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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27060325">Naruto: Tales of a Ninja Magician</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CptClaymore/pseuds/CptClaymore'>CptClaymore</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action/Adventure, All OC Cast, Alternate Dimensions, Chuunin Exams, Drama, Expanded World Map, Genjutsu specialist OC, Lukewarm, Major character death - Freeform, Multi, No Land of Waves, Parallel Universes, Stage Magician OC, naruto cameo, original storyline</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:14:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>764</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,654,108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27060325</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CptClaymore/pseuds/CptClaymore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of an alternate world where small changes long, long ago made a Ninja World of a different history and different people, different heroes, and different villains. Meet a young girl that tries to live a life as a ninja with a completely different set of ideals from the cruel world that surrounds her, trying to remain unchanged. All OC cast.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Tale Begins: Enter Nakotsumi Mana</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A young girl was standing on a cardboard box with some trash in it, one not unlike many more that could've been found across Konohagakure, especially in the spring season when people were tidying up and throwing out the trash that they had as leftovers from winter. The substance and contents of said box mattered little to the twelve-year-old girl, only its location in the central district of the village. The actions she performed on the said box were quite unlike what any common villagers had seen before causing crowds that couldn't have been called as small to gather around the child and observe her peculiar behavior.</p><p>Konohagakure was a ninja village through and through, people that lived in it may have lived under the illusion that it was no militaristic establishment however they weren't quite right. The village made its due from ninja performing missions for both its villagers and the village itself, most of the time ninja faced off against other ninja and no place, that benefits from violence and conflict can be called non-militaristic. As many rights these villagers enjoyed, as believable as this illusion of peace was - they lived in the village of hired muscle that did not shy away from killing. Perhaps that was why this girl proved to be so interesting to the audience.</p><p>The girl with of slightly tanned skin and dark hair, tied behind her back with a forehead protector with the Leaf's mark carved into it, wearing a casual flowery black dress similar to what normal girls of her age wore and sandals was performing tricks for the audience's amusement. Her performance consisted of tricks both simple and utilizing ninjutsu, something that not that many people have seen before. Ninjutsu was made to be a tool of murder and stealth, a tool of accomplishing the task at hand and this child was using it for the amusement of the audience, making harmless but highly visually appealing sparks, using her natural affinity for sleight of hand as a kunoichi to quickly hide and reveal objects. The public ate the little girl up...</p><p>The girl opened her eyes in the morning as Sun felt its need to blast all of its luminescence into her closed eyes slightly earlier than the young genin would've loved it to. She scratched her tired eyes and sat up looking around the bright room, her somewhat annoyed and tired eyes slipped back to the piece of cloth illustrating one of her favorite books that was hanging on her window, acting as a cover, as a mean to protect her from the light. The girl's hand reached up and tore it off with a quick pull, "Thanks, I'll remember this, Shikio-kun..." she thought sarcastically thanking the character who was depicted on the cloth. The illustration was one of his iconic battles with the Kirigakure ninja which was currently hard to believe when in reality he failed his duty to protect a young girl from sunlight in the morning. Life was truly unlike fiction...</p><p>"Mana, when will you get down!? You don't want to be late for your "One-Time-Thank-You-Tour", do you?" father's voice echoed from below. The man was a chuunin of Konohagakure and had quite a powerful voice, he was more of the intellectual type so he had that certain shade of confidence and strength to his voice without making it sound too husky and dark. He had the perfect voice for a teacher but he used it to berate the opponents that fell into the traps of "Konoha's Great Trapster", as he was known, instead. The only reason why Mana knew all of this was because sometimes father's friends gathered and they kept telling the girl all of the stories, always sounding so proud of all the violence, always making her doubt just how much of the content of those stories was true. Surely Hibiki-san couldn't jump fifteen meters in the air to catch the scroll they were supposed to retrieve, right?</p><p>Mana jumped out of the bed and slipped into a white shirt, buttoning it lazily and making the bed. This day was actually a special one and that meant something having in mind the fact that she just graduated from the Ninja Academy three days ago. Today was not supposed to be the day of her life as a ninja, however, this was more of a day for magic! The girl had a strange little hobby for a kunoichi, she performed magic tricks on a cardboard box full of trash for everyone to see. It was a strange thing to do for those who did not understand the deep hidden meaning of Mana's behavior.</p><p>This girl with messy dark hair that was all over the place and skin that was several shades short of making everyone think she was from Kumogakure was actually a very peaceful and kind soul, she despised the notion that ninjutsu was art for killing. To Nakotsumi Mana all life was sacred and magical, ninjutsu was a part of life so it was just a special kind of magic, a magic that was meant to protect the source of all magic - life. Because Mana believed that ninjutsu was magic which was meant to protect the stronger magic she had to express that belief, she had to show everyone that ninjutsu was not meant for killing but rather it could be given any number of meanings depending on the person that used it.</p><p>The hunched and sleepy figure slothfully stumbled down the stairs from her room into the kitchen where mother had already made her some pancakes, Mana's mother worked in a café further into the village center called "Nakotsumi Café", she knew all sorts of weird dishes and beverages. She knew how to make that weird "coffee" drink, a lot of villagers came to her home for a visit just to try it, for some reason mother wanted Mana to keep away from it, maybe it was some sort of alcohol or something? The girl slumped down on the chair and started stuffing her lovely little cheeks with the breakfast. A kitchen knife flew and dug right into the column of pancakes that were stacked in the center of the table.</p><p>"I hope you're not going to thank Mr. Hanada like that, you do realize he sponsored your act, right?" mother spoke, the woman was a kind one but had a rather feisty character, she was also the only one in the family with the darker skin making Mana somehow wonder if she wasn't the one whom the little ninja-magician inherited it from. "I'm going to dress up and do my hair later, mom, I want to spend as little time in that uniform as possible." The girl replied after swallowing the breakfast, by now the knife flinging did not bother her one bit. "Excuse me?!" mother yelled out with a smile in a funny tone "We made that uniform together, you know? Put it together from scraps of cloth". The family shared a laugh.</p><p>"Hanada is a crook though." father spoke, he had his chuunin vest on, most likely he was supposed to run off on an assignment pretty soon. "Yeah, somehow doesn't feel too great knowing that my daughter's act took off because of a person with such a reputation..." mother scratched her forehead as she was still working the pan with the reinforcements to the pile that was currently on the table. "Well, he may be a slimy bastard but I guess he's an admirer of art... Let's just hope it's his artistic side that is interested in Mana and not the one I'd be glad to pound." father concluded the topic and finished his tea. "Well, I'm off, tell me how it went," he said his farewells and dashed off as Mana and mother waved him away.</p><p>One day, not too long ago, Mana was doing her casual thing, working on those little magic tricks she did and a man in a fancy attire approached her and after the little show was over offered to sponsor the first year of her performances in a village hall in the northern district of the village just in case if she was willing to take it further. The hall was mostly used by actors who kept playing the same stories over and over again: "Adventures of Shikio", "Stories from the Great Shinobi Wars", "Tales of a Gutsy Ninja" which, to be entirely honest, to Mana looked pretty much like a hentai-story from little she had seen.</p><p>Naturally, the young magician felt much obliged to return Hanada the favor in some way, she decided to give him a show for free, show him what he was financing, luckily enough his son's birthday was just around the corner so he felt very happy about all of that. Children did comprise the vast majority of Mana's audience anyways, they also were quite firm supporters of her craft which in terms made the mature villagers look at her with the "she's not hurting anyone anyways" stares and smile as they passed by the cardboard box that Mana performed on. That was the plan for today, later she'd have to train for a little bit because father told her that soon she should receive a letter about the meeting of her team. That was just the way things went in the village - genin worked in teams, not that the girl wasn't excited about meeting them.</p><p>After the breakfast the young magician rushed to get a shower and to dress up, the magician uniform did look weird but it was fun in a way - she looked like a little monkey in it and it was tight, not a thing Mana would've loved to be caught in a fight wearing but she looked like a fancy lady-man in it which amused her somewhat. The young kunoichi was one of those girls that didn't mind looking cute, obviously, she was instructed about the practical attires in the Academy but during her days off she didn't mind looking silly just for the sake of it. Her attitude towards outfits matched one towards ninjutsu if one wanted they could've just had some fun with it and not cared about the consequences. Father also looked pretty happy about the uniform, he also gifted the girl with a seal in her round top hat that could've been used to seal things into it and unseal them, sadly enough Mana wasn't skilled enough to use it yet but father said it's a gift for the future anyway.</p><p>After slipping on her magician's uniform and fitting it with all the card decks and tools she used for simple hide and reveal tricks like spring devices that could've been loaded with light objects and then just shoot them out when flicked for a visual effect, the girl admired herself in the mirror for a couple of seconds before giving herself a playful smile and dashing down the stairs and rushing off after waving her mother goodbye. With a slow and confident step, Mana was heading off into the large western district of the village which was all just large mansions and big houses that made the small home of the Nakotsumi family blush like a schoolgirl being complimented.</p><p>Feeling a bit nervous the magician pressed a button which in term made a light flicker making some hired security gather up near the entrance to check her. These men weren't ninja, they were all mercenaries however a lot of the mercenaries started as a ninja before mucking something up or they lived outside the village walls and grew up in an adapt or perish kind of environment making them just as strong as a ninja and much more crafty. Picking a fight with them wouldn't be good in any way and annoying them would be a poor demonstration of Mana's manners. The men stared the weird looking kid down and let her through with a smile. They also were kind enough to lead the magician into the mansion and handed her over to Hanada Katsuo himself. The man was a tycoon who built his fortune on a combination of "business" and "lucky breaks of the right people disappearing at the right time", being in his presence wasn't pleasant to the girl in any way but he was her sponsor and she couldn't help it but accept his small donations just for as long as her shows take off.</p><p>The man was a tall and well-built gentleman, he wore a rather fancy attire comprising of a white silk shirt and a vest, his overflowing golden hair and gentle facial features combined with what looked like eyeliner and makeup made him look a little too feminine for Mana's comfort but his strange looks wasn't the most uncomfortable thing about this man. Being an advocate of justice and peace, and a kunoichi of Konoha, the girl suspected she'd have to take this man down when he becomes too ambitious and makes a mistake but for now she was wise to stay on his right side. "I'm quite glad that you decided to accept my offer to bring your art to the stage instead of... Cardboard boxes... I understand that you may be too young to understand this, Mana-chan, but... Art is a business and your art is so exotic and strange, its meaning is so yet unseen that an artist like me cannot stay neutral in its presence. My son Koji is right there, he and his friends cannot wait to witness what you do. I must compliment your attire, it's rather classical, as you might see if you look around, I am a man that sees the value in the classical..."</p><p>The man made a gesture for Mana to look around and witness the countless statues and art that was everywhere in his home. Somehow this just made the girl feel less comfortable as she felt like she was not unlike this poor busted up statue of a naked lady. Petrified and put on display, her arms broken so she cannot resist because her art somewhat depends on her benefactor...</p><p>"No way! Guys, it's Konoha's Sorceress!" the teenager in the expensive-looking armchair yelled out and jumped up pointing at Mana as she and Katsuo entered the room. "Konoha's Sorceress?" Mana looked at Katsuo, he shrugged and smiled like a litterer would smile being caught red-handed. "I thought of it, has a certain ring to it, all good artists have stage-names, you know... Use it at your discretion, or don't if you don't like it." he laughed out before turning around, wishing Mana good luck and leaving. Mana looked at the kids and teenagers that were staring at her expecting to see a miracle. When she was performing on a cardboard box without a care in the world it felt so different, now she was... Almost stage-frightened. "Okay, you might want to move now!" Mana ordered herself when the pause became a bit too uncomfortably long as the girl extended her arms.</p><p>"Alright, who wants to see a magic trick?" Mana smiled through her newly discovered stage-fright she was starting to get used to just for her audience to cheer on. People in a militaristic ninja village rarely got to have some fun, art was supposed to change all of that, and Mana's art was quite unlike anything anyone may have seen. Maybe that was why she was starting to pick up some popularity around the village...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Revolt? The Hanada Estate Under Attack</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The "stage" magic that Mana performed was unique, it, obviously enough, wasn't actual magic but it was the closest it got to the real thing. How did one define what is magical? Was it something that could not be explained? Life had many mysteries, probably less was known of it than unknown and people seemed to be strangely more attracted to learning of how to take it away than to understand what it actually was. With that in mind, one wouldn't have to twist their mind around too much to empathize with Mana's peaceful point of view.</p><p>What the young kunoichi did when she performed was a combination of both simple practical magic but she most of all preferred ninjutsu. After all the point of her magic was to show ninjutsu as something other than a tool to claim lives or to ruin them. Instead of cutting people to pieces or burning them alive, Mana preferred that her techniques looked impressive to provide a certain spark of joy for her audience. The girl took great pride in the preparation work she did before each performance, she always ground her magic to perfection.</p><p>For that simple reason, the audience of teens and children just a couple of years shy of being qualified as teens looked like they were colored impressed. The very first thing that Mana did was weave a single handseal and force a small and harmless current of wind chakra out of her sleeve, then flick the device around her wrist hidden behind her sleeve that shot out the deck of cards she had hidden. The combination was an impressive display of cards twisting around in a horizontal and round twister. With swift movements of hands, Mana caught each and every card and started shuffling the deck.</p><p>"So does anyone want to volunteer? I promise not to turn you into things or hypnotize you or anything." Mana smiled when a kid jumped up and ran up to her, his face didn't look like it belonged to a fan, he looked eager to make a fool out of Mana and to bust her act. Reading faces to some extent was something that was taught in the Academy, for a ninja it was essential to identify the dangerous faces from the harmless ones in a large crowd sometimes, sensei probably had no idea that Mana would use it for magic shows...</p><p>"Thank you, now if you could please pick a card we can finally see some magic." the young ninja magician smiled as she quickly shuffled through the deck gesturing with her chin for the teen who looked like he was just slightly older than her to pick a card. With a rather rude and powerful movement, the teen drew a card out of the bunch and the raven-haired magician grinned with half of her mouth - he played right into it. "I think someone has the King of Hearts." Mana declared as the kid showed it to the audience.</p><p>This wasn't the sort of trick to represent Mana's arsenal of stage magic, this was just a warm-up trick that used very intricate and psychological tricks rather than sleight of hand. The trick was to remember the card she caught that she wanted the audience member to draw, to know exactly where it was in the deck, and to flick it open to him several times during shuffling. The teen's mind perceived that card as special and subconsciously chose it most of the time, had he not chosen the card Mana had several backup plans on how to develop the trick further but for now this part had to end.</p><p>"That's pretty cheap, show us more tricks like that flying cards bit!" the volunteer decided to heckle for some reason. Mana didn't really want to overexert herself with chakra usage, she usually did three to four ninjutsu or genjutsu tricks per show and those were the only things she knew. All of her ninjutsu or genjutsu techniques were harmless techniques made for magic shows and all of them were made by Mana herself. Truth be told if she did not possess precise enough chakra control to train genjutsu and the ability to invent her own impressive visually but ultimately harmless techniques she'd have not passed the Academy test.</p><p>One thing that was odd about Mana was her refusal to use jutsu that were not invented by her. As an artist, she felt very uneasy about ripping off other artists which proved to be difficult in the Academy because it was all centered around learning the generic Academy techniques. By no means were they any easier to learn than Mana's own techniques, most of them had tricks and practical uses to them unlike the jutsu that Mana used but that was not the obstacle that prevented Mana from using them - it was her hesitance to use the techniques she didn't invent.</p><p>"Shut the hell up, Shinjiro, I'm enjoying the show." Koji, the son of Mana's sponsor, replied. The magician was glad to hear that for the time being at least Hanada's son was entertained. Still, the artist's honor demanded her to step her game up and entertain everyone. "Well, I suppose I could show you a more appealing trick, I always appreciate a demanding audience, keeps me on the top of my game." Mana smiled gently as she quickly weaved some handseals looking right into the eyes of her volunteer. Suddenly the boy crouched down and started acting like he was a monkey, letting off strange yelling sounds, jumping around on all fours, and butting his head into the furniture.</p><p>The kids that were circled around couldn't keep it in, they couldn't have been any happier than they were at that moment, in a way this was also part a psychological trick combined with some harmless genjutsu. The genjutsu technique in question was one of Mana's favorite - "Polymorphy Jutsu", however if it was used on a different audience member it may have annoyed the kids, the exchange of dialogue between Koji and his friend who was now looking in the cupboard for bananas suggested that this Shinjiro kid was the pretentious kind and everyone wanted to see him being taught a lesson.</p><p>Without letting the genjutsu eat up too much of her chakra as her reserves were already almost half empty Mana let go of the audience member who instantly started yelling at her, "You promised you won't hypnotize me!", Mana made an innocent face and slapped her own cheek, "I did? Oh my, I guess you'd have been wise not to trust a magician. Artists these days do all sorts of things for a cheap laugh..." Mana finished that part of the show and was getting ready to move it to the main part when she realized that her show was all going to blow up in her face.</p><p>A loud bang came from behind the magician and loud yelling broke into the room, multiple loud voices started coming in and out of the house, they started spreading to every room and probably even every floor, there must've been a party for adults going on as loud shrieks of women came in from the floor above - Hanada Estate was under attack. Before the kids and their entertainer recovered from shock the door that led to their room burst open and four mercenaries rushed in, seeing how they were all wearing the clothes that Hanada's guards were wearing. The kids had all calmed down but something was wrong - they rushed up to Shinjiro, who was now back to normal, and Mana and put their hands behind the kids' backs and commanded them to kneel down on the floor.</p><p>"Wh...What in the world is going on?! Junjo, what are you doing? What's going on?!" Koji started freaking out as the men he thought were supposed to protect him were now tying up his hands and feet. "Just keep your mouth shut, kid, this doesn't concern you, it's between us and your backstabbing father." one of the muscle-heads replied. The guards offered no more words, they just picked the kids up and started taking them upstairs to a room that reminded Mana of an attic. The kind of an attic rich people have, mind you, but an attic filled with art and expensive furniture was still an attic.</p><p>The mercenaries put the kids down and left one of the mercs to watch the kids while the others left the room without even bothering to lock it. After all, the people there were just kids, what could they do against a grown and trained mercenary? This wasn't a good situation to be in, Mana never thought this day would require combat expertise so she left her ninja tools at home, all she had with her was this quite uncomfortable uniform and all the practical magic tools like fake flowers, decks of cards and the sort. Mana never was any good in the Academy with the physical arts anyways, she lacked any notable skill in weaponry combat, her aim was one of the worst in the class and her taijutsu skills placed her in one of the lower quarters of the class.</p><p>Koji yelled out at the mercenary, "You betrayed my dad! He should've never hired a shit-head like you, you mercenaries are just backstabbing snakes!" The man calmly approached Koji and kneeled up so that his blocky head could reach the boy's level. This was good! Koji was getting the mercenary to keep his eyes away from the kids and focusing on him, he probably didn't know that Mana was a ninja but this was still better than nothing for a start. The best option would've been to just play the scared little girl and let the events go as they did, Mana was under no mission, no orders, no assignment. To sit still while people got hurt was not her style, however.</p><p>Mana had the gift of ninjutsu in her, the gift that most people lacked, her magic of life was more powerful than that of everyone else in this house and that gave her the responsibility to use that magic to protect everyone! Even if that meant placing her own life on the line, even if that meant getting hurt and risking this by entering a combat situation clearly unprepared. At least the girl had the decency to wear sandals and not those shoes that mom suggested, they looked nice but no fighting ever could be done in them.</p><p>"The real snake is your slimy daddy, brat. Do you even know why we're doing this? Haven't you ever wondered why so often mercenaries attack the mansion? Well once we did, we didn't submit one for the Konohagakure Police Force and questioned him ourselves, turns out they worked for your father, just like us. When the time to pay up came your father just gave them up for Police Force and paid those dirtbags to stick some crimes up in their files. We decided to teach your daddy a lesson before he screws us over like he did every other mercs he hired."</p><p>So that was it? Finally, Hanada's own greed was catching up to him, on any other day Mana would've loved to see his own slimy affairs explode in Hanada Katsuo's face but... These men meant business, they probably wanted to hurt or kill the man, that's what mercenaries do, they have little restraint if any. They follow their own sick and twisted code of honor and if they feel like their payment is threatened they will most likely not stop at just quitting the job, they'll feel as if they have to pay Katsuo back and that Mana and her own moral code could not allow.</p><p>There was an easy way to escape these restraints, this was a simple rope knot so the basic Academy Rope Escape Jutsu would've sufficed but that really was not Mana. She never used a technique that she didn't invent in public, only by herself, and only on special occasions, her getting through Academy with this silly rule was a story all of itself, a story for another time. "Sir, I don't know if you know me but I'm a magician, I have a bunch of pointy tools on me and the way you put me down made one dig into my side and it really hurts, maybe you could flip me over?" Mana asked attracting the guard's attention. Before that she used her natural sleight of hand to escape the binds on her arms, being a stage magician offered some more skill in escaping binds as one did that for fun every Tuesday.</p><p>The brute approached Mana and bent over to flip her on the other side, "Whatever you say, Konoha's Sorceress..." the man grunted out using that ridiculous stage name with the most condescending tone imaginable. Swiftly as the man's arms went under her side to push her the girl shot her elbow straight into the man's eye and jumped up driving her palm into the man's face. Mana had a pretty puny punch, just barely strong enough to make her graduate the Academy but the man staggered back and hit the wall making all sorts of statues and ancient clocks fall on his head and knock him out.</p><p>The magician proceeded to untie her legs and then went over to Koji's binds, then everyone else's. Everyone looked at her funny, they were impressed up to an extent but also they realized they've underestimated Mana, that was what they all did, that was why she succeeded when she did. She may not have been the most amazing prodigy or had the most impressive bloodline or come from some ancient clan of ninja but everyone always looked down on her. It was a good decision to leave her headband at home, otherwise, these mercenaries would've made sure to keep her better contained...</p><p>Mana's eyes slipped up on Koji and saw him lifting a heavy head of some statue above the head of the mercenary, she silently let out an alert for him to stop. "I know you're angry, I know you feel betrayed but don't kill them. I saved you, you owe me if you just look the other way and escape the mansion I'll consider the debt paid." Koji looked at her with a berating and enraged look, he probably couldn't believe it - a ninja that refused to let the enemy die? This must've been the dumbest thing the teen had ever heard but Mana considered all life sacred and would have never let anyone die. That was her ninja way.</p><p>"Whatever... Go save my dad, I'll go get some REAL ninja here," Koji grunted out and gestured for the other teens to follow him as he followed Mana who slowly opened the attic door and looked down. Of course, she'll try her best to save Hanada, she may not have liked the guy at all, the genin may have just a little bit been on the side of the mercenaries but... This wasn't the way, hurting people and possibly killing them for something they haven't even done yet. The magician took off the blazer that was obstructing her movements and waved for the kids to move, if they were silent enough they'll pass right through.</p><p>There was some amount of activity, sounds of pounding, painful grunts and women crying, excessive cursing, those were all over the house. The kunoichi wasn't sure exactly how many mercenaries did Katsuo hire for protection, still, it would've been best to not directly fight any of them. Mana's legs felt tired from all the time they've been tied together so the exhaustion made her sit down on the stairs, this was a bad plan, she couldn't take these men on, not alone. She may have been a kunoichi of Konoha but her arsenal of techniques was just light shows and useless visual illusions, even more, some of her chakra was spent in that magic show previously.</p><p>A loud shout of pain, coming without a doubt from Hanada came Mana's way forcing the girl to jump up. Even if she's taken out, even if these men beat her, every second she fights them saves Hanada some suffering, she was given the control of ninjutsu and chakra manipulation by fate for a reason, if she just whined over how unfair the world was on the stairs she wouldn't deserve this gift she was given and if she died fighting these men that meant that she didn't prove herself worthy of those gifts and wasted them. Mana was burning with fire that made her wish to prove that wasn't true. A fire that burnt away all the fear, all the stress, and all the shock and forced her to go save a life!</p><p>"Wait, you shouldn't be here..." a voice came at Mana's side as a mercenary was standing on the lower side of the steps, this one looked slimmer, he most likely slacked off his training hours. The mercenary didn't speak loud enough for the others in the shut room to hear, it took yelling of a man in pain for it to be heard all the way here. Through sheer instinct the kunoichi's hand reached for whatever she could find, flicking the switch that shot her cards out of the device and making the man flinch in the surprise of a bunch of cards being shot in his face, as he recovered Mana's kick had already reached his face, he was stunned and the magician couldn't stop for a second because that would mean she lost - she had the advantage and the kunoichi couldn't waste it! One punch after the other from her palm came at the man's chest and his face before the magician found a hard object - a vase on the table to knock him out with.</p><p>She could already hear a commotion and loud yells in the room at the western part of the building, the doors opening and some men confused by all the noise leaving - it had finally begun. It was time for Mana to prove her worth, to prove that the man that signed her Academy graduation papers was right to put the trust of the village on her. The magician glanced behind her only to witness the kids leave through the front door, she quickly jumped to hide behind one of those ancient couches getting ready for her first actual fight.</p><p>"Shit, the kids escaped!" one mercenary yelled out as several of them filled the room and started looking around. It was only a manner of time before the kids reach a ninja, a "real" ninja not a newbie disgrace like Mana... She may not have been willing to kill but she was ready to put her life on the line to protect a man she would've liked to slap with a wet cloth on a spare day. Life as a ninja was strange...</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Big Boss Bakku! The Rumble Concludes at Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were three mercenaries roaming one of many living rooms of the mansion. This was a problematic situation as the two were back to back and were scanning the area quite thoroughly while heading towards the door. Right as the magician felt like she was getting the basic idea of the situation one of the men separated and went through the door on the northern side of the room - completely in the opposite direction to both the exit where the kids went and the room where Hanada was held in. What could he have been up to? What exactly could've been the big plan of these men?</p><p>There were so many unknowns in this situation, Mana didn't know the degree of preparation that these men had, the very fact that they decided to pull something like this inside one of the most powerful ninja villages of the world was mind-blowing by itself. They most likely planned to teach Hanada a lesson leaving him dead or heavily injured, rob his home leaving the man without as much as a ryo in his pocket, and just disappear in the Fire Country forests, maybe move to another country to live their days as newly made men.</p><p>Even with all the newfound heroism the genin felt quite hesitant to face off against the mercenaries, even one of them proved to be tough enough to barely be hurt by her blows, she needed to utilize heavy objects and play dirty if she was to take them down, fighting against even one of them was a gamble and those guys were as close to each other as husband and wife. If Mana as far as peeked to attack one of them from behind trying to utilize her element of surprise the other one would spot her near instantly.</p><p>"What was that sound? Is that Zanmaru? Holy shit, what happened, did ninja already find us out?" one of the mercenaries shouted out finally spotting his knocked out ally for the day. Mercenaries had no sense of loyalty, they weren't friends, they were just in it for the money and one wouldn't have been wrong to assume that these men had no sadness to spare for what happened to their friend. Growing up and learning to survive outside the village walls makes one only look out for themselves, adapt, and survive, bonds to these men were a weakness, the only occasion for them to work together is when they need to satisfy their hunting instinct by hunting for money in a pack.</p><p>"No, no way, Bakku said that unless we make it publically known that shit is going down here no ninja will notice, no one should've noticed anything until we set this thing on fire, this has to be one of the kids... Still, how the hell..." the other one still tried to wrap his head around just how some kids managed to knock out a skilled mercenary. "Kids are scared little buggers, they probably ran off the first chance they got after taking out Zan, damn that guy, I'm almost tempted to draw something on his face right now..." the first mercenary replied crouching down to his downed fellow.</p><p>Mana slowly crept around the couch, letting herself remain unseen as she observed the scene, the slim and puny hand of the girl reached up to remove a bust of the owner of the house that was located on the table. It was about time that the self-adoration of Hanada Katsuo finally served a noble purpose... Mana was careful to remain unseen as she tossed the stone head at one of the mercenaries, sadly her horrible aim let itself be known, instead of hitting the man in the head, the stone hit him in the upper back making a painful wound but probably not a very effective one. The man cursed and fell on the floor, scratching the aching area and cursing profanities the likes of which the young magician had never heard before.</p><p>"You little brat!" the friend of the injured merc shouted out while charging at Mana, this was bad, a situation like this called for the genin to use some more chakra because there was no way to get out of this unscathed otherwise. Luckily enough the girl's hands were quick enough to weave some seals before the brute got too close, she managed to make the seals, the man pulled out a knife. The blade of the damned thing was amazing, possibly large enough to cut entire limbs off with just a swipe, certainly very unlike the light and shallow cutting kunai that ninja used.</p><p>Mana struggled to get eye contact with the bandit, she needed that to set off her technique. The man jumped forward, thrusting with the knife as if it was a longsword. Honestly, he couldn't be blamed for such a lackluster knife-fighting style, his range was still superior to that of the unarmed girl, he was quite enraged and willing to kill. The man's knife impaled the young magician and the brute kept running with the powerless body of the girl for a while slamming her lifeless body to the wall. He lost control as he started punching her and laughing to himself.</p><p>That was the version of events that the man saw, luckily enough the genin managed to get eye contact with him in time and move to the side, had the man retained all of his awareness he may have tried to swipe sideways but now he just kept running forward believing to have impaled his enemy. "Hey, what the hell are you doing, she's right behind you, you idiot!" the still incapacitated mercenary yelled out to his friend, to be honest, the two were quite justified in not seeing genjutsu coming - it was a rare craft for someone to wield and even rarer to be inside a genin's arsenal.</p><p>Genjutsu were complicated techniques, they took a lot of chakra and they took the magician her entire, yet at the moment quite short, a lifetime to make. Coming up with ideas was difficult enough, researching textbooks about the human brain and their chakra network to acquire the knowledge of which chakra nodes needed to be affected by chakra only added to it. They may have been a surprise weapon, they may have been effective techniques but... A single genjutsu technique drained almost half of the usable chakra that Mana had at that moment, the girl was already breathing heavily and her movements started feeling slower and sloppy, it felt like she just ran several laps in seconds. Single technique giving her just mere moments strained her body so much.</p><p>The kunoichi didn't wait too long for the merc to recover from the illusion, he may have seen what he saw and heard what he heard but he must've heard his buddy's reaction, Mana's foot was quick enough to target the back of the man's knee forcing him on the knees and her arms quickly slammed the man's head into the wall he was so kind to get close to. She tried her best but she wasn't sure if she knocked the man out - she may have been trained for almost five years to be effective in combat and stealth but she still was just a teenage girl. Despite the fears of the magician the man looked like he was out cold, Mana looked at the downed mercenary, he struggled to move but it didn't look like he could - maybe she hit a sensitive spot in his back. The genin almost instantly started to feel bad, she didn't want to injure these men so much, what if she incapacitated the man for life?</p><p>Loud yells of Hanada from the other room signaled to the girl that this was no time at all to wonder about those things. She had to get in there and save Hanada even if she was quite tempted to hit him with something for what he brought on his family. His child, his wife, the friends of his family could've been killed because he was too greedy to pay some mercenaries that always took things too seriously. The girl's chest inflated as she drew a deep breath - she was still afraid and tired but she had to move, she had to go in there, what if the men inside the room had heard what happened here and became desperate to finish their job quickly? Mana had no luxury of time, ironic when luxury was all that surrounded her at that moment...</p><p>Slowly, still with shaking hands the kid opened the door and finally got to see the situation in the room. The good news was that Hanada, while messed up and tied to a chair, was alive and in a pretty good condition, there was also just one man inside the room which meant that Mana had to only get lucky one more time, that wasn't too much to ask for, right? The bad part was that the man who had his foot up on Hanada's chest as he kicked the chair down and held a knife up in the air was one of the biggest and coolest looking guys that Mana had ever seen. He had short and greasy dark hair that was messy enough to make his gas mask covered face look scary. The man wore a similar vest to that of a Konohagakure ninja but if Mana's memory from the Academy days served it was that of a Kumogakure ninja but no band suggested that this man looted it off of one or bought it from the black market.</p><p>"Well, girl, you have newfound respect from my side, taking on big boys like us requires balls. Now just be a good girl and bugger off." the man spoke to Mana without bothering to even look at her, he kept his gasmask googles focused on Hanada's beaten face and kept a firm grip on that knife, ready to plunge it wherever it needed to go to cause the man pain. Once more the girl breathed in and out, not being considered worthy to be even looked at by one's enemy felt degrading. "I'm about to risk my life to save a man who I shall strangle myself later. Well done, you..." she spoke to herself under her own nose as she took one more step forward.</p><p>Almost instantly, the very same moment her foot was set down forward the gigantic leader of the mercenary pack threw the knife at her, he wasn't fast enough for Mana not to lean to the side but he followed up his throw with a rush at her, the girl had no other option but to jump over some furniture and roll sideways, she wanted to counterattack but the momentum that the man forced her to build up with a double attack didn't give her that option. The only thing left for Mana to do was to stand back up as the man pulled his knife out of the wall. The blade went in deep, maybe all the way through the wooden wall but the tip looked bent somewhat. That gave Mana an idea about how to bring this Goliath down.</p><p>"I suppose letting me punch Hanada-san is out of the..." the genin opened her mouth again as the man turned sideways and tossed the knife again, that was what she wanted this time. With full knowledge of the man's follow up attack and the bent tip of the knife, the girl didn't follow up the same course of action, she leaped sideways with a small hop and watched as the knife didn't cut into the wall, but instead bounced off of the small stone surface of the western wall of the room. This time it was Mana's own hand that caught the knife and swung it at the lower side of the man's leg as he passed by her, ducking to dodge his punch that would've probably killed her outright.</p><p>A powerful resistance of the man's muscular leg suggested that Mana's attack was successful, some blood shot out as a deep gash opened on the man's leg, however, he didn't even flinch, instead, the back of his hand slapped Mana back, the girl was too surprised by lack of reaction from the man's side to duck, plus the size of the man's palm was just too big to dodge in such short span of time. The genin's body was flung backward by the force, she actually hit a couch and flipped over with it, it somewhat softened the impact, had the kunoichi hit a wall she may have been out and probably would've never woken up. Mana's head moved up spontaneously and almost instinctively to observe the follow-up attack of the enemy.</p><p>Instead of rushing at her or trying to toss the knife again he was looking at the crumbling blade of the tool - the force of impact from before as it hit the wall caused the knife a lot of shock and the follow up cut must've added up to it, also, who knew what kind of battles the weapon had already been through. The man's refusal to gloat or speak sort of scared the magician, he tossed the knife aside and instead decided to walk up to the girl and to just punch her out himself. He didn't take too much time, he obviously was not enjoying this and wanted it over with. Had Mana seen the man's eyes any better her impression would've been strengthened - it was obvious that he had seen many battles and murdering his enemies was a routine to him before he started working as a bodyguard.</p><p>The man approached Mana but then stopped in shock - he didn't notice the katana in the girl's hand before he already was too close. It was a weapon which was on Hanada's wall and was forced down by all the ruckus, the genin just happened to find it by accident. The fact that he was so close to being killed forced the mercenary leader to freeze - this was supposed to be it, Mana could've just made a strong cutting motion holding the handle and forced the sheath off, it was just a matter of time from there... But that was not Mana's way. The girl did not remove the sheath, she just swung the whole thing targeting the injured leg of the mercenary, as the tough oaken sheathe with cold steel inside collided with the man's bone it wasn't even close to being a fair match.</p><p>The merc yelled out loud as he fell on one knee, Mana quickly jumped up and started hitting him in his mask from both left and right, not stopping because stopping meant dying and letting Hanada die. The hits really let the boss of the mercs feel it, his mask tore, his googles almost exploded from the pressure, and, for the first time, the magician got to see the man's eyes. Suddenly the worst happened - the sheath broke revealing the steel inside and Mana hesitated to swing it, just for a mere moment, just long enough for her to turn the blade and to try to continue her onslaught of attacks with the blunt side but... It was all that the mercenary needed, he thrust his palm forward into Mana's chest pushing her into the wooden wall. The girl grunted out from the pain of hitting the wall as all air she had up to that moment, the little that was from all the exhaustion and swinging the sheathe blindly, went out forcing her to gasp for air, to try and catch any of it just to not let herself pass out because that meant Hanada's death.</p><p>The man picked up the sword, it didn't look like he had the same amount of hesitation to kill that Mana had, he started to approach her. This was it, Mana's hand to hand was pathetic, not even enough to outmatch a simple blockhead guy with more muscles than the brain. Why didn't he talk? Why didn't he gloat? Why didn't he laugh at her? Did her life not matter to him?! Mana suddenly got furious, her life mattered, she was the only thing right now protecting Hanada so she mattered, she couldn't let herself die! Quickly the girl made two more handseals and shot her hands forward yelling as she felt the last of her usable chakra leave her hands in the shape of harmless sparks.</p><p>"Magical Spark Jutsu" may have been harmless but it was useful because it was visually impressive and the amount of spark in kept bombarding the enemy with was enough for them to be stunned for a brief moment, the man's arms were occupied with holding the sword so he couldn't shield his eyes using his hands for a moment, before he started covering them with his arms, lowering the blade and moving back, his eyes that were now exposed as his goggles were broken by Mana's ruthless bashing before. The mercenary was giving in to the pressure, no that wasn't it, he figured out the weakness of Mana's jutsu, it had a very short range and the sparks got weaker as they hit him further, the barrage was less intense and it didn't feel nearly as unpleasant. What he didn't take into consideration was the couch that he stepped into and fumbled backward, trying his best not to fall down but stumbling further and further into the room in the process.</p><p>Mana's hands weighed down - she just had barely enough chakra not to pass out but... Her enemy found himself in quite the conundrum - he fumbled back and hit the impressive deer horn that was hung on the wall, probably one hunted by Hanada Katsuo himself. The place where the man was bleeding from, however, made Mana lift her palm through the pain and to grunt out. "Please don't move, if you do you'll open the wound and bleed out almost instantly, the shoulder is a dangerous place to be impaled in..." Mana huffed out and she was right - the man was only bleeding a little bit right now but he could've hit a pretty sensitive spot, had he moved around too much he risked dying in mere seconds from bleeding out if he hit an artery.</p><p>The mercenary roared out with a voice powerful enough to make Mana pout. She felt a slight relief however as the roar ended abruptly it forced fear to return as she looked at what made the man stop being enraged, she saw his eyes strangely excited... As if he was... Smiling under that mask... Suddenly Mana realized - she missed one mercenary, back when three of them walked out, one of them left through the northern door, he must've wandered back having found nothing. However, she realized that it was already too late. The girl heard loud whistling noise in the air, similar to steel cutting through the air itself...</p><p>A loud crumbling noise of shifting rock and breaking wood came her way instead of the pain of being stabbed - confused Mana looked back only to see the mercenary completely pinned down by pillars of rock that closed him by tightly shooting up crushing through the wooden tiles of the floor. "Nice work here, kid, but you missed one." a friendly voice reached Mana's ear as she saw a man in a jounin west with a bandana and geeky looking glasses grinning at her as he held a thumb up. "A young man bumped into me and said that a weakling ninja needed help, I suppose you did alright but you were a bit sloppy - you forgot to knock out that guy back there, you forgot this guy behind you... Other than that... Good job" he laughed.</p><p>A short while later ninja were swarming the area taking the beaten mercenaries out for questioning in the Konohagakure Police Force HQ. Mana decided that her job here was done, she went upstairs to pick her blazer up and as she went back to the first floor the geeky jounin stopped her. "You're a genin, right?" he asked and after Mana nodded he grinned "I hope you get assigned to my squad, nice work here." he finished, the magician thanked him for the praise, this guy happened to be different from all the other jounin she met - he was strangely kind and unaffected by difficult ninja life.</p><p>On her way out the Hanada Estate door Mana heard Hanada's voice directed at her, "So, Mana-chan, the show is this Friday, don't forget..." he said only for the girl to turn around a bow slightly, she had a slightly swollen eye from the powerful slap she got before so she must've looked funny, "Right... Friday!" she replied as if nothing had happened here today, explaining her swollen eye to her parents will be a doozy...</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. A Gentle Womanizer and an Otaku?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The week after the event at Hanada Estate was different from the kind of life Mana was used to, despite that it was still relatively peaceful. Parents were quite nervous and worried about the girl's injury, her eye and the entire right side of her face was pretty swollen and looked funny for a couple of days after. Ninja had unnaturally amazing recovery rates compared to ordinary villagers, chakra manipulation required complete mastery of one's body which also unlocked new levels of body recovery speed, still, it hurt and Mana was ashamed to look just like she was punched in the face, ironically enough that was pretty much what happened...</p><p>Despite that unpleasant experience things went quite smoothly, she got a little closer with her parents, father told Mana the story of his own first mission to oversee a construction being finished and having to protect the object from vandals that kept trying to spray paint on it to leave their mark on the world. One couldn't really blame people like them, both young and old wanted to be remembered, to feel like their life mattered, and in the world where life was thrown away casually such feelings only multiplied a hundredfold.</p><p>According to father, one day the construction workers were working on the upper floor and his team had to oversee the work being completed, unfortunately, no one noticed the nest of hornets swarming up in the trashed rotten wood that was used for the construction so within seconds the entire floor was flooding with angered hornets. The man claimed to have been stung so many times that he fell down through the unfinished floor right to the first floor and as he tried to stop his fall he cut his arm on a steel beam leaving a giant gash on his arm. He must've told the truth because father actually showed Mana the scar.</p><p>The point of that story was lost to the young genin, however. Of course, there were many thoughts that Mana had about the story, perhaps father wanted that she didn't feel bad about having been marked in her first real combat encounter, maybe he just wanted her to know that his first job was even worse, maybe he wanted her to know that even the most trivial and simple assignments could go wrong and cause injuries worse than actual fighting scars? Either way, when the time for Mana's big performance on stage came her face looked pretty much alright, just a slight black mark on her cheek that could've been wiped out by make-up. The young magician wanted to look her best for the occasion after all!</p><p>Mana's Friday show went great, the hall wasn't really full or anything, out of several hundred seats in the great hall about forty were filled and for a first show, the manager was impressed. Of course, the girl had some prior experience and some people knew her already from the time she performed on cardboard boxes that must've been the reason why she attracted some people - they were just people that occasionally checked her out when her shows were free. A part of the girl felt bad for charging money for the shows, her shows started as an idea, idea that ninjutsu was not a tool of death, it was not something that defined a person but rather was defined by the person that used it.</p><p>When the young one brought this question up to the manager of the hall he just shrugged, "Don't worry, kid, money ain't the problem here. Your prices are half the price of the plays people watch here, I wasn't sure how to promote your stuff because no one did crazy things like that. That probably was why so few people checked you out the first time - they didn't know what the hell they were getting into, now that voices will spread people will start to come." The manager was named Hiro, he was a nice short and elderly fellow, his eyes were always squinted and his hair was already grey, his face was filled with wrinkles and he always wore that weird flowery orange shirt. He couldn't have been older than the late forties, maybe it was what the stress of managing all of Konoha's artistic and entertainment environment did to people.</p><p>Just to feel better Mana asked Mr. Hiro if she could let in people for free sometime, the man just waved his hand and laughed. "You're the boss of your own shows, I just own the hall you're renting so as long as the rent is paid, do whatever you want. I'm telling you though, you're gonna be big when people get used to this, don't waste the chance by giving people free stuff." Apparently, Mr. Hiro had a nasty reputation about him with the common folk, not like they hated him or anything but he had the rep of being quite the old skinflint and made money from everything he had the chance to. It wasn't the bad kind of rep, more like something people always made fun of and pointed fingers at, but then waved their hands and left the hall with a "Classic Hiro..." in their lips.</p><p>Having moderate success with her magic shows made Mana more excited about her ninja life, she started to train more, exercise both her physical state, and meditate to improve her mental state and to better understand her body. The magician was a prodigy at meditation, ever since her mind managed to defeat her own sickness from back when Mana was even younger. From what the girl had heard her mother say, mother was not from Konoha originally, so when she settled down with dad and when Mana was born the two were crushed when they found out their baby had a rare mental disorder.</p><p>As a young child, the Nakotsumi kid had a disorder that prevented her from understanding facts and relating them to a process. She could see the stars in the sky but she could never understand how they worked even if she was directly told that the kid just couldn't relate the explanation with the actual process being explained. It was a disorder that made people into outcasts and they lived short lives as they had few friends and failure to understand basic everyday science made them extremely prone to unfortunate accidents. The parents did their best to help Mana, they weren't too rich or anything so they could only talk to the kid and try to make it easier for her but nothing really worked.</p><p>One day the two spat out whatever they were drinking when they heard the girl playing with toys and other children outside, they ran out to ask Mana how was that possible because usually those plagued by the disorder could not play with toys and imitate real-life scenarios because they simply lacked understanding how they worked which made it difficult and the girl just told them that she knew how things worked - magic made everything work. As the girl then spoke with her peers she was told of ninja, people that risked their lives to protect the lives of everyone and someone everyone admired. To the four-year-old Mana, these ninja were champions of magic, enforcers of magical will. Mana herself wanted to be a ninja but her mental disorder made it impossible.</p><p>Despite their best attempts to talk Mana out of the idea to be a ninja her parents still enrolled her into the Academy when she was six, they figured that eventually, their daughter would quit when she found her dream life to be unattainable. They were right - Mana absolutely bombed every test and failed at everything, her sensei in the Academy, however, took a liking to her, he wondered if this was Mana's lack of skill or her disorder that prevented her from succeeding and he taught the kid how to meditate, focus on one's own mind and work things out when they became too confusing. That was the breakthrough the kid needed, just a couple of years later Mana managed to completely overcome her mental disorder and for the first time managed to think like an ordinary kid, she still kept clinging to her ideals of all life being magical but she did finally realize that magic didn't exist, she made it up to explain things she didn't understand.</p><p>Still, magic made everything so beautiful, so perfect, considering all life magical made the kid appreciate it more, knowing how it worked sort of made Mana feel empty and feel like life was pointless. So just out of respect for her old ways the girl still upheld her beliefs of magic being sacred, chakra being magical in nature, and that those with the exceptional gift to manipulate chakra were champions of magic with the duty to protect those that could not. After all of that, the young Mana managed to graduate Academy with average grades, the test she took was weird due to her refusing to use any Academy techniques because they "weren't hers". That story was for another day as the magician kept pushing those memories away.</p><p>Finally, after a short while meditating and training every day the moment that the girl waited for came - the Nakotsumi household received a letter which informed Mana that her team was assembled and that all the newly made genin were to be sorted out into teams the next day. The letter had in it the time and place where the girl needed to come, it didn't really tell her about who exactly was on her team. Not that the girl would've known those people if she was told that, she wasn't too popular in the Academy because most kids considered her "weird" and since she rarely got a perfect grade she wasn't one of those "cool kids" that aced everything from calculation classes to physical exercises.</p><p>Sleeping was hard for the young lady, she kept recalling the events at Hanada Estate as that was her only experience with actual ninja life. Will all missions be crazy like that? She would have died in there if that Jounin didn't bail her out, what if in the actual battlefield there'll be no one to watch her back, what if she'll hesitate to hurt an enemy again and she'll get killed? Now that she herself was a ninja, now that she had some experience over the whole thing the magician understood her father's work a lot better, he left for missions all the time and Mana for some reason was rarely worried. Somehow she just always assumed that he'd be back in one place, she took his return for granted. It was decided, tomorrow she'll smother the life out of her old man, stop taking people she loved for granted, and there was nothing he could have done to help it.</p><p>The next morning, after scaring the hell out of her father by hugging him for an extended period of time and having breakfast Mana ran off to the Academy, the sorting process was supposed to take place in the large classroom that could contain all of the students inside. It needed not to be said that the girl was excited and worried at the same time, there was a certain shade of unknown about how things will go, what her teammates will be like and what her sensei will be like and how will she handle life as a ninja. By now the kunoichi had at the very least accepted that she'll be made fun of for her beliefs and desire to never take a life. That was not a great mindset for a ninja to have after all, even when she told that her Academy sensei he just laughed it off and told her that a lot of kids babble about that but they always "grow out of such nonsense", according to "real ninja" lives had to be taken, the justifications of their casual murder were quite different, sometimes they killed out of fear, fear that their enemies would hurt their loved ones, sometimes it was just rage, to some it just felt good to show off all of their power and crush their enemies...</p><p>The classroom was full when Mana came in and no one really noticed or said anything about her entering and finding a seat on the right side of the classroom, further away from the window. Some kids near to where Mana sat down congratulated her on her shows taking off and told her that they will never miss a single magic show, that made the girl feel a bit better, after all, she finally was acknowledged for something she did, her magic and using ninjutsu just for entertainment no longer looked "weird" to some, there were people that actually enjoyed that sort of thing.</p><p>One by one each team was picked off, a Jounin entered the classroom and read names off a sheet of paper to pick up their students, and upon being called out the kids just stood up and ran towards their sensei, running off to bond and train with their team. After an entire hour of sitting around listening to the names of other people and seeing their joy of finally being a real ninja, Mana found that she was left sitting with two other boys in the classroom with no one coming in to read their names. What did all of that mean? Did that mean that nobody wanted her and those two other genin? Was she back in the Academy now? The girl's little heart started jumping despite her desperate attempts to calm down.</p><p>"Don't worry, that bastard is just late..." Mana heard beside her as the boy who said it - one of the two that were left together with Mana in the classroom, placed his hand on her shoulder. His voice was strange, it was already starting to get more mature and strong but it was also pretty soft, most likely because the boy deliberately tried to restrain it and soften it to sound nicer. "I mean we already got our photos taken, graduated the Academy, and got all the paperwork done, Hokage would be pissed if he had to do all that paperwork again to write us back into the Academy list..." the boy just smiled with a thumb up. His strange nice and polite behavior made Mana smile a little herself.</p><p>The kid was a rather tall individual with crazy white hair, he wore glasses and a rather formal-looking for a ninja attire, the other one sitting in the middle row was the complete opposite - small and slim in build, had black hair and wore some weird earing. "You better be right, future rival, otherwise I'll be pretty pissed for wasting my time sitting here doing nothing... I've got manga to read back home." the short boy grunted out, his voice was much huskier. "Future rival?" the tall white-headed one asked curiously as he didn't leave Mana's side. "Yeah, that's how teams work in all the manga, the guys are always rivals with each other, whether they want it or not..." the boy replied as he relaxed and kicked back pulling a small magazine out of his book filled with black and white pictures as his eyes started wandering around.</p><p>"Huh... He's a weirdo... Anyways, I'm Shimo, maybe you wanna go somewhere after this meeting is over with?" the boy asked as he leaned curiously by Mana's side making her feel a bit uncomfortable. The slim one cracked a grin, "I see, so you're the pervert type, I mean you gotta be the generic manga pervert because you'd have to be one to be in such a rush..." Shimo then dashed up to him and started angrily but without trying to hurt the boy just lightly rub his knuckle into the otaku's head. "What was that?! You're calling ME weird!?" this reaction made Mana genuinely amused as she covered her mouth and laughed out a bit. Maybe these two will be fun after all...</p><p>Suddenly the door burst open directing everyone's eyes at it, everyone expected the sensei to finally come to pick them up. To everyone's surprise and much confusion it wasn't a Jounin that entered but the Fourth Hokage. The man's white Hokage cloak and the hat that he always wore behind his back hanging around, reminding everyone of his status could not be confused, just like his shoulder-length grey hair, it was a unique color because the man was probably just in his mid-thirties and his head already looked grey. As the man burst into the room he started huffing heavily making everyone even more confused.</p><p>"Sorry, guys, your sensei is a real jerk, I just met him hanging out and doing nothing which made me suspicious so I forced him to come to pick you guys up, just wanted you to not leave without meeting up with him, jeez that guy... Sorry again, I hope he'll make it up to you... Though knowing him... Probably not..." the man scratched the side of his hairy head and laughed uncomfortably, he then just turned around and left as if nothing had ever happened. The three genin were pretty confused when they didn't know anything about the team's status, they were confused even more when they saw the Fourth. Now, when they realized that the Hokage just dropped by to tell them to keep waiting, it all seemed even weirder.</p><p>Mana kept looking at the door, expecting it to open any moment, at some moment she even got over the small brawl and then making up of her teammates as the two were now just slobbering over a dirty manga, apparently dirty manga had something that appealed to both perverts and otaku so their interests finally came to one. These two now seemed pretty tight, the magician wondered if she will ever find something to talk about with those two, she didn't read manga that much or went on dates. She wasn't really an unattractive girl, just a little young, and her slightly darker skin tone and wild curly dark hair required an observer of much more exotic tastes. Plus she always was a bit weird...</p><p>Just as Mana kept wondering if she'll be getting along with these two goofballs the door burst open and a man in an unzipped jounin vest and black cloak, similar to one Hokage wore just without the village insignia entered. He had shoulder-length brownish hair that had some shades of red in them, his eyes were pretty rough looking as they didn't suggest the man being too nice of a guy. He just opened his eyes forcing Shimo to jump up and the otaku boy to drop his manga on the ground. Mana had to say she was pretty intimidated by the man's look alone too.</p><p>"You guys, come with me..." was all he said as he turned around and started walking into the corridor at quite a pace, without even slowing down to wait for the kids to make it down the classroom and out the door. This was one fellow that didn't fool around!</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Ruthless Sannin Tanshu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The three kids rushed out of the classroom, doing their best so that they didn't fall behind their sensei. Having his behavior in mind, how he decided to not even show up to pick them up until Hokage himself forced him to, he wasn't likely to be the nice kind of guy that waits for his team. Something about his intimidating stature and squinting eyes just freaked Mana out and from the looks of her teammates - she wasn't the only one utterly scared of the man. He just had that certain kind of feeling coming off of him.</p><p>Even following him from behind, looking at his flowing dark cape and messy hair from behind him, being too far to even see him in much detail instilled fear, something made the magician wish to stay at such range and not get any closer. Out of nowhere the man stopped and turned sideways at them, his angry and freaky stare made the three almost stop in their tracks. One could've only speculated what this incredible energy coming out of the man was, strangely enough, Mana was the boldest and came up to speaking distance the first, the boys followed her shortly.</p><p>After the team finally gathered in close enough range to each other to be associated with the others the man simply turned around again without any words and started walking, this time a little bit slower. "T...This aura..." Mana wondered looking at the man's back, strangely enough, the magician hadn't noticed a symbol of some sort on the back of sensei's cloak. It looked like it meant something, perhaps sort of reminded Mana of a hieroglyph of some sort but it wasn't any language she could identify. The girl was a self-made prodigy at history as she loved to read historical books and legends as a child and continued to do so throughout her life.</p><p>"You've got to be kidding me... This is... Uzumaki Tanshu, one of the Konohagakure Sannin..." Shimo, the lady-loving teammate uttered, he obviously attempted to only let the other two teammates know but something told Mana that their sensei must've heard it as well. If he was at all the ninja his incredible presence implied him to be, he would've been aware of everything going on in the same room as he was, the fact that Shimo could identify the man, however, was quite interesting. Mana didn't know about the most famous and the strongest ninja in the village, she wasn't one that engaged in gossip or dreamed over their pictures in the textbooks, she only could identify some by their key features.</p><p>The man then pushed the Academy door and left into the yard, the three quickly rushed after him and left through the door before it closed. After sitting so long in a closed room, waiting for their sensei to come to pick them up, Mana appreciated a breath of fresh air and some sunlight. The man then started moving at an incredible pace, as if he wanted to get somewhere in the village but he only moved around the Academy building, then jumped and his feet stuck onto the wall of the Academy building. Shimo jumped quickly to follow him, Mana and the otaku boy who was yet to introduce himself remained on the ground. The boy sighed and jumped onto the wall as well, scaling it as quickly as he could and trying not to fall too far behind.</p><p>This situation annoyed Mana because she didn't want to use the ordinary Tree Climbing Jutsu that the Academy taught the students. It was a basic technique that also served as a tool to train one's chakra control, it was useful but Mana was not the one to invent it and that was enough of an obstacle to make the girl wonder how she'd scale the wall. The girl ran to the side a little bit further and found a backdoor entrance, she instead decided to use the stairs up to the exit to a balcony. After leaving for the balcony the magician observed her team stopping at an upper balcony as she quickly made some handseals and jumped straight at the wall, then kicking off of it to gain some altitude as a small gust of wind propelled her higher.</p><p>The jutsu was a simple invention of Mana's, the girl called it the "Mystical Wings Jutsu" despite the fact that it didn't actually serve the same purpose. It didn't allow the magician to fly just yet, it just made a single powerful wind current below her and propelled her upwards for just a moment, it barely only made those directly below the current flinch so the only uses there were for such a technique were to get small boosts of altitude or breaking one's fall quickly. Mana managed to grab the ledge with her arms as she pulled herself up and got into the same balcony that her sensei stopped to wait for his team.</p><p>The man's eyes looked like the man really hated Mana, not in a deep and personal way, she just annoyed him by wasting his time and he obviously didn't care that much about her, to begin with. The man only grunted out a simple but effective "You're slow" as the only scolding that the girl ever needed. The otaku boy was also annoyed, "Ugh, I guess you'll be the weak and useless member of the team, every team in manga has one, our enemies will have to take you out fast to establish that threat is serious..." he started his tirade before being interrupted by Shimo's "You're amazing, Mana-chan, I remember that technique from your show!" the boy yelled out.</p><p>It was quite clear that the only reason why Shimo even liked Mana's performance was that she was a girl, the technique wasn't really that impressive visually or efficient. She wasn't sure which reaction hurt more: the genuine annoyance of her sensei, the deep rooting dislike of all female beings that otaku had, and their trait to see everything as one cliché or the other or being praised just because of something that had nothing to do with anything. Now that it was out of the way the previously identified Konoha Sannin spoke up, "I'd like the three of you to tell me something about your personalities, don't get any ideas, I don't care too much so don't go too deep into it. It's just that I'm unlike my idiot colleagues, I understand that personalities and goals matter because they let me understand how you use your combat abilities."</p><p>He then took a small file out of his coat's pocket and flipped it through, "You three were put on the same team to balance out the grades, the teams were built to have one great student, one with horrible grades and an average one, the Hokage wanted to make all teams balanced and have an equal beginning." Despite Mana's genuine hope that the man won't go too deep into their grades his sharp and long finger shot forward at Shimo, then proceeded to point at her other teammate and then at Mana. "You, white-haired boy, your grades were really good, you were the fourth top student in the entire year, you, weasel-looking guy, yours were second-worst from everyone that graduated... You, girl, contrary to what your magic shows make people believe your grades didn't stand out in either direction, you're average in every way."</p><p>Being average offended Mana the most, she could've handled being called the worst because for some reason being worst was still special, being average wasn't anything, it was just sort of there. "Since in the Ninja World leaders always get all the responsibility and all the fame, the one with the good grades will start." the man spoke again, his tone was rough and it didn't look like he was asking them to do something, he was pretty much ordering it. Every moment of his presence radiated that impossibly thick and cold air, only him being there made all three of the kids feel uneasy.</p><p>Shimo sat on the edge of the balcony and began after fixing his glasses. "My name is Yuki Shimo, my parents moved out of Kirigakure several years ago with their business and moved to Konohagakure. They had to do it because the Mizukage was getting crazy according to them and started ordering having his own villagers murdered..." the boy's head slightly went down, it was a topic that summoned a reaction in him despite the fact that his family avoided the cruelty which was interesting. "I don't really care about the Mizukage or Kirigakure, honestly, I don't really remember it and Konoha is my real home, it's just that I want to make sure that scum that orders their own comrades to die would never come to power in Konoha and I'll fight such a person if I have to!"</p><p>After a brief moment of silence, the boy sighed and looked at Mana to continue. Him being a descendant of a rich family that had some sort of business inside Konoha would've explained his interesting attire, his clan was also quite a rare one and the magician only barely remembered it from being taught about them in the Academy. It was interesting how being both rich, successful, and being an heir of a rare ninja clan did not make this youth arrogant and prone to bragging about his life. He was very different from Mana in terms of his origins but he was not so different from her in terms of personality.</p><p>Mana got a strand of hair out of her face and moved it past her ear, her hair was curly and rather wild so the girl usually wore a hat, this day was the kind when she really wanted to wear one. "I am Nakotsumi Mana, some people know me as "Konoha's Sorceress" from all the posters in the northern districts and the magic show that I started recently. It's not ACTUAL magic, I just use ninjutsu that I learn for different purposes because I believe that lives of every person in this world are magical and sacred and that ninjutsu is a tool to preserve it, not to take it."</p><p>Sensei sighed, he obviously disagreed with that but so far he didn't let the girl know that or at least didn't tell her anything because his face pretty much spoiled it all. It was impressive how much Mana managed to piss him off because usually whatever thoughts he had remained a secret as his face was quite strict and static, now his emotions were incredibly clear. Why did he hate her ideals? Will it be a problem? Maybe he was the kind of person who killed a lot and ninjutsu was his tool to accomplish that? The man could've felt offended by the existence of a youngling like Mana.</p><p>It was then that the otaku boy spoke up, still reading his manga and not bothering to put his eyes up. "My name is... Nara Sugemi..." the boy spoke in pauses as his eyes were still running through the letters and pictures of his magazine and his brain was struggling with multi-tasking. "I don't really know why I became a ninja, I like manga about ninja and I love action, to read about it at least... I want to be able to do cool things like Rock Lee from that manga one day, if I can be as cool as the guys I read about, if I can inspire my own epic manga, that is all I need!" the boy spoke as he flipped the page and finished his introduction at the same time.</p><p>Sensei took a deep breath and massaged his tired eyes. "I'd imagine you yelling "Sensei" all the time would be annoying so I'll introduce myself at least, as rich-boy here got right earlier, I am Uzumaki Tanshu - one of Konohagakure Sannin. You have no business or interest in knowing my personality, I am more than capable to handle myself and watch over you guys for as long as we'll be working together. Now that I got to know the mental part, I'll need to see your actual abilities, follow me to the Training Grounds, I'll give my final impressions about you guys after the test. Just know that I am allowed to send the lot of you back to the Academy until we complete our first mission so don't mess it up!" the man exclaimed after leaping off of the building and starting to slowly walk towards the Training Grounds.</p><p>At least this time the kids knew the destination so they didn't have to keep following their sensei's back. Also, now sensei's weird shade of red in his brown hair made sense - the Uzumaki were known for their amazing vitality and flowing red hair. The kids rushed up to and descended the stairs, using the more conventional means to gain access to the village streets leading up to the Training Grounds. As they finally accessed the streets Mana asked her teammates something, "Say, guys, sensei seems to be really proud of his rank but I've never heard of a rank of "Sannin", isn't "Jounin" the highest rank in the village?"</p><p>Shimo looked quite happy about his chance to talk to Mana and to show off his brain a bit more, "Yes and no. "Sannin" isn't an official rank, not really, it is a rank that is passed through word, officially Jounin is still the highest rank but if one becomes so much more powerful than a Jounin, so much so that they surpass any common classifications of ninja they are declared a "Sannin" by the respective Kage. Each village has three of them, they are easily the most powerful ninja in the village, being a Sannin also grants you a certain amount of diplomatic freedom, for example, a Jounin being in another village is weird and suspicious but Sannin commonly travel around and they are usually respected everywhere for their power and achievements. Also, only the Great Villages are allowed to have Sannin, so there are twelve in total around the world, Sand Village used to have them too but they lack high ranking ninja to select theirs so they haven't had one for ages..."</p><p>Sugemi closed his manga and put it into his small backpack, "Maybe if I become a Sannin by killing sensei one day they'll make a manga about me..." he wondered out loud scratching his chin as if he was actually considering it. "That's not how it works, Sugemi, there is no single right way of becoming a Sannin, in a way it is similar as it is with Kage - there needs to be a vacant spot and you need to be way above everyone else in terms of skill and achievements. Sannin have been beaten and killed before but that didn't really make people rise in ranks, in fact, if rumors are true, Tanshu-sensei once beat a Sannin in his teen years, he didn't even have a ninja rank, stories say that he may have been a nukenin at some point..."</p><p>Finally, all the talking had to cease as the three reached the astonishingly beautiful patch of nature surrounded by a fence with a sign "Training Grounds" with a number on them. Teams used "Training Grounds No. 3" all the time so that was where the three went, the other grounds had different purposes, No. 1 was made for sparring, No. 2 was for physical training as it had a lot of dummies to punch, No. 3 to 5 were for teams, No. 6 to 8 were for ninjutsu training as they were pretty much battlefields, they were always decimated and blown up by one technique or another and had to be fixed all the time. Someone took the time to rebuild the rock formations and plant the trees, a lot of Doton users and Senju must've been occupied with keeping those grounds in check. Mana had never visited No. 8 to 12, but there were twelve grounds in total.</p><p>Sensei was already waiting for the three. His hands went through a couple of handseals and an identical copy appeared out of the lake nearby. The man looked at his clone and grinned with half of his mouth, "This is a clone of mine, he is many times inferior to the original, I'd say my own physical abilities are twice as great as this clone's, and this clone has ten times less chakra than me, if the three of you are able to kill it - I'll promise you guys that I won't send you back, if you mess up, I'll make no such promises. If you annoy me, if one day I'll feel like you guys aren't worth the hassle, I'll just send the three of you back, it could happen at any time so you better win. Don't worry, I'll just be standing here."</p><p>As the man signaled the three to begin all three of them did the same thing, dashed towards the nearest bush throwing a barrage of shuriken at the clone, Mana was too busy rushing for a safe hiding spot to see how the clone did with such an overwhelming barrage of shuriken, loud and deafening clanking of steel suggested that he deflected all of them somehow using a weapon of his own. As the darkness of the thick trees planted one by the other surrounded Mana she carefully peeked at the clone - the weapon he used was a katana in its arm, sensei must've been a masterful swordsman so it may not have been too hard for him to deal with these shuriken.</p><p>Mana started weighing down her options, her ninjutsu was nothing too impressive, mostly they were relatively harmless techniques that looked pretty so that they could be used for her magic shows. She also did not like that she had no contact or mean to communicate with her teammates, there was no way to coordinate their assault, they may have hidden from the clone but they also hid from each other. Both other boys had very effective clans to set up a diversion: Nara had amazing abilities using their shadows and from what the girl could remember they had awesome displacement abilities, Yuki used the Ice Style just like their name suggested. The young kunoichi realized that her best option was to wait for a diversion and then try to follow it up. Maybe eventually the three will get the feel of the abilities of each other and start to work together well!</p><p>Either way, when their opponent was a man who was rumored to have beaten a Sannin in his teenage years, likely being just a bit older than Mana was now, nothing could've been taken for certain...</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. You Lose! Mana VS Tanshu - A Clash of Ideals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana just kept waiting for Sugemi to make the first move, after all, wasn't his clan so famous for their ability to make complicated plans and being so incredible at enemy displacement and battlefield control? At least such traits were typically given to Nara as the kunoichi could remember a lot about them being told in the Academy. Shimo must've been waiting for Sugemi's move as well as the boy remained still in hiding and did not take any action, most likely thinking similarly to Mana. Despite that, Sugemi not only didn't make any moves but he also remained outside everyone's vision.</p><p>That was not what both Mana and Shimo did, the smart boy managed to leave a slightly frosted leaf which alerted the most perceptive ninja to his location, the frosted white leaf could not have been seen from the degree of vision where the clone was situated in, however, Mana could see it. The magician also left a clue about her location by removing a poster that was on a tree near the bush, also visible only from the side but not from upfront, where sensei's clone was. This was a rather drastic mean of telling teammate of her location as it could've been picked up by the enemy too, Mana could've just as easily left a carving on the tree bark but she wasn't as fast, by the time she got to the location the clone had already dealt with the projectiles so she had to improvise.</p><p>The clue that Sugemi left either did not exist or couldn't be picked up by Mana, whether he forgot to leave one deciding to act solo or made it indistinguishable was equally as bad. Now the two that did have a general understanding of each other's locations had no idea where Sugemi was or what he was going to do. To make matters worse, sensei's clone started moving rather fast to the thick area full of trees making it only a matter of time when one of the three would have been sighted. The clone was rushing but not in a way that made the impression of it being reckless or using too much effort. Just in case Mana's grip on a kunai she held tightened as she got tenser in order to better perceive the clone's movements.</p><p>Much to the surprise of the magician, lurking a moderate distance further from the clone's left side, and most likely, to Shimo's as well, Sugemi decided to rush at sensei's clone by jumping out at him after the clone got close. The girl was surprised at how fast the clone moved and how close it got to Sugemi's actual location, almost as if it could accurately sense where Sugemi was. It wasn't like the clone showed much effort at telling the exact location, it just started heading in the specific direction and probably pressured the boy into attacking as it got too close.</p><p>Right as Sugemi leaped at the clone with a kunai in his arm and swung it to leave a wide gash, aiming at its chest the clone swiftly moved out of harm's way. He wasted no moves as he positioned himself right behind the boy, quickly grabbing the boy's wrist with one arm and his head with the other and then lifting his arm in the air applying pressure while slamming the boy's head to the ground. "Your movements were so loud that I got an audible clue as to where you hid, where your teammates tried to move fast but also silently, you just ran rustling every patch of grass and breaking all the twigs around, you didn't leave any clues for your team to your location either despite having most time to do so since you didn't bother about being silent."</p><p>Tanshu-sensei's voice was angry and annoyed, it wasn't that Sugemi's mistake was such a simple one, Mana herself was never a prodigy in stealthy movement and was just as stealthy as anyone else in her class were. It didn't look like Shimo was any more of a stealthy fellow as his clue was currently quite visible from the clone's current location so he was likely to be the clone's second target. Sugemi yelled out in pain as he made a handseal, "Shadow Tendril Technique!" he yelled out as an appendage shot out from under his jacket and went after the clone, this was not a Nara technique that Mana had ever seen before - that shadow didn't come out from the shadow on the ground but it came from inside his jacket. This was quite a revelation of how inventive true masters of clan techniques become compared to common knowledge about them.</p><p>Sugemi's attack was quite effective too, it would've forced the clone to let go of the boy buying him some time or doing a moderate amount of damage if it hit. Unluckily for him, sensei did not let go of his arm, his clone just leaped sideways doing a flip to the side to avoid the tendril. Sugemi shouted out wildly - clone's movement must've done something with his arm, it could've dislocated a shoulder or messed it up pretty bad but the boy was definitely out. This clone was brutal, it barely pulled any punches and it fought to incapacitate, there wasn't a lesson to be learned, no hidden point of the training - the clone was just out for their blood.</p><p>Mana couldn't stand around, she threw the kunai at the clone without waiting to see what he'd do with the injured boy, the genin rushed recklessly at the clone trying to get to her enemy faster than the kunai that she threw, obviously unsuccessfully but she didn't want to waste time. After getting to the man the girl observed him deflect her kunai with the side of his palm - she probably threw it incorrectly due to stress and concern over her teammate's well-being.</p><p>Mana didn't even attempt to fight the clone up close, back at Hanada estate she struggled to keep up with casual mercenaries that were swarming the woods outside the village walls, there was no way she'd keep up with the clone. The genin simply jumped onto his raised arm and using his wrist as a platform leaped over the man throwing an explosive kunai into his back, one advantage of fighting a clone was that she didn't have to worry over the clone's life. The clone caught the kunai, why? Didn't he see the tag on it? Either way, Mana made the handseal and tried to set it off.</p><p>Nothing happened... How? Why? Mana could set off tags easily, it was one of few common techniques that she used, it wasn't an actual jutsu to Mana, but just a way to use her tools so even to her twisted wish to only use techniques she herself invented it was fair game. The clone looked annoyed, maybe it did something? What sort of a trick could he have pulled? How could he just negate Mana's technique like that? Even worse, the girl felt that her chakra was reduced, she clearly set it off properly but nothing happened. This clone apparently was strong enough to use techniques, but this was not like any technique that Mana had seen.</p><p>At least the magician bought her comrade some time to escape - even with his injured arm, Sugemi was nowhere to be seen. Tanshu grunted out, "Well well, I didn't really want to use it like that. That's right, your gut is telling you the truth, I negated your technique. All those stories of me beating a Sannin in my teen years are true and this is how I did it - a seal of my own invention that negates ninjutsu techniques and special abilities by interrupting the user's chakra flow, it's sort of a mixture of genjutsu and ninjutsu. You weren't supposed to see it as I don't usually honor kids like you by showing it."</p><p>Now it made sense, a lot of things did, the Sannin that Tanshu must've faced as a teenager must've relied heavily on some sort of ability, sensei must've just used his seal and negated it bringing the two ninja to the equal ground by forcing them both to fight physically, Tanshu was just a superior kenjutsu or taijutsu user... Still, Mana was just like that Sannin in his past, she relied incredibly on her techniques, genjutsu, and ninjutsu. Now like this her only hope of beating the clone was destroyed. Tanshu-sensei's clone stretched out and pulled out his katana again...</p><p>"Truth be told, I expected this, YOU of all people ruining your team's chances to victory..." the man spoke up as he took a fighting stance. Mana was too intimidated to take a defensive stance or prepare a weapon to try and fight back - this was over, even if he only used the technique out of an instinct for that one moment... The fact that such a technique existed at all made the girl lose all her wish to fight, still, she didn't understand what the man meant so she looked at him with a confused and scared look, the way that a child who doesn't know any better looks at their parents when they do something stupid and make fools of themselves in public.</p><p>"I attacked that idiot-otaku on purpose, don't you get it yet?" Tanshu smiled as he jumped forward thrusting the handle of his katana hitting Mana in the solar plexus, the girl coughed up and collapsed, the clone was so incredibly fast! And the real sensei claimed that this was only a fraction of his true physical abilities, so that was how Uzumaki Tanshu fought, he negated any special abilities of his enemies and kept the fight purely physical and built his body to be the best physical body of any ninja automatically granting him victory over any kind of opponent.</p><p>Even worse - Mana understood now, she understood what he meant and she wanted to yell it out, to alert Shimo but she couldn't because the attack left her without an ounce of oxygen and she struggled to catch a breath just to keep conscious on the ground. Tanshu attacked Sugemi first because he knew of Mana's ideals - to protect all life, he knew that if he hurt Sugemi rough enough she'd jump out at him and he also knew somehow of Shimo's obsession with girls, maybe he observed the kids before Hokage showed up, maybe he read it from Shimo's Academy reports. Now he had all three kids, all of them attacked him and all he had to do was take them out.</p><p>"YOU BASTARD LEAVE MANA-CHAN ALONE!" the voice of comrade that anyone would normally be pleased to hear came from the woods as a barrage of shuriken flew Tanshu, the man's katana swung in a circle to deflect all of them, then the barrage intensified, "Multi-Shuriken Technique!" Shimo yelled out as the shuriken he quickly emptied his pouch by throwing shuriken at incredible rates, still, Tanshu deflected them near effortlessly. A loud "Heh" came from the boy as he made another handseal. "Glaciation Technique!" he yelled out as a small puddle which Tanshu's leg was in instantly froze leaving his shoe entombed in it.</p><p>"Multi-Kunai Technique!" Shimo yelled as he emptied his kunai as well, Mana knew he planned to mix in some explosive ones too and set them off when deflected because it only made sense. Shimo was the smartest kid out of the three, he knew that if shuriken barrage made little difference to Tanshu, so would've kunai, even with this small entrapment he devised using his Yuki technique. Either way, the kunai didn't set off, sensei's clone must've used that chakra disrupting seal again. It was still unclear how it worked but it completely blew into both Mana's and Shimo's faces.</p><p>Within a fraction of a moment, sensei's clone jumped right up to Shimo's face, forcing his leg out of the shoe that was frozen in the small puddle, and thrust at his throat using the side of his palm. The boy fell down on the ground struggling with breathing, sensei then quickly turned and threw his katana at a tree, a loud thud was heard and Sugemi's shout of pain came moments later. The boy tried to use the wire to climb up the tree using just one arm that he had working, sensei used the katana to cut that wire and made Sugemi fall down and injure himself even more. The clone stood by the tree and relaxed, locking his arms around his chest as the real sensei walked up to the beaten kids. Out of all people he stood by Mana, he was right, it was all her fault.</p><p>"People like you are not suitable to be a ninja, ninjutsu is an art to kill, jutsu are tools of death. Using your techniques for laughs and entertainment is pathetic. Going easy on your enemies because you're afraid to kill them is even more pathetic." the man spoke in a condescending tone looking at Mana as she struggled to get back at her feet from above. The magician picked herself up and looked sensei in the eyes, with just a short distance separating them. "I don't care, ninjutsu is a gift that I am given, it is up to me how I use it..." she moaned out through the pain. The real sensei punched her in the stomach with his palm making the kid fall down again.</p><p>"You should be glad that you're hearing this from me, I am saving your life by making you quit, most fools hear it from their opponent's blades as they go through their hearts or even worse - hearts of their comrades. Right now, there is nothing stopping me from killing your friends and it would all be YOUR fault because they lost because of YOUR inability to act calm and rationally." the man spoke as the clone picked up Shimo's weightless body and placed a kunai to his throat. "People like you are a danger to themselves and their friends, a danger to loyal and skilled ninja that are an asset of the village, out of all ninja, I hate ninja like you the most. Luckily enough I have the means to stop you from becoming a ninja before you make a mistake like this in the field..."</p><p>After letting this be known Tanshu started walking back to the field of grass, most likely intending to head to the village. If the three of them lost, that meant that he had the right to return all three of them to the Academy at any point, meaning even right now if he felt like it! "To be fair, I never intended to stick with you guys, you're always a pain in my side, you'd always be. I'll save your lives by returning you back the moment I have the right to, just like I planned to all along." their sensei said as a final farewell before Mana finally managed to pick herself up on her feet again.</p><p>"Stoooop! I'm up! We didn't lose yet!" she shouted out, "Sure maybe this is my fault, maybe you modeled this fight after focusing on me as the weak link... But if I can get stronger... I can stop this from happening, I can protect my teammates and my enemies, defeat my enemies without killing them, no matter the means..." another painful impulse forced the girl down on her back, she couldn't open her eyes because they were full of tears. She could feel a sharp kick in her side, then another, sensei wasn't really trying to hurt her, he was trying to make it so painful that Mana would shut up. Still, he had strong morals and upheld the rules that he made, he didn't just declare their loss and leave, he wanted to actually win, make his opponents acknowledge it. That in itself was admirable.</p><p>"That's what every stupid brat thinks, that they're some legendary hero who can make every enemy into their friend, that the world is about holding hands and singing songs but the truth is - the world is about killing your enemy before they get the chance to hurt someone you care about. Before they burn your village down and kill the people inside. That's my ninja way, the ONLY ninja way. The world out there is kill or be killed. Until you don't accept that I won't accept you as my student." the man stopped kicking and turned around again, Mana coughed up some blood and started slowly rising again. This wasn't a fight, this was sensei trying to test how hard Mana stood by her beliefs, she wasn't going to stop, she'd rather die!</p><p>"I know the enemy wants to kill me, all the time..." sensei kicked her back down again, "But I don't care... I'll fight them but won't kill them..." Mana grunted out through pain as the man kept kicking, he wasn't using his real strength, the clone stroke much harder than this before. "Wait, you're fighting Mana-chan, not the clone! That means we won! You said you wouldn't interfere!" Shimo yelled out of the top of his lungs, somehow managing to stand up while this little chat took place. Tanshu slapped his forehead with his palm, "Shit... You got me... Damn, this girl is kinda smart, how much of this did you plan ahead?" the man asked as Shimo smiled and jumped up and down a couple of times "I bet Mana-chan was planning it all along. Since the "Life is magical" speech!" he added.</p><p>Mana stood up and fixed her clothes that were now all dirty and messed up, "I planned none of this, I really meant what I said about life, every word of it and it just sort of happened..." the girl could feel pain all over her back and chest. Tanshu turned around and shouted out in pure misery, "Shit, I'm stuck with you losers... Now I'll have to torture you guys until you quit yourselves, you just made it worse for yourselves..." the man said as he started heading for the village again. A loud laugh came from somewhere in the bushes, where Sugemi was down for the count.</p><p>Mana could barely remember how she got home, the three all helped each other and all three of them needed a checkup, luckily enough Mana's father was a ninja and knew how to do some basic field treatment. "So Tanshu-san is your sensei?" he asked later that evening as he was patching daughter's injuries, her whole body was covered with blunt traumas and bruises. "Yeah, you know him?" Mana asked as her father rarely used honorifics especially the respectful ones. "Worked with him a couple of times... He's a piece of work but he always gets his team home, at the very least your mother and I will always know you'll be back alive." the man laughed. The magician just sighed, still, she was quite excited about her team - stronger pressure from her superior only means she'll grow up to be that much stronger!</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Who Will Become No. 1 at Dishes?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A couple of days had passed since the brutal test that the team went through. The time between then and now was not spent in vain, Mana strained herself, while still recovering, to somehow become both a stronger ninja and a better stage magician. The girl kept both training her physical shape, doing so by jogging in the mornings, beating on the dummies in the training grounds, and the mental and spiritual side by meditating. To a ninja one's mind and spirit were just as important as muscles. Chakra was just as important and chakra manipulation depended heavily on mastery over emotions, sometimes when Mana was under stress she wasted loads of chakra on techniques that were seemingly simple.</p><p>Over time the girl discovered a new trait about herself, more specifically, about the body of a ninja. Whenever a body used chakra it had a tiny fraction of it stuck in the system, normally that wouldn't be worth noticing but apparently, the body gained the certain memory of techniques one used and automatically adjusted one's chakra levels. What this meant was that after one's chakra control improved significantly they had loads of chakra left over in their system being wasted. What the girl imagined was that with enough of a push she could force that chakra out, it would be stressful for her body as it wasn't used to larger than usual amounts of chakra but in time it could be tricked into making it believe that the amount of chakra was natural, achieving higher chakra level as a result.</p><p>One day the kunoichi tried this, she sat down and concentrated hard, allowed her mind to slip away into a meditational state of complete awareness of her own body. That was how the genin managed to overcome her mental condition as a child - by meditating and reaching a stage of complete awareness of her own condition. With a slight nudge and communication with one's own body, a lot of problems could be fixed, obviously, the girl's mastery of this sort of meditation was not yet great enough to overcome poisons and diseases, but perhaps one day even such amazing feats would be possible through meditation alone!</p><p>The only reason why Mana trained so incredibly hard was that she felt she had the responsibility to do so. She wished to preserve all life, even that of her enemies, because of that she was weaker than her peers, the girl understood that. For that reason she had a disadvantage, to catch up to her peers she had to train harder, to become so much stronger so that her kindness doesn't hold her back. To become so strong that next time someone tries to hurt her friends by exploiting that - she'd be able to surprise them. It may have been viewed as a disadvantage in combat but to Mana, it was a necessary one, she'll always love life and wish to preserve it, try to avoid violence and fighting when possible.</p><p>All that training did not go to waste, the kunoichi could feel that she's gotten stronger, not by a significant margin but if she kept up the pace, one day she'll get there! She may never reach a level of Tanshu-sensei, but she didn't want to, Mana didn't want to be the strongest or the best ninja ever. All that she wanted to do was to preserve life so that maybe one day people around her no longer laughed from this ideal but joined in on it, to do everything so that when Mana died she'd have left a better world than she found, one where people's lives did not go to waste, one where life meant something.</p><p>Over the several days of training Mana learned another thing - Mr. Hiro, the owner of the stage she was renting for her magic shows, was right - once the word of her shows started spreading more and more people started coming, suddenly empty seats no longer poked Mana's eyes so hard and the little money that she charged for entrance started to make more than she needed to pay the rent, the bonus she'd be getting as a ninja would add to it even more... The downside was that for the first time in her life Mana was getting short on time, her life as a ninja and her life as a stage magician did not clash directly just yet, but eventually, they might.</p><p>Finally, after long several days, a letter came, it was from the Hokage Administration and it described the four as "Team Oak" and told them to come to the Administration building for a briefing for their mission. This was exciting but also a bit scary, on one hand, Mana would get to see Shimo and Sugemi again, on the other the mission might get crazy and all of them may get hurt again. Recovering from those bruises and traumas even with advanced ninja recovery rate wasn't fun. Also, due to her recent success in magic shows people started to recognize her on the streets more. Usually, villagers sort of knew each other and a weird girl like Mana was bound to stand out, since lives were lost so often in this world people kept tight bonds with each other, especially if their friend was a ninja because killing another ninja was not only normal but also an honor. This was only one of the things that Mana desired would change over her lifetime...</p><p>When the day of briefing came, the girl got an unexpected knock on the door, neither father nor mother were home: father was out on a mission and mother was working early in the café. Father used to tell stories to Mana when she was younger about how her mother was from a tribe of wandering ninja that had a knack for entertainment but also making money. Maybe that's why mother was so successful in her small business, maybe some of those genes helped the girl out with her own shows too, maybe it was all her legacy. No! Mana didn't want to only be good because some part of her is a descendant of some weird group of travelers that made money, Mana wanted to earn money and the love of the villagers using her own charm and skills. But what really was that? How could she know what was actually her and what's her legacy from that bedtime story group? It was possible that the tribe was made up, father never told Mana much more about it anyways...</p><p>Behind the door stood Shimo, he looked alright and pretty happy, had a wide grin on his face and after fixing his glasses he asked Mana for the pleasure to walk her to the Administration building. To some girls such behavior would look weird, it'd raise suspicion that the boy might be into them but Mana saw Shimo for over five years in the Academy, he was like this to most girls all the time. He may have been super weird now, but that was only because he only had one girl around to be weird with. Mana took her jacket with her and rushed out with her teammate to the location. It wouldn't have been decent to be late for their mission briefing even if their sensei would be the one to do the talking.</p><p>"I hope you don't feel too bad about that training?" Shimo asked on the way, he was strangely talkative today. "I think sensei was just mean and said what he said because he didn't like you, but I was just as much to blame for our butts being kicked as you were, you may have cared about Sugemi's life but I was too concerned over yours, my love for the ladies is just as bad as your wish to save lives..." it was strange how more excited and even possibly stronger Shimo looked, it was just like several days ago Mana and her teammates were children but now they didn't really look like children. In a world where children were hired to kill other children that got in the way of the mission, they looked like warriors if anything, Mana probably couldn't look like a killer even if she put on a creepy festival mask and wielded a scythe...</p><p>"Thanks for the concern but... I'd never blame something for what I did and say. I walked by the path I set for myself as a ninja, I just wish that I would be just the same no matter how rough things got." Mana replied smiling back at her teammate. At that moment she could see it, getting close to these guys, just like her father casually meets his old friends from his old days as a ninja as well as new ones. Drinking and talking about the old days... It all seemed like it was going to happen one day and they didn't even start working yet. It was strange thinking of how things would end before they have even begun.</p><p>Shimo was surprised by how many people recognized Mana, there were even a couple of children that stopped by and spoke to her, cheered her on, and asked when the next show would be. "That's really awesome," he said, "but don't you think this will get in the way, I mean if everyone around the village knows your face? Won't it make working as a ninja harder?" Mana thought for a moment, Shimo raised a valid point, ninja were supposed to be stealthy and hidden, having her face known around the place would make it hard to work in Konoha, if her fame ever spread beyond the village it'd be really hard to work outside the village too. People wouldn't take her seriously and think that she's less of a ninja just because she's a little star in the entertainment world...</p><p>Before the girl got her chance to answer however the Administration building came into view, Shimo didn't look as interested in getting his answer as he wanted to get inside and he rushed into the building. It didn't need any saying that he had to open the door for Mana and then several more ladies that came after her and hold it for every lady passing through. While it was kind of cute, the two could have been late so the magician gently took Shimo by his elbow and dragged him to the fourth floor where the Hokage's office was. Sugemi was nowhere to be seen but Tanshu-sensei was waiting on a small seat near the office.</p><p>"Good, you got here, where's the otaku-guy?" he asked, it was quite likely that he'll never learn their names, but then he nodded at the kunoichi and pointed at her with his chin, "You OK, Mana? You're Tsukumo's kid, aren't you?" after the magician nodded the man scratched his forehead, "Too bad, your father has to be the best Chuunin I know, I thought he deserved a less stubborn and stupid brat." Shimo laughed out, "You must really secretly like her, you just called Mana-chan by her name!" It didn't look like sensei was too pleased by this observation, or to be honest, any observation Shimo had made, as it was because of his observation that he got stuck with them, to begin with, but the fact that he called the genin by her name suggested that he may have cared enough to memorize their names, he just rarely used them.</p><p>Finally, Sugemi came, just several minutes late but in no rush whatsoever, still reading his manga but it really was no surprise at this point. His arm was probably stuck in a book holding position as he slept... "Well, time for our grinding chores before we are trusted by the village to do actual missions, can't wait for one of them to go wrong or secretly be a ruse so that we can show the village how cool we are..." Sugemi spoke in a dull tone with a dreamy smile over his manga, he didn't even look at his teammates. Truth be told, he looked pretty good for a guy that had his arm messed up just several days ago. Even for a ninja healing a broken or dislocated bone in several days was quite impressive.</p><p>Tanshu grunted something out and entered first, leaving the door open for the rest to come through. Shimo didn't disappoint and gestured that Mana walked in first as he held the door. Had the magician not seen this behavior for years in the Academy it would've been getting annoying at this point. Just as expected - Sugemi didn't even look at the Hokage, he just kept eating up his manga with his eyes. For a moment it seemed like Hokage was confused by it but then he just let go of it, children that are taught to kill silently in their early years often end up a little weird, and to be honest, this whole team was a team of weirdos...</p><p>"I hope you guys aren't expecting to save the world just yet... These will be your jobs for today." Hokage said as he pushed a bunch of files forward on the table. He looked at Tanshu-sensei with a confusing stare as if encouraging him to pick them up but the man instead just walked up to them and read them, he looked annoyed but then again - he always did. "You won't be taking the files with you?" Hokage asked when sensei replied rudely, "I've got better things to do than carry a bunch of papers with chores in them, it's because I owe you that I got into this mess, Howoku." It was really rude to address Hokage by his name, without even a single honorific, his assistant looked really shocked and almost dropped his own share of files and his glasses. Hokage laughed out and let them go, Shimo did pick up the files just in case.</p><p>Inside the files were a bunch of chores: gardening, cleaning dishes at Ichiraku Ramen, doing some tax and finance paperwork for some shop, sorting out tools and weapons in the weapon shop, filing all the confiscated illegal objects in the Police Force building. Sugemi didn't seem too happy about it, he had every reason to, for a boy who put so much love into his manga he even bothered to read the files and didn't see anything to his fancy, "What the hell?! At this rate I'll never have a manga written about me!" he yelled out, "What's the point of those useless missions! No one remembers or cares about people that clean dishes!" he shouted out in a questioning tone at sensei, expecting without a doubt a nugget of wisdom from his superior. Tanshu shrugged.</p><p>"No point at all..." Shimo and Mana couldn't hold a laugh inside of them, these jobs really didn't annoy the girl at all, she was used to small errands like this to make her childish money as a kid while she was in the Academy, this was just the same except these will go to her dossier as a ninja. While it didn't help her own dream of making her appreciation of life and love around the world, it was however certainly a useful bunch of errands, helping people was something that the magician was always willing to do. "Come on, Shimo, let's go home! This is stupid!" Sugemi grunted out throwing one of the files on the ground, only for the white-haired Yuki boy to pick it up. "Nah, we need to get through those to become real ninja," Shimo answered placing the file in between two others.</p><p>"Out of all people I expected the rich boy and the starlet to wish to do those jobs the least... This could be pretty interesting." Sensei grinned. He was sort of right, one would think that the son to a rare and powerful clan, an heir to two separate businesses in the village, and a girl that was a rising star in village entertainment would be the first ones to complain about washing the damned dishes. At least sensei found his own sick way of enjoying this. If he was happy he was less likely to get into a clash of ideals with Mana. Sugemi kicked a can and yelled out, still a bit embarrassed by his words. "All right, new plan! I'll be so good at washing those dishes that they'll make a dish-washing manga about me, then I can realize my nindo first and laugh at you all from the top! Let's go you two, you won't get in the way of my dish-washing manga!" Sugemi yelled out looking back at Mana and Shimo as the two nodded and followed him.</p><p>"Wait... You guys can't be serious... Excited over some errands..." Tanshu-sensei laughed out and fastened the pace as Ichiraku Ramen was just around the corner. The owner looked really excited, the place was a famous fast food place in the village and it got a lot of greasy dishes accumulating and the owner's daughter couldn't really handle them alone. Everyone knew that Ichiraku Ramen commonly hired the young ninja to do their dishes but this time it was bad - apparently the ninja that were supposed to do these dishes were sent back to Academy so now even more dishes piled up. After seeing the endless columns Sugemi moaned out, "Wow, with that amount of dishes you'd think they'd bump up the rank of the mission! How is this D-Rank?!" Shimo mockingly smiled "What's the matter? I thought you'll have a manga written about your mad dishwashing skills, won't work if I wash more! I guess I'll be the one getting the manga!"</p><p>"Shut up, you womanizing-bastard! Don't you dare take from my pile, mine is this one and that one and that one, all plates on the ground are MINE!" Sugemi yelled out grabbing every plate and swiping it with unseen devotion. Mana had to hand it to Shimo - he really was a genius and he wasn't even the Nara on the team. Tanshu relaxed by the wall and smiled, one wouldn't have believed that he was annoyed at this very moment at all - "Well well, I guess you losers will be pretty fun after all..." he spoke silently.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Misfortune Strikes Low - Bells of War!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The three kids were panting, Mana was just barely on her feet, bent over and breathing heavily, still wondering how her feet held her mostly upright. Shimo was sitting by a wall and his head has sunken down, he could've passed out from all the pressure for all everyone else knew and Sugemi was just down on a small chair. The team had just finished their last chore of a mission. By the time the kids were done with cleaning the dishes they were already exhausted so it was pretty good that most other jobs were filing or sorting jobs.</p><p>"Did I win? What were we competing for anyway?" Sugemi softly let out still trying to sit up straight in the chair. "Well, you did clean most of the dishes, I don't remember much else of what we did..." Mana replied still huffing and struggling for air. She was yet to make her decision about which was worse: a mission that threatened her life or a bunch of simple and non-dangerous missions like this that just drained her life essence completely. Sensei was the only person who looked like he was in any way ready for a walk home.</p><p>"You did good today, I'll do you guys a favor and report to Howoku without you, go hit the beds," Tanshu-sensei spoke, his voice was a bit different from the usual tone. He still sounded strict and his requests sounded like orders but this time he somehow seemed softer. Maybe watching the guys work on filing and doing the dishes helped him remember something from his past? His own old days? Well if all the rumors were to be believed it was unlikely that sensei was ever on a team, he was supposed to have been a nukenin, his progression through the ranks may have differed from the normal one.</p><p>Mana finally could stand up straight, she looked at Sugemi with a begging look and nodded at Shimo who looked like he had passed out. "Can you help me with this?" the kid squirmed for a little but then he helped the magician pick their friend up and walked out of the Police Force building with him. One Police Force lady was really concerned over Shimo but after she checked his condition quickly she said that he'd be OK and let the kids go. "Where does he live anyway?" Sugemi wondered and it was a fair point, neither of the three was too familiar with each other yet anyways. "Let's bring him to his father's workplace, maybe there'll be someone who'll know," Mana replied and the two started making their way through the village with their passed out friend.</p><p>Konoha was beautiful at night, so quiet but bright, there were several stages of nocturnal Konoha: one was from late evening to early night when all the lights and lanterns were glowing brightly and people were all over the village, there were plenty of gambling houses and various entertainments to occupy their free time, but then there was this other stage that started really late at night, one that has not yet come when the village is completely quiet and there's not a soul to be seen. The night really was an astounding time of day to be outside in Konohagakure. Several times Mana did stay a little bit up late after the shows having to leave the stage as she found it after it and always being the last person leaving the hall.</p><p>As usual, people recognized Mana on the streets, they ran up and said hello, they asked questions about what happened with the boy, and when they heard that he was OK but he needed rest they left her be. Talking with the villagers was fun, the young genin wished that she had more time for it because she loved her village and its people, she will have to go home right after taking Shimo back and parting with Sugemi, it was getting pretty late. Sensei looked happy about their performance, finishing all the mission in one day was not a necessity but it was the optimal way to do things and they did it, they performed the best that was expected of them. That made all the training worthwhile even if Mana didn't even get to make a single handseal filing those sheets of paper and washing the dishes.</p><p>"This guy... He's pretty heavy..." Sugemi complained, Shimo was not chubby and while being the tallest of the three, he was not that much taller than the others so it didn't really make much sense for him to be that heavy. It must've been just the tired friend complaining, an elderly man with grey hair was passing by the workplace of Shimo's father, the place was pretty well known around the village due to how successful it was so it was no surprise that both Mana and Sugemi knew where it was. The man waved at them after noticing Shimo passed out and ran up to them. "Wow, you guys worked hard, Shimo passed out, he'll be really ashamed..."</p><p>Mana smiled and looked at her peaceful friend, handing him to his father. "No surprise, he tried to keep up with Sugemi-kun at washing the most dishes, despite Sugemi-kun being an idiot!" she looked at him trying to get a reaction. She was right to be a little bit angry at him, the boy really took the thing way too seriously and by being so into the dishes he made Shimo try even harder and forced both boys to overexert themselves. Mana wasn't that physically strong and durable, despite her training so she got tired even doing it at her casual pace. She did catch up to the boys in the end though, after they got tired their pace really slowed down, and started crawling, letting Mana who was going at a more stable pace to catch up.</p><p>"Whatever... No one writes manga about dish-washers anyway, I'll try harder tomorrow, maybe we'll get actual assignments." the Nara boy shrugged as he walked away after fulfilling his obligation to help his teammate. To be honest, Mana was impressed that he agreed to help, over his obsession with manga one couldn't have been sure that he'll really help. Mana watched her teammate and a father carrying her other teammate fade away into the darkness of the night and then turned home herself. This was a tough day and it was just one day of countless more...</p><p>After getting home the girl sighed, she was so tired, the kunoichi slowly opened the door and went inside gently flicking the light on. It was strange that it was off, or that no one was home. Usually, at this time at least mother was back from her job, father often went on missions for a couple of days but after those harder missions, he stayed home longer. Maybe it was just one of those missions and mother was working overtime because it ended up being a busy day... It was still weird, no day was usually this busy, it was way past mother's working hours. Mana saw a note on the table, it must've had an explanation in it why her home was so empty...</p><p>After letting her eyes skim through the contents of the note they shot open in shock, Mana would've normally been impressed by her body managing to actually be shocked at such a moment, usually being afraid and surprised required a certain amount of energy which currently the magician doubted she had. In a rush the girl ran out again, running towards the western district of the village and finding the Konohagakure Hospital building, usually at this time the patients were given rest but now the building had some lights and the whole ground floor was buzzing.</p><p>It didn't take too long to rush up to the fourth floor and find mother resting in the waiting room. The woman was one of the most energetic people Mana had ever met but was currently completely wrecked by what had happened. When she saw the girl enter she slowly walked up and hugged Mana, the girl could feel her mother's tears falling down on her head and on her back making her feel uneasy but reminding her that this was no dream. "What happened?" Mana asked knowing well that she'd hate the answer.</p><p>"Your father's squad got ambushed, they say those were Kirigakure ninja but they were acting inside Fire Country. Everyone's really shaken and the families of everyone in Tsukumo's squad are here... Out of everyone your father was hurt the least, everyone else is struggling with their lives which is why this gloomy mood is around, your father was just injured on his arms." as the two sat down in the waiting room and started waiting to hear about how father was doing mother told Mana all about what happened.</p><p>Father's squad was on a mission, there was a small struggle between nukenin and Konohagakure ninja. They say that a squad carrying an important scroll with information was paid off to betray their village by Kirigakure but they were stopped by an early response squad of Konoha. After the fight, only corpses remained but the sensitive information within the scroll needed to be brought back to the village, the secondary objective was to identify the traitors and attempt to find any proof of Kirigakure's involvement. That would've made it easy to prove that Mizukage was unstable, threatened peace, and needed to be removed in a Summit.</p><p>Sadly Kirigakure ninja got to the corpses at the same time, they were likely to have already be positioned near the borders to lead the traitors back home, after hearing the news of them being intercepted they dared to enter the Fire Country territory and they clashed with Konoha ninja. Fire Country was Konohagakure's jurisdiction and foreign ninja could not do their missions here without Hokage's permission. Because they knew that they were in the wrong the Kirigakure ninja attempted to kill all witnesses and recover the scroll for themselves and another battle ensued. The Kirigakure ninja were all killed but there were a lot of casualties and even more injured on Konoha's side as well.</p><p>Mana really failed to comprehend the meaning of all of those events, this incident may as well have started a war between Konoha and Kirigakure. So many deaths for a piece of information... It was yet to be seen how badly her father was injured. What if another war starts? It will be Mana's responsibility to stop it as one that has placed the responsibility of protecting innocent lives and changing the world but... What could she do? She was still weak... Mother couldn't understand the way that her child was feeling, she hugged Mana again and tried to calm her down telling her that it will all be OK, that father will definitely live but that was just a part of the girl's problems.</p><p>She just started out, her team just finished their first missions today, and to be involved in a war would be... Not an ideal start for a ninja career and most likely a swift end. There were countless tales of past wars and how many children not unlike Mana and her team died in those wars doing simple dirty work. She couldn't die trying to dig a trench for a bunker for the intelligence unit to settle in! She had to be strong to stop such wars from happening! Her ninja career had just begun and she was already failing at her nindo. What if father was rendered unable to work as a ninja after all of this? It'd be crushing to see father crippled.</p><p>A medical ninja walked out of the ward and gestured for the two females that he could give them some information. The brief opening of the ward doors allowed the smell of burning to come out, just what was the extent of father's injuries? "First of all, we just saved the life of a hero - his device shielded his squad from a huge combined Lightning Release technique. But... His arms are severely burnt, we'll be able to somewhat salvage them, we'll heal his arms and we have a plan about getting him a new skin for his arms, he'll be mostly the same but... It's really unlikely that he'll ever be able to work as a ninja, he was called Konoha's Great Trapster for his precision and amazing tools built to trap his enemies and surprise them, capture them alive. He won't have any precision with his arms and he'll be in pain if he strains them. Burns are painful, you may want to consider that we remove his arms just to save him from the pain, you must understand Kei-san, pain changes people."</p><p>Mother tried to walk Mana away from the conversation but the girl slipped out of her grip quickly and looked at mother angrily. The woman wiped her hair off her face and looked with an empty stare at the wall thinking for just a moment before giving an answer. "Save his arms, Tsukumo can handle pain, he lives in the same household as I do and I've never seen him complain once about getting hit with a pan for refusing to wash the dishes. If there's one man that can handle it, it's my husband!" Mana had never seen mother speak in that firm and strong tone. She was usually easygoing and vibrant, always making jokes and bullying the two around the house with heavy or sharp objects but all for good fun. This Nakotsumi Kei was determined and strong. Mana wanted to be like that someday, to speak in such a tone and look so strong in the face of disaster.</p><p>"Very well, it is not a wrong choice by any means, just had to let you know. Now about our plan. Guru Ayushi is coming for his yearly lecture in Konohagakure, you may not know but Ayushi-sama was once a great ninja from the Senju clan, his longevity is a testament of that, and his medical skills and the techniques he carries inside that body of his might prove to be the thing that saves your husband's arms. If we can ask Ayushi-sama to give us a tiny bit of his cells, we can cultivate self-regenerating tissue and apply it on Tsukumo-san's arms making them look and work just like any other arms, the muscles, however, will still be damaged so his arms will not be the same, in other words, he'll have enough functionality to go by in day to day life and perform simple tasks but straining them or trying to be too precise will make the pain return temporarily."</p><p>Mana has heard of this Guru Ayushi person before. Was he really that amazing that only a bit of his cells could actually cure her father's arms? Well, to some extent at least... Even his cells couldn't make her father be like he was before. In moments like this childhood ends. When the child realizes that things changed for the worse and that they will never be the same again, no matter how hard you cry. Those moments were the worst, having just experienced one Mana could tell. Mother cracked a knuckle, "The old geezer will give us the cells, I'll make him bleed if I'll have to!" Sometimes mother scared Mana...</p><p>Finally, father's condition stabilized and the mother and her child were sent home to have some rest. Mana had to get some sleep for the busy and just as tough day coming up tomorrow. Maybe the next day after completing so many chores the Hokage will actually give them a chance at an actual mission. With the color of the sky turning back into its morning colors Mana's first day as a ninja was ending and what a day it has been: shadows of war, her father's injury... It was an overwhelming thing to have in one's life, much more so when one knew that things were only supposed to get harder from this point on.</p><p>Despite her genuine efforts, Mana had trouble sleeping, she couldn't get over the things that happened, what if there actually will be a war? How the hell does that work? No. The Fourth was a peaceful man, some of his deeds always were inspiring for Mana as someone who also craved only peace and well-being for everyone, but Hokage was always just and rightful. What if his sense of justice demands for those responsible to pay, Hokage was a man of justice, despite his wish to preserve the peace he would go to war if that meant putting those responsible for injustice to right.</p><p>The girl also could not stop thinking about what the medical ninja said of her father, that he was a hero. Father was always a notable but average ninja, everyone knew who he was around the ninja circles because he has been working for a long time but he was never quite impactful enough to be promoted to Jounin. He was the best of the average. Now after his heroic deed everyone in the hospital wanted to promote him to Jounin for the heroic deed just symbolically even if he won't be there to work as a Jounin. Mana decided - people gather around heroes, the only way for her to change the world, to make it a world where life is appreciated and preserved and where there is less violence was by becoming a hero.</p><p>That was Mana's new goal - to become a hero so that people gathered behind her and that her ideals were no longer a joke that older ninja laughed at. When the magician became a hero like her father no one will laugh and say that she'll "grow out of such foolishness" but they will follow her and appreciate life. There will be no violence. Though ultimately... One could not succeed at such a goal. If Mana keeps up such a pace of fulfilling this goal she'll die before it becomes a reality. No! She wanted to face death, only by defying death and laughing it in the face, only by saving everyone from it can she become a hero!</p><p>Mana will train even harder, she'll push her body until it can no longer be pushed, she'll do all the chores, she'll gain Hokage's trust for actual missions. She had no time to rise in ranks together with Sugemi and Shimo if she was to become a hero and stop this war if she was to fulfill her nindo she had to blow them away and leave them behind. The girl got out of bed and sat in a meditating position, she had to train her chakra, try that thing she thought of earlier, concentrate, and increase her chakra levels. She can sleep all she wants when she fails in her goal and dies, until then - she'll be training her butt off!</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The Pain That Bonds a Family! A Real Mission</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite an incredibly difficult and depressing start to her ninja life, Mana found the next two weeks to be extremely boring and monotonous. They were filled with one minor errand after the other and only her training allowed the young lady to get some variety, of course, there were always her shows to clear out the boredom as those were finally really starting to pick up. Her success with magic shows was so prevalent that Mana was finally moved up to what Mr. Hiro called "prime-time", that wasn't really that much to the magician's liking because while she did get some real attention, after the show and some encores she got back home well past her bedtime.</p><p>Where initially the girl only feared her life as a magician and her life as a ninja clashing, it was somewhere on the horizon, after those two weeks Mana realized that it was very much a reality. She was commonly found sleepy and tired in her missions from the shows and training taking all of her free time and Hiro always spoke about how Mana was not using all of her potential as she could perform multiple times a day or even tour the other countries. Of course, he advised waiting until Konoha and Kirigakure settled their recent tension before going to another country.</p><p>Mana's suspicion was true, Hokage called for a Kage Summit to be hosted six months later. There was no official reason why it must've happened so late but many people speculated that there were matters where Hokage wanted the three Sannin to look at, gathering enough evidence of Kirigakure's activities so that the Kage Council had no doubt that Mizukage was unstable. Obviously, he couldn't be blamed, things like that needed to be done right or not at all. A simple mistake could've ruined a political meeting of such grandeur and it wouldn't have been right. That was one of those reasons why Mana hated politics.</p><p>The accident changed father so much, while Guru Ayushi had not yet arrived at the village and had not yet donated his cells for his artificial skin his burns had to be covered with bandages and those had to be changed often. The man tried to appear unchanged but it was obvious that this wasn't even true. Often after trying to lift something heavy or do some house chore the man started grunting in pain and had to sit down. The medical ninja gave him all the painkilling medical herbs but what sort of medicine could ever ease such pain?</p><p>On the bright side, Mana's training with her chakra was really giving results, the girl found a way to move her chakra levels past that of what a normal genin would have. If every time she used a technique a small fraction of chakra she couldn't properly control was left over in her system she could accelerate that process - every day Mana left to the Training Grounds to fire off her techniques randomly without any target or purpose. She ran out of chakra quickly but the purpose of this training was to gather a lot of leftover chakra in her system, then every week or so the girl just intentionally bombarded the chakra system points that had the masses of chakra lurking in and let the chakra loose. It hurt a little bit and her body acted weird while overflowing with chakra but, at some point, it learned to adapt and work more intensely, Mana's body was fooled by thinking that this increased level of chakra was actually her natural one and started working overtime to constantly keep this level up. The magician was proud to have invented such an amazing way to train...</p><p>Finally one day her exhaustion had caught up with her, while working with sorting out the products into their separate sections at Ichiraku Ramen Mana passed out, just like Shimo had before. From what Sugemi and Shimo told her the next day - Shimo carried her home the whole way and, surprisingly to no one, a lot of time waiting for her to recover. Only when Mana's parents asked him to go home already did he decide to leave. The magician was obviously embarrassed about this event and started acting a bit strange when Shimo was around. At some point, his obsession should've started to look creepy even for his womanizing ways, and for Mana, that point was carrying her tired body home and watching her while she's out. Obviously, for Sugemi it was a ton of fun, he couldn't help but laugh his butt off every time Mana refused to work in the same room as Shimo did or when she kicked him in the shin when he held the door for her or playfully smacked him in the head when he was acting too nice.</p><p>"Well... I suppose two weeks of missions are more than enough, you guys each got about forty D rank missions in your record, I suppose giving you something more interesting wouldn't be too bad at this point..." Hokage one day finally got the clue. He passed a single file, Tanshu-sensei didn't look too impressed by it, but then again, he never was. Shimo looked really hyped, "C-Rank?! Hell yeah!" he shouted out loud finally letting the kunoichi read the file. As usual, Sugemi never read the files, he was too into his manga. By now the magician had noticed that at times he read the same issues of manga which confused her a bit. Why would he ever read something he's read before?</p><p>The mission was quite simple but also pretty difficult for a C-rank, it was almost pushing the boundaries of a C-Rank mission. Further from the Training Grounds, there was a very special training ground - Forest of Death. It was filled with creatures and dangers that well justified its name. Apparently, an archeologist wandering the area once found a hidden archive, he didn't have the proper gear with him to get all the scrolls back home so he just marked the spot on the map, the problem was that he was no explorer so his coordinates were all over the place. The genin squad had to go there and retrieve as many scrolls as possible from the archive before it collapsed, these historic scrolls were pretty useful for the Konohagakure Museum after all!</p><p>"This mission ain't like the others... You guys better go home and prepare, we'll meet near the village gate leading to the training grounds at sunrise. In the meanwhile read up on the animals and plants living in the Forest of Death. It won't be your usual dogs and rodents in there." Sensei instructed the three, as the kids headed home, he stopped Mana and asked about how her father was doing. By now the magician almost forgot these two knew each other, Tanshu-sensei never came to visit like father's other friends, never played with her as a kid, and never told stories over a beer with other friends. Maybe he was just a loner...</p><p>"Well he's in pain but mostly OK, we're still waiting for Guru Ayushi to show to ask him for some cells for the artificial skin." Tanshu looked pretty relieved, which was surprising because he showed genuine interest in someone's wellbeing for the first time in a long while. "Well that's OK, I once had a whole muscle grown from Ayushi-san's cells, he really doesn't like giving his cells, says he left his ninja days behind and now helps through ramblings of peace, you two should talk, you'd find a lot in common, both of you are equally crazy..." he smiled at Mana, this was the first time that sensei let her ideals off as a trait and wasn't offended by them. Not knowing what to respond the girl just smiled at the man and nodded, then ran off home.</p><p>"Ahhh... Forest of Death... A pretty nasty place..." father said upon being asked about it after Mana told him of her first C-Rank mission. "Just stay out of the water, trust me, also keep some of the explosive tags ready at all times. Don't get into sight of anyone bigger than you and don't get your guts eaten. Don't worry, Mana, you'll be fine, you've grown a lot and trained hard, you can handle it." Mana smiled and shook her head, "I'm not worried about that, I'm more worried you'll try to open the pickle jar again..." Father looked at her and it wasn't clear if he was angry at her for reminding of that painful time or if he was keeping laughter in. "Well don't worry about your old man, I served my time, now it's your generation's turn..." the man sighed, he looked really sad...</p><p>Mana didn't want to sadden father anymore, she went upstairs to train and get ready. She had to pack a backpack with the essential survival stuff and to fill her ninja tool pouch. She barely even used those in all those chores. There was that one time the team had to catch a prankster that was drawing graffiti around Konoha, cutting up people's laundry and all sorts of weird stuff, she did use a kunai to stick the buster to a wall. To be honest, Mana was more scared than the prankster - her aim was horrible so she could've easily poked an eye, even Tanshu-sensei was surprised and complimented her for not blowing it back then...</p><p>"I don't need sake, Kei! I need a medical ninja, I need painkillers!" an incredibly loud shout reached Mana from downstairs - father did something that made his arms hurt again. The girl slowly shoved her unpacked backpack and went down. She looked at mother furiously cutting cucumbers in the kitchen and father angrily wrapping his own bandages - anyone that tried to bandage their own arms with injured arms knew how pathetic it looked. The girl's face twisted with sadness. Her family used to be so happy, of course, mother was a constant danger to be around with her vitality and energy and dad was the complete opposite of her but...</p><p>Slowly the young magician walked down the stairs and went up to father trying to help him with his bandages but he pulled his hands from her. "Don't you have things to pack?!" he cut back at her rudely. "Dad... Stop doing this, let me help." She spoke softly but tried to sound a bit colder so that father knew how dumb he was being by closing all this pain in himself. The man sighed and let her take over, the girl gulped as looking at those burns wasn't an easy thing and she was pretty young, she hasn't seen too much messed up stuff even if she was a ninja and was bound to one day.</p><p>"What happened..." she asked as she applied for the medicine on the bandages and gently rubbed it on his burnt arms letting the medicine seep in before she started bandaging the limbs. "I tried to read a newspaper... A goddamn newspaper!" father yelled out, it was obvious that pain was hurting him. "It's okay, next time I can help you with that, now sit still," Mana replied trying to focus as hard as she could on bandaging. The man sighed, it would've been a welcome change of pace if he calmed down. He obviously already pissed mother off and when she was angry she always let the person know unless it was her family - then she let the vegetables and the fish know.</p><p>"You know... I and mom are always here, this is as much our injury as it is yours, stop bottling it all inside and then spilling it out, just listen to those slashing noises, mother is murdering the dead fish..." Mana said casually. Father's eyes sparked with anger, angered fueled by pain without a doubt but... They calmed down. "It's just... Just all new to me." Mana smiled a little, "It's okay, you'll get used to it." She tried to calm father down but with every word she said he looked more and angrier. Now he tried to move his arms around and shouted out in pain forcing the magician to remind him that she's not done yet.</p><p>"It's not that! It's when I dream I always see my arms being normal, even in my nightmares and then I wake up into an even worse version of my nightmares - my reality is more painful than my worst nightmare." Father grunted out through anger and pain, Mana had to hand it to him, he was quite honest right now, that was what she wanted from him, to share the pain. Mother burst in from the kitchen luckily she didn't have any pans of sharp objects. "So we're just a part of your worst nightmare now!?" she yelled out, father started weeping, at least Mana managed to finish the bandaging before his weeping if she hadn't he'd be in more pain from all the shaking.</p><p>"It's not that... It's just that I don't want to talk to you guys about it, Mana is doing so great, she's pretty famous now and is going to be more famous, she's sweeping one mission after the other... You're gonna beat your old man, kid..." Mana had honestly never seen father crying, he was always her model of masculinity, and seeing that model being weak actually made tears gather up in her eyes. "So... I'm to blame for that? Because your pain is growing, because you're bottling it all inside?" she uttered out with her shaking childish voice. Mana felt mother's arms around her neck and then turning her face at mother's, mother's eyes were also teary but strong. She had that certain fire that even tears couldn't remove. "Your father didn't mean it, you know he didn't, he can't think straight with all that pain and once he gets used to it I'm gonna smack him pretty good for what he said."</p><p>Father put his hand on Mana's head and stroke her hair gently, his movements were pretty sloppy and limited by what pain let him do, still, it meant everything in the world, it was the best hair stroke Mana had ever had. "You know that's not what I meant, it's just that I used to be a ninja, I may not have been that awesome at it but I had fun... Now I'm just a useless loser who has to cheer on you from home, obviously, that's not that bad, it's just new to me - feeling useless and broken." Mana stood up and let her father's arm slip from her head, she placed her forehead up to father's and looked him in the eyes.</p><p>"You need to find another thing that defines you, you can't live with pain being the new you, it's not who you are, it's just a part of you. You need to find another thing to call your own, something that beats the pain." Father's head started sinking down but Mana tensed her neck to hold the pressure. "And don't say that we are everything you need, that's not even true. You had your family with you this whole time and pain still torments you, you need something else." Father grunted, "I used to tinker pretty damn good... Big fat nothing that's gonna do to me now..." he said. Mana stood up and showed him her arms.</p><p>"You still have the brain, I can be your arms. When I get back from the missions you can start tinkering with all sorts of deathtraps and I'll try to escape them on the stage. It'll give you purpose and something to occupy your mind with. It'll also make a... A different part of the show..." Father stood up and hugged Mana, he then gently pushed her away and sat back down, "Alright, now go finish packing your things, you've got a big day tomorrow." Mana didn't need to be told that twice, the girl rushed up the stairs into her room and started packing again. At least for once she acted like a real daughter and helped her father out, of course changing the direction of her shows from using ninjutsu to escaping death traps she herself builds under her father's instructions is going to be weird, maybe she shouldn't change all of it and just use it as a part of her show. After all, if she let the ninjutsu part slip her magic would lose its point.</p><p>The next day came unexpectedly, Mana was woken up by mother. Gently as the woman was getting ready to go to work herself. Mother was working more hours now that father was injured and won't be working, she just hoped that Mana's double income, as well as those few extra customers that visited the café in those extra hours, would compensate father's part of the income. Mana didn't really know how well she did, mother kept all of her finances in her own pocket, father always joked how that was for the better - mother's fairytale native tribe was apparently pretty good with the money. That was father's excuse with everything that concerned mother - her heritage.</p><p>After the entire tirade of morning activities, Mana threw on some simpler clothes, choosing to wear a simple t-shirt and a jacket on top and much more casual jeans, clothes she wasn't afraid to tear or fall in a swamp with but something that allowed her a lot of freedom of movement. The girl rushed out to the gates, luckily there weren't that many people wishing to greet her and cheer on her in the streets yet, that helped the girl get to the gate faster yet still she was the last person to get there. It was quite surprising because this was the first time that Sugemi actually earlier than he had to yet from his appearance it didn't look like he slept at all.</p><p>"Wow, all three of you look like you guys are going farming." Tanshu joked as he was wearing the same outfit he always wore. The three finally head out to the Forest of Death - to Team Oak's first C-Rank mission!</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. I'm Gonna Be Hokage! Shimo's Decision!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After a short stroll lasting about a good half an hour, Team Oak finally reached the fenced off training grounds with the unfortunate name of "Forest of Death". As far as first impressions were concerned to Mana the name may not have been too far off - the whole place looked like this thick and dark clump with trees growing so large and thick that inside the area there must've been little to no sunlight. There were strange sounds and smells coming off of the place, the whole grounds were surrounded by a large fence with warning signs and Mana could already see guards standing around and protecting the area.</p><p>Seeing the Forest of Death made the little magician draw a comparison between the environment found inside and the world outside the village. From what was seen so far Forest of Death was a place where the weak got no sunlight and therefore died, in addition, seeing how only the tallest and the largest got any sunlight at all it forced the trees to either grow in strength and size or perish, just like in the ninja world. The animals inside must've functioned similarly, living in a survival of the fittest kind of environment. Out of everything that could've been found inside that iron cage, Mana was afraid of exposure to that sort of life the most.</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana-chan, I'll watch your back, just don't move far from me!" Shimo spoke up in a fake heroic tone, the one you heard coming from over-glorified patriotic figures in historical plays. Mana's right eye twitched, she wasn't a violent girl but sometimes she just wanted to let her fists loose. She knew that outbursts of this strange gentleman's behavior were common to Shimo but she still couldn't help but get annoyed every time he did it. Still, he couldn't really have been blamed - Mana's worry over the kind of harsh rules she'd see inside must've translated to him as overall fear of entry.</p><p>As Tanshu-sensei went on to speak with the guard and introduce them to the Hokage order to grant them entry, Mana thought to herself, the conclusion that she's drawn was that she wasn't afraid of entering - quite the opposite. She was excited, excited about getting to show off once in a while, excited about the chance to protect the animals from the rules of nature they lived by. After all, if she can protect a small-scale version of the world as she imagined it, wouldn't that make protecting the actual world much easier? Depending on how this would go Mana would see how she'd fare in the outside world the way she was and that excited her. Even if she failed, knowledge of failure and why it happened to her was better than no knowledge at all.</p><p>The guard of the place looked a bit strange, she wore pretty thick glasses, a baggy hat, and that strange cloak that covered half of her shoulders. Observing Mana's interest in the guard Shimo once again butted in, "I think that's the protection from insect swarms or something... I guess being so close to the forest in the evenings got to be cruel - mosquitoes are probably everywhere." "Or the weaker species, insects are light and travel in packs, if they get pushed out of their habitat a fence won't stop them from leaving the Forest in search of a new spot to live in, if that happens it would suck to be in their way..." Mana replied. That did help her get to a new question - did the animals ever escape? From all the stories everyone told about this place it seemed weird that just a thick and tall fence was enough to keep them all in...</p><p>"Well, I've got entry permission. Let's just hope we don't have to stay overnight, the lady said that mosquitoes are horrible this time of year, especially 'round these parts." Tanshu-sensei spoke as he came back and showed them a small stamp of approved entry. The four of them all gathered around tightly and entered through the open gate. Almost the instant that the gate closed behind them total darkness enveloped everything. "Dang it, can't read anything like this..." Sugemi said, pulling out a flashlight from his backpack and turning it on in order to read the manga.</p><p>Shimo apparently got a peek into the boy's bag, "What the hell, Sugemi!? Is that bag filled with manga? You brought a flashlight?! Did you bring water? Clothes? Something to make fire with?!" The Nara kept reading his magazine completely ignoring his friend, responding with ignorance and completely nonchalantly. "Nah, I figured you guys would take care of it, I just brought a bunch of manga and a flashlight... I was really smart to take a flashlight, didn't really know I'd need it but I had a feeling, I guess I'm just smart up here..." Sugemi replied tapping his head several times. Mana's puny knuckle smacked him in the head, "The hell you are!" she grunted out.</p><p>Tanshu interrupted their small fight, "No, the flashlight is actually great, we can keep track of the map at all times like this." The man slid the old and torn up map onto the upper corner of Sugemi's manga and asked the boy to keep them updated, just in case he showed them where the entrance is and where they are now, right by it. Then Tanshu explained where the archive was supposed to be. "You can read your stupid manga, just keep us updated once in a while," Tanshu instructed, this behavior was strange, Mana would have never taken Tanshu-sensei as the compromising type of person. Why was her ideal the only one he couldn't compromise with?</p><p>Sugemi nodded and pointed in the direction they had to go, the three started walking that direction. The forest was incredibly hot, all those trees provided constant shade but somehow they also kept the little warm air it got inside circulating. Within the same hour, they entered Mana could already smell their sweat breaking through, the problem was that Mana's nose wasn't really that sharp which meant that the animals definitely could smell it. Be it wolves, snakes, bears or whatever lived here - the four were an open menu for them, and with a guide that was interested in his manga more than the marked animal migration and mating zones and river passes they could've been in trouble.</p><p>It was incredibly strange that no animals attacked them, as the squad kept walking on there was not a single animal in sight, even more - they actively tried to hide from the squad. Why was this place even called Forest of Death anyway? Once Mana looked straight up and saw a gigantic boa slithering the hell away from the four, one the size easily letting him break the bones of all four of them, the girl finally got the clue. "It's you, Tanshu-sensei, isn't it? We felt that strange killing intent the first time we met you but up to now, we've been around you for so long that we barely notice it. These animals, however, are scared for their lives and that's why no one attacks us..."</p><p>The man grinned slightly, Shimo looked really amazed, "Wow, how could one get this kind of feeling to their chakra?! I want animals and people to be crapping their pants just out of mere sight of me too, then no one will be oppressing anyone while I'm around!" the boy shot a knuckle into the sky. That was right, Shimo's objective was to become strong, strong enough so that no one oppressed people, like the Mizukage, oppressed his family when he was a child, while he was around, he wanted to prevent stories like that of his family where entire families had to flee in fear of their life. In a way, his objective was very much like Mana's except his objective actually had a possibility of being achieved...</p><p>"There's no way to get it, you just have to be cool, that's it..." Tanshu replied with a cocky look. "I'll let you in on a secret that'll help you get there - you actually have to visualize yourself killing the person that you're looking at, that'll give you the killer's eyes. People think that they only see what they see, but never met a man that doesn't know when I'm not itching to murder him when I am. It'll protect a lot more lives like this than stupid "care for your enemy" attitude." Tanshu also found an opportunity to bite Mana too. From Shimo's weird faces the whole way since then, Mana just took that he was actually practicing the killer's stare...</p><p>Finally, the four reached a pretty wide river, Sugemi barely even noticed it so he just started walking straight into it as Tanshu's strong arm gripped him by his collar and dragged his lazy butt back. The man without saying a word pulled a bag of unprepared meat using his sword and put it into the water, removing it within a second only to reveal it being covered with leeches that quickly fell off. "This meat has no blood circulation but those leeches still grab onto it, at this point, it's surprising how they haven't leeched off each other. Getting in there is to actively commit suicide, you'd get drained of blood in minutes." Now Mana realized the point of her father's advice about staying out of the water.</p><p>It took the squad quite some time to find a small pass, the pass in question also was several wooden boards tossed over the river, making the heart of the girl jump in her chest with every step. Tanshu-sensei of course just had to taunt them by jumping over the river. He did it with such ease that to Mana it seemed apparent that he could've simply jumped over several times carrying them on his back with just as little problem. He must've really enjoyed the fear in genin's faces as they crossed the slow streaming river begging whatever forces above that the puny boards don't break.</p><p>"We've reached the area." Sugemi unexpectedly declared after walking for just a little bit more from the river. The exact location of the archive was not marked which meant that they had to explore the whole area and to find the entrance to the archive, apparently, it was supposed to be a small pyramid around two or three meters tall, made from old mossy stone and strange hieroglyphs all over it. Tanshu-sensei scratched his head and had a pretty strange look on his face, "I think it'd be better if we split up, if each of us went to check one-quarter of the area we'd find the place faster, I really don't plan on sharing my blood with mosquitoes at night, we'll have to finish our mission before sunset which means we got a couple of hours at best."</p><p>Mana couldn't believe it, what kind of plan was that? Splitting up in a place like this? That's basically the same as suicide! Sensei then made a handseal and made three clones. "These will follow you wherever you go, they'll scare the animals away so you can stop acting like scaredy-cats now." Despite the fact that Tanshu made all of those clones, the idea still seemed incredibly stupid and it appeared like sensei wanted to get them killed. Shimo looked just as displeased, Sugemi was the only one who apparently didn't care but that was most likely because he didn't understand a word sensei said over his manga. The fact that he was slobbering indicated it must've been something dirty.</p><p>"No. We can do it." Mana unexpectedly turned around in her thoughts, Shimo looked at her strange, the magician went on to explain. "We've got nothing to lose - if we find the place we find it faster than we'd do moving together. If we don't and get attacked - we'll be out of our comfort zone and have to push our abilities to survive, the thing is that it's the point of those simple missions. We need to be ready for this sort of thing. We need to be strong in order to fulfill our dreams: I need to be able to protect sensei's clone and myself if I can ever hope to protect the whole world and change it for the better, Shimo needs to be at least strong enough to fend off from some animals to see to it that the weak aren't oppressed, Sugemi, what better way is there for your manga to be written than if you tell the tale of a huge scuffle with a gigantic animal in the Forest of Death?"</p><p>Shimo grinned with full teeth and raised his fist in the air, "I get it, survival drill!" Sugemi put his manga back in his backpack and nodded. "I'm never gonna stop trying to make my chance at a manga! That is my ninja way!" Shimo turned around and looked at the western part of the forest, "Only now did I realize how dumb my goal is." he said, "If Mana-chan is there to protect the weak, of course, they won't be oppressed by the strong... Then again, how can I know for sure that the people won't be oppressed by the strong unless I'm the strong one handing out justice? From this day on, I declare my dream to be to become Hokage. I won't trust this position to anyone else but myself! Becoming Hokage is the prime way to ensure that the Kage don't oppress the people!" he declared and dashed forward into the western part of the forest after giving his team a huge confident smile with a wink.</p><p>Mana giggled, she was glad to see her teammates so inspired. She herself also headed to one of the two directions left to cover. She wanted this - a chance to show her growth, to prove to sensei that she wasn't just a silly kid, talking about her dreams while having no strength to back it up. Deep inside the magician also knew that her teammates were the same, sure, hearing Shimo deciding to become Hokage was cheesy, every kid in the Academy had that very same dream, Sugemi's quest of getting his own manga was really silly, he kept mentioning characters from the manga which Mana didn't even know existed, at least she never found them in the manga shops she checked just out of curiosity. Still, those were her teammates' silly dreams and she was going to stand with them every step of the way!</p><p>"You gotta teach me how to do that, make them do things you want them to do..." Tanshu-sensei's clone spoke from behind Mana, having followed her and kept up with her elevated pace. It was quite impressive how even his clones, after splitting sensei's chakra into several parts had that same vibe of absolute death behind them. That told a lot about sensei's strength. Mana grinned back, "It's called motivating people, all you have to do is tell them you believe in them, it helps when you actually believe in their dreams." Tanshu's clone laughed, "I do believe. I believe that Shimo might become Hokage one day, after all, I was told that Fourth was just the same kind of a snotty brat in the Academy, I believe Sugemi can have his own manga, if he had any actual brain in that Nara head of his he'd write one himself... What I don't believe is your dream, you're going to die or you're going to change."</p><p>This personal problem with Mana's dream confused her, why was sensei so obsessed with people that wanted to prevent death and that wanted to make people value life? Why was giving life worth some sort of heresy that needed to be changed with such rage and distrust? Maybe sensei just had someone in his life, someone who was like Mana and died before they could realize their dream. "Say... Tanshu-sensei... Why are you so angry at me? Did you have someone in your life that thought like me? Is it perso..." Mana turned back only to see that sensei was no longer there. "nal..." she finished the word as she realized how screwed she was.</p><p>Why would sensei leave her? A loud yell echoed through the forest, it didn't worry Mana because it was an intelligible "Oy" coming from the west - Shimo's location and the sound matched his voice. Sensei must've ordered his clones to abandon them, did he want them to die?! Just as Mana wondered what she was to do she heard a loud rustle, suddenly the ground itself started to bump with the smaller pebbles being thrown up just an inch and the leaves getting picked up. It was a fast and continuous burst of tremors - like a machine-gun. After just a mere moment the nearest young birch broke in half revealing a gigantic centipede behind it, it had to be at least three times Mana's size.</p><p>Somewhere west, a loud roar caught Shimo by surprise, the boy pulled a kunai out of his pouch and readied himself for a battle - the future Hokage couldn't be stopped here after all! Luckily the kunai was placed in the boy's hand just in time as a tiger far too large to be your ordinary tiger jumped out. The animal had to be the biggest species of a tiger to survive in this environment and soon the big cat would test its mettle against a young ninja of Konohagakure.</p><p>To the east of Shimo's location, Sugemi kept frantically turning his flashlight around examining the floor for remnants of the stone floor. His quest was cut short by a large tail wrapping around his waist and pulling him up into the tree. The Nara couldn't really tell what it was but that thing was crushing his chest and he had to escape in order to survive. Yes! This animal was just big enough to grant him enough glory for his own personal manga! This was the fight Sugemi wanted. As the large mouth of a boa appeared out of the cover of the leaves it didn't see a scared boy, it saw a genin itching for a fight with a creature that was as large as possible.</p><p>Sensei wanted to test them, they wouldn't deserve the rank of a ninja if they let their mission end here! Team Oak got ready to face their challenges!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. We're No Longer Children! We Are Ninja!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The boa tried to bite Sugemi, it was really strong and without a doubt could've crushed the body of not only a young ninja but also a strong and adult one. Luckily enough this was the kind of constrictor that applied force over time, if the snake had crushed the boy outright it would've spent more energy than he'd have gained eating that boy, surviving in such an environment was all about the economy, granted, different kind of economy but a pretty important one nonetheless. Being well versed in this economy the snake continued to slowly suffocate the boy instead of instantly killing him.</p><p>The boa must've also been quite hungry because it targeted Sugemi with a bite, it wasn't likely that this sort of snake would be venomous but it wanted to draw blood so that the boy lost energy and stopped resisting faster. It was out of sheer luck that Sugemi had one of his hands free, opposing that, it was a talent that had him know the art of single-hand handseals. With just a few quick motions, predicting the bite, Sugemi managed to pull off his "Shadow Tendrils" technique that tied around the boa's mouth with multiple tendrils while several more pushed its head into the tree.</p><p>The shock of having one's head slammed into the tree forced the snake's grip to loosen for just a second, that second, however, was quite enough for Sugemi to slip out of the snake's grasp. The boy quickly leaped down to the ground level using multiple branches as halfway points down. Sugemi pulled out a kunai and started carefully observing the branches above, it was quite likely that the snake had superior speed and would draw blood or capture him again but he was ready for that, the boy was already calculating his own response to an attack faster than he could see.</p><p>To the west of where Sugemi was fighting the snake, Shimo and the great tiger were circling around each other. The beast being lead by instinct and hunger instead of logic made the first leap which Shimo dodged and weaved a handseal. The powerful claws of the great cat left a scratch on Shimo's shoulder and a smaller one on his back, it didn't interrupt Shimo's jutsu however as the muddy sludge where the tiger landed turned into ice making the cat slip around powerless. Shimo leaped back and tossed a couple of kunai, he didn't really want to kill the tiger since he was so majestic and great, the boy figured that a couple of injuries would force it to flee.</p><p>As the few knives dug into the tiger's back the beast roared in pain, as it was still unable to deal with the ice it just rolled to the side several times until it got to the solid ground, the dirt and rocks on the surface he was rolling on left some more dirty and bloody marks on the tiger's large and powerful body. Unfortunately, it never intended to back up. It stood right where it was, it must've been really hungry and this hunt was do or die for the big cat. The beast had already decided to either die or follow this boy until the end of the Earth and Shimo was just to blame for falling in its sight.</p><p>Further on, Mana tossed a couple of knives at the giant centipede, trying to see just how tough its armor was and she was unpleasantly surprised - the projectiles easily bounced off of the centipede's armor and fell down on the ground. The insect started rushing at her, it was surprising how fast it was, its mandibles moved to the side, no doubt it wanted to crush Mana's body at the waist and finish her quick. The girl jumped up and weaved some handseals sending her slightly up in the air using her "Mystical Wings" technique, she landed squarely on the insect's forehead and made another combination of handseals trying to send a genjutsu at the centipede's way.</p><p>If Mana was to protect her enemy by beating them without killing them she had to start with this centipede. In a path of a hero, there was no next time so the girl was genuinely ready to die before killing this thing. That was Mana's way, her conviction. Sadly it appeared that a giant centipede lacked the brain centers needed to be affected by Mana's "Scary Trick Jutsu", the genjutsu in question showed the opponent a different version of events, one where Mana died, allowing the girl a quick counterattack or escape. The centipede simply cocked its head backward hitting the magician with its horn and sending her back off its head, tumbling back on its body, then on the ground.</p><p>Mana recovered just in time to avoid an endless barrage of the centipede's feet. He didn't have a hundred of them like the common myth along children went, still, they were tough enough to leave holes in the ground and were coated with the same material that the centipede's tough skull was, had they hit her they'd have impaled her like a blade which wasn't Mana's plan at all. Despite the impending death and having to fight for her life, this mission still beat washing dishes and filing... The magician rolled below the centipede to avoid the endless barrage of feet trying to crush her.</p><p>Sugemi meanwhile was getting knocked around by the constrictor, the snake decided to play with its prey and bash it around with its head, trying to knock the boy out instead of both instantly crushing it or trying to constrict him. Sugemi was quite decent at taijutsu, something most of Nara peers of his age lacked. After coughing up some blood after being tossed around the Nara pulled out an explosive note and decided to use a trick that he taught himself, used when confronting a stronger but brutish foe. As the snake's giant forehead closed in on Nara he thrust his palm with an explosive note forward, relaxing the arm right at the end and letting the snake's head to transfer its force into his palm and spin him around instead of having his tense palm collide with the superior strike. There was no contest of force, just a complete transfer as the force snake gave the Nara threw him to the side helping him dodge.</p><p>Before he even got up, the Nara made a simple handseal detonating the seal. As the smoke cleared the damage became apparent, it wasn't as extensive as the boy had wanted - the snake was just a little smoky and completely dazed and confused, but very much intact. The Nara didn't want to strain his chakra reserves anymore but he had to. Just one last attack, one strong do or die. The Nara made the handseals, building up chakra inside of his body with no visual indication of it. Luckily his opponent was just going to take anything he'd throw head-on, the attack wasn't something that was easy to land after all...</p><p>Shimo was barely tracking the tiger's leaps, he was using two kunai but he didn't have time to inflict any damage. He had a certain degree of bukijutsu mastery and that helped him to perfectly block every leap and paw strike that the tiger threw, sadly he couldn't counter because his hands were completely full trying to defend himself from any further injuries. There was still much that Shimo could've learned in terms of move economy, he still spent too much breath in his moves, too many unnecessary movements and that showed as he spent all of his efforts just to keep himself alive.</p><p>As good as the boy was, the tiger still found many gaps in the boy's defenses, Shimo was covered with scratches and very shallow teeth marks where the tiger's bites just almost caught the boy. Any of his teammates in his place would've died but Shimo was relentlessly blocking every attack - his kunai knives were covered with scratches, the tiger was strong enough to leave scratches on steel with repeated slashes. Being so overwhelmed was really not where Shimo wanted to be, it was the time that he stopped feeling sorry for this tiger. As much as the boy respected Mana's ideals (and wanted to show off to her just to be on her good side), Tanshu-sensei was right - the enemy won't feel sorry for you, you had to finish them off.</p><p>Shimo roared loudly as he allowed the tiger's claws to leave more marks but, instead, he dug his knives in the side of the tiger's head. The spot where the tiger was aiming was non-lethal, Shimo's stabs would've been if only... If only the kunai had more reach, more powerful penetration! Now they were stuck in the muscle and barely reached the tiger's blood vessels needed to be cut. Shimo leaped in the air and performed a dropkick aiming at the kunai, the tiger roared and was sent back, not by force but by pain. Still... The beast was bleeding but it was standing. The desired blood vessels were injured but the knives were blocking the blood, they needed to be pulled out. There was no way with his injuries that Shimo could come up with that amount of strength, it would've needed a superhuman to pull those out of the tiger's steel tough muscle tissue. This was it - time to go all out and take this beast down. Shimo weaved a couple of handseals and shot his arms forward as the cold icy wind blew at the tiger's direction...</p><p>The centipede was doing its best trying to get Mana out from under it - it was turning around frantically trying to leave her exposed and its fears were well justified. Its bottom spot was the soft one, Mana could already make it out that the bottom part of the centipede was unprotected and if she stabbed it with an explosive kunai she'd leave a gigantic hole in the insect's body for its primitive organs to fall out. That wasn't Mana's style. She'll find another way! With all of her puny strength the girl shot an elbow into the centipede's bottom part, it wriggled around. Strange, in the plays when heroes fought giant insects they always made the insects shriek in pain, roar, or make a sound, there was none of that.</p><p>Mana quickly dived out from under the insect, threw some explosive notes in the air, and made a handseal. "Friendly Gust Jutsu!" she yelled as a gust of wind drove all of the explosive notes at the insect. She activated the tags causing a chain reaction of explosions, each of which left powerful dents in the insect's body, it seemed like an explosion was the only concussive force strong enough to leave a dent in that shell. The centipede's armor cracked in many spots, there was some sort of gooey and disgusting liquid coming out of them. The centipede was wriggling around, still refusing to make a sound, it fell down on one side and wriggled around, writhed on the ground as some more gooey liquid shot out. Mana was careful not to touch that, not only did she find that thing to be completely icky, but it also could've been acidic, she's read that some larger insects had acidic blood in them and acid burns were deep down in her list of things she needed in her life.</p><p>The girl sat by a tree and breathed in and out. This fight was something, she could've used sensei's help but she was a bit proud of herself. The centipede came back to life again and jumped around, trying desperately to stand up. Mana stood up and looked back at it, a true warrior would've killed it... She was told so many times that she was a disgrace and not a true warrior, not a true ninja. Perhaps since she was not given the honor of being called a real ninja, she had no obligation to act like one. The magician simply walked away leaving the creature struggling to contain its own leaking goo.</p><p>Sugemi leaped forward, a hardly visible black chakra aura appeared around his body, stemming from his shadow. The technique was supposed to be a transfer of force from his Shadow Tendril technique into his body, focusing it all into a taijutsu attack, it was a bit telegraphed and was not something that could be pulled out of nowhere but it pretty much doubled his striking power, it was almost like punching someone and using Shadow Tendril to hit them at the same time. The boy shouted out in pain as the strain on his body from using a large amount of chakra came to him. The Nara thrust his fist forward as it dug deep into the snake's face, stronger even than an explosive tag because the force was concentrated to one point instead of being spread in a shockwave.</p><p>The first blow was a rising strike, after the snake's head shot up in the air and started falling down, Sugemi was worried that he may not have delivered enough of a punch, he re-sparked his chakra using the same technique again when used in combination his technique didn't cost twice that amount of chakra, since his body was still recovering from using it once it came off easier, there were still leftovers from the chakra he used before. Sugemi's fist shot forward, enhanced by his Shadow Tendril Technique. "FOR MY OWN MANGA! SHADOW FIST JUTSU!" he shouted as his last remnant of chakra blew into the snake's sensitive nostrils sending it back crashing into the tree. Purely for the visual effect, the Nara would've loved the tree to go down but nothing of the sort happened. The snake didn't rise up, the boy rushed back - he failed to find any remnants of the archive and sensei was no longer here, there was no point to hang around here any longer, especially now that his chakra reserves were almost empty.</p><p>In Shimo's front, the wind circulated and formed a smaller and smaller vortex. The boy struggled to finish building up the technique but his success was moderate - the technique was really difficult as he had to use his clan's signature Ice Release but also manipulate the shape of the vortex. It didn't really work - the technique just tightened into a beam-like vortex that fired right at the tiger. Normally, the way that Shimo's brother did the technique it was supposed to completely freeze the opponent but Shimo's imperfect version only dug multiple large ice shards and either froze them onto their skin or straight out violently drove them into the enemy as knives. "Ice Wolf Technique!" Shimo roared wildly as the vortex left the tiger into an injured and whining shell of the majestic beast it once was.</p><p>It probably would've still gotten in fighting shape. As Shimo's hands lowered he looked at the tiger, he felt really sorry for what he did to such an amazing animal... The boy walked up to it as the tiger looked at him with sorry eyes. Shimo pulled out a kunai and looked back into the tree branches, he wondered if sensei's clone was watching. "You seeing this?! We're no longer kids! We're ninja!" he yelled out and walked away. The animal should've known by the time it recovers that this was one fight that wasn't worth it. The boy just hoped that Mana or the others found the archive because his region appeared to be empty.</p><p>Mana was looking around, she had very few chances to properly explore the place since she was too interested in sensei's obsession with hating her ideals and fighting that centipede. It didn't appear like the archive was there, she figured that turning around was her best choice. It was then that she saw it - another centipede's head staring at her from the bush, no way, she had no time nor the means to fight it. She still had some chakra as her extended resources came in handy but she didn't have a technique hitting hard enough. The girl's hands quickly went through handseals forming a mass of crackling lightning above an area in front of her as the centipede tried to crush her like its predecessor lightning rods shot out of the mass and went through the centipede shocking it giving Mana enough time to bolt.</p><p>This was bad - Mana's "Magic Skewer Jutsu" was mostly harmless as it only shocked the person causing pain and left them briefly stunned in place out of sheer surprise and pain but she did literally no damage. Even more, she was running in the opposite direction to where her team was, the centipede was blocking her off and forcing her to run deeper into the forest. If she kept running she'd get lost, that's even if she's lucky enough to escape this thing! Mana kept running, she heard rumbling sounds, those same almost automated thuds hitting the ground, they were getting closer and closer, that thing was about to hit her, the magician kept running forward, she had to close her eyes and clutch herself to force herself to keep running. She was almost ready for those mandibles to catch her at any moment. Except...</p><p>Her sandals met a tough ground, suddenly she heard a deafening thud, and some crashing rocks, sand and dust fell on the girl's messy hair as she stroke over it several times to move it aside. Mana's curious eyes turned back only to see the centipede having his its head into an entrance of some sort - she was standing right in the archive she wanted to find! The bug was too into its chase to notice the small building that the girl ended up in and it seemed to have only one entrance which also served as an exit, the only path left not blocked with stone and centipede head was to go deeper into the underground archive. Mana sighed. At least she'll finish her mission by packing the scrolls... She's in an ancient library with all the time in the world, she was fortunate enough to love reading at least...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. You Are Not Perfect. Hurry to the Rescue!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana sighed, she was sitting on the stairs leading down to the main hall of the archives. Normally she should've gone on down, taken all the scrolls, and looked for a way out but she already knew there couldn't have been one. The whole place was simplistic with its architecture and the only entrance, also the only exit was currently blocked and while she had some more explosive notes left from her last battle, those that she kept in another pouch, those could've actually taken the whole place down on her.</p><p>Currently, the genin was wondering if sensei was going to help her out, after all, his clone did follow her and most likely had seen the battle. It also could've seen her moving away and then being attacked by another centipede and then entering this archive by accident. Her theory was supported by the fact that "Shadow Clone Jutsu" split one's chakra into parts, it would've been foolishness to let the clones disappear after making them for the show - there had to be another meaning to them. Tanshu-sensei must've been ready to help them out in a pinch but not before he was absolutely sure of their incoming demise. That was just the kind of man Tanshu-sensei was.</p><p>Sadly it appeared that no one was coming to rescue her. That didn't make Mana sad, it made her furious that she was about to do all the work for herself, it was a good kind of anger, however. The kind of anger when mother and father don't do their own dishes and Mana has to do all of them, on one side it's annoying but, on the other hand, all the dishes get done anyway. The girl stood up and looked at the gigantic head blocking her exit one last time before heading downstairs into the main hall of the archive.</p><p>The stairs were pretty long, they were straight and lead anyone heading straight down, the staircase was just a few degrees off of being horizontal so it took some time before it helped the explorer descend to the archive level. The whole place was just how one would imagine an ancient archive or a tomb to look, the stones were mossy and old, many bricks were loose and several fell out from behind Mana's feet when she stepped on the step. The girl was happy that the place was relatively dark, that way she had no chance of seeing the kind of insects that must've loved it here. Being not unlike other girls of her age Mana was not too fond of insects, especially ones that lived in tombs and caves, for now, it was better if they remained unseen.</p><p>Why didn't they come for her? Did something happen? What if Shimo and Sugemi got attacked too? What if one of them got hurt? Mana was a little worried about her friends even she was clearly the one in a tighter spot - this place could've been closed out from any air supplies, there was little to eat or drink except the stuff that the magician had with her. No. Mana won't rely on her team to come and bail her out, she'll go and complete her mission and if needed she'll try and blow a hole out somewhere and leave when she gets really desperate and the risk of everything falling on her head is well worth it.</p><p>Mana entered the great hall of the archive after a long and boring walk. It looked so forgotten but also so fantastic, it resembled much more of a library but whereas libraries were filled with books, this place was filled with all sorts of colorful scrolls. Some of them had insignia on them, some of the signs looked like animals or drawings or symbols, some of them looked like hieroglyphs or letters of some ancient language. Mana removed all food and water from her backpack and started loading all of the scrolls but then she thought - how does she know which scrolls to load? Normally the four of them would've had enough space to carry all the scrolls, they each had tubes that had an incredible amount of space in them and each tube could carry around fifty scrolls, problem was with Mana being here alone with no hope of being saved - she'll need to be picky and pick the most worthy scrolls being moved. Obviously, they can return here at any time later with Mana knowing the location but, for now, she'll have to at least peek into the content of the scrolls.</p><p>She had all the time in the world, last she saw the Sun was setting which meant that night was approaching. Nights in the Forest of Death were incredibly dangerous, all ninja, even higher ranking ones were advised to leave the Forest at night because whatever creatures may have attacked them during the day, at night they were ready to feed, there were more of them and they were more dangerous. Also, the night wasn't ideal for most people to defend themselves in. It was well within reason that Tanshu-sensei wanted to leave before night comes, now with lower chakra reserves the Jounin will call for the team moving out, leaving Mana behind - that was the most logical solution and sensei wasn't against leaving people behind.</p><p>Imagining herself tired and hungry, low on chakra and bit bruised in a forest filled with thing wanting to kill her wasn't fun in the slightest, it may have been a smart idea to sit tight and carefully select the scrolls she'd move over the night, then move in the morning. She could spare one sleepless night... "I always wanted to have a sleepover..." the girl thought to herself ironically since she didn't have too many friends to have a sleepover with. Moving in the morning would've been way better, she may not have had Sugemi's map but finding her way in the morning beat wandering at night without competition. And so as the decision was made the young kunoichi started checking the scrolls one after the other to choose the ones she could seal and ones better left behind for a later pickup. The place could have gone down during Mana's escape, if that happened the scrolls she left behind would've been lost so she had to do her best at choosing the most valuable ones. If she succeeded the mission would still be completed, after all the objective did state "as many as possible"...</p><p>There was a problem that the kunoichi didn't understand what was written in some of the scrolls, she automatically left some of the ones containing legends behind, she considered actual historical sources more important. It was quite difficult telling history from the legend, often the girl had to sit down and read everything in that scroll to better understand what was written in it. Luckily enough Mana was pretty good with the history that was taught in the Academy, she also did some extra reading so placing some of those into history wasn't that hard. Some of those that the magician chose were actually legends, but those she recognized as really important as they were considered lost in time but influential to historical figures and ideas. Mana was the best person that could've possibly wandered into this archive as she was most likely the best out of her squad in the history department, of course, she didn't know Tanshu's degree of mastery over history but something told her that something as useless practically as history wouldn't have been much to sensei's fancy.</p><p>Then an idea came to Mana's mind - her father's top hat... If she wore her magician's uniform she could've used her father's seal to seal some more scrolls. Sadly she chose a more practical attire and while the combat situation proved that to be the right decision, now she sort of wanted to have chosen her fancy attire just so she could have saved some more scrolls. Some of the scrolls had some sort of jutsu formula inside them, they only needed one to have the scroll unsealed and making the handseals with the scroll providing a one-time use of the jutsu. Most of them were high ranking techniques, Mana wouldn't have had any chakra for them anyways even with her larger than usual reserves. "Shadow Clone Jutsu..." Mana ran through one of the scrolls, it described the process of the technique and its different variations, sadly, if the girl used even the most simple version she'd die of exhaustion shortly afterward...</p><p>This was the most painful realization - knowing that not everything could be saved, that Mana wasn't perfect, that somewhere along the road she made the wrong choices, and now she had to leave a bunch of scrolls to rot here and risk having them permanently lost in time. Maybe... Maybe Tanshu-sensei wanted her here? Wanted her to know how real missions work, that she can't possibly be almighty enough to save everyone, that sometimes people have to be left behind? Except, of course, the realization would be made through scrolls...</p><p>"NO!" Mana almost broke out with emotions, being closed in a relatively dark space with only her own artificial light stick she took from home to illuminate her surroundings did horrors to one's condition. "I have to... I have to save everything..." Mana grabbed her face to keep herself from crying. She had to do it, she had to at least try to do it perfectly... The magician weaved the handseal and uttered... "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" just as the scroll described. Concentrating an equal part of chakra and splitting it off of her own, making just one clone shouldn't kill her but it'll be close! With a loud poof of smoke, a clone appeared, suddenly Mana felt an impulse of pain in her chest as the clone puffed into smoke again, just like it once appeared. The magician fell on the ground, she felt blood pressure around her eyes as her vision blurred and her chest was pounding trying to contain the strain from exploding her chest into a pool of blood. Mana fell on the ground, she tried to reach for the scroll extending her arm towards it, a sad and sorry "No..." came out of her before the girl passed out.</p><p>Somewhere farther away, the boys had returned to the rendezvous point and met up with Tanshu-sensei. Shimo was really angry, "What the hell, sensei!? You left us alone! We could've died!" Sugemi grinned "What's wrong? Future Hokage had trouble with some forest animals?" teasing Shimo. Tanshu looked into the leaf layer covering the sky, "It's bad, it's getting late, we got to move back, maybe we'll make it to the exit before nightfall..." Shimo and Sugemi looked around, "Where's Mana-chan? Maybe she got attacked too, maybe she's hurt?" Shimo got worried and looked at the direction where Mana headed off to when they separated. "Nope, she won her fight, she did better than the two of you did, she's actually in the archive right now which is the best place for her to be in, with a little luck she'll seal some of the scrolls and find us in the morning, we are NOT wandering this place looking for her at night." Tanshu decided and pointed in a direction that headed back to where they entered.</p><p>"Heroes from manga don't leave their friends behind," Sugemi said as he turned around and started moving towards Mana's direction. A burst of chakra came from Tanshu's direction, suddenly the air became chilling cold, both boys froze in place in fear of the sheer strength and killing intent coming off of the man. "We are heading that way." he said pointing at the entrance once more as the two boys turned around without questions and headed to where Tanshu pointed, "Yes, Sir," Sugemi added. Spirit of manga faded in the cold grip of Tanshu's killing intent.</p><p>"Man... This sucks... What if Mana-chan is hurt?" Shimo slightly peeked back at the direction he imagined the girl would be in. "It would be the most gentleman thing to do to help her out..." he added, Sugemi kept rushing through the trees, moving at a speed completely different from the one they moved to the location in. Even when the boys were low on chakra sensei's orders didn't let them let up, both of them were sweating heavily and barely keeping up with their sensei and huffing heavily. It seemed that all that Tanshu was worried about was getting out of the forest until the night comes, in the forest it looked like every moment of the day was night, that was one of the scariest things about this place - night just crept up on you and all sorts of creatures started hunting on you at night...</p><p>"Nah, didn't you hear what sensei said? Mana is in the archive, it's a bit weird that she went in alone but if she was in danger Tanshu-sensei would do something, the Golden Oak of Konoha the Fourth Hokage would never be friends with a person who is actually a dick, right? Tanshu-sensei didn't leave us alone, from how certain he was of Mana's location and condition it seemed like he tracked us the whole way, it is possible that his clone is still watching her... Let's just wait till morning, then we can go look for her, if we die now you won't become Hokage and I won't have a manga written of my adventures, even more, Mana will be pissed at us for dying while looking for her. We'll also blow her dream away, have you forgotten? Mana's dream is to protect everyone, always."</p><p>Shimo just shut up and kept moving where sensei led the way. It took three times less the time they took to get to the river pass to get back to the entrance. The last kilometer was full of clouds of insects buzzing and trying to feast on the blood of the ninja that were foolish enough to stay in the place for so long. In addition, there were strange sounds all over the place, sounds like roaring and whining, sounds of the natural fight for survival going on all around them, it was clear that had Tanshu-sensei and his insane killing aura had been around to repel wild animals the boys would've long since been food. It took them their best techniques to defend against a single animal each, more than half of their chakra reserves just to fight a single hungry and desperate animal. One could not begin to imagine fighting multiple or entire packs of animals. There was howling, roaring, trees tumbling down all around the place.</p><p>Also, Tanshu's chakra and his aura were greatly weakened. Even with his full reserve, there must've been animals brave enough to challenge even him, now when he made multiple shadow clones and kept up such inhuman pace of running for so long leading the way his chakra reserves could've been as low as being halved. If that was true that meant even more danger for the kids and himself. It didn't take a genius to realize that sensei's call was actually the right one, Shimo just hoped deep inside that if Mana is alright in there somewhere she also understands the situation and doesn't hold it against them. She was amazing enough to win against the animals of the forest and find the archive, she was smart enough to stay inside and wait overnight. She'll be OK... She must be!</p><p>The three ninja approached the exit and Tanshu banged on the gate hard. It took several minutes but, finally, the gate was open, there were multiple guards watching it so that no beast escaped the area. "You guys were pushing it, several more minutes and I'd have kept the door shut." the lady that let them in initially said, "Weren't there four of you? Did something happen?" she asked signaling the men to wait, "Do you need an extraction squad to go in there?" she added. Tanshu shook his head, "I've got the best man possible watching my student - myself, we'll go back in in the morning, I hope you guys have nothing against us setting up camp here till the morning?" the lady laughed, "How can I refuse you and that crazy feeling you got..." the team started putting up their tents. No one spoke too much, Sugemi and Shimo were working on the map, planning where they'd go so that they waste no time, theorizing where exactly the archive was. After a couple of hours, they went to bed, sleep was integral for recovering at least some of their chakra overnight...</p><p>The next morning came almost lightning fast, the boys barely had any time to sleep. Tanshu rudely woke them up by knocking on their tents and with extreme force clashing two kunai against one another. The sound of steel clashing forced the boys awake, none of them complained, all of them felt responsible for what happened but more so about extracting their teammate they had to leave behind overnight in one of the most dangerous places in Fire Country. </p><p>"If Mana is OK, I think we're good for the Chuunin exams. I mean, I heard they have a round in here, after missions like this we're ready for everything." Sugemi whispered. Shimo didn't reply, this wasn't time for goofing around or small talk. The three stretched out, wasting no time and bolting forward with all the speed they as ninja could come up with right as the gate opened. Back into the Forest of Death, hoping only that the place didn't live up to its name. Tanshu-sensei looked adamant and relatively calm, the boys were quite surprised how much so.</p><p>No one doubted if he wanted to pull Mana out of this at all, both boys understood that sensei held himself responsible for their well-being, he just showed it in unique ways. "Sensei..." Shimo tried to calm him down, "It's not your fault, I know that you just tried to test us, to put us in a life-threatening situation to make us grow stronger and learn, you're just that sort of a teacher." Tanshu-sensei looked back at Shimo with a rude and cold look, "Why would I be to blame? Everything is under control, as much of an idiot as your teammate was, she lucked out and ended up in the best place for her to be. If she's as smart as she's shown herself to be up to now she'll have finished sealing her share of the scrolls before going to sleep last night and will be waiting for us."</p><p>Sensei was moving insanely fast - he knew exactly where the archive was because his clone followed Mana who found it yesterday. It was just as if they were racing with an imaginary embodiment of death itself. "Please be OK, Mana-chan." Shimo thought to himself as the three kept moving forward.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. The Story of Satsuhimasa the Spruce Princess</h2></a>
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      <p>Small rays of light sparingly entered Mana's field of vision as her eyes slightly opened. The light from the lightstick she borrowed from her father was still barely emanating, the girl wondered just how long she could've been passed out for. This was reckless and irresponsible of her to do - to try and use such an advanced and seemingly impossible technique. Shadow Clone jutsu was classified as a B-rank technique, however very few B-rank shinobi used it, it simply required too much chakra. For her, a lousy genin with average skills at best to try it... She was an idiot.</p>
      <p>Mana stroke her hair and rubbed her aching forehead, her head was pulsing with pain and she could feel exhaustion all over her body. This wasn't good, she didn't know exactly what time it could've been outside, she didn't know exactly how long she'd been passed out for. The kunoichi tried to guess, looking at how traumatized her body was, the fact that she woke up at all suggested that she just approached the limit of usable chakra, she didn't yet cross it. The genin didn't feel like her chakra had increased at all which meant that less than ten hours had passed, usually, some of her chakra recovered overnight, she couldn't have been passed out for more than a couple of hours, four at the most.</p>
      <p>The magician's hand unwillingly was raised to her mouth to contain her yawn - she was tired, her biological clock must've told her to go to sleep. No. It could've meant a great many things, maybe she's running low on air to breathe and her body was becoming desperate, Mana opened her backpack and cracked another lightstick, she had twelve of those because she assumed she'd be in total darkness in this forest the entire time, one should've worked for three to four hours, the fact that her old one was just now going dim helped the girl time her brief passing out a bit better.</p>
      <p>As far as she could remember when she passed out it was the beginning of the night. Nights in the Forest of Death were nasty, she was probably too deep to hear any battles of animals fighting each other from down there. Mana sighed and continued her quest to read the scrolls to better evaluate them. This one looked weird, it was covered with a very dull greyish shade of green, the kind of paint used was strange and had an even stranger smell to it - it must've been ancient because the paint used was natural and had a peculiar dung smell to it. Such time placement of the scroll would've proved enough for the magician to automatically consider the scroll worth saving but the girl had other ideas.</p>
      <p>She had all the time in the world, she went through almost half of the scrolls of this place in just three to four hours. As the girl munched on a rice cake she took out of the backpack she thought - why doesn't she read anything more accurately, educate herself? After all, the scrolls were meant for the museum so they didn't have any classified information, she could have saved a couple of ryo she'd have spent for the museum ticket if she read some of those right now. She always was into history and lore and legends, maybe this was the time to enjoy this occasion and make it into an actual hobby of hers. When else will she have the time to read up? Back home she had her ninja missions, her magic shows to prepare for, she had training and tinkering with dad so that he had something to distract him from the pain. History and cooking were the two hobbies that Mana had abandoned since she started studying really hard in the Academy.</p>
      <p>The genin finished her rice cake and cleaned her hands, she took the ancient scroll she was about to put into the sealing tube and opened it up. The smell of old paper and ink spread throughout the archive, it was amazing how this scroll avoided being munched on by rats or ruined by insects. The story inside the scroll was written very weirdly, it was written in a language that Mana could understand but it used strange endings to words that at times needed to be dropped. It took a little practice to read the story fluently but it was indeed rewarding, after peeking inside the scroll Mana realized that this scroll was from times more ancient than she initially thought - before even the formation of ninja villages. With a little practice of reading the strange historic text, the girl began to read.</p>
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        <em>"Back before the times when all Great Tribes united themselves under the Wood Clan's rule, before the formation of the Konohagakure or in fact any other inferior village, there were two Great Clans competing with each other. The historian would like to correct himself, there were a great many clans competing but all of them were weaklings and insignificant specks of dust compared to the mighty Senju and the Garuru clans, even the highly praised Uchiha clan did not come into prominence until after Garuru clan was wiped out by the Great Vengeful One's wrath, the Uchiha clan struggled with survival as they were located deep inside Garuru lands, with every step they took the Garuru constantly attacked and raided any settlements that the Uchiha tried to make, keeping the Raven Haired Ones as wandering tribesmen with no place to call home. Had the Garuru not existed, it indeed would have been the Uchiha that would've competed with the unchallenged might of the Wood Users.</em>
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        <em>As it is known, the times were hard, the ninja preferred to wander the endless forests and wilderness as settling down meant that one was open to their rivals to invade, the clans were constantly on the move, training and honing their skill as skill literally meant survival. Strength was and is everything and the historian would like to remind that strength is still essential even at this time of Great Settlements. It is in such hardship that amazing strength was bred, strength as that of Great Princess Satsuhimasa and her beloved Omaru. Their love was as great as their power as no blade could rival the strength of Great Princess' Spruce Wood Release and Omaru's Black Wood Release.</em>
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        <em>It is a very well-known fact which the historian would like to hammer home, Princess Satsuhimasa was the most beautiful maiden of all that have been, are and indeed will be. Her beauty made every man lose their cool and, in fact, many clans were tempted to even breed with the Fairest Princess, even if she was not of their blood, just because her beauty and strength were so superior to everything else in comparison that her children were supposed to be children of Gods themselves. Many fools lost their lives trying to prove themselves to the Mighty but Gorgeous Satsuhimasa, many more got lost and died as the Great Princess of the Spruce left her signature Spruce Mokuton that spread illusions of such strength that even men that realized they were being Princess' playthings could not dispel the illusions because they lacked the power to break them, doomed eternally to wander the dreams given to them by the Princess they were instead.</em>
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        <em>Only one man was powerful enough to avoid being trapped in the inescapable illusions of the Amazing Princess. The man was smart for he knew perfectly that if the White Spruce Princess would have wished, that if he fell for her illusions for just a moment he'd be standing there dazed until his demise. He'd have been dead, he knew that she was well aware of his venture and perhaps smitten by his own looks in a moment of weakness or his amazing power that rivaled that of Black Senju Omaru himself. It could've been that the heir of the Garuru clan - Maramo was that powerful as to avoid being charmed by the endless spruce forests, perhaps the Princess was merciful to him herself, and so the heir of the Pitiful Wolves ended up right at Senju tribe's doorstep and in the night kidnapped the Mighty Princess.</em>
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        <em>Perhaps this historian is foolish to call that kidnapping for the Princess could have hung the Despicable Maramo's guts all over her forest dyeing her spruces blood red had she wanted, it must've been truly a moment of charming weakness as the Princess did not oppose Maramo's attempts who kidnapped her from Omaru. He brought her to his home - the Garuru caves where the two lived for a while surrounded by the Savage Garuru clansmen. The Gorgeous Sovereign of the Trees decided to build a superior home for the savages and made a gigantic spruce tree that split their cave and formed a fort of wood and stone, a real place that the Garuru could call home. Many rival weakling clans tried to set it ablaze, destroy it with any pitiful means they knew but Satsuhimasa's spruce was inflammable and immune to any sort of known destruction. She truly was the greatest.</em>
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        <em>It is argued whether Princess was charmed or forced, some say she never loved her cousin Omaru at all and truly loved the Garuru Spawn Maramo those "scholars" this historian would like to put on a pike. The fact was that the Princess lived seemingly happy with the Savage Garuru and helped them grow stronger and wiser, making them for the first time able to truly compete with the Almighty Senju. Their foolish luck, however, was not infinite as the Just Omaru finally caught up to the Garuru clan and slaughtered every single one of the Great Pathetic Savages Inferior to The Mighty Senju in Every Way Imaginable. The true desires of Satsuhimasa remain unknown for the Princess was under a vow to never harm her own people, for that reason she aided no side in this war, it is unknown which side the Princess considered her people (but this historian is pretty sure it's the Best Ever Senju, for sure!).</em>
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        <em>What followed next must've been another act of brief madness, as the Mighty and Beautiful Satsuhimasa appeared to be stricken with grief and declared that Senju were no longer her people. Seeing as her sons from living with the Garuru were spared, she ordered her sons to wipe the Earth clean of the tyrannical Senju. Her sons with the aid of her Mightiest mother killed every Senju present in the war, only those weak and sickly left behind survived Satsuhimasa's wrath. The Princess cut off Omaru's head and heads of each of his generals herself, defeating all of them together herself and buried them into the ground, crushing them herself, she then ordered her son to burn this ground until nothing can grow there for a million centuries. It was on that day that the wasteland later to become Lightning Country appeared from the forest that covered the entire land. It seemed as if Earth itself began to cry as around that land it started to snow eternally, this historian is sure that it is snowing even now around the wasteland this transpired in.</em>
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        <em>The Powerful but Merciful Princess returned to the Senju and gave them a choice - live under her Merciful and Loving wing as her children or to meet the fate of their warriors, Senju demonstrated their eternal wisdom by joining the Princess and becoming her children. Princess continued to make more children by killing any warriors that came to conquer the "weakened" Senju and making them her children as well, it was then that the mighty White Spruce Princess of the World became a Queen. Satsuhimasa began building an actual settlement in a place she found warm and welcoming, murdering any clans that tried to raze that "village" she was building or forcing them to join her as her children. Even the Uchiha and their mightiest Yosuke proved to be no match to the mighty Satsuhimasa and decided to retreat from the Spruce Queen's land and settle in the rocky wasteland on the graves of the old Senju and Garuru."</em>
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      <p>Mana closed the scroll as that was where it ended. It was apparently describing events transpiring in the pre-village period. It was quite clear that the historian describing the events was a Senju or at least wrote under their command or rule and he did appear a bit biased towards them. The girl couldn't help but admire some of the Princess Satsuhimasa's work and feats, some of the things she did were really cruel though. She must've been a lot like Mana at some point. There was a lot that the kunoichi could take from this historic woman but... If Mana's ideals belonged to Satsuhimasa the girl would've failed - Satsuhimasa dealt with her enemies with cruelty and had her own kind of justice. And yet she was the person that history praised as an icon of strength, beauty, and justice. Princess lived in immeasurably more cruel times than Mana did but if she had to resort to such means to achieve a true peace that meant that Mana really was as foolish as Tanshu made her out to be, her real fate really was to fail... Either by dying while trying to keep the peace or by killing someone and forsaking her ideals.</p>
      <p>It was clear that this wasn't the end of the story, the story described the end of the Great Wandering Period and the beginning of the Settlement Period, the events described could've transpired as much as five hundred if not more years ago, it spoke of clans like the Uchiha who were incredibly rare these days, if they lost the war against Satsuhimasa it'd explain why, and Garuru that were long since dead. The Garuru clan was a clan of wandering warriors that lived by their fists and swords and built their small camps from what they looted and plundered. Had they existed today they'd have been Mana's prime opponents purely due to their ways as compared to her nindo. The magician desperately tried to find the scroll that spoke of later events, she needed to know about Satsuhimasa more, the young one had to know how the Princess lived her later life if she achieved true eternal peace and if she changed at all after finding the village. The First Hokage was not Satsuhimasa so the magician was very interested to know why and why she was forgotten and no one ever taught about the woman in the Academy.</p>
      <p>It took a while to find the right scroll, one that had a similar smell and look to it, this one was purple, purple was a regal color. Maybe the scroll was written by the orders of a person in charge. Maybe it was only accessible to noble and rich people, from what the kunoichi knew of history that was and to some extent is the case, only ninja, samurai or the Feudal Lords themselves cared enough to educate themselves of history, ordinary people just tried to get by and cared much more about the world there and then. Mana wondered if the scrolls were maybe fictional, containing a legend or a myth that explained how things came to be but the period described was too recent for it to be a myth. It had to be either true or at least the version that the officials wanted everyone to know and there was no way to know any other versions form where Mana was stuck in at the moment.</p>
      <p>The girl finished sealing the scrolls, keeping that specific scroll on the top of the tube, putting much more inside of her clothes, taking off her jacket, and forming an improvised bag to put a lot more scrolls into it. She saved as many as twice the amount one person could save. There were no false hopes - if someone tried to move that centipede near the entrance the chances were that the archive would collapse on itself, it was fragile, to begin with, and it was a miracle that it didn't collapse when the damned thing headbutted the place, to begin with. This was as good as she could save, she'll have to finish reading the story on her way home. The girl's strained and tired eyes were shooting off tears as she yawned and tossed her jacket-bag over her shoulder. She still had to figure out how to get out herself. The rice cakes she ate in the morning over the story were her last. Mana would rather get squished by rocks than eat a giant cockroach or a rat, especially since she had very limited ways of preparing them, she had no way of making a fire so she'd be eating them raw. Even the idea of that almost made the girl puke, in addition to that water was running low after just one night too.</p>
      <p>Mana ascended the stairs, she fell down and bumped the knee a couple of times, the scrolls were really heavy and she was really tired from collapsing last night and not getting proper sleep. The kunoichi approached the giant centipede head that was blocking the exit, when she was reading the story an idea kept squirming around her head but the girl was very hesitant to try it, knowing what it was, no one could blame her. Mana took one of the few remaining note tags from her pocket and stuck it in the center of the crack in the centipede's headshell, then another, then the third. This was going to be disgusting... After getting clear and asking whatever supernatural force was watching over her that this whole place didn't go down on her, the girl made a handseal and heard a myriad of sounds: a crack of the armored shell, sound of crumbling rocks, and the sound she wanted to hear the most - centipede goo falling on the floor.</p>
      <p>Mana raced upstairs with all the additional scrolls on her shoulder, falling once again only to stand up, the whole place was slowly coming down, not the hall but just the entrance and the staircase, so far only a few rocks fell down but after it loosened the magician suspected the rest to follow! Without stopping to even question what she was doing the girl leaped inside the hole in the centipede's head. Warm and icky centipede goo greeted her trying to get inside every orifice she had. Mana literally almost swam forward, the goo was too thick to swim in but when she kicked around she could still move forward. The magician tried to dig her way to the right, the centipede fell to the side after bumping so right was where she knew there was a weak spot, with a swift slash with her kunai the spot opened.</p>
      <p>Almost instantly the shot of insect guts and goo shot out throwing Mana out through the side on the grass, the girl coughed up and then threw up - this was the worst idea she had ever had. Mana wiped her eyes and peeked over the jacket-bag, her jacket was ruined forever but she was lucky that the goo wasn't acidic as she had suspected before, while her jacket was indeed ruined the scrolls were just barely wet and could've still been saved to be of a reading condition. It was only then when Mana noticed three surprised faces staring at her, even Tanshu-sensei who was usually quite composed now couldn't contain his surprise.</p>
      <p>"Mana-chan... That... Was... Awesome!" Shimo yelled out overcoming his surprise. Mana stroke her hair removing more goo off of it, "You're not the one stuck with centipede goo all over you with no water source around that isn't filled with a life-threatening amount of leeches." Mana replied spitting some of the goo out and blowing some out of her nose.</p>
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<a name="section0014"><h2>14. The Mysterious Power - Samsara</h2></a>
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    <p>After catching up with the situation, both briefing her team about what happened and getting briefed by what they were doing it was time to think of what to do further. There were still a lot of scrolls inside the archive, Mana barely moved half of them out and while the mission was completed in theory it would've been nice to salvage everything. Tanshu kneeled on the ground and placed his hand on it, his eyes closed and he concentrated hard. Moments later his eyes shot open and he stood up, "The archive room is blocked off, the whole corridor is covered with stone blocks, if we tried to dig our way into the archive itself we'd risk to cave it in as well, our mission here is done, extracting those other scrolls requires ninja that specialize in salvaging. It might even prove to be a B rank mission... It's above our pay grade, let's go home."</p><p>"That was impressive, sensei, how did you do it?" Shimo inquired, Tanshu started slowly moving towards the entrance and at the same time the exit from the forest, "It's an Earth Release technique, I'm sure the specifics would bore you, it's useful when your enemy is hiding underground or looking for bunkers or something." The man's answer was short and swift to cut the chat down as an ax. Mana was really uncomfortable with moving covered with gooey slime and centipede innards, Sugemi giggled into his fist, "Don't worry, you can wash in the training grounds after we leave the forest, getting into the leech-infested waters isn't worth it."</p><p>It didn't take much time for the team to seal the scrolls Mana salvaged into their own sealing tubes. The magician unsealed some of the tubes she had because she sealed above the recommended limit and didn't want for them to suffer any damage, she also gave her team the gooey scrolls she salvaged from the archive, the three cleaned them up a bit using rags of cloth and their own clothes and then sealed them with the others. It was almost miraculous how well the scrolls took a dip into centipede goo. Finally, it was time to move out with their first C-Rank mission being completed. It definitely felt like a real mission, thanks to Tanshu-sensei who decided to test them in the middle of the mission...</p><p>Obviously, he meant well, a mission such as this one could've been failed, it was just a simple C-Rank mission so he wasn't too wrong to use it as another training drill. It still would've been nice for him to ask for their opinion or warn the three before just leaving them alone in the wild to fight off various creatures that lived here, that was the part of the Chuunin exam, there was a fair chance that they would've failed having just finished Academy weeks ago. The trip back to the entrance was going way faster than the first trip from the entrance to the archive, no one stopped to rest, everyone just kept moving. They must've felt bad for Mana and wanted her to get a chance to wash the goo off as fast as possible.</p><p>Mana looked at Tanshu-sensei and caught up to him, doing so was not easy as sensei's speed was incredible. "Sensei... I found a scroll in there, I'd like to finish reading it before I seal it, is that OK?" Tanshu grunted, "Fine, as long as you don't fall behind too much, do whatever you want." It was quite obvious that he didn't care. The girl slowed down a little to remove the scroll she kept under her clothes, as close to her skin as she could because she wanted to save it the goo treatment most of all. It was another scroll, one containing another story of Princess Satsuhimasa, one that let Mana know just how the whole thing went and what kind of life the Princess led later on. The scroll did not follow up on the first one, it took place many years later, right after the village was built so it could've been close to fifty if not a full century later. The magician opened the scroll, reading it was troublesome because she still had to watch out for obstacles with her quick pace, it took a bit longer to read than the other one but at least this time she had a bit more light...</p><hr/><p>
  <em>"After the Gigantic Battle against the Moon Clan, the planet itself was injured, eternal rains and meteor showers were constant, it rained acid itself and the sky was black. Princess Satsuhimasa was injured, furthermore, it pained her heart that a simple proposal from King of the Moon devolved into a battle that put the fate of the entire world at risk. Great sickness plagued her heart, seeing the results of her battle, the countless deaths of her people, and pain in the hearts of her children poisoned her every day as the Princess' condition deteriorated rapidly. Something had to be done, even the strongest medical ninja, even those tutored by Satsuhimasa herself could not cure her sadness and sickness as it appeared one was the reason for the other. And so the child of Yosuke Uchiha and Satsuhimasa - Satsumaru decided to leave the village and cure his mother's condition.</em>
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  <em>There were many difficulties in the path of the young one, namely his own youth and inexperience, while Son of the Spruce Queen was one of the most powerful people in the world, truly worth his title of "Demigod of Ninja" he acquired by simply being born, he was silly and naïve. The poor boy did not understand his mother's condition, he did not understand that it was not caused by her injuries fighting the Moon People but instead by the destruction and death of her own children. And so the child left to find "Samsara" - the mystical force of rebirth that could aid his mother and bring her back to life. Knowing little of the true problem that ailed his mother, knowing even less of the fact that "Samsara" was just a tale his mother told him before bed. The boy believed that "Samsara" must've existed and that it was the only thing to help his mother.</em>
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  <em>The cause of the cataclysms that slowly destroyed the planet was, of course, the destruction of the Moon People's home. This historian would like to remind the reader that in order to overcome the overwhelming force of the Moon People, Merciful Satsuhimasa had to use her indestructible Spruce Wood Release to shatter the Moon itself into small bits, it appeared that it was the Moon itself that was showering the Earth causing destruction to the world, even more, even in her deathbed Satsuhimasa had gathered many foes, even the Uchiha that fought beside her that governed the Lightning Country, even the Sabaku clan that governed the Wind Country and all the others that fought beside the Merciful one to repel the invasion of the Moon People now craved her death. They took the ailment of the Great One as a chance to finally get rid of one that had beaten every single one of them before as well as with her overwhelming power had achieved World Peace threatening with the destruction of the ones that broke it.</em>
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  <em>Wandering the inhospitable lands of the world Satsumaru survived the meteor showers, the magma gazers, and even the poisonous air as he was indeed his mother's son of incredible vitality. Once his journeys brought him to the Lightning Country he overheard the plot to kill his mother and was forced to return back home to Konohagakure without "Samsara", the stress and grief over his mother's illness caused a new power to awaken inside of the boy, one of his father's Crimson Eyes. As much as the boy tried to use this power to save his mother's life, they were only good for destruction, the complete opposite of what his Senju inheritance was.</em>
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  <em>Enraged by everyone turning on his mother Satsumaru and his father moved the Sick Princess outside the village, wandering the Fire Country trying to figure out just what "Samsara" exactly was. On their way the family wandered into the Fire Temple where the monks resided, the monks were a peaceful kind however they refused to let the family in, claiming instead that it was Satsuhimasa herself who was to blame for this. The monks revealed to the family an ancient pact made by the ancestors of not only all ninja but all people in general. The pact that was supposed to establish peace between the Sky Clan and the Earth Clan - the descendants of the First People and fathers of all other clans. A whole new place to call home - the Moon was created by the last descendant of the First People. The Sky Clan was given Moon to rule and live on as they please, the Earth Clan was left on Earth and as assurance that the pact was not broken a law was established inside of a seal - ones could not exist without the others, without Earth the Moon would've been flung to oblivion inside Eternal Darkness killing every single one of the Sky Clan, if the Moon was destroyed the World would've been thrown off balance by eliminating seals placed inside the Moon, unsealing the terrifying power of the First People which would eventually kill all Earth Clan people as well.</em>
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  <em>That revelation was what the family needed, Satsuhimasa rose from her deathbed and raised her hands at the sky. Blood shot out from her eyes - bloody tears of grief of what she had done, blood shot out of her nose - payment for the poisonous air she caused everyone to breathe, blood shot out of her mouth - punishment for the words she spoke when she made the Spruce that split the sky. As the Princess shouted in pain - giant roots reached up to one another and put the shattered Moon together. It seemed that Princess endless lifeforce flowed through the wood of her Spruce creating a new Moon, held together by her grief, by her penance and love. As this final action was over, the hearts of the monks softened - they let the family in. Little too late, sadly, as right after the jutsu ended Satsuhimasa fell down dead in an expression of endless bliss and love - she fixed the mistake her rage and violence caused and saved everyone.</em>
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  <em>Satsumaru was overcome with rage and grief, the boy fell on his knees yelling in pain as the tension and blood pumping through his steel-hard veins burst not unlike that of his mother's before. However his blood was different, not the blood of penance and death but the blood of justice and rebirth - Samsara itself flowed through the boy's eyes as by extending his hand over his mother a hellish spawn appeared behind her. The Gate of Samsara itself, opening his mouth and releasing her soul which he had claimed and returned the woman to life. Not only that, as another pact of peace, the son returned to life every Moon Clan who died in the war against the Shinobi Alliance, sadly he could not bring back the people of Earth that died in the war. It was a testament of the Moon Clan respecting and fearing the power of Spruce Queen and her son that they did not invade again up to this day, respecting the terms of Satsumaru's Peace and having been reminded of the meaning behind the pact that the First People made.</em>
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  <em>Despite a happy ending, Konohagakure did not see it that way, while the people praised Satsuhimasa for her accomplishment in fixing faults her own violence had caused, many people died in the cataclysms that followed the Sky-Land War after Satsuhimasa destroyed the Moon. People also did not understand why the Son of the Queen raised the Moon People back from the dead and not their own. She was not even considered for the title of the First Shadow of the Fire - the First Hokage, also people were angry and afraid that a colossal Spruce Tree still connected Earth and Moon as they were afraid that the Moon Clan will invade again using it as a bridge between worlds. Having been recently revived by the Samsara that flowed through her son's eyes, Satsuhimasa was far too weak to fix the tree so her husband Yosuke decided to seal the tree of pure chakra that connected Moon and Earth into an animal - a protector of this world, inheritor of their will. Sadly the power of the World Spruce was too great for one animal, creating the monstrous Ten-Tails as the chakra of the Worlds' tree overtook the beast and shifted it into the twisted form of the Ten-Tails, it was said to be so horrible that common people that saw the beast in the distance went blind and that its existence itself was causing the planet as much harm as the cataclysms from breaking the will of the First People caused before.</em>
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  <em>Yosuke then split the Ten-Tails into nine beasts, something that proved to be just as wrong as the beasts started rampaging over the ninja villages. It took the combined might of all three: resurrected Satsuhimasa, Yosuke Uchiha and Satsumaru to defeat all nine and seal them into people they deemed powerful enough to restrain the powers of the beasts but also righteous enough to resist their tempting influence as the beasts wished every moment to break loose and rampage. It is unknown why the Tailed Beasts are so violent, maybe they are sad that they no longer connect Moon and Earth, being confined to only one and long the other, maybe Yosuke's seal instilled inside of them some of the disgusting Uchiha malice. This historian cannot tell, but this is the nature upon which the beasts and their carriers, the Jinchuuriki came to be. Satsuhimasa and her family left the village after seeing the villagers treat the Jinchuuriki, the bridges that connect Earth and Moon, the will of their son Satsumaru of the Samsara, with fear, disrespect, and spite, as if they embodied the destruction which the Moon Clan brought upon this world as if they caused the cataclysms that claimed millions of lives as if they embodied the rampages and destruction caused by the Juubi and the Tailed Beasts. It is unknown what happened to the Spruce Queen and her family, where they went or what they did, soon enough history forgot them which was why this scroll was written so that their story is never forgotten."</em>
</p><hr/><p>And so the story ended, the last and final scroll of the Satsuhimasa and her family. There were so many new things which Mana did not understand: the eyes of the Uchiha clan, the mysterious Samsara, the Tailed Beasts, and the Jinchuuriki that carried them inside of them. The team finally arrived near the exit from the Forest of Death and as the gates opened letting the team through Mana handed the scroll silently to Tanshu. The man gently pushed it against the open tube as the chakra consumed and sealed it inside just like the other scrolls. "Oh, thank God you are OK!" the woman guard rejoiced seeing Mana, the woman then looked at the goo which the girl was soaking with and pinched her nose.</p><p>As the girl rushed to the training grounds it was revealed that they were all occupied making it impossible for Mana to bathe in there. Tanshu grunted and took a towel out of his backpack surprising all of the team. "You had a towel? All this time?!" Shimo yelled out, "I didn't want it messed up by the goo if Mana could bathe after leaving the Forest, I took it because I was certain that Sugemi would jump in the water and get leeched out in which case I'd need to carry him around but also he'd need a towel..." the man shrugged. Sugemi looked almost offended for a moment but then looking at his teammates he realized that Tanshu's prediction wasn't that far off.</p><p>With all being said, Mana took the towel and wiped as much goo as she could, Tanshu-sensei refused to have the towel back. It was understandable. "Consider it a gift, if you can wash it afterward that is..." the man grunted. After the problem of Mana's condition was dealt with the team headed towards the village gate, the guards smiled looking at Mana still smelly and looking pretty funny, the girl had to note that, usually, people came to talk to her because of her fame as a magician, speak to her or cheer on her, now they clearly wanted to but then reconsidered halfway and turned around. The girl just sighed, it couldn't be helped really having her smell and the funny look in mind, one couldn't just wash swimming in centipede guts away. Knowing her mother, she'll be laughed at the whole week...</p><p>"I'm going to give the debriefing to the Hokage, you guys can run off home, it was a pretty crazy couple of days." Tanshu spoke as Shimo and Sugemi said their "See you tomorrows" and ran off. As Mana turned around to head home she felt Tanshu's hand on her shoulder. "Your will to stand by your nindo is strong. I'll give you a chance and cut you some slack, I've told you many times that you'll fail, I'll just leave it up to you to realize it yourself one day, hopefully, not before your untimely death, you're a good kid." The man spoke after turning around and heading home, after a couple of steps the man raised two fingers into the sky "You see what you three are doing? Making me soft here... Whatever." He said as the man slowly walked away and disappeared into the crowd. Mana's shocked face quickly changed into a smile that kept growing wider and wider and wider and then burst into soft and gentle laughter before the girl also turned around and ran off home.</p><p>The very first moment she entered her home, she heard her parents rushing to welcome her before her mother got to see her. The woman's cheeks inflated as she tried to contain laughter, Mana's mood quickly turned sour, "Centipede goo?" her father asked while smiling, Mana nodded feeling a bit confused, Mana's mother finally couldn't help it and burst into a fit of laughter, just after finally regaining control of herself, the woman added, "Like father, like daughter..." implying that father also had something similar happen to him. That was a story for another time however as Mana had to hurry up to finally get a bath. That was the most refreshing and pleasing baths the girl has ever had. After she washed the smell of the forest away and changed clothes the magician rushed to the living room and dropped onto the couch,</p><p>"So what was that with father and centipede goo?!"</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Konoha's Sorceress</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first week after the mission was completely free of missions. Even the usual D-rank chore-missions were nowhere to be heard of. It seemed as if the Hokage gave the team some time to recover from the mission and to train a little bit. Given the mission debriefing, it wasn't too tough to see why - all three of the genin had some minor scratches and injuries from fighting off animals that were meant to test genin worth becoming chuunin, obviously, those guys fought the animals off in greater quantities but Team Oak lacked the battlefield experience that their examined counterparts had.</p><p>One morning Mana received a letter, one that she simply assumed that her teammates also got at about the same time as she did. It was from Tanshu-sensei and it instructed that they met up that very same day, it was strange that the meeting time was so late, luckily the magician had her magic show last night so entertaining time won't clash with her training. She did promise father to finish working on that spiked coffin device that day, that'd have had to wait until at least later that evening. It was alright, father wasn't the type of man that went to bed early. Mana had been doing plenty of her own training as well, she kept meditating and trying to improve her chakra levels, she kept trying to improve her physical condition and become agiler as well.</p><p>One thing that the genin tried to achieve with her training was to become more nimble and to improve her reaction time. Being able to be in complete control of the attacks of her enemies and to be able to dodge them since she served the role of a glass cannon in her team. She was supposed to be the main secret weapon using genjutsu and ninjutsu of not one but two elemental natures which was rare among genin, that being said, it wasn't like her ninjutsu was particularly powerful either... There were so many things to improve and Tanshu-sensei was going to notice all of them in the evening. He most likely was going to ask Hokage for another C-rank mission which was why he wanted to meet up and train the team a bit more.</p><p>The last mission to find the hidden ancient archive helped Mana to remind herself of her passion for history and lore. The magician started reading out in the Konohagakure Library every week, finding time between training and magic shows was not easy but, once in a while, an occasion revealed itself and Mana could enjoy a couple of hours reading about history. There were a lot of interesting things to be discovered, names and the abilities of all the past Hokage, tales of mystical ancient items that were hidden all around the world, stories of the legendary ninja and their mythical deeds and achievements. Mana was too shy to even dream of ever being described in books and scrolls similar to those she read...</p><p>The magician spent the entire first half of the day training, focusing her chakra control and meditating, also working out. She knew it was hopeless having her goal to impress sensei in mind, Tanshu was a strict teacher, despite how much she would train he'd still find things of hers to exploit and scold her for, even if he did promise to give her a shot with her nindo and stopped trying to change it so actively. Her performance in the last mission must've convinced the man that she was every bit an equal of her two teammates, even Shimo who received astounding grades and recommendations in the Academy despite looking or acting nothing like the typical perfect grader. Shimo wasn't arrogant or even that awkward socially, quite the opposite he was pretty energetic and headstrong, it took a headstrong person to declare that he'd become Hokage one day.</p><p>Sugemi also proved to be different than the first impressions would make one believe, he was goofy and kept messing around with his manga, talking some strange nonsensical things about everything being manga clichés and even referencing manga that Mana was sure didn't even exist. But when he stopped loafing around he was a pretty strong and kind fellow with a big dream, in a way his dream could be described as a wish of being acknowledged, the desire to be noted as important, to prove one's existence and earn respect. This was a noble dream, one Mana was ready to support, in a world where people's lives were considered expendable.</p><p>As the evening approached, Mana head out to the Academy, sensei asked the team to meet at the entrance to the Academy which was an odd spot to ask for a meeting. Maybe he wanted to do some more bonding exercises? Ask some questions or something? Maybe he got fond of the three brats and decided to tell them something about his past? Who was Mana kidding, that'd never happen. Tanshu was secretly a good-willed person but he never showed that side of him because that side was irrelevant to him, all he wanted himself and everyone else to see was the ninja, the undefeatable warrior that could take lives faster and more efficiently than everybody around him. That was who he was, Tanshu, or like father at times called him, "Red Dog Tanshu", Mana wasn't sure where that nickname came from, must've been something from when her father worked with the man...</p><p>People spotted her from over the other side of the path and walked up to greet her, must've been because of her attire, having once found herself without her hat which had her father's seal in it, Mana tried to incorporate it into even her combat attire. She didn't have to try too hard, just modify the materials of her magician's uniform to make it a bit less stretchy and more comfortable, she was in luck that mother was such a good sewing teacher. That way she could have one super uncomfortable but fancy-looking version and one more simple and less impressive albeit much more stretchy. It was obvious that she was overdressing but Mana was that kind of person, it was important for her to look good as often as she could because she was an artist and had to uphold an image of an artist, it was really shameful for her to run around covered with centipede goo for that very reason. Even the final result was not as good of attire as an actually comfortable combat attire would've been, that was irrelevant, in terms of physical combat Mana was already barely keeping up with her peers, if fighting ever got up close she'd go down even with the most comfortable clothes in the known universe if she barely had enough skills to keep up with genin level taijutsu. At least next time she'll need to seal something into her hat or keep some item safe she'll have the solution on her head. Father's seal cost a lot of chakra to use but it was better than having nothing at all.</p><p>Tanshu sensei was waiting alone, it proved pretty weird to Mana as she was late over all the people that came up to talk to her and ask when the next show was going to be. She really had to reserve some more time, stage magic was an unusual thing in Konoha and the Shinobi World, there were more and more people that got charmed by how silly and unusual using ninjutsu for stage magic and cheap tricks was. Mana was growing in popularity, she was probably the first ninja in the world whose face was known, the young kunoichi was also the first that didn't kill. Most people just took it as something proving the girl's lack of skill or her childish naivete. No one yet saw it as an evolution of what being ninja truly meant, that was something Mana had to change in people, to prove her own point.</p><p>"Good evening, where is everybody? Am I THAT late that everyone went home already?" Mana asked trying to alleviate her terrible sense of time with an even more terrible joke, Tanshu sighed and shook his head. "Nope, I gave each of you different times because I wanted to work with each of you individually. I'll be leaving pretty soon and you guys will have a C-Rank mission on your hands without my supervision, it'll be a chance to truly prove yourselves and if you do I'll recommend you guys for Chuunin exams, you'll have your butts kicked but it'll be a good experience, losing always teaches a lot of things." Mana smiled, "Have you ever lost, sensei?" Tanshu pouted almost like a child but then looked up into the sky, as if remembering good times of his past, "Yeah, once, it was the thing that taught me the most in my life and I've been through some crazy things." he answered and then stood up from the stairs he'd been sitting on. "Let's move to the training grounds then..." he said calmly.</p><p>Walking through the village with Tanshu-sensei was weird, true, significantly less now that he didn't act like he would've liked to strangle her with her own guts but still, pretty weird. He was a very chill and anti-social kind of person, he constantly looked angry and disappointed in everything, always bored by everything that surrounded him, and had that unimpressed look on his face so it was hard to talk to him about anything. Mana was a kind girl so she would still always try... "So... Is it OK if I asked where you'll be leaving? Is it some high ranking mission?" she asked with some amount of fear behind her voice, she expected Tanshu to rudely beat her down vocally saying it was none of her business or something like that but he sighed and scratched the back of his head. "Five Kage Summit. It's about that Kirigakure situation, about all those ninja of ours that disappeared around Kirigakure borders and the ambush of the squad your father was in near our own borders. Howoku rushed the process and called everyone early - he'll ask the Five Kage Council to remove the Mizukage and change him with a successor."</p><p>Mana stayed silent for a while, she expected the Summit to come in six months, just like the rumors said but it seemed like the Hokage was in a mood to get his justice done faster. Hokage Howoku was well known throughout the world, he was just a middle-aged man but he managed to gain the trust of the entire village and even the entire Konohagakure council, he was young for a leader and had new and revolutionary ideas of peace and lived under the idea that the Ninja Countries could live in harmony and maintain peace. He was not entirely a pacifist, he was quite energetic and in a hurry to punish any wrongdoings of any missing ninja or other ninja villages. Once he himself left to pursue a missing ninja that killed a genin just outside the village borders, it was said that the Fourth killed the missing ninja himself. He had many titles but one that Mana liked the most was the White Star of Konoha. She didn't know what it meant but names like that had different meanings to everyone that heard it. To Mana, it meant just what it sounded like - a star in the sky, an obelisk of light to look up to, and a powerful source of light and justice that incinerates any evil.</p><p>After Mana and Tanshu arrived at the training ground the man took a couple of steps back and placed his hand on the handle of his katana, a sword that Mana had not yet even seen sensei draw despite having it most of the time with him. "Attack me, know that I will defend myself and punish foolishness," Sensei said. Mana was not sure what it meant. If he was going to leave soon then why was he so desperate to train her? Was he going to train her overnight? Why would he choose such a light training routine, it was the sort of training one would choose if they had plenty of time. Mana's hands went through handseals, her familiarity with handseals over the magic shows where she used ninjutsu allowed the speed of her hands to transcend any genin and rival even that of ninja from higher ranks, Mana's sleight of hand was an advantage when things came down to handseal speed. The girl opened her eyes and looked right at sensei's eyes... He wasn't there.</p><p>Suddenly sharp pain pulsed all through Mana's body as she saw sensei standing right in front of her with his fist having already punched her in the gut. The magician fell down. "That wasn't bad, you knew of my superior physical and every other kind of strength, knowing of my superior skill you chose the path that granted you advantage if it connected - genjutsu. Genjutsu is the perfect tool to use if you're unlucky enough to fight a superior opponent. You knew that I had the mean to interrupt your genjutsu with my signature seal however you trained your speed and had a mean of surprising me with the speed at which you performed the technique, that also was pretty impressive. I'd like you to train the speed of your hands even further, you've got a talent for it..."</p><p>As the girl tried desperately to pick herself up Tanshu jumped a couple of dashes backward. "However... Your genjutsu is flawed, all of your techniques were made by you, that is both good and bad. You will always surprise your opponent with jutsu you yourself invented unless they fight you for the second time. The problem is that it's clear you invented these techniques as a child reading a genjutsu textbook, they are all pretty much the same: make handseals, achieve eye contact, fool your opponent with a visual illusion. That is just a scratch on the surface of what genjutsu can do, you've got a knack for it which is a reason enough even I can be jealous of you for. Genjutsu can play with the sense of balance, smell, hearing, it can do wonders with the body of your opponent, branch out, stop sleeping on the same techniques you invented as a child and make up some new ones!"</p><p>Mana picked herself up, her hat was on the ground and her wild hair was all over the place, she charged forward with a punch, "Useless..." Tanshu replied catching it with the least amount of effort a ninja would ever have to use, "What are you going to do with that? You suck at weapons and taijutsu, stop using it!" sensei yelled out as he noticed Mana's hand in the weapon's pouch and punched her in the cheek drawing blood. The girl turned back with a smile. Obviously, if Tanshu meant it with the punch she'd be knocked out dead but he didn't and now he was hers! "How?!" Tanshu jumped back, Mana's illusion was broken but her sensei had to use his seal which was his signature ability, one he liked bragging about never having to use.</p><p>Mana pulled out her arm from the pouch, still stuck in the same handseal position. "You... Learned to do handseals with one hand by seeing Sugemi do it?" Tanshu looked impressed. "Only the seals I saw him do, I had to read up on the others... They're a bit different from the casual handseals" Mana replied by wiping the blood from her lip, sensei's punch forced her teeth right into her cheek making the blood run pretty wild from her mouth. Her head also felt dizzy. Tanshu laughed out, "Now I see why they call you Konoha's Sorceress, you're just as crafty on the Field as you are on the stage, pulling illusions out of illusions, you made an impression of attacking me physically forcing me to lower my guard, forcing me to underestimate you and then you placed your hand into the pouch and made the handseals inside of it, I looked you right in the eyes because I never expected an illusion. If you were fighting anyone without my ability you would've had them..."</p><p>After finishing those words Tanshu-sensei stood normally, moving out of his fighting stance and removing his hand from the handle of his blade. "The purpose of this training was to give you three assignments, things to work on while I'm gone and also something that would define your fighting styles, I think I like your decision to utilize the skill set of a stage magician, to use cheap tricks and play with your opponent's mind as a tool in setting your illusions off, however, I'd recommend you work on things I told you to work on. I'm afraid genjutsu is an area you are entirely alone in, I know very little about the subject and there are even fewer masters of the Field in this village, you may ask around, however... Well, see you after I'm back, Mana." Tanshu spoke and then disappeared in a poof leaving only a large cloud of smoke. The genin sighed, her head was dizzy and she was still bleeding a bit from her cheek but it felt great - for the first time, someone acknowledged her skill as a ninja. That never happened...</p><p>Ever since she started training in ninjutsu she was always underestimated because she wasn't from some fancy clan, told she was a loser because of her silly and naïve nindo, made fun of, and told to quit the path of a ninja before it was too late. Even after she graduated people always only noted her skills as a magician on the stage, they always viewed Mana as a magician first and those that knew she was also a ninja saw it as some sort of publicity stuff, almost like a celebrity entering a ring to fight a big-time champion of taijutsu who was paid off to fight like a wimp. All those words affected Mana, they were painful blows but none of them kept her down, they only made her work harder because she was that kind of an idiot. And it all led up to this moment - a man called by some the most powerful shinobi in the world recognized that she had talent, that she was on the right path. Even if she didn't even land a blow, even if she couldn't have been further away from it - Mana was happy!</p><p>The girl couldn't help but run back home with a smile and tears of joy on her face. Acknowledgment would only make her work even harder!</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Mana's Bad Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sometimes, when a very special event is transpiring before one's eyes, one often knows that things won't be the same as they were anymore. Such was the feeling when the village saw the Fourth Hokage surrounded by four of his most trusted and most powerful ninja in the village head out. Surely something revolutionary was going to happen, a historic flip-the-table moment which would change everything, allies and enemies will be made and a clash was unavoidable now. Some people fooled themselves by thinking that this was going to be just another Five Kage Summit but one should've known better.</p><p>To Mana it was almost apparent that something bad will happen, there will be no peaceful resolution to this, otherwise, why would Hokage choose to take four of the most amazing ninja with him? He only took two of the Sannin though, the third Sannin was away on another mission. From the rumors that were going around, it seemed like she was in Kirigakure which put her life in extreme danger. If something awful transpires at the Kage Summit she will suddenly find herself to be the most wanted dead person around. Maybe it was for that reason that Hokage took so many not only strong but wise people, trying to solve any possible conflicts through intimidation of power and inevitable destruction if someone decides to become an enemy of Konohagakure.</p><p>Seeing Hokage and his four guards leave through the village gate made that sad and depressing atmosphere, the feeling of uncertainty was everywhere, the eternal and immovable peace that the Fourth had achieved was now trembling like a wobbly leg of a kitchen table. Just one wrong rude move will send all of the food crumbling down on the floor, reverting the families sitting around it to savages that either eat off of the floor or go to bed hungry. That was not even the worst part, the worst part was that everyone accepted it, just sighed and went back home, such wide acceptance of the fact that conflict and war were almost inevitable was what made Mana's heart hurt the most.</p><p>These couple of days from her training with Tanshu-sensei and the day when she received the letter to come to pick up a mission Mana did her best to buff up the amount of magic shows she did. The people of Konohagakure could've used some entertainment to turn their minds away from war. Some could've said that Mana was an awful girl for making double the amounts of shows, after all, people were shaken by the events and very unsure of their futures. All she had to do was show off and she'd have swayed them to her side, that was true, she saw a lot of new faces coming at her shows, far more matured people and far fewer children. Slowly she would become Konohagakure's mainstream source of entertainment, perhaps that was her calling, not being a ninja?</p><p>After all, Mana was not part of a clan, not some super amazing genius ninja that had mad skills and always made perfect choices, she often failed and struggled immensely in her ninja work, working out her physical shape felt like literally killing herself. Still, she was thinking a lot about what Tanshu-sensei told her - she had an entirely different mindset from a common ninja. Her unique ideas combined with her background and experience of being a stage magician - prodigy at creating illusions and playing with the audience's mind made her a very different kind of ninja. All those shows could've just been viewed as Mana's own kind of training, she was sharpening her mind and making new ways to deceive her opponent on the battlefield, after all, having no set of fancy eyes, no special unbeatable techniques made her have to rely on her skill in deceit and lies. Was that the skillset of a true hero? Probably not... Just one more thing to make the girl feel like she's failing her dream, as small as insignificant as such thoughts were.</p><p>Finally, the magician got another letter instructing that she had to come to the Konohagakure Administration with her team and that they would be getting a mission assigned. No Hokage, no sensei. Somehow it felt like they were just playing ninja at this point and with no figures of authority in the village it seemed like nothing was right anymore, everything just invited more and more questions. Nights of peaceful and long refreshing sleep were few and getting even fewer, training was the thing that often helped to exhaust both Mana's body and her spirit. Still, often the girl found herself waking up and wandering around the house, looking at the dark night sky and thinking what's ahead. Things like war and changing the world were not something a twelve-year-old girl should worry herself about but it was too late. She entered the ranks of people considered murderers and tools, thinking of anything less than that would've been a mistake.</p><p>Mana was surprised to see her teammates the next morning, she met them at the entrance to the Konohagakure Administration. Shimo wore a small blade behind his back, Sugemi wore a different attire choosing to wear more flexible and fitting for taijutsu attire, both of the boys also allowed their hair to grow messier longer which signaled that they may have been training pretty intensely since graduating. Did Mana fall behind after devoting most of her time to shows? Was she ever on their level to begin with? Just how well did they do in their training? Maybe the two actually gave sensei trouble and Mana just got special treatment from him because she was just a puny kid with pink cotton candy on her mind? No. Tanshu-sensei was not the kind of person to smile and say that everything was alright when it wasn't, that was one of the reasons why he was a person whom Mana respected a lot. If she would've been a useless link to the team he'd have told her that.</p><p>Shimo looked confident, he smiled with a full teeth smile and ran up to Mana first. "Hey, Mana-chan, don't really see what sensei told you during the training. I suppose you won't tell me how you did either?" Sugemi grunted, Mana was genuinely surprised he was not consumed by his manga and acted so smug, almost like Tanshu-sensei. "It's her attire, Shimo, she tried to dress more comfortably for missions but it seems like now she doesn't care about it anymore, whatever sensei told Mana, it helped her gain confidence and realize her role in the team. Then again, judging from the number of shows she had this week I'd say she is planning to quit being a ninja..." Mana walked past the two without saying a word. She just slowly turned back with a slight smile and looked at them rushing them to come with her. The boys picked themselves up and entered the building with her.</p><p>Differently from before, the missions were being handed out in four separate offices by one of Hokage's assistants. Assistants were mostly lower-ranking ninja anyways that excelled in office duties, they were not the first choice to protect the Hokage but they were more than competent to fulfill his duties of administration work during his absence. In fact, there were fewer people around the offices which suggested that the four of them were doing way better than Hokage was doing alone with their aid. One of the assistants invited the four into his office and handed the file forward, he waited for a moment as there was no leader to come to pick the file up, sensei was gone...</p><p>Mana looked around with a bored look as her two teammates kept stepping forward slightly but after seeing the other trying to take a step stopped and backed down from taking the lead. "Oh for God's sake!" she laughed out and stepped forward to take the file. There was tension between the two boys for some reason, it was quite natural, this was the first time they had the chance to butt heads, they had to choose a leader and that made them wonder about who was stronger, more competent to take temporary command. They both trained incredibly hard, they each were the strongest people in the world in their own minds right now because that was often the case after training. Training required a challenge to follow just so one had a clear image of where they were on the feeding chain.</p><p>"What's the mission?" Shimo asked curiously leaning over Mana's shoulder as she opened the file after leaving the office. It was a relatively simple C-Rank job for a team of genin but the administration had to hand them one - their team was incomplete. While normally sensei did nothing anyways but his presence was the greatest asset the three could have, just the thought that at any time he could be turned at for help or advice was the best thing ever. Now he was away and they had to handle it for themselves. It would've been better if Shimo and Sugemi didn't act so weird with each other and didn't want to show off each other's fruits of training and just what sensei told them.</p><p>The mission was to scare off or beat up some thugs that were bullying people around the entertainment hall where Mana hosted magic shows. Apparently, the group of bandits targeted villagers that came to see shows and plays and they were quite bold. Such boldness inside one of the most powerful ninja villages could only be described as stupidity and the three genin would've easily handled a couple of untrained bandits, even if they weren't at the moment the most functional team ever. Shimo and Sugemi barely even spoke, not only to each other but also with Mana, the girl had plenty of possible ideas what could've caused this but... She had to know!</p><p>"Okay, what the hell is this? Why aren't we talking?" she asked, this wasn't the usual soft and kind tone she used, Mana was really quite annoyed by this situation as the two boys were her friends, probably some of her only relevant friends at the moment as she had no other friends just fans of her shows. Sugemi pouted and turned away, Shimo looked annoyed but at least he spoke up, "We're just... A bit tense that's all." Mana kept looking him in the eyes, almost forcing him to continue. The fact that he spoke up at all signaled to her that Shimo was at least willing to talk about what was going on, was it something sensei told them? Was it something they told each other while waiting for Mana? Was it something she did?</p><p>"Well... You did most of the work last time, we were just there, sure we got to fight some animals but you saved all of the scrolls. Tanshu-sensei told both of us that, that we fought pretty good but fighting isn't what it's all about and that you were right in that mission to put the objective first. That doesn't bother us but... Both I and Sugemi trained hard because we don't want to fall behind, we want to be strong and able to complete the mission by ourselves too if it came to us." </p><p>Mana shook her head, she still couldn't understand what the hell this was about, "So what? It's my fault that I happened to stumble into the archive and got stuck in there because that stupid bug had the whole place fall down on him?" </p><p>Shimo looked away, "So are you really quitting being a ninja like Sugemi said?" </p><p>Mana almost yelled out "No! Sugemi is an otaku, he keeps talking about manga characters or events that probably don't even exist and he thinks everything around him is just a manga story waiting to be written. He's my friend but he's the last person I'd trust to make deductions like that." </p><p>Sugemi's voice broke out "I'm... Right here... Guys."</p><p>At least talking about it for a little helped the boys ease up a bit and they started talking to each other again. It must've been nothing else but a strong sense of responsibility, they had mistaken Mana's luck for skill and wanted to keep ahead, truth was that luck was a skill which couldn't be matched. It wasn't even good luck, to be honest, how can one possibly call getting chased by a hungry centipede and getting stuck in an ancient unstable library and then having to escape its fall by digging through centipede guts good luck? It wasn't skill, it wasn't luck, it just happened... At least the magician knew that the boys trained hard, she still felt guilty for taking sensei's word for granted and working on her mindset the most instead of training her body or trying to learn new techniques.</p><p>"We can wait here," Mana said, "Usually there's this group of actors doing historic plays until about midday." Sugemi and Shimo nodded, "It's good to have someone who knows the place and what's going on here." Shimo said. "We can wait in the alleyway and take those guys down quick and pretty after they show themselves. If it's just a small group we can handle them, I trained my taijutsu so I can do it alone, they'll make a manga about it and call it "World's Most Handsome Crimefighter and the other guys","the Nara exclaimed as he rushed to the alleyway. Despite hating conflict in general Mana had to admit - she was quite curious to see how much stronger her friends had gotten. She only worked on her chakra and only kept up her physical condition, most work went into her magic shows and mastering sleight of hand.</p><p>This was going too easy, just as people started to leave the three noticed a group of four following a pair of young men. Shimo and Sugemi took double time to get into positions - they wanted to show off and take those guys out in one swoop which pissed the magician off. The safety of the villagers was all that mattered! Mana shouted "Get away!" and charged forward. One of the bandits didn't have enough time to react and the girl simply leaped past him leaving a slash in his chest using her kunai, the man fell down on the floor yelling in pain and shock of it. Mana tried her best to take on all three of the bandits but the best option would've been to be defensive - that was not an option, she had to get in between the victims and the bandits so she leaped forward and while dodging two blows and kicking one of the bandits aside leaped forward placing her kunai up to the other's throat. She turned her eyes away instructing the victims to leave. That was her mistake.</p><p>As her attention returned Mana felt a sharp blow on her cheek and her light body got thrown back, just barely the magician held her balance. "Just great, another bruise..." she thought as suddenly the bandit's face got twisted in pain. Shimo was on the ground right behind him - he flashed behind his back so fast! The bandit fell down on the floor, the two others tried to run but Sugemi's body landed right on top of one and hit the other. The body of one of the bandits made a lot of scary cracking sounds and the man yelled out quite loud. He must've been in pain. Shimo approached the magician and looked at the bruise on her cheek and her cut lip. "You OK?" he asked gently as she turned around and kneeled by the injured bandit.</p><p>"You two... I can't believe it! Can you stop doing this bullshit and focus for just one moment?! While you were aligning yourselves for a "cool strike" these people could've been injured! I don't care which one of you is stronger, you can play Rock-Paper-Scissors to settle it for all I care... These are actual people at stake!" she kept complaining while she improvised a tourniquet for the man's open fractured leg. Sugemi's attack looked cool but he was way too rough. Their objective was to intimidate the thugs if possible, while they did not back off after Mana's warning that was no excuse to cause that sort of injury just to look cool. "You mean like Kakashi and Guy from that manga?" Sugemi smiled arrogantly, he still thought that he was right and proud of his awesome jump.</p><p>"None of those are a) real people, b) fictional characters, at this point I'm sure you're making up names!" Shimo yelled out, he knew manga better than Mana so he could at least argue with him about those things, none of that mattered to the magician. She breathed out lightly as she managed to somehow control the man's bleeding, at least until medical ninja would show up. Mana stood up and looked at the villagers that were still waiting around the corner just to see how it'd play out. "Could you please find some ninja patrolling and see to it that these men get help? We have a mission debriefing to do." she tried to ask softly. "Wait... You're Konoha's Sorceress, right? Are you working with ninja now?" one of them asked, "I am a ninja. I am both a ninja and I do magic shows." Mana replied. "No offense, but you're not that good, you should ask your friends to teach you how to fight..." the other one butt in.</p><p>Mana got annoyed and backed off, she sat by the wall and gently stroke her forehead with her fingers, trying to calm down. This day was annoying her immensely with her friends acting like a bunch of brats that wanted only to look cool and didn't care about people and the people she was supposed to be helping valued their violence over her worries over their safety. "Whatever, I'm off..." Mana thought standing up and heading towards the Administration building when Sugemi stopped her. "Hey... Ummm... I was thinking. These men... They had to work for someone right? Like... A big bad crime guy right? Like in all the manga all criminals work for bad people that have a bunch of art and cats and stroke the cats while looking at art. How about we beat that guy up and take him in too?" the boy came open with his idea making the magician suddenly prefer silent treatment over his ideas getting vocalized.</p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Going Underneath the Underneath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana was absolutely stumped after hearing Sugemi's suggestion. Was he actually suggesting going above and beyond their mission and taking down some bigshot crime lord that may not even exist? How would they go on and do it, by trashing through the village and then attacking the man they pinned down as being guilty? That's how ninja became nukenin. The magician wanted nothing to do with that, Mana started walking away at a faster pace but she heard Sugemi coming after her. "And how would you begin your "investigation", where would you start?" Mana asked trying to make Sugemi bug off, she spent some time with the two boys and she knew a lot about them. Sugemi often had grand ideas but always got hesitant when people started asking about how he'd go on with realizing them.</p><p>"Well... We could interrogate the guy with the broken leg." The boy scratched the back of his head, the fact that he didn't back down after Mana asked him about him realizing his idea was bad - he really believed in what he said. Shimo crept up to Mana and placed his hand on her shoulder, gently stopping her. His face looked kind and soft - he really wanted to get Mana along with the ride but how on Earth did he and Sugemi manage to agree on an idea? "I think it's a good idea, Mana-chan," Shimo said slowly and quietly as if he felt that what he was saying was stupid.</p><p>"Think about it, a shinobi is supposed to be the person that goes underneath the underneath, that's what they tried to bash into our heads in the Academy, right? Well isn't this going underneath our mission? Isn't this actually making a difference? Sugemi wants to get a manga written about him, well if he does heroic things like this he'll have it, I want to become Hokage and the first step is to go beyond my mission objective and make a difference. I know you want to become a hero - to protect the people around you and change the world... Well after we did what we did just now nothing changed - tomorrow there'll be other bandits taking money from the same people. If we took down the whole thing it'd be much more of protection, don't you think? You'd protect the people that come to see your shows, you OWE them this much, Mana-chan."</p><p>Sugemi butt in, he saw Mana's eyes change, he saw hesitation and he decided to exploit it. "We need this, guys, I want to become strong, that's the only way to become strong. Taking down crime rings is what higher ranking ninja do: chuunin and even jounin... I want to see how well I rank against that. I know that Shimo wants that too but you Mana... I know you're different, you don't care about measuring your strength but the thing is that... You want to protect everyone, right? Well, there's a war about to break out, we're just kids, there's no way they'll let ordinary kids on the battlefield which means you'll be unable to even try and fulfill your goal. You need to hurry up, you need big feats like this to get your promotion in time, if they see how cool we are, maybe the Administration will finally stop looking at us as if we're children, maybe we'll be given a shot at the Chuunin Exams even this year, think about it..."</p><p>Mana stopped and clenched her fists. She knew that she wanted to do that, she didn't care about authority, she couldn't have cared less if she'd be branded a nukenin or given some sort of dishonorable mention on her bio. She didn't care if she got hurt or even died, all she wanted to do was to change the world, to make life valuable and not some dirty cloth to be tossed around freely. Ideally, she would've liked to do something like this by herself, this was her dream, her nindo and Sugemi with Shimo had nothing to do with it. They didn't need to get into trouble for this or get hurt in a battle. Mana sighed, "Fine, but if I see as much as a wink to torture that guy I'll make you two think you're worms and wriggle in the dirt for an hour. We'll do this peacefully, no torture, if we find out that there's something big in play we try and solve it nicely and only take them down hard if they resist. And for God's sake let's not blow anything up, we'll get in trouble for this as it is..." Mana gave in.</p><p>Shimo raised his palm to his head and saluted her, "Yes, ma'am!" he yelled out before winking at her. Sugemi shrugged, "You took the file, I suppose me and Shimo would keep stepping on each other's toes if we were allowed to take charge so... Lead on..." Truth be told the magician didn't really know that much about criminal investigations, her first idea would've been to question the guy that Sugemi hurt too. Thing was that she knew perfectly how it'd go: Mana was a twelve-year-old girl who was known around the village as a stage magician - it doesn't get any less intimidating than that, the guy would say something rude to her, Shimo and Sugemi would only get annoyed and resort to torture ignoring what she said. They were eager to prove themselves now and Mana wouldn't have been able to stop them, she had to play them differently, try and avoid any sort of opportunity for them to want to show off.</p><p>Sadly that meant that she would have to approach and ask for a favor of a man she really didn't want to see in her life any more than was necessary. She already was indebted to the man, he paid the rent for her shoes until the end of the year. He was pretty much the most influential "thief within the law" in Konohagakure, Mana was absolutely sure that if he was not behind this scheme he at the very least knew the name, address, and shoe size of the man who was. He was the end of every conspiracy theory in the village, nothing transpired here where he wouldn't have had something to gain from it. Truth be told, Mana wasn't really sure how this would work out...</p><p>She led the way to the Hanada Estate, walking this path made her feel quite nostalgic for the days when she started out even if they weren't that long ago. What happened in that mansion was her personal cold shower baptism into the ninja world. How would Hanada even look at her? Would he feel indebted that she saved his life, his and his family's, or would he just let it down as her paying the debt for him sponsoring her magic shows? If she will be indebted to the man just what sort of price will he name? Mana would've rather died than dishonored herself and become his mercenary, then again, the man had a talent for making things look different than they were. He'd make her feel like anything but his own personal toy, he'd word it quite differently and make it look like she was actually protecting him or something...</p><p>When the kids approached the gate the two guards looked at them with condescending looks, one of them gestured for them to turn around and go away, "I think you kids are lost." he said. It was sheer luck that the second guy was one that Mana knew quite well. "Hey... You're... Sorceress-chan!" the man said, he was one of the mercenaries that betrayed Hanada before, it seemed like he was allowed to work for the man after all was over. "Hello, I see you were allowed to stay... Good to see." The girl twisted her heel at the ground with her eyes shyly looking down, she was quite embarrassed to be talking to the man she beat up, he probably didn't like her too much...</p><p>"Yep, I'm pretty glad you beat me up, if you hadn't we'd have hurt Hanada-san and I'd still be a mercenary doing whatever people pay me for, killing, stealing and bringing shame to myself but now... I acted nice for a while and they let me go, Hanada-san even forgave me, he pays me less than the other guys but I get along, I'm even starting a family, c'mon let them in. Sorceress-chan is welcome in Hanada-san's home anytime. Forgive him, he started working last week..." the mercenary laughed out, Mana didn't quite get his fond behavior but she was a bit happy that he ended up alright after the pretty nasty battle that happened here. "Well, I don't know... He was pretty rude... Not letting Mana in..." Sugemi pouted making an aristocratic and smug face, Mana couldn't help but chuckle before gesturing that it was alright.</p><p>The mercenary left his colleague standing watching the gate while he led Mana and the others to the mansion. He asked them to wait in the waiting room while he went to tell Hanada that he was here. Shimo looked surprised, "You know Hanada Katsuo, Mana-chan? That's... Something..." he looked like he just exposed the girl for being a criminal herself, Sugemi looked impressed by entirely different things, "You had missions before we were a team?! How come?" Mana shrugged, "It wasn't a mission, Hanada is paying for my rent because he likes my magic shows and I wanted to thank him with a show, things just happened pretty fast and I had to fight his mercs... Well... Word "fight" is a bit wrong in this context, more like "lucked out consecutively"..."</p><p>Before Mana could explain Hanada Katsuo walked out in a fancy and without a doubt expensive pearl color suit and even more expensive hairdo for his knee long blonde hair. The man looked like an actor and his emotions really did seem acted, "Mana-chan, I'm so glad to see you! I only wonder what made you and... Your friends come here? Is there a problem with our business proposition, do you wish to discuss my sponsorship or something? Oh, this boy, you're Shimo, right? Your father and I had business when you were younger..." Mana was glad that Shimo didn't reply, it was quite clear from Shimo's eyes that he was not fond of the man as he must've clearly known Hanada's reputation.</p><p>"Hanada-san, I am very thankful for your sponsorship and I intend to allow you to finish your part of the deal, I was just wondering if you could help us out with something, seeing how I well..." Hanada smiled, Mana knew that he instantly realized what was her deal was. "Saved my life, there is no shame in admitting that, quite the honor honestly... Anyway, I suppose you need a consultation of some sort? What area, art, perhaps?" Hanada spoke, the magician stood there silent. How was she supposed to tell him that she wanted his criminal experience? She was just so bad at that sort of conversation! </p><p>Shimo spoke up, Mana wanted to smother the guts out of him for saving her honor, "No, Hanada-san, BUSINESS, we believe that we are after some of your competitors so it would be beneficial of you to help us by letting us know just who exactly is controlling the... Public relations... In the area around Hiro's hall."</p><p>Hanada turned around and stroke his chin, he understood what Shimo meant, Mana was surprised that he knew the "thief within law" jargon to be honest. Maybe his father was like Katsuo? No, that couldn't have been the case, it was much more likely that Shimo's father interacted with the likes of Hanada Katsuo often so both the father and the son knew their manners of speech, "public relations" must've meant whatever those bandits were doing. Hanada turned around and sighed, "My, my... What a conundrum I have here... I usually don't discuss business with children but I suppose in Mana-chan's case I can make an exception... I suppose you are here with official Konohagakure administration business? A mission?" Sugemi shook his head, "Let's call it "private investigation"." Hanada looked really pleased with that revelation, Mana didn't really know why the Nara chose to come into the clear with that information though.</p><p>"Ahhh... Well then... I suppose "private investigations" have the advantage of not restricting one's actions, I should point more young "private investigators" towards my competitors, that way I'd have fewer problems. Well then... This is business and I'm afraid, Mana-chan, this isn't how this kind of business is done. You see what you are asking of me is to snitch a man like me, that could potentially expose me as an honorless businessman if this conversation ever went public. This kind of risk requires a proper deal, quid pro quo... You understand?" Mana instantly started regretting this conversation but she had no choice, she couldn't let Sugemi and Shimo torture a man, she was ready to at least hear Hanada out, there could've been no harm in that, right?</p><p>"I don't think I have much to offer, Hanada-san, if there is a particular thing you want, I'm afraid you'll have to make it clear, this is the first and the last talk of this nature we will have." Mana tried to be brave but her voice was shaking a bit, she knew the kind of deals that Hanada usually made. Shimo looked annoyed, his gentleman side was offended by how uncomfortable this conversation made Mana feel, he must've realized that she never wanted this and must've started to put together her reasons for choosing this deal over the interrogation. He was one of the smartest ninja of his generation after all. "Wait, Katsuo-san, are you sure you're being reasonable here? Mana-chan saved your life, yours and that of your family from what I've heard, surely that amounts to some sort of leniency towards business?"</p><p>Hanada fixed his tie, "Yes, Mana-chan saved lives of me and my family, she also helped capture and put most of those responsible for threatening it to Konoha Strict Correctional Facility. That is what amounts to you even being let into my home and for me having this conversation with a bunch of children that have no official reason to be here or talk to me about business at all, truth be told, it takes a bit more than saving my life to be shown this much sympathy, boy. As for what I would suggest you give, Mana-chan is your magic. Give me the ownership of Konoha's Sorceress as a brand, allow me to manage your shows, and get the same amount of profit that I get now until you decide you no longer want to do this. That is my deal, information for Konoha's Sorceress, I'll give in someone else's business and get a business in return, only seems fair..."</p><p>Mana almost started trembling, her mind screamed into her ear that she couldn't do this! She knew quite well of Hanada's interest in buying up most of Konohagakure's entertainment industry as well as art. He knew the power of entertainment, he knew how much people were into plays, music, and things like Mana's magic shows but she also has heard stories of what that sort of life was like. She'd basically be his minion, perform whenever Hanada tells her, wherever he tells her, and charge however much he asks her to, he'd be in complete creative control of her shows. If he tells her that her father's tools and her escape tricks are not profitable he'd be in the right to order her to remove that. What he was asking for didn't sound like much to anyone else but, to Mana, it was surrendering half of her life. Suddenly she had to weigh what she was fighting for, was the information worth it?</p><p>Hanada smiled, he felt Mana's weakness and decided to exploit it, "Well, I suppose if you add ten percent extra of all that you earn I can send my own men to take them out, I can see from your cheek that you have still things to learn in terms of dealing with that kind of men and it is in my best interests as your sponsor to see to it that my little magician girl looks the best she can, you take pride in that don't you? You're the esthetic kind of artist after all..." Hanada's speech was cut short, Shimo's short blade was pointed right at his face. "If you ever talk to Mana like that again I will attack you! Attack you like I should've when you asked my father to convince mother to sell her gallery to you!" Hanada shrugged "I am well within my bounds to speak to Mana-chan however I want, I am her sponsor, after all, I own Konoha's Sorceress for one more yea..." Hanada stopped in his tracks and started shaking, trembling not unlike Mana has been before. Mana didn't notice her hand weaving the handseal in rage, she didn't notice casting that genjutsu as anger blinded her and she released it that same instant.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Hanada-san... But you do not own me, I am quite capable of paying my rent right now without your help, if you feel like cutting this deal off I'll understand. To tell you my answer - I will never be a bird you can lock in a cage and show your guests, that's not what Konoha's Sorceress stands for. If I sold that symbol to you I'd be forced to stop doing magic altogether and I won't sell my magic to you." Hanada stood right back up and fixed his suit from the mess that he made trying to shake off the genjutsu that he saw. "Hmm... I wonder, Mana-chan, I wonder if you can pay your rent with the state that your father is in... I'm not sure if disabled people make the same wage if anything at..." Sugemi's punch aimed at the gut silenced the man.</p><p>"I don't like you, I didn't like you to begin with but at this point, you're useless to us which means you're standing in the way of me getting my manga done, furthermore, you're pissing off my friends which means they won't be at their best when the time to work for what makes up my manga comes." Sugemi turned around and left, Mana and Shimo followed - this was major! Hanada was an incredibly dangerous man, how could this go wrong so fast!? Mana placed him in a genjutsu and Sugemi punched him! He had people disappear for less, after the man straightened out he smiled, he managed to deliver his final words before the three left the room. "I am sad that we couldn't come to a deal. Perhaps another time..." his polite end to the conversation made Mana even less certain of what the future had. Now with the master of the entire criminal world of Konoha after the three it would this mission only got more difficult instead of this talk helping them find the man responsible for robbing people.</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. A Mysterious Tip? Interrupt the Deal!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A tall man in shades and a dark long coat walked up to Hanada as the man observed the kids leaving. This visit was not a pleasant one for the man, his displeasure with it and anger should've been postponed until after no one saw him, however. The magician kid made him money, supporting and sponsoring her as well as some other acts in the village opened doors to Katsuo, he could speak to any partners in Kirigakure and Kumogakure or any other village and reference his sponsored acts as a symbol of his influence and success expecting to be taken more seriously as a result. Him having the Sorceress under his wing would help both promoting the kid worldwide and using her fame to find more partners and spread his influence where her fame makes its steps.</p><p>"These kids are looking for Ooguchi's crew, right? They'll wander around through a lot of alleyways, probably until the late time at night, that's a dangerous time for kids to be out at..." the tall man fixed his shades as he leaned over his boss' shoulder to affirm that was what boss had in mind. Hanada lowered his head, "No, these guys are just kids, I don't like holding grudges against kids, they'll have to grow a bit older until they learn that actions have consequences but this will not go forgotten... I'd like for Ooguchi to receive a "tip" from a "kind-willed colleague" about them, make sure the girl lives, and is able to perform, don't let them harm her face and hands. She may not pay me herself but her name alone is bringing me increasing amounts of benefit. Soon she may actually be worth keeping around paying for with no obligations from her part."</p><p>The man in shades nodded and disappeared. He was a professional and his efficiency was needed, it was not known what exactly the plans of the children were if they had any tips. Boss's orders required him to tip Ooguchi faster than he would know of the kids himself which was not that easy. More so, Ooguchi was an idiot, he was the first man to send his men out to the open to take out his competitors so Hanada-san didn't predict a long and prosperous future for him. The idiot was already making deals with some people from Kirigakure. Everyone knew Kirigakure was bad business if they didn't kill you themselves they were still the enemy of the village so any ties with that village were punished with utmost severity by the Fourth's administration. Regardless of the difficulty of the orders or stupidity of the recipient, the man in shades will complete his assignment...</p><hr/><p>Mana sighed, "Sorry guys, I thought that we could've figured something out without torture and interrogation..." Shimo tried to smile but it was clear that his mood was spoiled by the encounter with a man he was not fond of. "You don't need to apologize, just... Don't go to that man for help again, Mana-san, don't give him the satisfaction of having you in debt to him." It wasn't that hard to understand Shimo's hatred towards Hanada - the man was everything that Shimo hated after all: rich, powerful, and influential and acquired his wealth by oppressing those weaker than him. Perhaps Hanada most clearly illustrated the kind of man that the Mizukage that Shimo's family fled from was like...</p><p>"Seriously? Torture? Did you really think that we couldn't keep our cools? Hotheaded people are always secondary characters and comic relief and I must be the protagonist of my manga!" Sugemi exclaimed raising his fist in the air with certain dedication and strength to his words and the tone upon which they were spoken. Shimo sighed, "Oh well, I guess we should apologize to you, Mana-chan... Our stupid tenseness and rivalry made you plan around us and forced you to go to that man, I guess we should've been better than that." After apologizing for something he probably had no reason to apologize for, the young Yuki raised a fist and gave it for Sugemi to bump, the Nara raised his and the two bumped their fists. "We can stop being rivals if you agree to be the supporting protagonist in my manga, I guess..." Sugemi smiled. "Eh, good enough..." Shimo replied to that. For once this day started looking like less of a trainwreck.</p><p>"So... What now? We have absolutely no leads on the mystery crime man." Sugemi scratched the back of his head, "Maybe we should find that guy in Konohagakure hospital and ask him who is in charge?" the Nara boy raised a good point. By choosing one source of information over the other they lost the one they did not choose. It was most likely that the man Sugemi injured was already in the hospital by now and his fracture was being looked at. Mana honestly had no idea about what to do, Hanada's behavior, however, seemed to lean towards there being some sort of "business" partner behind it so now she herself had a direct passion to solve this. "Do not turn around..." the three heard a voice behind them, it was a silent but clear voice, almost instantly cold air filled their lungs. It was a similar killing intent to Tanshu-sensei's but it felt so very different, Tanshu's was more searing hot burning all the air from one's lungs making one struggle to breathe, so hot it was cold... This one felt cold and damp, just this man being around them made one feel like drowning.</p><p>"I noticed that you are interested in the man behind the muggings near Hiro's hall, correct? I see you three are ninja so the information I can provide would be in good hands. This isn't just common mugging, it's much worse, it's a racketeering scheme - people pay additional "safety tax" to these men in order to walk around that area. The man behind this is known to his partners only as "Ooguchi". You will find him in the southern district of the village where the warehouses are, there will be a small district of homes, rotten and ruined pissholes. Ooguchi owns them all and that is where you'll find him. I'd suggest moving fast, something interesting will be going on there today..." And just like that, the cold atmosphere around this mystery informant disappeared as if it was never even there. The three genin simultaneously turned around but there was nothing there.</p><p>"Well... That was convenient..." Sugemi mumbled out, he looked so innocent and so unsuspecting of how dirty all of this sounded. Shimo looked completely different - he looked angry, this kind of thing like the trick that this Ooguchi has been pulling pissed him off. That was why he was blind about how suspicious it all was. Mana's head sunk down, this was so weird and... She didn't like it. At all. But she had no proof and couldn't even begin to solve this knot of people and who stood where in all this. Hanada wanted this Ooguchi safe but was willing to sell him out, this Ooguchi guy was some sort of fool that was trying to establish a racketeering scheme in a ninja village using the opportunity that the village is occupied with larger problems, a short-sighted idea at best... Who was this mysterious informant, what side was he on? Why did he give them this information instead of taking action himself? He did feel like an incredibly strong fellow, maybe not on Tanshu's level but his strength could have been felt by three inexperienced ninja, not just strength, his killing intent itself. That man was trouble, must've been!</p><p>"I don't know guys, this man... This information is just too suspicious." Mana voiced her concern, she didn't like how her voice sounded weak and unsure but to be honest it mirrored how she felt about all of this. They got into something they shouldn't have. "Yeah, I hear you. But what other options do we have? I guess we could just report this to the Administration..." Shimo hesitated for a moment. "Wait, you don't think about bailing out right? I mean, my manga is on the balance! This is just huge enough to make the first chapter!" Sugemi got pretty enraged by the hesitance of the two. Mana turned her eyes to the side, she didn't want this, any of this but... "We have to go..." she spoke without even believing the fact she said it and genuinely felt like it.</p><p>"If we don't go and report this, it's fine. But people will get hurt in the meantime. Tomorrow and the day after, all the way until they are taken down people will suffer and be threatened by Ooguchi's men. If there's any chance of stopping that I'm willing to risk my life, plus, the informant did say that there's something going on there today. If it's useful to Ooguchi it is trouble for everyone else, we must at the very least stop that." the magician explained trying to voice her feelings clearly, as a hero that she wanted to be she had to go and would go even if Shimo and Sugemi didn't. She owed it to the people of the village that lacked the power to manipulate chakra, that had their magic of life treated like dirt by those men every day, to people that loved her magic shows and believed in ninjutsu being more than a tool of murder!</p><p>"Well what kind of gentleman would let Mana-chan go there alone, or with an idiot like Sugemi at that..." Shimo sighed and stroke his neck, it was clear that he didn't like it, it must've been his logical side that finally overcame his first reaction of rage. His rage worked differently from any other form of rage the girl has ever seen, he was angry so he wanted Ooguchi to be stopped but he wanted it to be done right - his rage justified reporting it to the authorities and leaving it up to them. Mana's feelings were different, she had to put a stop to it because she had a responsibility to act, she couldn't trust other ninja to not kill anyone. If the administration sends out stronger ninja they will without a doubt make a bloodbath out of scumbags that dared to pull this on Konohagakure soil...</p><p>"YES! Let's go!" Sugemi yelled out, "Wait what did you just say!?" his slower brain finally got the clue of Shimo's previous words. Mana sometimes couldn't understand how Sugemi's mind worked, he lived in a world where only his manga mattered, he never weighed the pros and cons of anything, he just did whatever could grant him the fame to have his manga written about him and that was so incredibly weird. He never looked deeper, never analyzed anything just asked the question if it helped his cause. Being the kind of person to tolerate and consider any points of view Mana started to empathize a little with that sort of mindset. Perhaps if she adopted a little more of it she'd be more efficient in saving people, less concerned of the fallout and more reckless, less analyzing what something meant and only caring about if it helped her cause of changing the world, of proving that ninjutsu was something that each wielder defined and not something that defined its wielder.</p><p>The three rushed off into the distance observing the day reaching its peak. If they were lucky they'd arrive at early evening hours. That would be beneficial in scoping the area and at least trying to spot the trap if there was one. Just like expected the three arrived at about the beginning of the later hours of the day, the Sun was just about starting to set Mana crouched down and hid behind a wall, behind that wall was a large complex of multiple homes built of scrap and what almost looked like cardboard, almost like the entire homes were built from what these men found in the scrapyard. "Ewww... What kind of crime lord is this Ooguchi guy? I bet he doesn't even own a cat! Can we beat up that Hanada guy again instead? He makes for a much better villain!"</p><p>Shimo shushed the boy down and Mana angrily whispered back, "When your manga is being written just ask the editor to change some things up, you already made enough trouble with Hanada-san as it is... We're punishing only the guy that's to blame for all this mess." Shimo nodded, "I've got a plan, wait here..." he said and bolted off, Mana couldn't believe this, obviously she couldn't object since she wasn't officially the team's leader but she sort of expected being allowed to lead this little "private investigation", everyone acting for themselves was a dangerous thing to do in this kind of assignment. Shimo returned shortly with a guy that had ice around his mouth and arms and had blood on his forehead. The boy dragged the man up to the fence and rest him towards the fence.</p><p>"Talk, where's Ooguchi, what's going on here?" Shimo spoke after making a handseal and letting the ice dissolve into a small puddle. Mana had to hand it to the boy, it was a simple technique but it was an efficient one, Shimo's clan was truly spectacular and she wished to see some more of his Ice Release. "Forget it, brats, I ain't talking!" the man mumbled out, Mana's nightmare scenario was playing out in front of her, Shimo kicked the man but he only laughed, "That all you got?" Shimo moved to the side and looked at Sugemi, "You kick him, you're stronger, make sure it hurts!" The man laughed and reached for his rags, he lifted them up and showed a wound to the three kids.</p><p>"Forget it, brats, look at these burns. I'm used to pain, there's nothing your kiddy minds can do to me that I ain't seen before. Got this in a fire when Ooguchi-sama's previous boss kidnapped this murderous bitch kunoichi, she blew the whole warehouse district and gave most of us a beating of our lives and we got burns from that fire. What can the three of you do to that? I was tortured by a Yoruma once..." the man laughed out spitting some blood out of his mouth. Shimo looked really taken back by this, Mana got interested, "Yoruma?" "It's a clan of messed up assassins, they're bloodthirsty and they're some of the best swordfighters and torturers in the village. If even an infant Yoruma sadist couldn't get this guy to talk we may as well not bother and go in blind..."</p><p>Mana leaned up to the man and placed her hand on his shoulder, "Please, sir, can you help us by telling us the information we need? Ooguchi is making a lot of people fear and suffer, he's also clearly doing something shady too... A lot of people will get hurt." The man spat at Mana's face but surprisingly enough missed. "What the fuck do I care?! Those people don't care about us! They're paying you ninja lot all the good money leaving all the nasty dirt work to us, normal folk who can't spit fucking fireballs out of their mouths. How the hell is a weak guy supposed to make money to feed his family if not by crime? Your kind MADE Ooguchi and our crew so it's time you got the credit for it..." Mana's arms weaved an illusion by themselves, this man was so angry and spiteful but she had no time to deal with his hatred and his feeling of being wronged right now, she had to know whatever Ooguchi had planned first.</p><p>The man looked at his body identifying Mana's "Scary Trick Jutsu", "Cockroaches? Really? Do you think someone who lives in the goddamn junkyard has never slept covered in all pathetic kind of parasite there is!?" the man raged out, the genjutsu was completely ineffective against him. "Wait... Those tricks, you're... Konoha's Sorceress? That magician girl that's doing her shows in Hiro's hall, right?" the man suddenly recognized Mana forcing her to rub her eyes in annoyance.</p><p>"Yes." She admitted the man's face changed, within just a mere second his face changed from that of an angered and hurt man to that of a man that is asking for his life. "My little girl she's... She wanted a long time to see your show and... I don't make enough money to... Maybe if you let her see it, I'd tell a thing or two..." he started almost begging Mana, "Also, please make sure she's not around when you take Ooguchi down." Mana stood up, "Fine, I'll get her here before we go talk to Ooguchi, and I'll let her see all the shows she wants, just please help us." the girl almost begged, it was a unique talent to beg while standing tall and looking person in the eyes, luckily over her career as a stage magician Mana gathered some acting skills. She wasn't lying about her promise though...</p><p>The man sighed, "Well, Ooguchi is in the house with that milk ad poster stuck on the roof, he's meeting this guy from Kirigakure today to exchange something but he's too much of a scaredy-cat to meet the man himself, don't know what that deal is but the boss says it's huge. That exchange will happen in the smaller house built out of cardboard entirely, the one that looks like a large farm toilet to the left of boss' place, there's one house with the working chimney, the one that's smoking, that's where you'll find the thing that the Kirigakure guy wants, Ooguchi's making a fool of him and will try to kill the bastard, he's got the goods in that smoking house. My house is the third house on the left, right after entering the district."</p><p>Shimo stood up and looked at Mana and then at the guy that spilled the beans. "Alright you two, I'll bust the deal and prevent the Kirigakure guy from getting murdered, he may be a Kirigakure bastard but if he gets killed here it means war for sure. Sugemi, go and take the goods, it might be something of value to help village compensate the people robbed by these people, it doesn't belong to these men anyways. Mana, you go get the girl to safety, I know you want to, then you have one shot to work your magic with this Ooguchi guy. If he doesn't listen we're kicking his butt and taking him in."</p><p>Mana fixed her gloves, "If he doesn't listen I'll make him try to make a wormhole through the floor with his face myself". Shimo nodded with a smile "Don't play heroes. If you're having trouble retreat and go right to the Konohagakure Police Force and the Administration." he added. The three nodded to each other in agreement, Mana looked at the bleeding man for the last time before heading out. "Sir, it'd be best if you stayed here, if we get caught act as we took you out and you didn't tell us anything, we'll act the same."</p><p>The three genin dashed through over the wall, scaling it up in just moments and then leaping over it and heading towards the direction of their objectives.</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Trouble In the Junkyard District</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana carefully navigated the poor district. To be entirely honest she had never even seen it being built here. This whole district of warehouses and storage places was supposed to be more of an industrial place, how in the world these people moved in here was beyond her. A man wandered down the alley, clearly drunk, Mana let him pass without showing herself to him, someone looking like her would've stood out in the district plus she couldn't risk being recognized. The kunoichi had to move fast if she was to make it to both lead the girl to safety and confront this Ooguchi guy.</p><p>Something worried Mana as she kept moving, slowly but silently and still unnoticed, the man she let pass kept stumbling forward and dived nose-first into a bunch of trash cans - he was drunker than anyone could describe. The girl wanted to help him but she couldn't afford a distraction, it was quite likely that this soft and warm sleeping place was the safest place in the district for a while. What kept that small amount of fear rustling in her heart like a little tongue of flame was Ooguchi himself.</p><p>These people that gathered here were not a clan, they were not friends, they were a community, one with incredibly powerful bonds that no amount of torture could break. Mana had not yet seen the might of this Yoruma torture herself but if it was enough to make Shimo instantly dismiss torture as a viable option it must've been impressive. What kind of man gathers such amount of loyalty, even more so, does so doing crazy things like occupying a village district and doing crimes right under Hokage's nose, working with Kirigakure that had less of an approval rating in Konoha than Death God himself. He must've been a man of ideals, almost a cult-like leader, an icon to these people...</p><p>"Your mother wasn't from Konoha..." father's voice echoed in Mana's ear. She tried to resist the urge to sink in the memories of her father describing the wandering tribe that he met Mana's mother in, she had no time for that now. Either way, was her mother's tribe of people wandering from village to village similar to Ooguchi's crew? Mana didn't want to make any judgments before she met the man but what if they were the villains here by separating a community of poor people that have nowhere to go and no ideal to live up to, people that literally have nothing, people that were risking their lives and betraying their ideals just to make sure that their children are happy for one moment in their lives... That kind of person cannot possibly be bad. Inevitably Mana, Shimo, and Sugemi will not face off against bandits or animals trying to kill them but people, people with families that want their families to live in happiness...</p><p>Mana banged loud on the scrap door, a lady opened it - she wore rags and stank worse than Mana did when she was covered with centipede innards. "Excuse me, your husband sent me, he wanted to make sure you leave this district, it's going to go down today." the woman didn't look that sad or didn't even question Mana's words, she seemed to have a pack already ready to go, she gestured for the visitor magician to walk in and went to call her little girl. Mere moments later the little kid ran up to Mana with an actual piece of clothing which was a rarity - a raincoat and still held some sewn dolls. "Hey... You're..." Mana smiled and kneeled up to the kid so that she didn't have to look up all the time, "I'm Konoha's Sorceress, and your daddy and I made a deal - you can see my show anytime you want and you won't have to pay anything, you can even bring your mom and dad if you want. Just please let's hurry..."</p><p>The kid looked ecstatic, this was probably the first time Mana saw someone love her shows that much, usually the public enjoyment was there but she never saw someone's eyes literally light up as if they were specks of stardust fallen to Earth. "Yay, I knew you're a nice person, Sorceress, when I find my third job I promise I'll buy my tickets like everyone else!" the kid shouted out. Mana's mouth opened to reply to that peculiar sentence and the horrible implications it had but she realized that she was literally wasting time here. "We'll talk later, please move to the gate, your husband is there waiting for you." Mana took some of her allowance money and handed it to the woman, "Rent a room in the village, sleep it over, we'll see how this goes. It'd be great if you went to the Administration and told them about this place and your situation in the morning."</p><p>Mana rushed out of the house with the woman following shortly and moving in the opposite direction. This meeting made everything even more confusing, so people knew that their leader will eventually cause a downfall of this whole district they built here? Of course, they should've known, this whole idea of building a community inside a ninja village and living their own lives and expecting it all to be swell was stupid. Of course, the woman was smart and probably not even the only person here with a packed bag... This place started to make Mana sick, a place where even children had to work in several jobs and still didn't make enough money for basic survival needs. Just what kind of community this Ooguchi guy had here? Mana wasn't so sure she even wanted to resolve this peacefully anymore, she wanted that guy to say something, she was begging him to give her the option of fighting him and bringing him down. The genin quickly made way for the home where the man told her that Ooguchi was in.</p><p>Shimo tried to hold back a little bit, he needed to compensate for the time that Mana would take to move the kid out of the district. It was likely that no danger would even come to her but if such was the will of the man and that was the deal that Mana made with him... It was important to Mana that everyone was safe, she was lucky to have Shimo as her teammate. Most ninja would find such desire for heroism and making sure that absolutely everyone from common villagers to even the enemies were alright absolutely annoying. Sugemi didn't care about anything but getting a manga made about him so... She'd be lucky to stay in the team with them forever, otherwise, she'd have more conflict on her hands than she deserves.</p><p>The boy moved in and stood back to the wall of the house he needed to enter. His was probably the most dangerous of the tasks - it was likely that the Kirigakure man was a ninja and a skilled one. Usually, only mercenaries, ninja, or people employing mercs or ninja moved from one village to another. If that man was here it meant he knew how to defend himself or run away when things got hot. It was unfortunate that the Hokage had already left if this man was captured he'd be a good proof of Kirigakure's dark involvement in Konoha's criminal underworld. Then again, the only reason why this deal was taking place at all was that the Hokage and "Red Dog" Tanshu and "Vapor" Misu were no longer here. It might have been a good idea to set up a diversion in this situation, make those guys believe that things were worse than they actually were... Either way, he won't achieve anything here. Shimo moved in to a side "window", silently tapping the surfaces and checking which layer was supposed to be removed and worked as a window space.</p><p>Shimo gently removed the large piece of cardboard and placed it on the floor inside, he leaped inside and rolled to stand up - he couldn't waste time being seen between the house and interior. As Shimo's head lifted off the ground his eye almost got a senbon lodged into it - a tall woman was standing with her hand pointed at him with four senbon between her fingers, Shimo almost rolled into her taunting stance. "What do you know... The anonymous tip was right, Konohagakure actually does know about the deal." the woman spoke with an arrogant tone using her other hand to stroke her shoulder-length dark hair. Her eyes met with those of the boy, "You messed up, this is how little ninja die..." the woman said and thrust her arm forward...</p><p>Sugemi kept running on forward to the place he was assigned to, why the hell did he listen to Shimo anyways? That idiot was in the way of his manga, what was his assignment anyways? To move the luggage with the money that Ooguchi was supposed to pay? That's repossession man's work, repossession men didn't get their own stories, no one wants to read about a repossession man. That asshole Shimo must want to interrupt the deal and get his own manga first, he just says that Hokage bullshit to others, just to move their attention away from the real goal. Even Mana got two jobs, how come she always got to do most of all in the missions? Just like in the Forest of Death when she got to do all of the actual work...</p><p>Then again, this wasn't a mission, money was important for the village, maybe he actually will get a pretty good word from the village to his manga publisher when he'll pitch the idea. After all, he will be the guy that recovers all of the money stolen from the people, he will be as much of a hero as it gets, he may even give everyone's money back to them personally! This was awesome! Shimo may have been trying to snag his dream but he'll end up snagging Mana's to fulfill his, that didn't really feel right, Mana was a pretty nice person, she didn't really deserve to get this shit pulled on her but it's all Shimo's fault anyway! Sugemi giggled to his own palm as he thought about it, the boy didn't bother to be too discrete - Sugemi thrust his punch to the scrap layer that served as a door.</p><p>"Ohhh, a little powerhouse... Isn't that cute?" Sugemi jumped backward to avoid a pillar of solid rock shooting out of the ground, the amount of force behind that thing shook the whole scrap house. A man with a rugged cape and a bandana and shades was inside with a cocky smile, what did this mean, no one was supposed to be inside! Did the guard play a trick with Mana? Did he lie about the actual locations? Mana was such a stupid idiot! She and her stupid belief that everyone was her friend, it'll get her killed one day and even worse - it'll get HIM killed once, maybe it's even in the process of getting him killed right goddamn now!</p><p>"Splitting your efforts to accomplish most assignments possible, or at least taking the money was a smart idea, we were fortunate to receive the anonymous tip..." the man spoke and made a handseal that made the rock structure disappear. Slowly, one step after another the man walked outside. "Oh no, you won't!" Sugemi shouted leaping forward with a handseal charging up chakra and wrapping his Shadow Tendrils around his fist "Shadow Fist Technique!" Sugemi shouted leaping forward as fast as he could and punching the man right in the face. The force of his blow sent the man backward right through multiple layers of scrap - Sugemi had to keep it contained, the man had some sort of Earth Release style that was dangerous to use inside such a house, by keeping it contained Sugemi might stand more of a chance and keep it quieter.</p><p>The man's forehead cracked, then his entire body started to crack as if it was just a cocoon. The entire body crumbled revealing an identical copy inside. Sugemi's eyes were open wide - he had never seen anything like that, this was not someone of his level would use, his technique had the serious ability to break some bones, to soak all of it up was some pretty nice defensive armor. The layer of the man's armor that collapsed changed into the dirt, the man smiled, "Nice technique, as you can see I have some of my own..." His half-exposed grin made Sugemi sick, he wanted to keep punching this guy but he shouldn't overdo it, one Shadow Fist used to take a lot of his chakra and while he has refined his mastery over the technique somewhat it still was easily his most costly jutsu. It'd be nice to finish it soon and without having to use it again, maybe two or three times if need be...</p><p>Mana opened the door, slowly she proceeded to walk inside, this house was by far the largest. Even if they didn't get their tip from the gate guard they'd have still been able to somehow figure out that the largest house made entirely of large ad posters stuck onto the usual junk materials was the most important place in here. It was strange to not be able to hear anything. One step after another Mana kept walking forward, gently peeking after the corner and doing her best to spot the danger before it spotted her. The rooms were pretty dark - there was little to no sunlight getting in there from the outside seeing how it was covered blind. One room, however, had light coming from there, Mana bet that would be where this Ooguchi guy was.</p><p>The girl tossed a smoke bomb into the room. She leaped at the first person that was closest to her having pinpointed his location almost instantly before using her tool. Using her kunai Mana smacked him in the back of his neck. She then acted through hearing and seeing mere shadows of the people inside the smoke alone, Mana lunged forward and rolled to avoid the blow of a man targeting her as his friends were still trying to understand what happened. The magician cut the man at the back of his leg and punched him with her palm. Mana knew perfectly how long her smoke bombs lasted, she used plenty of those on stage, usually to announce her arrival. By then it was clear that these men were no mercenaries and definitely no ninja, they were just poor people to whom guarding Ooguchi was just one of their numerous jobs. That made the magician even sicker of it all so she started weaving handseals near instantly after taking out the last guy.</p><p>Mana pointed forward with two of her fingers sending a long string of channeled beam of wind chakra, it worked similarly to a blade, it was just much less piercing and efficient so it had no way of killing her enemy. Violence was a perfectly acceptable last resort kind of mean of achieving her ends but killing was out of the question for Mana. The sharp gust dug deep into the man's knee and he fell on the ground yelling, Mana tried to kick him in the face to finish him but he caught her leg and lifted it sending her down. He tried to crawl onto her but the kunoichi kicked him in the face. This was the second time that day she didn't perform as well as she could've in taijutsu - she needed to brush it up a bit, maybe invent her own style or something.</p><p>Mana's head turned up, her rough headcount, when she moved out to use the smoke bomb, suggested that there was supposed to be another man there but no one tried to take her out while she was down. The wandering eyes caught a quite grotesque sight to behold, a morbidly obese man sitting on a collection of large pillows. He had an extremely overweight body but his arms looked pretty muscular and quite able to do some damage, his legs, however, looked minuscule and definitely undersized for the man. His head was the worst, it was easily the largest part of his body with his chin being almost half the size of his entire torso. Someone like that had to be the most important guy in the room. Mana rolled onto her chest and stood up, fixing her hair. "I can't goddamn believe it, Sugemi was right, this does feel like a goddamn manga at this point..." she thought as her eyes met those of Ooguchi.</p><p>"We need to talk, about all of this." she calmly stated as the man flapped his lips and licked them with his tongue, his minuscule legs moved just slightly pushing his body forward as he fell down on all fours with his bulky hands keeping up the weight. "I'd have liked to see your show, you're that magician, right? That or you just dress like a magician which would be quite retarded... I just don't leave the district too much, people tend to point fingers and laugh at me all the time." the man spoke as he flicked his head to the side to get his dreadlocks off of his face. "You are insufferable, Ooguchi-san... You found those poor people and gave them hope gathered them together into a solid community, then you made them build you a home, not just a house but a whole village inside of a village, and then you made them work for you, employing them into multiple "jobs", even children, using them like nothing else but a cheap workforce... I wanted to talk to you initially, see if we could find a compromise, maybe you could have still called off your men from their "jobs" and canceled this deal... I'm sorry, Ooguchi-san, there is nothing to talk about with a person like you. This district will go down, its people will be free and will join the other villagers in an actual community, they will not be fueled by the need to survive but need to live better than they already do. And most definitely, YOU will go down and into Correctional Facility" Mana said with her anger coming up inside of her, her heart slowly growing hotter and hotter before her entire body was tensed and ready to take this man down, him and his entire... Whatever this madness was.</p><p>Ooguchi's body shook as the man laughed, then all of a sudden his hands tensed up, the immense arms pushed the large corpus of the man off the ground lunging into Mana, Ooguchi's mouth opened revealing blunt teeth - what a peculiar method of attack... The girl tried to make handseals but it was too late - the man's teeth drove into her body causing grievous injuries, her head was barely even hanging on a small thread of muscle that the man's teeth did not tear apart, her body was almost cut in half from the lower jaw slamming into her gut... Or at least that was what Ooguchi saw as Mana's illusion connected first and she managed to roll under the man's colossal figure. Mana thrust her palms repeatedly, slapping Ooguchi again and again, driving her palms into his back, making her rage drive her strikes, punching, again and again, using her palms until she was too tired and stumbled back. "Is that it, magician girl? I didn't feel any of it, I'm a pretty thick man you see..." Ooguchi mumbled as he turned around with a despicable smile that would make the devil himself claw his eyes out. Mana's face twisted in disgust as she lifted two fingers into the air and made a handseal moving it up to her chest, "You WILL feel this though..." Mana spoke as the man noticed his back and shoulders being full of explosive tags.</p><p>"I don't think I can punch you out, I'm not the kind of girl that would kill either but this would not kill you, as you said, you're a thick man, you have a layer of both fat and muscle that my punches sized up quite well, this wouldn't kill you but your life would not be comfortable from that point on... Seeing how we're sort of stuck in a deadlock, Ooguchi-san, let's talk..." Mana explained her intentions calmly, Ooguchi would have never listened to her before, now that she had his utmost attention and controlled the situation he'd be more talkative and willing to reach a consensus.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Gate of Opening! The Enemy is Jounin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a moment Shimo just stood there, stood there watching and sizing his opponent up. She was a relatively short and not by any means a muscularly built lady, she had well-shortened hair so trying to exploit that wouldn't have been a viable option. She used senbon, that much was for sure which meant she knew the anatomy of the body and had a pretty good aim. Wherever she planned to hit the genin, she'd hit him, if given the chance, she wore a long black dress, an outfit very unlike the people living in the area. This would be an exchange of decisions, if Shimo lost the battle would've been over if he won he'd be able to fight her for a bit longer - options weren't too much in his favor.</p><p>There it was, the woman's arm twitched, her exposed shoulder muscles tensed up telegraphing her next attack. Shimo used a short blade - as a close-range shinobi he must've had a certain degree of perception and ability to properly anticipate his opponent's moves and respond with the optimal response from himself. The boy dashed back weaving handseals using his hands, his handseals were nowhere near the speed that Mana had, a strange thing having his amazing bloodline ability in mind... One would think he'd be a bit faster at that but, with a little luck, the seals might just come out fast enough.</p><p>"Ice Plate Jutsu!" Shimo yelled out, he would've preferred to have some sort of water source to use in conjunction but, unfortunately, he had to settle for freezing air vapor for his techniques for now, at least until he gets smart enough to carry some water around or use a water technique to set his battles up. His female opponent used senbon, she tossed them forward with a straightforward attack but her tools bounced off of Shimo's defensive plates of ice - the two plates of ice that the boy created weren't large, but the size of a buckler but they were enough to deflect the senbon aimed at his gut. "She's aiming to incapacitate?" Shimo thought as he heard the needles clinging down onto the floor.</p><p>"An impressive display" the woman complimented, "An Ice Release technique, huh? You're skilled enough to freeze the water particles in the air too but it doesn't seem too strong. Just how strong is it? As strong as glass?" the woman taunted Shimo. The genin was alarmed at how much she knew of his techniques, she either was a good warrior who had fought Yuki clansmen in the past or she knew about Water Release and its variations which meant she was a ninja and didn't just use tools. "She knew where she was targeting but she didn't want to kill me because if she did she'd have aimed elsewhere - senbon in the gut would've made it excruciatingly painful to move so I'd be down but not out... What is her goal here? Who even is this woman?" Shimo wondered as his opponent reached for her senbon, now that she knew the strength of his Ice Release she'd not play around. A ninja of her level would simply attack strong enough to both break his ice and take the opponent down.</p><p>The woman breathed in, the boy kept on guard but he knew that a ninjutsu technique was coming, so she was actually a ninja! The kunoichi of the Junk District quickly went through a couple of handseals and spat a bunch of water out, Shimo leaped sideways to avoid it - that was good, she just made a source of water for him to work with! The woman breathed in again, proceeding to spit another mass of water right at Shimo, the boy slapped his hands together forming a handseal as the water she spat out before formed a flat and strong ice wall. This one was strong enough to withstand ninjutsu up to a certain rank, Shimo kept it relatively small though - just large enough to block the assault with no damage to it but also left some space up and to the sides for him to pass.</p><p>He was surprised to be greeted not by shouts of frustration but... Laughter! The water that slammed into his ice wall didn't fall to the ground, it splashed up making a bunch of smaller masses of water that stayed in the air shortly, they then transformed into needles, needles as large as senbon. "Water Senbon Technique!" Shimo heard the woman yell as the water needles bombarded the genin's body inflicting multiple cuts, moving in through the several spaces he had left for his own attack. The pain was unlike anything that the young shinobi has ever experienced, the pain of small pieces of water drilling through his flesh up to bone and then dissolving as it left marks on his bones in so many places at once - it felt like being shredded to bits!</p><p>The boy's injured body was drawn down to the ground, Shimo's hand shot forward to keep his body from slamming the floor like a sack of potatoes. "Are you... The Kirigakure ninja?" Shimo uttered some words, trying desperately to make the woman talk, just give him some time to get his pathetic ass off the ground and back into fighting shape. Shimo knew he could take this, all of what this woman had and more. All he needed was just a short break, just catch his breath and keep swinging back. She was clearly more skilled at ninjutsu, there was no use fighting her that way - anyone with the ability to shape elemental chakra into such complex shapes and at such numbers should've been beyond even Chuunin level.</p><p>Shimo's wall melted into a large puddle of water, the woman must've hit his chakra point which forced him to release any active techniques like this ice wall. The woman looked at the side, she was concerned about something, what could've been so important to her?! Never mind her concerns, Shimo got his chance to attack, gathering what he still had of his strength the boy leaped forward charging at the woman using all of his speed, that was what he trained all this time - his speed. That was what Tanshu-sensei told him, he spoke in what sounded like a riddle, he said that Shimo had the lock to his power-up already in his palm and that speed was the key. The genin figured that sensei meant that his body had the speed needed to impress sensei but he still needed to train it to achieve that speed so he spent those days running and pushing his body and ability to spend a great amount of force into quick leaps. Just focusing his chakra into the right muscles, making it work for him to transcend what even peak human condition could offer, all ninja were at peak human condition, it took a very special one to break that wall!</p><p>Shimo slipped and fell on the ground, that was impossible, his feet weren't even touching the ground! As the boy looked at what happened he saw water wrapping around his leg as if it was some kind of a whip or something. "Enough of this, kid, I'm not your enemy." The woman spoke, she was still looking at some point at the wall, her full attention was still somewhere else and she managed to counter Shimo's last resort attack? Just how strong was this woman? Finally, her cold gaze returned to the genin laying on the ground, breathing heavily as the hard fall reminded him of all of his injuries from before. He quickly started forcing his body to lift off of the wet floor - she completely embarrassed him but he won't give this woman the satisfaction, he won't follow his own advice, he won't run! This woman must've had her eyes set on Mana's or Sugemi's location, she must've been a sensor and wanted to go. Shimo will keep her here, she won't get to where she wants to nor will she get the pleasure of dominating him, he will fight her as an equal to the end!</p><p>"I said enough, I'm a jounin of Konohagakure..." she nonchalantly added as the woman's eyes returned to wherever they were before. "W-What?" Shimo grunted out, still affected by the pain. How could this make any sense? Why would she be fighting him in that case, did she know about the Kirigakure deal? What was going on? "I and my partner were both undercover here, we were on a mission to find out just what and how much of it was this district pulling in terms of criminal activities. Today was when we decided to blow our cover and take it all down - we couldn't allow this Kirigakure deal to go as planned but the man was close, I didn't want to tip him off and so I and my partner volunteered to keep you guys occupied and act like we're killing you when we got the tip from Hanada that you'd be coming. Going to that guy for help was a REALLY bad idea..."</p><p>Finally, all of this started to make a little bit more sense to the genin. So this woman and whoever she was working with were already on Ooguchi's track and working on taking him down. Team Oak was given the low ranking mission of busting one crime, to just win a battle while this squad was working with winning the whole war! They really must've made all of this difficult for the two by getting involved... Shimo looked away, he was really ashamed of himself and that he got involved, also disappointed that he was so weak and didn't give this woman a good fight at the very least, he wasn't an asset in this mission of these two high ranking ninja at all, just a kid that was in the way... "I'm... Sorry..." he uttered, the woman tsked with her tongue.</p><p>"It's alright, I couldn't tip off the Kiri guy so that he doesn't get away, I had to play tough. He was in this house but when the end of the fight was clear he left, I can sense him moving to Ooguchi's place. He was a weird guy, wanted to make the deal only with the fat guy himself. I can sense that there's a friend of yours there, a small chakra signature, larger than yours." Shimo nodded, "Mana-chan..." he uttered, "We've got to go, if this Kirigakure ninja gets there Mana-chan will be in danger!" The woman scratched her head, "Yeah, the chakra of that Kirigakure guy is crazy, he'd probably give both me and my partner trouble, sadly Ooguchi's house isn't our first stop, we need to let my partner know that the rules changed too - without him, we won't beat the Kiri ninja if he starts fighting us and he'd kill your other friend fighting him in the meantime. I just hope your friend can stall for time."</p><p>Shimo grunted and punched the ground, he was torn as both of his teammates needed help. "How about if I went to help Mana hold the guy off and you went to pick your partner up and then rejoined us. I'm sort of a gentleman, I can't leave Mana-chan in danger again, she always tends to get in trouble and do things by herself, I want to be with her this time!" the woman shrugged "Do what you want, I'm going to pick Dorimi up." she replied without a care in the world and dashed to the side, kicking out a cardboard layer while not losing pace and moving to the eastern side of the district - where both Mana and Sugemi were.</p><p>"I'm coming, Mana-chan!" Shimo uttered to himself as he jumped out the same hole and forced his body to move the best he could towards the place where Ooguchi's house was supposed to be.</p><p>Sugemi kept throwing punches in the man's general direction, they've been exchanging blows for a while now and he was holding the genin off, even more - he was returning more than he was taking. So far, for the entire couple of minutes of non-stop exchanges of blows Sugemi managed to resist the temptation to use any ninjutsu but he had to. This guy already gave him a swollen black eye that will probably look like a second face in the morning, he also must've broken some ribs at least. At the current pace, Sugemi might stall the guy but not knock him out. His dream of manga was floating away slowly and this was all that stood in the way!</p><p>"You're pretty impressive, you're a genin right and yet you're giving me trouble at taijutsu. Granted it was never a field I excelled at or trained in. I hope you understand that I'm beating you at the game rules of which you set up... That is unfortunate but the difference in strength is apparent!" the man shrugged, his voice, the words he spoke, it all made Sugemi more and angrier. Sugemi crouched up and started yelling loud, he was doing just like sensei showed him, letting his anger flow through his body while his motivation of manga was threatened, it was now that Sugemi was at his angriest and at his strongest, just like sensei said, however, anger made him slower and reckless so his strength was worth nothing!</p><p>"First Gate: Gate of Opening... OPEN!" Sugemi yelled as chakra burst out of his body for a brief moment. This was not something he did in battle, only something he trained with. So far Sugemi had never used this in combat but when he was training this technique let him train at least five times more efficiently which meant five times more gain for the same amount of training. Still, the technique was not something he could allow to last, it also wore down his own body and his body wasn't tough enough to stand even one gate for too long. "Eight Gates?!" his opponent exclaimed surprised as Sugemi used all of his briefly unlocked speed and the strength of his rage and desire to destroy this man, he slapped his hands together to form a handseal and yelled out in pain and rage, "Shadow Tendril Barrage!" as tendrils of chakra shot out of multiple pockets of his own body - Sugemi's own Nara technique tied around his body, striking his opponent repeatedly from any source of shadow in his body.</p><p>The technique connected, the surprise of seeing the Eight Gates being used by his opponent seemed to open up the man's guard and allow Sugemi to catch him unprepared, the fists pummeled his opponent and the Nara gave him no chance to recover, he went all out allowing his chakra to continuously burst prolonging both his One Gate and his Shadow Tendril variant. It was such an exhausting technique that Sugemi needed mastery over his own body to perform it and not collapse, only while using the First Gate could the boy manage to pull Shadow Tendril Barrage off even if theoretically it was just multiple quick succession strikes of a Shadow Tendril technique that he used quite casually.</p><p>"No!" Sugemi shouted in his own mind, he could feel pain and exhaustion in his arms, his actual body was crumbling on using so much chakra and the strain of the gates. Sugemi's body was still quite puny, he wasn't used to it being pushed too far so even the First Gate was straining enough to be the boy's limit. No! No more limits! Just one more! "Shadow FIIIIST!" Sugemi yelled as the multiple Shadow Tendrils quickly wrapped around his arm forming a bigger version of his fist. His punch hit the man in the jaw, the boy felt a rush, he felt like he still had something in him and that if he didn't use that last amount of force his opponent will stand up, him standing meant Sugemi's defeat and death, death meant no manga for him, that was unacceptable! The boy roared as he pushed his fist to fling his opponent back using all of his force.</p><p>Just as the woman in a black dress settled on a small wall, built entirely out of discarded household things like ovens and washing machines she looked at the home - she still couldn't quite understand what was going on, her partner was in there, right? Why did he make that boy's chakra dip so much? It was like he was getting closer and closer to death but at the same time - Dorimi was struggling as well, his chakra took some dips too, meaning he must've used a technique of some sort to defend but... His flow was calmer which meant he was in no danger of...</p><p>The entire damn scrap house collapsed as the sidewall burst open with her partner flying out through it! The woman even jumped out of surprise, what kind of force can cause something like that? That wasn't the amount of force a genin should be capable of putting out. A boy walked out through the hole just before the whole thing went down, no, he just barely stumbled out - his body was strained, just like his teammate this kid was giving his all, did he even know he was fighting a Jounin? Then again, it didn't seem like Dorimi was doing much more than defending... The man, that was flung out by something the genin did, stood up. His Earth Armor collapsed! No. That wasn't even it, the man wiped blood coming out of his lip that was open, he spat some to the side - this kid caused Dorimi damage!</p><p>The kid fell down, just like that other one that faced the woman, he used all of his remaining force to keep his body at least on his knees with just one arm to keep him from kissing the dirt. He was huffing heavily and sweating profusely - he was in no fighting condition but... This kid... He'd go places if he didn't die a youngling. "Hey! Stop playing, let's go, the cover's blown, let's proceed with the takedown." the woman yelled from atop a barrier of junk.</p><p>"I see..." Dorimi spoke, he then quickly stomped the ground shooting multiple rock pillars that surrounded Sugemi and pressed against his body - an efficient way to keep him from making more trouble. Now that the man could safely use his Earth Release he settled this in just an instant! "You're a fool, stay here so that you don't hurt yourself any more than you already have. You pack a punch though, well done." the man replied as he picked up his bandana off the ground and tossed his broken shades away revealing warm and funny green eyes. "Let's go, Shibari-chan..." the man addressed the woman on the fence, "I assume you will now put on your glasses in that case? Your aim is horrible without them?" he smiled as the woman pulled out a pair from behind and put them on. "Yes, sadly it is, barely can see a thing without them, having to aim using sensory alone is weird, fighting genin like that doesn't bother me but that Kirigakure ninja will be trouble."</p><p>The two ninja head out their way, leaving Sugemi struggle and kick around trying to break out of the improvised prison he was left in. The head was the only thing he could use so the Nara kept trying to break the stone with it, however, nothing was achieved but drawing his own blood. Sadly using the gates made his body more vulnerable after use too...</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. The Demon of Kirigakure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time that the brief scuffle in Ooguchi's house resolved and the magician got the man where she wanted him to be. The Sun had already almost set. There were only the small light sources that were coming from the room - small candle-like lights placed in various spots of the room. They were artificial, mechanical but they tried to imitate the real thing and only glowed like the real thing, dimly as no doubt was the intention of their maker. Mana had never seen such objects, people in Ooguchi's little "community" were amazing and crafty people, they had to be to survive...</p><p>"So... What do you want to talk about then?" the man asked the young kunoichi finally breaking the silence. Mana's eyes switched back to those filled with spite and rage, she usually was a peaceful soul but right now she was blazing inside and had no tolerance for men like Ooguchi. There was a part of her that wanted to activate the tags on his back and make him suffer. She extended her hand forward, still holding her hand in the handseal position as if to remind him that she has Ooguchi in her complete control. "There is not that much that I want you to do. We will be taking these people over from you, if you have any wisdom in there at all you'll leave this country and will never be seen again."</p><p>Ooguchi's fat body twitched, Mana knew what that meant, she did not activate the tags though, this was an attack made out of desperation and it posed no danger to her. The young genin lifted her leg up with a kick to meet the man's face, the silly chubby tried to literally bite the girl's arm off but Mana's arm was not where his oversized jaw chomped, instead her boot kicked right into the outside of the man's jaw. Ooguchi rolled back on the floor, whining in pain, the man spat out two gigantic for a human being teeth, they looked like they were tools of death, they had to be at least the size of a brick. "Did you just try to bite my arm off?" Mana asked completely confused? Why would anyone do that? That was not an attempt to kill, that was an attempt to injure her - even if Ooguchi had succeeded Mana would've still been able to activate the tags with just one arm. He was just insane...</p><p>"You can forget it..." a loud, artificial voice echoed throughout the room Mana was in making both the girl and the man she was fighting jump up in surprise. The voice had no man to claim ownership of it, it was just a sound that came from one of the multiple areas in the room that was pitch black from the absolute darkness, and as the Sun went down and the artificial lights were not powered up the darkness was slowly increasing in size. Within just ten minutes of the magician being in the room, the area corrupted by complete darkness grew from nothingness to at least one-fifth of the total size of the room.</p><p>"After all, Ooguchi is a slimy snake, if you let him go he'd just climb back to where he is now." the almost cybernetic in nature voice came from the darkness again, this time followed by a loud whistling noise. Mana's hand shot forward to try and intercept it but... A blade hooked to a chain dug deep into Ooguchi's flesh. The man seemed to barely even notice it until he turned around and saw it, then he started shouting into the darkness completely ignoring Mana. "No... Wait... I'll, I'll pay... Come on... It was a joke..." he then turned to Mana and started crawling towards her with teary eyes. "Come on... Girl... He's lying, you're kind, you'll help me, right? I'll disappear just like you told me to..." the second blade on a chain dug into the man's back, completely ignored by the large figure of Ooguchi.</p><p>"Begging her will do you no good. She'll be dead too by the time you'll be found. She and her stupid friends actually served me well. I was wondering how to pull off this perfect crime - kill a Konohagakure businessman and disappear without a trace... Just like sensei taught me." Two more blades flew at the colossal man and wrapped around him instead of having the blades dig into his body. The chains were then pulled back resulting in Ooguchi being completely bound by the steel chains. "Did you know, girl, that tags can be set off not only by the user's chakra but also by any source of fire chakra?" the creepy voice came again as flames erupted briefly illuminating a man standing in one of the corners, hiding on a wooden beam right near the roof.</p><p>Mana knew what he meant by that, right after his words reached her she dashed back - she wanted to save Ooguchi but... She wouldn't have even gotten to the chains before the whole place would've gone up in flames. A gigantic explosion went off, Ooguchi's tags were detonated by the man's Fire Release technique, Mana didn't make it in time - the explosion caught her and tossed her right through the scrap door, she was supposed to feel lucky. The crippling pain reminded her that she was still alive and the crumbling noise of falling debris suggested that the entire house was blown the hell up. Mana felt pain everywhere, she felt warm streams of blood going down her back, some areas of her body that were cut by the scrap wall she flew through. Her entire face was burning - it must've been cut in multiple places... So much for her performances for a couple of months...</p><p>Hair... So much hair was in her way... Mana peeled her head off the ground and looked at what used to be Ooguchi's home. No trace of it remained, no trace of Ooguchi himself, no trace of his assassin. That person, who was it? The guard mentioned that Ooguchi was having some sort of a deal with someone from Kiri, someone who obviously should've been a pretty powerful guy to move between villages with less than stellar relationship and working so deep underground. So maybe this assassin was him? The Kirigakure ninja that was having the deal with Ooguchi, and since Shimo went to intercept the deal... Oh, God! Did that mean that Shimo died!? No... That couldn't have been true! Mana shouted out in pain as her entire body felt like it was covered with fire as it stood up. She tore off what little remained of her jacket, her uniform was completely messed up, just enough remained to keep her dignity intact...</p><p>Such powerful devastation, the man must've killed himself too, what the hell was that all about? He couldn't possibly have run away, he had to hold the chains... A figure walked through the flames. Since the house was mostly built out of junk and scrap it must've been Ooguchi's gigantic carcass that was fueling the flame. "Just a clone, magician girl, I very much plan to live through this." the artificial voice spoke again. Only now the magician had a brief chance to get a look at the man, he was dressed just like a ninja that clung to shadows would've been dressed like - a black but slick armor. It must've been made from some sort of cloth but some areas like the face and chest had tougher protection, made from steel or another protective layer. The armor was decorated, the whole cloth part looked like the skin, the protective parts tried to emulate human skeleton with his face being most over the top of all - even with a miniature couple of fingers sized demon horns at the end. His whole body was wrapped in chains, those were without a doubt his main long-range weapon.</p><p>"You may want me to kill you and be over with it. That'll have to wait for one second. I sadly have a fatal flaw, I really love to tell people things, sensei says one day that'll kill me so he keeps beating me half to death every time I try to explain to my victim how I got them and how I'll kill them. Sensei tells me I am a prodigy, a genius even, and as such I want my mind to be understood, I want my victims to know just how good their killer is." He started talking with that annoying voice again. Mana wasn't sure if it was something that he needed to breathe, like a breathing apparatus inside that ridiculous outfit of his, or maybe just so his voice isn't recognized, he pressed something at the side of his neck and the artificial voice stopped. When he spoke Mana's body shook with anger and shock.</p><p>"You may recognize my voice. Yes, I am the guy that gave you the tip in the first place. You see this mission is sort of an initiation ritual, initiation into being an elite assassin. I was given the task to kill a man in Konohagakure, an influential man no less. Assassins always have to raise as little noise as possible, then again, I am also a perfectionist so I wanted my presence to not even be known. Then I heard you three talking about Ooguchi's thing, imagine my surprise, three young weakling ninja looking for the man I am trying to find ways of killing silently... Your expression betrays you, girl. You get it, don't you?" the man spoke with pride behind his voice, he was PROUD of having just killed a man, he was proud of what he was about to do too. He was proud of it all.</p><p>He was right, Mana knew what he did, he planted them, played them so that they got to Ooguchi so that then this guy kills them and Ooguchi and puts it on their heads. He framed their names, he was going to kill Mana, Shimo and Sugemi, no, he was doing more than that. On top of their deaths, he will also mix their memories with dirt, their names will go down in history as names of murderers, ninja that one day just decided to kill a man inside their own village. A man loved by the people that the same man secretly enslaved... Mana was so stupid, why did she get involved? Now she brought shame to her entire family, she burned down every bit of fame her father worked for, she would be the person that ruins the family name that father made from nothing. All that her father did, she would undo... Mana's merciful heart filled with rage once again. She couldn't keep it in anymore, if she would die today she'd go fighting.</p><p>Mana shouted out, that was her roar of pride and rage, she charged forward at the man who obviously was not expecting it, probably wasn't even done talking yet. Her first kick surprised the assailant and it landed right on his cheek just like the girl had intended it to go. Mana always wanted to make an improvised style of martial arts, one focused on kicking just so she could reach further, keep people away for her actual strategy to be used on them more efficiently. She may as well play with what she'll never get to anyways... Mana's kick seemed to hurt the man, what the magician girl perceived as armor barely absorbed the shock and it cocked the man's head to the side. This was her chance, she got the hit in, she dazed the man, she may as well make him work for that kill! Mana's legs danced gracefully as she kicked wherever she could find an opening in, the head, the chest, wherever she saw none of that ridiculous skeleton-like protection of armor her feet went for. As one leg got tired of attacking, the kunoichi switched to the other. She must've kicked him so many times but the man just stood there and took it, he didn't stumble back, he didn't fall... This was bad.</p><p>Both of her legs got tired, Mana was grunting and huffing openly as her relentless barrage of kicks made her defeat herself by exhausting her. NO! This was absolutely not the time to give up, she would fight with all she had, if she would die in the end she'd make the man lose more than a couple of teeth from getting kicked in the jaw. The young genin dashed backward tossing explosive tags in the air, just in time as the man had planned to counter her kick with a punch of his own which would've sent Mana down, kicking made one only have one leg of footing which was not solid ground, one simple hit would've sent her down. Now the assassin dove right into the cloud of papers, the last of Mana's explosive tags went into the air. The magician made handseals and shouted out proudly "Friendly Gust Jutsu!" usually the technique was used to deliver the tags from one point to the other with a gust of wind - this time it was just to faze her opponent so that he stood still while she detonated the tags.</p><p>Mana made the seal, at that moment she did not think if the tags would kill the man or not, she just went all out, ridding herself of both most of her chakra and all of her regrets. As the chain of explosions riddled the area Mana's hands weighed down and her body hunched a little. Never has the dirt looked more comfortable and cozy than at that moment. Mana felt pulsing around her eyes and in her head, she knew this feeling, the feeling of being almost out of chakra. Her recent experience with this helped her better understand her limits, had she not spent too much in the archive in Forest of Death she may have spent too much here, tried to follow up this technique with something else... No, her "Magical Explosive Combo" was complete. As Mana breathed more and more heavily she wondered if the man had died.</p><p>Sharp pain - her opponent flashed out of nowhere with the kind of speed that would've probably made Tanshu-sensei proud. He dodged that combination with so little time to react! And yet... This was not the speed of a Jounin, in fact, Mana saw that same kind of speed from Shimo. Could this man have been a genin?! A genin trained by the elite assassins so much that he transcended the lines of ranks? His body was trained just as much as Shimo's he must've been of around the same age. Mana's body stumbled backward, at this point, the girl almost felt no pain, adrenalin flooded all over her body. She heard the man's cloth rustle in the cold night's wind, "MOVE!" she ordered herself inside of her mind but her body froze. The man's arms worked like a machine gun, he attacked using his palms, just like Mana used to, the difference was that this man was much stronger and much better trained. He punched so fast, just as the pain of one strike reached the magician's brain he was hitting in multiple other areas. And yet... He was not perfect, all this disguise of him being a Demon of Kirigakure and he still was breathing heavily.</p><p>The man jumped backward flipping his legs and finishing his combination of blows with a backflip kick right in Mana's chin. The magician could've sworn that she lifted off the ground. Everything was white, was she dead? No... There were some loud voices all around her, buzzing inside of her head, and then they all went away just as spontaneously as they came to be... She was alive. Mana could feel the pain of being alive, the reality that felt worse than dying at that moment. Pain all over, the bleeding cuts all over her body made her hair that was all over the ground feel sticky. She heard the man huffing! He was getting tired of annihilating Mana. That was just what the girl needed, a sign that all of this struggling was not in vain... What was she talking about? Of course, it was not in vain, she was Nakotsumi Mana, the young woman that one day would change the world! Make human life be worth something, this goal could not possibly be a vain one! Mana's eyes turned at her opponent, he jerked his hands to the side as blade claws shot out of his fingertips. "Don't worry, magician girl..." the man said while huffing, he finally then realized his mistake, revealing to his victim that he too was human, the assassin quickly flicked his cyber voice back on.</p><p>"These claws going through your neck will not hurt one bit, it'll end it all fast, you've fought valiantly, maybe even valiantly enough for me to care to get your name before I end this." the self-appointed demon spoke. The girl closed her eyes, the man took it as a sign she was giving up, truth be told - Mana was ordering her body one last move. The man's arm shot forward, his claws dug deep into the girl's neck, but something was wrong, in a poof of smoke her body disappeared and a piece of scrap iron was there in her place. "Substitution?" the cybernetic voice spoke to himself, a punch to the jaw silenced him. "My name... Is Nakotsumi Mana!" Mana shouted out as she started punching wildly, she was just as skilled at close range combat as a genin that did not specialize in it, that often got underrated, she certainly enough was no match for this man but... She'd make him sweat for his victory!</p><p>The two opponents started exchanging blows, Mana kept striking but her attacks were blocked one after the other. This man felt like he was impossible to hit, her every punch, every kick he pushed away with a simple flick of his wrist, it looked almost like he was resting throughout this entire struggle! His move economy was impossible, not a single movement was unnecessary. Mana had had enough of that brief exchange of blows to know where this struggle would lead her, she needed a ninjutsu technique but could she afford it? At her current exhausted state, she'd have to be pretty cheap and use some of her weaker ones and that was never something the kunoichi liked to do. The young one kicked the man with all her might as he effortlessly blocked it with both of his hands, slightly slipping backward, giving Mana that distance she so desperately needed as the girl weaved the handseals and...</p><p>The Demon's elbow dug deep into her gut. Mana just let out a single gasp of pain and surprise. Her mind turned off... She couldn't remember anything from that point as everything blurred and went white. There was just her weightlessness and her body hitting the ground but it no longer mattered... The assassin flicked his hand again getting his claws out, his last set was discarded as they were bent up and dulled from hitting solid scrap. "And that is how the magician dies..." he spoke thrusting his arm aiming at the girl's neck!</p><p>A loud clang broke the assassin out of his ecstasy - Shimo's wakizashi clashed with the man's claws sending a barrage of sparks out in the air! Mana was lucky not to have seen the face of her friend, this Shimo was smiling and enjoying the fact that he was about to be in a fight for his life. How could he not? He was looking for a chance like this whole day! "Who on Earth are you!?" the Demon grunted, trying to win the clash against Shimo's blade and cut Mana's arteries open, but Shimo's wicked bloodthirsty smile only grew wider. "Mana-chan is out, good, means I don't have to hold back, she won't be mad at me for kicking your butt with all I've got!" he grunted back at the assassin.</p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Blizzard Cut VS The Infernal Chains</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shimo and the assassin struggled with their clash, each trying to push the other away with the assassin still trying to dig his claws into Mana's neck. Shimo smiled, something that the man facing off against him found annoying, "What's so funny?" he asked, "You need a break? You look like you're just coming from a beating of your life..." the assassin tried to regain his intimidation factor by noting the injuries all over Shimo's body from his encounter with the jounin earlier. "It's funny..." Shimo spoke still holding the clash of his blade with the assassin's claws firmly, "Mana-chan always believed that no person is ever unnecessary, that all life is sacred... I think right now I am bound to agree with her." Shimo spoke.</p><p>"What the hell are you on about? She got beaten by her own idiocy, she was so careful and foolish to try and set a trap for Ooguchi that she did the most damage to herself when it blew into her face. She is a failure and she deserves the shame her death will bring to her." the Demon pushed his claws, trying to win the clash but unsuccessfully. Shimo just chuckled and shouted out loud as he shoved his blade with the last of his strength, the assassin's claws broke off of the device that held them to his fingertips, using this victory to its fullest the Yuki kicked right into the assassin's armor sending him sliding through the mud several feet back. Loud cracks started erupting all over the protective surface of the man's fancy outfit as the night-black protection of the tough material that absorbed blows to his chest and head crumbled. Suddenly the Demon of Kirigakure found himself standing with just a black jumpsuit and a simple black cloth mask covering his face.</p><p>"You had a pretty fancy outfit, protected in several areas making it hard to near impossible for a blade to land a solid hit. I'm not sure what Mana-chan's intentions were fighting you, she's a peaceful girl that hates fighting but... It's entirely possible that she wanted to make it easy for me and Sugemi to take you out by leaving you exposed. Cloth offers less resistance to cold steel than whatever you had on there, also now that stupid voice of yours shuts up!" Shimo swung his wakizashi to the side and stood back into the fighting stance, spreading his legs wide to have better solid footing, lifting his blade into the air and ready to strike. "Plus, it looks like she gave you some trouble, even if she didn't want to fight you, to begin with..." Shimo never dropped his wicked smile for a bit, it felt great finally facing an opponent closer to his level, whatever that jounin meant by this guy being troublesome, he had this in the bag!</p><p>"I see... You believe that you are in some sort of advantage over me because your friend who is unconscious in the mud just waiting to be finished off removed my armor and made me huff a bit? My skin may be exposed now..." the assassin's body suddenly disappeared, within just a blink of an eye he closed the distance to Shimo, the boy swung his blade trying to hit the man's eyes with a slash, blinding him for life, it took the Demon a simple ducking motion to avoid the blade as his palm was thrust right into the boy's body - opening it up for a combination of blows. "But feeling cloth rubbing against my skin..." punch to the gut, "Or cold night's breeze sending chills through it..." diagonal upwards blow to the jaw, "Or there being no protection on my chest making it hard to breathe..." downwards kick to the side of the neck with the shin, "No tough plastic to get in the way of my muscles tensing..." double punch to the nose, "It only makes my body more primal... Faster, stronger..." a combination of crushing blows to the chest leaving no air in the boy's lungs, "More ruthless" a blow from the side of his arm covering all the way from his chest to the face, sending the boy down to the dirt with his friend, where he belongs.</p><p>The Demon was surprised to see that his relentless combination of blows did not keep the already beaten up boy down, instead of staying down the little swordsman used the momentum from him being blown back to roll back right on his feet and stay on his knees at the very least. Shimo clenched his nose, it spat out some blood, he could taste blood in his mouth and breathing hurt just the same as getting punched. This man seemed to favor quantity of blows over strength, he attacked a lot of times, covered many areas but he never really packed a lot of force behind a single blow. Still, if Shimo let him up close again and wasted his reach advantage that the wakizashi granted him he's as good as done. Nothing would stop the man from snapping his neck if he wanted to... Shit. This had to be it - Shimo had to go all out but could he? Could he use THAT in his current condition? Could he be fast enough? There was only one way to find out, the boy smiled and laughed out raising his blade up and taking a defensive fighting stance.</p><p>"You know... Not long ago, before leaving, sensei gave each of us a training session, one on one, told us a bunch of stuff, where we were strong, where we needed training, mostly how stupid and hopeless we were..." Shimo spoke as he threw his wakizashi into the air with all of his might and made some handseals. "I am Shimo Yuki, of the Yuki clan, I can use the famous Ice Release and am the only active ninja in Konoha with this ability." The boy kept speaking, his opponent did not attack, he was now on the defense, it was obvious that he didn't want to be up close to the boy when he uses his ace technique. Shimo's wakizashi slammed into the mud and stayed driven into the ground handle up. "Do you know what the most astounding advantage for a swordsman is? Speed. Good old raw speed... Do you know how to achieve speed? Speed is very relative, you can become faster... Or you can make your opponent slower... Do you know what cold does to your body?" Shimo smiled as a powerful chilling gust rose up making it impossible for anyone to move around.</p><p>The boy's technique drew water out of the air and froze it, he created a small artificial blizzard around the area making it hard to see, hard to move around, and for those that did not share his bloodline and weren't used to this technique it slowed down their reaction time and their movement. Shimo smiled as he reduced the blizzard to one compact twister around his opponent, it did no damage to the enemy and barely threatened his life, but it weakened his body which in terms made Shimo look fast. "Blizzard Cut - Two Slashes!" Shimo whispered to himself as he dashed forward with all of his speed that training bukijutsu helped him gain. "Too slow!" the assassin shouted out trying to outshout the howling gale of a blizzard but he felt a sharp pain and a warm stream of blood shooting out. A tap of Shimo's foot alarmed him that the child swordsman was already behind him, the assassin tried to turn around but he dashed through again. The blizzard stopped after the second slash as Shimo sheathed his short blade.</p><p>"Sure to you I seemed slow..." Shimo spoke with a certain spark of arrogance in his voice, this was something sensei had told him back then that helped him make this technique, no this style - using Yuki Ice Release to make his enemies slower, to distract them and ruin their chances to dodge or counter. "Your trained eyes saw me move from a mile away, ordering your trained body to counter but the problem was you were in shock, you were freezing, your trained body was just too slow to respond." Blood shot out of the assassin's body as Shimo's blade cut his flesh and left cuts in his clothes and his body instead of damaging his Demon's armor. The man was breathing heavily on his knees, he was injured and bleeding, he was moderately tired. "You little pests!" he yelled out from sheer rage, his body disappeared again, only to reappear right in front of Shimo.</p><p>The man's elbow quickly dug right into the boy's cheek, this attack was different, he put actual effort behind this one hit, he was slower but stronger! "Why do you stupid kids have to make this all so difficult!?" he yelled while kicking Shimo in the chest and reaching behind his back. "A weapon?" the genin instantly recognized the danger and tensed his body for a response. "Just stop trying to cause me trouble and die like good little Konoha weaklings!" the assassin shouted out grabbing two of his chain blades and using them as swords, Shimo's wakizashi just barely got in time to block them. The Demon's knee pushed the boy away, he already knew enough of the boy's physical strength not to contend with him in a clash. Seeing how the chains were already in his hands the Demon tossed both of the blades right at the boy. "Shit!" Shimo cursed swinging his blade to deflect the projectiles. A sharp pain came from his side as well as a warm torrent of blood went down and started dropping on the dirt.</p><p>Shimo managed to deflect one of the two chain-blades but one of them went right into his side. They weren't too large, just about as large as a small knife so they posed no immediate threat from a single stab but it was what the assassin was going to do with this successful hit that intimidated Shimo. "One, huh?" the opponent grunted with a certain amount of disappointment and grabbed the chain that held the blade with his arm, pulling Shimo in at a close distance. The chain blade ripped out of the boy's body but the force still pulled him in, the boy already knew he'd be dead if the man got his hands on him, he wasn't going to give him the chance, this was his fight! He was going to win! Shimo didn't resist the pull and the momentum, he used it by jumping into the air and dropkicking the man making his wound shoot blood like crazy. The boy loudly grunted from the pain but quickly jumped back on his feet and swung his wakizashi aiming at the man's throat. As much as Shimo wanted to respect Mana's beliefs, the girl was goddamn crazy if she wanted to take this guy in alive...</p><p>A loud clang echoed throughout the alleyway that the genin was fighting in as another set of Demon's claws blocked the swing. Shimo yelled out from pure rage and turned around kicking right to the assassin's chin sending him down on the ground. He was injured, he was tired, his reaction time wasn't that great. The fact that the Demon took this kick made Shimo believe in his victory again. The boy dashed backward clenching to the wound that the chain-blade left on his side, a hand proved to be a poor barrier for blood, Shimo felt the weakness all over his body already. He had to end this soon or he risked just collapsing from his bleeding. The boy made some handseals again, "Ice Wolf Jutsu!" he yelled out making a cold gust of wind, unlike the one he used in the Forest of Death this one was twisting around himself with a head of the wolf shaping just a couple of feet over Shimo's head. The boy's feet kicked his body out forward in a dash, it was pretty lucky that he could use a wakizashi with just one hand while clenching his wound with the other.</p><p>The boy dashed right through his opponent slashing him with the blade, a loud clang echoed as his blade was blocked with the claws again but this was not just another slash. Shimo finally recovered from his dash and sheathed his blade again with a smile just barely distinguishable from the pain. "White Wolf Slash" Shimo whispered under his own nose as blood shot out of the Demon's shoulders. This was Shimo's strongest combination, if this didn't keep the Demon down he'd be left with very few options. Shimo's brother who used to be a ninja in Kirigakure but was not allowed to be one in Konoha used "Ice Wolf" as a projectile of Ice Release, Shimo made the technique his. If his opponent blocks Shimo's swing, there was still the gust above his head cutting with multiple shards of ice to deal with, eight gashes to deal with - it was almost like an actual wolf was on the boy's back attacking his enemy together.</p><p>"A sneaky technique..." the voice of his rising enemy made Shimo afraid, "But the slash of the icy slicing winds is much less dangerous than your blade, the icicles were not as sharp, not as strong. Your exhaustion betrays you." The Demon definitely looked more demonic with each injury he received, his top was torn up by cuts and gashes, his mask had small holes and was covered with blood but... Somehow revelation of his humanity behind this nameless symbol of a demon only made him look that more supernatural. "He's just a man, you just messed up your cut... It's you... Not him..." Shimo tried desperately to convince himself this was his fault, that he just slipped up because no one had the strength to take his "White Wolf Slash", only Tanshu sensei withstood it but only with a kenjutsu technique of his own - "Red Cerberus Draw" a triple cut technique that makes the user draw and sheathe in rapid succession three times, doing it so incredibly fast that it looks like one slash from different angles. Even against such a technique... "White Wolf" cut through one of Tanshu-sensei's draws, Tanshu-sensei only won the clash because his technique was composed of three strikes so the two other strikes hit the boy knocking him out...</p><p>"Now it's just a matter of time..." the Demon lifted his body up, his hands were still weighed down and he was breathing heavily but he was clearly doing better than Shimo who probably was about to go down anytime soon. The two charged at each other, it was blades against claws again as each one of the two swung their weapon trying to cut the other, the assassin's moves were predictable, had they not been, Shimo may have skipped a couple of strikes but the way things went - the two were absolutely equal. They clashed with every strike, it seemed like the man's injuries compensated Shimo's own exhaustion. The two kept trying to find openings, switching their attacking sides, attacking high and low, left and right, diagonally, upwards and downwards and nothing worked, every time one cut, the other blocked it and responded with a thrust or slash of their own. Obviously, the Kirigakure Demon was the more masterful combatant - his weapon had a couple of times shorter range compared to Shimo's blade but mastery and skill had no role to play here, this was a brutal exchange of blows, mastery, and precision was long since forgotten, this was just two young men trying to kill each other.</p><p>Shimo roared loud trying to lob his opponent's head off or just open his throat but the Demon thrust both his hands forward launching a flock of sparks and pushing both men down on the dirt. The two crawled backward and stood back up, both of them were struggling to breathe, desperately trying not to collapse. Shimo's wound was still spitting up blood in weak but relentless torrents but the Kirigakure assassin must've had more wounds to worry about. The assassin laughed and clenched his ribs that may have been injured. Blood was hard to see in all of that black cloth. "You know... My official rank is... Genin!" the man kept on laughing. "That is the difference between our villages, in my village, a prodigy genin is capable of passing through your stupid defenses, one of me is enough to kill your whole stupid generation... Come, send all of your genin my way, send chuunin or jounin... You will only honor me more! There is no greater honor for a Kirigakure assassin than to die against many more skilled opponents after a successful kill!" Shimo slapped his dizzy head with his palm, "Gosh you sound like the darn Yoruma so much... I hate those guys..."</p><p>"I may be from the Yoruma clan, a clan of proud and unstoppable assassins or I may not be - you will never know because I have no history, no name, no face... I am a mystery to you and your pathetic village." the demon removed his mask and showed his true face - a face of a young man, perhaps sixteen years of age, not more, covered with scars and one that clearly has taken a beating or two in his life, his black messy and greasy hair went all over his pale face, he reminded a madman, a berserker much more than a Demon now. "Even when you see my face, even if you have my body you'd see but a void, there is no name to tag to that face, no meaning, no man. What is a letter to a man who cannot read?!" </p><p>Both of the young men simultaneously made handseals, the assassin spat out a small fireball, Shimo rolled out of its way and set out another small blizzard - this was the last of his chakra. This had to do! Both the assassin and Shimo dashed at each other, "Blizzard Cut!" Shimo shouted out loud aiming at the assassin's body that was shivering from the sudden cold around him as the Demon of Kirigakure swung at Shimo with two more chain-blades in his hand, using them as knives. Unfortunately, the blades of the two clashed, the clash shot out such blinding sparks and the noise was so loud that the two youths were temporarily deafened and blinded, or maybe that was not the bright sparks, but a figment of their burning souls, maybe it was not the deafening clang of steel clashing, but a small demonstration of their prideful roars of rage, but their own exhaustion...</p><p>The two ran past each other, the Demon dashed out of the small area of the artificial blizzard and Shimo's body slid through the mud. Both of the men fell down on their knees. Tearing sounds came from the assassin's side, the man straightened his body out and tore his cloth off, revealing his bare, cut up, muscular chest, it was hard to tell which of his scars he earned this day, which ones were from his gruesome training. Shimo coughed up, he fell on the ground. The Demon looked at his enemy, "You cut me first, my blade barely scrapped you and yet you collapsed... It seems that Galateia, the Goddess of War is in my favor." The assassin spoke to an empty street, he wanted to peel his body off of his knees, lift his chain-blades, walk up to Shimo and kill him, then proceed with his magician friend... He couldn't... He was just too tired. The man closed his eyes and put his black dirty mask back on, the mask that only showed his brown eyes. "Sensei... I will not fail you, I will not shame you any more than I've shamed you while fighting enemies of my rank and not finishing them off immediately." The Demon mumbled under his nose and stood up, creeping up to Shimo. The chains were too heavy, he let them slip off of his body and down to the dirt. He'll do it the old fashion way - with his own shaking exhausted and bleeding hands.</p><p>His hands wrapped around the magician girl's neck, she passed out first - she'd come back first as well. The man applied pressure, strangling an unconscious body was weird, it offered no resistance, how was he supposed to know when she was dead? Suddenly a loud rumbling noise alerted the young man making him jump backward from the girl's body and just in time to dodge a giant rock flying his way. The rock flew past into the distance and took down a small scrap iron home. The boy's tired half-naked and bleeding body turned at his new opponent's - a man with a bandana and a pair of shades and a woman with a black dress and glasses. "Is this a bad time?" the lady asked, mocking him. "Come! I am the Demon of Kirigakure, I will tear you down with my bare hands!" the young man's body tensed up as he shouted aloud at the duo.</p><p>"Well then... Shall we?" the man fixed his shades.</p>
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<a name="section0023"><h2>23. The Night of the Demon Ends. Resolution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Without hesitation, the young, now unmasked, and injured assassin charged at his two opponents. Dorimi, the male jounin with shades weaved a single handseal and slammed his foot to the ground, a large pillar of rock shot up blocking the assassin's path. However the Demon of Kirigakure was nimble, his foot quickly rose as he stood on his toes and his entire body twisted around the rising pillar. He thought to continue his charge but then froze and his body was thrown backward as Shibari's senbon hit him right in the chest and his shoulders. The young man rolled on the dirt and grunted in pain before slowly getting up and removing them.</p><p>"We weren't done talking yet." Dorimi remarked nonchalantly, "What did you mean before, saying this little brat could give us trouble, Shibari-chan?" The woman's eyes closed, judging from the assassin's eyes he would've loved to exploit this opportunity but with all of his injuries and exhaustion he was now almost glued low to the dirt. "The Sorceress kid is alive, her chakra is slowly going down which means she's in danger of dying eventually. Strangely enough, the Yuki swordsman's chakra is on the verge of death but it is not too excited over crossing this boundary, he is in much worse condition than his teammate but she is in more danger as her condition worsens slowly while that of the Yuki does not. I'd say we have five to ten minutes to deal with this, the girl might slip into a coma within half an hour or so with the rate her chakra is dropping. Be careful, your body seems to hurt too, your chakra has taken a large dip too, fighting that youngster tired you out, close-range combatants naturally trouble me so... We'll win, for sure, but this won't be pretty."</p><p>The young man rose from the dirt and wiped the mud off of his bleeding wounds. He laughed maniacally before his face froze in cold expression. "I've never killed jounin before but I enjoy when my opponents act cocky, I love to see that cockiness leave their face, is that the expression you will make?" he asked looking at the two jounin. He was confused that the woman in the black dress did not attempt to hide that her partner was injured and tired, why would she not be afraid to expose the weakness of her team? If such was the extent of the Konoha jounin stupidity, the Demon will grant them their deaths by rubbing that very same idiocy into their faces. He's beaten two genin already, they were pitiful and weak, how much stronger can jounin of such weak village be? Zero multiplied by any number is still zero. The young assassin believed in his training that his sensei granted him, this knowledge, this skill, this abuse and pain that made him grow strong. It will not bring shame to his village!</p><p>Dorimi made one more handseal raising four more pillars from the ground. "I don't believe you know who you are facing off against. I am Dorimi - the jounin of Konoha. My ability to manipulate the battlefield is without equal as I believe that battlefield advantage makes a won battle." Shibari fixed her glasses, she was annoyed by her partner's theatrics, "For example, my partner Shibari is one of the best Water Release users in the village but Water Release users are weaker without a source of water, sure, they can usually use the water from their own bodies or the air but their potency with an active water source nearby is multiplied tenfold." Dorimi leaped back onto one of his pillars as the four rock formations started to spin around and close in on each other, quickly grinding an open hole into the ground. Dorimi leaped into the air and weaved more handseals, "Water Style: Great Waterfall!" he yelled out spitting a large amount of water from his mouth onto the newly generated hole creating a pool of water.</p><p>"These so-called jounin are fools! They give me intel on their abilities. Normally I'd be honored to die fighting them after a completed job but... This information would be useful for Mizukage-sama and more importantly - sensei!" the assassin thought to himself. The body of the young man rose up, he overpowered his own bodily limits. How could he not? He now got another purpose, another assignment - survive and deliver this intelligence to sensei. Dorimi - the battlefield ninja who can shape the battlefield for strategic advantage and Shibari, a mysterious woman with Water Release techniques said to be the strongest of her elemental affinity. It'd have been even more ideal if the young man scoped their abilities, found weaknesses, all of this was going to be integral during the war!</p><p>Suddenly Dorimi's hands were slammed together as the rock he was standing on disappeared in the mud. The demon closed his eyes and reached for the ground, he was trained to fight after losing all of his senses, most genjutsu users were frail and weak when their opponent closed their eyes and shut off their vision. The young assassin felt the vibrations of the dirt and jumped sideways to avoid each of the rock pillars. "Such weakness... It would be a sin to let them..." unfortunately the boy did not finish his thoughts as a sharp kick hit him in the back sending him slamming right into the rock, breaking it into pieces. "Don't get cocky, boy," Shibari spoke. The rock pillars were weak, most likely because the ground was so soft, they crumbled after just one hit but the young man felt the impact all over his body - his body had taken so much punishment and was literally breaking, collapsing after being able to take no more. Luckily the Demon knew how to fight with his bones broken, all he needed was to adapt, stop using movements that hurt the bones that were broken!</p><p>The assassin of the Mist removed his boots and closed his eyes. He needed to feel the movement of the earth while listening to the best of his abilities for the attacks of the woman - these two jounin worked quite well in tandem, they must've been a team that went through many hardships. That gave him an idea. What if the two were bonded? What if they were friends? Naturally working alone the Demon had no friends and no bonds but he knew that such a thing existed, despite being located in the body of his enemy these feelings were his friends, no, his tools to exploit. The Demon lunged forward, he heard rumbling of the ground and the man's fist hitting the rock, he was throwing a rocky projectile at the Demon, the young man rolled forward right under the rock, no, a small edge of the rock cut the assassin bruising his back, it hurt, the pain did not matter. In the middle of his roll, the assassin pushed his body up using his arms and spread his legs wide spinning using his arms and kicking the Battlefield Ninja using his feet and knees repeatedly. The youth could hear the body of the man cracking, he could hear him grunting - the man really was injured and tired!</p><p>The Demon thrust his arm forward, aiming a rock-hard punch right to the man's neck, his fist would've broken the man's throat, made him unable to breathe and incapacitated, the Demon would then kill his first jounin and bring his head to his sensei! "No!" the mind of the assassin yelled inside his own head and stopped his arm in mid-air, sensing something around the man, something like armor, something that'd hurt his arm without a doubt if struck the wrong way. It was then that the boy heard something, a rising gurgling sound - the woman in black! </p><p>The youth rolled to the side as he heard sounds of crashing water. "Your Water Spout Jutsu missed? I thought your aim was spot-on?" Dorimi asked confused. Shibari fixed her glasses, "I wasn't aiming, I was watching your back." "I see..." the other jounin smiled as took off his shades and threw them away. Shibari laughed, "So you finally removed them? Gonna fight seriously?" Dorimi smiled "You do realize shades don't help you see in the dark, right? Actually, they hinder my vision quite a bit..."</p><p>The Demon could not believe this, were these people making jokes? What was this? Were they not serious? Their lives were on the line! Not that the lives of the Battlefield Ninja and the woman in black mattered on the grand scale but, to them, it must've. The assassin lunged forward again, rising up from the dirt trying to attack the man with a combination of taijutsu blows. This time he decided to use his palms, thrust them to make impulses and shockwaves through the man's armor of dirt and shatter it, then finish it! Sharp strikes were the way against meat and bones, blunt blows and throws helped against armor and barriers. The man didn't even protect himself, not until the first blow of the Demon shattered the armor, strangely enough, the woman did not aid the Battlefield Ninja, she just stood calmly and kept breathing calm, the assassin could've sworn that she even laughed out at some point. Were these two not friends and comrades, not even a bit of love perhaps? Had they no bonds like the Demon thought previously?</p><p>With a lock around the man's throat, the young man drove the jounin to the ground and started suffocating him. The woman still did not interfere. Suddenly the boy felt his body being lifted off by something - a rocky platform? How could he not hear it? Then the young assassin's eyes shot wide open, only to see the Battlefield ninja wearing rock like a glove, trying to slam the assassin between the two rocks. A crushing shockwave emanated through the district as the assassin's body was crushed and then poofed into smoke, the youth managed to replace his body using "Substitution" with a scrap piece of junk at the last moment and was breathing heavily further away. This jounin was smart, he moved the pillar incredibly slow, so slow that it only sent such small shocks to the ground around it that even with his entire body on the dirt the young man couldn't feel it. Had he not moved fast enough he'd be crushed by two rocks, even he couldn't have survived that impact, these jounin fought to kill...</p><p>"Is this hatchling giving you trouble?" the woman mocked her colleague, something that the man found annoying, "I let him get to me, I wanted him to grab me!" he yelled waving his arms like an idiot. These "jounin" of Konoha were pathetic, they did not behave like killers at all, it appeared that they were just playing a game. Such lightheadedness pissed the Demon off most of all. The youth weaved handseals and yelled out "Fire Style: Rooster's Tongue!" as he spat a giant spreading wave of flames. There it was! The two idiots were dead, they had to have been, the man was too busy bickering with his wench partner, both of them were deader than dead! The roar of flames was soon overcome by the roar of crashing water and the boy was washed back away by the flood. He slammed into the rumble of Ooguchi's house as the whole thing was washed away. It was that woman...</p><p>The pain was all over the assassin's body, the water he coughed up came together with pools of blood and his whole body was cracking and twisting as he tried to stand up. He was close to death, this was his cue to try to escape. Make the two fools believe that the water killed him and just get away with the intel. These jounin were fools but they were still jounin and certainly too powerful for the young assassin in his current state. The youth started to crawl away, slowly and quietly, the woman may have been a sensor but she had to concentrate to sense chakra, plus his body was so mangled and beaten that she may not have even picked up his signature at all. That was the first thing sensei taught him, to only lose when he died. Keep moving, stay conscious unless he was dead. That took years of beatings and injuries and experiences to learn. "Oh, shit..." was all that the Demon had the chance to think as the water wrapped around his leg and lifted him up into the air and slammed down into the dirt on the other side where he was trying to crawl. The heel of the woman called Shibari then dug sharply into his forehead, yet the assassin did not shame his sensei and his peers, he did not scream in pain!</p><p>It seemed like the water itself wrapped around the body of the assassin and the woman's fist then closed, "Water Bondage Jutsu!" she uttered as the pressure of the water pressed tight and broke his body. The assassin could not remember anything past that point. Dorimi scratched his head and looked at his partner, "Did you kill him?" Shibari coughed and then took off her glasses, "Don't joke around, he's a little bag of intelligence gold. I look forward to seeing how he responds to water filling his lungs only to retreat and then fill them again... His dark purplish hair... Might be a Yoruma, it'll be fun to torture the torturer for once." The woman winked at her partner. "Jeez you are cruel though, Shibari-chan, that technique was a bit too much for the boy." The woman turned around and formed a rope of water that she wrapped around her arm and the other end around the unconscious assassin, as she walked back the body of her prisoner got dragged together with her. "You're carrying the Sorceress, the Yuki, and the Nara we left behind..." she casually finished the talk.</p><hr/><p>Mana slowly peeled her eyes open. Just as they opened to certain degree sunlight instantly burst into her eyes. The girl tried to roll to the side but the pain took over her body stopping that from happening. Her muscles felt like they were completely disabled and unused for days if not weeks. It took some getting used to, slowly, one by one the magician got the feel of her every limb. What happened? Was she still alive? The pain all over suggested that this couldn't have been the Afterlife, plus what did she do to deserve it yet? The growing feeling that she was alive begged another question - how did she survive? Did Shimo or Sugemi help her? That had to be it. The girl sat back up letting her feet dangle just an inch from the mat on the floor. Then came the painful part of standing up and stretching out.</p><p>Mana descended the stairs, mother was busy in the kitchen, father was toying around looking over the death traps that the two were building before that last mission. Father looked at Mana with angry eyes, "Morning." he said and kept on looking at the trap, his movements were rough, but also precise, it took precision to know just how precise his movements could be before the pain took over his arms. Mother didn't say anything, the chopping of the octopus in the kitchen intensified hundredfold though - it was obvious that the woman was angry. There was a huge "talk" brewing in the future, Mana's head dipped down, she messed up big time. Something wrapped around her, the girl lifted her head letting her dark locks slip to the side as she saw mother's arms around her.</p><p>"You could've died..." was all that she said. "Your mother's right, what you and your teammates did was irresponsible and stupid, you're lucky that Hokage-sama is away, he'd have taken your licenses away and you would've never gone on another mission for a hundred years. The guy's an icon of peace but he's strict on stupid suicidal genin." Father was still angry, angrier than he could successfully try to hide, he let the anger take him over completely but he couldn't have been blamed - he had his own pain to deal with as well as the stupidity of his own daughter. "I'm sorry." Mana said, her eyes lifted to meet those of mother's "But... We had to do what we did, we didn't know that Ooguchi-san was being investigated when we started, we had to take him down, he was forcing people to work while keeping them in poverty."</p><p>Mother's eyes changed, she turned around and walked to the kitchen to continue chopping that octopus with as much force as her body could handle. "Well, you'd be glad to know that the district was completely taken down and reshaped by Dorimi-senpai, the people in the district will be given temporary places to live until they decide what they want to do - move or start making a living here. From what I've heard most of them were people from other villages and countries. There was this family that came to see you, wanted to let you know they're alright but... You were out at the time, apparently being able to manage three jobs made the family a lot of money and they've bought their first small home from their first pay. All of Ooguchi's wealth was also split for the people he kept under his watch so that'll help them settle in too." Father spoke while trying to do his thing adding up to the device. Mana smiled, she looked outside through the window and saw the Sun shining brightly. This was great, things worked out well, she was glad to hear that the family she went out of her way to help was OK.</p><p>"So... The secretary at the Administration was at your ward when we picked you up from the Hospital, she said your team won't be given missions until Hokage returns from the Summit, what'll you do in the meantime?" Father asked. Mana sat down near him, "Help you finish this, then I've got to learn how to throw a kick." The magician looked at the metal contraption of death and spikes, she had so much training to do. Fighting that assassin helped her understand just how much she still had to learn and just how powerless she was. That man was the exact antithesis of what she stood for - man that used ninjutsu for killing, a man who held life in no regard and threw it away casually for his own ends. Next time she meets a man like that, Mana needs to be able to fight them, to defend and stand up for her own beliefs even if she doesn't want to fight or hurt anyone. She needs to become strong, to become able to crush her opponents that wish to discard innocent lives with an overwhelming force so that she can show them that their way is evening Mana started training using her father's dummies. "Okay, I dunno how to actually train my taijutsu, I guess I'll start by just kicking this thing until I can't kick anymore, then in the morning I'll find someone to teach me... I'll also need to keep meditating and performing... Vacation has never felt busier." Mana thought as her leg lifted into the air and slammed into the dummy making it shake. Noises of thumping and crashing could've been heard from the magician's room throughout the night.</p>
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<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Tanshu's Story: Hell is Where Katei Is</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A small boy, couldn't have been more than six years of age, was observing his parents that were preparing for leaving. The boy's feelings were mixed, there was a certain amount of pride in his eyes but his face was as long as that of a horse. Despite being proud of his parents - the brave and strong Konohagakure chuunin little Tanshu could not stop crying. The sides of the boy's eyes started bleeding when the boy instinctually wiped his tears with the rough sleeve of his pajamas, the boy's mother saw the boy and slowly walked up to the little one sitting on top of the stairs and watching his parents through the space between the handlebars.</p><p>"Hey, what are you doing there? Go to bed you little rascal. Grandma said she'll be here in the morning so you won't be feeling lonely while we're gone." Mother said while wrapping her headband around her hair, letting just one lock fall over it so that they are not tied too tight. Father came up to the mother calming down her young boy and silently wrapped his arms around his wife. "Don't worry, son, it's just another big brawl, mother and I will be back in no time. We've got three candidates for the Sannin spot coming with us, they'll be eager to show themselves off for that title so they probably won't even leave any action for us. I'm actually jealous of you, your week with grandparents will at least be somewhat exciting, your mother and I will be stuck watching those guys plowing through the bad guys."</p><p>Little Tanshu smiled a little, father was always such a goofball saying the dumbest things. How could his parents have a boring time? They were going to war, after all. Just a battle of a war but it was a long and dragged-out war with many battles like this and his parents were in multiple already. Tanshu read all about war, that glorious place where strong ninja earn their name by killing the other bad ninja. It was the direct path to respect and adoration, other kids in the Academy keep looking at Tanshu with those jealous eyes because his parents are fighting in the war together with the likes of Misu of the Vapor and Chestnut Hanasaku and Howoku the Star of Hope - the three Konohagakure's top ninja that were told to soon succeed their elders in taking the title of Sannin. Tanshu didn't want that honor, he didn't want sensei in the Academy praising his family just if father and mother wouldn't have to leave.</p><p>Tanshu was a smart boy, he was able to see through what sensei and the books and every grownup told him. He knew what war was - father and mother would be fighting the bad ninja from the other villages. Even worse, ninja of the whole world were involved in the war. From what grandpa spoke last week the village of Sunagakure was sacked and torn down to the ground, now it's just a large sack of tents in the endless desert. The Kazekage was killed, most of the Sunagakure ninja died in the battle as well, all four other ninja villages just attacked Sunagakure and tore the village down. Everyone said it was a great victory but truth be told it was just a bunch of vultures descending on the weak. Three villages against one. Sunagakure against all the other villages that at the same time were fighting each other as well because with every ninja of another village they kill they withhold more loot from falling into the hands of that village. After that battle Sunagakure was completely ruined and had to withdraw from the war, it was lucky that they were still allowed to exist. Sensei was confident that Iwagakure will be the next one to go through this scenario. What if soon comes Konoha's turn?</p><p>No! Father and mother were heroes, they left and fought for their country, they were ninja of Konoha, Konoha may have fought alongside Kirigakure, and Kumogakure and Iwagakure to tear Sunagakure down but... They were different, they had to be! Konoha couldn't have been just a vulture feasting on the dying weak village, they were different, they had to be, they were... Konoha was Tanshu's home, they couldn't have been bad. Mother and father were supposed to be the heroes, fighting against the other villages defending Konoha so that Konoha is not the one to fall. As mother and father finally prepared themselves Tanshu thought he finally understood. Konoha had to be ruthless, had to be cruel, had to be evil, and tear Sunagakure down together with their enemies but only to defend themselves. In order to avoid dying they had to kill, in order not to burn they had to burn down the others. That was how life truly worked. Strongest survive, no, not really, strength alerted the prey and made them gang up on you, strength was irrelevant, only the cold calculating mind mattered.</p><p>Tanshu knew what had to happen in order for his parents to return to him, they had to slay the wicked by being more wicked than those they were slaying. Such was the natural order, the boy looked his father in the eyes, the boy's eyes were cold, exploding with rage and desire to kill those that would soon wish harm upon his parents whom he loved the most. "Father, I will pray that you slay everyone, that there is not a single enemy alive to cause harm to you or mother!" he yelled out through tears and anger. Mother's face was pale, she wrapped her hands and pressed little Tanshu against her body hard, the boy could feel tears falling down on his little head and going down his hair onto his back, then the warm teardrops disappeared somewhere below. Why was mother crying? Was she that proud of him?! She had to be! Tanshu made mother proud! Tanshu's head looked at his mother, he tried to catch her eyes that were filled with sadness but he saw father standing behind her looking right at Tanshu down her shoulder.</p><p>"It's not about just killing the others, Tanshu. That's not what Konoha fights for, that's not why we are leaving to battle." Father spoke, his voice was strict, little Tanshu shook and forcefully escaped his mother's grasp, he was confused. How could his father possibly have been mad at him, now of all times, now that he understood what it all meant? Fighting was necessary to prevent fighting, it made no sense but it was the natural order. "Then why?! Why are you leaving me!" Tanshu yelled out right into father's face, he saw mother's arm lifting to smack him but father caught it and shook his head, he kneeled down and looked his child into the eyes. "It's about protecting your home, protecting your "katei"." Father's voice spoke softly, now he wasn't really angry, didn't sound like he was. Mother wiped her tears too.</p><p>"Katei?" Tanshu repeated the word, he knew what it meant, it was pretty simple but why did his father make it sound like it had some other meaning? "Katei isn't just home, this house isn't your "katei", Tanshu. Katei is where your family is, where the people you love are, where happiness and serenity are. Where you feel calm and bliss and as long as you're there you'll never feel differently. Katei of your mother's and mine is this place, where you are and we go to war not to kill the people we are told to kill but to protect our "katei". Promise me you'll protect your "katei" while we are gone." Tanshu's head sunk down, so this word did have a special meaning, this "katei" he had to protect wasn't just "home" but it was where Tanshu is the happiest. The boy's hands clenched a knife in his hands, "I can't fulfill that duty, father, wherever you two are is my "katei", that means I must go to war with you two!" the boy yelled out with anger and certain bravery in his voice.</p><p>Father laughed, "Your moment to fight a war of your own will come, there will be wars as long as we live but this one is not yours. You need to trust this war to me and your mother. You can protect your "katei" after the battle is over but while you are, do not go to battle, that's your father's word." Mother kneeled down and hugged Tanshu gently and softly stroking his wild reddishly-brown hair. "That's right, Tanshu, you must protect your "katei", but you are grounded until the war is over for talking like you spoke before, that's the word of your parents." Tanshu nodded and hugged his mother back. After that father gently flicked him on the head and hugged him, before stroking his hair and leaving. The two just walked out into the rainy night, disappearing and giving birth to that certain feeling inside Tanshu's heart, that feeling that life just won't be the same anymore...</p><hr/><p>The battle that little Tanshu's parents left for was for a small speck of land inside the Fire Country. It was right past the neutral port that set sail ships that went to the Water Country, it was right in the middle between the access to the port and to the Snow Country - the road to Kumogakure to the north and to the Kirigakure. It was important because it provided access to all three currently relevant warring countries. Now that Iwagakure was less relevant, growing weaker and weaker with every battle yet, continuing to strain itself to try and fight with the stronger rivals, and Sunagakure had dropped out of the equation whoever controlled this invaluable land had access to the other countries. If the controller wanted they could easily assault Snow Village and block off Kumogakure from the rest of the world or they could take over the neutral port and block off Kirigakure from anything but what the ocean provides. Ocean's provisions would've also been contended for by the other island villages and countries around Kirigakure like the other islands in Land of Water. It might have caused a small Civil War inside the Water Country if so the controller of those lands pleased.</p><p>Seeing how Kirigakure wasn't pleased with this possible scenario as the Mizukage had plenty of reasons to fear the uprising of the smaller isles he desperately wanted to keep the land out of the grasp of his opponents. Even more, the man would've loved to make the land Kirigakure's bridge on land, from there his mighty village may have started to take over smaller lands and transcended its island roots, perhaps move into the Land of Waves which Kirigakure so desperately wanted for itself, the small neutral village would've made a wondrous industrial district for the Kirigakure so that those hideous industrial districts could've been moved from the main island and stopped making the environment so bleak and depressing. Mizukage was an oppressive fellow so he needed some desperate "happiness points" to keep his island village and the smaller islands around it from getting any bright ideas of change. His predecessor was assassinated by some rebellious black ops after all...</p><p>Kumogakure wanted it mostly to ensure safety for Snow Village, the small village was a neutral shopping and rest town that had all sorts of winter resort activities in it, plus the vast white hills of Snow Country land were filled with natural resources and made plenty of money for the Snow Village that was an ally of Kumogakure. In order to maintain the steady and generous flow of natural resources like minerals and metals, used for military purposes, Kumogakure had to assure Snow Village safety and keep those bleak allies happy to the best of their ability as they were an invaluable ally. It was understandable that one of the warring Countries having the land in their control would threaten Snow Village's safety which the Cloud Village could simply never allow.</p><p>Most importantly of all, this was Fire Country land from the time that the Great Satsuhimasa won them over, all the way back from the days when the Garuru clan was still a thing, from the War of the Moon and the Earth days. Such land was a part of Fire Country's cultural legacy, it was a beautiful and warm forest land with lakes and rivers that had plenty of small settlements of farmers all around it. To Konoha it was all about protecting their land, their interest, that which had belonged to them since times unknown, since before people counted time even, since before there were actual countries and villages, since the clans of descendants of the First People roamed the Earth looking for a better life. Konoha could not afford to lose this lovely and integral piece of land... Needless to say, all the countries went all-in to claim this land!</p><p>The battle waged for many days, entire two weeks passed before word of the results of the battle came back. The battle was won by Konohagakure but by a very small margin and as the result of the battle, the land became useless. Every side lost pretty much all of their ninja, one Kirigakure Sannin died in the battle and two of Kumogakure Sannin had perished as well. Just like that two of Konohagakure Sannin perished too with the third wishing to leave her title behind and pass it over. To make the victory even more Pyrrhic, the land that everyone was contending for became tainted by the dead bodies and covered with the dust of bones and ashes of the dead, it became a wasteland of death, it constantly emitted noxious fumes making the stench almost too difficult to take for any human being, the land transformed into a wicked swamp that would've swallowed any attempt to use the land for industrial or military uses or transferring any goods, moving ninja through there would've been impossible! Everyone died and did so for absolutely nothing.</p><p>The village was completely crushed, in just several days they lost all of their strongest ninja with the young-bloods being injured and unable to assist them in multiple future battles to follow. The land was claimed by no one. All three countries exchanged letters of apology, grief, and sorrow with every other country admitting that this war was looking more and more pointless. Even more, every other warring country promised to never threaten this land again with the bones and ash of their dead as well as their unburied bodies around the dark swamp to remind them of the worst of days. The day when everyone lost their heads out of fear that the enemy would threaten them making them do the things they were afraid the enemy would do. Even Kirigakure promised to never contend for that land again and Konoha answered with a promise to never use that land for any strategic war-related purposes. That land was a sacred sanctuary for those that died for this country and fighting in this war.</p><hr/><p>Little Tanshu was playing with his friends in the house, training and sparring with them for tomorrow's test in the Academy that would determine if he finally became a true ninja like his parents. It was then that grandpa entered his room and asked for his friends to leave. The kids' heads were down to the ground, the room was suddenly surrounded by this dark gloom that would never leave it. The old man looked at Tanshu, breathed in and out, in and out again trying to make it easier for himself to say those words. "Little Tanshu... Mother and father won't be back... Ever..." he said, he was a veteran ninja so he knew little of how to comfortably deliver such news, he was rude and just said things like they were.</p><p>Tears filled little Tanshu's eyes as he shook his head. He roared out in pain and grief, charging for the door and pushing his grandfather away violently, the old man fell down on the floor and grunted in pain, yelling for the little boy to wait. It was to no avail, the young one kept running and running, past these endless houses this wretched village of liars and murderers that mother and father died fighting for, NO! They didn't die fighting for this village, Tanshu refused to believe it, they died protecting their "katei", just like father had told him before leaving! The child ran past the gate guards that didn't even notice the child running outside the village walls. Tanshu just kept running, into the wild, past the trees. He knew where he wanted to be - where his mother and father laid down their lives because without them his home was not his "katei". His "katei" was now that battlefield, where his mother and father were laying dead. That was where his "katei" was.</p><p>The boy kept running until he just got exhausted and collapsed. Initially, he thought that his life now had no point, what did he have to look forward to? What did he possibly have there to comfort him? Was he supposed to look forward to becoming a ninja too, perhaps fighting in these stupid wars for nothing?! For some stupid land that would switch its owner after the next battle only to be regained and then lost again later. No! To Hell with that bullshit! As the boy woke up the next morning, hungry, cold, and exhausted, he thought long and hard about his life and what it even meant anymore. His life was meaningless and he was the only one left to give it meaning anymore. Slowly, one step at a time, through pain, hunger, and exhaustion, covered with bruises and blunt traumas and his own blood from continuously tripping over and wounding himself little Tanshu kept walking forward.</p><p>He was a different young boy now, he killed small and large animals to survive, he kept training for hours on end during the night. He would find his "katei" again and he would protect it until the end just like he promised his father! That was the new purpose of his life that the boy had given to himself. Tanshu would wage war against anyone that threatened his "katei". Finally, the ground became black and sticky, filled with bodies and bones and ashes of dead people. The boy leaned over a rock and threw up, so that was the smell of death? It did not matter! It was the smell of his new "katei", his happiness and bliss. The boy kept walking forward, trying to find his father and mother, or at least some sign that they were there before they died. He would protect his "katei" and he swore it to his father and mother, now he had to swear it to their graves as well. The boy kept drinking just to have some liquid to throw up, he had to get used to this putrid smell of guts and death, this smell of burning and no one knew what else. If there was Hell, Tanshu was there, not only that, Hell was where he wanted to be, Hell was his only and true "katei"...</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Tanshu's Story: He With the Eyes of God</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A band of men was marching through a nasty landscape filled with downed and rotten trees and skeletons all around them. While skeletons were certainly a poor company for a traveling group of moderately armed men that was not what intimidated the group - that would have been the ground in the swampy wasteland of death. The ground everywhere was black like the eternal void of death that the place reeked off. One could not know when the ground would open, when the black dirt would become a pure sludge of lethal stench that eats one up in seconds and when it would be sharpened coal-like surface that is able to cut through shoes and legs like butter.</p><p>Many people disappeared around those parts, no one ever went to that place which was why this ragtag team of bandits had decided to settle down there and make that place their headquarters, the place where they return to after every big job to settle for their share of the loot and party until the morning. Morning, of course, was a relative term there, the clouds were always gloomy and the Sun never showed its face, sometimes the marshlands and the swamps ignited and started flaming and that made even the late nights bright but gloomy - it was literally impossible to tell when it was night and when it was day in this cruel birthplace of death itself.</p><p>The criminals advanced slowly, helping out their friend that got into trouble by getting into the black sludge up to his knees or fending off the few animals that wandered to those parts. The stench here was impossible to stand, every couple of minutes one of the bandits threw up on the black gooey dirt surface, the men literally had to keep drinking so that their constant vomiting from the stench and lack of fresh air did not kill them. This place reeked of sulfur and despite this place having its battle concluded three years ago, it still reeked of rotting human waste. Perhaps it was the flesh and bones of the curious or daring travelers that passed through this place that still kept the stench going?</p><p>"This is a bad fucking idea..." one of the men spoke up finally as he waved the stick to hit a vulture spinning around his head as his body dug deep into sludge again. He was pulled out by his friends, one of them spoke up as well. </p><p>"Everything's a bad fucking idea with you. Remember when we wanted to raid that caravan near the Konohagakure gate? You said that was a bad fucking idea too." The man took off his boots and shook the black slimy dirt off of his shoe, then cursed and yelled out loud as the ground cut his feet opening up a gruesome wound. It was almost like he stepped on the edges of multiple blades. </p><p>"That was the WORST fucking idea, Higumo, Shoji, Mangoku, and Okumo died!" the man replied and bandaged his foot. "Details... We escaped with plenty of food and loot" someone from the group replied.</p><p>"May I remind you, gents, that it is because of that fucking raid that we are here, to begin with!?" the bandit spoke up as he approached the man leading the party. </p><p>"Had we not raided that caravan and didn't attract the attention of ninja we wouldn't have needed to hide here, just when we took those damn bags from the cart those fuckers just started chasing us like crazy!" The man in front kept walking forward silently, he was a nasty looking fellow with a certain "cool" charm to him, he looked just like one would've imagined a bandit to look like - rag clothes, a dirty cape that looked like somebody's curtain or dirty sheet stolen from the laundry bag, a giant scar all over his face as well as an eyepatch. The man's eyes were always angry and looking cruel, always ready to incinerate anyone he sees with his eyesight alone.</p><p>The man turned around and slapped his comrade, the man fell to the ground and screamed in pain as more wounds opened up on his body after getting cut by the now rock-solid ground. "Shut the fuck up, you loser! Konoha ninja ran like dirty dogs because they follow an agreement to not have any military forces in this ground ever, a group of five or more qualifies as "military force" in the agreement and they didn't want to send less than five ninja of average rank into this place. It's perfect for bandits to hide, I've no idea why no other bands ever grouped up here. This place is amazing!" the man shouted out, his voice echoed through the wasteland of death. Some people who have visited this place and lived to tell the tale had described it as "Hell on Earth" and it was quite apparent that they weren't too far off.</p><p>"Jeez, it's getting dark here!" another bandit shouted out, "It's always fucking dark and gloomy here, on top of it all it stinks like your dead mother's diaper!" yet another replied. The group kept walking, they weren't yet sure where exactly they were heading, they had to find some materials for their base, all they had were some clothes and a bunch of bones lying around. It didn't quite make a good bunch of things to build a solid base from. </p><p>"Why didn't we stop, yet, boss? What are we waiting for?" one of the men closer to their leader asked. The leader grunted and grumbled under his nose but didn't reply a thing. "We need to walk far away from the border of this place, I'm worried that entire armies of bandits might come here and realize just how perfect this place is for hideouts." the man then replied after a long enough pause to make no one expect a reply any longer.</p><p>A loud shout of pain came up as a man disappeared from the group, only his closest comrade saw him fly off into the darkness. He shouted out some unintelligible babbling, then just pointed in the direction he disappeared in. "We keep going" the leader ordered with an angry tone. </p><p>"I've heard there was a battle here three years ago, I bet that the spirits are still goddamn furious that they died so they killed your pal" one of the dumber sounding bandits laughed out holding his stomach as he laughed. </p><p>"Have some shame, fucker, Chucho saved your ass today, did you forget how he deflected that arrow for you?" the bandit that saw his friend fly off into the dark gloomy shade yelled out. A loud scream of a man dying interrupted the bandit group, that convinced the leader to keep moving faster, he ordered the men to keep watch. </p><p>"Yeah, cause that idiot found a coin and ducked to pick it up when he stood back up the arrow hit his damn helm... AAAAAGH!" the bandit tried to reply but was interrupted by an unseen force that dragged him outside the perimeter into the gloomy darkness.</p><p>The men started losing their cool and freaking out, losing and meeting new people of their crew was nothing new to them, comrades died and new friends were made each day. What worried the men was that they did not see their slayer and were worried that they'd be next. Usually, any danger can be evaded by just running really damned fast - now there was nowhere to run. For kilometers around this place, there was only the deadly Hell of a battlefield surrounding them, hungry for victims to swallow whole or bloodthirsty and wishing to cut them as deep and as many times as humanly possible. Then again, even if they did run and get lucky, what would've stopped this demon of the gloomy night from catching them completely off guard? The men were absolutely terrified.</p><p>Suddenly the leader stopped on his feet making the men behind him bump into the back of their leader. A dark and short figure stood in the gloomy shadows, completely invisible beyond just recognizing the basic humanoid shape, this could've been a spirit, a mad psycho killer, or a demon of this swampy gooey Hell for all they knew. "You are in my katei, leave now and you'll be spared, continue to desecrate it and I will kill you" a grumpy yet almost childish voice came their way. </p><p>A bandit yelled out and gasped in fear, "It's a demonic spirit of the child that had his parents sneak him into a battlefield and then he died!", his friend to the side slapped the back of his head, "You dumbass, who'd sneak their child into a battlefield, parents keep children away from battle!"</p><p>The leader of the bandits drew his curved sword and took a step forward. "I am the new owner of this wasteland and I claim it as my home! Be you just a child, a spirit or a demon, I spit at you and I will be the one killing you..." suddenly the man stopped in his tracks, only then did the bandits notice a young child behind him with an exposed blade. It was a short blade, the likes of which inexperienced ninja carried, the blade was cracked and chipped in multiple places. The boy himself was short and looked like a little jungle boy with his reddish-brown hair flowing freely over his shoulders and his face being completely pummeled and bandaged and his body covered with scars. "You're in my katei, leave now!" the child spoke again as the boss of the bandits collapsed having blood spray from his chest. The black slimy ground started to slowly consume the man's body. The bandits all drew their swords and took their staffs and improvised weaponry. The boy yelled out loud to express his discontent at this decision and charged forward at the group of bandits.</p><p>It would've been an incredibly odd sight to behold to see this battle transpire from the side, one would've had to come extremely close through the noxious gases that erupted from the ground and through all the perils that the place had. The boy's cracked blade continued to dance over the bodies of the men that have entered his sacred space, the boy was not a demon, just a young man and he constantly slipped up and got punched or struck with a weapon opening up wounds. Not that it mattered for this boy truly acted like a demon, his endless dance with his blade continued and would've never stopped until he or the men he was facing off against had died. To this boy this space was sacred and no other man or woman or child had the right to be present in his "katei" or else they be killed. Many times Senju shinobi from the Leaf have come to this place to try and fix it, make a forest of trees using their Wood Release, and then use Earth Release and Water Release to fix this landscape but... All of them caught only their deaths, all of them died and while each of them injured young Tanshu, each injury taught him yet another lesson. Made him stronger and faster and smarter and the fact that in order to honor their agreement with the other countries only less than five ninja could've entered this ground at once helped him not to get overwhelmed and captured throughout the three years he lived here.</p><p>Tanshu's sword went through the throat of the last bandit. The man coughed up and fell having been cut down by the rampaging demon of this hellhole, no, Tanshu was no demon, not yet, he still felt pain, he still got hit, a demon was perfect, a demon made no mistakes and killed without any warnings, a true demon craved death and bloodshed which Tanshu did not. A fighting dog was what Tanshu was, fighting when his bowl of food is threatened. He warned these men, he wanted them to leave but they didn't, so he killed them just like his parents would've in order to protect their katei. Parents would've been so proud of him if they saw him! Tanshu wanted to believe that there was an Otherworld where they saw him from but... Seeing what he had seen through these three years, the worst that this world has to offer, bandits, thieves, murderers, arsonists, and rapists fleeing to this ground to hide from justice. They were not welcome here! If someone wanted to take Tanshu's katei they were welcome to come and claim it.</p><p>As the boy tried to pull the blade out of the man's throat it broke off, it was inevitable that it would happen, the boy looted this sword from the first man he had killed in this place. He cursed as he looked around, he found the loot of these men and looked into the bags, they were full of food and medicine, bandages, and the things that he so desperately needed. The boy sat down and started bandaging himself, all those endless gashes where he was cut by either the bandits or the ground he was sleeping on, he then ate and drank from those bags and took what was left with him, all that he could carry and what he couldn't the boy tipped with his foot into the sludge that soon devoured all of it. This loot was not his, he felt bad that he claimed it but... In order for the rightful owner to claim this loot, they would've had to come into his katei and claim it, if that happened Tanshu would kill them defending his katei. He did not wish to do that, it would've been better off if there was no loot, to begin with...</p><p>As the boy passed through the corpses he noticed that the bandit leader was carrying a larger katana, the boy dropped the loot down and bent down to see what it was about. As the young kid picked the sword up and checked its blade he cursed, the blade was dull as a chunk of steel - must've been one of those "non-lethal" sword junk. These were quite common, slave traders used those, people that just wandered the out of village areas that belonged to no country claiming villagers and travelers, as well as other bandits as their slaves, "pacifistic" travelers, also had those, Tanshu hated all of them. One group were just human filth that had it coming when the boy cut them down, the other were just fools that were lying to themselves. There was no place for not killing when wielding a sword, there was no other option than to kill when fighting. These fools were just easy food for slave traders and then to Tanshu - slave traders had a nasty habit to command all of their slaves to fight the boy before they themselves tried to. Because of that all peaceful idiots that refused to kill automatically associated with enemies to Tanshu, a potential enemy was an enemy regardless. In the wild, a potential enemy was even more dangerous as the current enemy is fighting you right now while a potential enemy might attack you when you're unprepared.</p><p>Those were the times that Tanshu lived in, times where he killed whoever wandered into his katei with no mercy or reason other than that they were where they shouldn't have been. It all changed, however, all changed just a couple of weeks later from the day that Tanshu killed those bandits and changed his blade. Despite that the blade was dull, the boy still preferred longer reaching blades than the curved trash that those fools had, at least with the dull sword he could still thrust and stab someone, the boy already lacked range because of his short arms anyways, he couldn't afford to fight with a curved short sword. Still, the boy had decided to sharpen his sword one day as poking things he hunted or wanted to kill was just too difficult for him. Tanshu always preferred slashing over thrusting and he didn't feel like adapting his style. It was then that he heard a bunch of people walking up to him, how could they do that? Tanshu learned to feel the vibrations of the ground, he had traps and all sorts of alerts and impeccable hearing that alerted him when something was going on nearby. He controlled an area at least three kilometers in radius and only missed out on two or so by the edges of the wasteland, those that passed through there either got scared by the view of the place and the deadly stench and left or went in deeper to where Tanshu saw them.</p><p>The boy didn't bother to lift his eyes at the passing by people, he kept sharpening his blade, only nonchalantly adding "You're in my katei, leave now or I will kill you." Someone of that group laughed out, a woman stepped out in front, she had creamy pink hair and deep green eyes, her voice was annoying as hell though. She was dressed pretty weird for such a place too, her white clothes would've gotten dirty with black goo from the dirt or her own blood when she cut herself on the rocks. Only her boots were pretty cool, they were large and thick, maybe Tanshu should loot them off of her body? He wouldn't have to worry about getting cut in his feet ever again! </p><p>"So what if we're in your home, brat, scram out of here and maybe WE won't kill YOU!" she spat out with her stupid annoying whiny voice. That voice pissed Tanshu off and he stood up, the boy easily swung the sword around his head and then put it into his sheath and then stood into a drawing stance.</p><p>A man with a black round hat stepped in, he had his entire face and body covered with a huge coat and the lower part of his face as well as everything below wrapped in bandages. "Halt, Hana" he lifted his eyes at the boy, his eyes were so strange, they looked like pure silver but had strange circles all around it, only looking at them was scary! "It appears like this boy is a swordsman, he may be worth his words and if he is he'd be worth to be my beloved apostle if he is not... Well... A swordsman should always die by the hand of another swordsman, isn't that right?" the man looked at Tanshu and slammed his staff into the ground, drawing an oodachi from it, revealing the gigantic staff to be just a sheath for his blade.</p><p>"Let us fight. If you impress him with the eyes of God, he will allow you to join his ranks. If not, you will get an honorable death as one who is smitten by that with eyes of God has no place in Hell!" the man spoke. His weird manner of speaking addressing himself in the third person annoyed Tanshu even more than his female friend. His voice sounded cool but a bit forced as he clearly had to use moderate effort to lift his own sword.</p><p>"You refused to leave my katei, all four of you will now die!" Tanshu replied looking angrily at the man and his three companions. The man traveled with the strangest of companies: besides the bubble gum color haired girl with the white dress, there was a man in a completely black jumpsuit with chains around his body and with a blue oni mask and a swordswoman with a kimono and strangely large white irides with no pupils. Tanshu tied his sword to his belt and stood in a taijutsu stance, changing his stance and weapon of choice was a good idea - the man's blade was impossibly large so it must've been troublesome for him to keep up with a fast fighter, hand to hand will destroy this man and when he can't lift his sword at all because of his broken ribs - one quick strike would finish it all!</p><p>One with the eyes of God was about to close those eyes forever...</p>
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<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Tanshu's Story: The Red Dog VS The Rinnegan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The face of little Tanshu twisted with anger, it was a clear telegraph of his attack but it mattered little to the boy. He would unleash all of his anger at this man and destroy him! The boy's foot just gently tapped on the ground after a small hop tossing him forward, his fist tightened and his arm went back, Tanshu's foot shot forward right onto the closest solid piece of dirt he could see and within an instant a full-powered punch using not only his natural strength but also the ground itself as a balance point. Sadly Tanshu's opponent was no longer where the boy saw him just mere moments prior to his attack, Tanshu was fast, this man was even faster!</p><p>"Was that supposed to hit One with Eyes of God?" the man asked mockingly as his own arm blurred. Tanshu wasn't going to take this simple attack standing up, within an instant the boy repositioned his balance and leaped into the air, as the man's arm appeared at a downwards diagonal position after the blow was completed, Tanshu was already rolling over the man's shoulder and back to get behind his opponent. That darned bandaged man! Right as Tanshu's feet landed solidly on the ground the boy heard a whistling noise - it was slow but that was what scared him. Just barely Tanshu managed to duck and avoid having his body cut in half by the man's colossal blade. This won't work, the man was too fast, the young warrior drew his own blade and met the top-hat swordsman's force with that of his own. Obviously, Tanshu was not stupid enough to clash with him, the boy simply pointed and gently poked the giant blade to push and mislead it away from where the boy's flesh was.</p><p>This impressive and lightning-fast dance continued for quite a while, the man with the weird silver circled eyes kept slashing and thrusting only for Tanshu's own blade to gently push the sword to the other side using the man's own strength. Sometimes the man's effort was great enough to overcome Tanshu's speed of redirection but the boy was always in time to duck, at times the boy found himself in a favorable position for a quick thrust or a slash but the man avoided it as well. This was a match of two incredibly skilled nukenin, had Tanshu had the time to be impressed he most certainly would've been. This man was by far the closest one to become one to survive an encounter with the Black Fighting Dog of the battlefield. The man swung aiming at Tanshu's neck - there it was, the boy's chance!</p><p>Tanshu's blade drilled through the air decimating its puny resistance, this had to be it! This had to hit, Tanshu just knew it! With a loud scratch and a nasty sound of blade piercing flesh, the boy realized he was right - a small squirt of blood landed on his face as the man's belly was slightly scratched, sadly he moved almost in time and only received a minimal injury, one only potent enough to annoy him with a sting and small bleeding wound. A powerful kick followed, landing right on Tanshu's face and sending the boy rolling away. It didn't matter - Tanshu drew the first blood, which meant he had not only the advantage in this battle but also in a one-on-one swordfight he could've overpowered the man. It was unfortunate that once the black goo started enveloping the boy's body he realized just how screwed he may have been - he fell into the liquid gooey peril, quickly the boy flipped his body on his belly and swam onto solid ground, tumbling to stand back up onto the sharp black coal surface and cutting himself multiple times.</p><p>The boy roared out into the air as he leaped forward, the man did not expect such aggression, such amazing skill of recovering from a kick to the face, and the boy's recovery from the black goo pit. What did he expect? Tanshu lived there for years, he fell into this stupid annoying trap millions of times and almost died several times but after all those terrifying experiences he learned to quickly swim out of the goo. The goo was stupid, weak, it was literally impossible to drown in it unless one struggled for too long and kicked themselves into a grave of their own foolish making, if one just calmly swam out they could've gotten out no problem and Tanshu was the world's best conqueror of this barren wasteland's petty traps!</p><p>Tanshu's fast swipe cut the man's bandages on his face, revealing skin under them. The man managed to twist his face in time to avoid severe disfigurement or having Tanshu's blade pierce his forehead. The boy didn't want to lose his advantage, he kept cutting and cutting, attacking relentlessly with slashes, cuts, thrusts, spins, and flips giving the man absolutely no time to respond. The injuries of this God-Eyed man were numerous but none of them were solid, they were just scratches and cuts as the man avoided everything or blocked it, still - Tanshu was slowly dictating his dominance over the man. "You're... In... My... Katei!" the boy whom some currently dead bandit named the "Black Fighting Dog" yelled out as he landed a solid cut on the man's chest and face. Tanshu then leaped forward with a downward diagonal slash, "GET OUT!" he shouted after flashing down and rolling further away from the man. A loud clang of the last cut, the one that was supposed to be lethal, signaled that the man survived this combination.</p><p>Tanshu was breathing heavily, huffing and panting, down on his knees as he turned at his opponent. One with Eyes of a God was holding the bandages on his face - his clothes were cut up into pieces and his hat had fallen off, the bandages on his chest and all over his body had scratches and damage that would've made it get in his way. Tanshu was getting tired sure but this man was about to start tripping on his own bandages. "What?" Tanshu's eyes shot open as he saw the skin and face of the man as he straightened out. The man's skin was not burned or injured or had at least a single scar on it in fact - the bandages were just for show! What was the meaning of this? The man with those weird eyes stood straight and his head was up high, was he not afraid of death at all?</p><p>"Having trouble, God-Eyes?" the other guy with the oni mask and the black jumpsuit asked mockingly. Was this man not the boss of the group? Why was this man so indifferent and mocking towards his leader? </p><p>"I see... You are indeed a talented young man, normally One with Eyes of God would have invited you to his ranks after this clash. Think carefully, you've now seen the skin and the face of a God if you refuse One with Eyes of God will have to kill you! One cannot have people walking around telling other people how beautiful and divine One with Eyes of God is... Divine beauty and absolute awesomeness are not for the eyes of mere mortals, for that reason, so that your puny mortal eyes are not bothered by my divine appearance He wears these bandages and these excessive black clothes." The more this "God-Eyes" spoke, the more Tanshu despised him, why was he still so cocky? Did he not realize that Tanshu was more skilled yet? Surely he had to!</p><p>"Go eat donkey droppings, then again, you won't have the chance, I'll kill you here and now..." Tanshu replied standing back up and standing back in dueling stance. Tanshu was an aggressive swordsman and his style relied on overwhelming his opponent and his stance would've shown it. There was no chance in hell some half-baked cocky fool like this guy stood a chance! Even without his sword, Tanshu was just as skilled with just his fists and feet. Killing people with fists just felt... Odd and somehow uncivilized... God-Eyes looked pretty annoyed by the boy's display of rudeness. He grabbed his own face with his palm and squeezed it hard trying to hide his displeasure as his crazy silver circle eyes pulsed. What was this chakra right now? It felt like... Something that invited fear even in Tanshu's brave heart. "That is unfortunate, One with Eyes of God will have to kill you in that case..." God-Eyes shouted out in an angry and insane voice.</p><p>The bubble gum hair lady that the weird swordsman was traveling with turned at the Demon with the oni mask. "Hey... Achima, maybe we should go, I mean this kid does look like he's stronger than One with Eyes of God", the man called Achima laughed out openly and loudly. </p><p>"Truly you do not believe that was all of God-Eyes' power? Trust me, he might be a punk born from the right loins and too lucky with the eyes he was given but... If that would've been all the power he had I'd have killed him when we first met in Kirigakure... Just shut up and watch, the show is about to get really interesting." As the two spoke, Tanshu being the sensory prodigy that he was could hear everything. What did this mean? Did this "God-Eyes" have some amazing ability? What was this "born from the right loins" thing this oni mask man was talking about?</p><p>Suddenly God-Eyes' arm shot forward revealing an open palm. A powerful force hit Tanshu from behind taking the young swordsman by surprise and throwing him towards his enemy. No! He was pulled by some amazing force towards his enemy, what the hell was this? Some sort of bloodline, Tanshu had never heard of such bloodline in the Academy. "Attraction Cut!" God-Eyes shouted out as he slashed with his blade in a wide arc, Tanshu managed to thrust his blade into the dirt, pushing him up and helping him fly over the man instead of right into his lethal slash. Tanshu tried to cut back, counterattack, and then get some distance but God-Eyes leaned back and shot his hand up to his face again. "Universal Push!" he shouted but Tanshu was no longer there. The jutsu that the man just used was incredible, it lifted a bunch of sludge and rocks and dirt and tossed it forward... No. It pushed and repelled everything in front of the man and behind him, forming a bubble of gravity around him... What sort of technique was that?!</p><p>Tanshu grunted angrily, he was still trying to understand what kind of technique he was attacked with but this didn't look good. If the man used this "Attraction Blade" or "Universal Pull" during their first clash Tanshu would've been in trouble. The realization that his enemy was holding back made Tanshu even angrier, it was like his entire body was flaming up from sheer anger. Tanshu shouted out in pure rage as his sword ignited, this was the first time that this had happened and Tanshu was just as surprised as his opponent and his henchmen. "A chakra conductive blade... Hmmm, you were lucky to stumble into someone with such an expensive treasure, a Fire Release ninja, huh? The folk call you the Black Fighting Dog outside this place for your ferocity but... The name Red Dog describes you better now..." God-Eyes spoke with a playful smile, the bastard was excited about this new ability of his opponent. Very well, if he enjoyed being cut to pieces Tanshu would give him something to be happy about!</p><p>The boy leaped forward, he didn't care if his opponent would hit him with his stupid gravity manipulation, all that Tanshu wanted was to cut this man down! The speed of the boy was incredible, he made all this distance within mere moments and made the first fiery cut with no effort at all. God-Eyes grunted in pain as a new wound opened on his chest, he responded to the following outrage of the boy, the two continued to clash with their blades. "Amazing, utterly astonishing! Your Fire Release cauterizes the wound it opens but the pain it causes by opening it is like Hellfire itself! Show One more, Red Dog, show One with Eyes of God more!" God-Eyes shouted as the two continued to try and land a cut on the other. Tanshu tried to remove the filthy head of the man but he leaned back and thrust his hand forward, the boy tossed his sword forward and made a handseal...</p><p>"Universal Push!"</p><p>A giant lump of coal was broken into small pieces and pushed away at least two hundred meters - Tanshu's opponent had such amazing force of gravity under his command. Luckily enough the young swordsman managed to substitute himself with the giant rock in time. It was good that he knew his environment and remembered the location of the big lump. The two leaped at each other again, slashing swords and clashing several more times, Tanshu pushed the giant blade to the side using his full force - it was apparent that God-Eyes was getting tired swinging it, the force of the impact was just a small piece of what it was before. Using the momentum of spinning his own body like the spinning toys that the kids used Tanshu tried to leave a giant gash at the man's side, God-Eyes tried to jump back but was still cut. The boy spat to the side, he was pissed that he didn't finish sharpening his blade before, had he finished it this cut may have been more dangerous than it ended up to be!</p><p>"Well, this was fun, but I'm afraid a God can only afford a useless pawn that does not intend to serve him only so much time..." God-Eyes sighed, still clenching his side, he suddenly thrust his bloody arm forward as Tanshu felt the attraction force hitting him again. The boy cursed as he didn't have any other objects to substitute with or any other hidden tricks, he had to think of something! Tanshu's handle of his giant sword drove right into the boy's stomach, the boy could've sworn that he blacked out for a moment there, driven by instinct alone he blocked the downwards slash, the weight of the giant sword drove Tanshu to his knees and his blade started cracking. Once again God-Eyes charged in close and drove his handle into Tanshu's chin sending him upwards, as the boy's body landed on the floor it was stopped by God-Eyes' knee, sharp pain to the back alerted the boy that an elbow sent him down.</p><p>Tanshu's eyes were closed. He couldn't believe that this was it, that he would die right there against a man of no skill, just some stupid set of eyes. What was the point of this fight? What was the point of his life if he died like this?! The little Tanshu cursed as his eyes were forced open by him just in time to see his opponent effortlessly floating in the air. His sword was sheathed, it seemed like they both knew this fight was over. Tanshu had no more strength to move, he had some chakra but his body felt broken. Thinking back on all the fighting, all the bloodshed, what did his lifelong goal of protecting his katei amount to? He killed a bunch of people, defended his home which would now fall into the hands of this man who will kill him... His life was pointless, his death was made pointless and by itself made the lives of all those he had killed pointless... Maybe there's no point to anything anyway? Tanshu relaxed and accepted his punishment.</p><p>"UNIVERSAL PUSH!"</p><p>An awesome force hit Tanshu's body, he felt pain just for a mere moment before blacking out. God-Eyes slowly landed on the ground, huffing heavily. He had no more force left to execute this cocky youngling, the man kneeled and picked up Tanshu's own sword, it was cracked and damaged beyond being useful but maybe it had one more cut in it. </p><p>"Stop!" a loud voice stopped Tanshu as his arm met strong resistance before it could do its swinging motion. </p><p>"What is the meaning of this!? You dare stop the hand of God, Demon? After he intentionally holds back so that One does not injure his followers?!" God-Eyes asked looking straight into the black void where the holes in the oni mask for eyes were. </p><p>"Don't make me into a fool! I know that after using a push of this power you lose the gravitational ability for at least three minutes so for three minutes I am your God. I could snap your neck with one quick motion before you could possibly respond." God-Eyes appeared annoyed by the insubordination of his henchman but he tossed the cracked blade away and turned to him.</p><p>"Speak your mind, One with Eyes of God shall decide how to deal with this insolence later." It was impossible to say just exactly what sort of history these two had, how come Demon had the guts to talk like this to the one possessing the divine Rinnegan, or why One with Eyes of God did not execute him right after getting his ability back. </p><p>"Let's take this kid with us. I always wanted to open a school, breed Demonlings that would make not only this generation of ninja afraid of Demons but also the next. I shall make him into an assassin, just imagine a young swordsman with a Fire Release to enforce his image of a Demon! I could not ask for a better pupil. I shall make him void of emotion, void of sympathy, desiring only happiness for his head Demon, I will be the Devil, and this boy and his peers will be my Demons... And, of course, we will serve the One with Eyes of God, without question."</p><p>The swordsman scratched his chin, his eyes closed and he sunk deep in thought, after a mere moment his eyes opened again. "Very well, One with Eyes of God shall allow this Red Dog to live, make him into your infernal subordinate, but know that you are responsible for him. That includes carrying him. One with Eyes of God has spoken!" the oni masked man calling himself "Demon" picked Tanshu's unconscious broken body and put it on his shoulder. "I have an idea, this boy is a great defender of this place, let us build our temple of bones here and we will not have to do anything to brainwash this boy, he will work for us without question because he will still be watching his katei." God-Eyes nodded and pointed at the pink-haired girl, "Heal him, I shall begin building our temple of bones once he wakes and I get my ability back..."</p><p>The pink-haired lady bowed and dragged the boy further, tearing his clothes off and placing her arms on his chest. Emerald green light started emanating from her hands, the only beacon of light in the gloom of this cursed swamp.</p>
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<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Tanshu's Story: Power Born From Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu woke up in a dark room, to be entirely honest, it was quite difficult for the boy to even properly identify that he had even woken up since the room was so incredibly dark that he barely saw his own body. The feeling of waking up inside a pitch-black room was weird, the boy was obviously confused. How could he have ended up here? What was going on? For a moment Tanshu had settled on the thought that his opponent had crushed his body so hard with his repulsion jutsu that he had destroyed the boy's eyes. Still, weak and lingering reflections of his own body somewhat ruined that theory.</p><p>"Is someone here?" the boy murmured under his own nose, then after he braved up a bit once again. Out of nowhere a blue oni mask lit up in the corner, maybe it was just the distinctive color of the mask combined with the fact that the boy's eyes were getting quite used to the darkness that this mask could even be identified. It was the same mask of that man who was with the God-Eyed swordsman, it made Tanshu even more confused as to why he was kept alive. His enemy was not supposed to show him mercy. "What is this? Why am I here? Where are we?" questions spilled like beans from a bucket.</p><p>"As far as you need to know... You're still protecting your katei, boy." Oni-Mask replied, it was incredible how the man's dark jumpsuit completely made his entire body disappear in the darkness, only his mask was left visible which would've been quite frightening had Tanshu not seen the man in the gloom of the wasteland. The young swordsman stood up and felt his sword being hung by his side, why would the man leave his sword just hanging? Within an instant, the boy rushed towards the masked man drawing his sword and slashing the mask in two. The mask fell on the floor as it was split in two, eight more lit up taking its place. This had to be an illusion of some sort! Tanshu turned back and grunted angrily. He may have lost against the leader but there was no way in Hell a mere henchman will best him.</p><p>"If I were you I'd hear me out, I'm the sole reason you are alive after all..." Oni-Mask's voice echoed throughout the room again. Tanshu lunged forward cutting all of the masks in pieces with multiple slashes. Right after he did so, dozens of strikes hit him in his back in multiple areas. Tanshu roared in pain as he collapsed onto the soft wooden floor. "As you are right now you are too weak to protect your katei, there are people in this world that are both stronger than God-Eyes and wish your capture. If God-Eyes was to clash with any of the higher ranking Konoha ninja, most of whom still are looking for you because you're a nukenin, he'd die. He may not admit it but that's the reason why he had aligned himself with a still active Kirigakure jounin and two Sunagakure ninja."</p><p>Tanshu's sword slashed backward, the mask collapsed revealing behind it a busted and disfigured face, it was hard to tell this in the dark but its general shape made it look like it had melted off its owner's facial area at some point but instead of falling off it just stuck and kept looking like mashed fruits. "I warn you boy, your next strike will be your last." The voice came right from the fact as its lips moved slightly, the fact that this figure even had lips that could even move was miraculous by itself. The face slowly disappeared into the shadows and the entire room sank into darkness, now there wasn't even a single mask or any clue that anyone was even there. "I asked God-Eyes to leave you alive because you can be helpful to him, despite what that arrogant brat might think, and he may be beneficial to you. What I offer you is power, the only thing that matters, the strength to crush those that threaten your katei, and all I ask in return is that you allow us to help you protect it."</p><p>Tanshu scratched his head, he had never considered if he wanted another family after the death of his parents. "That being said... I know it's hard, but remember what went through your head at the moment when you were down, I'm no psychic but I've seen that face before, the "my life was useless and I'm about to die and it won't matter for shit" face. Well, with us by your side you can make your life and your death amount to something. With us, you could be a part of a bigger achievement without having to do anything you wouldn't normally do." Tanshu looked somewhere off into the darkness, "OK, even if I'm interested, I'd like to know my new "family" better."</p><p>Suddenly a wire tightly constricted around little Tanshu's neck and someone pulled it dropping the boy on the ground. The little nukenin felt his neck bleed, had the man wanted he could've beheaded him like this, this man had more physical strength than Tanshu and despite the boy being just a bratty kid, this was still a feat he had never seen during his days in the wasteland. "Don't get cocky, kid, call us a family and I'll kill you right then and there. I will train you but there will be none of that fucking marshmallow nonsense. I am the Devil and you will be my Demon, in order for a Demon to be born, a man must be broken down and burnt in the flame the Demon comes from. Plus, God-Eyes has problems with his daddy and mommy despite his eyes being entirely the result of who those two were, I wouldn't mention "family" around him anytime soon." Tanshu breathed out and pulled on the newly formed space of the wire getting out of it, the boy then stood up still clenching his neck where the blood was coming from.</p><p>"God-Eyes is a renegade, he comes from a faraway place you need not care about built long ago by you don't need to care who. He spits some bullshit about reincarnation or something like that, wouldn't listen too closely to what he spouts out of that cocky mouth of his. His goal is to take over the world - all of the villages because his grand...grand...grand... whatever once controlled it. Then, at some point, he just lost it and started talking of himself as God and now having the world is his right as a God... Anyways, he is an idiot and he'll catch his death one day by a ninja that is actually worth his mettle." Tanshu sat down and felt his neck again, he tore off the sleeve of the kimono he was wearing and tightly tied it around his neck. It didn't look like any vitals were cut, had it been so he'd have died momentarily.</p><p>"He established his "temple" here, calls it the Tower of Bones or whatever because he believes that his grand...grand... whatever once knew how to manipulate her bones or something. He likes symbolism, that God-Eyes... Either way, once he fails and is killed I'll kill his other "apostles" and grant you his eyes, then you will become the true Demon, ironically enough you will be the angel of a God that has fallen, doesn't get any more demonic, don't you think?" the man laughed out somewhere in the darkness. Tanshu stood up and tightened his look trying to see the figure of the man with the oni mask somewhere, spotting his humanoid twisted and slim figure in a faraway corner of the room. </p><p>"So you are the one secretly calling the shots?" Tanshu asked. </p><p>A powerful laugh met his question. "No, not really, even if God-Eyes fought me here, where I'm strongest, he'd probably win. I'm just one of the apostles with the weakest link to God-Eyes, you see, unlike Vashia and Hana I am still an active ninja, I am here with the mission from Kirigakure to train an order of young assassins, a brood of demons if you will. That is why I am mostly on your side and if God-Eyes died I wouldn't shed a single tear about it. So, what do you think? Are you ready to let the Red Dog die and be reborn into the Red Demon?"</p><p>The rest of the four years, after he had accepted the deal, were difficult for Tanshu to remember clearly. After his small talk with the Oni mask man, who surprisingly didn't go by any names, everyone just referred to him as they pleased, he was introduced to the rest of the apostles. Each of the apostles had a room assigned to them so that in case of attack each of them fought the ninja one on one until one reached the final floor. Each of the rooms was quite compact making a larger brawl impossible, it was simply most efficient to fight each apostle one on one, and the groups of ninja that came only came in groups of five at best. As the apostles would've been beaten the attackers would've advanced one floor further until they reached God-Eyes on the final floor. In order to advance a floor the attacker needed to get a key from the apostle inside that floor, they could've tried to use ninjutsu on those bones but, apparently, Hana, one of God-Eyes' apostles, was some sort of sealing prodigy and left protection seals all over them.</p><p>Strangely throughout all of the four years of Tanshu's demonic training the tower was only attacked once by Konoha, by a party of Chuunin that were scouting the area looking for Tanshu who was still regarded as a nukenin. The four had found the tower and decided to investigate, they never advanced further first floor where the man with the oni mask lurked. After that day many more bandits came trying to take the tower for themselves but none of them ever even left a scratch on the man with the oni mask. Strangely enough, only the bandits attacked all at once and got in each other's way, from what the man had told Tanshu during training the ninja actually followed his advice to fight him one on one with the rest waiting outside. They still would've needed the key to the other floor anyway.</p><p>The apostles themselves were all quite strange people, throughout his four years of training with them Tanshu rarely ever met with God-Eyes again and when he did the man didn't even bother to talk to him or even acknowledge his existence. He was still acting high and mighty and in control when often it was the Demon actually calling the shots and giving the best advice. It was clear that without the support of Kirigakure this man wouldn't have advanced too far with his plot to take over the world. Why would Kirigakure even support such a man was a question to Tanshu and one that Demon never answered to him, it must've been the fact that God-Eyes was targeting Konoha first, after all, Kirigakure had significant influence over God-Eyes through Demon anyways.</p><p>The girl called Vashia was a kind and a nice girl, that being said she was always very shut in her own inner world and rarely left her floor. It was said by the Demon that her floor was modeled after a typical dojo, one that her family had and where she was raised as a child which made the boy believe that Vashia actually was longing for her previous life in Sunagakure. The girl had raven dark hair and always wore a sword by her side, actually, that was all that Tanshu even knew about her, whenever he tried to ask her something or talk to her she politely and very directly answered his question leaving him no openings to know anything more. She was really skilled in avoiding all conversation and stroke the boy as a somewhat shy girl. Why such a person was on the group trying to take down all of the ninja villages and take over the world was beyond Tanshu, she acted and looked most like an actually honorable kunoichi out of the entire group.</p><p>On the other hand, the girl called Hana was really just as spoiled as God-Eyes was, sure, she never spoke of herself in the third person or called herself a God but she was arrogant and bratty in her own way. Her floor was located right after Demon's but she always tried to get a higher floor for herself since she disliked fighting. From what Tanshu gathered about her she wasn't even that much of a fighter, more of a supportive role that could do anything anyone wanted her to: she was a sensor, she knew how to heal people using ninjutsu and she was a great cook, she was one of the best seal users in Sunagakure according to the Demon. Still, she always enforced her image of the bubble-gum haired diva, she always dressed too pompously for a kunoichi and always ate only candy, popcorn, and fries as far as Tanshu could remember. She also always acted most childish out of the group making God-Eyes often quite annoyed by her but he had a sweet spot for her so he more often submitted to her will and gave her the final chip in the bag or the bigger ryo split or that lovely puppy left over by the Inuzuka who had died fighting Demon whenever she threw a fit.</p><p>The training that the Demon was giving Tanshu was odd, the oni mask man always asked Tanshu to take some pills, from what the boy understood they messed with his mind for the duration of the training. That meant both good and bad things - for one the boy lost his sense of pain which was for the best, oni mask often beat Tanshu down beyond recognition during training, also his fatigue was always absent when Tanshu woke up making the boy ready for more training next day even if his body was pushed to its limits. On the other hand, it made the boy's body and mind function on sort of an auto-pilot mode, also it made him completely forget anything that happened during the training sessions when under influence of the pills. From what oni mask man told him, it was because Demon didn't want Tanshu training people the same way when one day Tanshu becomes the strongest Demon there was. Apparently, despite Tanshu being a nukenin and his apprentice the Demon still treated him as a Konoha ninja as opposed to him being from Kirigakure.</p><p>God-Eyes found quite the army of bandits and thugs during the four years, just the promise to freely hide in the wasteland and the fact that Konoha could not legally pursue them in there was all that entire bands needed to swear allegiance to One with Eyes of God, apparently, Demon called those eyes "Rinnegan", Tanshu liked that name better than "Eyes of God". Also, he started referring to God-Eyes as God-Eyes which somewhat irritated the man, he always forced his underling bandits to address him as "One with Eyes of God" instead of the ruder "God-Eyes", even Vashia and Hana did not address him as Demon and Tanshu did but since Tanshu was Demon's little protégé something let the boy get away with it. Still, the young nukenin had to respect the amount of power that God-Eyes had gathered in only four years, he was almost ready to attack Konoha with that amount of bandits as far as Tanshu's perception was concerned but Demon desperately tried to talk God-Eyes out of it.</p><p>"Konoha has a bunch of seals on its gates those cheap tricks will shave off a fair amount of those losers. While you might beat them with sheer numbers and these men are thousands of times the killers that the people in the Leaf Village are but... Sannin alone could blow your army away in just five minutes, we need more ninja that are on their level, even if you..." that was the only moment when Tanshu saw God-Eyes lash out and blow Demon away with his repulsion technique. It didn't even seem like the man had a good reason to, he just hated to be reminded that he lacked the ways to deal with the Sannin of Konohagakure and the Hokage if he needed to. It was true, as numerous as his numbers were, God-Eyes still lacked the appropriate ninja of high level to deal with the Sannin. His four apostles according to Demon only could hold the Sannin back and prove a worthy distraction to them. It was then that Tanshu started to develop a technique in secret to his sensei. Demon-sensei taught him many things, he taught him every little thing that a powerful ninja needed to know about how chakra worked and how appropriate techniques worked, he gave Tanshu many tools but he never asked the boy to use those tools. The Demon only wanted to shape the boy the way he saw him fit but Tanshu wanted to be his own man.</p><p>For a moment, right before the end of those four years of his training, right before Tanshu started feeling like a challenge to any powerful ninja he saw, before he started appreciating this power he had gained and these new people he had met... This life started to feel good. The boy started to actually feel somewhat happy - the feeling that he had thought he'd never feel and he'd forgotten since his parents had died. Still, something was missing, while Tanshu viewed these people as his family they never really shared his belief. Every time Tanshu wanted to talk to any of the apostles they shunned him: Vashia despite obviously hating her own approach turned away and walked to her own floor, Demon-sensei always tried to kill Tanshu when he tried to even address him as Demon-sensei but those times, when the Demon could even do that, had long since passed and Tanshu always survived, Hana always felt like an older sister to Tanshu. The two always fought each other and bickered like two siblings and it appeared that inside only Tanshu really cared for the other where Hana actually may have hated him.</p><p>It was that one day that everything changed and Tanshu was finally shaped into the man he had finally become. That time when four shadows appeared in the distance on the top of the crater that God-Eyes built his tower in one that served as a testament of the power inside his eyes but one that did not intimidate the two men and two women on that slope one little bit. For they were the Sannin: Misu of the Vapor, Howoku the Star of Hope, Chestnut Hanasaku and the transcended Sannin of the past generation, the survivor of the great battle that gave birth to this wasteland - Sorano the Raijin's Prophet!</p>
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<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Tanshu's Story: The Sannin Enter the Battle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The four people standing on top of the edge of a gigantic crater continued to look down on the Tower of Bones that was just standing there - a giant obstacle in the path of the village they all came from. These bandits were a threat to not only the world peace that finally settled down after the Second Great Shinobi War ended but they also had the guts to kill Konoha ninja. Exploit Konoha's international promises as if making fun of the Great Village. It was as if the bandits openly taunted the Leaf village by posing a question: asking which was more precious to it, the village's honor and its promises or their own well-being and the short term peace they've established.</p><p>"Let us not be hasty, Howoku-chan has a lot at stake here. After the Third had passed he is one of the names thrown around by the council, after all, a success of such level would basically guarantee him the spot," an elderly lady spoke up. The violent wasteland winds picked up and thrown her silver hair around forcing the lady to restrain them. The Sannin of the last generation and the sole survivor of the great battle that made this wasteland it was difficult to understand what drove the retired lady ninja to return to active duty. She was known as Raijin's Prophet - Sorano, her name coming from the great staff hanging on her back which was said to have been one of the legendary weapons of Gods themselves. Right now the woman struggled to hide from the chill of the place in her blue coat, tightening up the belt and buttoning the top two buttons.</p><p>"I could not care any less about the title of Hokage. These criminals threaten the peace your generation fought so hard to bring, Sorano-san, that is a transgression I cannot allow to go unpunished!" one of the three current Sannin, the Star of Hope - Howoku spoke. He was the man who would soon become the Fourth Hokage but at that moment in time he was but a young shinobi who was in his early twenties but already a jounin declared a Sannin by the village. He was known around the world as one of the greatest defenders of peace and a great orator as well as an amazing ninja who has never taken a life in battle, his blunt-edged sword on his back was the greatest testament of that achievement. Having all that in mind, to a neutral eye Howoku may have looked like a rather puny and geeky man, being quite tall but slim and having curly and messy hair and still needing his glasses. This goofy exterior hid inside a powerhouse for the village like none other, underestimating the Star of Hope would've been a fatal and the last mistake one could make.</p><p>"Eh, who the Hell are you kidding, you and your softcore ways... Howoku. Either way, it was pretty cool of the village to authorize this mission. These limitations with them being unable to send more than five people made this really interesting, eh?" the third ninja asked, standing tall and proud over the horizon and observing the tower from the perfect place to sightsee. It was Misu of the Vapor, the past teammate of Howoku, and the third Sannin - Hanasaku. The man renowned for his tricky fighting style, unmatched speed and a strategy of fighting that made him one of the least likely people to get hurt, seeing Misu being tagged or injured was indeed a rarity on the battlefield and he was also one of the best swordsmen shinobi that Konohagakure had, a man whom many placed on the level of the Kumogakure swordsmen or even the Iron Country samurai who were previously considered dominant in this area. Misu was a quite attractive young man, often he showed off his bare chest by thrusting it forward and letting his kimono slip off of his shoulders or stroking his wild hair. That being said Misu's vanity was vain by itself, there was no single woman he tried to impress, he just liked showing off.</p><p>"I'm really glad you let me tag along! I can't believe the village wanted to keep me contained, it makes me pretty angry! When are we gonna get to fight someone already!?" the third Sannin - Hanasaku shouted out. The woman was by far the most tomboyish of the group often seen in male clothes she was also a halfway decent medical ninja and surprisingly enough the physically strongest and most durable ninja in the village. Normally lethal injuries like getting impaled many times over barely seemed to bother Hanasaku to the point where many may have suggested she's enjoying getting injured. Either way, out of the three Sannin even as children she was often put in tongue and cheek as compared to more gentle and soft Howoku, many spoke about how the personalities of the two should've been reversed as Hanasaku often acted most macho out of the three. Konoha's "Gentle" Chestnut as she was called came both from her "tough as nuts" attitude and her chestnut-colored wild hair. When Hanasaku rampaged through the battlefield, often the chestnut brown flash of her hair was all that her enemies saw before being brutally taken down.</p><p>"Patience, my dear." Sorano uttered before letting her voice suddenly turn wild, "Is what I'd normally say, but an occasion like this: a retired Sannin of the past and all three of the current Sannin is not something that should be put to waste. Allow me to smite those scum using the chakra I've stored up in Raijin's staff during all those years!" the old lady yelled out loud and swung her staff sending a wild gust of wind. For a brief moment, there was absolutely nothing, a silence that suggested that there was nothing to the staff but then a gigantic thunderbolt split the sky in two, cutting through the impossibly thick dark clouds of the location as if it was butter giving in to a hot knife. The bolt of lightning was as wide as a vortex of pure lightning, the sound and the amount of light it made forced everyone, even the great Sannin to turn back and cover their eyes. Such power would've truly only been accessible to those wielding the power of Raijin himself as this lightning bolt could've easily caused yet another crater of the same magnitude if not greater.</p><p>"DAMN IT, OLD LADY! SHOULD'VE WARNED US!" Hanasaku yelled out as her ears were still overwhelmed by the impossible amount of noise coming from the lightning bolt. Howoku removed his glasses and blew into them, "Well now you've done it, Sorano-san, I've finally gone completely blind..." he joked as he scratched his eyes massaging them carefully and waiting for his eyesight to return. It must not have been the first time that Sorano's lightning prowess caused this much displeasure for the young man as he was reacting to this loss of sight quite calmly. It appeared that Misu was the only one barely affected by the lightning. Then again, the man was quite indifferent even to the opponent's attacks so something like excessive sound and light would've barely proved to be an annoyance to the Sannin. "That was amazing, Sorano-san! It seems that you've still got it!" he shouted as the staff of the old woman hit the back of his head. Strangely enough, this weak attack actually hurt the man and he started scratching the aching spot and whining.</p><p>As the smoke and the leftovers of light from the lightning strike cleared and everyone affected by it regained their sight an incredible sight greet their eyes - the Tower of Bones was not damaged by the slightest. Sorano looked at a point somewhere on the roof of the tower spotting a single man, "Damn that Rinnegan user, he has already learned to absorb ninjutsu then... It is good we've come for him now before he had mastered Samsara as well." Right after Sorano's statement, noting that God-Eyes somehow managed to absorb the entirety of Raijin's fury charged for seven years straight, men started flooding from the tower filling up the battlefield in the crater, the four Sannin all shared a collective smile and jumped off of the edge right into the fray of the battle.</p><p>Raijin's Prophet Sorano danced across the battlefield like a Goddess of war, suddenly the memories of the Second Great Shinobi War made the old lady feel right at home as she effortlessly wielded her Raijin's staff just efficiently enough to deflect all of the incoming attacks. Sometimes it had appeared like she would be hit, but some astonishing chakra would leak out from the Staff expelling powerful and violent gusts of wind and pushing all the attackers away. When things got particularly difficult Sorano just pointed her staff at the enemies that she wanted gone, shooting off lightning bolts from her staff without ever needing to use handseals. Sorano's mastery over this lightning was unlike anything anyone had seen, not only she didn't need handseals to use Lightning Release but also the jutsu she used with the staff's aid appeared to come out effortlessly and in many various shapes: channeled beams of lightning, chains of lightning dancing and passing through all the enemies in the line, powerful lightning bolts coming from the sky or even lightning pulses running through the ground or barrage of small lightning spheres. Sorano truly earned her name as Raijin's Prophet and hundreds of bandits fell under her feet burnt and defeated by this incredible woman. Bandits that were supposed to be able to lay siege on Konohagakure itself were rendered powerless against a single woman just like the man with the oni mask had predicted.</p><p>Needless to say, other Sannin did not exactly stand around doing nothing. Howoku graciously fought using his sword, he was more than a match for any casual swordsman so he was right at home fighting a bunch of ragtag self-trained criminals. To tell the truth, Howoku struggled much more than Sorano but his blunt sword found its target and the few injuries that the young man had sustained were threatening to neither his life nor his future fighting potential. If nothing else, the pain had drawn out Howoku's anger, hidden will, and power to fight like the man named by the council as the prime candidate to become Hokage. Strangely enough, just swinging his blunt sword was all that Howoku seemed to show these bandits keeping his true power to himself, whenever the situation got too difficult Howoku simply took a couple of steps back letting Hanasaku or Misu take care of the situation instead of revealing all of his cards. One wouldn't have been wrong to say that the Star of Hope Howoku did not enjoy battling but still, his reluctance to fight at full strength did not mean weakness by any means.</p><p>Where Howoku held back against mere bandits worth the attention of average chuunin, Misu of the Vapor was scooting all around the battlefield. It looked like his legs had blurred and become a stream of vapor and when he got hit the man's body simply dissolved into a vapor that then heated up and punished the aggressive attacker with Misu appearing behind them and cutting them down. This was the only way of fighting that the man was known to use - Vapor Mode, the mysterious and unstoppable strategy that no other ninja ever seemed to understand. Whenever the man got hit he simply dissolved into vapor like a clone, becoming just a cloud of heated vapor with the real Misu striking from an open spot. Often Misu used this quick one slash kills even without his Vapor Mode, he called the style "Deceitful Blade" with his body avoiding a strike and counterattacking quickly and pinpoint to the enemy's opening. The combination of his mysterious vapor clone technique and "Deceitful Blade" was the fantastic and awesome "Vapor Mode" that has never found a situation it could not overcome. It was said that no one had ever figured out Misu's weakness ever since he invented this "Vapor Mode"</p><p>Where her teammates were subtle, striking like a scalpel or a gentle fish gutting knife, Hanasaku was like a rocket launcher. The wild woman leaped around the battlefield wildly throwing mad combinations of blows or simply leaped hundreds of feet into the air and creating mad earthquakes after landing. Out of the four Hanasaku took the most damage as she barely bothered to defend herself, the woman was not distracted by an enemy striking from behind, she always just kept punching and dashing around forward destroying the enemy ranks effortlessly. Her single punch was enough to destroy any man, even the largest ones that probably ate elephants for breakfast fell like autumnal leaves after just a single flick of the woman. Once Hanasaku bet against the village's strongest taijutsu ninja that no amount of Inner Gates would keep up with her, it was unknown how that bet went but from the tales of the ninja himself the woman could easily keep up with the first four gates and to bump it up was useless because the technique actually hurt him more than a successful blow to Hanasaku seemed to do as nothing kept her down for long. After the battle was over the woman was covered with bruises and blunt traumas and had multiple swords stuck in her front and back to the point where she looked like a pincushion. Just another mission for Hanasaku the Chestnut. That being said, the woman had the largest pile of broken bandits beneath her feet, even if she did cry like a little girl on a dentist's chair when Howoku angrily pulled out all the weapons stuck in her body and scolded her.</p><p>"Is it OK to go on? Hanasaku-chan seems injured." Sorano asked looking questioningly at Misu, the man just shrugged. "I dunno, she's always like that. Just give her five to ten minutes of rest and she'll heal herself up no problem." Howoku still did not look happy, "You'll exhaust your chakra fighting these goons, who are you trying to show up getting hurt so much?!" he yelled at the silly young woman, "That's right!" Sorano got surprised as if she just remembered something, "Every supernatural physical feat uses chakra manipulation, right? Won't Hanasaku-chan tire out?" The brown-haired wonder looked at the old lady and gave her a thumb up, "Don't worry, I'm not like the other ninja, my body doesn't use chakra to maintain superhuman strength, I'm just strong cause I train a lot!" while the old lady didn't buy this Misu waved at her to let it go.</p><p>"Howoku was not referring to chakra used with physical prowess but her mediocre healing skills. Hanasaku isn't like the other physical ninja, usually, there are two ways to become like her. One is to make up some sort of jutsu like imbue your entire body with chakra and give it some sort of supernatural feature native to that Elemental Release, like lightning-fast reflexes using Lightning Release, etc. The other is to train one's body to become strong, to find the bodily limit, and keep training to break it. The problem with this method is that it'll never give you the amount of strength that the first method gives, the user of the second method will always be weaker than a user of a jutsu that enhances strength. Strangely enough, Hanasaku is an exception to that rule, she trains not her body itself but her overall chakra level, seeing how the physical energy of our body is an element of chakra her physical prowess seems to increase together with her chakra level. That being said, it is only because she's a silly idiot that this even worked, I don't think anyone else could pull such a ridiculous concept off like increasing one's physical strength by only increasing one's chakra level. If any of us were sensors Hanasaku's chakra would feel like a Sun compared to small fires of normal ninja that is why she's such a freak." Misu explained observing the tower for any surprise developments.</p><p>As Howoku was carefully tending to Hanasaku's wounds, removing any weapons stuck in her or giving the woman a description of which wounds she'll have to heal up with her mediocre medical ninjutsu skills, there was something that bothered the man. "Sorano-san, how about you? You've blasted so many people with your staff, surely wielding it tires you out, right? Lightning Release is quite a difficult Elemental Release on chakra control seeing how unstable it is. Are you going to be OK?" the young man inquired, he obviously intended to add her age into the mix but remembering how violently the woman lashed out on Misu before the clever Sannin kept it inside, just letting it float in the air and letting the woman catch the idea if she was perceptive enough but without proof of Howoku's intention of bringing it up.</p><p>"My staff of Raijin works differently. It costs chakra to use, yes, but it is a steady flow of chakra, it tires me consistently to use it unsealed, not to use techniques. Its concept is very peculiar and difficult to understand and use efficiently which is why it is likely that there will be no one to use it after my passing... Which will be in a million years! Anyways, whenever I swing my staff it generates charges of electricity somewhere inside of it, the stronger and faster the swing - the more it builds up. If it comes into contact with another body or weapon it builds up even more. It is that built up charge that is used in staff's Lightning and Wind Releases." Howoku sighed, "In other words, you do not use Lightning Release at all, you use the force built up inside of the staff but it feeds off of your chakra. Interesting. Wait... Wind Release?" the young man got curious when the woman nodded, "Yes, I can also generate weaker gusts using the same energy built up inside it, but the same energy charges are used in both lightning and wind releases so it is often a strategic decision how to use the staff. It takes much more time to learn to properly use it than it takes to gain enough chakra to use it..." the old lady laughed.</p><p>With the last knife being pulled out of Hanasaku's shoulder, Howoku stood up and sighed, turning at the Tower of Bones and tightening his gloves. "Well, I think if we let Hanasaku-chan rest for the first couple of fights we can go in!" Misu and Sorano joined Howoku and once the chestnut color haired woman joined the squad of past and present Sannin the four all collectively entered the building. The figures of the four disappeared in the darkness of the Tower of Bones that no one has ever conquered before. The fight was about to get started for real with One's with the Eyes of God apostles facing off against the Sannin!</p>
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<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Tanshu's Story: A Battle in Total Darkness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Darkness was the first thing that greet the Sannin as they entered the Tower of Bones. The whole place was very briefly lit by torches but those only demonstrated where the walls that they were hung on were. It was not easy finding the staircase, it only took a couple of minutes of wandering before Hanasaku got a bit impatient. "This is stupid, let's just bust through!" the woman yelled out. Sorano's lifted up palm stopped the impatient Sannin in her path. "Even if we tried it'd be of no use. If the protective seals that protect this thing can make it withstand my strongest lightning bolt I've ever cast it can without a doubt take anything we throw - playing by the rules is the only way we'll get anywhere."</p><p>"Stop, you've wandered enough, Sannin, please follow me!" Tanshu shouted to direct the attention of his guests at him. </p><p>"Finally, some direction, some thugs these days can't even be bothered to show us around..." Misu shrugged with a smug face. </p><p>Howoku, however, was much more dumbfounded, "You're... Black Dog Tanshu, the boy that ran away from the village seven years ago, so you survived this long by joining with One with the Eyes of God?" he asked. Howoku's tone was quite interesting, usually, when a high-ranking ninja addressed a nukenin they had a certain shade of disrespect, resentment towards the peer that dared to betray the village, Howoku had none of that. He was respectful to the end.</p><p>"Well, boy, the man with Rinnegan is going down today, it's still not too late to switch sides. We can write your nukenin story down to you escaping when you were far too young to understand your actions. We've done something similar before." Sorano spoke softly trying to lure the boy back to Konoha's side but Tanshu's face did not falter for a moment. These were the people that got his parents involved in a useless war, this very old lady was a survivor of the war where his parents died. She, an old hag who survived while young parents died, has no right to speak to him. </p><p>"The purpose of my life no longer lies with that place, it is where my katei is. Make no mistake, you are standing in my katei and disgracing it with your filth. If Oni Mask sensei doesn't kill you I will do it myself. By the way, I go by Red Dog now... Follow me." Tanshu's voice was full of anger and rage towards these ninja, all of them were in the war, and yet none of them did anything to save his parents, they all looked like they lost nothing in that war at all. They were just in it for the glory, they didn't care about who lived or died out there and such filthy humans had no right to draw breath, not in his katei!</p><p>"Awww... He's so cuuute! Can we keep him?" Hanasaku shrieked as she ran up to Tanshu pinching his cheeks, for a moment the boy could not believe what this woman was doing. She crossed all the lines, he'd kill her right then and there, who cared what Demon sensei and God-Eyes told him?! Tanshu's arm caught the woman's and pressed it hard. Usually, that'd be enough to break anyone's arm and the woman's bone cracked but... She didn't even flinch, Tanshu threw an elbow at her face to break her nose but she simply clashed with the elbow of her own sending a gust of wind through the room as the two powerhouses hit each other. "You can be my little brother!" Hanasaku smiled as she didn't care about the injury to her arm at all.</p><p>Tanshu released the clash and turned around, all he had to do was to lead these idiots to sensei's room. Then again, the woman was supposed to be the strongest of all the ninja, Tanshu felt like if that strike of hers was all she had he could've given her a good fight, were these Sannin really that strong? There it was, oni-mask's room, Tanshu stopped by the room and turned back at the Sannin explaining the rules to them. Misu cracked a grin after the boy finished his speech, "So... What's stopping us from attacking the guy in full force and killing him together?" he asked, Tanshu shook his head and opened the door revealing sensei's dark room, the one where Tanshu woke up in after his fight with God-Eyes. </p><p>"If you feel that's what you want to do, by all means, attack Oni Mask sensei all at once..." Howoku seemed to be the smarter one, he instantly understood the condition of the room they entered. </p><p>"No, we will follow the rules and fight one on one, these rooms don't look like they'd let us let loose, plus our abilities are wide scale, we'd risk hitting each other if we fought here and would constantly get in each other's way."</p><p>Sensei's mask lit up and appeared out of the absolute darkness of the room. "Hello there, Konohagakure Sannin and retired Sannin, my name is... Well, Demons don't go by names, you can call me whatever you like. Which one of you will go first? I warn you, I am going to definitely kill the first one to fight me, my odds will of course decrease once the fights stack up, but the first one to fight me has 0% odds to survive. I'd suggest the old lady, she must have already finished all the things she wanted to do in life..." </p><p>Hanasaku cracked her fists and entered, yelling out "I'll fight!" but then Sorano's gentle hand pushed her back softly. </p><p>"No, dear, you've still not recovered from your reckless battle outside, let this be your lesson to be more careful next time." Just like that the first battle for the key to the next floor begun - Sorano the Raijin's Prophet, retired Sannin against the man with no name, Oni Mask!</p><p>Out of nowhere, the oni mask started moving up closer to the woman, she slammed her staff to the ground lighting the room up for a mere moment and then blocking the strike the of the man. The man with the oni mask continued to strike but Sorano's strategy of using one end of the stick to spark some light and using the other to deflect the assassin's lethal blows seemed to work perfectly as all of Oni Mask's blows were deflected or blocked by the staff. The man pulled some impressive moves, jumping around and kicking, flipping and vaulting around, using both floor and ceiling for footing and using ground and aerial as well as low attacks but using her staff Sorano always knew they were coming and was in time to react to them despite being an old lady.</p><p>"Impressive, Old Hag's amazing!" Hanasaku yelled out loud impressed by how fast the old lady managed to respond to the attacks, Howoku nodded, "The man has a very interesting approach to fighting - he lives in a very dark room with the room being tuned to his outfit which makes his attire invisible, it is impossible to tell if he is coming and where from, what kind of attack he is using without a source of light. Actually, out of us all only Sorano-san and I could beat him." Misu looked displeased by this conclusion, probably because he wasn't included in the list of names. Tanshu barely managed to contain his laughter, how did these fools plan to beat sensei? The Red Dog himself could beat sensei in theory but not in this room, in this room, sensei was God, not God-Eyes.</p><p>Suddenly Oni Mask's speed picked up, he landed a couple of nicks on Sorano and what was even more impressive - his blows were cutting like knives, the scratches that Oni Mask's strikes left on the old lady were like she was cut by blades. It was becoming apparent that the lady could not keep up with the same two-point strategy she was using before with this increase of speed and Tanshu could tell - sensei was not fighting at his top speed. As expected, even the mighty Sannin could not keep up with sensei in this room. Vashia and Hana and even Oni Mask himself were not up to Sannin level but in this room, right here, they could win! A loud grunt echoed, one coming from Oni Mask as a loud flesh cutting sound echoed. Tanshu could see it - the old lady's heart was pierced with sensei's hand - it was over! The quickest Sannin death ever. As always sensei's strength that helped him hit like a sharp weapon was impressive! A loud poof echoed through the dark room and a sound of wood hitting the ground came - it appeared that the woman managed to substitute herself with a wooden floor tile at the last second.</p><p>"As expected from a retired Sannin, to make a fool of me with such a basic technique..." Oni Mask applauded the old woman, Sorano, however, did not return the honor of talking to her opponent. She was focused completely on the battle as she just witnessed how making a single mistake may have caused the ex-Sannin her life. Then the woman shouted out as she forced her body to swing the staff around her body and then drove it into the ground. The entire room lit up with lightning as impulses of electricity went through the floor and erupted violently focusing on the man that the woman was fighting. The amount of Lightning Release that the woman could whip up impressed Tanshu, judging from how stressed out Oni Mask was to pull off his quick side vault dodges it could've been told that he did not expect such a violent attack as well. </p><p>"Wow. Old Lady gathered so much charge into her staff from such a brief exchange of blows?! That staff is impressive" Hanasaku once more shrieked out like a little girl.</p><p>Oni Mask was panting pretty hard, he clearly did have to use a moderate amount of effort to dodge that attack, but now this stupid young woman with chestnut-colored hair told him the secret of the old woman - the staff was what used the lightning techniques and not the lady herself. The Oni Mask charged at the woman with all of his speed that he could muster up in his tired state. If what this silly young woman said was true, it meant that the old woman had no more juice in her staff which meant he had to exploit the opportunity! Right as the man closed up with his thrust of the palm aiming to once again impale the woman, the old lady drove her staff into the ground and leaped over her opponent, then she proceeded to avoid his attacks using the same strategy as before. Oni Mask may have had the advantage of speed before but his current worn-out state quickly wasted that advantage. Sorano quickly thrust her staff forward shooting off a bolt of lightning but Oni Mask leaned to the side avoiding it. Minor branches of electricity gently separated from the bolt burning the man up a bit and revealing some of his skin. Now Oni Mask was not completely invisible in the darkness as some of his burnt flesh was well visible.</p><p>Tanshu was surprised by how well his mentor took those lightning burns, it was no secret that his sensei's body under those clothes was covered with burns, for a burned skin to be hit by minor lightning branches and to keep its owner completely unfazed was impressive. Sensei must've had tremendous pain tolerance, had he not drugged Tanshu when training him the boy suspected he'd have just the same kind of tolerance too. The ex-Sannin and the Oni Mask clashed again, as much as the man tried to break the staff using his near-superhuman strength he could not do it, as much as the woman tried to land a single blow on the man using her staff she also couldn't do it. It was evident by now that the battle would be decided not by who was more skilled but who could catch their opponent off guard with a more powerful technique. Having realized this both fighters leaped back.</p><p>"This fight sucks, I can't see a thing." Misu sniffed angrily, Howoku did not move his eyes from the battle. </p><p>"That's because you do not use perception in your battles, your Vapor Mode protects you from every attack your opponent makes which makes you careless. If you knew how to pick up and interpret sounds. If you could see the entire situation in those brief moments of light that Sorano-san gives herself if you had any imagination and perception skills at all you'd be able to see it." Hanasaku showed Misu her tongue and pointed at the boy, "Look, even my little brother can follow the battle clearly, jeez you're such a loser, Misu!" she laughed out. </p><p>Misu sniffed again and looked at his friend, "You're as careless as I am if not more, I bet you can't follow it either..." </p><p>Hanasaku's head dipped to the ground, she looked like she was about to cry, "I can pick up bits and pieces... I'm missing so much of such an awesome battle!"</p><p>"Well then, we've danced long enough, lady, let us proceed to the finishing touches then." Oni Mask huffed out, without replying a single word Sorano swung her staff and pointed it at her opponent shooting off a bolt of lightning. The lightning bolt seemed to keep going and the wall behind Oni Mask. Sorano was thrown off guard by the fact that the glowing in the dark oni mask at that moment wasn't even on the face of her opponent but actually on something else. It was too late however as every observer could hear only loud thuds and the grunt of the woman before Oni Mask's demonic voice returned. "Demon Kenpo," he said naming his style of quick succession strikes that hit the woman's body. In some ways Oni Mask was the perfect ninja as he represented all that ninja stood for, he deceived his opponent, threw them off guard, and then took them out quickly while being completely invisible to his victim. Even the mighty retired Sannin was now dead laying on the floor...</p><p>"Not bad, for the both of us to use the same technique to trick their opponent." Sorano's voice echoed from some other corner of the room. "String Reeling technique to hang the most visible object in front, making the enemy believe that their opponent was standing still. It seems I've gotten used to the dark already just as you are." </p><p>Oni Mask lifted off the coat of Sorano that he tore up using his quick thrusts strong enough to stab a human being with his own hand before laughing out and tossing it aside. "It is true, I suppose I am as blind in this darkness as you are, Sorano-san" Oni Mask nodded as he turned around to face the old woman in the corner where she has hidden. Tanshu was completely confused, when did this woman pull this trick off? When did she have the time to do that? He had to hand it to this woman, even if he did hate her, she was resourceful. How in the world could she and sensei have the same idea at the same time to trick their opponent?! Tanshu refused to place this woman on sensei's level of smarts, that was impossible.</p><p>The two leaped at each other, exchanging blows with each powerful strike being blocked by the other. Oni Mask's thrusts managed to deflect Sorano's staff just as easily as her staff deflected his fists and thrusts. Knowing that Oni Mask trained his fists punching steel and stone it was to no surprise. Then something happened, the whole room illuminated as Sorano just became lightning-shaped and dissolved appearing behind her opponent, Oni Mask tried to react but quick and precise blows from her staff stopped him in his tracks. The woman worked the staff very well, spinning it around to confuse the man and charging it up with lightning chakra to make a stronger blow. She tore up the man's jumpsuit, even more, making it even harder for him to properly conceal his body in the dark as his purplish dark burnt skin was quite standing out compared to the darkness around him to a trained eye. The woman tried to finish it all by driving her staff to Oni Mask's head, an impact like that would've knocked him out for sure. With a loud clang, the staff shot up into the air as the Demon deflected it with his arm thrust.</p><p>Having found his new opening the man did not hesitate, his balance and speed were thrown off, he kept punching the old lady but his strikes did not kill her, just open cuts and bruises, broke her teeth and cut her lip, made her body swell but did not outright impale her. It was apparent that sensei's "Demon Kenpo" needed some preparation and concentration-time but it didn't matter - sensei was fighting a Sannin one on one, he was returning her the blows he took and that was satisfactory. Even if the idea of a Sannin matching sensei in his dark room was scary, at least it provided some comfort as sensei was not entirely over his head. Sensei's arms weighed down, he was breathing heavily, the woman took this time to recover and started striking back herself, charging her staff up, even more, giving the man no time to respond or defend. This was no longer a perfect chain of blocks or a match of skill, this was two people desperately trying to kill each other! Sorano slammed her staff right into Oni Mask's head, sensei's head let out a disgusting and alarming sound - something told Tanshu that it'd be a very disgusting display if this darkness wasn't here to conceal it.</p><p>"Demon Kenpo!" Oni Mask yelled out of nowhere right as a combination of stabbing-like sounds broke into Tanshu's ears. He got her! Tanshu could smell the blood, he could feel it that both combatants were injured but did sensei hit the woman in her vitals? He could have hit her many times but if no vitals were hit any ninja could keep going even after being impaled by his strikes multiple times. Tanshu was hit by that many times when sensei wasn't planning to kill him and he always could take multiple of those. The woman grunted in pain but kept swinging her staff. Suddenly her staff lit up with sheer lightning chakra, she was going to use all that she had accumulated revealing just how much damage each fighter has taken with the light from the charging up lightning. Sensei's head was split open, it was hard to determine just how much damage he had taken since his face was disfigured but it was bleeding quite heavily, the woman also was bleeding out as she evidently took multiple stabs from sensei's strikes. A powerful beam illuminated the room making each ninja inside cover their eyes and ears from the deafening sound. </p><p>A powerful lightning wave blew covering most of the room as the woman yelled out "Heavenly Punishment Jutsu!"</p><p>It would not have taken a genius to know that if that technique had landed on sensei he would've been disintegrated... Tanshu couldn't see how things happened but he knew that this was the woman's plan all along - to quickly gather up charges in ugly one on one clashes and use this. All of this darkness worked in her favor, a contrast of absolute light breaking absolute darkness forced even the other Sannin to flinch in place. Nothing could have survived this inhuman jutsu. And yet... Tanshu knew not to count sensei as being dead before he saw the pile of his ashes. All the ninja in this room, both the fighting ones and the ones waiting for their turn stood silently waiting for the conclusion to this battle in the darkness that was approaching and seemed to be getting closer and closer every second! Every blow could've concluded the battle now.</p>
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<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Tanshu's Story: Howoku's Starlight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the aftermath of Sorano's technique, there was a brief moment of illumination even after it had resolved, such an "afterlight" effect was not something that was common to many techniques. Also, there were countless lightning sparks crackling in the air, even the aftermath of the technique was violent enough. The retired Sannin was breathing heavily and clenching one of many wounds inflicted by her opponent with small drops of blood ticking down on the floor once in a while. As the afterlight cleared the result of her technique was apparent, then slowly the surrounding dimmed away into the gloom. Loud grunts and whining could've been heard in the darkness.</p><p>"Your leg is quite messed up, perhaps it'd be for the best to grant us passage and let us go?" Sorano taunted the opponent whom she saw to be alive. "You've got to be kidding..." Tanshu thought, he noticed from sensei's stance that he used his "Demon Kick" technique charging his body with Lightning Release chakra and kicking transferring all of the force into this one kick, such kick was swift, silent and was strong enough to cut people in two, even more, the Lightning Release nature of the technique would've been enough to absorb the technique while sensei's other leg would've grounded it. And yet... Oni Mask's leg looked like a lump of coal, it was black and barely resembled a human appendage, just how powerful was this technique that this retired Sannin used? This strength was beginning to defy even the ninja limits, these Sannin were not superhuman, they were super-ninja.</p><p>Sorano grunted again as she spun her staff and pointed it to where Oni Mask last was when light illuminated the room, a powerful and unstable lightning bolt shot out, as the room was lit up it revealed Oni Mask standing right up to Sorano and having ducked right to the ground. "Demon Kenpo" he shouted thrusting his hand right to the woman's heart, as the body was penetrated it dissolved into pure lightning chakra and lit the room again revealing Oni Mask grunting and falling to his knees, "Lightning Clone!?" he shouted out in frustration. A loud thud echoed, then the thud repeated, then again, and again, and again, and again. The thuds started echoing around like a machine gun, it was tough for Tanshu to keep his ears open - the two were exchanging blows again in total darkness, using just perception and imagination of their opponent's position and predicting their movements with complete precision, as Sorano's staff ground against the floor it shot out lightning sparks that briefly lit the room. It was a glorious dance of light and violence. It made Tanshu almost beg for another peek just to see these two amazing ninja clash again.</p><p>A flash of light lit the next exchange, the woman's palm was shooting straight at the mess that was Oni Mask's face, there it was - the opening. The arms of the assassin shot backward like he was winding up to push the woman away, he then just shot them both forward at the same time. "Twin Demon Kenpo!" he grunted as another flesh-tearing sound reached everyone's ears. Then it started sounding like someone was spilling a bucket of water on the floor, as the lightning lit everything up again it was revealed that one palm penetrated Sorano's gut, this was major, with so many injuries and her old body there was only that much that the woman could do, this battle was wrapping up. Sorano tried to use her chance to hit Oni Mask's exposed head but she couldn't, the pain made her slower, exhaustion made her even slower. She shot all of her lightning out already from her staff, if she hadn't she'd have used the staff's own abilities and not her own "Lightning Clone Jutsu" moments before to avoid death.</p><p>Once again loud clangs echoed through the room, again and again, Tanshu could not believe for how long these two were dancing together, for how long they could keep this race of mind, will, and determination up, for how long they could both fight to the best of their abilities without slowing down. Sensei was being pushed, according to Tanshu's calculations he only had one last technique and no chance to use it - the All Speed. As the name suggests it is the entirety of sensei's potential speed and strength but... It couldn't just have been thrown out like that, especially not when sensei was this hurt, his eyes were flooding with blood coming from his forehead and his body was tired at this point of the fight, Tanshu had expected the jutsu to come in early to gain an advantage but why was sensei keeping it for last? Having its drawbacks in mind...</p><p>A loud clang, louder than the thousands before interrupted the boy's thoughts as a powerful gust of wind made him cover his face. For the first time, the room lit up not because of the lightning but because of the actual sparks from sensei's "Demon Kenpo" clashing with Raijin's staff. The woman's staff was first to attack, Oni Mask could not react in time and got a couple of blows, the woman aimed for the head - she knew that if she hit hard enough she'd break the man's skull, at some point, if it wasn't broken yet... Oni Mask was being flung around mercilessly as Sorano's staff hit him again and again, the man tried to block using just his arms but without chakra enhancements of "Demon Kenpo" he was unable to keep up with the staff's strength, it was simply flesh against the ancient steel.</p><p>With a powerful swing hitting Oni Mask's cheek and lighting it up just for that extra strength and flare, sending most of his teeth to the floor, Sorano sent the man down. Her staff started crackling with lightning - she was charging up another attack! She probably had enough for a lethal thunderbolt strike which made Tanshu worried - sensei just kept twitching on his knees, was he down and out? Sorano pointed her staff right at his bleeding head, at this rate... Wait... What if he wasn't still affected by the blows, what if he was... For the last time, Sorano's staff lit up with powerful impulses of electricity as a ball formed on the tip. The room lit up, so brightly that everyone had to cover their eyes. It was over, but the sight that greet everyone when they turned back surprised everyone.</p><p>The spot where Sorano aimed her lightning bolt was flaming, her lightning bolt had missed and hit the floor! Oni Mask was right below the woman, his legs were stretched out to the human limit as he ducked his frontal body to avoid the blast, his back was still smoking from the side-burns of the bolt of electricity. Sorano's body twitched a couple of times - Oni Mask's arm was dug right through her chest. There it was, All Speed. Oni Mask channeled all of his remaining chakra into lightning impulses that enhanced his bodily reaction time and movements to superhuman levels. However, using his All Speed required some charge-up time, appropriate to how exhausted the user's body was, also it fatigued the body and basically burned the muscles up. Tanshu understood what this meant, both short term and long term implications. Oni Mask straightened out as he held the old lady's body, gently placing it on the ground and closing her eyes with his soft stroke of the hand.</p><p>"You BASTARD!" Howoku yelled out, at that same moment his body lit up, it was like chakra was simply leaking out of his pores, like some sort of white divine-like light was leaking from his body. The man charged forward, Tanshu could follow the man's movement but it was incredibly fast, just how could this wimp have pulled this off? Oni Mask obviously could not move in time, Tanshu had already predicted that using All Speed so late in the fight would pretty much kill his chances of movement afterward. A sphere of light of the same nature shaped itself in the palm of Howoku's hand as his arm shot forward hitting Oni Mask's chest. "Starlight Sphere!" Howoku yelled out thrusting his hand forward and throwing his opponent back like a ragdoll as the sphere of light violently dissolved. Oni Mask yelled out loudly, flying backward and hitting the wall. After Oni Mask's body hit the wall behind him it collapsed with the lifeless body flying right out. Light seeped through into the room, it was symbolic that as Oni Mask died so did the darkness in the room... Tanshu blinked and it was over - to think that the power of this wimp could break even Hana's seal, sure, it was weakened by the old lady's most powerful lightning bolt but the boy had to know.</p><p>"This light... This chakra, it's a Kekkei Genkai, correct? May I know what kind?" Tanshu asked looking at Howoku, the man's eyes changed, this was no longer the stare of a noble and kind soul, this was a stare of a bloodthirsty fighter. </p><p>"This man was your sensei, correct? Don't you wish revenge for his death?" the man replied, his voice was rude and strong, no longer the gentle and soft tone he had when he came. </p><p>Tanshu looked down, "To tell you the truth I think sensei wanted me to kill him at some point, just to finish his training. I did like him as a mentor but in this world people die, I've already lost any grip on reality. Death of people dear to me no longer brings up any emotion. Neither this floor nor the one above it is my floor to fight. Now answer my question, Star of Hope, Howoku!"</p><p>Howoku turned around and drew his blunt blade, slowly the man stroke his hand by the blade, normally it would've opened up a grievous wound but the blunt steel was made more for bashing than slashing. With a swift and precise movement of his hand, Howoku threw the blunt sword like a spear aiming at Oni Mask's body lying outside on the black rough ground. Just mere moments before the sword went on its trajectory outside and impaled the body of his sensei Tanshu's wrist wrapped around its handle catching it in mid-air. "I no longer want that title or this blade that cannot take lives!" Howoku yelled out in rage, "I held myself back, restrained my Starlight Release and used a blunt blade, I believed that if I fought with peaceful intentions in his heart that the world would change, that it'd pull its punches on me as well! Curse you, Red Dog Tanshu, go to Hell for catching this blade, from now on I live by a new ideal - evil people that threaten peace deserve absolute death, Iron Country samurai call it "Aku-Soku-Zan!" Tanshu threw the useless junk weapon to the side, this blunt sword that could not kill anyone did not deserve to be held by him.</p><p>"Starlight Release... Huh?" Tanshu spoke under his own nose as he boldly stepped forward walking up to Howoku who seemed to be going through a crisis of ideals. After the young ninja passed by the saddened Sannin he turned to the side, "There is no need to attack corpses, even for one who follows "Aku-Soku-Zan", I'm not nearly patient enough to check if sensei is dead or not, all I know that no one can live through a battle like this, even if Sorano-san had survived this battle she'd have collapsed not too long afterward, sensei cannot be beaten one on one in this room and his purpose to God-Eyes is now fulfilled, I no longer care what happens to him and if you do you're just an angry child fixed on revenge. If you keep me waiting and standing here wasting time I'll kill all three of you, now let's move to the next floor." he said showing to Howoku the key. </p><p>Hanasaku jumped up, "Wait, did you have all the keys this whole time!?" </p><p>Tanshu kept on walking, he just waved his arm and carelessly replied: "You did not bother to properly answer my question, I don't owe you the explanation of this situation as well."</p><p>As the boy started walking up the stairs he heard the Sannin catching up, Howoku then spoke. "Starlight Release is a Kekkei Genkai I awakened during my teenage years, I have no idea where it comes from or why I have it but I'm the only person in the world with it. It's a form of a combination of Fire and Lightning Releases, it creates a plasma-like substance that is said to be as hot in its core as the surface of the Sun. I didn't like to use it because it usually either hurts people very badly or outright disintegrates them if I hit them head-on, such extraordinary power needs to be restrained, used carefully... Or so I thought, now I don't care about the lives of scum that threaten peace. Please tell me about the keys now, Tanshu." For a moment Tanshu just kept walking up the stairs contemplating what Howoku just said, "Starlight Release", so that was the kind of ability that the Sannin used, a superheated gas that can be used to absolutely decimate even Hana's seals. Even God-Eyes' most powerful Universal Push lacked the strength to do that, that was how this crater was formed this deep in the first place, the one God-Eyes made when fighting Tanshu wasn't even at one-tenth the strength of this one.</p><p>"Well, I guess now I can tell you the truth, now that you broke Hana's seal there is no use in this whole key thing, this key doesn't unlock anything, it's my key from my floor. You can just bust the door down, there is no longer any protection to this tower, you can even go as far as to break the rules and attack God-Eyes right now." After Tanshu finished talking Howoku nodded angrily, his cold and scary look started giving even Tanshu the creeps. And yet... A man who cared so deeply about his comrades, a man who was able to change his entire life worth of beliefs to better respect the memory of a dead comrade. The boy felt it inside - he wanted to be this man's comrade now. If he died while being Howoku's friend this man would avenge Tanshu and protect his katei for him even if someone powerful killed the young man... His life would finally have meaning.</p><p>"Nah, screw that, let's play by the rules. I'm really getting into this." Misu spoke as Tanshu's fist flew straight into the man's face sending him tumbling a couple of steps backward. Apparently, even the Sannin did not expect this blow as his face did not dissolve into vapor after getting hit. </p><p>"You bastard, Sorano-san died! How can you just play by the scumbag's rules after he had Sorano-san killed! How can we return to the village having lost someone like Sorano-san! The village will never wipe away the tears!" the man was literally shaking as he yelled it out. Hanasaku's hand reached over Howoku's shoulder. </p><p>"No, I believe what Misu said is what is best" for the first time in a while the young woman spoke in a very calm and assured tone, "Didn't you see it yet? These nukenin are able to kill us, they're just as strong as we are and when I clashed with Little Bro here I felt it - he'd kick me in the butt a couple of times and it'd definitely be tough to fight him. If we split up and fight everyone at once we won't be able to assist each other if needed assistance. What if you or Misu or I need help and the others are fighting somewhere else? More people will die and you will blame yourself, even more, Howoku-kun. Please stop and calm down, we'll play this how Little Bro wants."</p><p>Tanshu was truly annoyed by being called "Little Bro", who did this lady think she was? If memory served well the next in line would be Vashia... It was really hard for Tanshu to kick down the door, not because it was hard, the door itself was just a wooden construction and a simple shoulder push could've taken it out when the seal was broken. The hard part was the emotional part. Vashia was a nice girl, Tanshu knew it. She was silent, closed in, and didn't wish harm upon anyone else. But if she was told to fight she would fight until the end because she was devoted to the cause, deep inside the Red Dog knew that she thought of them as a little family, just like he did. </p><p>"Is something wrong, Little Bro?" Hanasaku laughed out and tried to stroke his hair, with a rough blow Tanshu pushed her hand away. </p><p>"Shut up, I'm just thinking..." As the door fell out and the Red Dog started leading the three he noticed something wrong, this was not Vashia's floor, it couldn't have been. Hana and Vashia must've switched floors, it was most likely God-Eyes who ordered this - still, the purpose of this switch remained known only to him. In the manner of a true God, he was unpredictable till the end. The walls were covered with some stupid graffiti-like paintings done with simple red and purple paint. The whole place was well lit and had multiple cushions thrown around randomly on the floor. As the boy opened the door he already knew the face that'd greet them inside. "This is Hana, she's the one that placed all those seals on the Tower. Please gang up on her and kill her quickly before she speaks." Tanshu facepalmed.</p><p>"Shut up you loser! Why didn't you help Oni Mask fight?! Maybe you sided with the Konoha trash then? Come on, I'll take you on too, you twerp!" the lady broke out spitting filth. The young nukenin sighed in frustration and stood to a wall gesturing that it was now OK to challenge her. Hanasaku jumped forward and cracked her knuckles, </p><p>"OK, my turn!" she shouted out but Howoku was already standing in front of the young woman. "HOWOKU-KUN!" she whined out comically but it appeared like the Sannin couldn't hear the voice of his companion anymore. </p><p>He just pointed his fist at the young lady, "Your boss is threatening the peace and is responsible for the death of a retired Sannin, give your key up and I will let you live." His voice sounded husky and angry but Hana didn't get the clue. </p><p>She just made a comic grimace and showed her tongue and her middle finger. "You'll get rabbit poop, ya loser!" the girl removed a small piece of bubble gum from her purse and put it into her mouth.</p><p>"She had bubble gum in her ninja tool pouch?" Hanasaku's mouth opened in shock, "Shit, how come I didn't think of that!? I can carry food in there!" Howoku's head sunk down and then lifted back up as the man fixed his glasses. "Then I shall remove you from the equation, as a threat to peace you must be destroyed!" the man shouted out, despite the fact that he looked calmed down after the death of his comrade he still acted like this new "Aku-Soku-Zan" version of the man he once was. Tanshu didn't complain, at least he'd use his Starlight Release and shut that annoying mouth of Hana's up. Meanwhile, he could think of some way to prevent Vashia's death, maybe he could somehow lead them to her floor right to God-Eyes! No. That wouldn't work, the construction of the floor was pretty simplistic and it only had one pathway, from down to up. Maybe he could talk to the girl? No, Vashia had a strong sense of honor, she wouldn't budge even if the enemy is a Sannin. Stupid God-Eyes, he should've fought these people himself, now he's counting on his apostles to wear them out so that he can finish them himself. What a despicable guy!</p><p>Hana and Howoku leaped at each other, preparing for a clash. The fight on the second floor was about to begin!</p>
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<a name="section0031"><h2>31. Tanshu's Story: Another Battle Stolen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The two opponents just continued to stare each other down. Tanshu knew that making a move first and taking the offensive approach was simply not Hana's style, especially when taking on a Konohagakure Sannin like Howoku. On the other hand, Tanshu was afraid of Howoku's silent and cool stare, while he may have spoken a lot of trash about Hana he still sort of cared about her. She was like an older abusive sister to him, on a day-to-day basis he may have hated the girl's guts but when the choice of life and death was given, it wasn't truly a choice at all.</p><p>Chestnut Hanasaku looked at Tanshu curiously, "Say, Little Bro, what's this Hana chick like anyways?" </p><p>Tanshu pouted angrily and yelled back in a rude manner, "I told you to stop calling me that! It ain't any of your business, Sannin!" Hanasaku just smiled and then looked back at the two opponents that just kept looking at each other. </p><p>Hana shot her palm forward as if she was a queen issuing an order to her subordinates. "Don't you dare say another word, loser! Your tongue won't do me justice! I am Hana of the Sand Village, the handiest right-hand person to have by one's side!" the girl spoke in a rather arrogant tone. It was obvious that the young lady had great pride in her abilities. All of a sudden Howoku's body started leaking Stardust Release chakra as the man disappeared from where he was standing.</p><p>An elbow strike connected to Hana's face almost instantly after everyone noticed that the man disappeared, then another blow to her middle body area, Howoku punched and kicked again and again in a combination before finishing his ruthless attack with a knee to the girl's stomach and a finishing downward strike from his elbow. Hanasaku yelled out in frustration, "Oy, Howoku, that's rude to do to a lady! You should stop playing around and just take her out quick!" Tanshu's face did not flinch, actually, Howoku's approach was the right one - hit Hana fast and take her out, don't give her a chance to do anything before she uses one of her crazy tricks. His only mistake was to stop hitting her once she was down. </p><p>Howoku's ruthless eyes looked back at his two teammates, "I don't care if she's male or female, she became an enemy to be taken down the moment she acted against us. She chose this world of violence and death and brought this onto herself. She or anyone else, for that matter, has no right to complain about any of this!" he grunted out angrily starting to leak Starlight Release chakra from his body.</p><p>This attack was different! The amount of chakra that Howoku sent out was insane! Why would any technique make one leak such overwhelming amounts of chakra, maybe this was a proof of this man's lack of chakra control, he must've been so hesitant to use these destructive Starlight techniques that he had no control over them? Howoku's arms shot forward as he roared loudly in pain and effort that it took to keep this impressive display up. All of the star-white chakra gathered outside of his body and just started making the man glow and shimmer. "Starlight Bridge Jutsu!" Howoku shouted out as the chakra violently shot forward in a powerful slightly arching beam shaped right like the user's body. This was without a doubt an attack to completely disintegrate the opponent.</p><p>As the overflowing light of Howoku's Starlight Release filled the room everyone had to cover their eyes. Tanshu tried to duck and bolt out of the room as a technique of such caliber expelling so much heat would've completely eradicated the entire room making the whole building collapse in the process. "This is useless, I won't move in time... This intense heat!" Tanshu thought to himself feeling just how hot it was being in the same room where Howoku used his Starlight Release. Hana would've been dead in moments... Then suddenly a realization hit the young boy - this wasn't so bad. For a technique that was as hot as the surface of the Sun, this wasn't half bad... Stumped Tanshu opened his eyes and saw Hana standing still with her own hands thrust forward with a big black insignia formed from her chakra in the air. The girl grinned with a cocky and mocking smile and then made a nasty grimace, showing the Sannin her middle finger.</p><p>"I told you loser, I'm the handiest ninja in the world! I possess the power to use amazing sealing techniques like this "Black Hieroglyph Seal" I used to seal away your Starlight Bridge Jutsu. Also, I am a sensor so I can feel just how much your chakra levels dropped. Come on, big man, fire some more of those, I'll just drain you out in seconds. Or maybe you want to punch me some more? Well, you should know that I'm a medical ninja too so whatever punch you throw I'll return with six times your strength - you have no options against me!" Hana spread her arms opening up her body as if taunting Howoku to try his best shot. The man's cold and ruthless eyes did not falter for a moment, he didn't even look surprised that his powerful Starlight Bridge Jutsu was absorbed.</p><p>"You cocky little brat..." Howoku spoke lunging forward with an onslaught of taijutsu techniques. The man just punched, again and again, kicked and flipped to punch from the other side while Hana effortlessly dodged or blocked his attacks. Medical ninja were hard to hit up close because they trained day and night to properly evade and Hana was just like that. She was training to dodge, sometimes when Tanshu came to Oni Mask's room in the morning for training he found Hana training to dodge Oni Mask's attacks in absolute darkness using just her sensory alone. This woman was impossible to land a solid hit on when she was pumped up. Tanshu observed carefully to see how this Sannin would deal with the situation, it may have been that, in the end, he'd see another Sannin die that day. Before he hit her when using his Starlight chakra boost and while Hana wasn't expecting it, now he couldn't even land a single blow on her.</p><p>With a powerful clash of kunai, the two leaped off of one another making some distance, both of them were huffing a little bit, Howoku was obviously the worst of the two tired combatants - that Starlight Release he used on Oni Mask and right here was already catching up with him and here he was fighting a perfect evader up close where Tanshu could easily tell, he did not exceed in. </p><p>"He should not have dropped his sword, I can see from his style that he has only above average skills with taijutsu, I assume that he was a better swordsman?" the boy asked looking at Howoku's fellow Sannin. </p><p>Misu of the Vapor cracked an evil grin, "Nah, he sucked at it, the idiot just fought with a dull blade because he considered fist-fighting "uncivilized"." Tanshu's eyes shot wide open, these Sannin were weird people. They purposefully restricted their abilities in battle to have a more satisfying fight? What crazy fools!</p><p>Hana once again shot her finger forward with a cocky smile, "So, what's it gonna be? Ready to surrender? Maybe if you say "Hana-sama, you're so amazing and beautiful and all-around a perfect lady" I'll let you go... If you also give me something nice to hang on those walls... And maybe kiss my ring while kneeling in front of me!" Howoku smiled as his eyes calmed down, Tanshu was starting to get scared by the man's ruthless eyes but now that they returned to calmness they also seemed to calm him down. This man had a weird feeling about him. The boy was starting to somewhat understand why Oni Mask said he was called "Star of Hope", whatever he felt, the people around him felt too. When he was grieving everyone else couldn't help but feel sad just looking at him. When he was feeling hopeful he also brought hope in the eyes of others.</p><p>"Girl, you're truly a remarkable ninja. I must say, however, I figured out your thing so if you continue fighting me I'll have to show you just what the true difference between a remarkable ninja and a Sannin is. Please turn back and leave this tower, go back to your village. Abandon this hopeless man who uses his friends as pawns just to keep the enemy away from him." Hana yelled out in frustration some unintelligible nonsense and leaped forward with a chakra enhanced punch, throwing it straight at Howoku's face. Before it landed, Howoku's body lit up with Starlight chakra, and with a tap, he gently pushed the woman's punch away and gave her one of his own, with an overwhelming force he pushed the young lady back crashing into the bone wall, he did not stop however as Howoku jumped right next to her and started punching her again, now that the first impact fazed her Hana was not nearly as good at evading the strikes. </p><p>"This Starlight Release chakra seems to enhance his physical abilities somewhat..." Tanshu noted to himself but overall even in this shining new mode Howoku was not too impressive of a physical force for the young boy.</p><p>With a powerful finishing blow, Howoku sent Hana to the ground and turned around, nonchalantly walking away from her without looking back at her. As far as he was concerned the battle was over. Howoku did not see Hana get up from the ground, trembling and covered with slight burns and bruises from his barrage of blows, spitting out blood but, with a powerful glow of green chakra, she started wiping all of those injuries away. "Don't you dare walk away! You cocky shining bastard!" she yelled out at Howoku stopping the man in his tracks. Howoku turned his head back to her halfway and mumbled in a cold and careless manner. "You're a sensor ninja, no, you're what we call "an Advanced Sensor", normal sensors can sense chakra from a certain distance, sense as if in they can confirm the presence of chakra. They are incapable of telling that much about the details of the chakra, their use of sensory is also a bit limited in battle."</p><p>After a brief pause, Howoku turned back from Hana and took several more steps back towards the exit from the room. "What we call "Advanced Sensors" use some sort of sensory enhancement, like Earth Release users sensing vibrations coming off of the ground or in your case... Lightning Release users sensing nerve signals and being able to use it in tandem with your normal sensory. With enough training, you learn to react to sensing the signal incredibly fast and you make your opponent believe that you predicted their moves because of how effortlessly you evade their attack. That being said, I've shown to you that this ability won't change the outcome of this battle, you are simply outmatched here and even your Advanced Sensory won't make the difference between us stop mattering. In ten or so years you may have beaten me easily but you lack training and discipline, now get out of my sight. You keep calling people "cocky" when in fact you yourself are nothing but that. I have no time for talented people that get in over their heads thinking they don't need to work hard as well..." Howoku grunted.</p><p>It appeared that the man's words have broken Hana down. She dropped down on her knees and started pounding the ground and shouting in rage and frustration, Tanshu had never seen the young woman so psyched out, she was really unstable now and could've lashed out pretty quickly. Had he cared at all if any of these Sannin lived or died he'd have warned them, his predictions just happened to be correct, Hana roared out into the air for one more time before slamming a smoke bomb into the ground with all of her strength. The smoke filled the room making it impossible to see a thing inside.</p><p>"Disappear without a trace, you filthy Sannin! Oracle Shot Jutsu!" Hana shouted out with a very uncommon for her enraged tone as she shot her hands forward firing off a wild bolt of lightning in a random direction. Tanshu knew this technique, it once hit him when he pissed Hana off and burned him severely as well as stopped his heart, it took Oni Mask threatening to kill Hana for hurting his only apprentice for her to heal him. She popped the smoke bomb to reduce the visibility to zero, she then used her "Advanced Sensory" as Howoku called it to take proper aim at her target leaving them no chance or time to properly respond as they didn't know what was coming at them.</p><p>As the smoke cleared Tanshu couldn't see Howoku anywhere, only a black burning spot where Hana's "Oracle Shot" hit the ground. Only in several moments could he locate Howoku hanging from the ceiling of the small room looking at his opponent with already finished handseals. Hana's eyes and mouth shot open in surprise as she took a couple of steps backward in fear. Howoku angrily taunted her, "What's wrong? You're a medical ninja, right? You can take it and get yourself back to fighting shape in no time... For your sake though... Don't." the mad leaking Starlight Release chakra formed four basketball-sized spheres of Starlight chakra, Howoku thrust his arms forward shouting "Star Chart Strike!" as the four spheres went on to strike the area where Hana was erupting in a powerful and wild explosion as all four spheres violently exploded upon impact with the floor or the walls.</p><p>When the destructive explosion resolved Tanshu saw the extent of the damage, nearly half of the Tower of Bones was blown to bits. It was really unstable now and it couldn't have taken much more to make the whole roof just slide down to the ground below. Hana was down on her knees with her white dress torn up and burnt and her pink hair now flowing wildly instead of being set in her stupid girly hairdo of twisted braids. "Im...Possible... I absorbed it... I had to..." she uttered coughing up blood and dust. Howoku landed back down on the floor and breathed out, he obviously strained himself more than he needed to in this battle but that was how one had to fight a medical ninja, explode quickly right into their faces with all or nothing assaults because medical ninja would eventually heal back from any weaker attacks and simply outlast even much stronger opponents.</p><p>The girl once again started healing herself when Howoku turned around and returned to his friends, turning at Hana for one more time. "Your absorption seal doesn't seem to handle barrage techniques that well, you only absorbed some of my technique, maybe one-third of it at least... You should invent a new seal for continuous or barrage ninjutsu techniques, there are plenty of ninja in the world that use those kinds of techniques. If your will to become a powerful ninja one day isn't broken, that is..." Howoku smiled back at Hana. Tanshu could not believe, was this really the same man that broke down in rage over the death of his comrade not too long ago? Did he forget his oath to kill anyone that threatened peace? Or, maybe, in his eyes, this girl was no longer a threat to peace, it was God-Eyes that was the big threat...</p><p>Tears burst from Hana's eyes as she rushed forward, Howoku leaned back and forth to evade her blind chakra enhanced strikes. This time even the girl's own tears of shame seemed to prevent her from punching straight. Howoku thrust his knee into Hana's central body area and as she staggered back he dashed right behind her and punched her in the back of her neck with a powerful but restrained blow. Hana's eyes rolled back as she tried desperately to catch some air and to retain her consciousness but she collapsed on the floor powerless and defeated. Tanshu sighed, "You should take away any sharp tools from her, she will most likely just commit seppuku once she wakes up. Old sis doesn't handle shame that well..."</p><p>Howoku looked back at the unconscious girl and picked her up into his arms. "There's no shame in losing to a Sannin, she had the potential of surpassing me but she wasted it by treating her amazing talents at ninjutsu and sealing techniques as if they compensate for hard work. She's a lot like Misu that way... Anyways, I'll go take her outside, if this tower collapses she'll die in the rubble, I'll go find a safe place for her where the ground is more stable." Misu was really annoyed by Howoku's expression but then his friend just played it as a joke and went off to find a safe place for Hana. </p><p>The Chestnut Sannin smiled ironically at Tanshu, "What did you just call her? "Old sis"?" the young woman burst into laughter as Tanshu desperately tried to shut her up. "Anyways, I won't let you stall this and give that Starlight guy time to recover, let's move on without him," Tanshu said quickly dashing up the stairs into the next room. The young man stopped and looked down shyly when he approached the door, he stepped back for one of the Sannin to break down the door.</p><p>Hanasaku stepped forward and flicked the door making a powerful shockwave emanate making the door crumble down into multiple pieces. Tanshu looked back and then to the side, "Ummm... Maybe... Could you not kill the next opponent? She's a really nice girl but she is really loyal to God-Eyes so she'll say anything to make you believe otherwise..." Hanasaku cracked her knuckles and nodded energetically, giving Tanshu a powerful thumb up right after. "Sure! I won't hurt her too bad, don't worry!" Hanasaku smiled. "Wait... Where's Misu? THAT BASTARD! HE BETTER NOT BE TAKING MY FIGHT!" Hanasaku yelled out as she started dashing up the stairs. </p><p>Tanshu only then realized what was going on - this Misu guy disappeared while Tanshu was acting the shy little brother to fight Vashia and that dumb idiot Hanasaku was dashing right towards God-Eyes' room! Talk about a conundrum! "Ugh, I'll just have to trust that Misu guy's integrity to not kill Vashia-chan... WAIT UP, YOU STUPID IDIOT! That's the wrong way!" he followed the incredibly fast Sannin that was bolting upstairs right to his room!</p>
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<a name="section0032"><h2>32. Tanshu's Story: Two Clashes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a silent tap of his feet to the stone-hard and edgy floor, Howoku landed on the wasteland ground. It'd have been problematic had the man landed on the mushy slime and started sinking, he'd have had to use more of Starlight Burst to escape by simply dashing out of the sinking death. Gently Howoku placed the pink-haired girl on the ground and looked at her. Since she had no life-threatening injuries the man followed Tanshu's advice and removed her pouch, placing it around his other leg which didn't have a ninja kit on it. Then Howoku's attention turned to the half busted tower. For how long would this shaky construction hold? If the battles turned too hectic it'd inevitably go down...</p><p>Misu was not the one that worried Howoku, the man was incredibly powerful but his fighting style was very small scale and self-contained. He knew quite well how not to make a fuss out of things and was the last one to leave a blazing trail of destruction behind. Hanasaku on the other hand... She's a rampaging beast of destruction, if she got into her fight she'd take the tower down with a single blow. That much was for certain. Howoku closed his eyes, breathed in and out, trying to balance his tired body out, regain at least some stamina so that his body calmed down. He would need some more strength in the future, he'd be the one fighting One with the Eyes of God, that much Howoku knew for certain. With a slow and confident step the Star of Hope went up to the entrance of the tower, he still had to carry out Sorano's body and bring her back home as well...</p><p>Tanshu rushed desperately trying to catch up with the stupid young woman that was running ahead of him. Her speed was ridiculous, everything about this woman defied logic: her mindset, her abilities, and the extent of them. It was like the world itself had gone insane to match the insanity of this woman. "Wait up, you stupid broad!" Tanshu yelled out in frustration but a powerful blow shook the tower. The young man struggled to keep his balance on the steps as he reached for the wall. It was of no use, the walls themselves trembled and for a moment it appeared that even the bone walls were crumbling down but somehow they held it together. This woman was a walking calamity. "Damn you!" he yelled as Tanshu charged forward dashing into the room which the woman broke into.</p><p>Inside was a room of black tiles on the floor, walls, and the ceiling. The room was not completely dark like the one where Oni Mask always fought, this one was quite well illuminated, it was just covered with black accessories and had one red hieroglyphic symbol on each of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. The symbols were pulsing with chakra, with each pulse the symbol started glowing even more intensely as Tanshu entered the room the glow went insane. Within that same instant, the boy felt his chakra, except the minuscule bare minimum which his body required to survive, leaving his body - his seals started working. The woman's eyes and mouth shot open, it was like she couldn't believe her feeling, with a look of surprise, fear, and desperation she turned at Tanshu. "W...What is this room?" she uttered as Tanshu's eyes closed and his face turned away.</p><p>"This is the room where Red Dog Tanshu fights people that invade his katei - the Demonic Pentalimbo" the boy replied drawing out his sword from behind him. The woman started shaking, she must've felt the effect of this room, the effect of the seal which Tanshu had invented as an ultimate fruit of his training. </p><p>"You... What have you done?" her eyes looked like those of a cornered animal. </p><p>"Oni Mask-sensei taught me many things, he taught me how to be a true demon. He, however, did not notice just how strong I've become, even more, he constantly tried to deceive me about the level of my abilities. His silly attempts were to no avail, I've discovered a hidden talent inside of me, I've drawn out this power and created a bunch of seals. I've finally created an ultimate technique and sealed it within the very walls of this room. It is set in motion and the seals are undone the moment I step inside, it is active as long as I'm here to feed it chakra and it is automatically sealed inside again when I leave. You feel it, don't you?" Tanshu took a step towards the woman and pointed his blade at her. "The Demonic Pentalimbo Seal is a perfect version of my technique, a seal that allows me to reduce chakra of a person I am fighting to the level of an ordinary human, normally I can place the seal into people as a genjutsu but in this room... I don't have to, I don't have to touch them, I don't have to place the seal into their chakra system as a genjutsu, I just have to be inside..."</p><p>Tanshu's eyes opened, they were burning with incredible passion and desire to kill this woman, then her friends after they come inside. Howoku's Starlight Release wouldn't work here, Misu's ability would not work here. In this room Tanshu could have killed God-Eyes himself, then again, God-Eyes stopped being an obstacle long ago, in his eyes God-Eyes was just a pesky roommate that lived in the same tower as Tanshu did, he provided a roof over the youth's head and for that he was allowed to draw breath inside Tanshu's katei, everyone else had to die! "Konohagakure Sannin, Chestnut Hanasaku, you have entered my katei. Leave it or I will kill you!" Tanshu shouted angrily, he still had hope that this woman would see how outmatched she is here, honestly though, who did he think Chestnut was? </p><p>"I can't do that, I need to pass this room to get to that God-Eyed guy. Once I punch him in the face a couple of times we can leave... As a sister and her silly little brother." Hanasaku broke through the fear of losing her chakra control. She stood in a fighting pose. Was this woman not intimidated she just lost most of her chakra? Was this woman not afraid to die? Was this woman an idiot!?</p><p>One floor below a sliding door opened and a young swordsman entered a dojo-like room. A young lady was sitting in a meditating position facing the wall. "Please take off your shoes, Sir," she asked with a gentle but strong tone. Misu kicked his sandals off and continued to stare at the young lady. She turned around, "I apologize I greeted you with my back turned" the young lady bowed gently putting her head to the ground, she then stood up and looked the man straight into his eyes. "My name is Hyuuga Vashia of the Sand Village, however now I am in debt to One with the Eyes of God, the descendant of both that of the Moon and that of Earth. Please state your business but now that I am ready to fight for my master until my debt is paid." Misu stared the young lady down. She was young, probably in her late teens or early twenties, she looked frail but had a katana by her side and wore a flowery kimono, strong suggestions of the classical style of swordsmanship, that combined with her Byakugan eyes could be troublesome...</p><p>"I am Misu of the Vapor, Konohagakure Sannin and before this turns unpleasant, I wouldn't mind hearing just what you owe this "One with the Eyes of God"," Misu spoke, still standing firm on his two feet and not even hinting at reaching for his own sword. This would be a battle of swordsmen but the man felt confident in his victory, he was simply lead by curiosity in his inquiry. Vashia smiled gently and closed her eyes lowering her head and letting strands of hair fall on her face. "Right now! This is my chance, cut her down... Damn... I really want to know though..." Misu wandered as his eyes switched from those of a manslayer to those of a gentle visitor of this young lady's abode within mere moments, switching between light and shadow came particularly easy for Misu of the Vapor. </p><p>"I do not wish to burden you with my story, Sir, let us just say that God-Eyes saved me from a situation where my village condemned me to death, now until I save his life by beating someone aiming at his life I am in his debt. Sadly I have never had my chance to repay my debt, the Sir with the Oni Mask killed everyone before they got to my room."</p><p>Misu took a sword drawing stance by reaching behind his back and slightly ducking his legs to increase the strength of his balance. "I apologize in that case, you must feel quite excited about an opportunity to repay your debt and you will fail the one and only chance you get. Sadly I am but a lowly ninja, I have no honor and won't be bothered by ruining a lady's debt. I will only do what I have to and not bother my head with the alternatives." Misu smiled. </p><p>Vashia also took a fighting stance and gently nodded, "That is a pity but I understand. Let us settle this then..." she said. While the young woman did her best to act indifferent her eyes were shining with happiness, she was so excited to finally be able to repay her debt, to finally be free to live her life and abandon the path of a mercenary, to finally stop bringing shame to her family and her clan, not to mention her own lowly self.</p><p>With his right arm, Misu made a handseal and felt chakra seeping slowly from his body, evaporating just like he would if he gets hit. Then with a powerful pulse of chakra, completely invisible to the enemy unless she was a sensor his flawless "Vapor Mode" was set up. Just as the handseal was completed the woman's eyes shot open, the blood vessels around her eyes stretched and her Byakugan became apparent - she activated her bloodline! A smile covered her face, she must've seen it through! Misu's Vapor! At the same moment, the man stopped his Vapor Mode. The young lady spoke, "What is the matter, Sir, do you not wish to settle this anymore?" </p><p>The man shook his head, "No, by all means, please, ladies first, I just reconsidered my strategy..." Right after those words Vashia charged forward drawing her blade and slashing with a straight cut. Evading such a simple attack was as simple as leaping backward.</p><p>"Curse this young brat and her stupid eyes!" Misu thought "Misu of the Vapor didn't have to dodge for quite a while, I can't use my Vapor Mode because she'll see through it and then my secret will stop being a secret... Unless..." the man desperately tried to figure his actions out as his opponent stopped in her tracks again. "Please, Sir, do not shame me by being elsewhere in your mind, would you please fight me seriously," she asked with a soft but demanding tone breaking her stance. This was just another chance for Misu and this time he would exploit it, with a downward slashing motion the man drew his sword cutting through the young woman's kimono and leaving a very small slash on her bandaged chest, just deep enough to get through her skin and bandages. Obviously, he had to follow up such a good and early first blood attack, the man slashed, again and again, the woman happened to be more skilled than he thought before as she evaded his attacks with some effort. This was strange, Misu was barely holding back at all...</p><p>A powerful shout coming out of the depth on the young lady's lungs alerted of an incoming attack, Misu turned sideways to avoid her thrust. He responded by cutting, striking faster and stronger than the last time and landing a couple of cuts onto the young warrior's body. She was indeed a worthy opponent but when Misu used all of his speed and ingenuity, all of his experience as a swordsman he outmatched her and landed a new cut on her with each couple of strikes she managed to block or evade. He was a better basic swordsman, no, they were equal in sheer skill, he just had more experience with pressuring and killing people that were just as good as he was. Misu's sword style was fluid, like the water, it adapted perfectly and slashed calmly, actually, he was quite slow, but that lack of speed was something the enemy couldn't predict. Vashia saw his attacks from a mile away, then she predicted his next one and moved her blade from the block of the first, but as that rhythm was set into motion, Misu's first attack only landed at the moment when she was readying for the next attack - his style was a very nasty one to face.</p><p>Misu's arm made the handseal again, he acted out of sheer instinct using his "Vapor Mode" again as white blinding water vapor covered the room. This was different from the technique Misu ordinarily used but this would prove great against this young woman - the vapor was chakra, every water particle inside that cloud was controlled by chakra so it's pretty much a Byakugan smokescreen. Just as expected the young woman was completely overwhelmed by the technique and dashed back, too late. Misu appeared from the vapor cutting her in the arm, then quickly dashing to the other side shooting off streams of vapor from his feet to propel him like a jet as he spun his body around slashing continuously with the sword. As the Sannin passed through the woman's body spinning with his sword and stopped he sheathed his sword again. "Vapor Cut - Double Strike!" he uttered under his own nose as blood shot out of the young lady's body. She was in over her head, she wasn't like that previous brat, this one was just a naïve young girl who believed in a code of honor, that there was some debt she had to pay. Misu hated fools like that most of all, this young lady had to be taught a lesson...</p><p>The woman coughed up some blood as she was just barely standing on her knee by using her sword as a support. Blood slowly leaked from multiple cuts over her body and she, without a doubt, was in quite a lot of pain. Misu grinned, "Do you know why they call me Misu of the Vapor? Not just because I use the Vapor Release Bloodline, the combination of Water and Fire Releases, it is because I am slippy and fluid like the water vapor. I am everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I can cut you from all the angles, my reach is as wide as that of the expanding gas whereas you cannot hit me because vapor also protects me. The young lady jumped forward, without any warning of words offered and clenching her blade in her hands. Misu grinned with arrogance, did this youth get that desperate? To charge at him so blindly... The Sannin drew his blade slashing downwards and crushing the wooden tiles beneath him but... The blade just passed through the young woman as she disappeared. It was some sort of afterimage attack. Misu knew where she'd be, she dashed forward leaving an afterimage so she had to be behind him, such a simple technique if only he could get there in time... He didn't</p><p>A powerful thrust of two fingers hit him in the center of his skull sending him back a couple of steps and the woman then tried to cut him right after. Luckily Misu recovered in time to jump back and only get a small scratch on his chest. This was the first scratch he got in forever, this was all because he was too careless and worried to reveal his cards to this girl! He didn't set up his Vapor Clone and replace himself with it in time... No more, the kid gloves were off. Misu then stumbled back and coughed - something was wrong with his body, he couldn't feel his chakra flow as usual. "Wh...What did you do?" he shouted. Vashia moved her blade onto her shoulder and looked at him with the careless eyes of a true swordswoman. </p><p>"The Hyuuga are famous for their Gentle Fist style, I put my own spin to it - I use it with my katana creating my own style - thrusting my sword at a chakra point closing it forever - the Gentle Sword Style," the young woman uttered.</p><p>Misu smiled as blood broke out from his nose, leaking up from somewhere this woman had struck - she was too slow to swing a sword at him but she wasn't too slow to strike his head with her darned Gentle Fist that all Hyuuga used then. This young woman was quite skilled. Misu sheathed his sword and prepared to draw again, "Show it to me then, your Gentle Sword Style..." he said as he weaved a handseal activating his Vapor Mode combination of jutsu. He did not care if the young lady would see his hidden style, even if she would, she deserved it. Vashia dashed forward with her Byakugan open slashing at Misu but his Vapor Clone dissolved. The girl knew it wasn't real, she had to see the clone through, still, she may have seen real Misu coming out of nowhere but she wasn't fast enough to respond. Another crimson gash covered the young woman's chest as she stumbled back and coughed blood up. "Vapor Cut" Misu uttered sheathing his sword again. Vashia leaped at him again, cutting through Misu's clone and the man appeared behind her back, he knew she'd just be moments late to turn around and block - instead, she reached with her sword over her back and blocked his slash!</p><p>"Rotation!" she shouted as she spun incredibly fast striking Misu with a blast of chakra and knocking him back, the young lady then thrust her sword as if it was an automated rifle piercing through the man's body in several spots and landing a couple of shallow stabs before he replaced himself with a clone as he usually did and dashed backward. This girl was learning as she fought him - one could not use the same technique against her and now she closed multiple of his chakra points if her statement was correct his chakra was decreased forever! This girl just made him weaker permanently! She had the ability to completely normalize one's chakra, make someone's chakra manipulation ability null! That Misu could not allow, she had no right to take his power away from him. He sheathed his blade.</p><p>"I will show you something interesting. You've seen through my Vapor Mode and now know its secret. I shall show you my Secret Technique!" Misu lightly jumped up, tapping his foot as he propelled his body forward, shooting off a stream of vapor to propel his body forward even faster. He appeared close to the young lady almost instantly. There came his secret ingredient! His sword was actually chakra conductive, the Sannin shot his strongest stream of vapor that added to his natural strength and speed of the draw propelling the sword from his sheath!</p><p>"Vapor Style Secret Technique: Misty Flash Murder!" the man uttered.</p><p>A powerful impact emanated throughout the entire tower shaking it from its basis to the roof, the pointy classical roof of the tower collapsed in on itself falling down onto the roof before being propelled out by a bubble of gravitational push. Howoku looked up - that was where God-Eyes was and there was no better time to confront the man than now! The man's body stuck to the wall and the Sannin started his wild dash to the exposed final floor. The man only took a moment to wonder just what caused this mad shockwave...</p>
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<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Tanshu's Story: The Gentle Hyuuga of the Sand</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The blinding combination of smoke and vapor cleared from the air. Misu grunted clenching aching spots on his arm, as the smoke cleared he finally saw just what the sword landed on as a powerful rotating shield of chakra was where Vashia was before. Right below the sword, there was a large hole that went down a couple of floors right to the first floor. It seemed that Misu's sword was deflected by the rotating chakra shield and redirected at a different spot causing shockwaves and cracks on the tiles and the walls. The tower was in a critical condition, Misu would've appreciated if this scuffle ended before the whole construction collapsed, then again, if God-Eyes was the one who built it he must've had some sort of tricks to keep it standing...</p><p>The rotation of the young woman stopped as Vashia's injured and bleeding, breathing heavily body appeared from the fading shield of chakra. "You can use your rotation technique with a sword too then? It'd be certain death of anyone caught in it..." Misu grunted lifting his arm and sheathing his sword, then gently massaging the aching parts. That deflection and the force of his Secret Technique clashing with this rotating Hyuuga jutsu really injured his arm a lot, there were most likely numerous bone fractures as only thinking about moving that arm hurt.</p><p>Vashia straightened her body, taking a tremendous effort to stand tall and proud against her opponent. "I would've loved to pull this as an ace in the end. Sadly that technique was simply too much for me, I could not allow you to use it again. I apologize if my defense caused any long-term damage to your arm..." the young lady replied with a slight bow of her head.</p><p>The young swordswoman drew her blade and stood in a thrusting position, her blood vessels around the woman's eyes tensed again as she activated her "Byakugan", something very interesting was coming and Misu knew it. "When this battle started the difference between us was too much to ignore, I took many injuries that would without a doubt lower my lifespan even if I healed them. Even now they hurt so much and tempt my body to fall down and to not get up. However I have greatly reduced your chakra as well, also I've disabled your drawing arm decreasing your potency, right now you are less than one-fourth of the man that started fighting me like this - I CAN WIN!" Vashia exclaimed charging forward as intense chakra formed around her katana while she thrust it forward. "Chakra Dragon!" she shouted but Misu managed to leap sideways. What the Sannin did not expect was such quick recovery from Vashia's jutsu, she canceled this "Chakra Dragon" almost instantly swiping sideways. With his weaker right arm, Misu managed to block her slash and use the momentum from her force to let himself get pushed further back from her.</p><p>The woman leaped forward, striking with her "Chakra Dragon" again but Misu just jumped in the air and pushed his blade horizontally against the katana's tip sending the thrust down to the floor that let out a shockwave that crumbled a bunch of more floor tiles. Misu's body split into vapor and as the cloud passed through the young lady two more gashes appeared on her back. She admitted that these small injuries were taking a toll on her. Misu was confident that he would win and he just wanted to see how strong the will of this young swordswoman was. That Tanshu boy wouldn't have liked his torturous approach, he appeared to be very fond of this girl but... That brat wasn't here, was he? Misu was free to win this fight the way he wanted it to be won. With a powerful shout of anger and rage, Vashia lunged forward, "Gentle Sword Style!" she shouted thrusting again and again at what her Byakugan showed as Misu's vital chakra points but even at his weakened state the Sannin managed to deflect the attacks.</p><p>Something was wrong, the young lady thrust her foot forward far too much - something big was coming and Misu prepared to block it. The man opened his eyes and watched the girl's movements carefully. Suddenly two thrusts hit him, one went right after the other and one hit Misu right in his chakra point. "Two Thrusts!" Vashia yelled as she turned around and thrust her katana in impossible to defend against speed again. This time Misu was ready as he had already activated his Vapor Mode. "Four Thrusts - Eight Thrusts - Sixteen Thrusts - Thirty-Two Thrusts - Gentle Fist Style - Sixty Four Thrusts!" Vashia kept bombarding Misu's Vapor version with thrusts that were impossible to defend against. Had Misu not escaped his condition would've been pathetic - with sixty-four holes to bleed from and most of his chakra points completely closed.</p><p>"You were very skillful to manage to use your Vapor Mode in time, Sir. This technique is special, each thrust hitting a chakra node closes it forever, combined with injuries from this technique as well as the shock of getting this many chakra points closed - the body gets overly protective of one's chakra, as one's life directly depends on it, and seals itself from using it ever again subconsciously. You'd be just as strong, just as fast as any normal civilian and unable to manipulate your chakra." Vashia explained as she sheathed her sword and stood in a drawing position again. This young girl drew her katana from the side where Misu drew it from up on his shoulder, swinging his way down. He actually had an advantage, the girl was faster but she was faster to reach his non-vital spots whereas Misu would reach straight her head. It was get maimed but kill your opponent type of situation, obviously, that'd have been if only their drawing potentials were compared...</p><p>The two charged at each other, drawing their katana together. Misu almost expected this girl to make the mistake that he had predicted but... His clash was greeted by her block. She sacrificed her speed but managed to block his draw in time. When she was using casual swordfighting before she was not able to properly intercept him in time but when she added the speed of sword drawing she managed that just fine... Or maybe it was just those hits she landed earlier with her "Gentle Fist Style" kicking in already. One's physical and spiritual abilities directly depended on one's chakra level, when one's chakra level was decreased forever so did their abilities, their natural speed, and strength. This was not good. The two clashed their swords a couple more times, jumping around and sensing just where their opponent was at that point of the battle. Vashia was slowly bleeding out, at this time it was only her willpower that kept her standing, Misu was now unable to dominate her like before - his chakra got slightly decreased, his right arm got injured so that he was unable to use it efficiently. They were almost on equal grounds now...</p><p>As the two finished their clash and backed up Vashia sheathed her blade and moved it back on her kimono belt. It was obvious that she wanted a time out of sorts - maybe she had something to say? "I've figured out your Vapor Mode, Sir, if I figured it out correctly and you use it again I'd kill you, if I was wrong you'd kill me. Such a fifty-fifty outcome is not fitting for a swordfight of skill, perhaps we can make a deal, I describe it to you and if I'm right you promise me not to use it anymore and if I'm wrong you can use it all you like. This way it will be our perception and skill that decides the battle, not random chance." She spoke looking at Misu with those same soft and childish yet also determined and ridden by pain eyes. This young lady wanted to return her debt but she wanted to do it with her own strength and skill, not out of luck. Misu nodded.</p><p>"So to begin with you create a small cloud of Vapor Release so that it would be harder to spot your trick, that was why it took me a bit longer than usual to spot it. You then create a version of Shadow Clone using your Vapor Release, a Vapor Clone that stays behind you and hides, once you are about to get injured you simply replace yourself with it and then use ninjutsu that reflects all light falling onto you and you make yourself invisible. Your clone fights in your place and when it'd be beaten you simply add in chakra and do not disperse it. It is costly in terms of chakra but effective. You can cancel your invisibility technique and appear behind me at any point, you can do it even easier if I am engaged in one on one combat with your clone and am distracted. Well, was I right?"</p><p>Misu smiled and closed his eyes, he looked down and shook his head. "No." he exclaimed.</p><p>"I see... Well then, feel free to use your Vapor Mode." Vashia looked disappointed as she looked at the decimated dojo room around her.</p><p>"Just how stupid is this kid? She hit the nail on the head but she is ready to believe me if I tell her she's wrong?" Misu wondered as he also took a fighting stance. Still, he decided not to use his Vapor Mode, after all, if she saw it again she may have seen it through. There was only one outcome to this battle. He had to go all out and attack her with his second most powerful technique right now and end it. "Since I agreed to your deal I'll ask you to do the same, come at me with your most powerful technique right now and I will clash at it with my own. Let us use our strongest kenjutsu techniques to decide this." Misu spoke as he drew his sword and took it into his right arm. Ironically his right arm was the only arm capable of using this technique, it required a certain amount of control and his left arm was only able to exert violent outbursts of force... The Sannin ducked down pointing the blade of his sword at Vashia while his left arm remained down like a sack of dead weight. Misu's right arm tensed up, the muscles blew up like balloons as he prepared to lunge forward. His entire katana got covered in a twisting vortex of vapor. It was as if steel itself was evaporating instead of air particles around him.</p><p>Vashia straightened her body, placing her right and left legs parallel, then she stretched them further one to another while placing none of them forward. The young lady bent her body forward placing the hand with the katana forward while she raised the other in the air behind her. This was such an incredibly odd stance but it did intimidate the Sannin a bit, this young lady has proven herself to be capable so this unusual stance may just have been a sign of another incredible technique. A tile loosened up and fell from the ceiling, just as it hit the ground both swordfighters leaped forward. Each of them ready to use their most powerful techniques. Suddenly Vashia's position changed, she stood just like she did when using her "64 Thrusts" jutsu but... She changed stance so incredibly far away from Misu...</p><p>The man suddenly thrust his vaporing sword forward shooting off a rotating dragon-shaped whirlwind at Vashia, its point had an incredible concussive force, and when the man added the speed of his sword thrusting to the speed of the technique's natural speed the force became impossible to overcome by any sword technique. It was a sword shattering technique, even if Vashia used chakra to enhance her blade it'd shatter without failure. Still, Misu sort of cheated as this wasn't really a kenjutsu technique, more like the combination of kenjutsu and ninjutsu but honor had no place in a battle where ninja fought. The dragon-shaped whirlwind rushed forward opening its jaws to crush the young lady. Her own technique was just as surprising.</p><p>Just as the dragon came to the middle of the total distance the girl thrust twice with her blade creating two dragon-shaped beams of chakra - she literally combined her "Chakra Dragon technique" with "Gentle Fist Style: Sixty Four Thrusts". So she was also not entirely honest about kenjutsu, she also used a combination of ninjutsu and kenjutsu even if her technique was much closer to ordinary kenjutsu than Misu's. "Vapor Style: Vapor Dragon Jutsu" Misu shouted out right as his opponent yelled "Two Chakra Dragons!" The two techniques clashed in mid-distance. Vashia's "Chakra Dragons" held Misu's dragon in its path, the girl continued to send more forward, with each dragon fading more heads joined its place! "Four Dragons - Eight Dragons - Sixteen Dragons - Thirty-Two Dragons - Gentle Sword Style: Sixty Four Chakra Dragons!" This technique would've completely obliterated Misu if not for the hidden factor of his Vapor Dragon - it was supposed to take everything that the opponent threw at it, it was the perfect clashing technique. As Vashia's strikes hammered at the dragon slightly budging it back at Misu, it ended right before it could completely overpower him and the dragon simply shot forward hitting the young lady tearing her kimono apart and damaging her bandages that covered most of her body as well as opening new wounds all over the body, her body was pushed forward and slammed violently into the back wall.</p><p>It was over... Misu walked up to the young lady and observed the pool of blood gathering around her heavily breathing body. She's reached the point where her body simply could no longer move. She was lucky that the dragon was a concussive and not a piercing technique or she'd have been dead for sure. The girl coughed up blood and raised her head looking at the feet of her opponent. "To think that you had such a technique... Even if I'd have used my "Rotation: Sword Variant" it'd have waited out until it was over and then finished me off... That was a perfect clashing technique so your deal was with a hundred percent success rate." Misu raised his sword and placed it on his shoulder. The muscles on his right arm were pulsing intensely and he'd have been unable to fight back if the girl had survived this shock. "So it's that phase, huh? It'll be you telling me how dirty I played? Grow up, kid, in the world of ninja there is no honor or "foul-play". All that matters is who lives and who dies. By the way, you were also spot on with my "Vapor Mode", I lied..." the man spoke up as he raised his sword into the air.</p><p>"One young boy asked me really nicely not to hurt you, sadly I cannot allow a person that knows my Vapor Mode live, if that information fell into the hands of the enemy it would be a risk to the village's safety, as the Sannin of Konoha I'd be unable to defend my home anymore so I must kill you," Misu grunted out, his voice didn't tremble one little bit. Suddenly his young opponent surprised Misu as through pain and sheer willpower Vashia got up on her knees and looked to the side to see the shattered pieces of her katana.</p><p>She looked Misu in the eyes and smiled, "I see... That is too bad. I did know that Tanshu-kun liked me for some reason but even so such a request was awfully nice of him, it's a shame I won't be able to thank him... Showing you how an honorable woman dies is the best I can do now." Vashia spoke as her eyes teared up, still, even through tears she was crying as she spread her arms to the side. Inside the girl understood why it had to be done, she understood the Sannin's logic, if she was captured or tortured out of this information it would fall into very wrong arms and God-Eyes' organization was already too much involved with Kirigakure...</p><hr/><p>Misu wandered through the floor, walking up and down various staircases and trying to discover just which one led to the floor above. Judging from the number of floors that Tanshu guy and the God-Eyes guy were the only guys left. Killing that girl felt really strange, truth be told Misu always intended to not leave her alive, she was a criminal but she also was one of those "honor-bound" people that kept pissing him off with talks about lines that ninja must not cross and how he should behave. Ninja were tools, they did the job that was assigned and there were no lines, there were just two separate ends to it: success or failure. People that went on about lines and morals and ethics of killing other people were idiots, honestly, they were tainting this world. The kid realizing the secret behind "Vapor Mode" was just something he used for the victim herself to justify why she had to die. Everyone tends to misunderstand him all the time and explaining it to that kid would've been incredibly difficult and Misu had neither the time nor the patience.</p><p>A ray of light came from one of the staircases, Misu looked up and started rushing up. That had to be the floor where Hanasaku was, only then it occurred to him. Why was he so into it, this foolish search? Misu turned around and rushed back to the room with the hole in the wall, then leaped outside. Strangely he could not see Howoku, only the body of the other girl. This one was useful, he wanted to kill her too but her skill set may have proved useful, maybe ANBU could brainwash her and use her for the sake of the village like God-Eyes brainwashed her and took her in from the Sand Village. How did Sunagakure even produce such a handy and rare talented kunoichi in the first place? Any chick could learn to swing a sword but someone with both potential for seals and medical ninjutsu as well as sensory... Maybe Sunagakure was regaining its military potential, in that case, ANBU definitely needed to know. Several subtle political assassinations may have been in order to keen Sunagakure in check... Misu looked at the crumbled rooftop and realized that was where Howoku would be, without rushing too much the Sannin stepped onto the wall and started slowly scaling it up to the top.</p>
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<a name="section0034"><h2>34. Tanshu's Story: The Tower of Bones Falls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu had never seen similar behavior to that of Hanasaku, most people when confronted with his "leave my katei or die" proposition either left because they were afraid of the general concept of their own death or fought him because they believed they could beat him. This woman was afraid, her eyes revealed her to be almost crippled with fear but... She did not move a single inch backward. She was petrified by the power of Demonic Pentalimbo seals but she did not let this fear make her move back. Tanshu sheathed his blade and prepared to strike, he took the woman's refusal to move as a sign that she won't.</p><p>With a single powerful leap, Tanshu closed the distance and slashed at the woman, channeling his fiery chakra through the blade. The woman did not attempt to defend or block it, she just took the slash as it went - straight through half of her face and her chest. Luckily for her, her body was strong enough to prevent Tanshu's blade digging deep enough to cut through something vital and his Fire Chakra cauterized her cut. Despite the fact that the cut was not dangerous fire amplified the pain tenfold, and yet this woman did not whimper or moan, it was like the pain did not affect her at all. Tanshu leaped back. "Are you not afraid of death at all!? Don't you get it yet? In this room, you cannot heal yourself! These injuries will kill you!" he shouted at the woman but she just stood like she was standing this whole time, no, her eyes changed.</p><p>Hanasaku's eyes became different, she was not afraid anymore, but she was just looking at Tanshu as if she felt sorry for him. "You don't have a sword, cutting you to pieces won't feel fair..." Tanshu murmured to himself as he tossed the seal straight into the wall. The katana bounced off the wall and landed somewhere further in the room. The young man raised his fists.</p><p>"So... You want to fight me? You'd honestly kill your Older Sis?" Hanasaku spoke as her eyes became the combination of her previous expression and the changed one.</p><p>"Don't joke with me! As if that's what was scaring you! This room bumps your chakra down to the level you need to survive, in here you are literally just another person, there is no need for your idiotic act! It's OK to fear for your life now!" Tanshu shouted out. Hanasaku kept looking at him with those same eyes, it was obvious that losing all that made her special did not matter to her. Perhaps it wasn't her abilities that made her special but her personality and her mind!?</p><p>"So... Your parents died in the war and you decided to forever protect their graves?" Hanasaku spoke up again. Did this woman not intend to fight him? Was she stupid? Of course, she was. She was Chestnut Hanasaku after all...</p><p>"Yes, I must protect the place where I am the happiest, my katei. The place where my happiness and those dear to me are..." Tanshu replied.</p><p>"I know you love those people, that pink-haired girl, that other one you spoke of to Misu, but we will catch them and move them to Konoha, they will be put in prison for their crimes. Unlike you, they have a history of some pretty nasty crimes. How will you protect Hana-chan and that girl you asked Misu not to hurt from here?" Hanasaku asked.</p><p>"My bonds with Konoha died the day when my parents were sent to war to die, my purpose now lies with protecting my katei - their resting place!" Tanshu repeated. Hanasaku raised her fist and tightened her glove.</p><p>"You retarded brat! What kind of nonsense is that!? Your parents would be ashamed of you knowing that you have thrown your life away to watch over the place where they died. This place means nothing, they've moved on to the Afterlife by now, this is just a dirty wasteland and a young man throwing his life away for it. There is no greater shame for a parent to see than their child being miserable. I shall bring you back to Konoha as my Little Bro, I shall bring the smile back to your family's face!" Hanasaku yelled out loud with so much conviction and volume that Tanshu's body almost trembled.</p><p>The woman then lunged forward, did she intend to actually fight? How? Tanshu reduced all of his opponents to just their physical bodies and he trained his body to be naturally superior to any people that enhanced their bodies using chakra. Where most people worked to increase their chakra level to increase physical strength which was the element of chakra Tanshu just trained his physical strength, completely ignoring his spiritual side and therefore not increasing his chakra. Without their chakra control, most ninja were average physical combatants, Tanshu was peak human condition one. With a thrust of his palm, Tanshu pushed Hanasaku's fist away and headbutted her back.</p><p>"You have no right to talk about my parents!" Tanshu shouted leaping forward and starting to pummel Hanasaku, throwing his fists out of instinct, rage, and frustration just like Oni Mask sensei taught him. This woman was on that battlefield, she deserved having Tanshu's rage directed at her! The young man shouted that out as he pummeled the woman with his combination of punches, the force behind them made it feel like the woman's body broke with each punch, each strike blew her body away, throwing it up or further where he tried to push her. And yet not a single sound of pain came out from the woman's lips. A powerful thrust of her elbow sent Tanshu back, stumbling into the wall. This woman was fighting back, it was true - losing her abilities did not trouble her at all, she did not hesitate, it was like power to her was not a factor, as if she was too dumb to consider strengths of her own and her opponent before fighting.</p><p>"No, Little Bro, I deserve to take all of your rage not because I was on the battlefield that day. I shall take your every blow, I shall shoulder all of your rage because I am your older sister and that's what family does. I am happy that you took my healing away, now I can truly earn your trust and love and crush your rage and darkness with my body alone. So come at me! Attack me with every bad emotion in mind, show me what troubles my little brother!" Hanasaku yelled out again as Tanshu's mouth opened wide.</p><p>This stupid lady really believed that he was her family despite meeting him just recently, just a couple of hours ago. This woman was unbelievable. "No! Don't just take my punches, punch back... I lost many friends today, it might be that I will lose Vashia and God-Eyes too just like I've lost my parents. While I do want to punch something because I'm angry..." Hanasaku leaped towards Tanshu and punched him in the face, stepping forward and pushing her fist towards his face, throwing Tanshu like a ragdoll. This was taijutsu prowess, she was a good martial artist and wasn't just insanely strong, she could compete with a stronger and faster opponent using just her skill and experience alone just like Sorano did with Oni Mask, just like Howoku did with Hana, just like Misu would have to do if he was to beat Vashia... These Sannin did not fight with power, they fought with their experiences and their emotions. That was what made them so strong!</p><p>Tanshu recovered throwing punches at Hanasaku wildly, he was by no means a lousy taijutsu user, Oni Mask perfected Tanshu's taijutsu but Hanasaku blew both of them away, she dodged those blows almost effortlessly and tried to return some. She moved without wasting a single movement, without any difficulty, her body was her best friend, her strongest tool, not an obstacle. Hanasaku's foot rose to the position of an upward kick, Tanshu leaned under it and quickly moved to the other side, kicking the woman as a counterattack while she was open. The impossibly powerful kick made Hanasaku's face swell and made her bleed from her lips and nose. Tanshu did not stop, but not because he wanted to kill this woman, he believed she could and wanted to take it all, he trusted her as his Older Sis. He decided to return her feelings for once. With a combination of blows, Tanshu sent the woman down again. Without a doubt, these blows would've broken some bones...</p><p>Bleeding and broken Hanasaku rose on her feet, she didn't do it effortlessly, she huffed and struggled, she did not moan out of pain but out of sheer force to keep her body up. "I can only promise you one thing. If you die here with that God-Eyed guy, your life will feel pointless. You will die thinking that you have thrown your life away watching a bunch of rocks. If you return with your sister home... You will be like me, like Sorano-san, you won't be afraid to lose your life because you will know one thing - you did not live in vain. Instead of regret your mind will be full of joyful memories of times with those you love, those very same memories will help you stand when some punk takes you down, those memories will help you bust through the wall of any amount of pain!" the woman muffled out through her swollen face.</p><p>The two jumped forward and started exchanging blows again. The woman was incredible at redirecting Tanshu's nearly superhuman amount of strength to the side while attacking and not opening herself up too much. She was the best taijutsu user in Konoha, she had to be! Better expertise in the field could simply not exist, her movements were already flawless and not a single move was wasted. Did she fight like that when she had her full strength too or was this her Plan B?</p><p>Tanshu leaped forward, thrusting his foot and aiming at Hanasaku's chest. This kick was able to stop one's heart but, inside of his own heart, the boy knew that his "sister" could take it, no... He believed she could. She wanted him to express all of his darkness, all of his anger and he'd be damned if he didn't. Hanasaku moved to the side and tipped her foot to break Tanshu's balance in the air. With a powerful thrust, moving his imbalanced body with her arms straight into her own knee with a powerful grab she roared out expressing rage of her own. Tanshu yelled out, he felt great shock going through his spine but miraculously it held. For a moment he envisioned his spine snapping, him dying in the arms of this woman and it didn't scare him! He'd die having discovered the true way of life - moving past all the darkness and enjoying life with those whom one truly loved, letting those wonderful memories guide him happily to the Afterlife when the time came.</p><p>Tanshu struggled to get up, "Leaf Whirlwind!" Hanasaku shouted out with three powerful twisting kicks pummeling Tanshu's chest, the boy flew back into the wall with so much force that he bounced off of it. "Sis... I'm finally... I think... I'm finally... Almost rid of it! My darkness!" he grunted as through willpower he forced his body back up, huffing and grunting in pain and due to the tremendous effort spent to get up.</p><p>The woman smiled, or at least tried - her face looked like she went on a date with a beehive. "Let it all out - now!" she yelled out as Tanshu leaped forward, he stretched his fingers and then bent them bursting his body with violent flames that burned his torn top off. Roaring from the chest, the boy thrust his palm forward, striking the woman three times while doing it so fast that it appeared he had only punched once - this was his Secret Sword Technique re-enacted with a palm.</p><p>"Fire Style: Red Cerberus Bite!" Tanshu yelled as the force and flame tossed the woman's body back through the entrance door smashing out of the Pentalimbo room. Tanshu collapsed on his knees, smiled, and laughed out. He won! He wasn't exactly fighting Chestnut Hanasaku, he was fighting his own inner darkness and his own despair but... He obliterated it, he could feel it! The boy fell down on his back and breathed heavily. Suddenly, he heard Hanasaku standing up. He lifted his head and looked at her, a green light started emanating from outside the Pentalimbo room.</p><p>"Are we done yet?" he asked, "Yeah, there's no reason for us to fight now, I give up..." Hanasaku mumbled out in a much better sounding voice - slowly she was putting her body back into shape. "Thing is, I wanted to fight the whole day but those douchebags didn't let me! Thanks, Tanshu!" she smiled at him as the green light illuminated the most beautiful smile of anyone Tanshu had ever seen. Most beautiful not because this woman was incredibly beautiful, but because his sister was smiling, she was happy! "So, did you find your new katei?" she asked, Tanshu lifted his fist into the air.</p><p>"Screw that, now I'll fight for whatever I want to fight for, there will be no person or place that binds me to fight. If I don't like someone I'll deck them in the face, it's as simple as that..." Tanshu replied. Silence dominated the room from that point on up until Hanasaku finally stood on her legs and entered the room again, she helped Tanshu get up and hugged him.</p><p>"That being said... There's one guy I wanna deck right now." Hanasaku spoke, Tanshu nodded and the two bumped their fists and left the room.</p><hr/><p>Howoku was huffing as he made his way up to the top floor of the tower. With a powerful leap, he jumped up to the final floor that had the roof tiles still all over it with one man sitting bored in a giant throne-like chair. "One with the Eyes of God?" Howoku asked looking him right in the eyes before pointing at him with a finger. The man stood up and tossed his coat aside revealing a muscular, bandaged up to his nose build.</p><p>God-Eyes took his great sword from the side of his throne and tossed it onto his shoulder bringing his palm up forward to face Howoku and prepare an immediate "Universal Push" if this Sannin decided to attack him too fast. "You have done well, Sannin of Konoha, bringing my plans back at least several more years but now that you stand against He who possesses the eyes of a God... You stand bare and naked, not a Sannin but a mere man for One with the Eyes of God to do as He pleases with."</p><p>Howoku breathed out, he was a bit tired from his previous two encounters and it was quite likely that Misu and Hanasaku may not have been in much better condition. This man, however, was not only completely fresh but also had those troublesome eyes - the Rinnegan. "You are not a God, God-Eyes. You are just a fruit of a forbidden union of two people who should not have been together, your very existence would threaten all of our villages if your ancestors knew that you are alive. You are also a terrorist plotting to overthrow Konoha and later other Ninja Villages, as a threat to peace I shall kill you." Howoku said in a calm tone. He had a little bit of rest and caught his breath but he was far from fresh entering this fight, still, he was probably the luckiest one with the injuries he had sustained, or rather, not sustained.</p><p>"To address me thusly... For that, I shall destroy you!" God-Eyes shouted visibly getting angry and attacking Howoku with a swing of his giant sword, slamming it into the ground. The tower shook from the weight of the sword and the force with which it was slammed into the ground but only because of how damaged it already was. Howoku punched, successfully, the man continued to strike, again and again, the man's blade was too heavy to defend in time and Howoku's punches were too powerful to give the man breathing room and readjust his stance. The Sannin kicked at God-Eyes' chest and leaped backward, bursting with Starlight Release chakra his hands started glowing. The man thrust his palms forward sending a barrage of small spheres of chakra bombarding the ruined tower.</p><p>"Starbright Jutsu!" Howoku yelled. The man could not see what was happening, suddenly everything shook and a loud popping sound emanated. Something cracked incredibly loud - as if the ground itself was opening and the tower started to sink down.</p><p>Howoku started descending as well but he would've died had he fallen right down, he had to burst his body with Starlight chakra at the last moment and spend some of it to kick off of air itself breaking his fall. That was easier said than done... "You heathen!" Howoku heard a voice behind him as a powerful kick made him grunt in pain. God-Eyes bombarded Howoku with kicks, sending him crashing down with a final finishing kick. Howoku felt so weightless as he went down... He couldn't even begin to think about activating his Starlight right now, he was too hurt and couldn't concentrate properly.</p><p>"Darn it! The Sannin of Konoha cannot die falling down from a tower he himself finished off!" Howoku cursed as he felt something bump into him hard. As Howoku snapped out of it he saw the face of Misu holding him.</p><p>"Well well... Brought the whole damned tower down, didn't you... I was running on it you know..." he spoke up. Misu looked really injured.</p><p>"Where's Hanasaku?" Howoku grunted looking at the rubble of the tower still falling down while the whole construction sank into the goo of the wasteland leaving just oversized blocks of bone structure around the place.</p><p>God-Eyes descended slowly - using his weird gravitational jutsu. "Your fellow Sannin are dead... And soon I shall finish you two off as well!" God-Eyes spoke pointing his sword at Misu and Howoku, Misu placed Howoku on his own feet and shrugged.</p><p>"Nah, I'll pass, I'm pretty cut up, you can have him, Howoku, I'll let you be the next Hokage in return." Misu laughed out. A loud and powerful bang shocked the earth behind God-Eyes as the bony rubble shot up into the sky, flung by a powerful force of nature. "GOD-EYEEEEES!" Hanasaku roared out as she leaped out from under the goo, holding Tanshu by the boy's collar. She looked banged up too - she must've been hit by some of the rubble on her way out but she looked pissed and ready to pound someone. Even One with the Eyes of God looked quite worried and just for a moment - fear found its way in the heart of a God.</p>
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<a name="section0035"><h2>35. Tanshu's Memories End - The Kage Summit Ahead!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a brief moment, all three Sannin proceeded to stare God-Eyes down. Despite the fact that Vapor Misu had already declared his decision to let Howoku, Hanasaku, and Tanshu handle it, he was still not out of the equation and looked quite capable to still at least fend off for himself. Hanasaku and Tanshu looked pretty banged up, it was still a mystery as to why those two took so long to leave the tower or what exactly had happened between them to the other Sannin but God-Eyes must've known he was betrayed by the last of his apostles. His condescending sight betrayed that. He simply extended his arm forward, "Come then, I shall destroy all of you for you are just speck of dust against a God!" he spoke.</p><p>All three: Tanshu, Hanasaku, and Howoku leaped forward, surprisingly enough Misu also dashed towards the man. Tanshu and Hanasaku threw their most powerful punches, Howoku tried to kick the man in the face after jumping up, Misu tried one of his simpler sword drawing slashes. It was almost like time itself had stopped around God-Eyes as two words were muttered from his lips, escaping them just mere parts of a second before the group collided with him mashing him into the dirt. "Universal Push!" he mumbled as an incredible and awesomely powerful bubble of gravitational force formed around the criminal swordsman sending his opponents crashing back into rocks or debris of the tower of bones. This shockwave was so powerful! After hitting the bones Tanshu didn't feel like he had what it took to stand up, even below the man there was a crater that he made around himself, grinding and crushing the bones beneath him.</p><p>Howoku flipped onto his belly and his arms shoved his body onto his knees. Hanasaku just grunted and rolled around, still trying to overcome her injuries and pain. That falling tower did a number on both Hanasaku and Tanshu as the two had to not only escape the tower by having Hanasaku bust through one of the walls but also escape the Pentalimbo walls that sealed Hanasaku's power. That extra time caused them to get hit by quite some rubble and in terms made them less effective in this scuffle.</p><p>Misu also looked pretty banged up, Tanshu yelled out directing it at Misu, "You! Vapor guy! What happened between you and Vashia, you're pretty banged up so there was a fight, right?" Tanshu's voice sounded pretty desperate and quivering from the pain and exhaustion.</p><p>"Yeah... Kinda... She flew out through the wall, I think she may have escaped before the tower went down, spoke something about some debt being returned or something too." Misu lied. God-Eyes was breathing heavily and did not move out of his crater to finish his opponents off. It was clear that the repulsion technique of this caliber tired him out greatly.</p><p>Howoku stood up, he was still staggering, the man tore off his orange jumpsuit and slipped his green coat back to remind more of a cape so that it didn't restrict his movements. "Howoku..." Hanasaku grunted as she reached towards her wounds, a strong green light started bursting from her hands as she started treating her own injuries, Howoku thrust his palm at her signaling her to stay down.</p><p>"Sorry, Hana-chan, this is something I have to do as the one who will become the next Hokage!" the green light coming off of her hands stopped as the woman just laid down and relaxed.</p><p>"Do what you want, I won't heal myself because if I'd be up and in fighting shape I'd kick that guy's butt without being able to control myself. I'll just play too weak to stand up. Kick his butt Older Bro!" she yelled lifting her fist into the air. Howoku laughed briefly as God-Eyes levitated out of the crater landing gently nearby.</p><p>"Hokage? So that's how hopeless fools croak before I squash them with my divine power..." he spoke with a strong and confident tone.</p><p>"Yes. Before I didn't really want the big chair, nor did Hanasaku-chan or Misu... That made a big power vacuum causing the poor Sandaime-san to stay in the big chair for longer than he had to... Now I think the title of Hokage is the best for a man like me: it is a title of hope for world peace that I shall establish, it is also a title of despair for those that wish to threaten that peace. Those like you, One with Eyes of God! I shall crush you and demonstrate that I am capable of carrying the responsibility of crushing all that oppose my peaceful ideals!" Howoku yelled out.</p><p>The man with the Rinnegan extended his arms towards Howoku and pressed one of them into a fist. "Come for me then, pathetic man! Struggle before you start boring me and I decide to crush you." He arrogantly replied.</p><p>Howoku leaped forward, he did not enhance his body with Starlight Release, he had used it so much already so he must've been saving his strength. Howoku's roaring fist hit right into God-Eyes's jaw and the man placed his foot forward using it as a balance point to shove his fist so hard that he threw his opponent forward. God-Eyes must've overestimated his own power, after using his "Universal Push" before he must've still been unable to use it, that jutsu had a great cooldown period and now Howoku saw that. With a relentless barrage of punches Howoku kept throwing the man off his feet, God-Eyes drew his greatsword swinging it around but the one that declared to be the next Hokage avoided the colossal tool of murder without much trouble. Howoku tried to throw another punch to take his opponent down off of his feet but God-Eyes' slash opened a gash on his arm. The Star of Hope shouted in pain and dashed back to recover.</p><p>Starlight chakra started bursting from Howoku's body, God-Eyes leaped forward driving his sword where the man was standing but Howoku was no longer there. The Rinnegan user thrust his arm forward, ready to use his powerful version of "Universal Push" to grind Howoku's bones to dust which was right what the future Hokage was waiting for. Howoku's shine became brighter and brighter before it exploded in a violent beam that collided with the gravitational force bubble. With a powerful roar, naming his technique - "Starlight Bridge Jutsu", Howoku's Starlight Beam burst through "Universal Push" pushing and burning One with the Eyes of God up, sending him almost tumbling down back into the crater of his own making. The man's body after the collision of techniques was burnt up and shaking, the color of his skin was much redder as if he spent a long time burning up under intensive sunlight and multiple spots of his body were bleeding - his own Rinnegan technique held off a significant portion of Howoku's Starlight. Shaking, cursing, and spitting out blood God-Eyes stood up.</p><p>"Impossible... Only a Rinnegan technique can match Rinnegan techniques, you cannot be of Godly Origins!" he coughed and cursed at Howoku again and again. Misu grinned, "Actually I was always wondering about that, I think this numbwit actually has some Moon people blood somewhere in him, Starlight Release was described as being used in the War of the Moon and the Earth. That'd explain why it can match up to Rinnegan's stupid ninjutsu absorption and "Universal Push"." Tanshu looked at the stumbling and panting Howoku in confusion.</p><p>This man had some remnants of Moon people blood in him? That is to say, a distant relative of his must've been one of the people that were later settled on Moon which meant that, during the War of the Moon and the Earth, the Moon Clan procreated with the Earth Clan, giving birth to both abominations of sheer luck like God-Eyes but also people that used their power to inspire hope. People like Howoku.</p><p>"I couldn't care less who my distant relatives were, maybe my grand, grand grandpa was of the Moon Clan or whatever... All I care about is killing those that threaten my vision of peace!" Howoku shouted putting a stop to this discussion of his origins. But then if Howoku was a descendant of both Moon and Earth Clans, did that not mean he also had to have the Rinnegan like God-Eyes? Maybe Rinnegan was obtained differently then...</p><p>Tanshu wanted to ask around these Sannin for what exactly God-Eyes was so that a man like him never again appeared. Then again, killing such men when they raised their heads had to do for the teenager. "So what if you can clash with my Rinnegan with that ability of yours!?" God-Eyes yelled out charging forward with a powerful swing of his blade, with a stumble to the side Howoku's tired body avoided it. God-Eyes' sword kept swinging around, Howoku's arms deflected each slash, thrusting his palms at the blunt side of the blade, sometimes receiving minor cuts, also the fists of the future Hokage found their way through the defenses of the Rinnegan user as well landing on his face and beaten up and sensitive body. With a powerful clash of their elbows, the two separated dashing to the sides.</p><p>God-Eyes' arm unexpectedly shot forward attracting Howoku to him, the man had never yet encountered this attraction technique so he fell right for it! "Attraction Cut!" God-Eyes shouted as his body left a powerful gash on Howoku's body. Because of the extensive damage on God-Eyes' body, however, the sword swing was half-baked and only capable of dealing intensive injury but not completely severing the man's body in two. Howoku huffed on his knees clenching for his spilling blood. God-Eyes lifted his blade to smash Howoku when Tanshu's arms caught it in mid-air, getting only minor cuts on his palms with the blood gently tapping on the black wasteland dirt.</p><p>"Shut up about this macho-Hokage bullshit! You've got me and Sis-chan here to help, don't be an idiot, no one wants to have to elect the Fifth Hokage right after the Fourth!" Tanshu grunted as Hanasaku's tired body dragged Howoku away and started treating his gut injury. The Rinnegan user swung his sword around with Tanshu easily dodging his swipes. Fire chakra blazed on the teen's palm as he thrust it towards God-Eyes' blade breaking it in two. "Fire Style: Red Dog's Bite!" he yelled as steel bent and broke from his force and blazing chakra.</p><p>God-Eyes pulled a kunai out, swiping right at Tanshu and opening up a painful and deep wound on the boy's chest but he kept on clashing with the man. Pulling out a kunai of his own the two clashed for the second time, again and again, this new and trained Tanshu cut open God-Eyes' body but this incredibly arrogant fool did not surrender.</p><p>"Give up, you Blood Zebra..." Tanshu grunted making fun of his cut-up opponent, pointing the blade of his kunai right at God-Eyes' face, he's bested the One with Eyes of God in sheer swordsmanship even before Demon's training, now he completely dwarfed God-Eyes in that department! God-Eyes' body lifted into the air as he extended his arms and legs to the sides as if reaching for the whole world.</p><p>"You fools! You stupid worms squirming under the boot of a God!" he shouted like a madman as powerful and tense chakra erupted from his body, one did not have to be a sensor to feel it! "After this, I may not be able to use my gravity controlling jutsu for a while... But if that is the cost of smiting you, heathens, that will be fine! Ultimate Universal Push!" a loud screech echoed through the location. Complete silence... And then... Destruction.</p><p>Tanshu couldn't understand what had happened, he was certain he was supposed to die but... He felt someone holding him in his arms gently. When Tanshu's eyes finally understood what he was seeing his mouth opened wide. "What's this?" he wondered out loud, Hanasaku was holding both him and Howoku in her arms, she was in terms covered by the gooey and dripping body of Misu of the Vapor. "Do you know what happens when you exert great pressure on vapor? It becomes water." Misu spoke as his vapor clone collapsed into a puddle of water running down Hanasaku's shoulders and hair and head, dripping all over Howoku and Tanshu too. This... This was how quick on their feet and amazing Konoha Sannin were... God-Eyes slowly descended from the sky, he was breathing heavily and had large black bags under his eyes, his muscles were twitching and his body was no longer straight but instead hunched from the exhaustion.</p><p>Howoku stood up and gently pushed Hanasaku away, "Thanks, Hanasaku-chan, and thanks to you too, Tanshu, for occupying One with Eyes of God while I was out. I do believe that this match is mine though." He spoke in that heroic and confident tone.</p><p>"You pathetic, insignificant scum! I keep showing how insignificant you are and yet you still struggle!" God-Eyes roared out of sheer rage dashing forward and thrusting his kunai forward at Howoku which the man dodged, throwing a kick into the opponent's gut making God-Eyes throw up blood - it appeared like the body of "God" was finally broken. The two exchanged fists again, with Howoku blocking God-Eyes' arms from bending in a way that'd have made him cut Howoku with his kunai. Both were injured and exhausted, it was an exchange of willpower, not fists! With a powerful kick, God-Eyes sent Howoku backward a great distance and thrust his arm forward.</p><p>"What? But..." Howoku couldn't believe the attraction force that was pulling him in again, how was this possible? Was God-Eyes unwillingly breaking the limits of his own body? Just to kill him? It didn't matter! Howoku's arm pressed hard into a fist, then opened up as a powerful burst of Starlight chakra formed a small sphere in Howoku's arm. Using the attracting force of God-Eyes' "Attraction Blade" technique to his advantage Howoku leaped in with his sphere and drove it right into God-Eyes' gut, the sphere went all the way in and expanded making Starlight chakra burst from God-Eyes' wounds and his orifices. "Starlight Sphere... Into... OVERHOPE!" he yelled changing the intensity of his technique and shoving God-Eyes' powerless body with a powerful wave right into the crater where his "Starlight Sphere jutsu" expanded fiftyfold into a gigantic sphere making the crater twice the original size as the "Overhope" sphere completely destroyed God-Eyes.</p><p>Howoku fell on his back and huffed heavily into the air - the fight finally was over... To think that this man and his followers prove themselves capable enough to pose such a challenge for Konohagakure Sannin...</p><p>"Well, I suppose this may as well be your field promotion to Hokage... You do need to rename that big sphere, no way you're gonna use "Overhope" as the official name..." Misu said smugly as he looked at Howoku from a sitting position from somewhere further away.</p><p>Hanasaku crept up to Howoku and started healing his injuries, "You guys owe me... You snagged all of my fights..." she grunted before turning her smile at Tanshu.</p><p>"This guy is Little Bro, by the way, he beat me up so I guess it's OK if we take him back to the village... I think he's gonna make a fine Sannin sometime soon! With Howoku-kun becoming Hokage and the spot being vacant and all..." Misu and Howoku smiled too. "Welcome to the <em>Familia</em> kid. For the record, don't feel bad because you got into it against your will - we pretty much all did..." Misu spoke at Tanshu as the teen laughed out.</p><p>"Vashia..." he thought looking at the distance... "I wonder where you went, what you're doing, and what you plan to do... I wish we could've gone to Konoha together, got to know each other..." he thought before falling down on his back and stretching out. He looked into the clouds that were starting to part away - could it have been due to the colossal battle that transpired here? Then again, Tanshu himself was so similar to this place - he too once was full of despair and darkness but got all of it cleansed away by someone much dumber but stronger and a more amazing person than him.</p><p>"So... Uhm... I guess since I ran away right after Academy..." Tanshu opened up the speech before Howoku nodded, "Yeah, you'll have to go the distance all the way, don't worry, with your power you'll climb it in no time... It's a pretty sweet deal if you can handle most of your peers being chuunin already."</p><hr/><p>Many years later, even more miles further from the wasteland where Tanshu returned back to his life as a Konoha ninja, Howoku the Fourth Hokage with Misu of the Vapor and Red Dog Tanshu by his side looked at a giant system of buildings. This was the building where the Kage Summit was supposed to take place and it was in neutral territory, set in an ancient system of temples of people that worshipped a mystical being that was told to be sealed in the moon. This cult was long extinct and the location was mostly used for political meetings of international scale just like this Kage Summit. Misu looked at Tanshu,</p><p>"What the hell were you thinking about all this time? It was like you were somewhere else entirely..." he asked his friend, Tanshu's head sunk down letting his shoulder-length hair flow over his eyes, only his nostalgic smile was visible.</p><p>"It doesn't matter... I was just thinking of an old friend and where she's now..." the man replied.</p><p>Howoku turned her head, "Don't worry, she wouldn't be ashamed of you knowing you're protecting the Fourth Hokage and are standing by his side as his trusted advisor in a Kage Summit..."</p><p>Tanshu laughed out loud, "I don't know, that's just the sort of thing she hated - politics, I tried everything from politics to fighting but she just wasn't interested in anything... "Politics has no honor in it, it's not up to my tastes" she used to say..."</p><p>Misu looked confused, "You look strangely cheerful today, everything's alright with you?" he inquired, and right after Tanshu's eyes returned back to their ordinary state - cold and careless with his insane killing intent filling the air. The bunch of samurai that let the Konoha delegation of Hokage, his two advisors, and a bunch of bodyguards through shook in fear of it, making the iron constructions of their armor clang out loud.</p><p>"Don't worry, I'm not gonna go soft on those Kirigakure scum, they'll answer for every bullshit thing they've pulled, one magician in Konoha wouldn't forgive us if we screwed up and they were left without punishment for what they did to her father..." he angrily replied looking at the open doors leading to a hall that led to a chain of halls leading to other halls, somewhere down the line there was the place where the Summit was to be hosted. This was going to be big!</p>
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<a name="section0036"><h2>36. The Kage Summit Begins. The Mysterious Mizukage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The group comprised of Howoku - the Fourth Hokage and his two Sannin: Tanshu and Misu advanced through the countless large halls. Howoku occasionally turned and commanded some of his men to guard the halls, it appeared like this decision was by no means a unique one as many more ninja were standing around watching the halls as well as the samurai of the Iron Country. "What are the samurai doing here?" Misu asked silently so that only the trio from Konoha would hear it. </p><p>"I asked Haoru-san to moderate the Kage Summit" Howoku replied, Misu's eyes shot wide open in surprise, then he adjusted his shocked expression so that he didn't appear caught out of his comfort zone to the ninja around.</p><p>"I guess there is no better man than one of the legendary samurai wielding one of the God Sword techniques to observe the order and protect us..." he added his conclusion when Howoku gently shook his head.</p><p>"No. That is not why I invited Haoru-san, I am well aware that he and his insane kenjutsu prowess can best any ninja on the battlefield but I am more interested in his personality. He hates all ninja and thinks them arrogant of their own power and irrelevant, he believes that they are a sick mutation of noble warriors like the samurai and that they not only have outlived their purpose, they never had one in his eyes, to begin with." Tanshu scratched his wild brown hair and looked at Howoku with an inquiry brewing in his expression,</p><p>"I haven't seen that guy but... Is he really that strong? He doesn't really sound like the guy that'd be fitting to moderate ninja villages' petty squabbles."</p><p>Howoku smiled, "Exactly, he won't tolerate Mizukage's dragging political bullshit, he'll force us to go straight to the point, he won't be afraid to ask the tough questions and offend us on a deeply personal level and people like the Mizukage cannot stand that, they'll be exposed, they'll be stripped and if we're lucky... Removed from their post..." Both Sannin following the Hokage looked at each other, none of them really thought it was a good idea to invite such a man to oversee this event.</p><p>As the group entered the second hall leading up to the hall surrounding the main meeting hall Tanshu looked around. Something looked very suspicious to him and he just couldn't understand it. "What's with all those men in hoods? Those steel masks on their faces, who are they?" he grunted as he felt a bit on edge around people concealing their bodies and faces. He wouldn't have minded if they pulled something funny, that'd have given him the excuse to take them out.</p><p>"They're the Kirigakure Barrier Corps, they serve a similar function to Konoha's Barrier Corps - they're the protection team whose main purpose is to create and observe the village protection system, notice barrier breaches, close the threat inside and take it out," Misu replied.</p><p>"You know a lot about Kirigakure to identify those guys from their uniforms..." Tanshu looked at his comrade with surprise. Misu smiled back at him, "I've been to Kirigakure many times on missions, so has Hanasaku, you're the only one who avoids missions there." Howoku scratched his chin, the fact that there were so many Barrier corps ninja in here alerted him.</p><p>"I feel you, Howoku, it's unusual for Barrier ninja to even leave their own village. Once they complete their exams they stay inside their village and protect it from threats, their presence in such numbers is something to bring up during the Summit, huh?" Tanshu spoke out nervously reacting to the nervousness of Howoku. The Hokage ordered all of his remaining men to stay in that hall, a secretary bowed and gestured that the men entered the main hall and took their seats. As Howoku and Misu entered Tanshu looked back and observed all the ninja he could identify before turning back and following Howoku and Misu inside.</p><p>"I don't like this, I would have thought that Mizukage would bring his dogs but... I see none of them." Howoku nodded as he moved his large chair and sat down, Tanshu and Misu followed sitting down on smaller chairs from both sides of Hokage.</p><p>"Yeah, the fact that the one being blamed does not bring the men whose actions he is blamed for... It's either very arrogant or very ignorant, either way, it's suspicious..." Howoku closed his eyes and looked at the other end of the long oval table.</p><p>The door at the other end of the hall opened and a bunch of samurai clanged inside running in a slow jog, a bulky but short figure entered, a man with messy dark hair and a ponytail, face covered with scars and several small patches of burns and wearing a rugged brown coat. The coated man removed his cloak revealing his muscular build, wearing a white kimono that had its sleeves removed just to expose the man's incredibly thick and strong arms, this was not just any samurai, someone with this muscular structure could cut just about anything given a proper blade. The man opened his eyes and stared at the Hokage sitting at the other end of the table, Howoku slightly nodded his head, "Hello, Haoru-san" he dropped with a small smile. The man's eyes shot open and his grin turned sideways, "Yo, Howoku-ninja!" he replied with a strange manner of speech for a samurai, especially as respected as the famed God Sword user Haoru.</p><p>"The others appear to be late then?" Howoku asked cutting it right to the point. </p><p>Haoru didn't drop his smile, he stared down at the doors and empty seats and squinted a bit. "I thought they'd be late too, they all arrived at the same time which seemed odd to me, Howoku-ninja, I swear to God if those disgraceful ninja plan something I'll cut all of them down!" the man grunted while still not shaking his smile off, the prospect of killing all of the Kage as they gathered in the same room must've really appealed to him. Howoku just laughed it off and looked at each of the doors,</p><p>"Indeed, all of the Kage arriving at the same time appears to be odd... I don't believe that has happened in the history of Kage Summits." All of those signs being present just rubbed Tanshu off in the wrong way, something was bound to go wrong but to do something stupid in such a place was to court war with all of the other countries.</p><p>One may have assumed that peace worked well with all the Great Ninja Countries that was not entirely right. They were all just acting according to the deals they've made in many conflicts in the past. Some countries hated war, Tsuchigakure and Sunagakure wanted nothing more but to prove to the other countries that they've recovered from the conflicts that have almost eradicated them in the past, they wanted to prove that they were now an economic and political, and military force to be reckoned with and deserved to be dealt with under equal terms with the other villages. Now the big three that have signed the peace treaty of the Second Great Ninja War: Kumogakure, Kirigakure, and Konoha were the "Great Ninja Villages" that got more liberties and overall better rep in all the relationship with the other villages. That was something the smaller villages couldn't have despised more.</p><p>That being said, some if not most villages actually wanted war, they were living in peaceful times when in reality they were all breeding soldiers. Soldiers all needed action. Most villages lived in a standby mode, ready to charge at the first village that broke the international treaties. To do something stupid in such an event would've justified all military action to be taken against the village and with the bloodthirst of about twenty years in the stomachs of each village a conflict would very unlikely stop at just beating a village. The scapegoat would be decimated like numerous others. Third Great Ninja War would be the most devastating and claiming most lives of them all, everyone knew it, and, for that reason, even the most tyrannical Kage upheld the international law. As powerful as the greater villages were, none were strong enough to withstand even a single battle against the rest of the world. It was act civilized or be destroyed - a world that Howoku the Star of Hope helped create, he was a co-author of many of the treaties in question and always strived to create such status quo.</p><p>The door busted open, then another, all of them opened within a short period of time from each other and four people walked inside, surrounded by several guards. As the participants of this Kage Summit looked at each other they noticed something wrong with the Kirigakure party. Instead of the Mizukage some strange blonde woman in a black dress entered, surrounded by Barrier Corps ninja that Tanshu saw before. All of the Kage sat down and stared down at each other, as the awkward pause continued Haoru slammed his palm into the oval table. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS BULLSHIT!?" he yelled angrily grasping the sheath of his sword with one hand while his other one was shaking on the table. "Where is Mizukage-ninja!? Is he too important to attend the Kage Summit!? Shall I tell the other Kage-ninja to just march into Kirigakure and burn it down! They'd have the full support of the Iron Country samurai, that I can assure you!"</p><p>The woman opened her seductive eyes and placed her finger up on her blood-red lips, silencing the samurai, and then she placed the hand on her chest, making a very sorry face. "I apologize, everybody, it appears that the news didn't reach every corner of the world yet... I assumed that your intelligence was better than this and that your spies would whisper all about this situation so I didn't even bother to send a proper declaration..." the woman spoke in a very strange, almost acted, apologetic tone. She was incredibly attractive and her voice just added to that image.</p><p>Haoru was still shaking with rage as the woman spoke, "Will you get to the point, woman-ninja! Where is Mizukage-ninja!?" he yelled as the woman smiled and moved her finger shyly to her lips.</p><p>"I am the new Mizukage, we've removed Daikon-san from the big chair. I believe you are all well familiar with my predecessor and do not need any reasons as to why a coup was necessary? As the leader of the Barrier Corps and the woman who has protected the village many times while our leader sat in his room munching his steaks while his people were slaughtered, often observing said slaughter from his balcony, I Namikaze Shirona have been elected by the council to succeed my incapable predecessor."</p><p>"Namikaze?" Tanshu whispered at his party when Misu replied. </p><p>"Yeah, a branch family of the Senju, they don't really possess the Senju bloodline or any other exceptional abilities, except for their elite heritage they aren't really that interesting..." Howoku jumped up from his seat.</p><p>"How could the other Kage sit acting so calm!?" Howoku shouted. "What is this game, Mizukage? The purpose of this Summit is to punish the Mizukage for his deeds and questionable decisions, his continuous abuse of both his own people and his power, and complete disregard of other villages. I have plenty of proof against Daikon, the previous Mizukage. It is clear that this move is just a cheap shot at avoiding responsibility. The other Kage, that were still wearing their signature cloaks and hats just nodded and mumbled something inconclusively making Tanshu even more suspicious of what was going on. Haoru slammed his sheathed sword on the table and relaxed into his chair, breathing out and sighing, trying to calm down.</p><p>"Fine, it is decided, I am not a man who likes to have his time wasted. Let us carry on with the Summit and if the charges brought by Hokage-ninja are sufficient we can make Mizukage-ninja responsible for her predecessor's actions. Her irresponsible behavior and failure to inform us of these developments in the already extremely secretive village serve as a weighty stone on the scale supporting my decision."</p><p>Haoru then angrily glared at the other Kage and grunted, "What kind of man sits near a table and discusses business with a hat!? Remove your hats, Kage-ninja!" he instructed angrily as the three reached for their hats. A young woman, in her early forties, removed her hat revealing bright murky cerulean hair, she had peculiar eyelashes that matched her hair, also her skin was of a much darker shade than that of the rest, even darker than Mana's by many shades to the point where Mana looked like she had a permanent tan where this woman looked like she was from an exotic faraway land. Her strange looks had some mystic charm to it. This woman was Samaya Imasu - the Fifth Raikage.</p><p>A tall man in his middle forties removed his hat and placed it on the oval table as well. He sighed shaking his wild long white hair. His face made the man instantly identifiable as one of the Kaguya clan as he had all the traits of the typical Kaguya: his flowing white hair, the red line below his eyes, and the typical Kaguya marking on his forehead. After placing his hat on the table the man did not utter a word, just like his fellow Kage to the right, it was quite strange as the Tsuchikage - Kaguya Yaban was not one to stay silent for too long. Another man, by far the tallest out of all in the room as he may have been more than two meters tall removed his hat putting it on the table. He had relatively casual dark red hair that had two extremely long braids going down his shoulders almost reaching his belt. The Kazekage was a strange-looking fellow, no one who has ever seen Akasuna Mugao would have thought he looked any odder than the time they have seen him.</p><p>Haoru sighed and then sat straight, gesturing at Howoku, "Now that Kirigakure's pathetic attempt to hinder or postpone this meeting is dealt with, please, Howoku-ninja, bring up your accusations and state your facts and proof. The council of Five Kage will decide how to deal with the Mizukage, having in mind that she is merely a successor of the man responsible. Just for clarity sake... I'll assume you've disposed of Daikon-ninja, as is the Bloody Mist's way?" Shirona - the Mizukage smiled with a pleasant but having the context in mind somewhat scary smile.</p><p>"But of course, it was fitting to allow the villagers that he had oppressed and tortured with his bloody ways for so long to finally have their justice with the man..." Judging from the smile of the attractive blonde it remained completely clear that she did not regret anything that had transpired that day. Perhaps it was for the better that Konoha and the other villages did not know of this for the details may have been too shocking and disgusting even for those who've seen their fair share of revolutions to hear. What was even more troubling to hear was that the woman did not even react to her village being called "Bloody Mist", which was an ancient nickname given to it. Even more, judging from the crimson crescent of her smile - she took pride in it...</p><p>Howoku stood up and cleaned his throat. "I need no proof of the first accusation - Kirigakure had ninja acting in Konohagakure soil. Ninja that interrupted a mission transpiring in Konohagakure's jurisdiction and took over a scroll from the team sent to take the scroll over by a client that asked Konohagakure to have the scroll taken. By interrupting this mission and slaughtering the squad sent to take the scroll you have brought shame to the Fire Lord in the name of Water Lord, also, you have killed Konohagakure ninja on neutral soil, not only that, it was the soil in which the climactic battle of Second Great Ninja War occurred over twenty years ago, one that signaled the nations to end the war. That land was sacred and no village had the right to move a military force comprising of more than five individuals inside of it. It is a land that reminds us all of how greedy and bloodthirsty we can get during times of war, it reminds us of the worst of us all. It appears that your predecessor had not learned his lesson and broke multiple treaties he himself has signed. He is responsible for breaking multiple peace treaties and the deaths of many Konoha ninja, also his orders cost the career of some very prized and important ninja to the village like Konoha's Great Trapster - Tsukumo Nakotsumi who assisted all of the villages by dismantling the wandering showman ninja clan early in his career. Such losses are not the kind of accusation just switching the person in charge fixes, Konohagakure will need some serious satisfaction for the damage caused and the lives lost, needless to say, our diplomatic ties will suffer, either way, no amount of money or other political settlement can replace the value of human lives."</p><p>Howoku sat down, Misu remained cold and static, staring at the blonde woman who has remained completely still and cool throughout the entire speech. Haoru grinned and pointed at the Mizukage, "Those are some serious claims and accusations. The incident brought up is indeed public enough to need no further proof and its details are well known even to a politically neutral country like the Iron Country. What will you have to say for yourself, Mizukage-ninja?" Haoru asked looking curiously at the woman.</p><p>Misu couldn't help but whisper to Howoku, "Something about her strikes me as odd... I'm gonna return in a moment" he said as he lifted his hand "I'm going to excuse myself for a moment, I need to issue orders for some ninja waiting outside, Hokage-sama forgot to tell them to take relaxed positions and they may be taking it the wrong way. May I temporarily leave to clear it out for the ninja outside?" Misu made up a ridiculous excuse.</p><p>Haoru lifted his arm and waved it ignorantly, "Your presence here isn't needed unless you are a witness, Sannin-ninja, you can come and go as you please if your Hokage is not inconvenienced." he replied. Howoku looked confused but Misu rushed out of the room.</p><p>"Now, let us return to the matters at hand, Mizukage-ninja, may you address Hokage-ninja's accusations, or do you admit having broken the mentioned treaties?" Haoru asked looking at the still calm and scarily smiling Mizukage.</p>
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<a name="section0037"><h2>37. Who Is Namikaze Shirona?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The woman who had declared herself as the new Mizukage closed her eyes and grinned with a cruel smile, it was quite clear that she was just hardly restraining a full-on fit of laughter. She then once again switched into her acting mode, placing her hand on her chest and looking almost like she was about to cry.</p><p>"Honestly, I don't really see your point. I agree with all of the charges and admit that Daikon did all of that, I cannot prove that he did it, most of his documents were burnt during the coup so it will be years before we finally untangle all that he had done throughout the years as the Third Mizukage but..."</p><p>Tsuchikage interrupted the woman. The Kaguya shook his head and replied in an annoyed mood, "While it is unfortunate that you did not inform us of this change as it starts feeling like we are just chasing shadows here... Judging from what Fourth has said... The thing is that all of those charges only improve her position. You've brought up the charges against Daikon-san but he has already been removed. This meeting has no point anymore and I cannot believe that a respectable man like Haoru-san is still taking this matter further."</p><p>Haoru stood up, "What are you implying, Tsuchikage-ninja?! That I am in cahoots with the Hokage-ninja?! My job is to make sure that justice is done in this meeting of liars and murderers, truth be told all of you are despicable to me and I'd rather see all of you executed than listen to one minute more of your intrigues and lies. I am well aware of Mizukage-ninja's point but I see her own political game in that and letting it pass is something I'd never allow as a man and as a samurai. Mark my words, ninja snakes, justice will be done here today and none of you will leave until you all put all of your cards on the table and all matters are resolved."</p><p>Tanshu grunted, "Now I see why you chose this guy... He's something else, it'd all fall flat, of course, if he couldn't back his talk up..." </p><p>Howoku shook his head, "Konoha withdraws all charges brought up and agrees that justice has been done to Daikon-san even if it was rude, abrupt, and secretive justice..." he said quickly sitting down.</p><p>Tanshu shook his shoulder angrily, "Hey, what the hell?" he whispered to the man right at his ear, the man had absolutely no respect for boundaries as Tanshu treated his Hokage just like he'd treat an old friend. "What the hell did you just do? How am I supposed to look my student in the eye and tell that her father's injury..." </p><p>"Stop, Tanshu-san!" Howoku raised his voice, even the other Kage sitting around the table could hear it. After the Kage settled down and silence once again took the room over Howoku turned at Tanshu angrily.</p><p>"Our charges have been turned against us... I can't believe I'm saying this but our work is all burnt down to nothingness... This woman..." Howoku grunted looking at Shirona - the Fourth Mizukage angrily. "The more we blame Daikon, the more she benefits from our charges - she's the one who removed him after all. As his successor she benefits from all filth we spill on the state of her village in the past. We've got nothing to bring on her and even Haoru-san sees this. This meeting is as good as pointless, she's won. Our attempts to beat her by bringing up the sins of her village's past only makes her look that much stronger in the eyes of the other Kage." Shirona finally saw that she was in the right and her face took a triumphant look, it was then that Howoku stood up again.</p><p>"That matter being settled, we've still got the glaring issue at hand - Lady Fourth has not informed the others of the sweeping changes in her village that has slipped the rug from under the entire meeting. She's done so during the interval that was given to us as preparation as the letter sent as an agreement to attend the Summit came from Daikon-san. This means that Lady Shirona must've known of the incoming Summit as his successor and purposefully withheld this information during the preparation period. This still is a serious issue which is a big stain on Lady Shirona's sheet, enough of a stain to maybe consider her removal from the chair as well." Howoku's speech surprised all of the Kage. His quick adaptation to the surprising changes in the situation must've pleasantly surprised even Haoru as well who openly expressed his disgust for the filthy politics going on in this meeting.</p><p>Haoru cleared his throat and looked at Mizukage who was unpleasantly squirming in her chair. "That is true. If Hokage-ninja wants to abandon the previous charge and focus on this one that is fine, what do you have to say for yourself, Mizukage-ninja, I have here Daikon-ninja's letter of agreeing to participate in the Summit so which was it: did you purposefully withhold information of Daikon's change during the preparation period, knowing of the Summit as it was public news to every common villager reading the papers or did you fake Daikon-ninja's credentials?" both of the answers would've meant pretty much the same - either a very big stain on the Fourth's reputation or her removal from the post depending on the strictness of the judgment.</p><p>"Well, well... I suppose you got me, I did withhold information. I am a woman raised in the world of intrigue and political moves, Kirigakure under Daikon's rule was a cruel place and my mind genuinely thought that the other villages had enough spies in our rotten Daikon's dump hole of a village that they'd know all about the change. I did withhold the information on purpose, I suppose but only as a result of my own origins and mindset." The woman bowed her head to the other Kage, "For that, I beg your consideration and hopefully forgiveness!" she added.</p><p>Haoru scratched his oversized chin. "That is a serious offense, Mizukage-ninja, even if your confession does make me rather hesitant to remove you from the post... What say you, Kage-ninja?" Howoku nodded angrily, "True, Lady Shirona's removal would serve no good for her violence-ridden and broken village, her people need a leader, a good one, that can bring their village back from the image of the "Bloody Mist" and yet I doubt if Lady Shirona is the person willing to do so... I say that each other ninja village is allowed to have a member in Kirigakure council to regulate and oversee its matters for three years. This punishment seems fitting enough to Konoha..."</p><p>"Well, I really don't care, doesn't seem like much of a crime to me..." Tsuchikage shrugged,</p><p>"Even if Kirigakure has demonstrated extreme cruelty in their dealings with enemy spies... We must admit our intelligence in this matter was also lackluster..." The Raikage spoke up as well.</p><p>"I personally do not see the point of pursuing punishment," Kazekage added.</p><p>Haoru grunted, "Seriously sometimes I don't get you, ninja. A woman plays all of you for fools and you just shrug her off..." his eyes shot open and he jumped up leaping quickly on the table and swinging his sheathed sword at Raikage, the young lady jumped back out of fear and fell down off of her chair. Haoru grinned and laughed arrogantly.</p><p>"I don't know who this young chick is, but she is most certainly not Samaya Imasu, I myself taught the young girl swordsmanship and I know her speech mannerism too well. This person is a fraud which makes me assume the rest of you runts are too..." Haoru said out loud still standing on the table and pointing his sheathed katana straight at the nose of the young Raikage who was angrily shooting stares back at him. Within a single moment Raikage, Tsuchikage, and Kazekage leaped out of their seats rushing at Haoru, the man drew his sword from his sheath making a powerful and violent gale that blew the Kage back crashing into the stone wall. In a loud poof, the "Kage" de-transformed back into ninja with Kirigakure headbands.</p><p>"Executioner of the Clouds, Wakashi Moya and his Executioner Blade and the rest of Kirigakure Sannin... I'd have imagined you to pose more of a challenge!" Haoru grinned and laughed out madly, enjoying his brief chance to fight a ninja and get back at them. </p><p>"Oni Mask-sensei!?" Tanshu suddenly shouted out having recognized one of the men transformed into Kage to sabotage the Kage Summit. The man wore a different shaded Oni Mask and the same sleeveless kimono outfit, one of his legs looked like it was just a piece of iron and plastic - this would've fit Oni Mask's injury in the battle against Sorano twenty years ago... Then again, Kirigakure had numerous Demon assassins of varied strength, it could've just as easily been just a diversion.</p><p>Howoku jumped out of his chair and slammed the table, shouting loudly at the Mizukage, "Shirona, what is the meaning of this!? What have you done with the other Kage?!" for a moment there, the man started to believe that the others may have been dead by now.</p><p>Shirona giggled into her palm and made an arrogant and victorious face, "Who knows... Maybe they're all dead, maybe they're still fending off the entire Kirigakure military force that I've mobilized for this "peaceful" meeting..." the woman replied mocking the word "peaceful" as much as humanly possible. So this was her game? Mobilize all of her forces, drain her village of resources and manpower right after it has rid of the worst Kage in history... All just to mess with Konoha?! This woman was mad. Just as mad as Daikon... No. Even Daikon wasn't dumb enough to attack the Kage by himself. Even if it was the entire military force the Kage likely moved with sufficient support that they would be able to fend off, they were the three most powerful ninja in the world after all.</p><p>"Why? Why would you hurt your village and rob your people of peace?" Howoku grunted out, at this moment he hated this woman most of all in the world. He wanted to strike her, to beat her until she was one with the dirt but even the dirt was not worth the stain of accepting her corpse.</p><p>Shirona stood up, she leaped on the table, and charged right at Howoku, in mid-charge she was interrupted by Haoru who blocked her attack, his sword clashed with an orange chakra barrier similar to that which Barrier Corps used. The barrier that Shirona used was covered with hieroglyphs of unknown origin or meaning. It must've been a higher tier jutsu compared to the casual barriers to successfully clash with Haoru and withstand the clash without the barrier shattering. The woman withdrew and dashed back as her barrier stayed until she dashed back and then disintegrated into small cubes that dispersed into smaller particles and disappeared into thin air.</p><p>"Because... You spoke of the reputation of ninja in general. What is that reputation worth when weakling scum like you are in charge? How is a client to ask a slothful imbecile who rambles about peace to assassinate someone? What do you know about war, of combat? Peace has made your mind narrow, you and your pathetic peers didn't even consider the possibility of being attacked with full military force - your time slobbering over peace and political alliances made you drop your guard too often. Your predecessors would have never allowed another village to intercept their mission because they were powerful men of war. They were men that were worthy of being rivals to Kirigakure but people like you make me sick. Within just one day I will take everything from you and the other Kage, I will kill them and then manipulate my way into ruling everything just like I manipulated you shallow-minded fools in this Summit. There will be no more villages, just ninja and a single Queen of all ninja, the mightiest and most cunning of them all. That is what Daikon wanted to achieve but he was too scared to ever set any of his plans in motion, instead, he got his kicks out of torturing common villagers. I, on the other hand, am a youthful woman full of youthful enthusiasm, and ready to act upon my desires, take what I want. That makes me different and superior to Daikon, the true successor of his title! Now just..."</p><p>Before she could finish her title Haoru charged forward, thrusting with his katana to impale the woman. He was a man that hated ninja after all and he had heard enough of this woman's ramblings for a decade. All that the man's impressive charge met was another barrier that was as large as the hall room, effectively splitting the room in two. Shirona waved for the henchmen that have impersonated the Kage to follow her as she turned around and started making her way towards the door that Haoru has entered through. </p><p>"Now that this part of the plan is complete, set out and assist the squads, make sure that the other Kage are dead, and under no circumstances let them come here..." she commanded them as the team disappeared in the darkness of the corridor. Haoru started striking the barrier madly, again and again, and, initially, it seemed like his attacks only damaged his own blade.</p><p>"You arrogant youthful ninja bitch!" Haoru yelled out, however, he was not angry, he was excited. His entire life this samurai just wanted to kill ninja. He despised them but as one of the four best swordsmen who wielded the Four God Sword techniques, he had to behave and submit to the world order. No more, this young and ambitious woman stepped out of the world order and entered the pecking order the caliber of which she could not possibly imagine, Haoru stood leaps above all else in that order.</p><p>"You just made this Summit really damn interestin', I'm gonna love to cut you and your lackeys down! Stop hiding!" Haoru roared as he wildly cut at the barrier that was starting to crack.</p><p>Tanshu looked at Howoku, "This guy is starting to scare me a bit..." </p><p>Howoku looked back, "Good. If Haoru the God Sword does not scare you, you've no idea of the battle you've gotten into. It is said that ninja cannot beat samurai in an open field on a one on one match... Well, Haoru is a monster that surpasses even the level of the samurai. He genuinely hates ninja too... Lady Shirona was more foolish to piss him off than to make enemies of all of the ninja villages." After replying Howoku tried to desperately decide on what to do.</p><p>Leaving right now would've proved to be quite counterproductive, going around the room would've taken enough time for the woman to make her escape - if that was her intention, to begin with... If she wanted Howoku's death why did she wish to leave the building so much? Perhaps Howoku was supposed to die with the building, she probably had something very destructive in mind...</p><p>"Tanshu, that man might be your sensei, you sure I can count on you with this?" Howoku asked looking at his old friend Sannin, Tanshu nodded.</p><p>"Oh yeah, let's rampage like old times. She's probably brought everyone here, the jounin, the Water Temple monks, her own henchmen - the Barrier Corps. Let's kill them all." The barrier shattered and only Haoru's afterimage remained as the man had long since disappeared and was dashing right at the Mizukage.</p><p>Howoku pointed back, "Let's regroup with our men, Haoru will cause enough of a destructive diversion for us to regroup and then attack Shirona's whole group with our whole group, that way we'll stand more of a chance at survival." </p><p>Tanshu grinned and turned around, "The lady was right, you are pretty soft, we could take care of the situation solo but you just want to make sure no one of your men dies... Nothing wrong with that I suppose. Lead on." Tanshu smiled with an angry look on his face.</p><p>This Summit actually turned out just the way that Tanshu wanted it - he was sure that if he returned and told Mana that her father was avenged by imposing some political sanction upon the nation, as peaceful as she was Tanshu would've felt sick and as if he's betrayed himself saying it. Now he could really dish out a form of justice he could understand and it still will be right, technically he was doing it defending his Hokage and himself, defending his comrades when in reality he'll be killing these Kirigakure scum, not because of that, not primarily, he'll do it because they are insanely cocky bastards and he wanted to teach them a lesson. After pulling a dick move like this they really deserved to be burnt down and beaten to the level of just primal existence just like Sunagakure was during the Second Great Ninja War.</p><p>Mizukage Shirona and her three assistants that were impersonating the Kage were fleeing through the hall. "Mizukage-sama? Why must we fight someone like the Kage? Can we really do it?" one of her assistants asked, the woman gently stroke his cheek and slowed her pace.</p><p>"Of course, they are currently facing military force, they will be tired, weakened, do you not wish the title of the man who has killed a Kage? That'd bring you straight up to the ranks of Sannin and not only Sannin of Kirigakure like you are now, you'd be a Sannin of the entire world!"</p><p>The man with the Executioner's blade looked back, "I sense someone coming, he's pretty loud, are you sure you're OK, Lady Shirona? What do you plan to do?" he asked her. The woman just smiled, "I'm alright, you guys go, I'll handle this joker and then I'll disintegrate this whole building with the Hokage and his Sannin inside. I've got many aces in my sleeves, even if THAT doesn't work, I still have some nasty tricks for that man. I am completely certain that he will not survive this day."</p><p>The Sannin with the Oni Mask lowered his head and turned around, "Lady Mizukage, please be careful, do not underestimate Red Dog Tanshu, he is considered one of the strongest ninja alive for a reason." The woman turned around to look at the empty darkness of the corridor behind her. "I am well aware, I have plans to deal with him as well, now go." Her Sannin disappeared in a loud poof of air as instructed.</p><p>Moments later with a loud tap of wooden sandals hitting the floor a short but muscular samurai descended to face the Mizukage, he drew his sword and leaned back into two hands thrusting position. His smile betrayed how much he enjoyed the prospect of killing a ninja. "My my how I love killing young ninja who underestimate me..." Haoru said in an excited and upbeat tone. The woman lifted her arm into the air and placed it in front, letting her relaxed palm form a round imaginary circle in the air. "To face a Kage is to court one's own destruction, even for you..." </p><p>Shirona replied, "I have no time for you, I have a world order to destroy, so I shall kill you quickly."</p>
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<a name="section0038"><h2>38. Namikaze Shirona's Scary Strength</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Haoru stood still in his battle stance. This ducking and widespread balance point position was perfect for him, within an instant he could throw a quick thrust of his blade at any point, even more, he could enhance his blade with his Wind Release chakra making it able to shoot near-invisible cutting and piercing currents of wind. However, the man called the world's strongest samurai remained still, his style depended on his opponent making a mistake and she's made plenty: pissing Haoru of the Iron Country off, fighting him one on one on a battlefield. Such a narrow walled corridor would've served perfectly to Haoru's thrusting techniques. Surely this woman should've been worth her mettle, she's seen him effortlessly toy around with her trusted Sannin did she not?</p><p>Shirona's face pouted, this obstacle in her path was clearly annoying her, she slipped her palm through the air as a round barrier, similar to a small buckler, covered with hieroglyphs and ancient symbols formed around her palm. The woman threw the barrier as a disc, spinning right at Haoru but the man's katana blade thrust forward busting it into pieces. The Mizukage was not where he last saw her after Haoru recovered, however - she was right in his face with similar cutting barriers around her palms. The woman thrust them forward, trying to slam them into the man's body again and again but Haoru just moved to the side and backward repeatedly, dodging her assaults almost effortlessly. Why did this woman struggle? Against the man called the strongest samurai, she could only accept her own destruction...</p><p>Shirona's arms shot forward forming a combined shield-like round barrier and thrusting it right at Haoru. It merely hit an afterimage. Shirona's eyes were shocked, instinctively, just following her intuition she formed a barrier above her head and made it as strong as she could.</p><p>A powerful clang echoed sending gusts of winds as shockwaves as the barrier and Haoru's katana collided. The man grunted as he pressed the blade forward, breaking Shirona's barrier and thrusting it forward using gravity and his own weight to cut the woman in two. That was not what happened, however, the blade just got stuck on the woman's dress and tore a piece of cloth which remained hanging on the big golden rings holding the shoulder pieces of her dress together and preventing the dress from falling off. Haoru was confused for a moment, he looked at his katana which was cracked and completely unusable.</p><p>"Those barriers... How tough are they? I have no problem cutting steel but these barriers ruined my Yama no Perun - a blade that has been by my side since I was a young man..." the samurai asked spitting to the side.</p><p>Shirona formed more round barriers around her palms and stood in a defensive stance showing off her glowing and colorful orange barriers and the impressive markings on them. "Before I became the Fourth Mizukage I was the head of Kirigakure Barrier Corps. Limits and barriers, whatever concerns these two things - I can do it. While my good looks have aided me plenty in my quest to obtain everything imaginable, my ability to do with barrier ninjutsu what no one has ever seen before helped with those persistent men that were impossible to reach a compromise with. Now without your sword you are nothing, bow before me, lowly samurai, and swear allegiance or get swept aside by my crashing wave of change!" the woman ordered lifting her chin up with arrogance.</p><p>Haoru laughed out, his laugh was deep and genuine, not an acted one - almost like the man has not had that much fun in ages. "You seem to believe that my sword is unusable now? As expected, a woman knows nothing of a fine blade, even if my edge is cracked all I need is to focus my Wind chakra more and make the blade even sharper. Still, I haven't done this in a long time, not since the war I was challenged to channel my chakra this intensely and cut this deep..."</p><p>With a smile just as smug as that of the woman's opposing him Haoru's blade lit up with greyish chakra which soon turned cerulean blue, before the chakra around the blade looked more like an aura, now it was basically a raging wildfire, ready to cut through and destroy anything in its path. Haoru lunged forward in his thrusting stance and thrust his blade, Shirona clashed her own barriers together to form a triple large shielding wall of barriers. She was lucky to instinctively move out of the way - Haoru's sword went through the barriers with moderate difficulty.</p><p>The Mizukage was surprised. This man was proving to be quite the challenge for her for a samurai, granted, samurai were told to be superior to ninja in pure one on one battle, only in tricks, stealth and assassination could a ninja best a samurai but Shirona Namikaze was no ordinary ninja. The woman made a couple of handseals making countless barriers around her. "Barrier Ninjutsu: Guanyin's Protection!" she chanted as seemingly hundreds if not a whole thousand of similar barrier bucklers started floating like satellites around their planet which, in this case, was Shirona.</p><p>Numerous barriers cut Haoru, they were as sharp as disc saws and upon cutting the man they also inflicted some sort of chakra burns. Not that Haoru could not handle pain, only the initial performance of the technique even fazed him as he quickly started wildly slashing and thrusting, destroying each and every barrier while Shirona jumped on a larger platforming round barrier and floated back. The Mizukage was in awe of Haoru's speed and strength, his hands and blade were but a blur as he cut through each and every of her thousand disc barriers. After the first couple of scratches, not a single barrier even touched Haoru, now she was starting to understand the danger this man posed to her plans - he was certainly the most skilled, swift, and strong swordsmen that Shirona has seen. If such a man was not hers to play with, he was to be no one's.</p><p>"What a woman... Beautiful, smart, ambitious, and strong..." Haoru sighed as he swiped his sword to the side as if he was shaking off blood off of it and stood in his signature stance with the same confident smile.</p><p>"Oh, I had forgotten, you have your women stay at home, maybe that is why Iron Country is such an irrelevant little dump in the world's grand plan..." Shirona replied forming two more barriers around her palms.</p><p>Haoru laughed out loud deeply again, "I'm almost tempted to let you cut me down so that you may know my wife's wrath. The Iron Country men are so strong and able that women need not concern with their lowly matters." Haoru replied as both combatants charged at each other.</p><p>Shirona grunted throwing her barriers forward, "Barrier Ninjutsu: Barrier Multiplication!" she yelled as the two barriers she had around her arms became eight, all of them stacked on each other to form a stronger protective wall.</p><p>"Windcutter Style: Power Cut!" Haoru yelled out striking with both his arms from above down. A powerful flash of light blinded both competitors as the barriers and Haoru's strength guided sword clashed. As Shirona struggled with her blindness Haoru's blade cut her figure in two, his blade pierced her flesh as if it was as easy as cutting air. After the swing was made Shirona's body became as thin as paper and a transparent barrier shined around the deceptive figure as the barrier's upper side slid down being cut in two.</p><p>"Barrier Style: Barrier Mirror Mirage!" Shirona chanted from further away, forming more barriers around her palms again. Haoru was open - this was her chance!</p><p>"Barrier Style: Koho!" she fired the barrier hitting Haoru straight in his bulky and muscular chest, the man staggered back as the barrier shattered on impact from the force it packed.</p><p>"Barrier Style: Baikoho!" she shouted sending two more barriers crashing and shattering into the man's body. Haoru kept stumbling back and grunting from the force,</p><p>"Now get out of my way!" Shirona ordered sending the final small barrier hitting straight into Haoru's jaw from the side sending him crashing into the wall and leaving a small crack in it. "Insects need to be stepped on with force..." the woman mumbled arrogantly to herself looking at the man's body on the ground - an impact like that third one would've been more than enough to break a man's neck and the barrier's speed hitting from the side would've been enough to snap it as well.</p><p>"Agreed... Wait, are we discussing insects now?" a grumpy voice of the samurai reached Shirona's ears as the woman took a couple of steps backward in surprise.</p><p>"I've grown bored discussing your ogre wife." Shirona cursed angered by the man's persistence. It appeared like he barely took any damage at all, the man nonchalantly spat out several teeth to the side and smiled with his disgusting half-complete smile.</p><p>"Shouldn't have played that card, lady-ninja..." Haoru cracked a somewhat annoyed grin as he sheathed his sword, a weak current of air started twisting around the man's frame lifting off dust and small pebbles alerting Shirona of his concentration of chakra, could Haoru only have been playing up to then? With a single handseal the woman's arms shot forward, four, square barriers formed into a cube. </p><p>The Mizukage mumbled "Barrier Style:...", as the samurai leaped at her the woman thrust her barrier cube forward. Haoru's foot thumped right before Shirona's feet breaking the stone below it as the man's voice roared loud enough for the Gods themselves to hear.</p><p>"Windcutter Style Secret Technique: Zephirus Dragon Draw!" he spoke right at the same time as Shirona thrust her cube to block Haoru's blade, finishing the name of her technique - "Shibaikoho Cube!"</p><p>A powerful current of wind rose, roaring in the air as the wind howled, it was coming from Haoru's blade. While Shirona's technique managed to block most of the force and prevent the woman's death, the sheer power of Haoru's blade tossed her backward while the dragon-shaped projectile coming out of all the Wind Release chakra stored in Haoru's katana surrounded the woman's body cutting it up as her body was thrown around by the violent twister as she hit the wall, the violent winds then seemingly crushed her body with absolute force drilling it into the wall. Haoru looked at his bare blade, now absent of any chakra enhancements, and sheathed it. "You've done good over the years, Yama no Perun-chan... But now, against this woman-ninja, you've done goofed..." he mumbled in a comedic tone to himself.</p><p>"The insolence..." Shirona's hurt and angered tone echoed through the corridor. Haoru looked at her body curiously as the woman's body stood up, covered with small cuts that looked like they were made with tree branches not a cutting gale of wind, her black intricate and expensive silk dress was all cut up and her hairdo was messed up to the point where her wild blonde hair now flowed everywhere as the woman's scorned and injured body pushed itself off the ground.</p><p>"Those barriers' o yours are somethin' else, Mizukage-ninja. You've made so many around you - shielded yourself from most of the damage and prevented your body from being cut up and drilled into stone." As Haoru spoke Shirona's crimson red lips twisted into a sick smile as she predicted a compliment coming her way. Haoru drew his katana and tapped its blunt side on his shoulder as he looked at her with an unimpressed face, "Truth be told it just tells me your body is as fragile as a daisy, I for one wouldn't have bothered shielding my body' cause I ain't afraid of such injuries..." the man replied sending Shirona into a mad fit of rage.</p><p>"Barrier Style..." the woman mumbled as Haoru comically reached for his ear.</p><p>"What was that? Did you say something? That wind was really loud ya know..." The woman's palms were raised forward as countless small round barriers shot out of her hands.</p><p>"Guanyin's Thousand Arms of Judgment!" the woman straight out screamed in frustration and rage as the barriers started flying at Haoru like machine-guns, the swordsman leaped backward shouting "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" in shock and seemingly childish fear as his hands blurred with his sword deflecting all of the barriers flung his way, every single barrier was deflected and kept flying further past Haoru slamming through to the main Summit hall where it crashed randomly leaving a hole in a stone. Haoru leaped forward deflecting some more barriers right at the same moment as Shirona's technique ended. The samurai placed his blade in a thrusting pose, aiming to pierce the woman's stomach so that she bled out on the stone-cold floor thinking about the foolishness she'd pulled.</p><p>"Koho!" Shirona shouted as her raging barrage of barriers continued, a powerful rectangular wall slammed into Haoru's face and sent him tumbling backward, slowly, the woman started walking forward, "Koho!" she chanted again sending another barrier right into the man's face and making him stumble backward, then again and again! "Make a joke out of me, will you!" she shouted angrily as she sent another "Koho" barrier wall the samurai's way as the orange wall sent the man slamming right into the heavy gate that separated the corridor from the main hall. The woman's palms shot forward,</p><p>"Barrier Style: Shibaikoho!" she chanted sending four simultaneous walls of barriers slamming and stacking one on another and pressing Haoru's body into the steel gate, crushing it like an insect between a foot and pavement. The man's body fell to his knees, his face was swollen like he had hit a mountain flying at the speed of sound. "Jokers like you are not even worth licking the dirt off my sandals, Koho!" she shouted sending one final Koho barrier that hit Haoru so hard that he crashed through the steel gate busting it down as the man's heavy and bulky body rolled into the busted up hall.</p><p>Shirona looked at the man's body for a moment before turning around, then as she finally congratulated herself on an obstacle removed... Some stones shifted and something cracked in the main hall. Horrified Shirona turned around and witnessed Haoru standing up from under the stone table, pushing the stone off of himself and dusting the half of his kimono that wasn't ripped. "Darn, Rudoviga-chan cleaned these trousers for me this morning... Now they're all ripped up and... Oh well, serves me right for making fun of a lady, I s'pose..." Haoru examined his torn up white trousers as his attention turned back to the woman who beat him around for a while.</p><p>"Well, Mizukage-ninja, that was fun, but now I'll have to kill you..." he smiled with a certain shade of confidence as his red swollen face started to regain the normal color. This samurai was hit in the face so much that torn blood vessels stopped leaking almost instantly now, that being said his face still looked rather funny...</p><p>"You... Insolent... Old Geezer!" Shirona roared into the hall making her feminine powerful shout of rage echo through the room as she put her palms together in front of her chest. "I have no time to beat you around, I've no time to play ragdoll with a lowly samurai! I've got to destroy this whole building and the darned Hokage with it!" she shouted out as another cube of barriers shaped around her arms.</p><p>Haoru looked around searching for his sword, he dug around the pile of table rubbles and removed the sheath, and unsheathed it taking his defensive stance. "I mean, your plan sounds alright for a twisted lady... If you want to kill Hokage that works but you'd be killing your own men in this building too, even if you do have the jutsu to tear it down." Haoru spoke getting ready, he knew how to kill this woman - he'd see her technique and wait for an opening when she uses it - all ninjutsu have openings. Then his blurring blade will find her heart before she can as much as take a breath. He killed countless ninja this way and had he not enjoyed this brawl with the Mizukage so much he'd have done so to her as well.</p><p>"Ninja are but tools. If the owner wishes they are free to throw them away." The blonde replied with a dark and husky tone.</p><p>Shirona shot her palms forward letting the cube of barriers fly slowly forward, Haoru broke his stance as he took one of his hands off the handle of his katana to scratch his head. "Ain't this a bit slow, Mizukage-ninja? I think Hokage-ninja will kill all of your guys and get here before this gets to me..." he taunted her as Shirona swiftly made a handseal.</p><p>"Barrier Style: Barrier Multiplication Jutsu!" she said as the cube started glowing faintly with the shade of mixture of azure blue and white light. Haoru stepped back a bit as he didn't quite understand it, now the cube was standing completely still!</p><p>"Do you know what my Barrier Multiplication technique does? Even your small samurai brain should comprehend the concept... Do you know that my barriers have a certain amount of mass, yes? They weigh approximately sixteen kilograms each, without the aid of my chakra to move them they'd be quite a shield... Do you know that when an object of certain mass multiplies, their total mass increases accordingly?"</p><p>Haoru started frantically scratching his head. "Darn it, Mizukage-ninja, are you pulling some of your stupid ninja witchcraft again?"</p><p>Shirona smiled as her wild hair covered her eyes that were emanating a certain triumphant glow from them. "You fool, how many times do you think I must multiply my barriers before they become too much for the fabric of reality itself to handle?" she mumbled as suddenly the barrier started quaking from pressure and sending ripples through the walls and the floor of the room, the ceiling and the entire roof of the temple started to collapse on the room's walls and floating to the barrier combination. Shirona made a final handseal.</p><p>"Barrier Style Combo Technique: Infinite Mass Configuration!" she uttered. Her voice was followed by a loud shriek coming from the barriers that took the hall over, overwhelming all of the sounds anywhere close. Haoru grunted as the immensely powerful gravity started attracting him to the technique, his own body started to crack and stretch from the pressure as he could swear his bones broke in multiple places and his muscles and joints were torn apart by the immense pressure of gravity. An incredible amount of debris also gathered around the cube making a large mess out of the hall. The whole main hall formed a sphere of debris around where the cube was.</p><p>Shirona was huffing heavily, still in the corridor behind the hall, she could not believe she was pushed to this, no way she can use the larger version she intended to use to destroy the temple now... Plan A was ruined now, she had nowhere to rush. "Well..." the woman panted, "I suppose now I'll have to kill Howoku myself..." she finished her own sentence barely as the woman spat up some blood on the cracked stone floor observing the destruction in the main hall. This insolent man and his refusal to just bend over and die made her plans more difficult, she could use her "Infinite Mass Configuration" multiple times if it was just room scale but expanding the scale of her combination required immensely greater proportions of chakra, one temple sized configuration would've taken everything she's had and she's spent so much already that there was no doubt - she'd have to rest and kill Howoku herself by other means.</p>
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<a name="section0039"><h2>39. Chasing Evil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu and Howoku rushed one hall back from the main hall where the Kage Summit was taking place. The two ninja looked around witnessing a gruesome sight - the Kirigakure Barrier Corps were nowhere to be seen while their own ninja laid there knocked out without any signs of life. "No blood, no signs of battle... These men were some of my most trusted ones, they also were quite high ranked... They must've been taken down in a sneak attack." The Hokage uttered confirming what both men already knew inside. They were now on their own. There was no more reason looking for their men as the cunning Mizukage had made sure that they'd be all alone. She's thought of everything. It was a good thing that Howoku picked up those extra men from outside the village after leaving and didn't arrive with just a few guards he left with, otherwise, those barrier ninja may have caught him and Tanshu unprepared.</p><p>Tanshu cursed, "Damn that Misu, didn't he leave the room to make sure that everything's OK with the men? Where the hell did he go off to?" Howoku looked at the Sannin questioningly, "Do you think Misu's out too?" he asked as his tone descended.</p><p>Tanshu kicked down a chair and flipped a wooden table over just trying to let all of his anger out, "Nah, that bastard's too tough even for Kirigakure sneak attacks, he spent the entire year in that pisshole, if there's anyone knowing a Kiri scheme coming, it's him." Howoku turned around looking at the main hall. "We've got to go back, maybe we can still catch Mizukage and have her answer for all of this?"</p><p>"Too late for that, Haoru probably already caught up to her and he didn't strike me as a guy who would've appreciated the help of ninja, we turned back to find our men, may as well look for Misu or confirm that there are no more surprises coming our way," Tanshu replied. Howoku nodded, "True, Haoru-san is not the kind of man who likes ninja butting into his fights." The two men started moving towards the exit from the temple they entered through.</p><p>As they entered the next room the trio saw a bunch of Konoha ninja on the ground just like in the last room, this time, however, their assassins actually were present in the room. Within an instant Tanshu's body instinctively dashed towards one of the barrier ninja driving his elbow into the ninja's gut and then again into his neck. The barrier ninja fell lifeless.</p><p>"T... This is Red Dog Tanshu... Fall back!" the barrier ninja yelled as several of them fired moving barrier walls at Tanshu as the man tried to strike them down as well, the barriers pushed Tanshu back to the other end of the room.</p><p>Tanshu made several handseals and charged towards the barrier, thrusting his palms at them as they flamed up, "Fire Style: Red Cerberus Rampage!" Tanshu shouted out as his palms started shooting wildly busting through the barriers near effortlessly with his flaming barrage of blows, the man then proceeded to jump amongst the enemy ranks and take them all out with quick and precise blows and kicks. It only took one blow to their necks for the ninja to fall, it only took mere kicks from Tanshu to break their bodies and cripple them for life or outright kill them. It was quite a while before Tanshu got serious...</p><p>"Die, Hokage!" A bunch of barrier ninja yelled leaping from a balcony and shooting off some walls of barriers trying to crush Howoku from below, after weaving just a single handseal Howoku's arm lit up with bright light that was his Starlight Release and the man swiped it sideways sending a powerful scythe-like projectile incinerating all of the barrier ninja assailants while cutting right through their barriers as if they weren't even an obstacle. The man fighting now was not the young and hopeful Howoku but the one that followed the belief that all that stepped out of line had to be destroyed and Kirigakure had long since thrown rotten fruits at Konoha from over the line. Just about long enough... More Barrier Corps ninja flowed the halls, Tanshu and Howoku leaped at them, carefully dodging their assaults and offensive use of barriers by maneuvering around them and striking all of them down. After the last of the Barrier ninja fell the two once again reunited.</p><p>"I think wearing us down is Mizukage's intention, I certainly hope that you're not feeling worn out just yet, Tanshu." Howoku said as Tanshu showed the man his fist, "Not even close, I could beat losers like this around the whole day" he replied confidently.</p><p>As the exchange of lines went the ground rumbled. Deafening quakes echoed all through the temple as the sound of debris and shrieking of some sort of supernatural origin made Tanshu and Howoku cover their ears and fall on their knees, they had to find cover for support as the roof in their room also dropped several fist-sized stones. This entire place was very ancient and even more unstable, just what kind of nonsense were the Mizukage and Haoru engaged in? As the sound stopped Tanshu looked at Howoku questioningly and the two took off and dashed back to the main hall. All this time they assumed that Mizukage had already taken off but this sound suggested she may have been closer than they've imagined. If these barrier ninja were all that Misu had to look out for, he was safe.</p><p>"Haoru, one of the four God Sword Jutsu wielders... I thought he had an advantage against any ninja, he usually cut the enemy down before they could weave a single handseal." Howoku grunted as he was genuinely worried about what exactly had transpired in the main hall.</p><p>Tanshu coughed up as clouds of dust cleared up, "Not necessarily, a very skilled barrier ninja could excel at keeping a distance or protecting themselves as the enemy tried to take them out with their half-baked attempts to intercept their seals." Either way, these were just speculations, finally, the main hall was in sight. As the two men entered the destroyed landscape they couldn't stop themselves from looking around in awe - the entire room was disassembled and it appeared like all of that part of the building had centered and piled up in one place - the center.</p><p>"That's... Like... God-Eyes' power..." Tanshu grunted, he had already seen Oni Mask that day, was it possible that God-Eyes was also alive?! "No, that cannot be, we've all seen him disintegrate after being hit by my Starlight Release jutsu, he cannot possibly be alive nor can there be another Rinnegan user. Someone did this without Rinnegan and that is possibly even scarier..."</p><p>At that moment the gigantic pile of rubble shook and rumbled, loud muffled grunts came from under, and then a great gale of wind gusts blew all of the destroyed halls off of the central area where it had formed a crushing sphere. "DON'T BURY ME YET, DAMN IT!" Haoru shouted as he burst from the rubble. His kimono and trousers were torn up and covered with his own blood, his body was covered with bruises and injuries and his hair was set loose and was flowing wildly as some superhuman chakra pulsing off of him floated it in the air.</p><p>Haoru pulled cuts of his kimono from under the rubble and tied his hair back into the ponytail, he then started wildly throwing the smaller rocks aside while pushing the larger ones with his unnatural strength. Howoku and Tanshu were both astounded and couldn't believe it. "You were... Under that pile?" Howoku spoke first. Haoru looked back at the man for a brief moment and showed him a thumb up before continuing to dig around for something.</p><p>"This is nothing, I've fought in several wars, a moment of larger than life injury cannot bring down a man who has been cut up by swords for entire days on end..." he grunted as with a powerful push he flipped over what looked like a crumbled pillar that held the roof. "There you are, honey!" he shrieked like a little girl and pulled his sheathed sword from under the rubble, checking on it for damage and then tying it up to his belt.</p><p>"Well, I'm set to go! Let's get that woman!" he energetically raised his fist into the sky. Tanshu scratched his head, "Wait a moment, old-timer, first you should tell us what the hell happened here, I think we need to know just what kind of ability this woman used because we're sure if we'd get hit by something strong enough to do this - we'd die instantly..."</p><p>Haoru laughed up and then comically grabbed his injured ribs, they must've been broken but it didn't seem to bother the man except for the occasional fits of pain. "Well, she can make pretty tough barriers, she can also multiply them seemingly infinitely to where they weigh enough to rip holes in reality leaving a dent in it that causes everything in that place to be sucked into the rip. Luckily I used my Hurricane Draw jutsu to not get made into spaghetti and keep myself far away from the tear by giving him my wind to eat up instead of me. All I had to do was survive the hall crushing me into a big pancake!" the man laughed at it as if it was something funny.</p><p>Howoku sighed as he looked on ahead, the spring breeze picked up and rustled his hair. "If the Mizukage can use that kind of jutsu it's troubling, I've never heard of a ninja who could legitimately kick your butt, Haoru-san. Still, to make a barrier so heavy it'd tear away reality surely sounds like a tiring concept, she must've used her barrier multiplication technique many times in rapid succession and that's something that tires a person out. Good to know we are not the only ones to get chips on our armor..." Howoku said.</p><p>Tanshu curiously stared Haoru down, "Can you go on ahead, old-timer?" he asked, "Sure, I may have a bunch of my bones broken but when you've been battered, burnt, and zapped as many times as I have it stops bothering you until you die. I may move slower but I'm sure I'll still beat you shadow humpers..." Howoku smiled, "If you can still make fun of ninja you'll be fine, let's catch Mizukage and take her out." The three men dashed with all of their speed onward, entering through a hole left in the temple when the main hall was disassembled and mushed up in one place.</p><p>As the three were rushing past the corridor Howoku pouted and turned his head to Haoru, "Haoru-san, did Mizukage tell you what her actual plan is? I mean she told us that she's planning to crush all the Kage and take everything over, that much is for certain, she believes that she's the only competent enough person to control the entire ninja population, that being said, what was her plan here?"</p><p>Haoru grinned, "She planned to leave the building and then use a larger scale of that thing she used against me on the whole building killing everyone inside. I think now she's unable to do so, if pulling those glowing cubes came easily to her she'd just have done so from the start, it was more of a last resort to her so now she'll try to take you guys by other means. I'm wondering just how well her effort to hold the other Kage off with her military is going, surely Kage is a ninja much stronger than any number of usual ninja?"</p><p>Tanshu nodded, "True, at some point, when talking about Sannin and Kage, the number of opponents is irrelevant, someone like the Mizukage could take out an entire army by just using that reality tearing jutsu on them. The highest-ranked ninja need to be taken out by equally high ranking ninja, no number of chuunin or genin can outmatch them..."</p><p>The three ninja dashed out of the overly drawn-out short corridor into a cage-like hall. The structure had a rotating staircase with countless openings where windows were supposed to be, instead of glass there were bars for protection. This location must've been built way before glass was even a thing.</p><p>"Where to now?" Howoku wondered. Haoru pointed right in front at a door that must've lead onwards. "If we are to assume that she still wants to leave, there, that way is the straightest path outside while the staircases lead to various other corridors to other halls." Two figures landed right in front of the trio - both of the men looked very similar yet each looked also different from the other.</p><p>"Water Temple monks." Haoru smiled as he drew his blade, "What did that lady do to make you guys sell out and join her pack?" he taunted the duo. One of the monks got visibly annoyed and outraged, he almost charged at the swordsman when the smaller one held him. Both men were wearing the typical black and white rag monk attire, they each had some strange face paintings, the larger one was bald and the smaller one had excessive dark facial hair and wore a bandana which barely helped contain his long hair.</p><p>"Mizukage-sama did nothing, we've joined her cause by our own choosing, the Water Temple agrees with her ideas, each temple worships different divinities, they each are lead by different ideals and the world needs not such confusion. There must be one temple, one ninja establishment so that there is no conflict to be made. Such eternal lasting peace and prosperity justifies one giant slaughter to end all slaughters" the smaller one replied as he moved his hand away from his bigger friend's chest and took a fighting stance.</p><p>Howoku turned to the side and looked at Haoru. "Haoru-san, please remain uninvolved. You need to gather your strength and let your body recover somewhat, we cannot afford to let you die in the middle of battle unaware of how critical your condition is, even if you have overcome your bodily limits, that does not make you immortal." Haoru was very visibly not pleased with this suggestion but he stepped back and sat down to the wall.</p><p>"Fine, don't like killing monks anyways, would much rather cut down ninja..." he grumped out, crossing his arms over his chest. </p><p>Tanshu tossed him a small bag, "Take care of your bruises and injuries while we fight, these men are pretty tough if they are monks but it shouldn't take too long..." he confidently declared.</p><p>He then jumped up grabbing onto the second-floor staircase and pulled his body up, dashing madly to the upper floors, the larger monk followed. Tanshu's goal was to separate the two monks, it was likely that the monks were trained to work together and while they normally could've both ganged up on Howoku their goal to keep the two away from Mizukage made it difficult to ignore Tanshu's movement.</p><p>The monk appeared right in front of Tanshu, dashing several floors up and then making a mad rush downstairs, throwing a wild punch at Tanshu's face. The Sannin ducked under it only to receive a kick into his chest that sent him tumbling one floor down before he pushed his body up with his hand and backflipped into a balanced stance. Tanshu was impressed by the speed, strength, and precision of the man's moves - he was very clearly a taijutsu user so he may have been troublesome to someone who specialized in negating opponent's ninjutsu and genjutsu, either way, it made no difference, whatever the playing field was - Sannin surpassed all ninja.</p><p>The smaller monk dashed and threw a punch at Howoku as well, the Hokage leaned his head to the side and tried throwing a punch of his own only for the man's other hand to catch it, the two kicked their knees forward at the same time only for them to clash, the two exchanged several blows and then dashed back to get some distance. At this point, they were just checking each other out but Howoku was feeling the pain where he clashed or blocked the monk's blows but it didn't look like it bothered the monk that much - his face remained stone cold.</p><p>Howoku clenched his fist as it lit up with Starlight Release chakra, the Hokage leaped forward throwing a fist charged up with enough chakra to disintegrate the area it connected to, the monk leaned out of its way as the punch dispersed, the heat from the punch did seem to bother him as he lost his footing for a moment. Howoku tried to throw a combination of blows to the man's abdomen and his face but the monk managed to respond in time by blocking all of the blows and tapping his foot at Howoku's chest and pushing his own body away instead of using it to kick. The Hokage had never seen such strange taijutsu moves before, it made a lot of sense - the monks had very secretive and amazing taijutsu styles of their own with each temple developing their techniques incredibly differently compared to the other.</p><p>Many floors higher Tanshu's fist finally connected to the larger monk's face, the large man stumbled back, tripping on the stairs and having to use one hand for support, as Tanshu prepared to exploit this opening the man shifted his balance using the hand as a balance point and pushing his body into the air while kicking the air wildly using his long legs. Tanshu leaped into the air and stuck to the wall just in time to not get kicked down the stairs again.</p><p>The Red Dog quickly made some handseals breathing in deep and then releasing all of that air at once - "Fire Style: Red Dog Bark!" he shouted spitting out a mass of flames at the monk who just covered up as they devoured his body. The technique wasn't lethal as it sacrificed density and power for speed and versatility but any damage he could land could still quickly establish his dominance.</p><p>As the monk moved his smoking and damaged by slight burns hands to the side his monk attire was scorched off and his whole body was smoking and covered with small patches of burns. He cursed loudly as the monk got up from the staircase and finally got to his feet, taking a fighting stance and readied himself to keep fighting. He needed to hold this man here for as long as he could, every second he struggled Mizukage regained her strength and the Water Temple monks were not the kind to let down the Mizukage!</p>
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<a name="section0040"><h2>40. Ambition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>ONE MONTH AGO:</strong>
</p><p>A cold evening breeze blew rustling the numerous small ponds in the Water Temple yard. Usually, during the mornings the monks exercised together in a coordinated fashion, honing their fluid and fast movements, striking hard and moving fluently like the water itself. The Temple was on a small island, in fact, there was a beach nearby the temple and elder monks often ran to dip their bodies into cold ocean waves in the early morning. This was no small feat as there have been accounts of people actually dying of hypothermia trying to reach the Temple from a neighboring island. Then there was the matter of elderly hearts, monks were men who have pushed their bodies to the limits their entire life, a simple dip in cold foams of the crashing ocean waves could've easily stopped their hearts. There were many who also fell victim to the water taking them down their feet and dragging them further into the ocean, taking all air out of their chests and leaving them unable to swim back. Even such primitive training routines were incredibly dangerous.</p><p>Of course, there was no training exercise more dangerous and perilous than the body strengthening training of standing in front of violent crashing waves during a storm. Each and every monk hardened their body by allowing the powerful force of water to bash mercilessly at their mere human flesh and bones. None withstood the wave their first time, very few could even stand up after their first time training.</p><p>Youngsters have had their ribs and even skulls broken by the violent movement of water, crashing waves were not a thing to be taken lightly after all. The results of this training, however, couldn't be argued against - a monk's body became as tough as a rock, no - tougher! Even rocks were susceptible to being broken off of their formations, shattered and washed away, men of the Water Temple stood still and took everything the cruel ocean had to throw at them. As much as they trained their martial arts and strength, water was their greatest tool for training.</p><p>This cold breeze of salty oceanic air was different from yesterday's however as a woman in a black coat had landed on the shores of the Island of Isolation, where the Water Temple was. There were women amongst the monks, very few as their bodies were much tougher to get past the initial training stages, women had a much steeper curve and often gave up on their choice of isolation and firm suffering in order to strengthen their bodies.</p><p>Because of their initial frailty it took them much more pain and willpower to match their peers, not that it never happened - it did, but it wasn't as common as it was with men. This lady was not interested in joining the temple, however - she came here with far more destructive motives and a suggestion that was, to be entirely honest, crazy. Even with Mizukage Daikon in power, such a suggestion would've been ridiculous, even merciless and crazy Daikon didn't have the guts to talk to Water Temple monks this way! This woman was evidently more ambitious than her predecessor, much more willing. This woman's willpower and ambition surpassed that of all those that have died trying to become monks.</p><p>"Return in the morning, this is a time of peace and the head monk is resting after his training." A young monk spoke up pointing at the woman ordering her to return to the small boat that has carried her there.</p><p>"I insist that I must talk to him. If I put matters bluntly I am sure even you would see the mutual benefit in my suggestion, boy." The woman spoke up taunting the young monk for his youth at the end. It was not just a matter of age, this hooded lady couldn't have been a decade older than this youth but it was experience and mindset that set them so much apart.</p><p>"Oh yeah, and what is that offer, lady? Before I bother head monk I must know if it's worth it!?" the young monk yelled back at the woman clearly annoyed by her insolence. The long sleeve of the woman's coat raised up in the air and gently slipped off revealing her crimson red-dyed nails and two fingers being shown, the top of her hood slipped up gently revealing her blood-red lips smiling and moving softly.</p><p>"I need two monks, give me the support of the Water Temple, and two monks in my guard as a testament of your support and I will not sink this salt-stinking island beneath not only the waves but the scorching magma beneath the bottom of the ocean itself. I can't stand the salty smell..." she said as the boy was starting to annoy her too.</p><p>The inexperienced monk leaped right at the woman, his body flowed like the water, he did not tense his body but moved relaxed - perfectly managing the sensitive balance between strict tenseness of the body that hardened it and the relaxation that made it move more swiftly and fluently. One of the woman's companions just blurred as a moment later he was already standing five meters further with the unconscious monk helplessly collapsed on his firm arm. The man swiped his palm to the side as brief sparks of lightning chakra ran down his arm and the blood of the monks faintly colored the salty and mossed rocks near the beach.</p><p>"Big mistake, kid." the man said with his husky and low pitched voice, it was unknown who he was talking to as it most certainly was not the unconscious monk who had his eyes rolled up to the point where his pupils weren't even visible. He may even have been dead but none of the hooded figures really cared too much. Suddenly black flashes danced lit only by the pale moonlight, all of them trying to impale one of the figures with at least eight men devoted to a single figure.</p><p>The one who had knocked the young monk out responded in time, carefully his body deflected every blade pushing every one-handed saber away from his body while his leg blocked the swipes completely. However as the saber hit the man's appendage it did not spill blood - a loud clang echoed as half of the blade was sent flying off into the distance and etched into the beach sand. The man's cloak hood slipped off revealing a blue oni mask on the man's face. He looked around staring each of the monks down, even if his eyes were not really visible over the oni mask it was evident that he was sizing each man up for their coffins. He just had that feeling of a merciless killer around him and it was apparent to absolutely everyone that this man had killed countless people in his days, even before his leg became this strange metallic abomination of nature.</p><p>Another figure just moved their arm to the back of their heads, reaching up for a handle. The motion happened so incredibly fast that his hood slipped off revealing a large and spiky golden hairdo. The man did something, in the darkness of the forest it was absolutely invisible but all of the monks screamed out in pain and fell on the sand as blood shot from their gruesome wounds. As grievous as the men's wounds were, they were still non-lethal and it was clear such was the man's intention. After all of his opponents were cut down the man kept his arm on the oversized sword handle which hid some sort of a weapon under his cloak. Judging from how totally deep and battle ending the wounds on the men's bodies where it was clear that the blonde swordsman had quite the oversized tool on his back!</p><p>Powerful streams of water shot breaking through the ground of the third figure, each of the aquatic appendages grabbed hold of the attacking monk's faces and held them up in the air forming a large sphere of water around them. Each of the monks was tied up and could only struggle to try to break free from their terrible fate of drowning in a beach surrounded by nothing but sand for about three hundred square meters. The man released his hand seal at the same time as he leaped on his arm and kicked around, spinning on his arm to deliver a spinning kick to the gut of each monk which caused every single one of the locked-down monks to grunt out and start drowning right before being released. As the attacking monks fell powerless on the ground coughing the man looked at each of them from above. As if judging the monks who had fell victim to his superior talent and skill.</p><p>The monks attacking the crimson-lipped lady did not get too far, each of them slammed into an invisible wall and dashed backward, cursing and swiping their blades, then tossing them at the woman in frustration. Nothing even left the faintest of marks on the woman or even got through her invisible walls. The monks then stopped their completely fruitless attempts at attacking these cloaked figures and just helped their injured ones get back on their feet as reinforcements gathered on top of the hill. The hooded figure who almost drowned his opponents smiled and spoke up, trying to act intimidated even deep in his heart he was impressed. "Hoh, these fellows are different from those youngster monks. If they all attack we may be in trouble, Lady Mizukage. I sense their chakra signatures to be at least Special Jounin level each."</p><p>"Enough!" an elder man shouted out and landed in front of all four cloaked figures with the fifth still watching from the boat. The head monk was tall and had that strangely shaped, round head. His facial features were not attractive as it just happened that the man was not overly gifted by nature, he did not have any facial hair which was odd for a head monk, however.</p><p>"May I know what your business is, mysterious visitors?" he spoke up, the man was taller than all but the Water Release ninja with whom the monk was equal in height. As the cloaked lady walked up in front and removed her hood revealing her flowing tied-up blond hair the man crossed his frail elderly arms on his chest. Water Temple monks practiced fluidity and endurance, strong defense over everything else in their fighting styles. It was uncommon for them to have too bulky builds even with their barbaric training methods. It only made sense for the head monk to follow this mantra to the extremes.</p><p>"Nothing much. Before I state my business I'd like you to welcome us like proper guests. I believe that the Mizukage deserves a proper welcome, no?" the woman asked with a playful tone. The old man mumbled something under his own nose and turned around, nervously shooting his palm up in the air, the monks turned around. The cloaked figures heard a bunch of clinging noises which were revealed to be monks hiding in bushes with bows and arrows.</p><p>"I was almost excited to see the infamous "Water Temple archery", it is said that a monk archer's arrow can pierce the ocean all the way to its bottom..." the blonde with an oversized sword politely joked, the monks did not honor the man with a response. The head monk led the entire party of monks and the cloaked figures into the shrine where the head monk sat on one side of an altar with an ancient scroll placed on it and gestured the woman to sit on the other as the monks made several circles around them. The lady nodded and kneeled by the altar, sitting on her knees and getting to an eye-to-eye level with the head monk.</p><p>"So... What business brought our late-night guests at such a time of night in a matter of utmost importance which could not wait until the morning?" the head monk asked. Loud laughter pierced the silence that dominated afterward as the monks all stopped rustling and talking.</p><p>"Well... Not that it's that urgent, there is still a month till the Kage Summit, I am a woman who likes to do all her work upfront and rest after, anyway." The head monk scratched his head, it was clear that he wanted to ask a question but was too shy to do so.</p><p>"Ummm, please do not get offended but... Who exactly... Are you?" he uttered at last as Shirona started giggling at the top of her lungs.</p><p>"It's too bad that I don't carry Daikon's head around, that thing started to smell so awfully after the first couple of days. People don't take "I'm the Mizukage" as seriously as they used to these days... How could I ever convince you..." the woman acted as if she was genuinely troubled by her own thoughts but the head monk just waved his arms.</p><p>"No no no, it is just fine... Any woman who would enlist all three Kirigakure Sannin to her side is either a very good courtesan or a woman of very high political power." "Or both..." Shirona giggled, then angrily looked at the monk who at first did not follow her joke, the man nervously faked a laugh.</p><p>"Anyways, here I was wandering around my land, informing all those who were troubled by Daikon's rule and I thought for a moment... Why don't I fix the relationship with all of those little insolent countries: Land of Waves, Island of Isolation, all those other islands of varying importance. So here I am... Interested in forming a pact with the Water Temple, decided to fix our relationship, so to speak, I'm sure Daikon did his best to piss you, people, off..." the head monk scratched his head, obviously, he and the past Mizukage had a history that was not entirely pleasant.</p><p>"Anyways, whatever taxes you paid Daikon so that he did not tear this place down are no longer imposed, feel free to practice your thing here freely... In fact, I'd love to hear all about your religion and your interpretations of it, I've heard that all temples worship different divinities and that somehow influences the art they create, both martial and the exquisite kind of art."</p><p>The head monk looked back at his fellow monks, to the man it became obvious that they were just as troubled by this woman and, in a way, afraid of her as he was. "Well... We technically do not worship a divinity, our martial art is based on a legend and we craft our faith and model our lives around the ideals it represents. According to the said legend, there is a being so powerful and large sleeping deep in the oceans in between Kirigakure and the other islands that even a sight of it would drive a man mad. If the legend is true when this beast awakens it will inevitably destroy all that we know - sink all of our islands and return back to sleep. It does not necessarily mean that we are living in fear of a giant monster wiping us from existence, what is to be taken from this story is that our lives are temporary. We must all strive to be as kind to those in our lives as we can, we must constantly strive to improve ourselves because we are remembered for the people that we were in our lives that could end at any time."</p><p>"Just lovely... Well, if our ultimate fate is to be decimated by some sleeping ocean monster, may as well do the most of it - I'll get to business. I'd love to set my sympathy for this little island in stone, it will only take two of your best men to aid me in the Kage Summit." Head monk was visibly intimidated now that he saw Mizukage's political play being very much involved with this visit.</p><p>"What exactly do you have in mind, Lady?" the man asked carefully.</p><p>"Well, I sort of wondered just how successful your existence was? I mean your ideals and morals and lessons sound great, your men are powerful because they follow those beliefs faithfully but... I can't help but feel that other Temples are in your way, I mean Fire Temple and their thousand armed Gods of murder... It's boring... I plan to wipe all other villages off the map and make the whole world into my own empire, then there will be no competition between ninja and all clients and all of the Lords will only hire one village, there'll be no bloodshed, no wars for dominance, only... Ninja. Cold, efficient, and simple. In return for helping me realize this dream, I'd be willing to give Water Temple the chance to make more temples worldwide, exclusive right in fact. Think about it, you could tell the tale of your scary sea God for all to hear and then if it actually awakens - survive his rampage somewhere deep in the oasis of the Land of Lightning's deserts."</p><p>"With all due respect, Lady Mizukage... That sounds terrible, you're asking us to be a part of your suicidal attempt to slaughter countless people just to satisfy a lust for power. It has nothing to do with anything that Water Temple stands for, no temple in the world has ever involved itself with ninja affairs and we will not become the first, especially not over such pitiful motive as one woman's ambition." The monks all looked petrified, they were literally shaking in their boots because they knew that when you refused someone who wielded infinite power over an entire village with only a slothful and incompetent Lord to answer to... Saying they don't usually take it well would have been an understatement.</p><p>"Oh well... That's too bad..." Mizukage shrugged as she stood up, the monks couldn't believe it she'd let it go so easily, didn't this woman just declared war on all the ninja villages? Was unifying all the villages under her rule as Ninja Empress, not her ambition?</p><p>As she passed by the monks, Shirona slowly walked up through all of them, giving each of them those playful glares, checking their eyes out, looking for that particular emotion. There it was... Ambition... One young monk lowered his head in shyness, he wanted power, he wanted to fight for a chance to be someone more than just a monk, he didn't want to die with lungs full of seawater in his late nineties unable to withstand crushing ocean wave pressure. He did not want to be a statistical victim of the current Mizukage's crazy regime, he didn't want to be part of a temple washed away on a mad woman's whim. He had the eyes of a King, more importantly, he had the eyes of a traitor! Gracefully the woman stroke his cheek and looked him deep in the eyes, gently she moved her finger from his cheek to his lips and then walked away as if nothing had happened.</p><p>"Oh... I sense a storm incoming, would it be fine for me and my Sannin to stay camped on your beach for the night? Perhaps you will still reconsider my offer?" the Mizukage asked curiously looking at the head monk. With his head as heavy as ever the man nodded, of course, he agreed. When refusing the most powerful woman in this part of the world and having been granted forgiveness, one did not refuse her second request. This man was too easy to play with.</p><p>"There will be no storm, Mizukage-sama, why are we staying?" one of the Sannin asked while the woman smiled, "I feel the wind picking up, trust me, my dear, there will be a storm. A storm of changes... Now if one of you would be so lovely as to build us all a camp..." the woman playfully spoke.</p><p>It felt so great to be right, it felt so great when one set up all of her pieces of the board perfectly for a winning move. That feeling when you are just superior to everyone else was unmatched by anything else in the world... Surprisingly enough, an actual storm came, right out of the blue clear sky suddenly storm clouds gathered and it started pouring as if the hungry sea God of destruction had woken up just as those monks fear. Soon. Soon it will rain blood.</p><p>The woman never went to sleep that night, she sat waiting, waiting for that sound of betrayal, and lo and behold! Screams and shouts and lonely lights lit up the bland stormy night sky.</p><p>Once the woman and her party got to the Temple grounds they were stopped, as the Sannin stared the monks that dared stand in their way down and they moved aside the woman finally saw what she came here to see - a trial in process. "Mizukage-sama, please, this is internal Water Temple matter, this man killed our head monk in his sleep, he said he wanted to bring you his head and be one of the two monks to accompany you!" the monk giving the trial speech shouted right as he saw the woman.</p><p>Shirona grinned, "This man is the new head monk. That's how the world works now, that's how it will work when my new ninja establishment is complete - he killed a man, therefore, he gains all that his inferior had in his life, namely his title."</p><p>The monks stepped up and started making a noise. "IF NOT!" Mizukage's voice outshouted all of their voices. "I will kill as many monks as it is needed for this man to be the most viable contender for the spot. I am a very favorable woman to those that seek my approval, my allies will always get what they want as long as they are my allies, this man seeks my favor and he is the new head monk."</p><p>The traitor stood up from the position of being on his knees, struggling out of the hold that his peers had him in as they cursed out loud into the sky. "For my first decision as the head monk - two of our top monks will join her guard and follow her to the Kage Summit, disobedience means expulsion from the temple!" he ordered with his still childish voice. As two monks stepped up to the Mizukage's party and joined her cloaked men the woman nodded and thanked her "ally", she then turned around and stated to be busy and left for the boat. "So... What does this mean? Do you think this boy will hold power for long?" one of the Sannin asked.</p><p>"God no! He will get murdered on this same night, his is an empty title, without me here to uphold my own law it is but a word. These monks are all idealistic fools but their purpose is served. I don't care about the chaos that will take this place over now."</p><p>Shirona turned at the two monks behind her, "Mark my words, you two will still thank me for removing you from this island. The previous head monk should've known that even his temple order was temporary, had he learned nothing from his tales of slumbering ocean Gods?" The lonely boat set out into the nightly stormy sky, somewhere further on the horizon lightning cracked temporarily lighting the sky up and then letting it sink back into darkness.</p>
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<a name="section0041"><h2>41. The Starlight Sword - Pleiades</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu let out a sound of frustration as he lunged forward to once again try and land a blow on the injured monk. Even with burns covering his skin this man did not show any amount of pain after clashing with Tanshu which was something that the Red Dog has never seen before. He was supposed to be the second-best ninja in terms of pure physical prowess, second only to Chestnut Hanasaku who was a monster to whom rules of nature apparently did not apply. It appeared that the legends about the bodies of monks from Water Temple were not exaggerated. People spoke of how apparently they trained by allowing crashing waves of stormy nights hammering their bodies and after seeing the amount of toughness and willpower that these men showed Tanshu was not feeling any doubt in those tales. Truth be told they'd explain just how in the world these men managed to become so durable.</p><p>Tanshu desperately tried to find an opening in his opponent's defenses, he attacked high and low with both direct strikes and fluid but misleading thrusts of his palm trying both striking with fists, tips of his fingers, and his palms to see what sort of impact would do the most damage to these immovable monsters. It appeared that all of it was in vain. The few blows that the monk's martial art prowess did not block or deflect just hit the man's body with a thud but not even an eye twitch came from the man to suggest a painful reaction. The Sannin was certain he was doing damage but his opponent just did not show it, he did not waver of flinch. That worked as both strength and a weakness. Carefully, Tanshu retreated some distance back, blocking the blows and kicks that the monk decided to return after Tanshu's offensive ended.</p><p>"This is really embarrassing..." Tanshu panted out as he needed to make some things clear to his opponent while catching his breath. His opponent remained still and just observed his opponent with a blank stare.</p><p>"Monks working with ninja, men of faith and discipline working side by side with a tyrant to reach the goal of an over-glorified assassin." The Sannin spoke with the appropriate amount of discontent for the matter he spoke of. The monk jumped forward swiping his fist to the side, using more his strength but not his skill.</p><p>"So you believe the Fire Temple's approach is better?" he yelled as his fist dug into the brick wall sending dust and specks of stone into Tanshu's eye. "Completely isolating oneself from world's problems, caring only for one's own?!" he shouted as Tanshu leaned backward and jumped back to avoid being struck, his speed gave him enough distance to dodge even with his troubled eyes as the Sannin carefully removed all the dust within mere moments. The monk was gone!</p><p>"Sitting still and doing nothing while people die and then acting high and mighty because you were not the one who made mistakes!" a loud shout came from Tanshu's back as the man felt tremendous force hitting him and sending him crashing into the stone stairs. With a forceful push from his arms, Tanshu avoided breaking his bones into the stairs and leaped up higher.</p><p>"Whenever a schism occurs one must make a decision, place themselves on one of the two sides." The monk tried to catch Tanshu from behind again but the Jounin was smarter this time. The Uzumaki leaped backward with a backflip letting the monk charge through him while Tanshu got behind the monk. A loud crashing wave of air emanated through the higher floors of the hall as Tanshu's elbow clashed with that of the monk's.</p><p>"And if you remain indifferent!" the monk shouted punching Tanshu in the face from the left, "You dismiss both sides!" he punched his enemy from the right, "And if anyone dies you are to blame for all of the deaths!" the man punched from the left again, "And you are to blame for everything bad that the conflict brings because you deemed yourself too good to get your hands dirty, you were above all that!" the monk outright roared as his punch flew directly to the center of Tanshu's face where it stopped with a deafening thud.</p><p>The monk's will shook for a moment as the Red Dog's body did not fall nor did it move, the Sannin just stood there as his face barely moved back after getting hit by the oversized punch this time.</p><p>"You're right," Tanshu said nonchalantly before thrusting his face forward and pushing the monk's entire punching arm backward making himself an opening. The man's arms blurred in the air, his opponent could barely discern what was happening, it was a combination of his opponent's natural speed and his skill in taijutsu. With a powerful elbow strike to the face, the Sannin sent the monk rolling down the stairs down.</p><p>"But if you intentionally choose the side of the killers just for the sake of choosing a side you lose the right to use this argument. You're just as much trash as one who chooses no sides." the Sannin spoke staring at his opponent struggling to get off the stairs and wiping the blood leaking from their broken nose.</p><p>Below, Howoku attacked his opponent with a flurry of hits, one just as impressive as Tanshu did on the upper floors. The fist of the Fourth Hokage burst with Starlight chakra as the man thrust it forward but he only managed to hit a head of a statue placed in an occasional hole in a wall which the monk substituted himself with. As the small gargoyle stone piece of art disintegrated into dust the monk's figure appeared out of the dust trying to pummel his opponent into dust that matched the kind made by his own jutsu.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Safety Fuse!" Howoku yelled spreading his arms to the sides and shooting off miniature strings of lightning chakra in a small radius around himself, the monk got in too close, invested too much into his attack. The attire of the monk Howoku was fighting was set ablaze from the immense heat and strength of the Hokage's lightning technique so the holy man tore it off taking a fighting stance again.</p><p>Then the monk suddenly changed his stance, standing up straight and placing his arms on his belly and raising one above his head as if he was praying. "Ninja Monk Style: Inshirrinbu Seal!" the monk shouted out as a bright bluish glow shot out from somewhere behind him. It was almost mystical in nature as it appeared like the monk was standing in front of a light source. As Howoku clutched to keep as much of his ability to perceive the battlefield as he could, he had to step back and cover his eyes. Suddenly he felt a powerful clutch and as he opened his eyes he realized to his horror that he was trapped!</p><p>From whatever the source of the monk's mystical light show was hailed transparent blue constructs of chakra shaped almost like tentacles of an octopus, some of them were humongous and barely fit in the room but the ones that tied Howoku were significantly smaller.</p><p>"Ninja Monk Style: Inshirrinbu's Wrath" the monk chanted out as if he was praying, the tightly tied chakra tentacles dragged Howoku towards the monk who delivered a crushing blow to Howoku's abdomen. The Hokage felt the taste of blood in his mouth and whited out for a moment before the whistling wind awakened him - he was flying backward out of the hall the two were fighting in and he was about to crash into a stone wall.</p><p>"Starlight Style: Bright Wing!" Howoku shouted as he swiped his arm to the side and made a crescent projectile just in time - the monk leaped behind him attempting to punch Howoku's back and break the man's spine instead of letting him crash into the wall. The monk's fist struggled with Howoku's quick and unfocused Starlight technique before it violently dissolved in a blaze of blinding white flames sending Howoku backward and crushing the monk between the eruption of the jutsu's inner heat and the stone wall.</p><p>Howoku coughed up blood and breathed in - it hurt him to do so as the punch he had taken was quite a powerful one, nevertheless, his opponent must've taken some damage as well. The monk's burnt up and ravaged figure appeared from the smoke, the arm which collided with Howoku's Starlight jutsu looked charred up and had excessive amounts of blood on the floor below, luckily for the man the immense heat burnt every injury that it caused as well or he'd be dead, either way, even with his strange ninja monk style jutsu he took much more damage in that clash than Howoku did.</p><p>He probably intended it to be that way and that was what intimidated the Hokage - by now it was clear that Tanshu and Howoku would come out on top, the thing was that these monks tried their hardest to inflict excessive damage on the both of them so that Howoku could not compete with Mizukage later if that clash ever occurred. Howoku could not allow that, he had to end it quicker than he sustains any more damage but it'd be better if he also didn't overuse his Starlight Release since it did exhaust him more than any other technique he may have used.</p><p>The monk dashed right up to Howoku, "Water Temple Taijutsu Combo: Rising Tide!" he yelled as the man punched from below aiming to land an uppercut at Howoku's chin, the technique was fast but the man only had one arm to perform it with, had he had both, he may have been significantly more dangerous even to Howoku.</p><p>The Fourth Hokage leaned back and avoided the blow, the arm then descended as an elbow strike only to be blocked by Howoku's own elbow. The Hokage let out a grunt in pain as it hurt his flesh and bones to clash with such a tremendous amount of physical force but it appeared like once again, even with his injuries, the monk did not even flinch. The monk tried to drive a knee into Howoku's abdomen and the Hokage decided to take that trade - he had more usable limbs and was in a hurry after all! Howoku took the knee but traded that blow for a free elbow strike to his opponent's face at the same time as he got hit, both men stumbled backward clenching their injuries.</p><p>"You do not have to fight for Mizukage with such devotion, if she has you here by force then just let us pass and we'll tell her we beat you. This does not have to end in death..." Howoku tried to both reason and confirm one thing. It was not when the monk told Howoku his answer that it became clear but when he moved his healthy arm away from clutching his charred one and took a one-armed version of his fighting stance.</p><p>"I apologize but I believe in what Mizukage is trying to accomplish, I did not do so from the beginning, I must admit but... There is truth in the words that she speaks - ninja kill each other and each other's children because they compete for territory and jurisdiction like children. If a singular entity of ninja would be established, a ninja empire... Then such petty squabbles for meaningless things would stop, after this bloodshed, there'd be none more and no more blood of children being spilled... That is a cause worth dying for." Howoku's face twisted in anger. Mizukage Shirona must've been a master of manipulation to have even ninja monks twisted around her ideals like this.</p><p>"In that case..." tiny shining sparks, reminding of miniature glittering stars broke off of Tanshu's golden aura as a gigantic blade of pure Starlight Release chakra formed in his hand which the man gripped and swiped to the side leaving a trail of shining falling little stars of light. Almost like snowflakes, like little souls falling down from the heavenly shine above. "As an opponent of peace I worked so hard to establish over the years, I shall destroy you!" Howoku yelled out, he saw already that this man was beyond saving, this manipulation of men to do her bidding was Shirona's greatest sin, not murder.</p><p>A murderer leaves only bodies whereas a manipulating monster like Shirona only twists one's friends forcing friends to kill each other instead. In the end, she kills not only the victim of her manipulations but also she kills the person who sees their friend being played like a card in a game and then has to kill that friend. Any man who must kill their friend out of mercy of what he had become dies inside every time it happens. Even if Shirona would not achieve her goal that day and did succeed in killing Howoku, she'd have killed a part of him either way...</p><p>The monk shouted out charging at Howoku but with a slow and painful swipe the man's body lit up with Starlight chakra bursting out of the gash left by the man's technique. "Starlight Release: Pleiades" he whispered quietly as Howoku's arm swiped, again and again, the blade never really made contact with the monk's body but the pulsing heat from it cut the man's body open as if it had with chakra bursting from each gash until the man had been cut seven times. Howoku's sword of Starlight chakra burst into small shining sparks and fell to the stone floor. There was no blood, the monk's body was slowly falling apart, burning up like a piece of paper with the burnt parts flying off in glittering shimmer mist. And yet... The monk was still standing.</p><p>"I used to be a fool like you, monk-san..." Howoku spoke up as two little stars lit up under his own eyes, no, just small tears that reflected the pain and sadness that the man's shimmering body emanated. "I believed that maybe this one more bloodshed could end all bloodsheds, that maybe one day the killing would stop. Then one day my eyes opened. That is impossible, even if ninja will not kill each other for one reason - they'll find another. In the end, there'll be just you and the deeds that you've done to get to that point, you'll be just a manslayer who has created a world that changed nothing from the world he tried to change, in other words... Just a manslayer."</p><p>A powerful sphere of chakra lit up in Howoku's arm as he pushed it into the monk's body, the sphere carried the monk's unconscious body away before expanding and disintegrating the man's body in a giant sphere of bursting light. "Overhope..." Howoku uttered silently as he turned away and started walking back to the hall where he originally started fighting. What Mizukage has done with the lives of the people she played with casually was unforgivable, she preyed on their dreams for peace to achieve her own ends. She was far worse than the likes of Daikon - the Third Mizukage.</p><p>Daikon was a tyrant, plain and simple, he killed people because he was a sick individual who enjoyed that sort of thing, he tortured and killed people from other villages and when he got bored - those of his own. It mattered not to him who he was torturing as long as his sick ears heard the screams he yearned for so much. Shirona on the other hand... She had her own goals but she went around achieving them by using other people like tools, to her it meant nothing to make fun of people and make them only a mean to her end. What a despicable existence, Daikon was despicable but Shirona... This woman wasn't satisfied with just that, she decided to ruin the lives of honorable people by making them just as despicable as she was.</p><p>This woman decided that it was up to her to completely ruin everything that the people that fought for her lived for. She just made their entire lives mean nothing by making them commit atrocities for her under the illusion of peace. She made them believe that they were achieving the ultimate goal but really they were just destroying and burning up their own legacies. Haoru peeked through the hole in the stone and then looked at the busted outdoor, then stared Howoku down.</p><p>"Now who needs some rest and medical assistance, Howoku-ninja? You ain't beatin' Mizukage-ninja with those injuries, here, this ointment helps internal injuries a lot, I wonder where Tanshu got it..." the samurai handed a small bag to Howoku who looked at it with nostalgic eyes. </p><p>"A young Hyuuga woman he loved as a young man gave it to him, he never got injured enough in a battle to ever use it but he figured that young Vashia's will would've been to save lives, to make him happy so he gives this bag to his friends so that our injuries do not keep him down. If his friends die, Tanshu would fret, drink and beat himself over it and young Vashia's memory would be tarnished. That is the story of this bag."</p><p>Haoru looked up where Tanshu must've been fighting with the monk. He breathed in and out and stretched his body out, he moved with no stuttering, no obstacles - he felt no more pain. "Well, young Vashia-ninja has my gratitude, wherever she is..." Haoru leaped up and down quickly to feel his regenerated body. The medicine was no miracle but it helped as much as it was possible. It healed no bones but at least it made it easier for them to heal in the future while removing the pain from moving with broken bones.</p><p>"I've no idea, all I know is that he talks about her every time he gets drunk..." Howoku smiled as he gently applied some ointment to his abdomen where he was struck, then wrapped the bandage around the spot. Haoru grinned as if he had not a care in the world and kept staring up at the staircase as loud crashes and thuds kept echoing and reaching their ears. </p><p>"What a drunk man speaks of is what truly is in his heart. That is why young samurai feel so compelled to drink - they need aid to learn the ways of truthfulness, a lying sword will always be shattered by an honest one!" the man laughed out.</p>
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<a name="section0042"><h2>42. Echoes of A Day That'll Never Be</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu and the monk huffed heavily, both men had their upper bodies dragged to the ground but only through sheer willpower did they resist the temptation to fall down and pass out. Tanshu's face was red in multiple spots, beaten and bruised and the monk's body was covered with burns and black marks.</p><p>The Red Dog took a brief moment to look down the stairs to multiple floors below witnessing Howoku and Haoru standing around and treating each other's injuries. His comrades were safe, they'll get to return to their katei, Tanshu will defend his own, baby gloves could've been taken off, there were no more concerns in Tanshu's mind. The monk leaped forward, he smelled blood and knew that there was a chance that he'd be the one to outlast his opponent. A direct blow right to the monk's face sending him crashing into the staircase and making bricks and stone fly out of the construction convinced him otherwise.</p><p>"Your speed picked up..." the monk huffed out spitting several teeth out and wiping the blood from his broken face, after getting pounded again and again this man's balanced flow of chakra was interrupted. His mastery over chakra control to enhance his physical abilities now mattered less than it did ever before as it now didn't feel like Tanshu was punching a steel barrier covering a stone wall - it felt like a mace hammering away at soft flesh and bone.</p><p>"The Hokage finished his fight, I've no more concerns over anyone else, nothing on my mind to keep me away from this battle."</p><p>"You mean you didn't mean this whole fight?! You were somewhere else in your mind the entire time?" the monk shouted out in frustration, Tanshu's arm disappeared in his messy brown hair as he scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"Kind of... That's why I didn't use my sword, if I swung it when I don't look at what I'm doing I can cut my own limb off by accident, I'm really clumsy when I'm thinking about something else entirely..." the Sannin laughed out admitting to his opponent that he never had any hopes of winning, to begin with.</p><p>"So you're a swordsman then?" the monk asked, Tanshu took a taijutsu stance and shook his head.</p><p>"My sensei taught me how to use a sword in my childhood but... I wouldn't say that I am." Tanshu replied. The monk charged forward, with near-perfect precision the Sannin leaned out of every blow, effortlessly pushed away every kick, ducked, and leaped over every attack before moving away untouched. The monk fell on his knees. He had trouble breathing, it was more than likely that broken ribs added to the shortage of air by making inhalation painful.</p><p>"I'd give you five minutes to recover normally but... We sort of are in a rush, if you'd feel better I can think about something else again so we can fight as somewhat equals again. Make your last fight an honorable and good one. No one will notice my own wandering thoughts anyways..." Tanshu spoke, he really wanted to be done with this and go after the Mizukage but this man was a strong and disciplined one, he deserved an honorable warrior's death in combat, not to get completely trashed around by an opponent who wouldn't even break a sweat against him.</p><p>"I cannot ask you that. You have your goals, I have mine. Asking for you to hold back would be selfish." the monk sighed and stood back on his feet. Tanshu smiled for a second, he couldn't actually satisfy his opponent's desire. When he remembered the story of his own swordsmanship memories flooded back by themselves and the Red Dog found his own mind wandering again.</p><p>"I'm sorry, monk, I won't be fighting you at full strength for just a little while longer." He thought to himself as the two clashed again. His opponent must've felt this, Tanshu's strength reducing, his speed dropping, the man's breathing becoming irregular and amateurish at best. It couldn't be helped, a man with such a painful and long history of countless battles like Tanshu had many memories that flooded back once in a while...</p><hr/><p>Little Tanshu approached Oni Mask, he was hesitant to ask his sensei about something, usually, the boy had no fear to ask anything but... This topic was different, it concerned feelings and communication - social skills. Something that sensei told him was irrelevant for a ninja and even more so for a demon. After all - a demon is what Oni Mask trained Tanshu to become. Had little Tanshu been a bad student perhaps Oni Mask wouldn't have tried so hard but Tanshu was a talented and incredibly powerful student, the best one that the old wolf could've wanted. The old man had said many times that he'd train legions of demons and yet both he and Tanshu knew that none would surpass his original student.</p><p>"Speak up, boy. If you won't it'll keep you back in training and this day will be wasted, even more, I may end up killing you and wasting my precious little demon. I wouldn't want that..." Oni Mask grunted out angrily after noticing the boy's distress. At that point, he must've already analyzed the boy's feelings: Tanshu had no reservations about anything, he shared everything with his sensei and so it had to have been something that Oni Mask had forbidden him to talk about. The boy wanted to talk about "family", about "feelings" of some sort and while Oni Mask hated those things - if he didn't help the boy out he would not be the best little demon he could be that day and the training would have been useless. If you're not risking your own body and life when training then may as well not train at all...</p><p>"Well..." young Tanshu stuttered, "My katei is my best motivator, when I fight to protect it I am at my strongest. You once said that if you faced someone in this room of darkness you'd be able to kill anyone, when I fight to protect my katei I feel the same way and... I know that you told me to abandon those feelings but... That would mean spitting at what makes me the strongest."</p><p>The shining Oni Mask twisted around ninety degrees, after several creepy moments it returned back to its original state. "No... That is good. If you just did what I told you you'd never surpass me, you'd just be a slightly inferior version of me. That's no good at all. To ever surpass the devil a demon needs his own source of power, he needs to fly with his own set of wings and not use those given to him by his overlord." Sensei's voice sounded strangely dull and uninterested, usually, he kicked Tanshu's butt whenever the boy brought family and friends up. "Go on..." he added.</p><p>"Well, I spoke with Hana and Vashia... I thought that maybe we could be comrades, maybe we could develop some sort of stronger bonds with each other so that my feelings for my katei are stronger and I can fight to protect it even harder but..." Tanshu's head sunk down, his tone of voice shifted to incredibly sad. "Bubblegum-head keeps cursing me and punching and kicking me when I try to talk to her, Vashia won't even talk to me at all. Why is that? Why am I the one no one talks to? Why am I the untouchable one!?" Tanshu yelled the last sentences out in pure rage. Oni Mask moved up, the lights coming off of the mask's eyes just made a path of light rays where the little points went as the mask flipped over and went up to the ceiling.</p><p>Suddenly, the mask appeared right in front of Tanshu's face and the boy felt a sharp pain in his gut - it felt almost like sensei's leg dug deep enough to bypass his innards and reach the boy's spine. The boy fell down on the floor and writhed around for a while. Sensei spoke up again.</p><p>"Forget talking to Hana. She is a homeless person who has nothing for her in this world - she is an arrogant person, the worst kind, in fact. Under normal circumstances, she always deems herself correct and the strongest, most beautiful, and most talented out of all the people in the room. I'm sure that deep in her heart she even thinks herself superior to God-Eyes..." sensei's attacks kept coming but Tanshu leaped back up, following the sound of his rustling fabric he avoided his sensei's lethal blows while still getting hit a couple of times - in that room such injuries were unavoidable.</p><p>"The only way to get to her is to beat her - prove that she is not better than you but... If you did that the little brat would kill herself - it is imperative for her to be the best in this world, else why bother breathing? That is why she is the absolute worst person with no hope to improve - she never assumes "what if I'm wrong", she'd rather die than be wrong and that's why she'll never grow. She'll always remain the "bubblegum girl"... Give up on her."</p><p>Tanshu and Oni Mask exchanged blows again. The boy landed several blows on his sensei by imagining his sensei's body based on the picture provided by his other senses - his hearing, his smell, and touch, by seeing his sensei's mask and its position he could better draw an outline of where his sensei was and what the position of his body was.</p><p>"As far as Vashia goes... Well... She's different. She grew up in a family of samurai, the only speech she understands is that of swordsmanship, you cannot bond with her with your tongue, you need to clash swords with her in order to reach out to her." Tanshu leaped backward and wiped the blood off of his lips. That night he thought a lot about what his sensei had told him, it wasn't common that sensei even spoke to him about such things so every word he was told was precious.</p><p>Next morning Tanshu showed a sword to Oni Mask sensei, not the one he used to have but another one he claimed from God-Eyes' bandit he had beaten down earlier that day. "Teach me swordsmanship, Demon-sensei, so that I could reach out to Vashia and understand her heart. So that I would think of her as my friend and think more of my katei... So that I would fight more ruthlessly to defend it and become a true demon!" he grunted out. A sound of a sword being drawn from the sheath lit up the total darkness.</p><p>"Defend yourself" was all that Tanshu heard before getting cut. It did not matter - he was learning swordsmanship, one day he would become better than Vashia and clash with her to understand her heart. After that day maybe he'll have a family again, maybe his katei will grow, as will his strength!</p><hr/><p>Tanshu's mind returned back to his body, right on time to deliver a powerful kick to the monk's chest and end their overdrawn clash of fists and kicks. Tanshu's thoughts were now crystal clear and even if he was still waiting for the day when he'd clash with Vashia, now was not the time to think about that day. Remembering that he still had that on the schedule helped him clear his thoughts though, a flurry of punches and kicks sent the monk down again only for him to crawl a bit higher up and stand back up after taking a brief moment to recover.</p><p>Tanshu bit his finger and slammed his hand to the staircase "Summoning Jutsu: Fighting Dog Pack!" he chanted as three average sized dogs appeared in a cloud of smoke. Tanshu never wasted chakra on summoning dogs unless he planned using THAT later on that day so his companions knew perfectly what to do. Tanshu slammed his hands together as if he was praying, the dogs leaned forward shouted out in unison - "Fire Style: Dog Pack Bark!" letting out three conjoined heat waves at the monk.</p><p>Monk slammed his fist to the floor. His body lit up with blue light emanating from behind him "Ninja Monk Style: Ishirrinbu Defense!" powerful tentacle shaped constructs of chakra surrounded the monk in a cocoon-like construction as the triple Fire Style hit him blowing the part of the staircase up.</p><p>After a moment the monk's body flew out of the smoke cloud heading head first to the ground floor - his impressive ninja monk technique blocked most of the damage but he still took some as his body was now burned up even more and the force that destroyed the staircase beneath his feet sent him crashing down. The dogs leaped after the monk, the unconscious monk got back into consciousness at the last moment.</p><p>"Ninja Monk Style: Ishirrinbu Offense!" he chanted as his body lit up again and the same gigantic tentacle constructs pushed his body upward from the ground he would've snapped his neck crashing into. "Water Temple Taijutsu Combo: Rising Tide!" the monk shouted out as his fists dug into the bodies of the dogs and sent the canines flying up in the air where the monk's onslaught of punching the ninja animals continued. After the monk's beatdown reached its highest point the monk his elbows into two of the dogs sending them crashing down instead. The two dogs that slammed into the ground disappeared in a poof of smoke leaving only one dog that landed on Tanshu's side. The man stopped standing in his peculiar stance, his partner turned back and barked out "Already finished?"</p><p>Tanshu shook his head "No problem, I will need it later on anyway, I wouldn't use that on someone like this monk." Red Dog replied.</p><p>The dog barked out and disappeared in a poof of smoke and Tanshu's body lit up in a brief flash of red light. The monk landed on the continuation of the staircase that was not broken, "What did that dog give to you?" he asked before charging forward.</p><p>"That does not concern you..." Tanshu replied casually and leaped up to clash his own elbow with that of the oversized monk's.</p><p>The two exchanged some blows before both of them landed on their respective platforms of the staircase that were still hanging and not blown down. The monk slapped his arms together "Ninja Monk Style: Ishirrinbu Onslaught!" he shouted out as his body bulked up, his blood vessels shot out and some must've ruptured - this technique strained his body immensely and Tanshu decided not to risk getting hit by it. An endless swarm of tentacle constructs of chakra rushed at where Tanshu was slamming into the staircase blowing it down, the monk did not end his rampage as more and more tentacles shot out from behind him and blew more and more platforms of the staircase until none of it was intact, only the couple more platforms that lead to the top floor with no way to get to them from below. And yet... Tanshu's body was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>"Fire Style: Two Headed Dog Red Bark!" Tanshu chanted shooting off a double version of his Red Dog Bark jutsu of Fire Release towards his monk opponent. The ninja monk leaped up dodging it by moving in between the two masses of fire and then sticking to the wall using his ninjutsu and chakra control. Tanshu did the same. The monk roared out and lunged forward slamming his arms together.</p><p>"Ninja Monk Style: Ishirrinbu Drill!" he shouted out thrusting his head together as a shape of a gigantic squid construct formed around him. Tanshu leaped forward to meet the force of his opponent - this fight had gone for long enough and the Red Dog wanted to end it. A silent sound of steel rubbing against Tanshu's sheathe reached the monk's ears and as crimson red flashed in the monk's eyes he knew it was all over! Tanshu's sword re-entered the sheath as the Sannin finished his technique.</p><p>"Red Dog Twin Slash!" he whispered to himself as an "X" shaped gash opened on the monk's chest and his lifeless body fell to the ground. Tanshu leaped off the wall and landed on what little remained of the staircase sliding down the stone remains and then the wall down to the ground floor.</p><p>Howoku had already finished dealing with his wounds, Haoru looked like he had done it long ago. The Fourth pouted a little, "You took extra time and you're almost without a scratch. If you had no trouble why did you take so long?" he complained after Tanshu stretched out.</p><p>"I remembered something I still have to do..." the Sannin replied. Haoru and Howoku stood up from the stone floor and the three picked up their pace heading towards the next hallway. It was entirely possible that this was not the last obstacle that the Mizukage had in their way. They were lucky to avoid significant injuries even if Howoku didn't look like he escaped the battle unscathed, his breathing was more intense. Tanshu considered stopping for some more rest he remembered that he had already given him enough time by taking extra time to dispose of that monk.</p><p>Many kilometers away from the temple an intense battle was taking place. One similar to two more battles further to the south. A white-haired woman was dashing around the battlefield and cutting cloaked men down, ninja with black shirts and white vests, wearing Kumogakure headbands were accompanying her by facing off against the cloaked men. Many of the ordinary ninja fell, even if the Kirigakure demons were completely out of their comfort zone in an open battlefield they still managed to draw blood from both the Raikage and her most trusted ninja. The woman's body was riddled with small scratches and cuts but it was to be expected when fighting an army of elite assassins. It appeared like the battle was just about reaching its peak though.</p><p>To the south, a giant set of armor similar to that worn by samurai generals was swinging his gigantic blade around swatting endless hordes of cloaked assassins like insects. It would've been unknown to any ordinary passerby just who this colossal figure of cold steel was and where exactly the Kazekage was hidden seeing how his own men were fighting alongside this giant walking set of armor. The desert warriors of Sunagakure were not entirely in their native field as they were fighting in a rocky wasteland but these assassins they were fighting against weren't even native to any battlefield.</p><p>Their hands were swift to cut, precise to aim for the vital blood vessels but, still, they lacked sheer force and battlefield experience. Also, the Sunagakure legion had that giant set of armor laying rampage across the unarmored forces of the Kirigakure demons. In addition, it had to be noted that Sunagakure forces were excited - they wanted to prove to both Kirigakure and other "Great" ninja villages that the Sand was now back and recovered after the extensive damage done to it after the Second War. Sunagakure wanted to yell out their claim to be declared the next "Great Ninja Village" and no army of cloaked Kirigakure elites was going to stop them!</p><p>Further to the south giant earthquakes flipped the tables of the battlefield, the Kirigakure demons were all running for their lives as loud cracks and rumbles intimidated even the most devoted to their cause. Giant boulders were flying around, some white flashes of light lit up and in its wake followed destruction. It was like a God of War had entered the Iwagakure's ranks and assisted the Tsuchikage as that battlefield was an absolute curb stomp. Not even a single scratch was placed on Tsuchikage's bare chest, his white hair flowed like those of a silver-haired banshee devouring its victims as none squad of assassins he had set his eyes on survived even a single moment of his rampage. At some point, his entire army just stood back as none in their ranks could even properly support such an invulnerable powerhouse monster that was Kaguya Yaban.</p><p>The other Kage were just about to begin their final marathon towards the Kage Summit!</p>
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<a name="section0043"><h2>43. A Village On A Path To Greatness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A desert lizard crawled by a desolated rocky wasteland path. The little creature sensed loud and strong vibrations of the ground so it decided to get to a cover of some rocky structures on the other side while the large group that was incoming passed by. The creatures that appeared on the horizon and soon flooded the place were ones that the lizard only saw rarely in these parts, they were people. To a more intelligent observer, this large party of men may not have appeared to be dressed accordingly to the climate - the men wore long-sleeved black tops and wide and loose trousers, they also wore headgears that looked like turbans and some sort of flak jackets. Truly these people with peculiar headbands on their foreheads must've been sweating profusely. Little would the observer have known that these men were quite adapted to desert-like conditions as this party marching on was none other but the Sunagakure delegation moving to the Kage Summit.</p><p>It has been a while since Sunagakure took part in any political meeting. The village has been looked down on for a while and no one really bothered to invite their parties to the Kage Summits that had taken place between this one and after the Second Great Ninja War. Naturally, as one appointed as the Wind Shadow - the Kazekage had the right to appear in the Kage Summits even uninvited, still, since no one ever would have listened to the opinion of a leader of an unimportant in the grand political scheme village the Kazekage did not even bother with it. This time, however, was different - Hokage Howoku invited leaders of every village and since Howoku was a man who had protected all peace - the state of Sunagakure included, the Kazekage decided to respond in kind.</p><p>Had it not been for Howoku's excessive worries of countless peace treaties between all of the villages Sunagakure would've been erased from the map, his peaceful lockdown status quo had helped the village recover and regain power which made it much more of a player on the map. Kazekage headed to the Summit to make a statement - he was sick of Kirigakure and their arrogant and elitist behavior for a long time, it was time that those cocky bastards saw that Sunagakure was back in power and was powerful enough to judge the Mist as equals.</p><p>A man walked up to the hulking figure of Kazekage, most Sunagakure ninja were rather short, Kazekage was well over two meters tall so the natural shortage of his men stood out in comparison even more. "Kazekage-sama, there are people ahead, I sense a large concentration of humidity increase in the air up ahead." Kazekage stopped and looked up ahead.</p><p>"You are an Advanced Sensor, correct?" he asked his man, Kazekage already knew the answer but he wanted to be sure. </p><p>"Yes, Sir!" the man nodded, "I am a sensor with the additional advanced ability to sense humidity of the air and sense its alterations - that makes my sensory acuter and lengthens its range!" Kazekage scratched his chin and ordered his men to take a round, defensive formation placing his Wind Release users on the outside where they could've crafted powerful gusts to defend everyone on the inside.</p><p>Sunagakure had very few types of ninja: Wind Release users, Puppet users, Weaponry jutsu users, Sealing jutsu users, and Sand Release users. While such an unimpressive assortment of skillsets may have made Sunagakure military predictable, it also helped each leader craft battlefield strategies much more successfully and easily.</p><p>The party advanced forward, there was no way that the Kazekage would allow an opportunity to declare the rising back of their village be burnt down to nothingness just because he got afraid of an ambush. He'd crush those insolent fools who thought they could bully the Sunagakure around, these fools apparently forgot the times they lived in and had to be educated that this was no longer the post-Second Great War period. Iwagakure and Sunagakure were powerful villages to be placed among the Great Ninja Villages - Kirigakure, Kumogakure, and Konohagakure. The Great Three had to move aside and make a place for the returning villages or be swept aside by the winds of change. The Kazekage very much planned to make an example out of those men planning to assault him and his men.</p><p>"Akasuna Mugao, by the orders of the Mizukage Namikaze Shirona I sentence you to death." a voice spoke right behind the Kazekage.</p><p>"Shit... How did he get there!?" the large man wondered right before his throat was opened by the assassin. However it was not blood that shot out of his neck - it was sand as the Kazekage's bulking figure collapsed into a vortex of sand that surrounded the assassin.</p><p>A young man stepped up and thrust his fist forward. "Sand Coffin! Sand Funeral!" the young man chanted energetically as the assassin's body was crushed by the sand and collapsed lifelessly onto the ground in the shape of water.</p><p>"A water clone trying to assassinate a sand clone... Interesting!" a cloaked figure further back declared out loud as the real Kazekage removed his cloak and threw it aside. </p><p>"Well done, Guuma, I'll take it from here." The Kazekage observed his attackers - up on the twin rocky fields up ahead stood two squads of cloaked men with blue Oni Masks - the Kirigakure Demon Corps. Most elite assassins throughout the entire Ninja World and yet... The size of the squad suggested to the Kazekage that these men must've not been the most elite Demons, they were but trainees, even more - an assassin had no chance against a warrior on the battlefield. These men came to this wasteland to die!</p><p>"Men! What we have here is a free chance to kick some Great Ninja Village rears and be in the right, let us not waste this chance!" the Kazekage shouted out vibrantly as his voice let the men know just how excited their leader was to kill some Kirigakure Demons. Kazekage Mugao removed a large staff from behind his back as the Demons jumped down and attacked his men. The large hulking brute swung it around swatting several men aside - the Demons stood back up and continued attacking him and his men.</p><p>With a simple flick of his finger, the Kazekage transformed his staff into a scythe. Now, these Demons would not just ignore his blows, the Kazekage clashed with one of the Demons, the brute just thrust and pulled the scythe to him disarming the assassin and swung his scythe around. The man that Mugao was attacking leaped back into the fray of his folk with a powerful backflip but several more Demons found the battlefield to be too stuffed with men to dodge the wide-reaching weapon and fell to the rocky ground to never stand up again.</p><p>A painful sensation alerted the Kazekage of an attacker from behind. Several swipes of a knife opened some painful wounds - the assassin then tried to stab the kunai right into the man's neck but the knife got stuck into something metal. Kazekage turned around only for his body to be met by kicks and a backflip hiding the Demon once again in the fray of battle. The man grunted as he felt warm streams of blood run down his back and softly tapping onto the rocky wasteland - these Demons meant business, they were silent, quick, and agile. Trained in arts of wielding a kunai and how to remain silent and unnoticed until the knife was already plunged. If Mugao held back or underestimated these men he'd really die in here.</p><p>"Kazekage-sama!" someone alerted the man of another assassin, Kazekage ducked and saw a knife flash above him aiming for the man's neck. The giant turned around and swiped his scythe upwards cutting one assassin down, another one jumped in out of nowhere and cut Mugao in the leg, slowing the man down. These men were so numerous and so fast that they easily compensated for their lack of high hitting destructive power potential. They fought like bees against a hornet - all swarmed up on one, everyone died but left their impact. Kazekage slammed his scythe down and grabbed one man who had injured him by his face, "If you're trying to kill a man, at least have the decency to look him in the eyes, Demon!" he roared as Mugao slammed the man's puny head against his own shattering the demon mask and spilling excessive amounts of assassin blood on his face.</p><p>The man then lifted the unconscious but very much alive Demon and showed him to his men. "See, men?! These are not Demons, these are boys who have peed in their beds until yesterday! Let's send them back home to their mothers and their cups of milk!" The Kazekage picked his scythe back up and swung it around, clashing with the demon's knives, defending against the endless onslaughts of the enemy, and drastically reducing their rank with each swipe.</p><p>"This is stupid..." the brute wondered to himself "I only took five hundred men, just enough to demonstrate Sunagakure's rising military potential but... This is a full military squad, Kirigakure intends to destroy us! This is one-fourth of an actual army... Wait a second... No... They wouldn't do something like that..." Kazekage wondered to himself as he sent more and more assassins down on the rocky dirt. Two assassins swiped at the Kazekage's eyes trying to blind the man, Mugao dashed by them avoiding the attack, and gently tapped their backs. "Human Puppet Jutsu!" he shouted controlling the assassins like his own puppets and sending them after their own.</p><p>The Kazekage's puppets cut down several more assassins, someone tried to cut the strings much to the Mugao's enjoyment. One could not cut a puppeteer's strings without a chakra conductive weapon of certain controlled flow. These boys clearly had never faced a puppeteer, it took several dozens of men to finally stop their own human puppets, and even then - they only struck down their own comrades! Kazekage tossed his scythe forward and his fingers twitched revealing a slight chakra glow on strings attached to the scythe.</p><p>"Puppetry Style: Phantom Weapon Jutsu!" he yelled out controlling his scythe as if an invisible ghost was wielding it. As if the scythe had a mind of its own cutting down countless assassins and troubling countless more. Still, this battle was not going well - Mugao kept hearing desperate cries of pain from his own men behind him, occasionally his own body lit up with pain as more of his blood-colored the rocks of this cursed wasteland. If he did not end this quick it'd be ended for them! Furiously the giant roared with a battle cry slashing wildly, taking on many assassins, and angrily trying to compensate for the extreme difference in numbers.</p><p>He clashed with tens of assassins at the same time by himself, trying desperately to keep these men focused on cutting him down, getting hit many times in the process but saving many times more lives. Mugao's men saw the devotion of their leader and it inspired them to fight that much harder, faced with an overwhelming military power they fought back like beasts, no, like true Demons educating these fakes of the true meaning of the word. Even when they fell, each Sunagakure ninja took ten if not more assassins with them. These kids cut to maim - Suna ninja cut to kill.</p><p>"End this now!" someone commanded the army as the assassins dashed back forming a large circle and started madly weaving seals. The Sunagakure ninja tried to intercept but as they dropped their guards heading for the distraction they were cut down. The ranks of Mugao's men were now incredibly rare. "DARN IT, THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!" Mugao roared leaping towards one part of the circle aiming to cut them all down but being confronted by the assassins protecting the circle ninja. </p><p>"Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!" each and every assassin in the circle chanted spitting out masses of water that took the shape of dragons and lunged towards Mugao - such an overwhelming combination of Water Dragons would've crushed the man's body and stripped his flesh from the bone from the sheer pressure.</p><p>The loud roaring water dragons all slammed where Mugao stood to form a powerful flood. Violent crashing waves flushed Sungakure ninja away momentarily but the violent water didn't let the Kirigakure Demons proceed to go for the kill, they'd have to pick out the remaining ninja after the water calmed down. Finally, the water settled down and ran into fissures and small holes everywhere in the wasteland, washing the bodies of the fallen away. As the battlefield was cleaned up the Demons tried to confirm the death of Akasuna Mugao - the Fourth Kazekage but... There was no body!</p><p>Where Mugao stood and was supposed to be crushed by the water stood only a giant set of armor - one reminding the samurai of the past, no, reminding a general of those samurai. There was one man in the Iron Country who was like the Kage of the samurai called Iron Shogun. This fancy and edgy colossus of steel reminded most of the armor that the Iron Shogun wore. From inside the puppet, a cybernetic voice came, similar to the voice enhancers that the Demons themselves used - maybe even taken from a dead Demon Corps member infiltrating Sunagakure when the armor was built.</p><p>"Puppetry Style: Iron Shogun!" the cyber voice of Mugao declared reaching for his back and pulling a giant sword and swinging it around swiping the worn-out bodies of the assassins aside. The Kirigakure Demon circle of Water Dragons was no more with a single swipe of Iron Shogun's blade! This was the true power of Akasuna Mugao, the inheritor of the ancient art of puppetry and master of the little known internal puppetry. The art where instead of exposing themselves the puppetmaster was hiding inside the puppet they were controlling and so to get to the puppeteer one must have penetrated the alloy of the puppet.</p><p>Seeing how the Iron Shogun was barely bent by the onslaught of the Water Dragon techniques such penetration was highly unlikely. The assassins all charged at the Iron Shogun at the same time, thrusting their knives and trying to find gaps in the armor but even as they found them their blades could not reach the soft skin of the man inside. With a powerful shake, the puppet armor shook all of the assassins aside and with a swipe of his blade finished them off while they were down.</p><p>With an excessive attack, the likes of which no one had ever seen before the Shogun dashed forward as his feet shot out flames moving the whole giant structure forward. With powerful and fast swings of his sword, the shogun finished off the last of the Kirigakure military force sent to dispose of the Kazekage. After the last assassin hit the ground the Iron Shogun's chest opened up and Mugao leaped out of the armor with it transforming into an exoskeleton like construction which the giant put on like a backpack. The man's tired and sad face turned to his men - observing only less than twenty survivors and a clean battlefield. It is unknown where the tide had washed away both the Demons that were treated like throwaway tools and those unfortunate enough to get killed as a result of an order made by a sick tyrant.</p><p>"Aaaaaaaargh!" Mugao shouted out angrily as he punched the rocky ground opening up wounds in his knuckles. Just like that, his country was reminded of the times when they were ravaged down to near-extinction by war.</p><p>"I'm sorry, men..." Mugao spoke up to the survivors, "I wanted so hard to enter that league of champions again, to have our village be placed among the Greats but... I think I may have forgotten what that meant. Before we had the benefit of their pity, we were not attacked from behind, we were always protected by those stronger than us but the moment we walked out of Konohagakure's shadow we must fend off by ourselves. You must understand that this will be the norm now, we'll have to fight every enemy dumb enough to wish to bring us down by ourselves with no one to help us."</p><p>"Kazekage-sama..." some surviving men tried to calm the grieving man down but the giant just looked at them.</p><p>"You know what? Fuck their pity, they can pity the men we send to the Afterlife and pity their own filthy selves for ever daring to pull sick shit like this. Now let's go to the Summit and kick Mizukage's ass!" the brute yelled out inspiring courage into the hearts of his devoted surviving men.</p><p>"Well... I wouldn't be in such a rush, Kazekage." a low pitched husky voice spoke up from the same rock where armies of assassins were located previously, the Kazekage and his men looked up in horror and saw a man in a black jumpsuit and a blue sleeveless ninja outfit like those worn by Kirigakure ninja. And yet the scariest accessory of them all was his white with blue strips Oni Mask.</p><p>The man jumped down and stared at the Kazekage, only when the hulking brute returned the Demon's stare did he notice the steel leg appendage that the man wore - this must've been a much older and much more experienced Demon. While the Kazekage wondered just how much functionality did the man have with that metallic leg something suggested that he shouldn't have underestimated the man - he must've seen the Iron Shogun and still revealed himself after all. Either this Oni Mask man believed that he could take the Iron Shogun out or he was just devoted to his Mizukage until the end.</p><p>"Back up, I have lost enough men today as it is and I am not losing anyone else, if I fall that means I was unworthy of the title of Kazekage - retreat and elect a new one! Remember the meaning of our actions, bring our village forward to the ranks of the Greats!" Kazekage ordered and his men obediently backed up. "Kazekage-sama..." they almost teared up by the devotion to the village that this large man had. </p><p>"You do not need to bother, Mizukage Shirona will take over as the Ninja Empress, there will be no more meaning to the useless title of Kage." The man wearing the Oni Mask put a lot of faith in his master. </p><p>Kazekage broke out a grin - "So old man Daikon finally lost his grip, huh? New butt on the chair, same bullshit..." he cursed at the Oni Mask as the men prepared for an inevitable fight that would break out.</p>
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<a name="section0044"><h2>44. Kazekage VS Oni-Mask</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The two men continued to stare each other down. Each of them was competent in close range fighting techniques so it was important for them to properly assess the situation, observe the opponent's stance, and find any openings they could exploit. A weak breeze sent tumbleweed rolling around but the wandering plant did not distract the two shinobi who continued to stare each other down. Kazekage's eyes were full of determination to destroy this high ranking member of the Kirigakure Demon Corps, a man who was in a high position of the order that killed so many of his trusted men that day. It was impossible to clearly say what exactly Oni Mask's eyes looked like, his demonic mask removed any signs of the man being human, and with each battle and lost limb he reminded less and less of a man and became much more of a demonic ideal he strived to be.</p><p>"I wonder..." one of the ninja who survived the scuffle with the assassins mumbled but only his closest friends heard him. They curiously looked at their troubled comrade with questioning glares.</p><p>"This man, he clearly is a high ranking Demon... What if he is THE Demon? Kirigakure's Legendary Demon who survived a battle with Star of Hope Howoku and killed Raijin's Prophet Sorano twenty years ago?" The shinobi finished his chain of thought as his comrades looked at the assailant with newly found fear in their eyes.</p><p>"You mean the man who then got promoted to Kirigakure Sannin by the Water Lord after a suggestion from Third Mizukage, tyrant Daikon himself?" someone in the group of survivors shouted out in surprise. The fact that all Demons concealed most of their bodies: their faces and every trace of their skin made identifying the specific Demon near impossible. This man could've been whichever one of the Demons, he could've been THE Demon and no one would have known. In some ways the Kirigakure Demons were the perfect ninja as no one knew their identities, no one could even pin a specific person to a battle or event because of how secretive and utterly badass these men were.</p><p>"Yeah... Rumor says that the particular Demon can only be identified by one feature - he is missing a leg. This man seems to wear some sort of metallic leg which makes one wonder: is he the real deal or if he is just messing with everyone taking other Demons' names..." the Sunagakure ninja concluded as the group continued to stare the nameless Demon down. This man definitely did his homework if he was impersonating the real Oni Mask as his body build and height was identical, he was missing the same leg that Raijin's Prophet Sorano annihilated. It would've taken some effort to properly identify and confirm the man's identity but it didn't appear like the Kazekage even cared about that.</p><p>Suddenly, the Demon just dashed forward, leaning his head up front and shooting at the speed of an arrow cutting through the air. His arm lit up with lightning sparks as the man thrust it forward cutting through the air, the Kazekage leaned to the side avoiding the thrust. Oni Mask leaped into the air swinging his metallic leg in an impressive jump kick but Mugao once again outmatched his opponent by leaning below the kick and avoiding it. Utilizing the momentum of his jump kick Oni Mask spun around and thrust his other leg down in a vertical kick. Mugao's iron staff blocked the strike, the man flicked a switch on the weapon, and blades shot out of the scythe. A silver flash lit the air up and the Demon leaped backward covering a wide gash on his chest, Mugao decided to keep going he tossed the scythe forward twitching his fingers to activate his puppetry technique.</p><p>"Puppetry Style: Phantom Weapon Jutsu!" he chanted sending the scythe cutting as a disc saw. The Demon's speed was impressive as he quickly avoided certain death ranging the puppet strings out but he still got cut in his mask, he had to thrust his metallic leg forward and damage it as well so that his fleshy bits didn't get amputated in an instant.</p><p>"Look at his chest! It's burnt up, he has to be THE Demon from twenty years ago! So this bastard survived!" the Sunagakure ninja shouted out having witnessed the man's uniform tear up and reveal his burnt skin underneath.</p><p>"So this is the man who worked with two infamous Sunagakure nukenin: Hana and Vashia..." his comrade exclaimed angrily to himself before raising his voice, "Kazekage-sama, let's retreat! Fighting such a man after a lengthy battle may be dangerous, we have no reason to fight a man who has already killed one Sannin and survived the fury of another!"</p><p>"Don't make me laugh!" Mugao shouted back at his subordinate. "What we have here is a chance for me to prove to these people that Sunagakure is powerful once again, what is a Kage worth if he cannot best a Sannin?" the puppeteer lashed out.</p><p>Loud laughter echoed through the wasteland, one that reached even the dead or still dying bodies washed away from Kirigakure's previous assault. Not that they even understood the significance of this laughter.</p><p>"It is you who makes me laugh, Kazekage, how dare you even wear that name when Sunagakure had not had a Sannin level ninja recognized by all countries in over twenty years? Yours is an empty title, only a Sannin is worthy of ascending to Kage and you're just mocking your title, you just sit in the big chair because you are the strongest in a country of barely breathing weaklings. You're the strongest of "get-byers", master of the average league." Oni Mask spoke up at last "Shirona-sama is right to eliminate shameful jokers like you."</p><p>After finishing his speech Oni Mask once again tensed his muscles up and leaned back making his body shoot forward at incredible speed, his muscles lit up with passing through lightning sparks and the man thrust his arm forward impaling Mugao through the chest.</p><p>"Even in her late, passing years, way past her prime, Lady Sorano gave me more of a challenge than you, pathetic!" the Demon declared after his eyes opening up wider under the mask in shock. A part of Kazekage's face fell off and slammed onto the rocky floor making a wooden sound, as the impaled man's head lifted up making his black long locks move out of the way of his face the Oni Mask was revealed cartoonish round eyes and a wide clown-like smile on the face of the man he just "killed". A loud wind cutting swipe whistled in the air, blood covered the rocks as the Demon stumbled forward and fell on his knees with another gash on his back.</p><p>"It's a shame that my scythe seems to have gotten dull after cutting down so many of you Demons..." Kazekage Mugao taunted his injured opponent from behind. The man replaced his body with one of his puppets and did it so incredibly skillfully and fast that even the extremely powerful and experienced opponent like Oni Mask was fooled by it. "Had it not dulled so much it'd have cut you right in two..." the man finished his thought, however, he did not count on his opponent to retaliate so fast.</p><p>With a loud deafening roar of anger the Demon jumped up and turned around, it was like pain and bleeding did not even matter to this man. "I seem to have underestimated you, Mugao!" Oni Mask shouted out as his kick from his metallic leg connected to Kazekage's chest making the man spit up blood from somewhere in his chest. A powerful punch dug deep into the Kazekage's face sending the man stumbling back, as large as Mugao was even he felt the damage that Demon's inhuman strength did, or perhaps it was a callback from his endless previous battle with the young Demons? No, it was the combination of the two, this strongest of Demons was smart, he purposefully planned all of this, he must've known Mugao's personality and that proving the worth of his village was more important to him than anything.</p><p>"Then again... You know what they say, the sharpness of one's weapon only depends on the spirit of the user!" the Demon taunted his opponent as lightning emanated through his body and the man thrust his elbow forward right into Mugao's chest. "Demon Kenpo!" Oni Mask chanted as his gigantic opponent gurgled up blood and fell to the ground with a giant gaping wound on his chest.</p><p>"You bastard!" two Sunagakure ninja shouted out as they charged at the Demon angered by the fact that their opponent held his own against the Kazekage himself. With a simple and effortless move Demon opened up the weapon user's defense and, with a pinch at the man's throat, the brave Sunagakure shinobi fell down on the floor lifeless. The Demon then leaned to the sides avoiding the onslaught of Sand Release techniques as if they were nothing, as hard as the young Jounin tried to tag the Demon he had no luck.</p><p>"Ahh, the famous Sand Release, a combination of Wind and Earth Releases only found in Sunagakure... What a pathetic piece of junk." Oni Mask taunted his younger and inexperienced opponent by thrusting his elbow covered with lightning chakra right through the tightest sand defense that the young Jounin could put up.</p><p>"Taste the strike that killed your master! Demon Kenpo!" Oni Mask spoke driving his elbow into the young man's chest and almost cutting him in two as well. The arrogant Demon's head cocked back and twisted to the side creepily, the effect and creepiness of the man's twitching motion was only made stronger by the lifeless and scary mask that he wore. The infamous Oni Mask Demon was tough enough to instill fear even in the middle of the day outside his room of darkness.</p><p>"Well... Aren't you a medical ninja?" the man addressed a young woman with a ribbon on her right arm. "Go ahead, help your friends. Or do your best trying to avenge them... It'll be fun seeing which one is more important to..."</p><p>The man's speech was cut short by a headbutt that sent him flying back, with a powerful roar and a burst of chakra that made the smaller pebbles around the Kazekage spin around in a mad twister Akasuna Mugao was back on his feet ready to rampage again.</p><p>"I already did help Kazekage-sama!" the lady medical ninja shouted out in desperation hoping her hardest that the flying Demon heard her. Oni Mask's sight quickly focused on the shining trail of sand that the young Sand Release user had set up previously and its slight greenish glow. "So the woman transferred her chakra through the sand that the young Sand Release user missed... No, he was targeting the Kazekage the entire time... I was played." Oni Mask realized as his body hit the ground, breaking something out loud.</p><p>Demon's body twitched and the man shouted out in pain, but he was still moving, it was only a matter of time before he stood again and killed every single one of these Sunagakure ninja! "Hmph!" the Kazekage grunted arrogantly as he tossed his giant scythe forward. "Puppetry Style: Fisher Combo!" he shouted as the scythe dug deep into Demon's metallic leg, with a powerful pull the Kazekage dragged the Demon up close to him again and then dashed forward pushing his shoulder forward and clotheslining the man right back down.</p><p>"Kazekage-sama is winning!" the Sungakure ninja cheered on their leader but Mugao's face remained calm and observed his seemingly lifeless opponent who didn't even more for some time.</p><p>"I don't get it, why isn't Kazekage-sama finishing that bastard off? Just stomp his head and crush him into the rocks! He and his men killed so many of ours, he deserves no mercy!" the medical ninja shouted before she herself heard her own words, gently shutting her own mouth and covering it with her palm.</p><p>"It isn't that easy..." a fellow Sunagakure ninja spoke occupying the young lady's attention. "You see the Fourth knows that his opponent is still alive and conscious, in fact, it's entirely possible that the Demon is ready to counter-attack the moment that Kazekage opens his guard for a finishing blow. Since Mugao-sama is well educated in close range fighting he can see that if he opens up he's as good as dead so he is waiting for his opponent to make a mistake again instead. In this situation being patient is the way to survive." the man explained to his comrade. Mugao's eyes did not move from the seemingly lifeless body of the Demon, desperately waiting for the man's counter attack so that he can drop him again, hopefully, this time for good!</p><p>Suddenly, a blinding light flashed making the Kazekage cover his eyes, the unexpected flashbang even forced the Sunagakure ninja cover their eyes as well. "Flashing Demon Kenpo!" a loud triumphant shout reached the ears of all who were cowering in fear of the Demon. A terrifying flesh cutting sound alerted everyone that once they opened their eyes a very cruel slap from reality will bring them back from an idealistic dream to the cruel world that they lived in. Kazekage opened his eyes first, he looked at his own bare bulky chest and was surprised that he was OK, the man then turned to his right witnessing the cruel twist - the Demon chose to kill the young medic instead of him.</p><p>"W-Why?!" Mugao shouted out, his voice twisted by the pain of endless loss and grief. These people here were his most trusted men and women and most of them won't be coming back home. That was the reality of war, no, the reality of peace. How could the reality be so cruel when the countries were no longer in war? What was the point of all this meaningless murder in that case? Was this their own fault for dealing peacefully with cruel madmen who only wanted the world to turn back into the primal warring state it was in since its conception? Oni Mask pulled his arm out of the medic's chest as the woman collapsed lifeless. It was clear that she died before realizing what had happened.</p><p>"What do you mean? If I chose to kill you she'd have brought you back again, when you punch a barrier and it doesn't break, it's just plain stupid to punch it again, you just kill the person holding the barrier. That is the path of a Demon, the path of an assassin. Shinobi are assassins so if you cannot handle these truths you have no place in this world. The fact that you weep over the loss of one ninja just proves to me that Shirona-sama was right, the current generation of Kage have all forgotten the ninja way." Oni Mask spoke as the Sunagakure ninja around him cowered and fell back on their backs, crawling back like worms running for their life. Hiding and squirming so that this man, no, this Demon didn't choose their own life to claim next.</p><p>"See? They're all running away. This is the reality that you and Fourth Hokage cannot grasp, no matter how they all talk, no matter what ideals you put in their heads, inside their feeble hearts people will remain people. They will praise and cheer you when you are succeeding but the moment you get stabbed they'll just drive another knife into your back and twist it to stay alive. That is the cruel reality. Peace cannot exist in a world of violence, the very idea of peace is sick in itself. You believe me to be insane? No. It is you who is insane, Kazekage Mugao, you and the other Kage are the real madmen. We are ninja, our function is to kill the people the Lords point at, we have no morals and no place in our hearts for humanity. No. There can be no place for humanity in the hearts of killers and deceivers. Humanity needs to be abandoned to leave only a Demon inside. That is how true ninja are made, that is how Demons of the Demon Corps are made."</p><p>A man crawled out from the safety of rock and stood up, his hands were down and his face was covered with tears. "Kazekage-sama!" he cheered out.</p><p>A woman walked out from under a rock that was on another rock covering her position and providing shade, she was holding another injured man who thrust his fist into the sky. "Kazekage-sama!" they both cheered at the same time.</p><p>A man who remained crying over the young medic's body lifted his bloody forehead, covered with the blood of the young woman who was struck down, the man wiped the blood off his eyes and glared angrily at the Demon, then turned at Kazekage Mugao. "Kazekage-sama!" he spoke quietly with only his shaking pale lips to help put his words together from the unintelligible banter of a man taken over by sadness and grief.</p><p>"Hm..." the Demon almost broke into a brief laugh as he looked at the injured and saddened ninja who all walked out of their covers and stood back on their feet, no matter in how much pain they were, no matter how injured they were. "KAZEKAGE-SAMA!" they all shouted into the air deafening all other sounds in the wasteland, even the vultures waiting on top of a big rocky mountain until the scuffle ends and their endless feast begins leaped off and flew away. The prophets of death and the cruel reality of a battlefield were scared away by the determination and will of the brave Sunagakure ninja.</p><p>"You seem to believe me to be wrong?" the Demon concluded looking at Kazekage's furious and cold eyes. "The truth is that people like these fools exist but they are not an exception to the cruel reality of life. That is because..." another flash blinded the people as the Demon repeated his murderous offense aiming at another brave ninja. "They all die in the end so they cannot be counted as a true reflection of people!" the Demon concluded thrusting his arm towards another ninja.</p><p>A powerful clang echoed through the wasteland and a shockwave shook the ground below the ground of all the temporarily blinded ninja. After the flash bomb's effect cleared the Oni Mask stood clashing against the Kazekage's scythe, the man's eyes were closed - he moved following his other senses and intercepted Oni Mask's lethal thrust in time with his scythe.</p><p>"There are no fools among the people I care about!" Kazekage replied with a cold and angry voice.</p>
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<a name="section0045"><h2>45. The Iron Shogun Hits The Field</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The two men continued to push their weapons at each other, it was surprising to see Oni Mask's body holding completely still against a physically superior opponent. Kazekage was a towering and bulky man. He completely blew away the image of all puppet users being puny and having to use puppets to protect themselves. Even so, Oni Mask managed to hold his own and not get completely blown away in a struggle of physical strength, this spoke volumes of the physical prowess of Tanshu's sensei. Finally, Mugao decided to end this struggle. Quickly he canceled all of his efforts to push the clash of the weapons back at his opponent making Oni Mask slightly stumble forward losing his balance.</p><p>The brute then leaped into the air flipping over as if the air itself was a surface for him to roll around, his scythe extended forward held by the man's puppet strings and spinning forward in a mad vertical spin. Oni Mask had little time or ability to evade the technique. The man turned around and raised his metallic leg to his chest to block the scythe. Blood shot out of Oni Mask's body covering the cut-up, rocky floor which now had a giant fissure right in its center where Mugao's spinning technique cut the rock in two.</p><p>"Puppetry Style: Desert Wind" Kazekage exclaimed calmly pulling his scythe back to his hand. The great weapon had penetrated right through the artificial leg and dug deep into Oni Mask's chest, it didn't seem to have hit any vitals but the man was still kept on his knees and didn't look in much of fighting condition.</p><p>"He's won!" someone in the ranks of the Sunagakure ninja cheered out and someone else raised their hand to calm them down.</p><p>"It ain't that simple, we've seen this Demon act like dying and counterattack like crazy before. The vitality of those Demons is incredible. Unless he quite literally stops breathing it is useless to call it a fight..." the ninja said angrily. He was right, the Demon was halfway down but he was still huffing and if anything his life-threatening injury just seemed to piss him off more.</p><p>"Give up." Mugao asked his opponent, "This is pointless, even if you do kill me you'll never beat my men in this condition, whatever the outcome of our battle is - it's over for you with that injury." Kazekage grunted out, anger did cloud his judgment, he wanted to just skip the reasoning part and keep pounding the face of this man until that fancy mask he wore was in pieces but... Reason was what made him different from the people he fought, he wasn't a blind murderer who killed everyone in sight. He was not above killing and was capable of murder but that didn't mean that such punishment needed to be abused without reason.</p><p>The Demon stood back up, he no longer laughed or threatened, he just stood back up and took a fighting stance - now it was serious for him. "Don't joke with me, killing you was always my intention and my orders, even if I kill you and your men kill me afterward my orders will be fulfilled and that is all that matters." Oni Mask replied. He was quite obviously lying, dying while following orders was never his intention and while he knew that even if he beat the Kazekage he'd never beat the rest of his men afterward he was confident that he'd manage to escape them. What was another diversion or a smoke bomb if it meant his own escape. They would just all clutch and protect each other and gather around watching the backs of each other, too busy to be worried over their own throats to chase him.</p><p>Oni Mask leaped forward, so did Mugao. The Demon put both of his palms together and shaped his hands as if they were a jaw, running lightning chakra through it. Mugao slashed from the side when the Kirigakure Sannin thrust his hands forward.</p><p>"Demon Kenpo: Nasty Bite!" he named his technique as it clashed with Mugao's long end of the scythe. This did not end this exchange of attacks however as Oni kept pressing harder and pushing his hands forward further. Loud cracks came from the center of Mugao's scythe as the thrust cut it in two leaving the shattered chunks of steel all over the rocky wasteland. His arms also hit Mugao's chest but the Lightning Release chakra had already gone out by that time and it barely even affected the Kazekage.</p><p>The hulking puppeteer swung both his scythe and its other broken end of it as a blunt weapon, with a leap clenching his bleeding chest wound Oni Mask flipped over his opponent avoiding this attack. Oni Mask then thrust his arms back to his sides, "Demon Kenpo Secret Technique..." he chanted striking his opponent in the back as his arms pierced through his opponent's body like butter. "Demon Claw!" the Demon finished naming and casting his technique as the lightning chakra around his body calmed down and settled.</p><p>The Kazekage's body collapsed into wooden pieces and parts, Demon quickly leaped backward hearing some sort of sizzling sound before the entire puppet replacement exploded with dozens of more explosive tags spilling into the air and exploding in a chain reaction. It was only due to his agility and natural speed that Oni Mask managed to get back. His wound spat up more blood.</p><p>"You don't have much time..." Mugao stated standing at the side and declaring his observation nonchalantly. The arms of the Demon once again lit up with Lightning Release chakra. "Demon Kenpo: Nasty Bite" he shouted out thrusting his palms into his own chest. Mugao jumped up and shouted in shock - within moments the bleeding wound cauterized itself even if the Demon's body twitched and shook violently - it was clear that such treatment of one's own injuries was painful. An elderly woman shook her head in disbelief, a young man close to her looked at his fellow comrade and asked her what was wrong. The elderly woman pointed at the Demon, her eyes were sad and depressed as if she was... Pitying the man.</p><p>"Can't you see it now? The origins of all those burns? His body is the way it is now because he kept cauterizing it himself this same way... With the extent of them, he must've been cut and stabbed in every part of his body at some point." The woman explained.</p><p>"That's right..." Oni Mask exclaimed grunting out in pain, his voice was twisted and in a much higher tone. The pain clearly was too much for him to completely ignore and block out as he was cauterizing an already burnt area of his body. "I was the very first Demon that Kirigakure created. The original program that was supposed to create a Demon was so intense that I needed a technique like this or I would have died instantly, even until today I am the only survivor of that program and it was heavily modified after that generation all died out. Whatever injuries you inflict on me, I took ten times that during my first day of training... There is nothing you can do to a Demon's body that scares him. After becoming a Demon one is completely immune to torture or fear of injury and death because they've been through it countless times already and left unimpressed."</p><p>Mugao's eyes squinted as he looked at the Demon with eyes of sadness and pity as well. "After we take your master out... We'll fix that hellhole of a village, I promise you that much, Demon. No other child will have to go through what you went through." The man spoke in a tone that infuriated the Oni Mask. Without replying a word the man jumped forward thrusting his palms behind and getting ready to strike his opponent. This was a total offensive stance - it was near impossible to counter or defend in that manner of attack so his attack must've been something to leave the enemy no chance at striking back, Mugao prepared his response, he thrust his now significantly shorter scythe forward slashing downwards trying to cut the Demon down, timing the attack just right. In an impressive leap over the scythe and his tall opponent, Oni Mask landed behind Mugao.</p><p>Oni Mask's fingers twitched revealing string wrapped around them, the man violently jerked his hands forward stretching the strings out and revealing a loop on Mugao's neck that now cut tight into it and was strangling the man. Mugao tried to pull the steel-string more at his side so that Oni Mask moved in closer and the grip of the wire loosened up a bit, it would've been quite useful in keeping his head on his shoulders too as the steel wire pulled at the extent of strength that Oni Mask did was quite capable of taking an entire limb off - luckily enough Mugao had the strength to keep that from happening.</p><p>"What speed... What variety of attacks and ways to kill an opponent. Kirigakure may have created the most dangerous human weapon alive..." the Sunagakure ninja wanted to step in to help but Kazekage's arm shot up to stop them. They were an absolute non-factor in this battle. All the more experienced ninja stood down, a single youngster turned around and started scolding his superiors.</p><p>"What are you doing? We must help Kazekage-sama! For how long you think he can keep this up!?" he shouted out when another Sunagakure ninja appeared behind him and placed him in an arm lock.</p><p>"It is true that we are all strong ninja, however, at some point in one's experience it stops mattering just how many less skilled opponents come at you - it makes no difference. There is a level of experience when only a superior opponent can beat you and no number of even slightly weaker opponents can overcome. Even if we fought together with Kazekage we'd just get in his way - he'd have to incorporate us into his plans and strategies, inform us and coordinate his actions with ours - that'd keep him back. We've trusted Fourth to get this far, let's trust him to finish what he started as well." The shinobi said and released the youngster who looked at the battle taking place.</p><p>Blades shot out from under Kazekage's cloak, the blades wrapped around his chest making a skeletal structure - almost like a ribcage, then more and more shot out when one pair of blades cut the steel wire. Oni Mask instantly dashed back making some space. More and more constructions appeared from under Kazekage's cloak, it was like all of his puppets were now disassembled and being reassembled into a combined armor structure. One puppet became sort of like a puppet control panel and stuck onto the front, some more formed platforms that reminded of legs, some more formed into arms, others stretched out into a gigantic sword. With one last puppet forming a helmet the entire armor construction was complete - a puppet fusion Iron Shogun was once again rebuilt.</p><p>"You must've really gotten desperate to use this." Oni Mask spoke up.</p><p>"What makes you think I didn't just now stop underestimating you, maybe I could've used this the entire time?" Kazekage taunted his opponent from inside the colossal Iron Shogun that was at least six times the size of the Demon.</p><p>"I was wondering why you didn't pull this out from the get-go, I think now that I've seen how it is built I understand..." Oni Mask smiled under his mask making it slightly shift forward and almost slip off by stretching out the rubber that held it tightly on the face.</p><p>The Iron Shogun didn't let Oni Mask talk, the giant armor lifted the sword up and thrust it forward cutting into the rock and opening up another fissure, also sending a crashing gust of wind at his opponent that cut through the rocky floor it passed and even cut every rock it passed through, with a roll to the side the Demon avoided it.</p><p>"A puppeteer uses chakra to control their puppets, more accurately - controlling each puppet is like a continuous technique of its own. When I saw the sheer number of puppets it took to build this... I'd say you have to strain yourself quite extensively to keep it up, manipulating such a complex structure must be difficult too, it must be a pain in the butt to use. It's not hard to put together that I just have to keep dodging your attacks and eventually you'd die of your own exhaustion, shall we try it, slowpoke?" Oni Mask taunted the giant set of armor, Iron Shogun leaped forward as flames shot out its feet propelling it like small rockets, Oni Mask rolled below the sideways slash of the giant blade and then unleashed his counter-attack.</p><p>Lightning chakra passed through the man's palms as he bombarded the structure with strikes, using just his two fingers to penetrate the steel armor, the Demon leaped onto the construction and ran up it using chakra to keep his feet stuck on it. The Iron Shogun tried to catch the man but his speed by far surpassed it, Oni Mask got to the helmet, leaped into the air, and stomped it a couple of times before landing behind the armor after kicking off of its head. The Demon then backflipped a couple of times in rapid succession to a safe distance from the colossal set of moving armor.</p><p>"It is true that normally no blunt force could penetrate this chakra infused alloy of yours but... That's how force works - if I hit you strong enough covering a precise small area and don't let the force evenly distribute throughout your armor I can easily cut inside it, too bad my fingers aren't long enough to reach you in there..." Oni Mask spoke up as he stood back up. Iron Shogun also stretched out and took a fighting stance. It was quite obvious that the large hulking armor was at a disadvantage - Oni Mask was fast enough to keep the armor in a safe range and just poke it away until he hit something that caused it to stop functioning or Mugao timed out and died of exhaustion.</p><p>The Iron Shogun turned his sword around and cut air again sending a projectile of cutting wind, Oni Mask once again avoided it and leaped forward. "Demon Kenpo!" he shouted striking the armor several more times but not even leaving a dent in it. Iron Shogun tried to swat the Demon aside but the Sannin just ran up the Demon's arm and leaped down on the other side over his shoulder within just a couple of seconds. "It seems he can reinforce his armor with some additional puppets..." Oni Mask thought to himself leaping back a couple of more meters just to get some more safe distance from the Iron Shogun whom he had clearly underestimated.</p><p>A loud clanging echoed through the wasteland as the armor's gears turned again as it slashed to the side once again, this time however some more puppets shot out from the Shogun's back forming into spear-like projectiles handled by a bunch of steel wire. Oni Mask was already in the air avoiding the wind projectile, once again having underestimated the Iron Shogun's offensive capabilities. The spears penetrated Oni Mask's body right through and tied him up after leaving it, the Iron Shogun swung his opponent around before slamming him into the rocky ground head first. The body that hit the floor dispersed into a puddle of water making the Iron Shogun angrily trample the ground in frustration.</p><p>"I don't think this armor is effective against me, it is a tool of outlasting your opponent, tanking any blow they throw but you are the one short on time. Leave this armor at once and give me an honorable victory, it's not as fun seeing you die slowly of exhaustion nor is it as easy for you as I can make it." Oni Mask suggested but he just heard brief laughter that sounded so strange coming through the cybernetic voice amplifier. All of a sudden the rock beneath Oni Mask started feeling so light - the man's body started sinking into it as if it was...</p><p>"Sand?!" the Demon shouted out in surprise as his body sunk deeper and deeper underground.</p><p>"I may have anger issues but I wouldn't have stomped the ground unless I wanted to grind the rock into dust using the pulsing shockwave puppet units in my feet. They generate a chakra shield-like pulse within anything I stomp and utterly crush it when they are not part of my feet I use them as shields as they can deflect a lot of attacks and break most weapons. If it can smite steel rock is a poor comparison..." the cybernetic voice coming from the Iron Shogun explained as the man once again stomped the ground sending another powerful pulsing shockwave through the rocks turning it into dust and putting a tremendous kinetic shock on Oni Mask's body.</p><p>"If he's hit by it most of his bones should be broken. Capturing someone like him would be pretty cool, I bet no other village has captured a Kirigakure Demon alive yet..." Mugao thought to himself.</p><p>All of a sudden an arm burst out of the ground to dust stone. The Iron Shogun took a couple of steps back in shock. The arm then started digging the dust away and made the body almost swim out of the dust. The Demon couldn't stop shouting as his body stood - he was experiencing immense pain by using bones that were broken and that was pretty much all of them.</p><p>"This man can move even with most of his bones broken!? Can nothing stop him!?" one Sunagakure ninja shouted out in fear as he stepped back several steps.</p><p>Oni Mask collapsed onto his knees, then hit the ground. His pain ended just as suddenly as it erupted from the ground. Mugao kicked the chest of Iron Shogun out and leaped out from the puppet. He looked at the few of his ninja, one of them closed their eyes and concentrated on the collapsed man. "His chakra is... Weak... He's alive but he's shaving at the edge, if he'd be able to throw a punch at this state I'll eat my own tool pouch" the sensor replied.</p><p>Mugao fell onto his back, breathed in and out, he had never believed he'd met an opponent like this. He somehow thought so highly of himself this whole time that he believed that his own power placed Sunagakure among the other villages, after all - how could one best HIM? This fight showed him that the ninja world was vast and that it had all kinds of people. But most of all it made him love his fellow ninja even more. Mugao felt a cold refreshing wave of chakra pass through his body, there was still someone with the ability to heal among the survivors... Good.</p><p>"What will we do after this?" the man heard a voice of a friend, "Head straight for the Kage Summit, I want to see the face of this "Shirona" when she sees me bust down the door." Mugao laughed out before clenching his painful ribs. It'll take an hour or two for this inexperienced medic to heal him at this rate but even the fact that he had someone like that in the first-rate made him appreciate his people even more. They trusted him and they assisted him every step of the way - placing their lives on the line when needed, bringing him back from the jaws of death when they were needed, helping him right now. He was the leader of the best village in the world with the kindest and the strongest ninja, no young brat Mizukage has the right to try to take that away from him!</p><p>A crushed and ground in the dust Oni Mask was blown away by a gust of wind, spinning around as the wind carried the dust away and spread it around.</p>
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<a name="section0046"><h2>46. The Modest Supersonic Warrior</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A cold howling breeze picked up a bunch of snowflakes from the ground and mixed them up into the fray of those that were already coming down. The clouds in the sky made the edge of the Land of Snow where the Kumogakure delegation was coming from extremely gloomy and dark. It almost looked like the place was in a completely different time zone. As if it was early morning hours in the Land of Snow where it was actually slightly past midday. The constant blizzards and snowing that have pelted relentlessly at the faces and the very souls of the travelers have calmed way down compared to the degree they were terrorizing the delegation in the Land of Snow before. Still, the fact that snow was endlessly shaving off the last remnants of the shinobi patience made them happy to finally be close to leaving the accursed desert of endless snow and ice.</p><p>It was hard to tell clearly one ninja from another - all of them wore ponchos or hooded cloaks to shield them from both the cold and the snow. One of the hooded figures turned at another - a short feminine figure whose murky blue hair was visible even from the large hood she was wearing. "Raikage-sama, it seems like the worst is over. I still do not understand why we had to travel on foot? Locals make insane profits from caravanning people from one side of the Land of Snow to another. That's pretty much their most profitable profession..."</p><p>The woman's fingers emerged from under her poncho and she reached for the veil that protected her face from snow bashing into it. With a graceful move, the woman removed it and took in some fresh winter air, and sighed.</p><p>"Unfortunately you chose to accompany this lowly swordswoman to her goal, that you did. The likes of this lowly swordswoman do not deserve to traverse using the aid of caravans, that they don't. Disgraced swordsmen like this lowly one must walk their own cold broken roads with their own bleeding feet, I am very sorry that you had no choice but to follow me on that journey, that you did." Samaya Imasu was a very attractive young woman, possibly the youngest of all the Raikage and maybe even all Kage in general.</p><p>"I still don't quite understand what is so lowly about you, my lady, you are a great hero who was chosen by our people to lead after you took out a truly disgraced and lowly Raikage. Truly you should have more faith in yourself..." the cloaked bodyguard shrugged still looking curiously at Imasu.</p><p>The woman was only the Raikage for over three months and she already made vast improvements to the way that the previous Raikage ruled. The Fourth Raikage - Afolabi Kimya was a promising leader. The boy was a ninja who basically raced through the ranks and entered the Kumogakure Spec Ops by the time he reached fifteen years of age. However, when he was given absolute power he sort of caved in on the pressure and constantly abused his power, Afolabi constantly disappeared from the meetings and Summits only to be found ordering his villagers and entertainers around to "dance" for him or "give him all the food" off of their stalls. He was a boy that had far too much power and thought himself above everyone else because of it. For that reason when he discredited Kumogakure during the greatest Summit of all in recent times, after a blunder that nearly cost the peace of the entire Shinobi World and the unique relationship between Kumo and Land of Snow, Imasu herself drove her blade through the boy's heart.</p><p>Many people still felt like Imasu was a very controversial figure to be placed in the big chair but she was the best candidate. Afolabi almost cost the Country their peace openly offending every other Kage in the Summit and he played a dangerous game by outright demanding the friendly objects of peaceful offerings that Kumogakure and Land of Snow exchanged for generations as part of their numerous gentlemen agreements. Behavior like that could've cost far too much, the moment when Mizukage stood up to declare war Imasu plunged her blade through the boy's heart and fell to the ground begging the tyrant of the Mist to reconsider. It was only through sheer luck that blood of Afolabi pleased the tyrannical Daikon and war was avoided... After that followed multiple years of trying to find the right candidate, while Imasu did the right thing ultimately in the eyes of the world she was very affected by the fact that she betrayed the man she swore to protect by killing him from behind. Her personality would've never allowed herself to become the next Raikage and it took long years of convincing for it to happen. So far the woman had been performing exceptionally well.</p><p>"Don't even bother... It's said that Lady Imasu has been raised and trained by Haoru-san of the Iron Country samurai - one of the swordsmen who wield the impossible God Sword jutsu. It is said that the man's training was so rough on the little girl that she grew up into the modest woman she is today... Just go with it." A man from the side spoke out loud, even Raikage herself heard it and she just giggled at her palm before gently rubbing her hands at each other to warm them up a bit.</p><p>"True... Master Haoru was a rather strict man but one has to be strict to educate a lowly loser like this one, that one does." Imasu replied looking at her men that surrounded her shielding the woman with their bodies just in case something went wrong.</p><p>Expected by no one white figures burst from the hiding of snow that perfectly concealed their white cloaks, men tossed a flock of kunai at every figure in the delegation which only had about fifty men plus the Raikage herself. Some of the men made it in time to react, some only blinked witnessing the kunai pop right before their faces before the assumed end. A couple of them didn't even notice the attack to begin with but this did not speak of their inexperience - all of these were most trusted men and some of Kumogakure's strongest ninja. If anything it spoke to the credit of the swift and stealthy Kirigakure Demons. They dove out of their holes and fired with pinpoint precision all at the same time - it was a perfect ambush, the infamous Blitzkrieg Assassination plan.</p><p>A loud chain of clangs echoed through the fields, then a sound of the flapping poncho and light footsteps reaching the ground reached everyone's ears.</p><p>"My my... What a lowly failure, that I am..." Raikage spoke up spinning multiple kunai at her fingertips right in front of her men. "This lowly self only managed to pin some of the kunai and had to deflect the others, that she did... To think that this one had a whole second to react, that she had... Master Haoru would hit this lowly swordswoman's head into a tree stump and stomp it a couple of times, that he would." Imasu mumbled out in a tone only intelligible to herself and a couple of men close to her. A younger ninja shook so hard in her shoes that her cloak slipped off of her shoulders.</p><p>"She caught most of the kunai and deflected all of the others using just her bare hands... I didn't even see her move!" the youngling kept shaking. Another Kumogakure jounin close to her laughed out and gave the young woman a thumb up.</p><p>"Never worked with Raikage-sama? This is her not even being serious... I don't know who these guys are but they are in a world of trouble." the man couldn't hide his own excitement. It was almost like he desired to see Raikage fight because it was a sight to behold.</p><p>The white-cloaked and white-masked assassins pulled out their kunai and took an offensive stance. "Fifth Raikage - Samaya Imasu, by the orders of Mizukage Shirona-sama you are to be executed. You may choose to surrender and have your men be spared if they swear loyalty to Shirona-sama - the soon to be Ninja Empress." One of the Demons spoke up in a cybernetically altered voice which was supposed to further dehumanize the human weapons. The Raikage took several graceful steps forward and pulled her blade out showing her sheathed katana to her enemies by lifting her hand holding it to the eye level.</p><p>"There it is, Raikage's true strength!" one of the Kumogakure ninja shook with excitement and tried his best to keep his eyes on his idol, he knew it'd be to no avail - no one could ever see Imasu move, it was said by drunk story weavers that even Haoru blocked her attacks only by predicting them and not actually seeing them coming. Her speed surpassed even the eyes of the world's strongest swordsmen. She was the pride of ninja - a kunoichi trained by samurai who surpassed her mentors even though her pride and ambition still needed work. At times it appeared like Imasu couldn't fathom her own strength herself.</p><p>Suddenly the woman plunged to the ground dropping her sword in front of her and pounding her head to the snow. "This lowly one surrenders, this one knows the Fourth Raikage had offended Kirigakure and if this lousy loser's life is the price we must pay for peace this one shall gladly surrender it but spare my men, that please do!" the woman kept bashing her head at the snow and ice beneath so strong that blood broke through and covered her lovely face. Ashamed and blushed her guard walked up to her and forcefully put Imaya on her legs and pointed at the assassins</p><p>"They're not here for that, Lady Raikage! They are here because Mizukage Daikon was succeeded by some other crazy tyrant! Please defeat them and let us move on to the Summit, Raikage-sama, we're already late because you decided to walk the whole time!" the shinobi pleaded, however as their attention turned to Imaya's blade it was no longer there, the back rows of the Demons were already passing it around.</p><p>All of a sudden, the Demons just leaped forward dashing towards the Raikage and her men. The Kumogakure ninja engaged the Demons and a violent clash erupted. Kumogakure was known for the strongest military in the ninja world but they were severely outnumbered in there. Even if the Kumogakure ninja were all experienced warriors fighting a bunch of assassins on a battlefield of warriors, even if a single Kumo jounin surpassed a single Demon in sheer fighting prowess it did not matter having the difference of numbers in mind as none of the Kumo jounin had yet reached the stage where mere numbers didn't matter.</p><p>"Keep the sword away from the Raikage - she is a famed swordswoman so she must not get her blade!" the altered voices of the Demons spread throughout the bloody battlefield as the sword was passed backward again and again.</p><p>"I see... So that is your plan then..." Imaya jumped around in place a couple of times as her katana was once again in her hands despite her not even appearing to have moved at all.</p><p>The Demons were absolutely stunned and overwhelmed by the woman's speed, "H-How fast... Is she?" One Demon stuttered before being cut down with a powerful gash opening up on his chest. Then another. All of this happened while the Raikage was absolutely invisible, this time it didn't look like she was standing still - she simply disappeared momentarily before a single Demon was effortlessly cut down and colored the snow with their blood.</p><p>"All Demons, focus on the Raikage, at this rate she'll pick us off in seconds!" a Demon commanded as all of the men started retreating from their murderous rampage slaughtering the Kumogakure men and all lunged at the Raikage at the same time. A powerful shockwave erupted as a deafening sound of steel clashing took the hearing away from every ninja on the field. Most of the Demons were shouting into their speakers asking what had happened but none of them could hear it. After a brief moment and more cloaked Demons joining the ranks of the beaten-down on the snow with a strong beeping noise everyone's hearing returned.</p><p>"Was that some sort of a jutsu?!" A shinobi asked his comrade who looked at the cerulean haired swordswoman in a poncho and shook his head.</p><p>"No... Imaya-sama just clashed with every single Demon who attacked her and blocked the blows of all of them at the same time..." It looked like his friend struggled with believing such a statement but then after being reminded of just how fast the Raikage leaped around the battlefield dispatching numerous assassins suddenly he found her clashing with each assassin momentarily after another much easier to believe.</p><p>The assassins once again switched their targets and tried to cut down as many of the Kumogakure men as possible but... Somehow each time they tried to backstab the ninja their blade just hit an invisible wall - the Raikage made it in time to protect every single one of her subordinates in time. It was like she was omnipresent and omniscient. It was like when the Raikage moved the time around her stopped.</p><p>That being said - this sort of fighting had its toll on the Raikage as she was seen breathing heavily and barely even lifting her sword off the ground for moments after moving. She barely had the time to counterattack the assassin's advances and only defended her own men. Raikage herself was supporting her men and not taking the center stage which was slowly becoming troublesome as none of her men managed to openly compete with the highly trained elite Demon Corps.</p><p>"Damn it, Raikage-sama! Stop protecting us and start cutting those bastards down!" one of the ninja yelled out after seeing what his leader was doing.</p><p>"But... This lowly self must protect those that she holds dear, that she does!" Imaya huffed out.</p><p>"Then cut all of them down so fast that we don't have time to get hurt!" another jounin challenged the woman, "If you cannot then you are a loser unworthy of your title!" it appeared like the man knew of the woman's personality and played his cards right. It was almost like at the very same moment three streaks of light lit up and set several assassins on fire on their bodies.</p><p>As the Raikage's figure appeared behind the entire squad of assassins many of them fell down to the ground bleeding and covered with some sort of white fire that was crackling like lightning taking them over. "Light Step Style: Thunder Cat Paw!" Raikage mumbled to herself as she sheathed her sword and turned back seeing a significant majority of the men fall down on the floor covered with glowing white crackling light cuts that burned out like a flame without air and left just the cut on the body of the men cut down.</p><p>"S-She's moving at lightspeed?" one of the Demon grunted out intimidated by the name of the technique.</p><p>"Don't fool around, no ninja can possibly be THAT fast. That is impossible! She's just really damn fast..." another assassin shouted out so most of his comrades could hear.</p><p>Imasu smiled, her body flashed almost instantly to the bodies of other Demons and she only appeared for a brief moment before drawing her sword and cutting them down so fast that it was questionable if by the time she appeared she was even there. More and more Demons fell down. "It's true! She does move at lightspeed!" as the ranks of the white-cloaked assassins reduced they became visibly more intimidated.</p><p>"This? This isn't "Light Step Style", this is just "Quickdraw", this lowly self just runs really fast for a moment, that she does..." Raikage smiled more Demons tried to attack her but only hit an afterimage as the real Raikage barely even had to spend any effort to avoid the attackers' techniques. One by one, more Demons fell as Imasu kept showing off what she called her "Quickdraw". Then suddenly she stopped.</p><p>"You see, this one trained with Master Haoru her entire life and only managed to master "The Three Steps", that she did. Step one is - Quickdraw Step, that it is." Raikage disappeared again appearing before an assassin momentarily before her hand blurred and the assassin fell down, this repeated in rapid succession multiple times as when the assassins tried to counterattack the woman simply wasn't there anymore. Then the Raikage reappeared where she stood when she explained her First Step.</p><p>"When this lowly swordswoman uses the Quickdraw Step, she moves so fast that while most trained ninja can follow her movement no body without some special technique can respond in time, that they cannot. In other words, you see this one but cannot respond. Then, there is the Third Step, strangely enough, while this one learned it the last, it is less useful than the Second Step - Sound Step, that it is"</p><p>After the woman finished her speech the Demons weren't about to take the woman's assault, they quickly formed into a wall and made handseals in fast coordinated fashion "Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!" all of them shouted out in synchronized fashion sending countless dragon-shaped waves of water towards where the Raikage was. The projectiles slammed into the spot completely decimating it and drilling through. All of a sudden the water that was made by the technique froze almost instantly. The assassins believing in their success just stood there and continued to wait to see Raikage's crushed body, their eyes could only feast on an empty decimated block of unsteady ice, however.</p><p>"At this step as you probably have guessed - this one moves at the speed of light, that she does." A voice reached the Demon Corps as they turned around and it appeared like the embodiments of fear - the Demons were starting to understand fear themselves. Blood freezing screams of pain echoed through the field as numerous assassins fell down on the ground having been cut down in pretty much no time at all.</p><p>"It's a very flawed Step, that it is. The way Master Haoru sees it - this lowly loser moves so fast that for a brief moment - time stops, making this one move instantly. However, when someone is as lowly as me and moves so fast, they are affected by a very large increase of their own body mass which I have to compensate for by spending a monstrous amount of chakra to keep my body moving. Also... I just like the Second Step better, that I do." The woman kept talking, explaining her entire skillset to a bunch of dead men, or at least so the Demons had thought. Imasu was not a woman who cared too greatly about the secret of her ability, she had no problem just telling people how it worked.</p><p>"Why! Why would you tell us all this!?" a Demon shouted out angrily, at this point he felt like a cornered animal who was ready to do something stupid because of how hopeless his situation was. Imasu smiled.</p><p>"It is simple, this lowly swordswoman has no problem with letting people know of her ability, that she does not. This one feels so miserable for killing one she swore to protect that this one deserves death, please! This one wishes you to challenge me and kill me so this one can die in peace and be redeemed of what this one did, that she does!" Raikage bowed her head slightly as her subordinates started yelling at her that this was not the time for that sort of sentiment.</p><p>"Flee!" the Demon grunted out angrily "We did not expect Raikage to be this powerful, if we keep fighting here we'll just die needlessly and if we join Mizukage-sama we can assist her in bringing this woman down!" the man ordered as the squad of Demons started to slowly retreat. Imasu took a sword-drawing stance and dashed forward. "Sound Step Style: Supersonic Draw!" she uttered under her own nose.</p><p>A powerful round burst of air roared and exploded violently sending the snow, ice, and several trees forward at immense speed and grinding them into dust as the woman's impressive charge and drawing of her blade broke the sound barrier wiping not only the remainder of the Demon Corps out but also decimating the battlefield. Imasu breathed out heavily as she sheathed her blade. "W-What... The..." one Demon was still breathing and talking but it came out of immense effort and willpower. The cerulean haired beauty turned to the man.</p><p>"This is the Second Step - Sound Step, that it is!" Imasu smiled.</p><p>"She... Moved... At the speed of sound as if it was nothing!" a Kumogakure ninja shouted out in disbelief, another ninja shook his head.</p><p>"No. Her body only moved at half the speed of sound, she then suddenly stopped and transferred her force into her dominant drawing hand. It was the speed of her drawing the blade that broke the sound barrier which she further enhanced using chakra - she used a natural occurrence and kicked it up to a different level. It's easy to see why Raikage-sama favors this step - it makes her move much slower but it annihilates everything in her way, she doesn't even have to cut anyone, it's just the sound barrier being busted that crushes everyone close to her. That is the scary woman that is Amaya Imasu, the Fifth Raikage!"</p><p>Further away a blond man admired the destruction from afar. He reached for the blade on his back - the Executioner blade and looked at it. "Yes... This woman will do fine, she's just right to challenge us, under this kind of pressure we shall excel!" the man shouted out in excitement. Another Sannin was about to challenge a Kage!</p>
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<a name="section0047"><h2>47. Imasu's Pinch? Silent Killing Unleashed!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Fifth Raikage looked around examining the losses. Having the might and numbers of the attacking force in mind they were few, there were several casualties and multiple more injured but the injured ones were being taken care of. From the process of healing, it appeared that the medical ninja had started treatment well during the battle - their trust for their Lady Raikage was that great that they were willing to leave their backs exposed. Imasu drew her katana and drove it to the ground kneeling by it as it tore through into the snow and ice. Wet and cold chills passed down the woman's body as the water soaked through her trousers and her poncho.</p><p>"This lowly swordswoman is sorry for all the casualties, that she is!" Imasu shouted out. Her heart was quite literally eating itself for every life lost. She was trained by some of the world's most potent masters and there she was letting someone die. That was unacceptable, how could these people even tolerate a woman like her as their leader was a complete mystery for the Raikage.</p><p>A Kumogakure ninja stood up and walked up to the kneeling woman and patted her on the shoulder, "We'll forgive you this but just this once, now get up and do your job, Raikage-sama!" he gently replied.</p><p>The man knew well that this woman needed to be spoken with differently, she always degraded herself and needed to be berated even more to get anything done. Such was the trauma on her feeble mind that training with Haoru - one of the four swordsmen wielding the God Sword techniques forged. A lifetime of traumatic experiences was not easily broken, still, seeing how she was the Raikage even as one handled Imasu the way she needed to be handled she still had to be respected which constantly made insults sound rather weird.</p><p>"Water Style: Water Trinity Jutsu!" a loud and low pitched strong male voice reached everyone's ears. Those that had enough time to look up and notice a bulky male in the sky falling down with his hands raised and a gigantic sphere of water above his head would've seen one of the three Kirigakure Sannin - Wakashi Moya also known as "Executioner of the Clouds".</p><p>The man was called that because of his strong lower body and his style of combat which involved high and powerful leaps, acrobatic flips, and having his gigantic Executioner's Sword in mind - he always cut people down from high above. The man was a handsome and well-built one - his body perfectly suited his great blade and he was a bit taller than the average individual which helped his muscle even up throughout his body. He had wild blonde hair and wore strange ragged clothes that gave him that certain "bad boy" vibe that most women loved, still, only the dumber and inexperienced ladies messed with this man when they saw him at the bar due to his wild reputation.</p><p>As the water sphere slammed into the area it exploded into countless bursting streams of water that soon formed crashing waves and flushed every tree and everything that wasn't deeply rooted into the ground. After the destruction ended the entire battlefield was covered with an even thicker surface of ice once again, this one by far surpassed the previous one that covered the ground due to the collective Water Dragon jutsu hitting the field. Strangely enough, not a single person was hurt. All of them were tossed down rather rudely onto a higher hill where the destruction was less severe. It seemed that even the impossibly fast Raikage had trouble this time - while she didn't leave anyone behind she got her poncho damaged, the people were scattered around suggesting extreme haste and she was not even able to stand tall and was on her knees breathing heavily in front of the attacker.</p><p>"Samaya Imasu, I am the Kirigakure Sannin - Wakashi Moya and I intend to destroy you!" the man spoke with serious eyes but his lips couldn't help but twist slightly suggesting that the man was a bit excited.</p><p>"Is it because of this woman's - Shirona's orders? May this one perhaps at least know what this one had done to her to deserve her hatred? This one would like to know if there is something this one could do to perhaps fix that, that she would." Imasu asked before she finally broke through the fatigue and stood up clenching the handle of her katana and taking a fighting stance preparing to fight this man.</p><p>"Initially my orders were to kill you but even Shirona-sama seemed to have miscalculated your abilities. None of our soldiers even came remotely close to matching you and so the best course of action, having my orders in mind, would've been to rejoin with the Mizukage-sama and assist her in taking you down instead. However after seeing your power, Samaya Imasu... I see that you are an amazing woman and I am one who wanders through the bars every night looking for a good brawl. Not to fight you would be completely dismissing my ideals and that I could not forgive myself, your men can stay calm, I don't give a shit about weaklings like they are, you are all I want and I want you to just focus on me and not bother defending them!" Moya shouted out removing his Executioner's Blade and taking an offensive stance.</p><p>"You bastard, you keep talking about pride and wanting to challenge our Raikage but she just fought an entire army of elite Demon assassins!" one of the Kumogakure ninja shouted out waving their fist at the Sannin.</p><p>"You dumbasses, those trash weren't the real Demon Corps. Had they been you'd all have been dead, they were normal soldiers dressed as the assassins in order to properly utilize their reputation, to instill fear into your hearts. Kirigakure doesn't throw their Demons around, you know, a single operative is worth more than an entire squad of ordinary ninja." the Executioner replied with a cruel smile.</p><p>"This one sees, that she does. Then it is alright. This one shall fight you, that she will!" Imasu responded.</p><p>Right as the words left her mouth the Executioner of the Clouds charged forward, swinging his gigantic blade. As fast and powerful as he was, by the time his swing was completed the Raikage was right below him having ducked under his blade and drew her sword cutting deep into the man's flesh and sending him upwards into the air. Just before the man fell down the Raikage sheathed her blade and drew once again from an upwards position slashing in an arc-like motion to crush her opponent's body into the ground. With a powerful shockwave emanating through the ice and the ice shattering making cold water cover the battlefield, the Executioner was sent underwater. This must've been some cold shower for the man in both literal and figurative of meanings.</p><p>With a wild roar, the man burst from the ice and charged at the Raikage kicking off of one of the floating ice platforms - he was incredibly fast for a man wielding the blade of that size. Imasu was completely caught by surprise by how fast the man had recovered and she used some of her speed to try and dodge the attacks but she slipped and fell into the water just barely avoiding getting hit. Moya laughed out and jumped back onto his platform.</p><p>"Be careful, Raikage-sama! Your speed might not be suitable for slippy surfaces like solid ice!" he shouted into the depths of cold water. The woman's hand shot out of the water and caught onto the icy platform dragging her tired and freezing body onto the surface. The woman removed her poncho as it slightly got in her way.</p><p>"Your skin... What was that when this one cut you? It was like it turned black and spikes emerged from it, that it did?" Imasu asked reminiscing a moment just before when two of her cuts hit the man but his skin hardened making him avoid getting cut and just getting thrown around by the force of the swing.</p><p>Moya turned his head to the side and spat out some cold water and then smiled at the Raikage, "That's for you to find out" he added as he leaped at the woman again. This time the Raikage had learned her lesson and didn't use any of her steps, she simply twisted her body sideways to avoid the crashing of the sword and while using the momentum of her movement drew her blade jumping up and cutting all the way from the man's groin through his stomach and deep into his chin. Only sparks flew out as the Kirigakure Sannin's skin once again dyed black and some weird spikes shot out from it, the sheer force of the blow still tossed the man's body up into the air.</p><p>The man recovered from the hit faster than the Raikage could follow her attack up as he swung his blade diagonally, the Raikage just barely avoided getting cleaved in half by flipping her body sideways. Then Moya slammed his sword downwards as if he was crushing the woman with a heavy object, while the Raikage's blade lit up with chakra and managed not to break her body was once again sent violently crashing through the ice into the manmade icy lake below. The water started washing the icy platforms away and they started crashing into the shores. The Raikage once again barely dragged her beaten and tired body onto the icy platform and started crawling further where there was no water. She was freezing and was beaten around so hard that it reminded her of the times when she trained with Haoru. While she was fast it didn't matter if she couldn't properly use that speed on the ice, while her speed was an amazing way to easily cut people it didn't matter if her cuts didn't count and just slammed into whatever armor that man had on him.</p><p>"Step of Sound: Sonic Boom!" the woman shouted out as her voice revealed to anyone that heard it just how hurt and afraid she was. It took her only one strong and impossibly fast step, accelerating from nothing to half the speed of sound and then drawing the blade transferring the force. This technique was different than "Supersonic Draw", it did not involve the breaking of the sound barrier and enhancing that shockwave, instead, it focused on drawing the sword so fast that the air particles were pushed to fly faster than the speed of sound forming an actual sonic boom projectile - it traveled far and hit hard. The cannon of air shot forward violently tearing through the ice and throwing the water to the side, splitting the whole lake and making the water leak outside its borders. Now the whole place again reminded of the desolated wasteland of ice and snow - the water and the solid ice surface was now gone!</p><p>Moya covered his body and bent his knees, his body once again dyed black but as the cannon wave of air hit him he realized that it won't help - his armor started cracking, as the air became so thick that the armor couldn't even keep him on his feet the man's body was tossed around like a ragdoll and shot into a small hill and bashed into the rock. Any man would've been killed by such brute force, their skin and flesh would've been torn off from their bodies from the intense air pressure, and yet... When the smoke and the whirlwinds of snow cleaned up a giant sphere reminding Imasu of a turtle being wrapped in its shell was etched into the icy hill. The woman slowly made her way forward - the strenuous workout from using her technique heated up her muscles a little bit and she could at least act like she's ignoring the effects of the cold.</p><p>A large, armored tentacle shot out from the armored sphere and bashed into the hill sending the shell forward, in mid-air the shell reformed into the man that made it, and that man mercilessly swung his sword - the woman tried to step back but the sheer size of the sword left its mark as a giant scratch ranging from her left shoulder to her hip made her white-out for a moment.</p><p>Warm blood shot out from the wound but it somehow felt good, the pain didn't feel nearly as bad as it normally would have but to Imasu... It all just felt nostalgic! The man tried to follow up his attack by swinging again and again but the woman's incredible agility made her body blur even in his eyes as she near effortlessly evaded every strike while looking the man right into his eyes angrily. Her stare secretly made Moya's heart freeze, it couldn't just have been the cold. Such terrifying killing intent!? Where could this woman have learned something like that?! What sort of monstrous power could those eyes restrain?</p><p>The man spun around quickly trying to cut the woman in half at her torso but her blade clashed with that of his own! How was this possible?! How could she so easily compensate for the immense strength and size difference?</p><p>"She leaped back and then charged forward converting her speed into force!" the Sannin realized thinking to himself of the woman's secret as his body was pushed back with immense force and his balance broke, the man's body once again turned into a giant rolling black turtle shell and rolled backward before another tentacle shot out stopping it instantly in its path further from the woman. The shell reformed into a man and he charged to cut her again but then suddenly the man just stopped and dashed back as his heart filled with doubt - he didn't feel like his full potential was behind that strike! This killing intent of Imasu Samaya was inhuman!</p><p>"What's the matter? This one was preparing to respond, that she was, you broke this one's rhythm, that you did." Imasu's cold and bland voice reached the man's ears, it wasn't like before, it now reminded him of THAT man. Haoru of the Iron Country samurai who without breaking a sweat fought off all of the Kirigakure Sannin and proceeded to challenge the Mizukage! What could the Raikage have in common with that man? Wait... He said something back then...</p><p>"I don't know who this young chick is, but she is most certainly not Samaya Imasu, I myself taught the young girl swordsmanship and I know her speech mannerism too well. This person is a fraud which makes me assume the rest of you runts are too..."</p><p>Moya's memory flashed back to the Kage Summit hall. So this woman was taught by him, he was her sensei? How that possible? Didn't samurai hate ninja and refuse to involve themselves in ninja matters? Why would someone like Haoru even teach this woman? Moya had to know that, he sheathed his sword and straightened his body. "Hey! Please reveal to me why Haoru of the Iron Country samurai trained you? I can see a lot of his dark deadly feeling inside of you. You reek of the same sort of killing intent as he did."</p><p>Imasu stood into a drawing stance, her cold eyes looked into those of the Kirigakure Sannin's. "Your power brought back the memories of those days to this lowly swordswoman, that they did! I cannot allow those precious days to sink away so I'll be short. This one's parents died during the Second Great Ninja War, this one left the village to find a death of her own and this one would have since she wandered into the Iron Country by accident, that she did. Master Haoru thought that "this one had balls to waltz into this country" and said that "this one's hairy eyelashes amused him" so Master Haoru took this one under his wing as a student, that he did. This one was an experiment if a ninja could be taught the Bushido ways, that she was. This one has told you all there is to tell, that she has, let us finish this so that this one can settle matters with Shirona-sama and crush her hatred for this one. This one wants to fight her the most, that she does, so draw your sword!" Imasu shouted out.</p><p>The tone of this Imasu was different, it was not confident but it was loud, while she still spoke with the same tone and had the same strange speech pattern she had a certain shade of imposed aggression in her voice. Moya smiled and weaved multiple handseals. Suddenly a thick mist started to cover the surrounding. "Hidden Mist Jutsu!" the man's voice reached every ear in the surrounding area. The man's figure completely disappeared into the mist, not even his footsteps could have been heard, and having the man's speed in mind he could close distance incredibly fast. A wild swing of the blade appeared right in front of Imasu's eyes but it only hit the mist and then the ground making icy rubble shoot out from where she stood moments ago. The Raikage had dodged the stealthy assault even if she had mere moments to react.</p><p>"This is the ancient secret art, a style of combat only taught in Kirigakure called "Silent Killing". It involves the hidden technique of "Hidden Mist Jutsu" as well as strenuous training to make one's footsteps completely disappear into the mist, you cannot hear me, you cannot see me, you cannot feel me or taste me - as far as your perception is concerned I do not exist until I wish for me to exist!" a voice with only an implied owner and no clear direction as to where it came from echoed through the mist inspiring fear in many hearts.</p><p>"But you can't see this one either, that you cannot!" Imasu responded to which only laughter came as a response. The woman instinctively jumped forward avoiding getting cut in two but a wide cut opened in her back tearing through her leather jacket. It appeared that the woman's reaction allowed her to react and dodge while she was hit - the moment that the opponent's blade touched her skin cutting into it she dashed away drastically reducing the degree of injury. This was impossible not only for ninja, parents never dared even weave stories of such reaction time in their tales but it didn't come easy for the Raikage - she had to stand still and concentrate on her perception completely, center around a single sense of touch and react to the slightest impulse of pain.</p><p>"While I do not exist to you, your existence is as clear as if it'd have been mapped out to me: your heartbeats, your breathing, the mist that you disrupt when you move around - a master of "Silent Killing" senses ALL of those things. They manage to focus on the other senses just as you've felt with your skin that my sword was coming from behind. That being said, for how long can you keep yourself from dying, avoiding my blows in the nick of time? Let us see how many times you must be cut before you break!" Moya shouted out, each sentence came from a different place in the mist making Imasu more and more desperate and confused. If she didn't come up with a solution fast she may actually have died in that mist!</p>
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<a name="section0048"><h2>48. Roar of the Three-Tails</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cold winter breeze that was around to deepen the cold and send it seemingly straight into one's soul was no longer around. Nature itself appeared to favor the Silent Killing user by making everything around the battlefield completely calm, not even a single breeze blew their way to assist by dispelling the fog. Imasu however actually preferred the calmer weather - she was soaked right down to her boots in chilling icy water and every breeze only reminded her that she desperately needs to push her muscles to their limits so that the risk of losing her limbs decreased.</p><p>"Did you know that one's speed and reaction time decreases when one is freezing? Do you feel it yet? How long do you think it's gonna be until the cold sets in?" Moya taunted the Raikage, the woman tensed her entire body to make the muscles keep the blood flow going and shouted into the cold winter air.</p><p>"Shut up and fight, that you must!" Right after loudly exclaiming her anger the woman dashed forward and drew her blade cutting into the fog only to hit absolutely nothing, the only thing that she cut was the mist itself disturbing the air. Loud laughter echoed through the mist.</p><p>"This is bad, speed is Raikage-sama's forte, without it she doesn't have much, her body is rather frail for a ninja of her level so if pressed hard she might just go down..." a Kumogakure ninja grunted out preparing a blade.</p><p>"Don't" another placed a hand on the shoulder of the other. "This man seems to value his one on one fair matchup, he believes that Raikage-sama can challenge him and he even holds himself back from attacking us so that Raikage-sama focuses on fighting him. If we attack and most likely fail to find him in all that mist... There's no telling what this man will think, he may start cutting us down, he may feel cheated and just proceed to kill all of us. Let us trust Lady Imasu and stand down until we know that her loss is certain."</p><p>The other ninja looked angry that he was calmed down but it was quite apparent that he could see the reasoning behind the man's words and agreed to stand down. The ninja who were moved out of harm's way before and saved many times during the battle against the Kirigakure military force by the Raikage herself decided to place all of their trust in their leader. They knew that she had the means to beat this gust of wind. "What are you waiting for, Raikage-sama!? You're disgracing all of us, step up your lowly swordsmanship at once!" several ninja started hurling insulting cheers but everyone knew that this was the way to inspire their leader.</p><p>"This is bad, that it is... I could blow this gust away using the Step of Sound under normal circumstances but my muscles feel stiff from the cold and I'm not sure I can even pull it off..." Imasu thought to herself, suddenly she felt pain in her side, her reaction time and movement speed slowed down, she could no longer avoid strikes while taking minimal damage by moving away when the sword breaks her skin using her Steps.</p><p>This was different, Raikage drew her blade and tried to push it into the way of the Executioner's blade. While she did take another nasty wound that spilled blood from her back, it also slightly warmed up the area that her blood bathed in. For just a moment Imasu could feel the muscles in her back - this was a chance. The woman dashed forward sheathing her blade and grabbing the handle strongly.</p><p>"Quickdraw Step!"</p><p>The woman dashed to the place she imagined the Sannin to be right after the strike had concluded, she even saw his figure, his shadow shining through the white mist. Using all of her momentary speed recovery that her own warm blood granted her the woman drew her sword using all of her strength and speed trying to cut the man down. Her body blurred and it would've been impossible for the man to respond even having his own impressive speed and abilities in mind. Useless...</p><p>Only the mist was cut and the smoky gas passed through the woman's katana getting sliced like a piece of paper. Another painful gash, this time in the front of her body - the man's figure was manipulated by the mist. What Imasu saw was just an optical illusion and when she missed her cut the man decided to use all of his power to quickly respond. Injured and breathing heavily Imasu staggered back, the woman moaned in pain and fell to her knees with only her sword driven into snow holding her frame from falling down.</p><p>The young woman desperately clung to the gash that spat out more blood all over her body, her vision was starting to blur but... For this moment she felt warmer than ever before, she had only a couple of seconds before her blood cooled down and started feeling just as freezing as the air around her. She had to utilize it, she had no time to bleed out down on her knees while this man cuts her down. Master Haoru would have never accepted such a disgraceful end for his only student. Imasu's leg shot forward, breaking through the snow and ice in sheer force and speed of her step, the woman's brave and powerful voice cut through the mist and reached even the ninja cheering on her from the sidelines.</p><p>"Sound Step Style: Supersonic Draw!"</p><p>A powerful shockwave blasted through the fog, like a much tinier scaled planetary bubble with lightning crackling all over it as it burst. A grunting shout followed right after the sound barrier was shattered and electrified as a male figure flew out of the mist and slammed into another icy hill, busting it down and equaling it to the ground, then flying through multiple other hills. The Raikage sheathed her sword and breathed out, she looked at the man and tried to determine just how far he had been tossed away, she looked back at her comrades.</p><p>"This lowly one... Needs help... That she does..." she mumbled out and then fell on her knees, then face into the snow. Multiple medical ninja rushed to the young woman and started treating the cuts on her body. She had lost a lot of blood and had quite nasty injuries.</p><p>"Wow... Those wounds aren't even... What are those other scars!? They're horrible!" a medical ninja shouted as his colleague silenced him</p><p>"Focus, we may not have much time until that man recovers! The sensor said she could still sense his chakra!" she yelled out.</p><p>"Yes, ma'am." The younger medical ninja nodded and his glow intensified. "We need to do something about her hypothermia."</p><p>"Please do not bother, that you don't" Raikage grunted out through pain, "This one channeled Lightning Release chakra into that last technique, the sheer intensity of that technique will have to keep this one going for a while, that it will. This one plans to finish it soon before the cold kicks in, that she does. Please be fast and then move away from danger, that please do!" the woman ordered, no, her tone sounded more like a request than an order.</p><p>Samaya Imasu's ordering tone still needed work. Loud footsteps through cracking ice alerted the medical squad of the Sannin making his way back to the battlefield, each of them reported when they finished their work and bolted before the fight reignited again.</p><p>The woman stood up and sheathed her blade, she was far from being completely patched up, this was just the essential field medical work that was needed so that she did not die in the middle of the battle. Imasu had already started to feel her life slowly fading away after that last charge, after her training days with Haoru she had never used so many of her "Steps" in such rapid and constant succession. She was really exhausting herself here, just how much more her body had was unknown.</p><p>The Raikage pressed harder a black round pill in her hand and tossed it into her mouth chewing it quickly, the bitter and pepper-like taste made her frown but she felt some of her chakra bumping up. The medical ninja used these food pills, apparently, a body never used all of the chakra it potentially could, some was still left over in one's system but it was essentially useless. With a little push, it could have been expelled to temporarily boost one's chakra reserves. This pill that one of the medical ninja slipped into her palm was a lifesaver, she could now use her "Steps" several more times and be confident that she won't pass out.</p><p>"I see, you're using emergency tactics, medical ninja, and food pills..." Moya noted swinging his giant Executioner's blade around his head and placing it on his shoulder.</p><p>"You've used the help of another this whole fight, this one did nothing that dishonored her, that she did not!" the woman responded by standing in an offensive sword-drawing stance.</p><p>A loud almost manic laughter echoed through the icy ruined battlefield. "I see, so you've figured me out, huh? Perhaps I shouldn't hold it back in that case?"</p><p>Imasu's hand shot forward, her eyes were filled with panic fear, "You fool, stop, that you must! You'll kill everyone, that you will!" she yelled out at Moya who just laughed out.</p><p>"Don't worry, I'm not that stupid, although if you kill me you do know what'll happen, right? Even if you knock me unconscious... That thing starts acting up on its own, I swear to God..." Moya laughed out again. He seemed to enjoy the fact that the swordswoman had figured out what he had inside of his body this entire time.</p><p>"That is good for this one, that it is. After this one killed the Young Lord this one doesn't like killing all that much, that she does not. This one will just have to take the risk and knock you out, that she will!" Raikage shouted out as she charged forward. "Quickdraw Step!" she chanted out as her sword clashed with that of Moya's but her sheer speed that transferred into the katana at the point of impact made a powerful shockwave that pushed the gigantic blade back, unable to keep its weight the Sannin had to let go of it as his own body slammed into the blunt side of his Executioner's Blade.</p><p>"Light Step Style: Instant Murder!" Imasu shouted out as time itself froze for a moment. Moya had nowhere to go - his back was against his blade that was etched into ice and he was open for striking. After just a moment of frozen time the man just coughed up as seven deep gashes opened on his body, his eyes rolled back and the force of Imasu's seven light fast battojutsu slashes, that all happened in an instant while to everyone else the time appeared to have frozen still, sent the Sannin crashing through his own blade that got cut in two. As the man's body lifelessly hit the snow the steel of the blade clung together and repaired his blade.</p><p>"S-She... Killed the Sannin..." Kumogakure ninja started mumbling around as Imasu sheathed her sword. "No! Lady Raikage only kills when there is no other choice, I don't really know what they were talking about previously but she clearly didn't want to kill him, she struck all non-vital areas but she still knocked the man out..." another Kumogakure ninja replied as he kept his eyes peeled and watching the battlefield since he himself still could not believe in what was happening.</p><p>All of a sudden crimson bubbling chakra started erupting from the man's body, the man's fingers elongated and his skin started darkening, spikes started growing in random spots of his body - the Three-Tails inside of him was starting to take control of the man's unconscious body!</p><p>"So you decided to come, that you did..." Imasu sighed as she prepared to attempt to fight off the awakened Jinchuuriki who was completely taken over by his beast. "The Three-Tailed Turtle... Come." she finished her taunt as the man's long fingers started clawing at his own stomach tearing his leathery outfit apart and leaving the man topless. The red chakra cloak formed into the shape of a round sphere that was surrounded by tentacles, it appeared that despite using partial transformation in a midst of battle this man had not yet mastered his relationship with the beast and after his defeat, the beast only awakened halfway.</p><p>"This is... An awakened Jinchuuriki!" everyone started panicking and everyone started looking for safe spots, only a few remained where they stood and continued to observe the battle below - against a man carrying a Tailed Beast inside of him there was no safe place to hide oneself in. The man roared loudly into the air with a demonic and beastly voice as tight aerial shockwaves ruptured the ice and made the Raikage slide and stumble back shocked by the sheer pressure of the air around the awakened Jinchuuriki. The beast's lifeless white eyes looked at the woman in front of him and... It disappeared.</p><p>Within less than a second, the Jinchuuriki reappeared right in front of Raikage's face clashing its chakra tentacle with her blade. Had the Raikage not covered her blade with a thick and controlled stream of chakra with every cut her katana would've shattered without any contest. This chakra was immense!</p><p>The awakened, cloaked Jinchuuriki disappeared again, with a loud roar it appeared right behind the woman making a giant aerial shockwave that combined the force of its movement after instantly stopping and the force of its roar sending the woman flying. Suddenly the chakra tentacle flew right at Imasu, with a draw of her blade the woman deflected it and pushed it to the side. Then the tentacle hit again, and again, more and more chakra appendages started erupting from the Jinchuuriki's cloak as they continued to try and break the Raikage's guard and overwhelm her with these intense blasts that started to approach the speed and intensity of an automated weapon.</p><p>The woman's hands blurred as well, she was deflecting each and every blow and doing so successfully, skipping none of them because skipping even one may have meant death. The cloaked enemy tired itself out just as suddenly as it exploded into its rampage and the barrage of chakra tentacles stopped, Raikage's body landed on the ice and her hands instantly dropped the blade and weighed her body down. The woman was breathing heavily. The beast roared loudly into the air, now the Raikage's figure completely vanished into thin air and reappeared several meters further from the Jinchuuriki.</p><p>The woman sheathed her naked blade and turned around, "Light Step Style: Lightray" she chanted right at the same time as the Jinchuuriki's cloak lit up with a powerful shockwave and blood shot out from the Jinchuuriki's body and the entire body got sent down.</p><p>It took the beast a couple of moments to stand up and after it did the Raikage witnessed that the giant cut mark that she left on the man's stomach was completely healed up. The healing looked strange, it appeared like the man's injury got burned up as his skin tore off and it looked like it got healed with the heat of some sort since the edges of the wound looked burnt up.</p><p>The cloaked monster roared loud into the air and started thrusting its tentacles once more at the same speed as it did before, now as the tentacles passed through the ground they left awesome craters and completely demolished the icy hills that they hit, however with a flash of bright light the woman avoided each strike, it seemed like the beast was only cutting at an illusion, a figure that burst into blinding light after getting struck. Not a single tentacle once again touched the Raikage. The woman's figure appeared in the air, the beast cocked its hand backward to crush the woman with another chakra tentacle.</p><p>"Light Step Style: Lightray Crash!" the woman's voice shouted out as her body was already behind the monster as another injury lit up and spat out more blood, the force of the impact of the blade passing through was so intense that it not only cut through the chakra cloak and opened a giant gash but also turned the body of the awakened Jinchuuriki around, the beast raised two tentacles and their chakra conjoined together forming a giant mace-like structure of crimson chakra that hit the ground, still it only crushed ice sending shards of ice around but the woman was too fast for the enraged and mindless beast to even land a blow on.</p><p>"Light Step Style: Lightray Flicker!" another sword technique came at the Jinchuuriki as the Raikage's body flashed through it flying incredibly low and almost touching the snow on the ground, the intense speed of her movement sent the snow to the sides as the woman dashed through leaving a giant wound in the back of both of the Jinchuuriki's legs. The sheer power of the fast movement also made the beast lift up into the air and spin fast in place. Imasu's body appeared right in front of it in an instant, "Quickdraw!" she chanted again by drawing her blade and crushing the Jinchuuriki's body right back into the snow. The beast only roared out a pitiful cough of pain as blood shot from its mouth and its opened wounds.</p><p>The crimson chakra cloak withdrew inside of the Jinchuuriki's body, that must've been all of the power that the Three-Tails would bother to lend him in the man's weakened state. Imasu sighed and sheathed her blade collapsing on her back, "That food pill saved my life..." she thought to herself as medical ninja once again flocked to her and started healing her up.</p><p>"This one must have words with this Lady Shirona, that she does!" Imasu spoke with a painful tone, several younger ninja laughed out. The incredible strength of this woman prevented many casualties and only several ninja died while facing an entire squad of Kirigakure military. Such an outcome was nothing short of miraculous and the amazing skills of this woman were to thank for this miracle!</p>
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<a name="section0049"><h2>49. The Kirigakure Military Crushed!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Powerful and confident steps tore through the overgrown parts of the Kusagakure forests. Men and women of Iwagakure were quite firm, strict, and always to the point. Usually, they took no luxury of enjoying their surrounding especially now that the surrounding was so completely different from their home. Iwagakure was a place where winds from the mountains carried rains of small rocks, a rocky country founded in a sweet spot surrounded by mountain ranges that provided natural protection. This ancient strategy of finding a safe place to live in an eye of stormy and sky-high mountains worked - even the Lightning Lord found his safe-house in the surroundings of the Inari mountain range in the Lightning Country desert.</p><p>The lands of the Grass village were completely overgrown, once in a while, the thick and endless forests ended but only to reveal a giant ravine. For a first time traveler, the entire landscape would've probably started to remind more of "land of ravines" or "land of bridges" as the grass was a rather unimpressive detail to make a name out of.</p><p>The dense forests that one wouldn't have been wrong to call a jungle were unrivaled by any other country. Still, the bare-chested figure of a middle-aged man with overflowing white hair and blood red facial tattoos encouraged his men to walk faster and make wider and more confident steps the more the jungles of Kusagakure resisted. It seemed like no tree branches and no insects even hurt the man or bothered him at the very least. His step remained firm and strong no matter how long he walked.</p><p>That would've been the man's downfall as with one loud slurping and breaking sound he stepped into some strange stony construction built from rotten wood. The Kaguya man curiously stared at the round hive that he had stepped into as his men lost all of their cool.</p><p>"Oh no, run, Tsuchikage-sama! These are the infamous Kusagakure killer hornets!" the men started shouting as swarms of the insects covered the already brief patches of visible sky and made the entire forest area black. Their buzzing sounded almost like some sort of intricate machinery working at full power. These were the killer insects that a clan of insect-using mercenaries had discovered and used to their full extent during the war.</p><p>While their usage of these hornets was relatively successful the insects were rather uncontrollable even using their own pheromones and were known to rebel and attack even their own masters. Iwagakure had enough trouble in the war as it was, the last thing they needed was a clan of idiots sending hornets that were just as likely to attack their own men as it attacked the enemy... That period was shameful to Iwagakure history as it was back then during the warring days that the country slipped into hardships.</p><p>The hornets kept trying to sting the Tsuchikage, thousands of the hand-sized insects trying to penetrate his skin. None of them prevailed, with each bite the insect just fell powerless to the ground as their own mandibles gave in and shattered. The man known as the Tsuchikage just arrogantly watched as the problem of the overly aggressive swarm of killer hornets just killed themselves trying to leave a dent in the man's skin. While his clothes did give in and the insects left many holes not even a scratch remained on his skin, it was almost like an autumn leaf had fallen on the man's skin - it felt like a tickle if anything else.</p><p>"Well... I guess the stories of the lethality of these insects were widely exaggerated, let's go, men, it's safe now." the Kaguya turned back at his men who kept staring at the man.</p><p>Despite the men having endless opportunities to know the man's seemingly infinite strength and durability, they ended up surprised each time. In so many years of this man's presence in the leading position, not a single time he felt challenged by anything - the knives of the assassins broke when plunged into his chest, the man won every wrestling tournament of many that he himself organized to improve the bombing Iwagakure economy. At some point, those tournaments just ended up being "who can last the longest against the Tsuchikage" sort of competitions as no wanderer from any country managed to challenge the man properly.</p><p>Kaguya Yaban seemed to be the perfect leader for the sinking ninja village. During the war Iwagakure initially seemed like sort of a top dog, over the times of peace they have assembled a powerful military and kept sending overpowering numbers of ninja into each battle. They also did not lack skill - their men were toughened by living in the mountains where the air was scarce and rains of rocks were constant.</p><p>Even the housewives of Iwagakure could've won some of the battles. The problems started when Iwagakure sensed their success - they started overextending and abusing their early successes. The overzealous country sent an immense military force to compete for even the least important patches of territory and least strategically important military objects. While Iwagakure scored many successes, the Third Tsuchikage did not put into consideration what toll his extensive military exploits had on the economy.</p><p>Iwagakure was a country that lived off of natural resources as the mountains were not the best soil for farming. Their entire income came from what they could find in numerous mines and what they won in the war, also tributes from weaker villages nearby like the Kusagakure where the delegation was now traveling to the Kage Summit.</p><p>When Iwagakure started to feel arrogant and wanting to feel the thrill of victory in every battle they managed to piss off every country, suddenly Iwagakure troops started appearing even in petty battles against two other villages. The villages started increasing their production of military technology as well and then Iwagakure started struggling to keep up. They also overextended and exhausted their mines draining them empty of iron and other minerals, even more, Iwagakure's infinite supply of gold no longer mattered because no country felt like trading with the arrogant war dog that felt obliged to involve themselves in every battle.</p><p>As the war progressed Iwagakure found itself more and more reliant on the gold they mined from their mines, countless accidents made even that exploit increasingly difficult - cave-ins happened day after day as with the increasing digging quotas came lack of basic carefulness, endless gas leaks happened choking down every miner in the section, as quotas increased explosives started getting used for mining gold and sadly greedy ninja were not the best handlers of hazardous and subtle tools like explosives.</p><p>Soon Iwagakure closed off their last veins of gold under endless rocky chambers of gas and vast layers of varied minerals and rocks piled on them. It would've taken too much to dig the obstacles out of the way and Iwagakure lacked both the manpower and resources to fund such a project - the war started choking the village and soon the entire Earth Country down. Not to mention that when devoting one's entire manpower to war not that many miners remained, while Iwagakure treated every loss of countless miners in careless accidents as "nothing to worry about" they started running out of human resources very soon.</p><p>Luckily the Earth Lord withdrew from the war before the Tsuchikage would employ children and women in the mines. The terms of peace treaties were even crueler, like countless daggers all striking at one's side at once, bleeding the arrogant country out.</p><p>After the death of the Third Tsuchikage, the current one stepped into his place - a confident young ninja who was too young as a chuunin to be employed in the war so he led the mines. As the incredibly strong ninja and a great patriot Kaguya Yaban saved many ordinary men from the mines and earned the love and adoration of all: men for being such a great symbol of manliness, women for being such a model beefcake and bringing their husbands home, children for being an icon of heroism and being the man who brought their fathers back home and also worked his oversized muscles off to gather enough gold so that their parents had enough to buy bread for dinner.</p><p>He was the hero of the people so if the already hated Ninja Council decided to elect another there'd have undoubtedly had been a revolution. Unlike Kumogakure, Iwagakure never had to regret such a hasty decision to choose a young and powerful ninja as the successor of leadership - Kaguya Yaban was the perfect Kage.</p><p>"I don't get it... Why didncha cut those buggies down with yer bones, Tsuchikage-sama!?" a chuunin scratched his head making his bandana slip off, the man just cursed and picked it up carelessly slapping it back onto his head.</p><p>Yaban started sulking and turned away curling close to the nearby tree. A fellow ninja that knew the Tsuchikage since the mining days punched the back of the chuunin's head making his bandana slip off again and forcing the ninja to pick it up and put it on again.</p><p>"Ye fool, Tsuchikage-sama may be a Kaguya but he doesn't possess the Shikotsumyaku bloodline, that's like... Most of the clan's members that don't, why did you think he had that ability anyway?" the man asked his comrade who just laughed out and scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"Oh... Sorry, sorry... I just... You know... Thought since Yaban-sama is the Raikage... And a Kaguya... Well..." the white-haired hunk stood up and looked back at his subordinate, he no longer looked that depressed after being reminded that he did not possess the bloodline, he just gestured that the men kept on moving.</p><p>"Tsuchikage is a bit depressed about the subject, he always felt like he was a loser for not inheriting the bloodline. That's why he worked extra hard, that's why the guys back during the mining days during the Second Great War looked up to him - he had the ancient heritage of the Moon People but he was just the same as you and I and he achieved everything he did not because of some bones shooting outta his body but because he just worked the hardest out of all."</p><p>The Tsuchikage looked back angrily and once again encouraged his men to keep on walking. Right after that, another ravine opened up - larger than the others before this one. The men couldn't help but sigh as walking over those ancient bridges every time felt like they were gambling with their lives. The men stepped onto the bridge and kept walking - this bridge was also the firmest of all they stepped onto before, probably because it covered the longest ravine so it had to be the greatest and the best in terms of construction.</p><p>As the men made their way to halfway of the bridge a loud blast echoed, the ninja looked back to the beginning of the bridge, then to the end and witnessed the most horrific thing - the start and the end of the bridge blew up, with an immense shaking the bridge started plummeting down to the abyssal ravine the end of which was completely invisible from the top.</p><p>As the bridge disappeared down into the endless hole, ninja gathered around each end of the bridge, they wore camouflaging cloaks and Kirigakure headbands and looked down. One of them reached his ear and contacted someone using his earset,</p><p>"Please tell Mizukage-sama that it is done - Tsuchikage and his delegation are disposed of! So strange, this was just too easy... Wait for a sec." he spoke as a loud rumble alerted the ninja, they looked down into the bottom of the abyss and noticed an unintelligible shadow below that was quickly approaching them. As it quickly dashed through them the men all stumbled backward, what appeared from the end of the abyssal fall was...</p><p>The entire bridge that had plummeted down with one man seemingly levitating and holding the bridge with the men from below. "Weightless Boulder Jutsu..." the Tsuchikage spoke as it didn't seem like this bridge at all troubled him, the men all leaped from the bridge to confront their attackers to the other side where the end of the bridge was. As the Iwagakure delegation engaged one half of the military force the Tsuchikage just tossed the entire bridge at the other crushing that entire part and making large chunks of the entire rocky forest to plummet down below. He then turned around and focused his attention on the Kirigakure military.</p><p>"Men, scatter! I'll take care of them all," he said as the men all dashed backward concealing themselves in the forest. The Tsuchikage kicked his body off of the air and dashed forward diving into the entire squad of ninja. One brave Kirigakure shinobi jumped off and decided to punch the Tsuchikage right in the face as he dashed at them seeing how the Kaguya was wide open. As the man's fist collided with the Tsuchikage's face a loud cracking sound made everyone around that area pout in disgust, the man screamed pathetically as he fell to the ground clutching his shattered arm.</p><p>The Kaguya stomped the ground sending powerful shockwave and making the entire area start to slide into the abyss below. Quite a lot of Kirigakure ninja fell to the ground crying out in pain as their leg bones were busted by the impulse that passed through the dirt being transferred into their lower bodies as it passed through. Those ninja all started falling into the abyss below, many others retreated further into the forest.</p><p>The Tsuchikage moved incredibly fast dashing through the forest and appearing near several ninja running in pairs and knocking them out just by slamming into them. Then the white-haired hero slammed the ground a couple of more times sending shockwaves and opening up fissures that swallowed smaller squads whole and knocked even more ninja down busting their legs. Two powerhouses of the Kirigakure military dashed up to the Kaguya who avoided their punches and then grabbed their arms lifting the men into the air as if they weighed nothing, he then swung them around as he jumped up and drove his knees into both of their backs finishing the men off instantly as they fell lifeless to the ground.</p><p>"What incredible strength!" a Tsuchigakure ninja gulped in awe, "So this is the strength that Tsuchikage acquired mining in the great gold mines?" he asked a fellow shinobi who just shook his head.</p><p>"What you see here isn't just physical strength. Yaban-sama was not only missing his clan's signature bloodline, he was also very bad at ninjutsu. That did not stop him though, he trained hard and increased his chakra pushing his body and powering his physical state as well." The man began explaining, as he did the Tsuchikage kept flashing through the battlefield knocking out one small squad of Kirigakure ninja after the other without even breaking a sweat just by dashing into them.</p><p>"So Tsuchikage-sama is like Chestnut Hanasaku of Konoha then? Has he somehow figured out her secret? After all even if one enhances one's physical attributes by just increasing their chakra level there's a heavy limit to everything, one that uses a jutsu to enhance their physical abilities will always best one that strengthened them naturally by increasing their overall chakra levels, right?" the first one asked still cheering on his Kage who got hit in the face with a katana only for the chakra enhanced blade to shatter into smallest bits.</p><p>Many more ninja tried to punch and kick Yaban but all of them collapsed to the ground rolling on the floor with broken bones. Even those that became powerful taijutsu specialists by training their chakra and increasing their physical limits to new heights couldn't handle hitting Yaban, leave alone being hit by him.</p><p>"No... Yaban-sama realized that this method that is common among taijutsu users will only take him this far. He went against his genes and started busting his body by training the secret Tsuchikage technique of boulder weight manipulation. All the leaders of the village were masters of this technique, all of them brought something new to the mix, Yaban-sama didn't want to become the leader - he just wanted to master the technique because it was in his way. After all, if he mastered what he was born without the ability to use that meant he could also break the known limits of the primitive strength boosting methods... While he did not realize his goals and break the chakra level strength boosting limits, he did raise the Weightless Boulder Technique to new heights. What you see before you is... A man who had combined natural strength and the ability to change an object's mass in mere moments. He can fly by making himself weightless, he can lift a mountain, if he wants to, by making the mountain weigh nothing and then undo his own technique after tossing it. It is safe to say that Kaguya Yaban became the strongest man alive..."</p><p>As the two ninja exchanged their admiration for the Tsuchikage the man just about finished up with the entire squadron of Kirigakure shinobi. The man dashed around the battlefield beating the men up, sending them flying with mere flicks and sometimes restraining his punches and just unleashing flurries of blurring punching combinations onto one man completely overwhelming them.</p><p>The man's strength was not what was impressive, it was his perfect absolute control over his ability - one moment he could punch as strong as a hammer, the next one he could punch the man so high that he reached the sky and disappeared in the clouds. The Kirigakure ninja started retreating but none of them really stood a chance, Kaguya Yaban was just faster, stronger and in control of the battle the entire time. Had Mizukage Shirona decided to send the entire Kirigakure military at him he'd have likely destroyed it all. And yet still, as completely overwhelming as Kaguya Yaban was... He was holding back and it was evident.</p><p>Finally, with the final dash close to the last enemy shinobi the Kaguya left the man spinning around from the intense speed that the Tsuchikage used to fly past him. Then the man simply landed from above pounding the man into the head and driving him deep into the Kusagakure soil leaving just a black hole as no one really knew where the shinobi ended up in. The entire Kirigakure military force sent after the Tsuchikage was destroyed! Suddenly a brown and golden flash blurred through the dark thickness of the Kusagakure forests. A man in a brown trenchcoat and shoulder-length golden hair appeared right in front of Kaguya Yaban cocking his hand backward for a punch.</p><p>"I've got you, Tsuchikage bastard!" the man with a black watch cap yelled out enthusiastically thrusting his powerful hand forward aiming right at Tsuchikage's face.</p>
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<a name="section0050"><h2>50. I Can Lift Any Weight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the fist of the mysterious attacker collided with Yaban's forehead, a powerful shockwave made the grass bend down and tore leaves off of the trees around, any Iwagakure ninja that were close to the vicinity of the impact were tossed backward from the sheer force of impact. The others nearby just stood there shocked and overtaken by awe, both feeling threatened by the unexpected appearance and incredible power of this man and also shocked that the Tsuchikage was hit point blank with such an impact. This was no sword or an assassin's knife, this hit would've made a small mountain crumble, it was enough to crush rocks with.</p><p>The man who threw the awesome punch just stood there and laughed at himself, his strange cocky facial expression combined with his somewhat rugged and bratty attire and a haircut as well as his lazy stubble made the man look like some sort of village drunkard. As the man opened his mouth it still sort of reeked of alcohol but it felt more like an after effect which only made it smell a thousand times worse. Only after a couple of moments did the man's coat finally catch up to his static state and the back end of it finally touched the ground. The blond-haired assailant just kept staring at the Tsuchikage waiting for the man to flip over and die from getting hit by his fist right at the center of his skull.</p><p>"Well..." suddenly the Tsuchikage spoke up, his tone implied that he was questioning the man's actions, "I keep waiting for you to finish your attack but you're just standing there and laughing like an idiot... Am I to take this is it then?" Yaban asked politely wiping the cocky smile off of the assailant's face as he dashed backward and cracked his knuckles.</p><p>"Darn it! I thought I had you this time..." the Kirigakure attacked smiled and wiped his nose playfully with his thumb.</p><p>"I must say your punch improved in those four years, perhaps now I can attack you without feeling bad. You look like you've toughened up, I'm sure you can take it..." Yaban replied straightening his body up and answering the assailant's cocky stare with a cold one of his own.</p><p>"This will be nothing like back then during my Ninja Tribunal! This time I'll leave you beaten up and bruised in a pool of your own slobber!" the man shouted out thrusting his fist at the Tsuchikage who did not even honor this claim with a reply.</p><p>"Am I missing something? Who is this man?" an Iwagakure ninja asked his colleague who just raised his finger up to his lips and silenced his friend whispering back his answer.</p><p>"This is Namikaze Joki, a Kirigakure Sannin, the only Sannin in the history to have a Ninja Tribunal case against him during his time as a Sannin and the only one to have spent time in prison. Tsuchikage-sama took part in his Tribunal session himself and Joki tried to escape the Tribunal by attacking the Council of Ninja that were judging him, Tsuchikage-sama brutally beat the man down and left him completely broken. Still, for someone to survive being punched and tossed around by Tsuchikage is an impressive feat."</p><p>A black flash blurred as the Tsuchikage lunged forward at his opponent having decreased his weight to make it easier for him to move faster. The man threw a punch only for the Sannin to dodge it completely, then the Tsuchikage followed up with another blurred combination of punches and kicks, each of them packed so much force that even as they missed the air that Yaban's attacks split hit the Sannin's clothes and pushed him backward, only because of his strong body did the blonde manage to stay on his feet during this attack. Joki never even tried to block a single hit, he knew better than that, must've been experience speaking.</p><p>"You picked up your speed as well old man... Gonna teach me how to do that?" Joki taunted his opponent as he threw another powerful and focused punch. Tsuchikage did not even try to move out of its way and let it just hit his nose. The man's feet dug deep into the dirt as Yaban's body got buried into the soil halfway throwing dirt and tree roots away as rubble. A slight stream of blood ran down Yaban's nose - this man managed to somehow pass through Tsuchikage's impenetrable body. The white-haired powerhouse just grinned with half of his lips.</p><p>"It's simple, speed increases your weight - the faster you move the more your body technically weighs, some ninja compensate for this by intensifying the flow of their chakra to "armor up" their bodies and protect their bones from being crushed, I just decrease my own weight using the "Lightweight Boulder Technique"." Tsuchikage's legs burst out of the dirt as the man dragged himself out from the ground and landed further away. He still had that confident smile that his opponent had as well, at that early point of their meeting both combatants equally believed in their chances of success.</p><p>"Quid pro quo, could you tell me how exactly you've powered up this much? Last time we "fought" you were just slightly stronger than your usual Jounin and to top it off you had no ninjutsu potential whatsoever. Now you're like a completely different person, I actually felt that punch, then again, I only barely boosted my own weight." Tsuchikage asked. His opponent took off his cap and tossed it aside letting his shoulder-length golden hair flow freely.</p><p>"When you left me I was battered and broken, I had more bones that were ground to dust than solid ones and that was just from one thrust of your palm. Naturally, that was not a good state to be sent to prison in... You've no idea how much I suffered. I was beaten and kicked around many more times in there. I saw the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst, and had to get my feet deep into shit to finally kick myself off and start swimming up. You ask me how I managed this? Simple. Kirigakure Correctional Facility is called "The Zone", it has that certain tradition - inmates fight until the warden says he's satisfied. For exchange, they lose some time off of their punishments."</p><p>Tsuchikage closed his eyes and turned away, then breathed in heavily and opened his eyes, "Don't they seal your chakra in prisons?" he asked. Joki's fist shot out in front of the man's ripped black shirt.</p><p>"That's right, they do. That's the catch - no one can keep a streak going, the one who loses gets the years that are "shaved off" of the winner. Since no one can use chakra it's just pure fisticuffs where only talent and skill matters."</p><p>"In other words, not a world you would do well in..." Tsuchikage smiled.</p><p>"Yeah, that's right, laugh it up! Then again, you're right. I got my butt kicked over and over again, I got sent into that joint for four years and I ended up accumulating sixteen hundred years in total. I couldn't believe it, I was a shinobi, a Sannin! And there they were, those mercenaries and bandits were constantly kicking my butt... Do you know why? Because they live like that, that's just the way they fight for freedom as well! They're trained to fight ninja using just their bare hands and they can take a ninja without chakra manipulation ability down easily. It's incredible how rusty chakra makes one in hand to hand, who cares if you're a master martial artist if your punch can bust mountains, right? Well in "The Zone" no one can punch through mountains, it took me weeks to learn how to punch a man and not break my own hand."</p><p>Tsuchikage looked around, "That is something that your comrades here could've benefited from, so were you able to master it?"</p><p>Joki nodded "Yeah, after every battle I trained, studied how to fight from my cellmates in exchange for my food. When I won I lifted my weights five hundred times, when I lost I lifted them five thousand times. I became stronger than I have ever been and beat every dog in the house using my own prowess. Then the warden gave me an offer I could not refuse - fight him in exchange for complete freedom. If I lost I would've stayed there forever - become the "Scapegoat". Scapegoats get half of the punishments of every loser, if a loser gets two extra years, he actually gets one while his scapegoat gets one. I would've been the Scapegoat not of one person but of the entire prison... It's basically a life sentence with no hope of escape. Warden was actually a ninja, a Special Jounin, he also tried to cheat by bringing weapons into the fight but I busted his face in. Left him for the other inmates to deal with as they deal with all cheaters while I walked out through the gates. I thought that I'd never get work but things changed - Shirona-sama took me in, unlocked my chakra again, and made me more powerful than I've ever been, she also returned my position back. All just for killing you... I told her... "Lady, I'd do it for fun."..."</p><p>After Joki finished his story and awkward silence set in. Every Iwagakure ninja looked at him with different eyes - they felt bad for the man. This young man was not a villain, he was a victim of the village that gave birth to him. A baby born in a family of killers and deceivers who was told that killing and deceiving was a way to be successful. A boy who rose through the ranks by killing those that thought similarly to him but were slightly weaker, slower, less intelligent, or even a bit less lucky.</p><p>A ninja who followed every dirty order he was given to the final letter and got in trouble because of it taking the arrow for his village and being the scapegoat of the tyrannical Daikon's reputation. A Sannin who lost his entire lifetime of achievements and was continuously beaten and kicked around by everyone else. A free man who was given a chance to redeem himself and stay relevant in his shithole of a village if he agreed to fight Kaguya Yaban, one of the strongest ninja alive. Namikaze Joki was just a plaything of his superiors, always a scapegoat his entire life...</p><p>"Well, I'm glad it all worked out for you in the end... Anyways, if this is your solution you stand no chance at all, leave and become a Missing Nin or just disappear and return once I kick your Lady out of her seat and reform her village with my own bare hands. Kirigakure is crying the same bloody tears that my own village once shed, if you stand in my way I shall crush you with my full force and flush you aside, the way you are you cannot beat me..." Yaban finally spoke after the long silence and started calmly walking forward. The ground beneath his feet and the light footsteps suggested that he didn't even bump up his weight and just decided to ignore and pass through Joki.</p><p>"DON'T IGNORE ME AGAIN, YABAAAAAN!" Joki shouted out like a lunatic into the sky raising his fists up and tensing his body up, his pupils completely faded and slobber started shooting out from the man's mouth as four years of channeled rage and suffering converted into strength made its release making a powerful crater and pushing the Tsuchikage back with just the force of Joki's chakra bursting from his body.</p><p>Whoever this man standing against the Tsuchikage was, it was no longer a man who listened to reason or could properly evaluate the difference in strength, the man jumped forward and threw a fist right into Yaban's face, as hard as the Tsuchikage tensed his jaw his head was still turned to the side but quickly recovered.</p><p>Joki threw a punch after another with each punch making a thundering and deafening boom and sending blasts of air from the point of impact but they barely even hurt the Tsuchikage.</p><p>"You were just a man who brawled your entire life, you just fought everyone all the time and increased your physical strength that way - by increasing your chakra level and becoming strong. Eventually, you hit the same limit everyone else hits and you thought that was it, then your chakra was taken away and you felt again what it meant to be weak. You worked hard to regain that power and, in the end, your power doubled with the power of your suffering adding to that of your success... But Joki-san... MY HARD WORK EXCEEDS YOURS!" Tsuchikage shouted throwing a powerful punch right into the young man's chest and sending him up into the sky crashing through the thick tree branches above.</p><p>Yaban released his weight and jumped up soaring through the sky, as he dashed up to the insane opponent he once again bumped up his weight at the last second before his fist collided with the man's chest sending him further up, then he lightened himself and dashed to the man again, punch from the side sending him soaring forward through the sky. Tsuchikage kept dashing to his helpless opponent and kept punching him sending him flying beyond his vision again and again with every punch Joki screamed and spat out blood - his defenses were destroyed after the first punch was thrown.</p><p>After one dash up to the golden-haired rebel, Tsuchikage concentrated even more into his fist and dug it deep into the man's back sending him all the way back, right to where he weightlessly dashed through the air and hit the flying by the figure of the Sannin with his elbow sending him crashing down into the forest ground shattering it and sending the entire forest platform down into the abyss that ended with a river below. Just barely did the Iwagakure ninja manage to avoid this absolute destruction by dashing through the trees further away than the destruction could reach.</p><p>Yaban breathed out and descended onto the edge of the stable platform. He felt sorry for this man, he was just a puppet of all the right emotions and feelings who was used by the world's craftiest puppet master. The Kaguya had never met this woman, this Shirona but... He already didn't like her at all. He intended to kick her butt and demote her from her position as Mizukage, then reform her village himself. Luckily enough, a Kage Summit was already called - a perfect opportunity for this decision and now he will have proof to the other Kage that this needs to be done.</p><p>Joki's mad face appeared again in front of Yaban, a powerful fist hit the Tsuchikage into his chest when the man was unprepared busting some ribs. Luckily enough the man managed to harden up just in time for the following combination.</p><p>"Kirigakure Taijutsu Style: Jailbreaker!" the man yelled out sending sixteen full-powered fists right into Tsuchikage's chest. Yaban lifted off the ground and fell to the ground again, this was the first time that his men saw their leader get knocked off his feet. Joki's face was bleeding, it was cracked open in multiple places, his chest was torn as well, his coat was torn off and now his injured chest and arms were revealed, his jeans were ripped up from falling down and hitting the rocks as he was going down. His nails were bleeding from climbing all the way back up through the solid rock. Yaban stood back on his feet and wiped the blood from his nose and his mouth.</p><p>Yaban charged up to his opponent to finish this, just stop holding back, cease making it easy for his opponent. The first punch missed, Joki just leaned out of it and followed it up with a blow of his own that Yaban caught. With a confident smile, Yaban crushed the man's fist and pushed his opponent onto his knees. The loud cracking sound of the man's knuckle and splashing blood from his bones emerging from under the skin made the ninja observing the battle clench and turn away from the cruel sight of the battle. Tsuchikage threw another punch at his kneeling opponent but Yaban jumped backward kicking out of the Kaguya's hold of his fist. Then the golden-haired brawler dove forward trying to tackle the Tsuchikage with his shoulder and send him down, the Kaguya remained standing still, the shoulder that dug into his stomach barely even pushed him back.</p><p>"Weightless Boulder Style: Stratosphere Punch!" Kaguya yelled throwing an upwards fist, Joki responded with a two-handed slam that clashed with the Tsuchikage's fist and was blown backward by the force of impact. Tsuchikage charged up to his opponent and started punching, again and again, shoving his opponent through the soil, the rocky lower layers of dirt, at some point the Kaguya punched his opponent through into the water below and continued to punch sending Joki further and deeper until he hit the bottom, even then the Kaguya continued to punch again and again digging his mad opponent even deeper into the dirt until something hot shot out at which point the Kaguya dashed madly up to his platform. At this point, he had widened the ravine several tens of times over its previous state.</p><p>Joki's arm burst through and grabbed onto the edge of the dirty platform and dragged his tired burnt up body that still had leaking masses of hot red mass on his shoulders. The man's chakra burst, tossing the heated red mass aside, after this, however, his defense lowered. It was evident that the man was in his last breaths. Yaban crossed his hands over his chest.</p><p>"You've done well to use your chakra to avoid significant injury this far, intensifying your flow to harden your body and all that but to withstand my punches takes a lot more chakra than you can spend. You're just about to bleed dry out of it. Accept the truth, I am the strongest ninja alive, Raikage Imasu is the fastest ninja alive, Kazekage Mugao is the craftiest, Hokage Howoku is the smartest and the best diplomat. We are the Strongest Generation of Ninja and all of us are in our prime. With us, training, and working as hard as we can you will never catch up.</p><p>"Shut uuuup!" Joki yelled out charging up to Yaban and punching him in the face with the punch bouncing off, the man continued to punch again and again until both of his knuckles dyed red and started pulsing with pain and spitting out blood.</p><p>"Your chakra is at its lowest, your punches no longer bother me, if I hit you you'd probably punch the very atoms out of you. Surrender now, please, return and challenge me again when you grow even stronger. This is over..." the Tsuchikage repeated again. "The man who... Lifted a mountain... My ass..." Joki started spitting out some mad words in a creepy tone and ran away, for a moment there the Tsuchikage thought this was over, the man relaxed and turned back but then he saw...</p><p>Joki leaped over the divide and grabbed hold of the entire forest island that was floating on the ocean below, trying to rip it all out of the water and fling it at the Tsuchikage. The man wanted to prove to Yaban that he could lift something greater than a mountain but... The man's nails started to bleed, the blood vessels in Joki's eyes burst as he desperately tried to lift the island but it didn't even budge, he just ripped chunks of rocks and dirt.</p><p>It was then that the Tsuchikage realized - this man was manipulated to such extent that he would never stop! He was torturing and injuring himself trying to match to an unmatchable ideal. He wasn't like Yaban, he didn't just work hard, he tossed himself at the hardest challenges hoping to survive them and when he lost he kept killing himself trying to do it again. The Mizukage implanted the belief that this man could win and by doing that with such success she destined this man to suffering and death.</p><p>"Give up!" Yaban yelled out and without waiting for an answer jumped down into the abyss below. The Iwagakure shinobi continued to watch and wait, did the Tsuchikage kill himself? Did he realize that his opponent would never give up until he was dead and wanted to finish this by committing suicide? That was impossible, that was not the kind of man that Tsuchikage was...</p><p>Suddenly Joki shook in his boots, he fell to the ground and grabbed hold of a barely intact tree. The entire island shot up into the air right in front of the unbelieving eyes of the Iwagakure ninja.</p><p>"I can lift... Any weight... I need to... To help my people... I can make any hardship weigh nothing."</p><p>With those words, the Tsuchikage hurled the island to the side having it slam into the abyss of water below upside down. It wouldn't have taken long before the island crushed Joki to the bottom of the ocean. Yaban descended onto the ground and started walking to the Summit again. Everyone knew even someone as tenacious as Joki would never return after having an entire island thrown at them...</p><p>"Are you alright, Tsuchikage-sama?" one ninja asked rushing up closer to his leader.</p><p>"Let's just get to the Summit, there are words I need to have with this new Mizukage..." Yaban replied.</p>
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<a name="section0051"><h2>51. The Loop Tightens!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu, Howoku, and Haoru were dashing through numerous halls trying to catch up with the Mizukage who had gained significant distance over them. Each of them had different thoughts on the matter, each of them harbored quite different feelings but were somewhat unified with the desire to stop that woman, and while none of them exactly knew what she had planned, having her goals in mind it couldn't have been good. A hall just like countless others flashed through the eyes of the rushing men, they took no time to examine those halls or marvel at their well-preserved beauty having the age of the structure in mind.</p><p>Howoku was kept moving just by his desire to eliminate Mizukage Shirona. She was a woman who not only threatened his established status quo of peace between the five villages but also she loved the idea that she did. She was a woman who thought that nations were supposed to be fighting and that such was their natural state as villages training ninja. Howoku had met many people like that, people who thought that the only way for ninja villages to stay relevant was to stay in a warring state with all the other villages. Those people had an ounce of truth in their beliefs, ninja were warriors, assassins who should have always stayed ready for combat. Still, these people sentenced many young and unprepared ninja to death, ninja who could've grown up and excelled in their fields. Flowers that had not yet bloomed had no meaning in their wilting.</p><p>Tanshu wanted to stop Shirona but he had quite different, much simpler motives. She was a woman who stepped out of line, she dragged all of the other ninja villages by their hair and pissed them off. If she did not bite the dust that meant that any arrogant idiot with followers could do as they pleased. Shirona was a lot like God-Eyes, a figure from his past. A person who had a lot of influence and power that they couldn't really back up, pathetic figures of war who were just icons and had no purpose or right to exist. Even more, she had indirectly hurt his friend who was also a parent of his student's. Tanshu owed it to Mana and her father to stick it to the lady. Also, he had to admit, he was a bit worried about the well-being of Misu. He just upped and disappeared in the middle of the Summit, guys like him couldn't have died against just Barrier Corps, what was he doing? Where was he?</p><p>To Haoru this was as simple as it ever got - he just had a justification to break loose and kill some ninja and be on the right. The old man never really liked the kind, they acted like they were all that just because they had no moral codes and because the Lords liked them more. Of course, Lords would have preferred ninja over samurai, samurai had rules, they had standards and principles. Samurai would've never stricken down a child, an unarmed person, or a woman who was not a warrior, they would've never raised their swords against anyone who was not a threat to their Lord. Ninja were beyond all that and Shirona of all people was a living embodiment of that. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and had the nerve to step over everyone else and reach out for it. Warriors had no right to be ambitious, they surrendered their ambition to their Lords after accepting servitude. Haoru just wanted to cut that bitch down. It may have been a brutal and crude way of saying it but that was the kind of man Haoru was - primal and rude but to the point.</p><p>Finally, they entered the hall where on a platform on the third floor stood their blond, well-endowed nemesis. The woman spread her arms and smiled arrogantly, her face did not twitch nor did it display any emotion or fear. She just merely welcomed them in catching up with her.</p><p>"Let's get her talking, catch our breaths before we engage her, survey our surroundings. She lured us into here so she has an ace she is willing to throw down at the last second." Tanshu whispered and the two men to the side nodded.</p><p>"We're here, Shirona-san, there's no need to run, there's no need for any more words. We shall settle it all here but before we do I want to know... What did you do it for and was it worth it? You killed many men in preparation for this, you had to piss all of us off to have this Summit called, you played all of us making us think we were in control, you killed even more in this Summit, good men and women and good ninja. Good and loyal ninja you as potential Ninja Empress lost. So I ask you, Shirona, was it worth it?" Howoku started his attempt to get Shirona talking. The woman crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"Was it worth it...?" as she opened her mouth to speak Haoru was already up in her face with a wide smile that almost looked like it was about to tear his face apart. He thrust his sword forward only for it to freeze up and slam into a barrier halfway. Haoru's eyes twitched in surprise as a large man appeared in front of him and drove his palm right into Haoru, a palm that managed to cover the entire body of the samurai and send him crashing back into the mossy rock below. Four ninja stood nearby Shirona, four ninja with Kirigakure headbands and vests. The Mizukage laughed out and spread her arms wide again as if showing her men off.</p><p>"These are the four currently active Jounin of Kirigakure, the strongest I must add. Once you die here or beat them while barely breathing you can advance, I shall be waiting." Shirona spoke with an arrogant tone and turned around, Howoku yelled out in frustration.</p><p>"Damn it, Shirona! How many people will have to fight and spill their blood for you? How many lives will we have to end? Just come and fight us now yourself! Spare yourself and your men the trouble!" he shouted out.</p><p>Tanshu looked at his friend and he started to feel a bit worried. Howoku was getting emotional, he was ready to break loose and wasn't completely objective in this situation. He was more likely to make a mistake - overuse his Starlight release and exhaust himself, kill people he didn't have to kill or the other way around - leave alive and kicking people that were indoctrinated too deeply. Shirona just turned her head back and glanced at the Hokage for just a second, just enough to reply, and then left as the rocky door slammed behind her.</p><p>"Make no mistake, Howoku, my game is to kill you and I will use as many loyal ninja as it takes to kill you or wear you out, and then I'll finish you myself."</p><p>"SHIRONA!" Howoku yelled out with his powerful enraged voice penetrating the rocky door and briefly making the Mizukage glance at the door and shiver. The woman had to double-check that it closed and that she was alone in the corridor. With a loud clacking of her sandals, the blonde quickly made her way along the corridor as a blue shining oni mask appeared out of nowhere and the blue on the mask lit up. The mask was busted up, cracked, and dirtied. From the looks of it, the Sunagakure front didn't go too well.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Mizukage-sama, Kazekage beat through our troops and beat me. I managed to give him the slip though, at the last moment using Demon Body Replacement Jutsu." The man reported, small torrents of blood flooded from the location of the mask and dripping noises suggested that he just barely escaped with his life, and yet he was reporting it like it was just another day on the watch. Shirona's face disappeared in her wild blond hair, the woman was thinking, Kazekage's survival was unexpected and very troublesome. Based on her information Mugao was the weakest of the Kage who was famous not for his strength but his craftiness. If he survived it was likely that the others would too.</p><p>"I'd appreciate it if you did not kill me for my failure. I believe I can still be of use." Oni Mask added as the emotional weight of the operation on the woman's shoulders became apparent.</p><p>"Just because I am Daikon's successor does not mean I use his idiotic methods. Just because I am willing to sacrifice people loyal to me does not mean I will do so for no reason. I am glad that you survived, please return to the village and recover, before that, however, I'd like to know a couple of things: who did you use as your replacement, what state is the Kazekage in, have you any news from the other battlefields, how long until Kazekage delegation gets here?" she replied with a shaking tone.</p><p>This was the first sign of things not going as planned and having the grandeur of the operation it was of no surprise. Oni Mask would hate it to be in this woman's shoes, she now had the crosshairs of the entire world aimed at her head after the brave actions she pulled off and all with "patriotism" in mind. Oni Mask himself did not believe in those pathetic things, that was why he was still alive and he suspected that these feelings for her village may just end up being Shirona's downfall.</p><p>"My substitute is of no importance, just a victim on the battlefield though I believe they may be onto me at the moment. I placed a Transformation Seal on him, I didn't have too much chakra to use so it lasted about an hour. I moved using a Transportation Jutsu used by someone from Barrier Corps here who got my message, I'd say the delegation is about an hour and a bit away from here. So far I've got no messages from the other Sannin, they are all likely either still fighting or all dead. The Kazekage is injured and exhausted, the military force managed to kill off the majority of his men and injure him, I put even more work on him. If you fought him it'd take you approximately four to six minutes to finish the job. He uses Puppetry techniques on his scythe and then has some sort of "puppet armor", I poked it for weak spots, the only ones I could find are around the shoulders, still, it'd be best to time it out as using that armor costs Mugao chakra. That is all I discovered." Oni Mask concluded his report.</p><p>"Thank you, you are the best subordinate one could have," Shirona gently stroked Oni Mask's mask telling him to stand up as the mask's glowing eyes evened up with those of the woman. "Now, please come with me so that I can have one of my Barrier Corps transport you home and you can recover. It goes without saying that once our plan is completed I'll give you full control over the Water Lord's region, you'll have all the children for your "Demon Programme" you'll want."</p><p>Oni Mask did not say anything, just bowed his head, and followed Lady Mizukage to where she meant to go. He could've sworn that he heard loud incomprehensible sounds from the room behind blocked by thick stone blocks that were supposed to act as a door.</p><p>Inside a wild battle was raging. A silver-haired woman threw a punch aiming at Haoru's chest, her hand had that strange near-invisible mist-like aura around it. Right at the same moment that Haoru dodged the first blow an obese ninja appeared behind him with the speed matching that of a significantly more athletic ninja. The man thrust his arm forward slamming it into the rock making the rocky floor crumble and shoot out the debris of rocks to the side. Haoru took a couple of faster than the eye can follow swings of his katana to block each and every stone tossed at him, differently from most swordsmen of his level he did not rely so much on drawing techniques but instead chose the "naked blade" approach where his blade usually only entered the sheath when he meant to use a drawing technique or when the battle was over.</p><p>The obese Kirigakure ninja leaped forward thrusting his palms in a mad flurry of strikes reminding of a sumo wrestler, Haoru leaped backward just the right length to avoid his strikes but also just close enough to make the sumo ninja believe that he was going to hit the man. Suddenly water shot out from two smaller gourds around the sumo ninja's side and coated his palms as upon touching the ninja's palms the water expanded in size as well.</p><p>"Water Style: Ogre Push!" the man chanted driving his watery palm forward and shooting a mad vortex of water as the masses of water around his palms exploded into wild whirlwinds. After the water calmed down the sumo ninja took a moment to locate Haoru sticking himself onto the ceiling and the other two jumping onto walls.</p><p>"I shall take the silver-haired Yuki lady and the Onimoui sumo-bastard, split the others and move them away from here, I'm gonna break loose and I don't wanna cut you hatchlings!" Haoru laughed out madly as he took his widespread legs and sword over his head stance while upside down and prepared to attack. The silver-haired woman toyed with her hair.</p><p>"Oh, impressive, you analyzed our clans and abilities with just one attack." the Yuki woman commended the elder samurai who just spat to the side forgetting that he was hanging upside down which caused a very strange trajectory of his spit making him have to lean his own head to avoid spitting on his own head. The sumo ninja rubbed the back of his head with his finger.</p><p>"Is this guy really the Haoru with the God Sword technique?" he mumbled out.</p><p>Without replying Haoru jumped down appearing close to the sumo ninja and slashing in his general direction. The sword just bounced off of the man's skin as the samurai laughed out even louder from the depth of his lungs and then took his defensive stance again. "Just as I suspected - an Onimoui, most of your kin wear thick armor to strengthen their natural impenetrable skin, you, on the other hand, wear nothing but your trousers."</p><p>The sumo ninja slapped his cheeks making his tattooed face flab around for a moment before the flesh settled down. "Yes, my weakling kin wear armor on top of their stone-hard skins, I, however, chose to abandon armor, I trained at the Water Temple, slapping tsunami waves to the side like water spouts, toughening my skin to the point where armor is of no use to me - the person with chakra control and precision to enhance their weapon to be sharp enough to cut me will never be born. Even the great God Sword Jutsu users cannot cut my skin!" the sumo chubby slapped his belly again making it flab around for a while. Haoru laughed out from the depth of his lungs. This elder was having a time of his life.</p><p>"I dunno, chubby, with my last cut I haven't enhanced my blade with chakra at all..." he added ominously.</p><p>The Onimoui clansman swiped his arm to the side and shouted out "Liar, no one can cut that strong and deep without any chakra at all."</p><p>Haoru's blade flashed through the air, the chubby ninja stumbled back a couple of steps and clenched a shallow cut on the thickest spot of his belly. He was too surprised to even talk properly.</p><p>"T-This is... It... Can't... Be... What kind... of a... Monster... Are you?!" the chubby yelled out, his partner clenched her fists tighter making small blinking snowflakes fly out.</p><p>"Don't underestimate your enemy, you fool" she taunted her partner who got back up on his feet. "Right" the sumo ninja just added and wiped his running nose and stood back into an offensive stance.</p><p>"Don't feel discouraged, I aimed to cut you in two..." Haoru laughed with a demonic look in his eyes that made the two Jounin sweat. Such was the intimidation and the power of the presence of one of the most powerful samurai in the world. This man wasn't the one overestimating himself when he took on two of the Kirigakure jounin, it was them who were unlucky to face off against him. The woman leaped forward, Haoru's blade didn't even more, or at least it didn't appear to move but her body separated into two parts and fell to the floor. Instead of blood, however, water burst out as her water clone collapsed.</p><p>The silver-haired Yuki appeared from behind the swordsman thrusting her palms with sharp icicles on her lower parts of the palms. Blood squirt out but the samurai barely even let the woman know that he felt the hit, her body just split into twelve parts again as if it went through some shredding machine but it once again collapsed into a dissolving water clone. The woman was just poking at him, seeing the way he fought and how he dealt with attackers. So far the results were scary - he was able to cut anything or anyone into dozens of pieces without even a sign that his blade moved. It would've taken the eye of a master swordsman to properly even see the blur, it would've taken an equally as skilled swordsman to be able to block these attacks, not by reaction but by instinct - the only way to defend against such an offensive.</p><p>From nowhere combinations of blows pummelled Haoru and with a crushing strike of water enhanced palm strike, he was sent back and slammed into the rocky walls, bouncing off of the first and hitting the wall on the other side. Anyone would have long since died after being hit by such an attack but Haoru stood up and dusted off his torn trousers and his muscular chest and once again took his famous defensive stance. This was Haoru - the user of one of the four God Sword techniques, a man whom even a battlefield of the war could not claim, how were young children of peaceful times ever hope to step up to the challenge?</p><p>Further away, one hall back Howoku was fighting his opponent on one side of the hall and Tanshu was facing off against his on the other. Such splitting of the teams was so that neither of the trios got into the way of the other, apparently, the Kirigakure jounin did not care how they would fight - all that mattered to them was that they killed or wore out their opponents for their beloved Mizukage Shirona - the mistress of manipulation and intrigue to take down. The two halls were divided into three battlefields and a fierce scuffle was about to begin, the last obstacle in the way of the trio before they face Shirona, the penultimate step of the ladder!</p>
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<a name="section0052"><h2>52. The Barrier Buster And The Monkey Woman</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The man in front of Tanshu wore a dark cloak and a white mask with black lenses. It reminded the Sannin a lot of the attire that the Kirigakure Barrier Corps wore but this mask looked a bit fancier, this man must've been a captain of a Barrier Corps squad or something like that, Jounin usually didn't make commanders of the entire Corps, that seat was usually reserved for Sannin or Kage themselves. Tanshu pulled out a kunai and twisted it around his finger then snapped his hand lock shut and placed the kunai in front of his body raising it up to the face level, he was ready to defend himself against this man.</p><p>The cloaked figure leaped forward throwing a fist with glowing yellow chakra emanating faintly around it. Tanshu swiped his kunai at the man's mask but he did not move. The kunai made sparks burst as it collided with the steel mask and sent it off of the man's face clanging further to the side into the darker areas of the room. The man's fist hit Tanshu right into the chest knocking the Sannin back. Grunting from the pain the Red Dog quickly got back on his feet coughing up blood. The taste of blood in his mouth was something that brought the mindless instinctual fighter in him but it was something he didn't want right now. Howoku was going to make a mistake, Shirona was working her magic on him and Tanshu needed to be there and make sure that his Hokage didn't mess up, he needed the whole of his brain in the game.</p><p>The cloaked figure quickly advanced to press his advantage, the cloak rustled as the man moved revealing his rather ordinary looking face, if it wasn't for the diagonal scar spanning from forehead to chin, that is. The yellow chakra started glowing yet again from the man's arms as he slammed both of them from the side trying to crush Tanshu's skull but the Sannin ducked under it and with the aid of his arm pushed his body off of the ground thrusting both of his feet into the man's body, sending him tumbling back and shouting in pain. Tanshu straightened out and spat some blood out, the fact that a punch from a ninja made him bleed that badly alerted him, it was certainly unusual as he trained his body to the peak that training one's chakra might result in. He was at the peak ninja limit of physicality and no Barrier Corps punch could bust through his tough muscles that easily.</p><p>"What the hell was that?" Tanshu asked observing his opponent as he stood up, it was obvious that his opponent had taken some damage as it took him some time to get back on his feet. "I thought you Barrier Corps folk actually bothered to block attacks, I wasn't really hitting you at my top speed and yet you took it. Are you just a weakling or was there a reason for that?"</p><p>"I'm not a Barrier Ninja." The scarred man replied with a low and husky voice. Judging from how growling he sounded it was quite obvious that he did not speak often. When people don't speak a lot their voices grow husky and they need to clean their throats to speak more clearly. Tanshu's eyebrow shot up, this man clearly wore a Barrier Corps outfit, why would he do so if he wasn't a barrier ninja? Even more, Tanshu clearly saw the man conjuring a barrier to protect the Mizukage before. Truth be told, Haoru's sword was frozen before it was blocked which meant that the barrier wouldn't have blocked it as it was coated with chakra. That Yuki woman coated Haoru's blade in Ice Release chakra so that the basic barrier could block it as the ice reduced its sharpness and focus of the chakra. That meant that the man's barriers were not all that much more than those of normal Barrier Corps ninja.</p><p>"I am a Barrier Buster" the man concluded as his fist lit up with yellow chakra again. So that was it? In the Barrier Corps, there were not only ninja that could create a barrier using barrier ninjutsu but also ninja who could break through most common barriers by using some sort of special combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu. Barrier ninja would've worked well as a defensive force while Barrier Busters would've fit for the offensive - just to break the defensive of the enemy. Konohagakure didn't really have an official Barrier Corps for a while, most of their ninja capable of barrier ninjutsu just worked in the village's Protective Service which was an order of ninja loyal only to the Hokage who did their best to contain, dismantle and crush any threats to the village with little to no villager casualties. Tanshu took his offensive stance again and prepared an attack.</p><p>The man's body just leaned forward with all of his muscles tensing before it lost balance and slammed into the ground like a bag of potatoes. This was an impressive display of muscle mastery with the ninja being able to relax and tense their muscles with great ease making them incredibly aware of their body and able to utilize their own natural speed and strength perfectly. Tanshu covered the small distance between the fighters within mere moments throwing multiple punches, the man shot his hands forward with the yellow glow of his chakra forming an improvised barrier but Tanshu's strength tore right through them.</p><p>The first batch of blows stopped right after breaking the barrier but the Red Dog soon adjusted to the strength and kept on his barrage of blows breaking more and more of the man's bones. After his hands grew weaker, the Sannin switched to his legs but that let the Barrier Buster adjust his strategy and strengthen his barriers - it was like Tanshu hit rocky walls as his legs busted through the strengthened barriers but stopped right afterward.</p><p>Tanshu breathed in and out heavily as he used a couple of back handspring jumps to gain some distance. His maximum force could bust this man's barriers but did nothing more, he needed more than just brute force to get him out of that one...</p><hr/><p>Howoku continued to stare at the middle-aged woman he was supposed to beat to advance to where the Mizukage decided to hide. This woman wore several steel belts wrapped around her body as armor and had flexible shoulder armor. Such protective attire was not really common for ninja as they strived to be as quick and as stealthy as possible. Even more, the woman's goofy smile continued to throw Howoku a bit off balance as she seemed to be enjoying the fact that she'll be fighting against the Fourth Hokage. All of her armor mostly appeared to protect her upper body as she wore baggy trousers with knee pads below so Howoku questioned the effectiveness of half-baked armor approach.</p><p>Such goofiness and carefree approach annoyed him, Howoku had no time to waste on henchmen! The man shot forward with a charge, he did not even use his Starlight Release as he intended to save his chakra for when he needed it - against Shirona. The woman leaned backward and jumped back, using her hands to spring her body back forward and thrusting her legs into Howoku's chest making the man tumble back, she then bit her finger and made a couple of handseals summoning a large iron staff.</p><p>"Tee hee..." she laughed out goofily making Howoku even more annoyed. He was not a taijutsu prodigy and this woman seemed to be quite flexible and strong, from her choice of weapon one would've assumed she knew how to handle her staff too. It couldn't have been helped - Howoku needed his Starlight Release to win.</p><p>"May I ask you to step aside, there is no need for us to fight, you are in the way of me taking out a threat to my village and that is something I punish with death. I know Shirona indoctrinated you deep and that you are most likely not a bad person, please reconsider this fight, lady." Howoku angrily spoke up to which the woman just smiled and rubbed her nose.</p><p>"Ease up a bit, stiffypants. I just wanna fight, I don't care 'bout that politics thing. That's what Shirona told me she'd give and that's what she gave me so let's not bother about our villages and just fight." The woman spoke in a very strange manner and she used no honorifics when talking about her Kage. This one seemed much more like the "Hanasaku-type" to Howoku, a lovable idiot who only had their own motivations and were mostly harmless.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I cannot do that when people I strive to protect are in danger. I see now that you wish my village no ill and are just acting upon your instinct to fight, I shall not kill you but I will not hold back." Howoku replied.</p><p>Suddenly the woman appeared right behind him with a crazy smile, "Why would you do THAT, silly?" was all that Howoku heard before her heavy staff drove into his back sending forward. Had Howoku not broken his flight by thrusting his arms to the floor and flipping himself on his feet he'd have slammed into the wall. That impact... Howoku felt his chakra straining and fading inside.</p><p>Chakra worked in a rotation-like process - like a high-intensity engine. It flowed inside one's body and could be borrowed for various techniques and ways of use. Most skilled ninja, however, could manipulate not only chakra itself but its flow process, make it more intense to withstand blows that would kill normal people, temporarily increase their strength to punch out trained warriors with one blow. The likes of Tanshu could intensify it to such extent that it made his chakra leak out creating that "killing intent-like" aura around him sensible even to non-sensor ninja.</p><p>Such use of chakra was dangerous - there was a reason why a body had a slow and steady chakra flow. Intensifying it just for a moment would've meant that for that brief moment one stressed their body out making it use up much more chakra. Normally just going around normal everyday activities cost inconsequential amounts of chakra but boosting the flow to extreme extents like needed in order not to die after being hit like that made that inconsequential amount feel almost like one used a jutsu of some sort.</p><p>The body just burned up chakra for that one moment and the natural loss of chakra from the chakra flow going its way had to be readjusted in time, messing with the body's natural processes was not something one should have abused. Howoku decided to try and avoid getting hit by such an impact again and not lose such amounts of chakra and stress his body out too much.</p><p>The woman appeared behind him again but this time Howoku predicted her attack, his body dropped down to the floor and flipped over on his back. The Hokage's hands stretched to the side of his head and thrust his feet up shooting his body upwards and kicking the woman in the chin. Howoku made a handseal and made a shadow clone that leaped up and stroke her in the chin again before disappearing in a cloud of smoke. Howoku tossed a couple of kunai at the woman trying to utilize that brief instant of the smoke cloud, he heard a couple of clangs and saw the kunai fall down. Howoku cursed, that armor deflected basic ninja tools apparently. Finally, the woman landed from the cloud and laughed out with a wild grin.</p><p>"I initially thought you were just a weakling, I guess a Hokage can't really be a weakling, huh? Sorry for looking down on you." Her laugh and mannerism seemed almost monkey-like. The woman's eyes blinked and when they opened again her pupils had changed into a much more wild state.</p><p>It was then that Howoku realized what was going on - this woman was the Four-Tails Jinchuuriki. Seeing how she was a Jounin it was quite likely that she was able to use Chakra Cloak Awakening if needed and that was something that Howoku didn't really need. The decision to not kill her was also the correct one - the thing he needed the least was a Tailed Beast rampaging in this place.</p><hr/><p>Haoru's wild smile intimidated the Onimoui sumo ninja, the silver-haired Yuki seemed to be quite content and cool with her approach to the battle. The elder samurai himself decided to finally show these ninja just a tiny fraction of his strength. He leaned on his right leg harder and twisted his left foot to the side as the grip on his sword visibly hardened. Suddenly the chakra and air pressure around him became more intense and even the non-sensor ninja could see the fluctuations of transparent air around him. The man's right foot lifted off as he thrust his sword cutting down through the air.</p><p>"Windcutter Style: Sword Gust Jutsu"</p><p>He chanted sending an invisible vortex of air that quickly gathered dust and became a larger and grey twister. The Yuki woman disappeared in an icy mist while the chubby ninja leaped to the side at the last moment avoiding the wild gust of wind. The icy mist intensified at a certain area from which the Ice Release user appeared again, "For a moment there I thought we were screwed..." she mumbled to herself.</p><p>"A sword slash so intense and powerful that it can create small vortexes of air. Impressive, samurai!" the Onimoui laughed out. The Yuki lunged at him with icicles once again shooting out from her palm trying to slash at Haoru's eyes, the samurai leaned backward, a crimson stream of blood shot out of the woman's chest and she quickly dashed back clenching the open wound on her chest.</p><p>"What the hell was that!?" the sumo ninja shouted out at his partner. "I thought we already established that this guy's sword moves faster than we can see!? Did you really expect to get him with a simple attack like that?" he scolded the woman.</p><p>"I tried to use my Frost Armor Jutsu to protect myself, I thought I could initiate it in an instant so his sword would've slid away from my body and crashed into the floor instead but... He cut even faster than that..." she explained her mistake.</p><p>"You're next, Sumo-Ninja!" Haoru laughed out and charged at the obese Onimoui slashing his sword upwards while leaping into the air himself. The sumo couldn't react in time, he just stepped backward as another shallow cut appeared on his body, it was strange how the Onimoui skin which was one of the toughest defenses in the Shinobi World was penetrated by Haoru's near lethal slashes even if the cuts he left were quite shallow and unimpressive.</p><p>The samurai quickly followed up on his slash by cutting from the air at the tumbling giant chubby hitting various areas of his body and opening more and more shallow cuts all over. The samurai sheathed his blade and then drew it all in one instant, by that time he was way too high in the air to even hit the sumo ninja with his drawing slash which confused the chubby shinobi.</p><p>"Windcutter Style: Heavenly Wind Draw!" Haoru chanted as he drew his blade and stopped it dead center aiming at the chubby, there were good two or three meters between the two. All of the sudden three vortexes of air shout out of the man's blade and collided into one large one that crashed into the sumo ninja driving him into the ground as the super vortex mercilessly kept drilling through the sumo's body. For a moment it appeared like that would have been enough to kill the man outright. The Yuki woman leaped back in time to avoid being too close to the impact point, by that point she must've already seen just how hard they would have to work to win this battle.</p><p>Surprisingly enough the Onimoui chubby leaped up quite fast and jumped into the air to hit his opponent before he could even land. The sumo ninja launched a flurry of hand thrusts "Water Thrust Barrage!" he yelled out as his palms got covered in water that gathered from the previous water that he had used around his palms in small tunnel-like streams. One could not even see Haoru's blade move as it near effortlessly kept up with the strikes of the sumo ninja however with each deflected thrust slowed down a little to the point where his defenses became blurry but visible at the end.</p><p>"Water Shotgun Thrust!" the sumo ninja shouted thrusting both of his palms coated with water forward, however as he cocked his hands back to prepare the thrust Haoru was already behind him and landed on the ground taking his defensive stance.</p><p>"Windcutter Style: Spring Breeze Cut!" he mumbled as sumo ninja's offensive was broken and the chubby's body flipped over in the air several times before slamming hard into the rocky floor.</p><p>This time the large frame of the Kirigakure Jounin took significantly longer to stand up - his body was covered with shallow cuts as if he ran through a very thick spiky bush and cut himself all over with the spikes. He was breathing heavily and it barely looked like Haoru even broke a sweat while taking on two of the Jounin.</p><p>"This is ridiculous... We can't possibly win against this guy..." the Onimoui grunted out rudely looking at his injured partner who shook her head.</p><p>"No. He is definitely tired and injured, his body just does not show it. He is the kind of ninja who just goes at full strength and then when his body hits the limit he just dies. I've seen many ninja like that, most of them are old timers of war. They don't really communicate with their bodies, they have no alarm signals that they are injured which works both to their favor and their disadvantage. I think if we press him hard enough he'll fold with time." The woman concluded, the sumo just slammed his fist into his other hand and then raised it to his face yelling at Haoru.</p><p>"Alright you samurai-bastard, here we come then!" Haoru just leaned back harder, never dropping his smile of excitement.</p><p>"Well, come at me then!" he replied vibrantly.</p>
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<a name="section0053"><h2>53. Tanshu's Mysterious Strategy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu stayed still, analyzing his situation and the possible options he had. Truth be told, this battle didn't really trouble or confuse him. The Red Dog was quite certain that if he stopped holding back for just a moment he'd destroy this Barrier Buster in one attack, the problem was the future battles. If he used too much chakra in this battle can he be counted on in the future, for example, if Howoku lost to Shirona? Tanshu was certain he had seen Oni Mask previously, what if Tanshu had to fight his old sensei at some point? There were just too many questions, too many dangers in the future and all of those factors needed to be considered and properly analyzed. The Barrier Buster had no such problem, sadly.</p><p>The man lunged forward, Tanshu tried to intercept the lackluster offensive with a straight punch but the man flipped over and rolled on the Sannin's arm, kicking off in the air with another flip and driving his glowing with golden chakra arms right into Tanshu's skull. The man's reddish-brown hair flowed wildly all over Sannin's face covering up the blood that shot out from Tanshu's nose and mouth from the sheer pressure his skull was hit by.</p><p>The legs of the Barrier Buster locked onto Tanshu's neck and slammed the man into the ground, the jounin stood up and examined the Sannin's neck. The Kirigakure jounin had snapped many necks with this drop, there was no way that the famous Konoha's Red Dog - Uzumaki Tanshu was still alive. He turned around and started walking in the direction of his female partner, who was busy with the Fourth Hokage, with the intention of supporting her.</p><p>"Is that it? Are you giving up already?"</p><p>The Barrier Buster shinobi stopped in his tracks as a creepy but firm and manly voice alerted him to his opponent's survival. Tanshu stood back on his feet wiping his hair to the side and the blood off of his nose and his mouth. The Barrier Ninja shook once in a wild uncontrollable signal of fear.</p><p>"I have to say, your Barrier Busting Jutsu packs a punch, then again, that's the only way for me to even feel your puny blows. If you don't want to embarrass yourself I suggest you keep em coming..." Tanshu grunted out with a rough tone, almost like a bulldog intimidating a traveler who was passing by his master's yard with a bark.</p><p>"Who do you think you're kidding? You're intensifying your chakra flow for just a second when you're hit, that's why your body manages to withstand these blows, it's a textbook technique. You're wasting your chakra, when do you think you'll run out of steam, Konoha's Red Dog?" Tanshu's opponent taunted to which only a calm laugh intimidated the man even more. Tanshu's finger rose up to the man's mouth and the Sannin sunk his teeth into his own finger, then he flashed some hand seals and slammed his palm into the ground making a wild circle of seals appear and a powerful cloud of smoke appear with a loud poof.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu: Red Poochy"</p><p>A small dog with red-colored fur, not taller than one's knees as hard as it tried to stand on two appeared in front of the man as the smoke cleared.</p><p>The little dog barked up with a high pitched bark more common among the younger dogs. "I've got no need to preserve chakra, I've got another trick up my sleeve for your mistress, not that it's any business of a pitiful lapdog like you," Tanshu replied pointing at the man with his arm as the dog leaped at his opponent with a violent growl and a very underwhelming bark of a young small dog.</p><p>The Barrier Buster's leg shot up into the air kicking the dog away and preventing it from biting him. The dog lit up with reddish chakra as it landed on its feet and shook on its tiny little legs to recover itself from the impact.</p><p>"You know what to do, Poochy" Tanshu mumbled silently so that only the dog and he could hear it. The young dog nodded and the red glow of chakra around him intensified. This barely visible red glow interested the Barrier Buster ninja, most of all it intimidated him because he had no idea what sort of technique it was.</p><p>From the report of the Barrier Corps ninja that placed special recording barriers in the room where Tanshu fought the monks the Sannin also used something similar letting his dogs charge some sort of mysterious chakra and then disappear transferring it all to Tanshu. Just what sort of technique was it? As famous as the Red Dog was he had never demonstrated this technique before in any high profile battles which meant that either it was something he kept at great secrecy or it killed literally everyone who saw the technique, leaving no one to tell the tale.</p><p>The Barrier Ninja bit his finger and made some handseals swinging his bleeding finger around in the air and leaving a small trail of blood from the squirt of blood that came out. It appeared that the Barrier Buster's technique kept it afloat and stuck in the air.</p><p>"There is a downside to any technique, no matter how powerful. One of the more popular downsides is that it is very easily avoidable, after all - most jutsu are just projectiles of chakra that can be leaped over or stepped aside from. That is why the most elite Barrier Ninja and Barrier Busters can do this!" the Barrier Buster slammed his hands together forming transparent barriers around Tanshu. They formed and stuck together so that they formed a tunnel-like structure.</p><p>"Now you can't avoid my technique! Lightning Style: Restriction Beam Jutsu!" the Barrier Ninja shouted out as a powerful and incredibly loud beam of lightning chakra erupted from his handseal filling the entire barrier tunnel and slamming into Tanshu. Only as the technique exploded did the tunnel of barriers break.</p><p>The explosion and the intensity of the beam looked like it was a thousand times hotter and more intense than a bolt of lightning, there would have been absolutely no way for a normal man or even a normal ninja to survive. The Barrier Buster breathed heavily with his hands weighed down and shaking from the strain that the technique placed on his body, the Red Poochy stood calmly beside the barrier as he was not included in the narrow target zone of the barrier tunnel.</p><p>"Why on Earth would anyone waste their time dodging this?" a loud and rudely toned reply came from still clearing smoke and rubble. The Barrier Ninja jumped up and rubbed his eyes, he started grinding his teeth in frustration. He knew of two ways for a ninja to survive a hit like that, one was to use the textbook technique of spending immense amounts of chakra and interrupting one's own natural flow by kickstarting it and intensifying it to incredible rate - such technique would've provided a natural "armor" for the user but in cost of a disrupted chakra flow until the natural flow returned.</p><p>One would've only used anything like that in an emergency. When no other way to survive was possible. Especially someone like Red Dog Tanshu - someone who took great pride in their physical strength which, if it was achieved with chakra level being increased would've made his physical stats plummet.</p><p>The other way was to counteract it with a Lightning Release technique of same or greater strength. This was a common way for one Lightning Release user to counteract and redirect powerful Lightning Release jutsu - by grounding them. It was so because one's own body was using the technique and immune from being shocked one could easily have absorbed the weaker charge and redirected it to the ground or even back at the opponent. Thing was that based on the information that floated around it was unlikely that Tanshu was a Lightning Release user.</p><p>Based on the most common information Tanshu only used Fire Release and while a previously undiscovered secondary nature was possible something made the Barrier Buster suspect that the Red Dog actually used the first way.</p><p>"What's your game, Red Dog? Why are you interrupting your own chakra flow so wildly? Why do you care so little of your own chakra right after telling me how important the future battles are for you?" the Barrier Ninja yelled out thrusting his fist at Tanshu and waving it wildly to which the Sannin only laughed.</p><p>The man enjoyed seeing his opponent grind their teeth in frustration as they struggled to wrap their heads around his plans that weren't even meant for them anyway. With a careless glance, Tanshu looked at his summoned partner who looked back at Tanshu and nodded. The dog then wildly charged forward, as the dog jumped up to dig its teeth into the Barrier Buster's face the jounin tried to move back.</p><p>The image of the dog that leaped for the face blurred and disappeared, the Barrier Buster felt a sharp pain in his leg as he saw the little dog digging his teeth into the lower parts of his leg with blood squirting out from the pressure that the little bugger managed to put out. The jounin tried to shake the little pest off but then an elbow dug deep into his chest breaking multiple ribs in the process.</p><p>The little dog working together with his owner leaped and dug its fangs deep into the Barrier Buster's face and while the jounin tried shaking it off Tanshu's strike hit him deep into his solar plexus making the jounin drop like a sack. With his face and his leg bleeding the Barrier Buster rolled around on the floor writhing in pain before standing up. He then charged with a kunai at the little dog before stopping in mid-charge - the little pet was no longer glowing, it was just a little dog with a red fur and no more chakra glow... What did that mean? Did Tanshu cancel his strange technique? The man restarted his assault and lunged at the little dog kicking him up to stab it but after a single kick, it poofed into smoke.</p><p>The Barrier Buster was absolutely stunned. Nothing annoyed him more than his opponent being steps ahead of him and him being absolutely oblivious to it with no way of pinning down just what the hell it was.</p><p>Not too further away Haoru was still entertaining himself with two Kirigakure jounin. The enraged but re-inspired with fake hope sumo ninja leaped at him, coating his palms with water that seeped up to his hand off of the floor and formed a water padding the man started thrusting his palms fast and strong.</p><p>The impact of the thrusts must've been immense as only thrusting the palms above the rocky floor made the rocks below crumble and rise up being flung in the general direction of the sumo ninja's attack with each thrust making that cruel water splashing sound, sort of like that when one jumps off of a bridge into the water landing on their belly just multiplied numerous times.</p><p>Both Haoru's chakra coated blade and the Onimoui's palm thrusts clashed with each other and while the sumo ninja appeared to have some trouble keeping his attacks up, Haoru's smile made it look all too easy.</p><p>All of a sudden the silver-haired Yuki woman appeared behind Haoru driving her leg right into the elder samurai's back. Haoru stumbled forward but still kept up with his clash with the woman's partner. In fact, the sumo gave in first as his hands just weighed down pulsing with blood passing through the vessels inside his palms as if he was slapping a brick wall for the last minute. The Yuki woman kept kicking the stumbling samurai's back, she had caught him unprepared and his blade was busy elsewhere, now she had to exploit the advantage! Suddenly after a combination of kicks the woman's body split in two and collapsed in pieces onto the ground only for it to dissolve into the snow.</p><p>With a wild breeze the woman's remains were carried in front of the samurai and she thrust two spikes of ice right into Haoru's shoulders. Then with she planted the heel of her sandal right into the man's face making him tumble back.</p><p>The woman laughed out triumphantly and her partner joined her after a brief moment of heavy panting. Much to their surprise, Haoru rose from the floor momentarily. "I see, so this was all a genjutsu, huh? You activated it and then leaped onto your partner's back, the genjutsu rendered the real you invisible replacing you with a snow clone of sorts while my body believed me to be hit from behind..." The Yuki woman thrust her index finger forward arrogantly as if signaling the samurai to bow to her to earn her mercy.</p><p>"That's right, samurai, and now as you have these icicles in your shoulder blood vessels you need my mercy to keep them from melting and opening the blood flow. If those blood vessels open up - you'll die in seconds!" the woman replied with a high and mighty tone to which she was only replied with laughter.</p><p>"Well... I would've been done in, had I not tensed my muscles up and blocked your stab." the samurai laughed out, the Yuki woman squinted in suspicion, "What do you mean? I stabbed you in the shoulders, I know my anatomy just fine, don't play games with me, old man!"</p><p>The samurai laughed again, "Go ahead then, young lady, melt your ice toothpicks, the moment that you do, however, my arms are free to move three hundred and sixty degrees, you better believe I'll be hungry for blood!" the man shouted out swinging his sword and then comically jumping up in pain as with the icicles stuck in his body the man had trouble properly moving his hand around. The sumo ninja looked at his partner with a worried look.</p><p>"Umm... Maybe you should... You know... Keep the icicles solid... I mean... Just in case..." he started uttering words one after another trying to calm his partner down. The woman started grinding her teeth heavily trying to decide on her course of actions. Seeing his partner's hesitation and realizing the fact that it meant great restriction of movement to his opponent the sumo ninja leaped forward grabbing the samurai by the face and slamming him into the floor and then leaping up and landing with his bottom straight onto the man's face. As blood started leaking from the cracked forehead of the elder samurai the woman finally braved up and made a handseal dissolving the icicles.</p><p>That same moment that the icicles disappeared a powerful shock hit the sumo ninja right into the center of his belly sending the chubby shinobi rolling back. Just like that Haoru was back on his feet with his sword raised above his head. "I must thank you for calling my bluff, the cold from your ice allowed my injured blood vessels to heal up. After a lifetime of battlefield experience one finds their body healing up quite fast and if you'd have dissolved them earlier I'd have been in quite some trouble." Haoru smiled with a cruel twist of his lips.</p><p>The Yuki woman pouted as her body started sweating in fear - she wasted her chance to kill this man and this was all because of this godly intimidation that this man kept up. She believed his every lie just because he threatened her life and with that impossibly thick murdering atmosphere coming off of the samurai warrior she had no choice but to let him control the battlefield.</p><p>To think that the man played her like that - made her make her icicles freeze the same wounds that she opened while his body's own natural freak battlefield regeneration ability allowed his vessels to heal within just several minutes. Even with his life in danger, this man's face did not change, so this was what it meant to be a veteran of countless wars and claiming the heads of many times more ninja.</p><p>The woman just let her intimidated and afraid voice run wild. "Aren't you at all worried if you live or die? I could've easily killed you then and there!" she yelled out, her voice was flooded with fear over her own life and regret that she let him recover. Haoru's sword swung through the empty air, cutting so fast that one moment it was above his head while another it was already touching the floor.</p><p>"Windcutter Style: Sword Gust Jutsu!" the samurai chanted as a powerful vortex of wind from the air literally being cut apart picked the giant sumo ninja up and tossed him around in the air leaving countless scratches and cuts as well. Within moments after the previous technique concluded Haoru appeared in front of the man jumping into the air with an upwards slash making the sumo ninja's body fly up stuck onto the blade that cut him. After reaching the highest point up in the air the samurai slashed downwards sending the chubby's body slamming into the ground while he himself landed gracefully nearby. The Onimoui ninja just laid there with his eyes rolled back with no signs of life.</p><p>"It is the first lesson a samurai learns during their young days: "Go to a battle afraid of dying and definitely you will die, go there with a clear mind and maybe you will live!" that is how a true samurai fights, that is why a samurai will always best a ninja in a fight!" Haoru shouted out madly finally dropping his smile. As the woman stumbled back, trying her best to fight the instinct to run for her life the samurai slowly walked towards her.</p><p>The eyes of the Yuki that previously were so cold and analytical and so recently had the shade of victory and arrogance were now terrified of the concept of her own death. The woman stepped back and tripped over a rock, she fell on the ground and tore her dress. As the pain revived her brain reminding it that this was real and actually happening she jumped up. "Stay back!" she screamed out.</p><p>Haoru didn't even stop for a moment, his pace didn't even slow down. The Yuki thrust her palms forward as cold winter winds howled around her picking up snow "I said stay back! Icicle Barrage Jutsu!" she screamed out again shooting a mad flurry of icicle projectiles all of which bounced off Haoru's blade that moved in a blur deflecting each and every projectile. It was like this samurai didn't even try to deflect the projectiles of such speed, his hand worked almost entirely out of instinct and muscle memory.</p><p>Such was the strength of one possessing a God Sword technique in their arsenal. The Yuki woman's hands shot forward as the winds howled again. "STAY BAAAACK!" she screamed as Haoru's chest thumped right into her thrust forward hands that finished their handseals just at the same moment.</p><p>"Ice Style: Absolute Zero Storm Jutsu!" the woman screamed in panic as the winds focused into a single direction blowing straight into Haoru and pelting him with snow at such speed that the snowflakes managed to cut into his skin and leave cuts. Within mere moments the man disappeared in a wild and uncontrollable mess of snow, howling winter winds and ice. The technique was so immense that Howoku and Tanshu stopped for a moment to look at it and even had to evaluate if it won't be a threat to them.</p><p>Fortunately for them, the technique was very contained, that was why it was so powerful. The Yuki woman dashed back, her shaking knees finally gave in as the woman collapsed onto the ground and grabbed her head with her shaking hands. "I hit him... I hit him head-on... He's got to be dead... Frozen still and torn apart... One with the snowflakes... He is now just a bunch of snowflakes... Then why... WHY DO I STILL FEEL THIS PRESSURE!?" she screamed out into the air absolutely terrified of the terrible atmosphere around the samurai that didn't waver for a moment.</p><p>"That was some technique, Yuki-ninja." The voice echoed from the large pillar of freezing and rampaging blizzard. "Had I not used my sword to make a vortex of wind equally as strong to contain the blizzard within it I would've actually died..." a wild laughter came out of the tornado of blizzard that then wildly split in half at the center and ended just as suddenly as it started, the wild but static snowflakes now fell from the air as it started to snow around the area where Haoru, the one with God Sword, stood. He was no longer smiling, however, maybe because he felt the strain on his body from all this mad fighting he had done that day, maybe because he stopped enjoying himself and grew bored, wishing instead to end it all with one strike!</p>
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<a name="section0054"><h2>54. Opponents But No Longer Enemies</h2></a>
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    <p>Howoku tried to come up with a proper plan to respond to pretty much any attack, any possible outcome. The Four-Tails Jinchuuriki were known for their Lava Release ability, Howoku already knew that his Starlight Release could most likely properly counteract it, then again, he still didn't know the amount of mastery that this woman had over her beast. Was she able to awaken it? Was she able to use the chakra cloak at the very least? So far she barely even mentioned it, it was only due to the immense chakra burst and the wild change in her eyes that Howoku even got the clue of her ability.</p><p>The woman leaped forward with a wild slam of her iron staff, Howoku stepped to the side but the rubble that the slam raised hit him in the face opening minor bruises and making him flinch. The woman flipped back with a kick at Howoku's chest, after landing on her feet she charged forward with her staff resting on her back, the woman's fists hurt immensely. Howoku was forced to once again interrupt and boost his chakra flow just so she didn't do too much damage to him. Fighting with the idea of an upcoming much larger fight was troublesome indeed. The woman's elbow sent Howoku flying a couple of meters forward. There was no grace or fanciness in him getting up, just a man picking his injured body and peeling it off the floor.</p><p>"My name is Howoku, the Fourth Hokage, may I know your name and also just how much mastery you have over the Four-Tails? Do you plan on bringing it out at any point?" Howoku roughed out after picking himself up and wiping the blood off of his nose. The woman just smiled back playfully, while her eyes still looked like those of a mad wild monkey and her chakra leaked so intensely that the red glow was visible even to the human eye she appeared to be in complete control.</p><p>"Why would I let Son Goku have all the fun? We had a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to decide who would get this fight, he looked a bit upset that he won't have a go so I let him boost my abilities but if he ever tried to slip out he'd be grounded for a year! This is my fight, Goku doesn't interrupt my fights, I don't interrupt his. Also, my name is Surawu" the woman explained calmly, Howoku looked surprised. This Jinchuuriki was in complete control of her Tailed Beast! She could even keep it down and restrained if she needed to and gambled by playing games with it, games rules of which the beast upheld. This woman was dangerous!</p><p>The extensive mastery over her beast brought another problem to Howoku, he had to decide if he wanted to let the woman live. She was a dangerous asset for Kirigakure and if he was to take Shirona down and place a replacement in her place, the loyalists of the woman could always use this Jinchuuriki by tricking her and promising her awesome fights. Someone with so much power but little restraint of her actions had no place in a world of intrigue.</p><p>If one was stupid enough to become this strong they had to have the brain to use that power responsibly and at the very least the judgment whom to lend it to. It would not have been too tough for Howoku to defeat a Tailed Beast if he just let all of his power out in one burst, he'd be exhausted but... Tanshu could beat Shirona, could he not? There were so many questions that kept the Hokage from fighting at full strength.</p><p>"No! If I let this continue I'll get killed, I need to beat this woman first, then to consider all the moral implications!" Howoku thought to himself as he charged forward, kicking with a spinning kick right into the woman's block, then repositioning his weight and leaping up to kick with the other foot pushing her block away.</p><p>Howoku's punches then had an open hunting season all over the woman's dropped defenses and he decided to exploit it. He was not the best of taijutsu users but he knew enough. He just kept punching with the hope that one of those punches would take her down, he did not stop for a moment because stopping would have meant her having a chance to respond. Howoku leaped onto her shoulders, then over her, and kicked off the back of her head. The man slammed his hands forward shooting off shimmering Starlight Release chakra out of his body.</p><p>"Starlight Style: Nova Rush!" Howoku shouted leaping with a tackle at the woman as the chakra around his body expanded into an ellipse making Howoku's body appear like a comet shooting horizontally right at his target. A deafening explosion echoed and wild shrapnel of heated and molten rock from both the collapsing roof and the floor started shooting off at random directions making everyone put a temporary stop in their fights and worry about avoiding this immense backlash of a jutsu.</p><p>The area where the explosion went off around the center was completely obliterated, there was a huge crater that reached well into the soil completely disintegrating even the ancient mossy rock that covered the floor, the entire roof construction was completely blown off and disintegrated into dust. Only Howoku stood in the center of the explosion right in the crater breathing heavily standing by the unconscious body of Surawu - the Four-Tails Jinchuuriki.</p><p>"Now... I can think what to do..." he thought to himself stroking his own hair to put out a small tongue of flame on his head. This was a bit excessive, he once destroyed an entire assaulting party that tried to invade his village with this technique and he held it back a bit this time, he was using it on a single target in an area where his allies still were after all. Still, Howoku was a bit surprised that the woman only suffered slight burns in some areas and while her armor got completely annihilated.</p><p>She was supposed to be disintegrated but the Hokage knew that the woman would've done something to survive. He actually counted on her tagging out and letting the Tailed Beast take the blast, in that case, he would've let it have it all and taken it down. Nova Rush Jutsu was powerful enough to severely kick the Tailed Beast in the teeth, it was made for inhuman encounters, those like ones with a Tailed Beast or a Lesser Demon.</p><p>A powerful shock caught Howoku unprepared, something steel hard drove into his face in an instant - it was the woman's staff! The woman's injured body leaped up so fast that he couldn't even track her movements, she spun the staff around wildly letting its weight pummel Howoku, the hits were not as focused and crushing as single strikes but the numbers of impacts let her really get into it. Howoku was completely at her mercy for those several combinations of blows. She hit with spins, both left and right, lower and higher areas finishing the combination with a powerful slam into his face sending Howoku out of the crater and onto the floor. The man's glasses were shattered all over the area from the damage they took.</p><p>Clumsily the woman climbed out of the crater, huffing and panting, murmuring something under her own nose.</p><p>"Wow, that attack was amazing! I really felt that!" she complimented the downed opponent of hers by patting her torn up clothes and examining the burns all over her body. Howoku raised his head and started slowly getting up, his vision was blurry and the sides of his body started aching, this degree of damage was something that even Vashia's ointment would not have completely helped with.</p><p>He sustained permanent damage in this battle, something he wouldn't be able to completely heal even in the future, and that was something that severely lowered his chances against Shirona. Howoku felt warm torrents of blood running down all over his body in multiple areas. If this woman focused her strength into a single strike she may even have killed him!</p><p>"You mean... You took all of it?!" Howoku asked wiping the blood out of his eyes and tearing off the sleeve of his jumpsuit. The man tied it onto his forehead to stop the bleeding all over his face, that would have gotten into his way. "I actually counted that you would bring your Beast out, I planned for it to take the blast and get taken out..." the man admitted to which Surawu really got mad.</p><p>"I told you this was MY fight! Don't fight Son Goku you stupid twit! Fight ME! Get serious or I'll pummel you real bad! Well... Then again, we sort of shared chakra at that moment, I wouldn't have taken the blast if he didn't help me, heh heh..." her emotions switched completely erratically. One moment this woman was furious that she was not the main target, the next she laughed herself off just because she used the chakra of the Tailed Beast to survive the impact. So these two had perfect coordination - the beast could lend his chakra instantly without questioning his Jinchuuriki's judgment, she could incorporate the Beast's chakra into her flow and use it as her own effortlessly. These two worked in perfect sync.</p><p>Howoku had to stall, he needed time to start regaining full control of his body as his ribs and his chest hurt too much to keep fighting. He coughed heavily from some sort of liquid in his lungs - he may have been bleeding internally.</p><p>"This sync... You also named your Tailed Beast... Just what sort of relationship do the two of you have with each other?" Howoku wondered out loud. Surawu stood straight, her eyes changed into more serious eyes and they wandered down onto the ravaged rocky floor.</p><p>"I didn't name Son Goku, that's his real name. That's what he told me when we became good friends. That wasn't the case initially. When I was a little girl I hated him, he made me stronger, more durable and he indirectly helped me to train harder. The stamina of a Jinchuuriki is fifty times that of a ninja without one, even when the two have had no contact with each other. I always thought I was some sort of a freak - I could've trained for weeks without rest and so I've become really strong unaware of his existence. Other kids thought of me as a freak, so did the grown-ups but they didn't hate me because of Son Goku, they hated me because I was strong, because I made it all look too easy and because that made them look bad. When a kid appears to barely be trying to complete the tasks that they would fail at even if they trained for a hundred years... People say "Thank you" but they actually hate you deep inside because you illustrate their flaws, you remind them that they are flawed themselves. They think that you're full of yourself even if you never take pride in your strength. Honestly, they didn't really care about Son Goku, they only hated me because I was better than them while still being innocent and stupid - they thought it all came on a platter for me and that became my curse. I dealt with that hate and cruelty by transferring all of it on Son Goku..."</p><p>The woman's eyes suddenly became sad as she looked down. Howoku's body started feeling better, he once again felt his arms and legs, some of his wounds didn't appear to bleed remotely as profusely as he applied other pieces of his jumpsuit as a bandage on the wounds that needed attention. All of a sudden Howoku didn't want to kill this woman at all, even more, he could identify some of himself in her, empathize with her. He knew the social rejection of a genius, he knew all too well of the hatred that people had for people that were inherently better than them. They never even bothered to see these geniuses being arrogant, they never bothered to even question if their skill was even the point of the conversation - a genius was better than them, he illustrated all the flaws they had by contrast and so they had to disappear. They had to be punished for being so good at something somehow, by rejecting a genius people executed their own "social justice".</p><p>Howoku's eyes raised up and met those of the monkey woman. He saw from her own eyes that she noticed Howoku's own experience being related to hers, she knew that he understood her own pain perfectly.</p><p>"It's funny, usually the one who doesn't want to communicate is the Tailed Beast, I've met some other Jinchuuriki as they were supposed to tutor me of the easier ways to master one's abilities as well as teach me the responsibility of having a Tailed Beast inside. Son Goku wanted to play with me and talk from the very beginning, it was my own hatred that rejected him. Son Goku kept asking me to play with him, talk to him and I yelled at him that I hated him. Told him that if I ever played with him I'd vomit until I died and if I died I'd be happy because I would no longer have to share a body with him, Goku was really crushed by those words. He stopped talking to me, stopped lending me his chakra. I was happy for a year or two, tried to gain friends, I thought that if I changed for my friends that they'd accept me but while I changed for them they couldn't have cared less. It's actually ironic that I wanted recognition, I wanted friends when I had one all along and I pushed him away by being mean to him for people who weren't even friendly but recognition of which I craved most of all... It was then that I felt truly alone for the first time."</p><p>The story of the woman he never asked for but just couldn't force himself to tell her to stop reminded Howoku of his own past. With him bearing the heritage of the Moon People, being a descendant of a descendant of some other line of descendants, and possessing their unparalleled power he also was rejected as a child. He was smart because he worked hard, he was strong because he obliterated every obstacle in his way by disintegrating them, he possessed Fire and Lightning Releases from his earliest days surpassing the other genin who barely could use one.</p><p>To him, things always came easy but he never wanted strength, he never wanted to beat his enemies - he wanted to make them understand him, he wanted everyone in the world to just get along. Ironically enough no one ever bothered to empathize with him or get along with him so how could a man with no friends or empathizers make the entire world feel for itself? It only changed for the better after he met Misu and Hanasaku, Hanasaku was a bit like him - she was crazy strong and always took all the punches smiling but she didn't care about anything.</p><p>She taught him that ignorance was bliss, she taught him that the last thing he should cry about was how everyone else perceived him, that he shouldn't change for their approval, he should reveal his true colors and have people either approve of him or go to hell. Misu showed Howoku that peace and friendship weren't always going to cut it, that sometimes one needed to get their hands into the mess, that turning the other cheek after getting slapped only lead to being slapped again, sometimes peace needed to be forced... The three of them were the best of friends and nothing else mattered, meeting them helped Howoku bloom into the man he was today - the Fourth Hokage!</p><p>"So how did you two make up?" Howoku asked Surawu encouraging her to finish the story. This was a unique experience, two opponents of each other feeling for one another, being opponents but not enemies. Fighting only because they ended up on the two sides of the same bridge and one of them had to get wet so that the other could pass.</p><p>"I always thought that Son Goku was angry at me and that he hated me after I lashed out at him. Turns out that was not the case - he was just hiding because he wanted me to be happy. He thought that maybe once I was happy that I would stop being so angry and hate the world and him by extension. He is a weird creature, he isn't violent or inherently evil like people portray the Tailed Beasts to be. He's actually a lot like me - simple-minded. He just wants to play around but sometimes he gets a bit destructive with his games so over the years he started to feel really happy being sealed into a human - where his games hurt no one else, there are no villages to destroy in one's body, no volcanoes there to erupt, just a black void to play with one's friend until one gets bored. I confronted him after realizing that, it took me some time but... When I did, I've never seen anyone be as happy as Son Goku was at that moment. My inhuman strength and endurance returned after he started sharing chakra again but it didn't matter, instead of suppressing myself I let myself bloom and I couldn't have cared less about what other people thought, I had the only friend I would ever need inside my own body, as close as close gets..."</p><p>Surawu gently touched her exposed belly where a complicated sign of a seal was. That gentle touch must've meant a lot, it communicated so many feelings at once. While Howoku was not a Jinchuuriki but he could understand the woman perfectly. "Very well, Surawu-san. I shall honor you by going all out and fighting you without thinking of Fou... Son Goku, or the Mizukage. Initially, I was afraid of your mastery and coordination with Son Goku but... I guess I'm getting old and soft, I really have no wish to kill you now so you better find an answer to every attack I throw because if you die on me I won't forgive you!" Howoku explained taking an offensive stance.</p><p>The two charged at each other and Howoku's body lit up with Starlight Release chakra as the two started exchanging punches. Even without using the Tailed Beast chakra Surawu was incredibly strong and fast and a very skilled taijutsu user. If it was not for Howoku's Starlight chakra that made his body much hotter leaving severe burns on any area he touched and burning the fist or knee that hit him slightly, this woman wouldn't have fought him on such equal scales as she did now.</p><p>The two leaped around each other, Surawu avoided every blow, she couldn't block any attacks without taking some damage and now her body was already battered by Howoku's previous explosion of excess. The woman made quick and lacking force strikes to hit the man, just land a quick jab, just to leave a mark but not put too much force so that she didn't contact the heated up chakra for too long. The man's glowing bursts of chakra were so hot that they didn't even feel hot - they just burned whatever they touched so Surawu had additional trouble avoiding taking more damage than she would have liked taking. Eventually, the woman just flipped over Howoku and kicked off of his shoulders to make some distance between the two - fighting him up close was too much trouble for her.</p><p>"Not that I'm complaining but... Aren't Son Goku's Jinchuuriki supposed to be able to use Lava Release? Why aren't you using it?" Howoku asked politely panting after this intense exchange of blows with the woman.</p><p>"Well, technically, Son Goku can teach you that and while one has him in them they have the capacity but... I'm sort of really bad at it so I stopped bothering with it, is there a problem with that?" Surawu replied.</p><p>Howoku laughed out loud from the bottom of his heart. "No. Your reply reminds me of a friend I know though."</p><p>The two prepared to settle their fight finally.</p>
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<a name="section0055"><h2>55. The Final Confrontation Imminent</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Surawu leaped forward winding up with her staff for a hit. Howoku swiped both of his hands to the side forming a rod out of Starlight chakra that blocked the blow. The slam of her staff only seemed to be the distraction for her main attack as the Jinchuuriki of the Four-Tails backflipped and drove her fingers together into a clone technique seal.</p><p>"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" she said as a loud poof with a cloud of smoke that silenced any words she may have said afterward. Five clones of the woman leaped out of the smoke cloud, Howoku stepped to the side to avoid the blow aimed by one of them and thrust his knee into her stomach making the clone poof away.</p><p>The second clone's staff drove into Howoku's back but it didn't hurt like the real thing, the Hokage soon recovered from the shock and the pain and thrust his right leg back into the clone's chest dispelling it as well. Noticing the black staff of the third clone Howoku rolled forward stopping his body with his arm and pushing it off the ground while thrusting both of his feet at the clone kicking her in the chin and sending her into the air where it dispelled as well.</p><p>With a powerful swing of his elbow, Howoku dispatched of the other clone and then leaped into the air and dispelled the last one with his kick. All of this seemed weird, Shadow Clone technique was an incredibly costly technique, a young genin in Tanshu's team was mentioned to have used the technique and passed out, this woman split her chakra into five parts essentially. Only then did the Fourth notice Surawu rapidly spinning her staff around her head and standing further away.</p><p>"Sorry, Fourth, this is my special technique and it needs time to charge up, I had to throw those weaklings at you..." the woman giggled with a weird smile reminding that of a playful monkey.</p><p>The staff started glowing with a reddish glow before red lightning started bursting out of it covering the entire staff in a cloak of red chakra that shot off violent lightning-like bursts. Surawu then placed the staff in front of her holding it on one end while she pointed the other end at Howoku as if she was wielding a katana. The chakra around the staff intensified and the strain on the woman's body was evident as she started shouting out of pain and exhaustion,</p><p>"Monkey Destruction Cannon Jutsu!" she yelled out as the violent burst of chakra separated into a wide and swift beam of destructive chakra attack. Just barely did Howoku manage to leap to the side and avoid the beam, Surawu tried to hit him with it again by adjusting her staff and turning herself with the beam around but Howoku managed to vault over the beam every time. It was unfortunate that this frantic dodging tired him out too much to exploit the moment of weakness after the woman's technique ended.</p><p>"Wow... You're pretty good, from the rumors people say that physical stuff comes hard for you but you matched me hand to hand and managed to dodge my beam as well as keep up with my clones, even if they were severely weaker versions of me... I'm really impressed." Surawu showed Howoku her tongue and laughed out like a monkey again, it seemed like the beast that she carried within somewhat affected her personality and mannerisms.</p><p>Howoku wanted to adjust his glasses that he still believed to be there but then his fingers only touched thin air and his own nose, his vision blurred again for a moment as he remembered losing them.</p><p>"Truth be told, Surawu-san, it is my weakest side by far. That is simply the real difference between us, the wedge between a Jounin and a Hokage that separates us. I felt like I really connected with you, now I cannot kill you even if I wanted to. That being said I have responsibilities and I can entertain you and Son Goku no longer. I shall end it all with this final attack. When you train and grow stronger and when your connection with Son Goku grows to be even more powerful I'd gladly fight you again..."</p><p>Surawu furiously shook her head. "What are you talking about!? Do you mean you've been holding back this whole time!? Well... That makes me really pissed, you know! Stop playing around and show me this "wedge" of which you speak of!" the woman shouted out and leaped forward with a strike of her staff that burst with the reddish lightning chakra.</p><p>It appeared that Son Goku was lending the woman chakra which she used to enhance her strength and endurance by injecting it forcefully into her chakra flow and accelerating it. While Howoku understood the basic concept because of his vast experience on the battlefield he could not understand why would the woman have chosen to do so - it basically had the same effects as the casual textbook chakra flow manipulation to achieve chakra augmentation.</p><p>The staff, bursting with crackling red lightning chakra, flew through the air cutting through it but then it stopped after hitting something really hard and strong. Surawu's head peeked to the side and then her mouth shot open in surprise as well as her eyes that widened to an almost comedic extent. Howoku had raised his hand into the air and held it as if he had a sword in his hand and then a burst of Starlight Release formed a blade in his hands that was several times larger than her staff.</p><p>"Starlight Release: Pleiades!" he mumbled under his own nose as he pushed her staff back effortlessly by swinging his Starlight blade of chakra. Two wide slashes that formed an X shape covered Surawu's body before her gentle and swift feet even touched the ground making the woman lose her balance and stagger back, wild bursts of burning-like reaction to the chakra cut was glowing out of her wounds. On one hand, it cauterized all of her burns but it also incinerated the areas around the cuts as well as deeper inside her body, Surawu coughed up blood but then regained her balance, her wild monkey-like eyes returned and dyed red, they were now enraged to the point where she now reminded more of a monkey than a human.</p><p>The Jinchuuriki's fist tightened as she cocked it back preparing a powerful punch, a cloak of red chakra covered her entire body with three tails growing out of her bottom shaped out of chakra. She was letting Son Goku give her more and more chakra to the point where his chakra dwarfed that of her own, it was starting to take her over.</p><p>Suddenly, the woman's fist shot out that very same crimson lightning that her staff was emanating before, just incalculably more dense and concentrated and supersized, her fist reminded more of a large ball similar to those that children played on the streets. Howoku's hand changed from a clenched hand that held his Starlight Blade to an open palm as the Starlight Chakra got reabsorbed into his body - while the man could not refund his own chakra that he had spent on his Starlight techniques he could change one to another quickly if he needed to.</p><p>The concept was similar to reaching for water from a pond - one reached down and took some water in their hands and then raised it intending to wash their face. In the middle of that action, they may have realized they were pretty thirsty so they completed the action by drinking the water instead of washing their face, that being said the amount of water in the pond was still reduced.</p><p>As Surawu prepared to charge at Howoku the gigantic ball of chakra around her arm that was an even more intense shade of crimson red that the cloak of chakra around her shaped into a gigantic fist. The Jinchuuriki roared wildly, reminding more of a roar of a wild ape than a roar of a furious woman which was troubling to hear. A powerful light emanated from Howoku's chest as he leaped forward to meet the woman's attack. Surawu roared again after thrusting her wild construct of crimson lightning chakra forward.</p><p>"Monkey Fist Jutsu!" she shouted out in a voice that barely reminded that of her own, all of a sudden before the fist construct collided with his body Howoku's lips moved just barely - "Starlight Nova!" he uttered as the small ball of Starlight glow in his chest expanded into a gigantic all covering sphere that disintegrated the entire half of the room that those two were, deepening the crater that his previous outburst of power had made. Now the wing of the temple that the Hokage's group was in was no longer even connected to the main building.</p><p>Howoku looked into the sky only to see wild raindrops falling onto his face, the man observed the dark clouds in the sky before his eyes briefly slipped onto burnt up and the unconscious young woman beside him. The Fourth took a couple of deep breaths before falling to his knees and having to stop for a moment. This was getting out of control, he was tired and wanted to stop all this fighting.</p><p>"Just one more fight... One more fight to end them all." Howoku whispered to himself as he decided to get out of the crater where the water was filling up moving his beaten opponent out of the crater as well.</p><p>Meanwhile, slightly further down the room in the part that was yet undestroyed by Howoku's Starlight techniques, Tanshu continuously tried to break through the barriers of the Barrier Buster of the Kirigakure Barrier Corps. Breaking a barrier was simple, the Sannin could bust a barrier with a single punch but his opponent kept crafting more and more endlessly, with each swipe of his arm while his other arm held the hand seal another barrier rose up.</p><p>"Your punches are weaker, you're getting slower, finally your own stupidity is catching up to you! Your chakra is slowly fading away, soon you won't even be able to punch through a single barrier!" the Barrier Buster laughed out as he started to believe in his hopes of victory. However, no matter how the man tried to taunt the Konohagakure Sannin it invited no reaction. The man just leaped backward and then lunged forward, his intense chakra started building up - something big was coming and it didn't take a sensor to feel it. The Barrier Buster thrust both of his hands forward forming as powerful of a barrier as he could but Tanshu's kick just kicked him up into the air as no barrier formed.</p><p>"Grgh... Impossible..." the Barrier Buster grunted in pain as Tanshu confidently wiped his nose with a flick and jumped up.</p><p>"Leaf Whirlwind!" the Sannin yelled out as his continuous kicks bombarded the man's chest sending him crashing to the ground. It was not a powerful technique but when performed by a powerful ninja the power of the taijutsu technique mattered little, only the strength and speed of the user.</p><p>The Barrier Buster tried to form more barriers around him madly inside the cloud of dust that his body formed when it slammed into the ground but unsuccessfully - Tanshu's knee collided with the man's belly making him throw up blood. With a calm dash backward Tanshu built up some space between the two and gave the opponent some time to recover.</p><p>"I can negate any ninjutsu or genjutsu technique you can throw at me, it's a combination of a sealing technique and genjutsu that enters your body like an illusion but then instead of putting you in a genjutsu places a seal that stops your technique by messing up your chakra flow. Stop even bothering with your stupid barriers..." Tanshu replied as he breathed out.</p><p>He had to admit - the man was right, his strange strategy of wasting chakra really was getting the better of him at the moment but he was preparing his body for something special. To use THAT he needed to get rid of as much of his own chakra as he could because he hasn't mastered that technique that well. Normally it was a combination of chakra collected by one's summoned animals and one's own but Tanshu just couldn't do it. He had to get rid of as much of his chakra as possible without passing out so that the process came easier...</p><p>The man jumped up on his feet and thrust his arm forward shooting off a wild and weak barrier that pushed Tanshu away slightly, the man then started thrusting his arms forward wildly reminding, ironically enough, of a sumo wrestler.</p><p>"Barrier Style: Thousand Barrier Barrage!" he shouted as his barriers started flying at Tanshu at great speed intending to crash into him and possibly leave some broken bones. The Sannin flashed through his handseals after biting his thumb and slammed his palm to the ground, a powerful explosion sent multiple mad clouds of smoke all around and then the barriers crashed into his location.</p><p>After the technique ended and the Barrier Buster lowered his fatigued hands he could only curse - a giant, three-headed dog stood where Tanshu once was with the Sannin standing on the nose of the central head. Seeing how Howoku had blown the roof off before this at least fifty feet tall dog could fit easily inside the building seeing as the hall was quite wide but only a couple of floors tall. Tanshu looked at the dog's eyes as the central head nodded letting the Sannin slip off of its nose.</p><p>"You know what to do!" Tanshu ordered as the giant Cerberus lit up with a crimson glow of chakra just like the little pooch did before. Tanshu, however, had other plans. He charged right at his opponent attacking the man with a quick and powerful punch to the face, as the Barrier Buster tried to counterattack with his own glowing with chakra fist the Tanshu only dissolved into harmless red flames. The man then grunted in pain as the real Tanshu appeared behind him and drove his elbow right into the Barrier Buster's spine.</p><p>The Kirigakure Jounin thrust his elbow hitting Tanshu right in the face but the Sannin recovered quickly and started punching madly with incredible speed. The Barrier Buster did his best to block as many blows as he could but he only blocked some of them - Tanshu's offensive was ruthless and brutal and would soon tear him down if this went on like that. Another "Leaf Whirlwind" sent the Kirigakure Jounin down only for him to barely pick himself up again.</p><p>The man then turned at the dog who despite his threatening size only stood there gathering some strange sort of chakra. The Barrier Buster thrust his arms forward attempting to form barriers around the dog and blow him away. "I don't know what your game is but I'm not letting it happen!" the man mumbled out through blood and slobber that was running down his mouth and nose as the battle had taken an incredible toll on him and his wearing down was quite visible.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Restriction Beam Jutsu!" he shouted out but neither his barriers nor his beam shot out. The Cerberus thrust his giant claws at the man who just barely managed to leap aside and avoid being cut to shreds, the left head then leaned forward to get a good bite out of the man but he managed to leap aside and avoid that as well.</p><p>"You bloody fool, Tanshu-san just explained it all to you! Your stupid tricks won't work, if you want me gone you'll have to do it with your own two hands!" the dog growled angrily as the three heads spoke at the same time with its incredibly loud voice reaching even the farthest corners of the temple.</p><p>Tanshu's body dove down from above with an elbow strike that connected right with the Barrier Buster's head, a mad flurry of punches sent the man down. Tanshu glared at the Red Cerberus angrily with a squint, "Is it done yet!? This one's just about reached his limit..." the man asked his summon angrily. The Red Cerberus visibly got scared of his master's fury and started explaining itself in a hilarious fashion where each head started telling a different excuse, making none of them intelligible in the end.</p><p>"Whatever, hurry up, I'm just about done with this weakling," Tanshu replied angrily. He leaped back onto the head of the dog and pointed in the direction of the Barrier Buster who was writhing on the ground. It was then that a powerful explosion shook the ground directing the Cerberus' attention and canceling its charge up of chakra.</p><p>The Red Dog glared angrily at his partner again to which the giant dog only barked an apology. "It appears that Howoku's already done with his fight, let's wrap this up too." The Sannin encouraged his dog again and all the three heads spat out a mad jet of flames that united in a colossal fireball in the center of where they crossed right on top of the Barrier Buster ninja. The wild firestorm raged for a moment before Tanshu threw an explosive kunai at the explosion to reignite it and make the total explosion destroy the second half of the hall they were in.</p><p>"Are the two of ye crazy!?" Haoru's mad voice shouted through the blazing inferno as the man's mad and muscular body broke through the raging flames as if they were nothing. "This is a protected cultural treasure, some idiots worshipped their deadbeat gods here!" the elder samurai shouted out. The head of the sumo ninja he was facing off against dug deep into Haoru's side sending him crashing into a wall to the side.</p><p>"Focus your attention on our fight, damn it!" the sumo ninja shouted out. The attention of the Sannin and the Cerberus turned at the smoldering cloak that once belonged to the Barrier Buster. Before the two of them could breathe easier a powerful impact sent the Red Cerberus to the ground, Tanshu had to leap off of the dog because of how violently the dog's body was shaken and crushed to the ground. Burnt up and injured Barrier Buster was still alive, he must've avoided the firestorm because no one could've survived something like that.</p><p>"You thought that was it? Mizukage Shirona entrusted to us the glorious mission, this majestic purpose of..." a powerful and loud splat echoed through the hall as the Cerberus' paw crushed the little yelling man to the floor. Tanshu angrily stared at his partner. The arm of the Jounin just twitched from under the furry paw that slammed him to the ground.</p><p>"I was hoping to finish charging it up before the next fight, you know... Whatever, give me however much you've got." The man grunted out angrily making his summon look at him with the sorry eyes that only a canine was able to make. The dog Cerberus barked angrily and disappeared into a loud poof of smoke making the blood-red chakra that it had gathered cover Tanshu's body and be absorbed by the man. Tanshu stretched out a bit and smiled. "Heh, almost done charging... Not bad."</p><p>Haoru rolled out of the hole in the wall that he had left as the entire construction went down. His sides were actually starting to ache, it was entirely possible that even his monstrous body was reaching its limits. Then again, he was fooling around far too much, it was just about time he showed these two twerps why he was such a legend. Haoru's body leaned back and his muscles tensed up to the point where his blood vessels shot out madly, small pebbles and slightly larger rubble around the man started moving around frantically and shaking as the immense gusts of wind gathered around his body blowing even large chunks of debris away. Haoru expelled a powerful kiai shout as mad projectiles of wind shot out cutting up the rubble around him, even the largest stones fell to pieces like falling leaves.</p><p>"Godly Sword: Susanoo!" he chanted out leaping forward in a flash appearing right beside the incredibly obese sumo ninja.</p><p>For a moment the Onimoui ninja wondered what sort of technique this famous "Godly Sword" was - Haoru's sword was not sheathed but close to the sheath so it wasn't a sword drawing technique. With a swift and blurry motion, Haoru's arm sheathed his blade, as the blade entered the sheathe inhumanly fast it generated powerful gusts of wind that blew from behind the sumo ninja drawing him in at Haoru, the elder samurai shot his foot forward and turned his entire body around a full circle while drawing his sword. The gusts of wind blowing at the samurai made it impossible to dodge the drawing slash, the sword of the famous "God Sword" Haoru passed even through the immensely hard Onimoui skin and flesh like butter. The poor chubby met the ground in two pieces.</p><p>The Yuki woman stood there speechless for a moment before trying to utter a statement of the fact that her comrade was dead. Haoru leaped around and stretched his tired muscles out, using the Godly Sword technique tired his muscles out a lot.</p><p>"Y-You... K-Killed him... W-With one cut..." the woman still couldn't believe it, she raised her hands and placed them on her chest as if they could've shielded her from the wrath of the rampaging war hero samurai. The woman fell to the ground hopelessly, it was very clear - that exact moment when all hope left her and she accepted her own death. Instead of a sword severing her lowered head, however, a mad laugh met her still stunned and unbelieving ears.</p><p>"I dunno, I can still hear his heart pounding, those Onimoui sure are lively... A medical ninja could still put him together." he laughed out looking at the unconscious chubby. Hearing the man's words the Yuki woman's eyes quickly lifted up and met the top piece of her comrade, madly she crawled up to her friend and went through a series of handseals placing her arms in front. "Ice Style: Jack Frost Jutsu!" she uttered as a stream of ice shot out from her hands covering the wound of the chubby and closing it from bleeding. The woman was shaking with rage.</p><p>"Y-You bastard! Toying around with us like this... Unforgivable!" she yelled out forming some more handseals and pointing her hands at the samurai. A mad barrage of icicles shot out all of which bounced off of the samurai's body as they were deflected by his sword that moved faster than the eye could see.</p><p>"Didn't your mommy tell you a lousy ninja can never face a samurai in an open battle? Honestly, what sort of outcome did you expect?" Haoru shrugged, the Yuki woman grabbed her partner and started running to the stone door through which the Mizukage left. Haoru's blurry sword swung a circle in the air that made a tunnel of howling winds.</p><p>"Wind Cutter Style: Vacuum Prison" he chanted as a bubble of air formed around the woman and her unconscious chubby friend. The samurai's blade lit up with blinding white chakra and he made a handseal slashing with the other hand madly. "Wind Cutter Style: Wind Blade Barrage!" he shouted out as each slash fired off a projectile of wind chakra that cut the woman and her friend down bursting the bubble of air they were encased in and making them fall lifelessly onto the ground.</p><p>"Weren't you too cruel, Haoru-san? The woman was running, she was no longer fighting." He asked. Haoru just laughed and sheathed his sword.</p><p>"Actually I feel sort of soft right now, had I let her escape her mistress would've killed her without a doubt for abandoning her post. I on the other hand just injured her severely, it is more than likely that someone will tend to her wounds, also even if Mizukage wins she has no reason to punish any of those two - they fought till the end for all she knows." Haoru sat on the floor and covered his face. Tanshu and Howoku started walking forward to the stone door, with a single kick the Red Dog sent the stone door crumbling down.</p><p>"It'd be better if you stayed here, samurai." Tanshu said with a rude tone, "The fatso and the woman were right - your own body doesn't know how severely it's wounded, you've been fighting whole day today, even fought the Mizukage herself and on top of that you just used a God Sword technique, if you just died on the battlefield you'd get in our way."</p><p>Haoru laughed out madly and sat on the wall in a meditating position. "You ungrateful little runt! Do you think I don't know my own limits? Mizukage-ninja's technique hit me pretty hard, plus my body ain't what it was in the war. Even in this state, I could sever her head with a single swipe... I'll just choose not to cause she is a problem for you ninja, if you guys win she'll get hers, if you guys die to her she'll kill more ninja than I could've ever hoped to so, in the end, I'll win either way. Her puny men bore me anyway. Just make sure someone tells me when either she or you guys are dead, I'd hate to sit here forever." the elder samurai grunted and crossed his bulky arms on his buff chest relaxing and closing his eyes.</p><p>As Howoku and Tanshu made their way through the corridor rushing for whichever room Shirona ended up in the Sannin looked at his partner, "You think Haoru's full of shit or is he actually that weird?"</p><p>Howoku laughed, "Honestly, both are quite likely, I've never met a man who hates ninja quite like he does but he has taken a lot of damage. He may be too worn out to move but it's equally as likely that he actually intended to let us kill each other in the end like he said he did..."</p><p>Howoku saw the blonde hair of the Mizukage flow far away in the distance and her black dress. The two men burst into a square room with a platform facing upward. Where observers would have stood and watched whatever insane ancient rituals transpired below. Behind Shirona stood a bare-chested statue of a bearded old man with a staff that had several oak leaves on it from the side. The great divinity crafted out of bronze stood there with a bolt of lightning in one hand aiming to smite those that stood below it - this place was likely a sacrificial altar.</p><p>"I've been waiting for you two, it's sad that Haoru couldn't join us, I would've loved to kill all three of you off, I'm a busy woman after all, about to get much busier. I'll have little time to chase timed samurai around." Shirona smiled welcoming the two who have come to their final goal. This was the end of both of their paths - Tanshu and Howoku wanted to apprehend or kill Shirona, Shirona wanted them dead so this was their final trial. No more lapdogs, no more traps or games, just ninja doing what ninja were always meant to do. Ambition for endless war clashing with the ambition of endless world peace.</p>
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<a name="section0056"><h2>56. Backstabbed!!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanshu and Howoku continued to stare their opponent down, the two men had worked alongside each other before so it would've taken them little trouble to crush even a Kage level opponent. Then again, Shirona was someone who had faced off against Haoru and survived which was not something easily dismissed. The woman gently raised her hand into the air and swiped it back down, Tanshu's body instinctively turned to the side. A powerful noise of rumbling greet the three as the stone structures behind the Sannin separated after being cut in two by an edge of a barrier sent by the woman, she was someone who has managed to make barriers into a tool of both perfect offense and defense.</p><p>Tanshu's body disappeared and in a blink appeared right in front of Shirona, a powerful punch flew her way that collided with a barrier in mid-flight. The Sannin's punch didn't even inflict that much damage upon the woman and it could've been said judging from her face that blocking his blows didn't come too hard for the Mizukage or strained her at all as she was just playfully smiling behind the barrier. "You'll have to forgive me, it's an old habit to dispatch of irrelevant dogs early. I suppose we've both underestimated each other..." the woman shrugged acting like the situation at hand was not at all troubling her. What truly transpired in the heart of the world's most ambitious lady was a mystery as it often is with women.</p><p>"You should hurry back to your master, dog, he may need your help soon." Shirona laughed out when Howoku dashed sideways tossing some kunai and shuriken her way when Tanshu was attacking from another side. The Hokage tried to test a theory that Shirona could only place a barrier at one place at once, something that was quickly ruined when she managed to make a bent barrier that blocked both corners. Tanshu looked at Howoku questioningly wondering what the woman may have meant, Howoku just shrugged. What transpired next took only a couple of blinks for it to be missed: a white flash flew straight at the Fourth Hokage only for the figure's blade to collide with that of Tanshu's. When the dust settled down the Konohagakure Sannin found himself staring at Misu of the Vapor - his brother in arms.</p><p>"I always thought you were an idiot but I've never taken your aim to be that far off!" Tanshu cracked a grin as he struggled to keep the hold, he couldn't have been too forceful with his clash as his kunai when blocking Misu's blade could've cracked and broken off quite easily if too much force was placed on it.</p><p>"I'll leave you two to catch up, leave mommy and daddy to their differences alone, boys..." Shirona yawned by raising her arm that caused the ground beneath the two Sannin to shift - a barrier of solid chakra below the rocks acted like a platform that lifted the entire floor beneath the two and shot it up to the ceiling. Tanshu and Misu held their clash to the final moment, they only parted and leaped to the sides right before the rock slammed into the ceiling, something that would've crushed them and ground them with the rocks above. The Red Dog and Misu landed on the opposite sides of the observer's area.</p><p>"I'll give you until I go for the kill to explain yourself. If you die before you prove your point it'll be on you!" Tanshu angrily yelled out going through a couple of handseals and spitting out a bursting wave of flames at his friend. Misu went through a bunch of his own seals and spat out a dragon-shaped water projectile to counteract Tanshu's jutsu.</p><p>The Red Dog's injured and tired body burst from the smoke with a roaring fist that was just barely blocked in time with Misu's blade, Tanshu angrily breathed in and thrust his fist forward breaking Misu's steel and making his fist collide with the body of his friend that then burst into white vapor. Knowing full well about how his friend could use that vapor by heating it up Tanshu leaped back out of it. The fight between Howoku and Shirona below no longer mattered to those two.</p><p>"I don't need to explain anything, I have my own views about how the world of shinobi should be and the lady is just a better leader in such a world than Howoku, it's simple politics, he may still be my friend but he no longer has my vote," Misu replied drawing another katana out of his set of two tied to his waist. The last one was cracked and worn down even before he confronted one of the strongest ninja alive so it was of no surprise that it cracked under pressure.</p><p>"You've cut down so many that your own sword was weeping to be broken, whatever vision of the world you have doesn't interest me, I'll just get you out of my way and go crush Shirona to rub salt onto your bleeding wounds!" Tanshu shouted out enraged as he thrust his fist forward, Misu's body once again dissolved into vapor. The Red Dog had seen the Vapor Mode used a lot during his times working with the other Sannin, he had never seen the mystery of it cracked nor has he wondered about it himself, the idea of fighting a friend had just never dawned on him. Not that it mattered or Tanshu was afraid of it.</p><p>Misu's blade cut through the vapor that he had made, a blinding cloud of smoke-like substance that was deadly similar to the infamous "Hidden Mist Technique" of the Kirigakure ninja. The blade was caught by Tanshu's arms and pushed to the side, as the Sannin tried to capitalize on the opening he himself made the figure of the man only faded back into the cloud of vapor around him.</p><p>"Stop running and fight me!" Tanshu yelled out angrily taken by the ridiculousness of the situation of having to fight a friend he was worrying over for so long when it turned out that his friend was busy cutting down his other friends.</p><p>"Oh, you'd love that huh? You made the enemy out of me so easily, perhaps Shirona's views are also more fitting for you than Howoku's delusions of peace amongst countries of warriors and killers?" Misu's voice echoed from everywhere, it was almost like his voice separated and came from multiple areas inside the fog at once.</p><p>"There's nothing complicated about me kicking your ass, you've sold out to the enemy, it's as easy as that," Tanshu shouted out again blocking swings of Misu's blade that seemed to come from random directions. The bastard was utilizing the cloud of vapor that he was continuously emitting to deceive Tanshu and try and land a cut on him from somewhere he didn't see it coming from. Luckily enough, Tanshu's sharpened senses allowed him to hear the blade cut through the vapor just in time for him to react, it was a superhuman feat all by itself but such was simply Tanshu's life. He broke the conventional rules of how ninja worked to do his job properly.</p><p>"The world where one country is the enemy and another one is a friend, the ideal world where you know who your enemies are... Such a delusional world doesn't exist, Tanshu, you're just as naïve as you were to leave the faith of your little, wet dream to a man you just met!" Misu's voice came from various directions again. "Do you think Shirona is an enemy because she is from Kirigakure? Do you think Kirigakure is an enemy? Do you think Shirona is your enemy? False knowledge of who is an enemy and who is your friend leads to generalization which leads to the death of innocents. For all the bullshit talk Howoku spouts out about peace he doesn't know crap about it, he thinks that just pointing at one country and blaming it for the world's problems will solve everything, he just mistakes it to be that easy and that's why he isn't fit to be in charge. Truth be told, he never was..."</p><p>Tanshu closed his eyes and avoided several more strikes, sharp pain and the warm sensation of blood squirting onto his back alerted him that he may not have been as perfect at avoiding all of the slashes as he may have thought. The Red Dog had spent so long getting rid of his chakra and exhausting himself, charging up the chakra that his summons gave him instead, he planned to use THAT on Shirona but... He will have to dispatch of Misu with it. For that to happen he still would need some more time, however, some more time when he couldn't afford to die!</p><p>"Wait... Wet dream? Do you mean Vashia? What do you mean by that?" Tanshu caught onto a detail in all that manifesto of madness that Misu was spitting out. He was just an apologist for Shirona's actions because those actions allowed him to be a wild animal and kill whoever he wanted to kill. Misu always was a little bit scary and ruthless, they should've gotten the clue when he started leaving for missions in Water Country a bit too often...</p><p>"What do you think I did? She was a Hyuuga with those cursed eyes, she saw through my Vapor Mode, she had the information about my abilities which she could sell to the enemy at any moment - I killed her!" Misu replied cold and simple as if he was describing a meal that he had yesterday. Tanshu's teeth dug deep into his own lip making blood squirt out, his hands furiously flashed through some handseals and slammed into the platform they were standing on.</p><p>"Double Summoning Jutsu: Baby Heaven and Earth!" Tanshu chanted out as the two dogs burst with the same crimson chakra that the Red Cerberus and the Poochy before charged up for him. The two leaped inside the vapor using their incredibly sensitive noses to sniff the bastard out. The two dogs weren't too large or powerful, they were just a duo of shepherd-like dogs with black uniforms that had two symbols on their backs reading "Heaven" and "Earth" respectively. The two dogs whined in pain telling Tanshu of the location of the man he was gunning for, without second questioning his thoughts the man burst forward with all of his speed. As the two dogs whined again in pain Tanshu felt their chakra enter his system - they were dispatched off.</p><p>The man leaped into the cloud where Misu was supposed to be and started attacking in wide swings and kicks trying desperately to hit the man. He wanted to punch him until only a stain remained, no more respect, no more kinship, no more tolerance for the life of this man remained - he killed Vashia! Truth be told he may have had his reasons, his responsibility altering reasons to justify him but to Tanshu it didn't matter, for the death of the young woman he wanted to know, to clash blades with to understand her heart, Misu of the Vapor had to die.</p><p>Tanshu's wide swings only hit vapor, the man felt the gas heating up around him and he leaped up sticking onto the wall, and ran up to the ceiling. Tanshu leaped down with a straight kick that separated the vapor mist in two from the intensity of it, it crashed through the platform sending debris crashing below, making the Sannin backflip to land on the more solid ground.</p><p>"Oh? Did that hit a nerve? I didn't know if she was actually a sweetheart of yours, or what, you were always so silent about her and so shy, like a schoolboy, honestly." Misu taunted once again from the cloud of vapor. "Maybe had you told me back then that you loved her, had the almighty icon of coolness "Red Dog Tanshu" acted like a man around the woman he loved, I would've had a clue and wouldn't have killed her... Although not quite, you were still a criminal back then after all, what did it matter who you loved or hated?"</p><p>Tanshu roared madly into the air with a proud shout that was just supposed to let his emotions out. Wild fiery chakra shot out from his body pushing the cloud of vapor away, the fire started enveloping his entire body, Tanshu stood in a wild rotating and rampaging firestorm of wildfire and he didn't even shake.</p><p>Misu stepped back intimidated by the display of Tanshu's fury, he questioned just what exactly this new technique was, the color of the flame reminded him of the color of chakra that burst from those dogs, could this have been the true purpose of Tanshu's strange way of fighting using his summons as martyrs? Misu let more vapor gas shoot out from under his sleeves as he hid inside the cloud, the ongoing mad outburst of chakra and flames and Tanshu's relative calmness made him very careful about his approach.</p><p>"Y-You should just give up, whatever you do is pointless, you'll never even land a single hit in my mist, I guess you could say Vashia's death wasn't pointless, my secret was preserved and came to bite you in the ass. She is the one you should blame for your own death by my hands, it's because she wasn't strong enough to live and tell you my secret that you die today!" Misu tried to taunt Tanshu.</p><p>The wild burst of flaming chakra formed a sphere of wild flames around Tanshu, the figure that emerged from inside those wild flames was something else. It was a combination of a man and a dog - a bipedal figure with dog's paws and feet, body half-covered with red fur with the muscles breaking through the fur and being just pale skin, the man's face had the typical snout of a dog and Tanshu's pupils looked like there was still some of the literal fire inside of them as they blazed around the minus shaped iris. Erect canine ears broke through from Tanshu's wild shoulder-length locks and powerful and threatening fangs were shown when the man growled angrily, ready to tear into the man who had killed the woman wanted to meet again at some point, the man who had betrayed his friends and his country for his own desire to kill anyone he pleased at any time. Fangs piercing the throat of such a man brought no blame onto their owner!</p><p>"What the... Is that?" Misu shook lowering his blade inside the vapor mist.</p><p>"It's the ultimate combination of a summoner and trust of his partners - the perfect coordination technique between man and animal, had you not been so happy to take a life you'd have known that each life form has vastly different kinds of chakra. This is the result of training that combines the unique chakra of two vastly different beings, the symphony of trust between a beast and a man, originally aimed to crush Shirona but I guess you will have to do. My rage of loss combined with burning passion to kill you creating a technique previously unheard of - Sage Mode!" Tanshu growled out in a voice that belonged more to an animal than to a man.</p><hr/><p>"What did you do, Shirona?" Howoku grunted out leaping towards the woman kicking at her only for his blow to be blocked by her. "What did you do to Misu, why is he fighting against us!?" the man lost any semblance of control. When faced with a woman who manipulated people and wasted their lives to satisfy her goals, someone who has turned one of his best friends into someone that wanted to kill him into his enemy, could he truly be blamed for the loss of any remnants of composure he may have had previously? This battle was the culmination of this entire day, the most insane day of his life, he had no composure to spare for this woman.</p><p>"Ah, yes, isn't it so easy to think that I did something to him? Sure, blame me, hate me, and never for a moment wonder that perhaps you never truly knew the man you called your best friend. With all your mad barrage of peace treaties, tangling the world around you in strings you thought you were pulling but actually were tangled in yourself, have you ever consulted with your friends? Because when I first met a young Sannin walking around my village I sure did, I took my time getting to know him, without the labels of villages, we weren't a Kirigakure ninja talking with a Konoha ninja. We were a man and a woman exchanging ideals and dreams, coincidentally enough our visions for this world were similar and while our means of achieving it were different with a little... Convincing, he decided that means did not matter, only the point they were leading to." Shirona answered, she was no longer smiling, no longer making fun of Howoku or shoving her superiority in his face, she was looking with those angry and burning eyes that looked almost like she was blaming him.</p><p>"Shironaaaa!" Howoku yelled out madly punching and kicking, losing any semblance of cool he may have once had with the woman stopping to even use barriers, she simply leaned to the sides, ducked, and leaped over his attacks. This blonde was not a physically dominating ninja but, at that moment in time, she was physically dominating Howoku. The woman leaped into the air and kicked off of the Hokage's chest backflipping gracefully further away, gaining some distance.</p><p>"Oh, so we've moved past the "village" part, Kirigakure no longer equals evil in your eyes? You seem to now think it's not Kirigakure that's a "nest of tripping snakes, etching to swallow one another" but you think me to be mad? That's an improvement, yes, Hokage, it's not countries that are evil, or rather, different from your point of view, but people. Do not blame my village for my actions, one of us shall live, it is important that he or she does not hold any grudge towards those that were not involved." Shirona's eyes looked completely different, almost... Worried. Almost... Afraid. Finally, the woman behind the manipulative façade appeared, or at least another mask changed its predecessor.</p><p>"I will not let you twist this world again, perversely crush the legacy of me and my predecessors! I won't let you twist this world into war!" Howoku spoke, calmly this time as he started regaining his composure, started dealing with the situation where one of his best friends was a traitor who just tried to cut him down from behind working with the woman who stood against everything he stood for.</p><p>"It is you who twists the world, war is its natural state, it can be no other way when warriors and assassins are who inhabit it. You are just an actor with a mask, forcing the same masks onto the entire world to wear." Shirona replied sending a straight barrier at Howoku that crashed into the man shattering upon impact, the woman turned around herself and sent some more barriers his way from which Howoku rolled to the side. The man was breathing rapidly on his knees, desperately trying to regain his fighting condition which he wasted on the woman's minions and puppets she used as means to her end.</p>
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<a name="section0057"><h2>57. For Vashia! Roar, Sage Mode!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shocked by this new technique that Tanshu had displayed Misu clenched his blade harder. He never was too fond of this youngster, he always thought that everyone was too soft on this kid who spent almost half his life as a criminal. He couldn't stand his stupid act of a tortured soul. Still, he had to hand it to the fool that he was skilled, had Misu not had his Vapor mode at his disposal the Red Dog would have required some additional planning to take out.</p><p>Misu wouldn't have felt nearly as brave just jumping into the fight with him, he would've asked someone to assist him or that the Mizukage spared him some secret weapon in Kirigakure's disposal. The country spent the better part of its history plotting destruction of Konoha, surely they must have had something to take this cocky idiot down.</p><p>"Calm down, this changes nothing - it must be just a combination transformation of some sort, there is absolutely no way that he can sense the secret of my Vapor mode. He may be faster, stronger or whatever but it doesn't matter if he can't get his hands on me..." the Sannin kept calming his racing heart down. The world as he saw it - enveloped in war, a cruel vortex of flames and death, the state that keeps the skill of every ninja sharp, makes them grow and evolve constantly or get swiped aside by the twister of history was at the palm of his hand. No man-dog creature could stop that.</p><p>Tanshu's hand reached to the side and grabbed a handle of a staircase, the Sage Mode user gripped the handle tighter and it melted where his grip was situated leaving a spiky iron bar in the man's hand. The flow of chakra from the body of Tanshu was so immense that when it touched any other substance it rubbed against it so hard that it heated it up. It may have taken the Red Dog the better part of the day to charge up this technique for use but it seemed to be quite the ace in his sleeve.</p><p>Misu leaped forward winding his sword backward and then thrusting its point at the Sage. "Vapor Style: Vapor Dragon Jutsu!" Misu roared out as a powerful gust of wind forced the wild and constant flow of water vapor from his body accumulate into a giant shape of the gaping jaws of a gigantic dragon. Tanshu's arms lifted up and got placed into a handseal.</p><p>"Sage Art: Cerberus Howl!" the man growled out sending a powerful heating shockwave at the concentration of the vapor dragon tearing it to bits and proceeding to incinerate and utterly disintegrate the man in the center of the cloud using the technique. Sage chakra completely dominated any other kind of chakra, Vapor Dragon Jutsu was supposed to be the perfect clashing technique - stand still and absorb any answers that the opponent throws and then lash out violently devouring the target in a wild rush of vapor that simultaneously and wildly changed its temperature and density constantly. It was a living hell for those that got hit by it, still, it was absolutely no match for the Sage chakra of Tanshu.</p><p>"You fool!" Misu's voice yelled laughing maniacally from the shooting cloud of vapor as his fist appeared out of nowhere aimed right at Tanshu's face. The Sage just leaned his head to the side effortlessly avoiding the blow as if he was expecting it, no, as if he knew where it was coming from perfectly. Tanshu's fist tore through the Vapor clone and disintegrated Misu's shape once again. The flaring eyes turned and stared at a random point in the cloud of vapor that constantly grew, no, the point was anything but random - the eyes were staring right into the eyes of the real Misu.</p><p>"NO! Impossible! How could he know!? Tanshu isn't a sensor nor does he possess Byakugan or a similar technique!" Misu thought to himself as he quickly leaped to the side to relocate. His feet moved quietly but swiftly, the Sannin couldn't believe that Tanshu saw through it all. How could he have known that the Vapor mode was a simple use of Vapor clones combined with the Substitution Jutsu, using the constant upkeep of the Vapor mist that helped him confuse his enemies and conceal the trickery? Obviously, someone who could track chakra would see right through it but... Tanshu wasn't supposed to be able to do that!</p><p>Sage Tanshu appeared right in front of where Misu was headed - his speed was incredible, incomparable not only to that of a normal ninja but even to his own. Even Tanshu's own league was completely outclassed by this display. The dog-man figure just growled angrily.</p><p>"Sage Art Taijutsu: Dog Bullet" he chanted out as his wild barrage of punches bombarded Misu's body tearing through it like hot steel cutting through butter, still, instead of blood and guts only more vapor shot out from the Sannin's body. Tanshu's eyes took only mere moments to track the real Misu again.</p><p>"This was the last clone, you've got no one to substitute with anymore, run, make more clones, embarrass yourself more." Tanshu almost barked out as the wild transformation that the technique brought caused his voice to be a combination of both man and a beast. Misu shouted out angrily into the air lunging at Tanshu and drawing his sword, Tanshu leaped forward slashing with his bar of iron that he held in his hand, a deafening clang echoed as Misu's sword cut right through the iron bar but met Tanshu's wild heated up hand that caught the blade right up to his chest.</p><p>"You can't melt my blade, no matter how much you focus your chakra, it's chakra conductive you fool!" Misu grunted. Tanshu smiled. "I wonder about that..." as the flow of Sage chakra from his hand intensified a bright flash covered the top floor of the temple, swallowing both men in it.</p><hr/><p>"This is stupid. I don't need summons!" a much younger Tanshu yelled out after Hanasaku showed him the forest where the ninja hounds resided in. After the young woman helped him in the Tower of Bones and they all kicked God-Eyes' ass he had great respect for her and her level of strength but still, he felt like she underestimated him all the time. He had to listen to her, he had to do everything she did and train with her like her apprentice, those were the conditions upon which Howoku and he agreed to. Tanshu trained with Hanasaku and in return, he will climb through the ranks accordingly to his level of promise and strength that he showed.</p><p>Hanasaku pounded Tanshu into the ground, as violent as that looked she held back the greater part of her wild strength. "Yes, you do! You can't just dismiss an entire field of expertise just because you're good at another. If you had the ability to summon back when you fought God-Eyes the first time you may have beaten him. Ninja dogs can be used for displacing your opponent, damaging them, they're also loyal companions and friends." Tanshu pulled his head out of the dirt and locked his hands around his chest while pouting and looking away. He had nothing against training with Hanasaku but having to train with and acquire the trust of someone else was stupid, especially if this someone was someone of no use to him. Why would he kneel for an animal that was weaker to him?</p><p>"Alpha-san!" Hanasaku kneeled on her right knee and placed her palm on her right shoulder, bowing her head. She then angrily dragged the young companion of her down with her as well. The giant dog growled and upon being given a signal Hanasaku stood up.</p><p>"This young man wants to train with you guys and acquire your trust, he's a great pain in the butt but I hope that having in mind that he is my friend you will find it in you to forgive his great stupidity." the gigantic white shepherd, covered with black stripes in some areas of his body lowered its head to the level of the little man and sniffed him.</p><p>"Fine" Tanshu murmured under his nose, "This big guy looks like I could maybe use him to dispatch of any underlings of my enemies... I guess I'll let you be my comrade." The boy angrily spoke, the canine in front of him barked angrily sending a powerful shockwave that pushed the youth back several dozens of meters making him clench and cover his head to stay on his feet.</p><p>Hanasaku sighed, she gently touched the forehead of the colossal dog and let his silver-colored glowing chakra flow through her until her body went through a transformation, the woman changed right in front of the eyes of the young man. Her body then flashed in an instant implanting her elbow into his belly. Tanshu fell unconscious in a single hit.</p><p>When the young man woke up it was a late evening, Hanasaku was right by his side, the woman noticed him waking up almost immediately. She sighed and leaned up to him checking his body for any greater injuries. "What was that, back then?" Tanshu asked. Hanasaku smiled.</p><p>"Ninja dogs are a very special sort of species of ninja animals. They take a great amount of loyalty and respect towards a ninja to become partners, it took me almost ten years to gain enough mutual respect for them to even let me sign their contract and let me use them in battle. However, that is great because in this world there is a technique that requires a summon and a ninja to be in perfect harmony - Sage Mode. Usually one acquires summons easily and then after gaining several members of their species completely forgets about it, focuses on other skills. Very few have ever achieved this jutsu, no one had ever mastered it. The thing is that once dogs finally trust and respect you - you're incredibly close to that bond being strong enough to learn this technique. Ninja hounds are the best species to train this technique with as you will learn it the most easily with them. I'll leave you here and come back once in a while to oversee your progress, your training will move on once you learn this technique or if I'll see there's no hope for you to learn it."</p><p>Hanasaku stood up and moved towards the door silently, she barely even looked back at the boy. Tanshu clenched his fists together and yelled out angrily, his bandaged head that he hurt when he fell after passing out started pulsing with pain almost instantly. "That power you had, it was amazing! I'll bend my knee as many times as I need, I'll eat shit if I have to but I'll learn this technique! I need it! I need it to protect my Katei!" Hanasaku turned her head back to him, just half of her face was seen in the moonlight as she showed him a thumb up and disappeared into the night. Tanshu got up and started moving towards the light in the distance, where a bunch of ninja dogs were playing cards by the fire. They carried their cards in their teeth and just flipped them face down, pushing them around using their paws.</p><p>"Hey look, it's the human. Sorry, we ate everything, Alpha-san eats like a beast, we eat what's left. You eat what's left after us."</p><p>"Hey... You got thumbs, can you maybe hold our cards and play them as we tell you? Tell you what, you play my cards and scratch my back and I'll let you play with me in the morning." A tiny dog mumbled out in a drunk tone, accelerating the flow of his words and slowing it down to a crawl at random intervals.</p><p>"Yeah, I can do that." Tanshu sat down and took the wet and covered in slobber cards from the dog's teeth, then picked some up from the ground and showed them to him, letting the dog pick the cards to be played. The game went on great, soon every dog playing wanted Tanshu's help and started offering him things for the use of his thumbs to play card games. Still, Tanshu remembered what Hanasaku had told him - dogs were a species that valued loyalty and respect so he never switched his "card master", he let the tiny dog use him every time.</p><p>"You're alright, Tanshu. Tell ya what, I'll arrange it with Alpha-san that you get to sign the contract with us, I'll lend you my fangs just like you lend me your thumbs every evening. Name's Poochy by the way."</p><p>Several years later, a much older Tanshu stood by a pack of crimson dogs, all of whom he had trained with, respect and loyalty of whom he had earned over the years by hunting with them like an animal. Using his own punches and kicks and teeth to take down the prey to honor their ways. It was a real bummer that Alpha, the leader of the Ninja hounds had sworn loyalty to Hanasaku, had it not been so he may have even snagged the big guy's services at some point as the two often sparred just for fun and over the several years have learned to respect one another a great deal. Hanasaku came every three months to observe his progress, by the time she came the first time he already had the contract signed and several dogs he had befriended and able to summon in a fight. Now she was standing proudly and observing his final steps towards becoming a true Sage.</p><p>"So did you get that, Tanshu-san? That's how it's done, each species on Earth has a different kind of chakra and when they mix it up it usually ain't too good, you need great mastery over your own body and your own chakra control to pull it off. You let your summon concentrate all of their chakra, build up insane amounts of it and transfer it to you, then you adapt it and match your own chakra up to it, you don't let it take over yours nor do you let yours take it over - you create a unique mixture of the two that is neither human nor animal. That is how a Sage is born - it's the ultimate combination of trust and respect between the summoned and the summoner."</p><p>Tanshu slapped his hands together and started building his chakra up, the four dogs around him also started howling as their chakra flows intensified and they started to glow blood red from the immense chakra that they emanated from their bodies. The strands of chakra from Tanshu touched up with the chakras of the summoned dogs and as each dog collapsed they transferred great amounts of their chakra to Tanshu. The young man's chakra changed colors a couple of times, the crimson chakra that the dogs sent over mixing with the brownish color of his own to create the vibrant orange glow. A wild burst of flames emanated through the grasslands setting the patches of grass on fire, in the center of the mad burst of chakra stood Tanshu - now a combination of a dog and a man.</p><p>Hanasaku slapped her face with her palm. "What's wrong?" Tanshu growled out, "I feel amazing, with this technique I feel like I could beat anyone alive!" Hanasaku shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"You're just as bad as I am at this. Normally, the true Sage Mode shows no physical signs of transformation except the vibrant changes in chakra color and the blazing chakra nature colored eyes with the weird pupils. In your case you've failed to properly balance out the chakra, you've made it more dog than man and so you've gone through a physical transformation. That is what Alpha-san called "the Imperfect Sage Mode" when he saw me doing it."</p><p>Tanshu sighed, he leaped around a couple of times and threw a couple of lightning-fast punches. "Alright, so how does it work? What are the drawbacks and how do I make it end?" he asked.</p><p>Hanasaku chuckled, "In theory, you could just rebuild your chakra by expelling all the traces of the Sage chakra you've formed, however, I've never successfully done it. The technique ends when you use out all of the Sage chakra you've made using the transformation." In a wild blaze of orange flames, the technique ended and Tanshu returned to normal. "Usually the first time your Sage chakra is impure and sloppily made, also you make very small quantities of it so it ends fast. The quality of the chakra and the amount you can generate will improve with each transformation."</p><p>Tanshu stretched out, he looked really pleased with this amazing new technique but it appeared like Hanasaku had not finished talking yet. "Before you go out there you have to know something. Because we are able of only achieving Imperfect Sage Mode it'll take great amounts of time to achieve the amount of Sage chakra needed to transform. Look at it like this, let's say you need a glass of concentrated orange juice to make you strong, thing is that you can't make concentrated orange juice and you can only make about 20-30%, which means you'll need four or five glasses of it, identically you'll need four or five times more time to reach the amount you need to use the Sage Mode, also you'll use up that many times more of it when using Sage techniques. At least that's how Howoku explained it to me after seeing it... The good part of it is that your physical attributes, depending on the species of the summon that grants you their chakra, will be enhanced beyond belief. You'll be able to sense all non-Sage chakra around you as long as you're transformed and you will also be able to put the Sage chakra into your ordinary jutsu to make unique Sage Style techniques, since the Sage chakra is so special they ignore any chakra nature comparisons and they beat any other chakra nature."</p><p>"I may have trained with you for too long as I care little for your explanations and just want to use it soon!" Tanshu laughed out, Hanasaku shook her head, "Don't rely on it too much, if your mixture of summon chakra and your own chakra is not pitch-perfect, even for your Imperfect version, you can become the animal you're trying to sync with. That happened to me once, it takes a ritual of the contract species to reverse and it's not guaranteed to work, if you mess it up you may stay as a dog for the rest of your life." Tanshu scratched his head, he just realized he spent several years of his life perfecting a technique like this, a technique he could only use at a wildly imperfect version and could only use in a pinch. Still, the rush of feeling in complete sync with the Ninja Dogs was incredible. The amount at which it increased his strength and his speed was beyond astonishing.</p><p>"You said that each species have their own unique Sage Mode, what does that mean?" Tanshu asked as the thought just popped into his head. Hanasaku went through some handseals and summoned a dog and asked him to start channeling chakra. She gently tapped the head of her partner and then looked Tanshu in the eyes and nodded.</p><p>"Yes, that is true, while each Sage Mode enhances one's physical abilities it does so to a certain extent. For example, the speed of a Ninja Turtle Sage Mode user might even be less than that of the user before they went through the transformation, on the other hand, their physical endurance would be incredibly high. As far as the Dog Sage Mode is concerned, you get a vast increase in speed and a slight increase in physical strength, it isn't too much but you also get another ability, just like a dog can bite..." finally Hanasaku's partner finished channeling its chakra and in a flash of white flames the woman transformed as well, looking more like a dog on two feet than a woman.</p><p>Hanasaku leaned her arm back and then thrust it into the earth opening up a fissure that quickly split the field in two, she Sannin then raised her hand and showed her palm to Tanshu. There was some sort of wild flow of chakra from her palm and her fingers that all came together, almost like... Jaws of a dog. "That's right, you can destroy things with your grip like a dog can tear them to shreds with its bite. While Dog Sage has only slight increase in physical strength, its grip strength is boosted to a ridiculous extent, you can press things so hard that their particles get rubbed so hard that they melt. You can tear even ground itself to shreds with it.</p><p>As powerful as the transformation was Tanshu could still see its downsides, he needed to use as much of his own chakra as possible for the transformation to be easier. Which meant that once the Sage Mode ended he was left tired and completely beaten, able to only use his own natural physical strength. It was a last resort technique, plus his partners probably didn't like being used as chakra channelers, that would've also hurt their mutual trust and respect which meant that if he used them as tools to acquire Sage Mode it could've been locked down from him as his trust would've soon become not nearly as strong as it once was, as it was needed to sync up with his partners perfectly...</p><hr/><p>"I know your secret, Misu. Just try and kill me like you killed Vashia... Just TRY IT!" Tanshu roared out loud into the air sending powerful heated shockwaves as his Sage chakra flowed freely from his body, his enraged state no longer controlled the flow of chakra which meant he lost more and more Sage chakra with each second, it didn't matter, Tanshu didn't need that much time to end the killer of the woman he wanted to get to know.</p>
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<a name="section0058"><h2>58. Reality in Shatters!? Howoku VS Shirona</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even though their encounter and scuffle had been quite brief up to that moment in time, Howoku was a bit intimidated by Shirona's abilities so far. Despite her general skillset and her managing position in the Barrier Corps making her a Barrier Ninja, she was not to be written down as just that.</p><p>When she moved and when she weaved hand seals, whenever a barrier ninjutsu technique was made, it came with such mastery and effortless finesse that the Hokage instantly understood that what most Barrier Ninja defined as their limits in the field was only the cover page for Shirona. It was just her opening hand, a ruler for measuring her opponent's abilities, a shoto-blade to measure the distance between her and the enemy before she drew her real blade.</p><p>The woman cocked her head back letting her messy blonde hair fall gracefully behind her back, she also stroked them with her hand putting them in order. They did not seem to get in her way at all, or rather she had chosen a fighting style that did not really make the hair getting in her way a major flaw as it offered few openings if any. Her barriers were built effortlessly and were quite capable of walling any ability, even that on Howoku's level, even if Howoku had not used any of his strongest techniques on the woman yet, he had no doubt she could stonewall them.</p><p>Then there was the fatigue and injury from his previous fights. At his current stage which was just the opening steps of their dance Howoku was already feeling at his limit, every step of the way further down the line, every technique and every punch he threw in this fight was only done so because Howoku's mind commanded his beaten and exhausted body. This woman was so cunning, planning this entire day like this...</p><p>Howoku hoped that Tanshu could handle himself but honestly he wasn't sure if he could handle Shirona all by himself. Then again, if there ever was a person who could figure out Misu's fearsome ability or take him out - it was Tanshu. Even with his title as the Fourth Hokage, Howoku always knew Tanshu was the strongest ninja in the village, if not one of the strongest in the entire world...</p><p>"Well, now that we have our attention set on each other, perhaps I can proceed with a more intricate number?" Shirona smiled as her hands quickly moved through hand seals, Howoku just continued to analyze and observe. The speed of her seals was certainly impressive but Howoku was sure he could match that, even when tired, and when every ounce of air in his lungs counted he could keep up with her in terms of hand seals. The man slapped his hands together trying to make a hand seal of his own when Shirona's palm shot forward.</p><p>"Too late!" she exclaimed as Howoku's figure became just a reflection on the barrier she formed around him. With a slow and sultry walk, Shirona walked up to the barrier. "Isn't it a wonderful technique? Ability to seal a person into the barrier that they touch, forever kept in a static reflection, until of course..." Shirona's arm burst with golden-colored chakra as she shoved her barrier-busting technique enhanced fist through the barrier crushing it into pieces. "I break it!" she finished the train of thought seeing bits and pieces of the barrier-shattering on the ground before disappearing, disintegrating into the air like dust, just like snowflakes that get into a warm home. Just like that whatever was sealed into the barrier would've disappeared in time and space forever.</p><p>A powerful explosion blew from above as Howoku crashed into the ground, having successfully replaced himself with his own clone he made above himself at the last moment. That barrier sealing technique without a doubt was impressive but it was not something that one catches a Kage off guard with. It was more something that a ninja uses on an insolent and inferior opponent, like a lowlife bandit challenging them to a battle.</p><p>Howoku's own arm burst with Starlight chakra creating "Starlight Sphere" technique, a miniature version of his massive "Overhope" jutsu, this one was much more compact but also much weaker. Shirona slid away from the cloud of dust and smoke and stopped herself by driving a kunai into the ground, for a barrier ninja she had the reflexes of a taijutsu expert even if her dodging could've used a bit more technical skill.</p><p>Shirona patted the lower areas of her impressive black dress that was torn up by rocky shrapnel that Howoku's brutal technique threw away, just being close to the technique burnt some areas of Shirona's dress and some of her skin, her body had several minor cuts and bruises. Such was the price of just narrowly avoiding Howoku's technique, normally this would mean a shift in the momentum of the battle but now it meant literally nothing.</p><p>Not with Howoku's exhausted state, not killing Shirona with this technique was not worth the chakra it cost him. Even the weakest of his Starlight techniques taxed his body, soon he'd be entering the emergency supplies of his chakra and at some point, if it goes on as it has up to now he may enter even his vital supply. The Fourth had to hope it wouldn't come to that though...</p><p>"It's so like you, Mizukage, toying with people's lives." Howoku leaped forward with a fist, he already knew that a barrier would be placed in front of him, Starlight chakra burst from his body as the man was already behind his opponent before the barrier was even placed. His fist hit the woman straight in the face, she stumbled back and swiped her hair away from her face, grinning with a full teeth smile. Howoku's burst of Starlight chakra became gigantic, it expanded into a sphere and the Fourth Hokage went through several hand seals thrusting his hands forward after it.</p><p>"I will make you disappear so that you cannot use people as your pawns ever again. Starlight Style: Bifrost" Howoku shouted out as a wild beam of energy, spanning entire meters in its covering radius blasted through the temple room.</p><p>Stone and steel offered no resistance and the woman's frail physique paled in comparison with the destruction that went on, soon her black shade faded in the overpowering white that blinded temporarily all that would've looked at it. Howoku closed and covered up his eyes knowing this blinding effect full well, his eyes bled for five minutes and he thought he'd gone blind the first time he used the technique. The Hokage's technique tore through the entire building, it was impossible to tell just how far it went but there was a great hole in the interior and the other halls, the beam just entered and left the appropriate halls and corridors disintegrating all matter it came in contact with up until an unconfirmed point in the horizon.</p><p>After the destruction finally settled down Howoku's eyes shot wide in surprise, a single mirror-like barrier was right in front of him with Shirona's arrogant posture engraved in it - she sealed herself into her own barrier as she had done with his clone previously. The barrier then burst with Shirona's figure being the only thing that left it, while the woman's body was hunched over and her hands were weighed down and she was hyperventilating, the fact that she didn't take any damage at all just put the D in the "Doom" that Howoku was spelling out for himself in his mind.</p><p>He could not afford just to miss his moves like that, not the moves that cost him so dearly! Not the moves that were literally chipping away at his own life force. Powerful black bags appeared below Howoku's eyes and the man's vision blurred - he knew the symptoms, he was overusing his chakra reserves by a wide margin.</p><p>It was only due to sheer luck alone that Shirona seemed to also be worn out by her solution to the predicament, the barrier somehow managed to withstand all of Howoku's blast, and to make such a powerful wall Shirona must've spent a great deal of chakra as well, now with her being tired and stressed from the strain, Howoku had some brief moments to deal with his own exhaustion. It was like manna from the Heavens to have this moment of short bliss, Howoku could feel his body thanking him for not moving even if something told him that his body would've refused to move in those brief moments even if he commanded it to anyways...</p><p>"What you see as "using", I see as "ruling", we are the people put in power by the trust of our own people. They gave us their permission to rule over them, they gave us their trust to do with them as we see fit as long as we fix the pathetic state they were in before us. If you cannot see that I pity your people. You are no leader, you've not transcended the "ninja" part, even as the head of your village you remain a servant. Just a servant of a nonexistent master, the most pathetic kind of servant there can be." The woman shouted out swiping away with her hand in anger as her body stood straight and proud, this alerted Howoku that she had recovered from her situation and that he needed to prepare for a fight soon. Howoku's arm shot to the side as his "Starlight Sphere" technique formed in his left hand.</p><p>"I see it clearly now, Shirona, you are not a woman plagued by her own ambition, you are a woman plagued by the pressure of ruling. Your people imposed unfair expectations putting you there to fix what Daikon had done, then they criticized you when you did not deliver immediate results so you decided to do something drastic, something to prove you can be an effective leader, one who brings results. While I do pity you, I still have to take you down, I guess in that you shall find freedom from your duty..." Howoku spoke up, his voice no longer had traces of anger, for the first time in this battle he was controlling his actions and chakra clearly, using none more than it was needed to. He just prayed to whatever was listening that it would be enough not to die of exhaustion...</p><p>Howoku's body shot forward, he charged at the woman driving his hand forward attempting to slam his Starlight Sphere into her central body area but Shirona shoved her own hand forward with a powerful barrier. A violent explosion erupted throwing both Kage aside, both Howoku and Shirona threw off their feet and dragged through the rocky ground but their bodies were not like those of Haoru or Tanshu, they were quite human and so were their wounds. Painful gashing bruises that left blood all over the floor, cuts, and burning pain was all they could feel for a moment before the two leaped up on their feet. Howoku's eye bags got deeper, his tense muscle tonus now changed out for a flabby and forcefully dead muscle. Pain and fatigue met his every move.</p><p>Another "Starlight Sphere" formed in Howoku's arm, this time the man drove all of his chakra into it. All of his desire to free his comrade from the responsibility that dragged her into the grave, the pressure of being the Kage she could not handle. The delusion that she could abuse her own people for her own purposes, this cruel idiocy of exacting revenge upon the people that gave her their trust but then disregarded her by using them as her pawns in her own attempt to pull something drastic.</p><p>"Tell me one thing, Shirona. How will you manage the entire world as the "Ninja Empress" if you struggle so with the pressure of being just Mizukage? Do you not see you're trying to shoulder too much responsibility and hate?" The blonde stayed quiet, she just moved her hands to her chest focusing them into four interconnected barriers that she then let go off, the barriers expanded tremendously after leaving her hands but they contracted again and started pulsing with chakra.</p><p>"This is it then? The "infinite mass technique" that Haoru was talking about? Well, it's do or die then..." Howoku thought as his body just drove him forward at the expanding cube that was starting to gain so much mass that it started attracting nearby objects. Shirona thrust her hands again.</p><p>"It seems it will be you who shall disappear, your people will have to suffer your delusions of peace and shackles of treaties no more. Barrier Style Combo Technique! Infinite Mass Configuration!" she yelled out as the shriek coming from the barrier gaining mass by multiplying the number of barriers several times every moment became too loud for comfort.</p><p>Howoku didn't care about if he was doing a sound thing, he was faced with a jutsu that tore through reality itself, he just flung his arm forward chanting out the name of the jutsu that had triumphed against odds of similar caliber. Truth be told he was a bit worried about if he could handle something reality itself couldn't. Strange things started happening, rocks both large and small started flying at him but they didn't smash into him, not yet anyway. Howoku realized that all time had slowed down to a crawl.</p><p>The Fourth wondered if that was how Haoru felt as well, how exactly did he fight against that technique? How in the world is anyone supposed to fight it? Howoku force shoved his hand with the sphere of bursting Starlight chakra into the cube and it just disappeared, together with Howoku's arm, for a moment there the Hokage felt terrified, did his entire arm just got transported into a tear of the fabric of reality? The stones started flying at him at higher speeds and then it happened - a violent explosion as the Hokage's voice finally pronounced "Overhope" in the real world time, not the one diluted by the technique.</p><p>The violent expanding sphere of an explosion of Starlight chakra tossed Howoku aside, away from the crushing void of the tear of reality itself, the man's body got shot through every single rock, and a wall that was attracted to it, pieces of metal and bronze, even the statue in the room got torn to shreds and attracted to the cube in bits, the shards of the statue cut Howoku's body as it was tossed through them. As the Starlight chakra expanded, desperately trying to catch Howoku but failing to incinerate him, it took all of the debris and destroyed it instead.</p><p>Shirona was breathing heavily, she was tired and she had just destroyed the icon of the historic legacy. She made her place in history by utterly disintegrating the historic temple of gatherings of many generations of Kage and the Lords. The place of many Summits was now just a pile of rubble, most of it stuck in an undetermined void in between reality and everything that was not it. Shirona kept looking at Howoku's unconscious body, or at least she took it for an unconscious body but she was too tired to check. Also, the Hokage may as well have been toying with her, luring her in to exploit the opening.</p><p>Shirona glanced above, observing as the fight between Tanshu and Misu had moved from taking place on the higher floor platforms meant for observers of the rituals that used to transpire in this room, chanting religious babble as blood was spilled without a doubt, as was the case with those ancient religions, to the treetops and what remained of the rubble forming artificial tall platforms that stood alongside the trees around the temple.</p><p>The woman reached for her backpack and removed a kunai, playing with it in her hands before starting to slowly and carefully approach her knocked out opponent. The Fourth looked so beaten and powerless, he was completely at her mercy. Still... Something felt wrong with just driving the knife in between his eyes or ribs like this. No. She wanted to beat him clean, to actually crush him and his ideals because she wanted clarification that her ideals were right.</p><p>After all, only in a battle can a matter be solved, there were no truths, only artificial delusions of truth based upon one's own individual understanding of things. One person experienced one thing one way, the other could've had completely different experiences and understandings of the very same thing as each person had different backgrounds. There was no one absolute truth, no catharsis of justice being served, just an ideal triumphing over another as natural selection deemed one person survivor and another a fatality of war. Such was the cruel inescapable law of this time and world. In a world of liars and killers, there was no truth or justice, the only truth and justice were what the strongest believed in. The will of the strongest was the only absolute.</p><p>"You were a remarkable ninja, Howoku. A descendant of the Moon People, God of whom were praised in this very temple. As ironic it would be for your life to crumble together with the temple which was the legacy of the foolish praise of some beast sealed in the Moon... This cannot be it, you cannot be dead, right? I wondered why the mass of the technique didn't just crush you outright, it was because you used that bloody technique to create a tunnel in the crushing weight of the mass. Your Starlight chakra, no, your conviction in your belief drove through the infinite mass. You drove through the point upon which only the monsters aren't crushed to but dust by just moving on, thrusting your heart and ideals that your "Overhope" symbolized forward, caring not of the end."</p><p>Shirona kicked Howoku's body so that it flipped over and leaned over his neck with her knife in her hand, placing it to his throat. "So hear this, Howoku, the Fourth Hokage. If you do not stand now and fight me to the end I shall deem myself the victor, I, Shirona, the Fourth Mizukage will have triumphed over you. My ideals will be deemed superior by natural selection. What say you, Fourth? Speak now or stay forever silenced!" the woman yelled out. A powerful punch silenced her sending her body rolling forward, with a proud roar Howoku's injured and barechested figure jumped up, his pupils were completely white and it appeared that the man now fought completely out of instinct.</p><p>Howoku's shouting body leaped forward, kicking the Mizukage to keep rolling on the dirt and stone rubble before weaving a hand seal and making a shadow clone appear that punched the woman up in the air with an uppercut. The Hokage's mindless body leaped into the air and together with his clone, the two kicked the woman in the head sending her crashing down. The clone then disappeared in a poof of smoke as Howoku's eyes once again returned to normal after his feet touched the ground.</p><p>"It appears you've been right, Shirona. My Starlight chakra made a tunnel of air that was free of crushing might upon which reality itself folded. Rest assured, all of that power, the strength, and ability to drive through the force that bends reality itself will now come right at you!"</p><p>A cruel smile dyed Shirona's face as she stood up placing her torn dress back on her shoulder and wiping the hair off her face and the blood off of her lip. "Come!" she shouted out. This was what she wanted - fate itself deciding over which Kage was right.</p>
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<a name="section0059"><h2>59. The Price of Love. Sage Mode Ends</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A powerful shock shook the platform on which Tanshu and Misu were fighting. Misu managed to realize what was going on after he noticed the black cube below that was sucking in chunks of rock and debris and reducing the entire room to rubble, increasing in size and strength with each passing moment. "Damn, Shirona must be pushed really hard to use that on such a scale, she's gonna blow the whole place to bits..." the Sannin thought to himself as he gracefully leaped from one chunk of rocky wall and ceiling to another as they were rotating and being pulled towards the cube.</p><p>Tanshu seemed to also realize the danger of Shirona's technique, unlike Misu however he didn't trouble himself with the thoughts of how his partner was doing. The Sannin knew full well of Howoku's abilities, the man was not put onto his seat of Hokage for nothing. Then there was the fact that Tanshu's Sage Mode sensory allowed him to track not only Misu's movements but also the battle below. While Howoku's chakra was in the red zone for certain, Tanshu was confident that the man could pull it out in the end. Howoku was a man who lived his life holding himself back, restraining his abilities from incinerating and disintegrating everything around him. If anyone knew how to restrain and control the level of strength he puts out - it was the Fourth.</p><p>Tanshu could feel the immense power of the cube dragging him towards it as well, Misu happened to avoid that power by hiding behind the surface of the rubble he leaped on, he always stuck to the side that was not exposed to the cube's gravity and so overcoming the pressure and great attraction came easier for the man. Still, it was not enough, not even for him.</p><p>Tanshu could feel the Sannin's chakra decreasing rapidly as Misu kept making new clones further away and replacing himself with them, letting the clones get dispelled and leave a cloud of vapor that also got caught in the gravitational pull. It formed an impressive twister of a black cube in the center, vapor clouds around it, and large chunks of the torn apart temple rotating around the cube. The construction was almost poetic in its beauty.</p><p>And then it all just blew up, luckily enough Tanshu and Misu had moved up onto the cover of trees above, they were quite far away from the battle between the Kage and the Sage could no longer sense Howoku's or Shirona's chakra. It could've meant a great many things. It could've meant that both of them died in that violent explosion, it could've meant that their chakra was so weak now that even Tanshu's Sage Mode couldn't pick them up, the simplest and by far the most positive explanation was that Tanshu simply leaped out of the range of his sensory. After a brief look back at the decimated temple, Misu grinned and clenched his sword more tightly letting his chakra flow through it.</p><p>"So... How long does your mode last? I bet you can't just use it as often as you want, having in mind that we worked plenty of times together and I never saw you use it." Vashia's killer tried to keep Tanshu talking. The Sage spread his legs and evened his balance slowly positioning his arms in a jaw-like position up front. A wild burst of the Sage chakra concentrated on the center, lighting up both hands and forming a more clear jaw-shaped construct out of pure chakra.</p><p>"I never found a situation where I would need it. Make no mistake you're not a special case, Shirona should've been, I just spent so much chakra preparing it that now I'll just have to crush you with it instead. Don't get delusional and think for a moment that you can just stall the battle and have my Sage Mode time out. I have more than enough time I need to beat you." Tanshu's chakra burst more violently as rage itself made the Sannin force his chakra out in much larger quantities and higher density than it needed to be. Tanshu purposefully supercharged his technique.</p><p>"Sage Art: Hellhound Crunch Jutsu" Tanshu mumbled to himself as his body simply disappeared, aiming not for the Misu's figure that was standing right in front of him but instead at the one above and behind him - the real Misu, not one of his Vapor clones. Tanshu moved faster than Misu could even perceive him and replace himself with the clone, or maybe the Sannin just used too much chakra making the clones and having his body replace itself with them, spreading those vapor clouds and all that, and now his tired body could no longer keep up with the reflexes.</p><p>The Red Dog's tight grip locked into Misu's shoulder making blood shoot out from the wound. The overflowing with chakra grip tore right through bone and flesh with no resistance at all, it tore the chunk of flesh and cauterized the wound with an intense flow of Tanshu's Sage Chakra so fast that Misu didn't even feel the pain, he just lost his balance and tumbled down with his right shoulder looking like a mashed mess - his flesh was torn out and then molten into some sort of mass that stuck back to the spot where it was torn from. It was usually a wound that'd kill a person outright, even if there was no bleeding - a major blood vessel was now missing from the vital circle of blood flow. Misu, however, defied reason and stood back up, spitting out blood from his mouth signaling some sort of irregularity in the way his blood flowed.</p><p>Blood broke through Misu's nasty wound and started dripping onto the grass, that shouldn't have happened - the place hit by Tanshu's technique was completely dead meat. He wasn't supposed to be able to bleed from it or even stand back up or live for that matter. Within seconds the Red Dog realized the solution.</p><p>Chakra was a combination of a person's physical and spiritual sides, its flow could've been used for various purposes - to strengthen one's physical abilities or make one survive blows one shouldn't have. Misu's chakra control went a bit beyond that - the Sannin was temporarily sustaining himself by using chakra to redirect his blood flow. It was a pathetic final solution but it kept Misu alive at least, it was killing him but much slower than it should've. It was a desperation move.</p><p>Three Misu vapor clones appeared out of nowhere swinging their copied swords at Tanshu trying to cut him down. The real Misu below also weaved a hand seal. "Vapor Style: Deceitful Blade Jutsu!" he shouted out in pain with more blood shooting out from his mouth as he forced air out of his lungs. Misu's body dissolved into a figure of gaseous state water and shot towards Tanshu, the Red Dog knew that technique well, he had seen Misu use it plenty of times.</p><p>The Sannin would harden his body and normalize it right at the last moment to deliver the cut, then quickly replace himself with one of the clones to avoid a counterattack. Tanshu leaped forward standing up upside down using one of his hands and spreading and twisting his body to avoid every single cut from Misu's clones. The Sage then pushed his body up using all of his strength in that one hand making the branch break off and crumble down but also propelling himself upwards and landing on a higher branch.</p><p>The Sage then leaped forward diving down and landing on the solid branch where the clones were at striking rapidly and precisely to dispatch of them, they may have dissolved into move vapor upon being taken down but at least Misu would have to trouble himself making more clones and using chakra if he wanted to replace himself with them using his Vapor Mode. A painful shock woke Tanshu up out of his fit of rage he was fighting in - Misu managed to land a cut onto his back, instinctively the Sage leaned forward and avoided what would've been a beheading blow and then tried to roll to the side but got another deep cut right on his back.</p><p>Tanshu had to hand it, Misu was giving him a fight, while on a one on one fight Sage Mode would blow the Sannin away, his opponent was playing it smart - using cheap hit and run tactics to wear him down. While Tanshu still had plenty of Sage Chakra in his system those injuries made him worry about his physical state. If he gets hurt too much he'll need to start spending chakra to keep himself standing and if that happened... Senjutsu chakra was the only kind of chakra he had to spend.</p><p>Tanshu leaped forward cutting through the vapor with his right hook, connecting to Misu's painful messed-up wound and making the man shout in pain with the most horrible voice that Tanshu had ever heard. Even having the fact that Misu was the man who killed Vashia in mind - that shout almost made him feel sorry for the man... Almost. Another punch missed its mark but the Red Dog saw that his opponent was opened, he was dodging out of sheer instinct and not plan. With a powerful uppercut he sent his opponent flying, Tanshu hoped that Misu would hit a really thick branch and open his skull killing him instantly, sadly he only flew through smaller branches and eventually landed on one of them that stopped his fall.</p><p>"Got no more clones to substitute with? So now perhaps you realize how Vashia felt? Overwhelmed, fighting an opponent she had no chance to beat but having pissed that opponent off to the point where they would have never let her go alive. Do you feel it now? The kind of fear of inevitable doom, the kind of helplessness that she felt at her last moments?!" Tanshu shouted it out. Misu stood up, he was huffing and grunting, throwing up blood but, for some reason, he still stood up. The Sage smiled as he realized what it was that kept the man standing up.</p><p>"I know what your game is, why you told me what you've done to Vashia. I've been thinking about it for a while, Misu. You were fighting one of the most powerful ninja in the world so why tell him something like that? Why piss them off? Now I know, you wanted for it to be personal, you wanted it because you knew that if this was strictly business I'd kill you in a couple of seconds and never worry about it. You made sure that I'd do everything in my power to prolong your death, this way you'll get maximum chances to outlast me seeing how I've already fought several powerful ninja today. You always were a snake, Misu, but to me, snakes are just pests, things to crush with my boot!" Tanshu's half canine form growled out angrily.</p><p>Even when his strategy was revealed to be known Misu didn't react significantly, his eyes did display a certain distaste of his plan being known but he just gulped that despair down and kept fighting. He must've known that the fact that Tanshu finally caught up to what Misu had been doing meant nothing. Just acknowledging someone's feelings didn't make one feel differently, even if Tanshu knew of Misu's strategy he'd still try and make the Sannin die as painfully as possible. Even with the Red Dog's knowledge being there - ultimately nothing changed.</p><p>Misu sheathed his blade and focused immense amounts of chakra into his feet, vapor shot out from below, and formed streams of gas that rotated around the man. The ninja swordsman leaped at Tanshu diving at the Sage with great speed, the Sannin shot his strongest stream of vapor through his sword right at the bottom of his sheath that added to his natural strength and speed of the draw propelling the sword from his sheath. With a powerful drawing and swinging motion, Misu intended to cut his Sage opponent down. "Vapor Style Secret Technique: Misty Flash Murder!" the Sannin grunted out through sheer pain and exhaustion. Overpowering death just to kill his opponent before he eventually kicks it himself.</p><p>Tanshu looked at his opponent triumphantly from the side - he had dodged the swing and the compressed jet of vapor that shot out after it was over. With a strong punch, the Sannin sent his opponent down. The Red Dog thrust his arm forward slamming his palm into Misu's stomach making the man shout in pain once again as his palm drove deep into Misu's body. Something was wrong, that punch should've definitely killed him... Unless Tanshu's Sage chakra was actually weakening, could he have been spending it in his blows unintentionally this whole time? Enhancing his every blow without his mind agreeing to it? In that case, Tanshu needed to end it all, the Sage let his Sage chakra burst wild and slammed the branch with his palm again making the entire tree fall down cut in half.</p><p>Misu managed to slip off of the branch and swing onto another tree. The Sage tried to balance out his breathing, he was starting to feel the pain in his back from before, he was starting to feel the edge of his abilities - the limit of his Sage chakra that he spent so much time storing up. Even after all this time, he couldn't properly control this state, he couldn't fully control how much chakra he was spending, or maybe this was just his unstable emotional state? Rage dictating his actions and making him foolishly enhance every strike. Make every blow hit like it was meant to move the world and crumble mountains. Misu jumped up from below with an upwards slash, Tanshu stepped back losing his balance and backflipping onto another branch. The Sage felt a warm drop of blood run down his forehead as Misu's hit didn't entirely miss its mark.</p><p>There he was - Misu dove right after Tanshu, the Sannin made a couple of hand seals and shot his arms forward channeling his chakra through them. "Sage Art: Cerberus Howl!" Tanshu shouted as his body got enveloped in a powerful stream of chakra that quickly shaped a sphere around him that dissolved blowing Misu away. This wasn't Tanshu's technique however, this was the natural occurrence of his Sage Mode ending. The last of his Sage chakra left his body in a blast of force that wasn't that powerful but at least it kept Misu off his back.</p><p>Misu laughed out loudly landing on a branch and wiping the blood off of his face. "All this arrogance, all those big words and swearing you'd avenge your sweetheart!" he yelled out. The bastard couldn't stop laughing his ass off. "I guess you really did love her, how else could you have gotten played like that? Even after realizing my game, you kept on doing it, getting angry and empowering your strikes. All it took was conserving my chakra at the last moments, using it to withstand your onslaughts, and then see your beloved Sage Mode end. That's why I always hated you, it's only fitting that your cockiness made you fall hard. Well, on the plus side - you'll get to meet your Vashia pretty soon!"</p><p>Tanshu stretched his neck out. This really did suck, how could he have overlooked something like that? Of course, ninja's emotional state influenced how they used their chakra, an angry ninja worried less about conserving it, their chakra mastery was impaired and imperfect. The imperfection of his chakra mastery added to his already imperfect Sage Mode made it all just one big balloon that couldn't wait to blow up in his face. An angry ninja unintentionally enhances their blows with chakra, Tanshu got played like a fool. Had he known how to simultaneously control both his Sage chakra and his own chakra, using his own chakra for enhancement of his blows and using his Sage chakra for blowing Misu away... Oh well, it was too late for that. That darned back hurt so much!</p><p>Misu leaned forward and once again sheathed his sword. Jets of vapor once again shot out from his body and started rotating around in a wild twister as Misu prepared to use his ultimate killing technique. "Or maybe... You won't. She was so young and innocent that she couldn't have gone to the same afterlife we'll go. After all, skilled ninja like you and me have so many dark spots in their files that they couldn't possibly go anywhere else but hell. It's going to suck having to share an afterlife with a cocky bastard like you but if that's the price of Shirona's plan coming to fruition and her perfect world being born, I suppose it'd be worth it."</p><p>Tanshu sighed and stood tall. Almost like he wasn't going to even fight it anymore. His chakra was in an alarming state and he probably didn't have it in him for any jutsu. He made sure to use all of his own chakra that he didn't need to stay alive before using his Sage Mode so that he didn't mess it up and now he'll pay the price for it. "Well, you're right about one thing, sharing an afterlife with you really would suck. But the thing you're wrong about is that you're forgetting one thing..." Misu's body leaped forward, closing the distance between Tanshu and Misu almost instantly and drawing his sword using jets of vapor that shot right at the end of his scabbard driving his sword out of the sheath.</p><p>That nasty flesh cutting sound echoed through the forests around what used to be the temple where the Summit was supposed to be taking place. A loud sound of dripping blood, hitting the wood like raindrops from the sky could've been picked up by anyone close by, the crimson fluid of life flowed freely through the branches, down onto the leaves, and then hit the floor below coloring the puddles of water blood red. A sound of flesh hitting the ground and tumbling to the ground below right into one of those puddles followed, the man that fell down had their life leave their eyes long before hitting the ground below. Even Shirona and Howoku must've felt that wild burst of chakra, that fateful moment that decided the man chosen for victory by fate itself, leaving the other one in pieces. Then again, in a battle between monsters like that, there could've been no victor. The sky itself started to cry, the rain broke out with a strong gust of wind driving it into the faces of whoever was still alive to feel its cold embrace.</p><p>The bloody puddles colored with the blood and guts of the loser were quickly about to be washed away by a wild flow of water. The fresh tears of mother nature were about to clean the impure signs of death and destruction that man had created that day.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0060"><h2>60. When The Skies Cry Blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Howoku's eyes were wild, the man felt the blood pumping into the bags below them, his entire body has been pushed now more than it had ever been. Judging from the state of his opponent it was evident that challenging another Kage after previous great fights that tired him out was a foolish move. Shirona's body also displayed some signs of fatigue and injury but it was more on the level of someone being after a bothersome jog, she wasn't really struggling with just standing upright. Howoku clenched his fist feeling blood dripping from his fist, his body was now so tired that an entirely different effect from chakra enhancement of durability was evident.</p><p>Enhancing one's body was almost like making it like stone when one used chakra to augment their physical abilities or to improve their chances of surviving one or another attack it interfered with the flow. When one did so many times during a short period of time it was entirely possible to not only mess up one's chakra flow but achieve an opposite effect - body started breaking down. Puniest of blows opened up wounds, scratches felt like slashes from a sword, getting punched felt like an elephant stepped on you. To Howoku this had never happened but he heard from both Hanasaku and Tanshu that such effect was quite possible.</p><p>Howoku's palm opened up as Starlight chakra erupted from it, the Starlight Sphere jutsu that he formed now was different, smaller, blinking in and out of existence constantly. It wasn't even perfectly shaped like a sphere too, the shape was imperfect suggesting that troubles with chakra control made Howoku struggle with shape manipulation. The man leaped forward trying to punch Shirona with his fist, then open it up and slam the Starlight Sphere right into her face. The Mizukage gracefully leaped back slamming her palms together.</p><p>"Barrier Style: Barrier Multi-Image Mirage!" she chanted as countless barriers appeared around her and then within moments shuffled all around the area. Howoku's fist drove into a barrier image, busting it down. The Hokage roared out of wild outburst of pain as the bones in his knuckles cracked loud and blood splattered onto the ruined barrier.</p><p>In a fit of rage and desperation, Howoku leaped forward driving the Starlight Sphere into another barrier making it blow into bits. "Overhope!" Howoku yelled out shooting a wild burst of chakra into his technique that erupted into a powerful sphere that started tearing trees down and drilling into the stone forming a powerful crater. Now Howoku was tapping into his vital supply of chakra, he wasn't sure just how much more he could last, he wasn't sure of the effects of such desperation but he didn't care. He was fighting for his ideals, fighting to protect his village and nothing more mattered. If Shirona survived now she could've easily torn Konoha and the other villages down, even if Konoha was the only village to fall to her hands it'd disrupt the sensitive power balance making Kirigakure the most capable force in an all-out war.</p><p>Barriers burst into shatters one by one, each and every one of them, even Shirona's incredibly hard barriers got crushed when hit by the strength of Howoku's own life force. Shirona shrieked in pain as the barrier she was hiding behind burst sending her crashing into a tree, the woman just barely managed to roll to the side in time. Her hair, skin, and dress were burnt up severely, Shirona's pale skin now had numerous patches of pink burns that needed attention, her face had streams of blood that spread from the wound on her head caused by the impact into the tree.</p><p>Her dress only held on a pathetic rag, she had pieces of a tree still sticking out of her, the heat of battle made her not even feel the pain of having those enter her body, they were just bleeding, weakly but relentlessly chipping away at the woman's life. This was no longer a battle of care and planning, this was one ambition crashing into another, only the final person standing mattered in the waves of history. Whoever would have stood would've been seen as right, whoever would've gone down would've been the final relic of the old order.</p><p>Shirona and Howoku leaped at each other shouting wildly. At this point even the Mizukage used no barriers, the two were so wildly taken over by their berserk rage of battle that they just dove into one another swinging with fists and kicks. To an eye that would've observed the two from afar, if said eye had the capacity to ignore the vast amounts of blood, devastation, and moans of pain, it may have appeared that the two were engaged in some sort of sick and twisted dance.</p><p>A tango of pain, a polka of devastation, a flamenco of cold and absolute death. These two were not physical combatants, weren't known for it anyway, despite that fact, their bodies disappeared in a flurry of Howoku's bleeding fists and his feet, Shirona's palm or two-finger point strikes and broken heels swinging around. Each strike was blocked by another point of another's body, punches and kicks were blocked by shins, blocks from elbows and knees. Almost like in a lethal game of Twister. The bodies of two contorted in manners that ordinary people would have never thought were possible. With a double punch out the two backed away, staggering from one another but still holding on their feet.</p><p>Having exhausted the supply of punches, kicks, lunges, and thrusts from her elbows and knees, Shirona decided to attack using her tongue instead. "I heard Hanasaku and her team of genin are currently in Water Country? Are you worried that if I survive I'll place bounties on their heads? Imagine the kind of sick and twisted bastards roaming this world that would go after your precious childhood friend and her little kids. Is that how you imagine me and my country?"</p><p>Howoku wiped the blood and slobber off of his mouth and stared back at Shirona trying desperately to get back some air into his aching lungs. "You're a woman of plans and endless ambition, the only reason you'd be telling me that would be if you have an ace on your sleeve. So tell me, are they here? Do you plan to shield yourself with their bodies sealed into barriers at the last second? Both of us know that Chestnut Hanasaku is beyond the mettle of any Hunter ninja, Land of Fire, or Water..."</p><p>Shirona straightened her body out, her muscles were twitching as they have been pushed and exhausted to an enormous extent. Wiping her hair out of her face the woman calmly breathed out, she seemed to have gotten the hang of her breathing. "No. I thought about it for a moment there but... They have been spotted on an island in Land of Water. It would've been really easy to declare open season on them or maybe try and capture them myself but that's beyond the point. I just wanted to know if you're worried about them, if ever during that Summit you figured to ask me. Were you worried that I may not already know of their presence close to my own village? Perhaps you were conflicted between asking me to leave them alone, maybe even threatening me, and just staying silent and trusting your lifelong friend. She's an idiot, it isn't in her capacity to stay hidden. She drowned an island sending it to the bottom of the ocean the first day in Water Country, sensor ninja tend to notice an entire island disappearing off the map."</p><p>Howoku stretched out and took his fighting stance, "It's indeed unfortunate that they left to that mission before all this mess started, we tried to contact her informing her of the new conditions but... Either she chose to ignore our messages or she was too thick to even notice them. To answer your question - yes, yes I cared about the lives of Hanasaku and her students greatly. I was in the predicament like the one you described. Although I don't see the point in your question."</p><p>Shirona smugly grinned, "Can't you? Allow me to reveal it to you, you were worried about the tools of your Lord. The only one with the use of such feelings is the Fire Lord for he is the one losing worthy assets, to you they are just numbers on a paper, should be anyways. Can't you see how unfit and twisted this world is to maintain ninja? It needs another war, it needs people living in fear, I want people dying less than you do but I want what makes people into people and what makes ninja into ninja preserved. Right now we are hugging our neighbor without a worry if he is armed or not, oftentimes we embrace them even if they ARE armed. A response of kindness to violence is not healthy human behavior, we've long since lost our way."</p><p>Howoku leaped forward with a punch, "I thought we've established that we will disagree with each other for as long as we draw breath." The punch missed Shirona who thrust her palm into Howoku's arm making something snap, she then punched him in the face a couple of times. Howoku regained his consciousness from fading away quickly, "Why should I care about how you justify your delusion?" he finished his thought trying desperately to land a punch but failing.</p><p>His chakra no longer could augment his physical abilities as that would've literally killed him. Shirona still had some chakra to spare for augmentation of her reaction time and her agility so she gracefully and easily leaned out of the way thrusting a knee into Howoku's stomach. She then weaved a handseal and spread her arms as four barriers formed around Howoku with the fifth forming right above him.</p><p>"Barrier Style: Empress' Embrace!" she mumbled as the barriers slammed together breaking multiple of Howoku's bones as they busted out of the sheer pressure of the woman's push. She realized how much weaker her barriers had gotten since the beginning of the battle, had she caught the Fourth with such a jutsu early on she'd have crushed him into a red minced mass, now the barriers folded and shattered from their own force. Howoku's lifeless body slammed into the center of the crater his own technique dug up. For a moment Shirona had to regain her freedom of movement as her fatigue was making her more and more tired but she'd do so in a moment - the important fact was that she finally did it, she won a satisfying one on one fight against her nemesis - fate justified her actions at last!</p><hr/><p>Further away, in the thickness of the woods, Tanshu's tired body slammed against the tree bark and slid down. The rough surface of the bark rubbed against his skin leaving gashing bruises. Blood shot out from the man's gut which was quickly but momentarily contained by Tanshu tying a cloth around it and pressing against it hard. "You forgot one thing, Misu... That Sage Mode or not... I am still Red Dog Tanshu - Konohagakure Sannin..." he heavily mumbled out seemingly to himself as he remembered that fateful fraction of a second that determined which one of them fell down below in pieces and which one was left to reminisce about the experience.</p><p>Howling sound of vapor hitting the scabbard, Misu's hand gripping the hilt and drawing it from the sheath enhancing the driving force and speed of the technique. Tanshu's own iron grip locking around Misu's hand right before the blade contacted with the Sannin's body with the other hand pushing his body up in the air from Misu's own shoulder. The hand that managed to grab hold of Misu's slashing hand wasn't foolish enough to try and resist it but instead kept on driving the cut forward, full circle around the spot where he intended to cut - right through its master's own body making the real Misu hit the dirt below in two. It was pretty dumb of Tanshu to land so soon on the other side - the compressed vapor shooting off of Misu's blade cut him in the gut pretty deep. Now he had to force his consciousness to stay intact, to literally keep himself from dying.</p><p>"Who could've thought that a weak little fucker like Misu would've... Driven me to this..." Tanshu coughed up some blood. His eyes were starting to feel really heavy, the Sannin almost considered singing with that legendary voice of a Sannin that couldn't sing to save a life. His voice was said by many jounin and his Sannin peers to be so horrible that it would've kept a dying man awake.</p><p>"Time to test that theory, huh? Nah, it ain't worth it... Shit... Bet those three are gonna slack off while I'll be away." Tanshu thought to himself. The dying man looked up into the sky, feeling the cold and cleansing droplets of rain running down his own face. Now that the man recalled on his life it sort of sucked: his parents died early, he was lost and controlled by any idiot with enough force to impress him for so long, his first love died by his friend's hand before the young Tanshu even fully realized what love for a woman meant. Although now that he tried to generalize it all - it didn't feel that bad. There were some fun moments that made the general disaster that was his life feel great...</p><p>A voice of a young girl echoed in his ears, Tanshu could've sworn he was delusional at this point: "If I can get stronger... I can stop this from happening, I can protect my teammates and my enemies, defeat my enemies without killing them, no matter the means...". Suddenly Tanshu remembered the team of brats he left in the village with instructions on how to further train their abilities before his return. Yes, Mana - the dumb young idealist who thought that world was something she could fix without killing, Shimo the one of hundreds of young brats that dreamed to be Hokage, Sugemi, the rivaling Mana in dumbness kid who didn't care about anything else but getting his non-existing feats recorded and acknowledged in a manga.</p><p>Tanshu's lazy hand wiped rain off of his face, his shoulder-length hair started sticking to his face and feel really sticky. If it just wasn't for that head-splitting migraine that getting cut up like this called up he could've at least thought straight... "Shimo... You weren't that bad, you just really hated that bastard Mizukage Daikon and you wanted to make it so that no one would have to live in a village controlled by a guy like that. Nothing really wrong with that, I guess. Just keep training that sword hand, keep making your chakra control better. If you need it ask Mana to teach you how to use it better... I wonder what you would've said if you met that bitch Shirona, which one would've seemed worse to you, heh?" Tanshu thought to himself scratching the back of his head. The rain started soaking his clothes, the fresh cold made his wound hurt less, or maybe it was just his impending loss of consciousness.</p><p>"Sugemi... I've just no words bout you. You're a lot like my idiot sister, I guess, too dumb to know where your limits are. A young stud like you learning the Gates... Maybe sister will see your potential and train you, she'd see a lot of herself in you, kid. And for God's sake find a better goal than having a fucking manga written about you..." Tanshu growled, at this point, he almost believed that his students back home could hear him somehow. Maybe they really could, maybe the world really was as dumb and pink and magical as Mana wanted to make it out to be, maybe some magical force would transfer his words to the ears of his students so that they didn't have to be completely lost and useless.</p><p>Sugemi's dumb face popped into Tanshu's memory, his soapy dumb face yelling loudly that he'd beat everyone else at doing dishes. Tanshu's body twitched in laughter. "This ain't tears runnin' down... It's this stupid rain..." the man grunted out to himself as his tired hand covered up his wet eyes. It wasn't that the total mass of his life was that worth living or that good, his life was so depressing that instead of living it he endlessly pursued strength. Almost became Oni Mask's Demon apprentice, trained with Hanasaku, killed countless bandits and ninja roaming the wilderness that were looking for either him or a free buck. However, there were those few in-between moments that somehow reminded him what it was to actually live...</p><p>"Mana..." Tanshu mumbled, "I was the strictest on you, partly because you were stupid and childish and naïve but... I guess partly also because you reminded me of Vashia and because somewhere deep I knew she may have died somewhere, else she'd have contacted me, I would've heard from her, at least one word about her from someone... I knew that she was shy and kind and honor driven and I saw some of that in you. This world is cruel for people like you two, it takes lives way too quickly and because of that people stop appreciating just how precious hopeful, and childish people like you two are. Everyone forgets how much we need them in this gloomy world of fear and conflict. Just as I have forgotten and so you probably thought I was just being mean to you for the kicks. Truth be told that's how people will treat you, that is the life of being an idealist, people will make fun of you, call you out forgetting that ideas inspire change..."</p><p>The Sannin wiped his tears off using his wet sleeve, blood started breaking through his cheap attempt at containing his wound. At least he was spared from the fate of having his guts fall out. "I wish you were never told about the real world, the world that showed itself right here. I wish no one told you I died fighting a man I always thought of like a douchebag but my friend, who turns out killed a friend, whom I, it turns out, loved. I wish you didn't have to know that friends can turn on you, that your hope and happiness can be snuffed out as easily as snapping a finger. Strong and weak both are equal in front of death, no one is strong enough to eliminate it or defy it. Stop chasing strength to protect the people you love, you'll just kill yourself in the process and make those people sad, failing your mission in the end. I don't really know what kind of person Vashia was, understanding her was something I wanted to do before I died. I just feel like she was so similar to you and for that, I've been unfair towards you, for that I apologize, Mana... There, I'm not apologizing to anyone else!" Tanshu grunted out angrily as his body no longer responded to commands and just laid down on the branch he was on.</p><p>"We've torn through every bastard in our way, punched every bad guy in the face once or twice, some of them quite a lot of times... Ain't too bad of a way to go, I suppose..." Tanshu's eyes weighed down and closed. It did not move until twenty minutes later when a party of people in hoods found the man's body and after examining it moved on forward. One of the cloaked white-haired figures that had their silver locks flow wildly in and out their hood stopped and summoned a pigeon, quickly scribbled a message finishing it with a line "...To Guru Ayushi" and let the pigeon fly free towards Konoha where the recipient of this message was going.</p><p>"Who's this "Mana" and those other names you've mentioned?" another hooded figure asked to which the man just firmly replied, "I've managed to hear this man's speech from a long enough distance, I've been living and working in the mines for a long time where hearing is essential, mine has improved beyond that of even the acutest ninja. This man's final words must not be lost, he is a damn hero. Now let's move on, I've words for this Shirona."</p><p>A bulkier figure just laughed out, "Heh, I have more than words for her!" he added as the shadowy figures departed, any clearer details were hidden from any observers that may have seen them by the setting Sun. The white-haired hooded figure sealed Tanshu's body into a large scroll and put it on his belt, the three then departed heading towards the ruins of the temple.</p><hr/><p>Howoku's body just rose from the floor, it lacked any pupils or signs of life, it appeared to move just out of sheer combat instinct and a wild desire to win. The man lunged forward with a punch, hitting the female opponent of his who was really surprised by her opponent's miraculous revival onto their feet. "Curse you, Howoku, you and your inhuman Moon people heritage!" she shouted out as she gracefully leaped out of the way of each and every following blow of the Kage, she tried to respond with one of her own but her opponent managed to jump back, had he not planned this movement beforehand he'd not have been fast enough as indeed he could no longer augment his speed and strength using chakra.</p><p>The man's arm rose to the side with an open palm, a reddish almost fiery like Starlight chakra burst from his body forming a chakra sword. This was it - this was Howoku's lifeline as he was giving his core and his very being away, all throughout his life he cared little of what he inherited from his elders. Now he was thankful for that heritage, he was glad that his distant relatives gave him enough inhuman endurance and this amazing chakra to save the world once more. "Nova Style: Pleiades!" Howoku shouted out as his Pleiades started looking more and more like just a blade of pure flames. This was Starlight Release in its purest form, this was the essence of Howoku's life imbued into a jutsu. Howoku swung the sword sending a shockwave with a heating projectile forward.</p><p>Shirona leaped out of its path and lunged forward, avoiding another blow with a spinning sidestep the woman planted her kick into Howoku's side. Even if she heard something crack and her boot dug deep into the man's flesh he didn't even budge, just the force of her chakra augmented impact pushed him back slightly but it was almost like Howoku had no more pain to feel, on this day he had experienced all pain he was given to feel throughout his life and now he only lived to save his world. Howoku charged at his nemesis swinging his blade wildly, each strike sent a shockwave that incinerated and destroyed whatever it hit in its path, Shirona was too busy using all of her chakra to enhance her speed and not get hit, at this point, even her barriers were far too weak to stop this rampage.</p><p>A flash of red! Shirona staggered back spitting out blood as a deep gash opened all over her body. The woman managed to spend more than half of her supply of chakra not to get cleaved in half but the wound was still emanating heat. Howoku started wildly swinging his great sword comprised completely out of chakra. With a final swing, he put extra effort into he sent Shirona, who had coated herself in an immense amount of multiplying barriers back into the depth of the forest where Tanshu and Misu had been last seen clashing. The mindless shell of Howoku charged after his opponent, desperate to kill her before his own life faded away. Wild all incinerating slashes started carving the entire forest up, immense forest fires rose up and disappeared just as quickly as they started as the flame of the man's life was a dying one.</p><p>Finally, Shirona's agility ended, one slash after another started cutting her body into countless pieces, there was no blood at all, just a white glow from where blood was supposed to spill from. It was almost like with this final technique, this final kill for peace Howoku had surpassed reality. As if he wasn't killing Shirona but... Erasing her.</p><p>With a wild shout, the man thrust his immense blade of chakra into the woman's cut-up body and let it all go with a beam of chakra as the sword was dispelled. There it was. Howoku's eyes closed, his mind would've faded away had that not happened a while ago, his body hit the floor lifeless having no more pain to torment him, no more blood to bleed, nothing more to worry about. But this stalemated photo-finish was not how it was meant to be. A grave silence took over what used to be a wild battlefield - a peaceful silence.</p><p>Then white cracks colored thin air. As if reality itself was just a sheet of paper, an image, a mirror that was now cracking. With a powerful explosion of sheer force of the chakra contained within Shirona erupted from the break within the tear in the reality that she had made, Howoku's body faded from the floor and then his still alive body reappeared before the reborn Shirona, still mindless but now more confused than enraged - his victory was stolen away from him, he was denied a triumphant death and the satisfaction of his world being saved. "Barrier Ninjutsu: Reality Break!"</p><p>"H...How!?" the mindless shell of Howoku spoke, "World's most powerful Barrier Buster ninja can break through any barrier, any limit, even that of reality itself..." Shirona huffed heavily. Something was wrong, her eyes were completely black and instead of her pupils, there were just red spheres rotating in the black void of her gaze. "For a moment reality is in a complete fritz before it rebuilds itself. It is up to the possessor of the power to break it to reshape it as they see fit, a dying body only has one desire - to live and so it happened. The fabric of reality somehow reversed your triumphant assault, however, I have now several more moments to make it all right before the reality returns to normal." Shirona extended her arm forward as Howoku realized that his own body was slowly disappearing, matter itself was detaching off of him in small chunks and fading into even smaller chunks.</p><p>"NO!" Howoku yelled out lunging forward with a powerful sphere in his arm. "Nova Style: Overhope!" he yelled out as his technique faded away and his body just collapsed. Shirona's eyes returned to normal.</p><p>"So you chose to instead repeat your mistake and kill yourself again by using the last of your chakra then? Well, whatever works for you..." she uttered to herself locking her arms around her aching chest.</p><p>Now that reality had fixed itself Shirona was stuck living her life with all the pain that came after such a battle. To think that she had to damage the fabric of reality so extensively, she tore holes in it twice that day and once completely restarted it by shattering it to pieces. Just as the staggering tired figure of Shirona tried to find a quiet place to relax three hooded figures descended from above removing their clothes.</p><p>"I don't believe we've met, Mizukage Shirona, I am Akasuna Mugao the Fourth Kazekage. You've killed many of my men today. For that - prepare to die!" a hulking giant removed his hood revealing his face and his dark red hair that had two long braids that flowed freely with the rest being trimmed to just rest on the man's shoulders.</p><p>"The man you've just killed is Howoku of Konoha - the Fourth Hokage, that he is! Following the ninja code, any Kage who kills another Kage is demoted therefore there will be no punishment or demotion if this lowly one kills you, that there won't be." A woman also removed her cloak revealing her tanned skin and murky cerulean-colored hair, this was Samaya Imasu - the Fifth Raikage.</p><p>"Your predecessor was a horrible man, Shirona, but even a tyrant like Daikon had lines that he would not cross. He may have entertained himself with his own cruelties but he would have never openly invoked war, not in his later years when he was shown his place. It appears that Kirigakure is beyond its own salvation. I - Kaguya Yaban, therefore, call for the decision of this Summit, one that shall elect a Mizukage who will rule under the close watch of combined forces of all the other ninja villages. For a while, he will be a puppet ruler but once Kirigakure proves to us that they can play by the rules and that Bloody Mist is out with its roots they can have their autonomy back." Yaban spoke up also removing his cloak, his eyes looked like they were ready to completely incinerate Shirona who was still shaking in front of the arrival of the other Kage.</p><p>The other Kage only slightly nodded expressing their agreement to the terms that Yaban set out. And so the Kage Summit was over - even with all the interruptions the proceedings transpired anyways and the fate of Kirigakure was decided.</p><p>"I disagree with that decision!" Shirona shouted out biting her thumb and summoning a bunch of ninja in front of her: Oni Mask and the other Sannin of Kirigakure.</p><p>Imasu clenched her sheathed sword placing it up on the eye level of the summoned Sannin and the Mizukage. "It seems you didn't hear me the first time, that you did not. This lowly one said you were demoted from your status and no longer hold any power, we shall decide how to deal with you soon, that we will."</p><p>The Kage stared at the Sannin with enraged looks, each and every one of the Sannin had been beaten down by the Kage with the third Sannin still being missing, likely dead after Yaban threw an island at him. The Sannin looked hesitant to start the fighting again. Shirona stepped backward as her voice suddenly got full of fear.</p><p>"What are you doing!? Protect your Kage, hold them off while I regain my strength, and crush all of them... ", her voice was silenced by a sound of steel piercing flesh. Shirona's shaking face stared down at her own chest witnessing a katana piercing through her from behind. Shirona's vision became blurry as she fell down and died on the spot.</p><p>As the woman's figure collapsed her killer was finally revealed - Haoru of the God Sword stood behind her, looking over his cracked and damaged katana. "You bastards seem to have forgotten who the moderator of this Summit is. With this final judgment I deem Kirigakure guilty and Yaban's assessment of the situation fair. Now you can scatter, I believe this fateful day left us with a lot of corpses and even more paperwork, the balance of the world will change and all you idiots do is bicker. At least now you've seen that there are true warriors that are willing to clean out your mess if you find it too hard. Class dismissed, you petty ninja."</p><p>Imasu blushed and fell on her back with streams of blood shooting from her nose. "Senseeeei" she yelled out almost unintelligibly. The other Kage seemed confused but Haoru only graced his past pupil with one petty stare before setting out on his way back to Iron Country.</p><hr/><p>Far, far away the Sun finally set, right before the cloudy skies cleared after the intense rain for a couple of final moments of shining Sun's embrace, sadly that embrace only lasted for several moments. And so the fateful Kage Summit was finally over! A couple of days later the entire delegation of living Kage and the current Sannin, as well as the entire delegations of each Kage together with Shirona's few surviving ninja, returned to the misty streets of Kirigakure.</p><p>As the procession continued to walk down the fancy, combining both modern and the exquisite classic architecture, full of advertisements and various colorful posters and filled with palaces Kirigakure's central "Royal" district, a small young blond girl ran around peeking into the procession shouting "Mommy" once in a while. As her efforts proved fruitless the girl just fell on her knees and started to cry. At that moment Oni Mask happened to pass by the girl, he looked at her and while it was impossible to tell what exactly his lifeless eyes were saying to the kid as he wore a new mask, the villagers moved the girl away from him trying desperately to calm her cries.</p><p>"Come, Little Princess, let's take you back to the Mizukage Estate, shall we?" an elderly lady tried to fake a smile through her terrified of this procession face.</p><p>"But Mommy was the Queen, without her they won't let me in... I've got nowhere to go!" the kid kept on crying.</p><p>The old lady had no idea what to do with the child. Streets of Kirigakure were incredibly dangerous for a villager who had never wandered away from the "Royal" districts into the poor ones. One thing was for certain, a change was in the air, both for this girl and the rest of Kirigakure...</p>
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<a name="section0061"><h2>61. A New Chapter Begins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Troubled eyes were running over a short message. One that came right after the other one, it had reached its reader from a nearby corner of the world where the first one was sent from. The content of the two messages couldn't have been more different from one another. Even the technical level of encryption of the message used on both messages was like day and night different from each other.</p><p>One came from one of Konohagakure's Sannin – Chestnut Hanasaku, the other one was from the Kage Summit and signed by all three remaining Kage. The first one was informing that all was going well, the other one informed of an event that changed everything, as the young folk often put events like this – "shit went down".</p><p>The reason for such a specific expression of words was selected for the reader of the messages to form the general image in his mind because the message from Hanasaku literally had that combination of words in it, which was in no way at all surprising having in mind the person who sent the message.</p><p>Despite the fact that Hanasaku was a woman whose external image displayed great maturity as she reminded of a matured middle-aged woman of great stature and presence, her behavior was that of a child and her intellect was literally that of a chestnut upon which her nickname was aptly chosen. That cover of the color of her hair being the reason must've just been what her friends told the silly minded Sannin.</p><p>The content of the message displayed a clear image that the woman was proceeding with her mission together with her squad of some of the village's most potent and experienced genin. Somehow the woman managed to so far avoid noticing the fact that Kirigakure's patrol forces increased tenfold and avoiding suspicion and being noticed had literally become impossible, somehow she had managed to avoid the fact that she may have been wanted with a bounty on her head for a while, she even managed to avoid the knowledge of the Kage Summit or the events that transpired there.</p><p>That devilish woman just tore through everything in her sight, every single Kirigakure ninja, unable to destroy the bunker with the secret information before it was teleported to Kirigakure by a trap seal the woman just sunk the entire island. Such obvious denial of ninja tradition of subtlety and secrecy would've without a doubt invited an international scandal if one wouldn't have transpired right after, one to dwarf the other in its entirety.</p><p>The man reading the letter rubbed his tired eyes, the assistant of the man leaned up to receive instructions for his further course of action. "Chestnut Hanasaku has informed us that she had destroyed the bunker and retrieved the information she needs and is returning home, one of her genin was severely injured and she admitted that she did not dare attempt treatment instead of leaving it to her pupils." The chubby little man spoke to his assistant. The butler-like looking gentleman fixed his vest and cleared his throat.</p><p>"Perhaps lady Hanasaku is growing in wisdom? I'd assume knowing her impatient and... Highly destructive personality in mind it'd be very bad for her to attempt and perform basic first aid."</p><p>The chubby little man slapped his own bald forehead and moved his palm down accidentally striking his grey hair bun and then covered his mouth, then proceeded to rub his beard. "She's the only viable candidate for Kage at the moment, sadly we don't have any Jounin that are on the level of competence to just skip her. She may be an utter pain to manage but we'll have to put her on that chair if we want the village to be safe. Order the message to be sent to her informing her to accelerate her return and do it safely. Her return to the village is now another A-Rank mission for both her and her students. Those genin of hers will need to suffer her no longer, unbeknownst to them they have a future Kage in their care. Let's just hope she doesn't kill herself in her imbecile rampage."</p><p>The assistant wrote everything down, it proved slightly more difficult as the illumination was severely lacking, having to do everything under candlelight was quite difficult but the man was very skilled in the craft of simple butler work. Once the order was recorded the man's eyes lifted to the fancy-dressed councilman again. "Anything else?" he asked the man.</p><p>"I'm afraid so, Assistant, I wouldn't have moved you from Kirigakure to Konoha if I didn't intend to use your skills. I'd like you to contact all the councilmembers and hold a meeting tomorrow evening, if possible we'll appoint Hanasaku as the new leader of our village as fast as possible. Some serious political balance shifting is about to take place and we have no luxury to be picky or to wait until Dorimi or Shibari reach the appropriate level of strength." The councilman rubbed his tired eyes continuously, he then stood up and moved to the door, leaving the room in a hurry. The assistant just appeared right beside him as if he had moved in an instant.</p><p>"Are you quite sure about your decision, Sir? You are aware of the technical level of Hanasaku-sama's letter?"</p><p>The councilman nodded "Yes, I know that Chestnut probably doesn't even know how to cipher the letter, she most likely gave it for her students to properly cipher, that's why it has several mistakes and was so tough to decode. Those kids had grown quite strong and competent having to put up with that woman's silliness."</p><p>The Assistant's shadowy figure disappeared in a turn of a corridor, the councilman knew that the man would do his job. He'd be damned if the Assistant was not the best lapdog to bark orders at. An order from Kirigakure, custom bred and trained to follow orders and be the perfect assistants, that Kirigakure loyal elitist culture of their central districts really spoiled themselves but that trip to the Mist and the enormous pay to keep the Assistant around was worth it just for one of those guys all by itself... As the door leading the councilman to the outside of the Administration building opened up the man looked at the red sky and the departing signs of the setting Sun.</p><p>"The day we all have been afraid of, the day no one thought was possible had come... Chestnut Hanasaku will be in charge of us all, the era of the Star of Hope is over. Truly the end of days must be upon us. Still, we need a leader to call our shots for some parts of Kirigakure's autonomy, we need to establish connections, gain valuable intelligence on the village's deepest secrets. For that opportunity even handing HER the hat is worth the potential gain... I hope." The councilman pondered to himself thinking if he had just doomed everyone or just did the only reasonable thing to do.</p><hr/><p>A large foot of a middle-aged man was set on the Land of Fire soil. Konohagakure was just about one day of traveling away. Since the man did not intend to sleep the night but keep moving instead he'll be reaching it by early tomorrow morning. The man had been waiting for this trip for quite some time, recently he was spending a lot of time in various countries and so it had been a while since he visited his country of origin. The man's dark brown eyebrow raised curiously as he observed the newly built pathways and newly erected vendors selling snacks and some emergency supplies any traveler might need having just crossed the country borders.</p><p>His presence without a doubt had been picked up by the ninja surveilling the area. His iconic monk outfit, his powerful build, and status as a legendary ninja made even the newbies recognize the man instantly. Upon picking up as much as a sight of the man's intricate and youthful bald head and his rock hard muscles the ninja would've dashed back to the village to the best of their ability. The man's eyes closed and the area around his eyes dyed in purple, he sensed so many youthful chakra, burning vibrantly, firing up in the excitement, and moving around like rabbits being disturbed by a passing of a bear.</p><p>In his youth, and even now it'd be only a matter of time for him to catch up to those younglings. He may not have exactly felt like in his prime and he had abandoned the life of a ninja, that is to say, the life of fighting, violence, and murder, but Guru Ayushi still felt like he could keep up with the young ones. It was true that the current generation has bred some amazing ninja, just one sniff of Kaguya Yaban's chakra or that of Samaya Imasu of Kumogakure, and even the peaceful Guru remembered the youthful days of excitement when faced against an overwhelming opponent on a battlefield. Finally, the ninja monk's eyes had opened back up and all supernatural signs around them disappeared just as mysteriously as they've appeared.</p><p>A pigeon started slowly landing by the ninja making the man who was well familiar with the ninja equipment notice that he was carrying a message for him. It was quite strange, only the most important figures in the world dared contact him by pigeons, most ordinary people just waited for Guru Ayushi's arrival to their village, there were few ordinary villager pigeons that reached him but those were the exception and a rare one at that. For someone to use the ninja method of communication this must've been important, after all, Guru Ayushi thought he'd made it clear that the topic of his days as a ninja was something he had left behind and only liked to reminisce in moderation. He had become an icon of peace now, he would not trouble himself with matters of ninja normally.</p><p>Guru picked up the message and read it, he placed two of his fingers on the sheet of paper and they lit up with his chakra, leaving a sign on the paper which was soon put back on the pigeon's leg and the bird was let free to return to his master. The request made by the Tsuchikage was something the great Guru couldn't deny, it didn't really deal with the life of a ninja, it was a desire for a man's final will to be delivered to his pupils. Man's final words must never be lost, especially not those of a man like Red Dog Tanshu.</p><p>Even the usually detached of all earthly matters heart of Ayushi was moved by the death of the young boy he had witnessed in his last visit in the Leaf. That young soul that was so tortured throughout his life and was quite fitting to become a wandering monk sharing his knowledge upon his retirement just like Ayushi, those that transcend all others in their generation often either follow Ayushi's path or continue doing their thing until they grow old and face against promising younglings passing on their status as the strongest as their bodies are left in their final battlefield.</p><p>Even now, with all that head start and all of the incredible speed of those Special Jounin watching the borders granted to their mastery over chakra augmenting their natural abilities Ayushi could catch them. But if that was the case he should've answered positively to the request of that young girl to kill Daikon back when he visited Kirigakure many years ago. What people failed to understand was that he moved on, left his old life behind. Helping ninja on one side would've made the other angry, violence on one side does not eliminate the problem. Tyranny and conflict were like a static wheel. When a force like Guru Ayushi pushed the wheel by crushing the tyrant the wheel did not dissolve, it just turned, again and again, it kept on turning, dropping off many pieces off of it until it settled down again. It might have settled down on another side, it might have settled on the same one but in the end – what difference did it make if the wheel remained the same.</p><p>Just like that if Ayushi would've chosen to interfere with any of those problems he was constantly begged to magically solve, another problem, with the added horror of angry vengeance for what happened to the first, would take over. From what little had Ayushi heard of the Kage Summit he was right – Daikon was just replaced by another tyrant, the strangest part was that Ayushi had never seen the side of a tyrant in the young lady with the long curly blond hair he had seen in Kirigakure.</p><p>It just showed him how little still he understood about this world despite wandering it for about a hundred years even after retiring his life as a ninja. Guru's sharp eyes pierced through the thick cover of the forest, he was moving to Konohagakure, and while he was sorry for the events that took place in the Kage Summit, in one way such tragedy only made his presence more needed. He had to rid the people of their impure thoughts of revenge and war.</p><p>War was Shirona's agenda. If after Howoku's passing and stop of Shirona's plan his village would have only devolved into war anyways that would've completely ruined that man's peaceful and noble sacrifice. Even more, it'd have crushed the final will of the Red Dog as well. Ayushi's powerful bare feet continued to step over the hot gravel of the newly made pathway through the forest. He traveled the world giving lectures and teaching people, however, it was during special times like this – after great battles or wars or political assassinations most heinous that he was needed the most. Guru observed the figure of the pigeon fly off into the sky above the forest, oh that wonderful illusion of the bird's freedom. Free to soar the sky, free to breathe the mystical air above but still being burdened by the duty to deliver the vital messages...</p><hr/><p>Mana moaned rising from bed. She had to grip tightly on the crutches to even stand straight. She was officially the dumbest girl ever – no one in the history of the world had ever trained so hard that they literally tore their body apart. Desperate to become stronger, to strengthen her body, her resolve and invent her own martial art based on kicking to keep her opponents at a distance Mana made her leg muscles ache so much that she couldn't walk for the whole week. It's only been a couple of months since the night when she and her team confronted the agent of Kirigakure who only identified himself as "the Demon". She only heard bits and pieces from his interrogation, just as much as all ninja in the village were allowed to know. Besides babble of his "Oni-sensei" and how he had failed him and brags about how his escape will be grand the youth offered few words.</p><p>Part of why Mana pushed herself so was because she was ashamed of herself, she felt bad that she was taken out so easily fighting him, that she'd have died and never had a shot at changing the world back then. That "Demon" boy from Kirigakure was just slightly older than she was as it turned out but he managed to resist torture from even the village's Yoruma ninja. The Yoruma clan was a nasty group of expert assassins, apart from slitting throats they also knew the human anatomy quite well and some of them were decent military strategists. Their knowledge of anatomy and sadistic nature made them unparalleled in the art of torture, they were so good in fact that the village purposefully kept them away from it usually. This time even their efforts proved to be vain – the young Demon resisted it all. What sort of training bred warriors like that?!</p><p>In a way Mana was jealous of that youth's skill, he was powerful enough to be on the level of a Chuunin, folding relatively easily only to Jounin taking him on. Also, he had the skill to infiltrate another village and operate within it, he was not a man but a true shinobi, someone she was not. A real shinobi was not the person that they were, they were a tool, they didn't think of what to eat, where to sleep while in another village – they thought of whom they needed to talk to if they wanted this or that, they thought where they needed to poke to kill this person or that so that no one even noticed. Mana hated that concept but that one young man who followed it was so incredibly strong – one would say that the girl was intrigued by that strength and wanted an audience with him. Obviously, such a thing was impossible, the young man was locked down in the Police Force headquarters...</p><p>The young magician crept downstairs and grabbed a couple of gyoza dumplings stuffing them into her mouth and then washing her hands. "You're leaving your hat at home?" father asked reading the paper. Mana sighed, "If that thing falls off again I'll never pick it up, not until my legs feel better..." the girl expressed her worry over her current state. She's been out of order for quite a long time and the village apparently needed the aid of Team Oak even with her impaired and... Sensei...</p><p>So far the village had no idea of what was going on. At least the ordinary villagers and the lower ranking ninja didn't. As far as Mana could've known the village may have known and have been discussing the results of that Summit behind everyone's backs. That vacation actually took a bit longer than Mana had predicted, it may take a week or so to travel to the location of the Summit if one moved really slowly, why would it have just gone silent like that? Everyone felt a bit uneasy about that, everyone felt like there had been something that was going on and being hidden behind everyone's backs. The magician just sighed and kissed her father on the forehead slowly moving towards the door.</p><p>"Be careful, although I'm pretty sure the Administration has your health record, they wouldn't send you out in action. It's probably something you can do while sitting or just something simple..." father shared his worries. Or at least what Mana took as his worries, after his injury on the field he had trouble expressing his feelings. The pain made people angry but over time both father started to better cope with the pain and Mana and mother learned to deal with his pain outrages. Maybe as time passes all will be alright... Maybe...</p><p>This would've finally been the day when Mana would've tried to instead of being totally locked down by her crutches moving with a cane. So far it seemed to work, her muscles still hurt with each step so she had to take it a bit slow but at least she wasn't completely off her feet. With a shamefully loud clacking of her steel cane, the magician left out to the streets of her village. Her injury made her postpone countless magic shows, strangely enough, the villagers treated her just the same – they came up to her with worried faces and kept asking her what happened. She lied to them. Mana didn't like to nor was she too good at it but...</p><p>She didn't want to hear all those same morals all over again: "Don't overstretch yourself now!", "Be careful next time", "Well I suppose the art of knowing how to train comes with experience. Don't worry you'll get it soon!" Mana kept telling everyone she fell and got hurt like that. She had no bandages or anything like that so everyone must've known she was hiding something – her wounds were internal. Her muscles were burning up from being exhausted to the point where using them felt like being set on fire below the waist. It was getting better with every day but the process of recovery was slow, especially with Mana doing mental training while her physical body was injured...</p><p>Ironically enough, she advanced much further in mental arts than she had in the physical. Mana started grasping the basic concept of her own martial art made of kicks, long-reaching and stretched out ones to keep her opponent's at a distance where she could dictate the terms of battle using ninjutsu and genjutsu... However, after her injury made it quite impossible to train she started working on her chakra capacity and making advancement in her understanding of the human brain which helped her start working on improving her genjutsu. New concepts of new rough drafts of powerful techniques started appearing in the girl's mind but nothing specific was mastered yet. It was all just sharp blades that still needed hilts to be used properly...</p><p>Why was she so much weaker than everyone else? Even Shimo put up a fight, at least so she heard from all the official stories of the events. After she passed out the Demon proceeded to kill her but Shimo interrupted him and fought him valiantly, they were quite even as father's higher ranking ninja friends recounted. Why was she dispatched off so quickly and easily? She worked hard, she had a goal that kept her fighting, why was she neither in the league of Sugemi or Shimo nor the league of that Demon from Kirigakure? Mana desperately wanted to talk to that young man from the Mist in the darkest corners of her heart, know how true strength like his is acquired – strength to protect her friends, and change the world.</p><p>Tanshu-sensei will hate her even more than he always did when he comes back knowing she went down so easily back then...</p>
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<a name="section0062"><h2>62. Team Oak's Reunion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A loud clang scared some birds that almost instantly darted off above the tree line. Another one soon followed. A blond girl sighed looking back at her sensei pulling out a kunai from her body. Sometimes it felt like her sensei was straight out immortal but she knew that the woman just had insane durability and a monstrous amount of chakra to heal herself up with when she's been injured. Unless something killed Hanasaku instantly, chances were it barely even bothered the woman. Kiyomi had seen countless battles where sensei's body was completely riddled with injuries, swords, and knives sticking out of her body, trying to just hit Hanasaku until she fell was a stupid idea.</p><p>"Sensei... I've been thinking..." a young male spoke up from behind Hanasaku, he was a young Inuzuka who had been assigned to Hanasaku's squad because of his bad grades. As per the usual tradition, each squad had one member with some of the worst grades, then one with average and at least one with above average.</p><p>Obviously not every squad could have a stellar performer but the better they chose the good grade ninja, the worse the fluke one was. For example, the team that got the best grades having ninja also had to foster the one with the absolute worst. After being alerted to her pupil's words Hanasaku looked back at the boy after removing another knife and healing up her injury using medical ninjutsu.</p><p>"All of this... This mission, Yamashiro getting injured... I don't think I want to do this anymore. I mean... We could have died out there, I thought I could handle it but... I don't think I actually can, there's nothing like a guy sticking a knife into your friend's eye to alert you of that..." the experienced genin spoke of his troubles. That last mission was technically a success. The information was retrieved, all copies of it were destroyed. The enemy tried to prevent that extraction by setting off a bunch of timed teleportation seals that most scrolls with sensitive information had but Hanasaku sunk the entire island to prevent those seals from activating and salvaged them from the bottom of the ocean, withstanding even the water pressure of the deepest parts of the ocean that hosted the Water Country islands.</p><p>Training under Hanasaku was a unique experience. On one hand, the woman was a Konohagakure Sannin so it was already a precious opportunity to learn from the best but... She was just so thick-skulled and battle-hungry, the woman never remembered any passwords she herself set up for the meetings to sniff out infiltrators, she never even bothered to learn message encryption and Kiyomi and Tetsuzuki had to do it all for her, message encryption was not something genin did, it was entirely possible that their messages weren't even properly understood.</p><p>While there was always the idea that one of the strongest ninja in the world, one bested only by Red Dog Tanshu long ago in the post-Second Great War days, would always protect one in a mission, that was not always the case, apparently. This ninja deal always seemed so innocent, just a bunch of kids and their teacher who slowly became their maternal figure making a difference in the world in the most dangerous missions that genin could even be let out on. The four of them had been at it for years and they even skipped a Chuunin Exam just because they were away on a big mission at that time, which also happened because Hanasaku didn't understand the calendar properly and sometimes confused the dates.</p><p>Still, even with their unparalleled experience, they were just children, the three got completely sure of that when they were captured after Hanasaku disappeared into the abyss of the ocean with that island. One thing one had to have in mind was that not knowing Hanasaku's limits, the three students always believed that their sensei died whenever she dove into a volcano or was flung into space or crushed beneath the ocean floor by a bunch of broken landmass. Every time she was stabbed through the heart the three always were worried that their sensei, who was almost like a member of their family now, had died.</p><p>Yet she always just came back after a couple of minutes when all hope seemed lost and kicked everyone's butts. Not this time, this time sensei disappeared for quite a while and the three got captured, they were intimidated for information just because no one even bothered to torture a bunch of "kids". Yamashiro was injured in the eye during their escape, added to that were many more injuries he'd sustained getting captured and while escaping and it was unclear if he'd even survive. Having a teammate lingering on the verge of death made one reconsider their life choices. Hanasaku used her medical skills to stabilize the boy's condition but he still remained unconscious and looked only barely alive.</p><p>Tetsuzuki's dog barked out loudly, the little pup had grown significantly throughout the years. Not that it even mattered. The young Inuzuka kneeled down and scratched the canine's neck. "I wonder what you'll do after we're done with this..." the boy gently whispered to his dog.</p><p>"Don't start with that shit, Tetsu!" Kiyomi the young Yamanaka prodigy of the group shouted out. She was losing another teammate now, right after Yamashiro got injured, that day the entire status of the team flipped over. With that strange reply, they've received that demanded the team to return and to protect Hanasaku's life at all costs... Kiyomi just sensed that her life was about to change and that she might be left all alone, for two years the three of them studied under Hanasaku surviving situations that would have qualified as battles of war. For her friends to pull this on her with Yamashiro getting hurt, Tetsuzuki leaving and God knows what the deal with Hanasaku was.</p><p>Tetsuzuki placed the unconscious body of his friend onto his dog's back and secured it tightly, the dog was more than capable of carrying it. "It's just that, I've seen plenty of shit already, this life isn't what I signed up for. I've had more experience than I even need to be respected in my clan and I've got a royal position. If this happened to me my father would consider my claim at the leadership of the clan hindered. Coma isn't the best status to add to royalty's life summary, you know... I decided that logistics and managing the clan might be for the best for me, what about you, Kiyomi? You're in a pretty high position too, right? Is ending up like Yamashiro even worth it?"</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes almost started filling with tears of rage, she was visibly getting angry that her teammates were scattering and that the team was falling apart. "Yamashiro was too arrogant, he thought that just because he's a fucking Uchiha he was entitled to win every fight, he thought that running away wasn't honorable enough. He got sloppy, we never did. You have no idea how much this stupid "royalty" bullshit is making me want to smack you right now!" the girl yelled out angrily, she ran up to Hanasaku who was ignoring the squabble, and yelled it out into the woman's face. "SAY SOMETHING! Your team is falling apart!" Hanasaku sighed.</p><p>"It's fine, Yamashiro's injury is on me, if Tetsuzuki feels like I can no longer protect him under my wing, if he wants to be a leader of his clan at the end of the road then being taught by me is the wrong place to start from. Sannin are always sent on the most dangerous missions, I always long for a good fight so I ask for them to be even bigger. Just serving in my team for a while is a good thing to have in a clan leader's record, there's no need for him to end up like Yamashiro." Kiyomi jumped into the air with a kick that Hanasaku evaded, the girl followed it up with a straight jab that just bounced off the woman's thick skull, Kiyomi removed her aching knuckle that felt like she had hit a stone wall.</p><p>Hanasaku placed a hand on Kiyomi's shoulder. "Don't worry, I know that your friends and your team and this life means a lot to you, more than anything. The two of us can still work as usual, for the two of us nothing changes. If you ever want to see your friends at least you'll know they're safe in the village, isn't that what you want? For them to be happy and safe? This way everyone will be happy, sure I don't like losing students I've trained for years, you two were almost like my own family but... Times change. Ninja have to learn how to let people go, us most of all people, people die on every mission. I don't because I don't want to disappoint anyone, that's where I draw my strength from but if Tetsuzuki doesn't have that thing to draw inspiration from – he'll die on another mission like this. I'd rather lose him as a student than have him lose his life."</p><p>Tetsuzuki walked up in front and glared at Hanasaku's eyes angrily, inside of his heart he didn't like the woman too much. Despite her being incredibly powerful and seemingly impossible to kill, he still blamed her for a lot of things going wrong, for selling their map for a bunch of dumplings during their first mission, for breaking his arm during their first survival training, for accidentally splashing acid on his back when the idiot dove into an acidic lake that one time. She was a danger to society, usually, natural selection makes people like this woman disappear but...</p><p>Apparently, some people just manage to evade fate by being really persistent. "Don't get me wrong, sensei, I do treasure all the memories but... I can't wait to sign those resignation papers and start working on another team until I get my promotion to Chuunin. From there on I can start taking the control of my clan over from my father. You've made us grow really strong, it was inevitable to survive your incompetence and even if we entered the Chuunin Exams last year we would've blown everyone away. At least for that much, I am grateful."</p><p>The team moved in close to Konohagakure gate, a bunch of guards started swarming the area which alerted Kiyomi. Apparently, Hanasaku's return was a huge deal, the blonde turned at her sensei "Sensei, what if we messed up and you're gonna get reported and they'll call the Ninja Tribunal on you again, last time you were just barely acquitted, just because the politician you killed turned out to be a leader of a criminal syndicate." Hanasaku shook her head. "No, if that was the case we'd have gotten arrested, the guards are keeping their distance as if... They're protecting us." Tetsuzuki smiled angrily, "Don't stretch your brain on this one, sensei, let's just move in and find out from the Administration what exactly do they want with you."</p><hr/><p>Mana's shoulder started to feel really numb, she wasn't used to using a cane to walk around, using a cane which supported just one side of her body when both of her legs were hurt wasn't the best of ideas but she at least could move around with minimal pain in her muscles. Was she never going to become strong? If she didn't overtrain she'd have fallen behind, if she did push her body to the limit she went overboard and burnt it up. Perhaps greatness wasn't her destiny, maybe fate told Mana to stay a nobody with the unimpressive legacy of not being a member of any clan that made a difference in the village. The closest resemblance of a clan was from her mother's side of the family and those guys weren't even ninja, just a bunch of greedy con artists that danced and pulled tricks off for food and payment. Traveling artists weren't known for their impressive combat capabilities.</p><p>"That's the most retarded thing I've heard ever!" a familiar voice reached Mana's ear coming from the street to the right that connected to the central street that led right to the Administration building.</p><p>"Oh, excuse me, and what would YOUR plan be in case of the dead ninja rising from their graves to eat the living?" another familiar voice made the girl magician turn around and see her friends walking towards the Administration and quarreling. They seemed to be so consumed by their discussion that they didn't even notice Mana walking in front of them, even with her strange choice of apparel.</p><p>"I don't know, probably burning them to bits. That or chopping their legs off so that they can't move"</p><p>"That's even MORE retarded than my idea and my idea, I will remind you, was to breed a special breed of killer dolphins with chakra cannons on their back trained to track the dead and shoot them from the seas with tracking blasts of chakra lasers."</p><p>"Why is that? Your idea was right out of a manga book!"</p><p>"Well for one dead ninja can't die, loser, so you'll just have a burning zombie rampaging in the battlefield setting things on fire. Before you know it you're on fire and there you go, you're dead too!"</p><p>"Well dolphins aren't even land mammals, you twit!"</p><p>"That's why you'd make their chakra cannons track their targets from a long distance so they can fire from the sea where the dead can't even hurt them... Mana?!" finally her teammate noticed the magician staring at them awkwardly right when they almost bumped into her.</p><p>Shimo rushed in to hug the girl to which Mana just grunted in pain as her leg muscle acted up again. "It's been so long, Mana-chan, where have you been!? We haven't seen you much on the training grounds and when we did you were just meditating on a log." Sugemi butted in "Well yeah and Shimo didn't know that you can't really move a person who is meditating or else they'll mind will become trapped in their own mind and they will always remain sleeping like that."</p><p>Mana blinked rapidly a couple of times. "That's... Not really true, you can talk to a meditating person, my parents often do alert me when the food is ready and all that. But yeah, I was training alone, got a bit overly invested into it too..." the girl nodded pointing at her cane. The two boys started asking questions which made Mana have to explain the entire situation in detail.</p><p>"A kick-based martial art to keep opponents at a range? That's a pretty good idea, did Tanshu-sensei suggest you that?" Shimo asked rubbing his chin after hearing the idea.</p><p>Mana shook her head. Sugemi yawned, "Yeah, we pretty much mastered the tips he gave us already, those two months that he had been gone were pretty useless, I mean we did make some progress initially but we sort of hit a wall. Progress without a mentor just becomes so slow and tedious, there has to be a special training method that helps you boost your progress, what's your secret?" he asked.</p><p>Mana got deep into thoughts observing the Administration building coming up in their sights. "Well, there's this training drill that lets you increase your chakra. There is this stage of meditation called "Ego", it basically grants you total awareness of your own body, it shows the chakra nodes that are clogged up with unused chakra masses so with a burst of chakra to those spots you can unleash them and then adapt your flow to the larger mass of chakra being in your body which grows your chakra capacity in total. Then I've started to find this other stage of meditation entirely, you can learn to create scenarios in your mind and convince yourself that they are real, you can go through entire training regiments in your mind within just minutes and then convince your body it's real, the best part is that when you wake up, in an hour or two your body realizes it was all fake but you still keep the gain where your exhaustion is suddenly gone and the body realizes that it didn't even spend any chakra for real."</p><p>Shimo looked really impressed by Mana's methods but Sugemi looked pretty annoyed. "Darn it, it sounds pretty cool but... I'd never manage to learn meditation. It's too boring and weird for me."</p><p>Shimo laughed out, "Yeah, Tanshu-sensei tried teaching it to me unsuccessfully too, it's useful for a swordsman to learn to adapt and change up their style and mental simulation is the best method for that, still, Mana-chan, Tanshu-sensei said it was a pretty advanced method and you've already reached that level of meditation mastery? That's pretty badass!"</p><p>The magician just looked away, she was a little humbled by the compliment but there was that knowledge that despite her breakthrough in training methods she still considered her teammates above her. Shimo struggled against the Demon but he at least gave the youth a good fight, Sugemi fought an undercover Jounin and didn't get immediately taken out.</p><p>Finally, the three entered the Administration building, it seemed to be especially buzzing and no one bothered to inform them of what exactly was going on. Everyone was just so angry and busy, almost like some big event was about to take place. Some people almost tripped Mana over and it took the attempts from both of the boys to catch her and keep her from falling down as the smallest tension to her thighs made her muscles burn up and the pain made them just give in to the pressure.</p><p>"You sure you can do this, Mana-chan? I mean I am still on my training vacation and they called me so it seemed weird but you're straight out injured. Why would they pull something like this on us? They don't pull ninja out of their training vacation or injury unless it's a war situation or something, even then why would a challenge like that need the desperate aid of an injured genin and one that's not finished with their training yet?" Shimo wondered.</p><p>"Well, a lot of my favorite manga are on break now so I actually enjoyed a little challenge." Sugemi cracked his fist in excitement.</p><p>This was a strange change as, usually, it was the Nara who was the least excited about missions unless they sounded like good chapters for his imaginary future manga.</p><p>"I'm fine, as long as I don't have to fight someone or move around a lot, I can probably even make hand seals if I really need to. I'll probably be a burden for your guys though, I'm sorry." The girl smiled with an apologetic smile, she really felt bad about this.</p><p>Shimo laughed back at her, "You a burden? Forget it, you beat that Ooguchi guy to a pulp and wrecked that Demon's armor! I wouldn't have matched up to him as well as I had if it weren't for you. I bet even injured you could kick a bunch of butts!" While his optimism was appreciated and recorded, Mana would've really enjoyed some more realism out of her friend right about now.</p><p>Finally the busy assistant of whoever was in charge now that the Fourth was out to the Summit invited the bunch of them inside. It was none other than one of the Councilmen inside! These guys were really important, they were high ranking politicans who were always included in all of the Ninja Tribunal sessions and their opinions were always consulted whenever Hokage made any important decisions. His presence only made this occasion more intimidating and the young magician found herself subconsciously stroking her aching thigh in worry.</p><p>"Well, Team Oak, I assume. No offense but Mana is quite easy to recognize with her... Public status. Sometimes I call you guys "the Sorceress' team" because of how well known the girl is for her artistic activities..." the councilman finally addressed the three with a pleasant tone but his eyes looked tired and sad.</p><p>"Personally I'd have never allowed a girl with such a celebrity status in our village on the team but as long as her "fame" is contained within the village walls, I suppose she can play ninja for a while." Despite the councilman's words stinging quite a bit, his tone sounded like his words weren't supposed to be taken as offensive, still, those politicans had a way with words. That was basically their entire job so who was Mana to judge them?</p><p>Shimo cleared his throat, "While Mana-chan is the de facto leader of our team it's only because I and Sugemi butt our heads too often for any of us to make a productive leader. What bothers us is that you called us in the middle of my training vacation and Mana's injury, each ninja is guaranteed at least three months of time to train each year to improve their overall condition and potency. It's a very desperate decision to call for a ninja during that time, the tradition forbids it."</p><p>The councilman fixed the messy collar of his kimono and tightened his fancy silk belt on his waist. Took a couple of deep breaths and finally opened his troubled eyes. "I am fully aware of your and Mana's condition, in fact, I was personally advised to NOT call Mana out of her resting time by the medical ninja who supervised her recovery. That being said there are some very... Troubling news I must deliver to you three, also there is a simple but important job I want you three to take care of. It will take only a day or two and the chance of a fighting scenario is almost zero. Despite that it's still a B-rank mission at least as it's quite iconic and very important to the village, I thought quite long about which team should get this "freebie" in their record and... Well since I had news for you three anyway and since you did exceptional work with that Kirigakure spy, I suppose you guys are granted that opportunity."</p><p>Sugemi raised an eyebrow, "What "troubling news" are we talking about? That "Demon" guy didn't escape, did he?!" he asked.</p><p>The councilman sighed. "There is no easy way of telling you this so I'll just break it down to you guys – the Fourth and Red Dog Tanshu, the Konohagakure Sannin, and the supervisor of Team Oak were killed in action during the Kage Summit!"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0063"><h2>63. The Fifth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the councilman spoke those words it was almost like the world started shifting beneath Mana's feet. The young genin even took a small half of a step back right after the news was delivered. Her first reaction was to deny it all, just yell from the top of her lungs that this must've been a stupid joke or that the councilman didn't have all of the information. Who could ever have killed sensei? Even if sensei had his arms tied down he still could've competed with the best of the best, he did so even as a teen, didn't he? He was the strongest Konoha had to offer, he was immune to death, wasn't he!?</p><p>Sugemi beat Mana to her first sensitive and sentimental reaction. "How do you know that? Sensei was the strongest ninja I've ever known so unless you've got a solid reason as to why he could've died I'm gonna pound you hard, just know that before you answer!" fist of the Nara shot forward and then up trying to touch the ceiling, sadly the boy lacked the needed height by a wide margin. The councilman was obviously prepared for all those inevitable questions, he looked tired and quite busy but he still took the time to reply to the questions replies to which he'd been working out since he first read those fateful two letters.</p><p>"Another Sannin – Misu of the Vapor had betrayed the Hokage and Tanshu, we don't know many details but apparently Tanshu killed Misu but collapsed to his own injuries, the Hokage was killed in a battle with the Mizukage. That is all I can comment on that news for now, at least for you, please understand - children have no place in these matters even if they are ninja."</p><p>Shimo's stare dug down into the ground, he also looked like he was going through the denial stage, Mana wanted to comfort him but... She kind of was a mess herself. An ally died and she not only wasn't strong enough – she had absolutely no chance of stopping it. She lacked the age, rank, strength so that she would have been there. It was safe to say that there was no conceivable way for her to prevent those deaths from happening.</p><p>Lacking strength was not the painful part, one could always have grown stronger and smarter. Inevitability, being unable to change anything because things just happened sometimes was the most painful part. Even if she could travel at the speed of light and make the most powerful ninja explode upon impact she'd have been unable to save her sensei.</p><p>Mana turned around and started stumbling out of the office, she leaned onto her cane with all of her weight to the point where her shoulder just burnt up and her hand quickly started feeling numb. The emotional and psychological pain, combined with her own impairment almost made her let go of her cane, just slip and fall down, what did it even matter? If one was powerless to change all things. If one was unable to save their treasured ones from dying what did it matter? What was her life to the Universe if she just exploded right then and there into a wild mash of blood and guts? Tears started running down Mana's cheeks, the girl was afraid to admit it that those were very selfish tears.</p><p>This pain and misery in her heart were not because her sensei had died, it was because she just found out that her lifelong goal was pointless and completely out of reach, not only for her, it was out of bounds for anyone. Tanshu spent so much time telling Mana that it was all so pointless, that she could have never saved everyone and that heroes were just in fairytales, then perhaps this death of his was his final lesson – saving everyone was impossible, to have such a goal is to be doomed to fail.</p><p>Now Mana finally realized that her nindo was literally rigged to blow up in her face upon her own death. Her entire life would just be hearing about people close to her slipping away without her having any chance to change anything. It would hurt even more since she had made it her lifelong goal to change something about that.</p><p>Mana carelessly wiped her premature tear away and postponed her mental breakdown, she was in the middle of a mission briefing, after all, the magician turned around and crept back into the office. She noticed that Sugemi and Shimo were pretty angry about it too and that the councilman was waiting for the three of them to get over their first instincts.</p><p>Apparently, Mana's first instinct was grief and depression, her teammates had a shared one of anger. Almost instantly when Mana entered the office again the councilman jumped up from his chair gesturing that they can carry on. Obviously, this was not over, the balance of power has shifted and people lost precious and loved icons. Why was no one informed of this? Why did people cheer on Mana passing by instead of crying that the Hokage has died?</p><p>Shimo interrupted that train of thought, his lowered and husky tone managed to slip in a question. "Can we know for certain that the information is correct? I mean it's Star of Hope, the Fourth Hokage and Tanshu-sensei we're talking about." Councilman nodded as he was stroking his beard, his eyes suggested genuine sadness, something very few politicians managed to convey in such situations.</p><p>"Sadly so. We've been informed by a signed letter from all the other Kage, we've lost not only Tanshu and the Fourth but also a lot of Fourth's trusted men he took to the Summit. Very few have survived and those few will undoubtedly be unable to fight or perform in missions. What nails the final nail into the coffin is the date of the letter – the other Kage would've wanted for Konoha to know of this as late as possible so that they cut the juiciest pieces of Kirigakure... Don't ask about that... It just makes all the sense. Too much so to doubt it."</p><p>Sugemi's fists tightened and as pieces of his sleeves got caught in his crushing grip a strange tearing sound came from his side. The boy's face was turned and twisted with his teeth in a wide grinding mimic of sadness and his hair covering his enraged eyes. "W-What's our mission about?" Mana asked the councilman trying to get this over with as fast as possible, the less time spent here and less time given for Sugemi to lash out the better. She was in no condition to get the Nara under control if he broke out and if Shimo clashed with him the rivalry of the two would fuel their fire into an endless twisting inferno.</p><p>The councilman cleared his throat, he visibly appreciated that the girl had changed the subject making him speak less and less about things he didn't want the kids to know. Based on what he said an intelligent listener would've already guessed that Mizukage had also perished in the Summit and now the dominating forces were cutting the village into pieces and while the concrete picture was still unknown it was likely that even more horrors would follow.</p><p>A village which was ruled by tyrants, one worse than another, wouldn't have responded kindly to being split like a pie amongst the world's strongest. Which would, of course, lead to violence... At least war was postponed for several more years, Mana had some time to grow and develop and become strong enough to change it all one day or die trying. Knowing the inevitability of her failure did not shy her away from living that way, even if she would die failing to save her friends or even people she didn't know, such was the only way of life worth living.</p><p>The councilman confidently handed Mana the file which Shimo took from his hands because the girl was visibly struggling with maintaining her balance and reading the file. The councilman then decided to also talk about the mission out loud. "As you may know the famous Guru Ayushi will be finally arriving in Konoha, by our estimation he will reach the gates at least tomorrow morning. He is a famous ninja from a past era, some rumors claim that he had served our village under the Senju name long before the Second Great Ninja War, maybe even during the First one. He was the most famous medical ninja of his time, he could literally bring people back to life and he himself was considered to be immortal. Needless to say, such a shinobi reached twice the age upon which ninja retire and decided to leave the life of a ninja behind."</p><p>Shimo quickly skimmed over the file, offering it to Mana after finishing it but when the girl gently shook her head in shame that it would've been too hard to read it by herself he kept it. "So why is protecting him a task for three genin, two of which shouldn't be on active duty?" the Yuki prodigy asked. He was glancing at Sugemi's raging and shaking figure with a corner of his eye, visibly he was as worried about his friend as Mana was before. Knowing Sugemi, if he didn't explode in a fit of rage instantly, he probably won't at all. He was just that kind of guy. The councilman sighed.</p><p>"I know you three are young and don't know much about someone like Guru Ayushi but he is a hero to even my grandparents. After saving many lives during the war and helping establish Konoha as one of the dominant powers in the Ninja World, he decided to leave his life as a ninja behind. He now travels the world giving seminars of peace and wisdom to the villages and smaller settlements in need. That being said, he is still an unparalleled icon in the world. Despite him refusing to fight, even his presence in a settlement scares bandits and nukenin away. Some things just aren't questioned, everyone's grandparents either idolized Ayushi and his teachings or owe him for saving their entire families during the war. There is no one dumb enough on this Earth to lay a hand on that man. For that reason protecting him is mostly a symbolic duty, but that of great honor. Despite him never needing actual protection, his protectors are usually graced with a great honor of having a record of having protected the great Guru Ayushi at some point in their lives."</p><p>As Mana's heart started jumping more intensely, namely because meeting this Guru Ayushi would've led to saving her father from his pain, if only she can ask him nicely enough for the man to provide his cells for her father's treatment, she was soon beaten out of these happy thoughts. Sugemi walked up to Shimo and violently took the file from him flipping through it. He then tossed it onto the office table and turned around.</p><p>"Fine, we'll protect your old man." his eyes then turned back and stared straight into those of the councilman right before he left the office. "I hope "great honor" includes being signed up for the Chuunin Exams, right?" The councilman slapped his forehead, he looked relieved as he thought that for a moment this child would have said something stupid and problematic.</p><p>"Ah... I assume one of your clan is included in organizing that and spilled the beans, right? Well, yes, I suppose even if your sensei spot is currently... Vacant... I could in theory sign you guys up acting as a higher power to those in charge of the exam. Until this evening I can still do that sort of thing and something tells me that even after, the Fifth won't give a crap about who signs what under her nose..."</p><p>The three were completely silent their entire trip down the stairs. Just as they nearly approached the exit of the building they saw a very special trio entering the Administration building. One of them was a woman of average height, looking in her mid-thirties and wearing a tight murky orange jumpsuit with an unzipped jounin west. Her jumpsuit was torn and burnt off in places, her body still had signs of exhaustion and immense bruising, and her arms below elbows were completely bandaged with her knuckles still soaking the bandage in red. The woman's wild brown hair, reminding almost of an autumnal chestnut was by far the most impressive feature of the woman, the flow of the brown ocean was only restrained by her blue forehead protector which she wore on the top of her head like a hairband.</p><p>Together with her came two teens that were visibly older than the three of Team Oak but not by that much, still their mental and physical maturity as well as their puberty having started and done their work on the teens it was quite apparent that the duo had seen much more in life than Mana, Shimo, and Sugemi. The three just walked right up to the Hokage's office without registering or letting anyone know anything. The boy with the strange face markings and sharp fangs sticking from his mouth bumped his shoulder to Shimo, at least fate didn't make him bump into Sugemi. At this point, the Nara would've picked a fight for sure.</p><p>"So... Chuunin Exams, huh?" Shimo tried to spark up a conversation, the three of them had a free midday to morning until they had to go greet Guru Ayushi by the village gates. Sugemi nodded and looked at his shaking clenched fist. "Yeah. We've had enough of this dishwashing shit, maybe if we were given the real missions to start with we may have stood up to that Demon guy, maybe we would've been trustworthy enough to be by Hokage's side when he got murdered... We can pull it off, we're all strong enough. Those damn Kirigakure jerks. I hate them... As long as I remember all they did was abuse their people and pick on us, now this. Shimo was right all along, that shit can't be allowed to continue. Come on, you two, we've got business to take care of until the morning."</p><p>Shimo nodded, "I'm going to go keep my training up, you should go home and rest, Mana-chan, you've trained plenty already. What are you going to do, Sugemi?" The Nara looked at the Administration building and then at some unspecified point of the village. He could've been looking at the bakery that stood right where he was looking at but Mana could've sworn that it was more like some building further that direction.</p><p>"Probably the same, for now," Sugemi added. Just like that the Nara just split off and started walking, not to the direction he was staring so intensely at but where his home was. Shimo started walking on forward but then looked back at Mana and walked back placing his hand onto hers on the cane.</p><p>"You gonna be OK?" he asked, "Maybe you want me to walk you home?"</p><p>"Nah, I'm fine" Mana looked somewhere to the side worried, "I'm just not sure about this whole Chuunin Exam thing. I mean are we really ready? We've trained plenty alone but we had very little team experience, Tanshu-sensei always split us up and tried to raise each of us individually. Honestly, it feels like there has never been a time when there was NOT a hedge between the three of us."</p><p>Shimo smiled and rushed back to where he was before he rushed back to Mana, he then turned back and showed her a thumb up with a confident smile. "You worry too much about too many things. I fought a giant tiger, Sugemi fought a snake, you beat not one but two giant centipedes and we all had our butts kicked by a spy, except Sugemi who got his beat by a guy with glasses. What is there for us to fear?" The genin's confident reply really did break a smile on Mana's face. Perhaps she was developing fears and worries far too fast. They may have never had real teamwork training but they were friends who knew each other for quite some time now, right?</p><hr/><p>Hanasaku and her two students entered the office without even knocking, the councilman stood up and walked up to the door leading the three to a hall much further down the corridor. He then looked at the woman's students and shook his head. "Oh, come on!" Kiyomi pouted but for the first time ever Hanasaku nodded and played by the rules, something in her guts told her that she may have known what all of this was about.</p><p>"Kiyomi, Tetsuzuki, please go home now and rest. This meeting isn't for you." Tetsuzuki pouted a bit and acted up. "I still want to leave the team, you know!"</p><p>The councilman cleared his throat, "Well the meeting of village's officials and the entire council is no place to do that. Please file your papers on the first floor." The man's voice was clearly irritated, even the noisy Inuzuka decided to obey the man's will and he turned around and started quickly marching downstairs. Hanasaku gently stroke Kiyomi's head and then poked the girl's forehead, "Go home, I can handle this." Kiyomi still continued to be worried.</p><p>"You always fall asleep during meetings of politics and briefings" she exclaimed.</p><p>"That's exactly why I can handle this, what I can't hear doesn't bother me" Hanasaku smiled with a confident full grin. Finally, even the second student relented and the girl turned around moving downstairs and passing through her teammate who was filing papers of his departure from the team. With a worried and sorry look, she tried to give him one final reason to reconsider but her eyes did not meet a reply. Just like that, Team Petal was dissolved completely!</p><hr/><p>The councilman stood up and showed Hanasaku where to sit, the woman just sat down and crossed her legs and arms closing her eyes. It wasn't that she was ignorant, it wasn't that she was disrespectful towards her basic suspicions. Howoku and Tanshu were dead, most likely Misu too. Only if all the other candidates for Kage would've died had the council approached her with this. She was pretty much the last person to be considered for this position. The councilman looked at her and asked for Hanasaku to pay attention but the woman kept her eyes closed, this time applying tension to that eye-lock. She somehow had to keep her tears inside, didn't she?</p><p>So what if that was Hanasaku's way of coping with loss? So what if she always made fun out of everything, so what if she always acted dumb and silly. So what if she always made people she liked hurt because she was clumsy and not too bright. But why did Howoku and Misu deserve to die? Why did her two brothers deserve to die alongside her younger brother? Why was her family now all alone again?</p><p>Just like that time when her parents died, she's all alone. The more things change the more they stay the same. It's a definition of insanity to do the same thing again, expecting things to change and while Hanasaku was stupid and clumsy, insane was one thing she was not. A family was something she could not have. The greatest curse of surviving everything was that you got to see everyone you love die before you...</p><p>"And that is why we need a Hokage suddenly. There is hope that a new leader can perhaps still salvage the situation, obtain more reliable information on what happened in the Kage Summit, and maybe even still get some good puppet politicians of ours into the newly elected Kirigakure council. Maybe we can still push some of our candidates for Mizukage as well, as dickish as the late news were, I'm sure that the other Kage wouldn't have elected another Kage without our knowledge..." the councilman went on and on. Hanasaku's eyes shot wide open letting her tears run free. Her body leaped up making all the ignorant councilmen shouting that this was insanity itself sit back down in fear. After all, whenever Chestnut Hanasaku did something, everything fell apart...</p><p>"Silence! I, Hanasaku Senju, otherwise known as Chestnut Hanasaku, using my Sannin priority status accept the suggested title as the Fifth Hokage until the situation is stable and a viable substitute can be placed in my seat," she spoke, for the first time what she said were not words that revealed the clumsiness of her foolishness. Those were words of a woman ready to accept power. Power of being able to find out what happened to her brothers and power to prevent something like that from happening again. Also possibly punching people responsible in the face... Preferably the last one.</p><p>Even the councilmen who were opposed to Hanasaku's candidature initially started hesitantly nodding their heads. They then caught themselves agreeing to Hanasaku being chosen as the next Hokage, the successor to one titled the "Star of Hope" no less. One of the most questionable leaders in history following undoubtedly the greatest. One that made the economy blossom from peace and peace from the economy, one who found balance and coexistence in those things. It could all either go very well or terribly wrong. Such decisions were best made when one had nothing at all to lose...</p>
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<a name="section0064"><h2>64. Stages of Grief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's slower pace did not reduce that feeling of ground shifting beneath her feet. Such feelings were natural after such an event, every time a great clash between two sides occurred there was to be a great aftereffect of that encounter. People crying and lamenting the deaths of their beloved, children left without homes and families, entire settlements and villages thinking how things would be now that their leaders had passed away. It is just human nature when all is perfectly well to expect that this would never change. Such was the case when the Star of Hope became Hokage. People just took that bliss of having such a competent and powerful iconic leader for granted expecting that this state would never change.</p><p>This time on her way back Mana noticed a significant change in people's moods. Women had teary eyes everywhere, the men looked like they've been told the worst news. Mana assumed that the news had already reached the public. After all, if the councilman thought a bunch of kids should know it already that meant it was already in the papers that day.</p><p>What some people couldn't find out about from the news, they heard about through hearsay or from their neighbors, nothing spreads quite like crushing news like those. In one violent swoop of history, Konoha lost two of their Sannin and a Hokage with no known replacements for the Sannin lost and a very questionable choice for a Hokage.</p><p>Mana thought back on seeing that woman in the Administration, her brown hair... She must've been Chestnut Hanasaku, after all, as secretive as the council tried to be with their meeting to elect the new Hokage, their choice was made for them. There was really no one else there to choose from. It was either choose Chestnut Hanasaku, the only surviving Sannin or wait until a more appropriate candidate rises up to the occasion.</p><p>It all depended on the situation the village was in and by seeing how rushed the decision to select the new Kage was Mana was starting to feel uneasy. Were things so bad that they needed the succeeding Kage right after the last one died? It was fruitless to think too hard about it without knowing much more, she was just a kid after all and didn't get much information about the more intricate village affairs.</p><p>Right after returning home, Mana realized that her parents had already found out about the news. Father approached Mana and wanted to comfort her as he was comforting her mother who was crying her heart out but he saw that his daughter was in a much calmer state. Mana was not crying or shaking or displaying any signs of losing her mind but... Father knew she was suffering inside, in fact, the invisible sadness was often the most dangerous. It was obvious that the man didn't really know how to help his kid. He just reached out and gently tapped her shoulder then drew Mana in for a hug.</p><p>"So you've heard, huh?" he asked.</p><p>"Yeah, the councilman told us..." was all that Mana could reply, her voice was deep but silent, her tone sounded so distant.</p><p>"Well, they're really rushing this thing, they're having the funeral this evening and then the Fifth is going to be nominated tomorrow. Doesn't really help that they're rushing it so much..." father started babbling, trying to find a note that would open Mana up a bit so that she could let her feelings go and stop sealing them away. Having lived for so long as a ninja and lost many comrades father must've known that it wasn't really healthy to deal with it the way in which Mana was doing it.</p><p>"I'm... I'm probably gonna go to bed early today, I've got a mission tomorrow, it's nothing too big." Mana replied trying to free herself from father's arms. While she successfully escaped his embrace his hands held her by her arms quite firmly, having father's injury in mind.</p><p>"You should go to the funeral, death is something you want to let out of your system and deal with immediately. Death is like an infestation of darkness, if you let it stick around for too long it'll grow out of control until no one will be able to tell the moss from the stone. You might not want to say goodbye just yet but... You'll feel better later if you do it now." Father explained letting go of the little magician right afterward. Mana quietly stumbled back to her room, walking upstairs with a cane was a great pain in the butt.</p><p>Father was right, she kept telling herself internally that if she never saw Tanshu-sensei's body and never confronted the problem it just wouldn't exist anymore. Sure she'd never see or hear about Tanshu-sensei again but at least she'd never have to deal with the problem. For all the talk about being a hero and a savior and one who'd change the world, being an icon of hope for others to draw courage from she was a big coward.</p><p>Slowly and having to force her body to move every inch Mana stood up from the bed and crept up to the wardrobe and pulled out her black dress. It was safe to say that neither Mana nor her parents ever hoped that the girl would ever have to wear that, it'd have been for the best if the girl just grew out of it and tossed it away without ever getting to put it on. Such was the case with most clothes meant specifically to be worn during a funeral.</p><p>Mana just laid back down and kept looking through the window at the Sun as it circled through the sky, hiding behind the dark clouds that were starting to accumulate. Autumn was a season of rain, while it wasn't really uncommon for it to rain during this time of the year, the girl wanted to believe that it was the Universe itself that was gifting this expression of sadness as if it was an apology of the sort. That was being hopeful, that's how Mana was ever since she was a kid, believing in nonsense like that...</p><p>As the sun finally started to set the girl changed into her dress, it felt so cold and uncomfortable, must've just been her mind associating the soft fabric with what it symbolized that made it so. Looking through the window Mana then took a black sweater with her in case if it started to rain. Mana loved the rain but she just wasn't in the mood to enjoy it now, she wasn't in the mood to enjoy anything really. While it sounded stupid for the girl, she felt like she'd never be able to enjoy anything ever again.</p><hr/><p>Mana looked around, pretty much everyone had gathered around the Hokage's grave. She was too far to see if there was even a body in the coffin. There was something of the sort, perhaps whoever was in the Summit managed to get Tanshu-sensei's and Fourth's bodies sealed and then sent the scroll to Konoha. There were just so many bodies piling up in these times that by now moving them was quite a simple deal, there must've been entire industries around it, people who specialized in sealing dead bodies. Mana turned at father, seeing her sad eyes father's arm wrapped around her shoulder as the head of the family gently hugged both Mana and mother.</p><p>"Dad, is there a special kind of ninja that deal with sealing bodies?" she asked.</p><p>"Yeah, several specializations actually. There are ninja called "Shinigami", those guys seal the bodies into scrolls and have a multitude of techniques related to protecting those scrolls and quickly transferring them. Bodies are a treasured thing for a village for a multitude of reasons so "Shinigami" are usually quite potent ninja capable of protecting them. Then there are "Sin-Eaters", usually the bodies of a ninja contain various traces of how they died, sometimes seals that work like traps when allied ninja recover the body, it's the job of a "Sin Eater" to remove those or recover all they can about the death of a ninja. They're both investigators for hidden messages and signs but also supportive ninja, while both are quite powerful ordinary ninja don't really like them."</p><p>"Why not?" Mana asked slightly confused.</p><p>"Because of what they represent, they deal with dead bodies which means that they always follow death. It's not really their fault but... It can't be helped. That's why their kind is quite rare and not many younger ninja know about them, people tend not to talk about them too much except during occasions like this..." father replied trying to silence his voice a bit to the point where those around the family couldn't hear them.</p><p>"This is horrible... Howoku was the one who gave me permission to stay in the village. He also was one of the only opponents of the council's decision to assassinate my tribe..." mother wept. Mana wanted to hear more about that but she figured that this may not have been the best occasion to do so. She'd have to just keep that in her mind and ask about it some other time.</p><p>The girl's eyes unintentionally slipped onto Sugemi and Shimo, these two were standing on separate corners of the crowd, Shimo was surrounded by his family as well but Sugemi was standing further away from his. Also, their emotions couldn't have differed more, Shimo was sad beyond comprehension – the Fourth was his hero, whereas Sugemi was... Angry. Mana couldn't really understand what her teammate was so furious about, maybe he still blamed himself for what happened, maybe he blamed someone else. Blame often sparks anger.</p><p>Mana slowly slipped out from her father's arm and then crept carefully to the young Nara. She tried to talk to him, greet him and ask if there was something on his mind but her teammate stayed quiet.</p><p>"You know, I wasn't originally going to come here, I thought to run away from it all and deal with it alone, or better yet not deal with it at all. If you have something weighing you down it'd be best if you shared it" she said trying to open her friend up a bit. Sugemi clenched his fists.</p><p>"They're all just crying, acting like this is no one's fault. We have the guy in our cells, we've got that "Demon", that Kirigakure scumbag. He should get the shit beaten out of him every day, I should've been there when you two fought him and beaten the shit out of him, to begin with. Now I'm one beating behind schedule!" Sugemi shouted out, the surrounding people looked at the two youngsters and started slowly moving back forming a small circle around them. Mana slowly breathed in and out, this was a dangerous mindset that her friend had, he was about to do something stupid and she had to stop that. It was her responsibility as a friend.</p><p>"It's not "Demon's" fault, he didn't even see Tanshu or the Fourth, the three never even met for a moment. You're just pointing arrows because you're feeling dark and sad inside. I know that feeling because I have it in my heart as well, I don't know the good way to deal with it yet but... I know that yours is wrong." Mana scolded herself almost instantly after finishing her reply, she came off too hard on him. She should've said something else but... How was she supposed to react, her teammate was itching to hurt someone completely innocent just because he came from a country responsible for taking the life of their treasured teacher.</p><p>"No. You're the wrong one, that's what Tanshu-sensei kept telling you, even after his death you can't respect his will. Even after his death, you keep on disappointing him. People like you always confuse everyone else with their stupid speeches, "It's not that guy's fault, it's nobody's fault". Nobody's fault my ass. It's Kirigakure's fault, we've been warring for years and Fourth was a fool to think for a moment that those deaths were forgotten, that this violence could ever be left behind. The Mizukage wanted war, well we should give him that."</p><p>"Sugemi, it's not Kirigakure or Kumogakure or whatever, it's a person that killed the Fourth and it's a completely another person who killed Tanshu-sensei. Didn't you hear it? Tanshu-sensei was killed by Misu-san – a Konohagakure Sannin. You can't just lash out and start beating up and killing people from another country because they hurt you, it wasn't Kirigakure's will this happened, it was the Mizukage's." Mana almost started shouting, the circle around the two grew wider with each passing moment.</p><p>Sugemi turned around and started walking away, bumping into Mana's shoulder. The girl moaned in pain and almost collapsed, just barely did she manage to keep on one knee when gripping her cane with all of her strength. "That's what I thought, you keep trying to make it more difficult than it actually is. We are allies, they are enemies. It's as simple as that. To them we are enemies as well so they'd do the same to us as they did to sensei and Hokage without blinking twice. I thought of you as a friend, Mana, I still do. I'll walk away before you tarnish that belief of mine by siding with them."</p><p>Some people came to help Mana get back on her feet, they kept cursing at Sugemi and his words but some actually agreed with him. There were too many voices for Mana to hear them all but... Some of them really did want war with Kirigakure, probably the majority of people around her wanted to start that cursed circle of violence all over again. Father helped Mana up and examined her. "Is everything OK? What happened?"</p><p>Mana forced a fake smile and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine, just got dirt all over my dress. I uh, I felt a bit weak there for a moment and fell..." Mana heard Shimo behind her. She looked back and saw that same emotion in his eyes – rage. He must've seen everything that happened, he probably heard some of it. This wasn't good, right when Mana started dealing with one loss, her life was starting to spiral down even more threatening to shake the balance of her team even more. With all of her speed that the girl could muster up she walked up to Shimo trying to catch up to him, he was slowly leaving the crowd.</p><p>"That bastard, I'm gonna kick his ass hard! He's got no right to act like a fucking drama queen here, we're all suffering!" Shimo was cursing really badly, Mana shouted for him to wait and her teammate listened stopping for a moment and waiting for her to catch up to him.</p><p>"Stop, it wasn't his fault, he always was the weird one and... It just hit him harder than everyone else. Although I do think he's about to pull something really stupid." Mana said.</p><p>"He knew that you would stand by your beliefs, he knew that people around him were easy to sway to the violent side. He made fun of you and publically mocked you. I'm gonna kick that fucker's ass, no matter what he decided to pull here!" Shimo shouted. He wasn't going to be reasoned with. Mana knew that the two were looking for an excuse to jump at each other for quite some time.</p><p>"Shimo, there's no time for your rivalry and stupid macho nonsense! I think Sugemi is going to break into the Police Force HQ and try to kill the "Demon". If he's caught we'll all be in trouble. We owe it to him to stop him as his friends." She explained. Shimo nodded.</p><p>"Fine but I won't do it softly, I'm still gonna kick his ass when we stop him." He pouted. "I think he went to his home, if he's going for it like you think he is, he'll need to gear up. I'm heading home as fast as I can and I'll pick up my blade and my tools, you go change too. Hopefully, you won't need to jump in but... At least be there to stop me from beating him too hard."</p><p>After clearing things up and putting the plan together, the two split and head back home. Sugemi was never the overly subtle one so if he decided to break into the Police Force building he'd either be found out or he'd leave way too many clues to suggest a break-in. Mana tried to desperately race home, she was moving at a turtle's pace and her thighs hurt with each step more and more. A couple of times the girl almost fell down from her muscles just giving in and feeling weak almost making the entire leg give in.</p><p>Luckily, Mana managed to make it home and to the second floor where she changed into her uniform and filled all the hidden pockets with kunai and shuriken and her sleeves with knives. For some using a magician's uniform during battle would've sounded like a bad idea. The truth was Mana knew that outfit inside out, she knew every hidden pocket and could slip knives out of her sleeve effortlessly and faster than even her peers that specialized in weaponry. That beat feeling slightly uncomfortably during sudden movements.</p><p>Mana met up with Shimo who was now wielding a katana, having finally acquired the skill to switch from a wakizashi to a longer blade, custom made no doubt. His family could definitely afford a custom order from one of the several blacksmith clans of the village. The magician nodded gesturing that she was ready and the two set out. Truth be told Mana felt really bad inside. Her friend was spiraling into madness and she couldn't help him. She'd probably mess things up even at her full strength and here she was injured and unable to move around fast.</p><p>She'd just get in Shimo's way. Still, as a friend she owed it to Sugemi to be there, to try and talk him down from committing professional suicide. If he was found sneaking into the Police Force it'd be Ninja Tribunal for him, if he gave up the part during torture where he intended to kill a treasured prisoner, a source of information he could be accused of treason even. That would mean crushed dreams of ever being a ninja or having his own manga, maybe even death. This was no longer a game or a joke.</p><p>The two stopped before the Police Force building. Shimo peeked from the corner. "The two guards are taken out. This is bad" he whispered. Mana couldn't believe it, "Wait, how did Sugemi take two Police Force guards out?"</p><p>Shimo grunted and shook in his hiding spot uncomfortably. "All the good ones must've left to the funeral, it's the really influential and powerful ones that knew Tanshu-sensei and the Fourth the best. They left the youngsters in charge for just one evening... Still, these might be genin level ninja, each and every one of them would be troublesome to face directly. Let's try to be sneaky, even Sugemi thought he should sneak around which means while he is a dick, he's not insane"</p><p>Mana and Shimo snuck up to the entry, the lock was still there, for some reason it wasn't a seal lock that needed an injection of the right kind of chakra to be unlocked, it was just a good old steel lock. Mana bent over almost crying out in pain from her legs and pulled a pin from her hair letting it loose. She bent the pin and worked the lock.</p><p>Shimo looked amazed. "Holy shit, where did you learn that? More so that fast!?"</p><p>Mana blinked, trying to smile but unsuccessfully due to the severity of the situation. "I'm a stage magician, remember. I break locks before the coffin fills with water for fun. I could've broken it five different ways with no tools on me, it'd have taken me longer though."</p><p>"And everyone says being a famous magician is a bad career choice for a ninja..." Shimo smiled as the two snuck in leaving the door unlocked. They may need to quickly escape and hide, even if such was unlikely for Mana. If shit hit the fan she'd probably be captured as she was unable to move around too fast.</p><p>Shimo looked around, the two could hear footsteps all around – Sugemi somehow snuck through these floors without alerting or taking out any guards. Mana took off her hat and made a hand seal, she then pushed her cane into her hat and it disappeared in a bright glow as the magician sealed the cane into the hat. It took some amount of chakra but, finally, Mana became skilled enough to use her father's seal.</p><p>"It'd make too much noise if I walked around with that..." the girl explained in a whisper, weaving some more hand seals and using a small vortex of wind to elevate her several feet into the air.</p><p>"Mystical Wings Jutsu" she whispered again as the air managed to hold her, she'd not be completely invisible with the gusts setting off dust but it's still more silent than cursing in pain with every step. Shimo nodded and started leading the way, Mana wasn't the best in ways of stealth so her friend had to guide her, tell her when to move and when to stop.</p><p>Her technique improved from being just a gust of wind to propel her upwards though, still, it wasn't by any means fast or efficient, this situation was just exceptional enough to make it look useful. Sneaking was a painful and scary process, it seemed as if it took two hours to get to the third level where the "Demon" was kept. There it was... Traces with lying knocked out guards and a guard standing near a cell looking at the young man inside.</p><p>"Sugemi!" Mana shouted out, the "guard's" concentration broke and the transformation jutsu ended revealing Sugemi standing at the end of the hall. The boy looked even more furious than before, "Don't get in my way you two! I'm gonna kill this bastard for what his kind did to Tanshu-sensei." It was safe to say that things could no longer be taken under control.</p><p>"We'll take too much time trying to talk this drama queen down. I'll just quickly cut him down and we'll get him out of here where we can kick his butt for being such an idiot and talk him over. I'm sorry, Mana-chan" Shimo quickly mumbled out and leaped forward drawing his sword and trying to cut Sugemi down but the Nara just rolled over Shimo's shoulder and kicked off his back making the Yuki swordsman lose balance and fall on his knees.</p><p>Sugemi then lunged at Mana but stopped at the final step with his fist right up in her face. Having realized that Mana wasn't fighting him but just here to try and control the situation Sugemi stepped back and looked her in the eyes. His eyes weren't angry or sad or... There wasn't anything in them, his stare was just blank and emotionless. Sugemi then turned back at Shimo who was standing up looking pretty angry and ready to beat his friend down senseless.</p>
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<a name="section0065"><h2>65. Shimo VS Sugemi!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shimo and Sugemi kept looking at each other, trying to determine which one should make the first move. This was a complicated fight, they couldn't go too flashy or else the guards would pick up on the trouble brewing in the lower levels, at the same time they were each a capable genin able to provide a decent challenge for one another. Shimo may have expected an easy knockout but this first exchange of attacks proved to him that such would never happen. Sugemi was not only ready to fight his friends for this blind quest for vengeance but he also was well able to deliver on his big talk.</p><p>Shimo started the brawl, he kicked off of the ground leaping forward, one of his arms held his drawn blade whereas the other one was ready to defend against any counterattacks which the sword may not have been fast enough to intercept. This time Shimo invested far less weight into his attack, he learned of Sugemi's style and decided that if he got his attack redirected again he'd be wide open for a takedown and this time the Nara wouldn't fool around. This was a real fight with real stakes, in fact, when the life of a friend was at stake the stakes couldn't have been more real.</p><p>With a sharp and quick but unfocused kick, Shimo tried to weigh and measure his opponent, see how he dealt with simple quick jabs, Sugemi's knee shot up kicking Shimo's leg way up, where the Nara then swept the other leg. Shimo's body hit the ground hard but Sugemi wasn't done, he turned his body around with a second sweep to send Shimo's body slamming into the cell.</p><p>A dirty and bruised arm grabbed Shimo's neck and started choking the boy out. The Yuki swordsman whispered something to his assailant and his grip loosened. The Demon must've been told that he was attacking his own savior, without his tools, broken, tired, and hungry even the Demon could not escape from this HQ at that moment.</p><p>Sugemi turned back at Mana with the same blank stare. "Well? Aren't you going to fight? If you're here you must support a side, with me or against me. There are no neutral grounds in life, all must pick a side, those that do not are treated as enemies to both sides." A handle of Shimo's sword silenced Sugemi as it drove deep into the boy's jaw sending the boy crashing into the stone wall picking up dust and cracking some bricks in it. Mana just barely managed to lean out of the way of her friend crashing into the wall, she couldn't keep her balance but at least she didn't get knocked out by her own friend crashing into her.</p><p>"Don't listen to him, Mana-chan. You don't have to pick any side, I'm sorry for doing this to you, I'm sorry that I forced you to watch friends fight but... Please just endure it a little bit longer. We'll go back home again and be friends, we'll be Team Oak like the old times. Isn't that right Sugemi? What happened to the Chuunin Exams? What happened to your manga?! Are you just spitting at all of your dreams just to express your feelings of anger towards an unarmed man?" Shimo yelled at Sugemi who picked himself back up and spat out some blood to the side.</p><p>Mana's body was almost shaking, she couldn't believe that she was seeing her friends fight like that, her best friends. When coming here she expected that they would be able to stop Sugemi by either talking him down or he'd get his mind back in order when the first blow would be thrown, seeing the madness behind it all. Now she witnessed that the boy wasn't like that at all, with each fist thrown his mind devolved more and more to the mad fighting animal which he held inside.</p><p>"They don't write manga about spineless fools like Mana. They write them about brave and strong men who know where they stand and act upon their feelings. That is what it means to be a ninja and that is how I'll make my own history. If you feel obliged to fight me, I'll gladly kick your butt before I kick that of that Kirigakure bastard in the cell." Sugemi shouted out, his tone finally made it clear – he lost it completely.</p><p>"So you think you can take me?" Demon's confident and husky tone echoed through the entire room from his cell. "Come on, big guy, I'm right here. Open the cell door and we can go for it."</p><p>Shimo gave the inmate an angry stare, he was just making this whole madness worse. "Guys. Please. Stop!" Mana shouted out while standing back up and using her "Mystical Wings" jutsu again to make her slightly levitate as she moved in closer to the two. A blow sent her back into the wall of the room, it wasn't a chakra augmented blow so Sugemi was holding back but he showed clearly that he was going to have none of it. He was so far beyond being talked down that Mana could barely believe it. If this was a mercenary or another ninja or some giant animal from the Forest of Death she'd have had no second thought about taking them out but... This was Sugemi. How could things have gone so far out of control?</p><p>Sugemi shouted out madly, such loud cries of battle must've been heard above but the guards probably just took it for normal shouts of desperate or drunk inmates. Sometimes when a ninja has had too many drinks they may have ended up contained in the Police Force HQ as well until the morning so some unusual noises wouldn't have been out of the ordinary in the slightest. The Nara leaped forward slamming his palms together as the shadows shot from the ground forming into fists, each of them started relentlessly striking at Shimo with a powerful barrage of strikes.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Barrage!" Sugemi yelled out.</p><p>Shimo's body moved to the side and dodged each of the strikes, Mana saw that his body moved far too fast, he must've been using chakra to make his movements faster. A genin may not have been able to augment their bodies' natural abilities too much but somehow Shimo managed to avoid each and every strike, with a graceful spin the swordsman appeared behind Sugemi and drove his sheath right into Nara's back sending him almost crashing into the cell. The bars of the Demon's cell were bent up, the inmate moved back because he believed that the strength upon which Sugemi was thrown into his cell would blow them out completely. The Demon just laughed out in amusement.</p><p>"This is great, you Konoha brats are so soft. Afraid to draw your blade against your own brother, I've been killing Kirigakure ninja since I was in the Academy. Your pitiful games bring shame to the craft of ninja."</p><p>Sugemi's body picked itself up and wiped slobber and blood that shot from his mouth from having a pointy end of the sheath driven into his spine with all of Shimo's strength. Even now when their encounter had well kicked off they were playing with kid gloves. Even when it seemed apparent that they were fighting both Shimo and Sugemi held back significantly and that's why they were different from the Demon.</p><p>"If you toy around I'm just gonna take you and Mana out and then proceed with my plan. Draw your damn sword when you hit me, Shimo!" Sugemi yelled out angrily. Truth be told, even to Mana Shimo's approach of sheathing his sword when attacking and unsheathing it when the attack was over seemed silly. And yet... She was powerless to stop her friends from killing one another.</p><p>Shimo stood silently, his eyes were completely covered up by his hair that was greasy and covered with sweat from this encounter and all the previous months he had spent training. Sugemi angrily spat out some blood to the side, "Suit yourself!" he exclaimed as chakra erupted from his body and he lunged at Mana.</p><p>The girl couldn't stop him, not in her injured state at least, her body was frozen, she was completely disabled by the thought of fighting her best friend. Her best friend wanted to harm her! Before Sugemi's fist drove into the girl's stomach punching her out of her consciousness, however, Shimo's naked blade shot up and to the side right across Sugemi's body, from one shoulder to his thigh.</p><p>"LEAVE MANA-CHAN OUT OF THIS!" Shimo roared out like a wild animal as he moved his arm making the blade cut instead of just pressing against Sugemi's body. The Nara's eyes whited out, overwhelmed by pain pulsing through his entire body, blood shot out from the wound splashing all over the walls of the room. The magician felt a warm splash of blood landing on her cheek, her body still shook in disbelief of what was happening, with each passing moment the situation was getting worse.</p><p>At this point, almost everything bad that could've happened did happen. Sugemi's body slammed into the edgy stone floor, blood still ran wildly from the wound on his chest, his eyes now looked so innocent as the boy was temporarily cut down out of his consciousness. Moments later the boy's consciousness returned, he started writhing on the ground in pain.</p><p>"What... The..." a weak voice echoed to the side of where the girl was floating a foot into the air. One of the guards was getting over being knocked out. The girl didn't have time to think, her hands quickly went through some hand seals and activated a genjutsu. The guard's eyes opened wide in surprise, he started rolling around and scratching all over his body believing to be covered in cockroaches. He started writhing around, bashing his body into the stone walls until he hit his head and got back to being knocked out cold. Just great. Now Mana messed up too, now she's just as much of a criminal as Shimo and Sugemi were. The Demon just laughed out amused in his cell.</p><p>"Well well, I guess this girl isn't completely toothless..."</p><p>Shimo looked back with sorry eyes. "Mana..." he uttered. It was clear that he felt sorry that he dragged her into this with his aggressive approach. Sugemi got back on his knees wiping the blood that he was throwing up. It appeared that the wound on his chest wasn't too deep or didn't cut through the bone. It must've been really painful to keep a fighting maniac like Sugemi down for so long. "Yeah... Be a dear and knock out everyone who gets in our way" the Nara huffed out. Shimo's hand rose up showing the edge of his sword to Sugemi.</p><p>"I'll take you out quick, we've already hurt Mana-chan enough by fighting, now because of my inaction she got involved in this... It's my mess to clean up!" he spoke quietly but firmly and with much confidence. Shimo then sheathed his sword and his hands went through three or four hand seals as a powerful gust of wind picked up, suddenly the humidity in the air was transformed into a strong blizzard and it was made even stronger by the fact that it was raging indoors in a contained environment.</p><p>Mana shrieked out in pain as the force of the wind overwhelmed her levitation technique and she was sent back down to the ground. The Demon laughed out, his voice was muffled by the raging winds. "I see your chakra control improved while I was sitting here" he yelled out.</p><p>Shimo's body disappeared, flashing in on Sugemi as he drew his sword slicing at the center of the whirlwind that was throwing the pelting snow and icicles around. "Blizzard Cut – Three Slashes!" Shimo yelled out as a white blur flashed through the center of the blizzard cutting the whirlwind into four parts separating it in three spots where his blade cut through the whirlwind. Because of the overwhelming cold and strength of the wind, there was no way for Sugemi to avoid it but the Nara kept on his feet, stumbling around as new deep wounds opened on his body but not once letting a part of his body above the knees hit the ground. Then the storm stopped as quickly as it began.</p><p>Shimo was not done, he saw that Sugemi was taking every blow so he continued his ruthless onslaught. After stopping from the last slash he made more hand seals and pointed his hands at his friend and rival. The storm picked up again right around Sugemi slamming powerful and large chunks of ice made from the humidity in the air right at the genin. Encasing Sugemi into a mausoleum of ice made out of huge messy blocks. Shimo breathed out and leaped forward, drawing his sword with all of his might.</p><p>"Ice Style: Ice Cutter!" he shouted trying to cut the pile of ice blocks on top of Sugemi in half and taking the genin out with it. A powerful flash of chakra sent Shimo away slamming again into the Demon's cell, bending the bars furthermore. The chunks of ice got blown away, forming into smaller shrapnel that would've easily shred through the flesh of anyone who got too close.</p><p>"First Gate: Gate of Opening! OPEN!" Sugemi shouted out releasing a powerful burst of chakra from the opening gate which blew away Shimo's jutsu. Without hesitating even for a moment the Nara jumped at his friend. No. These two were no longer friends, they were two people trying to genuinely kill each other. They may have been friends at some point but now there was nothing but their battle. Shimo leaped forward, cutting madly with his sword, Sugemi pulled out a kunai as the two started to blur.</p><p>Clashing with each other sending sparks and shockwaves, leaping on the walls, kicking off of the ceiling. Their eyes were completely white, absent were any traces of emotion or feeling. Just an automated bombardment of loud clangs and booms when these two clashed with one another trying to take each other down. This mad explosion of fury and killing intent must've alerted someone above, soundproofing could only protect from this much noise escaping...</p><p>Then, in an instant, the blurs appeared in their human shapes again, wild Nara shadows surrounded Sugemi as powerful tendrils shot from the ground trying to whip at Shimo "Shadow Tendril Jutsu!" Sugemi yelled out. The swordsman vaulted over them moving in to strike at the Nara from behind but the Nara was facing Shimo again by predicting the swordsman trying to move in from behind.</p><p>"Shadow Push Jutsu!" Sugemi chanted out again as the shadows formed a big palm that slammed into Shimo's chest sending him rolling back and slamming into the wall. Shimo grunted out and quickly got back on his feet. His body was trembling in pain and exhaustion was starting to kick in. Shimo's breathing was irregular, that slamming shadow technique must've broken some ribs which made breathing difficult. Without his ability to breathe properly Shimo may not have had what it took to keep up with Sugemi's "First Gate".</p><p>The first flock of guards broke in, these were the four that were supposed to check the situation. Mana realized that if the scouting party did not return the ones staying above were supposed to call for reinforcements, the problem was that in their maddened states Shimo and Sugemi may not have realized it.</p><p>Both Shimo and Sugemi leaped at the guards. Sugemi moved so fast in his "First Gate" that he quickly took them out with strong strikes directed at the vital areas. Shimo was slightly softer with his strikes but he hit with every intention to knock them out instantly. If these guards were given a proper chance to fight they may have proven troublesome to Shimo and Sugemi, the thing was that the two genin were already warmed up and in their most potent stages of combat, they also caught the guards unprepared and utilized the shock factor. Now it was just a matter of time before the guards return with reinforcements after the scouting party does not return. It didn't matter, Mana would stay with her friends, she'd stand with them even if now they were trying to kill each other.</p><p>After the final guard hit the floor after a mad blurring combination of blows from Sugemi his "First Gate" disappeared with a loud popping sound as the chakra bursting from his body dissolved. Almost at the same moment, Sugemi collapsed onto his knees breathing heavily, this "First Gate" must've been really wearing his body out. Now was Shimo's chance to take his friend out cold and get the hell out of there. There was a slim chance that the three could still escape without being recognized, it was dark in the cellar and Shimo with Sugemi moved really fast, maybe their faces still weren't seen? Even Mana with her optimistic and naïve attitude realized she was being too hopeful.</p><p>Shimo rushed at Sugemi who was struggling to breathe properly, his arms decisively flashed driving the sword down and leaving a wide cut on Sugemi's chest. The heat emanating from Sugemi's body from the effort he had to put in to use the "First Gate" had already cauterized the previous cuts, this one was fresh, this one wasn't defended against in any way. It was a clean knockout slash.</p><p>And yet... Sugemi stood up, stumbling back but he stood. Shimo shouted out like a madman, slicing right and left, waving his sword around in a mad fit of rage, opening new wounds, shallow but numerous, desperate to take his friend down but not out for good. Sugemi shouted in pain, he stumbled back with each successful strike but he didn't go down. He always jumped up from his knees to greet each successive strike. Then the unbelievable happened, Sugemi clenched his fist and shouted out "First Gate: OPEN!" again sending a powerful punch Shimo's way. It only dispelled an afterimage. The real Shimo was somewhere in the darkness of the room.</p><p>"Ice Style: Cold Air Mirage" a voice came from somewhere deeper in the room, somewhere in the darker corners.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Elimination Cut!" Shimo's voice came from right above Sugemi whose face shot up in disbelief, he was too late to stop it. Shimo's body dove down from the ceiling cutting Sugemi through the chest. A powerful finishing cut like that was supposed to end it all but Sugemi only stumbled back again. The bursting chakra which his Gate of Opening emitted protected him slightly making the cut just a little bit short from cutting through bone and into the vital organs. Still, it was apparent now that Shimo was no longer cutting to hurt, he was cutting to kill, confident that his friend would survive his meanest kill-shots.</p><p>Once again Sugemi's body blurred and disappeared, so did Shimo. A multitude of exploding aerial shockwaves almost blew Mana off her feet again, she was now sitting with her back against the wall, her body and mind were completely broken to the point where she was just observing this madness which was happening there. Friend trying to kill another friend, when did her life end up like this, where was this all leading up to? If these two people fighting were anyone else... If only these weren't Sugemi and Shimo fighting. The gentleman who thought it was his noble duty to let each girl in the Academy into the canteen first and the otaku who brought a bag full of manga into the graduation exam instead of his tools.</p><p>The two just kicked off of various surfaces: walls, ceiling, floor, passing through each other and clashing using their weapons. Sugemi's kunai got cut in two after two or three swipes but he quickly replaced them. Then it happened – Shimo's feet kicked strongly off of Demon's cell breaking the bars and blowing the door down. The Demon was unleashed again onto Konohagakure, the slow and hesitant steps tapped against the sharp edges of the rocky floor, an exhausted, tortured and broken youth walked out from his cell laughing madly.</p><p>"Finally... I have escaped from my shackles... Oni-sensei, I've not disappointed you, I've obtained all the information I need and now I'll..." two fists silenced the tired, sick, and delusional inmate. Sugemi's "First Gate" must've hit like a truck, that combined with Shimo's fist and then a follow-up strike from the sword handle sent the Demon back into the cell passing out instantly.</p><p>"There... We've hurt him plenty. Let's go now..." Shimo huffed heavily looking at the unconscious inmate they've just punched out. Obviously, had the Demon been anywhere close to his prime he'd have been much more troublesome to take out, still, Shimo and Sugemi were stronger than they were before when they investigated him and it showed. Sugemi's "First Gate" ended again, the boy fell to his knee and started huffing grabbing his chest in pain. His entire body must've been shutting down from being pushed so much.</p><p>"No! This isn't enough. He deserves more for what they did to sensei and the Fourth! I need to punch him more, I need to crush his arms and legs and punch him until he's just a stain but still barely alive!" Sugemi yelled out.</p><p>"Don't you think for a moment that I didn't notice what you did, you're still thinking about Mana, aren't you? You did this on purpose trying to calm me down, I'm not some idiot you can play with!" the Nara followed up as his body stood back up and straightened for the continuation of the battle.</p><p>Shimo looked at Mana with a sorry glare, "I'm sorry, Mana-chan, I did everything I can to do it peacefully, I restrained my cuts enough, I even appealed to his intentions and freed the damned prisoner. That's it, now I'm hitting you with my full strength!" the boy leaned forward widening his legs and bending them, taking a sword drawing stance and preparing to devastate his opponent with his secret technique. Sugemi's arms shot to his sides and then he also took his taijutsu stance preparing to continue the battle with all of the training wheels being off.</p><p>"Good. I also haven't shown you all results of my training as well..." Sugemi's arms once again moved to the side as he started to channel his chakra intensely, driving it all from his body in mad bursts. Sugemi's skin started blushing, dyeing in a shade of red and blood vessels started shooting out on his forehead. The chakra rushing from his body was no longer crystal clear, it was now completely blue and red with rotating streams and a green aura started briefly emanating from his body, present but still weak and transparent.</p><p>"Second Gate: Gate of Healing! OPEN!"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0066"><h2>66. Whoever Wins, Everyone Loses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shimo leaned back taking a stance that he favored when using quick sword drawing techniques. He planned to very much finish this fight with this technique, he had already gotten hit by a First Gate shadow ninjutsu technique and he undoubtedly could not keep up with First Gate for too long as a result, let alone the Second.</p><p>Mana stood up and got back onto her air current, she wanted to interfere, this was clearly too much. Sugemi was using Second Gate which, based on the damage to his own body from the First was quite as likely to kill him as it could have killed Shimo. Shimo was clearly setting something big up too.</p><p>As a drop of sweat fell from Shimo's chin hitting the small puddle on the damp rocky floor the Yuki swordsman kicked off the ground sending his body to crash against his opponent who was still standing in his Second Gate opening stance, completely open to attacks. Shimo's hands went through a set of handseals sending a small-scale twister of snow that formed an incomplete figure of a large wolf.</p><p>The snowy avatar of Shimo's started to catch the gust of the blizzard winds and moved behind the Yuki who at that moment dashed forward using all of his speed and overflowing the chakra to augment his movement speed flashing right to Sugemi. The wolf of snow and ice swung his long-reaching paw which was made of snow and sharp icicles made out of chakra. At the same moment, Shimo drew his long sword to cut his opponent down on two fronts making a singular defensive tactic pointless.</p><p>"Ice Style: Wolf Blade Draw!" Shimo shouted out as his sword cut through the air, freezing small particles as it went along cutting the air, showing off the intensity, power, and speed of the technique.</p><p>Sugemi's arms shot forward, an immense shockwave shielded him from Shimo's sword blowing Shimo back and disintegrating his ice wolf construct. Sugemi's irises were completely whited out from the intense pain and stress to his body that the technique provided, the body was stressing out so much that the heat from his muscles working overtime cauterized smaller wounds instantly and while that would've looked like a positive in the short run, it was hard to say what such abuse would do to one's body if used for a bit longer.</p><p>Sugemi's body disappeared, appearing right in front of Shimo and punching with such speed that his hand never even appeared to have moved. A powerful force sent Shimo right through the stone wall into another corridor of the lower levels. The entire building could not contain a battle of these two enraged genin who were now way past their friendship and just wanted to straight out murder one another. The only clear thing in this insanity was that if Shimo had not used chakra to augment his body's endurance his bones would've been ground to dust in an instant. Now the Yuki managed to roll back and get back into the battle, letting his feet touch against the wall at the end of the other room.</p><p>Sugemi's body blurred and moved in an instant right into the next room, Mana followed levitating through the gap in the wall that was breaking down further. These two didn't even seem to be worried about being quiet, nothing but their fight made sense to them anymore. Sugemi jumped up in the air and flashed right up to Shimo who leaped at his opponent as the two passed one another. A small wound opened up on Sugemi's body as he got cut by the swordsman passing by whereas the taijutsu user slammed the ground with all of his Second Gate force opening up a great crater in the lowest level of the Police Force HQ causing the whole building to shake and rumble. The two were flashing around, trying to beat one another down, Mana couldn't even see them move most of the time as they moved in an instant, only returning to visible state as they wind up for a punch of a slash. Sugemi clearly had an upper hand.</p><p>Shimo's body was flung around, busted through the ceilings and walls blowing the stone away as if it was cardboard and it was apparent that the swordsman was taking damage even through his chakra augmentation. Using an intensified chakra flow as armor was just that – an armor that was dependent on the level and size of one's total chakra level and the level of chakra invested into withstanding the blow.</p><p>Shimo was putting everything he had into it, also speed to be able to at least fail to keep up with Sugemi by an acceptable margin, even more, he still returned some blows but his sword appeared to have gone dull as hits no longer cut Sugemi but hit him bluntly tossing the taijutsu user aside momentarily before he recovered to resume his rampage. Mana would've never imagined that her friends were capable of fighting on such a level even if such a battle was shaving at their own lives with each passing moment.</p><p>The young magician kept following the battle as it moved, with each floor it ascended or descended, to the southern wings and to the western. She could've tried to concentrate, control her chakra flow to see their movements more clearly and not just a bunch of blurs and shockwaves busting down walls and destroying public property in their wake. But Mana didn't even want that, she didn't want to see her friends killing one another.</p><p>"Stop it now!" she yelled out but no one heard it, maybe just a cowering guard who hid under a table as things started to blow up and bust around him.</p><p>"Don't you guys see it? It's no longer about saving Sugemi or avenging Tanshu-sensei. You're fighting because of your stupid pride. Because you want to beat the other one who feels just the same and so you just... Won't... Stop... Fighting..." Mana tried to tell them as she followed the battle but she just couldn't.</p><p>Finally, the pace slowed up, Shimo's body was covered with bumps, bruises and his clothes were torn up from his body rubbing against rock. He had bleeding nasty gashes all over, his forehead had an especially nasty wound which he quickly temporarily mended by tying up his torn up sleeve as a headband as his own got lost somewhere in the debris of this battle.</p><p>"You can't fight me anymore" Sugemi spoke for the first time after opening his gates, it was the first intelligent sound he let, everything else was just cries of battle, grunts, and shouts.</p><p>"It's true I cannot compete with your Second Gate. Regardless I've won already. If I get a lucky shot in and beat you quick you'll go down, if I drag this out you'll still go down because you cannot fight your own body for much longer either. It's only been a couple of minutes and you're already losing flare, you're barely keeping up with the demand of the technique. Show me your last flares before you pass out." Shimo grunted out angrily as blood made it impossible to see his enraged eyes from further away. "Don't worry, Mana-chan, I'll beat this fool senseless and we'll go back to being how we were..."</p><p>It looked like whatever damage Shimo's head took was getting to him, he clearly didn't see the damage he had caused to the building, he didn't see the damage the two have caused to one another and so he still believed there was a point of a friendship that they could return to.</p><p>In fact, getting imprisoned for this and having their ninja status taken away was the best option, them outright murdering one another was by far the worst but at the moment the most likely. If this didn't stop... Mana was desperate and prepared to stop them, she'll throw herself into this battle, maybe once they severely injure or kill her they'll snap the hell out of this.</p><p>"If only I had perfected that technique... I could stop them from right here..." the girl lamented that she invested so much time in training her physical stats instead of focusing on things she was actually good at like Tanshu-sensei suggested.</p><p>Sugemi's body disappeared, his fist shot right through Shimo's figure as the shockwave of drilling air currents around his immensely fast fist tore through the cold air mirage that the genin actually hit.</p><p>"Ice Style: Cold Mirage Double Team Jutsu!" Shimo's voice echoed through the wrecked office as a bunch of Shimo's mirages started floating around faking out an attack. Sugemi stood still, he must've believed that they were all fakes because he had already seen the technique twice now.</p><p>If he opened himself up hitting a fake, he'd give Shimo a chance at a freebie and the Nara must've known that he could probably only take one or two blows at best without passing out. A loud bumping sound emanated from Sugemi's body as it was hit by two solid Shimo figures with his body being trapped in between two mad sword swings. Sugemi was lucky that Shimo's sword had dulled up and didn't outright slice him into pieces.</p><p>"These were... Real?" Sugemi coughed out some blood mumbling pathetically as his figure collapsed like a sack of potatoes on the ground with the jets of blue chakra ended. The second real Shimo collapsed into a puddle of water, it appeared that the Yuki had learned to make at least one Water Clone which he shuffled in with the mirages. Shimo looked below at the level in which they were supposed to be fighting in, the one where the Demon was still unconscious but free.</p><p>He looked at Mana. "We need to get down there, I'm not confident about his containment with that guy being unshackled..." he said.</p><p>Mana smiled for the first time in a while, she was glad that the battle had concluded not in the way where it was heading and that a decisive victor was found. She was starting to believe that without her sacrifice these two would never get back to reality. Mana could hear guards rushing in, she leaped into the large hole, letting the air currents soften her landing and keep her slightly afloat, upkeeping this continuous jutsu was strenuous, but not nearly so as these two had strained each other. Shimo picked Sugemi's unconscious body up and landed below with a jump as well.</p><p>"Oh... Good, he's still here, I thought he'd escape..." Shimo smiled looking at the unconscious frame of the Kirigakure prisoner.</p><p>"If he had..." Sugemi's barely recognizable voice echoed through the darkness of the room as he grabbed hold of Shimo's back and slipped from his grip, flipping his friend over his own shoulder and slamming him into the ground face first. "I'D HAVE KILLED YOU!" he shouted out madly looking at the pool of blood gathering on the stone floor from Shimo's broken nose and wounds on his face that were now open again.</p><p>Any of those would've been a life-ruining injury had Konoha not had the aid of medical ninjutsu and the ability to heal such battlefield injuries in mere hours. Still, if these two showed up in a hospital questions would've been asked and they've been recognized already. There's no escape from being prosecuted in the Ninja Tribunal for the three of them now. Mana started to feel more and more hopeless. Her hand slipped to behind her and into the tool pouch, Sugemi's body shot off mad jets of chakra rotating around his body and the green aura once again started glowing around his blushed skin.</p><p>"Stop it, Mana. You'd be able to take me out with your genjutsu at full strength but... I don't want to hurt you. Stay out of this." Sugemi's voice finally sounded somewhat intelligible and devoid of any anger or hatred. That was the worst part of this day – Mana finally realized that Sugemi wasn't just following his emotions blindly, this was his conscious decision to hurt or kill this prisoner for what happened to the Hokage and Tanshu.</p><p>"What choice do you leave..." Mana started talking when Sugemi instantly flashed up to her slamming her into a wall and pressing his elbow against her neck. The sudden force of the impact made the magician lose her kunai and her pouch. Mana's vision started to blur, she couldn't use her legs or float any longer because of the pain in her thigh muscles and she was slowly being choked out. Shimo was out cold. She had to make a decision, she wore that fancy uniform for moments like this...</p><p>Mana moved her palm away from trying to force Sugemi's elbow from her throat and flicked her palm moving a steel-edged card out of her sleeve. Mana swiftly swung her palm by Sugemi's eyes, she didn't intend to blind him but she'd have been able to if she wanted it – just leave a shallow cut and move him further from her.</p><p>Sugemi shouted out in pain as a mad torrent of blood ran down his face leaving a scar on his face going just a tip above his nose. She must've damaged one of his eyes at least as he was clenching it this whole time and yelling out like a madman. Shimo's elbow to the back sent Sugemi stumbling forward, Mana could've finished it all with a punch or a slash with her card again but she just moved to the side and let Sugemi hit the wall.</p><p>Shaking, the girl collapsed on her knees, losing all of her will to fight. She'd just hit her friend, probably blinded him in one eye... The magician just fell down on the floor and decided to stay down until a guard picked her up or if Sugemi decided he wanted to kill her as well.</p><p>A mad burst of chakra busted the wall where Sugemi slammed into, the Nara activated his Second Gate again and lunged right at Shimo.</p><p>"You bastard! Look at what you've done, you forced Mana-chan to hurt you!" Shimo yelled out when Sugemi's shadowy construct decked the swordsman right in the face, several teeth flew out and for a moment there Shimo lost consciousness – Second Gate seemed to enhance the strength of Sugemi's technique since they drew their strength from the willpower and concentration of the user. First Gate unlocked the complete control over one's body, 100% of muscular potential was used which meant that the Second Gate enhanced that furthermore, closing the strength to somewhere 120% percent of the body's potential.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril!" Sugemi yelled out following up his attack, then he made that same hand seal letting a second one shoot out, whipping Shimo at the chest and making his body bounce off the floor from the sheer force of it. "Shadow Tendril Jutsu!" he repeated as the tendril wrapped around Shimo's neck and then swung the boy's body around throwing him into the air. Sugemi used his shadow tendrils to throw his body up as well, the giant shadow construct wrapped around his entire body, hundreds of fists started forming as the entire construct now reminded of a tree of sorts.</p><p>"Nara Hijutsu Secret Technique: Shadow Yggdrasil Jutsu!" Sugemi yelled out as the fists started hammering in Shimo's general direction. Shimo regained his consciousness just in time, drawing his blade and drawing a circle with freezing blue circle forming around the area of the air that he had cut.</p><p>"Ice Style: Cold Air Pillow!" Shimo chanted out as the fists started pounding on the pillow of air that worked almost like an invisible shield that softened up the blows. The Yuki's body was still sent up through multiple floors landing right on the first. The fists kept pounding relentlessly at the pillow of air making it lose air with each hit. Such a technique would've broken many bones undoubtedly, added bonus with Shimo's body being flung through multiple thin stone ceiling tiles would've broken his spine as well.</p><p>Finally, Shimo's body landed on the first-floor ground with the technique finally ending. Shimo was breathing heavily with his eyes closed, painful needles were emanating all through his body. Powerful flashes of light were popping in and out even if he had closed his eyes. Stupid Sugemi...</p><p>Making such a huge deal from it all, now they're all screwed and will have their ninja licenses taken away, they'll be lucky if they avoid imprisonment in the Correctional Facility. That stupid bastard. Sugemi's loud roars of pain and him writhing around could've been heard further away. The boy kept rolling around on the floor in pain – this Second Gate must've really hurt him plus a technique like that...</p><p>Countless guards started flooding the floor, this must've been every guard present at the HQ at that time, they kept asking those two questions. They must've still assumed that the two were on a mission just because they recognized the two. They saw these kids in the files when the Demon of Kirigakure was brought in for containment and daily interrogation attempts. That obviously meant the Konohagakure Interrogation squad did their thing on the prisoner giving him minimal amounts of food and water, sometimes beating him up for refusing to cooperate. "What could have those kids been doing here", that's what must've been on all of those people's minds.</p><p>"Where's the Demon? What have you guys been doing?"</p><p>"Wait, I don't think these guys are supposed to be here now..."</p><p>"I've sent people to go check at the Administration, we'll get our response soon, for now, let's just take these guys in, assuming they're going rogue on us."</p><p>"Guys, there's a girl on the third level, she's mostly OK but her eyes don't respond to stimuli, I think she's just really shocked or something"</p><p>"I think these three are the Sorceress' team that means all three of them are here. What were the three of you doing here!?"</p><p>The guards kept shooting questions at the two of them. A guard ran up the stairs with Mana in his arms. Some guards started trying to ask her some questions but Mana remained silent, her eyes still stared at some point in the room, completely distant from everything that was happening. Sensei was dead, the Fourth was dead, Shimo and Sugemi were just trying to kill each other. The world had gone insane and Mana was struggling to keep up with it. She had been insane once in her childhood and her mind was now wondering if she had not returned to that insanity. Her state was no different from when she failed to understand facts and relate them to specific things, she now failed to understand the world just the same.</p><p>A loud shout of four guards hitting the floor alerted everyone and the guard that carried her to the top level placed Mana by the wooden wall, her eyes sunk to the floor as her hair covered up her depressed and blank face.</p><p>"What the... The Nara is resisting!" a guard yelled out when Sugemi's Second Gate shot open again.</p><p>"Hold back, this is Konoha ninja, he might be on a mission we don't know about! Talk to us, Nara, damn it!" the guards stood no chance, they were almost equal if not stronger than Sugemi but they were confused, they were holding back and oblivious to Sugemi's killing intent. Police Force weren't ninja who fought ninja too often, they mostly dealt with either captured or contained ninja or just common villagers who were misbehaving. Fighting rampaging avengers was beyond their pay grade or experience.</p><p>Powerful currents of air and shockwaves from Sugemi's punches aimed at just blank air sent the guards down and crawling to cover. Further aside Shimo got back onto his feet, stumbled down onto his knees, and then stood back up. Shimo took his sword drawing stance, making the hand seals for his "Ice Wolf Jutsu" as well forming a construct of ice shaped like a wolf behind the Yuki. Sugemi's shadows went mad forming countless tendrils and whipping the knocked out and injured guards out of the way.</p><p>"Everyone, hold them off for just a moment longer, Jounin are en route right now!" a guard read a note from a pigeon that was dropped as the bird flew by through a hole in the roof.</p><p>"They won't be here in time..." Mana realized as she finally had a first conscious and material thought about something in a while. Her blank eyes looked at her friends, they were struggling to even draw breath and they were preparing their strongest techniques. Ice Style: Wolf Blade Draw was about to clash against Sugemi's Shadow Yggdrasil and whoever lost would undoubtedly die. Mana stood back on her feet, no air currents or anything, just her own burning feet. Every step made her want to shout in pain but the lives of her friends were in danger.</p><p>"It hurts. Hurts to walk!" Mana thought.</p><p>"Can I afford to stop? Stopping means one of them will die, no. No, I cannot stop!" a thought followed.</p><p>"What will I do? I'm hurt, I can't fight them! No... I have to use that..." the girl desperately tried to come up with a proper response to the situation.</p><p>"But... It's incomplete, I can use too much chakra and die... What other choice do I have?" it was almost like Mana was fighting against her own instincts, her mind told the girl to just stay down, she had no obligation to kill herself to stop this madness but then a part of Mana realized that this was a moment like those she had been thinking about.</p><p>Violence was in control of the world around her and the death of her friend was about to happen, this was her chance to show to herself and Tanshu-sensei that she actually COULD be a hero. That she wasn't useless or toothless or whatever. Even if it would be her last deed in this cruel world where people dear to you died and then other people dear to you tried to kill each other as a result of that death. The mad world required even madder actions to take control of it!</p><p>"Ice Style: Wolf Blade Draw!" Shimo's body moved forward, completely oblivious to Mana's frame that entered into the center of their crossfire.</p><p>"Shadow Yggdrasil!" Sugemi shouted out leaping forward, he didn't care if his shadowy constructs break Mana's back or her neck or her own ribs pierce through her heart in the process – it was the girl's responsibility to consider her actions and his reaction. She made a choice to mess with his fight for justice, now she could die for all he cared.</p><p>Mana made a single handseal.</p><p>A gentle whistle killed the silence. A whistle of a lullaby that Mana had heard so many times as a little girl, one that her mother hummed to Mana so many times to put the girl to sleep. The ice wolf dissolved into snow and ice dust that quickly melted, Shimo dropped to the ground with his body completely paralyzed and his sword fell to the groundbreaking in two from the abuse that the boy had put it through that day. Sugemi's shadows disappeared and faded in an instant and his body also hit the floor completely paralyzed and so did every guard within a circle around Mana, close enough to hear her whistling. Her lullaby.</p><p>"H...How..." Shimo grunted as he failed to move a single muscle. The melody then stopped and Mana fell on her knees.</p><p>"My stupid friends... There are no winners in a fight between friends," she said as the guards finally stopped shaking and approached the three putting stickers with chakra seals around Sugemi and Shimo. One tried to put another one on Mana who was silently moaning in pain from abusing her legs too much after her body got used to not feeling a thing from when she levitated. A jounin stopped that guard as the entire cavalry arrived.</p><p>"Hold your horses for now. This girl just stopped the fight, she may not need that seal." Mana felt a hand softly pressing against her shoulder and someone's breath close to her ear. "I'm sorry, Sorceress-chan... You'll have to answer some questions, please understand, we will let you go after and we'll be very brief." Shimo grunted, desperately trying to move but being unable to. Another jounin bent down and tried dispelling the illusion but failing, she looked at Mana confused.</p><p>"I'm sorry, it's an experimental technique so... I messed plenty of stuff up..." Mana whispered as her exhaustion from using way too much chakra in one go made her lose her ability to speak loudly. "It should time out shortly" she concluded.</p><p>Shimo tried to move but then he managed only to talk. "Guys, please let Mana-chan go home, she isn't to blame for all of this, we came here to stop Sugemi and she wanted to talk him down. I was the one who escalated this fight, I'll answer all the questions and take whatever punishment you have for me."</p><p>The head Jounin scratched his back pulling a smoke from his coat and lighting it up. "Fine, it's not like Konoha's Sorceress can run anywhere, her face is on the posters for her shows and all that, plus she doesn't look in any condition to be able to run either. Someone take her home."</p><p>It was going to be a long evening for Mana, an even longer one for Shimo, ironically enough Sugemi, the instigator of this huge scuffle, was completely out cold.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0067"><h2>67. The Fallout</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana simply could not sleep. One could not have really blamed her – she was quickly brought to her room while the ninja carrying her decided to explain the situation to her parents. The girl's father used to be an average ranked ninja, despite his unimpressive rank and career cut short by an injury he was still very respected even among higher ranking ninja.</p><p>He may not have been that powerful or amazing during his time but he worked with plenty of impressive ninja like Tanshu and some jounin, he also displayed a great potential to become a good leader in the future. It was sad that said future remained a speculation after his arms got burnt badly.</p><p>The little magician still shook in her bed. She couldn't believe what had happened, such was usually the case when events simply broke out of one's control. She genuinely intended to talk Sugemi down, then Shimo decided that beating him would've been much simpler... Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong after that. Mana could still hear voices below, her parents kept asking questions and the ninja replied to the best of her abilities.</p><p>A middle-aged jounin woman carried Mana home, one she had never seen before that night. Judging from the rather tough tone of her fathers she and father shared no history also, but the respectful and soft tone of the woman revealed that she did indeed respect him enough to use such a manner of speaking.</p><p>The strange thing was that Mana didn't even know what was going on, nor did she wish to. Honestly, it'd have been much better if the jounin lady just explained everything and left, explained enough that the young girl didn't have to explain the events to her parents. What was even worse was the possibility that Mana would have her status as a ninja stripped from her. Such events weren't that common, that happened when a ninja committed treason or dishonored their Feudal Lord so badly that they requested the ninja's status being stripped.</p><p>Treason also had numerous degrees: one may have left the village and become a rogue, the status of a wandering samurai or a ronin was romanticized often in folk tales but wandering ninja were usually frowned upon and hunted down. A ninja with no village to swear allegiance to was basically open season to have things done to them according to the hunter's sick desires. There was only one limit to what couldn't have been done to such an individual and that limit was the imagination of their attacker.</p><p>Slowly Mana's eyes became heavier, the pain in her thighs was easing up a bit, most likely the result of her sleepiness with the body doing what it could to neutralize all obstacles in the way of her rest. The girl found herself having snoozed off for an entire half an hour at a time as she peeked at the alarm clock on her table every time she woke up from such an occasion.</p><p>After one such event, the ninja magician realized that there was no one below talking anymore. Slowly and carefully so that her aching thighs weren't lit up with excruciating pain again the girl sat up and took her clothes off, trying to settle down for her rest. Only then did she remember that she had a mission tomorrow... Well, after this night that no longer mattered did it?</p><hr/><p>Sugemi's heavy head shot up as he found himself locked in a chair, the boy tried to build up his chakra trying to augment his strength and see if he could break out of the bindings. After all, if Mana could do it on the stage every other day it couldn't have been too hard, right? After several unsuccessful attempts to channel his chakra Sugemi found multiple stickers with strange hieroglyphs symbolizing seals on his body.</p><p>These were applied to unconscious or submissive prisoners to take away their ability to use chakra as long as the seals were intact. It would've been a very handy tool if anyone could just slap a sticker and take one's chakra mastery away, however, these seals started working when one's chakra was dormant beneath a very hard line to sink to. Usually, it took a lot of beating to reduce one's chakra to that level, either that or conscious effort of the restrained person to not raise their chakra above it. For assassins like your average ninja, either way worked...</p><p>A man entered the room, it was not the jounin with the overcoat and silly hat and the cigarette that Sugemi could vaguely remember from before. After Mana took both him and Shimo down the boy could remember his mind fading in and out, he saw plenty of people but trying to recall those events hurt his head. Just how on Earth could this have happened? Mana took both of them out as well as all the guards in a circle around her. The Nara had underestimated that girl, everyone seemingly did.</p><p>They mistook her peaceful nature for weakness when truth be told, it must've been one of her greatest strengths. She had absolutely no regard for her own life, no desire to be happy whatsoever, all that mattered to her was that everyone else was happy. Such a person either died very young or became a hero, then again, neither was a very attractive path. A hero was just one step away from being a martyr.</p><p>The man was really creeping Sugemi out, he was tall but incredibly slim, had wild black hair that flowed freely all over his face, he had those blank blue eyes with no actual visible pupils inside of them. Such a weird and scary guy...</p><p>The creep just settled down on a chair in front of Sugemi and with tremendous effort raised his shoes on the edge of the chair wrapping his arms around his bent legs. Very creepily the man kept staring at Sugemi from above his bent knees. Almost as if he was peeking from a cover. The door then slammed open and a woman walked in – the very same woman that the three saw in the Administration building earlier.</p><p>The lady now looked a bit different, she still had that wild flowing brown hair, she still kept her height and build but now she wore a white coat, similar to that a Hokage wore. The only accessory missing from where Sugemi would've started making suggestions was the big red and white hat.</p><p>"It's okay, M," the woman said looking at the creep sitting in front of Sugemi, "No need to do your thing, you're gonna stare a hole in him if you keep going. I can tell when a person is lying to me without your Yamanaka clan techniques, thank you" the woman gently placed her hand on the creep's shoulder making the man jump up in surprise.</p><p>The door opened again and another ninja peeked in, "Lady Hokage, could you please not touch M-san, he is very sensitive to social interaction and he once had a stroke when a girl touched him accidentally during an Academy student group tour in the interrogation facility. M-san, Lady Hokage does not require your expertise, please come with us... Ummm... Cookies and milk are in order, I believe." It appeared that the prospect of cookies and milk greatly motivated the creep, at least if by greatly motivated one meant him moving like a sloth to the door and leaving so slowly that Sugemi would never rid the feeling that he was still watching the man leave. His long fingers wrapped around the door and didn't disappear before it would've been dangerous for him to keep his hand on the closing door.</p><p>The woman sighed and slapped her forehead as she sat down. "The first day as Hokage and I have to deal with this..." she moaned out in annoyance. It was clear that this was not a woman who concealed her emotions much.</p><p>Sugemi coughed out. "Wait... Hokage?" he asked to which the woman just nodded, stroking her madly flowing long hair and pointed at herself using her thumb. "That's right, my name is Hanasaku Senju though I don't like using my clan name too much, people just call me..."</p><p>"Cut the crap! I know how they call you – Chestnut Hanasaku, you're a Sannin, everyone knows that even non-ninja." Sugemi was yelling out quite rudely and even louder than he was rude. The weight of the person in the room sitting in front must've not sunk into his brain just yet. The woman stared into his eyes and the Nara kept on staring back, usually, the eyes of a ninja would've broken down and sunk to the floor when meeting the gaze of a Hokage. Sugemi was either one with tremendous willpower or just as stupid as the lady in front of him was known to be.</p><p>"So they didn't even take an entire day to replace the Fourth, did they?" Sugemi grunted out angrily. He was still very much offended by everything that happened recently: the death of the Hokage, death of his sensei, his own teammates trying to get in his way, and him failing to take revenge on a man he pinned everything on without any reason to because a girl in his team kicked his butt with a simple genjutsu technique.</p><p>"Well they really would've let it sink in before appointing another Hokage, then there'd have been an inauguration ceremony, obviously enough, they wouldn't even have appointed a woman known for her tendencies to strategize in a battle by charging at everyone and looking like a pin-cushion after the battle. Sadly, time for formalities is a luxury we do not have. I have to read books with fancy words to improve my vocabulary, I have to review candidacies for my pick at Konohagakure's appointed representative in Kirigakure relationships since the Mizukage was removed and the Great Villages now own its autonomy. Up until today, I didn't even know what "autonomy" meant."</p><p>The woman's body stood up and moved to Sugemi's in an instant, a gentle finger tap sent the boy's body through the room painfully bumping into the stone wall, the chair slid all the way to the other end of the room and it didn't appear that the woman even used that much effort to fling Sugemi around.</p><p>She must've known that the boy couldn't mold chakra, he couldn't toughen his body up, he couldn't survive being crashed through stone walls anymore so she restrained herself to an extent that would've been impossible to restrain one's abilities to. It was not the amount of power the woman had that impressed the Nara clansman, it was the amount of restraint she could issue to that immeasurable strength. It didn't even appear she used any chakra at all, it was just her finger that pushed Sugemi's chair to the other end of the room.</p><p>"So you might see why I'd have no time to deal with little shits like you!" the woman roared out loud, this certainly was not the Fourth's manner of speech. Usually, the Fourth spoke politely and never lost balance even when talking to his opponent. It would've taken a mass murderer to annoy that man and send him to a frenzy as fierce as this woman's, this lady just looked like she was ready to smash the restaurant that served her a soup with a hair in it.</p><p>"They don't care... They don't care about the Fourth, they don't care about Tanshu-sensei, they don't care about you or me. They don't even want revenge, they just want more ASSETS. The three most powerful ninja in our village die in one day and the council only cares to establish people who could leak resources and intelligence from another village. I heard Mana speak of how little life was worth in this world but... Only now do I understand what she knew all along, she wants to change this world, she puts the weight on her shoulders to change all of THIS? She's insane. Only now do I understand what Tanshu-sensei meant when he spoke to her. Only now do I understand how stupid she really was..."</p><p>"And yet..." Hanasaku rolled back her gigantic sleeves and wrapped her arms around her chest. "You talk of her when you're being interrogated, she stopped you and your comrade from killing each other for no reason. Perhaps this girl you speak of is closer to realizing her goal than you imagine, perhaps she was not as stupid as you and Bro think her to be."</p><p>Sugemi laughed out, "Only an idiot strives to change the world, only a sadomasochist wishes to understand, let alone start changing this piece of shit of a world we live in. I once wanted to have my story serialized in a manga, I wanted that people appreciated my existence, I wanted to be known, I wanted to know that life mattered and that I was born for a reason. Maybe it was because, in the end, I knew just what kind of world I lived in, just like Mana, I wanted to prove it to be different. Unlike Mana, however, I seem to have grown out of such foolish dreams."</p><p>Hanasaku slowly walked up to Sugemi, the boy uncomfortably shook in his chair as she leaned up to him. Her strange hazelnut perfume reached his nose, her long wild hair touched his thighs as she leaned down to his eye level.</p><p>"And what is your dream now? Letting a Kirigakure Demon out of Police Force custody? Getting imprisoned yourself? Sounds like a sadomasochistic goal to me" the woman almost whispered out. Just Sugemi and her knew what she said, no gear, no sound transferring seals placed in the room could've transmitted that.</p><p>Sugemi jumped up trying to free his wrists. "What are you talking about? I wanted to kill him! I wanted to kill that Kirigakure scum, we are allies, they are the enemy, it's as easy as that. Fools like Mana keep wrapping everyone's head around with stupid confusions, they keep shifting blame around until it becomes no one's. I just have the guts to admit the truth. An enemy cannot stay silent until their enemy is destroyed, for that reason until the enemy disappears we will never know peace."</p><p>Hanasaku walked back to the center of the room and sat on the table crossing her legs. "Well spoken, you speak the words of Namikaze Shirona – the woman responsible for Howoku's and Bro's death as if you've heard them." The woman's retort utterly crushed Sugemi, his head weighed down and his eyes almost whited out like back then when he was knocked out. The utter shock that he may have been adopting the position of the person he wanted to kill the most of all was incinerating the boy's sanity.</p><p>"Yours is a toxic way of life, sadly, toxic people seem to be the majority these days, to be smart is to be like you. For that reason, people choose to remain stupid and be happy. Or at least make someone else happy. This Mana girl you spoke of, she is a person I could hang around with, a fool who dismisses their own happiness to make others happy is my kind of fool. Can you not realize that if everyone was like her the world would be a perfect place to live: everyone caring about others solely but remaining happy because there is someone close to them who only tends to their happiness. I'd much rather stick to this ideal than kill all I deem my enemy, that being said I don't possess the amount of patience for that belief."</p><p>Hanasaku turned around and stepped to the door when she was stopped by Sugemi's grunt. "Wait? You said "Let operative out", didn't you? We didn't let him out, we knocked him out." The boy spoke with a relative tone of surprise and sadness, the woman turned around with an expression of strictness and anger.</p><p>"Well too bad, it seems you haven't been smart enough to realize you two were being played – the Demon slipped out during the ruckus, we don't know where he is now, it is highly likely that he escaped the village as his chakra level was low enough to not trigger any seals and since he was already captured he wasn't really wanted. By throwing it all away to kill him you set him free, well done "avenger"."</p><p>Sugemi yelled out loud like a madman as the heavy steel door closed. He didn't care if he was imprisoned or even executed. It usually took an extreme case of treason for a ninja to be executed so even his maddened mind didn't think it possible, either way, his life had little attraction at that moment. He had become his own worst enemy and secretly a part of Sugemi wished himself death. A bunch of jounin surrounded the Lady Hokage leaving the room, she shook her head angrily and stopped them from entering.</p><p>"His mind is in shatters. We can't have that kind of madman running around on missions armed to the teeth, yet he's still young, feels wrong to have him in the Correctional Facility at this age, he is weak and confused. If we expose him to criminals like that we'll just doom his mind for good. Send him to one of the remote facilities and lock him up there in solitude, let him hang around alone and think about all of this for a couple of years, observe him and report on his condition yearly." The men seemed to obey the Hokage's orders without hesitation, they didn't care about the woman's reputation up to that moment. She took this responsibility seriously, her love and adoration for the men she had lost, her desire to continue and honor their legacy made her a serviceable leader at the very least.</p><p>A jounin appeared close by, the one who lead that charge previously, still smoking, even in a closed-in place like the Police Force interrogation room. "I spoke to that Shimo guy, he seems a pretty decent lad, he just feels compelled to beat up any bad guy he sees and, in his eye, his friend looked pretty bad at that moment." The jounin spat out his smoke to the side and quickly lit up another, an annoyed Police Force officer picked it up and tossed it into the bin. He was impressed by the speed at which cigarettes were swapped and lit up, however.</p><p>"Doesn't matter, he cost us a valuable prisoner, he is temporarily relieved from duty. I'll review his case yearly and see if he can have his ninja status back but for now, I'm tempted to throw him into a remote correctional facility as well" the tired Hokage scratched her worn-out eyes as she grunted the words out. After finishing she yawned, it was a tough break – she woke up that day somewhere in Fire Country with her students still a Sannin, now she was a full-blown Hokage with so much to do on her hands, her life basically flipped over on one day.</p><p>"You won't have to, this Shimo boy said he'll be leaving the village to think about what happened anyways, wander around until he's got his status back, he already knew you'd strip him of it. And what of this "Mana" girl?" the jounin asked.</p><p>"Well I've heard some interesting things about her, initially I wanted to strip her of her ninja status too, after all with her career as a magician she doesn't need it. Also magic is a poor tool for a ninja, ninja must use ninjutsu..."</p><p>"Lady Hokage, you do realize that's not REAL magic she's using, just stage tricks, right?" the jounin stressed out as he even took off his tight hat from a headache that the woman summoned in him.</p><p>"Well... I suppose in that case... I'd like to meet her, I'll tell her my decision personally then. Let's see that Shimo boy first though." Hanasaku decided as she turned around and started walking towards the exit.</p><p>The jounin with the nasty smoking habit followed her, obviously, his Hokage did not know where the girl lived or where Shimo was placed in, the woman was infamous for often forgetting where she herself lived after all. Despite Chestnut Hanasaku, no, the Fifth, displaying extraordinary leadership and wisdom on rare occasions when it counted, she was a total twit most of the time who couldn't have been trusted wandering around the village by herself.</p><hr/><p>A rough hand shook Mana's body from its sleep, it was father, and while his manner of waking the little genin up was rude his face suggested that it wasn't intentional. After the injury, he oftentimes had trouble with properly restraining and controlling his muscles.</p><p>"Honey, the Hokage wants to see you, please get up" he whispered making Mana jump up in shock, almost instantly snapping her out from her slumber. The Hokage? What did he mean? Swiftly the girl stumbled to her drawer and pulled out her nightgown and slipped into it. She managed to do it just in time as the woman in the white Hokage coat entered her room and sat right by the girl's bed.</p><p>Mana tried to kneel but the pain in her thigh made her drop on the ground like an idiot. The brown-haired woman broke into uncontrollable laughter but then she restrained herself. "I'm sorry, I've heard a bit of your injury but I suppose slapstick appeals to the fools. I am Chestnut Hanasaku, the Fifth Hokage, pleased to meet you, Mana! Please don't bother with the kneeling, just settle down into your bed and sleep that nasty injury off." the woman looked really concerned for Mana's well-being. The girl sat back on her bed looking pretty confused.</p><p>"It took great courage to do what you did, initially reading the report I was pretty stumped as to why you did what you did so late and why you didn't start fighting with your comrade from the get-go. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head, then I heard it from your father and Sugemi about what kind of girl you are and I understood. No. I perfectly understood your actions, it takes real heroism to oppose your friends like that, especially when the idea of your friends fighting each other crushes you completely inside, to move past that devastating inner defeat and settle it all saving both of your friends' lives like that... I think you'll want to know what my decision was..."</p><p>The woman didn't give Mana any chance to respond or recover from her confusion, this was the first time that the magician even saw this Fifth Hokage person, except that time in the Administration. There was no official declaration, no inauguration ceremony, or a celebration, she was just appointed out of the blue and took over like that. Then she spoke as if she knew Mana, talking about how she knew just how difficult it was to hurt one's friends when one didn't even hurt their enemies all that much... Even if the woman went out of her way to confirm her knowledge of Mana's feelings somehow the girl wondered if the woman actually understood.</p><p>"I decided to imprison your friend Sugemi at a remote Fire Country facility, he'll be locked up with only the lake island he'll be in being accessible to think about what happened. I have little mercy for those who hurt their friends as he hurt you, both physically and internally. Your friend Shimo decided to leave the village on a journey of self-discovery himself, after talking to him and hearing about his dream of being the Hokage I sort of went back on my decision to strip his ninja status but he decided on it himself. I took his status away until he returns a new man from his wandering. As for you..." the woman stopped talking and sighed. Mana's little heart was pounding inside, with a single word this woman could've ruined the young magician's life beyond salvation.</p><hr/><p>Sun finally rose on the horizon, the guards stood awaiting the arrival of the famous around the entire world Guru Ayushi. Instead of the figure of the monk arriving from outside the gate, a figure of the young girl arrived from inside of it. She wore a peculiar magician's uniform with a fancy hat to top it off. It didn't look like she was ready to leave as she carried no supplies with her, she did have a weapon pouch on her leg, however. The guards knew this girl – there was hardly a person in the village who hasn't heard of Nakotsumi Mana, Konoha's Sorceress, the little stage magician at least once.</p><p>The guards kept staring at the girl as she slowly stumbled to the gate, it was clear she had trouble walking straight as it appeared like each step made her bite her lip and breathe erratically but she didn't use any aid walking. Perhaps her condition improved over the days she was seen using a walking aid...</p><p>"Isn't it a bit too early for your shows? Hanging posters for the new ones?" a guard asked politely. The girl turned to him and forced a genuine smile as her head was shaken playfully and as cute as a child breaking into teen years can.</p><p>"No. I'm waiting for my mission – my team was assigned to protect Guru Ayushi, there's no Team Oak anymore but the mission objective still stands."</p><p>"Oh..." the guard uttered with a certain shade of admiration for the girl's devotion to her job slightly. He had heard of the event last night, he wondered about the Guru's protection squad. Apparently having hardly any sleep last night didn't bother this girl too much, nor did her injured legs. "Well then, little lady, we won't get in your way. Make us proud!" the guards smiled as they relaxed and kept staring at the forest clearing outside waiting for Guru Ayushi's frame to finally appear.</p>
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<a name="section0068"><h2>68. The Story of a Man Born of an Arm</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana kept tapping her foot impatiently on the ground. She was informed that Guru would arrive early that morning, now there was this weird mood in the air where one knew that the moment they were waiting for was just around the corner yet it didn't come. Almost like waking up five minutes before one's alarm clock went off, one knew that going back to sleep was useless but also they wanted to savor those last moments of peace and tranquility before the day began, therefore, staying in bed. Weirdest thoughts and metaphors of the sort ran through the girl's head as she impatiently waited for the great Guru to arrive.</p><p>She's been waiting for this man for so long, ever since her father's injury, Mana kept scratching days off of a calendar with the chances of the man's arrival getting greater and greater every day he did not arrive. Guru Ayushi had no schedule. He wandered the world coming into a village he considered needing his help and support the most and left it when he deemed it no longer necessary. He was a man with all the time and freedom in the world. He was an ideal for all who desired freedom and wisdom at the same time.</p><p>Yet it wasn't entirely true that Mana was only so hyped about the Guru's arrival because of his legendary cells and healing prowess. The girl had read so much about him and heard about his words of wisdom in the Academy, he was like the spiritual leader of the entire world and that said a lot about a man when the world had no religion to blindly follow. Some deemed it too murderous and hopeless for a religion to sprout, others said that it was because your average schoolgirl could spit fire, therefore, no mysticism existed to base religions off of. It took an extraordinary miracle to be named as such when there were people strong enough to move the world itself on this planet. Witnessing a man so wise and legendary that every nation and every man and woman alive had nothing but love and adoration for him was a reward all by itself.</p><p>And then just like that, the figure appeared out of the forest clearing, pushing the immense and thick cover of brushes aside, moving past the thickness of the Fire Country forests and heading towards Konoha.</p><p>What an impressive man Guru Ayushi was: he was relatively tall for a grown man, at least twice taller than Mana was though the girl was a rather short and slim one even for her age, he was bulky and muscular and appeared to be in his mid-forties judging by his appearance alone. He wore the simple raggedy monk attire that consisted of absolutely bare feet, baggy white pants, and a strange orange cloth wrapped around one side of his body while the left side remained exposed. The appearance of the famous Guru Ayushi truly left the magician stumped.</p><p>He looked so powerful and young and amazing, his long black beard shined as the early and puny rays of light reflected off of some drops of water lost in it from when the man washed his face that morning. His chest and muscles looked in prime condition and perfectly toned for a man who had abandoned the path of violence and combat, one would say that bandits would've thrived in an environment outside Konohagakure walls however no bandit in their right mind would have attacked Guru Ayushi. How could this have been? Wasn't this man supposed to be really old!? Mana didn't know how old exactly, some people claimed Ayushi was at least sixty when he retired, that'd have made him at the very least over a hundred years old.</p><p>Some claims and legends around the man were just straight out insane. Mana was a girl who excelled and loved reading about history after her encounter with the legend about princess Satsuhimasa back in the Forest of Death. She sometimes ventured into the Konohagakure archives to read all about history and myths and all kinds of stories, obviously when she found some time being both a ninja who often did chore missions with her now dissolved team and a stage magician who kept performing on the stage showing off a craft one couldn't have seen anywhere else in the world as some of her fans claimed. There were people who claimed that Guru Ayushi may have been there during the First Great Ninja war or even War of the Moon and the Earth. It was tough to know for certain what they meant as some wars throughout history had different names depending on who named them.</p><p>The very first great war that history spoke of was the Original Great Ninja War, sometimes also called First Ninja World War or War of the Clans, as the name suggests it was the centuries-long war before villages were built between all clans.</p><p>It was often confused with the conflict that transpired almost a century ago also called the First Great Ninja War, that was the first time after the villages were built that the entire world devolved into conflict but instead of clans being at war trying to contend as to which of their bloodlines were superior it was now between villages and countries.</p><p>In this time of conflict when the world kept having these worldwide conflicts, it was tough to list all the world covering wars that happened but those two were the most often confused. After the Original Great Ninja War, there was another First Ninja World War, also called War of the Moon and the Earth to distinguish it. From Mana's guesses that was the war where Princess Satsuhimasa destroyed the Moon, recreating it using her immense skill and power not too long after. If Guru Ayushi was actually placed in any of those "First Great Ninja Wars" he would've been well over several hundred years old which was impossible even to ninja.</p><p>Usually, ninja had the potential to live quite long, chakra manipulation granted them perfect mastery over their bodies allowing them to live well over a hundred years. The problem was the violent world they lived in. With the kind of conflicts that came with each mission ninja died even during their teen years, even a simple mission to catch a village prankster claimed lives recently when the prankster accidentally blew up a large gas canister using his amateur attempt at ninjutsu. That accident claimed two lives of young ninja, the deaths soon became so frequent that people stopped granting them so much significance. They became just a statistic for that week.</p><p>As the Guru Ayushi closed in on the gate and spoke to the guards Mana approached him hesitantly and bowed respectfully, lowering her entire body above the waist instead of just her head as was usually the custom when speaking to respected individuals. This implied a great deal of respect, there was only one greater way of bowing which was used to suggest subordination. The Guru looked quite confused by such a gesture of respect. He looked at the girl examining her strange attire and looking around her.</p><p>"Guru Ayushi-san, my name is Nakotsumi Mana, I am the Konohagakure genin who was tasked with aiding you throughout your stay in our village. I will protect you with my life and you may ask me about anything you desire for comfort. It is a great pleasure to meet you and have you visiting our village."</p><p>The Guru kept looking behind Mana, expecting to see someone else, he then leaned back and scratched his beard.</p><p>"Strange, usually genin work in teams, I always told the Kage that such was an excessive gesture of respect when matters concern my protection. No one ever wishes me harm, has the Fifth finally listened to what I've been telling his predecessors?"</p><p>Mana smiled with a lovely smile and shook her head.</p><p>"It's "her", Chestnut Hanasaku was appointed as the Fifth Hokage after..." her pleasant smile soon disappeared as she remembered the events as they were continuously told and retold at the Kage Summit. Whoever asked whomever, each villager had a different version of the events as most thought that the official version was heavily edited to make the Fourth and Tanshu look more heroic. Mana had never seen the Fourth fight but she believed that Tanshu-sensei was every bit as heroic as he was described in the official version.</p><p>"Yes... So I've heard... You said your name was... Nakotsumi Mana? What a coincidence, I would have wished to stop by your place and two other individuals: Yuki Shimo and Sugemi Nara. This only reduces the amount of work I'll have to do here before settling down to prepare for my seminar later today. I have some words with the three of you"</p><p>Mana's eyes shot wide open, she then got even sadder and gently stroke her elbow using her other arm from behind, it was a peculiar gesture she did when she felt depressed about something.</p><p>"Sorry, Shimo and Sugemi were involved in a... Situation. They were my teammates but I was the only one of my team who was allowed to keep my ninja status. Shimo was temporarily suspended, he intended to leave on a journey to discover himself again, Sugemi is to be held in one of the island facilities of containment in Fire Country. If you wish to tell them something it will not be easy..."</p><p>Ayushi smiled, his beard stretched in a very funny way when he did so. It made his smile look that much more comic and cartoonish.</p><p>"I am a man who fought in multiple "First" Ninja Wars who were always supposed to be also "the Last", only for another "First and the Last" to follow as generations shifted. I'll handle some bureaucracy just fine, young lady."</p><p>Mana would've really been surprised by the man's incredible youthful appearance if he had fought in multiple "First" Ninja Wars. After all, the timeframe between the most recent of the "Firsts" and the one before that was a hundred and fifty years at the very least. If Guru actually fought in both of those conflicts during his days as a ninja he must've been at least two hundred years old! Still, the situation with her teammates being detained or leaving the village on a journey of self-discovery and her sensei dying was too depressing to think about those things too much.</p><p>"Well at the very least I am here, I was tasked to make your stay as comfortable as it can be. The last time you visited I don't believe I was even born yet so I'll do my best to make you wish to visit more often. If need be I'll get you to Sugemi and Shimo."</p><p>Guru smiled and nodded, the two moved past the guard outpost watching the gate and started moving further into the village.</p><p>"Young lady, you'd rather I'd not come anytime during your lifetime, I visit a village only after a significant tragedy strikes or war is imminent with wishes to help people deal with it or avoid it. It may seem a bit tragic of a fate to trap oneself in but it is the burden of being who I am. That being said... I'd rather keep the words I have for you, Nakotsumi Mana, for the last as I believe they are the most important. Plus if they affect you too heavily you might be unable to aid me in delivering the other messages."</p><p>Mana nodded. She didn't really understand what was the point of those mysterious "words" he had with her or Shimo and Sugemi. Truth be told she was a bit afraid to see them after last night again. The guru must've noticed that hesitance in her sad eyes.</p><p>"Young lady, are you not excited to see your ex-teammates? They must've been contained and locked up for so long, or what seems so long to a young one like you. I am one who had experienced the treasured days of working in a team of genin. Girls your age spend so much time with their friends that they usually fall in love with one of their teammates. In my experience, I can say that most families of ninja involve people who had been in a team at one point or the other, so powerful are the bonds of people who fight alongside each other, save each other's lives and do chores of the village together, yet you look sad, why?"</p><p>Mana sighed.</p><p>"Well... When I last saw them I incapacitated both of them after they started fighting each other. That fight meant a lot to them because they've been butting heads with each other for some time now. Sugemi always wanted to be the best, to stand out so that he was acknowledged and had his efforts recorded, at some point Shimo acknowledged Sugemi's desire to be the best and started a friendly rivalry with him to push his friend higher than he could ever go without such a rivalry. Sadly it got too serious. The short version is - I'm afraid that after I got in their way they'll hate me for it and won't want to see me."</p><p>Guru scratched his beard and looked into the sky locking his hands behind his bald head. He kept observing the passing clouds for quite a while before glancing over at Mana.</p><p>"Well, if that's the case it'll be better if you hear it from them and be done with it. Even if they do hate you for something, at least you'll know it for certain and won't have to bother your head with such thoughts. Kids your age shouldn't worry about that kind of stuff, when I was your age all I cared about was impressing a girl, I didn't really have to think about if my friends hated me or not because most of the time I didn't care. You think far differently from a child your age. I suppose that's what ninja life does to a blossoming teen."</p><p>Mana's chest started aching, she suddenly realized that well before Ayushi's departure she had to ask him about offering his cells for the Konohagakure Hospital. Those cells could've healed her father's arms and stopped his pain, he would no longer be irritated and would no longer have to suffer just to perform daily chores.</p><p>Mother and Mana would never have to think about how father used to be in comparison to how he was then, he could tinker by himself again instead of doing so using Mana as his "hands". The magician was not the best tinkerer and father often got a bit too mad at her for anyone's comfort when she failed at some simple task, eventually, she got better but father never expressed being proud of her improvement, to him it was her advancing to an "acceptable" or "passable" stage of his craft.</p><p>The girl kept trying to devise ways to weave the conversation so that she could arrive at the point of suggesting doing that for the hospital, she tried to somehow find a more delicate and sensitive way of asking for Guru's help. She didn't want to make it too personal because she needed to get it done soon but she didn't want to make the visit too awkward if Ayushi refused her plea to help. Only one possible version of the conversation made sense so the girl decided to give it a shot.</p><p>"Ummm... I'll understand if you don't want to talk about it but... Why did you start doing what you do? I mean... We've read and heard all about the kind of ninja you were, you were and are still considered the very best medical ninja in existence, you've brought recently deceased people back to life in dozens, you've healed injuries that seemed impossible to heal. Our teacher in the Academy kept telling stories like that time you regrew a person from just his arm, we thought it was just a tale but even if one-tenth of those stories were true you'd still be able to save many lives."</p><p>Guru's face didn't change, he didn't smile but he didn't really look offended or that sensitive about the topic, he must've really been asked that a lot. The man scratched his beard and then locked his arms on his massive half-bare chest.</p><p>"Well... Yes, that is true, I did once regenerate a man from just his de-attached limb when the rest of his body was incinerated. I don't know up to now if that man was the same man or just madness, an abomination of chakra I've conjured and a crime against nature. At one point I was so good at it that I found myself able to end and create life at will but at no point it felt very right. I am no God nor do I wish to do God's work. Ninja are tools of war, ninjutsu is an art of murder or support of murder. Even the core essence of medical ninjutsu is to keep murderers alive long enough that they kill enough people to make them "efficient" to feed for a village. That was not the world I wanted to be a part of, I've long since paid my dues so I just retired at well over the age at which ninja usually retire. Many ninja these days retire in their thirties and that's understandable, the life expectancy of a ninja doesn't go too far over twenty. I was a force for good before, at least I hope I was, I just chose to be a different kind of good."</p><p>Mana sighed, just as the stories went Guru Ayushi didn't quite fancy life as a ninja. He was possibly even a bigger pacifist than Mana was and he didn't believe in fighting for the sake of peace. Asking such a person to devote his craft and return to his life as a ninja again would be to go against his own beliefs. Mana almost broke into tears from the pressure on her chest, on the one hand, there was father who was in pain, on the other was his doctor who expected Mana to get those cells, then there was Ayushi who had abandoned and severed all his ties to the world of violence and would've never returned to it. Ayushi looked at her strangely.</p><p>"What's wrong? It looks like you're about to burst into tears and one thing I hate in this world is children crying. Did I somehow make you sad? I'll pound myself pretty hard if I did!" Guru spoke with that strange warm tone, it was like he was a part of Mana's friend circle already even though they only spoke for a brief while.</p><p>"It's just... My father got injured on a mission, now he's suffering every day and... It's having an effect on him. The medical ninja..."</p><p>Ayushi raised his hand to stop Mana from saying another word. His body was literally shaking, his face looked infuriated and it was almost like all of his blood had centered in the upper area of his body. The blood vessels on his face shot out so immensely that at any moment the magician expected the man's face to just explode. Unwillingly, her hand moved to her chest and she took a couple of steps back. Did she mess it up? Did she offend Guru Ayushi to the point where his entire body tensed up, it looked like the man was about to kill someone, it really did. And to be entirely honest after everything that happened, with all the responsibility on her shoulders Mana would've accepted that death if she was to blame for his fury if only that'd have helped her mission.</p><p>"Those darned vultures!" he spat out an excess of slobber as he raged. "Preying on a child's hopes and dreams, on something as sacred as a child's love for their parent... I can't imagine how you felt, hearing about me ditch the life of a ninja yet feeling responsible for acquiring my cells, right?"</p><p>Mana looked to the side and nodded so briefly that it was hardly even visible that she did so. Ayushi's face suddenly shifted into sadness that to match Mana's own.</p><p>"I'm sorry, child, your father cannot be helped. It's not that such power is beyond my abilities it's just... It's not the first time this happens, the village craves my cells thinking it to be a panacea of some sort, thinking it can heal any sickness just because I myself cannot be hurt. They think me immortal and therefore they believe that my cells can grant immortality."</p><p>The man reached over Mana's pocket and removed a card from it, the girl was impressed that he saw that her attire was filled with hidden pockets full of tools to help her in the time of need. The man then cut deep into his hand making blood wildly squirt out onto the floor. Within mere moments the injury closed up and the blood on the ground evaporated.</p><p>"It's a jutsu I discovered during my days of youth. It's a technique I no longer have any control over, whatever damage comes to my cells is immediately healed, I do not age, I cannot stay injured. I can die if death strikes me instantly but if there's a moment's delay I shall survive. I can also grant this sort of ability to another using my cells."</p><p>Mana was both impressed by that ability but also a bit confused, so far Ayushi had only been confirming the medical ninja theory that his cells could help Mana's father.</p><p>"The problem exists on two levels: ideological and material. Ideologically if I grant the ability for a village to heal any injuries, if I provide as much as a single cell for them to duplicate it'll completely imbalance the world's sensitive power balance. It'll mean invincible, immortal soldiers. Also what message will it send? Instead of dealing with one's injury and sickness, instead of growing stronger people will just go back and fix it all denying their chance of emotional and spiritual growth. What most do not understand that even terminal diseases make people grow as people, they are obviously a plague to humanity but to some, it is a chance to appreciate life for the first time in their lives. To talk to their families for the first time instead of being absorbed by their work all the time. Everything in this world happens for a reason and to go back to such events is to spit in the face of said reason. It is at the very least immature."</p><p>Mana just kept staring at the dirt completely embarrassed by herself, she did realize that Ayushi didn't really blame her for anything but she felt so stupid and immature. She felt so embarrassed that it was almost like she would just burn up at any moment into a pile of ashes.</p><p>"The material reason, however, is far more devastating... The reason why my cells work is that I'm... Well... Me. Every body has a limit as to how many cells can regenerate. If you abuse that limit... Well... Let me finish that story of a man regrown from an appendage. When that limit is passed the cells begin to mutate, they form rushed, sick, and twisted, what is born is not a man, it is a pitiful creature of gore, puss, and tumors. I would wish that your father was well but I am not willing to risk such abominations of nature, I will not risk putting your father or anyone else through that kind of risk. The regeneration that my conscious cells would provide would completely throw a body out of whack, all injuries would be regenerated in an instant but the cells would mutate and form a sickness like no other. Normal people just cannot deal with it, I've told those fools that many times before but they keep coming up with more immoral ways to ask me for my cells each time..."</p><p>An atmosphere of silence spread after Ayushi stopped talking. Mana covered her eyes with her sleeve trying to hide the fact that she was crying. So much hope, so much looking forward and hoping that her father would just magically get better with an injection of some cells... All of it for nothing. How immature, how naïve and childish she was for daring to hope that bad things could just be waved at with a magical wand and cured. How naïve indeed...</p><p>Mana felt a soft and relaxing tap on her puny shoulder coming from a man twice her size. Ayushi's humongous arms wrapped around her and pressed her to his own belly harder letting Mana's tears burst forth into his dirty cloth. It must've been a depressing but also touching moment - Guru Ayushi comforting a crying child. Sadly, people were so insensitive to such events by that time that no one even stopped for a moment to care. Why care that at that moment a child somewhere felt better if that same child's body will most likely be found in some ditch having perished on a mission.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0069"><h2>69. The Solution to Violence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a while, the continuation of the walk was quite awkward. Just as Mana suspected, talking about the problem of her father's made it really uncomfortable for both of them. At least the magician herself was quite embarrassed that she was played by the medical ninja like that and had to make a fool of herself in front of one of the greatest heroes in the Ninja World. Guru coughed, quite badly attempting to fake a cough just somehow to kill this awkward silence.</p><p>"So... Konoha has changed quite a bit since I've last been here... I believe it was after the Second Great Ninja War."</p><p>Mana's sleeve once again rubbed her eyes, luckily her blush of embarrassment did help conceal the natural red of one's face when one cries. Needless to say, Guru noticed the girl's distress yet he chose to let her work it out by herself after suggesting the initial gesture of comfort and understanding. He had that great feeling to him that he perfectly understood the situation and almost like he had been through it himself, there was no sensible tension from his side, just the one that Mana herself has created and imposed onto the situation.</p><p>"First "Second" war, huh? I wonder what made the historians move past the "First" curse..." Mana spoke up. She did not expect the mad laughter from the side of her conversant. Ayushi was laughing it up holding his buff stomach with both of his arms as if protecting his intestines from falling out. The giant had bent over and almost fallen to the ground.</p><p>"Wow, I've never met a young lady with such knowledge of history? Do you aspire to be a historian? In that case, I'll be the first one to say you've chosen the worst first steps for that profession!" the man finally managed to force some words through his mad laughter.</p><p>"No, just a hobby, one would think reading ancient language and dialects would be difficult enough, how is one supposed to time a scroll correctly when each of them speaks of different "First" war. I personally like Demaso's suggestion to name the wars: War of the Clans, War of the Earth and the Moon, the Wars of Establishment, War for the Greats, First, and the Second Great Ninja Wars. Something in describing the purpose of war just to help paint a better picture instead of just calling all of them "First" and then suddenly start numbering them..."</p><p>Ayushi finally straightened his body out, leaning back and to the side to stretch his bones out. Strangely enough, they didn't crack, nor did he act like he was in too much pain which for a man of his age was quite impressive.</p><p>"You speak great truth, sadly the profession of a historian is as dangerous today as it was before: it requires devoting all of one's time to studying ancient texts, then it asks even more devotion wandering the No Man's Lands of each country, lands abandoned because of the battles that took place there that now shelter the worst kind of nightmarish people there are. One might ask what is a worse profession than that of ninja, I'd answer any profession that requires one to survive hordes of murderous bandits with only a scroll and a pen in one's hand... For that reason, each historian wishes significance with their work for that reason they each try to make their discoveries more important than they are, well, that and the danger makes the rushing or scared for their lives historians quite bad at their jobs..."</p><p>Mana looked at Guru Ayushi, only now did she realize just how insane this man's profession was, it wasn't even a profession as he did not accept any material goods from any village. The ninja villages were usually quite safe, they had the local crime underworlds, sure, but in a village filled with ninja, those never got out of control.</p><p>Outside the village gate, there were some ranges of relative "safe-zones" that very few bandits tread into because villages still often had patrols of chuunin or highly experienced genin wandering the places to watch the territory and locate and identify any threats to village security, notify the guards by the gate of what was going on near the village gate.</p><p>Then there were the vast territories outside the village. One would've traveled for days, maybe even weeks or months with ordinary pedestrian feet to find any change in scenery. There were just the vast and awe-inspiring Fire Country forests where the trade route ended. It was the village gate, then the big Roiyaru Road that led to a small pleasure town – Shukuba town.</p><p>After leaving that town one would quickly enter the immense wilderness that took entire weeks to reach the port that sailed people through to the Water Country. Similarly, those same woods would've led to Land of Snow, then the colossal desert and rocky wastelands of the Lightning Country in the north or Lands of Wind and Earth to the west. Each of those paths was filled with bandits and thieves, villages never even let genin set foot in those areas beyond the "comfort zone". This man traveled the world since times unknown with not even a toothpick to defend himself with...</p><p>"I would like to see your friend Sugemi first, if he is to be transported to some remote location at some point it'd be for the best if we found him before that happens. This other friend of yours Shimo leaves on a journey of self-banishment, I'd assume he wouldn't leave without saying goodbye to you first, call it a hunch of an old man."</p><p>Mana nodded to Ayushi's suggestion. She did take a slight lead in order to show Guru the way to the Police Force HQ. The girl scratched the side of her head wondering if she could ask the man about his history, about how he survived so long having abandoned violence. After all, hers was the life of a young woman who wished to make the world peaceful, make it a better place by setting the right example. If she knew how a man can survive peacefully in the most violent and dangerous to one's neck areas maybe it'd give her a clue as to how she was to achieve her ideals.</p><p>"I see, you wish to ask me of something, young lady, go ahead. You've mentioned history was your hobby, I believe, I am full of history and quite willing to satisfy your hunger for knowledge. That is the least I can do after bursting the bubble of false hope that some despicable soul blew in your young heart."</p><p>Mana shook her head vibrantly and ran out in front of Guru Ayushi, her body was still fighting the instinct to ask him the questions that she wanted most to ask but her mind just having been encouraged by the man himself overruled her shyness and embarrassment by itself.</p><p>"Guru Ayushi-san! You've traveled the world for so long, yet you say you've abandoned all remnants of your old life, left all that violence behind. My nindo, my Ninja Way, and a lifelong dream is to make this world different, to become a hero, an icon of hope that could maybe stop all this senseless murder and destruction. Someone who could make life be worth something again like it was at some point before, I believe such a point in time existed, it had to! Please tell me – how did you manage that?"</p><p>Guru Ayushi sighed, he wasn't angry or mad, just slightly disappointed. Yet his eyes were so kind, so warm, he couldn't have been disappointed in Mana, it looked almost like he was instead disappointed in himself.</p><p>"It seems it is my curse to blow this young lady's dreams today, oh what a cruel star I've been born under... I'm sorry, young Mana, I'm afraid that the "solution of peace" you think I've discovered does not exist."</p><p>Suddenly a gale picked up, powerful gusts of wind started blowing Mana's way freezing the girl on the spot. Several months back the Demon beat her around with inhuman strength, when that man's fists hit her they made the girl feel like she died every single time. This insane sensation, this powerful gust of wind that made Mana feel cold while she felt just the same as with the fists of the Demon.</p><p>She heard violent wildfires rage around, feeling gusts of wind that picked up any stray leaves around and threw them around violently bashing them into windows and tearing them to shreds as they burned down ignited by what seemed like magic. Mana fell on her knees grasping at her chest as her lungs felt like she was drowning at the same time. She had never felt death knocking on so many doors at once, it felt so horrible that it was almost like her body just turned off and preferred death over that feeling for just one more moment.</p><p>"This is what some ninja call "Killing Intent", truly it is nothing more but a powerful ninja releasing their chakra, preparing for combat, alerting all around them that they are ready to murder them on levels they never even thought existed. Usually, ninja of high caliber restrain their chakra, lock it down behind thousands of mental blocks, this is the result of all that chakra being set loose. To sensors, it feels like being naked in the vacuum of space in front of a star, absolutely overwhelming, to ordinary ninja it feels like... Well... That which you felt just now."</p><p>Finally, that nightmare stopped, Mana's lungs could draw air again, her ears no longer heard deafening infernos raging around her while her body froze to death from inside out. The girl lifted her arm right up to her eyes and it was shaking mad. Such was the aftershock of that experience, it was so similar to what Tanshu-sensei had. Mana remembered almost instantly a similar but weaker feeling coming from the Sannin, a feeling that her team quickly got used to. She remembered how the animals in the Forest of Death avoided that feeling, ran from Tanshu-sensei in circles.</p><p>"I... I s-see..." Mana uttered with shaking blue lips as her pale skin regained its exotic darkened tone combined with her childish blush. "So you did not achieve peace through some ideal solution. You achieved it by instilling fear into the hearts of everyone who wished to attack you..." the girl summarized her realization.</p><p>Ayushi did not gesture to confirm it but he really didn't have to, most bandits worth their plundering mettle possessed the basic knowledge of ninja arts, sensing one-hundredth of such overwhelming Killing Intent would've dissuaded anyone from taking any sort of action towards this man other than tipping one's hat as they passed by and wishing them to have a good day.</p><p>One would have thought that Mana should've learned her lesson already, after being informed about there being no "magical solution" to her problem once she assumed that there was one again. How could her naïve self not have realized that nothing in life was that simple, that situations could not have been solved by the right words being told or the right action being performed, that there was no solution to every problem in her life was beyond even Mana's limited childish understanding.</p><p>The girl's puny fists closed up as she picked up a bunch of gravel from the ground, pressing it ever so hard, as hard as her hand let her. Ayushi saw her frustration as the girl's raven black hair covered all over her face.</p><p>"Are you mad at me? If so I'd love to somehow make up for this frustration I've caused you. It really is unfortunate that I had to burst so many of your dreams..." the man scratched his beard.</p><p>Mana's little knuckles relaxed letting the bright powder slip from her fingers and fall down on the ground as her face finally lifted up and her lovely full smile met Ayushi's face.</p><p>"No, I'm just glad that you gave me the chance to find my own solution to the problem. If you told me how to make the world peaceful I would've felt like something was missing, a true hero finds their own solution." Mana kept on smiling. When she opened her eyes she saw a troubled face of Ayushi meeting her newly born attitude towards the world, one of a child who now knew that humanity had no answer to her question as one of the wisest people in the world didn't give one to her.</p><p>"I won't be the hero who achieves peace through fear like you, I won't achieve peace through some treaties or papers that limit freedom like the Fourth. I will make people see that peace and love are the true virtues of this world by example, then they will become better people by their own free choice. Peace achieved by violence or fear of violence or economic pressure is meaningless, peace achieved by shackles of one's freedom is equally worthless. Love for everything adopted by choice is the only ideal worth living for!" Mana kept on smiling as she delivered the declaration of her ideals, this clarification that Guru Ayushi helped her realize.</p><p>Guru squinted, his lips did twist a little to that which resembled a smile but he was very hesitant to finish that happy face.</p><p>"Young Mana, people often approach me begging me to fight for them, to beat this bad man who oppresses them, this band of bandits or this tyrant Kage who took power by force. I refuse their requests every time, do you know why?" the man asked, he expected the girl's smile to disappear but it didn't, it just slightly reduced and her eyes still shined with that childish glee.</p><p>"It is because of the circle of violence. Violence is a constant, crime is a constant, death is a constant. Once you mete out punishment for someone, once you cure one plague, another one takes its place, another sickness, far worse than one before arises. There is no end to this circle, the more you fight it the more people die in the end. Do not fall into this trap of idealism, I tell you this as a survivor of countless "wars to end all wars"."</p><p>Mana nodded.</p><p>"Yeah, "war to end all wars" does sound idiotic, that's how men become corrupted. In the beginning, they are good, then they gain power through public trust, they are granted the ability to really change things but they take up too much pressure on their shoulders. They decide to do "this one bad thing" as a means to achieve "that really really good thing that will totally compensate the injustice caused by the means" but that ultimate goal never comes. Once they see where injustice is taking them, once they step into those shoes that grant the widest steps they keep walking until they realize their feet have rotten and that the ground no longer supports them and then they sink into the filth they themselves mashed their motherland into."</p><p>Guru kept curiously observing the girl, walking by her side observing her from behind her as she led the way, witnessing as one man after another stopped to greet him and also greet the girl. This young lady appeared to be some sort of little celebrity around those parts as usually their protectors were completely overshadowed for people of the village even wave for them.</p><p>People rushed at the Guru pushing everyone else out of the way because "their problems weighed the most" or "their joy burnt with the brightest flame". Not this young girl, passing by the village square Guru noticed several posters with this girl's gorgeous smile – "Konoha's Sorceress" she was called... People did focus their love and adoration on the Guru but the girl neither got ignored by them nor did she mind the love and adoration that the sage received. The man was becoming more and more interested in this child.</p><p>"I don't blame you for not helping people, Ayushi-san. You've left the world of fighting and violence behind and so your hands are tied, you can't fight the evil that harms this world. That is why I believe you invented this "circle of hate" idea. Sure, evil and sickness are eternal and I or you are not, obviously I am even less eternal than you are, but that doesn't matter. Even if one evil changes the other that is no excuse to not do anything, would you refuse a cure to a sick person just because you know that somewhere in the world a new sickness will rise? Be it one stronger and darker than the one you can cure?"</p><p>Mana confidently tipped her top hat for a passer-by and then moved it to shield her eyes from the Sun that was blasting into the face of the two as it finally rose from the horizon with its all might and glory.</p><p>"My ninja way is to help everyone and anyone and if a greater threat rises after it I shall keep helping everyone until I die! Any other life is not worth living!" Mana smiled as only her white teeth could be seen from the girl's covered up face that was protected from the wild sunlight by her wild dark as night hair and her elegant hat with her father's seal on the inside of its top.</p><p>Finally, the two had arrived at the location – Mana and Ayushi stopped and glared at the Police Force HQ. The two guards tried to stop Mana from coming any closer as the place was seemingly still quite busy with the repairs from the immense damage caused by the two genin duking it out last night. After seeing Guru Ayushi by her side the guards lost all remnants of their confidence or their minds. The man simply walked forward opening the door and gesturing for Mana to follow. He looked at the two men.</p><p>"We are here to visit a young gentleman named Sugemi Nara, you two gents would be of great help if you directed us to him and give us some information as to where he is as he is about to be moved as I was told and I have an important message he needs to hear first, it'd be a real pain to find him in one of those "remote facilities" you keep some prisoners in..."</p><p>The men just pointed their fingers in the direction, one of the guards just uttered "312" giving the famous Guru a number of the cell. The bearded giant smiled.</p><p>"Thank you so much, gentlemen, I'd love to tip a hat but unfortunately the young lady is the only one with a hat..." he said and his tall and bulky frame soon disappeared into the mazes of Konohagakure Police Force HQ. Mana smiled, barely containing her wish to laugh out she just tipped her own hat at the two and rushed to follow the man inside.</p><p>She thought that the words that the Guru might have for Sugemi would have been personal, or even if they weren't, Mana would be the last person that her friend would want to hear them after what she did yesterday. The Nara pretty much made it clear that the girl was now his enemy, didn't he? All that talk about this whole "either you're with me or against me" attitude pretty much made it as clear as it could've been.</p><p>Mana looked around following Ayushi, the whole place was still a mess, there were Police Force ninja running around picking up sheets of papers from the ground and reading them. They probably just tried to identify if the papers were worth salvaging and being reworked or they could've been trashed. The girl had to hand it to the two combatants – they really did do a number to this place: walls busted down and through, stone and sheets of steel everywhere, Mana could have sworn that she still caught glimpses of smoke coming from somewhere too. There were several holes in floor two, one of them led straight to the room where the fight started in and the other lead to one or two floors below.</p><p>"So... Seeing how your teammates are being punished for something and the state of this place I'd guess that..." Ayushi started his question.</p><p>"Yeah, they fought each other down there," Mana replied without him having to finish by nodding at the deep hole that led down to where the Demon was kept.</p><p>"Friends fighting one another, such a sad thing to witness yet it happens so often in this world... Was the cause worth it? Young love perhaps? Maybe that was why it took you so long to break them up..." Ayushi kept guessing something right while missing something else. "After all with two friends fighting I'd assume you were there too, in my mind the only reason why you wouldn't stop it immediately would be that you were in love with one of them or perhaps you didn't know which one..."</p><p>Mana shook her head. "I do love Shimo and Sugemi but... Not in that kind of way, slobbering while kissing is really gross. I assume since everyone chases that sort of love at some point it'll stop feeling that way. No. I love them as brothers and really good friends. I didn't interrupt because... Well... I couldn't believe what was happening, I was injured and unable to keep up with them and then I just..."</p><p>"Couldn't think about hurting a loved friend..." it seemed as if it was now Ayushi's turn of finishing Mana's sentences.</p><p>"Yeah, not much further now..." Mana pointed in the direction as they finally reached the cells numbered close to three hundred. Once again the awkward silence took over the two as they just continued to walk forward with only Ayushi's weird bare feet and Mana's sandals with slightly elevated heels tapping at the cold stone floor.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0070"><h2>70. A Broken Road Goodbye</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A lone guard watched over the room where, apparently, Sugemi was held in. Ayushi stopped by the man and smiled at Mana. The man must've wanted the magician to do the talking which to Mana seemed quite strange. After all, was he not the famous authority figure around the world? The man called the "spiritual leader" of the Shinobi World? It was just really odd that he wanted Mana to talk with the man. The girl sighed and took several steps closer to the guard who instantly directed his eyes at her. The man must've known that she was there yesterday as he did indeed tense up as if preparing for an incoming attack from the magician's side.</p><p>"Umm... Guru Ayushi would like to see the young man kept in this room. It'd probably be best if you let him in, after all, what harm could Guru Ayushi, of all people, do?"</p><p>The guard didn't look too pleased. He snarled angrily at Mana and then at Ayushi. His hand moved behind his back slowly, he tried to move it so slowly that the two would not notice but Mana was no idiot. Having her hobby in mind she had to be not only perceptive enough herself but also know how to fool the eyes of the public.</p><p>"Is that it? So it's Guru Ayushi who wants to see this guy, huh? Aren't you this guy's teammate, girl? Which is more likely, that the world-famous Guru Ayushi wants to see some edgy punk who messed up like a loser, or that you asked someone to use Transformation Jutsu and transform into Ayushi?"</p><p>Mana took a step back, she knew that this wouldn't work, why would it? She turned back at Ayushi who closed his eyes and sighed. Some odd feeling ignited inside Mana's chest, she turned back at the man and walked right up to him, her head was looking up straight into the man's eyes. It must've looked pretty ballsy to just waltz in front of a guard who was a whole head taller than the girl and just stare him off.</p><p>"Sir, with all due respect, this is Guru Ayushi, the man who has fought the Uchiha, all four of the other Great Ninja Villages, and was personally involved in two of them no longer being called "Great". He was a man who has seen battles that lasted for entire weeks, losing his allies and then bringing them back to life as he shaved at his own lifespan to do it, and yet he still lives for over a hundred years. The man who abandoned all of these horrors and now a Police Force guard in Konohagakure wants him to remember all of that which he had left behind and despised? I don't think you've thought this through, Sir."</p><p>Mana's voice was quiet but tough, cold, and unwavering. It was not a tone usually attributed to her. The guard gulped and nodded.</p><p>"Umm... Very well, I'll arrange a meeting immediately! Just please be brief, Ayushi-san, this young man is about to be transported in an hour or two, you'll be the last people seeing him."</p><p>Ayushi nodded and sat down by the wall on the stone floor. The monk closed his eyes, Mana would've mistaken his state for meditation had she not been such a prodigy in the field herself. No... Ayushi's eyes were moving sloppily, during the first state of meditation Mana remembered her eyes being quite static, during the secondary, more advanced stage they were all over the place. The girl walked up to the man and sat down on the cold stone floor beside him, she didn't care if she'd dirty up her skirt, she didn't care if the stone felt pretty damp and cold.</p><p>The man grumbled something as if clearing his throat and then spoke up. "So... You really do want to see these two quite much. No girl would try so hard to get into a room if the person inside wasn't her friend or her beloved. I'll take your word for it that it was the first."</p><p>Mana closed her eyes as well. "Yeah. I do want to see Shimo and Sugemi before they leave. No, I will see them." Her voice continued to flow like a river stream in spring that had broken through the ice of winter past, just as firm and strong as it did before.</p><p>"Good, I'm glad to have been able to help you see your friends. At least once my words and intentions won't cause you pain, that much I owe you." Ayushi mumbled as it appeared he may have been snoozing. Then his eyes opened again and he turned to the girl.</p><p>"One thing though, one thing bothers me. You seemed pretty determined to get into that room, from what I've heard when arriving at the village from the guards you've also been pretty determined to stop your friends from killing each other, even going as far as to use an experimental genjutsu technique. You do know that sometimes unpolished illusions cause permanent brain damage to both the user and the receiver? Were you ignorant of this or did you wish to save their lives at that cost? What lines are you willing to cross when protecting life?"</p><p>Mana's eyes remained closed, she had never really thought about that. It was a very core shaking question indeed. Her entire life the magician wanted to save lives, to be the moral compass for the world, an example of a hero which would cause the world to change.</p><p>She assumed that saving lives would always be the moral choice but sometimes it wasn't. She was aware of the possibility of permanent brain damage for either of them when using her early stage of an illusion, yet the girl could not remember that stopping her for a single moment. It was just something that ran through her head.</p><p>"I... I suppose any lines. I did know that possibility but I wasn't afraid of it, it seems that I am ready to choose life over death, no matter the moral implications of such a decision. I'd save a man from death, even if it meant that he had to suffer for the rest of it. I believe that no life in this Universe is unnecessary and this belief is unwavering."</p><p>Guru closed his eyes again and returned to his state of slumber.</p><p>"That is a scary answer, young Mana, it is an answer that fanatics would give when asked about their beliefs. I'd wish to believe that you gave such an answer because you are still very young and have not yet encountered a truly gruesome situation where saving a life was to doom someone. Yet I've no reason to truly think so... But don't you think it is weird that you are afraid of hurting someone in that case? You don't wish to kill, that is fine, but tell me if you've ever frozen in place unable to fight off a threat? You said you were afraid to interfere in the fight between your teammates for a very long time, I'd imagine this was not the only time this happened to you, have you ever wavered before entering combat before? Don't you think it's hypocritical to restrain yourself from fighting when you say that no line is going to stop you from saving someone?"</p><p>Mana was shocked by those words, she looked at Ayushi who was playfully smiling with his beard and mustache being twisted. It was not a sadistic or bad kind of smile, it was a smile of a father who had just scared the dog off of the stairs letting his daughter out to play because the dog was barking and scaring the little child. Mana had that feeling of dread for violence this whole time when she didn't realize she may have been contradicting her own belief.</p><p>Fighting was not wrong, not always, fighting to save someone she treasured, someone she loved was alright. She was not a pacifist, she couldn't be if she wanted to be who she was. All life was sacred, that did not mean that people who threatened it couldn't have been taken down, crippled, or paralyzed. It may not have been morally correct but such were Mana's beliefs.</p><p>This Guru Ayushi was amazing, now the young magician understood why he was called "spiritual leader" and one of the wisest people alive. He just solved one of Mana's most painful problems for her with nothing but words, no, encouragement for the girl herself to come up with an answer. He never said anything, he just asked her questions and encouraged her to think for herself. This monk was truly something!</p><hr/><p>About twenty minutes had passed since the guard started arranging the meeting. In between then and now the guard had left the room and ran around setting up the meeting with his superiors. Apparently, seals and restraints were in order to prevent the detained one from hurting the girl who detained him last night and also the visitor. While bored of waiting Mana turned at Ayushi. A question popped into her mind, something didn't add up but she didn't yet wish to accuse Ayushi of lying.</p><p>"You told me that ordinary humans could not make use of your regenerative cells, yet Tanshu-sensei claimed once that he had regrown an entire muscle out of them, why was that? Was he sick too, riddled with tumors like that man you told me about?"</p><p>Ayushi opened his eyes and smiled again, just mere moments later he broke into uncontrollable laughter. After a while of letting his laughter go free, the man finally wiped a tear off of his eye and decided to reply to the girl to her question. Guru Ayushi looked like a man who was in no rush at any point, he acted like his entire life was still ahead of him.</p><p>"Actually there's an interesting story there... I remember meeting your sensei back during my last visit, no, it was a brief stop as I was heading for the Fire Temple and Konohagakure was just in the way and night sneaked up on me out of nowhere. Anyways, I wanted a drink so I went to the bar, my regenerative cells prevent me from ever getting drunk so I can enjoy my drinks indefinitely. So I sat down close to this young fellow, he looked pretty strong, back when I sniffed up his Killing Intent I knew he was someone amazing. We talked for a while and... He told me and showed me his arm - the entire muscle looked like some bastard tried to rip it out with its teeth, must've been a summoned animal or something."</p><p>Guru delved deeper and deeper into his thoughts. Mana hated when the man just stopped talking and drifted off like that but she did want to hear the whole of the story the way it happened and if that meant some breaks in between it did not matter. Guru finally seemed to have remembered the events and continued.</p><p>"So... The guy was pretty bold, he asked me for my cells almost instantly after the story, "Give me your cells, geezer" were his exact words. I explained to him just as politely as I did to you why it couldn't be done and then he challenged me, he claimed that he could drink me under the table and if he did he'd drag my body to the hospital and take those cells from me. Now there was a challenge I could not refuse - on one hand I couldn't possibly have lost such a challenge as I couldn't get drunk, on the other one if I did by any chance lose it I'd be helping a young man whose career was ruined..."</p><p>"I don't get it" Mana interrupted the story, "Why would your drunk cells work differently from your conscious cells?"</p><p>"Because you see, when my body is conscious my cells work impeccably, but when it is either comatose or passed out or... Well... Drunk they work at an incomparably weaker and slower rate. A rate that does not stress the ordinary body nearly as much as my ordinary one. Normally that never happens - whatever damage I am dealt to my brain I heal almost instantly so I have not passed out enough times in my life to count them on my hand fingers. But that Tanshu was a very crafty kid, he had this strange seal ability to neutralize my jutsu without me even noticing and so I end up drunk in no time because without my ability I'm quite lightweight, despite my menacing size... I suppose now you can piece the rest of the story together..." Ayushi finished the story at last. Mana gently covered her mouth as she laughed out, it couldn't have been helped since the story was just really funny and weird.</p><hr/><p>As half an hour more passed the meeting was finally arranged and Ayushi and Mana were called up to Sugemi's cell room. The two entered and the man wasted no time walking up to the young man and sitting in front of him and Mana kept her distance by the door. She just felt that horrible feeling like Sugemi must've hated her for stopping him yesterday so she just stared at her feet which she kept rubbing on the stone floor shyly. Guru leaned back in his puny wooden chair making it creek for its life.</p><p>"Greetings, young man, news have reached me that you'd be sent away to a remote facility on one of Fire Country islands. Rest assured, the one you're sent to is the only prison by name actually it is quite pleasant. You see there are three prisons in Fire Country: one of them is a prison called "Jigoku", it is a prison where the worst of the worst are held in the toughest security conditions and under constant surveillance, their chakra is kept sealed at all times and no one gets too worked up when a prisoner or two die in "accidents". The people there are considered rejects of society and very few of them have a chance to ever leave that place. "Jigoku" is located underground, somewhere in a remote location of the Fire Country."</p><p>Sugemi didn't seem very interested in the man's tale. He looked at Mana and interrupted the man's explanation which was supposed to calm him down and get him talking in the first place.</p><p>"Do you hate me, Mana? Why are you so distant? What happened?"</p><p>Ayushi's hand raised to stop Sugemi's interruption. "I will leave you two some time for farewells, sadly the words I have for you outrank the importance of the farewell of two young friends who will be parted for a year or two. The words I have for you are the last words spoken by Red Dog - Uzumaki Tanshu before his passing that were overheard by the Tsuchikage and sent to me via message. Those words are meant for three people: Nara Sugemi, Yuki Shimo, Nakotsumi Mana. Please let me finish my explanation and get to my message, then I shall leave the two of you to say your temporary farewells."</p><p>Sugemi looked pretty surprised by the fact that someone overheard Tanshu's final words but then his surprise was quickly overwhelmed by annoyance that this man would insist to finish his speech before delivering them, he then settled down and gestured for the Guru to continue.</p><p>"Thank you, as I've said, the second prison is "Rengoku", it is the prison also known as the "Konohagakure Correctional Facility" located in the village. It isn't anything too impressive, just your ordinary prison meant for perpetrators not tough enough or not evil enough or with hope for being adapted back into society after their redemption. The prison you are sent to is called "Eden", do you know why? Because technically it is not a prison, it is just a location where people of interest are detained. Currently, all of Konohagakure Jinchuuriki are located there so that they do not escape or die and let their Tailed Beasts roam free. It is entirely possible that the Fifth will revise that decision and let those poor two go in the nearest future..."</p><p>Sugemi sighed, "Look, old man, I'm not worried about the whole containment situation, I don't care. Just give me the words Tanshu-sensei left us and get out."</p><p>Guru smiled and nodded. "Very well..."</p><p>"Tanshu believed that you were just as stupid as his sister, by which I believe he referred to Chestnut Hanasaku who had adopted him in his youth into her "family". The man wanted that Hanasaku would train you herself because the two of you were both too stupid to know where your limits were. He also expressed a belief that your goal of having a manga written about you was not that bright."</p><p>After Guru finished Sugemi asked if that was it to which the man nodded. "If it was any more personal than that I'd have asked the young lady to leave but I didn't believe it was," Guru added.</p><p>"Well, whatever, I don't want that woman training me. Plus even if I did I pissed her off enough for a lifetime, I'll do fine training in the containment facility with the two Jinchuuriki, I guess..." Sugemi shrugged, he then looked at Mana again. Mana's eyes raised up to meet those of her friend and she approached him and slowly hugged him.</p><p>After the girl backed off she desperately tried to fight tears off. "I'm sorry, Sugemi, I don't hate you. I just... I got in your way, I understand. But I couldn't let you kill that man, nor could I let you and Shimo kill each other."</p><p>Sugemi banged onto the steel table signaling that he was done with the meeting. "I know, Mana, I'm still gonna get that manga written about me, I'll just go about it differently. I'll change the world, just like you wanted it to but I'll go about it the entirely other way. Don't you get it? The hero who has no backing from the people around her will fail and die alone and people don't want peace. They want those who did fucked up things get fucked up things done to them. People are simple, I am going to get into their hearts by exploiting that and earn respect, that is how I will be immortalized in legends and get my own manga. We will clash again, Mana, it is inevitable. The one who wishes to kill all killers and the one who wants those killers to get "justice" by scolding them are bound to clash but I don't see you surviving that clash, people will always back the killer of killers because people want blood. For your sake, I hope one of us will die before that clash because one of us won't survive it if it happens, and killing you would be too painful for me. Shimo was never my true rival, it was always you, Mana. It just was as Tanshu-sensei said, I was too dumb to get it."</p><p>The guards came to take Sugemi away and prepare him for being moved. As he was taken to the door the Nara gently wriggled out of the guards' hold and walked up to Mana placing his chin on her shoulder gently. "Goodbye, old friend, until we meet again..." was all he uttered. Mana and Guru observed Sugemi get taken away, the captain of the Police Force approached the two and stroke his brown thick mustache line.</p><p>"So you are seeking for Tanshu's students, Guru Ayushi-san? In that case, you'd better rush to the Konohagakure gate. We've had reports that one of the students, the swordsman, was leaving and the guards tried to hold him, once he explains that his status as a ninja is suspended they'll have to let him go and if he leaves you'll miss him."</p><p>Mana and Ayushi started moving quickly towards the gate, the two ran up the stairs to the roof and left the building, moving quickly, dashing through the rooftops and wires, all the electric poles and the wires where the laundry was hung. Ninja traveled like that when they were on a mission, the rooftops were the playground of empowered criminals and ninja. Mana would've never guessed that Ayushi had retained so much of his past speed, she could barely keep up with him, several times she had to pop her "Mystical Wings" jutsu just to send the gust of wind to keep her from tumbling down when she missed a jump. The two were forced to move at such a pace that Mana almost twisted her neck several times.</p><p>Finally, the gate was in sight, the two landed just in time to witness the figure of Shimo leaving. The boy was no longer wearing his formal and fancy clothes, instead choosing an attire more fitting for a homeless wanderer, which he was not. The boy wore a washed plain green kimono which would've soon get covered with dirt and get torn up in his travels. Right before he left Mana's voice reached his ears and he turned around.</p><p>His innocent surprised eyes and jarring mouth when he recognized his friend would've made Mana laugh had the situation not been so desperate. Guru took several steps forward again, as usual, he had to complete his own duty to an old friend, the only man to have ever drunken the famous and unbeatable in drinking Guru Ayushi under the table.</p><p>"Young man, please wait. I have words to tell you, words from your late sensei. After that, I believe, the young woman would also like to tell her farewells and it would be extremely rude to..."</p><p>"Deny a lady a chance at saying "Goodbye", I know my manners, old man!" Shimo finished the monk's sentence before the man could. Wasn't even that surprising, ever since he was a little kid, since the first day he entered through the Academy door wearing that comical suit with the world's biggest bowtie he acted like the world's most polite six-year-old gentleman. No one could've educated Yuki Shimo on manners when matters concerned women.</p><p>Guru coughed up and started fulfilling his duty. "Tanshu expressed extreme fondness of you, he admired your moral decision to despise a tyrant like Mizukage Daikon, he also expressed support for your goal to make it so that no one lived in tyranny again before his final moments. Tanshu hoped that you would train your swordsmanship and perhaps asked Mana-chan here to train you in chakra control one day. He also wondered sarcastically if you'd have liked the now deceased Mizukage Shirona over Daikon, the one who was responsible for the events of the Kage Summit."</p><p>Shimo smiled and nodded in confirmation that he heard the words meant for him, his smile was not a happy one, more like one that was almost lyrical. It was clear that the Yuki acknowledged the sadness in his sensei's passing but appreciated having heard his final words, at least as far as he was concerned. Once again, just like Sugemi, Shimo inquired if that was all to which Guru just nodded.</p><p>"Well, I guess sensei wasn't a man known for his words or his extreme skill with the tongue. Still, thanks for that, Guru Ayushi-san." the swordsman then turned to Mana and approached her.</p><p>"Heh, it feels pretty bad to make Tanshu-sensei wait before his final will is completed, I'll definitely ask you to teach me when I'm back. I just don't want to draw my sword again before I understand who I am and where I stand. Nothing pulls the carpet from under you like raising a sword against your own brother in arms and being taken down by your own little sister..." Shimo hugged Mana gently, the girl once again just barely kept her tears in her. Shimo then moved back and laughed out as if he was going to say something really stupid.</p><p>"I really hope you didn't fall in love with me or anything, I'm not a guy worth swooning over neither am I a guy who ties himself with just one lady so I'd just break your heart..." Mana's fist bounced off Shimo's head from the sheer force of her pound. She was pretty angry that her silly teammate ruined the moment but it couldn't have been helped. Her friends were always sort of goofballs.</p><p>Guru was smiling the whole time, after exchanging hugs and waving each other farewell the two parted, Mana followed Shimo's figure as it disappeared from her sight in the thickness of the forest outside the village gate.</p><p>"It may seem like the end of the world to you, young Mana, but as I've come to learn that people leave only to return. You will meet your friends again, in the meantime, you'll make many new ones and while you won't be a team anymore, bonds like that which you share are not easily broken. Just some distance and a journey of self-discovery is powerless against that sort of friendship. Now all that's left is what was meant to be told to you..." Guru once again spoke wisdom.</p><p>Mana didn't intend to keep the man from completing his debt. When she finally didn't feel Shimo's presence anywhere close the girl turned back at the Guru and walked up to him to hear Tanshu-sensei's final words meant for her.</p><p>Knowing her sensei it must've been something pretty mean so the girl's little heart was pounding relentlessly in her chest but she knew that sensei always meant well with his strict words. His insults made everyone work harder, his jokes always kicked them in the butt to move forward faster. Mana was ready, she just parted ways with her friends, and in order to start a new chapter of her life, she needed to tie all the knots from the old one.</p><p>"I'm ready" the girl uttered letting the Guru know to spill it out.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0071"><h2>71. Last Wishes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Guru scratched the top of his bald head. Apparently, the message to Mana was either the most important, the longest one or at least it was the only one that could have waited. After all, both Sugemi and Shimo were just about to leave. The old man pointed for Mana to follow him, he himself started walking, slowly picking up speed as he went along.</p><p>"Your sensei recognized the fact that he was strict on you in his final moments. He even went as far as to say that he may have been the strictest and hardest on you as compared with the others."</p><p>Mana's nose wiggled around, it was her trying desperately not to cry. She was strong, she had to be. Heroes didn't cry, they couldn't cry because they had to appear strong in front of the people they wanted to inspire. So the girl's lips kept pointing out, her nose wriggled around and sniffled like she was about to cry but she held her front admirably.</p><p>"He drew comparisons between you and a lady he had known in his youth, I am not entirely sure who this "Vashia" was, I have only been given a name in the Tsuchikage's message. The only thing that Tanshu had made clear was that this young woman was an honorable one and very similar to you. I believe that now that I've met you I understand what he meant."</p><p>Mana rubbed her wet eyes with her sleeve, she wasn't crying just yet so she tried to play it down like the wind had carried dust into her eyes, which was actually a quite decent and often seen occurrence since Konohagakure streets were mostly gravel and dirt.</p><p>"Yeah, Tanshu-sensei didn't really like my ideals. He often criticized me because I wanted to save even my enemies which he couldn't understand. He said that people like me were a danger not only to their own lives but those of their friends too as they will not only die themselves, they'll doom their comrades too. Those were probably some of the most painful words I've heard in my life... But I really looked up to Tanshu-sensei, I liked him a lot, he was a good mentor even if we didn't see eye to eye."</p><p>Ayushi's thick and chest long beard was twisted around, it once again let the girl know that the man was smiling. His eyes were so soothing and calm...</p><p>"Well, Tanshu wanted to meet this Vashia woman again his whole life, he admitted in his final moments that he knew deep inside that she was dead. He most likely believed that it was her honorable and kind ways that caused her death and he only was so strict on you because he saw Vashia inside you. He wanted to protect you by being mean to you. He wanted that you either left the life of a ninja or changed your ways, he saw you as a second chance to protect the woman he loved."</p><p>Mana turned her eyes away, somehow she managed to swallow down a huge gulp of despair and sadness, the magician thought she had already dealt with the pain of losing an authority figure like Tanshu but she was wrong. Pain like that most likely never went away. Still, it'd have been best if she followed her own advice, one she gave father back then when he was struggling with his injury. Mana had to stop letting her pain control her, stop letting it shape who she was, and choose an alternate identity. She had plenty to choose from, plenty of ideals to strive to shape herself by. Only by stopping floating, she would drown in pain and one thing Mana certainly was, was a floater and a fighter.</p><p>"Tanshu acknowledged that the world was the strictest on people like you, he also acknowledged the injustice of that, that the sweetest and kindest people were always the ones that paid the highest price in this world. He also loved that you were trying to change that, he acknowledged that people like you were needed, they were what would eventually change this world." Guru spoke once more after a moment of silence.</p><p>It appeared that the next few words were difficult on Guru himself, just for a mere second Mana forgot her own pain just because she was surprised to see Guru so stricken with emotions deep in his own chest.</p><p>"Tanshu wanted to let you know that he would have wanted that you would never leave the village, never found out about the real world out there, never found out about his death and the manner of it. He thought that living in a pink cocoon of cotton candy was for the best for you. I don't think he meant that you were weak and couldn't take it, I think he knew that you'd just blame yourself for everything you'd see, you'd put it on your childish and puny shoulders to change it all, you'd suffer tremendously under such pressure and he didn't want you suffering, he wanted a happy life for you the most of all people. As his final words to you he... Apologized for the way he acted with you..."</p><p>A villager tried to approach Guru and Mana, Ayushi's large palm rose up alerting that it just wasn't the time. The old man whispered something into the villager's ear and the man nodded and rushed away. Mana tried her best not to collapse but she just couldn't handle it. A strong but soft hand pressed against her shoulder and led her to a bench.</p><p>"Cry it out, kid, don't hold it inside. A world where people can't feel free is a pathetic excuse for a world. I've got a seminar in an hour, we've got all the time in the world."</p><p>Mana sniffled "I just... Wish that at least one of Tanshu's final wishes came true, Sugemi won't train with Hanasaku, Shimo won't train with me, I actually did find out about his death and do very much plan to tackle every inch of darkness and hatred this world has..."</p><p>Ayushi remained silent.</p><p>Mana was observing the sage giving his seminar. There were more people than she could have ever imagined attracting. The girl's watchful eye found her manager, also the owner of the hall they were in, Mr. Hiro rubbing his hands. This was really profitable to him, Guru Ayushi was a major international figure of wisdom and spirituality. He always made people gather so densely that half of the public didn't mind listening to the man's powerful voice from outside.</p><p>As a bodyguard the magician was failing her client – she allowed people even behind the curtains, sitting in circles right around the great Guru. If they wanted to attack the man all of what some of them had to do was to just stand up. Guru was one of the most powerful ninja once but he had left that behind and wouldn't have used any of his skills even to protect himself. Granted killing the man would've been close to impossible but if someone was stupid and desperate enough to go after Ayushi they would've at least done their research on him and come up with a plan.</p><p>What was so different between Mana and Ayushi? Why did he constantly gather full crowds, crowds even from other countries that followed the news of his travels, and came into the countries he visited only to listen to him? Why Mana only enjoyed moderate popularity if she actually spread the same message? Granted her crowd was steadily increasing and she gathered full halls more and more often but she wanted to know the secret of Ayushi's skill in inspiring people. Inspire people to change the world so that Mana left it better than she found it was her goal, learning to make people adore her was a major part of that goal.</p><p>Ayushi seemed to love contact with his crowd, he gave no speeches, no large monologues of his ideals nor did he hammer his messages in. For the man it was mostly crowd interaction over anything else, the leader let his crowd give him questions and suggestions for topics, he also always hugged whoever needed it and held the hand of the people who suffered so apparently physical contact also played a great part.</p><p>The two were completely different people: Ayushi inspired change through preaching and promoting peace and serenity of one's spirit by answering the questions to one's problems accordingly. Mana was an artist who tried to give the same message but using art as her tool instead of speeches and solutions to people's problems.</p><p>The councilman was right, usually, when a figure of importance had such close contact with their audience they at least invited creepy fools that either wanted to kill them to make their mark in history or at least show that they could've killed them at any time. One such event happened to Mana too during the time she trained after Tanshu-sensei's departure when a fan climbed on stage and just stood there watching her escape a deathtrap.</p><p>He probably could've just climbed on top of the box and held its top, making Mana drown in front of the public, it was transparent but the box withstood any attempts to break out from inside. The man never tried anything, he just stood there and watched from close up as if letting the girl know "I could've made this performance living hell for you but I didn't". Some people just loved feeding their superiority complexes...</p><p>Finally, the seminar was over, it took good four hours to conclude and yet it didn't look like anyone in the audience was bored. Mana had noticed that as well, usually when people gave you morals one grew very bored in moments, Guru Ayushi had been doing nothing but moralizing and questioning her about her life and fixing her problems the whole morning, and yet the magician had never even thought about being bored.</p><p>Maybe it was just because he was always on point, always having the perfect words to say for every problem. Living over a hundred years, two hundred years, however long Ayushi had lived, made one really wise, able to pinpoint the exact problem and its solution easily. If Mana had to prove Ayushi's longevity she'd easily use that argument as proof that needed no further argumentation. A man so precise and wise, a man able to pick any problem apart and recognize its solution in just a couple of sentences must've been around for a while to see a lot of said problems, to begin with.</p><p>The monk approached Mana cleaning his sweat with a towel, he was quite energetic and at times loved to wave his arms around, also because of the overcrowded public the air inside was really stuffy, Mana had also removed her jacket and was holding it in her hands. She'd still need that shower later... "So, how was that?" Guru smiled as he approached his bodyguard. Mana gave the man a thumb up.</p><p>"The world is this much closer to being saved... And no one had to be beaten up to boot..."</p><p>Ayushi laughed out.</p><p>"Don't lose sleep over it, sometimes a problem can only be solved by beating someone up, even as a pacifist I acknowledge that. You can either be a pacifist who never fights and speaks of change or a kind-hearted hero who fights for justice and those they love, also for those that cannot fight for themselves. You cannot be both. Both exist, both are needed. Wasn't it your idea that no person on this Earth is unnecessary?"</p><p>Mana pointed Ayushi to the exit, she was surprised that no one tried to catch up and talk to Ayushi off stage, usually, people did chase her down for flowers or just a chat after the show. Maybe it was just that Ayushi didn't arrive often so he always made sure to leave everyone in the audience satisfied.</p><p>"For that to be true the world also needs bad people that exist solely to hurt other people..."</p><p>Ayushi laughed out and shrugged his giant hulking shoulders.</p><p>"True, still, that is never the problem, somehow those always rise up... Even so, how would we know a hero, how would we know what's right if there weren't bad people to challenge those beliefs? Good is molded by evil, given shape by it, one only knows good when they see evil, point at it with a finger, and say "That is definitely wrong"."</p><p>For a moment there Guru continued to stare at a fixed point somewhere, the magician and the sage left the building and Mana started leading Ayushi to the hotel where he was supposed to be housed in. Konohagakure hotels were nothing too special which must've come off as quite the embarrassment since sometimes some pretty important guests had to stay there. At least some hotels had the business feeling in them enough to modify their places to closer resemble the classic style and try and appear like the shabbiness of the places was intentional. Guru was housed at the very best hotel in Konoha but that didn't say a lot. The whole place was just a simple wooden construction built in the classic style, all those silk cloths, carpets, and curtains were supposed to mask the lack of funds attributed to the field.</p><p>"Have you ever wondered, young Mana, if you were something extraordinary, something special? Like an heir to some ancient clan or maybe your parents adopted you from some elite clan of ninja like the Uchiha?" Guru smiled, his words may have been taken as rude by some people. Mana loved her parents and they very much loved her, to think that they may have adopted her at any point would've been at the very least offensive to them. The girl shook her head.</p><p>"We do have several hours to kill until the place gets dark, even then I wish nothing more than to see that glorious Konohagakure shine at night, to see all the street vendors and all the lights reflect from the Hokage monument playfully dancing in my eyes. It is one of my favorite experiences in Konohagakure, something I always look up to." the man's eyes wandered off onto the Hokage Monument – a giant structure of faces of all past Hokage carved into a mountain. It was an amazing monument but when one walked below it every day it often sank into oblivion and lost its primary charm. "I wonder when they will add Lady Hanasaku to the four faces..." Guru added.</p><p>Mana nodded, it was her mission to make sure that Ayushi has the most pleasant stay in Konohagakure. The girl took her mission objective quite seriously. If the great Guru wished to hang around and roam the village and talk about Mana's heritage it was more than fine with her.</p><p>"The reason why I say this about your heritage is that your skin color and your hair, your eyes, and your entire face look slightly too exotic to be from around this place." Guru started describing his mighty theory, "I've traveled all around the world and I found out that people all around have different traits. People in the northern parts like the Snow Country or the northern Kumogakure wastelands, northern Earth Country especially tend to be very tall, bulky, and strong. People from Kumogakure tend to have dark or darkened skins, they're either very bulky or very slim and lean. People from the Wind Country have slightly more squinted eyes, no doubt to better protect them from the constant raging sandstorms, they're also lean and smaller in size so that they didn't have to burn too much energy fighting the desert winds and storms."</p><p>Mana was interested in Guru Ayushi's suggestion that there was something more exotic about her origin. Other Academy students always did think she looked a bit weird and for children that meant that Mana was automatically out of the most popular circle, she still had friends and all, she just was rarely described as the etalon of beauty or attention. The girl was told by her father that her mother was not from around and that was the cause of Mana's exotic looks but she never questioned that story at all or dug deeper into it. That was odd, it wasn't like Mana also despised her different heritage in any way...</p><p>"The thing is that if I had met you and had to guess, I couldn't even pin down an exact region you may be from. Your skin is of a darker shade than people from Konoha yet not dark enough to be from Kumo, not even if one of your parents was from Konohagakure. Your facial bone structure, namely your lips and cheeks also seem to be completely different from those of the people from Kumogakure. You are also rather short and slim but not like people in the Earth Country. Your appearance is so strange to me that if I had to say I'd say you're descendant of one of the Sky Clans, just because you don't fit the description of any other clan I've seen..."</p><p>Mana got a little stumped by Ayushi description, normally a person would've been offended when they were put on a pedestal but the Guru did raise an interesting point and she was a bit curious as to what he exactly wanted to do with that theory.</p><p>"Wait? Sky Clans, you mean like the Fourth was the descendant of the Sky Clan? Can't I just be clanless?" Mana wondered, after all, she belonged to no known clan which was a reason why very few people placed expectations on her in the Academy or outside. The thing was that all the best ninja were from one clan or the other, being a part of a clan granted one access to those crazy bloodline abilities or hidden technique only taught in those clans. Mana had none of those advantages so from her childhood she was looked at as cannon fodder, as a filler material in armies made to be led by someone from one of the elite clans.</p><p>The likes of Yamanaka had access to techniques that made one able to control one's mind, how was a genjutsu user supposed to compete with that? The Inuzuka clan and their kinship with ninja hounds made them become unmatched in terms of brute force, speed, and sheer peeling power on the battlefield. The Aburame clan and their control of insects made them more amazing than most ordinary ninjutsu users could ever get as the insects were basically a living ninjutsu technique with a swarm mind of their own, fitting any use and capable of draining the opponent of chakra completely. The Nara clan was able to completely lock any enemy strategies and were unmatched strategies, masters of displacement, and diversions. The Hyuuga clan also made one impossible to compete with in terms of close quarter fighting.</p><p>One didn't even need to mention the likes of incredibly elite and rare clans like the Uchiha who were few and far in between each nation. A skilled Uchiha was more treasured and trained in a village than a Jinchuuriki carrying a Tailed Beast yet they were so rare that an Uchiha was usually too arrogant for their own good and died very early in their lives. The noble Kaguya who were all descendants of the Sky Clan, leftovers from the clansmen who moved back to the moon after the War of Earth and the Moon.</p><p>The forbidden fruits of love-based union between the Earth and the Moon people with abilities so amazing and fierce that they were treated as elite without even needing any training, just possessing their bloodline abilities. How could Mana, someone without a clan ever compete with all those families? While the girl did have a complete and utter devotion to her cause, she never even for a moment placed herself amongst those elites nor did she even wish to, the title of "Strongest" was meaningless to her.</p><p>Guru shook his head in response to Mana's question. "Actually no ninja is completely clanless. Back when the First People split into groups and their society erupted into a civil war they each split into groups, each group grew with the bloodline of that group's patriarch, the strongest defined what that group's bloodline was, what blood their inheritors would carry. The First People split into clans, wandering the endless wilderness in a constant state of war against everything, eventually, their elite and royal bloodline became less and less royal and elite and something happened, the First People changed and started becoming extinct, they were getting replaced by two lesser factions that they fathered – the Sky Clan and the Earth Clan. After the two were given the Earth and the Moon to watch over by the last of the First People, the Earth Clan still lived following the old ways, living in clans, only when the Settlement period began did the term "clanless" appear, a "clanless" person back then was someone with very vague family ties with some clan. In other words, even you have ties with a clan, just they may be traced very far back and the percentage of their bloodline in your blood is not enough for you to manifest it."</p><p>Mana thought for a while, did she really need that question answered? What did it matter if her ancestors were Yamanaka or Uchiha, or whatever. She looked at Ayushi with a rather bland expression.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I just don't see the point of it all in that case, if solving this mystery would please you, however, it is my mission to help you enjoy your stay. What do you have in mind in particular, how do you plan to find out about my heritage?" she asked.</p><p>Ayushi sighed, "Well, I used to have a technique to determine that, as a medical ninja I can diagnose irregularities in one's blood. Sometimes it helps one to determine the more extreme memberships of a clan, like the Kaguya, have greater concentrations of iron in their blood, the Uchiha's blood structure is also very unique and they have an overdose of a certain protein. I really don't want to devolve into that however as I only use my old techniques if I have no other choice. You seem to be a girl who likes reading, else why would you know so much about history, what say you we hit the archives and check your heritage?" Ayushi grinned</p><p>Mana nodded, even if she still didn't understand why that interested Ayushi so much she went with it. Still, she had to admit that even the magician was getting a little curious about the entire thing. After all, what if she really did have ties with some weird clan way back, the little historian in her was a little excited.</p><p>Not only because she was about to find out the truth behind her heritage, something that father and mother kept telling different stories about, but she also will get access to the Konohagakure archives that were usually pretty secretive about their information and only to be accessed by people with Hokage's permission, working there or people in a mission which requires information from them. Even so, who would ever deny someone like Guru Ayushi information? Mana followed the great Ayushi without uttering a word until they've come close to the archive.</p><p>"So, what do you know about your origins? Maybe this whole little sidequest of ours is pointless?" Ayushi asked curiously.</p><p>"Well, father used to tell me that my mother had something to do with some traveling band of wandering ninja, that's pretty much as detailed as he got... Mother usually just said she was traveling around as a youth before settling down with father in Konoha, she never even mentioned the "wandering ninja" and seemed pretty sensitive about the subject, my mother is pretty hot-blooded, and when she's sensitive about something everyone around her is in danger so I never poked any deeper... I just accepted that it's nothing special and moved on."</p><p>Ayushi carefully listened to young Mana's words and nodded, "Very well then, may this be my reward for refusing to help, or rather doom, your father and hurting your kind young heart. I shall find the secret of your origin for you and even if there's no secret to it. I could swear that you're so interesting, your hair is dark and messy enough to remind me of Uchiha yet you would've already woken up the Sharingan by now if you were, your skin suggests that you may be from one of Kumogakure's clans, Arashi perhaps? Let's just say you sparked the interest of the medical ninja in me..."</p><p>Mana shrugged, "As long as you don't start dissecting me, I'm up for some research" she joked hoping that Guru didn't take it as a suggestion.</p><p>Ayushi laughed out, "Truth be told had I been a medical ninja still that would've been what I'd have suggested. I can keep people sedated and alive during similar procedures and it had a perfect success ratio, also it wouldn't have even left a scar after... Sorry, old habits, back during the war they had me harvesting bloodlines so some of my jokes may be a bit dark" he returned the joke back.</p><p>Mana did start feeling a bit creeped out by the man but she realized that this was a man who had helped her out greatly and only had the kindest intentions in his heart, also a man who had been through a lot in his life and was a relic of times where things were greatly different and people didn't casually joke about dissecting other people.</p><p>"Well then I'm lucky that you left it all behind then..." the magician played it off as a joke as the two entered the archive building.</p><p>"Part of why I left it too, the more masterful you become at intricacies of surgery and the medical field the less ethical some of the practices look. Even when you extract sickness from a person on a cellular level it still feels horrible sometimes... Even now there are very few ethical lines for the medical ninja, something I was reminded of when those vultures asked you to talk to me about those cells." Ayushi's eyes changed to very serious and almost angry right before switching back to his usual carefree bliss.</p><p>"Now then, let's begin our search!" he clapped as he approached the ninja observing the entrants to the archive to have a talk with him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0072"><h2>72. Where Magician Babies Come From</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana could barely even believe what was going on, while the actual events and actions they were going to see and do were quite ordinary, at least for anyone with access to the archives, the goal of such discoveries, and the prospect of them happening did continue to scare her. What if Guru found some impossible connection to some rare clan, what if she found out that she had some super amazing ability hidden inside of her, what if Mana would find out that she wasn't actually the child of her parents? That would undoubtedly have caused more pain, not made up for the pain caused by Ayushi's honesty previously.</p><p>"Hello there, young Sir," Ayushi spoke up interacting with the slightly aged gentleman in charge of watching the archives, the man looked like he could've used some sleep as his half greyed out hair was messy and his striped black and white shirt was covered with wrinkles and one of his suspenders was on the edge of slipping off.</p><p>"I'd argue about the "young" part but you're quite welcome to the archives if you have permission to be here, how can I help?" the man answered, he didn't appear to be affected by Ayushi's presence whatsoever, perhaps so because he too believed the man to be some prank pulling teen who transformed into a world known celebrity the picture of whom he found in some textbook of his.</p><p>"Well when you can recall the War of the Moon and the Earth going on when you were in your cradle with your mother covering your puny and weak baby body with her exhausted motherly figure so that the Moon which was about to crash into the Earth didn't crush you, you'd reevaluate that argument..." Ayushi joked grabbing his belly in laughter. Judging from the look of the archive worker, the man was beginning to piece things together.</p><p>"Wait... Did you say the War of the... Holy crap, you're actually him, aren't you!" the man exclaimed jumping up so quickly that his geeky glasses almost fell off. Ayushi giggled like a little girl in his fist.</p><p>"Sadly I am, I'd be someone else if given the choice and wouldn't have to shoulder all those desperate cries of people who refuse to rely on their own strength or strength of the new generation, asking that I solve all their problems instead... Sorry, I babble sometimes, yes, I am me, in that much, I am sure, although now when I say that... Who am I as a person and who are you? How do we..."</p><p>Mana slowly crept up to the man and gently pulled on his rag. Ayushi got the clue and stopped talking giggling again into his fist. While the man appeared to be acting like a schoolgirl placed in an old man's body by some mind replacement jutsu, for a moment Mana did admire the size of his fist, the great Guru probably could've punched out a horse with that effortlessly...</p><p>The magician nodded her head with a respectful bow in front of the archive worker and gestured at Ayushi. "The great Guru Ayushi would like to explore the archives, there is a question that plagues his wise mind, one that could be answered if permission to enter the archives was granted" she explained.</p><p>The archive keeper didn't appear overly fond of the request. The man carelessly fixed his glasses and reached below the table, reaching for a weapon without a doubt. It didn't seem like he wished to start a fight, he must've just felt defensive when cornered by a ninja and someone posing, quite skillfully, as Guru Ayushi. No! The man lunged out leaping over the table slashing at Mana with giant scissors, he wielded two sets in each hand, one was sent Mana's way quite carelessly, just to cut her and show her that this was serious business, the other one opened up to straight-up cut Ayushi's head off.</p><p>Mana leaped back avoiding the strike, she wasn't expecting it but the man didn't mean to hit her that hard so it helped. She removed a kunai knife from her weapon pouch and got ready to block any follow-up attacks. The archive man's scissor blades snapped together driving the blades deep into Ayushi's neck and sending streams of blood down the man's neck. The girl was standing there speechless, as the blood of the holy man dripped on the ancient carpet she was shaking in disbelief. How the mission could have gone so wrong, how could she have failed it so badly? Where did this even come from!? The archive keeper just snapped out of nowhere!</p><p>"Who do you think you're kidding, Konoha's Sorceress, do you think I don't know of your team's stunt in the Police Force?" the keeper smiled sadistically at her as he clenched the blades again sending more blood from Ayushi's neck onto the floor. "After that thing the three of you delinquents pulled, did you honestly think I'd let you in with some loser? Do you even know what's contained within these walls? All the information on Konohagakure that one might need: names, addresses, histories, intel on all missions ever done in this village. You silly child, it was your head I should've snipped off!"</p><p>Ayushi smiled breaking the archive man's concentration.</p><p>"Please, this is all just a big misunderstanding" the man laughed out stuffing a fist into the end of the scissor blades and pushing it further, initially blood shot out from Ayushi's knuckle but then the scissor set just broke into two blades with a loud clang and the entire thing fell onto the floor. "I assumed you'd be this protective over the archive right after the Kage Summit but I hope you won't be mad for the carpet. I decided not to avoid your attack because it could not possibly hurt me, also it would undoubtedly convince you that I am the real thing."</p><p>The scissor-wielding keeper backed off and walked right behind the counter. Mana was still shaking with shock and surprise but Ayushi gave her a thumb off, "Don't worry, young Mana, your mission is not affected by this at all, I've been cut and stabbed and burnt so many times that pain doesn't even affect me anymore, my satisfaction with my stay has not decreased in any way, not unless you want to call this sidequest of ours off, that is." As he spoke the giant wounds on his neck closed in almost instantly.</p><p>The young ninja magician tried her best to regain composure and nodded, the archive keeper sighed and put his signature on the permission to access the archive letting Ayushi and Mana in. As the two entered the first-floor archive hall and witnessed the vast storage of scrolls inside the girl could feel Ayushi's breath by her ear, she gently leaned to his side.</p><p>"Did you see that?"</p><p>"Yes, I felt like killing myself in shame when you got hurt, please do not pull this ever again, Ayushi-san" Mana whispered slightly louder than she'd have wanted, making the archive keeper bang on the glass of the door with his steel scissors again.</p><p>"Not that, I was talking about the reaction of the archive keeper, that was not the kind of reaction we got from the Police Force, was it?" the Guru reminded Mana of the difference in protection in the two buildings, after finally realizing just what the Guru meant the girl nodded.</p><p>"Why do you think that was?" Ayushi tried to provoke some strange process of thought within the girl, Mana scratched her cheek and wiped a strand of hair out of her way.</p><p>"Well, I think that the village values information more than people. After all, at this day and age leak of information would cause deaths of many, one escaped prisoner means little compared to that." Mana theorized.</p><p>"Correct, do you think that is right?" the man asked to which Mana reacted by violently shaking her head almost instantly.</p><p>"No! A person's life is worth an infinite number of scrolls with information for me, it is the most expensive thing in the world and I'd never choose any kind of information over a person's life."</p><p>"Even if it cost the lives of many? Say it was the password from the cell of a criminal who had the Tailed Beast sealed into him, escape of that man means an attack against Konoha by a Jinchuuriki and then a Tailed Beast being unleashed when he dies, what would your choice be then?" the Guru tried to provoke Mana again and again but the girl still shook her head, albeit in a much more controlled and restrained manner.</p><p>"Even still, I'd save the life of the person I'd be saving and then fight that criminal and the Tailed Beast myself, I'd sacrifice my life before I'd let anyone die. If that criminal killed anyone I'd just blame myself because it was my responsibility to stop him as the person who chose to protect the life instead of information."</p><p>Ayushi smiled and facepalmed himself, he wasn't disappointed or sad, his expression looked happy as he smiled with the full extent of his abilities.</p><p>"My, my, you're just a spectacular and unusual piece of work... You've almost sold me over to your cause with those speeches of yours, you know." The man complimented Mana's vocal abilities as the two proceeded to walk further down into the archive.</p><hr/><p>Ayushi was spending entire hours researching scrolls, Mana thought that she was a history fan but even she couldn't understand how he could just keep going like that. She even found some scrolls of herself to run through just to pass time. She kept in her mind about what she heard Ayushi say – he was just a child during the War of the Earth and Moon. That meant that he was alive when Princess Satsuhimasa destroyed the Moon if that legend was true. He saw the Earth covered with whatever punishment the First People had in store for the clan that broke the peace between the two, he even grew up in those times, could that have been the secret behind the man's incredible vitality?</p><p>This was straight out insane! Why would a man like that, someone who lived in the period when the most powerful ninja could destroy and reshape entire moons as they saw fit, the period when the Tailed Beasts were created and tamed by ninja, be interested in her? Why would a man like that spend time researching the history of some nobody with no hopes of being somebody like Mana? Could he really have believed that Mana was ever destined for something more than nothing at all? What reasons did he have to believe that she had anything to claim from this world based on her legacy?</p><p>Mana's thoughts of self-doubt made her a little sad, she peeked at the man being completely absorbed into his research. Sometimes he turned back to her and asked her something like the names of her parents and things like that but some things even Mana herself could not tell. She didn't know the names of her grandparents, both father's and mother's side. She didn't know much about any other relatives besides her parents, she recalled father saying that his brother died early in his ninja life long ago, first mission outside the village, in fact.</p><p>No, Ayushi's research and his claims were preposterous, how could she, of all people have been someone special? An Uchiha or a Kaguya, her? No way! Mana was just Mana, she could never have been anything more than that. The girl stood up and slowly walked up to Ayushi, looking over his search. He was reading a scroll in some language she could barely even recognize, the whole world spoke one language – a heavily modified version of the language that the First People spoke in.</p><p>There were different dialects of this language in between different historical periods and so sometimes it was almost impossible to read them without a translation scroll. This could've been one of those occasions but why was he reading into so long ago? Either her roots were so celestial that they reached into ages ago, or Ayushi couldn't find any clan roots in Mana even in that period, that last thought made Mana especially sad. One thing was being told she was nothing special, the entirely other was have it be confirmed that she was so much of nothing that one had to tread into the times of the First People to even grasp at straws of something special in her... This quest was a bad idea.</p><p>The girl crept back and dropped into her chair, she covered her head and let her wild hair flow freely covering her face in the darkness. Poor Mana could hear her own troubled and sad breathing. What a foolish girl she was, ever thinking she could've been some princess or a descendant of some special clan or a family... Mana wanted to slap herself so hard that she'd return to reality, trying to force the violent and sad thoughts away the girl just returned to her scroll and started run over it one more time. Time just flew by like that...</p><hr/><p>"I think I've got the entire story..." Ayushi leaned back in his chair, he was really tired, it was seen on his face. Even his several ages old forty-year-old body looked wrinkled and worn out by all that running around looking for the right scroll, climbing the ladder to pick it up, and all that reading. Mana slowly picked herself off the chair, whatever Ayushi would have said would've just crushed her dreams, both knowing that her parents adopted her and that she was just an ordinary good for nothing kid were equally depressing things to think about.</p><p>"Lay it on me, then, Ayushi-san" Mana uttered with a tired and still a little depressed voice.</p><p>The man looked pretty happy by his discovery, he laughed out and relaxed into his chair. "Well, I think it's the best answer for you, you'll really be most happy to hear it... First of all, you're the child of your parents, that much is for sure, you're not some princess or an heiress of a clan adopted into an ordinary family to learn humility, truth be told you have no royal blood in you whatsoever. Also, technically you are completely clanless, completely as if in one hundred percent."</p><p>Mana shook her head, her stare was both confused and a bit annoyed, "Wait for a second, I thought that was impossible..." she grunted out in a voice completely taken over by exhaustion and irritation.</p><p>"So have I, apparently there is a way to be completely clanless, that's to be a descendant of a clan that is not technically a clan. When is a clan not a clan, young Mana?" Ayushi kept poking at Mana and trying to provoke her interest even if the whole time he was the only one excited by it all.</p><p>"When it completely rejects all the principles of a ninja clan: it does not cross-breed with the other branches of the clan or inbreed, it does not cultivate ninja, it does not teach them any secret techniques nor does it have any bloodlines, a clan one can be a part of not only by being born into it but also being accepted into it." Ayushi kept waving his arms like a child who had just been bought his favorite toy by his mother. He apparently made the discovery of the century and suddenly the historian within Mana's heart also started hammering at her indifferent and depressed façade with a pickaxe of emotion and confusion.</p><p>"Wait... What? There was a clan like that?" Mana asked in complete disbelief to which Ayushi energetically nodded in agreement.</p><p>"Just to be sure, could you tell me how you graduated the Academy?" Ayushi asked Mana, the girl sighed, she wasn't a fan of talking about that story, mostly she just remembered it and then just instantly placed it below layers of other memories.</p><p>"Well, as a little child... Fine... Even now, I really dislike using techniques that I did not invent myself. I dunno, it just feels like... Like I'm taking someone's heart away. Someone put parts of themselves, their own feelings and thoughts into those techniques, they told their own history about the friends they had, enemies they faced into those techniques and I could never even hope to understand those feelings, how could I ever use such techniques without understanding that sort of thing?" After hearing Mana's reply, Ayushi shrieked like a little girl, honestly, seeing a grown man act like that shaking his hands and shrieking in joy made the magician laugh a little.</p><p>"So naturally this would've been a problem in the Academy, the graduation test and a very important part of the Academy's curriculum is mastering and using the textbook Academy techniques to their maximum potential. I just refused to do that, even during the early mock exams, so the other teachers said that I was a pathetic loser and a silly excuse of a ninja and that they'd fail me every time and that I should just give up..."</p><p>Mana scratched her eyes, she really thought that she'd cry at least a little having remembered all those memories, all those words and angry faces shouting at her. It definitely made her cry as a child, little Mana scratched her eyes until they started bleeding from wiping her childish tears. Father and mother kept telling her to just give up as well, they said that it wasn't wrong believing what Mana believed and that it was OK to not be a ninja because of those beliefs. Still, even knowing well she'd fail little Mana kept showing up in one mock exam after another, getting yelled at and having the other students laugh at her.</p><p>"One day the sensei in Academy found me meditating on the swings, just sitting on them in perfect balance, completely snoozed off. The man was really impressed by the spiritual depth of such powerful meditation mastery of a child of such a young age, he asked me to show some ninjutsu to him, any ninjutsu at all and so I showed him the techniques I invented myself as a kid. He was blown away knowing that a kid invented ninjutsu techniques all by herself even if they were pretty much harmless. He passed me during my exam just because I showed him any of the techniques I've invented. The only condition of his was that I'd actually learn the techniques I was meant to know, just in case I'd need them to save my life someday and if I'd reconsidered in that case."</p><p>Ayushi smiled, "I see" he noted. "This belief is native to a very special but also very... Ordinary clan of ninja – "the Wandering Ninja"."</p><p>"Wandering ninja?" Mana leaned her head to the side as the name confused her, all ninja had villages, there could've been no other kind of ninja. All samurai had masters, those without masters were known as Ronin, they were romanticized but usually not overly respected in a professional environment. Ninja without a village were just straight out rogues or nukenin. Rogues could've been killed by anyone at any moment, just being a rogue was a crime punishable by death. There could've never been such a thing as a "Wandering Ninja", they would've automatically been labeled rogue and killed on the spot.</p><p>"Yes, they were descendants of the First Men just like all the other ninja but they never joined any of the ninja villages. You see, after the War of the Clans, the people decided to settle down, live safer by living in a bunch sparking what was known as the Settlement period. That was the time when clans united and formed villages. Some ninja like the ancestors of the wandering ninja decided that uniting and the advantage of not being in a state of constant survival environment was just not worth total subjugation, they loved their freedom more than their lives."</p><p>The young magician still could not believe that. Something like that sounded too crazy to have ever been true or taken as true by anyone. Someone like Guru Ayushi couldn't have possibly believed in that, right?</p><p>"Initially what happened mirrored your first thoughts of what'd happen, by refusing to ally with any of the villages these wandering ninja became enemies of all of the villages and have been hunted down for decades just like the rogues. Their ranks started to thin, the mass genocide of their kind proved as a further motivator for a ninja to finally pick a side. Then the genius solution came for the wandering ninja – learn to entertain. And so the wandering ninja became perfect dancers, gamblers, salesmen, singers, and entertainers of all kinds. They traveled the world visiting village after village, some of them were just plain con artists, most were actually good entertainers with an exceptional heart for business. Explains why your mother is so amazing at managing her café, even if she did trade the ragged clothes of a wanderer into a suit. Wandering ninja were roamers, they adapted and survived. That also explains your exceptional skill at stage magic that all those posters around the village praise so much." Ayushi finally concluded.</p><p>Mana wasn't sure about what to even think about it. She had heard some similar stories from her father, something about wandering tribes of ninja but it never went into too much detail. There must've been some painful stories about that. A smile covered Mana's pretty childish face for the first time in a while that day. The rain started pounding quietly but relentlessly into the windows from outside as the night caught the two unprepared. The girl stood up and made a small lap around the table she was sitting near.</p><p>"So... My people, can I maybe meet them someday?" she asked with excitement, Ayushi sighed.</p><p>"It's a long story but I'll try to sum it up soon. Your story about you being so original with your craft, it actually mirrors the beliefs of the people, your exotic skin, and facial structure matches the story too – wandering ninja accepted people from all around into their midst, as long as they had dismissed all previous ties, the dark-skinned giants of Kumo procreated with all sorts of people, even some Uchiha rejects which I why your hair looks so much like theirs, making a unique race with no bloodline, that's why you looked so unusual to me. You're not an alien or anything, you're just a mixture of what're some of the best features of several people."</p><p>Mana shook her head energetically, "No, I don't care about that, tell me more about my people, where are they now!?" she yelled out, the archive keeper must've been long gone as he didn't really care about the noise she made.</p><p>"Well... There's really no other way, I'll tell the whole story to you, the whole story of your conception and the events that lead to it... So it all began with a visit, the Wandering ninja came to Konoha, the timing was a little odd as the Fire Lord himself appeared to have decided to visit his strongest land. Naturally, there was tension between the Fire Lord and the Wandering Ninja as they obeyed no master and the Feudal Lords are the masters of all ninja, even now. As the wandering ninja did their thing, played with the local kids, gambled, danced, and sung in the streets the councilmen of Konoha decided to get onto the Fire Lord's good side... He decided to eliminate all of the Wandering Ninja. He sent a young genin – a man who would eventually become your father to spy on them, they then staged a murder right in front of your father's eyes making him report that the Wandering ninja killed and robbed a villager of their money. With the Fire Lord already quite tense about those guys the decree was passed, no one really would've cared or missed ninja that belonged to no one..."</p><p>Mana kept listening, from Ayushi's tone she already knew that this was not a happy story, she already knew where it was headed just because the man was so persistent to tell her the whole story. She was visibly becoming sadder and sadder.</p><p>"Well, the hit happened, all of the wandering ninja were slaughtered, they were great tricksters and entertainers but they fared not too well in combat against trained ninja who got the drop onto them. Only one young girl survived, that girl was taken into your father's family, the two then married. Since she adapted to the village life and never tried to recreate her old life, band the new wandering ninja, the village just left your mother alone. I believe you already know the remaining history, you lived it yourself..."</p><p>Mana and Ayushi stayed quiet. Knowing that she actually had special blood, the blood of the wandering ninja. The world's most beloved entertainers, dancers, and singers, the most freedom-loving people in the world. That actually calmed Mana's heart, she was special, she was special because there was very little but her pride in her heritage that made her special.</p><p>Her belief came from nowhere else but her heart, it wasn't her clan mentality that made Mana into who she was, it was her own free decision and maybe it was the blood of the wandering ninja speaking but... Mana loved that, that she was made and defined by that freedom, by being who she wanted to be, the magician actually honored the legacy of her people and with the blood still in her veins, she had their legacy in her hands. Her people went extinct, sure, but they never were so much into being pureblood maniacs anyway. In a way, Mana was still royalty, her mother's own little princess, the last survivor, last half-blood of her people who carried within them the blood of all the united countries of the world.</p><p>Mana's ancestors had no relation to a village, they went above that, ideals to them spoke higher and were more important than any village. A village was but an establishment and ideals went higher than that. Knowing her roots made many changes. All of a sudden knowing that there was nothing special about her but at the same time knowing that she was unique in her own beloved way made Mana feel greater than the village, greater than everyone else.</p><p>Her children would be the inheritors of that will of freedom, that belief that one's own mind and decisions, one's freedom was above any authority and beyond their reach, and for that, the girl thanked her mother and her people. Even if they weren't any elites of the ninja world, more like the rejects, Mana still thought that they were the best tribe she could've hailed from, Ayushi was right – she really did get the best possible answer!</p><p>Guru looked outside and stood up, stretching his neck. "Well then, now that we've got that out of the way, I suppose we can head for the hotel? Tomorrow will be my final day here, the people aren't as affected by the death of the Kage as I've thought they were, now I am needed most in Kirigakure where the major reforms are taking place. You, young girl, were the only thing of interest in this village at the moment with the seminar out of the way." Ayushi's hand pet Mana, he tried not to come off as rude so he didn't keep his hand on the top of her head for too long. Mana put her jacket back on as well as her hat, the great Guru Ayushi turned off the lights as the two left the archives. After the two left the building Mana heard a large lock clanging signaling the archives being locked up.</p><p>Her origins were known now, it was a gift from Guru Ayushi, and what a gift it was!</p>
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<a name="section0073"><h2>73. Psychosis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rain had already pretty much died out when Mana and Ayushi left into the streets of the village, leaving the archive behind. The magician wasn't sure if her guest felt the same way, but she definitely felt like she left the archive a much happier and more complete person than she entered. The prospect of being some long-forgotten heir to some clan, having some amazing larger than life ability, maybe more exactly the knowledge that she couldn't be one of those people, the reminder of that fact was what plagued the girl when entering. Now all those thoughts were behind her.</p><p>Mana still felt some inferiority over that fact, the fact that most students in the Academy were special. Usually, the people who enrolled to be ninja were the descendants of clan members, they really had very little choice in the matter. When one's father was a famed Inuzuka hound master, known for his prodigious skill in the clan's techniques it was pretty much expected for one to be able to follow up on one's parents' legacy. There was much pressure but also clarity and hope. While one was pressured into joining the Academy and becoming a ninja, because of their clan member status they were looked at as if they were already elite in the making by default.</p><p>On the other hand, the clanless children were looked down on, they had all the other jobs to choose from. They'd bring shame to no one if they chose the profession of a baker, florist, vendor owner, etc. They could've made perfect janitors or caravan runners. The only place for a clanless ninja in the battlefield was to either make the casualty statistic, to make the bravery of the elite sound even greater and more built on blood and flesh than it actually was, or to become one of the countless filler ninja in the armies. Become a grey mouse, a page in a large novel, no, an entire address book. Pages to be torn away when a cruel reader became mad and started peeling away at their book, as the Feudal Lords sent their ninja to die on meaningless assignments.</p><p>To say that Mana had different treatment in the Academy was to flat out lie, no one ever expected great things from her, they didn't, nor do they have now, the reason to. She was born to a family of an average ninja, with a greater than average reputation, and an owner of a café. Honestly, her best bet for a profession would've been to inherit her mother's business, she had no place in the ninja world, then there were her magic shows in which it was safe to say the girl was largely successful. What point was it for her to be a ninja, most kids and teachers looked at Mana as a showoff, as someone who would back out at the first sign of pain, trouble, and blood in her sight. On the other hand that was what made the teachers praise her more when she actually did something right. When no one expected one to succeed, they were only more surprised when they actually did so.</p><p>"Fantastic, just outright spectacular, astonishing!" Guru Ayushi kept shouting out looking around at the glowing nocturnal Konoha. Neon signs were a rather recent invention, apparently, there was a ninja somewhere in Kirigakure that could use some sort of poisonous gas that when ignited glowed at a very bright and visually appealing light. It was just what Mana always wanted to see, the amazing abilities of ninja put to other sorts of use, ninjutsu couldn't have been purely a tool of murder, it was what the user made it do that defined it. Everyone's ninjutsu was different, made different by the actions that were done using it.</p><p>Mana couldn't help but smile, on one hand, she was admiring the remains of the intense rain on the ground and the raindrops barely hanging off of the various surfaces, on the other she couldn't have enough of Ayushi's reaction to things. He acted and looked like a child who had seen a train for the first time, so many things, so many gears, so many devices all working in unison. Similarly to that kid, Ayushi was impressed by so many different artificial lights brightening up the nocturnal village and making it look so majestic and almost divine, in a sense.</p><p>"So do you wish to walk around and buy something or do you wish to head back to the hotel? You've been so active today, Guru-san, I'm sure you wish to get some rest." Mana tried to keep up with the Guru who was just running around, people all parted to make space for the man but they always banded together when Mana had to pass making her need to excuse herself to pass every time.</p><p>Guru soon returned with numerous large flasks of sake and a lovely purple umbrella on a bamboo stick. It looked rather traditional and it couldn't have been too cheap, the strange thing was that Mana could have probably made one just like that herself if she had the appropriate cloth.</p><p>These craftsmen must've been making a fortune in this world where all everyone knew how to do was fight, without these men this world would've been lost, all those simple pleasures of life would've been lost and even the meanest fighters had something they loved most of all and needed the craftsmen for: some loved smoking, that needed someone to make their cigarettes out of God knew what, also the various fancy lighters that most ninja used, some loved to just sit down and rest, they needed all sorts of bedroom things to enjoy that simple pleasure. Fighting was overrated, an ancient and needless, also very underpaid and risky craft. One could've made their life making umbrellas instead...</p><p>"I don't have too much money, I think I'll just make do with these! Come on, let's go back to the hotel!" he cheered after taking a sip from one of the flasks right on the street.</p><p>Mana tapped her leg angrily, "You shouldn't be drinking, you know, this is a public spot and drinking is one of the ninja vices..."</p><p>Guru laughed with a full mouth making some sake leak out all over his beard and down his hairy and bulky chest.</p><p>"Hah, that's the best part, I'm not a ninja anymore! I thought as a descendant of the most freedom-loving people to ever walk this Earth you'd appreciate a man doing what he wants. Don't worry, I won't share any, you're WAY too young for that, what are you... Thirteen, fourteen?"</p><p>"Twelve and a half, doesn't matter, let's go to the hotel, it may not be best for you to be seen drinking like that!" Mana smiled dragging Ayushi gently by his elbow to the hotel room.</p><p>"Heh, girls always look older than they actually are, experience says... Anyways, it's fine, I told you I can't even get drunk, technically it's not even drinking, it's like I'd be sipping water..." Ayushi laughed out like a beast again, his laughter roaring wildly through the crowd. Mana had seen father and his friends drink before, they sipped that thing, just barely let it touch their lips, none of them usually finished more than two or three of those small cups.</p><p>"You're not sipping, you're gulping, quite intensively I must say." Mana tried to contain her laughter inside, Ayushi getting drunk worked so weird, he got drunk for just a single moment - his voice started dragging and slowed down, he became softer and his eyes closed up, his smile twisted his entire face and he blushed. Then it all went away in just a moment and his entire body returned to how it was. It looked just so silly and stupid, Ayushi must've only felt the dizziness for just a moment making him want to get drunk more and more just to experience that feeling. For a man who couldn't feel almost getting his head snipped off, Mana couldn't blame him for wanting to feel something...</p><p>"Let's go, it's not too far away." Mana kept calmly encouraging the drunk-then-not-drunk-anymore Ayushi to stagger-walk back to the hotel.</p><hr/><p>If Mana thought Ayushi's drinking habit was weird before, it really got out of control when he didn't need to worry about walking, the man just dropped onto his butt crossing his legs, and started cleaning one flask after the other, tossing them aside and letting the small wooden containers roll further away. He must've really longed that feeling, the feeling of being vulnerable and dizzy, the feeling of some sort of happiness and carelessness. Mana wanted to be strict on his drinking but she just couldn't. This was a man who had the entire world asking him for answers, now that he had answered all he was asked, didn't he have the right to relax the way he saw fit?</p><p>"You know what..." Ayushi started slurring slightly, his speech dragged on, he started speaking slowly and omitting words. "I've lived for so long with little to no activity, always talking excuses and... Oh... Alright..." Ayushi's speech fixed itself from the last flask of sake being emptied. Any living man would've undoubtedly been either dead or about to be from the excessive amount of alcohol consumed in such a short span of time.</p><p>"I mean, so many people came to me for help, they kept begging me to kill this tyrant or do this heroic deed and I kept denying their requests, offer other kinds of help. Gather monetary support for their villages and offer spiritual guidance. Meeting you made me wonder... Maybe your way, the little more hands-on approach was actually better. What if instead of gifting monetary support, which got plundered by the same tyrant I tried to help them recover from anyways, I just stood by their side and used intimidation to repel his forces? What if instead of cowering behind my retirement I used my medical skills again to save lives, to create a medication that'd eliminate and heal pain? What if I learned how to degenerate my own cells to the state where donating them could actually help people instead of killing them faster?"</p><p>Ayushi downed a whole other flask of sake down his throat and tossed the flask aside. "Makes one wonder, huh?" he slurred out again.</p><p>Mana wasn't entirely sure just what Ayushi was getting to, just which part of this was his drunken delirium, and what was actually his intention? Could her conviction to her cause actually cause the man to reconsider his centuries-old vow to remain passive and neutral and distant from all conflicts and problems of the world? How could it have been so? Mana wanted to tell him that he shouldn't take her ideas too seriously but...</p><p>What if he did do what he spoke of? What if he did cure pain and sickness and people could get his cell treatment finally? What an amazing dream of a world would that be? Ayushi's authority could stop wars, his panaceas could cure sickness and unhappiness, his unseen prowess in the medical field could bring back the recently dead and even grant children for those who cannot conceive them. This man just wondered if he should make the world perfect and Mana was about to keep him wondering.</p><p>"I think it'd be selfish of you not to do so..." Mana uttered the words which she instantly regretted and slapped her own lips for uttering. The girl stood up and turned around, bolting out of the room and shutting the door, locking it behind herself. Her heart was thumping and her chest was jumping up and down from the intense and stressed breathing. How could she have said that? It was selfish of her to wish anything of the sort to be done. Mana slowly unlocked and entered the room, she was careful, a single word or a bad stare from Ayushi would've sent her back but he didn't do any of those things.</p><p>"So you've decided to watch over me while I rest? Thank you, young Mana, I will certainly feel safer this way. I think you're right, it would be selfish of me not to use all of my gifts to benefit humanity, the Guru Ayushi that will leave Konoha tomorrow will be a whole new Guru Ayushi. I shall create a better world encouraged by a brave and lovely young lady in Konoha. What a wonderful future for our world..." Ayushi slurred and then recovered again, sitting on his bed and slipping his cloth off of his chest, the man kept his ragged pants on and fell asleep almost instantly. He must've been really tired after all those seminars and walking around the village and researching Mana's history after all...</p><p>Mana carefully settled down on the floor by the door, she made sure to shut the windows and set some wires, hooking them up to fragile objects. If anyone tried to apply pressure to the window, the fragile objects would've fallen down and broken, something like that would wake Mana up. Wire trapping was quite common among ninja, it would've worked against the more common ways of entering through the closed window like cutting out the glass or trying to open it from the other side but if a strong wind blew against it nothing would've happened.</p><p>Slowly Mana blacked out and slipped to sleep, she was just as tired as Ayushi was, chasing after Sugemi last night and barely having any sleep at all after that. All the roaming and worrying over her friends and the Guru also tired her out. While Guru shouldn't have been in any danger she protected him like he needed constant surveillance of her protection. Mana's standards were just that high, now that her team was disbanded she had to make sure to do her best, to prove to Hokage that the decision to not suspend or strip her rank of ninja away was the right one. Suddenly thoughts started feeling murky and the girl's mind drifted off into the black void of slumber...</p><hr/><p>Heat. Smoke. Mana's eyes shot wide open only to reveal her own worst nightmare realized. Guru Ayushi was covered in flames completely blacked out, the whole room was filled with smoke and she started coughing almost instantly after returning to consciousness. It took the magician a moment to realize that everything that she was seeing was actually real, that it wasn't a dream or an illusion but it was painfully real. She could feel her body starting to drift away and feel weak and sleepy from the smoke. The need to move hit her head in an instant, the pain in her thighs was meaningless, Mana fought through it forcing her body up. The girl weaved a couple of handseals shooting a burst of wind chakra from her palms shooting her body up onto the air, she stopped breathing - the highest parts of the floor were where the smoke was the thickest.</p><p>Mana leaped over the wall of flames, while in mid-air the ninja tossed a kunai knife to the side, she heard the window break and the wires pulling a vase down. That meant that the windows weren't trifled with, Mana had her back against the door and would've been woken up by it being pushed, how could this have happened?!</p><p>Mana shot more air currents from her palm to force the flames aside for just a moment in which she landed and grabbed onto Ayushi's ragged pants. Mana aimed her palms at the wall, she had just one try to make this jump just right, anything less than perfect will kill both her and Ayushi and she had no time to hesitate or do this any different way - the smoke was slowly killing her, she could feel it.</p><p>A mad burst of chakra sent air currents that bashed into both the bed and the wall, once again splitting the fire apart and shooting Mana's body off of where she and Ayushi were. The two were propelled to the window. The girl shouted out in pain as she felt painful sensations over multiple spots on her body - she didn't make it perfect enough, she and Ayushi still got cut up by some glass.</p><p>Desperate not to lose consciousness Mana shot out the final gust of wind chakra to cushion their fall. She still hit the ground pretty hard, the girl heard her clothes tearing and felt some gravel and stone etching into her body, the cuts were bleeding and the dirt that got into those wounds burned. Still, the pain was the only thing that reminded her that she was still alive, dead people felt no pain. The magician peeked at Ayushi, his body appeared to have no more flames on it after the second burst of wind from Mana, still, he looked bad. His body was almost completely charred. Mana messed up...</p><hr/><p>The girl kept scratching at her wounds angrily, as if she wanted to open them, wanted to punish herself, and bleed out in the hospital waiting room. How could that have happened? The room was completely safe, everything was done according to the procedure as taught in the Academy, where could the fire have come from? There were no gas leaks, this was a classical hotel, it had no gas lines going through or below it. From what the magician had heard Ayushi's was the only room that was set ablaze. None of this made any sense whatsoever. She messed up, she's such a loser! The Fifth made a huge mistake, she should've kept Sugemi and Shimo but dismissed Mana. Ironically enough, as much of a crybaby as Mana was, she didn't cry a single tear. This was too absurd and she was too tired to even cry.</p><p>She was officially the worst ninja in existence, she wasn't sure who took the second place but she beat that person by a longshot. How could anyone come close to her idiocy, the world's most famous figure, loved by all, the world's spiritual leader almost died on her watch. The girl shouted out in frustration and punched the wall, she cried out in pain as she drove some small shards of glass deeper into her palm, crying from pain Mana removed them, the medical ninja that healed her before must've missed those. For all people to burn that night, it was Mana that should've burned, she felt so embarrassed that she was about to burst aflame at that moment.</p><p>Two ninja walked out, one of them must've been a student as he couldn't have been much older than in his mid-twenties, that was the age when medical ninja usually start working on actual surgeries and treating actual people. The other one looked like a seasoned medical ninja. The younger one walked up to Mana and shook his head.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Mana-chan, we did what we could but his body is burnt to the point where anyone else would have died. We kept him alive just to use parts of him as his cells, technically now his cells are damaged enough to use them to heal people successfully" he spoke sadly, scratching his neck. It was clear that he was ashamed of himself to talk about a living being that way.</p><p>"If you woke him up... What if he healed himself?" Mana wondered, she was talking nonsense, she was not herself, the stress and fear for that man's life made her almost lose it completely.</p><p>The older ninja stepped in, "That's possible, he is Guru Ayushi after all but that would cause him so much pain it is just as likely that he'd just pass out, either that or die from the pain. Who knows, everything we do is uncharted waters with this man. Think about it, the way he is now we can heal everyone, we can cure incurable diseases using his damaged cells, we can even heal your father back to how he was, he may even be a ninja again..."</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and grabbed covered her face, her whole body was shaking in fear and the fact that she didn't know what to do. No. She knew perfectly, she was Nakotsumi Mana, Konoha's Sorceress and she had no right to accept that offer. She'd screw herself and the people she loved but she'd do the right thing, she'd save the man's life even if it would have meant death. "No... We wake him up. He'll heal himself, I... I believe that he will."</p><p>"That's just stupid, Mana-chan!" the younger medical ninja shouted out, once again stepping in. "We've got no reason to believe it'd work, we'd just be torturing him by waking him up, if we kept him sleeping we could heal hundreds of hopeless patients every day!"</p><p>"It... It wouldn't be right, save Ayushi-san's life. At least try to..." Mana spoke even if her tongue flipped on autopilot, she was completely dazed off, it all felt like the worst dream she had in her life, she just rejected her father's salvation just to get a chance to save one man's life. This happened on the same day that she asked that man to save her father's life and he said he couldn't. Mana was the worst daughter in the universe... Arguments could've been made for being the worst person alive.</p><p>"This is stupid, I won't let some insane brat..." the younger medical ninja started talking trying to storm back into the ward but the older medical ninja stopped him.</p><p>"This is unethical, completely immoral and gambling on a man's life, you're asking us to destroy a panacea just to do something which can kill the man, just because it has a slight chance of saving him. It's disgraceful and despicable, I approve of it." Mana would've been completely taken aback by this expression of the old ninja's opinion but it appeared that the younger one actually beat the girl by one second.</p><p>"No! You can't seriously be..." the younger medical ninja tried to stop the older one who was about to enter the ward where the stench of burnt flesh was spreading from.</p><p>"This girl is the Guru's bodyguard, for the duration of his stay in the village, she is in charge of decisions like this. She's got the balls and lack of moral sense to try something as mad as this, I can respect that." the older ninja disappeared into the ward, unwittingly the younger one followed. Mana sat back down, she was shaking. She just confirmed her own worst fears, there was no line she wouldn't cross to save a life. Even if the person begged her to kill them, even if they were doomed to a life of pain. Ayushi recognized that darkness in her heart long ago... A pitiful and selfish being like Mana shouldn't have ever been born...</p><p>A deafening shout of pain, one that froze entire bodies and hearts of everyone who could've heard it echoed through the entire hospital. Even Guru Ayushi who was hurt in every way possible shouted from pain. There was nothing to be done to help him. Mana grabbed hold to her ears and pressed her own hair so hard she thought she'd tear it off. All of a sudden the screams stopped, a minute later the completely shocked younger ninja walked out, he placed his hand on Mana's shoulder and gently tried to force her into the ward. The magician didn't even resist it, she despised herself more than anything in the world at that moment.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes, she was afraid to face what she had done, a gentle "It's okay, you can look" snapped her out from her despair. The body that greet Mana's eyes was a completely healthy and sleeping one. Guru Ayushi healed everything in an instant, his body healed itself subconsciously right when the body was woken up, Ayushi's new skin looked so pale and so soft. He had just grown it all from nothingness, strangely enough, his whole build changed, the fire decimated his muscles and all the fat in his body.</p><p>Now Ayushi looked slim. As if a baby who had just been born and has never trained a moment in his life. His body healed only the bare minimum of his muscular structure. This was a medical miracle, but the cost at which it was achieved scared the magician. She forced the man to be woken up, she didn't know nor did she ever assumed he'd be OK, she just wanted that his life would be saved. Somehow...</p><p>Ayushi peeled his eyes open, he smiled at Mana. "I believe a sign of gratitude is in order, you've just saved my life, young lady, while I've healed myself from much worse before, I needed my full consciousness to do so. I put myself to sleep consciously when the fire got really bad."</p><p>Mana looked the man right in the eyes, she was hit by a realization all of a sudden. There was no way for the fire to just happen out of nowhere, the windows were sealed, the doors were closed and Mana had all of the entries well protected. Furthermore, no one in this world wanted to harm the man. Now that the girl finally saw the man's face without that fuzzy beard to cover him up, now that she saw his real face, all of his mimics. When she saw the man smile at her and speak to her... She realized something that made her doubt the reality of this dreamlike experience.</p><p>"You... You caused that fire, didn't you?" Mana uttered a single question.</p><p>Ayushi smiled and nodded. "I heard so much about your beliefs, I just wanted to see if what you told me is real, I wanted to see how deep your devotion to the ideals you spoke of went. If you were ready to cross the boundaries that no one else would cross, in other words, what were the limits of your conviction. Apparently, there are none, that is good to know, I plan to embody your ideals and so not having any lines to get in the way will make me much more efficient at creating the perfect world. I can finally stop being selfish, just like you told me, young Mana."</p><p>Ayushi shrugged and pointed at all of the medical ninja, "Now, you can go home to your family, affirm your father that, eventually, I'll heal his injury, I'll heal all the injuries, all the sicknesses in the world, I'll even cure war. I'll relieve you of your duty, a duty which is unfit for such small shoulders of such a cute little girl. I'll fulfill your goal for you."</p><p>Mana walked up to Ayushi. "You could've killed both of us!" she told him staring the man right in the eyes.</p><p>"There was never such a danger, I could not have died even if the flames ran their course, eventually someone would've either cut off large enough chunks for me to grow myself from them anew or would've woken me up, then I'd have reanimated you, success depending of course on how much time had passed..."</p><p>Mana staggered back, it was like she was talking to a whole another person. A person who adopted Mana's beliefs but just found out that there were no ethical or moral boundaries to stop them. Even worse, this man had so much power that he could have backed off his wild claims, unlike Mana to whom all of that was just a childish dream she swore her life to. The magician knew she'd fail eventually, that she'd die somewhere in the battlefield, alone and forgotten after failing to stop all war and violence. Ayushi could've actually made it happen. The magician's childish heart couldn't decide if she was supposed to be horrified or happy. At that moment she lingered on both. She wanted to shout out to Ayushi that all of it was just her stupid childish dream but she couldn't, she genuinely believed that naïve dream and she couldn't deny that even if she'd lie doing so.</p><p>The girl just collapsed on a chair nearby the man. He gently stroke her cheek with his new baby skin. "Oh, maybe it's too stuffy here, doctor, please open the window. Or better yet I should probably leave, after all, there's no point in me being here - I'm completely healed. Oh well, I'll leave in the morning."</p><p>The older medical ninja from before stepped closer to the Guru and objected.</p><p>"Silly doctor, you cannot stop me..." was Guru's only reply.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0074"><h2>74. Idiocy That'll Change The World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time Mana had woken up in the waiting room, it was early morning. She was surprised that she was allowed to just pass out waiting for a patient to recover like that. Almost instantly the magician jumped up and tried to peek into the ward where Ayushi was left in after the fire he had caused to test Mana. She had that silly reason in her mind even though she wasn't entirely sure why Ayushi had done that. He said that he wanted to make up for the pain that he had caused and yet he caused the most pain to her with that last stunt.</p><p>Truth be told, Mana was angry at Ayushi, not in a way that made her hate the man or anything, no blood vengeance was sworn. She was just very angry at him because he made her stress out so much, even more so because he made her deny her father treatment once again. Mana's mission was to protect Ayushi during his stay, make sure his stay was pleasant and yet the man seemed to have gone out of his way to almost kill himself. If that would have happened there'd have been no life as a ninja for Mana. She'd have been eternally dishonored and would carry the stigma as the girl under whose watch Ayushi got hurt.</p><p>The thing with dishonor was that it was one of the worst marks for a ninja. Usually, most cases of shame and dishonoring one's name or clan didn't make one lose their ninja status but it always carried a certain social stigma to it. If a person lets a teammate die or killed them themselves, they'd have always had the name of a "comrade killer" and be treated like scum. At times even rogue ninja were treated with more respect than those with shame. Letting one of the most beloved icons of the ninja world get injured and stay in a comatose state would've made one of the worst social stigmas out there, there'd have been no comparison.</p><p>Mana was surprised to find different people in Ayushi's ward, even the monk's bed spot was filled by some old lady. The girl ran out to the bathroom and fixed her hair, washed her dirty hands and face, and snapped out of her morning snooze, then she tried to find a medical ninja and ask them about what had happened. One was always walking around and it wasn't too tough of a task to fulfill. After walking just down the hall Mana ran into a group of two just walking to a ward near the one where Ayushi was yesterday. The kunoichi raised her hand and stopped them.</p><p>"Excuse me, Guru Ayushi was brought into the ward yesterday, right there, where is he now?" she asked, "I am responsible for his well-being and I am working for the Konohagakure administration so I do have access to this information." The girl added that last bit just in case she was refused the information.</p><p>A medical ninja lady with short blond hair came up closer and explained the situation to Mana in half-whispered speech.</p><p>"Yes, he was here however he had completely recovered after you asked for him to be woken up so we let him go. Well... Actually, he just stood up and left, we couldn't really stop him or anything, technically there wasn't anything wrong with him after he completely healed himself so we had no authority to keep him here."</p><p>Her male colleague smiled at Mana, he seemed to know the girl from the situation that happened last night.</p><p>"Hey, you're that girl who saved his life, right? He was brought here all burnt to a crisp in a pretty much comatose state and you asked to have him woken up, letting his passive use medical jutsu kick in, right? That was some bold call, how did you know it'd work?"</p><p>Mana smiled unpleasantly, she quite honestly didn't, she was disgusted by her own behavior yesterday, and just remembering the darkness in her heart made her puke. That dark gnawing at one's heart of failure, that terrifying prospect of seeing one's most loved people disappointed forced her hand, it was her own selfishness and desire to protect Ayushi's life at all costs, abiding no moral codes and seeing no ethical lines, that forced her to make that call.</p><p>"Lucky shot, I guess..." she tried to play it down but the medical ninja didn't have any of that, he almost started clapping to Mana.</p><p>"Lucky call my ass! You luck out when you win the lottery, to make a call like that, to wake up a barely alive man into a life of eternal incomparable pain and disgust of their own pitiful existence, you must've had really strong reasons for that! Ah, it's OK, I guess you're a magician and a hero, those don't often share their secrets. Anyways, Ayushi-san insisted that we let you sleep up, he said he'd be waiting for you by the gate once you wake up. Remembering your heroism yesterday and Ayushi-san's authority... Well, the hospital was happy to oblige."</p><p>Mana just couldn't take it anymore, she couldn't stomach all that disgusting praise for her own selfishness, her desire to follow her ideals past the line of common sense. She hated her own guts at that moment, after being informed about Ayushi's intents the magician just waved goodbye and wished the medical ninja to have a good day and rushed off to the bathroom. Nausea took Mana over as she bent over the toilet but she couldn't even throw it all out, instead, that sickness in her own self continued to plague her, burn her from inside. With the last resort attempt to push all anger for Ayushi's behavior away Mana breathed in and out and left the bathroom after one last wash of her face and hands, no matter how hard she rubbed, that feeling didn't wash off...</p><p>It wasn't really clear what exactly was that made the magician so angry at herself, maybe it wasn't the fact that she said all those things, asked the burnt body of Ayushi to be forcefully woken up from his comatose state. Maybe it was because part of her actually felt alright about that? Some part of Mana felt like she had acted just how her ideals would've demanded, Mana just was herself, she ordered to save lives at any cost, that's who she was and what she did. It was just that before the question of was saving lives always moral never rose up to her. Not until Ayushi just flat out asked her yesterday, before deciding to test her answer.</p><p>Or maybe it was the fact that she herself denied her father the cure for his pain. She denied her father happiness and his chance to be a ninja, to tinker, to have those stars of hope and glee in his eyes. It was like Mana snuffed those sparks of happiness out herself by demanding Ayushi to be woken up, she didn't ask for his cells, even if the medical ninja suggested taking his cells. Obviously, that would've taken time, researching and cultivating them, Ayushi would've remained comatose but he would've fulfilled his dream - he'd have cured every sickness and injury ever... Yet... That didn't feel right, keeping a man sleeping against his will, that's not what heroes did. Maybe if there was no hope for him at all but... Not like that. Mana covered her tired and teary eyes with the tips of her fingers. She wanted to pummel Ayushi so hard at that moment, for forcing her to do that, to say no to her family's happiness. For fueling that clash between her ideals and her own personal happiness and that of others.</p><p>No. Mana wasn't always moral, she didn't do the right thing all of the time and that was painful. Up until that moment, the girl thought she was perfect, that good people always did good things and did so by their own free will, that bad people did bad things by their own free will. Good was good and bad was bad for no other reason than the way things were. In reality, even good people apparently messed up, even good people did immoral things. Then again, did Mana even know what was moral anymore? After telling the medical ninja to wake a burnt man up under the conditions of equal chance that he died from the pain or healed himself before his heart exploded from the pressure.</p><p>There he was, the tall pale figure. Mana walked up to Ayushi and looked him in the eyes. There was this certain shade of anger and hatred in her eyes, not the malevolent kind, the kind that a teenager gets for their parents when they forbid them to leave and meet with their friends in the evening. Ayushi nodded his head and greeted Mana.</p><p>"Didn't exactly feel right to leave without saying my farewells, not to a girl who had changed my life." Ayushi started up the conversation. His tone was different, he was speaking faster, he thought less of what he was saying. Yesterday his tone was more like that of a person under certain substances, he was slurring and slow even before he got drunk, now Ayushi's tone and voice was clear and fast. Words came out so quickly that one used to the man's previous manner of speech had to readjust to the new Ayushi.</p><p>"I wouldn't have minded..." Mana shot back rudely.</p><p>"Would you not have?" Ayushi asked curiously.</p><p>"Yesterday when... When you did that thing... I almost died, YOU almost died, so many things could have gone wrong! If I missed the precision of my chakra control we could've had our throats opened by the glass, I did miss it, just not by that much. Then when they carried us to the hospital and took care of my wounds they asked me about your cells, they said that... That there was not much that could've been done but they suggested cultivating your cells."</p><p>"And you refused" Ayushi butt in, "It takes a great hero to refuse such temptation. You have been offered to make a great moral action - sign under permission for a panacea to be invented. What you did was the right thing - the right thing which seemed grey to you, that thing which your own ideals gave you a suggestion to. Don't you know what I tried to teach you, young Mana? Your ideals are your moral compass, even mine now too! As long as you follow that path you cannot ever get lost." Ayushi was quite energetic with this speech. That wasn't entirely unlike the old Ayushi from yesterday.</p><p>"I had to... I had to say no to my father's cure, I had to do a thing so despicable that it made me hate myself." Mana almost broke down emotionally. She couldn't believe that Ayushi too thought of her having done the right thing, how could he? He was the one who almost died last night, he was the one who went through the absolute limit of pain that a human brain can go through. The only reason he survived was because of his unnatural pain tolerance of having been injured an infinite amount of times during all those years and having grown accustomed to it.</p><p>"That's what being a hero is all about, you of all people should know that choosing this path is to choose the most difficult life for oneself. You'll be hated, publically made fun of and, in the end, you'll choose happiness for those people who scorned you instead of your own. That's the kind of person you are, that's the kind of person I shall try to be as well, from now on. I'll travel the world trying to become more like you, trying to obtain your spirit, your mentality, your personality. Join that with my own skills... I've experienced pain yesterday, yes, but that only made my hatred towards pain to burn even stronger. Instead of focusing my wrath on my own actions or, even more idiotically, you, I chose to focus my spite on pain. I've decided to make it my first target. I'll destroy the world's pain."</p><p>Ayushi's words sounded so mad, the world's spiritual leader, one of the most respected people on the planet got charmed by the ideals of a young girl in Konoha and decided to change to fit her way of life. That should've become the practical example of madness in the definition somewhere in some dictionary. Mana tried to reach out and stop Ayushi from leaving, to try and talk him over but the man turned around and started leaving through the gate, he slightly peeked back at Mana and smiled.</p><p>"I told you spiritual journeys of self-discovery were for the best, young Mana. I shall become a brother of your ideas, once I truly discover how to become more like you, once I learn to absolutely rely on that one ideal, once I start to truly treasure life... "No life is unnecessary" will be my one true mantra from now on!" Ayushi's last words echoed before he left into the thickness of the forest from where he appeared early yesterday morning. For a moment Mana just kept standing there, thinking and refusing to believe this insane visit. She just kept staring at the vastness of the forests and refused to move on.</p><p>A gentle hand reached over her shoulder, it was one of the guards of the village gate, the man smiled and gave the girl a thumb up. "Relax, Mana-chan, this is a mission completed for you" he reported but the magician still refused to believe it.</p><p>Slowly, she turned around and started making her way towards the Konohagakure administration building, she still had to report about the mission, then the painful part came, the part of going home and telling father and mother that she's the worst daughter to have ever been born in the history of time and space. Only an individual worth such a title wouldn't be able to step over oneself to cure the pain of their loved family member.</p><p>As the girl entered the building she couldn't help but let out a disappointing sigh. For the first time since probably ever her mind was completely empty, she was so weighed down by all that had happened that she couldn't even think or feel straight. People thought she was a hero of some sort, she hated herself for that same decision. Apparently, the moral sense was not some sort of absolute either, the more days Mana had spent in this life of hers, the more firmly she started to believe that moral things may not have been some sort of absolute and to be defined by the observer.</p><p>"Sorry, Kiyomi, I've got no viable team members for you at the moment. You're an experienced genin and I will grant you permission to work alone on missions but I cannot put you on a team." Mana overheard a heated conversation inside the Hokage's office. She decided to wait it out, the magician didn't really want to listen in on that but the two people that were talking pretty much forced everyone in the building to listen to them go on by yelling at each other.</p><p>"Then put me up for the Chuunin Exams!" the other, much younger voice yelled out angrily, it seemed to have been something that was repeated over and over again during the conversation as the young lady talking said those words in a rather monotonous but loud nevertheless tone.</p><p>"I told you, that's out of the question, Chuunin Exams are meant to be taken by teams of three. An essential part of the competition is to test the teamwork of the people taking it. Letting one person without a team take it would be unfair. More so, there's not enough time left for you to find one, the sign-ups will be over tomorrow at midnight. Even if you do find a team by then, you won't have a chance to bond and train with them, you will be taking a test of teamwork with people you don't know." At that moment Mana recognized the voice of the first woman, it was the Fifth Hokage. It wasn't that easy to identify the woman, after all, when she spoke to Mana she spoke in a much calmer and pleasant tone. Now the woman sounded like she was really getting annoyed.</p><p>Suddenly, after a loud exclamation of frustration the blonde burst from the room, she was a girl of a similar age to Mana, perhaps a little bit older. Her hair was so blond that it was distracting and her eyes seemed to be completely light blue with little to no intelligible irises. A more experienced ninja or just one who lived in Konoha could've easily identified the Yamanaka clan, the masters of illusions, and mental abilities. Usually, every genjutsu user wasn't too fond of those guys, to the Yamanaka the abilities to manipulate minds came almost as naturally as waving a hand whereas it took great mastery for a common ninja to learn that sort of ability. Yamanaka were the elites of illusions and mind-reading and controlling, they also were unmatched in intelligence gathering and enemy displacement.</p><p>The significantly taller and more muscularly built girl just stood in front of Mana, who had not yet realized that she was blocking the young lady's path. For a moment it was clear that the Yamanaka girl wanted to shoot something offensive or just to bump into the young magician pushing her out of the way but she restrained herself.</p><p>"Please get out of my way" was all that the girl said after walking around Mana and disappearing behind the corner leading to the stairs down and out of the building. The young kunoichi wondered what was that all about before remembering having seen this young lady before, in a much more battle-hardened look, it was back when the Hokage returned with her students to the Administration building back when she, Shimo, and Sugemi originally received the mission to protect Ayushi.</p><p>Mana sighed and entered the Hokage office. The Fifth looked extremely irritated so she just raised her palm to stop the entrant in her tracks, looking scared and confused. Hanasaku took a moment to rub her temples with her fingers to relax and then gestured with her hand to continue.</p><p>"My mission to watch over Guru Ayushi was... I guess successful..." Mana stuttered at the last and the most important part of her report. The Hokage's assistant placed the countless files he had on the table and crossed his hands on his chest.</p><p>"You guess?" he got annoyed.</p><p>"Well, he's alright, he seems pleased but..." Mana wanted to report the whole situation but the Fifth once again lifted her hand into the air.</p><p>"That's all we need to know. Ayushi-san is a strange individual, he says and does weird things to "cure" everyone. Things he does are also highly personal so you may not wish to share them. The fact that he is safe and that he is happy with his stay is enough, we'll report to Kirigakure that he's coming, thank you, Mana"</p><p>Mana shook and rubbed her foot onto the floor, she was a little hesitant to keep talking but she had to report on what happened.</p><p>"We do know of the situation with the fire and the whole hospital ordeal, you've encountered difficulties, you've moved past them and made the right call, congratulations, now go back to your recovery, Nakotsumi Mana." The assistant informed the girl after noticing her hesitation.</p><p>"Ummm... I'm not sure he's going straight to Kirigakure..." Mana let the bird out of the cage. Hanasaku's fist shot through the table leaving a large hole in the colossal pile of papers and the table but, strangely enough, it didn't collapse.</p><p>"WHAAAAAT!?" the woman straight out roared. Mana was a bit worried about her life but she actually sort of wanted to be beaten down and punished for what she pulled last night.</p><p>"He said that he wants to start using his medical abilities again to save lives and change the world, he said that meeting me opened his eyes or something..." Mana closed her eyes and clenched herself for an impact that would've sent her flying through the wall. She waited, fearing but also wishing for her high flying death, whether she'd die instantly from the Hokage's furious fist or her neck would snap while flying or she'd crash and die that way... Nothing. Mana opened her eyes only to see Hanasaku smiling like a lovely old lady over a cup of coffee.</p><p>"Heh, you just can't help it, can you... Oh well, it's not like he has to do anything, he's retired anyway..." Hanasaku cracked a grin even if a vein was still pulsing on her forehead, though that was most likely present there from her meeting with her student before.</p><p>"B-But... Hokage-sama!" the assistant yelled out wanting to make a bigger deal from it, Hanasaku waved her hand.</p><p>"I said it's fine, whatever, the man does whatever he wants, he's a force of nature, thanks for letting us know, Mana. I saw your team's application for Chuunin exams, I don't think I need to explain it do I?" the Hokage brought another topic up, Mana's face turned to the floor as her hair weighed down and covered it. The girl's top hat almost fell off from her sad expression but it remained just barely on her head.</p><p>"Yeah, Chuunin exams are a test done by teams of three, part of the test is testing the teamwork and all that... I've heard it, I'm pretty sure everyone did..." Mana uttered with profound sadness and disappointment in how this whole situation went. It wasn't just the fact that she was denied her chance to grow in rank, it was also the fact that this denial also went out of its way to remind Mana of the fate of her disbanded team.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I'll be going through possible candidates to form a new team... For now, though keep training, there'll be another exam in three years, you'll have your team formed and ready by then. I'll send you some easier missions to do in the meantime, after you recover from your training injury, of course. Now, if that's all, you're dismissed."</p><p>Mana dragged her sorry body out of the Hokage's office. Things really went bad, there was so much hope and expectation back when Tanshu-sensei last trained her, back when he promised to recommend them for the Chuunin exams to get that sweet battlefield experience. The magician sighed. After that, things just all went downhill: Tanshu-sensei died, the team got disbanded, Ayushi-san got mad or something, now there'll be no Chuunin exams for at least three more years. The worst part of all was that she had to go back home and talk to her parents about those damned cells...</p><p>Mana went back home, her parents almost immediately picked up on her sad face. Mother hugged the girl and kept almost furiously stroking her hair. "Ayushi's cells won't work, they'd heal father but that'd cause another sickness that'd kill him really fast..." Mana said to her mother, the magician could feel her mother shaking in sadness. No. They had to know the whole story. Father entered the living room too, walking down the stairs and staring at Mana and mother expressing their sadness and support to one another.</p><p>"Oh well..." he said "I mean, that bastard took his sweet time to get here anyway, by now I'm almost used to it. Got the recipe for the new herbs and ointments, they help keep it manageable, I'll live" father replied and went up to Mana trying to express his approval by gently stroking her hair. "You did good, you were hurt, you had my unfair expectations and expectations of the whole village to make this work, even more, we relied on you to do something stupid and impossible. Any sane person would've cursed this world to hell for that sort of responsibility and pressure. I'd rather completely lose my arms and legs than have my precious girl be blamed for that sort of bullshit, I kind of loved my life as a ninja but I love you much more."</p><p>Mana felt almost surprised and a bit relieved hearing it from her parents that they didn't blame her for anything. She was certain that they'd cave in but father was right, all this extra time it took for Ayushi to get here made him better at dealing with the pain himself. He was so much more mature than Mana, he didn't believe or need any miracle cures. He acknowledged that his life was in his hands and his hands alone and dealt with his pain, he learned to live with it and deal with it. He was a true hero, her true hero! Mana hugged father apologizing to him one more time. "There's one thing... Ayushi... He once fell into a coma and... There was a chance to cultivate his cells..."</p><p>Father put his finger on Mana's lips, the girl flinched in surprise.</p><p>"You did the right thing, kid. I'd rather live in pain than know it was healed by causing pain to someone else, I know you asked for his life to be saved, you're my little hero. I know you'll always do what's right, what you think seems right."</p><hr/><p>Back in Hokage's office the assistant angrily looked at the Hokage and tried to object to something she had said to Mana before her words broke and interrupted his speech before it even began.</p><p>"Before I and my students left to Kirigakure, not too long before Howoku and Tanshu left for the Summit, I met with Howoku, Misu, and Tanshu over dinner, just to call back to the old times, we always do that sort of thing before big missions. Just to remember that moment in case our last hour comes in those missions, just to have a pleasant memory to grasp on to in case nothing else comes up, just to make that final journey into the void more pleasant."</p><p>Hokage's assistant walked up in front of the woman and found a seat, he put the files he had in his hands at that moment back onto one of countless more piles to the side.</p><p>"We spoke about our happiest moments, I, of course, kept going on about some big brawls I had, some of the fun tests I had with Kiyomi and the others, I kept abusing them and almost killed them and most of that wasn't even consensual, I was just an idiot who kept messing things up. Howoku spoke about how he loved sometimes leaving the office, walking through the street and admiring his peace, the smiles of the villagers, and the children just playing in the street, the peace he had created from violent wars over those last fifteen years. Misu didn't talk much, he rarely did talk much... Lil' Bro, however... Tanshu, my little precious brother, usually just bashed how idiotic our happy thoughts were and how he's wasting his time, he didn't mean it but he always had to keep that façade up..."</p><p>The man fixed his glasses, Hokage's assistant was a very strict and to the point man, still, he appeared to be smiling and enjoying the story. Having one's job experience pile up by working for the Hokage meant having to listen to these kinds of stories from time to time.</p><p>"That day Lil' Bro was different, he actually praised his students to us, he spoke about how they were a bunch of losers but how they actually grew stronger under his guidance which he initially thought impossible... Then... That last couple of lines he said... He spoke about this lovely but stupid young girl who reminded him of a friend he once had. I think I may remember that friend of his, at least him talking about her from back when we sieged the Tower of Bones that one time. I thought, wow, a young girl who reminded Tanshu of a woman he once loved, that was amazing. I almost instantly wanted to meet that young girl who was so weird and stupid that she even made my Lil' Bro smile... Now when I saw her change both Lil' Bro and Guru Ayushi..."</p><p>The assistant stood up and took a bunch of files into his hands, slamming them in front of the Hokage's face. "That was a fun memory, you're not allowed to die yet so don't long for it. You have no right to die until you fix the Feudal Lord bingo evening budget."</p><hr/><p>It was a really lovely night outside. Mana kept breathing deep, observing it from her bed. Her childish chest kept lifting up and down from her heavy breathing. The young ninja carefully stroke her thighs, she didn't feel that much more pain left. Tomorrow she'll start training again, she'll be careful, she'll still keep training her kicking focused style of taijutsu she's trying to master but she'll put more focus on her chakra control.</p><p>That technique, that illusion she cast on Sugemi and Shimo saved both of their lives. Mana was called Konoha's Sorceress as her stage name, that name has also been associated with her ninja abilities too. She was crafty and tricky, she always did the right thing, she always lucked out so far but she needed some powerful tool like that to stop relying on luck. Next time when innocent lives or lives or her friends will be in danger - she'll be ready for it.</p><p>Ayushi may have given her the cold shower about the moral implications of her ideals, how they may not always have been the right and moral thing to do. Either way, saving lives was what Mana did. What she wanted to do and how she wanted to change this world. Ayushi also taught her that fighting for her ideal, fighting to stop the bad people trying to hurt those she wanted to protect may have been OK sometimes. That if they chose the violent path, she should've not been so afraid to disable them if talking didn't work. Before she often found herself frozen in fear of hurting her enemy, Ayushi taught her that hurting the enemy wasn't the problem. She was the Konoha's Sorceress, she had it in her to find ways to beat the enemy without killing them and then leave it up to them to change. That was her nindo, her ninja way.</p>
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<a name="section0075"><h2>75. Of Blue Eyes and Red Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The day had already reached its prime. Children were playing in the street, the smaller ones were chasing rubber balls and the slightly older ones were tossing wooden ninja tools at each other and clashing with wooden swords. Playing ninja was one of the most popular past times for kids old enough to grasp the basic concept. It was more common amongst young boys, girls usually played a strange simulation game where they're just sitting around at home taking care of their dolls which were supposed to be their kids. It was quite usual for the two groups to play together and fuse their seemingly separate universes into one.</p><p>Each kid had their "family", a "wife" they left at home when they ran off with other boys to play a great war of ninjas. Girls liked being part of the boys' group and their silly antics never interrupted their own game so they played along with this weird social contract. It was a small model of how society worked, the most common and simple particles of it, at least. There were some girls who didn't fancy just sitting at home feeding the dumplings that their mothers gave them for snacking to their dolls.</p><p>They played alongside boys and went to war yet it never bothered either the boys or the girls. Girls accepted those other girls as part of their group, let them occasionally visit their "family" and boys treated them as their equal partners. If a girl was considered a weaker ninja of the group it wasn't because of her gender, it was because she wasn't creative enough to make a strong imaginary persona for herself and lacked the skills of imagination and quick decision making.</p><p>Maybe to some this would have seemed weird, those people would most likely not have experienced the world where the spiritual and physical energy of one's body was able to augment one's abilities to compensate for natural shortcomings. Some people would have attributed this strange aura of equality that surrounded the children, usually, the least likely group to behave appropriately and respect equality, to a certain amount of time having passed since the strongest and the leading ninja of the village was a respected woman. Even more, one who could've shattered the dreams of any man trying to match her in the physical strength department. Those people would not have known how things were before that woman took over from Star of Hope, Howoku, the Fourth Hokage.</p><p>Obviously, in a world where people's lives were wasted left and right a woman's decision to devote her time to raising children was very much respected. No woman was scorned or scolded for choosing to devote their lives to that goal, maybe even the opposite was the case, they were respected even more than an average ninja who devoted their lives to their village would have. They enjoyed specific protection, a certain social elevation in their importance which was tough to explain but quite visible if one was to spend some time amongst the villagers.</p><p>A whole year had passed since Chestnut Hanasaku became the Fifth Hokage, her face was quickly added to the monument amongst the other Hokage of the past. The village was living in some strange state of having frozen in time after the initial shock of having lost their Hokage and most of their Sannin. There was an obvious vacant gap left, for the first time in many years Konohagakure had no Sannin to be proud of: Misu and Tanshu had killed each other in their battle, Hanasaku left the spot open by becoming the Fifth Hokage.</p><p>The council tried to raise some of their more prominent jounin to the rank but for one reason or another, they were refused. Konoha had plenty of powerful jounin but they weren't quite on that level just yet. Knowing full well the amount of danger and respect that the rank granted Hanasaku rejected each candidacy, the woman simply didn't think any of them could have handled the fame and the desire of so many bounty hunters from the sides of both: rogue ninja or other villages to take them down and add their heads to their collections.</p><p>Konoha still didn't have people in Kirigakure to observe the village's political and administrative life. Despite being the primary motivation of Hanasaku's election to the great chair, the woman just said that she either needed most ninja selected for that role in the village and at her disposal or she simply didn't trust them enough.</p><p>Little by little, people started talking that Chestnut Hanasaku had crumbled under the pressure, she made very few ballsy choices during her reign. Usually, Hokage punished with severity, chased goals of great ambition, even questionable ventures. It seemed that Chestnut Hanasaku was so afraid to show off her stupidity and inexperience that she just froze all iffy matters in time and space. While the council and any political experts and journalists didn't enjoy that behavior, to the general public her safe approach to politics seemed rather pleasant as they had one shock too many recently. Ambitious ventures became associated with the name of Mizukage Shirona and left a bad bloody taste in everyone's mouths.</p><p>"Mana, dear, you're gonna be late!" mother's voice came from below alerting the girl to finish her gearing up quickly. The girl buttoned up her cufflink, secured, and double-checked her various hidden cards and sleeves. During that last year, Mana had changed up her ninja tool arsenal a lot, moving much more towards the card and magician prop focused more innocent and tricky style. Instead of the usual kunai knives, shuriken and explosive tags Mana used much more deceiving and tricky tools like steel-edged cards like the ones used to give Sugemi that nasty scar back then, steel rings and ropes of cloth, also cards with explosive seals on them that only used a small bit of chakra to set off. Finally, the girl embraced her magician roots and her stage nickname of Konoha Sorceress, she tried to honor the will of her late sensei by doing so.</p><p>After securing her father's gifted hat and checking if she had the "package" sealed inside Mana ran down the stairs. She recalled how just a year ago using her father's seal sapped most of her chakra, a year of endless chakra level training allowed Mana's chakra to grow several times above her previous levels. If she pushed herself far enough she may have even been able to use the clone technique that once knocked her out cold before.</p><p>Mana's bulkier and firmer thighs also were a testament to gruesome effort and training that she put into mastering her own style of taijutsu. As the girl ran down the stairs and gave a free hug to her father and mother before leaving through the door, she couldn't help but call back to all the days she spent practicing acrobatics and various stretching exercises to better control her body. Mana was almost confident that her kicks and flips were now fast enough to surprise even a more physical peer of her level, something she took great pride in.</p><p>Obviously, her path had many training injuries and accidents, she burnt out just like before several times, also there was that time she broke her arm and her leg after falling pretty nastily in the training grounds. She continued to train even during injury which greatly annoyed the medical ninja. Having no fear to fight, no fear to hurt but never kill those that threatened her ideals and her loved ones made Mana much less afraid to train and grow strong. Her mind was completely free, absolutely clean of any doubts and fears. All she felt was curiosity and excitement, the girl was always a little bit on the geeky side and she viewed training and the subjects of genjutsu and ninjutsu techniques as another subject, a hobby with endless possibilities to be explored.</p><p>Even after a whole year, Mana didn't manage to master that technique, it was only when she started delving more deeply into the subject of illusionary techniques that Mana found out just how reckless and stupid she was back then using that technique at such baby stages. Honoring the last words told to her by Tanshu-sensei during their training the magician delved deeper into the craft, trying to pick up more tricky and difficult subjects of the matter, such as sound-based illusions and different mediums through which illusions could have been transferred. It was incredibly tough focusing on that specific craft. That was because of the nature of the specialty that Mana had chosen.</p><p>Genjutsu was the art of illusionary techniques. Illusions were fancy and often powerful, a good tool for diversion, displacement, and various other versatile uses. However most ninja were too practical, they wanted to cause damage on the battlefield, cause some ruckus. Illusions never caused actual damage, they could've tricked one's mind with enough skill put into it to cause the body to damage itself but the illusionary fire was always just that – a fancy vision.</p><p>Also, the art of genjutsu was incredibly despised and neglected among most ninja, very few even bothered picking it up because of its intricacy and very unrewarding nature. It required almost perfect chakra control, great concentration, and skill as well as some imagination to be used effectively, and even with all that effort it still dealt no direct physical damage to one's enemy. It wasn't hard to see why people were frustrated about it.</p><p>The thing was that because of the complete neglect of the craft that was barely even touched upon in the Academy made most people completely unable to defend against it. A surprising majority of ninja crumbled even under the most basic of illusions and incredibly skilled ninja could've even sunken those ninja under multiple layers of illusions, caused extreme confusion, and made them believe that they were in an illusion when they may not have even been under one causing some terrible circumstances. There was this one story told in the Academy by the teacher, one that had a moral of never choosing to neglect any subject or craft completely.</p><p>The story was about this young and strong ninja who had a lot of potential, one who was all about physical and destructive power. That ninja focused exclusively on destructive techniques and strength overpowering all of their peers. One day they met a decently skilled genjutsu user who was actually a very unimpressive ninja otherwise and he chose to engage him.</p><p>Apparently, the illusion master caught that ninja into an illusion and convinced him to kill all of his comrades and give up all of the scrolls with the vital information they were carrying. Then the genjutsu user delivered one final line: "I never even used genjutsu, it was all just the power of suggestion, you killed your friends because you believed I masked myself in their image, you gave me the scrolls because you folded under the belief that I had you in my control." Sensei in the Academy said that the ninja later committed suicide being unable to deal with the pressure of the situation and the shame.</p><p>That inability to deal with even the most basic illusions of most ninja out there gave an illusion user a slight advantage, however, the idea that there were no skilled illusionary ninja in the village to train with brought that advantage down and dragged its face in the dirt. There were very few ninja who even dabbled in the illusionary arts, let alone skilled enough for Mana to ask advice or guidance when in a tough spot. Sure she still hadn't reached the level where she'd be the authority figure of genjutsu in the village but she was approaching that spot and that prospect scared her quite a lot.</p><p>Mana's amazing growth in strength and spirituality and mind wasn't the only pleasant news to happen during that year. Her magic shows pretty much became the biggest source of entertainment in the village, her strangely classy attire also helped create the illusion that it was a very high layered kind of entertainment, many rich and famous people started attending her shows bringing the owner of the hall, Mr. Hiro a terrible lot of money making him appreciate his newly found golden hen.</p><p>Hiro insisted that Mana moved all of her performances to what he called "prime-time", he let her dictate the terms whenever she threatened to leave his care. Still, even with all that success, the magician tried to not let it go over her head. She still tried to incorporate the lessons of public contact and certain closeness between an entertainer and their audience that she picked up from Guru Ayushi during his seminar. The price of her shows never rose beyond the price she charged at the beginning, her tremendous rise in profits was not due to increased prices but because of an increase in people who bought the tickets.</p><p>Maybe that same success in terms of her being an amazing and unique sort of entertainer, seeing how stage magic was still something no other village had explored, was what made Mana so well known in the village. People approached her in larger masses, spoke to her more often, and invaded her public privacy with every chance that they got. This newly acquired fame was both something the girl enjoyed and in a way wasn't overly fond of.</p><p>She loved being appreciated, she loved that people acknowledged her art and the message that it carried along of ninjutsu being what the user used it for, not the predefined tool used for murder and nothing else. On the other hand, Mana hated being known just for her stage magic. Quite often when the girl did leave on some of the smaller missions she was recognized by both her mission targets and her fans, most people thought that she was only a ninja because of a publicity stunt and criminals she tried her best to apprehend always made sure to make fun of her for her child celebrity status when they were beaten.</p><p>Mana was just as much a kunoichi of the Leaf as much as she was a stage magician. She felt like people neglected and never appreciated the things she did as a ninja, they kept waving at those things and mentioning how cute they were and how she just "played ninja" and kept considering her mainly a magician and only cared about what she did as a magician. If only she could have done something amazing, something so incredible and heroic that she could've finally busted through that barrier of neglect and ignorance.</p><p>If only she could have placed herself amongst the higher-rated genin of the village, the kind that attracted people to the stadium when those genin sparred... Mana started craving to be strong, not because she wanted to be the best, not because she had a selfish power fantasy but because she wanted to be taken seriously, not as some silly girl playing ninja. There were plenty of times she could've died in the field and yet no one acknowledged that and thought she was still taking it easy. That hurt Mana a lot internally.</p><p>"Hey, it's Konoha's Sorceress! Hello, will you be performing today?" a lovely pair stopped Mana just to say hello and talk. Mana stopped and smiled at them despite still feeling hurt inside by her own feelings that she brought up.</p><p>"No, sadly I've been called to a mission, it's been a while since I went on a bigger mission and I was warned to cancel any shows I had today or in the nearest future, it may be something pretty grand." Mana scratched the back of her head only now realizing that she may have been leaving for her final mission, all of a sudden the girl started feeling like she may not have said her goodbyes fondly and softly enough. Each mission may have been one's last and should've been treated as such.</p><p>"Oh, that's too bad, we were really looking forward to it, be careful, Sorceress-chan!" the pair bowed their heads slightly suggesting respect despite still using the slightly demeaning honorific.</p><p>Hesitant to keep on walking Mana scratched her neck, maybe she should return and talk to her parents a little bit more, she had some time left to do that and... Whatever. Father knew what kind of thing these kind of missions were, he wouldn't have been too surprised if Mana got hurt. If all of those stories of her mother being a descendant of the wandering ninja were correct she also had been on the outside of the village and had seen the world beyond the village walls. As much as the girl wanted to say her goodbyes as if they were her last she felt like her parents were tough enough to handle the tension.</p><p>Slowly the magician started walking towards the Konohagakure Administration to pick up her mission. If she was told that it'd take several days that'd have meant that Mana was supposed to leave beyond the village walls, right? But then why would she have been sent out like that alone? She still didn't have a team despite Hokage's most desperate attempts to find her one.</p><p>Seeing how many high-ranking ninja died in the Kage Summit many of the assembled teams were left without a sensei so there were many genin without a team. Even during the early stages, some genin managed to get themselves killed already, right after leaving the Academy. There were vacant spots but as Tanshu-sensei said, there seemed to have been some special rules when putting teams together. What with all the one member being a genius, one average, and one loser rule, for example.</p><p>After entering the Administration building Mana just went up to the floor where the Hokage office was situated. Some more manual labor kind of missions were handed out by simple office clerks but the kind that this mission apparently was were handed out by the Hokage and her assistant themselves. Mana walked up to the door and knocked, listening in and hearing permission to enter. The girl opened the door hesitantly only to see the Hokage and her assistant in the building. The strange part was that they weren't the only people there. The Hokage gestured towards the blond Yamanaka girl that Mana had seen several times before, the one that used to be on the Fifth's team apparently at some point.</p><p>"It's good that you've come. I invited all three of you but for some reason, the third one didn't come... Those guys are always a real pain in the ass." The Hokage scratched her forehead angrily trying to just rub her headache away.</p><p>Mana looked curiously at the other girl, she looked pretty tough but she was a pretty girl too. She had those deep light blue eyes that would've made her an ideal pop idol singer but her look was far too tough for that kind of profession. There was little innocence in this girl's eyes, she's seen the outside world, without a doubt. The Yamanaka suddenly turned making Mana jump up a bit, trying to act as if she wasn't staring. The magician was really interested in this girl, she was so pretty and looked so strong that Mana couldn't help but admire this girl.</p><p>"I'm Yamanaka Kiyomi, pleased to work with you, Mana." the girl said extending her hand forward. Mana did look a bit confused about how would the blonde know her name, after all the names or even the fact that they'd be working in a team was nowhere in the actual mission objective. Hesitantly the magician answered the gesture of greeting.</p><p>"Oh please, your name is all over the place, to be honest, it's written in some really small letters, "Konoha's Sorceress, on the other hand, is really clearly spelled out. If it's an ego thing I can call you that, I guess." The Yamanaka girl explained without having to be asked.</p><p>"Was she reading my mind?" Mana wondered inside of her head, knowing the skills and the reputation of the Yamanaka clan members to be absolute masters of controlling and messing with their enemies' minds.</p><p>"No, I didn't read your mind, just because I'm a Yamanaka doesn't mean I read your mind all the time, you know..." Kiyomi leaned at Mana angrily placing her hands on her hips as if she was being placed into a stereotype, despite the magician never having said a thing.</p><p>"Ummm... Sorry, I guess..." Mana just let out turning away with a blush. She made a fool of herself in front of this really cool girl, she really wanted to fit in with this blonde who was a part of the Hokage's squad. Truth be told, part of Mana's wish to be approved by Kiyomi was because the magician was extremely jealous of the girl despite knowing so little about her.</p><p>Kiyomi was a member of a clan, a pretty well thought of, and one held in very high regard at that. She must've been able to do all sorts of amazing things and she looked a year or two older than Mana which gave this young lady an experience advantage. Also, Mana was still going through her puberty so to herself she looked kind of weird, where this Kiyomi girl was clearly more attractive due to her age and completed the process of puberty as well as probably a much stronger girl by a margin.</p><p>"Relax, I'm just messing with you" Kiyomi laughed out playfully punching Mana in the elbow. "That's just what most people tell me when they're socializing, I've got a system by which I classify people by what they tell me, it gets boring sometimes."</p><p>Mana smiled, she was still embarrassed and didn't feel too comfortable in the girl's company even if she had a genuine desire to feel that way around the Yamanaka. There was nothing really wrong with the blonde, her eyes were pretty kind and had no malice behind them, she had lost all the anger and irritation that the Yamanaka once had when the two bumped into each other in the hall last year. It was just that this new feeling of wanting to be acknowledged and looking up to someone was quite new and it didn't let the magician feel too comfortable around the girl. It was all about the new itchy experience that didn't let her relax.</p><p>"So... What's the mission, when do we leave?" Mana tried to change the topic for later hoping to avoid the awkwardness of having to socialize with a person she had strange sensations about which the young magician barely even understood.</p><p>"Not so fast, there's a third person you need to pick up, I'm not sure if she even plans to drop by anytime or if she's even coming, that one is a real loose cannon sometimes," Hanasaku growled irritated by the personality of the third one. Mana started both feeling curious about this third person but also feel slightly hesitant towards them and started to get a bad feeling about them.</p><p>This whole mission felt weird, usually, team-based missions promoted teamwork between the three or more participants, now this was much different. The three teammates haven't met each other yet, they won't be a long-term team, just work together on one mission, the three had no time to get to know each other, learn about each other's skills or learn to cooperate. It was almost like Hansaku just tossed this mission and this team together randomly, organizational skills like that cause casualties. Mana felt like she's about to experience Fifth's lack of experience first-hand but she stayed quiet.</p><p>For a short while, the two girls just stood quietly before the Hokage. The year was actually quite kind to the woman, her brown hair finally settled towards an acceptable and even somewhat regal hairdo, instead of flowing wildly all over the place in mad locks. Her eyes and her skin looked soft and had no bruises or blunt traumas that a ninja on active duty had their body full of.</p><p>Even Mana had a couple of long-term scars already, it wasn't to the point where the girl was shy to undress in front of a mirror but in a year or two, it might get there. The truth of the matter was – Chestnut Hanasaku was looking much more ladylike and sported a more fitting look for a lady in charge of a village. Power didn't seem to corrupt this woman, it changed her for the better, taught her some experience. Still not enough, apparently.</p><p>"Enough!" Hanasaku shouted out slamming the table, this time the woman restrained herself perfectly, she also seemed to have learned restraint as breaking too many tables must've cost the Administration an arm and a leg. "If that girl doesn't feel like showing up to the briefing just wait for her near the gate until it becomes a bother, then ditch her. I swear to God!" Hanasaku yelled out angrily.</p><p>"It's fine, me and Mana here can handle it if the third one is a no-show" Kiyomi smiled confidently. Mana smiled back and nodded. She liked Kiyomi's confidence. Just one more feature to make this blonde be Mana's idol, the kind of ninja that the young one tried to be more like soon. It wasn't like Kiyomi was that much older to be her absolute hero or anything, it was more like a directional guideline, almost like an older sister for Mana to admire and try to imitate.</p><p>"That's a big no. Usually, I'd send at least five genin to a mission like this, probably even a chuunin to lead the squad. A son of a rich perfume tycoon of Konohagakure was kidnapped. We don't know anything about who kidnapped him or why. They didn't send any requirements or demands or a reason as to why that was done. It is starting to seem that the son may not have been kidnapped for his father's funds which is beginning to scare me. You absolutely need to have a third member, your mission is to find out about the kidnapping and if possible reclaim the victim. The mission objective is information, the secondary objective is the return of the victim safe to the village. If by any chance the third one doesn't show – hire some mercenaries outside the village walls. It's a dangerous gambit but a hundred times less dangerous than going in just the two of you."</p><p>Kiyomi nodded, Mana was about to kneel as per normal procedure when accepting a mission but seeing Kiyomi's ignorance the magician just awkwardly froze half-way and then straightened out, blushing to her ears about how dumb she must've looked.</p><p>"Yes, ma'am!" Mana uttered shyly.</p><p>Kiyomi laughed out openly, seeing a hatchling ninja several years younger mess up continuously trying to look cool must've been hilarious to the Yamanaka. The two turned around and left the office. Both of them stood awkwardly for a moment in the corridor just looking around, each one of them was hesitant to take charge of the mission but, eventually, both of them started walking downstairs to the first floor complex of offices.</p><p>"So... Why are you alone? What happened to your team?" Kiyomi opened up the discussion first. "Usually genin are working in teams until they are promoted in the Chuunin Exams"</p><p>Mana's chin sunk down as she once again remembered the story of Team Oak. "Well, Tanshu-sensei died during the Kage Summit, one of my teammates messed up and left on a journey of self-discovery, the other tried to kill a prisoner we caught from Kirigakure and... Well he was sent away to a containment facility, Eden I believe"</p><p>Kiyomi whistled out in surprise. "Tanshu? As if in Red Dog Tanshu? Holy Hell! I thought you were just for the show initially, no offense, all the fancy posters and all, sort of makes an impression of all those pop idol bubble gum girls, you know? Tanshu's hardcore, Hanasaku used to be my sensei, the two constantly hung out, the rep was that Tanshu was just insufferable. No matter how many beatings we took, how many times we got burnt or something blew up cause sensei was a loony, we always thought it could've been worse, we could've ended up under Tanshu's care... I mean, all the respect for the dead and all..."</p><p>Mana smiled, recalling the first meeting of the team and how Sugemi had his hand broken the first day. Then remembering how they were left to be animal food or get good and survive. From a neutral point of view that was brutal but... To them it felt nostalgic, they were afraid for their lives back then but it felt so silly and innocent. They were just children after all.</p><p>The two just started moving towards the Konohagakure gate, deciding to wait for their third team member there. Kiyomi didn't feel like letting go of Mana as she kept asking questions. "Hey, how old are you? Cause, no offense, but you look like a damn kid, you know? I mean we're all kind of still kids but... Ninja grow up fast, they pretty much have to."</p><p>"Almost fourteen" Mana replied, Kiyomi whistled in surprise once again.</p><p>"You've been through some badass shit and you're pretty young, I left the Academy almost three years ago at thirteen, not because I flunked a class but because I took a course in my clan's special class. It's something like intelligence gathering and that sort of thing. Everyone expects Yamanaka to be all about intelligence, you know, mind-reading, spying, telepathic mental links, and all that..."</p><p>Honestly, all that talking was making Mana grow fond of Kiyomi, the worst thing she could've done was stay shut and not talk to Mana. The magician started to feel like she was viewed as somewhat of an equal so that made her warm up to her temporary teammate.</p><p>"So what happened to your team? Are you alone just because Fifth became the Hokage?" Mana finally gathered up the courage to ask something herself, Kiyomi just hissed, something about the Fifth rubbed the girl the wrong way, probably still an old wound about the Chuunin Exams...</p><p>"Nah, one of my teammates got cocky on a mission and got hurt, he was an Uchiha so he started showing off those stupid eyes of his and got careless. He lost his eyes. Fucking Uchiha... Hate those guys. The other guy left the team shortly afterward, Hanasaku isn't the best of mentors, then again, look at me complaining to a student of Red Dog Tanshu..." Kiyomi laughed out. It appeared that it wasn't that much the Fifth herself that irritated Kiyomi but the history of her team. She must've still held a grudge towards the Uchiha boy and the one that left.</p><p>"And the worst thing is that they still didn't find me another team, I mean just slap the two of us together, give us a hot guy on our team and I'm as happy as it gets, we could take the damned Chuunin Exams, no problem. I swear to God if they make me skip another exam!" Kiyomi started angrily rubbing her fist and slamming it into her free hand and punching air. It didn't look like Kiyomi was a physical kind of ninja but she definitely threw a punch with free and fluid movements like a pro.</p><p>"You really think we'd make a good team?" Mana asked smiling.</p><p>"Hell yeah!" Kiyomi yelled out energetically, "If I and the red eyes doofus made it work between us without me strangling that cocky bastard, we could make do. All teams fight between each other, it's not the chemistry at the beginning of the road, it's the chemistry when it counts that matters!"</p><p>Mana smiled and nodded. Somehow talking to Kiyomi made her own worries and painful history feel a little bit lighter. Kiyomi was definitely a person that the magician wanted to be around more and maybe work with after this mission. If they even return from their mission, that is.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0076"><h2>76. The Third One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So for how long are we going to wait?" Kiyomi pouted looking back at Mana who was patiently standing near the guard stand with her hands locked on her chest, staring at the village as if she still had hope that the third one would show up. After being asked the question the magician just sighed.</p><p>"Don't know, you're the one with more experience, you take charge" she submitted all of the responsibility on Kiyomi's shoulders.</p><p>"Point taken, if I can choose between a ninja from our village and some mercenaries I'll choose a homie anytime. Don't really like those brutes anyway..." Kiyomi grunted out. The blonde didn't seem to be a very patient one but she appeared to at the very least be able to get over herself and wait if she needed to. Stepping over one's own character was a really good feature which the magician greatly liked in anyone she met. This Kiyomi girl just may have been a pleasant person to work with...</p><p>"You've had some bad experience with mercenaries?" Mana asked. She recalled her own experience dealing with the mercenaries that Hanada Katsuo hired to watch over his family. Based on that experience alone those guys weren't really trustworthy, yet that one guy who still worked for Katsuo seemed really happy to have moved past his mercenary days and settling down.</p><p>"Oh, come on, you don't have to have bad days with them to know they're trouble. Think about it, some ex-ninja and just all around brawlers, criminals, and killers selling their services, wandering in bands, and settling down in camps all over the world. Anyone who defies a village and isn't loyal to something, willing to sell themselves over a coin is a scumbag." Kiyomi laughed out sarcastically, she really used a lot of irony and disgust in her voice.</p><p>This special dislike for people who didn't obey a village and didn't devote themselves to an ideal sort of hurt Mana. The magician wanted to talk to Kiyomi about clans but then she realized that her own origins hailing from the Wandering Ninja would've come up. Wandering Ninja must've been just as shameful and hate-worthy to Kiyomi as mercenaries. Mana pouted and tightened her hand lock trying to close that part of herself from her temporary partner. Suddenly the magician stood straight and started moving out through the gate.</p><p>Kiyomi jumped up and started running after Mana. "Hey, wait up, what got into you!?" the blonde yelled out. The young magician really hoped that Kiyomi didn't read minds casually, that would've been an invasion of privacy but that wasn't the worst part, Mana just wanted to keep her origins secret from a person who was a patriot and devoted to their village without question. That wasn't an unusual trait, Kiyomi deserved no hatred or dislike for it.</p><p>A lot of ninja were just like that. Mana just sighed realizing that once again she was the black sheep, she would've always chosen her own ideals and freedom over the orders from a village, she'd have been willing to die for her ideals or lose her title as a ninja. She wasn't that much different from the mercenaries, she just didn't sell her ideals out, the ideals themselves were the coins for the girl.</p><p>"Did I say something?" Kiyomi ran up to Mana looking at the girl curiously, this at the very least revealed that Kiyomi didn't just probe people's minds just because she could. That just made the younger kunoichi appreciate her superior a little bit more.</p><p>"No. I got sick of waiting, let's move." Mana cut the dialogue down, she was really hurt and shut inside, maybe most because she admired Kiyomi and wanted Kiyomi's approval and this revelation that Kiyomi was one of those loyalists of letter of law and absolute loyalty to the village made Mana feel like in the eyes of her superior which she wanted to befriend she'd have looked just like those mercenaries – just a scumbag.</p><p>"Okay, the road is long, are you gonna talk to me, or not? How about you? Have you had any experience with mercenaries?" Kiyomi asked with that same tone of curiosity in her voice. The blonde must've already picked up on something bugging Mana, she also appeared to have related that to something that she must've said and it was evident that Kiyomi tried to somehow find out about what exactly rubber her partner the wrong way without probing her mind.</p><p>"Yeah, I've had some. I've fought them when they turned on a guy who paid them." Mana casually threw back. She didn't sound angry or anything, nothing in her voice implied any malicious and offensive feelings towards the Yamanaka but she still sounded sad. Almost like a person sounds when they knew they've been wrong and someone corrected them. A part of a person felt grateful for the person who did that but it still hurt deep inside.</p><p>"Oh... That's impressive, mercenaries are trained to face ninja, for a girl your age to hold your own, that's pretty cool, you must be really strong" Kiyomi tried to somehow repay her unclear offensive remark with some compliments. Mana didn't react to that in any way. "Did you beat them all by yourself?"</p><p>Mana suddenly started feeling even worse. The magician stopped letting Kiyomi catch up to her and then take lead. She then shook her head angrily but slowly. "No. This jounin named Dorimi saved me. I did knock out all but the leader, I hesitated to kill him and he flipped the table on me, next thing I know I was about to die..." Mana stopped talking trying to let her newly made friend know that she didn't take any pride in having to be saved. If actually offend her a little.</p><p>Kiyomi laughed out, "Really? Why would you hesitate to do something like that? You're just like my friend, not the Uchiha one, that guy was a real douchebag, he never hesitated, the other one, the one who quit. Initially, he really was afraid to fight people, Hanasaku-sensei kept pummeling his face every time he refused to hurt someone because he was afraid to hurt them. "You don't have to kill, but you must not be afraid to fight! If they die while you're fighting it's on them, not on you. A true student of mine must love fighting"!" Kiyomi did her best impression of the Fifth.</p><p>"Great, so on top of being a village loyalist Kiyomi is also a brawler with no reservations about killing..." Mana sighed keeping these reflections to herself after being laughed at. It wasn't an offensive laugh, more like the kind of laugh that a friend gives you when you tell them an embarrassing story from your youth. Mana lived a life of embarrassment and inner pain, she was always looked down on and laughed at whenever she voiced her ideals of peace and love being the ruling forces of the world. One of the most painful things to happen to her was when ninja she admired ditched her beliefs and laughed at them.</p><p>Tanshu-sensei wasn't a ninja Mana wanted to be like when she grew up, still, to her Tanshu-sensei was the best ninja in the world. When the world's strongest ninja tells you you're wrong there's a certain amount of pain and sadness one has to go through. Tanshu was supposed to know everything there was to know about being a ninja and he was pretty firm on that specific distaste for Mana's ideals. Now Kiyomi, a kunoichi whom Mana strived to be more like, someone she looked up to because of how cool, pretty, and strong she was, also shared that same belief. The world didn't seem like it was about to give the magician a break.</p><p>"OK, wait, are you... Still... You know... Like that?" Kiyomi suddenly jumped up and shyly shouted out, having realized that she may have spouted out something offensive. Mana silently nodded.</p><p>"I am, I would never consciously take a life, I'd die before killing someone. I used to be a lot more peaceful but a wise man once taught me that in order to protect the people I want to protect, which is everyone, I need to fight sometimes. I realized that he was right. If an enemy of mine chooses to fight, it's his choice and I'll do my darned best to end that fight quickly. I won't shy away from doing whatever I can to them, I'll break their body and their mind until they can't fight but I'll never take their life." Mana silently explained, she could hear Kiyomi's step slow down a little and wriggle hesitantly further from her.</p><p>"Damn... That's pretty... You know..." Kiyomi let out, she wasn't disgusted or anything she just wanted to let Mana know what she thought.</p><p>"Stupid? Yeah, Tanshu-sensei let me know that every day..." Mana replied shutting inside even further.</p><p>"No... Dark and hardcore. I mean... I get it, you don't want to kill it's your ideal, your nindo and all that but... It's not by any means an idealistic pink shades ideal I've taken it for. You may just be darker inside than I am. Most ninja choose to kill other people over causing them too much pain, the whole point of ninjutsu is to eliminate the enemy so quickly that they don't even know what hit them, so fast that they don't even get a chance to feel any pain..." Kiyomi explained.</p><p>Mana didn't get any happier from that declaration of opinion but at least she knew now that Kiyomi didn't exactly think that Mana or her nindo was stupid. She just took a bit different stance on things and that was alright. That was why magic chose to let Kiyomi be born, she was that kind of person and people of every kind were necessary in this world for it to be rich and diverse and as magical as Mana took it to be.</p><p>"Look... If I said or did something that hurt you, you know I didn't..." Kiyomi started something that sounded like an apology, Mana shook her head and interrupted her newly met friend.</p><p>"No, it's my fault. Me getting worked up over you saying something about my views, which is also a testament to your views is the same thing as the thing I'm getting worked up for. I'm just... I get angry sometimes and sad and... I know it's wrong, I know I'm wrong but it doesn't help..." Mana almost grunted out her admittance of being wrong.</p><p>She knew just how hypocritical getting offended by an expression of opinion was, after all, she made the life of someone harder just because they let her know their opinion. In other words, she got pissy about someone's opinion because someone got pissy about hers. If there was anything wrong with the views of Kiyomi, Mana made something equally as wrong with hers when she took them too deep and shut-in herself.</p><p>"It's called puberty, it'll pass..." Kiyomi smiled, Mana finally managed to crack a grin. "You should've seen me when I was your age, I was punching everyone, every time. Even Hanasaku-sensei got the sharp end of my wrath, I liked to punch her especially because she never got hurt from any of it..."</p><p>"I... I got angry initially because you said you disliked people who took their ideals over the authority of the village. I'm a half-blooded descendant of a tribe of wandering ninja entertainers, they valued freedom and making people laugh and enjoy their time most of all. They got slaughtered by the village because they defied its authority, I just felt like if you knew that you'd hate me just like you hated those mercenaries..." Mana admitted.</p><p>"That's stupid, why would anyone hate someone with those cute cheeks?" Kiyomi playfully pinched Mana. Being treated like a younger sister initially annoyed the magician but then she still couldn't keep her laugh inside. "So you're from a clan too? I've never heard of your clan, guess that makes you a little last princess, huh? Most girls would kill to be in your shoes" Kiyomi joked with some irony in her voice.</p><p>"It wasn't an actual clan, more like a tribe of people who shared their love for freedom and entertaining people for food and donations to get them through the life outside the village walls" Mana spoke "Plus, I'm not sure if I'm the "princess" of anything, I'm only a half-blooded member of a tribe of ninja mutts with kind hearts. I just really like everything my ancestors stood for and I owe a lot, because of my own ideas, to what they did"</p><p>Kiyomi shrugged, "Nothing wrong with that. You're not selling your ideas and heart out for money like mercenaries, you have your own nindo which isn't that popular, to begin with. It constantly clashes with the opinions of people around you and the popular opinion of your village. You're always forced to defend your views against parties much stronger, older, and more respected than you, and you're always looked down on and pushed around. You're strong, both inside and outside and that deserves nothing but respect"</p><p>Mana looked at Kiyomi for a moment and smiled, she just barely restrained her instinct to gleefully shriek like a little girl, her idol finally recognized her ideals and existence, she may not have actually agreed with Mana's views but at least she recognized that they were there and didn't just attack Mana for believing in such stupid childish things. That to the magician meant the whole world.</p><p>"So, how close are you to being "Princess Yamanaka"?" Mana asked trying to return the question and get to know a bit about Kiyomi in the process. The blonde smiled and sighed.</p><p>"Actually... I'm pretty much it, my father's brother is supposed to pass on the status of clan's head to his heir but he has no children. The main idea floating around is that once I get married my family will lead the clan" Kiyomi admitted slightly blushing.</p><p>"Why do you need to marry someone to lead a clan, also wouldn't that make you the queen? I mean wouldn't your husband rule the clan in that case?" Mana curiously blinked repeatedly. All those clan rules were so complicated and confusing but they were living tradition and history and Mana loved everything about history.</p><p>"Not if I marry another wife, I'm joking... I mean, whatever, the thing is that if I marry a Yamanaka like me, in that case, yes, he'll get the wheel and I'll just be a cheerleader from the side but if I marry someone from another clan, they won't hand the rule over clan matters to some random guy so I'll still have the whole responsibility in my hands and my husband will be the cheerleader." Kiyomi explained. Mana almost felt bad that she didn't take a notebook to write all that stuff down, clan rules and traditions were pretty interesting but also confusing.</p><p>"Wow, I should've known earlier, I would've bowed to Your Majesty!" Mana smiled and bowed from the waist down as if she was meeting a Feudal Lord or something. Kiyomi just showed Mana her fist as her eyes flared as hotly as the red on the Yamanaka's cheeks. "I'm older than you by at least two years, I can still kick your butt, you know" the blonde let out a joking threat, at least it was supposed to be taken as that from the tone.</p><p>All of a sudden Mana's eyes shifted to a spot behind her, the girl leaped into the air and quickly made some hand seals, Mana thrust her legs forward, almost like as if she did a dropkick but instead of just kicking a powerful gust of air shot from her feet, it was a vertical "Mystical Wings" jutsu. The powerful gust of wind that would've normally propelled Mana into the sky or broken her fall now blew away multiple knives coming at the two girls. Kiyomi looked back and picked one of those knives up examining them.</p><p>"They're not just simple kunai, they're throwing knives but they're completely flat, they're meant to go in deep, not just puncture the flesh, this one can go through bone and even get into the body whole way in. Be careful" the blonde warned, she then lifted her head up and yelled out, "Come on out!" into the thickness of the forest. Nothing came from the blackness of the shadows formed by the thick line of trees. The assailant may have been anywhere.</p><p>"Damn it!" Kiyomi shouted out nervously throwing multiple kunai and shuriken into the depth of the shades, in multiple directions, and multiple degrees of elevation just to see if she can get a read on the enemy's location. The correct course of action would've been to dive behind cover, trees could easily stop shuriken and kunai but these knives were so flat that they had the penetrative power to go through most trees and then still pierce into the flesh, staying hidden behind a cover would've just made the two static targets unaware of them being picked off.</p><p>A dark-haired young woman leaped out from the cover deflecting the kunai and shuriken going her way as easily as eating a pie. She wielded twin short swords, they went just a bit past her elbow but they were definitely long enough to impale someone on them. They also looked a bit crooked and more of the slashing kind. The woman's face had a strange tattoo on the upper forehead and the cheek, they were some strange symbols, hieroglyphs used in the ancient times that Mana identified as being from the War of the Earth and the Moon times. The one on her forehead read "Kill", the one on her cheek meant ancient praise of a single symbol "Galateia Be Praised", it was hard to know what exactly that name meant, it could've been the name of this young woman.</p><p>"Why you! Are you a mercenary?" Kiyomi wondered out loud but then she noticed a headband protector with the Konoha sign on it. The raven-haired assailant was tall, she was no girl, she must've been either in her late teens or early twenties even as her body was completely formed, covered with scars and tattoos. She wore a simple darkened bronze ring armor which only covered her chest, her arms looked like the arms of a slim but athletic male. This was a woman capable of smothering the life out of a person if she got her hands on them. She had extremely pale skin and oddly colored dark purple eyes with wide irises. That was too unique of a look not to be from some weird clan.</p><p>"Galateia, Goddess of War be praised with these two joining her fray!" the woman uttered playing and rubbing her swords at each other so strongly that they shot off sparks. She must've been able to coat the blades with chakra because usually swords dulled when similar misuse and tension was applied to them.</p><p>"What kind of retarded Goddess accepts one's own comrades as an offering?" Kiyomi angrily grunted charging forward, the woman moved in an instant, passing right through her opponent. After this assailant appeared behind Kiyomi, the Yamanaka grunted in pain and fell on her knees, a small gash opened on her cheek but the girl appeared to be clenching her gut where she must've been hit with something dull as it didn't bleed. This woman was insanely fast! Way faster than any genin Mana had ever seen.</p><p>"Galateia, Goddess of War? That's the Goddess from the times of the Great Settlement period, worshipped by assassins and warriors like the Uchiha and Kaguya. Who are you?" Mana asked the attacking kunoichi openly but the young woman straightened out and prepared to attack again instead of answering Mana's question. Mana lunged forward, she couldn't let this woman attack Kiyomi, with a quick flick of her wrists she tossed several steel-tipped cards that hit the swords in the lower section forcing some shock to be transferred into the woman's wrists, strong enough to disable those arms for a moment.</p><p>Mana leaped into the fray with a powerful spinning kick but her kick was blocked by the same manner of kick. Angered and irritated from being perfectly matched in term of kicking speed and power Mana kept sending more and more kicks, faster and faster, the woman matched Mana's speed but didn't surpass it, the two were locked in a clash of kicks, it was an endless dance of kick after kick, Mana's black sandals moving in a flurry, powerful booming sounds of muscle hitting muscle erupted every time the two clashed. As fast as Mana kicked, as fast as she linked her kicks together and switched her dominant leg letting out another kick the woman matched it perfectly, it was a very different style but it was equally fast and strong.</p><p>Mana did a cartwheel back to clear the area as a powerful explosion erupted coming from Kiyomi's explosive kunai but the woman just leaped out from the smoke moving in close to Mana, with her swords in the ready to cut the girl down. Mana gasped as that last exchange of kicks left her out of the air and as fast as the girl's hand seals were they weren't fast enough to save her life. That was it! The woman grunted triumphantly as her swords swung in a mad spinning slash but they only cut down a large log. Mana felt her being held by Kiyomi further away – the Yamanaka used substitution to replace Mana with a log that she had in her hands.</p><p>"Thanks" Mana thanked her friend feeling really bad about almost being killed. She trained so intensely that last year and all of it was for nothing, had she been alone she'd just have died for nothing.</p><p>"Don't feel bad, no way she's a genin, we're as good as genin get, I would've aced those Chuunin Exams last year and I know a Chuunin when I see one." Kiyomi winked at Mana, "You've just clashed your super-neat legs against those of a Chuunin and didn't get crushed, also you kept her from cutting me down so that's appreciated..." Kiyomi breathed out as she did seem a little worn.</p><p>The Yamanaka shoved her arms forward holding them in a peculiar hand seal. "Mind-Body Switch Jutsu!" she shouted out, Mana's mouth opened wide from surprise when she saw some sort of transparent ghost-like figure shooting out from Kiyomi's hand seal heading towards the woman, with a graceful flip to the side using her one hand for support the woman evaded and lunged towards Kiyomi.</p><p>Mana leaped back, knowing that the woman didn't attack fast enough for someone as tough as Kiyomi not to dodge it. The woman got closer and closer, time seemed to have stopped. Mana's arms went through a handseal. The woman's swords pierced Kiyomi's black grey top but then only cut through a log. Mana returned the favor by substituting herself and her friend.</p><p>"Thanks" Kiyomi smiled at Mana, "I am left wide open and can't move for a while after using that technique, I guess she's a bit too agile to just throw it around like that, sorry" the blonde laughed out as if her life wasn't on the line here.</p><p>Mana smiled back, "Guess we're even then" she casually said without turning her eyes off the woman. Suddenly the woman leaped forward, reminding of one of those graceful jumps of ballet, as her dominant foot landed it redirected all of the force into a fierce skin, the swordswoman moved like a horizontal disc saw!</p><p>Kiyomi charged forward, somehow Mana knew just what her friend meant to do, it was like they were meant to be fighting together, almost like they needed no further training to understand one another. After getting dangerously close to the woman Kiyomi flipped acrobatically over the woman with an Arabian flip. Since Kiyomi covered everything behind her with her body there was no way for the woman to see Mana's steel cards with explosive notes on them, a violent explosion erupted from the cards being deflected by the woman's mad spinning motion. Kiyomi and Mana were huffing and smiling at each other for their nice combination move. This fight was like their deadly playground to learn to work together. They'd need it later. If they survived this, that is.</p><p>The woman was huffing heavily on her knees to the side, her armor was completely busted and all over the ground, the bronze rings weren't that tough to shatter. She must've really strained her body hard and twisted her leg weird because she was sweating all over her forehead. Mana and Kiyomi attacked simultaneously, neither of them was able to match this woman up close alone but together they could just do that.</p><p>Mana went in for a fierce and swift combo of kicks that was swiftly blocked, the magician felt Kiyomi's arms on her shoulders as the Yamanaka leaped over Mana with a powerful kick that planted right into the woman's face, making her stagger back with a bleeding nose. Mana rolled forward getting behind the woman and doing a backward cartwheel to send her up in the air, then leaping up and wrapping her leg around the woman's neck. The assailant let out a powerful grunt as Mana's other foot kicked the woman straight into the top of her head sending her crashing down into the dirt.</p><p>Mana landed nearby and moved back in order to avoid any deceitful responses from her lying opponent. Kiyomi looked at Mana and nodded. "This woman can augment her moves, her endurance, her strength and speed using chakra, that's why she's still alive..." Mana concluded seeing the woman rising up from the ground, wiping the blood off her nose and her lip which was busted. "This sort of augmentation is not something genin can do, not to such extent, this combo I hit her with was made to paralyze..." Mana huffed heavily.</p><p>"Well then it's official, we're facing a chuunin, a jounin would've already mopped the floor with us..." the blonde concluded.</p><p>"You little fancy dressing bitch!" the assailant yelled out, she appeared to have quite the potty-mouth and her voice fit that rough manner of speech perfectly.</p><p>"I just wanted to mess around with you two, now this is personal! I'll kill you both and then finish our mission by myself!" the woman swiped with her sword angrily taking a fighting stance again. Kiyomi and Mana both blinked rapidly as they realized that this woman in front of them was their third teammate.</p><p>The woman leaped forward swinging at both girls but Mana gave Kiyomi a boost to leap over the slash while she herself just dodged backward just getting a small cut on her throat, any deeper and it may have really gotten nasty. Mana covered her neck trying to see if the bleeding was dangerous or not, it bled rather slowly but it was very annoying and relentless bleeding, plus the magician preferred not to mess up her uniform if possible. Those required a lot of sewing and crafting to complete with all those hidden pockets and spring devices to boost the speed of the cards shooting out of her palms...</p><p>Kiyomi charged forward, the woman roared proudly raising her swords vertically and Mana observed much to her horror as her friend ended up hanging on the tips of those swords. At least Kiyomi managed to somewhat augment her endurance or else she'd have been impaled. With a swift kick, after removing the swords, the woman sent Kiyomi rolling back grasping her small wound on her gut. Despite the gruesome look, her friend was lucky to toughen up just in time, she must've wasted a lot of chakra but at least she didn't die...</p><p>The raven-haired psycho leaped at Kiyomi trying to decapitate her when Mana appeared in front of her pressing the buttons of her cufflinks, whole two decks of steel-tipped cards shot out, the woman backflipped doing her best to deflect all of them, she skipped some, they left some nasty cuts, several etched into the woman's body but generally, she received no fight ending wounds whereas Mana cleaned all of her reserves that were in her emergency spot near her wrists. The psycho swiped her sword and licked the blood off of the tip, leaving some to rub onto her cheek, she seemed to enjoy the blood of her injured comrade.</p><p>"I see, so that's why you dress like that, you hide those stupid cards in every pocket of that stupid uniform. No worry, auntie Hisako will strip you of it and force you to fight without it, I'll kill you slowly without your handy cards to bail you out. I'll bleed you out like a pig, then that older blonde will beg me not to kill her like you, maybe if I'll have had enough of your screams I'll slit her throat and be done with it..."</p><p>Kiyomi grunted out, her gut wound must've kept her down pretty badly. "That clears it out, she's a goddamn Yoruma..." the blonde said. Half of Mana's glance reached back at her friend, "Yoruma? I think I've heard that last name before..." Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>"Yeah, Yoruma are braindead psycho assassins, some of them are just bloodthirsty brawlers, some of them are cold and calculated psychopaths who love to torture people. I don't know why the village keeps them around but they do, probably cause Yoruma are decent at torture, assassination, and strategy so the Council likes them... If you ever felt compelled to kill someone, this might be the right chance to think about your beliefs, knowing Yoruma mentality, she's not bluffing." Kiyomi grunted standing up. Mana took her fighting stance, she was ready to take this woman on, or at least hold her back before Kiyomi recovered.</p><p>"No. Even a woman like this deserves to live, somewhere, at some point she'll have a purpose to serve and I have no right to take her life. It's not for me to decide those things." Mana replied still very much determined to keep even this psycho alive. Hisako leaped forward swinging her sword, Mana tried to block it but the sword blurred and Mana couldn't catch the blade with her palms – it disappeared like a mirage!</p><p>Then the mirage disappeared and the real Hisako appeared in its place, the first one was just an afterimage, the woman slashed making Mana scream in pain, she didn't cut to kill, she didn't intend for it to be that quick. Nor did the Yoruma wish to let the magician have it that easy, she playfully cut Mana, again and again, rubbing her blade against Mana's skin just to open painful gashes but not to make them deep enough to kill her. This Hisako really was ready to fulfill her promise!</p><p>Finally after a powerful spinning motion after jumping up in the air, the swordswoman sent Mana down on the ground. The magician grunted pitifully but she crawled away further from her opponent just to stand up again. "What a fucking disgrace, a little pop idol girl who thinks she's a ninja yet refuses to kill. I'll do the world a favor and snuff you out right here and now, I don't plan on giving you an easy time either, it'll be a lesson to all those stupid idealistic little kids who think this is some cranberry pie day out here!" the woman shouted out.</p><p>"Stop! If you kill a comrade for no reason you'll go on Ninja Tribunal, you'll get executed or imprisoned for life!" Kiyomi tried to reason with the Yoruma. The woman turned back with a sadistic smile, "Do I look like the kind of a bitch that cares!?" she replied licking the blood off of her swords. Mana's foot planted deep into Hisako's gut while she was distracted, the woman flew backward, her eyes looked completely whited out. Mana realized this was her final chance, with a swift roll she moved behind stumbling Hisako and locked her hands behind her, she locked them hard enough for the raven-haired monster to drop her blades. Kiyomi placed her seals forward, "I'll kill this psycho right now..." she said angrily, the blonde's voice was enraged enough for Mana to believe it!</p><p>"No, please don't, just take her out, we'll find some mercenaries and ask them to patch us up. They've got medics amongst them too, maybe we'll pay them to detain her while we deal with the mission. Please..." Mana yelled out struggling to keep the hold.</p><p>"Mana... After all the pain she caused you. After she mocked your ideals and cut you up like that after she tortured you... You still want her to live?" Kiyomi couldn't believe, her hand seal faltered and almost sunk down.</p><p>"Yes! Hurry up, please!" Mana shouted as Hisako started stomping Mana's foot and hammering the girl's sides with elbow strikes but Mana's hold held firmly. What the magician lacked in physical strength she compensated with sheer willpower.</p><p>"Mind-Body Disturbance: Harakiri... Peaceful Version!" Kiyomi chanted firing off that same strange ghost from her hands that this time successfully entered Hisako's head, a strange howling sound let go as the woman just slipped out from Mana's arms and ran wildly like a maniac, controlled by Kiyomi's technique. She slammed her head right into the first tree in her way and passed out. Mana fell to her knees clutching her cuts and wounds, she lifted her tired and beaten up head and smiled for Kiyomi. "Thank you..." she was really grateful for her friend's decision to modify her kill technique to just disable just because Mana asked her to.</p><p>Mana took her top hat from somewhere on the ground and activated her father's seal removing a medical kit with bandages and some medical food pills. Mana tossed one for Kiyomi and ate one herself, after tying Hisako down she also gave Hisako one. The two girls just collapsed near the tree they held Hisako tied to and almost fell asleep.</p><p>"Now we definitely need to find those mercs, we need medical supplies..." Mana said. They had eaten all of their medical food pills and those provided only the most basic medical emergency aid like patching up small wounds and fixing broken bones or torn muscles. These were quite rare so it was unlikely for most genin to even have them, Mana accumulated three over several months of saving them in her missions... One psychotic young lady ruined all of that collecting, all of that wish to have them ready for a dark time, to save someone's life with them gone...</p><p>"I guess you're right..." Kiyomi nodded. The two looked at Hisako who was awake right after being given the pill and now kept staring at the two with the coldest and most emotionless stare ever seen on a person, it wasn't angry, it wasn't spiteful, it was just there...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0077"><h2>77. A Sick World For Sick People</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the day was approaching its end, Mana and Kiyomi continued to wander forward through the Fire Country's forests. They had already passed the incredibly rich trade route that led to the Shukuba pleasure town, the three decided recently that staying there would be counterproductive. While both girls could've used a warm room and a bed, those simple pleasures had to be given up on when the two heard about the prices. It appeared that Hisako, the raven-haired assassin from the Yoruma clan was to blame for all of the trio's troubles.</p><p>First of all, Mana and Kiyomi could've easily fit into a single room but the policy was that three people had to rent out two rooms. Even a single room would've drained the funds meant for hiring a mercenary, something that the magician and the Yamanaka would have to do, now that Hisako proved herself to be completely insane.</p><p>Even more, with the black-haired assailant being tied up she was moving at a turtle's pace, there was no malice from her side, she just couldn't move too fast as her legs were restrained and her hands were tied quite firmly. Mana knew which knots could've been escaped from and which couldn't, she's been doing it for the greater part of her life after all. Even the Academy "Rope Escape Jutsu" couldn't have helped Hisako with those knots.</p><p>And so since the funds needed to be conserved, their prisoner kept in their sight at all times, also the mission implied urgency needed, with the life of a youngster being in question, the three needed to pass right through the pleasure town. Kiyomi was quite rough on the young woman, the Yamanaka kept dragging the woman around like her dog and appeared to greatly enjoy this. Mana asked if it was her turn to keep Hisako on her check and the Yamanaka denied it multiple times. It was a chore to keep the woman on watch and drag her around, still, it was a chore that Kiyomi had taken great pleasure in doing. After almost getting impaled by the Chuunin and having to spend most of her chakra on that incomplete augmentation she must've been tired too...</p><p>To Mana, such hate and severity towards a fellow ninja seemed excessive but the magician had decided to show respect towards Kiyomi's approach after the blonde showed so much respect towards Mana's by not killing the woman when she had the chance. The Yoruma was so quiet and submissive the whole way after her attack that Mana almost forgot that the woman had just tried to kill them. Well, technically, if her statement was to be trusted she just wanted to mess with her comrades but Mana's "rough" approach pissed her off. Apparently, in Hisako's mind, it was OK to almost kill her comrades but when they as much as touched her in defense they had to get tortured and killed...</p><p>"Can you believe those Yoruma?" Kiyomi grunted aggressively yanking Hisako's rope to the point where the rope had burned some nasty wounds on the woman's hands and body where it came in direct contact with the woman's skin. Even if those rope burns were supposed to hurt the woman didn't as much as a moan, she just stayed completely quiet and didn't even flinch even when her wounds turned crimson red and were about to draw blood.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I am unfamiliar with the Yoruma except some small bits I've heard from my old team about Yoruma torture being the worst there is," Mana replied quietly, still wondering if she wouldn't have been out of line to ask Kiyomi take it a little easy on their prisoner. The magician wasn't even a fan of having her around, after all, if the mercenaries refuse to take Hisako in and deliver her to Konoha they'll have to go on a mission they have no hopes of completing with an offended Yoruma prisoner who was ready to slit their throats at the moment they make a mistake and let down their guard.</p><p>"I mean, they keep pulling shit like this off, once a Yoruma let his teammates die just to wait until the enemy set up camp, and then they slowly tortured and killed every enemy in their own camp, the other time they joined the enemy side and killed their own comrades, then when the enemy let down their guards slaughtered them all too. They're skilled strategists but their strategies involve their comrades getting sacrificed like it's a game of goddamn shogi!" Kiyomi complained giving Hisako an angry stare and yanking her rope harder, finally, the young assassin gave in and fell onto the dirt, Kiyomi walked up closer and stood by the woman giving her time to get up.</p><p>"But... Wouldn't someone do something about them if they were that bad? Why are they allowed to do things like this?" Mana wondered looking at the whole situation. Hisako wriggled on the ground in pain and Kiyomi softly kicked the woman to the side, not strong enough to hurt her but strong enough for it to hurt and for her irritation to be made apparent.</p><p>"That's the thing, every time they do crazy shit like that they complete the mission. The village Council loves them. The First Hokage once fought over the Council to banish them, the entire clan was nearly snuffed out under the Second but they really must like sex because they're duplicating like rabbits..." Mana giggled into her palm at Kiyomi's mention of procreating, for some reason to her dirty jokes seemed funny, even if they never did before.</p><p>"Every time the Fourth tried to raise the question of their blatant lack of any morals or ethics, the Council shot the Hokage down. The Yoruma complete their mission, they do everything they're told to do, why bother sending a Yamanaka to read someone's mind, you'd need to answer a bunch of questions, you'd need to capture the enemy alive and then the Yamanaka would know all the secrets you're conveying, they also are moral, they tend not to torture people needlessly. Yoruma can just delete them like that enemy was never born and they'll never wink twice about it or ask a bloody question. If one needs intel they'll torture it out from them with no moral code in their methods. For that reason, the Council made them pretty much damned invincible in terms of responsibility. They do from time to time act out a Ninja Tribunal session but, for some reason, the Yoruma either get all charges dropped or just get placed in Eden, the softest of the Correctional Facilities." Kiyomi kicked softly at Hisako again to which the woman moaned but managed to pull herself off the ground.</p><p>Mana wanted to raise a point that Kiyomi's hatred seemed to be based somewhat on clan competition. There was a big tension between clans and the competitiveness of efficiency in terms of mission completion always made matters even more difficult. Yet the magician stayed silent, she had no clan so she couldn't understand those sorts of matters. "I've met a young man who was too powerful for his rank too one day. He was trained in the Kirigakure Demon Corps and he was quite ruthless, I wonder if he's a Yoruma too..." Mana remembered the young Demon that they fought in the Junkyard district.</p><p>"Unlikely, those bastards are Konoha exclusive, as far as I know. Several villages want some of them for their services but the Council doesn't want to share and the Yoruma don't even care. As long as they have beer to drink, members of other or same sex to have fun with and throats to slit they're happy in Konoha." The Yamanaka grunted out annoyed. Obviously, the matter of Yoruma was a painful and inviting a lot of hatred topic for the blonde so Mana wanted to drop it as fast as possible.</p><p>Finally, as the sky turned dark the trio reached the mercenary camp that was wandering around close to Shukuba town and Konoha. This one was a particular and a special one, ninja sometimes used the services of mercenaries and this one was exclusively that kind of a band. They hung around Konoha and offered their easily accessible services to the ninja of that village, other villages had similar bands as well. Mana and Kiyomi were hesitant to enter the camp. It was a large circle of tents with a colossal fire that lit up the night's sky. Some sort of a large animal was being roasted on a spear just above the fire.</p><p>"You can come in, girls!" a loud voice reached the ears of Mana and Kiyomi. It was a cybernetic voice, similar to that of the same Demon that Mana had remembered fighting before. This mercenary must've used a cybernetic amplifier which made his voice unrecognizable too. The three slowly stepped into where the band could have seen them. These were a very brawny lot, armed to the teeth and armored. They looked like quite capable of doing most jobs requiring muscle but it was always a gamble with mercenaries as the three were just teenage girls entering their fray.</p><p>The owner of the strange cybernetic voice stepped into the light, revealing himself from the large circle and looking over the three. The giant was almost twice larger than any tall normal man. There were many ways in the ninja world to achieve such insane height and bulk but this certainly was not by any means achieved by natural means.</p><p>The man may have been closing in on four meters in his size and he did not lack anything in the physical bulk department either. His group wore the usual chuunin vests that would have protected their vitals and their torso from most conventional weapons like swords and kunai knives or shuriken. This man, however, was too large for that, he just wore a white shirt and a black vest with shoulder guards to protect his oversized neck and shoulders.</p><p>"Well, come on, little ladies, won't you ask how I knew of your presence, if anything you were pretty much invisible, ain't that right, folks?" the giant turned at his group who all raised their beers in the air and yelled out with a deafening cry of joy and approval. Mana's heart was thudding like mad inside of her little chest, one couldn't have been too sure about how a bunch of mercenaries would react...</p><p>"OK, big guy, how did you know?" Kiyomi replied having decided to play by the leader's rules in case of them staying there.</p><p>The man suddenly reached onto his eyelid and peeled it up as if it was some sort of a zipper revealing a red glowing eye with some sort of yellow symbols and numbers running down his fake eye. "Those damned Iwagakure sensor eyes, the best thing in the world, I swear, calculates the distance between multiple points, senses body temperature and all that neat stuff. I don't know how those bastards rock miners did this but it's hot as hell!" the man shouted out in excitement.</p><p>Mana actually was quite interested in this strange eye of the mercenary boss. She had heard stories about technological breakthroughs happening all around the world. Konoha with its glowing gas for vendor ads and computers which could calculate really fast and store files, some people said it'd soon push the carrier pigeons and the Konohagakure Archive and its scissor-man owner out of business! Iwagakure with its sensory and radar technology, inventing radars that could sense veins of certain minerals underground and put the structure of the soil on display, Sunagakure with its amazing weather prediction system and its amazing solar power drawing devices. So far, Kirigakure was the only one lacking technological advances as it very much dabbled in the old ways. They did use Sunagakure's solar power technology and started recently developing similar hydropower technology under the watch of the other villages...</p><p>"And what's that on your back? Is that a sensor too?" Hisako's voice came for the first time since she was captured. Kiyomi looked back at the woman angrily and was about to punch her but she decided not to, after all, showing violence in front of those guys may make them a bit annoyed.</p><p>"Nope!" the mercenary colossus removed his gigantic pole from his back. It looked like some sort of metallic column of some sort and it had a bunch of weird numbers on it. "This is "Julie" the newest invention from Kumogakure, the world's leading inventors of kickass weapons. This baby converts chakra into pulsar blasts that blow shit up, no jutsu needed. You sort of need to know how to channel it into this baby so that sucks but so far this baby and I are engaged!"</p><p>Mana smiled back at Hisako, the woman seemed to know how to play this man, if he was pleased and talking he would've most likely have grown fond of the three and maybe helped them out. Then out of nowhere the giant mercenary leader recovered and pointed his gigantic finger at Hisako, seeing those fingers made Mana shake, the man would've been able to pop her head like a zit with two of those if he grabbed a hold of her...</p><p>"Why is that little hottie all tied up? We're all free men here, aren't we? Untie her the fuck up, come on, don't be such poor sports..." the man commanded.</p><p>Kiyomi stepped forward but Hisako leaped into her back pushing her forward, Mana realized what the young woman was doing so she covered her friend's mouth too.</p><p>"Ummm... My friend wanted to know which mercenary band this was, if we were to have business and untie this woman, we want to know at least if we're dealing with the right band..." Mana smiled and blushed as she just made that excuse up. She needed to buy time and play this right, hopefully, Hisako got over her madness and started playing along, so far she seemed quite helpful and started making up for trying to kill the two. Not that saving their lives would make up for that but she was at least going in the right direction.</p><p>"Right, well my name's Hachi, I'm the leader here 'cause I blew the last one the hell up. That dick tried to move this band away from Konoha, I didn't agree with that and I used all of the awesome gear that I've bought using my numerous payments, which other members of my... Group... Wasted on booze and... You know... Temporarily fun things." The giant explained. Mana didn't really like this man, not because of his "weapons of destruction are cool" attitude but because he had enough brain to use his funds for something like bartering for such weapons.</p><p>Most mercenaries weren't so good at making investments for the long run because they had no long run, their life expectancy out there wasn't that great so they just drank and humped until they died in battle. This guy was different and something about it rubbed Mana the wrong way.</p><p>"Fine, we want to do business with you, Hachi" Kiyomi pulled the bag of coins that she was given by the Fifth as mission funds. "-san..." Mana added trying not to disrespect the man and desperately wanting not to pick a fight with this group. There may have been as many as twenty men and women here, most of them wore chuunin vests, and how they earned them was quite shady, they may have been bought or looted from dead bodies and ninja tend not to sell their equipment to strangers unless they're greedy and the deal is good.</p><p>"Well then, why don't you settle down by the fire, young ladies, also untie the blackhead chick, even if she's your prisoner she's not running away from all of us," Hachi ordered.</p><p>"You'd be surprised..." Kiyomi started but then mercenaries surrounded Hisako and cut her ropes. "Or... You know... Do whatever the hell you want..." the blonde finished her thought having realized that all semblance of control had just been taken away and the table was officially flipped now. The rug couldn't have been more pulled. The mercenaries gently lead the girls to the fire as they settled down in front of it, on the other side Hachi dropped down shaking the ground under his giant rear cheeks. His size never ceased to impress, apparently, his weight must've been matching the man's size as well.</p><p>"Well then, what do you need to do and what do you have to offer for it?" Hachi asked curiously placing his head on his giant palm and looking at the three girls with genuine curiosity. The lack of malicious intent in his eyes was surprising but Mana had seen kind eyes change into malicious in a matter of moment. This situation was as close to a sword of Damocles as possible.</p><p>Kiyomi peeled a chunk of meat from the giant animal roasting and stuffed her mouth after being gestured to eat. After swallowing the whole thing down she slammed her hand on the ground to try and gather some respect and authority. Mana also took a small bite of the meat, she wasn't much of an eater but if a host wanted one to eat, the worst thing to do was to dishonor them by refusing, especially if a host had a heat-seeking eye and a pulsar chakra blast launcher on his back as well as God knew what other enhancements...</p><p>Hisako also sliced a piece with her knife. She had multiple belts of knives all around her body, as many actually as Mana had cards. For a moment this revelation of all the hidden sharp blades around Hisako's body made the magician feel happy that she recollected most of her cards she had tossed in their brief scuffle before.</p><p>"We have a hostage kidnapped and we need hands to rescue it. This woman here is Yoruma Hisako, she was supposed to be our teammate, a Chuunin no less, and she tried to kill us. Now we're short on competent hands and we need your help. All of the ryo here is all we have to offer. Unless you're also charging us for the food..." Kiyomi explained their situation revealing the bag of coins on the dirt, it was picked up by a mercenary and brought to Hachi who counted the ryo and nodded.</p><p>"Fifty thousand ryo for an assignment like this? I assume you're paying for a single merc because one mercenary costs forty-five thousand at the least, I price my own services in the ranges starting from a million ryo." the man rumbled out. Kiyomi looked really confused, she probably expected hiring the boss as a single mercenary may not have cut it in this assignment.</p><p>Hisako spat to the left, her spit landed alarmingly close to a near-naked mercenary woman who was rubbing her body against her colleague. "Anyone told you that you're a greedy bastard, Hachi?" she remarked, the mercenaries started shouting out in excitement as they felt like this woman had just challenged their leader.</p><p>Hachi laughed out, his laugh alone appeared to nearly put out the giant fire in the center of the camp.</p><p>"I mean a kunai with an explosive tag costs what... Eight hundred ryo? To have a decent meal costs more like nine hundred, if we're talking Ichiraku Ramen it's five hundred or even three depending on the bowl of ramen. Now I haven't seen shit from you yet so if you asked me, I'd rather eat two thousand bowls of ramen and let my egg allergy kill me than hire you. Or just buy a thousand and a quarter of another thousand of explosive kunai, I'll let your little calculator in your eye do the math and check if I'm correct, I get it, you're big, it takes time for blood to reach everywhere..." Hisako kept on throwing insults at the man but it appeared like the more she insulted the man, the more he kept on laughing.</p><p>"Now there's a bitch who knows how to talk to a merc..." Hachi laughed out. He stood up and took his "Julie" off aiming to the side and blasting a single bright blue ball of pure chakra into the area where the three have come from. A deafening sound equaling a thousand thunderclaps made Mana lose her hearing for a moment and the bright light completely devastated her sight. The magician only regained her senses after almost a minute and she only saw devastation and destruction, craters and trees pulled with their roots and incinerated in the blast into dust and ashes. This man blew up at least fifty meters radius area with just one blast, a glass container shot out from "Julie" breaking on the ground. It was empty.</p><p>Hisako nodded, she didn't appear surprised or impressed but Mana could smell the sweat from the girl, she clearly was stressing out a little even if her act was pitch-perfect. "Fine, we'll take either you if you're willing to work for this price or a man whom you trusted enough to join your group. Give us someone of your choosing."</p><p>Hachi sat back down putting his trusted cannon back to its sheath. "Not so fast. There's still one matter I don't get. You came here with this mission and hired us, that's fine. But then where will you go at night? You are clearly also asking us to let you sleep here in our tents, that'll cost twelve thousand ryo extra, I mean you're ninja, and this gal looks like a Yoruma with those fucking tats, I can't really trust you out here unless you're willing to buy my trust. You're also asking us to lead this "Hisako" chick right back into Konoha, so you're expecting my mercs to just waltz into a ninja village? That's twelve thousand ryo extra. So to sum it up you owe me twenty-four thousand ryo more than you got."</p><p>Mana shook in her seat uncomfortably, they didn't account for that at all. When a mercenary feels ripped off he might turn uncontrollable. Kiyomi looked really pale and it didn't appear like she knew a way out either. Hisako, on the other hand, wasn't worried, she was utterly terrified. Mana couldn't understand it, what exactly could this girl be so terrified of? Then the raven-haired woman just stood up and walked up to Hachi on the other side and whispered something into his ear. The man laughed out from his full lion's chest, the buttons of his shirt shot out revealing his hairy and bulky chest.</p><p>"Well then... This girl knows how to make a deal, then again, you did tell me that you were doubting my skill, why should I value yours at that price? I'll need a display of your skill or I'll just send your two underage brats home and keep you under my protection." Hachi ironically winked at Hisako who just lowered her head. She nodded, then Hachi pointed at some random mercenary who took Hisako to a tent.</p><p>Mana turned at Kiyomi who was a bit horrified by the transaction, more perhaps that Hisako was the one to initiate it. The magician didn't get what exactly was scaring her teammate. Clearly, Hisako made some sort of a deal and from how skilled she was with words it appeared like she was quite skilled at those sorts of deals. "What happened?" Mana asked Kiyomi with a whimpering and silenced voice, trying to talk to just her friend. The Yamanaka weaved a hand seal. Her words started appearing in Mana's thoughts as if the two were linked with their minds, Kiyomi knew how to telepathically communicate!</p><p>"It might be better if you don't know..." the Yamanaka said. Mana wasn't completely sure why on Earth was the atmosphere suddenly so sad and why her teammate was so crushed. Kiyomi's hands were trembling for some reason. Fifteen minutes later the mercenary and Hisako walked out from the tent and the mercenary nodded at Hachi. The boss then smiled at the two and at Hisako who soon joined the two by the fire.</p><p>"Well then, I suppose a fun lady for the night..." Hisako raised her palm and nodded at Mana. Hachi coughed up, "To tell me stories from her rich ninja life whole night, I mean... That concludes the deal if my associate is happy..."</p><p>The boss stood up and spread his hands out wide with a happy smile, his giant cannon almost slipped off of his back. "Well then, young ladies, enjoy yourselves, eat and sleep wherever the fuck you want, my camp is your camp, my mercs are your mercs. My associate just let me know that I, in fact, owe YOU some. I am glad we could reach a consensual agreement here." Just like that Hachi disappeared, he danced around by the fire, sang songs and kept on drinking. Mana looked at Kiyomi who couldn't pull her eyes off of Hisako, for a moment the magician saw the reflection of Kiyomi's eyes from Hisako's crystal eyes. The Yamanaka was looking at the Yoruma with both pity and disgust.</p><p>Finally, the big feast and all those horrible songs and hilarious dancing was over. Mana sat by Hisako who had her hands untied. Kiyomi disappeared in her tent, the mercenaries chose to vacate the tent which Kiyomi had chosen.</p><p>"If that bitch tries something just think about it, I'll cut her throat that same instant!" Kiyomi's thought appeared in Mana's head, this ability of Kiyomi's sounded scary, just how did the girl use it? How potent was it? Who heard it? How exactly could Mana talk to Kiyomi back? Apparently, it was as easy as focusing on a thought. Still, now the magician saw why the Yamanaka clan was so treasured by the village. They may not have been "point to make the problem disappear" people like Yoruma but they were incredibly handy in other departments.</p><p>"Why the fuck are you still here? What are you, seven? Go to bed, twerp!" Hisako hissed angrily at Mana, for some reason the woman wanted to stay alone by the fire. Mana looked at the sad young woman and she sort of felt sad for her. Whatever that deal she made was it looked like she was really familiar with those terms as that cruel realization moment made it apparent that Hisako had done it multiple times before. Did she often hire mercenaries or something? Mana just wrapped her hands around her knees and buttoned up her blazer and moved in closer to the fire, the night was a really cold one.</p><p>"You look sad, I thought maybe you needed company..." Mana tried to be nice to the woman. "Plus I'm like almost fourteen, so come on, don't be like that."</p><p>"Trust me, kid, I'm about to have my company, more than most can handle." Hisako hissed back, just with a little less anger, Mana wondered if maybe she could talk to the woman before it was time for the assassin to go to Hachi's tent to tell those stories of hers.</p><p>"You know... If you don't want to follow up on that deal, if you don't know that many stories or if you don't feel like it... We can just leave, we can do the mission just the three of us, we wouldn't need the mercenaries, we'd just have to get together..." Mana suggested, she was really ready to follow up on that suggestion, if Hisako felt uncomfortable with any part of that deal she made the magician just wanted to let the woman know that she had options.</p><p>"Jeez, you're so fucking stupid. How do you think it'd go? Me working with that blonde Ms. Morals in there, I'd never wish to impose on her "my bloodline is so exalted and you're all just fucking disgusting plebs here" personality. Plus just seeing you makes my blood boil, I'd probably just kill the two of you anywhere in the middle of the job. I'd rather tell stories to this whole fucking camp by the fire for a month and then go to prison than have to listen to the condescension of that Yamanaka bitch." Hisako grunted out, she spoke quietly but she was visibly angry. She looked like a woman who was hurt way too many times as a girl and when she became corrupted by that damage people's hatred for her made that damage grow out of control.</p><p>Mana placed her hand on her chest and wiped her nose. Her eyes started watering a little. "Hisako-san, why do you hate me?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Shut up, go to bed already." The woman hissed back at her.</p><p>"I mean... Why are you so stubborn that you'd rather do something you don't like than just work with us?" Mana asked again.</p><p>A painful shock emanated from Mana's side, Hisako kicked Mana pretty weakly. Kicks from a sitting position weren't that potent but it really did hurt, mostly the mental idea that the woman would've rather hurt the magician than talked to her. Mana picked herself up and sat in the same spot where she was.</p><p>"I mean, I think I get it why you hate me, Hisako-san. You're a person who's had bad things happen to you a lot for your whole life, you became a person who could deal with that pain and all that darkness but other people didn't like that person. All that dismissal and all that hate, all that condescension and all that prejudice of your Yoruma legacy made you shut in even more, it's a circle... No, a drowning spiral of darkness and sickening hatred that doesn't help anyone." Mana spoke up, Hisako turned at Mana with a violent stare, the magician saw the woman's hands trembling on the handles of her knives on the belts on her thighs.</p><p>"I'll fucking kill you kid, it's not worth it, leave it alone!" Hisako warned Mana as her voice started to pick up.</p><p>"Mana?" Kiyomi's trembling mental voice reached Mana's mind through the telepathic link.</p><p>"Please go to sleep, we'll have a troubling couple of days ahead." Mana thought concentrating on the thoughts with all of her might.</p><p>"You don't have to concentrate that hard, you're basically screaming it at this point..." Kiyomi replied mentally.</p><p>Mana reached up and hugged Hisako unexpectedly. She felt a sharp pain in her gut, Mana coughed up as all traces of oxygen left her lungs and she fell down on the dirt. She looked down where the pain came from, Hisako tried to punch the magician out by punching her in the gut. The girl desperately struggled to pick herself up. "Next time there will be a knife in that hand" Hisako grunted out. The woman stood up and started walking away moving to the large tent that belonged to Hachi.</p><p>"Does this hatred come from your family? Do you at the very least have a home to go back to and relax?" Mana huffed out, struggling to breathe. Hisako punched like a truck and a single punch almost made the girl throw up all that brief dinner that she had. Even after almost a minute had passed the magician struggled to get up.</p><p>Hisako stood there for a moment, she didn't say anything, she just stared into the tent and closed her eyes, the woman's head lowered as she stared into the dirt, she was shaking but then her voice returned to Mana.</p><p>"My mother was killed on a mission, she was a spy assassin, the slipping poison kind and she slipped poison to an official who was immune to it. She got tortured for hours before she died. My father was killed in front of me by the same people who wanted revenge for that attempt, they didn't attack the Kage, they attacked the family that was hired. That scar on my eye, that's from back then. Now go back to sleep and don't go to that tent, not if you want to see this world for what it really fucking is. A sick world for sick people, a world where the excess of sickness is rewarded and kindness and weakness leads to suffering and death. Keep living in that dream, keep thinking it's beautiful, keep thinking you can change it. I want you to have that thought in you when I kill you, I want you to think about that, I want to see that thought leave your eyes at your last moments."</p><p>After that monologue Hisako entered the tent, Hachi's happy welcome echoed from inside and Mana finally managed to stand back up. The girl still rubbed her gut from the pain, Mana painfully walked up to Kiyomi's tent and peeked in. Yoruma had a way with murderous monologues, that much Mana had to hand it to Hisako...</p><p>"Kiyomi-san, can I sleep here too, I don't want to force some pair of mercenaries out of their homes?" she asked in an apologetic tone.</p><p>"Sure..." Kiyomi's sleepy voice returned. Mana entered and settled down into the corner of the tent on the fur that was taken off some dead animal's carcass, possibly even that same animal that Mana ate that night. The magician sighed, the air that entered her lungs was shaking with fear and hesitation.</p><p>"Don't talk to Hisako anymore, don't even think about her, she's nuts and she will kill you," Kiyomi warned Mana, this tone she used was incredibly strict and almost maternal. Mana closed her tired eyes and rubbed them wiping all the remains of any premature tears that may have formed. Yoruma really could talk, their scary monologues were so cold and so distancing, they made any sane person realize that this person was trouble. Most people would've described Mana in many ways but sane wasn't one of them. "Also, you may want to cover your ears, maybe cover your head with the fur," Kiyomi said gently pulling the fur cover on Mana's ears.</p><p>Mana's head slipped out from the fur, "Why?" she asked. Kiyomi grunted in frustration, "Yoruma kill a lot so I imagine her storytelling techniques will be quite vivid and energetic. If you want to get any sleep you might want to cover up" the Yamanaka said covering the magician's head back up. "That sick, self-centered bitch..." Mana heard the last message come through the mental link before she couldn't feel Kiyomi in her own mind anymore.</p><p>Despite the tent being cold and stuffy and the smell of dead flesh being all around her Mana drifted off rather easily, that fight with Hisako earlier left her quite exhausted.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0078"><h2>78. A Crossroad Between Order And Chaos</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's strange how deep and long the sleep of cold autumnal nights was. It's like the body was getting ready for some sort of human hibernation, the exhausted body and the somniferous cold nights made a very freezing and almost dreamy combination. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the fact that everyone had their troubles to wake up to, oftentimes those troubles got edgy during the autumn period as one had to both work and prepare for the winter. This may have been a very primal reflex of postponing stress of preparation and casual trouble but it seemed to be passed down the generational line quite efficiently...</p><p>It took Mana good two or three "love taps" from Kiyomi to wake her up. The magician softly rose from the fur, rubbed the aching skin as the fur etched into her face. She made the right call to sleep with her clothes as her entire body would've felt itchy and had those weird sleep marks of hair rubbing at her body. Ignoring the stench that once again smashed itself mercilessly at her nostrils, Mana also desperately tried to get her wild hair in order but, unfortunately, the bed hair was strong on her. Kiyomi giggled looking at the magician.</p><p>"God you're so cute like that, I'd nom you like a pickle..." the blonde remarked but then her lovely smile quickly changed back into disgust as the Yamanaka peeked from the tent to see Hisako by the fire.</p><p>After Mana left she just barely restrained her surprise. Hisako looked amazing, someone did her hair and she wore a majestic, almost regal-looking, fur coat. It appeared to be made from the skin of some rare and once very beautiful marten, sable perhaps. Also when Hisako turned back Mana noticed her wearing a silver hairpiece. Were her stories that great that the assassin earned some additional bonus points with the mercenaries?</p><p>"Well, Hachi liked Hisako to begin with, I suppose she just got to know him better, I wish she let us in and opened up a bit as she did with..."</p><p>Kiyomi's grunt interrupted Mana's thoughts. For a moment the girl wondered if the Yamanaka was able to hear everything but then the blonde transmitted something back at Mana.</p><p>"I've had it with this bitch, let's get our merc and leave already, they'll deliver Hisako to the village or keep her for themselves, I don't care..." Mana still hadn't gotten used to the mental link. Thoughts just materializing in her head with her partner's voice sounded just too weird. It was like the blonde was some sort of an alien or something and communicated through telepathy. Just like in all those weird plays that spoke of the Moon People...</p><p>"Why would the mercenaries keep Hisako-san to themselves?" Mana thought back to her teammate curiously.</p><p>"Oh, for God's sake, Mana, Hisako paid for the mercenaries, the food, the tents and all that with... Ugh, you laughed at a dirty joke before, come on!" Kiyomi blasted a powerful sensation into Mana's mind. The magician tapped and rubbed her head as the thought was really powerful and caused some headache, even by shouting through telepathy Kiyomi was able to cause headaches, just how powerful her clan hidden techniques were it was scary to imagine!</p><p>Mana couldn't believe for a moment but then it all made sense. Why Hisako whited out before committing to it, why Kiyomi was so disgusted, why Hachi was so happy and content and why Hisako got all that special treatment like she's the queen of the mercenaries now... The magician walked up to the woman and gently tapped her shoulder.</p><p>"I'd stab that hand but I'd stab so deep that I'd plunge it into my own shoulder too, what do you want, idol-bitch!?" Hisako yelled back at Mana to which the mercenaries just laughed like they were a bunch of monkeys.</p><p>"How did it happen?" Mana let out a very serious and concentrated question, her tone implied that she was about to do either something very stupid or just let it go, depending on the answer.</p><p>"Scuse me, didn't you fucking hear what I said? Bugger off before I'll ask one of the guys to spank you with a belt like an annoying little bitch you are!" Hisako rudely shouted back at Mana pushing her and removing the girl's hand from her shoulder.</p><p>"Mana, you're doing it again, just leave it at that, she's not worth it..." Kiyomi's thought was voiced on the link, it was interesting how the Yamanaka never included the assassin in the link. Almost like the hate for Hisako was so deep that the blonde wanted nothing less than let her anywhere close to her mind whereas she had little problem letting Mana in.</p><p>Seeing how the magician didn't move and continued to stare at Hisako with an angry stare that didn't budge off of the raven-haired woman's eyes for a moment the assassin waved her hand at her, two assassins stood up and tried to lead the girl away, gently. With a single flick of her fingers, weaving a single hand seal sent the two writhing on the ground.</p><p>"Get them off!" one yelled, "They're all over me, oh my God, why did it have to be mole crickets!" the other joined in with his own horrifically pathetic scream.</p><p>"How... Did it... Happen?" Mana repeated the question. More mercenaries stood up, they looked much angrier than the lot that came at Mana before and while the girl's exterior acted all tough, internally she was beyond afraid. If all of them came at her she wouldn't have been able to detain all of them. She had to work just to keep that illusion on both of the other guys.</p><p>Hisako stood up and grabbed Mana by her elbow, forcefully dragging her further away from the band and Kiyomi. "Drop your fucking cheerleader act, now!" she hissed at the magician but Hisako noticed that Mana's eyes didn't change.</p><p>"You whited out when Hachi-san told us that we had nothing to pay him with, then you instantly switched to that. I want to believe that they forced themselves on you but... That simply doesn't happen like that. I'm confused if I should kick as many of their asses before they overwhelm us to teach them a lesson or if we need to have a talk." Mana insisted hissing back at Hisako. The magician didn't really understand what sexual violence was, it wasn't even much to her care, she didn't want it in her perfect idea of a world but killing was her primary opponent, she was bit too young to realize just what sort of a thing it was so she usually never thought about that. That meant she was about to pick a side on the spot, depending on Hisako's answer.</p><p>"So you're gonna condescend me too then, huh? That blonde cheerleader bitch got to you then? Well at least she's got some guts, enough guts to hate me! Idol-bitch and just bitch, ain't you just a fucking Bitch Brigade!?" Hisako started throwing a fit but then she noticed that she's not getting a reaction from Mana.</p><p>"If I have to ask you the same question again... I don't care how much chakra I spend, I'll make you pee yourself all over that fancy fur coat, eventually, I'll find the insect or animal you hate..." Mana replied. It wasn't a threatening tone or an imposing one, while the content of her reply may have been interpreted as such her voice and tone were completely distant and cold.</p><p>"Fine!" Hisako yelled out before switching to a lower tone, "Yes, I paid with... That... I told you, idol-bitch, this is a sick and twisted world and sometimes sex helps you to take some shortcuts. I made a decision of my own free will. Tell you what, I didn't go pale because I was afraid of fucking with that giant hunk of muscle and gear, I did so because for a moment I thought I'd actually have to work with you two bitches and that thought made me wanna puke so much that I'd have died and if I did I'd have been happy because I wouldn't have had to look at your stupid fucking face for once"</p><p>Mana sighed and lowered her eyes, she didn't know what to say or do. How could she? Was what Hisako did wrong? Yeah, it probably was by Mana's moral point but... It was what Hisako wanted, wasn't it? Mana couldn't have known if it was wrong or not, she was too damned young and inexperienced with those sort of matters.</p><p>"I can hear you two caring but I simply don't care enough that you care, now if you'll excuse me, if I screw with that Hachi guy enough maybe I'll yank that fucking cannon off of him..." Hisako replied turning around and walking towards the center of the camp where the mercenaries were cooking some animal for breakfast. As the woman approached the fire the other women moved to the side and let Hisako sit down.</p><p>"Well, at least it worked..." Kiyomi's thought materialized in Mana's head, "In just one night the Yoruma went from being a prisoner to being pretty much the queen of the whole band. If she asked them, they'd even let her stick around and wouldn't take her to Konoha..."</p><p>Mana's head sunk down, the magician couldn't even fathom how wrong it felt. Hisako did something so seemingly wrong but also she was so good at making it sound right. Also, she wielded results, had the woman not done what she did Mana and Kiyomi would be heading back to Konoha to return Hisako and they'd have jeopardized the mission as they'd have wasted too much time. What Hisako did was wrong and immoral and... But she saved the mission, even if she was a selfish cunt about it. Maybe if she regretted it one bit...</p><p>Having grown with the mental sickness that she had, having to experience all the joys and misfortunes, having to relearn all the facts and rules, both written and otherwise, all over again, Mana sometimes got confused. When a deed seemed bad to her but the perpetrator felt not even a single drop of remorse about it she always lost her damned mind. That was just the simple defensive reaction, the social implication was that in such a world this sort of behavior was acceptable but... Mana tried to desperately tell herself differently, that was what caused her to freeze and just think about it hard.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Mana... I'm still looking at your thoughts because you're still transmitting them, you'll learn to keep things out of the link eventually, sorry... What you feel is right, what Hisako did was wrong, there are no written rules that forbid such behavior and female ninja are even trained to do that sort of thing to get what they want but... Human nature is that a woman must have some dignity, she needs to own and respect herself but she also has to respect the other gender. Using one's own advantages like this is disrespectful but... Technically she did what some kunoichi do and there's nothing illegal about that. Ultimately..."</p><p>"Thanks, mom... I got it..." Mana thought to herself rudely letting Kiyomi know that she wasn't that young and inexperienced to get morals from her superior of that nature.</p><p>"Yo! You two cunts hungry? There's some bitching sable cooking and I think I'm wearing it so... I dunno, feels kinda cool. Like I totally destroyed that bitch, you know?! I mean we'll eat its flesh and then we'll wear its skin..." Hisako yelled at the two when Mana closed her eyes and shook her head moving towards the fire to get a bite or two before leaving. Kiyomi followed shortly.</p><p>"Yeah! Let's eat the shit out of that dead rodent!" one merc yelled out when Hisako laughed out maniacally.</p><p>"I was kidding you fuckwad, the animal's fucking dead, like it fucking cares!" and she started digging into the animal. It didn't appear like Hisako was at all ashamed of her using someone, it was the exact opposite since she was almost happy and proud of it!</p><p>A mercenary came in, his face was completely black from blunt force trauma. Mana looked horrified at the man when Hisako dropped her chunk of meat.</p><p>"You look like you kissed the bottom of the canyon from all the way up, what the fuck hit you?" she mumbled out taking another chunk of meat out of the animal to munch on. Mana suddenly felt like she wasn't hungry.</p><p>"Hachi..." the man sadly jumbled out through his toothless mouth and wrecked face.</p><p>"Holy fuck, I mean... I get it why he did it, technically we were supposed to screw and no one shares boss' bounty, that's like the first rule of mercs..." Hisako replied peeling a chunk of meat from the thigh of the animal and munching on it almost comically as a strip slipped out of her mouth only for her to slurp it back.</p><p>"Yeah, but we didn't even fuck..." the man whined grabbing his jaw and almost starting to cry from pain. Kiyomi looked at Hisako curiously to which the Yoruma just shrug.</p><p>"So I held the knife to his balls and told him to say it was the best fucking shag of his life, no offense, man, but even I got standards..." she replied. Mana wasn't sure if this revelation made her dislike the woman more or less, seemingly everything about Yoruma Hisako was worth complete and utter hatred and disgust. Mana stood up and stuck the stick with the chunk of meat onto the ground close to the fire moving further and closer to the tents.</p><p>"Aincha gonna eat, idol-bitch? I mean you got a nasty right leg stomp, I'll hand you that, but you're not gonna squash a bug if you don't eat..." Hisako asked. Kiyomi nodded</p><p>"Yeah, Mana, you should eat something, today will be a tough day, hopefully, we'll find the kidnappers and set camp around their location and plan the ambush overnight..." the blonde added agreeing to the basic idea that the Yoruma brought up for the first time.</p><p>"I don't feel like it, just know one thing, Hisako-san... I don't hate you." Mana replied. Silence took over the circle sitting around the fire when Mana turned half of her face back and glanced at the raven-haired woman over her shoulder with a very faint smile aimed at the assassin.</p><p>Yoruma turned back, for the first time in a long time she looked actually pissed. Not pissed in a comical manner, not acting like she's angry when in her heart she's content. Hisako looked like she burned with such anger deep in her heart that it was about to explode and take over this whole forest. Kiyomi smiled so hard that it was clear that the Yamanaka was restraining herself from breaking into laughter from the apparent humiliation that Hisako felt in her heart. Obviously, the Yamanaka wanted to kick Hisako in the butt, to somehow get at the woman but this was better than anything, this was seeing the woman get hurt internally and it was worth a billion ryo to the blonde.</p><p>"I know you put this exterior and talk nasty and bully people because you want to reject them, you want to be alone because then you have an excuse to be pitiful. You can whine about this cruel world and act like you're in control by stimulating sexual relationships with men you think you're using for your ends when in reality you're just compensating for your vanity. That's why you were so mad yesterday, right? You wanted us to hate you, to push you away, you were also angry and impulsive towards the mercenaries but today you're all shining..."</p><p>After Mana turned around she heard a loud scream and then a strong tearing sound. When the magician turned around she saw Hisako halfway to Mana with her hand on the sword handle and Kiyomi locked her hands onto the assassin holding her in place. It was impressive that the Yamanaka could hold the assassin in place, it was likely that some degree of chakra augmentation was used and, for a genin, it was no small feat to pull off. It just proved that Kiyomi should've been a chuunin at this point having her ability to slightly augment her abilities with chakra in mind...</p><p>"You may not hate me or whatever... But have in mind that I will still kill you." Hisako said angrily, Hachi left his tent and Kiyomi instantly let go of the woman, the last thing she wanted was to be seen brawling with the woman that the leader of the mercenary band slept with. Too much depended on Hachi's cooperation to make it happen, if Hachi pulled the plug on his support Mana and Kiyomi would be leaving on a suicide mission and if he just decided to murder the two kunoichi then and there he probably had the manpower to do it...</p><p>"Now! What's all this ruckus about? I really feel like getting some beer about now!" the man roared out, Hisako sheathed her half-drawn blade and picked up a jug off of the ground, rubbing herself at Hachi's body even if she just reached up to his lower chest area.</p><p>"Sheesh, what a godly woman, why on Earth would I take you to Konoha?!" Hachi laughed out as beer spilled all over his chin and down his black cloth and over his chest.</p><p>"Because I'll gut your oversized balls if you don't..." Hisako replied rudely. A devastating blow whistled in the air, a slap able to blow down entire tents or smaller vendors and crushing them to bits. Hisako's raised arm blocked Hachi's blow with a deafening thud and an awesome shockwave causing violent gales of wind that picked up the crushed chips of trees from last night. Hachi's wild laughter echoed through the air...</p><p>"What a wild, godly woman..." he kept on chuckling like an oversized ape</p><hr/><p>The whole band of mercenaries was preparing to go. Hachi actually decided to aid Mana and Kiyomi and send his entire mercenary band to aid his "queen". The degree to which Hisako had the leader wrapped around her finger after just one night of her "magic" was simply unbelievable, she may as well have run all the things in the band. The magician had even heard the colossal mercenary boss attempting to talk to the young woman over and convince her to stay with the group. Hisako was smarter than she acted, had she done so she'd have been instantly declared rogue and then there'd have been no place on this planet where she could've hidden from the Hunter Nin hunting rogues or rogue bounty hunters who were rogues themselves but made a living hunting the most expensive heads to add to someone's collection.</p><p>Mana sat down gently to the side of Kiyomi and observed the Yamanaka twisting a flower between her fingers, enjoying the sight of the yellow petals and the charming scent of the plant. The magician smiled softly, "Do you like flowers?" she asked trying to find out more about Kiyomi. The Yamanaka closed her eyes and nodded.</p><p>"Yeah, my mother had a garden and we liked to take care of it together, she even called me her "little flower"..." Kiyomi replied, the girl looked a bit sad and very concerned before but when reminded of her past she bloomed like a flower during spring. Mana's smile became more apparent, she liked hearing stories like that, stories of happiness because it reminded her what she was striving to change the world for. She wanted every child to have a childhood like that of Kiyomi, at least the image of it that Mana had in her head...</p><p>"They even treated me like one, due to the potential inheritance of the high status of the clan they kept holding me back, they did everything in their power to keep me from getting as much as a scratch on me. I was inexperienced and weak even by the standards of the other students in the Academy, if it wasn't for my brother training me in secret I'd have never even graduated..." Kiyomi then continued to talk. Apparently, Mana had caught her friend in a very nostalgic moment. Those happened often when one's life was at stake, people commonly referred back to their childhoods and history trying to validate their own existence in case it just ceased soon.</p><p>"What happened to him?" Mana wondered, regretting the question almost instantly when the blonde started sniffing. It was clear that the question still hurt her and those memories were sealed, still, the young girl didn't break down and she maintained her posture as well as her kind and noble features.</p><p>"While I was weak because I was held back, not being permitted to even get a scratch on me without the tutor getting fired, my brother took the responsibilities for both of us. He was expected to be my protector, he was supposed to be the strongest of us and so he worked twice as hard. He became a perfect protector, a legend, and a hero of the clan and he also still was my big brother, the best kind I could've asked him to be..." Kiyomi replied, she wasn't taking the story well but she appeared adamant to finish telling it.</p><p>"He was too good for his own good, I suppose, he made enemies and he died protecting me..." Kiyomi finished it summing it up really quickly, it was clear that at that part she would've almost broken down. Mana turned her eyes away looking at how the mercenaries put out the fire and how they lifted Hisako to be carried on their shoulders like she was some sort of royalty. It was almost comical really. It now made sense why Kiyomi hated killers, rogues, and criminals, people who defied the village authority so much. Mana smiled turning back at the blonde and gently placed her hand on her shoulder.</p><p>"It's OK, I think your brother would've been really proud of you. You're the strongest genin I've seen, you've worked with Chestnut Hanasaku, one of the Konoha Sannin and the current Hokage. You've become one of the most prospective ninja in the village while still being next in line to inherit the leadership of the clan. Any person who wouldn't be proud of such a sister is not a brother whose approval is worth earning." Mana replied almost whispering, as softly as a feather of a dove passing by, fallen off of its wing.</p><p>Kiyomi chuckled, all traces of tears disappeared from her eyes. "Heh, Hanasaku-sensei was weird, she just took over watching me when she saw me being pandered, she thought that I was getting spoiled and so she wanted to grind my face against stone, to make my life a living hell and make the next inheritor of the Yamanaka leadership worth their mettle instead of them just being a spoiled brat. Every day Hanasaku's idiocy almost killed the three of us, the Yamanaka elders complained again and again when I got back wounded or full of broken bones but the Hokage only suggested them coming to Hanasaku-sensei herself... No one in their right mind would've objected that woman, not if they wanted to keep their face from having to peel it off the pavement."</p><p>Mana got surprised, "Wow, Fifth's training was that tough?" she wondered recalling how badly Tanshu treated them, breaking Sugemi's arm just because he acted just like sensei predicted him to act, leaving the kids to get mauled and eaten by the animals of the Forest of Death which was supposed to test genin who were advancing to the next rank. It was the edge one needed to overcome to become a Chuunin but it never stopped sensei.</p><p>Kiyomi winked she lifted her shirt revealing clean and pale skin with a large visible white scar tissue shaped almost like a small cross. "Once Hanasaku failed to decipher the map properly and missed a trap warning, I stepped on a panel that sent a stone with wooden spears crashing at me and impaled me. I thought I'd die but Hanasaku-sensei healed me haphazardly, then the medical ninja said that they had to rearrange my innards because sensei messed something up, obviously because she was lazy and because she rarely healed others, her physique was mangled so much that to her silly things like that don't matter. Usually, scars like that get removed through several medical ninja healing sessions but I was completely gutted on the table and surgeries like that don't really go completely clean..."</p><p>Mana scratched her head, she still wondered which was worse: getting injured because one's sensei was just silly and couldn't do their job properly or because they were insane and purposely let one get injured. Had Mana not been quick enough she'd have been cut in two by the centipede back in Forest of Death as well, had it been an acidic centipede the girl would've either gotten crushed by the archive caving in or dissolved in the insect's acidic goo trying to swim through its guts. While the Kage and the Sannin were considered the greatest teachers and the students of those kinds of sensei were supposed to inherit their teachers' status, they also seemed to be quite ruthless and crazy with their methods!</p><hr/><p>"Alright, ladies, let's move!" Hachi ordered, he swung his fist up in the sky gesturing for the others to move too. Going against his own plan he also took five extra mercenaries with him to head towards the area of supposed kidnapping. He happened to know a new encampment having risen in his area of where he sold his services, apparently, it was just a day-long walk further, and if the group hurried up and moved as fast as ninja usually do they may have reached the area before the night fell, which would've been the plan as the night could've been used to set up plans for ambushing and recovering the hostage.</p><p>"I don't like it." Kiyomi telepathically let Mana know, "Hachi is taking extra men, he is changing his plans every minute, now Hisako will only be watched by fifteen men..."</p><p>"Don't underestimate mercenaries, during my early days I could barely match up to one of them and only beat them through trickery and cheap luck. They're trained to fight ninja, plus Hisako-san said she'd rather make love with the entire camp than work with us." Mana replied back, she was slowly getting the hang of this telepathic link thing. It worked very strangely, when one wanted to send something all they had to do was think about it like they were going to say it, the harder the concentration the stronger the tone and the louder the thought. If one wanted to think but to keep it away from the link all they had to do was to think without voicing those thoughts internally, it took some training but Mana was a prodigy at meditation and self-control, she found the trick really easy to pull off and only needed brief training with it.</p><p>"Smell you soon, bitches, or better yet, never again!" Hisako smiled gesturing a farewell motion and leaving with the leading crew, heading back to the village whereas Mana and Kiyomi were moving to the completely opposite side. "Trust me, the feeling is mutual..." Kiyomi replied also waving her farewell. Mana smiled and waved at Hisako.</p><p>"I hope we do meet again, I'd like to talk to you about what happened to you again..." she replied.</p><p>"I'd rather choke on cocks" was Hisako's reply to which the entire mercenary crew once again fired off their barrage of wild monkey laughs. These guys may have been even less mature about dirty jokes than Mana was and Mana was still working through her puberty, the time when dirty jokes were at their most hilarious.</p><p>"I most sincerely hope she does..." Kiyomi replied on the link as the groups finally moved beyond where one could have seen the other. Mana glared at Kiyomi, it was advantageous that the girl knew that telepathic communication ability, after all, they were surrounded by mercenaries which honestly couldn't have been trusted even by the most optimistic people. They could've been working for the kidnappers and tried to kill the two girls deeper within the forest for all Mana knew.</p><p>"So, Kiyomi-san... What are your specialties, I'd rather know who I'm working with and what they can do before we get into a team scuffle like the last time, while we worked together quite well, it'd be better if we actually knew what we're doing..." Mana asked on the link.</p><p>"Actually, from what I've seen, mostly the same as you. I'd say that I throw a punch better than you but your kick sent that bitch crashing and pissed her off even through augmentation, I'd say my upper body is stronger and I've more experience with my hand to hand. Other than that I use ninjutsu of Fire Release and Ground Release, I can also do some basic Wind Release techniques and obviously the Yamanaka hidden techniques..."</p><p>Mana took note of all that her partner had said.</p><p>"I do genjutsu and ninjutsu, my kicks are just to keep my opponent at a range in case they try to rush me down close and dirty. I mostly use ninjutsu for annoyance and displacement purposes whereas my genjutsu is more of the crippling kind. If I land one, we may as well have won."</p><p>It appeared that Kiyomi also took what Mana told her seriously. Now that the two shared their affinities and preferences in battle and had experienced fighting alongside each other first-hand, they'll stand a much better chance when trouble came their way.</p><p>"You two are awfully quiet, my lovely Hisako used to talk a lot of obscenities but she at least spoke... I like women that can talk, even if they talk nonsense, talking is just more of a woman's thing to do, you know..." Hachi tried starting an interaction, he must've suspected some sort of foul play being involved with the two just silently walking by each other and looking at one another from time to time.</p><p>"You do realize "your lovely Hisako" screwed you just for gain, right? That's what kunoichi do, they show some skin, sometimes even at some very sensitive areas so that they can plunge a knife into your heart or slip something into your drink?" Kiyomi asked. Hachi looked at her angrily, Mana realized that her friend shouldn't have walked such thin ice, having in mind the man's reaction to his friend "sleeping" with Hisako before him, even if it was by his order.</p><p>"I'd say... That beer tasted strange last night..." Hachi remarked to which Kiyomi and Mana just curiously stared at one another.</p><p>"I can't fucking believe it..." the Yamanaka slapped her face in frustration.</p><p>"Well, at least Hisako-san got the "underneath the underneath" part of the ninja life right..." Mana added. Hachi laughed out, still obviously not getting the clue.</p><p>"She danced so well that I passed out pretty darned fast. If only she wasn't a ninja with all those going rogue rules..." Hachi replied, "I thought a woman should be at least a little mysterious but Hisako-chan just slipped out of her clothes instantly, I thought I'd have a heart attack."</p><p>"Too many details, Hachi-san" Kiyomi angrily replied "Let's just focus on the road"</p><p>Mana laughed to herself inside, Hisako stripped because she wanted to accelerate Hachi's blood circulation so that whatever she slipped into his beer worked faster. She was a true assassin, born and bred. Able to take her enemy by surprise and use whatever means she had to take them down. Kiyomi and Hisako were both older kunoichi who were potential examples of what Mana could've grown up to be like, they were both guidelines for what she'd become and it was only for the magician herself to choose who she'd be in life. At the very least that event taught her to always look for something deeper in simple statements and things.</p><p>"Holy shit, look at that rich caravan!" Hachi's voice rumbled through the forest depth as his finger shot forward pointing at a wooden but sophisticated looking caravan passing by. It just screamed rich as it was covered with colorful silk cloth and the horses were armored, as well as the caravan driver.</p>
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<a name="section0079"><h2>79. The End Of A Dream?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"No! Absolutely not, you can't be serious, we're on a mission right now!" Mana objected out loud. She got Hachi's idea almost instantly, after all, it wouldn't have been that tough. A caravan with no visible guards, pretty far away from any active Konohagakure guard patrols, a mercenary band already mobilized and prepared for battle. It all could've only meant one thing. "You are not robbing that caravan, we have an assignment!" the magician repeated as if that was the most important thing that bothered her.</p><p>Obviously, Mana was much more worried about the innocent lives that could've been lost. The caravan driver, maybe whoever was protecting the goods inside as well. Mana trained for over a year, she trained with one purpose in mind – to prevent innocent people from dying, whether she's there to do it or not. Now that she was right up close to the lives threatened there was not even a single moment of hesitation, she'll pick a fight if she had to but those people will reach their destination.</p><p>"Chill out, kid, I know what I'm fucking doing. There are no guards in this caravan and even if there were, we'll overwhelm and crush them quickly. We're risking nothing." Hachi pressed his temple with a finger and his radar eye started running down numbers.</p><p>This was bad, the mercenaries were ready to plunder this caravan right in the middle of a mission. Mana looked and Kiyomi and finally realized why the blonde had that particular dislike for mercenaries. The magician didn't rule out all mercenaries as being total dickbags, still, those guys definitely were if they were willing to just throw their entire mission away.</p><p>"Odd, there seems to be no one inside that caravan or I just can't see any heat signatures..." Hachi mumbled placing his cannon arm forward, was he going to blast his cannon at that caravan? Why would he be so reckless and risk destroying it? The mercenaries all took their bows and arrows off their shoulders and quivers and prepared for an ambush. This was a stupendously bad idea, it was an even worse idea to pick fights with those guys. Mana and Kiyomi were underhanded already, they needed the mercenaries, not to mention that a fight like this would draw out resources, tire them out, injure them or even kill them. To fight them now would've been to jeopardize the whole mission!</p><p>Hachi's cannon fired off a small concentrated beam hitting the horse, the heated beam went right through the animal's flesh as if it was a heated knife going through butter. The animal fell right under the other horse's feet tripping him as well, the entire caravan stopped and the driver fell over and off his seat bumping his head. It was then that the arrows appeared. Mana and Kiyomi moved at the same time.</p><p>The two dashed to the driver, making their hand seals while moving forward, they made it right before the arrows started landing forward, each mercenary shot out at least ten arrows, it was safe to say that some amount of chakra must've been used. It probably was a similar technique to the "Multi-Shuriken Jutsu" which Shimo used once during Team Oak's first training session with Tanshu-sensei. The arrows multiplied while in the air.</p><p>"Wind Style: Friendly Gust!" Mana shouted out, a powerful burst of wind chakra shot out from her thrust palms deflecting most arrows heading for the driver. It was clear that the target of the mercenaries wasn't the driver himself, it was the caravan, they were trying to draw out any people hidden inside, set off any protective seals, and scope the material it was made from. Still, some arrows went off their path and would've hit the poor driver who already had his head split open from bumping it to the ground. Mana looked back, Kiyomi moved the guard away and told him to run. For once the magician was glad to have a partner who cared about the lives of the innocents as much as she did.</p><p>A loud clang drew the girl's attention, the arrows meant for the caravan just bounced off their target. Mana slowly advanced to the large box that was on the carriage and poked it, it was solid steel. The kind of steel they'd make shields and high-quality blades from. Something here was really fishy.</p><p>Why would someone make a steel container, such high-quality steel nonetheless, such a container would be more expensive than most things that could've possibly been inside it. Hachi moved out from the cover of the forest with all of his men. Mana checked her pockets and sleeves, she still had some cards that she picked up after using them all out during the brief fight with Hisako. This mission was cursed or something, at every twist and turn something went wrong...</p><p>"Now why would you girls have done that? As I told you, we had it perfectly under control, we'll just snag this container now and then we can go on our merry way and help you with that mission!" Hachi laughed out, his eyebrows and mimic suggested that he was annoyed and alarmed by Mana's and Kiyomi's actions against his ambush, however.</p><p>"You..." Mana was about to start swearing in a manner similar to Hisako when Kiyomi shut her mouth by covering it. The Yamanaka decided to try and salvage the mission, they desperately needed the help from those mercenaries even if it meant having to bend over from time to time.</p><p>"Look, something doesn't make sense here, Hachi, this caravan has no guards, it carries some weird solid high-quality steel container that probably not even our greatest Fire Release users could melt, you drop everything you've had up until the point you saw it, jeopardize our deal and the mission to plunder it clean... What's in that container, Hachi?" Kiyomi asked the key question. Mana looked back at the container, it did really feel strange that Hachi was willing to go back on the deal they made, while he was a mercenary the deal did provide him with lots of pleasure, or at least he dreamt of pleasure while he was knocked out by Hisako's poison, right?</p><p>Hachi cocked his cannon arm, Mana looked at a blue liquid running up and down it and it seemed odd to her how the amount seemed lower than it was before. Could it have been that this cannon used that strange, glowing, blue liquid? Didn't Hachi claim that "Julie" ran on chakra bursts? Unless... Unless he couldn't manipulate chakra and had to provide it with ammunition of some sort of chakra cells. That meant that running him dry on ammunition meant that he couldn't fire that cannon, it also meant that the cannon had a very volatile weak spot.</p><p>"Now that's none of your fucking..." Hachi opened his mouth to talk, Mana was already up in the air, aiming her kick at his neck. This wasn't a concentrated and full-powered kick, she purposefully made it slow and wanted for it to be blocked, it was just a distraction, she just wanted to get close.</p><p>The girl's kick actually was blocked by Hachi's hand, he tried to wrap it around the girl's foot and slam her but Mana's lack of force behind the kick let her kick-off of his hand and leap back – now his cannon was an open target! The girl tossed several cards at the cannon with all the force she could come up with without it hurting her aim. The cards bounced off of the steel cannon. The giant mercenary leader grunted out and ordered his subordinates to kill the girls.</p><p>"I really liked the deal we made, too bad that this caravan is thousand times more worthy loot. Guess I need to make sure Hisako-chan doesn't reach Konoha either, otherwise, they'll think it's a bit suspicious, I mean little girls die out here all the time but why would their teammate return with a bunch of mercs, right?" Hachi pressed against his temple when a large device popped out from around his ear and covered it. It must've been a very strange communication device.</p><p>"The manner in which those cards bounced off... That caravan is made from the same kind of steel, it's probably carrying more of Kumogakure high-tech weapons to Konoha. That's how Hachi got the hands on all of his tech..." Kiyomi sent a message on the link. Mana tried to intercept Hachi delivering the message but the lowlife mercenaries got in her way, they tried to rush her down swinging spears and swords at her, at that moment they were far too close to fire arrows at the girls. Mana was so reckless that one spear actually scrapped her in the shoulder, almost lodging in.</p><p>"Don't rush so recklessly, Hisako is a tough bitch, she can handle herself..." Kiyomi warned Mana mentally kicking at a mercenary and breaking their spear. The other one behind the girl tried to stab her with a dagger which Mana blocked using her leg to wrap around the man's arm. With a strong pressing twist of her leg, she broke the man's arm. The mercenary fell down on the dirt screaming like a madman. Kiyomi then started pummeling her own mercenary with a combination of blows, too fast for the man to keep track of, too strong for him to stay standing after the Yamanaka was done.</p><p>"Help us fight, Hachi!" the mercenary yelled out in fear as two of his friends rushed off to fight the girls as well.</p><p>"Are you fucking crazy? If I start firing my cannon and throwing my fists around I'll destroy everything around this place, you guys will get crushed just a bad as those little brats. Plus, it'd attract attention. Just shut up, get brave, and kill those two before I grind you in the dirt!" Hachi replied angrily.</p><p>Mana threw a mad combination of kicks, too fast and unpredictable for the shield-wielding mercenary to block consistently. His wooden shield crumbled and he started skipping blows. The man swiped his dagger that he held behind the shield, cutting the magician onto the lower part of her leg. Mana grunted in pain and flipped backward kicking the man in the chin and knocking him out. With her leg injured she botched the landing and fell pretty much almost on her face. Kiyomi crushed her mercenary with a powerful punch and rushed to the magician's aid.</p><p>Hachi sighed and looked at the last mercenary, "Go, survey how the situation with Hisako-chan is, make sure she's dead and that no one finds her body. I'll take care of these two". Mana had never seen a happier man than the mercenary who ran off, glad that he won't have to fight these two ninja.</p><p>Mana examined the two cuts that she picked up, the shoulder wound looked a bit nasty but if it hit an artery she'd have already been dead, she just wasn't fast enough to turn for her dodge and the blade still got her. The leg injury was a little bit less serious but it impacted the speed of both her kicks and her running.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at Mana, her concerned voice reached the magician's mind. "Are you gonna be OK? I can take this fight if you need some time to patch those up..." Kiyomi was a really caring, kind, and noble girl, the last thing Mana could've done for her was to make her fight this thief alone. A man who built his power on stealing Kumogakure's tech meant for Konoha and killing innocent people, a man who lied to everyone that he's an investor when in fact he was pulling side jobs behind his previous leader's back... It'd be a crime not to deck this guy in the face at least once.</p><p>"I'll be fine, just give me a couple of seconds, stall him, make him shoot that cannon, the big one," Mana asked to which Kiyomi looked really confused. "Just trust me..." the magician added to make her teammate feel a bit braver about herself. Kiyomi charged forward while Mana examined her wound, still keeping the eyes on Hachi. The man laughed out and pointed his cannon at Mana.</p><p>"A diversion? Don't take me for a fool! Obviously, I'll pick off the weak first!" Hachi yelled, Mana weaved a hand seal and leaped to the side just in time before the cannon fired. Her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" propelled her and pushed her to the side enough to avoid the cannon's blast, it wasn't the all-destroying blast, but instead the weaker beam version. Kiyomi started pummeling Hachi's hip area, the tallest she could reach before she had to give up on strength in her punches. The punches of the Yamanaka linked together perfectly, she threw entire combinations but it didn't look like any of the punches did any damage.</p><p>Kiyomi slid back waving her arms from pain, "It's like this guy built himself from the same steel..." she let Mana know.</p><p>"He probably has several prosthetics or something in that fashion, be careful, we don't want to bust our knuckles against this guy, we still have a mission to do later on!" Mana warned as she painfully grunted, trying to pick herself off the ground. The burst of wind combined with the small explosion of Hachi's cannon sent her through several bushes and she hit a couple of trees, she was lucky not to have broken or dislocated anything. They were taking way too much damage, there was no way after this that they could have still carried on with their mission...</p><p>"Ha! You just postponed your death, fuck her up "Julie"!" Hachi yelled pointing the cannon at Mana, the magician heard Kiyomi's warning shouts in her head but her mind was too buzzy and mumbled up to make it clear. She could hear the sounds of the cannon charging up, it must've been the big blast, the magician relaxed and spread her hands, smiling. An awesome, deafening explosion broke all the trees around the area tossing them around.</p><p>The explosion, however, was not from the cannon disintegrating Mana's tired body, it was from the cannon misfiring and blowing up in Hachi's face. By overextending Hachi ruined his favorite weapon, had he just fired the small beam blast at Mana he'd have killed her, he had to go big and so he triggered that explosive card Mana tossed at him earlier.</p><p>"I thought those cards bounced back!" Kiyomi asked Mana mentally. "One of them was not steel-tipped, just ordinary paper, easier to make it get stuck in smaller areas like between the chakra cell and the cannon compartment that holds them..." she replied. Even Mana's thoughts sounded tired and pain-ridden.</p><p>"Are you OK?" Kiyomi asked. Once again her voice was so worried and concerned, it was like she was genuinely worried and cared about Mana. That was not the kind of relationship that most ninja shared. It wasn't even Mana that triggered this reaction, Kiyomi was the one who bonded with whatever team she was given, that must've been why she was hit so hard when her old team walked their separate ways.</p><p>"Yeah just... Glad to be alive..." Mana stood up, she looked at her wounds, they looked manageable but she'll need to seriously take a look at them soon.</p><p>"You little bitches, look at what you did to "Julie"!" Hachi's enraged roar echoed through the area of the forest that the girls were in. Mana's eyes shot wide open in surprise and so did those of Kiyomi, the girls observed completely taken over by fear and disbelief as Hachi's figure appeared from the smoke. Some parts of his flesh were torn off, he really did have some steel prosthetics on him, the man shrugged off the whole damage from his cannon blowing up in his face and peeling off of his hand. He now had just a torn up stump but he didn't react to the inhuman pain he must've been in...</p><p>The mercenary leader started slowly walking towards the caravan, still clutching the shards of "Julie" in his working arm. Kiyomi tried to charge at Hachi, she kicked him in the weak areas of the leg, targeted all the joints trying to trip him over, hit him in the neck but to no avail, she was backhanded off of him like she was just a pest. Hachi shouted out loud in rage, he shoved the shard of his cannon into the caravan, then putting his working prosthetic arm into it and peeling the caravan open. He took out some sort of knuckle-like gloves. When applied to his wrecked hand the glove drilled into his bone with a small drill and after just a brief second, just like that, Hachi had a new hand, twice larger than those he would've normally had.</p><p>"Shit..." Kiyomi slapped her own face with her palm. "I think I know where this tech is coming from, it's from Kumogakure."</p><p>"I think that much was already made abundantly clear..." Mana replied on the mental link.</p><p>"Yeah but... I know why it's here. It's because Hanasaku-sensei stroke a deal with the Raikage and the other countries, that's why we have no one in Kirigakure. Because all the other countries are paying us with technology not to have someone there. Sensei traded political power for scientific and technological advancement..." Kiyomi explained, Hachi was quite busy testing out his new gigantic fist prosthetic.</p><p>"Yeah, too bad this scumbag takes all the cargo, Fifth must have still not noticed we're not getting our share..." Mana replied.</p><p>"That's just like sensei, she'd really be too dumb to notice..." Kiyomi rubbed her eyes in frustration when Hachi finally remembered that the two were there. A thundering clang emanated from his point of location when Hachi cracked his metallic knuckles. At that point in time, he was far too close to Kiyomi for comfort.</p><p>Mana stood up and felt her foot, she could just about move it around. Moving it did cause her some pain but by that time the magician had gotten used to some degree of pain. She remembered when she overexerted herself daily and every movement caused pain, this was a joke compared to her training.</p><p>Mana leaped up and weaved a couple of handseals, shooting off another gust off of her feet using her "Mystical Wings Jutsu", shooting her off forward at great speed. Using the technique as a super fast and incredibly powerful dash wouldn't have cut it, the magician invented that technique as a child as a pathway to mastering flight, complete and total levitation, similarly to how Iwagakure ninja could fly by reducing their own weight to almost nothing. Obviously, Mana's skill with ninjutsu and inventing new techniques still wasn't great enough but this was still something.</p><p>Mana's kick clashed with Hachi's, whatever the mercenary leader had in his legs wasn't that steel alloy prosthetic, it had to be something unnatural to withstand Mana's kick but it must've been something else, clashing with that steel alloy would've busted Mana's leg up. Even now, the magician felt incredible shock passing through her body, she had to slightly augment her endurance to withstand that shock and keep her leg bone from being ground into dust. Mana flinched and fell, grabbing her leg and clutching it in pain, Hachi seemed completely devoid of any pain. He raised his oversized fist to crush Mana where she was.</p><p>Just before he could do that Kiyomi's fists sent the man stumbling forward forcing Mana to roll sideways. The Yamanaka was pummeling the man's back again and again and while it did no damage it successfully pushed him stumbling forward. Before Hachi could have turned back and backhand slapped Kiyomi as he did before, the girl finished her combination with a stab with an explosive kunai, after a leap backward the girl detonated is as well. Kiyomi obviously pulled no punches, if she had the chance to kill Hachi, she would've!</p><p>Mana was of an entirely different mindset, she wanted to stop this man, she wanted to take little to no damage while doing it but she also wanted to somehow not kill him. She was childish and naïve but that was just how Mana was. She wanted everything and strived for it, she may have torn her muscles and overstretched her childish shoulders trying to support all that responsibility but that never scared her away from at the very least trying. Kiyomi leaped forward, kicking Hachi's back right into the cloud of smoke that picked up. Her kick hit right into Hachi's cheek and sent him down for the first time that day.</p><p>"Stop holding back, Mana, we can't allow ourselves to take too much damage against him, you've already taken far too much. We're killing him, now!" Kiyomi declared.</p><p>Despite her inner conviction that she was absolutely not going to kill Hachi, despite everything he had already done and what he'd do in the future. Mana accompanied Kiyomi on her attack on the giant. The cut on her leg started to feel better and better, while it still burned with each sudden step, at least it was somewhat tolerable. Ninja were trained to retain as much battlefield functionality when injured in battle. With a swift and decisive step, both Kiyomi and Mana lunged themselves at Hachi avoiding his strike. Both girls were tossed up into the air from Hachi's ground pound, a powerful shockwave ruptured the ground and caused fissures to open up.</p><p>The elevation allowed Mana's combination of kicks to connect right to Hachi's face. She didn't care nor did she check just how much damage she was dealing, all that mattered was to keep kicking, to not stop for a moment because stopping meant that the man could've gotten his hands onto her and that would've meant it was all over. Just slightly below Mana heard Kiyomi grunting, the young woman was shouting as she was expelling all of her rage and energy into a fierce onslaught of blows directed at Hachi's gut.</p><p>The colossal man was completely overwhelmed and yet he didn't rush to fall, he just grunted in pain continuously and stumbled back, occasionally trying to toss a half-baked response which forced Mana and Kiyomi to change places, the magician descended and started kicking at the man's groin and gut, Kiyomi used her kunai to climb onto the man's face and started pounding it.</p><p>It would've been much easier if the girls didn't have to use tremendous amounts of chakra to keep their own bones from shattering from having to punch what felt like a brick wall. Augmentation came very hardly for Mana, she wasn't used to it and only used it several times before and only in the matters of life and death. While this most definitely was a matter of life or death as if the man caught her he'd have pulled her limbs off one by one without any effort, Mana still was getting more and more tired the more she struggled to keep the combo of kicks going.</p><p>Kiyomi screamed, Mana stopped punching and saw Hachi catching her by her hair and holding the Yamanaka up in the air. Using her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" Mana dashed up but Hachi's head was thrown right at her. Mana covered her own face to block the man's headbutt, it still felt like a truck. Mana tightened her back and augmented her endurance, she knew what'd happen next, Hachi threw a lackluster kick to get the magician away from him while he finished Kiyomi off. Mana screamed out in pain as the kick broke through her augmentation. The girl writhed on the ground clutching her back, she had no time to cry like a little kid, her friend was about to get hurt very badly!</p><p>Hachi used his free hand to punch Kiyomi straight into her face, Mana saw her friend's hands weigh down, whether she accepted her fate or just passed out from the pain was yet to be found out. The magician saw drips of blood coming out from her friend, angry and desperate Mana weaved a couple of hand seals and leaped up, Hachi looked at the magician angrily ready to kick her again but then he froze. The man collapsed onto the ground, waving his arms and legs wildly, desperately grasping the air for an ounce of breath while Mana caught her friend and moved her away.</p><p>"Polymorphy Jutsu!" Mana whispered to herself as she placed Kiyomi on the ground, her friend's forehead had a nasty bruise and an open wound, probably from that steel knuckle hitting her in the face. Her nose also looked broken as blood was wildly bursting from it. Finally the blonde got back to her senses. Hachi finally recovered from the illusion of thinking he was turned into an octopus, he leaped at the girls intending to crush them but Mana once again made some hand seals and placed her hands forward, lightning ran down her entire body passing through her arms and then a wild barrage of small balls of lightning started bombarding the man's body, forcing him to take steps backward, stumble away from Mana's jutsu.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Spark Barrage!" Mana yelled out, she was getting tired and worn out by all that chakra wasting, it'd have been much better if she didn't have to use chakra to survive every blow this man threw her way...</p><p>Finally, Kiyomi had recovered as well, the blonde leaped right into the fray, Mana just barely managed to stop her jutsu as Kiyomi jumped with a combination of kicks aimed right at the overwhelmed colossal man, with his defenses broken with Mana's unexpected lightning style jutsu, Kiyomi's kicks definitely hit home and took Hachi down. Kiyomi tossed a bunch of explosive tags up into the air and weaved some hand seals of her own.</p><p>"Earth Style: Traveling Rock Pillar!" she yelled as a great formation of rock shot out and went on aiming towards Hachi almost like an oversized fin of a shark, gathering all of Kiyomi's explosive tags in the process. The blonde finally set off the tags blowing the rock formation up right when it was up in Hachi's face. Whatever technological replacements for his bones and limbs Hachi applied to his body really made him a juggernaut on the battlefield. Even this combination that'd have without a doubt killed anyone without a significant skill in chakra augmentation or agility to dodge it only bent and mangled his body a bit, torn some more flesh off of him exposing more prosthetics and various devices inside of him.</p><p>Hachi quickly recovered and dove out from the smoke, he still had debris like small pieces of rock and dirt deeply etched into both his fleshy bits and his prosthetics. Hachi's sensor eye was completely blown up and shards of glass had dug deep into his eye socket shooting blood out of it. The giant man twisted around his own axis throwing a powerful kick towards Kiyomi, the poor girl couldn't have possibly avoided a kick with a leg so large and covering so much space. She just lifted her hands up for a block but it didn't work that well as her body was tossed back like a ragdoll. Kiyomi screamed out in pain, a barrage of crunching sounds emanated through her body as she slammed into a tree further behind.</p><p>Mana tried to step in to protect her friend since Hachi advanced for a finishing blow, the girl jumped into the giant's path, angry Hachi tossed a punch at her. Mana leaned backward avoiding his hook just barely but then she felt something grab her by the collar of her blazer. Hachi pulled her in closer and dug his oversized fist right into her gut. Mana's eyes whited out. She didn't even feel anything, her mind went completely numb with just loud squeaking noise audible in the white void she's been transported into. The girl could hear something in the distance, something reminding of Kiyomi's voice... Then the pain returned. Mana lifted her head off the ground, her long hair felt sticky, she probably had a bleeding wound on top of her head. She felt nauseous.</p><p>"Mana, MOOOVE!" Kiyomi yelled out but the magician had no strength left, Hachi picked her up by her leg and swung her around. If he smacked her down like that she'd die, it was the equivalent of hitting the ground falling down from space, Mana could hear complicated machinery working in Hachi's shoulder joints.</p><p>"Die!" Hachi screamed out with his cybernetic voice a loud poof and a slamming sound killed all the other noises. A deafening silence ruled supreme, Kiyomi covered her mouth, tears started running down her eyes. Hachi looked around trying to peek into the cloud of dust and dirt that he raised from slamming the girl into the ground. Only a stain of blood bleeding into the fissures and various crevices of the ground was visible. Hachi pulled his arm out of the cloud and stumbled back. He looked at the joint and saw a card stuck in there, his joint started shooting off sparks.</p><p>"That bitch... Did some damage to the joint before she died... No matter, I can finish you off without the use of the big fist..." Hachi quietly remarked. Kiyomi couldn't stop crying and slamming the ground. She was afraid to look at the magician's mangled body. Not that she'd be able to see much, the poor girl made quite a crater from being crushed and ground with dirt, it would've taken a jounin to amplify their defenses hard enough to withstand such a blow.</p><p>"She was so young and kind... You bastard!" Kiyomi yelled out.</p><p>Hachi shrugged, "What can I say, most mercs love their money, I say, money's good, power's better. Technology is the future, who cares if you guys can manipulate that ninja magic shit, I can use that same cultivated energy for the same purposes. Also, I can replace my squishy parts with others, time of ninja is ending, ironically enough by the hands of ninja themselves inventing weapons that'll replace them." The giant laughed out maniacally.</p><p>The giant pulled his damaged arm hard, the cybernetic prosthetic snapped off and fell onto the ground, black oily goo shot out from Hachi's arm socket, the giant advanced to the large caravan container and removed a new arm, putting it into place.</p><p>"Not as good as the old one, but it'll have to do... Shit, I hate using puppet parts for my prosthetics, they're all snappy and really stiff. Oh well. That bitch... Ruining a good arm like that... Good riddance." Hachi mumbled to himself.</p><p>"You dirtbag, I'll kill you!" Kiyomi yelled out through tears and frustration, pounding the ground until her knuckles started bleeding. The blonde didn't take the loss of a team well, she'd never had a teammate die on her watch before. Seeing Mana's body smash into the dirt and dig up a giant crater raising dust and dirt into the air so dense and thick that it still didn't settle down...</p><p>Kiyomi was pissed. She'd avenge her friend even if it meant having to die herself!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0080"><h2>80. After The Dust Settles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a wild shout, Kiyomi lunged forward at Hachi. She held two kunai in both of her hands, ready to poke an eye out or deepen the already gruesome eye wound that Hachi's own sensor eye made after bursting during the explosion. The girl's entire body was tense, so tense it was shaking. She was ready to murder this man in the most painful ways she could make up in her mind. A man who so mercilessly and gruesomely killed an innocent and inexperienced ninja had no place on this Earth, or maybe what was so painful to Kiyomi was the fact that such was exactly the kind of man who would've thrived in this world?</p><p>Hachi didn't just stand and took the punishment meant for him, his giant puppet arm slammed at where Kiyomi was leaving a crack in the ground from which several fissures started opening up but the girl was no longer there. Hachi's fists only crushed a thrashed log of wood with which Kiyomi had replaced herself using the "Substitution Jutsu" at the last moment. Hachi lifted his arm into the air but then he froze. A cruel smile dyed Kiyomi's face as she raised two of her fingers up, making up a single hand seal. Hachi was frozen in place, the man's entire colossal build was shaking in tension.</p><p>"Chakra Hair Trap Jutsu!" Kiyomi whispered to herself, only then Hachi's single working eye lingered down to see strands of hair scattered on the dirt with a blueish glow of pure chakra connecting the hair to a line that also connected Kiyomi and him. The man grunted and tried to force himself out of the technique but unsuccessfully.</p><p>"What did you do!?" he shouted out. His cybernetic voice box was bugging out, the damage he had taken throughout the battle must've been doing its part. Now his voice often just dimmed, when the voice box bugged out the man's voice just disappeared as if he had no voice without his box. He may have had several voice boxes to switch up with as this current one sounded a bit differently from the one the two girls had heard yesterday or even earlier that day.</p><p>"It's a secret Yamanaka paralysis technique. I always wondered why did my clan elders teach me that if it ties both my and your movements and forces me to insert chakra continuously to keep it going. Seemed like a disadvantage to me, if anything. After I fought Hisako yesterday and missed my clan technique leaving me wide open I realized it... The Yamanaka clan jutsu are incredibly powerful, being able to transfer one's mind into another one's and just force them to do things... However, if it misses just by a slim margin the user is left open for a follow-up attack for a lengthy window for a counter. This technique is integral to using Yamanaka clan jutsu."</p><p>Hachi tried desperately to break out, he could barely even move, Kiyomi was surprised by the effectiveness of the technique. Usually it wasn't supposed to be so completely debilitating, it worked similarly to the usual Nara "Shadow Possession Technique" which just restrained the target but a particularly strong opponent with strong willpower could've resisted, maybe even broken out. Hachi was completely tied down like a machine that was turned off. Maybe it was because of his machinery bits that made the technique so effective, fleshy bits always had enough strength to resist chakra effects but a machine was just a tool, a tool that was useless without flesh manipulating it. Seeing how Hachi was now at Kiyomi's complete mercy he couldn't really work with any of his prosthetics or technological replacements.</p><p>"Let me go, let me go and I'll leave you alone..." Hachi started singing a whole different song after he realized the horrible nature of the situation.</p><p>"No. Scumbags like you, people who kill other kind and noble people like Mana don't get to just leave. I'll play around with you until I'll think you've had enough, then I'll knock you out, I'll leave you here, knocked out and your subordinates will find you here, they'll never look at you the same, the great Hachi bested by two little girls. You'll be everyone's bitch, serving grub to everyone's dogs and cleaning after their litter." Kiyomi replied looking Hachi right in the eye.</p><p>The girl's arms shot forward in the shape of the Yamanaka clan technique seal. "This technique is the first taught to most Yamanaka children, "Mind Body Switch" transfers one's own consciousness into another's body, it's not overly useful in one on one fights, after all, I take all the damage that my weightless body takes, I also take all the damage that YOUR body takes while I'm in it. I can't just force you to commit suicide, not unless I cancel the technique at the very last moment. When avoiding death is impossible for your returning mind."</p><p>A loud howl echoed as a hollow ghost-like figure floated from Kiyomi's body straight into Hachi's. Just like that the chakra flow through the hair ended, the wind that blew through the forest scattered them everywhere. For at least two minutes the two bodies just kept standing there, Hachi's body was twitching with his eyes completely whited out, Kiyomi's body collapsed as if she had just died, not even a single sign of its owner's life was apparent. Hachi was the only one with any signs of life, yet very faint and rather grotesque as his wild twitching wouldn't have made anyone get the right idea...</p><p>A powerful howl echoed again as Kiyomi picked her body off of the ground and leaped back, she took great haste, right after the girl gained some distance she collapsed on her knees. The girl was breathing heavily and her face had the combination of both fear and anger on it. She used so much chakra, she took quite some damage and it was all for nothing... Hachi's flipped back twitching head returned to its original position, the man wore the most gruesome and disgusting sadistic smile.</p><p>"What's the matter, kid? Weren't you supposed to make me kill myself or something?" he asked sarcastically, letting out a despicable thundering laugh afterward.</p><p>"It won't work... Part of his body isn't controlled by his mind, it's a machine, I can't take over the prosthetic part of his body for some reason, I can only control one part of his entire collective mind... My techniques won't be too effective as long as he is of that collective mind," Kiyomi grunted in her own mind, still transmitting the message through the mental link. As if she still kept some small rustling flames of hope inside. Finally, the smoke settled down, the Yamanaka wanted to take a look at Mana's crushed and broken body but she couldn't force herself to. She had seen people die during her time away with Hanasaku and her old team but they were always bad people who deserved punishment. They were always just like the dirtbags who killed her brother!</p><p>Mana was different, she didn't deserve anything coming at her, she was naïve but she had only the best intentions in her heart. She even believed that someone like Hisako still had kindness and something to foster in her black heart. To Kiyomi the heart of someone like Hisako was just a black oily sludge, similar to that which was running through Hachi's prosthetic parts, there was nothing but dirt and ooze in that woman's heart but Mana believed that everyone was necessary in this world. It was a retarded ideal but the girl wore it proudly and that deserved respect.</p><p>"What the!?" suddenly Hachi got over his feeling of superiority, it was when he peeked inside the gaping crater and noticed that there was nobody in there, actually there was just the wrecked giant scrappy part of "Julie", it was not Mana's blood running in torrents down the fissures, it was Hachi's own from when his poor "Julie" was blown up!</p><p>The colossal mercenary roared out in anger and frustration, he started looking around the forest, paranoia was starting to take over, the magician girl was a ninja and she was a particularly slippy and tricky one to get a hold of. She could've been anywhere or nowhere, she could've bolted and yet still Hachi would worry that she could've appeared out of nowhere...</p><p>Kiyomi smiled. This whole time she looked at Mana like some sort of inexperienced kid, someone who had to be protected, sort of her younger sister who was let out on the field for the first time. That was why Mana's death would've hit her so hard home, knowing that the magician was well able to take care of herself and think of a plan independently made the Yamanaka appreciate the magician a little bit more. Consider her somewhat worth the praise and opportunity to get to work with the future leader of the Yamanaka.</p><p>People often said that "Konoha's Sorceress" being a ninja was just a publicity stunt for her shows... No. The whole "Konoha's Sorceress" act was just another training session to aid her in being the trickiest and craftiest ninja out of her entire generation. Mana used the "Substitution Technique" so masterfully, she wasted just the right amount of time, made the switch at the very last moment making them believe until the very end that she had perished.</p><p>"Come out!" Hachi's voice thundered throughout the whole forest area. Kiyomi placed her hands forward, she had to give Mana some time to do whatever the magician planned to do. Initially, Kiyomi saw herself as the deciding factor just like she ended things with Hisako but after wasting so much chakra the Yamanaka started to count on Mana's plan more and more.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Art of War" Kiyomi chanted as the hollow ghost shot out at Hachi, the giant was unprepared, he was looking for Mana everywhere and the clever Yamanaka seized the moment. Her clan technique connected taking over Hachi's mind. The gigantic leader of the mercenaries fell down on his knee and started yelling out loud into the sky. Clawing at his head, at his temple until it started to bleed. He was so strong and his cybernetic arms were so sharp that he almost peeled his scalp off revealing that half of his skull was plated and filled with various technological replacements.</p><p>"Art of War" was a B-Rank technique that caused excruciating migraines to the victim, the user transferred their mind into the victim's body but they didn't shelve the other person's mind, they literally started warring over their mind. That was why the technique was a short one, even when one's mind was shelved it usually broke through and kicked the user out of their mind. When the two minds waged war like that the war took only moments but those were immensely painful and debilitating moments for sure, the human brain wasn't built to have two mental projections in it. It wasn't built for conflicts like that.</p><p>Hachi's puppet arm shot forward, extending in the middle, his hand wrapped around Kiyomi, the blonde was caught completely unprepared. Apparently, the giant's arm could stretch, it was some sort of incredibly elastic type of steel alloy. The machine man dragged that Yamanaka closer and tossed her in the air, his mind still pulsed with pain, his temple was still spitting blood from the gashes he himself made by clawing at his temple to try and ease his pain. The monstrous man started tossing wild punches in the air, toying with Kiyomi by punching her up a little with weak jabs, his weakest jabs felt like the most horrifying pain to Kiyomi, every punch felt like it went through her bones and dug into her vitals.</p><p>"You hear those screams? Those moans? They're for you, stupid brat! Come out! Come out and show yourself!" he yelled out. So that was his plan, Mana had some sort of plan but he wanted to torture Kiyomi until the magician was forced to come out and reveal herself shelving that plan...</p><p>"Don't! Mana, you hear me! Do whatever you're doing!" Kiyomi found some spaces between the punches that took over her body. Every time she was punched the girl couldn't help it but scream out from the bottom of her lungs.</p><p>Another punch, and another one and... Hachi's third punch was pushed to the side by Mana's kick. The fool came out of hiding and ditched her plan just to save Kiyomi. The magician girl twisted around and delivered another kick straight to Hachi's unflinching face and then kicked off of it grabbing Kiyomi and moving as far away as she could while holding a heavier person than she was.</p><p>"Sorry about the landing... And the time I took..." Mana whispered to Kiyomi. "I shouldn't have come here probably, I don't think I'm ready for this sort of mission yet..."</p><p>"You idiot..." Kiyomi grunted out, she spat some blood out, probably those punches gave her a nasty case of internal bleeding. "The only thing you did wrong was come to save me. I had things under control..." the blonde smiled.</p><p>"Sorry, I guess an artist like me just likes to snag the great finale from others..." Mana replied. A loud snapping sound reached the ears of the girls taking their entire attention. Hachi tore off his elastic arm was currently searching the container for some more tech. He removed an arm attached to some sort of chest plate that Hachi added.</p><p>"It should be fine now, Kiyomi-senpai, he clawed his head off, damaged his tech enough, his speed and response time dropped. If you land another clan technique he won't be able to resist." Mana said looking at her opponent. It was clearly just a theory, just a plan improvised because her previous plan went up in flames horribly after the magician had to give up on it.</p><p>"Call me "senpai" again, see what happens..." Kiyomi squinted at Mana angrily, while to the magician the honorific used with superiors fit both Kiyomi's professional and personal status in Mana's eyes the magician noted the girl's disdain for that honorific.</p><p>Hachi smiled, he started pulling switches and pressing pressure points on the chest plate, some sort of sharp metallic devices appeared from Hachi's arm and from his backplate as well as the shoulders. Each had the same kind of chakra battery cell, glowing with blue liquid attached to it.</p><p>Mana realized what those devices were, the glowing chakra cells gave it away. The magician took two kunai from Kiyomi's tool pocket and flung them at Hachi, just to occupy his attention and make him direct those missiles to her. Kiyomi tried to shout something, try and stop Mana's suicidal plan but the Yamanaka couldn't properly talk after being pummeled in the chest and gut like that. She tried talking to Mana's mind but the magician closed her mind off, the blonde couldn't believe it, she was just familiar with the technique for over a day, and Mana already successfully managed to close her mind from any telepathic messages.</p><p>The magician just kept repeating a phrase in her mind, like a mantra, again and again. That was the way to close her mind from Kiyomi's mental messages. For her friend's pleas to stop and think, there was no time for that. Mana got the man's attention. The pointy steel devices with chakra cell tips took off with a loud poof, within just moments they closed in on Mana's location, the magician leaped into the air and activated her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" to push her away, one last dash further from the zone of the explosion.</p><p>Kiyomi jumped to her feet with adrenaline pumping and forcing her body into action. The powerful explosion sent her back down onto the grass, Kiyomi covered her ears for a moment so that she didn't hear Mana's gruesome scream when the chakra missiles exploded so close to her. The magician did everything right, she gained Hachi's attention, she pulled the target further away from Kiyomi who was at that moment in time injured beyond the ability to successfully dodge... She even pulled a desperate attempt to avoid the explosion entirely but...</p><p>Hachi smiled. "Died again?" he ironically spat out seeing Mana's lifeless body on the floor fifty meters further from where the explosion went off, her clothes torn and tattered and smoke coming from her smoky rags. The girl's body reeked of blood and burning flesh, she probably took some damage but chakra burns were unlike normal burns, they could've been completely healed if Mana received medical attention soon. Obviously, even if she was still alive it was all messed up... Where would they get medical attention from in this middle of nowhere? Mana may as well have sacrificed herself right after coming back to life...</p><p>Hachi looked at Kiyomi who stood back up on her feet. "What, you gonna lash out again? We're doing this whole "You killed my friend" routine all over again?" he didn't drop his sarcasm.</p><p>Kiyomi angrily flung some ninja tools at the man, first things she could get her hands on inside her pouch, just like with the tools Mana threw they bounced off of Hachi's body. "You two are giving up your lives, refusing to die, wasting chakra just to barely survive each attack, and then wait until you recover with your insane ninja metabolisms... Where do you think this'll go?!" Hachi yelled out angrily.</p><p>"I'll tell you where it'll go. One of two ways, either I kill both of you quickly with you helping me and stopping using your cheap augmentation and replacement tricks, suffering so much just to barely survive each blow. Or my comrades, who are probably already on their way after murdering your friend from behind, will come here, and then you'll really know pain. I'd prefer to finish this all quick, I've already gone through half of the toys in that container, it is becoming useless to me now... Give up."</p><p>Kiyomi smiled, her usually tidily tied hair were now wildly all over her face, just her smile was visible on her dirty and blood-covered face.</p><p>"So if your sidequest of getting that container is worthless, can we return to our previous deal and go on with the mission?" Kiyomi asked following up that smile, "Work as if nothing happened? My friend there is either dead or dying, we killed some of yours, we're even, right?" she huffed out spitting out blood as she tried using lungs to draw air and then talk.</p><p>Hachi stepped back confused before Kiyomi continued.</p><p>"Is what ninja are taught to say in such a situation... But... I and Mana aren't like Hisako, our generation isn't like the usual ninja, we have our heads on our shoulders but we aren't just weapons of the Hokage or the Feudal Lords, we're soldiers, not tools. That's what I believe, that's also what Mana believes. So come, beat me up so Mana can recover and keep on fighting, then beat her until I recover. One thing I know for sure, we'll make your fight not only worthless, but we'll also make you go bankrupt... That peeves you mercenary folks, right?"</p><p>Hachi shouted and pointed his arm at Kiyomi, shooting off smaller chakra missiles as the armor started literally firing itself, just flinging the parts off of Hachi's chest and arm in the shape of missiles, except they didn't have the chakra cells so they weren't explosive. Kiyomi carefully and slowly avoiding each and every missile, the smaller explosive ones tossed her around, making the girl spill some blood but she still picked herself up regardless. Once again, Hachi was unarmed in the literal sense of the word, but Kiyomi wasn't about to let him re-arm.</p><p>"Mana... I feel like passing out, I was beaten and tossed around pretty badly. If you aren't dead and feel like tagging me out for a while... I wouldn't mind..." Kiyomi whimpered out looking at her lifeless friend, the smoke coming off of her unconscious body was the only sign of life coming out from her. Hachi started taking slow steps towards the container again. Left, right, left, right... His feet let out strong thuds, bumping, and crushing the grass beneath them. A soul-crushing huff came from Kiyomi's left just as she was about to try and interfere.</p><p>Mana was on her feet, shaking, huffing, and looking pretty dead but she was on her feet.</p><p>"That rage back when I came back the first time was completely uncalled for..." she said, her voice was weak and pathetic, her hand seals were just one-tenth of what they once were but her tenth was probably just as fast as anyone else at her age...</p><p>"I did complete my plan after I "died" the first time..." she finished the sentence making Hachi freeze in fear after putting his hand right into the hole in the container. Mana shot her hands forward and lightning once again ran down her body and concentrated onto her palms.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Spark Barrage!" Mana yelled out firing off the more powerful version of her lightning sparks. These lightning sparks were shaped like little baseballs, they flew at the speed of an arrow and they bumped into the target leaving pretty big bruises, they also let out all of their lightning chakra upon impact. Hachi started yelling out, desperately trying to pull out his arm off of the container to dodge the jutsu being fired at him but failing as it got stuck.</p><p>The container blew up, violently, throwing both girls off their feet and making them work to get back up. It was just pure luck that none of the container's shrapnel hit them while they were down.</p><p>"Some of the things inside that container were pretty explosive, I tossed a little something inside and waited for him to come closer. Last time he didn't go in as deep, he switched his arms too quickly, plus if those chakra cells exploded in unison with those weapons this whole forest may have been leveled. I waited until now to set them off..."</p><p>Kiyomi wanted to laugh but she physically couldn't, it took her a couple of moments before the girl could even sit back up on her butt and look at her disabled friend. Mana turned her head at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Can you stand? Like, use your chakra augmentation to force you to your feet or something?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Nah, augmentation is dangerous by itself, you're messing with your own chakra flow and you may mess it up without return. You can permanently damage your maximum chakra level, you can also injure your body beyond repair. I've done it so many times on a very small scale that if I did it in my current condition my heart would probably blow up or something..." the blonde replied. Mana laughed, her body ached, the girls were in no condition to move, their mission was failed all because of those mercenaries.</p><p>"So I guess all that's left is to wait here for death?" the magician asked with a grim tone in her voice.</p><p>Kiyomi lowered her head, "So it would seem, still, if the mercenaries would've killed Hisako they'd have already been here. The bitch is giving them trouble, either way, whoever wins out of the both of them – we lose..." she replied falling on her back and stretching her arms.</p><p>Mana took a handful of gravel in her hand and let it gently and softly sip out from her fingers. She didn't want to die like that, not at that moment, not there... Well... She cheated death multiple times that day, but this must've been how everyone felt in this world, everyone who died. They kept thinking on and on about who they were, what they did, what they planned to do, and never for a moment accepted death like that. Mana didn't either. She didn't want to die like that, out there it was just not her time. While the girl's body kept fading away, she felt the light release right within her reach, Mana still fought on. For what though?</p><p>Thud, thud, thud... What was that noise? The girl lifted her head witnessing the most gruesome and horrifying sight – Hachi walking out from flames, his flesh completely torn off, mangled and burnt up, just a part of his brain must've remained, the part that was hidden inside the prosthetic part of his skull. Hachi didn't talk, he probably didn't think much, he acted out on instinct, just what his damaged dying brain told him to do... Kill. The mindless leader of the mercenary band kept on walking forward, with his single damaged prosthetic arm intending to drive it through the fleshy soft bodies of his disabled enemies.</p><p>Hachi drove his arm forward, aiming right at Kiyomi's heart but the girl caught it and tied her legs around the arm. The mindless mercenary lifted it up. The girl kept punching, clawing, and bashing the steel skull, trying to finish off the man's brain. Hachi stumbled back and almost fell – as weak as Kiyomi's taps were, they were doing some damage, all shocks to his steel skull were shocking his brain as well, all damage to him mattered in those cruel final moments. Hachi started advancing towards Mana, Kiyomi dropped down unable to keep her hold on Hachi's arm. The mercenary stopped above the girl, raising his arm in a straight palm position to impale her on it.</p><p>"I'm killing him, Mana!" Kiyomi yelled as she focused her chakra and made the handseal pointing her seals at Hachi.</p><p>Hachi tried to impale the girl but she rolled to the side and kicked his head, the mercenary slowly stumbled backward but he turned around.</p><p>"Initiating Protocol: OP Punch!" Hachi's voice box let out, his mechanical mind was operating while his human mind was out cold.</p><p>"No... Please... Maybe we can still..." Mana tried to talk but a strong punch to her gut made her spit up blood and pass out from the shock and the pain. The damage she had taken was simply too great and the girl's body just turned out, slowly fading until it was ready to die for good.</p><p>Hachi's arm tensed up and straightened imitating a blade again, ready to go through Mana's heart since the girl was powerless and unconscious.</p><p>A loud howl echoed, Kiyomi's mind entered Hachi's, this time there were no two conflicting minds, nothing to kick Kiyomi out. The Yamanaka was now in complete control.</p><p>"Mind-Body Disturbance: Harakiri" Hachi's cybernetic voice spoke, the what remained of the mercenary jumped up, high into the air and backflipped, pointing his head right at the ground. The heavy steel frame just drove into the ground, it's head snapped severing the ties between Hachi's spine and his brain as the neck snapped and broke off, just being held by a small strand of steel wire.</p><p>Hachi was finally dead. Kiyomi heard footsteps. This was either the mercenaries or Hisako, either one would've finished both of them off. Hisako had a particularly nasty distaste for Mana. Going out of her way to every time they met point out that she'd kill the magician... Mana's honest and kind approach pissed the assassin off more than anything in the world could, by not sharing Hisako's hatred but instead loving the young woman, Mana earned the woman's eternal scorn. Kiyomi's head raised up, while she was powerless to oppose impending horrible death in the hand of the mercenaries she looked at who would appear from the forest's depths.</p><p>A short and slim figure of a torn up and showered with blood woman appeared, her body was covered in cuts, she was almost naked and dressed just with what she looted from the female mercenaries' corpses, her wounds were so intense that the cuts destroyed her clothes. Hisako's hair was bloody and looked extremely greasy, the woman's eyes were the same color but for some reason, they emanated hatred and bloodlust.</p><p>Seeing Kiyomi and Mana powerless like that must've satisfied her sick feelings... Kiyomi wanted nothing more but to rob her of the following satisfaction. The bitch kneeled up to Kiyomi and felt her pulse, checked her eyes. She must've wanted to make sure that the Yamanaka was alive to see her plunge a knife into her heart...</p><p>No.</p><p>The woman stood up and advanced to Mana, checking the girl's neck, running over her injuries, and observing her lack of response. She then yelled out to someone. A young boy ran out from the forest, covered in blood but he had little to no wounds to explain that blood – the blood was not his. The boy handed something to Hisako and pointed at Mana's chest.</p><p>"She needs to be awake, wake her up, make her feel the pain and snap out from it, drive this right into her heart!" the boy ordered pointing at the long glowing object he handed to the raven-haired sadist. Hisako looked at the object in her hands and at the Mana. Kiyomi tried screaming something out, fighting it. She had to stop it, Mana saved her life so many times in just two days, Kiyomi had to fight those wounds, somehow stop it all. Hisako raised her hand up, taking her sweet time, Kiyomi took the time to look the Yoruma assassin in the eyes... Oh, she was enjoying this moment so very much...</p><p>This was so horrible, to die here like this, having won the fight yet knowing nothing, being not a single step closer to the mission objective. Nothing worked out, the boy remained kidnapped and will probably soon follow Mana and Kiyomi. Who the hell even was this boy Hisako kept around, was he another boy-toy of hers? Just like she had manipulated Hachi she'd manipulate this fool, maybe he'll lead her to the village and then take the dive for her? Maybe he'll admit to having killed Mana and Kiyomi... No... Not like this, injustice couldn't have won like this... Kiyomi wriggled around, flipped on her belly, and started crawling towards Mana and Hisako pointing the object.</p><p>"What are you waiting for!? Do it!" the boy shouted out, he was pretty rushing this execution. What was his gain in killing poor Mana!?</p><p>"I dunno, you sure you don't wanna?" Hisako asked him back.</p><p>"No! My hands are shaking, I'll miss her heart!" the boy replied, "Now stop being such a wuss and do it!" Kiyomi was so close!</p><p>Hisako's hands shot down, plunging the object into Mana's chest. The magician's eyes shot wide open and she screamed madly. Hisako sat on top of Mana keeping her from writhing around too frantically. Kiyomi relaxed, it was all over...</p><p>She'd be next...</p>
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<a name="section0081"><h2>81. No Rest For The Kind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>White, seemingly eternal bliss was everywhere where one's consciousness could reach. There were various strange voices, long-lost memories, voices of people who once said or did something. Was this life flashing through one's eyes right before death? A blast of needles struck Mana's forehead forcing her to peel her eyes open. She didn't remember anything. The girl looked around, her floating vision and migraine didn't let her forget that something horrible must've happened but her mind was still in shatters.</p><p>"Jeez, idol-bitch, you really struggled like a beast, you know that? For a little bitch like you, I didn't expect that much resistance, thought you'd claw my fucking eyes out." Hisako's soft voice reached Mana's ears making the girl turn at the raven-haired woman. The woman's annoyed face leaned over entering Mana's sight of vision from above, her eyes flared up, catching all semblance of light that the fire nearby emanated and reflected it off like a colored glass panel.</p><p>Mana gripped her chest and grunted out, some throbbing sensation reminded her of something horrible having happened earlier. A young man passed right through, looking at Mana for a second and breathing out heavily. "Oh, you're awake... That's good, for a moment there I thought we lost you," he said acting as if he was someone Mana was supposed to know.</p><p>Mana sat up, still clutching her chest, only then she realized how cold she was – her uniform was full of fist-sized holes all over, close to her laid her cards, all stacked in a steel-tipped deck. When the magician was found her uniform must've been so singed up that all the hidden pockets couldn't hold her weapons inside. The girl took the cards and tried to find where she could've hidden them. Mana weaved a hand seal and removed a small pouch from the bottom of her hat unsealing it from father's seal. She had several necessities in there in case of an emergency as large as this.</p><p>Slothfully, the girl placed all of her cards into the empty leather pouch, her body was shaking from the cold. Thoughts started flooding in, thoughts of what exactly happened, her memories were all jumbled up so it was tough to put them together. Mana definitely wanted to unleash a flood of questions because at the moment nothing at all made sense to her. It was like she woke up in a dream or something. The magician let her vision get straight, she let her eyes run around the small camp consisting of several sleep bags placed around a small fire.</p><p>"What happened? Why does my chest hurt so much?" Mana mumbled out through the cold that made her grind her teeth and shake. The magician moved in a little bit closer to the fire, Kiyomi smiled at Mana and hugged the girl. It was strange to see such expressions of softness and affection from the blonde, usually, ninja didn't care that much about their comrades except the professional bonds or the ties of sharing one's village that tied them all together.</p><p>"Hisako stabbed you in the heart, I got really scared but then they told me that this guy here is a medical ninja I've no idea why he saw it necessary to put that thing into your chest, you may want to ask them..." Kiyomi replied. She looked pretty happy that Mana was OK but she didn't seem overly fond of the situation they were in, perhaps it was because it was Hisako and that strange young man that pulled the two out of trouble.</p><p>Hisako shrugged, she was eating something that looked like a fish cooked on a stick and it didn't appear like she overly cared about anything going on around her except for that fish. "I was walking down the forest path, thinking about how I could return to you guys and help with the mission because I suddenly got the urge to actually do that mission and all. I didn't think how much fun it'd be killing all those criminals, it's basically a kill-all-you-want buffet of murder. Then I heard those strange whispers behind me, also that strange radio transmission, naturally my instinct told me something was wrong and I didn't take any chances, I started rampaging all over the crew of mercenaries."</p><p>The young man walked up to the fire and sat down, he stroke his messy and spiky blond hair and took off his dirty cloak tossing it to Mana. The girl looked at it and gratefully dug herself under it, she was freezing.</p><p>"You really didn't think covering Mana up while she was out? It's goddamn freezing and her clothes almost got torn and burnt off by that explosion!" Kiyomi angrily lashed out at the medical ninja boy.</p><p>"I'm a Quack" the young man shrugged.</p><p>"What's a Quack?" Mana wondered out loud, there was just so much information she needed to absorb: why did Hisako suddenly want to cooperate with the two girls, was it really just for a chance to murder all criminals freely, who exactly was this young medical ninja and where did he come from, what was his role in all of this, what exactly happened back in the battlefield fighting Hachi, how was she healed and how much time had passed after she passed out, what was the progress with the mission?</p><p>"A Quack is a rogue medical ninja, some of them are really charlatans however rogue ninja need medical ninja so a lot of Quacks are often more skilled than your average village medical ninja. Their methods are strange, often too rough and unethical to be used by village's medical ninja" Kiyomi explained taking a stick with a fish on it away from the fire and digging in.</p><p>"So I keep cutting everyone down with those guys completely unprepared, they didn't even hear that fucker's order to kill me 'till the end and all... Suddenly this Quack just stands there looking me in the eyes as I lunge at him with a sword, completely unfazed by all the murder and without a single twitch to defend himself. Naturally, I was interested in his story so, apparently, he was some medical ninja apprentice who had his superiors killed in the field and he himself got kidnapped and passed around from one band to another as their personal Quack."</p><p>"So you decided to release him from his slavery?" Mana got curious, that was a very kind thing for Hisako to do...</p><p>"Fuck no, he's my Quack now!" Hisako started coughing after Mana's suggestion made some food get stuck down her throat. "So anyway, I pick the Quack up and kill every fucker in that mercenary gang while they were unprepared. Then I hear the transmission from the headset of that beheaded head and take her earplug, the bitch didn't even turn off the transmission so I heard most of the bullshit going on. Since my desire to murder those criminals was still there I decided to bail you two bitches out and start a new page, just until we're done with the mission."</p><p>Kiyomi finished the fish and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "You should've seen that. Hisako rushing into the battlefield covered with blood and guts, rushing up to you and stabbing you in the chest, I thought she was actually murdering you."</p><p>"Nah, I may have been a bit too bitchy about that whole murdering thing, I'm still working on that decision... I really feel like we've connected. Like we're making a progress here" Hisako replied starting another fish. Kiyomi squinted angrily at Hisako's joke suggesting that it wasn't funny to her in the slightest.</p><p>"Okay... So how exactly stabbing me in the chest saved me?" Mana asked completely confused. There were some more important questions, this didn't really matter that much but it really made no sense and distracted the girl's still hazy mind from the more important matters.</p><p>Hisako's eyes flashed, she stared at the Quack to explain it. The young man sat down close to Mana and removed an incredibly thick and large rod.</p><p>"Basically the worst nightmare for any medical ninja is an unconscious patient, you don't know if they just passed out, if they're completely dead or if they're in a coma. Medical ninja have a very limited chakra pool and wasting chakra on a comatose or dead patient is a bad decision putting it mildly, that chakra is better used making a run from the hunter ninja coming after you. Most Quacks use this sort of tool to stab their patient through the heart, the rod pulses with chakra and because of the pain and the shock it wakes them up, it'd also kill them normally but, usually, a good medical ninja can get that wound under control and it also makes healing a little bit more clear and an easier task. Good thing I had Hisako here to hold you still though, you were flailing pretty hard..." the Quack explained.</p><p>Mana didn't really understand any of it, maybe it wasn't that she didn't understand it but it didn't really make much sense. Then again from what she remembered seeing in the Konoha Hospital most medical ninja never woke up their patients, they just supplied a certain amount of chakra into healing them and if it didn't work they called them hopeless. Obviously, their stats were always monitored and sometimes the condition stabilized even while the patient was unconscious but Mana had never wondered about those sorts of things, to her medical ninja just sounded like the real magicians with their ability to bring people back to life and patch them up quickly.</p><p>"OK, so what's the status of our mission then?" Mana wondered. The fact that they weren't in Konoha at that moment must've meant that there was still hope that they'd complete the mission. The magician wanted to know how far they traveled so far and where exactly they were and if any new intel came up.</p><p>Kiyomi tied her long hair and sat up close to Mana opening up a small map of the Fire Country. The girl pointed at a random point. "This is where we were a day ago, we've moved to here at the moment..." she dragged the finger further to another point and then even further by a narrow inch, "This is where we speculate the kidnappers are in and where they're holding the hostage, we managed to catch a black market dealer passing through the area and he revealed some pretty sensitive information about a young purple-haired brat being held in an underground bunker nearby disguised as a warehouse"</p><p>Mana jumped up rushing to the fire, "Why is this burning then? We're giving away our position, they're so close that they can definitely see us!" she yelled out starting to panic, Hisako tossed the fish bones at the magician which she managed to avoid, the stick with the bones hit a tree behind the girl and rolled down the hill somewhere.</p><p>"Calm your tits, that's what we're counting on. We don't want to engage the kidnappers in a fucking bunker, that's where they're holed in like fucking rats. They'll have trap seals in there or just ordinary pressure plate traps, we need them to fight us on our territory. Don't worry, I have a hunch about being ambushed..." Hisako smiled with a mouth full of fish. Mana sighed.</p><p>"This is a terrible plan..." she replied, "I mean I know they most likely knew there'd be at least a single party of ninja raiding them to retrieve the kidnapped kid but that doesn't mean we need to let them ambush us just to avoid playing by their rules"</p><p>Hisako didn't even honor Mana with a response, it was painfully obvious that the girl wanted to fight those kidnappers, she wanted her life to be in danger, she thrived in such situations. Suddenly Mana started to realize more and more about this young woman, about the Yoruma mentality in general. These people just wanted to fight, they didn't care who would get hurt in the process or anything like that, they didn't care much about the mission objective, to them the missions were just an opportunity to fight someone strong enough to get the village's attention.</p><p>"Plus, if they're so well bunkered in, they won't risk ambushing us in the first place. Did you forget that it's us who need to extract that young man, not the other way around?"</p><p>"That's what I told Hisako but she is an adamant young woman..." the Quack replied shrugging and sighing as if he was looking at it all as a big joke. Mana sat down and looked at Kiyomi.</p><p>"What do you think? Why are you suddenly agreeing with this plan?" the magician asked curiously, of all people Kiyomi was the fastest to point out the flaws in Yoruma because the Yamanaka couldn't stand those guys and how they just did whatever they wanted. The blonde winked slowly and turned her eyes away.</p><p>"She's our superior, she pulled our asses out of the fire. She wants the same we do, she wants for the mission to be completed. Sieging the bunker would require cooperation and trust and we have neither of those things. Surviving in this state of everyone for themselves just gives us better odds at both surviving and completing the mission" the blonde replied, despite her great annoyance by the situation it appeared like the Yamanaka truly believed in what she was talking about so Mana gave in.</p><p>"You know... I really liked you when we met, I looked up to you like this amazing great ninja I wanted to be more like. I still do. You're like my idol, like a big sister for me to look up to and shape myself to be more like. If you trust Hisako's plan, I'll go with it too..." Mana replied, trying to appeal to Kiyomi's own sense of what's right. If the Yamanaka just wanted to repay some sort of debt to Hisako for saving both of their lives this wasn't the right way to do it, it was the Yoruma who was repaying the debt for trying to kill the two when they first met.</p><p>"Look, I get it, idol-bitch, you don't want to get stabbed a bunch of times in your sleep, that's not what I fancy too much either. We will keep the night watch, cheerleader-bitch agreed with that." Hisako looked at Mana with those eyes that one's best friend gives you when he tries to tell you that peeing into the city hall fountain is a really good idea.</p><p>Mana looked at Kiyomi, "The only thing I see here that's wrong is you lashing out at me for calling you "Senpai" when you completely ignore being called "cheerleader-bitch"..." the magician gave in and sat down, the Quack handed her some fish and told her to drink some hot tea with some strange herbs he put in. He observed carefully while Mana drank it but only when it was halfway down her throat did the girl realize she may not have wanted to drink it, she looked curiously at the young man who smiled at her.</p><p>"Don't worry, it's just drugs..." he said through the world's most genuine and heartfelt smile.</p><p>Mana spat the second gulp out and almost spilled all of the tea out. The Quack jumped up to her trying to calm her down.</p><p>"Don't worry, it's fine, they will accelerate your natural ninja metabolism. Most people regenerate injuries naturally, ninja have incredibly potent out of field regeneration factors which are granted by them mastering their body through chakra manipulation. These drugs only enhance that... And... Might give you some side effects..."</p><p>Mana squinted angrily leaning closer to the Quack and clutching her fists. "Side effects?"</p><p>"Yeah, possible nausea, hallucinations, and insomnia, it's really worth it" the Quack explained.</p><p>Hisako chuckled, "Don't worry, idol-bitch, he tried to drug me when we first met too..." she added.</p><p>"Umm... It may have been better to ask you this before you drank but did you by any chance ingest any alcohol today or have a history of heart sickness? Cause, in that case, you'll most likely die..." the Quack then winced with an innocent and begging forgiveness smile.</p><p>The late evening finally turned into night. The drugs that the Quack gave Mana with her tea actually helped her feel a little better about her pain, even if it wasn't intentional for her to consume them. Either way, it also gave her a massive case of insomnia. That was why to the magician those three hours just laying by the tree waiting for her turn to watch, when it was time to take over from the Quack were as gruesome as torture. Every time she looked angrily at the medical ninja who was watching and listening to the surroundings waiting to wake them up if something suspicious came up gave her an innocent smile back.</p><p>Finally, it was her turn, Mana stood up and crept up to the Quack putting her arm on his shoulder softly and waking him up, he had been sleeping like a baby for the last forty minutes but since the magician was awake anyway she didn't bother saying anything. All of this goofiness that surrounded this Quack was almost a bit cute, he may have won a lovely smile out of Mana had he not successfully drugged her with insomnia drugs.</p><p>The girl sat down on the wet and cold feeling stump and sighed. This didn't feel very comfortable so she ran up the tree and settled down there. It'd give her more perspective to see a wider area, she could see both the lower and the higher levels from where she was anyway. Mana really believed that those kidnappers would come for them, she was almost certain about it even if before she theorized that they wouldn't. Maybe it was just a hunch, an instinct similar to that of Hisako's. Regardless of her personal fears, multiple attempts to relocate to get a better vantage point she heard or saw nothing suspicious.</p><p>Her watch must've ended because Kiyomi woke up and knocked on the bark of the tree where Mana was. The girl slowly and carefully climbed down.</p><p>"What the hell, Mana? I thought you were supposed to wake me up when my turn comes..." Kiyomi whispered rather angrily, still rubbing her sleepy eyes with her knuckles. Mana yawned, while she felt tired and kept yawning until her eyes started tearing up, she still couldn't catch a Z even if she tried.</p><p>"Sorry, those drugs just made me a bit sleepless so I figured that I'd just watch it until the end..." Mana replied. Kiyomi smiled.</p><p>"You're lucky, I actually got nauseous yesterday cause of that same shit... I'd really pound that Quack hard if he hadn't healed us from the point of dying." the blonde replied, she then settled down on the same log that the Quack was watching from earlier.</p><p>"Come on, I'll keep you company, I mean... May as well since I'm awake, right?" the Yamanaka smiled. Mana sat on her knees placing her back on a rock. She dug into the cloak that the Quack gave her as the cold started sticking needles into her body since she stopped frantically moving around looking for better vantage points.</p><p>"So... That thing you told me earlier, about you looking up to me, treating me as your superior and all that..." Kiyomi suddenly brought up a topic after a couple of moments of silence.</p><p>"Yeah, I meant it." Mana confirmed it nodding at the blonde with a smile "To me, this mission feels really strange, I was put on a team of two extremities, two older young women who are both strong and amazing women. Even Hisako-san has a certain amount of qualities she could teach me. She's probably more valuable to the village than I'll ever be because of her classic virtues. Then there's you – a slightly older, beautiful and strong and badass young woman who knows who she is, what she's doing, and how she'll get to her goal. Yet doing it while following her own rules, your own personal ethics together with the code of a ninja..."</p><p>Kiyomi smiled and closed her eyes, for a moment the magician wondered if the blonde actually snoozed off but then she turned and looked Mana right in the eyes. "You're a silly girl, Mana, you don't need to shape yourself after us, you don't need to look up to me and sure as hell not to Hisako. You have your own life, your own nindo, sure you feel confused about everything, sure you think you're a lesser person because you see amazing people around you every day and you feel like you don't add up to them. You were taught by Tanshu himself and you feel like you will never rise up to his legacy as you'll never fulfill his expectations. Truth is that you don't have to become a Sannin like he was, you don't have to become Hokage or whatever..."</p><p>"God no" Mana laughed out sticking her tongue out in comic disgust, "I'd never agree to be Hokage, it's just a symbolic post, you do paperwork, you compromise with the Council that cares more about efficiency and money than people's lives. A Hokage needs to sacrifice people daily, send ninja away on missions they may not return from. I couldn't do that, I'd want to do everything myself but I couldn't leave the village because the Hokage is needed there at all times to manage trivial administration matters. The big chair just isn't for me..."</p><p>"Don't spit at it..." Kiyomi smiled back "Your goal is becoming a hero, in other words, a symbol to people. A person who values all life, a person who treasures life and treats all life as being magical and by example encourages the world to change as well. A Hokage is in the best position to be that sort of a person, people automatically look up to Hokage and it's not because of the big hat they get to wear, it's because it takes great charisma and strength to gather enough people and trust to become one."</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and sat there silent, she understood where her friend was coming from but it still didn't change her stance on the seat of Hokage. She'd support any righteous and heroic Hokage with all her strength and heed their every order that didn't force her to be something she's not.</p><p>"My point is, you don't need to look up to us, don't chase me or Hisako or anyone else's image. Don't be like I was when I looked up to brother, to Hanasaku, and failed. I failed to become a strong ninja like my brother because he was always the wall of what I could achieve, that was why I couldn't help him at all. Same with Hanasaku, I tried to become more like her except for the incompetent part and I still failed, Hanasaku made the team disband and I was an even lesser woman than she was because she was my goal. The person you are destined to be is without walls, limitless, and knows no boundaries. If you make your ideal self the only wall to strive to rise up to, you'll have no walls or barriers, you'll transcend all others. Don't try to be your version of us, try to be Nakotsumi Mana through and through." Kiyomi finished her thought from before.</p><p>Mana lowered her head, "I guess... If I tried to be you I'd fail anyway, you have all those cool Yamanaka abilities I'd never manage to keep up with while I'm just... Me. You can be everything I can ever be and more..." she replied.</p><p>Kiyomi punched Mana in the elbow painfully.</p><p>"That's completely not what I meant. It doesn't matter if I'm an heir of a clan or whatever, it doesn't matter if you have a clan or not. I knew an Uchiha shithead who was an inch of a person that you are and that arrogance got him nowhere. He lost an eye and he then stopped being a ninja altogether donating his second Sharingan to his clan, having implanted a normal set of eyes instead. For his arrogance he was punished with what he deemed the worst punishment ever, being ordinary, losing his Uchiha heritage."</p><p>Mana kicked a small pebble around, "Except he didn't" she added, "Your friend didn't lose what made him... Him. He just thought that he lost it with his eyes that's why he gave up on himself, he could've been just as skilled of a ninja with one eye or normal eyes if he just trained and worked hard and learned to deal with it..."</p><p>Kiyomi placed her hand on Mana's shoulder and smiled. "That's actually is what I meant, now you get it..."</p><p>The blonde smiled and stood up, stretching out. "Well, I think I'm off to sleep a little bit, I'll wake Hisako up, you may want to get up that tree again, I wouldn't want anywhere close that woman when she's woken up like this from her beauty sleep," Kiyomi said, making those last words sound especially mocking and comical. Mana giggled into her hand and observed the Yamanaka waking the Yoruma up, the swordswoman walked up to Mana and sat down to the same stone.</p><p>"The fuck are you still up for? Don't tell me, that fucker's drugs actually are keeping you awake!?" she thundered out loud waking the Quack up, annoyed the young man flipped on the other side and tried to go back to sleep. Mana didn't even answer that, probably because by then she had learned that Hisako didn't particularly care about that. The only person she cared about was herself.</p><p>"Hisako-san" Mana's gentle and softened voice reached the assassin's ears. The woman turned her head to the magician.</p><p>"Thanks for saving our lives. Kiyomi is an heiress of the Yamanaka clan, her life is really important..." Mana smiled at the woman.</p><p>"You fucktard, everyone's life is important. Your life, my life, her life, everyone's. That is why Yoruma kill. Because when a person is dead nothing else matters, it's the ultimate "fuck you" to everyone. People can say how fucking amazing they are and how they defy death but truth is that they love life, that's because there's something everyone loves and that thing exists within life, ergo they love life by extension. Taking that life away is to the complete discretion of a ninja, it's an ultimate act of playing God and I'll be fucked if it's not fucking fun."</p><p>"I... I didn't realize you treasured life, Hisako-san..." Mana looked really surprised.</p><p>"Only an idiot doesn't and odds are if you're an idiot, you're dead or about to be, that's the world we live in. It doesn't matter if you're strong but it helps, doesn't matter if you've got a nice set of tits but it helps, the only thing that matters if you're fucking retarded or not... The only thing that ass-kissers get from life is a warm ass to crawl up in and live in while the "honorable" can all go get fucked. Killers live, victims die. If you don't love your fucking life you're a lot of things but a retarded fucknut is definitely one of them and if you searched the dictionary, retarded fucknut is another way of spelling victim."</p><p>"You curse a lot..." Mana smiled, it didn't really hurt her that much that her teammate did but it was just an observation, the girl really wanted to realize where this habit may have come from.</p><p>Hisako started wildly looking at where she was sitting as if trying to lift the giant rock that she was sitting by. Mana looked really interested in what on Earth she could've been doing.</p><p>"What are you doing?" the magician asked.</p><p>"Looking for a fucking medal for this child fucking detective, with those fucking skills you should've become a Police Force officer, you'd look really tits in that tight uniform too, oh, you wear one anyways..." Hisako lashed out and then collapsed by the same rock. Mana broke a chuckle, it was clear that Hisako was trying to push the magician away and offend her but she wasn't doing a very good job. Or maybe it was just Mana who had gotten too attached to her newly met teammate to push her away because of something she said.</p><p>"Chuunin Exams... What were they like, Hisako-san?" Mana asked with the same smile that she greeted the woken up partner with.</p><p>"Eh, cut some kids to pieces, get a promotion for it... Simple as that..." Hisako replied.</p><p>"They let you kill people in there?" Mana was a bit surprised by that revelation.</p><p>"Fuck no, but you know, accidents happen, to some, they happen every time in a row." Hisako smiled.</p><p>"I've never before met a person who was proud to have killed children" Mana looked at Hisako with worry in her eyes. It wasn't a worry for her own safety or anything like that, she was worried about how twisted her friend was.</p><p>"Well I was a fucking kid back then, plus, when a kid picks up a weapon and comes at you, you don't give a fuck if it's kid or not. No, you give more fucks and kill them without hesitation because a kid doesn't give as many fucks as an adult does. An adult thinks about bullshit like "What if this fucker has a family, what if it'll hurt, what if this manner of death is inappropriate and wrong", a kid just fucking slits your throat because the good man down the street promised him a fucking ice cream stick for it, do everyone a favor, when you face off against a kid coming at you to kill you, kill the fucker."</p><p>Mana shook her head, "I would never kill anyone, no matter the age, no matter if they're good or not"</p><p>Hisako laughed out, "I'll come to your funeral, kid. That is if they deem your death important enough to give you one, sometimes they just dig the fuckers up randomly, outside the village walls. Only the strong and smart people earn a nice grave, that's even if your enemy won't cut your head off to show it off to their Kage..."</p><p>Mana looked at Hisako weird, "Wasn't that an ancient custom of Kirigakure, back from the Bloody Mist days?"</p><p>"Once a killer, always a killer, kid" Hisako replied. She then drew her sword nonchalantly and spun it to the side deflecting a spear flung her way from the forest. Mana jumped up and prepared for combat, with a loud whistling sound a wire attracted the spear back to the owner's hand cutting Hisako on its way back. The woman grunted, Mana already saw the bloodlust in her eyes... Hisako was already in her primal rage mode and she was beyond being reasoned with now...</p><p>"Everyone wake up!" Mana yelled out but she didn't even need to, her teammates got woken up by the first clang coming out from Hisako's sword deflecting the spear.</p><p>The ambush had begun!</p>
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<a name="section0082"><h2>82. Life-Treasuring Monster</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One thing that was impossible to get used to as a ninja was how quickly shit could have hit the fan. After all, had Hisako not used whatever supernatural reaction time she had and deflected that projectile Mana would've seen a friend die before her very own eyes just like that. One moment everything was fine, the other moment one's friend could've just kept on standing with a spear in their chest and then collapsed and faded away. That was the world that they all lived in, the world where anyone could've died at any time. The world that Mana intended to change during her lifetime.</p><p>"Stop daydreaming, dear, let's move" the Quack snapped Mana out of her thoughts.</p><p>Barely visible figures were flashing above in the higher level, those must've been the assailants. Someone flung a knife at the young man, Mana managed to form her "Friendly Gust Jutsu" just in time to deflect the projectile, also the one hidden right below the other. The man who attacked them tossed a knife and then another one right below the first one, it was a deceitful attack. Such attacks were common for ninja, could these people have been rogue ninja?</p><p>A black figure swooped in, swinging on something reminding a rope or a whip, her high heels drove into Hisako's cheek as the woman was quite busy reflecting the projectiles from her knife tossing friend. The raven-haired woman peeled her face off the dirt almost instantly and shouted out in frustration. A smooching sound reached everyone's ears from the other side, the woman who kicked Hisako sent them an air kiss and swung away from the battlefield using her swinging tool.</p><p>"Oh no, you fucking won't!" Hisako rushed forward head forward, Mana jumped forward to stop her but the woman was faster, also Kiyomi caught Mana's hand and shook her head. She was right, splitting them apart and picking them off one by one must've been the idea... Out of nowhere, Hisako returned to the area, rushing in from the other side.</p><p>"Fuck... That bitch is fast..." the woman was hyperventilating quite excessively. Mana looked at the small skyline, barely visible through the trees and she noticed three shadows. One belonging to a man with spiky hair, a slim one but also he had a strange hairy and large figure by his side, almost like it was a head of a wolf growing out from his shoulder.</p><p>The other one belonged to the woman from before, she wore a full black bodysuit that disguised her in the darkness making her able to just swing around with that thing and deal damage either up close or from further away. The third one belonged to a very bulky and apparently quite hairy man. He must've been the knife slinger as his shadow was quite edgy and had a bunch of spiky ends. The figures split again...</p><p>"One of us has the heir, I wonder which one..." the woman's sultry and playful voice echoed through the camp. It was followed by an evil laugh overkilling her idea of a taunt. Hisako grunted and prepared to lunge after where the voice came from, Mana shook her head placing her hand on Hisako's shoulder.</p><p>"Move your fucking hand or I'll chop it off for you!" Hisako hissed out.</p><p>"No, if they are really carrying the kidnapped boy with them the most likely person to have him would be the one with the dog by his side, I doubt the others would risk carrying him around. Please go after that guy, Hisako-san, I'll handle the swinging woman." Mana replied.</p><p>Kiyomi didn't like that idea. "You're suggesting that we send our psychopath after the man with the kidnapped boy? She won't reason with that man, she'll murder him and won't care about the boy!" she shouted out, all three girls realized that they didn't have any time to stand around and argue.</p><p>"I know, that is an advantage. The man will have no leverage over Hisako because she simply won't care, her mind will remain cold and calculated no matter the odds. Also, she is our strongest member which means she has the highest odds of rescuing the boy." Mana explained. What Kiyomi complained about was right, Mana knew that it made little sense to send Hisako, someone who was in it only to kill people to save the boy. Either way, Hisako was able to fight off both Mana and Kiyomi before, obviously, that wasn't a clean fight as no one knew of the others' abilities but Hisako was fast, strong, and ruthless. She stood the best chance of winning that fight.</p><p>The raven-haired assassin nodded with a sadistic smile and disappeared. Just a mere moment later a whisper returned from her, "Don't worry, I'll bring the wussy back, what remains of him at least..." Mana didn't like Hisako's idea of a joke, not at all but this was the only call they could've made at that point. Kiyomi rushed forward, she decided to chase down the knife-slinger since Mana claimed the woman previously. Mana stopped her friend.</p><p>"I don't like the idea of splitting..." her voice faltered.</p><p>Kiyomi smiled and gave Mana a thumb up, "Don't worry, you're amazingly strong, you can handle it."</p><p>Mana shook her head energetically, "That's not it, I want to watch over you two, I want to know you two are alright."</p><p>Kiyomi just leaped up and forward, a message on the mental link reached Mana back, "Don't worry, we're both stronger than you are, you'd just get in our way. Now don't die, my mental link will soon dissolve 'cause we'll be out of the fifty-meter range, watch out for yourself!" the blonde let the magician know before the mental link snapped like a string with too much pressure on it from both sides.</p><p>Mana only laughed, she wasn't the one with self-confidence trouble, more like the whining kind. She never took herself as being unworthy or anything of the sort, still, Kiyomi was most likely right. The magician just smiled and moved on, following the woman. These assailants were moving slowly, it didn't take Mana much time to catch up to her, must've been the same with the others. Had they wanted to escape they'd have never alerted the trio, they wanted to split the group and kill them off one by one. Now they were playing the game of their enemy which was a very dangerous thing to do.</p><p>Back at the camp the young Quack just shrugged and sat down by the tree, he looked at the briefly visible skyline, the leaves on the higher treeline covered most of it. The young man smiled, "Yeah... I'll just sit here and patch you three up. New crew, same shit..." the boy laughed to himself. While the girls treated him with much more respect, he was still doing the same thing he was doing with the mercenaries. That Hisako person even claimed him as "her Quack". That woman seemed to always linger between the dark side of the line and doing the right thing, most of the time she did the right thing but with the darkest of methods.</p><hr/><p>Further away, Hisako was catching up to the man with the strange dog head close by. Now that she had gotten closer it was apparent that he was having a white wolf by his side, the animal seemed to be moving at the same speed as the man was, he must've been a ninja-hound. This must've meant that the man either was a ripoff who used ninja-hounds or that he belonged to the Inuzuka clan, the famed users of ninja-hounds. Hisako was slowly getting excited, Inuzuka were amazing taijutsu specialists with unusual sync techniques utilizing their hounds. Maybe she should think about not using her swords to make it more interesting?</p><p>Inuzuka were amazing, they lived with their dogs, grew up with them. An Inuzuka member was given their dog as a partner from the early days, right before graduating from the Academy. Due to their mastery of chakra manipulation those dogs were pureblooded badasses who mastered their bodies, they possessed all the natural strengths of a dog enhanced, also there was none of the "dog years" shit.</p><p>Hisako smiled, this was going to be an incredibly fun battle. Over their long years working with the dogs the Inuzuka members also started possessing dog-like features, they had those strange fangs, their eyes were almost canine in their features and they also had a much larger portion of the dog's senses compared to common ninja. A dog was still the better sensor, had a better nose and hearing, but the Inuzuka member was incredibly close to matching that prowess which was incredible all by itself.</p><p>Suddenly, the dog split off from the man, spinning in a wild vortex and heading for Hisako. The dog howled and the Inuzuka turned to her and grinned, the bastard must've sensed her coming from a mile away, smelled her sweat or something incredible like that... Hisako drew her blades and blocked the drilling vortex. The dog applied the pressure and suddenly the girl felt really weak, the pressure and the sheer unrestrained brutal force of the animal tackling her with that spinning manner blew her off her feet and made her plummet down to the dirt.</p><p>"Tunneling Fang!" Inuzuka's growling voice reached her. Hisako got back on her feet, she had heard of Inuzuka techniques before, seen this technique in action during the Chuunin Exams. This idiot was using his easily predicted techniques on a Konohagakure ninja, most Inuzuka were native to Konohagakure anyways, there was only a small majority in Kumogakure and most of the other portion was living in the Snow Country. A Konoha ninja would've seen those idiots fight at least once in their lives, who did this fucker think he was kidding attacking Hisako like that!?</p><p>The man landed right in front of her with the dog following him not too much later, landing right by his master's, no - his partner's side. Hisako pulled out her swords and brandished them just to taunt the man. The Inuzuka's face twisted into a smile, his creepy long dog-like fangs were visible in that weird mouth of his, before that day was over Hisako will have pounded those teeth out. Maybe she'll make a necklace out of them? Wearing heads around one's necks was strangely uncomfortable and creepy anyways, teeth made much better trophies for accessories.</p><p>"I see you took some damage there" Inuzuka rubbed his nose with his finger pointing at Hisako's torn up top, he must've got some pretty dirty look at something through that hole and thought that'd dishonor Hisako or make her feel shameful at the slightest. Yes. Hisako was a sexy beast and she knew it, she won't cover up what that dog tore out while she augmented her body not to get injured too hard. If some naked skin excited this man that much, he may have wanted to get a good look, Hisako will use that to her advantage and make it the last sight the man would see before his head parts from his shoulders.</p><p>"It's fine, your dog will make a fine coat anyways, they say this winter will be pretty chilly..." Hisako retorted, it was quite apparent that the dog understood human speech as he slightly flinched and looked intimidated by that retort. The Inuzuka comically started flailing his hands above his head.</p><p>"What!? Who does that to dogs? Are you some sort of sick bitch? Jeez! I mean... You don't hurt dogs! That's like... Way too evil!" he started yelling out. This Inuzuka must've been a funny-man, Hisako liked funny men, namely how their fun tended to leave their eyes shortly before they died. There was simply nothing quite like that sight to be entirely honest.</p><p>"I see you don't have the kid, who has him? Don't tell me that the bitch with the whip has him!" Hisako grunted taking an offensive stance preparing for her attack. The Inuzuka finally snapped out from his shock that this world had people who'd hurt his wolf, he then started snickering like a dirty teen. "Heh, we fucked with you good, you'd think we'd wanna move that fucker an inch further? We left him at home, we just wanted you bitches to think that we moved him so that you didn't ignore us and just stormed at the bunker."</p><p>"I see..." Hisako thought for a moment before her body just disappearing and reappearing right in front of the Inuzuka, a giant gash opened up on the man's chest, the woman cut faster than even a ninja's eye could see. It took great skill and perception to track her incredibly fast movements.</p><p>"Not that it matters since I'll kill you and proceed to that bunker anyways..." Hisako mumbled out making an elegant swipe with her blades, opening another cut on the man, not quite as deep but still prominent and painful. She then dug her feet into the ground and kicked off, spinning like a dancer with her blades and opening a very deep cut on the man's face, he tried to lean back out from her finishing attack but he got cut regardless and was sent tumbling back.</p><p>The Inuzuka managed to get himself back together. "Wow, I seem to have had some streak of bad luck..." he complained.</p><p>Hisako smiled. "Tell me about it, an Inuzuka user who uses the "Chakra Absorption Technique" to enhance his clan techniques, don't think I didn't notice it when your dog used that "Tunneling Fang" technique on me... You're a perfect counter to any little fartface who uses ninjutsu techniques as you quickly drain them and make them feel too weak to fight you back. However when you face a physically strong opponent who fights at close quarters and doesn't rely on chakra that much... That's bad for you, right?"</p><p>The Inuzuka's dog leaped forward biting at Hisako's neck, the woman just stuffed her blade sideways into the dog's mouth blocking his bite and then swiped her blade to the side leaving a big cut on the dog's jaw. A powerful impact from behind – this Inuzuka was really fast as he used the opportunity granted by his dog to get behind Hisako and ram her back with his shoulder. His arms lit up with blue flames as he started pummeling Hisako with a powerful combination of taijutsu blows at the same time as his dog occupied her by biting at random vital points. It took Hisako great trouble not to die from that dog's fangs, every time the man hit her she felt her very own life-force seeping out from her body – he was slowly draining her chakra with each hit!</p><p>Hisako flipped back, shooting her arm onto the ground to keep her balance as she stood on that arm upside down and flung her blade, the blade etched slightly into the Inuzuka's body. Hisako finished her flip and then lunged forward, sadistically and rudely pulling the blade out and making a whole fountain of blood shoot out. Those swords weren't exactly piercing swords, they were more like slashing swords, built to cut their opponent and leave deep cuts or chop their limbs off, stabbing left wide holes but it was near impossible to hit any vitals because of its curve and it was very hard to drive the sword very deep. The Inuzuka coughed up some blood, to add up to the shower of it that dyed the grass.</p><p>"You're a lucky fucker, lucky that you sipped up so much of my chakra, now it sustains your life, you're using it to sustain you post-injury right? It's common for little fuckers like you to use chakra stolen from others just to prolong your own pathetic lives, right? Face it, you've lost, had you faced off against idol-bitch you'd have slaughtered her because she relies on chakra, the cheerleader-bitch would've struggled but she packs a mean right hook so she'd have also come out on top eventually. You're basically fucked, give up and stop torturing yourself by using your chakra to keep yourself alive." Hisako taunted dashing right at her opponent slashing at him and knocking him off his feet.</p><p>"Fuck... Sunomaru, we're retreating!" the man shouted out at his dog, who responded with a whiny bark. A loud snap - a small smoke bomb was seen in his fingers and slammed at the ground making dark purple smoke shoot out, Hisako covered her face and coughed, she felt a powerful palm slap at her chest and suddenly weakness took her over again – the man took a large chunk of chakra from that.</p><p>"Thank you, ma'am, I'll take that wrapped to go!" the man taunted her, and after the smoke bomb cloud cleared he was gone, almost like he was never there.</p><p>"Fucknuts wrapped in a pussy sandwich!" Hisako cursed, she almost had a pretty neat kill but her bloodlust was kept waiting again. For how long could she have kept herself in control? If she as much as smelled some blood she'd leap into the fray blades swinging. This was fucking ridiculous!</p><p>"Whatever" Hisako thought to herself as she turned and started moving back, she needed to assist those two bitches if they got in trouble after all. Maybe they got lucky like she did and ended up against the opponent whose skills they countered perfectly, maybe that wasn't it.</p><p>"Dad... I won... He got away but not THAT man, I killed HIM..." Hisako thought to herself closing her eyes, her mind started drifting, Hisako's speed dropped drastically to the point where she was barely even moving forward. Her mind moved back to her early days, that fateful day...</p><hr/><p>Hisako lunged at her father, she swung the bamboo sword as hard as she could, attacking from the side and from above, trying to swipe from below, to break his sideways placed guard too, nothing worked. Father always blocked every strike, he found his way to block literally everything. Not to mention that he then punished the girl by driving his actual sword into her, he slammed the blunt side into her face, her gut, and her knees, he hit wherever it hurt. Such was the Yoruma training: die or become strong, survive by wishing for the pain to stop, every time one failed they were stabbed, cut up, had their kneecaps broken by cold steel being bashed into them. Steel against bone was hardly a fair match...</p><p>But then once the kid started to wish for the pain to stop there were just two options, strike better, faster and stronger, be more precise and technically superior, improve your technique and get good. Either that or just give up and die. Either way worked, whenever Hisako landed a blow on her father she got to eat her dinner, and when she didn't her father beat her up. That was the Yoruma way, father was not a monster, quite the contrary, he did it because he loved Hisako and wanted her to be strong. He beat her and stabbed her and broke her bones because he wanted his daughter to be strong, to win, to have what it took to survive in this world. If she chose death, the coward's way out, then she wouldn't have been her father's daughter and she'd have deserved what was coming.</p><p>"Enough" father shouted, Hisako tried to strike him while he was off of his defensive stance but father's blunt side of his katana hit her right in the head sending her down. Hisako bit her tongue and cracked a tooth after that last slam. She felt like the whole world was spinning, she felt nauseous, must've been another concussion.</p><p>"I said enough!" father yelled kicking Hisako in the gut when she was down, the kick was strong, lifted the girl's body off the ground by a significant margin. The girl grunted and spat out some blood, she'll probably pee it too for a while too. She should've been better, stronger, and faster, her sword loops just didn't work, father worked his way through them with a single displacing block. She was sloppy, she was weak... Like mom...</p><p>"Your attack is impressive, Hisako, however, you have no defensive skill whatsoever, you just rush attacking combinations with no attempt to block my attacks. That is a silly idea, a katana is a perfect blade for combining both – attack and defense" father said, his voice was judgmental but also a bit soft, he was showing kindness by not killing her when she was making so many mistakes! Father was so merciful and kind! The girl tried to get up but nausea and the coughing up blood sent her back down, writhing in the puddles of blood she herself spat out.</p><p>"Defense is for weaklings... Mother was all defense, she was beautiful so she used that to deceive, she was tricky so she used that to slip poison and escape but it all caught up with her... If I'm exactly the opposite of Mother... I'll survive. Only attack, no defense!" little Hisako chanted.</p><p>Father lost it, he started rampaging through the yard, he knew that his daughter was dying so he didn't push it, he didn't hit her but he hit everything that wasn't her. "Don't ever speak that way of your mother..." father spoke in a different tone. "Your mother was discovered because of bad intel, she did everything right, it's those pencil pushers that fucked up, YOUR MOTHER WAS PERFECT!" Father shouted out.</p><p>"Perfect people keep their heads on their shoulders" Hisako replied. She whited out, something hard hit her and the girl couldn't remember anything. Everything was white, father must've kicked her pretty hard for those last words.</p><p>Hisako woke up later, she felt like her chakra and most of her endurance was restored, she felt up her body and saw that while most of her scars remained, her wounds have already closed and made some new ones. Father fed her a medical food pill, he never showed that much mercy, he always just tossed her bandages and water and a needle to sew her injuries. Father must've lost control... He kicked Hisako when she was too injured and he didn't want to kill her like that. Even father wasn't perfect, father lost control.</p><p>Hisako looked at her bamboo sword, she took the thing and drove it at her knee. The wood broke, Hisako shouted out as she heard a powerful crack in her knee. She must've busted up a bone again. Not that it mattered, it'll all heal up in a day or two, that was just how ninja were. If they weren't dead they could've come back from it in just days' time. Hisako had her knee busted many times, both of them even. This was nothing for a big girl like her to cry over...</p><p>Hisako crawled up to her bed and laid down. She looked at the ceiling. The bamboo sword represented the katana, it was the perfect weapon for offense and defense as father put it but... If Hisako's style was all out offense why would she use such an unfitting weapon for her style? Katana was meant for striking and then returning to defense, Hisako needed something like... Like those swords from the east that she read about in the Academy, those twisted swords that were perfect for only attacking, if she needed ever to defend those would've helped but Hisako didn't want to defend, she'd survive anything, she'd kill the enemy before they managed to beat her loop...</p><p>The girl stood and crawled up to the two pieces of her bamboo sword. She whined in pain as her knee didn't let her stand but she picked the pieces up, Hisako swung those for hours, adapting her style to these new weapons. Only when she passed out from the pain of her bleeding and broken knee rubbing against the incredibly tough wood did she finally get some rest. The next day Hisako woke up to a deafening shout of pain. The girl fell out from her bed and got to her feet, limping downstairs she ran into the yard.</p><p>Father was there, he was kneeling by a group of men with strange green kimono and he... Had a sword driven through his throat.</p><p>"Fucking Yoruma, you fuckers should all just die with your sick and twisted ways! Sending your wife to seduce and poison me... You should know that I plowed that bitch good before giving her the satisfaction of getting to die!" the man shouted at Hisako's dying father before pulling his blade out of him.</p><p>"He didn't send shit, the Konoha council plays those sick fucks like puppets. What husband just lets his wife go to some guy's house and fuck with that guy because some old fucktard says so?" the man's companion shrugged.</p><p>The third one pointed at Hisako, "Look, that's a little fucking Yoruma bitch, looks just like her mother this kid!" he laughed out.</p><p>"Look at how beaten and bruised she is, she's pale like she has no blood in her..." the man kicked the corpse of Hisako's father. "Those sick fucking Yoruma, they should all fucking choke on dicks and die, they make their kids as sick as they are since their baby days! Having the guts to come and kill me... ME!" the man walked up to Hisako and punched her, the girl fell down on her back. Tears started accumulating in her eyes.</p><p>"Hey, calm down, man, we're in Konoha, this ain't Kirigakure, we can't just murder a family in the middle of the street!" the man's companion started encouraging his leader to leave the village as fast as possible.</p><p>"The fuck are you so pissy about?! This is the fucking Yoruma clan district, do you think anyone even steps their fucking foot into this pisshole? Do you think anyone fucking cares if these dogs live or die? They have no morals, they have no pride in them, this little bitch would suck my cock if asked her to. That's the kind of people Yoruma are, she'd bite it off after I'm done with her though... Fucking and killing is all those sick bastards do!" the man slashed at Hisako trying to behead her with a single swipe but the girl dove to the side. She screamed like she was getting killed, the girl covered her eye up, there was a deep gash on it going deep into her eye. She was blind with it, blood was bursting from it but even if it wasn't, she'd still be blind with it!</p><p>This was her eye... Her eye... The one that mother and father made her with! This was... Her eye!</p><p>Hisako lunged at one of the men beating him senselessly with the two pieces of her broken bamboo sword that she still held in her hands. Initially, the other men just laughed looking at the wild girl they were about to torture and kill but when Hisako started madly laughing and stabbing the man with the sharp parts where the sword was broken they suddenly froze in place... This kid just killed their friend...</p><p>"You fucking bitch!" one of the men yelled out leaping at Hisako. What followed was hours if not days of beating, torture of the most inhuman kind. It all happened in the backyard of one's family's household but no one passing by dared to intervene. This was a Yoruma household, after all, Yoruma were all assassins and killers and this must've been just common practice, this must've been just how they made their kids behave. No one cared about the two brutally murdered men on the lawn, this was Yoruma district after all.</p><p>Who even cared about them fucking Yoruma?</p><p>"Who even cares if you live or die? You Yoruma fuck a thousand times every day and breed like fucking rabbits, what's one little cunt less in this world?" the man held Hisako's beaten body lifted up, holding his sword and readying to strike. He let the girl's body to slip out from his hands and fall on her knees onto the bloody grass. Hisako didn't even feel like herself anymore, it was like her soul moved on, she looked at her body from further away, who was that horribly beaten and mangled person? Was it her? No, it couldn't have been?</p><p>The man turned away, Hisako knew that move, it was the typical fake-out slash at the back of the neck, he was going in for the kill. This man who killed her mother after torturing her for hours, this man who just murdered her father will kill her too now... No! No, he won't, Hisako suddenly opened her single working eye, before the man could turn around and slash at her, Hisako's knife was already in his throat. The man gurgled with blood and fell. She could've just let him drown in his own blood for minutes before he died, just like he tortured her mother!</p><p>"You're right... My life doesn't matter, no one's life matters, our all existences are meaningless. So don't be offended if I do this to you because none of it matters... It's because you think like that that you die, if you treasured your life, you'd have never turned your back on a Yoruma!" Hisako sat on the man's chest and stabbed at his eye, she'd pay all of it back, giving the man time before moving on to the other debt. She had several minutes, half an hour if the man was adamant to steadily prolong his pathetic life using chakra.</p><p>When the Konohagakure ninja arrived after receiving a report about an unusual, even for Yoruma district, a breakout of violence in one of the family households they saw the most horrible sight to behold: a single girl just barely breathing, kneeling over a pile of corpses. Just barely alive but still pushing it strong. Hisako was quickly carried to the Konohagakure Hospital.</p><hr/><p>Finally, Hisako landed by the camp, she looked at the Quack who was just sitting by the tree admiring the stars through the small gap in the tree line.</p><p>"Where are the other bitches, are they OK?"</p><p>"Seeing how quickly you've dealt with it... They'll be just fine..." the Quack replied with a creepy smile, "Even if they don't, little ninja die every day, what does it matter?"</p><p>"Everyone's life matters, that's why they beg you so much not to take it away..." Hisako replied. Quack smiled, he liked Hisako, she was more like the people outside the village walls, she knew what this world was like but she was still a bit unique. A unique kind of monster...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0083"><h2>83. Kiyomi VS A Cat-Hobo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi was moving steadily through the black thickness of the Fire Country's endless forest. She had trodden so far from the village walls before, even as far as to the islands of the Water Country but that by no means meant that she knew the place. There was a certain degree of worry, that speck of fear when chasing an enemy of an unknown level of skill throughout a dark forest, knowing little of what the enemy's actual plan is, knowing even less if the next branch you set foot on would break or have an explosive tag on it ready to peel one's leg off.</p><p>Maybe that was why Kiyomi was losing sight of her projectile slinging opponent? No. The man must've possessed a certain degree of dexterity and physical prowess as he was moving incredibly fast. Almost like these thick forests were native to him, Kiyomi did not see him move but she heard the noise of rustling and shuffling leaves and his sandals hitting the wood of the trees at high speeds before the man leaped off of the tree to the next. It took Kiyomi a lot of chakra to even keep up with the man, leaping from one tree branch to another while keeping one's sight on the target as well as where one stepped on was incredibly tough. Almost made Kiyomi appreciate the profession of a Hunter Ninja.</p><p>Right after her brother had passed Kiyomi wanted to become one, the job of a Hunter Ninja was to roam the outside of the village walls searching for rogue ninja. With just their wits and the Bingo Book by their side, the book with information about the most notorious high ranking ninja, both rogue and village alike. Information gained through investigations, favors, and blood. Lives were lost, probably even made for this information. Whoever compiled the yearly editions of the Bingo Book must've been incredibly crafty, to be able to track a rogue and get such detailed information as to make an entire databook on them...</p><p>Thing was that the lifespan of a ninja was quite lacking in its length, a life of a Hunter Ninja was even more so. Hunter Ninja were vultures, hunting dogs barking at everyone and not afraid to bite any hand to get to their prey, they were not much better than all those Bounty Hunters roaming the forests. One could've said that a Bounty Hunter was just a rogue version of a Hunter Ninja, one who kept the pay for one's head to themselves instead of giving it all to the village, also Bounty Hunters killed for money, Hunter Ninja killed because the rogue ninja inconvenienced someone important. Not to even begin on how Hunter Ninja hunted village ninja from other villages alike with the criminal scum...</p><p>Ninja villages were highly competitive. Almost like separate firms doing the same sort of business, which was to say - all kinds of businesses, whatever pleased their paying clients. That was why highly skilled ninja, the "employees of the month" so to speak, were highly sought after, each ninja village secretly craved elimination of skilled competition which was why Hunter Ninja always hunted the most skilled ninja from other villages as well.</p><p>It was incredibly dangerous for someone ranking higher than Chuunin to roam around not only the outside village walls, where Bounty Hunters were looking for cheap cash for someone's decapitated beauty shot, but also even look for salvation inside the other village walls. Hunter Ninja hunted them there. To survive long enough to make a name was to literally become a public enemy... It was like the world itself was out to get the most elusive survivors of its sick natural order.</p><p>Kiyomi would have never known or thought so much about these things had she not traveled with Hanasaku for all that time when her sensei had that mission, right before the Kage Summit. It was during that time that the blonde realized what it meant to be a high ranking ninja. When everyone wanted you dead. Villagers refused to house Hanasaku in their homes in fear of those homes being destroyed when she would've inevitably had ninja come looking for her, every passer-by could've been a killer in disguise, several attempted at Hanasaku's life in broad daylight in the middle of a small settlement.</p><p>Innocent bystanders got hurt quite often, at some point the woman wrecked so many houses by causing earthquakes during her fights that even the villagers tried to stab her with forks in her sleep. One night Kiyomi woke up to a sight of hooded men with knives around their beds. Seeing and living through something like that made experiences like this even scarier than they had to be...</p><p>Kiyomi slowed down, continuously losing speed as the sound of her prey's feet shuffling through the leaves and hitting the wood disappeared. The Yamanaka looked around, trying to pick up anything, any sound, nocturnal birds, maybe rodents running around the lower levels looking for a good night's snack. Nothing, absolute silence matching that of a graveyard during a Friday night. This man may have been sitting silently, looking to make a cheap and quick kill. Kiyomi drew her kunai blade from the pouch and prepared to deflect any projectiles, trying her best to listen in to that horrible sound of steel whistling and buzzing through the air aimed at her chest.</p><p>Sharp pain, almost like ice-cold glass being dragged over her flesh on her back. The girl couldn't help but let out a grunt of pain, grinding her teeth together, as her body fell over forward, through the branches only to land softly on the moss below. The ground was soft, sludgy, almost like a swamp.</p><p>Kiyomi looked around, touched her knees, and felt a painful wound on them, probably caused by the fall, her elbows and knees were bleeding, the hot air made the warm stream of blood running down her back barely even sensible. The girl looked around, just by her own good luck she turned to see her assailant in mid-pounce, instinctively the blonde raised her kunai knife and blocked the man's stab by shoving it to the side, his knees, however, dug into her abdomen sending her down and leaving her opponent on top of her ready to poke something out.</p><p>He was so silent! He moved with little to no sound, as if his steps moved no leaves, pressed against no moss, snapped no twigs. He moved fast, silently, hit right to the point. His knife was aimed right at the girl's chest, had his attack connected she'd have a giant knife sticking out from her heart, having cut right through her spine. Paralyzed and dead momentarily, a silent and flawless kill. Just who on earth was this guy!?</p><p>The man raised his arms for a finishing stab, Kiyomi thrust her knife upwards, fighting strength with speed, the assailant leaned back to avoid the kunai so she wrapped her legs around his throat. No. At the last moment the man dropped his knife and blocked her thighs, shoving them aside he leaped backward, so strong and so fast, he disappeared into the swampy forest with just a single leap back. His legs must've been able to dent steel to have this kind of force in them, either that or he used augmentation of his speed and dexterity to retreat.</p><p>Kiyomi got back on her feet, moving backward and always looking at her surroundings. Trying to summarize what she already knew about her assailant. The man was strong and fast, leaped through the air as if he had no air resistance to oppose him, walked and jumped without a sound. He knew his way with projectiles but he also seemed to wield a pretty large knife. Large enough to cut through Kiyomi's chest and leave on the other side, maybe even wide enough to chop limbs off if he had the piss in him to cut hard enough. Looked more like a cleaver than a knife but was too fancy to cut dead meat with it.</p><p>His look was so strange, he looked like a really well-trained hobo. He had long, mane-like hair all over his head, the like that would get in one's way when traveling around through such a thick forest, maybe that was why he stopped moving and decided to just take the girl out and be done with it. Well, Kiyomi was the future heir of the Yamanaka clan, one of Konoha's elites, she'll make the man work for his kill, ideally, she'll take him out. He was traveling way too fast to have the hostage with him. Traveling so fast and so carelessly with a passenger would've been too difficult, even for a bulky hunk like he was.</p><p>Kiyomi shook her head, a strange detail entered her mind... The man... He had grey whiskers and fangs, his teeth reminded her of Inuzuka teeth, she'd know, she'd seen those numerous times during her days with the old team. His whiskers rubbed against her face, right before the man tried to kill her, also she felt a pleasant tickle on her thighs, right where her skirt was torn by the explosion.</p><p>"I guess it's inevitable that there's a cat clan, I mean there can't just be a clan of dog people and no cat people, that'd make no sense..." Kiyomi thought to herself sarcastically. The man hunted like a large cat, however, he didn't act entirely like one, great cats like the ones that were native to the Lightning Country's wastelands or some native to the southern parts of Fire Country's forests tried to bite through the neck, kill the enemy momentarily. Waste no time, waste no energy. This man acted similarly but differently, he aimed at a lethal spot but not the neck. Maybe he wasn't taught all of his clan's secrets just yet, maybe he's a reject of his clan or something?</p><p>A knife plunged through Kiyomi's neck, right through her throat, right through the spine, and out through the front. A loud poof dispelled the clone making the cat-man confused, Kiyomi's shoulder dug into the man's back making him grunt and get thrust off-balance forward, the cat-hobo tried to turn around but Kiyomi's punches kept him from fighting back or getting back straight on his feet, neither was he let to get away again now that he showed himself again. Once again without a sound or a single sign of his existence. After a large number of punches, enough to take out most ordinary men and even weaker ninja the large cat-man stumbled back, struggling to keep his stance straight. Kiyomi was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>"Earth Style: Submarine Voyage!" Kiyomi shouted out appearing from below with an unexpected punch from underground. The man blocked her punch and swung her, tossing her aside with little to no effort and disappearing into the forest with a single leap once again.</p><p>His stupid quadrupedal pounces tossing him to the other side of the battlefield annoyed the girl greatly. He took all of her punches and stood, that wasn't something many people were able to do, she also caught him unprepared, it's very likely that if they contended one on one just with their hand to hand skills he'd come out on top, Kiyomi needed to be careful.</p><p>The girl wanted to get the man talking but she knew that was impossible. If he was an actual stealth-using assassin he'd stay quiet and out of sight. The fact that he didn't use projectiles showed that he either used all of them out before or he realized that projectiles didn't move as fast or as silently as he did.</p><p>Both assumptions were right, the man moved faster than a thrown knife, he leaped more quietly, almost like he didn't contact with air. Kiyomi pressed her back against a tree, she knew that the man was likely able to cut right through it, no he'll be tempted to do that, in other words, she made a mistake to draw the man out where she could've seen him.</p><p>Almost like she sensed the man coming, Kiyomi rolled forward, the man's knife appeared from the tree bark cutting through it like butter, with a roar the man pulled the knife out from the tree. His muscles were tense and were apparently working overtime to pull the blade out, which meant that it wasn't a chakra-enhanced weapon. It could only cut thing depending on the toughness of its alloy and the strength of the user, it could've been subjected to dullness and rust. Not that Kiyomi could make steel just wither...</p><p>The girl pulled out her knife, she wasn't that great at knife combat but she couldn't afford to let the man slip from her sight again. This was not good, the man countered her perfectly, he was constantly out of her sight so the girl couldn't have possibly hit him with her clan techniques, he was a very agile and dexterous combatant so even if she did see him it'd be hard to catch him off guard again. He was a pretty tough cookie!</p><p>Loud clangs emanated through the forest as Kiyomi tried desperately to injure her assailant, the man deflected her swipes near effortlessly, as predicted he was much better at armed combat. It didn't take long for the man to find holes in Kiyomi's defense and start swinging around her blocks, leaving cuts and gashes on her, tag and mark her as ripe for the killing.</p><p>Kiyomi needed to get back from him, to get away from this confrontation or she risked skipping a thrust and dying a painful death before she could claim her position as the leader of her clan. Something Kiyomi was rightfully proud of, something she viewed as a great honor, and as a responsibility, she had no right to get hunted down like some deer in the woods!</p><p>The girl raised two of her fingers, the hunter stopped in his track, his knife was right atop of her chest, perhaps several inches away from entering it. His unsuccessful attempt to behead Kiyomi separated a lot of hair from her head, the girl smiled looking down and seeing her chakra channeled through the hair and stopping the man in place, now she had him. Kiyomi weaved her hand seals again.</p><p>"Mind-Body Disturbance: Art of Valentine!" she shouted right before a loud howl echoed and a pale hollow left from her palms, one shaped similarly like a sphere with a Kiyomi's facial features onto it and entered her opponent. The man twitched and shook violently before lifting the knife up into the air and plunging it into his own chest, blood squirted out from his wound and Kiyomi's mind left his body. This technique was quite different from her simple "Mind Body Switch", she didn't take over the opponent's mind by entering it, she instead just ordered them to do something, something like injure themselves.</p><p>The cat-man struggled, clutching his chest he stumbled back and tore his shirt off revealing a grotesquely hairy chest. He then disappeared into the forest thickness with a single leap. Kiyomi once again heard no sign of his existence, she was really surprised that the man could still move so swiftly. If he could move like that, it meant he could still fight even with that wound in his chest. Kiyomi didn't know how deep exactly it was but this man had some stamina and pain tolerance, she had to give him that...</p><p>The man's figure leaped out from the forest into the fray, stabbing at Kiyomi's location, this time the girl could hear his cloth rustling, he had his shirt wrapped around his chest like a tourniquet and charged at her without whatever stealth techniques he used previously making avoiding him an accomplishable task with enough effort. Finally, some luck smiled at Kiyomi's side too, she could compete with an opponent who perfectly countered her abilities, she was really a prodigy! Now the girl realized what exactly the clan elders saw in her, well, technically her origins had a lot to do with her status but skill must've also...</p><p>A loud poof alerted Kiyomi that the man who leaped out was just a clone. A spear flew out from the forest plunging itself into Kiyomi's stomach. The girl coughed up blood, she got careless for just a moment, thought she had the man... Almost instantly Kiyomi weaved a hand seal and forced her body to use chakra in hyper mode, waste as much of it as it needed to in order to keep her alive.</p><p>As her life was fading the Yamanaka supplied her chakra to replace it but the more time would pass the more chakra she'd need to fill the gap. Kiyomi moaned, no screamed in pain pathetically as some sort of a wire dragged the spear out from her gut and made her fall to the ground. She saw the blood spill out madly, a wild burst of chakra slowed the process down a bit. This was bad... She couldn't die here, not like this...</p><p>The cat-man prowled at her from the thickness of the forest, he smelled the blood rushing out of her, he saw her pale skin, he sensed her body slowly seeping the life out of itself. Yet the man was desperate, he was also bleeding out so he desperately tried to take the girl's life with carelessly wide swings, Kiyomi was no knife combat master but even she could avoid or deflect such careless and desperate swings.</p><p>The man roared, two more knives appeared in other spots on his hand, he held a knife using the holes between his fingers as if they here his claws. Like a really great cat, he lunged forward with a barrage of mad swipes. Kiyomi's body got torn into shreds, into small pieces as if she was a file in a paper shredder but then her body poofed and de-transformed into a piece of log that she substituted with using the Academy "Substitution Technique"</p><p>The girl breathed heavily clutching her bleeding gut. She charged at the man using her knife, maybe he'd be just as lackluster with his defenses as he was with his offense? Kiyomi's theory was correct, he was getting sloppy but the bad news was that so was she, her blood loss made her swings weaker, sloppier, the dizziness in her head made her swings strangely lack power, speed, and precision so the man managed to avoid them. Kiyomi thrust her knife forward sending it right into the cat-hobo's eye, from a cloud of smoke she realized that she just pierced a log of wood, the cat-man also managed to use the "Substitution Jutsu" in time, so he actually was a ninja who went through the Ninja Academy...</p><p>Kiyomi leaped to the side, instinctively, knowing that the man would try to take her out after her attack missed and just barely she avoided a spear, another whistling sound, the wire returned the spear to the man's hand and he tried hitting Kiyomi with her again. The man returned the spear back to his arms but Kiyomi had already pinpointed his position from where the spear returned and sent some shuriken at him, she couldn't afford to miss her clan techniques now, it'd leave her a free kill out in the open during the time that her mind would take to wander back to her body...</p><p>A loud clang and her shuriken falling down signaled that her projectiles were deflected. The man leaped out from the forest aiming to plunge his knife at Kiyomi, the girl just stood there, too dizzy to fight back, too injured to oppose... She made the look that pleaded for her life, she of all people, a Yamanaka heir could not have died, not like that... Not in some goddamn swamp out here... That was just the helpless act she needed!</p><p>"What the fuck!?" the cat-hobo shouted out as he realized that he was stuck in the air. Unable to move a muscle and when he forced it, steel wire cut into his flesh, making him drip and lose even more blood.</p><p>"What, did you think the real me was just doing nothing back when I replaced myself, did you think that I just revealed myself after having a chance to disappear from your sight? I played the prey this whole time..." Kiyomi smiled through the pain, her lips were slowly becoming pale and blue, she pointed at the trees on the other side that had kunai in them, the kunai had steel wire tied around them which made an efficient wire trap, students were taught to make similar traps in the Academy so falling for it, thinking for a moment that this fight was over before being over was this man's mistake!</p><p>"I lost my explosive pouch in my last battles..." Kiyomi said and she switched the minds with her opponent again using "Mind Body Switch" again. "That's not too bad, you still have yours anyway..." the man's body spoke for Kiyomi as the girl forced the arm to reach for the pouch, the wounds opened also on the real Kiyomi's arm but she managed to let the pouch slip off, Kiyomi forced the man to weave a hand seal and her mind quickly returned to her real body before the explosion was set off.</p><p>A deafening explosion killed all the other sounds, it devastated the battlefield and set the moss on the ground ablaze starting a forest fire. Kiyomi looked around, she wasn't about to get cocky again, she needed to see the man's torn off limbs and blown up body to confirm her victory... Only a bunch of spears... The man must've substituted himself with them, he had several placed all around the forest, that mean that he also wasn't just staring at the blonde when he was hiding, he was setting up a plan B as well...</p><p>Kiyomi turned around catching the small knife aimed at her heart with her hand. She was so injured and so desperate that now further injuries barely mattered, the girl was on her final legs so she had to throw it all at the man, this was her final resolve, do or die! Kiyomi's punches ran wild, entire combinations connected to the man's tired body and face, she then fell on her knees but even as she did that, Kiyomi didn't let herself rest, even on her knees the girl kept pounding at the man's gut, blood started shooting from her stomach, running down her mouth but Kiyomi refused to just flip over and die, the girl weaved some hand seals, the man prowled back to the forest's thickness.</p><p>Kiyomi slammed her arm onto the dirt making a large boulder shoot off from the ground, making it rise controlled with her chakra. The burning moss on it stank even worse than that cat-man's beard! With a chakra fueled punch Kiyomi shoved the boulder forward, forcing it to crash into the area of the forest where the cat-hobo was supposed to be.</p><p>"Earth Style: Boulder Rush!" she shouted.</p><p>A wild roar, almost like that of a cat whose leg was just stepped on echoed after the deafening rumble of the boulder crashing through the trees, Kiyomi knew that she hit her mark! The girl fell on her knees and raised her head forward, she barely had the strength to defend herself but... She must've won, right? Purple smoke spreading from that area right behind the boulder suggested that a smoke bomb was used. Kiyomi waited for a counter... She waited and waited... And waited... Nothing.</p><p>The girl's body weightlessly hit the ground, she heard the forest burning down around her and saw the light closing in... She was too weak, lost too much blood...</p><hr/><p>The blonde felt a pill being shoved down her throat, thinking that it's a medical food pill the girl cracked it in her mouth. A wild flood of blood, no, some sort of blood substitute that instantly got absorbed into her mouth started running out from Kiyomi's mouth and into her stomach.</p><p>"Shit, blondie, you're not supposed to bloody crack it in your mouth... You're supposed to swallow it... Get it, I said "bloody", because it's a sanguine pill... Eh, fuck you, tough crowd, I guess..." Kiyomi heard the Quack's voice and saw Hisako slap the back of his head. She still felt weak, the Yoruma lifted the girl off and put her on her shoulders.</p><p>"You'll heal her when we make our way back to the camp, as much as I appreciate that cheerleader-bitch set the forest on fire and let us know her position this place is about to kill us pretty fucking bad. I'd rather not have my fucking flesh melt like noodles in pee..."</p><p>"We have vastly different tastes of food, dear, you know that?" Quack snapped back at Hisako and the two took off</p><p>Kiyomi struggled to keep her consciousness, she felt a warm stream of blood go through her body and her cheeks, she felt much better but it still felt like dying. It didn't matter, she just won. She got to prove her worth as a Yamanaka heir and that was all that mattered, leaving that alone she also kicked that cat-man's butt pretty hard. Maybe with some luck, he'll be out of commission when the team stormed that bunker.</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi kept on relentlessly bashing the training dummy. The knuckles of the young girl were bleeding, it was entirely safe to say that she no longer knew what she was doing. Much to her defense, she just woke up in the world where her brother, the only person in this world who saw her as a person instead of some delicate flower who couldn't be let out of a bubble and had to receive only the right amount of sunlight. Kiyomi punched the dummy again and again but it barely budged, the girl looked at her bleeding wrists, her hands looked so messy...</p><p>A man with strangely feminine, blond hair and a purple kimono walked in on Kiyomi's "training". He ran up to her immediately trying to pull her away from the dummies. Why won't they break? Why won't they bend or fall how they did for her brother? Why was Kiyomi so weak that she couldn't even deliver a proper thud when she clocked those wooden leather covered targets.</p><p>"Lady Kiyomi, please, you can't be doing that!" the lady-man pleaded with her trying to drag her away.</p><p>"What's wrong? No sensei to fire for actually doing their job and training me?" Kiyomi rudely tossed back trying to yank her arm out of the man's grip but he was surprisingly strong for his build and looks.</p><p>"Lady Kiyomi, you must understand you must grow up to be of a serviceable condition, you will be the image of femininity and compassion to not only your clan but the clan of your chosen husband. You absolutely cannot have broken knucklebones with knuckle gumps like some brawling wanderer when you grow up!" he pleaded again trying to drag her but Kiyomi pulled out a knife and slashed at him, leaving a small cut on his kimono but not yet cutting his "delicate" girly skin.</p><p>"Screw that, I want to be strong, I want to be a good ninja to be like my brother. I won't be some damned damsel described as a big cheese but actually fainting when the temperature falls below her comfort zone..." Kiyomi snapped back at the man and rushed at the dummy as if it was her actual opponent. As if that dummy would've killed her brother.</p><p>"Please, Lady Kiyomi... The clan shall provide all the tutoring you will need and it will also keep you safe. If you asked me it's for the better that you won't be around your brother, he was a bad influenc..."</p><p>Kiyomi slapped the man, tears filled her eyes and she bolted from the garden, rushing as far away from the clan district as possible. What a pathetic ninja she was... Her brother would've been disappointed, slapping and crying and whining like a spoiled brat... Her clan's strategy at pampering her must've been getting to her, she needed someone more like her brother, someone who could've watched her trip and fall, someone who'd laugh at her when she stepped into dog poop instead of licking it off from her shoes and then get fired for allowing the "Lady" to get dirty.</p><p>What was so special about her anyway? It wasn't like she was THE next in the line, she was just a conditional heir, then again, it was highly unlikely that her uncle would've actually had any heirs with his age and attitude in mind. Kiyomi kept running, heading to the training grounds. That was where her brother trained, that was the best place for her to be, be alone with her thoughts.</p><p>A powerful shockwave shook the ground tossing Kiyomi at least a meter into the air and then plummeting down. The Yamanaka stood up and ran towards the shockwave's center point. What if it was actually another bad person, a rogue ninja or something? No, it made no sense, how could it have been a bad person so deep inside village walls? It wasn't a desire for revenge against the very abstract idea of evil that led Kiyomi to rush into the training grounds, it was sheer curiosity. Regardless, it was a powerful force to be lead by.</p><p>A middle-aged woman with the usual Chuunin flak jacket and vibrant and wild, brown hair was standing close to a leather dummy, knee-deep in sawdust, and small leather pieces. The brown-haired woman closed up to the dummy, carefully, taking one or two steps at a time. As if she was expecting a counter or some sort of movement from it.</p><p>Slowly, the brown-haired stranger moved two of her fingers up to the dummy and flicked it ever so softly. Another violent shockwave tossed Kiyomi up, the dummy dissolved into a pile of sawdust and leather cuts from the force built up inside it and small fissures opened up letting the excess of the leftovers spill inside. This woman was so strong!</p><p>Kiyomi flew up into the air and landed face-first in the dirt, the girl started tearing up again as she felt the blood rushing from her broken nose. She felt a cold relief in her bleeding nose and saw a green flash of light right up to her face. It kept glowing and shining... For so long that Kiyomi was both bored and hurt from just sitting like that on the dirt.</p><p>"How long is your healing going to take?" Kiyomi asked, starting to get annoyed, her own clan medical ninja would've fixed something like a broken nose within seconds. She's been sitting there for a very awkward amount of time.</p><p>"Hey, I'm not used to healing other people, most people can't really take my healing, sometimes I break... Things." The woman loudly exclaimed. She sounded like one of those class clowns and Kiyomi had little time to deal with such people. Though maybe she could have been used, maybe this woman could've taught her to be strong, like her brother and this brown-haired idiot?</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi opened her eyes, they ran around the camp and stopped for a moment just to see Hisako and the Quack talking, having noticed Kiyomi waking up the Quack wandered back to her and sat on his knees.</p><p>"You snapped the sanguine pill in your mouth, while it did do the job of giving you a universal blood replacement to compensate you bleeding out through your gut while I healed you it did it halfway so you passed out, I was just about to stab you in the chest but it seems you've woken up, that's good, I've healed up your guts, your welcome, by the way. I used out most of my chakra checking after you and Hisako so beg that the one with the weird choice in clothes doesn't get too roughed up. It'd be best for you to rest now, I promise to do my best not to stab you in your sleep checking if you're not dead." The young man smiled at Kiyomi and walked away.</p><p>"We'll need to siege the bunker in the morning, we've no time to wait, they already know we can kick their butts so they'll move as fast as we give them the chance to, if they move outside the Fire Country we can't chase them. The seas are a neutral zone and the Atlantis Archipelago is already Water Country territory and jurisdiction..." Hisako's voice reached Kiyomi's ears after the blonde closed her eyes to rest.</p><p>"No, that's stupid, I told you that I won't be able to take care of you two for at least two more days after this, we need to wait! Quacks don't use medical food pills because they're too expensive and rare, if we carried those on us we'd be a constant target for rogues, my supply of sanguine pills and snap crackers is running low, you break a bone or lose some blood - you're on your own. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't normally care if you kick the bucket, well, the blondie's kinda cute but she's not my type, plus she has a year or two before she's allowed to look cute..." the Quack replied.</p><p>"Wait, so do you give a flying pigeon's raging diarrhea of fucks about our lives or not? Because that makes a huge fucking difference!" Hisako started losing it.</p><p>"Of course I do, you're my only chance to get inside Konohagakure and legitimize, settle down, stop healing wild mercenary swingers' broken dicks and feeding them blood pills when their concubines shank them. All I'm saying is - if you want me to help you - you'll wait."</p><p>Kiyomi snoozed off, just a tiny bit short of hearing the resolution of that heated debate. She felt tired and wanted some rest. There were a million thoughts running through her head, worries about Mana and what'd happen if she got injured, worries of how the mission would go if Hisako just ignored an exhausted Quack on their team...</p><p>It all disappeared with a flick of a finger right as the girl slipped into sleep.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0084"><h2>84. I Want To Kill Rogues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi sighed happily after Hanasaku sat back and the green flashing light of the woman's healing stopped. The young heiress of the Yamanaka clan had just met this brown-haired klutz and while she was impressed by the sheer awesome power of the woman, her skill with healing could've used a lot of polish. Hanasaku smiled like an idiot with a full-teeth smile and gave the girl a thumb up, her thumb then was dropped as horror changed to woman's expression.</p><p>Hanasaku's horror ignited the dark flames within the blonde as well, she shook uncomfortably and asked the woman "What's wrong". Being a bit worried that she may not want to know the answer.</p><p>"Your nose... It's... It's on your cheek at the completely wrong place, it happened to me again!" Hanasaku shouted out slamming her own forehead in frustration.</p><p>Kiyomi jumped up and started running around frantically, completely lost and unable to get even a single idea of what she should have done in that situation. This woman... She bumped the girl's face and now she ruined it for good, what will the clan elders say? They will immediately remove Kiyomi from the line of heirs that much was for certain, what kind of a husband would've wanted a wife with a nose growing out from her cheek...</p><p>The girl dashed to a small leaking pond and looked at her own reflection. She then touched the point where her nose would've been normally feeling it up. It was only then that Kiyomi realized that her nose was completely normal and Hanasaku's heal was totally fine. The blonde felt a gentle pat to her back that sent her flying over the surface of the pond like a stone tossed at the ocean bouncing into the horizon before sinking like a brick in the middle of the pond.</p><p>Kiyomi swam up and got onto the surface of the water using her "Art of Water Climbing", a technique that she was taught after leaving the Academy. There were many sensei that gave her tons of meaningless techniques to work on, they had to occupy the attention of the young heiress so that Kiyomi felt that she was learning something useful when in fact she was learning something completely trivial like walking on water...</p><p>"What was that all about!?" Kiyomi yelled having lost all semblance of composure, at this point, she was pretty much just barking insults and lashing out at the woman while Hanasaku was rolling on the rocky dirt where she accidentally sent Kiyomi flying all the way to the other side of the pond.</p><p>"Sorry, sorry, I never get used to my own strength..." Hanasaku finally managed to stop rolling on the ground and give the blonde a reply, the woman then pointed to the side with a smile and rubbed her own nose, "That's what this training was all about, I was learning to restrain myself..."</p><p>Kiyomi wiped her hair rubbing it over with her hand and letting the excess of water just flow off of it. This idiot was unbelievable! The blonde stepped off of the pond's surface and deactivated the jutsu she used to walk on it.</p><p>"Who on Earth are you? My clan elders will hear about you insulting the future heiress of the Yamanaka clan!" Kiyomi shouted out. She was acting like a diva, she had no idea why, after all, she hated all of that over-glorified childish pampering that she got. Maybe she just wanted this woman to pay for this transgression but she knew well that she couldn't have matched up to her in any way.</p><p>Hanasaku made that weird guilty look, almost like a little puppy, and introduced herself. "I am Hanasaku, I have a clan name but I don't like to throw it around because I grew up in a normal family of clanless villagers..."</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes shot up wide and her mouth opened almost to the ground in shock.</p><p>"Wait... Hanasaku... Chestnut Hanasaku, Konoha Sannin!?" she asked yelling out and completely losing any semblance of coolness she may have preserved before that, even that façade of a pampered child was blown away, no way that could've been true...</p><p>"Why do you have to go around telling your people this... I'm sorry, I don't want to have to beat them up, you know!" Hanasaku exclaimed with little to no restraint to her tone, she was so outspoken and extroverted that she pretty much almost yelled her words out.</p><p>Kiyomi rubbed her chin like a supervillain plotting her next scheme, she could almost feel the hellfire burning behind her and a devilish cape growing out from her back, together with the small evil horns to complement the whole set! There was no way that any of her elders could've ever found any muscle who could've left a scratch on the Chestnut Hanasaku, that was exactly what Kiyomi always wanted, that was a chance for her to become strong, to break free of her shackles, of her cage and become an amazing ninja! Someone actually worth the mettle of being the next leader of her clan instead of being just a sissy lady with a fancy dress and being all name.</p><p>"Ummm..." Kiyomi thought out loud before flipping back and falling on her butt and slamming her head into the dirt, trying to make her fall look convincing. "Owwie, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch! That slap, why did you do that... Oh no... I think I'm really hurt... I... I may be dying, in fact!" she started faking an injury. Hanasaku shot up to the fallen girl and started freaking out.</p><p>"Oh no! What?! Wait, what'll I do!? I killed the heiress of the Yamanaka clan - Shiyomi!"</p><p>Kiyomi lifted her head off the ground comically.</p><p>"It's Kiyomi... I mean... I decided to temporarily postpone my death to remind you that you're a medical ninja..." she said out quietly, almost whispering like the autumnal trees dropping their leaves.</p><p>"Wait..."</p><p>Kiyomi shook on the ground, shit, her act was outed, now she'll be announced as fake!</p><p>"I think that you might have an internal fracture!"</p><p>The Yamanaka couldn't help it, she leaped back on her feet and started yelling at the woman from the deepest abyss of her lungs, so hard that even the deafest of all pigeons took off in fear for their life.</p><p>"How an idiot like you could have finished medical ninja education, you're supposed to study at the Konoha High and the Konohagakure Hospital for that!"</p><p>Only after realizing that this time she outed herself for real Kiyomi just coughed and scratched the collar of her top in discomfort. She raised her palms up to calm the Sannin down and explain her intentions, Kiyomi was pretty good at playing people whether it was via her mind control hidden clan techniques or otherwise. However, she didn't count on how difficult it'd be to actually be playing an idiot, a complete buffoon!</p><p>"Fine, I'm not really injured... Just... Look, you offended me, you made me slam my face into the dirt, then you scared me with that prank and then you threw me into the water, I could've drowned you know... Actually, it might be an actual miracle that saved me from having my spine break from all the backflips I did after you slapped me over the water."</p><p>Hanasaku just stood there and looked at Kiyomi with the dumbest puppy eyes possible, it was quite not out of the park that the woman didn't even realize where the girl was going. No. She must've struggled with the basic concept of most of Kiyomi's sentence structures as she looked like she'd appreciate having a notebook to write all of it down.</p><p>"The thing is... I want you to train me in return, to repay the harm you caused me today." Kiyomi declared her terms of how Hanasaku could've avoided the horrible fate of having to beat her clan elders and their hired muscle effortlessly.</p><p>"Oh... Okay, you should've just said so... You go around and around and around and I get really confused, when I train you, tell me how it is. I should really teach you to talk, you know..." Hanasaku pouted like a little baby wrapping her arms around her chest.</p><p>Kiyomi rubbed her temple with her fingers angrily, she struggled to believe that this Hanasaku was an actual adult human being. She looked like she was at her late thirties yet it was hard to tell as medical ninja often enjoyed a much more youthful and beautiful appearance since their healing prowess somehow managed to affect them indirectly as well. The woman should've been much older, maybe in her mid to late forties if all those stories of her participating in that huge battle at the Tower of Bones were true... That scuffle actually formed what was known as the Mammoth Graveyard – a giant pile of bones and crushed and ground soil north of the village walls.</p><p>How could a half-wit like this be one of the strongest ninja in not only the village but the whole world? Even more, the famed Chestnut Hanasaku was among some of the most powerful of the Sannin among all of the villages, the top percentage of Sannin. How could she ever be so numb-witted? How did she survive daily activities? How didn't she cut her hands off when making a sandwich or cutting fish? Kiyomi sighed, trying to push all rude thoughts away. After all, she wanted to learn from this woman and demoralizing thoughts didn't help anyone...</p><p>Hanasaku leaped up into the air and landed right on top of the dummy's head, settling down in a meditative position. She must've leaped well over ten meters into the air to make that jump and the precision was incredible. Still, a chuunin or a jounin could've made a jump like that. Kiyomi couldn't help but still be a bit skeptical, after all, most jounin level ninja she met were absolute geniuses not only in terms of combat experience and strategy but also in such subjects like geometry, mathematics, literature, and philosophy, some higher ranking ninja were even world-known authors themselves. They traveled a lot and saw a lot of what life had to offer after all!</p><p>"So... Why do you want to be my student, Kiyomi? Don't you have a sensei? If I have to beat someone up to rip you from your old team I won't do it" Hanasaku asked seriously, she seemed to have dropped the goofing around tone, at the very least she could still do that much...</p><p>"Actually... I just want to train. I had multiple different sensei in just the last three months, some of them were actual genin, hired to play around with me, some of them were really good but my clan ditched them because they wanted me to stay safe" Kiyomi explained, she didn't lie, she told things how they were with all of the feelings and frustration intact with those emotions. Hanasaku smiled.</p><p>"Why would they do this to you? Why would they hold you back? That's a terrible idea, if you're a weakling you'll die outside the village walls!" Hanasaku asked viewing Kiyomi's expression of desperation and frustration as some manner of a joke. The girl pouted, she felt a bit offended that the woman found something to laugh at, this was her life, her pain, her deepest and most honest feelings, were they all just a joke to this brute!?</p><p>"Because they don't want me to be a real ninja! They just want me to play one. Since the Academy I was bred to be some childbearing princess mare, I was never taken seriously. "Oh no, Lady Kiyomi, that knife cut your precious finger, let's fire your teacher who let that happen!" and bullshit like that was what I grew up with! It's more important to them how good I look in the royal kimono than how I can handle myself in battle..." Kiyomi's face switched quickly from anger and frustration and locked feelings of angst into teary eyes and sadness.</p><p>Hanasaku just sat on that dummy and looked at the Yamanaka for a while, her face was serious and she did look like she had a certain amount of empathy in her heart. She actually appeared to be lamenting the fact that Kiyomi was being spoiled.</p><p>"I won't teach you" Hanasaku declared.</p><p>Kiyomi leaped forward, trying to grab the woman but the brown-haired fury just concentrated all of her chakra and let it go in a burst sending the blonde back as if a hurricane had just blown her way, the blonde's furious attack didn't even break Hanasaku's delicate balance!</p><p>"Why!? I thought we had an agreement!" Kiyomi shouted out angrily. She was both depressed and angry at the same time, she was thankful to whatever sick God oversaw this world that Hanasaku was a powerful ninja who could've taken all that Kiyomi could've dished out in her blind fury, or else the blonde could've done something she'd later regret.</p><p>"Because you've been spoiled, it's been too long, you're a ruined child. I've no time to waste on you, there's a low cap of skill where even I can't help. I won't hold back. I'll give you all of the challenges right from the get-go because that's the kind of person I am. If I only used half of the teaching methods it'd be doing just what you hated – I'd be spoiling and pampering you. You'll either die when I get serious about training you or you will become a liar to yourself when I treat you like a little, pampered lady once again" Hanasaku explained.</p><p>Kiyomi fell down on her knees, she clutched her eyes together desperately trying to restrain her tears. She wasn't a crybaby, she couldn't have been, it's just that all of it hit her so hard, so recently... Her brother dying, the clan becoming even more annoying with the pampering than they usually were and now Hanasaku refusing the deal to teach her. The blonde pounded the ground, again and again, opening the wounds that she had on her knuckles from before, blood ran wildly on the rocky ground dyeing the whole training area crimson red, almost like a petal storm of roses had just been brought its way.</p><p>"I... Brother... I'm sorry I'm so weak!" Kiyomi shouted out in angst and frustration. She was literally shaking in tension.</p><p>"Brother?" Hanasaku asked curiously when Kiyomi shook her head, her wild hair slipped out from the hairband and flowed down covering the girl's crying and pathetic face.</p><p>"He... He counted on me, he wanted that I became a real ninja, he always saved me, saved me from this stupid life of being just a toy, just a little doll heiress. Saved me from death and pain too..." Kiyomi couldn't stop crying, she stood back up and wiped her teary eyes looking at Hanasaku with brave and determined eyes.</p><p>"I wanted to become as strong as he was so that I could've been able to fight the people likes of which killed him. He died after he made an enemy of the wrong people, bad people, strong people. People who defy the rules and moral norms, people who are worse than scum! I want to learn to punish rogues, I want to learn to kill them like they killed my brother!" Kiyomi shouted out from the bottom of her heart. Hanasaku sighed and stroke her own wild brown hair.</p><p>"Well, I guess, then you have a motivation that'll keep you from dying. Let's make a deal, I teach you and go balls out on you, I'll literally break you and then pick up the pieces off the floor and grind them to even smaller dust. If you die in the process – it's on you, you'll be a disappointment to your clan and your brother, if you live, that'll be because you have the determination to live to fulfill your goal." Hanasaku smiled extending Kiyomi her hand.</p><p>The blonde walked up to Hanasaku and the two shook hands, driving them together. Kiyomi shouted out in pain as her shoulder instantly shot out from its socket and her elbow twisted in a very grotesque manner snapping her hand in two. The girl fell onto the floor and Hanasaku forced her back up to heal her arm back. Even when the bones were being mended they hurt. Hanasaku was a lousy healer, her healing hurt even more than the injury itself, usually healing was supposed to feel relieving and good.</p><p>"We'll get there eventually..." she calmed Kiyomi down.</p><p>"It's fine..." the girl stopped whining and closed her eyes to endure the pain. "It's better to fall a thousand times and break every bone in your body while running than to keep crawling."</p><p>"You dummybutt, why would you crawl? You'd just get into more dog-poop if you're closer to the ground..." Hanasaku laughed.</p><p>"I... It was a meta... Why am I explaining metaphors to you... Ugh..." Kiyomi grunted in frustration but then the sensei and the student shared a laugh. The two didn't even know each other for more than an hour and they already felt like friends, something about Hanasaku made her pretty easy to get along with. It had to be her insulting lack of intelligence and brutal honesty because of her inability to think of both the reality and her lie at the same time...</p><hr/><p>"Hey, twinklefuck! Get up!" Hisako slapped Kiyomi waking her up from the glorious slumber she deserved so justly by passing out. "Do you have any idea where idol-bitch is? Did you see which direction she left at or maybe saw how she's doing? She's been away for a pretty long time and we see no signs like, in your case, the burning forest to come to her aid..."</p><p>Kiyomi sat back up and shook her head.</p><p>Quack walked up to her and kneeled up to her level. "Did you at the very least get the bloody fucker?"</p><p>Kiyomi smiled, "I sure as hell hope so... Hate rogues..."</p><p>"You and me both, blondie..." Quack replied quickly popping a pill of some sort. Must've been one of those crazy medication things he had, what could it have been for though?</p><p>"You're a damned rogue, Quack!" Kiyomi snapped at him angrily.</p><p>"Not if everything goes according to plan, babe, plan to legitimize myself right after we off those fuckers and bring the rich boy back... I healed the lives of you two lovelies far too many times for me not to become the man of the year when I bring the three of you back." The young man smiled before coughing up like an old smoker. Black rings appeared below the youth's eyes all of a sudden, if those pills he was popping were so poisonous why would he take them Kiyomi wondered...</p><p>"Not if Mana dies, she's an actual idol to the kids, Konoha's Sorceress they call her, heard her magic tricks ain't too bad..." Kiyomi smiled looking at the thickness of the forest.</p><p>"Pffft, please, kids idolize everything these days, they'd tattoo their bodies with all sort of bullshit if they let them. You've no idea how many tits I could've signed out here..." Quack looked pretty skeptical about Mana's ability, that couldn't have been helped, the last time he saw the girl she was unconscious and burnt up, with smoking rags in place of her uniform...</p>
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<a name="section0085"><h2>85. Long Range Ninja VS Long Range Ninja</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A light tap echoed through the nearest acres of the forest. Mana gently kicked off of each branch in her way just to keep her moving. She was looking around and trying to see where the woman she was pursuing had gone, the swinging lady was incredibly agile and fast, she flipped around and must've possessed some degree of superhuman strength to swing around as she has been, she easily traversed the forest by perfectly adjusting her leaps using whatever it was she was using, it may have been a whip, a rope or a chain, either way, the degree of speed, precision and agility was unmatched.</p><p>Strangely enough, for the most part of their little game, the woman didn't even try to escape Mana's sight, quite the contrary, the woman even taunted the girl, hanging on a branch upside down and gesturing for the magician to come closer. The more she taunted the more intimidated and afraid Mana felt, she was now all alone with none of her friends even close around to help her. She was chasing someone much faster and possibly stronger, this woman must've been in her early twenties at the very least since her voice sounded quite sultry and mature.</p><p>Sometimes when Mana got lost her voice came in to guide the girl, just something really weird and creepy like a joke or a direction where she should head. This woman could've been luring Mana into her trap or selecting a favored combat environment. Either way, it wasn't good. The magician did her best to look out for any traps but, with the speed she was moving in and the absolute darkness around her, it was impossible. If she stepped on a tag placed below the branch it would've been set off and Mana wouldn't have noticed it until her leg was shredded to pieces and the magician was already in mid-fall. Mana always assumed missions would be dangerous but she never thought she'd have to rely on luck and chance like this...</p><p>Mana stopped for a moment, she's been moving at the speed of a moving vehicle, leaping and flipping over branches, desperate to reach another branch on another tree which may have been ten or twenty meters away. The girl was tired, she may have been leaping around and running for an hour or maybe even two, this was getting to the point of ridiculousness... Was the woman intending to run away from Mana or to fight her? Did she have the boy or not? Most likely she didn't, several times Mana had come quite close to the woman but then the rogue just dropped and swung to the other end of the forest. It was getting quite ridiculous.</p><p>Mana was also quite worried about her friends. She had no idea how was Hisako or Kiyomi doing, despite Hisako's most genuine attempts to make Mana hate her the girl still cared for the raven-haired assassin and treated her as a friend. There was this thing that the magician had noticed in the woman, no matter how disgusting her swearing was, no matter how nastily she spoke or how she threatened everyone, when the time came Hisako did what was right all the time.</p><p>She helped the three girls not to get themselves murdered when they first entered the mercenary camp, she saved the two from Hachi and had them healed, she listened to Mana's reason. Maybe this nastiness of Hisako's was just a façade, otherwise, why would she have done everything right when things came down to it?</p><p>"Awww... How cute, what's the matter, are you lost, little girl?" the woman's voice picked up. Mana heard the voice of a young man shouting in pain following the woman's taunt shortly, her eyes shot up in surprise so quickly that the girl's tired eyes shot out some tears. Mana hadn't slept at all that night, she was running for an hour or two at the speed that surpassed her usual limits just to catch up to the woman... Did she have the hostage with her? That changed everything! Mana leaped towards the voice.</p><p>Sharp pain emanated through Mana's abdomen, she looked down and saw a cruel smile, the woman was dressed in all black, the girl didn't even notice her jumping in from below and driving her elbow into her abdomen. The woman then grabbed hold of Mana's shoulders and flipped over the girl using them as her support, throwing the magician after her feet landed on something solid. Mana felt a cold breeze and the howling wind close to her, what amazing strength! Then she moaned pathetically when something made of leather wrapped around her neck – it was that thing that the woman used to swing around the forest.</p><p>Mana realized what was going on, the woman tossed her down and wrapped this whip of hers around the girl's throat, she counted on Mana passing out after hitting a tree and then her neck-breaking or her getting hanged on the whip. The grey tree bark was closing in quick, Mana thrust her legs and activated the "Art of Tree Climbing" to stick to the tree. She then grunted again and felt something warm like blood or slobber shooting out from her throat when the woman pulled the whip yanking Mana off of the tree and once again falling down.</p><p>"Get out of that loop, get it off of you, you'll die... Come on... Come on... MOVE IT!" Mana ordered herself in her mind as her childish heart was pounding relentlessly inside her own chest, it felt like it'd hop out at any time, honestly. Finally, the loop tied around Mana's neck went off just in time, Mana made some hand seals and activated her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" to break her fall with a powerful gust of wind. After Mana fell onto the soft mossy dirt she took a moment to catch her breath and calm her pounding heart, she almost had a panic attack there and it wasn't helping. Had it not been for Mana's experience with hanging devices and deathtraps during her magic shows she'd be hanging lifeless with a broken neck off of a branch right now...</p><p>Mana swung her arms wildly tossing some steel-tipped cards at where the woman was, Mana heard the sound of tearing and the woman grunting – she hit her! The woman leaped down, Mana noticed her jumpsuit having been torn up but it didn't seem like Mana's cards opened any bleeding wounds yet, she just scored some lucky close shots. The magician girl shoved her arm deep into her hat and activated father's seal, she was just about running out of her cards and Mana didn't intend to clean her resources just yet, she had to use some tools she sealed into her father's seal.</p><p>The girl pulled out a new box of cards and shoved it into the device inside her sleeve, the intricate holster was now exposed since Mana's uniform was all burnt up and had holes in it. The girl still felt cold and a bit ashamed to be walking with a torn-up attire but that was not the time for being embarrassed. While cold could eventually kill her but currently it was only slowing Mana down, it was not yet a problem but the time when it'd be one was approaching.</p><p>The magician tossed another card, the woman leaped up and tied her whip around a branch up above pulling herself even higher up. The seal on the card activated firing off three shuriken at the woman from the back of the card. All three dug into the woman's back and she hissed like a cat whose tail was stepped on. The woman hung herself upside down on the branch. Her hoodie slipped off and her short ginger hair finally slipped out, strangely enough, two bangs right near her face were brown, while the rest of her hairdo was bright orange. She had some strange whiskers on her face and her teeth looked pointy, she reminded Mana of a cat version of Inuzuka.</p><p>"You play dirty, little mouse, this trap was meant for your delicate neck reaching in for the cheese..." she pulled out a radio from her back pocket showing it off to Mana and playing a recording of the hostage yelling in pain.</p><p>"I didn't know Inuzuka also bred cats..." Mana bumbled back, scratching her aching neck, honestly with how close that call was a little neck ache was the least of her problems...</p><p>"I'm no Inuzuka, I'm a member of the Nekomata clan, just like my brother." The woman angrily replied, it appeared that being confused for an Inuzuka was a pretty sensitive subject since there would've been no other reason for her to reply.</p><p>The woman then gracefully leaped on top of the branch and unwrapped her whip swinging it around, letting it crack and break off several pretty large branches of the trees and sending them crashing down. That whip may have killed a normal person if it as much as hit them once, even a hit on a leg or an arm would've sent a shockwave throughout one's entire skeleton shattering bones where it made its way through. This was dangerous, Mana didn't want to use chakra augmentation so shortly after using it to traverse but this may have been unavoidable.</p><p>The woman also was smart enough not to pull out the three shuriken that were stuck in her back, that'd have caused pretty intense bleeding. The woman then laughed seductively and lashed her whip at Mana, the girl leaped back but the end of the whip bounced off and hit the girl in her chest tearing off more of her uniform and opening a gruesome gash, blacking the area around it almost instantly. Mana screamed in pain as her body froze, it hurt like nothing she had ever felt before...</p><p>"Does it hurt? I bet it does, you've been a pretty bad girl hurting me like that, I'm afraid I'll have to whip you around for a while before I kill you!" the woman then laughed as she swung her whip again. This time it lit up with chakra, piercing through the trees as it passed them, Mana leaped away from several falling trees and avoided the whip's snap, while she avoided the tip of it, the middle part leaped off of a tree it was close to and once again hit the girl making her fly back into the rubble of fallen trees and screaming in pain.</p><p>Mana desperately tried to crawl away from the rubble she was thrown at as she was a sitting duck in there. She took a brief glance at the wound – it was a pulsing reddish and black blunt force trauma. So concentrated but so strong! It wasn't meant to kill, maybe if it hit her directly yes but... The bouncing was made to torture. That whip was impossible to avoid entirely.</p><p>Suddenly, the leather tied around Mana's neck again out of nowhere, the woman yanked the whip pulling the girl in and applying pressure. Mana grunted pathetically, she had to get that stupid whip loose, she had to escape, do something about it or she'd die. She'd die when the woman felt like letting her die, after gruesome torture. Now Mana realized the point of that weapon – show the enemy that avoiding it meant to torture yourself. Make them refuse to avoid it and choose death by their own choice... Such a cruel way to go...</p><p>"Well? Do you like my "Cat's Tail", just relax, stop kicking around and I'll hang you like a good little girl, I won't need to whip you again!" the woman yelled at Mana, the girl kept kicking around and grabbing for stumps so that the woman didn't drag her in close enough to actually hang her.</p><p>"As you can see, I am a long-range fighter, I use my "Cat's Tail" to keep my enemy as far away from me as possible. Long-range is a pain in any ninja's butt... I've killed many chuunin like this as well so don't feel sad about dying here, you've done well, now just stop struggling and accept it, it'll come faster that way..."</p><p>Mana kicked around, her vision was becoming blurry and she felt like going asleep, no, that couldn't happen, not now not ever, not until Mana finally changed the world! The girl pulled a card out of her hat which she still clutched in her right hand, the other one was looking for a stump to hold to before the woman yanked her so hard that Mana's bleeding left arm couldn't hold on any longer. The magician swiped the steel-tipped card at the leather whip, luckily enough it wasn't enhanced with chakra then, the woman didn't want to behead the girl, just to strangle her.</p><p>Finally... Freedom, Mana tore the leather off her neck and coughed frantically, for the second time that day she almost died... All that training she did, all that struggling and she almost died again. She became so much stronger but it still wasn't enough. The magician stood back up once her blurry vision lined up and looked at the furious Nekomata woman.</p><p>"Actually, long-range is just fine for me... Now I've shortened your range by cutting your whip in half. I'm really more of a long-range ninja myself, I usually have to use my legs to keep the enemy at a much more comfortable range but you actually prefer long range which is great. I'm what you'd call your counter..." Mana huffed out once she regained the use of her voice.</p><p>The woman laughed maniacally, "Don't joke around, kid, you should've just been a good little girl and died, now I'll have to mess up your pretty body, that's of course if they'll even find it!" she shouted after raising her palms into the air and activating something – short chakra flames lit up on the woman's fingernails.</p><p>"Man-Beast Formation: Cat Mimicry!" she yelled out as the chakra flames formed long claws where her nails would've been, her hair also stood up as spikier and the woman leaned forward standing on all fours. Chakra was shooting off in jets of blue flames all around the woman's body, it must've been quite the costly technique to sustain.</p><p>Mana's arms went through the hand seals and shot forward. She had something new to try out, an improved version of her mostly visual "Magic Spark Jutsu".</p><p>"Magical Sphere Barrage!" she yelled forcing lightning chakra to light up and crackle around her body before forming several sets of dozens of small lightning chakra spheres and shooting at the woman. The Nekomata leaped at Mana trying to slash the girl but the spheres started collectively bombarding her, pounding into her body with enough strength to crack bones and then shocking her leaving nasty burns. A combination of small loud thuds and crackling lightning echoed lighting up the night's sky briefly before the lifeless Nekomata woman fell from where she was.</p><p>The tree she was on as well as several others and some of those she cut down were ablaze from Mana's technique, the girl smiled, this version was so much stronger than her previous one, it actually dealt some damage and had some lightning properties, it wasn't just all sparks and no burn...</p><p>Mana gurgled up some blood and stumbled back, suddenly the burnt up and injured woman just appeared right up close to her and slashed her chakra claws, she was so fast! One moment she was lying around and the other she was up and close to Mana. The woman started wildly cutting at Mana, the magician tried to leap back and avoid everything but more and more cuts opened wounds on her, Mana was tired, injured already.</p><p>This wasn't looking good. The girl made hand seals but then changed the last one, she planned to repeat the previous jutsu, just try and power it through but the Nekomata slashed at her gut with enough reach to let Mana's guts out, wind chakra shot from the girl's legs throwing her backward after she activated her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" again and landed further away.</p><p>The girl coughed some blood up and clutched her injured abdomen – the woman cut her pretty deep, not yet guts-out deep but one more cut would've done it. The woman leaped forward. Mana closed her eyes and felt her body tense up. This was just like with the Demon back in Konohagakure – she wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough. She mastered her kicks just for situations like this, where she couldn't keep her opponent at range.</p><p>Right before the woman's claws dug into Mana's intestines the magician's knee dug into the woman's cheek so incredibly fast that the woman who invested all of her efforts into offense had no time to respond. Mana smiled as her eyes shot back open, her opponent was hit, stumbling and dazed. The magician continued to keep up her wild kicking combination, aiming for the burned areas, for the sensitive spots like the abdomen, face, and nose. With a final jump kick to the woman's gut, Mana sent her tumbling back. She looked completely out.</p><p>Mana looked down, she heard her own blood tapping onto the leaves and grass below, the wound on her abdomen was pretty deep. Mana took off her covered with holes jacket and tore off her blouse tying it around her waist, almost instantly the white cloth dyed crimson red, then Mana wrapped the jacket around just to have some cloth on her so that she didn't freeze to death. It was known to the magician that her natural ninja metabolism should've kept her going for a while, maybe just long enough until that wound didn't bother her as much. Mana knew a lethal wound when she saw one, over that last year she pushed herself to the limit many times and this was not the kind of wound that the girl was ready to die because of.</p><p>A loud pop alerted her, Mana turned at the beaten Nekomata but she saw nothing else but a cloud of purple smoke. The magician stumbled back, worried it may have been poisonous but then when the smoke split there was nothing there but a small puddle of blood and torn black cloth. Mana weighed herself back and hit her back against a tree, she grunted as more bruises opened up when she slid down against the rough tree bark. Mana breathed heavily, waiting for the Quack or Hisako or Kiyomi to come... Ten minutes passed, fifteen, half an hour... Mana was all alone, left alone to die here.</p><p>"Well, if I'm gonna die, may as well die moving..." Mana thought to herself forcing to pick herself off of the ground and starting moving towards the camp. The night was already passing, soon the Sun would rise. Mana was moving so slowly, she didn't know if she'd make it back to the camp or if anyone was even there. This was what the life of a ninja was like, this was the world that Tanshu-sensei warned her of.</p><p>Mana wasn't about to prove Tanshu-sensei right by dying with a bleeding gut wound in the middle of nowhere.</p><p>And so the agonizing walk back began...</p>
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<a name="section0086"><h2>86. Phantasmal Maturity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana took careful and planned steps so that she didn't trigger the overwhelming onslaught of pain which would've sent her grunting on her knees. When the cut in her gut was moved it let itself be known by completely crippling the youngster. Each and every step was agonizing but it also took the girl closer to her team, to where she could've gotten help. Mana wasn't sure how far away from her team she was. She's been tracking the Nekomata member for quite some time and she was moving at her top speed which was nothing short of a speeding vehicle. Then again the woman could've led her in circles...</p><p>Mana didn't know what was worse – the pain she felt with every step or knowing that an incredible amount of steps she needed to take was left. Each and every step took her closer to help but the number of total steps compared to each individual step just made her getting to her final goal that much more impossible. Mana tripped on a large root and fell onto the mossy ground. The girl whined for a while but picked herself back up. She felt pain but none of the release that dying offered – she was very much going to survive it but having the suffering in mind it was not much of a relief at that moment.</p><p>The magician took a brief moment to examine her wound, it didn't appear to be bleeding, it used to spit blood in torrents before slowing down, then completely closing in. Such was the ninja metabolism, injuries like this tend to heal quite fast as long as the ninja was out of battle and let their chakra circulation enhance the natural processes of the body and treat the wound somewhat. This wasn't some sort of a miracle, it didn't work in the middle of a battle but it also didn't take care of the wound, it just kept it from killing the ninja. One stronger bump, one irregularity in one's chakra flow could've reopened the wound again and that would've made it all worse again.</p><p>Mana's steps were trembling, her entire body was fighting off the impulse to take another step. Her mind was determined, completely set in stone with its decision to make it back to her team in the camp. Her body gave up however, it wanted for the pain to stop, the battle itself didn't exhaust Mana but having to power through the pain of her various injuries tired her physically. Taking each and every step took a toll on her, it not only made her power through pain but convincing herself started to tire her mind as well, her iron will started appearing less iron every second.</p><p>"Ugh..." Mana grunted putting her back by a tree and sliding down on her butt, she looked onward into the darkness of the forest and felt the first gentle rays of light warm her cheeks.</p><p>These weren't her final moments, not yet, this was just a trial for her to power through, it was something she had to do, a pain that was inevitable for her to continue existing yet this trial felt so impossible. She may have tracked the woman for hours, how long it'd take with this turtle's pace to come back? No... It wasn't worth it! She was just a useless weakling, she trained for so long yet she hesitated to fight the cat woman with her very best from the start.</p><p>"Really? Of all the people to prove me right, you'd disappoint me the most..." Mana heard Tanshu's voice and noticed the man's brownish locks and thick beard in front of her, wearing the same messy clothes he always did and looking with all of his disapproving glory at the teen girl.</p><p>Mana didn't respond, she just turned away, that was how it happened, huh? At some point, everyone encountered a challenge that was so strong and made one suffer so much that they had to turn away, give up on their lifelong dreams and become the grey mass that comprised this world.</p><p>"Where did all that bullshit about everyone's life go? Were you just showing off? Were you just a filthy all-talk little shit!?" Tanshu started yelling at Mana. The magician was so tortured by her own exhaustion and pain that she didn't even question the appearance of her dead mentor in front of her. Mana breathed in and out.</p><p>"Hisako-san and Kiyomi-san are alright, they're stronger than me, they're smarter and they've been doing this for far longer. Hisako-san went through more pain and loss than anyone deserves to, she'll handle her trials, Kiyomi-san is the most amazing ninja of her age I've ever seen. If anyone can survive this it's her and if she can't I sure as hell can't help her... I give up..." Mana started mumbling under her nose, imagining that this phantom of her mentor heard her. That was it huh? That was her breaking point? What would her friends, what would Shimo and Sugemi think about her if they saw her broken like that?</p><p>Sensei's imaginary phantom arm passed through Mana's cheek, the girl's mind forced her to turn her body to the side where she was slapped by her own imagination.</p><p>"This was never about Hisako and Kiyomi, this was about you! You keep talking about how important and sacred everyone's life is, what about YOUR life? You're throwing it away, you see a person with a sacred life inside of their heart dying and you're giving up on that person, you're giving up on yourself... Stop embarrassing yourself, you know I'm just in your head, there's a part of you that hasn't given up yet, give in to that part, put it on the wheel..."</p><p>The teen magician turned at where the ghost was supposed to be but it wasn't there, it had never been. It was just Mana's injury that forced her body to start seeing things that weren't there, things she'd have liked to see. Mana let her head rest at the rough bark of the tree, she looked down at her wound and saw that the blood mark was already darkening – the stain wasn't fresh, Mana carefully removed what used to be her shirt from her wound and looked at it – it'll make for a pretty nasty scar...</p><p>Cold raindrops fell on Mana's forehead, it wasn't rain but a drizzle, it took a great number of raindrops before they gathered into a big chunk of water that ran down Mana's face.</p><p>"Not gonna make it easy for me, huh?" Mana looked at the sky, she used to believe that there was this energy in charge of everything, this certain Magic that gifted parts of its own being into each living being, giving more to some, less to others and those with more of Magic inside of them had a responsibility to compensate that difference by watching out for those with less of it. Maybe those beliefs formed little Mana's hero complex...</p><p>Despite not believing in that thing for quite some time, maybe there was still more of it inside Mana than she has realized? She still sometimes sarcastically spoke to something, something greater than everything else. She had the full understanding that her cries of pain, her questions, and her sarcastic thoughts all didn't reach anything, they didn't amount to anything, they weren't being listened to. No one cared about those things but it was so easy to believe that someone did, naïve but easy...</p><p>Mana grunted and clutched her scar, some rainwater running down her torn clothes washed some blood off of the wound, the cold raindrops sort of refreshed the girl to stand up and keep moving. Mana always loved the rain yet it wasn't like the rain made her stronger, it wasn't that some supernatural force of nature sent it there, it wasn't that rain picked her up all by itself. It was just something that happened, despite being the simplest explanation, that there was no causality for this event and resurrection of Mana's spirit, the cancellation of her inner surrender, it was much harder to believe in the simpler things because people hated the idea behind them.</p><p>The magician kept on walking, it hurt a little less now that she accepted this pain, this responsibility, and no longer fought against herself. Fighting against pain and cold was much easier than fighting against oneself. Tanshu-sensei... Tanshu-sensei's phantom, whatever that was... It was right. Mana's life mattered, it mattered just as much as the life of anyone she strived to protect. That meant that Mana was responsible not only to someone else but also to herself, she was responsible for keeping herself alive, she had to become a hero for herself as well as everyone else.</p><p>All this time Mana knew it, she knew that gap in her logic that her own mind was just as sacred and that she was throwing it away. Throwing it away was the easiest thing to do, some part of Mana wanted to just change the world and die right after it so that she wouldn't have to face that world. But if she gave up one herself that would've made Mana actually fail at the very least one person – herself. Even more, as the architect of this new world, one where all life mattered and was protected Mana was responsible for all of the problems in that world. She'd have to answer the cries of hatred of every mother whose children would be killed by killers who were left alive because of Mana's ideals.</p><p>"Forward... Only forward..." Mana whispered to herself, biting her lip until blood was drawn, the pain was difficult to take but it was her responsibility, all of this was. The Fifth gave her the assignment to save that boy, she was integral to this three-person team. Without Mana, the mission would've been impossible, or so Lady Hokage believed. Apparently, the magician was also responsible for the mission, for the lives of everyone in her team and the boy kidnapped, she had to come back successfully.</p><p>Why was she so silly? Why didn't she just explode with all of her new skills from the beginning? Why didn't Mana just dropkick that tree down where the Nekomata woman was, why didn't she blow her away by overwhelming her with her new techniques? The magician could've won that battle much faster, it was just her inner kindness that prevented Mana from unleashing that anger and power inside her.</p><p>Once again, even after the lesson from Guru Ayushi and her own endless training and moralizing that she had to always fight with all she had and that it was OK to fight, Mana found herself holding back because she was kind.</p><p>Mana felt a bit warmer... Almost like someone placed their hand on her shoulder. The magician turned to the side, no one was there, she was all alone... The young kunoichi kept on walking until she heard a familiar voice.</p><p>"You're so rude, Mana..."</p><p>The girl turned back, happy to hear that voice again but... Something was wrong. Behind her stood Shimo with his usual messy dung green kimono and his significantly longer hair. This was not Shimo, it couldn't have been, Mana imagined how Shimo would have looked now many times and she had imagined him just like that. This was her own imagination again, she must've twisted her gut a bit too sharply and caused her wound to bleed again. Mana stopped and coughed up, she was definitely going to catch a cold out there...</p><p>"Fine, what do you mean?" the girl honored her own mental projection with a reply. Talking to oneself seems like a really good idea when one suffers from a fever and is slowly bleeding out. Especially when one is out in the middle of nowhere and has to cover hell knows how many miles on foot without the ability to sprint.</p><p>"Your enemies, you disrespect them all the time, you play around and keep your strength back. Even if you believe that fighting is the right thing to do, face it, you know it! You already know that you'll change the world by punching the person who wants to preserve its twisted ways out, that's the only thing you can do, you are not a medical ninja, you're not smart enough to write laws and make contracts between countries... You'll make the world violence-free with violence, you'll try to change it by fighting the people who threaten it. The reason you're so bad at it is that you don't just fight the people you need to fight, you fight yourself as well."</p><p>"We both know Shimo calls me "Mana-chan"..." Mana replied lowering her head and avoiding the observation, her own mind was giving her a moral lesson and the girl knew that no one hit harder than her own mind because she knew exactly what was wrong with herself.</p><p>"Everyone's life is sacred, there are no evil people, just people with different ideals and some idolize the entirely misguided things... I get it, of all people I, who is part of you, really do... But tell me, if they decide to fight you, what right do you have not to honor that decision? If a person decides to fight, it's their decision, they bring the consequences upon themselves and that's where your responsibility for their well-being ends.</p><p>When the first punch is thrown, you make sure you beat them down, you do whatever it takes to win and then you decide if you kill them or not... We all know which you'll choose every time!"</p><p>Shimo's last sentence sounded so soft. Mana turned back at the phantom with her face full of tears, her lips were shaking.</p><p>"Come back some time... I miss you... Aaaand I'm talking with myself again..." Mana sighed realizing that the man she had imagined Shimo to be now had disappeared already, her ninja healing factor had already fixed whatever was wrong with her, cleansed the minor sparks of infection, started working on that fever. It won't cure those problems but it'll make them tolerable.</p><p>"If they decide to fight, it's their decision..." Mana repeated to herself again, continuing to walk on. The drizzle started settling down, it was so barely recognizable now that the magician could barely even feel the freezing drops of rain hitting her red and heated from fever cheeks.</p><p>A loud scream pierced the forest's depth, Mana scratched the wound trying to pass around a bush but scratching her abdomen with a branch, she cried out pitifully again and stopped, standing by the tree for support. After a moment of precious self-pity Mana pushed her body off of the tree's salvation, she could've just stayed by that tree and enjoyed its fake and treacherous sanctuary.</p><p>That would've meant giving up, going back to all that responsibility shit. While Mana acknowledged all of the responsibilities she took of her own free will, that didn't mean that she liked to be reminded of how numerous they were.</p><p>"I think the problem is in how you view the battles..." father's voice echoed, it only made sense that Mana would once again start seeing things since she reopened the wound and even made it seem nastier after bumping into that bush.</p><p>"You view them as battles, you take them seriously which is why you always have that idea of the possible outcome of killing your opponent. You need to find a way to trick yourself, make yourself think differently before you get used to that prospect that someone might die. There's no shame in that fear, there's no single thing more worth our fear in this world than death, whether it be ours or that of others..."</p><p>Mana didn't reply initially, she loved to hear father's voice, it reminded her of home, reminded her of the calm and cozy pleasure of looking through the window in her oversized winter sweater and seeing the bleak and gritty rain and cold from the warmth of her home.</p><p>"You mean like a performance? Stop having a giant divide between my magic shows and battle?" Mana then asked her father's image but realized it was no longer there. She was alone, yet she fell for the illusion that she wasn't three times in a row. The idea that there was someone in the world that gave a shit about your pain and your regrets was so tempting that it made one fall for the same trick three times and the magician was sure she'd fall for it as many times as it'd have happened...</p><p>"I guess that was the idea the whole time, use ninjutsu as an art form, not a tool of murder. May as well treat fighting as art too... Look out world, here comes the girl who'll pull a rabbit out of a hat in the middle of a fight." Mana sarcastically mumbled under her nose.</p><p>"What the hell are you talking about?"</p><p>Mana heard a familiar voice but she didn't turn back, it must've been just another phantom. She just kept walking, it was then that the magician felt a cold hand on her forehead and someone picking her body off of the tree and putting it around her shoulder. Mana lifted her head and saw the Quack holding her straight.</p><p>"Whoo boy, seems like you got yourself messed up a bit, shit... Here I thought I wouldn't need to... You know... Use actual medicine. Sit down here, this has to be done here, just let me..."</p><p>The young boy reached for his speaker and pressed his ear, turning the headset on.</p><p>"Hey, my lovelies, I found our little magician, she's injured but I can get her singing in a jiffy. Stay clear, I might need to use some medicine here, my stitching is a bit rusty, I just always popped some pills... I've no idea how medicals actually do it..."</p><p>"Okay, are you kidding? Tell me you're kidding? I saw you down two flasks of what smelled like rice wine earlier! No way, I'm going there, what's your location!?" Kiyomi's loud voice could've been heard from the one earplug that was out from the Quack's ear. The young man must've loved having just one in his ear as it let his other ear stay vigilant of everything around him.</p><p>"Fuck that shit, am I the only one alarmed by him saying "in a jiffy"? What sort of a jinglecunt says that?! I let this fucker treat my injuries! A man who says "in a jiffy" cleaned my infection..." Hisako's voice also followed shortly.</p><p>Quack pulled the plugs out and shoved them in his small bag.</p><p>"Sorry there, lovely, I'll just shut those two tigercunts up, the only thing I let to mess with my medical hand when I stitch is alcohol..." Quack sat down and made some hand seals, a small jet of water rose from the man's little flask inside his bag and wrapped around his arms, it got blacker and blacker, and then the water just darted to the side, black as tar.</p><p>"Alright, now you..." Quack made some hand seals and pointed his arms at Mana's wound, more water shot out and covered all small scratches and the big gash on Mana's abdomen. They all soon blackened too and then flew to the side only to disappear as they've been absorbed into the dirt. Mana felt her fever falling back, her wounds also somehow felt... Fresher... It must've been some sort of cleaning technique. Quack started breathing really hard, he must've been tired.</p><p>"How are the others? Are you okay? You look tired..." Mana got worried.</p><p>"Hold it... Going in..." Quack silenced Mana putting his needle into her wound, strangely enough, Mana didn't see any thread in the needle, it must've been some strange ninja tool specific for Quacks. Mana bit her lip in pain, honestly when her entire body was pulsing and aching getting one's wound sewn didn't feel half that bad but it still made her wriggle a little bit.</p><p>"The two are peachy, well they sort of weren't, I helped them get there, Hisako was a bit messed up and had her chakra flow all tangled up, fought some sort of a leecher cunt or something, the blonde got herself messed up pretty badly too so I wasted most of my chakra healing them. Sadly I'll be out of commission for two days but the sword-swinging one is adamant on hurrying with the siege of that damned bunker. That means I will be only as helpful as conventional Quack medicine can help you, no medical ninjutsu mumbo jumbo..."</p><p>As Quack explained he was almost done. The young man pulled some pills again and popped them, his skin paled and dark rings dyed around his eyes, the young man ran to the corner and threw something up, this was the first time that Mana saw him do that.</p><p>What exactly was going on with this young man?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0087"><h2>87. Babies Born And Made</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Quack's finger gently ran down Mana's face down to her lip and examined it with its touch.</p><p>"Does it hurt? What is this?" he asked after finishing patching the magician's abdomen gash up. Strangely enough, despite there appearing to be no thread, the needle somehow still stitched the wound up and closed it with each puncture just like there would've been one.</p><p>"I bit it, accidentally from the pain..." Mana replied blushing a little since she was ashamed of such a stupid injury. Quack smiled and started examining the other scratches, moving away from the lip bite. He then handed the girl a purple pill, similar to that which he had been popping the whole time.</p><p>"What is this? Is this poisonous or something?" the girl asked confused, remembering quite well how violently the young man's body reacted to a pill just several shades different in color. The young man shook his head, he looked a bit annoyed, must've been the notion of his patient questioning his judgment.</p><p>"No, lovely, the poison is for me. This is an immuno-booster, it boosts your short-term ninja metabolism but it has a pretty nasty cooldown period, I'd suggest refraining from getting injured for about four to five days starting after tomorrow..." the man explained. Mana nodded and took the pill, swallowing it without water hurt her dry throat a little but she took it down with moderate effort.</p><p>"So... Why do you drink poison then?" the magician got curious, she guessed that the pills that the boy was taking were some sort of a drug or maybe medication from some sickness, apparently, it was a poison which intrigued the magician a bit. Why would someone take poison in such continuous and prolonged periods of time, she could remember the boy popping the pill before sleep, he just popped one now just about when he'd have awakened under normal circumstances.</p><p>"It's a long story, lovely, a really long story..." the youth tried to dismiss the question but Mana shook violently, the medical youth then touched her forehead.</p><p>"You're getting cold, usually ninja metabolism counteracts the fever when it starts hurting the brain, my booster multiplied that reaction so your body temperature is now dropping..." the young quack explained removing his long coat and wrapping it around Mana, the girl was far too short and of quite a different build to wear the man's long coat but she buttoned the top button and wrapped into it like it was a blanket.</p><p>"I guess we're not going anywhere..." the magician sniffed her nose and felt it clearing up, this immuno-booster thing just cured her cold during its starting stages within seconds. Obviously, there must've been a payback, by now the magician had learned that whatever use the Quack's medicine provided it had an equal counterbalance to it.</p><p>Quack stood up and took a sip from his flask, Mana looked at the young man's frail body covered with merely a tight white shirt. His skin had no goosebumps or signs of cold at all, was the man immune to it? He also had no fear of taking poisonous pills with alcohol as he only took the poison maybe twenty or thirty minutes earlier. Did he have a death wish?</p><p>"Umm... Sorry if I sound annoying but... What's your real name? I mean, obviously, you have one, you're not just called "Quack" right?" Mana asked shyly rubbing her freezing cheeks against the man's coat. The blonde rubbed his messy hair with his arm swiping a bunch of rainwater off of it. He sat down and sighed.</p><p>"It's Eiju, Eiju Fuuhen" he grunted out, his voice sounded quite rough, he didn't particularly enjoy talking about himself apparently. Several minutes later the man angrily glared at the magician and asked, "Have you warmed up enough? I need to take a look at the other cuts and you're bleeding all over my coat, as sexy as I'd find a lady bleeding over my coat under normal circumstances, I'm not that much of a children-loving person and you remind me still of a child..."</p><p>Mana removed the coat and looked at several bloodstains left on the coat, this made no sense, her ninja metabolism was supposed to have already clogged those minor scratches, was it some sort of a weird reaction to his medicine?</p><p>Eiju sighed and waved his hand, "Keep it, lovely, you'll find a better use for it, for now, return it to me when you wash it though."</p><p>Mana looked down and rubbed her heel against the dirt making a small bow mark on it. "So... Are we going to move soon?" she asked. The Quack shook his head and moved in closer unbuttoning and moving the cloak away from the injuries and started to look at Mana's cuts and scratches.</p><p>"No need, the two ladies will soon come to us, that's how I always like em... Bloody hell, are those chakra burns? Well, at least they cauterized the wound... How did you get those cuts?" Eiju asked angrily, for some reason he still acted pretty rude with Mana, the magician didn't feel too comfortable with that since he acted like she was just a burden for him to watch over.</p><p>"A Nekomata woman did them, she has that jutsu that forms pure chakra blades around her fingers, almost like elongated claws," Mana explained looking at the scratches on her shoulders and all over the other areas of the body.</p><p>"Well, the good thing is that you're going to get those completely removed by the time you're legally allowed to be hot. Blokes will line up behind you, chakra cuts and burns can be healed pretty easily as long as it's not an elemental release technique." Eiju explained and moved away from the girl giving her some time to cover up again and stop shaking from the cold.</p><p>"You're talking strange, I haven't noticed it before but... I've never heard words like "bloke" and someone referring to people as "lovely", you're not from around?" Mana was almost too afraid to ask because she knew that Eiju would get angry again for bringing up his history, he seemed to hate being around Mana, to begin with. Seemed to be a pretty common habit these days...</p><p>"It's... I'm from Kirigakure, a certain rich and snobby layer of society there speaks that way, "bloke" means a guy, "lovely" is how we used to refer to women." Quack rudely replied, his tone was still a bit rough but this time there was something different in there, longing for his home perhaps?</p><p>"And "jiffy" means... Quickly?" Mana smiled at him moving her nose out from the coat for the first time in a while feeling warm.</p><p>"Yeah, something like that..." Eiju replied.</p><p>Mana's sad eyes moved away, suddenly she felt something tearing inside her chest, something pulsing and burning her from inside, some kind of profound sadness the source of which she couldn't initially understand but then she did and the realization of what it was terrified the girl.</p><p>"You know... I could beat your story out of you, you look like an asthmatic zombie, to begin with, even if I couldn't I could just tell Hisako and Kiyomi that you're from Kirigakure and they wouldn't trust you, they'd beat it out of you too..." Mana had no idea where this rude anger rose from. This realization that this man was from Kirigakure just angered her, somehow brought all the pain that the country was responsible for: hurting her father, killing Tanshu-sensei, and the Fourth Hokage...</p><p>"Well, fuck me... Never thought little brat had thorns... Don't expect me to call you "lovely" for a while, only blokes talked to me that way so I may start referring to you like that from now on, little bloke." Quack grunted back at her but for some reason Mana's negativity fuelled him, the man started to enjoy talking to her as if it was the magician's softness that made him dislike her.</p><p>"I'm sorry it's just... Kirigakure..." Mana admitted lowering her head and removing one scratched up and beaten arm from the coat's collar to fix her messy and wet hair.</p><p>"Yeah... I get it, kid, tough history, to you it may be the place that killed your whoever and had your mum through the bottom-hole but to me, it was home, it was where I ate my crumpets and sipped my mum's tea so stick your hatred to your bumhole and push it down with a walking stick." Eiju replied, while the content of his words was hateful but they were delivered in a soft manner.</p><p>"Could you... Talk to me? Like... About where you're from, just until Kiyomi and Hisako come, please?" Mana asked looking at Eiju with the largest and wettest puppy eyes she could make. The girl just wanted to hear how he was brought to this corner of the world from entirely another, she wanted to know how a young boy from Kirigakure's aristocracy could've ended up in Konoha as a Quack to whichever mercenary gang claimed him.</p><p>"Jeez, kid... Fine. I'll talk but only to keep your mouth shut." Eiju started but Mana interrupted him.</p><p>"Don't lie to me though, I'll know..." she lied.</p><p>"Fine. So I guess I was popped from my mother's womb in Kirigakure, the high and mighty layer of society, crumpets, and tea all day long was my diet until I was old enough to enter the Academy..."</p><p>Mana shook her head and raised her weak and wobbly palm from under the coat. "I'm sorry, what's a crumpet?" she asked.</p><p>"It's not like it's bloody ruining the story, kid, stay focused, that's not the detail you should focus on..." while Quack kept trying to explain the concept of his story Mana's eyes forced him to sigh and plant his slap onto his own face.</p><p>"It's a bloody dessert... Okay? So the point is, a kid can only grow that large and that strong eating just cookies and tea, right? So I was a thin, sickly little chump, not unlike now but now I'm more plagued by lack of crumpets than an overdose of 'em, anyway..." Eiju stopped, looking down, he pointed at Mana and then reached into the inner pocket of his coat removing a bottle of pills and showing them to her.</p><p>"Basically I lied to you already but you didn't notice, so much for your lie detector skills, huh? I wasn't booped out my mummy's funny hole as I said, I was lab-bred because my mum was as sick as I am, you take a chunk of your daddy, you take a chunk of your mum, mash it into a mass and give it to a funky little bloke who does some insane and, quite frankly, illegal Quack work – you end up with a world's most handsome baby... I suppose."</p><p>Mana looked up into the sky and then turned back at Eiju, the man sort of looked like he was finished but Mana's look encouraged him to keep going.</p><p>"Can you really do that sort of thing? Why would people ever have normal babies then if you can just make one? Why would it be illegal?" she wondered.</p><p>"Well there's one chick who never made babies, it's bloody fun, I'll tell ya one thing... The point is that you don't simply "make babies", the result isn't random, you "create babies", you give them whatever you want them to have, you want them freckled, you have that, you want them blonde – easy. The prospect of just creating a human-like it's a bloody chunk of clay is scary to some, having in mind what I've seen, there's a reason behind that fear... Let's just say there were a lot of... Less fortunate Eijus before I was bred, ones with funny looking heads and extra limbs if you catch my cold. Because the practice is so hated it didn't have time to be polished yet."</p><p>Mana shook from disgust imagining a laboratory somewhere underground filled with fail genetic experiments. If she ever actually saw one she'd probably be pretty messed up for life and started swearing herself.</p><p>"So why were you made? Why didn't your parents just make you the casual old way?" the magician got curious as to why one would go for such a risky and disgusting way to breed heirs.</p><p>"Because my mum was pretty sick and her sickness was very much hereditary, I've lost a brother and a sister before parents decided to model me in a tube. They asked the bloke who made me to program a tissue inside of me that constantly regenerates me before my body gets eaten from inside by my mum's sickness, technically I'm sick with what my mum had before her death, whatever killed my sister and brother, however, the tissue counteracts it and heals me. That's both what keeps me alive and is a bloody nuisance..."</p><p>Mana shook her head, "Nuisance how? I'd really find such a tissue useful for my father's burns..."</p><p>Quack spat to the side and waved the pills he removed previously up in Mana's nose. "The tissue starts growing, breeding, it's basically regenerative cancer, I need to keep popping poison to kill its excess growth, because of the fucking thing the poison doesn't work like it should on me. It feels bloody disgusting but the fucking thing always keeps me alive and kicking, always sacrificing its bloody chunks to survive as a thing, it's a living, growing thing. Well, at least I can drink as much as I bloody want, no fucking old hag will mess with my drinking habits cause every drip of poison I take, whether drug or alcoholic keeps me alive..."</p><p>Mana listened and struggled to believe in any of it, then again she did see the man down a pretty large amount of poison and his reaction was quite grotesque...</p><p>"Okay... So let's say that's true, how did you end up here though?" Mana asked for Eiju to continue.</p><p>"Eh, if you've been paying attention you'd piece it together: a little bit of jealous aristocratic rivalry slipping the Mizukage some delicious info of an artificially bred child, an abomination of nature, a little bit of good ole discrimination and prosecution and violence and you've got one little kid on the run and two beheaded snobby parents... I just didn't feel like sticking around Kirigakure or the Archipelago of islands around it, I got into a pirate ship, this medic there noticed my tendency to drink poison, initially he went all "Kid, don't drink poison, you'll die!" but then he found out too..."</p><p>"And? Did they cast you out again?" Mana asked sadly, she was starting to really feel bad for the difficult life that this young man had for something that just didn't seem a crime to her at all, more so not one he should've been held responsible for since he had no control over it.</p><p>"Nope, turns out pirates are a pretty merry bunch, they started teaching me stuff, the old medic on that ship was a rogue Kirigakure Hunter Ninja, he was a master at gutting people and harvesting their organs. He was also a dying fellow so he decided to try and gut my tissue out 'a me. Since I thought it was the source of all my problems I let him keep operating on me as much as he wanted, hoping that he'd succeed but then one day we both realized he won't, he found out that the tissue is linked with my body, he knew if he'd extract it I'd die so he chose to make the sacrifice and let me live..." Eiju started rubbing his eyes, Mana turned away because she noticed that the man tried to hide his tears, maybe he wasn't even crying but he was about to.</p><p>"Since I was a source of a lot of the old bloke's chopping sessions I picked a thing or two from him, he finished my training on his deathbed... The pirates decided to keep me around, I was the best at cutting out and transferring organs. The only thing I was always shite at was actual medicine, medical ninjutsu, harvesting DNA and organs, entire bloodlines, that I can do, but stitching still makes my hand shake. Conventional medicine just wasn't the Quack way so I self-taught that stuff from spying on ninja on the field right before the muscleheads I was with decided to off them..."</p><p>For a moment, the Quack stopped talking, then he looked at Mana and back, visibly annoyed that the two other kunoichi were taking so long to get there.</p><p>"From then on it was just one gang slaughtering the other and taking me with them as their Quack and harvester, most didn't even know that I was good at it, they just used me as a Quack but this Hachi bloke realized my potential and forced me to do all the stuff he had on him, in the end, he was more a weapon than he was a man, to think they called me an abomination of nature... I've no idea how he could even mate with women when I replaced his fun stick with a kunai shooting cannon long time ago, must be really good with his tongue..."</p><p>"So we leave you for five minutes with a fourteen-year-old and your best idea is to give her the birds and the bees talk?" Kiyomi's voice thundered behind the two, Mana turned around and smiled at her friend. The angry blonde leaped down and examined Mana's wounds and heard Eiju's suggestion not to storm the bunker out.</p><p>"No! We may be wounded but so is the enemy, we can't give them a chance to regroup and move away from here, they're too close to the border, from here on it's just one day away." Kiyomi seemed to finally agree with Hisako on something, with a worried look she looked at Mana who nodded and stood up and gestured that she'll be fine.</p><p>"Well then, those fuckers woke us up, let's shove things up their asses so that their screams play us the anthem!" Hisako smiled drawing her blades and playfully spinning them around before sheathing them back.</p><p>Kiyomi squinted at the dark-haired swordswoman, "I thought you told me you were going to try the whole "no cursing" thing..."</p><p>Eiju stood up and started moving east. "Yeah, not until she can cure whatever's causing the itch in her sandy panties..."</p><p>Hisako shrugged and then looked at Eiju, "Nah, I just don't want to wet turkey it... Wait... What did you just fucking say, fucktwig!?" she snapped and started chasing Eiju, it was impressive that the Quack could escape his inevitable evisceration so effectively.</p><p>"It's cold turkey, Hisako... I'm starting to think you swear just because you are verbally challenged." Kiyomi sighed as she and Mana followed the trail of destruction behind Hisako's attempt to cut Eiju to pieces which resulted in a lot of trees being cut down, at least it was easy to follow...</p>
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<a name="section0088"><h2>88. The Smell Of Purple</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A strong gust of wind and a tap on the wooden border of the window alerted those in the nearest vicinity that someone decided to drop by. The sound was heavy, usually when ninja travel they make little to no sound at all. Now anyone inside the building and a decent distance outside would've been able to pick it up and distinguish that someone had decided to crash there. The two figures that arrived took their time to carefully step over and inside the bunker and approach the hole that led to the lower levels.</p><p>As the two figures moved, the larger one tripped over and dropped some trash cans, making a powerful sound of tin and rubbish of various kind rubbing together and rolling all over the floor. The muscular male who caused this event cursed. The woman who was trying to lead him steadily holding him together gently caressed the man's cheek and looked at his trashed face and multiple beatings all over his muscular upper body.</p><p>"You still haven't told me how this happened, Roe... the young woman tried to ask about the subject that troubled her, the man just growled angrily and sat by the hole.</p><p>"It doesn't matter, I'll have to give the briefing to Yellow anyways, what's the point of explaining it twice, I had my ass kicked by a little girl, it's not a subject one likes to discuss, you know!" he grunted out angrily. The man's whiskers shook and tensed up, his rage made his muscles twitch as if he was excited about an upcoming fight when the real fight had finished long ago.</p><p>"How about because I'm your sister and I care about you?" the woman asked softly blowing gently into the man's injured part of the face, the man roared like a large jungle cat but then the refreshing feeling of cold air being blown into his face alleviated the pain a little.</p><p>"Sorry..." the man replied softening his voice a bit, he tried to push his sister away but she kept holding him, after a brief moment he remembered that without his sister's aid he could barely stand. The man growled again, like a lion threatening another animal aiming at his fresh kill. "You know how Yellow is when we make him wait, he'll do something stupid again..."</p><p>"You're right, brother, let's report to Yellow and endure his punishment for failing, then we can plan our revenge... Just... Don't forget that Yellow is up there in our revenge plan as well" the woman in black once again gently rubbed her brother's wound and lead him into the hole, she extended her torn whip for him to land.</p><p>"Never. No one burns our family and forces us to work for him and escapes unscathed, repair your whip, do you still have the material?" the large man asked looking questioningly at his sister, his eyes burned with conviction and pride, ready to claw the heart of this "Yellow" who had wronged them and forced them to work for him out with his bare hands.</p><p>"I have mother's hair in the chest, the wax and the fats are there too, the supply is running out if I can't use our mother's hair the material will not be the same, mother loved us so much, tapping into that love she left behind in her chakra makes my whip pierce through anything, makes it as tough as our mother's love..." the young woman explained to her brother who was carefully using her whip to climb to the lower level.</p><p>"And without it? If mother's hair runs out or if her chakra actually fades, we don't know why it is still in her hair so long after her body burnt to crisp..." the large man grunted, his voice was sad and disappointed, almost like that of a cat lamenting the loss of its owner.</p><p>The woman wrapped the torn up whip around her arm and then whipped it on a strong steel pipe, after the tip of it tied around the structure the woman leaped down breaking her fall using the whip and then removed it and tied it around her shoulder.</p><p>"I don't know, I can always use just a normal leather whip with my own chakra infused, even without it I can still use my claws..." the woman replied, she was a little worried about the supply of the hair that her mother cut off and gifted the woman before she and father were burnt alive by Yellow's ambition.</p><p>The man claimed that he had nothing in common but the twins knew that he did, he was too sinister, his eyes emanated pure evil, he spoke soft and sweet things but his tongue was that of a demon, promising, kind and caring but his intentions were a different thing entirely.</p><p>The large man's muscular arms wrapped around his sister's frail body and then pushed her farther away. He had decided to move by himself after that display of affection. "Never, Cony, never take risks, keep using a whip, keep fighting from afar. I'd die of sorrow if I saw you getting hurt."</p><p>"You should've seen me, Roe, I was amazing up close, I totally destroyed that brat..." the woman tried to argue but a backhand slap tossed her figure to the other side of the narrow corridor. Her brother roared out angrily, emulating the sound of an angered feline predator perfectly.</p><p>Realizing that her brother wasn't going to back down from his stance and would've rather lost the last memento of their mother than lost his sibling the woman gave up and just followed him to the lower level, then an even lower one and an even lower one, down to the final level which served as the basement and base of operations where Yellow did all of his planning.</p><p>A loud sound of a growling dog broke the silence and the Inuzuka who was standing inside the basement room turned at the new entrants, he placed his arm onto the top of his dog's head and calmed him down. While the canine had long since gotten used to the Nekomata twins, he always kept reacting aggressively to them, must've been their feline looks and mannerisms.</p><p>"We've returned, Yellow. The mission is a failure, they're coming here, now, with full force and pissed off..." Roe growled angrily back at the dog and grunted out at his superior who was sitting on a chair cloaked in a black hood.</p><p>"That's a lie, dear Roe, you injured them, no blood is shed needlessly, blood always serves someone's needs..." a childish voice came off from the hooded figure.</p><p>"That is true, Yellow-san!" Cony, Roe's sister, kneeled before the man and smiled at him after raising her head, happy that her boss found what to enjoy in their failure. "I've shed plenty of the young genin's blood and Roe just almost didn't bring you his opponent's head on his spear..."</p><p>Yellow laughed, "There, you see, my dear minions, your efforts weren't in vain. What Noji and Sunomaru told me that you just had a streak of bad luck – he faced off against a close-range ninja, you, dear Cony faced a long-range ninja who enjoyed your long-range approach... It was my fault as a leader to let you out there with no knowledge of your opponent's abilities, then again, obtaining said knowledge was the point, now we can carefully plan who will face who during their little siege..."</p><p>The Inuzuka who was called Noji nodded. "It is advised that I face the long-range kunoichi, from what Cony told us it seems that she would be injured during our fight, also I love fighting ninja that focus on ninjutsu and other chakra reliant techniques and fight at long range. Using my Inuzuka clan techniques I can close the distance between us easily. She wouldn't last a minute against me but I'd love to sap every little sip of chakra from her body as I'm quite tired and injured myself so I might take a while, rest assured, while I'll take a while to play with her I will win against such an opponent for sure with Sunomaru at my side..."</p><p>The large canine standing close to the Inuzuka barked out loud, almost like it was confirming the words of his master. The ninja hounds were quite intelligent, they were capable of understanding human speech but the only reason they weren't able to talk, not all of them at least, was because of their anatomy, not all of them possessed the needed voice box for such a feat.</p><p>Yellow nodded, "Sounds like a good plan, last time they beat you because they countered each and every one of your abilities perfectly. Let's reverse that advantage then?"</p><p>Roe growled angrily, he looked where he imagined Yellow's eyes to be in all of that black shadow of his hood. "No. I want to fight that blonde again, I am sure that this time I'll take her. We both made mistakes in that fight and now this is a matter of pride!" he grunted out, his sister reached out at him but her arm stopped just inches short of the man's shoulder remembering what happened the last time when she tried to argue with him.</p><p>Yellow laughed, "Well then, you always were about pride, I'm surprised you're not plotting against me, Roe, tell me how do you deal with me being in charge of you when you're such a prideful one..."</p><p>Roe wanted to react violently but his sister intervened by jumping in front of him and raising her arm.</p><p>"Very well then, I shall take on the close distance swordswoman who took down Noji. Short distance fighters are my specialty and I believe I can easily counter her abilities with my long-range whip attacks once I repair it," she explained looking back at Roe and shaking her head at the disapproval of his prideful antics.</p><p>Yellow's dark hood slipped forward covering more of the figure's face. "Very well, this sounds good. We expected that pulling this off would attract ninja attention, we just never expected that this attention wouldn't be shaken off after this first attack. I'd be very happy if these ninja found their most tragic deaths in here instead of the boy they are coming for. Now go, prepare for your approaching battle..."</p><p>Roe grunted and took a step forward, his eyes then changed from ones filled with rage like one's eyes would be after seeing the man responsible for the death of one's parents and subjugation of oneself and one's sister into a more ironic yet submissive stare.</p><p>"Perhaps if we get our butts kicked we can finally see the mighty Yellow show us a thing or two in combat?" he sarcastically remarked. So far he had never seen Yellow fight but the man carried significant influence, so extensive was his reach that it could've only been earned by either high status in society or extensive knowledge in the art of combat.</p><p>"Hah, trust me, dear Roe, I could teach you a thing or two in combat, if you didn't believe that, you'd have killed me long ago... Or maybe you're afraid you'd fail and that I'd rip the second dearest thing from you as I did the first?" Yellow returned the offense.</p><p>"SO YOU ADMIT IT!" the cat-hobo's figure tensed up as his muscles shot out and tensed in tonus even Kiyomi didn't see during their last battle, the man pulled out a knife and tried to leap at the man but then stopped in his feet, kneeling before Yellow, not because of his own willful submission, because his entire body was aching from the last battle.</p><p>"It does not matter now, I may have taken your family away but you will do everything I tell you to because you're afraid I'll take your sibling from you, that is how I obtained your loyalty, that is why I left the two of you alive, you are both my dear subordinates and my insurance policy against your sibling. Now go, prepare for the battle, if you are as pathetic against that brat during your rematch as you are now against me I may not get my chance to play the "I'll kill your brother card" against your sister, she's been much more submissive towards me, perhaps she'd already forgotten?" Yellow wondered. Cony's eyes filled with tears and she just outright dragged her injured brother out of the basement.</p><p>Once only Noji and Yellow remained the Inuzuka stepped closer to the hooded leader. "I've carried out your orders, now please..." he whimpered like a scared child.</p><p>A puny and weak arm emerged from Yellow's coat holding a small vial, Noji picked the vial with the purple liquid and shot it into his dog's body. The canine shook on its feet and barked happily. Noji sighed relieved to know that his canine friend will live another day, he turned to Yellow with an angry stare.</p><p>"You know, you should stop taunting those two. They're strong, fast, and dangerous, even more so once you piss them off and trust me, burning their house with their family inside of it in front of them is pissing them off plenty..." Noji hissed out.</p><p>"It wasn't me, it was a wild bloodthirsty band of mercenaries like many roaming the Fire Country... And why would you care? Maybe you care for me!? I am touched!" Yellow playfully acted out a scene with his tone switching from childish innocence to a playful question and a faked display of affection.</p><p>"Don't play around, Yellow, everyone knows you're the one who hired them and that doesn't make you less involved. Also, yes, I do care, don't mistake it for care about if you live or die, it's because you have the perfume with the herb that is vital for Sunomaru's survival that I care, I wouldn't under any other circumstances!" Noji explained showing his Inuzuka fangs for the hooded dwarf leader.</p><p>"Well... I suppose I may have hired a certain mercenary army to gather me a couple of ninja for my band, that being said, I had no say in the course of their actions... I mean... You know how they are... Romantics all of em, letting the family go ablaze while the kids work for me, just a bit more Romeo in their hearts and they'll start eating noodles in the moonlight with rice wine..." Yellow shook his arm.</p><p>"Whatever, I need you alive so stop making it so hard for the twins to not eat your throat out, they certainly have the fangs for it... I need those perfume shots! If you die and leave Sunomaru without his medicine I'll kill everyone you care about, just know this in your final thoughts when you see Roe's fangs dig into your throat with your blood squirting on the walls..."</p><p>Yellow laughed with a high pitched laugh, "Ah, that famous Inuzuka bond of souls with their dogs, I've heard so much about that love, that kinship of hearts. It is said that once one of them dies the other suffers pain like none other. If the master dies the canine suffers so much that he dies of sorrow. If the dog dies the master is left in a crippled and beaten state that they never recover from... It's so romantic that I am tempted to test that bond... Maybe I'll ask you to track some Inuzuka for a test."</p><p>"Chew a dick, I'd never give in my own blood for your sick servitude..." Inuzuka changed his tone completely and started growling at the hooded figure himself.</p><p>"Oh? Would you do it for a perfume shot? Maybe for a whole box of them? Heh, I can't wait to see where the edge of your morals lies, call me a lover of the scientific method..." Yellow giggled playfully, Noji and his hound disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.</p><p>The hooded figure pressed his slim blade tighter against his side, a cruel smile covered his face. This was so much fun, what would happen? Would the Konoha ninja kill his playthings, his precious family of subordinates or would the Konoha ninja get killed? Would one of his playthings betray him? Which one? Would they successfully kill him or would one of the others kill the traitor because Yellow had something they want... This was so much fun!</p><hr/><p>Silent taps of sandals passing through alerted absolutely no one of four figures entering the bunker through a hole in the window as the volume of their steps was just too low. The footsteps were simply too silent. Mana looked back at Quack and shook her head, Kiyomi and Hisako turned back as well. Eiju shrugged, "Bloody really!?" he almost shouted out in surprise after the girls asked for him to wait outside.</p><p>"Trust me, cunt-cheeks, it's not 'cause we give a fuck about a fuck, it's cause we'll need a bitch to patch us up and I ain't trusting any of those two bitches to patch my ribs. As shaking as your drunk arm is when you stitch, it'll have to do. I don't care if you can fight or not, you're keeping your blond stubble outside." Hisako hissed and drew her sword pointing it outside.</p><p>"Fine, I hope you all have your bloody guts poked with a thousand dicks, thank you very much!" Eiju grunted as he slothfully crawled back outside.</p><p>"Yeah, we love you too... Hope you'll be OK..." Kiyomi squinted at Eiju's annoyed expression of some weird kind of friendship.</p><p>"Plus you're my fucking Quack and I fucking own your ass cause I killed the last bitch who owned it..." Hisako couldn't help but bite right briefly after the youth left.</p><p>"If Eiju is pardoned in Konoha by the Fifth you won't be able to "own" him, plus, I'm not really sure if that's how Quacks even work from how Eiju explained it..." Mana smiled at Hisako reminding the raven-haired assassin of her Quack's final goal.</p><p>"Oh, come on! Yeah, a rogue Quack gets pardoned and lives happily ever after, shut the fuck up, your optimism gives me cooties..." Hisako yelled back at Mana pushing her to the side playfully with her shoulder.</p><p>"We should've really made it a bet back when you said you won't curse anymore, Hisako, I'd have been a rich clan heiress right now..." Kiyomi sighed as the three threaded deeper into the bunker.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0089"><h2>89. Yellow's Cruel Plan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The three girls tread carefully, Hisako was the most experienced with missions and so she was clearly supposed to observe the environment for traps. It was just so easy for one to set their foot on a floor tile that was sealed with some trap, it only took a genin decently skilled in sealing techniques to seal a simple explosive burst of chakra into stone tiles, hell, some could even seal entire techniques into scrolls that other people could use without learning the technique first-hand. Mana knew quite well how potent seals were, she wore a large pocket space full of tools that her father crafted for her after all.</p><p>Even if Hisako was overly excited about the prospect of upcoming slaughter Kiyomi did her part for the raven-haired swordswoman. Luckily enough, Kiyomi was quite familiar with stepping up and dealing with a sloppy leader's part of responsibility since she worked so long with Chestnut Hanasaku who, while being one of the most powerful ninja in the world, was quite sloppy and, most of the time, a complete idiot.</p><p>Mana was glad that the Yamanaka had that experience, with Eiju tired out she needed that injury least of all things. Usually, a ninja would just augment their chakra at the specific point to shield them from a blast or an incoming arrow but when they didn't know it was coming it wasn't that easy.</p><p>It was a strange thing, chakra augmentation. Mana and someone of her skill level, which was to say slightly above that of an average genin, should've been able of some degree of augmentation. The thing was that even if she could have done it and she could've just coated herself with augmented bursts of chakra shielding her entire body from explosions or sharp projectiles and it'd have not killed her or injured her that badly. However to shield oneself was to waste an overwhelming amount of chakra, also chakra augmentation had the nasty side effect of messing with one's chakra network already. It was best used just in short bursts and only when it was needed.</p><p>"Hey... Look, what's that?" Mana asked and approached something that looked like a poster with several very distinct and darkened hieroglyphs, they were so clear that to the magician it instantly became clear that they were meant to be read. The girl was very careful and didn't touch it, just let her eyes run down it and waited for her friends to come to check it out.</p><p>"Looks normal, don't think it's a trap, trust me, I've seen plenty..." Kiyomi examined the poster and carefully touched it, both Mana and the blonde augmented their bodies to emit a weak forcefield-like shield that'd have protected them in case of an explosion and kept their limbs on their bodies or protected them from the penetration of a cloud of arrows coming their way. Those two were the most common types of traps anyway...</p><p>"Tear me off and my friends at the same time or the perfume kid gets it..." Hisako read it out loud.</p><p>"So it actually is a seal, it's probably linked to a bunch of explosive notes stuck around wherever they're keeping the kid, if we try and act smart we risk blowing him and ourselves up or setting whatever trap it is..." Mana pondered.</p><p>"Smart girl... Although Yellow is a guy who has a flair for the classic dramatics, he actually placed the boy in a prison of hardened glass and dipped the whole thing into a vat of acid, if the seal is set off the walls will disintegrate and the boy will take the last skinny dip in his life. probably still better than one in Serenity Lake but he'll die anyway..." a voice echoed through the bunker, all three girls turned and saw a Yamanaka dressed in a white zip-up combat jacket and smiling with his wolf-like fangs and his trusty dog by his side.</p><p>Hisako flashed at him almost instantly, moving at incredible speed but her blade got stuck in the fangs of the Inuzuka's dog. She smiled ready to once again rudely pull the sword out and leave another wound in the dog's mouth but then the Inuzuka sighed and yelled out.</p><p>"Wait, each of us can set the seal off ourselves, you three will play by our rules and the rules are – the fancy Nancy smartsy pantsy here fights me, you two can go to the lower floors. If you want to set the boy free you'll each beat the ninja protecting the seals in each room and remove the seals at the same time. How you coordinate this is none of my concern..." the Inuzuka explained waving his arms frantically and smiling confidently.</p><p>Hisako looked at Mana and closed her eyes, suddenly the swordswoman realized how hopeless the situation was – the enemy had complete control of the situation here and they just walked into a far more intelligently crafted trap than they had any right to expect...</p><p>"You'll die, idol-bitch. This guy is a close-range Inuzuka who can drain your chakra, he combines the peeling and overpowering Inuzuka clan techniques with the usual Chakra Absorption Jutsu. He's a perfect counter to your style" the swordswoman explained looking at Mana, she may have already realized that whoever was waiting on the other floors would've also been a similarly crafted match-up.</p><p>Mana gulped and shook her head, then faked a smile. "Nah, it's fine. You guys go ahead. If I die, it doesn't matter because you can just beat down those other guys and come back here and finish him off. We need to save that boy no matter what, no teen deserves the experience of being kidnapped and put into a glass surrounded by acid..."</p><p>Kiyomi walked up and opened the hatch, after a brief glance down she looked back at Mana hesitant to leave her friend behind in such a pickle. "And if it doesn't work? If this is all just a ruse and the seals don't work?" she asked to which Mana just faked another smile.</p><p>"I'm a stage magician, glass cages sinking in acid are my specialty, I'll get him out either way. Still, might be a better shot to try the sealing method first." Mana tried to calm her friend down but she struggled to hide her fear. She wasn't really afraid of being beaten down or killed, she was afraid of failure, she was afraid of dying knowing that the boy would die too and his father would lose his son. That was what scared her the most.</p><p>Hisako nodded and leaped down, apparently cool girls didn't use ladders... Kiyomi gave Mana an encouraging thumb up and slid down the ladder. Just like that, it was just Mana and the Inuzuka.</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi looked at Hisako after the two girls dropped to the lower level. The blonde wanted some support, she wanted a teammate whom she may have talked about having just left a young and inexperienced and naïve girl in a situation she was sure to die in. More so Kiyomi wanted to make a plan or something, playing the way things were was just not at all right, they were playing by the rules set by the opposing force.</p><p>"Stop being such a fucking momma-bear, that's idol-bitch's role. If she survives that shit anyways, if she doesn't – she's not cut out for this work. Situations like this happen all the time, one fights in fights where things are stacked against one's favor all the time!" Hisako angrily hissed back at Kiyomi looking out for the other member of the enemy group letting them know the rules of this floor and whom he had selected to be their opponent.</p><p>"Yeah but... Mana's already injured and a bit tired from before, none of us had much sleep and lived through fights that nearly claimed our lives, one of which was with you by the way!" Kiyomi yelled back angrily</p><p>"Oh, please, I knew you'd augment your gut and not just get your gut poked out... I have a feeling for those things, it's needed for a swordsman because if you don't predict it and put too much force into a strike that's gonna just hit a chakra forcefield it'll break your wrist." Hisako explained, still looking for someone to see in all of the darkness.</p><p>"Well... Lucky shot for you, I guess, but I just want a teammate to talk with, I just want to be sure that Mana's gonna be alright. She looks up to me like I'm some goddamned hero or something and I guess that somehow made me feel responsible for her a bit" Kiyomi explained, soothing her tone down and softening it up, appealing to Hisako's humanity.</p><p>"Pffft, you and your fucking responsibilities, take a responsibility for not being such a condescending cunt once, why won't you!?" Hisako suddenly broke out reaching for the handle of her sword.</p><p>"What was that all about!?" Kiyomi also prepared to punch the black-haired assassin in the face.</p><p>"You know what it's about! Ever since we met you're always just yelling and talking about how fucking messed up I am and how my clan is somehow not worth the shit dripping from their assholes. "Oh, Hisako is such a bitch, she wanted to test her teammates she'll have to trust, oh Hisako is such a bitch, selling her cunt to save the lives of her team!" Guess fucking what, Princess, your shit doesn't smell of gold either!" Hisako snapped back drawing her blade, Kiyomi took a dash back seeing the alarming rage accumulating in the assassin's eyes.</p><p>"Look... I'm sorry, I just... It's clear we both have issues. I hate criminals and people who do things that while legal in our line of work aren't ethical, in other words, I hate cunts and... Well... You're a bit of a cunt... You also seem to have some psychological issues that I clearly stepped on and I'm sorry, let's just agree to never work with each other and trust our lives to each other and keep going. This mission is bigger than our quarrels, Mana was ready to sacrifice her life for this, let's forget this for at least until we're back home. Then if you still want to have a go at me, I'll take you on in the Training Grounds... Sound fair?" Kiyomi carefully tried to calm Hisako down and with a depressing sigh, she realized that the assassin relented.</p><p>"You're right, you're a good ninja but we can't work in a team. You hate people like me, I hate people who hate me for no other reason than just hating me because of my clan or what I do. We're meant to cut our throats out not to fight together, for all I know those guys are doing us a favor splitting us up." Hisako sighed a couple of times and sheathed her swords, only to grab their handles again and deflecting a bunch of knives flying right at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Thanks..." Kiyomi uttered surprised. She never heard those coming, that could've only meant one thing – that annoying cat-hobo from before.</p><p>"Leave me and the Yamanaka alone, I'm sure that Noji explained the rules already, my sister will take you on on the other floor. This between me and the blonde is personal, it's a matter of my broken pride! Make sure to let my sister kill you, if one hair falls from her head I'll make sure to stab you everywhere but where it'll kill you for it and leave you to bleed out!" the man roared out. His lion-like growling and powerful voice was something to admire as it instantly covered all of the room.</p><p>The man looked like Kiyomi's boulder gave him quite a beating – his powerful and muscular chest was covered with several deep and nasty bruises and purple as prunes blunt force traumas. His hair also was no longer worn in dreadlocks but was wild and all over his half-naked body. He still wore several belts full of knives, Kiyomi would've loved to see him take Hisako on as both of them had similar fashion senses with belts of knives being the dominant accessory.</p><p>"Awww, I didn't know it hurt your feelings, big guy. Maybe if you asked nicely I'd have let you off with a tie..." Kiyomi taunted the man with a smile as she removed her kunai from the pouch and let Hisako leave. It appeared that the assassin didn't even need to be encouraged further, right when the lion-man stated his conditions the assassin was gone.</p><p>"My name is Roe, I was an heir to the Nekomata clan and I plan to cash my claim in once I kill everyone who stands in my way. My father was unfairly dismissed by his stronger sibling who took my father's spot in the line of succession, I must be the strongest there is to take my claim back! You've beaten me and that makes me respect you a great deal but I will kill you, I must become the strongest one there is, to become a man worth inheriting the leadership of my clan I must remain undefeated. Only such a man is worth the Nekomata name!" the cat-hobo growled angrily drawing two knives and spreading his arms and legs out wide, preparing for a fight.</p><p>"I'm Yamanaka Kiyomi, an heiress to the Yamanaka clan. If my uncle doesn't miraculously have a son, that is... Anyways, there are things I must prove also, but not to you nor myself, I must save the child you keep down there and prove to my stupid sensei that I am worthy of a promotion. An heir of a clan who doesn't believe in his own strength and needs to beat someone to trust his own claim doesn't deserve to lead a clan."</p><p>Roe roared again, proudly and pounded his chest with the handle of his knife. "You fool, the leader of a clan must be the strongest there is, only by remaining undefeated can I trust my claim, only those who protect their family, their clan and are strong enough to never lose to anyone are worth leading a clan"</p><p>Kiyomi shook her head angrily, "You're wrong, leading a clan is so much more than just being a muscle-head and killing everyone in your way. Strength has little to do with that nonsense, it's all about the will of being a leader. All about love for your own blood and putting the interests of your clan in front of those of your own. All about the responsibility of always doing the right thing and if you do a wrong facing the repercussions because that's who a leader is"</p><p>Roe stepped back and disappeared into the shadows, Kiyomi prepared for the rematch, that inevitable second clash between her and this crazy and stealthy cat-man of the Nekomata clan. "One clan shall lose their future head today, only symbolic that you'll lose yours as well!"</p><p>Kiyomi turned behind and blocked the man's knife, leaping back to avoid his slash with the other hand. She fought this man already and knew his style, she knew he favored striking at her blind spots and disappearing again unless he felt a relentless assault could've earned him his kill.</p><p>"I'll show your head when I claim my position! It'll show the Nekomata that I am willing ready and able to bring the clan above even the Yamanaka!" somewhere from the shadows the man's voice still reached Kiyomi's ears and while the cruel tone still froze her body in intimidating fear she loved the fact that he now had his feelings hurt and was emotionally involved into this fight, it may have been what would make her come out on top again...</p><hr/><p>Hisako carefully and silently walked around the third level of the bunker, it had a bunch of cargo crates in there which begged the assassin the question of how they were carried down there. This place may have been the basement and it only had doors that lead further, not lower. This floor must've been it – the main base of their leader's operations, just who was this "Yellow" guy whom the Inuzuka spoke of?</p><p>Surely it couldn't have been that woman with the whip from before, Yellow sounded like a nickname based on some detail like a dominant piece of clothing or the man's hair... It could've been a man or a woman... They haven't even seen the leader which was odd to the assassin, why didn't he or she attack with the crew? If the leader was present in at least one of the battlefields he or she would've meant the difference between victory and defeat... Maybe this Yellow guy wasn't that good of a fighter, that would've explained everything.</p><p>"Well, you've come" a seductive feminine voice alerted Hisako of her challenger sitting on top of a stack of cargo containers, playfully dangling her legs and smiling with her blood red-dyed lips and greasy purple hair. She looked like a countryside whore with a fancy ninja jumpsuit. If it was Hisako's guess the bitch must've looted it from some kunoichi, no way she was worth the reward which would've been needed to make such a fancy piece of attire, maybe it was worth snagging from her dead body...</p><p>"Wow, it's like you're a fucking detective or something... How did you guess, I'm fucking stumped! May as well give the fuck up, no way I'll beat Mrs. Perception over fucking here..." Hisako snapped back at the woman. It was clear that her snark hit the mark.</p><p>The woman leaped down and swung her whip around preparing to lash out at the assassin. "So you're the witty tongued one, you talk a mean talk for a bitch who couldn't catch up to me earlier, even the idiot dressed as a magician caught up no problem... Isn't it a bit too early for you to get old? I guess you are how you feel..."</p><p>"You know fucking what? I'll strangle you with your own fucking whip, how'd you even get to "Last Boss" status anyways, did you fuck that other cat-guy? You look alike..." Hisako angrily snapped back taking a fighting stance and preparing her blades for a fight.</p><p>"You bitch!" finally the whip-wielding cat-lady with those stupid cat ears dropped her sultry façade and got angry, maybe she'll make a mistake or something... "He's my fucking brother!"</p><p>"Yeah, he may have said something like that... Didn't listen to him much, he's hot but I don't fuck much with airheads and I don't listen to people I don't plan to fuck or kill in the future and guess what, I'm not a lesbian!" Hisako smiled leaning back for a charge, intending to settle the fight with a single swipe.</p>
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<a name="section0090"><h2>90. Moonlight And Roses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a brief moment, the entire room where Mana faced off against the Inuzuka was completely silent and the two remained perfectly still. While Mana was afraid, somewhere, on a very deep level, she didn't let it affect her too much. The fear she felt was not the kind one always naturally felt when a battle was about to break out, this was not the natural threat of death. That was inevitable when one decided to fight someone. This felt more like a test the likes of which the girl had never had yet.</p><p>Mana was a little bit tired, she didn't have much sleep those couple of last days, she also faced off against Hisako and Hachi, also she had that nasty brief run-in with the black jumpsuit wearing purple-haired woman with that peculiar whip. While the injuries from the first battle were healed by her medical food pill and those from the second one were taken care of by brief rest and Eiju's best medical ninja efforts, the third one still gave her some weight to trip over. The injuries from those battles were patched a long time ago and her natural ninja metabolism was quickly patching them up every second the girl was not engaged in the exhausting use of chakra manipulation, that being said, they still ached and kept her down.</p><p>The knowledge that Mana was not at her best wouldn't have been nearly as frightening if this young man wouldn't be, at least according to Hisako, her natural counter. The three exchanged information before coming here, they were formulating complex strategies and battle plans only for it all to go to waste after they fell for this strange game.</p><p>The enemy completely dictated the rules, even if she would've gotten the upper hand, what could've stopped the Inuzuka boy from just activating the seals that'd kill the boy anyway? This was the worst situation there could've been, greater ninja died in such scenarios than Mana.</p><p>"It is a custom for ninja to exchange names when they face off in a fair one on one fight, it is so that once one of them survives they can spread the tale of the other and if the other becomes someone special, his opponent. If they survive, can brag about having faced that person in battle. I am Inuzuka Noji and this lovely doggy here is Sunomaru. We fight as one, as do all Inuzuka clansmen, as a Konoha ninja you should know that, my kind hails from the village, so don't feel like this is unfair that we're taking you on two-on-one."</p><p>Mana remained silent for a moment, just trying to stare her opponent down. Her wounded and cut up lips then gently moved.</p><p>"I'll give you one chance to back away, one last chance to leave, I am no longer the girl who left the village several days back, I no longer hold back. If you decide to do this I will cause harm to you, as much as possible but not enough to kill. You may not enjoy your life after facing me but that pain will be on you. I am Nakotsumi Mana and I am the one who will beat you to save that child, that is the only reason we are here and I don't care if you walk away from this. Capturing rogue ninja does not interest me."</p><p>Noji's body blurred, Mana knew what it meant, this boy moved so fast that he left an afterimage but this was no longer the Konoha's Sorceress who played around. The magician's thigh lifted up to block the entire barrage of blows tossed at her using her feet while keeping the Inuzuka at her leg's reach.</p><p>This was an efficient strategy, she didn't let him get too close, always kept kicking at his blindspots, and kept Noji at her foot's reach. It was then that the dog joined in on the offensive. Mana started dashing back, giving space. She skipped a couple of punches, the dog's teeth went dangerously close to her chest and neck a couple of times and tore several holes in Eiju's coat which the magician still wore.</p><p>Mana huffed heavily after their exchange of blows ended, this was hopeless, this young man was leagues ahead in terms of hand to hand combat while keeping him at leg's length was a pretty good way to go the dog joining in changed it, Mana couldn't keep up with both of them and had to lower her legs for balance, she had to move around and for that to happen she couldn't kick around. It was either stand in place and let the dog maul her, or move around until she runs out of breath and let the Inuzuka deepen his advantage.</p><p>A powerful shock of pain emanated through Mana's chest, the girl coughed and fell on her knee, several drops of blood dripped from her mouth. Mana shook in pain and stood back up. So this was the "Chakra Absorption Technique"? The girl had heard plenty about it in the Academy, it was a very well-known and somewhat common technique among hand to hand experts, it wasn't too great on higher levels because it required its own style, in order to sip one's chakra at the relevant amount one needed to make full palm contact, in other words, the more of one's arm contacts the opponent's body the more chakra was taken.</p><p>This was bad, the outcome of this battle was inevitable, even the way things were Mana would run out of breath, she'd tire and get completely sapped of any semblance of her chakra within several dozens of brief contacts like this, even worse, chakra was her life-force also, the more this teen would absorb out of her the more her body would break down like this. In the most extreme cases, she would barely be able to move which meant he could easily come in for the kill.</p><p>Mana's arm went into her pocket, quickly she pulled a card and tossed it at the Inuzuka, she wasn't fast enough and the boy just leaned to the side smiling. He saw that it was a desperation move. This was bad, without her uniform Mana couldn't utilize the card holsters, she couldn't use her dispenser devices – she was just a kid reaching into her pockets to pull out tools, that was significantly less tricky and much slower. While Mana's uniform was called out to look very impractical and stupid it was another weapon of hers, it didn't matter that it was very tight and hard to move in, it had a bunch of card holsters, hidden pockets, small switches to shoot cards out from her sleeves, etc.</p><p>The card Mana tossed emitted a loud beeping sound and then a loud pop came out of it. Transparent gas started emanating from it and the Inuzuka grabbed his nose shouting in pain, his dog started howling and rubbing his nose with his little paws. While it was spectacularly cute and Mana was barely restricting herself from shrieking she had to treat that dog as an enemy. It was large and able to kill her with a single bite.</p><p>Without wasting any movements Mana leaned forward and dashed at her opponent, Noji's arms lit up with the same blue flame that signaled that he activated his "Chakra Absorption Jutsu" but Mana knew that as an Inuzuka he was impaired and his dog was completely disabled. The girl caught his punch in between her powerful thighs and leaped over him flipping over the boy's shoulders behind him.</p><p>Something snapped and Noji yelled out loud in overwhelming pain. Mana's arm shot forward to keep her from bashing into the steel floor face first and her legs started working on Noji's back sending him tumbling forward. After that the girl simply swiped at the dog who was still writhing, augmenting her lower body strength to send the dog into a bunch of crates further away.</p><p>Mana jumped back at her feet and caught her breath, this was an impressive attack but it was unlikely it'd work again. The Inuzuka smell was impressive, it was many times superior to that of a normal man or even of a ninja, it was approaching that of a canine and the senses of an Inuzuka dog was even beyond that of a normal canine. Inuzuka were unmatched in terms of their smell and that served as both their strength and their weakness.</p><p>"What the hell was that!?" Noji grunted, shouting as if he was in a loud room despite the fact it was dead-silent.</p><p>"It's a smell-card. I use it when I fake my own death, it's usually used in my magic shows." Mana humbled her opponent by responding to his attempts to get her talking for the simple reason of needing to take a breather, she just performed a pretty impressive movement for someone who wasn't known for their physical prowess.</p><p>"Shit, I guess I should stop taking you lightly..." Noji cursed, his face suggested that he was really serious and he looked to the side looking at his dog trying to get up and walk away from all the wooden pieces of the boxes he slammed into. The Inuzuka leaned forward and stood on all fours, chakra started flowing from him erupting from the teen's body and forming an aura like burst around his body, it was wild and powerful. Mana didn't like it one bit.</p><p>"Come on, Sunomaru, get out of there!" Noji yelled at his dog who was still inside the boxes, then the dog yelped and walked out covered in purple goo, the canine shook frantically getting the strong hitting perfume off of him.</p><p>"What the...!?" Noji suddenly broke out of his stance and covered his nose again, wildly scratching at the point on the back of his head as the powerful smell sensations took his body over.</p><p>"Shit, Suno, you hit the fucking perfume supply! Goddang it, go find somewhere to wash yourself, I can't sync with you like this!" Noji complained yelling at his beloved dog who just barked with a small speck of guilt in his reaction. The intelligence of those Inuzuka dogs was really something else! They could easily understand human speech and respond to commands as the dog quickly ran off somewhere leaving Mana alone with Noji and finally giving her a chance for once.</p><p>The girl didn't even have time to get serious as Noji leaned forward again and resumed his strange chakra concentration technique. His voice got more feral and rough again, reminding much more of a wild growling dog, a large one.</p><p>"Don't think you stand a chance just because you lucked out!" the young man growled out at Mana. He reached for his back pocket, Mana tried to intercept him with a quick draw from her upper left pocket which contained the simple steel-tipped projectile cards but she was once again too slow – this coat was making it all so slow!</p><p>The young man popped a smoke bomb and soon a dark cloud started to cover the entire area. It wasn't poisonous as poisonous clouds all had a clear purple shade to them for some reason. It didn't really make sense for all poisonous clouds to be purple but they were, as someone who didn't even dabble at the medical ninja arts and had little knowledge with poisons Mana didn't dig too deep into it but it was just common knowledge and taught in the Academy. The cloud dissipated at the point where Noji was only to reveal him activating some sort of technique.</p><p>"Four Legs Technique!" Noji growled as the smoke once again covered him. Mana placed her projectile back into her pocket as there was no way she'd hit anything with this smoke all around, fighting in an enclosed space made smoke bombs just that more powerful.</p><p>Mana hunched over and flew backward from the force of Noji's impact, once again the pain in her chest pulsed all over her body as her chakra was torn from the girl's body and absorbed by the Inuzuka. This was bad. This technique that the young man activated made him incredibly fast and dangerous, it was like chakra augmentation of one's speed and strength without the actual downsides. It was all just because of his clan heritage!</p><p>Mana felt a sharp pain in her back, by the time her body recovered from the last hit she managed to augment her endurance but she couldn't believe how fast and strong this Inuzuka was. He was completely dominating her in close quarters by closing her vision while he could easily keep track of her by smelling her in the smoke.</p><p>Noji continued to kick the girl around, his single kick sent her to the other side of the room making Mana hit the steel walls with such force that her body bounced off of them but the Inuzuka was fast enough to already be there for the follow-up kick, he was just playing around kicking Mana all over the place.</p><p>With each hit the magician had to re-augment her body because each hit absorbed the chakra she spent augmenting it, it was incredibly dangerous to use chakra augmentation against an absorption technique user because they were able to absorb not only the amount of chakra they usually absorbed through contact but also an excess of chakra one spent to augment their technique.</p><p>In a blinding blitz the Inuzuka continued to juggle Mana in the air before growing bored and kicking her up, Mana ran out of augmentation and she felt a powerful blow from the man's elbow to her back. She screamed in pain as her powerless body flew right down but before she hit the floor the Inuzuka's knee dug deep into Mana's gut almost making her throw up. The only thing that kept her from dying instantly after that final hit was her pathetic attempt to re-augment her body again.</p><p>With another weak kick, the Inuzuka sent Mana to the other side of the room, rolling on the steel floor pathetically. She stood no chance. Still, the thought of a boy trapped in a cage of hardened glass and stuffed into a container with acid all around him with no hopes of escape motivated the magician, it gave her strength to stand back up and fight. Mana's shaking arms got her body back up, the smoke started to clear, finding even the smallest crevices and vents to dissipate into.</p><p>"Just know, Mana, that I take no pleasure from this. I only fight to regain the chakra I lost previously and because Yellow told me to. It hurts my heart to kill you, it really does but it's either you or Sunomaru..." the young man growled back at Mana, the girl reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. She wasn't about to honor this man with a reply or pity him, he chose this fight, she would fight until she either ended it or died trying. This was Mana's new way, protection of those she loved by beating the enemy but never crossing the sacred line.</p><p>A loud bark from behind her froze the girl's heart in her chest – the dog was back and he must've not smelled so much because Noji smiled and welcomed the canine back to his side. Mana's arms flashed through a bunch of seals, still clenching that card in her hand so hard that the steel edges cut into Mana's own delicate childish hand sending a couple of drops of blood down her hand.</p><p>"Just give up, let me take what's left of your chakra and I'll kill you fast, you won't have to suffer any more than it is needed. Sunomaru is a born hunter and he can end it fast, just one bite and it'll be over." Noji asked her, no, he almost begged Mana to give up, looking right into her eyes. His eyes were kind, they were genuine and it was clear that this Noji was a very kind man, had Mana been who she was before she'd have completely shut down, just like she did with Sugemi... No more.</p><p>Mana would no longer make it easy for her enemies by talking to them, by letting them hurt her and by extension her friends. Her friends would no longer have to fight the battles that the magician lost because she was too scared to injure her opponent too much or just too scared of her own strength in general. This was the time she proved that she had grown, that she not only became stronger but also that she was ready to fight the hard battles.</p><p>"Look, I know you don't want to give up but this is just cruel, Yellow has the supply of perfume that cures Suno's sickness, he was born with a disease that needs a really hard to get herb, they're no longer even selling that herb. It's only found in that one kind of perfume which Yellow has and I need it, I need it to keep Suno alive because he's all that I have left! Please, don't suffer anymore and just give up, you fought bravely, you've done all you could and stood up to an opponent you had no hopes of beating but... Come on..."</p><p>Sunomaru barked, he wasn't angry, it was a bark of agreement to what his master said, it was strange, Mana couldn't remember the last time she fought a battle like this, a battle in which her opponent was not her enemy, who didn't want her to suffer and die.</p><p>This was not a conflict between a good person and a bad person, this was a conflict between a person who needed to save one person and another who wanted to save his friend, his soulmate. Hisako was right, Noji was Mana's natural counter but not because of his skill set, it was because he was a genuinely good person. The Mana whom Hisako thought she was would've never fought such a person and died needlessly. Hisako must've counted on that, it must've been the assassin's plan all along...</p><p>Mana's arm moved up, her steel-tipped card still being held firm. Slowly the girl moved her arm right up to her throat and swiftly pulled the card. Blood exploded all over the cellar, splashing all over Noji's face and spoiling Sunomaru's snow-white fur. It was almost like a petal storm of roses all over a field of daisies. Noji just kept standing still, completely dazed and still struggling to believe it.</p><p>Mana slit her own throat and collapsed on the floor.</p>
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<a name="section0091"><h2>91. The Lion And The Lamb</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a loud thundering roar of battle, Roe charged at Kiyomi, this was a completely different approach coming from the Nekomata. The hunter was now treating this fight less like a hunt and more like an actual duel, he didn't want to simply plunge his knife into the Yamanaka's heart, he wanted for fate to determine the more worthy heir to lead each of their clans. It may have seemed odd that Roe was so determined to best an heir of a clan completely different from his own but this Roe guy seemed to be all about pride.</p><p>After leaning back to avoid Roe's quick swipe, Kiyomi threw a quick jab at the man's jaw, she was terrified to see that the jab barely even fazed him at all and the cat-hobo continued to throw knife swipes at her. First, his knife holding hand moved back, trying to rip out a good chunk of the girl's flesh but Kiyomi's arm was already back on the defensive and she managed to duck under his swipe, throwing a combination of blows at the man's gut, all of them were absorbed by his powerful body. Suddenly the man bolted back like he had seen his own death or something.</p><p>For the first couple of moments, Kiyomi had no idea as to what exactly may have scared the man but then she noticed strands of her blonde hair slipping carelessly onto the ground like petals of a flower hit by a strong spring breeze. The Yamanaka smiled, now she'll have some of her hair on the ground ready to unleash her secret clan technique. All she needed was to catch this man unprepared... The bad news was that Roe also seemed to be quite familiar with this technique since it was used on him previously.</p><p>One thing Kiyomi wasn't a fan of was their environment, they were located in a steel basement which completely disabled any of her attempts to use Earth Release techniques. She couldn't submerge underground, she couldn't even fling boulders at the big guy which proved to be so successful the last time. Kiyomi gently giggled, "Punching you hurts me more than it seems to hurt you, I thought after hitting you with a boulder I'd have softened you up a bit..." she tried to taunt the man.</p><p>"If I fail this assignment Yellow will have my sister's head. Like a good sibling, I must protect her!" Roe charged forward swiping with his gigantic knife. That explanation of Roe's determination stunned Kiyomi, she dodged the first swipe but then the man's knee dug deep into her nose. While the girl managed to augment her abilities so that her skull wasn't crushed with that single kick she was still thrown back, just barely did Kiyomi manage to roll around and pick her body back up off the ground.</p><p>"This guy is just like Kenji... He's just trying to protect his little sister... Shit... I need to get my mind into it, I'm having a hard enough time as it is!" the blonde started scolding herself and trying desperately to get over the realization that she may have been fighting a representation of what her most beloved and admired person in the world may have been like.</p><p>"If I kill him, will I then be just like those thugs that killed Kenji? Will I make life as tough for his sister as those rogues made it for me?!" she wondered without noticing that Roe was already behind her and with a powerful horizontal kick to the girl's back he sent Kiyomi tumbling forward.</p><p>The Yamanaka coughed, she stood up all shaking and afraid to fight. Was it always like this for Mana? When one viewed all of your opponents as someone one didn't want to fight? When you want none of this violence. When all of it brings back this sickening feeling inside you that you'd want to puke if you landed another punch? Poor girl... No. She wasn't poor, she was stupid, she wasn't fit for battle, no one feeling like this was fitting for battle.</p><p>Kiyomi's hands went through a bunch of handseals, she just barely made them go correctly, just barely she managed to not mess them up. Her chakra had already taken a huge hit after protecting her from instant death that each of Roe's crushing blows would've delivered. Kiyomi had no more chakra to waste.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi yelled out shooting a powerful and invisible blast of wind at Roe. The man's body flickered, he then appeared right before Kiyomi holding his knife up and ready to impale her on it when the wall of wind hit the man head-on and sent him crashing into a bunch of boxes.</p><p>The blonde staggered back and placed her back right at the ladder to the upper floor, taking a moment to look up. How was Mana doing? Was she OK? Of all places, Kiyomi wanted to be there the least. Fighting someone who reminded her of Kenji so much was so difficult that she was almost ready and more willing to die than cause more harm to this man who was a living memory of her brother.</p><p>"Let's stop this, there's no use in fighting further for the two of us, you just want to protect your sister and I can help you with that..." Kiyomi yelled, then a strong smell of flowers caught her nose, the girl tried to move out of where she was but a strong elbow slam pinned her to the steel wall and lifted her in the air, trying to smother the life out of her. Roe was just so fast! The man growled with his cat-like fangs right up in Kiyomi's face.</p><p>"It is true that my sister is the reason why Yellow even got me serving him. But the real reason I'm fighting you is that you hurt my pride, the pride of an undefeated Nekomata heir. My sister's life will be saved by the same action that will satisfy my pride – your death and your head on my belt." Roe almost whispered right into Kiyomi's face.</p><p>"Normally I'd say... Ewww for your breath... But... Are those tulips that I smell? Did you get perfume spilled on you?" Kiyomi taunted the cat-hobo who was covered with some strange purple goo from those boxes and hat shards of glass all over his muscular frame. The Yamanaka then lifted her feet and kicked at two shards digging them deeper into the cat-man's chest making him let her go and roar out loud in pain. The heiress took a couple of seconds to roll to the side and catch her breath.</p><p>"No. He's nothing like Kenji, Kenji only cared about his village and his family, he never let personal feelings get involved in it all. This man is all about pride, he is a lot of things but Kenji he is not! I'll just have to try not to kill him, I don't need this sibling vendetta on my consciousness..." the girl thought to herself coughing out and standing back straight.</p><p>Roe slammed his arms together, "Nekomata Clan Secret Technique: Roar of the Prideland!"</p><p>Kiyomi was blown back almost instantly by some invisible force, it was like the man's voice got multiplied a thousand times and made into some strange ring of pure force that ground and threw objects around. Once again Kiyomi felt her chakra taking a huge dip. She's been abusing chakra augmentation but there was no other choice here – any single of these blows would've killed not only a normal person but it'd have been enough to level a mountain. As the shockwave of Roe's roar passed through casual objects it completely ground them to dust, not even a single shard of wood remained – the shockwave completely disintegrated everything by its intensity.</p><p>Kiyomi felt warm drops of blood running down her ears, she got back on her knees and then back on her feet. The girl looked around – the entire room was demolished, there were absolutely no objects to substitute with, even the steel was completely wrecked, the whole room was bent up and just barely holding together – the shockwave must've run out of its own range, otherwise it'd have demolished the entire room and buried both of them beneath the upper floor. This Roe guy was a madman, he was ready to destroy everything just because he felt prideful.</p><p>Kiyomi's arms went through a bunch of handseals, she noticed that Roe slipped into the shadows again trying to hunt her down again but this time she'd be ready. This time the cat-hobo was all covered in perfume, this time Kiyomi knew of his abilities and she'd be ready for him. With a tap of her knuckle the Yamanaka set off a genjutsu, Roe leaped at her but his body stopped suddenly, he then just fell down on the floor straight, the girl went through even more handseals but then her jutsu failed, no, the blonde stopped it in time – she was running out of chakra slowly, she needed a breather.</p><p>"You changed the appearance of the room using your genjutsu, making me believe that I was charging at a steel wall when actually it was just you... Stop postponing the inevitable, either fight me or die proudly!" he shouted out reaching for the loops of some wires. The cat-man pulled on them setting off an excessive trap. Kiyomi did her best to move backward, to try and navigate so that she didn't get caught but it appeared like this whole place was set up to become some sort of intricate spider web when those two loops were pulled.</p><p>The girl felt tight steel wire wrapping around her wrists, her elbows and her shoulders, her body, thighs, and the lower leg all the way to her feet. Just barely the Yamanaka heiress managed to avoid having one loop tie around her neck, if it did, this man could've beheaded her with a single pull on the right strings.</p><p>"Remember? Last time you caught me in a trap just like this, I prepared this specifically for you." Roe's fangs ground together angrily and his peculiar whiskers moved up and down as he exclaimed what he thought was his victory speech.</p><p>"Awww, you shouldn't have." Kiyomi tried to keep the talk going so that she found at least one way to escape this tight spot without losing any limbs or dying.</p><p>"Normally I'd just stab you through the heart and end this, maybe bite through your neck but... You beat me, you crushed me and insulted my pride!" Roe charged forward bashing into Kiyomi's body with his shoulder. The girl screamed out from the depths of her lungs as the steel wire dug deeper into her body.</p><p>She heard the horrible sound of steel being pulled from its sheath but this fool had already made his mistake – he messed with his own trap by bashing Kiyomi in it, he may have opened a bunch of wounds bursting with blood but... That was what Kiyomi was trying to avoid, now that he did it she was ready to just struggle a bit and pull out from there.</p><p>Roe's fists flew freely, he kept punching at Kiyomi's side and the girl kept augmenting her chakra to keep herself alive. A single free punch could've destroyed her, a single punch would have just killed her instantly and sent a shockwave through her body strong enough to grind her bones to dust. This man wasn't playing around. Kiyomi kept on screaming and taking all of his punches but then it happened – one of her hands got free, the steel tore off a nasty chunk of her flesh, and opened a pretty bad wound but it let Kiyomi pull out her knife and swipe at the man.</p><p>With a click of his fangs, he broke the kunai into shards of steel. Kiyomi didn't stop, she roared in pain and pulled her legs and the remaining arm out getting cut up and injured and swept at the man's legs after landing taking him down for a moment while she ran to the corner to examine the extent of her wounds.</p><p>Kiyomi disappeared in the same shadows where Roe used to hide. She was hiding, trembling, and just barely restraining her weeping from how much her whole body hurt from that nasty trap. The worst part was that Quack was tired out, he won't be able to heal all this... Darn it, Kiyomi needed to win this, she needed to win this fast and go help Mana, the hatchling depended on her, she looked up to Kiyomi, and the blonde needed to live up to that trust.</p><p>"There you are!" Roe's thundering voice echoed as his figure leaped out from the darkness, Kiyomi had sensed him coming, he still couldn't get rid of the smell, the area was so dark that the Yamanaka was only able to barely distinguish the hunter once he got very close up to her. Then again, it was quite likely that it was the same with the Nekomata member. That gave the blonde an idea, she avoided the swipe of Roe's knife by observing the steel as it reflected the faint rays of light emanating from the other side of the room, Kiyomi rolled under Roe's feet and then disappeared again.</p><p>"Stop hiding! Darkness is my weapon!" Roe roared out. Two punches into his lower legs sent him on his knees, two swipes from Kiyomi's kunai left gashes on his back. A flip over his head followed by a double kick right to his face made the man roar in anger. Kiyomi couldn't believe this was working, she was tired and in the process of bleeding out yet, she somehow managed to find out that the man's greatest strength was also his greatest weakness, after all – who hunts the hunter? Finding out stealthy opponents was really not his strongest suit.</p><p>Suddenly an iron grip locked around Kiyomi's throat just before she could knock Roe out with the back of her knife. The man's face remained looking somewhere else, it was just his arm working completely independently yet so incredibly precisely! Kiyomi moaned pathetically as her body was effortlessly lifted up in the air and she felt air starting to leave her body, she tried to jerk around, struggle, kick the man a couple of times but it didn't work.</p><p>"Did you really think that I couldn't see in the dark? I fucking fight in the dark you stupid bitch! Which part of "cat-like physiology" was so hard for your little brain so hard to understand?" Roe roared moving Kiyomi's face, still gasping for at least a little breath of air closer to his own. He then laughed out.</p><p>"No, not like this, you'll suffer more, you injured my pride, you won't die enjoying yourself like this!" Roe shouted out tossing the blonde aside into the light.</p><p>"We'll play the same game we played last time! You look around, desperately try to find me, and fail! My knife plunges one organ after another until you give up and die!" Roe's voice came from somewhere in the darkness. "Last time was just a fluke, I'll prove it to you, I am the world's strongest hunter! No one can find me when I don't want to be found!" the man's voice kept echoing.</p><p>Kiyomi coughed up and stood back up, she saw blood dripping from various wounds all over her body from that stupid trap. This was so close! She was just about to stab his eye out! The blonde still clenched that kunai in her hand, she got caught completely unprepared but she managed to get her kunai ready to poke the cat-man's eye out before he decided to kill her differently... If only he behaved in a logical manner and proceeded to try and choke her out. His illogical behavior was making it pretty hard to plan all of this.</p><p>There it was! The dreaded smell of tulips, Kiyomi turned around and flipped back to avoid the knife. Silence once again took over the room, she knew this game – he'll tire her out, either that or she'll bleed out. No part of this game was going her way so she had to change the rules.</p><p>Kiyomi felt up her own chakra, tried getting the general feeling of just how much she had in her, just how much more fighting she could take. It wasn't that much, she had it for several more techniques, maybe a couple of augmentations too but that would be pushing it... She'd need to conserve some chakra on that augmentation, maybe augment a little bit less, it was a really big risk but it was a necessary one.</p><p>Kiyomi staggered back avoiding another slash. The man's body flickered and disappeared again, he moved much faster than the girl's perceptive ninja eye could see. He must've been one of the most amazing ninja the girl had ever seen and yet Hanasaku could've taken care of this joker so easily.</p><p>"Just do it how Hanasaku would. Take the hit – hit him back harder... I'll just augment my body, just in case..." Kiyomi thought to herself right before the figure of the cat-hobo appeared from the darkness charging in with his knife up and ready to cut through the Yamanaka. Kiyomi felt chakra bursting, surging through her creating an invisible armor to protect her from things that'd kill her normally and she raised her arm like a shield, with a little luck the man's stab would pass right through the augmented arm and hit the floor opening him up for a finishing blow, a stab to the neck should do it!</p><p>A loud flesh piercing sound echoed and a burst of blood shot out all over Kiyomi's face. For a moment the girl just stood there and looked at the gruesome sight of her hand being easily penetrated by her assailant's knife. It was then that the overwhelming pain hit her and Kiyomi screamed in an inhuman-like voice throwing a mad kick to get the cat-man further away from her. The pierced arm shook wildly, blood was squirting from it and Kiyomi didn't care about standing there and fighting, she was bolting, retreating into the darkness to tie something around that arm.</p><p>Roe stabbed so hard he cut through her chakra augmentation! How could've she been so stupid!? Reserving chakra on something as integral as toughening her arm up... Right as Kiyomi tore the shoulder off of her top and started wrapping it around her arm she begged whatever forces there may have been overseeing this battle that this mistake would not be her final one.</p><p>"Yeah, that's right, run. Run. Run, little lamb!" Roe's annoying voice echoed all through the darker parts of the room once again, Kiyomi knew he was coming for her soon and she had to be ready for him, she had to get ready for him!</p>
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<a name="section0092"><h2>92. A Bell Which No One Heard</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It didn't take long before the whip-wielding Nekomata youth named Cony started her offense. The woman winded her whip around and smacked it at Hisako's location. The raven-haired swordswoman didn't wait around, she decided to utilize the time that it took for Cony to wind up her whip and before it made a full circle and to gut the young woman before it happened.</p><p>It was a good plan, normally the whip user would've had the advantage of long-range on Hisako but Hisako could still utilize her speed right? Kill her enemy before they could press on that advantage. This cat-lady must've had some impressive abilities to rough the magician kid up, after all, Hisako always knew that Mana had it in her to be a pretty powerful ninja.</p><p>The main reason why the Yoruma thought like that was because of the magician's skillset. She just used the least normal and the weirdest ninja arts: ninjutsu and genjutsu. Ninjutsu techniques were some of the most destructive ninja arts utilizing chakra to perform supernatural larger than life abilities. Most of the ninja considered the best by today's standards were also ninjutsu experts at least on some level.</p><p>The other one was equally as tricky. The girl used illusions which was an exceptionally annoying but also a complex subject. No one knew that well about it, everyone just knew what was passed on by their ancestors but few bothered to delve too deep into the art of illusions, there were some Jounin who focused in it but their illusions were just meant to be distractions for their main techniques. No one used it as their main skill quite like Mana.</p><p>As much as Hisako hated Mana, she acknowledged that the kid would one day make an exceptional or, at the very least, very annoying to deal with ninja. For that reason, anyone who could inflict those injuries onto the girl deserved at least Hisako's actual effort to gut them for having earned that amount of skill.</p><p>A peal of brief sultry laughter broke Hisako's mad dash, the girl felt pressure on her feet and suddenly a blunt shock on her head – she was tripped. Hisako looked down glaring at the whip and seeing a knot tied around the Yoruma swordswoman's leg. The raven-head decided to cut at the whip but with a strong yank to the sidewall, the effort was interrupted. Hisako just couldn't get a mean enough swing, her half-assed swings seemed to bounce off of whatever that whip was. It wasn't ordinary leather that much was for sure.</p><p>"I really wish I could bash you more and more but... Sadly you seem to have eaten one too many butter cookies." Cony playfully taunted the Yoruma. It was a big mistake to taunt a Yoruma, those people only knew hatred and violence, taunting only made them delve even deeper into their own insanity.</p><p>Cony moved to the side and grunted in surprise and shock – a knife dug deep into the steel wall. A knife of exquisite Yoruma bladework, thrown using the unnatural strength of an assassin.</p><p>Cony looked back at Hisako trying to find her opponent but the black-haired woman was already gone from the loop, she was leaping all over the place, her body was just a blur and her continuous leaps were just distractions. She moved at such inhuman speeds that her body wasn't even visible, only loud clangs and thuds on the wooden boxes and the solid steel structure alerted to Hisako's movement.</p><p>"My father used to say..." Hisako's voice echoed ominously from multiple areas in the room, while she finished that brief sentence she managed to move all over the room making her words more ghostly but also much clearer.</p><p>"It's not how you throw, it's how you stab and twist!" Hisako's body blurred and flashed up to Cony finally confusing the woman with her upwards thrust of the two blades that the raven-haired woman wielded. Her leather jacket tensed and emitted the most awkward grungy squeak from the pressure.</p><p>While the whip-wielding rogue managed to avoid the impaling double thrust, Hisako's foot followed almost instantly digging itself deep into Cony's stomach and sending the woman back into a bunch of boxes, the woman's body bounced off from one box to the other before painfully bashing into a wall and then back on some of the boxes she fell on. Hisako leaped forward driving her shoe down to slam Cony and crush her into the box and whatever was in it.</p><p>After a deafening thud, the swordswoman fell into a bunch of bottles and flasks, most of them got crushed and instantly Hisako felt being submerged in some sort of sticky purple fluid. It smelled... Weird... To a trained Yoruma assassin only the most normal things like flowers and pies felt weird and unnatural. This goo was... Perfume? Why would these rogues have an entire basement loaded with this purple goo?</p><p>They kidnapped this kid, this perfume tycoon's heir but they already had an entire basement filled with perfume shipments. Something here felt off, Hisako's mind started wandering away from the fight, trying to desperately put together what could've happened there.</p><p>The woman heard something loud and screechy, Hisako tried to leap outside that horrible mixture of glass and perfume but the explosion sent her body blasting off from one side of the room to the other. Cony must've avoided Hisako's stomp and then moved in back to having the tall ground advantage as well as being able to just attack the assassin with her projectiles.</p><p>"You know..." Cony laughed looking at Hisako standing up and tearing the burning and torn leather jacket off of her body, looking back at the rogue with the furious stare coming from a face covered with blood from cracking her head into the steel floor and perfume.</p><p>"You don't really strike me as an assassin. I mean looking at your weirdly dark shade of hair, those scars on your face, and those clan tattoos on your face and cleavage... You're Yoruma, huh? Anyone could recognize your foul stench. Strangely clear and exotic hair color, clan tattoos, and love of scars. There's a reason why people treat you like dirt. Because you treat all life as dirt. Right now you threaten the life of me and my brother and I'm having trouble deciding if I want to kill a Yoruma shitstain or a woman whom I was ordered to kill by a man holding my beloved brother ransom, forgive me if my feelings confuse you, Yoruma. Emotions are something only a human would understand, not a Yoruma trash like you."</p><p>Hisako's body was shaking with sheer rage. "I'm not an assassin. Assassin is just a word for simple-minded fools who fall by our blades to call us!" Hisako lashed out straight out shouting her words.</p><p>The woman's body flashed forward, no more distractions, no more leaps, or anything silly like that. Her body was injured by the explosion, she had multiple broken ribs and several burns. The glass of those perfume bottles cut Hisako up pretty nastily when the assassin just tried to use her senseless aggression to kill Cony. None of those things mattered. Yoruma were rage, pure desire to kill. Mere pain was one level below that.</p><p>Hisako's leg swept at Cony's before the woman even noticed Hisako having moved a finger. "I am a murderer," The Yoruma's leg then kicked Cony upwards bashing straight into the ceiling of the lower floor with utmost ruthlessness and violence "I am a slayer, decapitator, and a ravager,". Hisako's bloodthirsty frame kicked off the ground dashing right at the plummeting opponent and passing through her in mid-air "I desire to kill everyone I see except those I want to fuck with, that is the Yoruma way. The word assassin doesn't fully capture that". A heart freezing scream pierced the temporary silence as a nasty X shaped gash covered Cony's chest, from her groin over her chest and ending by the neck.</p><p>It was far too fast for the woman to even have the time to augment her strength and endurance. Taunting Hisako was something she really shouldn't have done. While in mid-air Hisako pulled two scrolls out of her belt and unsealed them, she attached it to the wiring device that held it with two wires and spun them like one of those spinning toys that the young ones liked to play with trying to see which one would spin the longest.</p><p>"Secret Yoruma Hijutsu: Blooming Petal of Death!" Hisako shouted as just when her body started to land down the rotating scrolls started to fire off automated barrages of weaponry: kunai, shuriken, various small daggers probably meant better for opening letters than killing but all of that fired off all over the basement.</p><p>It was like the woman's whip rose up and formed a protective twister deflecting each and every projectile thrown by Hisako. The assassin kept emptying her supplies, firing off everything she had sealed inside those scrolls, literally thousands of small weapons but all of them just bounced off and fell by the woman's sides. Right when the technique ended and the scrolls together with the detached strings fell off of Hisako's wrists the woman pulled her blades back out throwing them at the circling whirlwind of leathery whiplash.</p><p>The blades bounced off as well flying back at Hisako but the woman caught them in middle air and then with a wild roar dove back down, if she couldn't penetrate this wall with her onslaught of these weapons she accumulated after emptying her wallet in the Yoruma Black Market she'll gut the bitch herself. Personal was always her approach anyway!</p><p>It appeared that Hisako was especially lucky, the woman's skydive back down appeared to time properly with Cony's whip running out of its supernatural juice and falling down the boxes below where Cony could reach. The woman moved to the side skipping just one sword. Hisako's left sword penetrated Cony's side making the woman scream out in pain and spit out some blood into the assassin's eye. Hisako staggered back giving the injured cat-woman some time to drop down for her whip.</p><p>Cony's laughter echoed through the basement, it was this bloody and terrifying combination of fear, pain, and also pride and joy. It was clear that the woman was injured, probably close to dying, and in a lot of pain but she also felt really proud of something even while being afraid to die at the same time.</p><p>"So this was my mother's will then?" Cony's voice echoed.</p><p>Hisako cocked her head and cracked her knuckles picking her swords back up and licking the blood off of her sword. The woman always did that, it helped her realize if she was back from her murderous rage. If she cut her tongue that meant she was hyperactive, too jumpy to act straight, still in a rampaging mood. A clean and soft lick without injury meant that Hisako's mind was back to being its bitchy cold self. "The fuck are you on about now? I don't think I stabbed you in a spot where you'd start to get delirious." The assassin asked.</p><p>"This whip is made from my mother's hair. Yellow hired mercs to take me and my brother from my family several months back, those mercenaries separated me and my brother giving us just a couple of final words with our mother, our father was killed after he opened the door. Mother just gave us her hair, she didn't say what it was for or anything but she was a ninja and we felt the chakra in them, then they burned our house down even after her death the hair continued to harden my whip, act like it had a will of its own."</p><p>So that was it? That was why Mana was so busted up then? The dumb kid-idol just couldn't deal with the whip having a mind of its own while also being coated with chakra and completely invulnerable during those moments of free will? If that was all it took the kid was of no challenge to Hisako, not even worth staining the blade of her sword with the kid's blood.</p><p>"I didn't realize it up to now but... Mother's goal was to protect us, it must've been some special seal she placed in them, to not fade before it saved both of our lives. If I died right now Yellow would've killed my brother too because without me he'd have no use for him. Because of that my mother's will inside that seal acted by itself and protected me, now that both I and my brother are safe her soul moved on to the Afterlife. Her lifelong goal of protecting us is complete."</p><p>Hisako laughed out in the most ironic and sarcastic laugh she's ever had and lunged back at where the woman's voice came from. A nasty flesh-tearing sound followed Hisako's flashy assault, the woman managed to augment her chakra right before the blade entered her body making it just inflict a wide but incredibly shallow cut, barely passing the skin. The second cut was blocked by Cony's knife. The woman leaped back dropping several more marbles with explosive notes stuck all over them. Hisako rolled back avoiding the explosion.</p><p>A powerful whiplash hit right into Hisako's jaw from the smoke, then another and another one. The ruthless combination continued before the whip wrapped around the assassin's neck and the rogue ninja slammed her opponent's head into the ground again and dragged her body up close.</p><p>Cony's foot slammed on top of Hisako's head leaving a large dent in the steel floor and making the young woman's body twitch creepily and emit a powerful scream of pure pain. Hisako managed to augment herself to avoid having her neck snapped but Cony continued to stomp on her face. Again and again, until the augmentation could barely even protect Hisako until her nose broke and fired off wild torrents of nosebleeds.</p><p>With a strong backroll Hisako stood back up and then dove forward slashing right at Cony's shoulder, augmentation helped the woman only receive a small cut to what would've been a nasty injury. Cony twisted her whip around once again in a wide circle whipping at the Yoruma's jaw again sending her broken nose into blood spilling overdrive. Another whip hit Hisako straight into her groin. The woman yelled out in agonizing pain and fell on the ground scratching the cheaply placed shot.</p><p>"What's the matter? I didn't know you Yoruma felt pain at all? What was that bullshit about you being all-killers before!?" Cony shouted out in a pathetic voice of an injured and desperate woman who was ready to reach out to dirty shots for survival. The woman swung her whip up in the air aiming straight at the last hit spot.</p><p>"Let's make sure the world sees no more filthy Yoruma babies!" she grunted out before stumbling back in shock. A sword was etched into her gut, one thrown in a desperation move by Hisako.</p><p>"Shit, fuck, cunt, ass... You fucking sodomized pirate whore cunt licker!" Hisako writhed on the floor before picking herself back up off the ground and dashing to her opponent, with a swift movement she pulled the sword out of the woman's gut and then grabbed hold of her whip cutting it in half using her other blade and kicking Cony back to die in agony.</p><p>"I'll suck the cocks of a clusterfuck of dickwhistling dead men before I'll let you win!" Hisako yelled out completely having lost all fucks to give.</p><p>Cony appeared to not even plan to die yet, the woman kept crawling back, leaving a bloody trail for the raven-haired assassin to follow. She must've used chakra augmentation to keep her blood loss contained as much as possible, in the most extreme cases chakra could've been used to prolong one's death but it was rarely ever used that way in battles, it was used as a last effort to receive medical help whereas in this case there was little to no hope.</p><p>Cony's arms raised up and blue flames flared up where her nails were forming long chakra claws. The woman's body burst up with chakra, transparent blue flames of pure chakra started flooding off from her spiking up the woman's hair, straightening and sharpening her whiskers and her cat-like fangs.</p><p>Cony lunged forward, wild red stripes started cutting everything to pieces, Hisako leaped back a couple of dashes looking around. The impossibly fast claw swipes seemed to pick up an object and utterly shred it into the smallest chunks. They appeared to be somewhat random so the assassin barely felt threatened but she had to make sure, the shredding barrage of Cony's chakra claws intensified, the barrages started multiplying and suddenly it started seeming like there were more and more of Cony as if the woman was so fast that she started leaving afterimages.</p><p>Hisako leaped into the midst of that clawing madness and raised her blades up. With a bold right step forward and raising her blades as a wall, Hisako managed to impale Cony onto her swords. The chakra flames went out, Cony was just about to die, her wounds were too numerous and deep even for chakra augmentation to sustain. Hisako dropped Cony's powerless and weeping body on the floor. Tears started gathering in the woman's eyes, her previously seen pride in her mother's final will was now gone after finding just how pointless her mother's sacrifice was.</p><p>"Come on... Tell me how pathetic I am not to welcome death..." Cony started crying in her final moments, "Tell me how inhuman I am to not desire death upon myself!" she tried to scream but she only spat up more blood from her torn stomach.</p><p>"There's nothing inhuman in not wanting to die. I've never met anyone who wanted to die when I killed them. Death is the ultimate bad ending, it's only normal to hate it, to wish it upon everyone else but you. In some ways, that's where I and the magician-bitch are really fucking similar. We both accept that death is bad, the worst, in fact. I don't know what sort of monsters you imagine Yoruma to be, but even we know that. That is why we kill so much – because death is the worst we can give our enemies and life is the most precious that we can take from them."</p><p>Cony tried to move but she managed to only twitch pathetically. "At least I'll meet my mother in the Afterlife... I just hope Roe makes it..." she uttered.</p><p>"There's no Afterlife, you die – that's it, nothing beyond that. No praise-hungry God to suck his dick off for eternal salvation, no meeting your lost ones. To say that there is something like that is to diminish all that the Yoruma do. To belittle a killer." Hisako picked up Cony's whip and looked at the woman.</p><p>"What are you doing?" Cony cried out in horror after Hisako wrapped the whip's remains around Cony's neck and started applying all of her superhuman pressure, just barely holding herself back from snapping the woman's neck.</p><p>"Being the kind of monster you think I am. Wouldn't like for you to be a liar in your final moments now would we?" Hisako snapped back at Cony angrily and held the pressure before the woman stopped moving, after a powerful press on the whip the leather snapped and so did the woman's neck already after her death.</p><p>"Well, that's demented. Even I wasn't that twisted..." a voice reached Hisako from the back of the basement, it belonged to a short cloaked figure with strings of blonde hair.</p><p>"You fucked up her life by making it a living nightmare, you were a fucking creditor of her fucked up slaving life and if I hate one thing more than being whipped into my genitals that's fucking creditors. At least I had the decency to finish her off, I was just as sick as this world is and not sick enough to be the sick fucker in this room..." Hisako replied pointing her blade at her next challenger – the mysterious dwarf called "Yellow"</p>
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<a name="section0093"><h2>93. A Wolf That Howled Boy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Noji remained standing in total awe, looking at the giant gap in the throat of his opponent and her body weightlessly slamming the ground. The young man didn't move, nothing more but an occasional twitch of a facial muscle. Why would this girl do that? Was she so desperate and finally willing to admit her loss? If she was driven by the honor that'd explain why she'd take her own life before letting Noji do it, no, she was too nice to do something like that. The Inuzuka looked at his partner.</p><p>"Tell me you saw this too, buddy" he mumbled out to which the dog only howled and nodded his head a couple of times.</p><p>"Shit... I'll just never get used to people dying, good people..." Noji quietly started talking to himself under his nose. He looked at the static corpse of his opponent and then back at his beloved dog. He was in a conflict, was all of this worth it? Obviously, Noji was willing to go to any extremes to save Sunomaru – the dog was his soulmate after all, however for how long can he kill? For how long will he be able to justify his actions with necessity? How many dead bodies of children like this girl have to stack until Noji would finally have enough?</p><p>Noji's tirade of self-pity was broken by a loud thud followed by a loud whiny howl of Sunomaru. Much to his horror, the young man turned at his white large canine friend only to witness the magician's sandal slamming on top of the dog's head and driving it to the ground.</p><p>With a gentle backflip, Mana regained and repurposed her balance for a direct assault and lunged at Noji punching him right in the jaw, then again from upwards down, and then with a vertical kick launching the man up into the air. The magician dashed back and prepared a counterattack. Her corpse had disappeared from where it fell, almost like the action of suicide had never transpired at all.</p><p>"No one dies today. Not on my watch." Mana firmly stated gripping her kunai tighter. Noji stood up wiping the blood off of his lip and spitting some to the side, he looked at Sunomaru who appeared to be alright after Mana's attack. He was just knocked out but still breathing heavily, the dog's giant back was lifting up and down repeatedly while the dog was taking large breaths.</p><p>"What was that?" Noji asked still trying to regain his balance since while the magician's punches were pretty puny, her kick really made his vision blur and almost crushed his jaw, the force of it alone was enough to toss him around like a ragdoll.</p><p>"A genjutsu technique, I told you I'm a stage magician remember? The smell card?" Mana smiled slightly through her serious expression. She felt that Noji's voice was warm and almost friendly, it was almost like he felt thankful for something. Like he didn't really want Mana to die and the realization that she was alive was liberating to him somehow.</p><p>"Oh, right... Those handseals you made before and nothing came out, so it was back then that I fell for the illusion... You had a perfect opening to kill me or Sunomaru yet you chose to knock Suno out. You held nothing back, came at me until it was no longer safe to keep going without being countered. You fight with all your strength yet you don't wish to kill... Thanks for not hurting Suno more than you had to." Noji nodded with a warm look. Mana did feel a little conflicted about all of this. She wasn't about to make the mistake of holding back but she felt really bad about fighting these two.</p><p>"I told you – no one dies today if I can help it" the magician firmly repeated. That painful journey through the forest, looking back on her past, her greatest mistakes, and her losses made her grow like she's never grown before. In just those couple of hours, she matured more than the girl had matured ever before. She still felt hesitant inside, still wanted no part of this violence but she felt like honoring her opponent by giving them the fight they asked for – fighting was not her will, not her decision but if her opponent wished it, they'd have brought it on themselves.</p><p>Mana's body twitched, all of her muscles kicked into overdrive and the girl leaned forward with her legs thrusting her forward as fast as she could go without augmenting her body needlessly. Noji tried to grab her, counter her straightforward attack but Mana's body just disappeared, she boosted her speed using chakra augmentation just for a brief moment, let it all flow out but only for one insignificant second. The magician's body blurred leaving only an afterimage which the Inuzuka fell for while the real Mana moved right past and behind him.</p><p>The young man collapsed on his knees after Mana's kick hit him on the soft spot and the back of his legs. Noji took time to stand back up and turn around and Mana made sure to capitalize, he gave her time to wind up and prepare another combination of kicks. She had to go all out, kick him so hard that he passed out, give him all the punishment she could and not stop because this was a precious opening, one he'd not provide in the future. If Noji regained his footing and started dictating his advantage again he'd kill the girl for sure this time. Mana had to keep herself from giving him the chance.</p><p>A crushing kick connected to the side of Noji's jaw. An entire combination of precise kicks collided with his chest, Mana leaped into the air activating her Mystical Wings Jutsu to push her forward, a gust of wind pushed her body diagonally down with a sharp kick to the man's gut grinding him to the floor, bending steel where he was sent down again.</p><p>Mana dashed back, she completed her attack, she could've attacked more, pressed forward but it would've been risky – she was getting winded and without a doubt, Noji would've regained his balance and breath at any time soon. At least the magician was making the Inuzuka work for it a little, the fight stopped being an absolute stomp once the girl took the dog out of the equation.</p><p>"Heh, I'm much faster and stronger than you, as a close-range Chakra Absorption user I also perfectly counter your long-range abilities, even with your long and strong legs in mind... Still, you have a mind of an exceptional ninja, you're tricky, unpredictable, making strategies on the fly each more deep and advanced than the other – that's where you would make your mark on the ninja world if you left this basement..." Noji laughed coughing blood up from his torn and busted stomach. He must've used some sort of chakra augmentation, Mana kicked him to kill knowing full well that he'd do that. If she held back he'd have just tanked that attack and then swatted her aside not giving her a chance to counter – he'd have killed her.</p><p>"That's what my sensei taught me, that's the only thing that makes me unique. I have no clans, no bloodlines, no special abilities beyond just what makes me Konoha's Sorceress – a crafty stage magician who is also a ninja." Mana replied retaining her seriousness. What was this attempt to talk to her? Was he just trying to play the emotional game? After all, big talking was just as effective in a battle when one dominated their opponent, every time Noji reminded Mana how much stronger and faster he was it terrified her a little, just the reminder of how badly this fight could go if Mana ever lost control of it for just one moment.</p><p>"Heh, you know... This kinda makes me dream like a fool, want for both of us to survive this day so that one day I can perhaps return to Konoha and see your show. Seeing how you improvise I dread the excitement of seeing your scripted performance." Noji laughed out as if this battle wasn't a matter of life and death.</p><p>This young man was so different from how Mana imagined a rogue ninja, so different from what she imagined a "bad guy" to be. No, Noji was not a "bad guy" per se. His interest just clashed with hers, he was ordered to take care of her so that his soulmate could live another day. Knowing that situation made Mana sort of feel sorry for the young man.</p><p>How could he have fought this battle? His mind couldn't have been all in this, not after seeing Mana "kill herself" and stressing out. He must've told himself a thousand times that he was ready but, in reality, seeing a young girl die because of his actions woke something up inside of him. Hesitation perhaps, questioning of his actions and his motives. He was tearing himself up from inside, that was why genjutsu sometimes were more effective than given credit for. A right vision may have completely broken an opponent, that being said, Mana had no idea it'd do that, she just needed an opening.</p><p>"I keep having optimistic thoughts like that every time, people make fun of me a lot because of it. If both of us make it out, please come see it sometime, I'll make sure to reserve a seat for you..." Mana replied with a brief smile, for a moment her own eyes faltered, Noji saw it – he knew that the girl realized his internal struggle and somehow that knowledge made it all different. The hands of the young man went through a couple of handseals and the blue transparent flame lit up around his arms. "Chakra Absorption Technique!" Noji chanted out taking his fighting stance.</p><p>The Inuzuka leaned back and then dived forward. "Tunneling Fang!" he shouted as his body started rotating like a drill, the blue flames of pure chakra around his arms dyed this whole impressive horizontal vortex of claws light blue. Noji unleashed himself flying at Mana with his ferocious spinning attack. "Combination Technique: Life Shaving Fang!" a loud howling voice came out from the vortex as it shot right at the magician with blinding speed.</p><p>The girl couldn't even dream of having the speed and agility needed to avoid the technique, it may have moved instantly for all she knew. Having no knowledge of the technique coming, Mana just let it hit her, just barely managing to augment her lower body so that he didn't drill a hole right through the girl.</p><p>It felt like her chakra was just torn out of her, the technique combined the offensive speed of the Inuzuka clan technique and the chakra draining of the Chakra Absorption technique, even more, the technique absorbed not only the chakra it'd have normally sapped but that which the user spent on augmentation – augmenting one's body to survive the attack only made the technique more effective.</p><p>The tunneling vortex of blue claws pushed Mana back and slammed her into a wall. The Inuzuka dashed to her body right as it bounced off of the steel structure and started punching, his punches were weak, he pulled them back but not because he felt sorry – he wanted to drain more chakra out of her. Full powered punches may have damaged organs, broken bones and that'd have reduced her chakra greatly. Now Mana barely felt each individual punch but the total combination left plenty of scratches and internal blunt traumas and drained so much chakra too.</p><p>With an elbow strike Noji let the combination end and then he leaped back, his Chakra Absorption technique timed out and the flames around his arms faded. Striking so ferociously and with such speed must've worn him out since the young man couldn't even move or lift his arm to stay in his fighting position. Mana coughed some blood up and jumped back on her feet – her chakra took a huge dip into nothingness but she had to keep going.</p><p>"Your chakra..." Noji kept breathing and looking at the girl strangely. Mana's hands froze in their handseal forming position. "People's chakra feels different. That of most people is colorless, it has that bland transparent light blue color to it and feels the same as anyone else's. However, some people are different. The chakra of incredibly evil people or people who have witnessed a lot of darkness in their lives is as black as tar, the chakra of people defined by their desire of vengeance, and their rage is blood red. Yours is azure blue... You have something inside you that defines you, makes your chakra feel unique. It really feels good to absorb it, I told you I take no pleasure in taking it but... For a moment there I seemed to have lost myself. You should discover what that means if you live through this day. It might serve as a very interesting and helping you know yourself better discovery"</p><p>So that was it? Noji didn't make a mistake by overextending his attack and leaving himself with a shortage of breath, he lost himself in the strange feeling of Mana's chakra. What he said was interesting, some emotion defined by the color of azure blue defined her, it made her chakra feel different and pleasant to feast on for those that absorb chakra. That was strange, there was nothing special about her chakra besides its color, Mana had known if it had some innate abilities inside of it. Maybe it just told the world just how determined and defined the magician was by that trait that defined her?</p><p>The girl completed her handseals, reaching for her pouch. She pulled out a small explosive marble-shaped package and threw it right at Noji, the boy leaned back and let it fly far to the other side of the room. His attention was distracted by the tiny package and while his eyes were focused on avoiding the explosive package which didn't even detonate yet, the remaining arm of Mana's completed the handseals. Her arms lit up with crackling lightning chakra and she shot her hands forward. "Combination Technique: Explosive Lightning Combo!" she shouted firing off the barrage of small lightning spheres at her opponent.</p><p>Noji covered up his face and his eyes, having winded himself after getting lost in absorbing Mana's chakra pool and taking in too much at one time. Chakra Absorption technique was still a C-Rank technique and while its absorption effect was dangerous and lethal, it had this strange "overfeeding" effect when taking in too much chakra at once. The force and shock behind Mana's lightning spheres bounced and dissolved once reaching Noji, the youth shouted out in pain and struggled to stay still, stumbling back more and more, right into where the package was situated.</p><p>Mana stopped her technique with one arm and detonated the package close to where Noji was – she didn't want to kill him so she didn't drive him back far enough for it to be torn up by the explosion but she led him close enough for it to really hurt him even with chakra augmentation in mind.</p><p>A deafening explosion echoed throwing even Mana off of her feet. Noji's torn up and burnt, also bleeding profusely frame dived out of the cloud of smoke with his arms lit up with the Chakra Absorption Technique. His punches once again overwhelmed Mana, she was down and unable to use her kicks to hold the man at bay. Noji continued to strike, again and again, one of his arms grabbed Mana and lifted her up by the rags of what used to be her uniform before, tossing her up slightly into the air and then unleashing an agonizing combination of draining punches into her lower body. Mana struggled not to pass out, staying conscious hurt too much, her eyes whited out for just a moment. Then a powerful grip around her neck forced the magician to return to reality.</p><p>Noji held her slightly lifted up in the air so that only Mana's toes could barely reach the steel floor. His arm was choking her out and the draining technique around his hand made it impossible for the magician to escape it since her chakra was being sapped with each second the two made contact.</p><p>The supply of air was becoming short, Noji made sure to pound her gut enough to take all of it out before starting his finishing choking move. Everything was fading to black, Mana couldn't believe how difficult just twitching her fingers was while her chakra was being drained. A full grip was nearly impossible to escape from without augmenting one's chakra and Mana was too tired at that moment for that.</p><p>Suddenly the blue flame faded – that was just the opening Mana needed, using the last of her will and her fading mind the magician swung both of her legs forward into Noji's stomach and then when she was let go and fell on her toes briefly augmented her chakra to perform a backflip to send Noji flying off his feet as the magician's feet collided with his chin, cracking something that sounded very painful in there. The Inuzuka youth's body lifted up all the way to the steel ceiling and just barely didn't bash into it before falling down.</p><p>Mana gasped for air, she was tired, she still had some chakra to finish this fight up but her exhaustion made using that last ounce of chakra close to impossible. She needed to finish that fast. The magician took off Eiju's coat and tossed it aside, flicking the small hidden mechanisms that she still wore and revealing them on her body, when she wore her uniform it helped conceal them, it also fit very well into her tight choice of clothes and held it firmly, now the bumped and beaten up devices were letting off some weird noises and just barely functioning. It won't be as comfortable as when she still had her uniform but at least the coat won't get in the way.</p><p>Suddenly the girl's heart froze – she heard a loud bark from the side of Noji's dog who alerted his beaten and spitting blood and his own teeth from his mouth master that the pooch had woken up from being knocked out before. The Inuzuka smiled, the bodies of the two lit up with chakra, and the dog transformed into a clone of Noji, the clone leaped on top of Noji's back, who in terms leaned closer to the ground forming his back into a more comfortable and horizontal platform for his soulmate.</p><p>"Let's go, Suno, sorry, Mana. It seems luck just wasn't on your side. I'll make sure you'll get buried with care and respect, you earned it! Ultimate Combination Technique: Life Shaver Fang Over Fang!" Noji shouted orders for his hound, the two leaped forward and started spinning changing into those dreadful spinning horizontal hurricanes of claws. The two lunged at Mana determined to tear her apart.</p><p>The two vortexes collided not with Mana but instead with something dark brown, long, and much more like leather – the magician used the Substitution Technique to replace herself with the coat she just tossed aside and rolled aside to avoid the brunt of the technique. She observed in horror when Eiju's coat was torn to absolute shreds. The two vortexes worked in a ruthless and almost mechanical combination rotating in circles tearing what they thought was Mana apart. The two must not have had much vision while they were spinning around since they only stopped tearing the coat up when they stopped the technique.</p><p>"Shit! Suno, again! Good thing we took so much chakra from her, huh, buddy!?" the youth exclaimed energetically as the two once again fired off at Mana, this time, however, the girl had time for her response. Her handseals went off and she looked into the one vortex that just spoke. The vortex got thrown out of its way right into the other.</p><p>"Polymorphy Technique!" Mana shouted out the name of her genjutsu illusion. Noji started believing that he was a dog, the illusion also did some weird things with one's brain, they resembled more what they thought that animal was like which meant that Noji thought he was the alpha of the pack and since Suno was right beside him that made the affected Noji treat the dog as a challenger of his authority.</p><p>Noji attacked Suno violently digging into the dog's neck with his Inuzuka teeth drawing blood. The dog howled in pain and leaped at his master performing the "Tunneling Fang" technique that Noji used previously hitting disabled and delirious friend right in the head and knocking him out. The dog then growled looking at Mana.</p><p>"You idiot!" she huffed out, "Look at those boxes, what do you think is stored here!? Perfume! The secret ingredient herb you need is in there, just take it and carry it back to Konoha, have it analyzed, and then just ask the hospital to give it to you every day."</p><p>The dog barked back at Mana growling and slowly approaching her.</p><p>"Aaaand I'm talking to dogs now, I wish I knew what he barked back at me..." the girl scratched her head angrily. "Look, if the perfume Yellow has can help you that means the perfume that the hostage's father has can too. I mean why would he just have a bunch of super-expensive perfume stored in entire crates and target specifically an heir of a perfume tycoon and then not express any demands? Instead of killing and doing these horrible things for this guy you and Noji could ask Konoha for shelter, legitimize yourselves, and, after a brief sentence, you could live normal lives. You'd live and no one would have to die because of it, you'd get your treatment every day."</p><p>Mana leaned to the side avoiding Sunomaru's tired leap at her trying to bite her neck out. The dog stood still and barked angrily back at her, it was clearly communicating something to her but the magician just didn't know what. "Look, I don't know what you're telling me but... Don't you remember how torn Noji was when he saw me die? If you died he'd lose himself but he's already losing himself even while you live with every horrible thing he is forced to do. There's no happy ending where you two are right now. Stand down and leave this room with Noji on your back and head to Konoha, take some of the perfume, hell, you've been doused in it with those wounds on you so you probably have enough in your blood to last some time already. Once Noji wakes up he'll explain it all to the hospital staff. You didn't have that much time to perform that many crimes yet, you can still legitimize if we vouch you were forced to kidnap the kid for the Administration."</p><p>Suno calmed down and walked up to Noji pushing the boy's bleeding face with his snout, Mana carefully crept up and placed Noji on top of the dog and added a handful of perfume vials from the boxes into Noji's pouch. The dog then barked something at Mana. His last howl sounded something like "Yellow" but the magician just dismissed it.</p><p>"Look, I don't know what you're telling me, I'm sorry, I'll handle it from here, I still have some chakra left for one or two jutsu and I think now I can use my cards more efficiently cause that damned coat isn't in my way. If one of the others won I should have enough to finish them off, I'll save the kid for sure!"</p><p>The dog barked at Mana angrily again, repeating that last yellow-like growl. "It'll be fine... Look I don't get what you're trying to tell me, just go. I'll handle it." The dog shook his head and howled as if he was just mad at the magician for not getting his clue. Maybe he really did howl something about "Yellow" knowing well that she didn't understand his common way of speech, trying desperately to convey something important. Well, at least this ended without any more needless bloodshed, even Noji's busted jaw could be fixed in half an hour by a skilled medical ninja.</p><p>The girl then took a piece of Eiju's cloth and handed it to the dog's mouth to hold. "Look, if a young man stops you and tries to kill you, please show him this and don't fight him, he'll get the clue" she with a soft tone informed the dog and stroked its head. The dog licked back at Mana and then bumped her head as if it still held a grudge for not understanding him earlier. The white wolf-like dog then started moving on the path leading outside the bunker. Mana sat down to catch her breath and regain some of her stamina and what she could still muster of her chakra. If whatever this dog wanted her to know was this important she may have yet needed it.</p><p>The girl looked at the tattered and utterly destroyed Eiju's coat and sighed. "Eiju-san is going to kill me..."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0094"><h2>94. Memento No More</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi kept creeping around through the dark edges of the room. Her mind was all over the place, jumping from her own bleeding arm back to one floor above, wondering how Mana was doing. More and more the Yamanaka started wandering off. Maybe it was a genuine worry about the youngling's well-being or perhaps more her wish to not confront a young man that resembled her brother a little. While the realization that Roe was more prideful than protective did help Kiyomi look the man in the eyes, she still had several bonds that needed to be severed.</p><p>"My friend down there, the one facing your sister is a cruel and violent killer. She'll kill your sister and she'll do it very slowly and very gruesomely. It'd be for the best if you left and went there to save her." Kiyomi grunted out, her voice still sounded a tiny bit whiny over the pain and losing all that blood. Roe leaped out from behind Kiyomi, his feet kicked off of the wall giving the young woman some time to react properly and roll out of the way, clenching her tied bleeding arm.</p><p>"Cony can handle herself and if she cannot she isn't worth my clan's legacy. She is of royal leading bloodline, she has no right to die against a filthy Yoruma and if she did that'd be on her. I love Cony but it'd be her wish that I killed you and rebuilt the pyramid of my pride which you've toppled and made myself whole again" the man shouted out angrily. Trying to step back into the light when loud clangs and sparks of shuriken being deflected by his knife lit the area up for some time while Kiyomi moved into the light.</p><p>That was it – that severed all of the bonds, all of the similarities between Kiyomi's late brother and this man. Her brother was a little bit arrogant but more in a confident kind of way, he'd have never allowed his pride to get in the way of his family. He even gave up his life, his promised dream of being the next greatest Yamanaka shinobi to ever come from that bloodline by fighting multiple opponents whom he had no hope of beating. He trampled on his own pride by choosing to lose, by choosing to risk it all for his little sister and his family. Now Kiyomi could fight this man at her full power without holding anything back!</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" Kiyomi yelled by firing off a continuous barrage of shuriken that multiplied from the ones that she had already tossed, it was a simple C-Rank technique that most genin learned right after the Academy, one that didn't clone the user but cloned the tools they used to be used in larger quantities. Roe continued to deflect the shuriken, skipping just a couple. Kiyomi's chakra was large, larger than most genin in the village so she was able to fire off a much larger barrage than most users of this simple technique.</p><p>The cat-man pulled several ninja stars out of his shoulder and chest, the small spikes of the shuriken left small wounds but it didn't appear to reach beyond his muscles and cut any blood vessels which was unfortunate. Kiyomi hoped to sever one by hitting Roe in the shoulder's soft spot but she didn't hit it deep enough it seemed... The Yamanaka slapped her hands together channeling chakra through the hair she had cut previously, just in time she rolled to the side to avoid Roe's throwing knife that he tossed right at the center of her skull to intercept her technique.</p><p>Having faced off against the Yamanaka once already, Roe knew that she couldn't just pull her techniques off quickly and easily. Kiyomi needed a moment for her chakra to reach the hair and then connect the channel to her opponent, she needed time to fire off her clunky soul-like hollow figure when she used her clan techniques, and missing it left her wide open. If Kiyomi only used those clan's hidden techniques she'd have never survived this long, it was only due to her physical prowess equal to if not surpassing that of her fellow genin that she managed to excel.</p><p>The girl grabbed a kunai in her other arm, holding the bleeding and injured one carefully in a cast-like position, and lunged at Roe. He was injured and bleeding now, the girl needed to press that advantage and make him lose more speed, then when the cat-hobo is tired and bleeding out she could hit him with a clan technique and it'd all be over once she did. Roe's knife clashed with Kiyomi's the two clashed several more times in the darkness. The shadows of the room were occasionally lit up by the lethal dance of knives of the two ninja, now that Roe was injured Kiyomi could somewhat manage to not let up to him up close. The kunai style of knife-fighting only used one arm anyways so Kiyomi's injury didn't hold her back that much.</p><p>Roe leaped back – there it was again, the same trick twice. Just like the last time the cat-man let Kiyomi believe she could contest with him up close wishing to make her confident before he speared her gut. This time the Yamanaka leaped to the side and the spear got stuck in the steel piercing halfway through the floor and getting stuck in it. Seeing the spear tear through solid steel halfway in made Kiyomi shutter remembering that pain from before, it was a good thing that the three met Quack in this mission or it'd have been all over for the three of them ages ago.</p><p>Kiyomi pulled out a scroll from her belt, she opened it and slammed it into the ground. The girl made the handseals and bit her finger until it drew blood dragging it across the scroll's surface leaving a bloody mark. Roe wanted to intercept but he had never seen that scroll or what was inside it, he was worried that his reaction was just what Kiyomi wanted when in fact it was the opposite. The Yamanaka predicted such a line of thought and had no defenses against that counterattack, that was why she simply played the right psychological game and got a little bit lucky to unseal what was inside that scroll.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Proximity Mine!" Kiyomi yelled out unsealing a technique she asked her friend seal into the scroll before she left on the mission. It was one used by her Inuzuka friend from before and it was one of his early favorite techniques. Having jutsu of both of her past teammates sealed in the scroll felt like they were always there for her, almost like they watched her back. Such thoughts were poisonous, those two goofballs were gone! Kiyomi now had a different team, it may have been just a temporary team but she'll be given a real one until the Chuunin Exams. While the young woman got rid of the toxic bond with her brother, finally being able to let go of his memory, she may as well have spilled it all out.</p><p>The lightning style sphere flew slowly at Roe, waiting for Kiyomi's order to dissolve into a larger storm of small shocking bolts that'd have been both a pain for the cat-man but also briefly stunned him giving Kiyomi an opening for a wounding close-range attack. Roe jumped into the air tossing another spear to the ground finally ridding his body of those long and dangerous weapons.</p><p>Kiyomi activated her teammate's technique but the spear acted like a lightning rod and absorbed the bolts inside of it burning up and dissolving into black dust and the tip playfully clanged as it got torn off of the steel floor and spun around from the force of the explosion. Just like that one of her teammate's memory was let go of!</p><p>Kiyomi dragged her finger across the scroll again letting her blood touch another symbol on it. Suddenly violent shocks erupted through the steel starting to tear it apart leaving large fractures and fissures – only the Earth Style of her sensei could've able to rip through steel. This was just Hanasaku's last memento for her student – a powerful A-Rank technique to pull her favorite student from a sticky situation when she'd need it.</p><p>"Earth Style: Tearing Fissure!" Kiyomi shouted when the fissure exploded from the pressure built inside the steel tearing large chunks of the floor and firing it off at Roe who was still in the air, descending. The cat-hobo covered his chest and head so that one of the sharp chunks didn't dig into his skull or heart. Toughening his body, augmenting it as much as he could so that the explosion of pressure on the floor didn't kill him, the shrapnel all hit the man but none of them drew blood, they all just made him yell in pain and leave sharp-looking blunt force trauma all over but none of them impaled him like they should've – must've cost a lot of chakra.</p><p>Once Roe's feet touched the ground the powerful force that was tearing the floor apart finally hit his body too. The lion-man lifted off from the ground yelling madly as his body contorted in the strangest of shapes, it genuinely looked as if the force would just rip him in two like a strongman ripped phonebooks.</p><p>Sadly the aftershock of the technique was not enough – Hanasaku's memento was also let go off. With the third stroke on her scroll, Kiyomi sent the third technique – a large fireball, the signature "Great Fireball" technique of the Uchiha clan. Roe covered his body and took it all. The raging flames weren't that powerful, they were just an overflowing tongue of flames wrapping into a circle shape, not yet on the higher ranks where it formed a powerful projectile of a wrecking ball that exploded in a violent firestorm upon impact. A powerful dissolution of flames appeared to eat Roe up but once they cleared up it became apparent that they didn't.</p><p>The man continued to stand with his hair and his beard completely singed with the short remains of the hair still being in the process of it. His body was covered with burns from heated up steel tools that he carried around his body pressing against his skin once they've been heated up but the man's chakra augmentation protected him from getting third-degree burns all over his body.</p><p>Still, the injuries he took were huge, he also augmented his body multiple times as evidenced by his hyperventilation after the technique dissolved. Even after the flames had ceased Roe stood there with an X shaped block to protect his vital parts, slowly his twitching and smoking arms were pushed back and he took a fighting position again.</p><p>With a powerful fling Roe tossed a couple of throwing knives, Kiyomi was too tired, she only had the option of making sure they didn't poke her brain or heart out as she let them get stuck in the least-vital areas she had the time to pick for the projectiles to hit. The girl screamed out in pain and stumbled back. Roe's body blurred and flashed up to her, his kick aimed to hit Kiyomi in the side of her head knocking her out or outright killing her but the Yamanaka leaned under the kick avoiding it.</p><p>"Just go down already!" she grunted in pain throwing a strong uppercut under the man's raised legs straight into his groin. She needed to resolve to cheap shots, she needed to target his eyes, groin, any weak spot she could've found. She was stabbed by those throwing knives that while pretty short and slim still left their mark and would bleed her out in minutes if pulled out, she had multiple pretty deadly injuries and her chakra was approaching its limits.</p><p>Roe screamed out as Kiyomi had never before heard men scream. It was a similar scream to a wildcat being dragged across the pavement held by her tail. The man tried to toss several desperation counter blows but Kiyomi carefully dodged them, every time she twisted her belly or sides that had those knives in they burned like Hell itself but the Yamanaka persevered and kept on swinging. Several punches hit the man's face sending him stumbling back, then a finishing large punch to knock him out!</p><p>Sadly the blonde lacked the physical strength to do so, even with slight augmentation she only sent Roe stumbling back even more where she intended to knock him down. The cat-hobo leaped back, Kiyomi stepped forward but something was wrong, she looked down and realized how lucky she was to have noticed the slower and almost alluring speed decrease of her opponent.</p><p>On the ground in front of her laid makibishi – small spikes used by ninja to pierce through their opponent's feet and either ruin the hooves of a mounted opponent or disable their opponents' feet by making walking a living hell. Roe kicked off the ceiling after his leap, doubling his speed after realizing that his opponent saw through his clever trap, swinging his knife at Kiyomi. This wasn't good, the girl pulled out her own kunai, she couldn't move around much because she could've missed some of those pesky spikes – she couldn't move around as much as she wanted and was forced to just slug it out with a physically superior opponent.</p><p>The knives of the two clashed, they were both extremely worn out – Kiyomi had a bleeding arm that she could only use for handseals and several knives stuck in her body, she was slowly losing chakra and blood and had more bruises than she could remember. Roe was also beaten up but also had severe internal bleeding from Hanasaku's sealed technique and was quite worn out by tanking that fireball with his body, something that also left numerous burns all over his body.</p><p>Kiyomi pulled out three kunai and tossed them forward. Roe leaned to the side avoiding all of them and letting them get stuck somewhere further in the wall behind him. Kiyomi pulled on the string making the string tied to the three kunai attached to the string in the blonde's hand tie a painful loop around Roe's foot.</p><p>The girl then tied the string in her hand up to another kunai and tossed it to the ceiling getting it stuck in the wiring of some lights. Avoiding another desperate blow from her tired opponent and using the last of her willpower Kiyomi tied the wire with her final string pulling it hard while augmenting her arms so that the tearing and cutting steel wire didn't cut into her hands.</p><p>The result was her opponent hanging helplessly tied to the hanging trap on his one foot. The man tried to reach up and cut it loose but Kiyomi's punch knocked several of his fangs out and made him lose his large knife. Roe closed his eyes and made a calm expression.</p><p>"Your willpower succeeded. Kill me, your clan is found to be superior by fate, you've been selected as the victor."</p><p>Kiyomi turned around. "No. I don't want to, it'd probably be a good idea having in mind that I could pass out at any moment but..." the girl stumbled to a wall and slid down onto the floor leaving a bloody trail on the steel wall. "A greater punishment for you is to hang here until you regain your physical strength needed to tear the steel wire apart, you'll live the rest of your life knowing that I beat you fair and square twice. Maybe then you'll lose this stupid idea of pride and being the strongest and finally spend some time with your sister, I'm sure that she loves you and cares about you a great deal. Don't waste either of your lives with this bullshit, it's too short in this world of ours."</p><p>Roe relaxed before a wild burst of tension and his final powerful burst of chakra, that outburst of rage caused a powerful gust within the room that made Kiyomi cover her face and look aside. Once the rage burnt out the cat-hobo passed out and finally the prey had overcome the hunter. Kiyomi sadly grunted having realized that her enemy probably had learned nothing in the end from this encounter. The blonde closed her eyes and let the pleasant release of sleep take her over. Was this just her losing it or was it death? In her current state of mind, the Yamanaka couldn't know or care.</p><p>"Shit..." she heard a familiar voice. "I think we're losing blondie here, I'll see what I can do but I may need to wake her up..." it was Quack's voice. Wait. Wake her up!? The Yamanaka heiress suddenly remembered the method used by this quirky Quack to wake his allies up and her eyes shot wide up, "I'm awake, I swear, I'm awake!" she yelled out.</p><p>Mana, all beaten and covered in wounds, having torn her cloak and standing there in her tattered remains of what remained of her uniform and some weird mechanisms that held decks of cards in them and were attached to her fingers that were now exposed. She must've won, even though it didn't look like it happened easily.</p><p>"Alright, though no way you're moving anywhere, blondie, I'm keeping you here and alive. With a couple of Sanguine Pills and stitches, you'll be up on your feet in a minute or thirty" Quack sighed with a shade of annoyance in his voice.</p><p>"Wait, how did it go, Mana?" Kiyomi looked at the girl, she was the one with the least experience facing off against the hardest odds as the man she fought was supposed to completely crush the magician's style of fighting.</p><p>"It's fine, I knocked Noji-san out and let his dog carry him back home. The dog needs Konoha's help with some medicine so it won't run away. I'm going on forward to help Hisako-san, the dog said there's something really important I had to know but I didn't speak dog... Whatever that language is called, if whatever it said was so important Hisako might need help, you stay put for now while Eiju-san patches you up" the magician explained with a worried and friendly voice.</p><p>"What did it sound like? The dog's message?" Kiyomi asked, her teammate was an Inuzuka, after spending so much time around the two she picked a couple of things from the two. When she linked herself with the two of them on the mental link she could compare the thoughts to the words they said to each other which helped her grasp the basics of the Inuzuka communication. Dogs had a system of howling, barking, and growling that formed words, they were responded with normal human language which they understood. Kiyomi knew the basics of the Inuzuka dog language, she hoped that maybe she could've helped.</p><p>Mana tried to repeat the message to the best of her effort. Kiyomi slapped her face making Eiju who was stitching her up look at the Yamanaka angrily.</p><p>"The underwear is what!? I don't think you said it right, try again..." Kiyomi growled angrily at her friend. Mana apologized and tried again.</p><p>"Okay, this isn't even... You didn't even get a single word, none of those are words dogs say..." Kiyomi grunted again.</p><p>Mana concentrated harder. Repeating the growls and barks and howls perfectly.</p><p>"Yellow is hospice?" Kiyomi wondered repeating the message out loud. Mana's eyes then shot open instantly. She jumped to her feet and rushed to the lift, bashing at the button that was supposed to activate the mechanism to murder the hostage. Kiyomi tried to jump up and yelled at Mana but then a hidden door opened at the center of the wall with light emanating from below leading to the deepest underground floor.</p><p>"What does this mean? Why would the hostage killing button do this?" Kiyomi asked Mana who turned back to her friend with horrified eyes.</p><p>"It's not "Yellow is hospice", it's "Yellow is the hostage"..." Mana explained, "If he tries something on Hisako-san she'll freak out and when Hisako-san gets freaky she gets murdery, she'll kill our hostage. Even if he is this "Yellow" guy, we need him alive, our mission is to bring him back alive!"</p><p>Kiyomi tried to stand up but as her wounds and her stitches burst more blood shot out making the blonde dizzy. "You can't go there. If Hisako does indeed go mad... You'll be getting in her way – she'll kill you."</p><p>Mana looked at Kiyomi and then at the staircase. "She won't. I saw her fight, I know her moves, she'll be tired and I am no longer the Mana whom she faced back in that forest. I need to save the life of the horrible bastard that manipulated us all so I absolutely won't lose."</p><p>Just like that Mana ran off, her body disappeared in the confusing downwards spiral of the staircase leading down.</p><p>"Well... Magician's dead... Too bad, she was kind of cute, may have tried something with her in a couple of years." Quack gruffed out in an ironic tone making Kiyomi squint at him angrily and then grunt in desperation – she had to be there. She had to help Mana. No matter where she'll end up – facing Yellow or Hisako, either two of them were bad endings...</p><p>"I thought dark-haired girls weren't your taste..." Kiyomi angrily shot back at the medical rogue fixing her wounds, right now he was her only hope of getting back on her feet and helping Mana solve this nonsense once and for all.</p><p>"Are you mental, lovely, all girls are of my taste, I must've been high when I told you that, or I'm high now, could be either one really..." the Quack replied in his weird dull and annoyed tone while he stitched Kiyomi's stab wounds.</p><p>"Is there any use complaining about your work ethics now?" Kiyomi asked ironically.</p><p>"None. I'm too poisoned and drunk to remember it in the morning, in my defense, you made me wait your fights out until I saw that dog. It was cold..." the Quack replied finishing another stitch.</p>
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<a name="section0095"><h2>95. Viva La Revelacion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At the other end of the tip of Hisako's extended blade was the little man everyone was so afraid of and hating at the same time. It would've been just so easy for the woman to flash forward with all of her speed and cut that person down. Just when the Yoruma started wondering what was the use of having that hooded dwarf alive, Yellow reached for his hood while his other hand held firmly on the handle of his sword that he wore by his side.</p><p>Hisako was pleasantly surprised that she may have had the pleasure of killing yet another person that day, by now she had made peace with the idea that she may have only had only the boring part of traveling back with the hostage to deal with.</p><p>"Aren't you worried about your friends up there? Go on, rush to their aid, you won, didn't you?" Yellow's squeaky voice came from under the hood right as he pulled hard removing it and tossing it aside in an overly dramatic fashion that made the dark cloth linger around his face in the air for a while.</p><p>"No offense but you're a really bad fucking backstabber. I see your intentions from a mile away, the tip of my blade is all you're getting, I'll reserve my back for someone I decide to get fucked from behind by." Hisako grunted angrily still pointing her sword straight at Yellow's face from the other end of the room.</p><p>Finally, the hood hit the floor, right on top of Cony's emotionless corpse covering the poor young woman up. It wasn't that Yellow cared particularly about that yet another victim of this cruel messed up world, it was more that his garment landed there by sheer luck covering the unsanitary and slightly frightening sight of death up.</p><p>Yellow stood there looking Hisako straight in the eyes. The dwarf behind the cloak turned out to not be a dwarf at all, his short stature was not because of a disorder that the man had but instead due to his age – Yellow was just several years into his teens. His nickname must've come from the kid's golden colored hair and the strange, almost purplish hue of his eyes combined with his golden locks made the kid look almost a little majestic and regal.</p><p>He wore quite unusual clothes for a rogue, wearing a white shirt and a strange leather vest, that was not an attire of a combatant, not of a ninja anyway. He looked like an over-glorified jockey.</p><p>"Well?" Yellow shrugged his arms, moving them away from his long but incredibly slim sword sheathe. Hisako blinked a couple of times in confusion.</p><p>"I'm sorry, are you expecting a fucking compliment of your looks or something? Sorry, kids aren't of my particular taste, between the categories of "fuck with" or "kill on sight" they lean more to the latter" the woman replied.</p><p>"You stupid bitch" Yellow cursed not really suiting his young age, "I can't believe someone can be so incompetent! I mean I sort of expected ninja peasants to be as dumb as a cow shit sniffer but not to recognize your own mission objective personified is beyond hogwash!" the little runt yelled back at the woman angrily.</p><p>"Oh, so you've escaped captivity and dressed like a goddamn opera villain, good for you, let's go home now" Hisako swung her swords around getting ready to sheathe them when all of a sudden Yellow leaped at her pulling his strange sword out and thrusting it right at her eye.</p><p>With a near-effortless movement, the Yoruma leaned out of the way, getting a bit of a better look at the boy's sword. It was a sword possibly as long as two-thirds of his whole body but it was as thin as a needle. Hisako was almost intrigued to see just what sort of toy-sword this toothpick was but she was surprised by how quick its thrusts were and how the blade became near invisible in mid-movement making it look like quite the trouble to block or dodge properly.</p><p>"You stupid poohead!" Yellow shouted out thrusting, again and again, Hisako dodged each and every thrust without much trouble, resisting the temptation to yawn playfully somewhere in the middle. "Is it that hard to understand that there is no crime lord named "Yellow", it was me all along, me using the money of my father behind his back to hire mercenaries to intercept perfume shipments, to find me a rogue ninja band, to neigh like blasted horses when I tell them to!? I did this, it was me all along!"</p><p>Hisako leaped back with a graceful, almost dance-like pounce and straightened her hair out which was starting to get into her face from all the leaning to the left and to the right quickly. "Okay, "poohead"? We would've needed a lot of vocabulary training to teach you how to fucking curse. So wait... If you're a criminal that means I can just kill you, right?" Hisako wondered to herself, barely even looking at the young man who was giving his all trying to kill her.</p><p>"That's right, you could because I'm really dangerous! I managed to muck up my father's business enterprise by working through my mercs from behind the village walls, communicating only through children who were daring enough to venture outside for a hundred ryo or two. I am the worst criminal in the history of Konohagakure!" Yellow boastfully laughed lunging at the woman who just moved to the side and slapped the boy with the back of her hand sending him down on the floor.</p><p>"Well, you're technically a "criminal" so at least you got that part sort of right..." Hisako smiled at the sight of the infuriated child getting back on his feet and grabbing his rapier again only to continue his offense. Hisako had to hand it to the boy – he was sort of fast for someone not at all familiar with chakra augmentation or actual ninja physical training, he also had that strange thin sword that disappeared from her vision after reaching a certain speed of movement in mid-air.</p><p>"And now that I pit you three wenches against my band of unbeatable rogues who weakened you before you beat them I shall pick you off one by one using the skills I acquired planning for this day. This is all going according to my plan!" the teen laughed out with the same degree of arrogance in his voice that he had made his own in those couple of exchanges of words with Hisako.</p><p>"It's a terrible plan, you planned for your rogues to get beaten? What kind of a retarded leader plans like that? Why would you plan to lose?" Hisako taunted the kid dodging several of his thrusts again when one of them actually nicked her cheek, that invisible sword was starting to become a bother and she actually was getting slower despite what she may have wanted everyone else to think.</p><p>"You hypocritical wench! How dare you of all people, a Yoruma, tell me sacrificing one's pawns is a disadvantageous move? That is exactly how Yoruma plan: sacrificing one's allies to land cheap blows, getting hurt just to find an opening in one's opponent's body! I've read many strategic guides and those written by Yoruma were simply the easiest to understand, give up something insignificant for something great!" the boy continued thrusting again and again until Hisako was forced to draw her blade and actually block the boy's attack or else she'd have had it pierce right through her mouth.</p><p>"And now that you're weakened I shall kill you and leave the bodies of the three of you here, then I'll melt one of my subordinates in the bath of acid I've prepared supposedly for the "lonely and scared hostage" so that everyone will think that I am dead. This will be a perfect withdrawal underground!" the teen started laughing as he continued to explain his plan, particularly acting up and mocking the part about him being the scared and lonely hostage.</p><p>He finished his relentless assault of thrusts with a swing from his elbow right in Hisako's abdominal area but she barely felt it, it was just because she had wounds from the previous battle that it forced her to stumble back a little and get even more on the defensive.</p><p>Hisako drew her second sword and took a fighting stance, it was about time that she showed this young brat what exactly he was dealing with. Hisako lunged forward pushing the boy's counter-thrust with one blade and elbowing him straight to the nose then kicking him to the other end of the room. She reckoned that'd have been enough to crack his skull and cause some serious injuries before the two other slackers got there and they could've decided what they wanted to do with this.</p><p>"Your "flawless" plan has one flaw, among many, I am not weakened. Not by a wide enough margin for someone of your skill to even leave an actual scratch. The only tags you can mark on me are those that I let you achieve" Hisako's body blurred leaving multiple afterimages in the air wherever she moved. From each side the girl's real body mixed into among the afterimages and started pummeling the boy using her punches and kicks, she pulled them severely, just what she deemed enough to teach this arrogant and murderous brat a lesson.</p><p>After Hisako finished her assault and watched the brat's knocked down body for signs of fighting spirit she noticed him getting up again. With his nose busted up and bleeding, with several bruises and black spots all over his face and wherever he had skin exposed to hit he was standing.</p><p>"My tutor was a foolish woman, I hated her with all of my guts and told her many times I need no lessons from her. I kept fighting using my own style of fencing, I assume in this tough spot I may give her lessons a shot..." the brat mumbled out wiping the blood off of his lip and nose. The boy's body shot forward multiple times faster than he was before, Hisako's eyes widened in surprise and adrenaline rushed her tired body to deflect the countless thrusts. Using both of her blades she managed to do that but the boy's increase in speed surprised her, if he had this much strength in him, so much talent, this fight may have excited Hisako, this may have just been on!</p><p>What a strange boy this "Yellow" was. He had the talent and was taught skills of exquisite and quite exotic swordsmanship he called "fencing" yet he used his own stupid and sloppy style. Improving his posture and legwork according to the instructions of this "tutor" of his as well as holding the toothpick sword of his properly made so much difference he may as well have been a wholly different person. As blood and tension flowed through the woman's body she realized that the excitement for battle would make her lash out, attack the boy with all she had, and that would've only ended one way – with his dead body by her feet.</p><p>A painful puncture made blood burst out from Hisako's shoulder. The boy was reckless and in a lot of rush so he missed her vital blood vessel but he stabbed her successfully. Had his sword been heavier, had a wider edge, it may have actually taken the assassin out for good. No. Fuck holding back, this brat brought this, he was too good to fuck around with. Hisako decided to let herself off the hook, unleash herself and throw everything she had at the extremely thin and wobbly wall hoping to tear it down, no, she knew it'd fall.</p><p>Without even flinching the woman's cheeks dyed red with rushing blood, her pupils dilated and she lunged forward with a swing of her curved sword. A single swing from the left, blocked, another much stronger from the right, blocked again but the boy was struggling, his small sword was quite puny and transferred much of the force right into his arm, he couldn't have kept on blocking for long, some pressure would open him up like an Academy girl after giving her a daisy and calling her pretty. Hisako's swings widened, she repeated her left and right double swing combination, this time putting more and more force into it and the boy stumbled back falling on his butt.</p><p>Hisako spun like a whirlwind making Yellow fall on his back and hope that her arc didn't cut him in two. A bunch of his hair flew all over the place and were shredded to bits by Hisako's two-bladed spinning attack. Yellow crawled back and picked his sword up again. He was breathing heavily, yes, Hisako knew that face, those eyes, those pale cheeks, and that tremble – he was afraid to die.</p><p>Had it not been for his much-hated woman tutor he would've long since died. This kid had so much talent if he was able to defend against one simple combo from Hisako just relying on lessons he ignored during his training. He was so much talent and so much arrogance with no hard work put into it. Yoruma training would've destroyed the youth, it'd have killed him. Or it could've made him stronger, after all, Yoruma trained their children by fighting them for real, if Yellow picked his hated fencing lessons' style up because of the threat of death, maybe he'd have excelled being pressured all his life instead of being pampered...</p><p>"Tell me, kid, who is your "tutor"? If she was able to give you this much skill just on lessons you ignored, she must be quite formidable, sort of makes me want to fight her instead of wasting my time on you..." Hisako looked at a bunch of golden hair floating down on the floor with a cruel and devious smile. The kid gathered himself back up and took a more defensive stance.</p><p>"You would not know her, she is a swordmaster from the Land of Snow... The only person I've ever seen wielding this kind of sword." Yellow replied preparing for another clash. "She was strong enough to thrust her blade so swiftly that she made air itself into small projectiles, she called it "Air Bullets", to me it was quite stupid obviously, my own stances were quite superior to hers in all ways possible but I would like to try it now if I'm honoring her..."</p><p>The youth swung his slim toothpick of a blade around raising it above his head. Now he pretty much was just looking to get his gut itch scratched with a point of a blade. Hisako dashed forward with all of her diminished speed attempting to impale the boy on her swords at the very end just as she had nearly done so to that Yamanaka previously and as she finished that whip using woman before. All of a sudden Hisako's blade just froze in the air, it was like the air itself formed a cushion to absorb her sword. With a quick jump forward and a thrust aimed at her chest, Yellow attempted to take Hisako out. The girl grunted.</p><p>A loud flesh cutting noise echoed through the floor, followed shortly by a noise of liquid splashing on the walls. Only those that would've been close to the two combatants could've possibly seen what was going on inside there.</p><hr/><p>Mana kept on running down, for some reason this shortcut wasn't nearly as short as she had previously thought, it went around several different rooms, one had a large container filled with what appeared to be acid, at least Mana's visual inspection of the large container could've explained that much together with the story that the band made up about the hostage actually being locked in a container similar to that one. It also had several strange empty rooms, some of them had dog hair and uncleansed dog poop, the other one was much different, much more personal.</p><p>It had two beds placed on the different ends of the room. The rooms didn't have much furniture but this one had two bed cases with pictures on top of them. While having little time for such matters the magician took the time to give the pictures a brief glance. They had strange images inside of them of some people she had never seen previously, a young boy with quite exquisite and excessive for his age body hair, looking similar to that man which Kiyomi had knocked out on the second floor.</p><p>The other people inside that photo were: a little girl, just a bit younger than the long-haired young man and two people – a man and a long red-haired woman. They looked so happy... Mana could only wonder what may have happened to them, knowing the location where those photographs were held on only suggested that nothing good. Most stories in this twisted world had sick and depressing endings so the magician decided not to go too much deeper into details of the rooms. Maybe she was better off not knowing.</p><p>Mana continued to run down the staircase, she saw another room on the way down, some strange room that looked almost like a throne room of some kind, she saw several like that before. Sometimes the downwards spiraling staircase changed into a long round corridor leading her in circles and then starting to spiral down again. There were many of those strange confusing throne rooms in those corridors. Whoever designed this bunker really liked to sit on a different chair every couple of hours...</p><p>While rushing to her friend's aid Mana wasn't exactly sure what she was rushing for or what she'd find when she makes it down. She believed that Hisako could best her challenger, after all both Kiyomi and Hisako were such powerful and amazing ninja, if someone like Mana could beat her challenger who was perfectly placed there to beat her, so could those two. On the other hand, could Hisako best the brat's plan, what could've his plan been?</p><p>Would he come at the assassin himself? Would she find the two at each other's throats or one having recently killed the other? Mana dreaded that last thought the most. She was determined to save everyone's life in this, she refused to even think about the prospect of someone dying while she wasn't there. She'd just blame herself, blame herself for not winning faster, for not going down there faster, and not for preventing that death. Despite exhaustion and pain all over her body Mana kept on running...</p>
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<a name="section0096"><h2>96. Crash Course</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sound of blood dripping on the ground repeatedly ran through the ears both of a young woman kneeling and struggling to keep her body on her feet and a bratty teen behind her. Hisako looked at the expanding red stain on her shoulder and ground her teeth in frustration. The technique that the brat used was way too advanced for him, once again it must've been something he was shown by his tutor but something he never perfected by himself. Both his execution and follow up of the technique was highly questionable, for a moment it may have gotten dangerous but the Yoruma assassin was ready to beat that technique of his.</p><p>He used chakra manipulation, people untrained in manipulating their chakra could do it, obviously, but their control was all over the place. They couldn't sharpen their techniques, their degree of polish was pretty much non-existent and they wasted much more chakra on the simplest of techniques. It was only because of chakra's nature as energy that all living beings produce using their chakra network and chakra nodes inside their bodies that this kid can even use such impressive moves. Most likely, he himself had no idea of what he just did. Losing against someone like this would've been pathetic at best.</p><p>"What's the matter? Your heart went soft?" Hisako taunted the kid by grunting out her insult through her ground teeth. That fool leaped at her right when her blow was absorbed by the pillow of air that his strange sword movements formed. It was an impressive technique – using circular motions of one's sword to form a pillow of air by combining natural air circulation with chakra manipulation. The pillow was at its toughest at the sword's tip and got softer as it went deeper, which meant that it was perfectly crafted to absorb all blows and thrusts – the tough shell blocked and softened the blow while the weaker air mass inside absorbed the shock.</p><p>"No, I just felt like showing you the superiority of my form over the lacking one of my tutor's..." Yellow returned the reply after a brief moment – he was breathing much more heavily, as suspected even a single small use of chakra drained his untrained body and taxed it unreasonably.</p><p>Had this kid listened to his teacher he may have been a pretty tough swordsman, he has impossible one-in-a-million kind of talent for it but he lacks the desire to hone it, he also is incredibly arrogant considering his own flashy but stupid moves to be superior to those of his tutor's.</p><p>"You fool, you could've stabbed me straight into my heart the moment you absorbed my blow, that's the way in which the technique is used – you form the wall of air to cushion the blow, and then when the enemy is open you thrust it. You could've killed me yet you played around."</p><p>The brat reacted with arrogance to Hisako's explanation. He remained on his knees even going as far as to sheathe his sword for a moment and turn back to her. "Oh, so I assume that now you can understand my complicated forms and counter them?" the kid asked with a confident smile. Hisako was wondering what to do further. The arrogance of this kid made him impossible to fight, he was basically giving up.</p><p>He wasn't strong enough to beat Hisako even at her worn-out form, even if he took it seriously but he was toying around too. This fight was completely useless and so stupid that it completely squished any desire of Hisako's to kill this idiot. She'd probably do it anyway but she'd take no pleasure from it. Murder just for the fucks of it, that was a new one for the raven-haired assassin.</p><p>"I do, I know how to beat it too" Hisako informed the kid deciding to end it quickly. The young woman pulled two throwing knives from her belt, the knives that the Yoruma used were not the usual kunai knives, they were much thinner, almost like made from a thin single layer of steel. That way they had much stronger penetrative power than the usual kunai that rarely went all the way in. Swinging the knives around her hands on the rings in the end Hisako quickly launched them at the boy. Yellow drew his sword and blocked the knives, Hisako repeated the movement tossing more and more projectiles at him.</p><p>Eventually, the kid spun his rapier once again and blocked the knives using the same technique again. The tips just barely broke through the thickest layer of air and got bounced off by the softer part of the protective cushion. The knives were flung right back at Hisako, the woman leaned to the side to dodge her own deflected knives, one of them hit the wall and fell down far away from Hisako but the other one hit her in the cheek leaving a cut. The Yoruma touched her cheek and looked at the blood on her fingers. She was getting slower, her reaction time was falling significantly. Fighting two strong opponents would do that to a person, even if the second one is more lucky and talented than he is skilled.</p><p>"I guess you got jack squat after all" Yellow laughed out before breaking into a streak of huffing heavily. He may have noticed it already – his untrained body failing to keep it up.</p><p>"Nope, I got you. Usually, I'd just stand here casually bombarding you with knives from afar, shrieking like an Academy girl on her first date each time you tax yourself to that technique trying to block it until you eventually either die of exhaustion or a knife is stuck into your eye. Then I'd just come in closer and disembowel you like a hunted down animal up close. Strangely I feel little excitement about killing you so I guess I won't play the enjoyment game, I'll just end it..." Hisako spoke out in a cold and indifferent tone. The assassin spoke of murder as if it was just as casual as washing her dishes.</p><p>The brat swung his sword around and tried to force an arrogant smile. "I'll believe it when I see it" he replied. Hisako drew both of her blades and playfully spun them around in her hands pointing their tips right at her opponent.</p><p>"Yoruma Hidden Technique: Dance of the Night" the woman mumbled under her own nose, her lips twisting so briefly that one who didn't listen carefully would've missed the woman naming her technique. The dangerous thing about weaponry techniques and taijutsu techniques was that some of them used no hand seals which made them difficult to see coming. One had to be looking for signs on one's body or one's mouth, pronouncing the name of one's technique to alert their own body, to sort of use it as a mantra to get one's body into a mode fitting to perform the technique.</p><p>Hisako's figure leaped forward, almost twice as slow as she was before, incomparably slower than the flashing dark blur she was when fighting Cony. However this decrease in speed was not due to her exhaustion or numerous injuries, it was instead because of the technique she used. She was purposefully moving slower, she wanted her blade thrust to be blocked, it was how Dance of the Night worked. A single block would cause Hisako to quickly boost her speed, forcing the opponent to block, again and again, causing them to be locked into an eternal circle of blocking until they tire or open up for her finishing strike.</p><p>The boy blocked the first strike from the right, he was as dumb as the Yoruma perceived him to be, or perhaps more arrogant, those two often tread side by side. Using her second blade Hisako swung from the left, blocked again, then another swing from the right which was blocked also. The boy was at least smart enough not to use his dangerous defensive air wall technique – he realized that Hisako saw it. She saw through the technique, she knew that techniques that focused on less concentrated strikes and much more on continuous combinations of strikes had a chance to outlast the technique and also leave the enemy without a chance to counter the first block.</p><p>Hisako's lean and strong frame jumped slightly up in the air, letting her blades and arms extend and spin. She acted like a masterful dancer, her strikes were so precise, and while she gave the boy a lot of openings she was picking the speed up. That was the nature of her Dance of the Night – while the technique was incredibly slow, to begin with, it picked up speed at a dangerous pace, within moments it made the speed even greater than the maximum speed of the user was before.</p><p>A skilled Yoruma could contend with even the highest-ranked opponents. Even a sword-wielding Sannin could've found the technique troublesome to keep up with. Still, it came at the price of reduced speed early on, as well as taxing the user's chakra and body continuously even during its early stages.</p><p>The spinning attack was also attempted to be blocked but Hisako's accumulated strength was too great, each attack that was blocked, avoided, or otherwise did not hit its mark only boosted her speed creating an endless offensive loop. The puny and thin sword of the boy bounced off hitting him in the face, if it hit him with its blade and not the blunt part it'd have cut into the bone, quite likely, now it only drew some blood from the areas that were cut by his own blade. Within seconds, no, fractions of seconds Yellow's face was covered with blood. Hisako's momentum could no longer be stopped by an easy block. She was becoming a problem.</p><p>The Yoruma swung from the left, Yellow leaned back, his defenses opened up. Hisako could've finished it right there, just thrust her sword lower and stab him in the chest. Still, she wanted to finish the dance, if she attacked him right now she risked leaving him alive, she didn't want that, she'd finish the dance, she'd let it go only when her momentum could sever the boy in half, then she'd cut at his limb and chop him down like an annoying weed.</p><p>A double slash from the right beat the sword out of the boy's hand, using both of her swords and both of her arms doubled the increased momentum crumbling the boy's blade. Yellow pulled a short shoto blade from behind and tried to use it to defend himself. Hisako leaped into the air, spinning both her arms and legs, functioning almost like a horizontal propeller. There it was, the air pillow again – while Yellow avoided possible decapitation and evisceration he still used out his ace defensive technique, his shoto was too slow and short to properly counter Hisako and the woman had gained far too much speed. It'd all end there.</p><p>Another double slash slamming the boy's shoto out of his arms and making him scream in pain from the shock of the impact. It caused small shockwaves to emanate and bust smaller wooden debris into dust further away – it must've busted several bones which was the source of the boy's violent reaction. Hisako spun again, Yellow ducked and moved in behind her but he didn't have time to properly counter. Even if he did, what could he have possibly done being stuck in this endless loop of death?</p><p>While he was still winding up his punch Hisako's speed which had gathered to degrees no longer comprehensible to the boy helped her already leap onto her arms tossing the sword up and catching them by their handles using her thighs and shins. Using her arms to spin her upside body around Hisako made a powerful tornado of death. Yellow squealed like a pig being thrown backward and falling down covered with wounds. Blood started accumulating on the floor forming a small pool.</p><p>Hisako breathed out and kicked her own swords up, flipping back on her feet and catching them. She took a small breather to catch her breath and approached the boy, ready to finish it by thrusting her blade through his heart. Just one effortless motion and all this bullshit, all of this suffering of having to put up with those two other bitches would be over. Hisako raised her blade and thrust it right at the boy's chest. It'd all end here, this useless mission, her having to put up with Mana and Kiyomi, everything! Technically it'd be considered as a failed mission because their only objective is to bring the boy back alive, still, Hisako was never the one to care much about objectives.</p><p>The woman's arm froze for a moment. Seeing the boy frozen in place, beaten and awaiting for her finishing blow to end it all reminded her so much of her first mission. It was common among the Yoruma to invite youngsters as Hisako had once been, right after Academy, to accompany an older and more experienced assassin into their assassination mission. It wasn't that the kid did much, mostly the dirty assistant work, sometimes the older assassin sacrificed their little assistants if they got caught and booked it themselves leaving the youngster for a painful session of torture, humiliation, and death.</p><p>The man that Hisako accompanied was this really big and important assassin. He was old, maybe closing in on a hundred years yet his lack of facial hair or any hair in general combined with his strangely small amount of wrinkles made him look twice as young. The man had trouble walking which made Hisako wonder just how could he assassinate someone. His cane had a hidden blade inside and he used a lot of strange knife-sealing and unsealing techniques to compliment it but that was for fighting scenarios. Assassinations required one to be lightning-fast, agile, and incredibly fast on their feet.</p><p>And so the man did the usual Yoruma thing, he activated a seal in the middle of a town square unsealing a bunch of hidden blade dispensers firing knives straight at the target, enough to kill him multiple times over. The target died before realizing what had happened however just as Hisako suspected he sacrificed her to grant him escape, pointing at her and informing the guards that she was the assassin and just carelessly walking away. Why would the assassins not buy it?</p><p>She had hair of such a dark hue of black that it was weird enough to be that of a Yoruma, Yoruma were known for their exotic and extreme shades of hair colors. Her face tattoos and multiple scars over her body also testified it, who cared about something a Yoruma said or did, right? Who cared if the girl pleaded and swore her innocence? She was just a Yoruma, just a child born in a filthy clan of murderers and assassins who had no human feelings, what could she have ever felt? Yoruma had no right to feel fear or pain, just kill or get killed themselves, being bad-mouthed by their living clansmates as being "useless".</p><p>Hisako killed them all, each and every guard, the more they badmouthed her, the less they thought her to be a human being with emotions and feelings, feeling betrayed and afraid of her own life. The less they treated her a human, the less human she was. With each offensive word, her hatred increased, with each drop of hatred her strength flared up even hotter. That was a trait very common to Hisako, she felt like a person, she felt pain, regret, wanted to love and hate like normal people but the less she was treated as such, the more she rebelled.</p><p>If someone called her a "monster", "Yoruma filth" or similar, they only saw that same side of Hisako. People expected her to be a monster, someone beyond the range of human emotions and so she acted like that. Entire life just stretched to fill the human expectations of her. A sacrifice of her own humanity, trying to please everyone around her, trying to fit the grave dug for her and failing. The more monstrous she became, the more other people treated her as a monster. An endless cycle of losing her own humanity.</p><p>Hisako's blade was thrown out of her arm by a small projectile accelerating and hitting right at the place between the blade and her arm. So close to her arm that it left a small annoying cut on her hand that held the sword and was exposed to the assailant. Hisako quickly leaped back picking the sword up on her way and turned at the source of light that came from a corridor. Just outside that corridor and having just entered the basement floor stood a girl.</p><p>A relatively short girl, even if Hisako was short herself, a slim one. The girl's hair was black, not as black as Hisako's but much messier, maybe she was running for a while before she got here? Her clothes were torn up, she once must've worn a white shirt of which now only strips remained, she had some strange mechanisms around her arms and several on her chest, they were connected to other pockets, other mechanisms, it looked like some early stage of an exoskeleton suit designed to help a person to walk but it was filled with small switches and boxes.</p><p>The boxes had small traces of projectiles being placed inside them, the projectiles looked like... Cards. Hisako's glance turned at the card that got etched into the ground after cutting her hand and making her drop her sword. The girl who looked almost like a magician, wearing a top hat which strangely enough avoided any damage that ruined her attire and left her body covered with bleeding wounds and bruises was just standing there, angrily staring at Hisako with pouted lips.</p><p>Mana finally got to the lowest floor and faced Hisako, stopping her from killing the boy...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0097"><h2>97. Swords And Magic, Literal And Otherwise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The piercing glare of Hisako tried to kill her teammate before she could get her swords to do that. The assassin was infuriated that her kill was interrupted. Before that happened Hisako didn't care much about killing the boy, but now that Mana challenged her decision by attacking her and cutting her and disarming her temporarily it was personal. Seeing that unconscious boy now made Hisako fired up to kill him, not because he was worth it, but because Mana didn't want her to. That bitch dared challenge her decision and interrupt her battle and that gave the boy's death some sick rebellious meaning.</p><p>"The fuck you did that for, idol-bitch?" Hisako grunted out angrily at Mana, her tone was calm and cold, not the likes of which are used when addressing one's friend, much more like the one used in addressing someone you're about to murder. "Just 'cause you won your battle doesn't mean you have the right to butt into mine. I beat him fair and square, his life is in my hands and he's just too much of a dick to leave his throat uncut."</p><p>"I stopped you from making a mistake, I stopped you from making yourself the monster that the people around you think you to be. The monster I know you're not" Mana replied in an equally serious tone. She didn't know if she could take Hisako on, usually, if both of them would be in top shape, Mana would've stood a chance in her mind.</p><p>The magician saw Hisako fight, knew how her skills worked, and while she missed a couple of her more recent fights the one against her and Kiyomi gave her enough to work with. Now with her hidden mechanisms all exposed and her uniform with all of its hidden pockets burnt up and torn, with her chakra drained up and her body burnt, battered, and bruised... This could've been problematic.</p><p>Even if Mana saw Hisako fight, even if she predicted that the assassin would become a problem at one point, foreseeing that exact scenario since they set Hisako free from her binds – the assassin wanting to kill someone on Mana's watch, even so, this fight wouldn't be pretty and the magician wanted to avoid it. While Mana knew how to fight her assassin friend that didn't make it alright, she'd still be hurting her friend.</p><p>Hisako kicked Yellow aside. Mana's hand twitched and a card appeared in her grasp almost instantly. Luckily enough for her, the strings firing off cards and placing them in her hands still worked. The magician thought that Hisako would try and murder Yellow but the assassin just kicked him further away, making space for the inevitable clash that the genin tried to avoid.</p><p>"Humor me..." Hisako grunted in a murderous tone, clashing her own swords against each other. Shaking bunch of blood off of them as well as a flurry of sparks. The assassin's blades were dyed rusty yellow, they weren't like that before – must've been a reaction to some nutrients in the blood, something meant to intimidate an opponent. These weren't normal swords, they must've had quite a history behind them and it was unclear how Hisako got her hands on them, nor did it matter.</p><p>"This whole time I never viewed you as a monster, as a senseless killer. You were always just a ninja who wanted to do the right thing, just went about it differently. You go about things in usual ways, classic ninja mindset. You have no shame killing or offering your body if that gets the job done and those are the ninja values we've been told to work with. Even while you killed and cursed inventing a new way to express your rude thoughts through combinations of curses I never knew to be possible, you've always done the right thing. You wanted the same things we did, you just had your ways of going about it." Mana replied.</p><p>Hisako swung her swords at her lazily, Mana flicked her hands up shooting a bunch of cards and then another switch that hardened the string behind them, making an improvised blade of cards stuck together that clashed with Hisako's, the woman forced her swords forward, grabbing and tearing the device off of Mana's arm with her bare hands and crushing it without much effort. Only her cold murderous stare right into the magician's eyes.</p><p>"I attacked you two bitches in the forest. Was that also "for the right thing"?" the assassin asked sarcastically. "I mean I certainly see your dead disemboweled body as being for the better but it may not fit your sense of justice..."</p><p>"You were testing us. Missions beyond the wall of the village are brutal and you wanted to see if we could be trusted. If we were able to handle it. If the two of us couldn't best you, more so going easy on us, restraining yourself so that we don't get killed, we had no place in this mission. After all, Fifth is known for her lack of maturity and evaluation of risk, she may have as well sent two newbies into such an assignment..." Mana replied.</p><p>That much was apparent, judging from the likes of enemies that Hisako managed to slaughter later on, the assassin must've held back significantly during that brawl, both Mana and Kiyomi did hold back as well and it would've made no sense for someone of the level of Hisako back then to beat a whole group of mercenaries without even getting injured.</p><p>"Even more, later on, you made sure that we don't get killed, you risked the integrity and the shame of your own body to make sure that we get the aid we need. You did everything in your power to make sure the deal with Hachi goes through and when it didn't you killed every bastard threatening us" the magician added taking her hat off and making a handseal.</p><p>A bright purple light lit up the basement room as the girl pulled out a wand the length of a short sword or a lengthy knife. It had a bright greenish-blue gem on the end, something she acquired during the time spent training after Team Oak split up. It didn't have many things special about it, it was quite sturdy and looked magical enough to be used during Mana's performance. The gem on the end could've been used to bludgeon someone but such use was not fitting for the magician's character.</p><p>"I just made sure the mission goes through, all I needed from you two was to make sure that the mission is completed!" Hisako shouted out lunging forward and swinging her swords at Mana's face, the magician leaned back successfully avoiding the swing but Hisako's swing continued as the assassin picked up speed using the momentum to boost her force. The girl thrust her wand forward blocking the second strike, her lungs started getting short of air and she wanted to avoid being caught exhausted and winded. A loud clang echoed through the room with the sparks lighting up the angry and determined faces of both young women facing off.</p><p>Mana would've stood no chance just fighting the assassin off using her wand, Hisako was buying time, she was using the talking time to get her breath back together acting like she's trying to kill Mana when in reality she was just playing around to make it look like Hisako is fighting for real.</p><p>"You saved us after we took on Hachi, you kept on helping us out throughout the rest of the mission even going as far as to save a young man from his life as a slave! You gave him hope for a better life, don't you get that!?" Mana lost her cool throwing cards left and right, those were just simple blade tipped cards, Hisako rolled to the side, blocked some more but two of them dug into the girl's body. The Yoruma grunted and cursed rolling behind a pipe.</p><p>Mana furiously pressed the advantage on, unsealing a whole deck of explosive cards from the pocket space inside her hat and throwing them at the pipe. As the cards cut through steel leaving holes powerful streams of heated steam made Hisako yell in pain and move away from the pipeline.</p><p>"I know the kind of person that you are, the real you. You're a kind soul who has been oppressed and called inhuman filth for your entire life who just wants to rebel against everyone who calls you that. You have much love, much care, hurt and pain inside you yet no one sees that and it angers you. So you lash out, try to become an anti-social monster they take you for to fit their expectations, to make them at the very least love this twisted version of you instead!" Mana continued to attack Hisako with blade tipped cards, wearing the woman down from long range.</p><p>The assassin tried to leap in and strike the magician down but a card stopped her from gaining momentum. Speed was not something instantly acquired, it required chakra control and body augmentation but even more – it required time and space to pick up. A speedster like Hisako needed to move, to pick speed up blitzing all over the room before she moved in at unimaginable speed to strike her opponent down before they have time to react, by intercepting that space and time with a well-placed projectile Mana denied the assassin her speed. The magician predicted this encounter long ago, she had plenty of time to think this through.</p><p>"That may be true, it may be all lies. Either way – I want to kill this rogue, so does that high and mighty Yamanaka bitch. Either I'll kill you and then him, or the two of us will beat you for that kill either way and while the blondy is busy with the boy I'll slip a knife between your ribs. Ninja that protect the life of a rogue are rogues themselves, a rogue has no right to live, the life of a criminal is that of inhuman filth who only wastes everyone else's air!" Hisako roared out. That was one thing Mana tried to avoid, getting the woman angry. Anger and hate were Hisako's steroids. It made her ignore the injury, it made her force through any odds to kill her enemy.</p><p>Hisako lunged forward, a simple steel-tipped card wouldn't have done it now, Mana threw an explosive card, Hisako formed an X shaped block with her blades and augmented her body. The explosive force made the assassin shoot out from the smoke sliding back, doubling the distance between the two. Mana was in no worry to run out of cards, she had a couple of decks in that hat of hers and while unsealing them would've cost her some chakra that wasn't the main worry – it was time. Once the magician ran out of cards she'd need a moment to refill, would Hisako give that moment to her? Probably not...</p><p>Hisako roared forming a handseal and flipping her hand, five throwing knives flashed in her palm and then got launched at Mana. The magician threw a bunch of cards at the knives intercepting them in mid-air. Hisako's twisted smile colored her face in the emotional shades of absolutely terrifying. The girl's fingers twitched, "Yoruma Hijutsu: Shot Bladeworks!" she grunted as the small sources of light enlightened the wires tied around her fingers that sent the knives back directed at Mana.</p><p>The magician slammed her arms together. "Mystical Bubble Jutsu!" she yelled out shoving her arms to the side forming a protective bubble of wind chakra around her that deflected the knives. After the exchange of blows the two young women just continued to stand and huff at each other, each saw the weakness and exhaustion of another but none of them were confident enough to capitalize on it.</p><p>Mana weaved some handseals, looking Hisako straight in the eyes with the saddest look, she wished none of this fight between friends. This fight caused major callbacks to when Shimo was fighting Sugemi, back then Mana was hesitant to involve herself, she may have been injured but she shouldn't have let that get in her way, had she been less afraid of her own power she may have resolved the fight earlier, somehow prevented the downfall of Team Oak.</p><p>The magician threw a bunch of cards at Hisako, the woman easily turned the blunt side of her sword and deflected the three projectiles lunging at Mana and slashing at her chest. A gash opened up and blood splashed out all over Hisako's face. Mana's scared face twisted as her frame collapsed on the ground.</p><p>Sadistic urges took over the mad Yoruma assassin, she continued to hack and slash at the collapsed teammate, again and again, cutting off her limbs and cutting deeper into the already dead corpse of her teammate. A couple of cards whizzed through the air digging themselves deep into Hisako's back, the assassin woman leaned forward as the injuries of that day stacked up to bring her down.</p><p>"It seems that this illusion is fairly effective on the more sadistic opponents. It made you completely unaware of anything around you..." Mana's voice echoed as the girl glared angrily at her partner who was down on one knee huffing and coughing up blood.</p><p>The magician once again used her "Scary Trick Jutsu" to slip into a state unseen to her opponent, leaving only her copy behind, an illusionary clone that appeared to get killed when in reality it was just a phantom. Just a figment of her opponent's imagination. Hisako fell for her illusion perfectly. That injury must've slowed her down, the cards left pretty deep wounds, they were thin and cut quite deep. Hisako didn't even augment her body, she may have been warned by her instincts but purposefully didn't trust them because she saw her dead friend right in front of her, she chose to get more kicks out of slaughtering the fake Mana some more and paid the price.</p><p>"You're fucking annoying, like a fucking branch of a chili tree stuck up my irritated ass with the pepper burning it from inside!" Hisako shouted out, turning at Mana, getting back on her feet through the sheer force of will and firing that disgusting fire of a maniac desperate to kill his prey before going down. There may have been no besting Hisako as long as Mana was drawing breath, the only way to knock her down so that she didn't stand up again may have been the permanent one...</p><p>The assassin jumped forward, no, she simply disappeared, reappearing instantly right up close to Mana, accelerating from her slowed down state to near-instantaneous movement within mere fractions of a second. She must've poured chakra into that augmentation, Hisako raised her blades to an upwards slash, Mana had no time to block or dodge. Her reaction time simply couldn't comprehend that attack. She never even realized what could've happened however her body worked without the approval of her brain augmenting her body with a powerful burst of chakra.</p><p>The blades slid through the girl's body as they cut into the rock, the bursting chakra of Mana's elevated chakra level formed somewhat of a forcefield on the girl's skin, Hisako's swords would've killed the girl with one cut but now they only left shallow scratches. That was how the bodies of a ninja dealt with faster than their reflexes blows, as long as they had the right amount of chakra, the body could've augmented the endurance even at an instantaneous rate however if the chakra wasn't enough it would've amounted to nothing.</p><p>Mana's body was thrown down onto the floor, the magician finally realized what happened and tried to roll back, Hisako leaped forward again trying to raise her blades upwards and impaling the girl on them, lifting her body off the floor. Mana leaned back avoiding it, after using such a mad burst of chakra Mana was sure that her opponent wouldn't risk ruining their chakra network with another augmentation, she just avoided the upwards thrust by leaning back and dashing backward. Hisako's kick drew air out of Mana's lungs, momentarily whiting the girl's eyes out and drawing blood to burst from her injured stomach. Mana slammed into the wall leaving a small dent. Her body shook with a creepy twitch as it hit the ground. Her will kicked in.</p><p>"Get up and fight, she'll kill you if you won't!" the magician's mind ordered herself. Her body refused to move, however, what chances did she have against a Chuunin, more so, one on the higher tier of Chuunin? One who had killed everyone in her way to the top? Mana lifted her head up, she felt blood coming up from somewhere internally, she must've almost gotten killed from that one kick alone. Her long hair got in the way of her vision but her tired eyes with blood running down on them still saw the blurred sight of Hisako holding her sword above the boy's back.</p><p>"Oh? Have you passed out yet? Had enough? Well then, allow me to do my job then bitch, now that you've been reminded who's in the right here..." Hisako shouted in a cold and emotionless tone. "Just sit still and admit you've been wrong and maybe I won't execute you for protecting a rogue. He may not be a rogue ninja because he's not a ninja, but he's a criminal, he's dangerous to the village and to himself."</p><p>"Should I relax? Just let her kill the boy? Just lay low, admit defeat, and maybe live? Do I have the right to live if I let someone die?" Mana thought as she felt her stomach burning up inside of her, she felt blood running down from everywhere, something inside her was crushed, something was wrong. Mana felt bad, felt like dying several times in her life but never like this. Never had she felt her own body burning up from inside.</p><p>What was crushed? Her spleen? Her liver? Her kidneys? Either way, she was dead, it was just how she accepted that death that mattered. "Can I just lay here and die, watching her kill this boy? Kill him before giving him a chance to redeem himself, before he is mature enough to realize what he had done with his own life and those around him? No... No, I can't, sorry, body, I can't"</p><p>Mana's body flared up with chakra leaking out. Her hands moved by themselves. Hisako looked surprised at her beaten opponent, only for her eyes to white out, suddenly Hisako fell on all-fours and started licking her palm. "Polymorphy Jutsu..." Mana whispered completing her illusion.</p><p>The magician forced chakra through her body, leaping forward with the strongest kick that her body could muster up. Her body couldn't move anymore, it was moved with chakra alone, what little that she had left. Mana only knew a single low ranked taijutsu technique, it was the time that she used that. The magician let her chakra run through her, move her body, she submitted to her flow that moved her forward and guided her, she may have died later on but that didn't matter, only saving this boy's life did. It was never about Mana making it, it was about the conditions of how she passed.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" the girl roared, her internally burning with pain body mustered up one breath to yell out the name of her attack proudly to dig her foot from up in the air deep into Hisako's gut, she was thinking of herself as a cat, she didn't augment herself because cats didn't usually manipulate chakra. Her body took all of Mana's strength. Hisako's body got kicked down through the layer of steel, peeling it like it was paper. The body of the assassin hit something that looked like a throne chair and dangled on it, Hisako may have broken her back as her eyes were closed and blood ran down her nose and mouth as well as several other spaces.</p><p>Mana's body weightlessly collapsed. The magician lifted her head to look at her friend, Hisako grunted and tried to move but could only slam her body down to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Mana forced her body up, she didn't care if she broke her body's chakra network.</p><p>She'd die soon with those internal injuries and even Quack couldn't help her, what did it matter if her chakra network burnt out due to abuse of augmentation? Most ninja used it sparingly, once or twice per battle just so they didn't die or landed a technique that really needed to hit. Mana was a bit too much of a novice to use it at all, her higher than usual chakra level may have ensured that she wouldn't burn out but it was still dangerous. Now she had no choice.</p><p>Mana approached Hisako looking at her from above, her opponent was down, blood was slowly forming a tiny pool around the woman's head. Suddenly the body flashed, a black blur, like a hurricane. All was resolved in just a moment, victory changed into defeat. Hisako was on her knees and the tip of her sword was inside Mana's gut. The magician's chakra augmentation ensured that the girl's body didn't get completely skewered but she still got an injury, one that made her body helplessly collapse on the ground. The girl's conscience slipped up, switching from here and now to some other time and another place.</p><p>"Death... So that's how it feels? I've been nearly killed before but never like this? I was never feeling it happening, crawling up my neck, wrapping its fingers around my throat and suffocating me, looking me in the eyes with joy and pride. Pride of snuffing out the last daughter of the Wandering Ninja..." Mana thought to herself, her eyes opened up, her conscience returned, her first sight was her own hand, covered in her own blood.</p><p>Then the sight of Hisako climbing up the throne, reaching up to the collapsed floor she fell through. Her body must've been just as broken as Mana's was, what kept the assassin going? Was it her will to kill? Was the will to kill stronger than the will to protect? It couldn't have been. Mana's eyes closed, a smile twisted her face into an expression of bliss.</p><p>Hisako reached up for the torn shred of steel of the floor on the other level, she pulled her body upwards with just one hand, the throne chair fell down, shaking around and leaving the assassin's body dangling in the air. "Mystical Wings Jutsu!" an annoying whiny and bratty voice of a young girl echoed behind her, Hisako let go and turned around, the last thing she saw was Mana's body, dropkicking her right in the chest using the empowered kicking force of the wind that usually propelled her body from the ground. Hisako's body slammed into the wall and the powerful stream of wind drilled her deeper still. The woman's head bashed mercilessly into solid steel knocking her out instantly. She was lucky to stay alive.</p><p>Mana's tired and broken body fell down on her back. The magician clutched the stab wound on her gut, her breathless head weighed down to the right, her eyes closed. She knew she did good, at least as her final act. She fought a vastly superior opponent in every way and managed to protect a young soul, one that was dark and twisted but one with hope for redemption. The girl was a believer in second chances, hell, even third ones if it was possible. Mana was a lot of things, she kind of wanted to be all those things for some longer but her body didn't listen.</p><p>"Just close your eyes and go to sleep... You deserved rest" her last thoughts ordered.</p>
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<a name="section0098"><h2>98. Love And Genocide</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Fourteen and a half years ago:</strong>
</p><hr/><p>A lonely man was sitting in the armchair. His place reeked of cheap alcohol, there were several clay flasks of emptied sake all over the floor. A mass of unfinished lunch that reminded more now of slime than it did of waffles, which it began its existence as, lay dormant on the table, just a couple of hours short before life would flourish on its surface making it dangerous to eat. It wasn't that the man cared that much of safety hazards of the edible food variety. In his line of work, tainted waffles were the least likely thing to kill him.</p><p>The man flipped the flask of sake tied down to his arm, it was comfortable to drink it that way for drunks. One didn't have to constantly hold it in their arm, one flip of the flask, just a gentle movement of the arm and the disgusting flammable devil's elixir poured all over one's mouth. Filling one with that feeling of disgust and regret but at the same time relief, satisfying one's desire for self-destruction, making their self-pity somehow feel better. As if the drunkard screamed to the world: "I'm miserable, so what, you may hate me but I hate myself even more, so fuck off".</p><p>Even with the more comfortable drinking mechanism on the man's arm, his arm twisted in a way that let the booze spill on the floor as he forgot to close the flask before lowering his hands. The man cursed but ultimately felt too drunk and lazy to fix it. His apartment already looked like a shithole so what's a little sake on the floor? If anything the liquor will serve as a decontaminant for all those bacteria and insects on the rarely cleaned floor and carpet. That furry thing was there before Nakotsumi Tsukumo could remember, belonged to his father, or maybe even his grandfather.</p><p>The man decided to pour his next drink, he spilled the contents of the flask on the floor, clearly, he was too drunk for that kind of drinking to continue so perhaps a change in habit could somehow slightly give him some sharpness of thought back. He hoped desperately that this night would be nothing like the nights of the last eight weeks, nights when he drank himself until passing out, waking up covered in his own vomit, cleaning himself up, and going to work.</p><p>People looked at Tsukumo and hated him for being a drunkard slob, they called him a mess. They were afraid of him and pointed fingers. They didn't hate the man half as bad as he hated himself. He drank because he wanted to kill himself but lacked the guts to cut his own throat. Sometimes he got so drunk that the guts toughened, the man tried to kill himself in one of his traps, "Konoha's Great Trapster" they started calling him after Tsukumo became one of the more notable genin and approached the day he'd be called a chuunin even.</p><p>Yet every time the man tried, every time he failed – a drunk mind just couldn't properly set the darned thing up and Tsukumo always passed out. They called him a mess, how does one not become a mess after being involved in a literal genocide? Following and gathering intelligence on a band of people tied together by bonds of family – "Wandering Ninja" they called themselves. It was Tsukumo's information that helped their entire tribe to be killed, just snuffed out, stabbed, and slit their throats in a coordinated fashion one rainy night. All of them but one woman, Hokage was merciful enough to spare her seeing how Tsukumo got involved with her. The worst part that it wasn't even Tsukumo's word that saved her, it was Hokage's own skills of observation.</p><p>"Tsukumo," he said, "I've heard you've been hanging out with this Kei of the Wandering Ninja". At that point the genin was ready to admit he was involved and slept with her numerous times, he was ready to let go of her, he was that sad and pathetic. Admit it all and let her die with the rest of her people, "Don't worry, Hokage-sama, it won't be a bother" was the best that fuckwad which was Tsukumo could come up with. Hokage allowed her to be spared, he said that even the Daimyo was fine with one woman surviving, after all – one woman was not enough to keep the purest form of bloodline alive. Even if those mutts could be considered a clan before, with all of their mixed blood, they certainly won't be now, not for real.</p><p>A loud bang woke Tsukumo up, it must've been early morning. The man wouldn't have woken up if it wasn't, booze tends to knock him out good. The genin looked at the pieces of his glass and the damaged wall, he must've flung the damned thing pretty hard, he was proper pissed last night...</p><p>Slowly dragging his feet and feeling worse than a dog having swallowed a bucket of banana slugs and a toad on top he staggered to the door, Tsukumo's head was spinning, he felt like he was going to literally pour out his stomach and innards on the floor if he as much as thought about it or opened his mouth. It's alright, he deserved to suffer, he deserved death for what he was responsible for...</p><p>Tsukumo opened the door. There she was... A short, dark purplish shade of long hair reaching the lower parts of her back. Kei of the Wandering Ninja. Tsukumo tried to slam the door but her hand got in the way. The man pulled it tougher, slamming the door on her hand and pressing hard, the woman grunted and barely restrained her scream of pain but she held it there, the bleeding hand was shaking but the woman left it there – she was desperate to get in.</p><p>"Look if you want to kill me for what I've done – be my guest... I've been trying to but I'm too much of a dirtbag to throw myself off of a cliff. Fucking excuse me for not having the guts to off my stupid face." Tsukumo spoke, he was right, just as he opened his mouth and opened the door he threw up close to the woman's slippers. She stepped back letting his torrent of vomit just barely slip from hitting her wet and transparent white shirt. Kei locked her hands on her chest and helped Tsukumo get back on his feet.</p><p>"I can't kill you, I wanted to, I mean... But you saved my life, similarly to how you can't end yourself, I cannot kill a man who loved me so much that he saved my life from... That..." Kei spoke softly. Her hand moved onto her stomach. "Also, I can't kill you until you help raise our child..."</p><p>Tsukumo's eyes widened, he jumped back on his feet and looked at the vomit, trying to swallow the following up reflex to throw his poison up again. "Scuse me, what?" he asked looking at the woman who gently took him by his elbow and dragged him inside his own home to hide both of them from the rain and closed the door.</p><p>"The child, two months..." Kei smiled looking at her belly with those most lovely eyes that Tsukumo got in love with.</p><p>"Fuck... Two months? That was... Fuck..." the man cursed stroking his lengthened hair and nearly clawing his own eyes out from dealing with the shock.</p><p>"This child was started on the worst night of my people, it's either going to be someone great or someone genocidal, either way, it's gonna mean something, I just know it" Kei looked at it before tears started bursting down her face. She turned away and crept up closer to the door, gently tapping her forehead to the rough wood and starting to cry for real.</p><p>Tsukumo cursed again and hugged the woman from behind, gently stroking the belly where his child was growing. "What's wrong?" he asked, he didn't feel nearly well enough to be dealing with the hormones of a pregnant woman but that was his life – responsibility and hatred. Hatred for himself for taking that responsibility up. He was warned about what that mission to gather intel on the Wandering Ninja would do to him.</p><p>Still, he went with it... He wanted glory, he wanted a shortcut to the next rank, and being someone who caused genocide in the name of the village was that shortcut. This world awarded the worst scum there were and if that was the truth, Nakotsumi Tsukumo was the worst there was. Maybe even worse than those who actually carried the mass assassination out.</p><p>"I can't, Tsukumo, can't you see? What kind of an ignorant ass would bring her baby into this pathetic and sickening world?!" the woman cried out, her heart was still aching, she still hasn't forgiven Tsukumo's betrayal. After all, the man got involved with her while working behind her back to gather intelligence on her people which was then used to slaughter them all out just because the Daimyo didn't like them and the fact that they were people who loved freedom most of all things.</p><p>"You're right, this place sucks, everything about it is disgusting and it may be for the better if that child would never be born to see it how it is. Imagine the hatred and grief in that child's heart when they hear that they were started on the night that all of their people were slaughtered for refusing to be subjugated. Imagine its disappointment when it learns to not even belong to the tribe of their people, that anger for its own roots when it learns to be the child of their only survivor and the man who handed the dagger to their killers... We've failed our child before it was born, we've failed to give them a world to live in, only this... Just as we were failed by our parents and the list goes on..." Tsukumo rambled stopping a couple of times feeling like he was about to throw up again but barely managing to keep it in.</p><p>Kei turned back and hugged the man she loved, even with all that he did, she still loved him. "Then give me a senbon and I'll end it. We'll spare our child the suffering of being born, we'll spare it of the realization of the failure of our ancestors and its own parents..." she cried out pitifully.</p><p>"We have no right" Tsukumo's voice thundered it out, this wasn't the voice of a drunk who was responsible for mass murder, it was the brave and strong voice of a future father.</p><p>Kei's shocked and surprised eyes looked her lover right in the eyes. She kissed him passionately and then shook her head in disbelief.</p><p>"I mean... Our child will probably hate this place, they'll probably be the cruelest and meanest bastard and let this world seep into their veins. I'm sure them being started on the day of genocide isn't a good sign but... If our child will hate it or love it, it's a fifty-fifty chance. If we decide for our child it will be a one hundred percent disappointment and death. It may be too young to know anything yet but it will still be a failure. We'll let this cruel world get to our child before it is even born, we'll show them the twisted side of this world before they even understand what is happening. No. I'm going to accept this responsibility, I'll answer for what I've done, I'll raise this child and be the best father at the same time while I fix this somehow... All I ask for is that you also give me the chance to be your husband. Look at this place, without you I'll fail. Please give this a chance... I'm not asking you to forgive me for what I've done, it's unforgivable. I'm just asking for your help in fulfilling this responsibility."</p><p>Kei hugged Tsukumo and kissed him again several times. Right after her sweet lips moved away from those of the genin he felt a powerful blow and saw a broomstick in her hands. "Look at this dump, clean yourself up, my future husband!" Kei laughed out through her tears handing the broom to Tsukumo who laughed out and picked it from her hands.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Several Days Ago:</strong>
</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi looked at the sleeping body of her teammate, her chest just barely lifted and deflated showing some signs of life. She must've been cold. The girl crawled up to her friend and covered her up with her own jacket. Kiyomi looked at the fire and moved in closer. She was fortunate that the Quack and Hisako saved the two, they'd have died if they didn't butt in and heal them. That Quack had the craziest healing methods but at the very least because of him Mana and Kiyomi are currently alive. Despite having met him just a day ago the young Yamanaka already trusted him more than Hisako, not that it was a tough limit to beat...</p><p>The young man looked at her and took a pill of some sort. He squinted his eyes and his skin got paler, for a moment it looked like he was dying as he started to choke and struggle to breathe and his blood vessels shot out but then just that moment later he started breathing again and his pulse got back to normal, only his pale skin still reminded the Yamanaka of this young man's strange ritual. She looked at him with a questioning glare. While Hisako was out getting them food she may as well have gotten to know the guy.</p><p>"Sorry, lovely, not your damned business... If you're a junkie of some sort, you can't have any, it's mine and I don't like to share" the young Quack replied, it wasn't that his tone implied rudeness too, he appeared to feel more annoyed than anything else.</p><p>"Story for a story?" Kiyomi smiled. The Quack laughed out sarcastically as if mocking the blonde, he must've doubted that she had an interesting enough story to deserve his own.</p><p>The blonde looked down, she was acting out of line, this man was just a rogue. Even more, he kept on treating her and everyone else like dirt, he didn't even as much as look at Mana after stabilizing her condition, she may as well have died on his watch and until Hisako or Kiyomi ordered him to look at her he wouldn't have cared one bit.</p><p>"It's poison, I need it to kill something worse inside me, something that together with killing me is also healing me so that it can thrive and kill me longer, that's the short version, lovely..." the Quack replied quickly, he moved up closer to Kiyomi tightening the belt of his coat. It really was a cold evening. The rogue medic reached for her cheek.</p><p>"What's this?" he asked looking at it, "Looks black, bleeding black's the color of "I'm fucked through the bunghole" he examined it.</p><p>Kiyomi pushed his hand away and wiped the dirt off of her cheek. "It's just dirt you dum..." before she could finish her sentence the young rogue kissed her forcefully. Kiyomi's fist dug deep into his jaw sending the man down and rolling a couple of meters back. She was ready to kill him before the man lifted his head and spat a couple of teeth out before giving her that innocent missing teeth smile.</p><p>"Now you've paid for that story, lovely..." the Quack laughed out. He then came back to where he was sitting, Kiyomi kept on squinting angrily at him preparing to punch him in the face when he as much as twitched his damned lips. A goddamned rogue! He may have felt bad about it and he may have been forced into his servitude and he may have had no choice, he may have wanted to justify his ways and legitimize his work becoming a medical ninja but he was way out of line. She was an heiress of one of the most elite clans in Konoha. She should've killed him where he sat!</p><p>"Although now that you mention it... I mention it... Whatever... I guess I'd kind of like to hear your story. That punch felt like... Yeah, that didn't feel "stop kissing me, you creep!", more like "you killed my daddy, prepare to die, criminal scum". As sad as the story sounds, we've got plenty of time before the dark-haired bitch comes back, may as well share stories while we're at it." The young man shrugged.</p><p>"Fine, but if I see as much as another movement I don't like I'll shove a handful of those poison pills down your throat, you may need them to survive but I can't imagine you liking that much of them!" Kiyomi whipped back at him angrily.</p><p>"Aw, don't be like that, lovely, you know how we criminal folk are, don't have a lot of time to live our lives so we get right to the point. No need to feel bad if you don't like rogues, once I'll legitimize and start treating you, maybe wear that fancy doctor uniform I'll be all yours, I give you a 66% promise" the Quack winked at Kiyomi. The Yamanaka just wanted to punch him, beat him, maybe even kill him but... He was a medical ninja, a rogue one but, still, she and Mana owed him their lives. He may have been a womanizing scumbag but he at least deserved several more chances Kiyomi gave most not to piss her off.</p><p>"Alright, since you wanted to hear it, listen up..." Kiyomi started her story, telling the Quack all about her early childhood. All about her mother and her days of tending to the gardens and being pampered like a little flower by the clan elders, being prepared for becoming the next heiress. She went on to tell the young man all about her brother, how strong and amazing he was, how he took it upon himself to fight every enemy of the clan, how he took the responsibility of training Kiyomi and helping her graduate and become an actual ninja.</p><p>Everything about him. How he eventually became a Justicar, an international version of a Hunter Ninja who didn't hunt for the profit and convenience of the village but instead to uphold the various international codes and laws of justice written before the villages were even built, some of them even by the First People, and how he died protecting his family after some criminals wanted to get at him.</p><p>Kiyomi did get a bit invested in her story, her eyes started watering and her body started shaking. She didn't even notice Quack's arm wrapping around her to calm her down. After finishing her story she took a couple of moments to realize it still. Kiyomi's elbow slammed right into the young man's face sending him down again. Whatever skills he had with medical ninjutsu seemed to heal his facial fractures and injuries quite fast, maybe it was the same skill that helped him overcome his poison?</p><p>Either way, once again he stepped over the line. The blonde stood up and walked towards Mana intending to check up on her. "Stop this nonsense before you get hurt. I'm an heiress of the Yamanaka clan and one day I'll marry someone of high status as well... I've no right nor the desire to even look at a rogue medic like you, be it play or actual shot at me..."</p><p>"Heh, never say "fuck off, criminal scum" before you see me in a medical ninja uniform, lovely..." Quack writhed out through the pain of fixing his broken nose.</p><p>Kiyomi didn't want to admit that she cracked a grin and just barely restrained her giggles.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0099"><h2>99. The World Of Bastards</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi grunted while she took another painful step forward, she was rushing it. She felt like Mana was in trouble and felt responsible for helping her friend out. She didn't quite know the source of that responsibility, she barely even knew her friend, hell, they didn't even start off that great. Still, getting almost killed together twice in two days makes even the shakiest of friendships get hardened fast.</p><p>Mana revealed herself and dumped her advantage back when they were fighting Hachi, Kiyomi's well-being was more important to this girl than victory. Than her own life even. She'd rather risk her safety and life than have Kiyomi suffer and that notion surprised the Yamanaka.</p><p>There weren't that many people like that. This world was a world of bastards. Bastards everywhere one went, ready to place their leg in front of you to trip you over, ready to drive a stick into your wheel to make your carriage flip over. That was just human nature, in this world the death and suffering of one meant advancement of the other's position. When one ninja died, others got their work.</p><p>If a ninja messed up their assassination that work was not only transferred to another, the other one had to pick up their assignment and they had to do it faster before the target successfully managed to strengthen their security and destroy the chances of the mission's success. That made the mission rank higher, which made it grant the ninja who completed it great fame and higher reward. It was a sick society where the loss of one was a victory for everyone else.</p><p>Mana was different, she sacrificed everything and was willing to sacrifice more, she lamented not the fact that she gave everything up for the well-being of others but because she didn't have more to give them. Every time she gave everything up so that someone else could live better she felt bad because she didn't give them enough. If a person lived because of her actions, she was sad because that person didn't live a better life or because they had to suffer in the first place.</p><p>It wasn't even that she was delusional. The strange case of Nakotsumi Mana was that she perfectly realized the nature of the world around her. She didn't have naïve illusions that everything around her was made of cotton candy as everyone thought, she knew it was sick and messed up.</p><p>There was no surprise in the face of this magician when Hisako yelled out her tirade of how sick this world was before going into the tent of Hachi's, no, Mana was almost bored by those words, she just looked back at the woman with a confused and slightly angered look. She knew how it really was, somewhere deep inside, she did know everything. Yet she didn't change one bit of herself. She was kind and giving by choice, with the full awareness that this way of life had nothing but suffering and loss for her. People like this didn't deserve to fight their friends and their enemies and die, they deserved...</p><p>What did they deserve? Did they deserve to be in charge of the whole thing? Did they deserve the whole world for being like they were? Probably not. That'd diminish the meaning of Mana's mentality. The magician was kind not because she wanted to be in charge, she wanted to be that way because she wanted everyone else to be more like that. She saw the problem and decided to change herself so drastically that the others would only take a small fraction of her mentality and that fraction would still be enough to change and solve the problem. She was a hero of overacting with the kindest of intentions. Kiyomi wasn't sure of what people like Mana deserved, all she knew for certain was that it most certainly was not death.</p><p>"Do... Do you think Mana died?" the Yamanaka asked, her voice whimpered.</p><p>"Not sure, she's a dumb brat but if she's one thing, that thing's slippy like a bloody viper. I'm not sure if she can even die, every time I think she dies it's just a stupid trick or some ploy or..." the Quack spoke, for a moment there Kiyomi saw some speck of emotion in his voice. Usually, he spoke in this incredibly indifferent and sarcastic tone but now he did have some desire to get there in time. He helped Kiyomi walk down the steps, much slower than Mana must've in her crazed rush to save everyone but they would get there in time, they had to!</p><p>"Yeah... She may be crazy but, in my experience, silly people are sometimes the ones you wanna be around the most..." Kiyomi smiled thinking back on Hanasaku, her silly sensei who was probably busy filing papers currently. Knowing that a person who couldn't count to thirteen without losing her track and focusing on a squirrel somewhere above was handling the logistics of the village was scary but at the same time strangely hilarious.</p><p>"I think why her dumb antics work so well is because she's a martyr, at least tries to be. She always tries to get killed, throwing herself in danger and so the enemy is supposed to take from it that she wants to die, so when she apparently kicks the dust no one expects her return... For a medical ninja people like that is the worst plague ever" Quack smiled again, he was really getting into this emotional thing, Kiyomi couldn't turn her eyes from the man's smile, not because she fancied him or anything but because she had rarely seen him smile unless it was the smile of the sarcastic kind.</p><p>"Good thing you're not a medical ninja then. For a Quack people who get injured are the best, aren't they? I mean you guys get paid for treatment by the contractors, you're like an independent medic for those who can't go to the village hospital so people like Mana pay for your food" Kiyomi replied finally witnessing the end of this horrible shortcut. It wasn't a shortcut at all, it actually took them at least ten times longer to get to the basement the way that they chose, they wasted even more time because Kiyomi was still injured and only had some stitching work and basic medic work done on her, some battlefield operations and quite skilled patching work but very spontaneous and erratic nonetheless.</p><p>"By the way, you don't really need to hold me, I can walk by myself perfectly fine..." the blonde squinted at the Quack suggesting some dirty play from his part.</p><p>"Nonsense, lovely, if I don't hold this lymph node here on your chest it's going to metastasize into your thyroid and you'll die of Huxley fever" Eiju smiled slowly moving his hand from the suggesting position it was situated in.</p><p>"That doesn't make a nick of sense and you know that" Kiyomi angrily pushed the man back and applied some pressure on her aching ribs slowly moving forward. The Quack rubbed his elbow angrily having bumped it into the wall.</p><p>"Jeez, if all ladies are so smart in the village I'm gonna have a problem, usually most rogues are around my neck the moment I say "subdermatoglyphic"..." Eiju sighed.</p><p>The eyes of both shot wide open in surprise seeing a little kid trying to slowly book it right at them. He was stumbling, must've been pretty cut up, blood was everywhere on his clothes and he had some pretty nasty bruises but the fact that he was booking it meant that the other two were either down or dead. The boy pulled a long and slim blade preparing himself to slash through the two, Eiju evaded his thrust and pinched an area on his thigh, also adding a slight thump on the top of the boy's knee sending him down on the floor screaming like he was getting murdered.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at the Quack pretty impressed, usually, quite a large portion of Quacks were just that – actual quacks. Most of them were self-taught or taught by people who were self-taught medics. It appeared that Eiju may have been a Quack who knew his way around some medical things and also used some of the more unconditional Quack methods. He was the best of both worlds. He even knew how to work pressure points apparently.</p><p>"Holy shit, we should've taken you with us..." Kiyomi looked at Quack surprised after she tied the boy down and went on to examine the place.</p><p>"Nah, I'm pretty glad I didn't go. Danger isn't really my thing. I only fight the disabled or elderly when I have at least four mates to back me up. That's the medical ninja way. There are some dick rules about that for the village medical ninja, to stay behind the fighting ones, right?" the Quack asked examining the dents in the walls and blood all around the room. The signs of a very large scale battle taking place were apparent: the perfume boxes were busted so the place reeked of blood and the perfume combined making that vomit-inducing combination. Any Inuzuka would've been disabled just entering this room alone.</p><p>"Yep" Kiyomi nodded finally noticing the hole in the middle of the room, the lack of decent lighting in the area made it really hard to notice.</p><p>"Well then, that's my kind of a rule already, just kick back and relax while everyone does the bloody murdering for you..." Eiju placed his hands behind his head, acting as if he was already relaxing on a soft pillow of air. Kiyomi's face paled all of a sudden and she dived down almost instantly, she was shouting incomprehensible things. She couldn't be blamed – she saw something horrible and she was afraid!</p><p>"Oy, blondie, so what are we singin'?" the Quack shouted loudly into the dark hole, hesitant to jump in, letting the girl do the checking of how deep the hole was and what's below for him. "We singin' the "Olė's" or "God Bless the Dead"?"</p><p>"Get your lazy ass down here right this instant!" Kiyomi's angry voice came back at Eiju – she was bloody furious. Seeing how Eiju still wanted to keep her as a list of possible dinner mates later on the young man just shrugged and leaped down.</p><p>The view there was horrible, dark, and smelly, that hole however only reeked of blood, there was none of that perfume mixed in which was a welcome change. Kiyomi was kneeling and pressing her head close to Mana's bleeding face, occasionally checking her chest for a heartbeat or trying to desperately cover up the girl's bleeding wound. The Quack knew how it looked, that stab wound looked dangerously close to the girl's heart, it may have been nicked even...</p><p>"So, the three really did kick each other's asses up... Sad. I like ladies more when they're making out but that's just me and every other sane male individual..." the Quack slowly walked up to Hisako feeling her pulse, examining her with his eyes was stupid, the room was dark enough to make specific details too hard to comprehend but just tempting enough to try it, still, wasting time was not good for anyone in the medical profession. He was in it for some time and he knew when stuff was going to fail.</p><p>Quack's hand carefully rubbed around Hisako's body, the sight was tricky, with this deceitful shade around him he needed to use touch for his diagnosis just like that blind medical guy in that one mercenary band he served on. He didn't feel any fleshy wounds and those few he did feel were well covered by her own chakra augmentation. He had a specific diagnostic technique in his arsenal but he decided to save that for the magician girl – she was undoubtedly in the danger of dying so he had to get the lesser attention-grabbing case off his shoulder first.</p><p>"Yep, the hot one with the scars is alright. She's got a motherlode of all concussions though, may as well not recognize your ass from the Hokage, her eyes are late to respond and she's got a small puddle of vomit near her head, she's knocked out for good but she's gonna make it..." he gave Kiyomi his diagnosis for Hisako. Usually, a concussion of this magnitude would've been dangerous but the woman was a ninja with a healthy instinctual chakra augmentation response, her body was already recognizing the injury and doing its best to self-solve all the life-threatening or life-altering problems.</p><p>"That bitch is the least of my worries, she might choke on her vomit for all I care! She almost killed Mana!" Kiyomi yelled back trying her best to give any first aid she was taught to provide in the Academy. It didn't look good, Mana looked completely knocked out with the parts of her skin that weren't covered in blood pale like the moon, which, having the girl's complexion in mind, didn't look remotely good.</p><p>The Quack gently flipped Hisako over onto the side so that she didn't choke on accident, she was lucky to somehow spill it all out on the first go. He then rushed to Mana and felt her up, he felt multiple cuts and bruises, several pretty deep flesh wounds, in one instance his fingers went completely into her flesh which scared him. Eiju took his hands up and moved them on top of Mana's face, he weaved a hand seal, he still had juice for this one technique, this one technique that'd help him determine just how badly the girl is injured, he can't diagnose it properly from where he is and moving her might be too dangerous and take too long.</p><p>"Diagnosis Jutsu" Eiju mumbled as his hands lit up with a bright bluish glow, he moved them all around the girl's body examining her injuries and getting the horrendous full view of exactly how badly injured she was.</p><p>"Not nearly, lovely, the bitch did kill her..." Eiju sighed feeling the girl's relaxed muscles. She wasn't dead yet but she was getting there.</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes went through a myriad of emotions, they shifted from sadness, grief, to anger, and that lovely looking bloodlust that the Quack enjoyed seeing in the eyes of young women.</p><p>"Wait... Aren't you at least... I mean..." she tried to say something but her emotional state was just too crippled.</p><p>"I can't, you two made the decision to move in before I regain my chakra, I can't heal her, even with my full chakra I doubt I could take care of these injuries. There's some extent of injury even a hundred percent of a medical ninja's capacity cannot take care of and usually the rule is ten percent per patient. You two made the call, you have to accept the consequences, I know it sucks, consequences are the least favorite part of adult life personally, right up there with alimony and mercenaries hunting your ass for gambling debts. Who am I kidding, I don't pay my alimony and I always poison those I gamble with..." Quack kept mumbling to himself, standing back up and rubbing his stubble that formed over a couple of days. He looked back at Hisako wondering if the last remnants of his stamina and attention should be diverted to the patient that can still be saved.</p><p>"But... She's just been stabbed... People survive getting stabbed, I get stabbed all the time, I even keep on fighting after that! Why isn't her own chakra dealing with it? I thought the body augments its regeneration factor during extreme cases!" Kiyomi yelled back at Quack grabbing him by his collar and dragging him back to Mana forcing him to sit closer to her and look at her again.</p><p>"It does, hers doesn't. Something went wrong, she must've abused chakra augmentation, it's not something young and inexperienced ninja should toy with – her chakra network is all messed up now. It doesn't work at all, I didn't sense any bodily regeneration from her, she may as well be just an ordinary civilian girl getting stabbed in the chest, I'm surprised she isn't dead already" the Quack explained looking Kiyomi in the eyes and gently holding her head so that she looked him right in the eyes and saw how serious he was.</p><p>The Yamanaka burst into tears and almost collapsed, Eiju hugged her and pressed her head against his chest. He lowered his own eyes, was he an actual human being? He was reporting to a young woman that her friend was dying and all he cared about in his own head and gut was how good it felt having her head on his chest.</p><p>That was the part he hated about being able to heal people, of making it his job and business, it made him eccentric, it made him completely indifferent and objective towards what were lives of actual people. The man pushed Kiyomi's blonde head gently removing his pills and popping them. If he had any dignity he'd have swallowed a dozen and been done with it. Then again, assholes like him fit perfectly into this world, the world of bastards.</p><p>"There has to be something you can still do..." Kiyomi whined, jumping back at her friend, shaking her lifeless body, trying to slap her awake, and then searching Mana's pouches for something. The magician probably carried around medical food pills, those may have healed all of her wounds if she still had some but after a brief search the blondie gave up.</p><p>"Do you think so little of my word!? I told you, lovely, watch my lips closely! She's-going-to-die! Nothing I can do 'bout it!" Eiju yelled back at Kiyomi surprising the blonde. He articulated the last part like the worst kind of indifferent bastard.</p><p>The Quack was so mad that he was helpless, no, that wasn't even it. If he was mad because he couldn't help a dying girl in front of him he'd be fine, it was because it wasn't even the reason he was mad because of. It was because he finally realized how horrible of a person he was, it was because deep inside he knew that Kiyomi wasn't his soulmate, because he was messed up, and if he did indeed love her more than a tavern whore he'd have pushed her away from him because a sick bastard like he was would've only hurt her.</p><p>"What do you fucking care if she lives or dies?! Who the hell is she for you!? You just met her some days ago, why do you show all that older sister bullshit for her? She's not your sister, she's not your anything, she isn't even that important to the village. Out of the three of you, she's the least paid one: she's not a part of a clan, she's still a genin and the least experienced one out of the three of you. You caring for her doesn't make any logical sense!" the Quack exploded, he started punching and kicking various objects over. He was so sarcastic, so calm and indifferent, why was he acting so weird all of a sudden?</p><p>"There's something you can do, isn't there? You're holding something back, there's something you can do to save Mana's life but you don't want to do it..." Kiyomi realized looking at the guy she let touch her and even tend to her wounds with horror and disgust.</p><p>Finally, he revealed himself to be the criminal scum that the blonde should've always taken him for, and to think that in the deepest corners of her heart she honored fantasies, joke scenarios, that maybe the two of them could work in some alternate universe, that maybe she and this ragtag rogue could say "fuck everything" and just escape the clutches of her clan, just do whatever the hell they wanted. Be happy together with this chemistry of love-hate between them. Why was she ever so dumb to give a criminal Quack hope for redemption?</p><p>"Answer me! There's something you can do, right!?" Kiyomi yelled out with the loudest her voice could, she stood up back on her feet ready to beat the living shit out of this scumbag if he answered the way she predicted it. She hoped, begged whatever forces oversaw this Universe that he wouldn't flip his miserable viper tongue the way she doesn't want him to, that he doesn't prove himself to be the worst kind of a scumbag, that he doesn't completely destroy the faith Kiyomi still had in humanity.</p><p>"Answer me..." she whispered softer, still angry but now more of the grieving and depressing kind of anger.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0100"><h2>100. The Obligatory Wonderful Life Episode</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn't like Mana woke up. More like she stayed asleep yet somehow aware of her slumber. She no longer felt the pain all over her body or the sadness over the way things went. Initially, it was like her soul, like some ethereal substance that was only Mana because the magician identified herself as it floated in the air, just several meters above the girl's body. Observing one's own body knocked out and beaten, broken and without a doubt dying was a strange experience. The only thing about all of this that still kept Mana happy was that she didn't float away just yet and stayed around for a while more.</p><p>Mana had faked her own death numerous times on the battlefield. Sometimes it was her go-to strategy when she needed to make an opening when her opponents weren't giving her any. Had it not been for this strange fighting style she'd have never survived against Hachi or beaten Noji and Sunomaru right here. This thing going on now, however, was no trick, she was actually feeling her own existence fading away, for real. It's a spectacularly dark and incomparable to anything else experience. Needless to say, Mana's heart was not calm even during this peaceful moment of silence and tranquility. She was afraid.</p><p>Could she really be blamed for being afraid to die? Someone at some point said that nothing was to be feared but fear itself, that sounded really stupid at that moment. Maybe the true revelations only came before one's death? Maybe it was because she knew this unavoidable part of living – dying, that Mana could say for certain that fearing fear itself was stupid. What was the point of something existing just for the sake of it being applied to itself? Then again, it wasn't that in this world everything had its point. Mana, for starters, felt incredibly pointless at that moment, her entire life felt like having been lived for nothing now that she lied there dying.</p><p>Mana was afraid of death and she felt like that was perfectly normal, death was the ultimate end of everyone. If one didn't fear death or the concept of the absolute end, what else could there have been to fear? Death was certainly scarier than fear itself, at least fearing the end made some lick of sense even if it wasn't as majestic and celestial as the greatest heroes of literature would have made the girl believe.</p><p>They would've been disappointed in her for caring about her own life but, for some reason, Mana still considered herself right. Even if ninja could breathe fire and throw thousands of weapons at their enemies in mere seconds even the best and least human of them were susceptible to death. Even the strongest and the smartest died, just like Mana's own sensei – Tanshu did. There may have never been a more powerful ninja in this world and there may never be in the future and still, he died, with all of his inhuman strength and endurance even he found his limit which he couldn't cross.</p><p>The girl closed her eyes, or at least its soul or whatever was floating above her body... It closed its ability to see. Suddenly the magician felt unifying with her unconscious body, merging with it again. For a brief moment her heart lit up with happiness for the first time in quite a while – maybe she'd still survive this? No. The magician was quite familiar with the concept of meditation, even going as far as to discover several stages of it.</p><p>The first one she called Ego, in it she could witness all that was going on with her own body, it was like her own body lit up like a galaxy of stars and suddenly the girl could feel what was going on. The second stage was called Omnes. Mana had still very little mastery over it but it somehow extended the Ego stage to everyone but her. Somehow the magician was able to see small stars instead of people instead of the usual black void with stars around her own chakra network.</p><p>The current sight was almost tragic. All of the stars were slowly going out, some of them were burning up, the hottest they've ever burnt but slowly each of them were going out in these gigantic flares, gigantic being a very relative term since those stars were minuscule in comparison, smaller even than the chakra nodes they were supposed to represent. Her own personal galaxy, a universe inside Mana's body was slowly dimming and going out, one star at a time.</p><p>The more time passed the more this process accelerated, stars started burning up faster and in larger numbers. The magician tried to concentrate, to try and feel her friends, maybe they could get to her and help her, maybe Eiju still had some silly methods of saving a person? She failed to enter the Omnes stage, it wasn't something too much of a novelty, even when she was healthy and at her best, it was something she did accidentally and discovered new things about every time. She had some sort of gift, a gift to see every living being around her with just her concentration alone.</p><p>"This is hopeless..." Mana sighed, somehow she managed to retain and salvage a part of her consciousness and bottle it up inside her dying body. She wasn't sure if it helped her live longer or if it just opened the tragic fate of her death up for her to see. So that was how she'd go? Dying while fighting a far stronger opponent, trying to keep them from killing a young man and destroying their own inner integrity. Did she save anyone in the end? Would the young "hostage" ever reform, would he ever know or care about the sacrifice Mana made for him? Would Hisako survive this encounter? It'd really be tragic if Mana crossed her ultimate line and killed her friend on accident with her dying desperation move.</p><p>Maybe there was still hope for both of them? Just maybe the kid would somehow see where he was wrong, realize how messed up it all was, maybe Hisako would finally see that while she wanted the right thing to be done deep inside, killing a kid who didn't even know what he was doing and had no chance at redemption wasn't what she wanted...</p><p>Either way, that was all that Mana had as her calming thoughts that should've made her transition to the dark and scary embrace of death more pleasing and more acceptable. It did neither of those. Assumptions and hopes didn't do the trick. Even in her final moments, Mana felt sad that her life ultimately served no purpose or use. Just like fearing fear itself instead of fearing death – something fear was supposed to help us avoid as an integral instinct of our being, her life was lived only for its own pointlessness instead of what it was meant to do – save people and change the world.</p><p>"You're wrong though, stop wasting both of our time with those thoughts and find out a way to live" a strange voice echoed loudly throughout the black void of Mana's dying Ego stage. It was an originally kind and soft voice, maybe a little bit on the whiny side but it had so much commanding authority and ruthlessness behind it.</p><p>It reminded Mana of her own voice but perhaps much older. Her own voice had already transitioned through puberty and changed very little in its core, this one, however, was changed not by age but by the shift in the speaker's core itself. Almost like this Mana was angrier and meaner, almost like she had seen more in her life. For a moment the magician wondered if this could've been her from the future but it made little sense, even having in mind the nonsensical fact that she was thinking about it in a cradle of self-created mental cocoon inside her own mind with her body looking like a vastness of space constantly dimming away.</p><p>"What are you talking about? Who are you? Why are you in my body?" Mana wondered, thinking those words to herself similarly to how she would've done if she was on Kiyomi's mental telepathy link. Who knew someone peeping on everyone's thoughts would've taught a valuable lesson on how to communicate with mystical mental constructs? Live and learn, even if there wasn't too much living left and that reduced the amount of the other by extension.</p><p>"It doesn't matter, stop emo'ing about your sad life, you've done plenty and you'll do more if you help me and concentrate on what's ahead, instead of looking back if your life was worth it, look at how to extend it" the voice echoed back at her again. All of a sudden the space shaped around her body opened its eyes, glowing star-like orbs were staring at Mana's little mental cradle with large portions of the space bending around where the entity's mouth would've been forming lips, when they opened only darkness was inside, absorbing any rays of light that came from the eyes of the entity. It was like Mana was alive and talking to the representation of her own body, as two parts of her were conversing with each other.</p><p>"So did my mental disorder return? Am I seeing things now?" Mana scratched her head.</p><p>"Ugh, you just aren't going to let go of this, are you, you stupid brat? It doesn't matter who I am, I am someone so closely bonded to you that if you died right here I'd die along with you. You were the one giving birth to me but that process has not yet been completed. Let us say that I am still a creation in-forming and you're killing me by dying before I can be born inside your own mind" the thundering voice replied, it looked pretty angry at Mana for some reason, then again, if what it was saying was true it had all the reasons to be angry. "Plus, your mental disorder was linked with failure to relate one concept to another, not forming of separate personalities inside your own body?"</p><p>"Oh, so you're like... A murderous me, an evil twin, I mean what would be the use of a good twin anyways? An imaginary friend? What am I talking to here?" Mana asked scratching her chin playfully.</p><p>"Look, it's too early for me to know what I am exactly, I haven't even been born yet fully, give me a break, you twerp! It's your sadness and fear, your hesitation that gave birth to me. What exactly I am remains to be seen" the entity kept on speaking. It didn't even have a body but it did seem to have some kind of personality already. If it was true and it was Mana's indecisiveness and fear that sparked its life.</p><p>"Well, I'm sorry if you'll die with me, you certainly didn't deserve to, then again, maybe you don't even exist, maybe there's no extension to even be made. If you're a part of my personality then there's no "you and me" when talking about who died. It's just me who is dying" Mana explained.</p><p>"Sorry though, I don't know a way of how not to die, this withdrawal inside my own dying body is the best I could do and only because I dabble in meditation. Right now I have no false hopes of survival, there's just one thing I want to be made clear to me – have I lived in vain? Was my life ultimately useless? What if I even made the world worse by being born? Those are the questions I need to be answered before my passing and I'd love it if you could help me with that..."</p><p>The entity stood there with its wide starry eyes shining its light endlessly at the magician's face. "You're stupid, I hate you. You would rather delve into meaningless things like meaning than save your own life. Here's my answer..." the suddenly the space of the black void moved forward as if the entity moved and then a giant explosion lit up where its titanic fingers snapped. The expanding sphere of light expanded covering the entity and Mana.</p><p>The girl found herself standing in her healed mental self in a white endless room with a red glowing orb floating beside her. When the entity continued to move or speak it acted through the fist-sized orb floating close to the girl's head.</p><p>An image of the Hanada estate flashed, then the training with her newly formed team and Tanshu-sensei, then the following missions, the brawl and getting lost in the Forest of Death, the huge scuffle between Shimo and Sugemi in the Police Force cellars, and Mana hesitant to involve herself before exploding with all of her power and recklessness, then the final image of Mana standing in front of Hisako with a card in her hand with the unconscious hostage boy lying down close to them.</p><p>"Your whole life you were a bratty idiot, you spent wasting it by desperately trying to throw it away. You claimed that "All life is sacred" and you also said that you knew that your motto included you by extension yet you never showed that. You always leaped first into battle, always the first to endanger yourself without thinking that your friends and your family might feel the same way about you as you do about every life in this world. You wanted to die and you now got what you wanted, a true hero would've lived instead. Living and accepting that there are things you can't do, things you can't change is much harder and more heroic than dying bashing your head against the wall trying to change them still... That's what I have to say to the reckless moron that killed me before she finished creating me..."</p><p>Mana's head sunk down with her hair falling all over her face and getting into her sticky with tears eyes. Her mental cradle started faltering, blinking in and out of existence, suddenly the entity became incredibly troubled.</p><p>"Hey! What the hell are you doing!? Shit, fine... Let's take a better look then. See what we can find out about things troubling you. Maybe if you calm the hell down you can still pull us out of this"</p><p>The image flashed back to Mana's parents. Mother once told the story of how the two met, it was a story full of inconsistencies and lies so it wasn't until Mana learned the history of the Wandering Ninja that she actually could fill in the gaps in it and piece it together.</p><p>Mother was crying on the father's doorway, her dress was bloody on the lower side. The entity's voice reached Mana's consciousness, "Let's imagine that your mother suffered an unfortunate accident and you were never born, to begin with, if we come with the consensus that your birth did good for the people around you, you will force yourself to life, I don't give a rat's dookey how. If we find out that your life is somehow making it all worse – I'll just leave you here with your blasted depression to let it sink away your mental barriers until your inner-self fades and all that's left is your dying veggie of a body which would follow soon. It'll be a sad but painless death."</p><p>Mana looked at the tragic image of her mother covered with blood and it just made her feel worse. The girl felt a warm glow by her ear, the orb moved around over her hair as if it tried to stroke it.</p><p>"Look at this, already you not being born would affect people negatively, it is highly possible that after this your mother and your father would become living trainwrecks. Must we really go on?" it asked mentally.</p><p>"Yeah, if I was never conceived, to begin with, even this tragedy and sadness could be avoided. It depends on the scenario we create and this one is inconsistent..." Mana replied.</p><p>The image shattered into pieces like a broken mirror. The orb relented and another image formed. One of the people just walking about the Konohagakure streets.</p><p>"Look at these people, what can you tell about them? They all live in a world where you don't exist, you've never been born, never even been conceived. Our mother and father just went their separate ways shortly before the genocide and their fated bedding happened."</p><p>"They're... Normal... Almost bored." Mana observed.</p><p>"Exactly, they have never had the pleasure of witnessing a young toddler in a black flowery dress performing magic on her way home from the Academy, every day on the same cardboard box. Even more, I'd say that they are not just normal, they're miserable because they live in a world we both know sucks, our world is miserable, full of death and sadness, a world that doesn't respect its people, where life means nothing and happiness means less than the dirt on the shoes used to stomp on it. They never had you, some silly girl doing magic, telling people that there was still hope to change it all. You may have sucked at actually changing the world but you talked an awful lot and you weren't half bad at it. You must've inspired people, just look at all those people, most of them would've gathered in the halls you performed in and saw your magic tricks with all your philosophy in between. They'd have been amazed and thought, hey, if the right card can come out of the butt of a rabbit this girl pulled out from a pigeon which flew out of her hat, why can't people stop slitting their throats too?"</p><p>Mana's eyes lifted up slightly, she looked at the normal and bored people walking about and turned to the side. "I guess... That's not a real trick though..." she uttered indifferently.</p><p>"Forgive me for not knowing what magic is yet, I have not yet been born and I don't care enough to access those memories of yours to check..."</p><p>The image faded once again, this one was not smashed, it simply got painted by another one right on top of the old one. Almost like a gigantic brush just brushed it on by some cruel artist of a deity of fate. The image showed the Hanada estate on a beautiful morning.</p><p>"If you were never born, Hanada would've never covered the first months of your rent, you'd have never come to thank him and he'd have been killed by the mercenaries after gruesome torture. His kids and family may or may not have survived but without your meddling, they'd have never escaped and warned the village officials. Best case scenario – one person dies in a horrible and gruesome way, worst one – an entire family as well as people in the estate at the time die too if the mercs decide to burn the whole blasted thing down. You being born saved a lot of lives even if you thought you just got your butt kicked in there and got saved. Your meddling, your involvement alone saved a lot of lives and you were on your first days as a ninja" the entity explained again.</p><p>"Yeah but... What if Hanada is responsible for more deaths by his survival than he... Whatever, it's still human life... I guess you're right" Mana was feeling emotionally crushed so she started to leaping to truly horrible arguments. She knew that she was grasping at straws only to belittle her own existence she was so afraid of losing. Somehow it seemed that if she acted indifferent she may have actually started to believe it – she'd have stopped caring about it that much. The fox and the grapes sort of thing...</p><p>The image flashed again, this time it was Mana who instigated the change just by thinking about it hard. She visualized just how the image should've changed and it did, everything she imagined happened. The image depicted the training grounds with Tanshu-sensei training Shimo, Sugemi, and a generic-looking third girl who wasn't Mana. The image still depicted the three failing but this time Tanshu had a smile on his face, not a full one but the sort of pleased grin he used to have when the three of them did small-time missions like the one with the dishes and the filing.</p><p>"If I wasn't born my best friends and my mentor would've been better off..." Mana uttered quietly before going silent again, forcing the orb to ask for her to elaborate since it didn't quite get where the girl was going.</p><p>"Well, Shimo only cared about me because I was a girl and he had that gentleman personality to him. Before he went through emotional maturity he just tried to be nice to girls and tried for that to be the one thing that defined him. Well, usually Konohagakure teams are composed of two boys and a girl so it's safe to assume I'd have been replaced by a female so he'd be as happy, to begin with, as he was with me as his teammate. Later on, the relationship might change but maybe the other girl being a better friend than me would help them understand each other and actually get involved with each other. Shimo felt bad for me which was why he said he didn't want to look at me as a girl he could date, I was kind so with him having his personality in mind he'd have played with a lot of girls and hurt me which he didn't want to do. Maybe the other one would've been different, it's a safe enough assumption..."</p><p>The image changed to Shimo, now having grown up to the point back when Mana last saw him leaving the Konohagakure gate with the grown third teammate by his side and the two holding hands. The orb floated around, "Let us assume it is so. Go on..." it gave a temporary agreement but it was quite clear from how it glowed that it was desperately looking for counterarguments.</p><p>"Well, Sugemi never really cared about me, I was just his third teammate. He was the only one he cared about and Shimo was his rival so that gave him some amount of thought too. I don't think that there's any reason to think that the other girl would've made him feel anything about her, however, later on, Sugemi started hating me because in his eyes I was wrong – "bad people needed to die, good people needed to live, simple as that" mentality fueled him which most people in the village agree to. All I have to do is just remember the funeral after the Kage Summit, people's eyes sided with enraged Sugemi screaming angrily for revenge, they looked at me with spite and anger when I dared to stand for my views... In the end, Sugemi would've found a good friend in the third one if she was a generic village ninja with the same ideals as the others... Maybe he'd have never rebelled like that, maybe he'd have never been imprisoned if I was replaced by that other girl"</p><p>The orb floated around for a while making several small circles. "There are a lot of assumptions in your words, you assume a lot of things so your words aren't entirely correct but yes, Sugemi would enjoy a more traditional-minded teammate as a friend, and expecting that generic teammate to be an extremity would be to make a wilder assumption than all of the ones you made. True. Sugemi would've been happier and his life may have gone a bit better if you were never born" the orb floated around for a while as if gesturing for the magician to continue.</p><p>The image changed to the image of Mana down on the ground clutching her busted ribs and Tanshu kicking her while yelling how stupid she was, way back during the first day of their team training. "Tanshu-sensei would've always been happier without me. He hated people that thought as I did and sure, judging from his final words to me I seemed to have reminded him of some person in his youth but... Still, he hated my guts and working with me – that much is a given. If he had received a more submissive student he'd have properly shaped her into a worthy successor of his, not a confused mess who endlessly questions herself like I turned out to be"</p><p>The orb replied without hesitation, "True, Tanshu would have been happier if he had never met you and he'd have never been reminded of his first love which went so tragically, supposedly..."</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times confused, looking at the orb. "So have we reached a consensus then? Team Oak would've been way happier and stronger without me?"</p><p>"Wrong!" the entity lashed back at Mana, her rude voice almost mocked the girl for daring to make assumptions like that, "Individually each member of Team Oak would have been happier had they never known you, that is correct. However, you forget that without you Team Oak would have never been formed in the first place – it was formed because you were stubborn enough to make Tanshu-sensei get thrown out of balance and attack you himself..." the entity quickly flashed the memory back and stopped it at the moment where Shimo pointed the fact that the team was formed and that they won out.</p><p>"We have little time, running shorter every second... How about you hurry up, I still want you to work on saving yourself more, every second boosts your chances of figuring some trick out, you know..." the entity hurried the magician up. Mana thought deep and concentrated hard trying to come up with some person whose life she changed for the worse.</p><p>"What about Guru Ayushi?" she asked recalling the old man, "Had it not been for me he'd have never pulled that madness on himself and started talking about those weird ideas, in the end, he'd have never latched himself on my beliefs and started talking everywhere about them, right?"</p><p>The orb floated around before lashing back at the girl rudely, "Wrong! Think about it, even if we do assume he has gone mad, isn't the saying "Happiness is bliss" right? He thinks that he is right and for the first time in his life standing up for something. You gave him that happiness even if it is just an illusion. Even more, remember when we spoke of people being inspired by your stupid ramblings of peace and hope? Now, in the form of Guru Ayushi, those ideas will reach more people, they will reach the ears of the most remote corners and when coming from a source like Guru they won't be doubted. If you have never been born Ayushi would have simply never changed, he'd have remained his stiff old self and have never gotten the illusion of happiness that you provided him"</p><p>Mana wiped her tears and then flashed forward a large chunk, right up to when she met Kiyomi with the two walking through the village gate being the center memory that shaped the image.</p><p>"What about this mission? Wouldn't Kiyomi have been happier meeting some other experienced genin? Wouldn't Hisako be happier, maybe even still alive?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Absolutely not!" the entity cut back at Mana, "If you have never gone to this mission, Kiyomi would've died fighting against Hachi because your silly behavior saved her life many times and while doing so you broke the conventional ninja rules. You once gave up on an advantage to save her life, that is not something ninja do. She'd have died several times, maybe she'd have even killed Hisako, to begin with during their first encounter making this mission a certain failure. It's not that tough to believe when you take the Yamanaka's iron will of hating rogues, mercenaries, and criminals. Even more, Hisako would've killed that young man for sure failing this mission still, you supposedly sacrificed your life for the only scenario in a million where this crazy mission where all the odds were stacked against you three could still be completed. Now stop whining and save your life..."</p><p>All of a sudden the orb started to glow dimmer and dimmer, the entire memory background started darkening and slowly dissolving pixel by pixel rising up into the sky and fading away, dissolving into even smaller pieces. The entity formed back into a special version of Mana, much younger, more like a toddler version of her before giving the girl one final look in the eyes, that final stare from those starry glowing eyes that begged the magician to find a way to defy death, that final starry gaze that begged for a chance to live even if it wasn't going to live its own life in the first place, just be a part of Mana's mind the nature and purpose of which still remained unclear.</p><p>The spacial girl faded away just like Mana's memories, one small dust at a time until she was gone. A bright cocoon of light formed around Mana again as she curled into a small fetal position ball and fell asleep. The surroundings around her changed into that same void filled with dying stars. The bright light of the inner universe of the girl's body sometimes reflected off of her sleeping eyes making the girl squint a little before she closed her eyes back again.</p><p>Mana's body was slowly dying while her mind went to sleep to preserve its existence for as long as humanly possible. The magician's mind was now calm and peaceful but one thing was for sure – she had not given up yet. She wasn't able to save herself from dying from inside her own body but maybe she was able to prolong her life by surrendering her life to the hands of people whom she helped, people that she trusted. If there was ever a chance of her living and finalizing the creation of the entity that helped Mana figure everything out, it would not be done by her dying body or mind, it'd be done by the people she met along the way, people she helped, people she loved all the same and wanted happiness for. Wanted happiness for enough to prolong her own life and suffer through as much pain and sadness as necessary to make them happy, even if the cost of their happiness is her survival and her own happiness!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0101"><h2>101. Equal Exchange</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eiju looked Kiyomi straight in the eyes before looking away for a while. He wasn't really feeling bad about this honesty which he was about to show. Technically, he had no reason to feel bad about what he was about to say, no one ever should but that wasn't the source of his suddenly originating pain. It was quite another realization completely.</p><p>"Yes, there is one thing that could save Mana even now" the Quack looked at the lifeless body of the girl that actually meant nothing to him and should've meant nothing to the girl that he liked playing around with the thoughts of maybe calling out on a date when he settled down just because he liked her animosity towards him.</p><p>Kiyomi winded up a punch but then she clenched her aching ribs and lowered her hand relaxing it. She looked the medical rogue straight in the eyes and walked up to him trying to stare him down, she had a decently intimidating stare but the Quack's firm look didn't budge.</p><p>"What does that mean? Why would you withhold that from her then!?" Kiyomi yelled out angrily.</p><p>"Because it's a forbidden technique, it isn't that complicated so, in theory, a skilled medical ninja should be able to use it but it's forbidden, it's a kinjutsu, lovely" the Quack's eyes stared back at Kiyomi, it was the eyes of the Yamanaka that first quivered and started switching sides between focusing on her dying friend and on the Quack.</p><p>Kiyomi wasn't sure just what her stance on things was anymore. If the technique that the Quack referred to really was a forbidden one it may not have been proper to bully him into doing it. Truth be told there were no actual legal consequences on using the kinjutsu techniques but they were heavily frowned upon and they were absolutely never taught, most people possessing the knowledge on forbidden techniques were self-taught from various sources such as historic scrolls or black market scrolls containing intel on the techniques. If Quack was revealed to have used a kinjutsu right before the application to join the village ranks he'd sink his odds of actually having his request granted to the bottom.</p><p>"What do you care if it's forbidden or not? I know you... People like you. You don't give a shit if a technique is forbidden or not, you just care that it makes you strong, if it can get you to your goals..." Kiyomi whined out. She was honestly on the verge of breaking. Her friend was dying and there was a huge dilemma erected in front of her.</p><p>If she bullied the Quack into using that forbidden technique she'd lose his trust and hopes of ever playing around with those thoughts of rebelling against the clan rules, but she'd save Mana's life in the process. She could still let the magician die and she'd morally be in the right – kinjutsu were not to be used, it was more of moral responsibility but it was responsibility, a badge of honor nonetheless. If she just told Hanasaku things how they actually were the Fifth wouldn't have winked twice and understood it.</p><p>"You're right, lovely, I don't care if it's forbidden or not. I couldn't give a horse's shit spouting arse if some bloke sitting in his office decided to ban a medical ninjutsu technique." Quack carefully placed his hand on Kiyomi's shoulder trying to comfort her, normally such gestures of kindness and emotional closeness would've been beyond his care but now he genuinely felt bad.</p><p>Eiju felt bad not because he didn't burn with the desire of using the forbidden medical technique but because he simply didn't care that much. Even if healing Mana by conventional means was an option and he tried it and the girl died the Quack wouldn't even frown a muscle. He was emotionless towards human life other than his own or that from which he was to obtain certain use. That was not a fitting emotional state towards a man hoping to legitimize himself.</p><p>"I care because of what that technique does. Do you even know why most kinjutsu are forbidden? Impure World Reincarnation is a technique that can bring a dead person back to life but it requires the life and soul of another as an equal exchange, Creation Rebirth and Dead Demon Consuming Seal are techniques that either kill or heavily injure the user beyond the point of ever being able to recover... They are not only vile and morally repugnant techniques, fuck that no one cares about morals these days and lives until their fifth birthday, that they're lethal or costly to the user themselves is what counts" Eiju explained.</p><p>Kiyomi turned back at the Quack and placed her hand on his looking him deep into the eyes with the watery eyes of her own. She always tried to do what seemed right, even in this sick world she always tried to be a younger sister worth of her brother's sacrifice, she may not have been his last thought, may not have been the direct reason for his sacrifice but her life was protected by the extension of his sacrifice.</p><p>"Will this technique kill you? What will it do to you?" she asked with a firmer and more confident tone. She still considered asking a guy to use a kinjutsu he may have never even used before, there were so many things that could've gone wrong there.</p><p>"Not bloody sure. Usually, medical ninjutsu takes the medical ninja's chakra and converts it into a universal chakra of healing nature that fuels the regeneration process of the body itself. This kinjutsu doesn't take the chakra of the user, it takes their literal life force. It might leave me dying, it might kill me, it might take so much life force that it'll kill me and not even heal Mana. Kinjutsu is tricky bloody business, lovely..." he replied. The weird part was that Eiju felt so guilty by his emotional indifference, having his destination in mind, that he almost was about to do it.</p><p>Kiyomi stood up and looked at the rogue, then at Mana and back at the Quack. She sighed. "You have to do it, you have to try it at least. If it doesn't work just stop it"</p><p>"What does it matter to you if she lives or dies? She's just another ninja, thousands just like her, even younger, die every day. I've killed younger than her to survive out here myself. I've killed children trying to kill me because I am a rogue who heals rogues. You have no bloody right to ask anything of me, lovely, I've done all I can for all I know..." the Quack's tone changed into a more ironic tone. He decided to just go into Konoha with the same "fuck it all" attitude that carried him through life.</p><p>"How dare you!? Did you not swear to save all you can save, even as a rogue, did you not make any vows? Do you have any decency at all?" Kiyomi started to really get pissed at her companion.</p><p>Truth be told she was pissed at him the whole time, the only thing that kept her from killing him when she first saw this criminal was gratitude for saving her and Mana's life when they were wounded. Then it was the hope that maybe he was just unfortunate, maybe he could've still been fixed and made into a proper human being. Maybe being a filthy rogue was just a mask one wears that can be washed away with a stream of water strong enough...</p><p>"I did swear to the bloke that taught me. The old fart told me that in the world of rogues one must always charge the coins first, then heal the client or leave them to die if they're too dangerous. I've healed the three of you this whole time without charging a single ryo because I hoped to legitimize and truth be told I still have all the right to. I've done all I can, no reasonable medical ninja would resort to kinjutsu ever, I mean those wussies even have precise timing lines of how much chakra spent exactly constitutes "worth saving"... Not for someone who is meaningless in the grand scale, they wouldn't!" the Quack pointed at Mana barely stopping himself from kicking her unconscious body in his anger.</p><p>For some reason, this blondie ignited a whole fire of anger that usually wasn't there. Just like this dying brat, she made him remember the path that led him here which didn't come simply for him... Maybe it was because Eiju actually thought he could be this different person, this good medical ninja guy who smiles to his patients as he heals them instead of charges their pants off of them and then laughs at how funny their exposed bones look.</p><p>Kiyomi kneeled closer to Mana and pressed the girl's forehead closer to hers. She didn't know why she had this emotional attachment, she tended to have that kind of kinship with her teammates, it took her entire years and almost dying before she could let go of the memento of her previous team. She almost fought her old teammates when they informed her that they're going to leave her alone with Hanasaku.</p><p>The Quack sat down, his anger slowly faded away when he gently pushed Kiyomi's face off of the bloody face of her friend. He looked at those sad eyes and that stain of Mana's blood that slowly dripped off of the forehead of her friend's, taking some time to calm himself.</p><p>"Look, I'm doing nothing wrong by letting her die, neither are you. People die, it's not your fault. She ran off alone to fight unknown odds without any rhyme or reason, she made a mistake, and sometimes people die even if they do everything right and by the book. It's not supposed to itch you, lovely. It's not your bad..." he tried to calm the young woman down as she was starting to break down.</p><p>Crying women were annoying and troublesome, Eiju hopes to one day genuinely form an attachment to his lovely blonde friend but now he just did to avoid that annoying weeping sound he heard a million times before.</p><p>"I know... I've no logical reason to care so much but... She looked up to me when we first met, I was almost like her idol, like her older sister, and for a moment... For a moment I actually liked that, I really liked feeling like an older sibling and looking out for her. I felt like I was transferring all that love and care that my brother left in me into someone else, it felt like I was moving on past his death by becoming an older sibling to someone else... Like the torch was being passed almost..." Kiyomi replied, slowly and taking her time. She didn't know how long Mana had left or if she was even alive, to begin with.</p><p>"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Eiju pushed Kiyomi off of the girl angrily and placed his hands above her. He popped a couple of pills before beginning his healing. If he died healing this fucking brat he may as well have died of transferring his literal life force into this kid and not because that tissue decided to eat his brain or whatever...</p><p>The Quack's hands lit up with a bright emerald glow. "One's Own Life Reincarnation!" he forced the chant out through his mouth struggling with the pressure of the poison and the technique sapping his very essence away from him at the same time. The glow around his hands intensified and colored bright blue. After a couple of seconds the tension and the shot out vessels on his forehead settled down, the pain became much more manageable.</p><p>"Yeah, I got it. As I've said, when you know what you're doing it ain't nothing to spend an all-nighter for, lovely..." the Quack grunted out, sweat started breaking out on his forehead, he suddenly felt the girl's body lighting up as a reaction to his very life force being transferred into her.</p><p>"What if she's dead? What if it's too late? Maybe... Maybe you should stop..." Kiyomi wondered to herself, mumbling under her nose. Quack was such a crazy idiot. He just flipped a full circle around and decided to use a goddamn kinjutsu technique just because she cared so much about this girl... He was literally willing to die just because Kiyomi asked him to. Maybe he wasn't completely hopeless.</p><p>"Doesn't bloody matter, this technique was made by some old maniac to transfer life into toys. The cunt liked to kidnap children and keep them in his little house locked down by his crafted and reanimated toy soldiers..." the Quack tried to calm her down without even looking at the blonde.</p><p>"It really bloody hurts though so if you'd just... Talk to me through it, I'd appreciate it, lovely..." he added.</p><p>"So... You actually did learn it from that toy person?" the blonde asked just trying to keep the conversation going per her friend's request, it may have been a final one for all she knew.</p><p>"Nah, that bloke is just where I found out about it from, apparently he was lively enough to survive giving life to one toy at a time so he brought a toy back and waited until his body recovered, sometimes he went back to the village to get healed, telling the medical ninja that he got attacked by some rogues and since he was a farmer outside the village walls everyone bought it... Did I ever tell you how messed up Kirigakure was some time back?"</p><p>"I was there once, trust me, I know..." Kiyomi smiled, the experience was scary, being so far away from home in that collection of islands floating in an endless ocean that didn't look so vast from the ground because the islands were so vast. At least all that scary experience made for a bonding moment with this young man willing to risk his life for her emotional stability.</p><p>"Maybe now that the reformation is going strong after the Kage Summit everything's going to be fine though? Maybe the Bloody Mist will actually be gone?" the Yamanaka wondered out loud. The Quack laughed out, clutching his aching ribs, his eyes started squinting, Kiyomi touched his forehead and felt the rising heat. He was burning up, at some point he may start go completely delirious if this keeps up.</p><p>"Heh, here's to hoping, then again, it happened a couple of times in the past too. People hoping that a new Mizukage or some new law would make big changes, the problem isn't the Bloody Mist in power, it's the Bloody Mist in the hearts of its loyalists. As long as the idea of survival of the strongest and the constant need to check who the strongest in the world are remains strong in them – Bloody Mist ain't going nowhere, lovely. I've seen people as young as five years old slaughtering other five-year-olds because the ideals are strong in them. Regimes don't mean shit, people are what always mattered..." the young man responded, he then smiled.</p><p>"I was never a sensor but... This girl's chakra feels nice, it's like drowning in ice cream. I think now I know why that Inuzuka wanted to fight her so much." Eiju smiled as the warm and sweet feeling of the magician's chakra helped him calm down the pain somewhat, the contact between his own life force and Mana's chakra made them closer than people can ever get normally, for some time they shared one life force after all.</p><p>"You mean she's some sort of special cookie after all?" Kiyomi's eyes opened wide, what if they were actually rescuing someone really important? What if the magician lied about being a normal kid, what if she was secretly a descendant of the Moon People or some elite clan like the Uzumaki or something?</p><p>"Nah, there are just people like that, I've met some. People that let their entire essences be defined by their personality, that one bloody trait. It literally makes their kindness... Or, sometimes, darkness fills their very chakra. It colors them, makes them a little unique, feel a bit different to a sensor or a ninja who comes in contact with their chakra. There was once this guy in our group that had chakra so dark that it literally petrified any sensor they came in contact with, we used to send him to fight sensors all the time. Then there was this medical girl whose chakra acted like a painkiller, she was too nice for her own good. Both of them are dead now though... Never be all good or all bad, always be what the situation calls you to be, lovely."</p><p>"I think you may be delirious or something, you usually don't tell anyone much about your past..." Kiyomi laughed gently, she felt that depressing glee that was both filled with sadness but also quite pleasant. She could possibly lose a friend while another one would be saved.</p><p>"Shit... I think I'm running out of juice, if this chick doesn't come back to life soon we'll be majorly screwed over by this. That fucking maniac always said I was too ambitious for my own good and that it'd be the end of me..." the Quack cursed. The black circles around his eyes started turning clear purple and then straight back to a much darker and more clear and terrifying shade of black.</p><p>"So... Did you kill that guy? The toy army guy that kidnapped children?" Kiyomi wondered, she tried to change the topic so that she didn't have to confront the fact that this rogue was about to die. For the first time in her life, she felt something other than a wish to murder a rogue ninja.</p><p>"Oh yeah... Not because we felt heroic or had an affinity for capes and tight pantaloons, it was because he wanted to give me in to the authorities, I'm a fuckload of more wanted in Kirigakure than I am anywhere else so I couldn't allow that" Eiju sighed wiping the sweat off of his forehead with one hand and then resuming the healing with it.</p><p>Kiyomi pouted, "Maybe you can use my chakra for it? Maybe you don't need to die alone, maybe we can both live?"</p><p>"No that's just really stupid, chakra isn't water, you can't just pass it around spilling it wherever. It's a lot like blood, except there aren't several different types, there are as many different chakra types as there are people. Some techniques manage to adapt the chakra to another person's but in your case, it'd have to go through my body and then into hers. No offense, lovely, but it's the dumbest idea I've heard in a while..."</p><p>Mana's eyes shot wide open, the Quack fell onto his back but managed to stop his fall with his own hands that got overwhelmed by his effort to Kiyomi had to hold him from falling and passing out. It worked, Mana was alive!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0102"><h2>102. Broken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana jumped and sat up as fast as she could surveying the situation. Eiju was huffing heavily with his face sweating and looking like all of his blood gathered in his cheeks to the point where his head would soon explode. His blood vessels were shot out and twitching on his forehead and black circles around his eyes made the young man look troubling.</p><p>"What happened? Is the kid OK? Is Hisako OK?" Mana yelled out, she knew little of what happened since her body gave in. The magician examined her body and looked surprised both by the fact that she was alive and that she was completely healed, not a single bruise or scratch remained on her body as if her life was just reset like a buggy computer.</p><p>Kiyomi silently thanked the Quack and then went up to Mana helping the girl get up. "Yeah, the kid is out, he attacked us when we entered so the Quack had to knock him out, Hisako is also alive, unfortunately, you clocked her head into the wall and caused a major concussion so she shouldn't be in fighting condition for a while..."</p><p>Mana felt her body around, she stretched her neck, her back, and her arms, something felt a little off. She felt weaker, maybe it was just the result of her resurrection? Was it even a resurrection, was she ever truly dead? Her wounds were sure as hell lethal and she had that weird dream about talking to some weird cosmic entity inside her own body or something... Dying was weird.</p><p>"So how come I'm still alive, what did you guys do? Please tell me none of you sold your souls away or something!" Mana yelled out energetically trying to understand why she had that weird cranky feeling inside. It felt almost like she wasn't in control of her body. Like her soul was just placed in a shell, like a driver placed in a car before being taught how to drive.</p><p>Kiyomi hugged Eiju and squeezed him hard pressing him to her chest. "The Quack used some forbidden kinjutsu to bring you back, he said he may have died but he doesn't look dead to me, maybe everything's gonna be alright for once?!" she looked really happy, maybe a little bit too invested in Eiju's life.</p><p>"Yeah, name's Eiju, pleased to be pressed to your bosom, lovely..." the silent and weak voice of the young man who apparently risked his life for Mana's echoed.</p><p>"He must really like Kiyomi..." Mana wondered to herself observing that scene. She never saw any signs of possible attraction between those two, maybe it all happened while she was out, maybe it happened while the Quack was treating her.</p><p>It was strange how the world worked, a young woman so hateful towards rogues finds possible warm feelings towards a rogue whose main job is keeping rogues alive for monetary gain. A man who buys and sells life quite literally. "I mean last time we spoke, Eiju didn't really like me that much, he'd only risk his life for his own good, guess I can add Kiyomi's approval to the list now..."</p><p>"Say... Magician girl... You got anything to drink in that weird hat seal of yours?" the man uttered looking at Mana with his weak and sad eyes.</p><p>"Yeah, I think I've got some canned green tea in there somewhere..." Mana replied with a smile and took her hat off the ground placing one hand on the bottom of it and activating a hand seal with the other.</p><p>"Oh, lovely, that's my second favorite thing to drink, right after unidentified kind of booze you find in stray bottles..." Eiju joked showing that he was still able to smile and that his bad sense of humor was still intact, even if it did come through effort and moderate amounts of pain.</p><p>The magician waited for a while and then looked at the hat, she activated the hand seal, again and again, waiting for a while but nothing happened. It wasn't that she didn't have any chakra, if that was the case she'd felt physical exhaustion and passed out or something, this was different, this was... Nothing!</p><p>"Yeah, take your time, lovely, I mean it's not like I'm dying here or anything..." Eiju laughed out in a manner of laugh that sounded more like a cough before giving a weak smile.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at the magician angrily, "Mana, stop playing around, this isn't the time for your magic tricks... Just give him the tea and let's go home" she looked really defensive for her friend, whatever happened between the two must've bonded them more than Mana had hoped.</p><p>"I'm... I'm not playing... I just... I can't do it" Mana stood there looking at her hat horrified by the realization of just what she was feeling inside. She couldn't feel her chakra flow at all. Usually, when one learned to mold their chakra they felt it all the time, it was like feeling that great overflowing sensation of strength, that's why using chakra felt so horrifying when large quantities of that strength disappeared, now there was none at all.</p><p>"Wait... What?" Kiyomi's eyes shot wide open as she suddenly started looking really confused. It was that look in one's eyes when they officially lost the track of what was going around them.</p><p>"Shit... So that's what it was back then..." Eiju's face suddenly paled up displaying signs that his fever must've passed.</p><p>"Back then?" Mana looked at the man with curiosity.</p><p>"Please tell me this isn't your way of getting back at Mana for losing your coat!" Kiyomi looked at Eiju playfully still thinking this was some kind of a game when Mana started to freak out internally.</p><p>"No way, back when I used my diagnosis technique on her I felt her chakra network going completely bonkers. Like... I don't know what to compare it to. You must've abused your chakra augmentation and the excess chakra you've forced to flow tore your network apart... I'm sorry..." Eiju looked at Mana, straight into her eyes with that sorry look that made the magician feel like he felt sorrier for her than he did for himself nearly dying.</p><p>Mana's hands started shaking, her voice started trembling and she almost started losing it. Her eyes started feeling wet and she felt like she was on the verge of a breakdown. To her the gift of chakra control was everything, it was the sign that she was chosen by whatever magical force oversaw the Universe that she was meant to be a hero. That she was meant to protect the people around her who did not have that gift.</p><p>Now she had that gift taken away from her, no, she squandered it by herself! She herself rubbed that gift back into the cosmic entity's, that granted it in the first place, face as if it meant nothing to her when in fact it meant the whole world to her. Her path as a hero was over, she was now just a clanless girl without a nindo, without an ideal. She was officially nothing now. Her existence was meaningless now.</p><p>"How long? For how long did I lose it!?" Mana yelled out the question louder than she'd have liked it.</p><p>Eiju shook his head, he looked like he was about to slip into a deep sleep at any moment but Kiyomi knew perfectly what that sleep would've meant and kept the young man awake. "I don't know, it happens to young inexperienced blokes a lot, I've never seen them recover honestly but it might be possible. I'd need a more detailed diagnosis to know for sure..."</p><p>Mana screamed out into the air falling down to her knees and slammed her hand into the floor angrily. She heard a loud thud and felt the pain flowing through that puny knuckle of hers, no bodily instinct to enhance her strength, no instinct to protect her hand from breaking needlessly anymore. She only managed to keep her knuckle intact because her punch was so weak.</p><p>Kiyomi stood up and carefully placed Eiju's head on her wrapped zip-up top, she tried to walk up closer to Mana but she stopped halfway seeing how freaked out the magician was.</p><p>"Calm down... It may be temporary, Eiju did say that it's possible, right? I mean... He used a forbidden technique no one used for this kind of thing before, maybe it's a secondary effect or something... We don't know anything about anything at the moment, calm down. Maybe you'll still get it back..."</p><p>Mana's distress changed phases from an aggressive one to feeling miserable. Her violent outrage stopped and she just started weeping on her knees.</p><p>"Don't you realize what it means? My dream, my path... It's all over. I have nothing now. I lost everything that I was, my entire life I wanted to use this gift I was given to protect the people who didn't have the same gift, and now... Now I'm..." Kiyomi carefully walked up to Mana and hugged the girl softly.</p><p>"Ummm, not that I'm complaining or anything, blondie, but maybe you could spare a hug or two for me? I mean I did risk my life after all here..." Quack's voice echoed when suddenly it was interrupted.</p><p>"Oh just fucking can it!" Hisako's rude tone interrupted the man's desire for more attention. Kiyomi looked at the kneeling assassin and lunged at the Yoruma with a punch which the assassin avoided by stepping sideways but then nausea caught up with the raven-haired woman and she threw up to the side. Luckily the place was too dark for the overly disgusting details to be seen.</p><p>"How dare you even talk to us after nearly killing Mana!" Kiyomi yelled out stopping her assault because she realized that at this point attacking the Yoruma was like kicking a downed disabled person. The slightest quick movement sent the woman into a vomiting frenzy from the dizziness that her head injury brought up, it'd pass in a couple of days due to the natural out of combat regenerative factor that ninja had but right now she was at her weakest.</p><p>"Actually... Yeah... I did get hotheaded and I'm thankful that the bitch saved my integrity and all, I still think that I should've killed that brat but at least now we'll complete that mission, idol bitch went through hell to save him, guess I'll respect that for now. Also, as payback, I'll save your integrity too, Ms. Royalpants" Hisako spoke out in a weak tone that had nausea written all over it.</p><p>"Wait... Me?" Kiyomi wondered confused.</p><p>"Yeah, why do you think the Quack had this sudden change of heart? Why do you think he healed idol-bitch?" Hisako mumbled out "It's not because he gave a crap if she lived or died, that much he already established, I could hear everything you two spoke about I was just too sick to intervene... It was sure as hell not because he cared about you or your feelings, you're just another blonde bimbo to him, one like hundreds of others he had over the years living free like a rogue should"</p><p>Eiju scratched his forehead, as his fingers touched his face the spots where they passed through reactivated the blood flow returning the brief red into his face for just a moment before he paled out again. "I'd appreciate if one of you ladies kicked her in the face, she's delirious and has no idea what she's talking about..." he spilled out. "That's my official diagnosis and you know I'm right because I said a big word like "diagnosis"..." the man added.</p><p>Hisako kept talking ignoring the Quack entirely. "He did it all because of himself. Because he suddenly got the idea in his mind of how to make his life all better. He's a selfish bastard, he always was and always will be..."</p><p>"What are you talking about?" Mana joined in on the conversation finally returning back to life only for the following further disappointment in mankind.</p><p>"Oh come on! All this time he was taking POISON, people! And then so conveniently there's a technique he can use that supposedly kills him but as he does so he establishes himself as a savior in shining fucking armor and gives you two bitches a fancy story to tell the Hokage that'll finally rehabilitate him in the eyes of the village. His stupid regenerative tissue thing, that's what died, this fucking genius over here knew all along he'd be able to cure himself of that fucking thing, he just waited for a good chance to do it... Sure, I'm a fucking cunt for nearly killing idol-bitch, but at least I didn't use her distress for my own cure making me look like a fucking hero... Sure, I'm a messed up scum of society but at least I own it!" Hisako turned to the side nearly hurling up but barely managing to keep it down.</p><p>Kiyomi's head lowered down, her long blonde hair fell down on her shoulders and all over her face before she turned her surprised face back at Eiju. "So that's why you didn't fight that hard when we voted for sieging the bunker when you were out of chakra... Part of you wanted it to happen, you wanted one of us to get killed so you could make the "heroic sacrifice" and cure yourself in the process..."</p><p>"What do you guys care about why he did it?" Mana's weak voice interrupted the three, the girl's eyes were still staring lifelessly into the ground, the girl was broken inside, still grieving her loss of chakra and wondering what was even the point of her miserable life at that moment if all meaning in it was squandered away.</p><p>"I mean... He still saved me... Or at least what's left of me. I'm still thankful for it, I'm sure my parents will personally try to get him rehabilitated and legitimized after we bring him back. What does it matter if he had a selfish motive for all of this?" Mana mumbled back.</p><p>Hisako jumped back on her feet and stumbled briefly before walking up to Mana and grabbing her by the girl's hair, lifting her face up so that the eyes of the two met.</p><p>"You fucking tool! Don't you get it? He wanted us to fight in these conditions! He wanted for one of us to die, he let us fight it out purposefully, all this time he wanted you or me, or anyone else to die, if he didn't want to cure himself so fucking much we wouldn't have fought, you wouldn't have half-died and I wouldn't feel like there's a shit goblin making more shit goblin babies in my fucking throat making me try and chuck em out of there! He may have brought you back, but your loss of chakra and your supposed death is on him. When he met us, I bet his only goal was to cure himself and legitimize using us"</p><p>Hisako let go of Mana letting her body weightlessly slam down on her knees and continue to lifelessly drift away into depression.</p><p>„Wait, how do you know about Eiju's regenerative tissue and all that stuff? Did he tell his story to you?" Kiyomi wondered, she needed some filler questions to help her realize that she may have been played and Yamanaka Kiyomi didn't like to be played with.</p><p>"He didn't tell me, that fucking tissue healing him from me cutting him down did... Back when those fucktards wanted to off me in the forest when we first met" Hisako quietly replied.</p><p>"One thing I still don't get though, why wait for us? Why not just play the same game with some mercenary? I mean surely you've seen a bunch of dying mercs during your time, right? Why not do the whole thing on them years back? You'd have even gotten a promotion or something, you'd have been old Hachi's best friend for saving a dead guy's hide..." Hisako asked closing in on Eiju, carefully sitting the Quack back up.</p><p>"Because it wouldn't have been enough, lovely..." Eiju quietly replied and sighed after his plan came out into public. "I mean if I just healed some bloke I'd still be a mercenary Quack without a regenerative tissue keeping me alive, had I done that I'd have died when you went barmy on all those mercs in the forest. Life of a merc is tough, lovely, people die all the time. I needed something more, I needed to do it when I had a clear chance of leaving this life behind, a guarantee that I'm not ridding my "get out of the shitter for free" card for nothing..."</p><p>Kiyomi walked up and lifted Eiju up by the collar of his shirt and slapped him strong enough to knock his eyebrows off. Blood shot out from the weakened mouth of the Quack and he spat out a tooth. "So that's how it feels like, losing a tooth for good..." Eiju smiled half-heartedly.</p><p>"For how long did you have this plan to use us? How long ahead did you plan this?" the Yamanaka angrily grunted out ready to slap all of the Quack's teeth out if he answered not how she would've liked him to.</p><p>"Eh, not too long actually... I had the idea the whole time but that the timing was right... That only popped to me when we were talking over Mana's soon-to-be corpse... I figured I'd need to do it at some point but I never planned or played you three, I swear. I needed a cure, you don't know what it's like living with that inside you..." the man replied, Kiyomi let go of him and let him slip down on his bottom.</p><p>"Oh, poor you, being able to regenerate from certain death, survive what should've killed you... What a curse!" the Yamanaka shouted out angrily, looking at the Quack with a condescending look and turning back at Mana.</p><p>"You decide what we do to him, he wronged you the most... He agreed with us coming here unprepared too easily, he must've known one of us was going to die, he is at least partially responsible for you losing your gift, even if he did bring you back, he only did it for his own selfish hide..." the blonde switched between Mana and the Quack.</p><p>Mana stood up and turned around, slowly starting to make her way towards a staircase leading up. "What does it matter? He may be a selfish ass who only looks out for himself but he can be useful to the village, Quacks know a whole bunch of weird medical techniques and he doesn't listen to rules that restrict medical ninja so he can actually save more lives that way... At least he's still useful to someone..." the magician lowered her head and slowly disappeared into the shade. Kiyomi wanted to go after Mana but a hand on her shoulder stopped her, Hisako shook her head slowly, the only way that let the contents of her stomach stay where they were.</p><p>"The kid finally realized there's no such thing as a hero, you're not a hero, you'd snap a rogue's neck if you got your hands around their neck, I'm a killer, born and raised. She just found out that this guy ain't no hero either, the realization that a man who saves one's life is only doing it for his own selfish gain is a horrible one. The worst thing of all – without her chakra control, she's not a hero either, don't make it even worse. It's up to her to decide what she wants to do with her life now..."</p><p>Kiyomi grabbed the Quack by the collar and slowly dragged him to the staircase, she planned to drag him around for as long as he couldn't walk for himself. The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a weird slimy green mass for Hisako, "Here, this ought to help your nausea, I didn't know if you were conscious before so I didn't give this earlier, it won't taste good but it should help for a while before your body fixes it up..." he handed the handful of goo to Hisako who swallowed it without question.</p><p>The assassin pouted and kneeled as if she was going to throw up again but then she stood up and relaxed, surprised she looked at the Quack somewhat relieved. "What's it made of? It actually helped?"</p><p>"The seaweed inside the stomachs of ninja toads..." the Quack replied only for Hisako to throw up almost instantly. Kiyomi looked at the pathetic man she was dragging by her side, a man she was ready to swear eternal love to only a couple of minutes earlier, a man whose gut she now despised and whom she wanted to murder on top of a mountain so that the whole world could see her do it.</p><p>"Ey, this ain't my pill, that one's psychosomatic..." Eiju shrugged with a smug smile. Kiyomi fought the desire to beat his teeth in but Mana was right in some ways. The medical ninja, especially as experienced and skilled as Eiju were needed around the village. She just wanted that maybe the magician wouldn't have put it the way she did and wouldn't have gotten so down because of it, Mana was just walking in front of the entire party, leading the way yet looking the most dead inside out of all of them...</p><p>Mana closed her eyes for a moment just so the tears on her face weren't evident, she had never felt useless in her life before. Weak, wrong – sure. But those times were different, then she still had the hope of growing stronger, of doing things better the next time. This time was different, her life felt completely empty, she had nothing inside of her that still made her into what she was when she left. She'd probably still be able to retain some of her stage magician self, she'd be slower, less skilled since she lost her chakra control and she'd need lots of training to regain one-tenth of her previous skill and speed. Still, what's the point of doing that when half of her essence was literally torn away?</p><p>Feeling useless, having one's purpose completely lost and never to be found, was the worst thing ever. Who could've thought that maybe dying would've been the better way? This was a dark thought but how else was one supposed to feel after knowing that their life was a result of someone's selfish desires and that she wasn't even herself and would never be herself again. In a way she was glad that she cured Eiju's sickness and that he'd never need to drink poison again, also she made someone else a hero, even if just for a moment, even if it was for all the most selfish reasons...</p><p>Mana turned back and looked at the powerless Eiju being dragged around by his collar like a ragdoll. "Eiju... Now that your regenerative tissue is gone, won't you die of that genetic disease of your mother's?" she asked.</p><p>Kiyomi and Hisako looked at the Quack surprised, they must've not known about that detail. Hisako almost dropped the "hostage" that she was carrying on her shoulder, now that her nausea was a bit calmer. Eiju smiled and shrugged.</p><p>"It can be managed by the medical ninja, adults can survive with it for five or ten years maybe... Trust me, kid, dying is better than some sorts of living..." he replied with that arrogant tone he always used.</p><p>"No. Life is always better than dying..." Mana replied instinctively.</p><p>Quack smiled turning his head to look her straight in the eyes, making her feel almost like he looked right into her soul as they left the bunker and sunlight took over their eyes, making them need some time to recover.</p><p>"Is it though? Of all people, right now, do you truly believe that?" he asked with that same smug smile.</p><p>Mana covered her face with a bunch of her messy hair to hide her tears. How. How could someone cripple a person so much with just a couple of words? How could someone ruin someone's entire life, shake all of their ideals with just one action? Even more importantly, how does one still go on when all that they are is lost forever...</p>
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<a name="section0103"><h2>103. The Evil That Helps Us Grow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The troubled eyes of a mother stared at a specific point in the ceiling. It was so concentrated and worried that to the woman it almost seemed like she could peek through it and into the room of her daughter. The young lady hasn't been eating or drinking, she hasn't done much sleeping either since she returned from the mission.</p><p>Nakotsumi Kei tried questioning the girl but she barely even spoke, the mother tried talking to some people in the administration who confirmed that the mission was indeed successful and completed despite colossal complications with the mission objective that, if known, may have even bumped the mission difficulty by a whole rank.</p><p>Both parents of the young magician were troubled by the girl's refusal to talk, over a couple of days she spent just laying on her bed in her room she had never trained or meditated. That was something new and probably what raised the most concerns. Skipping a meal or two or having one or more sleepless nights was nothing unusual for young Mana but completely halting all training and not meditating even for a moment...</p><p>Didn't the girl once look so happy after explaining how her meditation worked? Did her eyes not shine in that same childish glee while explaining the stages of her meditation just like they did when they first introduced little Mana to strawberry ice cream? She went on and on about how it made her aware of any problems in her body and made her one with herself, completely familiar with all that was happening inside of her...</p><p>It almost felt to the woman like her daughter has given up, maybe something happened during the mission? That much was obvious but what exactly could've crippled that noble yet unhealthy obsession with doing good and changing the world that Mana had? How could someone so obsessive and so kind just give up? Millions of possible explanations went through the head of the worried mother, from Mana failing to save someone during the mission to finding out that she had a sickness of some sort inside during one of her meditation sessions.</p><p>The more she thought about it the more the woman returned to the idea that maybe her daughter knew exactly what was wrong with her body which was why she didn't meditate at all. Maybe she was even afraid to confront that problem, afraid to see it again, what could've been so scary as to cripple such an idealistic and naïve child?</p><p>Over her still quite short life Mana saw plenty, she struggled for her life several times, she fought her best friends and saw them leave the village, she blamed herself so often for things that may not have always been up to her to decide and influence in the first place... Yet she always stood back up and went on. The girl was completely broken now.</p><p>Quiet and slow footsteps echoed through the house, slight remnants of the continuous sound of small feet tapping against the wood reached Kei's ear, and soon Mana showed herself after a long while in the kitchen. It was strange, the girl really did look tired and like she'd have just lied in that bed for days without even moving – her hair was all over the place and her face was a bit swollen from the tears but it was evident that some attempt at fixing herself was made over the days. The girl did apparently shower, as proven by an absence of nose crushing body odor most outbreaks of self-neglect produce and there were some marks on her hair that suggested at the very least attempts at restraining the monster that was bed hair.</p><p>"Where's dad?" Mana asked softly, she looked exhausted, and despite her doing nothing but resting this whole time she still sounded tired.</p><p>"He's out. Something about those new herbs that are supposed to help his pain. He wanted to see you, he said that this new medicine, some potion or something is really helping him and he wanted to help you out with your shows more now but... You just shut inside your room and..." the girl's mother tried to approach the problem from multiple corners but she didn't know how to go about it. It was obvious that her child was suffering inside and she wanted to help without ruining it all or making it even worse.</p><p>"Oh... Yeah, I'll probably cancel all shows... Not sure about that anymore... Maybe I'll host more of them now that... Still figuring it out" Mana's voice wandered from one extreme to the other. It was clear that the girl herself knew how dumb canceling her shows would've been but it was clear from the lack of emotional attachment to the statement that she had given that concept a lot of thought.</p><p>"What happened in that mission? I mean so much happened, that hostage kid was returned to the family but now the father wants to disown him or something, this Kiyomi girl came a couple of times but when I told her how you were she left, she said she was just following some advice or something... Then this new medical ninja that the village took in, some Eiju fellow came and he gave some paper that apparently classifies you as suffering battlefield injury and temporarily suspended... What happened?" Kei asked having decided to not fool around and just ask the things she wanted to know.</p><p>"So everyone was fine? Kiyomi was OK? I see Eiju was accepted as a medical ninja, he wanted nothing more than to legitimize..." Mana asked. Mother nodded, she hoped that maybe the magician would be willing to admit what happened in exchange for some information.</p><p>"Yes, Kiyomi looked fine, she had some bandages and band-aids but she said she was fine when we asked. She was mostly concerned about how you were doing which was weird because you returned without as much as a scratch..." the woman replied.</p><p>"Oh, so that's good then. I'll be leaving for a moment, I'll fix myself and... I just need to see someone... Hopefully, I'll figure some things out on the way" Mana continued to talk in vague terms, noticing the worried look of her mother she tried to force a calming smile but somehow it just didn't work for her.</p><p>"It's alright, I... My chakra network got messed up and I can't... You know, do anything now. I'm pretty much just a civilian from now on so I'm trying to... I don't even know. I need to see Hanada-san and tell him that I'm canceling my shows, he's not paying my rent anymore but he's still investing a lot of money into them..." Mana declared and she rushed to the shower. Just mere moments later the brief glimpse of the girl was caught again as she ran to the door and rushed off.</p><p>Something worried the woman about her child. She didn't wear her uniform, choosing to go for a more comfortable and casual attire, she wore those weird purple shades and a hoodie almost like she tried to avoid attention.</p><p>Mana rushed through the streets of Konoha, as much as she wanted to avoid any attention from any of the other villagers a running person would attract a lot of it. Still, while people did look at her general direction they only noticed a shady looking teenager rushing through the street with a trashy leather jacket and a hoodie with half of her face being covered with those weird and oversized purple shades.</p><p>While the magician was quite famous in the village, she was usually identified through her unusual clothing or her facial features, people did identify some weird girl running down the street but they couldn't really put their fingers on who exactly she was.</p><p>It didn't take too long for Mana to reach the Hanada estate. She hadn't really visited that place for a while, at some point she just asked the owner of the hall where she performed for Hanada's money to stop being accepted and started paying for the hall rent herself. She just felt like after that last visit she offended the man too much for her to still accept his money and after several refused payments the man seemed to get the clue. He still spent a lot of money promoting Mana as if she was his brand or something, he still invested a lot into the show but it was more through anonymous donations and gently asking reviewers and for the general public to be kinder towards the show.</p><p>Not that she really needed that soft nudge towards the public opinion, whenever Mana appeared on stage she was amazing, still as devoted and masterful towards her craft as she was when she started, even as new magicians started appearing in the village, Mana still proved time and time again why she was the original. Each new street magician trying to break into the scene would've had to struggle with Mana's petite and slim yet important shadow serving as a barrier they'd need to at least match up to.</p><p>"Oh, hey, it's Konoha's Sorceress!" the familiar guard still guarding the gates of the Hanada estate recognized Mana once she walked up to the gate and removed her hood and her shades. "What's with the stupid getup? You getting into the racketeering business... Which I would know nothing about..." the mercenary looked a bit confused by the girl's attire. His emotions were rather easy to follow, he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed which was why his emotional reactions were always overblown.</p><p>"No. I'm leaving the magic gig behind and I want to tell Hanada-san about it so that he stops wasting his money on me. Can I see him or will you deliver it yourself? I'd reckon he wouldn't like to see me that much after the last time..." Mana said answering her own question and turning around as if she was ready to go away.</p><p>"Whoa, whoa, you're quitting?! No way! Nah, kid, you gotta talk to Hanada about that, he brags about knowing you to everyone he meets, every new business associate, you gotta see him with that!" the mercenary reached over Mana's shoulder and gently pushed her inside through the gate, gesturing for his pal to stand guard while he led the magician into the huge mansion.</p><p>The mercenary asked for Mana to stay and disappeared in the labyrinths of the estate made of solid marble and filled with larger than life busts, statues, and paintings. The girl wondered about the story of each one, how much blood should've been on each of them? Were they obtained by the owner buying them by bullying his competitor to withdraw from the auction or by simply removing them from the picture? The news and rumors spoke a lot about Hanada Katsuo's methods but not all of them could've been trustworthy, as slimy as Katsuo was...</p><p>"Ah! Konoha's Sorceress... I am glad to see you here, despite your apparent shyness towards me. I assure you I hold no grudge from last time, I went out of my shoes to offend you then and I'd apologize if you and your friends hadn't made me pay for that social transgression..." Hanada's expensively dressed body combined with that silly feminine hairdo appeared from a room to the east of Mana's position. The girl turned to him and scratched her elbow in shyness, she didn't really want to be there but she had to. She felt obliged to tell the man she was quitting.</p><p>"Sorry, I... I didn't intend to even see you I just... I wanted to tell you I was stopping the whole Sorceress gig, no more magic for me..." Mana mumbled out like a teenager getting caught in the process of escaping with their parents' car.</p><p>"Well, that is quite a sudden and very life-altering decision for you. I am glad you gave me a chance to talk you out of it!" Hanada smiled extending his arms to the sides as if he offered the girl a hug but Mana was smarter than to hug the king of Konoha's shady underworld.</p><p>Mana tried to jumble out some excuse as to why she couldn't be there but Hanada was much more persistent than she gave him credit for and also, now that her chakra control was off forever – quite significantly stronger than her physically. Mana honestly expected that after that last meeting the man would just make her disappear or something and pin it on the dangerous neighborhood which, truth be told, was only dangerous because he was there to make it so...</p><p>"Now, I realize there must be a reason for this incredibly spontaneous and, quite frankly, stupid decision? Before I talk you out of it I'd like to hear it!" Hanada smiled with that despicable way of twisting his lips and showing off those expensive teeth of his.</p><p>"There isn't one, I struggled with combining my life as a ninja and a magician for long, I just can't do it anymore... Things complicated a bit and I have to give one up now" Mana mumbled out trying to hide her eyes from those of her conversant. Ever since she lost her chakra control she felt really down and even more inferior to everyone else than usual. This success killed her inside more than any sort of failure would have.</p><p>"Hmmm, you see, normally I'd believe you... I mean I heard all about your success with that infamous last mission of yours. That mission removed the "Ikiro Perfume" successor from the equation making it possible for me to buy the darned thing and place myself in the kid's place. Right now, everything you do makes me more money than you could imagine, every good deed of yours looks even more golden in my eyes. You saved a troubled and edgy young boy who decided that he's the next criminal overlord of the village – his father removes him from the line of succession... Surely you'll let me repay that favor for earning me the entry into the perfume business by saving you from making this horrible decision?" Hanada smiled</p><p>"I mean... I suppose this rash move has more to do with you losing your chakra control?" Hanada looked at Mana with the most petrifying eyes the girl had ever seen. So he knew of her injury? Did he know everything the whole time? That made Mana's presence in his household incredibly dangerous and the only reason why Mana showed none of that inner fear that was rustling deep inside of her like a starting forest fire, was because she currently cared little if she lived or disappeared without a trace with her unrecognizable body being found in the trash in some alleyway like most people who crossed Hanada.</p><p>The man shrugged being cornered by Mana's suspicious stare, "I apologize, it's just I own the clinic that owns that medical ninja you've brought back, he was examined and questioned about his practice multiple times and... Some information like that slipped..."</p><p>So now Hanada owned the clinic that had in its employment the medical ninja who knew the medical kinjutsu capable of breathing life into people? The more she talked with this man, the worse the magician felt about the whole thing.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be here. I'm thankful for all you've done for me, Hanada-san, however, I'd like to stop now, stop with everything and if you truly wish to repay me as you've told me you do, you'll understand and let me just fade away..." Mana mumbled out, still hesitant to look the man in the eyes.</p><p>Hanada's hand gently lifted her chin making the girl's messy hair slip to the sides and her eyes look into his again. Every moment of contacting the skin of this horrible man-made Mana wish to scream and claw her own flesh that touched him off.</p><p>"I understand, young Mana... If that is truly your will then so be it, however, just as you asked me to respect your decision, I'd like to ask you to consider what I'll tell you. You tell everyone in your shows again and again how you want to be a hero, several times you've told in those brief interviews and when meeting the fans how you wish to inspire people so that they change the violent and bloodthirsty world we live in and magic is a way of expressing that. I understand that losing chakra manipulation crippled you, destroyed your self-confidence and any semblance of self-worth you had. Still, I must wonder where that devotion to your dream went, after all, there are more ways than one in being a hero. Your mother doesn't fight bandits in the forests, she owns a small lovely café she refuses to sell me, she is a hero, Mana, she inspires people and I think you'd agree she's a hero for everything she does for you and her clients..."</p><p>Mana nodded, "Yes, she is a hero she always hears everyone's stories over coffee, everyone's problems, and no matter how much I screw everything up she never gives up on me..." she added indifferently thinking back on her mother who must have been worried about staying in the dark for so long about what was going on in Mana's heart, even if the girl wanted to admit about everything but somehow she was just too distressed to talk about it, every word had to be forced out of her at that moment and it wasn't the best time for that kind of talk.</p><p>"Well then, I still see that same passion in your eyes that I've seen in the eyes of a young girl in a flowery dress performing tricks on a cardboard box out in the street, she inspired many people despite not having punched a single bandit in the face and not spitting a single fireball out of her mouth. Just because you could fight evil physically doesn't mean that was all you could do. Your stage magic is the most powerful tool of your conviction, always was, I was never too big of a fan of your little ninja escapades anyways, I think it distracted from your main message... Please consider my words, young Mana. Ultimately, while you're still just a young girl, you're old enough to decide your own succession of your dream, to decide what you wish to do further..."</p><p>Mana bowed for the man, expressing some gratitude and some respect, and rushed off. That bastard! He may have been a criminal, a thief within the law which Mana dreamed of having the means of taking down one day after he slipped up and didn't tie all the loose ends.</p><p>He may have only spoken about those things because of his own interest, his own need to donate huge sums to Mana's shows and Hiro's halls so that he could brag about being a sponsor of her show. He may have been just like Eiju was – helping Mana for his own gain, still, he was right. Mana may have no longer had the gift of the magic of ninjutsu and chakra manipulation but she still had the other, more common kind of magic running through her veins. She was still:</p><p>Konoha's Sorceress...</p>
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<a name="section0104"><h2>104. The Violent Warrior Clan of Iwa</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A happy child ran down the stage, his large childish eyes were so close to watering but those wouldn't have been tears of sadness or depression as it was common in this world filled with murder and death. He was rushing down the stage from being called up the stage as a volunteer for Mana's magic show, it was then that the girl's eyes fell on a familiar face in the public. Normally she'd have proceeded to the main point of the show but now she pretty much had to call that little kid on stage as well.</p><p>"I know how much you guys want to see me try and kill myself by locking myself into something I set on fire but there's a very special little girl I want to call on stage. Please stay with me for another warm-up trick, will you?" she smiled nodding while looking the little girl right in the eyes. The kid couldn't believe it for a moment, it was only once the girl's parents nudged her and encouraged her to go on and get on stage that she ran holding a plushy rabbit in her arms.</p><p>"Ease up on the grip, little one, you'll tear your friend's head off..." Mana joked as the girl made it on the stage. The magician had met the little toddler and her parents in the junk district way back, back when she and her team shut down criminal activity in that region.</p><p>She invited the girl to see her show for free and informed all the hall officials of that deal, there were plenty of people that the magician let see her show for free and it wasn't anything special for them. While the magician occasionally did jarringly bad for business decisions her audience was growing so fast that it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.</p><p>Ever since Mana decided to use her loss of chakra manipulation as a sign that she needed to use that effort and time of her life in other places, like her cooking hobby, her reading out, and most importantly – her magic shows, Mana's shows were exploding in popularity. At the moment there couldn't have been a single Konohagakure villager who didn't know who Mana was or at least hasn't seen her face on a poster somewhere. She beat all the actors and movie stars that usually were around the place.</p><p>Recently this new trend of entertainment hit the hall, Hiro, the owner of the hall, decided to buy a giant screen on which some sort of pre-recorded material was displayed. Mana had never seen anything like it in her life but Hiro thanked her and the profit from her shows publically as a factor that helped him bring cinema to Konohagakure. Initially, Mana lost a lot of people to this booming cinema trend but as time went the boom calmed down and her audience started growing again at a quite solid rate. It was amazing how much could've happened and how much could've changed in just a couple of months...</p><p>The little girl started whining on the stage before breaking into tears. This was something Mana couldn't have predicted. Her face twisted in that weird emotion that one always feels when they mess something up in public, on the most public stage of the village one might argue! The magician slipped her hat off, letting it playfully roll down her arm until Mana's quick hand grabbed the edge of it and then quickly put her hand inside of it, popping a smoke bomb she pulled from out of her sleeve that made a loud sound which surprised the little crying girl and made her snap out of her tears of happiness.</p><p>"Let's see if I can make a friend for your rabbit pal..." Mana smiled winking for the little girl as she popped a light bomb inside the hat, one she had especially stuffed with confetti before. Editing the contents of a ninja tool was difficult, pressure made them activate, something as delicate as pressing them with both fingers would've popped it and made it wasted so cutting it and adding content inside was pretty much like brain surgery.</p><p>The girl looked in awe at the light show which Mana had prepared and as the girl pulled out an ace card from her hat which came from Mana's pocket, the magician found a chance to reach for it in all the light show and confetti flying around which attracted the most of everyone's attention.</p><p>The stage magician acted out a sad face as if her trick had failed, Mana failing to pull a rabbit out of her hat was a common running gag on her show, she sometimes did much more destructive failures like making a smoke bomb filled with ash explode in her face making herself look hilariously messed up with all that ash but cleaning up the stage afterward must've been horrible...</p><p>The girl giggled as Mana pulled a balloon out of her pocket and played with it blowing it up and trying to tie it to something resembling a rabbit shape. Mana pulled on the tip too hard on purpose making the balloon explode with candy she stuffed inside during preparation.</p><p>"Well, it looks like this is as good as you'll get today... I guess I'm getting washed up..." Mana shrugged playfully as the girl collected the small candy bags from the ground laughing her butt off to the point where she had to hold her belly with her hands as it started hurting from the laughter.</p><p>After the little girl from the junk district returned to her parents with probably the largest smile Mana has ever seen the magician followed it with the largest show stopper she's ever shown in a while. She had assistants lock her down in chains and close in a giant iron maiden-like device which had handles of swords that were held by complicated clockwork, each blade would've thrust into the device in a seemingly random order every minute, obviously, Mana knew the order in which the swords went and she knew when it'd get dangerous.</p><p>At the very worst if she didn't get out of the bindings and unlock the device the fifth sword would cut her hand and her side but it'd also break the chain, it was her last hope to escape the device because the seventh sword would've gone through her heart and the eighth one would've decapitated her.</p><p>Naturally, Mana imagined that in case of her horrifying death it'd have been nice to hide the device from the public, the last thing she wanted all the kids to see was their favorite entertainer getting impaled and beheaded right in front of them so the device was also raised in the air and lowered into a giant glass container filled with gravel. The stage magician always topped her show off with one of those larger than life escaping tricks, naturally, things were harder now that she had no chakra control to bail her out.</p><p>She couldn't have substituted herself, couldn't have used a genjutsu to fool the audience. She was really inside a device that could've killed her, a deathtrap crafted by her father's ideas and built by her own hands. A social contract between the two that helped her father feel like his old crafty self and gave Mana something to do, namely think of ways of how to escape her father's deathtrap until the show starts...</p><p>Even without her chakra control Mana was good at escaping binds, she slipped out of the chains and pinched the right switch to loosen the device a minute before the fifth sword cut her, she did get cut in her thigh a little bit by it but she broke out and her hand burst from the gravel container before pulling her exhausted body out and bowing to the audience.</p><p>Some people noticed the moderately sized still bleeding cut on Mana's thigh but they just saw it as a sign of Mana's devotion and not madness. Ninja risked far more every day and the magician was now in no condition to risk it as they did. She felt useless and weak and these dangerous and visually pleasing shows were the best she could do to push those feelings away.</p><p>Hiro and a couple of his assistants ran into Mana's little preparation room after the show looking at the cut.</p><p>"Shit, how are you!?" he yelled out angrily letting his moderately skilled staff examine Mana's injury</p><p>"It looks nasty, it's not infected but it might sting when you put weight on this leg for a day or two, a week in the worst case" the medical staff examining the wound concluded placing a patch on the girl's leg. They weren't medical ninja so they could only give first aid and not just heal the leg instantly like a medical ninja with access to medical ninjutsu would've done.</p><p>"Did it make an impression? Were people disappointed?" Mana asked. She was still hyperventilating from the physical stress of rushing her escape before the device killed her, the gravel also pressed against her body almost getting into her lungs and almost drowning her, she didn't account for that much effort being needed for simply going up through gravel...</p><p>"Disappointed?! Kid, you call those tricks "showstoppers", trust me, the show was "stopped" alright... I think it left an impression, that much you can be sure of. If you keep this up people from other villages will come flooding, I've already had offers from Kirigakure to have you tour there..." Hiro looked at Mana with his silly-looking signature squint. The man was a short but slightly chubby guy who always wore a Hawaiian shirt and always had those weird squinted eyes as if he was always looking directly at the Sun.</p><p>"Maybe some other time... Might be dangerous to travel around without a ninja escort, even now..." Mana tensed her thigh muscle and pouted grunting a little from the pain, she's been cut before, it meant little to the girl at this point. Hell, she's been stabbed in her last mission... A little cut couldn't have kept her down even when chakra manipulation and the natural ninja regeneration factor was gone.</p><p>"Oh, right, you're not doing that anymore? Have they terminated your license yet? I mean you haven't been on a mission for a couple of months already, ever since that last one, right? How does it feel taking weeks to heal minor cuts like this? Hope you'll get used to it and stop getting reckless, I hate having to refuse all that Hanada Katsuo money on your medical bills every time you get injured on stage..." Hiro sighed out. He was always a bit of a scrooge...</p><p>"No, not yet, they still hope I'll eventually recover or learn to function without it. I hate getting injured on stage more, trust me..." Mana breathed out and took her bag, looking at her ruined pantyhose, and ran out. She rarely brought clothes to change out of her uniform with her.</p><p>"Right? I mean be careful, kid, you ain't got nine lives, only got one..." Hiro flipped his hand to gesture the girl farewell until they meet before the next show.</p><p>Mana stopped and looked back at him on the doorstep, "It's not that, I hate getting hurt on stage because it makes me look sloppy... I want to inspire my crowd, I want to entertain them, I don't want them to see me bleed, to see me as just a normal human being..." the magician uttered before disappearing.</p><p>"That girl..." Hiro sighed looking at his medical staff, "I need new staff, she'll keep pulling shit like this and getting hurt, try to see if you guys can hire someone from the hospital, someone with medical ninjutsu experience..."</p><p>The medical crew looked at Hiro, they looked pretty hesitant to talk to him, one of them opened his mouth only after being encouraged by the superior to the right. "Well, sir... We did... You told us to last week..."</p><p>"Good, you're all fired then..." Hiro smiled before snapping his little chubby fingers, "Ah, don't fret, the compensation you'll get is twice bigger than you need to buy an apartment in these parts..."</p><p>"Sir, he didn't show. As you've said we've spent as little as possible on him – not even a ryo in fact..." a medical expert started explaining himself. Hiro still looked quite confused by that revelation, he did start remembering something like that being told to him but he wasn't paying attention and therefore forgot it by now.</p><p>"He's a young intern at the hospital, medical interns who wish to become full-blown medical ninja need to serve three years at a medical experience related job... He's a young kid but he's dirt cheap, interns do come to work for free after all... He is late today though..." the medical worker explained. Hiro sighed.</p><p>"Fine, you're all unfired until he learns to come to work on time... Now, chop-chop, go see if any actors will get injured in their little play, honestly I've no idea why people even come to those things anymore, we've got moving pictures... Moving goddamn pictures... Seriously..." Hiro left Mana's little preparation room rambling with the rest of the crew following shortly after and one guy locking the room behind him.</p><p>Mana limped slightly through the endless corridors of the large hall. The small preparation room she used was given to her back when she was a nobody. When only a handful of people knew her as that girl who did tricks on a box in the middle of the street every other day. Now she could've gotten one of those large and sophisticated rooms smelling of rich mahogany and with a bunch of star-shaped lights all around, one with more space than in her own room... Mana kept refusing, somehow she liked her little shack, it was dark and smelly but it reminded her where she came from, it was really nostalgic for the girl and Mana was always a sucker for nostalgia.</p><p>"Oh! Sorry, Konoha's Sorceress-san!" a loud masculine voice that must've belonged to a young teen alerted Mana that her attention was wanted behind her. It could've been a fan, Mana always had small fan meeting sessions after a show every Friday but today wasn't the day for those, still, sometimes some fans asked for some of her time and she gave them what they wanted. Answered questions or just spoke with them, a little attention made these people happy, and pleasing people was all that Mana wanted to do after all...</p><p>Mana turned around with a curious expression and saw a short teen run to her and then break into mad huffs as he almost fell on his knees. He must've been rushing for quite a while...</p><p>"I apologize, Sorceress-san! I am a medical ninja intern and I was supposed to treat your wound but I'm so late! Darn it! Please forgive me! My father came home after a long while, he's a Jugo clan member, pure-blooded so you must understand how rarely he ever comes home, inside the village walls! Please forgive me and let me look at that cut, it looks painful!"</p><p>The boy kept shouting in the most apologetic and polite manner, continuously bowing as if Mana was some sort of royalty. She could barely restrain her shame from dyeing her face blood red. She was never addressed with the honorific of "-san" before. Usually, everyone just addressed her without one or used the slightly condescending "-chan", the one used when addressing young girls or boys when one wanted to make fun of them.</p><p>She gently showed him the wound placing her leg forward so that he could see it. "It's alright, I'm quite thankful you are willing to take care of it, honestly. I didn't even know we had a medical ninja in here, saved me time having to limp to the hospital so you're really doing me a favor, might as well address me by my name – Mana..." the girl left a pause letting the teen get the clue to introduce himself.</p><p>The young man smiled awkwardly, "That's the wrong leg, Sorceress-sa... I mean... Mana. My name's Kouta Hirano, my father is a Jugo as I've mentioned before but I use my mother's last name because I'm not too proud of my father's bloodline... Oh, you probably don't care, sorry..." before breaking into a shy and restrained fit of chuckling.</p><p>Mana's face blushed instantly as she replaced the leg she pushed forward with the injured one. "It was a long day..." she let out an excuse. Then her expression changed back to slightly ashamed and mostly curious. "It's alright, I'd love to get to know you a little since you're so helpful, treating my injury and all. I've never really heard of this Jugo clan, truth be told, if it's not too much trouble for you I'd love to hear some more..." she smiled to him with that small shade of guilt as if giving him the wrong leg to look at was something shameful.</p><p>Kouta placed his hands above Mana's thigh and concentrated, his face when initiating the usual healing ninjutsu technique – "Mystical Palm" jutsu, was much more stressed and concentrated than the faces of other medical ninja Mana had seen. He must've not really been used to the technique too much. Normally, healing Mana's wound would've taken a professional just a mere moment, Kouta took a couple of seconds longer than that. Then he stood back up and smiled giving the girl a thumb up.</p><p>"There it is, as good as new. It might take a while if you want to hear about my father's clan. May as well lead you to the door, if you've got the time, Mana-sa... cha... Mana..." the teen laughed awkwardly when he confused the honorifics again before deciding to use none at all.</p><p>He was such an odd guy, he was as short as Mana, who was a bit shorter than most of her peers but he looked mostly about the same age, maybe a year or two older than her. His muscles looked pretty well trained, he must've been well versed in the physical techniques, taijutsu most likely, he had no weapons on him beyond the usual ninja pouch on his left leg.</p><p>Must've been left-handed, it wasn't too comfy using weapons with the right hand from the bottom of the left leg... His hair was pretty messy, dark, and strangely spiked, long enough to run down to his shoulders but the sides were quite trimmed. His hair strangely didn't act like the usual human hair, they spun together in those strange spiky strands that curled around each other. He wore a simple white top and a dark jacket on top of it that he kept unzipped, some medical tools were visible from his pockets.</p><p>"The Jugo clan was found in Iwagakure, they were all banished from the village and hunted heavily because of their violent tendencies and destructive bloodline. Jugo can manifest chakra into cannon-like bursts or shape them really skillfully into all sorts of shapes. They can make their own bodies into cannons, like open holes and stuff, I can't do that but my father showed me once when I was a kid. They've changed through the years, they've become monk-like, calm, and peaceful. They believe that unity with nature and a peaceful way of life would help them stop being viewed as demons and hunted down. My father is not like most Jugo members though, he's violent and he does roam around because of that, he rarely ever comes home. Mother says I've inherited my father's bulk, all Jugo are like walking mountains..."</p><p>Mana laughed, "Well you're not much of a mountain, no offense, but anyone as short as I am can't be called a "mountain"..." she was actually enjoying hearing about this Jugo clan, after all, history was one of her hobbies, one she engaged in more and more now that she was no longer a ninja.</p><p>Kouta laughed out and scratched the back of his head messing up his already messy hair even more. "Yeah well... I guess I'm more of a "hill" though maybe "wall" sounds cooler, "the rock" is pretty cool too!"</p><p>"Could've fooled me..." Mana smiled gently before bowing to the teen as a farewell, "You seem pretty nice despite your pretty impressive physical condition. Maybe I'll see you soon around these parts?" she looked with excitement and hope in her eyes.</p><p>Kouta laughed, "Hope not, that'd mean you've gotten hurt, would it not? I'd rather everything was fine with you, you seem like a really warm and nice person and I hate nothing more than nice people getting hurt..."</p><p>Mana squinted playfully, "Seriously, how are you related to those "Jugo" again?" before running off, stopping mid-way and jumping up waving at Kouta who was watching her run off, "Glad to meet you, by the way!" she yelled back at him before running off.</p><p>"The blue uniform isn't your color! The black one looked better!" Kouta yelled back before walking back into the hall to get yelled at by Hiro for almost missing his opportunity to heal one of his most prized performers.</p>
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<a name="section0105"><h2>105. A Prelude To A New Adventure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The way home was filled with people wishing to congratulate Mana on her successful show or just straight out stop her to say hello. It was weird how people functioned, the girl couldn't really understand the thought process behind just stopping a person to greet them but she enjoyed it and smiled back and greeted everyone who did so. These were the people that the magician loved most of all things in the world, it was nice to get at least a slight shine back at her from them.</p><p>Feedback for her deeds was not something she got as a ninja, ninja's work is a secret one and most definitely a dirty one. It includes things that should never be thanked for or congratulated for, twisted and evil things. Yet deep in her heart Mana knew that the work they did was necessary, all those missions she did for the people was the hard work. It was dirty and nasty work but it was something that needed to be done, somehow being appreciated for working on a different field entirely felt like living on a permanent "easy mode" of sorts...</p><p>Evil had to be fought, there were plenty of bad people around the village walls, people who were buying and selling other people like kittens, people who killed, who rudely took the responsibility for deciding over life and death from the great order of the Universe. As much as Mana still wanted to believe there was Magic – a deity that oversaw all that happened and weighed its heavy hand on all things... After seeing what she saw it was apparent that either there was no Magic, no God or Goddess to weigh the right and wrong and decide for us, or that it was not a kind and loving Magic.</p><p>Yet the prospect of decision making, the prospect of herself being the only person responsible for everything going on with her life... It was a scary one, a terrifying one that claimed the teenager's breath every time she tried to wrap her head around it. If she is the only one to blame for all the failures, for everything bad happening around her... No. Maybe that's the right way. Only by realizing that the only reason something is bad is that she wasn't strong enough to change it into better can Mana truly change herself and the world.</p><p>But was this change necessary in the long run? She was weak now, she could no longer shoot bolts of lightning from her hands, she could no longer weave illusions to trap her opponents in. She was just what she was – a weak human, below even the potential and power of a normal adult, she was just half of what a human woman was...</p><p>A halfling surrounded by super people, by people who could survive what couldn't be survived, people who could do all sorts of things, people who were strong enough to change everything, and yet all they did was kill, maim and abuse that power. The greatest curse in the universe was to know the truth and being unable to make everyone see it.</p><p>Mana stopped by the door to her home and looked behind her, she saw young kids with Konoha forehead protectors run down the streets. Young genin embarking on their first missions, not unlike Mana and her friends did not too long ago. It all went so wrong so fast... Mana was now depowered to the extent where she felt like being crippled.</p><p>Shimo was a wanderer without a purpose to his wandering, someone who did something he deemed wrong looking for redemption which was impossible to be found because the thing he tried to find redemption for was not something one needed to be redeemed for in the first place.</p><p>Sugemi was a prisoner, a man who took his power for granted and decided that he knew the one true way as to how to do things. A once silly and naïve man crippled by a loss. Death affected people in the strangest of ways.</p><p>Normally the weak hated the strong. It was natural really, Mana opened the door and sighed as she took off her blue blazer and gently hung it on the sofa, relaxing and stretching out. She looked at her damaged leg which was now healed perfectly as if no damage even befell it. There was certain jealousy that the weak had for the strong, the salmon always despised the bear, from the viewpoint of the salmon the bear was evil but from the bear's point of view it was just doing what it needed to do to survive – killing the salmon.</p><p>Mana felt like a salmon who felt bad for the bear, she felt horrible seeing the unnatural burden that killing placed on the young bears and she felt even worse for the bears that grew up and never even felt the weight of that burden as their shoulders and jaws became too strong to even feel it. And yet she was a salmon in another river, protected by slippery and edgy rocks that kept the bears eating the salmon outside it.</p><p>Mana was of the weak who didn't hate the strong, one of the weak who didn't let the hate define her and dictate what she should do or how she should feel. The morality of the salmon was lost on her. But if she was not of the salmon's morality, was she still a salmon? If the weak hated the strong and the strong were defined by their strength and Mana was a halfling who didn't hate the strong, what exactly was she? Where was she placed? Who was it that defined her?</p><p>Dying back then would've been so much simpler... She'd have died like a hero protecting a child and granting him his shot at redemption for what he did, she'd have known who she was – a bear who found an alternate source of food and lived her life to the fullest, dying for something more meaningful than nothing at all...</p><p>A painful pinch on her cheek made Mana's peacefully shut eyes open up in surprise – Kiyomi was smiling leaning over Mana. The magician sat up and looked at the kitchen where mother and father were talking over a bunch of snacks – Kiyomi must've come to visit but Mana wasn't home so her parents suggested that the girl stayed for a while over some snacks.</p><p>"I heard it was a great show today!" the Yamanaka grinned out. She looked great, happy, strong, and healthy, maybe a bit too healthy, wasn't she supposed to be on active duty? Determined to complete literally all the missions she could so that she'd prove capable of taking part in the Chuunin Exam?</p><p>"You weren't there?" Mana looked at the girl curiously, she smiled with a shade of guilt and scratched the back of her head.</p><p>"Sorry, I was on a mission and I came as fast as I could, right after getting my swollen and busted face treated..." she excused herself, judging from the guilt and honesty in her voice Kiyomi wasn't lying nor would Mana have blamed her if she would've. The magician told the Yamanaka that she could check her show out for free if she ever felt like it but Kiyomi never cashed that free ticket in, not a single time in all the two and a half months after their last mission.</p><p>"Your clothes are new and far too fancy for mission attire, you've been home to change before visiting the Hospital, seeing how even the best medical ninja can't heal cloth. You smell of flowers, you've mentioned your mother's garden to me before so you must've also spent time there, you weren't gardening since your fingernails are pristinely clean and done which means you were there to absorb the flowery scent... You were there wishing to impress someone... Someone to impress in the hospital... Eiju?" Mana mumbled out a series of emotionless guesses.</p><p>Kiyomi looked in complete confusion and slight embarrassment, as Mana listed her features the girl examined her own clothes, her own fingernails, and smelled her own girly palm trying desperately to debunk Mana's analysis but she realized that the magician must've been right.</p><p>"Wow... You've been... Doing something with your time..." Kiyomi mumbled out, "You're only half right though, I came to meet Eiju but he was busy, we barely exchanged words, he healed me and threw me out..."</p><p>"I've been reading a lot, history books are very lacking in quality and cohesiveness, also they don't always add up. If you want to get good at history and lore you pretty much have to craft your own theories, analyze details since a single word in a room-sized scroll can change the entire fate of your theory... Busy?" Mana explained her newly discovered skill in perception.</p><p>Kiyomi nodded, "Yeah, Hisako's been pummeled like an apple on a mission in Kumogakure, from what she told us she was looking for some guy to kill, some Uchiha guy and then some large guy just snapped the guy's neck in front of her by just wrapping his hand around it and pressing with his finger, like popping a grape off the bunch and... You know Hisako, even if her mission's been completed for her she still took it as a personal offense..."</p><p>"Poor thing, I wonder what kind of a guy could beat her up like that..." Mana thought to herself, mumbling things under her nose "Or not kill her once he did beat her, people tend to kill their opponents until it is beneficial to them not to in this world of ours..."</p><p>"Is it still your world? I mean you haven't been really responding to calls to action, Eiju's been printing those excuse papers for the Administration like crazy without even bothering examining you. Hanasaku-sensei is worried about your indecisiveness, it's hardly the first time someone lost their chakra control over abuse of chakra augmentation but they always quit after, you've remained out of duty for months..." Kiyomi looked at Mana giving the magician that strange worried look.</p><p>"Yeah... I imagine Eiju feels bad about it but... Strangely enough, you can tell him to calm down during your next date. I don't blame him for what he did anymore, I mean when we spoke after my fight with the cat lady. When he told me about his sickness... I saw his despair towards that thing and... I really wanted to help him. I guess by being crippled for life, rendered absolutely useless as a ninja I helped him in ways I could've never helped by staying active" Mana explained, her voice shifted around from indifferent to outright depressed, it was apparent that she had given this matter quite a lot of thought.</p><p>"I heard interesting things from your parents... You're still working out, at night, when you think they can't hear you. You're still meditating and researching jutsu in your room during your free time. Mana... Please don't tell me you plan on going back to active duty. That's why I came here, I'm worried about you. I'm worried you'll pull some childish hogwash like apply for a mission without your chakra control back..."</p><p>Mana turned her eyes away, she was really sad about being called out on her dreams of regaining her chakra manipulation, regaining all that she'd lost, regaining her purpose and her lost dream. Why was she being called out on trying to call back at her dream? It was like yelling at a disabled person for still trying to hope to walk again, someday... In some way...</p><p>"There are ninja that can't control chakra, you know... There were several students in our Academy group who couldn't perform ninjutsu for their lives and focused purely on taijutsu or weaponry..."</p><p>Kiyomi jumped up, it was clear that she got angry and afraid after Mana validated her thoughts that the magician wanted back to her old life of being a ninja. "Yes! Yes, there are ninja like that but those guys trained their whole lives! They trained their whole lives because they knew that they're inferior, even more, none of them actually lost their chakra control, they have working chakra networks meaning they can still augment their physical abilities if needed. Mana, don't do this! You're going to kill yourself! If a ninja punched you with an augmented punch – you'd die instantly, there'd barely be a body for your parents to recognize!"</p><p>Mana turned her whole body away crossing her arms over her chest and legs. She wasn't sure if she felt like crying or if she was furious. At any moment Mana could either explode in anger or break into tears and quite frankly she didn't want her friend to see either of those things.</p><p>The Yamanaka sat down and gently placed her hand on Mana's shoulder. The older girl calmed her voice and tried to appeal to Mana's common sense instead of yelling at her.</p><p>"Look... I'm not saying that you shouldn't train, training your body and your mind is healthy, I mean... That analysis thing you did previously was awesome and I could never do something crazy like that but... This is no longer a thing you can do. You look happy without it, you've got plenty of awesome things to do. The scissor guy in the archive keeps talking to me about you every time I go there, apparently, you're becoming some prodigy nerd amongst the archive readers, your magic shows are exploding in popularity! If you return to your old life, you'll lose all of it, you'll become like us – a depressed and miserable superhuman who thinks they can make a difference by slaughtering an orphanage and bringing their heads home to their bloodlusted overlords"</p><p>"It's fine, don't worry about it, I won't go out again, I will never do a mission in my entire life and I've given up on my dreams already... Is that what you wanted to hear?" Mana replied angrily, still refusing to look her friend in the eyes.</p><p>Kiyomi hugged Mana and stood up, walking towards the exit only to stop midway and turn back at the magician. "You know... When you were dying there in that bunker and Eiju refused to heal you... He asked me what exactly you meant to me and I told him... I told him how you looked up to me like I was your older sister and... And that for a moment... Just for a moment... I gave into that illusion, I really thought of you as my younger sister, I really wanted to be to you what my brother Kenji was for me..."</p><p>"It's alright, don't worry, I've already found things to do, things that keep blinding me and filling that hole inside me. I do feel incomplete, every day... Can you blame me? My lifelong dream, my nindo was ripped out from me. Ever since I woke up I felt like incomplete half-baked trash. Still, stage magic, history, and books... Those things help me forget, forget that my identity lost one of the most important pieces" Mana replied and stood up, leading her friend to the door and saying her farewells. Kiyomi probably wasn't calmed down by this visit by the slightest. Still, she didn't know what Mana felt like.</p><p>Kiyomi was a member of a well-respected Yamanaka clan, ever since her birth, she had a place in the Konohagakure Intelligence Division. She could've worked for the Protective Service, she could've interrogated prisoners, etc. She was born and raised like an elite and she was – one of the best youths Konoha had to brag about. Mana was different, she was born with no advantages and she worked hard her entire life, not even for a moment getting closer to her privileged friends. Just barely competent enough to play her cards at the same table but never strong enough to not be the dead last.</p><p>And then she got even that little that she had ripped away. Even if she was the slowest member of the race she got her kneecaps busted and she was beaten while she was down until she could no longer continue that race. Then one of the prize winners came to Mana and unintentionally rubbed it in, asking her to stop doing racing altogether and start baking pies for other racers...</p><p>That evening Mana and her father were working on a blueprint for another deathtrap. It was really a tricky one because it required a lot of different clockwork mechanisms and gears that were supposed to all work in a coordinated manner. They tried everything, kept arguing about how it was supposed to work. Mana had picked up some skill by working with her father for a while and her research and interest in world history and lore helped her sharpen her mind.</p><p>"What if we turn them sideways, change up their positions? They're all turned sideways but what if we flatten them and place them facing us?" father scratched his chin. Both he and his daughter were completely stumped by this new deathtrap.</p><p>"No, that wouldn't work, if we place those blades in then either the blade will damage the gears or they'll get stuck, either way, I'll be too dead to know what went wrong..." Mana explained pointing at the part on the blueprint that was supposed to symbolize a ritualistic knife stuffed into the device and showing how close it'd be.</p><p>"Well then... I suppose this device won't work..." father angrily pushed the blueprint on the floor. Mana carefully picked it up and straightened it out.</p><p>"There's an option, we could reduce the size of the gears, then they'd take less space. If we also turn them facing us and they're at least three times smaller they wouldn't contact the blades. We could use rubber bands as a connector here and here, the gears wouldn't touch but the rubber would make them act like they do touch..." Mana explained her plan pointing at a bunch of complicated drawings.</p><p>"That would never work. I always draw these gears as small as they get, how would you make them work while they are three times smaller than the minimum people work with!? That's wishful thinking at best and a literal suicide at its worst, must I remind you, Mana that it's a deathtrap we're working on? It needs to be a hundred percent foolproof for me to give you the green light to work on it..."</p><p>Father was always so careful...</p><p>"Still, better we give it a run before giving up on a whole evening of sketching, I'll run it around several blacksmiths in the morning, see if they could help us..." Mana smiled rolling the blueprint into a large roll and putting it into her backpack.</p><p>Father nodded and scratched his stubble, all those extra shows Mana was doing made their time working on the tools make him neglect his own personal hygiene. Not that he cared much about it, to begin with, father somehow often acted like the accident that left his arms burnt and him without his ninja license ruined his life...</p><p>Like father like daughter...</p>
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<a name="section0106"><h2>106. The Yoruma Treatment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Early in the morning, right after finishing the appropriate morning routine, Mana headed out for the Konohagakure hospital. Normally, only visiting the blacksmith was in mind for that day – she needed to know from a professional if the specific miniature gear-work mechanism that she and her father were working on was possible. Even if it was possible it was unlikely that Mana could make it, even with father's guidance. Father was incredibly crafty, he was known for his skill in tinkering acquired over a lifetime. The skill of that magnitude couldn't be picked up in just a couple of years.</p><p>After entering the hospital, and some time before, Mana had to deal with people wishing to greet her or talk to her, ask her when the next show would be. By then it had become the girl's normal routine so it wasn't a big deal. Just a minor hindrance, in terms of how long it took compared to the simple idea of it that Mana had. It was supposed to be just a short visit, in and out after a brief talk. After hearing how Hisako was hurt Mana wanted to see her friend by herself.</p><p>"Hey... You're Konoha's Sorceress right?" the lady in the medical ninja uniform sitting at the table at the reception smiled, looking excited to see Mana visiting the hospital.</p><p>"Ummm... Yeah. I just... I'm not sure if I can even do that but my friend's been brought from Kumogakure, pretty banged up from what I heard, could I see her by any chance?" Mana struggled out to ask this of the lady. Usually, it wasn't like anyone could just waltz in and see people, especially the people who were in really bad condition.</p><p>"Oh... Do you speak of the Yoruma girl? Sorry, normally you could do that once her condition is stable but... I'm afraid she just slipped out from the hospital, we've been informed that she checked into the Administration as "in active duty". You'll probably find her at home at this moment, or drinking from the early morning before getting into a fight, as Yoruma are known to do, Sorceress-chan..." the nurse looked really willing to help Mana out, whether it was because of her job description or particular fondness of Mana's craft as a stage magician remained unknown.</p><p>A little saddened that this sidequest of hers ended up being prolonged even more Mana left the hospital building. She probably could've gone to see Eiju but... She wasn't sure that she wanted or even could see him. She wasn't angry at him, what she told Kiyomi was true, and if the Yamanaka, whom Mana considered a friend, decided to start a silly rebellious relationship with the newly appointed medical ninja she'd support her friend all the way. If that was what would've made her happy.</p><p>"Oy, well you're someone I didn't expect to see today!" Eiju's voice made cold sweat run down Mana's neck and down her back.</p><p>"Hey..." she greeted him half-heartedly.</p><p>"So... You willing to check yourself at last? You know they won't let you out on a mission unless I tell them you've been examined and you've skipped hell knows how many of those examinations already... It's time to decide, whether you want a shot at going back or not?" Eiju popped a pill. Mana looked surprised to see that he was still popping something after his regenerative tissue was removed by using Mana as a living tool for it...</p><p>"Didn't the tissue die? What do you still need poison for?" Mana glanced at him slightly but only out of curiosity.</p><p>"People sometimes drink even if they're not alcoholics, lovely, you were right – my tissue died but my sickness came back. It's no worry, there's still a couple of years till it'll flip me over..." Eiju laughed out.</p><p>"If you want to poison yourself may as well pick up drinking or smoking, bad habits of normal people. For all the slack you can't seem to cut me for my indecisiveness, you can't decide if you want to live or die yourself..." Mana snapped back at him angrily, she turned back to face the young man she used to hate so much. She started to dominate the conversation, she noticed his stance faltering so the magician closed her distance and stood on her toes to somewhat close the distance between her face and his.</p><p>"I don't hate you anymore, I'm not mad at you anymore. You saved your life without asking anyone else at my expense, may as well own it, and not make the loss of my gift for nothing. If you die of taking poison I'll bring you back and kill you again. My gift is running down your veins, you're the only person I managed to help throughout my entire life, the only one whom I really helped all the way. You will NOT die on me!" Mana cracked down on the medical ninja angrily.</p><p>"Alright..." Eiju sighed, he leaned over as if he was about to throw up but he managed to keep the contents of his stomach in.</p><p>"How have you been holding up? Heard you became a medical ninja and sold your cheap butt off to Hanada-san?" Mana calmed down a bit and asked Eiju as if he was her friend.</p><p>"Yeah, usually there's a pretty messy procedure involved with medical students becoming medical ninja, since I was a Quack and wanted to legitimize I could apply for the spot with just a single exam. One might say legitimization into a village ninja from being a rogue itself was the hard part – lots of questions and lots of talks with lotta blokes..."</p><p>"I'm sure Hanada-san made it very easy for you. Friendly advice since you're actually somewhat dear to Kiyomi we brought you back because we wanted you to move past your old life. Don't you dare return to being Hanada-san's personal slave medical ninja..." Mana threw somewhat rudely at Eiju before deciding that she wasted enough time and may as well have moved on.</p><p>"I'll have that in mind, lovely, thanks... So you think blondie still thinks I'm hot?" Eiju asked playfully.</p><p>"Ever heard of this guy named Shikio?" Mana asked coldly after turning around and facing Eiju again.</p><p>"Shikio? Can't say I did? Wait, wasn't he that heroic legend guy? The one in all the movies and plays? Chicks keep inviting me to them... Or they would theoretically if I knew anything about any "chicks"..." the medical ninja pulled a quite frankly pathetic save of his own ass, as he was known to do.</p><p>"Yeah... He's tall, muscular and strong, brave and heroic, really lovely beard. Thing is – every girl of ages ten and above had a poster of him around their room at some point. They knew it'd never happen, there were a million reasons why they would've never become the brides of Shikio, the fact that he wasn't even real being but one of them. Still, they obsessed over him, they checked him out and dreamed about him because he was just a dreamy guy. Point is... When I see her and the topic turns to you - you're her Shikio. It's not that she finds you attractive or sees you as the love of her life, you're her dream of rebellion against her clan rules, a living embodiment of it." Mana explained before starting to walk away again.</p><p>Last she saw of Eiju the man kept standing by the hospital back door pathetically, desperately trying to keep the contents of his stomach inside. So he wasn't a complete dickbag? He had guilt over what he had done plaguing him from inside, the guilt that worked in combination with his lethal terminal sickness which would claim his life before too long.</p><p>Those two combined made him engage in self-destructive behavior. Mana sighed. She didn't want to admit but him and Kiyomi getting together and striving to impress each other would be healthier for the two of them: Eiju would stop trying to kill himself and at least make an effort to look as good as he could with his natural-born handsomeness, Kiyomi would finally embrace her dreams of rebelling and they'd stop burning her up from inside...</p><p>Love life was complicated, what could Mana ever know being just a fourteen-year-old stage magician who had more attempts at her life than boys showing any interest in her...</p><p>Walking around the Yoruma district was really dangerous, Yoruma were quite violent people. Hisako wasn't too far off from what a normal Yoruma was like. Normally it wouldn't be too correct to try and generalize people by their clans, even if people shared their clan they weren't all just the same as the common traits amongst their clan members. That being said, Yoruma were more alike than some other clans. If clan members weren't all like their common traits, how come Hisako was exactly like that? No. Mana knew better than that, her Yoruma traits were just a façade. Something to make the girl look worse than she actually is, something to distance herself from the rest of the world. Mana walked into a small inn, an inn in the Yoruma district no less.</p><p>The idea was to ask around, see if any of those drunkard brawlers knew anything about Hisako but the moment the girl entered the inn hall she instantly regretted the decision. It was filled with the worst looking sort of ninja one could find. Despite all of them having Konoha forehead protectors none of them looked like ninja, all of them looked like killers and most definitely all of them displayed a similar killing intent feeling to them like Tanshu-sensei used to have, except much weaker.</p><p>"Oy! What's a little girl doing in a fucking inn!? She doesn't look like one of ours!"</p><p>Similar yells started coming from each side of the inn. Mana shook in her shoes, she was afraid, she had a good reason to be. Yoruma were the worst kind of people one could meet: brutal, always angry, and looking for a fight. They were just as likely to drink you under the table as they were to kill you at first sight. Just for the kicks of it.</p><p>"Ey! The little bitch ain't talking to us! Wait a sec! I think... Yeah, she's that magician girl ain't she? What, did you come to perform here!? Alright then, dance for us!" some idiot yelled out tossing a knife right where Mana's foot was, had the man not been so idiotically smashed he'd have stuck his hunting knife right into the girl's foot, now she just barely managed to track his hand moving. Her eyes, her reaction time was so horrible! She'll find her death in a place like this...</p><p>A shorter looking fellow stood up, he was toying around with a knife he still had some cheese on. He was older than most, maybe in his early sixties, one of his eyes was completely white, and judging from the scars it may have been due to a slash. The other one was pretty dimmed out as well, he must've been completely blind at this point.</p><p>"It's alright, girl, if that's your job, perform for those old fuckers, if you're here for a drink you've come to the wrong damned place..." he slithered out in such petrifying and shallow husk of a voice that Mana's heart froze just hearing it. Even if this man spoke of toast, one would've been afraid for their life. How many could this man have killed? Hundreds? Thousands? No. This must've been the effect of his killing intent... Mana's lack of appropriate chakra control made it really hard to deal with that pressure in the air.</p><p>"What's wrong, why are you silent? Are you mocking us?" the man asked silently, so quietly that Mana could barely make out what he was saying, and yet that somehow just made his acknowledgment of her existence that much scarier.</p><p>"Just gut her already, we've gutted kids for less... Nothing runs back home to mommy faster than a gutted kid!" some drunkard yelled out from the side.</p><p>"I'm looking for someone..." Mana finally managed to break the immense pressure on her chest and say something. The sheer collection of killing intents in that place scared her to Hell. Just what kind of an inn would be full of drunkards in the early morning!?</p><p>"Well... I sure as hell hope it's death because that's all I can give you" the old man husked out. "If you say one more word, I will. Leave. Now"</p><p>Mana wanted to leave, she was worried about Hisako though, her friend left without recovering, she was wandering around a region like this. A dangerous and a really nasty district. It may have been smaller than a couple of streets but it was still the scariest place to be in Konoha.</p><p>"It's..." Mana tried to say something but she heard that horrifying buzz in the air – that sound of steel whizzing right before the inevitable sensation of pain followed. One that was to shock the one on the receiving end so much that it froze their entire body for a moment, almost like they were shocked. Her body felt so stiff, it was like she was in a body of an old woman's, without her chakra control the magician couldn't have possibly dodged a fast attack like that.</p><p>A loud thud made Mana break out of her shock. A slightly taller feminine figure stood in front of her. The woman who saved the magician was covered in bandages and plasters on her head, the entire upper part had bandages tightly wrapped and one of the eyes of the young woman was covered with a large chunk of compress as if the eye was really injured. Strangely enough, the raven-haired woman also wore a poncho of sorts that covered the bandages of her lower body.</p><p>Even in her severely battered state, Hisako managed to catch the dagger coming straight at Mana's chest by just catching it in her hand by the blade. She managed to focus her chakra control and augment her body so precisely that it surpassed the strength and speed of the assailant and let her hand remain uncut. Mana nodded in gratitude for her friend but the addition of Hisako's killing intent pressed against her chest even more.</p><p>"You old bag of dicks, the magician bitch can't talk because of all of your fucking killing intents. Stop being such a creepy old fuck and let the girl go home..." the raven-haired Yoruma hissed out angrily. Hisako's voice was thicker, perhaps more masculine as if her throat had great pressure applied to it recently. It just added to her intimidation factor though.</p><p>"I sense weakness in you... I could take you right here, fill you with holes this moment. When a Yoruma's blade is stopped we must fight, you know the code!" the old man yelled out angrily, spitting some slobber up on himself from his blind rage.</p><p>"I'd gladly fight you if you weren't such a blind cuntslammer, you'll poke your own eye with the elk trophy in the corner if we go at it, and yet somehow you'll probably see better if you do!" Hisako angrily yelled out and back at the old man.</p><p>"You're worried about my safety, hatchling? Look at your..." before the man could finish his sentence Hisako punched him out with a single strong thrust of her fist right into the man's teeth, her hand got so deep into it that for a moment Mana thought that Hisako would punch a hole through the old man's head.</p><p>Mana shook and took a couple of steps back leaving the inn and finally catching some breath from the overwhelming shock of all those killing intents. Hisako left shortly after.</p><p>"Don't worry, that's just about how all drinking sessions go, that old fart will wake the fuck up, laugh at it and keep drinking because he has no teeth to eat with... Rooster's raging cock! I opened my wounds..." the woman cursed looking at her bleeding fists. Mana reached into her pouch and removed a medical food pill from it, handing it to the Yoruma.</p><p>"Fucking hell! You've got one of those? Fuck, how much money do you make for those shows!? Or is it one of your yearly quota? Can't be, you and the blond-bitch ate two in the forest... Fuck... I can't take this..." Hisako looked at the black marble in Mana's hand. The magician quietly shoved her hand closer to the assassin's chest before Hisako took it and chewed it up. Soon the woman reached for the bandage on her eye and removed it revealing a perfectly healthy eye, she also stretched out as if she had no more pain from the previous fight.</p><p>"Thanks... I just wanted to see you, maybe talk about what happened a bit... It's been tough lately, shouldn't be but it is..." Mana decided that just giving her friend one of the most expensive tools a ninja could carry in their kit was not quite enough for an expression of her gratitude.</p><p>"Boo-fucking-woo... You make enough money to hire me as your hitwoman to snuff out all of those old faggots. Your face is known all around the village and some people outside of it. You're Little Miss Idol here, fucking own it" Hisako angrily stopped Mana's attempt at letting her feelings out. "I don't get your problems and I never fucking will, I'm a different person, a worse one? Most likely. A hopeless one? More likely than not. Thing is - I'm different, stop wasting your time treating me as your friend and leaning on my shoulder"</p><p>"So... What happened in Kumo? Who was that guy?" Mana asked curiously trying to regain some of her friendship with Hisako by at least talking about one thing the Yoruma loved – fighting.</p><p>"I'm not sure he was even a man... He was large, like... Really large and brutish but his strength... It wasn't normal, he wasn't strong – he grew stronger the more we fought! The more I hit him, the stronger he became and my swords only cut through his skin, it's like his body absorbed the blows past that point. Fistfighting him was useless..." Hisako lifted her hand up, loud chirping noises came from her arm as lightning chakra formed around her hand.</p><p>"I hit him with this, a technique I ripped off from another technique, it was like I hit a brick wall with a toothpick... Around Kumogakure, when they gave me the emergency first aid before moving me to Konoha, they considered him a living legend of some sort, a living myth. Some urban legend who comes and kills people sometimes, completely randomly. He killed my target despite having no reason to, he left me alive despite my most genuine attempts to kill him... He's the only man in the world I truly fear just because I know nothing about what he is exactly. He's one of those guys whom when you encounter you just give up on trying to beat and feel lucky you just survived" Hisako stopped talking, Mana was surprised to see so many feelings from her mostly emotionless or just the usually enraged friend.</p><p>Hisako was really scared, her face was turning around, her muscles were twitching and turning in ways they weren't used to and she was so close to firing off torrents of tears.</p><p>"It was nice seeing you again. Thanks for not letting me butcher that fucking kid, Hokage said I might get promoted soon, that mission was a good boost... Thanks for the pill too, I'm still calling you some kind of "bitch" though... Idol-bitch is growing old so I'll work with "Magic-bitch" for now..." Hisako changed back to her usual cocky and rude self and turned towards a large but really neglected house.</p><p>"I wouldn't accept anything else..." Mana smiled waving farewells to her friend. Right before the girl turned around and walked away Hisako turned back with an annoyed smile.</p><p>"How fucking dicks were those fucking old fucks?" Hisako almost laughed out.</p><p>"Real "fucking dicks". I really like the district of your clan though, it has a nice classical feel to it..." Mana smiled back at Hisako as the two parted ways. The assassin headed to her home to train more now that her bones and her busted body were healed by Mana's generosity and the magician headed to the best-known blacksmith in the village to continue her life as a weakling civilian. At least she closed the old chapter of her life before beginning a new one...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0107"><h2>107. Shits And Giggles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>„Hey, you're that Sorceress-girl, aren't you? Shoulda said so before, maybe I'd have let you cut the queue a bit. It's a busy season, I tell you!" the blacksmith laughed out slapping his large beer belly covered up with that weird but surprisingly thick and durable leather apron that most blacksmiths wore.</p><p>Common clothing in Konohagakure was quite flammable so people around dancing flocks of sparks needed some sort of protection from the tongues of flames that could've erupted out of nowhere. Leather was quite protective of flames, after all, anything else would've caught fire before that large impractical piece of cloth started rustling red.</p><p>"You mean every season? When is the job of a blacksmith ever not needed?" Mana tried to smile but her observation was quite a bleak one since most blacksmiths were exclusively merchants of death. The skill of a blacksmith was determined by how potent tools of murder they crafted were. After all, a blacksmith capable of crafting a sword of unmatched quality could've also done the same with any household tool in need of repairs. Crafting blades and armor built up one's skill like nothing else could, it was the most profitable and the most sought-after way for a blacksmith to gain notoriety and skill.</p><p>Holding his large layer of fat in his hands as if it without such a notion it'd fall right off the blacksmith thundered out with deafening laughter.</p><p>"True, so very true! The line of the job of a killer would be made significantly harder when one finds oneself having to stab someone with their bare hands..." he yelled out trying to restrain his voice after having just let it go in that strangely amusing fit of laughter.</p><p>"So, girl, what sort of services are you looking for? Let me see..." the man finally managed to calm down and take over the scroll of blueprints from Mana, slowly unwrapping it and letting his experienced eyes run down them. The magician tried to not say a word, she just couldn't bring herself to inform the man of complicated this gear-work would be and just what sort of device it was.</p><p>"Huh... Strange, this doesn't seem to be something your father shouldn't be able to craft, isn't he Konoha's Great Trapster? The Trapster I've heard of could make such a thing with his feet, even if his hands were tied... You seemed to make a mistake though, girl, the scale numbers are way off..." the blacksmith smiled at Mana, his strange mustache twisted and lifted up revealing his teeth, a little nasty looking view, considering the still moving pieces of beef stuck in the man's teeth being in full view once his teeth were exposed.</p><p>"No... They're correct, that's the problem..." Mana reported with a guilty look, like a cat looking at its owner after they came home only to find their beloved ancient vase in shatters on the floor. For one reason or another, the magician felt guilty bringing such a complicated blueprint for the blacksmith, as if she was guilty of coming up with such a wild idea for a device.</p><p>"Well then... Sorry, girl, as bad as my vision is... I'd need a molecular microscope, the likes of Konoha Hospital to even see what I'm working with... I'm telling you that I'm a million years behind this construction, it requires a molecular level of steel craftsmanship. Can't be done..." the man shook his head and stroke his wild beard giving Mana the scroll back. The girl turned around and looked at the small queue behind her, the old people bringing their metal canes for a little fixing, young ninja wishing to buy tools or order some of their own design to be made.</p><p>A strong and heavy grasp landed on her shoulder stopping Mana before she left. The girl looked back at the blacksmith who seemed to be scratching his curly brown hair with his oily gloves leaving sludgy remains in there wherever he went. His wife must've been one of the ladies who got excited from such sights.</p><p>Mana knew some girls who got quite excited by men who tinkered and the only reason the magician was even approached by them to be befriended was that her father was somewhat of a prodigy in the field of tinkering. It was yet another Shikio-sort of a situation, they just wanted to see him at work, see him tinkering knowing that their strange childish thoughts would be only dreams...</p><p>"Truth be told... I suppose you shouldn't dump those sketches, you could bring them to a Kirikuzu clan blacksmith, it's quite convenient but they're the only blacksmiths able to manipulate materials at a molecular level, it's their bloodline ability" quietly the man exclaimed, he removed his oily gloves and dusted his hands off-putting a note on a nearby device that he's taking a break. He did seem a little winded so it may have been a good idea to take a break.</p><p>"Kirikuzu? Aren't they mostly residing in Snow Country and Kumogakure?" Mana asked for clarification. She had heard about the legendary craftsmen who could manipulate the molecular size dust of special alloys and create complicated constructs with them. So complicated, in fact, that they left their peers in the dust for centuries as it'd take endless years before similar technology would be discovered to aid the common blacksmiths catching up to the awesome skill of the Kirikuzu clansmen.</p><p>"Yes, all but one family, one family lives in Konohagakure and have their shop here. You see, most Kirikuzu do not craft weapons because they feel like their incredible ability would grant any weapon user wielding it a tremendous advantage, this man does indeed build weapons however he doesn't use the Kirikuzu bloodline ability to do so, he does it as a normal blacksmith. He'd be unable to work his little shop in Kumogakure so he moved to Konoha a long time ago, you may be able to convince him to help you" the man explained grabbing a can of soda from a small cubical fridge and popping it open then flipping it so quickly that some of it ran down his thick curly beard after he flipped the can back.</p><p>Mana nodded and bowed slightly in gratitude before thanking the blacksmith and running off. She was quite in rush to reach the mentioned Kirikuzu workshop but she forgot that she didn't ask for directions beforehand in her excitement so she briefly returned for that small clarification. It wasn't a great surprise that the blacksmith found it immensely funny so the magician had to suffer another brief pause until he laughed his powerful large lungs off before giving her the directions.</p><p>It wasn't too far away from where Mana was, the small workshop was situated in the northern district of the village close to the Administration building and the Hokage Memorial mountain. Only after briefly glancing at the colossal constructions of the faces of all of the previous Hokage did an idea pop into Mana's head that the mountain was slowly running out of place. It probably only had in it for one or two more Hokage before the monument would've been unreasonably floated to the east as opposed to its current central structure, to fix it some Hokage of the future would have to be placed behind the face of the First causing possible confusion about the order of the Hokage...</p><p>Strangely enough despite the day approaching the second half of it, there were still numerous genin queued by the shop. After just a brief look at the vendor displaying the sample goods sold at the shop, Mana realized that it was a simple shop of shuriken and kunai, also other simple tools in lesser quantities like the Fuuma Shuriken as it's large windmill-like shape was showing off its great glory for all to see at the top of the stand. Without wasting much time Mana stood in the queue and waited for a good twenty minutes before her time to speak to the blacksmith came.</p><p>The man was an incredibly large and bulky individual, he had a much more well-defined muscular structure and he had no overly manly features like thick facial hair. He was dressed like a blacksmith but looked much more like a hulking warrior as his physical condition was much more suited for showing off or fighting than strenuous physical labor. The man's strict and boring black hair stood in a small stump-like column. After seeing Mana he tried to show some sort of emotion but he was unsuccessful.</p><p>"How can I help you girl?" the man spoke in a strange accent, Mana had never heard any similar to it, it wasn't even similar to anything one could hear in Kumogakure. As a prodigy in history, lore, and culture Mana couldn't even place a finger on it and it intrigued her a little. His speech reminded Mana of northern people, they tend to speak in slower and more erratic rhythms, there was little elegance to the man's voice or tone.</p><p>"I showed this blueprint to a blacksmith in the central district, he told me you may be able to help me with it..." Mana smiled handing the man the blueprint scroll. He briefly ran it down with his eyes before returning it.</p><p>"It's not right, numbers wrong, fix it, then show me" he let his erratic and accent-ridden voice take over again. He seemed to sometimes skip some words when he spoke, he spoke in a very simplistic manner making Mana suspect that there may have been something very ancient about his roots.</p><p>"No, it's actually quite exact, that is why the other blacksmith wanted me to show it to you..." Mana informed the man handing him the scroll back and not letting her polite smile fade for a moment.</p><p>"Oh, yes, I see now... Yes, that is small gear, very small gear. What is this thing you need to be made? Armor? Why would your armor stab you?" the man squinted at Mana strangely after having the details clarified to him.</p><p>"Well... I don't know if you know... I'm..." the girl opened her mouth to explain.</p><p>"Yes, magic girl from the hall, your poster all over the district..." the man interrupted her dropping another strangely worded and sounding yet crushing word bomb. He was clear to not speak too much but when he did speak it was the most important collection of words said in that conversation.</p><p>He only spoke of important things, which may have been one of the North-Eastern cultures that treasured words. Some ancient people living in those parts thought that each person was given a certain amount of words to say throughout their lives and that they died after that amount of words was said. Some people got millions, some got thousands, making each and every one of them treasure what they said and only speak when it was necessary. Maybe this man was a descendant of such people, he may have not even known of his origins but still unconsciously followed the philosophy of his predecessors.</p><p>"So... Then this is show tool? For show? Shits and giggles?" the man glanced at Mana angrily with a judgmental look, he seemed to accuse the girl of something but she didn't really understand what.</p><p>"Umm... I suppose, in a manner of speech..." she tried to bellow out but he cut her down instantly</p><p>"I won't work on this shit-giggle metal junk. I build real tools, weapons, armor, using my tools people fly, people kill, or hurt other people. I don't make tools to joke with!" the man replied rather loudly handing the girl back her scroll.</p><p>Mana was quite disappointed by the blacksmith's decision but she respected it, slowly the girl sighed in sadness and bowed to the man also thanking him for his time. Then the door to her right burst open quickly and someone ran into the room.</p><p>It was a tall and rather bulky for a female girl, perhaps a year or two older than Mana was. She looked really well trained and refined and had a strange tomboyish attire that complemented her very strict hairstyle. She had bright red hair that was incredibly short and only reached the back of her neck, the only sign of any style of individuality in the girl was her green tracksuit and the small lock of her hair that covered one of her eyes. She rushed up right to the blacksmith and handed him something.</p><p>"There, father, I've finished the combat-shovel you asked for!" she exclaimed energetically, Mana was surprised to find out that she was related to the man since she shared very little with him. Her general facial features did look similar but her hair and eyes were colored slightly differently and she didn't have the slightest sign of his accent, probably the result of her having been raised in Konoha.</p><p>The girl's eye then wandered on Mana's blueprint, she got excited and grabbed it out of her hands for some reason, rolling it out and admiring it in all its glory.</p><p>"Wow! What is this? This looks pretty cool! I've never seen such detail on an armor blueprint before... Wait... Why do those swords penetrate your own body, seems like a security issue, don't you think?" the redhead looked at Mana with curious eyes that also suggested great excitement. The father of the kid tsked angrily.</p><p>"This is my daughter, Meiko Wakizashi, she sometimes takes up silly projects to occupy her free time. I'd have normally rejected this silly thing but... If daughter wants the stupid joke, she can take it" the blacksmith replied.</p><p>Mana looked a little confused, why did Meiko's father introduce her last name as well as her first name? Wouldn't the last name of his daughter be the same as his? If the girl was a Kirikuzu and had a similar ability to work the materials into tools why would she dismiss such exquisite legacy by taking up such a last name?</p><p>The redhead turned at Mana with a really overly invested smile, she gestured for the magician to follow her into her part of the workshop. The footsteps of the girl were quite wide and Mana had trouble keeping up with her. Everything about Meiko just yelled masculinity and raw power, she was quite beautiful in her own way but she was a bit exotic in her beauty, she was no damsel that was for sure, any bandit coming against such a young woman would've had plenty to work for as Meiko looked quite like a dangerous brawler.</p><p>"Joke tool? What was that? Wait... I know you! You're Konoha's Sorceress, right!? You mean this tool is going to be used by THE Konoha's Sorceress!? Awesome! I'll take it! I'll build this thing for you, don't worry!" the redhead jumped up in excitement and rushed to the workshop slipping out of her tracksuit and into the leather apron, grabbing a nearby hammer and some steel plates as well as some gears from a small box to her side. She wielded those crazy sized tools like they were feathers, the sheer strength of the girl amazed the magician.</p><p>The girl just started pounding away at the tool, one loud clang after another she started from hammering parts of steel together, nailing them with some strange special nails, they looked like a combination of screws and nails but they kept the plates together.</p><p>Meiko was rampaging around the blacksmith like a Goddess of War rampaged on a battlefield, as a warrior beheaded their enemies, similarly did Meiko pick up tools from random and remote points of her workshop and used them in their intended purpose. This young woman may have known crafting on a similar degree of mastery like Mana knew stage magic.</p><p>"Are you sure you can work those gears like that? I mean I was told that only a Kirikuzu could do that and..." Mana finally gathered the courage to ask for some clarification.</p><p>"Oh, definitely not! I'll just trick my father into doing those for me, don't worry. If you want Kirikuzu quality, you'll have it. The thing is that I'm not that good with the molecular manipulation thing yet, my chakra control is a little wobbly but I assure you it'll all be even better than you expect it to be! I'm kind of a fan, even if I don't have that much time to see your shows too often..." Meiko winked back at Mana and continued to hammer at the device. She then placed the tools down and walked up to the magician, wiping some sweat from her forehead.</p><p>"Don't worry, Konoha's Sorceress, the tool will be completed tomorrow evening, I'll work overnight. This is my baby! It looks pretty fun and I'll have a bunch of fun working those edges and those blades and all the gear-work making them work, gotta say the design is pure genius! Rarely does a design fit blacksmith standards, usually, we have to make it work, make some edits, even more rarely, it surpasses the possibility of what we can work with! Don't tell me you were the one to draw this baby!" Meiko looked beyond excited just talking about it and looked really excited to get back to work, she was snapping her knuckles and jumping around in anticipation.</p><p>"Not alone, my father helped, his name is Nakotsumi Tsukumo..." Mana started to explain but she was interrupted once again, must've been a trait running down in the family.</p><p>"Konoha's Great Trapster!" Meiko almost shrieked out. "I liked that guy, he wasn't too overblown and overused by the village but he had a pretty neat gimmick, I've seen his traps before and they were pure genius, I only dreamed of ever working on Trapster's design... Thanks, Sorceress, I really appreciate it!" Meiko kept scratching her palms in the desire to come back to work so Mana smiled and bowed her in gratitude for taking up the job.</p><p>"Thank you, Meiko, you can call me Mana, though. I'm not on stage at the moment and all..." the magician smiled, "I can see how much you want to be left alone with it so I won't bother you with my presence anymore, I'll return the day after tomorrow to check in on how it's going, feel free to take as much time as you need, the show is not until the next week..."</p><p>"Oh, it's gonna be done tomorrow!" Meiko assured the magician with a thumb up. Mana left the small workshop with a strange feeling in her gut, these people were pretty weird but in a very positive kind of way.</p>
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<a name="section0108"><h2>108. Bloom For Bliss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The very next morning Mana felt excited to check on Meiko's progress. The redheaded blacksmith was pretty confident that she could finish working on Mana's device overnight but somehow the magician just couldn't really believe that the strange girl could actually do it. After all, the device had a bunch of complicated gear-work as well as its visual enhancements such as engravings and various decorations meant to make it more visually appealing than a bunch of scraps. There was also plenty that the magician wanted to know about the blacksmith herself.</p><p>Meiko was apparently the Kirikuzu blacksmith's daughter, he did look at her with a great amount of fondness and love and did address her as his daughter but she didn't take the clan name from her father. More so she looked very little like him, having only taken his muscular structure from her parent.</p><p>When the topic of her inheritance was brought up Meiko didn't deny being of the clan of famed Kumogakure blacksmiths but she did bring up the obstacle of being unable to use the manipulation of the Kirikuzu iron dust. That meant she really had roots with the clan and normally should've been able to do it, there was something really interesting hidden in the girl's origins.</p><p>After spending quite some time meditating and then taking a break to visit the archive and read up on some ancient history. The magician girl loved reading up on the Settlement period, it happened somewhere during the lifespan of Princess Satsuhimasa of whom Mana read during her mission to discover the hidden archive.</p><p>Princess Satsuhimasa worked together with Senju Gan, a man who would later become the First Hokage. Reading on the relationship and deep kinship of the two was refreshing, however, it was about during that period that the reputation of Satsuhimasa started to dip into the gutter so the stories of the two were filled with strange inaccuracies left there by purpose. It took plenty of logical skills as well as skills of deduction together with a rich background in history to put the pieces together.</p><p>The Princess and the First had a very interesting mentor-student relationship. The Princess was seen as a living legend and Gan was someone who was taught under her wing and grew into quite a wise and remarkable ninja himself. He was really brave and powerful, known for the crushing strength of his Wood Release ability second only to Satsuhimasa's own.</p><p>It was said that Gan's Wood Release could rip through tempered steel and once ground a meteorite headed towards into a storm of beautiful falling stars, still, when compared with Satsuhimasa's destruction of the Moon using her Wood Release, Gan's own paled greatly. It was like comparing an exceptional prodigy to a legend. Gan may have been the King of Ninja but Satsuhimasa was on the level of being called a Goddess of Ninja.</p><p>Just as the collections of books turned to recall the succession of Gan by his wife Uchiha Hakari – the Second Hokage, Mana put the books back and glanced through the window only to see the night changing the day and the slothful dance of the snowflakes going down taking over the view. Having put the books together and taken all of her notes and other things she took with her Mana dashed out.</p><p>"I'm astounded by your ability to restrain yourself from eating in the archives..." the librarian smiled at Mana fixing his tie and glasses as he jumped up to see the girl out with his eyes.</p><p>"If you found someone eating there you'd clip their head off" Mana joked giving the man a wink. The man lifted his hand wielding his scissor blade and clipped it playfully, the girl just barely managed to contain her giggling and ran out.</p><p>"It's quite chilly outside, should've taken a sweater!" the archive keeper tried to let the girl know but at that point, she already bolted to the streets. The man just sighed and sat back down, flipping his table light to illuminate his own book – "Tales of Shikio the Great". The man took great pride in the edition of the tales without the bare-chested version of the main character on the cover, that usually attracted too much attention and giggles from the visitors as it was basically an image of a topless well-endowed man and the keeper loved to enjoy his book in peace.</p><p>While Mana had not heard the warning of the archive keeper before she left, she somehow came to the very same conclusion. She had to clutch herself by wrapping her hands around her chest and shoulders. Konoha was very peculiar with its seasons, spring and winter changed around, the seasons went and gone like normal but it was either warm enough to walk in one's casual clothes or it got slightly below freezing temperature when the winter came. That was why while in theory there were four seasons, Konoha only felt two of them, half of the year was warm but not hot, the other half was cold but not freezing.</p><p>The other parts of the world had it much more extreme, the air got much hotter to the East, the Wind Country had it pretty bad as they barely saw any snow and the desert was searing hot. The people in Sunagakure had to deal with both the blinding sandstorms and the searing heat.</p><p>It was up to the North where the weather was the oddest – the Snow Country was the coldest place in the world where one could easily freeze to death unless prepared for the freezing cold, however farther to the north laid the Lightning Country – a large mountainous wasteland that was surprisingly hot and then Kumogakure which was almost as hot as Sunagakure in the Wind Country when it was hot and almost as cold as the warmer spots of the Snow Country during the winter. Kumogakure was a country of extremes both weather-wise and as far as the reputation of the personality of its people went.</p><p>Mana wasn't really sure just what kind of weather was around Kirigakure, based on what she heard and read it was mostly just damp rainy days all year long. It wasn't that the place saw much heat, it was that it was too wet and gloomy to not get a major case of seasonal depression. No wonder the people there had their children kill each other in order to graduate the Academy... So much rain and mist could've driven anyone mad. However some of the Kirigakure's Archipelago of islands were quite tropical, they were supposed to be quite popular tourist hotspots if the advertisement was to be trusted...</p><p>Still rubbing her arms and shoulders Mana finally reached the Kirikuzu workshop. Meiko's father was sitting in the workshop and resting at that time, his work for the day must've been already finished. The girl bowed upon her entry to show respect, for some reason she felt like the man didn't quite like her based on their first impression but surprisingly enough his reaction to the young magician looked quite warm.</p><p>"Oh, magic girl! You look pale and cold, I'd give you some sake to warm up but you are just a kid. Maybe my wife can make some green tea... Mari! Make some green tea!" the man roared so loudly that Mana had to clench her ears for a moment. Normally she'd have wondered if anyone inside the home which was right behind the workshop, connected to it with a system of small corridors and halls would've heard it but having the strength of the man's lungs in mind the whole neighborhood must've heard him.</p><p>After the woman called "Mari" came in Mana instantly realized that Meiko must've been the daughter of those two – the woman was of average height, wearing a black casual tracksuit and she had long red hair, even her eyelashes were bright red and extremely thick! Her facial features were much kinder and slicker than the strict and sharp edges of her husband and the color of both Mari's hair and her eyes matched that of Meiko's. The girl blacksmith must've been the child of the two, having inherited her mother's hair and eyes as well as her looks and taken her father's muscular structure and several stricter features like sharper cheekbones and a longer and pointier nose.</p><p>"I've already prepared a cup for you, you always drink your tea after work, would the young lady care to wait for a moment?" the woman smiled politely at Mana with an apologetic look as if feeling bad for not predicting the girl's arrival.</p><p>"This is Mana – Meiko's new best friend..." the hulking blacksmith informed the woman after spilling a small gulp of sake into his green tea and flipping the cup down before handing it to his wife.</p><p>"Ummm... I guess..." Mana squirmed a little uncomfortable, why would the man think that she's Meiko's best friend. The magician only met the girl yesterday and barely even knows her, the whole time of their acquaintance it appeared that the blacksmith was more interested in Mana's project that the client handing it to her.</p><p>Mari laughed out, "Oh, don't be shy like that, if you give Meiko something to work on, she'll be your best friend for the duration of the time she's working on it. I've heard she's especially excited about this project of yours..."</p><p>The woman disappeared for the refill of the blacksmith's tea and Mana's cup, the man stood up and stretched his tired muscles out. "Yeah, really fiery this kid... She almost exploded in a fistfight, coming at me to get me to work on those miniature gears! Can you believe it? Her own father! That's one kid who takes her job seriously..." the man laughed out, strangely to him almost having to fistfight his own daughter appeared more of a joke than a relationship problem.</p><p>"There you two go, I checked up on Meiko, she said the project is ready, you can go examine it now!" Mari soon returned with the tea. Mana carefully caressed the burning hot cup to take as much warmth from it as she could. The workshop was pretty warm and had all sorts of smells, the smell of burning, smells of oils, the smell of sweat... Carefully the girl took a sip taking great enjoyment as the small sip went down warming her from inside.</p><p>Mari led the magician to the young blacksmith's little workshop that she had, it appeared that the whole eastern part of the workshop was handed down to the girl. It was quite messier than that of her father's, it had a whole bunch of unfinished projects, parts, and pieces of armors, handles, and blades of swords thrown around. Meiko turned around with a creepy impression reminding of that of a mad scientist having just built a twisted masterpiece. She approached the two and nodded at the large, finished deathtrap near the working table.</p><p>"She's done!" the redhead blacksmith smiled showing off her teeth so hard that she had to squint.</p><p>Mana laughed out awkwardly, "She?" she asked curiously examining the perfect craftsmanship of her device. It wasn't the exact copy of the blueprint but it wasn't supposed to be.</p><p>"Yeah, they're not tools, they're babies! They have personalities and they need to have their mommy give them some care of her own, it needs to be a perfect fusion of the personality of the builder and that of the designer... I figured it's supposed to have that classical horror feeling to it so I eased up on the flower motifs with the engravings, added some spikes, and made the whole frame bulkier... Hope you like it" Meiko explained waving her hands and making strange gestures, the magician could've sworn that at one point she tried to portray the cradling of an actual baby.</p><p>Mana awkwardly looked at Mari, the mother of the young woman just smiled pleasantly, "She didn't play with dolls as a kid, instead, she insisted on building her own toys, that one time the boys invited Meiko to play ninja and she built actual ninja tools to play with them... She's a little quirky" the mother explained.</p><p>"No, it's amazing, I love it! I love the classical gothic feel of it, I thought that a monster face on the head would be scary but this beautiful woman's face is much creepier! Awesome, you're really talented, Meiko..." Mana's eyes just ate the deathtrap up, she couldn't believe that with just a couple of minor alterations to the visuals the blacksmith brought up what Mana wanted to say with the device without actually knowing what it was that the magician wanted to portray.</p><p>Meiko pulled out a scroll and sealed the device into it, the girl must've had some skill with sealing techniques as well since she complained previously that her chakra control is too wobbly even to use her clan bloodline ability which even most non-ninja Kirikuzu could use. After sealing it into the scroll the tinkerer gave it to Mana and the magician paid her a little extra for all the effort.</p><p>All of a sudden the magician's eye got caught on a peculiar thing Meiko had hanging on the wall instead – a long sword, the blade was of the length of an adult arm, maybe even longer. The handle looked almost like made of bronze entirely with a fake emerald on the center, crafted and molten in a way that resembled the consistency of tree bark with rough edges and the texture of rough tree bark. The blade was so impressively crafted, it looked like a blood crimson-colored steel but the blade wasn't simply edged, it reminded more of a pincushion. It was a collection of smaller almost miniature blades erupting from it, like a tree of swords, a long concentrated stream of blades that upon contact would leave a nasty collection of cuts.</p><p>"Is this "Ranma"?!" Mana whispered out unable to believe her own words. Hanging on the wall of this young blacksmith's workshop was the legendary weapon used by the infamous rogue ninja who plagued the entire world during the times of Uchiha Hakari – the Second Hokage. The man was called Nakao Magobei, he was a man who was unable to manipulate chakra but he was a great swordsman who had such unfathomable willpower and conviction that he managed to tame a Tailed Beast and ride it into battle.</p><p>He did not beat it, seal it inside of himself becoming a Jinchuuriki, he didn't trick it – he just fought it, befriended it, and rode it into battle. That may have been why he was known as Yonbi no Magobei or Magobei of the Four-Tails. He was a man who achieved more with his guts and "fuck it all" personality than most ninja had achieved up to his time and after with some of the greatest bloodlines of the most elite clans...</p><p>"You know what "Ranma" is!?" Meiko shrieked out like a schoolgirl who was invited to a date by her childhood crush. Mari smiled and left the workshop having decided that the two would just drift into a conversation, maybe she had just seen it happen too often, or perhaps it was that this was the first time that her daughter finally saw someone who could match her own knowledge of weapons and legends...</p><p>"Yeah, the blade of Nakao Magobei, it is said that it was the sword that nearly killed the Second Hokage, or at the very least shortened her lifespan greatly... She was never the same after the battle against Magobei and the Four-Tails... Some sources claim she almost went blind, truth be told, it isn't too hard to believe, she was really out of shape having just given birth to her son five days before the battle" Mana explained adding some history to the tale of the blade, she wasn't sure if Meiko was interested in the historical aspect of it, she most likely just loved the weapon itself.</p><p>"Wow, you know so much about history! Nah, this is just a copy I made, this isn't even the real alloy of the sword, I can't work blades that are chakra conductive yet, my control isn't good enough... It's just a steel blade dyed red, it looks pretty legit though" Meiko explained switching between fangirling over Mana's knowledge of history and the real "Ranma" the image of which must've still been in the girl's mind.</p><p>"The reason why I was so surprised by seeing this sword hanging is that I was quite sure that the real "Ranma" was broken, it was never explicitly stated in any historical sources but during the battle, the Second used her Susanoo forming her own legendary sword – "Kinshu", it is said that it was a sword made of pure chakra, as sharp as the willpower of the user. Such a tool would've broken even "Ranma"... I suppose that may have been why Magobei was so obsessed with the Second, he knew of her possession of the blade and, in his hands, it would've been able to cut through anything in existence, his willpower was unmatched..." Mana told her speculations and theories just blankly staring at Meiko's replica with dreamy eyes.</p><p>After turning around she saw the rather creepy sight of her blacksmith friend standing behind her with another sword, a construct of steel that had a ring instead of a handle and just grew into a blade with gold-like engravings around it. It was the best replica of "Kinshu" Mana had ever seen.</p><p>"Once again, it's just a cheap copy made of ordinary steel used to craft swords and kunai and shuriken, it's not made of pure chakra and willpower..." Meiko's emotions shifted from sheer happiness to complete disappointment.</p><p>"It's really refreshing to meet someone with a similar fascination in history even if it just the legendary tools you're interested in..." Mana smiled.</p><p>"So... You think "Ranma" is broken then?" Meiko looked really sad, it was almost like she grieved over the loss of an actual friend. Mana gently placed her hand on the young woman's shoulder, having to reach a bit up as Meiko was a bit taller than the magician was. Mana could relate to that specific emotion on Meiko's face – the loss of one's lifelong dream. The blacksmith must've wished to acquire "Ranma" for herself at some point.</p><p>"It's fine, there are plenty of other great blades for you to acquire, you said your chakra control is "wobbly", are you a ninja? How good are you?" Mana tried to change the subject to something else.</p><p>"Nothing to write home about, I just finished Academy last year, I decided not to take the graduation exam for two years longer than my peers because I was afraid I'd fail, and after graduating I only had small chores. No sensei wants to take me on their team because I really suck at pretty much everything but punching people and weapons... I wouldn't ever deserve to wield "Ranma" or "Kinshu" or "Dokyo" or "Chie", I'm just a wannabe who dreams big..."</p><p>Mana couldn't believe but she wrapped one of her arms around Meiko's head and gently hugged the young woman. It looked like after being informed that her dream weapon may not have survived the trial of time she remembered some past insecurities.</p><p>"It's really alright, you may not believe me but at the moment you're much more fantastic of a ninja than I am..." Mana smiled thinking of her loss of chakra manipulation.</p><p>"No way! You're Konoha's Sorceress, I've heard this one girl on one of my teams remark that you're one of the village prodigies on genjutsu despite the fact that you're still a genin..." Meiko pouted.</p><p>Mana smiled, "That's a cheat, genjutsu isn't something many people work on so it's really easy to be one of the best at it... Tell you what, maybe one day we can go on a mission to find a legendary object? I'm not sure if they'll let you keep it but... You never know..."</p><p>Suddenly Meiko's eyes opened up with glee and she burst out of the magician's arms and started jumping around in joy.</p><p>"I'd love to! What sort of item would we look for? Would it be the legendary "Ruyi Jingu Bang" or one of the "Swords of Virtue"!?"</p><p>Mana smiled and shook her head, "No, if we looked for something material, something we can bring home we'd never be allowed to keep it. We need something that doesn't seem all that useful from the first glance, something so incredibly obscure that the Fifth wouldn't even want it for the village"</p><p>Meiko curiously scratched her chin with a shade of childish playfulness, "Is there even such an item?"</p><p>Mana grinned and devilish sparks burst in her eyes from her childish joy, "Our target is – The Box of Ultimate Bliss!" she declared boldly as if this declaration was a sign of great triumph already.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0109"><h2>109. An Unexpected Return</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A mailman was walking from one door to the other, dropping by packages and mail for the families to find once they wake. The elder had been doing this for many years, during the war, back when he was in his prime, he used to deliver mail not only in Konoha but also to other countries.</p><p>Serving as a Courier Ninja was a difficult job, one had to travel through countries that may not have always had the best of relationships with his own, one had to worry both about their reception, village ninja on missions and rogue ninja at the same time. Needless to say that the man enjoyed the tranquility that the twilight of his years brought.</p><p>Something quite odd hit the man's eye once he passed the street to deliver a package to the house on the other side of the street to the one where he was. A young man walked past him, almost like ignoring him, and just kept on walking. His facial features were barely visible but what little the courier's eye did catch reminded him more of a young boy than a seasoned warrior, yet this kid had an immense presence and not the best of feelings around him.</p><p>He felt like bloody murder, just being around him creeped the old man out, as a man who served as Courier Ninja he had encountered many men with Killing Intent, this one's was nothing special, yet still surprising having the boy's early years in mind.</p><p>"Hey..." the courier tried to strike a conversation with the young man but the youth just kept walking quickly disappearing from the mailman's sight. It wasn't that big of a deal that this youngling was wandering the streets, after all, if he was inside the village walls that meant that he was let in. If the guards at the village gate found the youth trustworthy so should anyone inside the gate.</p><p>Still, very few were outside at such a time, it may have been four or five in the morning and so only those who were obligated to be outside usually were. It was not some fear for the village's safety that intimidated the man, it was the oddity of the boy's presence that confused him a bit. Just minutes after encountering the young silver-haired boy who seemed to have let his hair grow far too long for the man's tastes he forgot all about the youth and just continued his job.</p><p>"To Meiko Wakizashi at the Kirikuzu Workshop..." the old-timer read the next letter's address. The last name of the young lady who was the receiver of the letter sounded quite fake. These kids and their silly youthful heads, full of air... Back in the mailman's days, the last name of a clan was something to be proud of, to wear like a badge of honor, these days kids just ditched this honor for some fake sounding made-up names like "Wakizashi"</p><p>"Was Meiko Katana or Meiko Buckler taken? If she were my kid, I'd smack her good, smack the dumb name right outta that brat..." the grumpy mailman kept talking to himself as he headed towards the Kirikuzu workshop.</p><p>Talking to oneself may have seemed like an odd thing to do but it was how the man kept his sanity with him throughout the years of wandering the world during times of war. It was either talking to oneself or going mad from the combination of loneliness and fear that any small rodent below you could be a ninja disguised to catch you unprepared and steal all the mail, all the valuable information. The time of the old courier had long since passed.</p><p>Mana tapped her foot impatiently by the Administration building. She informed Meiko by sending her a letter that the magician had finally done enough research about the Box of Ultimate Bliss to approach the Hokage with the information. The girl wanted to tell the Hokage about what she'd found out so that maybe the woman let the two of them out.</p><p>Both of them could actually use this little field trip. Even if they didn't find anything, Mana could have used the company of a friend as quirky as she was, also she wanted to know just how much of her abilities still remained. If she was attacked by a simple rogue bandit outside the village walls, could she still defend herself? Was there still hope for Mana to return to normal life? Maybe somewhere down the line, she could still manage to do a mission or two even without her chakra control.</p><p>There was also a hidden agenda behind all of it. It was the nature of the said box which the two of them would be looking for. Most of the girl's hopes towards the mission counted on it being a fail, maybe they'd explore some ruins, find some dead ends and Mana gets to scope out her own abilities and give Meiko some good time for that amazing service that the magician got in her father's workshop. There was still an astonishingly minuscule possibility that Mana with Meiko's help could find that box. That was where the magician suddenly started feeling bad. She wanted to use that box, use it for her own gain...</p><p>"Hey, Mana, wow, you actually walk dressed like that? I thought it was just a show thing?" Meiko sniffed in a fit of laughter into her fist. She should've been the last person to judge, she looked like a warrior from one of those fantasy plays about those orc and goblin things. Even in the ninja world those plays and movies sounded ridiculous. An old species of people-like barbarians living in the mountains? That sounded stupid even in a world where children breathed fire and summoned lightning.</p><p>"Yeah... Well, my uniform is very closely tied to my fighting style and my abilities as a ninja. I found myself without it during my last mission and it was a drag, I quite literally died without it" the magician shrugged, knowing fully well that her friend would get confused by that story.</p><p>For some reason, the magician insisted on keeping her loss of chakra control from Meiko. It may have become apparent at some point but Mana just felt too embarrassed to admit it. Meiko looked down on herself for being sloppy in terms of ninjutsu and other chakra manipulation techniques but Mana's chakra manipulation was completely lost.</p><p>The magician didn't want the blacksmith to think that the two were absolutely defenseless or hopeless or to kick what little remained of her self-confidence in the nuts. It wasn't all selfless however, a significant part of it was Mana's own embarrassment, she felt like a lesser being for not being able to do what she always could.</p><p>Her chakra used to be a part of her identity. Now she stood in front of a young woman who beat herself over being sloppy at it when Mana had absolutely nothing to say about it. Some people categorized ninja and their abilities into special groups: special ninja and physical ninja. It was an integrally flawed classification seeing how the best physical ninja relied on chakra to enhance their physical abilities, but, basically, a physical ninja was a ninja who fought with a weapon or their abilities of pure physical power or speed as opposed to illusions, ninjutsu techniques or seals. If Meiko felt like such a trash over being a lackluster special ninja, what exactly was Mana, someone who had lost all of it? Admitting her lack of chakra control would've made Mana admit that she was worse than trash in her own mind and she just couldn't do it.</p><p>"Huh? That's weird... Oh well, I'm glad you got better then! So, wanna maybe tell me a bit about that box? I know very little about it, I may have an interest in legendary weapons but I don't have that much of a fascination with artifacts" Meiko scratched the back of her head having decided that suddenly she was OK with Mana's attire and her style.</p><p>Meiko was dressed in actual steel armor, it didn't cover all of her body but it was on her shoulders, some of the more sensitive arteries close to her neck, her chest, and her knees as well as a little below the groin. The rest was all cloth or leather for easier movement. Just tough enough to protect her most sensitive spots but not restrictive enough for free and slick movement. It appeared that the redhead was quite ready to leave right after the two confronted the Hokage about it that was good, Mana had packed her things too but she left it at home. In the best case, all she needed was a brief drop by to pick them up and she was good to go.</p><p>"I'll be explaining it all to the Fifth anyways, she isn't the kind to know those kinds of things so you'll have all your answers then. Just know that if I asked you to meet me – the clues are solid enough" Mana encouraged the armored blacksmith with a gentle tap on her shoulder. It was strange how the magician could easily tell that her friend was worried just by how often and how much her chestplate lifted up every time she drew breath in.</p><p>After Meiko nodded confidently the two girls headed straight for the Hokage's office, waiting outside for a little bit before the ninja that entered before them could get their business straight with the Fifth. After the door opened Mana observed a bunch of kids leaving the office with a woman in a red dress and wearing a Konohagakure headband around her arm. The kids were fooling around, laughing, and casually talking to their mentor who also looked cheerful enough, just how long of this childish joy could they have still had? When exactly would a tragedy make these kids realize just what the nature of this job was? Mana remembered being a lot like these kids one day, she had her reminder on the first day of the job what it was all about...</p><p>"Mana! You're staring, let's go already!" Meiko snapped the magician out of the stream of memories of her old team that started to take her over. The two walked into the office and Meiko slammed the door behind her. After the eyes of Mana, the Hokage and her assistant all fell on the blacksmith she just smiled awkwardly and apologized. Nervous Meiko was a bit cute, Mana had to admit.</p><p>"So... Have you finally had a medical ninja have a look at your chakra network?" the Fifth instantly asked, she looked really angry at Mana for missing all of her scheduled examinations for months. The last thing everyone in this building wanted Chestnut Hanasaku to be was angry...</p><p>"Ummm... No. I feel fine, I don't need examinations. In fact, I came here with an emergency mission I need authorization for" Mana tried to salvage her hopeless situation. A loud bang on the table silenced her instantly, having the Hokage's strength in mind it showed remarkable restraint that she didn't even grind the table into sawdust with a single tap.</p><p>"No way! I've already suspended your license until a professional takes a look at your chakra network and confirms that you are fit for duty. Whatever this is, you two can go now" the woman thundered out shutting the magician and her friend down, Meiko was already in the process of leaving.</p><p>"Wait! That means I'm not a ninja right? I'm technically a civilian at the moment?" Mana jumped up in surprise, as hopeless as the situation was, she had an idea that could've still salvaged it.</p><p>Hanasaku nodded, a little confused as to where the girl was going with it.</p><p>Mana put her hand and pulled out a cute but excessively oversized plushy wallet that looked like a bunny cuddling with a heart and unzipped it, slamming all of her ryo onto Hokage's table with a confident smile.</p><p>"Then I request to be a client of a mission!" Mana shouted out.</p><p>Hanasaku first stood up to yell at the magician but then thought about it for a moment and sat back down, she smiled so much that she was almost laughing so the woman had to hide her grin behind her own hands.</p><p>"Go on..." the woman's assistant encouraged to hear Mana's request out.</p><p>"Way back you gave us a C-Rank mission to find a hidden archive and retrieve a bunch of scrolls. I request a similar mission, as you know during my free time I spend a lot of time studying history, lore, and legends in the Konohagakure Archives. Well... I believe I found sufficient enough clues to claim that I found the possible location of the Box of Ultimate Bliss deep in the Wind Country desert" the magician explained, after giving that last bit of detail she heard Meiko complain behind her.</p><p>"Aw man, you should've told me it was in a desert, I wouldn't have worn that leather under my armor. Steel bruises are better than sweating my brains out!" the blacksmith complained before realizing that she interrupted everything and once again after the annoyed stares of everyone in the room looked at her the young lady blushed and apologized.</p><p>"Box of Ultimate Bliss?" the Hokage scratched her head. As expected Chestnut Hanasaku justified her reputation of being quite a numbwit, while the object was a complete unknown for most ninja, anyone interested in history or in a relevant position of power should've at least have heard the name.</p><p>The annoyed Hokage's assistant fixed his glasses and sighed, he waved at Mana, "Please explain it to Lady Hokage as non-scientifically as possible... She usually loses interest after ten words or so"</p><p>"Well... The Box of Ultimate Bliss is said to be able to fulfill any wish of its owner. After that, it disappears and reappears at a random location in the world. It is known to have appeared underground, underwater, and inside volcanoes but it also had previously appeared right in a center of a village" Mana started from the most attractive trait of the box, just so Hanasaku properly understands the importance of the clues that Mana put together after almost a week of endless studying with just her magic show and secret workouts getting in the magician's way.</p><p>"I see... Why should I not send every ANBU operative and Jounin I have on-call right now after the box?" Hanasaku scratched her head still relatively confused, "I mean... Something impossible sounding like that should attract the attention of every village in the world? Why isn't it in Sunagakure's possession right now, they're quite close to the desert in question..."</p><p>"That's because it's a longshot. What I've found describes the box's location but the box may have already been used and changed its location. Also handling the box requires someone with intimate knowledge of it, it is said that one of the First People sealed something inside of it and it is quite possible that careless handling of the box might make some of its power leaks out and damage the environment or kill its possessor" the magician was preparing for this conversation for a while, she tried to foresee any possible angles from which the Hokage would try and bust her attempt at this which was odd – the Hokage never attacked a mission like this, even if it was a lady who lost her kitten or a man who needed to have his dishes washed...</p><p>"Something?" the assistant wanted Mana to explain in more detail. He must've been familiar with the box's reputation of being a wish-fulfillment device of legends but he had never heard about its origins and the story behind it.</p><p>"Well, it is said that during the early days of our world, back when it was still forming and shifting, there was a being so ancient and so evil that it controlled death itself. It is said to have come from somewhere deep inside the Earth, it just burst from underground and destroyed a small settlement, its very presence corrupted this world and threatened to destroy it. It was on the level of the Ten-Tails' power but whereas Ten-Tails was a force of nature, this entity was pure evil. Whenever during its existence a person died it became a puppet and served its needs, it might be said that this entity "created" death itself, some particularly crafty poets claim that what we know is death is just leftovers of that entity's malevolent chakra. However, that creature is now sealed inside a box the size of a ball and it is tied to the box's will"</p><p>"Wait... Are you sure it's a good idea to mess with that thing!?" it was strangely Meiko who interrupted Mana now.</p><p>"Absolutely, while the box is closed it is of no danger to anyone, even when it is opened the entity inside it would not be set free. There is not a being living or dead strong enough to break the chains that hold it although careless use of the box might leak some of its evil chakra out" Mana tried to calm everyone down.</p><p>"You said that this box can fulfill any wish its owner pleases, what's that about?" Hanasaku's face then suddenly shifted from a worried and somewhat relaxed to extremely serious.</p><p>"Well... It is said that the entity inside it wants to come out just for a moment and it rewards those who let it free for even a single free heartbeat by fulfilling their greatest desire. There are some people who claim that by finding the box they managed to bring their loved ones back to life, their claims are unimportant though, there is no solid proof that the box had ever been used since everyone who ever openly admitted finding it disappeared without a trace."</p><p>"It sounds like more trouble, if you find it and bring it back you will give Konoha a great bargaining chip but will also put a target on its back for any nation looking to test their military strength... Also... I hope this isn't about Tanshu... You're not trying to play me to use the box and try to bring him back, are you?" the Hokage stood up and turned to look through the window, to see her villagers go around their own business absolutely unaware of the matters being discussed in the Administration building.</p><p>"No... I am a firm believer that the Box of Ultimate Bliss has only cultural value and no mystical abilities. I wish to give it to the ownership of the Konohagakure Museum. If the mission is successful and the chances of this are one in a million... The clue is solid enough to come to you but not solid enough to make it a sure thing" Mana admitted, she did lie about the first part, she was quite on the believing side of the box's abilities and wanted to possibly use it if she found it to restore her chakra manipulation.</p><p>She was greatly pained by the Hokage's question about Tanshu, Mana would've brought him back if she believed there was such a chance. Still, it was years since Tanshu-sensei died, just what shape would he be back in? Could he even be brought back? What makes him so special to bring him back and not a bunch of other people that died like the Fourth?</p><p>Everyone had already achieved some closure with these terrible tragedies, to bring any of the two back would be to claw at those stitched wounds. There were just too many questions about this venture but Mana counted on using the box if they found it, claiming that she didn't find anything to Meiko and when they came back. A clue to a legendary artifact being a dead-end was nothing too tough to believe, was it? Mana craved her chakra back, her gift, her identity.</p><p>"Very well... I shall make this a C-Rank mission because it is such a longshot and because the only danger seems to be the departure from the village walls. You will be followed and protected by three genin to the location of the said box, your mission is to validate the clue, just check its validity, do not touch or use the box in any way once you find it unless it is in danger of being compromised" the Fifth finally gave in.</p><p>"Wait... Three genin? Who? We need to leave as soon as possible, we've already possibly wasted a century or two based on the age of this hint, granted the scroll came from the archive we discovered so it is unlikely someone else read it but still!" Mana almost freaked out. She may have been able to put Meiko to sleep with a sleeping gas card from her pocket but taking out two ninja would be troublesome.</p><p>"Don't forget, you're not a genin, Mana, you're a civilian so you'll need two more people for this mission. It just so happens that there is a young man waiting to have his license re-approved who would like to assist you, I told him you're scheduled to meet me and so he so pleasantly waited nearby..." Hanasaku smiled and pointed at the wall.</p><p>A loud poof echoed through the room and a large cloud of smoke shot out from the wall revealing a young man having used some sort of camouflage ninjutsu technique. The young man wore torn up, burnt, and bloodied green rags and had below shoulder-length silver hair that was greasy and messy like the man had spent years dipping them in someone's innards without washing them. And he wore those same glasses he had when he left the village and had that same awkward smile.</p><p>"It's been a while, Mana..." Shimo waved at her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0110"><h2>110. Chakra Over Matter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana continued to stand there completely confused. At some point, the awkwardness had become unbearable and yet still she couldn't find anything to say. She was happy to see her friend but after all that time she wasn't quite sure as to where everything was anymore. Shimo left the village on a quest for self-discovery and had his license suspended and was so crushed and confused by what happened when he fought Sugemi. Now he looked rested, completely refreshed yet at the same time he looked like a homeless bum.</p><p>"You let yourself go..." Mana smiled just a little, testing the waters by just letting her little toe dip. Judging from Shimo's warm laughter they were quite warm and shallow.</p><p>"Yeah, well... A courtesan in Tanzaku told me chicks dig guys with longer hair, you've only grown cuter over the years though, Mana-chan" the Yuki swordsman shrugged with a small speck of longing in his voice.</p><p>So was Shimo feeling just like Mana was for some time now? Nostalgic and longing for the days past? The days when they were all a team thinking they're going to change the world? Was that the reason for his return or has he actually discovered himself like he intended to?</p><p>"You should never take advice from a courtesan seriously, Shimo" Mana snapped back.</p><p>"Truer words have never been spoken..." Shimo broke into wild laughter, must've been a reaction from his memories of the woman in question, and some seemingly unpleasant history that the two shared. Just what sort of adventures did he have? His torn up and dirtied, burnt up kimono suggested that a lot of fighting was involved and his eyes looked much more careless and much more matured. This Shimo Yuki was a whole different young man from the one who left.</p><p>"Oh my God! This is Audra steel! The real deal! How on Earth did you get it, were you in Kumogakure?! These cost a whole fortune!" Meiko was geeking out on Shimo's sword which she somehow held in her hands and was examining at the moment.</p><p>Shimo freaked out. "Wha! How did you do that!?" he yelled out referring to Meiko's ability to snag his sheathed blade from his belt and just casually examine it and identify the steel alloy by just looking at it.</p><p>"Forget it, she's like that, if it's an armor or a sword or whatever she's gonna be all over it..." Mana smiled looking back at Meiko. The blacksmith was feasting her eyes on the various engravings and the fancy work that was put into the sword.</p><p>"Yes, it's an actual Audra blade, I studied under an Uchiha who had once faced the current Raikage and copied some of her moves using his Sharingan. Unfortunately, he trusted a courtesan far too much to be considered wise and he lost his arm in the process, a blade such as this was useless in the hands of a one-armed swordsman so he gave it to me" the Yuki explained casually walking up to Meiko and taking the sword from her hands.</p><p>"I am not worthy to be in its presence!" Meiko bowed handing the sword back to Shimo who only grinned.</p><p>"If you're going to work with me protecting Mana-chan on this mission, I have a feeling we'll get along..." he concluded.</p><p>"What's an Audra blade?" Mana wondered out loud.</p><p>A loud slam on the table interrupted the hearty conversation, all three teens directed their attention back to the Hokage, it appeared that their bonding and catching up would have had to wait for just a while longer.</p><p>"That being pushed aside, I can still only count two ninja in the room, now that I've officially reapproved Shimo's license. Also, having the difficulty and location of the mission in mind the third genin must be a medical ninja" Hanasaku rumbled out with an authoritative tone, not the likes which one would've had the courage to argue against.</p><p>"Where on Earth are we going to find a genin medical ninja? Most medical ninja don't train students until they're at least Chuunin" Meiko scratched her chin.</p><p>This was just so stupid! After all these aces in Mana's sleeves and all this surprising luck that had followed her to get this mission approved... To bump into a dead end like that!</p><p>"Oh well. And I was so hyped to get to show off in front of Mana-chan..." Shimo shrugged indifferently. This journey of self-discovery he went on must've been quite something. The Shimo that Mana knew was never this calm, this relaxed, so confident. It was like he returned a whole different person indeed.</p><p>"Well, if this mission was to get approved it is a mission of maximum urgency, the source from which it originates is an ancient scroll, the object is located in another country's territory and it is an object of incredible importance. You have twenty-four hours to find a medical ninja to complete your squad or this whole parade is canceled. I will not have children leave on a secretive illegal mission unless it can be done quickly and efficiently!" the Fifth concluded her will.</p><p>"Well, technically, Fifth forgets that Fire and Wind Countries have the Serenity Treaty signed which is still in effect allowing us and Sunagakure to salvage cultural relics inside the Countries of each other and granting us a truce for five more years until it is renewed, there will be nothing illegal about this mission. Technically the box could be used as a weapon, if its mystical abilities are real, I'd say it is defined more as a "legal grey zone"... Still, the Fifth has spoken unless you have some other urgent matters the three of you are relieved" Hanasaku's assistant added to the mission objective and concluded.</p><p>Mana angrily rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, she was tired and frustrated. She was so close, so close to getting this mission put together. So close to reacquiring her chakra manipulation or at the very least giving Meiko a nice adventure as a reward for her kindness and skill. So close to catching up with Shimo and getting to know just how much he had grown over the time he had been missing...</p><p>"Look, guys, I know we should be looking for a medical ninja so our destination should be the Konohagakure Hospital and all but... Could we stop for a snack?" Meiko almost begged the two giving them the worst case of puppy eyes that Mana had ever seen a human being make.</p><p>Shimo laughed out and Mana could only sigh, the stress and frustration of trying to get this mission together were getting to her. She wanted to just pass out, she's been studying, reading, and putting things together, comparing and combining historic theories and trying to make sense of it all, trying to predict the Hokage's possible responses and quarrels with the mission and refine the basic concept of it. Now they had to find a genin skilled enough to be a medical ninja and Meiko wanted to waste time snacking.</p><p>"Fine, let's make it quick though, genin medical ninja don't quite grow on trees" the magician replied as the two turned for the Yakiniku Q restaurant of Meiko's choosing. Based on the choice of the young blacksmith Mana was starting to realize that the three may have gotten stuck there for a while.</p><p>There were numerous restaurants and cafes and places to eat in Konohagakure. First, there was Ichiraku Ramen which was becoming infamous for its incredibly fatty and quick served food. It used to be a small establishment of an old-timer with a dream to cook the best noodles just like his grandma used to make them - quick and fatty. Turns out this quick and filling style of eating pleased many visitors and so Ichiraku was becoming incredibly popular among both locals and tourists. Mana didn't fancy fatty foods herself, not just because she was looking after her image as an entertainer, more so because she wasn't the greatest of eaters in general. She couldn't stomach fatty foods and only needed a minimal amount of any kind of food to feel sated.</p><p>There were plenty of sweet shops like the Dango Shop and Amaguriama. They served national sweets and recipes that the ninja managed to secure from other countries. Strangely enough, securing a recipe was a quite common average difficulty mission, it also quite fitted the traditional formula of the mission involving secret information and scrolls that needed to be retrieved and protected so ninja partaking the mission needed little extra preparation and training for it. The magician had somewhat of a sweet tooth occasionally loving a sweet or two but always feeling done with them after a piece or two whereas the sweets were served in entire boxes. For that reason, Mana rarely visited those shops too.</p><p>The final most notable restaurant was the Shushuya. It was a more adult-oriented pub/restaurant which served alcohol and strange exotic foods. Its entire menu was comprised completely of weird and unheard of dishes from other countries making the restaurant Mana's favorite, sadly due to its reputation and manners of things most commonly discussed over alcohol minors weren't allowed inside which irked the magician since she only could taste the food through leftovers her parents brought home.</p><p>The restaurant selected by Meiko was infamous for its godlike beef and barbecue. It was a paradise for people who loved to eat fatty and large servings of various sorts of meat and poultry dishes. That being said, it differed from Ichiraku Ramen because the food served was quite sophisticated and not nearly as quickly made. Also usually the people who favored the restaurant tended to be quite the lovers of food making the magician suspect that Meiko liked to eat a little bit more than their busy schedule allowed them to. Still, the blacksmith was her treasured acquaintance so the magician decided to let her indulge.</p><p>As suspected the place was crowded and smelled of barbecue and cooked meat. It had also quite pleasant smells of various spices and tomatoes as well as some of the more popular local sauces in the air. Mana's nose was not the sharpest one in the shed yet even hers managed to identify and catch all of those smells so the aroma must've been quite intense. Perhaps that was the main cause of Meiko's open and comically watery mouth and her rush to shove something into her stomach. Strangely enough, while, initially, Mana wasn't a fan of the idea, watching her friend react to these smells and the prospect of food was just hilarious so she was beginning to enjoy this trip somewhat.</p><p>"Well, may as well eat too, haven't eaten since... I dunno, does a roadkill count?" Shimo wondered after the three finally found their seats.</p><p>"Awww, I hate those! My father eats those in a soup with red beets and it's the worst thing ever! If I wanted a crushed animal to eat I'd crush it with my own hands" Meiko replied missing the point of Shimo's sarcasm. The young man stretched out and smiled.</p><p>"Well then, I'd like to buy your father a drink in a couple of years..." he replied. It was strange how much Shimo changed from his early days. The gentle Yuki swordsman Mana knew could have never stomached roadkill.</p><p>As the time finally came for the three to get served Mana politely shook her head and refused, Shimo ordered a single serving of barbecue sausages. After Meiko started naming what she'd be eating the magician found herself getting bored and so she leaned over to Shimo and asked.</p><p>"So, did you find yourself already? Is that why you're back?"</p><p>"No. I just realized that I can never find myself in a place where I don't belong and so I've come back where I do belong. Konoha was always my home and while I'm glad of the experiences I've had outside and thankful for all I've learned, this place is where I'll find myself, I know it" the young swordsman explained it all, after that, both youths turned at Meiko who was still letting the waitress know what she'd be eating.</p><p>"Meiko, just because I told you I won't be eating anything doesn't mean you have to order for me..." Mana whispered in the girl's ear as she just appeared to be reading the entire menu out loud to the waitress rather than ordering.</p><p>"Young lady, I will ask you to make a double order after you're done eating the first, I've run out of space in my notebook, sadly. I apologize!" the surprised waitress bowed quite low as an additional apology.</p><p>"Also, when you actually do bring her the food we'll have no space on the table..." Mana joked looking at the young woman who rushed into the kitchen to list this insane order that will undoubtedly test Yakiniku Q's kitchen manpower.</p><p>"So, what's this Audra blade you were so obsessed with, Meiko?" Mana couldn't wait to find out. Maybe the explanation of just what kind of tool her friend carried around would help her understand the nature of the trials he faced?</p><p>"You know the general rule - "mind over matter"? It applies to chakra quite well, that is to say, no matter how strong you are you cannot break a defense that uses chakra, your punch would only feel as strong as a normal blow. You cannot protect against an attack the nature of which is chakra unless the nature of your defense is chakra of greater strength or density" Shimo began to explain.</p><p>"It's a blade that can fight against chakra-infused blades made of the Audra alloy" Meiko summed the explanation up quickly.</p><p>"You see, normally chakra-infused blades pass right through normal blades, almost like to a heated knife going through butter, they offer no resistance. Audra blades are able to block blows from chakra enhanced swords or not go dull after being blocked by one. They're basically slightly inferior versions of a chakra enhanced tool but they are able to contend with them instead of just breaking" the swordsman finished his explanation after giving the blacksmith a cruel glare for interrupting him.</p><p>"How is that even possible?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"It's an incredibly complex process. It involves combining the Kirikuzu bloodline iron dust, the dust of incredibly tough meteorite steel, and some blood iron as a catalyst. The Kirikuzu iron dust is basically a living embodiment of chakra and blood iron serves as some sort of strange catalyst that makes it activate. They don't consume each other but they somehow feed off of one another and work in constant harmony and if the ratio of the ingredients is right - Audra steel is made" Meiko started explaining waving her arms and somehow making even larger sparks and stars form in her eyes from the excitement of explaining the process.</p><p>"And it's so amazing because one doesn't even need to use chakra at all, as opposed to chakra infusion that actively uses it..." Mana started to seemingly understand why her blacksmith friend was so amazed by the exotic steel.</p><p>"Can your father make it?" the magician wondered just out of curiosity.</p><p>"Sure, if given the right materials. It takes just one syringe of blood for a skilled Kirikuzu to infuse small iron dust of their own inside and control the iron in the blood by controlling the iron inside the iron and it'd take a decent chunk of the meteorite to extract what's useful and what's just a dumb space rock. He hasn't done so yet, no one came to him with such a request but he's above the needed level to make such a blade" Meiko nodded.</p><p>Mana would've thought that nagging questions of such a nature would've annoyed the blacksmith but they were only boosting her excitement. It appeared that Meiko was far too interested in the subject to ever get tired of talking about it. Cooking Meiko's order was taking a while, understandingly so but Shimo's order didn't take too long so the young man was enjoying his barbecue the first, much to the despair of the yearning Meiko and much to the amusement of Mana while watching her friend drool.</p><p>"So, for how long have you been standing there in your little camouflage technique? I'd figure standing by the wall the whole day would've been boring..." Mana tried to annoy her eating friend to get some sort of angered reaction, maybe to make him look at least a little bit more like his old self as compared to this mature and relaxed man she saw right now. Not that she hated the current Shimo but seeing some of his old self in there would've been quite great.</p><p>"Eh, one thing you learn while standing in ambushes for your sensei's stolen underwear is that freezing and lack of comfort are worth a good entrance. Besides, it's not like the Hokage's office was my first stop, I stopped at home too, washed and all that, I grew out my old clothes though so I'm stuck with these rags..." he replied with an indifferent look while slowly munching on the small pieces of meat dipped in the tomato and chili sauce spiced up with some herbs. The slow manner of Shimo's eating only made Meiko more miserable.</p><p>"That's gonna be a good story for the road..." Mana laughed out. Initially, she was worried that her friend may have gotten into some pretty shady business but based on his stories and impressions it appeared that he may have been more into the weird side of outside the village walls than shady. The magician would've been crushed to find out that yet another one of her friends had become tainted by the dark and gritty world around them.</p><p>"Eh, all I overheard was a couple of small-time mission objectives, the more time passes the more shit stays the same: washing dishes at Ichiraku, filing for the Police Force, those brats these days do all the same things..." Shimo shrugged waving his chopsticks still holding the small piece of meat around while Meiko's eyes followed it like a cat follows the small fuzzy object when you wave it in front of their noses.</p><p>"You douche-nozzle, all of us are still genin. I mean... You two..." Mana looked to the side finally seeing some action with the waitress placing Meiko's order on a giant wooden slab and preparing it for delivery to the table.</p><p>The three shared a laugh, despite Meiko's hunger the young woman finally saw her desired food being prepared to be served and despite Mana's own inner darkness regarding her loss of identity. The magician was just happy because her friends were happy, the fact that they still had to find a medical ninja for their squad was almost forgotten in this brief moment of bliss.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0111"><h2>111. Identity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now that poor Meiko had her nourishment finally brought to her she could finally dig right into it. There was something odd to be found in the manner in which the armored girl ate. She wasn't one of those brutal devouring monsters that just made food disappear in the most beastly manners imaginable, Meiko was much more sophisticated than that. She ate every piece of meat gently, just like a normal person would. She used utensils and all that, never let any of the sauce drip to the side. That being said, she still ate literally everything that was brought, while watching her eat was somewhat pleasing and elegant, she still took double time doing it. At that point, the magician started wondering if her eating like a monster wouldn't have been better...</p><p>At some point even observing her friend display all of her elegance and manners at making food disappear got boring, there were only so many thirty-minute intervals one could've spent watching someone eat and so the magician found her gaze wandering through the restaurant hoping to find something interesting enough to occupy her attention. It appeared that Shimo was doing the same. It was awkward how little two friends separated for years had to talk about. The several attempts of Mana's to find out more in-depth about his trip were quickly shot down by Shimo changing the subject making the girl believe that he just didn't trust her enough.</p><p>There was always that crushing moment when one realized that the person one thought of as one of their best friends had stories and other friends they didn't trust one with. Mana didn't have much experience with dating but she was sure that having her genuine feelings rejected by a boy must've felt somewhat similar. Now that she saw Shimo's hesitance to talk to her about his time away from the village or his lack of interest in what happened to her during the meantime she felt like the Yuki was avoiding her friendship for some reason.</p><p>"Shay, Mana... What wazhat Hokage shaid abouf yer shakra?" Meiko suddenly decided to ask with a full mouth. "Why did she take you for a civilian? Why are you just a client in this mission?" the blacksmith wondered. She must've heard bits and pieces about Mana's problem from when the girl was talking to the Hokage but neither she nor Shimo could've known the full story.</p><p>"It's nothing, really. Just an injury I had on the last mission, Hokage-sama is just worried if it's more than it actually is, there's nothing to worry about..." the magician smiled and looked away.</p><p>Mana's eyes fell on a peculiar young man standing by the counter to order, he must've been particularly impatient since the waitresses usually came to hear one's order out in a while right after sitting down. Why would this man be in such a rush to eat? Such a weird and unimportant detail interested the magician a little so she let her attention remain focused.</p><p>"Ummm... Yeah, I'll have the celery carpaccio please..." the man mumbled out like he had just woken up several minutes ago and stumbled into the restaurant for his breakfast.</p><p>"Sorry, sir, such a dish doesn't even exist. Carpaccio is an exclusively meaty snack..." the waitress quickly spilled her response out, feeling bad for the fact that she had to refuse a client. The staff here was quite polite.</p><p>"Oh... Then I guess... Cabbage shashlik is what I'll have..." the man quickly jumped to another dish.</p><p>"Yeah... That's... Not a thing either, a cabbage shashlik would be just cabbage poked on a stick, I mean..." the young waitress was starting to get quite nervous. It was visible that the client annoyed her and yet she felt bad for refusing him as if she felt like she was actually the one who was at fault for not knowing those non-existent dishes.</p><p>"Okay, I suppose I could then eat barbecued peas..." the man answered with the same indifferent and sleepy tone.</p><p>"Sir, this is a barbecue restaurant, also no one barbecues peas, I am as sure of it as I've never been sure of anything in my life" the waitress responded wiping the sweat off of her forehead, someone signaled the young woman that they were ready to order and the woman rushed off, an older woman came to change her younger colleague.</p><p>"Oh shit, Toya, the veggie guy is back! Come here and bring a large spatula!" the woman yelled at someone behind her. As a larger woman left the kitchen with an oversized spatula, the strange client just turned around and left the restaurant before the woman could ask him out with it. Seeing how Mana followed that peculiar man with her eyes all the way to the door her eyes fell on a familiar face sitting in the corner closest to the door. Mana excused herself and walked to the table.</p><p>"Hello, Kouta-kun" she greeted the boy she met some time back during her show. This was actually quite lucky for her to bump into the boy right here, who could've known that he was a rich eater?</p><p>"Ah! Mana" the boy shouted out in excitement jumping up and shaking the table a bit, the older man he was sitting with looked at the boy angrily but Kouta just scratched the back of his head and laughed out apologetically.</p><p>"So how're things, what are you doing here? I never took you for an overeating person?" the magician smiled trying to ease the boy into the question she actually intended to ask. Strangely enough, the girl heard steps behind her and when she briefly glanced back she noticed Shimo approaching them.</p><p>"I am actually, I'm eating here with my father, father is still resting after the mission, you see! I must say I am the one surprised to see you here, Mana-chan, what could you be doing here, I wonder?" the boy replied with quite a large amount of excitement in his voice. Most people would've taken Mana's approach and interruption of a peaceful eating out at a restaurant with one's father as rude but Kouta appeared to be quite happy with it.</p><p>"Well, I stopped here to feed a friend, if I had known of her appetite though I may have reconsidered though... I see you two may just match her though..." Mana noted looking at a large column of emptied plates. It appeared that Kouta's father didn't even stop his mad eating ways even while Mana and Kouta were talking right up to him. Although whereas Meiko ate elegantly and rather slowly Kouta's father ate like a pig barbarian on a rampage to eliminate all the food left on Earth.</p><p>"Well... Juugo use out a lot of chakra with their techniques, even more than conventional ninjutsu users do so our appetites are naturally incredibly large because we have to compensate for it" Kouta shyly rubbed the back of his head, it was cute how ashamed he looked of his godlike appetite.</p><p>"The pipsqueak here ain't a natural Juugo though so he can't eat half of what I can... I'm Kusagoro Juugo, Konohagakure Jounin." Kouta's father grunted. He stood up and offered Shimo a handshake which the boy accepted. To Mana, it appeared a little strange that he'd offer a handshake for someone who wasn't even participating in the conversation much and was just standing around because being there was much less boring than watching Meiko keep eating at this point.</p><p>"Hmph, I see Kouta keeps finding puny friends..." the man rudely remarked before sitting down and digging right into a colossal piece of cooked meat. He most likely referred to Shimo's handshaking skills which he must've found disappointing.</p><p>"This gentleman isn't my friend, yet, father. He's a friend of Mana's, who is a friend of mine. I kind of work for her, I heal her stage injuries after her shows, for my internship, remember?" Kouta smiled back at his father, it was strange how completely different these two were.</p><p>"Pfff, a useless craft those healing techniques. It's a woman's specialty!" the man remarked after nearly choking on a large bite of meat.</p><p>"Well, it turns out that I need this "woman's specialty" expert for a mission, would you maybe wish to help us out?" Mana looked at Kouta with her best attempt at the puppy eyes she saw Meiko make some time back. She really needed this, Kouta was probably one of the few genin medical ninja in the village and she had little time to find the others. Even if Kouta wasn't yet officially a medical ninja, just an intern obtaining necessary practice in Hiro's hall where Mana performed, he was still sufficient for a C-Rank mission.</p><p>"A mission!? With you? Sure, it'll be awesome!" Kouta yelled out excitedly before blushing a little and looking around everyone looking at his table with strange condescending looks. Everyone was already quite disgusted by the eating manners of the two and now the boy started making noise.</p><p>"Hmph... An easy buyer, just like your mother..." Kouta's father yelled out pushing the emptied plate away to form a new column of plates and looked at Mana from her face to her shoes like he was judging her. "If you stopped slacking off with your training by messing around with girls you could maybe survive at least a single one of my punches!" Kusagoro yelled out angrily at Mana even though his anger must've been directed more at the young Kouta who was now sadly clenching his fists looking pretty down after his father's scolding.</p><p>"I'll have you know, Kusagoro-san, a respected man once always used to say that there's no more useful and pleasant distraction than women. That being said he lost his arm because of his excessive trust in a wrong woman, however, that fact is something I should've probably kept quiet about..." Shimo but into the conversation.</p><p>"I'm not saying that Kouta's friend is to be kicked out of his life, I'm saying that he should at least determine her worth by challenging her to a game before accepting her terms. He's a good kid but he always assumes people are worth his time when most of them aren't!" Kusagoro angrily snapped back after picking up a turkey leg and digging into it. Finally, his full frame turned at the three youths.</p><p>Kusagoro was a very large individual, with large and spiky orange hair that spiked mostly behind him. His exotic hair must've been a testament to his clan heritage. The man wore a simple jounin vest. However, his was quite modified. Kusagoro's vest only covered his gut and his chest leaving his neck exposed. It looked like he was issued a vest two sizes too small and just went with it. The man also appeared to be carrying absolutely no weapons with him, not even the usual ninja pouch. While normally Mana would've dismissed it to it just being his free time, the man was actually wearing his combat attire – the jounin uniform and it was battle-worn since the black top below the vest had quite several gaping holes as well as his pants. His face had some quite fresh cuts and bruises too.</p><p>"A game?" Mana asked the man to clarify when Kusagoro smiled with a pretty cruel smile as if he was certain Mana would lose.</p><p>"Yeah! If you want the help of a Juugo beat him in a game! Seeing how you're such a slim little thing you probably couldn't even out-eat him" the man sarcastically made fun of Mana making some pretty crude hand gestures and making a smug face.</p><p>Suddenly, Mana felt a crushing weight on her shoulder and felt an arm wrapping around her neck. It appeared that Meiko was listening to the whole last part of the conversation and decided to drop by.</p><p>"I've no idea what's happening but my food is all gone and I have to wait for more! I heard about an eat-off and since Mana had already eaten her lunch she's at a disadvantage, I shall be Mana's second in this eat-off!" Meiko cracked her fist right in front of the man with a confident smile.</p><p>Kouta shyly rubbed his hands together, he was observing the situation getting out of hand, and yet he only found strength in him to oppose it now that the challenge was about to begin. "It's really not necessary, you guys, I'm ready to accept to be in your team, what's the point of this all?" he tried to calm the situation down but his father just yelled at him angrily.</p><p>"What's the point!? Didn't you hear? This hatchling tin can decided to challenge you! A Juugo never backs down from a challenge, especially one from a girl! Fulfill your duty and eat this girl under the table!"</p><p>"Fine..." Kouta sighed sadly and sat back down in his chair with Mana serving both of the devourers their servings. Somehow the magician decided that just going with it and helping the two out with their eat-off was the best choice.</p><p>And so the greatest eat-off in the junior weight class began, Meiko and Kouta ate one barbecue serving after another making entire plates disappear. It was Meiko's gentle style of eating against Kouta's barbaric annihilation of food which he picked up from his father, no doubt. The two ate for almost an hour which was amazing seeing how Meiko just finished half of her order. At some point, the waitress brought Meiko the rest of her food which was split along the two. Meiko ate and Kouta followed, the magician had to hand it to the boy, for such a short and a rather athletic fellow he ate like a beast.</p><p>"Ugh... I don't... Feel... So good..." Kouta bellowed and collapsed under the table slipping down the chair like a sack of potatoes. Kusagoro slapped his forehead and growled like an angry dog.</p><p>"Ugh... This isn't fair, I think the girl is still one deer leg behind!" the jounin tried to trick the trio but Mana shook her head and pointed to Kouta's plate.</p><p>"I've been serving him an empty serving for five minutes, he passed out from eating air for five minutes whereas Meiko kept on eating. If anyone's cheating, we should stuff five minutes' worth of servings down Kouta's throat," the magician just barely contained her wild laughter.</p><p>"Ugh... Please don't, I concede..." Kouta moaned from under the table forcing his father to just pull his son out with one careless hand movement and put him back down on his chair.</p><p>"Fine, you can drag my son along with you, whatever your stupid mission is..." Kusagoro angrily growled and pulled out his wallet to pay for all the food. The mission he came back from must've been at least an A-Rank since his wallet was overflowing with ryo bills. A single A-Rank mission may have granted one an entire life living in moderation or a single wasteful night, depending on how one looked at it...</p><p>"Yaaay..." Kouta moaned out again rather indifferently but Mana knew it was just because of overeating. She saw already how excited Kouta was and she was a little glad that he'll be there to watch their backs too. Meiko stood up finishing her serving and nudging the medical ninja into his cheek.</p><p>"No offense, you've got a pretty mean stomach it's just that I was in my best shape, you never stood a chance..." she joked as the three were preparing to leave.</p><p>"A piece of advice, girl, next time as a team leader you should face your own challenges. A team leader that loses is much more respectful than one who chickens out and lets his lackeys win..." Kusagoro grunted out at the three as they were ready to leave. Shimo turned back at him angrily. This wasn't good, Mana had already seen those eyes on her friend.</p><p>"You offended Mana-chan and Meiko-chan at the same time. My name is Shimo Yuki and I'm going to kick your ass for the disrespect you showed my friends!" the Yuki swordsman declared starting to remind Mana of how he was before. She should've been more careful about what she wished for previously, this new Shimo was way better to work with, now he returned to his old self and picked a fight with a Jounin!</p><p>Kusagoro stood up and fixed the band around his wrists angrily before cracking his knuckles. "You better think about that some more, brat, cause when I start going at you I won't stop until you're in no condition to go on that mission!"</p><p>Mana angrily shook Shimo's shoulder, she could feel her own weakness since she tried making it hurt but her lack of chakra made it feel more puny than painful for the young man.</p><p>"What are you doing!? You don't have to do this, neither I nor Meiko were offended, if you attack him now you'll just justify his words – you'll fight for us. It's something we don't even need right now!" the magician tried to talk the Yuki swordsman down.</p><p>Shimo turned at Mana with happy eyes and smiled at her gently removing her hand off of his shoulder.</p><p>"It's fine, I know you don't want me to fight again, it's just like last time. The thing is though that defending woman's honor isn't something I let the woman decide, it's a part of my identity. I must do this!" Shimo declared.</p><p>Mana took a couple of steps back. Identity. Why was that his exact word? That magic word that crippled any resistance Mana had inside from letting this fight happen. She looked at Shimo with determination, confidently and a little angry at him.</p><p>"This time I won't pull you out of this, you're on your own. You better win, we've no time to find your substitute if you get hurt!" she let him know angrily.</p><p>"Are you sure, Mana? That guy said he's a Jounin, didn't he? He'll kick Shimo's butt..." she indifferently declared sitting down and turning the chair at the two to better observe their confrontation.</p><p>"Identity... I know a little too much how much losing it hurts" Mana replied looking at Shimo with a troubled look. She had no time for this, this was completely stupid yet this one stupid word made her just stand here and let him fight it out...</p><p>"I don't really get it but if you're OK with this, I'm fine too" Meiko declared laughing out and relaxing in the chair observing the fight that was about to break out.</p><p>"Well then, kid, let's take this outside..." Kusagoro declared as the entire party moved out. Mana's eyes slipped and stopped at Kouta for a moment but the boy hesitated, he was too shy and hesitant to stop his father, and even if he did, it was quite unlikely that anything in the world could've prevented this nonsense...</p><p>Knowing the people involved one could've only wondered how come it didn't happen sooner...</p>
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<a name="section0112"><h2>112. Foodfight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The crowd around Yakiniku Q restaurant stopped to curiously observe the two people who stood in front of each other, staring each other down, and the two girls and a boy who stood a decent distance behind them. Bar-fights weren't uncommon in Konohagakure however they usually didn't happen in Yakiniku Q because it had a reputation to only appeal to the tastes of people with rather chubby bodies making them quite lazy and unlikely to brawl their differences out.</p><p>"One minute. I'll give you one minute of free punches before I take you out" Kusagoro grinned with a deviant but still quite playful smile. It was evident that to him this brawl was just a game and, by all means, it should've been to anyone of his skill level. This was a genin picking a fight with a jounin. Such fights shouldn't have lasted longer than the first exchange of blows.</p><p>Shimo didn't give in to Kusagoro's taunts, he calmly stood and waited it out. The boy prepared himself - his breath was calm and collected. Previously Mana made a mistake by thinking that this Shimo was somehow a return to his old self which very obviously wasn't true. While this Shimo had the same ideals as his old self he was much more calculating and much wiser. He didn't just leap into battle, he thought and prepared for it, only when he felt good enough about his attack plan did he initiate the brawl.</p><p>Such was the case now. Shimo's body just blurred and disappeared. His figure appeared right in front of Kouta's father, then another, then another and a dozen more. Shimos were popping out of thin air, all trying to hit Kusagoro with a drawing slash.</p><p>"Wow, he's pretty fast! I never thought a genin could move fast enough to leave an afterimage, let alone fifteen of them!" Meiko whistled into the air. Judging from the blacksmith's tone to her this fight seemed like an interesting distraction, something to feast her eyes on after a good lunch.</p><p>"No... Shimo's a Yuki, he was always fast but no genin can be this fast. Last time I saw him his chakra was maybe half of my level and it couldn't have been bumped up to a level where he could augment his abilities to this extent. It's a trick..." the magician recognized it.</p><p>She had a very clear reason to think that way – had Shimo truly moved that fast she'd have not seen him move at all as she had no chakra control so she couldn't use her supernatural ninja perception. She couldn't burst her chakra in excess all over her body sharpening all of her senses to the point where even supersonic and greater speeds could've been picked up on, where even the faintest changes of the environment or the most minor clues could've been picked up on. And yet even without her ninja perception Mana could see and understand Shimo's movements. It wasn't a physical feat, he was trying to outsmart Kusagoro.</p><p>Confirming Mana's theory each and every single one of Shimo's afterimages slashed at Kusagoro and disappeared doing so. It was a mirage of sorts, seeing how Shimo could manipulate ice with his Yuki bloodline ability it only made sense that he had picked up some neat and subtle ways to utilize the cold nature of his abilities. It was just a manner of playing with the air around him by manipulating his ice jutsu to an incredibly weak level so that it only let out streams of cold air and then further manipulating those optical illusions with chakra. It was like genjutsu but the same effect was achieved through ninjutsu techniques.</p><p>Kusagoro's body lit up with chakra, a loud and powerful gust dispelled all of the afterimages instantly making Mana, Meiko, and everyone observing the little brawl clutch and cover up their faces from being blown back or having the dust blown into their eyes.</p><p>"You're a bother..." the man remarked once his violent expulsion of chakra settled down.</p><p>"What was that?!" Mana shouted out surprised, she had never seen such violent expulsion of chakra that placed so little strain on one's abilities. Usually, chakra was something that functioned inside one's body, any techniques that brought manifestations of chakra outside it were usually higher level techniques and quite taxing on one's body.</p><p>"Juugo bloodline, remember what I told you, Mana-chan? Juugo can shoot pure chakra from their bodies as if it was water they drank and are spitting out. Father formed countless microscopic openings on his body, microscopic cannons if you will from which he shot out minuscule and nearly invisible amounts of chakra. This isn't just him bursting his chakra, this isn't father accelerating his chakra flow. It's a defensive technique of a quite different manner..." Kouta explained looking at the brawl with serious and troubled eyes.</p><p>"Just how potent are those "chakra cannons"?" Mana turned at the youth with a slightly worried expression.</p><p>"If I was you I'd look for ways to end this nonsense before father decides to fight. A Juugo can easily level mountains, destroying a whole village or a settlement would come easy to a skilled Juugo with a decent enough chakra level. If you truly believe that this Shimo can actually challenge my father then please beg him to stop, if father gets excited he'll blow the village up for sure!" Kouta explained the reason for his distress.</p><p>"Wait, what?" Meiko suddenly got back to her senses and started violently shaking Kouta like a sudden twister picking up a ragdoll, "You mean this guy can blow up a whole village?"</p><p>"Well, any Juugo of an advanced level can. That's why we were hunted during the old days, that's why the Hokage usually sends father on away missions as far away from the village as possible, that's why most Juugo exercise restraint and peaceful lifestyles loving the nature and birds and animals and so on..." the confused and dazed boy mumbled out through his nausea from being shaken so violently by the blacksmith.</p><p>Shimo's figure appeared right in front of Kusagoro, Mana didn't see it move which meant this must've been the real Shimo, the one using his actual speed augmentation to surpass the human and even the ninja limits. A powerful punch flew right into Kusagoro's face, a loud thud echoed. The testament of a powerful force, and tremendous strain placed on each of the combatants' bodies. Kusagoro remained standing still completely unfazed by the punch. Shimo jumped into the air and kicked off his opponent's chest backflipping some distance away from him and panting a little, taking a sword drawing fighting stance ready to defend himself in case the man decided to come at him.</p><p>"Heh, was that it? I'm sorry, I must've augmented my body, I really should've just taken it, lose a tooth, and not bothered. I bet the wench you're fighting for packs a better wallop" Kusagoro grinned with a cruel smile trying to psyche Shimo out.</p><p>Shimo's body leaped forward, drawing his sword and thrusting it forward, placing his hand right on the other side of the hilt and driving it forward with additional force. A loud clang signaled the sword hitting its mark, a powerful blue glow emanated from where the tip of the blade met Kusagoro's body. The faint blue light kept on shining as the Yuki kept on driving the sword forward trying to impale the jounin right in his chest. The light was the glow of one chakra clashing with another since it was quite obvious that Kusagoro was augmenting his body to take Shimo's blows while the swordsman's blade was an Aura blade capable of contending with such barriers.</p><p>"I'm a swordsman. Blocking my punch isn't worth jack squat!" Shimo roared out as he repurposed his effort and power into a swinging motion slashing his sword to the side. A small squirt of blood shot out from Kusagoro's body and dripped onto the dirt and by his feet, a small hole was left on the man's jounin vest.</p><p>"Hmmm, what is that sword?" the man smiled feeling the small cut on his chest and tasting some of his own blood.</p><p>"Audra blade..." the Yuki replied angrily taking a leap back and preparing a response, a follow-up attack.</p><p>"I see, it was made with someone else's chakra, someone with much more pissing potential than you which was why my chakra augmentation wasn't enough. To take a hit from this I'd have to augment my body to where I'd actually risk messing up my flow. It must've been made by a skilled chuunin..."</p><p>"A rogue ninja... B+ Rank" Shimo sheathed his blade and quickly went through a bunch of handseals. "With the unfortunate experience of having faced the Raikage when they were kids and recording her moves"</p><p>"Ice Style: Thousand Needles of Death!" Shimo chanted out placing his arms forward. Countless needles formed around his opponent, needles made of ice which was made out of humidity of the air around Kusagoro. The needles lunged at the man in a blinding shower. The man just kept on standing and took the technique head-on, each needle broke off and shattered like a shard of glass hitting a brick wall. In the end, there was only Kusagoro standing with some leftover water dripping from his hair and clothes as the needles were thin enough to turn back into puddles upon breaking.</p><p>"I thought I told you, your own chakra levels are too insignificant to hurt me. I could just stand right here and take your attacks for days..." the man grinned, his eyes looked quite cruel, Mana was starting to get a little intimidated by just looking at them.</p><p>"No... You're trying to psyche me out. No sane ninja, even a jounin would stand and augment their endurance to withstand blows instead of dodging. You're wasting your chakra and you risk overdoing it. You're trying to scare me, make me give up just from the idea that I cannot hurt you. So far you've wasted quite the amount of chakra just to prove one genin a coward, don't you think? Your minute has long since passed, please come at me now, Kusagoro-san" Shimo explained.</p><p>"Stop this, you don't know what you're doing!" Kouta yelled out at Shimo and he turned at Mana, "Please, Mana-chan, you have to stop this! My father purposefully lets his opponents reduce his chakra level by letting himself get hit after augmenting his abilities, that's a sign he means to enjoy a fight by bringing himself down to their level. If he lets loose now he won't return to his normal self until he is beaten!" the boy explained.</p><p>Mana shook her head, "I couldn't stop them even if I wanted to, plus if I did stop them in some way it'd only make things worse. They'd hate me, they'd keep thinking that the other got pulled out of this by an outside factor and that they could've won this if it didn't happen. They'd clash again and this time it'd be a much more ruthless clash. If Shimo is to lose, it is better that he takes it and moves past this, I trust in my friend that he will find a way not to get killed"</p><p>Meiko giggled "It's a good thing we got our medical ninja by our side, Shimo is gonna need some healing after this..."</p><p>Kusagoro yelled out into the air and then formed several handseals faster than Mana's eye could track them. "Earth Style: Displacing Tremors" the man shouted out by placing his hands on the ground when a violent pulse went through the ground making it shatter below the feet of the villagers and the bystanders.</p><p>Mana leaped back just barely avoiding a fissure opening up below her feet, Meiko shoved her aside and then carried her off from another one opening up – the technique created a small pulse of tension to the ground below the feet of the opponent and the user but it functioned just like a wave, it picked up power the further on it went and when it reached the bystanders it almost consumed them.</p><p>Mana's eyes slipped on ninja picking the villagers up from falling down and getting injured or killed inside the splitting ground, so village ninja decided to intervene then? It made sense, this scuffle has long since gone past the usual bar-fight and was now quite threatening to the bystanders or the village itself. The opening fissures inflicted quite some damage to the homes around, some of them were completely brought down and the rubble was taken into the ground sinking down the fissure holes. Shimo on the other side was only shaken by the initial impact, only potent enough to make him lose his balance and footing, to make him unprepared for the following attack.</p><p>Kusagoro's body flickered before disappearing, "That chakra!" Meiko and Kouta chanted both at the same time. For one's chakra to be felt like that by non-sensor ninja, it must've been impossibly strong, the man must've not been playing around, that punch must've been strong enough to kill Shimo!</p><p>"Earth Style: Titan's Drill!" a loud chant echoed, Mana wanted to interfere, she wanted to at least yell something out, to alert her friend but her body felt like it was completely frozen. Her completely normal body was only perceptive enough to hear the last words her friend may have heard, it was only fast enough for her eyes to shake and her lips to whimper in fear for her friend's life. What had she done? Letting Shimo take part in this...</p><p>A deafening thud made everyone cover their ears, windows burst from their sockets for entire miles around the impact zone. However instead of the man's fist hitting the genin's face with the force that was strong enough to drill right through any mineral or armor with enough effort to blow his body up from inside from sheer pressure of the force inside him it met an equal counterforce – the open palm of the Fifth.</p><p>"That'll be quite enough of this..." she casually said looking Kusagoro right in the eyes. Her fist was glowing blue – she was using the superhuman strength of a medical ninja to block the man's technique and she was doing it so effortlessly as if it was but a ball tossed by a toddler.</p><p>The shockwave coming from the clash of the two went out in a ring-like line that busted every building in a narrow line to the right and to the left of each of the two from the sheer pressure of the force that had nowhere to go as the Hokage's hand didn't fold or move back at the slightest from the impact zone.</p><p>"Could you explain to me why I am right now here, stopping some petty squabble between a jounin and a genin instead of in my office adjusting the budget of Konohagakure orphanage foundation?" Hanasaku squinted angrily looking at Kusagoro. The jounin made an apologetic stare and then tried pulling his fist away from Hokage's grip but he couldn't do it no matter how hard he tried – the all cutting sword was stuck in the toughest stone in the world...</p><p>"This kid picked a fight with me" the Juugo explained after the woman let go of his fist making him almost tumble down from the effort of trying to force it out of her hand.</p><p>"And as a wise and mature adult, you obviously obliged and went at him with an A-Rank technique? You're fighting a kid here, you're not trying to punch out a Tailed Beast for God's sake!" Hanasaku shouted out.</p><p>"Whatever, I'm done here..." Kusagoro shrugged and started walking away.</p><p>"You most certainly are, your license is suspended for a year, if I see you brawling once more I'll eat that plastic card in front of you myself..." Hanasaku turned her back to the man to mirror his own.</p><p>The Juugo turned around and started waving his fists angrily, "You can't do that! That's the Ninja Tribunal's competence!"</p><p>"You really think I understand any of that bureaucracy bullshit? Consider this an executive decision..." the woman flipped the man the bird on the spot without turning around. She walked up to the captain of the squad that was responsible for saving the villagers from the destructive effects of the battle.</p><p>"We've managed to prevent all casualties here, we're organizing a rescue operation for the people trapped in the destroyed buildings and will have a more detailed list of injured and casualties later, let's hope they are minimal, Ma'am!" the man reported kneeling before the woman. Hanasaku nodded and walked up to Mana's team.</p><p>"What in the..." she started her scolding but Mana kneeled before her and interrupted the woman before she could yell so loud that blood would've burst from their busted ears.</p><p>"We've been looking for a medical ninja for our team as per your request, we've found one, Ma'am..." she quickly spilled the beans and lowered her head even lower.</p><p>The woman sighed and scratched her tired forehead and rubbed her even more exhausted eyes.</p><p>"Goddamnit! Fine, I'll fill the paperwork in and form the mission papers in the evening, get your things ready, and leave today..." she let out an exhausted grunt. "I know that if someone actually died in the fallout of this battle you'll be delivering your own worst punishment, Mana, but I am very disappointed in all of you..." she finished it up with the softest yet the most painful scolding any of them had ever had.</p><p>Mana stood up and sighed, this went all the bad ways it could've gone. She hoped that no one died, the Fifth may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed but she was right on one thing – if someone did die because Mana allowed this battle, because she encouraged Shimo acting on his "identity" she'll be blaming herself for all of it despite not even being a part of the battle nor having the physical or any other kind of ability to stop it.</p><p>"Well, you heard the Hokage, let's go home, get ready and we'll be leaving at sunset. Gather by the gate before that..." Mana said.</p><p>"I recall you being a client in this mission..." Shimo replied trying to suggest that she was taking too much responsibility by placing herself as being in charge.</p><p>"Yeah, if I leave alone and get killed your mission will be failed so either follow me and protect me from getting myself killed or act high and mighty and fail, your choice!" the magician snapped back at the silver-haired Yuki angrily, still feeling mad for what he did by asking for this fight.</p><p>What a rollicking good start for a mission...</p>
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<a name="section0113"><h2>113. A Silly Question To Begin A Journey</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Wait, I thought you lost your chakra control..." mother quietly tried to wrap her head around Mana's explanation of why she was packing her bags. The magician didn't give her parents that much to work with but it wasn't because of ill will, she just wanted to be ready. Ready for anything. Ready for success or for failure. Ready for safety and ready if her team would ever need a useless weakling which she currently was to pull their asses out. Mana packed her cards and stuffed the pockets and all the hidden dispensers of her uniform with them. This time she'd have to use them smart if she'd ever need to, she'd not have her father's hat to utilize this time.</p><p>"I am not leaving as a ninja on the mission, I'm leaving as a client and the team will serve as my bodyguards. It's a quite common C-Rank type mission" the magician explained with her full attention still being occupied by her stuff. Over all this time she spent completely powerless her weapons and ninja tools were all over the place seeing how they were mostly unused.</p><p>"Wait... Are you sure about this? You'll be leaving the village with a bunch of genin? Experienced genin, experienced enough to be given C-Rank missions, but genin nonetheless..." mother tried to argue, she looked at her husband who was just standing nearby for support, trying to ask him to join in on the attempt to stop her daughter from leaving the village without having recovered her ability to stand up to the threats outside of it.</p><p>"It's fine, they need my history knowledge, not my brawn. Not that there's too much currently there to be desired..." Mana growled angrily, she felt so much anger inside which she had no reasonable direction to direct it at.</p><p>She didn't know what this anger was all about or where it came from. It was just like in the recent years she started to get angry and annoyed and outraged by everything all the time. Even the smallest injustice appeared to offend her and make her boil. It hurt having so much anger inside, the anger she had no right to release being a public idol, showed and idolized by children with parents trying to make their own kids more like she was.</p><p>"Look... Mana... I know how it feels, losing the edge, being unable to fight on that level anymore. I hope every day that what's happening with you is not forever, that it's not as final as my injury but... What I and your mother wish to say is... Don't pull anything stupid, don't try to fight like you used to. What you're going through may be temporary and you may just get your chakra manipulation back, it's definitely not worth losing your life before you do because you want to prove something to someone..."</p><p>Mana pushed her bag aside and turned at her father, she dashed up to his face and almost screamed out into it. Just barely did she manage to contain her snappy reply at the last second. He was right. Father did know what Mana was going through, he knew it far better than she did, he's been dealing with it for much longer, and for him, it was definitely final. All this anger, all this sadness, and lack of something to fill that part of her own self.</p><p>"I know, dad..." she hugged the man instead doing her best to push that rage down, maybe it'll be useful at some point, maybe there'll be some pickle jar in need of opening. That's just about all she'd be good for at the moment. Father's eyes looked completely blissful, he must've not even noticed that the magician almost blew right into his face, her mother however instantly picked up on Mana's hidden feelings, she pushed her husband out of the way and gently placed her hands on the girl's shoulder holding her closer face to face to herself.</p><p>"I know it hurts, Mana, it hurts when people need you or think you're good at something that you don't wish to take pride in. You want to be strong again, that's why you work out every time you're out of our field of vision, you're trying to put something else on top of what you lost and now people recognized it but it still hurts because it's not what you want to be known for. It's the worst. But this isn't who you are, this is temporary and you'll deal with it. Just don't make a dumb mistake that'll ruin that for you. 'Cause you will hate yourself in the end for being so rash and stupid later. When you'll get your chakra back"</p><p>Mana nodded and hugged her mother. She needed something like that but... It didn't help all that anger at all. It just made her feel better for managing to contain it, for being able to push it all down. Her parents didn't deserve to see her like that, they were good people who only deserved to see Mana in her best behavior.</p><p>"Now go, those brawnheads won't find that thing without your bright head..." father pointed his chin at the door with a confident look on his face.</p><p>Mana nodded and dashed towards the door with her bag staying in her hand, the magician almost flipped over as the bag weighed her back, it was so heavy that just casually carrying it around was quite impossible, in her old days she had her chakra bump up her casual physical abilities to that of peak human condition, as strong as a human could be. Now she had to earn every extra pound she could carry around with hard sweat. Mana stopped and flipped the backpack onto her back, filled with whatever she'd need for the mission as described in the objective.</p><p>The magician ran off, rushing towards the gate. Most ninja could just run on the rooftops or the wires on the upper level, moving around faster than how a thousand horses combined into a mother of all horses could carry them like. Mana wasn't like that, not anymore, she had to use the way that civilians used to travel around. Maybe she should've used that grappling hook device her father and she designed for that one magic show? It'd probably have pulled her arm off having the weight on her back in mind though...</p><p>"There you are..." Meiko jumped up in joy finally seeing Mana approach the gate. This one was like a gumball of joy and excitement...</p><p>"You took your time, Mana-san" Shimo let the magician know that she was not only the last one to come but also the last by a significant margin. As if his displeased face didn't let her know by itself...</p><p>"Well not all of us can move like ninja..." Mana replied realizing that she may have said too much.</p><p>"Well, why can't you?" Kouta scratched his head confused by her words.</p><p>"Umm, the darned shoes make me trip over the cables all the time..." she made something stupid up, granted if she was running in heels that'd have been the problem but Mana wore similar sandals to what all ninja wore on missions so it was just made-up trouble.</p><p>"Honestly you're always such a fashionista..." Shimo checked his sword and his tool pouch before turning at the gate.</p><p>The magician sighed, it was better that her friends took her for a silly girl who overdressed all the time than let them know of her trouble and the extent of her injury that left her just as a client this time. Mana didn't think she'd be ready to talk about that, none of them would've understood anyways. Meiko wasn't too confident in herself just because her chakra control was not up to par with everyone else's, she'd probably have looked at Mana really weird if she was told of the fact that Mana couldn't use her chakra at all.</p><p>The team of four headed for the village gate having finally gathered as a team. As the two approached the village gate they were stopped by one of the gate guards.</p><p>"Hey, you're the guys leaving for the mission in the Wind Country desert, right?" he asked.</p><p>The four nodded in an almost synchronized manner, their sync may have needed work but they were a team put together completely at random just to fit the time requirement so their lack of team esthetics could've been forgiven.</p><p>"Could you guys fill this form, we'll send it to the outpost in Roiyaru for archive keeping. I mean you guys don't wanna get attacked by the guards there and get extra pain in the ass, do you?" the guard laughed out extending the form to fill. Mana had never seen anything like that before, it was a completely new procedure.</p><p>"We have a guard outpost in Roiyaru?" she mumbled out.</p><p>"Aggressive enough to react on sight?" Shimo added.</p><p>"Yeah, there've been a couple of pretty nasty security breaches in that area so we pretty much had to build an outpost and place some Chuunin there to watch the area" the guard explained looking a bit annoyed that he has to take extra time to explain it to a bunch of youngsters.</p><p>"Security issues? Sounds fun..." Meiko chuckled to herself tightening a belt around her glove that shot out a small blade from her forearm before deactivating it and retracting it back, it looked like a thin one time use tool that'd break upon hitting something tough but it was perfect for slashing soft areas and lodging into tougher ones leaving a weak spot there.</p><p>"Ah, I've heard people have been disappearing around that area lately, it's all about that, isn't it?" Kouta jumped up looking surprised that his teammates haven't heard about it.</p><p>"Well yeah, initially we just tried to play it as the rogue ninja having fun filling their bloodshed quota but when that Honda kid disappeared and his mother was found in a vegetative state the public outcry was something that forced the Hokage's hand. We don't have that many Chuunin to spare, they drop like flies and not that many join the ranks as most failed the last Chuunin Exam..." the man continued to explain the situation further, this time it looked like his annoyance was shifted on the events going down there instead of the youngsters talking to him.</p><p>"There..." Mana handed the man the papers back after leaving a couple of ominous scratches on their mission objective. It was not something that needed to be discussed in too much detail and she wasn't quite fond of leaving traces like that in a guard outpost surrounded by wilderness. After seeing mercenaries able to blow up a large portion of a forest in seconds with laser weaponry somehow an outpost didn't feel too safe...</p><p>"That'll do, thanks for not making it too much of a problem, this other team refused to leave and even brought the matter up to the Fifth..." the guard nodded and headed back to his post where his colleague was waiting for him and the filled documents. They placed it onto a leg of a hawk and sent it off. Those carrier hawks were quite fast, able to carry small packages faster than most ninja could move and much more silently, leaving less of a trace while also being much more expendable with the added bonus of being able to destroy the message by flicking a piece of flint on their claws at their steel plate and setting the thing on fire.</p><p>"For good reason, mission objectives shouldn't be sent around like that, if anything this is the security issue..." Shimo grumped around but then resumed his indifferent stare at the forest thickness. All around wherever one could see was just trees. Ahead was a trip unlike any that Mana has had before, they'd be going all the way to another country even if it was one quite near. It may take them a week or so moving fast. Maybe even more moving at Mana's pace. She was able to run and leap at a relatively fast pace but she was just as fast as an athletic person of her age and build. She had no mastery over bodily spiritual and physical energy to aid her leaps and steps...</p><p>"Why are you moving so slow, Mana-chan?" Shimo looked back at her after having to slow down to match her pace.</p><p>"Yeah, you've been left behind for the fifth time this hour..." Meiko looked at her with a troubled look, "Are you OK? Maybe that meat in Yakiniku Q was bad or something?"</p><p>"If it was you'd be having it the worst, Meiko-san..." Kouta shyly laughed out before remembering that he also participated in an eating competition, "I would not be doing too well either, I suppose..." he added with a hint of sadness and disappointment in his tone.</p><p>"Let's not rush, we're not in that much need to be in a hurry, the source is relatively old so it's unlikely that it'll be followed now if it wasn't before. Also with those security threats being out there, I want us to move slower and smoother..." she added.</p><p>"Well, you're the client, you don't really have to act like one and move slowly..." Meiko laughed out playfully slapping Mana's back almost making the magician trip over. She was having trouble keeping up with their slowed down pace as it was.</p><p>"That's a very strange, yet wise move..." Shimo replied ominously slowing down to a pace that was a crawl even compared to Mana's.</p><p>"What's that?" the magician looked back at her friend who appeared to be a little spooked by something.</p><p>"Back when I was still training on my journey with Hachiro-sensei there were some quite confusing behaviors he showed at times. He was a very lax but well-adjusted ninja, he had contacts everywhere and he kept on asking his contacts about that one specific thing, twice after hearing from them he paled and ordered me to turn back" the Yuki started explaining the source of his agreement with Mana.</p><p>"So, rogue ninja are always hunted by bounty hunters and hunter-ninja, they're not too popular with normal ninja either, most want to be the "hero" and kill one when they see one..." Kouta replied, slowing down significantly to match Mana's pace.</p><p>"Not like that, not Hachiro-sensei. As I told he lost his arm to a courtesan's charms because he was too trusting, too much of a slacker, and too carefree. He trusted everything people told him, he believed that I was a war orphan and took me under his wing, even when a village ninja recognized me he assumed that the ninja was lying, even when he found my ninja license he thought it was fake... Yet there was something, something in Iwagakure that also moved near Shukuba town a little past Roiyaru road that intimidated him, that made him lose his cool and carefree approach" Shimo answered looking a bit scared himself by his sensei's intimidation.</p><p>"That's odd, you think whatever Hachiro-san was afraid of and the security threat could be related?" Mana asked her troubled friend.</p><p>"I believe it to be one and the same, whatever made this Honda brat disappear, whatever left his mother in a pitiful state barely alive... It has to be what Hachiro-sensei was fearing, he was so full of it in his pants that we got stuck close to a ninja village because Hachiro was afraid to move past Tanzaku town"</p><p>"Well, now you're making me feel all warm inside..." Meiko chuckled in excitement and slowed down to match the speed of her team before she disappeared leaving them behind.</p><p>"I don't know what you know, Mana-chan, but you are wise to wish to be careful here, I believe you may be right when you ask us to move slowly and carefully before we move past Shukuba" Shimo looked at her with a comforting look.</p><p>Mana turned her eyes away because she basically lied to him, she felt embarrassed about not being able to admit her weakness but it was just how it was. "Well... I mean... I'm sorry but moving at this pace we will only reach Shukuba late at night, we may not get a room that late..."</p><p>"It's fine, Mana-chan, reaching it later is better than having whatever happened to that child happen to us, if we don't get a room I'll build you a hammock myself..." Shimo nodded his face still not dropping his serious expression. He genuinely believed that Mana may have been worried about the security threat instead of being completely unable to move at the pace of a ninja.</p><p>"You seem to be quite intimidated by that whatever it is yourself, Shimo..." Meiko curiously inquired with a little hint of sly poking around and offense intended to be taken.</p><p>"I believe that whatever may have intimidated Hachiro-sensei is worth being careful of..." the Yuki shrugged.</p><p>The three continued to run around the ground levels of the forest which the magician was thankful for since she didn't feel confident in her ability to dash around the upper level and running on the trees as most ninja did. Finally, the sun set. Catching the four unprepared and forcing them to slow their pace down even more before they managed to even reach Roiyaru road.</p><p>"Shit... This might be a sleepless night cause of me..." Mana started feeling worse and worse about her lie now, her eyes started to wander off from what was in front of her and Shimo had to interrupt her by dashing to the side and tackling the girl before she hit a tree.</p><p>"Careful, you dolt..." he smiled carrying Mana around on his shoulders before stopping to put her down.</p><p>After they kept on going and Shimo slowed down even more, most likely because whatever must've lurked in this road intimidated him that much, Kouta closed in on Mana and whispered something close to her so that only she could hear.</p><p>"Say, Mana-san... Are you and Shimo... Well, you know..." he tried to form a question in a way that wouldn't have sounded rude. Mana smiled.</p><p>"We're longtime friends, you could probably say that Shimo is one of my best friends..." she replied to his question, Mana felt like she knew which direction the boy was taking the question but she didn't want to reply to it that way because if he didn't mean it she'd have literally burnt up from shame. An ominous response may have been the best one there could've been in that situation.</p><p>"Oh, I see... It's just you two look pretty close and he doesn't hesitate to push you around or talk weird to you and... I just wanted to know..." Kouta shook his hands wildly and moved back.</p><p>Mana smiled, even if due to the pitch-black darkness around them the boy probably couldn't see it clearly.</p><p>"It's fine. You're new to the team so you didn't know..." she replied.</p><p>"Yeah... Exactly..." the medical ninja nodded erratically.</p>
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<a name="section0114"><h2>114. The Unexpected Encounter Of The Family Kind</h2></a>
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    <p>The never-ending tree line around the small forest path that the quartet was still moving on kept on monotonously moving by as the four ran forward. The night had caught them unprepared and they were already supposed to have reached Shukuba town – a small pleasure town at the end of Roiyaru road. It was well known to thrive serving as a pit stop of sorts for ninja passing by and was a nice halfway stop for shinobi heading outside the Fire Country.</p><p>"Say, Meiko-san, your armor makes some noise and doesn't look too comfortable, aren't you worried about that in battles? I mean most ninja sort of dress more casually to blend into the crowds and have relative comfortability while sneaking around, an armor protects you when in battle but fighting face-to-face isn't what ninja are all about..." Kouta asked out of the blue.</p><p>"If we didn't have to worry about fighting we wouldn't really need you" Meiko replied, her tone didn't suggest that it was supposed to be taken as something offensive but Kouta did look a bit knocked down a peg.</p><p>"I think it isn't about fighting, Kouta" Shimo butt himself into the conversation, slightly picking up the speed to catch up to the two who were leading the squad by a couple of feet.</p><p>"I remember Meiko from the Academy, I was a little interested in her back in the Academy since she always failed her genjutsu and ninjutsu assignments but kept working hard even when she completely blew everything. During the exam, her clone looked like an asthmatic bald granny and she never even managed to use a simple disorientation genjutsu throughout the whole course. What Meiko is doing with this armor and her focus on weaponry which she clearly telegraphs to everyone looking at her is finding her own identity and sticking to it. That is worth a lot of respect. Despite that, I must admit I was surprised to hear you graduated the Academy the same year" the Yuki added.</p><p>"I almost didn't, that asthmatic bald granny of a clone just barely flung me over the minimum grade..." Meiko admitted, judging from her tone and her facial expression her shortcomings weren't a topic she liked discussing too much.</p><p>"I don't know, I kind of like what Meiko is doing. She loved blacksmithing outside her missions so she found a way to incorporate it into her main job. Not many people can do that, it's tough to balance several parts of one's personality and combine two seemingly different things like that. Ninjutsu and genjutsu can always be sharpened later..." Mana gently smiled at Meiko who looked back at her, looking at the magician with surprise. It must've been not so often that she was commended for something.</p><p>Mana felt like there must've been so much in common between her and Meiko. Obviously, ninjutsu and genjutsu were areas where Mana passed with flying colors and as far as her illusions were concerned could've tutored her Academy teachers a thing or two as it was not a very popular and researched subject. It was only due to her average intelligence test and slightly below average physical and accuracy exams that her overall grade dropped down from remarkable to average.</p><p>Still, Mana was commonly scolded for far too many things, in a similar manner to Meiko. Whereas Meiko was made fun of for not living up to her awesome Kirikuzu potential and outright denying it by changing her last name, Mana was commonly made fun of in the Academy because of lack of any special bloodline at all. She was never meant for great things, she was just a grey filler material in an army of special prodigies. Someone to fill up the statistic and that was why she felt so similar and soul-mated with Meiko. It was like the two were always meant to be friends.</p><p>"Well, obviously you'd like that..." Shimo started his reply but then stopped and got dead silent, he looked back and dashed on top of a tree with blurring speed, Mana could barely even see his movements with her perfectly normal eyes. The swordsman dashed up to a strong enough branch to hold him on it yet slim enough for his liking and placed his ear onto it.</p><p>"Shit! Someone's coming, hide, now!" he tried to combine sound and whispering with his alert. Mana's reaction time was good, she dashed to the side almost instantly but her teammates simply disappeared from her sight. They were holding back the whole time and now they were not and they didn't know that Mana wasn't able to move at the speed they were able to. Right before she reached the bush to dive behind to hide and powerful frame of a bulky man blocked her path – the man was so fast that he simply appeared right in front of her and Mana bumped into his chest falling on her butt in the process having been pushed back.</p><p>"Well well, I never thought to see you here. What are you doing here, girl? I remember you asking for my son's help on something but I didn't think it'd involve straying so far from the village" Kouta's father – Kusagoro asked. Not too long after he blocked Mana's path three other ninja appeared out of the forest and surrounded the girl.</p><p>Kusagoro changed out of his ninja uniform after the brief fight with Shimo, his headband protector lacked a village insignia and he wore a simple grey vest similar to that of most mercenaries. One that was cheap and filled with small interconnected chain rings that were able to protect one from most simple ninja tools. His hair was much messier than before and his face appeared much more ruthless.</p><p>"Perhaps the young lady embarked on a mission-related adventure as per Hokage's request?" a middle-aged woman behind Kusagoro with a butler-like uniform topped with the mercenary vest where her formal vest would've been wondered. Her hair was quite long for an experienced ninja and tied behind her back right at the end with a blood-red ribbon. The woman's nightly dark hair and her silver pupils lacking any irises suggested that she was a Hyuuga possessing one of the most majestic bloodlines in the village – the Byakugan.</p><p>"I'm not. I'm not even a ninja anymore, I'm just touring the world, I'm a stage magician in case you don't know... Hokage-sama canceled the mission shortly after the fight and suspended all of our licenses" Mana replied quickly and tried to be direct about her response while trying to learn how to lie on the spot. She could under no circumstance just share her objective with a man who had his license suspended and could've wished to claim the box for his own gains, he was a potential danger to her mission objective.</p><p>Another incredibly tall male pressed a strange device on his eye, it looked like the whole left side of his face was replaced with this cybernetic eye, similar to the sort of technology Hachi, the cybernetic mercenary used in her last mission.</p><p>"Well then are you aware of the three ninja of below-average chakra signature following you in close vicinity?" he rumbled out. His voice was the rock bottom of low and husky voices yet somehow quite matching the man's bulky and masculine frame. His body build was well trained and he wore a sleeved version of the mercenary body armor with what appeared to be steel shoulder plates. Despite his quite hunky build, his face looked like it has tanked its fair share of bricks though. He had so much of his face busted up and lazily patched up that it looked like he fell from the sky and the pavement with his face.</p><p>"No, I was not aware of that..." Mana replied, even she felt the hesitation and fear in her voice. She had to keep calm, she had to make them believe it. If she lied to them there was no telling what they could do. Kusagoro was a battle-hungry maniac and he had no more village authority to answer to. If he killed them all right there and made them disappear and said to the Fifth that he knew nothing about it she'd have nothing to pin on them.</p><p>A darker-skinned individual looking quite sly yet a little charming snuck up to Mana to the distance where he wasn't very comfortable to see. He pretty much rubbed himself against Mana and it freaked her out.</p><p>"Well then, little cherry blossom, it is safe to say that our merry company saved your life, it isn't safe for a performer to travel around the country with no ninja escorts, what do you think about that?" as the man was talking Mana carefully and slowly took a couple of steps back, he smelled of cheap perfume and was a good couple of years past his prime and his weird long and curly mustache made him look almost hilarious. A roach ran down the man's face, getting out from his hair spiked up with cheap hairspray and down under the collar of his coat. Mana gulped and tried to keep herself from throwing up.</p><p>"I would strongly veto such an irresponsible decision, it appears that you are once again lead by your desire to be a gentleman" the butler Hyuuga lady crossed her arms on her chest and squinted angrily at her comrade.</p><p>"I wouldn't mind that if that means blasting those bastards in the forest to Kingdom Come!" the bulky man roared out placing his oversized hand onto Kusagoro's shoulder as if trying to appeal to the man.</p><p>"No..." he closed his eyes and smiled a little, "I was just granted a vacation, I have no desire to take up responsibility again... However..." his fist shot forward faster than a shotgun shell right into Mana's gut almost turning the girl off. Mana felt her own blood shooting out from her stomach – she couldn't have augmented her body because her chakra manipulation was gone, she just took that punch. As her mind lingered between this world and the other, between awareness and eternal serenity her falling body was caught by the jounin and lifted up.</p><p>"Hmmm... I pulled my punch as much as I could and yet she didn't offer resistance... Either she's a suicidal follower of her little lie or she's telling the truth..." his grip let go letting Mana's struggling to stay alive and shocked by the overwhelming pain body fall to the ground as he placed his foot on top of her head.</p><p>"Now listen to me you three little fuckers in those woods! Either you come out here and tell me what the fuck you're doing with your lives, as I feel that I could be quite interested in that, or I'll pop this kid's head like a fucking grape!" Kusagoro roared out so that he may have been heard all the way in Shukuba. The man kept on standing, looking around and waiting but nothing happened. No one came out.</p><p>"Come on, squish her and let's go, we're late to get to Shukuba as it is because Gokibure had to romance those dancers..." the large one grunted angrily watching at Mana's lifeless body with excitement.</p><p>"Oh my, squishing someone's head is so unsanitary and uncivilized... Just like you to kill someone this way, Kusagoro, you're such a brute..." the Hyuuga lady complained out loud "Just let me close a couple of her vital chakra nodes and I can do it like a truly refined killer would..." she added lifting her palm in a striking position.</p><p>"Killing young ladies before they get a chance to mature into gorgeous young women to keep me company... That is always a sad sight to see..." the mustache packing dark-skinned roach man looked like he was about to cry, he even stroke out a fake tear.</p><p>"Shut up, Gokibure, you've never had a lady near you for more than five seconds, your stupid roaches creep everyone out!" the large gentleman yelled out grabbing his comrade by his coat and lifting him up into the air. One of his eyes squinted while the other shot out to nearly comical extents. "Every time I see a roach run down from your hair or nose I wish to sacrifice you to Lord Jashin then and there!" he grunted angrily.</p><p>Mana's silent moaning stopped as Kusagoro removed the foot off of her head and relieved the extremely painful pressure he applied to it.</p><p>"Hmph... Still can't tell if they called my bluff or if they're really just nasty murderers looking to kidnap a performer for ransom" the man scratched the back of his neck.</p><p>"My my, is this mercy I see from you Kusagoro? Serving the village made you quite soft inside... Or maybe it's that nurse wench in Konoha that made you like this?" the Hyuuga lady tried to psyche her comrade out.</p><p>"As much as I don't like this girl because she derails my son's training and keeps him in his stupid medical line of work instead of becoming a mercenary or a Black Ops killer like his old man... I can't kill her either. She's a bother but I need her because if she dies my son may never follow my footsteps and if he finds out I was the one who did it he'll go the opposite way on purpose". Kusagoro swiped a lazy backhand smack to the side breaking a tree in half in his irritation.</p><p>The tree fell right on top of the man but broke again where it contacted his head. In a sheer rage, the man grabbed the main log of the tree and tore it to bits with his sheer hands leaving just small wood chips from the peeling pressure behind.</p><p>"Let's go, I know where we can get answers, something that gate guard said gave me an idea" Kusaguro ordered and soon the four disappeared.</p><p>Shimo and Kouta dashed out after a couple of minutes, the Yuki carried unconscious Meiko on his shoulder. The medical ninja examined Mana and took her on his starting to move, encouraging Shimo to follow.</p><p>"How is she?" the swordsman asked.</p><p>"She'll live until we can find a room to heal her in. She's in critical condition but this place isn't safe to settle down and heal her" Kouta grunted angrily, his eyes were completely different from the shy and goofy young man he was, this Kouta was determined and serious. He was decisive and he looked like he'd do whatever was needed to take care of his team.</p><p>Mana's eyes opened slightly, looking right into those determined balls of light Kouta called eyes, he was moving so fast, leaving nothing behind. It looked like he would fight his father just to get that room. The medical ninja looked down and his eyes met Mana's, he smiled gently and moved some of her wild hair out of the way.</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana-chan, just relax and rest, this is why you took me with you, isn't it? Let me do my job" Kouta assured the girl, Mana closed her eyes, subconsciously moving her tired head closer to the boy's chest and passing out.</p><p>"Why didn't she block that attack properly!? She should've given us away, just how far is she willing to go for such a low ranked mission?" Kouta kept on talking to himself as the large classical houses of Shukuba town and the small gate separating it from the Roiyaru road appeared in sight just past the tree line the two boys were moving in.</p><p>"Because she couldn't... Now it all makes sense: why Mana-chan was just a client, why she purposefully missed those medical check-ups and why her license was suspended, why she couldn't keep up with us, and why she couldn't hide in time – Mana-chan lost her chakra manipulation ability completely somehow. Must've been in this last mission she spoke of." Shimo huffed out doing his best to keep up with Kouta's determination and his full speed.</p><p>"What you did to Meiko-san was quite ruthless, Shimo. Knocking an ally out cold from behind..." Kouta glanced back with an angry stare.</p><p>"She'd have given us away, she was about to dash right out to Mana-chan's aid, something had to be done. Those bastards would've killed all of us and made it look like an accident and then proceeded with our mission. If they'd have found the box they'd have kept it for themselves. They'd have tortured us before we'd have given them the information on our mission which they wanted" the Yuki explained looking at the unconscious armored teammate on his shoulder.</p><p>"Father wouldn't have gotten a thing out of me, I think Mana-chan proved that she wouldn't have said anything either, Meiko-san doesn't quite understand enough about it to say anything too useful, she just looks like she's along for the ride. That only leaves you, Shimo... Afraid of a little pain?" Kouta kept on quarreling with his friend as the two dashed into the little pleasure town desperately looking for a room.</p><p>"I'd have told everything the moment they threatened Mana-chan or Meiko-chan, I've got a feeling you'd have done the same with any of us being at the other end... You don't even know how potent torturers work, you may just be more naïve than Mana-chan" Shimo folded.</p><p>Kouta didn't even reply anything, his face revealed the truth, however, just the fact that the quarrel was ended so fast with that last observation said enough. Kouta would've led his father to the box himself just to save Mana from having to suffer any more. She was so stupid, why didn't she tell them that she was unable to mold chakra? It made no sense... Unless...</p><p>"Shimo, why do you think Mana-chan didn't tell us?" the medical ninja rammed a wooden door of a small inn with his shoulder.</p><p>The innkeeper instantly tried to raise noise, to him two ninja bursting into the inn with two unconscious girls looked either suspicious or requiring instant medical attention. He tried to suggest the local clinic instead of his inn but Kouta would've had none of it. The innkeeper went out to see if he still had any rooms left.</p><p>"One thing trying to be a gentleman all my life has taught me... I would never understand women, why do you think I changed my nindo from making sure that all ladies around me were happy to becoming Hokage so that I could protect the weak from the wicked, it's a much more achievable dream..."</p><p>After the innkeeper returned, the two rushed into the room for four. Since Shukuba was a pleasure town for the passing-by ninja, they had plenty of rooms for four. Since most ninja traveled in squads of four, even the genin worked in teams of a jounin mentor and three genin so it fit perfectly. Right after locking the door behind them Kouta slammed Mana's lifeless body onto the bed and lifted her clothes examining her injury – the entire lower part of her abdomen was black, blue, and purple with large red circles around it.</p><p>"Shit, I need to start treatment right now, father was so close to shoving his arm right through her... She'd have bled out on the spot" Kouta mumbled to himself as he placed his hands on the girl's stomach and emerald light started illuminating the dim room.</p><p>Shimo carefully placed Meiko on a bed and covered her up, he did feel a bit bad for what he did to her but that was the only way. This girl was just so loyal and ready to leap to help her friend out despite only knowing her for a couple of months... Mana may have messed up a lot of things all the time but she pulled friendship with this young lady just fine...</p><p>"Your father... I want to kill him but I must admit I lack the strength to do it" Shimo declared.</p><p>"Please don't think my father is a monster of some kind. He is quite brutal but he grew up outside the village walls. He only became a ninja in his late teen years. He acts following his killer's instinct and he doesn't understand the social skills that the village ninja who grew up in safety know..."</p><p>"His care for you is the only reason why I won't kill him. He kept Mana-chan alive because he cares about you and knows you like her, you are his connection to humanity, and because he still has that I'll keep him alive but... One day... I'll kick his ass really hard!" Shimo grunted out raising his fist into the sky.</p><p>"I... Don't... Like... Mana-chan..." Kouta leaned up closer to act like he was examining Mana's injury to hide his face.</p><p>Shimo laughed off and sat on his bed watching Meiko. He knocked her out cold from behind, he was responsible to make sure she woke up and had some rest after that. Maybe he'll slip into slumber soon watching her but he owed her all that he could do for her for the time being.</p><p>All that remained now was to wait for the morning...</p>
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<a name="section0115"><h2>115. Cooldown Period</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Light seeped into Mana's eyes with moderation as the magician finally opened her eyes the other morning. As the girl carefully and slowly sat up, surprisingly feeling very little pain, more like a minor irritation in her gut that was burning so overwhelmingly the last night that it made the magician desire the most unfortunate outcome for however long it lasted. It was the most painful night in her memory, being passed out yet overwhelmed by pain, she could remember very little of her last night's agony.</p><p>It appeared that her comrades could remember very little as well. Shimo was doing his best not to fall asleep sitting on the edge of his bed staring at Meiko who was just carelessly humming a tune silently looking at the ceiling, Kouta on the other hand looked quite dead making Mana sit up and reach over him, after feeling the air move in and out under the boy's nose Mana was calmed that he was only tired and resting.</p><p>"Good... Whatever it is. How does it feel to be back to the realm of the living? Kouta said you were on the line a couple of times last night..." Meiko grinned as if she was telling a joke. Mana was not particularly mad for the girl's lack of understanding of the severity of that situation, in this world, lethal injuries could've been taken away with a careless wave of a hand, depending on the waver's skill, obviously. Kouta was not quite yet tangling with the best of the hand wavers so he may have taken the whole night to heal the magician, still, he did heal her for which she owed the boy her life.</p><p>"It's becoming a tradition, sadly, as well as losing someone or something after I wake up making me wonder if waking up is even worth it in the process" Mana grunted out rubbing her eyes. Strangely enough, she was feeling really tired and sleepy despite being treated while only being somewhat conscious. It wasn't like she could've been blamed, the pain inside of her and the fever which was raging the whole night made sleeping impossible so she got as little actual rest as her team.</p><p>"Maybe if you let us know of your condition this wouldn't have happened..." Shimo carelessly threw an offensive remark at Mana, at least he meant for it to be taken like that which was implied by his manner of speech.</p><p>Mana's eyes sunk down to the ground, there it was again, waking up back to life giving her something to regret waking up for, last time it was loss of her identity, half of her whole life was torn out from her with an iron grip leaving a giant bleeding gash of emotion and regret inside. Now it very well may have been the loss of her friend. Another one, anyways...</p><p>"I'm... Sorry..." Mana mumbled out, she wanted to yell out her reasons for why she didn't tell them anything but now that they knew... She still couldn't. Even when she knew that they knew everything it was still too painful to talk about that for her.</p><p>"Sorry? Kouta said it was like a miniature explosive tag detonated inside your gut, you had the contents of your stomach spilling inside of you infecting you and raising your body temperature to the point where it threatened to fry your brain in your own boiling blood. I think recklessness like this sort of surpasses what a "sorry" can fix" Shimo looked proper pissed off and he had all the reasons to be like that. He was angry at Mana and he had pretty much no sleep at all.</p><p>"Meiko is probably quite angry at you too, I had to knock her out because she almost leaped to your aid out there. All because you didn't tell us everything there was to know about the person we were supposed to bodyguard..." Shimo looked at Meiko encouraging her to yell her feelings out.</p><p>"I'm actually pretty mad but... I'm not that good with words so I don't think I can express myself properly. What makes me even angrier is that I can't punch you either without killing you now... Expect some jabs once you're back to shape!" Meiko replied almost like she was happy and excited. This young lady was so kind and warm inside that she didn't even understand what it felt to be angry. She didn't know that feeling before she met Mana... That was one of the notes for the "FML" notebook in Mana's drawer of her own psyche.</p><p>"I know I let all of you down, I'll understand if you choose to head home right now. You've got no more reasons to trust me anymore and, without trust in the person you must protect, there's no way you can travel to the other end of the planet for a box that may not even be there at all." Mana uttered letting all of her inner anger and sadness take over.</p><p>"It's not even all that you need to know, there's another thing I lied about..." Mana opened her mouth feeling Meiko's hand on the collar of her shirt lifting her up.</p><p>"The main reason for me planning this mission was because I saw the love and excitement that Meiko had for legendary objects, I wanted to pay her back by letting her leave on an adventure and by letting her actually hold an item of legends in her own hands but... After this adventure I planned to use the Box of Ultimate Bliss to restore my chakra manipulation, this mission was doomed to fail from the start." Mana spilled the truth. She closed her eyes fully prepared to have her head blown off by Meiko's fist of fury.</p><p>Instead, she felt the armored kunoichi's arms wrapping around her. Shimo smiled looking down, it wasn't a cruel smile but one that a friend has when they realized that a friend of theirs pulled a friendly prank on them.</p><p>"You should've told us!" Meiko shouted out to the point where the rotten wood of the walls of the inn started to shake. "You should've told us, you dummybutt! None of us give a crap about that box anyway, you're our friend, Mana, just knowing that you need something is enough for us to follow you to the edge of the Earth."</p><p>"I couldn't tell you guys because... It hurts too much. I thought I got over it in those couple of months. When I was just working on my magic shows and just living my life like a normal person who couldn't spit fire and create illusions with just a look... When we left I suddenly realized that I didn't get over it, that I just hid it so deep inside that it grew like a tumor and that now it had grown hooks and spikes and trying to pull it out just hurts too much."</p><p>Shimo's eyes slipped down as he examined a little bug running the whole distance from one end of the room to the other before almost bursting into laughter. "It's because of things like this that I chose to become the Hokage instead of trying to grant women around me happiness. Still, I must say I kind of feel you, if someone ripped a part of me out and expected me to deal with it like it was nothing... I'd be as crazy as you too. I'm with you till the end, just promise you won't pick a fight like that again until you get your thing back".</p><p>Mana's sad eyes closed and her head slowly nodded. She was too hurt and too tired to even promise something like that out loud. Meiko let go of Mana and slipped out of her armor tossing it aside and sitting by it to check up on it. "So it's set then, we'll find that stupid box, no matter if it's not where Mana thinks it is, we'll keep on looking until we find it and we'll restore Mana's chakra! That's just the kind of adventure I looked forward to taking part in one day!" she yelled out with excitement.</p><p>Kouta's head lazily rose off the pillow looking at his teammates talking. "What's going on?" he asked.</p><p>"Nothing much, we're just forgiving Mana for not telling us she lost her chakra control and that we're following her to the ends of the Earth to find that blasted box," Shimo informed the sleepy medical ninja who flipped on another side and closed his eyes to sleep again.</p><p>"Definitely!" he shouted out before his breathing once again became peaceful and calm. Letting his friends know that he went back to his peaceful rest.</p><p>"Well then, seeing how you can't do what you normally do, we need to teach you how to fight properly..." Meiko decided after tightening a loosened belt that could have resulted in her armor just falling apart in the heat of battle. Her design must've still been a bit clunky but it was still beyond impressive for her age. Even old and experienced blacksmiths couldn't design a perfect suit of armor and while Meiko's was far from perfect it was quite impressive nonetheless.</p><p>"I know how to fight, I passed the taijutsu class in Academy...Barely" Mana tried to object but she knew deep inside that Meiko was right. The magician just didn't want to feel any more of a burden. She didn't want to keep her team back, she didn't want her team to get in trouble because of her or take too long barricaded in an inn instead of moving towards their objective.</p><p>"Just punching or blocking won't be enough. Your perception is crushed by the loss of your manipulation. Your agility was nothing to write home about even when you had it. If your Academy grades are to be believed... You need to learn a temporary style of your own. Your punches and kicks will only break your own arms and legs now, you lack brute force and speed, also the skill. It's nothing to fret over, knowing what you are hopeless at lets you focus on another department – redirection".</p><p>Shimo looked at Meiko impressed, "You know, you kind of sound pretty genius when you're talking about fighting... I'm kind of impressed and starting to get a little bit scared".</p><p>"You should see her talking about weapons and blacksmithing..." Mana smiled politely making Meiko blush and get angry. Mana knew that anger, that playful rage one felt when they've been scolded and brought down their whole life and then getting complimented on something.</p><p>"I'm smart you idiots! I just choose to be smart at very specific things! We'll start teaching you to redirect blows and focusing on using your opponent's overwhelming strength against them once I'm done maintaining my armor. It's not a tough style to pick up, I've seen some civilians being trained in it, and quite a number of mercs who commonly fight ninja everyday use it. If some bonehead mercenary can learn it, you'll pick up on it quickly".</p><p>"We don't have much time, we don't have that much money left, less than a couple of weeks actually. If we spend it all here we'll have to sleep in the woods and the desert once we reach our objective. Mastering a fighting style will take many months..." Shimo hissed out annoyed. He must've known a thing or two about mastering fighting styles. Mana also didn't feel as skilled at physical combat as Meiko or Shimo so she would probably take whole years to learn something like that...</p><p>"That's why I'll only give Mana the basics, she'll train up on them on the road. We will take a week or two but it'll be worth it. Even if we find no box and have to move to another location Mana will be able to protect herself from at least the most basic or just underestimating and cocky threats..." Meiko explained.</p><p>Mana sat down and stretched out on her bed. She felt so tired and powerless without her chakra manipulation, would she actually be able to pull something like that off?</p><p>"Alright, I'll do my best, Meiko-sensei..." she said playfully.</p><p>"Keep pushing it, young lady, see what happens!" Meiko growled at her angrily still trying to patch up a small hole in her leather vest.</p><hr/><p>Meanwhile, farther to the west, an outpost of ninja was at the peak of its awareness. Chuunin were trying to pick up the smallest hints of the infamous kidnapper of people who were active some time ago. There were just so few clues to work with! All the victims were completely random, some of them were just civilians, some of them were actually ninja of varied ranks, some of them were men, some of them were women, there were both adults and children in their midst.</p><p>It was only ironic that what troubled these ninja the most would not be what attacked their little outpost. Finally, after six hours of watch duty the shift of the outpost watch shifted, the tired guards went inside and new guards took their place, the eight guards quickly split with two dashing off to protect each entrance and watching each possible side, each of them had a small road to observe as well to protect the caravans and civilians and all the moving ninja from the unidentified mysterious kidnapper.</p><p>They didn't want another little Honda incident on their hands... The civilians were already badmouthing the Hokage and the ninja enough as it was, they felt like for people able to move faster than an eye could track or striking with the power to blow up a mountain the ninja weren't doing enough to ensure their safety...</p><p>"Did you read that last report? About those brats looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss?" one guard tried to start a conversation.</p><p>"Yeah, they always give those dumb "find something everyone knows doesn't exist" missions to kids, they never find anything though. Imagine if you found it, what would you do with it?" the other replied.</p><p>"I dunno, maybe ask for a promotion? I'm sick of playing watch duty, I went out on years of dishwashing missions for this? This is stupid"!</p><p>"Seriously, you wouldn't want your ex-wife to come back?" The second one tried to bite his friend a little.</p><p>"Dude, like if I had an ultimate wish-fulfillment device, I would ask for a million things but my ex-wife... I could marry Lady Hokage herself with something like that!" The first one laughed out.</p><p>As the second one laughed together with his friend he saw his friend's head and half of what's below burst in a combination of blood and guts all over his face. The eyes of the poor guard opened wide as shock and fear took over, behind what used to be his friend's head stood a tall red-haired man with a mercenary vest and a headband of a nameless village.</p><p>A painful pinch took the shocked guard out, he was alive but felt overwhelming pain in the nerves of his spine. As he fell lifeless on the floor he saw his assailant – a strangely formally dressed Hyuuga woman, she must've pinched one of his chakra points and paralyzed him. The guard was sure that if he wasn't paralyzed and unable to feel anything he'd feel himself pissing in his own pants. That man... He was a Konohagakure jounin, one of the best... A Konoha jounin blew half of his friend up with just a punch!</p><p>"Hmmm, unrefined and brutal as usual, Kusagoro..." the Hyuuga woman whispered.</p><p>The punch of the red-haired Konohagakure jounin aiming for his crippled back was the final thing that the guard saw. Since he was completely paralyzed, he felt nothing at all.</p><p>"Hmph, I pulled my punch... I wanted to interrogate the guy but he blew up like a water balloon..." Kusagoro quietly cursed.</p><p>"That tends to happen when you hit someone with that much force, you need to learn control, what if you killed that girl your boy liked back then?" The Hyuuga woman scolded him again. Right then her eyes fell onto the blood all over the walls of the outpost entrance. She dashed right up to the wall, stroking the blood and reaching up to lick the leftovers before making a disgusted expression and shaking the blood off of her white tainted gloves.</p><p>"Let's move! Let's meet in the main room, where they keep all the files, I need to read up on what this girl was doing. She was too secretive for it to be nothing interesting and I need a worthy adventure to entertain me before I return to active duty." Kusagoro barked out his orders and his team disappeared right after the last word was said, each one found an alternative point of entry, infiltrating the facility silently and easily.</p><p>It was never built to withstand a high-level siege or to fend off a skilled infiltration effort, it was just a pile of bricks put up for the show so that the people saw the Hokage making an effort to stop that strange kidnapping maniac who was working locally.</p><hr/><p>A young woman was working the cameras in the main room, she was alarmed by the loss of feed from one of the observation points right before the shift changed. She was trying to contact someone, but she heard sounds of combat, shouts, and screams, to send a pigeon she'd have needed to leave the room. She'd expose herself to the attackers and leave all these files that were most likely the target unprotected – it was her duty to see to it that they didn't fall into the wrong hands. But who on Earth would attack them? Who of such a skill level would be interested in encrypted mission objective files? They'd need to know the Konoha code of encryption and their reward for this difficult puzzle would be a bunch of gardening and local bandit band bullying missions.</p><p>The woman removed a kunai and pulled her short blade, given to her after graduating in the last Chuunin Exams, and trembled as she saw the sealed door getting blown out with a shoulder ram. A loud explosion echoed as the seals on the door were activated, the kunoichi guarding the files managed to hide behind the panels and monitors. As she peeked her head out she noticed an armored man, completely unharmed by the combined force of at least fifteen explosive kunai devices, who reminded more of a mechanical monster than he did a man.</p><p>He wore a strange combination of armor plates that looked rusted and ancient, he had no visible head as one of the plates simply wrapped around where his head was supposed to be making it look like the armor had no head, instead a powerful red glowing orb suggested where the man's face was receiving sensory input from. He barely even fit through the door, the woman leaped out and charged at the man as he de-armored to enter the room. As the heavy plates hit the floor they let out loud thuds that would've intimidated most opponents.</p><p>She was fast, landing an easy tag on the man's chest and cutting right into one of his muscles through his mercenary vest with her tanto blade, she tried a secondary swipe with her kunai but it was caught by the man and using her own momentum he redirected it right to her own shoulder before tossing the woman aside and clenching her weapon tagged with her own blood. The man licked the blood off of the kunai, the kunoichi growled and shouted in anger, pain, and frustration. She moved her shoulder-length dark hair with a single pink strand out of her way, they were obstructing her vision, and with all of her might, she tossed the tanto straight into the man's heart.</p><hr/><p>Fifteen minutes later, the rest of Kusagoro's squad gathered themselves into the room. The gruesome sight that greeted their eyes was their comrade stuck to the wall by a short blade stuck in his chest and at least forty-six more kunai all over his body. On the other side of the room a slender young chuunin laid dead with forty-seven bleeding injuries all over her body, all of them inflicted without damaging her chuunin vest, her white shirt which she wore under the chuunin vest was all soaked in blood.</p><p>"Goddang it, Mardith, I told you we've got no time for your stupid rituals in infiltration missions!" Kusagoro growled and let his friend drink something from his ninja pouch, the strange gooey purple liquid seemed to reanimate his recently deceased friend making him grunt almost pleasantly. As if he was enjoying the pain, as he pulled all the blades and daggers out of his body and fell down the wall.</p><p>"It's not like you needed it, we saw plenty of heads busted by your armor all over the place, you did it just for the fun of it!" the man called Gokibure in Kusagoro's squad complained.</p><p>As Kusagoro carefully carried the gruesomely killed woman onto a bench and placed her there for a possibility of a proper burial which not all of the ninja stationed there would get he started running down the records of the recently received mission objectives. While he was doing it the Hyuuga woman crept up to the deceased body and picked it off the floor opening her mouth and reaching up to bite the woman's face off before shaking her head in disgust and dropping her.</p><p>"I never got your strange preferences, Remashi, I thought you told us you're a cannibal..." Gokibure spun his mustache playfully observing the mess they've caused by attacking this facility.</p><p>"Yeah, but I also feel really sorry for the people we kill, I was born with too powerful of a sense of empathy so I can never actually go through with it..." the woman whined almost bursting into tears.</p><p>Kusagoro smiled and slammed a large scroll back into the box, locking it and placing the same simple sealing technique. He turned around and fixed his damaged wristband that was still a little blazing from the fire technique he was almost caught unprepared by during the battle. Putting out the small tongue of flames the man laughed out loud and started slowly walking towards the exit from the facility.</p><p>"Our next target is... The ruins of an old palace in the Wind Country, the little lying brat is after something called B.U.B. her secrecy only makes me more excited!" the man couldn't contain his excitement. He was no monster, he'd have much rather not have killed all these people just to get his next destination but that was what he had to do. He was bored and now the village refused to give him more missions to fight to his heart content, he needed something to do or he'd go insane, and obtaining this B.U.B. was the next best thing!</p><p>"Don't you think they'll know we did this? I mean blowing people up with a punch is sort of your signature mess-up isn't it?" the large hulking man named Mardith complained, he just wanted an excuse to use his large hulking suit of armor to blow this whole place up leaving no trace it was ever here, to begin with.</p><p>"Shut up, Mardith! I told you I was pulling my punch! It's not as easy as it looks! There's no use staying here or doing anything with this place, didn't you hear? There's a security threat roaming around these parts, they'll just pin it on that maniac or whatever and they'll be done with it. No one will wink twice about a bunch of amateur ninja dying in a place with an unknown threat on the loose... Now let's move out, we don't know how much ahead this brat is and we need to catch up!"</p><p>The squad of four war veterans bonded by their common participation in countless battles, all of them recruited by Konoha for their ruthlessness and their reputation growing up like rogues and mercenaries, kept around just because of solidarity after the war was over. All four of this squad of warriors set out for the Wind Desert, without knowing yet that they are looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss</p>
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<a name="section0116"><h2>116. Redirection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko punched her own palm from excitement. For some reason, this training session seemed to excite her. Maybe it was just most things that the blacksmith saw in her life. Sometimes she looked like a little ball of hype, she did have a sensitive and a little sad part of her deep inside but she rarely ever let that part shine through. The part filled with a lack of confidence in her ability, having been dropped out from several teams and barely managing to graduate from the Academy by the skin of the teeth was irrelevant. Neither was the part filled with disappointment for her inability to control her chakra properly.</p><p>"So, I think in the beginning it'd be best if I showed you some basic redirection moves. From what I remember in the Academy you preferred a quick and always moving and striking style, differently from everyone you used your palms instead of fists" Meiko started the mentoring, Mana still felt hesitant that she needed these lessons but the blacksmith was a superior physical combatant with a decent knowledge of taijutsu even if she didn't focus on it.</p><p>"Yeah... The knucklebones are weak, they break easily also the palm isn't as likely to kill your opponent since they inflict less direct damage but they still knock one off their feet and can break bones with enough chakra focus. Recently I switched to a kick-focused style though" Mana nodded, despite her lack of interest in this training she figured that being honest was the least she could've done.</p><p>"Well, neither of those will do. You're simply not quick enough without your chakra manipulation to utilize your movement properly" Meiko's body disappeared from Mana's line of sight, the magician turned behind her knowing the blacksmith's intent well. With a cruel grin, Meiko was standing right behind Mana. It was like the magician was living in a world with a lagging view of it, one moment Meiko was there, the next one she was behind her...</p><p>"Even when ninja don't put much effort into it at all, they can strike and kick ten or twenty times per second, they can move at speeds completely untraceable by normal people. You could train your entire life and you'd never tag a ninja"</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and sighed. "Unless you're a samurai or a mercenary..."</p><p>"That's different" Meiko nodded, "Most samurai use chakra, they just call it "Ken-ki" those that do not never rise above the peak human limit, they fight with pure technique which takes a lifetime to learn. Mercenaries use easy and cheap moves, they use high tech weaponry and various specialized methods of combat designed to fight ninja. Only a mercenary can teach you that style as I am completely unfamiliar with most of it".</p><p>Meiko showed a couple of flowing hand movements. She moved gracefully yet with speed, she didn't augment her body at the slightest yet her arms moved fast enough for Mana to have to see the movements a couple of times before she could fully get them. Even several more reps were needed before she memorized them.</p><p>"These movements work like handseals. You have to repeat them again and again and again and again before they become second nature to you before your body automatically performs them as fast as you can while your mind can analyze other things and be focused on observing your opponent" Meiko said, apparently she was taking this whole teaching Mana how to fight without her chakra thing seriously...</p><p>Mana kept on repeating those moves, she kept repeating them for at least four hours if not more on end before sweat broke out from her forehead and her lips dried out, her tired hands could stay raised and waved around. Meiko looked displeased with the result. "You're not even closing your gap between where you are and from where we can start the actual training, we've only got six days left..."</p><p>Crushed and depressed by the lack of progress in her training and with arms that felt like they were literally filled with acid that burnt them from inside Mana went to bed that day. Meiko wanted to ask for Mana to keep on working on her moves but Kouta objected as a medical ninja, at least he said he did it as a medical ninja. He may have just felt sorry for Mana, her face must've looked so miserable. Feeling too weak for even basic training drills and then having her weakness rubbed into her face by Meiko's disappointed face.</p><p>It wasn't even that Mana felt bad about her own lack of skill and progress with the training, it was the sadness that she started to break through Meiko's façade. The blacksmith just started looking so sad and disappointed in herself because she wasn't able to properly help Mana. Because she must've felt like she was failing her friend and on top of her own problems the magician started feeling bad because she made Meiko feel like that.</p><p>The next day Mana's movements looked even sloppier because of her exhaustion from the last day. Kouta decided to patiently sit with Mana and heal her arms from the damaged muscle tissue that was getting in her way. The magician had long since forgotten what this human exhaustion felt like. Ninja clearly got exhausted but their supernatural out of combat healing factor patched it up to the point where it all went away the same day. Kouta said that without his help this pain may have kept relentlessly plaguing the girl for a week or so.</p><p>"It's... Passable I suppose, we'll start the actual training tomorrow, you're just barely at an acceptable level but we're running out of time... We can't afford to stay here any longer than our mission funds allow us, we'll need to buy supplies for our journey too so we may get to stay here for even less than we originally planned. We've got no time to perfect your movements. You'll have to do it yourself on the road..." Meiko complained out loud, she tried to be gentle and polite to a friend but Mana saw it in Meiko's face – she was terrible.</p><p>The girl wrapped herself tighter into a sheet before passing out trying to get some sleep, she just felt so weak and vulnerable, cold never felt so troubling before, the heat never took away all traces of her strength so quickly and effectively, she couldn't keep up with her friends and in the process, she felt like she was just outright an inferior being to everyone. It was clear that the other teammates wanted to comfort her but they couldn't find the right words, they knew that they lacked the knowledge to properly understand what she was going through so they just kept quiet about it. Silence was not a good treatment, it just made Mana feel even lonelier despite being surrounded by friends.</p><p>Meiko's fist completely blurred, she said that she didn't use any chakra and that she held it back but Mana's face burst into a combination of blood and pain. It took Kouta at least twenty minutes to patch up her busted up face after each unsuccessful attempt to redirect a punch.</p><p>"Should I fix your teeth too?" Kouta asked referring to the gaping hole in Mana's mouth when Meiko's fist almost got swallowed by the girl in its entirety.</p><p>"Yes please..." Mana replied as well as her aching face allowed, her decent looks was the last speck of confidence that the girl had. She got kicked around and had to watch the disappointed looks of her friends all around her for entire days, at least she didn't want their looks to also be disgusted at Mana's busted up face too...</p><p>"It'll hurt, regrowing teeth and fixing bones is a bit painful..." Kouta warned her softly, his eyes were kind, he didn't appear to judge her swollen and covered with bruises face, her eyes that looked like they were assaulted by a whole swarm of bees and her missing teeth or her battered body.</p><p>"I don't care, I'll take it... I'd wish there was something to bite a rag with while you did it though..." the girl tried to joke with the most pathetic attempt to slightly alleviate the pathetic situation she was in. Why was she failing so much? Was all that she had ever achieved only because of her chakra control? Was the gift of chakra which she was given the only thing that made her special, the only thing that made her halfway competent? Was the girl behind the ninja worthless and unable to learn even the most basic movements?</p><p>"Yeah... They should make other pain management techniques for people without teeth" Kouta giggled warmly as the emerald light from his arms started glowing so intensely right up at Mana's face that it nearly blinded her.</p><p>Yet another punch hit Mana right in the gut, feeling merciful for the epic failures of Mana getting socked in the face with the power of a giant hammer every time the blacksmith started punching her in the gut or kicking her in the shins sending Mana down and sometimes dislocating bones or twisting her legs in the process. Each of the injuries that Mana went through every day would've crippled someone for weeks yet Kouta always found the time to fix her up in under an hour, no matter how severe it was. The boy barely trained by himself, he devoted his time to healing Mana completely.</p><p>"Can't Kouta do the punching me in the face thing?" Mana wiped the blood off of her face after skipping another gut punch and throwing up. "Doesn't seem so hard to do and he is actually well versed in taijutsu thanks to his father's training" the magician wondered on her fourth day. It only made sense that a ninja focusing on taijutsu would do her taijutsu training but, for some reason, it was Meiko continuously pummeling Mana.</p><p>"He didn't want to, he said so himself, after hearing his reasons Shimo agreed and appeared to be quite adamant about it. Didn't even tell me those reasons, he just insisted that I did the training..." Meiko scratched the back of her head throwing Mana some towels and band-aids. The magician patched her cuts and bruises up and wiped the blood coming out from her mouth.</p><p>"Looks like a pretty nasty internal bleeding, you may want Kouta to take a look at it..." Meiko looked concerned after Mana stood back up in her defensive position adamant to learn to redirect at least one blow her friend throws.</p><p>"Well if he dislikes me so much he doesn't even want to train me, may as well not get in his way with my petty problems, are you gonna punch me in the face or what?" Mana grunted angrily, she felt quite nauseous too so she may have had a concussion coming but, at that moment in time, she felt so hurt inside that she wouldn't have minded if she flipped up dead after one of those hits. It'd have surely been better to die while still having a semblance of who she used to really be than living without a part of her identity having a new one forced down her throat.</p><p>"I don't like your attitude, missy..." Meiko slowed her punch up to a crawl, just to the point where Mana managed to tap her wrist and redirect it near effortlessly. "You do know you have to redirect those blows, not take them, right? I don't enjoy punching you half to death every day either, it hurts me internally just as much as it hurts you externally..."</p><p>Mana got furious and started throwing punches instead, not even using her palms but using her clenched tightly fists. Her blows utilized all of the Academy training, these weren't childish punches, these may have knocked out even a skilled martial artist. Meiko effortlessly caught or avoided each and every blow, she smiled softly because she knew that this was good for her friend, punching her anger and troubles away. For a ninja it was easy to block or dodge a blow like that, still, even Meiko skipped one punch. After the loud thud echoed Mana's eyes shot wide open in surprise, she jumped up to Meiko but only saw her unfazed face. Only then did she realize that she broke her fist after punching what seemed like a brick wall...</p><p>The fifth day was spent entirely of Kouta treating Mana's injuries, the medical ninja demanded a whole day because he had some treatment to do for the injuries that he stopped from being emergencies but left some nasty painful scars. He decided to remove all the bruises and black marks all over Mana's broken body, all of her black eyes and bumps.</p><p>"You seem awfully quiet today, Mana-chan..." Kouta observed after the girl spent several hours just angrily squinting at a small clock on a fridge instead of looking at the boy for at least a single moment. "Don't get discouraged, you could kick the ass of anyone not using chakra, you could easily reflect all the blows of Meiko where she only used her normal strength, each of your reflections is so skillful that you'd open up even the best normal martial artists for a counter-attack. You may not fight ninja until..."</p><p>"Stop..." Mana shut him up angrily.</p><p>"Stop?" he looked at her confused trying to catch her eyes but he could only contact Mana's angry puffed-up cheeks.</p><p>"First of all stop talking about how "my chakra will return eventually", no one knows if it can even happen and, at this point, I started doubting it myself. I was examined by a Quack when it happened and he said it may have been permanent, I couldn't even show my face up in a hospital because I was afraid a doctor would confirm it because that'd feel like he'd put a nail into my coffin!" Mana yelled out finally turning her eyes to greet those of Kouta's</p><p>"Also, please stop trying to boost my confidence when you have no hope in me. You're one of the most skilled genin in taijutsu yet you so adamantly refused to train me. Why would you do so unless you didn't actually believe that I could succeed? I appreciate the mercy you show me by healing me from time to time as if encouraging a kid putting their head into a guillotine by placing candy on the other end but if that is all it is – pity, please stop! It's hard for me as it is... Getting beat up every day and seeing all of my friends disappointed in me, feeling weak and useless, knowing that I may never be able to do that one thing I love, to achieve my lifelong goals!" Mana started tearing up after the last sentence.</p><p>Kouta smiled politely, his eyes never changed from that warm and polite look, he tried to move in closer and hug her but then he stopped halfway and awkwardly breathed into Mana's face before jumping back and acting like he was just observing her face for more scratches to heal.</p><p>"I do care about you, Mana-chan. I do believe you can succeed. People can't fight ninja but you're not like most people. You are a very quaint girl and that's what makes you so special, that and one other thing makes me believe you can do it. You've already made some progress" Kouta kept on smiling as he was bandaging Mana's arm which had a nasty bruise from when the girl was tossed on her back and bruised it into a large rock which was in her way.</p><p>"Then why... Why wouldn't you train me?" she asked after slowly wiping away her tears with the sleeve of her healthy arm.</p><p>"Because I don't want to hit you, Mana-chan" Kouta closed his eyes and smiled with a full grin as if he had just told a joke.</p><p>The next day Mana got beaten up again, royally so, since Meiko decided to once again boost her speed to a superhuman extent which proved to be Mana's limit previously. It appeared like the word superhuman was there for reason, whatever the human limit was even when Mana knew the movements perfectly, even when she could analyze the visual ticks in Meiko's face before she made the moves she couldn't redirect the blows in time.</p><p>"Let's wrap this up... It's over, your body is broken, you've got just one functional arm, Kouta will definitely wish to heal you the whole day tomorrow so... Let's say that you can easily beat any non-ninja opponent, even the best martial artists would get redirected and provide you with an opening, if you can finish them during that opening you'd win, if you couldn't they'd adapt to your solely redirective style and come out on top. I suppose you still, under no circumstances, can fight a ninja..." Meiko explained scratching her head. She still looked disappointed, she wanted to make Mana whole again, to give her friend an ability to fight against the other ninja so that she could perhaps smile once again.</p><p>"I'd suggest always finishing the fight using a kick combination and topping it off with the Spear Kick" Meiko sighed and turned her back</p><p>"Spear Kick?" Mana huffed out through blood and sweat, both of which she had all over her face and mouth.</p><p>"Yeah, that jumping stomp thing... I liked it so I named it, I own it now and you must use it when I demand it! It kicked me down even while I was blocking really hard, it looks really cool too!" the blacksmith replied.</p><p>"Wait... Meiko... Let's try again! You hit me with a decent punch, something that'd kill me if it hit me, you don't have to make it your top punch but... Please" Mana begged while bowing to Meiko. The magician saw her blood dripping from her face and her open wound that made blood push through even Kouta's bandages. She risked bleeding out or passing out due to blood loss if this training continued.</p><p>"What? No! Look at you, you're almost dead as it is! If I punched you right now it'd be like being crushed by a flying boulder and your bones are broken as they are, you'd have your organs mashed into porridge!" Meiko turned back and swiped her arm angrily trying to talk Mana out of it.</p><p>"I can't do it. I can't live a life where I am always that person everyone's looking at like a china doll, someone that everyone cherishes to protect from every smallest thing. I want to be strong enough to protect everyone. If I'm not then what's the point? Please, all I'm asking for is to give your best shot and have faith in me..." Mana begged falling down on her knees.</p><p>"My best shot? You've never redirected even a decent shot, I can bend steel with my best shots, break boulders, that's how I test the gloves of my armor! What you're asking me is madness, you're the client of this mission!" Meiko yelled back at Mana picking her off the ground by the collar of her shirt and making her stand on her feet.</p><p>"I know... That's why I'm asking you to do it. You still believe I can do it and I believe that you are an excellent teacher. I saw your disappointment deep inside when I couldn't fight as well as you wanted me to and I want you to smile just as much as you want me to do so. There's just one way to make both of us happy – try to punch me so hard that it'd throw me to the Moon, so fast that I'd never see a thing coming. My heart is in this, all the way!"</p><p>Meiko closed her eyes and clutched her fist. For a moment Mana thought she saw air bend around the fist making it appear like it was blurring, almost like a mirage. Her body instantly switched into the preparation position, her arm gently yet as quickly as it's never moved before flailed preparing her body for a redirection. Meiko's body disappeared, Mana could hear her friend's roar, she could almost swear she could hear her fist flying at her as if it was on fire. If that hit her she'd be left as a bloody stain – that was an all or nothing moment.</p><p>Kouta's happy smile appeared in Mana's mind. "Because I don't want to hit you, Mana-chan," the mirage said. Mana couldn't even see her own body pushing Meiko's fist aside and kicking the girl right in the center of the back of her leg sending the blacksmith tumbling down onto the ground. Kouta and Shimo rushed out of the inn, they looked in awe at the cracked and busted up the ground where Meiko's focused energy of her blow was redirected.</p><p>"Mana-chan did it, she redirected a chakra augmented blow!" Kouta jumped up into the air in joy and ran up to Mana spreading his arms up for a hug before awkwardly switching to a faked interest in her injuries. "I need to look at those immediately! Let's go back to the inn!" he yelled out dragging Mana by her ear</p><p>"What the..." Shimo still stood there refusing to believe what happened, he walked up to Meiko giving her an arm to help her stand up.</p><p>"Well, I suppose you aren't a taijutsu focused ninja, you're just decent at it. We can't make big claims yet, also no actual ninja would just focus all their energy on a single punch like that... But... Still..." the swordsman just stood there with his mouth open looking at the hole that the force of the redirection made Meiko dig up.</p><p>"No... It was... Chakra. Mana did it, she augmented her body, both her perception and speed!" Meiko looked back at Shimo with a look of similar confusion. The two looked back at the inn where the light lit up in the second-floor room. Mana learned a lot over these several days and yet... More questions got raised than answers and lessons were learned.</p>
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<a name="section0117"><h2>117. While You Were Sleeping</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Chakra? Are you sure?" Shimo mumbled out in a confused voice. This whole deal with Mana's chakra control was incredibly odd, at that moment the Yuki regretted not talking to Mana about it in more detail: what exactly happened, when exactly did she notice losing her gift, etc.</p><p>"As sure as I can be, there was no way she'd have redirected my punch with human senses and agility, she even went as far as to counterattack and bring me to my knees, only someone with chakra augmentation could have done that" Meiko nodded examining her bruised fist that got wrist deep into the ripped apart soil.</p><p>"This is quite major, we may need to examine her and see if she's actually regained her chakra manipulation or if it was just a freak accident but... This puts the possibility of Mana-chan's gift returning back on the table and that's wonderful" the swordsman smiled looking at the light in the inn room.</p><p>After helping Meiko get up the duo headed towards the room. Both of them were quite confused and didn't know what to think of it. Once they entered the sight of tired and sad Kouta treating Mana's injuries he met their eyes. Mana really did look miserable from a third person's point of view, her body looked like she had just escaped captivity and endless sessions of torture, she was pale making her blunt force traumas contrast that much more horribly in comparison.</p><p>The magician's hair was messy and sticky, it probably had plenty of blood in it but washing it must've been on the lower end of the magician's priorities. She looked as close to being beaten to death as a person could have been. Kouta slipped off of the bed and rubbed his tired eyes while sitting on the floor.</p><p>"Shit, I... I can't... I'm tired, this week was crazy..." he complained as black circles, not unlike those of Mana's, appeared around the boy's eyes. No one could've blamed him. He spent the whole week healing Mana's injuries that often times came multiple times a day. His healing prowess improved daily just due to the extensive amount of repetition that the boy did saving Mana from dying from her injuries. Mana was reckless and stupid for falling into such a state all the time but Kouta felt like it was his own personal responsibility to bring her back to the perfect state each time and now he was paying the price.</p><p>"It's fine, rest up today, you can pick up tomorrow or in the worst case the day after, we'll move out in two days at noon. You've been pushing yourself quite a lot, give yourself some credit and rest up, if there's anything we can do, please tell us" Shimo replied placing his hand on Kouta's shoulder.</p><p>"But Mana-chan is... Still in pain..." Kouta complained.</p><p>"I'll be fine..." Mana's voice ringed in the boy's ear weakly and softly. "Pain is what we need to get used to, I'm just glad I didn't get killed, thanks for giving me a shot Meiko..." the magician tried to smile but the aching body made the girl clutch up and then fall asleep. As bad as the fatigue and the pain was it didn't seem to bother Mana's sleep for the first time in a while.</p><p>"Good, she's asleep, she could use some, this week was really horrible for her" Meiko looked at Mana's battered sleeping body with some pity in her eyes.</p><p>"And for you? I saw you suffer plenty too, for some reason you also don't look like you've slept well and plenty..." Shimo asked Meiko, the blacksmith lowered her head and closed her eyes.</p><p>"Yeah, this wasn't the best for me either. It's just that... Every time Mana got hurt it felt like it was my fault, that I failed her somehow as a teacher" Meiko scratched the back of her head making her short hair stay messed up in a goofy manner, it reminded a lot of bed hair perfectly reflecting the tired state which the blacksmith felt herself staying in.</p><p>"Don't blame yourself, what you tried to teach Mana-chan is almost impossible. People don't contend with ninja, it just never happens. The progress you two have made having that in mind is astonishing, you should pat yourself on the back, really" Shimo yawned.</p><p>"If you two aren't too busy, Mana-chan's injuries need treatment, I can't heal her right now but it might be quite useful to buy some herbs for her. Shukuba town has amazing herb shops" Kouta stood up and stretched out sitting close to where Mana was sleeping and resuming to examine her injuries.</p><p>Shimo and Meiko disappeared for a good half an hour. After they returned with the several bags of herbs that were described in a small list Kouta had made the medical ninja rushed up and started preparing the herbs to apply onto the bandages and wrap around the most gruesome of Mana's injuries.</p><p>"She looks... Better, did you try to heal her again?" Meiko squinted comically looking at Mana's sleeping body who was now sleeping with much more peace and serenity in her eyes.</p><p>"No, I just gave her a couple of specialized food pills, some of them were sleep pills and some of them were special pills to treat bone fractures. I used a small portion of my pill supply but it's for good measure, even if I won't be ready to heal Mana tomorrow, it'll help her a great deal" Kouta smiled proudly, even managing to smile through the black circles and bags around his eyes that appeared out of his chakra shortage and overall exhaustion.</p><p>"Good, she'll need to be in moving condition in the morning, we've spent a lot of ryo on these herbs so we'll need to leave one day earlier" Shimo lowered his head. "Also... There's one more thing I and Meiko discussed, "Could you use your Diagnosis Jutsu on Mana-chan? Just to see if her chakra network is still torn up?"</p><p>"Wait, what? No! Mana-chan said she doesn't want it! She doesn't want to know for sure because she's afraid of that knowledge, she's afraid of knowing that her chakra network is broken permanently! It's probably for the best medically to do some tests but... She's traumatized by the experience, we can't just poke inside of her even if we won't actually get inside her. The last thing you want to do to someone traumatized like this is to force the experience onto them..."</p><p>"We don't have to tell her, we just need to know" Shimo didn't relent.</p><p>"You don't get it, if we know, she'll know that we know! We'll eventually slip up and when she'll realize we went against her wishes and found out she'll... She'll hate us..." Kouta still opposed the idea and his agreement was integral to Shimo and Meiko's plan being pulled off.</p><p>"But imagine if it's all just in Mana's mind, what if the only thing keeping her from being how she was before is some mental block she herself placed!?" Shimo was starting to get really loud, Mana almost woke up, restlessly rolling around the bed and burrowing deeper into the sheets.</p><p>"Even more reasons not to do it, you do realize that there's no positive outcome in this, right? If we find out the network really is damaged beyond repair all four of us will be crushed, if we find out that it's all in Mana's mind, imagine her own inner pain when she finds out. When she is told that all of her identity problems are because of her and that she's just not wishing hard enough" Kouta snapped back which wasn't very common for the boy to do. He was usually quite silent and non-confrontational type, he wasn't quite yet shy but he was overly polite, and to see him openly arguing like this was a new sight.</p><p>"I thought you liked her, guess you really don't give a rat's ass..." Shimo rudely and abruptly tore the thread of the conversation off, for a moment a total silence took over in the room, the Yuki turned around and walked towards the exit declaring that he needed some fresh air when Meiko saw something snap in Kouta's eyes, his fist lit up blue and at that moment she knew this wasn't going to end well.</p><p>Without saying a word Kouta lunged at Shimo, just because she predicted the assault did Meiko manage to get in the way of the two blocking the medical ninja's chakra enhanced punch at the elbow where the force wasn't as focused and destructive slightly tilting the elbow to punish the medical ninja's aggression with some helpful pressure pain. She felt a sharp pain in her back and when her glance reached it she saw Shimo's Audra blade having left a shallow cut on her back, intending to slice right at the medical ninja. Clearly, he had predicted the attack as well but he didn't quite predict Meiko's interruption.</p><p>"Shit, I'm sorry! I need to walk this shit off!" Shimo declared quietly apologizing to Meiko like he really meant it and angrily dashing away from the room.</p><p>Kouta stayed silent for a moment, anger in his eyes got changed by depression and sadness, since his blue glow around the fist dissipated and the arm relaxed itself Meiko let go and the boy slid down on his bottom sitting down on the floor. "Am I doing the wrong thing? Am I hurting Mana-chan?" he whined out, he wasn't crying but he was visibly distressed.</p><p>"Nah, I don't know her for too long but one thing I know is that no one but she herself can truly hurt her. No amount of pain or injury or threat of imminent demise would scare her but whatever she tells herself cripples her effortlessly. I think the way where she has the least to brood about is the best one but I still can't decide which way that is..." Meiko lowered her head and then looked at the peaceful friend just sleeping her injuries off.</p><p>After the bandaging was finished and Mana looked, for the first time in a while, like a pretty young teenage girl Shimo returned. He looked a little tipsy but he crept up to his bed and just fell down as if he just died at that moment.</p><p>"Let's do it..." Kouta's voice echoed in the darkness, filled with disappointment and sadness. Just like that life returned to Shimo's body and he jumped up to his feet. The three rushed to Mana's sleeping body and the medical ninja raised his hands above Mana's body, he straightened and relaxed his palms, softly he placed them on Mana's body, and powerful yet silent and painless impulses of blue light started emanating through Mana's body</p><p>"Diagnosis Jutsu" Kouta mumbled to himself just to set in stone the horrible mistake he was about to do. Mana would probably never forgive him...</p><hr/><p>The next morning finally came and Mana looked incredibly vital and energetic for someone wrapped in an almost excessive amount of bandages. At least this set of bandages wasn't soaked in her blood like many that were changed before. Kouta examined the girl's injuries.</p><p>"It looks okay, I can completely heal everything if you want, not even a scar will remain, these herbs did wonders..." he concluded.</p><p>Mana vibrantly shook her head, "No, conserve your chakra. I'm already really grateful to all of you. I don't deserve such devoted and wonderful friends. You've agreed to look for the box still, despite my revelation that I always intended for this mission to fail. Meiko did so much to teach me to fight without my chakra manipulation and Kouta overexerted himself to heal me every time, all of you wasted our inn money on herbs just to make my recovery faster and less painful... Almost brings a tear to my eye, you guys..." she smiled.</p><p>"Well, you're the client, your well-being is the only one worth a damn in this line of work. If it'd make you feel better I'd massage your feet even..." Shimo joked.</p><p>"I'll consider it, you said it so there's no going back if I take you up on your offer" Mana gave him a thumb up and smiled. She felt really great and she had some reasons to feel that way – after all, she successfully redirected Meiko's attack and even threw some of her own in return after a week of trying, she's in so little pain that it may not even be a pain at all and they'll be moving out one day earlier which makes it one day closer to them getting to the box... Things were finally looking not too bad.</p><p>"Well, if everyone has everything we can go then, let's hope that we'll never need to stop anywhere in such a hurry as we did coming in here" Kouta laughed out, it was a little strange as to the magician his laughter felt a bit faked. The medical ninja was just as bad as faking words and emotions as she was and so even a naïve teen like Mana could pick up that something wasn't alright with him.</p><p>"Are you OK, Kouta-kun?" she asked trying to sound careful and not too imposing. "You sound a little disappointed or sad or..."</p><p>"Just tired, Mana-chan" he faked a smile again, Meiko butt into the conversation with her large behind and pointed at the Shukuba gate which led to the road which circled to Tanzaku.</p><p>The trio didn't quite travel efficiently, they wasted a lot of time on the Roiyaru road and only stopped at Shukuba because of Mana's injury, ideally, they probably would've stood the best chance at success if they changed from Roiyaru to Rooibos road and went to Tanzaku town which led to the Land of Rivers and then crossed to the Wind Country. Now they may have wasted at least six or even eight hours of the journey but luckily Rooibos road was made for just that sort of scenario – easy traveling from Shukuba pleasure town to Tanzaku town. It took the quartet less than twelve hours to get to Tanzaku because of Mana's slower pace of traveling, a ninja may have made the distance in four if they were rushing.</p><p>Tanzaku town was a little larger and looked a bit more industrialized and modernized when compared to the small Shukuba town. Shukuba was a small town of classical architecture which contained many classical pleasures a ninja or a traveler may have enjoyed like hot springs, tea houses, and inns, Tanzaku town was much more commercial in that aspect, filled with various small businesses, countless bright advertisement boards and gambling houses. There was still a problem with the four having no more money left but in Tanzaku money was everywhere.</p><p>"Mana-chan, you're patient and you can focus incredibly well, go win some money at Kingyo Sukui" Meiko suggested, Mana nodded.</p><p>"Those goldfishes won't know what hit them!" she declared and rushed off to look for the goldfish scooping vendor offering money for a successful game. The trick there was to catch a bunch of goldfish into small nets, the problem was that the payout for a fish wasn't that great and so to actually make a profit one had to be pretty skilled at the game. She was just glad to finally be helpful at something since being just a normal client really depressed her to no end, feeling like one wasn't a part of the team often did...</p><p>"Okay, Shimo, you can toss some killer balls at those bottles, right?" Meiko looked to be quite happy ordering everyone around.</p><p>"I probably could but I don't think the inn owner will take plush toys as payment, I saw a shuriken target practice game somewhere that pays in ryo. Also, weren't you the skilled one with projectile weapons? I'm more of a swordsman-type..." the Yuki tried to object.</p><p>"Nah, it'll be fine, me and Kouta will go slam some hammers, we'll be eating lobster dinner and sleeping in the inn in no time!" the blacksmith redhead energetically declared pointing at the sky with the largest hype grin this world had ever seen.</p><p>After a sigh, Shimo headed out to find the shuriken practice vendor, they would all start out betting some of their possessions since they didn't have any money but eventually they'd make the money they needed. Tanzaku was a town of opportunity where decent money could've been made gambling and playing those small vendor games.</p><p>They really weren't that fair since ninja easily dominated at them but there were just about enough homeless people or petty gamblers with no skill to make the vendor stands enough profit to pay the ninja out and still have some left. Plus it kept the more ill intent having ninja from just bullying the vendor owners out of their money encouraging to win it legally.</p><p>As expected, two hours later, Mana returned with a fairly decent payout of a wallet filled with ryo, Shimo returned with a moderately smaller sized loot since as he complained shuriken wasn't his thing entirely and it was only because of his "mad skills of concentration" that he even won as much as he did win. Kouta and Meiko actually looked like they made a whole fortune. Mana really looked surprised.</p><p>"Well initially we were hitting a slump, Kouta gambled half of his ninja kit away when he bet on the hammer slamming thing but his chakra enhanced strength turned the hammer into dust while the zinger only rose halfway, I had to bail him out and so some time was spent making up for what he had lost. Then there was this large guy who kept betting against me and we kept competing for hours on end and he lost everything so I guess I kind of hammered him out of his underwear, which in perspective, we didn't really need but we felt in a gambling mood..." Meiko smiled showing the completely surprised team a pair of white underwear with teddy bears all over it.</p><p>Kouta's cheeks were completely blushed from embarrassment and couldn't hide his eyes away from the passers-by enough. "Please... Please don't let Meiko-san gamble again..." he almost begged the rest of the group. With playful laughter, the four headed for the nearest inn.</p>
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<a name="section0118"><h2>118. Trouble Stew</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Loud thuds emanated in pitch total blackness, several pigeons resting on a small roof structure took off, feeling threatened by those booming sounds coming from inside the small inn in Tanzaku town. What transpired in that small room had nothing to do with the pigeons, in fact, one could've boldly claimed that the men causing the ruckus couldn't have cared less about some winged rats and may have considered their existence as a nuisance at best.</p><p>The inn room belonged to a small vendor owner. His name didn't matter, nor did any other details of his life. After all, he was no one special, he was born in a family of vendor owners and he never showed too much talent or skill in anything ninja-related, he was never in prime physical condition yet he had above average talent for managing a business, or so his parents may have thought. Truth be told his "talent for making business decisions" was more due to what his "friends" did to make their bread.</p><p>"I am telling you, it's not yet time for my payment, you're a month early. Some ninja gambled all the money off, I only have what Nabagu lost to me. I can give you guys everything back!"</p><p>The people inside his home did not lay a finger on the man himself, they were instead thrashing his room, tearing it apart with their bare hands, sometimes employing thick staffs when a more delicate touch was needed. These men were well adjusted to survive as hired muscle in a world where travelers packed incredible weapons to defend themselves and children could spit fire and cover their blades with the power of lightning. They could've torn a building apart with their bare hands brick by brick and still be able to mix the melting sugar in their tea delicately afterward.</p><p>"It's not the money that Boss wants, his enforcer had to prance around Tanzaku with his little ding-ling covered by just a piece of board and an old spinster's laundry. It's safe to assume that the Boss is a little bit peeved, see? Distressed... Worried... Absolutely livid he would say..."</p><p>The man to the right of the person trying to keep the conversation alive shoved his arm into a wall and carefully and slowly walked to the other side of the room crumbling the wall down, it was like his very skin was made of steel.</p><p>"And I'm telling you guys, it's not my fault, it was his decision to gamble against a ninja girl dressed in a full set of armor. It was clear the whole time that he won't out-hammer her but he kept going. I don't see what my part in his issues is!" the vendor owner yelled out trying to stop the muscle-heads from tearing his apartment apart.</p><p>The well-dressed gentleman keeping up the conversation with the man lifted a gentleman's cane blocking the vendor owner's path to approaching the brute who was crushing all of his eggs in his fridge with his fingers who were large enough to fit an egg in between of them.</p><p>"Don't get your pants in a twisty now, ya goose, we all know that good old Nabagu likes to get plastered, or as sophisticated peeps say – abuse some bad substances. He isn't in the most reasonable of moods when he does so and let's just say prancing around the town with his weenie getting filled with splinters from the board he stole from a fence of an old lady isn't even the worst thing he's done"</p><p>The talkative mobster wrapped his hand around the vendor owner's neck and pushed the man in closer to his own mouth. Mostly to let it be known to the man of the great importance of his words.</p><p>"Now... You see where I'm going, obviously when one of Boss' enforcers goes on pirouetting around the place with a splinter and board tutu on his waist half-naked that puts a bad image on the Boss' face and... Well... Boss dislikes having a bad image, he's sensitive in that area"</p><p>Another giant mobster, so tall and bulky that his frame couldn't even fit into the room was desperately looking for something else to smash but couldn't find anything at all, all things considered, the vendor owner was taking the complete obliteration of his home quite well. That being said, it wasn't because he was a calm and collected person nor because he was afraid, it was because with the Boss' support behind him he could've made all of this loss back in no time.</p><p>"What you could do for the Boss, after all the unfathomably generous donations he made to your endeavors, is give at least a little bit of information that would help us track the young lady down and pop a knee or two, discuss our differences and compare our points of view, you see..." the spokesperson of the mobsters tried to make his point as sweetened and as far from the truth as possible.</p><p>The vendor sighed, "I don't know, she wore some weird armor that covered her vital parts, it was mostly green and grey, she had short red hair and hung around with some loser brat of her age, that brat was really weird looking, when he smashed the hammer into the pressure plate the hammer got torn to smallest shreds, on the shorter side, dark-haired and looking pretty well trained..."</p><p>"I see, that's what happens when you use shabby tools with great strength... So the boy has more strength than he knows how to deal with, interesting... Did they wear any headbands?"</p><p>"Yeah, the girl had one on her forehead and the brat wore it as a belt... They were Konohagakure ninja"</p><p>The mobster who was still looking for things to smash found a cookie jar and smashed it onto the floor starting to stomp it. The shop vendor rushed to him pushing the gentleman mobster's staff aside and tried to stop the brute from destroying his precious cookies.</p><p>"Oh come on! Not the cookies! Is nothing sacred to you!?" the vendor owners yelled out pulling at the waist level of the brute as that was just about the only area he could reach. These mobsters were larger than most rooms, they had arms the size of a carriage and their skin was dark grey, their eyes were bloodshot and constantly flying from one edge of the room to the other looking for things to destroy until the gentleman mobster ordered the brutes to stop, after which point the giants simply stopped and stood still with their heads down almost to their waist so that they could fit into the room.</p><p>"The Boss thanks you for your contribution, expect your competitors you've named in the last meeting dealt with as... Apology for today's rude transgression, it is just very important for the Boss to maintain his high status and this unpleasant problem needs to be dealt with, you see..." the gentleman mobster bowed allowing the brutes to crawl out from the hole where they came in from and rumble down the stairs to the lobby.</p><hr/><p>„Come on, Boss, you know how it is when I'm tipsy, I got to get my gambling done and... Well, I just lost control for a while..."</p><p>The large man whom Meiko gambled with the other day was kneeling in front of a large chair which was turned at an even larger window which was as huge as the whole wall of the great conference hall which it was placed in. The only sign of any life on the other side of the chair was a small trail of smoke rising from it, the chair was apparently much larger than the small man sitting in it.</p><p>Without as much as a warning, the chair turned around revealing a comically short person sitting in the chair with a strangely misshaped head which was just about as large if not a tiny bit larger than that of most people where his normal stature was much smaller. He must've measured up to a normal person's waist, not much below that. He was the only one in his syndicate of significance except his enforcers wearing a suit, the other more important members of his syndicate wore exquisite and incredibly expensive kimono and had swords by their side.</p><p>"You see... I made a gamble with you" a very husky and rough voice came from the short man's mouth, something that could've only been a sign of great throat damage due to his longtime smoking addiction. Had someone hung around the man for a couple of days they'd have found that the man smoked like a cheap chimney and took great pride in his ability to smoke up a whole cigar with a single draw of breath despite his lungs appearing to be one-tenth of what a normal man had.</p><p>"I've replaced all of my other muscles after we've formed the deal with the Bellucini family in Kumogakure and gained access to the Land of Rivers Gold Mine. And what lies deep inside of it... You told me... Come on, now, tell me what you told me, I want to hear it from your own ungrateful mouth!" the short man ordered the kneeling muscle to talk.</p><p>"I said, "Boss, please don't do that sick and twisted shit you did to the others, don't replace my skin with that thing... I won't let you down... One day you'll need a normal flesh and bones enforcer and then I'll be there", that's what I said, Boss..." the man bellowed like a whining dog with a broken leg, probably because he was just that – the man's lapdog with a broken leg and kneecaps that got blown up after the other enforcers spat at them.</p><p>"That's what you said... Now I remember" the little man tried to colorfully mock the irony in the situation which his lapdog prophesized and the one that actually transpired. The shorty kicked his desk with his comically small leg and seemingly colossal, as compared to the rest of his body, feet so that his short frame span around in his large and comfortable office chair.</p><p>"Do you have any idea what it's like to be a short man in this world? What it's like to live in a world where everyone's so special, one daddy's little princess has a puppy that can headbutt stone to dust, one good boy can control insects and tell them to eat away at the very essence of their enemies... What it's like to be born in such a world and not only be unable to do any of those things but also be handicapped, even less than those other folks who couldn't care less about war or peace but care only about having enough shit to slap at their walls so that they stand firm and stick those fucking bricks together?" the man spoke out spitting his cigar to the side only for one of his modified enforcers to pick the thing up and eat it, munch it up before swallowing the thing and breathing out a small cloud of smoke.</p><p>The poor man just kept on kneeling, only because he had little choice but to remain in his position having his crushed knees in mind.</p><p>"So I spend so much time, do all these things to finally start getting people to respect me. I make business trades, I buy and sell property and not all goes according to plan but... Small details can be adjusted by means that some people may call questionable. After all, I was blessed to actually have something to compensate for my short legs and everything else... I had a brain that saw an opportunity everywhere. So I go ahead and build myself a life where I'm finally respected and what do you do?"</p><p>The little man hopped down the chair with a little difficulty, walking up to the mobster who was kneeling in front of him and looked him right in the eyes, now that the leader of the syndicate was standing and his ex-enforcer was kneeling while bellowing about his popped kneecaps and broken legs the two were finally at the same level as far as the height of their eyes went.</p><p>"Look, Boss... Just... Whatever you do, don't do to me what you did to those other guys, I can fix it all, I can make you respected again just... Don't bring me to the mines..." the wounded man begged and whined, begged, and whined like a dog with broken legs looking at a man who held a treat in his hands.</p><p>"The mines? You think after what you did I'd fill your skin with the merchandise, pump you up!? You'd think I'd waste the time of my blacksmiths and the invaluable precious ores on your sorry ass!?" the little man shouted in his husky voice so hard that it broke, kicking the man down with his oversized foot and pulling out two large crossbow-shaped pipe-like weapons from behind his jacket, they were so incredibly large that it was tough to imagine just how he could've fit them in there since they were almost as large as the shorty himself.</p><p>The man extended the pipes at the crippled man and fired the weapons, the string mechanisms inside fired off a bunch of kunai at the man's chest while several more hit him in the neck making him die instantly.</p><p>The four large grey enforcers behind the man rumbled and growled like they weren't even human anymore, a remnant of pains of the past and all that they went through to acquire this ability to make their boss actually feel threatening.</p><p>"It's not like you to just snick a guy like that, Boss, did your knuckles feel rusty today?" one of the other mobsters with the kimono and tattoos all over his body and a shaved head, one of five others in the room, asked.</p><p>"I don't feel like getting trash in between my fingers, I plan to eat at momma's tonight and I'd have it all over my food. My knuckledusters got a bit rusty so I'm having my guys work on new ones, they should be ready shortly. If they work I'll get all of ya some. My guys need to be and look like..."</p><p>"Boss?" another rich and sophisticated looking made man asked for a clarification as to why their Boss stopped talking in the middle of his speech.</p><p>"Fuck... I forgot the name of that teen actor who plays Shikio in that movie..." the little Boss-man complained out loud before lighting up another smoke, he fully intended to enjoy this one.</p><p>"Fukuharu Shunko?"</p><p>"Iito Seichi?"</p><p>"Okumura Yoshitaka?"</p><p>"Haga Akimichi?"</p><p>"Onaga Maritsumo?"</p><p>Each of the five of the slightly brighter and more sophisticated of the mobsters started suggesting the man names of actors. Now that the movie industry started booming recently some of the artists made a name for themselves making them, it wasn't that common for an artist to make a name for themselves. Especially not for an actor in a play, people usually remembered a character that they played and not the actor, the actor was only mentioned if he did not become the character they played, it meant a great sign of disrespect.</p><p>In a lot of ways, Mana's success at entertainment paved the way for other famous people to appear and start getting idolized. Only novelists used to be known for their work before and even then most of them signed under a nickname so that their fame didn't overshadow their actual work.</p><p>"Nah... This young little guy, a midget like me, he wore those huge shoes..." the little man cursed to himself.</p><p>"I wouldn't say... Midget, Boss... You're just... Of short stature, there are taller people and there are smaller, you're just smaller than the total average..."</p><p>The other members of the syndicate nodded and looked at each other nodding in sync with each other. After this fiasco of his memory and the point he was trying to make the Boss sat back down and angrily rubbed his oversized eyes that didn't quite fit with the rest of his body, as he stretched his aged skin and his scars that he had acquired in gang fights when his syndicate was in its earliest stages it looked a bit weird and creepy when the whole skin seemingly moved as it was shaped, almost like clay.</p><p>The door opened and the gentleman mobster walked in followed by two of his empowered experiment-made enforcers. "I've got news for ya, Boss!" the man almost sung out in his beautiful singing voice. The gent had a small-time career singing in Tanzaku on Friday nights and planned on moving to Konohagakure soon but the place was a tough business to break into.</p><p>"How're the brutes? Performing well?" the shorty asked his subordinate to which the man only danced with his shoes, letting them freely tap onto the incredibly overpriced marble floor, and then bowed after pressing his cane at his belly playfully.</p><p>"No one's as great as smashing cookies as these two!" he replied.</p><p>Being fully aware of how his subordinate acted when he was in a good mood the Boss just gestured for the man to get his point over with.</p><p>As he was walking up closer to his Boss the gentleman rudely stepped over the corpse of his buddy which was being slowly dragged away, after the corpse got into the mobster's way the other brutes flipped him over their shoulder when bringing him outside to dump him somewhere. It wasn't even the first person to disrespect Boss that week and respect was a subject Boss was very sensitive with.</p><p>"We got something, a teenage girl with green armor and short red hair, a kunoichi from Konoha, hangs around with a weird looking pretty muscular guy from Konoha who is a medical ninja and definitely pack a wallop... We asked around and we know where the young lady is resting her half a million ryo richer redhead!" the gent smiled bowing to the applause of his Boss.</p><p>"See, men, now that's some bloody service... Someone fucks up and this guy comes in a couple of hours later and says, "Hey, this bitch had the cojones to do it, go do yer thing"! The Boss clapped for a couple of seconds before sitting up and resting his hands while leaning his body on his office table.</p><p>"Well, what are the lot of you waiting for? Do yer thing!" he yelled out. The gentleman swung his cane playfully and marched out the door, four brute mobsters followed him as if they were compelled to, the remnants of what little human intelligence they had before whatever happened in the mines which were now overwhelmed by the memories of insufferable pain dictated their every move...</p>
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<a name="section0119"><h2>119. Ninja VS Mafiosi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No one ever wondered, nor would they need to, about what would happen to a house of cards if an oversized boulder fell on it. However, a small inn right in the middle of the small pit stop town called Tanzaku town collapsed in a manner not much different from the way in which such a house of cards would rumble. A young man with normally quite slick and spiked behind him hair, now in a state of recently awoken fury and a massive case of bed hair, could only blink witnessing the fall of the inn.</p><p>"You're welcome!" Shimo's annoyed voice from down below yelled at the young man before the medical ninja noticed that a large twister of cold air slowly brought him down from the spot where the massive force shockwave tossed him aside. After Kouta finally landed firmly on his two feet he stroke his messy hair angrily.</p><p>"I didn't really thank you, not because I'm not grateful I just... Have no idea what's going on!" the boy shouted, his hearing must've been impaired since small torrents of blood were coming out from his ears.</p><p>"No idea either, I woke up from this weird bad feeling and then... A massive boom tossed me out the window, had I been the intended target of that... I don't even know, it hit like a small meteor... I'd have been a wet stain, I think Meiko's gut took the punch though..." Shimo grunted out looking at the pile of wood, after just a single impact the whole wooden structure crumbled leaving just the first floor barely supporting the whole frame.</p><p>Kouta sniffled, "I'm not sure people thank other people for sending a blizzard their way, medical ninja can't cure a common cold, you know" he complained as a joke.</p><p>Shimo didn't reply, he knew it was meant as something to lighten up the mood. After all, their whole home was busted up, all of their stuff and their money was in there and it was hard to tell just how much could've been salvaged from there. The jutsu he used to prevent Kouta's injury or death was a technique used to shock and slow an opponent down by overwhelming their bodies with cold air, if all that the medical ninja would get from it was a common cold, he'd have gone off as quite lucky.</p><p>"Where's Mana-chan and Meiko?" Kouta asked rubbing his red nose and wiping some more of his snot off</p><p>A deafening thud followed by a crashing boom which contained the sounds of solid steel being torn to shreds and wood being pressed so hard that it got peeled to small sawdust from the pressure alerted the two shinobi to a most recent sound coming from the side of the barely standing structure. A hulking monstrosity wearing what appeared like a torn-up business suit and a fancy hat with a red ribbon and an eagle feather included in the whole set bashed another person through the wall carrying them with their unstoppable charge.</p><p>A barrage of loud thuds made Kouta scratch his ear – it was Meiko who was caught by the hulking brute's charge and the freak was charging at such a considerable speed that the blacksmith girl couldn't leap off of the oversized elbow. What she could do was exactly what she was doing – pound the shit out of the oversized man's little brain with her enhanced with chakra blows. Meiko's chakra control was shabby so she put all of her possible chakra into each hit without worrying about the consequences that have so efficiently broken Mana's life.</p><p>It looked like the brute cared very little of Meiko's blows which was awesome all by itself, judging by the sounds which the blacksmith's blows made she could've busted large boulders with them yet it barely even fazed her opponent. The mobster leaped high up into the air, repositioning his arm to grab Meiko by the piece of her armor and trying to spin her around by spinning his arm, without a doubt intending to slam her with an added momentum of this spinning move. The mobster's target was another inn just a couple of blocks nearby.</p><p>Meiko's quick reaction flicked a small belt that instantly slipped out and helped the girl get out of one shoulder pad which the monster was holding her by. The girl made a couple of seals in mid-air and placed her palm at her shin.</p><p>"C-Rank Seal: Release!" she yelled out as blue flames fired off from her boots propelling her downwards at the ground as her opponent disappeared in its awesome leap. Meiko adjusted her position using her flames as air pillows by quickly activating them to stop her propulsion and adjusting her descent. She activated it one last time right before landing on the ground making a large, almost blinding cloud of dust.</p><p>"Hmmm, that bonehead, he must've leaped to the other side of the town... I wonder if he's smart enough to remember to come back here..." a voice which the girl had not heard before reached her ears making the curious kunoichi check its owner. It was yet another overdressing gentleman with brown shades, an even more expensive-looking suit, and a really nice cane that had lightning bolts drawn on it.</p><p>"Wow! Those lightning motifs, they're an added extra layer, the whole thing is aluminum and those look like titanium! It's not just paint, right!?" the blacksmith shrieked like a schoolgirl seeing ice-cream for lunch on the table after coming back from school.</p><p>"How is that the only thing on your mind right now, young lady?" the gentleman smiled swinging his cane around before tossing it aside and cracking his knuckles. An earth-shattering sound alerted Meiko of another combatant joining her in this alleyway she landed in. Two more powerhouses burst through the buildings tearing them down with just a light push. The redhead pouted, this may have been a battle she shouldn't really put many hopes in.</p><p>"Red-haired armored girl, I assume you're the one who gambled our associate out of his underwear, correct?" the good-looking, non-beefed mobster asked tipping his shades so that his brown eyes could see the girl better.</p><p>"Oh, so you're his friends? Sorry, I don't feel like gambling right now, if you want we could have an eat-off. If you want that underwear back that is... Oh, wait... No, I tossed it away... Sorry..." Meiko scratched the back of her head making a really sad face, only now an idea came to her mind that the poor guy may have been quite inconvenienced by having no underwear, he could've frozen his peepee off this time of year!</p><p>"Well then, I sure am glad you acknowledged it and confessed, it'd have been awkward if we toppled several buildings chasing the wrong girl..." the mobster sighed flicking his fingers as if alerting his muscle-headed friends to attack. That command was just what the two were waiting for as they leaned forward and charged at Meiko, the girl made a handseal and placed her palm on her right arm.</p><p>"Storage Seal: Release" she uttered and after a loud poof and a cover of a cloud of smoke a buckler shield materialized around the spot where she placed her palm on, the blacksmith's right hand grabbed hold of it, it was just in time as the non-roided out mafioso pulled out a strange tube-like device and flicked a switch on it firing a barrage of kunai at Meiko. The girl's buckler collected all of them, she rolled to the side to avoid the first punch of the brute, then leaped to the side, firing off more jets of blue flames to move sideways and stick to the wall quicker.</p><p>"Art of Wall Climbing!" Meiko uttered as her feet stuck to the wall maintaining her stuck onto it like the wall was just another surface she could effortlessly walk on. The girl stumbled a couple of times running up the wall, her chakra control was really lacking and she had trouble maintaining even this simplest of Academy techniques.</p><p>After reaching the corner of the building Meiko flipped back, making a handseal, and then flung her buckler in the direction of the shorter and weaker looking mobster since she felt like the brutes could withstand such a defect blow effortlessly. The buckler was tossed with great force and speed, the gentleman mobster tried his best to dodge it however it still hit his large kunai shooting weapon disarming the assailant of it.</p><p>"Storage Seal: Release!" Meiko yelled out unsealing a large claymore from her left arm and cleaving it right at one of the brutes allowing gravity and her chakra augmented strength to enhance the hit, it'd have been enough to cleave through a building-sized animal in two without much resistance.</p><p>The brutes didn't appear like the kind to dodge. Pure force emanated through Meiko's arms as it was like the sword hit pure titanium. The enhanced mobster merely tried to block the blow with his arm but the claymore busted in pieces from the impact.</p><p>"No goddamn way!" the girl yelled out in a combination of awe at her opponent's abilities and how cool it must've looked. Her arms were completely disabled though and the previous couple of blows she took from those things exhausted her chakra supply, she was just reaching her vital limit which she couldn't cross and her arms were completely disabled, Meiko also felt surging pain in her palms – her hands must've been broken, or at least some bones in there.</p><p>The mobster lifted his arms up to smash Meiko to the ground, the girl saw the leftover crater from the last guy's blow, she saw those guys tear through buildings with their mere hands as if they were made of paper and feathers. Meiko decided to wait until the last moment to move to the side but she saw the other brute walking up from behind the first one – she didn't know for how long she could've avoided those blows, several attacks, maybe more. They looked pretty pissed at her for some reason.</p><p>"Wait... Don't tell me we already had an eat-off and you lost, you're being sore losers, you know that?" Meiko grinned as the brute's arms moved down to crush and grind her bones.</p><p>A powerful beam of blue light followed by deafening howls of wind followed. The brute standing right in front of Meiko froze solid. With a surprised expression, Meiko looked to the side and saw Kouta and Shimo charging in. The Yuki swordsman made several handseals.</p><p>"Water Style: Water Assault!" he yelled out spitting from his mouth a small stream of water right onto the ground filling the large hole that the brute's fist previously left. Shimo made at least twelve more handseals with the speed of weaving them that would've looked completely invisible to a normal human.</p><p>"Hijutsu: Crystal Ice Mirrors!" Shimo grunted out as the water inside the crater leaped up and formed thirty or so plates around the battlefield closing everyone inside in a formation of large ice mirrors, with a slightly audible bling sound Shimo's reflection appeared in all of them. What followed was a deafening blur of invisible movements. Meiko couldn't see anything that transpired as Shimo moved in a speed invisible not only to a normal human but most ninja too!</p><p>A crumbling sound gave several clues as to what may have transpired, a large chunk of the frozen brute fell down before the whole statue of ice collapsed in pieces. Kouta moved Meiko out of the way and placed his hands above hers, a strong green glow quickly patched her hands up – the boy was becoming faster and more skilled with his healing every time.</p><p>"Well then... He took out one, haven't seen that before, will have to go to the mines and make some more, what a bother. Kill them too!" the only talking mobster waved his arms indifferently moving in to pick up his weapon before Shimo's afterimage appeared in front of him and then disappeared, as did his weapon. It was like the swordsman was everywhere within this field which the crystal mirrors surrounded.</p><p>"Shimo, don't overdo it, you've already killed one of those guys like that! Let me take care of him! Just watch my back" Kouta yelled out charging at the remaining brute as his fist enlightened with the chakra glow, the medical ninja had the ability to focus their chakra in their strikes much more carefully and with more finesse and control as compared to the usual chakra augmentation, they could've enhanced their strength without any fear of the repercussions which someone who augmented their abilities normally would've had to think about.</p><p>With an awesomely winded up and clearly telegraphed punch Kouta's fist dug into the brute's face, the oversized mobster didn't even try to lean out of the way, he just took it and the force of the impact emanated throughout breaking every window and even every ice mirror of Shimo's tossing the swordsman back from the sheer force of the blow.</p><p>"You idiot! What the hell are you doing!?" the swordsman yelled out annoyed by how unskilled they were at working together. That was commonly the problem with spontaneously formed squads.</p><p>Kouta's eyes looked back at his friend, his face twisted in an apologetic smile, "Sorry, sorry, I didn't think he'd take this blow head-on..." only after apologizing did Kouta's brain realize that the brute was just standing right in front of him unfazed by the blow. The medical ninja stepped back rubbing his aching arm which would've blown up from the force of his punch had he not took great precautions with augmenting the endurance of the arm as well as his strength.</p><p>The brute raised his hand and winded it up to throw a punch at the medic. Normally, medical ninja were taught quite extensively of the useful art of evasion so the boy leaped up into the air and onto the brute's shoulder, using his shoulder to kick off and jump into the air. The boy then placed his arms forward and growled, with a loud cracking sound, reminding most of the sound bones made when they shattered, two pipe-like protrusions of hardened skin formed around the boy's arms – a testament of his Jugo heritage.</p><p>"Chakra Pistol!" he yelled out firing a fireball of blue chakra formed from small blueish marbles of chakra that floated out from those protrusions and molded into a singular larger projectile. The concentrated ball of chakra exploded with far more power than any number of ninja tags could've, the explosion tossed the medical ninja back making him fall on his butt and almost breaking his elbows and tailbone from the impact but it gave him distance at least.</p><p>The sight of the brute, however, surprised the ninja greatly. He was twitching and had a large bruise on his chest, it was like the flesh on his chest was peeled off with a knife. Kouta just couldn't understand why would such a weak technique have inflicted so much damage, it wasn't even his damaging attack, it was done purely to propel him further away after an unsuccessful attack, and yet...</p><p>"What's wrong, why aren't you moving?" Shimo growled angrily at Kouta, evidently still quite pissed about how the boy ruined his technique.</p><p>"It's... So strange..." Kouta mumbled under his own nose.</p><p>"What do you mean?! That was awesome!" Meiko yelled out shrieking and cheering like someone who attends the firework festival for the first time.</p><p>"It was a distraction, I've no idea why it did so much damage, the destructive power of my punch was at least eight times stronger than what this technique could do even head-on! It usually just burns people and slightly injures them, the reaction this guy has to it is... Just like a normal person with no enhancements would have but he took that blow as if his whole body was hardened with chakra!" Kouta explained standing up slowly.</p><p>As the team stared at the injured brute confused and still trying to figure out just what must've happened, the brute clenched its arms by his side and roared into the air, his shout let out powerful shockwaves that broke windows far from the alleyway it came from. The picking up winds from the shout tore laundry off the ropes and tossed it all over the place making it fall and stick onto any surfaces it fell on, several shirts and kimonos even got torn to pieces just from the force of it.</p><p>"Oh well, now you pissed it off. I've never seen it pissed off but it might just wreck this whole town, I've seen these guys lift small buildings above their heads just for the fun of it even when they're on their joyful drooling mood" the gentleman mobster cracked a grin, clearly excited to see the potential of his bodyguards.</p><p>"DESTROY EVERYTH..." the brute yelled out as his muscles tensed so hard that they tore his suit and shirt to shreds. His mantra of destruction was however cut quite short by another brute falling down from above right on top of him. The weight of these brutes must've been impressive because it was enough to knock the large raging mobster down and even leave a small crater matching that in size of the one left by one of them punching the ground.</p><p>The trio looked up seeing Mana jumping from one balcony to another, grabbing the one she landed to by the ledge and then kicking off to another and then back, in just a couple of vaults the girl landed on the ground and dusted her aching hands. Some of the wounds she acquired from moving down from the rooftop were quite painful and were bleeding relentlessly, such minor injuries could've been avoided if she still possessed the ability to run down walls like a ninja...</p><p>"Holy shit, Mana!" Meiko kept screaming in joy, despite the efforts of these gangsters being solely devoted to crushing her this night proved to be an endless ride of joy and hype for the blacksmith.</p><p>The brutes started to pick themselves up from the ground, they stood up and stared at each other for a while before roaring and throwing a punch at each other's face. An overwhelming gust of pure force sent everyone who wasn't a roided out brute clutching for something to remain standing as the two heavyweights hit the dirt having knocked each other out.</p><p>"Well, it looks like that training in redirection I did wasn't in vain... Good thing I went down to ask the owner for a glass of water when I did though, I'd have probably been killed in that initial impact" Mana smiled dusting off the pants of her pajamas.</p><p>"Did you just take out two of those things without your chakra control?" Kouta's mouth opened while he was pointing his finger at Mana and then at the scene of the two unconscious brutes.</p><p>The girl's face blushed as she stroke her bed hair madly, "Well, the stronger the force, the more effective the redirection..." she couldn't handle compliments that well but the three just kept staring at her completely refusing to believe what just happened.</p><p>"Well then... I woke you guys up, you beat up my guys... I'd say we're even, you see..." the gentleman turned around and started playfully dashing in the opposite direction. Shimo stood right in front of him before he could make it to the first corner kneeing the man into the stomach.</p><p>"You owe us, we're leaving in the morning so we have no time to mess around with you, pay up and we'll be on our way first thing in the morning. I believe your problem is with Meiko since the first hit was thrown right at her from above, we're leaving tomorrow so we actually will be even. Your boss won't even blow your head off for this failure if you lie..." Shimo's husky and annoyed voice weaseled out a deal for the mobster. The gentleman's arm reached into his pocket but Shimo's arm reached it first, moving at blurring speeds.</p><p>The swordsman removed several large blocks of bills and tossed them at Meiko. The blacksmith struggled to keep them in her arms, letting them playfully slip around and tossing them like a hot potato before managing to finally catch them at which point she sighed and placed them into her ninja pouch, the blacksmith picked up her shield and placed it by her right hand.</p><p>"Storage Seal: Seal!" she yelled out as a bright light shot out from a hieroglyph that appeared on the girl's armor piece and absorbed the shield within. Despite her jarring holes with ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques Meiko appeared to know how to perform sealing techniques at the very least.</p><p>"Ummm... I'm not traveling in my pajamas, we should drop by another inn and hit the clothes shop in the morning, then maybe the weapons shop and then we head to Land of Rivers" Mana scratched her head trying to make some sense of this mess and put their plan back together.</p><p>"Actually... Could you maybe... Not go to Land of Rivers?" the slimy mobster who was still on the ground after getting his jacket pocket emptied weaseled out.</p><p>"Why? What's in the Land of Rivers? We are heading to the Wind Country and Land of Rivers is the only way there, it literally is the only passage on land and there's no reason for us to sail around..." Kouta complained.</p><p>"Well, Boss' Gold Mine is in the Land of Rivers, now that you offed so many of our muscle we'll need to restock so our syndicate's elite will leave to recruit some more brutes, they are umm... Trained... In the mines. If I am to lie that the armored girl is dead... It'd be better if we weren't on the same place at the same town, just in case..." the mobster explained waving his arms as he spoke, he appeared to gesture a lot and his face was one of those overly detailing and emphasizing the emotion that its owner wanted to portray.</p><p>"Then our destination is clear – we'll destroy those mines and head to Wind Country for the Box. I mean we're going to Land of Rivers anyways... We can't allow these gangsters experiment on more people and then use those poor things to bully innocent people" Mana nodded crossing her arms over her chest.</p><p>"The client has spoken!" Meiko declared lifting her fist up to the sky as the four grouped up and headed towards another inn to finish their night before the Tanzaku shops opened up.</p><p>"That complicates things..." the mobster grunted getting off of his knees and fixing his tie before placing his hat back on after picking it off the ground where it must've fallen at some point of the battle. "The Boss would like to hear about this "Box" though..." he spoke to himself as the four ninja had long since left the alleyway.</p><p>He had no choice, the Boss wouldn't have accepted failure and if those Konoha ninja were ready to cross the Wind Country's border for it this box must've been worth Boss' attention and his mercy towards the failure of his subordinate...</p>
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<a name="section0120"><h2>120. Entertainer's Creed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I was wondering..." Mana mumbled indifferently while she was trying a nice casual jacket that would've fit her black shirt which she found just recently referring to Meiko whose head playfully dug through the clothes on the other side and popped in between several different sets of coats.</p><p>"Hmm," she mooed like a cow</p><p>"You were in your armor when this whole thing happened, you were hit directly by that thing, right? You're lucky to be alright, those guys are nothing to sneeze at even by ninja standards..." the magician wondered picking several different sets of clothes off of the stand and placing them into her cart to try out. Mana was always a sucker for clothes, a part of her identity as a performer was to always look her best, the problem was that despite enjoying changing her wardrobe up a lot she rarely got the chance to do any shopping with all those crazy missions she's been doing lately.</p><p>"Yeah..." Meiko's head nodded and then disappeared back to the other row through the endless ocean of coats, a loud tomboyish laughter let the magician know just where her friend was standing behind the giant set of clothes.</p><p>"Don't worry, I can take a punch. Though yeah, I was checking my armor before I went asleep, I always do because my armors are made of simple materials: leather and steel mostly. I need to maintain all those bunches of belts, see that all the switches and parts work properly and aren't damaged. It's a lot of work, you know. So I just fell asleep while checking something, the last thing I remember checking was the belt that kept my shoulder pad connected to the rest of the set..." Meiko explained. It was really lovely how invested she got into talking about her armor and her job.</p><p>Then again, Mana would most likely be just as invested to talk about stage magic if there was someone to talk about it with. Maybe it was her own desire to talk about things that she loved that made her be that person who listens to other people's passions and things plaguing them.</p><p>"Yeah, I know what you're talking about, my uniform is quite similar – it has a bunch of pockets and all those switches that slip cards in or out, shoot them and all that... It really is a lot of work, making them good for both stage magic and fighting is the tough part" Mana smiled even though her friend could not see it. Surprisingly there were more things she could relate to Meiko with than she initially thought. Surely they were pretty much polar opposites but a lot of things that they hated about themselves and things they loved had similar aspects to them.</p><p>It only took the girls two more hours to conclude their shopping, mostly because of Mana's own fault, she was perfectly aware that she won't need that many different outfits for this mission but she was adamant to finish her shopping. Then again, she was the smart one to remind everyone to buy appropriate attires for the Wind Country desert, it was getting closer and closer and they may travel it for days before finding the ruins. Mana's natural love for shopping was masked behind her own lie that she was doing it because it was practical and while it certainly was on some parts, her motive behind spending so much time and earned money was purely for enjoyment.</p><p>"Finally..." Shimo rolled his eyes, he was already dressed in a white long robe which appeared to be most suitable for the desert, it wasn't a bad idea as they were going to reach the Land of Rivers which was pretty much a huge resort in just a day or two, maybe faster depending on their rate of travel.</p><p>Kouta smiled in a white and blue tracksuit and scratched his head, he didn't appear to be nearly as annoyed as the Yuki swordsman but he didn't spend too much money on clothes either. "If you need help carrying that backpack I can do it for you, Mana-chan..."</p><p>"You ate all of your money meant for clothes and supplies away, didn't you?" Meiko squinted at the boy feeling suspicious for his sudden desire to help his teammate out.</p><p>The cheeks of the medical ninja dyed in a rather crimson hue as his eyes closed so that he didn't betray the truth but the truth was really apparent.</p><p>"You're just jealous that you didn't think of it, Meiko-san" Kouta tried to bite back at his teammate which was somewhat effective as Meiko stopped talking for a while at least. Finally, the four set off to leave Tanzaku town, they may have optimally stayed there to make some more gambling money as with their ninja skills it wasn't really gambling. Still, they made a deal with that mafia weasel that they'd leave early and something deep inside made them honor that deal.</p><p>"Stupid buildings... All the same..." the quartet heard a rumbling yet deep and powerful voice close by, they slowly walked up to check. After turning the corner leading to the street where the unnatural voice came by they bumped into one of the large mafioso brutes. The living mystery of the Land of the Rivers' Gold Mines. The monstrous man twisted his upper lip in contempt after seeing the four approaching.</p><p>"I think it's the one that jumped away from the battlefield, he's still trying to find his way back, not too bright, those guys, are they?" Meiko observed leaning back curiously, it was interesting how this girl expected no danger from the brute even though she was their main target yesterday judging by how they specifically aimed at Meiko when they tore down the inn.</p><p>"Head hurts... Hurts when I try to think hard..." the man uttered lifting his worn-out hat and scratching his messy hair.</p><p>"Whatever they're doing in those mines... It must be so painful that their bodies undergo a protective mindwipe so potent that it wipes it permanently, any semblance of complicated thought appears to bring up their painful memories, interesting..." Kouta slid around the brute as if he was a living specimen in a museum, even climbing the monster and poking him on the head curiously, just to see if the stimulus wouldn't call a violent reaction.</p><p>"Where is home? Boss must be angry..." the mafioso mumbled out loud, despite his loud and rather aggressive tone he didn't seem to be in a fighting mood at all. All he cared about was getting back to the headquarters.</p><p>Mana smiled at the man and walked up, touching his large arm gently and lifting it up, as she removed the hand four small wooden balls remained in his hand. Mana intended to have them as a part of her improvised ninja kit seeing how using knives and shuriken was made more difficult without the enhanced ninja perception and accuracy being on her side, every skill she ever possessed needed to be retrained.</p><p>"Balls?" the man grumped out shaking his head and starting to get angry before Mana slowly took them from him and juggled them for a couple of seconds just like she used to do as a child, standing on a cardboard box in the middle of Konohagakure.</p><p>"You can make your own money like this, money can buy you food, shelter, anything you'll need. You'll also make people happy..." she smiled handing the balls back to the giant looking at his stumped impression, "You do know how money works, right?"</p><p>"Me talk hard, not stupid! Fifteen hundred ryo for apples..." the man read a sign on the other side of the street, the magician kept on smiling.</p><p>"Make sure to practice a lot, making people happy is tough and sometimes it'll come at the cost of your own happiness but it's OK, that's what we entertainers do. The only kind of money that feels rightly earned is money earned for making someone happier..." the girl said after Kouta dragged her off since the four were heading towards the exit from the town. The man just kept on standing there stumped with the balls in his hand, still trying to fully grasp what the young genin told him.</p><p>What followed was a rather long and uneventful run towards Land of Rivers. It was said to be a beautiful natural paradise that had plenty of settlements all throughout the country but it was by far the least tampered with land of any places where people actively lived. People made homes and caves inside rocks protected only by waterfalls, they made homes inside trees instead of from them. It was a lovely idea of living in sync with nature taken to its natural limits.</p><p>After just three or four hours of movement, the four genin could already see the changing scenery, the leaves became greener as the trees in the Land of Rivers soil grew larger and richer in nutrients. They were also much more numerous in their numbers, not only larger in size. A river or a massive lake commonly interrupted their uneventful and even boring trip, Kouta pleasantly agreed to carry Mana over them as the three used the "Water Walking Technique" which most genin learned in the Academy to simply run across them instead of bothering to walk around them which would've cost them days more time spent on the road.</p><p>The four didn't bother to sleep for the whole three days of traveling, they did stop for a small rest, just place their backs to a tree, relax and let their minds slide away for a while, just for an hour or two. It wasn't that they were worried about criminals, which all things considered would've been a legitimate worry, they were just really rushing to get to their destination – Land of Rivers was the final stop before the Wind Country, and that Gold Mine inside it was the last obstacle they needed to be cleared. After seeing in action just what was done to people inside those mines the four didn't even talk about it – all of them agreed that whatever was happening there had to end, no matter that it was neither their objective nor did it have anything to do with their objective whatsoever.</p><p>Finally, the Land of Rivers welcomed them with the four reaching a small settlement village which was the thing that reminded of civilization the most in that large untamed land of natural beauty. It was a small and simple settlement, numerous homes built of wood, all of the villagers appeared to be at least somewhat involved with the mines since the road to the mines was the main road of the village and most males that the ninja squad saw were definitely mine workers – carrying mining tools and had figures far too well defined and trained for them not to be used to heavy labor.</p><p>"Well then, not much use standing around, let's head out to the mines then?" Meiko growled out, it was clear that the lack of sleep got to her. It may have been a wise choice to postpone that trip.</p><p>"We may not even find anything there, it'd be ideal if we knew when the syndicate that we bumped into decided to do their thing in the mines, they'd lead us straight to it..." Shimo replied, he was much more skilled with that kind of thing, having lived beyond the village walls and living and training with a rogue ninja himself, he must've picked up on a thing or two about how things like that were handled.</p><p>"Doesn't really feel right to torture people, even if they are criminals..." Mana pouted, that was really the best way she could express herself in having her exhausted condition in mind. She wasn't like those ninja who could've had their bodies sustain themselves even if they were literally dying, her body had no supernatural feats about it and she was stuck with just one frail body and an even frailer mind.</p><p>"Well, I am a medical ninja, I was taught how to torture humanely..." Kouta shrugged.</p><p>"Torture... Humanely?" Mana growled squinting angrily at him.</p><p>"Yeah, the Konohagakure torture method is quick and incredibly painful, I've gone through the course, it's always so painful that maximum pressure is applied making the one being tortured instantly pressured into surrendering the information so that..."</p><p>"Yeah... No... Plan B" Mana cut Kouta's explanation of the methods of torture taught to the medical ninja. The profession of medical ninja had so much romance to it for Mana, the magician had always wanted to be one but those who got to practice it and be taught in its ways were always the prodigies with the best grades and the most amazing chakra control. Even back at her peak, Mana could probably ever hope to heal minor wounds, even if taught the basics of medical ninjutsu. And she was supposed to be quite proficient at it due to her self-training.</p><p>"Well dismissing torture and interrogation... It doesn't leave us with many options, we're really too tired to sit and hope that an ambush situation presents itself..." Shimo scratched his chin looking around for a proper plan to somehow make itself known to him, be it with just the smallest hint...</p><p>"No, we'll get in, blow it up and get out. We find out how those things are made and then we blow that thing up so that people are no longer made into those things! That's it" Mana tried to explain her idea of how their work was supposed to go down when a hand grabbed her by the mouth covering it up and dragging her into a tent. The rest of the squad just stood there for a moment before leaping in to follow her and whoever decided to attack the magician. Once they entered the tent the sight that greeted them was Mana standing above an old miner she just threw over her shoulder once she recovered from the shock and gained proper footing. The man was whining on the floor as the magician had him in an armlock.</p><p>"You fools, don't just discuss things like that on the street!" the miner grunted out through the pain that the girl's armlock gave him.</p><p>Meiko grinned with a full-teeth smile and gave Mana a thumb up, "That's my student! Don't let em bully you around!" she commended the magician who finally realized she may have harmed a possible ally and let go of the miner.</p><p>"What do you know about the mines, old man, what's happening there and when?" Shimo pressed the man to the back of the tent after letting him get back up, not giving him much time to recover.</p><p>"What are you talking about? Aren't you four with the Agurotti family? Who do you work for then, Bellucini?" the man asked leaning slightly at Shimo trying to figure him out. The miner nodded at the Yuki's blade that was half drawn the moment he showed himself.</p><p>"That's an Audra blade if I ever saw one, can't get enough of that shit unless you're a Lord or you've got a crapton of Audra dust and... You know..." the old miner winked at the four.</p><p>"Right, the mines... Yeah, we're working for Bellucini..." Shimo lied sheathing his blade all the way and blinking rapidly.</p><p>"Shit, the guy started recruiting them younger, that's for sure, his vigilante coup problem that bad?" the miner whispered leaning up to the Yuki, the swordsman slapped the man with a backhand, Mana and Meiko tried to jump up to object, so did Kouta but the man jumped back up to his feet and giggled.</p><p>"Yeah, I know, I know, I was just testing ya. I know ya guys don't talk business with us common folk. I guess it's gotta be bad enough that he's sending green kids without any intel whatsoever..." the miner wiped the blood off his teeth and picked up a large duffel bag placing it onto his shoulder and pointing at the exit of the tent.</p><p>"Well young folk, what are ya waiting for, let's go, I'll lead you to the mines. You're in luck, Boss is arriving soon, he sent a message so he needs another batch of the product. Too bad if you guys came here for the same reason... Might return empty-handed is what I'm saying... You see?" the miner started leaping around and pointing hands and fingers at things completely unrelated to his topic, his manner of walking and gesturing while he spoke sure was weird.</p><p>"Right, the product. Bellucini-sama needs some..." Shimo silently sang it out for the miner.</p><p>"Aight, no need to wrap me in your deals, I'm just a manager of the middlemen, you can get all the matters discussed with the Boss when he drops by. It's really lucky you guys came here when you did! Like... I don't know if the mine can service your order, the Boss had his whole supply wiped out... Are those ladies it?" the miner nodded at Mana and Meiko.</p><p>Kouta leaned at the ears of the two girls and whispered to them, "I think the product is those brutes, why would he refer to you though..." he wondered whispering to them.</p><p>Shimo nodded.</p><p>"Damn, I don't think Boss ever tried making women products, somehow just feels cruel, ya know, then again, Boss was always more of a male-dominated business guy... Guess Bellucini is getting desperate eh!?" the miner giggled out as the scenery once again changed once they left the small village and started walking up to a large black as smoke rocky structure.</p><p>"Talk about Bellucini-san like that again and I'll smack you again, middleman..." Shimo coldly replied.</p><p>"Eh, I'm just fooling around here, don't wanna ruin the relationship between the syndicates or anything... Just fooling around, I'm just an old man, I talk dumb things sometimes" the miner quickly excused himself waving his hands frantically. After he entered the mine Shimo politely excused himself and asked for the man to go about his business and told him that they'd wait for his boss outside.</p><p>That was just another way of saying that he got all that he needed from the man...</p>
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<a name="section0121"><h2>121. That Which Glitters May Just Be Gold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A gentle shake woke Mana up from the brief moment of slumber that the squad was taking while waiting for the Syndicate to arrive at the mines. It was Shimo's decision to wait for them and then stumble into the mines after them, following them quietly they could've surveyed key points, seen all the hidden sensitive spots and they wouldn't have even had to wander aimlessly around a mine. The plan was for one person to keep watch at all time, Mana was excluded from the watch since the sleep deprivation had the worst effect on her.</p><p>Ninja could normally push their human limits to superhuman without much effort. A young genin, just out the Academy could lift a large boulder above their head if they pushed themselves to the limit, could've spent at least twenty or more minutes underwater or in an environment where breathing was impossible like a room filled with gas. Poisons and sickness worked differently on them just because they mastered the control over their bodies, they've learned to tap into the combination of spiritual and physical energies deep inside their very essences.</p><p>Mana had access to none of that, she couldn't spend multiple days without sleep and only then feel the negative effects of sleepless nights, she was nodding off midway into the first night, she had to eat and drink as often as she could. An interesting fact that she found out was that ninja didn't have to eat as often as they could, the magician thought when leaving on this mission that Meiko's monstrous appetite would be impossible to satisfy in the middle of the wilderness, as she found out quite quickly, Meiko didn't eat that much because she had to, she ate so much because she loved to.</p><p>At the moment of stalking, the blacksmith had not eaten a thing for two days and she didn't even complain one little bit. It appeared that the clear limit of ninja endurance and potential was not well explored and depended much more on the will of a particular individual. After all, the injuries that Mana sustained during her fight with Hisako before she lost her chakra manipulation would've killed even the most tough-headed a person several times over.</p><p>"Is it my turn to watch?" Mana moaned in a whisper, she was woken from a quite calm and utopic dream of her early days. She was washing dishes at Ichiraku with Shimo and Sugemi and Tanshu-sensei was making fun of them for enjoying it, just like he used to way back... It's hard to imagine that at some point in one's life cheap work of washing the dishes would seem dreamy and call up nostalgic longing for better times.</p><p>"Get real, it's never your turn to watch, you can't see in the dark half as well as we do" Shimo grunted just as silently and pointed at a rich party of people gathering at the gate.</p><p>Mana looked away, obviously, her feeling offended and crushed didn't matter to anyone at that moment, anyone but herself, but Shimo's words really hit her deep. It appeared that training all this time was just her fooling herself that she could ever fight on the level of her friends and the enemies that ninja usually fought. It wouldn't have been nearly as painful if she was the one to stumble to that conclusion but it was a dear friend, one she loved more than anyone else in the world speaking those words.</p><p>The party below was composed of a bunch of mobsters, some of them wore similar attires to the slimy gent that the team met back in Tanzaku town: just slick and expensive suits and more sophisticated hats than the peacock feather stuck onto them. Others looked different in status, whether they were higher or lower the chain remained to be seen: several wore black and white kimonos with dragon motifs and had their heads shaved, they had their entire bodies covered with tattoos but it was too dark for Mana to make out the details of those tattoos, she could've sworn several of them were kanji symbols.</p><p>"Rabbit, Dragon, Rooster... What do those tattoos mean?" Kouta wondered, clearly his superhuman perception of a ninja allowed him to make out some details of the tattoos and his curiosity also informed Mana of what exactly they had tattooed on those exposed chests of theirs, some of those tattoos extended well past the chest, and all over the bald head of the men as well.</p><p>"Doesn't matter, ideally we won't engage them, we'll just get what we want from this place and be on our way. We can report on the Syndicate's activities once we return and Hokage-sama will send people to deal with them..." Shimo cut the topic down turning his eyes on the more... Peculiar looking figures.</p><p>Mixed in between the Syndicate's members were two incredibly frail figures, they were wrapped in bright-colored cloaks and one of them was really short and bald while the other one was much taller, had similar tattoos to the rest of the kimono wearing group and a strange braid wrapped around his head. They stood out from the rest of the group and that said a lot having in mind that the group involved two more brutes amongst their midst, similar to the muscle-heads that the team met in Tanzaku.</p><p>"So they weren't completely out of those numbskulls..." Meiko remarked scratching the back of her head.</p><p>The group left the two brutes behind to watch the entrance, they entered the mines without wasting much time, Shimo grunted and leaped down the slope, his ninja stealth skills allowed even his shoes to slip down without making a single stone fall down the slope picking up other stones and making too large of a ruckus and the sound of his slipping shoes was muffled by stone and coal being worked on by complex machinery nearby. The rest of the group followed, Meiko grabbed Mana by her collar and held her in her arms while she slid down, as thick-skulled as she liked to appear at times, the girl was not by any means lacking intelligence.</p><p>The group hid behind the machinery and moved quietly closer to the entrance, one step at a time. Shimo cursed to himself as he was almost seen by one of the brutes.</p><p>"This isn't good, we didn't plan on them bringing those guys here, we still have no foolproof plan on fighting them..." the Yuki swordsman whispered.</p><p>"Yeah, some blows are completely ineffective, then others seem to work just like they were made of flesh and bones..." Kouta reminded everyone.</p><p>Mana growled under her own nose – she was putting her friends to threat, a single blow from those monstrous men was enough to tear down a building, they were told to be strong enough to lift one above their heads when enraged and she personally saw the one she fought tear through walls and any kind of barriers she placed in their way effortlessly. He even tore through wet cement, using his large palms to dig himself out and tossing the goo aside. The only thing that stopped them for good was certain techniques, the mystery of which was still just that – a mystery, and punches of ones of their own.</p><p>"They didn't bring anyone for the "product", remember the miner thought that I and Meiko were tributes of some sort. That means that this "product" they're making here, these brutes, they cost people's lives. Since they didn't bring anyone with them except those weird-looking soggy guys with cloaks they'll probably use the innocent miners. I can't let them do that..." Mana whispered out. Once again her principles put the mission objective in jeopardy by making them do a detour.</p><p>"Hey... Where's Meiko?" Kouta asked slightly louder than a sneaking person should.</p><p>Mana's eyes slipped up and on to the open field where she was standing right in front of the two brutes, the giant mobsters cracked their fists as Meiko slapped her hands together into a handseal.</p><p>"Don't worry guys, I got this! Transformation Jutsu!" she yelled out as in a loud poof and a blinding cloud of smoke she appeared to have transformed into an animal to distract the brutes.</p><p>The problem was that the specifics of the animal were hard to tell, it was the most chimera-like animal that Mana had ever seen: it had a tail of a fox, a rich fur all over its body that looked like that of a terrier except it was as thick as an old bug infested carpet, not unlike ones that grandmas put on their walls. It had a tapir-like snout which was also covered with fur, its eyes reminded most of an old cat but for some reason one of them was shot out and much larger than the other.</p><p>The brutes looked confused at the miserable pile of failure that this animal appeared to be and burst into laughter. These men appeared to have little to no control of emotion as they rolled on the floor and punched stones and machines close-by to dust in their mad laughter induced rampage. Mana decided to move in, she leaped out from the cover and signaled the team to follow her, the boys did just that and they sneaked through completely unseen.</p><p>A couple of minutes later the miserable fusion of animals poofed back into Meiko. The girl appeared to be visibly annoyed to the point where her face was so grumpy that it was hard to tell which was funnier: the animal she transformed into or her grumpy and pissed expression.</p><p>"Not a single word..." she growled out angrily.</p><p>As the blacksmith bolted forward in an attempt to make the squad feel more occupied with chasing her than thinking about the miserable attempt to pull off a decent transformation, something that was actually in the curriculum of the Ninja Academy so it was one of the most fundamental skills of a ninja, Kouta leaned in on the rest of the squad and whispered.</p><p>"I thought she did that on purpose... Didn't she?" the boy whispered out.</p><p>Meiko looked back at them with the most angered and horrific also threatening expression one could imagine.</p><p>"Let's go, we'll lose them!" she yelled out, caring very little if the brutes pick up on her voice since the mine was much too small for them to fit into it.</p><p>"Apparently not..." Shimo cracked a grin as the team picked up the pace. Mana tripped and fell in the total darkness busting up her knee. Meiko leaped into a wall and kicked off of it to repurpose her momentum to get her to Mana's location quicker. The magician grunted and pet her knee in an attempt to get the rocks out of it.</p><p>"How are you?" the blacksmith asked.</p><p>"Ummm... Fine just... Hurts a lot..." Mana reported, Kouta cursed as he leaned in.</p><p>"It's a bit too dark to see for sure in here, let me check it in more detail... "Diagnosis Jutsu"!" he suggested before making a bright blue light emanate from his hands. In a brief moment of his hands making a more decent light source than the few torches on the walls and a couple of lamps on the ceiling every hundred meters or so Mana could see a nasty flesh wound and her bone sticking out.</p><p>"Well then, this needs attention..." Kouta sighed, "Let's just slow down for a moment... It's dark enough for this to happen to any of us so don't beat your head around it, Mana-chan" he tried to calm her down. He must've known how sad Mana felt whenever her humanity and loss of chakra control was brought up.</p><p>Meiko looked really on the edge, it was weird since it was Mana who had her knees getting checked and a bone getting put back into place and healed up. As she had learned from her experience so far – bone injuries were some of the most painful ones to heal as even if the usual Mystical Palm Jutsu treatment felt calm and refreshing, almost like soothing cold water being spilled on one's wound that made it feel really warm and relaxed, with bones it hurt much more. Whether it be repositioning or them being stuck together, bones were a tough thing to fix and they hurt even when patched skilfully.</p><p>"It's all my fault..." she said, the blacksmith leaned up to Mana and placed her hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have rushed so much it's just... That fail with the Transformation Technique... I'm sorry, Mana!" she kept apologizing, jumping up and quickly walking from one side to another as if the magician was her child who was in the middle of surgery or something.</p><p>"Relax, I know you didn't mean anything bad by it, it's fine. We wanted to catch up to those guys anyway but I guess now we kind of lost them so... We probably would've been in a rush even if you weren't distressed. No need to worry. No one cares you botched that transformation, for all we know it worked flawlessly, it did what it had to do, didn't it?" Mana smiled even though occasionally her lips twisted in pain and she even slapped Kouta's face on accident when the bone got stuck together and all the bone shards and dust in the wound just fused with the bone forming a fresh and strong bone, after that the knee closed almost instantly.</p><p>Kouta sighed, he looked visibly more drained than before and Mana felt ashamed that she was the one who needed such a stupid treatment for something as dumb as a clumsy mistake. Still, she didn't apologize or said anything to defend her clumsiness, Kouta made it clear that he didn't want to hear any of it.</p><p>"I see some light further down the line, the lamps on the ceiling become more frequent there, we can pick up the pace there, for now, let's stay careful and move slowly..." the swordsman smiled, his eyes opened up and softened in a kindred expression for the first time in a while. All this situation with the Syndicate must've reminded him of a tough time he spent with his rogue sensei training and learning the ways of how the rogue ninja survived, how they communicated and how they thought. Shimo's rogue skills were quite useful when dealing with these guys but Mana didn't want to notice that out loud – he may not have been proud of those skills...</p><p>The four started moving again, it was odd, this whole mine seemed to have just a single moving pattern, so far it was just a single way leading up to something. It was dark, it looked just like one would've suspected a normal mine to look – a bunch of coal and rock on the side, it all fortified by some oak wood beams so that the whole place didn't cave in at the first shock. Most beams were also fortified by solid hardened steel, having in mind that these brutes were made in this place this may not have been such a bad idea...</p><p>"Wait a second..." Kouta stopped and turned to the wall, carefully stroking it.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Shimo asked slowing down as well.</p><p>"They didn't touch any of the coal in the wall, it's a valuable resource, I've seen machines that work the ores in this place use coal as fuel, why wouldn't they touch such rich veins of coal so close to the entrance if they need it for fuel?" the medical ninja wondered bumping the wall again and again with his kunai knife, examining it.</p><p>"Forget that..." Mana said as her eyes widened, her hand carefully stroke a soft bright glowing vein which playfully glowed in her eyes as the light from the lamp on the ceiling reflected off of its pleasantly reflective surface. The rest of the squad turned in her direction.</p><p>"They're not touching the gold either..." the magician's lips barely moved to utter these words just due to how tough it was to believe what she was saying.</p><p>"I thought this was a gold mine? I mean sure, they may use it to make those brutes also but... If you're doing it in a gold mine, may as well take the gold too..." Meiko scratched the back of her head trying to get to the bottom of it.</p><p>Shimo closed his eyes, he tried to figure it out but then his eyes shot open widely and anger filled them, anger because he couldn't wrap his head around any of it.</p><p>"Let's get to this elevator, it will take us to the lower floors. If this is the only path that means the mobsters took it too. I don't know why they're not touching the coal which is integral for their machinery or why they don't care about the gold here but I very much intend to find out if we're stopping whatever we're doing here..." the swordsman replied stepping onto an old elevator of very questionable quality. The rest of the squad stepped onto the elevator too, Mana kept on looking at the wall.</p><p>Somehow to her descending and finding out the answer felt like cheating. She saw this as a really exciting puzzle and she wanted to find out about it with her own smarts. Was this how her audience felt when watching her shows? Seeing something incredible, something so unbelievable that it seemed illogical and then being given the honor to figure out that great mystery, "How did she do that?", except, in this case, it was more of a "What" than "How".</p><p>"Come on, get on the elevator..." Shimo complained waving for her to step on the platform before he pulled the lever to lower them down.</p><p>Mana kept observing the wall with her eyes closed, they rapidly moved to the left and to the right as she tried to figure it all out, put it all together: the mobsters, the brutes, their lack of any interest in gold or coal... No, this wasn't a lack of interest, this was a blatant denial, almost like they NEEDED for it to remain in the walls...</p><p>"Mana-chan! You said in one of your shows when a little boy asked you how exactly did you do a trick... You said "I'd never be as heinous as to spoil you the secret..." then you gave him a small hint to help him figure it out by himself. If you want to figure it out by yourself before we find out, that's fine, that's kind of cute but... There's nothing wrong with getting some more hints along the way" Kouta smiled.</p><p>Mana's eyes opened and looked down hopelessly, she slowly crept onto the elevator as Shimo pulled the lever raising them up first. The lever seemed to go both ways: above and below. The trip above or the top floor, for that matter, wasn't a very eventful or interesting one – it appeared to be just a very mechanized and well-built base of operations.</p><p>As the four left the elevator to look around Kouta's eyes seemed to have been fixed onto something that appeared to intimidate him quite a bit, after Mana saw the medical ninja just standing there staring at some sort of a window above on a small station with a control panel operating a large cart system which was supposed to transport a large number of carts filled with whatever they were storing there she also froze. Looking through the window was Kouta's father and his crew from before. The man's hand reached up to press a button.</p><p>"We know you're looking for something called B.U.B., whatever you guys are so interested in also intrigues me. I know that these Syndicate guys are too weak to take you down but they'll slow you guys down enough for us to gain a small lead. Let us spoil it for you – the interesting part is what's underground this mine..." after saying those words he pressed a small button initiating the movement of the carts.</p><p>"Shit, this'll alert everyone!" Kouta yelled out, "Father, stop this stupid nonsense!"</p><p>"As I've said, I don't want you or the other brats getting yourselves killed but the thought of a scavenger hunt excites me, race you guys to the B.U.B. then?" a sick smile covered the face of Kouta's father as he and his team behind him disappeared in a black flash while the doors all around the upper floor of the mines burst open with miners and mobsters spilling into the place like ants swarming to protect their home.</p><p>"I can't stress out enough how much of a dick your father is!" Shimo roared out loud in pure rage as he reached for his blade.</p><p>"Protect Mana-chan!" Kouta ordered trying to cover her from the rushing swarm of miners armed with small knives and pickaxes, Mana gently pushed him out of her way.</p><p>"Sorry, after being punched in the face so many times, I'd like to see the fruits of my training. I may just be an ordinary teenage girl with a lot of training now but I refuse to hide when I'm in perfect condition to help..." she replied.</p><p>A miner leaped at Mana swinging his pickaxe, the magician saw his moves from a mile away having been attacked ten times as fast, she leaned out of its way guiding his arms down to get his weapon stuck in the grate below. The girl's gentle and flowing movements flipped the man over using his own momentum and her foot snapped right onto his face breaking his nose and knocking him out with one go.</p><p>Just like that, the mad brawl began...</p>
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<a name="section0122"><h2>122. Reckless Sacrifices</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a moment in time, barely conceivable and comprehensible to the mind of a normal human, Mana's instincts froze her body, right before the other miners charged at her and her squad. For a single moment, just a raindrop in a raging ocean storm of moments to come, the magician tried to think, analyze the environment like she used to. Brawl in autopilot, surrender her body to pure instinct, let her chakra, and her ninja perception guide her actions while her mind was busy analyzing the environment, predicting the opponent's movements. Oh, how forgetful it was of her to do that...</p><p>Mana's body moved slick and fast, avoiding every blow, every swing of each weapon, built or improvised. She avoided fists, steel gloves meant to rip loosened minerals from stone with tremendous force, pickaxes, axes, and even tossed chunks of stone and coal. Just like Meiko taught her, all of her movements were fluid like water, she was ready to fight just about anyone or anything who wasn't faster than human perception. Her movements were sharpened perfected, not only during the week of training but also all those years of being trained to be a soldier for her own village. While her full power was crushed beneath the feet of cruel fate, her mind was still the same... Mostly: slower, incredibly sluggish but at least just as potent.</p><p>Mana felt regret, doubt, she didn't want to fight initially because she didn't know if these men were just miners doing their job or tools of the Syndicate to be thrown at them. The first man was different, she knocked him out because she wasn't ready, she reacted in self-defense, she restrained her movements from snapping his neck despite having full access to it. Then something snapped in her mind. She was protecting her opponent again, just like before... No more of that.</p><p>The kunoichi's hands and feet joined in on her smooth evasion, her arms redirected every blow, every weapon choosing a new target for the attack for the enemy, using their momentum and their own strength. And there was plenty of it to spare, these blows were strong enough to shatter bones, crush skulls, maim and even kill. A pickaxe meant to be stuck into Mana's eye sent right into the knee of the miner's friend to the right, a kick meant to kick the girl in the shin, it'd have sent her to her knees where she'd soon be overwhelmed had the man's kick not been pushed into the groin of his friend. Despite her best efforts to stand there and fight, Mana had to move backward, she had to avoid getting surrounded or else...</p><p>A sharp scratch composed of nothing else but sheer pain emanated from the girl's back, sending painful shivers to her very core. She was tagged, her defense was slowing down, it was natural, she was only human. A punch to the gut hit her but Mana bounced back, adrenaline and fear kept her on her feet. She kept fighting back, trying to find weak but not overly weak spots to redirect the punches to. It wasn't going ideally, she had more miners to deal with than she was comfortable dealing with. As much as she didn't want to admit it – she needed some help here... Fights were never pretty but if she was left alone Mana may need some more healing after this.</p><p>Meiko, on the other hand, was blowing everyone away. She unsealed the buckler from the sealing mark on her arm, shoving it into people's faces, dashing around like a moving wall, and blowing everyone off their feet, several times her swift and blurry movements saved Mana by cleaning her opponents right in front of her own eyes. The blacksmith leaned down and pressed a mark on her boots.</p><p>"C-Rank Seal: Release!" she yelled out as blue flames of pure chakra shot out from the seal in her boots. Had the blacksmith not spent so much time on the maintenance of her armor and its seals she'd have completely forgotten to refill the chakra supply in the seal. A jet of flames sent the armored ninja on a rampage through the battlefield wielding her buckler as a battering ram, judging from the looks and the tremendous success she had blowing miners away it was more of a crushing ram.</p><p>"Look, Mana! I'm like Kurye from "Tales of Shikio"! The Mighty Valkyrie of the Shield!" Meiko yelled out, to her this was just a foolish game, just something where she could goof off and show her tremendous combat potential off, test out some new combinations of her weapons. Mana, on the other hand, was fighting for her life... Well, that as well as her pride. She couldn't allow herself being beaten here, even when outnumbered a dozen of times...</p><p>"Ugh, I'm like so Team Vetsu!" Mana yelled out rolling under a pickaxe, as her roll was almost completed her arms shot forward, and using the momentum of the unfinished roll she repurposed the force generated by the leap into her legs that kicked the man's pickaxe back into his face hitting him with the top side instead of the sharp one. Shouting in pain the miner collapsed.</p><p>"Seriously?! We're going to have a fistfight later!" Meiko yelled out angrily throwing her shield but it was blocked by a miner with a pickaxe, the force of the throw still sent the blocking pickaxe back into the unsuspecting miner's face blowing his helmet off and making the poor man flee with a bruised face and his pride in ruins.</p><p>Mana wanted to quip around and act like she was having fun but the truth was that she wasn't. She was struggling, she was getting hit and she could on occasion see some black marks on the few patches of her exposed skin that she saw. All of the damned miners from outside must've been rushing to this place. Still, their numbers were starting to dwindle.</p><p>Shimo couldn't even be registered, he just flashed around in a blur, sending a small-scale vortex of cold air to slow the reaction of anyone he attacked that looked like they were worth their mettle. Most of these miners were surprisingly good so they may have had some combat experience which was a little bit odd. Still, with a single swing of his sword, the Yuki sent several men down at times.</p><p>Kouta, on the other hand, was holding himself back much more, restraining his punches to the best of his ability. His blows still threw the men around the whole damned mine, propelling them well over fifty to hundred meters and slamming them into sheer rock or steel, leaving them crippled, and if they didn't have some shock-absorbent vests on them and their helmets they'd easily be dead. Mana saw Kouta crush one man's helmet to smallest pieces with just a flick, flipping the man over with the leftover force as well.</p><p>Mana saw Kouta's body being covered with bruises and marks as well, even worse, due to him holding his full power back he was getting surrounded. Her eyes got serious. Suddenly it was like her fury over her friend's injuries made the time stop all around her, she had time to focus, she had the time to react. Or maybe she had it in her the whole time? Mana's gentle taps moved so fast she could barely see them herself, how was this possible? She changed the direction of over twelve attacks coming at her at the same time!? All the men surrounding Mana fell over after receiving the attack from a comrade of theirs while the magician flicked a device on her sleeve getting some cards ready. With several quick swipes letting them fly she leave them etched deep into the flesh of the men giving Kouta trouble.</p><p>The boy looked at her surprised and blushed, he must've felt ashamed of being rescued by a girl who didn't even have her chakra manipulation. No... It was something else! Mana tried to react, she tried to move with the speed that she used before but where her mind was aware of the danger behind her, her body was not fast enough, it was once again the body of a normal, well trained in combat and martial arts human girl. She felt a sharp as a knife touch pierce her shin, then another on her shoulders, a gentle tap from a foot to her knee sent her down while the hand of her assailant grabbed her own wrist, still armed with a sharp tossing card, and moved it to her throat. She was subdued! Those pinches felt like they sent lightning itself pulsing through her entire body, almost like she got shocked every time they touched her.</p><p>"Stop!" the man who caught Mana ordered. Mana just barely restrained her smile as each of her friends had already finished every single miner who rushed there. Why were there so many!? Were all of them responding to an alert?</p><p>"I'm sorry..." Mana murmured, she felt so horribly. The worst shame for a ninja was to be caught off guard and be captured alive, to be used as a burden for their team. Ninja were tools of their own village, not their enemies. She was a disgrace thinking she could still fight at that level.</p><p>"It's not your fault, Mana, these men aren't like ordinary brawlers, that was pressure point assault" Shimo sheathed his sword and prepared to lunge at them, the magician saw his eyes calculating the distance between her and him, he was trying to judge accurately if he could leap at them and cut them down with a drawing slash before they could react. While sounding quite impossible it sounded quite right for the boy in question.</p><p>"No, we're not like you ninja guys, we actually had to train our entire lives. Push ourselves to the limit that is... My brother and I, also every other Silkman in the Syndicate are versed in every martial art in the world. Even with their amazing speed ninja find us tough to keep up with up close and this girl was both impressive enough to pose us a threat and distracted enough by something, or rather someone to subdue..." the man spoke up.</p><p>"Silkman?" Mana wondered silently whispering to herself. Her eyes glanced below seeing the end of a long black and white kimono. So these were the bald kimono mobsters? Were all of them so skilled in martial arts?</p><p>"You fools! She's not even a ninja! She poses no threat to you! Let her go and let us pass!" Kouta yelled out, his chakra was raging deep inside so prominently that his violent Juugo heritage made it leak from his pores in the shape of blueish glowing dust. His hair started flowing upwards from the rising pressure and the electrifying presence of chakra particles in the air around him.</p><p>"Quite the contrary, she's the one who would've been the most bothersome one to tag and take out in a rush. We were fighting ninja our entire lives yet this girl uses no ninja techniques and still has such a well-focused and purposed style of countering our martial art styles that she had to be disabled..." another voice behind her spoke up, so there was more than one assailant?!</p><p>"Also, we're not the ones stopping you from passing, you're not letting our men withdraw from the mines!" the first Silkman shouted out angrily pressing the card closer to Mana's throat in anger. "We've disabled this girl's dominant leg with a pressure point pinch for several minutes, we observed your styles and know which pressure points would most efficiently disable yours too but we've no time, we need to retreat now!"</p><p>Mana saw more miners moving in from below, walking up the ladders since the elevator was unavailable. Using the emergency tunnels made to exit the mine in the event of the main elevator and all other exits being blocked. They were all armed and ready to take her friends out. These mobsters were right – the magician felt her left leg being totally numb so she was in no condition to leap or even to stand upright.</p><p>"You shall stand there and let us pass..." the Silkman ordered as several more miners moved onto the elevator before some broke off of the group and moved up closer to the aftermath of the fight.</p><p>"Wait a second, these brats beat up our friends! Let's kick their asses!" the miner yelled out to his friends.</p><p>"Don't fool around! The monster down below is free! The brutes won't hold him for long! We need to get out of here NOW!" another miner asked his friend to return onto the elevator but more and more branched off heading to beat these young ninja to the inches of their lives or even beyond that line.</p><p>Meiko grinned, "Don't worry, Mana, I have a plan... You just sit calm and don't worry"</p><p>Shimo grinned, he was visibly worried by the impending beating. "I could use a joke right about now, what's your wonderful plan?" he asked.</p><p>Meiko gave him a thumb up, "We'll endure everything they throw at us until they fall unconscious and exhausted!"</p><p>Kouta slapped his face. He extended his arms at the incoming attackers, preparing to open up the holes in his arms and concentrate the leaking chakra into the Juugo bloodline blasts, but the second Silkman ordered him to stop and stand down. Mana almost burst into tears from her shame. It was because of her that her friends were going to get beaten and killed, it was because of her that this mission will fail. After all this time, after all this training... It wasn't even because she was too weak... It was just a simple mistake.</p><p>No. They won't be hurt, not because of her! Mana looked Shimo in the eyes, he knew her the longest, he knew just what she was about to do and she was right to think so as the swordsman's eyes shot wide open and his arms extended at her to stop her. He was actually afraid, Mana's intentions actually broke his façade of cool and empathy.</p><p>"Mana! Don't even..." he yelled out but the magician closed her eyes.</p><p>"Find the box, I owe Meiko to let her hold it in her hands..." she uttered before shoving her neck forward and cutting the lower side of her neck on it. The Silkman leaped back, he clearly didn't expect this sort of suicidal effort so he tried to dash back and find another way to deal with it. His movements slowed down Mana heard his wild and uncontrollable scream and a loud slash from a blade – Shimo got to him in an instant... He wouldn't have made it if he tried before. The girl coughed... Blood was flooding everywhere, both inside and outside, her hair felt sticky. She heard deafening barrages of thuds, they were like small explosions and after every single one there were uncontrollable screams of pain, Kouta was angry...</p><p>"You idiot! Stop the damned fisticuffs and go heal her!" Meiko screamed like a wild cornered beast. Mana's vision was starting to blur but then she felt something – something freezing. Shimo must've used one of his cold air gusts to freeze up her wound. It wasn't delicate, it wasn't the thing to do in a situation like that but it was at the very least enough to stop her bleeding somewhat. The blurry vision dyed in a shade of salad green. Kouta's sweaty face cleared up.</p><p>"Can you treat her!?" Meiko's wild scream followed by screams of the miners and the sound of them hitting the ladders and stairs to escape this place reached the medical ninja. His face covered with wild torrents of a mixture of blood and sweat turned back.</p><p>"Yeah, the wound isn't fatal, I've treated worse but she may have trouble breathing and speaking for a while, I'm not sure yet, the lower part of her throat is damaged but it seems to have missed the major arteries, I don't think those cards are meant to slit throats" he reported back lifting Mana's head a little to check her neck for any other wounds. The girl coughed up something that looked like blood but Kouta stroke her hair and calmed her down.</p><p>"Don't worry, it's just the water from Shimo's ice ninjutsu, it melted and got into your lungs... Shit, it opened the wound again... Sorry..." the boy lowered her head and started treating the wound again.</p><p>"Run! Someone blow the fucking exit!" a voice of a miner reached Mana's ears. By that point, the shock disappeared and overwhelming pain took over. She wasn't sure if this pain was dumbed down by Kouta's treatment or if it was the full experience but it hurt so much that she started to wriggle, she wanted to scream but she knew it'd open up her wounds and she'd probably drown in her own blood.</p><p>"Please try to endure it... I'm almost done... Sorry... I'm doing it as fast as I can but... I'm... I'm a bit... Inexperienced..." Kouta wrapped his hand around Mana's head and pressed it tighter to his chest so that it remained still while she writhed in pain.</p><p>Mana wanted to talk but she couldn't, she forced a smile and looked Kouta in the eyes trying to portray her feelings to the best of her ability. She wanted to calm him down, to tell him that there was no one else she'd rather have taken with her to this mission but him.</p><p>"I'm not letting you die! Try as hard as you might to get yourself killed..." the medical ninja smiled back at her he wiped something from his eyes, it could've been tears, could've been sweat and blood getting to his eyes. "Look at you, you're bleeding out from having your throat slit and I'm the one you're calming down..." he almost laughed out. Judging from the relative calm look in his eyes the worst was over – she was going to live.</p><p>"Shit! You fucktard, what did you do!?" a miner yelled from far far away at a friend.</p><p>"I stopped the ninja from escaping, I sealed the doors!" he tried to answer but then his voice twisted into a grunt of pain.</p><p>"You sealed the other miners!" the man yelled out, "Now they're trapped down there with... With that thing and the elevator's stuck on this floor since the elevator room down there is caved in!" the other miner said something back but their voices were too faint to hear. Some amount of them actually escaped from wherever they were running from.</p><p>Kouta helped Mana get up. Meiko looked closely at the magician's neck trying to make out the mark that this reckless move left.</p><p>"I'd punch you right now, a full out, direct blow to your stupid face!" she yelled out, "Can I do that!? Won't it open the wound again?"</p><p>Kouta shrugged, "I did the emergency treatment, I'll give her some herbal concoction for the voice, several more Mystical Palm sessions will make the scar barely visible, I'm sure the medical ninja in the village may, in time, completely heal it. The card isn't really an ideal tool for cutting necks, even with the steel tip, it's still a bit too flexible so the wound wasn't too deep..."</p><p>Mana spoke up, her voice was shallower, almost like when she had the flu and her throat was really irritated and her voice was husky and it hurt to speak. It hurt to utter every word, felt like her throat was on fire but she had to tell her team what ailed her mind.</p><p>"We need to get down there, to the bottom of the mines, as deep down as it goes. There are still miners there and the secret of this mine is still a mystery. We get the elevator down there and break the elevator room open... We need to save those miners"</p><p>Shimo cursed and sheathed his blood-covered sword.</p><p>"Well... At least we know you weren't switched with a changeling... The Mana I know would worry about the people that tried to kill her first, right after nearly drowning in her own blood..." the swordsman's image blurred and then a green light lit up on the control panel where Kouta's father activated the cart belts previously, he moved in an instant, at least it looked like he did to Mana, the other may have been able to make something out of his movements. The elevator lit up with a green light and the cart belts stopped.</p><p>"Ladies first..." he tried to make an offensive tone while sarcastically bowing to show Mana the way to the elevator. It was clear that he had some very negative feelings towards the magician and her continuous attempts to get herself killed and her lack of the instinct of self-preservation. There may have been a very tough and uncomfortable talk in the nearest future brewing but it appeared that the swordsman kept it for a time when the magician could talk more comfortably.</p>
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<a name="section0123"><h2>123. The Secret of the Katabami Gold Mine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The elevator could not have taken more time to take the party of ninja to the lower levels of the mines. Even more, a couple of times the entire structure rumbled, dust and pebbles started falling from above, several of them were chunks of pure gold.</p><p>"Well, at least if we plummet down and die we'll be buried under solid gold..." Shimo tried lifting the gloomy mood but he was proper annoyed himself so even if the mood was even salvageable in the first place he wouldn't have garnered much success.</p><p>"Those shakes and quakes... I wonder what's causing it all..." Kouta wondered looking at above, from where they were the top of the elevator shaft looked like an abyss. They were descending so deep down that some of the ninja were visibly starting to get stressed out, Meiko was squirming and tapping her foot impatiently, Mana locked her hands around her chest and pressed her own elbows hard as if by closing in on herself she could protect herself from wherever they were going.</p><p>Shimo kept trying to make some bad jokes from time to time, to make matters worse, he was the only one laughing at them as well. It just made the entire situation seem even eerier than it was. Kouta handed Mana a flask with a weird dark green gooey drink.</p><p>"There, this should ease up your throat, maybe it'll let go in a while and it won't hurt to talk..." he murmured looking at her while she gulped it all down. His stare was starting to become a bit creepy at some point, luckily the medical ninja realized it and turned his eyes away just in time before Mana had to tell him he was acting weird.</p><p>The concoction he gave her was weird, it was sludgy and felt sticky but it actually slid down one's throat quite well. It was also a bit sweet, probably included a mixture of honey but the best alternative to its texture was a limb of a squid. It flowed slowly, like a chunk of goop, it smelled bad but it didn't really taste that bad if it weren't for the minty taste. Minty taste wasn't bad per se but it sort of didn't fit the combination. Too bad medicine didn't have a good taste critic. In a world where lethal wounds could've been patched up in ten or twenty minutes surely someone would've had enough skill and brain to make tastier medicine...</p><p>"Kouta... Did you use all of your chakra to heal me?" Mana broke the silence with a question, her voice was still lower-pitched and it still ached to talk but not to the extent as it did previously.</p><p>"Most of it" the young man blushed and nodded.</p><p>"I'm..." Mana opened her mouth before Meiko pulled her in by the collar of her shirt.</p><p>"Shut up. You can give your apology for being a suicidal asshat later, then I'll have a talk with you but now let's just focus on saving those miners..." Meiko's grip loosened as the elevator finally stopped. As the door opened clouds of dust started spreading and the environment turned dark almost instantly – the place must've used mainly electricity to light everything up and it must've gone out when whatever happened here happened.</p><p>"Ugh..." Shimo cursed stumbling around the dark, he headed towards the closest light source which happened to be a small flashlight, it still was on, its holder was nowhere to be seen though. Shimo turned it on and waved the narrow tunnel of light around. There were multiple trails of blood but no bodies, that was quite odd, the boy followed one trail up the rocky wall which fused with a small metallic wall which signaled the beginning of a small floor administration building.</p><p>The blood trail ended right up to the ceiling, right in a gigantic hole in the rock. It was like someone used a six-meter-wide drill to drill a giant tunnel above the floor and then dragged all the bodies into it...</p><p>"I can still hear some voices nearby, the miners are alive..." Meiko looked to the east where the least modernized structures of the mines laid. This entire place looked like the living quarters, it reminded more of a modernized laboratory made right in a manmade hole in a bunch of rock. Whatever was being done in the mine was being done here, it was supposed to be the lowest point where the elevator went.</p><p>Just as the miners above said, there was a colossal pile of rocks separating the room with the voices from the outer laboratory administration and the elevator room. The miners were stuck behind at least fifteen meters of rock and only faint noises could've been heard through the crevices. It was impressive even for a ninja to hear it, Meiko's senses deserved a lot of praise...</p><p>"Wait a second... Could you please shine over there..." Mana's irritated voice asked of Shimo.</p><p>"Oh? Did you find another tool to kill yourself with?" the Yuki angrily snapped back at her.</p><p>"Look, I know you guys are angry at me... You have a right to be, I acted upon my own thought without hearing your input. But if you expected me to..." Mana coughed up "To stand and watch you die, you're no better than I was when I struggled out of that hold..."</p><p>"Our deaths don't matter, we're ninja, you're the client" Shimo tried to argue but Mana's slap silenced him. Due to the darkness it awkwardly hit him on the nose, the blow was much more direct than turned to the side making it much more powerful, unintentionally of course.</p><p>"Sorry, forgot it's you we're dealing with here..." Shimo expressed himself not in any way less edgily. He had a lot of anger deep there, he could've kept it all to himself or expressed it at his own leisure and Mana would've listened to it all because she had it coming for getting caught off guard. However, one thing she'd not stand for was him berating the lives of her most beloved people, a group to which he himself belonged to.</p><p>Shimo's small tunnel of light turned towards the small round stones that Mana asked to direct it at. Meiko shrieked like a little girl, she started to jump around and leaped towards the stones, she started caressing them and almost smooched them a couple of times. Mana scratched the back of her head. She wasn't entirely sure what this ore was.</p><p>"This has to be an illusion, someone check it!" Meiko screamed out in sheer unrestrained excitement. Honestly, Mana had never seen her like that and she saw the blacksmith examining some more of her father's blueprints when she was reading up on the Box in Konohagakure archives.</p><p>"What exactly is this?" Mana asked trying to touch the ore, it was very soft and warm to touch, the slightest touch made its blueish stones etched into it light up with bright azure flame deep inside them. The magician had never seen such exquisite work, especially in nature. This reminded her more of something that the man's hands made.</p><p>"This is literally impossible..." Shimo murmured to himself while Meiko screamed out like she was a child receiving a thousand copies of their favorite toy for their birthday.</p><p>"Right! This is only the most incredibly impossible legendarific awesometubular superbtacularest thing ever!" she yelled out kissing the stone for longer than Mana considered normal for a little maniacal blacksmith finding something incredible deep underground the Land of Rivers mines.</p><p>"Okay, will anyone finally tell us what this blue ore is?" Kouta asked quite annoyed by the scene the two made himself.</p><p>"This is... Kill me for saying it out loud... 100% literally pure, okay I mean... 50% stone, 50% product so technically it's 50% pure, nevertheless it's... Audra ore!" Meiko uttered as if she just told an estranged son she was his long-lost mother.</p><p>Mana shook her head, it sounded like utter nonsense. "But... Didn't you say that Audra was not a natural element? That it was a manmade alloy with... Meteorite dust and molecular... Chakra particles or whatever? That it's only made by skilled Kirikuzu members due to their bloodline ability?" she asked for clarification.</p><p>"That's why it's so astonimazing! Apparently, they exist in ore form! This makes absolutely no sense, isn't it just superlicious!?" Meiko yelled out still stroking the stones as if they were a baby she just literally gave birth to.</p><p>"I'd rather you stopped slaughtering the language and... Tried to understand what the hell this is... I mean... How?" Kouta scratched his chin looking completely stumped.</p><p>"Of course... Audra IS manmade, these ores ARE manmade!" it occurred to Mana all of a sudden – everything started to make sense, the entire thing. It still needed to be put back into places and the proper order of the rows of this puzzle was still a bit confusing but she knew just about what this mine was.</p><p>"Uhhh, no they're not!" Meiko yelled out hopping back on her feet and off the cold wet floor "Look at them, they're so beautiful!"</p><p>"Yeah, that's the point – instead of shaping the Audra alloy into a weapon or a shield or a piece of armor, the Syndicate is making them into ores by infusing the particles with the walls of the mines. They've got all this space to use, all those endless floors, the ores laying here may just be worth... All the money, like literally all of them the world has to offer, and it's a completely limitless supply of infinities waiting to be exploited..." Mana explained her theory.</p><p>"Except why would they be making Audra alloy into ores when they can just make weapons!?" Meiko yelled out, more of her failing to restrain her excitement than because she felt angry.</p><p>"Because a weapon is worth as much as a weapon is worth, an ore has the potential to become anything, so it is worth infinitely more. Other Syndicates like the Bellucini family we've heard of can just buy this ore and work it in secret, this secrecy is worth multiple times over more than just a weapon. Think about it, you can buy one of the most awesome materials in the world from someone without telling them what it's for..." the magician started to get just as excited as Meiko which didn't do wonders by any means to her voice as her throat started feeling sticky and the girl broke into coughs after expressing her theory.</p><p>"Hmph, now those brutes suddenly make sense!" Kouta exclaimed having a breakthrough of his own. "These brutes are people with skins fused with the Audra steel particles. The process would be incredibly painful, it's like getting skewered on a molecular level but with a bunch of precautions it could be done, that's why my blows were completely ineffective – because Audra can only be destroyed by a more focused and concentrated chakra, that's why Shimo's ninjutsu was so effective against them, that's why my Chakra Pistol Jutsu completely bypassed their defenses..."</p><p>Shimo smiled and locked his hands on his chest. "Good, if we meet any of those brutes ahead we'll know how to fight them now..."</p><p>Kouta closed his fist concentrating chakra into just the tip of it until it started glowing with sharp azure flames protruding from random points. "I think I can modify my Enhanced Strength technique to do more damage to them but punching them using chakra augmentation is like slashing at chainmail. Ninjutsu would work the best. At any rate, it'd be for the best if we saved whoever is stuck in there"</p><p>The medical ninja leaped forward pulling a large stone out of the pile, some of them had to be lightly "tapped" from below to shatter into smaller pieces by the medical ninja. Meiko ran up to help him, her physical strength was unbelievable and while her chakra augmentation could only be used at its maximum since the blacksmith completely lacked any semblance of subtlety in her chakra control, her natural physical strength was enough to move large boulders without the active aid of chakra.</p><p>"Nice call, Mana..." Shimo acknowledged her putting the puzzle together with an arrogant look on the other side while the two waited for their much physically stronger friends to clean the path. Soon Kouta crawled out to join them popping a blue food pill. It was one of the chakra regenerating food pills that medical ninja used, it didn't replenish one's chakra but it accelerated the natural body aging process a couple of days so the chakra started regenerating much faster by itself. The cost of tricking one's body in such a way was that it naturally stressed out and aged a couple of weeks or even months so abuse of them could've shortened one's lifespan, however, they did regenerate a lot of one's chakra within an hour or two instead of a couple of days and good rest.</p><p>It was clear that Shimo was still angry since he refused to look Mana's way but at least he still didn't hate her half as much as her other ex-best friend – Sugemi. That youngster outright declared that one day he would clash with Mana and fight her to the death because Mana's belief was dangerous and foolish...</p><p>Meiko appeared out of the tunnel all covered in black coal marks and dust, all dirty and huffing from being worn out but happy like a kid seeing a bunch of glow-worms for the first time in their life. She gave the resting squad a thumb up.</p><p>"Path's open, I don't think the suits and miners on the other side noticed it yet, let's go tell them!" Meiko laughed out</p><p>Carefully and quietly, the team sneaked through the tunnel, Shimo even went as far as to kill the lights since the other side had a tremendous excess of light coming from it – the main labs must've used some sort of a different light source or had a lot more resource power than not at all which case the outer labs was stuck with. Shimo peeked through the tunnel and then looked at Meiko with an annoyed squint.</p><p>"This "tunnel" is cone-shaped. We can easily walk the early parts but then it seems you've got lazy and it gets narrower and narrower..." he complained</p><p>"Yeah, sorry 'bout that..." Meiko laughed out as she kicked the final barrier leading to the main labs down exposing their attempted entry. Right as the wall collapsed and the main lab reconnected with the outer labs and the elevator chamber the miners started rushing through the tunnel. They didn't care to fight or to curse at the Konoha ninja, Mana could've sworn she even heard a couple of absolutely terrified and soaking with sweat and piss grateful miners coming their way from the rushing crowd, there could've been as many as twenty miners still trapped there. What troubled the four ninja were the five suit-wearing mobsters with the shorty Boss staring angrily at the ninja.</p><p>"Waste em!" the Boss shouted out pulling out two large X-shaped crossbow-like devices with kunai belts attached to it and pressed a switch firing off streams of kunai knives at the ninja, each of those may have fired anywhere to ten or so kunai per second. Meiko's arm swiped through her arm as her other hand made a simple handseal: "Storage Seal: Release!" she yelled out unsealing her buckler which she picked up and resealed after the fight was over before getting onto the elevator. Loud thuds and clangs signaled the successful block of the Boss' offensive.</p><p>"Hey, calm your pompadour, suit-man! We're here to save your butts!" she yelled out trying to out-yell the endless barrage of kunai that'd have made them into pin-cushions if they were allowed to fire off unblocked. Suddenly the barrages stopped and Meiko pulled the shield away.</p><p>"What's saving our butts is all those guys we left below to fight off the Big Guy, we're almost tempted to stay here and lure him to the main lab again just to see him chomp your little heads off!" one of the mobster goons yelled out.</p><p>"Ye, we kept him locked down and sapped his blood for the Audra manufacture for so long that it must be really hungry..." his friend decided to join in on the threat.</p><p>"Although... To put matters into perspective, mayhaps it would be for the better for us to... Not be around when the Big Fella breaks out... Ya see... Anyone?" the less enthusiastic one whimpered.</p><p>"Heh, ye hear it, Konoha goons, lotta guys with a lotta kunai dispensers are keeping the Big Guy down there now that we used the Big Culling Gun to repel it to the lower levels! When they whack the damned thing they're gonna get here and get really angry!" another one yelled out.</p><p>Meiko's eyes shined with a bright spark of excitement. "Big Culling Gun!? Sounds awesome!" she yelled out, quite enthusiastically, yet not quite at the same class as the Meiko who found the Audra ores. The Boss turned at a large turret-like device with an oversized pipe.</p><p>"There! Fifty meters long, twelve meters tall, as tall as this whole lab complex, fires cannonballs with four hundred Audra infused kunai each shot! Each cannonball costs around fifty billion ryo to make!" the dwarf started his power fantasy speech before coughing to his fist, "We used it to repel the Big Guy's attempt to eat us all but... It sort of ran out of ammunition, we even filled it with normal kunai balls and explosive kunai balls but, nothing we do seems to work... We only delay the Big Guy's advances..." the little man complained.</p><p>Mana turned to observe Meiko's reaction to the description of the weapon that even amazed her a little, to someone as maniacal towards various contraptions and devices and exquisite craftsmanship it must've been outright orgasmic. Lo and behold her friend laid down completely knocked out by a rampant nosebleed.</p><p>The girl couldn't help but smile, even if they didn't find the Box in Wind Country, Meiko's time was certainly worth it, the blacksmith maiden saw more than her share of awesome things throughout the journey so it may have already been worth it.</p><p>Kouta and Shimo disappeared. The Yuki's sword's hilt dug deep into one mobster's gut, he then swung it to the side hitting the still sheathed blade straight into the head of another one before he could blink. These two attacked faster than the human eye could track them! Kouta's knee instantly knocked one fellow out, a combination of weakened blows knocked another one out. The fifth one tried to lift his hand but Shimo moved to the side and ripped his sleeve off exposing a kunai dispenser with strings to set it off attached to his wrist, with a quick grabbing motion Kouta crushed it together with the wrist bones of the poor mobster.</p><p>Suddenly Kouta's body got tossed aside, the boy bounced back off of a solid steel wall and fell deep into a strange crater. Mana was surprised by the strength of this "Boss" guy but then her sight fixed on his strange blueish knuckle-dusters – these must've been Audra steel too, having in mind that he had a full mine of its ores.</p><p>"Kouta!" she screamed out trying to get his response but the dwarf only laughed ridiculing the magician girl.</p><p>"You little twit, I tossed him to the Big Guy down below! He's as good as headless, the Big Guy likes biting people's heads off first!" he laughed out revealing a full mouth of Audra steel covered azure shaded teeth.</p><p>"I'm getting sick of hearing about this Big Guy... What exactly do you hold locked down here, shrimp?" Shimo asked. Mana noticed Meiko slowly recovering from her nosebleed knockout.</p><p>The little man reloaded his kunai barrage tubes and pointed them at the swordsman. "Do you know what this place is? It's the Katabami Gold Mine, the place where the last Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails died! In other words, chained below by his last Jinchuuriki before his passing and starving to death down below is none other than...The Nine-Tailed Fox"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0124"><h2>124. No Way Out</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The three teens continued to stare at the mobster leader with completely out of this world expressions. Having just been revealed so much within the last couple of hours of their lives, something like that would cause such reactions in a person so they were completely justified in their utter confusion. It was safe to say that their entire worlds had flipped over, the entire way in which they conceived this weird world changed to the point where the world where children could breathe fire and lift giant boulders looked incomparably weirder than it initially was.</p><p>After several seconds of confusion Mana's body just leaned forward as if it was falling to the front, then it tensed up, her muscles just shot into action and fired her body off to run towards the giant hole where her friend was tossed into, where, apparently, the Nine-Tails resided below. She ran towards it with all of her speed, which while unimpressive to a ninja was quite something compared to her normal standards. The leader of the Syndicate even stepped aside to let the girl through, he had no intention to stop her in her quest to have her innards be feasted on by a colossal Tailed Beast.</p><p>Shimo's head leaned forward slightly, he closed his eyes and then looked at Meiko. "Stop her" he commanded her with a voice full of disgust and desperation.</p><p>To the blacksmith redhead, it was apparent that the stunt that Mana pulled on the top floor of the mines greatly rotted the relationship between the two friends. Shimo now looked at the magician as if she was a burden, an annoyance and whereas previously he looked at the girl with some admiration, nostalgia, and eyes overflowing with friendship, now he looked at her like a cow looks at a horsefly.</p><p>"What do you mean, what's this Nine Tails? Why is it such a big deal?" Meiko shook her head before Shimo broke into a fit of rage.</p><p>"Just shut up and stop her, damn it! I'll explain later. This is above not only our paygrade but also that of a Kage level ninja. This is a monster that needs to be left there, don't listen to any of Mana's bullshit, just grab hold of her and don't let go. Knock her out if you need to. The Nine-Tails and she must not cross paths, it's not a brawl that'll end favorably. I'll take care of this joker here..." he explained. Meiko nodded, her body blurred and disappeared leaving a ghostly afterimage.</p><p>Mana kept on rushing towards the hole when Meiko's image appeared right in front of her. These ninja moved at such speeds that it was tough for Mana to even keep up with it. She may have had peak human ability to perceive speed but even a genin managed to move so fast that to her it appeared like Meiko was teleporting around the place. It was like she was everywhere, or rather, anyplace she wanted to be in.</p><p>"Mana, stop..." she uttered pushing away Mana's hand which tried to push Meiko out of her way. The blacksmith gently let Mana's hand flow forward and then directed it to move behind the magician before she locked it behind the magician's own head placing her in a painful lock where any effort to break free would've caused Mana some additional pain.</p><p>"No! Let go! Kouta is down there with the Nine-Tails! We must get down there and save everyone who can still be saved..." Mana shouted out through pain, even when dislocation of her arm was the danger it didn't scare the girl. She was ready to struggle until her shoulder popped out of its socket and then face the Nine-Tails with a dislocated arm if she had to.</p><p>"Look... Just... Wait, can you please explain to me what this Nine-Tails thing is first. I know that Shimo doesn't want us to even face it, he's threatened by it to the extent where it actually sounds pretty scary even without knowing what it actually is..." Meiko mumbled out trying to buy some time, she knew that once Mana would get into explaining just what this Nine-Tails was she'd get into detail, that'd buy Shimo some time to finish fighting that mobster and get there to help her convince Mana of... Whatever their next plan was.</p><p>"There's no time! We need to help him!" Mana yelled out as she leaped forward at such an angle that it'd have dislocated her arm instantly, it was fortunate for her that Meiko released the lock just at the last second seeing that the magician's desire to save her friend wouldn't be contained by any boundaries of self-preservation. Meiko's foot, however, swept at Mana's knocking the magician down, and then Meiko sat right on Mana's chest placing her arm on the magician's neck. She didn't apply any pressure to it because she knew that Mana would just waste all her air and get strangled instead of stopping.</p><p>"Kouta is a smart guy, pretty tough too. He can stay hidden, he can escape if he wanted to, ninja can scale walls, right? He'll appear up here at any moment, no need to put yourself in danger, so what's this Nine Tails? Why can't we just hop down there and kick its ass?" Meiko grunted out as restraining Mana's relentless struggling was starting to tax her a little as well. She didn't want to actually knock her friend out but she was approaching that line and would cross it quite soon if it was needed.</p><p>"No. It's impossible... Look, I'll explain it to you, just... You have to trust me and let me go, if you want an explanation then let me go and follow me, I'll explain it to you on my way down there" the magician tried to trick her way out of Meiko's immovable lock but Meiko let Mana go and shook her head.</p><p>"No, you explain it to me now and I'll decide later. It's either that or I knock you out for good. You may be a challenge to me when you're at your full strength but not in your hindered state, it'd only take a single restrained punch..." Meiko decided.</p><p>"Fine" the magician sighed, she stood up and dusted her clothes with a rough pat before fixing her hair and beginning to try and make a short explanation for it all.</p><p>"There was once a powerful kunoichi, she was called Princess Satsuhimasa. She lived in the time when all the clans were unified into two groups: the Earth Clan and the Moon Clan. At some point, the Moon Clan decided that the Moon was too small to contain all the mighty clans that comprised the Moon Clan so they waged war on the entire world attempting to take it over. Princess Satsuhimasa destroyed the Moon and forced the Moon Clan to submit, then she went through a quest of redemption and fixed the Moon again, transferring her own life force through her tree that fixed the Moon." Mana tried to shorten the story and compress it as much as she could but then she realized how much still needed to be explained to someone who didn't care about history that much.</p><p>"Okay... Let's say any of that makes a sand grain of sense and assume I believe all of it..." Meiko squinted at Mana. The magician couldn't blame her friend's lack of trust, the story of ninja who could effortlessly destroy planetary objects did sound a bit hard to believe even to someone who grew up in the world of ninja which wasn't a very natural world that was easy to believe in all by itself.</p><p>"The mistake of the Princess was that she granted her own life force to the tree by letting it flow through it. The World Tree became sentient, it formed a being of Satsuhimasa's soul and the body of the most powerful Senju clan wood – the Ten-Tails. It was said to be so massive and powerful that just the sight of it caused people to go insane and claw their eyes out, just its very existence threatened to destroy the world – Earth would've been destroyed just because the Ten-Tails was in it. Despite giving the Ten-Tails its substance and life, Satsuhimasa herself couldn't even hope to match up to it and so she and her husband and her son were beaten, however, her husband – Yosuke Uchiha did manage to split the beast into nine smaller beasts, it initially intended to seal away its power leaving Ten-Tails in a weaker form but that didn't work, he had to split its immense chakra into nine separate beings"</p><p>Meiko scratched her head in confusion but then she suddenly realized something, "Wait, are you telling me that what's down there is actually... A part of this Ten-Tails thing!?"</p><p>Mana knew that she was digging a grave to whatever hopes of Meiko letting her save Kouta she had previously but she decided to be honest. "Not just "a part", it is said later in some of Yosuke's own chronicles that the form where he tried to seal Ten-Tails' chakra away is the Nine-Tails. That is to say, Nine-Tails is actually a weakened form of the Ten-Tails and the chakra that Yosuke managed to seal away in the next dimension got later mixed into it again and then split apart into more parts. The Nine-Tails is so powerful, or one could say, Yosuke's seal was so inefficient against that incomprehensible power, that Nine-Tails alone could've challenged Ten-Tails and fared quite well against it. The rest of the Tailed Beasts are just made out of the chakra which Yosuke did manage to seal away while the Nine-Tails is what's left of Ten-Tails without that chakra"</p><p>Meiko grabbed Mana's elbow and started to drag her back. "Well then... Back to the top floor we go..." she cut so decisively that her intention to never be questioned on the grounds of this decision was self-evident.</p><p>Mana gently pulled her elbow out and looked at her friend with a begging look. "Meiko... Please... I know it sounds stupid to you, it looks stupid that I want to go down there and place myself in front of that thing to save Kouta but... I have to. I brought him here and I can't let him get eaten by that thing"</p><p>Meiko shook her head. "You're not the Mana I know. The Mana I know makes rational plans, she manages to pull off impossible moves like convincing the Hokage to leave on a mission to find some mysterious wish-fulfillment box just to make her friend feel good or slitting her own throat to avoid getting her friends killed. But she always knows something, has some ace up her sleeve – she plans out the conversation beforehand or she knows that the card won't cut her deep enough to kill her. What you're doing now is irrational, you're placing yourself in front of someone strong enough to shatter worlds into clouds of rock, someone who could disintegrate us with a mean look. There's no rational part of this plan which is why I can't let you go down there"</p><p>Mana looked away and then back at Meiko. "Yeah, there's no plan, there's no Plan B because there isn't even a Plan A. I just... I need to save Kouta, even if that means placing myself in front of the Nine-Tails to do it. I'd rather get eaten alive than lose him when I'm the one who took him with us"</p><p>Meiko turned back at Mana to finish the argument but a powerful shock impact made her cover her eyes – a blinding cloud covered her entire upper body as Mana's smoke card blew right in her face. When the smoke settled Mana was nowhere to be seen. The redhead looked around knowing how badly she screwed up and looked down into the largest hole in the floor she's ever seen, caused by the Nine-Tails trying to get out initially before it was pushed back by the bombardment from that gigantic cannon.</p><p>"Shimo's going to kill me... Oh well... I guess I'm dead either way then..." she whispered to herself before leaping into the hole herself. The darkness swallowed the girl and just like that deadly silence covered the bottom room of the mine up. Only brief sounds of Shimo fighting the mobster leader killed it on occasion.</p><p>"Okay, let's mambo, ye goomba" the mobster stood in the fisticuffs position ready to use his Audra knuckledusters. Shimo's body blurred again, he slashed at the mobster who instinctively thrust his fist forward to try and interrupt the ninja's movements but he was unsuccessful. The boy's sword left a wide gash onto the mobster's back. The dwarf recovered from the pain swinging around him and hitting blindly behind his back. Shimo placed his sword to block the blow, a powerful shockwave echoed sending chakra ripples that mercilessly whipped into the mine walls causing them to start falling down.</p><p>"Shit..." Shimo grunted picking his body off the ground, he didn't expect such a powerful shockwave to come from that impact. That must've been the strange chain reaction of two Audra weapons colliding.</p><p>"Heh, what's the matter? Afraid of a little cave in? I'd rather get buried under fifty floors of rock than go face the Big Guy down there, consider us lucky..." the mobster smiled leaping forward and swinging his fist at the ninja, Shimo carelessly leaned out of the way when he saw a small kunai dispenser slip out from the dwarf's sleeve and get placed right on his forehead. The little man's face covered with a confident smile, it looked pretty creepy combined with his pompous hair which was now all whipped up and all over his face like someone poured a bucket of black hairy sludge over his head.</p><p>"Yer pretty fast, ye bugger, fast enough to evade a kunai shot right in your face, I wonder?" the dwarf smiled as his finger pulled the small ring connected to the rope that fired the kunai. It took only small fractions of a second to fire that kunai which would've pierced deep into Shimo's skull and easily penetrated his brain killing him instantly or leaving him with some nasty brain damage, however... The kunai just flew forward and down into the giant hole as the man who had the dispenser rammed into his head was no longer there the other moment.</p><p>Lacking any semblance of belief in what had just happened the mobster took a couple of steps back, he shook in disbelief that someone could've evaded a shot in point-blank range, he had faced ninja before but he never had the pleasure of actually fighting one to the end like this. Seeing those inhuman bastards pull stunts like this made the dwarf genuinely terrified of facing them ever again. Even with all those tricks, all those fancy tools, and weapons... He was still outmatched.</p><p>Shimo's body flickered back into existence, as far as the dwarf mobster could perceive it at least, right up to his still extended arm and raised his arm up nonchalantly in an attempt to literally disarm the mobster. The poor dwarf screamed out in pain as he fell onto the rocky floor writhing in pain, separate from his arm which was twitching somewhere further. Shimo lifted his sword up into the air and tried to finish the job by placing it right in between the mobster's eyes but the blasted idiot managed to place his knuckle duster in the way causing another shockwave to ripple through the mines. This one finished the job...</p><p>The entire mine was starting to collapse, the rippling shockwave passed through rock causing unrepairable damage to its integrity and sending crashing chunks of rock down on the two. Shimo's lightning-fast reflexes and speed, as well as his instinct, lead him to evade the destruction of the mines, each rock was evaded by a leap to the side, each gigantic falling structure was dodged.</p><p>The Yuki didn't even try to run towards the elevator – it was too late for that, at that point the other mobsters would've been already out but it'd have taken too much time to lower the elevator again. Down to the belly of the beast was his only choice. Where was Meiko, where was Mana? Had they already leaped down there? Shimo did consider the fact that Meiko could screw that up, Mana may have been a complete idiot but she also was pretty crafty, however in this case... The blacksmith was right to fail her assignment so...</p><p>The stone floor crumbled, the entire mine caved in and fell onto the poor dwarf, Shimo wasn't there to see the man getting mangled and crushed, even if he wanted to as he was too busy leaping down himself. He evaded a couple of falling rocks even in mid-fall down to the lair of the Nine-Tails however... Eternal darkness once again took over when a large chunk of rock covered up the seemingly endless abyss of the crater made by the Nine-Tails. There was no way back... The only way forward was to face the Nine-Tails, or rather, try to sneak around its senseless rampage feasting on the lifeless carcasses of the other unfortunate miners and gangsters left below to feed the insatiable appetite of a beast left unattended for so long.</p><p>Shimo focused chakra into his feet, he made a couple of hand seals and breathed in.</p><p>"Water Style: Water Assault Jutsu!" he yelled out spitting a torrent of water from his mouth and then making another hand seal. "Glaciation Jutsu!" Shimo yelled out as the torrent solidified into a jet of ice for him to slide down on. It softened his landing so that he didn't splat down into a pancake upon reaching the bottom. He could only wonder if Mana had enough brain to have a way to somehow not splatter herself all over the bottom, maybe she and Meiko leaped down at the same time? That'd have saved the magician since the armored blacksmith had that weird chakra jet technique sealed into her boots that helped her fly around...</p><p>Shimo finally realized that he had reached the bottom as he was seeing a tough, rocky, and wet floor below. It was red from the blood and guts that covered it, however, most of it was so old that it could've been made at just about any point in the past. Shimo leaped down from the jet of ice he was sliding on and looked around. Mana always dragged him into those things but this may have just been the absolute worst thing she'd made him do... She picked a fight with the goddamn Nine-Tails.</p><p>"Why would she go pull the Nine-Tails' whiskers just to save that medical ninja? We can always just hire a Quack or something... If the opponent was anyone else I'd be with her, do my best to save my comrade but... The Nine-Tails... This is crazy even for Mana..." the boy kept thinking as his hand didn't move from the grip of his sword hilt. If the Nine-Tails attacked him it wouldn't have helped in the slightest but he liked to think that he could at least do something to defend himself. Made him feel less hopeless when he thought so...</p>
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<a name="section0125"><h2>125. What Lies Beneath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta rubbed his aching behind while looking around the primal lair he ended up in. After the unexpected and far too powerful for a human throw that the little made-man pulled off on him the young man almost fell down breaking every single bone in his body. That would've left him paralyzed and broken, just laying down there waiting for whatever fate befell all those mangled victims of whatever was haunting this mine to also reach out to him.</p><p>Luckily enough, Kouta managed to take control of his fall, flip over and touch the wall with his feet which allowed him to stick onto it. The shock and inertia of the fall sent his knees crashing straight into the wall tearing up his ragged pants and opening some nasty feeling bruises. The medical ninja may not have been overly agile under these conditions so stealth was his only option at that moment.</p><p>The place that he ended up in was impressive, it was a gigantic cave with the usual cave structures like stalactites and stalagmites all over the place. A careless fall may have made the boy get impaled on one of them which would've been a very nasty injury for his exhausted state to take care of. Most of his chakra was spent on Mana and her healing, the medical ninja didn't regret that for a moment.</p><p>After his eyes got used to the pitch-black darkness and the quiet, which was occasionally interrupted by a powerful quake sending small pebbles down from the ceiling and then an occasional water drop from above pecking into a small pebble that must've formed from a collection of such raindrops, Kouta started slowly moving forward. His knees hurt when he was leaning down to sneak around. Must've been due to the injuries.</p><p>Kouta's tired eyes then saw a strong and concentrated source of light, the young man rushed to a wall of salty stones and hid behind them. Letting his eyes peek over for just a small occasional glance. Deafening screams and even louder quakes shook the place. One of them lifted the medical ninja off the ground and then smashed him back down once the gravity took control of the situation again. A small group of miners ran out hiding everywhere behind similar structures to the one where Kouta was hiding. An even smaller group of mobsters ran out firing their strange kunai dispensers at something still remaining in the darkness of the cave which was not illuminated by the Audra ore shining its purplish-blue light from above.</p><p>Kouta tried to peek again but when he did he could not believe his eyes. Humongous red eyes shined through the darkness and a colossal snout at least a meter larger than Kouta himself pierced through the veil of the darkness. The creature's nose slammed into one of the mobsters with enough force for the poor man to explode into a combination of guts and blood splattering everywhere, perhaps it was good that the place was so poorly lit, that made the gruesome scene hard to see.</p><p>"Give that fucker all ye got, pin-cushion him!" another mobster shouted before he was splattered into a bloody stain by a demonic paw of the creature. Just briefly the young man hiding behind the rocky structure saw glowing orange fur on the creature that was slaughtering the remaining below mobsters and miners. Another mobster tried to use an explosive kunai on the fox-like creature but it didn't appear to do much damage, it barely even registered with the monster at all. The fox leaned up, half of its immeasurably large frame was already in the blueish light of the Audra ores shining their natural light which the chakra particles in them emitted.</p><p>Its monstrous snout breathed out, the torrent of air coming out from its snout looked so easy and effortless and yet... The poor mobster screamed in agony as his skin and flesh got torn off by the immense pressure of the creature's breath. Kouta looked at it in awe, "It's the Nine-Tailed Fox..." he realized, most genin knew of what exactly the Tailed Beasts were but not all of them.</p><p>The reason why genin may have known of the Tailed Beasts was that they were a bit overzealous. Jinchuuriki, the ninja with Tailed Beasts sealed inside of them, were some of the most wanted people to be captured by a village so that their immense power could've been used by the village. However, genin never engaged in combat with Jinchuuriki, only the most curious and excited to grow in rank ones bothered to read reports on the wanted alive posters containing information on the mysterious Jinchuuriki and then a little bit of extra research in the archives let one get the full picture.</p><p>The panicking last remaining mobster fled for his life firing off two smaller handheld kunai dispensers at the gigantic fox behind him before the monster's mouth closed around him severing his arm and a leg which have been caught outside the creature's bite range whereas the mobster was quickly munched up, as the demonic fox continued to chew blood burst from its mouth dripping madly onto the floor. Just what kind of trouble did Kouta end up at this time? He couldn't have fought off the Nine-Tailed Fox, his only way out of here was to go back and scale that wall up. He thought that was what he was doing in the first place but he got lost in all of his falling disorientation and all of that darkness in that primal cave.</p><p>"Hey, get out of my spot!" a miner's whisper reached Kouta's ear, the boy looked curiously at a miner shaking his fist at him. The medical ninja shook his head but then the miner decided it would've been the best idea to swing his pickaxe at him. Kouta rolled to the side and after the clang alerted the fox, one of its humongous nine tails quickly wrapped around the miner, and soon he ended up right in the Nine-Tails' jaws just like the mobster before. Strange... Kouta had never heard of the Tailed Beasts being so predatorial in nature. That being said, the young man had no idea what the Tailed Beast fed on but he was pretty sure that eating people with such ferocity was not its usual behavior.</p><p>The Fox screamed out in rage, its demonic voice and the pure compressed chakra in its yell sent crushing shockwaves that ground all the stone around it to dust, the walls above elevated by several meters, the floor lowered as a crater formed around the demonic beast, the stone structures behind which Kouta tried to hide got ground into dust and Kouta felt his body getting sapped of its last remnants of chakra augmenting his endurance so that he did not meet the fate of the miners. Those without the ability to augment their chakra ended up torn to bits by the powerful concussive force. Some of them were left in small pieces, dismembered and torn to tiny chunks, some got tossed and ground to the wall, crushed as if the shockwave was made of stone grinding them to the wall. Just the Fox's angry scream decimated the entire cave and killed everyone but Kouta.</p><p>Slowly the Fox crept up to each and every pile of body parts and guts slurping them into its smelly blood dripping mouth as if they were just oysters in their shells. Such desperation! Kouta grunted angrily as his entire body felt like it was broken. He tried wiggling around but he couldn't achieve much success, slowly he got behind a pile of stone dust hoping that the Fox took him for a corpse. Judging from the feeling of warm blood all over his face and his wounds he must've been quite similar to one. Then again, even if the Fox took him for a corpse, it'd have simply devoured him like the others...</p><p>"No use, boy... I can sense negative emotions, fear in your heart is crystal clear to me, don't go too far" the strangely manly voice for such a thin giant Fox rumbled through the cave sending more crashing stones from above. It appeared as if though the monstrous yell of the creature almost destroyed the entire cave they were in. With a gracious leap, the Fox appeared right next to Kouta, its breath rustled the young man's hair, blood and guts from its growling mouth fell onto his face and exposed by his torn up clothes chest. Those demonic red eyes were the worst thing about the situation. They must've been the most devilish eyes the boy had ever seen.</p><p>Kouta tried to struggle but his body was completely paralyzed. "No use, little ninja boy, I've killed so many and destroyed so much that my killing intent is second only to the Ten-Tails. Any ninja who value their lives are rendered completely helpless in my presence"</p><p>Just then a combination of loud clangs signaled that a loud and intense barrage of sparks fired off from the beast's eyes. Kouta's head just barely managed to look away only to see Mana standing further away, wielding one of those kunai dispensers, firing her own cards which she had loaded into the weapon straight at the creature's eyes. The cards exploded, some of them emitted a freezing gas, some of them burst into acid, some of them emitted a highly flammable liquid that quickly burst into flames upon air contact, some of them exploded into a barrage of kunai and shuriken, firing them in all directions. Despite hitting the creature right in its eyes, without even blinking the Fox continued to stare at Mana as she kept on firing and reloading, desperate to save Kouta's life.</p><p>"This girl's fear... It surpasses yours, but then why would she be able to fight me if she is more afraid than you? Perhaps she's not afraid of me, but afraid of your death?" the Fox continued to ponder as Mana fired off her entire ninja kit straight at it with no effect. Not even a single hair on the Fox's fur was rustled let alone fell from it. The eye took completely no damage nor was it irritated at all by continuous barrages of explosions, flame, and ice. Nothing worked at all.</p><p>"Leave him alone!" Mana yelled out angrily and with a trembling as well as desperate tossing the dispenser device at the Fox but failing to toss it strong enough that it'd reach the monstrous titan when she was left empty.</p><p>"Hmph..." the Fox cursed flicking in the air. The flick sent a howling wind projectile. Mana couldn't even react in time, it was like the projectile traveled faster than the howling sound of it. She was ready to die at that moment, she almost accepted it. All that she wanted was to have had a little bit more success saving Kouta. Mana closed her eyes, accepting the compressed projectile of wind but when her eyes opened it appeared that Meiko caught her from behind using her jet boots and moved her away.</p><p>"You suicidal bastard" Meiko's grin flashed right at Mana's surprised expression.</p><p>The Fox growled angrily, judging from its expression it became much more pissed off and the intensity of its devastating attacks may have increased. The Fox then looked down and noticed that, except for a small trace of blood, Kouta was no longer there. He moved quickly while the attention of the demon fox was all focused on Mana and its killing intent no longer applied such dominating pressure on his chest making it impossible to breathe properly when the beast was looking at you.</p><p>"I'll... I'll EAT YOU ALL!" the Fox roared out in its destructive low pitched tone that started sending more rubble their way, giant stalactites started going down from the floor aiming to impale anyone they caught in their way. The Nine-Tails found it impossible to evade them due to its immense size and so the stalactites made of pure Audra ores seemed to bother it a little. Clutching and dodging them to the best of its abilities the beast fled further into the cave.</p><p>Meiko blinked rapidly a couple of times. "Holy shit, we've repelled the Nine-Tailed Fox!" she yelled out in glee. The blacksmith must've been the only person down in that cave not to be terrified beyond relief. Kouta was afraid of the beast, Mana was afraid of losing Kouta, Meiko was afraid of absolutely nothing. She was there to do her job and she would've taken on even the Nine-Tailed Fox if she had to... The redhead placed Mana down on the floor, the magician stood back up and checked her empty ninja tool case.</p><p>"No... Something's wrong" Mana admitted looking down and trying to find anything that she could've used. She may have needed a weapon if the three were to escape the mine through the back, it was entirely possible that mobsters were still watching the exits of the mine.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Meiko asked, Kouta just fell against the wall, the young man was pale and breathing heavily – a side effect of being crushed by such overwhelming killing intent without a doubt.</p><p>"The Fox should've had no problem eating our guts. Its roar should've disassembled us on a molecular level, it's a being that can destroy the world by just punching it really hard..." Mana checked her body for injuries and then looked back at where they came from.</p><p>"Wait... Do you mean this isn't the real Nine-Tailed Fox?" Kouta finally managed to speak but his shortness of breath made it incredibly difficult to do.</p><p>"No. It's as real as it gets, you can't emulate that killing intent. At my own time I thought Tanshu-sensei had the worst killing intent in the world, it was impossible to stand around him but this... This is something else entirely" Mana closed her eyes and started slowly walking back to where they came from.</p><p>"Wait... That's right... You're now a normal human... A killing intent like that should've made you go insane!" Kouta finally remembered what he learned in the Academy. Killing intent worked on a multiplied fiftyfold scale, even the smallest killing intent of a child who managed to kill someone in their early career as a ninja intimidated people to no end. Something like an ancient demonic fox creature should've made Mana go insane from fear and yet she didn't tremble for a moment to grab the gun and fire off everything at it.</p><p>"I... I've built a tolerance of it after spending so much time with a murderous Sannin. Also, I'm pretty good with self-control, I've spent my entire childhood meditating and learning to understand my own body. I could never again go insane, no matter how afraid I get, for better or worse... Sometimes when you find a very firm thought to focus on and repeat it in your head you can survive such an influence over your mind and matter" Mana lowered her head and stopped for a moment before rushing forward.</p><p>Meiko looked back at Kouta and winked at him playfully, "Yeah, she digs you, you should've seen her up there... "We've got to save Kouta!" that's all she could babble about!" the blacksmith laughed out before rushing after Mana, losing the track of each other in this darkness was completely counterproductive and it was slowly starting to cave in out here. The three should've hurried back, it was safe to say that even if they rushed back to the best of their abilities it'd still be a close call if they could leave the mine.</p><p>"Wait... Really?" Kouta blushed and ran after Meiko "Wait up... Did she really say that!?" he kept shouted and Meiko while watching out for some of those stalactites so that they didn't cut him in two before crushing him.</p><p>After a short track back to the large hole Mana bumped into Shimo, it was tough to see the Yuki in this darkness. The swordsman rather rudely pushed her off of him.</p><p>"What are the three of you doing? We need to go the opposite direction, the mines are caving in and the hole is completely covered up. It's raining stones out there and soon the whole place will end up buried. We need to go the other way!" the swordsman yelled out grabbing Mana by her elbow and dragging her forward, this time a little bit softer than his initial push.</p><p>"Wait... What?" Mana looked at him confused.</p><p>"That stupid mobster blew up the mines, it's all buried under, the only way out now is to hope that it has another exit down there" her teammate informed the magician of how the battle went down.</p><p>"We bumped into the Nine-Tails, it's pissed beyond belief and it fled further into the mines. We're going exactly where it ran right now" Kouta explained their end of the story.</p><p>"Well then let's hope we don't bump into it again. We need to move, this place isn't stable either. It's falling apart as we speak up ahead" Mana closed her eyes and nodded to Yuki's suggestion having just realized what their situation was. Having been the person who brought everyone to this mine she felt incredibly guilty about it all. She felt bad that she put them all into this situation where their only way out was to fight off some ancient demon fox for their exit.</p><p>"So... How did you survive that? Meeting the Nine-Tails?" Shimo asked curiously.</p><p>"It was... Different..." Mana explained "Its eyes were completely glowing red and it was almost... Starved to death, it was so slim and exhausted. It must've spent decades buried here, it must be in its dying stages, its last legs"</p><p>Meiko blinked rapidly in confusion and then shook Mana wildly. "Wait, Tailed Beasts can die?" she asked curiously.</p><p>Mana nodded, "Technically they can, they die every time their host – the Jinchuuriki dies. However, since they are not actually living beings but created artificially constructs of chakra, it is said in most historical sources that they are reborn instantly after their death. Within an hour or so after its death, the reborn Tailed Beast is at its full power again with all of their memories intact."</p><p>Kouta scratched his chin, he was still limping around due to his knee injury. "So waiting it out until it kicks the bucket is out of the question, even if its reborn weakened something tells me that it'll still be hundreds of times stronger than this dying Nine-Tails we've bumped into..."</p><p>Mana shook her head in response. "It wouldn't work, either way, this mine would fall down on our heads and this cave would collapse sooner than it'd die or we'd starve out long before it died. Plus, I don't intend on letting it die, we're going to free it, it's just a wild animal who was caged in here, it may be a destructive force of nature but its place is out in the wild, not continuously starving to death and being reborn only to starve out again... Even destructive world breakers don't deserve such a fate"</p><p>Shimo cursed, "Here we go again..."</p><p>Meiko laughed out playfully as if their plan didn't include approaching a colossal Nine-Tailed Fox just to lure it to freedom as the three carefully avoided the falling down rubble and moved in to the large spiraling tunnel which the Fox fled into, wherever it led to, it appeared that the four would end up confronting it quite soon...</p>
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<a name="section0126"><h2>126. The Belly Of The Beast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Following the Nine-Tails into the deepest parts of its lair hidden deep below the mines was not as tough as it may have been considered for it to be. Tired and struggling with severe starvation and malnutrition the monstrous Tailed Beast ran slow, sometimes bumping into the rocks or tripping over. While the four genin could not confirm that fact, the vicious quakes and roars of the beast confirmed at least that much.</p><p>"Mana... Are you sure about this?" Shimo grunted finally gathering the courage needed to once again question the client's actions.</p><p>"I'm really not. None of this makes any sense and I cannot make a proper plan without understanding why everything is so convoluted..." Mana shook her head angrily. "That being said I feel that saving the Nine-Tails is the right thing to do, even if it is just a rampaging force of nature. Our predecessors tolerated its existence, the greatest of all ninja gave it life in the first place. It must exist and it must serve its role in this world whatever role it may be"</p><p>"What did you mean when you said that none of this makes sense?" Kouta curiously inquired once the beast shook the ground below them keeping them rooted firmly onto the rocky floor while the tremors ceased.</p><p>"The Nine-Tails appeared to eat people. The thing is that Tailed Beasts shouldn't feed at all, it's unnatural. It was never recorded in known history to feed on anything. They are living constructs of pure chakra given conscience and life, they are destructive in nature and malevolent because they are beings nor of Earth nor of Moon that feel out of place everywhere. They were the bridge connecting Moon and Earth as the Ten-Tails so now they feel a huge gap and desire to fulfill some sort of purpose yet they're unable to do so which is why they're so angry, at least that's the theory most commonly discussed in ancient scrolls..."</p><p>"Well, it looked pretty darned hungry to me back when we tangoed with it the first time..." Meiko nodded to herself looking on forward trying to see the end to the spiral rising tunnels they were roaming looking for both the Nine-Tails and an exit. At their current location, the ground appeared to have already been stable and nothing was falling from the ceiling aiming to crush them so that was already an improvement.</p><p>"Also, since they do not feed, their chakra should automatically rejuvenate every couple of days, just like it does for ninja under normal resting conditions. Their levels of chakra are nearly infinite, they can rampage around the world for weeks or months firing beams of concentrated chakra and never tire... The fact that it is so severely exhausted is just so odd, truth be told such degree of exhaustion should be completely impossible to someone with such vast supply of chakra..." the magician ground it out through her teeth again. She didn't like to be completely unable to understand just what was going on there.</p><p>"Well, let's just ask it when we see it, maybe if you tell it that it doesn't have to eat – it won't munch us like all those remains of all the mobsters on the floor back there..." the Yuki swordsman snapped back at Mana with a certain shade of sarcasm and irritation in his voice. He clearly didn't fancy the idea of confronting the Tailed Beast, he may have fancied it more if sneaking past it was their idea and not clearly confronting it.</p><p>Finally, the four left the endless halls and tunnels only to enter into what appeared to be an improvised temple, some sort of man-made lair with four tunnels leading up to a large platform in the center, strangely enough, it also had the same belts of carts and steel beams viciously torn up and tossed all over the place.</p><p>"I think it was tied down by those things, why else would they be torn apart..." Mana noticed and directed her gaze at the ruined track system.</p><p>"Yeah, makes sense. That's why they didn't normally use the belt system and carried the ore out by hand, it must've been used to detain the Tailed Beast in here and when Kouta's father activated them they must've tensed up and forced the Tailed Beast to break free. Whether he knew it or not the man caused a lot of trouble..." Shimo nodded looking at the ruined cart system from afar.</p><p>The Nine-Tails turned around. It was like it knew exactly where the four were the whole time, it must've known, judging from its apparent pride in the ability to sense negative emotions and all. It wouldn't have been too foolish to assume that everyone felt really terrified for their lives.</p><p>The beast swung its arm around and smacked it into the central platform. All of a sudden the platform cracked, shattered and the entire structure started digging deeper into whatever surface it stood on the way down below. The four bridge structures at different sides of the central platform just crumbled and started falling to the black abyss below as a biscuit smashed with a hammer. Meiko grabbed Mana and activated the seals in her boots, blue chakra flames fired off as the armored kunoichi carried the magician and herself onto the unstable and shaking central platform – the only safe spot in the whole cave system however at the same time the most horrifying – they were all within reaching distance by the colossal fox demon.</p><p>Shimo once again used the combination of his Water Release technique and his Glaciation technique to create a sliding platform for him to slide down and reach the ruined central platform, Kouta focused his chakra and kicked off of the falling bridge structure, it took a lot of focused chakra enhancement to make such a powerful leap but the medical ninja managed to barely pull it off, he landed solidly onto the central platform. With a loud rumble, the edges of the platform cracked off and fell down below, quickly Kouta made a small hop forward to avoid losing his balance and falling down. There was no end in sight to wherever the bridges fell...</p><p>This time the Nine-Tailed Fox looked so much different – its fur was far less shining and its eyes no longer glowed red, they had the signature red irises that the Tailed Beast was known for in the tales, but they no longer displayed that strange maddening glow. And yet still it was dried up and thin as if the fur and skin covered only a half-dead skeleton of the once majestic Tailed Beast. The Nine-Tails' snout snapped open as a large red-colored ball of pure chakra fired off from its mouth, Meiko once again grabbed Mana and moved the girl away, Shimo used his incredible speed to avoid the projectile and Kouta leaped back, hanging down on the edge but narrowly avoiding the projectile that slammed into the wall making a crater at least fifty meters wide and deep.</p><p>"Wait!" Mana screamed out trying to communicate with this much more ordinary-looking Tailed Beast. "We're not here to hurt you, we're here to set you free!" she tried to explain when suddenly she realized that she was no longer where she was a second ago.</p><p>The magician was standing on a large lake of some sort, surrounded by total darkness, and the fox standing right in front of her in all its glory. It took the confused girl a moment to realize that the Nine-Tails must've invaded her mind somehow.</p><p>"Hurt me?!" the beast laughed out sending crashing waves and ripples at Mana that tossed her around like a ragdoll. This was so odd, despite the waves being twice her size the magician didn't feel wet or hurt when they dragged her under this strange murky water nor when their smashing awesome might crushed her chest taking all oxygen out of there. It felt horrible, uncomfortable, and very unpleasant but it wasn't the real thing.</p><p>"Well... We're not here to fight, anyways..." Mana realized the wild assumption she had made previously just assuming that the four of them could've as much as scratched the demon fox even in its weakest stage.</p><p>"Hmph, that's what everyone says... That's what the old man said... Then again, a frog doesn't pick a fight with a stork, does it? Yet they all lie: "We're going to live here from now on, Foxie", he said, "it's just so that we can't hurt anyone else..." but he only wanted for me to suffer surrounded by those infernal walls!" the Nine-Tails replied, Mana stood back on her feet finally managing to settle on the uneasy waters. It was strange, despite not being a ninja anymore she could still stand on top of the surface, just like she used to be able to in the real world.</p><p>"Okay... What is this? I never thought you could invade minds... Why did you do it in the first place if you just want to eat us?" Mana asked for a little clarification before she tried to reason with the beast to help them set it free.</p><p>"I normally cannot, my sight usually crushes people mentally, paralyzes them in fear, or outright makes them go insane. It's always the same, everyone screams until they pass out every time I look at them, your mind, however, feels strangely... Trained. Nowhere near as messy as that of the others and you don't seem to be afraid of me, more of what I can do to those you love and care about. As you may have seen previously, even weakened, just my mere voice can level mountains and I can't seem to get it under control in this cursed cave so I decided to try this mental communication instead..."</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and tried to settle down, it appeared that the beast was in a quite fitting condition to negotiate at that moment, also it just so happened that her entire life devoted to meditation and mental training managed to make her mind strong enough to not be crushed by the mere sight of the Nine-Tails and helped the fox communicate with her.</p><p>"Well then, as I've said, we want to set you free..." Mana confirmed her previous statement, "But first I'd like a little bit of clarification because there are things happening here I still cannot understand, what exactly happened there? How did you end up down here, how did those mobsters manage to place you here and keep you chained by something like steel beams and carts? Also, why are you eating people, I thought Tailed Beasts don't really need to feed?"</p><p>The Nine-Tails leaned up to Mana, its gigantic eyes were level with the girl's entire body, its red irises and bloodshot eyes stared right at the magician. "The old man settled down here, my, as you call them, "Jinchuuriki". Way before his death... I once managed to take control over his body, he leaked too much of my chakra and we destroyed a small village in the process. The man decided to fight my influence by hiding in a cave down here, he placed a bunch of seals on his own body and then he stuck his hands into these rails before his death so that once I broke free I stayed stuck. I kept waiting to regain my strength after his death but it never came back... Once in a while, I feel those... Urges to kill, to tear things apart! But I'm so weak! So damned weak in this blasted cave! It's like poison itself seeps from the walls, like those strange blue stones and the light they make burn me!"</p><p>After the fox finished talking an awesome stream of breath escaped its snout blowing Mana off her feet and sending her rolling backward on the surface of the water, it was relatively painful and the girl almost passed out. This must've been only a visual illusion her mind made up to explain the overwhelming crushing presence that the Fox's mind had on the girl's human mind. Despite her "hospitable" mind, Mana's psyche was still slowly getting torn apart by the Fox's presence. It appeared that the beast realized it already and started to withdraw. The colossal figure of the fox started slowly turning into orange foam, large bubbles formed where its glowing fur once was, the entire frame was slowly disappearing under the surface of the mental waters.</p><p>"I would have liked to apologize for my actions but I don't feel bad about blowing you brats up at all. I know you feel bad about it, you're kids with childish lives and families and all those futures ahead of you and you feel like I'm evil or something for disintegrating you where you stand. The thing is that I am not evil, the very concept of evil is what I am, I am defined by it because it's just the way that I was made. I am a world breaker, I kill and destroy, it's what I am, I don't care why..." the demonic thundering authoritative voice of the Nine-Tails rumbled out as the entire foamy carcass disappeared under Mana's mental waters and suddenly the girl snapped out of this weird sensation back where she stood before.</p><p>"Meiko! I need you to take your armor off now!" she screamed out. "I know what's going on here, we have a chance to survive it but we need to move fast!" Mana pleaded desperately but her friend appeared to simply stand there completely still, almost like she was dead or just trapped in her own mind.</p><p>The magician grunted and looked at the others, Kouta was also standing there with his eyes rolled up and his mouth open, only his pounding heart alerted the magician that the Fox's sight didn't kill her friend of sheer terror. Shimo was also stuck on his knees, he must've been in the middle of a mad dash, some sort of attempt to attack the fox but he was caught before his attack could start.</p><p>"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" Mana's heart pounded, beat against her ribs as it had never beaten before. The fear inside of her was so intense and the adrenaline rush was so real that her entire gut felt like it wrapped around her throat internally and started to choke her out. The magician tore the countless belts around Meiko's armor, trying to figure out just how to use them, how all of this complicated system of belts and screws worked. One by one the magician tore the armor pieces off, feeling intense heat and hearing the most dreadful sound behind her – the shrieking sound of a chakra blast charging up.</p><p>This was a hopeless idea – Mana had no idea just how potent the seals in Meiko's armor were, she had no means of activating them or anything of the sort. Slowly the magician's mind realized that the chances of this day ending in utter disintegration were becoming so very overwhelming that just thinking about them almost made her drop down to her knees and accept demise.</p><p>With a loud roar, Mana pulled off the final strap making Meiko's heavy chestplate fall onto the ground. The girl whined as assembled the armor and piled it back one piece on another, she placed her arm on the back of it. There it was... If only she could use her chakra again... She could've at least tried activating Meiko's seals, tried to absorb as much of the Nine-Tails' blast as she could into Meiko's storage seals so that... What was she even trying to achieve?</p><p>Mana's watering eyes looked to the side, she saw the red chakra ball in the Nine-Tails' mouth become larger and larger and larger but her eyes wandered off to her friends. Frozen in time, could they even see what was going on? The worst possible scenario would've been if they actually saw what was going on, saw their impending doom but had no way of moving, no way of controlling their body, and the last thing they saw was their friend who doomed them like this in the first place letting them down.</p><p>The girl's hand started slowly slipping down Meiko's armor as she tried her best not to collapse on her knees in complete mental devastation. She failed everyone! She brought them here trying to prevent the suffering of the people converted into monsters here, people who had to endure steel particles being infused into their very skin, a process so painful it made their minds shut down and made them into bumbling rage monsters. She wanted to release an ancient fox demon just because she wanted for it to stop being so lonely, stop suffering inside those Audra particle infused walls...</p><p>Finally, the shrieking sound shut up and with a final boom, the giant red ball of chakra was released. It was like time slowed down... Almost like Mana saw the blast coming at them, a blast powerful enough to not even leave a single cell of them there, powerful enough to destroy the very platform where the Nine-Tails and the four were standing on sending the Fox down into the abyss itself. The magician looked at her friends whom she disappointed and doomed to death...</p><p>"Storage Seal: Open" she uttered, knowing well it wouldn't work – she had no chakra to spare, either way, she couldn't control her chakra so she'd fail even at using basic Academy level sealing technique...</p><p>Everything whited out. Mana could feel heat scorching her skin, her ears got overwhelmed by sound to the point where she felt blood firing off from her eardrums like a bursting volcano. Intense pressure blew the girl back, for a moment she thought that she was actually flying before the magician felt hitting the stone wall. The white in her eyes didn't let her see her friends in their final moments... The pain and overwhelming heat and the pressure were too much... The girl's mind let go... Farewell...</p><p>"So should we tell her what she did?" weak remnants of Kouta's voice somehow broke through the kunoichi's conscience.</p><p>"We don't know if she did it... It could've been a great many things... Fuck... She released the goddamn Nine-Tails... Well, now the world is fucked..." Shimo's voice which sounded much louder than the voice of the medical ninja broke through again, a powerful sensation of pain shut up around Mana's head on the sides almost as if a bear trap snapped shut around her head forcing the girl's eyes to slightly peek open.</p><p>"The world will be fine... I mean it existed for so long before the Nine-Tails was imprisoned. But why did she have to use my armor... Look at it, it's completely molten and messed up, I can pretty much just leave it behind" Meiko's playful sniffles completely woke Mana up forcing the magician's eyes to open back for good.</p><p>"Ugh... What happened..." her weak and pain-ridden voice uttered. She felt... Cold... Probably because the heat almost burnt off her clothes and the Land of Rivers at night was quite chilly, despite its warm resort-like look during the day.</p><p>"Well... Somehow you managed to use Meiko's armor to overload the capacity of the storage seals with Nine-Tails' weakened chakra, you sealed away parts of the blast and the part that hit us was mostly a concussive blast" Shimo explained helping Mana get back up. The girl looked at the smoking black remains of Meiko's armor. It was almost like it molted into a shape of strange sticks and then solidified again into solid coal, or something similar to coal. It was also smoking and looked quite brittle. Meiko was wearing a green tracksuit and crying over the remains.</p><p>"Which raises two problems: first being how did Meiko's armor have enough storage capacity to store away such excessive amount of chakra, isn't the Nine-Tails strong enough to destroy the world and then keep going? Also how on Earth did you open those seals up if you can't use chakra? Maybe your control is returning? I'll need to examine you once I recover, healing the burns of you guys and all the broken bones from when we got sent out that giant hole sucked the last of my chakra out..." Kouta complained pointing at a giant crater. What appeared to have once been a mine. The Nine-Tails blast must've bypassed Mana and the others with Meiko's armor working as an improvised barrier absorbing the demon's chakra while the walls behind were blown up and the concussive force tossed the genin outside.</p><p>"Hey, you didn't have to scale the platforms around the whole damned mine to collect everyone's unconscious bodies!" Shimo growled angrily at Kouta who apologized and laughed out uncomfortably.</p><p>"It was the mine itself. I've been wondering for a while as to how exactly the mobsters made the Audra steel, I mean to craft such excessive amounts they'd have needed to use the Nine-Tails' own chakra, its own genetic material, and infuse it into stone via some Kirikuzu master blacksmith's aid. The entire mine had a strange radiating glow to it. Those walls must've emitted some sort of weird vibe that weakened the Nine-Tails and made it act out of its mind. Almost like the entire mine was poisonous to the Nine-Tails but not poisonous enough to kill it for good, just to keep it at half-dead state, almost like a weakening allergic reaction for Tailed Beasts..." Mana explained.</p><p>Kouta nodded, "Well that makes just about as much sense as everything we've seen in that mine... Anyways, mind if I quickly scan you? I mean you just used chakra, didn't you?" the medical ninja stood up and tried to place his hands on Mana's body but the girl stood up and pushed them away.</p><p>"You will do no such thing..." she uttered with a much ruder tone than she usually used, Kouta was one of the people she spoke especially softly to but it appeared that the magician was quite adamant to avoid a scan. She was just afraid of getting the final answer that much, even when she just got a sign that things may not have been as final as she once thought them to be.</p><p>Meiko, Kouta, and Shimo looked at each other awkwardly, almost as if they knew something that Mana didn't. The three just gulped and slowly followed the magician back to the Land of Rivers settlement where they could've stayed for a while and examined their wounds.</p><p>Whatever Kouta's initial scan back in Shukuba town showed seemed to unify the magician's teammates, that uncomfortable secret that needed for the speaker to admit that they went behind one's back to fully be explained seemed to haunt the three before other thoughts finally pushed it away and everyone started to act like it was business as usual.</p>
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<a name="section0127"><h2>127. The World's Largest Scavenger Hunt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I don't know how to pay you guys back..." Mana awkwardly smiled rubbing the back of her head. The trio took a whole night off after nearly getting utterly incinerated by the Nine-Tails' immense power. They still had to keep moving to the Wind Country, especially now when they knew that they had competition on their tracks who currently were a whole day ahead of them.</p><p>The head of the small family bowed his head and politely shook his head refusing any payment. The man saw the bleeding and injured quartet wandering the streets, he took pity on the four letting them stay in his shabby home overnight, he gave Mana some of his daughter's clothes since hers were almost completely burnt off. Kouta rested overnight and then took care of their injuries, leaving a little bit of healing to various burn ointments and pills instead of using his chakra to heal them up.</p><p>Meiko grinned and opened a satchel showing some shards of a glowing purplish mineral inside. "How 'bout some of this for your trouble, a single shard probably costs a billion ryo, you know..." she explained.</p><p>Mana was surprised to see that Meiko had the time to snag some of the minerals while she was down there. Must've happened either when she was digging the tunnel for the four to cross from the resting quarters over to the labs or when they were down in the mines.</p><p>The house owner looked quite intimidated by the prospect. "Please don't, we don't need something like this in our lives. This cursed rock already cost this town its freedom, it has become infested with criminal families trading it and making it down the mines. Now that the mine is closed and sealed under layers of rock and gold, perhaps they won't find it worth the hassle to try and salvage what they've lost, having some of this around would only bring my family trouble!" he explained.</p><p>Mana nodded, it may not have been the best idea to leave something like this in the family's home. If they tried to exchange it for money word would spread, just one word of the ore's presence in the family's home would bring crime families on their doorstep trying to reclaim some of what they have lost. After some overly long farewells, the four departed from the Land of the Rivers settlement, heading west towards the Land's border with the Wind Country. They were getting closer to their objective.</p><p>"Wait... So did we win? Whatever we were doing in the mines?" Meiko scratched her chin wondering, "I mean I lost my armor, at least tell me we've won..." the blacksmith complained once again.</p><p>"Well, we've buried the Audra ore under endless layers of rock and gold, it'd take entire years for them to reach that ore, more so, the Syndicate no longer has the Nine-Tails' infinite supply of chakra for their production so even if they did reach it in however many years it'd take them, they can no longer produce the element artificially. Eventually, the crime families should move out of the settlement since they'll have no more business there. Also, all of us survived that which very few have before – a scuffle with the Nine-Tails, a severely weakened and delirious Nine-Tails but still, it could've killed us easily if we were any less lucky... All of those are small victories in my book" Mana mumbled out looking at the murky grey sky. Rain clouds were gathering, the girl could only wonder as to what these clouds could have actually meant.</p><p>"On the other hand, Kouta is still not completely recovered after healing us so many times in such a short period of time, your card supply is completely empty, Meiko's armor with all the weapons sealed in it was destroyed, also now we know that Kouta's dirtbag father is after the Box as well. We're not ready to fight him or pretty much anyone strong for that matter..." Shimo replied to Mana's pondering. "Still, we've helped quite a lot of people, I just hope that the Nine-Tails won't blow that statistic up in our faces now that it's free to rampage freely"</p><p>"We've got another trouble on our hands, that ore, I assume Meiko can't work it since if she could she'd have rebuilt her armor long ago. That means we've got a bunch of heavy cargo and no money..." Kouta brought up another problem.</p><p>"The Wind Country desert will be full of raiders and bandits, some of them I've been introduced to by sensei. I may try talking to some of them and see if they want to buy some Audra, their prices won't be one-tenth of its worth but it'll at least give us enough money to bargain with the wandering tribes living in the desert for food, water, and shelter as well as supplies we'll desperately need. On the other hand, those guys will absolutely make that ore into weapons. We'll be selling it to the bandits who would use it to rob and kill people. We should think about what we're doing before deciding to go with it" Shimo suggested a rather immoral yet, having their situation in mind, quite alluring to some idea.</p><p>"I don't fancy selling my precious minerals but... Mana looks like a twig already, guess we do have to eat something at some point, the bandits would be the problem for the Wind Country and Sunagakure, they have ninja in their employ who could probably handle them easily" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Plus we'd technically be helping Konohagakure out by giving Wind Country extra trouble, it would almost be like we'd be doing the job of the Black Ops, I'm sure it'd score some points with the village council that'd go quite a long way when our promotion comes into question..." Kouta theorized.</p><p>"Normally I'd be against selling Audra ore shards to raiders but... They can't possibly have the means to work it properly. They won't have a Kirikuzu in their midst so they will either try working it with normal tools and ruin their tools or they'll have to wait for nobody knows how long before they'll find an expert capable of working it. We should give it a shot, if we see that it's not going to be pretty we can always inform Sunagakure after returning to the village" Mana once again decided on their actions. Strangely enough, with her being the client of the mission she had quite a heavy voice among the group and her say usually happened, as it was with them taking a detour to destroy the Katabami mines and setting free the Nine-Tails.</p><p>Either way, it was at least several more days before they'd even reach the Wind Country border and start getting sand in their shoes...</p><hr/><p>A bunch of suit-wearing tall and bulky men rushed into a tent of a white-cloaked middle-aged man. His assistant, a young female with glasses and a similar white cloak fixed them nervously, the young woman didn't like having dealings with the Syndicate but their clients were always of the like, such was the bread of being a Quack, or rather, a Quack in-training.</p><p>"Yo, Quack, we've got a job for you, we're paying coins this time..." one of the muscleheads informed the middle-aged, grey-haired man by lifting a body bag onto his table and unzipping it.</p><p>"Oh? That's new, what's the matter, trouble with the damned ore? I still haven't managed to sell a single rock to anyone so I'd appreciate the change in payment..." the man washed his hands and peeked inside the body bag, quickly moving his face away from the nasty sight and stench that came from inside.</p><p>"We've had issues with the... Production... The little rock we have we want to be used on the man in the bag, you know... Upgrade him to mess up any... Competitors..." the mobster who was dealing with the Quack informed the man.</p><p>"Oh, so this is my patient? I thought you brought mashed tomatoes for lunch..." the Quack joked opening the bag revealing a porridge-like mass inside. Whoever this patient was, we looked like he was utterly crushed to the point where he was completely unrecognizable and reminded little of an actual person.</p><p>"You've got to be kidding, he's missing entire body parts! We can't possibly bring this man to life even if he somehow is miraculously still alive!" the young assistant objected, once again angrily fixing her tight glasses and moving her blond hair out of the way of her sweating forehead.</p><p>"Whatever body parts you will need we shall provide, we've got plenty of... Human resources to go around. The Big Guy left us a lot of... Leftovers too before he bolted" the mobster looked at the man in the body bag and then back at the Quack nervously.</p><p>The Quack broke a grin, "Heh, so it's that bad, huh? I assume this man here is the Boss? No one else would be worth so much after the whole family was completely blown up. Ironically enough we saw the Nine-Tails breaking out and bolting north ourselves, I was taking a leak at the time... It was the most monumental piss of my life"</p><p>The mobster grabbed the Quack by his coat and pulled the man up closer lifting him off the ground. "Listen, you wise guy, we got a knuckle duster with the coordinates of your face on it. We don't know if the Boss is alive or not but the fact that some of him was still recovered makes us think that you can play some of your Quack mumbo jumbo on him and at least salvage some of him. Isn't that what Bellucini's Quack did for Bellucini's old man? Put the man's brain into a jar and attached him to a puppet of some sort? Do whatever it takes, if you need arms, legs, organs or whatever we'll give them to you"</p><p>The Quack sighed and tapped the man's arms so that the mobster put him down, the medical rogue then walked up to the mass and placed his hands above it, scanning it a couple of times with his "Diagnosis Jutsu".</p><p>"I'll need twelve fresh bodies, blood type AB. I can make you a Boss from the body parts of twelve more bodies. Also, bring me as much of the ore as you can, we may need to use the chakra properties to keep that monstrosity together, also I'd advise to switch out his brain since whatever trauma befell and will befall him would and will in the future, most likely, ruin his brain, if not physically then psychologically"</p><p>"We'll get you everything you need, it's important that you use the brain of the Boss, we don't need A Boss, we need THE Boss" the mobster growled and then took notes of the medical rogue's orders. "The current Boss' brain is jumbled up but its here, we've made sure of that before bringing him to you, what trauma are you talking about?"</p><p>"Not the trauma from the injury, the trauma of recovery. I'll have to bring him back throughout the whole process, it's too much of a risk to have him sleeping through such a complicated and long period of time so he'll have to be awake, that'll ruin a man's screws..." the Quack explained.</p><p>"Okay, so you can bring him back then?" the mobster asked for confirmation.</p><p>The Quack smiled and nodded at his assistant, "First we'll need to fix his brain from being way over the edge of brain-dead. Okay, girl, do it as I showed you, use THAT technique..."</p><p>The woman fixed her glasses and rushed up to the mangled mess of a man that the Boss was. She placed her hands on him and concentrated. Sweat broke through her forehead and blood started dripping from her nose somewhere down into the mashed mass of human remains.</p><p>"One's Own Life Reincarnation!" she shouted out through pain and pressure, blood vessels shot out on the woman's forehead and her eyes became bloodshot with heavy bags. Her glasses fell down onto the floor and broke into small pieces. About twenty minutes later the eyes of the poor woman rolled back as her body collapsed lifeless onto the floor, only to be caught by the hair of her superior. His quick fingers quickly shot into her eye sockets removing the woman's eyes with a skilled and swift motion, he then forced her mouth open and removed some scissors from his pocket laying her body close to the body bag.</p><p>"I seem to have miscalculated, I only need eleven more bodies..." he smiled briefly, having all things in mind, he probably should've informed the young woman of the cost of that technique before teaching it to her, that being said she was becoming far too confrontational lately and was of no use to him anymore. Rogues had no tolerance for useless things, now at least her eyes and her tongue could've served some use, her eyes would need some adjustment work though, she did need glasses, didn't she?</p><p>A deafening moan came from the body bag. The Quack quickly zipped it up, maybe he rushed a bit too much resurrecting the... Whatever inside of it was, now he had to deal with those gut-wrenching moans. At least he knew that whatever that thing was, it was functional enough to scream in agony as it was resurrected prematurely.</p><p>The mobsters scurried from the tent and back into the small settlement nearby in search of the bodies. Boss needed to be brought back if the Syndicate was to survive. They were right to hire and to come to that Quack, he was ruthless enough to sacrifice his own apprentice just to save them some trouble and silence her...</p><p>Syndicate will survive, and then... They'll go right for that Box thing that the Boss spoke of. At least they still had some intel about some alternative business idea now that their main source of income was ruined. Syndicate will survive... If the other families paid so much for an overpriced chunk of rock, imagine what they'll pay to make a wish upon this Box of Ultimate Bliss!</p><hr/><p>Loud huffs and moans echoed through the streets of Sunagakure. Even in the middle of a scorching desert, it was cold enough to freeze one's balls off in the middle of the night. A man in a furry coat was running for his life, running at speeds that to the common villagers would've appeared incomprehensible. Just a furry blur, then again, he was being chased by someone much faster, a black flash of light with red sparks for eyes, eyes that emanated malevolence and death.</p><p>The man leaped to the side as the black flash hit a building making it explode from the pressure and the force of impact and crumble on top of it. A bunch of ninja leaped around the rooftops, tried attacking the black flash surrounded by some mysterious devilish chakra. A chakra that crippled any sensor in the range, close enough to sense its black toxic sludge-like substance. However, the owner of such a black malevolent chakra was not as toxic and sludgy as one may have taken it for. He was more of a majestic force of nature. Almost like a graceful angel of darkness.</p><p>The Sand Village ninja leaped into the fray, attempting to cut the man down but their screams of agony woke up anyone in the alleyway. Due to the blitzing speed of this man, it was impossible to tell that many details about him, only that he wore black and had some strange shining red irises in his eyes, almost like miniature crimson stars burning up. Within just mere moments the black flash started chasing the man in the furry coat with the brown hood. More and more ninja tried to get in the black flash's way, some of them waved gigantic fans sending entire whirlwinds of cutting gusts that simply disappeared once they collided with whatever this moving dark shadow was. As if they were absorbed by it almost. Some more sent entire sandstorms its way but those were absorbed by the force of nature as well.</p><p>The black flash leaped up into the air, covering the entire village with a single bound, landing right onto the rooftops where the attackers stood. In a wild hurricane of strikes and grabs, he tore the men and women, the loyal ninja of Sunagakure apart in a twister of blood and limbs flying out from it. His punches made even ninja with access to chakra augmentation explode into clouds of blood and guts, his hands grabbed ninja and tore them apart limb by limb with all of this happening faster than within a moment. The ninja didn't even comprehend their demise. With a loud shout, the mysterious dark shadow with the eyes of red announced its victory and disappeared in the alleyways of the Sand Village.</p><p>The man in the fur coat landed on the outskirts of the village having left his chaser back inside the village to slaughter the ninja that attempted to apprehend him. A woman in a red hood approached him. She wore a furry coat of desert foxes, skins of whom she tore herself, all of whom came from animals she herself hunted down and a golden gourd encased with gems like rubies and sapphires, also emeralds and onyxes that contrasted the golden casing of the gourd. The two kissed upon coming in contact. They hugged passionately and for a moment it appeared like they would go all the way with their display of love but then the man violently tore the woman off of him.</p><p>"We've no time, we have to move, he'll find us here..." he pleaded the woman in a desperate and almost whining voice which was surprising having his powerful and determined tone in mind. He did not possess a voice that commonly came in a whiny shade.</p><p>"Where's Aziz?" the woman asked, just her brightly red-colored lips were visible as her entire face was covered in the shadow of her red hood. The moon could only illuminate her lips.</p><p>"The Leech got to him first, I went to sleep, Father said he'd watch the perimeter and... The next thing I remember is seeing that monster suck the life out of him with that bloody smile of his... Those crimson evil eyes were shining so brightly! I tried attacking him, I cut him again and again but you know how he is when he's well-fed, I could only run... That's all we can ever do... Run!" the man cried out in desperation.</p><p>"Well... At least now we know he won't come after us immediately, Aziz... Father should've satisfied his sick appetite for at least a short while. He's an Uchiha, like you, isn't he? Then there were all those Sunagakure ninja..." the woman's crimson lips turned into a wicked smile. She felt sorry about the death of the father of her husband but she also was glad that he died and not her, such was the life of a family chased by a monster such as the black shadow with eyes of red.</p><p>"Where's Aisha? If she's out in the brothels again screwing with some lowlife... The Leech will be the last of her worries..." the man cried out angrily, he still felt the pain of loss, yet he too felt relief that this day it was the life of his elderly father that was taken.</p><p>"Ahh, so you do care, brother?" a sarcastic voice of a teenage girl reached the man's ears, he turned at her and saw a figure of a girl in her late teens with short black hair and those malevolent Sharingan eyes glowing red in the moonlight. Her clothes were messy as if she hastily put them on, it was apparent that she was once again entertaining herself...</p><p>"You bitch, the Leech tore our father apart, he tore his arms off so that father could not resist as easily as one tears a sheet of paper! If you were with us tonight, maybe we could've saved him! I'll fucking choke you in your sleep one day!" the angry brother pulled a curved sword from the sheath on his back and approached his sister, his mouth slobbered as the young man expressed his anger towards his sibling.</p><p>"Sleep? When was the last time we had any of that? The life of being chased suits you ill, brother. Well, while you two were busy playing wolf and the lamb, I was actually getting some intelligence that might help us kill the fucker who ruined our lives" the teen snapped back playfully flipping off of the small rocky structure she observed her brother from.</p><p>"Is that what you call being plowed from behind now?" the woman in red hood replied sarcastically.</p><p>The teen's red Sharingan glared angrily at her sister in law. "Konoha made their move, they sent ninja to retrieve something called "the Box of Ultimate Bliss" and according to a friend I met today that thing is a wishing artifact. Think about it, just one word and we could wish the Leech away..."</p><p>"Is that what you were doing while your father was dismembered and had his chakra absorbed until he was just a dried-out corpse? Listening to fairytales that your boy-toys told you as a bonus for your payment for their services?" the hooded woman angrily yelled out.</p><p>"Good thing your sandy crotch isn't in charge. You're not even a part of this family!" the teen pulled out a knife and lunged towards the hooded woman thrusting the knife at the lady's face before it was stopped by a wave of golden glowing sand that flowed out from the gourd on the woman's back, the sand was glowing in bright golden light that illuminated the part of the desert they were meeting in.</p><p>"We've had no hopes, only fled in terror ever since that monster touched us, tasted our chakra, and decided we're tasty enough to be its food and entertainment. We ran and changed places, fled all the way from Kirigakure through Kumogakure, and now here... We've lost friends, anyone who was kind enough to shelter us got their bodies gruesomely mangled because they were kind enough to shelter his food. Now, sister tells us we've got a rat's ass of a chance... Some semblance of hope! Isn't that the best thing one could ask for? A chance to finally for once fight that thing back? Where is this Box, sister?" the man asked letting his hood slip down revealing a messy curly dark-haired head with an almost primal beard and sleepless eyes, a face covered in scars and bruises, missing one eye while the second one was shining in red – with the infernal Sharingan eye of the Uchiha clan.</p><p>"The ruins of the Jookselman settlement, east-south from here, may be a couple of days path ahead..." the teen answered.</p><p>"Well then... We're heading to that old graveyard. We'll get this Box even if we have to peel it from the cold dead hands of those Konoha ninja! I saw that fucker take my own eye out and pop it in front of me like a grape, let's see how he likes it when we return the favor!" the man declared vibrantly and put his hood back on, turning towards the ruins, heading towards a giant sandstorm. The chased had no time to hide or rest. Now that the Leech had their taste, he could've found them anywhere at any time and either left them barely alive, beaten and almost void of any chakra, or outright take everything and leave them as sandy shells, gruesome remains of the body they once were.</p><p>There was no rest for the ones who were being chased...</p>
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<a name="section0128"><h2>128. A Deal With The Devil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The scorching desert sun combined with powerful yet not less searing at the slightest winds that also pelted Mana's cheeks with sand. The magician despised the sand and wished that she had something to protect against it better. Had it not been for her strange habit to find conflict everywhere she went, halting the squad's progress at every twist and turn she'd have perhaps not have had her desert cloak burnt to a crisp from inside her backpack when the Nine-Tails blasted them back in the Land of Rivers. Now she was stuck with what she had, still, it was better than Meiko's situation, the poor blacksmith hated the feeling of scratching sand so she never removed her tracksuit making traveling through the desert living torture for her.</p><p>Shimo was talking to some mean looking desert raiders. These were apparently his contacts from the time he trained with a rogue ninja during his journey of self-discovery. He seemed to have picked up a lot of weird skills during that time. The one that Mana fancied the least, secretly, of course, was his newly found love for self-preservation. Obviously, it was nothing wrong to protect oneself and one's friends from harm at all costs, Mana herself would've been quite an established follower of that rule if it was made law, that being said, rogues thought of it differently and that different approach made all the difference where it counted.</p><p>Mana could see it in Shimo's eyes, he roamed the world for over a year, training gruesomely with a powerful rogue ninja who taught him not only the improvement of his swordsmanship and also his physical attributes, but the boy also picked up some less than stellar attitudes and skills. Since when did he know some pretty well equipped and well-established raiders in the middle of the Land of Wind? These guys he was talking to reminded Mana of criminals that, be the situation any different than it was, she'd probably be gunning for on a mission with a team of ninja.</p><p>It went so far beyond just being a matter of changes, the magician could see it in the eyes of her friend that he changed. He saw some things beyond the village walls that made him always fight to survive. No longer did he take things for granted, all those stories of women and crazy brawls and daring escapes from villages when his sensei's status of a rogue ninja was discovered... He suffered a lot to discover himself and he failed to do so. He got lost even more. Now he had that strange shadow of the young man he was before looking from deep inside locked in a chest while his true self-fought to preserve himself and berated anyone else who did not share that belief.</p><p>Perhaps Mana was just paranoid, maybe she just felt bad that her friend and she no longer really saw eye to eye. Every time they spoke it all looked so blissful yet every time she made a call he couldn't have judged her more. Yes, her calls never compared with the rogue ninja code that well, she was rarely looking out for herself or her team and despite being just a client she held the mission hostage every time she decided to make a detour to help someone on the way to the mission objective...</p><p>"So how's the old pervert doing?" the raider in a strange headcover with a ring on top holding the thing in place wearing light armor and covering white cloth all over his body asked Shimo as if the two knew each other.</p><p>"Well, he lost an arm to a courtesan, turns out she was no courtesan at all..." Shimo strayed from the topic, Mana wanted to have as little as possible with these men, they were looking quite suspiciously at the ninja, the only reason their guts didn't cover the desert sand was that they weren't Sunagakure ninja which meant they had no jurisdiction here. Usually, the order in the deserts was maintained by Sunagakure but it was hard to oversee such a vast land and so it was mostly left to self-regulation. The worst bastard of them all always controlled everything until an even worse one raised his head and either had it cut from his shoulders or actually succeeded in becoming the next worst bastard. It seemed to Mana that this man talking to Shimo may have just been a bastard not unlike the theoretical one she imagined.</p><p>"Well, I kept telling him, gotta check their backgrounds first, never bed a woman you don't know, their crotch is the last place you need to get to know..." the man shook his head unpleasantly and then the bunch of raiders behind him laughed out loud. They appeared to look at their friend losing an arm as if he passed out first in a drinking game and someone drew an inappropriate picture on his face while he was out.</p><p>"It's different in places where crotches aren't full of sand, you don't have to worry about that part so can't say I blame sensei for his call... Did you hear it, though? That man he was so afraid of is now close to Shukuba..." Shimo scratched the back of his head and then wiped the sweat off of his face. The Konoha ninja weren't used to such weather so they definitely were wondering if meeting in the middle of the day was even the best idea.</p><p>"No shit? That's good to know, whatever fucker made that guy stop talking about breasts scares the shit out of me, so, I assume you and your Konoha crew didn't come to Viper's Pit to chat?" the raider started walking up closer to Mana and looked at her, his brown eyes examined her skin closely.</p><p>"Where's this girl from? Ah, nevermind..." he reconsidered raising the subject once he saw Shimo's face turn sourer by the second when the topic turned at Mana. He was really still mad at her for pulling that irresponsible feat back in the mines and then surpassing that feat just half an hour later.</p><p>"Anyways, we wanted to sell you something, something we snatched from a bunch of losers in the Katabami mine, the whole Syndicate is down and out, also there's zero chance of them placing a fancy shoe wearing foot down on the Land of the Wind's sands so it's safe, no bullshit or anything..." Shimo walked up to Meiko and tried removing her pack filled with Audra ore to which the girl hissed and then opened the backpack herself.</p><p>The purplish-blue shine of the ores glowed even brighter when reflecting from the greedy raider's dark eyes.</p><p>"So what do you want for that? An army? This whole damned desert? I don't get it..." the raider looked confused, he approached Meiko and carefully touched the bag, like a housecat who was getting cozier with the new people around her Meiko let the man check inside the backpack but it was clear that she was ready to bash his head in if he tried anything funny.</p><p>"Nope, the thing is that we know you've no means to work it so we know it's of limited use to you, it's Audra ore for crying out loud and we're really desperate for supplies. This young woman's here got a killer appetite and this one that you were so curious about is a civilian who is currently hitting four days without a bite in her mouth. We've got a long trip ahead and we'll need water, food, maybe even a camel or a bulky raider to carry us on his damned shoulders. We have no time to... Realize this merchandise for an appropriate price so we're willing to give you a shard of Audra ore for one-thousandth its market price as long as you're taking up the responsibility for doing whatever the fuck you want with it and leaving no strings on it attached to us. As usual, if we do this, we don't know your ass from a camel's upchuck."</p><p>The raider removed the veil covering his mouth and stroke his long black beard playfully. "Shit... As it happens... There're things you're not up to date with yet..." he spoke up turning away from the stones and approached Shimo.</p><p>"Dammit, you know we could murder your entire camp, I've kicked your ass before! You're turning away a stone of Audra alloy, something that shouldn't even exist, for a million ryo worth of supplies a piece?" Shimo growled angrily, yet quietly right up in the raider's face. It was somewhat entertaining seeing a half-developed fourteen-year-old hold more intimidation power over a fully grown man who owned a raider encampment and managed a whole band of raiders.</p><p>"No, that's the thing... The deal is so sweet I'm willing to cut my fingers off with a blunt rusty ax so that I could place my lips up your ass. The thing is that I'm not the man in charge anymore and if you knew the... Full picture... You may not want to sell me this" the raider's cheeks extended in the most despicable and twisted smile. He wasn't a very plump gentleman, looked more like a weasel, and yet he managed to legitimately look like a guy who'd steal medicine from a baby.</p><p>Meiko zipped the bag up, she apparently took this sign as a clear indication that the deal wasn't going to happen. Kouta looked at Shimo questioningly, Mana's eyes looked at the boy with a glare of jealousy since Kouta managed to have enough brain to buy multiple copies of a desert suited cloak so he wore by far the most sand-proof attire out of everyone there.</p><p>"Speak. I've broken a man's tailbone with a headbutt for you. If I missed my head would've literally been inside another man's ass, don't you dare screw me over now!" Shimo cut his words down like he was swinging his sword and not flipping his tongue. The boy legitimately wanted to show Mana how real ninja did things, ninja with actual-world experience and now his plan was blowing up in everyone's faces and he didn't like it.</p><p>"I know, I know... There's this guy... This old fucker with fancy gems on his cloak and all, gold-laced teeth and bunch of overblown neckwear. He's buying the raider bands, like outright buying them, those that don't sell out he annihilates! Technically he's the guy in charge of us. He owns all nine of the relevant raider camps out of fourteen, he says he plans to fuck Sunagakure over once he has all of them on his payroll. From what I gathered he's an ex-Sunagakure ninja, dishonorable discharge most likely, maybe a Tribunal case. We don't know how to work Audra but that guy has... Power and influence and I'm sure that he'd manage to properly work the ore" the man weaseled out.</p><p>"No way, only Kirikuzu can work Audra ores, everyone knows that!" Meiko yelled out of line. Previously the four had struck a deal that they'd let Shimo handle it but Meiko was never a person who let rules and lines get in her way. Not when she had places to be in and had things to find out about things she cared about...</p><p>"Correct, missy, but the guy... Fennec he calls himself... Has this weird stash of sealed bloodlines. He's got all sorts of bloodline jutsu sealed in a bunch of scrolls and I've never seen him not having a bloodline he needs ready to use. He's got a Kirikuzu bloodline in there somewhere, trust me, ability to craft perfect weapons is something he'd think about when gathering an army and Kirikuzu are the best there are" the man answered. Meiko turned away, the topic of her clan heritage was still sensitive to her, she didn't quite like her clan rules, she wasn't that good at the signature clan techniques. It'd only make sense she'd want to hear about how great a name she disowned was as rarely as possible.</p><p>"I'd imagine the knowledge that we're fully able to work the ore and mean to use it to overthrow Sunagakure would be a dealbreaker then?" the raider smiled once again as if he was talking about making candy cotton and not weapons out of one of the most difficult to get one's hands-on ores that were capable enough to contend with chakra conductive weaponry.</p><p>"Very much so..." Mana spoke out of line again.</p><p>"See? That's where I have to play the scumbag then, we really need those ores, you see..." the raider spoke up but before he could blink Shimo's blade was already drawn and almost stuck in his eyes, had the man continued to blink he may have cut his eyelids on its tip.</p><p>"Don't do this, drowning in your own blood mixed with desert sand is a very nasty way to go, I'd hate to do it to a guy I had my arms mauled by desert dogs for..." Shimo calmly explained. Strangely enough none of the man's raiders looked remotely scared or surprised nor did they jump to arms after seeing their leader threatened.</p><p>"Nah, I wouldn't dare threaten you or your lovely young ladies you're trying to impress with all those heroic ninja antics. You see, you know how these deserts work, right? There is Sunagakure, those guys are the top dogs here so they play like they're in control when they're really unable to oversee everything that goes on here. Not everyone wants to be a part of a ninja village so they're all over the place. There are a bunch of wanderers and small settlements of wandering people moving from one source of water to another. Robbing them and owning them and all they have is our job, the job of the raiders and yet these people don't care because ultimately they ran away from a ninja village owning everything they have to us doing the same thing..."</p><p>Meiko leaned up to Mana's ear. "So should I be punching him now? I feel like I missed a signal or something? Did Shimo raise his hand or was he just itchy on the nose?"</p><p>Mana couldn't help but chuckle but then she whispered back, "Just stay still for a while, let's see what their game is"</p><p>Once all this was cleared up the magician kept her eyes on the raider leader. The man looked quite charismatic and may have been a pretty fast fellow, he wore a simple, curved sword, Mana read about them. Pretty short and light but nasty to face since their slashes were much deeper at the center but they also had the potential to thrust over simple armor and shields. Knowing he was a raider, essentially similar to bandits close to Konohagakure, he must've had concealed weaponry but the magician felt confident about their chances of taking this camp if they needed... The problem was their tired and exhausted condition, it was the same problem that led them to even striking this deal in the first place. Also, it may have been ideal to not face them from the center of the camp where they were surrounded and clearly observed from all corners.</p><p>"We know the location of at least four peaceful settlements of merchants, cattle-breeders and just all-around nice people who shelter lost desert roamers and feed them. Thing is, we're ready to make their days a whole lot worse if this deal doesn't happen. I'm talking fire, blood, and a bunch of people drowning in their blood on the sand, which, as you pointed out before, sucks quite a lot. So are we talking business or do you want to go to sleep knowing that several hundreds of people died because you didn't want to sell some rocks over to desert raiders and their noble goal of overthrowing a village and starting a war?" the raider smiled once again with that disgusting twist of lips he called a smile. Mana's fists clenched and her head sunk down with her hair getting in the way of her face. She was almost shaking with anger.</p><p>So many things went wrong and the worst part was that this was her call. Shimo wanted this, the others were a bit hesitant about selling this tide-turning ore to desert raiders but Mana affirmed them that they needed this. She thought that there was no way that a band of bandits would have means of working such a tough to handle material.</p><p>Now it was a tough choice between selling the ore to people who would use it to spark a war with a ninja village where thousands of people would die and possibly the Sand Village would be spiraled back down to the pit it was after the Great War ended and letting all those poor innocent people die. There were tales spun about how kind and welcoming the wandering people of Land of Wind desert were, always helping out dying and lost travelers, always willing to trade with them even if the deal isn't too useful for them and if a deal is impossible even giving stuff away just because they were kind.</p><p>"So that's the kind of guy you call a friend, Shimo? Some Third Mizukage wannabe serving another Third Mizukage wannabe?" Mana's shaking voice broke the silence, she saw Shimo completely stumped and frozen in place. Normally someone like him, someone with a rogue mindset, wouldn't have cared if hundreds of people died because of a deal, Mana knew of his nindo however, his dream of never letting harm befall innocent people like it has fallen on the shoulders of his parents when they had to flee the Kirigakure during Mizukage Daikon's reign.</p><p>"Come now, young lady, we just really need that deal to be made, it's not like we're being unreasonable here, I mean we're not bullying you out of the stones, we just wanna make sure you sell them to us. We're willing to pay..." the raider shook his arms and walked up closer to Mana. The girl carefully observed his quick hands, knowing full well of the raiders' "stab first, talk later" ways. It was unlikely that the band would try anything funny but the situation was out of control enough already.</p><p>"Really, because it smells like long and fishy Daikon mustache here..." Shimo grumbled out completely crushed, he was really having a crisis deep inside.</p><p>"No, we'll sell you guys the ore..." Meiko said out of the blue, walking up to the guy and chucking the whole backpack right in his face. "Mana was kind enough to put this mission together for me, she helped us out many times throughout this trip and she doesn't deserve the feeling of being dead inside, she'd literally kill herself over the lives of those people and I don't want to see it. Sunagakure is strong enough to handle a bunch of sick losers who'd do something like this anyways..."</p><p>"Hmmm... You're this... Mana? I assume?" the raider smiled at the magician who was still shaking in defiant anger. She wanted to just leap at the man and kick his face into the dirt until he was just barely alive so that he could no longer open his mouth by himself and so every time he did open his mouth in agony he'd think of her. She was no longer afraid, she was angry, unlike so many times before she wasn't afraid to be angry, after meeting Guru Ayushi she knew just where her limits lied as far as fighting went. She wasn't afraid to leave all of those raider scum bleeding out on the sand, just barely on the line but never an inch past it.</p><p>"You're quite a leader if you get your friends so loyal to you. This girl, however, her build, her slight hint of an accent, her reaction to when I spoke about Kirikuzu... She wouldn't happen to be from Kumogakure, wouldn't happen to be a Kirikuzu herself would she?" the scumbag dared to ask, Meiko's face twisted in disdain and shame.</p><p>"No, I'm Wakizashi Meiko, Wakizashi, you hear?!" she yelled out.</p><p>"Wakizashi? I've never heard a more made-up name in my life. What, was Bucklershield taken too many times for it to seem natural? Doesn't seem like you made much of an effort to disguise your heritage, little missy..." the raider shrugged.</p><p>Mana walked up to him and got on her toes so that her face got as close to the raider's as possible. She no longer felt threatened by him, no longer protected herself against any surprise attacks that the man could've thought of throwing her way. She wanted the hatred and anger in her face to be crystal clear to the man, her guts that it took to approach him so carelessly must've impressed him because the man leaned back for a moment before matching the girl's gaze.</p><p>"We'll make the deal but just to save those people. We've come right out of the Katabami mine where we confronted the Nine-Tails... It's not a good idea to mess with us. I'm just crazy enough to leave all of you in the rubble of your own camp even if it costs me my life and my mission objective. Mark my words. We'll be coming back for that ore, this Fennec will see none of it, not a single pebble..." the magician uttered slowly and clearly, never letting the hatred disappear from her tone for a second.</p><p>"Holy shit, we've got a little Stifferson here, we'll be having that Kirikuzu girl too, we need insurance that Fennec will be able to work that ore" the raider opened his mouth again.</p><p>Meiko started making a ruckus, she was ready to leap at everyone but then Shimo grabbed her shoulder. "Didn't you hear what Mana said? Just sit here on your ass and drink lime sherbet until we come at night and take our ore back..." he uttered. Meiko's angry eyes looked at Mana who just calmly nodded.</p><p>Meiko looked at the raider and smiled spitefully, "An all-you-can-eat sounds nice..." she said after calmly sitting down where she stood. To Mana, it appeared like the exchange of camels, food, and water, as well as endless bags filled with golden ryo coins, happened instantly. The four looked back at Meiko who was currently finishing yet another barrel of ice cream which apparently existed in the desert, stashed deep underground where the nights chilled the sands enough to keep it cool. Once the three ninja left the raiders surrounded Meiko and tossed a bag of ore at her feet.</p><p>"Well, work your ore, Kirikuzu!" the raider leader ordered to which Meiko's lime green colored smile greeted his eyes.</p><p>"I can't work it for shit... You just bargained your whole operation away for nothing. Shouldn't have messed with us really, now Shimo, Mana, and Kouta will come back for their ore with your food and camels and kick your ass like there's no tomorrow" she laughed out energetically.</p><p>The raider yelled out in frustration and pulled out a curved blade swinging it right at Meiko's neck. The girl's arm moved almost instantly, with a loud clang and an awesome deafening shockwave picking up sand and bashing it mercilessly at anyone around where it started the man's blow was blocked by Meiko's bare palm.</p><p>"Impossible..." the raider's surprised jaw fell down almost all the way to the sand he stood on while a small rock fell out of Meiko's hand. Her arm moved to the backpack and then still was in time to block the man's strike using a shard of Audra ore.</p><p>"Well I guess I could kick your asses too, after all, it doesn't look like you guys are just gonna let me eat in peace..." the redheaded girl unzipped her tracksuit and ventilated it around to try and chill her incoming heatstroke out.</p><p>The sound of Meiko's knuckles cracking was deafened by a combination of sounds of hundreds of swords being drawn.</p><hr/><p>Finally, the night came and the temperature dropped almost a full 180 to where it was, from being impossibly hot it started to become so cold that Mana felt bad about trading her jacket away with a traveler close to the entrance to the Land of the Wind. The three genin carefully snuck up to the camp and looked at it from far away, all the way from a large dune that wasn't even there in the morning. Apart from a small fire and a brief source of light in the center of the camp there appeared to be no action inside. The four snuck up closer, surprised to see no guards watching the camp, after all, they pretty much declared that they'd be back once they weren't surrounded by raiders inside their own camp... The sight inside of the camp made the jaws of the four shot wide open.</p><p>On top of a giant pile of unconscious raiders, wearing a white coat and a blue headscarf, borrowed from one of them while her torn up and dirty tracksuit laid on the beaten to a pulp leader of the raiders, still eating a larger than herself barrel of ice cream and enjoying herself, sat Meiko, covered with scratches, cuts, and bruises but as happy as a child seeing a dolphin for the first time.</p><p>"Yo, nights around here really are a way better time to eat sherbets..." the girl smiled with a dirty mouth full of colored treats that made her cheeks and tongue as messy as the mouth of a child.</p>
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<a name="section0129"><h2>129. Conflict At The Entrance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Four genin stood on top of a great dune watching a breathtaking sight that appeared before them once they finished the great steep climb. Mana was the first to recover from total awe, she was currently checking and loading several kunai dispenser devices she found and snagged from the camp of raiders that Meiko so fantastically dispatched by herself. The Viper's Pit was one of the largest and well-equipped raider camps in the whole Land of the Wind, it only made Mana admire how awe-striking Meiko was and realize what the wedge between her and her ninja friends actually was.</p><p>This whole time after being taught by Meiko and then picking up some tools from the mobsters and the raiders Mana was starting to feel like a part of the team but she couldn't have disposed of several hundreds of raiders surrounding her while unarmed to save her life and Meiko did it so easily, so casually. She was wounded, cut, and bruised but she acted like those wounds barely even mattered to her, Meiko was cheerful and vibrant the whole way there. Mana never really was even close to their level... Not until her chakra control is restored.</p><p>The ruins were amazing, it was this giant castle composed of three colossal towers placed in a trinity position with smaller channels that could've been at least a hundred meters tall connecting the sky-reaching towers. The fortress was completely run down, sand must've pelted against the stone walls for centuries and yet it didn't look like it did any lasting damage. All it did was ruin the paint job...</p><p>Surrounding the towers of the castle was a collection of four captivating walls that could've been at least fifty meters tall. Each of them had red steel-plated ornaments that were blunted a little and had minor damage but looked mostly intact. At the center of each wall was a demonic smiling face, the wall looked a bit overly decorated to be practical but the sheer size of it must've granted more than enough protection by itself...</p><p>"This is the Rashomon Gate, isn't it? Those walls?" Kouta asked the team for clarification.</p><p>"That's right. One of the strongest defensive ninjutsu techniques, each one has a seal that absorbs chakra to nullify ninjutsu techniques, similarly to Meiko's armor except thousands of times more potent" Shimo nodded.</p><p>"If it's so amazing why does it have that gaping hole in the center!?" Meiko yelled out right into Shimo's ear angrily making the young man lean back in fear and shock of how simply the blacksmith got pissed off by him comparing this masterpiece to her armor.</p><p>Meiko was quite observant, right on the center of the southern wall there was a giant hole, it went all the way through the Rashomon leaving at least fifteen meters radius hole, enough for a caravan to fit through except it was made so high up that one would've had to lift the caravan up there to fit it through.</p><p>"So what's the story of this place, Mana?" Meiko asked scratching the back of her head while the four made their way down the dune, carefully so that they don't shift any sands beneath their feet and tumble down.</p><p>"I'm not that well educated in Sunagakure history but this here used to be one of the largest and most dominant settlements during the Settlement Period. Back before there were ninja villages and ninja were just freelancing wandering tribes, it is said that it was built by a great warrior who was so charismatic and such an amazing strategist that he led his followers to conquer every other settlement, he was one of the first merciful leaders who accepted those who wished to join his side instead of killing them which lead to the size of his tribe spiraling out of control. These ruins belong to a castle which was the first attempt to settle down, you could say this here is a predecessor of what later became the ninja village" Mana explained.</p><p>"Maybe that Fennec guy is trying to do the same thing? Maybe he's so fascinated by this past leader of the desert tribes that he's trying to repeat his success?" Kouta wondered as the four got closer and closer to the giant hole in the Rashomon.</p><p>"Fennec is using money and influence to buy his way into leading the raiders. That is nothing like what the King of the Desert, as he liked to call himself, was. The King took people in by being someone people wanted to be around, he was merciful, he was also strong and he always knew the right thing to do in any situation he ended up in. He has never lost a single battle and he expanded his tribe through fighting the opposing tribes and taking in those that wished to switch sides" the magician looked at Kouta surprised that he cared so much about this Fennec, she herself had almost forgotten about him. Probably because she was so focused on the mission at hand... Someone like that had to come to her mission report, however, hopefully, Konoha would inform Sunagakure about such a person so that his quest for a bloody revolt could be stopped before it escalates...</p><p>"Hmph... Now I'll have to run up the wall all the way there, instead of just using my chakra jets!" Meiko complained looking down at her desert attire and internally lamenting her lost armor. She must've missed her armor a lot but she never held it against Mana, deep inside the redhead must've realized that Mana did what she had to and that she never meant for Meiko's precious armor to get molten into a solid lump of black rock.</p><p>"You'll have to be carrying me too, I could probably run up the wall for a couple of steps but no way I'd manage to go that high..." Mana mumbled a little bit ashamed that she had to be carried around.</p><p>"Fine..." Meiko sighed grabbing hold of Mana's arm and casually tossing her several meters into the air so that the girl landed right on top of Meiko's back. The blacksmith leaped up and stuck to the wall so that once Mana landed the blacksmith had already scaled several steps up the wall.</p><p>Unexpectedly, after maybe about fifteen steps, the girl tripped up, the blue burst of chakra coming out from Meiko's feet dimmed and the blacksmith grabbed hold of one of the Rashomon's decorative fangs around its mouth keeping herself from tumbling down. Mana felt the liberating desert breeze before the state of weightlessness change into the paralyzing fear of freefall, she was falling down to the sands below, a fall like that could've broken her legs and maybe injured her back, possibly even broken her neck if she landed the wrong way.</p><p>The magician tried her best to adjust her position but right before the closeness of the ground made her stop her breath and brace for the impact, she felt someone's arm wrap around her middle section. Mana coughed up as the sudden stop of fall felt almost like she had hit something but she felt quite lucky to be caught, obviously had the fall been greater than this she may have suffered internal bleeding but Kouta managed to somewhat repurpose his weight to do his best and stop her fall not instantly but gradually.</p><p>Mana smiled and thanked the young man who managed to notice her falling and then turn back and dash all the way down the wall faster than a bullet and properly repurpose the energy of her fall so that she didn't suffer too many injuries. One could've only expected as much from a medical ninja. As the young man dashed through Meiko on his way up the Rashomon the blacksmith waved and apologized before hopping back onto the wall and sticking her feet onto it so that she could finish the run-up.</p><p>"What the hell was that, Meiko? Mana-chan could've died from a fall like that..." Kouta softly warned his teammate to be more careful.</p><p>"Sorry, I think I lost control halfway..." the blacksmith's mood changed back to being almost depressed and disappointed. It must've been just like that time in the Katabami mines when she botched the simple Academy transformation technique. Focusing one's chakra to run up the wall or on top of the surface of the water was no rocket science, it was something that most ninja were able to do with no hand seals or without even thinking much about it, the only genin right out of the Academy had to focus to pull this technique off. Meiko's chakra control must've been really iffy if she just tripped over like that, it was like the chakra just stopped moving through her feet or something.</p><p>"How do you mess up Art of Tree Climbing? It's a simple Academy technique, I mean you used C-Rank Storage Seal before... Well, anyways, nice save, Kouta" Shimo appeared to be a bit confused by the whole situation but then got over it. He had no reason to doubt Meiko's effectiveness, the blacksmith just took out an entire raider encampment by herself, what did it matter if she sometimes had trouble with basic ninjutsu?</p><p>"I'll take care of Mana-chan on the way down, just in case..." Kouta nodded and took the magician up in his arms before leaping down and activating his surface climbing technique right before he hit the ground in a larger burst of chakra to break his fall.</p><p>Shimo leaned down and examined the hole in the wall before leaping down in a similar manner as well. He questioningly suggested Meiko help in getting her down just in case she didn't feel like it but the blacksmith answered his kind glare with a look of fury, almost like she felt like her teammate was looking at her condescendingly. The Yuki swordsman just shrugged and leaped down, letting the redhead's sad and distant state to soon follow him. Meiko just appeared to be completely out of it for a while after her small trip-up.</p><p>"This crack in the wall... It was made by a punch, a really, really out of this world punch" Shimo dropped a bomb once he landed down on the other side of the Rashomon to Kouta and Mana. The medical ninja gently placed Mana onto the ground with a kind smile that was supposed to let the girl know that if she needed his help she could have relied on him any time. Honestly, she didn't need that, Mana already would've relied on anyone in her squad for help. She had grown quite fond of all three of her teammates, then again, she grew fond of pretty much anyone pretty soon...</p><p>"Isn't Rashomon Gate strong enough to withstand a B-Rank ninjutsu technique, with a chakra absorption seal the rank may be bumped up to A-Rank..." Kouta wondered.</p><p>"Yeah but techniques like that wouldn't have left so little damage on the ground around the gate or the other parts of the gate. It looks like the hole was blown out by a concussive hit, look over there..." Shimo pointed at a giant pile of stones having destroyed a small group of clay houses that were built inside the walls. The castle had a small ring of clay houses that were apparently supposed to house ninja who didn't live in the castle and any non-ninja settlers.</p><p>"It didn't look like the big slugger took much of an effort, if he or she had, the blow would have cracked the rest of the gate because of lack of control and finesse, now the blow just worked like a battering ram but concentrated enough to only damage the center where the blow was focused on. If a blow of such caliber hit the ground it'd cause a shockwave strong enough to blow a village away..." the great rogue detective Shimo continued to analyze the surroundings.</p><p>"So someone strong enough to punch a village to dust beat us to the punch?" Kouta wondered, "Well, I guess it only makes sense, after all, aren't those scrolls Mana took the intel from like really old? Maybe some historic super ninja already found the Box?"</p><p>"Question remains if this hole was made long ago or just recently... We know that Kouta's father is after the Box too" Mana replied.</p><p>"Oh, so B.U.B. is a box then?" a loud and deep voice hit the ears of the four genin making them instantly turn around to see Kusagoro and his squad of friends sitting on top of a larger clay structure, possibly what used to be a barrack of soldiers. "Interesting... What kind of a box is it?" the man smiled visibly excited by this sidequest of his.</p><p>"Father!? Did you blow that hole? This is a historic monument! Konoha and Sunagakure are supposed to protect it together as per the village peace treaty..." Kouta shouted out angrily.</p><p>"Yeah, I may have punched that darned thing a bit too strong, we only needed a hole large enough for a person to fit through, we could've run up all the way but it was getting really annoying... It just turns out that this gate is a bit too crappy even when I don't make an effort" the man thundered out an arrogant laugh.</p><p>"Anyways, I will need you guys to tell me what this box is and what it looks like 'cause I and my team searched this dump through and through and we found nothing... I guess we saw some pretty sophisticated looking stuff but we didn't know if it was B.U.B. or not" Kusagoro grinned while explaining. It didn't look like he was in the mood for a conflict, all he cared about was to find that box. All that this was to this man was a giant game, just a race to entertain him while his license is suspended and he's unable to fight people in his high ranking missions.</p><p>"This is ridiculous, father, stop this nonsense, Hokage-sama told us to..." Kouta tried to talk his father down but the voice of his father, now in a much stricter tone interrupted the medical ninja.</p><p>"The wench told you guys to confirm that the B.U.B. exists, that's all. That's all your mission records in the archive building said. You guys shouldn't care about actually bringing the B.U.B. back home so there's no actual conflict with you guys telling us what it is. After all, we can tell you if it's there or not, the castle is still filled with traps for raiders and treasure hunters, it's pretty dangerous for some young whippersnappers like you to roam around there" Kusagoro explained.</p><p>"If we tell him about the box, Mana-chan won't be able to use it..." Kouta whispered to the squad trying to tell them to not open their mouth.</p><p>"Oh? So this little brat wants to actually use this B.U.B.? Behind the Hokage's back? What a disappointment..." Kusagoro's voice informed the four that the man moved right behind them on a brink of a moment and overheard everything that the medical ninja whispered. Such speed was invisible not only to Mana, it was completely untrackable even by ninja, even Shimo looked completely blown away by it and that youngster focused on outspeeding his opponents.</p><p>"No way! Mana will get her chakra control back, we're not letting these guys get their hands on the box!" Meiko yelled out and lunged forward pulling both of the curved swords she looted off of the raiders. The steel cracked into multiple pieces upon hitting Kusagoro instantly without leaving a scratch.</p><p>The jounin continued to stand there with his hands locked on his chest, looking seriously ahead right at the castle, he didn't even bother to turn around and face Meiko and the rest of the team.</p><p>"I see... So you're involved in some criminal activity behind the Hokage's back, huh, Kouta? Well then... I guess it actually is fine if we kill this brat and all of her brainwashed friends. They're a bad influence on you, Kouta" Kusaguro declared without turning around. His team leaped off the roof of the barracks and charged forward.</p><p>A large brute pulled out a steel rod and drove it through his shoulder making a handseal as large metallic gloves wrapped around his arm, his steel backpack extended into tank-like armor that covered his entire body and his legs and then a large helmet-like dome shut powerfully around his head with a blue visor fueled by chakra lighting up on his front, two awesome cannons shot up from the backpack armor and then locked onto the man's shoulders and aimed forward.</p><p>"Holy shit, this is awesome!" Meiko screamed getting all of her desperation to save Mana's dream and depression for failing her basic Academy technique behind her. "I'm taking this guy on, I want his armor!" the blacksmith girl yelled out charging to take the man on.</p><p>Shimo pushed Mana behind him and got into a sword drawing position to intercept the Hyuuga butler-like looking lady rushing at him and the weird guy beside her. The man had changed his attire from before, most likely because the weather in the desert didn't let him wear his usual warm jacket. The man now only wore a simple pink shirt which made him look like some singer from Kumogakure when combined with his crazy licked back and flooding with hair gel black hair.</p><p>"Father, stop this!" Kouta yelled out rushing out in front of his father and pleading with him to call his squad off. The boy knew his companions a little bit more than he may have wanted to admit. While his mother hated the bunch and so they didn't come over as much as his father may have wanted it, there were several cases where the boy had to meet them. They were so much ahead of the skill level of his teammates that the medical ninja knew the only way to survive this fight was to plead his father to call this madness off.</p><p>"I'm doing this for your sake, for both of our sakes. I won't let your honor be dragged down and shoved into the dirt by those guys. What do you think the old wench would say if she knew you used the B.U.B. behind her back, she'd suspend your license or even terminate it. Also bringing those traitors in will possibly score some points with the lady for me, we'll be leaving on missions and training like the old days in no time..." the man calmly explained, still continuing to turn his back at the giant scuffle behind him, choosing to just strictly stare at the sky-reaching towers of the castle in front of him.</p><p>"No, I won't let you hurt my friends and definitely not Mana-chan!" Kouta roared out as his fist lit up with a blue flame of chakra surging through his body, bursting through his fist as it was all focused on this amazing blow. The ground shattering punch hit Kusagoro right in the face and stuck there for a moment. The ground below Kouta and his father sunk, the shockwave from the blow blew the clay buildings around the boy and his father away, it crushed the ground below them into a crater and then as the boy focused on his punch and pushed it forward with even more determination and force the crater deepened and deepened, widening its radius endlessly.</p><p>"I won't let you hurt them... I won't let you hurt Mana-chan because... Because I like her!" Kouta roared out pushing his fist with all of his chakra focused on it. Using all of his Jugo legacy to fire his chakra through his body as if it was a cannon, reshaping his feet into cannon-like structures and then pushing his fist deeper into his father's emotionless and unfazed face using all of the medical ninja prowess to enhance one's strength. Kouta's father's face dyed with surprise as the boy managed to break through his defenses and lifted the man's body up and sent him crashing through the countless clay building toppling all of them down before digging the man deep into the eastern Rashomon Gate, leaving a small dent in the wall.</p>
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<a name="section0130"><h2>130. United We Fall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sweat dripped off of the medical ninja's face as Kouta was so forcefully drawn to just collapse on the ground by mother gravity. He channeled all of his feelings, all of his chakra into a single punch, and had he not been a medical ninja with extensive training that lasted whole years as to how not to overdo chakra augmentation, a fate similar to that of Mana's would've easily befallen his ruptured chakra network. The searing heat of the desert only added to the boy's exhaustion.</p><p>Deafening cracks, similar to large structures of ice cracking reached Kouta's ears forcing the young man to straighten his back out and prepare to face the consequences of punching his father. A burst of mad laughter came from the side where Kusagoro was punched at, the excited and near crazy-sounding laughter that bypassed all the ruins of destroyed buildings that the man was sent through. The boy's father had such sky-reaching chakra levels that augmenting his body to survive such blows must've barely even lowered it...</p><p>"You actually punched your father... This is... Almost great. All those times we trained and you were afraid of your own power, of your own destructive Juugo bloodline... Right now I'm almost considering keeping that little magician alive because she may just be a good influence on you, as far as our training is concerned anyway..." Kusagoro's voice reached Kouta, the man appeared from a cloud of sand and dust pushing barely standing buildings so that they collapsed and got out of his way. The man's forehead had a small wound that bled a little, several small streams of blood going all the way from the man's forehead dripped off of his cheek.</p><p>"Still, I don't like you stepping out of line, this isn't the time to defy your father..." Kusagoro smiled placing his arm forward, in a fraction of a second the arm took a wooden greyish brown coloring and appeared to transform into some manner of a cannon-like tube. Soon the man's second arm followed.</p><p>"I know quite well just how distracting women are, your mother did the same to me in my time. That being said, I'd rather not risk it with this one, her insolent behavior might bring both of us trouble if we don't deal with her. I can see now that you intend to interfere, because of that I'll take you out. I need you to understand why I'm doing this son, just augment your body to the best of your abilities, this is not an attack that should kill you..." the man explained as glowing blue dust of chakra shot through small pores on the sides of the man's conjoined two tube cannon that became of his arms.</p><p>"Chakra Flashbang!" the man yelled out as the dust concentrated into a colossal bullet-like structure that fired at Kouta in barely conceivable speed. The boy reached forward, he tried to use his chakra augmentation, what little of it that he had to stop this attack, continue hurting his father so that he decided against hurting Mana. This was a mean battle, he needed to fight this like a guerilla war – hit the larger and stronger enemy until they decide it's not worth it.</p><p>Kouta's arms changed into large and wide plate structures, they both closed into a buckler shield. Black marks consisting of dots conjoined together into a tattoo of madness appeared on the boy's face and chakra jets split off from the tendons of his legs shooting wild bursts of chakra, Kouta tried to use his legs like jets to slow father's attack, he used his arms for protection. Still, even with all of his newly accepted Juugo legacy, he was overwhelmed, slowly initially, then at an accelerating rate, the attack was pushing the boy back into the Rashomon Gate.</p><p>"Hey, hey, come on now, don't overdo it..." Kusagoro observed the boy's struggle for a moment before turning away. He knew how this clash would end already – one attack was all he needed to injure his son beyond the edge where his body could keep going.</p><p>A deafening explosion combined with a blinding flash interrupted all of the scuffles transpiring by the entrance to the castle ruins. Kouta's whited out eyes and open mouth and burnt off to the crisp clothes and wide burns all over his body that was stuck in a crater in the Rashomon Gate informed anyone who would've bothered to check that the boy was out. Just one attack, one attack that was meant more as a distraction effort was all these ninja needed. This couldn't have ever turned out well.</p><p>Kusagoro looked around, his eyes tried to find Mana because ultimately she was the one he needed. Her head was the only thing that could've possibly pleased the middle-aged woman in the fancy hat enough to unsuspend his license, he was just handed an opportunity to have fun on Black Ops missions again without waiting for the license suspension to expire. He wasn't about to let that chance slip...</p><p>Shimo dashed around a black mass that was emitting some strange screeching sound, almost like the backs of millions of insects with intensely hard shells were rubbing against each other. No. It was exactly that. Not only was the swordsman fast enough to evade each mass that the strange, northern-looking Aburame gentleman sent his way but he also had enough time to push Mana out of their way too. To Mana this entire battle was looking beyond terrified – she couldn't perceive any of it but Shimo just managed to place her in different locations just out of harm's way. Finally feeling sick of evading the young man attempted an attack stabbing at forty different lethal spots within just mere seconds. A heart-stopping shriek and an immense shock sent Shimo on his back, rolling away.</p><p>"What the..." he wondered before seeing the masses of insects crawling all over their master. Finally, the insects slowed down somewhat to make their species more identifiable.</p><p>"What's the matter, young gent, have you never seen a ninja cockroach with a nearly impenetrable shell before?" the butler Hyuuga lady continued to observe the battle and, despite her early unsuccessful attempts to land a couple of blows, taunting her opponent.</p><p>"You know, for a moment I thought that this Aburame guy was a kindred soul, he appeared to be quite a lady-lover like me back in the Land of Fire forests... He also looks like a pretty desperate bachelor, maybe that's why swarms of cockroaches all over his body look very much out of place, especially on that hairy bare chest that probably makes middle-aged ladies go wild..." Shimo grinned despite realizing how screwed he was. These were two opponents in front of him, both on a level far beyond his abilities, and on top of that, he still had to watch over Mana.</p><p>"Huh? Gokibure makes ladies go wild? You're quite the comedian, Yuki. He has never had a lady stay around him for more than a second after seeing a roach crawl on his face, not because of lack of trying, though, I must admit..." the polite Hyuuga woman mocked her teammate.</p><p>"Stay silent, Remashi, I just haven't met the right cockroach loving lady yet!" the man yelled out playfully stroking his black hair and putting a strand of it behind his ear.</p><p>"That's because such don't exist, you twit" the woman taunted her friend again.</p><p>"They totally do! Remember when we once faced badgers that were rigged with explosive seals? I refuse to believe that cockroach loving women do not exist in the world where kamikaze badgers are a reality! Either way, I'll find a wife before you actually dine on human flesh..." the strange looking lovelace tried to bite back at his comrade.</p><p>"Wait, what?" Shimo asked confused, while he had no idea what the two were rambling about he could appreciate this brief quarrel between them because it gave him a chance to catch his breath.</p><p>"That's right, the woman claims to be a cannibal yet she's never done more than licked some blood off of a wall..." the roach-man pointed at her friend feeling somewhat warmed up to the Yuki swordsman now that he had found an ally in this verbal showdown.</p><p>"That's because I feel bad for those people and I can't take a good bite! It doesn't mean I'm not a cannibal, I'm just really sympathetic!" the woman suddenly lost her cool shoving her fist up to her comrade's face.</p><p>"Sorry to break it to you, ma'am, but a person who feels bad for another person they're trying to eat and so doesn't end up eating that person... Isn't really a cannibal...I mean, I feel bad for other people and so I don't eat them, so I'm quite sure I'm not a cannibal" Shimo shrugged in confusion. He was almost ashamed that this squad of weirdos was so incredibly strong.</p><p>"Right? That's what I tell her..." Gokibure smiled and pulled out a rose from his back pocket and sniffed it to distract him from the terrible desert heat.</p><p>"Boy, you have greatly offended me. For speaking thusly I require you to come at me so that I could kill you for my satisfaction..." the Hyuuga lady growled angrily pushing her teammate out of the way. Shimo dashed back and formed a couple of hand seals.</p><p>"Ice Style: Eternal Frost Jutsu!" he yelled out as powerful gusts of wind scurried forward covering both of his opponents. This was the most efficient of Shimo's ice techniques, it was supposed to cover them with so much ice that it literally froze his opponents solid in large blocks of ice. Obviously, the potency of the technique would be severely hindered in such scorching heat but it should've still disabled both of his opponents. That, of course, was a glorious theory, but only a theory. It didn't help that this desert air was so very dry and difficult to find any humidity to make ice out of...</p><p>The Yuki felt a strong grab that lifted his wrist into the air and then an overwhelming painful shock breaking his arm right in the middle. Shimo couldn't help it, he screamed from the bottom of his lungs as he had never been in so much pain. Only then he saw the afterimage of the infernal Hyuuga butler appear in front of him, only after the pain had already reached his brain did his own blood splatter all over his face and the boy was able to start thinking of a counterattack.</p><p>A crushing kick to the side of his knee broke his leg too. Shimo shouted out and collapsed onto the sand. He saw blood accumulating from the open fractures on his arm and leg.</p><p>"I'd stop your heart right now by closing your central chakra node but I choose to leave you to suffer instead, killing you wouldn't feel right after you dared call me not a cannibal..." the woman placed her palm right up to Shimo's exposed chest as a warming blue flame of chakra lit up around her palms. The Hyuuga clan was known for their ability to see the chakra nodes and being able to see those vital weak spots of every ninja and close them temporarily by striking them with precise blows. With a powerful kick right to Shimo's face, that easily broke his nose and his jaw, the boy was knocked out cold.</p><p>The block of ice that Gokibure was enveloped in cracked, cracked again after a brief moment and then broke as a colossal pillar of cockroaches appeared from it, the infinite masses of cockroaches then all scurried back inside the man's body or beneath his revealing purple shirt and behind his tight leather pants or even inside his pompous hairdo. Within an instant what appeared to be a structure made entirely out of ninja cockroaches ended up being just a man he was before.</p><p>"Oh... You're alive..." the Hyuuga woman exclaimed more like a meaningless statement of a face rather than a sign of her relief.</p><p>"Of course, the ninja cockroaches are the most indestructible species of ninja insects used by the Aburame clan. Remember that time Kusagoro flung me into the stratosphere and I survived not only that but also re-entry back to Earth enveloped in cockroaches?" the man bragged.</p><p>"I try to forget, the sight of that insectoid orb was rather unsettling..." the Hyuuga woman complained. "Well then, perhaps you could kindly finish off the young lady, I've heard your cockroaches work almost like insectoid disassembler – devouring all they see in their way. It would be useful to keep the young lady's head for the Hokage though... I believe such is the protocol of capturing rogues and traitors?" the woman suddenly remembered her butleresque manners.</p><p>"I have no desire to hurt a young woman, not until she blooms to make a decision to love my roaches or reject me..." Gokibure pouted and locked his arms around his chest.</p><p>"That being said... Where is she?" Remashi Hyuuga finally noticed that Mana was nowhere to be found in the nearest vicinity.</p><p>Meiko kept on swinging her wild fists, grabbing hold of the steel plates, and tearing them off the armor of her opponent using her own bare hands. The man's shoulder cannons aimed at where the girl was and fired a burst of wild flames but Meiko leaped on top of the cannons avoiding the flames and smashed them with her fists.</p><p>"Look at me, I'm a blacksmith" she yelled out playfully as she swung her fists in a manner reminding a hammer from the top downwards, smashing them as the man's armor and leaving him without it.</p><p>The large man angrily thrust his foot forward but Meiko managed to block it, the force of the kick forced her to roll backward getting sand all over her hair and her face that the young woman had to spit out.</p><p>"Why is your armor so shit?" the redhead complained, "I don't want it anymore, I could make a higher quality one when I was a toddler...Even though it looked kind of awesome" she pouted.</p><p>"That is because it is cheap, I didn't sell enough damage for the merchant..." the man explained biting his finger and making a bunch of hand seals. He then slammed his arms into the sand from where a bunch of seal hieroglyphs shot out in lines diagonally to the man's palm and a powerful sandstorm picked up. Once the Summoning Jutsu was complete the disruption of sand settled down again.</p><p>The man whom his friends called Mardith, the follower of Jashin, stood in front of Meiko covered in strange wooden armor which was covered with odd engravings and his helmet had even weirder ear wings whilst the entire helmet was shaped like a head of some ancient divinity.</p><p>"Wood? I thought Summoning Jutsu summons your contract ninja animal..." Meiko wondered examining the visual aspect of the armor that the man summoned.</p><p>"It can be used to summon a great lot of things: weapons, reinforcements of living people, also... Totems" the man explained as he removed a dagger that appeared more like the ritualistic daggers than ones used in actual combat.</p><p>"What's a Totem?" Meiko asked still quite captivated by the ancient and breathtaking engravings and craftsmanship of the armor that the man had summoned.</p><p>"Ancient objects, as old as the First People, each of them can be used as a summoning contract all by themselves. Each of them requires proof of one's abilities just like a ninja animal would, these ancient legendary structures have a mind of their own and each of them have different abilities sealed inside them by the First People. They are living relics of that time, almost like beacons meant for us to discover and explore by our ancestors" the man explained before taking a praying position, he stood tall while placing his hands together and against his chest while he closed his eyes and lowered his head.</p><p>"Seems a bit of an overkill to use to kill a blacksmith genin from Konoha..." Meiko smiled before taking a fighting stance herself.</p><p>"No. Using my true ability would be an overkill. I have no desire to kill you, our target is your friend. However, I am a follower of a religion that demands utter and complete slaughter when its abilities are used. I am a follower of Jashin however Lord Jashin only demands death when his gifts are used in battle, that is why to beat you I do not plan to use any of Lord Jashin's Curse Ninjutsu, that forces my hand to use my Totem" the man answered leaping forward and winding up for a strike.</p><p>"Hmph, I can't let you kill Mana but... Thrashing such a gorgeous armor feels really wasteful..." the blacksmith complained trying to punch the armor but then she noticed that the man stopped in mid-track and his knife stabbed right through the wood into his own thigh. Blood squirted out hitting the sands below and dyeing them crimson red.</p><p>"What the? Are you insane!?" Meiko yelled out but then a blue fist made out of pure chakra materialized out of thin air and backhand slapped her right in the jaw sending Meiko crashing into the buildings to the side. The crushing force of the armor blacked the girl out momentarily and demolished what little remained of the small shanty town, now the castle ruin was the only standing thing in the whole courtyard.</p><p>"This Totem is known as Merchant of Blood. Instead of my chakra it feeds on my injury and suffering, to put it into words you can understand – I "sell" any damage I take to it to manifest that energy it absorbs into living armor. In its sealed form it can only shape up something as cheap as that armor you peeled to shreds before, now that I actually summoned it... You stand no chance for you to face the power of an artifact of the First People" the man spoke to Meiko's unconscious body that was lying somewhere in the ruins of the shantytown under piles of rubble. Had the man suspected that the young woman would've temporarily have blacked out he'd have spared himself the trouble of explaining his ability.</p><p>"Everyone! Listen to me! Please, run away! Flee into the castle!" Mana's desperate and tear ridden voice screamed out from atop of a small wall of a fallen building. Her fingernails bled profusely from her attempts to scale those walls the usual human way and her hands were completely dyed crimson and in the process of bleeding the girl dry. She had almost scratched her eyes out from the sorrow of seeing her friends being one by one picked off by opponents vastly superior to them. She decided to take matters into her own hands.</p><p>"Run! Find the box! I have faith that you can do it! Ruuuuun..." Mana's plead was silenced by Kusagoro's elbow digging into her face breaking her face almost instantly even when the man completely diminished his chakra level and did his best to reduce his physical power to nothing. The man just appeared in front of her moving instantly through the entire battlefield, the blow to her face lifted the magician's body off the ground but she could still feel every tiniest ounce of the pain. Kusagoro's hand locked on a torn rag of clothes on her shoulder and pulled her up so that her body didn't fall down to where she could've slipped away.</p><p>"Your voice is annoying..." he quietly uttered so that only he and Mana could've heard it from way up the busted building. Mana kicked off of the man's chest, tearing the shoulder strap of her top off, and leaped back, she landed on her knees down below busting both of them open as blood poured from her wounds. The magician pulled off her kunai firing weapon and aimed it at Kusagoro, the man leaped down and slowly started walking up to her.</p><p>"We know you can't mold chakra, what do you think this toy can do to hurt me?" the angered man shouted out.</p><p>"It's called automated explosive kunai firing mode..." Mana replied pulling a small switch with her ring finger that unleashed a flurry of kunai at the man, each of them bounced off his chest and then exploded in a moment after impact, one by one the endless barrage of explosions continued as the smoke cloud expanded to beyond even where Mana was standing. A strong arm grip locked around the girl's throat as the arm appeared from the smoke and lifted her up beginning to choke Mana out in seconds. Kusagoro didn't even take a scratch, he effortlessly broke the tool with his other free arm, still holding the girl the man leaped back onto the tall wreckage so that his comrades could hear him properly.</p><p>"Don't let them escape! She may have brainwashed those idiots into using the B.U.B. but that doesn't mean they can..." Kusagoro opened his mouth to order his folks around</p><p>"Sorry, dude, they're already gone... I think the blacksmith may have come around to her senses and stealthily dragged them to the castle by now..." Mardith's low pitched and shallow tone informed the squad leader.</p><p>"Fuck!" Kusagoro cussed and punched Mana in the gut and then dropping her body down on the rocks below.</p><p>"It would be beneficial if we didn't rough up the young lady's head any more than we did, lest the Hokage will fail to recognize her..." the Hyuuga informed the rest of her squad.</p><p>"I know, I know..." Kusagoro yelled out in rage as he suppressed all of his chakra again just so Mana's body didn't blow up into the tiniest bits upon his punch. Angrily he dropped down to where she had fallen and started kicking her covering body until his fury ceased. Had he captured every single member of her team his odds of being reinstated back to his duties would've been greater, also he hated this girl on the most fundamental level for messing his son's head up so that he also was in all of this mess.</p><p>"You may want to just pull her head off and try catching up to that redhead in the castle..." Mardith yelled out, whether it was because of mercy for Mana's beaten and miserable state or because he actually only thought of capturing all the genin still remained a mystery.</p><p>"I would appreciate if we honored the last will of the young lady and spared her friends, I mean they were held hostage by their client's will, correct? We can just tell Hokage that she threatened them to bite off her tongue off if they didn't follow her lead and abused her position as a client they had to protect and ordered them to use the B.U.B. for themselves..." Gokibure complained, he was quite visibly feeling bad for how ruthlessly his leader had beaten up the kid.</p><p>"Ugh... She doesn't deserve it..." Kusagoro yelled out kicking the girl with less restraint sending her weightless body so that it hit another rocky wall of a collapsed building.</p><p>Mardith took his ritual blade and slit his wrists with it, a shining and flaming with blue flames sword made out of pure energy materialized in the air right above Mana's head. Mana grunted out, so weakly and so silently that only she could hear her own pitiful moans of pain. Was this the end? Her body felt so light and so weightless, it was like it didn't even belong to her, it was almost like she was but an apparition looking at her beaten and bruised bleeding body from above. She had some medical rations she took from the raider camp in her backpack if only her body wasn't completely broken and she could've... The chakra sword swung down, a loud flesh-cutting sound echoed through the plains as Mana closed her eyes ready to accept her demise.</p><p>A sound of a heavy head rolling on the rocks alerted everyone to the north, Kusagoro, Gokibure, and Remashi both jumped in surprise to see that their comrade was now missing a head, Mardith's bald head was rolling down the shantytown ruins. The chakra sword he made vaporized into thin air as well as the Totem on his body. A rag wearing man stood behind him with a curved raider-style sword placed on his shoulder that was dripping with blood, the man had messy shoulder-length black hair and only one working eye, the other being covered by a blood-covered patch, the working eye was glowing red with strange black tomoe symbols on the eye – the infernal Sharingan of the Uchiha. Behind the man stood two women: a gorgeous looking woman in a white desert attire and a huge gourd on her back, her knee-long black hair flowed freely in the desert wind unrestrained, and a little teenager girl with twin sheathed swords on her back and both functioning Sharingan eyes. Had it not been for the lack of the facial hair the young teen would've reminded a lot of the one-eyed man suggesting a blood bond of some sort.</p><p>"I've no fucking idea what's going on here but... I'll be having that Box of Ultimate Bliss now" the one-eyed Uchiha roughed out with a tired and serious tone.</p>
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<a name="section0131"><h2>131. The Will To Live</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The situation that developed in front of Kusagoro would have never appeared nearly as odd as the expression on the man's face. He was just ambushed by some unidentified party of the Sand Village as the assailant showed no desire to hide that: the Sunagakure mark was present on the gourd of the beauty of the party, it was also on the center of the leader's eyepatch, the teen Uchiha in the group also wore the Sunagakure headband tied on her arm. And yet the suspended jounin of Konoha couldn't have looked more excited. Finally, once the man recovered from the initial glee of seeing new opponents reveal themselves the mood of the man suddenly changed to worse as he turned at his comrades and coldly and lacking any emotion ordered them.</p><p>"Treat Mardith, kill all of them. I'm heading after the kids in the castle, we know now that we're looking for a box of some sort" Kusagoro cut down in a commanding tone and slowly started walking towards the ruins.</p><p>"Yeah, not gonna happen!" the one-eyed Uchiha leaped forward swinging his sword at the leader of the Konohagakure group when the Hyuuga lady leaped into the air, Remashi's eyes were wide open with veins around them being shot out creepily with her white irises of the Byakugan being as clear as ever.</p><p>"Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven!" she yelled out as the woman's body spun creating a violent bright blue sphere of energy that blasted the Uchiha assailant away, the man was caught in a hand-shaped mass of glowing sand that shot from the gourd of the woman that followed him. Gently the mass placed the man on the ground.</p><p>"Be careful, husband, these people appear to be stronger than your useless sister reported. These are no genin..." the woman said slipping back her sleeves to make arm movements faster and more comfortable for her in the upcoming battle. Once Remashi's sphere of chakra ceased to spin and the woman landed Kusagoro was nowhere to be seen, he had used the commotion as an opening to slip away. Now it was just two against three of the Sand.</p><p>"Choke on dicks! I'm not responsible for everything going on in Konoha you ingrate bitch!" the teen got unreasonably angry for the insult thrown her way, it didn't appear that the two family members were on the greatest of terms.</p><p>"That's why I have you here, Regalia, it's your job to watch over my back when I get reckless" the one-eyed leader of the group stretched his body out and pulled a second curved blade from his sheath. The swords that the man wielded were much more detailed and of much finer quality, had Meiko had the ability to feast her eyes on them she'd have most definitely taken a moment to admire the fine craftsmanship of these tools of murder.</p><p>"Are you quite done yet, Gokibure?" Remashi turned at her teammate seeing a whirlwind of cockroaches bringing her teammate safely to their beheaded teammate. Once Gokibure reached his goal the man picked up the separated head and placed it closer to the beheaded lifeless body. As consciousness returned to Mana's head overflowing her senses with crippling pain the girl observed closely as to what exactly this man would do – something that could've reversed death interested the magician greatly as preventing meaningless death was her lifelong dream after all.</p><p>"Nano-Roach Style: Fix!" the man mumbled as green light emanated from the corpse, the skin from the edges of the head stuck together in a grotesque manner as a loud steely scratching sound started covering the area. Just mere seconds later Mardith stood back up on his feet and cracked his reattached head around.</p><p>"I seem to have been caught unprepared..." the gentle giant apologized to his friend.</p><p>"Don't sweat it, old pal, that's why I placed my nano-roaches into your bloodstream, right? To fix you up with your insane self-stabbing style when you need it..." the cockroach wielding Aburame bowed his head playfully as if he was greeting a lady. He appeared to be quite proud of this ability that his insects possessed. Mana felt her forehead and realized that while she was having an insane fever she couldn't have been dreaming as everyone fighting Kusagoro's team was as surprised as she was.</p><p>"He's an Aburame who has reached a nano-insect level of clan ninjutsu mastery, be careful with that guy" the one-eyed Uchiha warned his team clearly frustrated that the odds were evened.</p><p>"Interesting, it appears that he has placed nano-insects within that man's body specifically, must have something to do with his fighting style, there'd be no way he'd be able to sustain several bodies worth of nano-insects though, right?" the gourd wielding woman observed.</p><p>"Yeah, they seem to grant some passive form of regeneration, they must be on the lookout for injuries which they try to fix once they find one, with that Aburame being able to kick it to overtime with a jutsu. It'd be beneficial if we took out the roach-man first" the one-eyed man nodded.</p><p>"Kay, I'll kill him for you, bro" the teen smiled and charged forward swinging her twin blades at Gokibure.</p><p>"I'll take care of the Hyuuga woman, as someone who uses a great deal of chakra flow in your techniques you'd be greatly inconvenienced by her chakra network closing fighting style" the leader declared before roaring proudly and leaping into the fray swinging his swords that lit up with chakra infused glow.</p><p>"Very well, then... Dear Jiou, I shall kill for a chance of our freedom from our demonic pursuer as well" the older woman swung her arm carelessly as the glowy golden sand from her gourd flooded in a crashing wave towards Mardith, intending to crush the life out of the man once again right after his life was restarted again.</p><p>Mana grunted, this was her chance. If only she could've managed to stand up and... The girl tried to wriggle around but she couldn't, it hurt far too much to try and move. The magician lifted her arm and tried to force her body back on her feet, angrily she tried to push herself off the bloody ground but couldn't. Disappointed in her own strength the genin just looked at her blood-covered hand as her vision blurred in and out. For moments it appeared like she passed out only to regain her vision again.</p><p>The girl knew that these Sunagakure people would just rush into the castle once they're done, so would Kusagoro's squad. Then again, if Kusagoro's squad won they'd surely make sure that she was dead, they wished to claim her head, didn't they? Such a cruel and unnecessarily brutal custom of the past, to cut off the head of a traitor or a ninja of another village that a ninja defeats. Mana didn't know that it was still practiced, at least not in Konoha, it was made famous by the Seven Swords of the Mist who were operating in Kirigakure. Why such a pointlessly gruesome custom would become so famous was beyond her.</p><p>The girl thought about it for a moment, imagining once again that feeling of being helpless and completely overpowered. That feeling when her life belonged to her enemy. When that sword hung above her head ready to cleave it off and end her. At those final moments the girl imagined her head being handed to the Hokage, the magician knew that Hanasaku would not tolerate such behavior, she'd discipline any Konoha ninja still engaging in this bloody tradition of the past but there would've been no use trying to tell these people that. Her head was welcome on any table since she was a ninja, after all. Even Sunagakure, a village protected by Konohagakure and the other great villages for a long time would probably still pay out the bounty on her head, as insignificant as it may have been.</p><p>Some ninja in the countless history books Mana read claimed they felt proud when their enemies would've beheaded them. They felt some sort of pride knowing that their killer would receive a hefty bounty on their head, they felt pride knowing that they've caused enough trouble to someone that they were ready to drown their killer in ryo coins. To give them such excessive bounties that one could've literally retired and lived in luxury after killing a single jounin and cashed them in. Mana felt none of that pride. Maybe it was because she wasn't that important in the end, the bounty on her head would barely even pay for her slayer's dinner. As a nameless nobody genin nobody cared much if she lived or died but were ready to reward for her death just because this was the world that rewarded such brutality. Such was the custom.</p><p>No. It wasn't because of just a lack of pride in causing enough trouble. When the girl imagined her head rolling on the Hokage's table and then the woman yelling at the ninja bringing that to her, even after the explanation that the girl planned on using the Box for herself and lie that it wasn't there, even after the lies that she forced her will on her team threatening to bite her tongue off if they didn't comply. Even after all that the Hokage would've still suspended or outright discharged everyone involved in this brutal murder. Then she'd have had to inform her parents and eventually the news would reach everyone in the village. That was what Mana was afraid of the most.</p><p>She wasn't a popular girl, she wasn't chased after by many boys and while she did qualify as a popular entertainer she still wasn't sure if she was worth an honorable burial for just what she had done so far. She dreaded the idea of her parents witnessing the head of their daughter and she was ready to fight her hardest to prevent that from happening. Her parents were amazing people who didn't deserve to experience something, even dirtbag parents didn't deserve anything of the sort. And even when Mana was completely sure that no one in the world would give two fingers to pee on if she died, she still would've refused to give up just because she loved those few people who would have cared. Even more so, she wanted to stand back up on her feet because she wanted to live!</p><p>Yeah, lately Mana had been wondering about that a lot. Ever since she lost her gift of chakra manipulation she felt down, she felt useless, she felt miserable and she didn't really see the point of her rebirth. After all, her lifelong dream was to be who she was before her "death". If her gift was taken, technically the responsibility to protect everyone was supposed to be gone too but it never felt like that, despite gifts being able to be lost with a snap of one's finger, responsibilities were much more difficult to shake off.</p><p>Mana wanted her gifts back and for that, she had to live. She was no one important and in order to become someone important, someone people would look up to if they wanted to change the world around them to a world where life mattered she needed to stay alive. Mana wanted the world to change which meant she wanted to stay alive, she wanted to see life being treasured which meant that by extension she had to live to achieve that dream. She wanted to live!</p><p>A deafening barrage of clashes echoed through the field, gusts of sand picked up blasting straight at the ruined shanty town, gusts so powerful that they shifted the rocky ruins around. With every clashing blow of the two sides of ninja craters as far as hundreds of meters deep opened up and these clashing sides barely even meant it. Mana flipped over on her front and coughed up some blood. Her hand reached into the back pocket where the food pill they looted off of the raider camp was supposed to be in. She placed the black pill in her mouth waiting for it to restore her dormant and useless chakra and immediately treat her injuries. The medical food pill was supposed to be able to do that, the magician waited and waited and waited. The pill was a fake...</p><p>"When will I ever learn... Nothing comes easy, what I wish can't just be handed to me. It has to be earned!" Mana grunted to herself, for a moment she felt horrified by just how miserable her weak voice sounded. Just how badly was she beaten? Mana slipped her arms beneath her weakened body and tried to push herself off the rocky edges that slipped into her battered body, going through her beaten skin and spilling blood from closed up wounds all over their clay surface as they cut into her flesh.</p><p>"Come on, you asked for everyone to flee, at least have enough decency to gather them back together, they need you..." Mana whispered to herself before slipping up and slamming back on the sharp edge she was stuck on. She heard blood dripping somewhere even lower below in a hole dug up by one of those destructive techniques that decimated the courtyard. She looked at her pale hand, her vision was blurry also the whole head of the magician was spinning.</p><p>"They don't need you. They're all so amazing, they're all pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a ninja, you're just laying around waiting to catch your death... No one needs you..." Mana whispered to herself, then suddenly from deep inside she felt anger burning up. Not at the world because it didn't need her, at herself because she wasn't good enough to be needed. No one needed dead weight. Mana lifted her lifeless frame off the ground, one moment her eyes looked at a couple of puddles of blood below her, the next one it stared into the distance where countless invisible blast waves rustled her sticky hair every couple of seconds. There were so many explosions and blasts going off there, there was some huge battle going on and she couldn't see any of it...</p><p>Suddenly a figure flashed in front of her. It was one of the Uchiha assailants, the one-eyed one. "Stay here, you will lead us to the Box" the man ordered her. Mana spat in his face, she was surprised to see blood come out from her mouth, she must've been pretty banged up. The magician felt a shock, the man must've struck her down carefully so that he didn't kill her and so she was back where she started from.</p><p>The girl chuckled, she felt blood budging from her gut and running down the edge of her lips before dripping beside her. "The enemy needs me, at least..." she couldn't stop laughing even if her entire body shook as she did so. Suddenly the girl felt some relief, she wasn't sure if the fake pill she just ate was at least somewhat medical in its nature or if her laughter eased up her pain somehow. Mana got back on her feet and looked over at a small corridor of ruins stacking a small tunnel which lead straight into one of the entrances to the ruins.</p><p>"Everyone hates me, Shimo and Sugemi must hate me for who I am, for what I choose to be. My enemies hate me because they need me for their goals to be fulfilled, Meiko and Kouta must hate me because I couldn't properly lead them after taking that responsibility, I lead them straight into a beating and almost dying... A beating for which I am fully responsible both as a leader and the person who inspired the reason for this battle. I'm sure once this fever passes I'll feel horrible about myself..." Mana thought for a moment, every negative thought, every self-bashing word fueling each painful step forward.</p><p>"Goddamn stairs, why did it have to be stairs!?" Mana yelled out grabbing her injured chest after being brave enough to shout out. Both squads appeared to be overly engaged in their battle to care about her slipping away. The magician's body gave in and fell right onto the stairs, she cracked her head at one of them but then quickly picked herself up and started climbing. Her bleeding fingers and nails from before opened back up. At least that fake pill she ate kept her from dying, now she could punish herself again by trying to not mess everything up again.</p><p>Mana's curious blood-covered face peeked into the room she ended up in. She was officially inside the castle's entrance. The girl looked below her, she happened to end up on the upper floor's balcony which was busted up and could've sent her tumbling down into an abyss at any time. The girl screamed out in fear when the castle shook up. Its very foundation shifted around, rubble started falling splitting off of the ceiling, Mana looked closer at the dark ruined hall below. It had a bunch of columns that could've been used for climbing if she felt suicidal enough to attempt it. There were multiple holes in the ceiling so this suicidal climb could've allowed her to reach the upper floors. Kusagoro mentioned some traps but Mana doubted if any of them could even be functioning at this moment in time, centuries away from when this castle was last used by a living being.</p><p>The magician got back on her feet again, she tore a sizable piece of cloth off of her white torn up top and tied it around her head where the only currently bleeding wound was – the one she got from bumping her head into the stairs. The girl then tore one-half of her trousers off and made cloth for a climb up the pillars. There was no way she could've done it without a little aid from the laws of physics. She had to use parts of her jeans as a climbing aid and still, it would hurt like nothing she experienced lately as most of her bones were being halfway treated by that fake medical pill. Mana knew the pain of bone treatment and she was going through it all but at the slowest rate imaginable.</p><p>"Okay, world's worst squad leader... Here's what you're gonna do, you're gonna run up this balcony, kick off the edge and grab that column right there, then before you tumble down to your death you're gonna wrap your legs around it and this cloth around it to use for climbing instead of your useless weakling arms, okay?" Mana asked herself as if she was someone she could talk to. She just wanted confirmation that she was about to do something really crazy while under the effect of some behind the counter forged food pill.</p><p>"Yeah, sure, it's gonna be the best idea ever..." the girl answered herself in a different voice as if her mind contained multiple people. "We're great at climbing, it's not like we ever failed tree climbing in the Academy or anything..." Mana mumbled out before bolting forward and kicking off the ledge only for it to fall beneath her feet sending the girl down just inches from the pillar.</p><p>The magician's instincts kicked in almost instantly, still with her cracking with pain bones she swung the denim strip forward and tied it around the column pulling herself in only to grab the pillar halfway and cry out in pain as her lower body hit the rocky surface of the column in a way that reminded a crash more than wrapping it around as she intended it.</p><p>"I hate you... I hate you, you're the goddamn worst!" Mana screamed out at herself nearly bursting into tears from the pain of bashing her body against the rock. Pain like this used to be nothing. Had she had her gift back her body would've just hardened itself instinctually with little to no pain, she wouldn't have even felt a dip in chakra from something as minuscule as that...</p><p>A loud rumbling suggested to the girl that the column she landed on may not have been as solid as it looked from the side. Mana's instincts instantly switched from self-pity and self-bashing to moving, the magician quickly turned around the pillar and kicked off of it grabbing a curtain that was hanging from another balcony to the right of the pillar she jumped to. Right after her body left the pillar the entire rocky structure collapsed into a black abyss below. Mana sighed...</p><p>"Holy shit, curtain, what the hell are you made off..." she joked about the toughness of the curtain that was somehow holding her weight despite the fact that it was several centuries old. Mana slowly started scaling the cloth to catch a breath on the balcony she leaped up to. After reaching the end the girl tried to pull the curtain off but the blasted thing held firm, it would've taken a knife to cut this thing, and even then it would've been a real struggle to do it. This cloth was really impressive!</p><p>"Okay, so this was a good start, let's see about this column..." Mana spoke to herself again bracing for another jump, first she leaped several balconies further leaping over several meters away with each balcony, catching her breath only to leap further before she could even reach the column. Once she reached the central balcony of the hall the magician prepared for the jump before looking back, there was a huge hole in the back of the wall and once the girl peeked outside she saw that there was a gap for her to climb out through and scale up the rocky surface to the next floor instead of trying her luck with that huge jump and the unstable structures again.</p><p>"Sorry, Mr. Pillar but your brother was kind of a dick..." Mana smiled before leaning outside as the cruel desert winds bashing sand into her face made her regret the decision to move out almost instantly. Still, grabbing hold of several gaps Mana managed to slip out and start crawling the wall. The genin saw several more cracks, maybe one of those lead her to somewhere she could've found the rest of her team in. For a moment the magician wondered if she even wanted that. If she really wanted to see her team again. After all, it was because of her that they got beaten up like that. She caused Kusagoro's team to attack them and then she wasn't a good enough leader to somehow help them overcome that impossible gap in skill and power.</p><p>"Well, want it or not, you've got nothing better to do, it's either that or falling down and bashing your brains all over the rocks below so... Not much of a choice..." the magician spoke to herself again reaching up for another rock and pulling her aching body up before letting it roll into a large hole several floors higher. She may not have wanted to get inside that hole like that but her fingers were bleeding and really slippy from the combination of the wind pushing her off the rocky surface and her own blood making the climb tougher than it had to be.</p><p>Mana hyperventilated for a while down on the rocky floor of the room she landed in after a small tumble down the ruins. "It's okay, no pain will break me worse than my pride is broken at the moment..." once again the magician tried to lift her own mood up and peel her body off the ground. Before she moved on to another room the girl decided to first check the one she ended up in out. She could've used a breather before deciding to crawl back out and try to climb the rock wall outside bashed around by the winds up here or try and find an actual staircase this time.</p><p>The room she was in appeared to be a dining hall of some sort, with the wooden table included and some strange pictures on the wall depicting someone impossible to identify. The paper was in such a bad condition that the pictures looked like someone spilled the paint all over them with random colors covering the whole thing.</p><p>"Yeah, no one is going to hide the box in a dining room, move on!" Mana ordered herself as she flung her body forward rushing up a spiraling staircase. At this point, she was just wandering around the place aimlessly. She needed some more planning in her quest.</p><p>"This is the Settlement Period, any treasure worth hiding would be kept in a treasure room hidden in the throne room. That means I have to find the throne room first, then figure out where the treasure room is and how to access it... Easy..." Mana realized before looking around any clues in these barely functional ruins that may have tipped her off to the location of the ruins.</p><p>There was no use in wandering around looking for her friends, they could've been anywhere, and running into them would've been a matter of luck, finding the Box was actually a bit more orderly and Mana could've also tried to plan out her attempt at using the Box as a bargaining chip with literally everyone trying to kill her at that moment in time.</p><p>Purpose and hope were once again back in Mana's busted up little heart. She was finally doing something that made at least a little bit of sense which felt refreshing after having the tables flipped over like that with the metaphorical dinner being smashed all over her face in the process...</p>
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<a name="section0132"><h2>132. The Inquisition of the Wicked</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All of the fighting transpiring around the castle ruins seemed to pick up a raging whirlwind of violent desert winds. In their storming rage, these winds tossed weighty masses of sand bashing them against the bodies of anyone silly enough to stay outside during this windstorm.</p><p>That being said, the rage of the forces of nature did not yet reach the overwhelming level of a sandstorm that blew one off their feet and buried them in sand however it was approaching that point quite soon. In just fifteen minutes the entire shantytown would be covered up with sand, together with the main entrance to the castle which would've made anyone need to look for an alternate entrance.</p><p>"Kunoichi of Sunagakure, you have incurred my wrath for beheading me, I shall fight with the full intent of killing you..." Mardith's voice thundered outmatching even the mightiest wind of this windstorm. An impressive feat having very much to do with how powerful the man's lungs were. The gentle giant reached towards his back pocket pulling out a much larger black rod with a very pointy tip.</p><p>For a skilled weapon expert, it would've been quite difficult to discern as to what purpose such a peculiar tool would've served: it had no handle so it couldn't have been comfortable for swordfighting. On the other hand, it had a pointy end so it had to be some sort of weapon, it had no sharp edges meaning it was purely a stabbing tool however the material didn't look too tough and firm to risk close distance approach without having the weapon break down.</p><p>"Oh, you're one of those..." the woman in front of him nonchalantly remarked without an effort to be heard. Unseen several glowing sand grains slipped out from her gourd mixing into the endless swarm of grains within the picking up sandstorm. The woman closed her eyes and smiled. She saw everything wherever her glowing and overflowing with chakra sand grains got carried by these violent desert winds, they also had incredible uses of their own.</p><p>Even as they spoke her opponent had her sand slipping into his nose, his skin, his mouth, his eyes, his ears... Everywhere whether he was aware of the crevice's existence or not. She was well aware of her opponent's strengths and weaknesses due to her personal history with his kind.</p><p>"Die, kunoichi of the Sand!" Mardith yelled out tossing his ritual dagger at the woman, even with her eyes closed the bombshell beauty of the Sand Village leaned to the side avoiding the straightforward projectile as it whizzed rustling her black as night hair. The woman's blood-red makeup which covered her eyelids made her closed eyes appear almost demonic in nature, almost like a bloody-eyed beast was observing her opponent from the cover of the picking up sandstorm.</p><p>Unnoticed by the woman, Mardith's fingers twitched as a steel wire pulled the dagger back, the beauty of Sunagakure whose name was revealed by her husband to be Regalia ducked, almost like she knew where the dagger was coming from. The gentle giant who was desperately trying to kill her waved his arm around, not without skill or finesse, his movements were trained, well taught to draw blood as the ritual dagger moved to the right and to the left to the woman's location. Perhaps even more impressive than the man's coordinated assault was Regalia's impressive skill in evading the knife.</p><p>The ritualistic dagger was small, it was moving in an incredibly deceptive and untraditional manner. Even so, Regalia leaned to the side, jumped up and ducked down, stepped wherever it was more beneficial for her to go to avoid the attack perfectly. Finally, the giant pulled the knife back to his hand and grabbed it by the grip.</p><p>"Impressive, you did not strike me as a physical type and yet you perfectly evaded my attack even with that weight on your back. I cannot mark you for my Curse Technique at all despite my flash speed overwhelming offense..." the man commended his opponent as the woman deserved all the praise being able to move so swiftly, so deceptively with that heavy gourd on her back.</p><p>"I am not a physical type of ninja. It is simply because of my ability to see forward in time that I avoid your techniques. I see forward where they will cut me and so I avoid the strike..." the woman smiled playfully tipping the ends of her desert coat while she bowed to her opponent.</p><p>"That is impossible. Ninja cannot possibly control time, not without achieving fame and great status..." Mardith's eyes angrily squinted at his opponent, he didn't believe the woman's words for a second.</p><p>"The sand I hold in my gourd is very special. It is infused with chakra just like it is for anyone in the famous Sabaku clan, mine, however, possesses the ability to bend time and space, which includes the ability to alert me of the events set in stone to transpire..." Regalia continued to explain while her opponent took his fighting stance.</p><p>"Prove it to me then, woman. Prove it to me that your Sand Release has the ability to control time, manage to defeat me without being cut once!" the man yelled out through the raging sandstorm as his flowing chakra split the winds apart sending a shockwave the woman's way.</p><p>"I very much intend to..." the woman informed leaping forward and waving her arms, sending a crushing mass of sand the man's way. Mardith's hand shot to the side, his ritualistic dagger cut into the sand and the man pulled at the string that held it flinging his entire body to the side to avoid the crushing tsunami of sand sent his way, once Mardith reached the dagger he retrieved it by gripping its handle and pulling it from the sand.</p><p>"Did you not know I would do that?" Mardith taunted the woman.</p><p>"I did know that..." she smiled, her dyed crimson lips were clearly visible through the murky background surrounding the two.</p><p>"You're a joke, a woman clinging to her lies!" Mardith tossed his knife at the woman, Regalia leaned to the side, her arm grabbed the knife in mid-air and pointed it at the giant.</p><p>"If I didn't read the passage of time, how could I have grabbed this in such terrible air condition with no weaponry training?" she taunted the man but Mardith's heart freezing laughter cut Regalia off.</p><p>"You foolish wench! Curse Technique: Strangling Noose!" Mardith yelled out as Regalia's bloody crimson dyed lips soon shot wide open and paled before turning blue and somewhat purplish. Mardith raised his arm and clenched it into a fist, almost as if his grip actually strangled the woman in front of him and what was the most gruesome – it worked. Regalia just pathetically tried to catch any actual oxygen but her neck extended upwards and black marks started covering it almost like she was being hung.</p><p>"Had you actually had the ability to see into the timeline you'd have known that the followers of Jashin – Jashinists possess the Curse Technique that is initiated when the opponent grabs an object of theirs. That is how the ritual is started. Do not fret, it'd take twenty grueling minutes for you to choke before you actually died, only for five of them would you be unconscious, I fully intend to kill you much faster than that..." Mardith rumbled out pulling his ritualistic dagger back to his hand and then tossing it right at the woman. The dagger cut her right on the cheek despite the strangling Curse jutsu ceasing when the knife left her possession. The woman had just so little air that her first instinct was to clench her throat and cough profusely which lead to her being cut.</p><p>Mardith licked the blood off of the knife and playfully toyed with the long black rod in his hand. "If you didn't lie about your experience with the followers of Jashin, you'll know what comes next... I would wish for us to take our time and properly fulfill the ritual but I will have to go for the short version – I am in a rush to find this Box" he explained as the man thrust the rod through his own stomach spilling extensive amounts of blood over the sand, using his bare foot Mardith dragged the bloody sand into the Jashin symbol of a triangle surrounded by a circle as his skin turned black with white skeletal motif markings all over his body. The Totem armor crumbled off of him as if it rot instantly. Truthfully it was merely released as it was no longer needed.</p><p>Regalia finally recovered from her injury, she weaved a hand seal as a perfect copy of her appeared from the sandstorm being composed entirely of her glowing golden sand and dashed off into the distance. Further away her clone landed close to her husband and whispered to his ear – "The Konoha girl is getting away, I've placed sand grains inside her so I can feel her and track her but she may get out of range if she tries to flee instead of looking for the box – scare her a little so that she hurries to the Box's location, beloved". After delivering the message the clone dissolved into minuscule particles of sand and mixed into the messy sandstorm.</p><p>"Whatever tricks you try now, woman, they shall be ineffective, let us share the pain on our final journey to Lord Jashin, only as I possess the nano-roaches in my bloodstream I shall be brought back whereas you shall die for good. Sharing pain with your enemy is truly the best... Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood!" Mardith screamed out in glee as he stabbed himself through the heart using the long stabbing rod.</p><p>Regalia gasped in surprise as all the damage that Mardith took was transferred to her body as well. She tore off her desert coat and looked at her crimson dress which did not properly portray the bleeding injury she took, only due to its soaking appearance could she see that she was bleeding from her heart before the painful shock claimed her life and the woman collapsed dead together with her opponent.</p><hr/><p>Fifteen years ago, a young family in the Land of Tea was preparing to go to sleep. The young girl, the daughter of the family, instead was more hyped about her positive result from the Academy tests. She spent two years in a ninja student exchange program between Konohagakure the jurisdiction of which Land of Tea belonged to and Sunagakure which was very beneficial to the girl who was of the Sunagakure native Sabaku clan capable of infusing their chakra into the grains of sand.</p><p>The girl just couldn't sleep as hours passed and the night grew more mature. Close to the hours of the early morning, the young one heard yelling voices reminding of the voices of shrieking teenagers. Slightly curious she looked outside seeing a bunch of black wearing gothic-looking bunch wandering around. These weird folk reminded her of those strange tales that her parents told her. Apparently, while she was gone a new cult was being born within her beloved native village, some sadistic people started killing victims while also maiming themselves, inflicting wounds upon their victims while wounding themselves the same way.</p><p>It would've been just an ordinary gang of cultists had they not attracted the attention of some strange ninja who helped these people adapt their MOs into actual ninjutsu techniques that the bunch called "Curse Techniques". Father was quite intimidated by those stories and begged for the young Regalia to stay home after the late hours as these "Jashinists" as they called themselves were not above sacrificing children to their sick bloodlusted God. Regalia observed in utter horror as the cloaked figures started kicking the doors down in the neighborhood and rushing inside, two or three at a time.</p><p>The girl ran down, she wanted to warn her parents of what was going on, ask her father to push something firm to the door but when she reached the staircase she saw a breathtaking sight – the door was already down and cloaked men with dark-colored faces with white skeletal markings were rushing in. Her father was struck down instantly with a single cleave of a large scythe that one of these men wielded. Another man attacked her mother tearing her clothes off and cutting her above her breasts. Regalia leaped forward to help but a powerful kick sent her flying back to her room as a third assailant sneaked up to her.</p><p>The man raised his black ax and swung it right close to the girl's gut nearly disemboweling her but leaving a wide gash. Regalia screamed in pain clutching her bleeding belly as the man then cleaved half of his own arm off sending blood gushing all over her and over her room floor. The man used Regalia's scared face to paint the cult's symbol all over the floor and then the girl heard it – her mother's agonizing scream being silenced by death's embrace. These people killed her mother and her father... And she was going to be next...</p><p>No one knew what they wanted, they never showed fancy for anything less than slaughter, they left no one alive according to the stories and they had to be stopped. The Jashinist lifted his arm wielding a black rod ready to stab himself into the heart but then the hand of the little girl shot up in an open-palmed position, sand seeped out from a gourd under her bed and enveloped the man in a large mass, making it impossible for him to move. She raised her hand into the air and the mass followed, moving the man outside his drawn circle.</p><p>"Sand Coffin..." she uttered with mad eyes, she couldn't believe what was happening, her mother was desecrated in front of her own eyes and her parents were just murdered, her own gut sliced open and she was slowly bleeding out...</p><p>"Fuck... Cunt... Kill you... Slaughter... Lord Jashin will be pleased... Pain... So much pain!" the delirious cultist screamed out in pain and utter madness licking his own blood-covered lips.</p><p>"Sand Burial!" the mass crushed the man into a blood raining mass of crushed flesh and bones.</p><p>Slowly the girl made her way downstairs, one of the Jashinist scum rushed at her but her arm instinctively shot to the side with the sand bashing the man's head to the wall and splattering the contents of the man's head all over it.</p><p>"Biiiitch!" another one screamed in mad fury but sand covered his wrists and the lower parts of his legs, Regalia's blood-covered face turned at him, her smiling face screaming for the suffering of these men looked him into the eyes. She opened her arms as if she was preparing for a victorious hug as the sand strands tore the final Jashinist to pieces.</p><p>Only then did poor Regalia notice the golden glow in her sand, what was this strange technique? The girl stumbled outside looking at the madness that was transpiring. People were screaming inside their homes, once in a while blood splattered on the windows, or human corpses were flung through the doors busting them open.</p><p>"Jashinists... I will kill you all..." the girl deliriously mumbled as she was bleeding out on the porch of her home. She fell down on her knees when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder.</p><p>She turned and saw the most civilized yet most intimidating man she had ever seen, a man surrounded by a black shroud of mystery with only his red glowing eyes being visible. As she was being touched the girl screamed, it wasn't that she was hurt by that touch, no, it felt strangely... Soothing. But she felt her chakra being ripped from her body, almost like the man tore his hand into her innards and pulled chakra out of her despite only touching her shoulder.</p><p>"You wish to kill these men plaguing your village? Their chakras are bland and disgusting, yours, however... That golden aftertaste... Yes... The most savory meal I've ever had, no, just an appetizer..." the man mumbled to himself as the shroud finally disappeared and the three-meter tall figure of the man became apparent, his ravenous black hair, his pale skin and those... Crimson eye-gouging scary eyes!</p><p>"I'll let you do whatever you want, just kill them all!" Regalia demanded as her lifeless body fell down on her front she looked up at the man's well-maintained shoes and formal attire. He buttoned his jacket and fixed his bowtie.</p><p>"Very well, I shall smash them all to bloody bits and then... Taste some more of you... But I won't kill you, no, a delicacy like you must stay alive and feed me again and again. We're bonded now, Regalia, I shall find you wherever you go, I am faster and stronger than you. I am your natural predator and I find you irresistibly tasty. However you're so tasty that eating you before you become boring would be sinful, I'll take more and more every day from you, leaving you just enough chakra to live..."</p><p>"Shut up and kill them all, whatever you do with me later doesn't matter!" the dying young woman screamed out.</p><p>Moments later the Land of Tea was filled with screams, whatever the Jashinists did was messed up, whatever this Leech did to them was infinitely worse. Regalia was lucky to not have seen what happened to them, the surviving villagers would later treat her and call her a hero for her actions, they'd say she did whatever she did to the Jashinists but... They'd remember those torn, bashed, and mangled corpses. They'd never look at her the same way again forcing the girl to leave her home to the only place she could call home – Sunagakure, the place where she was exchanged to as an Academy Student, the place she met friends at. The place where HE was not, at least not yet...</p><hr/><p>Regalia's body stood in front of the suicidal Jashinist. She looked at the deceased Mardith from above. Genjutsu was a powerful tool, illusions to make her opponent believe whatever she wanted them to believe: that she could control time, that she could reverse it, that she could read it. And all it took was a simple slip of some sand grains infused with chakra to enter the man's nose, eyes, or mouth. How easy was it to pull in the middle of a sandstorm? Too easy...</p><p>"Jashinist... There will be no return for you..." she uttered closing her eyes and feeling billions if not more of small roaches swarming in the man's central heart area, trying desperately to fix it, begging for the Aburame clan's technique to kick them into overcharge to resurrect the man shortly after his death.</p><p>The man believed that Regalia dodged his attacks, he believed that she was stupid enough to get cut when facing one of his kind. He believed he initiated the ritual when in reality he only stabbed himself in the heart and died like an idiot he was for accepting Jashin as his God. Foolish sadistic men of religion had no right to exist in this world. This plague of death and suffering had to end, preferably by Regalia's own hand.</p><p>Regalia spun two fingers raised above her head. Violent vortex of golden sand formed around her before she aimed her two fingers at the man, the sand crackled with lightning as the chakra infused sand grains rubbing together produced friction and thusly released the energy in the shape of a lightning technique that would've fried the nano-insects in the man's body.</p><p>"Sand Release: Eye of the Storm!" she triumphantly declared as the wave of golden sand slammed into the dead Jashinist the weight splattered his body into a mass of blood and broken bones where the lightning fried not only what remained but also the nano-insects inside him.</p><p>Regalia, the Illusionary Queen of Time killed another Jashinist that day...</p>
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<a name="section0133"><h2>133. Getting Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The pain was a poor companion for someone who had just woken up after being briefly knocked out. Yet it was the first one to greet Kouta as the young man's consciousness returned to him. The medical ninja felt a little bit of shame, even against an opponent like his father he expected to do more, he expected to buy his friends more time. He wasn't sure about what had happened but he was surprised, to say the least, to wake up inside a briefly lit ancient stone room. The tiles below him, ravaged by time, made for a poor pillow forcing the young man to sit up and look around him.</p><p>Shimo was resting nearby, he didn't look too bad but his arm and leg were bleeding out and gruesomely broken and were patched in a very amateurish manner. Without asking too many questions the boy stood up and staggered up to his friend, removed the bandages, and got to work. He was drained after punching his father, he put all of his heart, all of his chakra, and all of his feelings into that fist. Any lesser man would've been flung into beyond the farthest layers of skies but his father snapped right out of it. Even with the crazy Juugo bloodline combined with the medical ninja's enhanced strength, Kouta was still too weak.</p><p>Thundering bumps sending dust and pebbles down the ceiling onto the boys' heads made Kouta jump up in surprise and fear.</p><p>"It's Meiko. Mana bought us time by revealing herself, Meiko had to leave her behind to save us. She's not taking that well..." Shimo explained grunting in pain while Kouta was examining his broken bones.</p><p>"Well, these injuries can be treated, these blows were weak but precise, they didn't cause too gruesome and irreparable bone damage but they merely stroke at the tension points making the bones snap. Remashi-san is a very gentle and pinpoint fighter, had she been rougher your bones would have been beyond my ability to fix without Mystical Palm technique which I am too drained to use right now" Kouta explained trying to move the subject past Mana.</p><p>He felt ashamed of the whole situation. He didn't know what happened, all he remembered was him doing his best and getting knocked out by father's blast, one of his weaker ones too, one used to blow up buildings or bust barriers, one with more bang and concussive force than actual killing power. From what he could put together the rest were overpowered too, that only makes sense, father was a top-tier jounin after all with experience in the Konohagakure Black Ops called ANBU. All of his teammates were of a similar level as well. They stood no chance from the start.</p><p>And yet loss was not what brought Kouta shame, it was that Mana was apparently the one to buy them time to escape. She was the weakest one and yet she flung herself headfirst to the jaws of death again. Father would've killed her if he had the chance, Kouta harbored no hopes of Mana's survival which started making him visibly distressed. Maybe even more torn inside than Meiko was, at least the blacksmith was expressing her rage whereas Kouta was allowing it to pile up.</p><p>"We have to keep moving..." Kouta said trying to move his thoughts away from his shame and his regret over Mana's apparent death. He knew exactly how lethal and ruthless his father was when he wanted to be, Shimo and Meiko may not have known and so they must've still believed that the girl was alive.</p><p>"Hey, hey, don't lose any tears over her. She's alive as long as she doesn't show that bastard where the Box is or explains what it is. Had they known about the box they'd have long since claimed it even before we came here. They needed us to explain what it is and tell them where it may be hidden" Shimo tried to calm his friend down, Kouta backed up and sat in the corner which he woke up in.</p><p>"That's a long shot, all that father cared about was killing Mana-chan for wishing to use the Box without the village's permission or without informing it. She's as good as done now..." the medical ninja mumbled out, he sounded like his mind was moving in closer and closer to snapping at any moment.</p><p>"Shut up!" Meiko's loud roar reached them from inside a large library further on. "Don't you think I feel shitty enough for leaving her behind?" More and louder thuds and cracks reached the ears of the two injured genin laying by the crossroad between the library Meiko was in and nobody knew where.</p><p>"It's... Really bad..." Shimo lowered his head staring at the ruined castle floor.</p><p>"Wow, it's like you're a detective or something!" Meiko's angry reply came from the rampaging blacksmith as the floor of the library was starting to collapse but it didn't appear to even irk the girl at the slightest. The redhead continued to catch the giant stones as they fell on her head, pounding them with all of her strength using chakra enhancement to bust those giant stones to dust before they reached the ground.</p><p>"No, I mean... Meiko feels bad for leaving Mana behind, she really shouldn't. She had no other option. It was either leaving her to die or letting all of us die, it's surprising she even managed to pull our sorry asses out with her. Kouta feels bad because he couldn't beat up his father which is straight out ridiculous. He's whole leagues above our pay grade, there's no shame in losing to a guy like that. I'm the only one with a legitimate reason to feel bad about..." the swordsman scratched his bandaged forehead. Meiko must've bumped his head into somewhere while she was carrying him opening a wound on the back of his head which Kouta treated.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Meiko's face with a giant bump on her eye and a swollen jaw appeared from the library which completely collapsed once the blacksmith wasn't busting the stones to nothingness inside.</p><p>"Well... I actually didn't really feel bad about it when I woke up. That's the only legitimate reason to feel bad about it. My friend probably died and had her head torn off and I... I didn't feel bad about it, to begin with" Shimo spoke almost laughing out from how ridiculous he sounded. Meiko walked up to him and lifted his body off the ground by his collar.</p><p>"What do you mean, what do you mean you didn't feel bad about anything?" she uttered silently but with a hidden spark of threat brewing in her chest. Just one wrong word may have sent the blacksmith over the edge and forced her to splatter the swordsman's brain on the wall behind him with a well-placed punch.</p><p>"Well, when I was away, training and trying to realize who I actually was or what I wanted to be like... I always wanted to come back and see Mana again, not because of some specific reasons but because of the fun times, I remembered having with her. I didn't chase her, who she was, I chased all those fun experiences and so when I did come back and see her again I expected more of the same. Then I saw that she didn't change one bit after I left, the worst part was that I did change. I became more like a rogue, whether I wanted it or not, I started to only be worried about what was there to gain in everything, always looking out for my own ass and asses of my friends..." Shimo started to talk, Meiko let his sorry body to slip out from her grasp and hit the rocky floor as the swordsman collapsed and kept on sitting. Kouta stood up and approached him too.</p><p>"Then I saw just what kind of person I became friends with all those years ago. Someone who couldn't have been more different from what a rogue was and she started to piss me off in all the wrong ways. She spat at survival, sometimes she even put our own lives in danger too but even when she did that she was always ready to die first, even when the threat was out of this world and someone none of us had any chance to beat. I thought I discovered part of who I was and then Mana showed me that she's an exact opposite of that. I saw a person who was the exact opposite of a rogue and I saw how miserable and in how much pain she was every time while doing it but... It made me confused again, confused about what a ninja is, confused about who I am. That whole year of self-discovery, all those injuries, and all that training went down the drain. I no longer know who I am again and that's why I hated Mana for a while, hated my best friend for reminding me why I left but also for telling me that I haven't come a step closer to discovering who I am. She rubbed into my face how wrong I was... The only feature about her I liked was her selfishness, I thought maybe that's what we had in common, that's one step closer to me being a real ninja, a ninja with identity, someone who knows who he is..."</p><p>Kouta and Meiko continued to stand there in silence, the medical ninja moved back into the shade to try and hide his watery eyes whenever he thought about the teammate he thought he had lost. Meiko no longer felt bad about Shimo, it was almost like she realized what the swordsman was talking about and she started to feel bad for him.</p><p>"You see I always saw Mana like someone who knew exactly what she was and what she wanted and I wanted to be like that, I wanted to be like her. And so when I returned having discovered part of who I am and saw the real deal be everything but that... I tried to cling to the only parts of our character that matched – our selfishness. Part of me wants me to survive, that's just rogue programming, rogues always bolt and leave their friends behind. Mana also had some of that, she led us all here just so she could regain her chakra control instead of living her life as a starlet stage magician? That's selfish as shit, right? Then she gambled our lives to save some mobsters and corrupt miners, just to feed her ambition and hero complex, that's selfish as shit too, right? Now when I saw her giving up her life for us... I no longer saw that selfishness, I no longer saw anything in common between me and her. I'm just a confused swordsman who became even more confused after trying to find himself. Mana lost her identity but she knew what it was, I never found one in the first place, I guess in the end, that's the only bond we ever shared..." Finally, Shimo sat there in silence, staring at the floor as his hair flowed over his sorry face.</p><p>Meiko was the first one to speak up. "You're right, I did think that maybe Mana just wanted the Box for herself, she just made up this whole story about me being nice to her and her wanting me to see it and hold it just so she could regain her gift and her identity in the process. It must've been painful for her to be so weak yet yearn to be strong, strong as a true hero. Then when I heard her plead for us to go on, when I heard that weak crying voice that begged us to survive and find the Box... No, she may have tried convincing herself that she was going to get her identity back and nothing more but, she told us that before ripping us off, right? She told us halfway, no, she told us from the very beginning, before we even got halfway through our journey, and then she sacrificed herself to make this all possible. She wanted us to find that Box, she wanted me to hold it in my hands and see a legendary artifact just like she said, she wanted all the best for us because she had already given up on herself inside..."</p><p>That must've been the largest collection of words that Meiko had ever said, she usually didn't say much, mostly she just shrieked and acted like a fangirl over the strangest things but now she was so much different. She had a whole different side to her. Maybe it was because Mana saw that side right from the beginning, right when she met Meiko that the magician wanted her to hold that Box in her hands...</p><p>"Well then, what are we waiting for? Mana-chan sacrificed herself so that Meiko can have that Box. Our mission may be failed because our client is most likely... Dead but... Let's at the very least honor the reason and what she gave up her life for. Let's find that Box!" Kouta snuck up to Shimo and extended his hand forward for the rogue swordsman.</p><p>"You said you didn't know who you wanted to be, you said you were confused and Mana was the person who showed you what a person with identity was, now you know who she really was, how she really felt, and what she was willing to do for us. Does that not answer your question? Does that not clear out your confusion? The answer to your question was always lying within Mana's dream, you wanted an identity to strive for, Mana wanted to be a hero that people would strive to be more like. You told me that making ladies happy was one part of your identity once, I'm not sure how it changed but you defended Mana's honor even against someone like father. You have solid foundations to build your new identity on, identity isn't something you find, it's something you build. To build you need to stand up and move..." Kouta stroke his tears off with his wristband.</p><p>Shimo grabbed hold of Kouta's hand and stood up.</p><p>"Well, it seems I caught you at the wrong time..." Kusagoro's voice reached the three from behind them. "It just seems that luck isn't on your side, I just flashed around the place from the bottom floor to the top and I happened to hear some ground shaking from around here"</p><p>Meiko scratched the back of her head with a silly apologetic grin as the boys looked at her annoyed, the girl's rampage through the library must've been what this man had picked up on.</p><p>"No, father, you've caught us just at the right time. Had you caught us a moment earlier you'd have found us in a broken state, now we've picked ourselves up and we will find that Box before you, we'll let Meiko hold it in her hands to honor Mana-chan's last wish, and then we'll ask the Box to bring her back to life!" Kouta yelled out trusting his fist close to his father's face.</p><p>"I see, well then, I don't particularly mind if you do that, however, I will still try to have some fun and stop you from doing that!" Kusagoro grinned angrily and winded up his fist playfully to smack his son. The ground beneath his feet trembled and the man flashed backward to avoid tumbling into a black abyss together with the falling apart ruins.</p><p>Meiko laughed out as her sudden and incredibly powerful stomp was what caused the collapse of the floor. She stood on the other side, the one located at the other turn as opposed to one that led to the thrashed library she wrecked before. Kouta was also moved there by Shimo who moved much slower yet still managed to pull his friend out in time. The Yuki then went through a couple of hand seals predicting the assault of Kusagoro to come soon, after all, the man moved too fast even for his ninja's eyes to track, he may have been moving far faster than sound itself and if he was caught unprepared all three of them would get captured and incapacitated.</p><p>"Ice Style: Blue Screen!" the boy yelled out as a translucent blue screen erected in front of them covering the passage, now not only a large gap of the collapsing floor covered the distance between Kusagoro and the three teens but also this strange barrier that the young swordsman had erected. Kusagoro only grinned. "You think your foolish barrier would stop me? Someone who busted through a Rashomon gate with a mere backhand slap?" the man gloated as he charged forward with a lazy and weak punch.</p><p>As Kusagoro's punch collided with the near-invisible blue barrier a powerful chakra feedback fired off from it, the barrier broke down almost instantly but the blue shattered pieces gathered around Kusagoro and covered his body like armor, slowly the pieces started to evaporate into cold mist and soon the Konohagakure jounin found himself completely encased in ice.</p><p>"Holy shit!" Meiko yelled out in surprise that Shimo actually had some more tricks up his sleeve.</p><p>"Yeah, it's an ace in the sleeve meant to be used for quick escapes in closed spaces, I wouldn't have been able to use it outside because the bug creep and the Hyuuga lady would've simply moved around it... Let's move, he's a Juugo so he probably expelled enough chakra from his pores to make an invisible force field around him, he's not frozen solid and he'll thaw out pretty soon, as soon as he deals with the absolute zero temperatures from inside..." Shimo explained as he turned to run further the ruined path, intending to follow it wherever it led.</p><p>Meiko and Kouta nodded and followed the young man, the three ran on the walls and ceiling wherever the path had collapsed, they swung around flagpoles when their chakra ran out or they ran out of stamina, taking turns and shortcuts wherever they saw them just to put as much distance between them and the infernally powerful force chasing them. They were not yet aware of the irony of how similar their troubles were compared to the Sunagakure party outside...</p><p>"I'm afraid we're playing into father's hands..." Kouta huffed as all the running was getting to his lungs and already crippled stamina.</p><p>"Yeah, he's having fun from this little chase and I've already seen how dangerous he is when he's having fun..." Shimo grunted pouting his face.</p><p>"Let's just hope that we'll find the Box soon or we won't run into any traps, this place is a real ruin, let's just hope that whatever traps it holds inside are just as broken..." Meiko worried over completely different things. She knew there was no stopping Kouta's father if he caught up to them, he would've likely already learned to deal with Shimo's barrier technique anyways...</p><p>"With our luck, I wouldn't bet on it..." Shimo cracked a small grin as the three kept on rushing wherever eyes lead them in coordination, following the main path until they found it too difficult to follow it.</p>
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<a name="section0134"><h2>134. A Gentleman's Oath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A young Uchiha grumped out with annoyance when a whole batch of shuriken bounced off the seemingly invincible wall of ninja cockroaches that her opponent put up. Normally, one wouldn't have imagined cockroaches being the ideal insect to rely on defending themselves, they didn't even have wings like the usual Aburame chakra leeching insects, even with that natural shortcoming, however, the roaches managed to form structures like shield and insect waves by simply crawling on each other's backs. The teen Uchiha named Aisha let her hands flow through a bunch of hand seals before she let even a larger cloud of shuriken loose.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" she yelled out feeling a little strain as the number of shuriken she cloned out of the existing barrage was more than a usual genin could put up. Even with her extra effort put into the technique, the weapons simply bounced off the insect wall like the insects were made out of tougher steel.</p><p>"Hmph... You've got to be kidding me..." the young woman grunted and slapped her forehead with her palm, letting it stroke down a bunch of sweat off of it. This fight was straining her more than the young one was willing to admit and she still couldn't manage to find any holes in her opponent's invincible defense. Her only way out was to try and talk, stall the man for some time, try to change her approach.</p><p>"So... Roaches, huh? What made you wake up one day and make that decision? Cockroaches aren't the species of insects that Aburame are given at birth, the process of switching the species must've been grueling and could not have been worth the trouble..." Aisha smiled and stretched her tired muscles out, fighting this sandstorm was tough enough without having to worry about her opponent, some time-off talking may have suited her well, especially when her opponent was doing nothing else but defending himself.</p><p>"Ninja-roaches are actually more majestic and godly than it would seem at first glance. Yes, the process of switching the usual Kidaichu for roaches was grueling, after all, the insects are resting inside one's skin, an Aburame member is a living nest for the insects so removing the ones I was given was not simple. Managing to maintain two species within my body was even tougher, the two were constantly at odds with each other which is why I chose to eventually deposit the nano-insects within Mardith's body" the Aburame member explained. Now that his insects were riled up they were crawling all over his bare chest and his face, his expensive-looking hairdo was literally rustling around and looked like it was about to burst with insects swarming out of it.</p><p>"Cockroaches? Majestic? That's a fancy way of saying totally icky!" Aisha yelled out letting her tongue slip out in disgust. She had to admit that one of the most efficient parts of her opponent's defense was how those roaches frantically swarmed around the man's entire body making the teen rather hesitant to approach him in close distance as she was quite creeped out by those bugs and the potential disgusting abilities they may possess together with their indestructibility.</p><p>"No, you see, these insects seem casual and parasitic but... Once a member accepts the ninja-roaches and lets them nest inside their bodies, they teach their host a new thing about the origin of chakra and how it works, not directly, but just by observing them it grants them a revelation." The man smiled extending his hand forward and letting the insects swarm around his arm, he then swiped it to the side letting a whole bunch of those things fly in Aisha's direction as projectiles. The distracted teen leaped out of the way as her Sharingan flared red throughout the cover of the sandstorm even. The teen used all of her abilities to avoid being as much as touched by those bugs.</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Aisha yelled out as her hands went through a couple of hand seals and her chest bloated up before she spat out a giant burst of flames from her mouth, it was a bit too erratic for her to shape this flaming inferno into a proper exploding fireball but a flamethrower shape would have to do for now. The thought was that fire was supposed to be an insect's natural enemy, maybe it would've roasted them. As the man extended his arm forward and let a flowing wave of insects bash right into the flames clashing with them this theory was quickly proven wrong.</p><p>Aisha kept on breathing, blowing all the air from her lungs out just to try and burn everything around the man to crisps but the Aburame just continued to stand there as insects flowed endlessly from his sleeves and from his shirt, also from his hair and even his mouth. The endless swarm was like a living weapon and within just mere moments the teen realized that her stream of flames was diminishing, she had felt that before, that terrifying sensation of her technique being completely ineffective, not only that but also boosting the enemy's abilities...</p><p>The overflowing stream of swarming and marching on insects soon extinguished Aisha's flames by literally eating them away.</p><p>"Parasitic Destruction Insect Technique!" Gokibure yelled out forcing his swarm of ninja-roaches to burst through the flame and eat it up to the finish before the swarm enveloped the young Uchiha teen. "Insect Tomb!" Gokibure slapped his hands together into a hand seal that ceased his endless stream of insects rushing forward as the cockroaches closed Aisha into a sphere that quickly filled up with cockroaches. Soon the sphere collapsed exploding into a rain of insects that briefly matched the sandstorm around them.</p><p>"I know you substituted yourself with some random piece of debris. My cockroaches eat everything that they touch up. To be closed into a tomb like this with them would've made you scream without a doubt..." Gokibure yelled out into the storm as the roaches spread into a wide field around him. To approach anywhere within the range of at least a hundred meters around the man would've meant to sink in a mass of these all-devouring insects.</p><p>"It'll truly be quite sad to kill such a young flower so gruesomely before she has a chance to bloom, I usually refrain from such brutalities, I'm more of a lover than a fighter, perhaps we can somehow talk this out?" the gentleman looked around the perimeter trying to spot his female opponent but it was like she completely disappeared from his sight.</p><p>Suddenly Aisha appeared out of the blue, leaping at the man from an unknown length of distance aiming to cut him down with her cleaving blades. The girl didn't wear the usual native blades that most ninja wore, her weapons appeared to be much better suited for dismemberment as they were quite flat and very ellipse-shaped. They weren't long blades but their short size allowed Aisha to wield two of those.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Arena Trap!" Gokibure chanted out as the cockroaches instantly shaped two meter sized spikes all around the perimeter they were spread in, several enveloped Aisha and devoured her, this time the man heard the scream he longed for but also a loud popping sound alerting him that what he had just killed was just a clone. The cockroaches even ate up the residual sand that the clone left behind as unknown to Gokibure it was not just a simple Shadow Clone, it was a Sand Clone.</p><p>"You're wasting quite some chakra, to make a Shadow Clone just to fake out an attack and not follow it up..." the Aburame taunted his opponent but suddenly he noticed what he failed to notice before – the infernal Sharingan of the Uchiha glowing blood-red from several meters further from the farthest reach of where the insects still covered the area.</p><p>"To think that I had to waste my Sharingan analyzing a stupid ability like this..." Aisha cursed as the red eyes blurred signaling that she was on the move, quickly leaping around the ruins of the small shanty town around the castle, Gokibure tightened his insects' patrol by gathering them up close to him. He wasn't sure just what exactly the teen's game was but she proved to be rather resourceful and underestimating an Uchiha was generally never a great idea.</p><p>"I see... So she analyzed my technique and the chakra flow involved by seeing how I dispatch the clone... That isn't too stupid at all..." Gokibure mumbled to himself as he started admiring the young lady a little bit, he felt great pity that she like most women he tried talking to despised cockroaches, perhaps in time she could've been shown how truly awe-inspiring these insects were.</p><p>Aisha in the meanwhile was resting on top of the tallest ruin she could find. Observing her opponent and the swarming insects around him, knowing quite well that the moment she tried to close in these bugs would cover her up and eat her and even if she managed to land a blow on them they'd be near invincible as she's not yet seen one insect die or get injured.</p><p>"You know now how my technique works, it must reveal a lot to you about how chakra works in general, right? If you are as perceptive as your Sharingan allows you to be you must've realized by now that you cannot win. My ninja-roaches use a form of chakra augmentation to survive any attack together they can share the chakra they devour making a living network of chakra augmented armor, almost like insect-chainmail, each small chain in the link shares its input, and once the initial blow is deflected they eat everything they can get to up, leaving nothing behind" Gokibure explained.</p><p>Aisha gripped her cleaver swords tighter, she was getting more and more pissed the more she found out about this man's ability and just how those insects worked. Why would those insects have so much chakra, to begin with? There must've been a finite number of them, how could they have acquired so much chakra and replenished their resources from eating literally anything around them? Wasn't chakra only inside people?</p><p>That would've meant that either chakra was not nearly as exceptional to humans as Aisha may have believed or that these insects possessed the ability to convert anything into chakra, but for that to happen the things they eat must have some primal source of chakra, some particle that is converted into chakra as they process that particle... Aisha just saw those insects devour just smoke and sand that her "Sand Clone" technique released and refill with chakra, what could this have meant?</p><p>"I'll take your refusal to attack as a sign that you're confused about what you just saw. Yes, it is as confusing as it seems, it should be to anyone who was told in the Academy that the First People granted us chakra and that it was exclusive to humans and certain species of animals. These insects I wield are ancient and their workings are beyond my comprehension, they work as machines with instinct instead of programming and they devour anything they see in the way and convert it into chakra, they existed before even the First People and coexisted together with the First People. Observing them could teach us a lot about how chakra works and what it actually is..."</p><p>A red flare lit up from behind the man, Gokibure turned around as he felt the immediate reaction from his cockroaches that squirmed and begged him to swarm the area where the chakra just flared up. The Aburame could not peek into the brief semblance of crimson flare within the blinding cover of the sandstorm, as he did he felt like he was frozen in place. Soon the surrounding turned completely dark and large stakes fell from the sky-piercing his body and sticking it to the ground. His insects were nowhere to be seen.</p><p>"Sharingan: Genjutsu!" Aisha chanted out quietly releasing the hand seal and gripping her blade tighter to leap forward. The young lady spun around in mid-leap, she only had one chance at this, one chance to destroy her enemy by removing the man's head. Now that he had no control over his insects because of his mind that was crippled by the illusion she cast using her Sharingan she could finally end this.</p><p>A blur of red flashed right up Aisha's eyes, she broke her perfect aerodynamic leap and fell close to the man and groaned as she hit the sand with her head and upper body first, her blades slipped out from her hands. This thing she saw... It was interfering with her memories, this revelation about chakra she saw inside those insects confused her. What if... That man also was like those insects? What if the man chasing them could also be sated by other sources and didn't have to suck them dry every time? What if he wasn't a force of nature, a predator of ninja as he claimed to but just a sick man who kills people and tortures them for fun?</p><p>Even more gruesome memories flashed by Aisha's eyes. Images of her beaten self-being held in the air, that crippling feeling of chakra being sapped from her body by just a touch, almost like her whole soul was being pulled violently, yanked out from her body and eaten right in front of her. That all crushing fear, that agonizing realization that her life could've ended at any time that made sleeping out for information not only soft by comparison but also preferable over life cowering in fear for the shadow man with the crimson eyes... No. She had to push those images away! Aisha grabbed her cleaver blades, the sand squirmed between her fingers as she grabbed the sandy handles and swung the blades cutting through.</p><p>Blackness surrounded Aisha, she was suddenly drowning in some black itchy substance, it was then that she realized – the man she cast the genjutsu on was not actually the one she cut down. Her hesitation, the panic fear placed inside of her by the man who was torturing her and punishing her existence and that of her whole family for years on end, ever since that fateful day when she was still a child, ever since her brother met that bitch Regalia... She brought this to them, it was because of her that their parents were dead, it was because of her that this demonic man was pursuing them, it was because of that woman that she was now surrounded and covered by those insects...</p><p>That brief moment of hesitation allowed Gokibure to slip out, no, it must've been before that, he made a living clone made out of insects before that and replaced himself with it without Aisha noticing. She felt the man being affected by the illusion so the real him must've also been affected but it didn't matter because she attacked the wrong target, she cut down the clone. Aisha covered her body and rolled into a ball, she was surprised that she still was not eaten alive, the insects were just rubbing together squirming, that unbearable noise of their backs rubbing against each other...</p><p>All of a sudden the girl felt the heat all around her, even greater than the one in the desert, she was someone born and raised in Sunagakure, she knew what the desert heat was like and the heat she was surrounded by was like she was shut in an oven and being cooked alive... Aisha screamed out and desperately tried to burst out from the invulnerable sphere of insects she was surrounded by but the sphere expanded, the squirming of the roaches became more rapid, more layers of squirmers was added and so the heat levels sky-rocketed. Aisha gasped for air one last time before passing out. It was then that the insects suddenly spread out leaving an unconscious body of a girl laying on the sand.</p><p>The roaches gathered around the real Gokibure surrounding him and going back into their lairs, some hid inside his hair, some went into his nose or inside his shirt, inside his sleeves and feet. The insects went inside the man's body and some burrowed into his skin leaving large bumps where they lurked. The roaches weren't happy, then again, they never were – they lacked the emotional complexity to be happy or sad but they were really acting up, angry perhaps that their master didn't let them eat the girl? Or maybe because on top of that they had to inject their chakra and share it with their host so that he broke out of the illusion cast by the young teen.</p><p>Gokibure blinked and stretched his arms and legs out. He examined his body for holes but saw none. That illusion was so powerful, he felt the pain of being skewered by stakes, he felt fear and desperation as members of the Aburame clan were never used to feeling so alone. They had swarms of bugs around them and inside them at all times so the feeling of loneliness was the least known but also the most painful and fearful to them.</p><p>The man approached the unconscious girl and felt her neck for a pulse, she was alive. Almost cooking her alive by making his cockroaches close in and rub against each other tightly was a cruel technique but it quickly made her pass out, he was surprised she didn't try to consume her chakra by augmenting her abilities and try to outlast it, the feeling of that intense heat was either that overwhelming or she just was too stressed out to think of that.</p><p>Ninja could survive heats much more intense than the one possibly generated by those bugs but... The pulse was too slow and weak, she couldn't have faked it. Just in case Gokibure extended his hand and let his insects form a structure that reminded an arm form and lift her off the ground. Her cleaver blades got left behind to be covered with endless layers of sand from the sandstorm. She'll have no use for that in captivity...</p><p>"Yeah... I know... We better check on Remashi, a gentleman must always swoop in to save a lady when she's in trouble..." Gokibure mumbled to himself, almost like he was talking to someone but his companions were too primal to understand basic speech. They were ordered around by chakra movement, almost like a carrot in front of a pig. Sometimes a gent like Gokibure just liked to talk to himself, apparently.</p><p>Further to the west of Gokibure's location, another battle was closing in to its conclusion, to the east of his location, however, Mardith was already killed by Regalia, the outcome was still unknown to the Aburame, nor were the further actions of the woman in red. The brief scuffle of the two squads was just about to reach its climax. If his only remaining opponents would be men, Gokibure would feel no shame in going all out, to begin with, and letting his roaches devour them quickly so they could go help Kusagoro out to catch those kids and find that Box.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0135"><h2>135. The Crystal Rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Out of my way, bitch, I'm heading for the box..." the one-eyed Uchiha grumped out through his grinding teeth. It was like the man was full of and leaking rage itself. He acted like he was addicted to something and the certain something was located within the walls of the castle ruins.</p><p>"I apologize but I am under orders to keep you here while Kusagoro finds the Box and the girl. I am afraid we'll be taking everything of value from these ruins unless you're after some other treasure, then again, I am to believe we'd be interested in that as well..." Remashi gently smiled and stood into a Hyuuga fighting stance, stretching her legs out wide to gain more balance, extending one arm diagonally forward as her whole body leaned to the front and extending one arm backward for a counterbalancing point but also setting up a defensive technique just in case.</p><p>The leader of the Sunagakure group only growled angrily and moved his messy black hair off of his face, he quickly pulled his curved swords and spun them around playfully in his hands. The man's body blurred and then disappeared, only to reappear close to the woman aiming with a wild swing from one of his swords. The blades were highly decorated and crafted from a rather peculiar alloy, the steel of the swords had a strange stone-like texture. The swords were also carved up and more of the slashing and dismembering kind, not unlike other blades that the desert people used.</p><p>While the man's speed was nothing short of impressive, Remashi Hyuuga managed to match it, her hands quickly shot two fingers forward for precision strikes and her arms flared up with flames as her lightning-fast strikes greet the man's blades gently tipping them at the edges and pushing them away from her. To someone standing beside the two, even for a highly skilled ninja, it would've been tough to track their moves as they performed combinations of blows faster than the blink of an eye.</p><p>Remashi's precise and swift blows pushed every single slash away, the one-eyed Uchiha referred to by his comrades only by the name of "Jiou" delivered dozens of slashes that would've left anyone as countless pieces of chopped up flesh within only fractions of a moment but Remashi pushed each and every strike out of her way with a careless and light tap at the edge of the blade from the side, each strike shot out heated flocks of sparks as the woman's fingers and her entire hand was enveloped in flames and each strike emitted blinding flashes of light combined with a playful explosion of fist-sized sparks.</p><p>Neither of the two moved to the side, front or backward, neither of them gave way. Then unexpectedly Jiou decided to end this senseless standstill struggle by performing a deceitfully faster than his previous onslaught spinning attack, the tricky Uchiha purposefully held some speed back so that he could unleash it when it counted and when his opponent felt comfortable.</p><p>He spun aiming at the woman's neck, an attack which would've left her headless faster than a lightning bolt descended from the sky. This man was a well-trained and remorseless killer, he did not hesitate or consider the worth of killing someone, he only saw an obstacle in his way and decided to act upon it. His single Sharingan eye was racing around following the woman's every movement, to him his attack was impeccable.</p><p>However Remashi was even faster, she spun around as well, at the very same time as the Uchiha did as fiery chakra dyed her spin and emanated a powerful shockwave of chakra, a half-sphere shaped circle of burning inferno formed around Remashi as a blast of fiery chakra similar to the typical Hyuuga defensive rotation technique blasted the blades out of Jiou's hand but the man kicked his own speed and reaction time to the limit, within immeasurably tiny fractions of a second after the blades even touched the blast of fiery rotation shockwave the man leaped back with a back handspring.</p><p>To a neutral spectator, this entire exchange of attacks would've happened faster than their brains could have registered, it would have appeared like the two were just standing apart from each other and then they both disappeared before the fiery explosion of whirling chakra appeared out of the blue and then they were both back where they stood when in their time the dueling sides have exchanged most of their blow combinations and already scoped each other out. Well over a couple of hundred strikes came from each side.</p><p>"I have seen your every strike, your fighting style is now recorded in my Sharingan and I'd be able to overcome it with a second a clash. Move aside!" Jiou yelled out without a sign of exhaustion or shortness of breath.</p><p>"You hit me as the no-bullshit kind of fighter. Were what you told me true, you wouldn't have bothered to talk, you'd have merely stricken me down and proceeded forward. You've found my Fire Release infused ninjutsu-taijutsu combination problematic, didn't you?" Remashi replied extending her palm set for a striking condition forward and spreading her legs for balance.</p><p>Jiou lowered his head forward, once again his shoulder-length hair fell on his face forcing the man to stroke them out of his way. The desert heat was making his missing eye wound hurt and just was all out uncomfortable feel, all this sand from the sandstorm was getting into his eye socket causing an annoying itch. Now there was this woman with her incredibly well thought nin-taijutsu combination.</p><p>He was faster than her, he could tell, the problem was that this was the absolute worst opponent he could face under the absolute worst conditions. He was an Uchiha who was the hope of the Sunagakure Uchiha branch. His family pushed him to become the Second Coming of Uchiha supremacy ever since he was a kid. He could create moon-sized fireballs in the sky and crush them onto his opponent, he could create fissures and sinkholes on the earth or even sink entire villages into them. However he couldn't break loose here – he needed that castle ruin right behind the woman intact. All he had to use were his swords and his taijutsu.</p><p>Remashi smiled slightly, she realized that her opponent realized his fault here, he must've seen and analyzed the situation that transpired in an incalculable fraction of a second between them. He was faster because Remashi at one point stopped training her speed, she instead infused her blows with Fire Release chakra causing her blows to burn like hellfire, the problem was that her fire was too slow to follow up on her blows creating an incredibly difficult to bypass barrier around her. Whenever she swung her arms around, faster than lightning itself, she created a following after-trail of flames around her. Such a natural defense created by her all-out offensive style made faster opponents naturally have to adapt to her style and further training her speed would've been counterproductive. Even if the man was faster, in the close distance - the longer he spent around her the more intense her defense was.</p><p>"That wasn't the Hyuuga rotation technique, was it? That was just a wall of flames created by your blows..." Jiou asked in a tone that sounded more like a conformational one than a questioning one. His entire tune changed, he realized that the woman may not have matched his speed but with some careful planning she managed to overcome her lacking speed when compared to him, but also she managed to pin him into a corner by fighting him close to a place he wanted to preserve, a highly volatile place too, one that could've collapsed and buried or broken the Box of Ultimate Bliss if something like that happened...</p><p>"If it was the Hyuuga rotation variant of my nin-taijutsu, you'd have probably been pretty burnt up, however, you were a bit too fast for me to manage that, I had to make do with less..." Remashi admitted.</p><p>Jiou's arm was raised up sideways and started crackling with lightning. The crackling blue lightning intensified until a donut-shaped disc formed around his hand. When the man raised his one-eyed face enough for it to be visible his Sharingan flared up in the cover of the raging sands, two tomoe signs could've been evident on the man's iris, informing that the technique may have been copied from some another ninja this man had encountered throughout his life.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Chakram!" Jiou chanted out throwing the disc forward. Remashi knew that he wouldn't have attacked her in such a simplistic manner, this technique must've been a diversion, the man just saw her move faster than that. Lo and behold, the man's body blurred and disappeared, racing faster than his lightning projectile, much faster, in fact.</p><p>This time Remashi was ready for him, her hands lit up with flames again, something she rarely had to use against weaklings like mercenaries or silly genin children like the one she had to face earlier. The woman switched stances in an instant and started spinning.</p><p>"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven!" the Hyuuga chanted out but her words were uttered so fast that they wouldn't have ever been registered by a ninja of lesser caliber than hers, let alone a normal civilian. Chakra burst from every chakra point in the woman's body, similarly to how Kusagoro dispelled his chakra from his except the woman expelled it only from her chakra points and not her body pores. The woman's rotation created a flaming circle of chakra that blew up and deflected the Lightning Chakram but also, judging from a loud yell of pain she also defended from the attack of the man behind her. The disc of pure lightning proceeded to fly upwards and sliced into and through one of the upper castle towers making it crumble below.</p><p>Remashi quickly ceased her rotation and flashed in a fiery blur right behind where Jiou landed kicking him in the back just to send him back to where he stood and further away from the castle. The man moved much faster than lightning, he moved faster even then Remashi and got behind her faster than his lightning cutting projectile did, she pushed him behind her and closer to the castle using her technique which meant he could've simply raced to the ruins and left her behind as his speed was greater than hers. Still, even with his greater speed, he needed to stop and repurpose his energy into striking her from behind which gave the woman time to respond. His speed didn't surpass hers by that wide a margin.</p><p>The man grunted and picked his body off of the ground, his cloak and desert attire were burnt to a crisp and he only wore a smoking, burnt up cloak and what little remained of his white desert attire. The man angrily peeled off the armor beneath his attire as it was heating up and starting to melt on his skin, the peeling left nasty burn marks on his chest and his gut.</p><p>"How hot is that thing?" the man grumped out, taking his sword fighting stance again by lifting one of his swords above his head for a quick block and placing another in front of him for a more offensive purpose.</p><p>"It depends, you weren't hit by the attack itself, you were hit by the heatwave coming off of it. This is the fastest but also the least hot version I can make, it's a searing flame hotter than any natural lava could manage. Usually, just breathing in close to it burns one's lungs from inside, it appears you managed to survive, as much as I'd love to cook you up as a stake and eat you up..." Remashi explained fixing her messed up butler uniform and getting her messy long hair back in order, the stress and speed of her movement and the intensity of the flames she created made her tied hair escape its rubbery bonds.</p><p>Howling winds gathered up a vortex of rotating sand streams, streams of golden sand which were all too familiar to Jiou, the tornado of sand took the shape of his wife. It was merely a clone that could travel together with her sand, having her abilities in mind with this sandstorm mixed in she must've been having a field day. The woman's clone informed Jiou that she had slipped one of her sand grains within the girl and that she could've used encouragement to find the box for them so that they could track her later. After informing her husband of that, the clone dissolved into sand and split all over the area.</p><p>"Hmph... I'm afraid you'll have to give me a moment" Jiou apologized to his opponent and disappeared briefly. He planned on feeding the girl some reverse psychology, maybe encourage her to stay put and try to make her force herself on forward. She looked pretty young, younger than most genin that were allowed to tread to other Countries at least. She must've been stupid enough to fall for it, after all, she wasn't doing this game nearly long enough to recognize this common trick...</p><p>It only took brief moments but then Jiou suddenly returned to his opponent with his body simply flashing back to its initial location. "So, you've been saying you plan to cook me and eat me? I wouldn't have taken you for a cannibal, I thought that was something exclusively reserved for some of Kirigakure's most remote islands. When I arrived I saw you beating that girl up yet you didn't as much as lick her, didn't even ask for it, what makes me so edible?"</p><p>"Well I actually never managed to really bite anyone, I just always started empathizing with them and feeling bad for them so I left them alone, only now the idea came to me that I can cook people alive..." Remashi scratched her head with a lovely smile almost as if she was discussing family recipes and sharing them with a friend.</p><p>"Tsk, forgive me if I sound rude but... A hunter who feels empathy towards his food is not a predator" Jiou rudely shot back at the woman. He felt annoyed by her roadblock, she sounded so stupid and almost ridiculous but she was so incredibly powerful and so lucky that she stood right up to the ruins that Jiou needed preserved...</p><p>"You... Take that... Back... Now!" Remashi lost all traces of her cool, her hands burst up in flames and steam started coming out from her chakra points, she was about to use something pretty powerful...</p><p>"Hmph, when a man finds himself living his life as prey, he not only learns to understand the relationship between a hunter and prey, he never speaks words he'll be taking back later. Everything I say I mean fully, everything I do is because I want and need to. You'd never understand the life I and my family has been living these past years but I will go past you and then get that Box and I will use it to destroy that man pursuing us!" Jiou completely lost his own cool too, his face twisted in anger as now this raging fiery woman in front of him embodied that Shadow Man with the eyes of red who was after him and his family, the man who killed his mother the very first night Jiou met him, the man who killed his father just days ago, the man who crushed Jiou's eye in front of him...</p><p>Remashi slapped her hands together in a hand seal and with a loud pop formed three more clones splitting her total chakra into three parts. Each one of the clones started spinning together with her in perfect harmony, all of them were in absolute sync. All three of them spun firing off excessive amounts of chakra from their chakra points, forming the same infernal spherical shield of flames and pure heat but also joining their rotations together into a single colossal and overwhelming attack.</p><p>Jiou dashed forward, enhancing his blades with lightning chakra he believed he could cut right through this sphere but he was overwhelmed quickly, never expecting the sheer size and the absolutely impossible heat contained within. It may have been five if not ten times hotter than the previous version, maybe even several times his estimation. The overwhelming light blinded his one working eye, the scorching infernal heat made Jiou use out all his reserved chakra for augmentation just so he didn't get incinerated instantly.</p><p>The heatwave extended well beyond the castle walls, fire burst through every crevice, every smallest hole made in the structure by the time and pelting sand. However the structure still stood, the fire didn't blow the structure away, instead, it bypassed every obstacle but the shock must've still been felt inside, some of it must've still gotten in the ruins and did some serious damage. Had Jiou not had enough on his plate to deal with he'd have been seriously concerned with the wellbeing of the ruins he'd have gotten more desperate. If more desperation was even possible in his case.</p><p>"Fire Style: Hyuuga Great Revolving Heaven" the four Remashi's incarnations that remained standing inside that extending sphere of devastation declared with synchronized voices. After the technique ended all the clones disappeared, returning what little of their chakra reservoirs that remained to their creator. The technique greatly exhausted the woman as she was breathing heavily and her body stood in a pose suggesting that she was drawn to collapse on the scorched sand.</p><p>It wasn't even sand below her, the floor, and the entire sandstorm around the woman got heated until it melted. The ground got shaped into a crystal-like structure, almost like the floor was made of glass or crystal, the sand particles in the sky shifted into crystal as well as started raining from the sky. The raging sandstorm turned into an actual crystal rain.</p><p>"Y-You bitch... You could've blown the castle ruins away!" Jiou's scorched and burnt up frame roared out into the sky as his clothes got completely decimated and burnt off but the man himself managed to augment his body to avoid disintegration. His body was covered with burns, in some places, there were black patches of coal-like texture, elsewhere it appeared like the man was merely singed and dirtied up.</p><p>"Hey, hey, you really overdid it, Remashi..." Gokibure's voice declared standing on a crystal hill as the desert sun created a blinding flashy glow that reflected off of it, the only detail that the battle-damaged Jiou or tired Remashi could see was the unconscious young woman in his arms.</p><p>"Aisha..." Jiou grunted out to himself. He loved his sister, loved her perhaps even more than it was usual to love a member of one's own family, after all – he was an Uchiha and Uchiha were notorious for their ability of great and unconditional love. Love that so often turned into hate. Now he would have to choose – stay here and save Aisha, take extra time fighting these two jokers, or slip into the castle leaving his beloved sister at their mercy... Jiou's wild laugh echoed through the crystal hills, there weren't as much as a speck of dust remaining of the shantytown that once was as it was too close to the blast zone.</p><p>"You fools, where do you think my wife is now? Do you truly believe she didn't kill your friend and just slipped past you all into the castle? The fact that she's not yet here means she'll find the little magician bitch before all of you and she'll get the box" the man explained the source of his amusement.</p><p>"That's only if Kusagoro hasn't found it yet..." Gokibure tried to talk his way out but Jiou's laughter only spread more powerful and even farther away.</p><p>"Then she'll claim it over your friend's dead body. My wife may only punch like a woman and she may not be nearly as fast as me but she has her tricky ways of beating any foe" the Uchiha explained as his functioning Sharingan raced wildly across the battlefield analyzing the field and giving him ideas for a potential response.</p><p>"Except that man chasing you three... Right?" Remashi hit the man's weak spot remembering his previous ramblings.</p><p>Jiou's face only got serious from a temporary state of amusement. "Well, if HE follows us here – everyone is dead..."</p>
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<a name="section0136"><h2>136. The Bloody Kaleidoscope</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A sky-piercing stare of the one-eyed Uchiha turned at Gokibure who still held the man's sister on his shoulders. Despite possessing one of the most potent and unstable defenses that could've been repurposed into an all-devouring offense at any moment the Aburame just barely resisted the instinct to shiver. Even when his opponent was outnumbered, even when his body was covered in bruises and burns and he was cornered right up close to an object he had to keep standing. Such was the power of the mere presence of Jiou Uchiha.</p><p>"Do not believe for a second that I'd hesitate to pierce my sister's heart to get to you. I love her too much to let her burn herself in self-directed hatred for being a burden" Jiou's silent yet efficient voice reached Gokibure's ears and now that the sandstorm had ceased and become rain of grain-sized crystal dust he could understand every word.</p><p>"I saved your sister because I hate hurting women. I consider myself a gentleman and even when a woman is too dangerous to keep alive or I only barely pull myself out of a tough battle, I still cannot push myself towards such a thing..." Gokibure replied with a cocky smile, he meant every word. He'd have much rather took the young Aisha for dinner than fought her in such a cruel battlefield.</p><p>Remashi placed her hands together and suddenly veins violently shot out all over her face coming out of her eyes as her white Byakugan of the Hyuuga clan intensified. She scanned the battlefield around her while still trying to keep her eye on her injured opponent just in case he decided to pull something funny.</p><p>"He may be right, I don't see Mardith's chakra at all, nor do I see your insects inside of him. He may actually be dead..." she said with a hint of surprise and a slightly smaller shade of hidden sadness.</p><p>"Hmmm... I seem to have sensed the signal of the nano-roaches going out some time ago, I was troubled by that but figured it could've been a great lot of things. I thought maybe the woman shorted the roaches out with a Lightning Style technique... If he actually is dead that is unfortunate" Gokibure nodded looking back. Before he could back Jiou's injured and bare-chested body leaped up to him for the kill. Before the Uchiha could deliver a lethal blow or the Aburame could command his insects to protect him Remashi flashed up to the man getting in between the two and thrust her palm forward.</p><p>"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm!" she chanted sending a powerful heated up shockwave that blew Jiou backward a great distance inflicting damage all over his body as he took the technique head-on. The intense heat burnt up parts of his hair, it completely incinerated his eye-patch revealing a black hole where his Sharingan once was. The technique left even more patches of black burns over some areas of the man's body, the heavy injuries that he sustained from the previous superheated explosion of chakra greatly impacted his speed.</p><p>"I am your opponent, I recommend you treat me as such before I end up killing you..." Remashi exclaimed looking back at her friend. She wasn't overly fond of the roach wielding Aburame but she would have preferred to keep him alive. Kusagoro's squad saw many difficult missions and somehow they started taking each other's lives for granted, even while they bickered like children normally, they'd have protected each other's lives if given the choice.</p><p>As the smoke cleared and the searing horizontal twister of fire burnt out the two Kusagoro's teammates realized that they were played – Jiou was nowhere to be seen. The eyes of the Hyuuga woman squinted and focused on a specific point in the castle ruins.</p><p>"I've got him... A slippy bastard..." she grunted with great annoyance and dashed onwards to the castle entrance. She knew that Jiou was faster than her so the woman leaped up into the air and drove both of her hands backward.</p><p>"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Twin Vacuum Palms!" she yelled out as two crystal piercing jet waves of pure flame and heated air fired off of her arms sending her body skyrocketing forward faster than the sound itself into the castle. It took great mastery and perception for the woman to flip over in the air and dash off of a couple of walls surrounding her, she bounced off of the walls in her way like a pinball only losing a small fraction of her momentum, she had to catch up to that Uchiha bastard, she hit him with a head-on "Vacuum Palm", that closed at least four of his chakra nodes, his total chakra level must've been plummeting down at that moment.</p><p>The Hyuuga specialized in techniques that closed the opponent's chakra nodes. It was a very dangerous style to face off against since most defensive techniques such as chakra augmentation already sapped great amounts of chakra, losing chakra nodes was like losing chakra generators in the middle of battle, it wasn't just losing a specific amount of chakra, it was losing a part of one's chakra network, every time chakra passed through that part of the network large chunks of it got lost somewhere in the mix. The man must've been a fool to let himself get hit by that just to slip into the castle.</p><p>Remashi extended her palm trying to hit the man in the back of his head but Jiou leaped off the ground and turned around placing his elbow to where she would've hit him and blocked the strike.</p><p>"Fire Style: Last Resort Eight Gates Assault!" the woman chanted out as she flashed with fiery shades all over the endless corridors of the castle clashing with Jiou's own blows, it was like a combination of blurs, almost like a rotating jet twister of flames and pure power busting and drilling through the doors and walls of the castle that then extended into two that continuously clashed together.</p><p>The two involved themselves in a lethal and endless dance of taijutsu combinations. Jiou's stamina and chakra levels must've been insane since he dared to clash with Remashi's Fire Style Gentle Fist combinations up close taking heavy damage and burns even if he perfectly countered her blows.</p><p>Even when he completely outclassed the woman at close distance martial arts, perfectly avoiding each of her blows and answering with his own the splash damage from her fiery style of assaults burnt the man either way. Remashi didn't have to land a single blow, even her missed pokes hurt the man more than any direct punch could have.</p><p>The two danced on through spiraling staircases, through endless abysses that opened over the countless decades that this castle rot inside this desert, they bashed through every barely functional trap in their way. The heat from their exchanging faster than sound blows melted the steel spikes on the floor, the sheer force of the shockwaves from their clashing blows, and sometimes their conscious effort destroyed any dislodged stone or ceiling structures trying to crush them and ground it to dust.</p><p>While keeping up their dance of fire and death the two managed to deflect or block every single pebble falling on their heads, not because they wanted to show off, it was due to instinct. They didn't care to check if it was just a speck of dust, a pebble that would've felt annoying inside their shoes or if it was floor sized rock, they just destroyed everything in their path shaking the very foundations of the castle.</p><p>Their graceful exchange of blows felt like fencing, two skilled fencers dancing all over the place, all over the towers of the castle, throwing each other out the holes in the towers and window holes and then leaping after their opponent wishing to pummel the life out of them. The two traversed one-third of the ground floors of the ruins and at least six towers of the castle, the one great tower of the castle even collapsed due to their fiery clash.</p><p>"Enough... Begone!" Jiou grunted out through the blood shooting off his broken nose, his handseals flashed at incomprehensible speeds and the man inhaled. He felt his chakra draining out rapidly, it was almost like every blow he took from the woman divided his chakra into bits and pieces, messed up his network but the man didn't care.</p><p>It didn't feel one-millionth as bad as one single touch from the man pursuing him felt, the woman stroke like a butcher gently slicing his chakra to pieces, that man ripped all out and devoured it like an animal, like a devil feasting on chakra instead of human souls. Jiou had no more time to waste with this woman, that man had to be stopped!</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!" Jiou chanted intending on breathing out a firestorm hotter and denser in its all-devouring flames than even the previously displayed Remashi's clone rotation technique. The one-eyed Uchiha was sure that it'd have blown this castle away, it'd have made an all incinerating blast of destruction all the way to Sunagakure.</p><p>It'd have created a Hell on Earth, a magma spilling crater and a testament of the Uchiha might and destruction. He almost regretted it himself, he needed and wanted that Box but he had to rely on his wife's ability to recover it. He could no longer afford to hold back, this Hyuuga woman would've been a considerable opponent even if he was unchained. He held back long enough, it was time to raise some Hell...</p><p>"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Inferno Crusher!" the Uchiha heard a lovely voice of the Hyuuga woman yell out as she dove ducking in to bypass his defenses, she extended her palm forward making Jiou cancel out his technique before it even began and flip backward. A concentrated beam of flames a thousand times hotter than the woman's previously displayed Hyuuga Fire Style techniques fired off diagonally into the sky burning through the stone of the castle and firing off away farther than the man could even follow it.</p><p>"It was a waste of chakra to use this as a Hyuuga nin-taijutsu, the heat of that technique would incinerate everything and anything in its path, just whose chakra are you aiming to close if your opponent is scorched and not even an atom remains?" Jiou smiled, at one point in his life, before being chased by an unstoppable force of nature, he enjoyed fights, he even looked for powerful opponents and would've loved to challenge this woman. Still, it was useless to dwell on what once was, all that he was at some point was gone now, at the moment he was just prey...</p><p>"You're the one to say, you'd have left a bottomless canyon of destruction out of this entire desert with that technique, I thought you wished to preserve this castle..." Remashi huffed heavily, that last technique followed right after such a breath-taking clash must've taken quite the toll on her. She must've been pushed all the way to her limit, able to put out such impossibly searing hot beams of concentrated chakra into such precise and restrained blows, a technique like that must've cost some chakra.</p><p>"I lost control for a moment... You are fortunate to meet me on a battlefield I wish to preserve" Jiou also was breathing increasingly heavily and was pulled towards the ground. The aftermath of their clash suddenly opened large fissures on the floor they were standing on forcing the two to once again leap at each other.</p><p>The Uchiha clenched his fist tightly ready to knock this woman out while the Hyuuga woman was preparing yet another one of her Vacuum Palm techniques, Jiou cracked a grin, he was confident that he could withstand one more head-on but if he confirmed his punch he would've knocked the woman out. She seemed to put a lot of care into defending herself so Jiou's theory was that she couldn't take blows nearly as well as she defended against them.</p><p>Strangely enough, Jiou was not overwhelmed by the Vacuum Technique, his fist cut through the air around him and dug deep into the woman's face first, it must've been his superior speed that helped him achieve this. A loud pop alerted him that something was wrong, the woman's body was replaced with a large chunk of the stone floor that was collapsing and falling to the bottom of the black abyss below, Jiou tried to turn around but as he did he realized that it was too late.</p><p>The woman's hands lit up with bursts of fire, she shot two fingers out from both of her palms and precisely planted them right where Jiou's chakra nodes were, she started slowly with a slow combination of blows. "Fire Style: Two Palms!" she yelled out planting two searing hot but precise pokes that felt like heated knives tearing through his flesh, where the woman stroke and closed his chakra points a black burn mark remained.</p><p>"Four Palms!" she yelled out repeating but doubling the combination.</p><p>"Eight Palms!" she continued striking lightning-fast, this encounter has taken so much out of Jiou that he didn't even have enough in him to put up a decent defense.</p><p>"Sixteen Palms!" the woman continued to mercilessly bombard his defenses.</p><p>"Thirty-Two Palms! Eight Trigrams Sixty Four Palms!" she roared out triumphant with a crushing blow to Jiou's chest that left her palm permanently burnt into his flesh and sent the man heated like a comet crushing through the castle walls back into the desert where Gokibure was waiting with his sister on his shoulders.</p><p>The Aburame covered himself with the shield of roaches to protect himself and his captured hostage from the blast of a falling star-like man crashing out of the castle into the crystal floor, leaving a pretty wide crater. Jiou's body appeared beaten and mangled, burnt most importantly of all quite badly. He was quite a miserable sight with his one eye missing already. Life as a running man also badly reflected on his overall looks and now he had the messed up wounds to match it.</p><p>With a fiery flash, Remashi appeared close by, down on her knees and breathing heavily. She couldn't do much more but stay down herself. It was impressive how one man could push her so far while holding back most of his abilities afraid to destroy the castle nearby. In this world, the most destructive and powerful abilities were also the most useless, being able to create moon-sized meteors couldn't have been more useless when one was a silent assassin and a spy. Because he was a man who took pride in his destructive godlike abilities Jiou was destined to lose against a much more restrained and focused fighter...</p><p>Jiou's blood-covered and burnt arm grabbed the edge of the crater and pulled his pathetically beaten and burnt body out of the hole. His blood covered and singed hair still fell all over his face, a single movement forced blood to squirt out of the man's crushed inner organs all over his stubble and onto the crystal floor below. Pools of blood were poor decorations for such natural beauty as pure crystal.</p><p>Remashi looked surprised, she almost begged Jiou to stay down but most of all she was surprised that she wasn't able to kill him. A technique of such heat... His organs should've been molten into one solid pile of goo, the only viable explanation for him to have survived would've been chakra augmentation but how could have one man had such impossible levels of chakra. For him to have so much he should've rivaled the levels of weaker Tailed Beasts or Lesser Demons.</p><p>A loud thud reached the ears of the two combatants, Aisha's lifeless body slipped down Gokibure's shoulder and slammed into the crystal floor cracking her head, the poor girl's eyebrows angrily twisted and lowered, she must've been alright but just passed out, in a state of delirium.</p><p>"Rest, Remashi, I should take it over from here. You seem to be unable to keep this man down for the count and my roach friends are squirming deep inside... He still has plenty chakra left, enough for at least one more technique, huh?"</p><p>"Yeah, one last technique strong enough to blow this whole fucking desert up, however, it's sort of useless, that last technique of that bitch locked my chakra away. Whatever little I had left for any hidden aces, I just can't use it anymore... What a despicable feeling of the chakra being there inside my body but being unable to access it!" Jiou grunted out falling down on his knees and pounding the crystal floor of the desert, he reached to his right and picked up one of his swords and gripped it tightly.</p><p>"What are you planning to do? You could try attacking Remashi but she could blow you back with one of her Vacuum Palm techniques burning you up, even more, you could attack me but my roaches would block any attack and then eat you up, you can't cast your Sharingan genjutsu on Remashi because she'd break out of it noticing it with her Byakugan and she'd also kill you before you could kill me. Face it, you're beaten. Just sit down close to your sister and sit this one out..." Gokibure explained in his sultry confident voice as multiple cockroaches scurried around his face from his hair and disappeared behind his shirt.</p><p>Jiou's body blurred, Remashi braced herself to block an impending attack, Gokibure surrounded himself by endless shields of his impenetrable cockroach defense. A moment later the two realized that neither of them was hit, they looked on only to see Jiou flashed forward and behind Gokibure grabbing his sister and holding her up in the air, lifted up by the collar of her clothes.</p><p>Jiou closed his eyes... "I'm sorry, sister, I wish there was another way. Still, I'm sure you'd see this as salvation compared to what living chased by that man feels like. You're lucky to leave first..." he mumbled to himself piercing the young woman's chest with his blade after letting go of her and letting her fall onto his sword. The young woman coughed up some blood without even waking up, her body twitched for a couple of moments before letting out a final breath.</p><p>"What the Hell did you do!?" Gokibure shouted out enraged.</p><p>Jiou's only working eye closed and a single stream of bloody tears ran down his cheek. He let the dead body of his sister slip off his blade and hit the floor, quickly flooding it with the pool of her blood.</p><p>"There is a reason why Uchiha love so much... Because the source of our power is directly dependant on the pain of loss. Whenever we lose someone we love the most we grow infinitely stronger. Losing someone that one holds the dearest to their heart, that unlocks a very special power..." Jiou's one working eye shot wide open as his Sharingan had changed its markings, three circles added to his Sharingan symbol, and the three conjoined identically around his pupil straight onto the center of the iris.</p><p>The pain of loss opened a new power inside Jiou, the pain and desperation of living his life as prey made him ruthless enough to do what was needed, and seeing his loved ones in constant danger made him love those close to him strong enough for them to become vessels for his newly awakened power – the Mangekyou Sharingan.</p>
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<a name="section0137"><h2>137. Boy Meets Girl</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Over ten years ago:</strong>
</p><p>A large crowd gathered around a large and round stage-like structure. Some people appeared to be quite bored whereas the others appeared to be in some sort of rush, they were cheering on with their fists almost like they were hungry for blood. Such sights used to be very uncommon in Sunagakure – a village that was warring for a long time and then completely overwhelmed and one that lost its respect and dominant position in the grand political arena. Lately, however, the moods were shifting, people were growing increasingly angry and desperate to reclaim their lost glory. Wishing for a second go at any larger political conflict just so they could show their newly acquired power. The power they've been gathering during times of peace.</p><p>"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the great Gumbai arena!" a tall man wearing an almost regal cloak and turban, just barely letting his long black hair and beard flow through yelled out, declaring the beginning of the event that'd start the festivity which the people were waiting for so long.</p><p>"Yeah!" "Come on, show us some fighting!" "We came to see some Uchiha!" "What the Hell is all of this!?" various yells came from the side of the crowd but the people were at the very least excited. It was nothing less than what the long-bearded man on the stage wished for, the dyed with eyeshade eyes of the man flared as the red Sharingan activated in his eyes, the man walked backward and turned at the building that led up to the elevated arena.</p><p>"Villagers of Sunagakure, our powerful village has been mistreated and disrespected for too long! Fifty years ago I left Konohagakure with my family and moved here. I don't think anyone will disagree that I've done everything I could for this village and spilled more blood than my fair share for it. I freely surrendered my Uchiha power for this village and together with my wife granted it the greatest gift this village can get – an Uchiha legacy, the most majestic of ninja bloodlines in its military!" the man declared as a young bare-chested man walked out from the building and onto the central stage.</p><p>The young man stood with resolute calmness but also inspired respect and fear just by his mere presence alone. He was a really well developed and incredibly trained young man. His shoulder-length black hair was tied up at their tips where they would've fallen onto the young man's eyes.</p><p>"Today I demonstrate to you the future of our village, the mightiest soldier to ever graduate the Chuunin Exams! My son – Jiou Uchiha!" the man declared as the young man stretched out and started performing acrobatic warm-up exercises.</p><p>"Wow, he's so hot! Isn't he hot, I told it's the best idea to come here!" a young girl shrieked out into the ear of her friend who seemed less than impressed. The young friend who wore a large gourd on her back just nodded and smiled uncomfortably, while she didn't really want to be here and she didn't really understand the point of all this militaristic propaganda nonsense she continued to observe the young man's performance and his effortless dispatching of several Sunagakure uniform wearing soldiers in a playful spar session. Young Regalia had to admit, seeing the young man dancing like that, fighting gracefully and effortlessly seemed to awaken some sort of hidden emotions inside her.</p><p>"Ha, I know what you think, bloodthirsty audience, any fool can dispatch of eight trained Sunagakure Chuunin. That's what you mistakenly believe, right? Now witness as my son takes on a trained Uchiha, my brother – Cimaro! And proves just how astonishing of a prodigy he is" the old-timer declared as an equally strong looking and equally ill-equipped Uchiha walked out on the stage, with his Sharingan flaring red in his eyes equally as strong.</p><p>As the two traded blows it was apparent that the young man was superior from the very beginning. Both of the sparring men possessed the infernal Sharingan eye meaning they could easily predict the opponent's movements and, to them, each attack appeared like launched in slow motion. Each movement, each attack was predicted and processed and it looked like each combatant grew bored of the slow-motion response which they predicted before the last one was even thrown.</p><p>And yet... Where Cimaro only predicted the attack and adapted his moves to it, Jiou predicted not his opponent's attack, but also Cimaro's response, he predicted what exactly his opponent would perceive and predict from his own motions. It wasn't long before the young prodigy mopped the floor with his opponent.</p><p>"Wow, he's so amazing! I wonder if he'll attend the Kazekage's inauguration, I'd love to meet him!" Regalia's friend continued to obsess over the young man looking merely at his handsome beefy side and missing the point of why this young man was actually so great. Most Uchiha were arrogant and vain from their inception, they possessed the most revered and treasured bloodline of all, they were of elite ninja descent and had centuries if not entire millennia of history running in their veins.</p><p>What stood before the two young women and hundreds of other bloodthirsty and destruction of the other "Great" ninja villages wishing biggots was an Uchiha who was actually working hard and living up to his potential. Where most Uchiha just assumed they were the hottest shit around and had power running in their veins, this young man sought and actively pursued it, he only saw his limitless potential of a bloodline as something he was given, as a natural advantage over his peers but he also continued to live up to that potential. It was men like this that made history, a legend in the making surrounded by cocky fools. If only this remarkable youth would not grow spoiled due to his regal upbringing...</p><p>As the young Uchiha showed another amazing trick, managing to avoid or deflect and catch every of the sixty thousand arrows launched his way, so many of them that they snuffed out the Land of Wind's desert Sun even and made the arena appear like a pin cushion except where the Uchiha boy was, Regalia's friend turned at her and pinched the blushed cheeks of the young lady.</p><p>"You're jealous, you're jealous 'cause he's better than you!" the friend teased her.</p><p>"I'm not jealous, this is nonsense, I could block any number of arrows, I could block entire tons of arrows without moving a single step to the side and you know that!" Regalia declared blushing even more.</p><p>"Yeah, but you've got your sand to do it, he's catching and dodging them with his bare hands and body and doesn't even have as much as a scar. He could dodge as many arrows as there are raindrops on a stormy night and he's just a teen! Konoha ain't got shit on us and I'm gonna be his wife!" the silly girl shrieked out again.</p><p>"Oh shut up..." Regalia smiled and locked her arms around her chest, sometimes her friend tended to get overly excited and dream about the heavens. Still, as silly as the young lady was, she was the only girl who ever agreed to become a friend of the young Regalia who had a stigma of being a mass murderer and a girl around whom everything got destroyed and everyone close to her got horribly murdered.</p><p>While officially the mass slaughter in the Land of Tea was attributed to her, the only reason she didn't undergo Ninja Tribunal and imprisonment and execution was both because the details of the event were too shady and because while openly the two villages worked together, secretly a portion of Sunagakure population wished the destruction of Konohagakure due to nothing else but toxic jealousy of the village's power and reputation.</p><p>Regalia was someone who was continuously questioned and held in the officials' custody so her fate in the Academy and beyond its walls was that of a loner whom no one liked and everyone pointed fingers at. Even more, her sand was different from that of most Sabaku clan members, hers was golden, almost enchanted. After the death of her mother, Regalia's sand was more powerful, more amazing and she could do so much more chakra channeling with it than her peers. Almost like the love and will of her mother passed into the young lady's sand making it stronger and denser than the cores of stars themselves.</p><p>This whole time, throughout those couple of years she was pursued by that infernal man with the eyes of red. He always found her, always caught her, and managed to grab hold of her. Whenever the young Regalia ran he was able to catch her, destroying everything and everyone standing its way, and when he caught her the man sapped her chakra from her like a butcher bleeds a pig out. The difference was that the man left her living with the aftermath. People pointed fingers at her, blamed her for all the unfortunate destruction around her, and wanted her to die. And yet the man in black never grew tired of the way she tasted, the way her chakra tasted. He always left her just enough to stay alive...</p><p>"No, haven't you heard? They're looking for a suitable match for him, for some reason his entire family is involved, they're almost forcing him to find a young woman and marry her! Some say that's why the Uchiha keep putting so much money and support into the Kazekage inauguration ceremony, they want the huuugest ball!" Regalia's oddball friend waved her hands around in the sky like a fisherman exaggerating about the size of a fish they caught.</p><p>"Well, whatever, I won't even go... I'm not invited because of the whole "possible traitor and an overall bad omen" thing following me around." Regalia sighed and turned around.</p><p>"Teehee, well things around you do tend to get blown up and crushed..." her friend chuckled and raised her fist into the sky yelling out, "Hey Aziz, your son is a loser, my friend can kick his ass!"</p><p>Suddenly the bloodthirsty crowd went all completely silent. Everyone parted to the sides and made a small circle of shame around the two girls and the glares of both the old man Aziz and his young son fell onto the two girls.</p><p>"Is that so?" Aziz smiled, the crowd around the girls kept on whispering rumors going around about Regalia's possible involvement with the Konohagakure officials and how she was talked off as a filthy traitor. Even if those rumors had nothing to back them up but the amazing fantasies of children in the same teams as Regalia was, as she changed several because very few Jounin wished to train her due to her reputation, people still let those rumors fester.</p><p>"Well, my son is undoubtedly weary, he's fought multiple opponents and dodged enough arrows to cover the sky when standing from where he is, he fought one of our village's strongest Uchiha..." Aziz started to explain why he wouldn't have liked for his precious and treasured son to fight someone he barely knew with less than stellar reputation surrounding them.</p><p>"No" Jiou's firm for his age voice cut his father down. The boy's voice was indeed weary and he was sweating himself to death and that much was visible with a naked eye, "Let her fight my sister, Aisha is half my age but also half my strength. If the girl can best my sister, I'll be impressed enough to admit defeat"</p><p>Regalia sighed and looked at grinning friend with a desperate look, she really didn't need more trouble and attention in her life, it was only a couple of years after her entire family was killed in front of her, it was only a couple of days since THAT man nearly killed her and the restaurant where she and her team were washing the dishes due to a mission. It all felt like one big never-ending nightmare. Hesitant and a little depressed Regalia stepped onto the stage allowing her golden sand to carry her up.</p><p>"Golden sand? What's that? I've never seen anything like that..."</p><p>"It's said it's not actually gold dust, it's just sand overflowing with chakra that glows in this golden hue!" villagers started once again spreading rumors, even if that last observation was a correct one as it was taken out of her ninja file. Information like this shouldn't have been so freely accessed but no one cared about Regalia's life enough to protect her secret. All that people cared about was someone to direct their hatred at, it didn't matter if they had to make some information public to have more topics of hatred to discuss...</p><p>"Son, Aisha isn't ready, she's..." Aziz tried to pacify the situation but Jiou took a towel and cleaned his sweaty face and chest before smiling and gesturing for a young and shaking girl to leave the shade of the building entry point.</p><p>"Nonsense, I've sparred with her and at times she managed to surprise me and land blows on me, she's just shy in the public, that's all..." Jiou laughed out. The handsome devil of the Uchiha was so cheerful, almost like an actual heroic icon that people gather around. Regalia almost wished to throw the fight out the window and just let him win so that his perfect reputation was not tarnished.</p><p>The little girl quivered out into the sunlight, she looked like she couldn't have even been ten years of age, she was dressed not too much different from how all girls of her age who were Academy students dressed and she could barely even hold those two blades she carried around. They were an identical image to the swords her brother had on his back, the girl must've idolized her brother. It was always a ninja's privilege to see such things, identify and describe the psychological profile of their opponent before battle.</p><p>This girl looked oppressed and yet when she looked at Jiou she was happy and shined with glee. Her own weapons were identical to the weapons of the young man, it was clear that she idolized her brother but she also had that trait of fear of large crowds and she was very shy. Such traits were not common to an esteemed Uchiha warrior which was why the family chose to keep the girl concealed within their mansion's walls. Maybe in this fight, Regalia could help the little girl to come out of her shell? Maybe after seeing what Jiou has seen, the one person that this young one trusts enough to reveal her true nature, this kid will no longer be treated as a second rate, will no longer be ignored by her own family?</p><p>The young one walked out in front and bowed, her movements were so restrained, she was so afraid and hesitant even to bow.</p><p>"Wow, you're quite well mannered, young one, what is your name?" Regalia tried to be nice to the girl, it was quite clear that she had seen enough hatred and neglect in her life. The last thing she wanted to do was to make fun of her.</p><p>"A...Aisha..." the girl mumbled out in a thin and weak tone, she still clutched her chest as if creating an artificial wall to protect herself from all those bloodthirsty people around her. The girl pulled out her blades and took a very clumsy fighting stance, Jiou whistled with annoyance and lifted his arm up.</p><p>"Come on, Aisha, as we do during our spars! Don't hold back!" he yelled out. Despite very clearly positive intentions the negative attitude towards her stance from her brother was very clearly a negative for the girl, she started shaking and stepped out of her fighting stance looking confused.</p><p>"I told you it's a bad idea!" Aziz yelled at his son and then tried to approach his daughter but Regalia's golden sand blocked his progress with a hastily placed wall.</p><p>Regalia tipped her dirty red dress, the shade of which now looked more like brown due to all the damage and dirt that the attire has seen, and bent over her knees kneeling closer to the eye level of the young girl.</p><p>"Hey, Aisha, I'm Regalia... Look, I know you're worried, I know you're shy and afraid but this sand of mine is magical actually" the young lady smiled letting the glowing sand gently pass by her lifted palm in small jets and strands, playfully stroking it like it was the actual hair of her mother.</p><p>"Magical?" the girl blinked a couple of times, just for a moment her shyness faded and she appeared to be more interested in Regalia's story than anything.</p><p>"Yeah, with it I can see into time itself. I can see the futures and the pasts of people around me, people it touches, and I see inside of you that you're fated to be a courageous and strong woman. You're not going to be afraid of anything and you'll be able to stand up in front of crowds larger than this and tell them all to go to Hell..." Regalia softly and kindly explained.</p><p>"B...But I'm not like that..." little Aisha whimpered.</p><p>"Yes, but it is important to me that you know that while you're not like that now, one day you will be that person. That is to say, that person and you are the very same person just in different time periods..." the young woman explained to the little girl. She made up that lie about her sand being able to see into time and knowing the future, it was a common lie of hers but it always worked for some reason.</p><p>Maybe the reason she made that lie up was that Regalia was unsure of what the time held for her, just like this young kid she was unsure of her destiny. She didn't know if the people will in time accept her or if she will continue to be a traitor until the end of her days, she didn't know if she will become a great hero or never achieve anything, she never knew if she'd see that horrible man again tomorrow and if he'd finally kill her or not. If he'd claim everything she had just like he promised to do.</p><p>That unknown made her wish to see the timeline and what it had for her more than anything in the world just so she wouldn't have to live in fear. Life in fear of something, something big to come, almost like being a sheep being observed by a lion who is about to pounce and feeling uneasy because of that supernatural fear of what's inside the dark bush just around the corner... Everyone believed her lie because everyone thought like her. Everyone was chased by their own demons.</p><p>The chase is what made all of us feel so alive but it was also our greatest fear...</p>
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<a name="section0138"><h2>138. A Quest For True Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Well, here I go, ma'am..." Aisha hesitantly declared. The visuals of her body stretched out like a crazy nature's spaghetti as the girl's speed messed up how light flowed around her body, Regalia was not prepared for such an outburst of speed and she realized that she was about to pay for underestimating this child. Luckily for her, right before she pulled off her defensive technique by coating her body with her golden sand the little girl stopped halfway and fell to the floor.</p><p>"I dropped my sword, I apologize..." she cried out afraid that Regalia or whoever else would flip out in anger and yell at her.</p><p>"These swords truly are too big for you..." Regalia smiled, trying her best not to appear shocked or afraid by the incredible speed of the young one. Had she taken the moment to exhale and wipe away the sweat that broke out running on her forehead after witnessing the girl's inhuman speed she'd have given away her own intimidation.</p><p>"Nonsense, my brother wields them and I wish to prove that I am just as worthy as he is. I can do this, just give me another chance..." Aisha rubbed her eyes with knuckles as her entire face blushed in shame.</p><p>Regalia smiled and swiped her hand to the side ordering her sand to move out of the gourd and form a whole bunch of strands, jets and defensive walls around her. Her enemy was that of speed far surpassing her own, this girl was quite close to moving faster than lightning and she had not yet awakened her Sharingan as far as Regalia saw it.</p><p>"Your brother... He said that you're about one half of his skill level, does that mean that he's double the trash you are? That still makes two piles of trash..." the young ninja offended her opponent. It was Regalia's intent to play on her opponent's emotions, to make little Aisha angry so that she stopped thinking about all those people watching and judging her. So that she stopped screwing herself over.</p><p>"What? How dare you!?" Aisha screamed out, her body disappeared, completely untraceable by even the few ninja standing in the crowd. Loud thuds and bangs could've been heard as the girl's invisible body bumped into one sand wave after another breaking through them with her mere speed. Loud sounds of steel grinding against sand could've been heard as well – the little one had drawn her blades and meant to cut Regalia down.</p><p>The young woman turned to her back where Aisha's last image flashed, the speed of this girl was insane, the natural limit and the fastest that the ninja's body was recorded to go was the speed of light. There were multiple samurai in the Iron Country who were told to have reached that speed. It was not that the ninja's body was incapable of handling more, it was just that the laws of physics themselves placed a barrier on the human body. There have been strange events recorded whenever a swordsman, thirsty for fame, has tried it. This world or any other in this Universe did not sustain any higher speed than that. Strangest things happened whenever someone tried it, people just broke down or flat out evaporated or reality itself imploded and created large cataclysms.</p><p>For a moment there Regalia was starting to worry that this girl may not realize that barrier, that perhaps no one in her family knew enough about her abilities to explain it to her. It was not that Aisha's speed approached a place anywhere close to those limits, it was more that Regalia could neither perceive nor move in to counter in time. The body of the young girl was flashing all around her with afterimages and fake out attacks – the young one was shoving her superiority in Regalia's face like most Uchiha were known to do.</p><p>"Don't you dare offend my brother!" Aisha's scream emanated through the public as the girl flashed right through her opponent, cutting once for each word and then fading out from everyone's perception again. Old man Aziz turned at Jiou in disbelief.</p><p>"Why didn't you tell me my daughter was capable of this? I can't follow her movements!" Aziz shouted out</p><p>"That's because you try to follow them, you must use your Sharingan to predict her movements and evade or counterattack before they happen..." Jiou continued to observe the small scuffle with his Sharingan still active.</p><p>"Her body will collapse if she doesn't stop, she's augmenting her own body to withstand the pressure, such children cannot possibly understand or prevent the risks of conscious chakra augmentation" Aziz mumbled to himself.</p><p>"I'll interfere before she goes overboard, I've seen her move faster than sound without much problem while fully managing to fight properly. She isn't approaching her mass limit yet" Jiou replied grabbing his swords and gripping their handles more tightly. As the body broke those impossible speed limits it was crushed by their increased mass for which they had to augment itself with chakra to withstand it. It was said that samurai that moved at light speed had to deal with a literally infinite mass placed on their bodies which greatly strained their movements. Wise ninja withheld their bodies from going too far...</p><p>"Don't tell me you've been training her in secret!?" Aziz ground his teeth feeling both angry at his son for possibly teaching his sister things she may have been too young and naïve to learn and a little proud of his own blood.</p><p>"Don't worry, she's too fast for her own good, she can't properly track or perceive her own movements so she takes extra time. She won't break herself, she physically can't" Jiou tried to calm his father down feeling very proud of his sister and the power she displayed but also grateful that her opponent drew that power out from her.</p><p>A slash that Regalia couldn't have possibly seen or predicted cut at her from below, a powerful shockwave fired through the entire crowd picking up their cloaks and outright knocking people off their feet for well over half a kilometer away. Regalia's body lifted up into the sky with sand struggling to keep up with the young lady. Aisha's body leaped up, her feet kept kicking the air below her to propel her upwards as ground crushing gusts of wind fired off from the sheer force and rage behind each kick.</p><p>Within mere moments the young Uchiha girl flashed up just slightly above the flying Regalia, the young girl thrust her blades into the older one's body a great number of times bombarding her body with stabs, stabbing the girl over twenty times per second almost like an automated weapon. Then, with a finishing slice, Aisha cut her opponent's body clean in two letting the body of her enemy dissolve into thousands of flesh chunks.</p><p>However, instead of blood, the pieces of Regalia's body bled with sand as the woman's entire body dissolved into grains of sand surrounding the young Uchiha. Aisha slammed down onto the arena from so high up that the entire arena cracked and collapsed into pieces.</p><p>"The fight is over..." Regalia's voice could've been heard from the public, people parted and moved away from where the voice could've been heard leaving the young woman exposed in a wide circle as she lifted her fist up into the sky.</p><p>"Sand Style: Temporal Shift" she mumbled under her own nose pressing her fist hard, at that instant Aisha flipped over on her back and started crying like a baby despite there being no visible changes to her body. It was a powerful genjutsu transferred through the kunoichi's sand, with her desperation to move as fast as possible and cut as hard as she could the young girl breathed in a lot of it, got even more into her eyes and under her clothes.</p><p>"We're done here, I assume?" Regalia looked at her friend hurrying her to leave. The friend of the victorious ninja couldn't keep her pride and joy inside of her pointing out hundreds of times that she was actually with Regalia and how she couldn't wait for the great inauguration ball.</p><p>Later at the Uchiha estate things couldn't have been more heated up. Some members of Jiou's family couldn't stop yelling how stupid of an idea it was to let Aisha out to fight Regalia and how lowly their entire elite clan must've now looked having lost to some Sabaku nobody, especially in such a shameful manner. Sister of their prodigy and future hope of the entire clan whined like a baby and while it may have been due to an illusion cast by her opponent the civilians would not see it that way.</p><p>That night however quarrels of entirely different matter occupied Jiou's room. Right after the young Uchiha prodigy calmed his sister down and listened to the young whippersnapper scream in anger over how embarrassed she was, almost like her childish shyness was taken away together with her dignity, Jiou's father entered the room and asked for an audience with him. Jiou once again tried explaining to Aisha just why her opponent spoke so rudely but the capricious brat didn't relent and her anger did not cease one bit. After a worrisome sight, the young man left her room heading for his own.</p><p>"Have you decided who will you invite to the ball?" his father angrily asked, while he was clearly annoyed by that day's fiasco, he was also too proud in his daughter's previously unseen display of skill to scold her any more than public humiliation did.</p><p>"No, nor do I intend to. I do not seek love, I seek power, isn't that why you gave birth to me, isn't that what you are so proud of?" the Uchiha prodigy asked, clearly stepping over the line but caring very little. He was not loved, he was not given birth to or respected for his social skills or some special bond of his father with his mother, he was only alive because he was supposed to be the best his clan had – strongest male bonding with the strongest female, the greatest Uchiha elite to be born in centuries.</p><p>"That is exactly why I and your mother wish for you to find love, son. Was my lesson about the source of Uchiha power lost on you? Must I repeat it?" Aziz angrily tapped the young man's forehead as if trying to hammer the lesson in with his fingers.</p><p>"The greatest source of Uchiha strength is their unparalleled power of love. That is the dumbest thing I've heard in my life. I consider your little family bond to be mostly Platonic, at least as far as mother and your love is concerned, and yet I've achieved greater power than most Uchiha manage in their entire lifespans, that's because like my sister or your brother they fall victims to their own power and stop seeking for more. They enjoy it and flaunt it in their opponent's faces, I care little for such things..." Jiou pushed his father's arm away and tried to walk away from him but his father grabbed his elbow.</p><p>"Son... That is why I wish for you to uncover the greatest power of the Uchiha – the Mangekyou Sharingan and as the scriptures say the key to that power is through love!" the old man yelled out waving around like an old creep which he was, how this pathetic old bag of bones could've once been the mightiest Uchiha in the world was beyond Jiou's understanding.</p><p>"I see, well then, do you think so little of our clan that this "Mangekyou Sharingan" was not awakened for entire ages? Where was it all this time? Truly there must've been at least one of us who loved strong enough to awaken it!" Jiou angrily yanked his elbow but his father's grip did not falter, the old man had more strength in him than his appearance could've suggested.</p><p>"That's because it may not be the only element... I may happen to know... The finishing touch of the formula but true unparalleled Uchiha love is a key component. One must also experience... Something else entirely..." Aziz whimpered like a widow talking about the loss of her beloved.</p><p>"Don't tell me you knew the secret of the Mangekyou those entire years but never willed to awaken it? What could be so incredibly scary to shake the mighty Aziz Uchiha off of the idea of inheriting the power of Uchiha unheard of for centuries?" Jiou laughed out in a joking tone but the look on his father's face betrayed that this was no joking topic for the old man. After witnessing the look on his father's face the young man lowered his head and turned away.</p><p>"Very well, I shall wed this Regalia girl from today, the one with all those rumors floating around her. She's incredibly strong and does not flaunt that power needlessly, she appears to be a person I can tolerate. Perhaps in a couple of years this "true Uchiha love" shall peek its head" Jiou smiled.</p><p>"I warn you son, do not play with this. If this Regalia invites no feelings of love towards you and you only speak thusly to make me calm myself there is no use for it. May as well declare out loud that Mangekyou Sharingan does not interest you like your old man to whom the price of acquiring it seemed too steep" the old man shook his hand as a warning to his son.</p><p>"One more thing, let's say I would be interested in that sort of power, if true love is all it needs, I do feel like I love you, mother and Aisha sometimes. Would you three not qualify for this "price"?" Jiou asked purely out of curiosity, the air whistled around him as his father's fists pummeled his face a couple of times before the boy even had a chance to react sending him down on the floor.</p><p>"Don't even think about that, ever. The price is too inhuman to pay even when the woman one loves is concerned, the family is out of the question entirely!" Aziz declared and left the hall. Jiou got back on his feet and laughed to himself.</p><p>"Regalia it is then..." he said to himself and then laughed out again.</p><hr/><p>The very next evening the great Kazekage inauguration ball was already firing up. Jiou was noticed and invited to dance by countless young women seeking his attention but the young man decided to follow his father's advice and stop playing around. He needed to find that specific young woman who has piqued his interest and the one that may have fit his father's description of "true love". The young man still had no clue as to what exactly the other part of the equation was, he just hoped that his old man would not bring that secret to his tomb.</p><p>"Regalia, so you got the invitation then? I have to say I remember you from the Academy but our paths seem to have gone separate ways once you left to the Land of Tea..." Jiou faked a smile approaching the young woman in an impressive red dress he had noticed among all the guests.</p><p>"If by invitation you mean your Uchiha cohorts following me around the whole time and insisting on doing my hair, makeup and paying for my dress... Yes, it was a lovely invitation but it'd have been even lovelier if my friend could've made it, I thought she had the invitation?" the young Sabaku lady smiled uncomfortably. Her well done black hair and red eyeshadow combined with the striking job that the Uchiha assistants did on her made her feel quite out of her comfort zone in the ball.</p><p>"Yes, well, despite her rather important family roots she is quite bothersome..." Jiou nodded, "You are the only one I care to entertain myself with".</p><p>"Uchiha modesty in all its glory..." Regalia smiled deceitfully as the smile came while trying to offend her host just so she could see his true intentions. A man like that would not have invited her there without a reason.</p><p>"Well, in my defense, I do truly love you and therefore wish to appear more than I actually am. I thought that was the widely accepted custom of courtship?" the Uchiha prodigy bowed extending the young lady his hand.</p><p>"That is rather quick..." Regalia accepted the invitation by taking the hand and following Jiou's lead onto the dance floor. She wasn't sure why she accepted his offer to come here or to play this game, whatever it was. Maybe it was just refreshing to see all those other girls who constantly dissed her feel jealous of her for once, maybe she just liked the guy deep inside. As far as the girl was concerned curiosity was all she felt.</p><p>"Well, that is why I invite you to dance before I propose..." Jiou smiled.</p><p>"You don't dance nearly well enough to skip the drinking phase"</p><p>"There is a drinking phase? I was not informed of that..."</p><hr/><p>One couldn't have been entirely sure if the evening progressed more awkwardly or magically for the two. On one hand, Jiou did have this strange confidence and he always made the impression that while he didn't really need this relationship he wanted it. Such strange appearance and act were quite strange to Regalia who was always widely regarded as an outcast around whom everything blew up and fell down when the man with the eyes of red came for her. However, the young Sabaku prodigy also had the shame of seeing the eyes of Jiou's sister every time the two passed her on the dance floor. The young one appeared to have held quite the grudge against her after the big fight...</p><p>"Well, are we now ready for the marriage and eventually the "true love" phase?" Jiou asked after flipping up a small cup of rice wine. Both Regalia and Jiou have had more than their fair share of those and yet it wasn't like any of them needed it to say it how they thought it.</p><p>"Look... All this... It's really lovely and you're really cool and this is basically the dream of every girl ever but... Well, it's not really a "but", it's more like a..."</p><p>"I don't like "buts". Do make it not a "but"..." Jiou angrily shook his head downing another cup of rice wine.</p><p>"I'm trying to, don't just stop me and then ask me to keep going... Well, I'm sure you've heard the rumors about me, that everything I do ends up in things around me being destroyed and people around me getting killed" Regalia decided to see how her strangely charming new friend would react if she told him the truth about her, maybe later if it went bad she could've just played it all down to the excessive amounts of alcohol in her blood at the moment, not that any of them had reached the excessive point then but a woman's life was not above a little lie and acting...</p><p>"You know I've been thinking, you always wish to control time with your sand, I mean that's why you have that genjutsu thing with it right? I was thinking what if you increased..." Jiou started mumbling something unrelated before Regalia placed her finger on his lips but he gently pushed it away.</p><p>"The speed of the sand to where it moved past the speed of light and so then you could actually manipulate the time around the area where you use it without suffering the risks that the speed of light places on the human body... Sorry, your topic was boring so I just changed it..." Jiou finished his explanation and then shrugged.</p><p>"No, you have to hear this. Those Jashinists in the Land of Tea, they weren't killed by me, they were killed by a man who is after me. A man you would need to accept as a part of your reality if you decided to actually love me"</p><p>"Wait, I still reserve the right to kill this man and delete that part of reality, right?" Jiou joked but then saw Regalia's terrified eyes and realized she was telling the truth.</p><p>"You don't understand, he's not like anyone someone can meet in this world. He is completely invincible every time I tried to fight him, he always finds me. He's a sensor I think... He eats chakra of people but, for some reason, mine is incredibly tasty to him which is why he chooses to keep me barely alive each time he catches me so that he could have some more of it once it regenerates. Every time he touches me it feels like... Like being desecrated in the worst way possible, like he tears everything positive and bright about me and devours it like an animal. Several times he mentioned being a "predator of ninja"..." Regalia almost broke down into tears with the few wet drops that fell out from her eyes dragging a bunch of her make up with it coloring her face crimson red as if she cried bloody tears.</p><p>"Sir, I've not yet seen your invitation..." somewhere further away an unintelligible complaint of a bouncer reached the guests.</p><p>"Well, I suppose part of loving someone "truly" includes killing whoever bothers them, I'll do that then if you agree to become my wife..." Jiou nonchalantly waved his palm around.</p><p>Right after the young man finished a loud splatting noise echoed as the clothes of each guest around the entry point dyed with the blood of the bouncer. Regalia turned her head around shocked by the crunchy sound of the scene as her eyes opened wide and her weightless lips flipped over to whisper.</p><p>"Not now..."</p><p>A well-dressed gentleman stood in the center of the entry, his fist was right where the persistent bouncer's head once was before an effortless backhand swing demolished it into a burst of blood similar to how a bubble bursts from the pressure. The oversized man towering to almost twice the size of a normal person was smiling awkwardly with his eyes fixed on Regalia and his tuxedo was completely surrounded by a black, shroud-like substance that was coming off from his pores, the only clearly intelligible feature of his frame were those demonic glowing red eyes, like two infernal light bulbs with no irises to them...</p><p>The Kazekage inauguration ball was about to turn into a literal bloodbath.</p>
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<a name="section0139"><h2>139. The Stars That Died Out</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To a neutral observing party it would not have appeared that Jiou was at all worried about this towering man emanating mysterious dark shroud and staring straight into the petrified eyes of Regalia. The young woman gently slipped off the chair she was sitting on and prepared to bolt. Right before her mad dash towards the door began her hand was gently caught and stopped, Jiou softly turned her face at his own and pressed his forehead against hers.</p><p>"Is this any way to live a life? Running? Leaving everyone around you to die? I shall free you of this life and then you must promise to be my wife" the Uchiha prodigy whispered to her. Regalia's face, petrified with fear, nodded in agreement.</p><p>The giant demonic man took a step forward before a scythe bounced off of his body leaving a shallow gash. A long-haired man stepped in front of him and pulled the scythe back as it was held on a long steel wire. No blood dripped out from the man's wound, it appeared like the scythe barely even cut through his skin.</p><p>"Protect the Kazekage!" Akasuna Mugao, the man who would become the next Kazekage after the one being inaugurated that day died of lung sickness years later ordered the other Jounin gathered at the ball. A couple of dozens of Sharingan activated in a crowd of Jounin as the ninja gathered at the party surrounded the infernal giant who just waltzed into the ball and committed a casual yet most foul murder.</p><p>"Your chakra is too bland to satisfy me, step aside" a strong toned voice came off of the three-meter tall giant who had to hunch slightly to fit into the room. The cut on his chest closed almost instantly as the skin tied together with other strands of skin. The voice of Regalia's demonic pursuer seemed to be quite convincing as Chuunin and even Jounin took steps back in intimidation despite most of Sunagakure's elite ninja being inside the ballroom.</p><p>"If my chakra infused scythe cannot hurt you, let's see how you like the toughest armor and the sharpest blade in the Universe – the Neutron Shogun!" Mugao's fingers twitched as his tuxedo got torn apart, steel parts shot from under his formal attire and covered the young Jounin up building bulk and size to match that of the mysterious giant who was his opponent.</p><p>"A man dressing in tin foil to avoid being crushed by forces he does not understand, step aside before I am forced to strip you apart limb by limb..." the giant exclaimed calmly placing his fist up in front as if threatening to punch the hulking armor of Mugao's. And an impressive structure it was – a dark red glowing steel alloy shaped and modeled after the typical armor a shogun of Iron Country wore, bits and pieces of the armor glowed as if miniature fusion reactions transpired on the armor firing off jets of pure unrestrained energy.</p><p>The armor shot forward with a cocked back fist as it emitted a cybernetic roar. It moved so fast that windows exploded in bits and pieces of glass and the floor below it set on fire, walls cracked and the roof started dropping rubble. The civilians had started to flee long before the first punch was thrown however and the ninja inside were fully able to take care of themselves.</p><p>A blinding all covering flash was emitted from the armor's blow, a shockwave fired out digging deep into the ground below but before it created an abyss reaching the planet's core it was soon absorbed by the man it was aimed at in its entirety and barely managed to decimate the marble floor the two stood on. The other ninja leaped back to avoid the all-destroying aftermath of the armor's crushing blow. Mugao was one of the most powerful ninja in the village and the assailant was a fool to pick a fight with him and not even bother dodging his blow.</p><p>After the blinding flash of light cleared up and all the smoke settled down the giant just stood there with his chest placed still, the armored fist collided with the man leaving not even a single dent on him. Mugao's armor could not even move, the man inside was shaking in shock and disbelief.</p><p>"I...Impossible... I modeled this armor after the neutron star, I imitated its molecular structure by creating and studying it inside a chakra barrier! I created an entirely new steel alloy based on its molecular structure - Neutronium! Neutron Shogun should be indestructible, it takes all of my chakra just to move this heavy thing!" the cybernetic voice freaked out from inside the armor. The massive arm of his opponent slowly reached out and grabbed the neutronium arm.</p><p>"A feeble attempt, lifeless and artificial trash, simple iron infused with chakra, something of life and substance is harder than this chunk of rubbish..." the man yanked the arm clean off leaving Mugao's fleshly arm exposed. The Neutron Shogun fired off jets of flame trying to escape the man's grip but the giant yanked the armor right back and peeled all the neutronium plates and parts right off crushing them right in front of the man in his crushing grip and tossing them aside.</p><p>Jiou's eye winked right at his sister, once an Uchiha opened their Sharingan they observed the entire surrounding missing not a single detail, the Uchiha prodigy had not to worry that his sister may have missed his signal.</p><p>Two red blurs flashing at the man at a blinding speed could've been picked up by anyone possessing the top level of perception as the image of the two siblings froze right up and close to the man's neck and etched itself into everyone's minds. Jiou and Aisha coordinated their assaults aiming their chakra-infused blades at the man's neck, they could've sliced through virtually any substance with such an attack, even if the man was able to tear away the toughest known substance in the Universe, the presence of chakra infusion in their attack instantly made their attack more lethal.</p><p>A loud clang deafened the ears of everyone observing the battle forcing every ninja still hoping to overcome their crippling fear of this giant man so that they could have their turn at fighting this man to cover their ears. Small bits and strips of the giant's neck skin tore leaving shallow cuts but not even a single drop of blood fell, Jiou's and Aisha's swords seemingly exploded from the pressure falling onto the floor in pieces.</p><p>"Your chakras feel... Different... Yes, I may keep you around for a while, you'll be worthy nourishment..." the demonic man smiled, his white teeth could've been seen through the black mysterious shroud that covered him when he was fighting, combined with his ever-present glowing red eyes it made for a terrifying combination of features.</p><p>Aisha collapsed on her knees, she could not believe that hers and brother's combination attack was completely ineffective against this man. Suddenly she felt her father's arms forcefully pulling her out of harm's way, a soft peck on the top of her head informed the young girl that her father was proud of her bravery and strength.</p><p>"All Uchiha, let us show this fool real Hell!" Aziz ordered them, "All those who can use Fire Style jutsu join in!" he yelled out as more ninja than it was possible to count went through their hand seals and breathed out a Fire Style jutsu of some sort combining all of them into a vortex of flames as hot as a thousand dying stars. Possibly hot enough to destroy vast regions of all that existed had it not been for the highly coordinated and controlled flow of the chakra that purely fired off from the user and was absorbed by the opponent in its entirety.</p><p>Even with the highly coordinated flow of chakra and unparalleled mastery, a beam of whirling flames fired off into the sky, passing through the Moon and leaving into unspecified regions of space causing unknown and cataclysmic amounts of damage. The searing hot inferno of all Sunagakure ninja who possessed the ability to use Fire Release surrounded the man in a technique that would've annihilated anything that could've ever existed even before it was cast by the searing heat of air surrounding it alone. And yet...</p><p>As the hotter than the destruction of a thousand stars flame ceased the man remained standing without as much as his clothes searing off or losing a single eyebrow, his body was almost glowing in fiery light, he was twitching and writhing around, struggling to contain the amount of chakra, his eyes took in the fiery blinding glow blinding several fools idiotic enough to have not closed their eyes gazing at the spectacle of untold power and destruction unfolding in front of them but then... He calmed down and the fiery glow turned back at the black shroud of darkness that he always wore and flame-colored eyes changed back to their usual blood-red glow.</p><p>"Men of a bland taste, all of you..." the giant's fear-inspiring tone whispered yet there was not a single man or woman who had not heard it. The man clapped effortlessly sending a powerful shockwave through the ranks of the ninja splattering all of their bodies on what remained of the walls around them. "Unworthy of me feasting on your essences..." he concluded as the giant stood there hunched over the room filled with blood and guts.</p><p>Regalia was afraid to open her eyes but the fact that she felt fear informed her that she must've been still alive. The woman blinked and opened her ears. A tall woman in a divine white dress with pitch-black flowing hair and an active Sharingan held the Sabaku kunoichi in her arms.</p><p>"My son claims he loves you, you shall not die tonight" the woman smiled and placed the girl down, "Go, pick up Jiou and Aisha and protect them with your life, you said this man is after you, you've evaded him for so long, evade him this time, I shall do my best to buy you time..." she said as the woman moved forward so far that Regalia was completely unable to see her eyes. And those were the single set of eyes she wanted to see – the eyes of a mother willing to sacrifice herself for her family. The eyes with the willpower to inspire to overcome even the greatest of challenges.</p><p>Aziz was kneeling in front of the giant in disbelief, everyone he ever knew, every member of the Uchiha clan in Sunagakure destroyed and disintegrated or splattered on the wall without this man having to throw a single punch. He had seen those very men fight for days and weeks in wars where explosions as strong as dying planets were casual occurrence and hundreds of chakra infused swords danced over their flesh every couple of seconds. Yet a single clap eliminated them all faster than he could perceive what had happened.</p><p>"You wonder why you're still alive? Your chakra is relatively mild yet not bland, you shall suffice as an appetizer for now which was why I allowed you to live" the giant thundered out in his regal voice as he towered over the kneeling old man. A deafening explosion tossed Aziz aside, his body instantly forced chakra to augment his body so that he was not torn apart and disassembled on a subatomic level from the exploding shockwave.</p><p>"Megaton Punch!" his wife roared out as the shockwave cleared up with her fist being placed on the giant's face yet not even being able to twitch a single muscle on it.</p><p>"So you've copied Chestnut Hanasaku's Ton Punch taijutsu style with your Sharingan? But the name was all wrong, it was at least fifty times stronger than a megaton..." the giant spoke indifferently, the woman described as the most powerful female member of the Sunagakure branch of the Uchiha leaped back and prepared for another attack.</p><p>"Yes, I've fought her during the war and took a long while to record her techniques, I record every jutsu that defeats me so that I cannot be beaten by it again..." the woman nodded as she shook her palm around as the aftershock from the punch she just threw broke the bones in her entire arm and even a couple of ribs. She couldn't believe that Chestnut Hanasaku had punches stronger than this, namely one incredibly powerful jutsu that the woman swore she'd never use for she did not possess the healing ability of Hanasaku. Copying the woman's abilities was a mistake... No one but the madwoman herself could fight like that.</p><p>"My husband is no appetizer for any monster such as you, at the very worst case he is the main course!" the woman angrily yelled out as she focused the chakra augmentation to keep her right arm useable, she needed to throw an immeasurable number of times stronger punch and it may as well kill her but she had no other choice. It would hurt more than anything, even tossing a simple Megaton Punch jutsu broke her own arm and her entire right side and she was about to unleash Hanasaku's ace technique... This would hurt more than anything else...</p><p>"No, your husband is not the main course, your son and your daughter will be..." the giant smiled once again letting his pearl-white smile be clearly visible from the dark shroud surrounding him. It appeared like the man could control that shroud at will as when he entered the ball before this cataclysm of untold levels unfolded he was not covered by it.</p><p>"I will send you beyond the reaches of known Universe where you will never find your way back!" the Uchiha woman whined out through the crippling pain in the right side of her body as with a couple of leaps back she covered multiple miles and winded up for another punch. She wasn't even one-thousandth of Chestnut Hanasaku's level but she saw the woman sending an entire battlefield into the farthest reaches of space with this final punch technique when Konoha's forces were being overwhelmed by Iwagakure's forces.</p><p>Gently the woman's steps sent her forward, faster than she or any other Uchiha could keep up with, maybe she was approaching even the speed of Iron Country samurai? Perhaps she was moving just as fast as those light speed swordsmen able to freeze time itself as they moved? The woman smiled as she hoped so certainly... The first lady of the Uchiha appeared right up in the man's face and tossed her punch, knowing fully well that her enemy would not bother to try and dodge, after all, why would he? When he took the fiery chakra as strong as thousands of exploding stars what did he have to fear in this world?</p><p>"Yottaton Punch!" the woman's lips whispered the name of the infernal jutsu that sent an entire island beyond the reaches of any telescope any country had. Silence took over the world around the two, almost instantly the woman went blind from the flash of erupting chakra that was quickly transferred to her opponent and him alone. She had to be careful when dealing with such powerful attacks just like her clansmen were, if she didn't control the flow of the immeasurable amount of chakra flowing through her she could've caused untold destruction but she had to do this to protect her village, to protect her husband, to protect her children.</p><p>Jiou's mother screamed so loud in pain that she deafened herself and took away her own voice falling lifeless on the ground in front of her unfazed enemy. Her entire body tore up and simply dissolved into dust so small that only the Sharingan could've picked up their existence.</p><p>"That wasn't very pleasant..." the Leech fixed his bowtie and proceeded to walk forward heading for the escaped prey. They may have escaped that night but they would not outrun him for long, he'll find them, eventually, he always did. He sensed all the chakra in the Universe but once he tasted a specific chakra he could always tell it from any chakra anywhere in the Universe. It was like a man seeing millions of people but once he was slapped by one he could see and identify the man anywhere due to their unique features. Except instead of identifying the person by their scars and tattoos he identified them by how their chakra felt.</p><p>Everything had a specific taste. Any living natural substance was tied by a chakra bond. What these fools, these ninja prey did not know was that all in nature was filled with chakra, the chakra was a universal force that was there long before ninja and even people came to be and that would exist long after them. They thought chakra was unique to them and to a point they were right. The chakra of a rock in a desert was different from theirs, to a chakra gourmet like him that natural and primitive chakra of rock would feel like a rotten egg. Eating such transgression against nature would've been worse than the death of starvation. However, these ninja thought that their chakra was unique when in fact it was chakra that made them a part of this Universe. It was the source and the feedback that connected it all.</p><p>People crafted artificial lifeless materials trying to copy the strongest structures they found in nature but they didn't realize that created lifeless matter is not worth nearly as much as a simple lump of iron filled with chakra. It was not the fancy name or the emulated molecular structure that made power, that made importance. It was that warm natural bond, that feedback of chakra that made everything special. A simple iron sword of chakra could've pierced through even the toughest artificial neutron star shield. Perhaps one day these naïve fools would realize that... The man slowly made his way through the desert without looking back at the bodies and the destruction he left in his wake.</p><p>"Kazekage-sama..." a Jounin spoke to his leader on top of a desert hill.</p><p>"This is a nightmare... Our entire military force, all of our decades of militaristic breakthroughs, our elite Uchiha branch decimated..." the man mumbled to himself. He pulled out a white hanky and coughed up blood, placing it back into his pocket.</p><p>"Shall we message the other villages, ask for help? Perhaps combined military effort could beat this man, this monster?" the Jounin whispered to the Kazekage.</p><p>"Do not be foolish, we cannot tell them that a single man decimated most of our military elites. Think of what it would do to our image, Iwagakure and the other countries are just waiting for a signal to pounce on us and eat us up. They're waiting for just a moment like this. This event must remain a secret... I and my predecessors are trying to return Sunagakure to its once Great Ninja Village roots, if we let this news loose now all of that work would go down to nothing" Kazekage grunted out loud wiping the blood off of his lip with his sleeve.</p><p>The lone giant disappeared into a sandstorm, wandering the desert and looking for prey. Far away a lone crippled old man followed by his two children and a woman followed him.</p><p>"You shouldn't have gotten involved..." Regalia mumbled out to herself. "Now you've also placed yourself in his sight"</p><p>Aisha let go of her father and pounced on the woman to slap the life out of her before a strand of golden sand wrapped around her neck and lifted her into the air to wail around uselessly.</p><p>"You bitch, you brought this onto us, you brought him to us, you ruined all of our lives!" she yelled out, for a girl her age she perhaps realized the best just how much all of their lives had changed from this moment. From now on they'll keep living but they'll live as prey running from their hunter, they'll be chased until the end of their days. They'll need to be ready to defend their lives and run at any moment and a second of serenity will be a luxury they cannot have.</p><p>"Language, Aisha..." the old man tried to calm his daughter but could not find the right words, was he to blame for it really? Everything he knew for certain was crushed and ruined. There were no more Uchiha in Sunagakure beside them, there was nothing left, even his wife gave up her life in vain...</p><p>"The fuck do you care about language? Our lives can end at any point now, mom's dead, everyone's dead... May as well not bother holding ourselves by fucking chains if we're to die at any point..." the girl cried out jumping on Regalia's neck for comfort after the sand let her go. The young woman's arm wrapped around the neck of her "husband's" sister.</p><p>"Yeah..." Jiou said. Regalia turned to him curiously.</p><p>"Yeah, I'll take you as my wife, invincible monster chasing us and all that included..."</p><p>Old man Aziz tried to smile but that night brought too many tragedies for his smile to resemble anything a human smile should look like.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Ten years later:</strong>
</p><p>Jiou roared out in pain and fear as his only functional eye opened up, the first sight that greeted his awakened eye was his father lifted into the air and shaking as the giant man's, the Leech's as the four used to call him, embrace sucked the very life out of him. Blood was pouring onto the floor from some wound that the monster left on the old man. Carelessly the Leech tossed the barely living body of the old man for Jiou and coughed.</p><p>"He tasted a little mild, I suppose a little bit of you shall be just the right aftertaste..." he thundered out as Jiou held his dying father in his arms still refusing to believe what he had just seen.</p><p>"The pain of loss..." Aziz's dried out lips whispered, Jiou leaned up to his old man to hear his final words as the monster approached him, he had but moments before the monster's grip would lock onto his own body sucking his life essence out of him as well.</p><p>"The final element of Mangekyou is... The pain of losing that which you truly love..." his father's last words ignited some hope to Jiou's heart, as the Leech's reach extended the young man was no longer there, just his father's dead body. The Leech surrounded himself in the black shroud and gave chase to the young man... Much has changed over these ten years but one thing remained and would always remain a constant...</p><p>The chase continued.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0140"><h2>140. All Ways Lead To Bliss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sound of a small squirt of liquid splattering over the castle ruins made any creepers lurking on the walls, waiting for another one of their kind to creep by just so they could feast on their insides, creep away. It was not a gruesome death that stood behind the noise and it was not blood that colored the ancient structure walls. It was Kusagoro spitting over his shoulder in frustration.</p><p>"Shit, I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere..." he cursed as he was moving quite fast, and yet he still hasn't found his son and the others that accompanied him. The only explanation that with all his speed would've still kept him behind was getting lost. He wasn't able to really get into his speed reserves because the place was filled with non-functional traps, sharp twists and turns, and bottomless pits that went nowhere. He was still faster than those twerps could've possibly been...</p><p>The sound of squirming alerted Kusaguro as his entire body was instantly surrounded by golden sand. The golden grains concentrated into a structure that resembled a cocoon of some sort, a spherical coffin of death that lifted into the air.</p><p>"Desert Funeral..." Regalia's cold voice chanted out as the sphere was crushed grinding anyone inside to dust. The technique was lethal to ninja even when used by genin, strong enough to grind stone to dust, strong enough to tear steel apart. When used by Regalia and her unmatched golden sand it should've been enough...</p><p>And yet the man simply slumped onto the ground, he appeared relatively unharmed except for a scratch on his forehead and one above his eye that sent blood spurting down his face. His mercenary vest which was strong enough to withstand kunai and sword slashes was also torn up and now less useful for protection. Had the woman used such a relatively simple technique on someone as world-breaking as a Tailed Beast it'd still have felt some pressure... This golden sand was dangerous but, to the man, it felt more like a nuisance.</p><p>Normally, such an event would've invited excitement to Kusagoro's lips, maybe even joy that his abilities were somewhat challenged. After all, having fun like his old days was the goal, normal forced suspension from his ninja duties would've killed him of boredom and while he still craved the magician's head he did feel some gratitude to the girl. If it wasn't for her he'd have not had this much to do...</p><p>"Why are you here?" Kusagoro asked with a serious face, the face of a killer who was ready to burst into emotion at any point despite his current expression looking quite lifeless and bloodthirsty calm.</p><p>"I'm looking for the girl, the magician girl, who is currently looking for the Box. Judging from her movements she knows what she's doing, she's moving in a singular direction and only stops briefly when her dormant chakra takes a significant dip to regain her breath" Regalia replied. After seeing this man only receive minor scratches that were more visually repulsive than actually effective at keeping him down she felt like picking a fight with him may not have been too wise.</p><p>"Hmph, I'm looking for my son and his party. They're a safer bet. The little brat is slippery and crafty. If you can control her friends you can control her. Sadly, I won't let you lay a finger on my son." Kusagoro lifted his palm forward, his palm extended and his fingers stuck together in a mash of flesh as his hand formed a giant hole in the center and his skin at the end formed a cannon of wooden-like texture. A blue ball of chakra started glowing at the end. Yet the man did not fire his technique, he stood and watched the woman for whatever reason.</p><p>"Back out, Konoha Jounin. Yes, we can tell you're too skilled to be genin following the girl. She must've done something to annoy the Hokage and we aren't interested in her per se. We only wish what she knows, namely about the box, more specifically where it is. Whatever you wish to do with her is of no interest to us." Regalia's skin became dried out and cracked, her arms dissolved into golden sandy dust and created a dust cloud behind her as the woman resembled a creature made of both sand and flesh alike. The golden sand from the woman's gourd mixed in with her natural sand creating more golden sand with a mere contact of the two sand grains.</p><p>"This box... An awful lot of really interesting people want it, why? What is it exactly?" Kusagoro's emotionless face finally twisted with a smile, he asked the scary question.</p><p>This whole time he followed Mana and her party without actually knowing too much about the box they were looking for, they just knew that it interested them and because it was an adventure waiting to happen it interested Kusagoro's crew too. He didn't even bother asking the kids before about what the box was, they would've carried that intel to their graves if they had to... Now this woman was interested in a peaceful solution so they may as well have had a brief chat and seen where it went.</p><p>"The Box of Ultimate Bliss is a wishing artifact. It is said to fulfill one wish of its founder and then disappear beyond the reaches of the dimensional and universal walls only to reappear again at a random location. I sense a great disturbance in the girl's chakra, I theorize she may be seeking it to restore her ability to control it, most likely caused due to abusing chakra augmentation, I've sensed similar disorders before..." Regalia explained still standing ready for the man's next move. His face looked too rough and barbaric to avoid making an unnecessary mess out of things, he was going to do something very stupid most likely.</p><p>"Hmph, well then it's of no use to me. All that I want is to have a little fun and finding the damned thing first and winning the hunting game would already fulfill that desire of mine..." Kusagoro smiled letting his hand weigh down and shape back into his human hand. He was somewhat pleased by the lady's cooperation, enough perhaps to forget that he tasked his friend of keeping her at bay and it may have cost his friend his life since she was there talking to him.</p><p>"Game? You dolt! I and my husband need the box, we wish to get rid of a monster unlike anything else in this world, a monster of a man that chases us who is capable of ending all of us in an instant, and the only reason he doesn't destroy everything in existence is that some of those things are "tasty" to him. Your own friend paid for this game with his life! Is this all just a game, just for fun to you? How can you seek the box for such a stupid reason!?" the woman lost all her cool and started screaming at the man in pure rage, letting out all the angst, all the anger she felt repressed and reserved for the man chasing her family, chasing her ever since that fateful day in Land of Tea.</p><p>Before the sentence was finished Kusagoro was no longer there, the man disappeared and reappeared behind the woman in an instant, faster than anyone that Regalia had witnessed before as the ground beneath his feet crumbled from the sheer force of him kicking off. Before she could turn around she felt her golden layer of sand armor explode and crumble as the man's blow broke not only it but also a couple of her ribs right through that armor.</p><p>"Such power..." she coughed up feeling the taste of blood in her mouth. It would've taken more than enough power to destroy a large moon to break through her emergency golden sand armor which she usually wore as an invisible layer of protection against things she couldn't see coming. She used a similar to the Transformation Jutsu technique to make the golden sand layer completely blend in with her skin. And yet the man chasing her has outrun both her husband and her sister-in-law, both of whom were some of the fastest ninja she had seen. And now it was revealed to her through this all demolishing punch that there were other ninja matching her husband in speed.</p><p>Regalia clenched her gut feeling the sharp stabbing pain coming from the previous blow and surrounded herself with a ball of golden chakra-infused sand. She felt emanating awesome pressure and air rushing all around it, more and more bumps – the man was rampaging and unleashing all of his might outside the ball trying to break it. It took four to six layers of sand to protect from a single blow and the man was punching more and more and more and more in an endless barrage of anger fuelled blows.</p><p>"I'm going to run out of chakra if I keep defending myself like this, or worse, he'll miss a punch and blow everything up... He's like a Tailed Beast this man, enough power to destroy the whole world and no responsibility using it! Just instinctual rampage" Regalia thought making her golden bubble explode violently pushing Kusagoro away into a wall. It did not seem to hurt him too much, just keep him at bay for a moment as the woman floated. She will need to use THAT against him, it was the only way...</p><p>"You're like a wailing child! Hasn't your village taught you responsibility after you've achieved that level of power? I saw your Juugo bloodline, were your clan's teachings lost on you? Don't you remember the serenity and tranquillity filled ways of your clan?" Regalia yelled out as Kusagoro angrily yanked himself out the wall he was stuck in causing a castle ruin tower to collapse. The man's feet were shifted into jet-like cannons that emanated a faint chakra flame which kept him floating above the bottomless pit below and Regalia was using her sand as a floating platform to stay floating.</p><p>"You've killed my comrade. That changes my plans, I shall kill you then find that box and use it to bring my friend back! That is the ideal Juugo way, the way of ninja bruisers!" Kusagoro roared out rushing at the woman at a much slower speed, he clearly saw how much the castle was damaged by his enraged attack and he didn't want to destroy it now that the rebirth of his friend depended on it.</p><p>"Hmph, that was what lead to Juugo being hunted by Iwagakure, your kind has reformed since then and become peaceful with nature, where is some of that tranquillity in you? Leave and you'll need to lose none more of your friends" Regalia tried appealing to Kusagoro since she didn't really wish to use her following ace technique. Still, she began molding her chakra right after uttering those words because she knew that the man was not one to see reason all too clearly.</p><p>"The other Juugo have become afraid of what they could do! Fear over their extinction made them afraid to be who they are, what kind of life is that? They act peaceful and love nature and the animals when actually their souls long for battle, at least I had enough guts to reach out for a village that found use to my abilities everyone wanted to keep hidden. Do you know what those "peaceful" Juugo do to children that do not learn the lesson of "peace and tranquillity"? They kill them before they become trouble. Before they draw attention. Is living in fear of standing out, in fear of being excellent any way to live?" Kusagoro roared out trying to punch his way through Regalia's endless waves of sand she kept bombarding him with. He did break some but then some others kept hitting him again and again, opening more and more bruises and blunt trauma.</p><p>"Those youngsters are killed because they possess the power to destroy the world at an age much earlier than they know how to use it. Slaying them is a preventative measure, everyone knows that. Everyone knows of Juugo's peaceful natures. I see that your elders killed one Juugo troublemaker too few, when a skilled ninja punches strong enough to blow up planets or cause lasting damage to the universe or the integral laws of physics we bow to they control their chakra flow, they purpose it thusly so that it flows through their opponent and nowhere else. They fight with control and finesse and preserve their precious homes. You're like a scared dog, wailing left and right making things blow up where you throw your stupidly aimed fists. I hoped to make you see reason but I'll do this world a favor and save it from blowing up next time you decide to punch an alarm clock..." Regalia said by ceasing all her sand defenses and letting the endless waves of sand fall into the abyss below.</p><p>Kusagoro roared out, a tube of wood-like texture shot out from his elbow firing a jet of chakra that propelled his fist forward at an even greater momentum, the jets on his feet shot his entire body forward charging at the woman faster than sound, faster than lightning itself. The bruiser's fist did not collide with soft and warm feminine flesh, however, he only bruised through sand sending his empowered fist full rotation around and hitting his own left side opening a bleeding wound there.</p><p>The man screamed out of pain and aimed his leg jets at the woman shooting back, a demolishing wave of chakra fired off shooting right through the woman and destroying her body made of sand, the beam of pure chakra continued to travel through the tower, splitting the heavens above and into space, hitting an unidentified planet far far away when it lost most its momentum and force leaving a large crater in it flooding the planet with magma bursting from the crater.</p><p>Kusagoro himself was sent back into the abyss opened by his previous attack. He crashed into hot waters below, apparently, the place laid on some sort of heated water source that was boiling both because of the heated by the desert sun ground and because of the depths it was in. The man felt chakra automatically being used by his body to keep his flesh from boiling as he raised himself up and leaped up sticking to a wall at the bottom of the hole. He fired off the jets on his feet to raise him back to where the woman's body dissolved into the sand just in time to see it slowly reforming.</p><p>"What the flying fuck is this? For a moment I thought it's a sand clone but it's clearly not, it's reforming plus I tracked you pretty clearly, I would've noticed you replacing yourself using Substitution Jutsu or using a clone technique..." the man inquired when suddenly he felt frozen, paralyzed and afraid. It was strange, how could a battle scare him, maybe it was an emotion placed on his affected mind? Suggested? It was genjutsu! The man's body burst with chakra that disrupted his own flow dispelling the genjutsu almost at the same time he realized he was hit by it.</p><p>"It's an incredibly complex technique, it's neither ninjutsu nor genjutsu but it has elements of both. It's a Tenketsu Shinto technique. Tenketsu Shinto is a combination of ninjutsu and genjutsu cast on oneself that allows me to manipulate my own body at a molecular level and for example – become sand when I am hit" Regalia explained as her body popped into clouds of sand that blew Kusagoro's way, the man just stood there letting the sand cut his cheeks and caress his wild hair. The man huffed angrily as the ability as explained to him sounded quite troublesome.</p><p>"A technique like that must cost a lot of chakra to maintain..." he said when suddenly his body felt paralyzed again, Kusagoro looked at his arm and witnessed it aging rapidly and drying away into dust.</p><p>The man knew it to be an illusion again, he quickly used some more chakra bursting through his system to dispel it. He was surprised by how easily the woman transferred illusions through his system using her sand, only now he understood just how dangerous she was – whenever he hit her she dissolved into the sand and remained unharmed, and yet she could use her golden sand to transfer techniques at his expense if even a single grain of sand got into his body. How was one to track all the sand in the middle of a desert?</p><p>"Not at all, it does cost some chakra to command one of my chakra nodes – the Tenketsu to activate the technique on a very small scale, then one must simply overflow that chakra node with enough chakra to cause a small shockwave signal that passes through the others and passes the signal. It can be activated quickly and efficiently" Regalia smiled a little, she took great pride in her Tenketsu Shinto technique, there were very few if any living ninja that could use Tenketsu Shinto.</p><p>It required higher than that of a medical ninja chakra control to manipulate something on a molecular level in that exact way, it also needed manual reactivation every time one's body was completely destroyed to reassemble it. The smallest miscalculation could've manipulated the body's molecules permanently transforming it into the substance one emulates causing Regalia to permanently become just a pile of sand or the smallest miscalculation of chakra amount left compared to how much was needed to reassemble her could've left her in separate places at once making what remained of her life quite miserable.</p><p>"Hmph... Well, in that case, I can't kill you because I know no way of beating your Tenketsu Shinto. I've never seen or heard of someone manipulating their own molecular structure making themselves invulnerable, however, you also have no way of beating me. Your most powerful golden sand techniques might hurt me but you can't use it inside the castle or even outside without risking it falling apart and sinking your precious box to the bottom of the abyss, also you can keep casting genjutsu and reducing your chakra level but I have chakra to beat your illusions now that I know they are coming. I have more chakra left than you so all you'd achieve is cancel out your Tenketsu Shinto leaving you fleshy and very punchable" Kusagoro laughed out from the bottom of his lungs realizing the deadlock the two were in. If only this woman did not kill his friend whom he planned very much on bringing back he could've fought her to the end of time there... He could've had so much fun!</p><p>"True..." Regalia sighed, Kusagoro turned at the corridor he was heading to when the woman's body dissolved into the sand and then reassembled with two armored minions with steel helmets and chest plates and twisted desert swords, the equipment matching that of best-equipped desert raiders. The two minions assaulted the man but with a quick flip in the air Kusagoro's kicks blew the two up into two bursts of sand.</p><p>The golden sand wielder shrugged with an innocent smile, "Can't blame a girl for trying..." when Kusagoro looked at her with a little annoyance on his face.</p><p>The woman floated up closer to the Jounin and landed on the same corridor he floated into. She lifted her palm up pointing in one direction and then turned at another.</p><p>"I am also an Advanced Sensor, I can sense anyone within two hundred meters of my sand grains and I've placed one on the magician girl so I know perfectly where she is. The sand grain she has feeds back with the others and reaches me in a chain. She is over there. Since we cannot possibly walk the same path, go the other way..." the woman suggested.</p><p>"Hmph, that glowy sand of yours is pretty handy..." Kusagoro growled angrily and then looked at the other path, "Why should I go there?" he asked curiously.</p><p>"Because I don't know what's in there. Imagine the adventure and the thrill of going that way, you may meet the magician girl and stop her from finding the box if this path cuts in with hers, you can find your son and the other Konoha genin or butt heads with me again... The possibilities are endless" she smiled playing the man just like she wanted him to be played.</p><p>"Fine... I suppose it beats walking the same way as you and us trying to kill each other every couple of seconds" the man sighed as the two parted ways heading to the different sides of a corridor that split into two paths. Five floors higher Mana was still rushing towards where she thought the throne room was, the planning of the castle reminded her a lot of the long and detailed historical analyses of the Land of Wind architecture and she couldn't feel more proud of herself for studying all of those boring books back home.</p><p>The only problem was identifying all those ruined rooms correctly but she was making way – the throne room was close, she could feel it!</p>
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<a name="section0141"><h2>141. Belated Regret</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Slowly but, at the very least, surely, Mana was progressing through the endless hallways of the castle ruins. A couple of times the floor spooked her by having a couple of spikes shoot out, large enough to pierce right through her legs and maybe even reach her abdomen but they were so few in between and so barely functional that they only provided a temporary scare. Luckily for the magician, she was using the walls for support so the few spikes that did shoot out in the center missed her by a mile. She pretty much had to use the walls to help her walk forward having the state she was in in mind.</p><p>If her experience with the architecture of that age was correct, the throne room should've been somewhere on the ground floor, however, having in mind that the throne room also must've served as the treasure chamber it should've been at a separate wing of the castle somewhere at the northern parts. It was surprising how much in common different buildings of the same era had. Mana made a sharp turn that she didn't really calculate to the end, she tripped and fell right on her front and shouted out in pain peeling her body off the ground through sheer force of will.</p><p>What her eyes saw after she stood up made her curse internally. The entire corridor in front had no floor, judging from the rather visible part where the floor led to, the corridor must've once been a trapped one, it must've once had pressure plates on the floor that when triggered sent those poor unfortunate skeletons down below to their spiky demise. The water below was still evaporating even now, it must've vapored away and then gathered at the colder ceiling and then dropped back down to the heating source. Not only did those poor souls fell on giant spikes larger than their whole bodies but the water they fell into was also boiling.</p><p>"Someone really didn't want anyone to find whatever's in that throne room..." Mana thought to herself trying to find a way to make it across. Her fingernails were already bleeding and almost peeled off from the time she crawled the castle walls from outside the good old fashioned way, using her boots and torn up and scratched bleeding fingers.</p><p>Slowly the magician walked up to the wall on the other side, right up to where the big fall lurked there waiting for another careless visitor to claim.</p><p>"Well, if I was a big fancy castle snob, I'd want an easy way into my king's throne room, scaling the walls and ceilings couldn't have been the ideal way to pass this place..." Mana spoke to herself as she softly stroked the right side wall trying to find some pressure plate or switch that triggered something. Her foot accidentally stepped on a strangely elevated brick that closed the drop with a floor made of wet stones.</p><p>Mana smiled.</p><p>"I didn't see any rocks below, the floor doesn't crumble, it goes into the wall, it's got to be a deceitful switch... The floor would most likely just close back in once I trigger the pressure plates again" she loved every single moment of this. Even when her entire body was beaten and broken, even when she felt like passing out from blood loss and pain of merely staying on her feet, Mana loved trying to beat this puzzle of death. Finally, the magician's hand pressed against a stone on the wall that was supposed to open a passageway but the wall was so old that instead of opening it simply broke off and partly blocked the girl's path.</p><p>Through pain and a lot of teeth grinding Mana slipped through the small gap that was still left for her to slip through. It wasn't ideal but she had to be careful not to rub her body too hard against the stone as it could've just all broke into bits and crushed her beneath it. Try as hard as she may have, Mana's body still got covered with cuts and bruises from slipping under the collapsed stone wall. Not that new scratches and scars bothered her at this point, the pain was already so strong that new scratches barely even registered, she just left her bloody mark on the collapsed wall.</p><p>Slowly the girl made her way through the passageway and pressed a wooden switch that collapsed another wall instead of merely opening her. After a brief sigh and a moment to catch her breath and let the rampaging pain settle down somewhat, Mana continued her walk forward. She looked around, this was strange, the room she was in was the treasure room but it made no sense. She had figured that the desert king would've kept his treasure somewhere inside his throne room, not made his treasury the default access to his throne room.</p><p>Right up there for her reach on a small platform stood a gigantic black cube, four or maybe even more times larger and wider than the girl that was admiring it. The black box was covered with some sort of beastly or demonic ornaments and had huge decorative fangs that looked large enough to impale someone on. The whole structure looked like it was made of some sort of gemstone, it felt almost like black marble or a slightly bleaker onyx. The magician smiled and sighed. This could have been it, the box!</p><p>"Step away from the box, girl..." Mana heard a voice behind her, terrified she turned around only to see wild golden grains of sand whirling in a vortex that looked like a miniature sandstorm that then gathered into a single feminine shape which soon gained substance and color. An impressive looking woman in hair matching Mana's in their darkness and of rather similar skin color but with much more make up on her face and a much less conservative view on clothes stood in front of her with an angry look on her face.</p><p>"You're one of the Sunagakure ninja that attacked Kusaguro's squad... Why? What does Sunagakure want from this place? Didn't you guys know that the box was here? I mean it was recorded in some pretty old sources, you had to know..." Mana tried to stall for time when a violent explosion of sand coming from the woman herself knocked her on her back. The woman slowly and confidently walked up to Mana and stepped on the girl just to keep her from standing up, she didn't apply pressure, she must've somehow known that the girl's insides were pretty banged up and didn't want to further injure her.</p><p>"Those old sources you must've read it from were inside the Forest of Death's archives, whoever recorded of the box's existence wasn't aligned to a single village. He hoped that the box would remain hidden if he hid the box in one location but placed clues about that location in another country. He was a pretty smart fellow, even if someone figured it out centuries from when the source was written they'd just assume that the box was already claimed since the location was so well known to another country..." Regalia answered and then walked up to the box spreading her arms and admiring the structure in all its beauty.</p><p>"I thought it was supposed to be as large as a building... Still, seeing it like this is impressive, how do I activate it?" the woman asked without even turning at Mana.</p><p>The girl grunted in pain as she sat back up on her behind and tried to check on all her reopened wounds and see if any of them were leaking too much blood for her to not be worried over.</p><p>"You can't, this isn't the original, it can't be" Mana explained when Regalia turned back at Mana and walked up to her lifting the girl up and pressing her against a wall with her elbow, the woman placed some pressure on the girl's throat taking away her air supply for a moment.</p><p>"I have no time for games, the man after us might follow us here, he always follows us wherever we go. We need the box to make him go away, where is it, I'm in no mood to play around, I'm warning you" the Sunagakure ninja slowly and firmly stated right up to Mana's face letting the pressure loose when she was done talking. Mana fell to her knees and started coughing up blood at rather alarming rates.</p><p>"Hmmm, your chakra level is really low. You can't have much left in you, even if you do activate the box the only wish that'd make sense for you in your current state is one that would keep you alive. I've seen you worry about your friends. You let yourself be beaten to this state to buy them time. You're a kind person, I know you are. The man after us does not negotiate, he does not sleep or eat or do anything other than take away innocent lives. Don't you wish to make the world a better place, make a noble sacrifice and rid this world of that monster instead of just selfishly healing yourself?" the woman once again revealed how well she was able to read people from one or two signs she picked up.</p><p>Mana stared at the small puddle of her own blood on the rocky floor. What if the woman was right? All that she wanted was to leave this world a better one that she found it after being born. What if this was her way to make a difference, to leave a mark? What if by ridding this world of that thing she could've actually made a difference? It didn't matter, her heart was already nagging her to do the right thing and selfishly asking for her chakra or her life back was not it. She wanted Meiko to hold that box for at least a moment but it couldn't be helped. As the woman claimed Mana must've not had much time left in her.</p><p>"Fine, I'll help you find and activate the box" Mana bowed her head and closed her eyes, knowing full well she signed a contract that ends with her own death.</p><p>"Really? Wow, you're... Actually different from everyone I've ever met. No one in their right mind would give up their chance at a wish coming true for another person" Regalia's eyes opened wide but then the woman strangely turned sad, "You know... You remind me of how I used to be, before this all... Before that man put me and everyone I love in danger"</p><p>"It sounds like that person after you is quite scary, you don't sound like a bad person just... You love with all your heart and are ready to do all it takes for the people you love. To that, I can relate. If I just asked for my chakra back the box would just give me a second chance to fail, if I helped you and your family I'd actually help someone before I die, it's the only right choice"</p><p>Regalia's hand softly pressed against Mana's shoulder. The girl's fading eyes opened up a little and the paleness faded from her cheeks. "My sand is special, I can transfer chakra through it, that is how I use illusions on my opponents. I can keep you alive, even after you help me, I promise I'll keep you alive until your friends find us"</p><p>Mana smiled hopelessly, "It won't work. You'd need to be an actual medical ninja. My body doesn't do instinctual chakra augmentation anymore, I'm broken, been that way for some time now. I do appreciate the gesture though... Let's go, if the box is here, it's in that throne room," she turned forward and started stumbling over the stone stairs before Regalia carefully took the magician into her support and held her up helping her walk.</p><p>"I'll need your name, girl, it is possible that in your village you'll be known as a traitor for this, you helped another village and defied your own mission objective but... To me and my family, you will always remain a hero, also to thousands of people whom that man would have killed after us" the woman softly asked of Mana as the two slowly made their way through the L-shaped corridor into the throne room.</p><p>"I'm Nakotsumi Mana and... I'm not a ninja anymore. I used chakra augmentation beyond my ability to control it and it ruined my system, I beat my opponent and protected the young man I wished to protect but it broke my body and I'm unable to help anyone anymore. This is the least I can do..." Mana replied her voice was filled with sadness but also a small hint of happiness behind what she was doing. It was obvious to the woman holding her in her arms that the magician was ready to give up on everything she still had to help her.</p><p>"Maybe all is still not lost, I've seen people with your disability, I'm an advanced sensor so I've sensed my fair share of chakra disorders and... Well, usually people like you bounced back. I mean to travel here from Konoha... By now your chakra system should've fixed itself already and I am actually quite surprised that your disorder still persists. I think your problem may not be physical but mental, the event that left you disabled didn't scar your body nearly as bad as it did your mind. If you live through this, please try to overcome not your physical disability but the mental block that forces you to consider yourself worthless" Regalia explained as the two shared their first impressions on the ruined throne room.</p><p>Once in history, this place must've been quite impressive, it had several burnt down carpets and silk covers all over diamond-encrusted walls, and various art pieces ravaged by the time were all around the place. The entire room in its colossal entirety was rotten to its core in that depressing rocky grey that was only emphasized by the slowly dying desert sun. Mana's weak hand barely lifted up pointing Regalia at the throne where the woman placed the girl's body.</p><p>"Look... Maybe... Maybe this isn't the way... Maybe we should... Take care of you..." Regalia started to shake as she didn't seem so sure about her determination to let a person die over her dream. "I mean, I'm using you as a tool for my own survival and it just makes me feel so rotten inside... Almost like living like that wouldn't be worth it"</p><p>Mana didn't even listen to the woman's words, she had to be strong, it wasn't any easier for her either. She was the one who accepted her own death just so Regalia's family could live after all. Mana's weak and pale hand, covered in bleeding scratches ran over the inscriptions on the throne. The giant stone chair had one large silk and suede-covered cushion that was torn up and also, similarly to this entire building, crushed under the weight of entire centuries passing by.</p><p>The magician tried to stand and move down the throne but she just slipped and fell down the stairs. Seeing her own brief track of blood on the stairs looked pretty gruesome to the girl but she only laughed out. She solved it... Regalia tried to lift the girl up, the woman's eyes were almost tearing up but Mana shook her head and quivered out of the woman's hands.</p><p>"The throne itself is a giant ancient safe, just break it and you'll find the box inside" her pale lips uttered.</p><p>"You sure?" Regalia asked.</p><p>"Ultimate power caressed by the Greatest One's butt cheeks, breaking through the stone of arrogance will yield the dream that one seeks" that's what the inscription on the throne says in Anansu dialect, I'm pretty sure" she smiled faintly.</p><p>"No, about all of this... What if there is another way, maybe some way to find the box once it has been used, we could heal you using the box or maybe... Maybe there's some loophole in its rulings that would let us fulfill two wishes, maybe we could ask for a map of all the box's future locations?"</p><p>"For the wish to work it has to be a selfless one. Why are you hesitating now? All of this life being chased by that man has led you to this moment. Don't you wish to finally get rid of everything that plagued you, finally have a happy family life like you dreamed to? I mean it must've meant a lot to you to come here and risk your own life over this box... Go on and claim it, I want to still be of some help to someone, maybe before I die I'll still get to see a woman freed from being chased..." Mana closed her eyes annoyed that the woman wouldn't follow up on the deal.</p><p>"I was so entranced by being chased, reduced to a primal state of being prey, never standing up to the one after me that I failed to recognize just how the chase has changed me and my family. What we are actually ready to sacrifice to gain what we want – freedom. I'm starting to realize that people like us, people willing to let young and kind people like you die to achieve their dream aren't worthy of life. I have come to realize that I no longer wish to have my curse be magically wished away at the cost of someone else's life. I wish to earn my freedom by defeating that man" Regalia declared crushing the rocky throne with her golden sands. A small sphere of sand moved above her open hand and dropped a small iron ball with the manji symbol stuck on it.</p><p>"I... I don't get it... Where is the box?!" Regalia shouted out in desperation, "I want to help you, where is the box!? Mana, where is the box, don't die on me!" the woman yelled out gripping the symbol in her hand almost strong enough to crush the iron it was made from. Seeing Mana's twisted by pain but unconscious face brought horror to her own, the woman tossed the iron ball aside breaking the manji decoration on top of it. The woman pounded the stone floor below her.</p><p>"Get away from Mana-chan!" Kouta's voice made Regalia's tear ridden face to once again reveal itself from the mess of hair that she was hiding it in.</p><p>"I think she's still alive, dying frees one of pain and Mana like anything but free of it" Shimo mumbled out gripping the hilt of his sword and preparing to intercept the woman if she tried something funny.</p><p>"So is this the Box of Ultimate Bliss?" Meiko pouted tossing the round iron ball around in her hands, "I thought it'd be shaped like an actual box...Oh, well, Mana's wish for me to hold it is complete, we can now kick this woman's ass, save Mana, and go back home!"</p><p>Mana's team has finally reached the throne room as well!</p>
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<a name="section0142"><h2>142. Requiem For A Chase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"If you are Mana's friends I have no reason to fight you. I have seen and helped much younger than you find their deaths during my quest for survival." Regalia exclaimed in anger when it appeared like an inevitable conflict would erupt between them.</p><p>"Oh yeah? I see Mana-chan passed out and running out of time with you above her lifeless body, that's shadier than I am willing to overlook. What did you do with the real Box?" Kouta yelled back at the woman angrily clutching his fist and focusing what little he had of chakra into it making it glow in a blueish flare.</p><p>"That chakra focused punch... You're a medical ninja? I suggest you save your chakra for helping Mana and not waste it for pointless..." Regalia couldn't finish her sentence because Meiko kicked right at the center of the woman's spine from behind her. The body of the woman in the red dress dissolved into sand as if the genin kicked a large sandbox and then reformed when the grains of sand re-entered her body.</p><p>"What the?" Meiko's eyes shot wide open in surprise and confusion. She had never seen an opponent like that before. Usually, even when her opponent was stronger they merely augmented their body to be incredibly hard so that her fist never really did any damage but she had never seen a ninja become sand before.</p><p>Regalia's hand extended to the side firing a blindingly fast wave of sand that slammed Meiko to the wall and held her there.</p><p>"I am running out of patience, how such a kind soul could find friendship inside such brutish and numb-skulled kids is beyond me" the woman growled almost like this outburst was more meant to herself than the kids attacking her for no reason.</p><p>"Ice Style: Freezing Wolf Blade Jutsu!" Shimo roared out letting his hands flash through a couple of hand seals as a blinding sandstorm covered the entire area extending to the corridors and rooms much further to where the scuffle was going on.</p><p>The blizzards were shaped like a dozen smaller scale vortexes of cutting wind with knife-sharp icicles inside, the winds were cold enough to also freeze whatever they passed through. At the same time as those roaring winds of absolute frost collided at Regalia's location, the young swordsman leaped over the woman with a wolf-like figure shaping from solid ice around his sword making his blade appear several times larger and much more impressive in length and appearance.</p><p>The attack itself only lasted for an instant as Shimo's figure appeared behind the woman. Regalia's entire body froze into a solid chunk of ice that then split into three pieces and collapsed onto the floor, the same also happened to the stream of sand that held Meiko pressed to the castle wall crushing her chest slowly so that the blacksmith did not resist.</p><p>"Enough!" Regalia screamed out in anger as her body reformed. She was breathing much heavier as she had beaten many much stronger opponents that day and spent quite a large number of chakra on them, she wanted to stay there and slowly explain everything to these kids but frankly, they were surprisingly much more capable than ordinary genin and she had little chakra to spare on them after wasting so much on that Jashinist and his team leader.</p><p>Regalia's golden sand exploded violently all over the room, avoiding only the small spot on the floor where Mana's body was laying and blasting all three of her friends off their feet and bashing them mercilessly into the castle walls breaking all of them through them. The woman remained standing for a brief moment just to see if the kids still had some fighting spirit in them but all of them appeared to be quite battered by that blast of sand. It appeared like these kids also had very little chakra to spare as even such a weak blast injured them quite heavily decimating their clothes and opening a bunch of nasty looking wounds.</p><p>Slowly the woman walked up to Kouta and lifted his body off the ground holding the youth by his hair, she turned his bruised and battered body at Mana. "She is your priority, not me. This girl is a remarkable youth who is ready to sacrifice her own life and dream for a total stranger on a whim. There aren't many people like that. I don't know where the box is, nor do I care. The magician girl has convinced me to reach for my dreams using my own power and not some fairy tales and legends. As the medical ninja of the group you have the responsibility to heal her, if she dies I'll hold you responsible"</p><p>"I thought I froze your body, it should've been drenched in water when that ice melted, didn't that make your body vulnerable?" Shimo's loud huffing growls came from the next room as the young swordsman clutched for his ribs.</p><p>"It does not matter if you heat my golden sand or if you drench it. Tenketsu Shinto techniques cannot be beaten using ordinary chakra nature advantages for I do not just become sand, that sand is more chakra than it is sand" Regalia explained before letting go of Kouta's head and allowing the young medical ninja fall on his knees trying his best to crawl to Mana's aid. His own remains of chakra were already keeping him alive and kicking so he had to reach the girl before his own body uses out too much chakra for his own survival.</p><p>"You're a Sunagakure ninja, aren't you? What are you doing here? Does the Sand Village intend to interfere with our mission?" the rogue swordsman asked. If Sunagakure actually knew about the box and intended to interfere it would've made their mission much more difficult.</p><p>"The Sand does not care about the Box because it, apparently, isn't here. Your mission is over, go home" Regalia replied, she didn't really like this swordsman because he still looked quite hostile and was readying his body for another attack, as an advanced sensor she could somewhat tell.</p><p>"What do you mean it isn't here!?" Shimo yelled out burning up with rage. "We've come all this way, fought through crime syndicates, and faced the Nine-Tails, we didn't come all this way for nothing!"</p><p>"Open your eyes, boy, look around you. Two villages clashing with deaths on every side, people are ready to kill each other over a fancy fairytale. That is the kind of world we live in now, the world where wishes don't just come true. If you have a dream, in this world, you need to work for it, kill for it. Most of the time all those deaths are pointless, in war people die all the time and none of it ever makes any sense. We are born and we die without a purpose, only if we give ourselves a purpose, a thing to live for do we have actual point in our lives. Only then can we have dreams to work for. That is what I have come to realize after meeting Mana. I know you are ready to attack me, I can feel the blacksmith girl waking up as well... I need to disable you to actually make you stop coming for me"</p><p>"If I find out that you were responsible for Mana's pain, that you stole the Box or made it disappear, I'll find you and kill you wherever you are!" Shimo declared to which Regalia only smiled.</p><p>"Get in line, boy..." she closed her eyes, the woman could no longer feel the chakra of her sister-in-law. Jiou's chakra has shot blazing up as if he had just received a second wind. The chakras of his opponents were slowly fading, did Aisha actually get herself killed? Perhaps it was for the better, she received a fair and honorable death instead of being tortured and sucked dry by that man. Regalia would've chosen to die a thousand times in battle over another moment in that man's grasp.</p><p>"Sand Style: Temporal Shift!" Regalia chanted unleashing her genjutsu that made the three friends of Mana's de-age to their infant years upon their very eyes. She looked at the medical ninja who was crawling and rubbing his tired and disabled body against the stone crawling to Mana. Regalia knew that feeling inside the boy's heart, that feeling that made one crawl when they had no legs to walk with. She felt calm leaving Mana's fate in the hands of this young one. Then she felt a crushing pressure on her chest that made her open her eyes and fall to her knees.</p><p>"No! He has found us... No... Not here..." she started mumbling to herself before releasing Kouta from the illusion while she left the other two to writhe on the floor whining like little babies asking to be taken into someone's arms and calmed. By now Regalia was used to seeing grown people acting like babies so the sight no longer looked comical to her.</p><p>"Whatever you need to heal Mana is already inside her. Please do not rush to leave the castle until you absolutely have to. It'd be for the best if you forgot the way you came from, this is a castle, it must have some emergency tunnels, use them instead, wherever they lead it will be safer than the way you came from" the woman in red spoke to thin air but she knew that Kouta heard her. The woman's body dissolved into sand and rushed off to assist her husband who was about to have his hands full.</p><p>Finally, Kouta's hand touched that of Mana's, the boy pulled himself up closer and sat up placing his hands on the girl's body. He tried to gather the last bits of his strength but he couldn't find any left. He had just what he needed to survive, just enough to stay in a better condition than Mana was in currently.</p><p>"What you need to heal Mana-chan is already inside her..." Kouta mumbled to himself as he used the diagnosis technique to scan the girl with a blue light flaring up from his hands, illuminating his friend in the shadow of passing time that had devastated this castle. Mana looked terrible, once again she got injured to the point where she lingered on the edge of living and dying, that was how much they had failed her as friends and as ninja protecting their client. The world past the village walls was so scary. They could've never been ready for it.</p><p>"The woman gave Mana-chan chakra because she wanted her own body to use it to augment itself but Mana-chan's control is disabled so the chakra just stayed there..." Kouta realized pulsing a small flare of his chakra that illuminated his hands in green light and quickly pushed the mass of chakra out of Mana's system into his own stream. Usually, chakra couldn't just be passed around like water from a jug, however, in this case, Kouta wouldn't pass it to anyone, he'd use a small signal from his own body to repurpose that chakra mass to heal Mana. He'd use that woman's gift to Mana to bring her back, it won't be enough to heal Mana, she'll still be banged up but at least she'll be in no danger of dying...</p><p>Kouta used one of his arms to wipe the blood that was dripping on Mana's body from his forehead which was busted up, he took a moment to look at the side seeing his friends still affected by the illusion. They either still haven't realized that they were under an illusion or they simply didn't have the necessary amount of chakra to overcome the genjutsu technique. After all, usually, it took much more chakra to break out of illusion than that was used to cast it and the illusion that manipulates one's own perception of time must've been an incredibly advanced one.</p><p>"Then there're you guys..." the young man smiled a little...</p><hr/><p>"What happened, what is wrong with his eye!" Gokibure yelled out when he saw Jiou's Sharingan symbol shift around, circles formed inside the tomoe signs that a normal Sharingan eye had, they also twisted into a strange shape that reminded more of a manly trinity sign with two of them positioned at the top corners of the eye and the third taking the central bottom position. Two shifted circles that looked similar to the asteroid rings accompanying planets formed around the tomoe signs in Jiou's eye.</p><p>"You killed your own teammate to acquire more power? What sort of a twisted man would do something like this?" Remashi spoke horrified by Jiou's actions. The woman always thought that most people she met on the battlefield were innocent, just people doing their jobs.</p><p>Maybe that was part of why she could never actually push herself over the line to satisfy her cannibalistic curiosity. This man was sick, twisted... And the worst part was that he used an ancient Uchiha ritual to gain power, which meant that being twisted was the whole point of his cursed clan. It was said by many romance novel writers that no one loved stronger than an Uchiha, which was why most main characters in novels and plays were Uchiha. However to love so strong and yet choose power over the life of one's love was just wrong to the Hyuuga woman.</p><p>"I wonder which of the Mangekyou Sharingan powers I have acquired... Either way, I am incomplete, I need both eyes to fulfill the Mangekyou potential" Jiou mumbled to himself as he reached over his eye and touched it while his other hand made a handseal.</p><p>A deafening scream of a woman being murdered and screaming endlessly overwhelming all the other senses of the two opponents of the newly awakened Mangekyou user and stopped both Gokibure and Remashi in their tracks. Their bodies witnessed their own deaths, their blood vessels exploding in gruesome ways, their limbs contorting into positions no one had ever taken for imaginable. The genjutsu completely overwhelmed the senses of the two and froze them making them unable to protect themselves.</p><p>Remashi quickly burst her fiery chakra all over her body recovering from the shock but when her vision finally ceased seeing her own death all over and over again with the voice of an unnamed woman screaming in her ears and overwhelming her senses. Finally, that terrifying voice calmed down and then disappeared, however, the first sight she saw of the real world was Jiou standing in front of her friend with a sword penetrating Gokibure's chest.</p><p>"I figured you'd see through the illusion and recover first with your Byakugan and all that..." Jiou mumbled. He was no longer the man that Remashi started fighting, he was currently just a monster who has just killed his own precious one and had little to no feeling in his eye or his expression. He pulled the blade out with Gokibure's body squirting blood all over Jiou's body and face, the man turned back at Remashi with a blank stare, his face still dripped with her comrade's blood.</p><p>"His body didn't even try to resist, didn't even augment itself in any way... You guys are so invested in strength, finding the strongest technique you can that you lack the ability to protect against the simplest illusions, then again, the power of Mangekyou Sharingan is anything but simple..." he spoke like a man who has lost his mind but not due to how emotional he was, how he lacked any emotion whatsoever.</p><p>"Come, Hyuuga woman, push me to my limit and force my body to reveal which one of the Mangekyou abilities my eye has..." Jiou shouted with emotion finally returning to his twisted with rage face. The man leaped forward thousands of times faster than sound, Remashi's pain-ridden muscles forced to woman to follow albeit slightly slower, the two clashed again and again. Remashi's Byakugan couldn't even track Jiou's chakra points due to how fast the man was moving. The woman's fire infused pinpoint strikes clashed with Jiou's blades firing off miniature explosions of flames and sparks, they clashed, again and again, it looked like there was no end to their battle.</p><p>The sound of Remashi's fiery strikes colliding with Jiou's swords reminded of an automated fire barrage except one sound followed the other so closely that sometimes one hid the other beneath.</p><p>"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Inferno Crusher!" Remashi roared out focusing most of the chakra she had into her last resort technique, thrusting both of her palms at the equally exhausted opponent of hers. A fiery beam shot off of Remashi's palms that was supposed to incinerate her opponent. Hundreds of millions of degrees of concentrated power intending to destroy and absolutely obliterate the man who has killed her comrade.</p><p>Her hands moved in closer and closer. Remashi's eyes observed every fraction of a moment of her own movement, it was like the entire attack played out in a slow-motion crawl, her heated palms and the concentrated beam firing from them ready to incinerate the central chakra points and leave a large gaping hole in her opponent moving up closer and closer to Jiou, the man was tired, he may have been much stronger than Remashi initially but all the holding back and worrying over the castle ruins forced him to squander that advantage – he was caught open. He was within range!</p><p>Jiou's body started disappearing, fading, almost like it was spaghettified instantly and flushed down some sort of a hole in time and space appearing from his eye. Remashi's beam fired off into the distance, continuing forward without an end. She missed... The woman waited for her opponent's punishment, she was fully expecting to feel a sword stabbing through her from behind but as she kept on standing nothing happened. She just stood there and her opponent was nowhere to be found. What happened? Where did that man go? Did she win?</p><p>"Shit... That fucker stabbed me..." Gokibure's annoying voice reached Remashi's ears making the Hyuuga turn around and rush to her friend. She kneeled up to him observing his blood-spitting wound on the man's chest.</p><p>"He just disappeared..." Remashi uttered still confused about what had happened.</p><p>"I really hope you incinerated him somehow, I mean that beam puts a large star to shame, doesn't it? Maybe he just burnt from the intensity of it, disintegrated instantly?" the man coughed up blood when his insects burrowed inside his wound covering it up from bleeding.</p><p>"You should've defended yourself against that illusion, didn't you see it coming you idiot?" Remashi tried to annoyingly bite her friend. Now that she saw her friend being in no danger of dying she remembered how much he pissed her off sometimes and what their working relationship actually was.</p><p>"He... That illusion was different..." the Aburame sniveled like a whining child sitting back up and standing up in time. He could've walked that injury off now that his insects would cover the wound up and keep supplying his body with chakra that they eat, using their instinctive minds to keep their host alive so that they too can stay alive.</p><p>"Yeah, it didn't attack our chakra flow, it pinched our brain centers. Even if we somehow suppressed our chakra or even if we were of the clans immune to genjutsu we'd have been completely defenseless... I thought genjutsu focused chakra flow and not one's brain directly..." Remashi nodded.</p><p>"Damn genjutsu users, no one is ever ready for them and then they evolve their techniques even further..." Gokibure spat blood to the side. All of a sudden his body just burst into a combination of blood and exploded all over the desert sand and over the rocks and the debris around.</p><p>Remashi's eyes continued to stare at the space where her friend once was now only seeing a tall three meter-sized, hunched over man with long black hair and a rich beard, the man's eyes were glowing red as if they were red lanterns or two small stars that just glowed red. His position implied that Gokibure blew up due to the man's overpowered punch. The man's massive hand quickly wrapped around Remashi's mouth, surprising the woman by how deceitfully fast the man was and lifted her into the air.</p><p>The woman tried to resist but it felt like her whole body was powerless, she still had chakra to fight back, she was supposed to but she felt more powerless than she had ever felt. It was like the man's touch took away all of her essence, all of her chakra in one instance. She kicked around in the air, flailed her hands, and punched and kicked and clawed at the man. All of her kicks and punches did not even register, it was like she hit a diamond wall, her own nails broke, and peeled off from trying to claw the man's eyes out. Remashi's hands powerlessly weighed down as tears squirt from her Hyuuga eyes.</p><p>"Excuse me, did you see a woman in a red dress somewhere around here? I see her teen friend lying dead here so I just wondered..."</p><p>Remashi felt her essence: her emotions, her memories, her strength, and everything that she called her own being sucked out of her, it was almost like a mere touch of the man tore open her body and had the man burrow inside her guts, both literal and emotional and scavenge for whatever he fancied. The woman had never felt such a horrible feeling, she's been blasted by explosions more powerful than exploding worlds, burnt than fire hotter than anything found on Earth, and punched by people strong enough to lift mountains and yet she'd choose all of those combined over a second more of that man's touch.</p><p>"No? Nevermind, I sense her closing in, thank you for your time..." the man spoke Remashi screamed out in the man's grasp as she felt his palm penetrate her body as he thrust his arm through her and let her go, leaving her dead body hanging on the arm he pierced her through.</p><p>A twister of golden sands circled around the red-eyed man forming a humanoid form that then took Regalia's shape. The woman was tired and she felt like any technique she used could've been her last but she was the happiest she's ever been since that night when she met this man for the first time. She was finally free of fear, free of that feeling of powerlessness. She was facing her greatest fear, facing her problem and she wasn't about to let more innocent people die and suffer because she was too scared to face her fear.</p><p>"Was she even delicious to you at all, monster? Anything like feasting on me for all those years was?" Regalia asked angrily yet without any trembling or fear seeing the Hyuuga's body dangling still impaled by the man's arm that didn't relax and let her slip off his grasp.</p><p>"Not really, she didn't feel like anything, I killed her because she was in my way" the man's strong and loud voice thundered out. "Well, which direction are you running to now? Who will you hide behind this time?"</p><p>"No more running... No more dreams or fairy tales. We do this here and now" Regalia replied thrusting her hands forward and surrounding the man in endless waves of sand.</p><p>She kept on adding more and more and raising the ball higher and higher. She used the sand below the man as a basis to lift him above the ground and it was not even remotely easy even when he was surprised to lift him off of it. Regalia tapped into the supply of sands around the entire desert forming what looked like a miniature planet made out of the compressed sand with a core made out of the golden sand. The planet rose up higher as more and more sand was added to it, the Sabaku clan's woman of the golden sand moved the planet way past the Moon even to the point where it only resembled the size of a small ball in the sky.</p><p>"Desert Planetary Funeral!" Regalia chanted out making a handseal and releasing the technique, all of the sand crushed the golden sand core inside making it rain grain of sand and gold. Giant chunks of sand started falling from the sky as Regalia had to elevate the ball of sand well above the tallest layers of her home.</p><p>She smiled, she purposefully pushed the planetary ball of sand farther than the Moon, she wanted the central pouring stream of sand to land onto the Moon and not back here. Regalia screamed in pain and fell to her knees. She knew she pushed well past her limits but it didn't matter, she faced her fears, she ceased the chase and she may not have killed that man but she at the very least left him stranded.</p><p>Let him choke on space, let him die on the Moon... She will be the last one whose life that monster will claim, no, Regalia died on her own terms, she died free. The woman coughed some blood up as black circles formed around her eyes, her skin paled and she fell down on the rough rocky layer that laid dormant deep below the sands she lifted. The woman felt rushing waves of sand lifting her body up slowly, she probably left most of that sand up in the Moon together with the man only returning less than half of what she'd taken, still, it was worth it.</p><p>"Live your life free of the chase, Jiou. It was fun being your wife and loving you. Live your life to your heart's content, Mana, and... Thank you..." Regalia closed her eyes peacefully as her life faded from her body letting the overflowing sand flush her away and bury her beneath it as her lifeless corpse offered no resistance.</p>
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<a name="section0143"><h2>143. Separated</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's eyes softly clapped as the first sight they saw after she came to her senses was Meiko's silly ear to ear grin above her head. Right after the blacksmith noticed the girl's recovery, she alerted everyone else and Shimo helped Mana sit back up while Kouta did some quick medical check-ups that made him calm down about her overall condition.</p><p>"I didn't have much chakra to work with and I've never just repurposed someone else's chakra like that, I need to make sure everything went fine." He explained.</p><p>"So that woman in the red dress with the sand and genjutsu, did she hurt you, should we have kicked her ass?" Meiko asked sitting down closer to Mana.</p><p>"She did intend to hurt me if I didn't help her but... At some point, she seemed to have changed. After I told her that I was willing to sacrifice my wish to help her she just froze up and said something about how much she changed and how much she hated that, what happened to her?" the magician asked. For a moment the others looked rather surprised by Mana's revelation but then none of them really dared to say anything.</p><p>"She kicked our asses then left, told us to not leave through the main entrance and use the underground tunnels for some reason. Then she made such a huge ruckus that the lower floors of the castle are completely overtaken by sand. I'm not sure how we'd leave through there in the first place" Shimo complained a little or at least his tone made it clear that it was supposed to be a complaint. "On top of that, Kouta's crazy dad is still probably after us"</p><p>"She didn't look like a bad person, she held back the whole time and tried to calm us down but after seeing the state you were in we couldn't think clearly. She knew that my chakra was at a low so she didn't hurt us too bad, she used illusions to subdue us and they wore off a little later for some reason" Kouta said as he carefully applied a bandage over Mana's scraped abdomen.</p><p>The magician sighed. "She decided to confront the man she and her family were running from, if the illusions wore off within an hour with no effort from your part to deal with them it probably means she either left the effective range or died..."</p><p>"Hey, don't get all depressed on us about losing someone again, we don't know if she died or not yet... She was tough enough to grant the benefit of the doubt." Shimo growled knowing Mana's personality too well.</p><p>"Yeah, thanks..." Mana thanked her old-time teammate, she really needed at least a spoken statement that there may have still been hope that she didn't completely screw it all up again.</p><p>"We messed up, we had to protect you but we were too weak. We got our asses kicked by everyone we fought and all we could do was survive. I'm done living this stupid rogue life of just surviving, Mana, next time we'll protect you properly. I swear!" Shimo angrily exclaimed carefully punching the wall and looking at his friend with an angry glare. The magician had never seen her friend look at her with those eyes, he used to endlessly praise her for no reason and watch out for her just because she belonged to the gender he swore to pamper, then he started to get annoyed by her protective and needlessly selfless personality but something changed after this encounter.</p><p>"It's fine... You had no way of fighting those guys, Kouta's father is at least a Jounin level ninja, those people from the Sand Village were on the other level entirely. We weren't and could not have been ready. Also, Meiko, thanks for saving everybody when I asked you to." Mana smiled at her friend, her face hurt like she'd have been bashed with a rock for hours and her eye still felt swollen so Kouta must not have had enough chakra to deal with those injuries, just the life-threatening ones.</p><p>"Well, I mean... You told us to and... You're not our leader but your calls tend to be the right ones or at least pull us through most of the time and that's good enough" the blacksmith blushed, her shame wouldn't have been visible due to poor fire lighting had it not been so overblown.</p><p>"No, you were the best anyone could've asked you to be. Leaving your friend behind can't be something that comes easy but it was the right thing to do and you didn't hesitate" Mana sighed and looked down, her left eye could barely see right as it was hard-pressed by the swellings all over it, it felt like a blown up bump shooting out from her face and she must've looked horrible.</p><p>"So is our mission a bust? We've heard the woman in red say that the box wasn't here?" Shimo asked but before Mana could give him her answer the castle floor started shaking. Without hesitation, Meiko grabbed Mana in her arms and bolted towards the door followed by the others, as a feat of inhuman reaction the magician slipped out of her teammate's hands and crawled up to the small sphere that was inside the throne. Her covered in dried blood fingers wrapped around the sphere before she tried standing up but Meiko once again grabbed her and pulled her aside from the falling roof.</p><p>"Someone must've moved the foundation!" Kouta yelled out over the sound of falling debris.</p><p>Mana was taken over by the feeling of absolute dread and helplessness, she was powerless and then beaten to a pulp, one of her eyes barely worked and even the one that did was almost blinded by the lack of lighting and everything around her was falling down on her and her friends whom she wished to protect.</p><p>"Jump down there!" Shimo yelled out as he took a leap of faith. Kouta remained standing but Meiko turned to him and explained.</p><p>"The corridor that leads to the tunnels is down there on the first floor, we saw it on the run from your father, remember?" the blacksmith finished explaining and followed Shimo.</p><p>"I'm pretty sure I was still passed out at that point..." the medical ninja scratched the back of his head before following.</p><p>A blueish flash of light echoed and then Shimo's loud roar of anger, Mana shook in surprise and tried to see what was going on below but Meiko pressed her harder so that the magician didn't slip out of her grip and plummet below.</p><p>"It's fine, Shimo just froze a bunch of sand and sliced a tunnel through them with that totally awesome Audra blade" the blacksmith girl giggled in awe when talking about that sword which made Mana realize that this was no dream. One couldn't have been too sure about what was a dream or an illusion but Meiko's childish glee when talking about weapons couldn't have been emulated by any illusion of a sane individual.</p><p>A strong and quite painful splash made Mana yell out in shock as cold water filled her lungs. Meiko quickly pulled the girl out of the water and then pressed her chest to help the magician cough it all out. Not too long later Kouta splashed and swam to the rocky edge himself.</p><p>"Wow, the water is hot!" he yelled out quickly rolling out.</p><p>"What are you talking about, it was cold as shit, look at Mana, she's shaking..." Meiko looked at the medical ninja funny.</p><p>"It was boiling actually, I froze it but the temperature seems to change quite rapidly... It boils and evaporates but then falls back down because of vast differences in temperature here and up in the shade of the castle at night. The rocks on the bottom must be really heated by the desert rocks and sand." Shimo said while removing the upper part of his desert cloak and placing it on Mana's shoulders.</p><p>"Well, the tunnel's right here, we can leave the castle or go wherever it leads and hope it's in better condition than this but what's our plan?" Meiko asked looking at Mana. Kouta sat down and looked at the magician questioningly as well. Shimo pressed his naked back against the rocky wall and crossed his arms over his chest while looking at Mana too as if waiting for her decision.</p><p>"What do you mean? Our mission is over, there's no Box, even if it exists it isn't here and we don't have any authority to look for it. We're done, let's go home..." Mana mumbled out, speech came a little weird as she must've been missing some teeth.</p><p>"Wait... But, what about your chakra? You were all crushed and ruined before, it clearly means the world to you, I mean no one would subject themselves to Meiko's training unless being strong was essential to them." Kouta gently touched Mana's shoulder making the girl shake his hand off as it hurt her cracked bones and blunt traumas everywhere.</p><p>"Wait, what is that supposed to mean... I mean... Yeah, you wanted your chakra back hard enough to go behind the village's authority. You were ready to be labeled a traitor, you subjected yourself to this cruel world by leaving in your frail state and now you're just giving up?" Meiko couldn't understand the magician's decision either.</p><p>"Mana, don't give us your shit. Tell it how it is, what made you change your mind? Surely that sphere thing must have something important for you to risk getting squished by a whole castle going down. I won't have it with you lying to yourself. If you tell us to go back we'll do that and that'll be the end of it but if you want to go on, if you have any hints or clues or any ideas how to find that box or get your chakra back we're going with you, you're far too puny to let you wander the world at your current state!" Shimo angrily shouted out at Mana.</p><p>"I don't know what it is, it is just filled with random numbers one to six that don't seem to make much sense. I just thought that the numbers being written in modern scripture and not Anansu dialect like everything else from this castle's time period was odd. I grabbed it because it was interesting, out of instinct, not clear mind, truth be told I've never felt like under so many concussions as I do right now so my mind can't be further from being clear." the girl answered in a silent and oppressed tone.</p><p>"Something must've happened, something made you give up on your wish to get your chakra control back, what was it?" Shimo repeated his question.</p><p>"I... Well... It's something that woman told me, she told me that my chakra manipulation isn't gone because of my chakra network being messed up, she said it was working just fine. She said there's... Some mental block to it and now I don't know if I even know what I want anymore, I don't know if my body even wants me to get better. What if what I considered being one half of my identity is something that doesn't belong there." Mana explained saddened and hiding behind her messy and sticky with blood hair.</p><p>Meiko, Kouta, and Shimo all looked at each other with odd stares and kept on switching from each other.</p><p>"Guys?" Mana suddenly started realizing something was off.</p><p>Kouta leaned down on his knee and wiped hair out of Mana's face making the girl slip out of his hands again and hide her messed up face behind them again. She didn't want Kouta to see her banged up like that.</p><p>"Look, Mana... We... Back when you trained with Meiko we... We kinda scanned your body and I did the diagnostic check that you refused in the village," the young man quietly revealed.</p><p>"You... You looked into my body? You've... Had no right" Mana's whiny and almost weeping voice made the young man turn back at Meiko who was just looking at the ground like she was a toddler being busted for breaking a vase.</p><p>"Well, I..." Kouta tried to explain something but Shimo took that responsibility over from him.</p><p>"He didn't want to do it, we pretty much bullied him into it. This whole time behind your back we were discussing some sort of excuses if you ever found out but you don't deserve that bullshit. Yes, we wanted to know what was wrong with you for sure and if there was a potential for you to get better without the Box because none of us except Meiko really believed that Box of Ultimate Bliss was real in the first place"</p><p>"You didn't?" Meiko squinted at the two, she seemed to genuinely have believed in the box's existence.</p><p>"What Kouta found was identical to what that woman told you – it's your mind that still blocks your chakra control, not your body. That chakra augmentation mess up was big but it only injured you for a brief period of time, at some point down the line your network repaired itself." The swordsman explained, his face didn't suggest any regret for his actions.</p><p>Mana stood back on her feet and walked up to him, she didn't care that her thighs were burning up from fatigue, that her feet had open bleeding wounds from the endless walking having covered one-fourth of the world's longitude over almost a week on foot. Mana didn't care that only one eye of hers could see, that when she spoke bloody slobber spat out from her mouth through a gap between her broken or busted out teeth.</p><p>She didn't care that her hands were stomped and had to hold her entire body weight during a raging sandstorm while she climbed those rocky castle walls and were still covered with bruises and wounds. She punched Shimo right in the jaw using the lower part of her palm while also shoving her slightly grown fingernails straight into the young man's cheek drawing squirts of blood. He didn't even augment his body and just took the hit despite having every tool in his arsenal to dodge it or counter it.</p><p>"You had no right!" she cried out until her voice broke down from the several blows to her throat that Kusagoro managed to land and from when he tried to choke her out.</p><p>"Mana..." Kouta tried to calm her down by coming closer to her.</p><p>"Go home," the magician cried back at him. "This sign says that the straight path of this tunnel leads you right to Sunagakure's gate, I'll take whichever one doesn't go there"</p><p>"Wait, Mana, this is stupid, even if we do let you go back to Konoha alone you'll get raided and killed before the end of the first day on the surface." Meiko almost laughed out as she still believed that this breaking out was just a joke of some sort.</p><p>"Your mission is over, report to Konoha from Sunagakure by sending a message and then head home after you recovered, you told me you respect my call, that is it." Mana quietly whined out while slowly limping to the tunnel that still had brief lighting every couple of steps from eternally burning torches that burnt with some strange green flame. Must've been some Fire Style technique that couldn't have been put out by water and humidity and consumed no oxygen, it just burnt for as long as it had to, just to light the way of anyone needing its light.</p><p>"But... Where will you go?" Meiko's voice trembled as a clear sign of the blacksmith realizing that this conflict was no joke.</p><p>Mana's beaten face turned back with tears all over it, the tears picked up and washed some dried out blood that her brief dip into the frozen boiling lake didn't wash off making the tears appear almost bloody. She sniffed her running nose.</p><p>"I don't know..." the girl said and kept on limping forward.</p><hr/><p>Kusagoro growled as he dug through endless walls of sand. His mad swings pushed entire tons of sand pushing him forward hard enough for the sand passing him to actually hurt. He used his angry punch to bust through the damn thing but all it did was form a crystal wall of sand by superheating the sand from the energy that the punch put out. He didn't even mean for it to be too strong, he wanted to preserve the castle but as Kusagoro's slightly injured body swam out and emerged outside the castle he saw the blasted thing collapse and fall down.</p><p>"Son..." he wondered if his boy made it out before that. He wasn't sure where his son was or what his further goals were. Most likely he'd return to the village now that the mission was over together with that traitorous girl, Kusaguro no longer gave a crap about exposing or beheading her. He looked back and saw a bloody hand in the sand. The Juugo brute pulled on the hand and dragged out a corpse of his friend Remashi with eyes filled with horror and a gaping hole in her body as large as a thick log. He gently placed the body of his friend down and closed her eyes with a soft stroke, the all-seeing Byakugan snuffed out, finally getting a chance to rest...</p><p>The man tore off his friend's bowtie and tied it around his arm, he looked around and found the body of his other friend – Gokibure. His body was for once lacking the insects rushing all over it with the ancient buggers having abandoned their host at some point after his death. What remained of him was only his lower body, Kusagoro wasn't sure where the upper parts went. The man pulled out a bloodied white rose that his friend carried around in his pocket and handed to various women he tried to seduce, all of whom rejected his advances due to the man's symbiotic relationship with his insects.</p><p>Kusagoro pressed the ring of the flower in his hands and let the petals slip from his hands and be carried away with the desert winds. It took a little longer for Kouta's father to find Mardith, the man was also a bloody stain, carefully the man removed Mardith's mask which he wore on his neck, and put on his face when he needed protection from water or toxic gas. Kusagoro tore the upper google part of the mask and took off his headband replacing it with his friend's googles.</p><p>"I'll avenge your deaths..." he uttered in the wind before seeing the floating body of the woman responsible – the woman in red. Her eyes were peacefully closed and she was quite clearly dead. So the bitch died too? Kusagoro roared into the endless sky letting his raging chakra bursts pick up and throw sand around the place. The man lifted the woman's body up by her hair and effortlessly flipped it over his shoulders to carry around. Further, there laid another young teen, Kusagoro didn't give her much attention though, maybe it was because of her age that reminded him of his own kid, maybe he just couldn't place the hatchling behind being able to kill any of his friends.</p><p>There he stood with all of his friends, the people who saw him as a friend ever since his early days, the people that were through soft and hard with him, hot and cold. All dead and no one to exact his vengeance upon. He used to think things were easy – if someone killed someone you care about, you kill that person. This was so ironic and so annoying...</p><p>"Remashi... I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad that you died without actually eating anyone's face off, maybe we should've gotten drunk and tried it just to know for sure if you were half as sick as you said you were"</p><p>"Mardith... Your bullshit rituals pissed me off and I often killed you just because I knew I could with you coming back. Guess a man can only pull death's skirt for so long before the bitch kicks back, huh?"</p><p>"Gokibure... You were a creepy bastard but all you wanted was to be loved by someone. Love is bullshit but since you were my friend I would've handed it to you even if I had to force a bitch to go out with you myself but you didn't want it, you wanted the real deal. Hope there's a woman that finds you loveable wherever you are"</p><p>After giving a couple of words to each one of his dead friends the man just looked up into the sky. For a moment he almost begged the sky for a downpour.</p><p>"What's the matter, Big Guys? Can't spare a single tear to weep over my friends? Well, fuck you too..." Kusagoro cursed and pressed his knuckles into fists as hard as he could until he drew blood from his own fingernails digging into his own flesh. He wanted revenge but revenge on who? He could submit the corpse of this bitch to Hokage, see if she's worth anything as a ninja from another village, there was something odd with her so maybe the brainiacs in the medical center could've used her DNA. It was either that or the bounty hunters...</p>
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<a name="section0144"><h2>144. The Ancient Hunters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was this particular stage of pain where one accepted it as a part of their being, as a part of their daily routine. Together with that stage came those memories of days of happiness and the thoughts questioning how could one have ever taken those days for granted so badly? It was only one's own fault really, Mana could only blame herself and only hate herself. She was told what the world outside the village walls was, what ultimately her fate would be, she was told all about how stupid she was and yet defiantly she kept on strutting that road to disappointment and loss.</p><p>To most, it may not have been that big of a deal, the magician realized that her friends wished well. They wished to know what Mana's state really was but to the youngster it just seemed like she was betrayed. Her friends broke that sacred line of consent, it was supposed to be up to Mana and her alone to decide how much of her condition should have been made public, how much of her body should have been explored by anyone. Not only the people she loved and trusted the most crossed that line purposefully but they stayed in complete silence and would've undoubtedly lied to her if asked directly.</p><p>Why would they have ever been asked such a thing? After all, it would've never occurred to Mana that her friends could have done something like that. She trusted them completely, she would've given up everything for their sake. There were no ill feelings from Mana's side towards her friends. Hell, in their boots she'd have probably done the same thing. If she saw that her friend was suffering she'd have crossed every line imaginable and even made herself hated in the eyes of that friend to save them from that torment.</p><p>It was just that cursed combination of hatred towards oneself and confusion about the betrayal of her friends. Mana hated her own body and mind for blocking an essential part of her identity off, almost like it was a self-preservation mechanism. Almost like being a ninja came with Mana having to shoulder all those responsibilities she placed on herself making getting hurt or killed an inevitability. Ultimately, even her own body betrayed her and yet neither one wanted to stab her in the back, everyone who betrayed her wanted all the best to Mana making her the wrong one. That was what hurt the most.</p><p>Mana collapsed by a dark wall illuminated briefly by the dim salad-green flames from the eternally burning torches. She grabbed her hair and pulled it back behind her head so hard that it almost peeled her scalp off. She was such a mess, beaten yet healed just to the point where she was in no danger of dying, her hair was soaked in her own blood yet all of her wounds were closed. Only now did she understand those words that came from Guru Ayushi that time she revealed to him that there were no lines she wouldn't cross to save someone's life.</p><p>This was just the kind of life she cursed someone to by crippling them but keeping them alive...</p><hr/><p>"Mana! Wait up!" Meiko yelled out leaping forward but Shimo stepped in her way. Meiko rudely tried to push him out of her way but the swordsman twisted his body around her palms and pulled his blade placing it to her throat at a surprising speed.</p><p>"She's mad at us, give her some time. Were you really so dense to believe that what we did would never come up? What do you expect to tell her to make her stop being who she always was? She's silly and childish but that's who she is, that's who we've befriended. Give her some time" he growled angrily the words he couldn't stop telling himself trying to refrain from chasing Mana himself.</p><p>"But... She's leaving out there all alone!" Meiko yelled out pulling out a kunai from her back pocket but Kouta stepped in pushing the two off of each other.</p><p>"Shimo's right, we know exactly where she's going, which path she's taking. Right now she wants to see our faces the least and going after her is the worst possible idea. We've accepted this outcome when we decided to get our answers. Knowing what she just found out, Mana-chan must hate her own body just as much as she feels betrayed by us. Finding out that her own mind is keeping her from being whole, that has to be a cruel thing to know." The youth explained himself to Meiko. "Let's just respect Mana-chan's word and go to Sunagakure"</p><p>"If Mana gets hurt we'll still fail this mission." Meiko irked out worried.</p><p>"Mana's smarter than to get hurt," Shimo replied.</p><p>"But she's not herself at the moment, normally she may be pretty sharp but now her mind may not be focused on the right things. Let's give her some time but catch up with her at the end of the tunnel. The first path heads to Sunagakure gate, we'll then track her back finding where the other one leads to – with our chakras recovered we'll be faster than she is" Kouta scratched his forehead still refusing to fully comprehend the disaster that just happened.</p><p>The three entered the tunnel walking straight onto the path where Mana told them to. They've already pissed her off already so if they ever wanted her to talk to them again they'd need to do right as she told them to.</p><hr/><p>Mana's stomach growled, the magician kept on breathing heavily without even bothering to look into her backpack. She knew that Meiko carried around all the food. The girl thought about eating one of those creepy hand-sized spiders that scurried all around the walls, avoiding just the spots that have been illuminated by the fire on the walls. The noise of their shells rubbing against the rocks and their giant crawlers ticking and tacking against the walls was creepy but despite their incredibly terrifying appearance, Mana knew she was bigger than them. She was in pain in more places she could count so if they bothered to bite her it'd barely even be a shock to her, some parts of the girl actually wanted those crawlers to pick a fight with her so that she could express all of her anger properly.</p><p>Something rustled the sandy floor by scurrying around the path that Mana was in. It sounded like... Fur rubbing against the rock and the sand. Could there have been some mammals living in this cave? How could they have maintained their fur, most mammals living in dark and desolate places like this must've lost their furs and their eyesight over time...</p><p>"The fires..." Mana realized looking at the green source of light. These torches displaced the natural balance of the cave ecosystem by eliminating the irrelevancy of sight. Most mammals must've seen just fine, some insects must've relied on eyesight as well since the place did have some illumination that never dimmed. Still, this place had a system of its own, Mana had never seen anything like those giant critters scurrying around and avoiding her sight or those giant pincer wielding spiders on the walls.</p><p>What could they have been running from or where towards if they didn't mind entering a human's line of sight?</p><hr/><p>"This cave is boring, I wish Mana was here so she could translate all those hieroglyphs on the walls..." Meiko's face dragged out reminding that of a horse.</p><p>"You do know that not all ancient languages are the same, Mana isn't a universal translator, she may not even be able to read those..." Shimo looked at his bored friend with curiosity.</p><p>"Hmmm... Something isn't right..." Kouta scratched his chin.</p><p>"How so? Are we being tracked? Will we be ambushed!?" Meiko excitedly pulled her fists up to her grinning teeth and shook in her boots.</p><p>"Well, the whole way through we've heard weird noises, crawlies and some sort of critters and snakes digging through the sand, this cave has an ecosystem of its own made of animals I have never seen before." Kouta continued to slow down before he completely stopped and looked behind him with worry.</p><p>"Yeah, you told us to watch the sand ripples so that we don't get bit by any snakes." Shimo stopped and grabbed the hilt of his blade, he trusted Kouta's senses even if the current sense he relied on did feel like a bit on the sixth side.</p><p>"Precisely, this place has animals who are ready to hunt in the environment of this cave and appear to be completely different from any others. I may not have the antidote against the local snake or insect poisons nor the skill to properly analyze it. Having our environment in mind these may be the animals from thousands of years ago that have gone extinct everywhere but in this cave." The medical ninja explained.</p><p>A hissing sound alerted all three of the genin. Frantically, all of them started turning around, they pressed against each other's back so that they are not attacked from behind.</p><p>"Is that... A snake?" Meiko asked with a serious yet still somewhat excited tone, "A giant snake maybe? Fighting the little ones would be boring." She added.</p><p>"No... Sounds like... Gas..." Shimo noted too late as the hissing noise started coming from another corner, then another, then another until it was finally coming from all around the genin. Smoke as black as tar filled the area making the genin hold their breaths for a while.</p><p>"Do we run or do we fight?" Meiko asked exhaling some air but keeping herself from drawing any in, Kouta pulled off some of his cloak and tied it around his nose. The boy leaned down and fell to his knees, despite them holding their breaths and trying to filter the gas out it still passed through whatever blocked its path. All four started coughing.</p><p>"Vision's blurry..." Meiko complained and judging from Shimo's staggering attempts to stand straight it could've been correctly assumed that the same was with everyone affected by the gas.</p><p>Suddenly the gas started circulating and forming humanoid shapes that were just briefly illuminated by the green flames, no careful looks were needed. Meiko would have recognized the shape and face of her father wherever she saw it.</p><p>"Why did I leave my clan and move into Konoha?" The man asked in a haunting voice.</p><p>"Am I the only one seeing it?" Meiko looked back at her friends but she noticed they were all gone. She was alone in a room filled with black as night gas with her father who seemed to be emanating some sort of light. The figure was carefully proceeding forward and walking up closer to the blacksmith.</p><p>"You left because of the falling out with the clan, they didn't want to make weapons, you thought weapons didn't necessarily need to be made for killing, that everyone decided what they'd use their weapon for and you didn't want to limit your skills. You wanted the freedom to make whatever you wanted to make..." Meiko replied. The figure of her father shrieked in the dark with a creepy almost animalistic noise. The sound of scribbling and taping against the rock could've been heard. For a moment the gas cleared up around Meiko and she saw her friends again.</p><p>The blacksmith screamed out after witnessing Shimo being held by some sort of insectoid creature. It was at least one and a half meter tall, standing on two legs while two others held the swordsman and pressed it against its black shell while the two upper legs stabbed the young man in the back. Shimo shouted and struggled for a while before passing out, his eyes were completely white, some sort of white substance mixed with blood was dripping from his mouth.</p><p>Kouta's eyes were completely normal but his pupils were running around. "I don't know your favorite food, you chow down everything you see in front of you!" He yelled and waved his arms around, his cheeks were blushed and he looked like he was having a fever. Another pair of insects crept up to the medical ninja, Meiko tried to leap to his aid but she didn't notice yet another one scurrying up to her from behind and standing on its two legs.</p><p>Black smoke once again sprayed from small cysts at the insect's face, its face looked similar to a large wasp except it had three pairs of mandibles, in between of each pair was a large pus-filled cyst that sprayed the pus out whenever the insect pleased. That sludgy substance was highly reactive to air because it turned to that noxious gas whenever it came out. Suddenly Kouta's troubles and unconscious Shimo and all the other swarming insectoids disappeared. It was just Meiko and Mana who was standing right in front of her.</p><p>"What weather do I like the most?" The magician's voice asked, the tone was so wildly different from Mana's, it was so... Deceitful. Meiko knew the answer, she had it somewhere deep in her head. That one day the blacksmith visited Mana in the archives and the magician told her, it was a small throwaway line but... Darn it... What sort of a friend was Meiko!? She kept failing Mana at every turn, forgot everything her friend had ever told her, she deserved every injury, she didn't deserve to see and hold the Box of Ultimate Bliss like Mana wanted her to...</p><p>"I'm sorry, Mana..." Meiko's tear-filled eyes tried to walk up closer to Mana, she didn't want to play this one question game, she didn't want to see what those bugs were doing to her friends. She just wanted to tell her friend that she was sorry, that she just wanted to be close to Mana and support her friend when she felt betrayed. When she needed a friend the most...</p><p>A powerful grip clutched Meiko's body and shut it in pressing it right up to Mana's body. The blacksmith's eyes were racing all around but she couldn't see what exactly was gripping her or what was hurting her. The sharp pain made her close her eyes and bite her lip but Meiko didn't scream. She felt blood running down her back, Meiko felt her consciousness fading, her eyes weren't listening anymore, they rolled back, suddenly Meiko felt so nauseous.</p><p>So sleepy...</p><hr/><p>Mana kept on stumbling forward. She ate some sort of supersized maggot that was crawling around, it was the worst thing she had ever eaten, its insides felt fatty and slimy and it didn't swallow even remotely well. The magician knew that she needed more, one upchuck summoning maggot wasn't even remotely the amount of protein she needed to recover from those injuries but she physically couldn't keep those creepy things down. She had to force herself to swallow as much as she did.</p><p>A hissing noise stopped the magician in her tracks, she frantically looked around, her eyes raced trying to find where it was coming from. She felt a weird sensation, something was smelling way off but Mana's sense of smell was actually inferior to even most normal peers of hers, she only smelled that something was off with the air when it was already too late. The girl started to cough, what was that smell and those sounds? She heard pairs of feet clacking against the rock, somewhat was trying to sneak up to her from above using the rocky ceiling for support.</p><p>The magician girl tried to roll away to avoid an attack she predicted but her body was too trippy from all that gas she inhaled so she just carelessly stumbled around and almost snapped her own neck by sloppily flopping her face down into the sand.</p><p>"Just great... I deserve to get killed now..." she thought to herself crawling desperately as far away as she could from where she imagined her assailants to be. She scratched the sand out of her eyes wildly scratching one of her eyelids so hard it started to bleed. When she regained her blurry and racing vision the girl noticed that the entire cave was sunken in black clouds of that gas she previously inhaled and that she must've taken in all of it there was.</p><p>A faint light emanated up front, slowly it was closing in on Mana, turning around and shaping itself until it made a solid humanoid shape. It was Kouta's.</p><p>"What are you doing here!? I told you I want to be alone!" Mana screamed out angrily wiping the blood off of her bleeding eye. It was her good eye that was bleeding while the other one was still swollen and blocked off by lumps of swelling flesh.</p><p>"Whom do I love?" Kouta asked, his tone was hateful, deceitful, and wishing the girl harm.</p><p>"What... What are you talking about?" Mana's voice shook and she took a couple of steps back, she looked back seeing similar figures and lights approaching from behind her, they looked almost nightmarish in appearance forcing the young magician to stand her ground there.</p><p>"You love your father, Kouta," Mana answered making the figure stop for a moment. It then started moving forward but pain took it over and forced it to twitch as if it was on its dying legs. Mana grabbed a torch off the wall and slammed Kouta's face with the open flame. This wasn't Kouta, this was some sort of a dream, a nightmare. Some sort of vision caused by this accursed ancient cave!</p><p>Clarity returned to Mana's vision, she kept on bashing the fallen figure again and again and again and again. She wasn't sure how or why was the nightmare creature disguised as her friend or what was it aiming to achieve by that question, also why did it stutter like that almost like her answer was neither right nor wrong. Whatever nightmarish rituals made it must've been crossed. Finally, the illusion faded and Mana saw a crushed and shaking figure of a giant insect wailing around, one set on an eternal green flame and one with the head completely bashed into the stone but still alive to feel the heat of its final moments.</p><p>Mana cried out in pain and dropped the torch, her ribs were burning, she clutched at her aching body and ran on forward using the last of her strength. Suddenly the world blurred and turned black again, the girl stumbled and hit the wall. She felt pulsing pain in her nose and a warm torrent of blood going down her face. The magician stood up and turned around pressing her body against the cold wall and feeling her own pounding heart as if her arms formed an imaginary barrier that protected her.</p><p>Another figure appeared from the black smoke. It was Meiko this time.</p><p>"Why did you take us on this mission?" she asked just as slyly and deceitfully as the previous nightmare incarnated.</p><p>"Because I'm a greedy and selfish person!" Mana screamed out at the shapeshifting image of her friend.</p><p>"I don't care about any of you, I just wanted my chakra control back. Now just kill me or leave me alone or do whatever you must do! I don't want to see any of you anymore." The magician collapsed on her knees in tears. Why was all of this haunting her so much? Why did she purposefully lie to this image to get it to hate her, to get it to go away? Why would she wish to push one of her best friends away? Why would she purposefully wish to be hated?</p><p>The figure closed in, Mana felt a tight grip press her body against Meiko, one so strong that it almost broke her spine and cracked her ribs. The girl didn't scream, she just cocked her head back and gave up, if this thing was here to kill her it could go on. She wouldn't stop it. She deserved it really...</p><p>Abandoning and pushing away everyone she ever loved. Sharp pain almost made Mana scream, finally, the illusion went away revealing the magician completely in the insect's grasp with its upper legs having penetrated her back. Mana felt some sort of gooey liquid being pumped into her body and coursing throughout, what was that: poison, some sort of anticoagulant?</p><p>"Why am I not dying? Why am I not going asleep?" The magician wandered to herself. She wanted to die, she relaxed her body and tensed it again forcing the poison to course through her body easier.</p><p>"But... What if... What if these things also attacked the others? Do I have the right to give up and die risking to let my friends die too? No... No... I must fight... I need to find out if they're okay" Mana's eyes shot wide open, she couldn't ever hope to free herself from this creature's grasp.</p><p>She didn't know why didn't the poison work on her nor did she care, the magician thrust her teeth forward past the creature's mandibles and dug deep into the gooey cysts on the insectoid's face. The warm and sticky goo that smelled worse than a paralyzed diarrhetic pirate's diaper shot all over her face and down below. The insectoid violently shook on its hind legs and twitched falling down and shaking in a grotesque and nightmarish manner. Mana grabbed another torch off the wall. Her hands were shaking, her ribs were burning.</p><p>It was time to do hero's work...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0145"><h2>145. A New Course</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Several drops of a purple gooey liquid fell to the sand below. Mana turned the limb of the insect equipped with a sting on each leg around the green torches to examine it. In the other hand, she held one of the cysts she ripped off of the insect's face. Before she attacked those things and started swinging she needed to examine these creatures. She needed to understand these primitive yet terrifying insectoid hunters, the magician needed to understand what made them so effective at what they did.</p><p>Close to Mana's feet laid a pile of small rodents that Mana impaled with the limb, they weren't dead nor were they even bleeding. The girl wished to understand what the poison was doing exactly before she started digging deeper into why she wasn't affected by it. Judging from the results the magician would also find out just how much time she has to put a plan together, if her friends were indeed captured she needed to know how these hunters feed, do they kill and eat their prey immediately, or do they just paralyze it and have some further goals to fulfill with the carcasses of their prey.</p><p>So far judging from the delirious and disabled yet hyperventilating rodents it seemed like the poison merely paralyzed the prey and caused an excessive fever. Mana was not completely sure why these insects would not kill their prey immediately or how do they actually finish it off once their ulterior goals are fulfilled. She had no time to find out. Understanding the mechanisms that made these things work had the priority...</p><hr/><p>Meiko's eyelids clapped heavily, it felt similar to how it felt awakening from a heavy beating. Her entire body was paralyzed and the blacksmith felt sticky and hard surfaces beneath her, she wasn't laying on the sand. She knew that smell – it was blood. The genin tried to squirm and shake but something shaped like a rib just dug deep into her back, all of her efforts only made her move a single muscle. Whatever these insects injected into her was very potent...</p><p>Sounds of squirming and clacking of chitin shells against the stone and bones took over the place. Meiko's heart started pounding harder, as always she tried to overpower the poison but that was simply not enough. Once again she found herself just a little bit short of sheer power. She was so strong, she yearned to be even stronger, and yet she wasn't able to be strong enough anytime she needed to. She couldn't beat that totem-using guy in the desert, she wasn't able to resist the trap of those things and now she'll end up in some insectoid intestines...</p><p>One of the insects crawled right up to Meiko, the blacksmith angrily struggled to try to overcome that numbness in her body but nothing worked. She heard some bone-cracking sounds to her side so Shimo and Kouta must've been resisting those insects as well.</p><p>"I feel my chakra... Back..." Shimo grunted angrily, his voice was filled with pain, and made the effort in trying to break free quite clear.</p><p>"Yeah, we must've been out overnight, maybe even longer" Kouta agreed, "It's no use, even with all of my chakra enhancements I can't break out... I don't think it can be broken out of with strength alone"</p><p>The insectoid's creepy eyes leaned up to Meiko's face. The insect lifted one of its creepy limbs and penetrated one of their cysts with it squirting an entirely different cloud of gas as the chemical compound in their poison reacted with the gas stored in those blobs on their faces, one of pinkish-red shades of color. Meiko coughed, her mind was starting to feel hazy, her pupils simply faded from her eyes as her irises were all that distinguished her eye from being completely whited out.</p><p>"Meiko! Damn, they must've hypnotized her or something!" Shimo grunted. Another insect crawled up to his face and spat the cloud of gas out into his face as well. The genin tried to reach out and bite into the cyst, defying the gas's effects.</p><p>"How did you not get hypnotized like Meiko?" Kouta asked yelling out loud and scared as another one of the insectoid hunters was climbing up to his face to try and numb his mind and body as well.</p><p>"It's genjutsu, just keep focused on the fact that what they do is genjutsu to keep identifying it and keep applying chakra to dispel it!" Shimo answered.</p><p>"Genjutsu? How could insects...?" Kouta tried to fight back but then his eyes started acting weird, his mind started dulling and fading so the boy simply burst his chakra from his body accelerating its flow and breaking out of the illusion. He couldn't keep that up forever, dispelling genjutsu cost chakra, the more intense the illusion, the more strain fighting it placed.</p><p>The insect that knocked Meiko out crawled up to her face as if it wanted to sit on it. Its shell opened revealing a rather squishy and pudgy torso that was strangely glowing in the rather shady cave, most likely due to the substances stored inside its blobby bodies.</p><p>"Why didn't you tell us earlier, Meiko may have saved herself too?" Kouta angrily scolded the ex-rogue swordsman.</p><p>"With her chakra control, she wouldn't have been able to fight off genjutsu anyway. She packs a mean punch and can swordfight with the best of them but her skills managing chakra aren't the sharpest. Also, we need those insects thinking they can actually knock us out. If they get annoyed by our resistance they might just kill us immediately and be done with it. Eventually, we'll need to give in too..." the swordsman grunted out annoyed by his current situation.</p><p>"I wonder what they want with us..." Kouta just barely lifted his head up looking at the insect pressing its squishy inner body against Meiko. A sharp sting burst out from the insect's intestines making blood squirt out together with it and forcing the insect to violently twitch and shake in pain stabbing out powerfully against the floor surrounding Meiko with its stinger limbs.</p><p>A large sticky fluid shot out covering the insectoid hunter and pulling it to the wall upwards. The insect exploded in a mass of goo and separated chitin shell parts as a gigantic spider pulled its prey from the ceiling of the cave lair and crushed its entire body in its massive mouth.</p><p>"It's trying to lay eggs in your guts." Mana's voice echoed through the cave lair. Slowly, the girl walked out into the light from the corridor making all the insects in the cave turn at her and lunge in the girl's direction. The magician closed her eyes and grabbed hold tighter of her two torches that were her only defense besides the gigantic spider chowing those insectoid nightmares down one by one.</p><p>A deafening hiss interrupted Mana's attempt to explain to Shimo and Kouta what was happening and to calm them down. All of these insects launched their gas illusions at once.</p><p>"Damn it, Mana-chan can't control chakra so she won't be able to resist those illusions and cancel them out!" Kouta yelled out in fear.</p><p>Mana just continued to walk on forward, slowly but without making her face twitch even once.</p><p>"As you've correctly concluded the cysts on these insects' faces emit gases that cause illusions, they seem to be chakra induced so they do qualify as genjutsu of a quite sophisticated nature." Mana calmly explained as illusions of her friends and her past enemies appeared in front of her, all of them spilling questions trying to confuse her.</p><p>"Most simple genjutsu are initiated through what is called a "genjutsu focus", it could be a sound or a certain visual stimulus, this one is initiated through gas but this isn't a simple illusion because it attacks a person's brain center and not their chakra flow. It doesn't require someone to possess a working chakra flow, just a functional brain. That's how these hunters must've hunted for thousands of years before intricate chakra networks became a common evolutionary trait among the species." The girl spoke without bothering to combat the illusions. The insects all approached her slowly completely captivated by the defenseless girl and oblivious to the fact that they were hunted out one by one by a giant predator above them.</p><p>"Mana, damn it, stop fooling around, fight them or run!" Shimo yelled out as more than a dozen insects surrounded the girl and all grabbed and lifted her in the air.</p><p>"You see the most common illusion consists of a person in your memories asking a question the answer to which exists in your memories. Answering it correctly stimulates that part of the brain and cancels the illusions. Answering it wrong does not, while it wastes time and lets these things close in on you..." Mana kept on talking as the insects kept stinging her with their stings two at a time. The magician squirmed and yelled out in pain before finally pulling out something out of her pocket and drinking it before spitting it out on her torches.</p><p>The flammable liquid extracted from the smelly glands of the insects burst into flames in a wild firestorm setting all the insects around her on fire. The predators kept on shaking back and falling to their backs, their legs twitched still squirting the poison around as they died out one by one. Satisfied by the successful hunt the gigantic spider quickly left as well. Mana slowly crept up to Kouta and Shimo and cut them loose. The magician then fell on her knee and threw up. Holding that smelly liquid in her mouth even for a couple of moments was really disgusting, especially when combined with what she had to chow down to maintain immunity to the poison.</p><p>Kouta gently laid Mana down and gave her some water, he also mixed in some spruce thorns extract meant for combating infections just to kill her nasty breath. The rodent from which the magician extracted the highly flammable substance defended itself by squirting it using it as a smelly self-defense weapon.</p><p>"Is Meiko OK?" Mana smiled, her body felt like she could walk or do nothing more. Like she was all out. Honestly, she could've fought those things and not just take their stings but she had no more strength. All the research, all that effort, and all-night planning, all the previously sustained wounds...</p><p>"Yeah, she's fine, don't worry, Mana-chan, my chakra returned, I can finish treating you. I'll treat everything so just relax and rest... After I'm done you'll be good as new." The boy softly stroke her hair out of Mana's way pressing his hand against the lump of swollen flesh by her eye and green light burst from his hand. Initially, the girl could not see it but then the overwhelming green made her slightly shake her head in discomfort. If it hurt that much to heal her swollen beatings just how badly would it hurt to regrow half of her teeth and heal her ribs? Bones were always the most painful to heal...</p><p>"How did you find us?" Shimo asked slapping Meiko around a couple of times, then pressing his hand against her back and sending a pulse of chakra that shocked her out of her illusion and broke it for her.</p><p>"That spider-like-thing is the natural predator to those insects. Strangely enough, it grows from a maggot the size of a brick. Since that thing hunts those insects it is immune to the paralyzing effects of their poison and I happened to eat one maggot when I was hungry before by sheer luck. That's how I avoided capture. I found one grown-up version of that maggot and stabbed it with the detached version of that sting to find out if it's immune, then simply hid from it and followed where it'd go. It found you guys and brought me with it"</p><p>Meiko screamed out after seeing Mana and her face that was slowly starting to resemble her previous state. The blacksmith jumped up to Mana and hugged the magician screaming in joy. "You're back!" the genin yelled out. Angrily, Kouta yanked Meiko off Mana and continued his treatment.</p><p>"You did all this planning and risked your life coming to the nest of these things? There had to be a lot of variables that simply aligned properly..." Shimo coldly exclaimed.</p><p>"Not really..." the magician shook her head softly, "This nest is one of many, we weren't too far away from each other when we were attacked since this cave system is massive. It only made sense for those insects to carry you to the closest nest to where they got you and that would've been the nest the spider found during its hunt."</p><p>"And what if we got killed while you did all that research?" Shimo squinted at her.</p><p>"You wouldn't have, the insects wanted your bodies for nesting purposes so you were safe for possibly days if not weeks or entire months. They are predators that eat flesh but they need that flesh molten and mushed up, usually, their eggs burrowing from your bodies would do that, if they're desperate they also can overdose you with the poison and melt your flesh from the inside." Mana started feeling like she was being interrogated. Did Shimo really suspect that she may not have wanted to save them and was only in it for her own interest?</p><p>"Wow, Mana-chan, you could've died from so many stings, it was like your entire body was skewered by them!" Kouta exclaimed ripping Mana's raggy desert cloak off to see the pulsing wounds still dripping poison from them.</p><p>"It wasn't life-threatening, I gorged on a bunch of those maggots and applied their goo on my skin so that the spider didn't feel suspicious around me. The poison also makes one's blood thicken so it kept my blood inside. It hurt and probably poked some organs but it wasn't something I'd die immediately from, also I needed them all in one place, I wasn't strong enough to fight all of them even while their ranks were compromised by the spider-like-thing." Mana complained looking at the pulsing purplish swellings all over her abdomen that leaked a drop or two of the black poison.</p><p>"Holy shit, Mana, holy shit..." Meiko grinned with her full smile, that girl sometimes really confused the magician. Just a couple of moments ago her face was almost flooded with insect eggs that would've moved to her innards and then started growing.</p><p>Mana suspected the possibility that her friends may have already been laid eggs in but she counted that Shimo or Kouta would've had something to say about that. Maybe Kouta would've been able to surgically remove them once they reached Sunagakure or Shimo could have frozen those areas slowing down their development. And yet the blacksmith just laughed and looked excited as always.</p><p>"You've changed..." Shimo closed his eyes and lowered his head but then smiled and looked back at his old teammate. "I think for the better. The old Mana wouldn't have been brave or confident enough to use all of that big head on her shoulders or play it like that, not to mention totally murdering a bunch of bugs."</p><p>Mana screamed out in pain as Kouta finally finished healing her facial scratches and her teeth and moved to her ribs. Those were probably the most intense part to be healed.</p><p>"They're not people, their own brains aren't complicated enough to be affected by their own illusions. They don't understand or comprehend anything, they just live and do what they do by instinct. They don't understand self-preservation and just kill, mate, and lay eggs..." Mana closed her eyes, she'd have much rather have found a peaceful solution but those things weren't really people nor were they things capable of understanding what death was.</p><p>"More so, their existence is only because of us tampering with their habitats, the ancient people dug up these caves and let them take them over, they placed these torches all around that helped them find this place as their new home as the world around them evolved. Truth be told, they live in a world that is no longer theirs, ideally, they should all be allowed to just pass on to the species succeeding them. That's what the First People did, wasn't it? Died out and left chakra mastery for us allowing people to inherit it and succeed them." The magician looked away at the rustling salad flame behind her, she focused on the one point in space and time to avoid having to think about the pain she was feeling while her gut was healed and all those penetrating wounds and the insects' poison were healed and extracted.</p><p>Meiko didn't let Mana rest, she knelt up to the magician and looked her in the eyes, the blacksmith's eyes were sad and filled with regret.</p><p>"So, when we will heal you, will you leave us again?" Meiko asked, "I probably could've dealt with those illusions but they showed you to me and I forgot the right answer and... I just felt like reliving that moment again, that moment of letting a friend down, messing up again."</p><p>Mana tried to force a smile through her face as being healed wasn't as peaceful as she remembered it being, Kouta was a young and inexperienced medical ninja so his treatment was not nearly as precise and quick and painless as an experienced medical ninja in the Konoha Hospital could've done it.</p><p>"No. I returned because I still care about you guys, I care about everyone and it is as I told Tanshu-sensei once - I have the most responsibilities in the world because I must protect it whenever I can. Also, I won't allow myself to take any lives while doing it. Sometimes my enemies won't play fair, they'll exploit me and my weaknesses and sometimes people dear to me will annoy me, let me down or abandon me but even so, I must be better than to abandon and give up on them. I'm sorry, guys..." Mana sadly exclaimed.</p><p>Shimo sat down closer to the magician and closed his eyes, he was checking out some of the insects' chitin plates that they wore as shells but then he deemed it too weak and tossed it aside.</p><p>"So, what's next?" He asked directly.</p><p>"We head to Sunagakure, report to Konoha..." Mana tried to cut it short but her friend didn't let up.</p><p>"They'll tell us to go back. If you still want to hunt the Box you need solid reasons to ask for the mission objective to be extended due to unforeseen circumstances." Shimo shook his head. He was right, after coming back he was so often right but very brutish about the way he was right in.</p><p>"Well, before I was attacked I took a look at the sphere, it was one of the only things I took with me when I left you guys... It's covered with numbers, the first two numbers say "4/4" and then it's just endless streaks of three random numbers one to six ending with a bar." Mana sighed.</p><p>"Maybe it's a puzzle of some sort? Maybe it's a clue to where the Box was taken to after the person found it but lacked the balls to use it? I mean the Box does carry some risks, that whole bit about the wish needing to be selfless, right? So what if the original finder just sold it to someone for a lot of money?" Kouta wondered as he kept on healing Mana, the magician suspected that she'll need plenty of healing and that they should've found a better place to stay.</p><p>"It's a music puzzle!" Meiko cheerfully yelled out.</p><p>Everyone looked at her curiously, Mana even lifted her head out of shock to look at her friend. Nobody expected Meiko of all people to solve it. The blacksmith was an unmatched crafter and a great fighter but not much of a puzzle solver most of the time.</p><p>"What? I like music..." the girl shrugged as a response to everyone's stares.</p><p>Meiko took the sphere and turned it around, "You see, the 4/4 tells you how many beats there are per bar, each number must indicate some sort of a note or a beat but there are only three beats per bar in every section meaning each bar is missing one beat. It is a music puzzle, you need to insert a beat to each bar to make it all make sense..." the blacksmith explained.</p><p>Shimo looked at Meiko with a sarcastic squint. "I don't suppose you can solve it too?" he asked with a certain tongue of wit behind his words.</p><p>"I said I like music, I don't write it. We need someone good with that to complete it, a composer or something..." Meiko shrugged and handed the sphere back to Mana.</p><p>"When the puzzle is solved the bars must indicate some sort of coordinates-based clue to the Box's location... That was amazing, Meiko! That's definitely enough for us to ask for an objective extension." Mana finally had a reason to smile.</p><p>"Well, we'll still need to drop by the Sand Village to inform Konoha and give them a partial report. We can use the Sunagakure Aviary to send a coded message, we'll also use that time to sell off all we got from the raider camps and all of this insane journey and buy more supplies. We'll need clothes and food and to restock our ninja kits and fix our weapons." Shimo thought out loud, "But in general this can still work..."</p><p>The quest for Bliss was not yet complete but it was just resurrected back to life. For once there was still hope that things could still turn out OK. After that gruesome nightmare in the caves, the team would finally catch a break and refill their empty and depressed by defeat hearts with some semblance of hope!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0146"><h2>146. Locals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko threw a sloppy punch. Mana leaned to the side, bobbing and weaving as a boxer would've. A slightly faster combination of blows followed this tricky displacement punch, the magician moved the weight over to her left leg and ducked spinning on it and aiming her right leg to hit Meiko on the shins. The blacksmith's body blurred as she leaped backward faster than Mana's eyes could track her.</p><p>"You're getting better. Before I thought you should only redirect but you seem to start feeling comfortable with counters too..." Meiko smiled.</p><p>"Yeah well, I'm still done for if my opponent uses chakra augmentation..." Mana sighed fixing her messy hair and stretching out a little to let her weary muscles adjust the blood circulation somewhat to ease the tension.</p><p>"You can train for a hundred years and you'll never prepare for that. As skilled as a martial artist can get they'll never surpass elementary chakra augmentation, your redirection mastery should provide enough defense for those sloppy powerhouses so don't hate yourself over it" Meiko used a towel to clean floods of sweat off her face.</p><p>"You two done? We need to move..." Shimo grunted. It didn't take long to leave the caves for the four of them and start heading towards Sunagakure through the Land of Wind deserts, the closer they got to the Sunagakure walls the rockier the desert became, where before the layers of heated sand saw no end, at this moment the layer couldn't have been thicker half a foot.</p><p>"Mana-chan is getting better..." Kouta smiled gently and packed his things as well.</p><p>Mana and Meiko took the time to train a little bit more with every smallest stop to eat or rest. Having the heat of the desert in mind the genin tried to only move during the early hours of the morning or the later hours of the evening. At least the desert parts closer to Sunagakure had plenty of rocky blocks that resembled small mountains that served as a great source of shade during the hottest parts of the day.</p><p>"She's wasting her time, we've decided to have her gain her ability to manipulate chakra back. We should focus on that instead of teaching her how to fight in her current state. It feels like a Plan B type situation, we'll get that Box for sure, there need to be no doubts or other plans..." Shimo arrogantly declared tying his sword around his waist.</p><p>"Maybe you should train your swordsmanship a little too during the break times?" Kouta laughed out cheerfully biting Shimo a little.</p><p>"That'd be a waste of energy and chakra, I use Ice Style to restrain my opponent and it won't be too effective in the desert. My stamina is best reserved to deal with the pressures of traveling, look at those two, they're winded and now we'll have to move at a slower rate because of that" Shimo pointed at Mana who was sitting by the rock gasping for at least the smallest breath of air that didn't heat her lungs.</p><p>Meiko was also stretched out on the sand, normally she'd have little to no fatigue but not using chakra to supplement her stamina or her physical stats wore her out. Meiko severely restrained herself to make her a fitting and equal opponent for Mana to draw out her abilities and teach her proper fight planning and to challenge her accordingly to her skill.</p><p>"Well, at least with your Ice Style we'll always have a proper source of water with us" Kouta laughed out flipping his flask over his face and spilling some icy water on his face before taking in a couple of gulps.</p><p>"Speaking of which, I need to take a leak..." Shimo snapped his finger and placed his bags on the sand again. The boy started rushing towards the other side of the large boulder they were resting close to before Kouta jumped up to his feet as well.</p><p>"I'll watch..." he nodded with his cheerful laughing face diminishing into a friendly smile.</p><p>"Excuse me, you'll watch?" Meiko huffed out still struggling to get her breath back into proper rhythm.</p><p>"Yeah, the desert is full of raiders and snakes and all that thing, peeing alone is dangerous. You always watch Mana-chan pee, don't you?" Kouta curiously asked the blacksmith.</p><p>"Yeah, but I thought it was a social thing, I wasn't sure why we're doing it..." Meiko shrugged and leaped back on her feet, weaving around and throwing a couple of quick jabs in the air to check if her breath was back for good and if she could again physically strain herself without tiring too fast.</p><p>Mana laughed and sat back up, she took a hairbrush out of her bag, angrily yanking it out from under loads of stuff they took from the raider camp they thought they'd need. The magician took a couple of seconds to brush sand and various small insects out of her hair. She then handed the brush to Meiko but the blacksmith shook her head.</p><p>"That's why I have my hair stay short, I'm still astounded by your skilled head movements to keep your hair from slapping you in the face during spars, almost like it's a part of your style, but if I was some genius martial artist it'd make your movements a little predictable. If you plan on slugging with people you better trim that mess." Meiko did a couple of squats and then jumped on her index finger doing a couple of upside one finger push-ups just to see if her chakra augmentation worked fine. It appeared the blacksmith finished her warm-up.</p><p>"No, I need it that way for my magic shows. As an entertainer, I want to look good on stage and I'd probably look weird with short hair." the magician measured her hair and tried to imagine herself with half of that or even with shoulder-length hair having never imagined herself with that sort of hairdo. There were very few instances where she ever cut her hair that short...</p><p>"I thought you hated that thing? I mean didn't you leave because that magic thing wasn't you? If you actually like that stage magic thing why would you risk your life for getting your old life back?" Meiko wondered curiously sitting on her knees and looking at Mana stretching out and packing her things.</p><p>"No, I love stage magic just as much as I do my life as a ninja. Truth be told, I kind of miss that. I miss being on the stage and performing. I wasn't feeling depressed because I was a magician instead of being a ninja, I was crushed because I'm a ninja magician and I was forced to be only one of those things. If I had to be just a ninja I'd have a similar identity crisis as I do with losing my chakra control." Mana explained. A large smile covered her face as the girl imagined being on the stage again, recalling that sensation of making people laugh, making them look at her tricks with awe, and finally seeing ninjutsu as a source of entertainment instead of fearing it as something that could have taken lives of their family of those of their own.</p><p>"Well, you're doing just fine without it, you know... You're pretty darned smart on your feet. If you perform as you did in the caves with those creepy crawlies you could still be a low-ranking ninja even without your chakra control... You could even go a long way if you worked with intelligence or in the Administration offices" Meiko scratched the back of her head.</p><p>The blacksmith was right. There was a large quantity of ninja that only did the paperwork and achieved moderate success even as genin and chuunin who had never before left on a single official mission and just managed the paperwork and pushed files. There were people working in the office or handling intelligence, people interrogating criminals and captured rogue ninja, there were ninja who were the drafters of peace treaties or spokespeople in the Ninja Tribunal, and so on. They had their chakra control but weren't overly impressive in battle so Mana's disability would barely even matter.</p><p>"No, I'd hate working like that, reading about people dying and being unable to change anything. I'd rather work out on the field and perish being unable to beat an opponent with elementary chakra manipulation skills than have to file folders about how many children burned to death after the latest attack of rogues in a nearby settlement..." Mana's head sunk down, she pressed her fists up to her hips and shook for a moment imagining that moment in her head.</p><p>"Well, you saved our butts, I'm not keeping count or anything but it matters and you've changed something. If it weren't for you we'd be still paralyzed with insect eggs in our guts waiting to burst out and make us into goo that those creepazoids could slurp. Shimo can be a grump but Kouta is a nice person and I'm alright too, I guess, so technically the world is a better place already because you were born. Don't think of yourself as useless or anything. Don't hate yourself or think you don't matter." Meiko gave Mana a thumb up to which Mana could only stare at her in shock. Those words really hit her where it counted. For the first moment in her life, someone acknowledged what she was doing and said that she may have made a difference.</p><p>"I'm not going to stop, those insects taught me a lot about how ancient genjutsu worked, how it was before it evolved into what it is today... They gave me a key that will help me complete a technique I've been working on for the longest time. Genjutsu used to be something that assaulted the brain directly. When things evolved into creatures with those large chakra networks the illusions started targeting them instead of the brain but that means no one will know how to defend against those primitive illusions anymore. I'm going to become strong, I'll protect everyone." Mana mumbled out under her own nose, still feeling some joy and pride in her heart from Meiko's words.</p><p>"You know, you've got to teach me how to defend against genjutsu one day, I felt so helpless back then, I was hit with something I had no way of breaking, even Shimo and Kouta could only barely fight it." Meiko pouted her lips remembering how her mind was completely overwhelmed by that numbing feeling and how she was rendered helpless by something so simple as a chakra signal sent to her brain reacting to her own neural network.</p><p>"Most ninja can't defend against genjutsu well, it might be a very useful skill for you to have but the primitive brain targeting genjutsu cannot be defended against. As long as you have a functional brain you'll be hit by it, no matter how strong you are physically, no matter what protective techniques you have. That's why they were so fascinating and dangerous to me" Mana explained.</p><p>"Wow, you really sound hyped when talking about that, you're like a jutsu nerd of some sort..." Meiko laughed out rolling on the sand while she clutched her sides. Everything this girl did was kicked up to a hyperactive degree. Everything she did was supercharged with childish emotions, she was happy like a laughing baby, she was angry like a raging caveman and she felt sadness more profound than anyone else's.</p><p>"Look who's talking..." Mana sarcastically squinted at Meiko and just barely resisted the temptation to bring up a talk about some sort of crafting technique or a historically significant weapon to spark Meiko's own passionate reaction.</p><p>"I've no idea what you're talking about." the girl waved her large hand at Mana and then punched her own palm in excitement. "Very well then, you've gone as far as you can go at this level, now you'll be training me!" the blacksmith cringed with an almost aggressive level of excitement.</p><p>Suddenly the girl leaped up to her feet and pointed further away, Mana turned and witnessed a gigantic vortex of raging sand, almost like a super compact sandstorm. The raging whirlwind hit something as it appeared to violently explode. Loud yells, thuds, and explosions shaking the ground beneath the girls' feet could've been heard from where the boys left to pee.</p><p>"Come on, let's go!" Meiko jumped up and just disappeared. Mana sighed as she was left to get to the battlefield the old-fashioned way. Running on the sand was tough already and now she had that burning fear of her friends getting hurt in her heart that made her run that much faster.</p><p>Finally, the magician figured that she'd have more luck looking at the battlefield and supporting her friends from above. She pulled out two kunai from her pouch she recently refilled from the supplies they took from the raiders' camp and made her way scaling up the dry desert rock. It was a good thing that she was light and that those kunai were quite hard and high quality so they could be used that way. After a couple of moments scaling up the rock, the magician found it much easier to run over rock than sand. She took a peak from the large rock that ended right above where the boys left and where Meiko momentarily dashed to.</p><p>Below there was a huge brawl going on. The assailants appeared to be desert raiders similar to those that Meiko beat but some of them used simple low-ranking ninjutsu which Mana found surprising. Usually, raiders had no such ability, at the very best, most high ranking threats coming from the raider ranks were ex-mercenaries who were trained to deal with some low ranking ninja but certainly not use ninjutsu themselves. Someone must've been tutoring the desert raiders on the ways of the ninja which was a scary concept to imagine. Rogue ninja were enough of a threat already. If any small-time scumbag outside the village walls could raise sandstorms or use the crushing force of layers upon layers of sand it would've really challenged Sunagakure's military prowess.</p><p>Kouta was all over the place, sonic booms were everywhere where he stopped to move as he accelerated from nothing to breaking the sound barrier in less than a second. He must've been using most of what he had, using his chakra augmentation to enhance his speed just so he could combat most of his assailants at the same time while using his medical techniques to enhance his strength through precise chakra control. The magician noticed how the boy was pulling his punches and yet the raiders were being flung around like ragdolls from his easiest blows. While those raiders knew ninjutsu they were unable to use chakra augmentation or chose not to use it having its risks in mind.</p><p>Shimo didn't pull his attacks, he was barely even visible by Mana's eyes and she could only tell of his blitzing existence because of the dozens of raiders that were cut down or lost their limbs in Shimo's ruthless rampage through the battlefield. This was a young man who spent so much time beyond the village walls to hone his skills that he no longer recognized the value of holding anything back. These men were trying to use Wind and even Fire Style ninjutsu but the young swordsman outraced their flames and their fiercest and fastest winds. Several raiders formed entire projectiles or elongated their weapons with Wind Style techniques but Shimo wasn't scratched once, several supersonic projectiles did scrape his messy desert cloak however but it only appeared to piss him off more.</p><p>Meiko seemed to relish this brawl, she didn't appear to be moving too fast, maybe she was still a little winded from the spar before as Mana could see the red blurs from her movement. The magician could still track Meiko a couple of seconds after the blacksmith's movement which was entire leagues below the speed that Kouta and Shimo moved in but Meiko appeared to be more skilled with her approach, she tricked her opponents into falling her slower but more powerful attacks, she used stomps to split the sands apart or cause fissures in the more rocky surfaces, she punched the sand creating rippling waves that tossed her enemies in the air leaving them suspended for Meiko's crushing yet lightning-fast blows. Almost like picking apples from a tree, if the apples were enemies and they had to be picked at supersonic speeds...</p><p>All of a sudden a loud popping sound echoed as five small sand projectiles hit the raiders in their chest making them pass out instantly. The Konoha three froze in their tracks and looked back on the same large rock where Mana was, the magician looked to the side only to see a friendly smiling young man extending his hand to her and another red-haired man with an oversized white scarf and a toothpick with his index fingers extended firing sand projectiles from his fingers. That redhead was the man who was making those loud sounds.</p><p>"Sand Style: Desert Automaton!" the redhead chanted out as the deafening pops intensified to a barrage and Mana became completely oblivious to all the projectiles the young man fired but could see an entire field of put down raiders. Each one of them was cursing and grunting in pain so this youth just put everyone down without killing a single one of them and managing not to hit the three targets he didn't want to hit as well.</p><p>A chubby female ninja standing at his side flicked her fingers. Her large backpack burst open with a great steel box shooting off from it and opening itself in mid-air. The young female made a quick hand seal with her one hand, not nearly as fast as Mana was able to but it was still completely invisible to the magician's eye with her current impaired perception.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Tool Expansion Jutsu!" she shouted out as chakra threads coming from her fingers lit up and went all the way up to the large box-like tool she shot out. The container extended and opened what appeared to be its mouth, large steel tentacles fired off from its sides making the entire thing look like a steel flytrap of some sort. The puppet then started to chug the fallen raiders into its enlarged "mouth" keeping them as prisoners. After the girl was done she once again reduced the size of the container puppet and moved up to it in an instant, placing her hand on it and sealing it into a scroll of her choosing.</p><p>Mana finally recovered from the shock giving her hand to the blond-haired ninja with the Sunagakure headband who helped her get down from the rocky side of the mountain by simply walking down the side of it using the Academy wall-climbing technique.</p><p>"We've had the entire situation under control. While Land of Wind desert may be your jurisdiction we were attacked..." Shimo crossed his hands over his chest, typical coming from an ex-rogue – he didn't appear to trust these three very much.</p><p>A man appeared behind him wearing the Sunagakure jounin west and a turban on his head with an impressive brown beard and equally as rich mustache but he didn't need the facial hair to point his manliness out as his bulk and muscle could've done it by their own. The man must've moved so fast that even Shimo couldn't register his movements and didn't even know he existed. Judging from the sound of the man's flashy and blitzing movement he used the high ranking "Body Flicker Jutsu" which was common among higher ranking ninja. It was a way to enhance one's speed to near-instantaneous movement without having to augment one's chakra and risk tearing one's chakra network apart.</p><p>"We are Sunagakure ninja under direct orders to pick you up and lead you into the safety of our village. Kazekage-sama was contacted by the Hokage and asked to do so because Lady believed you four may have been in trouble since you haven't contacted her for quite some time. With Kazekage-sama wishing to improve his political situation with Konoha he immediately sent a team to retrieve you and here we are..." the man spoke standing back-to-back with Shimo with neither one turning around to face the conversant. Shimo's mouth and eyes were still gaping wide open from the shock of the speed of that man's movement.</p><p>The frail blonde genin bowed his head to the degree that people used when referring to professional superiors.</p><p>"Please do not look at our intervention as a display of force. We merely wished to spare you the trouble of dealing with these raiders" the youth spoke with an apologetic tone never opening his eyes or wiping the smile off his face. He had very messy and spiky blonde hair and rather profoundly blown up cheeks and a double chin which would've been cringe-worthy to everyone seeing it for the first time. The blood vessels around his cheeks also seemed to be quite evident giving the blown-up cheeks some hieroglyph-like blood vessel markings.</p><p>The chubby female fixed the bandana tying up her long tied up blond hair and then spoke up. She looked similarly on the comical side but mostly due to her t-shirt that had a futon on it partly covered up by the jeans that were held on her shoulders with straps. Despite her intimidating size physically she appeared to dress like a five-year-old boy.</p><p>"These men answer to a known criminal who calls himself Fennec, he is a big pain in Kazekage-sama's ass and we apologize you had to deal with his lapdogs" the young woman also seemed rather polite and apologetic for something she had little to no control of.</p><p>"So Sunagakure knows of this Fennec already..." Mana realized as this information was something she really wished to report after finding out about him from those raiders back when they first entered the desert.</p><p>The third one who was the tallest of the three genin, just barely short of matching the height of their sensei, appeared to stay quiet. He wore a rather fancy desert cloak and had a large scarf which must've proved rather useful to tie around one's mouth during a sandstorm or could've served as a decent turban to protect one's head and hair from the blazing desert Sun or the raging sandstorms. His silence and strict stare truly looked a little intimidating. After a moment of awkward silence, the redhead also opened his mouth, his voice was tougher than that of teens his age but also a lot huskier and a bit on the silent side.</p><p>"Don't worry Leaf, Sunagakure has your back..." he uttered.</p>
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<a name="section0147"><h2>147. Choices Matter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Moving through the desert with someone who knew very well what they were doing was quite different. Naturally, the secrets of the desert were not all that mysterious to these people seeing how they lived in a village built of clay and sandstone entirely surrounded by a hulking wall of the desert stone and residing in a large crater of mysterious origin so that the slightly colder layers of sand below offered some chills and the surrounding rocks provided ample shade.</p><p>"Enough..." the jounin leader of the Sunagakure team raised his fist signaling everyone to stop. While Shimo couldn't help but feel suspicious by the Sunagakure party leading them to Sunagakure such was his job in the group, to question everything and use his cred and experience he picked up being trained by a rogue ninja to help and guide them through the tough environment of outside the walls.</p><p>"Why are we stopping, we can still move for a good two or three hours!?" Shimo grumped out, he constantly questioned and complained about the jounin's leadership. Mostly because he was waiting for the man to slip up so that the ex-rogue could expose him as not who he claimed to be. It was a mystery to Mana as to why he wanted to pick a fight with a jounin but the opponent's rank appeared to be of little importance to the Yuki swordsman.</p><p>"What we walk in distance is inconsequential compared to the energy we waste walking during those hours. That rock right there is a very decent shade, we won't find anything like that several hours later down the road" the bulky Sunagakure jounin explained stroking his beard.</p><p>From what the Konoha team picked up so far the man was called Izem, it was a very strange name the likes of which Mana had never heard but she just assumed people from different parts of the world would have different names. He was a calm yet very authoritative in his presence individual, just like in the current quarrel of a question and answer what he said sounded perfectly logical and no one really questioned it further. Even Shimo didn't seem to have a problem with the jounin's decision.</p><p>While the Konoha three awaited the conclusion of Shimo questioning the jounin the Sunagakure team just settled down. The only girl in the Sunagakure party – Tiwul chose to settle down on the edge of the rock providing them shade, initially, it appeared weird to Mana as to why the female would choose to sit in the Sun throughout their stay but the girl then pulled out a sheet of paper and some drawing brushes and small containers of paint and began to draw the desert sights.</p><p>Meiko, while feeling totally bored, scaled the rock up and settled down on top close to the girl to see her paint. Shimo just sat down by the stone, pressing his back against the shadier and colder parts to chill himself out, it appeared from the low position of the boy's head and his hair falling over his face that he had fallen asleep or just functioned in some sort of trance-like state. It was very similar to meditation but occasionally the boy swatted his sheathed sword around to scare away the insects buzzing around him. There must've been some dead animal carcass nearby because the concentration of flies was not very pleasant to deal with.</p><p>The blonde boy kept on looking at his refilled flask and laughing to himself, he drank a gulp and then looked at the slightly diminished amount of water. To Mana, such behavior proved odd so she slowly and without any attempts to sneak around walked up to him and sat down on a small rock close to him. For a moment she observed the boy playing with the flask like a little child having discovered a hidden wonder of the world as children often do.</p><p>"It's astounding, isn't it?" Menna, the blonde youngster who was distinguished by his excessive politeness, asked.</p><p>"I knew that the people living in the desert didn't see water often but I would never have thought you'd be amazed to that extent." Mana smiled still not quite catching Menna's cold.</p><p>"No, your friend's ability to use his ice to refill our flasks. It is such a remarkable ability, he is born to live in the desert, we would never let go of him if he was our prisoner. Truth be told, most of us would grow quite fond of such a man... Not that we intend any harm!" the young man shook his hands once he realized how strangely his sentence must've sounded.</p><p>"Not that many Yuki clansmen around your parts, I assume?" Mana winked at the boy trying to tell him that his poor choice of words was forgotten and ignored.</p><p>"Not really, Sunagakure might have a rapidly recovering military potential but we don't have a very wide variety of ninja. Most of us are either Sabaku clansmen manipulating sand, puppet users, or Wind Style ninja. There are quite a lot of swordsmen and weapon masters in our village but no one with such an exotic ability like your friend." Menna continued to stare at his flask.</p><p>"Well, if you ever need your flask refilled, don't hesitate to ask Shimo or me." Mana smiled and nodded her head leaving the boy to obsess over the water.</p><p>As the magician passed over the rock from below a couple of small stones almost hit her on the head forcing her to look up. The magician was intending to go talk to Meiko about training her to defend against genjutsu like the armored ninja asked, also she felt a little curious about how Tiwul's drawing venture was going on. Sitting above was the fourth member of the Sand party – Tala. The boy didn't speak that much and Mana only knew his name from his teammates referring to him. It didn't even feel too comfortable to refer to a person by their name when they don't tell it to you themselves...</p><p>With moderate effort, the magician scaled the rock upwards and settled down closer to Tala. It wasn't that she wanted to spend some time and get to know him or anything, even if she pretty much had to scope him and his intentions out with him being a foreigner and all, but she needed some rest before she finished climbing that rock.</p><p>For a moment there both she and Tala continued to stare at Shimo sitting quietly below, Izem, the strong-headed jounin stretching out and training and Menna obsessing over water and some of the food looted from the raider camp before that they shared with the Sunagakure party. The boy must've never had sherbet, preserved in those strange cooling sealing tubes, before or at least it must've been quite the delicacy around these parts.</p><p>Granted, Mana had never had any herself before finding out about it from Meiko and finding a hidden stash of it that Meiko still had not eaten during her brief stay at the camp. Even with all the sophistication around that delicacy, it was getting tiresome to eat dessert for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, saving smoked meat and fruits for special occasions.</p><p>"You don't talk much?" Tala asked speaking up first which was really unusual for him.</p><p>"Why? Does it bother you? I just stopped to rest for a while, I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you..." Mana replied beginning to feel a little awkward having just stopped climbing close to the young man's location and not talking at all.</p><p>"No, I like it, I'm just used to everyone talking all the time so I'm a little surprised..." the redhead shook his head and resumed his over-watching duty which he himself decided to take up.</p><p>"I've seen your ability when you took out those raiders, are you a Sabaku clansman? I've recently met another Sabaku clan member, I never knew you were so common in Sunagakure..." Mana took the liberty of asking.</p><p>"Really? A ninja wielding sand in the middle of the desert is surprising to you? No, I'm not a Sabaku clansman, I am a Wind Style user, I wrap the sand and compress it into small spheres of wind chakra making it add some weight and force to it. I'm not going to tell you much more than that, Konoha kunoichi." Tala responded with some malicious sounding and offensive irony in his voice but Mana decided to not push it, she already felt thankful that this young man spoke to her at all having the last couple of days in mind.</p><p>"Oh, I'm not really a kunoichi, not anymore, anyway... I overused chakra augmentation and broke my chakra network" Mana decided to be honest with the boy and see where it'd go.</p><p>"Oh... I'm sorry, that must feel horrible. Still, to break it permanently you should've tried to kick the planet like a football or something, I know it'll sound rude but it's really your own fault." Tala finally looked at Mana with some curiosity but also some hidden judgment. At least he understood how crushing losing one's chakra manipulation ability felt, at least his eyes suggested that he did because they projected pity from them. At least being honest opened him up somewhat.</p><p>"Yeah... It's not really that, a sensor told me that everything's fine with my chakra network it's just my mind..."</p><p>"You are telling me an awful lot of things about you, why? Aren't you afraid I'd use them against you? I am from another village, after all, your head would grant me a moderate bounty. Enough for lunch at least. Why do you trust strangers so much?" Tala asked revealing why he was so interested in Mana.</p><p>"Because you shall not allow a single hair to fall from this girl's head, she is the client of the Konoha Four..." Izem's strong and low pitched but also relatively gentle in tone voice explained. Shocked by the man's presence being completely unknown not only to her but to a ninja nearby Mana turned to the side seeing the slightly aged man hanging sideways off of the rock with his hands crossed on his bulky chest with his feet sticking to the rocky surface and holding his entire weight.</p><p>"Well, if you're the VIP, my point is just strengthened. Your head would pay a little more than that of your friends..." Tala closed his eyes and crossed his own hands and legs suggesting that he was done talking. Izem extended his hand to Mana with the intention of bringing her up the rock. Once the magician allowed the jounin to bring her up the man apologized for his pupil.</p><p>"Forgive Tala, the old ways are still not lost on him, he is a lot more conservative than even my generation... The Kazekage would pay for neither of your heads, Konoha is in exceptionally good standing with the Sand Village so don't pay Tala's ramblings much thought. In fact, Kazekage-sama and your Fifth engage in casual friendly rivalry from time to time and meet quite often in various meetings and Summits. He'd never go so far as to encourage putting sticks in Konoha's wheels. Actually, I'll let you in on a little rumor, the Kazekage is a little afraid of Lady Fifth, that being said, if you were in Land of the Waves or Kirigakure you'd be smart to heed Tala's advice and not talk too much about yourself" Izem explained while he slowly carried Mana up and placed her on top of the rock.</p><p>"Now please check out Tiwul's painting, it's really something else, or so people that see them say..." the man smiled to Mana twisting his facial hair in strange manners, and then leaped down the rock landing down as if he barely even leaped half a meter, without even picking up sand from beneath his feet.</p><p>Slowly Mana approached Meiko and Tiwul sitting down. These two looked so much like two boys when looking from behind and being blinded by the desert Sun. Meiko was rather tall and had a very physical build, it would've been clear to any observer that she could physically kick their ass if she needed to. Tiwul was rather chubby and didn't appear to be ashamed of it at all but her attire choices made her look like a little boy if anything else. While walking up closer to the two the magician could not help it but see Tiwul painting a heavenly oasis with palm trees, ripe fruits, and flowing rich rivers. The only sand in her painting was on the ring-shaped beaches around the small squirting spring of mineral water she drew in the center.</p><p>"Izem-san was right, this is amazing, albeit not too accurate..." Mana smiled meaning no offense with her critique, she was just a little stumped as to why would Tiwul choose to sit on top of a rock in front of the raging desert Sun in the middle of a day if she wasn't drawing the desert itself and was just imagining her own painting and bringing it to life.</p><p>"I always draw not what I see but how I want it to look, how I'd like for it to change during my lifetime. Maybe one day after this life kills me someone will see my paintings and decide to realize that vision... That is just my way of..."</p><p>"Leaving the world better than you found it, actually leaving a mark" Mana finished Tiwul's sentence to which the girl turned around and smiled at the magician. It was only then that Mana noticed that Tiwul was missing a couple of teeth. The magician wanted to bring it up but she wondered if it was somehow important to Tiwul to keep it that way, after all, most medical ninja were able to heal missing teeth back in half an hour or so.</p><p>"Yeah! When I told Meiko about it she instantly brought you up, it appears you think quite similarly to me. I am very glad that there are more people like us, she also told me you even go as far as to never kill people which to me sounded a bit overboard and too hard to live by in our line of work. To each their own, I guess" Tiwul laughed out and continued to draw.</p><p>"We made a bet that I could beat Tiwul at an eating contest, we're gonna go at it when we reach Sunagakure. That way I'll have the chance to check the local cuisine out!" Meiko smiled with wicked excitement, looking back at Mana while dangling her feet off the edge of the rock.</p><p>"You know... Kouta is pretty skilled at healing missing teeth, he helped me with that a lot, if you wish I can ask him to heal yours." Mana tried to carefully go there and find out why exactly didn't Tiwul have her mouth healed.</p><p>"Nah, I'm fine. I had quite a number of them grown back and it hurts too much, I'd rather keep 'em out than go through that bother." the chubby girl giggled to herself, her appearance appeared to not at all bother her, while Mana took a completely different approach in life she couldn't help but warmly smile and look at clouds covering up the midday Sun.</p><p>"Say, Mana... Tiwul said that Fennec guy is kind of a jerk, think we'll have some time to kick his ass during our trip back?" Meiko looked back at Mana questioningly.</p><p>"Huh... It's strange, you're not actually that strong or fast yet your team looks at you with trust and considers your voice important, I don't think I'd like to paint you at all, you're really good the way you are..." Tiwul murmured to herself.</p><p>"I don't know, it's not really our primary or even secondary objective. If he gets in our way I suppose we can take him out but I think our best bet is leaving him to Sunagakure since he's really their problem. We can't just solve their problems for them, it's people like Fennec that might make the next Sunagakure generation famous..." Mana scratched the back of her head. While she did wish to solve that problem someone of his caliber just sounded completely out of their pay grade and totally unrelated to their objective.</p><p>"Yeah, but don't worry, he's not really keeping himself contained to just Land of Wind anymore so you may just have your shot soon enough. Recently he blew up a small settlement in Land of Rivers as a signal to Konoha to stop interfering, I think he's mad for something you guys did, you're the only Konoha team working here at the moment, as far as we know..." Tiwul carelessly explained while not losing her rhythm of painting.</p><p>"Shit, you think he's mad at us for taking down that raider camp?" Meiko looked at Mana worried. The blacksmith must've finally realized how living in Mana's shoes and blaming herself for everything felt like.</p><p>"Oh, so you guys did do it? Well, good riddance, Viper's Pit or whatever it's called was a hole anyway, still, Meiko, you should listen to your friend. This Fennec guy is our problem and we'll deal with him. Stop meddling with him and putting other people and other countries in his crosshair. You have a mission of your own, don't you?" The chubby calmed the blacksmith down better than Mana could have. Mostly because Mana actually felt bad about their decision now. Maybe if they played it cool they could've avoided that whole fallout with the raiders and then all those attacks on Land of Rivers. After all, it was her call to bargain with them for supplies they needed so much...</p><p>"If anything it's my fault, I made the call to bargain with them, don't feel bad about it, Meiko. Now I don't like that Fennec guy one bit but Tiwul is right. The best we can do with a guy like that is report him to Konoha so that they offer assistance to Sunagakure, maybe some manpower or intelligence we have on his growing syndicate. Ultimately our meddling and attempts to help already cost lives. We need to stop messing this up and leave it to those able to actually help." Mana sadly explained. It appeared all the talking about Tiwul's art and that unifier of raiders Fennec made the magician forget bringing Meiko's training up.</p><p>Tiwul then stood up and sealed her work of art into a small scroll with a simple sealing technique. She looked at the clouds with a sense of wonder, clouds must've been quite a rare occurrence in the desert.</p><p>"Well, the opportunity to move out presented itself, by the time the sky clears up it'll be late enough for us to move anyways. Let's go" she said and headed down the rock. Mana and Meiko followed. Sunagakure was just one day away so they should reach it pretty soon.</p>
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<a name="section0148"><h2>148. A Village Hidden By Sand</h2></a>
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    <p>Kouta threw a lazily put together combination of blows. Menna who was honoring the boy as a sparring partner avoided it easily. Curiously sitting on the rock Mana was observing the playful match between the two while Tala angrily squinted at it before closing his eyes and acting uninterested for most of the spar. The magician felt a little bit curious about seeing Menna's abilities since he has not shown them during the brief battle with the raiders and was the only one of the squad save for the jounin leader to do so.</p><p>"You shouldn't have requested this spar if you hold back the whole time..." Menna smiled while avoiding another half-baked combination of blows with his eyes closed. Mana couldn't really get Menna's point, she could barely even see blurs and flashes from her point of view, was that amount of speed considered so pathetic amongst ninja, even genin? It only made her feel that much more powerless and outmatched.</p><p>Finally, Menna allowed himself to respond with a combination of strikes, he fought very similarly to Kouta, his style was highly improvised yet reminded of a demanding and very physical striking and kicking style. Surprised, if not a little bit intimidated, due to the sudden outburst of brutality and sheer strength from his partner Kouta raised his arms in a striking position around his head, leaving his arms and fists to defend his head while his elbows were left open for striking if he found an opening.</p><p>"Hm? Aren't you a little bit interested, Tala?" Mana asked looking at the annoyed redhead who was just angrily rubbing his boot against the rocky surface wishing for the Sun to finally hide behind the clouds again so they could move.</p><p>"Fights for shits and giggles do not interest me. Fighting is a process of attempting to kill someone, there is nothing playful or sporting about it." The grumpy young man replied continuing to rest with his eyes closed as if he was forced to not look at the spar going on in front of him.</p><p>"You say that yet you did not kill those raiders, they were full of wounds but none of them died..." Mana reminded the boy.</p><p>"That's because if we killed more of Fennec's men he'd raid another settlement and slaughter everyone before razing it to the ground. Murder only invites more murder as vengeance for the murder committed. For that reason, one must target the head of the fold and kill them before they can plan out their response. Fighting means to kill, that doesn't mean it has to be carried out with no thought to it, in fact, it means it needs more thought than everything else because people's lives are on the line. Now if you'd forgive me, I want to nap a little..." The young man lied because he kept on angrily kicking the rock he was sitting on while acting like he was sleeping the entire time.</p><p>Kouta was thrown back by Menna's strength, the medical ninja was sent dragging through the ground for at least fifty meters after Menna's blow which he managed to block. It appeared that while looking the least ready to fight physically the blonde may have been the readiest to slug it out of his entire team.</p><p>"That power, that chakra breaking out when you strike..." Kouta mumbled to himself before moving his smoking blocking arms out of the way from blocking his face so he could ask his next question directly. "You're a Juugo clansman, aren't you?"</p><p>Menna scratched the back of his head, "Juugo? What's that? No, I am Menna of the Ayaka clan" the blonde smiled gently as he always did when talking to someone.</p><p>"Ayaka clan?" Kouta turned his head to the side wondering if he had heard of such a clan before. Menna attacked just as fast and strong as Kouta did when he used his Juugo bloodline to form jets around his feet to move around or when he enhanced his blows with chakra using the medical precise chakra manipulation techniques. Certainly, it couldn't have been just chakra augmentation, no one would use augmentation of such caliber so casually for a friendly sparring match, at least a genin wouldn't.</p><p>Tiwul dropped down from above to sit closer to Mana, the girl looked quite happy, almost so to an alarming degree that looked a little too creepy.</p><p>"Your friend is about to have his butt kicked... Ayaka clan members have genetic mutations in their chakra systems allowing them to casually augment their chakra without any risk of inflicting damage to their chakra network. That means that Menna can augment his chakra as much as he wants and not worry about injuring himself or losing chakra manipulation permanently..." the chubby tomboy explained to Mana.</p><p>Menna moved his arms to the side and bent forward preparing for a dash, rays of blue light appearing almost like needles at where they shot out from his body that split into endless flocks of smaller pins at the end started shooting out from Menna's body. It took a great amount of chakra being released for it to be visible outside a person's body, usually, such displays of power displayed desperation for the ninja using it.</p><p>It signaled that a ninja was ready to go all out for this one final attack and then collapse from the pressure of his own chakra network being out of sync. Just for a moment, such a burst of chakra accelerated the body's flow of chakra, and, after a couple of moments, the body believed that was the natural flow, making it consume chakra normally at an accelerated rate before returning back to place. That is if it ever returned to normal...</p><p>Of course, if Tiwul was to be trusted, to Menna such degree of augmentation didn't mean anything at all.</p><p>Menna leaped forward, Kouta's body suddenly appeared to shift, almost like his entire skin changed to a more wooden texture as his pores opened and started bursting chakra through his enlarged network venting the built up chakra through the open pores so that his body never got used to the faster chakra flow and never had to adapt to the strain placed by augmentation. In a way both Kouta and Menna fought similarly, to Kouta augmenting the strength of his punches was easy and without risk, since medical ninja could enhance the strength of their blows through medical techniques and precise and unmatched chakra control, also as a Juugo he could vent the excess chakra stored in his network so that his network didn't break. Both of these young men were users of chakra augmentation that found different ways to bypass the risks using their natural-born advantages.</p><p>Both Kouta and Menna clashed with each other, exchanging fists at incredible speed, sonic booms flew out from where their fists collided, rocks and debris were thrown at any watchers to the point where Shimo who was resting nearby and observing the spar had to draw out his blade and deflect the flying hazards coming from the nearby battle that was moving everywhere and raged throughout the entire desert field they were resting at.</p><p>Tala's eyes suddenly shot wide open overflowing with annoyance and anger, he placed his arms forward in a hand seal position.</p><p>"Sand Style: Desert Automaton" he yelled out as the sand below his feet shot upwards in bullet-like projectiles at the debris and small stones hitting all of them and destroying them with pinpoint accuracy.</p><p>"Thanks for that, Tala." Tiwul laughed out scratching the back of her head, they could've been injured if Tala didn't act as fast as he did.</p><p>"You idiots! Stop fooling around already!" The redhead yelled out loud making Kouta and Menna stop rampaging around the battlefield with fists up close to each other's faces. "You're tiring yourself out and you're making a mess out of this place risking injury to the VIP and others, even more, you're revealing our position with this display of destruction and violence. What if at least one of you fails to properly control their chakra and they end up causing an explosion strong enough to destroy the whole desert? Stop messing around!" He yelled out expressing his annoyance.</p><p>Menna and Kouta both moved back from each other, Menna's face was completely swollen and the blonde was gripping at his ribs as if they may have been broken whereas Kouta had a cracked forehead and his cloak was torn up and had some blood marks on it signaling that he may have had some internal damage since he was spitting up some blood after being punched.</p><p>"How did they get those injuries? Just how fast were these two fighting? It looks like they've been fighting for entire days..." Mana thought looking at the two hyperventilating boys, Menna was breathing much heavier than Kouta which made the magician better able to analyze his clan's ability.</p><p>"It's alright, Tala, their control was exemplary and they've only transferred the entire force through their opponent, it was their speed and the secondary effects of it they could not control. While the world around them was in no danger of blowing up just yet, that is why sparring like this is important, it teaches us about what can be improved, how our own power can be controlled. That being said, Tala is partially right, spar at a much more casual level next time. For now, it's time to move out..." Izem, the jounin leader declared after appearing close to the huffing youngsters. He had left to do some lookout and the fact that he returned so quickly suggested that he may have found something interesting.</p><p>"Hmph..." Tala closed his eyes and leaped off the cliff landing on the ground without raising too much sand beneath his feet despite the fact that he leaped down quite the distance. Tiwul helped Mana get down as well.</p><p>"Why are you back so soon, sensei?" the chubby puppeteer asked.</p><p>"Because we need to move" he replied casually.</p><p>"But isn't it the peak of Sun's activity?" Shimo raised an eyebrow, always ready to bicker with the man.</p><p>"Yes, but Sunagakure is just a good twenty minutes of walking speed away, the desert winds are strong so the sand they picked up obstructed our view before, I bumped into the guards almost instantly after I left" the man explained. The team then quickly packed their things and started moving, moving through the midday would be pretty tough and they'd need several showers to wash off the sweat and sand from their bodies after this trip but if they would reach Sunagakure within twenty minutes of Mana's walking pace it'd all be worth it.</p><p>"For the record, Menna would have kicked Shimo's ass..." Tiwul playfully pinched Mana's elbow, the magician smiled and shook her head.</p><p>"No, you may not have noticed but there is a difference between the Ayaka and Juugo bloodlines. Menna's body indeed does protect him from tearing his own network apart as I have done in the past, however, it does nothing to protect his muscles from fatigue, in fact, he is fatigued much more intensely because his network takes no pressure away from his muscles where the excess chakra is probably redirected damaging the already fatigued muscles even more. Kouta, on the other hand, vents the excess chakra away through his pores. Menna is stronger as far as short bursts of augmentation are concerned, he can augment his chakra to much higher extents but Kouta is more of a marathon runner and he'd be able to outlast Menna in an actual fight" Mana found a prideful moment to bite her newly met friend in the butt. Tiwul opened her mouth to argue but then closed it and looked away after noticing how much trouble Menna had just standing on his feet and how much he was rubbing his aching thighs and arms.</p><hr/><p>Sunagakure was a very odd village when compared to Konohagakure which was the only village that Mana had to compare it to so far. Konoha reminded of an actual small city built in the middle of a rich and prosperous forest surrounded by sky-reaching trees and crystal lakes. Konoha was surrounded by a gate, an artificial wall made of wood and bricks that was then imbued with chakra and various seals and barrier ninjutsu techniques to protect it. Unless the barriers were dealt with in a cleverer and discrete way previously it'd probably take enough force to destroy the entire world to destroy both all the barriers and Konoha itself from outside the village.</p><p>That being said, Sunagakure appeared to be built entirely in a large crater that appeared more like ones caused by meteorites. The magician could not quite remember all the legends talking about Sunagakure's origins as the village was absurdly old, perhaps as old as Konoha itself having been built relatively soon after Konohagakure's rising.</p><p>Some of them said that a great ninja purposefully made this crater to host the village inside of it, there were others that said that the crater was caused by a meteorite falling down and leaving it imbued with incredibly pricey minerals making this specific spot much more fitting for a village to be built. There were legends that claimed that this was a site of an explosion caused by a Tailed Beast or a Lesser Demon...</p><p>What surrounded Sunagakure was not a manmade barrier, it was not a wall nor was there an actual gate. Regardless, there had to be barriers and seals protecting it just as strong as those of Konoha, at the very least Sunagakure should've had the barriers that did not offer protections but signaled of the entry of any entity with a chakra level strong enough to register.</p><p>Those were quite simple to put together by a barrier ninjutsu user but all of it was just speculations, the true nature of the protections surrounding the village must've been a military secret guarded by the village's Black Ops and Protections Service ninja. The natural barrier around Sunagakure was a tall valley of rocks and judging from the tall wall of natural rock on the other side it only had one passageway to and out of it.</p><p>There were two ninja with Sunagakure uniforms watching the long and narrow pass and doing watch duty. They must've also served as the first line of the village's defense so Mana assumed they were also formidable combatants as well trusted by the Kazekage to defend the village first before the reinforcements swarmed the perpetrators and assailants from all sides moving in from above the pass. Even if someone managed to beat the guards and move in they'd be closed in from both sides and sandwiched leaving themselves open for attacks from each side or above. It was a pretty impressive defense, Mana wondered about how this village could have been hit by the war so hard with such competent natural defenses.</p><p>After a brief conversation and check-ins with the guards, Izem managed to get both the Sand and the Konoha genin past the gate guards. Right after the whole party entered the narrow pass the magician noticed hawks or eagles flying above their head, these must've been the messenger birds used around these parts as well. The Kazekage must've been already reported to about their arrival even without there being any need to report to his office.</p><p>"So where to now, will the Kazekage wish to see us in his office?" Shimo looked at Izem questioningly. The jounin lifted his fist up into the sky and extended it into a palm, it was a sign for the Sand genin that they were set free. Right after the palm was extended the young ones whispered their farewells and dispersed disappearing into thin air faster than Mana could see which was slowly beginning to be a habit. At this point, the magician wondered just how could she not be considered blind when she was able to see so little of what went on around her...</p><p>"There's really no need, I'll report to Kazekage, your business is to report to the Hokage. That in itself is really not our mission objective anymore but after that, you can feel free to hang around the village for as long as you need... Konoha and Suna are no enemies, you'll be under no threat here" Izem replied slowly walking towards a large rotund clay building with a crimson hieroglyph symbol on it, seeing how it was the largest and the most impressive building in the whole clay-based architecture of the village it must've been the administration building.</p><p>"Awww... I thought we agreed to an eating contest with Tiwul... Yeah, she'd better run" Meiko sighed looking a little down, she must've not been overly fond of all this sand even inside what appeared to be the largest center of civilization in the entire Land of Wind.</p><p>"In any case, I'll go on and report to the Hokage, you guys find us a place to stay for a couple of nights. We'll need to receive a reply and an official permission to continue the mission, technically our objective is already complete but let's hope Lady Fifth will allow us to continue with our objective extension" Shimo stretched out and took a couple of moments to locate the building that had the "Aviary" sign on it, it was not too far away from the Administration building as it could've been expected. It couldn't have been too difficult to find since a large concentration of birds soaring above the village landed there and departed from there.</p><p>"Here's to hoping that what little clues we have to the Box's location will be enough to grant us an extension..." Kouta replied stroking his messy hair and wiping the sweat from his face.</p><p>"Well then, we can go refill our supplies. I'll take care of our clothes and our ninja kits, also Shimo please take these custom orders I've written up for Konohagakure, I doubt that Suna will be too cooperative with giving us custom-made weapons to carry around here. It'd be smart for Kouta to refill our medical supplies and for Meiko to refill our food. We still have plenty of stuff to trade after that raider camp raid so let's make sure we do that" Mana finalized.</p><p>"Should we trade our Audra shards? Our deal with the raiders didn't go well..." Meiko wondered out loud.</p><p>"That's a good call, let's not risk being called traitors and return those to Konoha instead. Give me those bags, I'll ask for them to be delivered via space-time delivery to Konoha. If they'll wish to check inside I'll just wave words like "confidential" around or pay them off if needed and they should shake off, I mean we're sending things to Konoha and not from it so it shouldn't be too much of a problem" Shimo took the large bags filled with heavy Audra shards that they managed to recover from the Katabami gold mine.</p><p>"Great, let's meet here after we're done and then I'll lead you guys to the hotel I'll find. Sand Village is known among medical ninja for its fantastic herbs and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can barter out from the local Suna Greenhouse" Kouta excitedly declared.</p><p>"Don't forget to patch up your face, no one will barter with you when you look like a war survivor..." Meiko laughed out pointing at the dried blood all over Kouta's face since he appeared to have forgotten to heal himself after the spar which was odd since he did patch Menna up remarkably well.</p><p>"Sadly, whatever he can do will not fix all the problems with his face..." Shimo playfully teased his teammate before disappearing into the crowd far away from where the friendly wrath of his teammate could have reached him.</p><p>Finally, the team reached the Sand Village, hopefully, what they have planned for the Box would go just as planned, after so many bad twists and turns ruining their plans throughout the entire trip they could've used at least one thing going according to plan...</p>
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<a name="section0149"><h2>149. Canned Food of Space-Time</h2></a>
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    <p>Shimo felt surprised by how much more loud and hectic the streets of Sunagakure were. He couldn't help but scratch his head and lean away from some of the particularly noisy stands and entertainers. The swordsman wondered just how strange it should've felt to Mana, someone whose secondary profession as a stage magician had similar origins to these people yelling their prices on the street. There were even some who were bold enough to approach him and demand payment from him because he overheard their stories or their comedy which was inevitable seeing how it was leaking from the top of the man's lungs.</p><p>"You're not getting a single ryo from me and while you're arguing you're missing profit from fools who'd fall for it..." Shimo always answered, or something of such fashion. After all, he had spent over a year wandering with his sensei throughout several closer regions of the world and he's seen and done a lot of strange things that taught him of the survivor's mentality.</p><p>That being said, that very same survivor's mentality would have demanded from him that he ceased satisfying Mana's need to regain her chakra and Meiko's need for adventure as well as Kouta's need to stick himself as deep up the magician's good side as possible. The only reason why Shimo went so far beyond his mission objective, even going as far as providing his services for the sake of a supposed extension was that he decided to change himself. His confusion of what kind of a man he wanted to be was supposed to be over, he wasn't just a survivor anymore, he would no longer just merely live for the sole purpose of living as long as possible.</p><p>First of all the boy entered the Aviary, it took a while to code his message just in case, these hawks used for message delivery looked quite strong and well-fed, their feathers, even while lacking in color, were shining brightly. Still, as fast as a bird can possibly get they would never outrace even an average ninja while snagging them in mid-flight was a challenge, every message was in danger of being intercepted and Shimo wasn't sure if their team was still tracked by Kusaguro's squad or not. He had little to no reason to believe that they weren't. Still, having the fact that their enemy was a Konoha ninja meant that whatever code he used it would only give them time, not a certainty that the message will remain a secret...</p><p>Shimo attempted to honestly explain the situation, he wrote in his report that they had not found the box and encountered the opposition of unidentified alignment, doing the best he could to go into detail about the skillset of the woman in red. He also included information about Sunagakure's cooperation with the mission, included all the known clues about the actual location of the Box, and asked for an extension of the objective. He decided to be smart about it, instead of asking for an extension of the objective to find the Box itself, he only asked the Hokage for permission to extend their objective of confirming the information's validity before returning home. It was much more likely that their mission would get approved that way, especially having in mind that he reported about the opposition.</p><p>The Yuki swordsman sighed, he wanted to report on Kusagoro's involvement with the mission, he really did but the new man he wanted to become was yelling from inside his part of the brain that it was a bad idea. After all, all he'd be doing would be tearing up Kouta's family and also it would be an equivalent of signing on the Hokage's refusal to extend their objective as well as her demand for their return to Konohagakure as soon as possible. Kusagoro was a very dangerous threat as a man with a high ranking in the village with experience in the Black Ops unit of the village – the ANBU.</p><p>After the report was done the young man left the Aviary and headed towards the commercial section of the village, that is to say, just about any region of the village. After several looks around and disappointments such as the quality of the craftsmanship not being satisfactory or the shop owner refusing to craft weapons for a foreigner, the young one had appeared to have hit a brick wall. Shimo decided to ask around and if needed pay some locals to know where he could have found someone willing and able to make custom weapons for a foreigner. In that particular case, his experience in the streets got him a little benefit at last. After shaking a couple of merchants who appeared to operate in a very questionable part of the village the swordsman got a couple of them to talk.</p><p>"So you need men? Go to the Agbarah Sheikhate, you can find able fighters there with nothing to lose!" the strange orange merchant with the shifty shot out eyes explained before Shimo slipped him four hundred more ryo, he knew that the man would keep on talking as long as coins would continue to fall in his pocket. Such was the initial foolish glee of being paid off, he would've been wise to use the brief period before the thinking part of his brain turned on.</p><p>"No, I don't need men and I can't leave the village walls, I need a smith inside the village willing to make custom average rank weapons of sufficient quality" Shimo looked at the man curiously, after spending so much time around his sensei and seeing some darker parts of the world that were not surrounded by protective walls he had acquired a certain cold and fearless look, a look of a young man who has seen too much and wouldn't be surprised by anything, it complimented the clinging coins in the merchant's pockets just fine.</p><p>"Oh, that's great! So you're a foreigner then? Doing some solo work or do you work with the Shaphac?" the merchant surprised Shimo with the amount of information he held, that being said, the swordsman decided not to slip into the newbie trap of being lured into completely unnecessary information purchases.</p><p>"Just need to restock before leaving the village, don't plan on any work" Shimo grumped out showing the merchant that he didn't wish to engage in an overly lengthy conversation.</p><p>"Oh, well, in that case... There is a guy who actually arms the Shaphac, if he arms those guys behind the counter he'd have no reason to refuse you if you can give him an alluring offer" the merchant answered and pointed with his finger at a couple of directions showing a number of fingers with the other hand detailing on how many blocks Shimo had to walk in any particular direction. Without engaging in any more conversation the boy grabbed an orange from the man's stall and cursed at him.</p><p>"Your oranges are too pricey, old man!" as loud as possible to confuse anyone attempting to listen in about what this exchange was all about. It didn't take too much time to reach the old man's house, he prepared Mana's order of steel-tipped cards almost instantly and didn't charge too much, Shimo was smart enough to buy spare decks because he knew of the girl's nasty habit of running out of them in a single mean battle. Meiko's armor took a lot longer and that was the armor without any seals. Shimo decided to let Meiko place the seals both on Mana's cards and her own armor just to save time.</p><p>Strangely enough, Shimo felt more pressure and fear leaving the slightly rundown districts of the Sand Village than he felt entering it. That was his world for too long, was this man who obtained information like a rogue and felt more comfortable around questionable people who he was now? How long would it take for that man to change back? How long until Shimo can be who he was before? Maybe this decision to change the man he was into the young man Mana wanted to see and inspire in him was not too bad...</p><p>The Time-Space transfer office was full of people. Initially, Shimo was a little interested in what exactly Sunagakure used as their method of transferring objects through long distances. Each village had one of these but each used a different method as far as Shimo could tell: from what he heard from his sensei the office in Iwagakure used ancient water well that had a miniature wormhole somewhere in its depths that could be repurposed using chakra. It had a nasty history of sending objects to the wrong villages when used by an unskilled or unfocused sealing ninja. The one in Konohagakure used what was called the "Flying Raijin Seal", different offices at different villages had the Flying Raijin Seals on posters inside and an object could've been transferred from one seal poster to another with a massive insert of chakra.</p><p>The mean in which Sunagakure appeared to transfer objects looked particularly odd. There was a glowing slab of stone right at the end of the office room with a seal placed on it, the hieroglyph symbol of the seal shined red whenever it was active and had rotating sand particles around it rising from the hieroglyph symbol. When placed on the slab an object was engulfed in sand and disassembled at a subatomic level, only to be reassembled where it needed to be as Shimo guessed.</p><p>"Impressive, isn't it?" a masculine voice inquired starting up a conversation with Shimo, the boy looked behind him to see a middle-aged man, just a dozen centimeters shorter than Shimo wearing a conical straw hat and a poncho covered with cartoonish embroidered desert foxes, brown coyotes, and various Sun symbols. The man's greyish black ponytail shot out from a hole in the back and flowed gently on the man's back, the man's face was completely covered up with a scarf like a rag on his face leaving only his eyes visible.</p><p>"I suppose so, looks a lot different from the other Time-Space transporters but I suppose it serves the same goal..." Shimo shrugged restraining his chuckles, he assumed that this man was just as much of a stranger to these parts as the Yuki was since he wore a poncho indoors a building of a desert village, and a rag on his face as well as that hat. It may have served him well in the cold desert nights but the evening was still a couple of hours away. At this point, he looked like a pretentious fool just for the sake of it.</p><p>"It was actually invented by the current Kazekage after seeing a young genin in the Chuunin exams and getting the idea. The sand is fueled by chakra cells from Kumogakure and the grains move faster than light, it doesn't only transfer the object through space but also small gaps through time. Just imagine if we were able to time travel using a similar device" the ponytail man continued to obsess over the device when Shimo looked at the device and back at the man, switching his glares between the two.</p><p>"If the device wouldn't seemingly disintegrate the object before transferring the particles, that is..." Shimo replied.</p><p>"True, I don't think even Chestnut Hanasaku, the Fifth Hokage, could survive such a device and if anyone could it'd be that woman... Do you think that perhaps that has something to do with how close the Kazekage is trying to make Konoha and the Sand?" the poncho man asked.</p><p>"Differently from a friend of mine who wishes peace and cooperation between all the villages and countries... I don't particularly care that much" Shimo replied trying to cut the conversation down.</p><p>"Ummm... Okay... So... Transfer this canned cat food using that witchcraft first, then these coins, these coins... I guess these coins... Can you still transfer more?" an old lady was trying to sort out the objects she wished transferred.</p><p>"It's not witchcraft, ma'am. Also... Could you please explain why you need these coins transferred separately? You do realize we are creating loops in the fabric of time and space to transfer your items so we will need a pretty good explanation to make several just for a couple of stacks of ryo..." the office worker tried to make as much sense from the request of the old lady as possible.</p><p>The body of Shimo's conversant disappeared, the young man could only hear the flapping of the poncho cloth in the air and the hat slipping off his head stroking the man's hair. Shimo's body overflowed with chakra as he augmented his reaction, his perception, and his speed to leap in to counter the man in time blocking his sword strike right above the head of the old lady.</p><p>After a good thirteen seconds of the swords colliding in the air hard enough to fire off blueish sparks off of their collision course as the poncho assassin's chakra infused blade met Shimo's Audra sword the old lady looked above her head and witnessed what made that deafening clang before. With a more comical than terrifying scream the old lady slowly ran out of the building taking her sweet time to move her senile thighs. The rest of the queue also decided to choose another transfer method for their objects or just to wait this conflict out.</p><p>"This lady was taking an awful amount of time, it was getting annoying..." the poncho assassin tilted his head a little so that his cold eyes could meet Shimo's angry gaze and clash the man's will against that of the Yuki swordsman.</p><p>"She was..." Shimo blinked in agreement, "That being said I'd rather not see her cut down for such a silly reason"</p><p>The two continued to clash with their blades, usually, Shimo's Audra steel sword expelled all the force of the opposing sword in a powerful shockwave but this time his opponent used a sword infused with chakra, it didn't appear like the chakra had any elemental qualities to it or that it was too precise, had it been, Shimo's blade may have even been damaged because of the chakra over matter principle that the ninja universe existed by.</p><p>"This sword, it belonged to the Diamond Hand from Shukuba and was stolen from it by a rogue six years ago... You are a rogue ninja too, why would you care about the fate of some old lady?" the poncho assassin asked pushing his sword against Shimo's while the man's katana lit up with blue sharp chakra glow alerting the Yuki swordsman that Wind Style chakra was infused and that the precision of the enhancement was improved forcing Shimo to leap back and avoid damage to his weapon.</p><p>"The person I used to be may not have cared but I am a new person now, I have decided to care about all sorts of petty things and it's actually a little new and exciting" Shimo cracked a sideways grin and sheathed his sword preparing his sword drawing stance and leaning to the side to place more weight on the leg he'd use to kick his body off the ground.</p><p>"After all, had I not understood just what kind of man I wished to become I'd have never had a quarrel with you to fight over..." the Yuki finished his thought before his body blurred into a mirage and the entire building filled with a hazy white mist.</p><p>"Ice Style: Haze Blade!" Shimo yelled out as numerous mirage version of the young man appeared from various sides of the swordsman. The swordsman could not believe what he was seeing – the eyes of the poncho assassin were closed. A blue flash disintegrated all of the mirages at once followed by a howling sound of cold steel cutting through the air. Where the cold mirages were cut down the man's sword covered with a persistent ice layer making the sword heavier and duller but also covering over its chakra infusion making it no longer covered with the sharp coating of wind chakra it had before.</p><p>With a loud yell coming from the depths of Shimo's lungs the young man dashed at his confused and frosted opponent with a powerful drawing slash that was supposed to completely disable his enemy. The young man moved all the way to the other side of the building leaping onto the northern wall and kicking off of it making the entire clay wall crack and crumble from the force of the acceleration. Shimo's passing slash was met not with a soft sensation of flesh being cut followed with a stream of blood missing him by a mile for it was too slow to keep up with the movements of the swordsman that inflicted the wound, it was met by a powerful shock of a cutting wind bubble that blew his sword completely out of the Yuki's hands and stuck it into a wall to the eastern side of the office.</p><p>"Wind Clone?" Shimo wondered to himself as he continued to rub his hands trying to ease the overwhelming numbness and pain in the upper sections to reaching up to his elbows. This swordsman was of higher rank than Shimo was. If he even had a rank, to begin with, he looked too much like a rogue ninja who infiltrated the village. He used chakra enhancements on his weapons as well as elemental clone techniques, such skill with elemental chakra natures was above the pay grade of a genin that Shimo still officially was.</p><p>The poncho wearing swordsman turned his head to the side and shook the shards of ice off of his clothes and tore it out from where it penetrated and stuck into his flesh. He then turned his head to the side angrily mumbling to himself.</p><p>"Hmmm, it appears the clerk has fled. While you may be an annoyance your interference may actually help, the Shaphac will obtain the Time-Space transporter and there'll be absolutely no casualties making our move here seem small time. I suppose I should thank you..." the man said directing his speech to Shimo.</p><p>"Why do you need that thing anyway? Do you plan to transport something here from another village to bypass the gate checkup?" Shimo tried to get the man talking all the while he eyed his blade on the wall and planned how he could arm himself without his opponent's response. The poncho swordsman was fast, he would severely injure Shimo and it's likely that any chakra augmentation the Yuki would use would be negated by the poncho-man's chakra imbued blade of higher precision and intensity.</p><p>"No, if the old ways are to be preserved, if this village is to survive they must stay at war with the other villages. This device will help us make sure that happens" the swordsman fully finished thawing his blade out and sheathed it preparing his finishing attack.</p><p>"Ah, so you'll transfer to other villages to make sure nobody trusts Sunagakure anymore. What'll you use, explosives? Rude notes?" Shimo grinned despite feeling a little desperate, the boy slapped his hands together trying to weave handseals to slow his opponent down using his Ice Style so that he could retrieve his blade and continue his battle with ample time. His opponent flashed up, right to Shimo slicing sideways at the Yuki's chest. Shimo coughed up blood, his eyes rolled back. Pain pulsed all over his chest but the pain was strangely numbed by his body feeling weightless and soaring through the air.</p><p>The poncho assassin took a moment to look at the boy he had just cut down, his blade was coated with chakra, he sliced hard enough to slash the boy's heart in half and was fast enough to intercept his hand seals. Too bad, the young one appeared to be quite fast on his feet with a sword, surpassing any sword-wielding genin but his hand seals were just as good as anyone's of his ranks would've been. The poncho-man grew up in the Iron Country and was trained as a samurai, a samurai would always best a ninja in a fair fight...</p><p>The flashy and cartoonish poncho once again rustled in the air as the man hurried to retrieve the Time-Space transporter. The swordsman took great care so that he didn't accidentally touch the stream of glowing lightspeed sands, taking his time to seal the device into a scroll after placing numerous chakra barriers around the device. When the swordsman turned around he stopped in shock, his eyes lifted up so that he could confirm what he had suspected.</p><p>Bare-chested due to his torn cloak and with a gash on his chest Shimo stood wielding his blade, on the ground by his feet laid a wakizashi blade in its sheath cut in two, while the chest of the young swordsman bled quite profusely his heart must've been protected by that childish toothpick he carried around his chest as a secondary weapon.</p><p>"You appear livelier than I expected, I have no time for this, the village ninja will be here at any moment" the ponytail swordsman grunted out through grinding teeth.</p><p>"Neither do I, there's a package I need to transport" Shimo angrily looked his opponent right in the eyes, the back of his head had a bleeding and painful wound that greatly annoyed him, not to mention the giant gash on his chest that cleaved through a wakizashi blade right in two and also left a pretty deep wound.</p><p>"If I quickly unpacked the device and let you transport your package, would you let me through?" the poncho assassin asked sheathing his blade for a final exchange of drawing techniques as if he already knew the answer.</p><p>"The man I used to be would've, the man I am trying to become knows that this peace is important to a friend of his so he won't let you out with that in your hands. I am still in a rush though so let's settle this with this one final draw!" Shimo yelled out angrily with a sense of pride in his new identity.</p><p>And so stood two swordsmen inside a clay office during a hot desert evening with the Sun slowly approaching the horizon, preparing to kill each other if needed when the room is covered in darkness. Two men in a standoff.</p>
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<a name="section0150"><h2>150. When Gods Arm Wrestle</h2></a>
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      <p>At the pace of a creeping turtle, the rays of the setting sun became less and less giving, sinking the room where two swordsmen were preparing for their final standoff to resolve their battle in total darkness. The office was empty, not even a single soul was there except for the two, not that it mattered since the swordsmen were completely absorbed by their clash, waiting for some auditory tick to signal them to rush at each other but it appeared that they would have to wait for the room to completely sink in darkness. For Shimo such was a natural occurrence, ninja were accustomed to the dark and preferred it, to someone enhancing their perception using minor chakra augmentation darkness was barely an obstacle.</p>
      <p>Finally, the rays of the sun completely disappeared almost as if the light itself entered the now sealed time-space transporter and evaporated into nothingness only to be reassembled at another moment in time and space. Both men kicked off the ground with just a light tap on the clay floor that in no way represented the tremendous force of their movement. They moved lightning-fast, no, even faster than lightning. Their movements were barely even intelligible to each other but it didn't matter. This was no match of skill or technique, there was no need to see the opponent's actions clearly or predict them. There was no time for that. Each of the two decided to just use their trump techniques at the same time and let fate decide who'd win.</p>
      <p>Shimo's body tensed up, blood vessels shot out and tore up dyeing his body in a creepy darker pink hue that was quickly calmed by the intense sensation of freezing air accumulating behind him. The young man extracted all the humidity from the air surrounding him, as little of it as there may have been chakra did the supersizing of the actual quantity. A ghoulish light blue shape of a giant wolf formed behind the young swordsman leaning over the Yuki's shoulder and placing its gigantic paw forward, it was lucky that this apparition of pure frozen water chakra was on all fours, or else it'd have demolished the three-floor tall clay sphere of a building that the two resided in.</p>
      <p>The Yuki was lucky that the clash had come to a comparison of a single technique, he was facing a swordsman of seemingly superior skill and experience, hindered merely by the lack of time. Had the battle continued without the danger of the enemy ninja coming and taking the poncho samurai in, it was likely that the young man would've sustained great injuries and possibly even lost. He had no right to further hinder Mana's journey, he had no right to strain Kouta's abilities and further deplete his limited healing potency so that once again the medical ninja would find himself with emptied resources when he was needed.</p>
      <p>"Ice Style: Ice Wolf Rampage!" Shimo roared out as the technique strained his body and his mind to its limits. The incredibly precise requirement of the combination of chakra shape manipulation needed to form the wolf and the sheer speed and physical ability to mimic Tanshu's Cerberus Draw technique that the Yuki saw only once but obsessed over repeating successfully.</p>
      <p>This technique was powerful and complex enough to qualify as an A-Rank technique, it was his pride and joy, his very soul as a swordsman. The embodiment of the will and the sword of his family. There was a high risk of it failing and yet Shimo's mind was clear, failure or success, the chances of winning were slim so the technique was his one last chance.</p>
      <p>It was a combination of his two greatest techniques, two different identities he had during his life that currently clashing. The Ice Wolf part of the drawing technique was his Ice Wolf ninjutsu technique that he relied on before the whole clash with Sugemi and departure, back when he lived by the principle of being nice to girls and punishing the strong that abused the weak. That was a very different Shimo, younger and more naïve.</p>
      <p>The second part of the drawing technique was the only thing that the old Shimo couldn't wrap his head around – slashing three times at the very same time just like his sensei was doing. It was a technical element that only his experience with the rogue ninja allowed him to master through need and desire to live. Only an adapt or perish environment could've ever allowed a swordsman to break the rules that governed all others. That was why that technique would have won, not because there was no way of triumphing that A-Rank drawing ninjutsu-weaponry technique with an offensive technique because it combined all identities of Shimo into a singular entity with a single goal – to win.</p>
      <p>"Wind Style: Flock of Swallows!" Poncho assassin roared out with an equal amount of conviction. He drew his sword too early, initially, it appeared as a mistake for Shimo but then he understood that the actual sword was not the dangerous part of the technique, it was a cause to what was to come. Once drawn, the chakra-infused blade created a gust of wind flowing in one direction, meanwhile using his sheathe holding hand the man formed a hand seal which allowed him to create another current of wind that moved the opposite direction. The man had created a miniature typhoon inside the office room.</p>
      <p>Even faced with such an amazing yet seemingly simplistic technique Shimo did not flinch for a moment, the young man continued to dash at his opponent with his technique. Tanshu once told him that no sword technique could have matched the triple cutting techniques he used, the vortex of cutting winds appeared quite formidable but at best it would match Shimo's technique, not break it. Even if their swordsmanship techniques were dead even there was still the ninjutsu wolf made of ice chakra. Shimo was going to win!</p>
      <p>A deafening howl followed by a crashing noise followed as the two clashed with their techniques. The poncho assassin's facial cover and his poncho tore to bits, Shimo's body tensed and blacked up in multiple spots and his arms almost blew up in a bloody mess from the sheer pressure of their swords clashing, while initially, the poncho assassin was smiling, soon his smile faded from his face once he realized that Shimo's apparently singular draw actually cut at three spots at once perfectly blocking poncho's typhoon of swordsmanship. Then the man's eyes quickly shifted up but couldn't form a definitive emotion instead of running through a myriad of them before understanding that his fate was not to escape – it was to freeze solid. Such an ironic end in the middle of a desert village...</p>
      <p>Bang!</p>
      <p>Shimo's Ice Wolf avatar of chakra behind him exploded into shards of icicles and a kunai that shattered it fired from a long-range dispenser fell onto the floor, the two swordsmen dashed past one another with Shimo falling on his knees and thrusting his sword into the floor to keep his body from hitting the floor and passing out. That sword was the only thing that kept the young Yuki on his knees and breathing.</p>
      <p>"There's a second man... Outside the office..." Shimo huffed out as sweat broke out through his forehead combining with the blood already going down the boy's forehead and the back of his head.</p>
      <p>"What can I say?" the poncho assassin replied with a cocky expression while he sheathed his blade and looked back at the boy who was in no condition to stop him now, "While my origins are as those of a samurai of the Iron Country, the Shaphac are no samurai and do not follow the Bushido, they are actually terrorists. I am under no moral obligation to face you honorably. In my defense, my ally outside is a blind marksman. Think of it what you will..." The man replied turning away only to face a large man who appeared to blink into existence seemingly out of nowhere, dressed in a white cloak with a blue hat that had a great hieroglyph proudly stating "Wind" on its center.</p>
      <p>The bulky arm of the interloper swiped to the side, in mid-strike steel parts assembled a set of armor around his arm that sent the poncho assassin flying through the sidewall, after the assassin burst through the wall, passing out from the combined damage taken from the intense and almost instant-fast hit and hitting the wall, the armored hand of the interloper fired off and grabbed the man dragging him back to the hulking brute's grasp.</p>
      <p>"I think it's hilarious, personally..." Akasuna Mugao grinned at the young man who just barely managed to stand back up and face the Kazekage.</p>
      <p>It was quite convenient that Shimo was already on his knees, after all, kneeling against a person of such high stature may have been the proper manners however most foreign ninja chose to merely bow their heads to their mid-abdomen level suggesting great respect but not subordination.</p>
      <p>"There is another man outside..." Shimo huffed out to which the Kazekage just grinned.</p>
      <p>"The men I brought with me got that covered... Now if you will excuse me, there is a package I was expecting to receive today that was too important and sensitive to handle to send my assistants to pick it up" the redhead giant unsealed the time-space transporter device back in its rightful place, "What's this?" suddenly he stopped turning at Shimo's bag.</p>
      <p>The exhausted Yuki tried to pick it up but the Kazekage was simply too fast, the contents of the bag soon became public.</p>
      <p>"What are those shards? I've never seen the likes of it before..." the man wondered to himself.</p>
      <p>"It's something I wanted to send back to Konohagakure, Kazekage-sama" Shimo replied in a more grumpy tone than he would've liked. While this man didn't remind of a scumbag this was his village and he did hold a bag full of Audra ore in his hands. It was expensive beyond belief, even if the Konoha four only managed to secure a limited quantity of what laid beneath the Katabami mines.</p>
      <p>"Hmmm, this looks like... Audra ore. The same color as Audra alloy would have, I wonder how a full armor or a puppet made of this thing would run, might give me an edge in my next rival match with Lady Fifth, what would you say? Shall you lend this to me, young man? I might reward you with something from my arsenal, you know" The gentle giant looked right Shimo in the eyes with a look that suggested more of a curious gambler's interest than malicious intent.</p>
      <p>"Actually... Wait? Why did you say you need it again, Kazekage-sama?" Shimo squinted as he found the man's reason for needing this ore quite odd. Using these shards he could've armed an entire unit with Audra layered weapons or made entire crates of ninja kits of Audra alloy kunai and shuriken. The Kazekage was known as an inventor beyond his time, building puppets, weapons, and armors for himself and others, inventing barriers and new techniques and also technology to improve the quality of life in his village.</p>
      <p>"You see, young man, me and Lady Fifth have this friendly competition every year after a Summit of our villages. She comes at me with an intent to kill me in a location of my choosing and I use all of my traps and puppet armies and puppet suits of armor to stop her. This package is, in fact, an absolute hot generator, it generates temperatures of close to one and a half quintillion degrees, this year I intend to attempt to dehydrate the Hokage, you see. This way we settle friendly differences where peace treaties demand a coin toss or some other trivial ritual, sometimes we arm wrestle but I soon learned how hopeless that was..." Mugao smiled pulling out a glowing battery cell that appeared like a miniature star held in a battery-like containment unit.</p>
      <p>"I'm sorry, sir, I'd rather send the bag back to Konoha" Shimo replied after an uncomfortable pause of silence.</p>
      <p>"I see, that's too bad... I went through a lot of trouble to acquire this generator from Kumogakure and an Audra-infused puppet army would've greatly benefited me by cutting down the chakra costs to maintain them all in active combat. At this pace, Konoha will have their representatives take over the Kirigakure slum district from us as well as a couple of islands from the Archipelago that the Lady Fifth has already won. After getting trounced with my black hole dispenser last year I am running out of things to throw at her" the man scratched the back of his head</p>
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      <p>"Wait, you met the Kazekage!?" Mana yelled out in disbelief as the four were talking over breakfast the next morning.</p>
      <p>Last night they all returned having taken care of things they needed to do so late that they didn't bother doing much more. Kouta just stitched Shimo's chest injury with simple ninjutsu-free good old medical science and the four went to sleep. Everyone was really curious about just what kind of trouble could Shimo have run into as they didn't appear to have that eventful of a day. Since it had gotten far too late for tales the impressive story of terrorist groups functioning inside Sunagakure and the opposition to world peace had to wait.</p>
      <p>"Wait, so Hokage-sama has won over the right to take over the management of several Kirigakure locations, I wonder why doesn't she actually send people there, a couple of years more and Kirigakure might just learn and regain their autonomy, we'll run out of opportunities to stick it to them" Kouta wondered to himself eating a morning dumpling.</p>
      <p>"It is said she receives some sort of benefits from other villages for not utilizing her right to take over the areas that belong to her authority, however, the Kazekage appeared to mention that Konoha might have representatives there that would take over some areas yesterday" Shimo replied scratching his stitched wound to just Kouta just angrily objected, the disadvantages of the good old way of dealing with wounds was that there was an entire healing process to it, even if ninja healed at a much more accelerated rate with their insane ninja metabolisms.</p>
      <p>"We've been away from Konoha for so long, so much must've happened while we're gone..." Meiko looked at the sky before stretching out on the emptied table longingly.</p>
      <p>"Well, this may just be the worst line to bring it up after but... I found a very interesting poster yesterday stuck on the walls of one of the buildings" Kouta wriggled in the chair before pulling out a torn up and worn out sheet of paper with a smiling lady on it. The young lady in the picture had the most playful of smiles and was winking at the supposed viewer of said picture, she also wore a very curious set of headgear that appeared like some sort of a headset and stood close to a table that appeared very hi-tech with a lot of glowing buttons and panels. The whole poster was black in the background but it was filled with streamers and lights that gave the poster a vibrant and artsy feel to it.</p>
      <p>The title of the poster said, "Notasa – Last chance to see her perform"</p>
      <p>Mana blinked a couple of times still struggling to get the clue. "I don't think we have time to see a singer of some sort... Especially if you check the date of it – the concert happened last week"</p>
      <p>"Yes, she is from the Land of Sound's Otogakure and is apparently a musical genius" Kouta explained. Finally, the whole table got interested.</p>
      <p>"She may help us solve the puzzle of the sphere..." Shimo calmly stated what everyone was thinking.</p>
      <p>"That's right, from what I gathered from people in the streets, she can compose and perform complex compositions in the middle of a show, it's what she calls "Improvosition", she may just be to music what Mana-chan is to stage magic" Kouta explained slowly gathering hype for his idea and getting more and more excited as he went on. Mana slightly blushed and looked away after being complimented, she really missed magic and while being complimented on her entertainment skill felt great she really wished it didn't remind her how badly she missed all of it.</p>
      <p>"Well then, once we get a reply from the village we'll head towards Otogakure then..." Shimo confirmed with a strong nod and finished his morning tea.</p>
      <p>"It's actually great because no matter what the reply is – Otogakure is close to Fire Country, if we are denied permission no one will get suspicious because we'll be sighted in Fire Country anyways moving towards Land of Sound" Kouta got energetic to which Mana sadly shook her head.</p>
      <p>"Even so, normally it'd take you a couple of days to get there once we reach Fire Country but with me in your way, it'll take much more. Maybe even several weeks to get there. If we are denied permission that will be it... Our adventure will be over, I don't wish to put you guys in more trouble than you already are" Mana looked at every teammate sitting around the table.</p>
      <p>"It'd be really great if we got the permission to extend our objective, we could use it as a safe-card against my father if he decides to mess with our mission again" Kouta dreamily looked into the sky relaxing in his seat. It appeared to be a tranquil and calm morning of warm Sun that had not yet reached the point where it was annoyingly hot.</p>
      <p>"Still, it'd have been better if we figured it out earlier and used it in our report, an actual plan would've been a much better reason to grant us extension than just an abstract clue to the Box's location" Shimo angrily complained looking away and relaxing in his chair as well.</p>
      <p>It's been a long time since they could just relax and enjoy their meals after sleeping in warm and soft beds. It was definitely no home of theirs but it was the closest second thing to it. The four were slowly becoming accustomed to the hot desert climate, soon it'll seem weird to step on the ground and not have one's foot get filled with scratchy and searing hot sand...</p>
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<a name="section0151"><h2>151. Inside The Dark Room</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Heavy, muffled breathing could've been heard from another room. Breathing coming from a man with a broken nose whose mind was violated and invaded by a skilled interrogator who had extracted all that he was able to. Interrogation using illusions was a much slower and a little less potent sort than that of a Yamanaka clansman but Sunagakure did not have too many of those on their roster of ninja. Yamanaka were a proud Konohagakure clan having several branches in Kirigakure that have split from the main branch shortly before the Second Great Ninja War. The beaten marksman spoke nothing and yet all he knew was known to his captors.</p><p>With a heavy, metallic screech, the door to his containment cell opened. Slowly and confidently, holding all the aces in his playing hand, the Kazekage entered the room allowing a brief semblance of light to seep into it. Not that the blind marksman cared too much for he was used to living in total darkness. Even so, right after the Kage entered the marksman turned to the side as if a source of light as overwhelming as the Sun had entered the room. He continued to hide his eyes and turn his busted nose away even as the door was closed and the room sunk into darkness once more.</p><p>"You broke my nose..." the blind marksman huffed out, his voice sounded very intimidating by how strong and passionate it was. It was like the man was hungry and a burger cooked to perfection had just entered his room.</p><p>"An unnecessary measure seeing how physical torture tends to be ineffective with trained fighters. Nevertheless, you guys aren't liked around these parts, opposing serenity and peace so actively and all that, so I suppose the interrogators got overly excited." Mugao replied sitting in front of the marksman and slowly placing googles that the man carried around with him onto the man's snow-white eyes without even a semblance of irises. As the googles were firmly placed on the marksman's face they lit up in a faint yellow glow with a small briefly intelligible dot in the middle that raced around the yellow circles it resided in.</p><p>"Why are we alive? Those genjutsu users appeared to be quite thorough with scoping our minds. Overwhelming us with memories and raising fever by aiming at our brain centers. Playing with someone's body like that... And to think that they tried to restrict only the physical torture" the marksman started casually talking to the Kazekage whom he actively opposed.</p><p>"Politicians and diplomats tend to know very little about the world they negotiate about. That being said, even the physical torture Fourth Hokage fought so hard against has never been restricted, no village signed that treaty, a waste of a perfectly good paper." Mugao replied continuing to stare in the slightly illuminated yellow circles that the marksman's goggles made out in the dark.</p><p>"Why am I alive? You've got information on as many Shaphac bases and operatives as I knew of, obviously for convenience sake, no single member knows everything..." the blind marksman finally got to the point.</p><p>"What are you guys doing? What's the point of spinning the circle of war again? Have we not had enough of that lately?" the Kazekage sighed relaxing in his chair.</p><p>"We're doing what has to be done. War is a tough business but it's simple, it's primitive. Make people, foreigners whom we fought for generations, your friends, let them into your walls and you risk letting the enemy in, this risk isn't worth a couple of allies you gain this way. Warring with everyone is simpler than playing good-willed but secretly doing background checks of everything" the man replied, his speech did not appear to be nearly as twisted by delusion and passion when he spoke of the Shaphac goals as it was when he spoke of different things.</p><p>"No. The reason you're alive is not that I needed intel or because you don't seem nearly as passionate towards this pointless infighting as your comrade. The reason is that I need you for a job." the Kazekage spoke clearly, it was good that the blind marksman could not see the awkward and almost ironic smile that the leader of Sunagakure wore on his face as he uttered those words.</p><p>"And why would I be interested in that job?" The marksman leaned in very close, as close as his bindings allowed him to the point where his goggles flew right up to the Kazekage's face but Mugao didn't as much as flinch from this awkward and creepy gesture.</p><p>"Because the nature of the said job is hurting Konohagakure and taking their asset away from them, delivering it to Sunagakure. The Shaphac are terrorists plain and simple but you are patriots first and foremost. The boy that stopped your comrade – "Poncho Assassin" as he insists to be called, sent something to Konoha, we've managed to stop that delivery halfway somewhere in Agbarah Sheikhate but the Konoha genin believe the delivery to have gone on successfully. We need you to pick it up and return it to the village. If somehow Konoha will get in your way well... The ninja world is cruel, you may need to break some bones." The Kazekage explained.</p><p>The yellow circles continued to stare the man down with the black dots being fixed on a random spot somewhere close to Kazekage. It was impossible to tell just what the man was thinking about for sure.</p><p>"That's doesn't sound very nice of you... I thought you loved your union with Konoha and treasured that friendly rivalry with the Fifth Hokage." The marksman uttered and sat back down</p><p>"That is why I need you to do it. You guys are terrorists, someone I have no control over. If you happened to intercept the delivery I could just say I had nothing to do with it. I'd have ample proof that I am doing all in my power fighting the Shaphac but also a bag of Audra alloy shards as an asset for the village." Mugao explained himself.</p><p>"And what if we take the package and disappear halfway? What if Fennec or the Agbarah Sheikh and his asthmatic wimpy legion stops us and gets the package?" The marksman asked with the returning passionate tone in his voice. He was clearly thinking about it.</p><p>"That means you aren't trying hard enough, in this world people who don't try their hardest and don't live up to their potential don't live too long. You are terrorists and I have plenty of information on your organization's heads and headquarters. I have weaponry beyond your wildest dreams and while some Sheikhs supported your cause I would spit in all of their faces and leave not a stone on a stone or a single tooth remaining in each of your mouths"</p><p>"You really need those shards badly, don't you?" The prisoner wished to assure himself. To some extent, he wished to agree but he was still suspicious as he felt like being used only for his body to disappear in the desert sand after he had served his purpose.</p><p>"I've seen a man tear through neutron star alloy as if it was toilet paper with his bare hands, I've seen that same man withstand a fiery inferno hotter and more pulsing with destructive chakra than tens of thousands of dying stars. I've seen Lady Fifth shrug off black holes like they were beehives that just barely stung while managing to keep perfect control of the situation and not letting a single ounce of chakra leak to the side and destroy the world. If any of those two ever decided to attack us, if any of them ever wished to destroy us we may not last too long, not while I can't make a single decision without having to get the Sheikhs onboard, not while my own people wish for me to go to war with those people. All I wish is for my village to make it into the records of history and be there to read it, all I wish is for the next generation to not have to put up with the shame that I had to put up with. Being crushed in the war and spared, beaten to the brink of extinction, and left to ourselves to recover. Right now there are so many things that keep this village from blooming: the Shaphac trying to make us go to war with every other village, Fennec unifying the desert raiders and building an army, the Sheikhs meddling with the village affairs just because they can and they control vast land and influence. I could deal with all of them but doing so would needlessly threaten my village and cost lives I cannot risk"</p><p>"I'll help you" the marksman's reply followed almost immediately after. "But if I do this I need permission to at least kill some of the Konoha ninja in case of a clash"</p><p>"Out of the question." The Kazekage swatted the idea aside almost instantly.</p><p>"We're going to fight in the Agbarah Sheikhate. If they have women among them it wouldn't make sense for them to leave that place alive, you know Sheikh's stance on them." The blind man explained himself.</p><p>"Very well, avoid conflict at all costs but if they follow you to Agbarah you can kill the females, we'll play it down to Sheikh's madness. Maybe that'll make the Fifth help me deal with that old sexist asshole"</p><p>Loud clangs and metallic noises followed, a sharp and black puppet arm reached for the marksman's bindings and pulled hard tearing them apart.</p><p>"Are your optics still working?" Mugao inquired as one last parting question.</p><p>"I don't need these goggles for shooting, I may be blind but I am still a sensor, these goggles just keep sand from getting in my eyes. While my eyes are blind as a mole they aren't immune to sand itch..." Marksman's answer echoed before the man's figure disappeared from the cell. Mugao stood up and looked at the open door behind him. He wondered for a moment about how the marksman would sneak out from the containment facility but Shaphac were good at infiltration and extraction. They got in unsighted, did what they had to, and disappeared. That was why the Kazekage contacted them for this job.</p><p>Audra alloy by itself was not too valuable, it was inferior in toughness when compared to ordinary chakra infused steel but if someone found a way to artificially manufacture it and make actual Audra ores it interested Mugao a great deal. The tools he could make using such ores would greatly improve the village's arsenal.</p><hr/><p>Loud burping sounds combined with some sort of upchucking noises came from the bathroom. Meiko relaxed and tapped her belly that shot out from her tracksuit and lifted up her t-shirt.</p><p>"Justice has prevailed!" the blacksmith declared lifting her fist in the sky.</p><p>"It'd be quite nice of Justice to also pay her own bills for once." Shimo angrily remarked looking at the ladies' room from which all manner of horrible sounds were coming from with awe and pure horror in his expression.</p><p>"I hope Tiwul is okay..." Kouta nodded his head lower as if feeling ashamed of the people staring at Meiko's eating competition with the Sunagakure girl. They've been waiting for an answer from Konoha for a couple of days now and it couldn't have been too far away. In the meanwhile, the four trained extensively preparing themselves for another journey, whether it'd be home to Konoha or to Otogakure to solve the music puzzle.</p><p>Finally, Tiwul left the bathroom and smiled with a little healthy blush on her cheeks since people still continued to stare at her and Meiko in horror as they've been doing since the eat-off started. Meiko was adamant to try every single one of the desert delicacies and while most of them didn't look like edible things at all to Mana the blacksmith made sure to devour them faster and in higher quantities when compared to the Sunagakure competitor.</p><p>"Round two?" Tiwul jokingly asked to which Meiko shook her head.</p><p>"You threw everything up, I'm at a disadvantage here..." Meiko declared, it was quite possibly one of the very few times that the magician had seen Meiko say she's had enough.</p><p>"That camel stomach was not very good... I'd rather have that horrendous egg jelly than have to eat that crunchy-munchy mess again." Meiko stuck her tongue out complaining about the quality of food she may have devoured at some point post-factum.</p><p>"You didn't tell Meiko what that actually was?" Mana quietly whispered into Shimo's ear to which the swordsman just maliciously laughed out.</p><p>"I'm reserving that for a future moment." Shimo shook his head, the young man appeared to not be overly fond of Sunagakure's kitchen as well, that being said some of their desserts were quite lovely.</p><p>"You guys should know better, really, that was very rich in protein and is considered quite the delicacy. The desert raiders live exclusively on that diet during hard times." Kouta tried to look sophisticated and educated but he just came off as slightly pretentious and very much continued the joke that made Mana and Shimo crack up grasping at their sides.</p><p>"Well, I'm off then, I need to train those calories away..." Tiwul declared slowly stumbling out of the small restaurant that the five genin decided to eat at. Shortly the remaining Konoha four also decided to head home before checking in at the Aviary if they have received the reply from Konoha.</p><p>Strangely enough, they have received news from the village. Shimo took the entire message wrapped in a small scroll and attached to a hawk's leg and then placed the majestic bird back at the stand letting the hawk to soar back to where the birds resided. Since there was quite a lot of decoding to be done with the message the four decided to carry it back to the hotel they stayed in for a couple of days. Since Shimo and Mana were the best in decoding Meiko decided to go out and train meanwhile Kouta decided to check the bags and see if they did and packed everything.</p><p>The magician looked at Meiko shadow boxing and lifting a large sword that reminded much more of a mast of a ship made of solid iron than a sword. Only then did she remember the promise she made to the blacksmith to train her a little about how to defend from genjutsu attacks. After all, Meiko did so much to train Mana before...</p><p>"Shimo, could you maybe decode the message alone? I need to help Meiko with something" the magician asked to which the swordsman just nodded and swung his hand indifferently around gesturing that her presence may have been more of a nuisance than actual help.</p><p>Mana came up to Meiko and asked her to train the blacksmith in defense against genjutsu just like she had promised to do before. The armored kunoichi appeared to be quite excited about it, she dropped the giant chunk of iron she was swinging around and stood in a defensive fighting stance as if she was about to engage in a sparring match with someone.</p><p>The magician shook her head. "Defense against illusion is a more spiritual and perceptive craft than it is physical. You'll need vast resources of chakra but also you'll need much more than that – concentration and patience"</p><p>Meiko pouted, "Can't you just hit me in the face a lot before I learn it? It worked really well for you..." she complained.</p><p>Mana sighed, she may have signed up for quite a long day. The magician calmed herself and sat down crossing her legs.</p><p>"Most common illusions attack your mind, injecting the chakra of your opponent into your body and disrupting your chakra flow. You would never notice any changes however unless you possess certain abilities that allow you to sense chakra or see it clearly. That is to say unless you belong to the Uchiha or Hyuuga clans or if you're a sensor you'll have to rely on perception to identify an illusion." Mana explained to which Meiko just mimicked the magician's movements. The kunoichi wasn't sure if the blacksmith was mocking her meditation like position or if she was just not good at sitting still and concentrating, most likely it was the latter.</p><p>"Why would I want to identify an illusion? Can't I just dispel it by bursting my chakra?" Meiko pouted looking for an excuse to not have to sit still and concentrate for a while.</p><p>"You could, but then you'd wind out instantly or tear your network apart. You'd never know when exactly you need to disrupt your own flow to overcome your opponent's disruption so you'd have to constantly mess with your own chakra, you'd both be fixed on messing with your own body instead of fighting your opponent and you'd risk to pointlessly tear your own network apart ending up being a useless burden to your team like me." Mana tried to be a little stricter because she was starting to think that this may have been hopeless.</p><p>The magician now knew how Meiko must've felt when she saw how bad Mana was in physical combat before. It wasn't like her friend looked incompetent, Mana herself felt incompetent at tutoring and guiding her friend through it making the magician feel more and more frustrated.</p><p>"Okay, I get it, identify the illusion first, kill it with chakra disruption later... But what if I don't have enough chakra to force the disruption away or if I can't identify an illusion?" Meiko's hands sunk down, Mana understood what the blacksmith meant, she remembered her friend having trouble managing precise chakra control before. She even messed up a couple of Academy techniques several times before.</p><p>"Well, that is a possibility, some illusions are extremely powerful making them so hard to dispel that dispelling them would leave you without enough chakra to stay alive, also the illusions that target brain centers instead of chakra are much more dangerous because they can be used on just about anything with a functional brain. Theoretically, someone else may also dispel the illusion for you by moving your own chakra using their own chakra injection, sort of like dispelling a bad illusion by using their own illusion on you. That is why it is important to identify the illusion and its potency before trying to dispel it yourself, illusions like those of A-Rank or even S-Rank require pooled attempts of multiple people to defeat completely because of how potent they are" Mana tried her best to explain it to Meiko in a way that would make sense for the blacksmith's simplistic yet effective mind.</p><p>"It's too bad you can't use illusions anymore, it'd have been great for you to put me under a genjutsu to give me some practical experience..." Meiko spoke before realizing what she just said and that she may have brought up some bad memories to Mana. The blacksmith jumped up and started apologizing to which the magician just stood up and turned away.</p><p>"It's alright, for today just try learning to identify your surroundings. The caster of an illusion needs to emulate the world around them starting from sight to even the smallest details like air temperature and humidity. It's almost like creating an illusionary world of your own and placing the target inside it at times. Write down everything you feel around you: what you see, what you hear, what you can touch and the tastes you feel in the air, how humid, and how warm it is. Learn to concentrate on your environment and once I see that your level of perception is sufficient we can move on"</p><p>After leaving her friend with some instructions as to how to move on forward the magician rejoined Shimo who looked pretty hyped up. Mana didn't really wish to talk to anyone right now, she was in a state that made her wish to just fall down in her bed and be left alone. She felt like bursting into tears and crying until she died of dehydration and her own sorrow for being reminded of how weak and pathetic she was. By being reminded of the new identity that was forced and shoved down her throat on her.</p><p>"Mana! It's okay, we've got a green light to look into the clue but our mission remains – we don't retrieve the Box unless absolutely necessary, Hokage-sama just wishes us to confirm the information and our gut feeling. She also noted how many distractions we've been engaged in and urged us to be more careful! We can go on to Sound Country!" the swordsman gleefully declared. Mana just nodded with an indifferent "That's great" and rushed on to her bed wrapping herself under layers of sheets and pillows.</p><p>Kouta and Shimo looked at each other and then at Mana's slightly twitching buried body. An awkward silence took the room over.</p>
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<a name="section0152"><h2>152. Towards A Waterfall Of Experience</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So you guys are leaving already?" Menna happily yelled out stopping the Konoha four from entering the long pass to the Sunagakure gate.</p><p>"We've received an answer from Konoha, Lady Fifth wishes us to further investigate the Box's location, nothing specific, just check some clues, tie up all loose ends..." Shimo shared surprisingly a lot of details with the Sand team that he didn't trust previously.</p><p>"Oh, so that's what you were doing in the desert. Did you guys seriously expect to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss in that old wreck of stone?" Tiwul laughed before sticking out her tongue rudely, acting almost like a monkey spewing air and slobber through the mouth just to playfully appear rude.</p><p>"Hmph, looking for stupid fairytales instead of training and developing real skills, is that what Konoha has become now?" Tala sarcastically bit the Konoha team as well walking out from behind Menna's shadow. Even while his personality and the content of his words could've been picked up as offensive he had a rather warm if not a little challenging smile suggesting that his bite was more of a toying nature.</p><p>"I suppose we'll see during the Chuunin Exams just which village's method is actually stronger." Kouta smiled closing his eyes and raising his fist up closer to Menna who smiled and bumped the medical ninja. Mana remained silent throughout the entire exchange but not because she was still sad, she had no right to be.</p><p>This entire short exchange of words before the four turned around and moved through the pass heading outside the village was something that the magician wished to preserve in her memory and carve into her heart. The young of old warring villages saying warm farewells after only having met less than a week ago, already having formed some sort of bonds and connections.</p><p>That was beautiful, after witnessing that moment Mana wished to experience that day countless times. Moments like this would have made the world closer to the world she wished to see, world without war or suffering. During either of the Great Ninja Wars, any Konoha ninja would have been in danger in Sunagakure, there would've been endless threats to take their lives and claim on their bounties even if as genin they weren't worth much.</p><p>"Are you OK today, Mana-chan? You seemed to have been quite distressed yesterday." Kouta noted walking up closer to the magician.</p><p>"It's alright, I just... Have you ever felt like your own body would betray you? Not only your body but also your mind, your entire essence does the opposite you wish to do and then you do not understand what you even are anymore..." Mana spoke up, shortly peeking back just to see if Meiko and Shimo weren't listening in, she didn't really wish to share with anyone but Kouta who appeared to be dealing with Mana's problems in a way that seemed most appropriate at the time for the magician.</p><p>Meiko was a person who wished to fix everything, punch through everything. She was someone who has heard of legendary heroes wielding mighty swords slashing through injustice and as someone who was looked down on, a rejected branch of an elite clan who was a reject even by the standards of rejects, Meiko wished to fix all injustices directly. If she saw a fly stuck in a spider's web she'd immediately kill that spider and free it, without having a single bit of thought about how sensitive the ecosystem is and what the correct course of action would be.</p><p>Shimo was beginning to appear like a mystery to Mana. An old friend who has been through much and after living through so many experiences changed in ways she couldn't yet put her finger on. He was a man who merely wished to become Hokage, to make sure that the strong would not oppress the weak by becoming the strong.</p><p>Then, after realizing what the world was actually like he stopped caring that much, his core objective had become to survive and help survive to all he cared about, while still keeping parts of his old dream somewhere deep inside. And yet... His behavior in the Sand Village appeared so... Odd. Why would a young man who was a survivalist above all else interfere with that terrorist organization's goals? Was it a sign that old Shimo was breaking free through the rock hard façade of an ex-rogue? The kunoichi couldn't help but feel a little intimidated by Shimo but only because she couldn't understand him and things she couldn't understand, or obtain knowledge of, felt intimidating.</p><p>"Heh, I've got to say all the time..." Kouta rubbed the back of his head with a pleasant smile, he didn't appear to be acting all too serious about Mana's question even if his tone and words appeared to be honest. "I mean I'm a medical ninja, I wish to heal everyone all the time, I wish to beat everyone hurting people, punch everyone meaning my friends harm, but sometimes I just can't do it. I run out of chakra, sometimes I run out of stamina and willpower before I run out of chakra. Sometimes there are wounds I outright cannot heal. My body and the reality around me betray me all the time but as long as whatever of me that desires those things remains I do not question it, I just take the hit and become stronger"</p><p>"You're doing a pretty good job, before we left you took a while to heal a simple blade cut, now you've healed me so many times that you could do it in your sleep..." Mana smiled trying to make her friend feel better, such notions were simpler when she did not have to lie. Kouta has become better in terms of his healing skill, a whole level better. Simple scratches and cuts took him less than a couple of minutes where extensive injuries or internal bleeding took twenty to thirty minutes whereas previously Kouta expressed doubt in dealing with it at all.</p><p>Kouta blushed, "To be honest... Well... I've gotten used to your body, I'm not sure if I could fix teeth and swellings and facial injuries of a person I've just met nearly as well and fast" he said.</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times looking at the boy with surprise, "Really? There's a difference? As subtle as the person you heal?"</p><p>"Oh yes, it matters quite a lot actually, it's like navigating a map. Imagine having to locate and mark several points of a map without the names of the locations. If you have never before seen the map you may wish to scan it very well before marking the locations so that you do not waste time and ink. Once you've drawn a certain map that many times you actually could do the task in your sleep. Each person has subtle differences like chakra network quirks, previous injuries that may not have been properly healed, hidden genetic or physical anomalies, all of these things matter to a medical ninja and influence the healing process."</p><p>"Well, now that you put it like that it really seems difficult..." Mana looked away a little bit embarrassed by the notion that Kouta may have scanned and delved into her body so many times that he knows it extensively.</p><p>"If it weren't everyone would be doing it, Konoha High receives a lot of new applications of hopeful recruits wishing to learn the craft. Not that many pass the selection process, the chakra control ability of the person needs to be absolutely without a flaw and even then not many pass to the internship stage in the Konoha Hospital" Kouta proudly explained rubbing his red nose as all the supposed boasting made him feel a little embarrassed.</p><p>"You think... You could ever... Teach me healing ninjutsu?" Mana asked mumbling quietly and feeling a little down about the whole thing. "My chakra control is not without a flaw but it is sufficient enough to dabble in genjutsu. I keep talking so much about changing the world but all I do is fight and invite more fighting, becoming a medical ninja would help me change all that, finally actually do something positive without causing pain or suffering to anyone, do absolute good"</p><p>Kouta squinted, it appeared that his mind was very shifting and jumping from one thought to another. "It is true that your knowledge of genjutsu suggests hope in the craft, illusions are some of the most demanding forms of ninja techniques and one of the least rewarding. Still, healing ninjutsu is... Complicated. A person who learns not from the official Konoha High and Konoha Hospital course is called a "Quack", do you really wish that mark on your resume? It's slightly more tolerable version of "rogue", after all"</p><p>Mana blushed and jumped up waving her hands wildly in refusal, "Oh, no! Sorry! I do not wish to dishonor you or bring you any bad rep in any way, if it's like that then I wouldn't dream of ever harming your reputation. I don't imagine teaching Quacks is very looked up on in the field either... I just... Wished to help someone, in some way"</p><p>Kouta did not answer, he merely continued to awkwardly walk by Mana's side, his face looked strange, it looked almost like he felt really bad about refusing to do something that'd dishonor him, almost like he actually suffered internally about refusing such an elementary thing which really confused the magician. Why would he care that much about what she wanted? Why would her foolish ponders really matter to him that badly?</p><p>"Mana! Mana! Look, I took notes yesterday about what I felt of my surroundings!" Meiko declared out loud rushing up to the magician and handing her notes full of sloppy handwriting. Mana peeked into it and felt really stupid for stopping training with Meiko, it wasn't like the blacksmith was bad at it but she lacked concentration, she lacked precision. She quickly lost focus and shifted around. She didn't delve into the temperature, the humidity, she merely acknowledged that it had one property or another.</p><p>"It's a very decent effort, we'll work on it together tonight" Mana smiled trying to break the news down to her friend as gently as possible. It wasn't that Meiko was bad, it was just that she was not much better than anyone else would reasonably be and that wouldn't have necessarily have been enough. Meiko wasn't patient enough or perceptive enough to identify her surroundings properly, to analyze them, she appeared to grow bored and move on to another property far too quickly.</p><p>Was that how Kouta must've felt towards her? Did he see that she was not meant for such training and that was the main reason why he had to refuse? After all, while when she was in her prime Mana's chakra control was certainly superior to most of her peers, currently her chakra control was non-existent which the main problem was. That was why the four of them were roaming these lands looking for a legendary wish fulfilling object in the first place.</p><hr/><p>The journey away from Sunagakure heading east towards Takigakure was more of the same desert that the four were beginning to get sick of. The gracious and merciful change was the lack of any mercenaries or raiders attacking them. Whether it was because of the official use of the roads they were traveling on by Sunagakure and merchants going in and out of the village or some other reason remained a mystery. Either way, each night was spent training, now since Meiko was engaged with Mana's genjutsu defense course she had no time to tutor Mana.</p><p>There was a solution to it – Kouta informed the magician that an incredibly important part of the official medical ninja training was evasive taijutsu course. Medical ninja were trained to avoid danger in battle, best medical ninja didn't get as much as a scratch while fighting in week-long battles and even entire wars as they had to reserve all of their chakra for the wounded. Chakra wasted healing themselves was basically paying for sloppiness with someone's life. Naturally, medical ninja were tutored at evasion by some of the best taijutsu and martial arts experts: mercenaries and ninja alike.</p><p>While medical ninja's perception, as well as chakra enhanced speedy evasion, was honed, significant importance was placed on evasion skills that use no chakra due to the importance of chakra of a medical ninja. If a medical ninja evaded all injury by enhancing their abilities with chakra augmentation they'd have ruined their networks making them effectively useless. Kouta was all shining with glee having found his purpose to Mana which continued to baffle the girl. He was quite adamant to train her during times when Meiko was training with Mana's assignments.</p><p>Kouta's evasion training was very merciful, perhaps overly so. The boy purposefully moved slower, pulled as many punches as he could as if he thought of Mana as a fragile object he had to preserve. That part of the training felt really pointless but Kouta has taught Mana a lot of very useful things. He taught her about the principles of evasion, about how her eyes and her body had to move to waste the least possible amounts of movement and about proper breathing. About the openings and possibilities of counterattacks. It appeared that all of them had something to teach each other...</p><p>One evening Mana grew a little frustrated by Kouta's obsession with holding back against her. If he didn't come at her with full intention to kill how could she properly learn actual evasive skills? She suggested a change. It was something that was bothering Mana's mind for a while – part of Tanshu-sensei's final will. Despite Kouta's objections and lack of fondness for the general idea, she involved Shimo into the training sessions. She proposed a deal to the boy that he would come at her with precise enough chakra control that she could evade his blows, while still augmenting his abilities. That way he'd always have to fight a fraction of a percent of his abilities and such refined control wouldn't come easy.</p><p>"If I slip up for a moment I'll cut you down instantly..." Shimo said. It wasn't like he was against the idea. Based on his tone he thought that Mana had not considered such a turn of events.</p><p>"That means Kouta-kun will have to try extra hard at teaching me to evade. If he doesn't do it right – I'll die." Mana smiled as if she didn't just sign her death sentence by her longtime friend's hand which she very well may have done. Kouta's face was absolutely pale and he opposed the idea completely.</p><p>"Very well then, I suppose I shall go without training then..." Mana smiled playfully teasing Kouta who almost completely lost his mind. The medical ninja had not held a single ounce of his strength back, he never pulled a single punch much to Mana's "enjoyment". She started to get beaten again, beaten and cut down because she had to evade a skilled swordsman and a medical ninja trying to scare her enough to get serious. Once again broken ribs and bone-deep gashes became a part of her routine.</p><p>At any rate – that way everyone was training, everyone was doing their best. Meiko was slowly becoming more perceptive, more capable of identifying changes in temperature or animals that may not have been very native to that land or not supposed to be seen unless one was looking really carefully. She became able to spot hidden lurking predators like snakes burrowed in the sand or scorpions under a rock just by correct guessing and perception alone.</p><p>Most even the smallest signs of sand being moved around and something being burrowed inside did not evade her. There could've been no question about it – Meiko grew stronger without stretching a single muscle. She became a bit more attentive and analytical instead of fighting by instinct. That sort of mind Mana could work with in terms of further defensive genjutsu training.</p><p>Kouta became more skilled at taijutsu by seeing Mana evade and adapting to it, his strikes became less inventive, he feinted attacks much more often and started inventing new combinations, new ways of attack or deceive his opponent. He wanted to truly prepare Mana for the combined assault of him and Shimo, he wanted all the best for her and the best was not being cut down.</p><p>Even if Mana did get injured from time to time, it was because the combined forces of Shimo and Kouta were almost impossible to evade to her, it was only a question of time when Shimo would cut her deep enough to take her out or when Kouta would break one bone too many for the magician to continue. Needless to say black bags of exhaustion also once again became Kouta's routine as he had to continue healing Mana day after day.</p><p>Shimo's chakra control truly improved. Just by fighting while augmenting his abilities and responding to Mana's level of skill actually helped him adapt to using impossibly small fractions of his power, as the kunoichi had seen, later on, the boy was capable of multiplying his experiences and fight at much more subtle levels than before.</p><p>While initially, such training would appear useless it helped Shimo preserve air in his lungs as well as spend less on his ninjutsu techniques. He became stronger by learning to fight weaker. Outlasting Shimo with his quickly improving chakra control became tougher and tougher every day. Not to mention that finally at least partially Tanshu-sensei's will was honored.</p><p>Mana became near impossible to hit without being experienced with chakra augmentation and simply outspeeding her in battle. One had to be stronger and faster than Mana, to absolutely dominate her in a battle to land a blow. The girl even went as far as to successfully evade kunai dispenser fire up close, she listened on Kouta's breathing, listened on his tensing muscles rubbing his clothes or his finger tensing on the dispenser's trigger.</p><p>That way Mana managed to evade being made a pin cushion even when the dispenser was shoved all the way in her face. Slowly the magician was becoming as strong as her impaired body allowed her to be. Not even the greatest taijutsu masters fighting at the human level would have been able to defeat her combination of redirection and evasion techniques. Soon training would've become meaningless as she was slowly approaching a wall that her body could not overcome.</p><p>The closer to that wall Mana got, the greater was her pain.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0153"><h2>153. Explodnado 2: Fiery Boogaloo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Long tongues of smoke broke through the cracks of a seemingly well-concealed bunker that appeared most like just another large rock etched into the desert sand, not unlike countless others under which one could've found various crawlies looking for a cheap sting or a bypassing prey. Usually, rocks such as the smoking one provided ample shade and cover and ironically enough while the rock was a fake one, it actually did serve some very similar purposes to the people concealed inside. Concealed was perhaps a very strong word to use in this particular situation as the relentless streaks of dark green smoke continuously broke through the cracks in the rock and loud yells and laughs could've been heard if one crept up close enough.</p><p>The hole, inhabitants of which called it a "bunker", was similarly filled with clouds of dark green gas that appeared to come from some weird crunchy snacks that the people inside have been munching on. It was a bright yellowish sort of chip-like cracker covered with flower and appearing like a waffle chip that upon being eaten happened to emit some sort of smoke from it, likely from a contact with saliva or some other substance present in the mouth. The spreading smoke ventilated and traveled through the consumer's system and left through their ears and nose, often through the mouth after the consumer coughed.</p><p>There were only three people inside of the bunker which would have appeared quite odd as the walls of the place were covered with weapons, shields, and armor, the place was meant to be a sanctuary when darkness caught one unprepared or when preparation was needed or perhaps a refill of supplies for the organization of terrorists that built it there. It did not appear that the inhabitants were using it for that purpose, however. They were just crunching on the snacks and drinking molten sherbets that were likely a little stronger than the casual sherbet deserts enjoyed by richer people in the Land of Wind.</p><p>"I've had, like... An idea..." one of the trio, a man, spoke up. He sat in a relaxed position and tipped his ice cream up of molten sherbet before flipping it up letting some spill down on his hairy bare chest. Despite the fact that the man wore strange denim trousers and a vest and an incredibly raggy t-shirt that approached very close to being validly categorized as that belonging to a hobo, his chest remained exposed and was covered in bright blonde hair, matching the long hair on his head and a very rich beard that he wore which was also a little soaked in ice cream and covered with smoking crunch crumbs.</p><p>"Hi hi, I think it's just the Hat'ash you've done talking..." a girl who had the man's arm wrapped around her like she was the last support pole, keeping the man from tumbling down into an abyss. Her appearance was not in any way special, besides her above average physical appearance and shape and her clothes were too few to earn a description.</p><p>"Hush, my friend is talking. What idea graced you this... Morning, day... Whatever, haven't looked outside for a good while." Another man who appeared like an ordinary desert traveler silenced the woman by pressing his index finger to her sultry and plump lips and exclaimed his respect and desire to hear what his hairy friend had to say.</p><p>"Like... We should like... Have a deal... Or something." The hairy one said letting his head weigh backward as he exhaled the dark green gas from his mouth in a controlled stream so much that the colorful bandana fell off his head and finally revealed the oasis picture sewn into it in its full.</p><p>"Aw, that would be quite cool! What kind of a deal should we make?" The other male spoke up, the attention of the woman in between of them continued to shift from one male to another as they exchanged words in between. His words came at a dreamy and tipsy slur that suggested the man may have wanted to refrain from making deals in his current condition.</p><p>"Like... Dude... I came up with the idea that we should make a deal, how 'bout you twist your head a little and come up with the deal, I dunno, like... Sometimes I think... Do you even respect me, man?" The blond man replied shaking and throwing his hands and his feet around angrily, had the woman close to him not been sprawling and slipping asleep she'd have quite likely been accidentally hit by him warranting and an instant end to their attempted negotiations.</p><p>"How dare you!? We met only yesterday yet I love you like my own brother! But how am I supposed to know what kind of a deal we should make, I mean I don't know what you have, I'm not really sure what I even need at the moment either... Besides a good pair of pants," the man sitting close to the blond-haired hobo-like man replied genuinely looking guilty that he was completely unaware of the situation he was in nor could he suggest terms to this supposed deal they'd make.</p><p>"Aw man... You like... Killed my deal-making mood, man... Like, I wish we could like... I dunno, make a deal or something and you'd give me a way to talk to like hawks and all that... Sometimes I just want to... Like... Really know how to communicate with those birds, man." The blond man picked his bandana back up from where it had fallen and tied it on his scalp again slightly helping the crazy hair situation that he wore on top of his head.</p><p>"Shit, sorry, man... I just... You can't really go at a guy like that, you know? Gotta ease me into it. Don't just say, "hey, let's make a deal" and not know what sort of deal you're making." The man shook his hands around and shrugged wildly a couple of times trying to explain it to his friend yet feeling far too drunk on the sherbet and a little dizzy from the Hat'ash they've crunched through the night to be able to successfully do so.</p><p>"Man, like... Whatever... I'm bored, wish we could like... Blow up or something..." the bearded blonde replied pulling his finger out from his nose which he was picking at the time and flicked his finger allowing a small booger size white ball of clay to leap off his fingernails as if it actually had sentience. The dust size booger of clay stopped in mid-air and screeched for a brief moment covering the entire bunker in a blinding flash of light.</p><p>
  <strong>BOOM</strong>
</p><p>Light footsteps through the desert approached the bunker location and walked up to their wasted friend, his clothes were damaged but they were such, to begin with. It appeared that his t-shirt and his denim attire was singed and blown up so many times that it had built some sort of a tolerance to it already. The man's long hair was singed-up as well and also significantly shorter and his beard was still in the process of singing appearing almost like blond tobacco in a rolled-up cigarette in mid burning.</p><p>"You imbecile, you've blown up our bunker!" The blind marksman yelled at the just barely conscious friend of his who just shrugged with a friendly "what can you do" type smile and stood up with significant effort on his part.</p><p>"Also, where's Iyasha?" Poncho Assassin placed his hand on the hilt of his sword preparing to strike his wasted friend down where he stood, or to be more exact - laid.</p><p>"Like... I thought she'd augment herself using chakra. Like I did and... I guess she's dead... Like... One of life's mysteries, you know? You get to know a gal like really communicate with her and... She, like... Blows up." The blond hobo shrugged again and stumbled around looking at the gaping crater still being filled with flowing torrents of sand which he was lucky to have landed beyond the range from.</p><p>"He killed Iyasha and he destroyed one of Shaphac's bunkers, remind me why we're not only keeping him around but taking him with us?" Poncho Assassin looked at his blind and googled friend who took a cowboy hat to hide from the blazing Sun.</p><p>"Well, we couldn't have taken Iyasha with us anyways, people in Agbarah Sheikhate are way too stingy with women, even accompanied by men. We'd have attracted too much attention. Her loss, however, is an unfortunate one, she was one of few different and exotic ninja in Sunagakure, her Bloom Release would've been an asset to us later on." The blind marksman tipped his hat lower and fired a couple of sharp kunai-like sharpened bolts that just disappeared deep into the sand after the impact as if sand offered no resistance to them at all. The tipsy explosive specialist tried to dance his feet comically to avoid the bolts but he just fell backward like a sack of potatoes just barely avoiding being skewered by them.</p><p>"Like... Cut it out, Denton, I'll like... I dunno, make it up to you guys... Somehow... Like, make some rice cakes or blow up a meatloaf again to make it like extra soft, or something." the barely conscious man complained.</p><p>"Whatever, we need this idiot with us, he is a monkey-brain with explosive power to blow a chunk of this planet off, we need him if we are to do what we were told to." The blind marksman called Denton angrily fixed the tip of his hat and carefully tapped the fallen comrade around until he found the belt on his jeans, grabbing hold of it and dragging his tipsy friend through the sand.</p><p>"We could retreat the package without him, you know, fewer people means fewer chances of being seen..." Poncho Assassin casually remarked smiling a little at the hilarious sight of his friend being dragged face first on the sand by his annoyed comrade.</p><p>"We're not just going to extract the package, we're going to pop the kneecaps of those Konoha scum and make them beg for death, then we're going to pop them in the head and leave them for the coyotes to feast on their ribs, isn't that what the Shaphac stands for? Isn't that what we're doing this all for? Acts of war? If we kill a bunch of kids on a peaceful exploration mission, Konoha is sure to declare war on Sunagakure." Denton huffed out as dragging his friend appeared to be more of a struggle than he counted on it being.</p><p>"Huh... But weren't you ordered to only fight and kill the Konoha ninja if they move into the Agbarah Sheikhate?" Poncho asked him.</p><p>"Yeah, which is why we need an explosive diversion to lure them there, we'll kill the little women, then we'll have this shitbrain blow the guys' corpses up, we'll say we never saw 'em..." The man finally had enough and let go of his trigger-happy friend who without uttering a word just stood up and followed his friends.</p><p>"You're a pretty sneaky bastard, Denton..." Poncho laughed out. "Playing the Kazekage is also pretty dumb..."</p><p>"Whether we succeed or fail, whether the Shaphac will get destroyed or not, death to these kids will bring war, which means that the Shaphac will achieve their goals to some extent anyway." The blind marksman finished his train of thought.</p><p>The trio continued to walk on until they disappeared off of a hill into the slowly setting desert Sun.</p><hr/><p>It finally got so deep into the night that the temperatures started approaching the freezing point. Mana was glad to have bought something resembling her uniform where she could hide the emergency tools that she couldn't pull out of her kit in the heat of the battle. She also brought some sheets along with her, having experienced the freezing desert nights prior. When it got as cold and as dark as it got at that moment, the team always stopped walking and hunkered down, there was absolutely nothing positive to gain from traversing the place during the night, that one time of day when all the predators are out lurking and hunting and the temperatures match Konoha at its coldest time of year.</p><p>With a little struggle the team managed to light a fire, Mana didn't want to use her custom cards, one of which had a kunai dispenser modification sealed into it that basically exploded with flammable liquid and sparked upon being fired. The magician sort of felt bad about not having a kunai dispenser with her, she had already discovered that with a little effort they could've been reworked to fire not just kunai but other small objects like bolts, arrows or even cards at the speed approaching the speed of sound. When she was still a ninja she may have slung projectiles at such speed with her hands alone when needed but now she could only toss them as fast as a teenage girl with a lifetime of intense training could.</p><p>Kouta started making some of the quickly heated food packs that he bought from Sunagakure. They were quite odd things and Mana could briefly remember seeing similar things in Konohagakure shops. They were small bags, size of a hand, that when heated extended into the size and shape of an actual dish. Some had to be treated with care as Kouta bought plenty of ramen packs that just bloated with hot soup and noodles and needed a separate bowl to be eaten. After the team settled down to have their one meal per day that could've both kept them from dying and warmed them up it appeared like the day was about to end peacefully.</p><p>"Say, Mana-chan, what kind of food do you like?" Kouta asked with a smile. "I bought some ingredients sealed inside paper tags which we could use when we leave the desert, maybe I can make something you like one day?"</p><p>"Hm?" One of Shimo's closed eyes opened and looked curiously at Kouta before closing with a smile on the young man's face.</p><p>"Hey? Why don't you ever suggest making something I like? Then again, I suppose I'll eat anything so that question is sort of redundant..." Meiko answered her own question right after rushing up to Kouta and leaning over the fire angrily. Mana could only slightly chuckle every time she saw a similar episode play out, seeing Meiko be Meiko improved her mood a lot.</p><p>"I have to say your question does sound a little weird, Kouta-kun." Mana smiled, "While I do have to eat much more often than all of you because of my normal human metabolism I still fail to see the need to pamper me."</p><p>"It's because you're the VIP, you're the client." Shimo sarcastically answered the question with a smile after seeing Kouta blush and lose himself in trying to find an answer to the simple question. "Your morale is the most important to be kept up, you're constantly in danger yet we are directly responsible for your well-being and your stress levels. This is why not many clients are allowed to leave together with the ninja. It's something meant for stress management and a morale boost."</p><p>Mana looked at the starry sky and laughed a little, the desert was beautiful at night and yet just as deadly as it was during the day, if it wasn't for her friends helping her out and her doing all she could do in her current condition they would've died so many times over and yet together they made this insane mission work. Living in the moment helped the magician to appreciate the beauty of the natural wonder located around her and the company of her friends, despite streaks of depression over her loss of identity popping in and out her morale was not a problem to be worried about.</p><p>"I like gyoza, it's my favorite dish. Since I don't eat much nor do I need much to feel sated I am not overly fond of fatty and overly strong foods." Mana replied. Kouta smiled gently but then couldn't help but feel a little confused.</p><p>"Gyoza is a rather simplistic dish... I'd have imagined an artist like Mana-chan to love something really specific and sophisticated but everyone knows how to make gyoza and it's accessible to everyone, it's hardly a lord's dish. I mean I love rice wine chicken which isn't a dish I see on the table every day." Kouta scratched his head.</p><p>"That is exactly why I like it. It is simple, it has nothing special about it, just like me. And yet a fantastic and skilled chef might make something special of it, be it something with the dough or something with the vegetable and meat filling inside. It's a simple and unimpressive, rather bland dish that under experienced and amazing hands can become a food that is more exquisite than any other." Mana replied with her happiness suddenly becoming more lyrical than the absolute glee she felt before.</p><p>The gyoza dumplings were just like Mana in many cases, just like gyoza Mana was a girl with nothing special about her. She didn't belong to a clan of amazing ninja just like gyoza were made by even the lowest layers of society, the blandest doughs could've been made even from flour and water. Mana didn't have any fantastic bloodlines inside her just like the gyoza didn't have anything special in their filling to make up for the bland and tasteless dough. And yet... Gyoza could become so divine, additional ingredients could've been added to its dough or its filling making it surpass everyone else and fulfill its goal of sating its consumer just like Mana dreamed of one day fulfilling her goal.</p><p>"We're not alone..." Shimo mumbled and stood up, looking behind him and staring into a blank space on a dark rock which Mana couldn't even begin to make out in the blinding desert darkness, especially when contrasted with the all-devouring flame that was used for warmth and light. While it could've attracted attention it was integral for desert survival, it repelled wild animals, it provided enough warmth to survive desert temperatures.</p><p>Meiko's frame blurred and disappeared as she dashed right in front of Mana deflecting a barrage of bolts that flew at her at blinding speed. The barrage was connected by such a short amount of time and fired in such a rapid burst that to the magician it appeared to have let out a single deafening clang while Meiko may have deflected as many as sixty of sharpened bolts. The blacksmith looked at her ruined wristbands and gloves.</p><p>"Darn it, they're very loosely chakra infused, it ruined my armor." The blacksmith cursed as Meiko pulled off her wristbands and gloves and let them crash into the desert ground in a sound that alerted and scared Mana suggesting that Meiko may have carried the weight of a human being just on her single piece of armor. The wristbands weighed so much that they just sunk deep into the sand where Mana could no longer see them as the sand quickly covered the sinkholes.</p><p>"Her chakra control isn't nearly sharp enough to infuse her armor with chakra... Meiko can't defend well against chakra infused weaponry which puts us in a lot of danger." Mana thought to herself looking at the hills she couldn't even make out with her ordinary eyes, realizing just how useless and how much of a burden she was to her friends in her current condition.</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana-chan. Don't split from us, we'll take care of them for you." Kouta angrily declared and moved in close to Meiko to assist the girl if needed.</p><p>A loud howl of the desert wind picked up strands and torrents of sand, Shimo looked around witnessing the very unnatural breeze of wind that slowly started breaking and rotating as twin currents clashed against each other creating a tornado strong enough to make endless sandstorms of itself rotating around it.</p><p>Kouta's firm grip grabbed hold of Mana before the girl felt it loosening. Something was wrong, the medical ninja should've been strong enough to maintain a stable hold of her throughout a tornado, she saw him break through his father's defenses once.</p><p>"It's me he's worried about, he doesn't want to crush my arm or to pull it out of its socket." The magician thought to herself as Kouta let go, Mana couldn't help but scream at her own helplessness as she was taken by the raging winds and carried upwards, she couldn't see or hear anything but the currents of wind slowly tearing her body apart, she felt tearing force and sand bashing at her face, it was painful, it almost tore her body parts, almost broke her bones and left scratching marks all over.</p><p>Mana heard a loud sneeze that forced her to open her mouth. She saw thousands if not more of small white grain-like particles rotating and attaching to the sand.</p><p>"On the other hand, run, Mana-chan!" She heard Kouta's voice from below but she couldn't help herself, she was already floating in mid-air. Mana tried to somehow overcome the tearing grip and the cutting force of the wind and the sands bashing at her face but she couldn't even after giving her best. It was when she noticed that those white grains started glowing that Mana felt a tough shoulder shoving her out of the way, the magician heard loud clanging close to her suggesting that it must've been Meiko who picked Mana up and tore her from the tornado of these glowing white grains.</p><p>A loud screech overcame Mana's ears, she couldn't even hear the raging winds around her, even nature's perfect monster was nowhere close to being registered by Mana's body that was beginning to shut down from being assaulted on so many fronts at once.</p><p>A blinding and deafening explosion that could only have been described as destruction itself echoed ripping through the desert. An explosive force so potent that a beam of its controlled explosive power and searing blaze of obliteration streamed straight into space and could've been picked up by a curious extraterrestrial visitor if such existed. A hole so deep that no one could've even seen its end was made where the tornado filled with minuscule clay bombs detonated, bursts of hot magma danced deep below, providing a brief clue of just how deep and all covering the explosion was. Slowly the sand around the area started pouring back into the destructive blast, the crystalized and molten particles first, those that weren't molten before became so once they hit the blazing wild tango of the magma streams and torrents below.</p><p>It was as if like the God himself has poked the Earth with his mightiest of fingers</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0154"><h2>154. Welcome To Agbarah</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>An epitome of headaches fitting to be a description in the textbook of headaches hit Mana's head as she opened her eyes. She'd woken up from bad situations before, she's even once woken up from nearly dying, this couldn't have felt worse than that and yet somehow it managed to feel like that. It was like some device was placed on her head, similar to the snappers that snap the shells of nuts, that kept applying pressure to her temporal bones and yet barely not hard enough to crush it completely. This was one of the worse waking ups that the girl has had throughout her life.</p><p>Even if Mana felt the warm if not heated up sand beneath her cheeks and her hands as it shifted through them she could not see it. All that she could see was completely white, nor could Mana hear any sounds of the desert like the howling winds and scurrying little critters squirming around the sand. All that Mana could hear was loud shrieks, almost like two rusted pieces of metal rubbing against each other close to her ears, the girl could feel warm drops of blood making their way down her face and her cheeks from her ears, however.</p><p>She was blind, deaf, hurt and bleeding, without the ability to control chakra and in the desert. Quietly Mana spoke into the wind, asking for someone she knew, naming all of her friends but their names just went completely unnoticed as Mana couldn't feel any of them touching her, had they spoken to her or gestured for her she'd have not seen them but if Kouta was with her he'd have known that. She was all alone. Alone in a different country, in the middle of she knew not where surrounded by endless miles of desert spanning one-fifth of the entire land mass of the planet. This may have just been the worst kind of trouble she's ever been in.</p><p>Sitting on her bottom would've been the equivalent of waiting for her death. She could just vaguely remember the explosive cataclysm that transpired and despite the situation reminding one where most people would feel boredom, Mana felt desperation and worry. A worry for her friends. If she was to die here, blind and deaf, bleeding out on the sand she at least wished to know if her friends were alright. Slowly the girl rolled on her shoulder that ached the least and forced her body off the ground, picking herself up and stumbling for a while as her brain struggled to keep her body upright.</p><p>"I need to keep moving, I... I need to do something... I can't just wait here for death." Mana spoke silently to herself, at least meant to do so as she could not hear herself and couldn't really control her speech. If her friends were there they'd have stopped her but no one did, there really was no one there, no friends nor enemies. The only enemy around was the desert itself.</p><p>"This isn't so bad, I still have my skin, it wasn't singed off so I can feel with it, I can touch, I'll know when it's hot and when it's cold... I can manage... For a while." The magician thought to herself trying to confuse herself that somehow she wasn't in a total hole of the bottom, unlike any trouble she'd found herself in before that.</p><p>For a couple of hours the girl just kept on walking, feeling the sand in front of her with her fingers, softly letting it shift through it, she tried to speak to herself loud enough to alert any predators of her location, to sing or to just hum some melodies she could remember. Most snakes and larger predators of the wild were afraid of people, after all – people were armed, some of them could breathe fire from their mouths or employ lightning at their command or summon tornadoes and typhoons. People were out of the food chain and upon hearing a single tune of their voice most predators cleared out of the way. That way Mana may have avoided dozens of snakes that lurked in the sand burrowed in the sand she may have stepped onto and died normally.</p><p>Finally, the girl realized from her sweating and slowly scolding skin that it was becoming far too hot to keep walking. Mana helplessly wandered around trying to locate a rock to hide under, to see if she could find some shade but she could only find a cactus that she found in a rather painful way, luckily she didn't swat her hand at it too hard...</p><p>Mana removed her shirt and placed it on the cactus, placing the blazer that she carried around on it to make some shade. She was no survivalist, she was just getting lucky so far, there was only that much that she could do in her situation. She was just stumbling into things, lucky to not having been bitten and died slowly grasping for another breath of air as the snake's poison paralyzed her muscles and lungs... She was pathetic.</p><p>At the state which she was in currently, she was no savior, she was no hero that would change the world. No one would remember her story and be inspired to change their violent ways from the way she's been living up to now. A broken shell of what she once was chasing after days long gone, after life which was long lost. The only deed she had done which was remotely worthy of her final pride was that time she saved a child from being horribly murdered by Hisako, that being said that child was a murderous psycho who would likely grow up into an actual criminal but as long as he was alive there was still hope he wouldn't... Ironically, that very point was also when Mana lost herself, her identity.</p><p>The girl's body shook in a cold evening breeze, quickly Mana took her shirt and got dressed to protect from the breeze, she still had a couple of hours to keep on walking, then she'd have to somehow survive the coldest night in her life... Just that thought, that fear of her own uselessness and demise sparked something, Mana wildly shook her head around realizing that, finally, she could hear something. Her hearing was slowly returning to her, perhaps her sight would soon follow? The magician did feel a little ashamed of the fact that she relied so much on her sight but it was the sense she was the most accustomed to. She was a visual artist, after all, it only made sense.</p><p>The girl continued to walk, burrowing herself into her blazer by how cold the evening was. Usually, there'd be someone who would give her some extra clothing during those final hours of walking. She was still weak, she relied so much on the protection of other people when she yelled so loud that she'd be the one protecting everyone. Mana closed her blinded eyes and kept on walking forward, she shoved the depressing and wild thoughts away, forced them away. She had no time to feel pity for herself, she either lived or died.</p><p>Some walking sounds on the sand, Mana tried to yell for help but she could only hardly whimper. A loud animalistic sound came her way, similar to that of a bear's roar but since the magician knew that those things didn't live in the desert she just extended her hand forward. A slobbering wet tongue licked her hand before the animal's slobbery, wet and warm mouth let Mana's hand completely disappear into its mouth. It didn't bite her, it just held her hand inside its mouth and sort of flipped it around with its tongue before the girl pulled it out and wiped the slimy hand at the sand. Mana stood up and felt the animal around.</p><p>"It's a camel..." She realized, upon further feeling inspection, it appeared that there was a man with a bleeding wound on his head lying beside the camel. The night was getting cold, if he was allowed to stay down he'd likely die, whether it was from the cold or the predators. Mana was lucky that she laid at the edge of the explosion, the radiating heat warmed her, the emanating light must've scared animals away for miles. This man had no such luxury – he'd die here and so would Mana. The magician stroke the animal's fur and grunted after the pain took her over as she tried to lift the man up. The camel appeared to be a bit smarter than one would give it credit for as it bit the man's sleeve and helped Mana flip it onto its back.</p><p>The saddle on top of the camel didn't appear to be ready to handle two people at once, Mana would just have to grind her teeth through and have a bumpy and painful ride as just walking made her bones hurt like they were being kicked every second. The camel just shook uncomfortable after Mana jumped onto it but it seemed to be quite dealt with the idea that it'd be carrying two people wherever it was going. The magician lightly slapped the animal on its butt making it get the clue. The camel started rushing forward. This was going to be an agonizing trip, wherever she was going, but at least it'd be a lot faster.</p><p>A couple of hours in Mana was quivering, she felt cold needles digging into her fingers and her toes, she started feeling numb and sleepy. The magician needed to find something to warm herself up, the pure physical effort it took to not fall off was not enough. She was working out quite a lot to keep her body on top of the animal, if she fell off she'd have been done. Mana took the liberty of letting one of her hands to slip back and check for a blanket or something like that, there was something covering the merchandise that the camel was carrying which Mana removed and placed on her shoulders. She let a couple of bags to fall off just so she could secure her own legs into those belts and stay safer on the animal if her body ever failed her and the girl fell off.</p><p>She was quite right to do so as some time later Mana's eyes shot open and she realized that she was leaning to the side, had it not been for her secured legs she'd have fallen off and would've either snapped her neck going down or woken up far too late. Slowly the air was starting to warm up more and more – the morning must've been close. If that was the case Mana would need some water, she felt really bad borrowing some from the man as she already cost him a couple of bags of his merchandise. Only then she realized how much she relied on Shimo's Ice Style ninjutsu to create water in the desert for them and fill their flasks.</p><p>Mana screamed in pain as her eyes started watering. Bright flashes of light hit her eyes, whiter even than the eternal white she was stuck in and suddenly the girl realized that while her vision was still extremely blurry – it was slowly returning to her. Dying now would've been quite disgraceful, after all, she's made it through for so long with no vision or hearing. Forward was the only way, to ride, only to ride on. Judging from the brief flashes of light in her watery and pain ridden eyes the morning was slowly approaching as the desert Sun peeked from the horizon like a predator lurking on its prey, peeking at it from the tallest grass patches around.</p><p>Only then did Mana wonder about where her mission stood at that moment. She was stuck in the middle of nowhere without knowledge of her team, she was ruined and getting short on supplies again as she never carried much for the team, with all of her normal human carrying strength and all... Together with the worry for her team and the mission Mana couldn't help but feel curious about the place that this majestic desert animal was carrying her to. It couldn't have been too far from the location she was stranded in, they were heading east from Sunagakure and the explosion may have pushed her a little south...</p><p>"Oh no, I'm heading the wrong direction, I don't need to go south..." Mana thought to herself. Then again, the mission may not have been the exact priority realizing the situation she was in. She needed to find a stable way of getting her through a couple of nights, then think of a way to let her friends know of her location or find them in any other way. Still, she needed to head to the Land of Sound and Otogakure, maybe her friends would head to the objective thinking she'd catch up to them? No. They knew of her condition, they'd never move on without finding Mana previously. They were too worried about her well-being, or just as worried about hers and Mana was with theirs.</p><p>After several more hills and the morning finally hitting its peak Mana noticed a shadow on the horizon, it wasn't too large and yet it was no oasis. It must've been just a mirage but then why would a camel head that way? Camels should've been smart enough to tell mirages, weren't they? Where exactly was this animal bringing her? The magician checked the man's vitals finally enjoying the complete and returned vision. That last day navigating without sight or sound and just pain there to remind her of how painful living actually was couldn't have been described differently than a living nightmare. The man was alive but his bleeding head injury that was slowly drenching his bandage which Mana made sure to apply after tossing his turban away was worrying her.</p><p>As expected the camel slowed down almost to a halt once it had reached the large settlement it was heading towards. It was filled with clay buildings similar to Sunagakure but was much less fortified by natural barriers of rock. It appeared to have more guards patrolling the place but they didn't look like ninja, they reminded much more of raiders or rogues. This may not have been the best place to be in but...</p><p>"A woman, a woman in Agbarah!" a loud yell through the street alerted the surrounding settlers and even the guards to the point where they approached Mana drawing their crescent shaped blades and threateningly pointing them at her.</p><p>"She's torn up and injured, a beggar maybe? Does she wish us to put her out of her misery!?" another settler angrily ranted before picking up a rock and tossing it at Mana, with her human reflexes the girl could just barely lean to the side avoiding it.</p><p>"Look, I'm sorry, I don't..." Mana tried to speak but a guard leaped at her at an inhuman speed blowing her down from the top of the camel and ramming her at the sand below. He placed his sword by her throat so close that it almost drew blood, he had his sword at her throat the entire time, for someone to be so precise and controlled as to not sever her head with a rushing move like that... It told Mana a lot about the skill of these guards, she may have been able to face several in a fight if all of them were like this man but she'd be overwhelmed by a larger group even with all of her defensive skills and evasion skills.</p><p>"Speak once more, woman, see what happens..." the man spoke up once more, he had a much longer beard than the other guards, it was so long and thick that it almost ran down and touched Mana's face and the guard on top of her appeared to be much older than the others, maybe he was the leader or at least the most skilled one? In that case, she had a slightly better chance at fighting them off...</p><p>"This woman is carrying an injured merchant. This camel has never seen women, he'd have not allowed her to ride it if it didn't think it necessary – she saved the merchant's life I presume" a guard stroke the animal's head and slowly lead it away, Mana could follow the guard and the camel no longer after it was taken behind a corner, to follow them visually would've meant to turn her head in a way that would've slit her throat and Mana has done that before – it wasn't a fun experience.</p><p>The guard holding her down examined Mana for a while, he pressed her harder to the ground looking if she'd resist but Mana didn't. She would've only tried fighting if there was literally no other way to survive. Maybe they wouldn't kill her still, maybe they would imprison her and escaping binds and prisons was what Mana did on stage for a part of her living.</p><p>A settler walked up to the girl and looked over the guard's shoulder. "This woman isn't a woman, she is a child woman" he uttered. Something told Mana that these people have not seen that many women around but definitely for a reason as they didn't appear to be overly fond of the kind. That begged the question of how did this settlement sustain itself but that was not the most pressing matter to find out. Mana tried to flip her tongue to ask the guard where she was but she remembered the man's threat and reaction to her speaking before.</p><p>"Ten or twenty years don't make you grow a sack between your legs, a child or not, she is a woman but we can't kill her as we do with the others. She seems of fit shape and she did save that man's life. Let us bring her to the Sun Disc. That seems a fitting end for this little woman" the guard chained Mana's hands and sheathed his blade before standing up. The man took Mana's chains from behind and slowly lead her towards this "Sun Disc".</p><p>All around Mana could hear people whispering and pointing fingers at her, some tried to spit at her or fling rocks at her but the guard appeared to be quite adamant about not letting her get too wounded on her way there. He carefully turned her aside from the spitting folk and moved her away from the flying rocks.</p><p>"A woman in Agbarah Sheikhate?! How dares she!?" shouts of this and similar manner couldn't cease as Mana made her way through the place.</p><p>The guard leaned up to Mana's side after a young man tripped her over and picked her up, whispering to her.</p><p>"Welcome to Agbarah"</p>
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<a name="section0155"><h2>155. The Story Of The Sun Disc</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The entire trip to this Sun Disc place, where she was apparently being taken, was not a comfortable one. Despite his somewhat present degree of empathy towards her the guard holding her didn't shy away from being too rough or pushing Mana around and while he did sort of try to keep the cursing furious mob away from her somehow to the magician it seemed like there was a much more material reason for it than simple human empathy. And yet, with all the roughness and all the new wounds she got from falling down after being pushed too hard when she didn't expect it to or getting hit by an object tossed at her, the trip itself was not the worst part.</p><p>The worst part of it all was easily the hatred in the eyes of people Mana had never met in her life before that day. They looked at her as if she was responsible for all that was bad in their lives. As if she was the scapegoat for all of their suffering. Maybe not everyone would feel as crushed by such stares and all of that hatred, most perhaps would simply ignore it all and feel high and mighty as they've not really done anything to deserve this hatred making them feel in the right. Mana had not done anything to these people and yet she still felt terrible just due to the fact that they hated her for no reason.</p><p>She was supposed to be the person who helps people, one who guides them through example. If she wanted the world to stop being violent, to view life as being as precious and as magical as she thought it to be she needed to eliminate all this hatred and become someone people would follow and yet... These people couldn't have been more to the opposite side of the spectrum to that which Mana tried to achieve. She didn't know why or how but... She was failing her objective miserably and that just added to Mana's sadness. Made her feel even more depressed than just seeing a mob of people try to hurt you and spill their hatred out in whatever ways they can.</p><p>"Can you fight?" the guard mumbled quietly so that only he and Mana could hear, the girl looked back at the armored elder, wondering about the purpose of the question. What was she supposed to tell him? If she admitted being trained from her earliest days in the arts of killing people but perverting them to save them instead, would she be executed on the spot? Won't she at the very least get the chance to fight for her life?</p><p>"Depends on what I'm supposed to fight." Mana decided to be vague about it, usually in life half-assed answers were always wrong but, in this case, the world around her was mad enough to not answer to the rules that it usually followed. The guard actually cracked half a grin, maybe she didn't answer wrong.</p><p>"An interesting answer, if you can't I can always kill you quickly, it'll be faster and you won't have to suffer. It's an easier option." He replied revealing the purpose of his question at last. He didn't really feel like a bad person, from what Mana's gut told her he was just someone following a very messed up set of rules.</p><p>"I am known to always torment myself with harder options just for the sake of it..." Mana kindly smiled at her captor showing that she didn't really hold any bad feelings toward him. "I am to assume that I am arrested merely because of my gender then?" she asked again once the guards, leading her to where they were supposed to go, took a turn into an alleyway.</p><p>Another guard punched Mana in the gut, he yelled something out in a strange dialect which the magician couldn't initially pinpoint. It was a lot like hearing a weird accent of a language one spoke in, it took hearing a couple of sentences before one could've gotten accustomed to it. There was only one universal language in the ninja world, still, some people around various parts put different spins on it, invented new words or ways of pronouncing words and those dialects were as numerous as drops of water in a river. As someone who read a lot, the girl knew a couple of them but most of them were already gone as the people talking them were extinct.</p><p>"I'd advise you to stay silent, little woman, stay silent unless you are asked a question." The elder guard spoke once again, this time it was in a much stricter tone than usual.</p><p>Finally, once the alleyway ended Mana realized where she was taken, in the middle of the street there stood a giant temple of hulking towers surrounding a great central structure. Rotund shapes dominated in this strange eastern style architectural wonder, shapes and mosaics danced all over the building telling tales and stories starting from possibly quite old times when this wonder was built. The Sun Disc was finally in sight.</p><p>Once Mana was lead into the building she was taken into one of the towers, it was an endless spiral of stairs with dark and damp rocky cells protected by steel bars. The kunoichi was surprised to see steel bars and chains being used instead of chakra barriers and seals. The girl was lead into a cell and was thrown inside.</p><p>"Wait here for your calling, once it is your time you will know what to do. If you won't... Well, no tears of sadness will be shed." The elder guard lowered his head and closed Mana inside. Once she was closed in and chained down to a small rotten wooden bench the girl sat down and looked at the ruined floor with a sad and lifeless expression. So many people with pure hatred for her, so little hope that she would ever see her friends again but if there was at least some that would be what Mana would be counting on.</p><p>"You're a woman... Sorry, a girl... In Agbarah? Are you suicidal?" A large man sitting in front of Mana's bench asked. He was a very large and bulky individual, a couple of meters tall and lifted his fair share of boulders. His body was covered with scars and one of his eyes looked really creepy and messed up – must've been a battlefield wound. For someone like him to be really freaked out by her presence, it must've been a really big deal.</p><p>"I'm a kunoichi actually... Was at least... I don't even know what I am anymore." Mana tried to calm him down a little but she ended up just confusing herself in the process.</p><p>"Oh... Didn't notice a headband on you... A kunoichi should've known not to venture into Agbarah Sheikhate." The man replied, he didn't really seem very hateful towards her, whatever ailed the common folk didn't seem to be as deep-rooted as Mana initially thought.</p><p>"Yeah, I must've lost it, been through a lot these days..." she admitted, "I'm not from around, I wouldn't even know where I am if everyone wouldn't constantly remind me as if I committed some huge sin by coming here".</p><p>"Hasn't everyone?" The man asked, his tone was friendly, he didn't try to scold Mana for trying to imply that her burden was greater than everyone else's, he just tried to empathize with her and try to show her that the two were somewhat in the same boat and that they didn't have to be too distant from one another.</p><p>"What's the deal with this place anyway? Why does everyone hate me just because I'm a girl? I mean, if all girls and women are brought here or executed how does this place even stay on the map?" Mana asked the first thing on her mind. She really felt bad being hated by everyone around her for no reason at all, being hated just for the sake of hatred just didn't feel right for her and made her hate herself and feel down for no reason. Not one that made any sense anyway.</p><p>"Oh, this place isn't like a settlement or anything. It's a place people come to and leave, like an entertainment center, it's very unlike the other Sheikhates in that way." The large man shook his head and explained. The man continuously caressed several of his fingers on his left arm, upon a longer glare at them Mana saw that they were actually broken and swollen. Was this man going to fight too? He wasn't in a fighting condition...</p><p>"What's a Sheikhate? I thought Sunagakure was the only large cradle of civilization here and all the other settlements were just a couple of small portable tents and blocks." The girl asked trying to find out as much as she could from the man.</p><p>"Well, technically it's like a settlement of desert people but... It's hard to explain, the Land of Wind is unlike the other countries. Before there were ninja here and Sunagakure was founded, there were the Sheikhs that split apart the riches and all the resources and the land of the desert to rule in their Sheikhates. I don't really wish to go into too much detail but some of those Sheikhates still remain in some shape or form and they have some political power too. They're almost like separate states of the Land of Wind and often times they hold the Wind Lord back as well. It's not a secret that the Kazekage wishes to remove the Sheikhs from their posts and unify the desert under the Wind Lord's rule, still, the place is too vast and too complicated to just place under a single Lord." The man explained. Mana leaned up closer to him, straining her chains as much as they could've been strained. His skin appeared to be quite dark, much darker than even hers, he may not have been from around either.</p><p>"Strange, I like to read history scrolls and legends and I may have come upon a term like that before but I don't recall hearing much about it." Mana scratched her chin confused before nodding her head down and letting it stay that way. So even as an amateur historian she still had things to learn.</p><p>"Well, you know... Not every little bit of information is found on a scroll, sometimes you have to leave the archive and travel a little." The man tried to crack a grin but he couldn't. Just the tiniest look at his face revealed the reason – he pitied Mana. He knew something that was going to happen. Or at least thought he knew and he must've thought that it wasn't fair that such a fate would befall her.</p><p>"So, are we going to fight then? Is this like one of those gladiatorial arenas where people fight for money, like ones in Kumogakure?" Mana asked. The girl was not sure about how much time she exactly had, she may have had days, she may have had minutes. May as well find out all she could from this man as long as he feels generous with the information he knows.</p><p>"Something like that... This arena was actually built to mimic those in Kumogakure and it used to be just like them: people fighting for fun, entertainment and money, ninja and common folk, mercenaries even, no hits too brutal, no murder, just the art of combat at its finest. It used to be one of the best too once, ten or twenty years from now if you asked around – Agbarah Sheikhate was the best place to see some kickass fights and the Sheikh was a wicked manager. He knew all the right matchups and all the right recipes for an amazing match. That's how a place like this – an establishment could even stay on the map and relevant in the political scheme." The man kept on explaining, he then looked at his mangled hand and then back at Mana who, while banged up and clearly been through a lot, looked still quite young, frail and innocent, "Nowadays, you better remember your ninja days, but don't stand out too much, they'll kill you if they think your abilities give you unfair advantage and I don't think you are high ranked enough to take on the entire Sheikhate military force".</p><p>"I... I actually can't do any of those things anymore, I'm sorry if you relied on me or put hopes in me or anything. I don't think I'll be of much help to you in my current state." Mana looked away sadly.</p><p>"No, no, it's fine, I wouldn't be much of a warrior who traveled all the way from Kumogakure to compete in the amazing Agbarah Sun Disc arena all these years ago if I relied on a young lady to fight for me. I may be worn out by all these years of senseless murder but I will manage or die trying, either one is fine by me, it is the life I chose, the only one I know." The man smiled, so Mana's thoughts were correct – he was actually from Kumogakure, just like her ancestors may have been, that's why the magician had a slightly darker shade to her skin compared to her peers and such dark hair and those weird facial features that were more native to the Kumogakure folk.</p><p>"So you came here willingly? Why? It seems like a place one is cursed or banished to, not one people choose to live the rest of their days in." Mana wondered.</p><p>"Well, when I came here all those years ago, this place was still in its prime, shining, golden and mighty. Glory and strength emanated throughout these walls and there were no bars or chains to it. This place was once a fighting heaven for mercenaries or martial artists, low ranking Sunagakure ninja also trained here but it would've been unfair if the higher ranking ones applied so they didn't bother. Then one day... It happened." The man allowed his own head to sink down, just like Mana's has done quite a number of times, it appeared like the memories of that fateful day had plagued the man and invited darkness into his heart not quite unlike the one that being hatred for being born invited into Mana's.</p><p>"So what happened?" the magician hurried her newly met friend as he sat there for quite some time sulking in silence.</p><p>"The greatest fight the world has ever seen. You see, the Sheikh was and still is a fighting aficionado, he lives and breathes to see a good fight, a long fight between equal opponents and he had an eye for talent and was always a good manager of this arena. He always matched equal fighters and knew how to extract the best out of them to deliver a fight unlike any other. That day he outdid not only himself but also the Gods. It was like the Gods themselves descended and took shape of the bodies of the fighters competing, they punched each other for the whole twelve hours, they fought on and on and on and exchanged blows with such grace and finesse... The Sheikh was in ecstasy and so was everyone else! I'm not sure if the fight was so divine and majestic due to the power of the two contestants or if it was so because of how equal they were in strength, it was the cream top of management and combat. The complete perfection." The man got so invested in his description and his tale that he failed to notice Mana's growing discomfort hearing about it.</p><p>"What's wrong? Do you hate fighting or something or are you just that afraid?" the veteran asked her trying to realize the true reason for her disgust.</p><p>"Well, I suppose if it's purely a sporting event I see nothing wrong with it but... I hate killing, always have. For the longest time, I held myself from fighting in general just because I was afraid of causing too much harm to people or that I'd kill them." Mana revealed the real reason. The man just spat aside and cursed in some strange dialect the magician did not know.</p><p>"Well then, girl, you truly are dead, I'm sorry. It seems you've found yourself in the worst place in the world to be a woman in without your ninjutsu and with hatred for violence... If you feel like you can just talk yourself out of here or try being smart, trust me, I've seen women try all the specter of the rainbow out in the arena to survive and only those that can kill did... For a while." The man's opinion of Mana appeared to deteriorate a little after that last revelation, just like everyone else's did. It must've been the combination of the facts he knew of her – the whole deal about Mana being a ninja yet refusing to kill... Just another person disliking her for someone Mana was deep inside.</p><p>"So why did that fight change this place so much? I mean if it's so amazing should it not have had the opposite effect?" Mana asked trying to see if the man would still even talk to her. He was a fighter, after all, a warrior who looked for the best places to compete and display his skills in and she probably offended his entire way of life. As if she didn't have enough enemies, as if she didn't have enough reasons to hate herself, at least this one would make sense, at least this one would be actually caused by her and earned...</p><p>"Well, I suppose for a while it did, but you know what happens to a collector who finishes his collection – he goes insane. After that fight there was always something missing in the Sheikh's heart, he always wanted to satisfy that need to see a glorious fight once again and yet... He kept organizing fights one more crazy and mismatched than the other, he tried everything to recapture that moment until he killed his greatest contestants and almost ran this place into the ground, right now he's in the process of losing everything just for that thrill of seeing a good fight. Contestants are now more his slaves than anything else and these days he throws anything and anyone into the arena. All things considered, I'm not sure how no one thinks him mad, the place gathered the weirdest and the most messed up creeps in the whole ninja world now that it's known more for its bloodshed than honorable competition, the fighting experts and aficionados have long since left, the crazy bloodthirsty freaks are all that stick around." The man replied without a single hint of spite towards the girl, he didn't appear to feel offended and yet he still wore that pity for her soul just as proudly as he wore his warrior's pride.</p><p>"Huh... One thing doesn't make much sense though, why all the hate for women?" Mana wondered, "I thought the story of this place would involve a loss of a woman in the Sheikh's life and that would've lead him to this but... Everyone just appears to hate them for no reason"</p><p>"Women are just weak fighters in public opinion, I mean it isn't like we see many kunoichi here so that doesn't help either. The Sheikh hates them because they're useless in his eyes they cannot give him his perfect fight, the rest are just catching on to the wave. I suppose the guy thinks that if he kills all those women that come here in the arena they'll stop coming and stop wasting his time. Those few women that prove themselves in the arena are actually quite respected, not any less than any man would be. They don't hate you for what you were born like, they hate you because they think you're weak and won't put up a good fight before you die. Most women try to seduce, they try to escape, they try to trick or beg their way out and die dishonorably in the arena, very few bother fighting the dirty fight. Still, I believe the public opinion of this place outside Agbarah must be terrible, with so many women never returning from this place the talk of this place must be just as bad as it actually is." The man lowered his head.</p><p>"My name is Mana, what's yours?" The magician asked.</p><p>"It doesn't matter, it doesn't look like I'll be lasting another fight so it may be better if you don't get too attached, just see me as that old geezer that couldn't carry your weight but really hoped you'd walk as long as your frail legs let you." The veteran replied with a lukewarm expression and laid down turning at the wall. Seeing how before she was taken here it was not really even remotely late, Mana just assumed that the man didn't wish to talk any longer.</p>
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<a name="section0156"><h2>156. Let The Games Begin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was incredibly hard to tell the exact time of day inside the Sun Disc's living quarters. While the conditions were not exactly inhumane, Mana still could not shake off the feeling that she was more of a prisoner than a competitor as the purpose of the place would've made one believe. While the quarters did have torches providing minimal light sources during the night and the outside corridors had decorative holes in the ceiling providing light and warmth during the day, the Sun Disc's inhabitants still could not shake off the feeling of dread and gloom.</p><p>Also despite the minimal effort taken to lighten the place up a bit, the decorative gaps in the ceiling also "provided" more than a fair share of flies, mosquitoes, and pests of various sorts. Most things flying around the place were not even seen by Mana previously, even during her time roaming the desert. It appeared like the gloomy and damp hole that was the Sun Disc's living quarters invited the worst kind of creepy crawlies from the desert, the pests seemed to take the place as some sort of a cave, which, in their defense, it reminded of very decently.</p><p>Throughout the first night she spent in the place, Mana had heard some voices of people talking inside the quarters. She had expected more hatred from those people, maybe even that matching of the people outside the Sun Disc but no one even acknowledged she was there. Most of what reached Mana's ear through the night were prayers, then there was the pair several blocks to the west that very loudly bet on who of known competitors would compete tomorrow and who would die. To Mana, it appeared a very cruel and cynical way to look at the situation everyone was in.</p><p>"I feel lucky, I think Damij will compete tomorrow. Just feel crazy, wanna bet on that"</p><p>"No shit? Maybe you feel crazy enough to bet on Damij losing?"</p><p>"Screw that shit, whoever he'll fight the guy will demolish in seven minutes, as usual"</p><p>Mana looked at her blockmate who was still acting like he was sleeping. While there was little light any time of day, with enough effort day and night could've been identified through the changes in temperature. It appeared like the fire torches on the walls may have served more as a mean to keep the competitors from dying of hypothermia as well as being a source of lighting. Perhaps more being the case of former with the luminescence being more of a beneficial side effect.</p><p>"Who is Damij?" Mana asked trying to get her blockmate talking to her. Being sort of a fan of knowing every smallest part of the equation and preparing accordingly to her knowledge, the girl just had to know.</p><p>"Oh, he's just a crowd favorite. A dropout from the Sunagakure Ninja Academy, rumor says he quit because he didn't like taking orders from anyone and wanted to use his strength all to himself." The man replied squirming on the comically too small bench to sleep on, the man was several times larger than it so it must've been painfully uncomfortable to sleep on it.</p><p>"Doesn't sound like crowd favorite material..." Mana remarked flipping on her side to face her blockmate who did not share the courtesy and continued to stare at the wall.</p><p>The veteran raised his injured arm in the air showing the extent of damage on it, it was swollen and looked like it was crushed in between two colossal boulders or something of the sort.</p><p>"He's the one that did this a couple of weeks ago. There's an event in this place called "the Ascension Gauntlet" where one faces three champions of previous smaller events in a row and if they win they acquire unprecedented glory, the one that completes the Gauntlet may even leave the place at their leisure and live as royalty in the Agbarmahal – the Sheikh's palace. So far, Damij is the one of the only two who have beaten the gauntlet, I acquired this wound facing him in a warm-up event where killing is very rare. He did not throw a single punch, my hand and body broke from just punching him." The man explained placing his aching and ruined hand under his other arm.</p><p>"Sounds like chakra augmentation to me, endurance most likely," Mana replied, her blockmate flipped over and looked at her with a curious stare.</p><p>"Hmmm... Even if it is, the Sheikh knows the ninja arts, to him, the degree of augmentation must appear somewhat fair so he allows it. Either way, you won't face him unless you attempt the Gauntlet yourself, he's too far up and the only event you can be matched against him in would be a warm-up fight. Still, I have real trouble after facing him, every battle keeps crippling me more and more... If you are ever told to face off against him do not fight him, surrender immediately, you'll lose face but you have none to lose, to begin with, I'm serious." The man warned Mana.</p><p>The magician smiled and shook her head.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Sir, but I have a mission outside this place. I very much plan to take the Ascension Gauntlet challenge," she replied with an ignorant grin. It was an idea so foolish that it made the girl herself laugh but she has decided. The more fights she takes part in, the more injured she'll be, her odds will be lower and lower with each event, she needs to run the Gauntlet and do it fast.</p><p>"Mana, did you not hear what I said? Why are you in such a rush to make all these people happy to witness your death? Damij can leave this place and live in luxury this whole time, he is the strongest fighter in this arena. He stays here because he enjoys fighting and killing, his fights always end in seven minutes where he just toys with his opponents and the only reason the Sheikh keeps him around with all of his abilities is because the crowd loves his sadism. He did not join this arena during its golden age, he joined it when it hit the shit because he wanted a place to kill people for fun." Mana's veteran blockmate started yelling, shouting at her with fear taking over his expression, his hands and his head started to shake subconsciously as if taken over by some mental sickness.</p><p>"You lie, Bult." a creepy voice of what Mana could only imagine as an elderly man reached the cell. "Damij is not the strongest fighter around, he is amazing but you've joined too late to see another competitor..."</p><p>"Do not listen to this old fool, Mana." Mana's blockmate who was apparently called Bult replied to the old man's mysterious banter. "He weaves tales of old times, a man who survived the golden age and became far too sickly and old to entertain the Sheikh so was left to rot in the cell until he becomes stupid enough to ask for a final fight. His Goddess of Battle does not exist, old man's tales is all they are."</p><p>"She did exist, she was the first person to complete the Gauntlet, she beat all the other champions without killing them and left the arena to continue her training as this place had nothing left to teach her," the old man screamed out frantically, like a child whose lies of the world most ginormous lollipop was challenged by another child.</p><p>"So there was a woman who completed the Gauntlet?" Mana curiously rose her voice so that it reached the old man wherever he was located. "What was she like?" the magician honored the old man's fantasies both out of curiosity if they were real, and an attempt to uncover a lie if they weren't.</p><p>"She was a friendly gal when she joined, she came here totally green and didn't know how to throw a punch even. She made bonds with everyone, learned the fighting style of every single one of the competitors of the golden age. She bested me in combat a couple of times as well, by the time she became the first champion of the Ascension Gauntlet she was a master of at least eighty-six different martial arts from all around the world, then she left..." The old man spoke, his tone suggested that he really believed his own tale and he had a talent for storytelling, that much Mana had to admit.</p><p>"To never be seen again. So convenient that there is no one alive here to vouch for the story except for you." Bult once again angrily stopped the old man's tale.</p><p>"Could it be that you refuse to believe in her existence because it would imply that you didn't lose to the best? Because your pride as a warrior wants you to believe that you've lost to the greatest competitor to ever fight in this arena?" Mana asked.</p><p>"The old man never confirmed that she was capable of chakra augmentation, he only babbled about how many different martial arts she knew. I thought I knew my way in a fight but Damij blew me out of the park with no chance of me beating him, even in my prime, even with all the time to train in the world I'd never beat him!" Bult yelled at Mana, shifting the source of his anger. The old man fell strangely silent and Mana just bent into an even tighter fetal position wrapping herself in her own blazer which she used as a cover from cold.</p><p>"This Damij certainly seems formidable, any man who is able to crush a warrior like you this way must be. I've met plenty warriors, hell, I've known mere boys and seen the extent of a man's pride and I've never seen it shattered like that. You seem like a man who is afraid of this Damij, this entire place lives in his shadow. That is just another reason I must beat him. The object above your head must be a star of hope, not the moon of fear and despair" Mana said quietly so that only her blockmate could hear it. She spoke so privately because she knew the sort of feeling a man's pride was and didn't wish to let the others know how her friend's pride was broken. Just the mere public knowledge of such fact could've made it even worse.</p><p>"You don't know jack shit about how this world works. You'll just die needlessly entertaining the sick fantasies of those bastards. Even if you do win, all you'll show me is that I failed at something a teenage girl can do. For one who tries to sound like some stupid hero you don't know anything about it." Bult replied with spite and disgust in his voice. He then continued to lay around, several other fighters from the other blocks yelled at him asking for his input in the bet as to who will fight the next day but he remained silent.</p><p>Mana didn't have that much sleep that night, for a day that may have ended up being her last she should have at the very least tried. The magician couldn't remember her last dream, she was a very sentimental kid, imagining the moment of her death she would most likely wish to callback at the very last time she saw her friends, the last time she saw her parents, the very last thing she dreamed about. Somehow she just couldn't shake the feeling like the next day actually could've been her last day. To the kunoichi, it felt similar to how one would feel the last night before their execution and yet there was little to no reasonable excuse to feel that way.</p><p>Finally, loud trumpet calls and sounds of various instruments, mostly the deafening symphony of flutes and other wind instruments called the spectators to another day of events. Judging from everyone's mood the day appeared to be a case of a rather eventful collection of slaughter. All the martial artists were getting really visibly hyped as grunts and other noises of people working out and sparring could've been heard. Loud thuds from a neighboring block suggested that someone there may have been hitting the wall leaving some nasty cracks in the thick brick wall.</p><p>Then all of a sudden silence took over as the guards walked in and started making their way through the hallway. One bulky fellow just stood at the end of the corridor and read from a list.</p><p>"Today's event will be Fatal Warfare match, between Bult and Almash. Also, three simple Engagement matches between competitors that shall be selected by the guards. Everyone, please step forward towards the bars where the competitors competing today shall be lead onstage, the blocks will be unlocked for the duration of the event so that you can spectate the event through the lower points of observation. You know the rules: if anyone does anything stupid, it's public execution or the Descent Gauntlet for you." The guard finished reading his scroll and continued to stand around as the guards continued to pick fighters one after the other from random blocks.</p><p>"Descent Gauntlet?" Mana curiously looked at her blockmate.</p><p>"It's basically another word of execution, the fighter faces people one by one until they are either killed in action or the Sheikh deems they've redeemed for their sins, the only upside of winning it is that you don't get executed for your mess-up." The man replied, his tone was still rude and his eyes continued to look at Mana as if she was some silly child.</p><p>"A Fatal Warfare match, are you in any danger?" Mana asked the man trying to show him that she cares about his life greatly.</p><p>"It's just a simple one on one fight where the area out of the ring is filled with spikes. You win by making your opponent submit, killing them or dropping them onto the spikes." Bult replied.</p><p>"Maybe you should submit, I don't think you're in a good condition for a match like that." Mana threw the idea out there to which the man only squinted, appearing to get annoyed by her lack of information even more. It was quite evident that the man was a warrior and not exactly parenting material.</p><p>"I've submitted in several lethal matches and lost four non-lethal ones before my last win. If I submit again I may be up for a Descent Gauntlet, it functions as a sort of disciplinary action to keep things entertaining" the man firmly cut Mana's worries down, the old guard from before appeared in front of their block and opened the door. He chained Bult and then stared at Mana showing her a set of chains as well.</p><p>"The Sheikh wants to see his new fighter in a warm-up match. Feel grateful, woman, usually the baptism of the newbies is a full out Deathmatch but that is the Sheikh's way of thanking you for securing most of his merchandise. Let's go." The man explained locking Mana up and pulling both of them out of the block and placing them into a long line of people of varied moods. Some were depressed, some looked hyped, there were a couple of women up front that kept on walking out of the line and trying to talk to the other competitors, asking them for protection or some sort of aid.</p><p>Mana opened her mouth to talk to the guard but Bult pressed her mouth nearly suffocating her with his enormous hand. "You haven't earned your right to talk as a woman yet..." he whispered in his ear.</p><p>"Excuse me, guard, I'd like to know who my blockmate's opponent will be?" The veteran asked a passing guard instead of Mana, almost reading her thoughts. The question must've been quite an obvious one to be asked in her case so it wasn't that surprising to the magician that he pinpointed it without needing to tell him what it was she wanted to ask the guard.</p><p>"Gaffu Mujaji." The guard answered checking his scroll.</p><p>"It's OK, he's an underdog, lost several non-lethal fights in a row and submitted in one lethal he took part in, he may be facing the Descent Gauntlet or a no submission lethal fight in the future. If you're able to fight, you'll beat him easily." Bult explained to Mana.</p><p>"Yeah, it'd be a whole new low for good old Gaffu to lose to a little woman," the competitor behind Mana and Bult interrupted the two and laughed out loud to himself. "I always wondered why did the guy decide to take part in this, always seemed to me more like a thieving type than a fighter".</p><p>Mana lowered her head staring at the ground. So the man she was supposed to face was someone really weak facing disciplinary action in the future? What was the point of such a fight then? How was it entertaining to anyone to see a teenage girl fight some guy who kept on losing fights, what was the possible gain from all of that? Mana did not deny that a competition of martial arts had its appeal to some people, not her, obviously, but people who saw the more artsy and professional side of the thing. And yet, what was there to gain from facing some little guy like this Gaffu? Mana felt confident that she could beat him but what was the point of such an action?</p><p>Finally, the crowd settled in the surrounding seating areas and with a loud rumble that reminded more of a thunderstorm than working gears the roof of the arena split into multiple parts and a large circular structure which was supposed to be the ring rose up from below. Mana felt a rough shove from her behind that was leading her onto a track that lead to the ring.</p><p>The entire structure of the ring was at least fifty or so meters in radius and about two meters elevated from the ground, the out of ring area was covered with grass but it looked a bit artificial for Mana. There were two pathways that lead to the ring and multiple protective walls that served as barriers, the observational areas were at least three meters above the ring and surrounded it from all sides. There were countless decorations that reminded Mana of some sort of a festival and as she and her opponent entered the ring fireworks fired off into the sky.</p><p>The girl took a long look at her opponent. He was a feeble man, probably in his late forties to early fifties and was already beginning to grow bald, he even had a pair of glasses and reminded the girl of an alien from the sci-fi plays where people tried to imagine how people on the Moon looked like. He had long fingers which finally made the kunoichi understand just how the comparison to thieves was made.</p><p>The ring announcer actually looked more menacing than Mana's opponent. The man was at least somewhat chubby and wore a pretty exotic looking vest and some pretty spacious trousers. His turban combined with his strange make-up made him look a little mysterious, at the very least, when compared to the feeling of pity one had when looking at Gaffu who was Mana's opponent.</p><p>"Ladies and Gentlemen! This here is a warm-up fight between a young woman who has not yet deserved your consideration and attention and a competitor who is on a miserable losing streak but strives to recover and one day challenge the Ascension Gauntlet to fulfill his dream of living in luxury – Gaffu Mujaji!" The announcer energetically yelled out, the man appeared to possess a unique talent for hyping up a crowd of bloodthirsty psychos for a fight between an aging man with sight problems and a teenage girl.</p><p>"Begin!" the announcer yelled out leaping back onto a platform that rose him up to the audience seats with a gear mechanism below it.</p><p>The warm-up fight of that day's event had begun.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0157"><h2>157. Mamoru Your Pride</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's slick opponent leaped forward without wasting any time, right after the announcer declared the beginning of the battle. He weaved around and jumped like some exotic animal or someone trying to keep as little contact with the ground as he could. It looked similar to some of the larger desert animals that Mana has seen, there was this rather peaceful species of desert foxes that leaped around much like this man did so that they did not injure their flesh covered feet pads during the peak of the day on the scolding desert sand. It only made sense that an inhabitant of the desert would fight similarly to the animals he saw around him.</p><p>That being said, his style was sloppy, he wasted so many movements that Mana found the man's hopping and weaving style absolutely useless. She knew what he was doing – trying to intimidate Mana, try to dodge blows that weren't even coming yet, trying to show her how fast and experienced he supposedly was when in reality he must've been pretty shaken up himself. If Mana just stood calmly she'd have winded the man out without flicking her finger. Gaffu jumped around her, running and leaping, flipping even. By the time he tried his first punch, his body was already strained and winded.</p><p>Mana's body moved instantly, as far as human standards were concerned at least, she ducked under the man's punch and shot her leg backward hitting the man in his shin. The showy fighter fell down nose first into the rocky tiles breaking his nose in a rather painful upwards direction. Breaking one's nose like that made one's eyes water making further fighting quite impossible, the fight was over as far as Mana was concerned, not that it had ever begun. This man was not a fighter, he looked built more for thieving, he was slick, acrobatic, could certainly move around and lean his body in flexible ways.</p><p>"What is this!?" someone in the public screamed out in anger.</p><p>"This is pathetic, Sheikh-sama, execute this fool, getting beaten by a young woman, of all things! He always loses, he has no honor or skill!" Another one screamed out.</p><p>"You're a shame to the Sun Disc, Gaffu!" Countless more yelled in perfect sync as if they were actually rehearsing this shaming process.</p><p>Mana turned at the Sheikh, he sat under colossal constructions of palm tree leaves that gave him ample shade and he was surrounded by strangely dressed women that wore revealing outfits on the lower parts of their bodies and yet shrouded their faces and wore turbans despite their long dark hair slipping down through them. These oddly dressed women used large fans to cool the large man.</p><p>The Sheikh looked quite impressed and surprised, the thing that scared the magician most of all was that he was staring right at her like she was his long-lost niece or something. Mana's sight quickly shifted back at the face-planted enemy who continued to writhe in pain on the ground and try to get back in fighting shape, that is to say, restrain his wild nosebleed and to make his eyes stop watering like he had just been slapped in the face with the spiciest chili.</p><p>The girl would've been a fool not to notice the hatred and utter disgust that the Sheikh had while staring at Gaffu, his eyes appeared to spit flames of hell while the man's arms were shaking. The Sheikh was a well-built but quite elderly gentleman so his emotions were easily noticed even by Mana, someone who was giving him glances from several meters below. The Sheikh wore a very fancy desert cloak that had multiple gold and gem pieces attached to it around the man's neck, on his belt and the middle section of his arms.</p><p>"Get back up and continue the fight or give up, Gaffu!" The Sheikh declared after raising his hand covered in rings with gems larger than a man's eyeball. Rubies, emeralds, and sapphires shined in all the various colors as the famished desert sunlight danced inside them, devouring all of them in its all covering and scorching light.</p><p>"Damn it, I won't lose this one, not with my life and honor at stake..." Gaffu yelled out powering through his broken nose and wiping his tears, while a momentary solution it impressed Mana that the man had the sheer willpower to go on where most men would have given up.</p><p>Gaffu leaped forward, jumping back and forth, trying to blitz around Mana only to leap back to his initial position, he kept on trying to confuse Mana with his speedy movements but the girl's eye, that was trained to track superhuman ninja, kept up. Not only that, to Mana this fight seemed quite hopeless. She merely wanted to test her opponent's skill with that last kick and she ended up almost taking him out, now she'll take him out for sure.</p><p>The man screamed angrily telegraphing his attack, a pity since he tried to hit Mana from behind, kicking her right at the back of her head, a connecting kick like that could have killed a person. Mana's body turned around lightning fast, her body was trained by her friends, ready to survive the superhuman attacks of ninja, knowing the best counters and redirection maneuvers. The brunt of the girl's foot connected to Gaffu's leg stopping the blow and with a strong push shoving it backward, opening his body.</p><p>A barrage of kicks overwhelmed Gaffu's body making the man quiver and shake, his body twitched without a halt as if it was bombarded by automated fire. For a human, it was as fast as attacks went. The magician was sure that she broke ribs, left internal bleeding wound and kicked him in the head a couple of times, finishing with a jumping stomp at the man's solar plexus that not only crushed his body to the floor but also drove all the oxygen out from his body making him overcome by pain and winded. Attacks like this caused pain and shock strong enough to stop hearts of weaker people and for a moment the magician wondered if this was overdoing it, she expected the man to deal with some attacks at the very least.</p><p>This was bad, usually, Mana just went with all of her skills, all of her abilities and didn't hold back unless she fully meant to. Her opponents deal with some if not all of her offensive barrages making them get hurt but never too bad, this man was so unskilled in terms of hand to hand that he just got crushed and tired himself out too much by his own attacks before having to defend. Mana was beginning to feel bad...</p><p>"Stop the fight," she asked the announcer looking at the pathetic ball of pain and misery that was down on the floor in front of her. Some people in the public were beginning to cheer for her, once again, the Sheikh's look was absolutely overblown, the man was on the edge of his seat licking his lips and enjoying the show. Everything that she was told of this place was true – it loved combat and martial arts skill most of all.</p><p>There was no money, no fame or glory other than that earned through one's fists and that disgusted the magician to no end. There were people in this world that weren't bad people per se, people that found pleasure and self-discovery through combat and while the girl could begin to understand them she despised such a way of life herself and felt disgusted by the fact it was forced on people who may not have wanted it.</p><p>Gaffu stood up, slowly, peeling his ruined body off the ground he took the fighting stance.</p><p>"I cannot stop the fight if the contestant wishes to continue," the announcer shrugged. His filthy and smug face covered with makeup disgusted Mana, he was almost smiling while stroking his beard, he was taking pleasure in all of this, seeing a man getting ruined.</p><p>"Stay down!" Mana screamed at her opponent angrily. "If I kick you in the face once more – you'll die. If I kick you in the body once more your ribs will skewer your body from inside. Stay down!"</p><p>"I can't, this is the only way to achieve anything in this place... If I lose now I may as well place my head on the chopping block..." Gaffu's messed up face somehow spat out. Mana angrily lifted her hand up she was not going to take part in any of this.</p><p>Gaffu leaped up to her, she could've punched him, kicked him, elbowed him right in his almost blinded from all the blood running down it and unprotected face but that may have killed him in the state that he was in. She let him hit her but to her surprise, he didn't – he placed his bloody hand to her lips.</p><p>"Don't you dare surrender..." He declared. Mana's eyes shot wide in surprise but then she understood – that was not the way that pride was earned in this place. If she surrendered like this everyone would know that she did so out of pity and there was nothing that asked for execution or the Descent Gauntlet more than being pitied by a woman in a battlefield.</p><p>"Pride... Rituals that are made by humans to be followed by other humans... So stupid, all of it..." Mana thought to herself as she lowered her head, Gaffu must've understood that she got it, she got his point but now the girl was wondering what exactly was there for her to do.</p><p>She couldn't fight him further, this man was hesitant to rise above the ordinary folk, he wished to make something of his life and the only way to do that was to succeed in the Sun Disc. The only way to enter the high layers of society was to win the Ascension Gauntlet and this man wanted it, hell, even Mana wanted the Gauntlet for her own freedom.</p><p>She couldn't fight him nor could she surrender. If she fought him he wouldn't surrender until she either killed him or made him pass out, while entirely possible, Mana didn't want to make the man get knocked out either. If she won right now the man's only options would've been the Descent Gauntlet, execution or a lethal match and if he got messed up by Mana his hopes of surviving either would've been next to none. This man was only living in the here and now, his future mattered little to him.</p><p>"Can I kill him?" Mana asked the announcer giving the man an angry glare.</p><p>"Well, not really, not in a warm-up match but... In this case... He is a very reckless and foolish one and also a trash, feel free if you can, woman... If he loses he'll probably get thrown out like a trash which he is anyway..." The announcer shrugged looking at the Sheikh for confirmation, the Sheikh just nodded. He kept staring at Mana, she must've revealed some degree of skill in her taijutsu to him. Even as a human she could've bested even master martial artists due to her lifelong training and experience fighting on the higher level, she trained her body to avoid or redirect any blow opening even the most powerful martial artists for finishing blows. The Sheikh must've noticed her exceptional skill...</p><p>"Come at me, trash... I'll kill you where you stand," Mana declared looking him in the eyes angrily, "I'll save you the embarrassment from getting killed in a lethal match or the Gauntlet and end you right now, it'll probably also give me some public points too".</p><p>Gaffu quivered, he hesitated for a moment seeing Mana's newly discovered and, to be honest quite faked and bluffing, bloodthirst. Still, he took a fighting stance and forced his body to run at her, he no longer hopped around – his legs were busted up, he didn't flip or roll around as his brain was shaken up inside his tough skull making him move pretty pathetically and stumble over endlessly. A single tap from her elbow to his nose would've put him to sleep...</p><p>Gaffu punched Mana straight in the face making her fall down on the ground. It appeared like the feeble man couldn't believe his own luck, this young lady continuously and effortlessly dodged even his most confusing and fastest patterns and yet she got hit by his desperate stumbling and pathetic hit? The man looked at Mana who didn't move, the girl just kept on laying on the ground with her eyes closed and her head turned to the side, her body looked completely lifeless. The announcer crept up to her and felt Mana's pulse.</p><p>"She's... Alive but... Her breathing is slow and pretty faint. The fight is over, Gaffu wins!" The chubby gent declared loudly making the crowd cheer but not in joy but in confusion. None of them could understand what was going on, why did this loser pull out a win despite getting absolutely trounced the entire time? How could this have been?</p><p>"I can't believe it. A loser like Gaffu pulled a win like that?" One man in the public spoke to his fellow to the left.</p><p>"Yeah... This woman appeared to be quite good, her moves were so fluid and quite unlike any other martial arts I've ever seen... I wonder where she's from?" His friend replied just as confused.</p><p>"Who cares, she's a dumb woman who got taught a lesson, she may have trained her entire life but she lost even to the weakest of men! What a disgrace, if I was the Sheikh I'd hack her head off right about now." Another man in the public laughed out.</p><p>"Or maybe this Gaffu guy is better than we all thought, he overcame so much in this battle and won it with a single punch..." Yet another person wondered butting into the conversation.</p><p>"Oh, come on! We all know women can't compete with men, how hard could it have been to knock her out!?" A response came from somewhere in the public.</p><p>All of the conversants laughed out to themselves wildly. They were planning to have quite the day and even this first battle proved to be much more entertaining than they thought. Who could've thought that a hatchling woman facing off against the underdog of the entire roster of fighters could've made for such an entertaining and controversial fight? Maybe this Gaffu deserved to be given another shot?</p><hr/><p>"You're an idiot!" Bult yelled out shaking Mana violently after her body was taken back to the waiting area, "Who did you think you were fooling?"</p><p>"I couldn't keep it up, that man wouldn't have quit, he'd have died before giving up and if I knocked him out I'd have sentenced him to death as well, whether it'd have been by an executioner or someone in the Gauntlet matters very little..." Mana replied "miraculously" recovering from her incapacitation and wiping the several drops of blood that the man's puny punch drew from her nose. The man barely even packed a punch, just wildly swinging his arm and using his shoulder as the delivering force of the punch instead of transferring it from his feet like a proper fighter.</p><p>"So you did it to buy this man some time? How long do you think it'll be before he'll once again fall to the bottom of the list? What do you think your own standing is right now!? I'd be surprised if your next match wasn't a Slaughterfest match." The fighter veteran scratched the back of his head giving Mana a troubled look, similar to a look of a father of a kid who did bad but didn't understand just how bad her behavior was.</p><p>"Slaughterfest?" Mana wondered looking at her blood covered hands and using the washing bucket to clean it up. She looked at the side to a bunch of fighters carrying Gaffu around and swinging him around like a hero, he must've looked like one to them.</p><p>"It's not an actual match, it's a term we use, sometimes the Sheikh sets up his matches so that the odds are so uneven that it's basically a de facto execution, that's what we call a "Slaughterfest"..." The man sighed and stroke his forehead.</p><p>Mana looked at the other fighters who were pointing fingers at her, acting out her fainting act and laughing at her. She couldn't even begin to imagine how much they must've hated her now, before they just hated her for her assumed uselessness, now she lost to one of the weakest fighters in the roster. She actually expected to be placed in a lethal match against someone amazing next even if she didn't quite know the term of such a match while she was planning it.</p><p>"Hey? Aren't you next?" A bulky man with a strange rubber helmet yelled out at his friend.</p><p>"Oh, it seems so!" The friend replied in a tone that suggested mockery and a playful act.</p><p>"Watch out and don't walk into a wall..." The first one warned his friend playfully. "Those are known to kill hundreds of weakling women per year!"</p><p>"Oh no, the wind is so strong... I can't take it!" The other sarcastically yelled out in a mocking and feminine voice before pathetically acting a falling down act. Mana lowered her head and then looked away.</p><p>"This is just the beginning... You've earned this, this is your place now." Bult said with a hint of sadness and a little care behind his voice.</p><p>"I know, I've made a conscious decision, I couldn't give up or hurt him too badly, either way, it'd have been the death sentence for that man. I wanted to buy him some time, to give him some hope." Mana exclaimed sadly, grinding her teeth in pain.</p><p>She couldn't really do it, great heroes she read about in stories could just take hatred, they didn't care when they were being made fun of and hated everywhere. When they were abused and mistrusted. Mana wasn't like that. Still, Bult was right to some extent – it was an unavoidable part of her decision and she knew it. She now embodied the label of a weak young woman that everyone had already stuck to her before they even saw her fight.</p><p>"Time? Hope? What for? What does that weakling need time or hope for?" Bult still tried to talk Mana out of her stupid thoughts and strange decision making.</p><p>"Just enough time before I beat the Ascension Gauntlet and free him, free everyone," Mana answered. Bult turned around and walked away, he said nothing but his silence already told Mana everything – he left her alone to her own stupidity. The gesture was clear – Bult did everything in his power to help Mana but she refused his aid, again and again, choosing to stick to her ideals instead. She was now beyond the man's help so he left her alone, it was the equivalent of him washing his hands.</p><p>For a moment Mana herself started to believe that she may have simply been wrong, that there was no more hope or time left to buy. Her next following match would quite likely be a lethal match, she would need to kill someone to leave the arena. How could she possibly do something like that? She was destined for death now so she needed to somehow outsmart the system. If she played by the rules she'd burn...</p><p>Mana needed to do something desperate and really cool. Cool enough to impress the Sheikh.</p>
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<a name="section0158"><h2>158. Fatal Warfare</h2></a>
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      <p>Mana couldn't keep on looking long after the next fight started. She wasn't even sure about what she should've done next. The person she was trying to become would've busted in and stopped all the fighting, right now out there in the arena there were people trying to kill each other. But was Mana that person really? She was never anyone special and now she'd lost even what little special that she had. What was her plan actually? Maybe Bult was right about everything, she spoke a lot of things about peace and saving everyone but she didn't even know the further course of action.</p>
      <p>"Come on, let's go..." A guard rudely grabbed Mana from behind and dragged her down from the small stand where she could almost see the people bashing their faces in inside the arena.</p>
      <p>"Go? Go where?" She mumbled out, her voice was still muffled and ridden with confusion and stress.</p>
      <p>"You've had your chance to earn a nice place to spend your nights in. You've squandered that so you're being moved to the basement. We're moving some new folks, Damij's crew into your cell. After today it'll clean up..." The guard replied caring little that Mana dared to speak.</p>
      <p>"Clean up?" Mana spoke but the guard slammed her against the wall warning her without a word that his brief explanation was as good as she would get without pushing it too far.</p>
      <p>What could that have meant? Why would her and Bult's cell clean up after that day, she was alive and so was Bult until the fight concluded. Something must've been wrong, something shady must've been going on. Bult's hand was busted up and his entire body was riddled with scars of various sizes but he was a long time veteran and normally shouldn't be counted out unless...</p>
      <p>"He's being slaughterfest'ed..." Mana realized. She turned back after the realization hit her but the guard started pushing her even more violently. Whatever little decency she had before was now gone after she lost to an underdog of the roster. Mana's body and mind were taken over by a new sensation – fear and not knowing what to do. Her normal human body was working so slowly, thinking so slowly and shaking like a leaf. A ninja thought fast, acted fast, everything in their bodies, even the signals in their brains were supercharged. Being how she was made Mana feel like she had a mental condition or something.</p>
      <p>"What are you, having a panic attack or something? Don't worry, the fighting is over for today, you get to live another day... Not that you tried too hard to earn it, though." The grumpy guard replied laughing half-assedly after that last remark. "Those moves were pretty sick, what were you a dancer maybe?" The man asked but Mana didn't reply, she knew better than to speak in her current standing with the guards and the roster.</p>
      <p>The new cell she was shut in was pitch dark, moist and rather cold. If one was troubled too much by the desert heat there was some solace in this dark cube of containment but it did its best to completely limit all the other senses. Mana didn't even doubt that she'd go blind after a spending some time in that pitch blackness surrounded by a silence so quiet that after some time her own mind started imagining screeching noises just to make sense of it all. Finally, something above started leaking, drops of cold but smelly water from above entertained her fleeing mind at least for several moments.</p>
      <p>Mana wrapped into a ball grabbing hold of her head, trying to keep her mind intact. There was a conflict once again between what had to be done and what Mana wanted to do. Just like every time she did anything, Mana was forced to choose between her mission objective and what she had to do to become the person she wanted to end up being. Mana's mission was clear – help her team confirm the Box's location, even while she was separated from the team. If they were OK – they'd find her eventually, all she had to do was sit tight.</p>
      <p>That being said, she didn't have the luxury to sit tight, even if the magician could've used her newly learned defensive taijutsu styles to survive as long as she had to, beat any martial artist that the arena threw her way she couldn't do that. Bult was a kind man, a warrior soul who may have been very different from her: rude, combat-loving and primitive but he was a kind person as well.</p>
      <p>He helped her and looked out for her in every way he could. He'd get murdered out there today, Mana didn't know when or how but he was being set up for a slaughterfest. Could she really sit tight and just do everything she could to survive? Beat up a bunch of people and gain respect? If she was anything like these men she could've even made a living here, be respected and gain fame and trust... No, Mana couldn't do that.</p>
      <p>Even if she decided to do something stupid, something she'd likely regret, what exactly could she have done to help her friend? She was locked in a cube of solid steel, bound by chains and located underground in a catacomb below meters of sand. Mana stood up and slowly tumbled up to one side of the cube she was locked up in slamming her heavy hands against the hard steel wall.</p>
      <p>"I really miss my magic shows..." She thought to herself.</p>
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      <p>"And now, finally, the event of the day – our beloved veteran Bult, the Bare-Hand Axeman faces off against the Asura Berserker, Basher of Faces, the Bare-Chested Rampager – Almash!" the announcer was having a field day presenting the main event of the day to the public.</p>
      <p>"Raising the stakes even more, just to make it that more interesting our beloved Sheikh-sama has decided that the two would be facing off in a Fatal Warfare match so if the engineers below would be so kind as to set up the arena..." The man yelled out loud pointing his finger at the artificially grown grass below that already had some teeth and blood scattered loosely over it.</p>
      <p>Loud screeching followed and grinding noises announced that the needed levers were being turned as the ground plates with grass were set on flames singing everything off leaving just bare steel plates. After several moments bloodied and rusty spikes shot out through holes surrounding the arena in a deadly field, each spike at least as large as a short person.</p>
      <p>"Introducing the first contestant who needs no introduction or tales to be spun about his feats as they would not serve him justice, the legendary icon of the Sun Disc arena and the Agbarah Hero we all grew up with – Bult!" The announcer yelled out as the platform slowly moved from the circular structure of the arena up to the small quarters were the waiting contestants were housed forming a sort of bridge for the contestants to enter through.</p>
      <p>Slowly, Bult made his way over the bridge, he didn't even bother to look at the sides, his stature was slightly hunched as his entire body ached, he hasn't completely recovered from his previous wounds and he also managed to gather an impressive collection of scars over the years. The man pressed his busted up hand tightly against his chest. Bult survived many matches like this, countless more lethal matches, if he was to die that day he would've left this world seeing it some sort of repentance for the sins and lives he had claimed over the years in this arena.</p>
      <p>"And now, the newest addition to Damij's crew, the man with one of the most impressive winning streaks – the bare-chested berserker who was found surrounded by desert raiders with the flesh, skin, and guts of his captors in his nails and his teeth, the Tearing Scorn of the Desert – Almash!" The announcer spat out squirts of slobber in his impressive immersion into his tale of the man's abilities, on the other side of the arena, another platform extended to the other side of the arena's living quarters, another, much more luxurious living quarters. After the sandstone gate rumbled and open only loud foot taps to the stone bridge could've been heard for a moment and then... He appeared.</p>
      <p>Almash was a rather short man, certainly entire head shorter than the bulking yet hunched Bult. His skin was white as young cheese implying he may not have been from around the place. The man certainly fit his label of a "bare-chested berserker" as he didn't choose to wear absolutely anything, usually, the fighters were allowed to keep their clothes and once they killed someone they had the right to claim them from the corpses of their opponents. If even half of the tales describing the man were correct he should've had at least a shirt to cover his scarred iron-hard chest.</p>
      <p>The man's eyes were as wild as a raging storm, they scurried around the arena looking at the observers, then moving onto the Sheikh's corners and freezing by the women surrounding the Sheikh. The man's nose moved slightly, just enough to remind of a brief twitch of his nose but not yet distinctly enough to be seen by the observers in the crew. "Almonds... Bitches reek of almonds..." He mumbled under his own nose proceeding to slowly move forward.</p>
      <p>He did not just walk, he moved in a fashion that reminded a deadman being brought back to life, dragging his feet, twitching and turning a full three-sixty before resuming his ghoulish proceedings to the arena. His hands and legs were cuffed but the chains were torn so the man now wore his cuffs and the torn chains like an accessory. His wild red hair moved wherever the wind took them, long enough to reach his knees but looking so natural. The man's rugged facial hair implied that he tore the excess out with his own fingernails, his whole face was covered with nail scratches that further proved such theories.</p>
      <p>Upon walking out in the center of the stage Almash simply roared into the air tensing up all of his body letting his wild yet not yet pretentious level muscles intimidate the people in the crowd, this was not the battle cry of a man, it was the roar of a wild beast who probably still ate dead people for breakfast. Then Almash cracked his knuckles and locked his hands on his chest and stretched his neck around. In an instant, he switched from reminding a wild animal to almost looking human-like and well civilized. He must've been an individual who switched from civil to a crush-your-head-with-bare-hands mode in the blink of an eye. Must've been the trait that Damij liked in this brute.</p>
      <p>"I really don't envy Bult... That Almash guy is pretty wild, remember how he killed four people in the Battle Royale last week? I can handle good fisticuffs but it always looks like Almash just doesn't understand what's going on and murders everyone on a whim." Someone in the public spoke to his neighbor to the left.</p>
      <p>"Don't forget who you're talking about, this is Bult, he's been beating people up and killing them for years. He's a living legend, a survivor, if nothing else. He's got experience on his side and it is something I am willing to bet for." A man with a Kirigakure headband replied, it appeared like the Sun Disc arena attracted even ninja to look at the skill of martial artists who barely were even acquaintances of the chakra augmentation arts.</p>
      <p>"Remember that this match is a lethal match! You win by killing your opponent be it inside the arena or impaling them on the spikes outside, just falling on the spikes does not constitute a loss, don't repeat Wenid's mistake... Heh, heh... Begin!" The announcer declared before cringing into his own fist, remembering an event when a Fatal Warfare contestant was thrown outside the ring and impaled on the spikes but climbed back into the ring and snapped the neck of his opponent as the man was too engaged in prideful boasting to the public.</p>
      <p>Both contestants lunged at each other, Bult knew that this youngling was faster, more ferocious and possibly, all his injuries in mind and all, just as strong so he decided to go on the offensive and not let his opponent press his advantages on. He remembered how the young kunoichi he met fought and just barely resisted the temptation to curse. In this situation a defensive approach would've suited him ill, he needed to clash with all he had and not let his enemy dictate the terms because he could afford no more scars or broken bones.</p>
      <p>The two clashed, exchanging fists, the single working arm of Bult's functioned almost like an automated rifle pounding a couple of times per single second. Each of these blows carried enough force to shatter rocks and yet Almash just caught them in his own palm slowly letting Bult drive the red-haired brute back almost to the edge of the arena. It was then that Almash's body blurred and disappeared, the dark-skinned veteran's eyes opened wide as his body quickly tried to turn around – this was chakra augmentation!</p>
      <p>A powerful blow to his back made Bult scream out in pain, the blow was so strong that his entire back area where Almash elbowed him felt numb, it was like heated needles pierced his entire back channeling electricity – his spine must've been hit pretty bad as some nerves were acting weird. Bult's weightless frame disappeared as it fell down to the spikes below. Almash raised his hands in the air and roared with pride once again before turning at the spot where he saw his opponent weightlessly drop down like a sack of potatoes.</p>
      <p>A collection of fingers still clutched to the arena. A deafening roar of pain and a man doing all he could do to survive made the entire audience cheer and deafen the entire settlement as the public went wild – Bult pulled his entire hulking frame up to the edge and got back onto the arena.</p>
      <p>"You're treading dangerous ground, Almash..." Bult huffed out, "If the Sheikh decides that your augmentation is cheating he'll Slaughterfest you..."</p>
      <p>Almash did not reply, he merely smiled with a sadistic grin, Bult could not understand why would his opponent risk it. He probably could've evaded that blow without using chakra augmentation, the veteran wasn't even aware that the man even knew chakra augmentation to begin with.</p>
      <p>"Damn that Damij... He must be teaching his crew. Soon he may start dictating all the terms, do a total takeover of the arena" Bult continued to huff, his back pain made him twist and bend it to a very uncomfortable extent. As a former mercenary he knew that strategy – at some point in the future, Damij is planning to take over using his crowd of trained fighters, assembling only those he deemed elite and tutoring them in chakra augmentation. The old and idiotic Sheikh would not see it coming and his army would have trouble keeping up, the Kazekage would definitely approve of it as well...</p>
      <p>Bult couldn't believe that his opponent was letting him get a breather, suddenly the man remembered that his plan was to press his offensive on and now he took a hit that almost killed him and just barely was too weak to completely paralyze him. This plan was not working, holding back and defending would not work either. Slowly the veteran was running out of options.</p>
      <p>"Come now, you were trying to press your advantage. Show me your famed "Bare-Fist Axe Handle" slam that you're known for... Oh wait, Damij broke your arm, didn't he?" Almash kept on speaking, Bult roared into the air and dashed wildly at his opponent, the hulking brute spun around a full three-sixty driving his functional arm into a backhand slam at his opponent.</p>
      <p>"Bare-Fist Axe, One-Handed Variant!" Bult chanted out the name of his attack as the public started to get off their feet to cheer for their favorite. After all, while Bult may have been on a losing streak lately he was still quite legendary and many fans of the arena have seen him perform his moves since they were young.</p>
      <p>Before the crowd could even jump up and cheer Almash slammed his hands at the middle section of Bult's functional arm and drove his knee at Bult's elbow snapping the man's arm and forcing the bone to shoot out and fire off a wild squirt of blood all over his face. The aged veteran's eyes whited out – it was his natural instinct to just lose control and awareness of his body when overcome by impossible pain, to skip the pain and the threatening realization that his life may have ended in a couple of seconds. Bult just collapsed on his knees, giving in to instinct but having little way to respond.</p>
      <p>"Hmph, if you were in your prime it would have been a pretty neat fight, I just wish Damij wouldn't have told me all about your moves. There's a bad side to being a legend, it's called "being washed up"..." Almash explained as he stepped back on Bult's arm messing it up, even more, driving the bone back into the wound. "Déjá Vu, isn't it? Just like the time you faced Damij..." Almash taunted the whited out opponent who was trying to not be completely taken over by instinct, to maintain at least some more control but the warrior inside him was leaking out. The veteran was unleashed and he kicked the man out of Bult's psyche...</p>
      <p>The tall man leaped up with a knee strike driving it right into Almash's gut, turning around and delivering a straight kick into the man's chest and then jumping up with a kick to Almash's nose making it burst with blood. The red-haired brute staggered back and his body leaned backward almost forming a bridge shape, just one more shove could've done it but Bult barely had any strength left.</p>
      <p>"That bastard didn't even move, I broke my hand punching him, you had to actively take me on. You're a lot of things, pup, but Damij you are not..." Bult angrily roughed out with his eyes still being snow-white and his teeth still grinding against themselves. Blood dripped from the newly formed wound on his arm but the man was determined to finish the fight with his knees and his legs if his hands were broken. Even if the Bare-Hand Axeman was no more, the veteran survivor of the arena was still doing the dirty work and ready to kick, knee and stomp.</p>
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<a name="section0159"><h2>159. Bet On Freedom</h2></a>
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    <p>Almash laughed out wildly. The monstrous man wiped the blood on his face, both that shooting from Bult's wound and the one from his own nosebleed. The stain of the two bleedings made a twisted mask of red covering his face that only made the man appear much more monstrous and inhuman. Almash's eyes were slowly beginning to white out as well with the man's irises and his pupils beginning the rise upwards as if trying to stare into his own brain. Pure fighting instinct was beginning to take the man over. With a petrifying battle cry, that man leaped at his opponent.</p><p>Almash's attacks were blindingly fast, faster than even the human limit. No normal martial artist was capable of attacking so fast. The brute's brain no longer thought about his attacks removing the invisible yet usually present lag between the sensory inputs and complicated patterns and fighting combinations. This was a completely primitive and instinct driven rush down and Bult knew it but he also functioned entirely in the survival mode.</p><p>His eyes were equally flipped over and he was biting his own lips and palate drawing blood that flowed from his mouth. This fight was becoming much more primal, these two men no longer looked like martial artists, they were animals trying to gouge the eyes of their enemy out, peel their skins and flesh off with their bare hands or at the very least pound their opponent's face into the ground.</p><p>Sadly it was impossible to avoid all of Almash's attacks without his arms, Bult could only barely control which blows he'd take and which would bombard his body, break his ribs, open old wounds and make his barely seeing eye swell up, knock out his teeth. He never intended to be a looker anyway...</p><p>Still, the old veteran was proud to be able to return at least a couple of good blows however where Almash only had his wild animalistic roar in his lungs and was only stopped by Bult's blows, Bult also carried the weight of a thousand other battles, hundreds of previously broken and sloppily healed bones. Slowly the man was beginning to realize that he would not be leaving the arena alive...</p><p>With a wild and blindingly fast upwards thrust Almash tossed Bult's body up in the air, the primal man leaped up into the air and swung his leg around kicking the dark-skinned martial artist at the top of his head driving the man into the ground so violently that layers of dust were raised up and covered the entire arena, cracks opened up and tiles broke etching into Bult's skin and opening new scars on top of his old ones.</p><p>For a moment, the Sheikh leaped out of his chair in excitement thinking that the entire ring was destroyed by Almash's inhuman animalistic strength. No one knew where this monstrous man came from but he could outwrestle a giant ape and run faster than a desert cat. He also was strong enough to choke both of these animals out, this was known because the man had done it on multiple occasions during the more exotic arena events in the past.</p><p>"Just fucking burn!" The bare-chested berserker screamed out wildly making a handseal and swiping his hand to the side, a wave of heated air formed a small fireball that dissolved into a simple crescent projectile of roaring flames. It was a very primitive and imperfect manipulation of chakra but it was ninjutsu at its most basic stages nonetheless.</p><p>"I'm being slaughterfest'ed..." Bult realized when he put two on two together and realized why the Sheikh didn't as much as roll his eyes after seeing this demonic man use chakra abilities under two separate instances.</p><p>Heat took Bult's senses over returning the man who was afraid for his life back, wild sweat burst from the veteran's body as a wild grunt was all he could do before the flames blasted the ground exploding in a small firestorm – the technique was supposed to be a small restrained fireball – a C rank ninjutsu technique or even weaker but Almash was no ninja and couldn't accurately control his chakra that way so the flame was just wildly shooting from his hands in masses that needed to be slapped around and directed at their target.</p><p>The dust cloud and the smoke cleared out. Almash was a little winded as using chakra was no small feat to a man who wasn't even enrolled or sat a single class in the Ninja Academy. He was entirely tutored by Damij. Trained and bred to take out not necessarily the strongest but definitely one of the most iconic veterans of the arena. The smoke cleared revealing Bult's huffing and kneeling frame, one body part at a time.</p><p>"Huh... You used the heat from the technique to cauterize your bleeding wounds, rolled out of the way just halfway." Almash smiled sadistically before his body lunged at his opponent again kicking Bult into the man's jaw and sending him sliding backward and over the edge of the arena. Once again, the survivor inside Bult rose up and gripped up to the edge of the arena just to hold him from falling down, just to survive as long as he could, it didn't matter what he'd be surviving for.</p><p>It was easy to lose one's way of life in a place like this. When life takes a hard oaken stick and drives it right into one's kneecaps. It ain't hard to let suicidal thoughts or madness take over. If one isn't secretly also the other... The only thing that keeps one not only alive but moving is the thought, the promise that no matter how hard things would get one has no right to give up. A man or a woman, it doesn't really matter as both are made of the same flesh and bones, must promise oneself that even when they'll lose their way, when they'll be blinded by their opponent's punches or falling halfway down to being skewered by spikes they won't give up on their wish to live.</p><p>Technically, at those moments, it wasn't even much of a "wish", more like survival because one promised oneself survival during their toughest moments. Bult was acting driven entirely by such a promise. He didn't want all this pain, all this punishment. All he wanted was to rest, to finally repent for his sins, for all of his kills and just let go but... He promised, all those years ago!</p><p>The crowd jumped up off their seats, one childish adolescent even tore her top off in wild enthusiasm as Bult pulled his body up to the edge once more using one of his busted arms, screaming his lungs out from both pride and pain. If he was being forced to kick the bucket he may as well give these fuckers a bloody good show.</p><p>Countless glasses of beer were slammed at the steps of the arena, men and women screamed in hype and excitement but Bult couldn't entertain them anymore. He couldn't stand back up on his feet. He was a soldier wounded in too many battles and his old horse carrying him through them refused to go on. Suddenly the public realized it and fell dead silent. Their hero was about to meet his doom...</p><p>The Sheikh was leaning over the edge of his platform, he was excited, but he was also mad. His face was dyed entirely red in fact because he loved this battle, it was a solid brawl but... It wasn't enough... It was still missing some pizazz, that one final volcano eruption blowing the top of the rocky mountain off. And here this amazing fight was about to end... He had to stop it, he had to do something, he was about to reach that one moment in time, that amazing fight between two masters so many years ago but... It would end before it could reach that peak... No! It had no right to end, not now, not so close!</p><p>Almash licked his lips, licking blood off of a couple of wounds where Bult managed to bust the monster's lips and in couple more places where he bit his own lips in excitement himself tearing entire minuscule chunks of skin and flesh out of his own palate tongue and lips. He loved this fight but he loved the end most of all. Almash closed his fist and cocked it back, he knew what he'd do, he'd channel just a single ounce of chakra punching hard enough to bust through the man's broken ribs and blow up his heart with pure concussive force – it'd be his glorious finisher move... Maybe one day it'll reach the level of fame to match the Bare-Hand Axe Handle?</p><p>Almash's fist howled in the air, Bult no longer was able to see with one eye while the other one barely translated passable quality view of the world around him, it constantly needed to blink to let the pouring blood to pass over the eyelid and go down below. Bult was done for and he knew it, he accepted his death, he accepted his repentance, this wasn't Almash finishing him off, it was his endless victims unifying into a single indestructible entity comprised of cosmos and vengeance itself that possessed his opponent that day. Maybe it was just his beaten and shaken brains making up stupid bullshit...</p><p>A strong crunching sound made Bult's eyes shoot wide open as no freedom greeted him, instead, he continued to kneel in front of his opponent unable to stand back on his feet. Standing in front of him was a young lady, short in stature, waist long raven dark hair flowed freely in the desert breeze just softly stroking and touching Bult's face, wearing some peculiar uniform-like get-up that was dirtied up by desert sand and the dirt in the cells.</p><p>Her long and rather muscular for her age leg was wrapped around Almash's fist stopping it in its tracks, her thighs and her shin were grinding the man's arm to dust as Almash could neither push the fist forward nor detract it to defend himself until the girl let go of her iron grip and let the wild demon to stumble back on all fours like an ape-man.</p><p>"Mana?" Bult's half-toothed mouth asked spitting blood as he spoke.</p><p>There was absolutely no time to respond for the girl as the crowd jumped off their seats and started throwing their turbans and face-veils up in the air. Men were cheering and slamming their glasses overflowing with alcohol they were ready to rampage in their hype – they saw something that this arena has never seen before, an interference in a one-on-one battle saving nonother but a veteran icon of the arena.</p><p>"Unacceptable! You'll be stoned, quartered by blade, executed where you stand!" The announcer shrieked out slobbering and drooling all over the platform he stood on looking up at the fazed Sheikh who was completely blown away and yet... His face was... Smiling, the Sheikh then erupted into a wild fit of laughter shuffling the entire affair, flipping all of the tables in a figurative sense.</p><p>"Guards, how did she escape the cell? How did she enter the arena? Guards?" The announcer kept trying to get the situation under control but then he noticed that no guards replied. "Don't tell me..." He uttered.</p><p>"How did you?" Bult tried to speak but Mana carefully knelt up to his face and examined his wounds, pressing her soft and fragile finger to the man's busted and swollen lips.</p><p>"I was a stage magician in Konohagakure, escaping cages and bindings is what I did for a living..." She uttered silently, "I had to take a couple of guards out and I had an idea to free all the fighters but I figured it'd devolve the whole place into chaos, many fighters would riot, try to avenge their ruined lives and kill innocent people. I could not allow that so I just rushed to your aid once I found out you were being set-up".</p><p>Bult's only functional eye was tearing up.</p><p>Mana stood back up and faced the growling, demonic, red-haired man. "I apologize but I will have to beat you up, I cannot allow this senseless brawl to continue. If fighter's pride is all you care about – you've won, leave and it'll be the end of it..." She tried to explain but Almash rushed at her swiping with his overgrown fingernails opening up a nasty scratch, Mana screamed in pain – she didn't see his movements!</p><p>He was using a very faint and very primitive form of chakra augmentation moving faster and hitting and scratching stronger than any normal man. She'd have to predict his movements using Kouta's basic taijutsu patterns, examine which leg the man uses to kick his body off, which muscles twitch and which arm is cocked back etc... A lot of complicated body language reading would be involved.</p><p>Almash rushed at Mana but the girl leaned back, to the side, ducked under his swipes without needing to see the movements. He was beyond the human limit but she was just barely managing it, she was dodging and redirecting his blows combining the training from both Meiko and Kouta, combining the two defensive styles into a single combination of invincible and seemingly impossible move economy.</p><p>"What grace... What economy... Not a single move wasted, not a single hesitation... This isn't the same woman that lost to Gaffu, she could've stomped that man's face without breaking a sweat..." Sheikh started talking to himself, turning and shouting at his concubines in joy and utter and complete glee. It was a moment of his weakness, he was caught surprised by an event that no one could've predicted.</p><p>Mana flipped to the side slapping Almash's fingernail scratch straight into the stone tiles making him bust his fingers and scream out in pain as he broke all of them and left some of his flesh and blood on the stones. Mana's legs assaulted and danced on the man's face, chest, and his legs, she kicked him in the knees, shins and stomped his feet to keep him locked down, she kicked his chest to make him cough out all of the air in his lungs and kicked his face to inflict as much damage as possible.</p><p>Her opponent was stronger and faster than her, she needed all the advantages she'd get, she needed to explode right into his face and deal all the damage because if he hit her he may have taken her out outright. How tough was he compared to Damij? Could Mana really take on anyone stronger than this man? She was hitting this monster with all that she had and yet...</p><p>Mana leaped up into the air and thrust her leg forward, driving it deep into the man's gut and then forcing Almash's body right into the arena's messed up and cracked tiles.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" she roared out giving in to the chanting of the public, it was a moment when to her fighting really seemed "cool", when she was inspiring the public and when the people around her were behind a full one hundred percent, it was a sensation like no other, it was just what Mana lived to achieve throughout her life.</p><p>If she was to become a hero she'd need to make people cheer for her and be inspired by her without all this violence but for just a small second she surrendered herself to the arena and let the warrior inside her take over. She remembered someone at some point, one of the ninja she worked with or sparred with calling this kick "Spear Kick" because she drove it into the opponent's gut like a javelin and speared them to the ground stomping on them.</p><p>Almash was passed out, his eyes were totally white and he was bleeding from his nose and his mouth. Mana looked at the opponent she had conquered and then back at the Sheikh, the man was chanting for her to finish him off, the public was wild. Why were they so hyped for violence and murder? Why would they cheer for her to take out a tired and injured opponent that she had beaten after busting out of her cell and invading an event?</p><p>"No!" Mana declared and stomped viciously on Almash's arms twisting them in gruesome ways until the muscles made a grotesque grinding noise and a loud snap could be heard. "No more violence..." She told it half to the public but also to herself trying to control her raging spirit. She had so much anger pent up inside her, so much fear, desperation, and sadness that all exploded into violence against this man... She needed that violence. Had she held back one little bit it'd have been her lifeless body impaled on those spikes down below.</p><p>"How dare you!?" Sheikh screamed out angrily. The announcer also growled out similar words and the public raised the biggest riot beginning to throw things at Mana, one glass hit her in the head but only with its tip cracking a bleeding wound open but not completely knocking the girl out. Mana's lips pouted and her nose started sniffling, she was about to burst into tears... These people hated her once more after making her believe that they were behind her. How could she for one moment be mistaken that these people wished anything other than for her to kill or die herself?</p><p>"I won, there's no need for any more violence..." Mana tried to speak but everyone completely sunk her voice in an ocean of angry and hateful remarks thrown at her side. Mana restrained her childish desire to cry but she was shaken to her core, alone in an arena of bloodshed and death, surrounded by people that hated her guts while she loved every single one of them somewhere deep inside and would've given up her life to save any of them. Only Sheikh's angry cough silenced the arena.</p><p>"Girl, you have interfered a Fatal Warfare match. That alone is unheard of, interference has never happened but if it had it'd have been punished by Descent Gauntlet. You provided some entertainment and brought more life into this arena than it has seen for a long time but then you disobeyed its rules and disrespected this crowd. There must be a body impaled on these spikes or killed in a Fatal Warfare match and there'll be a body on those spikes, be it yours or someone else's." The Sheikh said.</p><p>"I wish to run the Ascension Gauntlet!" Mana screamed out silencing the crowd after they once again riled up with hateful remarks and throwing objects at her. One little girl screamed a c-word at her and tossed a plush toy of some fighter that fell down and got impaled on the spikes below. Seeing such bloodthirsty people made Mana realize just how impossible her lifelong dream may have been. She no longer had conflicting thoughts – she'd run the gauntlet and either die or achieve her goal without killing anyone, whether this public liked it or not.</p><p>The Sheikh laughed out madly, "That's some misguided arrogance coming from your side, girl! What makes you think you're respected enough to ascend? No. You shall run a Gauntlet however it shall be a Descent Gauntlet and by the end of it you shall either kill someone and satisfy this crowd of martial art lovers or you shall become a meatbag accessory hanging on those spikes." The Sheikh declared to gleeful cheers of the public. While the public was no longer as unified in their hatred as they were before they still would've loved nothing more than to see Mana's body getting impaled on the spikes giving them what they thought to be a fitting ending to a Fatal Warfare match.</p><p>"And if you do complete the Descent Gauntlet I shall grant you a tomorrow's warm-up match against Damij, a match for your freedom, what say you, young woman?" The Sheikh deceitfully asked Mana, the magician knew she was being played but she had no choice. She needed to change this place, to show them that killing wasn't the beautiful and artsy part of martial arts, that no blood needed to be shed for people to admire the art of fighting. Also, Mana needed freedom badly, she needed to find her friends and continue the quest for the Land of Sound.</p><p>"I accept" she uttered barely twitching her lips before repeating it louder much to the wild enjoyment of the crowd.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0160"><h2>160. The Gauntlet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What have you done?" Bult mumbled out through his swollen and beaten mouth, it took Mana a good couple of seconds before she could even understand what the man had told her.</p><p>"It's the only way to change this place." She quickly replied. Right now the last thing she wanted was to quarrel with the veteran who has helped her so far.</p><p>"There is no changing this place, there's no changing these people or the Sheikh, you're throwing your life away. He's just playing you because he wants to see a body on those spikes by the end of the day..." The man continued to plead Mana to reconsider and declare that she had changed her mind.</p><p>"You're wrong, if what you told me before is true, this place has been a sanctuary of martial arts once before it lost its way. That means that this madness is not yet too deep to be pulled out with its roots. The reason why this place hadn't changed back before is because people are doing it the wrong way." Mana replied observing the announcer disappearing into the tower where all the fighters were held. Clearly, there was supposed to be a short while before the fighters were prepared and the Gauntlet was set up.</p><p>"And how do you think it should be done? By dethroning the senile Sheikh? By tearing the Sheikhate down to the ground? By talking to these people? Many better than you have tried and you have spoken to them yourself, trust me, you've only pissed them off more" Bult was starting to switch into a sarcastic tone which greatly pleased Mana, that meant that he was still alive and kicking enough to crack jokes.</p><p>"No. I need to show them that fights where no one dies can be just as entertaining. I am an entertainer, remember? All I need to do is entertain these men until they realize that the reason why this place became this way is because of the illusion that entertainment must include murder. People and regimes don't change with violence or talking. Talking isn't efficient enough and violence only leads worse evils to take the empty seat. Things change by addressing the problems." Mana smiled to Bult "Entertainment will save this place, whether by beating the snot out of everyone or dying I shall entertain this crowd by the end of this day".</p><p>"You can't, you've got amazing moves but you can't think on your feet, you can't recognize patterns and you are barely able to predict moves, you lack experience on the field," Bult said trying to stand up and try to help Mana with the Gauntlet but his head got dizzy and the man just fell on his butt, his eyes teared up more and more the more he realized how pathetic he was in his current state and how old he had gotten.</p><p>"Then help me, guide me through it, give me as much information as you can before each battle. Let me gain experience by supercharging it and rushing it, let me become experienced over one night. You've got experience, I can move. We can do it, don't you want to see Damij's ass kicked?" Mana appealed to Bult's warrior's pride. The man closed his eyes and laughed out wiping his tears off with a closed knuckle.</p><p>"I'll help you but... You'll get yourself killed" he warned Mana, "If anyone from Damij's crew comes they'll be using chakra augmentation like Almash".</p><p>"It's not chakra augmentation." Mana shook her head kneeling up to Bult and examining his wounds with worried eyes. The man could've used some patching up, he didn't look like he was in any danger to die but he was banged up pretty badly and not in any shape to actually fight.</p><p>"To call it chakra augmentation would be the same as calling a rock a statue. Their abilities are so primitive that they barely even use actual chakra. It's a very basic form of taijutsu that isn't taijutsu combined with ninjutsu that isn't ninjutsu... Budojutsu, if you will." Mana explained, she wasn't able to sense Almash's chakra but she recognized some patterns in his increase in speed, strength, and damage he could deal up close. Chakra augmentation was something only stronger genin and above could've used, it was beyond the reach of people who have not trained their entire lives to master the complicated combination of bodily functions and chakra control.</p><p>"This... Budojutsu, do you think you can fight that?" Bult asked looking right Mana into eyes with a hopeful expression, the magician closed her eyes and shrugged.</p><p>"It's no chakra augmentation, if it was, I'd have been crushed instantly, at no moment fighting Almash did I feel completely overwhelmed but it was tougher than I thought. Let's just say I'm happy to have this moment to breathe." Mana replied as truthfully as she could, her answer didn't seem to calm Bult, however, the girl's honesty was appreciated, that much she could see in his busted face.</p><p>"Now, ladies and gentlemen, without further delay we shall start the spontaneously planned event of the day – the Descent Gauntlet of this young girl who has invaded a match and requested a match with our champion Damij!" The announcer declared as the bridge structure once again connected the arena to the living quarters on the other side with the announcer being ported right up to the arena since he stood on top of it once it got moving.</p><p>"For those who are unfortunate enough not to know the rules, there are few: the challenger fights until the Sheikh thinks they've had enough or are liberated by death! We've already met our challenger, she surprisingly lost a match against Gaffu today however she finished off Almash, the Bare-Chested Berserker! Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce the first contestant, the man who shakes the world beneath his feet and crumbles the ground – Sadar!" For the second time that day Mana had the honor to see the announcer engaging in his craft, for the girl the man appeared far overly excited by his introduction but at least he was devoted to his thing.</p><p>"Darn, he's not in Damij's crew but it ain't good... Whenever Sadar fights he ruins the arena, one time he knocked a person down and bashed their face to the ground until the whole arena crumbled down. He's a big and strong guy, don't try to overpower him, don't engage in standoffs with him, he's also deceitfully fast so don't get caught out." Bult started coaching Mana who carefully observed her opponent making his way down to the arena.</p><p>"I've faced large men before, I'll hit him low and make his legs give in, hit him in the joints and behind the knees, that usually worked. Fast or not no human can get his hands on me unless I want to, I've trained myself that way. I shall not allow him to ruin the arena, that'd mean us falling to the spikes below and I won't let that happen." Mana firmly declared quietly revealing her strategy to her friend.</p><p>"That should do it, be careful though, don't take chances, you've still got other guys to worry about," Bult suggested. Mana nodded and slowly started walking forward.</p><p>"Begin!" The announcer yelled out declaring the beginning of the fight. That very same instant Sadar went onto the offensive, his stance was strangely open, implying dominating presence and with countless openings, Mana quickly pranced forward avoiding the first chop, ducked under the first elbow counter and backflipped over the man's tripping sweep. The girl kicked the man right in the face a couple of times but he didn't appear to get overly fazed by it – a troubling sign.</p><p>Suddenly, the air around Sadar started to vibrate and glow barely intelligible golden glow, the man's blows intensified, they became faster and much more ferocious, with each blow they caused almost a small explosion wherever they hit making entire chunks of the arena fall down below. The ground shook and Mana almost fell down due to loss of balance from the man's relentless offensive effort. He didn't appear to tire which also felt really intimidating for the magician.</p><p>He wasn't yet too bad to avoid. Mana's training with Meiko with attack redirection and the ability to make her own openings allowed her to get countless cheap shots in and her training with Kouta with perfect evasion techniques allowed her to quickly identify the telltale signs of upcoming attacks and quickly make up perfect evasion tactics on the fly. She was going to pull it through. If that was all that her opponent had.</p><p>Sadar was an incredibly tall man, a good thirty centimeters taller than even Bult which made him actually appear almost towering. He wore a sleeveless mercenary vest which was made to protect one from knives and various bladed weapons, it also offered limited protection from blunt force trauma and elemental ninjutsu of a small rank. The man also wore a black skintight shirt below the vest so that the rough armored fabric didn't tear off his skin and leave pressure spots and various wounds of other nature. Sadar appeared not to shave his facial hair however he was completely bald suggesting that he may have been a monk from one of the Ninja Temples before joining the arena.</p><p>That fact alerted Mana, ninja monks were trained extensively in nintaijutsu, they were able to use chakra augmentation to much higher extent than even average ranked shinobi. Each of the Ninja Temples had their own secret techniques which were taught by the strongest and most determined and spiritually excellent monks. For that reason, the young woman tried to avoid cheaply exploiting his lower body like she expected to do before – if he was at all confident in his technique he'd have countered his natural shortcomings. Before Mana hits him low to incapacitate she needed to wear him out a little bit more.</p><p>"He's also using Budojutsu, why? Why not use nintaijutsu like all ninja monks?" Mana thought to herself, feeling like she knew the answer deep inside. Finally, the true reason revealed itself – the man was keeping it as a hidden ace card. The man slapped his hands together and his entire hulking frame started glowing like a miniature star with natural sunlight firing off from behind the man. A powerful shockwave sent Mana sliding backward and she could only barely recover in time to avoid the man's technique.</p><p>It was some strange technique that formed countless golden arms around the man, they weren't too standing out or look too fancy suggesting that perhaps they were an early version of a much more advanced technique but these golden palms formed almost in thin air in overwhelming numbers. Mana was beginning to run out of breath while she was avoiding these blows, so far she managed to perceive each and every palm before she was hit and avoid them by leaning out of the way or slapping at the side and redirecting them to the other side. Shockingly, the magician soon realized that she was running out of space to dodge as the relentless barrage of endless palms was pressing her to the edge of the arena with only the spikes of certain and painful doom lurking below.</p><p>"Spear Kick – Spear Kick – Spear Kick!" someone in the public started chanting, many more picked up on the chant requesting the magician girl to perform her makeshift signature technique. Mana was not nearly without control like she was before when she first performed the technique, that being said she was about to run out of time. The idea and the imaginary feeling of being pushed down the hole and being skewered by spikes made Mana's skin crawl, her body tensed and she moved in an instant, leaning under a couple of palms by lowering her body almost to the ground like a cat about to pounce, as her legs kicked her body off Mana's elbow was driven right into the man's groin.</p><p>For a moment the entire crowd died, clenching as if they have witnessed the most gruesome murder they've ever seen. Mana's nimble frame jumped up into the air flipping gracefully a couple of times before driving both of her feet into the man's back as he leaned with a comically destroyed facial expression, his hands grasped for his crushed groin area desperately but Mana's feet stomped strong and swiftly slamming the man's giant body into the rocky floor before Mana landed on her feet and flipped backwards to twist the man's leg from behind.</p><p>Sadar screamed out in pain before slamming his own head against the arena floor and passing out in pain. Mana once again had to explode all out on her opponent because she was afraid of Sadar's response if he wasn't fazed by at least one of these attacks – striking at the man's genital area was a desperate strategy but it opened him all up for follow up attacks and he won't go anywhere with injured pride and a twisted leg.</p><p>"Kill him!" The announcer excitedly declared as the public started chanting for Mana to finish the man off but the girl walked further away from the man and stretched out, taking the time to catch a good breather.</p><p>"You know I shall not. Call in the next opponent or stop this foolishness." Mana exclaimed visibly feeling worn out by her endless barrage of dodging and leaping around. The magician wasn't really sure about just how much she could keep it going but she knew that she'd go as far as her body would allow her.</p><p>"Ladies and gentlemen! This young one continues to defy our traditions! Let us welcome the next challenger that has agreed to fight this young girl at a moment's notice – Myrwa!" The announcer declared pointing at the extending bridge and the entering challenger. Mana slowly walked back at Bult and looked at him questioningly.</p><p>"Look, you may want to do something a bit more securing, right now Sadar is just laying sprawled in the middle of the arena, he might wake up at some point in the middle of your challenge and attack you from behind..." Bult advised, Mana nodded and then pointed at her opponent who was slowly closing in. The man was of very lacking height and looked of rather ridiculous proportions. It was a pathetic and pale looking man, about Mana's height with puny and shaking arms and legs but weirdly creepy looking shot out and plump stomach that was covered up only by a ragged shirt.</p><p>"Be careful, this man is not as formidable and deadly as Sadar but he is deceitful, that plump spot at his abdomen is his twin brother, Myrwa was born with his undeveloped brother attached to his stomach, it's just a distraction tactic, I don't know why he wanted this fight so much – he's only won a couple of non-lethal matches. Something seems fishy, be careful." Bult explained</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times in rapid succession, "Wait, that's his brother!? How does that work?" She asked looking surprised, her eyes glowed not in sickness or intimidation by the grotesque and rather pathetic sight but the desire to see that combination in action.</p><p>"Don't get your panties in a twist, that thing is dead and doesn't move, he just uses it as a surprise factor to get cheap shots in, maybe he'll slap it around and try body-shielding himself with it. As I've said, the brother is always asleep and is just hanging there like a parasite, he's a weird guy, not formidable but don't let your guard down..." The veteran explained, he looked a little entertained himself seeing Mana display some scientific interest in how exactly that man worked. Maybe he just saw for a moment the kind of child that was forced to fight in the arena, Mana was no warrior who fought for pride. She wasn't afraid to fight, not anymore, but she fought because of necessity, not desire or pride. Her interest in her opponents was purely scientific and sporting one.</p><p>"Now, are the contestants ready?" the announcer asked before Mana took an evasive stance preparing to carefully observe her flabby and puny looking opponent to identify his movements and properly defend herself. Both nodded firmly before the announcer declared the beginning of the battle.</p><p>Screaming like a madman and flailing wildly Myrwa started running at Mana, the girl took a couple of leaps backward before leaping with a whirling kick right at the puny man's head. With a pathetic whine, Myrwa was sent to the ground. It almost felt bad bullying this guy around... Mana still decided to keep her guard up and she playfully jumped around a little just to catch her rhythm again before her opponent stood back up.</p><p>All of a sudden, Mana twitched in shock realizing that Myrwa's shirt got torn up and a creepy large eye was staring at her from the shorty's chest. Mana wanted to turn and ask Bult if that was normal but Myrwa attacked her faster and more ferociously, the magician continued to evade the man's blows but then a ripping sound made her jump up in fear as she saw the single-handedly the most disgusting thing ever – a malformed even more pathetic version of Myrwa tore its way out from under the man's shirt and hit Mana in the head with its soft and sticky elbow.</p><p>Mana shouted in pain and skipped a couple of more blows before rolling aside. Her leg was caught by Myrwa's brother's flabby arm and she was dragged closer to the man who started stomping and punching Mana. The girl covered up her head and took a couple of nasty blows before she shoved her arms towards the ground throwing her legs right into Myrwa's face. Screaming in pain the creep staggered back and let Mana recover – he wasted his opportunity.</p><p>"So your brother is actually alive?" Mana asked looking at the little-malformed creature sticking out from Myrwa's gut and pathetically hanging down and using its arms to keep its body from just rubbing against the ground pathetically. It was a small and malformed creature, its legs appeared to be non-existent as it was only sticking out from his abdomen being connected to that of his brother's, almost like he was inside his brother's guts but then burst through his belly like some sick monster from a horror play.</p><p>"Everyone started learning those weird techniques in the gym, my win rate isn't too stellar so I asked some of the fighters to help me learn a crazy technique of my own!" Myrwa shrieked out with a strangely high-pitched voice that also reminded eerily of gurgling.</p><p>"So it's a Budojutsu technique, somehow he is sharing his chakra with his brother making it appear alive... I need to figure out how it works, I can't predict such a peculiar fighting style unless I know what and how it can do." Mana thought to herself as she just couldn't move her eyes away from that odd creature sticking out from Myrwa's stomach.</p><p>Myrwa once again started flailing forward and rushing at Mana, the young magician just took a defensive stance and avoided contact with the strange looking fighter for a couple of minutes, dodging each and every blow, jumping far away from him so that the grotesque thing he carried around sticking out from his gut couldn't punch Mana, not because of a lack of trying though...</p><p>Mana then swiftly leaned under Myrwa's blow and grabbed the "brother's" neck pulling it fast and strong behind Myrwa's back until she could hear a loud snap. The freaky brother screamed out in pain and started freaking out.</p><p>"You killed my brother, you bitch! How dare you!? Ouch, brother! Brother!" He screamed but Mana only closed her eyes.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Myrwa but you were tricked. Even skilled chakra manipulators cannot bring dead things to life, not without a very gruesome cost and what you use isn't even ninjutsu, it's budojutsu – a primitive form of chakra manipulation that can barely be described as dabbling in ninjutsu. Your technique did not bring your brother back to life because he was always dead, it merely made you capable of controlling him like a separate body part. Your brother was never alive, he was just an arm of yours I had to break, there is no more use for us to fight, please leave..." Mana explained, her face was sad and twisted by pain as she had to explain to a saddened brother why he felt his "brother's" pain so literally.</p><p>Of course, it hurt for Myrwa when she snapped his brother's puny spine, it was because the entire abomination of nature felt like a body part, it was similar to how having one's arm broken would've felt.</p><p>As Myrwa collapsed on the ground caressing his broken brother, Mana looked at the announcer, "Have you not had enough yet!?" She yelled at him but the man's smile betrayed that it wasn't even close.</p><p>"She asks if we've seen enough fighting but she has not yet met Fajal, the Majestic God of Martial Arts!" The announcer proudly declared pointing at the direction of the building where another bridge was extending.</p><p>"This can't be good..." Mana huffed out, she was now wearing a couple of injuries she had earned and she was getting tired to dodge all those blows. The girl looked back at her makeshift coach and realized that her fears were justified. This Fajal must've been something to make even Bult sit silently in fear.</p><p>"Mana, he's the third most powerful member of Damij's crew..." The man exclaimed with a weakened and pain-ridden voice. Mana looked at the sandstone gate as it slowly cracked and rumbled as they opened, staring long and deep into the darkness that concealed the next fighter with some fear and respect to that fighter before she even saw him. Anyone to scare Bult that much must've been worth Mana's fear as well...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0161"><h2>161. The God of Martial Arts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The crowd kept squirming in their seats, yelling unintelligible things but from what little Mana could make out – it was all just out of surprise of this Fajal making an appearance. The magician slowly walked back to Bult's resting place and knelt up to the man. It was hard to see the fear in the man's swollen and beaten face but Mana could see it, see his eyes shake in fear, hear air uncontrollably pass in and out of his lungs and see his swollen eyelids twitch.</p><p>The magician took in a couple of controlled breaths just to let her body recover from the stress of surviving multiple fights with master martial artists who would've beaten any normal human. She had taken her weak human body farther than most humans were able to but she was about to face a test unlike any other.</p><p>"Bult-san... I need to know about this Fajal, as much as I can if I am to survive this," she tried to get the veteran of the arena speaking but he finally managed to regain control of his body only to show what seemed like the signs of giving up, complete surrender to the fate that it was all over for the two of them.</p><p>"There's nothing to know, he's trained with every prominent martial arts master in the known world, he's won tournaments in every arena worth a shit. He's the only known person to give Damij a fight for all of the seven minutes instead of just being toyed with. He's trained for his entire life, he's the closest thing to what that old man rambled of, you've won a lot of amazing fights today, beg the Sheikh to call Fajal off, please!" Bult yelled out loud, Mana was shocked to see the warrior's pride she saw so much of being broken by a mere mention of a man's name. The dreadful sound of a platform covering all the way to the living quarters tower interrupted Mana's attempts to get information.</p><p>The young kunoichi stood back up and faced the tower to see this Fajal that all of the audience was now cheering for despite having been mostly on Mana's side throughout this entire thing. The door opened with a loud rumbling sound, the old stone structure shook and sent clouds of dust as it was moved open at a turtle's pace leaving a gap wide enough for a man to walk out.</p><p>Fajal's boots were the first to touch the platform and appear from the darkness, they weren't the usual sandals that most ninja wore or plate boots that mercenaries wore. They were made of leather, covered with belts to shape it around the man's foot. Fajal wore a black bodysuit, similar to the one that ninja wore, however, he also had a reddish armored vest, it looked custom made, possibly looted from some high ranked mercenary during his wandering days or even in this very arena.</p><p>Fajal's full facial hair was even longer than the dark hedge of his actual hair, covering his both sides of the face and extending richly and thickly but not long enough to make it into an advantage for his opponents. The man's actual hair was short, rudely cut as Mana assumed leaving them in a rather militaristic looking bland style. His face bore no scars, something that alarmed Mana having the man's background in mind, wasn't he hit at least once before? A good hit would've left him without teeth, left something on his face, marks not unlike the chains of scratches and gruesome mosaics of war that Bult had all over his face.</p><p>Fajal's face was completely clean, not even his nose appeared to have been broken once. He stood in a strict militaristic stance, his back was as tense and straight as a string of a violin, his tense and rather bulky arms were placed behind the man's back and he had a cocky yet strict stare to his brown eyes. Mana could feel them judging her almost immediately when their eyes met.</p><p>"Desert or wasteland?" the man slowly and rather quietly uttered when he finally stepped off the platform onto the arena staring at Mana.</p><p>"Huh?" She uttered confused.</p><p>"Your skin is slightly paler than mine but it is dark enough to suggest that one of your parents was from the Land of Lightning or Land of Wind, that is why I asked, the wasteland of Lightning or desert of Wind?" Fajal explained his question in few words. His tone implied some degree of condescension that the girl was not able to pick up on his question but he was looking down on the girl ever since he first laid eyes on her so that was not really much of a problem. The man spoke rather quietly but had a very cool and frightening demeanor to him making the crowd die out when he opened his mouth and making his every word clear and audible.</p><p>"Neither. My mother was a traveling woman but I am from Konohagakure." Mana replied.</p><p>"A ninja perhaps? Taijutsu I assume, if you were one of those fire breathers the Sheikh would've executed you already and you would need ninja tricks to beat Almash." Fajal wondered when the announcer lifted his arm into the air and declared the beginning of the fight. Both Mana and Fajal did not hurry to attack one another. Mana wasn't even sure about how to approach this, technically her redirection and dodging fighting style would've been able to beat any human, no matter their degree of dabbling in martial arts but she had a bad feeling about this Fajal and she was also quite winded after the last couple of fights.</p><p>"I was. I am no more," Mana replied in Fajal's manner of speech, the man cracked a grin.</p><p>"A woman of few words? Isn't this a surprise..." He took a fighting stance breaking out of his militaristic and strict stance, slightly leaning to the side and lifting his striking left hand into the air, placing his right in front of himself and ready to block, one of his feet was slightly elevated and only his toes touched the ground with that foot, he must've been ready to attack.</p><p>Finally, Fajal leaped forward, Mana followed, for a man called the "God of Martial Arts" his speed appeared to be rather human, peak human perhaps but Mana's eyes were certainly fast enough to follow him, her body was fast enough to kick to keep him at bay. That was her strategy, use her legs to keep the man at a range where his fists couldn't reach her, she was a short girl with rather short legs, her growth was not yet completed so the man's fists would've probably reached her anyways but it'd give her maximum time possible to redirect or avoid the blows. Fajal did not attack after the first couple of elbow strikes and punches, he just blocked Mana's responsive kicks before retreating for a moment with a graceful leap back. He wasted no movements, it was like the speed that would've been a peak of human ability to most came of no effort to him. It was at that moment that Mana realized that Fajal was holding back, checking her out, measuring her skill.</p><p>"You did not beat Almash, I came here to fight the person who has," Fajal said casually closing his eyes and once again taking his lax militaristic stance, moving his arms behind his back.</p><p>"Mana, what are you doing? Do not exchange blows with him, do what you've been doing this whole time!" Bult yelled at her encouraging Mana to stop trying and take her opponent on and instead to try repeating her strategy of avoiding strikes and redirecting them, creating an opening for her to finish her enemy off like she was trained to do by her friends. The magician continued to stare at Fajal carefully, she couldn't do that, not yet. She was too tired, too hurt in her sides. She'd taken a couple of blows and unlike the time when she was still a ninja, every strike left its dent now. She needed more time to breathe freely, correct breathing was integral to her style.</p><p>Fajal once again rushed at Mana, his hands still held behind his back, his eyes still closed and his face emotionless and arrogant. The magician tried to kick him right in the face, seeing how he pointed it forward and rushed at her almost taunting her to do so but in an instant, her opponent disappeared, her kick only hit thin air.</p><p>"So fast!" Mana thought as she felt a crushing blow at her dominant leg that kept her balance during her kicks – within just a single exchange of blows Fajal had found a weakness in her offensive style and exploited it perfectly.</p><p>A powerful jumping kick made Mana scream in pain as it slammed her tripping body to the rocky ground, the girl could hear the stone beneath her shifting and heard her own body gurgle and crack as it was brought down without any effort from this man's side, when her perception returned to the world of man the sight of her opponent with his eyes still closed and his arms still behind his back greet her. Fajal was walking away from her.</p><p>"What are you doing, Fajal?" the Sheikh yelled out, "Throw the girl over the edge and kill her!" he ordered the fighter but Fajal turned back and faced the Sheikh.</p><p>"I came out here to fight the person that beat Almash, I woke from my nap when I heard that Almash was beaten, I could not believe it at first. I did not learn a hundred and fifty styles of martial arts to kill a little girl, she is not worth this match, she is not worth this death, she cannot in a lifetime reach the level needed to deserve to have the spikes of this arena penetrate her, have her serve the fighters water after the fights, wash their wounds or something." Fajal said, still keeping his back turned at Mana, the magician coughed out some blood, grasping at her burning abdomen and chest. Her ribs must've taken quite the blow, she must've been bleeding internally. Slowly the girl got her body off the ground and looked at Fajal's back as if encouraging the man to continue.</p><p>"I beat Almash-san," Mana declared, "Then I continued to beat Sadar-san and Myrwa-san, I will beat you and whoever else enters this circle through that door until Sheikh-san decides he's had enough," Mana said wiping the blood from her lips, she still felt the taste of it in her mouth. She couldn't take that much more of blows like this, she needed to be more careful. Gone were the days when she could get stabbed with a sword and fight the very next day.</p><p>Fajal turned around, his eyes were still closed and he didn't move his arm one bit from being locked behind his back. The martial artist rushed forward the same manner as he did when he attacked the girl before, this time the magician knew how he would attack – he'd exploit her single dominant leg being on the ground while the other one was aiming at him, he'd try to duck down and sweep it again opening her for free blows. She'd be smarter this time! Mana didn't leave a single leg on the ground, instead, she leaped up spinning her body horizontally as she threw a double spinning kick aiming at Fajal's arrogant and smug face.</p><p>A crushing blow to her chest sent Mana flying back and over the edge of the arena. All air left her lungs, her chest exploded with pain that reminded most of being burnt alive from inside and just trying to take as much as a single breath to return at least some of the air that she needed to stay alive was making Mana's mind scream in pain but her body couldn't because she had no air to do so. Just her feeble bruised arm grabbed the edge ever so barely, as her nails dug into the rough and ancient stone they broke off and burst with blood. Her puny human body was slowly breaking down.</p><p>He predicted her prediction, he gave her enough of a benefit of the doubt to assume that she had seen what he had done before and he knew that Mana would come up with a response but he was one step forward – he knew what kind of response she'd make up and he created a simple one strike counter to that. His movements were so fast and so odd, he moved, unlike any ninja, unlike any other martial artist Mana had seen as his body was sometimes firm as a rock and sometimes flexible as water – must've been a testament of the countless styles of martial arts that the man knew.</p><p>Mana finally got able to breathe, her thirsty and burning lungs drew air in but she could only cough in pain and grunt, her weak and injured arm couldn't pull her body back up, the magician lifted her hand back up and grabbed the arena with it giving her ruined and bleeding hand a little rest. She felt a firm grip pulling her up, Mana saw Bult's beaten in face but the figure was looking a little blurry – she must've taken some damage too.</p><p>"Thanks..." she uttered.</p><p>"Stop this," he replied but Mana softly tapped his shoulder telling him to move to her side. Bult looked at her and lowered his head, the girl passed around him and walked out in front of Fajal.</p><p>"I've met women that loved to be abused. They screamed in pain when their husbands beat them but they always came back to them in the end for more, they cried when I killed the bastards that hurt them. Am I to assume you love suffering as well, is that why you stand up for more punishment?" Fajal asked her still not giving her as much as a look.</p><p>"I made a mistake trying to buy myself some time to recover from the previous fights by just trying to match you in skill. You're clearly superior to me in every way: physically stronger, faster and much smarter, a combat genius through and through with a lifetime of experience..." Mana said</p><p>"Hmph, so you're one of those women? The kind that tries to please you and begs in front of the entire arena? Spare it." Fajal finally opened his eyes, not because he thought Mana a worthy opponent to do so, more because her words annoyed him as they were burning with anger.</p><p>"However... Now I will stop fighting you with skill, I won't look for openings in your moves I shall create them. I will beat you so I suggest you keep your pride intact and retreat. Sheikh-san has seen a lot of fighting today, I'm sure he's satisfied enough to leave it be." Mana gave her opponent a chance to retreat, as was her usual behavior.</p><p>"If you insist to be killed by my hand I shall do just that." Fajal angrily grunted leaping at her, still adamant about not using his hands. Mana slipped behind him, moving just like Kouta had taught her, just like the medical ninja avoided being hit by even a single kunai or fireball in a battlefield. The most amazing medical ninja were able to avoid any injury when fighting for entire days inside a battlefield surrounded by ninja wishing to kill them, Mana had the training of a young man who was trained by these men and women. Fajal's humanly movements were no match for kunai and fireballs, they were certainly no bolts of lightning.</p><p>Mana ducked and flipped over the man's kicks, she even hesitated to dodge some of them just to annoy Fajal more. On some deep level she was personally annoyed by the man's cockiness and wished to rub it into his face – she was as slippery as an eel underwater, as fluid as a storming river and as precise as the finest clockwork. Even Fajal, the God of Martial Arts of over a hundred and fifty styles could not as much as lay a finger on her, toe to be exact.</p><p>The man switched to using his arms as well instantly, trying to surprise Mana but the magician continued to avoid his attacks, it was definitely harder but she could've dodged even another man like Fajal trying to kill her. The blows she could not avoid the girl redirected, opening Fajal up for cheap blows which she didn't even exploit. She wanted him to know and Mana knew that Fajal saw it, he knew that she could've pummeled him like a horse crushed fallen apples on the ground when rushing through a garden but she didn't.</p><p>Fajal roared into the air with absolute rage, it was the sound of a man's pride being broken into a million pieces. The rage of a warrior who despised women for their weakness but was being simply outmatched by one, not even a real one, a child. It wasn't that Mana was more skilled or faster, her movements were just like a formula of mathematical precision, the man could've come at her with a million and two martial arts styles and it wouldn't have made a difference.</p><p>The only martial art that was truly worth contending with the best was the taijutsu that ninja used, it was a style that unified all martial arts and combined them with the mastery of chakra, that was to say, the perfect understanding and control of one's body. Only a chakra manipulator could have overcome those of chakra manipulation, just like the principle of chakra over matter stated. While Mana was not able to control hers, she learned the formulaic movements of a person who was, she took time to carefully study any and all ways she could be attacked and learned to avoid them. She trained with actual ninja that moved faster than her human eyes or her brain could perceive – she dodged their blows through prediction alone.</p><p>Mana's firm palm strike hit Fajal's nose making it burst with blood, the man's eyes teared up. It was a common response of hers after she had made herself an opening by redirecting someone's blow, with a swift kick she sent Fajal tumbling backward only to kick off the ground and backflip back on his feet. The man cracked his neck and his knuckles around and took his fighting stance.</p><p>"I have underestimated you. You definitely would've crushed Almash with those moves. Indeed this cheap style of yours could best any human and seems entertaining enough to the public to make you a favorite. Damij would invite you to join his crew, he would love to have someone like you by his side. Too bad I won't give him a chance to." Fajal spoke up wiping the blood from his nose only for it to continue to drip.</p><p>"I do not care, my goal is to beat him and change this place back to how it was during its glory days – I initially wanted to free everyone, destroy this place and bury it beneath the desert sands but now I understand that it isn't the right way. You martial artists live by exchanging fists, I would not dare to take that away from you however by beating Damij and the Ascension Gauntlet I shall change this place to how it was before. Sheikh-san wishes desperately to see that battle again, the one that changed everything and I shall show him that but not with you, you cannot give him this battle. I believe that after seeing that battle again this place could come back to being the haven of martial arts it once was." Mana smiled taking a brief moment to look at the people who sat there in extreme silence listening to her and looking back at the Sheikh who was on the edge of his seat absorbing this fight.</p><p>"It is rare that I meet a person more arrogant than I am, I also seemed to have been wrong, you're no woman of few words. You talk rubbish and talk it in spades. Well then, shall we then begin? Showing you your place and knocking you off that high horse, ruining the world of childish dreams?" Fajal smiled wiping the blood from his nose again. At that moment Mana knew that the man had some sort of an ace he had not shown just yet.</p>
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<a name="section0162"><h2>162. Hypocrisy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fajal appeared to talk a big talk despite his seemingly little short performance. It didn't feel like Mana was actually beating him down, truth be told. Her fighting style was a combination of multiple taijutsu arts, martial arts and taijutsu were a little bit different as they focused on different concepts.</p><p>Taijutsu sometimes had different fighting styles as its component but it mostly focused on bodily improvement through improving one's overall chakra level and learning proper chakra augmentation techniques. Martial arts were based on pure fighting technique, if a martial artist did increase their chakra level it was unintentional and they had no way of actually controlling it. Martial arts focused too much on budojutsu which wasn't even a part of the typical ninja arts.</p><p>What Mana did to defeat all these martial artists, all stronger and infinitely more experienced and trained than she was, was basically a cheat code, an easy mode in the game of martial arts. She exploited the humanity's experience in countering specific moves, universal cheat moves that allowed her to bypass and avoid or redirect her opponent's movements. She tapped into the ages-old experience of ninja training to beat martial artists and mercenaries of pure martial art mastery. It was a cheap way to win these brawls but Mana was not participating in this for sporting interest, she was saving a life here.</p><p>Fajal's body started glowing faintly, it was a different emanation than the usual light blue glow of chakra. The man's shimmering aura was purple and didn't flow like a flame, it rose like smoke, coiling and evaporating from the man's body like separate parts of him. The sheer fact that the man was able to emanate this strange spinoff of chakra from his body in a visible manner greatly surprised Mana. Usually, it took an amazing skill to make chakra appear from one's body, to make it visible not only to sensors but also ordinary folks, what budojutsu used was not even chakra, just the physical aspect of it so how could this man have been able to display such mastery over such unrefined energy?</p><p>The master martial artist moved, it was like he skipped through space and time, like reality glitched around the man as it failed to properly render and display its movements, on some moments the man was visible fully, sometimes he just blinked out of existence. Mana tried to evade and redirect, she knew the perfect response to each of his attacks but she was physically too late to move. She could've matched a very small amount of superhuman speed and power in her opponent, truth be told, she could've handled any amount of power as her art of redirection only made the counterattack stronger on more powerful opponents but she totally misjudged the timing of her response.</p><p>How could she have properly gauged those movements? This man moved like his entire body was being augmented by chakra on the weakest and the most primitive levels, but having in mind that to slightly less than half of the world's population such enhancements gave the physical power to destroy the world and the ability to move faster than reality itself could allow them to, even the primitive levels were unbelievable.</p><p>This was dangerous and Mana knew it. As she skipped blows and felt her body being pummeled to a stump she realized that this man had no control over his augmentation, usually when ninja augmented their abilities to the point where a single punch released enough energy to cause an explosion that'd decimate the entire world they controlled the flow of chakra, they absorbed the energy inside their chakra flow and transferred all the force directly through to their opponent and not the world, this man was not able to do that. If he continued to grow in power he'd be able to demolish and ruin everything.</p><p>The man thrust his knee into Mana's gut making the young magician throw blood up. His blows were inhuman, while her own body was not only human but also worn out. The fact that she survived these blows, this initial spark of speed and power surprised Mana. Initially the girl thought that the samurai were the strongest people in the world, while ninja were incredibly strong as well they couldn't have matched the more warrior based samurai on a battlefield however she'd never imagined that other sorts of people would've manipulated the same energy ninja manipulated like Fajal and the rest of Damij's crew was able to.</p><p>Mana's body was young, maybe that's why she didn't instantly die from those impacts but she felt it. Her organs grumbling and shifting inside, she hadn't been punched like that ever since Hisako beat her up back during the mission to save the perfume tycoon's kid. The girl tried to move but she couldn't, this was what her parents warned her would happen. She was a human in a world of the impossible number of possibilities and things. Every couple of steps she saw things that the history scrolls never prepared her for: Tailed Beasts, some weird ritualistic syndicates of criminals, artifacts with the power to do whatever their possessor pleased. She had no place in such a world, not anymore, not with her being so simple and weak.</p><p>The magician screamed out in pain and fell blood bursting from her mouth in weak yet relentless drips. She could've countered those moves, they were multiple times faster than the fastest a man could move but she could counter them if only she compensated the lack of speed with beginning to counter earlier. She could still predict the man's moves, she saw too much of his patterns, she saw him trying to hit her with all that he could and the painful pulsing wounds all over her body were like a book for Mana to read the man's new patterns, that is to say – old but faster ones. Fajal lifted her body off the ground holding her by the magician's long hair, he dragged Mana to the edge and lowered her to the point where even if the magician reached up she'd never grab the edge.</p><p>"You actually do deserve a warrior's death, I was mistaken, you're not like most women that we see here. If there's a heaven for martial artists maybe you'll be permitted to stay there..." Fajal coldly stated letting the girl's hair slip from his fingers.</p><p>Bult yelled out, he tried to wriggle up to Fajal and attack him from behind but he was too weak and too late. Now the beaten and battered veteran of hundreds of battles continued to stare at the spikes below in horror. A sound of ripping clothes reached the arena and then Mana's flying kick dug into Fajal's cheek. The martial artist stumbled back before being literally flung by the force and tearing up his cool armored vest into the rocky ravaged surface of the arena. The magician looked at the man, beaten up and bleeding, having lost her blazer in a wild attempt to catch a sticking surface of the arena and swing herself back up from another side, enhancing the speed of her kick and the strength of it. Mana's eyes shot literal lightning at her opponent.</p><p>The black-bearded fighter roared proudly into the air leaping at Mana fully intending to tear her limb from limb. He no longer viewed her as a little girl, she was no longer the typical woman who was found wandering around the Sheikhate being brought into the arena just to die. The audience had accepted that long ago, probably the moment she stepped in to save her friend's life. Mana was no ordinary teenager, she may not have had her chakra manipulation or any of its benefits but she did still have her lifelong training from the Ninja Academy and the training she did with Meiko, Shimo, and Kouta to rely on. Even when they were far away her friends were still helping her and being with her.</p><p>Mana started moving earlier, she did just like she thought it'd be right to do – start responding to the moves before seeing them being made, predict the moves and stop relying on her perception to avoid or redirect the movements, throw her own counters Fajal's way. She didn't avoid every blow, she didn't land every blow. Those blows she did get were considerably weaker, Fajal was visibly getting weaker and slower. Mana knew it'd have to happen eventually. The magician continued to avoid the man's blows, she stopped relying on hitting the man and just kept on focusing on redirection and dodging. She was getting tired too, she was getting tired before she even began this fight with Fajal but she was getting tired from the human class effort, Fajal was wearing himself out superhumanly.</p><p>"Enough!" He yelled out leaping up into the air at least eleven meters like it was nothing. Even when beginning to feel the strain of his budojutsu enhancements Fajal performed leaps like that with little to no conscious effort. The man's muscles tore holes in his black shirt, his exploding strained body tore the zipper of his armored vest and let it slip off his body to the spikes below, continuing to tear holes in his jumpsuit as well. Fajal started punching the air as if shadow boxing, initially Mana couldn't understand just what was going on but then she saw.</p><p>He was horizontal to the arena's position, his superhuman blows were sending powerful air gusts to the ground propelling him and keeping him afloat. Fajal's rage exploded kicking his budojutsu enhancements into overdrive, Mana knew it was bad news. A loud screeching sound forced the girl to jump back, it was a good thing that the first blast was not aimed at her or else she'd have been totally crushed. Fajal's mad punching skills and superhuman speed created waves of pressurized air that slammed right into the arena destroying it. Mana made the maddest dash to Bult, tackling the man and leaping off of the arena, it appeared like Bult knew what she was doing. Fajal destroyed the arena and sent it crashing down onto the spikes below not by his mere punches but just from the gusts sent by them.</p><p>Mana felt Bult grabbing hold of her abdomen, she heard the man scream as he held firmly to the protective wall that provided minimal protection for the lowest rows of the audience. Had she not had this large man in her aid both of them would've tumbled down and ended up impaled. Even when completely battered Bult was strong enough to stay holding onto the wall with Mana in his grasp. Fajal's weightless body slammed into the rocky debris of the collapsed arena, where the debris fell they broke and flattened the steel spikes but the martial artists still must've broken quite a number of bones falling well over twenty meters. Mana was confident that if some of his budojutsu augmentations remained in Fajal's system he'd have survived the fall. Bult shouted in pain and through tremendous effort kicked off the wall landing down onto the destroyed arena below.</p><p>Mana looked around, the bodies of the other contestants that were still conscious appeared to all be knocked out, she wasn't sure if they were alive or dead but they were hit by the side blast of Fajal's barrage of air pressure waves, they suffered additional injuries than those Mana left them with but none of them fell onto the spikes at the very least. Myrwa's "brother" however was not so fortunate, the dead twin of the man was crushed by a piece of debris.</p><p>"Could you check if they are alive?" Mana looked back at Bult who was breathing heavily. She was glad to see the veteran in a stable enough condition to perform such amazing feats of agility and strength. When she saved his life he was on his final legs. His ability to slowly recover in the midst of a battlefield was certainly to be admired.</p><p>"Once I catch my own breath..." The man replied indifferently. Mana looked at Fajal standing up, the man didn't breathe, his tanned skin was getting paler and paler every moment. It was a signal that he must've broken a great number of ribs from that fall. The man dashed at Mana with all of his supernatural speed, his dash was short and much slower than before, a drawback of the extensive abuse of augmentation and the injuries he received. The magician moved aside, she kicked the lower part of Fajal's leg. The man did not notice a broken spike piece behind Mana, he was tripped over and falling right at it head first.</p><p>A tight grip on the man's belt stopped him. Mana leaned back to maintain some counterbalance as she lacked the strength needed to immediately stop him in his tracks but her kick slowed him down enough to make her job significantly easier and Fajal's eye stopped a millimeter to the spike's tip.</p><p>"A mistake." He uttered flicking the belt out of his jumpsuit with a flick at his belt buckle, the man then grabbed the belt and pulled Mana together with it towards himself planting a firm blow at her abdomen sending Mana down.</p><p>Mana never expected her opponents to have mercy on her or to somehow feel grateful towards her just because she saved their lives. That much she told Tanshu the very first day of training. She didn't feel regret or anything resembling it for a moment while she fell. Mana couldn't move, the punch completely drove all oxygen from her body and she needed it to fuel her muscles to pick her body up. She was just like a fish out of water, pathetic and gasping for air on the ground. Blood was spilling from somewhere internally. A couple of more blows like that would've knocked Mana out, a couple of more from there on would've killed her outright.</p><p>Mana knew that Fajal was going to pick her body off the ground and throw it at the spikes she saved him from, those bent and broken tips were duller and much smaller, death on them would take much longer as she'd be impaled sideways and not from upside down where the gravity aided her lethal impalement. Mana didn't care how she'd die, she just wanted that Bult would live. Judging from the set Sun and how excited the Sheikh's face was he shouldn't have been in much danger... Good. Sheikh was smart enough to leave it only at Mana's death, Bult could've potentially made too much money and had too many amazing fights for him.</p><p>Fajal leaned up to pick Mana's body up, he lifted her off the ground as effortlessly as a strongman lifted a phone book, each moment she was being lifted around and flung by someone that strong Mana felt like she could've ended up torn in half just like the phone book in the comparison eventually ended up. However as Fajal swung her body backward. Winding it up for the throw onto the bent spikes, his body froze. His muscles started cramping and twitching weirdly, blood vessels shot out from the tips of his muscles and started wriggling like worms burrowed under the man's skin.</p><p>Mana slipped from his grasp – it was the abuse of budojutsu augmentation catching up to him. When used by an unskilled or an untrained user chakra augmentation could've damaged the user's own body – torn it apart, forever taken the user's own ability to mold chakra like it did to Mana. Budojutsu was primitive and unrefined in its very nature. Fajal was doomed the moment he used it and it was just a matter of time. Mana kicked as hard as she could at the back of Fajal's knees sending the man crashing flat on his back before jumping up into the air and delivering a "Spear Kick" into each of his kneecaps. Fajal was no longer in any fighting shape.</p><p>"Who else wants some!?" Mana yelled out into the air, her body was at its limit. She expected Sheikh to send the next man out but the man just stood up and slowly, so very slowly began clapping. The audience shortly followed failing to believe what they just saw with their eyes. A teenager, a young woman no less, just plowed through several Damij's crew members and actually performed well in a Descent Gauntlet. She defied the rules and expectations and beat all of her opponents without killing them.</p><p>"That'll be enough, young woman, you have earned your right to face Damij the day after tomorrow in a warm-up match. You have fought long at hard for your chance to be humiliated, please enjoy it..." The Sheikh declared, despite somewhat spiteful words his face wore a very rich and genuine smile, just as the man finished speaking and sat back down into his pompous throne of cushions of silk and suede the women around him wrapped around the man like eels around their prey.</p><p>Bult pressed his hand against Mana's shoulder. "You have given me a chance to fight and die another day, I'm not sure if you comprehend what this means for a warrior but..."</p><p>"You're right, I don't, but saving your life is the greatest victory I could've achieved. Now all I need to do is..." She began talking but Bult pressed his finger to her lips.</p><p>"Don't talk about Damij, you first need to recover, you're beaten and broken, tired and hungry without a doubt. First see how well you can recover, how much training you can do before facing him. If you see that you're not ready when the time comes..." The man started his advice but Mana let her face slip out from his soft grasp that attempted to silence her and make her listen.</p><p>"No. There is no "if". I may have saved you but I intend to make sure that people don't die needlessly in this place or else it'd all be pointless, for that to happen I need to give the Sheikh a battle like the one that changed this place, to begin with, Damij is the most suitable man for such a fight..." Mana declared as the platform opened to their tower the two looked up and wondered just how they were supposed to get up there as the platform extended at the arena's initial level and not where it crumbled down to.</p><p>Suddenly with the sound of shifting gears, the spikes disappeared underground and, finally, a pathway was made to an open door where guards awaited for Mana and Bult. The whole way back to the cell that was supposed to be taken away from them and given to Damij's crew the magician felt respect and fear coming out from the guards. So Bult was right... In this place, only strength matter and the only reason for the immense degree of sexism was because of pre-conceived notions that women could not be what this place needed them to be.</p><p>"Is this how warriors feel like having punched their way to success?" Mana asked with a rather silent and whimpering voice as pain almost tore her down alone, even without the amount of walking needed to be done. Not surprisingly, the guards did not hit her or try to silence her – she was now one of them, one of the fighters of the arena and she was treated with some respect, at least as much as the male competitors.</p><p>"Yeah, a good feeling, isn't it?" Bult smiled revealing a mouth of halfway missing teeth.</p><p>"No. The only thing I am proud of today is having saved your life, the way how I went on to do it I am not overly fond of but I simply couldn't find another at the moment..." Mana sadly exclaimed pressing her blood covered hand against her chest as it was pressed by both kinds of pain – internal and external.</p><p>"Violence would not exist as a concept if on rare occasions it wouldn't be the only available answer... That is what I believe as a fighter," Bult said settling down. His injuries were far worse than Mana's but he appeared to be able to take them much better as well, such was the tremendous difference in body bulk and strength, as well as endurance.</p><p>"Maybe... Maybe one day I'll find another way" Mana uttered weakly as the door to their cell screeched open.</p>
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<a name="section0163"><h2>163. I Must Win</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Shit, you're heating up!" Bult growled after checking Mana's forehead in the morning. This whole night after her fight the magician felt like some underdeveloped amphibian stuck in a puddle of sludge and drying in the Sun. Her own body was heating up and betraying her, she kept kicking around and writhing in her lackluster bench that most fighters called a bed. She threw blood up a couple of times and the veteran fighter tried to get some attention from the guards who only promised to send someone with some healthcare skill in the morning. if Mana survived that long. She has taken quite the beating...</p><p>"You can't possibly fight Damij like this," Bult sat down on his bench after Mana stopped grunting in pain and rolling on the bench, every time the pain intensified the man held her pressed down to the bench until she threw everything up and the pain stopped, only to come back later. The man sat by her side the whole night, checking that she didn't choke on her own vomit or fall off the bench. Her innards must've already been crushed enough, at least some of her bones must've been broken and another shock could've just killed her outright.</p><p>When the medical staff came they only did some brief tests, checked the blunt trauma all over Mana's body, examined its color and tasted her blood. They did some really weird looking tests but they claimed that there was no time to do accurate analyses, had she not delivered such a wonderful fight night last evening she'd have not even deserved as much courtesy as she got now. Apparently, the Sheikh was somewhat interested in Mana's condition and was adamant that the best people checked her injuries. Even the big man was looking forward to Mana's fight which placed unimaginable pressure on her to get better.</p><p>"Well... A couple of more hours and she'd have died, we can treat this but she won't be in a condition to fight for weeks." One of the medical staff declared placing their hands on Mana and beginning the Mystic Palm treatment. The other one pulled out a strange blob of purplish goo and stuffed it down Mana's throat, the girl could feel the goo blowing up inside of her, it was a similar feeling to having a sanguine pill of Eiju's stuffed down her mouth so it must've served a similar purpose. Some strange liquid that helped her body heal.</p><p>"That's good, she's done some killer fights yesterday, I'm sure Sheikh won't mind waiting a bit." Bult sighed but Mana shook her head. Her body felt weird, eyes were heavy and her skin was drowning in sweat, she wasn't sure if it was because of the desert heat or the burning up fever she was having. Whenever she moved any of her arms the bones wriggled and cracked letting out some pretty disgusting noises but the medical staff assured it was harmless.</p><p>"We've given you all the medicine we have, it is a medical concoction invented by the great doctor Avemari himself four hundred years ago. The man basically jumpstarted the medical art in the Land of Wind. It has healed much worse injuries than this. Now it's just a matter of how fast your metabolism will absorb it for, for ninja it'd take hours, you might take a bit longer," the doctors kept calming the two down.</p><p>"I'm not much of a martial artist, it'll probably take too long. I need to be up for tomorrow's fight." Mana complained.</p><p>"Yeah, you're kind of a puny little thing. That's why fighting Damij is out of the question." Bult replied looking Mana straight in the eyes. Initially, he was completely sure that Mana's condition would deter her from taking the man on but after a couple of strange remarks, his calm demeanor was beginning to fade.</p><p>"No. I need to fight. Every day I spend getting better people get hurt and die, fighters taken here by force and those who came here mistaking this place for what it truly is. I have no right to lay here until I feel comfortable to fight, that's not how this world works. You don't get to wait before you're comfortable to take challenges on." Mana replied pushing Bult away and sitting back up. The doctors didn't appear to object it too much but one of them warned the ex-kunoichi to try and refrain from walking or standing up for too long.</p><p>"It's not your challenge, you challenged yourself with this! Throwing your life away will change nothing. Maybe you can beat Damij, maybe you can jump around and flail like you did with Fajal, maybe you can survive longer than seven minutes against him – something no one has ever done. One thing that's for certain – you can't fight him like this. Even when you're good and ready it's just a big "maybe" that you can beat him." Bult started getting annoyed, he jumped off his bench and started flailing his arms as he spoke which was never a good sign. His fighter's metabolism was starting to kick in, his swellings had already changed color, it'd probably take a couple more days for those to heal completely.</p><p>"So you will fight then?" A low pitched and a little screechy voice reached the ears of the two as a slim and beaten up figure walked into the cell – it must've been the time when all the fighters were free to watch the fights and no one checked where one went or what they did so Myrwa had snuck into Mana's cell.</p><p>"Myrwa! If you're here to hurt her I'll..." Bult jumped up waving his boulder-sized fists but Mana gently pressed her hot hand against his chilly dark skin making the giant back down.</p><p>"Myrwa-san... I'll understand if you hate me and wish me harm for what happened to your brother, I have sworn to myself that I'd never take a life and trust me – I have not yet broken that word. I just wish you to know that I am sorry for what happened and..." Mana tried to speak but her fever and pain all over her body made her words slurry and come out a bit dizzy.</p><p>"Will someone let me talk for once?" Myrwa laughed out scratching the back of his head, only when the man had moved his slim arm from his abdomen had Mana noticed a bandaged and strangely brother-less body of the slim fighter. So that accident in the arena made the man have that dead weight removed? Had the man finally moved past his brother being born dead? As much as Mana regretted all the pain she had to inflict to this man, both physical and psychological, having to break down to him what everyone must've known but no one bothered to tell, she felt glad that the man had a new chapter flipped for him.</p><p>"They've removed that stump from my body, normally I'd have to stay confined to bed but they said that my blood is something weird. They said that someone in my family must've been from some clan in Otogakure and that my brother was a bloodline of some sort. Apparently, since my father was a clansman and my mother was not that tainted the bloodline and that's why my brother was born dead. The healers also said that my brother's blood and his cells themselves were poisonous and so my own blood had to possess regenerative properties to counteract my brother's own poison." Myrwa grinned, closing his eyes and twisting his mouth. While the girl had to hand it to the man that he did appear quite creepy from a bystander's point of view, reminding more of a ghoulish wraith than a man, Myrwa's smile was quite pleasant to see. Mana only wished that she had enough strength to smile.</p><p>"I have seen a similar condition, you may need to take poison for the rest of your life because a regenerative ability is something that carries dangers all by itself. It'll form..." Mana tried to warn Myrwa, remembering Eiju's sickness and the Quack's desire to be cured of having to take poison for the rest of his life but it appeared that Myrwa was shining with glee from it.</p><p>"Yes, I know. It'll form growths, miniature incomplete organisms inside my body that'll grow and damage me. They said there's another way – my cancerous cells could be used as a treatment for injured fighters. They said that my blood could be used as a metabolism booster of sorts. They said I can be a doctor if I so pleased. I have risen above the slums, just like I always dreamed..." Myrwa teared up wiping his giant teary eyes with his comically puny arm and his long fingers fit to play an instrument or steal.</p><p>"I am glad that you've found another purpose. I hope you'll live a good rest of your life, having moved past the death of your brother and all this mindless fighting." Mana still desperately tried to smile but she couldn't. She was just too weak, her body hurt too much. Every time she tried the pain made her expression more whiny than happy.</p><p>"A weird thing, closure... I used to keep having hope, hope that my brother is alive, hope that I could use that budo-mumbo-jumbo to bring him back even if he wasn't... Hope that we could rise above being good for nothing losers together. It's ironic that all my dreams came true when the hope died, I suppose sometimes hope is the only thing keeping you from moving on and growing. I've learned from this that only when hope dies can you truly move on and deal with something terrible." Myrwa kept weeping like a child. Despite something revolting appearance of the man, especially so when his facial muscles shifted and bent during his weeping, Mana felt really happy for the man.</p><p>"You're not out of the woods yet... Think the Sheikh is just gonna let you go? Think again..." Bult angrily intercepted, finally settling back down after realizing that Myrwa came to thank Mana and not finish her off.</p><p>"That's why I came here, Mana... I wanted to see if you were actually sticking to your word. If you still fostered that foolish hope to change everything, to give us the choice to leave this place. I want to travel the world and heal people using my clan's legacy, I want my brother's death to mean something. I want to be the man with the golden blood. I want you to set me free, Mana!" Myrwa shouted out kneeling before Mana and falling to the ground. Myrwa rubbed his face into the messy stone floor of the cell, almost like he tried to force his face through it and onto the lower floors.</p><p>"Hey, what are you..." Bult jumped off his seat but then Myrwa lifted his head, all the rubbing he did to the ground made his forehead gush red with blood.</p><p>"I am not asking you to die for us, I am willing to give you as much of my blood as I have to. I can accelerate your metabolism, Mana, I can make you be in fighting condition by tomorrow, will you do it!?" Myrwa shouted out loudly declaring his offer. Mana looked to the outside of her cell and saw the doctors being lead back by a feeble old man.</p><p>Finally, Mana's emotions broke through, her eyes teared up and she had to dig her slobbering nose into the middle section of her own arm. "Yeah! I'll do it! I always meant to do it and I'd have done it even if I wasn't able to walk there on my own!" Mana cried out.</p><p>"Mana!" Bult shouted out, "That's dangerously arrogant of you! No one was able to beat Damij or stand up to his crew in a long time, you're really strong, much stronger than anyone gave you credit for but... Please!"</p><p>Mana took off her torn up and messy shirt and extended her arm for the medical ninja, with the other hand she pulled Bult's beaten and swollen head to hers and pressed it against her forehead.</p><p>"I will fight him! I will win back the arena you want to fight in, the best fighting arena in the world where you can fight to your heart's extent until the day you die tragically in your bed of old age. I will explain to Sheikh that forced fighting only leads to needless death and harm and that only fighters who fight honoring the art can deliver that godly fight he wants." Mana explained, letting Bult's head go.</p><p>"It is dangerous to do this, kiddie, I imagined you'd have ended up facing Damij one day, you've got the same hungry eyes as the Goddess of Battle had. However, I imagined I'd have the time to train you." The old man who lead in the doctors shook his head and scratched his long and messy beard. It was the same man who told Mana the story of the legendary woman who once completed the Gauntlet, even before Damij did. Finally, Mana could place a face on that voice.</p><p>The man was a short but very wide shouldered one. He looked like he could've been a prominent martial artist but his age got to him after long years. His face was covered in thick looking skin and strange scratches. Those must've been the stigma that lifelong fighting left the old man.</p><p>"It'll be fine," Mana replied laying back down as the doctors prepared to make some treatment from Myrwa's blood. Naturally, they couldn't have just spilled his blood into her body, they needed to extract the right cells from it and make medicine which Mana's body wouldn't have rejected. They had no time to play around with blood types so they needed to make the medicine which would've taken some time.</p><p>"I'm not much of a fighter so training me wouldn't have worked, took me whole weeks to learn just what I know now," the girl grinned with a guilty look.</p><p>"True, your fighting style reeks of disrespect towards martial arts, designed to win and not fight, defeat and not clash. Still, if anyone can repeat the feats of the Goddess of Battle it's you. As much as it disgusts me to aid someone like you, you're the last hope this place has to become a sanctuary for martial arts like it used to be." The old man giggled, despite talking a lot of rather mean things that were a bit offensive to Kouta's and Meiko's fighting style, he appeared to look at Mana with joyful eyes, almost like a grandpa would've looked at his grandkids.</p><p>The doctors took at least half an hour more to create the medicine and inject it, Mana didn't feel much different, the cells of Myrwa didn't feel like Mystical Palm treatment or any other regenerative measure she'd taken up to that moment. It felt like an absolute nothing. On the contrary to the weirdly unimpressive feeling of the medicine, it appeared to really have worked. The old man continued to sit around the cell, kneeling by Mana's bed and waiting for her to recover, desperate to have at least one or two hours to train her before tomorrow's fight. Despite Mana's recovery, her fever moving away, her sweating ceasing to as much as it possibly could have in the middle of a desert and her internal bleeding marks fading to just slightly darker spots on her body, by the time she recovered the old man was lead back to his own cell by the guards.</p><p>"You shouldn't fight. Even the old optimist thinks so, take some time, let the man train you. Win a bunch of fights and earn the right to face Damij in a one on one fight the right way." Bult was adamant to make Mana change her mind about fighting Damij but the magician was equally as determined to fulfill her dreams about this place.</p><p>"If I did that the Sheikh would pit us against each other in a fight to the death, not a warm-up match. A fight to the death cannot be epic, it cannot be that godly fight which the Sheikh wants. Both of us would just be wishing to survive, furthermore, the Sheikh's joy of battle would be diminished by my refusal to kill Damij once I beat him. It would not work. I need this. This is right." Mana replied with a hopeful and soft voice. She appreciated her cellmate's worries for her well-being and her life, she really did. The man was beaten and crippled by this Damij and how to him the champion appeared like some sort of sky towering wall of stone and fire.</p><p>"You're just like I was when I was young. You never consider the possibility that you can lose. You keep saying "I'll win", "When I win"... What if you lose, what if you're nowhere close to Damij's level? What if he breaks your spirit and destroys the momentum and love that the public already feels for you, how long do you think it'll take to get it back? How many innocent fighters will die then, just because you rushed recklessly. Should've at least let the old man train you..." Bult rubbed his aching battered face, probably still remembering the beating he himself received from Damij that crippled him.</p><p>"I've lost so many times in my life, got beaten so much and refused to fight enough times to never lose the dice roll ever again. If I lose – I'll die, that's how I'm used to thinking and that thought deserves no further consideration. I'm willing to die for my dream but honestly focusing on how to win justly is hard enough for me to bother thinking about how to die honorably. If I die, I'll die, that's that, that'll be the end of the last daughter of the Wandering Ninja, if I win I'll move one step up the ladder..." Mana's feeble voice reached Bult, both cellmates were on their sides only showing their backs to one another because each one was worried about all the different things about tomorrow.</p><p>"I mean... No need to dramatize things, it's just a warm-up fight tomorrow, killing during warm-ups is frowned upon and Damij won't wish to lose face." Bult replied with a little more cheerful tone, maybe he wished to cheer the magician up a bit, maybe he wished to let her know that this may have just been one of those trials that made her grow where victory was impossible.</p><p>"No. I must win and I must do it tomorrow," Mana firmly cut it down.</p><p>The two didn't exchange another word after that until the next morning, the morning of the big fight.</p>
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<a name="section0164"><h2>164. Seven Minutes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, how're you feeling?" Bult asked Mana next morning as the girl seemed to be more silent than usual the whole time since she woke up. As usual, the guards announced the fights after the breakfast and lined the crew up, despite taking part in the very first fight and Bult not fighting at all, the two ended up at the front of the row.</p><p>"It doesn't matter how I'm feeling," Mana replied, she was afraid and worried, despite the fight not being one that only death ended, a lot still depended on her performance. She needed to not only win but also do so in a manner that'd change the Sheikh's attitude towards martial arts. She needed to give the man the fight he had not seen for many years.</p><p>One like the kind that changed it all. Mana hoped that Damij would be helpful in that but she wasn't quite sure. The man was apparently the strongest fighter around so if he couldn't be the second part of the greatest battle this arena had ever seen no one could and that possibility greatly scared Mana. Having an impossible goal set in her mind did not worry the magician nearly as much as not having one at all. If this failed she'd know no other way to change the Sun Disc arena back to its glory days.</p><p>"Look, if you lose... Well, nobody will blame you for anything. Everyone knows you're really strong but nobody depends on you, we've all seen too much of this place to put all of our hopes on you" Bult tried to calm Mana down, he wasn't really successful but it wasn't because of the fact that his words weren't the best suited for that goal, more so due to the fact that Mana tried to hide her fear, to begin with. This was her test, her chance to be a hero without the ability to mold chakra, chance to be the kind of hero she always wanted to be. Heroes of legends didn't feel fear, they weren't afraid before their big battles, or so legends made everyone believe.</p><p>"I don't care about that, I'm depending on myself being able to do this. I will win. I still have another mission I need to complete so I can't take too long here" Mana said looking forward into the darkness of the waiting area. Not too long after the area sunk into the darkness Mana could hear loud voices from all the way inside the arena. She couldn't exactly make out what was being said, not for the lack of trying, all she could hear was a faint voice of the announcer and deafening cheers from the public. Finally, the light seeped into the waiting area as the gate rumbled open and the bridging platform extended to her end. Mana took a small step forward onto the platform as it closed in to the ring of the arena. The magician took a brief moment to look down. There were no longer spikes to fall down on, just grass.</p><p>"I have a feeling that this warm-up fight will set an unfair high for the other matches to overcome, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer yelled out energetically pointing at Mana who finally gathered the courage to look at the man called Damij.</p><p>He was a tall individual, well developed and trained, his body was muscular, edging out to the limit where he may have appeared too muscular to move fast but not just yet. His physical condition bordered perfection, his build suggested enough physical strength to compare even to the strongest arena's fighters but he also looked fit enough to move fast. His stance didn't appear anything special – the man just stood with his arms lowered and his chest buffed up front and open, his legs split shoulder-wide.</p><p>The man wore some strange head attire, Mana had seen some people wear it in Sunagakure – it was a cloth garment covering the man's head and held down with a golden ring. He also possessed rich facial hair, just like Fajal and his cold facial expression suggested some experience in the military discipline. The man wore a long white coat on top of his black tank top and white rather baggy pants held pressed to his abdomen by a large rubber sash so red that the color almost hurt to look at.</p><p>Upon setting her foot onto the arena Mana stretched out a bit, jumping on her left and right feet just so her legs got accustomed to the pressure of quickly having to keep all of her body weight and transfer it to the other foot just as swiftly. Something told Mana that Damij would give her absolutely no time to breathe easy. Mana took a brief glance at the Sheikh's balcony, not much appeared to have changed except the women appeared to be more passive as the Sheikh was all over the balcony edge, the man was hyped about the fight. Even the Sheikh expected to see something interesting, maybe that'd help Mana in the end?</p><p>"Begin!" the announcer screamed out gesturing for the two to go at each other but for great public disappointment, the fight didn't immediately explode out of control. Damij continued to stand there looking at Mana while the magician dashed to the edge of the arena to give her maximum time to react to his attacks. The ex-kunoichi expected Damij to be faster than Fajal, stronger as well which meant that she'd need all the time and advantages she could get.</p><p>"Well? Won't you attack? I'm giving you seven minutes before I finish the fight..." Damij asked looking curiously at Mana while the public roared up, throwing their headgears up into the air before remembering they'll need them once the Sun reached its peak so they quickly caught those at their way down. Damij's seven minutes gimmick appeared to be a beloved one in this arena.</p><p>"Darn it, if he's going to be passive about it this fight won't change anything. I need this fight to be the best that the Sheikh has seen!" Mana thought to herself angrily, she was usually a patient girl but now her goal pushed her forward, forced her to be less cautious than she'd have usually been. Mana rushed forward with a jumping kick which Damij effortlessly avoided by leaning back. Mana quickly repurposed her force into a downwards ax kick but Damij moved sideways just as easily. His move economy was just as impressive as that of the other fighters. That being said, the move economy of Fajal was so good that Damij's only matched it. There was no possible way for it to be even better.</p><p>Mana continued to attack Damij with a flurry combination of kicks, switching her balance foot often so that the martial artist couldn't counter by targeting it. Damij avoided each and every kick with such ease and grace that it appeared like he had entire seconds to spare when in fact Mana's strikes peaked the speed that a human was capable of. The girl grunted, she noticed it immediately – the secret that made Damij the most powerful martial artist in the Sun Disc arena. Damij wasn't necessarily that much more masterful, stronger or faster than Fajal or the second strongest member of his crew, whoever they were. Damij's budojutsu enhancements were so weak, so faint that they allowed him to cross the superhuman limits by a small margin without tiring him like Fajal's monstrous power boost did. Damij won through control, not sheer power and speed.</p><p>Damij's foot flashed below, the man swept his leg faster than a blink – a feat of the perfect economy not only of movement but budojutsu as well. Mana felt her balance being taken away as the man's hand made the air whistle around his thrust arm and rustle his long sleeves. Instantly, the girl felt a tight grip on her throat, her body being lifted up effortlessly. That wasn't as impressive as it'd normally had been – Mana was quite a lightweight and yet... That perfect economy of Damij's slightly visible power boost made all the difference in the world. Fajal was faster and stronger than Damij but the latter's perfect economy of both physical movement and his budojutsu augmentation made Damij a challenge even for genin ninja while Fajal would've landed a couple of blows and winded out. Mana was out of her league.</p><p>The girl tried to smack the man's wrists, slip her finger thrusts in between his soft spots and pressure points that'd cause the man pain and irritation forcing him to let go of her neck but he kept on holding her, snuffing all the air she had. Mana couldn't believe she'd be taken out this easily... If this was a one on one fight she'd have died like this! She had no tricks in her sleeves – her ninja tools were taken away and her limbs didn't listen to her. As her bodily temperature rose, sweat started breaking out the girl felt a light breeze – her body was being thrown sideways. Damij wished neither to kill her nor to end the fight before his seven minutes clocked out.</p><p>"Sloppy, you're not even a martial artist, how did you beat Fajal and Almash exactly?" the man spoke. It wasn't cockiness as such snarky comments would've been coming from Fajal's mouth – the man had a genuine point. Mana tried to attack him using her self-taught taijutsu style of kicking which to a martial arts master would've appeared childish and primitive. Her ace was her combination style of redirection and dodging. If she just employed that she could've matched Damij, Mana knew that but... That wouldn't have been the fight Sheikh wanted!</p><p>The magician grunted, she rushed forward with the textbook Academy taijutsu moves, she was at the very least as skilled at them as a common genin would've been. Finally, Damij noticed a slightly elevated challenge as Mana heard him breathe erratically dodging these blows just for a brief moment. However, he once again dodged each and every attack. It was like he was a perfect evasion machine, Mana was now shown how her opponents felt when fighting her one on one.</p><p>The girl screamed as the man's kick flashed tapping her lightly in her chin before his palm strike sent her stumbling backward. Damij then leaped spinning his legs like a buzz saw hitting the back of Mana's head and pounding her body into the rocky floor. The magician heard something in her crack, she felt the taste of blood and stone in her mouth, her eyes were watering – she was failing her objective, she was being humiliated and by then the public knew just how this fight would end. Another seven minutes of punishment before Damij ended his opponent. In the end, the strange girl that rode into Agbarah on the back of a camel and showed these amazing moves no one had ever seen before was nothing special, she fell just like everyone else...</p><p>"No!" Mana screamed in her mind as her body started boiling, three and a half minutes had passed, she still had half of that time to end it before Damij was fighting her seriously. She had faced superior opponents in the past and it never stopped her, adrenaline forced Mana to jump on her feet and bounce right off the arena, the girl saw the cracked floor tiles and couldn't even begin to imagine how much damage her body had actually taken from these blows, these mad whirlwind kicks would've busted through stone and left dents in steel but Mana's adrenaline kept her body moving, shock kept pain from being fully registered just yet.</p><p>Mana tried to attack Damij but then dashed backward herself – this man was as skilled and powerful as a genin ninja that focused on taijutsu and trained their body on the technical side of martial arts. He discovered a new form of chakra augmentation – budojutsu. One that Mana had never seen before. He was a prodigy of taijutsu whom she could never match in a fair one on one fight so it was the time she stopped trying. The magician took a couple of deep breaths before taking the defensive stance that Meiko and Kouta's training helped her devise. This combination of styles allowed her to evade attacks from both Shimo and Kouta at the same time. While those two were holding back from chakra augmentation even without it they'd have trumped Damij in skill together. Mana felt confident that she could evade Damij's perfect movements.</p><p>"What is this?" the martial artist asked her as he slowly started walking up to her.</p><p>"My true fighting style, the one that beat Fajal-san, Almash-san and the others..." Mana replied.</p><p>Damij cracked a grin, he punched a couple of times using his palm – just like Mana did. It only made sense that the man fought similarly to her, after all, he was a Sunagakure Ninja Academy dropout if Bult's tale was to be believed. Mana avoided his blows just as effortlessly as he avoided hers previously. The man raised an eyebrow and started relentlessly attacking her with a string of spinning kicks, he delivered them from various angles, as he was jumping, flipping and spinning in the air yet he was unable to land them now that Mana switched to the defensive.</p><p>The man performed a couple of lightning-fast backflips and took a straight fighting stance again.</p><p>"Impressive..." He noted "People refer to the human peak of speed and power as 100%, I suppose you could call my current state 120% and yet I don't quite tire myself because my increase is so minuscule and irrelevant. My subordinates love to multiply their power at least twenty and more times but I advise them not to go beyond 2200% increase. It appears none of my budojutsu augmentations can touch you if you don't want them to... I mean if Fajal's 2200% couldn't, how could my measly 120% ever hope to compare?" Damij complemented Mana's evasive style.</p><p>"My friends taught it to me so that I was able to fend for myself and didn't drag them down..." Mana replied briefly, she noticed that Damij was stalling for time. He knew by now that he'd have been unable to beat her using just the level of power he had now and he wasn't willing to show the audience that he didn't have things under complete control. Sadly the pain of being beaten and thrown around like a ragdoll was slowly beginning to catch up to Mana finally as adrenaline could only help her for so long to fend off so much pain.</p><p>"And that is all that it is... Defense. A style to help you to survive, just something to keep you from getting hit" Damij smiled.</p><p>Normally he'd have been right but the style of redirection that Meiko taught Mana was still up the magician's sleeve, while the evasive style was purely defensive Mana still had the option of creating her own openings using redirection and beat her opponents, even those of far superior skill. Still, Mana wished to use that style either when she was pressed against a wall or when Damij's seven minutes of playing around ended. If she managed to keep fighting after the seven minutes ended she'd be able to entertain the audience by showing that there was someone able to fully challenge Damij even at his best.</p><p>Damij quickly charged at Mana, his body blurred as he once again briefly augmented his abilities just barely above the human limit and dashed to Mana trying to strike her down. She didn't have much time, less than a minute left to seven minutes. The magician leaned back to avoid Damij's palm strike, moved the rest of her lower body back to avoid his flip kicks and barrage of offensive acrobatic kicks. She had to do it, she couldn't just keep on dodging forever. Mana thrust her own palms and knees to work, opening Damij's body for secured blows.</p><p>Mana opened her own offense but Damij evaded it, he evaded her artificial openings! Now he knew of Mana's ability to redirect, to create openings and exploit them. Brief dark aura started emanating around Damij – his augmentation was increasing. Mana found her hands caught in Damij's grasp, her eyes opened wide in surprise, "Ten, nine..." she counted down seconds until Damij's seven minutes would clock out and he'd supposedly beat her.</p><p>"I see... So you can redirect to create openings even from the perfect styles... That being said, such strategy works only on humans of peak human strength and speed. The moment you redirect you are no longer defending and evading. You still switch and jump around from offensive to defensive styles and you lack harmony between them. You can only defend yourself, you won't lay a finger on me..." Damij explained as Mana desperately tried to kick the man as her hands were firmly locked down in his iron grasp. Damij's feet matched Mana's, not only blocking her kicks but kicking her in the gut and her knees as well, sending the girl on her knees. Damij lifted Mana by her hands as her pain-ridden beaten body weighed down.</p><p>Mana didn't even try to resist. She knew that Damij was right, she could only defend herself in infinite loops of evasion but she could never tag Damij. Eventually, she'd tire out or Damij would but she had to use her full one hundred percent to evade his superhumanly fast strikes and he only had to warm himself up to throw them, a body capable of two thousand percent augmentation tired little when it fought using a bit over a hundred. She'd have timed out first, most likely... Mana knew it was all over, she gave up. Damij's crushing headbutt made everything go black. Her seven minutes were up...</p><hr/><p>For the first time in a while pain of light seeping into Mana's eyes didn't cause headaches that made her wish she was dead. Mostly because it was the middle of the night that Mana woke up, she was laying on the bench with a bucket laying beside her and Bult passed out by his bench. Mana smelled something very disgusting inside that bucket, the magician tried to sit back up but she couldn't, her head was too dizzy. Bult must've kept himself awake the whole time tending to Mana's knocked out body, watching that the magician didn't stop breathing all of a sudden or didn't choke on her vomit. This must've been quite a nasty concussion...</p><p>Mana checked her forehead feeling a cold and damp cloth dripping on it. It must've been something to help her concussion but... What exactly would she be returning to? She lost. Hopelessly and unconditionally. Damij had the full control the entire time, he dictated the terms, he named seven minutes and once the last second ticked Mana was knocked out. Maybe she could've resisted for a bit longer, just long enough to defy him his seven-minute satisfaction but... What was the point? Damij was right, she wasn't a martial artist. All she had was the ability to run away, evade blows and survive. That wasn't a skill worthy of an arena champion or the legendary hero that'd beat the Ascension Gauntlet and save the arena once again.</p><p>Mana took the damp cloth off of her forehead and flipped onto the other side as her shoulder was completely numb and hurt a little already. Crystal tears started running down Mana's cheeks, she was so arrogant thinking she could've won. She needed to listen to Bult, to the old man, to everyone telling her to wait and do it right. This silly arrogant rush to save everyone every time would've ended her life if this wasn't a warm-up match. Why was she so adamant to rush it, the save the arena as fast as possible? The girl sighed and tried to get some sleep. At this point she wasn't sure to what exactly she'd be waking up to, she must've disappointed everyone that secretly believed her and started having faith in her once she beat one opponent after another, each stronger than the other.</p><p>She raised everyone's hopes up just to let them all down...</p>
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<a name="section0165"><h2>165. Road To Ascension</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning was met with silence. Neither Bult nor any of the other contestants spoke to Mana at all. Granted, that may have been due to the magician's lack of trying since she just assumed that she once again squandered all of the respect and rights she had earned previously after losing. Wasn't that how this place worked? People had to fight and win to get the treatment that any human being deserved... Everyone just continued to stare at Mana uncomfortably and all the talking ceased immediately when she left the cell and walked around the hall during breakfast and the announcements of that day's fights.</p><p>From what Mana gathered there was a huge influx of new recruits. A small-time settlement was destroyed recently, not too far away from Agbarah, the work of the desert raiders who lately were becoming more and more aggressive as they gathered under the wing of their new leader, granted, Mana wasn't able to get any other clues about Fennec and his ambitions being involved. She thought it was very likely that it may have been a statement, maybe even a possibility that the cursed rogue was looking for the Konohagakure team that crushed the outpost of his subordinates.</p><p>Finally, when the fights were announced and everyone rushed out to peek at the fights through the small observation spots they could put themselves into, Mana, not feeling like looking at violence she failed to stop from happening decided to just return to her cell. The girl's feet dragged along the rough rocky ground so hard that she even tripped once and her sandals got full of sand. She lifelessly fell onto her bench and looked at Bult who was also laying and looking at the wall. Why would a veteran warrior withhold the pleasure of seeing some good fights?</p><p>"You know, I really expected this hatred treatment from everyone else but... I just thought you'd be different" Mana said with a dreadful combination of sadness and some scorn behind her voice. Perhaps she wasn't entirely just to suspect her cellmate of losing belief in her, for no longer looking at her like she was a human being but Mana was just too frustrated and crushed by her loss to deal with all of that bull properly.</p><p>Bult flipped over and looked at the magician, "No one's angry at you, we've just seen you give up out there and... We thought your dream was crushed, none of us are willing to get in your way now that you're going through what all of us had already gone through," the man replied, trying to smile gently for the girl just to soften her beaten and squished heart.</p><p>"He didn't crush my dream, I didn't give up because I gave up on my dream, I gave up because further violence would've been pointless. It was a deadlock, I could've kept on dodging him forever but I'd have never been skilled and fast enough to respond, in the end, he was just a superior fighter." Mana replied scratching her aching abdomen. Her head still felt a little dizzy, that all too familiar sensation of colossal slimy slugs sliding up and down her throat trying to force vomit to burst through as if trying to pull a mean joke on Mana.</p><p>"So you're still going to do something? You still plan on fighting him again?" Bult wondered looking at his own busted up hands and the wounds he sustained during his own fight with Damij.</p><p>"Yeah, I just... Need to figure things out, I don't know how to go at him, what went wrong... All I know is that I was too focused on what needed to be done and not enough on how to do it." Mana replied as her eyes dimly closed down.</p><p>She was very far away from being on Damij's level. It was quite possibly impossible for her to ever reach such mastery of martial arts in her entire lifetime. Maybe there were more hacks she could've learned but she needed a master who knew them. Kouta knew perfect dodging techniques because he was a medical ninja, Meiko knew redirection techniques because she was a skilled sword user and knew some mysterious ways of punching someone in the face. All she could've learned here was pure martial arts and there was little to no point of doing it since Damij was better than anyone else there. Then there was still Mana's own quest of finding the Box of Ultimate Bliss and regaining her chakra manipulation.</p><p>"It's fine, you're still young, we were all young and ambitious once, we all only looked at things thinking what there was to gain from them and never considered failure as an option. We've always thought that if we failed the world would explode and we'd cease to exist so that the best option was to focus on the difficulties ahead, instead of what'd happen if we lost and how to deal with the consequences." Bult replied squirming on his wooden bench and sitting up. "Hey, old man! Are you here?!" the large man yelled out.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm listening," the old man replied, "You're willing to start training or what?" His high pitched elderly voice reached Mana's ears. "It's been too many years since the Goddess of Battle last rampaged in the Sun Disc arena, let's make the old bitch proud, shall we?" He tried to motivate Mana.</p><p>The magician laid there in total silence for a couple of minutes, considering all of the options. Her friends may have been wandering the Land of Wind desert looking for her. She needed to somehow let them know exactly where she was and that may have been possible by using some hawks from the Agbarmahal palace. Nothing in her mission directly contradicted her current new side objective, that being said she didn't have all the time in the world. This was just a temporary stop on her quest.</p><p>Mana's eyes shot open, "Let's go, old man, however I don't have much time. We will train for one week, then I shall challenge the Ascension Gauntlet. There are people I must inform and using the Agbarmahal's hawks or the Sheikh's merchants to find them and deliver my message would save me a lot of time. I will still save this place, just like I intended..."</p><p>"Mana..." Bult tried to object. He would've been right to do so, after all, Mana was making almost the same mistake she made the last time.</p><p>"Hmmmm, a week you say. You couldn't defeat Damij one on one before, to make a fighter out of you capable of fighting off three champions of the arena one after another, Damij included..." the old man mumbled to himself.</p><p>"We have about a week until any of us are likely to see battle, right now the Sheikh is checking his new recruits, filling the days with useless warm-up matches just to measure their strength, one or two kill matches at best per day. We've got time but not much of it, Mana can't afford to fight and get hurt again before taking on the Gauntlet..." Bult finally got onto Mana's side despite most likely thinking that she had the wrong idea. He was supporting her just because he knew that the magician needed him. That made Mana's small but often pouty lips twist in a way resembling a smile ever so slightly.</p><p>That very same day, after lunch and getting their daily water rations Mana and the old man got together in an old previously unused cell. It was slightly larger than all the others but all four new and temporary inhabitants were participating in a Battle Royale match. The ex-kunoichi tried her best not to think about how she failed those men and women, how she could've saved them from this suffering and potential death if only she fought harder, if only she... Could somehow have won. This was her curse, her suffering but it also made her stronger by giving her purpose and direction, it showed exactly what failure meant and it made her push harder to avoid future failure.</p><p>That being so, she was still below average and the old man bodied her every time she wasn't just dodging and redirecting his blows. She could dodge him and redirect him like everyone else perfectly, not skipping a single blow but the moment she switched styles the old man completely dominated her. It was like he didn't fight in the present, each and every move of his looked so slow and useless but he was working Mana like a chessboard to place her at a place and in a stance he needed her in to beat her down.</p><p>"You're terrible, it'll take ten thousand years to make a martial artist out of you..." The old man angrily declared after wiping sweat off his face and sitting down. Technically, he was superior than Damij and Fajal combined in pure technique, he must've been a martial artist of such skill that it pushed the maximum amount of martial art skill imaginable by the farthest stretches. It was like thinking a pebble was the largest concentration of rocks and then seeing a meteor in action. However, the old man was slow. He was also battle worn breaking down in bleeding sessions in mid combat and also he got tired almost instantly, after one or two combinations of strikes.</p><p>"Just like I thought..." Mana replied as the two left the cell, she looked at two stretchers with a bloody cloth covering a cadaver of unclear origin, most likely someone's remains from the Battle Royale, one she could've prevented. Needless deaths everywhere she looked and she should've stopped them all... And yet, Mana knew no way of how she could've helped these people: the only way would've been to win but to win she had to have had her chakra which meant having to let the perfume tycoon get gutted by Hisako back then... No person could've been blamed for any of this but... Mana somehow found herself responsible for everything, as a person who placed responsibility to change the world upon their shoulders should.</p><p>"These moves..." The old man grumped out looking at the gruesome sight of dead men and women being carried through the rotten and smelly cells that reeked of rodent poop, blood and vomit. "How and where did you learn them?" He asked, probably referring to Mana's improvised style of dodging and redirecting, the combination of two styles taught to her by Meiko and Kouta.</p><p>"My friends, ninja taught me those, I needed something to replace my lack of fighting ability after I lost my chakra manipulation." Mana replied looking down and thinking about where her friends may have been now. She could only hope that they were alive and well.</p><p>"I thought I saw some ninja taijutsu in there... As a non-ninja I know nothing of those moves but they appear designed to kill, you use them to dodge. There is something that could give you the power to fight Damij, Fajal and all of his crew all at once breaking each of them like a parrot's beak breaks nuts. That'll need some... Questionable means to be taken." The man ominously cut down.</p><p>"You say that these styles are designed to kill, what do you mean?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Well, I see potential in them, they are incomplete. What you show is a paper with a girl of exquisite beauty drawn on it but the face and the bosom are not yet finished and remain blank, you get what I'm saying?" The old man hinted giggling into his fist, no doubt imagining something dirty.</p><p>"I'm not sure I do..." Mana squinted at him, it was a strange feeling having to squint at someone downwards since the old man was very crooked and so quite shorter than Mana.</p><p>"All ninja moves are built to kill and yet yours lack that ability. Taijutsu is an art of murder using one's own body, if you use it differently your style is incomplete. Your moves are just 75% complete and the 25% that remain are a very naughty detail – killing blows. Your martial art could be a new brand of martial art completely unseen on this planet, you basically invented a new combat style but it is incomplete yet, your moves show capacity for another move very often suggesting that your friends purposefully took something out of them, knowing you'd never kill." The man explained.</p><p>Mana had gained a great deal of hope previously but now her face sunk down again.</p><p>"I apologize but I cannot complete the style, I have sworn to never kill and I'd rather die than take a life." She exclaimed almost like a mantra.</p><p>"And what about the lives of others? If you do not do what you dream of doing people will keep on piling under bloody cloths and will get carried away in masses, good, peaceful people that were just mere settlers before raiders raided their settlements, sending them to this war zone to fight for food. Will you still not take lives then?" The old man angrily growled at her.</p><p>"I will find another way... You have given me a great idea, to include offensive moves into my incomplete defensive martial art. Perhaps I can perfect it in this next week but I shall understand if..." Mana began another speech before she was cut short.</p><p>"Shut up! I shall guide you until the end of your path, granted it shall be a short and painful path but I shall see to it that you walk it until your feet bleed. Counterattacks. That is your answer. One of your styles focuses on redirection, the other on evasion, they are each purely defensive styles but the first one opens your opponent up for counterattacks. Show me your taijutsu style and I shall use my experience and expertise to help you devise a perfect counterattack style to include into your combination. You shall avoid every attack perfectly and respond with equal or greater pain than your opponent meant to cause – I find no more suitable style for a foolish pacifist such as yourself." The old man replied stroking his beard so hard that if it was a cat it'd have clawed the man's face off.</p><p>Mana jumped up in excitement. That sounded so perfect for the kind of fighter she meant to become. She'd never become as skilled at martial arts as a purely taijutsu focused ninja but she'd at least have means to fight them hand to hand, so far the only times she'd been beaten were times when she didn't use her evasive style or used it improperly. If she was taught offensive moves to incorporate in her defensive style in the form of counterattacks it'd be the perfect addition. She'd be the protector of peace and human life who'd respond to any violence with slightly larger force, perfectly avoiding a strike, redirecting it in a way that opened her enemy up for counters and delivering the strike. The perfect trinity!</p><p>"Well then, we shall start first thing tomorrow, I just need to know that you shall do nothing stupid until we complete the training. Also if at any point I see that it won't work I need to know that I can count on you to finish it properly." The old man responded seeing the girl's excitement.</p><p>"I can promise the first thing but I shall fight in the Gauntlet after one week, seven more days is more than I can afford to stay here, for seven days I can tolerate seeing pain and suffering of innocent people just because I am still unable to save them but not longer. I shall make everyone's pain and lives mean something, this time I'm sure of it." Mana replied.</p><p>The old man sarcastically sighed, "You may possess one-millionth of her talent and martial arts prowess but you certainly have all of Goddess' conviction. All of her worst traits and none of her good ones, what have I gotten myself into, I wonder?"</p><p>For the next seven days, the brutal countdown began. Every day Mana showed the old man the basic moves of ninja taijutsu that she was taught in the Academy, helped the man understand its basic principles and the man helped her adapt those moves into a perfect counterattack based mini-style which she eventually could combine with her present two. The man was adamant about Mana ditching the kicking style, he said that there was no longer any use in the magician keeping her opponents away from her because she could no longer use genjutsu and ninjutsu anyways. She should've just focused on the style she was trying to master completely.</p><p>An important part of the training was also Mana's attempts to make the style visually pleasing. The man expressed his disgust of Mana's cheap and abusive style and claimed that it felt like cheating at an honorable art of martial arts and the magician took it to heart because she wanted the Gauntlet to be the best fight that the Sheikh and the public had ever seen. She was an entertainer as a stage magician, she knew what pleased the public, cheap visual and auditory tricks to keep them entertained, strikes that may have looked visually pleasing but were less than stellar in their sheer force.</p><p>Mana wouldn't be losing potency, she'd still be overcoming any attack thrown by a human or weaker ninja. So many times the magician was told that she could never fight on an even level to a ninja who can use chakra augmentation, ninja that can move in blurs and destroy entire buildings and even mountains with their full power, not to mention chuunin and higher who could probably blow up the entire world if they didn't control their chakra transferring through punches alone. Studying with the old man made the magician doubt those claims for a second. She was getting good.</p><p>Was she good enough to beat all three champions of recent events? Possibly, maybe not. That much remained to be seen but she was growing in strength, speed and technical knowledge of the martial arts. She still despised an art based on violence but she fought not for the destruction of this arena but for the art meaning what it was always supposed to mean. Improving oneself through the art of fighting. Mana was not that kind of person but she saw the people to whom it was a way of life and she wanted that for them. She wanted the Sun Disc to mean what it once meant, not for it to be some rubble of stone with its inhabitants let to wander the cruel desert.</p><p>The entire time, those whole seven days of her training Mana also took a brief moment to talk to Bult every night, hear what he had to say about each and every champion of every event of the recent days. She was a girl who loved knowledge, certainly on the geeky side so the more preparation she could've gotten on the potential opponents she may have faced in the Gauntlet the better. Despite only being able to get a couple of clues, as few as she had gotten went a long way. Right before the seventh day dawned Mana knew deep inside that she was as ready as she could've possibly been. Tomorrow she'd once again waltz her way out into the arena and demand for the Ascension Gauntlet!</p>
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<a name="section0166"><h2>166. Of Dentons And Doomsdays</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A trio of colorful characters was making its way through the ending narrow layers of the desert that quickly transitioned into a urbaner and rather ancient surrounding. The change of scenery suggested both a social and a visual change, one left the endless desert of the Land of Wind only to enter a realm ruled by someone else entirely. Where the first one was ruled by the strongest, those who managed to take everything they needed, the second one was ruled by the Sheikh, who just for the sake of simplicity kept a very run in a similar manner ship.</p><p>One of these characters was a tall and slim man who almost looked like he was put together from bone and hay. His narrow arms and legs appeared almost skeletal and it would've been a surprise to anyone looking from aside as to how exactly could the man keep himself walking upright, his large round head was covered with a metallic mask that had two very clear details to it: a breathing and filtering apparatus that allowed the man to breathe without getting a mouthful of sand in the desert and large yellow goggles that covered half his face.</p><p>The goggles also had small little dots that scurried from one point of the yellow glass to another, telling the observer where exactly the wearer was focusing his attention. The man's hair looked nothing fancier than if someone slapped a handful of hay onto one's head and called it a hairdo, it appeared that only the man's large hat let the hair keep from scattering in the wind.</p><p>The other one wore a similar hat, with a hole at the back to let the man's long hair flow through it. The hat was meant to protect the man from the Sun and the hair needed no such protection. Differently from his friend the hat which the second traveler wore was a conical hat, whereas the first gentleman wore a more reminding of a cowboy hat accessory. Also setting the second man apart was a large poncho that the swordsman wore, probably where the man's nickname "the Poncho Assassin" came from.</p><p>It was a mystery how this Poncho Assassin didn't sweat to death under that unfitting piece of attire as compared to that of his teammates' which was more ragged, torn up and moderate. The slim friend of the Poncho assassin wore a torn up sleeveless white shirt meanwhile his bearded third friend wore something that resembled an almost Hawaiian shirt but it was soaked in too many different kinds of sauces, vomit and God knew what else to tell for sure.</p><p>The third one also wore a strange bandanna with all the different Sheikhate insignia. One may have assumed that such was to blend in wherever the man went but it would've more likely only pissed the locals off. After all, the man wore literally the signs of every Sheikhate and even the symbol of Sunagakure on his bandana. If it wasn't the headset that would've brought the bearded blonde trouble it would've been his terrible smell and an apparent lack of personal hygiene.</p><p>Either that or the man's evident slouch as well as his affinity to snag things before he blew them up, not because he was worried that the owners of these things would come after him, it was just that things tend to blow up around him and they couldn't have exactly been snagged or been of much use after an Earth-shattering explosion, could they?</p><p>"I think you overdid it with the explosion..." The slim google-man whom everyone called just Denton remarked trying to bring up some manner of small talk with his teammates.</p><p>"I mean like... Can we really overdo anything in this life of ours... Like... Is something we overdo just more of our goal or a causality of our failure, or is it the causality of like... Our inevitable demise that like... Follows all of us as a species and is ultimately like... The fruit of our hubris?" The bearded man slurred, still high on Hat'ash he had consumed recently.</p><p>"Can I kill him now?" Poncho Assassin grunted, "He traded your projectile knives for drugs, he'll blow the whole fucking Sheikhate up when he gets the chance... Not that he'll wait for one." The man warned.</p><p>Denton sighed.</p><p>"I mean like when you say like that... I feel like we all may have made a mistake collectively but... Like... It's really easy to point fingers and blame someone but like... You have to look at it more as a human problem, a problem of us all as a species and shit..." The bearded explosion expert continued to speak while his friends erratically rubbed their temples.</p><p>"It's true that you may think we don't need him anymore but we do. There are also other reasons why we cannot kill him." Denton announced with a certain degree of sadness to his voice.</p><p>"Awww, this place is like... Pretty beautiful... It's so natural... Like... Sandstone on clay and it all smells like it was put together on camel poop. I like this place." The bearded man continued to speak</p><p>"Why? I mean I get it. Before we needed him to scare the Konoha kids to get lost in the Agbarah so we could have an excuse to pick them off but... Then you said he wouldn't be worth the blades it'd take to cut his throat, what now? I mean he just sold all of your blades, you had to go out of your way to restock your supply just so he could fuel his substance problem, what's to stop him from selling all of us into slavery for more drugs?" Poncho desperately tried to talk his partner into killing their explosive expert and dump his body in the desert, similarly to how the explosive expert got rid of the body of their female colleague previously.</p><p>Denton clacked his tongue annoyingly and reached up to the man's upper body, he ripped the upper parts of the man's shirt apart revealing a chest of scars and burns on the terrorist's chest. Right on the upper right corner of the man's chest laid a round seal with a curse word tattooed on the man's shoulder and surrounded by smaller kanji symbols.</p><p>"I mean like... I feel a lot of pent up anger coming from your directions but... I mean... Like... I get it... I killed Iyasha because we got a bit excited and I blew our bunker up, I get it. But I feel like both of you suffer from... Hey... Why are you tearing my shirt apart? Like... Come on... Not cool, man..." The bearded gent kept on needlessly bantering with a completely dizzy manner as Denton pointed at the seal on his chest and explained.</p><p>"I used to know him, back from the war, the fifth Desert Blitz. He fought on the side of Bethiod Sheikhate and I did as well. He placed this seal on his chest to be set off once he died. When his heart stops beating it will go off. If anything we're lucky that he's high on drugs all the time and harmless, we're lucky that he became this bumbling fool that he is now because the Shaziya I used to know would've sealed enough explosive chakra to blow up the goddamn world when he died." Denton explained to Poncho who just sighed and turned away.</p><p>"Yo, yo, man... Come on! I moved like... So past all the violence and all the murdering... I left all the Shaziya name thing behind, man... Now I'm like... Shazster, man, I told you. Why you so disrespecting me, man?" Shazster the bearded terrorist pushed his old war friend aside and tried to button his shirt back before realizing it was ruined.</p><p>"It would be the worst possible time to remind you that the fucking dolt keeps trying to blow himself up every chance he gets..." Poncho Assassin slapped his own forehead wiping the sweat off of it and using his own hat to ventilate a little bit as the three got deeper and deeper into Agbarah Sheikhate.</p><p>"I feel like you guys are like... Really misinformed about what Hat'ash is, man." Shazster brought up after a moment of uncomfortable and awkward silence.</p><p>"Please tell me that this goddamn addict terrorist is not about to lecture us about drugs!?" Poncho complained</p><p>"Hat'ash ain't no drug, man. It's like... A cracker and shit, it doesn't get you addicted to it, it doesn't even feel that pleasant really. It's just smoky with brain killing goodness, man." Shazster started his tirade.</p><p>"Shaziya was really pissed about Bethiod losing the fifth Blitz, he didn't get on Hat'ash to escape or to relax, he actively tried to mess his own brain up because he didn't want to deal with the world around him anymore. He blamed everyone around him for losing the war, he thought everyone around him was incompetent and he kept grunting how he needed to blow everyone to shits. I think part of it was because everyone he ever knew was killed during that Blitz, he didn't know too many people, most of them were other soldiers. One day he just started poisoning himself." Denton explained.</p><p>Shazster continued to stare at the sky, "Have you ever, like, thought... What'd it be like to like... Really communicate with the vultures? I mean like... Really communicate with them? They're like one step closer than us to space dolphins"</p><p>"Please don't get him talking about the space dolphins." Denton pleaded when Poncho curiously looked at his mentally damaged colleague.</p><p>"Space... Dolphins?" Poncho couldn't keep himself from asking.</p><p>"Prepare to have your minds... Like... Blown, gentlemen!" Shazster waved his hands around frantically making Denton crouch slightly expecting his unstable friend to actually blow something up.</p><hr/><p>"So do you have the bag?" Denton asked a contact in the Sun Disc arena.</p><p>The trio had to meet a contact who was working for the Kazekage and who was partly responsible for intercepting the transportation of space-time that Shimo set off. Naturally, there was only one place in the entire Agbarah large enough and well known enough for the two groups to meet up. As Poncho looked around at what appeared to be a rather lazy day at the arena he noticed a couple of more suspiciously very careful and observant men mixed into the crowd. Working for the Kazekage as well, no doubt.</p><p>"Sure, there ya go. Did you run into any trouble?" The contact inquired before handing the bag.</p><p>"Yeah, we had to fight off the Konoha kids, they were really close to Agbarah and they were having two women on the team, that'd have gathered too much attention and we've discussed the possibility of killing the kids with the Kazekage if they trod too close to Agbarah," Denton explained.</p><p>"Is that guy OK? He looks really not well." The contact looked at Shazster who was apparently imitating some sort of a fight with his fingers as action figures.</p><p>"He is acting out an aerial battle of the Desert Blitz he took part in, he's our explosion expert," Denton replied.</p><p>"That ain't really cool though, the big man may want to bring someone in for those dead Konoha kids. Someone needs to take the fall, trust me, you don't want the fucking Chestnut Hanasaku ripping the chunk of the planet we're on and slinging it beyond the known Universe." The contact looked with rather intimidated and troubled eyes at the Shaphac members, he wasn't in a very pleasant position, having to ask those two to surrender someone and take the fall.</p><p>"That'll be no problem at all. You can have Shazster, he's ready to take the fall for the Shaphac." Denton explained gently leading his old friend to another seat right behind the contact.</p><p>Poncho suddenly looked at his colleague with newly enlightened eyes. The hat-wearing swordsman wondered if giving up his old war friend was always the intention or if Denton just came up with it now. Truth be told, Denton's plan was kind of a success in the short term – he used Shazster's explosions to blow the Konoha kids up. It was so clear that Shazster did it that there'd be no questions about it and the man was too crazy to talk even if he wanted to. Still, a terrorist organization trod dangerous grounds dealing with the village administration.</p><p>"Just please keep him contained in a solid B-Rank or higher chakra containment barrier, things do tend to blow up around him and he has an affinity for Hat'ash." Denton lowered his head before standing up and gesturing for Shazster to stay. Obediently his friend kept on sitting close to the Sunagakure contact.</p><p>"Isn't Hat'ash not at all addictive? Why would he have an affinity for it?" The contact wondered scratching his head before Denton signaled for Poncho to leave too.</p><p>"That, my friend, is the story of your life! Like... Settle down for a tale of space dolphins, action, love, and mystery." Shazster declared as he wrapped his arm around the contact's shoulders and sat down close to him like the two were old buddies meeting up.</p><p>"Oh, and Shaziya." Denton turned around alerting Shazster to turn around.</p><p>"I'm Shazster, man! Come on!" The bearded fool yelled out.</p><p>"If you blow up anything at all in Agbarah, I'll shoot you in the fucking face with a kunai after stuffing five boxes of Hat'ash in your rear end so that when the Earth blows up from your seal you'll have to sniff the mixture of that shit and your own shit for the entirety of your final moments," Denton said angrily walking away with his poncho wearing friend.</p><p>"Jeez, man... Like... You could've just said, "Hey, Shazster, don't blow anything up, how 'bout that?", what do you think I am, some sort of a maniac? I sense a lot of pent-up violence in you, friend, you need to like... Kick it way down, relax for once..." The blonde beardo yelled at his friend as he left and continued to converse with the Sunagakure contact while watching the fights. Granted that day was a slow one for the Sun Disc arena as nothing but settler refugees fought each other in various measuring skill contests that were meant for the Sheikh to determine their worth.</p><p>"Jeez, this place is like... So violent, man... I mean... Like... Can't they just talk it out and shit? Like... I don't know, have some sherbets, talk like rational human beings?" Shazster kept on sliding in strange pacifistic remarks in, once in a while, as if he wasn't just warned by his friend not to blow up everything around him.</p><p>"You gave up your old friend to be imprisoned..." Poncho said, more like a statement of the obvious than a question with any degree of disbelief or doubt.</p><p>"If Shaziya is safely imprisoned he won't blow up the world, he won't even blow up the village. The reason why I and the Kazekage had a temporary understanding is that both of us wish prosperity for the village and both of us need what the other has. Shaziya is safer behind a barrier, as powerful as they can muster, protecting the Earth from blowing up after that fool kills himself."</p><hr/><p>"So what now?" Poncho wondered looking at Denton. Their condition at this point as well as their standing wasn't really clear. They had far too much Audra on their hands to not consider all options. If they just handed all of the shards to the Kazekage nothing guaranteed that the man would follow his word but his own word. The thought that the word of a man who negotiated with an underground terrorist organization that wished endless wars upon his village to ensure peace was not worth too much deserved at least to be considered once.</p><p>"Now we give the shards to the big man and you go home to your wife, we follow the rumors and news and listen for possible assignments. Our original plan to incite war between Konoha and Suna failed but there'll be many more opportunities. For now, we just need to settle down and wait, maybe I'll pick off a local politician or two in the meanwhile with different village insignia marked kunai, maybe that'll go somewhere, start something." Denton replied.</p><p>"Nah, I don't feel like going home to Tali. She supports our cause but I feel it's only because it's what I do, she's a white sheet of paper colored by whatever I do because she wants to support me." Poncho lowered his head as the shadow from the hat he wore covered his face up completely.</p><p>"Talia is a good woman, what we do isn't nice, it isn't what common villagers would understand but it is for the best. We've warred with the other villages the entire time ever since the first large settlements were made, spears were flung ever the first rock held firmly on the stick, we cannot afford to let them in, the last time we failed to keep them away they sacked the village and left not a grain of sand on another, all of them rained down Hell from above collectively, not a single village is innocent of slaughter and destruction. War is simpler, war is safer, we cannot afford peace and diplomacy." Denton sunk into memories.</p><p>"Were you there? During the Second Great Ninja War? When Suna got sacked?" Poncho also appeared to feel very interested in Denton's sinking into details to that specific event.</p><p>"No. Me and Shaziya were elsewhere, serving the Sheikhate that paid more at the time, back then the tensions were high already, once the great fat hand of the Kazekage was unable to do anything all the Sheikhs went at each other's throats that very instant. It's ironic really, some fools claim that losing meant the longest period of peace that Sunagakure has ever known, I say it lead to the bloodiest and dirtiest conflict to ever see the great desert Sun." Denton replied sulking and remembering old times.</p><p>"You know... I could always kill one or more politicians abroad dressed in Sunagakure gear, there are plenty events coming: from one of the million rallies in the Kirigakure's archipelagos to the upcoming Chuunin Exam in Konoha." Poncho suggested.</p><p>"We will definitely strike at the Chuunin Exams, we've got six months to come up with a plan but if you feel like you want to kill someone do it the other way around – kill Sunagakure politicians dressed in the Kirigakure uniform," Denton suggested</p><p>"People in Sunagakure are aware of our methods, I've killed too many officials in other villages' names. It's old news," Poncho replied.</p><p>"Very true but people hate Kirigakure now more than ever. The recent rallies at the Archipelago suggest that it may be time for Kirigakure to regain their independent rule, to elect a new Mizukage and let go of the village representatives and administrators. That outrages far too many commoners, even if in the depths of their hearts they'll know it is us, their wish for a reason to hate Kirigakure will work to our favor".</p><p>A sky piercing black figure dived from above slamming into the ground where Denton and Poncho were treading. The clouds separated where this figure dived downwards with a roaring punch that shook the ground beneath everyone's feet even while the boy restrained most of his force.</p><p>"Kouta!" Shimo grunted, "You could've caused another tsunami on the other side of the world!" He yelled out before the sand cloud cleaned up and a messy young man dug from countless layers above him.</p><p>"Sorry," he giggled "I restrained myself as much as I could but I think Meiko dropped me from too high up. Don't worry, it shouldn't reach the other side of the world, probably just a small quake at best." The young man apologized as he dusted off his messy and torn up desert attire.</p><p>A bubble of rotating winds appeared from the cloud of sand where Denton and the Poncho Assassin hid from the devastating punch that Kouta threw. A bubble of pure Wind Release chakra that Poncho created using the drawing of his sword and the natural momentum from it.</p><p>"We'll be taking that bag of Audra from you," Shimo said placing his hand on the handle of his own sword.</p><p>"We'll wish to hear all that you know about the location of Mana-chan, our VIP who got lost after your attack," Kouta added.</p><p>"And we also paid you douchebags back for that explosion back then!" Meiko yelled out angrily as she descended from above using her green tracksuit as a parachute and feint chakra bursts coming from her boots as jets that softened her landing.</p><p>Shimo and Kouta looked at Meiko confused why the girl yelled it out so loud.</p><p>"Sorry, I think the wind up there did something to my ears, or maybe it was Kouta's punch though!?" She yelled out again before instantly forgetting what she was talking about and concentrating on the enemy ahead of her.</p>
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<a name="section0167"><h2>167. Standoff</h2></a>
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      <p>Poncho continued to stare the three kids that decided to butt in down. He was not a prideful individual but he wished to conclude his duel with the sword-wielding brat from before, the one that lead to him getting caught. It was not as much what followed the capture of Denton and Poncho Assassin that annoyed the swordsman, more that he was bested by someone of lesser skill. This brat had no right to beat him back then and yet he did for the sole reason of being lucky.</p>
      <p>"It appears that our combination attack didn't really kill the kids," Poncho grumbled out rather quietly, the exchange of words was meant to transpire with Denton after all.</p>
      <p>"Even better, now we get to kill them right on the edge of Agbarah instead of days walk from it. The Kazekage will have no quarrel with us" Denton smiled removing two fist-sized spheres from pouches on his large manly leather belt. His smile was known only to the man himself since the mask only slightly tipped forward, not something visible to a trio of children a decent distance away from the sharpshooter.</p>
      <p>Poncho and Shimo dashed at each other, both drew their swords on their way meanwhile Denton leaped back a great distance flinging the two spheres forward. The masked man expected the kids to attack him since he appeared to be a frailer and long-range focused fighter, however, the female ninja and the strong punching boy disappeared from his sight altogether, just a moment later Denton realized that his gut was warning him justly. The two reappeared right in front of Denton however at that moment it was too late – an ironic thing to consider having the flashing speed of the two younglings.</p>
      <p>The two spheres that Denton had thrown exploded, one of them emitted black gas in a wide range covering clouds, the other meanwhile burst with purplish smoke. Meiko and Kouta covered their faces, it appeared that Denton managed to outsmart them with these smokescreen bombs and leap away. Meiko felt a crushing grip grabbing her abdomen and then wind violently ripping her short hair as Kouta pulled her off of the smoke clouds jumping up and then away.</p>
      <p>"The second bomb was poisonous, he used the pitch black smoke of the first one to cover up the purple smoke of the second one, purple smoke means poison," the medical ninja explained to Meiko who just grinned and scratched the back of her head.</p>
      <p>"Wow, I totally forgot that, boy we're lucky to have you around," the blacksmith carelessly giggled acting as if she didn't just get pulled out from certain death.</p>
      <p>"These guys aren't toying around, they're the real deal... And now that masked bastard slipped away too," Kouta angrily grunted out turning back to check on Shimo who was clashing his sword with the other Shaphac assassin.</p>
      <p>The two clashed, again and again, moving in almost identical speed. They outraced the sound and sparks of their own sword clashes, spun around, flipped and clashed trying to catch each other off guard but none of them gave in. Finally, the two settled down in a struggle of strength as they rammed their swords against each other and tried to overpower the other with a forceful shove, even if Shimo was a teen he managed to hold his own against the rather slim Shaphac assassin in a struggle of strength.</p>
      <p>"Your skill has greatly improved since the last time..." The Poncho Assassin commended Shimo to which the Yuki only smiled cockily, Meiko and Kouta's bodies flashed in from two different sides in his aid, winding up their punches that were supposed to crush the Shaphac swordsman in between their two sides of assault, breaking the man's body completely.</p>
      <p>Suddenly Poncho let Shimo's force to push him back, he pulled his sword and sheathed it, unsheathing it again in thousandth of a second, the man drew the blade so fast that it released a wave of compressed air that knocked the two teammates backwards on their butts while the Shaphac swordsman took a couple of quick and subtle hops backwards gaining some distance over his three opponents.</p>
      <p>Meiko and Kouta jumped to their feet and prepared to sync up with Shimo once the Yuki decides to attack. The three were worried about Denton slipping away and getting a chance to hide from them, looking for an option to slip in a cheap shot, no doubt, however, if they could quickly team up on this swordsman and take him down all three of them could have devoted all of their attention to searching for Denton.</p>
      <p>"Let's go!" Shimo yelled out as all three teens rushed at the direction of the single opponent they saw in their way, the Yuki grabbed the hilt of his blade preparing to draw it right when he got into range. Kouta's skin once again shifted becoming wood-like in texture and multiple tube-like cannons opened up at the spots of the young man's shoulders, his thighs and larger ones on his elbows. Meiko leaped up into the air pressing her boots and activating seals that fired off brief pulses of chakra, forming small jets that fired her off into the air. The three were preparing a combination to finish off anyone foolish enough to stand in their way, one they had plenty of time to perfect.</p>
      <p>A silent metallic tap alerted Shimo, interrupting his rush, the boy's eyes quickly located the tool that caused the sound – a round, metallic sphere that landed close to Kouta.</p>
      <p>"Stop!" Shimo yelled but it was too late, the Juugo medical ninja dived on his knees, sliding onwards using the rough surface of his morphed skin and twisting around, the holes on his small tube-like chakra cannons lit up but didn't have enough time to go off before Denton's grenade interrupted the boy's offense. Kouta's jutsu was supposed to be a full circle covering barrage of chakra blasts however he didn't have enough time to set it off.</p>
      <p>The metallic grenade cracked releasing shocks of crackling lightning that covered a narrow field around Kouta. The young man yelled out as the electric shock passed through him and flipped him over, firing off a wild blast of chakra from Kouta's cannons that blew dangerously close to Meiko's face up in the air. Despite not being hit head on the girl wasn't ready for that sort of misfire, Shimo wasn't entirely sure of her condition but she was slowly falling out of the air, smoke slowly rising and curling around in black twisting curls from the girl's burning clothes.</p>
      <p>"Don't get your eyes off your enemy! Wind Style: Eighth Zephyr!" Poncho's voice made Shimo realize his mistake however by the time the Yuki realized he was being played it was too late. The poncho wearing swordsman moved faster than Shimo's eyes could perceive which should've been impossible, that meant that the man moved faster than lightning, Shimo could distinctly remember training by cutting at natural lightning bolts with his sensei, back during his wandering days. Such inhuman speed should've been impossible.</p>
      <p>Blood and pain interrupted any thoughts that Shimo could've thought at that moment, any strategies he may have considered and attributed to the poncho-wearing swordsman or his pal who was firing grenades in the far off corner of the battlefield. Meiko's body hit the ground with a deafening pound that left a small crater and lifted sand and dust into the air. Shimo's eyes whited out as eight different cuts opened up on his body sending the Yuki down.</p>
      <p>He was cut eight times and the assassin dashed right through him before Shimo could even react! These were not opponents they could've fought one on one. They needed coordinated and powerful responses directed at each of them. It must've been a singular drawing slash that hit him, the other cuts were just projectiles of Wind Release chakra synced up to the sword strike...</p>
      <p>Poncho Assassin sheathed his blade and turned his head halfway around checking Shimo and a small puddle of blood gathering beneath the boy's downed body, the assassin's face turned to the left and to the right, examining the shocked and grunting body of Kouta, the medical ninja of the team who was the most important.</p>
      <p>Without a doubt, the medical ninja was the target to aim for. Poncho's body disappeared from sight again. Imbued with pure Wind Release chakra the assassin dashed up to Kouta and slashed with a sword drawing slice aiming to cut the boy in half at his abdomen. The figure of the young teen split in two but it didn't remain that way, it poofed and instead of it appeared a sliced up large stone, one only a powerhouse like Kouta could've substituted with.</p>
      <p>"Denton!" Poncho yelled out, realizing that they've been played, they were being played this whole time!</p>
      <p>Kouta's figure appeared as it jumped to the air from underground the sand, blowing it aside as the boy leaped out from the hiding, his arms molded together into a singular cannon-like tube and several smaller tubes formed around the large one.</p>
      <p>"Juugo Hidden Technique: Chakra Cannon!" Kouta grunted out firing a singular focused beam of chakra into a random spot in the air, Poncho looked confused, it wasn't even flying in the general direction of his partner. If anything it was aimed at Agbarah Sheikhate. Was the young man's goal to blow up the entire settlement? The chakra blast probably had enough power to level a settlement, even a large one but why would the medical ninja want that? Poncho Assassin just couldn't wrap his head around it.</p>
      <p>Meiko's loud grunt alerted the swordsman who frantically looked at the painful growl of the young teen, the girl flung a piece of her own armor, a shoulder pad if Poncho's eyes did not lie. The shoulder pad that the blacksmith girl flung at the beam lit up with white and red beams of light, it appeared that the girl's intention was to fling it right at the concentrated chakra beam...</p>
      <p>"Reflective Barrier Seal!" Meiko chanted out her own technique that gave Pocho a general idea of what the three may have been scheming but by that time it was too late. The beam's tip hit the armor and struggled to incinerate it completely almost as if it was covered with chakra, but then again it was covered with the young blacksmith's seal. Meiko's seal redirected the beam in a full ninety degrees angle down right where Denton was situated.</p>
      <p>An overwhelming explosion covered the desert, loud enough to drown out Poncho's warnings and loud enough to make blood burst from his ears in relentless torrents, powerful enough to singe off most of his clothes and blow his hat off to Hell knew where. Poncho got thrown off his feet and sent flying backward despite not even standing close to the explosion. The reflective seal of the girl appeared to absorb a decent amount of the blast but Poncho knew that his friend was in trouble. Once the explosion settled down the swordsman rolled around on the sand writhing in pain before thrusting his trusting sword into the sand and pushing his body off the ground, using his weapon for support.</p>
      <p>It was all calculated, the three runts deliberately got hit by Denton's attack just so they could find out his approximate location, with a blast that could've leveled a settlement or a village they didn't need to be more precise than that but they needed to at least be somewhat on point to hit Denton with enough force to take him out immediately. Shimo smiled, he knew that their combination was successful, Meiko was really upset that she once again had to bump up and leave dents on her impressive handiwork. Kouta was huffing and panting pretty heavily, the hidden clan technique that he finally managed to pull off after long training drained him of a lot of his chakra so the team may not have wanted to rely on the medical ninja too much.</p>
      <p>"It was an impressive combination, team," Shimo smiled.</p>
      <p>Meiko looked too worn out by the fall and too bummed out for losing her shoulder pad to care. She also got one of her favorite green tracksuits incinerated, one of several that she lost on this mission. Kouta was slowly getting back on his feet, the situation called for one more combination attack because Shimo wouldn't be able to take his opponent out alone.</p>
      <p>Poncho slapped his hands together forming a hand seal and then placed his palms behind him, the swordsman leaped up and jumped onto a jet of Wind Release chakra, an artificial current that he formed. The man's clothes have also been singed, as well as his signature poncho and his hat. The man was now left bare-chested with burns all over his upper body, his wild hair flowed freely as the hat restrained and shaped them into a ponytail no longer. His sword was all that Poncho needed anyways...</p>
      <p>"Wind Step Jutsu!" Poncho growled out through pain, he felt that the explosion may have thrown him through a couple of deceitfully underground boulders as his body was dragged through the sand by the force of the blast. The swordsman closed his distance on Shimo near instantly slashing at the young man's chest, Shimo drew his blade swiping it to the side, attempting to counter Poncho's assault but it was a feint. Using the current of wind Poncho slid around Shimo and slashed his back. The wind riding swordsman continued to skate his wind current and slash the Yuki swordsman, again and again, Shimo could only slightly evade the slashes, also augment his body so that the Wind Release chakra imbued blade of Poncho's didn't cut him up to little pieces.</p>
      <p>Shimo grunted and threw up more and more blood as the shallow cuts accumulated. The Yuki tried more and more to respond but the unusual wind riding movements of his opponent's, also his superior speed, experience, and skill made the young ex-rogue unable to land a single slash. With an elbow strike, the Poncho wearing swordsman sent Shimo down on the sand. At that moment Shimo wondered if he was going to die, he almost waited for that finishing stab at him from his standing opponent but right before Poncho could skewer him a loud blast forced Shimo's eyes open.</p>
      <p>What greeted the young Yuki's eyes was a small contained blast from a spherical grenade similar to those Denton used, the blast hit Poncho right in the back and forced the man to stumble forward, desperately struggling to keep his body upright. Shimo glanced to the side seeing Meiko holding and making out with a large cannon that appeared to fire these round projectiles, she must've dragged her tired body to Denton's and picked his weapon up.</p>
      <p>Judging from blood, shooting from Poncho's mouth and the man's loud grunts that suggested great pain, ranging all the way to agony, Shimo knew that this was his chance. The boy rolled backward and pushed his body off the ground with his arms, throwing himself back on his feet. Shimo's wounds bled profusely but it didn't matter, his body was literally burning up and sweating from the immense desert heat and the damage it had sustained that day but it didn't matter. Nothing would've mattered if they all fell to this Shaphac assassin here and didn't find their friend.</p>
      <p>Shimo stood in a sword drawing stance and focused all of his chakra and concentrated on his opponent. Then the young man moved his hands closer to his chest, the man's hands flashed right through the hand seals he had to make within portions of a second. Faster even than Mana's used to be during the times when she could still use chakra. All the training he had with Mana, it was beneficial to both of them. That way at least one of the things that were Tanshu-sensei's last words would've come true.</p>
      <p>A powerful vortex of howling winds picked up, snow and small icicles inside of it. Shimo's immense concentration allowed him to create this freezing blizzard even in the middle of the desert heat. The secret was to insert more chakra into his ice than usual, the more chakra focused on it the less ice properties his Ice Release bloodline of his clan had.</p>
      <p>"Ice Style: Ice Wolf Rampage!" Shimo roared out leaping forward, a wolf shape formed behind Shimo, a pinnacle of shape manipulation that the young man managed to achieve. This time Poncho knew better than to clash his own technique against Shimo's, the assassin leaped up into the air, aiming to avoid the technique, he once again activated his "Wind Step" technique using it to rise far above the heights he'd have normally been able to jump to. Shimo knew that if his technique missed he'd be too tired to fight, none of them were in the fit condition to combat Poncho right now. Kouta's and Meiko's shapes blurred out as the two appeared right up and above Poncho, slamming the swordsman down with their hands together in a combination, right back down into Shimo's sword drawing technique.</p>
      <p>After the moment of truth, the Yuki knew that his opponent must've been dead. Slowly the young swordsman walked up to him and checked the pulse, then he looked up at Kouta and Meiko. The blacksmith once again set off the seals on her boots and caught Kouta in her arms to help the two land properly. Their combinations and teamwork allowed them to overcome two much more talented and experienced opponents that day.</p>
      <p>"Is he dead?" Meiko asked, Kouta didn't even need to know, more exactly, he already knew. Shimo closed his eyes and nodded, he took no pleasure in that death nor did he regret what happened. These men were dangerous, they also tried to intercept their Audra transportation and somehow succeeded. They tried to kill the four of them and separated Mana from the crew.</p>
      <p>"It's not good, that Denton guy is completely blown up, I don't think his total chakra level was all that, he didn't appear to augment his body," Kouta also confirmed the death of the other Shaphac terrorist.</p>
      <p>Meiko sighed "Mana wouldn't have liked that," she said but no one even honored her rhetorical observation with a response.</p>
      <p>"If we can find Mana-chan in the first place, I'd like to hear all about her discontent," Kouta looked disappointed as well. He then approached Shimo and looked at the Yuki's wounds.</p>
      <p>"Let's find a place to stay in that settlement further down the road, maybe someone saw Mana-chan there" the medical ninja suggested quickly bandaging the more immediate wounds while doing a half-assed job on the others only for them to be properly treated later. When they find a more appropriate place and time.</p>
      <p>"We kind of suck at interrogating," Meiko looked at the two corpses they leave behind disappointed.</p>
      <p>"Couldn't be helped, they were too strong to play around with. We were lucky all of our combinations worked out like they did." Shimo noted. The blacksmith girl and the medical ninja both helped the injured swordsman on their way to Agbarah which was only a half an hour walk down the road. Meiko leaned, picked up the Audra shard filled bag, and casually flipped it over her shoulder. Somehow that blasted thing followed them and brought them trouble everywhere they went...</p>
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<a name="section0168"><h2>168. 1 V 300</h2></a>
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    <p>The old man and Bult didn't leave Mana's side for a second the very next morning. The big day when Mana would take on the Ascension Gauntlet was here. Truth be told, the magician wasn't totally sure about if she was ready, one thing that the girl knew for sure was that she did all she could do during that last week. If that week didn't get her ready and able to take on the challenge, the time it'd take to get Mana ready wouldn't have been acceptable. It was, quite literally, do or die, despite Mana being under no particular pressure to fight that day.</p><p>"Who's fighting today?" Mana asked quickly devouring the greasy and disgusting camel stomach dish that the locals ate as an energizer. It smelled of digested grass and was quite greasy and sticky – just the kind of food Mana despised but the girl had not eaten for a while and she'd need all the energy she could've gotten.</p><p>"Another Battle Royale between those captives from the ruined settlement. A big one this time, I think the goal is to emulate a small battle. There'll be at least couple of hundreds of them out there," Bult informed Mana and the old man.</p><p>"How many people are permitted to win such battles?" Mana wondered just wanting to know.</p><p>"Well, it depends, if it's an everyone for themselves kind of brawl then only one, if it's a team bout, probably the last team standing but if they're equally inexperienced expect only a couple of people to be left standing. Good news is it'll take the whole day to finish that butchery, that's why the fighters love events like that. The Sheikh wants to filter the warriors from the chaff and he's almost done rotating all the settlers through the grinds of battle." The old man replied this time, he looked Mana in the eyes and, from his eyes, the girl knew that the old man realized what she'd say.</p><p>"Well then, I have no choice but to fight. It's either that or letting hundreds of people die," Mana closed her eyes and stomached down the putrid mess of meat that she had to stuff down her throat.</p><p>"Say, girlie... Ya think you could... You know... Maybe get your chakra back? That one time you said that during your trip you managed to use it once," the old man brought up. Maybe his idea wasn't that bad, maybe trying to reawaken Mana's lost ability to use chakra properly would've been a much more fruitful training regimen but truth be told Mana had not the slightest idea as to how to remove the mental blocks that her body placed on it.</p><p>"It's... It's too risky, I need surefire ways to win, not faith. Lately, I've been thinking that even my own body couldn't be trusted..." Mana's eyes squinted a little bit in sadness. "I mean there's nothing I wish more than to be able to use chakra, to be what I always was – a ninja magician, neither one is able to fully outweigh the other, I am both. Why would my own body keep a part of my own identity locked away like that?" the girl wondered out loud.</p><p>"Well... I've never seen any human move quite like you're able to right now. I'd say we've both made a fighting monster out of you. There's one last thing that troubles me though..." The old man also shared Mana's trend of thinking out loud.</p><p>Mana and Bult looked at the old man curiously to which he leaned forward and explained.</p><p>"The Sheikh is an amazing fighting ability expert. He's surveyed decades of amazing martial artists doing what they do, he may not have seen through your hacks before but after he sees you move now... There's no mistaking it, he'll see through it. He'll know that your moves are a style designed to win any gamble, a defensive style that is more of a cheat than a legit martial art," the old man revealed the root of his worries. Mana smiled.</p><p>"Well, in that case, I'll hold myself back, only reveal my abilities at the very last second and by the time I am outed it'll be too late" Mana replied carelessly.</p><p>Bult stuffed the rest of the camel stomach that he held in his hand.</p><p>"But didn't you say you wished to show the Sheikh the best fight of his life? If the final moments are you revealing you've cheated by breaking the laws of motion and honorable martial art traditions..." Bult raised a point that actually made Mana concerned. Loud booms and yells came from the side of the arena. The girl leaped up from the bench and rushed to the arena winking for the two fighters sitting at the breakfast table.</p><p>"I'll think of something..." She pushed the problem away to a more convenient moment, or at least she did so in their eyes, internally she was still feeling like she was being burned alive by those observations that the two of her only friends in this place made.</p><hr/><p>"Now, ladies and gentlemen! Prepare to witness a true gift from the Sheikh, the one, and only amazing fighting event, unlike anything you've seen before! Five hundred settlers entered the arena last weekend, men, women and children, all lost their homes to a desert raider rogue warlord. Now today, ladies and gentlemen, we shall relive that glorious battle that left these people homeless! See as all the three hundred remaining living settlers face off against twenty-five trained warriors of the arena, in a reenactment of the worst day in their lives!" The announcer was yelling from the top of his lungs, slobbering all over himself and his head was shaking so vibrantly from all of the shouting that his ruby earrings were shaking and jingling on his ears from the vibration and head shaking.</p><p>Three hundred people were let into the arena, rounded up around the center. Most of these men had already tasted battle, not many women and children survived the initial trial by blood and fire of the Sun Disc arena. At this point more than half of women and children that survived the disaster and were unfortunate enough to be tested in combat throughout the last week were dead. Most of the settlers were now ravaged and scarred settlers, not in any way experienced, ruined was a more fitting word. To someone, it'd have seemed a very uneven match up to round up about three hundred men, few surviving women and children and have them fight twenty-five people. To Mana it seemed like a slaughterfest, the Sheikh must've seen no worth in any of these men and the others as fighters so he wanted to get rid of them, slaughter them in front of the audience making a very good end of the weekend.</p><p>A black shadow lingered on the window of the waiting building, Mana leaped off of the window and dived right onto the platform transporting the fighters that were supposed to surround and slaughter the settlers. Every single fighter standing on that platform shook in their boots and stepped back, surprised by the appearance of Mana whom none of them saw coming.</p><p>Mana scratched her aching foot, the jump almost made her twist her leg, it definitely tested her abilities. Had she gotten injured now it may have been all over but luckily to the young genin it seemed she'd actually be able to fight after all. Finally, the platform closed in letting the twenty-five trained warriors and Mana gather around the settlers that clutched together grabbing hold of each other, children and women wept, some of them have killed some of their own last week so they couldn't have really been blamed.</p><p>"Young woman!" The announcer yelled, "You have no business here! Why did you appear here today?! Do you also wish to partake in this reenactment?! If so, then perhaps the mighty Sheikh shall grant you permission!?"</p><p>Mana glared angrily at the Sheikh's balcony up high, the man was on his feet and standing on the edge, good. He was already intrigued.</p><p>"There will be no reenactment, I wish to participate in the Ascension Gauntlet." Mana declared out loud. The public stood quietly. Usually, such brave declarations would've meant the death of the partaking one, for that reason no one took part in the Gauntlet. Some of them wished to see these lowly untrained people getting slaughtered and now they may be forced to see something that initially appeared much less refined.</p><p>"How dare you!? Interfere with yet another battle, will you!? What shall the Sheikh say!?" The announcer angrily yelled at Mana, the girl heard feet grinding against the stone and noticed the trained fighters trying to surround her, attributing her more and more to the cattle they were supposed to slay there that day with their bare hands.</p><p>"Whosoever kills this hatchling and tears her head off her shoulders with their bare hands shall be granted entry into the Agbarmahal. No one has the right to do as they please in this arena but the Sheikh, this girl clearly has a death wish" A feminine voice spoke from the Sheikh's quarters, a woman speaking for the Sheikh himself, maybe the old man had not the strength left in his lungs in his old age to yell loud enough to be heard?</p><p>The announcer roared and leaped on the announcer's platform that was moved further from the arena, Mana felt the crowd thinning and forming a circle around her. This was bad, she had to earn the right to even face the three champions of the previous events in a row, she'd be worn out even before the actual Gauntlet would take place...</p><p>As the announcer declared the beginning of this pitiful event a large crowd rushed at Mana, men mostly, women and children cowered behind the large crowd of men, both the trained arena fighters and the settlers, hoping that they'd do the dirty deed for them. It'd certainly be a dark and dirty deed, there were no spikes below the arena, only grass. Mana's head would have had to come off without any aid from external sources which wasn't that easy to do, not for a normal human anyways.</p><p>The ex-kunoichi took a breath or two, right before the storm of punches and kicks tried to hit her – slightly less than three hundred men and a couple of braver women and older children trying to kill her. Each of them pushed each other away, stepped over each other in a mad symphony of sadism and hatred, wish to kill someone else to survive themselves, not only survive – live in the Sheikh's palace in luxury and honor.</p><p>Not a single punch, kick, scratch or any other sort of harm landed on Mana. The girl's dodging and redirection, her nimbleness and acrobatics were so on point that she purposefully let the people trample each other, push each other down without laying a single finger on any of them. Within twenty minutes of doing nothing but dodging and gentle redirection, Mana emerged from a pile of beaten and broken bodies. All of them were breathing but powerless to go on.</p><p>The magician looked at the cowering twenty or so women and little children, then back at the Sheikh. The moment one of them tried anything funny she'd smell their sweat, she'd hear their footsteps. She'd already beaten all of them and it felt so easy. Almost like dancing in the grasslands in the Sun, just like she used to do as a little girl, except this time it wasn't the grass to caress her thighs and her knees gently, it was kicks, fists, and fingernails trying to claw the very flesh of her limbs, unsuccessfully, fortunately...</p><p>"If we're done here I'll follow up with my challenge then?" Mana shouted out, her voice was a little winded but with a little clever space management and control of the storm of people rushing at her, she managed to efficiently control this insane situation as good as possible. These trained martial artists didn't feel much different to her, truth be told the simple villager was much more difficult to read, the better the martial artist the easier they were for Mana to blow away.</p><p>"What guts, what nerve!" The announcer yelled out, the public was still absolutely silent, refusing to believe what they just didn't get the chance to see. All they saw was a messy stampede of fighters who barely even fit in the arena trying to trample and murder a little girl but only managing to tear up her already ragged shirt a bit. The mess of all the fists, feet and bodies was too confusing to follow, it was unlikely that any of them even saw how little Mana had to do to beat all of them, had she actually played with all of her cards she'd have beaten every single one of them much faster, maybe even in less than five minutes...</p><p>"Each one of them is alive, are you not worried that they'll attack you while you have your back turned?" The same feminine voice reached Mana from the Sheikh's quarters.</p><p>"They know already they stand no chance. There's no use in it. If you feel like getting me off the arena, please, by all means, send everyone out here and I'll beat everyone you throw at me but I will get my challenge and what you'll get in that case is a mangled roster and no one left to entertain your audience tomorrow. I have reached the level of fighting ability where quantity has little importance, you need a more skilled opponent, not more of them." Mana yelled out getting the public riled up. The audience was completely hyped and on the girl's side. Maybe it was her guts that entertained them, after all, no one previously interrupted an event like this and this young woman did it twice during her quite short stay in the arena.</p><p>The Sheikh's elderly figure appeared from behind the thin silk curtain together with a strangely similarly aged woman. Mana would've assumed that the man who had it all would've wished a younger and more attractive company, this woman appeared to be dressed more as a mercenary and looked a bit too frail to be an eye candy. Who could she have been? The Sheikh whispered something into the woman's ear and she spoke again, without a doubt it was the same voice that spoke for the Sheikh before.</p><p>"What do you wish from all of this?" The question reached Mana.</p><p>"Just to fight in the Ascension Gauntlet. If I win I get to leave and send a message with your hawks, hopefully, the tracking kind, do you have any Blood Hawks?" Mana explained adding a question at the end, her throat was getting a bit irritated from all the long-distance communication.</p><p>"The Sheikh has everything he wishes to have, Blood Hawks do live and breed in the desert so they have a place in the Sheikh's aviary. Do you realize that if you win the Ascension Gauntlet you can live in eternal glory for the rest of your days in the Agbarmahal?" The woman's voice inquired.</p><p>"I don't care about that, if I win I'll just send my message and be on my way, hopefully, my fights will also help Sheikh-sama make some realizations of his past mistakes as well..." Mana respectfully bowed when referring to the Sheikh. The old noble lifted his arm gesturing for the injured and crippled beaten fighters to be quickly moved off the arena. The platforms once again connected the arena with the living quarters as the guards and the medical staff, little that remained of them, did their best to vacate the arena.</p><p>"Very well, you have ruined my event, however, girl. Make sure that you make up for that ruined event," the Sheikh's own voice finally spoke directly to her. Mana nodded her head in a manner similar to bowing again.</p><p>"That is very much my intention," she replied.</p><p>For a moment the magician stood there, observing as the arena was being vacated and prepared for the Ascension Gauntlet. Finally when all the injured and those unwilling to fight were lead out of the arena and the place was prepared the announcer began the declaration.</p><p>"Ladies and gentlemen, in an unexpected turn of events... It appears that today we won't be seeing the glorious three hundred on twenty-five battle but instead an Ascension Gauntlet of this strange young woman who joined the roster just a week ago. Does this young woman know the real meaning of her actions? Does she know that in the Ascension Gauntlet it's all kill-or-be-killed? That remains to be seen! However right now our staff is quickly looking for champions of recent events for this brave soul to face, one thing is for sure – the third challenger will be Damij, the man who has soundly beaten this young woman in the past!"</p><p>After the man finished speaking the public just cheered. Mana closed her eyes and took a deep breath trying to calm down her bumping young heart. Her body was still stressed from the sudden need of evading three hundred people trying to kill her. Had she only used all that she could in that twenty-minute long brawl she'd have tired much less, perhaps the first fight would be a bit easier and provide her with a chance to get a breather during it? That much remained to be seen... All this cheering and noise. It reminded Mana of home, of the stage where she performed her magic tricks from, even that small cardboard box where she began her "career"...</p><p>"Finally!" The announcer joined the cheers himself as the platform extended to the other side of the arena. "You may cheer for this young woman but this next challenger is similarly a survivor of a Battle Royale, the last year's "Great Ninja World War Reenactment"! You shall be reminded that this lady did not get a single scratch on her after an all-out war where she had to play the dishonorable princess that started the war and everyone wished to kill. She was the Woman that Changed History – Apheiya!"</p><p>"A woman?" The magician opened her eyes in surprise to see her next challenger. The girl had never thought that this place would have another distinguished female warrior seeing how women had such a reputation for being useless in terms of warfare around this place. It'd be a great honor seeing this woman with such a strange title. Someone who defied all odds and when cast in the role that was supposed to be murdered horribly not only survived but beat all the enemies without a single scratch deserved such a name...</p><p>"The Woman that Changed History..." Mana mumbled to herself waiting for her next challenger to appear.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0169"><h2>169. Do As Agbarahns Do</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the platform extended and the slim yet tall figure stepped onto it to be brought onto the arena Mana continued to try and pick up any details about her next opponent. The only detail that stuck out like a sore thumb was the decision of this woman to extremely overdress. She wore a white simple desert cloak together with a black coat on top and a black headdress that appeared almost like a shroud, her face was also covered with a crimson red cloth making the woman appear even more mysterious than usual.</p><p>It may have from the first glance seemed very rude or not quite proper for a woman to dress scantily in these conditions but it was actually quite the other way around. During the day the heat would've made it unbearable to stay under these clothes, these suggestively dressed women in Sheikh's quarters made few if any sexual or implied sexual hints towards their master and they very well may have been just protecting from the desert heat with their lack of clothing covering them up. The entire time Sheikh's eyes were absorbed by the fighting and he appeared to have little to no interest in the female forms unless there was nothing else to see.</p><p>For that reason, the way in which this Apheiya, the Woman that Changed History, overdressed appeared odd to Mana and the magician tried to see what could've been made out of it. Was it some sort of suggestion towards personal insecurities? Was it somehow reflective of her personality, could it have been used to devise a more precise dodging style or maybe somehow helped her define a valid prediction of to how exactly this lady would fight? Apheiya stepped very gracefully and her head was held up high, almost like that of a noble.</p><p>"Apheiya, this young woman..." The announcer began his attempt to rile the champion up for this fight but the older woman lifted her hand up silencing the announcer with a single gesture.</p><p>"I know who this girl is, I've been observing her for a while," Apheiya spoke in a very deep Land of Wind accent to her speech. The Ninja World had only one universal language but different time periods and different locations placed different spins on that language and sometimes it was quite easy to determine where the person was from by their language alone, sometimes these accents and dialects were faked for various purposes, such tricks were handy for a ninja to learn.</p><p>Mana did not speak to the woman, while the magician had a great deal of respect towards any woman who managed to break through the prejudice and hatred that women inevitably received when arriving at Agbarah, that didn't in any way change the girl's goal. This woman was just a nimble and strong rooted tree that bloomed right in the magician's way to her goals, that tree needed to be stepped around or trimmed if needed.</p><p>The announcer appeared to be too unnerved to speak any more words so he just announced the beginning of the battle. Instantly the woman's body blurred, she moved at least fifty times faster than Mana thought was humanly possible. The woman's knee thrust towards Mana's lower abdomen, attempting to instantly incapacitate the young one, no doubt. Instead, it hit Mana's palm which also used the force of Apheiya's forceful knee strike to propel herself and flip over the woman.</p><p>Mana didn't even look behind herself, she did not speak.</p><p>"Heh, I must admit I expected you to get hit at least with this first strike, that's how it usually goes with you. I observed your battles, you never expect the burst of speed that martial artists are capable of. How can you respond to such inhuman speeds? Do you use budojutsu as well perhaps?" The woman inquired. Mana turned around partly, turning to the side to face both directions and keep herself able to defend from both frontal and back assaults.</p><p>"Not at the moment, I merely always expect the top speed I can respond to from everyone. I usually need a hint as to what kind of an attack is coming so I begin my response well before you even begin your attack, by the time you realize I am countering your attack you're too invested into your speedy attack to change it." Mana replied casually.</p><p>It was an advice given to her by the old man. There was always a limit to how much a human could perceive, part of that limit was how much they were expecting to see. Mana not only stretched those expectations to the max every time but she also cut the brief response time in half by using her opponent's speed against them by giving them less time to counter her response because of how fast they themselves went for her.</p><p>"I expected this to be an easy fight, I expected to give you a lesson to how far beyond yours our level is, just like Damij has done but... It appears I shall have to work for it a little." Apheiya's facial rag twisted suggesting that the woman may have been smiling under it. She removed the facial rag and the black shroud that covered her face and tossed them aside letting them land beyond the arena's bounds.</p><p>"Your attires are severely hindering your speed," Mana mumbled somewhat coldly, "They not only move in the wind alerting me of your location, even when my eyes cannot clearly perceive you but they also slow you down, it's like wearing a parachute on you".</p><p>Apheiya's body flashed black once more, she charged at Mana with long reaching kicks but the magician could've evaded them with her eyes closed. For a moment the girl was hesitant to counter but then she realized that she didn't care if Apheiya fought at her best or if the fight was in any way fair, Mana only cared that she beat this Gauntlet. With a swift pirouette and a backward kick, the magician sent her opponent face down onto the stone, gracefully giving it a couple more leaps to get some distance which would've given Mana more time to react.</p><p>"It appears I may need to surrender..." Apheiya stood up and dusted her clothes.</p><p>"Go ahead," Mana replied.</p><p>"Since I cannot remove my clothes, I must protect the honor of Wind Patriarch's granddaughter," Apheiya explained.</p><p>"You're the granddaughter of the Land of Wind's temple leader?" Mana wondered, a history lover inside of Mana wished to talk with the woman after the fight to find out a bit more about the religious culture of the Land of Wind but currently there was little time.</p><p>"Yes, I am in the middle of my pilgrimage, training here in the Sun Disc fighting arena to return once I become strong enough to escape its grasp. I must suffer true hardship to be accepted back in the temple," the woman explained.</p><p>Mana wanted to just let this female monk surrender but something inside of her wished to help Apheiya. After all, even if Mana saved this place and changed the Sheikh's mind about his lethal ways and using literal slaves for combat, Apheiya would still not change. She'd keep on fighting here wearing a mass of clothes on her, sweating out of her mind and getting heat strokes in the middle of a battle or being too slow to properly fight any of the higher tier martial artists. The woman's pilgrimage would literally never end.</p><p>"Would losing your honor in front of these people not count as "true hardship"? Being beaten by me as well as losing your honor, I've lost both battles and honor, often at the same time. There are few things that are more painful for one to lose than these two." Mana replied grinding through her teeth. The last thing she needed was to make this woman stronger but... The magician wished to help Apheiya with her pilgrimage, she also wanted deep inside of her heart for the woman to complete it within the reaches of this century.</p><p>"I am already twice faster than Fajal was when you fought him, are you not afraid of me once I remove my cloaks?" Apheiya asked curiously as her feeble feminine hand reached up to her collar and yanked hard enough to tear layers upon layers of cloth apart.</p><p>"I am not afraid of death, I just do whatever seems right at the time," Mana replied quickly, hating herself for not letting this woman surrender.</p><p>"Then you still have much room for growth, then again, you are still a child." Apheiya smiled friendly, almost like a mother would smile for a child.</p><p>Apheiya finally hatched from her cocoon of clothes and cloaks, appearing with a simple green dress that didn't appear much different from those simple clothes one could buy at a bazaar around the Land of Wind. The dress that Apheiya wore was torn at the end, leaving just four straps that didn't restrict the woman's legs. That suggested Mana that the Woman that Changed History must've favored kicks, that and how well defined Apheiya's legs were, they were as thick as the arms of a strong man.</p><p>Apheiya's body blinked in and out for a couple of seconds, she was just testing her new limits, the public roared in excitement and awe of the woman's rising speed and power just from the simple act of removing her clothes.</p><p>"Do not be surprised if you find yourself dead in a blink of an eye, girl, like this I could dash 20 000 meters in just a second, I feel light as a feather." Apheiya giggled with a blush. She was quite ashamed visibly of standing in front of an audience in only a dress but while the embarrassment was clear the woman also felt certain liberation first time in a while.</p><p>The woman's body blinked out, Mana leaped forward and for a brief moment, both of the two disappeared. The two just blinked in and out, in and out, however, neither was able to touch the other. The two were locked down in an eternal chain of Mana evading Apheiya's attack only to attempt a counter that was evaded and attempted to be countered only for Mana to start the chain all over again. In the end, neither landed a single blow.</p><p>"That's it... You are using budojutsu." Apheiya smiled after the two leaped away from each other laughing. Neither of them managed to even touch the other offensively.</p><p>"I pretty much have to..." Mana closed her eyes, "Your speed is inhuman, no human being could stand up to it or react to it, even when using my style of combat".</p><p>"So the old fart did teach it to you." Apheiya wondered with an observation more than a question.</p><p>"Actually, I sort of discovered what it was by myself. He probably doesn't even know I can do it. It's the physical portion of chakra. Chakra as a concept is divided into two parts: the spiritual and the physical. There are other conceptual energies in this world: the samurai use kenki which is essentially just another name for chakra, you martial artists appear to use what the old man calls "chi", but it's actually just the physical part of chakra we ninja use. It's a far cry from the real deal but the good thing is that it was always the spiritual part of me that blocked chakra, there appeared to be no problems in accessing the physical. I initially had my doubts about being able to use it but there were no problems really once I willed myself to it." The magician explained without as much as a huff.</p><p>Mana glanced briefly at the Sheikh's quarters, her ego was stricken with a great deal of pampering when she witnessed the excitement in the old man's face and how he leaned over the balcony and clapped like a little child. At the very least she wouldn't be executed specifically for disappointing him...</p><p>"You don't appear to be tired at all..." Apheiya observed with a sigh that was supposed to hide that she was a bit short of breath.</p><p>"Because I'm not fighting at the peak of my abilities, I can kick it up at least four times this much before getting winded." Mana shyly shrugged. Her chakra pool was always far beyond that of her peers because she specifically used to focus on that, it'd take days of fighting on end to tire her out when fighting at such an insignificant portion of her abilities.</p><p>"Hmph... I shall have to bring out my strongest moves in that case!" Apheiya declared as she flipped back landing on her arms. The woman's body burst with overflowing purplish shroud of the purely physical aspect of chakra as she pushed her body forward.</p><p>The woman then landed her feet firmly at the arena and kicked off of it destroying the arena and crumbling the whole thing down from the brief tap of her feet alone. Once Apheiya was at the peak of her jump, so far in the air that she couldn't even be seen from the ground with an intimidating battle cry she dove right at Mana. The debris around the woman was reduced into dusty stone powder in an instant right as the woman touched it or even passed within a short distance to it from the immense pressure of the chakra.</p><p>With a gentle foot tap to Apheiya's heel, the girl sent the woman tumbling down completely repurposing her technique. Instead of blowing up the whole out of bounds grassland the shockwave formed an abyssal fissure that rumbled to the other end of the arena and cracked the building into two. For a moment, Mana looked in horror as the building split but there appeared to be no people caught into it and the structure was cut in half beautifully as a cake, didn't even collapse, only left a couple of hundreds of fighters looking through the gap in awe.</p><p>The Woman that Changed History grunted and writhed around on the ground before rolling backward and flipping back on her feet. Her dress and her flawless ebony skin were dirtied and bruised, some could say battle-worn. Mana crossed her hands over her chest and smiled, such slow attacks were the easiest to counter, it didn't quite matter how powerful they were.</p><p>"It was dangerous girl, you completely made me lose my balance..." Apheiya sighed with a smile.</p><p>"True, for a moment I almost cursed myself, if anyone in those buildings was injured I'd have hated myself greatly," Mana nodded in agreement.</p><p>"You mentioned being a ninja briefly, ninja of average rank are easily able to destroy this Earth if they do not control their strength. It might be wise, for our world's sake, to not trip them like that," the woman stood and cracked her knuckles. She leaped forward blinking out again, Mana's body blinked out as well.</p><p>The two clashed their elbows to each other, each using budojutsu augmentation to strengthen their endurance so that their flesh did not explode into particles and their bones weren't ground into dust. Mana knew quite well how exhausting budojutsu augmentation was, she, however, stood the most chance of controlling that tension since she was quite a prodigy at chakra control, something thousand times less refined shouldn't have posed much of a problem.</p><p>Apheiya gracefully and swiftly flipped, Mana leaned back avoiding both heels of her opponent and then witnessed a barrage of backflip kicks as the woman flipped so fast that the air pressure behind her heels allowed her to use them for leverage and backflip again. Doing so in rapid succession it appeared like a string of endless backflip kicks that quickly disappeared into the heavens splitting the nearest clouds and dispersing them. Had Mana gotten caught in that, she'd have quite likely strained herself too much trying to survive it.</p><p>Something brief mumbled from way above where Apheiya had risen. Then a blindingly fast double foot stomp crash drove into the ground. Mana took a gentle leap back and then kicked forward with a hop, right into the woman's chest as her stomp opened up her upper body for counterattacks. The woman screamed in pain and slid a great distance backward slamming into the protective wall. Despite the fact that both women stood on the grass below neither one was disqualified because the Gauntlet's battles were supposed to end in death, usually at least.</p><p>From the smoke and dust of the collapsing protective wall Apheiya's body appeared in a diving front kick position, she moved faster than lightning itself yet Mana, still using her augmentations leaned sideways and jumped up to kick Apheiya right in the back. Yet another wall got busted to pieces once the woman crashed into it. With a torn dress and messy hair, the granddaughter of the Wind Temple Patriarch appeared from the rubble wearing a smile.</p><p>Mana shared that sentiment, "You are attacking without thought, just showing off random moves," the magician noted.</p><p>"That is true, you said that you were able to fight four times faster and stronger, meanwhile this is my limit. When we fight like this we can't touch each other as both of us are fast enough to evade entire armies trying to kill us but... I must say that you are better than me. I just wished to have my fun before giving up." Apheiya laughed, despite being tossed around by blows that'd decimate any man or woman and grind their bodies to dust she barely even appeared to be injured by it.</p><p>"I may have been lying..." Mana tried to help the woman she was beginning to respect more and more but the monk had none of it.</p><p>"If you had I'd have noticed. You're barely even wearing yourself out while I'm fighting my best. You weren't bluffing... I wish you the best of luck against the others." Apheiya sighed crossing her hands over her chest.</p><p>"Wait, wait, you can't surrender during a Gauntlet fight! Young woman, kill your opponent if you have the chance!" The announcer screamed out but Mana turned around.</p><p>"I have no such intention, she may surrender for all I care," the magician sighed out.</p><p>The announcer looked at the Sheikh who just nodded and waved his arms around frantically like a child who wished to move past the boring rituals and pleasantries to move on to the other fight.</p><p>The announcer looked back at the staff behind him. "Find another champion that wishes to fight this one".</p><p>"Sir, the young woman beat Apheiya by making her surrender, they decimated the arena and almost tore this whole complex apart, who in their right mind will..."?</p><p>The announcer slapped the two around before the door in the barely functional living quarters opened up and the platform extended from it attempting to connect with the non-existent arena in the center.</p><p>"Someone has agreed to fight her!" The announcer yelled out in awe, apparently to the great surprise of his very self. The public roared in excitement as they have expected that after such a battle the Gauntlet would've pretty much been handed to this strange magician girl that rode in on a camel saving a local merchant's life. This whole heroic gimmick she was going for appeared to resonate greatly with the public which also resonated with the Sheikh above who was scratching his long grey beard and taking more and more curious sips of whatever fruity smelling drink he was having.</p><p>"Appear before us, the champion who has answered the insolent challenge of this young woman! We call you forth!" the announcer screamed out slobbering all over himself and the two staff members he was talking to. Despite a rather disgusting manner of speaking the man was quite energetic and had the ability to speak louder than Mana has ever heard a man speak. He was charismatic if anything, at the very least.</p><p>One more step closer to Damij and to her goal...</p>
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<a name="section0170"><h2>170. The Hitman Contest</h2></a>
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    <p>A tall and average built man stepped onto the platform and slowly made his way down it, staring at Mana from above the entire time right before he approached the end of it. He was a man who may have been in his fifties or his sixties as despite his prime bodily condition his skin and face had quite a number of wrinkles. He had a playful pair of moustache pieces that extended from under his nose and reminded more of singular black whiskers of a large cat than facial hair of a man. The most distinguished feature of his was the long braid of his reaching well over his knees with a bell-shaped iron weight attached to it. Much of the braid was tied around the man's head so it must've extended to three times that range... What a peculiar look he had.</p><p>"Ummm... I shall apologize but... You are not a champion of any events, contestant Quatal. Please make your way back to the quarters," The announcer shamefully announced. Mana's head turned to the side curiously. She didn't expect to be hated by someone to such extent that they'd walk out to fight her out of their turn. This man had no right to face her so why could he have been there, standing and staring at her from above on the safety of that platform.</p><p>"I may not be a champion, therefore unqualified to fight in the Ascension Gauntlet but I was paid by one and sent to eliminate this girl. Damij thought it'd be fun if I faced her and took her out." The man proclaimed, his face barely twitched, no emotion or soul beyond what he said but he kept his stare firmly on Mana's own eyes, staring the girl down as if eyes could kill.</p><p>"Just because you were vouched by a champ..." The announcer began to talk but Mana turned to him.</p><p>"I've got no time to waste waiting for one of the champions to grow enough balls to fight me. What does he mean "paid by a champion"?" The magician asked.</p><p>"Quatal here is a "Hitman Contestant". He himself does not participate in events however he takes out fighters that other fighters tell him to take out and pay him with food to do so, he requests those matches and interrupts other fights to take those undesirables out. He is quite the gourmet so his services are very pricey," the announcer explained.</p><p>Mana looked at the man curiously, she had never thought that this place would have a sanitarian like this one working here. This man behaved perhaps most how a ninja would out of all the fighters.</p><p>"Why do you do that? Is it because you feel bad for the fighters? Because they can't fight their own battles so you defend the weak ones?" Mana wondered asking the braided man who just grinned with half his face cockily.</p><p>"No, the food in this place sucks. I was raised on only the finest delicacies so those that can afford to satisfy my appetite can have the freedom to use my services. If I am called out to fight by the Sheikh, rarely as that happens, I just quickly dispose of my enemy and build a reputation. Damij and his crew often feel too lazy to do their own killing so they give me food from the Agbarmahal in exchange for my dirty services." The man explained, his voice was strong but also flowed like some sort of a twisted lullaby. It was how a viper with throat cancer would've sounded like if given voice.</p><p>"In other words, you take material goods from the strong to bully the weak. Come down here, I'll take you down so I can fight Damij sooner. I'm growing more hateful towards that man with every passing second," the magician sighed and obeying her request Quatal leaped down.</p><p>"This is chaos!" The announcer yelled out, "Please, cease this nonsense immediately!" But his voice was drowned out by the crowd, the man looked at the Sheikh who was overly entranced by the cheers of the crowd and the hype for the upcoming battle as the previous fight had hypnotized the man. It has clearly been a while since the man had seen fights like that.</p><p>"Do not worry, no champion out there wishes to tarnish their reputation fighting this freaky youngster," Quatal mumbled, the man firmly cracked his neck to the sides letting his night-black hair with several white streaks bounce to the sides weighed down by the small block of iron at the end. It appeared to have a tip at the end but it couldn't have possibly worked as a weapon, it was too heavy and round to be a thrusting weapon and too light to be a bashing weapon. Maybe that was why the Sheikh loved letting the man use his braid?</p><p>"Very well then, begin!" The announcer relented announcing the beginning of the following fight.</p><p>Quatal's head rapidly twisted and bent forward, the weighted braid of his shot forward like an arrow attached to a chain. Mana caught the strange attack by catching the braid and pulled by the braid but it only made the weight slip off the hairy bonds, within a brief moment, a fraction of a fraction of a second Quatal's elbow strike forced Mana to take a lean back and hop playfully back. Quatal was fast, so far a bit slower than Apheiya but leaps and bounds faster than Fajal or any of Damij's crew Mana had seen. Maybe there was a reason why the infamous crew left all the dirty work for this man after all...</p><p>The braided hitman caught the falling weight with the tip of his foot and kicked it up into his own palm, his body moved so fast, so efficiently! It was just like the old man that trained her except much younger, this hitman wasted no movements, his pure skill surpassed even the greatest martial artists Mana had seen up to that moment.</p><p>Swiftly with just a couple of slips of the fingers, the man tied his braid back. He then smiled and dashed back a couple of meters.</p><p>"I must commend you, most I face die after this first attack," the man smiled.</p><p>Mana didn't honor the man with a reply. She had only seen a couple of his moves but she needed to quickly make a profile out of them. If she could get a couple more of his patterns she'd never be touched by this man unless she wanted him to touch her. The magician couldn't doubt the braided hitman's claim even if she wanted to, that braid flew and spun at her faster than a drill, it worked as a budojutsu technique by itself, naturally, hair was a very potent material that easily transferred chakra. One could've called it a conductor of chakra. A hit like that could pierce stone, steel, diamond even. Given its chakra enhanced nature, it'd probably drill right through any material, the flesh was on the bottom of that list. Mana was lucky to have caught and stopped it before it got to her. Arrogance may have killed her...</p><p>The man started furiously wriggling his head around, his hair started glowing with a faint greenish glow as the faster than lightning attacks tried to overwhelm Mana. They were too rapid, some of them were feints. The man clearly didn't want her catching any of his attacks again. With soft and much faster taps Mana simply slapped the dangerous jabs aside sending the braid drilling through the ground as potently as a diamond drill would pierce a sheet of paper. Had the braid been longer it could've really left some deep holes in the grassy out of bounds area.</p><p>Quickly Mana's body blurred, she tried to attack the man just as fast as she attacked Apheiya just to see where the man ranked. Her elbow sunk right into the man's face sending him floating into the air before his braid hit the ground and the man dragged his body back down from being sent flying. He lost his concentration, he expected Mana to just stand there dodging those attacks until one of them tagged her and until they wore her out. Too bad Mana had no time for those disadvantages. She needed to put up a decent show for the Sheikh but once she thinks she'd drawn everything out from this man she'd finish him off. The magician felt capable of doing so.</p><p>Quatal shook his head and wiped the blood from his nose and his lip. Mana was genuinely a little surprised by how little damage the blow actually did to the man, she dashed at him at considerable speed and transferred all of that force into his face with just her elbow, that force barely spread throughout his entire face and was completely focused and yet...</p><p>"I see there is no use trying to attack you like those ordinary fighters. You are anything but, you are an anomaly capable of causing trouble for us. A worthy opponent even," the man admitted lowering his head and slipping his purple sleeveless gi off of his shoulders.</p><p>"This man is able to compete with ninja, I never thought it was possible for anyone but ninja to fight on that level. It appears we have been lied to in the Academy." Mana wondered looking at this man and remembering the absolutely overwhelming power of Damij and the woman she faced before. All of the dominant martial artists were on genin ninja level, some of them surpassed that level even. It took Mana cheating at martial arts training and devising a hack style of fighting as well as mastering the physical imperfect control of chakra to even fight them on the same level. The world was insane and full of wonders... Just in such a world, a Box of Ultimate Bliss must've existed, Mana had no doubts about it.</p><p>The man leaped at Mana aiming an elbow strike at her face. His body disappeared, he quickly kicked his speed up to double of what he showed before as the feinted his elbow top strike into a low kick aimed at Mana's chest. It didn't matter if the man knew thousand or ten thousand martial art styles or if he had invented his own even... Mana leaned to the side to avoid the elbow strike but blocked the kick, sending her flying up from the sheer force of it. Quatal was quick to follow.</p><p>Leaping right after Mana, striking from left and right but the girl's upper side moved flawlessly dodging every blow. Then the man flipped around like a vertical buzz saw and tried using his braid to slice Mana in half in the air, his speed and power hopped up a bit more instantly, such unstable leaps in speed and power left a cut on Mana's shoulder that shallowed out on the side of her neck – she was tagged. The girl realized it due to the strange fascination of small splashes of her blood being spilled from the audience's side. These people wished to see tension and drama.</p><p>Quatal was taken over by gravity, so was Mana. The man tried to hit her with more of his combinations. It was problematic dodging his attacks seeing how he had four limbs and then his long braid to deal with but despite it moving in an unpredictable manner, almost like a reptilian being with a mind of its own Mana was not touched again, not unless she blocked the man's strikes and proceeded to respond to his attacks.</p><p>She was a bit slower, letting the man block her strikes just so the fight would be more entertaining for the observers. Once they landed the man tried to sweep her legs at the moment when Mana was at her slowest and relied on balance the most but Mana's own palm thrust made the man's knee crack and him shout out in pain before rolling back and flipping backwards a couple of times using only one of his legs for balance.</p><p>"You're slowing your attacks before they reach me," Quatal noted caressing his painfully pulsing knee as his face twisted in pain.</p><p>"And yet you still got hit. It'd be ironic to maim you so badly that the next "hit" you are ordered to do actually takes you out, be it a martial artist or a nomad." Mana replied angrily trying to burn the man with her eyes. She hated people like him, people who had tremendous power, people with talent, training and unmatched technique using that power only to oppress the weak further than life already made sure to do it. She wanted to hurt him and for once her goal of prolonging fights to make them more artistic to the Sheikh and her ideal of never actually taking a life allowed her to fight that way.</p><p>"I still have the ability to augment my abilities further, I'm still reserving my chi from completely overflowing my body, just like you are." Quatal tried to intimidate Mana. As if she hadn't noticed.</p><p>This man was the second man Mana has heard to call the physical aspect of chakra "chi", the old man may have referred to it a couple of times that way but he usually still used the term Mana used just to stay on the same page as the girl, the two were quite short on time.</p><p>Mana thought for a moment about how little patience she had to just stand and play around with this man. She needed to excite the public more, she couldn't stomach this fighting, it annoyed her more and more every second she did it. There must've been a quick shocking way to excite everyone so she could have ended this fight quickly...</p><p>"Show me," Mana requested, "I know that the smartest augmentations are those that utilize fifty percent of body's flow, give me all hundred, I want to see it".</p><p>It wasn't like the girl was excited about this supposed power she'd see. She hated it, she hated two people breaking their own bodies and abusing their own power just to entertain other people but this was her shortcut – trick her opponent into showing their all, showing so much power that most fighters would rather lose than to strain themselves so badly. And yet if once this fighting is over there will be martial artists who wished to engage in this brutal art of combat it'd be their decision, Mana just wished that no one was forced into this. That was the goal worth stepping over one's principles and grinding them into the dirt for...</p><p>A purplish glow began to emanate from the man's pores, it was chakra, imperfect and very primitive and yet... Physical chakra was usually green or red, depending on how much it strained the body. The pure chi was completely salad green, any other color would've suggested either an unhealthy chakra system, imperfect chi flow control or great damage to the body that caused such unhealthy energy be put into rotation. Mana was sure that the man's chi had more to do with a great spiritual concentration being there, not yet potent enough to produce full out chakra but this man had potential to be a ninja, maybe he was trained by one at some point. Currently, his "chi" was closer to chakra than Mana's.</p><p>The man dashed at the magician, he ducked down and punched Mana's gut lifting the girl's body off the ground before pummeling her gut some more. The man dashed behind letting his messy flowing braid wrap around Mana's throat. The man then caught his own hair and began angrily flailing Mana around with that braid. He slammed her on multiple sides, flung his braid into the air letting the magician's body to land on his strikes. Mana removed the braid from her neck because it was beginning to strangle her for real. The man span like a cyclone letting his braid slap her on the cheek, after a successful attack the man stopped and turned to the other side slapping Mana on the other side. Finally, once the man's attack ended Mana stumbled back and fell on her back.</p><p>The public was completely outraged, it was a very healthy sort of outrage, for an entertainer at least. They were shocked and confused but Mana knew it was the sort of confusion that only added to the fight. None of them expected the man's full power to be so overwhelming, no one thought that the man was willing to bring his full hundred to the table and that it'd be this potent. No one expected the man to hit Mana who had evaded his blows just as powerful and as fast and previously easily kept the upper hand. The public was beginning to feel a bit worried that this new favorite of theirs was about to meet her doom.</p><p>Mana sat back up and laughed out. She wiped the blood off of her cracked eyebrow that was getting in her eye and getting in the way, she checked her teeth and found that some of her gums were bleeding and her lip was cracked, that constant taste of blood was in her mouth. The magician hated it... Still, she was happy, she amused the public, she remembered that sensation of performing a good magic trick if just for a single painful moment. This time, just for a fleeting moment, she let the crowd believe she was losing. That she could actually die and that added much more to their excitement than an hour of her imitated fighting would've.</p><p>"You... You were faking it!?" Quatal yelled out angrily, even more shocked than the public was seeing Mana getting pummeled. Someone they saw being incredibly nimble and able to evade pretty much any blow.</p><p>"Yep, I was playing around, your hits were pretty strong, I had to devote some of my "chi" to augment my endurance so that they didn't cleave through me like butter. Had I been the girl that entered this arena I would've died but I'm not that person anymore. You cannot beat me, even when I purposefully sacrificed almost half my physical chakra to get beaten around and barely take any damage." Mana explained.</p><p>"Liar!" The man yelled out leaping at Mana and spinning around, trying to hit her with his braid again, hoping that it may have been just his own underperformance or some problem with his chakra system due to the strain.</p><p>A backhand slap disrupted Quatal's rush, knocked the white into his eyes and it appeared like it completely knocked the man out. Mana was not content with just that, she jumped kneeing the man into the chin and as he was lifting off into the air she grabbed hold of his braid and pulled him down, not wishing for him to fly too high up while unconscious, driving her palm into his face and slamming his head to the ground.</p><p>This fight was over, truthfully it should've never even began, the man had never actual chance of beating Mana, it was just that the magician was so full of rage for how this man lived and how much pride he had in such a life that she felt content on stooping to that level to stop him. Maybe it wasn't the right answer but all that mattered was that he would not hurt or kill people who didn't wish to be there ever again. Once Mana changes this place he'll be left unable to kill and fighting only opponents that wished to be there and fight. That'd make all the difference in the world...</p><p>"My physical chakra is dwindling... To think that I've learned nothing from abusing my chakra augmentation against Hisako-san..." Mana thought. She clutched for her chest as her heart made a couple of extremely painful pounds inside her chest. If felt like it was trying to knife its way out of her chest.</p><p>This budojutsu was very primitive, very unstable. Still, Mana just needed it for one more fight, then she'd only use it for emergencies, the power that let people without chakra manipulation fight on the level of weaker ninja. It was a power she needed desperately until she gained her own identity back...</p><p>"Damij, enough! Come out and let me change this arena already by beating you, the symbol of everything wrong with the Sun Disc now!" Mana screamed out, letting the pain in her chest fuel her anger and the volume of her voice. She was worn, tired and she wasted time and physical chakra to make these fights a better show. She may have been powerful enough to beat Damij initially but her current condition may not have been...</p><p>The last fight where contestants fought as slaves of the arena was approaching quickly...</p>
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<a name="section0171"><h2>171. The True Meaning of Martial Arts</h2></a>
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      <p>At last the moment of truth had come. Mana's worry and excitement were burning hotter with every passing moment, ignited by the gate to the living quarters rumbling open to reveal Damij standing on the other side. This moment was what she was preparing for. She trained long and hard for this moment, learned to recognize and predict patterns and form profiles of her opponents, differentiate them into different categories and become efficient at avoiding and countering any attack. Mana wasn't sure if she was ready but one thing she knew for sure: she was as ready as she could've been during this moment.</p>
      <p>Damij's figure appeared through the open gap, the man stood as cocky as ever. Despite her certain degree of hatred towards the man, the magician had to acknowledge that he possessed some flare of charisma as the people appeared to eat the man up. His entire stature, his attire, his skin, his well-maintained hair and his perfect teeth grinning all showed off this man's success. He won every fight in seven minutes but not because his opponents were powerful enough to challenge him. It was because he played with them, not unlike Mana did currently. But where Mana did it to preserve strength or for other, more specific goals, he did it for all the wrong reasons.</p>
      <p>The man jumped off without using the cracked and broken up platform. His long black coat rustled in the wind before landing behind the man, the overly dramatic effort of this gent to look cool only pissed Mana off more. Maybe such dramatics would serve right in the new Sun Disc arena but showing oneself off when people were kidnapped and dragged here to die in an unfair fight was just scummy. The announcer began listing Damij's titles and endless events he had won in, not a single mention of the bodies he had left behind. Despite the mass murder he had committed he was still the public's boy, the beloved hero of the audience and Mana felt it. The audience that fell in love with her now wished for her to tragically fall at the final step of the Gauntlet.</p>
      <p>"I didn't expect to see you fighting me so soon again..." Damij smiled with that despicable grin.</p>
      <p>Mana did not respond a single word. The pain was forcing her body down on her knee, not now... This was the worst time to collapse. Shaking in pain and fury the magician fell on her knee. She felt the taste of blood in her mouth and despite her best effort let some escape down her lip.</p>
      <p>"Well, well, what is this? Respect for the champion? I respect that, I'd like so very much that everyone I faced showed this much respect. After all seeing petrified faces of cowards is so much chaff and gets as boring as cardboard over time..." Damij shrugged. He didn't appear to be intimidated at the slightest, still playing the superior warrior just because he was a dropout from the Ninja Academy with the gift of chakra augmentation where everyone else fought on the level of a normal human being.</p>
      <p>Mana screamed into the air, the public went absolutely silent. Damij lifted his eyebrow sarcastically, he saw her weakness, he knew that he was getting another free win by having his lessers wear his enemy down.</p>
      <p>"I hate you. People like you. People with power who think they are above everyone else, people who use other people's lives as boxes to stand on to appear taller." Mana spoke wiping the blood from her lip. She didn't have much physical chakra left, her body was breaking down, she wouldn't last in the sort of combat that she excelled in. This fight couldn't go like she planned it to go...</p>
      <p>Damij smiled and extended his hand taking a combat stance. "Well, since you've had the honor of surviving a fight against me, you know the drill, I believe? Seven mi..."</p>
      <p>Mana's body moved before the man finished speaking. Her foot stomped Damij's foot crushing it entirely, every smallest bone in that complicated system of puny bones. Her palm drove right into Damij's face breaking his nose and cracking his lips and his eyebrows, her body flashed and disappeared even in the eyes of the champion of the arena before she dove in down thrusting her foot in Damij's gut and pushing it down, an explosion of erupting pressure started tearing the arena apart and rising smoke covered an area far beyond the Sun Disc arena.</p>
      <p>"Three microseconds..." Mana grunted before spitting out blood as her body went over the limit again. She coughed up and fell on her knees again. She knew that Damij wouldn't rise, she kicked him with all she had, bursting out with all of her physical chakra, as much of it as her body could take and taking Damij down, dictating her own terms instead of letting a despicable snob like the champion do so. "That's all I'll spare on you" Mana finished her ironic mockery of Damij's fighting style.</p>
      <p>The public was completely quiet, refusing to believe what had just happened. Every time he walked out in this arena Damij gave his opponents seven minutes and he always delivered, the fight always lasted seven minutes as he took time to play around with his opponents, use the tricks he had learned in the Ninja Academy to dominate everyone. This girl had just beaten the champion in three microseconds, exploding with an unseen burst of speed and power out of nowhere. Mana's body was still glowing red streaks of evaporating ethereal energy.</p>
      <p>"You could've beaten any of those opponents so easily?" Sheikh's voice came from the Sheikh's balcony talking to Mana. The girl raised her hand, it was covered with blood. Her chest hurt too much to talk to Sheikh, truth be told she was completely at his mercy. If the man decided to not follow the terms of the Gauntlet she'd most likely be powerless to help herself just because she tapped into too much of her physical chakra. Maybe she still wasn't ready to get the gift of chakra back? The moment she learned budojutsu she abused it the first time she had a chance to. Granted, had she stalled and played with Damij she'd have timed out and died against him, going full one hundred was the only way for her to win.</p>
      <p>Black blurs made the public jump up and out of their seats. Three figures surrounded Mana with only their backs exposed, signaling that anyone that wished to cause harm to the magician would've had to go through them. One of them was a swordsman dressed in a greenish, raggedy cloak with uncut hair falling on top of his glasses. The second one was a young cheerful girl with a green tracksuit and what remained of her handcrafted armor still protecting the vital spots, the third one was a strong looking short medical ninja who kept on looking back at Mana and trying to determine her condition.</p>
      <p>Meiko lifted Mana up and placed her on her own back. "Talk into my ear, I'll shout those guys' ears off!" She energetically exclaimed. Mana's lips faintly moved implying that the magician was weakly speaking.</p>
      <p>"That's right, Sheikh-san, I could've beaten every single opponent I faced today within seconds but I spent time fighting them longer because I wished to entertain you. I wanted to show you something and if you truly felt entertained by it and wish to know what I tried to prove, please tell me so," Meiko spoke up yelling out well loud enough to reach the Sheikh's balcony, the blacksmith certainly had powerful lungs.</p>
      <p>Sheikh leaned over the edge interested in Mana's supposed message and gestured for her to go on. Once again the magician coughed up in pain before finally being able to resume her speech which Meiko had to translate.</p>
      <p>"I... Mana fought longer because she wished to entertain you. Because she wanted to show you that battle that changed this place so long ago. She asks you if ever during those years you've ever seen a battle like the one she showed you in this Gauntlet?" The blacksmith shouted out, the public settled completely quietly despite this interference from three more people they had no idea the identities of.</p>
      <p>The Sheikh shook his head up in his balcony.</p>
      <p>"Well, I... Mana wished to show you that contestants that know what they are doing and wish to be here, wish to fight because they love martial arts or because it serves their goals, people who are martial artists because they love to fight and challenge themselves, not because they are kidnapped and forced to fight, are able to deliver such fights which you seek. As long as you shall force nomads and farmers to fight each other to the death, instead martial artists fight for the sake of their craft you will never again see a battle like the one you've seen today. People afraid of dying will never perform as amazingly and competently as happy people doing things that make them happy in the first place." Meiko finished vocalizing Mana's words.</p>
      <p>The public stood up and started to rage in cheering, truth be told Mana would've had words with them as well. People that came into this arena to satisfy their need to see violence, people that cheered on senseless violence and death but she was too weak. There was so much more to say and do but... She was too weak.</p>
      <p>"Mana, not to be rude or anything but you're bleeding over my last tracksuit..." Meiko laughed uncomfortably.</p>
      <p>Mana smiled gently, "Sorry, my body is breaking down from inside, I don't think I need to say anything more today".</p>
      <p>"Good, I'd like to have a look at you and see if you can recover naturally from this or if you'll need intervention. I don't want you losing physical chakra right after apparently learning to control it again." Kouta said looking at the fighters rushing out from the living quarters and into the gigantic crater that Mana's Spear Kick hitting Damij had made. Some fighters started kicking their champion around and his unconscious body disappeared into a cloud of fighters, there was enough violence that day, they knew better than to cause too much harm to the man.</p>
      <p>"Hey, old man!" Meiko rudely shouted out into Sheikh's quarters making the Sheikh and his middle-aged female companion appear at the balcony once again after disappearing behind the regal curtains. "My friend just fought to prove you something and she told you an inspiring speech, she deserves to know if you at least heard it"!</p>
      <p>"Why you..." A loud scream of the female companion came from the balcony as the woman jumped onto the edge and prepared to leap at Meiko but the Sheikh stopped her.</p>
      <p>"What you said makes sense, girl. The only reason I shall allow you to leave with your friends is because I am reconsidering my arena policies. You appear to know what you're talking about and I am tempted to keep you around and force you to fight some more but... That was what caused my downfall all those years ago, clinging to the past moments and forcing the people around me to recapture them again. No more... Sun Disc will become a sanctuary for martial arts like it was always supposed to be." Sheikh's reply came while the woman stepped down from the rail and fixed her clothes, still appearing quite annoyed with the disrespect shown by these headband wearing ninja.</p>
      <p>Bult and the old man came up from behind and gently tapped Mana's shoulder, Meiko turned around letting Mana face the two, the magician saw Myrwa walking around somewhere in the crowd, trying to gently make his way to the next person to beat the Ascension Gauntlet.</p>
      <p>"Holy shit, kid, you actually did it..." Bult laughed out almost slapping Mana's back in his congratulations but just barely stopping himself.</p>
      <p>"I just hope that learning to control physical chakra will help you return the control of spiritual chakra as well, at least that it won't be repeating the same mistake that took your power away," the old man nodded, he had a strange expression to show his joy. Then again, maybe he wasn't that overjoyed by the promised changes, after all, the old man didn't fight too much anyways and he never saw the arena too often so it won't look much different to him. Just much less bloodied covered up bodies after events will be carried.</p>
      <p>"So will you two leave this place?" Mana's weak voice reached the ears of the two, initially, they weren't able to make out just what the girl was saying due to the great celebration from the public having just seen a successful Ascension Gauntlet and a promise for positive changes during an evening where countless people were supposed to die needlessly.</p>
      <p>"Nah, the two of us are martial artists. I will be looking forward to those changes, not having death looming over my head will be a positive thing for a change," Bult much softer stroke Mana's shoulder trying to not hurt the girl anymore.</p>
      <p>"Heh, maybe I'll open up a gym in this joint, "The Gym of that Guy that Trained Both Goddesses of Martial Arts!"," the old man chuckled into his fist.</p>
      <p>Mana nodded but then her face blushed a little, "I'm no "Goddess of Martial Arts", technically I still cheated. Not only did I use a style that trumps all other fighting styles but I also used budojutsu".</p>
      <p>"Yeah but "Gym of that Guy that Trained the Goddess of Martial Arts and That Girl that Cheated" won't attract as many clients...You're terrible at doing business," the old man walked away after telling Mana his farewells letting Myrwa come closer.</p>
      <p>"Thank you, young woman, thanks to you I may be able to realize my dream of becoming a healer, someone who makes a fortune and something of his life helping people." Myrwa scratched the back of his head, thanking people clearly wasn't something he did often.</p>
      <p>"Whaaa, you're so weird looking!" Meiko screamed out in surprise but then laughed out rubbing her tummy, "Sorry, I have no control over things I say..." she added.</p>
      <p>Mana nodded, she felt too weak to hear everyone's thanks. Maybe now these nomads will find a place to stay in Agbarah instead of being let go in the desert, maybe this could be the way in which Mana would make up for sending Fennec into a settlement raiding frenzy and leaving these people homeless. At the very least it'd be a start.</p>
      <p>"You can treat your friend inside Agbarmahal, after all, as a champion of the Gauntlet she is welcome inside, I remember her wanting to send a message to someone but I'll just assume that those conditions changed and she no longer needs that... If you do, just go and do it. Champions are as welcome there as I am." The Sheikh waved before yawning and disappearing behind the curtains.</p>
      <p>"Right, then that is where we'll go, then in the morning we'll get the Hell out of this place and this Country, I am getting sick of this stupid sand everywhere!" Shimo grinned nodding to himself and leading the way towards the exit from the arena. Mana looked back at the large group of settlers, fighters and anyone who fought in the Sun Disc arena waving at her, some people were even bowing. Softly and slowly she lifted her hand and waved them farewell. She could barely do that much.</p>
      <p>The time spent in Sun Disc was truly something. It began like a nightmare scenario that appeared to suck all hope out, a depressing imprisonment at a place where people came to die for the amusement of other people, to please a misguided nobleman who wished nothing more but to relive the most amazing experience in his life again. Still, at some point in her quest to change that place Mana had grown some fond feelings towards it and people inside it. Even people that started as her enemies, people that tried to kill her.</p>
      <p>Now most of all, Mana realized just what the words "martial arts" meant. They weren't just a meaningless expression of violence, it wasn't about hurting the weak and everything she hated. It was about people doing what they loved, making new bonds and growing both as fighters and as people, gaining new experiences in the process. Now, most of all times, Mana felt really good about her decision to change this place instead of tearing it all down.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Kouta didn't take long to examine Mana's body once they were accommodated in a large and sophisticated gold and diamond encrusted room. He scanned Mana through with his Diagnosis Technique a couple of times before deciding that her body should naturally recover in a couple of days if she didn't strain it like she did today. Meiko probably would've had a lot to say about the Gauntlet she watched the whole time but she was too excited about the room they were placed in.</p>
      <p>"Wow, maybe we should stay here and fight for stuff like this. If Mana got this for just that one Gauntlet imagine how much of this palace we could win over years!" Meiko kept obsessing over the exquisite craftsmanship and the sophistication of the place.</p>
      <p>"Heh, don't make Mana-chan look bad, the first passer-by we described her to immediately directed us to the arena so she made an impression. We sure as Hell didn't expect to see what we saw though, that was amazing, Mana-chan!" Kouta congratulated Mana on her victory in the Gauntlet as well.</p>
      <p>"It was impressive for a non-ninja but... Mana... I hope you know what it means," Shimo looked strictly at the magician, the girl sadly nodded.</p>
      <p>"This isn't a substitute for my abilities, sure, I could just go back to the village and use budojutsu as my only mean of self-defense but that is not what I want. Worrying about breaking my body while playing ninja isn't what I want, nothing changed in the end. Nothing except the Agbarah Sheikhate." Mana agreed to Shimo's warning.</p>
      <p>Also, she knew the secret meaning of his question – she couldn't fight like that the whole time. Using just physical aspect of her chakra was primitive and dangerous and terribly unstable, it was also weaker than using both sides of one's essence. She was taking higher risks with lower rewards every time she fought that way, but still, it was worth spending so much time just to learn this unique way of fighting as well as perfecting her style.</p>
      <p>"I know you guys are getting sick of Wind Country and we're not too far from leaving it but... I'll miss this place a little." Mana smiled nostalgically looking at the Sheikhate through the large open window at the side of the room.</p>
      <p>Meiko rubbed a silky majestically soft pillow all over her face. "I miss this place already!" She shouted out before beginning to stuff down whatever food they were served.</p>
      <p>Despite growing rather fond of the place, Mana has grown infinitely fonder still of her friends and their odd habits...</p>
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<a name="section0172"><h2>172. An Explosive Encounter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning came so peacefully and almost majestically, after all, there were no loud shouts, no smell of rotten food and sweaty men training overnight just to satisfy their inner desires to survive the next day. Mana's room was positioned, just like those of all champions of the Gauntlet, in a very comfortable position where Sun only barely let its rays gently stroke one's cheeks at only the later parts of the morning. Naturally, Sheikh probably had even more comfortable quarters but these were still much more sophisticated than any in which Mana has had the honor of sleeping in.</p><p>By the time Mana woke up, the fourth time that morning, everyone had already been up, eating or training or checking their kits and bags if everything was ready for the trip. It will appear so odd leaving this place... The reason why Mana had woken up multiple times that morning was due to inner pains, that so unfortunately always persisted the next morning after a fight, especially a big one, even more so when one had only their normal human metabolism. Mana tried to stay quiet about those pains, she didn't want to bother Kouta with what appeared to be a minor issue. The young man was already given more work than he signed up for, having to constantly drain his reserves almost completely dry.</p><p>"I'm surprised you're so quiet, Mana-chan," Kouta noted looking with a strangely happy expression on her pouty face still hiding under the covers, having just recently noticed that the magician was awake. "After all, after the beating you've taken yesterday the normal human metabolism should've torn you apart, I was plaguing myself with the idea of numbing your body today whole last night".</p><p>"I didn't take a beating..." Mana blushed, "That was the whole point of my training".</p><p>"Well, what damage you've avoided from your opponents you've dealt to yourself by overdoing it, as usual..." Shimo grunted still maintaining his sword and the hilt. The young Yuki appeared to have a new sheath, probably obtained it during the time that Mana got separated from everyone.</p><p>"Anyways, I don't really feel that bad, it's similar to a cramp everywhere at the same time but I can really take it, I've been beaten up worse," Mana replied finally jumping out from the bed in a nightgown she borrowed from Meiko and took her rags to head for the bathroom to change.</p><p>"We should get you some new clothes, maybe you should ask those ladies around the Sheikh for some spares?" Shimo tried to joke.</p><p>"Huh... I forgot you used to be a child womanizer at some point..." Mana smiled back at his friend. "It's fine, I saw the Sheikh's servants having prepared a full wardrobe for us, I'm sure we can buy some refills in our kits here as well, on my way being arrested I saw some small weapon shops," she added.</p><p>"We've already replenished our supplies, that's why we came to Agbarah originally. We didn't know about the whole "woman hate" thing but Meiko's fists soon made everyone reconsider trying to enslave us, we only asked around for you because we did everywhere we went..." Kouta explained showing a cartoonish drawing of Mana they've made on a small piece of paper that had multiple coffee stains on it.</p><p>"That's a really lousy drawing..." Mana laughed before disappearing into the small part of the room that was meant to be a bathroom section.</p><p>"Well, it's Meiko's, strangely enough, she was the best artist out of all of us, Shimo kept drawing stickmen with smiles and cartoon Sun on the corner that was also smiling, for a gloomy guy, the Sun in his pictures sure smiles a lot..." Kouta began to explain but Mana heard a loud pound to the head interrupt the medical ninja. The clothes that the Sheikh had provided for them were quite fancy and they'd definitely stand out in most places they stopped in so they may need to go shopping once they leave the Land of Wind.</p><p>"The hardest part was restraining Meiko from drawing you a mustache, she loves to do that..." Shimo added trying to justify the sudden stop of Kouta's recollection.</p><p>Finally, Mana rushed out with the colorful, white dress provided for her with a silly and very noblewoman-like plaid red tie on top. She didn't feel very comfortable in it but it definitely served better than her ruined shirt that was just a bunch of straps barely holding together and smelled of demonic dog piss and ear wax cream.</p><p>Unexpectedly a heart-stopping boom toppled the whole back part of Mana's room making Meiko's stiff training frame just fly in and slam against the wall where everyone currently was. Within incalculable fractions of a second, maybe just as fast as the flash of the explosion started Kouta leaped in and pulled Mana away from where he predicted the blast zone being, Shimo also prepared his blade for combat faster than the booming sound reached them but waited out for the small explosion to play out.</p><p>A shaking and dusty figure walked in, the man wore a denim jacket and ruined jeans with strange light brown stains on them, they had massive holes on them and his frame was still slowly singing with the residual flames from the explosion he just caused.</p><p>"What's up, little dudes?" The man chuckled stroking his messy beard that still had plenty of leftover food he had for breakfast, however, based on the smell that breakfast could've been had a whole month ago.</p><p>"The fuck!?" A loud yell reached in as a man ran in after the locked up and slowly singing explosive friend of his. "I thought I told you to stay still!" He shouted.</p><p>"Relax, man... Like... You're clearly not like... One with the nature, man..." the bandana-wearing bearded man who just blew up half of Mana's room smiled at his pursuer.</p><p>The man that chased after the strange looking explosive fool began to bow against Mana and apologizing, a little bit more and he would've begun to lick her shoes. The magician pulled her hand out from his grasp before he began to kiss it and still completely confused and embarrassed about the whole thing asked to know what was going on.</p><p>The man who was holding the bandana-wearing beardo began to mumble, he began telling some strange inconsistent series of events that suggested great shock and an inability to lie properly.</p><p>"Yo, little dudes, you guys are like... The guys that killed my friends, right?" The bearded bandana wearing terrorist calmly interrupted the unintelligible mumbling of his companion.</p><p>"You shut up! You're a prisoner of the Kazekage, just a Shaphac dog so stop causing an internal matter, you're gonna cause another civil war inside the Land of the Wind!" The man who kept a close eye on the explosive gentleman grunted.</p><p>"Oh, so you're the Shaphac guy? I'll assume the one that caused the giant explosion that separated us?" Shimo angrily asked beginning to put together the details.</p><p>"Shit... I am a ninja of Sunagakure, please leave this matter to us. This situation is already complicated enough as it is, please do not get Konoha involved too!" The man who was in charge of this beardo showed his concealed headband inside his bag.</p><p>A bunch of guards started to swarm around the room, Mana raised her hand stopping their assault as they were already brandishing their scimitars and spears to murder the hell out of their newly met Shaphac member.</p><p>"So you wish revenge for your fallen friends?" Meiko cracked her knuckles taking an offensive stance and preparing to go at it. Then her eyes wandered lower on a giant hole on the man's chest and all of a sudden her skin paled and her eyes shot wide open, Mana had never seen her friend so serious and so afraid all of a sudden.</p><p>"So... It's like that..." She uttered turning around and trying to dash before Kouta caught Meiko, it was clear that the medical ninja had to use all of his strength to keep the blacksmith where she stood, Meiko started throwing elbow strikes and punches his way</p><p>"You don't get it, look at the corner of his chest, it's a part of a seal mark, he's gonna blow himself up!" Meiko shouted out angrily but the bandana man just scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"Nah... That'd not be really cool... You're a pretty neat chick for recognizing that seal from just a small corner of it, heh, even I don't know how it works really..." The explosive man laughed out, he didn't appear in a very vengeful mood that day.</p><p>"It has the fourth circle of a sealing mark," Meiko grunted before pouting indifferently, trying to remain her composure, "I don't have to be a sealing master to recognize an S-Rank sealing technique".</p><p>"It is a seal of some sort, however from what I've gathered it is set off by this gentleman's death and the Kazekage very much wishes him alive and in his cell, so please, can we go, Lady Ascended?" The man begged Mana bowing to her respectfully, the guards finally tensed down and lowered their weapons, still adamant to stand there and see the situation to its resolution.</p><p>"Ummm... I guess..." Mana scratched the side of her head, still quite confused about what was going on, the only thing she could make sense of was that this man was apparently one of the Shaphac, a terrorist organization working inside Sunagakure that Shimo bumped into and that, apparently was responsible for splitting them.</p><p>"Wait up, little dudes, like... I just wanted to let you guys know, like... No hard feelings and all, right? I mean... I was at first kinda bumped last night and kinda wanted to blow this place up to Hell and all because I saw you guys were alive and all and I figured you'd have run into the Shaphac if you were so close, then this Suna dude got a message from his contact that I also heard that they were found dead and... Look, the point is... It's all cool, right?" The explosive Shaphac member tried to put his thoughts into words but it appeared that his mind was quite floaty and full of absolute hogwash most of the time.</p><p>"Ummm... Okay..." Mana encouraged him to go on.</p><p>"So like... I was like... "Whoa... Gotta blow these fuckers to hell", right? And then... Like... You gave that speech 'bout peace and shit, and man... Like... That's so damn tearful, man... I mean... Shit... If I ever spoke to those dolphins like one son of nature to another I'd like to communicate those damned words, right?" The explosives expert kept on rambling.</p><p>"Okay... Ummm... Very glad you liked it... Hope you continue to follow those peaceful ideals and change your ways," Mana tried to act like she knew what the man was talking about but she could barely tie all the knots together.</p><p>"You two should really go, stop pushing the Sheikh's patience." One of the Sheikh's guards angrily grunted out and so the Sunagakure ninja angrily yanked on one of the chains holding the Shaphac tied up and dragged him out of the half-blown room.</p><p>"Buh-bye, little dudes, hope to see ya some other time!" the strange bandana-wearing man waved with his tied hands and laughed out as he was being dragged away.</p><p>"Okay, so in this goddamn place we've confirmed that the Box of Ultimate Bliss, a magical wish fulfilment artifact exists, we've faced off against people able to blow up the world and saw ancient insects that probably hunted during the days of the First People, we've seen a bunch of political bullshit and saw Mana, a normal human, run around sixty thousand times faster than she should have been running without breaking a sweat but... That was by far the weirdest part of our visit in this Country." Kouta noted still standing in the middle of the rubble completely confused.</p><p>Meanwhile, Meiko was busy wiping the sweat off her face. That seal on the man's chest, whatever it was, must've been really scary to scare someone as careless and easygoing like that...</p><hr/><p>It wouldn't have taken too long for the team to leave Wind Country, it was just a couple of days away from the border from where the team was currently. That being said the team still decided to have a couple of stops on the way. Mana expected some more obstacles in their way, maybe some more raiders or maybe Fennec finally growing a pair and attacking them directly and not raiding defenseless settlements.</p><p>Nothing of the sort happened. It was a peaceful trip to the closest pleasure town where the four could shop for some less snobby clothes and buy some spares for when theirs would inevitably get ruined again. They also bought some food, quite a lot in fact since the local merchants accepted some of their Audra steel chunks.</p><p>"So what are we gonna do about this massive bag of Audra steel? In an attractive ore shard form, no less..." Mana wondered feeling really bad about making suggestions since the last one was the equivalent of making a deal with the devil that seemed to have been resolved well but then blew up in their faces by escalating a desert maniac into a settlement raiding frenzy. At least now Fennec would finally get a serious look into by the Sunagakure's finest...</p><p>"For some reason, the shipment got stuck, the only reason why that would've happened would've been if the shipment got intercepted in Agbarah, in which case it most definitely wouldn't have been done by ordinary martial artists, or the transfer system was ruined and sabotaged which is quite likely. Either way, something doesn't feel right here, it is best we keep the bag close and carry it home by ourselves." Shimo scratched his chin.</p><p>"Are you assuming that the Kazekage is dirty and playing tricks on us just to get his hands on something like Audra shards? I don't think he'd risk Konoha relations on something that can be beaten by ordinary chakra imbued metals," Kouta objected.</p><p>"It is a bit of a stretchy accusation to make, especially when it has a more politically attractive alternative, still, Sheikh didn't strike me as the type to need or know of Audra shards. I'd say the Kazekage's involvement is looking much more likely." Mana also joined in on the conspiracy theories as the four were leaving the small pleasure town they were in with their bags full of clothes and supplies.</p><p>"Alright! So our next steps are clear – march into Sunagakure and kick the shit out of the Kazekage!" Meiko declared energetically to which everyone laughed out loud.</p><p>"I don't think so, Meiko... I don't think so." Mana cut her friend's dreams down.</p><p>"Yeah, it was a good joke though..." Shimo cracked a grin as the group walked off into the distance.</p><p>Soon the sandy surfaces were becoming rarer and rarer, the rocky and clay houses, as well as those of sandstone, were soon replaced by small wooden settlements. Mana's heart spurted in happiness whenever the group walked into a settlement and it hadn't heard of Fennec's angry caprices or if they appeared to have an ample defensive force ready to fight back the raiders. Some border towns even had ninja stationed there and ready to defend the settlements in case of attacks. Having in mind how close to the borders these towns were, the Kazekage must've been really viewing Fennec's threat seriously as usually leaders only sent small squads to the closer settlements to defend the places closest to the heart of their ruled territory for those mattered the most.</p><p>Finally, only a week later the first familiar and long waited for grassy crunch met Mana's sandal making her little heart shriek in joy. The sandy grounds of Wind Country desert were no more, no more raider camps, no more snakes hiding in the sand, no more creepy crawlies that hunted and creeped the magician out at night. The place they were in was a large country-like territory that was actually just a gigantic ninja village – Takigakure, also known as the Waterfall Village.</p><p>While the current scenery was that of desolate grasslands, soon the place would become a little swampy as some humidity would get introduced to the occasion, then the place would proceed to change again and again until it finally becomes the beautiful land of waterfalls that Takigakure is known for.</p><p>Based on what Mana learned in the Ninja Academy geography lessons – Takigakure was a large complex of watery lands with small patches of grasslands and colossal towering trees, the land was also very dangerous for anyone using boats to swim around as it was full of waterfalls that weren't deep enough to kill most crews but they would've definitely been too complex to navigate and would have lead to loss of one's ship all the time. The places were ship and boat traveling in Takigakure was even allowed was very limited.</p><p>Takigakure also had a very impressive defense system. Each of those large trees was full of complicated systems of tunnels and rooms and buildings, this huge waterfall forest was actually full of trees each of which could've hosted a competent defensive ninja force. Each of these towering trees was also a building for various purposes all by itself. Takigakure was mostly a very neutral territory, it rarely involved itself in conflicts and when it did nobody held any grudges because invading such a territory would've been tough.</p><p>The clampy and occasionally deep and falling waters that covered the ground, the towering trees that could hide anything one wanted it to hide, large enough to host an entire army inside it. Takigakure was mostly left to its own matters, the only reason it hasn't risen to the top of the ninja elite was because its ninja were actually quite average with very few making a name for themselves.</p><p>Mana hoped that the trip through Takigakure would be peaceful and without incidents, yet knowing their luck and how peacefully they left Wind Country once they left Agbarah to expect no trouble would've been optimistic and possibly even foolish...</p>
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<a name="section0173"><h2>173. Tales of a Ninja Magician Annual No. 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A black vastness of space. Darkness only of the natural variety surrounded five figures floating in the vacuum and staring at the spectacle of destruction that transpired in front of them. Planets devolving into molten burning hunks of rock, where once was life now laid only destruction and endless death of all that was alive in the universe. Stars going out and exploding, both close and far away however the eyes of these godlike figures saw it all, they saw stars going out both close and far. Soon there'd be no life left in the universe, nothing left there to rule but ashes.</p><p>"We came here to rule but they declared war upon us" the man in the middle declared. His speech was rather sad about the events that transpired but he was not riddled with guilt for this upcoming end of the entire universe, his voice just would have felt confused to anyone who was still alive in this sinking ship of a universe to hear it. He was the largest of the five, he may have been at least three to four meters tall, his hands were as buff and large as buses alone and his chest didn't look like it needed much armor to protect it from harm as it was pumped enough to tear any fabric worn around it.</p><p>"They always do. They always will" another man spoke, looking over the destruction and floating in the vastness of space, surrounded by stars and systems going out. This man wore a similar plated armor of elite craftsmanship, composed of emerald colored plates with blades on several pieces, namely the wrist and the shoulder pieces. "As Gods it is our responsibility to snuff these rebellions out without ruining our dominion. It appears we have failed this time, as we did the last time, as we will the next time"</p><p>"I can fix it" a raven haired woman declared, she didn't wear any armor and was the only one to do so. Instead she wore a long and majestic purple cloak with golden engravings and diamonds all over it. "I can reshape reality as if this war never happened, so that this planet shall not die so that we don't remain the ruined rulers of nothing. I can put thoughts of obedience into these peoples' minds. We can fix this, there is nothing impossible for me, the Goddess of Reality"</p><p>"No!" the large armored figure in the middle declared. "If we wished to rule a bunch of stupid puppets we'd have created our own subjects but a God who has no followers of their own free will is a pitiful God. We shall do as we have done for eight thousand years and travel the Omniverse looking for a universe where we find people willing to serve us, to praise us and pray to us. In return we will give them us ruling over them"</p><p>"I believe what sparked this conflict was when I used this universe's star reactor formula to boost my speed…" a short and scrawny fellow in an armor plated mask scratched his oversized hairdo. "Then again, it's tough to say, they always hated us"</p><p>"And yet, to hate us so that they would rather fuel the destruction of their own universe than surrender it to us…" the fifth figure – an armored woman with twelve arms and a myriad of weapons around her back gasped fearfully at the destruction transpiring in front of her.</p><p>"Which one of us shall do it?" the second man asked.</p><p>"I believe it is my turn, Mind, observe the universe for memories of its nature, we shall not allow it to go into oblivion entirely" the leading brute in the middle sighed sadly.</p><p>The man leaned back a clenched fist and disappeared, the "God" was known as Power amongst his pantheon of five. These people were travelers, coming from a universe of their own they long since forgot the way back to, it was eight thousand years ago when these men and women dumped their old identities and began travelling the complicated web of the infinite universes called the Omniverse and began looking for power, resources and knowledge. After a while of leeching what every universe had to offer each one of them became infinitely powerful. Maddened by their power these people declared themselves Gods and embarked on a quest to find an obedient universe that'd praise them, pray to them and so that they could rule it as the Gods that they were.</p><p>The middle one, the leader, called himself the God of Power, or Power, needless to say his pantheon of Gods were not short on power themselves but as far as the physical strength and physicality went, Power was unmatched. The second one, a normal looking armored bald man, with glowing indigo ripples as if his head had cracked in multiple spots was known as the God of Mind, or Mind. He had the abilities of omniscience, knowing all there was, is and even will be to know. The third one, an armored and quite physical woman of twelve arms, ten of which were made of refined solid star core alloy that shined brightly like gold, was known as the Goddess of Technique or Technique. She was the most amazing warrior and skilled combatant of all. A true goddess of battle, but also of every other skill one could learn in existence. She was a handy ally to have by one's side in more ways than one.</p><p>The other two may have appeared lesser and weaker than the almighty three, for they looked much smaller and scrawnier but they may have held the greatest amount of power in their hands. The cloaked woman with dark hair and glowing eyes was known as the Goddess of Reality or Reality. Reality could reshape everything around her to her whim, she could do anything she could've imagined to be done, she was omnipotent but her imagination and mind were quite human making her often require Mind's help to do her godly deeds. The woman acquired this power from an advanced civilization that could manipulate subatomic and even molecular matter as they pleased in a universe they've long since destroyed after it ruined itself much like their current one.</p><p>The last one, the scrawny little guy close to Reality was the God of Speed or Speed. As much as Power was strong, Speed was fast. Power often told to those he wished to subjugate that Speed's ability didn't make any sense as he could outrun the silliest and seemingly most impossible things. He could outrun time, space, any other being in existence, even Reality when she willed herself to be in another place when the two raced, one time Speed even outran a social label when the local inhabitants of a planet in another universe labeled them "False Gods". Speed ran so fast that he outran the social label and when he stopped he was actually praised as God in that universe. However this praise was a false and unclean one. Power could not stand it and destroyed that universe on the spot.</p><p>A bright vortex of light, larger than any human mind could comprehend spun in the center of that universe. Had any human had the ability to survive the incalculable heat and radiation of that place they'd have first went blind in negative time, breaking all known laws of physics and rules of how reality functioned. Such would have happened due to the immense booming of light and radiation, granted, if they didn't they'd have gone insane of the unimaginable size of the construct in front of them. Power turned at Mind for a consult.</p><p>"It is a supermassive… No… A terramassive white hole expelling energy and radiation out of it at an unimaginable rate. This flow of pure energy is so immense that it pushes the surrounding universe away, this must be what causes the universal expansion" Mind scratched his chin observing the whirling spacial construct.</p><p>"It is the center of this universe then?" Power asked to which Mind nodded.</p><p>"Why did we come here? I could've made the point we were in the center of the universe, Speed could've moved to the center of the universe in a negative time mark, you can destroy a universe from any point and place in time and space…" Reality began to mewl to which Power responded by slowly moving into the object, completely unaffected and unrestrained by its massive output of power and punching it.</p><p>A loud crackling sound was sent emanating from the white hole, it was like the entire universe was just a surface of a lake in which a pebble was thrown, no, a large boulder sending crashing and tearing waves so immense that they tore the reality itself apart and destroyed every moon, planet or a star, galaxy or a cluster or even a speck of space dust that it came into contact with. The pressure and sheer destruction were so powerful that they were actually emitting sound in the middle of a vacuum as the universe was collapsing, in its final agony the universe began breaking its own laws of reality and physics. Nothing was law in these final dying moments.</p><p>And then there was nothing. Nothing except the five Gods floating in nothingness.</p><p>And then from nothing began something once again. A loud and immensely powerful expansive burst of energy almost pushed Power backwards as it emanated pushing space dust and pure radiation backwards, beginning the expulsion process over and over again before settling down. A ruined universe turned into nothing which then turned into a newborn universe. Confused the Gods all turned at Mind for explanation.</p><p>"It is an anti-matter universe, we've seen some before. Nothing in this universe is not actual nothing but anti-matter. It is likely that this universe began when a wormhole was opened from another universe to here, which caused a large amount of matter to spill into this nothingness of anti-matter causing the birth of this universe due to the violent chain reaction. You've destroyed the universe but we are made of matter and so our matter caused another Big Bang…" Mind casually explained tending to his slightly crisped and scratched emerald colored armor.</p><p>"I see" Power closed his eyes and sighed. "Reality, can you make us all made of anti-matter once I destroy the universe?"</p><p>"It might cause a very violent and unpredictable reaction, the destruction of a universe is an unstable process, it was never meant to happen like this. We don't know what effect a reality shift in the middle of a destroyed universe would do to the Omniverse. Have you forgotten that damage to the fabric of reality that came two years ago from a universe at the edge of the Omniverse? That forced us to stay in absolute nothing for a while until you pulled the torn straps of reality and tied them together" Mind objected.</p><p>"You know I can just blink this universe and all of the Omniverse, if need be, out of existence, right?" Reality once again complained.</p><p>"No. As a father of our pantheon I must do this myself. I have failed those that were to sing me praise, I was not the God they wanted me to be" Power clenched his fist and punched at nothing. The universe roared in pain as tears and cracks began to glow brightly, it was like the entire universe was a big panel of glass which was hit by a rock but not yet broken, only cracked. And then it all went to Hell in shatters. Reality sighed and blinked her eye, a needless gesture as she needed no actions, just her will to use her immense power but she made the pantheon made of anti-matter so that they did not trigger another Big Bang and reset the universe they meant to leave destroyed.</p><p>Power thrust his fist forward breaking through the nothing and out into the Omniverse. Reality willed their existences to once again be made of matter but Mind shouted in regret. Something was wrong – that inconceivable small moment of existence that they had as anti-matter beings inside the complex out of universe bounds and inside the Omniverse caused the complicated structure to shift. Countless glass bubbles that were actually little universes began to burst spilling azure and magma colored rays of light as they disappeared.</p><p>Mind slapped his own forehead, "Told you, we've just destroyed over two hundred universes… One of these could've been a universe we were looking for"</p><p>Speed bit his fingernails creepily and looked at Power and Mind, "I can run back in time and…"</p><p>"No!" Power roared out angrily. "We have made mistakes as Gods. We must face them and fix them. What other effects did my persistence cause?" he asked Mind.</p><p>"It's a long story to tell. Countless universes altered, cataclysms transpired in others. At least three and a half million universes were affected in some way, do you wish to hear a detailed report?" Mind squinted at Power.</p><p>"Reality could make this whole time while you explain it last only a second in real time. Very well, begin…" Power closed his eyes and sat down in a meditative position listening in on Mind's report.</p><hr/><p>"Baaaaaah!" Meiko bleated standing on all fours in the middle of the training grounds as the girl in her own mind was a sheep.</p><p>Mana giggled into her fist for a brief moment before cancelling the genjutsu. Ever since she had regained the control of her chakra she could now be more efficient at training Meiko to defend against genjutsu and other mental attacks since some assaults on one's mind were so different from how a ninjutsu worked that they couldn't even be called that by any stretch of the mind. After having her fair share of laughs the magician cancelled her technique.</p><p>"Aw man… I've got a mouthful of grass!" Meiko mumbled out spitting a bunch of grass and dirt out. "Plus I felt having shit stuck on my ass, is that a sheep problem? How would I know it was?"</p><p>Mana smiled, "Maybe you've read it somewhere or worked on a farm in the Fire Country at some point during your childhood? Anyways, I'm sorry, my illusions have surpassed the common genjutsu, maybe they're too powerful for your early stages. I've adapted them to what I've seen those bug predators use in the desert ruins, instead of attacking your chakra flow and manipulating it, I attack your brain centers instead. It makes for a much more powerful and harder to defend against illusion"</p><p>Meiko fixed her messed up armor plates and took a defensive stance. "No, it's because of those insects that I've asked you to teach me that, it only makes sense to use empowered techniques based on their way of using illusions. It's just… It was so fast… One moment I saw your hand seals flashing and the next and I had a craving for grass…"</p><p>Mana proudly crossed her hands on her chest, "Well, don't snooze then, I'm no longer that weak and dependent little civilian you lead to the Box of Ultimate Bliss. I'm a ninja now and I've learned a lot from the experience. Don't look down or hold back on me or you'll end up consuming more grass than an actual sheep today"</p><p>Just before Meiko could initiate her assault, right as the blacksmith reached behind her to pull out some ninja tools a booming explosion sent her down, it was like air itself tore itself apart and in her shocking horror Meiko witnessed her own friend splattered all over the area in a bloody stain and her own hands and legs torn apart and shredded by the destructive force of the tearing of reality above her. Then in a booming howl both Meiko's limbs and Mana's body reassembled as a powerful stream of light pulled Mana in and the magician ended up disappearing into the void of reality that had just opened and closed again.</p><p>"Okay…" Meiko blinked a couple of times before standing up and cleaning her clothes. She never overthought anything too much so it was much easier to accept for her that her friend had just been swallowed by a hole in reality which initially almost decimated the entire training grounds. "The Hokage probably would like to hear about that…" the blacksmith thought to herself scratching her chin and rushing at a casual pace towards the village. Just what kind of mess could Mana have gotten into this time? Was the outside edges of reality itself capable of sustaining human life? What if Mana died right after being flung onto the other side? Maybe Meiko needed to call for some smarter people to figure out where the Box of Ultimate Bliss was again? Then again, having in mind what happened to the last person who made the wish with it…</p><hr/><p>Mana couldn't understand what was happening. Her very essence felt being torn apart and only her chakra augmentation allowed her body to withstand the immensely crushing and tearing gravity of the experience. By all means she shouldn't have survived that but somehow she did. Was this maybe what "chakra over matter" meant? Mana remembered reading about those immensely powerful beings having those extraordinary and legendary adventures during the times of the First People that she never really questioned how they could've done it. Maybe the "chakra over matter" principle meant that exactly – chakra could've only been overcome by a higher concentration of chakra, not a chakra-less force?</p><p>Another boom made Mana scream in pain and cover her ears as finally her sight returned to her. The experience of losing her senses was one that Mana had previously and not too long ago. That could've only meant that she had returned home, but where "home" exactly? Was this Fire Country, Wind Country, Water Country? The magician looked around and stood back up on her feet, she felt a little tired having just passed through what appeared to be a wormhole of realities in a way. She was in a forest, very similar to those of the Fire Country. So she didn't travel that far, it appears. Well, that certainly was a fun experience. One she'll enjoy greatly telling the others about…</p><p>"Who are you? What are you doing so far outside the village, kid?" a voice reached her ears as the girl turned around and faced a grown man, a very vagabond-like looking young adult man. He had shoulder long black hair and a hat that was wrapped in bandages and wore a black ragged coat. "You have the Konoha headband so are you on a mission? Where is your team, girl?" the man insisted on continuously asking Mana questions.</p><p>"Ummm… Actually…" Mana opened her mouth to answer but then her mouth opened wide, she finally put two on two together – the black hair and the pitch black eyes that didn't appear to differentiate the pupil from the iris – this man was an Uchiha! Mana wasn't aware that her village had such well trained and combat hardened Uchiha left.</p><p>"You're a weird kid… Wait…" suddenly the man's right eye opened up, Mana's jaw gapped even wider open when she couldn't really pinpoint the strange manner of this man's Sharingan. If it even was a Sharingan in the first place, it was completely crimson colored, just like the eye would normally be and the pupil was so stick-thin and centered meanwhile the iris was covered in circles with straight tomoe that surrounded it. It did possess the tomoe typical to the Sharingan but it wasn't the appearance matching the one Mana remembered reading about it being.</p><p>"Your chakra level…" the man uttered, Mana felt a strike to the face sending her down, she saw it coming from a mile away but she didn't expect this man to attack her so close to the village, the girl just rolled back and jumped back on her feet.</p><p>"Hey! How dare you attack me so close to the village!?" Mana screamed out jumping up on her feet, her chakra augmentation saving her from the immense damage that the attack could've caused, the man appeared to blink rapidly in surprise for a while.</p><p>"I hit you pretty hard and yet you just bounced back on your feet, any genin or a ninja your age would've been dead but I saw your chakra level, you're not even human so what are you?" the man angrily grunted grabbing the hilt of his blade.</p><p>"You're not wearing the Konoha headband, I'd rather first hear your explanation…" Mana angrily squinted at the man who had lost all of her friendship points once he decided to attack her.</p><p>"Tsk…" the man just annoyingly exclaimed as his body blurred, Mana effortlessly leaned to the side, weaved forward and backwards, to the sides as well, avoiding each and every sword strike. This man was really slow by her standards but he possessed that strange ability to predict where she'd be, where she'd counter and when so he was able to somewhat keep up with her counters. Not that Mana tried very hard to hit him. Then the man extended his palm and grunted "Almighty Push!"</p><p>Some powerful force hit Mana straight in the chest and gut, then her face pushing her away, like gravity itself hit her and send her tumbling backwards. This man wasn't that powerful by any means, not judging by the standards of the enemies Mana had faced before but… He had those strange abilities that simply defied anything Mana had seen before. His Sharingan allowed the man to keep up with Mana's lazier attacks despite there being no reason he should've been able to. The magician grunted and stood up off the ground, she was getting sick of being tossed around.</p><p>Mana's arms flashed through handseals, the man's eyes opened wide but it was too late, her inhuman hand seal weaving speed made him fall to the ground and writhe like a snake which he was for attacking her. Mana walked up to the writhing man but then fell to the ground herself. Suddenly she herself started feeling like a snake and writhing foolishly on the ground.</p><p>"Genjutsu Reverse… A Sharingan technique, it was foolish to attack a Sharingan user with a genjutsu" the man remarked placing his sword to Mana's throat. A mad burst of chakra from Mana's system broke her own illusion. The violent shockwave sent the man dashing backwards and clenching his blade. As the man's right eye activated again. A giant purple avatar of armor began covering the man and rising into the sky. Suddenly the man just flew up into the air and stood surrounded by a giant purple glowing suit of armor that appeared larger than the most colossal mountain ranges.</p><p>"You can't attack in that, you'll destroy the village! Everyone will die!" Mana pleaded with a scream aimed at the giant armor that then slowly began to diminish down.</p><p>"I see, so you are a kind soul then, worried about the lives of the villagers?" the man wondered as he walked out of the dissolving armor that disappeared in snuffed out purple flames as fast as it rose from the ground.</p><p>"I care about them more than I care about my own life…" Mana admitted lowering her head in shame like there was something to be ashamed of, she only felt bad because she just admitted her weakness to this strange man with lacking power and speed but impressive range of abilities.</p><p>"Why? Your chakra it's… Literally everywhere, it's larger than the Tailed Beasts' and yet you seem to think you're from Konoha, what's going on here?" the man wondered sheathing his sword and closing both of his eye techniques making his eyes return to the complete blackness that he once wore.</p><p>"I am from Konoha and… No, my chakra isn't like the Tailed Beasts' I've seen the power of the Tailed Beasts, even a weakened Nine Tails could've decimated all of my team in moments" Mana spoke.</p><p>"A dimensional traveler perhaps?" the man wondered, he removed a piece of paper from his large bag that he carried around his back. He drew a simplistic looking human shape with a small internal fire burning inside of them.</p><p>Mana squinted angrily, "I'm not an idiot, I don't need to be explained things by drawing, you can just tell me!" she shouted out.</p><p>"Sorry, a habit one acquires by training a dolt son of an even dumber dolt…" the man put the paper back in his bag, his apology didn't mean too sincere as his face didn't shift much. The man appeared to be completely void of any emotions except some brief flashes of worry and surprise when they were briefly fighting.</p><p>"My name is Sasuke Uchiha, I am… A ninja, a wanderer more like it, but my allegiance lies with Konoha. I believe you to be a displaced dimensional traveler, I've seen one like you before but… That one was a lost soul, you are much different. You see most of us are born with chakra here, chakra is passed down from the original ancestors that ate the fruit from the God Tree, your chakra is constantly overflowing, like you were a source of chakra itself instead of someone using it. Your chakra level disobeys the very laws of physics of our world which is why I assume you're from another dimension, a place where chakra itself is as common as air and where ninja are much more powerful because of it. The origin of your chakra must be different from ours" the man explained.</p><p>"Well… I do remember being sucked into a large… Thing. I was training my friend Meiko and then after a loud noise it felt like I was being disassembled on a molecular level and…" Mana explained.</p><p>"Hmph… You may not even be a dimensional traveler but something else entirely. I don't understand what you are but you don't seem like you're here to hurt us. I'm heading to train someone, maybe you'd like to come with and share some things on the way, maybe your insight and different point of view will help me get to that dolt?"</p><p>Mana shrugged and nodded. "I'd very much like to maybe return to my home at some point… If I'm even out of place that is…" she wondered.</p><p>"Very out of place…" Sasuke confirmed with a firm nod.</p><hr/><p>"Ey, Sasuke, you've kept me waiting, what gives, I mean!?" a loudmouthed young brat yelled out when Mana and Sasuke walked out into a forest clearing. The magician looked around dumbfounded by how identical this training ground looked to that of her own dimension or universe or time or whatever concept she was misplaced in. Most battlefield devastations weren't there but mostly the entire clearing was virtually the same. Perhaps what Sasuke said about ninja in Mana's home being stronger and more destructive was what lead to those more severe devastations back home.</p><p>"Also who's this brat beside you, I mean?" the loudmouth yelled out questioningly again squinting at Mana. It appeared that this youngster had some sort of a verbal tick, inserting an additive that didn't really make sense. He certainly didn't do it on purpose, it was something that just happened to him but it didn't appear to bother him so it was unlikely he'd seek help…</p><p>"Based on the looks of it I'm a year or two older than you, kid…" Mana replied coldly when Sasuke gently raised his hand gesturing for her to not engage into a quarrel with the young one.</p><p>The boy didn't look like much of a ninja, then again, Mana possibly wasn't the one to judge with her own overly showy magician's uniform and all. The boy was short but had a wild blonde hairdo that seemed to compensate for his lack of height, he wore a weird black and pink tracksuit that reminded Mana of Meiko's casual dressing style.</p><p>"This young woman is someone I need to watch until we can figure out where she came from and how she can get home, Boruto" Sasuke closed his eyes and cut the boy's outrage down with a single sentence. It didn't appear like this Boruto was very excited about this prospect as he pouted and crossed his arms on his chest angrily.</p><p>"I saw your Susanoo, Sasuke, what happened, I mean?" the brat asked.</p><p>"I picked a fight with this girl, her name is Mana, I needed to know who she was" Sasuke replied before stepping in forward and nodding his head, pointing his chin at a training dummy. Grunting with annoyance Boruto began hitting it.</p><p>"So is she at least useful to us? Can she help me train or something, I mean?" Boruto grunted as he swiped wildly kicking and punching around. Mana couldn't help but notice how inexperienced and sloppy his shape was. This kid just helplessly wailed his fists and feet around, even more, his strikes appeared to be half-assed and lazy. He had no actual martial arts training and his form just barely implied he even passed the basic taijutsu skill exams of the Academy.</p><p>"I've noticed something, neither of you appear to augment your abilities. Sasuke-san at least hit really hard but Boruto-kun isn't even destroying this dummy with a strike. Is it sealed with force absorption seals?" Mana inquired.</p><p>"Augment, I mean?" Boruto wondered looking at Mana strangely before running up closer to her with an excited look. "Show me, show me, I mean!" he yelled out. Mana nodded and slowly walked up to the dummy, carelessly flicking it with the tip of her finger and blowing it to pieces that then dissolved into pure sawdust from the ripping force. Sasuke carelessly "Hmph'ed" while Boruto screamed in excitement.</p><p>"Hey, can you show me how to do that?! I bet I'd kick my old man's ass, did she kick yours, Sasuke, I mean!?" Boruto began losing all of his composure just jumping around Mana while the magician scratched the back of her head uncomfortably making a total mess of her raven hair.</p><p>"Well, she is certainly leagues faster, stronger and more durable than me. She also has some weird fighting style that makes her near impossible to hit but she lacks experience and seriousness" Sasuke shrugged, it didn't appear like the man cared too much about who was actually stronger and was much more interested in where exactly Mana came from.</p><p>"That's true, your sensei has amazing fighting experience and a very wide myriad of techniques. While I wasn't really trying during our fight, mostly because I was worried I'd hurt him after seeing his strength and speed, I believe that without knowledge of those techniques I couldn't beat Sasuke-san" Mana shyly butted her fingers against each other before giggling silly "Then again, I'm not much of a fighter where I come from, I'm actually part stage magician…"</p><p>"You mean you're not even that strong by your dimension's standards?" Sasuke appeared genuinely surprised for the first time in a while.</p><p>"Oh no, I don't think I could take even a single punch from Meiko or Kouta-kun, I'd need trickery to beat them, also I'm still a genin" Mana shyly explained feeling less and less special with every second she was being questioned. For a moment there having been ported to this world where everyone was weaker than she was the girl felt exceptional, almost how an elite talent would've felt and she longed that feeling, she wanted to feel special but the more she talked about her home the more she remembered just how ordinary she actually was.</p><p>"Whaaaa!? A genin, I mean?" Boruto yelled out in excitement, "How could genin be so strong, I mean!?</p><p>"I'll remind you that neither your father nor I ever made it above genin and yet we are the two most powerful ninja alive…" Sasuke annoyingly twitched his eyebrow.</p><p>"That's 'cause my old man's a loser, I mean, and I'm gonna become a wanderer like Sasuke and kick his ass one day!" Boruto declared excitedly before giving Mana a thumbs up, "So, what do you think, girl, can you teach me that "augmentation" thingie so I can beat my old man with it?"</p><p>Sasuke's right eye flared crimson as Mana felt dragged into an illusionary world where Sasuke stood right in front of her. The world around her was an identical copy to the one she stood before but it was all colored in various shades of red, the sky was bright red, the clouds were dark murky red and the water looked like a river of blood. Sasuke's ability to use genjutsu without hand seals or any effort actually surprised Mana, it only made her realize the actual difference between their levels despite being so much stronger and faster than Sasuke.</p><p>"Don't teach Boruto augmentation" Sasuke asked Mana, "In fact, don't ever show it to any of us. Just say it's your natural strength"</p><p>"B-But why?" Mana wondered, "Boruto-kun appears to really dislike me and maybe it'd help him warm up to me a bit, maybe it'd help him view other people more than tools in his quest for power? Also if you learned chakra augmentation maybe you could fight off threats that you couldn't normally, maybe it'd lead to you saving your home?"</p><p>"Truth is that Boruto is an even greater idiot than his father. Both me and Naruto had our weaknesses. Naruto's was that he was simply too absent minded and rash, mine was that I was willing to cut corners if that meant getting strong. Unfortunately Boruto appears to have not only our collective strengths but also our weaknesses. He is talented naturally like me and just outright persistent and outrageously lucky like his thin hammer of a father, however he also is rash, unwilling to listen and he cuts corners to obtain power. Truth be told your power appears dangerous and I don't think even I could handle it, someone like Boruto would absolutely abuse it and tell me, can it be abused?"</p><p>"No…" Mana let her head down sadly, "I once used it to fight an opponent I otherwise had no hopes of beating and that cost me my chakra manipulation, for a long while I lived without the ninja part of me and I thought I had lost it for good"</p><p>"Unless you wish to crush Boruto's dream and go through what you went through, you won't teach it to him. Nor will you teach me it. The power does sound alluring but… I'm done with this mad chase for power at the cost of my own humanity. I believe the only one in the village who could handle it would be Naruto, if need ever arises you could show him how to do it but chances are he's too thick to listen to the end of your first sentence…" Sasuke cut Mana's dreams down as the illusion faded and the two remained standing in front of an excited Boruto begging Mana to show him the secret to chakra augmentation.</p><p>"It's ummm… I'm not sure how I do it, really… It's more like a native thing, we're born with the ability…" Mana quickly made up something. It was a relatively new experience – to lie for the sake of protecting someone. The magician didn't like lying, it made her feel dirty, made her feel like her own heart would've rather clawed its way out of her chest and spat in her face than continuously beat in her despicable cavity but… Such was necessary. Sasuke was infinitely wiser and more experienced than her, he knew what he was talking about.</p><p>"Aw shit, I mean!" Boruto cursed trying to imitate Mana's movements and mannerisms on another dummy.</p><p>All of a sudden Mana felt a cold feeling of a short sword placed by her throat and heard loud footsteps all around her, ninja were landing and rushing to Sasuke's aid.</p><p>"We saw the Perfect Susanoo all the way from the village and thought you needed help, Sasuke-san!" the ninja rushed up to the confused Uchiha. A young girl with glasses and a red top also ran out from the crowd of ninja and wrapped her hands around Sasuke's waist.</p><p>"Father, you've returned!" she screamed out as her eyes became teary. "Why didn't you come home to mother and me?" she asked.</p><p>"Oh… I promised Boruto I'd train him right after I came back" Sasuke replied then pointed at Mana and the ninja holding her hostage.</p><p>"I'd be careful if I was you, you could begin slitting her throat and she'd disarm and kill you before you cut through the second layer of her skin. With all that in mind she's a friendly" Sasuke said making the ninja stagger back and sheathe the short blade that he wielded.</p><p>"Hmmm? Who is this, dad?" the dark haired girl came up closer to Mana and leaned up inspecting her from top to bottom. Then her eyes opened wide as she screamed out, "Don't tell me she's my sister!?"</p><p>"I thought you're already done with the identity crisis, Sarada…" Sasuke annoyingly said with an awkward smile, "No, she's not your sister. You don't really have one, she may be your counterpart from a faraway universe but I doubt it, this girl is very little like you at all"</p><p>"Hmmm… She has darker skin than us, maybe she's related to Chocho somehow?" Sarada wondered awkwardly inspecting Mana like a scientist would inspect their subject. "You said she's really fast and strong but she doesn't look like much…"</p><p>"Really? Hit her with your best shot…" Sasuke smiled confidently.</p><p>Mana wondered why Sasuke would make her fight his daughter but she decided to just stand still, after all she had already made a habit of trusting Sasuke without question. Sarada leaned back and took a fighting stance before rushing at Mana with a spinning elbow strike. Mana effortlessly leaned back and avoided it, it felt like being attacked by a sloth. Sarada looked so slow to Mana's instincts that the magician had trouble dodging the girl's blows because she couldn't properly place herself into a rhythm. Dodging such slow blows was actually quite problematic because the timing was unusually off, Mana was used dodging hundreds of times supersonic attacks so dodging a really fast human girl was surprisingly difficult.</p><p>"Chi…" Sarada exclaimed like some sort of a curse. She then leaped back and made a couple of hand seals, the girl flung a series of fast shuriken at Mana that then quadrupled in the air making almost a rainfall of deadly blades.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" the girl chanted before quickly making through another series of hand seals and breathing in. While Mana's hand seals were faster by an infinite amount the magician was relatively impressed by Sarada's hand seals when compared to her sluggish fighting speed.</p><p>"Great Fireball Jutsu!" Sarada chanted breathing out a fireball of flames that quickly caught up with the shuriken and set them ablaze creating a combination attack of rainfall of small burning shuriken. Mana simply removed her top hat and lifted it up placing her palm on the other end, the hat started glowing with indigo colored light as the shuriken that would've hit Mana were quickly sealed inside her father's technique to be used by Mana on a later note.</p><p>"Goddamn it!" Sarada screamed out in anger, her eyes flared up red as the girl opened her Sharingan.</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times in rapid succession, just how many Uchiha were there in this dimension? It appeared that Uchiha were more prosperous in this place than in Mana's home, while there were more numerous Uchiha in Mana's Konoha, these Uchiha appeared to be more prominent and more willing to actually train as opposed to feeling cocky about their natural talent.</p><p>The girl leaped so far into the sky that the magician found it tough to track Sarada, she used a very similar technique to chakra augmentation. It was actually looking more similar to Kouta's medical technique which augmented the user's strength, so this girl was familiar with medical techniques then?</p><p>"Chirping Blossom Crash! Cha!" Sarada roared out proudly as her hand began glowing not only with the blueish chakra of her medical enhanced strength technique but also got covered with Lightning Release chakra and she dived down crashing into the training grounds aiming her lightning enhanced punch right at Mana.</p><p>The destructive force of the punch was immense! The entire ground ruptured and became ruined, whole chunks of dirt and rock flew from under Mana's feet and all around, the ninja who came to Sasuke's aid all jumped back and hid in the trees while Sasuke remained observant of this brief struggle looking unimpressed. Once the smoke cleared Sarada appeared to believe that she had satisfied her hard to impress father but then she noticed that Mana did a vertical split kicking her flexible leg up and blocking Sarada's punch perfectly with her own foot.</p><p>Sarada jumped back and huffed, she clearly threw more than half of her usable chakra into this double assault and yet she had achieved nothing as Mana's lax kick perfectly counteracted Sarada's punch and cushioned the force right beneath the magician's feet.</p><p>"There's no way she's this strong!" Sarada grunted out angrily, "Dad, she has to be some sort of a nukenin infiltrating this village! No one can beat me without even trying!"</p><p>Sasuke walked up to Sarada and pet her head, Sarada turned around facing her father with surprise in her eyes, her Sharingan closed as the girl was too tired to not let her guard down. The Uchiha carelessly tapped the girl's forehead with two fingers.</p><p>"She's not my daughter, this girl isn't the one I am proud of. That honor will always belong to you – the successor of the Uchiha bloodline. Now go tell your mother I'm back and that I'll be home for dinner" Sasuke just barely and briefly smiled. It was an interesting thing when people who normally didn't smile smiled. It made that smile just worth a thousand times more than it was when someone like Mana smiled. The girl considered her own smile a gift to everyone so she continued to gift that present to everyone.</p><p>"It'd be for the best if Naruto saw you now. Maybe he'll know someone who can help you get back home…" Sasuke looked at Mana and started heading towards the village without uttering as much as a word. For a brief moment the girl just continued standing there but then she rushed after the Uchiha.</p><p>"Hey! How about my training, goddamn it, I mean! You ripped me off, old man, I mean!" Boruto raged on jumping and trying to stomp the ruined training arena even deeper into total destruction than it already was demolished.</p><p>"Fine… You're gonna be next on my hitlist, I mean. I'll beat my old man and then I'm gonna kick your ass, Sasuke, I mean it!" Boruto declared following after Mana, Sasuke and Sarada back into the village.</p><hr/><p>"Hmmm… So you think this girl might be from another dimension, you know?" another young adult surprisingly similar to Boruto squinted examining Mana. "Can't you tell which dimension she's from? With your Rinnegan, I mean you could track Kaguya, couldn't you, you know?" the blonde ninja with an orange tracksuit and a royal-like white cloak kept scratching his chin in a comical manner that actually cracked a giggle from Mana.</p><p>"Nope, I had no feedback, she's from no dimension that I have access to seeing. I thought I could track any dimension but I can't, apparently because this girl is most definitely not of this world. She says she's human but by our standards she's an "entity" more than a human" Sasuke concluded locking his hands around his chest and lowering his head. Now that the man had removed his bandaged turban his hair appeared to wildly flow around his face as Sasuke had shoulder length completely untrimmed hair. If he was wandering for a while, which he most likely has been doing there was no wonder he'd have trouble keeping his hair in check.</p><p>"Kurama is just as oblivious as you, you know…" the orange ninja sat back into his chair and spun around. Only then did it dawn to Mana that this man was actually the Hokage as he wore a cloak similar to that which Hanasaku had adopted lately and he sat in the Hokage's chair. However this Hokage's room was much more organized and had much less paperwork loaded so initially the girl wondered if this man could've been some sort of administrator of a high ranking.</p><p>"This must be Naruto, the father of Boruto…" Mana put two on two together remembering all the talking that Boruto and Sasuke did while no one really explained to her who this man was, while Sasuke did declare that bringing her to Naruto was his goal, to assume that this man was Naruto would've been a bit brave.</p><p>"She does appear to have a level of chakra matching my own, Kurama is a bit jealous, you know" Naruto smiled in a strange giggle and petted Mana's head like she was his child or something. "Don't worry, kid, we'll help you get home in no time, you know!" the man gave Mana a thumb up just like Boruto did in the forest, now Mana saw that Boruto was definitely the son of his father – the two had similar mannerisms and very similar taste in clothes and speech patterns. Both had nonsense words which they inserted into their speech.</p><p>Mana nodded, "I don't wish to be a bother, maybe I can be of any use to you?" she wondered, "I mean technically I am a Konoha ninja and I must obey the Hokage's orders, I'm not sure what the ninja protocol says about when a ninja shifts through dimensions but… I'm sure that my allegiance to you still stands, Hokage-sama!" Mana bowed lower than she usually did when talking to a person she respected, the degree of her bow suggested obedience and a degree of subordination.</p><p>"No need to worry, you know… We've just finished dealing with all crisis in our village so we can spare some time and manpower to help you, you know" Naruto laughed out.</p><p>"It would be better if she didn't stay at my place" Sasuke cut down, "Sarada appeared to have taken an extreme distrust in Mana, while Boruto also distrusts and dislikes her, he at the very least tolerates her existence because of her strength. Sarada is… Going through a difficult time, she's desperate for my attention and having my fatherhood standards in mind…" Sasuke tried to explain the situation but Naruto slapped his friend in the back.</p><p>"You're just saying you're a shitty father, you know!" he laughed out rubbing his nose.</p><p>"Not like you're any better, may I remind you that you dropped your daughter's cake last year when you decided to stay and work overnight during her birthday and sent a clone to congratulate her?" Sasuke squinted at Naruto, "Sakura can't have enough of telling that story ever since she heard it from your wife…"</p><p>Naruto appeared to settle down as the reply did hit him deep inside, "Well… It was… A difficult period, lessons were learned… You know…" he muttered out before Sasuke's lips just slightly tipped up implying that the man was just joking around.</p><p>"Good to have you back, you know, Sasuke" Naruto smiled.</p><p>"Maybe one time I'll come back without any world threatening events or any lost interdimensional travelers wandering to our world" the Uchiha also shared a moment with his old time friend in return.</p><hr/><p>"Well… This is where you'll be staying for a while, you know…" Naruto gestured towards a wide wooden door inside a modern looking house that still tried implementing the classical taste where it could. This Konoha was so different from the one Mana came from, files were stored in some strange TV-shaped boxes that reminded a lot of the revolutionary computer machines that were slowly spreading in her time. The buildings were completely different, some simple classical shacks were replaced by towering and futuristic looking towers of glass and steel and some of those sky reaching buildings had boards on them that appeared to function similarly to TV panels.</p><p>Mana did feel strangely shy about this whole deal. She just nodded her head and looked around the complex of rooms and corridors that Naruto lead her into. This looked like an entire mansion, she's never been in such a complex of large rooms, even Hanada Katsuo's mansion was more like a large house compared to this. This was just wrong. She got flung from her own time and space to this completely distant dimension or universe or space or maybe even time and now she had to trouble another family. She's already caused trouble for Sasuke who did his best to help Mana get through the situation.</p><p>Naruto slowly slid the door open and pointed for Mana to enter first but when the girl looked really hesitant to do so he entered first and declared that he's back home out loud. A loud childish voice could've been heard when a toddler-like little thing ran down from a nearby room, she was really fast based on how winded the little girl was, she must've dashed through multiple rooms to get to her father.</p><p>"Daddy!" she yelled out leaping into his arms, Naruto effortlessly lifted her in the air and placed her on his shoulders.</p><p>"Himawari, don't trouble your father, he's probably really worn out…" a feminine and really high pitched voice came before a woman appeared from the corner of another room. Naruto placed the girl called Himawari on the ground and rushed to his wife, wrapping his hands around her and lifting her in the air as much as the height of his own home allowed it. The little toddler remained staring at Mana with shining eyes and the cutest smile.</p><p>She was really a lovely kid, little Himawari had her father's face, even the same little whiskers on her cheeks, but her hair reminded more of her mother's, the kid was dark haired after all, differently from her brother and her father but on the pure cute factor she outranked every child Mana had ever seen. The magician couldn't resist smiling for the little flower.</p><p>"Oh, we have a guest?" Naruto's wife noticed before raising her voice slightly and alerting Boruto that the dinner was ready, judging from the smell that drenched the wooden frames of the house it must've been ready for quite a while and the family was waiting for Naruto to come home to eat it.</p><p>"Yeah, everyone, this is Mana, she's… From really far away and she's really lost. She's an ally and… It's tough to explain, you know" Naruto started scratching his own head trying to explain it to his family before Mana bowed to the Hokage's wife and tried to explain.</p><p>"I got displaced in time and space, I'm from Konoha but not this Konoha. I don't want to cause you any trouble, I just want to get back home" Mana uncomfortably rubbed her sandal against the floor.</p><p>The woman smiled and bowed her head slightly in return, "My name is Hinata, I am Naruto's wife and this is Himawari, Boruto told me a little about you. He mentioned that Sasuke has found another favorite. He was quite mad at you but I believe it was mostly jealousy, he can be quite demanding of attention" Hinata smiled awkwardly trying to see if Mana hadn't gotten a negative impression of Boruto already which must've been the case of most people that had met him.</p><p>"No, it's quite alright, I realize that my arrival has inconvenienced everyone so much so I should be the one asking for forgiveness…" Mana bowed again before feeling a warm grip around her hand, Himawari appeared to have grabbed her hand and started dragging the girl further inside.</p><p>"You're weird… Let's go eat" she laughed out.</p><p>Mana smiled trying to restrain a giggle but then she couldn't help it but laugh a little. Naruto rubbed his nose and laughed out as well. Considering all the circumstances of her arrival Mana was really surprised that she was trusted at all, had such a thing happened in her own universe the traveler would be stuck in the arrest house as a best case scenario or even accused of spying for another country as a worst.</p><p>After the family settled down around the table Boruto finally ran down from his room on the second floor, he looked significantly less happy about Mana's presence than the rest of the family. "What is she doing here, I mean?" was all that slipped out from his mouth but Mana noticed that the boy tried to at the very least soften his tone to try and sound a bit less offensive.</p><p>"This is Mana, she's weird and funny…" Himawari yelled out after eating a shrimp to which Hinata tried to reply with a worried stare. It was clear that the woman didn't like her daughter calling a guest "weird" even if it was more in a quirky kind of weird than a negative light.</p><p>"She's our guest Boruto, in more ways than one, you know" Naruto calmly replied closing his eyes and preparing for another outrage from his son.</p><p>Strangely enough Boruto just looked at Himawari who appeared to be quite fond of the guest and calmed down somewhat, he must've really trusted and treasured his sister to completely change his position like that. "I just thought she'd stay with Sasuke, didn't mean any offense, I mean" Boruto mumbled out before settling down.</p><p>Halfway through the dinner Hinata noticed that Mana had barely eaten anything, once in a while she placed some food in her plate but barely actually ate anything, just trying to move attention away from the fact by placing more and more food by small quantities.</p><p>"You're not eating anything, Mana, do people in your dimension not eat?" Hinata asked, it may have been taken offensively but judging from the woman's soft tone it was clear that such was not the intended meaning of those words.</p><p>"They do it's just… You clearly didn't anticipate that you'll have to feed a guest tonight. I don't want to be any trouble for you guys, you've been far more welcoming to me than anyone would reasonably be in this case" Mana replied poking the rice in her place with the chopsticks.</p><p>"Well, it's not like we have a very good record with travelers, I mean, one stole aunt Hanabi's eyes that one time…" Boruto said to which both Naruto and Hinata angrily replied with scolding glares.</p><p>"Toneri was not from another dimension, he was from the Moon, you know" Naruto angrily explained to his son and Mana.</p><p>"Yeah, but doesn't change the fact of that awkward dinner when he came to visit at the same time as aunt Hanabi, I mean" Boruto closed his eyes and took a sip of the juice from his cup. "Plus, even Sasuke doesn't know where she's from exactly, Mana being from another dimension is just his theory, last time I've heard dimensions don't have copies of Konoha in them, I mean" he added. It only made sense that someone angry at Mana would be suspicious of her story.</p><p>"Don't feel bad, Mana-chan, brother failed his written tests all the time in the Academy, he doesn't know about dimensions" Himawari giggled eating another shrimp. It was odd how easily this little one accepted Mana as an ally, having in mind the information she was given. It was clear that this Konoha lived in the times of long and prosperous peace. Naruto must've been a really good Hokage, together with a really strong roster of Kage in charge of the other villages if children trusted other people without anything tangible to earn that trust.</p><p>Mana stood up from her table and bowed for Hinata and Naruto. "I think I'll go for a short walk. I've caused enough tension for your family today" the girl replied almost running out from the house. On her way out she almost tripped on some wooden decorations due to tears that began forming in her eyes. Mana didn't want to cry but she had no control over it. She was lost in literally every ways one could've been lost, the only way home was to do what she didn't want to do – cause unnecessary trouble for other people.</p><p>The magician girl just collapsed by a wooden pillar and looked at the sky. She used to like to look at the sky back home, hoping for it to rain because Mana liked rains, they felt so sad but also they drenched one in water, they refreshed one's mind by washing away all the trouble and reminded of how inconsequential one's troubles really were in the scope of the larger natural processes.</p><p>Was this dark void filled with stars even her sky? Would this rain that just wouldn't fall despite Mana's most desperate pleads be her rain? The sky looked just as dark when it got dark, the stars glowed just as brightly but were they really her stars? Mana treated these people just like she'd have treated people from her own time or space or dimension or wherever she was lost in. First the girl hoped to protect her village before she learned of how vast the world was, then she extended her responsibility to beyond the village walls, no matter how badly they wanted to kill her. Now she was told that there was an infinite number of universes and worlds she had to protect and treat as her own as well… Just how many versions of Naruto were out there? Maybe the number of alternate versions of Mana out there was just as numerous…</p><p>A shuffling sound alerted the magician, someone walked out through the door and slowly tapped up to Mana in wooden sandals. It was Hinata dressed in a majestically gorgeous purple kimono with lotus and dragon motifs. The woman knelt and sat down to Mana and looked at the sky as well.</p><p>"I used to run to this pillar when I felt alone too. When I was a kid, much younger than you, I thought that this was just a normal pillar and I was the one that gave it meaning. Maybe that wasn't true, maybe it is mystical and actually is a sanctuary for people that feel alone if you found it as well. Similarly to this wooden pillar's meaning you're only alone and you only need to feel scared if you yourself make it that way, we're ready to welcome you to our home anytime you need it" Hinata spoke slowly and softly. She didn't ask or force Mana to return, the woman just spoke words that she thought could've helped.</p><p>The magician sighed and then looked at the woman. "You felt alone? But you're so beautiful and look so strong, how could you have ever been alone?" she wondered.</p><p>Hinata laughed out, "I've certainly never been stuck so far away from home like you so I cannot even imagine your pain but… You'd have no idea. As a kid I was a lot less confident, a bit shorter and frailer, also my own clan considered me a disappointment"</p><p>"How'd that turn out? How did you get over it?" Mana wanted to know.</p><p>"Well, I met a person I loved who showed me that I too can be strong if I want to, someone who showed me just how beautiful I was to them even if at first he was sluggish and it was difficult to tell, that person taught me to be strong but this pillar helped me get through the moments when all seemed hopeless and that person was really far away. It was a valuable pit stop on the way to inner strength and I'm glad it can help you as well" Hinata explained still looking at the stars. "Boruto doesn't hate you, it's important that you realize that, he doesn't have it in him to hate anyone. He can be really thick, just like his father but also just like his father he only sees the best in people. It's just that just like his father when he sees goodness and strength inside someone he gets jealous that other people don't see the goodness and strength inside of him too, jealous of the attention people give that person"</p><p>"Well, if that's the case he has nothing to be jealous of, I have it in me to hate. He is better than me in every way… All of you are. Being stranded in this world is like being stranded in heaven but wishing to be alive again instead" Mana's head sunk down.</p><p>Hinata looked at the magician before looking back at a light glowing on the second floor and loud yells. "I have a feeling Boruto once again took burgers with him to bed. That boy loves his junk food…" Hinata uttered to which Mana encouraged the woman to go.</p><p>"Just live your life like I wasn't here" Mana said, "You deserve a happy life for all the trouble you've overcome"</p><p>Hinata wanted to say something in return but loud yells and even louder banging noises suggested that Boruto started brawling with Naruto when he tried to take his burgers away again. The woman jumped up and dusted off her kimono before running indoors.</p><p>Mana looked at the Moon and sighed. "So people live on the Moon in this dimension?" she wondered remembering all the tales and scrolls she read about the Sky Clan that settled on the Moon and warred with the Earth Clan. Maybe the histories of these two dimensions are at least a little bit similar even if Mana saw plenty differences between them, for one the faces of this Hokage Mountain were completely different shape and look, they must've been totally different people.</p><p>A deafening sonic boom made Mana cover her ears, the magician felt her hands getting wet with blood that started running from them all of a sudden and the girl observed in horror as the Moon exploded into space dust right up in the sky, the space dust began falling down into Earth, it was so small and inconsequential that it actually looked more like falling ash.</p><p>Naruto in full ninja gear appeared right up close to Mana. "Stay here, you know!" he ordered before disappearing, or at least he would've disappeared to anyone else, Mana's eyes tracked the high speed movements perfectly. Naruto was even slower than Sasuke, all the time he spent being the Hokage must've left him a little weakened from the time that the two were working together. From how they interacted with one another the magician could only assume they were teammates once. Hinata, Himawari and Boruto ran out of the house and looked up into the sky. Hinata covered her mouth in horror seeing the Moon being blown up and tears started running down her face.</p><p>"Poor Toneri…" she uttered.</p><p>Mana wondered just who this Toneri person was, based on what she had heard so far he lived on the Moon and had once descended upon this world and taken the eyes of the aunt of Boruto and Himawari. He must've once been a bad person but redeemed, based on Hinata's regret of his supposed demise the magician realized that Naruto may just have been the kind of legendary hero she always wanted to become, one that inspired and protected people but also changed bad people instead of fighting them until they could move no more.</p><p>Boruto looked at Mana angrily, "This better wouldn't be an invading force and you better not be their scout, I mean" he said looking visibly affected by the loss of the Moon as well.</p><p>Himawari tried to push Boruto but she herself ended up stumbling. "Shut up! Mana is a good person!"</p><p>"Oh come on, we don't know anything about her but theories and the same night when she comes the whole goddamn sky blows up, I mean!" Boruto yelled.</p><p>Hinata looked at her son with that look that all mothers carried around hoping to never use it. The look that is basically the nuke of all looks that decimated any child's resistance and made them capitulate the moment "the look" became an option to a parent.</p><p>"I'm sorry… I mean… Toneri is probably done for, if he could've he'd have made his way down already and we're the only place he is as welcome as he can be, I mean" Boruto apologized, it was clear from his shaking voice that he also cared a bit about this Toneri person from the visit or two that the man from the Moon had made. Mana stood up and looked at the falling dust in the sky, then back at the village.</p><p>"I'm going" she said, "Maybe Boruto is right and I did cause this, maybe my very presence in this dimension is ruining everything, wouldn't be the first time I made things worse. I'm stronger and faster than anyone in this dimension, if I caused this, I'm gonna fix it"</p><p>Mana's body disappeared from sight right after she uttered those words. Boruto also closed his hands into a hand seal position and smiled confidently. "Alright, I mean, it's time Boruto, the great ninja hero, the man who would eventually become a great ninja wanderer like old man Sasuke joined the battle too!" he declared and launched his body into a wild run. A moment later a black nearly invisible blur brought the young man back to his mother and sister. To those without advanced reaction times surpassing the definition of a moment by millions of times it would've appeared like the young man just teleported back to his family.</p><p>"Holy shit she's fast, I mean!" Boruto yelled out in frustration but also admiration.</p><hr/><p>A glowing flash lit up the Konoha streets in feint bursts that went out as quickly as they ignited as the Konoha's Orange Hokage moved through the streets trying to look for a possible threat. Why would the Moon just blow up? There had to be something, a meteor or maybe another interdimensional being, maybe another leftover from Princess Kaguya's clan? After all, Naruto's way to being Hokage was covered with events where he had to deal with that infernal clan and people refusing to let go of ancient history and ambition.</p><p>There it was… Naruto noticed five figures floating in the air above the Hokage Mountain and examining its glory and craftsmanship. Within a single bound, moving in a flash the Hokage moved right on top of the Second Hokage's stony nose staring the strangers right in their eyes. His muscles twitched and his will begged Naruto to attack these men, they destroyed the Moon, that meant that Toneri was either dead or about to be.</p><p>"Greetings, I assume you are the leader of this community? Maybe even this planet?" the central figure, a hulking man at least twice Naruto's size with arms that looked like they could've wrestled with a Tailed Beast crossed on his pumped up chest.</p><p>"Actually he is the leader of this small city, however he does possess a unique charisma that makes him the closest this community has to a leader, even the leaders of other cities are willing to listen to this man" another slightly shorter and bald man covered with glowing cracks and markings over his skin and with glowing eyes informed the brute.</p><p>"That's right, I'm the Seventh Hokage of this village, Uzumaki Naruto, you know!" Naruto replied not liking at all that despite his presence these men still spoke to themselves and completely ignored him.</p><p>"Hmmm, never understood that split leadership thing. Worlds are stronger united under one rule…" the leader noted briefly closing his eyes that snuffed out two immensely powerful sources of the strange supernatural light that the bodies of these people were charged with.</p><p>"Rule? Is that why you've destroyed the Moon? To rule? What is there left of it to rule now, you know?" Naruto growled angrily pointing his fist at the large man in the middle whose eyes opened again illuminating the area they were in.</p><p>"For a mortal you show considerable understanding. We do not wish to rule ash and cinders however disobedience and insolence needs to be punished. The man on that small planetoid valued his home and his temples more than he awed at Gods appearing in front of him, he refused to praise us and even attacked us. We didn't attempt to kill him, taking his home away from him however felt just" the leader replied placing his oversized hand that looked colossal enough to crush Naruto's head like a grape on his chest.</p><p>"My name is Power, this is Mind, Technique, Speed and Reality. We are Gods travelling the universes and looking for a domain to praise us that we can claim as ours" the man began his speech with a black blur he was interrupted when Sasuke appeared besides Naruto.</p><p>"You're late, you know…" Naruto noted.</p><p>"I needed to see if the Moon's destruction caused any immediate threats. We can recreate it after this but it seems that several islands in Kirigakure were flushed away by tidal waves. The Mizukage will want a detailed report about this" Sasuke said glaring at the threats in front of him.</p><p>Naruto chuckled and with a confident and a little angry smile he looked at the enemy as well. Sasuke always was the more mature of the two, coupled with the fact that he also wanted to become the Hokage at some point, it made Naruto wonder if maybe Sasuke would've been a superior Hokage to him. After all he only reached for that post because of a dream and a bunch of declarations he made as a child and because he never went back on his word. Seeing Sasuke worry not about chasing the enemy but controlling the situation at hand before coming to Naruto's aid calmed the Hokage down and got him ready for combat, now his mind was clearer and more ready than ever.</p><p>"As I was saying, the five of us are Gods traversing the universes, looking for people that praise us. People always lash out and try to attack us which eventually causes them to destroy their own worlds in attempts to destroy us, either that or we become disillusioned with that universe and we destroy it instead. I sincerely hope that we can come to an agreement…" Power nodded his head. "All you need to do is bow before us and praise us. In return we shall act like all Gods act, protect you when we deem it needed, smite you when you misbehave"</p><p>Sasuke cracked a grin. "So you mean to say that in all of the universes you've travelled through no one ever praised you? Seems a bit unlikely"</p><p>"They did, but they never meant it. They only spoke that way but secretly harbored thoughts of rebelling or they only agreed to our proposition out of fear. Mind here knows everything that has happened, is happening and will happen, he knows literally everything there is to know about everything so he informs me when someone's intentions are insincere. However all the knowledge overwhelms him, he becomes lost reading and processing all of it so I have to ask him about something or else he shall remain absorbed inside of it all" Power explained as Mind just stood there staring into a blank point behind Naruto and Sasuke.</p><p>"Universes you say… Does that mean maybe that Mana is also from another universe and not another dimension?" Sasuke looked at Naruto who simply shrugged.</p><p>"Say, a girl arrived to our village recently, a short one with slightly darker skin and a strange uniform, wearing our headband and called "Mana", is she one of you Gods too? Should we praise her as well?" Sasuke asked momentarily playing the game, it was perhaps for the best that Power didn't test their faith at that moment, perhaps out of knowledge that usually faith took time.</p><p>Power bent his head around, engaged in thought allowing his silver hair to shift from one shoulder to another, slip all over his face, the man then caressed his own short silver beard in thought before relenting and turning to Mind.</p><p>"The girl you are referring to is from another universe, we've accidentally caused an anomaly of multi-universal proportions destroying over two hundred universes. Her universe was a remote one, at the very edge of the Omniverse but the universal shockwave caused a violent reaction of sucking her into the Omniverse itself, it is highly likely that she couldn't control herself and ended up stranded in your universe. The fact that she even survived outside the reaches of known reality is odd by itself, it requires some more thought about the subject" Mind explained.</p><p>"You've destroyed two hundred universes, you know?" Naruto shook in disbelief.</p><p>"Anti-matter particles slipped into our quantum wormhole which we use to traverse between the universes and the outside reaches of reality, they were brought into the collection of all universes – the Omniverse causing a violent reaction. It was something we did not think through" a woman with ten golden arms accompanying her normal two wearing an entire arsenal on her back explained. She was the one referred to as "Technique" during the introductions.</p><p>"That's terrible…" Mana's voice trembled from atop the Hokage Mountain, Sasuke and Naruto looked up to see the girl resting on top. Despite her immense speed the magician had no idea about the location where she was heading forcing her to slow down and ask people for directions as to where they've tracked Naruto's flashes of orange light. Mana's eyes accidentally caught Naruto's form of glowing orange light with strange tomoe symbols covering him. It must've been his own technique, something that granted him enough speed and power to become Hokage.</p><p>"It is, Godly power often leaves fallout, after all who considers the ants that die when two galaxies need to be merged?" the shortest of the bunch extended his arm, his eyes were the largest suggesting that he did feel some regret for what happened where the other "Gods" stood with rather indifferent looks.</p><p>"Mana, apparently you're from another universe. These people should be able to send you back though so don't worry" Sasuke calmed the magician down as the realization that over two hundred universes were destroyed was really breaking her down.</p><p>"So what is your answer?" Power asked. "Will you accept our offer? Please note that I will still check the sincerity of your answer with Mind"</p><p>Naruto's body blurred and left behind just flares of orange light, the figure moved lightning fast to his enemy slamming his arm into Power's chest, protected by the crimson armor plates. A howling sphere of wind chakra appeared in Naruto's palm exploding as his palm made contact, meanwhile twenty more arms appeared from behind Naruto's back, all of which created similar spheres and drove them into Power's body as they simultaneously exploded at once forming a powerful explosion that should've by all means decimated the village.</p><p>"Rasengan Riot!" Naruto roared in pride and rage of his defiance.</p><p>After the fallout cleared it was revealed that Sasuke held all of the combatants in his hand, the hand of a giant purple ethereal armor he once referred to as the Perfect Susanoo. The armor protected both the mountain and the village below from the blast. Power stood there completely unfazed by the attack, not only that, it appeared like the other "Gods" were also left without a scratch, even the woman who didn't even wear any armor and just wore a fancy cloak.</p><p>"I believe his answer to be fully sincere" Mind interrupted the situation.</p><p>Before Naruto could even notice Power's finger gently pushed the Hokage away, sending the man crashing back not only through Sasuke's Perfect Susanoo crushing it into million little pieces but also into and through the Hokage Mountain landing somewhere far far away in the Fire Country.</p><p>"Anything I need to worry about, Mind?" Power asked looking to the side.</p><p>"I do not believe so, the black haired one however possesses capacity for mental attacks of some sort however they shall not affect us as they only work on people who share the vital inner energy of these people, do not worry" Mind blinked indifferently.</p><p>Sasuke opened his right eye as blood burst from it, a burst of black flames enveloped the pantheon of five standing in front of him as Sasuke's Susanoo once again reshaped.</p><p>"Enough" the cloaked woman declared as the black flames around the pantheon disappeared. "This energy they use feels… Powerful and odd, what is it?" Reality asked of Mind.</p><p>"They call it chakra, it is very dangerous indeed however the concentration of it inside these "ninja" as they call themselves is irrelevant. It is not enough to hurt us" Mind calmed the woman down.</p><p>"Still, I've had more trouble removing these flames than dealing with beginnings and ends of universes, this energy feels unlike those we've met before" Reality continued to worry.</p><p>Sasuke grunted as his armored avatar grabbed Power and flew into the sky, angrily flinging the false god into the sky before a bow shaped Lightning Release chakra construct formed in its arms. It's been a while since Sasuke used that technique and it'd be the first time he'd be using it without the aid of the Tailed Beasts' chakra. It'd drain his resources considerably but if they had any hope of matching these gods it'd be it.</p><p>"Indra's Arrow!" Sasuke shouted out launching a large arrow shaped projectile of rainbow colored projectile. The entire sky lit up with a colossal lightning storm, with a roar Power dived through the electrical currents without as much as a scratch. He dashed up to the Perfect Susanoo's core and almost punched it but then restrained himself and grabbed the plates tearing them open like cardboard sheets. Sasuke began to plummet down into the village floor. A whirling indigo hurricane rose up, made by Speed running in circle to boost his momentum, close to the Hokage mountain and launched Speed from it with a raging punch that blew Sasuke crashing into the ground.</p><p>"Do not overdo it, we still wish to preserve something to watch over" Power sighed looking at Sasuke's beaten body still grunting and writhing on the ruined ground and the district of the village that his crash demolished. Mana looked over the scene in horror. She was physically stronger and faster than both Naruto and Sasuke but she didn't have their skill, their experience and they've been swatted aside like insects.</p><p>Mana rushed to Sasuke to see if he was OK. She covered quarter of the village with a single dash appearing beside the beaten and bruised man helping him up. "Darn it…" Sasuke cursed, "They weren't even trying and I'd have died without the Six Paths' endurance"</p><p>A deafening roar emanated from the forests of the Fire Country freezing Mana's heart solid. She knew that voice, that bestial roar that made everything around it cover in fear. Trees began crumbling, getting torn out with their roots and flung towards the village and mountain tops began popping like zits from the pressure of the sound wave vibrations.</p><p>"The Nine Tails?" Mana uttered in fear, over her journey to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss she had learned to fear and respect the beast.</p><p>"Naruto is a Jinchuuriki of the Nine Tails, since Naruto passed out the beast probably took the control over him…" Sasuke grunted, "In the older days it'd have been a problem, now the two are sort of friends so maybe it can help"</p><p>A gigantic arm of golden ethereal and transparent glow, comprised of pure Nine Tails' chakra extended over the village grabbing Power and dragging him in closer to the beast's location, slamming him into the ground with a shockwave that leveled the entire Fire Country forest and left a crater so deep that it would've been impossible to make anything out.</p><p>"Shit… Just one punch and I've got no more strength… And it wasn't even the strong one who punched me" Sasuke complained gently pushing Mana away to try and walk by his own. A horrifying shriek of exploding chakra and a violent shockwave of compressed air sent them both down shaking the ground beneath their feet as a black pillar of chakra blew into the sky destroying the ashes that were falling down to Earth and leaving a gigantic hole in the ash cloud through which the stars could still be seen. Then another one, another one and another one. A barrage of pillars like this before literal gazers of magma began to burst from the forest in wide arcs. All around Mana saw ninja attempting to rescue the villagers and move them to safe spots. The village was ready for such a disaster, Mana's Konoha wouldn't be... Just what kind of history does this village have to prepare them for such occasions, just how many times did these villagers have to evacuate to prepare them for this, to do it so efficiently?</p><p>"Tailed Beast Bombs…" Sasuke grunted, "If these don't leave a scratch, I'm not sure what could"</p><p>"Tailed Beast Bombs? I thought those had the power to destroy everything in existence?" Mana screamed out in fear.</p><p>Sasuke shook his head "No, I told you our Universe's Tailed Beasts are much…" a realization hit his mind as he pushed Mana violently towards where the explosions came from. "You have to fight them! Go! Now!" he shouted out. Mana crawled back away from Sasuke, afraid of his suddenly aggressive and angry voice.</p><p>"What?" she uttered in disbelief, did Sasuke really expect her to stand a chance? Didn't they agree already that Sasuke and Naruto would've stood a better chance and would've beaten her despite her greater speed and strength?</p><p>Power together with his pantheon appeared above the burning and broken Konoha showing them their unconscious and beaten Hokage. Even the Nine Tails' chakra wasn't even close to enough to leaving a dent in this man's armor or drawing as much as a drop of blood. Close to Mana a loud voice screamed in pain, Mana turned around only to see a young adult with crimson red and swollen skin and booming spiky black hair, pure green chakra of physical variety was firing off from the man's body.</p><p>"Seventh Gate: Gate of Wonder OPEN!" the man shouted out as his body disappeared. Power let Naruto's beaten body to slip out of his grasp falling weightlessly from the sky down to Earth but the gate user managed to catch his Hokage and lower him to the ground, placing him beside Sasuke.</p><p>"Rock Lee…" the Uchiha uttered before the green glow seating man flashed and disappeared breaking the sound barrier multiple times before planting a punch into Power's jaw, failing to force the man as much as turn his head. The gate user then flashed around, hitting and kicking every God trying to find weaknesses and if possible take out at least one of them but all of them were as tough and invulnerable as Power.</p><p>"Daytime Tiger!" the man referred to as Rock Lee roared launching at the pantheon in a tiger shaped chakra rush.</p><p>"Depower…" Reality uttered making Rock Lee black out and his Seven Gates to close instantly as the man fell from the sky as well only to be caught by another person, a smaller version of the man.</p><p>"Good, Metal Lee saved him…" a feminine voice followed with a sigh said from behind Sasuke and Mana. The Uchiha walked up to Mana and lifted her body off the ground outright screaming into her face. "Go there and fight! Come on! They'll destroy the entire universe if you don't!" the Uchiha began losing his cool before the woman that spoke before placed her hand on Sasuke's shoulder making the man calm down somewhat.</p><p>"Tenten, what are you doing?!" Sasuke grunted at her angrily before she walked up to Mana, it was a very attractive and quite physical woman wearing a white Chinese dress and wearing her hair in small round buns at the sides of her head.</p><p>"You don't know how to talk to girls, Sasuke, you're lucky that Sakura was all over you…" the woman sarcastically joked at the Uchiha before leaning up to Mana and placing her own hand on Mana's shoulder.</p><p>"Look, Sasuke is a really smart guy so he probably has an idea, I'm sure he wouldn't just throw you at them. You're too precious to all of us to be just thrown at them as a sacrificial pawn. He thinks you've got a chance, right, Sasuke?" Tenten asked for confirmation to which Sasuke completely calmed down and closed his eyes coughing out a weak "Well… Yeah…"</p><p>Mana quickly made some hand seals and activated her "Mystical Wings" technique creating a current of wind around her lower body that gently raised her up in the air and high enough to look at these gods face to face.</p><p>"My patience for your defiance is running slim" Power said rather quietly and coldly, "Do not make me destroy this universe"</p><p>"She wouldn't care" Technique butt in, "This girl isn't from this universe, remember?"</p><p>"Ah, correct… Well then she is an anomaly that needs to be destroyed!" Power screamed out in anger disappearing and reappearing in front of Mana so fast that it looked invisible even to the magician, Mana closed her eyes readying herself for a painful and gruesome death, imagining her guts and blood exploding all over the place and hoping that her death would somehow help this universe survive. Mana felt her body augmenting itself as much as it could out of fear of dying, after all those years looking for death she was still afraid of it after all. The punch was mighty! She barely felt a pinch.</p><p>Mana opened her eyes and saw Power and his fist planted firmly to her face but it didn't hurt her at all. The magician blinked a couple of times, Power swung more and more mad strikes, each of which emanated powerful shockwaves that leveled districts. Then the madman backed up and clenched his fist tightly, a golden light began to glow around it.</p><p>"Wait! Remember, Power, focus the energy into the girl, not the universe around her, with a punch like this you'd destroy this universe and all universes around it!" Reality shrieked out in fear, the first sign of fear coming from a goddess that day. Power's body blinked again in and out of existence before punching Mana. The magician felt force flowing through her body but it was similar to the warmth of picking up a hot tea cup during a cold day.</p><p>"Impossible! Insolence! How dare you not be destroyed!" the God of Power roared angrily spouting up excessive amount of slobber all over himself and his fancy red armor. "Mind! What on Earth is going on here!?" he yelled.</p><p>"This girl possesses a billion times more concentrated chakra level. I've already told you that the energy these ninja use is dangerous but this universe uses chakra at a much less concentrated manner, these ninja acquired chakra because their ancestor ate a fruit overflowing with chakra once, this girl is born in a universe where every single object, every molecule, every particle is sated with pure chakra. Only a more concentrated and more focused chakra can overcome her chakra. It's a law of physics in her universe and it appears like we've carried it through to this universe as well by pulling her out" Mind explained. "We cannot beat her, it's been six thousand years since we've encountered something we cannot beat but we must move to another universe, this girl has no power to follow us"</p><p>"Speed, Technique, Reality, smite her!" Power yelled out, within that same instant Technique launched herself at Mana striking a million times per each femtosecond using her twelve arms, each strike was powerful enough to blink out galaxies and yet Mana barely felt a thing due to her chakra augmenting her body. It was a novelty that she had learned that day, that things could only hurt her proportionately to their chakra level. That was why Sasuke's attacks were less effective but did damage her but Power's didn't – Sasuke did possess and use chakra in his attacks meanwhile Power used other energies, more primitive ones. Mana quickly shifted through hand seals sending a violent surge of Lightning Chakra through her own body, coating her very skin in lightning chakra, almost like turning her own body into a living taser</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch!" she chanted out the name of a technique she learned recently. Seeing how all of Technique's hands were contacting Mana the woman screamed in agony and fell down being overwhelmed by Mana's chakra. Whatever godly endurance they had, these gods had no defense against chakra at all, at least not against the chakra as concentrated as the one Mana used.</p><p>Speed smiled, the man's body began running in circles and Mana couldn't really understand what he was doing.</p><p>"Mind, what is he doing?" she asked.</p><p>"He is trying to build up enough speed to outrun a law of physics and reality itself, namely the chakra over matter rule" Mind replied obviously too enthralled by all the magnificent knowledge available to him to realize that he was replying to an enemy, Power turned at Mind and roared in rage punching his friend in the face and knocking him out, making lifeless Mind fall to the ground.</p><p>Mana quickly went through another set of hand seals and a silent whistle filled the air before it transcended into Mana humming. "Genjutsu: Sweet Lullaby" she chanted out the name of the technique as her humming and whistling completely paralyzed anyone hearing the noise of the genjutsu.</p><p>"What's… What's going on…" Speed mumbled through a lot of effort as speaking alone was incredibly difficult, powerless to sustain flight all of the Gods tumbled down to the ground.</p><p>"I thought their mental attacks do not work on us because we don't use chakra!" Power huffed out through tremendous effort.</p><p>"My genjutsu is different from the basic techniques used here or even in my universe… You may be immune to genjutsu, even to mental attacks but as long as you have a functional brain – you're fair game" Mana incorporated her explanation into song to keep the enemy paralyzed, "I do not target chakra flow, I target the brain directly, instead of chakra affecting the brain centers making the illusion feel more real, more comfortable and less invasive by your own body making it harder to overcome"</p><p>Mana glared to the side and witnessed Sasuke piercing Technique's body with his sword.</p><p>"Shit, she fried our technology with that lightning technique!" Speed panicked seeing Sasuke walking up to Mind but before he executed the man Sasuke's sword lingered, the Uchiha must've wondered if Mind could've somehow been useful to his universe.</p><p>"Reality, take away her use of chakra NOW!" Power shouted out making Sasuke's face light up in shock and surprise, the Uchiha tried to race right up to Reality, he didn't even have enough time to think through the fact that his attack wouldn't have affected Reality because she was not affected by Mana's technique and her technology was not fried.</p><p>"May the girl's chakra disappear!" Reality spelled her will out, Mana waited frozen in fear, releasing her genjutsu out of intimidation of losing her chakra again – the possibility of losing that part of her identity again crippled Mana. The magician remained standing there for a while but then a smile covered her face.</p><p>"A ninja's chakra level is directly tied to their life force. If you stripped my literal chakra away I'd have died slowly of exhaustion and pain" she exclaimed picking up an emerald colored wand with a crystal-like orb at the end which lit up with lightning chakra.</p><p>Power lunged at Mana grabbing her collar and trying to lift her body up. Mana's palm quickly locked around Power's.</p><p>"Are you trying to carry me into the Sun? It is true that I would die and you would not but your power does not affect me meanwhile any effort I use to restrain you is multiplied exponentially because of your lack of chakra" Mana angrily pressed the man's arm making him shriek out in pain as it effectively and gruesomely snapped, if Mana dug her nails in deeper she could've severed his arm off completely. Power collapsed on the ground, writhing so ungodly.</p><p>"Each one of you were proven inefficient against me, leave now and never return to this universe and I will let you leave, remain the way you are and Sasuke-san will kill all of you" Mana said.</p><p>"Hmph… Girl… I know of your hesitance in taking lives, you'd never allow that man to kill us" Mind said having woken up from Power's punch.</p><p>"That is true, I do possess such a belief, however I do acknowledge that other people possess different beliefs. I will never take a life but I cannot force people to change their beliefs, only hope that they can understand my point and change by themselves. Therefore there is little I can do to stop Sasuke-san if he wishes to kill you adamantly. That is how Gods and heroes are different. That is why I shall never accept any God and only admire heroes" Mana turned and told Mind, the man kept his glowing eyes at Mana the whole point but then looked down in capitulation acknowledging that her answer was sincere.</p><p>"And you would give up your last chance to go home just to help people of another universe?" Reality wondered as her voice instantly became much more sensitive and twisted in disbelief.</p><p>Mana's eyes shifted to sadness, she thrust her emerald colored wand enhanced with Lightning Release chakra, "Magic Spark Jutsu…" she chanted out coldly hitting each god with a small fraction chakra that fried their own technology as well.</p><p>"I am a stranger in this universe, a freak who doesn't belong. That will never change, these people may act like they accept me but they won't really. They've bonded with each other, they've befriended each other and I cannot possibly hope to share that bond with them, I can't possibly fit into that circle. But if devoting my life to sadness and solitude and being lost is all it takes to save this universe I will do that without hesitating" Mana said looking Reality in her shining bright eyes.</p><p>The battle that day was over…</p><hr/><p>Naruto was laughing and shaking Mana's hand firmly, everyone looked cheerful and thankful to Mana who somehow managed to rescue their village and possibly even their entire universe. Mana wasn't sure just how important that feat was in the grand scale of things, after all, there could've been an infinity of different versions of Naruto and Sasuke just like these ones scattered throughout the Omniverse. Their eyes were opened to a whole new level of understanding which, to be quite frank no one was ready for.</p><p>Naruto, Sasuke and the others found that they were unable to sever the gods from their technology, it was so far advanced and combined from billions of devices and gadgets from millions of universes that they could've used that trying to understand them looked like dabbling with sorcery of some sort. Especially to Mana who still couldn't quite comprehend the technology that Naruto's world used in the first place. Her own Konoha was still a good ten or twenty years behind these advancements. Naruto did give some samples of their technology for Mana to carry home so that luckily that gap could've been closed. There weren't many scientists in her universe, not in a world engulfed in global conflicts and micro-wars all the time. Still, those few were tenacious and ambitious, had a real flare and Mana was sure could've understood these complex machines in no time.</p><p>The technology was fused to the body of the men declaring to be gods completely, trying to remove it surgically would've been impossible, it was imbued with them on a sub-atomic level as some gadgets were literally that small. That was told to Naruto and Sasuke by a strange large forehead having pink haired woman who must've been an amazing medical ninja for Naruto and Sasuke to trust her with these prisoners.</p><p>Ultimately Naruto decided to follow a plan made for him by a fellow named Shikamaru whom Mana only met right before leaving, however felt greatly thankful for salvaging hope of returning home with his genius mind. The plan was to ask Reality to create a mental block, without the possibility of removing it, preventing her from traveling to other universes right before asking Technique, who barely survived Sasuke's attempt to kill her, with Mind's aid, to build a primitive one-way multi-universal travel device, while they were always under Reality's bound promise to follow these orders and just those orders alone. They were to be sent back to the universe they destroyed where they could've lived their days out in solitude, hopefully in billions of years after the Big Bang they'd cause again entering it they'd no longer roam the infinity of space alone and encounter some sort of life again, hopefully by that time they'd have the mental maturity to stop acting like Gods…</p><p>Additionally, while the ninja were busy rebuilding and re-growing their leveled forests, Mana, as per Shikamaru's instructions, asked Technique and Mind to also build a device connecting her own universe and this one, one to be used by her to go home, but also so that Naruto could come at any time for help if somehow the complicated plan, crafted by Shikamaru, who just happened to be the Hokage's most trusted advisor, would've been outsmarted. Despite their technology having reset itself within a couple of days the Gods behaved until the final moments when they disappeared into the universe they themselves destroyed. In the end they would end up being the watchful protectors of that universe, just like they wanted it to be, except it'd be a lot less selfish with no one to see their might and sing them praise. No one knew why the gods behaved. Maybe they were afraid of being beaten again, this time permanently, maybe they were genuinely different people now.</p><p>Mana definitely wished to believe so…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0174"><h2>174. Affections and Extinction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was that time in the morning when the most beautiful songs of birds would've been more and more likely to wake one up. Despite the fact that such a, in a manner of speech, rude awakening would've normally greatly displeased anyone in their fair mind, having these pleasant melodies accompany one through the day would've quickly fixed that foul mood. Takigakure was the home of many species of birds, some that lived and nested in the trees, some wingless species that roamed the watery grounds, lakes, rivers, swamps and never even dreamed of soaring above the thick layer of leaves that separated the sky and the dark and moist heavenly shade of Takigakure.</p><p>Mana was observing a hive of bees that was hanging on the eye level, stuck to one of the thick trees that could've only been hugged and wrapped around by a giant such as a Tailed Beast or an entity of similar size. The hive was being sieged by hornets, each as large as a kunai knife by themselves. Mana had never seen insects of that size, she did know the species however from pictures in books she read, she did know how poisonous their bites were in great quantities. For that reason, she kept her distance. A respectable one at least.</p><p>Five to ten stings would be all that it'd take to force Mana to ask Kouta for some anti-venom, these hornets were that poisonous. Despite the fact of their wide spread across the land, they didn't appear to worry the Takigakure people even if there weren't any in close vicinity, despite Konoha and Takigakure being in great standing politically the quartet decided to avoid meeting any locals unless absolutely necessary as the knowledge of three ninja moving through their lands may not have been a very pleasant one to the Waterfall Village.</p><p>The bees were getting trounced, the mighty jaws of these savage crimson red hornets were able to easily grab dozens of insects from the air and snap them into pieces, their thick chitin shells were impenetrable to stings, their evolutionary body temperature modification mechanisms, that allowed these hornets to survive and thrive inside both fire and snow, made them capable of withstanding the common bee defence strategy of heating the hornets by rubbing against them and covering them up. There was nothing the bees could do but perish, it was an insect genocide in its earliest stages.</p><p>Mana sighed, she closed her eyes and thought for a moment before opening her eyes and continuing to watch the scene.</p><p>"You may be a bit too close, Mana-chan. You want neither to get stung nor to use your newly gained power to avoid the hornets' stings, each one would provide unneeded trouble to us and drain your stamina needlessly" Kouta's quiet whispering voice reached her as the young man moved in closer to her and gently placed his hand on her shoulder suggesting that they'd move. Slowly Mana stepped back a couple of steps but that was as far as she would've gone.</p><p>"I could stop that. I could avoid every sting of every hornet and crush them before they even clacked a mandible, before they even brewed their poison in those organs of theirs." Mana whispered softly looking at the hive.</p><p>"You could... For how long have you been standing here, watching this?" Kouta wondered, still failing to see Mana's point.</p><p>"Two or three hours. Didn't feel too sleepy. Meiko did her best to place those seals that keep our tents afloat but... It'll take time to get used to this chilly shade and forest smells after just leaving a scorching desert." Mana replied still looking at the poor bees getting slaughtered. Still adamant to defend their home despite the fact that their mother had long since perished.</p><p>"So why don't you stop them? Why don't you kill these hornets? Is it because you're saving your physical chakra up?" Kouta wondered looking at the horrific scene of natural violence, not unlike millions of more transpiring in the world at that very moment.</p><p>"Because... I'm not sure if I should." Mana closed her eyes before once again peeling them open, almost like she was doing it by force, forcing herself to watch the endless death of millions inside that giant hive she refused to save.</p><p>"I'm not sure I follow" Kouta scratched his head, "We could use some of these hornets, their ground shells make for a very nutritional additive and their innards are actually a potent anti-toxin".</p><p>"That's the point..." Mana closed her eyes, feeling the beginning of tears beginning to gather before she swallowed her pain away, "Most of the local species of bees build their hives inside the trees, the very steel hard tree bark provides them shelter. For some reason, be it because these bees are a foreign swarm that just moved here or because they don't have time before autumn to build a proper hive they've swarmed here, in an open ground outside the bark, just ripe for the taking".</p><p>Kouta looked at the hive again and back at Mana.</p><p>"These hornets do not have the needed bodily structure to gather honey or food, their mandibles are too large and only fit for killing. Their way of life and the only way of survival is to loot other hives, they were born this way, that is how they survive, by taking food from others because they cannot physically get any by themselves." Mana explained.</p><p>"You're wondering if interfering with the natural order is the right way?" Kouta finally got on the same page, "These hornets are just doing what they do to survive, to blame them for living by their nature would be to look at it from the bees' point of view which wouldn't be right. Autumn and winter aren't far away if these hornets don't stock up they're looking at massive losses, maybe even death of their entire swarm." Kouta slowly explained the same thoughts that Mana has been pondering on for hours.</p><p>"Normally ninja don't look at those sort of things. They have it easy – just follow the orders. I've, on the other hand, placed upon myself the responsibility to become a hero that'd change this world, the world of death and violence, every day somewhere literal genocides take place, entire tribes and settlements die out. I myself am the last member of my own tribe and my own blood will die with me... I need to have the answer for these things, because of my lack of answers I need to face this horror, to see it to the end." Mana spoke continuing to stare at the hornets.</p><p>"Tsk..." Kouta exclaimed as his hand extended to the side, within mere moments it split into a mace-like shape with the texture of his skin shifting into a more wooden appearance and hundreds if not thousands of beams of light fired off from the boy's morphed limb, piercing each and all hornets within moments and disintegrating them quickly with a mere touch.</p><p>Mana's eyes shot open with surprise, she glared questioningly at Kouta who shook his head.</p><p>"You're punishing yourself, forcing yourself to see the worst horrors you as a person can endure because of your character just because you don't have answers to questions that'll never have answers to. I, on the other hand, care about you, I don't want to see you punishing yourself and I'll murder as many bugs as I need to just so I don't need to see you as sad and horrified as you were watching this..." Kouta said angrily as his hand shifted back, bees rose up from their hive looking at the two as a threat but they were hit too hard, somewhere between rising up and actually attacking they decided to better tend to the damage caused to their hive.</p><p>"There will be times when I'll have to have answers to these questions. When I shall see two countries warring with each other and I'll need to know what to do as a hero I want to become. I don't want to stare at a genocide transpiring by my eyes..." Mana whimpered out.</p><p>Kouta slowly walked up closer to Mana and placed his hand on her shoulder. "And you'll make enemies of them both, you'll unite all of them against yourself and it's my duty to make sure that you're strong enough to shoulder all of that hatred, hatred for preventing violence and people will hate you for it, my father taught me that much at least..." the young man looked away for a moment before hugging Mana full out. Initially, the magician didn't resist but then something dawned on her.</p><p>"Wait, you said you "cared" about me. The context of that... You don't "care" about me as a VIP of your mission, am I wrong, it's more than that?" She said suspiciously.</p><p>Kouta's face blushed, he began shifting his eyes, grunting and making incomplete sentences and excuses before sighing. "Well... Yeah. I wanted to find a moment to talk to you about that the whole time. There was just so much happening and I kept on making excuses that maybe each and every moment wasn't the right moment, then you got lost, separated and... I just don't care anymore, if any of us gets lost again I want you to know that I do care about you more than just a VIP, more than just a friend".</p><p>Mana smiled and laughed biting her fist. "I really should've noticed in hindsight... I really kept on looking for signs but I also made excuses thinking that no sign I saw was actually a sign, that it was just my head playing with my wild thoughts".</p><p>"So?" Kouta asked, quickly jumping off Mana and moving away from the hug now that it became awkward.</p><p>"I... I'd love to. It's just..." Mana coughed out pathetically.</p><p>"The identity thing?" Kouta asked before she could find the right words.</p><p>"Yeah, it's just... I... Want to fall in love with you, if that's what this is but... There's just so much going on and I... Without my control, I'm not me I... I know it doesn't make sense but I can't do this without being me, all of me." Mana explained uncomfortably. It was slowly suffocating her to say those words but she meant what she said. She did kind of like Kouta ever since meeting him, she always felt something weird for him, some odd affection that was more than just common friendship. That being said... Losing one's identity made Mana unsure of anything she did, anything that went on around her or even inside her.</p><p>"Well then... If getting you to go on a date with me takes finding the Box of Ultimate Bliss I'll take you wherever I need to take you for it." Kouta grinned awkwardly and fixed his messy hair lazily with a couple of strokes of his hand.</p><p>Mana giggled, she really felt bad about being so dumb and persistent and so unworthy of Kouta's affection in front of him. He deserved so much better than she was... It suddenly made her feel even more awkward around the young man than she was before when she just felt the strange warmth inside of her she couldn't explain every time he was around.</p><p>"Hey! Are you two losers moving or what? I even packed the things despite it being Kouta's turn!" Meiko shouted from the distance riling the bees up, Mana and Kouta quickly made a run for it to pick up their bags and move. They still had around two days of moving until they reached the end of Takigakure, despite the fact that they could actually move all throughout the day and didn't have to worry about things like the desert heat anymore.</p><p>Meiko looked pretty happy about something, Mana really wondered what that could've been but then the blacksmith began to search frantically for something in her bag, making the girl wonder if maybe Meiko had lost something, something that made her happy. Finally, the redhead pulled out a pair of stickers with kanji symbols on them that looked like sealing tags.</p><p>"There you go, Mana. You can stick those on your shoes and you'll be able to walk on water just like we can, you won't need to be carried anymore," the blacksmith laughed out. That was actually great! Mana was really getting uncomfortable about being carried around by Meiko all the time, also now that she finally confirmed her thoughts about Kouta all of the awkwardness when Meiko asked him to carry Mana now made sense, also it added additional awkwardness between them because now they both were on the same page.</p><p>"Are those... Bee stings?" Shimo wondered pointing at some bumps on Mana's and Kouta's faces.</p><p>"Yeah, Meiko's yelling riled up the bees but there were only a couple of handfuls of them left, we've decided to preserve chakra and stamina and just take a couple of stings," the medical ninja shrugged.</p><p>"Awww, there were bees!? We could've picked a lot of honey from a hive, those stings won't even get past the skin if we augment ourselves," Meiko shouted out almost begging the group to turn back and pick the hives.</p><p>"Ummm... Maybe we can find another, more prosperous hive, these guys really had a terrible morning already, trust me," Mana smiled like a mother telling a child that they'll buy the toy they want from another store because there it's cheaper. Strangely enough, the effect was almost the same with Meiko just childishly humming something cheerful all of their trip onward.</p><p>"So... How do these work?" Mana asked seeing her shoes managing to keep her on water now with just these small paper tags attached to them.</p><p>"It's a simple low-rank chakra storage seal, I sealed the technique inside it with a little bit of reserve chakra. I should regain it all in a couple of days so it's no trouble really, not that carrying a bag of bones like you was ever difficult, to begin with." Meiko tried to sarcastically bite Mana who actually managed to buff her frail physique up a bit after her stay in the Sun Disc arena. The blacksmith noticed that Mana didn't look that cheerful and didn't play back the joke at all so she just continued daydreaming about the honey.</p><p>After a couple of hours of walking Shimo's hand slipped on the hilt of his blade. "Someone's close," he uttered when a woman leaped out from the upper layer of the treetops slamming her ax on Shimo's head, or at least trying to. The Yuki swordsman effortlessly drew his blade in time and blocked the swing, the entire force of the falling smashing cleave got expelled back at the woman sending her crashing through multiple trees back. The entire forest clearing was suddenly filled with grunting and well-armed and armored men and women.</p><p>"Ugh! The fucker blew me away!" The woman grunted feeling her cracked bleeding head that was now spouting blood all over the woman's face. Kouta raised his hand.</p><p>"I can treat that, I'm a medical ninja, we're not enemies, we're a party of ninja from Konoha moving to our mission objective in Otogakure." The young man explained revealing their presence in the area despite their genuine attempts to avoid that.</p><p>A large man in the center who was strangely wearing no armor at all placed his gigantic gold-encrusted sword on his back. These men didn't look like ninja, if anything they looked like some sort of royal mercenaries as their armor wasn't just the usual light military grade body armor, it was actually pretty sophisticated and well-crafted steel plates, despite their general expensiveness they looked pretty ancient, both the swords and axes they used as well as their armor was far too heavy and clunky to be considered modern.</p><p>Current mercenary armor offered protection of nano-sized diamond chain links tied together and could repel even most powerful blows and easily stop a blade in its tracks. These weapons and armors were much older, larger and heavier but also offered much less protection. Mana instantly started feeling like these men may not have been mercenaries at all and felt suspicious.</p><p>"Very well then, we thought you mercenaries or assassins aiming to strike from our backs, we apologize most graciously and hope we can work this out, the direction you're coming from is suspicious, however, you're not moving from Konoha or maybe you're lost?" The man exclaimed, Mana blushed slightly looking at him and even saw Meiko keeping a straight and even slobbering stare when looking at him.</p><p>He didn't look like a warrior. If anything, he was a model put in shiny armor and wielding a sword that would've fit in plays better than an actual battlefield. He looked almost like a God, Mana tried her best to remain objective but she just couldn't, even Meiko who usually acted completely ignorant towards the manly shapes couldn't move her eyes away from these men.</p><p>"We won't tell you shit. We may have. If you guys weren't so shifty," Shimo noticed Mana's predicament and her unusual color of skin that must've annoyed him greatly. Kouta initially glanced at Shimo and tried to question the boy's distrust in these people but then Shimo pointed his shin at the girls who had completely lost themselves and suddenly Kouta also began acting quite cold and distant with these men. The women who were equally as well put together as the men were must've completely not interested the boys because of how muscular they were which didn't appear to be much to their tastes...</p><p>"Yeah... I have to admit a bunch of men and women gathering in large military force around a completely random and desolate natural reserve of Takigakure is highly suspicious, more suspicious even than a party of ninja moving by a neutral territory," Kouta agreed, "Before we apologize and treat the woman who engaged us we'd like to hear something that'd make us trust your authority and conformity of your actions here with the Waterfall Village".</p><p>"I think they're totally jealous!" Meiko shrieked in Mana's ear leaning towards it and trying to whisper which resulted in a comically hilarious whispered squeak.</p><p>Mana turned away and walked back a couple of steps, this was completely irrational of her to act this way, to just freeze like that. These people were all really good looking but she had no reason to be this dense and primitive. The magician took a couple of deep breaths and looked back but then realized that it'd be difficult for her to speak to these men and women.</p><p>"We are Justicars functioning within Takigakure territory, Yuki Shimo, when you blame us for suspicious actions please remember that your name was also written on our lists and just because you were pardoned by Konoha doesn't pardon you by our code," the leading man with the golden sword and glowing armor and a purple cape suddenly took a large step forward as well as bowed his upper body all the way to Shimo's eyes' level.</p><p>"He's a Justicar, Mana!" Meiko shrieked out. Mana had heard of that title briefly, at some point, Kiyomi may have mentioned it during their mission to rescue the perfume tycoon's son. "Isn't he awesome!"</p><p>Shimo's hand moved to his blade again. "Try your luck again, Justicar, me and sensei have stricken countless of you down, I did so as a child, let's see how many I can strike down now before you even blink. You operate without supervision, without authority other than that which you create with your swords. I could slaughter you here like animals and no one would shed a tear for you vigilantes." The Yuki growled. Mana wasn't aware that he had a bad history with Justicars. Despite her strange irrational tremble of breath and bodily quivers, Mana stood in front of the two men.</p><p>"We'll try talking this through before we do anything stupid..." She exclaimed with a shaking voice. This had to be a technique of some sort, she couldn't have been reduced to such a pathetic trembling state just by the man's looks alone.</p><p>"Young lady, are you a ninja?" The Justicar inquired looking at her trembling with a strange interest.</p><p>"No. I'm a person they must lead to Otogakure, you could say... I'm their client..." Mana spoke through great difficulty.</p><p>"Oh, then we would be wise to turn down our Intents. I must say I'm impressed by your willpower to still be able to function like this with so many Intents surrounding you... Most impressive. You'll have to forgive us, we use the Charming Intents because today we've been hunting a bunch of female rogues separately to our main objective here. Charming Intent is much more humane than Killing Intent but it disables people just as potently." The Justicar turned to his colleagues who didn't as much as twitch a muscle but within moments Mana's chest started moving normally and she could breathe properly. The presence of these men no longer excited her and made her feel and act weird.</p><p>"Tsk, using Intents like this..." Shimo angrily exclaimed, "This isn't a brothel you fucking pigs"! He appeared to be completely oblivious of the fact that these men used a twisted version of the Killing Intent that ninja used to intimidate wild animals and low-level threats, however where the Killing Intent made one scared for their lives this Charming Intent appeared to do just what its name suggested.</p><p>"Wait..." Mana suddenly realized something turning at Meiko, "You're a ninja with a functional chakra control, why were you all over those guys"?</p><p>"Because they're really damn hot!" Meiko shrugged with an innocent smile.</p>
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<a name="section0175"><h2>175. Into The Darkness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Justicars appeared strangely in quite a rush to speak about the situation they were involved in. This could've been due to a number of reasons but the fact that they concealed those reasons troubled Mana. The magician had read a lot of things about the order of Justicars over the years. It had many split factions, some were funded and supervised by the villages and countries meanwhile some worked separately with no supervision. Supervision technically was against the code set by the First Justicar several hundred years ago. Most of the time the Justicars, both supervised and unsupervised were just another kind of mercenary, one that didn't take money but only helped when they thought their code allowed it.</p><p>"I don't like this, not one bit. We have no obligation to speak with them, we could just leave right now and keep moving, we'd reach the edge of Takigakure in a couple of days." Shimo grunted, the young swordsman had a very fine reason to hate Justicars, most of the order despised nukenin and criminals and considered killing them their sole purpose. It may have been due to popular culture praising the Justicars that killed the nastiest and strongest criminals more than the code prioritizing killing criminals in any way.</p><p>"I don't know, we should hear what they have to say, won't hurt just to let them know who we are and where we're going, it might keep the Justicars off our tail. Remember that they answer to no one so if they think we're being shady they may attack us." Meiko spoke up raising a rather fair point even if her reasons of sticking around and talking to the ground were much more clear – these Justicars were just well built and developed people in general wearing ancient and gigantic looking armor and weaponry. Of course, the blacksmith would've wished to stay and admire these men and women a bit more...</p><p>"I really don't care, on one hand moving quicker is better, we'll get to our goal faster and all that, on the other hand making sure that we don't have the Justicars on our ass forcing me to hold a certain amount of chakra in at all times, just in case I'll need to heal someone, does have its benefits" Kouta shrugged, of all people his opinion seemed most indifferent but also the most objective, everyone else had interests or history with these people.</p><p>"I don't even wish to think hard about it, after all, we can't know if they're not still using those Intents from before. I don't feel like they are but the thought is still scary." Mana admitted looking to the side, usually, she was regarded by the group as the leader making her decision quite important in the actions that the group took. Now that she had removed herself from the decision-making process the situation became more complicated.</p><p>The large leading Justicar walked up to the four letting them keep some distance before leaning in.</p><p>"We're ready to answer any questions you may have but also report the situation at hand. If you could be troubled for a moment we've decided you could be quite helpful," he smiled, Mana looked at his face and wondered if the genuine affection and warm feeling inside of her were still from the Intent that the man used on a much smaller level or if she, just like Meiko, was captivated by how attractive visually and well trained these people were.</p><p>"Helpful?" Mana instantly asked, whenever there was a way she could've helped someone and potentially saved some lives the magician was all ears.</p><p>"Yes, you see there is a system of rotten trees the tops of which were devastated by a battle that had transpired long ago. In that system, the trees were ancient and well over a couple of centuries old with rich entangled systems of underground roots. We've been hunting those criminals we've mentioned to you before for a long time and some of them we've chased to here used to hide inside those root systems, apparently, they are completely hollow, almost like a tunnel. These people disappeared in those tunnels and, naturally, as Justicars we are very interested in this matter." The man explained.</p><p>"Isn't that a job well done for you Justicars? Don't you just kill all criminals you find anyways? Why are you so angry someone did your job for you?" Shimo angrily tried finding some problems with this man.</p><p>"I can see that a criminal like you would have a problem with that..." The leader nodded beginning to get more and more peeved by Shimo's notes.</p><p>"That's the thing, I'm not a criminal, I never was. I was let go from the village with the Hokage's permission, I was a wanderer the whole time and I had to fight you losers off and never had a moment of peace and quiet. You don't hunt actual criminals, you label people you wish to kill and then proceed to do so." Shimo began losing it as well reaching for his sword, with the same degree of subtlety the Justicar's hand also reached for his blade.</p><p>"So you've never sent people down there? Your plan was to wait here and try talking ninja into going inside those tunnels?" Kouta scratched his head as the Justicar's explanation lacked some details that would've given it some more sense.</p><p>"We did send them, none returned, in fact, ever since quite recently we've even been getting attacked at night by something coming from inside these tunnels, someone that leaps out and uses the dark to drag people inside. None of those dragged into the tunnels returned either. We were planning a big-time raid of those tunnels but then we ran into some more mercenaries whom we must have killed at that moment following our code. Now we don't have enough manpower or weapons to properly raid it but our code demands to fight injustice or to die trying and so I'm prolonging the deaths of me and my men by as long as possible as any sensible leader would. Your intervention would be of great help." The leader explained.</p><p>These Justicars appeared to take the code even more seriously than most accounts Mana had read about them. It was true that some Justicars were outright religious with their following of the code but this group appeared to follow it like law where the leader was a master lawyer looking for holes in it that allowed the group to function better than a group functioning on centuries-old rules devised by a violent forest hermit would reasonably be.</p><p>"Who do you think might be inside those tunnels?" Meiko wondered relaxing and stretching out. It was clear that she may have been beginning to get bored of the ridiculously good looks of these Justicars and began feeling bored, knowing Meiko only being hungry could ever shift that boredom in a relevant way and a hungry Meiko presented more problems all of itself.</p><p>"Anything in existence, everything and anything lives inside these trees in those parts. Homes are etched inside, entire cities are built out of them, it could be people, it could be a very savage wild animal, it could be a little bit of both mixed in together..." the Justicar nodded his head in shame of not knowing just what exactly may have been killing his men.</p><p>"Very well, we will check into it..." Mana nodded. The team all looked back and raised an eyebrow or two remembering that the magician was thinking about completely sitting this one out and here she outright declared that the Konohagakure ninja would be looking into this small sidequest.</p><p>"We shouldn't be helping these men, nothing good ever comes of Justicars," Shimo looked at Mana, it wasn't a look of anger or even contempt, it was a look and advice of wisdom and experience that was supposed to encourage the girl to reconsider but the magician shook her head.</p><p>"I have a certain sporting interest into this. I've never heard of anything that behaves this way, I'm really excited to find a new species of animals or meet new people that behave in a way I've never heard about. I don't know much about Takigakure and this might help us get to know the place better, if it won't, it will still potentially save lives and give these people closure. I've never refused a person asking for help and I don't intend to begin today." Mana explained seriously with a little wink of excitement when she spoke about her sporting interest into this. She was genuinely intrigued by this story because it sounded so unlike something that'd normally happen in a place like this.</p><p>Some kind of creatures living inside desolate and ravaged battlefields underground, hunting people that enter those places and even leaving out during the night and hunting for prey outside. Mana's childish imagination began creating the wildest dreams and ideas of what these creatures could've been and this interest into this weird case fueled her decision, she may have agreed to help just out of the elementary need to potentially save lives and help but it would've never made her this excited to do so normally.</p><p>"I've never seen Mana-chan this excited before..." Kouta noted nodding in agreement to her idea. "She looks just riled up enough to go and look into it with or without us and I'd be a nasty medical ninja if I let her do that".</p><p>Meiko shrugged, "Well, we've gotten this far already, to let Mana muck it up and fail would be really dumb, I wanna do this too, whatever interests Mana must be pretty cool to see!" She declared just as vibrantly as Mana did.</p><p>"Very well, I suppose if you guys decided to go I really can't say no to this... Shouldn't really take long," Shimo shrugged.</p><p>"Actually..." The leader stood up and released the iron grip he held around the hilt of his sword from back when Shimo tried to instigate a conflict. "We'd really appreciate if Shimo stayed here. We may have made a temporary truce having decided that he's not a criminal, for now, however, if any of those lost Justicars in there are still alive and see him they may strike from the shadows making the mission unnecessarily more difficult than it should be. Please consider leaving him in our camp, he's done quite well fighting us off for entire years, there's no reason to think we could take him now even if we wanted to..." The man suggested.</p><p>Mana looked at Shimo expecting a lot of opposition to come from the Yuki's side in which case she may have canceled this thing out. This would've looked just too suspicious but the young swordsman just shrugged again, "He does have a point, I could fight those guys off and take most of them out, it'd make no sense for them to attack me when I know they're coming, also, whatever danger I have a reason to expect they also have to feel placing me in their camp. I don't think they'll try anything funny, go and have fun..." The young man said.</p><p>Mana asked her team to prepare and warm up for a short while before she asked the Justicar a couple of questions, she was seeking for the minor insight and information that the Justicars had on these things she'd be looking for because in the magician's world knowledge and insight was everything that made all the difference. Same was with both fights and missions.</p><p>"Do you have any information about their typical behaviors? Anything at all that could help?" Mana wondered to which the leader only shrugged.</p><p>"Usually they're pretty scaredy, the lower layers of the roots are really thin and near impossible for the humans to navigate. You'd get stuck immediately and die of dehydration and starvation before anyone could pull you out of there. It might make more sense to attack during the night. When they surface and are on the higher levels of the root system," the man explained, "But due to their stealthy and extremely lethal nature we don't know much, all of this is just speculation".</p><p>"No, it's fine," Mana nodded before moving to her team and stretching out herself. She took off her blazer and laid it aside because it felt restrictive enough, if these tunnels ever got too thin she'd just cause herself unnecessary discomfort. It was alright to slightly discomfort herself in a battle that way having in mind the advantages that her uniform granted otherwise but during an exploration venture, it may have been just suffering for suffering's sake.</p><p>"We'll move in after the Sun sets..." Mana said, "During that time they'll be closest to the surface giving us highest possible chance to at the very least encounter them. We'll move together at all times, if at any point we find that we need to crawl we'll pull out. There's no use losing people here or getting too injured, remember, this is for fun, and a little bit of necessity just in case someone those things captured is still alive".</p><p>"Wow, you're getting confident enough to give orders, nice!" Meiko laughed out to which Mana just shamefully turned to the side.</p><p>"Just relaying the information I got," She tried to get out of the leader's label.</p><p>Once the evening went the trio that was allowed to move out crept up to the tunnel and took some peaks inside. The whole system appeared just like a colossal stump that may have taken an entire sports field and covered with hollow tunnel-like holes wherever the roots went. Maybe the tree was so colossal that these were actually the places where it tried to absorb and move water through literally?</p><p>Mana took out a sharp-tipped card before placing it back and asking Meiko for some kunai. Despite having similar cutting power in battle the magician simply trusted the kunai more in climbing ventures. Slowly the magician etched her knife into the rotten and dead tree and began climbing down, carefully testing how the tree held her weight because there should've been no reasons why the dead tree would even hold her weight in the first place. After seeing Mana disappear in darkness and not hearing neither a scream nor a splat the duo followed shortly.</p><p>Much to her surprise, the tunnel disappeared completely pretty soon, wherever those roots lead to ended just as soon as it began with the tips of the roots looking like they were bitten and chewed off. Something definitely lived in here and it apparently ate the roots and made an actual stony tunnel where the mineral part of the soil began. They must've been pretty deep because, usually, the soil of Takigakure and similar swampy areas had to go pretty deep down before it became so hard and rocky, the moist and wet ground soaked all of the dirt and minerals all the way through.</p><p>There was this eerie sound of water clacking against the stone floor of the caves. This wasn't that unexpected since the entire place was actually a large system of caves located below a country filled with watery floors and waterfalls. Still, it really made the whole trip definitely a lot creepier. Mana felt uneasy the whole way through because the whole place was just dark and noisy with its dripping enough to remind her of the ghost stories of her youth.</p><p>Meiko stepped on her leg in the darkness...</p><p>"Sorry..." she uttered beginning to walk forward again normally, waiting just a short moment so that Mana could move her aching leg forward.</p><p>"No problem, just... Try not to step on it again, it really hurt, your armored shoes didn't help." Mana replied whining a little over the really disabling pain of Meiko's iron boots. If just small accidents hurt this much, just how badly would it hurt if the blacksmith actually stomped on her foot and meant it? Moments like this made Mana glad that the blacksmith was not her enemy in this case...</p><p>"Wait, were you? Quivering?" Meiko asked with a little quieter tone than normal.</p><p>"No! Don't make things up..." Mana almost shouted out embarrassingly in return. She really didn't wish to admit that she was frightened right after being so excited to go there in the first place and being one of the leading voices advocating their descent into the caves.</p><p>"You totally were!" Meiko laughed out childishly, "What's wrong, can't take a little darkness? I can hug you and hold you tight if it'll help, Mana-chan..." The blacksmith began making fun of Mana like a kid in the Academy would've.</p><p>"I'm... I'm... Fine, this place is just too much like those ghost plays. I sometimes stay after the shows in Konoha to watch some of my actor friends performing, ever since I was a kid I was stupidly afraid of ghosts, those plays were terrible and most of them used sound effects and sets just like this..." Mana spoke.</p><p>"Mana-chan is afraid of ghosts? That's an eerily specific and a silly thing to fear, I mean why would you be afraid of dead people? They've already been beaten, that's what killed them, right?" Kouta wondered to himself voicing his thoughts in a turtle's pace and manner of speaking.</p><p>"It's not dumb! They're really scary! I mean doesn't the concept of a malevolent spirit returning to exact its vengeance not frighten you one bit?" Mana began getting a little bit irritated. Both Kouta and Meiko shook their heads, it was tough making it out but the sounds of their clothes rustling and the brief dance of their shapes around the head area suggested so.</p><p>"We're shaking our heads, in case you can't see..." Meiko added once again giggling childishly.</p><p>"Maybe it goes deeper than just ghosts? Maybe Mana-chan is afraid not necessarily of ghosts coming after her but ghosts of people she failed to save because they remind her of her failures?" Kouta wondered when Mana outright screamed and leaped to the side after seeing a large cave spider.</p><p>"Nah, I think it's just ghosts... She's scared of ghosts..." Meiko awkwardly pointed at Mana trying to scare the spider away with a stick. "That's not a ghost, Mana, it's a spi-" suddenly Meiko's speech stop and the girl began shaking herself, Kouta also froze in fear forcing Mana to turn around and look at what scared them so.</p><p>Standing, or rather crawling in front of them was a whole group of wall scaling quadruped man-animal like things. People with no hair anywhere on their body and without eyes or any significant area of their faces except a really big and sharp-toothed mouth. Strangely enough, the very sides of the creatures' mouths had two really thick and blunt teeth that were also really long and tacked against the other half making the creatures express themselves in a chattering noise of tooth clacking.</p><p>Slowly the creatures approached Mana and the group, chattering their mouths and pointing their large claws that allowed them to scale even the rocky caves they lived in. Apparently, there was a species living underground that Mana has never heard of before...</p>
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<a name="section0176"><h2>176. The Tunnels Have Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Protect Mana-chan!" Kouta ordered waving at Meiko before rushing forward. His speed was incredible, even with all of her recently acquired mastery over physical chakra Mana had no idea what was going on or how fast the medical ninja was going. He just disappeared and reappeared with his elbow deep inside one of the creature's abdomen. He punched so hard that even with all the force absorbed the thing pitifully lifted off the floor giving Kouta a chance to follow up his offensive with a sideways jump kick flinging the creature aside.</p><p>The medical Juugo prodigy proceeded to bash and dominate his opponent with a combination of quick straight strikes to the creature's abdomen and only after the poor thing was down and out shrieking in pain and spitting up blood pathetically did some of the others get the idea to interfere, Kouta was taking them out and stringing combinations faster than thoughts manifested in the minds of these creatures, faster than their brains passed the appropriate signals around. Mana wondered if Kouta was actually augmenting his abilities the dangerous way.</p><p>There had to be some explanation to Kouta's incredible growth, before leaving the village the boy admitted to never having been able to morph his body once using the Juugo bloodline however after leaving he soon learned to do so and after a brief moment managed to control the ability quite potently. His medical skills also grown exponentially matching that of an average medical ninja whereas before they were lacking and only slightly enhanced the natural bodily healing processes. This strength and speed wasn't the medical ninja strength enhancement technique, it had to be Kouta betting his very chakra on the line, the very thing that cost Mana hers...</p><p>With a lightning fast combination of kicks, Kouta kicked the whole bunch of these things around like ragdolls, kicking them up in the air before leaping up to them and whirling with his legs upright sending the cave dwellers crashing down into the cave floor. Several of the beaten creatures burst into clouds of smoke, some sort of self-defense mechanism that filled the entire section of the cave with smokescreens forcing Mana and Meiko to cover up themselves so that it didn't force into their lungs and make their eyes itch.</p><p>"Stop, you're gonna tear down the whole cave on us!" Mana shouted out prompting the rampaging medical ninja to calm down somewhat.</p><p>More of the cave dwellers began leaping off the walls of the tunnels trying to claw Mana's and Meiko's eyes out. Meiko easily caught them by their wrists slamming them together or swinging them around and tossing them before dashing from behind the flying things and kicking them downwards so that they didn't slam into the tunnel walls and further unbalance the tunnel system. She fought with such control and thought that it was scary to think that it was the carefree and goofy Meiko doing it.</p><p>"Mana-chan!" Kouta yelled out trying to dash up closer to her but Mana's kicks took the things pursuing her down after bursts of reddish chakra began coming out from her body pores. She had to tap into the physical chakra to defend herself, it wasn't something she wanted to abuse but it made her leagues and bounds beyond the abilities that these cave dwellers showed.</p><p>After a couple of moments, Mana memorized their moves, their primitive bloodthirsty leaps and turned her augmentation off allowing her natural flowing movements and pitch-perfect prediction of these creatures' movements to allow her to perfectly avoid and counter each blow. With each strike, an arm was broken at the joint, at each kick the base leg was tripped and the fallen body was stomped, with each attempted bite the head was caught between Mana's elbow and her knee. She didn't see their movements either, she didn't have to, even if their surrounding was bright enough to see her opponents more clearly their speed would've been beyond Mana's eyesight to follow and yet it made absolutely no difference.</p><p>"I don't need you rushing to my aid," she grunted at Kouta who looked in awe at Mana masterfully switching between the use of her physical chakra that allowed her to surpass the speed she had even at her peak back when she was still a proper ninja and just sheer martial art skill.</p><p>"Clearly..." Kouta agreed with a smile as dozens of his kicks overwhelmed another crawler before his leg wrapped around its neck while another one kicked it after uncomfortably bending right in the middle knocking the creature out. The cave was dark, to begin with, and then there was all of this smoke coming out from somewhere... Mana had to admit that it was getting hard to keep up and yet she was probably doing the best despite being possibly one of the weakest members of the trio. Meiko and Kouta relied overly on their ninja senses and superior augmented stats to fare too well in such a battle so they began skipping some blows, getting marked by attacks they could've easily dodged if they saw them coming.</p><p>Mana shouted in desperation tossing forward a couple of her cards that unsealed as they touched the ground unleashing a flash of light that most common flash bombs used by most ninja could do. The creatures didn't look affected by it at all but when the light cleared Mana and her friends were gone.</p><p>"Why did we run? We could've won that battle..." Meiko objected with a gentle whisper while the three were hiding behind a sharp rocky turn.</p><p>"Something's odd..." Kouta objected looking at the wandering ground of the creatures while Mana nodded.</p><p>"It is, these things aren't the creatures we're looking for," she agreed.</p><p>"They aren't?" Meiko appeared completely lost, "So there are two different kinds of creatures underground in here?"</p><p>"No. These things must be fakes. What if someone transformed into these creatures using the Transformation technique for some reason, that's where the smoke comes from, usually you can keep the technique up after being hit but when the user is knocked out it ends in a puff of smoke that can't circulate in this depth. For creatures that lived in a cave for most of their lives they didn't look that troubled by the flash of light which seemed odd to me." Mana was breathing heavily, she wasn't happy by how much effort it took her to fight those things as they weren't really that strong, it must've been the sudden switching between the physical chakra and back. It must've been more stressful to her body and overall exhausting to fight that way than to just fight using one of the two all the time. Or maybe she was afraid of her own new power too much to teach her body how to deal with that stress properly.</p><p>After a loud combination of clacking and rumbling sounds the creatures left. Mana breathed out more easily only to look at her side and notice another creature staring right at her – different and uglier than the ones they fought. This one hung onto the ceiling but looked more like a mixture of a human, a rat, and a mole. It had rough patches of really greasy and nasty looking fur and its jaw as well as its snout were torn in multiple places making it look really deformed. It was much less refined and less well shaped and built when compared to the previous dwellers. These other ones were hunters, this one was a pitiful abomination that looked like it was going to die if left be due to its own pitifulness.</p><p>Meiko and Kouta simultaneously turned at Mana wondering about her silence before screaming wildly, after a brief moment the blacksmith shook Mana's shoulder wildly and asked.</p><p>"Why aren't you screaming!?"</p><p>"Told you, I'm only afraid of ghosts, not body horror," Mana shrugged resuming her match of stares with this pathetic caprice of nature that was soon followed by more glowing eye shapes opening up inside the cave. It appeared that the skins of these creatures were so rough and ragged and dong brown that they could've perfectly stayed hidden standing next to a wall of the tunnel while merely closing their eyes.</p><p>These creatures also appeared to possess eyes, the one that came up closer to Mana and decided to reveal itself first clacked up a series of twelve strange different toned clacks in a manner nearly identical to how those previous creatures communicated.</p><p>Kouta swung a half-assed punch at the creature hanging at the top of the cave but Mana's elbow met the boy's hand at its center. The girl cried out in pain as Kouta's physical strength even when he didn't really mean it almost tore her own hand out of her socket and almost dislocated her shoulder.</p><p>"These ones don't seem aggressive," she replied looking back at the highly curious cave dweller who met her stare and placed its nose closer to Mana's face, clacking rapidly right at her face by grinding its blunt dirty teeth together.</p><p>"Twelve again..." Mana mumbled to herself to which Meiko and Kouta just looked at the magician and back at the abomination trying to chew her face off apparently as its ugly mug was almost touching Mana's, several of its hairs rubbed against Mana's face making the girl freak out a little and close her eyes in disgust but she tried to keep up her composure.</p><p>"Spermatophyte – Holton – Pidgeon – Bagging – Snappy – Tarbes – Decibar – Outtorn – Incardinating – Rapeoil – Nondiathermanous – Etonian." She spoke a confusing jumble of words as the creature jumped back and scratched its malformed filled with random bumps head with one eye three times larger than the other closing its toothed clacking mouth behind the pair of rather luscious yet very unattractive lips.</p><p>"I lack the ability to clack like you, perhaps we can communicate in my language?" Mana asked speaking her words slowly and articulating them clearly to the short rodent-like abomination that just scratched its head again peeling layers of skin off of it and sending it down to the ground.</p><p>"Yes," the creature spoke in a very strange dialect, its pronunciation suggested it had just learned the language right now and was surprised by itself that it could speak it.</p><p>"What the?" Meiko's jaw opened wide, Mana smiled as she turned back at her friends.</p><p>"The twelve clicks that the creature said previously was the Woodarthon Code, a suggested combination of words that in theory is enough for a linguist to understand the speaker's language's basic concepts and teach it to them on a basic level. The creature moved in closer because it wasn't sure if I heard it the first time, these things are actually really smart for mindless things we made them out to be... Were you a linguist by any chance at some point?" Mana wondered looking at the pitiful creature gnawing on its own longer ear than its sister.</p><p>"Yes," it answered.</p><p>"No offense, sir, but you really shouldn't have tried it. Not everyone knows the Woodar... Whatever code, definitely not the kind of people that tread down here looking for trouble, that's for sure." Kouta uncomfortably smiled at the monstrosity.</p><p>"How you know code?" The creature whined out in a sorry voice to which Mana just awkwardly laughed and scratched her head.</p><p>"I read a lot during my free time, recently I've had much more time to read as I've been less occupied by... Other things... These things we fought before, ideally the two different representatives would exchange the code upon meeting each other and it consists of twelve words which may have any number of pronounced symbols so it might be pretty confusing to hear it at first. When I heard the creature speak the system of twelve differently pitched clacks I started to get it together but it didn't make sense that someone trying to kill someone would use the Woodarthon Code, the code of a man who tried to encourage peace and understanding between different nations and possibly even species." The magician explained.</p><p>"Almost like they were repeating what they heard someone else say..." Kouta brought up, "What if those things are actually someone trying to incriminate these dwellers for something using their patterns of speech that they heard during their first contact which was coincidentally the... Code thing".</p><p>Mana was surprised by how much sense the theory made but it still didn't form a firm foundation for an actual picture of just what was going on.</p><p>"The surface justice men make look like us to make us look bad," the dweller said unexpectedly.</p><p>"What?" Mana didn't really believe it at first. The more she thought about it the more sense it made.</p><p>"We met them when they came here first, down here, they no speak, just kill, kill all they see... They want kill all us." The rodent abomination spoke again making Mana more and more confused.</p><p>"But... We left Shimo with them, is he going to be OK? Why would they strike this deal with us then? What's their gain?" Meiko wondered but her speech was without much emotion, almost like she just wondering when she was going to get the chance to fight someone again. All this hard thinking was probably getting to her already.</p><p>"They lead us down here and then lied about the disappearing party who in terms transformed into those creatures, the best they could do to replicate them. They may not have gotten a good look initially so that's why the two looked so different and why the Justicars weren't afraid of the light flash. They do wish for us to slaughter these things for them, I only assume that Shimo will be used as a bargaining chip in case their plan fails." Kouta kept on trying to help Mana understand what was going on.</p><p>"Logically they couldn't have foreseen us managing to find a common speech with the creatures, they counted on us being repulsed and afraid by their looks and strange behavior, it makes sense. But why would they wish to kill these things?" Mana couldn't understand it, one answered or theorized question only raised another couple of them in its place. Things needed to be properly thought out before a definitive action could have been made or else Shimo or these people could've been in danger.</p><p>"Wait... Woodarthon Code is meant to communicate between different dialects, that was its main use of conception because our entire world speaks a single universal language, the one that the First People left behind for us. I'm not sure if it would've taught a being unfamiliar with our language's basic concepts the whole thing. You guys then said that one of you was a linguist at some point, just who are you guys?" Mana asked the rodent men directly, the dwellers just scurried and quickly gathered around the crew, Meiko and Kouta were slowly getting twitchy while even Mana, who was really tolerant towards their deformities was getting on edge.</p><p>"We livers of small wood houses. Settle-ments." The linguist spoke up. "One day, man come to settle-ment, say he heal pain and death, he did this to us. We could no live in the light, we run here and justice men run after us, chase us here and try smoke us like dogs".</p><p>"Livers? You mean settlers? Oh, so you've had remnants of the language in your head, it just took triggers to unlock them. Also... Heal pain and death? What could that mean?" Mana thought up scratching her chin almost to the point of irritation and minor bleeding.</p><p>"Whoever that man who came to their settlement was, if he's a rogue in the Justicars' sights, that'd make these people their targets too," Kouta voiced his thoughts.</p><p>""Thee shall bury any well spit in by a poisonous snake hag" says the Justicar code," Meiko shrugged. "Anyone touched or affected by the rogue's jutsu is to be slain in case some wicked seal was left inside of them that'd set off even after the user's death".</p><p>Mana and Kouta looked at Meiko curiously, they expected the girl to be the last person to know the Justicar Code by heart. It was a quite complex set of strange metaphors that was supposed to have answers to any situation. Just like that time when Meiko surprised everyone by knowing quite much about music the blacksmith proved that she wasn't really a thick-skulled idiot, just really distracted in matters she cared little about. Seeing how hyped Meiko was after seeing the Justicars even admiring their looks and the gear that they used it was of little surprise to hear that Meiko may have taken an interest in the order at some point and learned about it to an obsessive degree.</p><p>"Well then, let's get out there and kick their asses. Let's show them what real justice is all about," Kouta pounded his own fists together looking pumped to finally leave this cave, and to be honest these unlucky and miserable people behind. Mana looked down before kneeling up to the unfortunate monstrosities of science and ninjutsu and gently touched the linguist's face, Meiko twisted her face in disgust and Mana resisted the urge to do the same as it turned out that the abomination's face was really slimy and greasy.</p><p>"It pains me greatly knowing how many injustices in this world I am still too weak to fix... Fennec in the Wind Desert, that thing we ran from in Roiyaru road or those ninja that took on Kouta's father's squad. All we can do in our present state is run from those people and hear all about the atrocities they commit while we run but... One day, I promise there will be no more running. I will regain my chakra manipulation and become strong enough to have words with the man who did this to you so that he isn't able to do this to anyone else." Mana spoke looking at the one overly large eye and another squinted one staring at her creepily.</p><p>"Yes," the strange dweller replied looking at Mana more confused than he was sad or happy. Whatever that rogue did to them must've also meddled with their brains, taken away more than just their bodies but also their minds and personalities. There were times like this when Mana realized just how true Tanshu's last words to her was and how cruel and terrible the real world outside the village walls could've been to people who deserved it the least.</p><p>Mana felt Meiko's soft tap at her shoulder, "Come on, we have some good looking faces to bash in..." she asked Mana to move on and not get overly emotional over this horror. Sometimes Mana forgot just how kind and smart Meiko really was, the blacksmith saw how painful it was to Mana to see these things so she did her best to turn the magician further away from them despite her hottest desire to rub her face into the horror she failed to stop by not being strong and inspiring enough.</p>
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<a name="section0177"><h2>177. The Path of the Wolf</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shimo patiently and subtly ripped off a chunk of meat off of a lump of flesh he was given to eat. Most people would've already gone to sleep but he simply couldn't. Despite the relatively strange degree of tolerance that the Justicars have shown him he still couldn't bring himself up to trust them. Not after chasing him and his sensei loosely throughout his entire stay with the man. Living without bonds to any particular affiliation made life a constant leaping contest between the Justicars and the hunter ninja coming after their heads, granted the hunter-nin had no wish to take his head as technically he wasn't really a rogue. Justicars simple did not care...</p><p>The young man tore another chunk of the already cold dead animal. He couldn't sleep because he was afraid that he'd be killed faster than his mind could perceive that something was wrong, he couldn't fight those people because he had no idea if they were even to be fought, they certainly didn't give him any reasons to fight them beyond being just all around assholes. Despite this world punishing even those sorts of transgressions, Shimo didn't fancy hurting people just because of that. The man he was now trying to become, this new identity he was molding himself after wouldn't do it.</p><p>The Yuki swordsman stood up and left his smelly tent, the man looked around and didn't see anyone outside their tents. He heard a bunch of sounds coming from some of the tents that he didn't want to really look into so the young swordsman walked towards the woods to check if Mana and the others haven't come back. If these Justicars by any means really did plan to kill him the return of the magician and the crew would've put a stop to that plan so in case of their malevolence these men and women would've been dangerous to the returning ninja.</p><p>"Halt..." A growly voice stopped Shimo in his tracks, the young man took a brief glance behind him only to notice a man in a chest plate armor but exposed meaty arms with a body covered with pelts of various animals malformed together into a sewing that reminded the pelt of a chimera itself.</p><p>"Where are you going? Silverton said you were not to leave the camp," the man threw orders around Shimo continued to walk forward as in his eyes the man didn't say anything noteworthy. He cared very little about what these Justicars wanted him to do, he would only follow his end of the promise as far as he wanted to do it, for as long as he believes it to be needed.</p><p>"You're killing them right?" Shimo asked the man without looking back, his voice began getting more and more feint as the young man was treading deeper and deeper into the forest.</p><p>"Huh? What do you mean?!" The man wearing an entire zoo on his back and shoulders growled out angrily rushing forward after Shimo.</p><p>"I mean those underground things, you're killing them? Before you lie to me remember that I was running from you for the longest time, no one knows someone better than its prey, a living prey can tell about its hunter more than the hunter's mother." Shimo stopped and turned back to the man facing him with a cold stare.</p><p>"The fuck are you on about!?" The Justicar slipped his pelt off leaving just a helmet decorated with a head of a decapitated wolf on top of the steel, the added chunk of flesh and bone may have helped protect the dumb head hiding underneath against common scumbags but not a serious fighter who could've cut through the very mantle and core of the planet if given a long enough sword.</p><p>"One who is getting picked off at the night does not camp around their danger zone. This here is a siege. You're not the ones getting picked out during the night – those "tunnel monsters" are. I don't know just what they are but in your eyes they're criminals. Normally I wouldn't care too much but I've seen in first person how broad your definition of a criminal is." Shimo replied. "Now will you attack me so I can cut you down? I've had no stomach for you scumbags this whole time so I'm gonna do those monsters a favor and deal with their dirty work".</p><p>The Justicar shouted out angrily flicking his hands back, metallic noises shrieked around his arms protruding steel claws around contraptions on the man's arms. The chimera wearing Justicar launched himself forward, he was quite fast, faster than most outsiders Shimo had seen, the swordsman leaned to both sides effortlessly avoiding the man's swings before jumping back.</p><p>"I thought you told me you'd strike me down?" the Justicar noted.</p><p>"You're no trash I mistook you for but you haven't shown me anything worth drawing my blade for," Shimo said, "As long as my blade is sheathed I am defending myself".</p><p>The clawed brawler launched himself at Shimo again, dipping his blades into the water and letting it splash around as the man ran on forward, pure chakra emanated from the man's body extending the length of his claws and shaking the body of water apart by splitting it open. Shimo took a couple of brave backflips finding himself a solid footing on the surface of the water, he didn't take any time to admire the man splitting the water into four parts, he had no time to spare, the water then came back together the way it was before it was split momentarily.</p><p>The Justicar launched another attack, Shimo dived down with a roll, finding support with his right arm and pushing his body up to deliver an upside kick to the man's neck. Despite hitting a vital the man just swiped with his claws opening a small gash on Shimo's leg. Slowly the young man realized that his body augmented itself so that his whole leg didn't get removed from his body – the man's claws may have only been that long but the chakra put into the chakra conductive tool let him elongate the reach and strengthen the cutting power to the point where there was no comparison.</p><p>"He didn't even budge..." Shimo thought to himself admiring the man's endurance or his chakra level. He had some training, it would've been ironic if it turned out that these Justicars were once actually ninja themselves, a ninja that served no village was a rogue and rogues were criminals. The Yuki had no doubts that these men were Justicars, they certainly spouted the same amount of bullshit.</p><p>"You can't take all of us on. Eighty trained fighters just as strong as me," the Justicar grinned. Shimo realized that the man was right – not even their combined group could take all of those men on. Still, to take out as many of them in an all out fight would've been a better fate than to hide inside a cave and get picked off one by one every night.</p><p>"I won't need to... I'll beat you, I'll beat whoever remains in the camp. I'll trust those that descended into the caves for tonight's hunt to my friends." Shimo replied checking on his bleeding leg, he may have put too much chakra into that wall – the wound was just a shallow cut similar to how he'd have gotten cut with broken glass but he had no control over that. His body must've panicked...</p><p>"Beat? You mean you don't plan to kill me, criminal scum!?" The Justicar shouted out rushing at Shimo, his body blinked out and flashed around the boy faster than the human eye could track. The Yuki moved his head when necessary, moved himself to the side when necessary, jumped to the side when necessary. Small scratches tore his dirty green top up and annoyed him to no end. The man was faster than Shimo could play around with.</p><p>It was a problem, an inner one that didn't let Shimo concentrate on beating this man. Was it something that his newly discovered identity would do? Before the boy lived his life merely for showing off to women. Before he even realized why men usually acted that way. At some point, he saw the relationship between men and women when his sensei fooled around in the small pleasure towns all over the places they've been in. Soon Shimo realized that there was little to no justification for acting that way, being an overly courteous person but only to women, it made no sense, he gave the ladies more respect than that... That left him with a hole.</p><p>A hole to be filled with his survivalist lifestyle, soon after reuniting with Mana the young swordsman saw the disappointment and sadness in his friend's eyes but he gave no fucks about it. Then he realized how stupid he was, that Mana has been looking for people to inspire and he himself was looking for an identity to adopt, one more fitting of a young swordsman looking to discover himself and so Shimo decided to wield his sword to protect people like Mana wanted him to. Would that kind of noble warrior fight such a battle?</p><p>The Justicar blinked out of perception again. His body flashed over Shimo's and the wolf wearing man appeared behind the young swordsman. Shimo just stood there, the mountains, trees and even water around them where the level rose above their current level split in two further than Shimo could see. Even the tents so far away that they were just barely seen by the boy all split in two where the man cut him. Blood burst through in a wild arcing splash from Shimo's exposed chest forcing the boy to cover it and stroke it with his hand while using his other hand to make a hand seal. Shimo froze the wound despite it not being too deep. It was still making him lose too much blood.</p><p>"Heh, what's the matter? Your chakra has taken a huge dip. You just stood there and took the hit augmenting your body to just stonewall it. Are you that suicidal?" The man snickered revealing himself to be a sensor who could sense chakra levels and its nature in people. It was a rare ability present in some ninja, ten to twenty percent maybe if it was natural, ten to twenty more discovered techniques that helped them achieve similar effects unnaturally.</p><p>"Was I that fast for you, kid!? Couldn't even react!?" The Justicar continued to make fun of Shimo who just stood there with his head nodded down before fixing his glasses and turning around to face his opponent with an angry and cold stare. This wasn't the look of a man worried about his identity, this was a look of a survivalist in his head.</p><p>Shimo removed his sheathed blade by untying it off of the cloth belt and showed it to his opponent by raising his hand while still holding it sheathed.</p><p>"No. I saw you making the first steps so I wondered what kind of attack it'd be. It was faster than the neuron signals themselves so I had to accelerate mine using Lightning Release chakra. Then I saw you take your left leg forward and lean on it with all of your weight so I instantly identified a spinning slash, I wondered if you were some sort of an idiot, revealing your back to me for an entire microsecond. I decided to finally draw my blade and block your attack so I did just that, then I noticed the unnatural concentration of chakra in your blade so I realized it was a weapon breaking technique, if I blocked it with my Audra blade it'd have caused a shockwave powerful enough to destroy this entire country because you're idiotic enough to not control your chakra and guide it through the body of your opponent because you like to show off. For that reason, I sheathed my sword back and took the hit..."</p><p>The man stood there in awe listening to Shimo's explanation. "You... You did all that in the span of my attack!?" The man shouted out refusing to believe Shimo's explanation.</p><p>"It's true, no one would have enough time to react to an attack like that because it moves millions of times faster than the signals between neurons and the brain. No human or whoever that functions like one would respond to such an attack, that being said... That's why chakra is there, to enhance our shortcomings. A friend of mine believes it is a gift to us from some supernatural being, that we are to use that gift to benefit those without it. It's really kind of silly when you think about it but I chose to wield my sword in the name of that fairytale because, basically, I had nothing better to swear my sword to at the time." Shimo shrugged.</p><p>The Justicar screamed out into the air, he prepared to attack again but this time the boy was ready. Shimo sheathed his blade and flashed through a couple of hand seals before his opponent could even move his foot, those brief lessons from Mana when they were training came in handy at last, Tanshu was no fool...</p><p>As the two warriors dashed to one another a storm of howling cold winds surrounded them both. Covering both ninja in cold white veil that reminded of the coldest winters on a faraway planet, far beyond the reaches of light in its star, beyond the regions where humans could still calculate its distance from its star. Shimo's body instantly began to compensate for the cold, he was used to it, trained himself inside of such storms but his opponent was less likely to have done so.</p><p>"Wolf Bite Barrage!" The Justicar yelled out snapping his claws together and forcing them apart a couple of times in a barrage of attacks that would've ground any flesh inside his reach into countless pieces but his steel froze solid, cracking and crumbling into snowflakes that covered the ground beneath his feet. Only then did the man realize in what immense storm of sheer cold he was standing.</p><p>"You call yourself a wolf and yet..." Shimo's voice reached the Justicar from outside the storm, despite being inside the storm the young man disappeared from it at the last moment.</p><p>"You don't know what the path of a wolf is, just because you can kill a helpless beast does not make you a master of its path," the voice once again intimated the man who began to slowly freeze solid in a chunk of crystal clear ice, the very humidity of the air around them began to freeze the man into a chunk of ice.</p><p>"You don't bother to guide your destructive force through the opponent causing damage to your own home, you show off trying to look stronger than you actually are by refusing to transfer your chakra only into your opponent like the code of a warrior compels you to. You're no wolf, you're the worst kind of scum there is. That chimera getup fit you better".</p><p>The man grunted and gurgled in pain as his body became completely numb, it took impossible to calculate cold to freeze someone who was so engaged in coating their body in chakra but Shimo did it easily.</p><p>"The path of a wolf is a path of loneliness, trusting only those you accept into your pack, the path of a wolf is a path of justice, ravaging anyone you feel being unjust and fighting for always doing what you think needs to be done. The path of a wolf is a path of kinship, ultimately, not strength. I was always afraid of going to sleep when I was outside the village because I was afraid to hear the words of the Justicar code: "A wolf that does not gnaw its prey is no wolf", you know what it means – the Justicar must always kill who they consider being a criminal without exceptions or excuses".</p><p>The man didn't shout or grunt or say anything, Shimo could only assume that he was already frozen solid. He didn't really wish to kill this man but he was dangerous, there were plenty of ninja that were able to destroy large chunks of all that exists if they were to unleash their power but the code of all kinds of warriors compelled them to guide that power only through the opponent. Anyone strong enough to destroy the world they were in had an obligation to only guide that force through the opponent, not only ninja followed this code: mercenaries, criminals, samurai, martial artists and even pirates. Everyone knelt to that code. A person like this had no right to remain alive, no right to become strong enough to destroy his own world.</p><p>"A wolf that does not gnaw its prey is no wolf." Shimo uttered under his own nose before his body blinked out and forced into the storm before appearing outside it. The Yuki swordsman sheathed his blade as the storm split.</p><p>"Ice Style: Ten Thousand Blizzard Cuts." Shimo chanted out the name of his technique as the blizzard exploded in sheer pressure dissolving immediately and the ice chunk which the man was encased in dissolved into countless smallest pieces to the point where no one could've even realized that there was once a body inside it.</p><p>"Not bad, kid" a voice alerted Shimo to a man standing right behind him. At the very same moment when Shimo turned around and drew his blade, the two clashed their swords against one another. The awesome force of the man wielding the gigantic ancient blade sent Shimo sliding back and sheathing his sword again, preparing to use his drawing techniques.</p><p>The man standing against him was covered up with large clunky armor, one that come from lost pages of history that no one dared or wished to remember, it only could've fit a man the size of the Justicar leader who stood in front of him, the man with the silver glowing hair and a rough fatherly face wielding the decorated sword just an inch smaller than his own self, the Justicar leader – Silverton.</p>
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<a name="section0178"><h2>178. No Holding Back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana, Meiko, and Kouta were making a wild dash towards the exit to the camp. They decided to take their chances and bet on Shimo's distrust of the Justicars, in general, to make the young Yuki quite capable of not getting himself captured. Moments before making a turn Kouta's hand rose and rudely slammed Mana against a rocky wall making her grunt out in pain and almost question the young man's rude expression but then his hand continued to slam her mouth closed and cover it up. Meiko was too obsessed with staring strangely to speak a word but after a moment she got the clue and also hid behind the sharp turn. Slowly the trio walked back before they found multiple corners and crevices to hide in.</p><p>Within mere seconds after Mana hid into a small crevice just barely large enough to hide half of her petite frame a march of angry men running through the tunnel broke the silence as they rushed to the place where their comrades were soundly beaten. It could've been well over fifty men, all of them wore exquisite yet ancient and long out of production armors and weapons far too large for comfortable murdering.</p><p>"They're mobilizing..." Kouta silently noted.</p><p>"What about Shimo?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"He's a tough guy, he can handle himself," Meiko assured the team.</p><p>"We don't know if these men are here for us or the dwellers. If these are here to kill us and hide our bodies inside the caves that's one thing. If this is just a daily hunting party that means that the Justicars are still unaware that we know of their game, that would mean that Shimo is alright." Kouta tried to sum his thoughts up and make up a way that'd help them decide on what to do next.</p><p>What the young Juugo said made some sense, if they somehow could manage to find out just what the intentions of these men were it could help them a great deal. Furthermore, it'd help them better make up a plan of how to save everyone. That was the goal, that was always the goal.</p><p>"We'll track them, see where they go, what they do. If they are actively looking for us we'll know that they're after us, if they attack the dwellers at one of their favorite hiding spots we'll know that our cover is still safe. I don't think that our brief encounter gave us up already, they have no reason to believe that we're onto them" Mana concluded.</p><p>Meiko and Kouta nodded and the three slowly began creeping at the general direction of the noises. After a short while, they managed to catch up to the group. It appeared that far too many of these men were mobilized, Mana couldn't accurately tell but from a rough estimation, she would've bet that this was most if not the entire group. They were preparing for some serious justice dealing. Or what these sick people made out to be justice, anyways.</p><p>"Mana-chan..." Kouta softly spoke up, carefully that his voice didn't echo hard enough through the caves to be heard by the Justicars on ahead. The magician soft and turned to him.</p><p>"Look, we found out some really sensitive and important information here – whoever is making people disappear close to the village is possibly also involved in whatever's gone on with those settlers. It's a decent suspicion and the village should know about it." Kouta whispered.</p><p>"Your point?" Mana didn't like the direction where this was going. She had a rough suspicion as to where the boy wanted to take it.</p><p>"Well... It means we have to prioritize our survival at all costs, we need to let the village know that the bastard may not be just a maniac who kills people or something. He's into some seriously messed up and important crimes." Kouta concluded.</p><p>He was right. Mana hated when people she disagreed with were actually right. She knew that not only according to the mission protocol but also a much more logical thing to do was to prioritize their survival at all costs. They'd potentially save more lives than just some ugly abominations of nature, monstrosities created by splicing science with ninjutsu or whatever that person did to them.</p><p>Mana didn't answer, she didn't want to go that path, the path of agreeing to condemn a bunch of unfortunate people to death just so they could save more people in the long run by shocking the village enough to take the threat more seriously. To send their best ninja after the perp and comb the forests, burn them and smoke the bastard out if needed. She couldn't in conscious mind tell herself that condemning those people could've actually been the right thing to do but deep in her heart she knew that it was.</p><p>"Why would they be so cruel," Mana wondered, "Why would they go so far to kill some unfortunate people that already had their lives ruined following some blind code?" That was when Meiko touched her shoulder.</p><p>"The Justicar Code." The blacksmith answered</p><p>"What do you mean?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"A wild cat that does not kill dies of starvation," Meiko quoted. Since Mana continued to stare at the blacksmith indifferently the redhead scratched her forehead and explained, "The Justicars operate with a bushido-like code. Those that do not serve their ideals must commit suicide. That's why in that lie that the Justicar leader made up he claimed that he was keeping the group frozen in procession, a state where they neither failed justice nor upheld it".</p><p>Mana looked onward as she noticed the feint lights began to disappear into the cave. The group picked up the pace a little. What sort of sick ideals were those? To live by such a stupid code? Then again, was her own conviction any better? Mana herself was ready to die upholding her own ideals. She had no right to judge those people or feel surprised when she herself gave up her life protecting a criminal just because she thought he didn't deserve death. To think that Kiyomi idolized these people just as much as Meiko appeared to... Why did people follow those blind icons of street justice when justice had nothing to do with what was right?</p><p>"It's the bees and the hornets all over again..." Mana laughed out. Kouta looked at her uneasily, he must've known that the magician's laughter was just a façade of her sadness and wish to know what to do. She thought up of a nightmare scenario and here it was transpiring right in front of her. Two sides that lived by what they did, one side that had to kill to survive due to their own foolish convictions and people who probably wanted to rather be dead due to what happened to them. To stop either side was to doom the other...</p><p>"I really hope you've found the answer..." Kouta answered trying to come closer to Mana and ease up her inner struggle but the magician slowed down a little, then stopped and sat down wrapping her head around in her arms. She was afraid, confused and had no idea what to do.</p><p>"Bees and hornets?" Meiko blinked a couple of times, stopping and following Mana before picking her up and carrying the magician in her own hands as if nothing happened. Her speed didn't even drop a tiny bit.</p><p>"A hypothetical situation, Mana-chan was worried that at some point she'd encounter a situation where she'd be stuck between two sides the survival of which hindered on exterminating the other. It's her worst fear because she placed the responsibility of troubling herself with every smallest conflict, she didn't know what she'd do in that situation..." Kouta explained looking at his collapsed friend. Mana looked really out of it all.</p><p>Meiko smiled cheerfully, "What a dolt, she can fight a full arena of trained martial artists wishing to kill her but she collapses because of something dumb like this".</p><p>"It's not dumb, it's important to her..." Kouta tried to object but then fell silent when he realized that the Justicars stopped. They must've found what they were looking for.</p><p>Meiko placed Mana on the ground gently and proceeded to close in on the Justicars, both ninja decided to utilize their element of surprise and get a drop on the enemy.</p><p>"That's it, freaks, you have nowhere left to run!" One of the Justicars yelled out</p><p>"You'll all be slain for your crimes of being tainted by a criminal! This world has no place for victims, only the evil and the justice that cleanses it." Another one laughed out as followed with a metallic shriek he drew out his sword from a sheath on his back, the swords these men and women carried were far too great to be carried by their sides so most of them carried their weapons on their backs.</p><p>"Why you kill us? What we do?" The dweller who has spoken to Mana asked walking out in front of his people, he appeared alone but Meiko and Kouta knew that all of the others were hiding with their eyes closed by the walls.</p><p>"Oh, look at that, they've learned to speak! Good, I could use some screams from the evil that I slay, clacking just sounds like I'm chopping wood." A large brute thundered out with a rocky voice as he removed his ax from his back and let its natural weight slam down onto the rocky floor shaking the entire tunnel structure. It may have weighed thousands of tons to have caused such a violent reaction to the integrity of the massive system.</p><p>"Heh, what did you do? You mean besides being pathetic and miserable ugly bastards who fell victims to criminal scum? All of you are just blisters of our society, you carry the ugliness of the injustice that touched you." A woman Justicar yelled out removing two long knives and brandishing them against each other.</p><p>The woman lunged at the man wielding her knives but with a reddish and black flash, she was sent back crashing into a wall and shaking up the entire tunnel system again. At the very least it held quite firmly as it was based on some tough and quite ancient system of roots. Kouta stood up from his leg swipe position and looked at the rest of the Justicars angrily.</p><p>"Enough." Was all he said.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Windmill Buzzsaw!" Meiko chanted out the name of her technique as she appeared out of nowhere and after a nasty flesh slashing sound a whole bunch of Justicars fell to the ground stricken down by two windmill shuriken that she wielded masterfully attached to string wire. With a flick of her wrist, the armored kunoichi returned the shuriken to her hands and placed them back on her back.</p><p>"You... Konoha ninja defend these freaks!? These monstrosities, these..." a Justicar opened his mouth to speak angrily gripping his large ax.</p><p>"Victims of a crime against humanity committed by a criminal? The man you all should be chasing instead if you had any integrity at all?" Mana's voice reached the group as it turned around to see the magician walking through their group and calmly joining her friends standing in between the Justicar and the tunnel dwellers.</p><p>"Mana..." Kouta acknowledged the magician's decision to choose a side whether she had an answer or not. To stand together with her friends when faced with her worst fear, her total nightmare scenario when no one in their right mind would've walked out there and faced their fears.</p><p>"Have you found an answer then?" Meiko looked at the magician questioningly.</p><p>"I don't think there is an answer. I've decided that no matter what situation I'll just always do what I think is the right thing to do. The one thing that would not be right is to let these people slaughter the dwellers just because they look ugly and are victims of a crime forced into hiding. The right thing to do is to break every bone in the body of every Justicar so that they cannot kill themselves when we stop them from harming these people." Mana calmly explained before giving each of the Justicars in front of her an angry stare.</p><p>"Thee shall bury any well spit in by a poisonous hag," a Justicar said taking a step closer and gripping his war-hammer more tightly in his hands.</p><p>"A wolf that croaks like the ugliest toad is no wolf and will drown when it tries to swim," another woman drew her sword and stepped forward. Mana didn't even need translation to the last line of the Justicar code, it was supposed to mean that they were now just as much criminals in the eyes of the Justicars as the dwellers were and if that was what it meant to be a criminal Mana would've more rather been the worst kind of criminal there was than let those poor people get slaughtered. A word criminal is an empty label when thrown around meaninglessly.</p><p>Kouta roared proudly in rage as his Juugo instincts kicked in, sending the boy into a furious rage, leaping into the whole bunch and pounding any Justicar that got in his way without restraining any smallest bit of his strength. Punching people through rocks and into the air and out of the tunnel system, throwing people around using the combination of his medical chakra enhanced strength technique as well as his unmatched chakra control that allowed him to augment his strength and speed more efficiently.</p><p>The young man's fists danced on the muscular and good looking bodies of the Justicar peeling through the hardest and most dense plates of armor, breaking their shields and weapons and breaking the body of each Justicar with a single softest touch, blowing away any attempts of these glorified mercenaries to augment their endurance as his physical strength blew away all of that. Just a single stare at the rampaging Kouta made Mana realize just how similar the boy was to his father. She even got a shiver remembering the man's face as he beat her down mercilessly back in the ruins of the Wind Desert.</p><p>And yet despite the awesome strength, the boy began finding his match more and more amongst the Justicar, after a couple of the first moments of unstoppable rampage Kouta had to restrain his augmentations in order to not damage his own chakra system. So his blows no longer sent people flying, he had to attack more often, more skillfully, use taijutsu combinations, block, dodge and weave around using technical abilities and he wasn't always successful in doing so. A powerful mercenary cleaved through at least a dozen of Justicars just to land a shallow cut on Kouta, the man then rushed with his shoulder and grabbed the boy's face slamming it into his knee.</p><p>Meiko unsealed a one-handed sword and a small buckler, the buckler was used more defensively as she charged around or tossed it as a projectile meanwhile her much leaner and more dynamic blade made most gracious art on the bodies of battlefield hardened Justicars. Sometimes Meiko hit something too hard to cut, sometimes blows and kicks or even slashes from those colossal weapons forced her own gear out of her hands. That was when the blacksmith showed her brute physical prowess that was just an inch or two behind Kouta's who was a purely physical brawler. Both Kouta and Meiko were restrained to some extent – Kouta couldn't use his Juugo bloodline chakra cannons in fear of destroying the tunnels, Meiko couldn't use her more destructive seals as well.</p><p>That didn't mean that the blacksmith didn't use her sealing abilities. With something as subtle as a hand seal with one hand and a touch of another with the ground or a wall the kunoichi formed explosive seals that exploded in relatively small power and disrupted or threw the enemies off balance. Oftentimes when meeting a hardened and heavy and clunky plate armor wearing person she didn't wish to bother with the blacksmith simply created a seal of explosive nature onto the person's armor blowing his armor to bits. Ancient armors meant to withstand the most amazing blows from the most powerful warriors of history offered little protection to a tall and buff she-devil blacksmith of Konohagakure and her crafty combination of swordplay and sealing techniques.</p><p>Despite being surrounded by fighters none of them managed to as much as lay a hand on Mana. The magician was burning her body out by exploding with as much physical chakra as she could – that was the only way because the speed of these Justicar was insanely powerful. They were fit to compete with lower ranking ninja, even blow most early career genin out of the water completely. They were able to move at immeasurable speeds, possessed unimaginable reaction time and each blow would've been enough to cleave through even the densest substances in the universe. Then again, Mana was not surprised by the immense strength of this army of savage murderers, they had to be this strong to survive killing criminals, people that gave ninja trouble.</p><p>At some point the magician noticed the Justicar asking for reinforcements, none of them no matter how hard they tried could land a blow and she was not responding in kind. Mana was using all of her tricks immediately, the combined fighting style of dodging, reflecting what she couldn't dodge and countering immediately after. She broke bones, disarmed and used the disarmed weapons against the users. She was fighting beings that would've been considered gods in other places and outnumbered severely and yet she was holding her own quite decently. If she was to ignore her burning pain that was already forcing Mana's heart to pound ten thousand times its normal rate, she was literally killing herself by breaking her own body.</p><p>Despite not being hit once Mana worked up the maddest nosebleed as well as a headache matching the pain of having her head split open with one of those thousand ton axes. Her heart felt like it was trying to use explosives to blow its way out of the girl's heart and yet... She didn't care if she'd die, she just tried to do what needed to be done, what she thought was right. She was fighting in the middle of a battlefield without as much as a single injury, she was once again what she craved to be – a ninja. Even if it'd end up killing her, Mana didn't care how many years she was shaving off her lifespan with each dodged punch, one, ten or a hundred. All she cared about was that once again she was defending people that needed her help, people who would've been slaughtered for their horrible luck and their physical repulsive looks.</p><p>Such couldn't happen. Such will never happen as long as Mana's tearing and crying with blood heart still pounded in her chest cavity.</p>
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<a name="section0179"><h2>179. Life Shaver</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The leader of this Justicar group – Silverton was a tall and bulky man, not by any means overweight but packed with muscles that would've been needed to wield his sword properly. He was well outside his prime age but he had that notable draw of an elder man, his strict facial structure allowed this aura of maturity and justice to emanate from him. He'd have reminded to many a headmaster of their own Academy as men of similar stature and faces usually ended up guiding the young through their own example.</p><p>One was not to assume that there was nothing notable or just about Silverton. The man was no snake but his ideals were bent and skewered, rubbed against a stone wall and pulled until they bent and flexed like an actual snake. That being said, Silverton upheld his slithering ideals firmly. Devotion to a foolish extent was often attributed to Justicars. The man used to wear his silver-grey hair in a rather tidily braided helmet of a hairdo, reminding more of a larger than life king than a head of a branch of a vigilante organization. Now Silverton's hair was messy and flowed all over his face all the way to where his neck began in spiky strands.</p><p>"You said you wouldn't kill my brother in arms and yet you cut him to icy shards the first chance you got. As expected from a criminal trash..." Silverton grunted angrily reaching behind his back and grabbing a bandaged hilt of his sword.</p><p>Shimo remained silent, looking coldly at a man he wished to kill for so long. A man who didn't wrong him per se but whose "brothers" gave Shimo and his tutor so many sleepless nights and hard times during his training. A man who represented authority in a mad order of self-executed justice, no responsibility or accountability. All the fun of killing whomever you call a criminal with no need to justify it.</p><p>There was no surprise that Meiko loved Silverton's armor, armors of all these Justicars as well as their weapons. The armor of this leader was certainly impressive and simply clawed at one's eyes with feminine overgrown crimson red nails at how ancient and majestic it was. An armor made entirely of lazulum, a strong mineral found in the bottom of vast oceans, only deeper than fifteen thousand meters with a shine of azure blue that rivalled that of refined sapphires, encrusted with diamonds and golden lines and mosaics making the man look like an aged seraphim thrown from the heavens without his wings to exact godly vengeance.</p><p>Shimo turned his side at the man, pushed his leg forward a little bit and steadied his breath. He knew that there was no need nor desire to talk his way out of this. No, to hell with talking. Still, Silverton had the heavier weapon but Shimo had no idea how swiftly he swung it. He was above falling for the amateur mistake of trying to attack a heavily armed opponent assuming they couldn't move fast. He'd seen giants wielding war hammers faster than Shimo could blink, noble ninja of Iwagakure that could strike a lightning bolt in two with a mace the size of a small inn. The assessment came first, not haste.</p><p>Finally, Silverton's hand wrapped around the colossal blade on his back, it had a shining green orb, possibly emerald, Shimo didn't have a proper good luck to tell confidently, anything upper right up to the cross guard and the blade itself was wrapped in bandages, not fresh white ones, sweaty, piss-yellow ones. After gripping that part firmly Silverton unleashed his blade – a giant lump of gems, gold and some onyx-like looking black stone of unknown origins. That part scared Shimo a little – the only part of his blade he could not identify also comprised more than two-thirds of the blade whereas the emeralds and the gold crusts were just visual enhancements.</p><p>Silverton yelled out like a madman, such loss of composure should've stricken any lesser foe as odd but to Shimo it meant little. Men went insane during and before a battle, lost all semblance of humanity, else they were unable to take a life. It was not human nature to take lives, not really, to do so with skill one needed to shed humanity away, tear out of it like a butterfly shed cocoon, like a snake shed its skin once the old one was outgrown. Similarly, a man shed humanity when humanity was too childish of a thing for reality to be comprehended.</p><p>Shimo did not draw, he did not dare compare his skill against Silverton's just yet. The young man weaved a hand seal, barely in time. Had he not been tutored by Mana on how to weave those blasted things fast enough he'd be split in two like a melon.</p><p>"Glaciation Jutsu!" Shimo chanted in an instant. The water left over from the molten Justicar from before glaciated in an instant, Shimo barely felt any pressure in his chakra network. Techniques like this came as easy to him now as waving his arm.</p><p>Silverton slid forward, he had to maintain his composure to remain afoot, keep readjusting his balance. Shimo wanted to use that opportunity. The boy dashed past the hulking man, drawing his blade as the blizzard gathered behind him in a shape of a rabid white wolf with icicles for fur and larger ones for claws. A simple technique from Shimo's youth that would easily test Silverton's capacity to take hits if not take him out instantly. The boy's feet slid so lightly, almost like they were feet of cherubs dancing in the clouds.</p><p>"Ice Style: White Wolf Slash!" The young proudly declared the name of his attack – a lightning fast slash that would've been difficult enough to block but the real deceitful killer came from behind the youth – a rampaging blizzard in wolf's shape that threw blade sharp icicles with all the might and speed of a rampaging highest possible blizzard winds cutting to the deepest vessels of blood. To a bystander, it appeared like the wolf-shaped construct of nature's wrath slashed with its mighty paws and the ice paws melted from the warmth of the crimson blood.</p><p>Crimson it was...</p><p>But not blood. Shimo sheathed his blade and dashed backward carefully examining his opponent's supposed wounds, or where they should've been seeing only an intimidating red glow, a bubble of unknown origin that looked like pure chakra but it didn't burn the faint light blue like all natural chakra did – it was blood red. A forcefield of sorts of a bubbly shape protected Silverton perfectly shielding him from the slash.</p><p>Silverton grinned. "Did you really think that a tortoise swordsman like me would somehow not protect his own body?" He arrogantly quipped at Shimo's expense, or so he thought. After all the Yuki youth was well aware of Silverton's high experience and predicted some sort of trick being inside the void of blackness which was his sleeve.</p><p>"Slow?" Shimo wondered, "He considers himself "tortoise" slow... Was he really slow?" The young swordsman wondered to himself but could only realize that he may have gotten into a fight he could not quite cash with his blade.</p><p>It was often a bad sign when one did not consider an attribute quoted by the opponent to be a glaring weakness as that weak, to begin with. Yes. Silverton was slow initially, but somehow the more he swung his massive blade the more its weight accelerated the swing, gravity itself improved his speed. The leader of Justicars was by no means slow but he thought himself slow because he faced opponents that were fast compared to him... If he survived such opponents Shimo should've had no hopes.</p><p>Silverton rolled forward, swiping upwards, Shimo leaned to the side avoiding the slash, now it was the exact opposite – when the gravity was working against the man his slashes de-accelerated the more they went, upwards swings were getting slower and slower each passing inch. The Justicar swung his blade around but Shimo dared not block it. Something looked way off here...</p><p>A cruel smile caught Silverton's face as the man twisted the edge of his blade and swung his stabbing sword to the side hitting Shimo with the blunt side and swatting him aside like a fly. A tree burst into millions of small shreds of wood after Shimo flew into it making the built-up pressure blow it up. The youth felt chakra leaving his body so fast that his ears were ringing, a taste of blood in his mouth... Blood tasted almost like iron, Shimo knew for he had tasted both in his life...</p><p>A howling blizzard once again built up, one of few larger techniques still left inside Shimo's network. So far he has been fighting Silverton with child's play techniques, it was about time to show him something greater. The blizzard formed a massive vortex of raging winds and ice, the winds absorbed the eternal waters of the Takigakure floors and used it as an ice source. In places such as this Shimo was at his mightiest, his techniques could've been empowered with little to no chakra charge, usually taking water from the hydration of air itself was tolling somewhat all by itself. Using water was simpler and much stronger...</p><p>"Ice Style:..." Shimo whispered to himself since as loud as he could've been shouting he'd have never outshouted this mighty blizzard he had created. One that ripped trees and gathered water, one that would've laid waste to this entire battlefield but it mattered little to Shimo, no, in a way he wanted the mark to be left. He called out for help with this massive technique, help from anyone seeing it, help maybe even from Gods as someone from space would have certainly seen the massive twister extending well past the stratosphere and poking at Gods' eyes.</p><p>"Ten Thousand Blizzard Cuts!" Shimo roared proudly, wearing his Yuki heritage as a herald on his chest as his body disappeared into the madness of ice, wind, and debris. His sword sliced this finger of God smiting this accursed patch of land exactly ten thousand times. The blizzard split into ten thousand and one piece, the air pressure would've torn anything and anyone apart.</p><p>It was said that punches or techniques used by Chuunin and above would've destroyed the entire world if the ninja did not control the flow of their own power and transferred it directly through the opponent and not anywhere else... Shimo did not restrain his power, he physically couldn't and yet he only ravaged an area of five kilometers in radius, left a dirty destroyed wasteland of it as the air pressure evaporated the water instantly heated out from the ice he had made. Devastation at its finest...</p><p>Silverton stood confidently surrounded by his flaring crimson bubble. His grin was cruel, mocking almost... Shimo looked at the man and realized that he was too tired to respond to him, he needed to drag it out... Ten thousand times he slashed him with drawing strikes, the fastest and most powerful kind of swordsmanship called – iai. Ten thousand strikes in less than a moment and yet all it did was overwhelm the damned bubble with crimson streamers... A circular aurora borealis of blood.</p><p>Shimo sheathed his blade and leaned for another drawing slash. He acted strong and confident when his body was all but shaking. He knew how to fake strength, one's entire life was faking being strong and confident in the moments of weakness in front of people one wished not to appear weak in front of. He couldn't have mustered to draw his blade once, let alone respond in time.</p><p>Loud shrieking metallic clangs signaled Silverton's tapping on the chest of his armor. A red light glowed from the center of the man's chest, something of a heart of pure energy.</p><p>"Life Shaver... That's how this armor is called. Took me ten years to collect this armor piece by piece. I only served as a Justicar for fifteen, guess I'm as much an archaeologist as I am a man of justice" Silverton sighed. Could he have also been somewhat stricken with fatigue? What from? That crimson forcefield he erected every time Shimo successfully hit him?</p><p>"Ten years to become invulnerable in battle? Where's the fun in that? How are you "fighting criminals" when you're not even really fighting. When you're not really putting your life on the line?" Shimo mockingly and coldly exclaimed. He felt sorry for a man who fought not with skill but the ability to remain invulnerable.</p><p>"Oh, but I quite literally am..." Silverton remarked. Honor must've been important to him as he stood adamantly to defend him, resisted an opportunity to attack Shimo just to explain his own honor to the man he considered criminal.</p><p>"You see, every ability of this armor comes with the price, it converts the very life force of me into these abilities. I can literally fire all of my life right at you in a beam of energy, disintegrate you in a microsecond but I do not because I intend to live and slay fools like you another day. I'd rather shave a little bit of my life to become invulnerable whenever things get dangerous." Silverton explained standing in an offensive sword fighting stance.</p><p>"I see..." Shimo noted, "So your ability allows you to pay a little bit of your literal life force to negate any damage. I suppose some may find such ability worth the effort it takes to collect this armor and assemble it".</p><p>Both men yelled loudly into the air, a cold mist built up from Shimo's devastation of the area around them as they charged at each other. The Yuki felt like he was too injured to continue to avoid the man's blows. A searing hot beam fired from Silverton's chest, Shimo bent his knee a little repurposing his weight entirely onto his toes as the beam passed just barely missing him. His kimono got partially ripped, bandages and clothes incinerated in moments, concussive flesh tearing wounds opened on Shimo's chest, it hurt like literal Hell. Like rubbing one's own chest against pavement while passing it on a merry go round.</p><p>The two clashed their blades, Shimo felt a massive dip of his chakra – his body was protecting him from something huge. A screaming flock of sparks fired off and into the eyes of both men but each tanked the searing heat, the forcefield protected Silverton meanwhile Shimo's chakra continued to dip to protect the boy's eyeballs from shooting sparks. To one it may have appeared foolish to use one's chakra to survive sparks, to say so would've been to be oblivious to the number and mass of sparks emanated from the clash. The moment the blades collided emitted a sound heard beyond the reaches of the horizon, a thundering clash, the sparks were just as bright. If one did not bother to protect oneself from the barrage of sparks they'd have had to augment their eyes to somehow not get completely blinded by the all cleansing light.</p><p>"Heh, you fool! Few can match blades with me!" Silverton taunted Shimo by dragging and pulling his blade down and rubbing the sharpened edges of both blades. Overwhelming shockwave blasted from the contact point throwing Shimo back, the boy flew for so long that it appeared to him that he may have died and been punished to fly for eternity. Only the pain reminded the young swordsman that he was still alive.</p><p>The Yuki swordsman thrust his Audra blade into the ground, normally such a mean of stopping one's flight would've utterly broken or ruined a blade at the very least. Since Audra was small part literal chakra it managed to survive any contact with any matter, chakra over matter was the common name to the principle. A single chakra-infused cell would've guaranteed victory over matter, no matter how hard or invulnerable...</p><p>Shimo felt blood squirting from his wound, granted by Silverton blasting his own life force in the shape of a beam at him. It was a weak and meaningless attack, the boy could tell it wasn't focused but he also knew that the leader of Justicars could make it focused if he wanted to. Invulnerability combined with overwhelming power and now whatever that blade was... Why did it react to Audra steel so violently? Or maybe it wasn't really a reaction to the steel?</p><p>"Still alive out there!?" Silverton's voice yelled out into the distance, once the trees got ripped out by Shimo's whirlwind.</p><p>"You're the one beaming your literal life essence at me..." Shimo grunted, he knew that the man was quite unlikely to have heard but the Yuki just didn't feel strong enough to raise his voice loud enough. Once again that blasted forcefield absorbed any impact from the shockwave, any backlash of that amazing force of the reaction.</p><p>"This sword is called "Heavenly Justice" by those that crafted it" Silverton spoke up while calmly walking forward, this immovable object and unstoppable force combined into one man with the most incredible fighting gear on the planet. "It is called that because it has the mass of a literal godly star core, a material invented by the Kazekage some ten or twenty years ago but perfected recently – it has a small infusion of chakra and also the total mass of fifteen undecillion tons. Every time you block this your body is overwhelmed by blocking the most massive and dense stars of the Universe. I can only wield this blade by canceling the damage to my own body using the "Life Shaver". Few survive blocking one strike, are you a Jinchuuriki by any chance?" The man wondered.</p><p>"Audra steel. It has small traces of chakra infused on a molecular scale. It's the second best thing to actual chakra imbued steel" Shimo huffed out displaying his sword by lifting it above his head horizontally preparing to fight back in a battle he couldn't possibly last any longer fighting.</p><p>"I see... Lucky you. Next time I won't be rubbing it against you, I'll be slamming it at you with all my might. We'll see just how far "chakra over matter" principle can stretch before crumbling" Silverton declared. "Justice prevails over measly principles, all other principles do not matter..."</p>
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<a name="section0180"><h2>180. Stars Gone Cold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shimo dashed at Silverton, he still had a couple of attacks left in him and now he knew all about his opponent's abilities.</p><p>"Dodge the beam..." He whispered under his own nose leaning under another life force beam sent his way, this time Silverton continued it twisting it and turning it around sending it after Shimo but as much as the boy's ribs ached he persevered and continued his dash. A couple of draw slashes, Shimo wondered if maybe the core of the armor remained exposed during the firing moments... A noble theory but it only lead to Shimo's blade getting violently torn off of his hands by the concussive beam's force after it bounced off the Life Shaver's forcefield.</p><p>Shimo leaned to the side, jumped back and backflipped a couple of times before vaulting up and over his opponent to avoid getting cut to pieces as he was disarmed. For a man wielding undecillions of tons weighing sword Silverton sure pushed Shimo's speed to the limit... The man roared and slammed his sword into the ground letting it split open. The black of the alloy the sword was made off glittered as the skies got torn violently open by showers of pure magma firing off from underground.</p><p>The Yuki swordsman's eyes opened wide, he didn't expect it, just barely did he made the several rolls back and only got a couple of splashes of the blasted thing on him. Shimo cursed as he realized he once again spent some chakra to keep his lungs from burning from inside his chest while he breathed the air so close to bursting magma gazers, the boy also peeked at some nasty swellings on his skin where it contacted with magma. Over eight thousand degrees of pure heat and he only got a nasty swelling similar to the ones he used to get when his brother playfully rubbed his wrist to leave an itchy wound in his childhood. He needed better control of his body's augmentations. If this continued he'd be grasping at straws pretty soon...</p><p>Shimo blinked a couple of times and looked at his blade, fifty meters away from him with Silverton grinning after placing that annoying chunk of steel he wielded on his shoulder. The soaring roar of breaking ground and crying earth as it spat its magma gazers into the sky annoyed Shimo, the sound was enough to drive anyone insane, if not deaf. The man was restraining himself, Shimo knew, that sword had the power to destroy the entire planet by just being placed down the wrong way. Without proper control just gently placing it on the grass would've lead to the blade sinking right through the damned ground... Since when has his life become so mad?</p><p>Shimo's body blurred and blinked, he had little chakra to spare but he had to do what he had to do, within minuscule fractions of a second the Audra steel blade was once again in Shimo's grasp and loud deafening clangs overwhelmed Silverton's forcefield. Who knew that total invulnerability would've been such a bitch to fight. Now Shimo's plan was just to keep chipping at Silverton's life force and let him kill himself. The irony that his invulnerability was literally killing him must've flown right over Silverton's head.</p><p>The Yuki youth quickly went through hand seals creating a couple of small-scale blizzards around the magma storms allowing them to instantly harden as the ice persisted until it touched the magma's core and melted into water hardening the thing. Shimo's brother kept scaring the boy saying that he would one day literally freeze the Sun and then the little boy won't have the sweet summer days ever again, that was his brother's way of taunting the boy into leaving outside instead of reading whole day. Only now did the Yuki youth realize that his brother could've probably actually pulled something crazy like that off...</p><p>Shimo's hands went through more hand seals. "Ice Style: Ice Wolf Pack!" the boy grunted as his breath became more and more erratic, blackened marks began covering and surrounding his eyes and sacks started to hang under them. Twelve wolf-sized ice constructs formed, just like the likes his brother used during his days as a ninja before forcefully retiring. The wolfs howled and rushed at Silverton, the man swung his blade smashing six of them with a single swing but the rest evaded his strike at Shimo's command and jumped at the man, freezing him solid with a single touch. Just a single whisker touching the man was enough to freeze him entirely. All six of them jumped at him at the same time, if anything could've bypassed that insane invulnerability it would've been that...</p><p>With a maddened roar Silverton made the ice bubble explode with ice shards scattering all around them and melting from the immense temperature of the wasteland that their battle was creating. Shimo could barely believe it but he didn't show that. His best moves barely even stunned the leader of Justicars. Was each leader of each individual and independent group this strong? Sure Shimo's strength could only demolish a large battlefield whereas that of a chuunin's could've destroyed the world, that was the difference between Shimo's current level and the wall he had to reach and vault over to be promoted to chuunin. It mattered little, this man had to be brought down somehow... He had to pay for tormenting people the way Justicars had tormented Shimo and his sensei, the way that those Justicars fooled them...</p><p>The forcefield of Silverton's armor visualized, began to crackle and flare, for a moment Shimo couldn't believe it but then wild red flares and jolts of pure reddish energy began splitting off of the field and concentrating on his chest. Shimo tried to take a step back but he realized that he was too tired to evade something of that magnitude, he couldn't sense the chakra since he was not a sensor but he could tell accurately enough from the immense air pressure that whatever this man was planning was above his tired and beaten paygrade.</p><p>Shimo's hands quickly moved as his mind settled on a good old and cheap combination of evasive and defensive techniques...</p><p>A sky piercing beam of blinding light wiped the horizon open, in the center, there was light so intense that any attempt to look at it would've closed one's eyes for good. As the beam went out from the center to its edge the energy got redder and redder, no more blinding light, only destruction. The beam expanded as it went forward, Silverton's literal life force, his embodied desire to punish and destroy evil expanded as it left the Earth's orbit. A pillar of power, authority, and destruction passing by the Moon just barely avoiding its destruction, flowing lightyears away before it met the first planet in its way decimating it and continuing on that path to infinity and beyond.</p><p>A small puddle of water was laying where Shimo once was.</p><p>Silverton laughed out, his voice suggested certain pressure and fatigue affecting him from this immensely jaw-dropping attack that continued to roam space decimating entire planets and overloading stars with energy, piercing them like a sharpened rod pierces human hearts before snuffing them out, instead of blood solar flares and pure energy bled of the stars before they went cold.</p><p>"Take that armor off..." Shimo's voice echoed from one of the hardened magma pillars.</p><p>Silverton began to madly look around searching for his opponent but Shimo's angered and horrified voice only shouted the same request out again. This power was too destructive in the hands of a madman like Silverton, Shimo willed himself to peel that armor off piece by piece if he had to.</p><p>"A criminal scumbag like you has no authority barking orders. Where are you? How did you survive?!" the hulking brawler in that destructive armor barked out.</p><p>"The oldest combo in the book – Water Clone jutsu combined with the Substitution technique. I created a clone further at the side and used the time-space aspects of Substitution to change places with it in an instant. What you've destroyed was just a clone" Shimo explained.</p><p>Dark clouds began to gather in the sky. Shimo angrily flipped his head upwards and saw the first signs of the impending Earth's death. The words of his sensei came from those boring days in the Academy when all he cared about was that the girls always left the classroom first and always got in the front of the line in the canteen. Back then their Academy teacher instructed them of the signs that the planet they lived on was not doing too good and that a fight transpiring needed to be stopped. Usually, even the most heinous criminals surrendered after seeing those signs – dark clouds covering the entire skyline combined with raging thunderstorms was one of the first signs that the planet could no longer contain this battle and was suffering greatly.</p><p>Shimo didn't have much left in him, he clutched his aching sides and thought for a moment, his opponent didn't really have a way of locating him. That meant that the ball was now in the Yuki's court and that it was up to him to think up of a way of passing it without destroying his home world and screwing it up for everybody. He could only wonder if Silverton had any caring about the world he stood on. Knowing how insane and devoted to their code Justicars were, most likely not...</p><p>Most likely his armor would've kept him invincible long enough for the fool to float to another planet, somewhere where he could survive. The biggest scumbags always survived those kinds of things. Shimo's shaking hands went through a bunch of hand seals, he had no more water to manipulate, not that it helped him in any way to manipulate it. This was supposed to be his final answer before he had no more chakra left to survive Silverton's attempts to claim his head.</p><p>The humidity in the air around the man began materializing in the shape of icy plates. Icy plates of reflective and almost crystal appearance and composition. They reflected the light that came at it, almost like a mirror made of ice would've. Shimo felt the chakra pulsing out of his system in powerful bumps, he felt his system getting torn apart, overwhelmed. He still had this in him, he wasn't planning on dying with this but it was powerful enough to maybe dent the man's forcefield, maybe by now, Shimo had already outlasted it?</p><p>"Hmph, if you're not showing yourself I'll continue decimating your surroundings. You care about it, don't you? You were so angry to kill a brother in arms just because he didn't care about properly channeling his power?" Silverton kept shouting into thin air, not even noticing the ice mirrors forming all around him. By the time he did notice rays of sun reflecting from them and falling right onto his eyes through a hole in the dark clouds, it was too late.</p><p>Yes, Shimo cared about the planet, not like one of those mad environment lovers did. He was looking for his own identity this entire trip just like Mana wanted to regain hers, he even decided to honor his friend's dream and become the sword that protects, someone seemingly inspired by her dream. If this world got destroyed it would be the ultimate failure of not only his own mission but also Mana's. Truth be told, Shimo was a little confused as to why the Justicars looked so indifferent towards preserving the Earth. Didn't the criminal the leaped down from the Moon – Tsukinabe Watashiki surrender when he saw the Earth about to get destroyed from his battles with the local ninja alliances a couple of centuries ago? If even criminals wished to protect a planet that wasn't even their home, why would so-called Justicars not care to this extent?</p><p>Silverton's forcefield erected once again. Violent ripples with crescent projectiles flaring out from it, it was a result of a simple swing of Silverton's sword. A simple swing created a crescent projectile that left massive cloud fissures in the sky. Shimo looked at each projectile go, each one of them sliced through any obstacles in its path, mountains, rocky passes before disappearing in the horizon. Each one of them made a star somewhere in the distance blink and disappear.</p><p>"Stop it!" Shimo roared revealing his position but it was too late. The ice mirrors had already formed around Silverton, the man continued to launch a couple of more crescent swings that way but they whizzed just right by the youth and went on to destroy a planet or a star, whichever it met first.</p><p>The youth leaped off of one of the hardened magma pillars he was hiding on and into one of the ice mirrors. His figure rippled and disappeared inside of them just like it would've if the youth had jumped into a large body of water.</p><p>"Ice Style: Crystal Ice Mirrors..." Shimo named his hidden technique. It wasn't a technique he used often as it was taxing on his body but it was perfect when fighting someone like this, especially when he had too little chakra for anything like this technique. The technique that created a mosaic of sorts, a mausoleum of mirrors made of solid Ice Release chakra around Silverton and allowed Shimo swiftly appear in any of the mirrors with his reflection also reflecting from each other mirror.</p><p>It was a complicated technique to pull off, he also had to know perfectly how to shape and place the mirrors to make his reflection reflect from each one of them, otherwise, the difficult composition would not work. It was not a technique he liked for that purpose, he had the brain to assemble them into that formation but he did not like to twist that brain to the extent needed to properly pull it off.</p><p>Silverton grumped as he flung another projectile at one of the mirrors crushing it and letting it disappear in the sky, likely to soon reach a planet or a star that it could snuff out in its path.</p><p>"Stop it you bastard!" Shimo shouted out as he and thousands of images of his likeness appeared from the mirrors and dashed through Silverton in an instant, slashing and cutting him with each passing moment meanwhile the fake images confused him. The technique somehow managed to bend light, space and time inside it allowing Shimo to move at much greater speeds than he usually would've been able to while not inside the mirror formation. It was a secret technique of his clan and some of its secrets still evaded Shimo but this technique was his last straw to grasp.</p><p>"Tell me, oh great Justice Bringer... Where is justice in destroying entire planets, where is the justice in letting your destructive power destroy the very world beneath your feet!?" Shimo grunted angrily, his voice sounded hollower and much huskier as the sound vibrations passed through the bent light and space through the endless anomalies that these mirrors created inside the formation.</p><p>"It's simple... Most Justicars who have been doing it for long enough have already realized this and share my idea – the world itself is unjust. People are a nasty piece of work and cannot be trusted to do anything well. Even as we speak thousands of women are raped and killed, settlements getting plundered, people getting murdered all around us while our very children are being trained in finding more creative ways to kill each other.</p><p>Even our own Justicars sometimes get out of control. No one can be trusted to not be as dark as our nature makes us to be. No one can be trusted to remain human, the very purpose of life is to be born an innocent human and then shed that humanity when meeting the real world you live in. People are unjust by merely existing, they shed their humanity at some point, all of them. For that reason, no Justicar is afraid of destroying this pitiful cradle of darkness. The black vast nothingness of space is more hopeful and bright than the bleak sludge of crime and blood that this world of ours is..." Silverton explained, strangely enough, he wasn't yelling, wasn't sprawling around and swinging his giant blade trying to catch Shimo's real copy in one of these mirrors.</p><p>He was just quietly talking and trying to explain his point of view but his voice wasn't passionate, the old veteran was... Depressed and disappointed if anything else. Shimo sighed, his chakra levels were beginning to dwindle, he couldn't sustain these mirrors for much longer and that wild dash with all of those drawing slashes didn't as much as left a dent on the man. Shimo didn't have it in him to outlast Silverton's invulnerability. He may have shaved more and more at the man's life but a single skipped attack crushed Shimo's own chakra and life force to way below the amount he shaved off, to begin with. It was Sisyphean by the very nature of the task to try...</p><p>"That is why no Justicar would be shy for a moment to destroy this whole blasted universe if they had the power to!" Silverton yelled stabbing his blade into the floor and launching a mad burst of magma from below him. Shimo yelled out, he was worried about the lives of Mana and the others deep in the cave system which probably was overflowing with magma by now...</p><p>The leader of Justicars clapped his hands together with all of his power, each hand was powerful enough to cause damage to the other but his forcefield intercepted it, in a chain reaction each forcefield intercepted the other and forced a violent repulsion of red chakra out of the man's clap. A clap of explosive nature, infinite red light covered the entire ice structure cracking Shimo's ice mirrors to bits. Shimo closed his eyes to avoid the light. All was so... So bright...</p><p>The boy writhed on the ground for a while, he wanted to stand up, to keep fighting but his chakra level was too low. If he got punched just one more time, even without that blasted sword his chakra wouldn't be enough to survive it. He'd either die from the impact or die of losing too much chakra, the possibility of tearing apart his flow using chakra augmentation was also still there... Always there. Shimo couldn't move, his sides hurt, everything in him hurt. A single shockwave decimated all of his ice mirrors... How could a single man hold that much power?</p><p>Shimo's eyes opened. Only to see a large chubby man falling on top of Silverton's forcefield from above, bending and twisting his own fatty belly around the construct. Then a roaring arrow of Lightning Release chakra echoed as it tore through the forcefield, finally shaving too much of Silverton's life to sustain it. A young woman in a simple linen dress wearing a leather vest and strangely curled into buns braids punched Silverton straight into his exposed chest dismantling his Life Shaver into millions of small pieces instantly.</p><p>A tall man with a purple helmet with reddish blades attached to the sides of it horizontally and a dark purple armored vest worn on a green plate armor leaped forward with a whirlpool worn in spear shape around his arm, extending well over fifty meters in length that drilled right through Silverton's chest finishing him off instantly, the raging rotating waters tore the man's body around the drilled wound to shreds instantly before dissolving into a wet puddle.</p><p>A ginger man with a playfully looking red goatee looked over Shimo's face from behind where his head laid and smiled. He extended his hand forward to the Yuki helping get back up on his butt, sitting back up was the best that the young man could do.</p><p>"We got your "message", young man... Just next time you send these "messages" make sure to not nearly destroy a country... A hawk with a message might suffice" the ginger shinobi said before tipping his strange triangle hat and leaping into one of these magma holes to go after Mana and the others.</p><p>The ninja of Takigakure have arrived!</p>
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<a name="section0181"><h2>181. Not Everyone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana had no idea for how long they've been fighting. These Justicars weren't just ordinary bandits. She hit them as hard as she could, they took all she could dish out and stood right back up. Every blow she dodged she attempted to counter in return. Ten or more people attacked her at once, none of them landed a solid blow, all of them got counters coming their way, aimed at their joints, their eyes or ears. Every time Mana thought she broke something, injured someone beyond recovery, even thought she may have gone too far, the guy or gal just jumped back on their feet with bloodied faces or limbs dangling strangely and kept coming at her.</p><p>Just their degree of hate directed towards her was disgusting, it wasn't fear of violence on their part, physical violence was something Mana experienced for the most of her life. For a person who spoke of peace, she was somewhat of a hypocrite as she was a child trained in combat since the days she could firmly stand on her feet. No, violence wasn't what scared her, not the prospect of being beaten or having her face caved in or her flesh exploding from being unable to withstand the force behind those superhuman blows. It was the more spiritual part that scared her.</p><p>These people wished to kill her, to an extent that was scarier than any of their beaten and battle-hardened faces grunting at her, trying to scare her by staring at her to death because they could no longer land a blow on her. These men and women hated Mana because she could not allow any harm to come to those poor misshapen men and women of some settlement who were now doomed to spend their days in hiding, shy of their own misshapen forms. Was that so deserving of hatred? Why did these people come at her with such devotion, such ferocity? Was it not human nature to try and help each other to the best of one's abilities?</p><p>Maybe it was Mana and not these violent people who were misguided. Maybe she was the anomaly who didn't belong and deserved to get murdered in a cave deep below Takigakure waterfalls? Maybe she was wrong to change Kouta's life, to try and change everyone she met? Maybe Kouta was for the better as a violent spawn of his Juugo father, maybe the efforts of his mother to make a medical ninja out of him, a person not at all similar to his father were wrong? Maybe violence was the norm here for the sole reason that much more people accepted it as an option, not even that, a solution.</p><p>A flurry of kicks sent a wall of people crashing into the cave walls. Mana was fast, she was getting slower, however. Avoiding blows was beginning to wear on her, her own body was beginning to break down for using so much physical chakra. And yet these people stood back up, they sacrificed just as much to kill her and then kill those dwellers trampling on Mana's dead body while doing so. They were just as devoted to their cause as Mana was on hers. For how long could she play this perfect protector of peace when she was the minority, how long until she falls and with her the last of this world's, what seemed to Mana, common sense?</p><p>Fury, previously unheard of rose inside Mana's heart. She became visibly more devoted to her strikes, more violent. She no longer felt content at pushing these men back, she felt angry, violent. She continued to strike, kick and push people even while they were down, she continued to dislocate, crush and twist their limbs, the more gruesome the noises came from them the better. She killed no one but killing was not the only immoral thing in the world. What was this anger she felt, why did she not feel content just pushing back? Maybe she had more of this world inside her than she thought, maybe she was no saint herself? No... There was nothing perfect about Mana, imperfect origins, average skills and now her disability...</p><p>A violent explosion ripped Mana apart from the twelve Justicars she continuously maimed and bashed at. Just barely a couple of them didn't drown in... Magma? Mana felt the blood rushing from inside of her, immense heat rising up before the physical chakra helped her deal with it. Augmenting her body... Physical chakra wasn't really working as potently as the real thing. Mana coughed up handfuls of blood and felt her lungs burning up. She almost got incinerated from inside by just breathing this hot air in. She heard loud yells, the Justicars were fleeing back, focusing on Meiko and Kouta instead as magma blocked them off.</p><p>That was when the girl saw figures emerging walking right through the magma like it was just water. Shrugging the burning sludge off, the blood of mother Earth itself felt no different to these four than a spring rain.</p><p>"She's just a civilian, remember how she shook and quivered when we first met? Just turn on your Intents, make her beg for us to kill her," one of them spoke, finally... Actual fear was born in Mana's heart, fear not for the lives of others but for that of her own. The magician wondered just how could Kouta and Meiko have been doing. Then the magma cleared out, with a small peek the magician witnessed Kouta continuously firing at the overflowing torrents of magma that threatened to fill the room. If it had flooded the room it wouldn't have killed Meiko and Kouta, Mana knew that all of them could survive it but it'd wear them out, also it'd kill the dwellers that the three were so adamant to protect.</p><p>"Let's just kill her, those dwellers have nowhere to run, they're cornered, to squirm and hide pressing their furry misshapen bodies to the rocks is all they're good for. We'll bash their heads against the rocks once we're done here, only seems fitting," one of the Justicars spoke. Mana felt it – the burning feeling in her heart, that strange sensation she had only felt a couple of times in her life. Except now it was multiplied a whole thousand times. The girl's legs shook and crossed themselves, just barely could she remain standing once the Intents kicked in. She'd have much rather choked on her own lungs refusing to breathe in fear from the Killing Intent, this Charming Intent variation was actually incomparably more sinister.</p><p>"Look at her, shaking in her sandals, before she could fight all of us off without a scratch, let's see her move now, let's see her DANCE!" A Justicar lady screamed out with the same scary bloodlust in her voice as she kicked Mana below the belt sending the magician down and writhing in pain. She could not tell which was stronger, that burning pleasure in her heart that was overflowing and pumping throughout her entire essence from those blasted Intents that these people used, the sadistic twist on Tanshu's abilities that they've put or the pain from being beaten.</p><p>Mana tried to pick herself up, she realized that she must've looked pathetic, fighting not only the damage from that kick but also her own body that begged to stay down, just writhe and enjoy the pleasure that the countless Intents around her attacked her with. Before the magician thought that people that hurt their victims with pain were cruel but she had never previously encountered someone as sinister as people attacking people with pleasure. People who hurt other people, killed them while making them beg for more. Mana wanted to change the world but she realized that she had no idea just how twisted it actually was.</p><p>A kick right to her face sent the magician down again, she couldn't even move, the best Mana could do was not to give in to the vile impulses that the raging pleasures inside her provided. The Justicar woman began trampling Mana, stomping her viciously before kicking her around. The magician felt the taste of blood inside her but her body didn't listen, it loved every second of bleeding out in some tunnel that was slowly filling with magma. Mana's bloodshot eyes wandered onto the sight of Kouta firing his chakra cannons in overload mode trying to keep magma away from filling the tunnels. Where did it even come from in the first place!?</p><p>Meiko was the only one still actually fighting, Mana was just getting kicked around at this point and Kouta also was getting pummeled by the Justicars while being occupied keeping the magma at bay. Those suicidal idiots wanted to flood the tunnels, they knew that the dwellers would've been the only ones to die in it and that must've been their plan. Kouta fell on one knee, he roared in pain as he couldn't even protect himself but he held the cannon literally blasting the magma away from the entrances. New cannons opened on his back, branched off from his hands. Mana saw his muscles tense up so intensely that it tore his clothes apart, some of them tore and opened bleeding gashes all over.</p><p>The redheaded blacksmith was too busy to see Mana getting kicked around and ground into stone. The magician could no longer feel the pain from the punches and kicks. Her body just broke down, her entire nervous system was tearing itself apart overwhelmed by pain and pleasure at the same time. Mana wasn't even sure just how badly she was beaten. It was then that a cold sensation came from above – something froze the magma and the tunnels no longer felt like literal Hell. It even drew the rampaging Justicars away from her, for a moment at least...</p><p>Then an arrow flew right through the eye of one of them. It must've been some strange, chakra enhanced arrow, normal arrows wouldn't have come close to sufficing. Then a flurry of crackling and chirping arrows covered with actual lightning chakra pierced several of them without any resistance, hitting the vitals and sending them down and dead. Mana looked at the side and saw a woman with hair shaped into buns tearing Kouta out of the hardened magma, just before it froze the young man must've been overwhelmed and drowned in it which made it harden with Kouta inside. He looked worn out and wounded, his clothes were singed off and he was bleeding all over. Almost like he'd have just survived a literal war and that suggestion wouldn't have been too far off. The woman punched and kicked behind her a couple of times knocking out the Justicars that pestered her instantly.</p><p>The feet and fists of the woman glowed with the blue flares of chakra that Kouta had when he punched and kicked using the strength enhancements of medical ninjutsu. She must've been a medical ninja too, only made sense for a party to have at least one. Then another man launched himself at the group of Justicars trying to attack these new challengers, it was like he wore some sort of armor all over his body, a thick green and purple plate with bladed shoulders and helmet, the man carelessly swatted his hand aside with some strange ninjutsu technique, forming whips of lances of water in his arms that slashed the Justicars in two pieces like they were butter being split by a heated knife.</p><p>The Justicars did not falter, with each crushed intent and plan they tried doing something else, the few that remained split between trying to locate the camouflaged dwellers and slaughter them and focus on downed and beaten Mana. The ones that tried to find the dwellers got quickly gathered together into a bear hug and crushed into bloody stains by a colossal chubby who had half bald head and wore a pair of dark green tunics tied together with a purple rope around his waist and shoulders.</p><p>The ones that rushed at Mana got downed by more chakra imbued arrows, as well as a short devil-man whose dance with knives must've been the fastest one Mana had ever seen. And the magician has tangled with Hisako, the daughter of Yoruma, herself. She didn't even see the short man before, he just appeared out of nowhere and whirled around with knives in a blond flash as his spiky blond hair gave color to his blurry dance. Another color contrasting the blood red of the liquid that splattered on the walls. Whoever these ninja were they spared no one, no one except the Konoha ninja, of course.</p><p>The ginger man with a strange triangular hat looked at Mana, "Hey, Caitrian, I'd appreciate a look or two at this girl here, she looks pretty messed up..." He yelled out. Mana then felt gentle feminine hands picking her up and saw a gentle face of the woman with the hair buns who pulled Kouta out.</p><p>"Awww, she looks worse than that kid who went magma dipping... I'll get right on her. But first, let's get outside, this whole place is falling apart as well as flooding," the woman called Caitrian said.</p><p>The bald fatso playfully slapped at Kouta's body which he carried on his shoulder, leaning his head so that it fit into the tunnel. Meiko rushed and started shouting something, from what Mana's bashed around head could tell she wanted to get a look at the magician and felt curious if she'd be alright.</p><p>"Don't worry, she'll be fine, once Ivalgith here got both his arms removed by this large rogue ninja named Regiglan, he was a big cheese around those parts but Caitrian patched him right up. The girl's got a pretty tough face for a civilian though," the ginger goatee wearing man remarked placing his hands at his sides in a heroic pose. He must've felt really well about himself for his heroic deed. Mana's consciousness began to slip in and out, she could only remember bits and pieces of what followed. She remembered hot air passing through her cheeks, Caitrian must've been running. Meiko's silly grin kept smiling at Mana from above with green glow visible above her face – the signature light of healing being done. Bits and pieces slipped through and out.</p><p>Mana blinked and raised her head up, it hurt like she had just been beaten by a bunch of self-righteous fops but she was thankful to have survived, even better, thankful that the horror of the Intents ended. The entire time her will was being tested, she felt like her mind was violated which was a thousand times worse than just being beaten, as someone who gets beaten half to death on a daily basis, Mana would have known.</p><p>Meiko screamed in joy when Mana sat up, she was so glad that the blacksmith rushed at Mana and speared her with her shoulder with a hug of happiness slamming the magician and almost leveling her to the ground. Mana looked around. The place that once was a swamp-like paradise of falling waterfalls and larger than mountains trees was now just a barren wasteland of hardened magma and rocks. The magician could only wonder what could've happened here.</p><p>Kouta walked up and sat on his knees, he tried to hug Mana as well but then backed out of it when the two blushed and it began looking far too awkward. Shimo walked up to Mana, his kimono looked ripped up and singed, there very little green left in it, it was black as tar from being burned. He must've had his fair contacts with magma too.</p><p>"Looks like the Takigakure ninja noticed the destruction. This ginger man with the arrows is Connallhod, this large gent is Brendonk, the lady you should feel thankful for your life for is Caitrian. The little man I didn't notice before is Wilsamh and the tall guy with the rubber-like hair and long beard is Ivalgith. I think I got it right? Those Takigakure names are a mouthful..." Shimo pouted looking at the Takigakure party curiously.</p><p>"That's right, we're the five currently active Takigakure jounin, pleased to meet our colleagues from Konoha. Even more honored to have the chance to give you guys a helping hand. Takigakure does take pride in its neutrality in inter-village affairs but when it comes down to rogues and self-appointed vigilantes all villages must stand united." The short ginger man called Connalhod laughed out to himself before noticing that the Konoha kids felt more devastated than cheerful.</p><p>"Did you save the dwellers?" Mana's voice grunted, her throat still felt crushed so Caitrian looked at the girl with a troubled stare and felt the girl's body up before asking her to allow for her throat to be healed. She was apparently getting strangled at some point, the magician could vaguely remember the details of what those Justicars did to her starting from one particularly painful point in time. In the midst of the healing, Kouta shook his head.</p><p>"I'm sorry, they're probably all dead, magma is slowly filling the tunnels. The Takigakure ninja told us that eventually this place would be fixed and all the magma would be cast back into the depths from where it came but... Right now there's nothing to be done".</p><p>Mana jumped up and pushed Caitrian aside. Of course, the girl would have lacked the strength to do so if the jounin woman resisted being pushed aside but she did not object. Shimo and Kouta jumped after Mana.</p><p>"Wait, Mana-chan, you can't possibly... You won't even enter the system before it fills up with..." Kouta tried to object.</p><p>"The system is huge, it'll take you a hundred years to search it for each and every dweller, that's even if they even aren't camouflaging, Meiko said they're usually pretty careful about..." Shimo tried to stop Mana too.</p><p>"I'm afraid I must agree with your friends, fair maiden, whoever you are trying to save, you'd have to search these tunnels at impossible speeds to pick all these... Whatever they are, " the tall towering man called Ivalgith who wielded lances of drilling water so efficiently before remarked, now his helmet laid off and on the ground and his funny towering hairdo was shaped by the helmet to look like the rubber end of a pencil which contrasted to his pointy long brown beard.</p><p>Mana's body flared up with red. She felt her eyes tearing up, her vessels bursting, her muscles tearing apart as her cells angrily flared with physical chakra. There were people in those tunnels. People who have already been wronged by fate, people who were looking at drowning in magma for their own desire to hide from the world that wronged them. No person was welcome nowhere, everyone must've had a place to belong in, somewhere there must've been a home for everyone!</p><p>A sharp pain interrupted all of the girl's thoughts, pain stabbing right at the back of her neck as her vision blurred. Shimo had dashed behind her with a cruel but restrained chop to the back of her neck while Mana was distracted. The girl crumbled down as all of her lights went out. The Yuki swordsman looked at the unconscious body of his friend, dried out blood stains still present on her torn, white shirt and on her healed face where it was broken. The cave blew up from internal pressure spouting out hot sludge of magma out into the air before the holes closed up and the entire structure crumbled on itself.</p><p>"There was a slim chance she could've made it, probably..." Brendonk the large fat shinobi of Takigakure remarked bitterly looking at the scene of friends knocking friends out. "Had a solid microsecond of a head start before the cave exploded, maybe she'd have pulled some people out".</p><p>"She's an idiot, a loveable idiot, but an idiot nonetheless..." Shimo closed his eyes and places his hands into the pockets before sighing helplessly. "Her chakra system is torn up and completely non-functional, physical chakra is the only kind she can use. She's already broken her limits before and almost killed herself in the process. As her friend, I'm not willing to see it happen again. Maybe she could've pulled everyone out in time, maybe she'd have emerged covered in magma while her body desperately tried to not let her burn and melt away, burning her physical chakra while her network broke again in the process... The bottom line is that I don't care. I won't stand and watch her kill herself trying to prevent others who have long since resigned from life dying".</p><p>"This won't be pretty..." Meiko closed her eyes and sighed, the sight of her incapacitated friend felt uncomfortable. It wasn't too long ago that Mana learned of another betrayal by her friends committed entirely out of care for her own life. If that time was any measure of future events the girl will be outraged and feel betrayed, her trust in her friends might falter...</p><p>"As her friend, I am ready to accept that hatred and anger. If you're not, you were never really her friend, to begin with. You may be one of the physically strongest out of all of us but you're a big softy, Meiko, you don't really want to get in Mana's way because you feel indebted to her for taking you on this mission and training you and Kouta is too worried to chase after Mana's affections to do it. I was the only logical choice to stop her." Shimo concluded.</p><p>The night sky was lit up by small patches of magma bursting out from the ground in gazers, fountains of Earth's burning blood bursting and leaking colored the sky blazing red, almost like the Sun hadn't even set yet...</p>
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<a name="section0182"><h2>182. All Alone Again</h2></a>
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    <p>Loud droplets of water broke the silence of the cave, the entire structure was dead silent which combined with the total darkness illuminated only by stalactites of azure crystal formed an eerie atmosphere. Once in a while, gentle clacks of hardened and raised heels of Mana's sandals joined in, forming a lovely harmony with the aquatic noises. Slowly the girl was making her way through the cave, looking around as if running or being hunted by someone and afraid of being caught. The girl's actions proved rather fruitless as not a single heartbeat joined her in this search. Just a deadly silence, torn away by water and girl's sandals once in a while...</p><p>Come to think of it, Mana had no idea what she was running from, where she was or what she was looking for, what exactly could her destination have been or other similar details. Could this cave have had something to do with the seemingly endless quest to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss, maybe she has sidetracked once again, looking to save someone dear to her? To say that would've been to say that she was sidetracked to save absolutely anyone as the girl had probably the least selective process of finding heroic deeds that required her to push her own needs aside.</p><p>Maybe this cave held inside an easier pathway to the Box, perhaps it held salvation for someone Mana wished to save, either way, the magician didn't falter but continued to walk that rocky crystal path. She did not notice how brief claps of red eyes colored the wall beside her differently, the color of the hunt, the color of death, the color of danger. Mana called out into the eternal darkness in front but no one answered. There was absolutely no reaction to her voice, it fell silent and dead in fate's ears.</p><p>Eventually, more and more eyes joined in the initial red blink, Mana was strangely aware of their existence, almost like they registered in her own mind but she couldn't see them. She could not hear them nor, sensibly, smell or touch them for they were abstract concepts. Yet she knew of them... The magician thought that maybe, for her own safety, it'd have made reasonable sense to turn around and look at those crimson bloodshot eyes examining her, measuring her limbs and her guts to wear around their necks as accessories. Somehow the magician was aware or at least suspicious of the ill intent of those lurking in the darkness.</p><p>As much as Mana ordered her body to turn, it did not, almost like Mana was part of a movie, a movie she was a starlet in. One of those revolutionary plays of moving pictures that Konoha recently received an influx of and Hiro's Hall was making a profit of, together with Mana's stage magic, of course. She must've had the role of the dumb pampered teen in one of those horror movies, walking into the typical horror scenario despite having little to no means of protecting herself.</p><p>For some reason, this disability to affect the environment around her or protect herself from these demons lurking in the walls of the cave scared the magician a great deal. Mana could feel her own heart pumping, beating and clawing its way out of her chest, she couldn't help but command herself to utter a scream but... She was silent. Once again the magician ordered herself to scream, this time as loud as she possibly could, as loud as she would if a madman was trying to butcher her and she was helpless to defend herself but... The kunoichi's lips were shut tight, not a single sound was made.</p><p>Suddenly, cold furry fingers wrapped around Mana's mouth, bent her head backward uncomfortably bending her body by the back around the creature's knee. The rodent-like creature shoved its twisted and rotten face right up to Mana's, despite being scared to the point of death Mana couldn't wail or scream, couldn't wave her hands or try to fight this thing off. She remained frozen and helpless in the creature's arms. The girl commanded herself to fight, summoned all the physical chakra she could've mustered up but... She remained helpless in its grasp.</p><p>"You killed us..." The thing muttered right to the girl's ear before opening its mouth to crunch on Mana's neck. The magician closed her eyes, she could feel slimy taps of the creature's slobber running down her neck all the way to her chest and below, soaking her clothes. She could feel that putrid smell of dead meat in its mouth as if Mana wasn't even amongst the first bodies this thing had munched on that day... Or night... It could've been either one...</p><p>Mana screamed, finally she was able to, not only that her body burnt up, the girl summoned all of the physical chakra she could before realizing that she was feeling hot. Not just hot – burning. The magician lifted her hand into the air and glared at the flames burning her, her skin blistered, peeled off her flesh in layers revealing crisped and coaly substance below, before only bones remained and then... Only bone dust... It was like she could see herself from the side, her face, her skin peeling off and burning into nothingness.</p><p>"Mana! Snap out of it!" The magician heard a loud scream before her head was crushed by the rodent's teeth. However it wasn't the jaws of a cave dweller that chomped on her brain, it was Meiko's large blacksmith's hand that slapped her face, continuing to do so again and again and again.</p><p>Mana shook and shoved the blacksmith aside, feeling blood and swelling in her mouth – just for how long was she being beaten?</p><p>"Wow... That must've been one hell of a dream..." Meiko sighed before grinning and giving Mana a thumb up. Just a friendly gesture to inform her that all was okay and that she was now safe.</p><p>Mana didn't respond, she looked around, Kouta was kneeling nearby and staring at Mana, Shimo wasn't even looking, he was watching everywhere but at Mana's general direction. He may have been looking out for assailants but something told the girl that his reasons for avoiding her glare may have been much more personal.</p><p>"You had to be woken up, your body flared up with physical chakra, Meiko couldn't even hold you on her back as the pressure was that strong. I checked your heartbeat because your chest was literally twitching... Sorry 'bout that..." Kouta blushed after revealing that he touched Mana's chest. Naturally, this whole situation with the team's medical ninja was bound to bring its own fair share of awkwardness... It was hard to postpone a romance when he had to touch Mana once every couple of days and his life essence ran through her body in the form of chakra every time he healed her. The two shared a much deeper connection than most medical ninja shared with their teammates especially due to how often Kouta had to tend to her wounds.</p><p>"Your heart could've stopped, your chakra network could've torn itself apart. You have the problems of a veteran ninja, Mana, and you aren't even old enough to drink yet..." Kouta tried to tell her something but Mana placed her hand on his lips. She wanted to hear none of it. If he had the guts to look at her and tell her that she had to quit then he misunderstood what this whole thing was all about.</p><p>Why would she quit, what was the point of this mission if she was ever to quit? What was the point of looking for the damned Box if she was to quit right after getting her chakra control back? She was a ninja stage magician, to be any of those two without the other was to live half a life and living half a life was worse than dying to Mana. She'd have rather perished than lived as anything less than what she wanted to be. As a child, the magician continued to hear stories about people losing their limbs and their senses in battle and always thought to herself that she'd rather die than live like that. Needless to say, her current disability was much more personal and emotional but to her, it was the same regardless of the kind of loss she suffered. Either she lived up to what she wished to be, to the ideal she strived to become or to hell with it all...</p><p>Mana stood up and bowed her head to Meiko, the magician looked around and noticed that the four were no longer even in Takigakure – she must've been carried around unconscious for more than three days if they already reached the no man's zone known as the Mountain's Graveyard. The place where the Tower of Bones once stood, the place where a criminal named God-Eyes once gathered an army of criminals to take over the world because in his eyes possessing a godly bloodline of the Rinnegan eyes granted him the right to the world's throne. The fact that such a chair did not exist did not make the man any less determined, he merely decided to find such a chair or have one built for him once the world leaders kneeled in front of him. Mana had studied that story extensively in the archives, she read it more and more after Tanshu-sensei had passed away, or rather was killed in battle.</p><p>Once the Mountain's Graveyard was a deadland, a land of sludge as well as hardened magma that when taken one step cut one's feet open and made one bleed all over the rocky surface or swallowed one whole. Now the bones of all the animals and people claimed by the place emerged once more, forming a much more organic pass, much more grotesque, unfortunately, as well. Bones of wild beast and men littered the place as they have emerged from the ground and their minerals interacted with the ruined ground forming a black coal-like mass which was no longer so difficult to pass through but still stunk enough to invite one to vomit whenever they took the liberty of thinking about what they were smelling exactly.</p><p>"The Takigakure ninja wished us good luck and left us right after saving us. The fat one carried this large scroll with a jutsu that summoned soil and trees, they regrew that part immediately and the goatee guy filled it with water in seconds. I've never seen terraforming of such degree. It was like the battle had never happened. Like magma never flowed in geysers reaching the sky..." Meiko began trying to explain what happened while she was out to Mana.</p><p>"We slowed down a little, even if you're completely healed, dipping in magma after being weakened in battle before really wears down on you... They say that the surface of the Sun is as hot as the hottest magma so I guess if we could survive a trip to the Sun we could one day land there..." Kouta laughed out awkwardly.</p><p>Seeing how Mana had not yet uttered a word the two were worried about her well-being. Shimo continued walking without offering any words. The boy's top was completely singed off and he appeared to have no spares so he was walking with half singed top, half bare-chested. However not a single burn appeared to be left on him, his hair did appear a little bit shorter but whether it was from the boy giving himself a field haircut using a kunai blade or magma managing to singe some off when his chakra augmentations faltered remained to be known. Not that Mana cared... She liked Kouta, maybe some other day she'd have really cared, maybe some other day she'd have spent some time glancing at his strong well-built for his age chest and new more orderly haircut but...</p><p>"The dwellers all died, didn't they?" Mana uttered quietly killing all the light mood of her friends. Shimo faltered and stopped for a moment before resuming his step, it was clear - that he wished to say something, perhaps scold her for bringing it up, maybe apologize for what he had done to her but he didn't say a word.</p><p>"Yeah... Most likely, it is possible that a few escaped but... The cave blew up shortly before you were knocked out. If you had entered you'd have had maybe milliseconds before the whole thing went up into the sky..." Kouta spoke.</p><p>"You'd have made some of the distance..." Shimo's voice killed it. Kouta and Meiko looked at the young swordsman who slowly continued to tread forward. The Yuki didn't turn around, he didn't try to give Mana any looks or appear to be that troubled by his recognition.</p><p>"You were likely fast enough, your whole body was flowing with physical chakra, you'd have gone in, saved some and saw the cave slowly exploding before you'd have carried them out. By the time you'd have noticed the explosion having begun you'd have made it out..." Shimo explained still walking on. Every couple of steps someone stepped on a brittle and long lost bone that cracked beneath their feet, it sounded a bit awkward having the topic of the conversation in mind.</p><p>"Then why..." Mana uttered, tears started to accumulate in her eyes but she desperately raced to swat her despair and sadness away. She shouldn't cry, she shouldn't... But could she ever get rid of the nightmares? Could any of them? Was Shimo even at all troubled by what he did!?</p><p>"Because you'd have suffered for it..." Shimo's head sunk down, his long hair flowed freely over the young man's face covering it completely, his glasses kept on slipping off forcing the young man to fix them. "You'd have never saved all of them without killing yourself, you're not perfect, I'm not perfect... Even the Takigakure jounin who were billions of times faster and stronger than us and... It's not even a hyperbole... Even they acknowledged it was too dangerous to go in. As few as you have saved, you'd have hated yourself for failing to save everyone, in the process you'd have crippled yourself for life. I could allow neither of those things to happen".</p><p>Mana covered her eyes, she removed her hat from the bag and tossed it onto her head, forcing the tip of it to cover up her eyes. She didn't want to be seen crying. That was not the person she wanted to be, she couldn't be so... Weak... So human. She wanted to be someone who saved everyone, someone who was this amazing hero who inspired people to change themselves and change the cruel world around them.</p><p>"You had no right..." Mana said. She raced forward, widening the reach of her step, gracefully bouncing over the skulls and ribcages around the place before she overtook the Yuki and raced up right in front of him. She stopped right then and there forcing the swordsman to bump into her. The boy's head lowered so that their eyes could meet. Mana was quite a bit shorter than her friend so their stare-down would've looked quite strange and uneven.</p><p>"I had all the right in the world. What gives you the right to save whomever you want to save, to do all you do and sidetrack every chance you get to interfere with the affairs of other countries? Our behavior will probably be reported to Konoha soon and Fifth won't be grateful for it. If you have the right to throw stones at a Wind Country terrorist, annoying him to break out of control, if you have the stones to let loose a Tailed Beast of all things, if you dare attack a band of Justicars despite high public approval of those guys from most settlers and villagers, I had the right to stop my friend before she made a mistake she'd regret" Shimo coldly exclaimed right in Mana's face, the young man didn't even flinch, there was no regret in his face.</p><p>"Regret? What makes you think I'd have regretted it!?" Mana shouted out in her friend's face, he must've seen this quarrel coming, he must've known that if he stopped the magician from saving someone she'd blow up right in her face.</p><p>"Isn't this what's happening here? Regret? Don't you regret picking a fight with an opponent you couldn't beat? Bargaining your own life so you could win? Aren't you looking for the Box because you regret the decision you made? You said it, not me, you want the Box because you hope to get your chakra control back, you lost it because no one stopped you from committing utter stupidity. Because you had no friends by your side capable of standing your way and saying enough... Don't you regret overtraining and breaking your own body, rendering yourself weak and unable to stop Sugemi from..." Shimo stopped, finally he noticed that he was crossing a line. Mana slapped him angrily and began walking forward. She wanted to leave them, she wanted to just storm off her own separate way but that had already happened before and nothing good came of it.</p><p>She couldn't believe it! How could he claim that she was regretting a single action she made? Had it not been to those injuries that prevented her from stopping Sugemi she'd have not been as strong as she was after all those years, had it not been for her stepping in front of Hisako she'd have not saved a life of a young man, a misguided young man who wanted to be a criminal genius but because of her had his whole future to change his ways. She saved people because she's as stupid as she was. That was why she saved all those people. Because she did things that to other people looked stupid. Her own friends didn't even believe in her...</p><p>How was she supposed to become this amazing hero who inspired change in people if she couldn't even convince her friends? The people who trusted her words, who should've trusted her at the very least didn't believe in her power to change anything. No one believed in her anymore, not even Shimo, not even the man she spent so much time training and growing with, not even her childhood friend... She was all alone, just the way she started it all. All those years and nothing changed, she grew stronger but people still mistrusted her, people still kept her from trying to do what she wanted to do. People still didn't believe that she was a hero who could save people instead of letting this cruel world claim them.</p><p>How could she stop people like the person who did it to those settlers if she had both the evil ones and her own closest friends to fight over it?</p>
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<a name="section0183"><h2>183. Rivers of Apathy</h2></a>
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      <p>"How many days has it been?" Kouta looked at Mana sitting further from the fire with a bowl of mushroom stew still in his hands. All the mushrooms the four had gathered in Takigakure were now compensating for the lack of notable settlements where they could've bought food and supplies in. That being said, if they were attacked by stronger bandits they'd have no tools to fight back with... Meiko's weapons dulled out from the past battles forcing her to have to resolve to fist fighting mostly, everyone's ninja kits had run empty except Mana's who managed to save up her steel tipped cards since discovering the ability to use physical chakra.</p>
      <p>"Since Mana hasn't eaten? I dunno... I'm just kinda glad she's not cooking anymore, though." Meiko tried to lighten up the mood but somehow her jokes fell on troubled ears.</p>
      <p>"At some point, I will need to force it down her throat. Her survival and well-being are directly dependant on our mission performance." Shimo angrily grunted looking at the fire lit sky. There were no visible stars, only murky dark clouds that could only be seen because of the flaring red fire of theirs.</p>
      <p>"You're not the one to talk, you haven't been eating much either lately..." Kouta replied looking at Shimo with a raised eyebrow. "At this point, it's clear that both of you are pissed at each other but also feeling guilty for something. When will it be enough of this self-imposed punishment"?</p>
      <p>"You do need some food, you need to be strong enough to fight off someone that decides to go at us. Lately, we've seen plenty of that..." Meiko added on to Kouta's remark. Since Mana was too far away from the fire, sitting alone in the darker corners of the Mountain Graveyard but not far away so that she isn't seen, the two decided to gang up on Shimo and make him eat at least half a decent portion.</p>
      <p>"Yeah but I'm a ninja, I can live without food for months, Mana is a civilian, just physical chakra won't sustain a decent ninja metabolism, she needs just as much food as a normal person who walks intensely throughout the entire day does." Shimo fended off both of them coming at him at once.</p>
      <p>The Yuki appeared to have had enough of this bickering, he stood up and took his sword with him moving off further away from the fire to train. It was quite impressive that he could still move just as fast and split the ground beneath his feet open just as strong when he had only eaten a couple of mushrooms a day, just to sustain the illusion that he ate something. Still, that was a luxury compared to Mana. The girl didn't eat and she claimed angrily that she drank water but the trio had some reasons to doubt that. That big fight in Takigakure may have just ruined their team and no one felt sure if it could even be stitched back together.</p>
      <p>Kouta looked at Meiko questioningly before taking another look at Mana who was just meditating further away from the fire. It was clear that she didn't wish to talk to them.</p>
      <p>"How's your training been lately?" The medical ninja asked.</p>
      <p>"I dunno, I didn't ask Mana to resume it, I just... She's just so cold and... I don't want to add up on whatever's going on with her with my shit." Meiko replied cleaning another bowl. Wonder of wonders, despite having extra portions of food left over from Mana and Shimo, Meiko was not content with that. She did finish the food since she wasn't sure how well the stew would've held up if left alone and Kouta's cooking was a bit better than Mana's but... The refusal to talk or eat of those two really troubled her.</p>
      <p>"You should..." Kouta looked down at a dusty and cracked skull laying on the ground right beneath their feet by the fire. "She's probably suffering a lot over what happened, she thinks so strangely that I'm not sure if she blames us for what happened or herself. Either way, I'd like to talk to her myself but... Things are more awkward with us now than they have ever been, maybe you should ask Mana to train you and I'll talk to Shimo. Hopefully, we can make those two eat together by the time we reach the Sound Village".</p>
      <p>Meiko looked down and to the side before looking at Mana's straightened and proud back as she meditated. Approaching the magician would be a thousand times scarier now than fighting off a bunch of Justicars in a blowing up cave system with her friends potentially drowning in magma... The blacksmith wasn't really sure what Kouta meant by the whole "awkward" thing, she has noticed that Kouta and Mana were really sensitive with each other the whole time and blushed all the time when talking about each other or looking at each other for too long but didn't get it nor did she see what exactly could've changed about that. Still, if Kouta made it such a big deal, it was probably because it was... For him at least.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... I'll try..." Meiko sighed standing up and loudly crunching and grinding the bone dust beneath her feet as she approached Mana. The blacksmith touched the magician's shoulder softly. She waited but Mana didn't react, Meiko clenched her fingers a little just to cause some slight discomfort but snap the magician out... Nothing. Meiko tried talking to Mana, shaking her or pinching her cheeks. Nothing snapped the girl out.</p>
      <p>"Look... I know you're angry. We did something or... Rather didn't do something and... I get it, I mean, I don't really but... I get it that it was important to you and even if I don't understand your feelings, I never do but... We're really worried about you so maybe you can eat just this once and then we can train a little? Please answer..." Meiko exclaimed in a sad and soft voice, the blacksmith was almost whiny in how sensitive she got trying to get her friend to reply but Mana sat completely still without as much as opening her eyes.</p>
      <p>She must've been really mad. Come to think of it Meiko has never seen Mana get so personally mad before, sure Mana was always overly protective of other people and she did yell and attack people who threatened other people's lives but... Meiko couldn't place her finger on when the magician was angry like this, so personally hateful and completely shut in.</p>
      <p>"Okay... Whatever I did... I'm sorry... I really am, we all are." Meiko slapped her forehead and walked off back to the seat by the fire rubbing her short hair that was beginning to grow out of control and now went past Meiko's shoulders a little and also wiping sweat and tears off her face. That night Meiko decided to train alone, just shadowboxing and some easy exercises just to let some built up steam off.</p>
      <p>Sometime later Kouta walked back from Shimo's front. "Yeah... Shimo's not budging. He keeps insisting that nothing of consequence happened, he did what he had to do and says he's not even sorry. He is adamant that he did everything right and acted surprised that I still thought about it, he said he thought everyone forgot it already"</p>
      <p>Meiko huffed as she punched air a couple of times before weaving around, dodging imaginary blows and then jumped on one hand in full armor set and did some one-handed push-ups. "Ooof... If he did... Ooof... He'd have eaten his share... Ooof..." Meiko replied in an almost rhetoric observation as drops of sweat dripped from her forehead. She wasn't really using any augmentations currently. If she was using augmentations she'd actually improve much slower, it was a thing she noticed recently.</p>
      <p>If one's power had a certain number and chakra augmentation was able to add a multiplier to that number, increasing the number instead of the multiplied version let her grow stronger more rapidly, it also carried no hidden risk of breaking her body and her chakra network so that was good too...</p>
      <p>"Clearly..." Kouta scratched his elbow, it was strange how frail and small the young man seemed when he wasn't fighting and in full tension of his body, shaping and malforming his own limbs in battle. He almost looked like a simple rather short young man. "Any luck with Mana-chan?" he asked.</p>
      <p>Meiko angrily shook her head without letting it interrupt her training rhythm. "She's silent, completely ignoring me"</p>
      <p>"Yeah, she's by far the more hurt one. Or at least taking it worse... Shimo's problems lie with Mana and her overreaction, Mana's problem is somehow with all of us." Kouta scratched his neck, he was getting tired just looking at Meiko working out.</p>
      <p>With a graceful leap, Meiko flipped back on both feet and stretched herself out.</p>
      <p>"Are we not all to blame? Sure the Takigakure ninja said it was a bad idea and didn't even budge but... We could all have joined in with Mana on the search, we'd have multiplied her chances a thousand times instead of just standing still and watching Shimo betray her." Meiko washed the sweat off her face. She was feeling hungry but, for the first time in a while, she decided to ignore that instinct.</p>
      <p>"We couldn't have all went in, we'd have gotten in each other's way, we'd have each other to worry about, we'd never know who entered, who was where and who managed to leave. Going back in there was the wrong idea, it was way too risky to be even considered too risky, it was a whole other level of risky, it was utter madness." Kouta exclaimed without noticing Mana pass by and sit by the fire. The girl longingly looked at him as she passed by, hearing just all the wrong words in the process. Despite hearing Kouta openly discussing her intent to save those dwellers with dismissal Mana did not reply, she just sat down and wrapped her arms around her quivering naked knees wrapping into a little ball of suppressed pain.</p>
      <p>"Look Mana... I didn't... Mean..." He tried to squirm out of an awkward situation but she didn't reply, she didn't even look back at him. Almost like she didn't even hear a word he said while she was looking right at him up close to him.</p>
      <p>"You've been skipping your training, Meiko." Mana spoke up for the first time in a while, "Are you already satisfied with your results?" She asked almost like she was disappointed in Meiko if she made such a conclusion.</p>
      <p>"What are you talking about!? I still suck! I was talking to you right there when you were meditating!" Meiko yelled back at Mana. It was clear that the blacksmith was beginning to get caught up in the major schism in the team. It wasn't like the team was just cracked in two pieces or camps formed or anything – anyone in this team no longer wanted to be a part of it. Everyone was angry at everyone and wanted to just end it all.</p>
      <p>"Oh... Sorry, I don't really hear the environment very well when I'm in trance." Mana mumbled out in a somewhat apologetic tone. "I used to be able to perceive it just fine but... After I... You know..." She uttered out like a child trying to whimper out why she didn't read the needed chapter of "Trigonometry of the Shuriken Trajectories" in Ninja Academy.</p>
      <p>"Oh... I... Didn't know that. I just thought you were mad at me." Meiko mustered out rubbing her neck uncomfortably to the point where the skin on the blacksmith's neck got swollen red.</p>
      <p>"I can't be mad at any of you. You did the right thing, the situation was too risky, just like Kouta said. There wasn't even a 1% chance that someone could pull all the disguised dwellers out from the entire cave system in just microseconds left to the explosion and magma flood. I don't blame anyone that you didn't choose to go in. I'd have blamed you if you chose to try..." Mana replied.</p>
      <p>Kouta and Meiko looked at each other curiously before looking back at Mana. "Then what is this all about? You not eating, not talking, just brooding in the corner separately from everyone else." Kouta called her out.</p>
      <p>"I'm not mad about you guys not going in. I'm mad at myself, I'm mad because my entire life I wished to be a hero who inspires people, somehow who is a hero that inspires change in people, desire to change the cruel world around them. And yet my friends didn't change, they didn't even believe in me enough to let me try to convince them, live up to my dream... They just knocked me out cold from behind." Mana spoke in a voice that was comprised of both bitterness of betrayal but also some anger and disappointment.</p>
      <p>"That's..." Meiko opened her mouth to object but Shimo intervened as he was passing through, having just finished his training and smelling of sweat and rotten dead bodies as those kinds of scents were often brought up when the substance Mountain Graveyard was comprised of was split open and all the skeletons were shown to the beholders above.</p>
      <p>"Stop it. You can't reason with Nakotsumi Mana. That's one thing me and Sugemi have learned over our time working together. She'll always wish to be stupid but she'll scold other people for being as stupid as she is. She's just in a rush to dig herself six feet under, become a martyr. But guess what, Mana... There are people in this world who care about you, with all your stupidity and hypocrisy, you make those people give up their own lives and lives of other people for your survival so next time you be a little bitch, you ask yourself – is it right to react this way to those people when being like those people is all you want to do." He said before walking off and beginning to build a tent for himself to spend the night in.</p>
      <p>Eventually, Meiko and Kouta both stood up and went off, building themselves their own tents and going to bed. Mana remained seated by the fire, even long after the fire dwindled and went out, even while buzzing mosquitoes began craving her blood, even while the deadly and maddening silence of Mountain Graveyard that made one claw their ears open kicked in. Sitting. Thinking...</p>
      <p>Next morning the group set out early. No one was surprised having found Mana just sitting by the dead fire, she needed some extra encouragement to get up and keep moving, they weren't too far away from Otogakure or the Sound Village. As the never changing views, plains and literal graveyards of the Mountain Graveyard changed and passed Mana began thinking about Otogakure, namely minding her apathy towards it. Her motivation to find the Box, her motivation to figure out the clue of the sphere they found in the desert ruins of Wind Country had greatly snuffed up and numbed.</p>
      <p>Maybe before realizing the horridness of a whole settlement being experimented on by a madman before let loose as these misshapen tunnel dwellers, before being drowned in magma by intolerant men and women who masked with the social hood of justice Mana could've wondered what kind of place the Sound Village was, what kind of people lived there and just what obstacles she may have found in her way. Usually, Mana made scenarios and plans in preparations for any possible obstacle, she was a schemer, she loved to plan, to overthink and overanalyze things all the time but now... There was just a little point in her heart, where once was love and compassion now laid only grief, regret and apathy.</p>
      <p>"So, Mana, what kind of place this Sound Village is?" Meiko kept asking her, wondering about even the smallest details. Of course, she'd ask Mana, someone, who spent countless days in the archive reading of history and being an all-around curious young lady.</p>
      <p>"Don't know exactly... Heard it has a rich musical culture scene. Whatever you know in Konoha to be entertainment, in Otogakure it's dominated by music." Mana mumbled out.</p>
      <p>Meiko looked really weirded out, judging from Meiko's observations below the ruins of Wind Country the girl loved music. It must've been quite exciting for the young blacksmith to see a whole village the size of a small country focusing on music. An industrial and entertainment haven for artists, bards, and traveling musicians. It was said that Guru Ayushi really loved the place and had countless funds raised to help the place grow and develop. There were few notable Otogakure ninja but the music it produced was chased after, the records originated in the village may as well have been made of solid gold...</p>
      <p>At that moment Mana looked at Meiko's whistling and grinning, also immensely silly face and she couldn't help but crack a grin. Where once was apathy drowning Mana down under, where the bodies of the tunnel dwellers wrapped their long cold dead fingers around the girl's throat and feet and dragged her down in the river of madness and grief her simple-minded friend managed to extend her hand for the magician overpowering all of those bad memories of the dead she failed to save. Yoinking Mana straight from out of their very cold dead fingers...</p>
      <p>How could she not do so, she was Wakizashi Meiko, the young blacksmith kunoichi who was so ashamed of being disowned by her very own clan that she disowned her own last name and couldn't make up anything else but the name of a short sword. She was so simple minded but also so happy... Not a care in the world, none of the sadness and despair Mana struggled with and the magician thought just for a second that if there was anything to be done that Meiko would never have to feel the way Mana does every day, she'd walk to the end of the Earth to achieve that.</p>
      <p>"Did you know that there's a ninja in Otogakure who is also a great composer and his tracks actually physically heal those listening?" Mana mumbled out with a slightly brightened tone.</p>
      <p>"What!? Is that for real!? That's fricking crazy!" Meiko almost screamed out.</p>
      <p>Shimo cracked a sideways grin.</p>
      <p>"That is interesting, how does that work?" He wondered.</p>
      <p>Mana sighed and tipped the front of her hat so that her face received little of the autumn Sun that broke through the eternally dark patches of clouded Mountain Graveyard sky.</p>
      <p>"You do know that sounds are basically vibrations, right? Well, the human body is composed of water so when those vibrations are infused with chakra..." she began a long explanation. Despite Meiko looking like the least likely person to listen to such long and overdrawn explanations, she looked with the childish eyes of glee the likes of which Mana had not seen for quite a while. Explaining the magic of medical musical ninjutsu was just as exciting as showing magic tricks to little kids, a sensation, and chills which Mana had long since missed.</p>
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<a name="section0184"><h2>184. Clef</h2></a>
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      <p>It wasn't too long before the obsidian rocky grounds of the Mountain Graveyard, contrasted only by the creepy bony remains of people who once died in this place, whether it was in the battle that formed the place, or in the power struggles between bandit gangs afterwards, changed into a more ground shifting and industrial zone. Once in a while the crew encountered a still working natural gas or oil pumping device or some sort of ground pounding pneumatic hammer of gigantic proportions that seemingly crushed one's ear drums from kilometers away with its crushing sound. It was like the goal of this gigantic machinery was to crush the ground all the way to the other side of the planet...</p>
      <p>"It's grinding the rocky minerals into shards, I think... If I knew how deep the pressure pulse goes I'd probably shriek my voice out!" Meiko scratched her chin after examining the ground dust that flew out in blinding clouds from under its rampaging pounds.</p>
      <p>The change signaled that the crew was slowly approaching Otogakure. A once desolate place, a gentle grassland where animals roamed free and there was nothing but green plains as far as an eye could see. These plains were initially much larger than Konohagakure and belonged to Fire Country and the Fire Daimyo. That was before it was decided to find another ninja village here, close to Konoha, where the locals could be tutored by Konoha and fostered into another ninja village which would potentially grow strong enough to rival the Great Ninja Villages and in such case Fire Daimyo would have ruled over two Great Ninja Villages greatly expanding his influence through intimidation of great power.</p>
      <p>The Daimyo then gathered a large number of ninja from around the land, excused some criminals that wished to reform asking of them to take important positions in this newly established village he called Otogakure or the Sound Village. The people who lived their lives as rogues knew very little of how to manage a village but they didn't want to resume their past shady lives, knowing full well that being so close to the Konoha borders they'd have ninja swarming the place and overthrowing them within moments of one shady action from their part.</p>
      <p>Having no idea how to attract ninja to live and breed, creating a new generation of ninja in their newly found village the criminals simply attracted musicians and traveling artists from all around the world, asking them to tutor the youth who were supplied by Konoha Ninja Academy's exchange programs in the arts of music. The hopes were that once the young ones knew of the musical arts as well as the art of ninjutsu they'd eventually combine the two together. The result was not entirely a failure of this plan – a handful of young ones found a newly discovered love for the art and began a slow prospering tradition of combining ninja arts with music and sound in general.</p>
      <p>The secondary effect which the newly appointed council of Otogakure could not have predicted was the musical culture that formed in the village. Common settlers who were accepted into the village freely as new villages, allowed to live in village conditions instead of being forced to work the land under constant threat of bandit raids and rogue ninja playing with their lives like a pretentious child plays with the lives of ants beneath their magnifying glass. Those very simpletons became fascinated with the music they've heard as all the traveling musicians attracted to tutor the youth decided to make a quick ryo entertaining the locals.</p>
      <p>Eventually, simpletons of basic tastes became experts, in just years villagers became dabblers of the miraculous arts of music and began playing the instruments themselves. They began creating new styles of music, experiments and a musical celebrity culture unlike anything else formed in the village. A cultural awareness of such exquisite tastes could have only been found in the royal and elitist districts of Kirigakure which was known for its snobbish and posh tastes in culture and entertainment. However, whereas Kirigakure devoured all cultural arts: film, theatre, circus and music, Otogakure simply became the capital of rather average ninja and amazing musicians.</p>
      <p>It was a mystery how the village was still standing, they had very few notable ninja who have made a name for themselves. It wasn't because of how young the place was, it couldn't have been more than a hundred years old, by that time Konoha had produced multiple Hokage and Sannin level ninja. One would think that in this world of violence and war the village would have been swept aside like an unsuccessful experiment but, strangely enough, it wasn't even raided once. Maybe it was that even the meanest soul enjoyed the soothing melodies and recorded sounds of music hailing from the village, more likely it was the close distance from the powerhouse of the Ninja World – Konohagakure that prevented more significant raids.</p>
      <p>This strangely devoid of violence environment allowed the Sound Village to amass great financial stability and riches, by the time the members of the first Otogakure council died out and the generations shifted the village was an economic powerhouse if nothing else. Producing millions of ryo per single record produced by a single of thousands practicing musicians of the place, even Mana was slightly jealous of the fame and great admiration as well as the rich celebrity culture of the place.</p>
      <p>Such peaceful and prosperous environment attracted one great man to foster his dreams in that place – Guru Ayushi. The spokesman of peace and perseverance, Guru Ayushi hosted multiple fund raisers and publically spoke about how close Otogakure was to his dream of a perfect land – a land that grew ninja just as a symbolic notion and for respect of the ancient tradition. If anything else. A village that could've paid off any assailant harboring as much as an ill thought, a village that took more pride in its rich culture than physical and military power or a sleeping time bomb in the form of a Jinchuuriki carrying inside them a bomb of mass destruction capable of decimating the planet if they as much as sneezed the wrong way.</p>
      <p>Guru's approval of the place only made its respect among the other villages and countries skyrocket. Even the more bloody Kirigakure would have never made moves inside the village walls, not publically, and any spies of Kirigakure caught in Otogakure would've been instantly disowned and declared working as rogues and under no orders from the village whereas usually Kirigakure would've taken great pride in such men and women who have worked inside the walls of a village for so long that they've amassed a fortune of information by the time they were captured and any loss of face or a treasured spy would've been inconsequential compared to the wealth of data amassed by these highly trained agents of deceit.</p>
      <p>Finally, the dark evening sky was lit up by neon lights, a familiar crunch and sweet softness of home soil met Mana's sandals, gentle cold evening grass playfully tickled her feet as the coaly surfaces of the Mountain Graveyard were no more. It was strange how the team haven't met a single bandit in the place – usually, the reputation of the place was that it fostered endless squabbles and power struggles between gangs and served as a shelter for the most dangerous rogue ninja hiding in the Fire Country. Usually one couldn't have taken two steps in the place without encountering a half-dead starving bandit trying to rob them with a knife made of hardened toothbrushes or fishbone.</p>
      <p>"We're here..." Meiko shrieked out like a schoolgirl, Mana looked at her with gently glowing eyes, it must've been nothing short of miraculous for the blacksmith to finally place her foot in the sanctuary of the musical arts. Mana had to admit that despite the recent events making her insides bitter and making her feel half-dead she also had a certain flare of excitement to see the place of such rich celebrity culture. The magician wanted to see the place for quite some time, there was so much she could've learned from Otogakure as a rising fame of stage magic... Or has-been rising fame... She's been away for so long that the girl wondered if at least one child who walked into her shows with eyes of fire-cracking glee would've even remembered the young lady they've idolized in their youth, then again, it was just several months that she's been gone... Felt like forever, honestly.</p>
      <p>"No guards at the gate?" Kouta wondered looking around, his dark brown hair flipped to the sides as the boy frantically tried to locate at least one guard trying to ask them for their identities or question their intentions in the place. Usually, even ninja returning from missions in Konoha would've had to fill blanks and paperwork right after entering the gate. This was a little ridiculous, honestly...</p>
      <p>"Hmph..." Shimo grunted before his eyes caught a beautiful and barely covered behind of a young lady, possibly an aspiring musician as she's been walking with some sort of a paper and reading from it, reciting what appeared to be lines of poetry, perhaps a song. Shimo instantly disappeared from the group, following the young woman. Meiko wanted to go after him but Kouta shook his head.</p>
      <p>"Let him go, this place seems to be an entertainment center more than a military establishment. I could've never guessed. He'll find us, don't worry, let the guy have his fun, maybe the tensions between us will ease that way. It wouldn't be too bad for you two to have a little fun as well, there was little of that lately..." Kouta also pointed at Mana with his chin, signaling for the blacksmith that maybe it was better if Mana and Shimo didn't have to see each other for a while.</p>
      <p>Meiko didn't really appear to have gotten the clue, she just jumped up and grabbed Mana by the collar of her shirt dragging her aside.</p>
      <p>"Roger! We'll find Mana a male butt to stare at as well!" She chanted out much to Kouta's protest but the crowd around them was getting so thick and intense that the boy soon found himself lost.</p>
      <p>"Wait... Don't... Show Mana any butts..." Kouta shouted out but his voice fell on deaf ears.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Shimo followed the young lady dressed in nothing but strangely glowing and shimmery dark purple leather into a small block of flats, it had a small waiting room before entering the staircase that lead to the actual flat complex where the young lady dropped down to sit on an overly soft armchair. Shimo dropped down nearby. He didn't care about making a move, all he cared about was opening the doors for the ignorant and absent-minded woman and see to it that she returned home safely... Just like the old days...</p>
      <p>Shimo finally drew his eyes away from the woman who didn't even know that Shimo gently walked in front of her to help her bypass at least four manholes and opened three doors as well as gently lead her through an arc she would've bumped into normally. She was so absorbed by her sheets of papers that she appeared to know nothing else but their strangely mosaic appearance and the symbols contained within.</p>
      <p>"Thank you for walking me home, young man..." She spoke finally informing Shimo that his attempts to safely guide her home weren't completely ignored.</p>
      <p>"I'm not a criminal, I just... I wanted to do the right thing, a young woman like you walking so absent-mindedly in such a big village..." He spoke up</p>
      <p>The woman placed the papers into a small handbag, folding them with little care for their integrity, even accidentally tearing the tip of one of them and laughed into her palm playfully.</p>
      <p>"You are not from around here, are you? This place isn't known for its criminal activity, maybe further at the edges of the village where the industrial districts lay. The central area is controlled by the Syndicate" She said "Ever since those guys took over there isn't any street crime, no murders in the alleyways, no muggings or rapes. A woman is as safe in the streets as she could be around these parts".</p>
      <p>"Wait! The Syndicate!?" Shimo shouted up jumping off his armchair and instinctively grabbing his sword and pressing it tighter against his hip.</p>
      <p>"Oh? You don't know? Yes, this place does not have an "Otokage" so to say, it never had because electing an Otokage incites challenge, it says to the other village that there is a ninja in this place powerful enough to call the shots and place themselves among the other Kage. There is only the council but having the history of the city in mind they are quite apologetic of criminal syndicates, their parents belonged to the rogue ranks themselves. The Syndicate runs the place, it's public news really. They control crime and they don't dabble or allow small time crime to happen. Small times who don't belong to the Syndicate and act up, all criminals of passion they disappear faster than you would inform an actual Police Force." The lady smiled as if she didn't just say that she was content about an actual criminal syndicate running her home.</p>
      <p>Shimo grunted unintelligibly. "It's something for another day... Say, fair lady, maybe you'd know where and when a musician named "Notasa" performs? We need to talk to her".</p>
      <p>"Oh, are you maybe a journalist? No... You wouldn't be foolish enough to carry a sword if you were..." The lady began pondering.</p>
      <p>"I'd be most grateful if you stopped flirting and beating around the bush and answered the question." Shimo sighed moving his grey hair out of his sight as they have become long and unruly enough to obstruct his view at times. At times like this the boy wondered how Mana managed her hair as the girl never really appeared to cut or restrain them, at least she never bragged about it, most girls would, wouldn't they?</p>
      <p>"A guy who followed me home asks me to stop flirting... Sorry, the people in this place are really relaxed and pleasure driven, I'll have to apologize if you find us odd. You seem to really be not from around... Well, Notasa is performing tonight in the Ponac Hall, it's a couple of kilometers from here, just ask the people around and they'll lead you to it," the girl giggled, she really did look like she was relaxed enough to not care enough to lie.</p>
      <p>"Wait... Can't you lead me to it?" Shimo hissed out in confusion.</p>
      <p>"I could..." The lady giggled before bumping the young man's exposed and tense chest muscles with her playful frail finger and dragging it down, getting him excited before pulling her papers out and resuming her reading activities, "But I'd miss the pleasure of seeing you stumble around, you're too cute that way".</p>
      <p>Shimo has never rushed off awkwardly from a room so fast in his entire life. "People here are weird!" He whispered under his own nose as loud as whispering could be done.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>"Meiko, for the last time, Kouta didn't ask you to show me male butts... Why would he try to get me laid, I mean... You know? Doesn't make sense..." Mana tried explaining it to Meiko who continuously dragged Mana from one good looking man to another shoving her imbalanced frame to their lower bodies uncomfortably. Mana was not quite sure which was stranger, that Meiko was interpreting Kouta's proposition to keep Mana and Shimo separate for a while this way, or that the men Meiko rudely shoved Mana in their faces didn't seem to mind. Strangely enough, they were down for a potential advance but then Meiko dragged Mana elsewhere just like that leaving them confused.</p>
      <p>"Hello there, ladies!" A couple of guys tried to stop Meiko and Mana but Meiko dragged Mana away and finally gave the magician a chance to straighten out and fix her clothes from all the carrying and dragging around the Meiko has been doing.</p>
      <p>"Why wouldn't Kouta want to find you a friend?" Meiko didn't appear to get it at all...</p>
      <p>"Doesn't matter... We've lost both Shimo and Kouta. I'll assume that Kouta is sensible enough to find us a place to sleep in through the night and Shimo will... Hopefully not get himself killed or kill anyone. We should probably go look for this Notasa lady..." Mana concluded before she heard sly comments about her clothes from behind and looked at them.</p>
      <p>She was all in rags, her black skirt was torn up and ragged in multiple areas, her sandals were completely worn out and basically just a lifeless lump of leather, her blazer was long lost somewhere along the way, most likely incinerated to the point where not a tread of it remained. Her shirt was nowhere near the color it began as and had multiple fist-sized holes, one of which was ironically enough showing her undergarments which greatly shamed Mana having in mind that she was standing in the middle of a densely populated ninja village which reminded more of a pleasure town.</p>
      <p>"Maybe... We should chill and get some new clothes and supplies..." She blushed trying to calmly move her shirt in a way that would cover up the pink slip of her undergarment covering the chest.</p>
      <p>"Yeah!" Meiko shouted out excitedly grabbing Mana by her shoulder and running off so fast that Mana was lifted off the ground and comically floated up like a flag. Despite Mana's desperate pleads for Meiko to slow down the blacksmith just kept on running, with all of her inhuman speed, evading each and every single passer-by of this dense pleasure town which was probably as difficult as evading raindrops in the rain. Mana closed her eyes, her shame knew no bounds but then she realized that all this typical Meiko's antics made her slowly move on from other, more dire things she could be thinking about... Even if the alternative was thinking about the shame of her ruined clothing and being carried around like a bag of vegetables, spun and carelessly flung around...</p>
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      <p>Kouta looked around and sighed, realizing that he was left all alone. The boy looked around and tried locating the nearest inn. All of those buildings were so tall, each block was at least two or three times the size of Konohagakure's buildings as the village appeared to concentrate all of their villagers in a couple of large and modern if not futuristic districts where Konoha spread them somewhat evenly amongst its territory. Slowly and shyly the medical ninja approached the nearest villager and asked them for the location of the nearest place he and his friends could stay in.</p>
      <p>"Shit, Meiko carried off the bag with all the material stuff..." Kouta cursed realizing that the blacksmith carried off the Audra shard filled bag with her which served as all of their bargaining chips in this village since they've long since run out of coins to pay with which was impressive knowing that they once raided the bandit raider encampment...</p>
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<a name="section0185"><h2>185. Ninja Noir</h2></a>
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      <p>Kouta slowly and tediously roamed the industrialized outskirts of Otogakure. It was much easier to find a place that'd host them for what little remained of their coins than it'd be to find Meiko and Mana in that mad hive of people. These men and women appeared to be so insanely pleasure driven, the entire population of the village swarmed in the central districts and filled the endless shops, entertainment halls, and gambling houses. The medical ninja found such excessive amounts of people exhausting, maybe it was just the sleeping warrior inside of him – it was much harder to anticipate an incoming threat when one had to check more people than their eye could register and count.</p>
      <p>Yet another industrial district rotten and rundown inn refused to house Kouta and three more people, even if they flocked to one room for the price which the boy carried with him. It would've been so much easier to communicate a clear plan – who was responsible for what, who was going where etc. Had they been a well-oiled and running machine of teamwork they once had been perhaps that'd have been the case. Now everyone was so glad to finally get a break from the others that somehow the idea completely slipped from everyone's minds.</p>
      <p>"And what if we returned with really pricy stones? Minerals unlike any you've seen before?" Kouta asked out of desperation, he's had enough aimless wondering begging inn keepers to slash their prices. It was about time he tried Shimo's way of the slimy tongued rogue. The Juugo has seen the Yuki at work when he spoke to the desert raiders and plenty more times, just how hard could it have been?</p>
      <p>"I may, in theory, be interested. What are those minerals? Gold? We have plenty of that here, we live in an industrial district, boy. Every day gold ores reach me from customers too drunk to count ryo properly..." The man replied, Kouta barely restrained the instinct to curse, somehow Shimo made bartering seem so easy but when he had to do it, it just didn't work...</p>
      <p>"Audra ore shards. Artificially crafted. A single shard could buy this whole damned establishment. You're making me question my own stupid decision to offer them to you of all people..." Kouta answered truthfully. Honesty was probably not the better trait of a trainee spokesperson.</p>
      <p>The inn keeper laughed out loud so hard he clenched his fatty sides. He certainly looked like the kind who paid for their greasy food with gold ore instead of ryo. Kouta realized that the man distrusted him, perhaps he was not wrong to do so, after all, he lived in a shadier part of the place, also he was just told tales, by a teenager no less, of an ore of one of the priciest minerals in the world, one that was never supposed to exist in the first place...</p>
      <p>"'Ey, boy!" A suited up gentleman with a fancy top hat, strangely not as fancy as Mana's which was surprising only because of how expensive the man's attire seemed otherwise, approached Kouta with some backup behind him. These gents all appeared to be formally dressed, the spokesman of the crew had black as oil mutton chops and a pair of moles on his face that looked almost comical. "Theoretically, if dose shards exist... How would you, allegedly, come into knowin' about dose?" The man mumbled out in a strangely familiar to the young man dialect.</p>
      <p>"Syndicate? Here? Maybe it's some other band who just dress and act the same?" Kouta wondered. It couldn't have been possible, technically they could've been extending their influence zone but then why would they hang out in some rundown inn at the edge of Otogakure. It was a good twelve kilometers from the main city, Kouta had to use his actual movement speed to get there in seconds as opposed to the slowed down charade the whole team put up just so Mana didn't get left in the dust.</p>
      <p>Ninja moved at great speeds, even Mana had the ability, in her current shape, to circle the planet a couple of times in just a handful of moments. Yet moving at such pace would've been foolish for a multitude of reasons. First of all, it consumed chakra to augment one's abilities to the max, one would find themselves strained by the time they arrived at the destination they wished to be in, they'd also risk straining their networks too much moving that way. It was always wiser to keep augmentation down to the necessary moments in battle.</p>
      <p>Another reason was because of the chakra they'd emit, such a fast mover would flare up as a chakra signature for any nearby sensors or chakra tracking devices any mercenaries would wield, ninja wished to be quiet and discrete and it was much more so to travel quietly but slower than to flash to the location of their desire in a mere moment, attracting the attention of everybody in the process.</p>
      <p>Yet another reason was perception, it was troublesome to perceive minuscule objects in such hasty movements, when moving so fast one was begging to run into a trap or just blast through every tree, mountain and boulder in their way spending out more chakra on perception augmentation and endurance augmentation to survive such a nasty trip, also making much more noise in the process. Still, when moving in such small distances Kouta had little restraint from using his actual speed...</p>
      <p>"That would be because I have them..." Kouta replied, "Looted everything that remained after the collapse of the Katabami Mine, right out from under the Syndicate's noses..." The boy added to the spite, checking the reaction of these men.</p>
      <p>The men instantly reached for their weapons. They found none. Loud cracks and bits of pieces of steel signaled that Kouta had long since disarmed them and broke their blade firing pipes into pieces, the boy had to hand it to them that he was beginning to feel sweaty and his breath slowly picked up the pace, perhaps he was overusing his tremendous speed advantage. Maybe he needed some more food to replenish his stamina since his weakened and restless body was struggling to keep up with the boy's inhuman demands.</p>
      <p>"Gentlemen, please!" The inn keeper shouted, "I pay protection costs, how different is it from racketeering if you brawl inside my inn?" He tried to reason. The Syndicate boys turned tails, but not because they were reasonable men or saw the man's point, no, they knew they were outmanned and outgunned by a single unarmed ninja. There were literally no tricks or ways in which they could've beaten Kouta, even with their guns all of their kunai would've simply bounced off of the boy unless the mafiosi learned of ways of enhancing their fired kunai with chakra somehow.</p>
      <p>"Alright, guys, let's go, but our other boys will hear about dis, kid? We're gonna find you and yer friends, ye ain't hidin' in dis joint for long, ya hear me?" One of the fleeing gangsters tried to fire off empty threats at the medical ninja but Kouta knew that scum like the Syndicate only posed a threat to just starting out genin, not his skilled and experienced team, not a team who had already beaten the crew a couple of times and knew all their tricks. This time they won't have those Audra skin covered brutes to bail them out either, even if they would, by now the team knew how to beat them...</p>
      <p>"Good, do me a favor and bring everyone in your organization to me, that way you'll spare me the trouble of looking for you," Kouta replied turning around and looking with a sorry glare at the innkeeper.</p>
      <p>"Any chance this changed your mind?" He curiously shrugged.</p>
      <p>"Not a chance, kid, if anything it enforced it, if you're picking a fight with the Syndicate, you're picking a fight with the whole damned village..." he rasped out angrily.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>"Are you sure this is what girls wear around these parts?" Mana wondered looking at her leather jacket and skirt. She looked like a punk missing just a dirty pink mohawk and a bunch piercings. Meiko just giggled staring Mana down, she had little right to mock Mana having bought male clothing, the blacksmith wore a white zip-up tracksuit with black strips and trainers. This village had the oddest sense of fashion and Mana felt torn between the shame of walking around dressed in a button-down with a leather jacket and a leather skirt and dressing in male clothing as well. To her, neither of the options sounded reasonable.</p>
      <p>"It'll be fine, we've been roaming the shops for a whole couple of hours, I never thought of you as such a shopping diva, Mana..." Meiko laughed awkwardly shoving her fist into her throat just to shut herself up from cracking into laughter. "It can't be that much more restraining than your usual clothes..." The blacksmith couldn't help but slip in a joke of a more biting fashion.</p>
      <p>Mana sighed and flipped up her top hat, Meiko was right, the two wasted far too much time looking for suitable clothes and the goal was not to look good, it was to find something to change their ruined clothes.</p>
      <p>"Fine, but we're not buying any spares from here..." The magician agreed and the two finally left out to look for this Notasa lady. They were in the central most crowded district and from what they already knew the kid they were looking for was by far the biggest starlet in the village so this must've been the only district where a star of such a level would perform. The question was just when and where exactly, also would she allow the team of ninja from Konoha to even approach her with the consult of what exactly the sphere said...</p>
      <p>"Excuse me, would you know where Notasa would be performing, today if possible, we've come from another village and would very much like to hear her perform before we go home..." Mana asked a young man who just stared her down with the most awkward looking eyes, even when Meiko butt in it didn't help much. All they got were a bunch of sly remarks and suggestions to take them there if it was on a date. Ironically enough things weren't much more pleasant to deal with when the magician tried asking the opposite gender.</p>
      <p>"Wow, people here are so weird..." She grunted slapping her own forehead, "Why would a girl ever suggest to take another girl out on a date"?</p>
      <p>Meiko slapped her hands together a couple of times thinking about something in a deep corner of her mind before shrugging, "Yeah, doesn't make much sense... That's other cultures for you".</p>
      <p>Just before Mana tried to approach another pair of young friends walking down the busy street the two noticed a bunch of kids running down the alleyway. It definitely looked weird that someone would purposefully enter such a dark and cold looking place if they were as young as the children the magician saw but she was forced to write it down to the differences of culture. At this point when she was so overwhelmed by differences of two such close in their locations villages, it was tough to say what was weird and what was just a small cultural difference.</p>
      <p>"Excuse me, would you know by any chance where..." Mana began asking but she heard a gut-wrenching scream from the alleyway, the magician instantly dashed off at that direction ditching the group of young people she was trying to question, her worn out and torn up sandals quickly carried Mana's hungry and tired body through the paved stone streets and into the damp and dark alleyway where not even a single spark of light shined.</p>
      <p>The magician tried to follow the imagined location of the sound but the truth was it could've come from anywhere. Her new clothes squirmed and rubbed awkwardly but they didn't restrain Mana too much, much to the girl's calmness of heart as it was tough to say when she'd get a decent attire change.</p>
      <p>Mana just had a whole bunch of people die on her watch, she wasn't about to let any more die. If there was one chance there was anything she could've done... Meiko shouted out the magician's name trying to call her to the blacksmith's location, her ninja's augmented hearing and perception must've allowed the girl to better pick up the exact location of the sound and Mana followed her friend's voice without hesitation or question. It was so dark...</p>
      <p>By the time the magician reached Meiko, and in terms a source of light coming from an open window and a gathering crowd she was shown just who uttered the scream... It was so cruel when the last breath to come from someone's chest was a scream.</p>
      <p>On the cold stone paved alleyway laid a little girl, she had a whole body riddled with small kunai blades but her face looked relatively calm, she must've died quick. Whoever wanted to kill her must've tried really hard to kill her and do it quickly, still, the pain must've been too much for the kid to not utter a single scream.</p>
      <p>"A murder? Here? I almost feel sorry for the perp..."</p>
      <p>"The Syndicate will have the shitface's head for this..."</p>
      <p>"Wow, I wonder who's gonna have it worse, this poor kid or whoever did this once the Boss gets his hands on 'im..."</p>
      <p>"A random alleyway crime? Here? When was the last time that happened?"</p>
      <p>"Look at that body... She's riddled with kunai, almost like it was a Syndicate hit, could it have been? Are the Syndicates doing this now?"</p>
      <p>A whole bunch of wild banter reached Mana's ears as the crowd began gathering around the body. The magician girl's eyes squinted in anger and determination, she would find whoever did this, she didn't care if she'd have to lose an opportunity to decipher the strange ancient code ball from Wind Country in the process but the death of this little kid would not go forgotten... Too many deaths of too many children have in this cruel world and it seemed like the pleasure driven people of Otogakure were far more shocked by an actual reminder just in which planet they settled down than Mana was by yet another failure to save a life in need of saving...</p>
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      <p>Shimo angrily kicked a can so hard that it bashed into a stone wall of a building and exploded into tin shrapnel, scratching a couple of passers-by who just turned at the Yuki and then at the wall, one guy just angrily turned his index finger to his temple suggesting that the young swordsman may have had a psychological problem of some sorts, as far as that man's professional judgment was concerned anyway...</p>
      <p>The swordsman had a decent reason to be moderately annoyed, he didn't manage to get any information from that young lady and she was so into sleeping with him that it somehow shook his wish to be himself off. He could never understand his sensei's wish to sleep with women he paid off to sleep with him. Nor could he justify being a gentleman and his usual self to ladies who acted so simple-minded and pleasure-driven as the women he lead to the block of flats before.</p>
      <p>He had gotten a couple of hints about the name of the hall from the woman, however, a name he had no association to meant very little to a young man who came to Otogakure from a different country. Only then did Shimo see a gigantic neon sign pointing out that the establishment below it indeed was the very same, one and only, Ponac hall. The Yuki swordsman may have underestimated the pompousness and sheer in your face attitude of this village.</p>
      <p>Even more, he was yet to see a single ninja in this ninja village, no one ever bothered to wear the headbands with the Sound Village insignia on it. They were either hiding their allegiances or... Maybe the Syndicate didn't like ninja and the folks were forced into hiding their identities? But Otogakure ninja couldn't have been that lame as to lose to a bunch of overdressed pretty boys with fancy blade cannons... This village held so many mysteries and it was so easy to lose oneself in one completely unrelated to Shimo's mission at hand.</p>
      <p>"Ponac hall, huh?" He wondered looking at the crowd of people lined up that dragged all the way to the dozens of other halls. Just faintly his eyes could pick up a large poster depicting a pretty young woman, perhaps in her late teens to early twenties with fancy looking bright blue hair and overly pompous hairdo matched with excessive yet impressive make-up job for a teen of her years.</p>
      <p>"So even kids were absorbed into this mad pleasure and musical culture..." Shimo sighed realizing that he was to see many odd things before the night ended, even after seeing what he was about to see he'd still be lucky to get why the crew came to this darned village in the first place.</p>
      <p>Shimo tried approaching the suit-wearing gentleman standing by the door and wearing those insanely fashionable nightly shades that must've been so immensely comfortable and helpful at night, then again... The whole place was so filled with neon lights showing off one product after another that perhaps Shimo was the fool for not wearing something to block all this blasted light out from his eyes. All of the sudden he began understanding the point of all this odd fashion sense of all these local folks. Maybe by living the Otogakure dream for a while, he'd understand a lot more about the mysteries of this place, then again, this place reeked of everything the boy was not overly fond of. Talk over action, visuals over content...</p>
      <p>"Hey, back of the line..." The muscle mountain said rather gently pushing Shimo back</p>
      <p>"With that kimono, stay at the back of the line..." His similarly dressed friend joked making both of them crack a grin. "Cosplay night is next Saturday, come back then, Musashi the Great Sword..." The first one laughed out from a reference to a popular manga series, maybe if Sugemi was here he'd have made some aware sly replies about it but the condescension just made Shimo angrily walk his way to the back of the line. It'd be hours before he was even let in, there was no guarantee that Notasa would even be performing then. He needed another plan of getting in, it was so convenient that he had attire problems and authority issues when he wanted to bust some Syndicate heads so badly...</p>
      <p>Maybe Shimo was yet to get some enjoyment of Otogakure and how the life here was lived after all...</p>
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<a name="section0186"><h2>186. Sound Village Stories</h2></a>
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      <p>A strong, chilling to the bone evening wind blew past all of Kouta's defenses that his clothing offered meant to repel the cold. His ninja physiology allowed him great endurance of unfavorable conditions, one many times beyond what a human would survive. His entire body could've been frozen, every single particle of it turned into a frigid icicle and if unfrozen the boy would survive. Same went with the opposite spectrum – impossible heats were painful yet non-lethal to someone with good chakra control and ability to augment their bodies using it. None of those things meant that chilling cold or searing heat didn't feel absolutely horrible.</p>
      <p>There were people that despised ninja, common villagers sometimes bantered among each other how they are oppressed by the ninja or samurai or the pirates or whatever the bane of society was that time, how their neighbor could hire one to kill their entire neighborhood if they had enough money and similar nonsense. It sort of made sense before one delved deeper into it – villagers were weak and afraid and weak and afraid people were the worst kind. They didn't care that ninja suffered burns and that they felt pain just like the villagers did – all they cared was that they weren't human, almost demonic people because being submerged into magma only singed their clothes off and left some small burns and marks where their chakra control was not at its best. Inner world, pain, and feelings mattered little to those who were afraid and weak.</p>
      <p>Kouta gripped his sides harder, rubbing his elbows to fend off the cold at least a little. He had some backup rags remaining so losing the majority of his ninja tools and his clothes meant slightly less than it potentially could've, still, it was an event worth some regretting at the very least. He felt a little proud of himself, proud of his own abilities. He knew that father would've been proud of him as well – five thousand or so degrees of superheated primal sludge bursting from the ground was a feat to withstand for a ninja his age. It must've been the sleeping Juugo clansman in Kouta that took pride in these meaningless achievements. Even with all of his might, with all the Justicar he took on or out, with all of their attacks he withstood he couldn't help Mana, and that was what counted.</p>
      <p>Kouta took a short while surveying the industrial districts. He took hours upon hours of bartering to buy as much as a kunai blade, desperate monetary situations called for very convincing and lengthy negotiations... Still, he had to possess some intimidation inside of him, he managed to buy an entire handful of used blades for the price it'd have taken him to pay for one. A couple of successful hourly barters like that would've refilled his ninja kit, even if it was of secondary importance to the boy, having his fighting style in mind.</p>
      <p>It used to mean a lot to Kouta – he used to be a lot shyer on the battlefield, he used to fear his own inheritance from his father's clan, he disliked his own power because the people who used it historically were mad and brutish. He couldn't wrap his head around it that it was the person using the power and not the power itself that could've been evil and distasteful. In a way, he was not unlike those weak and terrified villagers afraid of ninja and samurai or pirates and their godly battles, namely being caught in their crossfire...</p>
      <p>A young woman writhed on the paved floor, in the industrial districts the floor was less stone and more tin and metal. It clanged as the boy walked towards her over the old and rusted metal plates. Despite the noise he had made, the woman did not react. She remained conscious as she was moving, or so her movements could've been described as even the most pathetic writhing of a caterpillar was, in a manner of speech, movement. There was some icky light brownish sludge laying beside the woman, it had traces of blood in it, quite large ones, in fact, which troubled the medical ninja part of the boy. The sight of blood in any bodily fluid was something to be troubled about...</p>
      <p>Kouta stood in front of the downed and incapacitated, possibly even drunk or drugged, female. She could've easily been a trap set by the Syndicate, trying to exploit his heroic side, trying to force him to lower his guard so that these fools could think they've found an opening in Kouta's defenses. It would've taken a moderate amount of chakra to maintain his defenses at their strongest throughout the entire procedure of checking this woman... He could always rely on his bodily reflexes to enhance his body if need be but Kouta didn't want to, the enhancements could've been smaller than his intended or needed ones, they could've also been lazy and quickly slapped together and costing him much more chakra in the process...</p>
      <p>Kouta sighed and kneeled by the woman placing his hands above her wet blue dress. She looked like she may have been in her nightgown preparing to sleep but somehow ended up in a faraway and desolate industrial district of the village. Even so, her appearance was odd – it was clear that the woman was in her mid-thirties, the early forties perhaps. Her bodily condition and her appearance alone would've suggested her being in her late sixties, however – her skin was wrinkled and yellow in its shade. Even through the messed up and washed off make-up of hers it was seen that something was incredibly wrong with this woman. Her heels may have looked impressive ten or so years ago, or a certain amount of nights of rubbing them into the pavement but now they looked pathetic at best, the fewer said about her sticky and messy blond-like hair the better...</p>
      <p>A blueish bright glow emanated through the boy's hands as he uttered "Diagnosis Jutsu" to himself as there was simply no one conscious enough to hear it or make sense of his words. The young one scanned through the woman's body suspecting assault, maybe she was attacked, injured with a kunai blade or maybe shot by one of those Syndicate's kunai firing gadgets they carried around. Soon the young medical ninja's eyes shot open wide before squinting just to protect his white as early winter snow eyes from the pouring rain.</p>
      <p>"What say you, Doc, how much I got left?" The woman uttered, having her condition in mind it was surprising that she could even speak, blink or think. Kouta felt like being truthful with her may have been a bit too cruel, he did not know this woman or her story, he had no proof that Syndicate was even involved or her own role in that damned organization. He knew so little about her but she had so little time left that Kouta decided to spend his night with this woman... Right until her last.</p>
      <p>"I'm going to heal you up, it won't cure you of what's wrong with you, that simply cannot be done, not by someone of my skill level and not by anyone in Otogakure. We'd need to see some specialists in Kirigakure or Konoha for that. I'll be as honest as human decency allows me to be – you don't have long... That is why I'll resort to healing you in the first place – any hospital would consider your case hopeless but you don't have enough time to snap out of this... Alcohol or drug induced... Whatever you're going through so I'll have to heal you partially just so you don't spend your final moments being high." Kouta replied as the light emanated from his hands changed color, turning salad green in the process.</p>
      <p>He had no money or place to go until he was found by his friends. Human decency begged him to stay by this woman's side until her final moments...</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Mana kneeled by the body of the young girl on the ground. She carefully observed the stabbing wound on her chest – whoever wanted to kill this kid meant it, wanted it. It was strange how straight and unbent the angle was, so pretty... Almost like the girl didn't resist being stabbed. The scream that escaped her mouth must've come after she realized how painful being stabbed in the chest actually was, Mana would've known, after all. It's not something one brushes off, even if they fully wish it and for some reason intend on accepting the injury.</p>
      <p>The people around the two girls began to grow bolder, some asked questions if Mana and Meiko had anything to do with this, some felt angry that the magician took examining the body into her own hands. Truth was that this wasn't even close to her team's jurisdiction, her mission was to find a place to sleep over in and then find Notasa, question the performer about the sphere, proceed to the coordinates written on it. This was something Mana took up to do because it felt like the right thing to do, Meiko just stood by carefully shoving anyone trying to get into Mana's face back.</p>
      <p>"Mana, maybe you should hurry up with whatever you're planning to do, the Police Force could be here any minute, that'd get us in trouble. Unless you plan to spend our night at the arrest house, in which case it's a pretty desperate idea..." The blacksmith grunted as the flow of people gathering around them intensified. It wasn't that they were strong enough to push Meiko aside, far from it, however, their sheer numbers made seeing all of them and tracking their moves difficult.</p>
      <p>"Coppers? Here? There is no Police Force in this goddamn place, maybe they'll come in an hour, maybe in two, just to play a charade that they still exist and are doing something..." Someone in the crowd informed Meiko and Mana which calmed the magician down, that meant she had ample time to think and understand what could have transpired here. The girl had always had a certain flair for strange and unexplainable, this murder certainly sounded like it.</p>
      <p>"Since the Syndicate took over the streets there have been no murders like this, not for a while... What's even gonna happen?" Some of the villagers raised questions.</p>
      <p>Mana stood up and sighed. "This is... Weird. This girl wanted to get stabbed, she offered no resistance against her attacker, the stabbing angle is neat and pretty like it all went just like it was supposed to, based on the angle of the stab I'd say the killer was barely this girl's height, the stab was upfront, a thrust, the person just raised their arm and drove it in..." She concluded.</p>
      <p>"And?" Meiko wondered, "So we're looking for a bunch of kids killing other kids? Is this some sort of a game?" The blacksmith wondered.</p>
      <p>"Yoruma have similar initiation rituals – playful duels where each contestant shows off just one move at a time trying to clash wits and techniques between each combatant. Or it could be a rite of passage of some sort but... This girl doesn't look like a Yoruma or a ninja in general – her hair color is bland and bright, she has no Yoruma tattoos, she doesn't wear a ninja kit or a headband..." Mana scratched her chin examining the young girl further. This peculiar and depressing murder intrigued her and it made the magician sick of herself to no end.</p>
      <p>"Maybe the killer is a little guy, you know... Like has a growth problem or something, he makes himself out to be a kid and weaves his web around the kids, telling them lies and complicated psycho mumbo jumbo until the kids wish to die so they do not resist?" Meiko gave her own shot based on the information provided. Even genin straight out of Academy would've been able to analyze a body this way, make theories of what could've happened. Usually, the dead bodies would've had eviscerations, dismemberments, decapitations, blunt force or burn trauma suggesting of an exchange of ninjutsu. This body laid silent.</p>
      <p>Mana looked at the side and pressed her fingers against a bunch of mud on the watery stone paved floor. She calculated the width and distance between steps, it could've been anyone's steps honestly with all these trouncing people but... The steps were those of a child or, as Meiko suggested, a very short person acting like one. They were surrounded by other footsteps that differed in width and angle as well as distance. That suggested that there may have been more kids accompanying the killer, the strange manner of the placement of the feet implied that the kids may have been skipping and prancing around. Or maybe it was just the drizzle disturbing what little respectable clues remained?</p>
      <p>"This isn't good, this is a work of a group, that may mean that more kids would die today or some other day. We need to snoop around and try to pick some traces up... It'd be good if we had a sensor with us... Maybe there'd be a residual chakra signature if one of the killers was a ninja or at least an Academy student. The way things are now it's too complicated to be sure of anything..." Mana concluded standing up and walking away from the blood covered alleyway. She had left her fingerprints as well as her footprints in the pools of the girl's blood. If the Syndicate or the Police Force actually wished to apprehend them they'd have their work cut out for them, especially if anyone in the crowd recognized her as Konoha's Sorceress, that was not outside the realm of possibility...</p>
      <p>"And we have to do this?" Meiko asked placing on and securing her wristbands as well as shoulder pads and boots, the blacksmith kunoichi was gearing up for war, or so it seemed...</p>
      <p>"I've already failed to save those cave dwellers. I need to do this, I failed to save that girl but maybe we can still track whoever did this to her and prevent more dead children laying butchered in the alleyways." Mana answered with a sad and unconfident tone. Problems with confidence were something Meiko was quite familiar with, what with all of her problems controlling her chakra and properly executing ninjutsu techniques and all... Mana knew that deep in her gut, whatever complicated thought processes understandable only to Meiko herself transpired, she'd agree with the magician.</p>
      <p>"Alright. Let's do this!" Meiko punched her own glove excitedly blasting out a small shockwave that picked up papers, wrappers, and rubbish in its wake, flipping over several trash bins around. The blacksmith must've been excited about this, why else would she lack any restraint of her chakra flow like that? "The guys will most likely be really pissed at us..." the blacksmith peeked at her backpack filled with Audra shards, something they should've used to secure a room to sleep in...</p>
      <p>"After all this time working together you should know that I am the last person to care about what other people think of us..." Mana answered looking up into the dark sky and feeling the intensifying downpour pelting at her weak, depressed and restless face.</p>
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      <p>"Ye'll hear about dis!" a Syndicate goon shouted out before Shimo's punch clocked the mafioso out. It only took an hour or two of waiting for the Syndicate goons to start showing up, willing to engage in some of the world-known Otogakure musical cultural activities. Not just any, in fact, the very best! These guys were no Audra brutes from way back, Shimo was not the strongest puncher and yet... The men crumbled even from his weakest and restrained fists.</p>
      <p>"Shut up and take that jacket off, yours fits me much better than your friends' do," Shimo roughed out pointing at the long black and stripped four button jacket with shoulder pads that the goon wore. Carefully, Shimo assembled the whole set of clothes out of the Syndicate goons he beat up: black fancy leather boots, black trousers with stripes to match the suit, a shirt and a tie as well as the strange looking tie. Then, the boy picked off the hat off of one of the Mafiosi and a cigar out of the guy he just knocked out.</p>
      <p>Carefully, the Yuki examined himself in front of a large puddle – the weird and faintly lit image suggested that the shirt was too tight and the jacket was way too large for him, either way – it looked acceptable enough to try his luck again. He may not have smoked but smoking would've added him some extra credibility as a cool Syndicate mafioso looking for evening entertainment. Slowly and somewhat lacking in confidence, the young man walked up to the bouncers again overhearing a quarrel between a group of arguing individuals.</p>
      <p>"I'm the goddamn Much Money Cred – a rapping sensation, you stupid piece of shit! This whole fucking place, this goddamn evening wouldn't fucking happen if I wouldn't perform my life changing lyrics of my neat rhymes!" A gentleman proclaimed his self-imposed importance to the bouncers who looked like they were pulling the rapper's finger. The man looked way darker in his skin tone than anyone around, much darker even than Mana who at times looked a bit exotic compared to people around her. He wore a strange orange and white vest that covered his chest and left his muscular arms covered with tattoos open.</p>
      <p>"Much Money Cred? Ey, Brock, you heard of this guy!? I sure as hell haven't..." The bouncer once again playfully exclaimed placing his arms behind their back and nodding at the back of the line with their chin.</p>
      <p>"Nah, never heard of 'im, oh, sorry, maybe from the countless of interviews this guy gives in the papers and can't shut up about how he's the "New sensation sweeping all the nations", is that how ya call yourself?" The other finally revealed his game.</p>
      <p>"I'm the most successful musical project in the history of mankind! My agent will hear about this, I'll bury this place under, UNDER I tell you!" The dark-skinned gentleman began wildly swinging his hands so frantically that he dropped his pink shaded glasses. Shimo has heard of the appropriate expression before but he had never seen someone actually wearing such glasses...</p>
      <p>"Ey, whatever ya say, punk, just please don't tell your wife about it, she'll just tell you what kind of a type-A personality you are and then you'll end up beating her up again, big man" The bouncer snickered into his fist as the atmosphere became a little more serious after this event was mentioned.</p>
      <p>"Or wait, did you do that last month already and this month is drunk exhibitionism time, I get the wife beating month confused with the last one..."</p>
      <p>"Always happens, could happen to anyone, really... Sometimes Cred himself is so drunk he mixes them up" The bouncer's friend simulated genuine pity.</p>
      <p>"The thing is, Much Money Cred, that we know who you fucking are and we know what you do to keep your "Most Successful Musical Project" rep around these parts. Guess what, you ain't even that important, we could just say that you came here naked again and yelling some religious babble while spitting at everyone and we didn't let you in and no one would bat an eye... Also, I work as a fucking bouncer, to me a job in a fast food joint would be a promotion, oh, sorry, Mr. Natos, you go right in..." The bouncer started giving his huge moral of the day before noticing another performer, a large man covered with blond hair and facial hair like the mane on a lion carrying a colossal sized guitar with him, and letting him in.</p>
      <p>"What the fuck was that!?" Much Money Cred outright shrieked out after another singer was let in while he was forced to stand outside in the rain and listen to what those bouncers tried to tell him. "He sings fucking country, COUNTRY and you let him in! Who the fuck listens to country anymore!?" Cred began rampaging around knocking over trash cans and tearing his vest off his body. At that point, Shimo decided he's had enough, slowly and more confidently the young man strolled up to the bouncers who were calming Money Cred down and tipped his hat.</p>
      <p>"It's a fine evenin' fellas..." the young man spoke trying to emulate the dialect and the accent of the Syndicate guys, it appeared like the Syndicate rep here was flawless as he was let in without as much as a hitch.</p>
      <p>"What the literal fuck, that guy is a fucking mobster! He came here right after murdering someone for money, for fuck's sake!" Much Money continued his anger fueled rampage. It'd probably take some long time of stopping the line before the guy was let in. Honestly, Shimo started to think he should've slipped in faster since the rapper came pretty close to ruining his mood for the day. He was beginning to think that he had just about enough of those musicians for a day or thirty...</p>
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<a name="section0187"><h2>187. Until Dawn Breaks</h2></a>
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      <p>"So... How does this work, will you just stand by me until my last croak? That's what you call "decency"?" The woman spoke.</p>
      <p>Her attitude annoyed Kouta, this expression just furthered that impression. He was wasting time with a patient that no medical ninja would take. He healed her enough to give her time maybe until the morning and wasted a whole bunch of his chakra in return, greatly weakening himself in the process. If she really was a trap flung by the Syndicate his way she offered no effort to hide it. Actually, she was a bit too bitchy to be a trap, then again, Kouta hasn't met many human traps.</p>
      <p>"I've diagnosed you, I've healed you... As best as it is possible given the circumstances. What else do you want?" Kouta grunted out, he was tired, weakened and annoyed. Not his best hour to speak to a person who would've died at any point normally, now given more time to waste on... Whatever brought her to this condition.</p>
      <p>"Well, first, maybe explain what's wrong with me? I've seen many medical ninja but none of them bothered. All of them just sung doomsday sonatas and tossed around empty warnings and threats..." The woman asked.</p>
      <p>"Your body is incinerated from inside. Your organs and insides, even blood are boiled to a sludgy mush that stuck together into one giant clump. The best comparison is – your gut looks like you drank a bottle of pure magma. You'd have died at any moment if I didn't heal you, now only my chakra sustains you. You maybe have till morning, honestly, given the injuries at hand... I'm surprised you're even alive, you barely had a working cell in your organism." Kouta replied brushing his hair with his own hand and wiping the sweat from his forehead. The young man felt his body flaring up with a small fever and saw his vision blurring. He must've wasted more chakra than he planned, he was used healing Mana, sometimes the others, maybe he missed some chakra nodes that were misplaced, after all, all bodies were unique...</p>
      <p>"Holy shit... You make it sound much gloomier than the other whitecoats, you've got a knack for that, kid. Someday you're gonna make a pretty and sick gal cry real bad, nice job." The woman pressed her forehead against her ruined and badly done fingernails. As the rain covered her hair and face and washed some of the filth on her away, Kouta thought that she may have been an attractive woman once, maybe even that same beauty placed bread and butter on her table?</p>
      <p>"Well... My first instinct was to hold back but... I know what those injuries are from, kind of... I suspect at least, having in mind how the doctors "warned" and "threatened" you. I guess ultimately I am as much of a simpleton brawler like my father, just like I am a medical ninja... My medical discretion asks to be discrete, my warrior side tells me to say it how it is." Kouta replied. He wanted to spend some more time with the woman, at least until her final hours but now he prolonged the time she had and so prolonged the time decency made him stick around her.</p>
      <p>The woman smiled revealing a mouth of ruined yellow teeth, something the young medical ninja hadn't noticed before.</p>
      <p>"Well, something I've come to learn is that it's easy to choose a side, an identity, when you suck at everything else, it is when both things stick to you, when both things are part of your identity and define you together that the really tough choices have to be made..." She said.</p>
      <p>"I have a friend who's struggling with similar issues. Maybe you've found a solution to that problem? It's tough to tell your real age, I suspect you look far worse than you actually are, no offense, one thing for certain is that you have more experience." Kouta asked wondering if he could obtain some of this woman's wisdom in the matter before she passed away. She just smiled once again with that terrible keyboard of rotten teeth and shook her head.</p>
      <p>"Not unless you can help me find the answer until dawn..." She uttered.</p>
      <p>"I wish I could..." Kouta said, "Would that be the only matter left unresolved in your life? That very same girl is also very afraid of ghosts and spirits so I'd like to not spawn another one..." He tried to joke but realized that it may have come off as really rude. Then again, when one's imminent death was concerned morality and lines that weren't supposed to be crossed blurred greatly. When a person was about to kill you it was OK to kill that person, a person had no obligation to help another one until that another one is in mortal peril. Death redefined everything.</p>
      <p>"Oh no... There is one regret I wish I could have resolved but no sane doctor would advise me..." The woman spoke longingly.</p>
      <p>"Oh?" Kouta couldn't decide how to ask her to elaborate so he just uttered it, seeing how the woman fell silent, maybe wondering how he'd react and if he'd help her last request.</p>
      <p>"You know I wasn't always the ruined lady passed out in the puddle. As a brat I was curious and ambitious, my parents and grandparents kept telling me I'd rise high, that I'd be a businesswoman or maybe a great musician or at least someone of the first generation of the village's great ninja. I guess for kids curiosity, ambition and high hopes are all that matters. All curious kids are supposed to go high, right?" The woman asked, she fell silent so she must've expected a reply.</p>
      <p>"I guess..." Kouta answered, for a moment he thought about his own childhood, not having been an aggressive kid, not having been the curious or overly ambitious one. He just wanted father and mother to stop fighting, he just wanted to make both of them happy but that was until he realized that both of his parents wanted him to be different things. Satisfying them both was impossible, choices had to be made...</p>
      <p>"So then when I grew, my curiosity didn't fade, I had to go everywhere, do everything. That's when it became a problem. My parents now hated how I spent all of my time on various training missions and..."</p>
      <p>"You were a ninja?" Kouta asked, there was little wonder in the question, had she not been she'd have never survived total incineration of her innards into a large clot of puss and gore.</p>
      <p>"Sure, at some point. Then, as all people, I've had to make choices. Curiosity isn't nearly as precious for teens and young adults as it is for children. People expect curiosity to die and be replaced by devotion at some point, even sacrifice... Well, it didn't, not for me, nevertheless, I had to make choices, I didn't choose to become a ninja, I became a musician instead. All because of the ambition, the high hopes of rising high... That same curiosity lead me to become the passed out lady in the puddle. I rose high initially, I was the kind of person Notasa and Hipler are like now" The woman said.</p>
      <p>"So what happened?" Kouta wondered.</p>
      <p>"Fame... Fame and a lot of jackbang" The woman lowered her head.</p>
      <p>"Damn..." Kouta whispered to himself. Jackbang was a similar drug to the hat'ash of the Wind Country but much more aggressive, much more toxic. Where the hat'ash wasn't technically addictive, just the sensations it gave were pleasant enough to seek some more, similarly to how food that tasted good begged to be eaten again, jackbang was highly addictive and ultimately lethal in most cases. When ingested it burnt up and blew up like firecrackers, it filled one's mouth with chemicals that forced the organism to secrete pleasure hormones while their body was being blown up and burnt from inside. It also was addictive to the degree that addicts licked off the foam that the substance exploded into once it escaped the user's mouth.</p>
      <p>Sometimes the addict's body became so ruined that their entire bone and flesh structure became as flammable as the substance they took, then the person was set on flames from within and spontaneously burnt up to a crisp. Kouta suspected that drugs were involved, maybe jackbang, maybe chillpill, hat'ash would've been rare in these places but obtainable by a starlet which this woman once claimed to be...</p>
      <p>"You know... All I wish is to nib on one more cracker of actual pure hat'ash before I go... The brownie that started it all... My downfall to the bottom of the shaft." The woman whimpered after a pause of silence.</p>
      <p>"Absolutely not. It's a relaxation drug but it's a drug nonetheless, it may not harm a normal person much but it might kill you." Kouta objected, his professional judgment could barely even contradict that idea.</p>
      <p>"I'm already dead..." The woman spoke with longing of the life she once had.</p>
      <p>"From how you've lead the conversation to this point I assume there's a specific person you wish to nab it from? This was all your plan, to ask this of me all along?" Kouta suspected.</p>
      <p>"My manager, who then became my dealer once I didn't make like I used to, who then started croaking with the Syndicate once he made more than I used to, but we've no hopes of getting to his nest, not with all the other Syndicate dogs barking around him." She sadly exclaimed.</p>
      <p>Suddenly Kouta realized what Mana would have done in that situation. Usually, the girl made the impression of a strict and by the book kind of person but, actually, she only followed rules when they were valid and acceptable through her own prism. No... Mana had the potential to become the world's greatest nukenin based on how little she thought of rules.</p>
      <p>At this point, when a dying person asked for a last smoky cracker from a dealer that may have had a hand in ruining her life... There was only one answer to give her. All she wanted was a little pleasure before her inevitable death, the pleasure of tasting something pure, the pleasure of seeing the empire of the men that supplied the substance that ruined her life burn down to ashes. Mana would've rolled the joint out of the largest bill of money the sucker had herself... Kouta admired Mana greatly and wanted to be more like her, he wanted to be with her, he loved her...</p>
      <p>"We've got time. If nothing else..." he suggested with a hopeful tone and a smirk.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Mana and Meiko wandered the streets. They had little if any clue about where they could've found anything solid. They had a suspect, they had a modus operandi but they couldn't pinpoint the person, their location or where their sick and twisted murders would occur again. Mana slapped her forehead and grunted angrily. The leather jacket and skirt she wore may have protected her from rain rather competently but the silk shirt she wore below that was getting soaked and the rain was literally dripping off her long hair wrapping around her skin and under her clothes. Her hopelessness sickened the magician.</p>
      <p>"No one's knocking me out now..." She uttered. "No one's in my way, no one to struggle fighting without killing them, no friend standing in my way freezing me to inaction... And yet still I can't save anyone," she complained.</p>
      <p>Meiko looked down and then up into the pouring sky, she did not avoid or even try to avoid Mana's curious glares. The blacksmith was attempting to find something, she saw her friend tormenting herself over something she didn't even understand and so the redhead continued to order herself to figure it out for her friend. Not because the matter pleased or was important to Meiko but because it was important enough for Mana to care. All sadness and depressing tears disappeared or got stuck somewhere in their forming steps as Mana became taken over by surprise and gratitude for her friend, just for a brief moment, not long enough for Meiko to notice but long enough for Mana to realize how fond she'd grown of the blacksmith. She was certainly not wrong to plan this trip, Meiko would hold the legendary artifact in her hands if it was the last thing Mana would do...</p>
      <p>"The villagers said that the police force only functions as a façade and that the Syndicate thugs are the only "investigators" with real knowledge... You'd normally speak to the police force to get some details, right? Why don't we substitute one for the other?" Meiko asked something that sounded so foolish when she said it but the more Mana thought about it the more genius it sounded. When one met the blacksmith a common first impression would've been that she's primitive and dumb just because she was a bit awkward, noisy and quirky but the truth couldn't have been farther away. Meiko was just as smart as she needed to be, she just thought differently.</p>
      <p>"That's... Actually pure genius, I am surprised..." Mana blinked a couple of times in rapid succession staring at Meiko in surprise, just like with the blacksmith's knowledge of music, the redhead surprised Mana by how smart she sometimes could've been.</p>
      <p>"Yeah but... We won't be able to just waltz in and talk to them, I mean those guys probably know us and hate us, right?" Meiko thought for a moment.</p>
      <p>"Are you or are you not a ninja?" Mana smiled proudly. How could've her friend who just suggested such an amazing idea now not realized how easy the solution was.</p>
      <p>"Right... Transformation technique..." Meiko thought while scratching the side of her head. "I wouldn't bet on that though, I mean you can't even use that, can you"?</p>
      <p>"Hmph... If only I had my chakra control back we could use Combination Transformation Jutsu, I'd use my skill with ninjutsu and you'd supply the chakra and the idea..." Mana thought while scratching her chin. Strange, almost comical ideas of hiding under the same coat began dawning in her mind, even someone as optimistic and whimsical as Mana saw how silly these thoughts were and swatted them aside.</p>
      <p>"How much do you like being tied up?" Meiko smiled.</p>
      <p>"Have you even seen my show?" Mana smiled back as the two finally settled on an idea. There was no way that Meiko could've asked the right questions as her strangely working mind focused on completely other things entirely so Mana had to be there but she couldn't use the Transformation Technique, also wiring Meiko with a microphone would've been too risky and expensive, also no one even brought along the hi-tech pieces of the ninja kit since they were looking at a sandy trip along the vastness of the Wind Country deserts...</p>
      <p>Finally, a plan was made, the two would find out the truth and catch the person responsible for this gruesome murder until the new day dawned...</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>"Hey wait... I forgot your face, you'll be rich, I tell ya" a mobster laughed straight into Shimo's face once the youth made his way into the hall. The schedule hanging in the hall suggested that Notasa's concert was about to start and the curtain was still closed, it was a lovely red suede cloth with a white star embroidered on it with a nice gold colored "Notasa" signature hanging on top of the star. This lady was much fancier than Mana's show, maybe if the magician charged more she'd also be much more pompous, just like this lady...</p>
      <p>"Whachu talkin' bout, it's Jonessy, from the neighborhood!" Another drunk mobster wiped his nose. These two must've already had quite the night since the fat and small one who had just spoken was already quite blushed from alcohol's daze and had lost his fancy striped jacket somewhere, his white shirt was torn and unbuttoned halfway letting his fat chest and belly slip more and more out and siege the rest of his buttons with pressure they slowly relented to.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, ye goomba, how could you not know me, Jonessy, from the neighborhood!?" Shimo yelled out playing his act out and slapping the tall slim one in the back of his head making his top hat slip off and fall to the ground. The slim one didn't even bother picking him up, he just laughed out and blushed.</p>
      <p>"Sorry, I drank too much to tell guys from the neighborhood apart... What neighborhood are ya from though?" He asked.</p>
      <p>"What difference does it make, the bastard married Ariadne Jetson, the fuckin' actress! For fuck's sake Petey, you're embarrassing the neighborhood! He's from the neighborhood I'm telling you..." The fat one once again outright shouted into his friend's face and settled down locking his fingers together and slipping into a lovely alcoholic's slumber.</p>
      <p>"Did you really marry Ariadne Jetson?" The slim one asked leaning over his sleepy friend right up in Shimo's ear, the swordsman pinched his nose and placed his sword against the seat in front of him.</p>
      <p>"Oh... Wait... You're the guy who uses the sword we recruited right? What's his name... Damn, I forgot, he's from no neighborhood though, he's from... Damn... I don't even know..." the slim one scratched his chin with a small stubble of a couple of hairs wrapping around each other.</p>
      <p>"Does it matter? I just wish to see the show, can't we just listen to the show?" Shimo grunted facepalming himself angrily. He was seriously considering changing seats but that would've alerted the two drunks that he wasn't enjoying their company or attracted too much attention so close before the show started.</p>
      <p>"Wait... Wasn't Jonessy supposed to bring the money today?" The slim one complained again.</p>
      <p>"The money?" Shimo asked.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, the money for gambling!" The slim one shouted out alerting everyone around them but the Sound Village inhabitants knew better than to object the silence broken by the Syndicate.</p>
      <p>"You're drunk. Stop picking this fight, you'll lose..." Shimo replied, "It wasn't my turn, it was this fat pig's" The Yuki replied slamming his elbow into the fat drunk's sleeping face. The chubby remained asleep, a disgusting snot slipped out from his broken and hooked nose.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... You're from the neighborhood alright..." The slim one smiled slapping Shimo's back rudely with a laughter that spread more of his stench throughout the whole hall.</p>
      <p>"But are you?" Shimo angrily squinted at the slim one back with an angry stare.</p>
      <p>"How dare ya! I bet you ain't even married to Ariadne Jetson ye goomba!" The slim one jumped up rolling back his sleeves. "I was born in the neighborhood long before you, raised in it and kicked my ball with the neighborhoodest of them all! And even if I wasn't, I was playin' outside with the others way earlier because I was a late bloomer"!</p>
      <p>"An early bloomer..." Shimo replied crossing his hands over his chest and extending his legs so that they were lifted onto the seat in front of him. He was taught of the criminal ways good by his second sensei when he left the village temporarily. He had the chops to Syndicate all around this joker...</p>
      <p>"What?" The slim bastard complained dragging Shimo's face closer by his collar and winding up his punch. Shimo accelerated the chakra flow to break the dirtbag's fist when he decided to punch.</p>
      <p>"An early bloomer, if you'd have been a late bloomer you'd have joined the neighborhood crew later than normal, your point is that you've more neighborhood cred than Jonessy of the neighborhood and you simply do not. One does not outneighborhood Jonessy of the neighborhood! I knew all the neighborhood warriors! If I started naming them you'd know none of them, that's how many warriors I knew!" Shimo smiled shrugging.</p>
      <p>Finally, the fat slob woke up and tore the slim Petey off Shimo making the young swordsman fix his jacket and sit back down in his seat. The chubby shook Petey violently.</p>
      <p>"Stop! You're ruining our cred here, yer picking fights with Jonessy of the neighborhood! The guy can pee so hard he pees through a marble toilet, right fucking through! Pick yer fights carefully because if Jonessy gets as much as one drop of sake he'll kick your ass and then steal your woman"!</p>
      <p>"But he's married to Ariadne Jetson, isn't he? What does he need my Hunney for?" Petey began to sob. The fat mobster shook his friend violently and slapped him around before pushing him back into his seat.</p>
      <p>"You've had twelve too many rice whiskeys... Look at yerself, Petey... Picking fights with the neighborhood... Just look at yerself, Petey..." The fat slob finally settled back down.</p>
      <p>Finally, the lights turned off and the curtains opened. The Notasa's show finally started and Shimo hoped to catch the little starlet after the show, just like most fans kept Mana busy after hers...</p>
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<a name="section0188"><h2>188. Things We Have To Lose</h2></a>
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      <p>Kouta was moving slowly, looking back every couple of steps to see how his newly met acquaintance was doing. The woman was moving, stumbling and needed wall support every couple of steps but she was moving which was much more than what she would've had, had the medical ninja not stumbled upon her and decided to be crazy and questionably unethical and brought her back. While the two were moving forward to a location that the soon to be departed lady continuously pointed out a new question came up for the Juugo ninja.</p>
      <p>He healed the woman and went along with her request thinking that it was the right thing to do, after all, was healing people and bringing them back to life, whenever possible, not the purpose of the entire medical ninja profession? On the most basic and primal understandings of its linguistics and true meaning behind the word it was. However, there was a much deeper abyss of ethical and practical understanding which took arguably just as long if not longer to understand than the actual art of bringing people back to life using one's own inner power.</p>
      <p>Was it ethical letting this woman stumble and wheeze through her final moments? Live as a burnt, rotten shell with the knowledge that she'd eventually die anyway? Was any of those things even close to touching the line that defined the medical ninja? The rules and practices of "pointless patients" were not vain ones, despite them sounding cruel to the uneducated eye. Just because Kouta could give this woman some hours of conscience and life he didn't ask the question "should he"? When the boy's chakra emanated through the woman's system he was sure it was the way to go, right now, seeing her struggle to even walk straight and wheeze, cough up blood... Kouta was not so sure anymore.</p>
      <p>"So where are we going again? You just said that if I was to fulfill my promise to help you realize your last wish I need to get ready, you haven't spoken of this place in much detail..." Kouta asked. He was so absorbed with the ethical questions of his actions that he suddenly realized he stopped living here and now. He had heard of similar problems plaguing the stronger and higher ranking ninja. When one held the power inside to destroy the entire world one was plagued with much more complex questions than just if there was dog poop where they were stepping.</p>
      <p>"My old friend's place. He used to be an actor in Konohagakure, now he's somewhat of a dabbler in blades and firepower for those unassociated with the Syndicate. In his earlier life made a living for himself, even something to buy a fancy painting once in a while and a nice ring for his wife... I kept telling him that living in Otogakure was the real life: love, delicious foods and drinks and all the pleasures one could dream of. Eventually, he took my advice..." The woman spoke, leaving the last sentence to come after a long pause and also to be uttered in an overly depressed and longing tone.</p>
      <p>"What happened?" Kouta asked for more details, he wanted to know if there may have been bad history between the two. If there would've been he'd have had to fight someone that day and he'd rather not have killed a civilian inside another village, even if that was in defense of another person. He had enough ethical questions for one night...</p>
      <p>"Jackbang..." The woman uttered with disgust, understandably so as she was talking of the substance that dug her an early grave. "He became obsessed with the Otogakure lifestyle, every day he took his wife to another musical, every day they dined in restaurants each more sophisticated than the other to the point where words "where will we be eating today" substituted "I love you"... He became addicted to pleasure, stopped working altogether and when he found out that I was doing something that provided momentary simple pleasure not unlike listening to a good musical would've to an artist... It was too addicting to resist".</p>
      <p>As a medical ninja in Konohagakure, he had not heard that many stories like this. Konoha had its fair share of crime and death but people were too afraid of dying in attacks by enemy ninja to waste their time on drugs. The expected lifespan was so short that often people only became old enough to drink right before their passing. Obviously, during times of peace, the situation somewhat began to fix itself but drugs weren't a really big problem in Konoha, that was to say that with the village mentality in mind it was sort of an unattractive market.</p>
      <p>"Seeing the village like this... I always thought that pleasure-seeking was not bad by itself but... It ruined a lot of lives, hasn't it?" Kouta wondered.</p>
      <p>"Seeking pleasure is not bad. After all, happiness is what we all strive for, is it not? However, too many people confuse happiness and pleasure. Happiness is our ultimate goal and pleasure is just a stop to prevent us from going insane on the journey, our sustenance. My friend whom we will soon see found that his wife left him after an overdose of jackbang exploded inside and set him ablaze, fire-cracking from inside searing his flesh off. His wife left him, no play or one of those moving picture productions will ever hire him again. Do you think that pleasure brought him happiness?" The woman spoke up. Kouta didn't look back at her avoiding her eyes for a moment. He had taken the lady as much less wise and experienced than she actually was, perhaps it truly was those that suffered the most and lost everything that had the most lessons to teach.</p>
      <p>A loud shout stopped Kouta in his tracks, the boy looked back and saw the woman pointing at the house that they've reached. This must've been the place. The Juugo youth examined the place and had to hand it to the friend of the woman – he chose the most typical drug den to live in that possibly existed. To describe it with words would've been to simply ask one to imagine the worst kind of rundown building infested with lowlifes and people ruined lives and no hopes of bouncing back, searching for a quiet corner to die in. The house at one point just gave up on being serviceable just like its inhabitants must've. Even a dying man would've at the very least placed a cardboard sheet on top of the massive holes in the roof. One corner of the house was just simply blown up and didn't even exist.</p>
      <p>"There is no fourth wall to break in this one..." The woman snickered looking at Kouta but she saw that the boy didn't get the joke.</p>
      <p>"Yes, I can see that the fourth wall is missing but..." Kouta began but the woman's scratched and rough skin pressed against his lips as she shushed him.</p>
      <p>"Forget it, it was a joke my actor friends always laughed at, sometimes I forget that those days are long since gone..." The woman said disappearing into the darkness of the corridors of the block. Kouta sighed.</p>
      <p>"We all get nostalgic sometimes..." He tried to lighten up the woman's mood but having the fact that she's about to die in four to six hours it was insanely hard to imagine being possible.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Mana scratched her forehead, Meiko, in her transformed state, complained with great anger in her voice.</p>
      <p>"Mana we've been over this, you're tied up, stop getting out of my knots!"</p>
      <p>"There was some sort of a bug on my forehead, if it landed on my nose it'd have gone itchy, no one likes an itchy nose..." she shrugged apologetically.</p>
      <p>Meiko tried to transform into a dark brown haired middle aged man. She ended up with a red-headed elderly chubby woman. The reason why the magician asked her friend to describe her transformation using words was because she had already seen Meiko fail at Academy level ninjutsu and wondered if it was imagination and focusing issues or actual physiological problems that were the problems. Based on Mana's theory, Meiko wasn't unskilled at ninjutsu that required precision and good chakra control, she was simply not focused enough to maintain the needed level of skill and slipped up on occasion.</p>
      <p>And so Meiko described a fatso in a messy black suit, large cheeks, twisted sleek eyebrows, barely seen facial hair and squinty thin eyes that had a distinct cold stare – the eyes of a bandit that helped Mr. Imaginary Thug rise the imaginary mobster ranks to a skilled street enforcer cracking drug crackers and living large with women, much ryo, and earthly possessions. His choice in clothing included nothing but the finest, albeit a little aged, suits. The man was supposed to wear a black double-breasted jacket with slightly darker stripes and slick and shiny black leather shoes. To be fair, Mana was impressed by how well Meiko described the person to her and began feeling like her theory was going to blow up as soon as it was conceived.</p>
      <p>The result was a short and chubby mixture of what was described and Meiko's actual image. Mana sighed for a moment and stroke her forehead but realized that her depressed reaction may have been rude to her friend whom the magician greatly appreciated and would've never wanted to hurt. Sadly her slow instincts tipped her off in the right way – Meiko began sobbing like a little child as her large loveable eyes filled with tears bursting over and rushing down the wrinkly cheeks of the old crone she had become.</p>
      <p>"No, no! It's fine, it'll do!" Mana pleaded for Meiko to stop crying. "I didn't think you'd change the image you described at the last second, I mean... That was the point of describing it, ha ha ha..." the magician playfully tried to make it appear like she was not aware of Meiko's failure and thought that the blacksmith, in fact, changed her appearance that way on purpose. Strangely enough, it worked for Meiko and her sobbing face eased up a little. And so the first female mafioso the team had ever seen was born, luckily Meiko's transformation and the fat sausage-like fingers of the woman didn't impact the blacksmith's mastery at tying people up. Not that it mattered to Mana as she had escaped on multiple occasions. The current one being one of many.</p>
      <p>Meiko angrily readjusted the knots, she used to make the strongest knots she knew as a blacksmith, the ones that were used to tie armor pieces together, ones that could take a good sword blow and almost snap but hold. None of that mattered when Mana's crafty fingers and her career as a magician often performing escape tricks was concerned. At this point, the blacksmith must've started to think that no knot or binding known to man could've held the magician tied up as she only placed a simple triple loop knot in several places.</p>
      <p>The much harder part was finding a Syndicate establishment, it was mostly wandering through the streets aimlessly trying to find one. Luckily the whole town was taken over and infested with them, the runts were breaking into the very infrastructure of the village and so every other building had some of the Syndicate thugs standing around and talking. Some of them tipped their hats or even whistled at Meiko, or more accurately, her changed shape. That Mana found really odd, these mobsters were grown men of varied ages, was this kind of woman really the best they could've strived for? Honestly, the magician was a little offended that she wasn't harassed instead of Meiko's abominable redhead grandma.</p>
      <p>Meiko turned corners and lead the magician into an establishment that the goons blocked passage into. Just as the two were passing the two tipped their bats and crossed them blocking the way.</p>
      <p>"Who the fuck is dis? Who da fuck are you?" the mobster spat to the side. This one didn't wear a suit but just a bit more fancy casual attire of the locals, it was clear that this was a low ranking goon which Meiko planned to fool with this charade and yet it would've been unlikely that they knew anything about this case or the people involved. These were lowlifes and yet the bigger fish may have yet seen through the bait.</p>
      <p>"Ey, Jimmjon how the fuck yer talkin' to a lady, da fuck's the matter with you? Can't you see she's wearin' the soldato drapes? She outranks ya, yer lucky she didn't whack you right fuckin' 'ere, get what I'm sayin'?" The second tracksuit goon objected to his partner's rude behavior.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... Don't you know who I am, sonny, I'm..." Meiko got a bit confused as she was bad of making up names, given how the last name she gave herself after dumping the clan name was "Wakizashi" it wasn't hard to get to that part.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, she's the infamous Sarady "Bazooka" Choolip, I wouldn't have been captured by a lesser foe!" Mana playfully acted out a vengeful stare from a defeated foe she so often had seen in the plays she had seen before or after her shows. She knew a lot of the actors acting there and all the artists in the hall had a friendly relationship letting the others see their shows and get the chance to a professional critique. Making up the name was easy once Mana remembered all the history chapters dedicated to the village she had read.</p>
      <p>"Oh shit, hear dat Jimmjon? She's got a nickname, granny's packing serious heat!" The mobster began genuinely worrying.</p>
      <p>"Well we dunno whachu want from us, granny Bazooka, dis 'ere is just a simple establishment, couple a lowlife brothel managers count their money 'ere, you see?" The one who was so fired up before now became tranquil as a sheep and bowed his head repeatedly in apology yet he still couldn't be troubled to utter the words.</p>
      <p>"Kay, dis bitch 'ere busted my kunai dispenser, I'd appreciate a replacement..." Meiko nodded trying to keep a serious face because for some reason, possibly the name, made her cringe which bloated the woman's already chubby and very pinch-worthy cheeks and forced her to fight the cringe within.</p>
      <p>"Good call," Mana whispered to Meiko's ear, whenever they approach a serious establishment with more chances of intel being leaked they would appear much more credible with authentic weaponry instead of nothing resembling Syndicate's kunai dispensers.</p>
      <p>"Well, we dun have much... But I mean if it's Sarady "Bazooka" Choolip asking..." the Syndicate goon scratched the back of his head and disappeared inside the small room, from what little Mana had seen the place they guarded was a glorified basement and little of actual value transpired inside. They could've wasted the whole night chasing and shutting down the brothels that placed their income there and never would've even scratched the surface of the operations... It was best they didn't stray from their path.</p>
      <p>Soon the goon appeared and handed Meiko one of the big rapid firing kunai dispensers, one of the likes that the Syndicate leader used in the Katabami mine scuffle.</p>
      <p>"Dis 'ere is our last heat-tube, it'd be a real treat if ye didn't break it and vouched for us when we get slack that it disappeared. Believe it or not, the Boss is really displeased about any firepower we lose because that means someone in the streets can get popped by someone that isn't us and that's bad for business..." The man explained.</p>
      <p>"Happy people buy more whores, happy people buy more drugs, happy people order more hits to keep being happy..." The other added as a mantra which the first joined into.</p>
      <p>"And no one's happy if there's disorder in the street..." Mana uttered without her own control to which the criminals only glared at her.</p>
      <p>Meiko slapped Mana with a backhand which really hurt, no surprise probably, given the size of the hand...</p>
      <p>"Shut the hell up, ye... Bitch..." Meiko tried her best mobster dialect since she's only heard what she's heard on this trip to find the Box.</p>
      <p>"She is right though..." One of the goons shrugged.</p>
      <p>"We don't have anywhere to contain her if she's a prisoner, if she's alive so long that means the Boss wants her alive, that means ye better take 'er twelve blocks east to a bigger joint... Ya know... Ta see what she knows." Another added trying to speak politely and carefully. Meiko having a nickname added to her name must've really intimidated them, must've been some sort of sign of achievement amongst these people...</p>
      <p>"Right, then that's what I'll do... Dis bitch 'ere will know how terrible Sarady "Bazooka" Choolip is before the night is over." Meiko got really into her role. Despite the bloodied mouth Mana couldn't help but crack a grin, seeing her friend so excited and enjoying herself had that effect on her...</p>
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      <p>Shortly after the quarrel with the two mobsters ended the curtains moved aside and the show could begin. A short and slim girly walked out from the side with a violin in her hands. She was so eerily similar to Mana's build however whereas Mana's skin was of a slightly tanned shade the skin of this young lady was milk white. Her hair was worn in two playful ponytails that extended above and formed a horn-like shape, had they not been a combination of light blueish green and dark purple in color they'd have appeared like a demon's horns or angel's wings sprouted on her head.</p>
      <p>And when the girl began playing Shimo observed in awe as her lovely yellow-iris eyes closed in sublime serenity the heart of the young man danced in his chest right alongside the divine melodies that the young lady played. The young woman, who appeared to be in her late teens if not early twenties was energetic with her playing, she danced, leaped, flipped and shook her head violently, rhythmically, the violin was no instrument, her entire body was molded with it into a harmony of music and dance that was hard to wake up from. After she was done her white sleeveless shirt was tucked out and messed up so the young lady fixed it and her plaid skirt without a flinch and placed the instrument on the ground pushing it towards the audience and bowing like a samurai bowed against his Feudal Lord offering his sword and his services.</p>
      <p>"I shall require a tune..." the young woman uttered and despite her weak voice the whole audience heard it, it could've been that there was something magical about her voice, or maybe it was the great acoustics of the hall they were in. Either way, at that moment Shimo realized that if this lovely girl ordered him to jump off a cliff with a song he'd jump off the edge of the world itself. Then again, in a moment of regained composure, the young man realized he wasn't that tough to impress by the weaker gender...</p>
      <p>"Ajisa's 4th sonnet "Moon of the Heavens"!" Someone in the audience suggested, it was a strong manly voice, without a doubt it came from a well refined and culturally educated gentleman, the typical crowd to attend such events, together with the Syndicate goons, obviously.</p>
      <p>"Overture to Redemption by Muhanovski Yuya." Another suggestion came from the public.</p>
      <p>"Ode to Snow Tulips perhaps?" An alluring feminine voice from the public suggested.</p>
      <p>"I like that last one..." The violinist admitted leaping up by flipping back and using only her left hand for balance while grabbing her violin with the right one before playfully bowing and nodding while picking up the bow off the ground. "I shall improvise a musical piece out of all three of these together..." She declared placing the violin under her chin and preparing to play.</p>
      <p>What came out next Shimo could barely comprehend. He had never heard either of these three pieces but he could swear that he heard a unique harmonious piece comprised of three different musical pieces. It was like this young woman created a unique musical piece on the fly out of the unique properties of the suggestions given by the public, such musical genius surely must've been impossible, how could one just create a perfect harmony of notes and tunes out of all that's best of previous geniuses' best works, using them like nothing more but primal and useless notes in her performance. Shimo was no musical expert or even that much of a fan, nowhere close Meiko's fascination level, however, what he heard amazed him to no end.</p>
      <p>"Impressive, ain't she?" Another mobster leaned in from the other side speaking up to Shimo while the young lady decided to take a break as she played so immensely that her hair burst out of the bindings letting it all loose, unleashed into an ocean of purple and green majesty.</p>
      <p>"She does that every time, every evening she performs... Notasa... But she's off limits if yer interested in her loins. She's got a nasty guard dog protecting her. He'd pull out yer fucking throat with his own teeth while pulling yer balls out with his bare hands. I'm tellin' ye as a Syndicate soldato, he'd plow through our ranks like no tomorrow and leave no able or willing man to even give her as much as a rose. I mean... It's the goddamn Carnefici Satsu we're talkin' 'bout. Out of the slammer right to guarding Notasa's back door," the mobster went on and on as the young lady bowed and finished her performance. Her forty minutes of pure musical magic...</p>
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<a name="section0189"><h2>189. Things We Seek To Gain</h2></a>
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      <p>The stairs beneath Kouta's feet thudded firmly and layers of old dust got picked up and whirled around and down as the two carefully and slowly made their way to the fifth floor. The woman rammed against the door, seemingly because of the effort she had to put into simply moving. Maybe it was just the fatigue as the woman was breathing heavily using the door for support. Having her condition in mind such momentary signs of weakness could've been forgiven.</p>
      <p>Slow thumps and foot-dragging noises signaled to the two that someone was coming to the door. A large man in a brown leather jacket and a torn up, hole-covered black t-shirt opened it. He didn't look like one of the Syndicate guys but he most definitely could've kicked some ass. His hair was messy black and long while his facial hair could've definitely used some trimming. The man moved aside and signaled for the two to come in after he saw Kouta's new female companion.</p>
      <p>"Is this how it is nowadays Frankes, a minion to oversee your needs and scare old friends away?" The woman teased someone the two still had not seen as she raised her voice so it could reach the more remote rooms of the crack den looking apartment they were in.</p>
      <p>"You know how it is Jeandette... I don't leave this place much these days," A cybernetic sounding voice reached the two followed by the large leather wearing guy. The voice came from a room several steps past the corridor the three were in, telling Kouta the way and saving him the trouble of having to stumble around a place he didn't know.</p>
      <p>"A voicebox?" Kouta squinted questioningly at the woman who was now named by her old time friend. Before the young man didn't have a name to pin on her face because names simply didn't matter. As a medical ninja, he was used to look at the ailment, at the problems and the solutions he took to solve them. Names were bad, names identified someone, names gave them a feeling, personality and... Names made things difficult. Made tough decisions difficult.</p>
      <p>"Don't worry, he won't know if you stare..." The woman nodded with a reply that was supposed to sound like a joke but her tone was so dull and tired that it wasn't particularly funny, it was less fun still when having in mind the subject they were discussing.</p>
      <p>Once the three entered the room the leather wearing man positioned himself at the other end of the room and crossed his hands on his chest, carefully staring at Kouta as he was the only odd part of the equation which the man had no idea of. The man sitting on the only old and sophisticated looking piece of furniture in probably the entire block, an old armchair, was supposed to be the owner of this apartment and the man of the hour.</p>
      <p>As a medical ninja, Kouta was used to seeing weird shit, even gritty shit but his face and body were on the different scale. The boy even couldn't help but shake a little the first moments after seeing the man. His skin was singed off to the flesh, based on his appearance it was clear that he must've been covered with third and fourth-degree burns and required extensive medical assistance. The worst part was the center split of the body, it looked like someone had lived inside the man and just decided to leave him by peeling the man open like a cheese stick from inside. His face was burnt and mangled, also his flesh opened from inside and suddenly Kouta understood why the man needed his voicebox to speak. The sounds that came out of him naturally made him slobber over himself and just came out as an unintelligible murmur and mumble.</p>
      <p>"I've brought a friend," Jeandette spoke up first pointing at Kouta, it was just common courtesy of informing a blind man of the presence. The seated man just carelessly shook his head around trying to locate the young man but then stopped as his remaining sensory organs picked up nothing from Kouta's side.</p>
      <p>"I don't care about who you've brought with you, I care about why you're here, Jeandette. It's been too long, neither of us is a person we've once been. Neither of us is exactly a number one hit anymore... The star of the show." The disfigured man whom Jeandette called Frankes spoke.</p>
      <p>"True. Soon I'll perform for another crowd, one either of ogres or angels." Jeandette sighed lowering her head and moving up closer to Frankes softly touching his cheek and rubbing it. It was clear from the man's curious and indifferent reaction that he couldn't feel it.</p>
      <p>"Consider yourself lucky. Maybe one day you'll do the soundtrack for my picture..." Frankes sighed as the aggressive intake of air forced him to cough, whatever flaming inferno he must've endured most likely also burnt his lungs and the protective membrane to shit. Even breathing must've come to an agony to this man nowadays.</p>
      <p>"Maybe..." Jeandette sighed and moved back to Kouta before turning around.</p>
      <p>"Don't fool yourself, we're not performing to any angels. We've taken a loan from the demon king and gave up that right with the first cracker we gorged on, we both read the contract of this life of pleasure and fame and we both signed it. I hope you didn't come here to cry on my shoulder because I will neither feel your pain nor have I signed a check I cannot cash with my ass. Can't you see, Jeandette? I've been practicing, practicing living in an actual Hell and I've had plenty of practice. The devil will find no fear or pain or hear no begs to stop when his hooks will tear my flesh, he'll only see a man with terribly bored eyes..." Frankes growled, his cybernetic voice made a low pitch that made the voice sound almost demonic.</p>
      <p>"Ah, but that's your worst hell, isn't it? Boredom... I feel like the ogres will be content with just boring you to death. That's why you didn't kill yourself when this happened, that's why you don't have the guts to end it before it ends... You like the pain, pain is just opposite side of pleasure and none of the extremes terrify you, just the golden middle. The balance of the scales." Jeandette replied to which Frankes almost burst into laughter. His body shook violently in the armchair and spat out green slobber from his mouth as the voicebox dangled stuck to his mouth.</p>
      <p>"Laughter," it translated.</p>
      <p>"I'm playing a role, Frankes. The very last one, one that'll let me pass peacefully, a good one, decent one, one for the angels. You can help me and possibly share my place in purgatory or live miserably with eternal boredom lingering in the future. Maybe the angels will let you live in pleasure, live your old life again with your wife, like the old times..." The woman explained why she came, something that appeared to be quite stumping for the disfigured man as he had asked about it multiple times. These two must've not seen each other for a long time, Jeandette must've not been a common guest in these parts.</p>
      <p>"Last role to play? So you need weapons then? Humor me, what can be so humbling that it'd wash off your sins, what could be so generous and holy that it'd give you a chance that the angels would waste their time?" The man asked, his cybernetic tone shrieked as it reached a high note, must've signaled an ironic change in tone.</p>
      <p>"We need ninja kits, as many as we can have, I'll take what's left of them as compensation for my help," Kouta spoke up hoping that the man would agree to the terms and supply the weapons for the remained of their mission, all the way until the Box, if the other manage to decipher the sphere, that is.</p>
      <p>"Young man... I am the only non-Syndicate affiliated black market dealer. I chose this path because I don't give a shit if I live or die, no, I actually wanted them to kill me, torture me and pull me from this world of boredom. To this day no such thing happened. It's either because I'm that good or because they leave me as is on purpose, just to get back at me. There are many who wish my weapons, weapons unaffiliated with the Syndicate..." Frankes began his complex refusal but suddenly Jeandette's voice rose up again.</p>
      <p>"We are going after "Silver Dollar" Croquette and "Black Widow" Mortenson." She spoke killing all speech for a moment. The silence of the graveyard took over, wrapped its long rotten fingers around everyone's throats. Finally, Frankes managed to peel and break those old crone's fingers off his throat.</p>
      <p>"I'll give you whatever you need... Not because I believe in you, you'll most likely die but... If you kill the bastards and burn their operation to the ground I'll hear about it and laugh, oh how I'll laugh... If you don't they'll know you got your weapons from me – they'll finally have no right to ignore me and they'll come, cut me into pieces, maybe burn me to cinders... It'll shake some excitement into my life for once." The poor man wobbled like a nostalgic war veteran longing for his lost buddies.</p>
      <p>"Do you have any steel tipped cards? Hopefully, not artificial steel, actual living chakra conductive steel?" Kouta wondered</p>
      <p>"What? Who the fuck plays with steel-tipped cards? They'd shred your hand like paper shredder unless you know what you're doing!" The cybernetic voice shrieked again in the high pitched tone.</p>
      <p>"Very well... Ten ninja kits shall suffice..." Kouta nodded feeling a little bummed that he won't be able to bring Mana back some spares.</p>
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      <p>Mana huffed and grunted. She was tied to a chair with a Syndicate goon beating her up. One thing the magician didn't and couldn't possibly have predicted was how the Syndicate would react to an unknown mobster marching up to their establishment with a pretty wanted face tied up and handed her over to them. Meiko, or rather the comedic shape she now took, was lead to the leader of the establishment, Mana managed to slip some questions before she was taken to the other room to be tortured and at some point killed.</p>
      <p>She just hoped that Meiko would get her answers before the killing part came. Mana could've escaped being tied to a chair in two seconds flat without her chakra control, still, fighting a grown and pretty brawny man would've raised noise and that'd have ruined it all. The little girl stabbed in the heart would've slipped into oblivion, as would the other future victims.</p>
      <p>She could've maybe used some physical chakra augmentation, tanked those blows to the point where they didn't feel like all that much. At her peak, she could probably take a punch from a Chuunin without dying but the problem was not the power of the punches, it was the extended duration. At this point, Mana was being punched around for maybe fifteen minutes with guys changing a couple of times. She decided to only use minimal augmentation, see that their rings didn't crush her eyeballs, see that she didn't lose too many teeth because she hated the painful process of regrowing them.</p>
      <p>The guy pulled out a fork and ran it by Mana's face. The magician had to hand it to him, her head felt woozy and the whole body hurt and felt bruised pretty badly. She saved herself from a lot more terrible injuries as she'd have long since been pounded meat if she didn't augment herself. These guys hit harder than most people, hard enough to grind stone and punch through steel without a doubt. They must've been beginning to get suspicious why the girl's face didn't change into minced meat by now. Still, the general rule was that forks hurt... They were also slow and messy, Mana was not looking forward to that at all.</p>
      <p>Sharp pain in the left shoulder, Mana ground her teeth trying not to scream. It might be difficult to still do her mission after this. She needed as much functionality as she could muster but if she augmented her body too much she'd risk losing her physical chakra again by breaking the network or revealing the extent of her abilities to these jokers. In fact, she loosened her augmentations from the punching phase, letting small tips of the fork to slip by her flesh. The last thing she wanted was to break or bend the blasted thing and force the guys to get more inventive.</p>
      <p>Mana wasn't sure how much time passed. She felt sharp pulses in many points of her body and she was passing in and out, her conscience was fading and coming back. She had to persevere, she had to for the little girl that was murdered, if they managed to get a little bit of info from all of this it'll be worth it, it'll be worth getting skewered by forks and burnt and beaten... Mana would suffer a thousand times more if she could bring that poor kid back but she couldn't...</p>
      <p>Such was the curse of the human life, no way of rewinding and fixing the faults of the past, only moving forward and making sure those mistakes meant something, that something was learned from them... Mana began humming a song in her mind, slowly she began slipping into meditation, she felt more stabs coming her way but her mind was gone, how come she didn't think of it sooner?</p>
      <p>A cold shower made Mana's mind snap out. She looked around and noticed that she was drowning, the magician stopped breathing and coughed out some water she prematurely inhaled. Fear scurried into her heart. That was just a side effect of drowning, Mana calmed herself down, her meditation must've made her move far away from the torture and made her slip away. Those Syndicate goons must've thought she was dead and dumped her body, still tied into the chair which was also tied to rocks... Mana felt her ears screaming – the pressure was getting to her. Her calm hands quickly worked wonders of the sloppy knots, it only took moments to escape her binds. The magician tried to swim up.</p>
      <p>"Shit," she thought when she realized that the stones weren't tied to the chair – they were tied to her leg. A couple of extra seconds to escape those binds and then just float into the light... Pain... So much pain... Mana had no idea her meditation could help her withstand any torture, she had never thought of it that way. Now that she was back, however, everything those men did to her caught up with her. The only things in Mana's mind, however, were questions: if Meiko got any useful information and if she was OK.</p>
      <p>Mana's naked body swam out into the dirty shores. She dragged her body across the stone looking at the trail of blood she left behind. Ice cold water ran down her body, freezing the girl and forcing her to grunt in pain and cold at places, easing the pain with its freezing presence in some others. Tracking the wounds on her body she must've been stabbed more times than the magician could count but these were shallow wounds. Shallow but they were just numerous enough to be worrisome, the magician's semi-normal human body was already failing. Blood was rising and coming out from her mouth, that despicable bloody taste in her mouth... Mana wrapped in the rags she was brought here in, Syndicate may have had immunity from social stigma or persecution but they wouldn't have dragged her through the streets butt naked.</p>
      <p>Slowly, Mana crawled forward, on her knees when she couldn't walk and on her feet when she felt hopeful. An old man ran out from a small shack nearby to the lake she was dumped in and dragged her into his home. He tried treating Mana but the girl pushed him aside gently and asked for clothes and bandages. The old man disappeared for a moment and brought her similar clothes to those Mana wore, the way he explained it they belonged to his daughter. He also brought a large brown bag with medical supplies.</p>
      <p>"So women here do wear those things..." Mana thought to herself examining a slightly more worn and older version of the attire she wore, despite being worn, this one had a fortunate advantage of not being soaked in blood and didn't have any stabbing holes in it. It was an almost exact replica instead small inconsequential details like the jacket's zippers being colored golden instead of silver and the shirt having purple lotus motifs on it. The leather jacket was also decently torn in some places like the woman was dragged on the ground in them. Mana decided to rather not ask about the details of that and thanked the man.</p>
      <p>"My girl likes to get wasted and she's rarely home, only whenever she can drag her drunk frame through the pavement back home. Whatever I can do to help I'd be glad to do..." The old man nodded and bowed his head.</p>
      <p>The kunoichi removed the bandages and quickly rounded herself up in them wherever the fork wounds still bled, once applied the bandage stained red almost instantly. After putting the bandages on her limbs, abdomen and some on her forehead to cover up the knife cuts she got at some point Mana got dressed, thanked the man with a low and respectful bow and ran out. She still had to find Meiko now...</p>
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      <p>Shimo slowly walked around the endless corridors of the hall after the show. The public just all jumped up and left right after it. It began clearing up even before the end of the show, most of them left right after Notasa's performance and for a moment Shimo also wanted to do that. Leaving would've been a mistake, Notasa also performed together with some other artists so she was clearly not leaving until the end of the whole show so the Yuki decided to sit the whole thing through.</p>
      <p>Loud noises emanated from the end of the hall. Shimo looked around and then casually began strolling towards the direction of the noises as he was looking around like he was just minding his own business and just happened to run into the brewing situation. Something really bad was brewing, Shimo could tell just by looking at the number of Syndicate goons rallied around the large preparation room with a large bright blue note on it where "Notasa" was written in all the colors of the rainbow.</p>
      <p>"Look, kid, yer a good gal, ye pay your protection fees. We don' have a problem with ya, see? We got a problem with yer bodyguard" one of the Syndicates spoke as Shimo joined in on the rally to see what the big fuss was about. The hall outside had a good twelve men gathered and there were four more inside. Or so it seemed initially when Shimo peeked inside something, or rather someone, he knew made him open his jaw wide.</p>
      <p>It was a short man, used to be short, anyways, also he merely used to be a man. What once without a doubt was the man Shimo knew was now an abomination of nature and science. The very mob boss they've brought down an entire gold mine on was standing alive and kicking in the center of Notasa's chamber, his flesh must've been crushed and peeled off his skin and reassembled, it had many scars that didn't have blood and meat inside of them, instead it glowed with the purplish glow of the Audra alloy. Got a much fancier black with white stripes suit after the last fight too, picked up a knack for smoking indoors as well, his black tie had a red Otogakure symbol on it symbolizing the true "Otokage" of the village...</p>
      <p>"I don't care if you have a problem with him, he was attacked and harassed and that's why he had to do what he did. He didn't even kill your men, he's not the monster you make him out to be!" The lady who was for now only known to Shimo as Notasa, and as such was immensely important to the youth screamed out through distress and tears.</p>
      <p>"Lady, this guy right 'ere is none other then Carnefici Satsu, you may be too young to know what he used to do in his day, see?..." the boss spoke up, his tone and voice were a lot shallower and huskier, also much calmer. If Shimo had to guess nervousness must've broken his stitches and tore his flesh off the Audra core he had under it.</p>
      <p>"I don't care what he did! He was recently out of prison when I hired him, he's my bodyguard!" Notasa once again was losing her composure – a bad thing to do when talking to a bunch of lowlifes like the Syndicate.</p>
      <p>"How many settlements did you plunder? How many women did you rape and murder? How many ordered hits did you complete? How many children ninja did you slaughter in your days, Carnefici, or should I call you "Carnage Fici", do you still answer to that nickname? The old lady tales say that your headbutt once killed fifteen people, one exploded just from the force of it, the others died of the air pressure around it..." A mobster close to the Boss spoke up. The large man close to Notasa remained silent despite being asked a direct question.</p>
      <p>He was an average sized, well-aged fellow, wore a suit and shades, similar to those that the bouncers wore. He had no weapons on him and had shoulder length brown with grey streaks hair that wasn't supposed to be that long, they merely ended up being that way due to lack of trimming and supervision. He also had a neglectful stubble that may have been a couple of months old but his eyes were the worst. In those eyes, one could've found fear, aggression, and the desire to rip one's throat out and shove it up the other end. A scary fellow through and through...</p>
      <p>"I remember them all. Every poor man, woman, and child I did wrong to. I've been thinking, dreaming and remembering what happened to every seventy thousand fifty-two hundred of them. Shall I list them by names or is my word enough? I do not have the tongue for foreign names so I may disrespect my legacy by speaking their names, however..." The man spoke, he had a voice similar to the noise a man made when they had corn stuck in their throat.</p>
      <p>"There will be no need, as someone who has paid her dues each and every bloody month I request you cease this at once! This man may have done terrible things in the past but he has already answered for them, you've no right to treat him like an animal!" Notasa spoke, now much calmer yet also much stricter.</p>
      <p>"You dare ya, ye little bi..." The man's throat was crushed by his Boss lifting the mobster off the ground by grabbing him by the neck and lifting him effortlessly into the air before throwing him aside. The mobster was lucky his Boss didn't feel sadistic or else he'd have easily snapped his neck with just a tip of his thumb</p>
      <p>"Yer right, kid, see? You paid your dues, see? But we are paid to protect you. That means that this man here, see? A killer of over seventy thousand and pillager of thirty-nine settlements and two villages is a security flaw, see? As someone paid to protect you, we can't allow this monster to be beside you, see? So, "Carnage Fici" Carnefici, you gonna bow and let me kill you quickly or are you gonna go for a few rounds?" The Boss grunted.</p>
      <p>All the Syndicate thugs standing outside flew back knocked out by Shimo's strikes. The young man drew his blade and gently tapped each and every one of the thugs with the end of his hilt before they could as much as blink. They needed to be killed, they deserved death but... Shimo declared that he'd try and model his sword after Mana's ideal as much as he could. He killed only when necessary, he was a sword wielded to protect and so he claimed lives only to protect.</p>
      <p>"I wouldn't mind a few rounds myself, Boss..." Shimo grinned confidently when the man's face shook violently, his flesh and blood dying the mobster's face completely purple in rage.</p>
      <p>"You!" Was all he huffed out.</p>
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<a name="section0190"><h2>190. Love In The Dark City</h2></a>
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      <p>Moving around while carrying multiple ninja kits was difficult. While Kouta requested more kits than he could possibly need to take out a Syndicate establishment the young one thought that it'd be useful to stack up for the future. After all, they were close, close to the Box, after all this time! It seemed like once Kouta cleaned this last matter up and caught up with his team someone would have already found a way to decipher the sphere and they'd have one final destination to head to. And then... Mana would finally get her chakra mastery back and maybe cheer up for once.</p>
      <p>Granted, just as the lovely magician was selfish to leave on this mission merely to restore her chakra control and reward her blacksmith friend with an adventure, Kouta also had similarly selfish causes. Mana said she liked him, she said she wasn't against the idea of trying to make something of it... That was Kouta's driving force because he also greatly admired the girl. He was still hesitant to say "loved", he knew very little of what that word meant and just what sort of feeling hid behind it.</p>
      <p>"You doing okay?" He checked on Jeandette who was slowly creeping behind him, granted she was doing better than someone with molten together innards would've normally been doing but it never hurt to check.</p>
      <p>"Yeah..." She uttered softly and continued to limp forward, sometimes fixing Kouta's direction by telling him to turn the other way or giving him directions up front in case her mind blacks out.</p>
      <p>Love... What a strange word with an even stranger phenomenon hidden behind it. Ever since he was a young boy Kouta heard countless songs, saw many plays and read a multitude of stories of love. He didn't particularly fancy them too much but love always played a central part in any story. Some may have argued it was a much more important feeling than the justice delivered to the villain of the story. It was a more integral part of the story than killing the bad guy. That always confused Kouta. It was almost like killing the villain of the story was sinful, almost like by killing them the hero lost their humanity but love somehow was not, love redeemed them and helped the audience and the hero to move past the murder.</p>
      <p>Love was idolized, praised and raised to the heavens without an end, without an equal in the handful of feelings standing beside it. Anger, justice, empathy, apathy, happiness even... None of these, or any others, received the appraisal which love got. Ever since his youth Kouta felt like he was blessed for once having a chance to feel that exalted feeling. He thought surely he'd feel this divine elevation of character and mood, his heart would without a doubt claw its way outside the chest once he got this majestic monarch of all feelings.</p>
      <p>Such a thing never happened... When Kouta looked at Mana it felt like he was ready to forgive her anything, like everything the girl did was perfect and everything she touched turned to gold. He wanted to spend time with her and talk to her and laugh at the things she says or make her laugh, eat something delicious with her and watch her enjoy some gourmet dish for the first time just to see the happiness and surprise in her face and yet...</p>
      <p>Where was this divinity, this elevation of the human essence? This was no royal, heavenly feeling. This was very primal and human, it felt like a sin even. Every time Shimo used to tease him about it Kouta blushed and denied everything, he was even ready to pick a fight with the swordsman just to prove a non-existent point, to prove nothing but his own foolishness because this foolishness was something Kouta would rather have than this strange earthly pleasure of... Love?</p>
      <p>The boy's confusion was even deeper now. Now that he was in Otogakure and saw all around him people gorging and indulging in the sweetest pleasures. Men and women disappearing in the alleyways or scantily clad youths giggling as they disappeared in the inn rooms. Kouta may have been young and naïve but he was no fool, the innkeepers preyed on that youthful love and lust, that desire and hunt for pleasure by raising the room prices for a night... That was why he couldn't get a room for the life of him for a below average pay that would've earned him a roach-infested joint anywhere else in the world, at the very least.</p>
      <p>If these people engaged and chased for pleasure, would they end up like Jeandette and Frankes ended up? Does pleasure and living for one's desires always necessarily lead to their fate? Is pleasure nothing more but a fire for the human moth that feels so warm and pleasant but burns them up in the end, sometimes literally so.</p>
      <p>"Jeandette-san..." Kouta addressed his newly met friend by her name for the first time.</p>
      <p>The woman laughed and shook her head. "Spare the pleasantries, I lost the right to an honorific the moment I bartered my life away in the most ridiculous gamble. The ignorant deserve no praise nor honors, only serves them right to spare them the honorifics as well".</p>
      <p>"I just... Before we reach the place we're headed to and I make a proper plan of assault I... Wanted to know something." Kouta spoke slowly and hesitantly, he had little desire to actually finish his thought but he needed to know. This inquiry was so similar to his feelings for Mana – hesitation to admit them and fear of what it'd bring but also a great desire of the fruits of that labor.</p>
      <p>"Well? We have a lot of time until we reach the Messalina Plaza, go ahead..." She encouraged Kouta to speak, "I quite literally don't have whole night..." She added only to invite giggling from deep in her own chest.</p>
      <p>"There is this girl I like very much... I'm not really sure where it leads to, what it is and... Seeing this village for what it is, what it turned out to be when people do and get all they want by just snapping their fingers when they indulge voraciously in all the earthly pleasures..." He began trying to shape his question but he felt a cold and sweaty hand of the woman wrap around his neck and pull him in closer.</p>
      <p>"Never be afraid of getting what you want. Never be afraid of aiming high or trying your damn hardest to live a life of pleasure. Love isn't jackbang, even if sometimes it looks that way. A moth that burns in the fire is a thousand times happier to that which hides in the darkness of the woods and ends up in some stinky basement. I may look like a lot of things but one thing I know is that I am happy for everything good that happened in my life. If we pull this shit off, I will die happy. That is more than most people that want something they don't try to reach for and end up hating their object of desire in the process can have. My advice is love. Love with all your heart. It doesn't matter if you die tomorrow or in a thousand years, what matters is that you are happy and content in your final moments".</p>
      <p>Kouta looked down and scratched the side of his head, he mumbled out an expression of gratitude for the woman but he just couldn't completely understand the mixed message. Everyone he saw in this village craved pleasure during every moment of their existence with every fraction of their being and yet this woman, someone who had burnt from this mad quest for bodily pleasures and someone who knew people with lives ruined by the mad chase for pleasure advised him to love.</p>
      <p>"Love isn't jackbang..." he uttered under his own nose. If anything this felt like just one more line praising love beyond what it actually was. Blast those poets and playwrights, musicians and directors for deifying love. It made such a mess of all things... There was more meaning behind those words than the boy had initially realized, the woman may have revealed what he needed to know. Chasing a happy and pleasant life was not wrong, nor did it lead to ruin, it was chasing the wrong, momentary pleasures ignoring the things that really mattered. "Love isn't jackbang..." he repeated to himself.</p>
      <p>Love was one of those important pleasures, love was a long time investment, it was a joyous and simple earthly pleasure that granted one a lifetime of happiness spending time with one they loved. Jackbang was a cheap imitation of a relaxation drug from another country, something that gave a short-termed flare for the cost of slowly, or immediately, ruining one's life. No, love was no jackbang indeed and that made it worth chasing...</p>
      <p>"Hey, loverboy, we're here..." Jeandette giggled grabbing Kouta by the back of his head and turning his head at a large French fry shaped tower of glass and steel, an example of architecture that was fairly decent, the likes of which the commoners called "a skyscraper"</p>
      <p>"Messalina Plaza..." The woman's face grew nostalgic, serious, sad and longing within a span of a second as her eyes gazed at the modern miracle of architecture.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Mana stared at the sky with a blank gaze. She could hear unrest and shouts nearby, most likely emanating from the raging fire that lit the night's sky nearby, likely invisible in the further industrial districts. People shouted and gathered at the spot, a powerful blast echoed as the air around the lit night's sky formed a round pillow that apparently burst from the speed and force of someone quickly approaching Mana's direction. The magician continued to stand and wait around, focusing a tiny bit of her physical chakra into her eyes, making them flare up with a reddish glow at the irises and began to notice some familiar shapes in the sky.</p>
      <p>A young yet tall and well-built red-haired lady flew right at her current location, covering great distances in but a mere moment before the blue flare at her boots began to fade before completely going out. A loud comical shout of a falling Meiko could be heard as her boots turned on again with the last flare propelling her forward letting the blacksmith adjust her position upright and slam into the ground from at least two hundred meters in the air and causing a large cone of drilled out dirt as she slid towards Mana. As the blacksmith finally finished her improvised landing she just stroke the back of her head and apologetically grinned with her full teeth smile before jumping up and beginning to check Mana.</p>
      <p>"Oh my God, Mana! I'm so sorry, what did they do to you!? They didn't tell me anything at all about what they were going to do to you and I was so worried and then one shitbrain slipped something about you going to "swim with the fishes" and I thought it was nice of them to let you swim in their aquarium but then they all began talking of you in past tense and".</p>
      <p>Mana placed her hand on Meiko's shoulder and nodded.</p>
      <p>"It's fine, if I wanted to, if I ever felt like the pain was more than I could have handled I'd have busted out in two seconds flat. I just wanted to give you all the time to get as much information as possible. Did you get any?" Mana wondered.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, some..." Meiko nodded still looking at Mana and her bandaged head with a sorry stare, it looked like the blacksmith was about to break into tears at any point. She seemed to have a soft spot with people she had grown fond of and gotten friendly with... Perhaps she was lucky to not see the rest of Mana's body, only her bandaged face, Mana pressed the collar of her shirt more tightly together so that it concealed the scars and still fresh bleeding wounds on her body.</p>
      <p>"There have been several incidents like that all over the village, strange incidents of violence. Here look at this..." The blacksmith removed a piece of broken wall with something drawn on it with blood.</p>
      <p>Mana looked at Meiko questioningly.</p>
      <p>"When they let me know they tortured and apparently drowned you I got really mad at them and left no smug face unpunched and not a stone on stone in their headquarters. I blew it up with a really good punch, almost lost control there and destroyed the whole district..." Meiko admitted with a shrug. Mana noticed that Meiko had a really scary side somewhere deep, probably one fueled and built up of her awkwardness and strange trait of completely misinterpreting and misunderstanding things.</p>
      <p>"So first I asked them to point out all the similar cases of random unsolved violence, this is what they showed me, the locations may be wobbly, most of the conscious guys had broken fingers and busted wrists." Meiko smiled with a little guilt revealing what all those blood stains meant.</p>
      <p>So all of these points meant some sort of violent random outburst? It must've been too random for the Syndicate to pinpoint. They seemed to be quite fixed on maintaining order because the whole village was their own business playground and they wished to run a tight ship here. They must've despised those random sparks of violence more than anyone else...</p>
      <p>Mana took Meiko's finger and placed it on the sheet of folded and mangled, bloodstained paper.</p>
      <p>"Draw," she asked.</p>
      <p>Meiko closed her eyes doing her best to focus and mumbled "Finger Carving Seal" as her finger lit up with a blue flame and left a smoldering drawing mark wherever she held it, just strong enough to be seen but not wide and hot enough to ruin the paper. Mana slowly moved and guided Meiko's seal drawing finger across the paper connecting all the dots into a strange sign that appeared the combination of a slightly rotated S combined with a punctuation slash.</p>
      <p>"Holy shit! It's a "segno" mark!" Meiko shouted out, frankly, Mana had no idea what the mark meant so she was greatly surprised by the blacksmith's affinity for shocking the magician with her intelligence so soon after she shocked the girl by just how goofy and naïve she was.</p>
      <p>"Segno?" Mana asked playing with a streak of her hair as she was a little bit jealous that Meiko knew something that the magician did not.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, it's a musical sign used with "dal segno", another sign that tells the musician to repeat something starting with the last "segno"..." Meiko excitedly exclaimed looking at the graciously drawn and quite beautiful looking mark that truthfully symbolized places of great random violence.</p>
      <p>"So then the sign is complete?" Mana wondered looking at Meiko curiously, "Will these random events of violence no longer happen?" She asked the question she wished to know the most.</p>
      <p>"Oh no, it's still missing three signs, namely dots here, here and then maybe a perfect finishing stroke of this line..." Meiko pointed at a couple of spots.</p>
      <p>"Well then, at least we know where these events will happen, we don't know when though... If anything we have time, at least until Kouta or Shimo finds us." Mana closed her eyes realizing that it was now her responsibility to prevent these future events of violence. With so many dots filling the Otogakure map there was no reasonable doubt that whoever is doing all of this will want the "segno" completed sooner or later.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>The man whom the Syndicate wished to kill so much – Carnefici Satsu flipped the toothpick in his mouth hesitantly as his tongue played with the small wooden pick. It must've been the nerves, or maybe he no longer felt nerves before a fight? After all, a man of his notoriety... Carnefici's name was not entirely unheard of by Shimo, he faintly remembered reading it long ago as a kid in the papers.</p>
      <p>There was a huge deal, back then, some sort of public outcry when ten years after his capture Carnefici was still not executed. The punishment was delayed due to a big outcry about which prison Carnefici should've been imprisoned and wait for his execution in. The quarrels lasted for so long that eventually the sentence was changed altogether into life imprisonment... Apparently, somehow "Carnage" Fici managed to avoid even that sentence.</p>
      <p>Two Syndicate thugs rushed at Carnefici. The man blew air lightly by his tongue shooting the toothpick clean through the eye of one of them, a small squirt of blood shot out before the man collapsed on the floor, shaking in pain. The other stroke at Carnefici with a concealed blade which disappeared entirely in Carnefici's body. The scared shitless mobster tried to pull his hands out from being stuck in the body of the most terrifying murderer and pillager in recent history who did some of the worst crimes recently recorded for the sole reason of being bored. Carnefici dispatched of the man with a backhand slap sending the man down on the floor.</p>
      <p>The Boss rushed at Shimo throwing a barrage of blindingly fast punches the but swordsman had apparently improved much more than the Boss did since their last encounter as he was no longer where the punches were thrown. Shimo's blade danced in ten, sixty, two hundred, four thousand and even twenty thousand cuts in just a blink of moments as a deafening barrage of clangs unified into a singular shrieking sound forcing Notasa to cover her bleeding ears.</p>
      <p>Twenty thousand shockwaves erupted from where Shimo's blade met the Boss' tearing the corridor and most of the building apart, blowing off the roof from the built up pressure and tumbling down its walls while raising smoke and falling debris up in the process. With a careless glance, Shimo looked back to check if Notasa was not injured but the frail body of the pale girl was covered by that of her bodyguard who had debris and pipes penetrating his body all over.</p>
      <p>The Boss looked all over his body, looking over his ruined suit and at the spots where Shimo's blade danced on his rebuilt from scratch body with a cocky smile. The man then flicked himself in the fist and in the forehead laughing out loud.</p>
      <p>"Pure Audra skeletal frame and lower skin layer coating! I'm fucking invincible, punk, see!?" He laughed out in a husky tone.</p>
      <p>Carnefici jumped up from Notasa pushing all of the debris away from his back, he then noticed that the young lady's shoulder was cut and noticed that one metal bar went right through his skin and into the young lady's shoulder, shallowly true, but still injuring her. The angered bodyguard pulled the broken piece of debris and slammed it at the distracted by gloating Boss' face holding the rock by the metal bar and sending the invincible man flying beyond the point Shimo could even see him.</p>
      <p>"Go be invincible somewhere else, cocksucker." He angrily grunted in a voice that, Shimo would've most definitely agreed, belonged to a mass murderer. "You fuckers can scram too... Go cry to your flying Boss and ask for his titty" He then lashed out at the downed and injured mobsters that scurried away rather quickly.</p>
      <p>"You okay?" Shimo asked him looking at Carnefici but seeing no actual bodily wounds on the man, just his ruined hole covered and torn up suit.</p>
      <p>"I'm sort of a gum kinda guy..." Satsu reached for one of the more recent wounds and spread it with his fingers revealing a gooey inside that looked more like bubble gum in which organs floated in than human flesh, more so, the synthetic rubber was rapidly sticking together. "You don't get to kill as many people as I did if any fucker with a fancy suit and a knife can just stab you" He added angrily growling at the end.</p>
      <p>Shimo tried to slowly approach Notasa, he still needed her help but Carnefici's hand pushed him rudely at his chest.</p>
      <p>"Thanks for not trying to kill us, now bugger off," He growled again with that annoyingly husky growl.</p>
      <p>"No can do, I need help from your young lady so that I can help mine and let me tell you, I pissed mine off real bad. Backing off is sort of not an option..." Shimo grinned slamming his forehead right into Carnefici's lowered staring face. Both warriors stood one against another, Carnefici had to bow his head all the way down to stare at Shimo's level even if Shimo was quite tall for his age.</p>
      <p>"Well then, we seem to have a problem then..." The past mass murderer hissed.</p>
      <p>"You haven't killed one man today which makes me believe you've not killed since you left prison, you've gone soft, Carnefici..." Shimo taunted the man again. While he only needed the help of the young lady he was protecting some part of the Yuki was excited about the chance to fight someone so infamous.</p>
      <p>Some part of him also wished to show off in front of Notasa as if her approval of his macho stupidity meant absolutely anything. Notasa moaned in pain forcing Carnefici to jump back to her aid. The feared monster, the man that escaped justice was now tending to a flesh wound of some pampered little girl like he was her mommy... Shimo looked at the situation and his excited bloodthirsty stare softened somewhat.</p>
      <p>Things could've gone much worse, all things considered. "They'll be back..." Shimo said almost to himself.</p>
      <p>"Of course they'll be fucking back, where did you get your genius degree, kid?" Carnefici growled tending to Notasa's wound using some of his own shirt and a napkin he carried in his pocket to cover up the relentless flesh wound on her shoulder. "When one invincible fucker meets another they have an instinct to bash their heads against each other until one of them stops being invincible and gets his head mashed..." He said in a somewhat calmer and more passively despising tone.</p>
      <p>"Shit..." Shimo cursed realizing that he probably won't get Notasa's help until the Syndicate gets off her back.</p>
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<a name="section0191"><h2>191. Staircase To Inferno</h2></a>
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      <p>A man in a sophisticated suit was leaning over his table, his slight hunch now shot out much more clearly displaying a heavy emotional weight which the man carried on his shoulders. With a sleek rubbing sound of rubber making out with stainless steel of which the man's table and its sections were made of he opened one drawer and removed a couple of handfuls of murky green cookies placed in a vacuum sealed cellophane package. With a careless swipe to the side, he tossed the treats sideways both to the left and to the right. At least two dozen men and women crawled out of the shadows that the man's office was covered in.</p>
      <p>These were men and women of addiction, naked, starved, their hair ran rampant and their fingernails looked long enough to scoop one's eyes out with a spoon. Their teeth were ruined, their skin was almost bony in its consistency and they dug their rotten, leaking with green slobber mouths into the cookies. An explosion of purple smoke erupted from their mouths. As the slaves of addiction chained to the edges of the room fought for the mana from the heavens of their owner's mercy they bit each other, bashed and kicked, clawed and tore the flesh off one another despite having promised the other to never lose their humanity no matter how deep the hole addiction spirals them down in just a couple of weeks ago.</p>
      <p>A couple of these zombies of addiction began screaming in inhuman voices. Their bodies were burning up from inside as their bone tissue covered skin no longer regulated the temperature or sweat, their skin no longer helped secrete toxins out of the body either, the unfortunate ones of that day died whining as they had too little strength left to scream. The man sitting at the table right up to the window sighed and continued to stare at his subjects.</p>
      <p>He opened another drawer and removed a knife placing it on the table right in front of himself. The owner of the giant skyscraper he was sitting in the top floor of lifted the knife up to his eyes, placed the tip so close that his left eye teared up from fear of the blade slipping too close. The tip and the blade traveled higher all the way to the man's forehead leaving no cut on his face or touching his skin even once. With a deep depressed sigh, the man placed the knife back to the drawer and removed a brush with a couple of face painting tools.</p>
      <p>After opening the bottles up the mobster dipped the brush inside and turned around in a luxurious leather chair only to be faced by one of the most industrious and culturally relevant villages in the world, the most glorious panorama of the whole world opened up from where the man was sitting. Yet the shockproof thick glass reflected on the man's own image somewhat, at least the more colorful parts.</p>
      <p>His shoes made of the hardened skin of his own drug-addicted victims. The ones that ate the "jollyjack" brand of the crackers, it seemed to be a bit less lethal and explosive than the jackbang brand but it eventually hardened one's skin to the point where it was thick as bone yet flexible as leather. Only made sense to make shoes out of the victims his drugs claimed... Where else would he have put all the bodies of those hopeless victims of fifteen minutes of pleasure ending up intoxicating and ruining their kidneys as their skin could no longer vent all the toxins in their body or regulate its temperature effectively cooking the poor souls from inside.</p>
      <p>His fancy suit with a white vest of diamond buttons bought from the money made of selling slow death to the curious. It was hard profiting from suffering and death but truth be told those that called him anything but the businessman of tomorrow did not understand his merchandise. Yes, "Silver Dollar" Croquette was a merchant of death but not because he sold something that stupid fools misused to make death out of something that wasn't supposed to make it. No. He sold only death. Death and suffering itself and each day he invented new amazing ways of selling more painful suffering and slower, more agonizing death.</p>
      <p>To the uninitiated, it may have seemed like a terrible thing but those were the literal hatchlings in the life's pleasures. They were the old crones who had no idea how radio frequencies or moving pictures worked, they infuriated Croquette most of all. Yes, he sold death and torture to those that came begging but only because it was so genius to do so. Death and suffering tasted horrible, they felt even worse and yet... To those to whom pleasure was boring and no longer entertaining it was a new angle. If only those fools saw the women moaning in pleasure as they carved their own bodies in front of him for another cracker. If only they saw the men that hung on the streets because they wished more of the pain and death they could not buy from Croquette. The pleasure was getting boring, the pain was the future of marketing.</p>
      <p>Croquette's bloodshot eyes finally gazed upon his face, rather his face paint as the brush "carved" another scratch on his face. He tried to harm himself, he tried to give himself the pain and death he gave his clients but he never could. Mortenson, that sneaky bitch, though he didn't want to get high on his own supply, he wanted to. All this talk behind his back, all those fear filled eyes from the other mobsters, people who literally tortured and killed people made him feel guilty, made him feel unclean, somehow evil for what he did... It shouldn't have, but it did. Maybe just one cut, just one chopped off finger would redeem him somehow? But how could pleasure redeem him? Redemption needed to be sour and bitter, it needed to be something one feared like the plague but what was there to redeem with when both pleasure and suffering equally pleased one?</p>
      <p>Croquette's finished painting another scar on his face. By now his face looked like he wore a mask of some sort. He ran out of space to draw his mutilation paintings two years ago forcing him to shave his head. By now he had to draw himself new eyes to mutilate with paint and imagination. He couldn't cut himself, he couldn't take any of his own poison so he had to just imagine he did... For now, it was the best redemption "Silver Dollar" Croquette could hope for... Each stroke of his brush felt like the sharpest knife painting a smile on his face, each light tap of the brush felt like another eye getting poked out, blinded forever.</p>
      <p>With a loud bang Croquette's door opened and a mobster ran inside. As he showed his face in "Silver Dollar's" twisted office of madness endless tirade's of weeping and moans came from the shadows that covered the left and the right sides of the room. The chains that held the addicts began to shriek and clang, bone snapping noises could've been heard as the poor tortured souls tried to bite the chains with their rotten teeth snapping and breaking their jaws or broke their long pale fingers trying to peel their collars open.</p>
      <p>"The mask!" Croquette ordered out loud moving a large kunai dispenser coated in silver to the angle it would've required popping one kunai blade with into the fool's skull.</p>
      <p>"Oh, sorry, sir!" The mobster bowed his head and removed a red demon's mask placing it on his face. He did look quite grisly and scary with this lighting and how his deep blue eyes popped out from all of that darkness and the little light that the neon lights from outside provided danced in his irises.</p>
      <p>"How many times do I have to tell you, these people have lost their humanity and seeing someone beautiful and undamaged just makes them... Jealous and uneasy. They become difficult to manage!" Croquette growled in an angry tone, he didn't raise his voice but his subordinate clearly heard it as he bowed several times repeatedly.</p>
      <p>"Yes, I know, I apologize, it won't happen again!" He bowed again and again before slowly walking up to the table of his boss and placing a tape right in front of the man. The mobster's walk was greeted with growls and snarls from the darkness to the sides of the room.</p>
      <p>"Why do you even take it off in the first place?" The drug overlord growled angrily, his subordinate bowed again.</p>
      <p>"Well, with all due respect, Sir, they're creepy as fuck..." The man added. Croquette thought of filling the fool's body with blades but reconsidered as quickly as he thought of it. He didn't want another sin on his conscience to atone for. He only gave people what they wanted and this fool was too numb-skulled to wish the pain he had for sale.</p>
      <p>"What is this?" Croquette asked calmly pointing at the tape.</p>
      <p>"We've recorded something... Interesting. Sixteen people all knocked out in a single frame. We can't make out what it was..." The mafioso explained before Croquette stood up with the tape and used a button to lower a moving picture projector, slowly walking up to a recorder and stroking the head of one ruined woman chained nearby the device, she kissed his hand, she laid by his feet when he wished her to. Such was the cost for pleasure, such was the cost for the mercy of death he had all the capacities to give. These men and women had all that they wanted but no future... They had all the pleasure but none of the happiness.</p>
      <p>Croquette carefully examined the recording and sighed. He could see nothing more but a dark blueish blur in the single frame that managed to capture whatever took out these men. Then a woman stumbled in and through the bottom floor carefully stepping over his knocked out guys. The owner's eyes carefully looked over the floor seeing no blood, whoever did this was foolish enough to not kill anyone. If someone was this fast they were probably a ninja, a really tough ninja fully capable of devastating a whole country if their power was unchecked and undirected. They could've at the very least blow those puny mobsters up in a blast of blood and guts but ironically enough this assailant had no guts themselves to do such a thing.</p>
      <p>"I don't care what everyone is doing, make everyone mobilize as quickly as possible" Croquette ordered by just staring at the frozen recording that ended its run, freezing on the wheezing and collapsing of the woman in a ruined nightgown, those blond locks he could've identified anywhere and just some years ago – so could everyone else in this fucking village.</p>
      <p>"Excuse me, Sir, but maybe you could tell us who this woman is?" The uneasy masked mobster asked.</p>
      <p>"She's a nobody, she's just an Otogakure whore, she's got someone to help her, that's the one you should be worried about." The drug lord still spoke with his head tightly fixed on the sights on the projector that still didn't change having finished the recorded run long ago.</p>
      <p>"Tell Buonafino Sangrant to take his post and stop doing whatever he's doing, I'll need his tight grip on the situation..." Croquette added while he looked down at the twisted face of bony skin still locked in the expression of agony on his shoe, the face must've died in that expression and gotten stuck that way when it was peeled off with a spiral drill.</p>
      <p>"And Miss Mortenson?" The mobster inquired shortly before he was about to close the door and leave.</p>
      <p>"I don't care who that fucker is, whoever decided to fuck with me, they won't get a drop on Mortenson. Her knife is always in your back, not the other way around. The back of that woman is never exposed long enough to slip a knife in it." Croquette replied with a lazy backhand motion. The mobster finally ran down the stairs to alert everyone on the upper floors before running to the elevator to look for Buonafino Sangrant. He was an odd man of even odder tastes and it was tough to say where the man would've been in this plaza of many pleasures.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>"You sure you can move, Jeandette?!" Kouta exclaimed with a worried and much louder tone than he'd have wanted.</p>
      <p>"I'll be fine. I'll live as long as I'll have to, I'll see that fucker burn..." The woman grunted standing back on her feet before coughing blood all over her nightgown and onto her palms.</p>
      <p>"We can take a break, you know... I spent a lot of chakra healing you before, I also used out a lot of it taking those goons out right now. It's safe to say I'm only at a fraction of my abilities." Kouta explained.</p>
      <p>"Look at me and tell me, looking me straight in my eyes, that I have enough time for a break. That I won't die before seeing that bastard breathe his last while I have my last smoke." Jeandette grabbed Kouta's collar and pulled the young man closer to her face looking him in the eyes with passion and burning rage.</p>
      <p>Even if his worry did not flicker for a moment the medical ninja bowed his head and turned towards the long staircase. Jeandette realized she was getting desperate and sighed.</p>
      <p>"If you're tired we can have a short break. Make no mistake, "Silver Dollar." Croquette makes enough money to sustain one-third of Syndicate's grip on this village. He has no moral or any other kind of qualms about what he does. He has the whole army of goons at his disposal, each one of them was tutored in the art of combat. When we move up, it's gonna be a war out there..." The woman explained trying to tell her comrade how it is.</p>
      <p>Kouta's arm shifted, morphed into a long tube that fired a glowing blueish ball of pure chakra blowing up the door on the ceiling that blocked off the entry to the other room.</p>
      <p>"Catch up with me at your own pace... I saw some elevators nearby so don't make me wait too long" He whispered to the tired and dying woman, the one to whom he promised that he'd show her the empire of the man who built it on top of her life by stepping over her as painfully as possible crumble. The one to whom he promised that one last cracker before she goes. That one last cursed smoke emitting only devil knew what sort of chemicals inside of her body.</p>
      <p>Kouta's body blurred and disappeared. The woman did not lie, the other room was flooded, each and every corner of each and every room was full of these masked mobsters, some of them wore their demonic colored mask by their belt, some of them had them on. They were just leather or plastic, they offered no protection from Kouta's blows. He punched and kicked to the sides, he moved swift like a falling star and he hit hard.</p>
      <p>These men were no ninja, Kouta was forced to weaken his blows just so he doesn't cut them down like hot steel wire through butter. They did have a certain degree of training – humans trained by corrupt rogue ninja in the paths of superhuman physique. Still, physical superhuman training could only build one up to a certain point, to surpass the human limit was only to hit the superhuman limit in the skies above. When Kouta felt his head bumping against the superhuman ceiling...</p>
      <p>Piles of mobsters elbow dropped him from above, endless crowds more fired upon him with those kunai dispensers piercing some of their own but also leaving shallow cuts and stabs on the boy's own flesh.</p>
      <p>When that superhuman ceiling becomes unbearable... Kouta only tears it down. The boy yelled out opening up his body and making his skin shift into holes, four on his back, six on each of his legs and arms, four on both his palms and feet. Chakra beams blasted from each one of it. Powerful enough to blast the mobsters off of him with the combined shockwave tossing every single mobster aside. The beams erupted through the walls and the windows shooting off a blue pillar beam from each hole it blasted through.</p>
      <p>Kouta's tired, scratched and bruised body continued to punch, knock out each of the men that fired upon him, when the floor was clean he moved up. He knew that Jeandette was climbing the steps behind him, he had to move quickly but sometimes exhaustion slowed him down. Sometimes those odd large camera boxes on the ceiling and in the corners managed to catch a glimpse of him, just blur, very rarely identifying him as something human. He did not wish to appear human to these people, they've built their entire lives trouncing humans, stomping all over their lives and dragging their faces in the mud. No, to them Kouta was no human – to them, he was a force of nature, a wild tornado of hellfire that would burn this whole building to the ground in its wild blaze.</p>
      <p>The toughest part of fighting these endless hordes of mobsters and evading each and every kunai blade their fired was that the young medical ninja had to hold back – he had to quickly adjust his speed from his peak to slower, he had to use significant skill to avoid all of those attacks at once but he only had to try his very least to knock these men out without murdering them. This ballet of adjusting his speed and strength was the toughest part. Kouta felt what little already remained of his chakra quickly get sapped from his body, his shoulder felt a cold breeze as one of the Audra alloy coated kunai had already grazed by his skin damaging his clothes by the shoulder. The strap of cloth got in his way but it didn't matter. It wasn't like these simpletons could capitalize on it even with their superior numbers.</p>
      <p>At one moment the young man stopped fighting, he looked around and saw nothing but knocked out and hardly breathing bodies. Men knocked out cold or grunting in pain as a force of nature hardly picked up by any of the endless cameras ran over them getting all of them out of Kouta's way. Kouta looked around seeing only a swimming pool and a sauna complex behind him. A tall and relatively bulky man walked out of the sauna with a towel covering his chubby frame and another pink towel wrapped around his head like a turban.</p>
      <p>"Ah... You're quite fast... I was just told of your arrival 6.11 seconds ago." The man whined out in a masculine voice yet the line was delivered at such a whiny tone that it greatly annoyed Kouta and creeped him out a little.</p>
      <p>"How many floors are there in this complex? I do not wish to hurt anyone but if I continue moving like this I am bound to slip up and punch a hole in someone..." The medical ninja inquired.</p>
      <p>"Oh, if I were you, I'd not worry about that. You see, you're staying in this floor." The man's black curly mustache twisted as he smiled and extended his hand to the medical ninja. "Buonefino Sangrant. Pleased to meet you, boy!" He laughed while keeping one hand on his towel that held his junk covered up.</p>
      <p>Kouta slowly and carefully approached the man, with a simple handshake he could inform him that the boy was not in any mood or power level to be trifled with. By simply crushing the man's palm he could finish this quick and move on to the hundreds of floors above.</p>
      <p>The young man's hand was dwarfed by the gigantic palm leaf that was Buonefino's hand the two pressed against each other and Kouta found that crushing the man's arm would not be as easy as he had thought. The pressure from their arms began to crack the pool tiles below but neither of the two gave way.</p>
      <p>"You're an impressive young man, you've gone through war and came here with a couple of scratches and grazes. Each one of those Syndicate goons are as strong as one of you genin right out of the Academy" the chubby chuckled as Kouta felt his feet leaving the ground.</p>
      <p>Buonefino swung Kouta around, slamming him against the tiles a couple of times before swinging him around his head and launching him out the wall to fall out of one of the several hundreds of floors, wherever the two were located.</p>
      <p>Kouta's feet quickly morphed into the Juugo signature chakra cannons bursting with blue chakra flares just like the boy had seen Meiko do, the blacksmith sealed chakra into her boots to release in a time of need so that the release would give her some acceleration and propelling force in mid-air. Just like that Kouta burst back into Buonefino's room. He could've just flown up to the top but he would've wasted a lot of chakra flying hundreds of more floors up, also if Jeandette ever stumbled into the room, whether traveling by stairs or the elevator, where Buonefino was she'd get killed and Kouta couldn't allow that.</p>
      <p>"Ah, you're back, young boy..." Sangrant laughed slapping his belly, it appeared that he switched his towels out for long spandex tights and a dark red full body suit that had a wide cut in the front to allow his chubby frame to breathe more freely. Now that the pink towel slipped off Sangrant's head his bald egg of a head could've been seen. The thing was shaped like an ellipse surrounded by streaks of black curly hair that started from his nose and wrapped around his bald head in the shape of circular and thick waves of facial hair.</p>
      <p>"They always come back... They always do..." The man smiled after, his eyes betrayed it, he finally decided to take it seriously.</p>
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<a name="section0192"><h2>192. No Such Thing As Magic</h2></a>
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      <p>Mana's face was twisted in pain as she and Meiko traversed the streets of Otogakure, running quickly through the streets instead of using the roofs and the wires on the upper levels for transportation as ninja would've normally done. It would've taken Mana a minimal output of physical chakra to be able to traverse like she used to be able to once – like a real ninja but combined with the intolerable pain from her wounds from the torture it would've been an agonizing trip. Even moving as fast as the two did, which was to say at a sluggish pace, Mana was twitching and trying to conceal just how bad her injuries were, or at least how badly they hurt.</p>
      <p>It was really stupid to take Kouta's ability for granted like that and treat her own health with this much disregard and disrespect. By now Mana had gotten used to the young man healing her whenever something like that happened so she forgot what moving around injured even felt like most of the time. Now when Kouta was somewhere else, probably too far away to be found and asked for help, Mana had a painful reminder of just how stupid the idea of taking all the torture was. She probably could've protected her body using chakra augmentation but then she'd have risked losing it all again...</p>
      <p>After she managed to somehow regain the ability to use physical chakra and at least dabble in some of the things she used to be able to do, at least play being a weakling ninja instead of feeling absolutely useless, Mana dreaded losing it all again more than she feared her own death. Just a small taste of the identity she once had and lost made the magician addicted to it again, losing all of it would've been absolutely unacceptable. It would've sent Mana spiraling down the pit of darkness again, she'd have done stupid things and thought even dumber thoughts and the magician knew it.</p>
      <p>"We're moving really slow..." Mana whimpered in pain, clutching at her sides, Meiko asked to take a look but Mana pleasantly refused.</p>
      <p>"It's OK, we have no idea if those guys will even strike today, we're just checking those areas and... There's really no need for us to rush." Meiko smiled to Mana so genuinely that either the blacksmith was a really good actress or she really believed it.</p>
      <p>"They will..." Mana closed her eyes as her feet refused to move and she sat down by a dumpster. "If that map you've shown me is right they've hit over eighty points already, now they've only got several more. They'll be getting desperate, whatever they're trying to achieve with this coordinated string of pointless violence they already have it in sight and that makes people desperate, it makes them rush and hopefully make mistakes." The magician explained her stance on things and stood back up starting to slowly pick up speed again.</p>
      <p>"I... It's probably gonna sound really rude but... You said you can't feel anything while meditating and that's how you probably withstood that torture for so long but so can't you just do it now? Filter it all out?" Meiko asked of Mana, probably fully realizing that if Mana had any way of avoiding this pain she'd have done it. Normally, the magician was never afraid of suffering or even placing her own life on the line. But this time her pain was actively stopping them from reaching the goal and that was dangerous.</p>
      <p>"I can't. If I was sitting still I could but not while trying to move somewhere. I can't both move and meditate." Mana replied coldly.</p>
      <p>"I could carry you, then you'd just tune out and not feel any of it." Meiko suggested again with a voice that suggested pity for Mana's pain.</p>
      <p>"It's fine. I'm not going to make you carry me around and even if I would I may slip out so hard that I won't be able to snap out when we arrive. Last time I only woke up when my body was being dumped and everyone thought me dead, after losing my chakra my meditation mastery is a bit wobbly. I can't do anything right..." Mana shook her head. All of this temptation of ways she could've avoided dealing with the pain she accepted so easily without fully comprehending the consequences made her jumpy and her rude tone may have revealed that to Meiko already.</p>
      <p>The two finally arrived at where they previously pointed the next outbreak of violence to be. Just from the first look, the magician realized that it has already happened – they were too late. There was this chilling stench of blood and death in the air, the alleyway, not unlike where the little girl was murdered previously, was dead silent. Only someone's final resting place let out signs like that.</p>
      <p>Mana limped around clutching at her gut and sides, hoping that she didn't open any of the bandaged little wounds that she had and examined the place. There was a creepy and serene dripping sound coming from a nearby dumpster so the magician called her friend and asked to have it opened. Meiko looked at Mana questioningly only for the girl to blush embarrassingly.</p>
      <p>"I don't want to get any garbage on me and risk infecting my wounds," Mana said. Her own weakness disgusted her but she'd rather have betrayed just how useless she was than risked getting infected over something that stupid. After the explanation Meiko appeared to have no problem with doing as she was asked to do, she opened the dumpster and pulled out a man placed inside. Both girls covered their noses before realizing that the man must've been dead for at least an hour.</p>
      <p>Mana knelt by the poor soul and examined him. He reeked not only of death but also of garbage so it was tempting to throw up the horrible lunch she had that day every moment of examination. Still, Meiko probably lacked the sharp attention needed to pick up the right details and by now the blacksmith realized that with her getting the pulling the corpse out of the dumpster part she actually got the easy part.</p>
      <p>This time there were signs of extreme resistance. Whatever happened here clearly indicated that the man wanted no part of this and didn't just accept his cold-blooded murder like the little girl before did. His palms and knees looked crushed, some of his joints were awkwardly twisted and snapped. The man's face was also strangely bloated and had a nasty color. Mana had to ask Meiko to drag the corpse closer to a bar light nearby to properly examine the color aspects of the cadaver.</p>
      <p>The worst part that there was no way of telling if the two were chasing ghosts or not – this time the angle of the stab appeared to be inflicted from straight up but if the man was knocked down it could've easily still have been done by the same short person they're looking for or a kid. It could've been just a random victim of street crime or a part of the string of murders. It could've been this ritual of death thing or just a random accident, one unlike those that happen every night in the alleyways of the large villages.</p>
      <p>"So is it another one?" Meiko asked leaning up closer with her nose still pinched. A smell like that would've knocked out or at the very least forced to throw up any uninitiated and Mana was glad that she had a weaker nose than most her peers.</p>
      <p>"Tough to say. If we were Police Force officers we'd have no solid proof attributing this to anything else but common street crime but..." Mana stood up before noticing another detail beside the man – tracks of blood that mixed into the mud, made clearer when the man's body began to bleed all over the mud and the difference between bloody mud and just the ordinary black dirt was clear as day.</p>
      <p>"The Syndicate goons told us they're really strict about maintaining public order unless it's them disrupting it." Meiko finished Mana's sentence somewhat questioningly. As if asking for a confirmation that it was what Mana meant to conclude with.</p>
      <p>"Exactly..." The magician concluded slowly walking up the steps into a turn to a dead end alleyway. Slowly, step by step, the magician crept into the total darkness, opening her ears and eyes and hoping that her bodily instincts to crank her chakra augmentation up when in trouble was still functional after she regained her physical chakra use, at least in some limited capacity...</p>
      <p>"Please don't kill me!" A loud whimper of a cowering elderly man came out, the poor soul was hiding behind another pair of dumpsters placed side by side and in the pitch total darkness, he was completely invisible. It made sense that if he slipped away here he'd have been totally lost by anyone tracking him if he didn't betray his position like he just did forcing Mana to jump up in surprise.</p>
      <p>Meiko ran right up to Mana, worried that the magician may have been attacked before noticing a man with a cracked head slowly bleeding over the dumpsters and the mud he was sitting on in a dark alleyway but too afraid to leave. Maybe that same fear saved his own life tonight...</p>
      <p>"We're not here to hurt you, we're here to stop whatever's happening, did you see what happened here? Did you see what killed that man?" Mana asked a couple of time wondering if she came out a little bit too persistent and demanding. She had no chance but to be that, there was no time for the man to shower and warm up, they needed to move on to the other remaining hotspots or else, at the very least, two more people would get murdered tonight or tomorrow night.</p>
      <p>"It's... They were a bunch of kids but they were so... Weird..." The man covered his face up, his tone suggested that he was weeping. It looked like the man didn't want to appear cowardly and the magician knew how much male ego meant so she stood patiently until the man could continue. "They assaulted that man and tried stabbing him but he overpowered them. I was just pissing right here, I was drinking at the bar tonight, you see. The kids then attacked the man, clawed and bit at him, brought him to the ground and used rocks to break his joints and his hands and feet. They bashed him around before finishing the job. One of them tossed the rock right into my head as they were laughing and passing by me, the buggers could've murdered me too but they just ran by".</p>
      <p>Mana scratched her chin trying to make sense of things. "It's alright, sir, it's safe for you to go home now. Could you please just tell us how were those kids weird to you exactly?" She asked.</p>
      <p>"I don't know, their eyes had that strange glow in them, they were shining brightly with some sort of black symbols, like hieroglyphs on them for irises and they kept babbling about some "ritual" or "summoning" someone..." The man kept on whimpering, Meiko asked for more details making him aggressively jump up and begin rushing away from them.</p>
      <p>"Look, I was drunk and I don't know anything. Whatever's happening here, those kids are gonna get it. You don't just kill people like that in the Syndicate's village. That's all the comfort I need... You kids better not wonder in no alleyways and wait until someone finds the bodies of those brats with Syndicate's signature all over them in a dumpster just like that poor guy. I fucking knew him... He was a regular at the bar... We even went out to pee at almost the same time." The man continued to talk to himself as he disappeared outside the alleyway exit and into the larger main streets.</p>
      <p>Mana rubbed her exploding head and grunted angrily before asking that Meiko crossed off the area from the map. So whatever these kids were doing was not sensual, it was some sort of a stupid ritual so it obeyed no common sense or logic. Rituals never did. What kind of nonsense were they trying to pull off? With all of her historical knowledge, the magician knew of no similar strings of murders. If anything, she could've sworn this was a more serial killer thing than a religious or ritualistic string of murders.</p>
      <p>"We need to go, we've got two more spots left so let's hurry up. If they are really a bunch of kids we can go to the next spot and then if they're not there even to the last one faster than they could. I mean kids have short legs, don't they?" Meiko tried to lighten up Mana's mood when she saw the magician being stumped and even rubbing her forehead against the wall hard enough to tear away the bandages off her forehead.</p>
      <p>"No..." Mana replied stopping Meiko in her tracks.</p>
      <p>"Wait, what? Come on, Mana, don't give up yet, we can still stop this magic whatever it is..." Meiko kneeled by Mana's side gently pressing on her shoulder and pulling the magician's head off of the wet and cold brick wall she was pressing it by.</p>
      <p>"It's not magic... I'm a stage magician, Meiko, I of all people know there's no such thing as magic. They're just murdering people out of delusion. They're kids. They're probably just religious kids or just kids that heard a pretty fairytale so there's no way predicting what they're thinking. I thought I was smart, I thought I could figure this all out but ultimately there's just one thing to do now..." Mana mumbled under own nose.</p>
      <p>"So which point do you think they'll pick? It makes sense they'd pick the point one, right? It's closer and the other one's on the whole other side of the village... Wait, you said they make no logical sense so then we go to the other one, not the obvious one, right?" Meiko began flipping the man over and over again trying to make sense of anything when she had not yet realized just how insane the situation was. It would've taken a person of equal or greater insanity to figure out just which point those kids would've picked.</p>
      <p>"We'll split up. That's the only way, you take the further point because you can get there in just mere seconds without me slowing you down, then you examine every corner of that area and if you find nothing you return to the point I am checking." Mana explained after getting off her knees and standing up.</p>
      <p>"Wait... No!" Meiko shouted out. "You're wounded, what if you get attacked, you're moving to the closer point, there's a bigger chance of you getting attacked," she argued but Mana shook her head.</p>
      <p>"That's the only way, there's no way to be sure where they'd go and there's just one way to make sure that no one else dies today. They have no chance in hell of killing you and I will make sure that they kill no one else, even if I have to die in the process. No one else dies, not to this senseless babble." Mana angrily explained before beginning to firmly walk towards the point she was supposed to cover, the one closer to where the latest murder was. Meiko looked at her with sad eyes and then departed to her faraway location so fast that she completely disappeared from the magician's vision.</p>
      <p>Nothing about this made any sense. The murders were committed for no reason but mindless ritualistic violence. That was why nothing about those murders made much logical sense, that was why the little girl wanted to get murdered – they found no quick kills there and just killed one of their delusional own. They just wanted to kill people at every point, disguising that madness in some stupid babble about summoning something, in some stupid ritualistic magic thing. Mana, as a stage magician, was really angered by such a treatment of the beautiful childish illusion of magic. Magic was supposed to be an art of mystery and illusion, something so mysterious but natural that it appeared to be impossible to be explained by common means so it was just dismissed as magic. It was never supposed to be the means of disguising insanity and pointless murder.</p>
      <p>Whether it was some strange religion, like that string of Jashinist murders around a decade ago or some sickness that plagued those kids, they had to be stopped. It hurt to move, at Mana's current shape she'd have a bit of trouble even keeping up with kids. If they were crazy and aggressive enough to beat down a grown well-built man she may just have her hands full but it didn't matter. Even if she had to prove it to these kids that their silly rituals were nonsense by dying herself and sparing someone of the same fate, she'd stop them and their silly ritual.</p>
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      <p>A couple of minutes later Meiko arrived at a small industrial district corner, it was not an alleyway where the point was placed on the map. It was right in the middle of a small neighborhood, surrounded by a block of flats right in the middle of the street. The blacksmith looked around and began scanning each and every nook and cranny for clues but nothing could've been found, the girl began getting nervous as she was wasting precious time that her immense speed granted her by allowing to get there so quickly. The blacksmith swiftly jumped up and raised her arm up to block an attempt to slit her throat from behind, Meiko was perceptive, she was a ninja after all and it would've taken an actual ghost to sneak up on her. Her armored gauntlet had not a single scratch left from the pathetic kitchen knife used in the attempt to claim her life.</p>
      <p>The blacksmith grabbed the little childish arm trying to pull the brat's frame up her body and flipped it before kicking it so hard into the back that it hit a steel dumpster flying away, hard enough for the container to bend of the force at which the child slammed into it. Despite the fact that she was attacked the blacksmith was happy, happy that Mana would not have to deal with these kids in her current state. It was only then that it dawned to the redhead that if she murdered someone it would probably count towards the goal of these kids and they'd simply scatter in the alleyways, sewers and streets making it near impossible for Meiko – a foreigner to this village to track them all at once. It'd have been better if the blacksmith played along with the rules of this ritual for now.</p>
      <p>The blacksmith turned around only to see a bunch of kids with rocks in their hands, launching all of them aiming at Meiko. The blacksmith didn't have to even react. Mere rocks had no chance of scathing her, it'd have taken an inconsequential amount of chakra augmentation to withstand such a blow but Meiko lazily grabbed each and every chunk of rock tossed at her before letting them slip and tumble down on the pavement.</p>
      <p>"I wonder if I should knock those kids out or what... It's not like this place has a working Police Force establishment to place them in and giving them to the Syndicate just feels... Wrong." Meiko thought to herself as the kids attacked her from multiple locations each wielding a small shard of glass or a knife. Carefully and holding back every sense of her being, the blacksmith lightly and effortlessly flashed behind each of the kids and tapped them at the backs of their necks knocking each of them out and then looking around for more kids that may have slipped and ran away.</p>
      <p>If at least one of these little bastards killed themselves or each other Meiko's entire effort would've gone to waste so the blacksmith sighed easier to herself and even clapped her hands together playfully. Then she heard a dreaded sound of steel clicking against a larger tube of steel – a loading sound of a kunai dispenser. Terrified Meiko turned around only to witness a barrage of endless kunai fire.</p>
      <p>"Let the little fuckers have it!" The Syndicate goon commanded his crew as the bunch unloaded the whole supply of their firing blades at the unconscious kids with Meiko as their only protector – the mobsters must've also figured out who was behind the tumbling of their sensitive card house of order maintained through fear. The blacksmith's arms moved quickly as she blocked each and every blow of thirteen lined up mobsters firing barrages of endless kunai strings from the dispensers. Meiko's armored gauntlets deflected so many blades fired so strong that they bounced off into the darkness beside the blacksmith, the endless clanging of her blurry movements deflecting the endless blade fire in pitch black darkness almost deafened Meiko's ears. In the end, not a single hair fell from any kid's forehead.</p>
      <p>Meiko dashed forward hitting one of the goons from her elbow right in the gut. An upwards strike from her arm punched another mobster in the air with a hook that launched him a great distance up. Her foot moved and pushed the dispenser right into the face of the third as her headbutt took out the fourth crushing the man's nose and the whole face. All faster than any of the mobsters could even register. More blows to the mobsters' heads and guts, all of them incapacitating shots that would've killed any lesser man but Meiko knew that these men were no slouches, she had fought those Syndicate goons before and knew they had the appropriate skill of a fresh genin ninja. Within a couple of seconds, the entirety of Syndicate's goon squad was sent down on the stone paved street cold and unconscious.</p>
      <p>Meiko turned around only to see the heart-stopping sight of a kid choking on bursts of blood, some of it escaped his mouth and splashed onto the street. It took the redhead a while before she realized that the kid had bitten their tongue off and was now bleeding out. Slowly but surely. Within mere moments the kid died with a smile on its scary twisted face, it was unclear when exactly the kid had done it but there was little Meiko could've done for them with her limited supplies and medical skill.</p>
      <p>The rest of the crew who were still able to stand dashed for the possible exists, all the nooks and crannies, open manholes, alleyways and street exits, giggling and scattering faster than a caravan of a hundred horses. She had no idea how the select group of the kids recovered so lightning fast from being knocked out. It was almost like their bodies were not even governed by their own brains. The eyes of these kids glew so bright that they were like little candles with just a small hieroglyph which Meiko could not understand covering the glowing whites of the children's eyes. These were no normal kids, these were little demons wandering the streets out for blood and they were aggressive and thirsty for blood, desperate to complete their infernal ritual.</p>
      <p>Meiko scratched her eyes realizing what just happened.</p>
      <p>"Mana will probably want to know..." She thought to herself. There was no hope for her to capture each and every child, they disappeared in the darkest alleyways, the most confusing and narrowest of the street turns and even inside open manholes and into the sewers. Maybe Meiko could've caught some of them but her crushed self-esteem was preventing even that achievement from being realized.</p>
      <p>She failed... It went bad so fast and then she managed to do so good but then... It all failed. Meiko pounded the stone floor causing it to rupture as the blacksmith could barely contain her own chakra output in anger and frustration. She failed her friend and now Mana was in danger... Meiko would better move. A loud roar emanated from Meiko's stomach signaling the blacksmith that she hadn't eaten anything for a while but as much chakra as she spent on protecting those kids from all that firepower, as much of it was spent even getting to this desolate neighborhood... It won't matter. Meiko looked onwards with determination and began heading towards Mana's direction, it should only take mere minutes to move to the other side of the village in Meiko's current worn out and hungry state but it would have to do... It will have to do. Meiko would not fail her friend again!</p>
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<a name="section0193"><h2>193. Freak Like Me</h2></a>
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      <p>Shimo was going through a new set of feelings while he followed Carnefici and Notasa around. The tall man effortlessly moved aside the massive debris and pushed it over, making a comfortable corridor for the young singer and composer to pass through. Several times he even smashed the debris with a single careless flick of his wrist reducing the whole structure to dust. Carnefici was certainly a powerful man, as a person who walked with his heart by his sword Shimo inevitably tried comparing himself to the once famous mass murderer, pillager, and mercenary pack leader. He wasn't so sure if he could take the man on if the need ever rose to.</p>
      <p>"Did you lose something?" The man huffed out rudely aimed at Shimo's direction. The young swordsman just tsked his tongue, he wasn't sure about what was the best course of action for him. He needed Notasa's help but he didn't know how to approach the shocked and afraid young artist and how to get Carnefici by his side as the young lady appeared to hold the man's opinion and advice in high regard.</p>
      <p>Slowly the Yuki walked up to the young lady and looked her in the eyes, waiting until the girl raised her head to meet his eyes. "I need the young lady's help. I must insist, we don't have much time in this village and... It's really important," he spoke to Notasa directly. Ninja were taught minimal psychology basics in the Academy, people were always more likely to give a positive answer and help when they were spoken to directly.</p>
      <p>Notasa wavered and for a moment wondered if she should go out of her way to help this youth. Shimo took this waver for a sign of interest, "You see we've found this interesting golden sphere in the Wind Country desert, it has ancient symbols on it that are phrased like a musical composition but it has missing notes and pieces that only a skilled composer or a musician could fill in. Your talent in improvisation and composition is without peers, as I've already had my chance to find out. I am sure that you'd be able to help".</p>
      <p>Carnefici pushed Shimo away with his broad shoulder, his angry eyes stuck on a strict wrinkled face threatened to burn the boy alive with but a stare.</p>
      <p>"Fine, give your sphere to the young lady here and now, she'll give you her consult so you can leave the young lady alone." He hissed.</p>
      <p>Shimo stroke the back of his head further messing up his already hectic hairdo. "I don't... Really have it on me right now. My friends have it in one of their bags and... Well... I got separated from them tracking a young woman." He explained shyly realizing how dumb his position sounded.</p>
      <p>"The young lady was just attacked by the Syndicate, a criminal group that holds this whole fucking village in their hands and could squish it like a dying sparrow at any point. Every transaction in this village, every person draws breath only because the Boss allows it. The young lady is no longer in the favor of those men and they will come after her again, the safest place for her right now is her own mansion which I've ensured to make into an iron fort. No Audra boned motherfucker will ever step on her backdoor mat without having their ass blown up. That is where the young lady will go and not a single step sideways..." The hulking bodyguard angrily explained to the annoyed Yuki.</p>
      <p>Shimo couldn't allow Notasa to get locked inside some mansion. If she did there would be no reaching her for who knew how long and he wouldn't dare to piss Mana off any more by forcing her to wait. If he knew the magician as well as he thought he did, she'd just blame herself for every world war happening during the time she tried to find the damned box and get her chakra control back, something like that will only make his friend spiral down into darkness further and Shimo has already lost one friend to senseless and poisonous grief, the kind that corrupts all and makes comedians bloody their hands and flip their grins upside down.</p>
      <p>"She didn't piss anyone off, you did..." Shimo angrily grunted out, a bit louder than he may have wanted to, almost immediately he realized that he was over the line but now that he had committed to a strategy he had to go on, he was in no position to falter. He had to go on the set path until the end of it.</p>
      <p>Carnefici and the young lady looked at him curiously, for a moment it appeared like both of them were ready to burst into laughter but they just continued to stare at him like Shimo was a bum who just flashed in front of them.</p>
      <p>"I mean, they didn't have a problem with Notasa, they had a problem with you and it's a reasonable one at that. When I was a kid there was a huge outcry when you weren't executed, hell, I'm surprised there wasn't a loud enough outcry when you left the prison at all. You were pretty much the big bad wolf back then, the worst of the worst, mothers would've scared their children with you if they weren't so damn scared of your raids themselves. If they were to protect Notasa and maintain public order as they claim to be doing, they would never allow someone like you to stay in their village." Shimo explained his position. If he made Notasa question his bodyguard's legitimacy and ability, maybe even his morality and his personality she could be left alone with no one to protect her, in that case, she'd be under Shimo's care and open to his suggestions. It was a dirty play but it was the only play as well.</p>
      <p>"It's not about fucking protection, it's about control. The Boss is really darn happy about his new fucking bones and body so he goes around telling every merchant to ditch their doormats and change their curtains, he demands the dumbest things because he wants to see people do them just because he says they have to. It was never about fucking safety..." The bodyguard began speaking but then Notasa butt in.</p>
      <p>"Didn't you hear what Carne said? Get lost!" She angrily yelled out in Shimo's face with ferocity the young swordsman had not seen coming from the musician. Just what the hell could've been her problem? Just how close could those two have been?</p>
      <p>"Wait... I was wrong to take their side... I mean... Damn, whenever someone sides with the Syndicate they're on the wrong side of the argument. That being said, I'm still pretty tough myself and I can provide decent enough protection. Maybe if I helped you two get rid of the Syndicate's tail for good you could help me with our sphere?" Shimo looked at the two questioningly when Carnefici just sighed after giving Notasa a stare. He really didn't like Shimo but he happened to place the girl's well-being really high up on his priority list so he sort of had to factor it into his decisions.</p>
      <p>"Fine..." He grunted annoyed by his own decision.</p>
      <p>Shimo looked farther into the city center hearing screams, yells and seeing smoke in multiple districts. Was this village always this hectic at nights? It was like the whole damned place was going insane. There was one building that looked toppled down and just outright on a raging inferno of flames whirling up to the sky as if trying to heat God's own marshmallows. There was another – a sky reaching one that looked like it was about to be toppled at any point. The boy had not noticed it before but now that he had time to look around it really stuck out.</p>
      <p>"So why are you wearing that fucking getup? You fought the Syndicate in it so you can't be a Syndicate goon, are you from the Diamond Hand?" Carnefici asked. Shimo squinted at him questioningly.</p>
      <p>"Diamond Hand?" He wondered.</p>
      <p>"It's another criminal organization, similar to the Syndicate, one of many, actually, Diamond Hand is mostly based in Shukuba though, they don't spread out much, still they're conflicting with the Syndicate the most so I thought..." The man explained.</p>
      <p>"No. I'm a Konoha ninja and I tried to go see the hall but I have neither the money needed for the ticket nor the threads needed to be let in by the really sassy bouncers. We've already clashed with the Syndicate once, toppled some of their bases of operations actually, I didn't know they had multiple large operational locations like this..." The boy told the truth, something told him that in his current position the last thing he wanted to was to lie.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... Mobsters are like weeds to ninja, they're too small time to be a priority in their mad world of exploding stars and protecting the fucking world but when they're ignored they get out of control too fast. The only reason I was even able to slaughter and pillage so many was because no one gave rat's ass until I killed the wrong family, then everyone was on my tail all of a sudden..." The man's reply made Shimo curious. He wanted to know a little more about how a mass murderer and the very definition of evil ended up bodyguarding a talented musician in Otogakure.</p>
      <p>"So... You not killing, what's all that about?" He asked quite simply.</p>
      <p>Carnefici sighed, "When I was finally captured there was this huge outcry, suddenly every Kage and every village wanted to execute me according to their laws and on their soil, they almost went to war for it. The conflict actually went on for so long that I was just staying imprisoned in Jigoku without a sentence or even a word of my execution for five years. At some point, the Hokage decided that executing me at all would be wrong and that while my actions were inexcusable, injustice from the side of the Feudal Lord would've been equally inexcusable so they switched the sentence to life imprisonment. Still, not until I was actually let go from my cell after getting my pardon signed by a lot of influential people almost a decade later did I wonder about what I was supposed to do with my life. All of my accomplices were already littering the fields of battle with their dead bodies. I decided to be born anew and thought that killing people was not something I wanted to do. I lied to that scumbag, I don't really remember everyone I hurt, I think that would be impossible but I feel bad for the fact that I don't. I don't get haunted by those I've killed over the years during my nightmares and I feel like I should be, those few times I do dream of the final moments of those people I feel like there should be more corpses clawing my eyes out... I'm a piece of shit, always was and always will be, but at least I can be less of a piece of shit by keeping this kid safe and kicking all the right asses this time".</p>
      <p>The man spoke for a while and it was clear that his voice wasn't used to such tension, he was a man of few words usually and now that his breath was working overtime his voice broke in a couple of places and felt really shaky in overflowing feelings coming from the man's chest.</p>
      <p>"I was looking for a bodyguard when I started out. Carne was getting rejected by everyone and couldn't find a job no matter what he did. Everyone treated him even worse than he once treated his victims and the worst part was that he had already served his time. People who have paid for their sins and redeemed themselves should never have to prove they've paid for their sins or pay for them again. Everyone does bad things, everyone's guilty of something, Carne is guilty of probably some of the worst things ever... Still, he's my bodyguard now and that's all I care about." Notasa explained adding to her bodyguard's speech.</p>
      <p>Shimo continued to walk in silence staring at the murky sky, it was really late already, the night was probably reaching its peak and yet the flames and smoke as well as all the neon lights coming from the central district made it seem like the morning was about to break at any point in time, like the Sun would rise and a new dawn would come for once, lighting up this blasted village for once and giving it a new chance only for it to fail its chance. Again and again and again... But was it really doomed to only fail? Did it really have no chance to be something more? Mana would've probably believed that as long as there was a chance that the village could fix itself somehow, maybe even by the same honest people trying to fix it, the same pleasure-driven selfish bastards that lived here, that it deserved another chance. Carnefici was not the problem in this village... There was one sentence Shimo never expected to utter in his life.</p>
      <p>"So what made you into the bubblegum man?" Shimo wondered, "It's clearly a ninjutsu of some sort but it's not any ninjutsu I've ever seen, seems like a bloodline but it's not a bloodline of a clan I've ever heard of..."</p>
      <p>"Carne is what ninja call many names: "mutate", "freak", "reject"..." Notasa began to explain but the man spoke up himself to explain it properly, it was clear why the young lady wanted to speak for her bodyguard – it was very clearly a painful topic for Carnefici.</p>
      <p>"My father was from a ninja clan and my mother was not, usually clan members need to inbreed with their other clan members to carry on the bloodline, when the other side of the coin is not of the clan the bloodline may be carried within the baby or may not be. On separate occasions, another matter entirely happens..." The man explained.</p>
      <p>"So you're from a clan?" Shimo asked to clarify a little.</p>
      <p>"Hozuki clan from Kirigakure, usually Hozuki members are able to liquefy their bodies at will using a Hiden technique that also requires one to have the proper bloodline and heavily modified DNA traits of a clan member. I, on the other hand, was born a freak, sometimes when the... Union... Is impure the result is a unique twist on the ability, I on the other hand to my clan members cannot liquefy my body but I turn it into liquid plastic, an oily substance instead of oil, my clan naturally rejected me and tried to kill me multiple times, as is the fate of all like me. I suppose that hatred ever since I was able to walk helped create the Carnage Fici..." The bodyguard concluded.</p>
      <p>"So turning your body to bubble gum is some sort of a twist on that ability? Like how Yuki are capable of creating ice out of any water source or even air humidity you can form that gummy substance from your oil?" Shimo scratched his chin admiring the ability of Carnefici, naturally he was a little surprised as usually twisting one's natural abilities like that was more attributed to ninja that devoted their entire lives for their craft of mastering their abilities. For it to be accessible to a common mercenary with a lucky birth defect... Carnefici surely was a unique man in the tides of history, it was just sad that he turned out the way he was, people would've loved a talented lowlife rising to the top story...</p>
      <p>"What about you? Who's that "young lady" of yours you're so desperate to help?" Notasa asked with a little curiosity and that silly winking behind her voice, changing it to try to imply that she meant something more than she actually meant.</p>
      <p>"My client... Also... My teammate... Also a really good friend." Shimo tried to explain but Mana's place in his life sort of defied any single word or explanation.</p>
      <p>"You seem lost about her place in your life..." Notasa winked and laughed out making Carnefici laugh out much more crudely and loudly.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... That's the running theme of my life. Ever since I was a child I thought I knew who I was – the young man who would make every woman in the world happy".</p>
      <p>"I like that dream..." Notasa butt into his explanation.</p>
      <p>"Naturally..." Carnefici sarcastically added.</p>
      <p>"Anyways, then my sensei died and... It changed everyone, my teammates became different and suddenly both of us lost our way, Sugemi became angry and frustrated, he just decided that killing all criminals was the way to ensure that no one else had to suffer grief such as our own. I just lost all traces of who I was, I did something stupid and had to leave, try to find who I was..." Shimo finished his explanation.</p>
      <p>"Did you?" Notasa curiously inquired.</p>
      <p>"Ironically enough, not until I came back. I realized that Mana was the only one of us three who hadn't changed after sensei's death. If anything she became stronger in reaching for her dream and I admired that, no matter how hard she's hit she always falters and wavers, flails like a pushed pendulum as she is affected by those blows and suffers greatly. But she always swings back before returning to the balance point. I realized that she wanted to inspire people and I wanted to be inspired and find my dream, my identity. And so I've decided to be more like her – a sword that protects but".</p>
      <p>"Swords ain't for protectin', they're for poking." Carnefici added.</p>
      <p>"Right. I saw those bunch of Justicar scumbags just casually fighting without restraint, not caring about the homes they'd destroy fighting like that, casually blinking out stars out of existence and drowning entire systems in eternal darkness and cold. Don't people like that deserve death? I just don't know anymore... I think a sword that protects is not a sword that does not kill, I think that I am different from Mana, I think that sometimes I see no other option. But then... If someone like me was in charge I'd have beheaded Carnefici the first chance I got and he'd have never met Notasa-chan..." Shimo tried to argue with himself at this point, the young man was sinking in a river of confusion.</p>
      <p>"You would've probably been right to do so. People like me don't deserve second chances... I'd kill me if I had the blade by the fucker's throat." Carnefici grunted.</p>
      <p>Notasa wrapped her arms around Carnefici's large slammer and pulled him towards her possessively. "Don't ever talk like that, Carne! Maybe redemption for a person like you is impossible, hell, I'm pretty sure people made up that word to call a concept they themselves invented and the people who did that are long since dead... What matters is that you're alive and you've got people dear to you and people who hold you dear have you! That is all that matters!" Notasa whined out. Her voice sounded really strong and womanly and not at all as childish as when she sang. It was always so strange to hear a musician speak casually...</p>
      <p>"I'll help you, Shimo-kun! Once this all is over, I'll help you, if I'll be able to!" Notasa declared jumping off of Carnefici's arm which she was holding by herself a moment ago. Shimo didn't know how to react, he merely nodded, finally things seemed to be moving somewhere...</p>
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<a name="section0194"><h2>194. The Most Electrifying Brawl In History</h2></a>
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      <p>With a violent roar, Kouta leaped at his opponent, his fists ran rampant and blurred in their lightning-fast crushing barrage that was stopped by the gigantic bear-like paws of his opponent. To every change of pace or angle to his blows, his opponent kept up. Buonefino's face was twisted in a mad smile, he was enjoying every moment of Kouta's assault, it was like he ate up the boy's passionate desire to move the large man aside and pass through.</p>
      <p>Suddenly the medical ninja felt a tight grip lock around his fist, Buonefino slammed the young man forward and backward making Kouta yell out in pain and struggle to keep his chakra augmentations up. He had spent so much chakra that day – healing Jeandette to the best of his ability and using his chakra jets to both return to Buonefino's floor and dispatch of the endless hordes of the Syndicate mobsters.</p>
      <p>Buonefino flipped the boy around like a softened steak and tried bear-hugging him to grind the young man's bones, his face ate only the medical ninja's feet as with a graceful backflip Kouta retreated from the danger zone established by the powerhouse of the Syndicate. This man was different, he was on a whole different level than even those Audra skin wearing brutes from Tanzaku and Katabami mines. He was a solid threat for a decent genin to face, in his refreshed and rested state Kouta would've beaten the man with quite some effort but now he was not so sure.</p>
      <p>"Playing hard to get, are you?" Buonefino growled out in a strange husky laughter, shaking his strong thick fat so hard that he had to wrap his hulking arms around his own belly so that Sangrant did not collapse.</p>
      <p>"Sadly my heart belongs to someone else, Mr. If someone saw me in your grip it'd prove too much trouble explaining it to that someone," Kouta answered with humor to the man's strangely twisted humor.</p>
      <p>Sangrant charged at Kouta with a running clothesline, the man's wide opening allowed Kouta to dash right behind him. He would not strike just yet, his father taught the boy better martial arts than that, Sangrant would've expected a fake-out but not a double one. Kouta's image blurred and appeared right in front of Buonefino right after it did the same and appeared behind him. The hulking brute had only just turned behind him to try and protect himself from assault from his back when Kouta was already hitting the man's front with full force.</p>
      <p>The boy had no idea how many strikes he landed. May have been at least sixty to the man's abdomen, Sangrant staggered when the medical ninja switched up positions and began assaulting his face. The Juugo's assaults ran rampant on Sangrant's face, knocking a couple of teeth out and achieving a small nosebleed from the man's stumpy thick nose. With a diagonal kick, Kouta sent Sangrant flying to the side of the deep pool so strong that Buonefino hit the ceiling and got stuck into it.</p>
      <p>"It'll take him a while to escape that... I would be wise to use this chance to put some distance between me and Jeandette's elevator..." Kouta thought as he launched himself towards the staircase climbing it to the best of his ability. A couple of stick-wielding mobsters tried to stop him but with a single hurricane kick, he dispatched of them all before they could even wind up their bats. The young Juugo sincerely hoped that there would be no more opponents on the level of the fat wrestler by the pool.</p>
      <p>The door burst open with a deafening clang, Kouta did not open it nor did he kick it out, he just ran past it letting it break from his own toughness ramming it. It was like moving through a paper veil... The boy leaped onwards dispatching of a couple of gangsters that immediately fired upon him, Kouta felt warm squirts of blood on his chest and shoulder – those kunai must've had some Audra alloy infused in them which made them more penetrating to a chakra augmented body, they could scratch him which was already troublesome. At this point trying to withstand the barrage of fire would've been a suicide pact as his chakra would disappear in front of his eyes.</p>
      <p>Luckily, his medical ninja trainee evasion served him well, he was actually the one who taught Mana the art of evasion and while the magician had the advantage of having studied under Shimo's rogue ninja martial arts and Meiko's art of redirection as well to create an amazing combination of defensive moves, Kouta was still the superior evader. With rolls and spinning upside down kicks and vaults the medical ninja utilized his environment perfectly cleaning the room as fast as possible and as much as he needed to pass. Kouta's body slowed down as he began huffing heavily, this was really not being taken well by his tired body. If only he had more time to rest up before storming the tower but time was a luxury Jeandette did not have. Forward, just forward...</p>
      <p>A tight grip crushed Kouta's chest as the young one found it impossible to draw breath, within moments of seeing the size of hands locking him still the boy knew that it was the creepy wrestler from below.</p>
      <p>"There was not a young boy born to escape Buonefino Sangrant!" He yelled out in pride and jumped up so high that both of them hit the ceiling with their heads leaving a wide hole. Sangrant's frame flipped upside down as the duo crashed through the floor and then into the water, spinning and crashing through more and more floors. Blackness and pain, feint star-like lights popped in and out and the young Juugo found it so incredibly difficult to stay conscious. Suddenly he coughed up and realized that he was stuck in the water... Then air again entered his lungs – Sangrant was crashing them through the pool and below.</p>
      <p>He was losing chakra quickly. If he crashed all the way down he'd lose everything, one of these floors could've cost him too much chakra and killed him or maybe one of them made him pass out and then a slam like that would completely snap his neck. The more Kouta's tired and half-conscious body tried to resist its captor the more he realized it was pointless. The boy's body was being dropped through more and more floors. That was it...</p>
      <p>"No..." He thought to himself. An image ran past the young Juugo's mind, an image of Jeandette reaching the top only to be greeted by a crowd of armed mobsters that gunned her down upon sight. Another one of Mana crying over his dead body and looking at the tower with those eyes... That angry stare she used to give Shimo when he stopped her from entering the caves back in Takigakure.</p>
      <p>A loud snap followed by a booming crash emanated through the whole building coming from Kouta's head-butting backward and smashing into Sangrant's nose forcing the wrestler to release his prey. Kouta saw Buonefino struggling to stand back up – he was just as shaken as Kouta was by the fall and the young Juugo planned to give him no time to get his act together. A punch from the right, another winded up and charged all the way from the left. A knee strike right to the nose and all that Kouta could muster up exploding onto the man's thick chubby and hairy gut. A two-handed slam to the man's head to send him down.</p>
      <p>Kouta jumped above his downed and bleeding opponent and forced his feet to turn into cannons, he unleashed a powerful jet of chakra firing him upwards while it blasted Buonefino even lower below. Kouta felt and saw the building struggling to stand as he whizzed by the endless floors that he was tossed down through.</p>
      <p>The young one could take no more, he thudded down on one of the cleaned and destroyed floors to catch a breath. There was immense pressure below Kouta's eyes and his vision was getting blurry, he struggled to catch a single breath but even as he swallowed more and more air, tons of air, it just wasn't enough. It was like feeling hungry in a vault of food. It couldn't have been the heights... He must've been feeling shortage of chakra. Or it could've been both at once.</p>
      <p>A strong pull forced Kouta's weightless body down to the lower floor, someone grabbed his leg from below and dragged the boy all the way through the floor and into the lower one. Sangrant's face was bashed up, his bald egg of a head was cracked in a couple of spots and his nose was bashed upwards and slowly but relentlessly bleeding. The man's snake-like facial hair curve was now messy and flowing all over his lower face and his colorful wrestling spandex was torn up in most places and covered with stains of blood.</p>
      <p>Buonefino roared charging forward with a slap, as Kouta jumped and staggered back evading each and every slap thrown his way the floor beneath his feet crumbled and fell down leaving gaping holes in each floor and dropping the unconscious bodies of each knocked out criminal present in that floor. Sangrant threw a direct punch to Kouta's gut trying to force the boy to pass out but the staggering frame of the medical ninja allowed him to gain enough momentum for a falling overhead kick to his opponent's neck. The boy's experience as a medical ninja allowed him to identify a pressure point in the brute's neck and attempt to shut the giant man down.</p>
      <p>Dazed and confused by the rampant nerve pain all throughout his body and an overwhelming desire to shut out Buonefino just stumbled around before focusing himself once more and charging at Kouta with a powerful tackle, pushing the young man outside the skyscraper wall where both of them almost fell to their deaths, only barely clutching at the edges. While shouting in passion to win and utter unadulterated rage Buonefino twisted around trying to crush his opponent with a backhand smack but was unsuccessful each and every time, hitting only concrete and glass since Kouta jumped up and up, scaling the seemingly infinitely tall building.</p>
      <p>The passionate giant launched himself at Kouta's location but the medical ninja just flipped back and drove his feet into Buonefino's chest, utilizing the man's own momentum and breaking the man's arms up aiding his thrown Kouta rolled in and tossed Buonefino into a floor smashing him through multiple conference tables and decorative walls and office glass. Leaning on his right foot as a glass dug deep into his back Kouta walked on forward, he pulled out the glass and quickly patched his back up using medical ninjutsu, feeling his already dwindling chakra level dwindle even more.</p>
      <p>"Don't drop the soap on me yet, boy!" Buonefino yelled out grabbing Kouta by his foot, appearing from a pile of wreckage in all of his disgusting wrestling glory and locking him in for a piledriver and slamming Kouta's face into the floor. The knocked out medical ninja just laid there wondering where he was and what was happening, he had no idea how much time had passed or where exactly Jeandette may have been in her elevator trip to the top floor.</p>
      <p>Buonefino grabbed the barely conscious opponent by his trousers as Kouta's top was completely torn down and bloodied, the wrestler just spun the young man around and tossed him up through the hole they made while crashing down, jumping right after his opponent before kicking Kouta in the back as they've arrived at the pool floor and slamming him in the chest and gut with a double-handed slam crushing and grinding the young man's body to his knee. Before the gravity took over Sangrant's body the wrestler tossed Kouta aside hoping to have knocked the young man out and grabbed the edge right before falling down. Sadly the building's floor crumbled making the large man tumble down a couple of floors lower giving Kouta some time to recuperate.</p>
      <p>With huffs and throwing up blood the young man rolled into the water and dived down. He felt the cold and refreshing waters of the pool wipe away the pain from his countless bruises and wounds. No matter what he did, he just couldn't pass around this man, he was like a living wall. It was a miracle that Kouta was even conscious, to begin with. He had grown so much stronger since leaving the village with Mana... Before he could barely treat simple cuts, after worrying over the life of a girl he loved he soon learned to treat dangerous life-threatening injuries through desperation and willpower alone. Before leaving he could not even phase his father and could never have landed a punch on him but now... While worrying about Mana's life he could do anything.</p>
      <p>Kouta's elbows shifted and dislocated, bone pierced his flesh and soon molded with it forming tubes, tubes that appeared almost wooden in shape and texture Kouta's eyes opened but they were no longer the eyes of a timid and reserved young man, they were the pitch black eyes of a maniac Juugo barbarian, only a golden ring would grant sanctuary in this vast blackness of his eyes, now serving as the golden iris. A stream of golden chakra fired away from Kouta's elbows sending the boy upwards... A whirlpool of leaking water to the lower floors was slowly draining the pool and dragging Kouta down towards the hole, there wasn't much time.</p>
      <p>"Rising Piston Fist!" He shouted out the name of a technique he had seen his father use time and time again, a fist of overwhelming power, sadly Kouta's current condition would've made his fist infinitely weaker than that of his father's so no one would be flung out of the orbit but at the very least he dreamed of hurting the man standing in his way.</p>
      <p>There he was... Standing by the edge of the pool and wondering where his opponent had gone. Kouta's intentions were no longer pure, he was no longer trying to save anyone or prevent anyone's death, he no longer wished to benefit anyone but his inner fighter's instinct and that made him strong, stronger than he would've ever become. He was a true son of a Juugo clansman, only rage and wish to hurt someone, not a wish to save someone would've granted true power and the medical ninja finally realized the darkness within himself.</p>
      <p>The Piston Fist technique dug straight into Buonefino's face flinging him upwards higher and higher through countless floors. Kouta couldn't even calculate how high he went before his trip ended prematurely in a small indoors garden but Buonefino continued his flight the stream of dark purple chakra emanating from Kouta's elbow tubes had long since ended and his eyes returned to normal, the patches of skin that had begun to morph into a strange wooden like texture forming a demonic shape out of the young man had passed and returned to normal. Buonefino slammed into the floor and forced a hole in it before falling back down nearby where Kouta had landed. All the mobsters had long since fled from the destruction, at this point they may have realized that no matter how much money their boss would've flung their way, they'd have never been able to fulfill his demands. This was a world outside their reach, hell, until Kouta again discovered the selfish desire to fight and win, it'd be out of his reach as well...</p>
      <p>"Father... So that is how you fight..." He wondered to himself observing his crushed opponent. Slowly a couple of lingering mobsters began to fill the room hoping that maybe Kouta was weakened to the point where they could've finished him off. They began closing in closer and closer and Kouta felt too weak to even fight them off.</p>
      <p>"Shit, that fucking faggot got his ass handed to him..." One of the mobsters cursed as he raised his kunai dispenser aiming right between Kouta's eyes.</p>
      <p>With a loud bell ringing noise, the mobsters were interrupted by an arriving elevator, as the door opened Jeandette unleashed hell from a kunai dispenser she held in her arms gunning down both mobsters trying to cash in the prize that most had already fled from.</p>
      <p>"Made a couple of stops along the way, visited some old friends... Settled some differences..." She shrugged with a weakened and pale smile. She didn't have much time left...</p>
      <p>"I have failed... Kill me. There is no redemption for me, I was never man enough to beat you..." A sobbing cry came from Sangrant's side, the damned bastard was still conscious just beaten beyond the point of moving.</p>
      <p>"Man enough? This had nothing to do with anything. I just had a stronger reason to fight for and more training... If you asked me this style doesn't suit you, you're too agile for these stiff movements and slams, I've never seen such an agile fatso, honestly..." Kouta huffed out sitting nearby his weeping powerhouse of an opponent.</p>
      <p>"Now, my cousin, Winsel, will never release me from the family. He's the one who taught it to me hoping that such a manly fighting style would make a man out of me..." He wept and wept to the point where he grabbed his face to restrain the influx of manly fist-sized teardrops bursting from his face.</p>
      <p>"Being a man is not about the manliest style. It's about doing what feels right to do and never backing down unless backing down is the right thing to do. It's about always doing what you think is right, not because someone else tells you it's right, it's about leading the way. You're a little wimpier and softer inside than most mobsters and you've got a kind heart, you've got questionable sexual preferences but none of those things are something to be redeemed for. It's what you are, being a man is not about changing what makes you you, it's about changing what you don't like about yourself while telling everyone else to suck it up and deal with the real you. Being a real man is about never having to prove that you're a man to anyone. Now learn to dance, learn to jump and kick and do sick spins and pirouettes and then let's fight again, I've learned more from you than I've learned from a thousand of "real men" I've faced today." Kouta raised his fist by Buonefino's face only to be greeted by a soft fistbump.</p>
      <p>Staggering and stumbling over debris Kouta and Jeandette struggled towards the staircase to the next floor.</p>
      <p>"Only two floors remain... The elevator won't take us any further, you ready?" She whispered to Kouta. Truth be told he was never less ready than he was at that moment, however, he just grinned and gave the woman a thumb up, a dying woman craving for absolution had no business of seeing anything less from him.</p>
      <p>"Are you ready to have the best tasting hat'ash you've ever had?" He asked confidently heading towards a floor sunken in total darkness. The floor where "Black Widow"Mortenson lurked for a careless prey that wandered into her lair</p>
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<a name="section0195"><h2>195. The Beacon of Blood</h2></a>
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      <p>Loud footsteps and sounds of people talking greeted Mana's ears when the girl finally had reached the spot where the next ritualistic murder was supposed to take place. A little surprised and in a rush to hide from being seen or noticed the magician slammed against a wall, a bit too rude for comfort as her recently gathered an array of wounds flared up with painful impulses emanating all throughout her body and forcing her to clutch for her sides again. There was no way she'd have taken on a group of people at the moment without having to rely too much on physical chakra augmentation.</p>
      <p>Leaning by the side the magician took a small peek, the people inside were mobsters, Syndicate mobsters. It was only natural that they would get in her way – after all, they were the ones to gather the information first and they wanted those children out of the streets and stopped from murdering their precious happy cash cows. These men carried much more impressive kunai dispensers, even from as far as Mana stood she could notice the difference between the weaponry used in the Katabami mines and these.</p>
      <p>The ones in Katabami had wooden frames and pieces where the steel couldn't have been worked to be so small and delicate. They had no targeting systems or any visual aids so it was up to the user's skill to hit the mark. Naturally, it was of little matter to a ninja who was trained at accurately slinging blades and shuriken at their enemies but to a mobster, with limited training, it would've made for a poor weapon to rely on. These dispenser tubes had comfortable leather holsters and a strange aiming aid that was meant to assist the mobster by having the user peek through it and lock down on the target. Mana had seen such aiming systems worn as eye prosthetics on some mercenaries back when she and Kiyomi fought Hachi's crew.</p>
      <p>The magician slowly tried scaling the wall she was close to, it was to no avail, the wall was too slippery and wet and she couldn't use chakra to just run up it like a ninja could've. She was growing more and more desperate, she needed to get in closer, if the kids came in contact with these mobsters it'd be a slaughter and it only took a single simple death, an insignificant fraction of a second that it took for a fired blade to pierce someone for Mana's wish to stop this violence to blow up in her face, for the ritual to apparently be completed. The kids only needed one death, after all, they ignored the cowering man from before and only claimed one life, that meant they only needed one death for the succession of the ritual.</p>
      <p>Mana saw a metal ladder nearby, this whole place was a construction site but it was still the middle of the night so all the materials and climbing aids and safety tools were left around. Why wouldn't they be? If someone stole something not under Syndicate's orders they'd be quickly dealt with. To Mana, such justice system sounded mind-boggling but people here seemed to agree with it. There was something that troubled her as she slowly crept up to the ladder, ducking under various unfinished brick walls and carefully treading around abandoned tools just laying on the ground so that the silence of a peaceful conversation between the Syndicate was not disturbed.</p>
      <p>People appeared so happy with such systems. The systems were the people disobeying public order were just killed, it didn't matter whom they were killed by. Just like that time during the Fourth's funeral, during Tanshu-sensei's funeral... People all got behind Sugemi's anger and grief-ridden words, they would never trust her and her ideals, seeing how well they responded to momentary pleasures silencing their consciences and just random crooks killing their perpetrators, not for justice, but because they were in the way of their own plan of making money. At that moment, as she reached for the next step of the ladder Mana felt the most lonely she'd felt for a while. Why were people so opposed to chance for redemption? Why would they rather see criminals skewered by other criminals than dealt with by the book?</p>
      <p>"So did anyone actually read that note that "Momma" Zulfia left us?" One of the mobsters asked the other group carelessly smoking up a cigar and blowing it right into the air, Mana could finally make up something that these people were talking of since she was carefully positioned on a rail right above their heads.</p>
      <p>"I dunno. Sounded like a bunch 'a mumbo jumbo. Blah blah, rituals, blah blah some ancient Gods or whatever," the other mafioso, this one wearing a black and white kimono with lotus and dragon ornaments replied also puffing black tar smoke into the air. The smoke had little time to disperse and it was really annoying Mana's lungs as it hit right into her face by large clouds and in the darkness of the night the girl had few options of avoiding it.</p>
      <p>"Not "Ancient Gods", I think it's something about a Lesser Demon..." Yet another one intercepted correcting his friend.</p>
      <p>"Meh, Ancient Gods, Tailed Beasts, Lesser Demons, Snow Country... I don't believe in any 'a that shit..." The first gangster sneered at his pals blowing out an increasingly annoying and irritating to Mana's chest puff of smoke.</p>
      <p>"Snow Country is an actual fucking country ya goomba!" His suit wearing pal slammed him in the back of the head so hard that the mobster's hat fell off.</p>
      <p>"Uh-huh... That's what they tell you," the bullied naïve mobster nodded sarcastically before leaning down to pick up his hat. "I mean it could be a real country, you could be right, it could be an actual country right south of Kumogakure... All I'm saying is that I don't believe you. It could more likely be just a big lie! I mean how could a country be freezing cold right south to fucking Kumogakure, I mean Kumogakure is like a rocky scorching wasteland of mountains so hot you could cook an egg on their surface... And it's supposed to be north of the Snow Country? Na-ah, I'm not buying it... It's all a conspiracy, see".</p>
      <p>"Conspiracy?" All of the mobsters got interested and walked out into the light, Mana noticed that her shadow was visible from where she stood, reflected by the small lamp that the mobsters had positioned in the center of the abandoned construction building.</p>
      <p>"Oh yeah. They say it's a country with like its own snowy fields and shit... But actually, it's a secret training facility of Kumogakure's where they're training dolphins with sky piercing laser beams designed to nuke entire countries" the first one explained.</p>
      <p>"Oh, shut up ye big palooka, Ole Pa Bonztail is the only guy with a pool of skypiercin' laser wearing dolphins. That's cause he specifically ordered them to be bred. I even was on a mission to bring him goddamn dolphins from Kumogakure Archipelago myself. Bought them on the black market from "Zombieface" Yoruma Yoshiaki..." The kimono wearing mobster angrily dismissed his peer before looking right at Mana's shadow. The magician's heart gone cold as every single mobster also caught the sight of her shadow, now only narrowly seen as the magician was trying to move out of sight as slowly and stealthily as possible, unsuccessfully it seemed.</p>
      <p>"We've got a tail, pop it!" One of the mobsters yelled out, jumping and turning around only to launch a barrage of blades at Mana's direction, the magician had no other option but to jump away from them, she had to be fast, these blades were being fired faster than the human eye could track them so she tried flaring up her physical chakra so she could move out of the way, the magician tried flipping off of the rail but her side tore up in pain forcing her to scream out and trip over the rail falling down onto a bunch of sawdust raising a large blinding cloud that was irritating to the eye.</p>
      <p>Mana felt up her gut and felt a sharp blade somewhere in her gut, she dodged most of the barrage but her wounds made her skip one... Or at least she thought she only skipped one as the pain from the wounds was so crippling that she would barely even be able to feel anything else, even if it was a blade fired into her body at high speed.</p>
      <p>"Hey, Mik, there's some blood over here, I think we got em!" The mobster shouted out. Mana realized that they were dangerously close, she was too weakened by her wounds to consistently beat them at hand to hand, even if they were blinded by the sawdust that was slowly settling down. She could barely even run... Mana's little fragile fist grabbed a brick and pressed it hard by her chest before she stumbled out from the corner tossing it haphazardly and carefully at the general direction of the noises. She could hear someone screaming in pain and deafening clangs of blades being fired at her direction that just bounced off of the walls she was hiding behind.</p>
      <p>There was no use, she was too weakened and slow, now with that wound in her side she could barely even move around fast enough to be anything else but a wounded prey waiting to be tracked down. Mana prepared for what seemed more and more like her last stand but she could hear no more yells, only a brief gurgle of blood killed the silence forcing the girl's heart to freeze and her eyes to open wide in shock. As the dust cloud settled down the girl moved out from the cover to see the mobsters all stabbed to death messily and a bunch of children grasping shards of glass so hard in their little hands that they bled profusely.</p>
      <p>Mana's hand slowly moved on her side gut wound, she gripped the kunai stuck in her gut which she had not pulled out since it'd start an inevitable process of her bleeding out. That was the only weapon she had besides her cards but with her body as frozen and crippled in pain, she'd lack the precise and skillful movements needed to sling cards.</p>
      <p>"Mother?" The children asked someone still remaining hidden, turning around frantically.</p>
      <p>A loud wooden tick on the floor helped Mana narrow down the location of this "Mother" that the kids were looking for.</p>
      <p>An old woman dressed just like any other old lady would be dressed in the streets, if a little drastic with the number of woolen scarves she wore, walked out and examined Mana's broken body with her elderly eyes and a strict wrinkly face.</p>
      <p>"Sacrifice?" The kids asked in a monotonous tone looking questioningly at their leader, the elderly woman scratched her chin, she appeared somewhat indifferent and hesitant to utter the words.</p>
      <p>"No need, my deacons, the ritual is complete anyways." She uttered the words from her wrinkly and chewed up and torn skin covered lips. The woman wore a nasty scar that covered her face diagonally which the magician only made out once the woman walked out more clearly into the light.</p>
      <p>"You've killed them... You've killed them for nothing. You've killed so many people for what? For absolutely no reason at all!" Mana shouted out in anger clutching her burning ribs and lungs from the pain that stressing the chest summoned.</p>
      <p>"I killed them because of my faith. Faith that the lives of my sons shall be avenged, faith that redemption will come to the wicked," the woman said indifferently turning away from Mana and walking away into the endless swarm of little kids, some of them could've been as young as eight, some of them may have been as old as Mana. All of them had strange and haunting glowing white eyes with only a black piercing glow of a hieroglyph shaped iris in their eyes.</p>
      <p>"Redemption? I see no redeemed here, only corpses..." Mana replied quietly as she lamented all the people that died because of this woman and her "faith". "Nor do I see any Gods... Your ritual was a dud".</p>
      <p>The woman stopped in her tracks and looked around ecstatically. She was so hyped about something, so fired up that her nameless God will be summoned. "No, girl, the wicked ones will be redeemed, the Goddess will descend, I've told her where by drawing the beacon of blood. Then they'll become one and I can wipe this city clean, no more Syndicate, no more mothers losing their children to the night!" The old crone screamed out slobbering over her face and onto her own children that appeared indifferent to the old woman's nervousness. She waited for a while, waited and waited but to no avail. No Gods descended upon the Earth.</p>
      <p>"The infidel is right, the Goddess did not come... Something must've been wrong, the holy monk told us she'd descend if the beacon was drawn, something must've been wrong, these sacrifices must've been unclean, sacrifice the girl! Let me do it, maybe you did something wrong!" The woman ordered pointing at Mana. The children all launched at the magician at once swarming her, Mana swung back haphazardly, she was afraid in her heart of hurting these kids. They looked... Haunted... Possessed, not in their right minds. And yet...</p>
      <p>They crawled all over Mana, made a human pile on top of her clawing at her face and dragging her by the hair, tearing at her clothes trying to flay her skin off before Mana could suffer no more and pushed the especially ferocious ones away. She had less than a fraction of her strength left and she wasn't even using that. The magician may have felt easier about fighting back normal opponents after Guru Ayushi's lessons but fighting possessed children just felt wrong. She was just wailing in a nailed down coffin, as good as dead, as good as sacrificed...</p>
      <p>Mana was forced to the ground and her hands broken behind her. The girl screamed out loud of the pain and slammed her head at the ground to concentrate on that pain instead of that of her both broken arms. A kid peeled her face off the ground by her hair and lifted her up just enough to reach the old priest's knees.</p>
      <p>"Higher, no more throats, I need her heart! Her essence is in the heart!" The woman shouted at her children. For a woman that claimed to do all of this unspeakable horror for her children, she seemed to completely lack any compassion or love towards these children, viewing them as her pawns. A soft and lovely poem left her lips yet her hand held firmly a hooked knife. Mana looked the woman in the eyes, determined and not yet broken despite the fact that she absolutely was.</p>
      <p>"You showed remarkable mercy to my deacons, did not even hurt them much, those Syndicate dogs didn't give my children that luxury, they covered their beds with blades for nabbing some expensive things from their store... Your sacrifice should light the beacon." The woman spoke.</p>
      <p>"The Beacon of Blood." The kids simultaneously repeated in their lips in a coordinated fashion.</p>
      <p>Mana blinked rapidly, "Fine. Pierce my heart, murder me right here but no Gods will come. I'm glad to prove you wrong even if dying is what it'll take to do so." The girl defiantly spoke up.</p>
      <p>A loud thud followed by the woman's scream and a crash into an unfinished wall greet Mana's ears and not the pain of being stabbed. That pain she knew all too well and yet... At no moment did it come. Meiko's grinning face stared at the restrained magician just before the blacksmith got serious again. She looked at the kids that held Mana captive, some of them still held broken shards of glass in their bleeding arms refusing to let go of it.</p>
      <p>"Guys, don't do this. The old hag is an old fart and she doesn't know what she's doing. Don't kill Mana, she's a kind person and you've killed too many..." Meiko got really engaged in her hostage scenario speech.</p>
      <p>"They're not gonna kill me, Meiko, the old woman ordered to let her do it so they're waiting for her to kill me." Mana interrupted with a pain-ridden voice. Quickly, the blacksmith moved in and tackled a large group of kids away from Mana before picking her up and moving away from the swarming group of possessed children.</p>
      <p>"No... No... The monk told me that the Gods would come if I light the beacon, he even gave me the means of gathering followers! He couldn't have lied to me! Why have the Gods abandoned me!?" The old woman moaned spitting up blood in the broken wall that she busted through. She didn't talk very loud so a lot of her senseless psycho cult babble came out as hardly comprehensible.</p>
      <p>Mana wanted to clutch her aching chest but her broken arms didn't move. The magician just asked Meiko to move her in closer to the old woman, the blacksmith hesitantly agreed and jumped off the platform she had settled on top of and slowly approached the woman.</p>
      <p>"I'm sorry for what happened to your children. No one should ever be murdered like they were, no matter if they stole something or not. But you have to understand that you behave in no way different than the killers of your children. Gods don't come for people like that, the more I see of this life, the more I realize there may not even be Gods there to come for us. There's no divine retribution or redemption but the one we make for ourselves. Trusting a supernatural force to solve all our problems is naïve and vain, especially when one does it with these abhorrent methods." Mana uttered with a whiny and weakened voice, her skin started becoming pale from the blood she'd lost after being shot with a blade and attacked by the children that opened the old torture wounds.</p>
      <p>"You... Ignorant, infidel little whore!" The old woman screamed out clawing at Mana but her body was too broken by Meiko's strike to leap at Mana, she only wailed at the magician as Meiko's grasp where Mana was ended up far too tall for the broken old hag to reach. "You dare preach your heresy to me!? I'll claw your eyes out and when my Gods come I'll bring you back only to claw them out again"!</p>
      <p>A deafening sonic boom knocked Meiko off her feet tossing both Mana and Meiko in different directions, the old crone began screaming in pain and shock but her mad screams were snuffed out by the absolutely dominating sound of the white flare of light that began emanating immense gravitational waves followed by even more loudly roaring sonic booms as each one passed. A couple of children were thrown away through multiple brick walls upon even coming close to a single wave, as close as fifty meters to one. The pressure inside one of them must've been immeasurable by a human mind.</p>
      <p>Inside the ravaging and ground opening waves of sound booms and gravitational anomalies was just a beacon of purple light that lit up and revealed a figure standing inside of it. It was a feminine figure with two long appendages at the end of her head that extended well past her bottom and up to her knees, she wore a white bodysuit that appeared to be part of her skin, almost like a living armor tissue covered with pitch black and almost cybernetic looking black symbols and motifs, the entire armor was covered with ornaments except for her open cleavage and her face which were the only parts of the entity's body uncovered by the armor tissue but instead purple skin, the creature's mouth and eyes glowed with vibrant dark green lanterns that finally became apparent as the lightshow ended.</p>
      <p>"Mana?" Meiko looked at her friend horrified.</p>
      <p>"So... The ritual is... Real?" Mana's absolutely frozen in shock face just barely twitched enough to announce to her friend who just gulped observing the magnificence of the entity that appeared in front of them.</p>
      <p>The Goddess has descended to where the beacon was lit...</p>
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<a name="section0196"><h2>196. Demons of Our Own Making</h2></a>
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      <p>The second to the top floor was completely sunken in darkness, save for a handful of long glowing lines on the floor that extended to the end of the room. They appeared to glow similarly to those neon lights that were becoming so prominent in Konoha's nightly ads and vendors. Navigating such a room was difficult. Especially when the two were worn out and wounded and had no idea just where the staircase to the next floor even was. Jeandette was already breathing heavily and took a couple of stops to cough for quite some time with gurgling sounds that Kouta didn't like as a young medical ninja.</p>
      <p>It was during one of those coughing sessions that Jeandette exclaimed a surprised yell and fell to the ground. Kouta jumped up and wanted to rush up to the woman but he noticed a shadow moving through the briefly lit shadows of the floor's corners. Could someone have snuck up on them? That should've been impossible, Kouta was a ninja! He was the one who was supposed to be the one sneaking up on people if he had enough time to waste on stealth. How could this one assailant possibly sneak up on a ninja? Maybe his low chakra resources greatly impacted his perception?</p>
      <p>"It's Mortenson... Don't come any closer..." Jeandette cried out in pain. Whoever this "Mortenson" was, she must've wanted to lure Kouta into lowering his guard helping Jeandette so she could take him out as well. She was a fast and sneaky one, fast and sneaky ones usually couldn't do well in an open one on one fight which must've been Kouta's only chance.</p>
      <p>"Jeandette, you old crone, couldn't die alone in a puddle somewhere?" A feminine voice emanated through the room, taunting both Kouta and his new acquaintance. "Do you really need an old acting friend to deliver the killing blow? Did you become sentimental in your wilting years?" The woman kept on talking but she was constantly moving, by the time Kouta would've made his way to the location she was speaking from she'd have moved once again.</p>
      <p>A sharp pain hit Kouta in the gut, it was a fist-sized round sphere of iron that must've been launched at high speeds, possibly from a kunai dispenser, the sphere sent Kouta tumbling backward and hitting the wall after it blew up close to his body and sent him off his feet. It wasn't an efficient weapon, he had very little chakra augmentations left and his endurance was slowly approaching the simple point of whatever his body offered without any enhancements. If the explosion didn't incapacitate him it'd probably not kill a normal human, it must've been a weapon of displacement and torture rather than murder, then again, it wasn't like kunai dispensers were the most lethal of weapons unless a whole barrage of blades were fired or a vital was hit.</p>
      <p>The medical ninja instinctually rolled to the side avoiding a couple of more blast shots opening up the wall behind him and breaking the lighting situation by forcing the building's emergency lights to flare up and lighten up the room.</p>
      <p>Mortenson cursed from the other side of the room spitting the cigar from her mouth to the floor. She dressed similarly to the other Syndicate goons but with a more slick and feminine version of the outfit, her hat was more compact and rotund in shape and she wore classy red shades that probably helped her see in the darkness of her room where she saw everything that transpired in the room. Then again, all of her secrecy and stealth must've been pointless, after all any assailant would've been gunned down or beaten long before they reached Mortenson's floor so it must've been just her way of life.</p>
      <p>The female mobster played with her dyed blood crimson hair with streaks of blue on them. Once again she pointed her long and complicated looking kunai dispensers at Kouta forcing the medical ninja to bite his own lip and fighting through the pain evading her shots and seeing them leave large gapping holes in the walls and the floor. If he got hit by that again he'd probably be down for the count, just waiting to be finished off so Kouta decided to just not get hit.</p>
      <p>The two clashed, Kouta's elbow slammed into one of the long kunai dispensers, Mortenson swung the other, lifting her knee upwards aiming at Kouta's crotch. The young man met the woman's attacks with an upwards block from his arm and a block of her knee strike with his own. The two exchanged close distance blows, again and again, occasionally firing a shot or two to try and tag Kouta some more. Mortenson appeared desperate to aim at the young man and fire away at him at point blank range.</p>
      <p>"You've done your girl in, old hag Jeandette's been stabbed in the back with my signature poison, she'll be dead in an hour or even less, right now her body is being torn apart from inside, every cell is being corrupted and corrupts the others. If a cutie like you had anything in that big hairy head of his he'd bolt just about now".</p>
      <p>Kouta tried disarming the woman, grabbing her kunai dispensers and just pulling them out of her grasp, maybe pulling them apart or disassembling them by pulling out the sensitive and needed parts. It didn't work, Mortenson was just too skilled for that, she was well trained, well enough to match a low ranking ninja without chakra augmentation hand to hand, she'd have completely dominated someone with no skill at taijutsu. Had it been not for Kouta's skill of evasion he'd have been tagged long ago and had his limbs blown off.</p>
      <p>The young man realized that he'll score no hits up close, the woman was just too well trained and skilled, he was just too injured. He took a couple of backflips and rolls to avoid any follow-up attacks and made some distance, it'll be easier to dodge her at a distance than point blank. By that moment Kouta realized that he was fighting a lost battle, he could only fight off his own death, her nails had traces of blood on them, it was likely what carried through the poison. Maybe if Kouta could inflict injuries on the tips of Mortenson's fingers she could get poisoned by her own supply? Then again, it'd probably never work, he's having his hands full just trying not to die and even if Mortenson got poisoned she'd still take an hour to die...</p>
      <p>A couple of whizzing sounds interrupted Kouta's train of thought, Mortenson grunted in pain and slowly shook as she turned around to face Jeandette. The woman held a kunai dispenser in her hands and fired at her old friend from behind. Mortenson turned around, shaking in pain of kunai being lodged in her back deeply. "I'm dying anyway, you dumb bitch," Jeandette exclaimed as the poisoned musician fired a couple of more series of blades at her old friend taking her down, slowly Jeandette approached the downed mobster and fired at her again just to be sure. At some point the kunai dispenser broke down, it was overstressed while being empty. Such a strange and unperfected weapon...</p>
      <p>"I didn't know you did acting..." Kouta huffed out looking at the unfortunate turn of the friendship of the two women.</p>
      <p>"In a manner of speech. I was so bad it technically wouldn't count as "acting". I was desperate at one point. I was already into crackers and I was losing my artistic flare. That's where I met Mortenson, she was already a beloved girl of the Syndicate... Back then she wasn't an actual mobster, just their plaything. Must've picked up a thing or two during the years we've not seen each other" Jeandette complained falling to her knees.</p>
      <p>"We're almost there!" Kouta shouted out taking the wounded and dying woman up on his back and slowly carrying her to the staircase to the top floor, now that the shining lights of the village and the moon with the stars came into the artificially darkened room the staircase was revealed and the final stretch could've been made. Jeandette was pressing on his shoulders, breathing heavily and coughing. She must've been in a lot of pain as her own sickness as well as the poison must've been doing theirs. The woman never intended to make it, it was always just the top of her bucket list, the only thing in it, actually.</p>
      <p>The top room was better lit, round lamps spread beams of light diagonally inwards to the room's center. The floor was covered in rich purple heart wood tiles and the room extended seemingly into oblivion as the sides of it couldn't be seen. Something rustled and whined in the darkness creeping Kouta out to no end. The young man just kept on walking because Jeandette had more courage than he would've thought it was wise to have at that moment and did so as well. The ceiling also appeared to be sophisticated and it was made of marble and extended into large and very wide marble columns descending from the top and connecting to the rich wood tiles below. It certainly looked like the top floor was bought for numerous human lives. A room which the devil bought from the profit made of human souls.</p>
      <p>"If you wanted more crackers you could've just called. Then again, you would know all about how to get crackers, there hardly is a substance in this rotten shithole you have not tried yet..." A loud and somewhat husky tone came from the most northern parts of the room where an expensive leather chair laid turned at the massive glass structure and brief details of the man sitting in the chair could've been made out. Gruesome and creepy details.</p>
      <p>"It's done, Croquette... Remember when we last saw each other and I begged you to help me up from the puddle of vomit and rainfall I was in? You admitted to me then that you wished for redemption, that you never liked this line of work... I've come to free you from your nightmares." Jeandette declared looking at Kouta who placed her on the floor and looked at her questioningly, the ruined woman remained kneeling and didn't even try to stand up.</p>
      <p>"It's true... I never liked this, any of it. I mean I understood what I was doing, buying and selling death for those to whom it felt pleasant... But I always knew it would be something to keep me awake at night." The man sitting at the end of the room named Croquette admitted.</p>
      <p>Loud whines and cries, both sad and angry came from the sides of the room. Ruined bruised and rotten arms appeared from the shadows, Kouta jumped up after seeing that horrendous view. At the ends of the room, there were people. Calling them people was to use a very strict definition of the word, in this case, as they were long past the point where they could've been defined as such. These were ruined living corpses who were still not told that they were dead, grey and torn up skin, smelly putrid flesh and bloodshot eyes, fallen out teeth that still laid by their side and lodged into their own flesh when these unfortunate people stepped or laid on them.</p>
      <p>"Wh...What is that?" Kouta exclaimed angrily demanding an answer from Croquette, so far he had little beef with the man, all that he knew was that the man did bad things to Jeandette once and that he worked for the Syndicate. Now he had a much more terrifying and personal reason to despise the man.</p>
      <p>"That is a reminder of my sins. They weep, cry and beg for death but I don't grant it to them because I crave their punishment. They keep me awake at night, they remind me every living moment of my rotten life that I am ruined to the core and deserve a fate worse than theirs. They are my conscience." Croquette replied by letting his calm words linger in the air as he turned back at the two and leaped off his chair pushing it back so hard that it slammed at the window and bounced off it leaving small dents in it.</p>
      <p>Croquette's awful facial tattoos and paintings that imitated self mutilation being seen right after the nightmare of putrid awfulness that he held in his office was too much. Kouta pressed his fists and launched himself at Croquette, at this point even Mana would've done it, even she'd have exploded in rage after seeing someone so ignorant and wicked. Someone who wished to repent and be redeemed but did not change themselves or move past their sins, someone who still did what caused them internal pain and the realization that their life was that of sin.</p>
      <p>The man flipped the table angrily tossing it at Kouta, the boy was too slow, too wounded but he managed to slip under the flipped and flying table but right into Croquette's uppercut. Then another punch, then another one and another one. The man continued to beat on Kouta before kneeing him in the gut and kicking him aside.</p>
      <p>"I saw your ventures, I saw you take out my men and so I hoped you could also kill me and bring me to my personal Hell... I suppose that my personal Hell is living this life of mine until the end of time." The man shrugged. Kouta felt the taste of blood in his mouth and heard shrieks and cries of these ruined men, he felt their nasty breaths, he could almost feel their broken and ripped nails digging into his flesh but they were just an inch too far. Whatever they were, their humanity was long since lost...</p>
      <p>Croquette pulled out a large stick from under his long jacket and swung it back, then threw it forward playing out a hard hit.</p>
      <p>"If you won't kill me, I guess I am doomed to play this role of the salesman of death longer. The Syndicate has heard of you and your friends, we remember you from the Katabami mine, well, not those that have been there, those guys are probably all dead and buried. You're just as rotten inside as me, you know?" The painted face man swung his bat hitting Kouta's sides and cracking something loudly. Kouta had no more strength left to either oppose the man or heal himself to make himself able to, both his chakra and his stamina were gone. His only hopes were to somehow bait out a mistake from the man and catch him unprepared or to die a quick death.</p>
      <p>"I actually hoped you'd come for us, I mean we knew you kids were dumb but the other Capos said they'd take care of you guys and that I had nothing to worry about..." Croquette swung his stick again hitting Kouta right in his hands that were wrapped around his head. He may have broken them... Kouta was in too much pain to differentiate bruising pain and bone fracture pain.</p>
      <p>"And here you are... I never hoped that you'd come with Jeandette though, I mean why would you? These stories of my life are absolutely separate right?" Croquette slammed Kouta with his bat again and again, "And then I see two of my demons combining their forces and there I saw my reckoning, my death, and redemption... Finally, I'd have a chance to wash my sins away and maybe be reborn a new man in whatever afterlife I went to".</p>
      <p>Kouta's consciousness almost blacked out. He flung an explosive note he found in his pouch in the air and detonated it, that was about the extent of the chakra levels he could work with. Croquette leaned backward avoiding the blast but the heat and smoke of it forced water to begin running down from the fire alarm systems. These ones must've been really extensive and rebuilt to be triggered more easily, for all the talks of redemption Croquette was afraid of hellfire, literal or otherwise.</p>
      <p>The falling water began soaking deep in Kouta's broken bones and busted body, cold shivers began joining that wretched pain but, in a way, it felt refreshing. His blood ticked down in small streaks of droplets onto the building up puddles of water on the rich wood tiles below. The medical ninja noticed some paint slipping into his blood, that must've been the facial paintings and tattoos on Croquette's face washing off. Finally, from all those drawn fake injuries and burns his fleshy and sharp cheekbones emerged. He was no demon but a ruined man...</p>
      <p>Then Kouta realized that he had one chance, Croquette pulled out his long one handed kunai dispenser from the pocket of his jacket and aimed it to finish Kouta off but the young shinobi had disappeared in the darkness only to be followed by the man firing blindly into it, the knives bounced off the walls with only small scratches being left on the gem incrusted surfaces.</p>
      <p>The young man knew what lurked in the darkness but he'd have rather been eaten and murdered by those poor people than killed by someone as disgusting as Croquette. Maybe, before his death, he could set the poor men and women free? The Juugo moved swiftly up to each and every lock and bashed at it with the bounced off kunai. Croquette stood at his end and did not move into the darkness for he feared his own demons. His refusal to let go of his sins and move past them leaving them behind would be his end...</p>
      <p>Slowly, one by one Kouta set every single one of these ruined men and women free, Croquette's weapon cringed and coughed as it failed to fire any more blades into the welcome embrace of the darkness of his own room. His lamps offered no illumination, no sanctuary for his terrified soul. Kouta extended his hands to the side and felt those men and women caress his face, they were feeling up his bumps and blood, his countless scars and wounds he had gathered throughout the day.</p>
      <p>"Mask... Mask... One of us..." They uttered and let go of Kouta, suddenly these poor souls decided to leave their limbo of darkness and rebel against their demonic overlord. Croquette stepped back, then back, again and again, touching the window that laid behind him and marked the end of his fleeing line.</p>
      <p>"Wait... I'm... I have my mask... I wear my sins!" He screamed out but realized that his facial markings were all washed off by the bursting water system he himself tampered with. Irony became Croquette's undoing as the addicts tore into him, Kouta didn't wish to see the details, slowly and stealthily he slipped out of the darkness and slipped Jeandette into it so that she also did not get mauled and beaten by those men and women. They were ruined and tired but they were many and they were angry. Croquette was armed and he was strong but he was alone and he wished his own demise and redemption. Maybe he'd get what's his in the afterlife and his desire would be fulfilled...</p>
      <p>After having their way with their overlord the addicts let go of him, they tried to open up the drawer where the man must've held his crackers but they failed to do so. They quickly bolted out the open door realizing that there was nothing more there for them, just painful memories of being less than what any man deserves to be treated as – a man.</p>
      <p>Bleak rays of the rising Sun began peeking in the horizon as Jeandette was laying by Croquette's table and crunching on a hat'ash cracker, Kouta was sitting by the other side and looking back at the woman and then at the Sun. These were the woman's final moments and she wished to spend them in silence enjoying the purest form poison that ruined her life. Mortenson's poison took away entire hours of her remaining time but at least Jeandette would pass contempt just like she always wished to. This was a woman who never restrained herself from pleasure because she knew she'd not live forever and she'd have rather died that very same day feeling happy than died a thousand years later sad that she didn't do something she could've done. Maybe there was something in that everyone could've picked up from it...</p>
      <p>"Mana..." Kouta thought to himself before voicing himself out loud. "You know, I thought for a while that maybe your way has something I could learn from, Jeandette. To always try everything it feels right to try and never purposefully not take the shots I could take. Then I realized that this is just what Mana-chan meant... No people are unnecessary, most people would've thought you were when they saw you, you laid ruined and looked like you'd given up on life. And here you were teaching me something important... Thank you, Jeandette." Kouta blinked a couple of times before looking back at his companion, she remained silent so the boy crept up to her feeling her pulse and checking for other life signs.</p>
      <p>"I just wish you could've heard my thanks..." He uttered before standing back up and walking out of the building. Suddenly, a powerful ray of light burst from a point in the city piercing the dark dawning sky. Kouta pressed his aching ribs and looked at the purple beam anomaly, wondering if his friends had anything to do with it. Either way, this phenomenon was the only lead he had about the location of his friends. Slowly but assuredly, Kouta left the collapsing building behind him, walking towards the purple beam of light and the inhumanly loud rumbling noises, fissures and quakes coming from that direction.</p>
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<a name="section0197"><h2>197. An Invincible Man VS An Invincible Man</h2></a>
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      <p>Based on the experience gathered during his days as a ninja, both serving the Leaf village and as a rogue, Shimo suspected things to go wrong. In the ninja world plans rarely went without a hitch, planning was obviously wise as having a general chain of possible actions in mind always ended up benefiting any venture but one would've been a fool expecting those plans to always work as predicted.</p>
      <p>Similarly to that experience, right as the group of three comprised of Notasa, Carnefici and Shimo approached the supposed fortified mansion of the young musician that was supposed to keep her safe from any threat a line of men in suits with a familiar abomination of flesh and steel standing in the center informed the trio that their plan was predicted and as good as useless now. The Boss of Syndicate managed to gather his people and regroup before Notasa could've been brought into a safe environment making harassing her further completely pointless. Now Shimo and Carnefici had a fight on their hands, one they would've rather avoided since Notasa was also to be involved.</p>
      <p>"Step aside, little canary, you'll be singing in the Syndicate's cage from now on, see?" The Boss grumped out with his crushed windpipe emitting a very husky and low pitched tone, the man's eye twitched as the flesh surrounding it was only held by sticky molten mass of Audra that hardened around it.</p>
      <p>Notasa looked at Carnefici with worry, the aged man blinked calmly and nodded his head in assurance. "Don't worry, young lady, I will allow no such thing. I'll kill them all before they'll lay a finger on you," the mass murderer of the past days grunted with annoyance and determination.</p>
      <p>Shimo curiously squinted at the man, "I thought you don't kill anymore..." He wondered as if this group of mobsters with a near-invincible man leading the fold meant nothing.</p>
      <p>"You said it, not me. I just don't do it as often and never hurt people who don't have it coming." Carnefici replied carelessly as his flesh began to flow as if he was made of gooey liquid, the color of it did not change, the man still stood firmly but the texture and consistency of his skin became droopier.</p>
      <p>"Heh" Shimo cringed imagining how much trouble these Syndicate fools were in.</p>
      <p>"What are you two goombas waitin' for?! Come at me all at once! I'll fill both 'a ye full 'a holes!" The Boss shouted out vigorously shaking his twin kunai dispensers and firing them rapidly into the air making it rain blades at the general vicinity of the trio, Shimo grabbed Notasa in his arms and moved away from the rain of blades, Carnefici remained standing and letting the blades get stuck in his oily body before firing it back from his gut right at the Syndicate mobsters, some shouted out in pain before pulling the lodged blades out, several collapsed on the spot as their wounds were just too great.</p>
      <p>Carnefici looked at Shimo and nodded approving that the young man protected Notasa. Shimo just grinned in return confidently, no, arrogantly even.</p>
      <p>"What are you waiting for? I've already kicked this asshole's ass once, I've no hype to fight him again. He's all yours, an invincible man VS an invincible man, I'd like to see that fight. I'll keep as many of the small fry off your back as possible and watch Notasa-chan." Shimo replied taking a defensive sword stance and preparing to protect the musician from any attacks. He needed Notasa's aid so that the golden sphere got deciphered. So that Mana would be happy again and maybe the two of them became friends again.</p>
      <p>Silently and without rushing things Carnefici began walking up to the Boss, his texture and consistency changed again with the man returning to his normal state and stopping all the drooping of oily goo all over the place. Syndicate goons rushed at Carnefici but they were quickly stricken down in a blur, the bodyguard's hands turned to the bubblegum pink colored shapes of axes, swords and disc saws made of gum that cut almost like the real thing striking any man foolish enough to attack him down. During that moment, Shimo saw the horror of Carnage Fici reborn again and directed at the people aiming to hurt his young lady, the person he had sworn to protect, the person that granted this reformed criminal purpose. They were as good as dead the moment they stood against him...</p>
      <p>Carnefici's back blew open letting go elongated gummy tentacles that impaled and tossed the gangsters around, they even grabbed a couple and tore them right in half. This was the scorn of the world which Carefici was... The Syndicate's medical plan must've covered injuries like this, the Boss was completely crushed by long layers of stone and Audra ores and yet he was standing here completely rebuilt. One could only wonder if whatever wonderful medical ninja worked on the Boss would've worried themselves with common crooks like the ones torn apart by Carnefici.</p>
      <p>Shimo looked back at Notasa, "I promised your bodyguard to keep the small fry off of him, I'll do my best to keep up that promise and protect you, you'll have to trust me." He mumbled out to which the young artist just nodded hesitantly.</p>
      <p>The Yuki's hands blurred through a bunch of hand seals creating a small scale snowstorm of freezing temperatures pelting at the criminals and slowing their movement speed and intensity exponentially. Even Carnefici's gummy body began covering with icicles and snow, the man grinned with a cruel and cold smile, "Oh, I like that!" He declared throwing a punch in the Boss' way.</p>
      <p>The quick punch lifted the shorty with an oversized steel filled head off his feet and sent him down. It appeared that Shimo's ice ninjutsu granted Carnefici's attacks enough chakra coating to break through Audra steel and deal some damage. Still, Shimo had no time to just stand there and keep freezing the murderous bastard's body, he'll have to deal with this on his own. At the very least he could hold his own until Shimo finished with the lowlifes and could focus on helping him beat that short bastard up.</p>
      <p>Carnefici's hands couldn't elongate or change shape once they were frozen, the man continued punching wildly while taking a moment or two to evade the counterattacking bursts of kunai blades from Boss' kunai dispenser before pummeling the man again and again. With an almighty finishing blow of the combination, Carnefici sent the rebuilt man flying and crashing straight into Notasa's mansion. The body of Notasa's bodyguard leaned forward as if falling forwards but then his muscles tensed up at the last moment using the momentum of the fall to jumpstart his dash and bolt towards the mansion. He had some business to finish with the Boss and Shimo had no objections with that.</p>
      <p>The ex-rogue swordsman dashed around the battlefield cutting down every single Syndicate bastard that dared to do anything else but shiver in the cold air created by the technique he used before. Shimo's hands went through another combination of hand seals creating a raging vortex shaped blizzard around the area before the young man's body disappeared into the fray.</p>
      <p>"Blizzard Cut: Three Hundred Twenty Slashes!" Shimo mumbled as his figure appeared behind the raging blizzard that was cut over three hundred times and the vortex opened up in the spots the cut was delivered. Overwhelmed by the difference of cold air inside the blizzard and the warmth coming from outside of it the vortex imploded and dissolved in on itself leaving nothing but beaten and cut down bodies. The Boss would've needed more than fifty men to cause problems to Shimo at this point... Numbers made little difference here, skill was needed to combat ninja.</p>
      <p>Carnefici rushed into the ruined mansion, his right hand which was frozen solid and he used to pound his enemy with this winded up full powered strike was busted into pieces, drops and puddles of goo gathered around Carnefici fusing with him and recovering his missing arm.</p>
      <p>"Hydrification Jutsu." The man mumbled to himself testing out his new arm. A barrage of blades came whizzing his way, a handful of them missed him and whizzed right by his ear, a couple of them lodged into his chest and face but were expulsed by the pressure of his oily substance. Carnefici placed his arm against the wall and grinned.</p>
      <p>"I am the bodyguard of Notasa, the greatest child musical genius of our time, we are in her estate and you are now in my sanctuary!" The man declared making a hand seal with his free arm.</p>
      <p>"C-Rank Seal Release!" He chanted activating a floor of spikes shooting from below and supposedly impaling the Boss on them. The spikes just scratched at the man's flesh and tore open his clothes where they cut him, sparking and breaking in contact with the man's deeper layers of Audra alloy skin.</p>
      <p>"B-Rank Seal Release!" Carnefici chanted pressing his hand against another location as the walls opened up letting out spiraling marble pillars with blades on them rotating diagonally right at the man aiming to chop him to pieces. Being hit by such a thing would've been the equivalent of being tossed into a human shredding machine.</p>
      <p>And yet the Boss persevered, the blades screamed as if they were capable of suffering pain in contact with the toughened deep layers of the man's skin and broke, tearing off only the chunks of the artificially regrown and put together fleshy parts of the Syndicate leader. Angered by the endless traps the Syndicate Boss dashed forward in a fist-swinging frenzy breaking through walls and tables in his path.</p>
      <p>"A-Rank Seal Release!" Carnefici shouted opening up a wall beside him and turning it in a way that covered him and became enhanced with pure chakra lacking any elemental affinity. Creating an efficient barrier that stopped the Boss' advance.</p>
      <p>"D-Rank Seal Release!" The bodyguard set off another trapping seal that activated chakra infused magnets on the walls trapping the Boss inside by forcing his Audra infused frame to slam against the walls completely paralyzed and unable to move.</p>
      <p>In a blindingly fast pace, Carnefici dashed to the end of the mansion, through the endless kitchens, bathrooms and guest rooms straight into the main hall and stopped by the exit placing his hand onto the doorway opening the door that lead outside. "S-Rank Release: Sayonara Protocol Release..." Carnefici declared removing his hand from the doorway as the entire house blew up tossing the bodyguard outside its range and a large light blue flame bubble contained the explosion inside. The missing chunks of the incinerated body of Carnefici soon reformed as he continued staring at the explosion.</p>
      <p>A half-naked singed figure burst from the smoke swearing bloody murder and whacked the bodyguard straight to the face sending the man backward leaving a large trail of ruined road where his frame slid backward. Notasa ran up to Carnefici and tried to help him up.</p>
      <p>"There was an equivalent to a teratonne of chakra infused TNT in that explosion contained in that bubble. We may have a problem..." The slightly fazed Carnefici exclaimed looking at Shimo.</p>
      <p>"Does this mean you're asking for my help?" The young man asked with a ridiculing smile to which Carnefici responded with a one mirroring it.</p>
      <p>"Just telling you to not hold your breath," he replied before dashing right back into battle, swinging his ax arms at the Boss that simply bounced off the revealed purple layers of skin that laid underneath the man's flesh that was placed on top but now completely incinerated by the explosion. His current appearance was a demonic sight to be honest, a half-naked purple skinned man with blood red eyes exploding with anger.</p>
      <p>The Boss continued to wail his arms around pounding at Carnefici but his fists only left holes that quickly patched up or splattered the man only for him to reassemble. This battle would've expanded up to an infinity longer so Shimo had to do something. The young man formed a couple of hand seals with all of the increase of speed that training with Mana allowed him to acquire.</p>
      <p>"Water Style: Water Assault Jutsu!" He chanted out spouting out a small source of water which completely drenched Carnefici. Then Shimo made another hand seal.</p>
      <p>"Glaciation technique!" The young man shouted out as the water drenching Carnefici froze solid creating an armor of chakra tough enough to leave lasting impact on the Boss' Audra steel alloy layered skin. Carnefici's elongated tendrils that expanded before the man was drenched stabbed at the Boss piercing his shoulders at the back. The murderer's fists ran rampant upon the Boss' face and entire body – even having all the considerable power of the man's blows in mind it was evident that the Boss of the Syndicate wouldn't go down just like that. His entire face was filled with bumps and scars that testified of his long experience of having his head bashed and crushed. The man certainly could take his fair share of punishment.</p>
      <p>With a shoulder tackle, the Boss blasted through Carnefici's body breaking it into pieces and making the frozen man shatter all around the place. The mobster then pointed his finger at Shimo, at least where he remembered Shimo to be but the man was already gone by the time the Boss looked for him.</p>
      <p>"Ice Style: Haze Blade!" Shimo's voice ran rampant as clones of the young man danced all around the Boss making the man angrily attempt to swat them aside only for them to be revealed as mere mirages caused by cold air playing games with the warm air around the place.</p>
      <p>Since his opponent was finally open Shimo descended from the air drawing his blade with all of his might and speed. "Ice Wolf Jutsu: White Wolf Slash!" The young swordsman chanted out the name of his technique as all the sounds around the battlefield had grown silent just to be reset again after a howling stream of white air cutting through the Boss with the avatar of wolf made of solid ice appeared behind Shimo delivering a slash from its icy paws in addition to Shimo's drawing slash.</p>
      <p>A violent shockwave erupted demolishing the surrounding buildings and sending Shimo rolling sideways, even Notasa who was standing quite the distance away was knocked off her feet and thrown backward through a large vendor window and into the shop itself.</p>
      <p>"Shit... Forgot that happens when two Audra alloys clash together..." The young man complained standing back up, covered with bumps and bruises. Only then did he notice the form of Carnefici reforming.</p>
      <p>"Let's not do that ice thing. It works but not worth the hassle, we won't leave any lasting damage like this..." The ex-murderer exclaimed with great annoyance in his tone.</p>
      <p>"Got better ideas?" Shimo wondered looking at him.</p>
      <p>"Does that mean you're asking for help?" Carnefici teased him before launching his assault forward. Shimo couldn't understand just what the man was trying to achieve just rushing like that, he could keep attacking whole day but until they met the exact concentrated percentage of chakra enhancements they wouldn't bust through the Audra layer of the man's skin. If the stored explosive power of billions of explosive tags containing a teratonne of explosive power couldn't break through, it was hard to imagine what would've.</p>
      <p>"Come on! Come at me fuckers! I'll take all 'a you on!" The Boss angrily roared out before Carnefici signaled Shimo for his follow-up. The young man clapped his hands together after forming a bunch of hand seals and once again activated his Ice Wolf Jutsu, wrapping the avatar of ice around Carnefici's body with the wolf's jaws shaping around the man's fist. Carnefici leaned under the Boss' punch and delivered a finishing jaw buster that flung the Boss down.</p>
      <p>The bodyguard leaped right on top of his downed opponent and began bashing the man's head with his only remaining arm as the one wearing the Ice Wolf exploded into thousands of crystal-like pieces of ice upon the crashing impact. Carnefici was ready to cause carnage as he pounded and pounded away at the Boss' head shouting and roaring proudly, he did not tire, he did not give in, the man just kept on bashing and bashing the Boss' head before the mobster's eyes rolled back and white slobber began running down from his throat and get coughed out through the mouth with traces of blood.</p>
      <p>"His outer layer may be near invulnerable but his brain is still mushy soft. If it bashed against his tough skull from inside enough times it'd still cause a concussion." Carnefici explained turning back at Shimo who just looked confused at the bodyguard.</p>
      <p>"Wow..." The young man had to admit that Carnefici had superior fighting instincts and skill. It'd have taken a ninja capable of fighting on a Chuunin or Jounin level to possess enough percentage of chakra enhancements to beat the Audra steel layer of his skin and yet the bodyguard managed to find out a weakness that helped him beat such a foe.</p>
      <p>The two rushed to Notasa helping the young girl up. Carnefici looked completely ruined as he looked back at the mansion he worked so hard to make an invincible fortress, a place where his treasured young lady could feel safe. Now it was in burning ruins and had not a single stone on top of a stone. This whole district looked torn down.</p>
      <p>Then as everyone thought that the danger was over the ground shook violently, a purple beam erupted piercing the night's sky as an overwhelming roaring sound of some primal untamed beast made everyone grab for their ears that burst in blood. Shimo looked on into the glowing beam of purple light and began slowly walking towards it. Notasa's soft hand grabbed the swordsman's elbow.</p>
      <p>"I have no more home and no more place in this village. That gives me a chance to tour around the world, which means that I have a chance to start a new life without Syndicate. You helped me acquire that life so I wish to fulfill my promise to help this young lady you hold so dear, just like you helped Carne help me. Please..." She asked.</p>
      <p>Shimo nodded and pointed at the colossal beam of light stabbing at heavens themselves. "If I know my troublemaker friends, it's likely that we'll find them there. My young lady is an idiot and keeps making the most insane enemies, be ready to suspend your disbelief..." He warned before looking at Carnefici.</p>
      <p>"Are you going?" Shimo asked.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, wherever the young lady goes, I go to watch over her!" The man declared with a firm nod.</p>
      <p>The trio began heading towards the purple beam of light booming into the sky, engraving its possible location in their minds as it could've disappeared just as out of nowhere as it appeared.</p>
      <p>"I've found Notasa... Just hold on, Mana, she'll crack that stupid sphere and we'll find that Box for sure..." Shimo thought to himself looking at the beam that looked like Hell itself was making its way onto Earth.</p>
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<a name="section0198"><h2>198. A Cosmic Elegy</h2></a>
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      <p>The struggle to comprehend the insanity transpiring right in front of her astonished Mana to the point where she could barely respond to the stimuli around her. Right in front of her in a beam of sky-piercing light stood a supposed Goddess, one summoned through a ritual of a seemingly senseless ritual of murders most foul. Her appearance was unlike anything the magician had ever seen, she did not look ancient at all, in fact, she looked almost futuristic and majestic but not in a godly way. She was beautiful but her beauty was vastly overcrowded by her futuristic accessories and motifs, some of them appeared dysfunctional almost to the young girl.</p>
      <p>"She's not a Goddess... She can't be..." Mana mumbled to herself under her nose. Her mind returned to the state it was during her infant years, being unable to comprehend basic facts and relate them to events transpiring in front of her.</p>
      <p>It was like all those years of meditation, all that time she spent overcompensating for the mental disorder by studying and aiming to understand and relate all facts to every known transpiring event even in this crazy world of hers never happened. Her mind returned to the primal state of affiliating every matter to non-existent made up Gods and magic. Rain fell because Gods wept, lightning crashed down because they were angry, people loved each other because of magic. How was she supposed to relate any fact to any event if an actual Goddess stood in front of her?</p>
      <p>The white armored entity examined her own body, her hands and observed her white outer shell before looking at a puddle of blood, where her brightly colored skin reflected off of it. Mana shook in the absurdity of it all. Her feet trembled before taking a step forward, then another one. Meiko glared at Mana in shock and surprise that the magician dared walk forward towards this Goddess descending from the skies.</p>
      <p>"Kill me..." Mana spoke silently before repeating it momentarily louder and then louder still.</p>
      <p>The Goddess curiously lifted and twisted her neck to the side examining Mana who was slowly approaching her. It was clear that the entity was more curious and stumped about the world around her than harboring any intent, malicious or decent.</p>
      <p>"Mana!" Meiko shouted out taking a couple of hasty steps forward and grabbing the magician's shoulder rudely, trying to yank her back to her place. Back before the magician did something she usually did – stupid and unjustifiable to anyone but herself.</p>
      <p>"If she's an actual Goddess that can only descend in pools of blood showing her the way... If that is the way Gods operate, I do not wish to bend to such Gods or live in such a world." Mana explained looking at Meiko angrily.</p>
      <p>The blacksmith examined the tearful look of the magician, she saw her friend's face enraged and greatly saddened, overflowing with tears of sadness, almost like the ex-kunoichi regretted ever being born on such a world. Meiko was determined to do anything it'd have taken to protect her friend from such sadness and such a meaningless death.</p>
      <p>"Yes! Yes! Show me your power, Goddess that descended from the sky!" The old crone screamed her lungs out from where she laid knocked down, unlikely to ever rise again due to her injuries. "Do that and then let us join together! I shall take the power to avenge the Syndicate for my sons! Show me your power before becoming a part of me!" The old woman shouted, the Goddess' hand lifted off and her palm extended at the old woman who answered by lifting her old crooked hands and extending them back.</p>
      <p>A silent sound wave emanated from the Goddess' palms blasting all particles that the woman had and dispersing them away. In a frozen moment in time nothing remained of the old crone, even her blood particles vibrated so rapidly, moved by the frequency of the Goddess' sound vibrations that they simply ceased to exist. In a cruel smile of fortune, the woman was erased from existence in all but the memories of all who knew her.</p>
      <p>"I am Melobi... And I just want to live..." The almost futuristic looking Goddess exclaimed in a loud, cybernetic sounding synthetic voice of a female.</p>
      <p>"She's... She's not a Goddess?" Mana's eyes shot wide open as she jumped back and reached for her card pouch. "She's a..."</p>
      <p>"Goddess or not, she hurt my friend and I'm gonna punch it for that!" Meiko shouted out finally reacting to the descent of the godly being by rushing at it with all of her speed, all of her strength and wish to hurt this divine being all channeled into a single punch. A strike like that could've punched a hole through the planet itself if it wasn't properly channeled but Meiko didn't worry, her effort concentrated into channeling all of that energy right through the Goddess and nothing more. All of that energy, all of that ill intent will only flow through the Goddess in front of her.</p>
      <p>Grungy yet, once again, absolutely silent shockwave erupted from the Goddess' body without any of her conscious effort blasting Meiko away and sending her crashing through a multitude of buildings behind her. The shockwave passed through the entire district toppling multiple buildings over meanwhile the magician girl tossed forward a card with explosive tags which automatically detonated on impact. The explosion sent Mana flying back just narrowly avoiding the brunt of the shockwave that sent Meiko flying, anything to injure the blacksmith at the peak of her augmentation would've splattered Mana without any remains.</p>
      <p>For a good couple of minutes, Mana's world was all pain. The magician looked at her shaking covered in blood hand and felt warm streams of blood running down her face and sticking her hair together in clamping strings. Grunting and crying out in pain, Mana flipped over revealing to herself a couple of small rocks that dug into her flesh painfully, the kunai that had been fired at her was now lodged even deeper and gushed with blood momentarily before the pressure of the blade stopped it. By now it was clear that a single yank of the knife out would've opened up a wound that'd kill her in moments.</p>
      <p>Never in her life has the magician felt so powerless, so completely blown away and unable to help her friends at all. Even in the face of defeat such as when she fought the Demon of Kirigakure she managed to damage the young man's armor assisting her friends in his defeat, even when she was attacked by Sugemi in the arrest house Mana managed to wound him helping to calm the old friend down and wear him out. Now one of her best friends could've died right in front of her and the magician had no idea what happened nor did she stand a way of helping Meiko.</p>
      <p>"No more physical chakra... No use in redirecting or dodging anything... No logical angle of this to analyze... I'm so useless..." Mana grunted slamming a rocky chunk of debris in front of her.</p>
      <p>"I went at her with all of my speed, all of my strength, all of my chakra augmentations kicked up to the max..." Meiko's faint voice emanated through the ruined remains of a building that both girls ended up in. The magician crawled painfully to her collapsed friend and looked at Meiko's devastated armor and broken body, her arms, and legs laid in awkward positions – likely broken. When Mana tried to lift the redhead's head up to look her in the eyes Meiko shrieked out in unheard of pain. It was like the entire body of her friend was broken in just one careless backlash of the white and purple Goddess descending onto the beacon of blood.</p>
      <p>"I didn't even break through her aura. The chakra of that thing is so immense, so immeasurable that it radiates this... Aura of chakra pressure... I didn't even get past the pressure of it with all of my strength. She hurt you Mana, she hurt a friend of mine and I just wanted to punch it because that's what I'm good at. I don't deserve to hold that Box..." Meiko teared up, Mana hadn't seen this sensitive side of her friend, not since the last time that the redhead screwed ninjutsu and chakra control up.</p>
      <p>Mana carefully placed her sunken in blood hand on Meiko's bent and peeled off shoulder plate leaving a couple of bloody prints on it.</p>
      <p>"You tried to punch a God because it hurt my feelings? Some would say that is worth the journey we've traveled all by itself..." Mana tried to smile, she faked a smile because she knew how hopeless the situation was. A loud rumbling sound alerted Mana forcing her to stand up. The magician saw a pillar of ice being erected further away – that could've only been Shimo!</p>
      <p>"You said she wasn't a God?" Meiko asked as Mana began instinctually stumble forwards towards the battlefield.</p>
      <p>"No. Melobi is a name of a Lesser Demon. An ancient remnant of Ten-Tails' first rampage and the immense chakra it irradiated during its lifespan before it was split into the nine Tailed Beasts." Mana looked down watching as her blood slowly dripped onto the messed up and demolished district. The girl felt countless itchy wounds on her body that must've been infected, her chances didn't look too good but Mana wished to at the very least do something about this Lesser Demon before confronting her own human mortality.</p>
      <p>A powerful shockwave shook the ground beneath Mana's feet. The girl cried out in pain and fell on her knees, her cracked ribs and knees had no chance of withstanding quakes, she just wondered what could've caused this violent rupture. She had no chance to beat this thing, Meiko got knocked out instantly and the entity wasn't even trying. With a single conscious effort, it could kill them all and destroy their entire world. Lesser Demons were much weaker than fully powered Tailed Beasts but they still were too much for anyone except ninja of legendary power. A team of Sannin or Kage level ninja perhaps, skilled jounin maybe...</p>
      <p>The magician screamed out seeing the sight of the battle, Melobi had broken out of Shimo's pillar of ice trying to freeze her solid and held a tall suit wearing and shoulder length hair having aged man of cruel facial features in the air in some translucent shockwave of pure sound. Melobi's hand twitched sending ripples through the soundwave that tore the man into smallest pieces forcing Mana to shout out and get the demon's attention before it could go on and kill Shimo. Melobi extended her hand but before the devastating wave of sound could splatter Mana all over the pavement leaving a deep drilling hole and disappearing in the vacuum of space the magician felt Shimo's hands wrapping around her and moving her away from harm.</p>
      <p>"I know this won't make you forget what I've done and that we're still far from the friends we've once been but... That girl right there is Notasa. She can decipher the sphere." He whispered in her ear.</p>
      <p>"That man..." Mana's lips shook in the overwhelming sensation of a girl who swore to protect all life but now saw them being casually taken left and right.</p>
      <p>"He's not dead, he's a freak of some sort and he can reform using chakra to create bonds between his tissue and cells, sort of like a bubblegum man, like the stretchy chewy candy..." Shimo explained before pointing at the white and purple entity asking for an explanation without uttering a word.</p>
      <p>Mana saw Kouta further on passed out. She rushed at the knocked out young man, Melobi stood in her way but the magician didn't care, the boy she promised her attention and time, the boy she loved laid there knocked out without a sign of life!</p>
      <p>Curiously enough Melobi turned aside and let Mana pass, observing the limping and stumbling magician curiously. The girl's hands wrapped around Kouta's unconscious body with her blood sticking all over his innocent peacefully asleep face. Mana saw the paleness of his skin and the bags around his eyes – he was short of chakra just like it happened to her in the archives during the first big mission she was in.</p>
      <p>A rumbling noise alerted both Mana and Melobi towards it, Carnefici reassembled himself from just the faintest cells into a pool of oil before taking his gooey and slimy shape. After the reformation was complete the man began panting heavily on his knees, reassembling himself from just smallest particles must've required emulating endless bonds and completely wiped out his own chakra reserves. A young girl who was apparently the Notasa they were looking for, according to Shimo wrapped her hands around the man's neck and ran in front of him shielding the tired man from Melobi's sight.</p>
      <p>It was so strange... So far Mana has not seen Melobi attack or purposefully try and kill someone, always attacking in response to being triggered. She certainly had the power to do so, she could've destroyed the planet multiple times over before any of the surrounding ninja villages formulated a response team and sent it over here to defuse the situation. This was so peculiar that from deep within her chest curiosity arose and pushed Mana's sadness and despair aside. There was no chance fighting this entity, perhaps the magician could learn to, at the very least, understand it?</p>
      <p>"You love this young man?" Melobi asked first before Mana could utter a word.</p>
      <p>"I... I think I do." Mana replied looking back at Kouta and urging herself to stand in front of his body so that she could shield all of Melobi's scary strength if the entity decided to kill them both. "No! I know I do!" Mana replied much more firmly, without the fear that standing in front of alleged Goddess invited into one's heart.</p>
      <p>"I'd like to love. I've only been alive for moments and I haven't felt much of anything... I'd like to love someone one day." Melobi replied with strange warmth in her voice.</p>
      <p>"Wait, what are you?" Mana asked curiously, she asked the question that was intended to be asked the whole time before Mana was interrupted.</p>
      <p>"I am Melobi, I was born when Ten-Tails was born from the bridge extended between Earth and the Moon by the Princess. The Progenitor of the Tailed Beasts that was born of the mightiest of all bloodlines and the mighty Princess' spruce connecting Earth and the sky. I was born of the Progenitor's roar, the chakra in that sound emanated through the universe connecting and bonding with every sound ever to be made since that point. Thusly, I became the embodiment of sound." Melobi explained.</p>
      <p>"But... You said you were born just now, the Ten-Tails first roared centuries ago and was soon split into the Tailed Beasts." Mana's eyes began feeling dizzy and her body shook almost falling down onto the ground. Melobi's curiosity only grew seeing the magician's condition.</p>
      <p>"Are you dying, human girl? Please do not die, being born is such a happy feeling, I wish to share it with everyone" Melobi's face shifted into what closely resembled the way humans smiled. Her face did not shift, her muscles didn't twitch. Melobi's mouth simply disappeared on her purple synthetic skin and reappeared shaped into whatever she felt at the time, similarly her eyes stopped glowing before changing their shape while being dark and enlightening again.</p>
      <p>"That is not... Something I have control over..." Mana replied as she fell to her knees feeling the powerful draw to pass out, she must've lost too much blood. Pity. There was so much she still wished to know about Melobi, about the world really... So many promises she still hadn't fulfilled: the promise to lead Meiko to the Box, the promise to go out on a date with Kouta once this whole Box journey has concluded... She still hadn't forgiven Shimo for what he did in Takigakure... Dying while holding grudges was a bad omen, that was how ghosts came to be and Mana despised ghosts.</p>
      <p>Melobi's hand extended into another shockwave, it enveloped Mana and began glowing salad green. The magician felt her wounds closing up, she felt her chakra resources resurging and suddenly Mana felt like newly born. This was just like that tale she told Meiko of medical ninja in Otogakure using sound ninjutsu to heal people instead of the usual medical ninjutsu. Melobi must've functioned with the same principle, she controlled sound itself because the Ten-Tails chakra infused roar fused itself with all of the universal sounds.</p>
      <p>She could mold chakra and strengthen the technique's intensity by strengthening the sound wave. She could've blasted one with all of the sound vibrations emitted by a supermassive black hole or used a healing wave of the same intensity. The kunai lodged in Mana's body got disintegrated into smallest pieces and scattered in the wind as her ruptured blood vessels patched themselves together with Melobi's healing soundwaves.</p>
      <p>"There. Isn't being born better than dying?" Melobi smiled like an infant, in all meanings of the word she probably was.</p>
      <p>"Thanks but... My friends are all also hurt, could you maybe help them as well?" Mana asked trying to determine if whatever line there was between her and the Lesser Demon was not overstepped, after all, she had only met the Nine-Tails before and that monstrosity was in no helping mood.</p>
      <p>"I can heal everyone in the vicinity... I could probably heal everyone in the world and on the Moon... I could maybe make everyone who's dead reborn again! That'd be glorious!" Melobi shrieked in excitement clapping her hands and forming a heart shape of her appendages present on her head.</p>
      <p>"Wait! A vibration of such immensity would tear a black hole open and kill everyone, it'd consume our entire system. Let's just... Help anyone nearby, okay?" Mana asked calmly trying to contain Melobi's excitement. The Lesser Demon nodded and another pleasantly harmonious shockwave of chakra infused sound erupted from her body passing through everyone and into the horizon. The magician saw the building further away explode from the pressure with Meiko jumping out from under the debris and rushing to where everyone was and the elderly man which Notasa tried so hard to protect standing back up and examining his newly resurged strength.</p>
      <p>Hands tied around Mana's belly firmly holding her in place, the magician's heart froze before realizing it was Kouta hugging her from behind.</p>
      <p>"I was so worried..." He whispered into her ear.</p>
      <p>"Just this once, I didn't screw everything up and helped someone..." She smiled in excitement. After remembering about the kids which were used by the old woman Mana looked around only to see them scattering, they moved differently, this time they were afraid. They had emotion behind them which must've meant that whatever tricks the old religious woman used to force them to do her bidding must've been undone.</p>
      <p>Melobi knelt to the ground and felt the dirt beneath her feet. She looked so sour and disappointed.</p>
      <p>"Why did you kill that old woman, Melobi-san?" Mana asked uncomfortably, to her all life was precious and she didn't want to ruin this moment but she did really want to know why of all people the Lesser Demon murdered the woman that ended up summoning her.</p>
      <p>"When the Progenitor first created me, rather the mass of evil anomalous chakra I came to be from, all I wanted since then was to live. You see, the bridge of the Princess was malevolent in nature, it was gracious in its intentions but the Princess felt anger and hatred towards the Moon people so deep in its core the World Tree was rotten, that's why the Progenitor was evil in its nature, why its voice was evil and why I formed in a cosmic mass of evil chakra. Like a planet being born of space dust, my conscience opened itself in absolute evil. All I wanted since that moment was to live free of my roots, free of the evil of my origins... All I want for is to live!" Melobi's face once again changed into that of sadness, as she spoke the appendages on her head began letting streams of air escape from its crevices at the tips. The escaping air formed a sad and lyrical melody, it was the most harmonious and yet longingly sad sound Mana had ever heard.</p>
      <p>"And the old lady wished to imprison you again by becoming your Jinchuuriki," Mana concluded the thought freeing Melobi from having to speak those words. Poor Melobi was such a tragic entity, she was born from the voice of ultimate evil the world has ever known, she was confined to just be a consciousness inside all of the world's sounds, from the musical melodies to the screams of death and begs for help.</p>
      <p>She was labeled a "Lesser Demon" before having a will of its own to earn its demonic label. Her very birth process included the need for countless murders to draw the beacon of blood so that Melobi could concentrate her efforts and take shape where the beacon was drawn. She was not malevolent yet her entire existence was wrapped in evil and she needed evil deeds to even be allowed to be born.</p>
      <p>That left one question in Mana's mind – the monk which the old lady mentioned. Someone with such deep extending knowledge of mythology and history of the world to know who Melobi was, to know how to give her birth, something Mana would've never known. Who could've been this behind the scenes mastermind playing the old woman and why would Melobi's birth serve his needs? Everywhere Mana and her team went there seemed to be deeper mysteries and questions that raised only more questions!</p>
      <p>"Your appearance is odd, it is not primal, you look very different from other Lesser Demons or Tailed Beasts. No Lesser Demon I'd seen appears so... Synthetic, cybernetic and attractive by the human standards." Mana remarked observing Melobi's attempts to feel the dirt beneath her feet by filtering it through her fingers.</p>
      <p>"My looks are representative of music. They are what music currently represents, I thought by choosing such synthetic and visually pleasing look I'd appear casual to people highly educated in musical crafts at this moment in time." Melobi sadly explained. There must've still been something that troubled the entity.</p>
      <p>"You sound really sad, is something the matter, Melobi-san?" Mana wondered carefully.</p>
      <p>"It's just... I am now alive and yet I can feel nothing, no love, no pain, no sadness and the happiness of my birth is fleeting away. There is no meaning to my existence if I cannot feel. Perhaps being evil is my nature? I feel great jealousy of living things, maybe my nature is to destroy all living things? If I cannot truly live, no one should be able to!" Melobi declared with the volume of her synthetic voice rising higher and higher.</p>
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<a name="section0199"><h2>199. Cadenza</h2></a>
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      <p>The crew around Melobi stood uncomfortably, wondering if they may have misunderstood her last words that appeared to declare war on life itself. If someone of the Lesser Demon's might would decide to eradicate life there'd be little anyone could do to stop it. Sure there were a handful of ninja or samurai that may have stood a chance at outright beating it but they were far away.</p>
      <p>"You said that a shockwave encompassing the entire planet of the meaningless intensity I've shown before could swallow up the entire system in its aftermath? Just the Earth and the Moon have any signs of life so wiping all life out would be easy..." Melobi mumbled under her own nose like a child that didn't get a toy for her birthday.</p>
      <p>Shimo and Carnefici took fighting stances and prepared for their seemingly inevitable last stand to protect their world and life itself but they did not attack. It was because in the depths of their hearts the two knew that they stood no chance even leaving a scratch on the Lesser Demon and once they attack – it'd be all over, the demon's decision would be set in stone and everything anyone would say following it would fall on deaf ears.</p>
      <p>Tendrils of sludgy gum mass expanded from Carnefici's back standing in a shield against Notasa through the side of which the scared musician decided to peek at the unfolding situation that took a rather drastic turn. The girl then turned at her bodyguard who nodded and gestured that she should stay behind the shield even though they both knew that if the recently taken shape Lesser Demon decided to do something no shield that the man seeking redemption could provide would do any good.</p>
      <p>"W-Wait... You said you felt joy before. The joy of birth!" Meiko uttered realizing that Mana ran out of things to say to Melobi and wishing to buy some time, just talk to the darned spoiled demon so she doesn't eradicate all life.</p>
      <p>"Hmph... I guess... But that feeling was so short and now I'm over it. I want to feel again, something, anything... I just can't. Things are passing through my mind but I can't understand them, I think some things I feel are emotions but what do they mean, really? I can't feel the sand passing through my fingers, the chilly breeze that musicians sing off only invites sensations I can't understand and really know feelings." Melobi answered pressing her hands together, Mana saw pebbles and dust accumulating around her hands as a translucent shockwave sphere formed inside of them. Had Melobi wished to eradicate all life she'd have done it instantly – the demon was hesitating, there must've still been hope!</p>
      <p>She had to say something, she had to somehow make Melobi reconsidering ending all life. That was what heroes did, they delivered huge speeches and they made situations better. They made bad people wish to change. And yet... Nothing momentous came to Mana's mind, she couldn't come up with anything that would've helped Melobi, nothing but her own selfish desire to save all life in the universe was in her mind and the sound demon wouldn't have understood it. Life literally meant nothing to it, it was only a cradle of feelings which the demon craved but now that it got a taste it thought them stale and lacking. Life did not meet the demon's thousand-year hype...</p>
      <p>"Maybe it is your shape?" Mana spoke out the first stupid thing on her mind. "I mean that white armor tissue on your body and over your skin, maybe it shields you from feeling something? You said you took shape of what music meant currently, that is you decided to embody music, why that sound specifically? Maybe embodying another sound would help you feel something?" Mana tried to reason to the best of her lacking skills, she couldn't speak on point like a hero, she couldn't have been one.</p>
      <p>"I embody music because music is the sound that invokes feelings. If I embodied something like the sounds of black holes or quasars it'd be meaningless, I'd simply fade into nothingness existing as shapeless mass again or look like a giant monster or something..." Melobi angrily complained slowly walking up to Mana's face and looking the magician right in the face.</p>
      <p>For a moment the two looked at each other eye to eye. There was an immense pressure emitted from Melobi's body, almost like the chakra contained within the impish newly born Lesser Demon was so great that it projected a repulsive field of aura pressure by itself just like Meiko described and if the blacksmith's descriptions were to be trusted even Meiko's top attack couldn't break through it. Mana felt the pressure pushing her away from the demon but she stood tall and kept her eyes open and even to Melobi's to the best of her abilities.</p>
      <p>"Do you wish me to not live again? To float in space craving for being alive? I'll know if you're lying..." Melobi asked seriously.</p>
      <p>Shimo and Carnefici looked at Mana with terrified glares, the Lesser Demon claimed it'd know if Mana lied and the magician was no good liar despite being quite a prodigy at the art of illusions. As far as spoken lies and not visual or auditory ones were concerned, Mana was one of the worst liars there may have been. All life could've been screwed, at that moment everyone would've told Melobi that they wished that she disappeared into Hell.</p>
      <p>"No..." Mana replied. "I wish you to be alive and happy, not because you're beautiful and powerful or because I'm afraid of your majesty and might. It's because I wish for that to everyone. You've not lived for a single day yet, you have no idea what life or feelings are all about and alone it'll take you a lifetime to figure them out and you don't strike me as someone with a whole lot of patience. All I know is that if you destroy everything you'll be alone again. You'll be dooming everyone for a fate similar to that you were given – the fate of not being alive while you and every other Tailed Beast, Lesser Demon and elite ninja remain. You know that pain the best of everyone in the universe, do you wish to inflict it on everyone truly?" Mana asked in return.</p>
      <p>Mana's eyes didn't hesitate, the pressure coming out of Melobi made Mana's eyes tear up, it was like standing in front of a raging hurricane that no one else could see or feel but Mana's convictions and will were strong. She was no longer strong and able like she used to be but her inner strength and desire to persevere was unwavering.</p>
      <p>"No... No, I don't" Melobi concluded. "You are not lying, it would seem, but you speak nonsense. How could I learn about feelings and life without actually living it? Would you really trust me not to destroy all life? You appear to be quite adamant about protecting it, why else would you have asked to heal everyone around you?" The demon began digging deeper into Mana's own core. It was like it wanted to expose Mana's own worst fears and force them to play against the argument of preserving Melobi and its life.</p>
      <p>Mana looked to the side and noticed that everyone was scared of Melobi and they were right to be. Truth be told the magician was petrified as well, she was afraid of not only losing everyone she held dear and all the concept of life – the ultimate failure of her dream which she'd be responsible for. Mana also feared for her own life, something that usually she never experienced. Melobi's ancient and massive chakra must've played games with Mana's sleeping chakra network, flipped it and twisted it to its own means and ends like an illusion would've.</p>
      <p>"Ummm... I could teach you" Notasa's scared but almost screaming in desperation voice spoke out. Shocked by the girl's bravery Mana turned at her and witnessed the musician walking out from behind Carnefici's shield which returned to its maker's body fusing with him.</p>
      <p>"Your voice... It's soothing and beautiful" Melobi noted. "But how would that work? Do you wish for me simply to trust your words? How do you mean to accurately portray the experience of life, of all feelings in words? Words are but currency which we use to portray feelings to the best of our abilities, but even music – the most sensual of arts does not accurately and consistently play our strings to the perfect extent".</p>
      <p>"You could become Melobi's Jinchuuriki." Mana's firm voice suggested out of the blue. The blushed magician felt everyone's stares turn at her.</p>
      <p>"It is much easier for Lesser Demons to be sealed inside humans. Plus if you enter her body willingly there'd be no need for a complex high-rank seal to keep you in her and if you, for any reason, leave her body she will not necessarily die like she would if you were a Tailed Beast. That way you'd experience her feelings and the way she lives her life, both high and low, by yourself and you'd have access to Notasa-san's heart and all her experiences. You'd quite literally share a body and mind." The magician explained.</p>
      <p>Notasa nodded and looked at Melobi. "I make music, perhaps I could use your aid to become more artistic and create even greater masterpieces for everyone to hear. We could not only experience the world together but we'd also give birth to new palettes of feelings inside people's hearts!" The girl confidently agreed with Mana's suggestion.</p>
      <p>Melobi's head appendages floated and waved in the air as the demon thought for a while before her glowing eyes looked right at Mana's own. The suggestion may have caused abhorrent consequences yet, after all, the old woman was just murdered for just such a desire. However, the suggestion of molding in free will and after moments of getting to experience life may have made all the difference in the world.</p>
      <p>"I would love that. I'd be able to protect dear Notasa from all threats so we could live forever and experience ages of life as one body and mind. I am also curious what sort of feelings lay within the heart of a musician, someone who bends sound to their will just like I do. We are, as ones say, kindred spirits. Would you please seal me inside her?" The Lesser Demon directed her question right at Mana. Crushed by the reminder of her own disability the girl lowered her head pathetically and shook it.</p>
      <p>"As I've said, a simple C-Rank seal would suffice since we're not forcing you to be contained, we're just going through the formality. We would require your aid with the chakra portion as containing someone of your power will require inhuman chakra reserves but the sealing portion can be performed by Meiko, she's the best seal user of the team... Sadly, I cannot use even such simple techniques." Mana concluded closing her eyes and barely containing her own sadness from having to confront her own weakness inside.</p>
      <p>Meiko walked up to Notasa and Melobi standing in between of the two and asked for the Lesser Demon to stand right behind the girl and touch the future Jinchuuriki. Once the sealing process began, initially there appeared to be some trouble as Meiko's body began weakening and paling right in front of Mana's eyes but once the three-way channel between Notasa, Melobi, and Meiko was established and the Lesser Demon's immense chakra began leaking into Meiko's body the seal erupted in dark purple colors and suddenly the majestic Melobi began to fade away before her shape began becoming one with the bursting beams of light erupting from the seal on Notasa's back.</p>
      <p>"Combination Sealing Technique!" Meiko chanted out the name of the technique before forcing the process onwards. Despite the technique being a relatively simple matter, placing a weak seal which Melobi would have little to no problem of breaking given the need or desire to do so, Meiko was still greatly strained due to the needed cooperation of the Lesser Demon. Combination techniques were difficult if the two weren't in sync. Right before the beam completely absorbed the essence of Melobi Mana walked up to Notasa placing her hand on the girl's shoulder but looking straight at the twisting and fading shape of Melobi.</p>
      <p>"If you wish to truly be alive then you will need a name. Melobi is not your real name, it is how you are called. Usually, Tailed Beasts share their real names with their Jinchuuriki after establishing trust." Mana explained what she read of Tailed Beasts during her increased off time in the archives. The interviews and tales from past Jinchuuriki that described interacting and working together with the Tailed Beasts to achieve great things. Mana was no legendary hero, she had nothing special to set her apart from the others and now she had even less. However, Melobi and Notasa may just soon possess power great enough to fight off Tailed Beasts if needed. These two may soon become legendary heroes like those that embody the hope of humans and Tailed Beasts working together.</p>
      <p>"I have not been given a name... Ten-Tails did not know of my existence before it was sealed and I was not given a name since I was never technically "born" until now." Melobi's voice spread ethereally through the ruined district of Otogakure they were in.</p>
      <p>"Well, perhaps you may begin thinking of one to give yourself now. It is something that you and Notasa-san should do, you two are now closer than siblings, closer than spouses, after all..." Mana replied taking a couple of steps back and giving both the shapeless existence of Melobi and Notasa a firm and warm glare.</p>
      <p>"I'd love if you named me, magician... If it weren't for you I'd have never been given another chance at life, if it weren't for you treating me as something more than something given birth by evil incarnate and then reborn through bloodshed I'd have never become one with Notasa." Melobi's voice, now significantly weaker echoed.</p>
      <p>The magician smiled before gently laughing out, "Well, I always considered musical names incredibly lyrical and quite beautiful, something like Sonata or Symphonia would fit you just fine".</p>
      <p>"Synth..." Melobi's voice echoed, quiet as a whisper but spreading wide and far. "I am not of natural birth, I was created by Ten-Tails and then given birth through unnatural means. Despite my wish to be born I was never really born, I was created and then given direction to shape myself in. I am artificial but just like you, I choose to embrace it. Honoring your preference, I'll be named Synth..." the entity completely disappeared into a beam of light that got absorbed into a seal hieroglyph on Notasa's back before blinking out. Just like that, the sealing was over.</p>
      <p>Notasa nodded and thanked Meiko and Mana. It must've been a great opportunity and joy for the young woman, Mana could only imagine what it'd be like to have an embodiment of magic for a stage magician, must've felt similarly to how Notasa felt right now.</p>
      <p>"Just for the record, I still couldn't manage to find us a place..." Kouta scratched the back of his head laughing uncomfortably.</p>
      <p>"You lazy dickbag!" Shimo grunted out rubbing his knuckles against the young man's head and hair forcing the young man to shout out in pain as he was bullied.</p>
      <p>"Well, my home was also destroyed..." Notasa looked around realizing that a large portion of the district was devastated as well. Once the village finds out that Melobi resides inside Notasa it'll really make the girl lose some popularity points. Then again, the Syndicate shall be a threat no longer.</p>
      <p>"I have some old acquaintances I can call favors from." Carnefici grumped out in annoyance. The man must've had mixed feelings about the girl carrying the Lesser Demon inside of her. On one side it was dangerous as if at any point Melobi wished to escape she could've greatly weakened and injured the musician. On the other hand, it also made him quite useless as once Notasa learned to harness Synth's power she'll become near-unstoppable to any but the most elite threats.</p>
      <p>Notasa wrapped her hands around Carnefici's. She must've felt the man's worries.</p>
      <p>"I'll leave my protection to you then, Carne-san!" She exclaimed. Carnefici's face softened almost immediately after seeing that the young lady still didn't consider him useless and didn't toss him out like yesterday's garbage. Treatment like that was what the old wolf was used to so seeing actual human kindness and friendship at work must've warmed his heart.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Mana walked out to look through the balcony of an ancient classical home of an old painter whom Carnefici knew from his old days. It was odd that she and the ex-murderer had no falling outs or problems, oddly enough Mana never even spoke to Carnefici about his past despite somewhat hazily remembering the outcry of his incarceration and the huge rings of rumors and conflicts that it caused during her early years when she was but a child. Then again, was she not one now? She was. A child who took over the responsibility to talk down a Lesser Demon from destroying all life in a blink of an eye, both Earth and Moon...</p>
      <p>"I've no idea how you did what you did..." Notasa smiled walking out from the same room where Mana and Notasa were housed to sleep over the remaining hours until the morning becomes day. It was once everyone rested that the musician promised to take a look at the golden sphere and reveal its contents so that Mana and the others can leave before they overstay their welcome in the village.</p>
      <p>What they did in Otogakure in just one night would shake its very foundation, Melobi's power shook ground far beyond Otogakure's walls and the other ninja villages will ask questions. Soon Otogakure's criminal structures will be revealed and without so many leaders that fell that night, the Syndicate will be eradicated by walking out before more trouble is made than they can scoop out. "Talking to a Lesser Demon like they're just another friend of yours..." The girl concluded about what was admired exactly.</p>
      <p>"Neither do I, my hands are still shaking..." Mana replied looking down. "I mean... Just a couple of years ago I was filling in paper tests and going to the Academy, now we had to prevent the destruction of everything that's alive. Sometimes I look back at those days and think of how easy I had it back then, I get nostalgic and jealous honestly of that little magician brat with chubby cheeks." The girl smiled before Notasa joined her at the balcony and looked over the smoking panorama of the village.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... Now that I and Synth are one... I just get the feeling like I'm wasting my time. Like I should be studying her and that we should be partnering up and befriending each other as fast as possible and then... I don't know... Saving the world? I mean... It's similar, isn't it? Given all this power and being taught to use it, it's just like graduating from the Academy, suddenly you wish to do everything, to fix the world".</p>
      <p>"It's different..." Mana replied, "You have the ultimate power but that doesn't mean the ultimate responsibility. Ultimately, the only responsibility we answer to is the one we take as our own, the one we place on ourselves or one we accept. I placed the ultimate responsibility on my shoulders and I barely even managed to stop one person from doing the wrong thing before dying once. I think, partly, why I managed to think of the whole sealing thing and talk Synth-san into it was because I believed you could be the hero I could never be... Someone who could do whatever she needed or wanted to do, who could fulfill any responsibility they would accept as their own".</p>
      <p>Notasa stood leaned over the balcony silently for a while, Mana wondered what was that all about but then the girl turned at the magician and smiled.</p>
      <p>"Synth says she's never seen a hero so she may be wrong but someone that protects all life from a big baby such as her deserves to be called that".</p>
      <p>Mana smiled acceptingly before longingly looking at the garden two floors below the balcony and looking back at Notasa.</p>
      <p>"Be careful with the seal. It's paper thin, one disagreement, one big fight with Synth-san and she may just break out. It might be no problem but if you're fighting at that moment Synth-san may just end up hurting someone. You should discuss finding a stronger seal user to strengthen the seal one day with Synth-san, she might view it as a betrayal of your trust or you locking her up so you need to be sensitive about it. You two need to become friends, just using or controlling her will never work." Mana advised before turning around and walking back to bed. It was tough to think that she could sleep after just going through the most fearful experience of her life. Once again she'd remember the painful experience of nightmares and stress of ninja life keeping her awake.</p>
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<a name="section0200"><h2>200. Leaving The Sounds of Silence Behind</h2></a>
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      <p>By the time that Mana woke up the day was well past its middle. One could've expected at the very least that much from how the team spent the whole last night doing a great many things that ended up leaving the Sound Village pretty shaken up. The sight through the balcony was an intimidating one, one of the largest, towering skyscraper buildings in the village was brought down, the whole district where Synth was summoned last night was in smoldering ashes even though the Lesser Demon saved all the injured as well as kept the dying from going over the line when asked by Mana to do so.</p>
      <p>For the first time in a while, Mana didn't feel a crushing leftover of past wounds, the pain that made it difficult to imagine how the rest of the day would go. By now, having been just a normal civilian for months the magician had gotten used to the frail human body. It was tough to imagine how she could've taken the ninja metabolism for granted during all those years. Luckily enough due to Melobi's effort, Mana could make the bed she slept in and get dressed without any pain. Having in mind the literal torture she went through last night it was impressive.</p>
      <p>By the time Mana got dressed and descended to the main guestroom below where everyone was having breakfast and, it appeared, waiting for her, everyone was already ready. The things were packed and stacked close to the door, everyone was just sitting around and looked happy to see Mana finally woken up and ready. The magician was a little scared to be entirely honest.</p>
      <p>They've been chasing this box for so long. The four have been in so many places and experienced so much throughout all of this time and now they had all the cards they needed in their hand. All the four needed to do was to make the play and find out where the Box was exactly. Mana settled down and had some pancakes for breakfast, eating something made by an actual housewife who knew what she was doing felt really odd somehow, tasty nevertheless. It made Mana think about how much she missed cooking herself. Everyone hated when she cooked on the road because, frankly, Mana wasn't as good as she told herself she was. The young one lacked experience, something she could hopefully fix in time.</p>
      <p>"It was strangely affectionate of you to show that much love last night... You've never hugged me openly before" Mana smiled to Kouta during the session of small talk when each member of the team recounted their adventures in Otogakure. The girl, of course, referred to when Kouta hugged her after getting back to his senses and over his injuries. While the two did awkwardly talk about the topic of their feelings towards each other neither of them made an actual step to illustrate their firm intentions towards those feelings.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, well... I met a woman last night that helped me open my eyes. Helping her cleared up a lot of things for me." Kouta replied with a smile stuffing another pancake. Meiko and the medical ninja continued to eat the second breakfast using Mana needing breakfast-company as an excuse to stuff their cheeks full of food. These two were quite the heavy eaters when they had plenty of access to food...</p>
      <p>"It might not be wise for us to stick around this place for much longer. Right now the whole Syndicate chain of operations is unstable and it is highly possible that they're losing their public grip on the people. The village officials will view it as an opportunity to take their village back." Shimo tried to hurry everyone up and leave the village. There was a lot of truth in his words, they were ninja of a completely different village after all. If the village re-established order and found them scooping around or made connections between them and the destruction last night the Hokage might have some explaining to do. Ninja have been suspended for far less than this.</p>
      <p>"Well, we've made messes everywhere we went, we're in a whole stew of them anyways." Meiko cheerfully chuckled grinning with a full teeth smile like a monkey making fun of something.</p>
      <p>"Still, might be better to avoid making a public mess here. Just because we've got a nasty record already building up doesn't mean we should keep adding to it when there's chance of avoiding it." Shimo concluded to which no one appeared to object.</p>
      <p>"Well, you guys are welcome to stay here as long as you need. I've run my own art smuggling operation for my gallery so if I was caught by the Syndicate I'd have been screwed big time. You gave everyone hope that those fuckers will be kicked out, maybe one day I'll actually open my gallery publically." The painter and the owner of the house that everyone was staying in affirmed that there was no rush to leave.</p>
      <p>"The public likes the Syndicate..." Mana looked down placing the roll of pancake and syrup down on her plate and pushing it away. Remembering her inner pain made her lose all appetite. She had never thought that she'd see the day when people supported criminals running the whole ship just because they openly killed any criminals unassociated with them. The very thought that such a system would be acceptable to the public made Mana very sad and whacked her hope of someday making her dream come true right in the head.</p>
      <p>"That they do... You have to understand, they've been controlled by a band of criminals ever since the village was founded. To them, the Syndicate is just another political party..." The artist nodded looking at Mana with a sad stare as if pitying her sadness before standing back up and leaving towards the kitchen.</p>
      <p>"Well, we're not staying for too long anyways..." Mana concluded standing up and walking down the hall to pick up the bag that had the sphere inside it. The magician carried it back and placed it to her feet before drawing the little ball out of it and rolling it in between her open hands, examining the craftsmanship in it.</p>
      <p>Notasa looked at Carnefici it was evident that she wanted to say something but was a little hesitant to do so. It must've been tough – having two minds inside one's head and constantly having to speak for both voices. Usually, the powerful seals used for Jinchuuriki sealed the beasts away deep and had to be loosened for some of the beast's consciousness to leak out. Communicating with the Tailed Beast required great mastery over the seal, one's own body and great experience communicating with the beast as well as a good relationship. Notasa's seal was thin as a bride's veil, Synth could've broken out at any point whenever she wanted to and could seemingly freely communicate with Notasa at any point.</p>
      <p>"I've run this past Synth and we agreed that finding a master to strengthen the seal would be the right idea..." The musician spoke to Carnefici who just closed his eyes.</p>
      <p>"There are no sealing masters in this village, it's a relatively unpopular branch of specialization and it's a dangerous world out there, my lady," He warned.</p>
      <p>"Yes, I know that but... A journey like that would help me understand Synth and it'd get to understand me, it'd be a bonding trip but also it'd finalize our union. Synth doesn't want to hurt me or kill me if she ever broke out of the seal, plus, with our powers combined what could we possibly have to fear?" The musician gave her bodyguard a hopeful smile.</p>
      <p>Carnefici just shrugged, "You're the lady, I'm just your bodyguard. If you wish to find a sealing master then I'll follow you wherever you go. Although you underestimate what transpires outside these walls. Maybe it would be a good experience for you to step out for once and see this world for what it truly is".</p>
      <p>"Before that, I believe I've made a promise." Notasa smiled to Mana and picked up the sphere from her hands. The musician observed the sphere and looked around it flipping it and rolling it around to see all of its angles, she then asked for a pen and paper to write some things down. It took the young woman a good half an hour to finish the puzzle and write everything she needed down.</p>
      <p>"It's quite a simple puzzle to any musically literate person, just a quite tedious one" she admitted. "You see, in the ancient times, music was written down with numbers and not notes, each note and symbol represents a number and this sphere has a grand total of ten missing pieces that represent the numbers you need".</p>
      <p>Notasa handed the paper to Shimo who just rolled his eyes and put a couple of slashes with the pen in between the numbers. Separating the numbers into two groups of four and one group of two.</p>
      <p>"It's coordinates... Some pretty exact ones and they can't be that old, less than a hundred years old for sure because they use the Guilman's method of writing down coordinates." The ex-rogue concluded. Once he took a more accurate look at the coordinates his face shifted in annoyance as he rushed to the bags and pulled out a world map placing it on the table after taking all the plates and cups and utensils off of it.</p>
      <p>Kouta stood up and compared the coordinates to the map.</p>
      <p>"Oh no... It's in Kirigakure..." He whined out, with good reason, the current standing of Konoha and Kirigakure was less than exemplary and even though Shirona's rebellion was long since cut down its roots and united Kirigakure loyalists remained strong in the village. Even more, they were more than ever united in their hatred of the other ninja villages now that they've taken away Kirigakure's autonomy.</p>
      <p>"Not quite... It's in the north-western part of the Archipelago. I think it's in the Tako Reach region." Mana pointed at the supposed area with her finger. It was within the central area of the region which may have been the most dangerous.</p>
      <p>"Awww! Sick! We're gonna fight ninja pirates!" Meiko shrieked out, "I'm gonna go and get ready!" She yelled out and ran off and grabbed her bag running into the yard to do whatever she thought of doing.</p>
      <p>"Tako's Reach is a dangerous place, Mana. If I was you I'd think very carefully about just how much you wish to find that Box..." Carnefici added "Even when I was still who I was, we rarely tread into the oceans, when we did we paid our dues to every sick pirate bastard we encountered. We'd have rather hungered to death than fought in the middle of the ocean. You do know that the Eight-Tails is loose somewhere in the Archipelago living in the depths and sinking ships left and right. You have to wonder if whatever you wish to obtain is worth eight kilometers of a journey to the bottom of the largest ocean on the planet in the grasp of a gigantic octopus-ox. It's either that or chakra infused sword to the gut by some random pirate, make no mistake those sea-dogs are no slouches, they were all proven ninja before they went rogue".</p>
      <p>"Even if by any chance you do find that Box, I hope you know the dangers of using it?" Notasa added. "There is an opera written about a man who left his home as a child and was raised as a monarch, only to return to his rundown country with his uncle in charge. Witnessing the suffering of his people he made a wish to the Box but the spirit of the Box took his soul away and sealed it in the Box instead. It's called "Murasuke's Trial" and it's about the selfishness of our own inner desires and the hope that they come true without any effort on our part. I've performed bits and pieces of it many times".</p>
      <p>Mana's eyes sunk to the floor and she thought for a while. She had no wavers in her heart except when things expanded to her friends. She wished to show Meiko the legendary Box of Ultimate Bliss, she also knew that without her chakra control back the magician had no point of continuing her life. And yet even knowing all those things Mana didn't really wish to lead her friends into peril. She didn't want to doom them just because she did something as selfish as asking the Box to fulfill her wish.</p>
      <p>"Truth be told, I have no other choice. I know that everyone left on this mission not because they wanted to but because the Fifth would've never let me go without them. I know that it is selfish of me to wish for my chakra control back but... Without it, I have no point of living. Life without any hopes of ever accomplishing your dream just isn't worth living to me. At any point, you guys can go home and just label me as someone who has gone rogue... I will walk the distance till the end, wherever it leads." Mana replied looking at her friends who didn't reply at first.</p>
      <p>"You're not bailing out on your promise that easily..." Kouta smiled before getting off the armchair and moving on to the pile of bags by the door.</p>
      <p>"I know I hurt you a great deal back in Takigakure and I still think that I was in the right to do so. Sometimes the only right thing to do is the one that hurts the most. I still want to be your friend, Mana. And friends watch out for one another, we've been through a lot already and this one may just be the big one. I still want to be the sword that protects because only that kind of a person can eventually become the Hokage. A Hokage doesn't back down on missions just because things get a little crazy, especially when their friends walk into them with their heads up high." Shimo followed by standing up and picking up his bags as well as Mana's and left through the door to wait for the magician outside.</p>
      <p>"The redhead already left, she's the most energetic about beating up ninja pirates out of the four of you..." Carnefici quietly roughed out through his teeth with a relatively warm grin.</p>
      <p>"Before you leave, may I just ask you one question, as one artist and friend to another?" Notasa asked to which the magician nodded.</p>
      <p>"Have you ever truly wondered why your chakra went away? Meiko told me that you can use physical aspect of chakra but not the spiritual, which means your own mind is blocking it off. Before you make a wish to the Box that steals people's souls have you ever really looked into yourself and asked if that was the only way?" The musician asked with worry and desperation in her voice. She must've really believed that opera and its story, to Notasa whoever asked for a wish to be granted by the Box, was as good as gone.</p>
      <p>Mana's eyes closed as opened halfway as she avoided the musician's stare. "I hope for all the best to you and Synth. I'll be looking out for any epics written to praise your kind deeds as well as for posters of your upcoming tours in Konoha. Look out for me, I'll be sitting in the front row." The magician just bowed and walked out the door into what was supposed to be the final chapter of the adventure to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss. That was it, they knew where the Box was supposed to be. It was now just a matter of walking to the shores and setting off through the largest ocean in the world and into the most dangerous and pirate-infested part of the Kirigakure Archipelago where deep underwater, rumors said, the Eight-Tails may have lurked after his last Jinchuuriki died years ago all the way in Kumogakure and the beast was chased into the ocean abyss of Land of Water.</p>
      <p>Had Mana truly spoken to her own mind? Had she really meditated and looked deep into her own psyche asking the question why did she forbid herself to use chakra on a mental level? No. She never once did. Truth be told the magician was even going as far as to completely avoid her own subconscious and never peek around those parts of her mind. She always categorized and dealt with conscious thoughts, ones she could control and manipulate but what transpired on a deeper and much more intimate level made even Mana herself fear setting foot in there.</p>
      <p>How could she not be afraid of understanding herself? There had never been a more suffocating and crushing experience than losing her chakra manipulation and throughout all of this time the magician knew, on some tiny inconsequential level, she imagined, that she was the one to blame for her own misfortune somehow. After all, she herself was the architect of the entire incident. She was adamant of facing Hisako, a vastly stronger opponent alone. She was completely fearless of losing her own life if it meant doing at least one heroic deed in the end. If it meant giving her existence and birth some sort of meaning even if it was giving a juvenile crime lord a chance to redeem himself.</p>
      <p>Looking inside her own heart and asking herself of the reason why she was stopping herself from reaching the full potential and getting back on the road of running towards her dream required the immense effort and strength which Mana didn't really feel she had. As the magician rejoined her friends and acted like all was well and they slowly began to tread towards the edge of the Sound Village and towards Yugakure further down east before they reached the port that'd have taken them to the Archipelago she realized that she was more likely to face an almighty demon of wish fulfilment and look into his sinister soul sealing eyes than look into her own heart.</p>
      <p>"So... Yugakure is our next stop," Kouta said with a slow and low pitched tone looking into the midday sky.</p>
      <p>"Don't hold your breath... The place hasn't seen any action since the Second Great War. Ever since they stopped dealing with ninja and became just a large settlement instead of a ninja village." Shimo replied, he was right, of all places Yugakure, the village with little to no walls or protection and residing in between long stretches of port towns from the east and Konoha and Otogakure from the west needed the least protection or competition in the ninja game. Neither were there hopes of seeing some action there.</p>
      <p>"War strained many villages. Maybe it's for the better that some villages decided to call it quits before the fate of Iwagakure and Sunagakure followed them and they were sacked to the ground." Mana finally pushed Notasa's words away and got into the trip and the discussion at hand.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Leaving Otogakure was not as simple as the team would've predicted. After they entered the village there was hardly any observation or control over their actions while they were there. Had such control been established many of Syndicate's operations would've been in peril, therefore, it was not beneficial to the men and women of the Syndicate in charge. Now that Syndicate's iron grip on the village loosened the officials began instantly reapplying that of their own.</p>
      <p>After making their way through the damaged and smoky village districts where they had the misfortune of fighting last night the team finally reached the more industrial rocky plains with large machinery working the exhausted ground and supplying minerals and natural gas residing below the village. The loud and towering machinery worked right on the other side of the street of the poorest residential districts making living there very cheap but virtually a living hell of machinery noise. The depressed workers had nothing to lose so they drank in the local bars and brawled like there was no tomorrow. Maybe the men wished that there'd have not been one. After they woke the next morning with the heads still pounding from the beers and the literal pounding they had in their last night's fights they'd have wanted to die more than anything. Especially so knowing that they had a full working day ahead of them...</p>
      <p>Mana, Meiko, Kouta, and Shimo were stopped by the borders. It was odd seeing control over the village reestablished virtually overnight and the four may have been in a little bit of trouble as their identities would've been established and the officials would've known that ninja of Konohagakure meddled with their affairs which would've been a public nightmare for Konoha and possibly spelled out "suspension" for all of them. Luckily enough Shimo knew one guard from his time training during his rogue days so they weren't shaken much, the team was let go relatively easily right after Shimo paid for the man's beer and spared some time for a refreshing catching up talk.</p>
      <p>"Wow, they've established control pretty much overnight..." Mana scratched her head being genuinely surprised by how fast Syndicate's grip on the village slipped after just one night and multiple ruined operations.</p>
      <p>"Maybe the officials really didn't like their Syndicate overlords, maybe the rebellion was always in the works and the Police Force was waiting for the mobsters to slip up so they could reestablish control. Then again, Syndicate had some amazing fighters amongst their midst, tough to imagine the Police Force stopping any of them." Kouta replied remembering his tough time in the tower. Usually, the Police Force was comprised of low ranking ninja, reformed mercenaries or rogues that legitimized and started working for any given village.</p>
      <p>Sometimes there was one or two chuunin amongst the Police Force but they were usually the elite and commanding officers. The higher ranking ones rarely fought because they couldn't properly control their chakra augmentations, common chuunin had the destructive power to ruin the planet with a single punch making controlling their immense power part of the ninja training.</p>
      <p>"Make no mistake, they didn't do it because of good intentions... The Police Force just saw Syndicate slip up and wanted to take over. At this point, they're no better than another criminal band. What else would you expect from a village founded by giving a bunch of criminals pardon and giving them high ranking positions in the village government..." Shimo laughed out ironically making fun of the high hopes of his friends.</p>
      <p>"What's wrong, Mana?" Meiko asked looking at the magician's sudden change of mood. The ex-kunoichi really looked on the down, more so than it would've made sense given what had happened.</p>
      <p>"It's just..." Mana began wondering how better to put it, "We've traveled through most of the world in a straight line, walking across it and we've seen so much but... Even when we stopped to help nothing changed for the better," she pinned it all on the results of their travels instead of her own inner struggle and the question asked by Notasa in Otogakure.</p>
      <p>"We had no chance of changing anything. Syndicate is implanted too deep in Tanzaku and Otogakure, they're expanding even faster still. We had no chance of stopping the goddamn Nine-Tails and Kouta's father and those other ninja in Sunagakure were just too powerful for us. It was far too early for us to try and change anything but we still tried anyways, we did some good too. All those Justicars in Takigakure were casually destroying star systems and ready to destroy the whole damned world if it meant destroying all they deemed evil. You also softened the Sheikhate up changing its ways, remember?" Shimo tried to calm Mana down. He usually never tried so hard, it reminded Mana of how they were in the beginning. Before both, Shimo and Sugemi, got tired of her and the way she always was.</p>
      <p>It was just a couple of days of traveling before the team reached Land of Hot Water. It was a peaceful and varied land, it had no dominant appearance as it had both mountainous regions, plain grasslands and sandy beaches leading into vast and crystal clear lakes. If anything the natural views and untouched beauty of Mother Nature was glorious to watch and sleeping by the open sky in Land of Hot Water was similarly unmatched.</p>
      <p>Mana continued to train Shimo in the art of quicker hand seals. She had to admit that the young man was a talented one, every time the swordsman performed a jutsu faster than Mana's eyes could track a single handseal she saw that prodigious kid that graduated in the top percentages of students in the Academy. They barely even really spoke, what Shimo did in Takigakure just hurt too much and Mana helped his training just out of respect for Tanshu-sensei's final wishes. Shimo then asked if Mana wished he returned the favor by keeping her own fighting skills sharp but the magician always found an excuse to politely refuse.</p>
      <p>Meiko became Mana's sanctuary in these excuses as to why she couldn't train. It was always the promised training of Meiko. Mana began training Meiko longer and longer and push her friend to strive higher and higher. At this point Meiko was far higher in the genjutsu defense tier than most of her peers but just because Mana didn't let up. She needed to be occupied the whole night so that Shimo got off her back and stopped asking if she wanted to train and so she pushed all of that on Meiko. It was cruel and the redhead was struggling but she thought that it was all to her favor and that Mana was just being a strict teacher so she bent to Mana's pressure and as a result improved in leaps and bounds. Her chakra control was still incredibly unreliable, sometimes Meiko pulled off quite impressive feats of concentration and sometimes Mana fooled her with a simple finger redirection or Meiko messed up even the simplest chakra molding exercises that an Academy student could've pulled off.</p>
      <p>"You think you could teach me to meditate, the way you do?" Meiko one night asked her. The team was pretty close to Yugakure that was located in the center of Land of Hot Water but they decided to set camp and sleep over instead of reaching the village in the middle of the night.</p>
      <p>"I don't think you could reach that stage in a reasonable time frame. Your concentration is still too swimmy." Mana tried to be honest.</p>
      <p>"Swimmy? What does that even mean?" Meiko's puffy lips pouted like those of a toddler being told that they couldn't have the cookie.</p>
      <p>"It means that you're swimming around aimlessly when you need to float. You need to stop thinking about anything, you need to achieve total clearness of mind and... I'm talking to myself again, huh?" Mana noticed that Meiko's eyes were chasing a glow-worm that flew around in the distance near the small river where a whole group of them were concentrated. The glow-worms here were like miniature light bulbs by themselves, their shining bellies were the size of a human fist making them effective distractions but ones no meditator should've been distracted by.</p>
      <p>"Sorry..." Meiko laughed out smiling just like a toddler again. "Though you know, if I tried and failed at least I would realize how far I am from that level and I'd stop asking you to teach it to me..." She noted a fair point.</p>
      <p>"Look... I'm not gonna show you how to meditate!" Mana grunted out a bit more angrily and desperately than she'd have liked to. The magician knew that Meiko would've wished to see Mana's meditational stages and now that Mana deeply feared to delve into her own heart and had that fear engraved within her mind she'd definitely delve there while entranced. It couldn't have been controlled. A single slip of her mind would've taken Mana deep within her own body and made her face the reasons why her chakra was taken away, why Mana couldn't confront her own spirituality and obtain the spiritual chakra control part back.</p>
      <p>"Oh... Well... Then back to the concentration exercises?" Meiko asked looking at Mana with those sad puppy eyes as if she did something wrong and Mana was hurt by her words. The magician sighed, she couldn't handle those eyes. She couldn't handle the thought that her own friend was hurt by her own words. Meiko shared that same feeling with Mana and the rest of the team where each feared to hurt their friends the most of all things. Even when they had falling outs they still felt really bad about it and felt like they were to blame inside, all except for Shimo, that young man blamed himself for nothing...</p>
      <p>"Look... Fine. I'll... I'll show you how it's done but I can't talk. Talking and explaining it to you will only distract me and I'll have to think about things to tell you and then it won't work. You'll have to observe me and understand what's happening without my aid." Mana softly explained feeling sorry about her own fears making her too edgy and distancing from her friends.</p>
      <p>"Sure!" Meiko barked out raising her fist at the sky energetically. She then peeled her wide eyes open and continued to keep them peeled and staring at Mana like the magician was about to show an actual magic trick.</p>
      <p>Mana closed her eyes and took a meditative position by crossing her legs and straightening her back, the magician completely relaxed and pushed away all thought letting her mind slip into trance almost immediately. She used meditation so often as a child and even now that by now it came almost like an alternate dimension she had easy access to. Like a dream world which she lived in but couldn't quite yet bend to her will.</p>
      <p>A black void encompassed Mana as she realized that she's slipped into her own consciousness. The girl saw her own body in front of her as a map of sorts with stars and small planets symbolling her organs, systems and chakra network. Just as expected the blasted thing looked operational and fully capable of supporting proper chakra control. Mana had even accumulated leftover masses of chakra in those nodes from her time training and using physical chakra which could've expanded her chakra pool beyond her wildest dreams if only she could force them out and into her normal network flow. If only she could control any darned part of her life...</p>
      <p>"Ummm... Space baby thing?" Mana asked around ethereally trying to find out if maybe that huge space entity she once encountered as she was dying was still there. No one answered, it either didn't survive Mana's dying process or was blocked off from her consciousness. Just another part of her body the girl couldn't control. It was like her own body blocked her off of it.</p>
      <p>"I guess I deserved it..." Mana forced her mind to materialize her in front of the ethereal imaginary map of her body and looked down. The girl just wanted to see her own body, both conscious and unconscious parts and speak to it. Just heart to heart, she didn't care if her own body listened and if it cared or if it continued to hate and stay angry at her.</p>
      <p>"I mean I've done nothing good my whole life while I had chakra. Most of the things I did were accomplished by other people while I was just there foolishly risking my life. I always try to help but then I set free the Nine-Tails or... Things just don't go how I want them. I used the chakra control recklessly, I endangered my own body and almost paid my own life as the ultimate cost in return. I guess I don't really need to talk to any of the imaginary space babies inside of me to understand why what happened, happened. Just... Maybe one day... When I'm worth it and when someone I love is in danger, consider really hard and if I deserve it at that moment and... Please make me strong again..." Mana spoke to her own body fully knowing that no one was listening, she was quite literally talking to herself. At least last time there was a Space Mana to talk to, the two had a fruitful discussion that convinced Mana that her life was not in vain and that she could make it mean more still if she saved her own life.</p>
      <p>Now she was alone... All alone.</p>
      <p>Mana's eyes shook and opened again. She whispered a question at Meiko asking if the blacksmith got anything from the demonstration but then she noticed Meiko sitting with her head rolled back and her drooling mouth open. The fact that the blacksmith was still sitting upright proved considerable restraint and wish to actually understand Mana but the blacksmith just couldn't beat her nature of being the world's cutest goof. The magician just sighed and gently placed her friend onto the soft grass.</p>
      <p>"She went asleep like fifteen seconds into it. It was amazing really..." Kouta whispered into Mana's ear.</p>
      <p>"It's okay, I didn't expect it to go any other way. Meiko is an ass kicker, not a self-reflector. She can punch a Goddess right in the teeth then never question herself and sleep like a baby afterward." Mana smiled looking at her friend before pressing her head against Kouta's rough cloak that protected the boy from the night's chills.</p>
      <p>Kouta's hands wrapped around Mana and pressed her firmly. "You looked pretty nervous about meditating? Any skeletons in the closet you wish to talk about?" He asked quietly as the two moved past Meiko leaving the blacksmith kicking about while asleep like a little puppy dreaming of chasing other little puppies across the great steppes.</p>
      <p>"No, I've confronted those skeletons and I think we've started anew on... Better terms. Hopefully, they can move out of my closet once I make enough to rent them a place elsewhere" Mana replied with an even greater smile resting her head against Kouta's shoulder as the two sat to look at the running river and the dancing glow-worm swarms downhill. The magician had no idea when exactly she had fallen asleep. Kouta must've just laid her head down on the grass and laid down just a couple of meters farther from her as that was the position she found everyone after waking up in the morning.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>Yugakure was a disappointment. Not a depressing one but a strangely glad and liberating one. The village itself was completely unprotected from either side. It wasn't even much of a village as it no longer fostered any ninja to make its riches from murder, theft and other unkind deeds ninja usually made money out of. It reminded Mana more of a small but sophisticated and rich pleasure town offering services and low-quality entertainment like lesser known actors and musicians. A fine place to stop and relax and enjoy the pureness of the surrounding nature.</p>
      <p>Mana somewhat expected that a Konoha representative may meet them there and ask for them to return back home. She even tried imagining a fighting scenario and thought about the best ways of escaping the representative, the magician thought of various chuunin and jounin she knew of that may have been sent to retrieve them. Analyzing the parts of their skillsets she knew and trying to come up with ways to evade them long enough to lose them.</p>
      <p>After getting into so much trouble and making so much noise Mana expected there to be some sort of consequences afterward but it appeared that their involvement in Otogakure's affairs remained unidentified and a complete mystery. For all anyone knew. it could've been just a random Syndicate outfit wearing swordsman, just another leather jacket wearing young woman and just a random mercenary-like looking armored brawler that caused the public outcry and destruction of several important buildings as well as a whole district.</p>
      <p>Just a week later the team was already close to one of countless small port settlements that made a living out of fishing the great ocean that opened up and ended only on the other side of the world at the most western sides of Land of Wind as well as taking people to the endless islands stretching throughout the ocean. The ocean itself had no known name, it was too vast to name it. Several sections of it had names, however. All the way in the north-western parts laid the Tako's Reach – a region of two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers in length and about hundred and forty thousand kilometers wide where ninja pirates reigned supreme and prospered.</p>
      <p>More to the south there was a safer but longer path to the Archipelago, most of the smaller and unprotected ships often took that path but those were torturous and long trips around the more straight but dangerous path. Then, to the east laid the Land of Water and its Archipelago, the collection of islands both small and large that were too many to count, somewhere in the center of the Archipelago laid the greatest and the most famous island – Kirigakure, one of the past Great Ninja Villages with a bloody reputation.</p>
      <p>The air in the port town was very humid and somewhat salty, the structures had signs of erosion and moss typical to such humidity and the rising and fleeing tides. Mana decided it'd be wise to get used to that salty smell and humid air – it was there to stay for quite a while...</p>
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<a name="section0201"><h2>201. Salt And Quince</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In a campsite, close to one of the small port towns, selling ship related services and whatever else port towns profited from and did Meiko and Shimo were sword-fighting. The two were seriously going at it even if neither of the two was particularly angry at the other or wanted to kill their partner. The fight had nothing hinging on it, it was a playful spar that happened to grow into something more intense but just as contained and within the bounds of common sense.</p><p>Mana was calmly eating by the side and looking at the incomprehensible mess of flashes and blurs she wasn't even able to comprehend. She knew how these sort of fights took place, hundreds of hits and blocks connected before she could even see a single red and green blur from Meiko or a damper green and silver blur that her old-time Yuki teammate left over from his movements. Even those flashes were afterimages, mirages of sorts, reacting to them was to react to the sound of your own cut open flesh. May as well not even react at all...</p><p>At this point, the magician had gotten used to not being able to make out much of anything when her teammates really went at it. Before they used to restrain themselves, maybe the wound of Mana's disability was still fresh and they thought that she suffered greatly seeing by just how far she got left behind. It was true, even at the peak of her physical chakra augmentations that would've slowly broken her body even more than it already was when used the magician would only barely be able to keep up to the sloppiest of her friends' attacks.</p><p>Here and now the two went balls out, they didn't aim at where the other was not blocking, the two purposefully tried to train each other by giving the other some time to defend themselves and develop their own style. They were training like two comrades in arms should have – beneficially to one another and honoring the sparring opponent. The downside was that with the other blocking each and every blow the sounds were abhorrent. The clangs and thuds conjoined together as another one started before the first sound could properly kick off making a terribly loud cacophony of steel and thuds that sounded like they were splitting the Earth in two.</p><p>"They're not really restraining themselves..." Mana noted to Kouta who was just sipping tea and observing the spectacle. Without a doubt the medical ninja could see it all, he wouldn't have been half as entertained by it all if he couldn't.</p><p>"Why would they be?" The medical ninja wondered distracting his eyes to look back at the magician who looked at him while she spoke to the young man.</p><p>"I don't know... They used to do it..." Mana blushed looking to the side, she didn't want to talk about how uncomfortable this whole difference in strength made her feel still.</p><p>"Yeah, because you were really stressed about being a civilian again. Now you're much better at dealing with it, right?" Kouta asked casually walking up to Mana and sitting by her, gently he wrapped one of his hands around her back.</p><p>"Sure..." She dismissed the topic without explaining that being better at hiding something was not the same as being better at dealing with it.</p><p>With a wild howl of the passing wind currents, the fight stopped with Meiko falling on her butt scratching her forehead. Shimo's arms and exposed thighs were twitching and blood red – he must've been pushing his body to the limit if his muscles were that tense just from the workout and not from being hit. His clothes were torn and cut open in many places – despite his speed Meiko must've had plenty of close marks on him that cut his kimono and trousers open but didn't quite tag the boy's skin.</p><p>"Wow, you're really damn fast..." Meiko shrieked out in surprise and followed it with a playful laughter. "You hit me like four times before I even raised my hand to hit you"</p><p>Shimo closed his eyes and stroke his twitching and tensed up muscles. "Yeah, well... If you hit me with at least one of your blows I'd have been out for the count. You going for my feet was particularly nasty... Feet heal funny".</p><p>"You've got chicken feet, they're small and slippy so I wouldn't have stomped on them in a million years, I figured I'd go for it since there was no chance on landing a hit there" Meiko smiled playfully wiping the sweat off her face. "Your technique is just really amazing, we should do this more often!" she shrieked out in excitement before picking herself off the grass and rushing off to the small lake on the other side of the campsite to wash behind the bushes. Meiko had little shame in her own nudity but after one or two really close calls she at the very least bothered to not bathe in plain sight.</p><p>"I have to say she's right, I haven't seen sword-wielding skills this smooth in a while..." Kouta also commended his friend. "You're on a higher level altogether. The Chuunin Exams should be smooth sailing for you".</p><p>"I've had tough teachers..." Shimo answered falling down onto the grass and stretching his overworked body out.</p><p>"I thought you said your teacher was careless and lost his arm to a vengeful courtesan?" Mana smiled teasing the young man.</p><p>"Every swordsman I clashed with on this mission was a teacher of their own. Every movement they made, every block they used to protect against me taught me a thing or two. Your training in handseals also helped, I've never had wrist movements this fluid..." Shimo replied, "Still, I don't want to underestimate Hachiro-sensei's lessons. He was a competent swordsman on his own feet and a pretty amazing man, his philosophy lessons were also quite remarkable and his charisma was second to none".</p><p>Shimo and Mana looked at each other before the two turned to the side avoiding each other's gaze.</p><p>"Obviously, he's a poor replacement for Tanshu-sensei, then again, no one's good enough to fit those shoes..." The young Yuki concluded.</p><hr/><p>After a short while, the four finally reached a port town that seemed somewhat functional and had ships actually leaving. The team had made a mistake of finding a port town that was directly leading ships into Tako's Reach and, as they were informed, only accepted ships and hosted and sold shipment that arrived without sending anything away. At least this port town had ships actually leaving which was one step closer to successfully departing into the great unknown of the largest source of water on the planet.</p><p>The four wandered through a couple of normal looking port houses, not too shabby nor too sophisticated, looking for departing ships that went into Tako's Reach. Despite the place being a relatively large region of the ocean, apparently, not a single captain risked departing, even with the motivation of the Audra shards that the four still had with them. Confiscating as much as they did from the Katabami mines really did turn out a good decision, in the end, the shards were really pricey and helped numerous money problems where the four would've had to resort to more ninja-appropriate methods under other circumstances. Still, the bag served them jack-squat.</p><p>After a while the team decided that maybe checking out normal looking places was the problem, after all, a less selective captain may just have been crazy enough to depart to Tako's Reach but just as the four showed any captain the map and the exact coordinates everyone turned them down. It was almost like all the meanest looking marines feared a little piracy, most of the seamen in the port town looked like they could've handled themselves in a fight.</p><p>"We should just steal a ship ourselves at this point..." Kouta complained.</p><p>"Yeah, that's what piracy basically is... Plus we don't have the manpower to handle a ship, we may have the physical strength but we'd need the numbers as well. Shadow Clones would only get us through one or two chores but we couldn't keep it up whole day and night." Shimo exclaimed annoyed by the lack of success.</p><p>"Plus we'd need supplies and food, ships present at the port wouldn't be loaded with that stuff unless they're about to set sail..." Meiko, naturally, complained about food.</p><p>Just as the team was discussing their further chain of actions a ship docked into the nearest docks and a bunch of overgrown and brutish-looking men began rushing out from the marine vehicle like lambs from the slaughterhouse. Mana managed to notice the crimson, still fresh on some occasions, streaks over the backs of the sailors. Then some of them looked like they hadn't eaten a thing for days, some of them had virtually no teeth and still spat out blood from time to time onto the planks that kept the small port town afloat.</p><p>"What happened to them?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Why do you think sailors turn to pirates?" a middle-sized man asked the young girl having crept up to her from behind. He was above average aged and about average build, wore pretty nice looking clothes but they looked pretty old and raggedy, torn in some places.</p><p>"Because they're dicks?" Meiko answered the question for the magician, basically representing the girl's point of view quite decently.</p><p>"No, because being a sailor or a marine hunter-nin is the worst career choice ever. No food or career opportunities, tough manual labor with little to no reward and a thousand lashes as the supervisor's gratitude. At least a pirate can live and die with some dignity, as much as a common criminal can have of it, anyway..." The man replied honoring the two young ladies with a seaman's laugh, the stench of beer and smoked fish escaped his mouth with every breath. That was still not talking about the general smell of salt and quince all around the place as well as the humidity of every breath.</p><p>"Okay... Like before I wasn't sure but, at this point, I have to ask, by any chance, are you, sir, yourself a pirate?" Kouta inquired attempting to be as polite as possible as to not reject a potential sailing buddy who could help them sail to the middle of Tako's Reach.</p><p>"Yeah, you do seem a little "piratey" to me" Shimo seconded this question.</p><p>The man laughed out again and gestured in a rather very feminine for his incredibly masculine look kind of way. "Like me?! A pirate?! Why I'd never, I mean I talk to pirates and serve them fish and beer when they dock and don't talk about their special status all the time because if they did I'd have to refuse service. I've served as a cabin-boy on a pirate ship during my childhood years and read plenty 'o books about pirates but I myself cannot in any way affiliate to the noble yet devious pirate order..."</p><p>"Okay... So do you have any idea how we could get to the center of Tako's Reach?" Meiko wondered feeling completely content with the answer.</p><p>"I absolutely doubt that any sailor coming from this side of the ocean would voyage through the Tako's Reach, not that deep inside, anyways. The threat of getting tossed overboard with one's ship and payment for the voyage kindly confiscated by pirates is a little bit of a deal-breaker for any sailor." The man replied appearing in a chatting mood whereas most port town inhabitants seemed most untrusting of the strangers with headbands asking questions and wanting to venture into the most dangerous centers of the most pirate-infested waters.</p><p>"I don't get it... Aren't those sailors like really tough? Aren't at least some of them capable fighters or trained in chakra manipulation at some point?" Mana stressed out, she was visibly getting annoyed over the lack of progress in this small port town that all obstacles were aside and only claiming the Box was needed of them.</p><p>"Most sailors from Kirigakure are outright ninja on a mission to serve a certain number of years as sailors aiding the village economy, most of our own know how to throw a good ole flimflam themselves. Still, the only pirates worth a mettle are all ninja without exception – ninja sailors that were sick of being treated like lowlife trash and decided to rather go rogue in the seas than serve some fancy pretty boys onboard. You shouldn't treat a pirate any differently you treat a rogue ninja, missy" the pub server replied smiling with his greenish-yellow teeth.</p><p>"Pirates, that are ninja too?" Kouta whistled out crossing his hands behind his head, evidently, the medical ninja still wasn't taking the threat too seriously.</p><p>"Yeah, ninja-pirates!" The server concluded before apologizing and informing the crew that his break was over and he had hungry seamen to bring beer and smoked fish with quince filling to serve. "If you guys want to get to Tako's Reach your only chance would be to find a pirate ship and ask them but them pirate kind aren't too welcome here. They're a bad rep and common folk just beat the shit out of those they aren't scared of to fight, that's just how tough a pirate's life is – lowlifes don't make it too far." Just like that the middle sized beardo disappeared in a nearby pub from whence he came.</p><p>Meiko looked at the team with wet puppy eyes.</p><p>Shimo drove his open palm down on her head shoving her puppy eyes down. "No," he uttered.</p><p>"We're not becoming ninja-pirates ourselves, Meiko, we can't cause that much trouble to Lady Fifth on a simple C-Rank mission..." Mana replied stroking her tired eyes with her fingers.</p><p>A loud boom made the team instantly turn their attention towards a nearby pub, the very same one where the server that spoke to them before entered. A bunch of twenty-something aged ruffians got tossed out and a whole bunch of local chaff began gathering in a circle and rolling up their sleeves. Such was never a good sign.</p><p>"You fucking pirate trash! You dare sit and drink in our little port town!? You only bring trouble and local attention, we've already got Konohagakure ninja scooping around looking for ways to get to Tako's Reach!" The lot began quarreling with the pirates and simple early signs of a big fight were beginning to form.</p><p>"How can you live with yourselves!?" One of the younglings suspected of piracy yelled out, a vagabond-like dressed fellow, one someone would suspect being just that – a bum rather than a serious and scary ninja-pirate. "Seamen and marines both live like dogs, abused by Feudal Lord hired supervisor scumbags who don't know a thing or two about the seas! I didn't graduate the Kirigakure Academy for this!" He began shouting at the group.</p><p>One of the larger men picked up one of many decorative cannonballs laying around in a pile, they were at least four times the size of an actual thing and began riddling their pitiful wooden ship until it was nothing but busted planks and sawdust floating on the salty sea. Despite the hulking size of the cannonballs, the man tossed them faster than an actual cannon would've fired them so the flimsy wooden construction stood no chance and got ground to dust after the first pair of man-sized balls of steel crashed into its sides.</p><p>"If these men are afraid of the ninja-pirates, I get the butterflies myself..." Kouta admitted.</p><p>Mana stepped onwards but Shimo's hand on her shoulder stopped her.</p><p>"We have to stop this, these men can't be trusted to deliver fair justice," Mana mumbled out.</p><p>"And what? Didn't you hear it? These guys admitted being pirates, this place has no court or tribunals nor can these pirates be delivered to the nearest ninja village. They're ninja-pirates, they'll slip out of any binds the first chance they get. You also don't know their story, they may be heinous criminals. Even if they're not – piracy is a heinous crime in of itself..." Shimo replied.</p><p>There the two were at it again. Conflicting at where Mana wanted to intervene and Shimo just wanted the nature to run its own course. Suddenly Mana saw the beehive situation again. The whole thing with killer wasps slaughtering the whole beehive with Mana having to decide if she was to interfere and spit at the natural order.</p><p>The locals began beating the young pirate group up. Luckily enough they didn't kill them, if they tried Mana would've stepped in even if it meant compromising her mission, the group just beat the snot out of them and tossed the guys into the water. A minute or two later a bunch of sailors came up and picked the pirates up bringing them into their own ship.</p><p>"This isn't right! Being confined to poor working conditions in the seas was what these young men and women ran from, now their grandkids are gonna slave it on that ship with menial labor. They're not tried, they don't face any Tribunal, they'll just work until someone thinks they've had enough. I've seen enough to know how long that'll be..." Mana lowered her head, her whole body was shaking but she didn't interfere.</p><p>Had she done so her whole team would've been labeled as pirate apologists and would've never left the harbor. Then again, they may not have known what these young men and women have already done as pirates, they had plenty of pride in their lawlessness too, but the way they were treated wasn't how a human deserved to be treated like. It wasn't like normal sailors got treated much better either.</p><p>"The world isn't right. That's what you're fighting against, isn't it?" Shimo asked with a slightly softer tone understanding how torn his friend felt inside.</p><p>"Apparently, not anymore..." Mana replied shutting deep inside of herself and making it abundantly clear that she was in no mood to talk anymore. She and Shimo hadn't even moved past the events that transpired in Takigakure yet and now there were new things stacking on top of that.</p><p>A loud shriek alerted the team of ninja, a tall man with long curly black hair and a worn out brown hat was literally chewing on his own hand, the only one he had. The man's eyes flared red for a moment and after pulling his hand out of his own mouth he reached for one of his coat's pockets before being calmed down by the fish vendor.</p><p>"Calm down, sir, this isn't a dolphin, I mean it barely looks like a tuna, how did you even make that conclusion?" The fish lady looked pretty confused but the coat-wearing gentleman calmed down after her explanation, somewhat at least...</p><p>"I just... Can't be too careful, you know? I mean didn't you read about what they're doing with those dolphins and those chakra laser cannon thingies in Archipelago!? It's scary! And how they're placing explosive seals on wild gorilla training them to be suicide bombers... That man looks awfully like a gorilla, I'm not paranoid, I'm just saying..." The man buying fish from the lady complained without an end in sight.</p><p>"Aww, shit..." Shimo covered his own face but apparently not fast enough as in his shaking fearful twitch the man turned his eyes to the side and noticed Shimo looking at him.</p><p>"You thief!" The long coat wearing man shouted out, "You liar and thief!" He screamed his lungs out again lunging at Shimo at incredible speed and maneuvering right past the confused passing by townspeople.</p><p>Shimo leaned to the side frantically avoiding the man's endless strikes delivered with a single hand. For a guy who only had one arm the curly blackhead was incredibly fast, his single hand kept Shimo completely overwhelmed and unable to deliver a single counterattack.</p><p>"You lied to me and stole my sword!" The overcoat wearing weirdo declared after getting off Shimo's back for just a moment so both of them could breathe.</p>
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<a name="section0202"><h2>202. Wounds Of Words Made Flesh</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The team looked questioningly at Shimo who was both engaged in observing this acquaintance of his and busy looking ashamed.</p><p>"Wait... I thought your rogue sensei gave you your sword because he had no use for it anymore?" Mana asked for clarification confused. Her question sent the overcoat wearing man in a frenzy of unadulterated fury.</p><p>"What!? I mean yeah, I lost an arm!" he shouted lunging at Shimo and delivering a blindingly fast flurry of one hand strikes which Shimo avoided by dashing around his past friend. Despite the man's blinding speed, it looked like his lack of a right arm was interrupting with his balance and hindering the man's speed making it possible for Shimo to run circles around his acquaintance.</p><p>"Yeah, I really have no use for the damned thing!" The man shouted again striking back with an elbow, using his instinct instead of his lacking balance and perception to catch Shimo unprepared and crack the young man's eyebrow opening it up and sending a torrent of blood down his face.</p><p>"But as if I'd just give anything away!" The man finished his sentence while continuing his relentless assault. Grunting in pain, Shimo rolled back only to see the man dashing onward, right to the boy's face and delivering a knee strike to his cracked and bleeding eyebrow. Meiko and Kouta leaped in from the sides so fast that to Mana it looked like her friends were warping time and space, standing beside her one moment and aiding Shimo the next.</p><p>The functional arm of the mysterious assailant crashed into the wooden floor flipping his body over as he delivered a whirl of spinning kicks sending all three young ninja into the water. This man may not have had the physical ability to keep up with the three ninja in fighting ability or Shimo for that matter however he had considerable skill and experience fighting with his hindrance that compensated for it. Whoever this man was, he was experienced and above the team's rank in strength.</p><p>The man dashed up to Mana, the magician's senses sharpened as she felt her body overflowing and exploding in red physical chakra. Mana's acrobatic and redirecting skills turned on to as much as she could crack it up to as her upper body leaned to the sides avoiding every blow sent her way and gently pushing them with her palm to where they posed no threat. Mana's eyes, failing to keep up with all of the man's movements, instead noticed his glowing red eyes – the Sharingan of the Uchiha. Her style lingered and failed to notice his flip backward stopped by his palm and repurposed strength into an upwards kick. Mana could already feel her skull exploding from pressure, a kick like that would've blown her head right off!</p><p>A rough shoulder tackle sent the magician further and out of harm's way as Kouta grinned at her. His entire body was wet and smelled of seaweed but his face was still all sweaty, the two smelled completely different – the medical ninja must've strained his skills to the limit to save Mana in time.</p><p>"I don't know who you are or what your beef with Shimo is but... Don't touch Mana-chan. She's a civilian and she can't fight on our level. If you hit her even once she'd die for sure!" Kouta shouted out a warning to the man through his fleeting strength and exhaustion.</p><p>"Hmph... Could've fooled me." The overcoat wearing man cracked a grin while his eyes ran around him looking out for threats that he predicted would come at him from the sides.</p><p>"Just who are you?" Mana asked scratching her head and feeling up her chin as her heart still pounded relentlessly in the girl's chest – she almost had her head blown off. It was something she was slowly getting used to but close calls like that didn't help her young heart rest easy.</p><p>"I'm Hachiro Uchiha – I used to teach this ungrateful little shit!" The man shouted out turning at Shimo who was slowly making his way out of the water and onto the wooden platform that held the whole section of the port town afloat. The Uchiha dashed right up to Shimo and tried kicking at the young man's face but Shimo blocked the kick with the hilt of his sword. The force still sent Shimo flying back into the depths of the sea. A little farther Meiko climbed out of the ocean covered in seaweed and pulled a little sharp looking shattered seashell out from between the pieces of her armor where it lodged into.</p><p>"Hey, scaredy-sensei, the debt collectors from Iwa have found you!" Shimo's voice yelled out after the young man's head came out of the water. The feet of the young swordsman began glowing faint blue as he stood on the surface of the water using the simple Art of Water Climbing technique most genin learned at some point to master their chakra control. It was a simple technique that slowly chipped away at one's chakra reserves and allowed one to walk on the water's surface and it was ideal to train one's chakra control since when one trained while forgetting to use that technique it taught one's body to multitask and manage multiple chakra using processes at once.</p><p>The man began cowardly looking to the sides, his Sharingan became more formed out as the three-tomoe symbols he had on it became more evident – the man was focusing his vision trying desperately to locate the potential threat.</p><p>Shimo's hands flashed through hand seals and extended the man's way. "Ice Style: Ice Assault Jutsu!" The Yuki chanted out the name of his technique while a large wave of water rushed towards the only functional arm of Hachiro and wrapped around it freezing in place and leaving the man restrained. The water that surrounded the wave covered the areas around the frosted arm completely restricting the man's movements.</p><p>"I see you're a scaredy-cat as usual..." Shimo grinned before jumping onto the wooden platform. "That's the problem with you, that's why I left – you awakened the final tomoe of your Sharingan when you were afraid that the ants that were biting us were working for your debt collectors and you needed to keep up with all of them. You're a paranoid fool!" The young man shouted out lashing out rage that was clear to have been built over a long stretch of time.</p><p>"Oh yeah, Shimo, Hachiro-sensei really was an inspiration... A really charismatic guy, this one..." Mana teased Shimo walking up to him and flicking his forehead. She was a little glad to see a chance to bite her friend in a bit more friendly manner rather than the more serious quarrels they've been having lately.</p><p>"Shut up!" The Yuki swordsman's cheeks dyed red remembering the tales he spun to his friends while training and locked his hands around his chest.</p><p>"Okay, okay, I'll just piss off then, just let my hand go and I'll be on my way" Hachiro smiled slyly. This man truly had the facial features of a sly weasel yet his build was quite suitable for combat. It was likely that he had the skills to protect himself from the life outside the walls and his cowardice was merely a tool adopted by choice.</p><p>"You shut up too! I felt really bad about not telling everything I felt to your face so now you'll stand here and listen!" Shimo yelled out walking right up to Hachiro's face.</p><p>"Do we have to stand here and listen?" Meiko lifted her hand up asking.</p><p>"You lied to me though, everyone told me you were working for Konoha and that you were a ninja spying on me and I didn't believe them! I bet you don't even share a house with twenty-three virgin girls..." Hachiro appeared to also share some spite towards his old apprentice.</p><p>"Of course I fucking lied to you! I never even told you my name for fuck's sake and you trusted me from the start! Then, when we were spilling our hearts out in that raider camp in Suna, I said my name was "Noteh Reelname"! You bought into everything anyone told you ever and, as a result, you live a life of a coward and I got sick of you! Then you lost your arm and had no use for your stupid sword because it's a two-handed sword... I just couldn't let it fall into the hands of the first debt collector that caught up to you!" Shimo was outright screaming it into his mentor's face, Hachiro looked a little shocked and offended by his student's words.</p><p>"Wait... You mean your name isn't Noteh Reelname?" The man's eyes began tearing up. "I thought we had a connection there in that camp, tied up to that pole and waiting for the bandits to sober up so that they could kill us..."</p><p>"We only got caught that time because you refused to pee in a public bathroom before entering the desert and then hours later just HAD to pee right onto a wall of a bandit camp..." Shimo sighed slapping his face and turning his back to the man he was taught by for a couple of years.</p><p>"Wait, you told him you lived with twenty three virgins?" Meiko scratched her messy red hair and fixed her headband that was beginning to slip on her eyes and nose.</p><p>"It was a phase in his younger days..." Mana smiled at her friend who then began cringing into her fist.</p><p>Truth be told the magician was really glad to see Shimo spilling his emotions out. This whole time after his return he wasn't like he used to be, he was quieter and reserved, he always acted cool and rational and it was evident that he must've had a weight on his heart. This revelation that he abandoned his sensei and stole his blade in the night returning home with it made so much sense now. The change of his personality also made a bit more sense having in mind how evidently Shimo was the one taking care of both of the two wandering rogues and was the voice of reason. Someone responsible for their survival. Pressure like that changed people...</p><p>Shimo made a hand seal and released his mentor's arm, the man just roughly rubbed his freezing cold pale wrist before looking back at his past pupil.</p><p>"What are you doing here anyway? I thought that horror-man in Roiyaru road terrified you and you didn't want to move, did you just walk around Konoha so you could come here through thick forests and roads unfit for traveling?" Shimo asked finally gathering the courage, or rather calming himself down enough, to face his old teacher.</p><p>"Yeah, this whole continent is not safe anymore, debt collectors in Fire Country, raiders and that stupid Fennec idiot in the Wind Country looking to carve my eyes out for a transplant, then the madman is roaming all over the place – rumors say he's looking for something in Iwagakure. Probably that boy Honda is out of organs he can use already... I need to move to the Archipelago and maybe even Kirigakure" Hachiro revealed his intentions, "This one time this guy walked up to me in the forest and he just opened his coat to me, I think he wanted to blow himself up with me but he forgot the explosive seals, apologized and ran away..."</p><p>"Goddamn it, he was just flashing you, Hachiro, if you came here through the backroads those parts are filled with nutjobs, mercenaries, and bandits!" Shimo grunted out, evidently, he had to deal with similar cases of paranoia before for a couple of years.</p><p>"Then, that one time, someone shot me in the face with a kunai dispenser, they have those new optical devices that use some sort of lights for aiming but they wash off with water..." The man kept on explaining his paranoid delusions to everyone but it didn't look like anyone understood anything that was going on at this point.</p><p>"Those were kids, they were shooting berries in your face with those slingshot things. Goddamn it, scaredy-sensei, you were THAT close to the village!?" Shimo was beginning to lose his mind.</p><p>"Well... The madman was getting closer, I heard loud roars in the forests and then that one time I used a public restroom".</p><p>"That's a first... Weren't they full of shit-goblins that grabbed you and dragged you down into the crapper?" Shimo sarcastically asked.</p><p>"Well... Yeah... But I had no choice, it was either going back to Roiyaru or into the village which would've been too risky, I could've been recognized and the guards would've killed me on the spot for my bounty! I've been hiding for so long that I must be worth a billion ryo by now!" The man completely lost his train of thought and began chewing his fingers in fear. It was tough to believe that this man just almost killed Mana with his single strike...</p><p>"Goddamn it! Sensei, no one even has your face in the Bingo Book because you haven't committed any crimes for decades! You're just hiding and visiting geisha and courtesans during your free time, that's all you do, neither of those are crimes!" Shimo exclaimed before waving his arm in ignorance and walking away, gesturing for his team to do the same. "Whatever, we're done here..."</p><p>Mana looked at the pitiful man who was wearing too much clothing because he was afraid of catching a cold and a man who wore a huge hat because he wished to shield his eyes and skin from the Sun. She felt a little sorry for this man who was so evident to be afraid of everything but tended to get a little impulsive and defensive when cornered.</p><p>"So... What did you hear, back when you used the public restroom?" She asked softly.</p><p>"Eh? I heard two ninja patrolling outside the village, they spoke about how more and more people were disappearing from inside the village. The worst part was that no one knew anything. It's slowly becoming a problem that can't be dismissed but the Hokage doesn't know what to do... Big problem... It's all that madman I tell you!" Hachiro grabbed Mana's shoulders and shook her, the magician leaned back a little afraid of the man but, slowly, she noticed that he was more afraid of threats coming from her than willing to hurt her.</p><p>"Come on, Mana... Let's go. We've got an inn or something to find, I doubt we'll find a ship to sail in until dark..." Meiko turned back and urged the magician to follow her friends.</p><p>"Wait, you said you wanted to get to the Archipelago, then why are you here? Are you planning to go all the way through the Tako's Reach? You could've chosen any of the port towns more to the south-east and paid much less if you plan to go around it..." Mana just wanted to ask one last thing. It just made little sense for a man afraid of everything to traverse through the middle of the Tako's Reach or pay so much more to sail around it from the central port town it was a massive detour that required so much more food and supplies that the client must've paid for.</p><p>"Yeah... Right through the Tako's Reach..." Hachiro replied with a nod. Shimo turned around and walked up to the man standing on his toes so he could look the man right in the eyes.</p><p>"Aren't you afraid of the stormy seas? Pirates? Sea-sickness? The Eight-Tails sleeping in the abyssal depths of the Tako's Reach? The sea winds? Rain? Anything in existence? Did Hachiro Uchiha perhaps grow some balls for a trade?" Shimo asked, his tone was more surprised than offensive even though it was evident that the Yuki wished to spend as little time with his old time mentor as possible.</p><p>"Well... To be honest, the winds this season bring killer colds with them and you know my nose always bleeds when I get a cold and I'm pretty afraid of the sea-dragons dragging me overboard when I'm asleep and pirates and... Don't even get me started on..." The man gulped heavily "The Eight-Tails... Still, I'm afraid of the madman more than all of those things combined. I need to get to Archipelago as fast as possible and Tako's Reach is the fastest way there. That man will topple the world, you'll see... Every time I hear his beast crying in the night I almost pee in my bed" Hachiro admitted.</p><p>"You do pee in your bed all the time, that's because you never pee before sleep when we pass the public restrooms because you're afraid of the shit-goblins..." Shimo grunted out. His eyes met Mana's gaze and suddenly the boy realized just what his friend was thinking about. Angrily the Yuki began shaking his head in disagreement.</p><p>"No! No! Absolutely not! We're not hitching the same ride as Hachiro!" Shimo angrily yelled out.</p><p>Kouta and Meiko looked at each other curiously and walked right up back. "It's a good idea though. If Hachiro has any plans for a ride we could just go with him".</p><p>"That's like... If I even want you guys around me!" Hachiro shouted out.</p><p>"Do you?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Well... I mean it does get pretty scary at night when the lightning begins cracking loud..." The grown man looked shyly at his shoes.</p><p>"For fuck's sake, you can summon lightning at will, I've seen you do it!" Shimo shouted out. "How the hell do you even plan on finding an idiot dumb enough to sail through the Tako's Reach"?</p><p>"Well... I thought of asking some pirates to take me. Think of it, it's genius. When you're afraid of pirates – just join a pirate ship. What are the chances of pirates attacking a pirate ship!?" Hachiro laughed out as if he had just found some mystery of the universe that confused the scientists for centuries.</p><p>"Actually pirate wars are very frequent. In fact, pirates often attack other pirates when they feel territorial or just have power struggles..." Mana explained with a warm smile. The man's easy-going and goofy nature was becoming to grow on her.</p><p>"Awww man..." Hachiro scratched his head so frantically that it began to seem like he'd claw his long and messy black hair right off with his scalp.</p><p>"Then again, all we need to do is join a really strong pirate ship – one that is less likely to be attacked, such a crew would also be more likely to set their foot on this port town as they'd be completely ignorant towards the public dislike of the port town towards pirates..." Mana replied looking at her team.</p><p>"I'll still need that sword back though... I believe my acquaintances and services are of need and I'll need compensation for my worries." Hachiro began speaking much more seriously when talk turned to money.</p><p>"All of your "acquaintances" want to kill you, we'd be better off saying we don't know you..." Shimo replied rudely.</p><p>"Well, in that case, I'll tell them I do know you unless you give me my sword back. If you do I can tell them I haven't heard of you specifically and very convincingly!" Hachiro began persuading Mana whom he viewed as the member of the group he could play. The magician sighed.</p><p>She stood up on her toes and whispered something in the Uchiha's ear, she unzipped one of the bags and showed him an Audra shard before placing it back and zipping the back again. The man scratched his stubble and nodded hesitantly.</p><p>"Fine, I guess that makes sense..." He said.</p><p>As Hachiro began making his way towards a specific inn further away from the shore Shimo leaned up to Mana asked her what she promised the man in return.</p><p>"I told we'd give him more Audra shards than the sword is worth," she replied.</p><p>"That's not too many, four maybe, seven at most..." He replied tapping her shoulder a couple of times, "Good call," he commended his teammate. It was odd hearing compliments from Shimo, maybe confronting his rude departure did actually turn out for the better to him?</p><p>"Want me to take care of that cracked eyebrow?" Kouta suggested.</p><p>"Shut up." Shimo replied with an angry stare but still cracked a little smile without being able to help it.</p><p>The future remained to be seen, as it always tends to be...</p>
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<a name="section0203"><h2>203. Into The Ocean Of Dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A sound of disturbing kitchen noises woke Mana up. She was the only one willing to share a room in an inn with Hachiro, the others appeared either untrusting or unwilling to sleep anywhere near the same room as if the man was made of plague. Meiko however, despite her lack of desire to share a room with the man slept close to Mana and Hachiro just because she wanted to watch the man and keep him from pulling something dangerous on them. The blacksmith wasn't too devoted to the cause though as she got knocked out by the Sandman and remained in that state until the morning. Not even the countless rustles Hachiro made through the night could as much as make her wiggle her nose.</p><p>Mana's tired eyes examined the room, her heart was not as troubled as it once was. Naturally, the girl was afraid of being in danger the first couple of times she was woken up, now it was just annoying. Finally, the magician's lazy and floaty eyesight fixed on Hachiro standing by the window and drinking yet another glass of milk. For a man powerful enough to hold his own against their entire team the Uchiha sure was paranoid. Mana was the only one of the group to take his ramblings seriously and as such she didn't get mad at him for pulling this sort of thing, at first, at least...</p><p>"Is something wrong?" She whispered, without a worry of waking Meiko up who was sitting near her bed and guarding the magician like a guard dog. Despite being in a rather intimidating protective position Meiko's head was cocked back all the way and she was drooling all over her chubby cheeks while the blacksmith slept like a baby.</p><p>"It's just... I thought I heard someone talking outside..." Hachiro smiled, at least Mana thought he did. A sharp stench of sweat stabbed at her nose revealing that the man may have been playing brave while his own body played games on him.</p><p>"I don't think there's anything to worry about. When you open the fridge the light is flashing right into my eyes..." Mana tried to tell the man she was becoming very annoyed by having to wake up every five minutes because he had to drink some milk or place some ice cubes into his glass.</p><p>"Do you think I have inflammation of the pancreas, girl? I feel kind of nauseous..." The man wondered after looking back through the window.</p><p>"No, I don't think so. It's no wonder you're nauseous, you've drunk at least six glasses of milk so far, maybe it just has gone bad?" Mana wondered flipping onto the other side to try and sleep up. It was a possibility that she'd be sleeping on a ship the next night and that meant she may not have slept too good, the magician had never been on a ship before and new sensations were a poor catalyst for sleepy nights.</p><p>"Oh, it is bad... I wouldn't drink good milk, no one would slip in poison into bad milk, I mean why would they, no one drinks it..." Hachiro mumbled to himself. "I want to pee, can you maybe go to the bathroom with me and guard the door?" The man asked.</p><p>"I won't. There's no such thing as a shit-goblin, or any other sort of goblin for that matter. I'm sure Shimo told you this plenty of times before... No one watches the inn bathrooms, they're not public." Mana grunted a little more aggressively than she'd have wanted.</p><p>"Oh... Okay..." Hachiro replied as if her answer disappointed him and shaking as if he was heading towards certain doom he began heading towards the door. His voice was whiny and overwhelmed like that of a baby being told that he was responsible for filling in the taxes for the whole family and that he won't get any ice cream until he does.</p><p>A grunt came from under Mana's cover, the girl flipped her cover off and jumped out of her bed.</p><p>"Fine... I'll watch the door..." She replied annoyed.</p><hr/><p>It was tough to say just who made Mana wish to break her no killing rule more – Hachiro with his paranoid waking up routine or Shimo with his declaration of moving out. The scaredy Uchiha was already waiting by the door by the time Shimo banged on it and ran out immediately after the young ninja woke everyone up. Mana could barely peel her head off the pillow. She felt sorry for her own miserable and sleepy face when she examined it in the mirror. After Hachiro left Mana began changing out of her PJs since if she decided to snooze for one more minute she'd have gone right back asleep.</p><p>"So what's our plan? Are we gonna wait for a strong pirate crew to dock or are we gonna try and bump into it in the seas?" Kouta wondered after the whole morning routine was concluded and the breakfast was finished. Hachiro sadly said goodbye with the ryo coins he paid for the room and the breakfast as they left his hand. For some reason the man wanted to pay for the rooms and the food, Mana wanted to believe it was because she was as nice to him as it was humanly possible to be with such a man but she couldn't have been sure. With this man, one could've never been sure...</p><p>"Well, we may as well wait for years until a strong pirate crew docks here. I mean technically the central port town does have the highest chance of seeing a pirate ship dock here for supplies and cheap accommodation but still... Pirates often spend the whole year in the seas." Shimo thought out loud. "I say we hire a weakling ship any stupid pirate with a kitchen knife could capture and lure a crew in, then hit them with our parley and beat their shits in if they don't agree".</p><p>"Didn't everyone tell us not to underestimate the pirates? Weren't they like crazy strong?" Meiko wondered to herself still munching on some snacks she snagged from the inn.</p><p>"Every pirate from the captain of the crew to the deck scrubber are at least as strong as a good genin ninja. They'd never survive out in the seas otherwise..." Hachiro repeated what he told them yesterday.</p><p>"Well if we sail out then we run into the risk of having our ship blown up before we can parley even. What are the guarantees that the pirates won't just blow us up, or that they won't just beat us, rob us and leave us for the dead in the middle of the ocean? They rule the seas so bargaining with them in the middle of their dominion is the dumbest decision we can make." Kouta provided his point of view, the team looked at Mana who just yawned and scratched her eyes with a knuckle before licking an unruly string of her messy bed hair back in its place.</p><p>"Mana?" Shimo asked for her opinion.</p><p>The magician sighed. "I don't know... I don't think I'm in any condition to be the swing voter here," she admitted.</p><p>"Well, in that case, if we can't find a crew today, we'll set sail first thing tomorrow," Kouta suggested a compromise.</p><p>"That sounds reasonable enough, we've no luxury to wait around indefinitely," Shimo agreed.</p><p>"Yeah, I need to get to the Archipelago as fast as possible!" Hachiro reminded everyone despite everyone's general disinterest in the man's agenda.</p><p>"Hachiro-san, didn't you plan on asking a pirate crew to take you there? Didn't you have a deal of some sort before coming here?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Yes, those young whippersnappers that got their butts beaten and tossed into the water were my plan..." The Uchiha admitted.</p><p>"Wow... You're just... You're just the worst at life." Shimo scratched his eyes angrily.</p><p>"I've never imagined it being this hard to find someone willing enough to do something for more money than they can spend..." Mana sighed before yawning again only for her open mouth to be slapped closed by a woman in a long blue coat standing right in front of her.</p><p>"Did someone mention money?" the woman smiled flicking her pompous black hat and letting some of her eye-gougingly ginger hair to flow out from under it. She was a relatively young lady, maybe just a couple of years older than Mana and yet her clothing suggested high social status and a possible already pre-existing possession of more money than one could spend. She was short, shorter than Hachiro and Shimo and almost as short as Mana, her skin was also almost as dark as Mana's except it wasn't because of natural causes – the woman was just tanned.</p><p>"We need to get to the middle of Tako's Reach as soon as possible, we're willing to pay enough to buy you a mansion." Mana's sleepiness instantly went away after the magician realized that she was standing in front of a potential solution.</p><p>"Strange you just happened to bump into us, lady, and with a proposition and willingness to work with us..." Shimo suspiciously mentioned squinting at the short, aristocratic-looking, young lady.</p><p>"I may have heard from some of my subordinates that they've been beaten up and about a bunch of snotty kids looking for a sail and throwing money around... Tell you what, we blow this fucking town to the crapper and we can set sail for a million ryo or twenty." The woman smiled with her hat slipping on top of the woman's face as her crimson red dyed lips twisted into a smile. The way she held herself and spoke suggested not only power and influence but also a pirate status.</p><p>"Subordinates?" Mana wondered, "You mean those kids that got beaten up yesterday and tossed into the sea? They work for you"?</p><p>"Didn't you know, ninja girl? The life out there in the seas is just the same, here ninja answer to the Kage who dance for the Feudal Lords, out there pirates all answer to their captains who in term obey the three Pirate Lords. There is not a single captain out there not answering to one of them. Together they govern the triangle of the seas called the Tako's Reach" the woman explained, "The Eight-Tails sometimes drags a crew down under into its tentacle locker, I suppose you could say the old horn-head is a chaotic-neutral de facto Pirate Lord too".</p><p>A bunch of men laughed walking out from the alleyways around the team. Mana shook her head and stepped out from behind her team in front of the blue wearing woman.</p><p>"I'll pay extra if we depart immediately. I'll pay double if you seek no satisfaction from this town and leave it standing. I imagine you've a reputation of a ruthless pirate lady to uphold but I hope the money you'd make out of it would quench and compensate your bitterness of not burning this town to the ground." Mana removed the bag from Shimo's back and unzipped it showing it to the woman. Upon seeing the purplish glow from inside the bag the pirate lady's eyes shimmered with greed. She pulled a sword out that shot up in the blueish chakra colored imbuement and rose up to Mana's neck to where it touched a throbbing vein.</p><p>Shimo and Meiko prepared to attack, Mana had no doubts that the two could break the woman's face after her brain issues the command to cut Mana's throat open but before it is done. Even if she was fast and skilled, her hand was occupied with an executing motion which would've granted her team an advantage in this first exchange of blows.</p><p>"Tell me one reason why I shouldn't kill you, blow this town up and then just take your bag and sail into the sunset." The woman smiled, her eyes had no bloodlust in it, they were almost testing Mana just to see how the girl's guts worked.</p><p>"You could, you could even kill my team in an outright brawl, I'd bet. However, your losses would hardly be reasonable. I've no chakra control and I've survived the Sun Disc arena in Agbarah, my team may not be strong enough to beat you but they'd thin your ranks up just enough to leave too few men to sail fast enough to outrun any marine hunter-nin vessels chasing you. You'd have all the money in the world and yet they wouldn't buy your head back on your shoulders." Mana replied calmly, while she did maintain a poker face at all times her heart was pounding and blood was rushing so intensely that the girl thanked the fate that she could barely comprehend the situation she was in due to her sleepiness.</p><p>The blue chakra flare went out and the pirate lady sheathed her blade. Her expensive blue coat with golden weavings and buttons jingled and rustled as her hand raised for a shake to conclude the deal.</p><p>"Shit, you're the kid that was in Agbarah? Old fart Cheng said he saw you in the coliseum, he would love to meet you no doubt. You're a strong little lady, I like that. We ass-kicking women need to look out for one another, I'll take you up on your deal and charge you hundred-fifty percent for it, consider it as a fifty percent off offer... Just hand us thirty million ryo or... Twenty-seven shards now and the same after the trip." The woman said as her men looked at her questioning her devotion to this new plan she made.</p><p>Mana unzipped the bag and calculated the shards in front of the woman giving it to a tough looking carrying mule she sent out of her crew of pirates. Looking at the lot of pirates she lead, it was tough to imagine each one of the small-timers being worth as much as Hachiro swore they were worth. They looked no different from weakling bandits but apparently each lowlife there was able of beating down a trained low ranking ninja all by themselves.</p><p>"Hey, Read, what the fuck!? Do you think Ollonais is gonna stand for you dragging his reputation through the mud bargaining with a bunch of kids? What message does it send the ungrateful port fu..." One of the pirates spoke up but before he could conclude his sentence a sword plunged his chest coming out from the back of the pirate lady's coat as if she had hands out there. The odd thing was that both of the lady's hands were stuck out and dealing with Mana.</p><p>"I can tolerate young ambitious studs wanting to match swords and wits with me, what I can't stand is insolent little fucks referring to a Pirate Lord by name as if they're beer guzzling buddies..." She spoke out coldly as the man collapsed to the ground. Mana looked in complete awe – if these men were all rogue ninja that meant they had chakra augmentation, similar or greater degree of it that genin had. Mana saw Kiyomi protect herself from Hisako's stab using it once, accelerating the chakra flow to such an extent that it created a force field like presence and made one's skin seem impenetrable...</p><p>How refined this woman's chakra control and sword mastery should've been for it to completely bypass that man's chakra augmentations as if he had none at all? Even if his perceptions were outsmarted or simply slacking he'd have still had instinctual augmentations that were wasteful but even more powerful. Not only did this woman possess chakra mastery impressive enough to coat her blade in chakra on her will as if it was an extension of her body but it also pierced right through augmentations.</p><p>It was evident that the rest of Mana's team was just as impressed by the woman's display of speed and power. A stab like that could've broken even through Audra imbued skin or any substance or flesh lacking chakra properties, no matter how invincible and dense.</p><p>"Oh well... Ruined my favorite coat now with that sword hole..." The woman smiled at Mana grabbing the magician by the girl's elbow as if the two were classmates and gesturing for the magician's team to follow.</p><p>"That was..." Mana began to speak up but stopped in the middle of the sentence. She was genuinely afraid to finish that sentence because the speed and power of this woman literally tore to shreds any notes and ideas the magician had of how powerful ninja could get, she could've listened to tales of how the Justicar swings blinked out entire star systems from Shimo but seeing this down to Earth feat of precision and finesse left her more in awe than any degree of senseless destruction ever could.</p><p>"Impressive? Well, it's my sister – Bonny... We're sort of stuck together, you see." The woman laughed out "My name's Becky Read, I'm a captain of my own crew and a proud vassal of Pirate Lord "Green" – Hideo l'Ollonais." The woman began casually chatting to Mana ignoring the magician's bitter expression she couldn't help but wear after seeing a man casually get murdered in a single meaningless moment in time.</p><p>"Ruthless, actually..." The magician replied.</p><p>"Oh well, you know, back before Kirigakure Black Ops beheaded him the Pirate Lord of the last generation "Black" Soba Teach used to say "Insolence today is a mutiny tomorrow". He ran a tight ship and was never betrayed. All of his crew went down with him, I sometimes wonder if his old head doesn't look too wrinkly and doesn't reek too bad on the Mizukage's trophy stand? The bastard must be wondering if the smell is worth the honor of hanging those greyed out, once raven black locks on his stand." The woman nonchalantly dismissed Mana's remark, she appeared to take offense less strictly from people who were doing business with her instead of her own crew. The image of strength and unwavering loyalty must've been the core values amongst the scourge of the seas.</p><p>An awkward silence reigned as the magician's team was walked aboard Read's ship and showed around and lead into their quarters. Bonny must've been quite the socialite as she was adamant to break that silence, asking Mana a bunch of questions about her trip and the time in the Sun Disc arena. The magician went into more detail about the arena so that she stuffed time and details into things that she had the luxury of going into more detail about and moved the attention away from the things she'd have rather kept secret. The last thing Mana wanted was the Pirate Lords declaring war on one another and the world for the Box of Ultimate Bliss.</p><p>"I'm just a history fanatic, I love reading all about the lore, legends, and myths of this world as well as real history. That's why I want to see Tako's Reach" was all that Mana told Read about that subject.</p><p>"Oh, you love history? Boy, do I have tales for you!" Read shrieked like a shopaholic let into the mall during a sale.</p><p>"They do sound interesting but I'll have to ask you to reserve them for dinner, I've had very little sleep today so I'd like to make up for that..." Mana admitted honestly.</p><p>Read's face got strict and stone cold as her hands clapped emitting a thud that only two bulls clashing with one another at full speed could've let out.</p><p>"The man who wakes this young woman up will lose his fingers and the middle one's going up their arsehole!" She shouted out from the top of the captain's deck to her crew and asked for someone to show Mana to her quarters. One of the rough looking brawling types rather gently lead Mana to a small but pretty expensive looking room that looked compact but had all the necessities as well as some more luxuriously sounding objects, especially in the sea.</p><p>"We'll set sail once we get some supplies, and refill our stocks. The captain wished to assure you she'll be buying them and not looting, honestly plundering ports isn't very praised by Lord "Green" anyways..." The pirate spoke the first and possibly the last words he'd speak to Mana and left her alone in her quarters.</p>
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<a name="section0204"><h2>204. Two Questions For Each Answer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That evening went surprisingly tame. Mana would've imagined pirates being some drinking and plundering brutes, a lot like the stories, both fictional and historical, she read. Despite their fear of portraying weakness in any way, demonstrated by Read's booming desire to kill anyone showing any disrespect to avoid a mutiny, the pirates were behaving rather civilized compared to Mana's imagined stereotype. While meditating in her small but slightly more pompous than Mana would've wanted quarters, filled with plants and multiple bookcases filled with both educational atlases and books of fiction to keep the girl company, the magician heard no loud cursing or brawling. Only occasionally someone passed by her door accidentally bumping into it with their broom while they scrubbed the deck.</p><p>The young magician wished to make no premature conclusions but perhaps the description of the pirates as just rebellious sailors wishing to be treated like human beings and running a humane if a little illegal ship was justified? After all, she had seen with her own eyes the scars on a marine's back, the cold and lifeless zombie-like eyes that each marine carried. It wasn't tough to see the allure of a pirate's life, a life where you were treated as a person as long as you stayed within your own bounds and respected the pecking order. After all, it wasn't tough to imagine similar punishment befalling any sailor questioning the order of their superiors. If anything on a legitimate ship the sailor may have been questioned and tortured before being executed, dragged through the whole tribunal charade.</p><p>After confronting the emptiness of her own soul Mana was no longer afraid of meditating. There was nothing out of ordinary in her body, at least there didn't seem to be, all was working normally, as long as one had Mana's disability in mind. Her body was still intentionally withholding the ability to mold chakra, the girl felt like she knew why.</p><p>It was because of how she treated that gift. It was a self-preservation mechanism that her body placed on itself, choosing to never regain the full grasp of chakra control since the magician constantly risked her own life with it. She'd have fought Shimo to save those crawlers, she'd have fought the pirates to save that misspoken fellow who was killed that day... She'd have lost both fights. It was a scary thing to know that one's subconscious made more rational sense than one's own conscious mind.</p><p>Mana opened her eyes and stretched her tired body out over her own compact bed. She felt rested despite only having meditated and not slept throughout the whole time. She was such an idiot for not having done so during the last night, after all, if she had placed herself in a trance she'd have remained oblivious to Hachiro's antics and had a good night's sleep. Just like Meiko did. Except Meiko was no meditating genius, she was merely a really good and almost comically deep sleeper.</p><p>A loud thud alerted the girl's attention and she hesitantly walked to the door opening it. There stood a chubby, elderly man wearing a bandana and a torn and dirty shirt.</p><p>"Captain Read would like to see you at the dinner table, she's quite excited to tell you the stories you so wished to hear" the man bumbled out in a voice belonging without a doubt to someone's grandpa. The pirate's tone and voice were so soft and low pitched that it seemed like everything he said was an educational journey with rich rewards of experience and knowledge. It was the most grandpa voice Mana had heard.</p><p>The ex-kunoichi just bowed her head leaving through the door and following the man to a staircase below captain's deck.</p><p>"Forgive me for the messy shirt, young lady, it's just that I was fixing some gear-work before this and had no time to change, the captain looked urgent with her call for you." The round-bellied pirate smiled looking back at Mana picking his drunkard's red with pulsing blood vessels nose.</p><p>"It's really no problem, why are we going downstairs? Aren't we going to dine at the captain's deck?" Mana shook her head once before inquiring.</p><p>"Oh no..." The man chuckled grabbing his slipping out belly and stuffing it back into his oily trousers. "The captain dines with her men, we all eat at the same time by the same table, I can imagine it to be a bit confusing as marines cannot imagine such a luxury".</p><p>The magician and the chubby grandpa pirate descended into a lovely little room lit by gas lights instead of candlelight which must've been due to the fire hazard. There were plenty of wooden parts on this ship despite most strong military vessels being made of water chakra particle infused hardened steel that had floating properties. This allowed ships made even of toughest alloys to float like wooden ones. Read must've been unable to afford such a ship, reasonably so, a single good military vessel like that would've been the pride of the country's entire navy.</p><p>"Well, sit down, why don't you?" Read smiled through her teeth before Mana's gaze stopped on a rather grotesque detail on the woman's exposed body.</p><p>Read was sitting not on a large and soft suede cushioned chair but on a backless stool with a soft red pillow on the seat. That was because now that Read had removed her coat her sister Bonny was in full vision where before she was concealed enough to just look like a fancy accessory of the coat or maybe a small hunch of Read's.</p><p>Bonny was a frail and pale thing, a truly grotesque and a little miserable addition a bit less than half Read's size to the point where Bonny's miniature hands and legs dangled helplessly and the women were connected just by their backs. Where Read's head was completely fiery ginger, Bonny's shade was a darker pink one approaching a shade of purple even. The twin's face was completely invisible as it was hidden in the flowing ocean of untrimmed hair that also did its best to cover up Bonny's private parts that were completely exposed and it didn't look like Read bothered to dress her sister.</p><p>Mana realized that she was staring for a little too long for both of their comforts so she rushed to the nearest seat she could find. The girl's attempt to hide her discomfort seeing the seemingly lifeless twin of Read's was unsuccessful as the pirate captain just lessened her grin and pointed at Bonny with a thumb.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess seeing my sis' for the first time is a little... Something, huh?" The woman asked. Before Mana could answer she gestured for every present pirate and Mana with her team to dig into the food served. There was plenty of chicken, pork chops, and beef. Some smoked meat and desserts. Such commodities must've been available solely because they were in a port town.</p><p>"Not really, I've actually seen a similar case. Sadly the sibling of that man was dead all along but he didn't want to let go of his brother, he used physical chakra to manipulate his brother's corpse like a limb." Mana replied remembering her time in Agbarah and the people she met there. Had she not had that memory to fall back on she may have caused some discomfort for both herself and the captain.</p><p>"So sad... Well, Bonny is alive and well, she sort of sleeps most of the time but she's quick and really sneaky when she wants to be. I love her a great deal when she isn't just dangling on my back..." Read nodded appearing interested in Mana's memory of the Agbarah coliseum. "Anyways, here you are telling me stories..." The captain realized after taking a large chunk of meat and ripping it off the bone.</p><p>"I wouldn't like to trouble your meal, captain, but if it's not too much trouble I'd love to hear more about the Pirate Lords. Since I and my team are heading right into the center of the triangle we'll probably have to deal with them or their people at some point." Mana asked politely waiting for the woman to finish chewing. The magician tried to ignore Bonny's slithering arm reaching for an unfinished bone and moving it towards its pile of flowing hair where its head would've been.</p><p>"Well... The Pirate Lord that I am working for, working for being a pretty loose definition, is Pirate Lord "Green" Hideo l'Ollonais. He doesn't really bark out any orders, my primary concern is to uphold his code wherever I can and pay him a share of my earnings every year. Of the three active Pirate Lords, he is possibly the most passive, after a gruesome massacre he survived while covering himself in blood and guts of his slaughtered crew he despises conflict and only justifies it when defending his honor, such as you would've seen today. He is quite a swift and skilled swordsman from what I've seen but he prefers it as a sporting interest instead of a full-on art of murder".</p><p>Mana saw the evident discomfort of talking of l'Ollonais amongst her crew, after all in a way the man was both Read's and the whole crew's superior so it would've been difficult to speak of him any ill and not expect retribution from the crew. Especially if this "Green" was so fixed on protecting his name and honor as to letting his subordinates decimate a port town in his name because the port town beat up on his own subordinates. Out of the three Mana expected to be misled about Green the most seeing how subjective Read had to be when describing the man.</p><p>"The other one is Pirate Lord "Blue" – Aomura Flint, he is more of an adventurer than a pirate. It is rare that one hears of Flint's crew plundering anything, he doesn't care that much about his name either. From his history serving on other ships, he is an amazing fighter having traveled the world and mastered plenty of fighting styles. He surfaced a couple of decades ago, before that he served in Pirate Lord "Black's" crew and when his master went down he wandered about training with the samurai of the Iron Country as well as the ninja and the martial artists. Hell, piracy may just be another page in his diary".</p><p>The crew roared out and flipped their beer pints emptying them for a great pirate being described. It was unlikely that any marines or marine hunter ninja displayed such respect for anyone who wasn't their direct superior. Even if they did so it could've been merely a façade and a feat of respect.</p><p>"The final one is Pirate Lord "Red" – Akimichi Francho. I'm not sure how one can describe "Red", he is typically a pretty stereotypical pirate, plundering and chasing any treasures he can find, he also goes after his booty himself unlike l'Ollonais often risking his life. He isn't one for honor or good name, he has left his own men to die and allowed his captured captains rot in jail and get executed under several occasions and has committed acts that codes of no other Pirate Lord would permit. I don't think he is a tyrant or a mean guy he just... Wants to be on top of the world and doesn't let himself go down with his loyal men before he gets there." Read finally got some time to stop talking and have some beer. Bonny's freakily flexible arm bent backward by the elbow and smacked the woman in the head making Read spill some drink all over herself and begin coughing angrily.</p><p>The pirate captain reached the glass back and handed some to her sister. When the conjoined sibling was awake she appeared to be quite the handful and had a personality befitting a pirate captain.</p><p>Read continued to tell stories of her plunders and jobs that she had pulled off until the dinner was over and the night was suffocating the last breaths of life of the day before. Some were of her childhood and how she tricked her childhood friends into joining her into piracy. Some more stories detailing how each and every friend she ever knew was captured and executed by Kirigakure marine ninja and Black Ops. One story of how Read escaped captivity while pregnant and giving birth under heavy cannon fire...</p><p>"What? You have a son?" Mana shouted out in surprise after that revelation which initially appeared shocking but the more the magician thought of it the more casual it looked.</p><p>"Sure, the little rascal's growing up in Kirigakure, a lot of Green's captains visit him so he's quite the popular brat..." Read grinned as wide as her face allowed, Mana's surprise entertained and rekindled the flame of storytelling for the pirate captain.</p><p>Mana had long since lost count and there were some stories the validity of which was questionable but the girl honored her hostess by letting her engage in storytelling, simply choosing to nod and drink tiny sips when the captain gorged down her whole pint after each story or mention of a treasured friend.</p><hr/><p>Mana's head felt a little woozy, she had made a decent effort at barely taking in any beer handed to her, unlike Meiko and Kouta who got completely hammered under the table. Shimo, on the other hand, could certainly handle his alcohol. The young man easily drank with the experienced pirates doing his best not to slip down under the table where the scrubs of drinking slept peacefully. Even if she only wet her tongue sometimes the magician still felt a bit wobbly on her feet and while she couldn't call her condition tipsy, her head was still a bit dizzy. Or maybe it was just the wobbling of the ship and the sea air forcing to summon the best of her effort not to throw up like some pirates that were throwing up into buckets that laid around everywhere.</p><p>Normally they'd have been too young to drink in any village however pirates cared little of such pesky laws and, in the sea, there was only their law, the code of the Pirate Lord one enforced upon their captains. There was also the matter of emancipation and being declared a legal adult once one completed the Academy and became a genin. A ninja would've needed to buy and consume alcohol or use and carry around weaponry as well as make deals and sign contracts even in their earliest years. For that reason, the fact that Meiko and Kouta got so bashed or the fact that Shimo appeared to have acquired both taste and experience over beer worried Mana least of all things.</p><p>A known face stared at the endless ocean blocking Mana's path as it was neither pressing against the ship's wall nor leaning over the edge. Hachiro just stood right in the middle of the path to Mana's quarters and looked into the darkness with endless waters in the horizons wherever one's eye could see.</p><p>"Ummm... Can I pass?" Mana asked politely.</p><p>Hachiro jumped up after the magician's voice broke him out of a trance of his own – a deep immersion in his own thoughts forcing him to move back and press himself against the ship's wall. The man grunted as an exposed screw of an illuminator dug right into his elbow.</p><p>"You're not drinking or eating?" The girl asked while passing the Uchiha.</p><p>"Most dinners and parties I've been in ended up with too much murder for my taste. I don't like getting drunk, getting drunk equals getting your belly or throat opened out there... Darn this ship, maybe I should stick to the quarters, if the Eight-Tails' tentacle grabbed me from here it'd drag me tens of kilometers deep and crush me like a roll of toothpaste!" Hachiro began mumbling.</p><p>Mana leaned over the edge which scared the Uchiha to no end, it appeared bold and challenging his own way to the extent that he even screamed out something unintelligible to her.</p><p>"Aww... You care, how cute..." Mana smiled at him kindly. "You know, an important part of security is trust. If you won't trust some people you'll just make enemies out of them all and no matter how careful you are, even you can't defend against all of them. Trust is just as important as carefulness in security." She tried talking to the Uchiha even if she knew there'd be no changing his ways.</p><p>"Well... You have your ways, I have mine. There's no way I'm trusting anyone after my own idol fell from grace. Not with that madman out there..." the Uchiha replied surprisingly most clearly he has spoken in for a while.</p><p>"When you speak of this "madman" you speak of someone exact. Every other enemy or threat you create is abstract, it's always "them" and something "might" happen but with the "madman" it's real for you, isn't it? Shimo lied to us about you being careless and aloof and I can see why but he was right about one thing – whoever that madman is he seems an actual threat you wish to avoid at all costs whereas you speak of being captured and murdered as almost a joke. Like you did back then with Shimo." Mana spoke with a degree of interest into Hachiro and this "madman" he kept speaking of. Initially, his ramblings seemed very paranoid and mad but the girl was curious if any of them could be forced to make some sense.</p><p>"Shimo didn't lie about me. I am careless and aloof, that is why I became so... However, I am over the years. When people out there see your goofiness they see how they can exploit it, get poisoned enough times and you'll learn to avoid poison. If you can't tell what poison is you only start eating and drinking what you personally can vouch for. Everything else is dangerous, but everything fades compared to him. If the world we live in is a table game he is going to flip the table. All the figures shall play by his rules or fly off... He's doing whatever he wants to do and he has the ability to achieve every mad goal he wants to. Kidnapping people right out from under the village's noses without them getting as much as a sniff of him..." Hachiro finally began speaking to Mana in a voice and tone resembling that which he used when the man was angry and fought the team of genin.</p><p>"I see. You wouldn't happen to tell me the madman's name or something to identify him by?" Mana asked just in case, something like that prophecy this man made would've been valuable info for the village.</p><p>"I can't... If I would he'd sink every island in the Archipelago just to get back to me. He'd wield the fury of all the Tailed Beasts and blow the chunk of the planet I'm in off the total package." Hachiro shook in his boots and where he was slowly approaching the rail Mana was leaning over he stumbled back to the wall again.</p><p>"Why would this madman fear exposure so? If he is as mighty as you say?" Mana wondered curiously.</p><p>"No. He fears nothing and no one, he doesn't want YOU to know... Mana..." The man spoke before freezing up as if he had just told something incriminating and ran off as a paranoid old man he probably was. The magician just stood there wondering what those words could've meant. Why would she be of any importance to that man? Did she perhaps know that so-called madman? The magician struggled to remember any name matching the description of such a man.</p><hr/><p>Slowly and carefully, as to not fall over and into the uneasy oceans below, Mana stumbled back into her quarters. It appeared that the surprises would still not cease as inside her quarters Shimo was waiting and he didn't look easy or calm. He was pretty fired up about something. Mana looked at the Yuki for a moment before his drunk mind let the fact of her awkward staring become evident.</p><p>"What are you doing? With all of this?" He asked her straight, all the beer he did that evening must've helped with the straightforwardness.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Mana asked the swordsman to be a little less straightforward.</p><p>"I mean Read... Bonny, whatever she is... You promised her a decent chunk of our Audra. You've heard today the jobs these men and women do, you know what they'd do with it. Promising Hachiro a couple of chunks is just fine, he won't..." Shimo appeared to have been practiced this speech for a while.</p><p>It was evident that the whole deal troubled him greatly but he feared to confront Mana until he was totally hammered and had no qualms about doing pretty much anything. Their fighting over moral matters must've interfered with it, Shimo didn't want them to fight like they used to back in Otogakure. He clearly wanted things to be like they were back when they were friends. They clearly still were friends, just neither one of them wished to admit it and apologize for their fighting.</p><p>"Calm down..." Mana whispered. She thought about her following words for a good while before leaning up closer to Shimo.</p><p>"Back off, I'm not kissing you..." The young man pushed her rudely, "What would Kouta say if he saw you!" He mumbled out in a manner that suggested too many beers five beers ago.</p><p>"I'm not gonna kiss you!" Mana punched him in the arm shouting out. "Are you sure you've not been followed, can we talk here?" She asked.</p><p>"We can't be sure of that ever. Any place can be filled with noise recording seals, also a ninja of superior skill may remain invisible to a lesser skilled eye no matter how hard they try to find them. I mean goddamn Black Ops can remain unseen even in plain sight to anyone but ninja of similar skill if they damn please. There could be five Black Ops in this room right now and we'd not see them unless they wished to be seen. If you have anything to say just say it..." The boy grunted angrily but, despite his drunken stupor, he had a point.</p><p>"I don't intend to pay Read..." Mana answered awaiting for the lightning of consequences to strike after these words were uttered.</p>
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<a name="section0205"><h2>205. Shattering Wicked</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning after the overly indulgent dinner, there was a certain period of cooldown where Meiko and Kouta took their time recovering from overeating and enjoying far too many drinks. Impressively enough, the ninja metabolism eliminated most signs of a hangover after one and a half hour at worst but the whole day Shimo kept on whispering something in the ears of his teammates, something that slightly troubled Mana for she worried that her declaration may be overheard or intercepted in mid-delivery.</p><p>After lunch, the magician's team gathered in Mana's quarters. They only barely all had a place to settle as the place was not meant to fit more than two people inside, while the rooms were certainly costly they were not overly spacious after all. Everyone began speaking at once filling the limited space with verbal rubbish which wouldn't have been intelligible to even the most devoted listeners so Mana just gently calmed everyone down and sighed trying to explain as much as she could to her team.</p><p>"Wait, Shimo said..." Kouta began speaking again, this time alone.</p><p>"Don't finish that sentence. It's not safe to utter those words in captain Read's ship." Mana jumped up pressing her hand against the boy's mouth.</p><p>"So is that true? What's your plan?" Shimo asked angrily rubbing his temples. While Mana was sure that internally the young swordsman was completely with Mana's idea he wanted to act out like he needed persuasion. The reasons of such rebellious behavior eluded Mana's mind but she had long since passed the point trying to reasonably explain the boyish ego.</p><p>"Look, all I can tell you guys is that... Yes, that's true but I can't discuss it. It's too dangerous." Mana answered.</p><p>"Don't worry, guys, I'm sure Mana has a plan, she'd never endanger us or doom us for a confrontation like that unless she has a foolproof plan." Meiko grinned leaning back on her arms without a care.</p><p>"Actually... I haven't figured that part out yet. I only have small parts of an actual plan because my actual plan is very dangerous. It has about fifty-fifty chance of success and everything can go wrong. I don't want to leave the fate of my team to chance, I want it to be a full hundred but... I simply see no other way than my plan." Mana admitted looking down and then turning around to look through the illuminator.</p><p>"Well... At least you have a plan." Meiko tried justifying Mana's words but then the magician turned around and shook her head sitting on her bed and staring at the expensive carpet beneath her feet with apologizing and guilty eyes.</p><p>"I'm really sorry, guys. I just can't give captain Read or any single Pirate Lord that many shards. I have no problem paying Hachiro-san or any wanderer who probably wouldn't have much use to it but what if Read melts the alloy and coats her ship with it? It'd take a miracle to sink such a ship. And what if she coats her cannonballs with it or learns to manufacture it after handing one to Green? I know this is the same argument we had in the desert but I've learned my lesson, we all must've. These shards are coming back to Konoha, I'd rather die a thousand times over than give this many of them to Read or any other pirate." Mana tried explaining herself, she spoke quietly and Shimo constantly stood on the watch peeking through the illuminator. Technically they've only expressed very abstract ideas yet but they'd still sound suspicious if the wrong ears overheard them.</p><p>"You paid Read half of the share already," Kouta said.</p><p>"I'll take it back" Mana cut down in a tone that implied she was not going to discuss this any further and has made up her mind already.</p><p>"What's the plan?" Shimo asked.</p><p>"We're going to send a message with coordinates to another Pirate Lord, we're going to spark a fight between the two pirate crews and do what we came there to do before fleeing. We're ninja, doing our jobs and fleeing is what we're supposed to be good at." Mana explained pressing her shaking hand against her face, she knew how bad that plan must've sounded and how much risk was involved.</p><p>"Send a message to a Pirate Lord from the ship of a captain loyal to another Pirate Lord?" Shimo snickered.</p><p>"How are we even going to contact him?" Kouta added salt to the wound.</p><p>"Wait, that's why you asked the pirate lady about the Lords yesterday?" Meiko pressed her index finger to her lips as her forehead wrinkled really hard suggesting some complicated thinking processes transpiring in the redhead's mind.</p><p>"Yeah... I wanted to know which one to contact, I wanted to know their personalities and their skills. I had assessments to make." Mana admitted, "Obviously a bit of personal curiosity was also involved but I'd have never been so persistent to talk about them onboard if it wasn't for my plan".</p><p>"You did all of that without consulting us? You know, you'd make a fine Black Ops ninja..." Shimo cursed squinting angrily at Mana. "You're talking to us about something and yet, in that complicated head of yours, you're constantly weaving plots. You're no different from most scumbags we've seen on this mission. A real blossoming ANBU..."</p><p>Mana's blood began to boil and she wished to shout something rude out, offend the young man and tear him to bits but... She contained that rising storm, her fingers dug into the sheets on her bed and she allowed her raven black hair to run down her face and cover her rage up. Once her mind calmed down and Mana realized that she had some blame to own she wiped that hair off and faced her friends again.</p><p>"I know and I'm sorry," she admitted, "But I cannot allow that much Audra to fall into Read's hands. She is no world-conquering maniac like Fennec or that bad of a person from what I've seen but... She's still a pirate answering to other pirates, if her Lord gets a sniff of power that'd help him dominate the seas – he'd eat his own face off to obtain that power".</p><p>"Starting a pirate war just to escape with your hide... That's so sneaky and... So..." Kouta looked at Mana a whole different way, his disdain stabbed at Mana's chest the most.</p><p>"Ordinary people may get hurt, such clashes would spark a war, they always do. Civilians suffer the most during wars, that's' why generally wars suck. Obviously, it'd make the villages take pirates more seriously, maybe eventually they'd even be eliminated freeing the seas but are you willing to make that call?" Shimo asked Mana sitting near her and placing his hand around her.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and covered them her nails almost dug into her own eyebrows from how hard she trembled and pressed at them. This wasn't fair. She had a mission objective, one that wasn't really her responsibility, she was a client and yet she was a client who has taken up to own that responsibility. If she made that call people would die in the pirate war, without a doubt, then the pirates themselves would be eventually eradicated by the angered villages combining their forces. If Mana rolled back on her plans then one Pirate Lord would acquire a great deal of Audra and rule the seas eliminating the others, the optimal power balance would be broken. It was impossible to say if the Lord would rule with a just fist or an iron one. Either way, people would suffer and die because of Mana's call.</p><p>This wasn't why nor was it what she became a ninja for. Mana wanted to change the world, to reduce the suffering around her not to control it or choose between what exactly would be the cause of it. This wasn't fair at all.</p><p>"I'll need a great deal of chakra. Meiko can place seals on a bottle working in a similar principle to the seal on her jet boots, it would release a small output of chakra every couple of seconds and send it propelling through the water. I can drop it during a cold evening and no one would suspect a thing..." Mana finalized her decision.</p><p>"Alright!" Meiko grinned giving Mana a thumb up, the magician had no idea if her friend realized the thoughts that went into making such a decision and just what would be the fallout from making it.</p><p>"Well, the village will be proud if we make it, we'd have gone through a great deal of trouble to grant it those shards. Well done, great hero, you!" Shimo sarcastically "commended" Mana and left her quarters. The magician sighed uneasily, she knew that deep inside he agreed to her call, he just didn't want to be seen agreeing to something like that nor did he choose to own such a decision up. He was right, Mana would earn major extra points with the village higher-ups for such a stunt, that being said these people were not the kind of people she wanted approval from. These were the leaders of liars and killers, people who managed and had their own personal armies of assassins and thieves. And Mana would be their wonder child...</p><p>A couple of hours later Shimo returned with Hachiro. Mana had finished up writing the message to Pirate Lord "Blue" – Aomura Flint.</p><p>"Here, I brought cowardly-sensei so he can fill your seal's juices up. He agreed to fill her up for two extra shards..." The swordsman mumbled out indifferently staring at his sensei who walked up to Meiko asking if she was ready.</p><p>"Can you really transfer your chakra through me?" Meiko asked. It wasn't like the Uchiha was some sort of supernatural being like Synth who could freely grant or take its chakra away from people. Usually, chakra couldn't be passed around like water from a bucket, unless with a use of some sort of technique.</p><p>"No need for that, it's a simple seal, I can simply duplicate it with my own chakra input." Hachiro grinned, "Is it a secure bottle, won't I get any cuts from the glass"?</p><p>Shimo smacked the man in the back of his head, "I've seen you take hits that'd split the planet in two with your stupid face, it's not like your huge chakra augmentation levels can't compensate for a little cut".</p><p>"Yeah, but if I insert this much chakra my flow may be interrupted and not work properly. What if I secretly have hemophilia I know nothing about and I bleed out and die!?" Hachiro began freaking out more and more. Kouta walked up to the man and pressed his hand against Hachiro's forehead.</p><p>"Hemophilia Identification Jutsu!" He chanted out a made-up technique. "No, it seems you do not have hemophilia, otherwise my hemophilia identification technique would've found it..." He smiled like a doctor smiled handing a toddler a lollipop.</p><p>"How much chakra exactly do you have, old man?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Oh, you'd be surprised..." Shimo grunted in annoyance. "He's a pretty amazing fighter when he's not scared, his chakra level should be at least lower tier jounin level".</p><p>Meiko's mouth gaped in surprise while Hachiro placed his hand on the bottle and made a couple of seals.</p><p>"Chakra Eruption Seal!" He chanted opening the seal up and leaving a sealing hieroglyph onto the bottle before beginning to pour his chakra inside.</p><p>Shimo looked at Mana who still looked like a walking ghost, it was clear that the magician was crushed by the weight her decision placed on her shoulders and that she approved of none of its aspects, the decision she made was just apparently the lesser one of the two evils.</p><p>"How do you even plan to find this Flint guy? It's not like we know where he or any of his ships are..." The swordsman wondered.</p><p>Mana's pale hand rose to point at an enlarged version of the Archipelago with the oceans and seas surrounding it hanging on the quarter's walls, it had three centers connected with straight lines with "Tako's Reach" scribbled in the middle. Together those three colored centers made up a triangle. That accursed triangle most ships barely dared to tread inside of.</p><p>"So?" The Yuki asked for some clarification.</p><p>Mana's fingers pointed at each of the centers, her lips barely moved upon pointing at each one calling the color of each circle representing the center. "Red, green, blue"</p><p>"Oh..." Shimo finally understood the meaning of that map. It would've made little sense for each captain not to have multiple versions of such maps hanging all around the ship – it detailed where exactly the current territory of each Pirate Lord identified by their codename color was. When treading inside another Lord's territory meant being plundered and sunken to the bottom where the Eight-Tails may have lurked, one had to make sure that as many crewmates knew just where the accessible territory was and just where their Lord's influence ended and another's began.</p><p>Hachiro sighed heavily and moved his hand off the bottle. "There, I made four seals on each side of the bottle, if one burst of chakra takes one fifty or so meters this should take the bottle to Flint's territory and beyond easily, even if it does run out of juice it'll float where the guy can find him..." The Uchiha explained.</p><p>Mana nodded and thanked the man handing him two shards for his trouble. Hachiro really did look like he was sweating heavily and almost like most of his blood was drained. It must've taken a great deal of effort for this strange plan to work and it was a very unusual mean of delivering a message in the ninja world. Everyone scattered and went back to their rooms meanwhile Mana continued to sit around rolling the bottle and the message contained inside between her hands.</p><p>All of a sudden, her door burst open with such intensity and unexpectedness that the girl just dropped the bottle down in sheer surprise and scare that such unexpected and swift entry gave. Just barely did Mana's foot manage to break the bottle's fall so that it didn't break, the blasted thing just bounced off her foot and fell onto the carpet rolling around there for a while. The visitor that entered Mana's quarters was Read herself. This could've ruined everything! Mana's foot hooked the bottle and rapidly pushed it to the end of under her bed!</p><p>"Oh, you!" Read squinted at Mana making the magician's heart tense up and her blood begin pumping hard for the second time that day, this time out of sheer petrifying fear. "Don't think I didn't see! You're a naughty young lady!" Read smiled maliciously. Was Mana's plan discovered!? This could've ended everything. Read was fast enough to murder Mana before she could make as much as squeak and then silently kill her unsuspecting friends while they're asleep!</p><p>"Drinking alone, aren't you?" Read smiled and extended her arms to the sides. Her coat ruffled and slipped off the captain's shoulders. For a moment the woman battled her sister for the right to keep the coat on, the poor sister must've been suffocating beneath that massive thing and wanted some fresh air.</p><p>"Yeah... Sorry. I can pay for it if..." Mana began admitting her "crime", Hell knew she had enough guilt in her heart to look convincingly sorry even if she was a lousy liar. Sometimes she lucked out just enough so that circumstances allowed her to technically tell the truth and get away regardless.</p><p>"Nah, don't sweat it, still, kinda feels wrong that someone's little girl gets hammered on my ship in secret, you know. I mean... I guess... If you're allowed to go outside the village walls you probably can but... Still, those fucking moral principles, right?" Read smiled.</p><p>"Yeah... Moral principles..." Mana nodded slightly in agreement. "Well, I really feel bad about doing this, I'm sorry, I won't do it again" she "swore".</p><p>"Nah, no big deal, I mean if you were my crewmate I'd whip your ass cheeks till they reminded the bars of a prison cell you'd eventually rot in but you're not – you're a paying customer so drink up, it'd just be... Calmer for both of us if you did during the times when everyone's drinking, you know." Read walked up and sat near Mana on the bed. Instinctively the magician shoved the bottle further with her heel.</p><p>"I understand... It's just... Those expectations, you know. I have to be a nice little lady and nice little ladies don't drink... It's tough." Mana made something up, by now her lies were beginning to stop appealing to the hardships in the girl's heart so her voice began to tremble and it must've begun to become apparent that something was off.</p><p>"Oh, girlfriend, don't even go there! I totally get you! I mean, you're talking to a female captain of a pirate ship for fuck's sake! Don't bow to those fucking norms, be a bitch if you want, you're the only one whose say matters." Read slapped Mana's shoulder so hard that the magician almost felt her arm fall off. The captain then stood up and tipped her hat before leaving.</p><p>"You know, you'd make a really good pirate captain one day... We'd be the Trinity of Sea-Bitches, you, Bonny and me! Think about that." Read smiled before leaving Mana's room. The magician breathed out a heavy one. Her heart almost jumped out through her mouth during that brief talk.</p><p>That night the oceans were pretty rough but they weren't exactly stormy. Mana was careful in her silent and slow-paced walk to an edge of the ship. She carefully looked at her compass and determined north, luckily enough it was on the side of the ship she was on. Had she needed to sneak passed actual pirates she'd have failed, after all, most of them, if not all of them, could mold chakra. Mana would've been discovered the moment she breathed out her first breath and peacefully lead to her room. The second time she'd be discovered would also be the last...</p><p>With equally as troubled and stormy feelings Mana tossed the bottle as far as she could. The splash it made was silenced by the roaring waves and soon the bottle completely disappeared into the horizon nowhere to be seen. So she committed the most heinous act in her life – started a pirate war between two lords... That's only if the plan succeeds, Flint gets the message and everything goes as planned. Flint only had a couple of days to get the message and gather his crew, after all, that's how long it'd take for Read's ship to reach the Box's coordinates.</p><p>Mana felt a hand press her shoulder, scared the magician turned around only to see Kouta. The boy hugged her and pressed her head against his own as hard as he could. Mana could feel her wet and soaked by rain head press against his and raindrops falling from his hair fall onto her head and down to her neck where it sent shivers down her spine.</p><p>"Why Flint?" He asked.</p><p>"Flint is an adventurer, one mention of the Box and he'll be all over the information. I mentioned that if he didn't hurry up the other two would get to it first. One thing adventurers wish is to be first to discover something..." Mana replied looking down. Usually the magician loved the rain, usually, it washed down her heavy thoughts but now it somehow felt like it was the heavens dooming her.</p><p>Kouta kissed Mana's forehead softly getting a sip of rainfall in his mouth in the process.</p><p>"You're really smart," he replied as the boy turned and began leading Mana back to her room.</p><p>"Devious, one should say..." She replied hating herself with every essence of her being.</p><p>"There was no way to avoid the fallout, you could only direct whom it hit first. These people aren't exactly saints, you know." Kouta tried to calm her down.</p><p>Mana gently pushed him further from her door gesturing that she wished to spend the evening hating herself alone. Sometimes that was the only way to cope with difficult choices, to just be sad about it and embrace that sadness, to let it run its course so that the next morning there was no sadness left and only everything that sadness was not could take the control over.</p><p>"I used to not make that distinction. It used to be a way in which murderers justified their casual death sentencing..." Mana replied closing the door and realizing that she was the only one who heard that last part as a strong lightning bolt silenced her final words. The magician always used to believe that she was someone special, someone who could delve into all that darkness and remain unchanged. Was the truth actually different? Was she slowly becoming what she hated the most? Would that mean that to truly change the world around her eventually she'd have to end her own life?</p><p>Mana dragged her lazy feet to the bed and covered up her head. Failing to fall asleep she sat back up and observed the raindrops falling outside. The lightning barely troubled her anymore, only the rain... That one true friend that always calmed her down and reminded what she was fighting for. Only the rain...</p><p>Only the rain...</p>
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<a name="section0206"><h2>206. At The Box's Doorsteps</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Land, ho!" A scout sitting on top of the tallest seat on the ship declared. Soon all twenty-five crewmen gathered around and Read, wearing her Bonny hiding captain's coat, appeared to scope the island ahead.</p><p>"Get the girl," she ordered turning at one of her pirates who began rushing to Mana's room only to meet the girl halfway there as Mana darted onto the main deck to observe the island by herself. The pirate nodded his head and gently lead the young ex-kunoichi to his captain.</p><p>"Is this the island?" Read inquired coldly, she wore no smiles and appeared to have taken a professional almost business like attitude towards this whole event.</p><p>"It appears to be... What are the coordinates?" Mana asked before observing a number of incredibly familiar murals and mosaics on a pyramid far ahead in the distance, right in the middle of the incredibly overgrown with vegetation island. "Never mind..." she stopped the squirming little man desperately trying to write down the exact coordinates.</p><p>Meiko, Kouta, and Shimo gathered nearby Mana. They've reached island a whole day early, the four had not precisely coordinated their plan. The three young ninja kept on squinting at Mana trying to determine if the magician would proceed with her defiant plan or if this change finally made her reconsider.</p><p>"Well, I suppose we'll pay up and be on our way..." Mana smiled looking at Read. "I'd appreciate it if for pleasant goodbye's sake you'd give us lifeboats to get to the island..." The young lady asked.</p><p>"No... We're going with you. Whatever you're looking for here, for pleasant goodbyes' sake, we'll help you with that for no extra pay." Read smiled back at Mana which made the magician's eyes sink in suspicion and a little bit of fear. What kind of game was Read playing? Did she wish to find out what Mana wanted from this island and then snag the Box away from them and bring it to l'Ollonais? That most definitely fit the description of what a pirate would do, helping a bunch of kids for no pay at all, however, did not.</p><p>"That will not be necessary, I do not wish to trouble you any more than we already have," Mana attempted to politely refuse the woman's offer, "Our quest here is dangerous and might cost you men, I would feel terrible if you lost valuable crewmen in a charity job".</p><p>Read scratched her chin and nodded. "Fair enough," she waved for the small chubby grandpa like looking pirate "Long Smith, please ready lifeboats for fifteen men, me and the kids. We won't trouble the kids any longer but we can make sure they land ashore successfully at the very least..." The woman ordered. The short elder began running around and ordering the men to prepare the ordered lifeboats.</p><p>Soon enough, the young teens were placed in lifeboats and rowed to the luscious island. After setting their foot ashore everyone sized up and evaluated the island with their eyes. It was a relatively small but incredibly overgrown island with thick forests of ancient looking sky reaching trees. The jungles inside and past the thick layers of leaves appeared to contain their own hidden dimension of shade and mysterious evening glow at every point in time. It looked oh so very similar to the Forest of Death except with much more mystery and charm and a thousand times less death.</p><p>"Strange... I've never seen this island or known of its existence, did you, Long Smith?" Read finally broke the silence.</p><p>"Well... No, it doesn't appear to be on any of our maps, I assumed the kids wanted to be let go in a random patch of the ocean. I never thought for a moment that there'd be an island here. Maybe the villages have some sort of knowledge of the seas we do not have?" The old man mumbled out in a strangely dazing and sleepy jingling tone.</p><p>"Well, anyways, we'll just have to issue an order for Maximillian to nail this island on our maps. We may just get some sweet piece of land for l'Ollonais. Something like that could nail us some sweet booty, maybe we should pick up paying hitchhikers more often. That bastard Flint kept on adventuring and discovering all those new islands, serves him right to be behind at least once." Read wondered out loud speaking to herself but the entire crew ashore shared a laugh after that last sentence.</p><p>"So, is our mission objective in that pyramid?" Shimo whispered to Mana's ear.</p><p>"There's no way Flint would help us now, this is bad..." Kouta joined in making a mumbling cacophony of whispering as the voices of both young men got mixed up and began confusing the young magician in her mind.</p><p>"The crew is split right now, maybe we can take this many?" Meiko managed to slip in a pretty violent and risky but an alluring idea.</p><p>"OK, let's get the rest of our men here, Smith, order our cartographers and scientists down here. I want every man exploring every nook and cranny but not getting in the kids' way." Read ordered, Mana saw Smith reaching up to his torn up denim trousers and pulling out a scroll which he opened up. An inky stream of chakra guided black goo fired off into the sky and formed a heart with two rapiers crossed beneath it. Must've been the signal for the crew to get down there and judging from the sight of men throwing themselves overboard and swimming to the island with blades in their teeth, thinking they've been bamboozled, it was an effective signal.</p><p>"Now... How about we get down to business?" Read turned to Mana. The pirate looked pretty happy about the whole situation, it was just about time for that control of Read's to begin slipping.</p><p>"We won't give you those shards, Read, even more, we'll take what we gave you, to begin with." Mana calmly revealed her plan.</p><p>A deafening tirade of laughter echoed throughout the growing crowd of pirates as the crew that was left on the ship soon rejoined the crew present on the small strip of sandy beach before the mysterious green realm of unexplored jungles started.</p><p>"Oh? That's a good one, now give us the..." Read smiled through tears but then a loud clang emanated from her two sabers clashing with Shimo's drawn sword as the boy dashed in unimaginable speed at the woman with a jumping slash aimed right at her neck.</p><p>"Don't make fun of Mana or her word. She explained the deal to you, now follow it up!" The young man shouted out clashing with Read's twin sabers a couple of more times.</p><p>The pirates surrounding Read tried to surround and skewer the insolent young man but Meiko and Kouta made a bunch of hand seals in sync with each other. It was astonishing to see how well the team began to work with each other over those months they've spent traveling around the world looking for the Box.</p><p>"Earth Style: Mud Wall!" The young man exclaimed as a powerful rocky structure rose from each side of Shimo creating a canyon of sorts from the side and making it impossible for the lowlifes to surround the young swordsman.</p><p>"Pimple Blast!" Meiko yelled out stomping the ground beneath her feet as the jet seals on her boots blasted a powerful burst of chakra through the fissure her stomp made and sent it behind the mud walls blowing every single pirate, Read included off their feet.</p><p>"Pimple Blast?" Kouta looked at Meiko questioningly.</p><p>"I'm still working on the name, I just made this technique up recently and it reminded me of pimples. It builds up and then pops after a while just like a pimple." Meiko grinned scratching the back of her head a bit ashamed of the association she made.</p><p>Shimo blocked a couple more of Read's attacks before taking a wild leap back because he'd have skipped a pretty nasty cut at his chest which may have sent him down. The Yuki grunted just how much more skilled and experienced the woman was compared to him, it may not have been a good idea to challenge these pirates.</p><p>The lowlife crew of pirates began picking themselves up off the ground, looking dirty, slightly scratched up and wearing several small but evident scars and beatings but mostly just pissed to no end. With a single blow, the two walls of chakra erected by Shimo were brought down.</p><p>"The people in the port town were right, these aren't some lowlife thugs..." Meiko suddenly got serious and took a fighting stance getting ready for a brawl of her life.</p><p>"Yeah, any unaugmented thug would've stayed down after a blast like that," the medical ninja by her side agreed. He then looked back at Mana.</p><p>"Mana-chan, please sit this one out. These guys may be too fast and strong for you to handle." Kouta advised but Mana shook her head and stepped forward between the two teammates.</p><p>"I got you into this mess. We're already overmatched and we don't have the luxury to have people sitting this out," she admitted.</p><p>The pirates began a mad rush onwards, faster than a greased lightning bolt, Meiko and Kouta blocked the first strikes, doing their best to defend against the flood of fists, boots, and blades coming their way. Each single thug pirate was capable by their own, each one would've been able to beat down an unexperienced ninja who just dabbled at chakra augmentation.</p><p>An unexpected uppercut Meiko couldn't even see opened her defenses up and a rushing in pirate hit her with an elbow strike from the side while five others rushed at her punching and kicking the blacksmith wildly and while Meiko was definitely feeling those hits she didn't go down. The redhead pushed her feet back and tried regaining some footing and pushing the offensive back but it was just too intense.</p><p>Each single pirate hit with the force needed to blow up a large mountain and each of them moved at least a couple of times faster than a strike of lightning. Their strengths and speeds weren't the same, some hit harder, some moved faster and some attacked slower and weaker but this many opponents of this level pushed Meiko back too hard. A barrage of knife slashes with some bouncing off her armor and some leaving shallow gashes sent Meiko on her knees and a direct strike sent her down.</p><p>The blacksmith pushed her body off letting her augmentations burn as wildly as they could, Meiko knew she was pushed beyond her limits and had moments before burning out but she did her best to keep up. Right as she was beaten down the girl flipped back and on her feet only to receive another beatdown, sometimes tagging one or more pirates, sometimes even sending one or two down for good but the blacksmith fostered no false hopes of victory.</p><p>Kouta's legs shifted into jet boots and blasted off the ground, his fists shifted into giant fists that looked more like hammers than human fists which he used to punch madly at this one persistent pirate but the vulture of the seas just put up a daring block and withstood his assault. Two others leaped over their comrade and kicked Kouta in the chest canceling his body morphs and sending him rolling back. The boy felt his chest crack even through his augments so while he was sent rolling through the waves he placed his palm against his cracked ribs and quickly patched them up as well as battlefield conditions let him.</p><p>Battlefield healing was dangerous and not generally advised, it could've done a sloppy enough job that surgery was required and could've left cracks of bones in one's system that needed to be removed. The usual Mystical Palm treatment usually disintegrated those wild bone pieces which was why it was superior in every way to the sloppy healing technique for beginners that Kouta used on himself.</p><p>Using his morphed jet feet Kouta quickly traveled the water surface he was sent piercing back through and rejoined his assailants in the whirlwind of battle. He used wide swings and kicks, pounded the ground with shots of his chakra cannons which let out wide arcing explosions that kept those scumbags away from his back but the medical ninja knew that he had little chance of surviving all those pirates constantly attacking him back. A single one of them would've made a moderate challenge to his abilities. When facing almost half of the crew at once he could only keep them away from overwhelming him and killing him fast. He prioritized avoiding the armed ones while quickly doing his best to patch up injuries that would've kept him down or held him back too much. This was a losing battle and everyone knew that.</p><p>Five pirates branched off of the group that fought Meiko and Kouta and dashed at Mana. The magician couldn't react to their impossible speed all at once, they surpassed her limit by a good couple of times. The first couple of strikes almost finished her off alone sending Mana down to the ground. The magician didn't see where she was attacked from or whom she was attacked by. These guys just blurred as they moved almost completely invisible.</p><p>"I can strike and move much faster than I did in Agbarah and yet... These guys have to be able to fight at least four times faster than my peak." Mana calculated their approximate speed in her mind. There was no use fighting back, there was no use using her physical chakra as it'd just burn her out faster unless, of course, she could trick them into evening the odds for her. These men by now were fully aware how massively they overpowered Mana, they knew she was just the client, to begin with, so they didn't try too hard. A quick but shallow slash here and there, a quick and weak punch to her gut to drive the air out or to her lower legs to send her down and reduce what little defensive abilities she had.</p><p>"Enough toying around, just take her head and let's go aid the others," one of the pirates suggested ramming Mana to a tall and thick tree with his elbow. By that point, the magician had no air in her chest already so her vision was instantly getting blurry and she felt blacking out not too far in the distance.</p><p>"Now..." she ordered herself exploding with all the physical chakra she had at once. At the moment when her opponent's guard was at its lowest Mana decided to just go wild with her full one hundred and then see what the future held. Mana's thrust palms slammed wildly into the pirate's ribs at the moment when the pirate was commanding his body to hold his strength back. Usually, the body instinctually augmented one's abilities to protect their life but such was not the case when the opposite was the intention and the order. With a crushed chest, the man collapsed with whited out eyes after throwing out some blood.</p><p>The remaining four attacked Mana with their abilities amped up. Now that the speed of her opponents surpassed her only four times instead of the immeasurable difference there was between them before she was able to use the combined style of evasion and redirection to her aid. Gentle taps to redirect the strike of one pirate to their comrade. Acrobatic rolls and flips, tapping their opponent's open weak points just like she was taught in the Sun Disc arena.</p><p>Mana gripped her burning chest and coughed out some blood as her physical chakra augmentations ended prematurely. Her body was breaking down because she was unreasonably pushing it again. The magician collapsed on her knees, she was short of air, injured and her vision was fading, her head was getting dizzy. Luckily enough, her opponents collapsed, one with a stab wound in his gut left by his own comrade, the other one with a twisted leg that he unsuspectingly placed so much weight on that it turned off his consciousness with sheer unrelenting pain. The third and fourth ones had their faces busted and their noses broken and decided to tactically retreat. Mana played it smart, played it as skillfully as she could but she broke past her limits long ago. Her subconscious was right, she was dumb and reckless...</p><p>Farther away Shimo did his best to keep up with Read's wild swings. He had little downtime to as much as weave a hand seal, the pirate's technique and moveset were well put-together. She didn't give him many chances to catch his breath, always wildly attacking and always on his back. Augmenting his speed more than it was smart to Shimo dashed back and sheathed his blade taking a wild leap of faith onwards to his opponent preparing to draw his blade at the last second.</p><p>Read's style was an all-out offensive one. She had two sabers both of which she used to press on the advantage which left many openings but, while close in and overwhelmed with her offensive, Shimo had few chances to exploit it. Using his Audra blade made a fat lot of nothing – Read's blade was coated with chakra imbuements and glew as if it was magically enchanted. Such blades would've cut through common steel and lesser chakra augmentations like paper and Shimo imagined his own sword would've broken soon enough if he tried to block all of her endless attack strings.</p><p>"White Wolf Slash!" Shimo roared out attempting to strike at an opening he spotted at Read's lower body as she made a wild diagonal strike aiming at his shoulders. It would've made no sense to attack him that way, she must've been less skilled than the Yuki gave her credit for. Drawing techniques were simply faster than simple naked blade slashes. He had the green light, he had the advantage, he could've won this fight quickly and went in to aid his friends! Even if Flint's intervention plan failed, they could still win!</p><p>Shimo's attack stopped in mid-air right at Read's face and the young man's face changed into an expression of surprise and pain. A roaring headache matching the pain coming from his chest soon joined Shimo's list of problems. The Yuki looked down with his slowly fading out trembling eyes and saw two smaller sabers piercing his body from Read's sides. That blasted sister of hers...</p><p>Read's diagonal slash reached its goal and opened a wide X shaped gash on Shimo's chest. Bonny's small and frail arms resheathed the two extra sabers she wielded and clapped. The way in which the little sister wielded those sabers like daggers, holding them back made it seem like Read had four arms. Truthfully it was two separate bodies fighting with two separate minds – a real nightmare for any swordsman to face. With an angry unintelligible grunt, Bonny slipped the captain's coat down and giggled like a little child as sunlight danced across her cheeks.</p><p>"What a newbie mistake..." Read grinned to herself.</p><p>A loud clang with an immense force made the woman bend on forward – she was attacked from the back but luckily enough Bonny's deceitfully fast frail arms managed to pull the extra set of swords and block the attack. Further away, by the edge of the shore, laid an unconscious pirate dreaming in a Sharingan induced genjutsu while Hachiro Uchiha joined in on the offensive after shamefully being left in the ship all by himself. A polished puppet arm was present in the place of the one he had lost before, one found on the pirate ship likely indicating that the man intended to need both arms for this scuffle.</p><p>Bonny's clenching blades cut through the simply uncoated blade like scissors through a lean twig but Hachiro was long since gone. As two pairs broke off of the pirate groups beating down Kouta and Meiko and went on to finish off slowly losing her consciousness Mana, Hachiro butt right in and jumped in front of the four. With a single flare of his crimson Sharingan, the man sent the pirates down after placing them in a powerful illusion of being impaled with large stakes.</p><p>"You're so foolish to ignore the danger of fighting these men in your state... Didn't you know attacks of people stronger than you can kill you?" Hachiro asked in a sarcastic tone.</p><p>Mana did her best to smile but the burning muscle pain and bone fractures she had kept her from doing so. The girl just looked up at the man who decided to butt into their business despite wishing nothing more but to get to Archipelago, a collection of islands under Kirigakure's control thousands of kilometers away. A rogue ninja stepping out of their path to do something so selfless... It was not a bad sight to die seeing. Mana just hoped that she wouldn't die of injuries so close to the pyramid that had the Box she sought to find for so long.</p><p>"I must've skipped that one..." Mana replied playing down her injuries and fatigue.</p><p>"Sit tight, I'll free the hands of the medical ninja so he can help you and Shimo, we'll need everyone to take on Read and Bonny" the man carelessly explained.</p><p>"But... Why?" Mana asked as one passing question before Hachiro began doing what he did.</p><p>"Because you were nice to me and helped me out, also if they kill you they'll take all the shards and my sword. I can deal with Shimo wielding it but some lowlife pirate is a bit too much for me to worry about" Hachiro gave her a small rise of his cheekbone that reminded of a smile.</p><p>"Right... The whole world's a danger" Mana smiled. A Pirate Lord having all those Audra shards in their possession must've threatened the peaceful life Hachiro imagined in the Archipelago. There may have been some selfish and fear triggered motives in the man's action but at the very least he had some care for their lives. Selfless acts like that were the source of Mana's strength, it was why she stood up to do what had to be done despite her injuries.</p>
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<a name="section0207"><h2>207. Shabby Steel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Damp and silent raindrops just barely ticked as they were falling and being absorbed by a raggedy cloth hood covering the shoulders of a large man who was wandering the rocky streets of the port town during a downpour. For a second, the man's large cape topped off with a face covering shady hood split by his body after the cape was blown back by a strong gust of ocean winds, the gusts brought with them a sour smell of salt and blood. For a brief moment that the man's muscular arms were revealed a white tie with messy red dried out blood stains could've been seen tied around one of them.</p><p>The man walked alone, he had a company of a dead young woman before yet he submitted the cadaver to his home village instead of giving it to the bounty hunters that paid much better. The Hokage was quite thankful for the contribution and, apparently, the dead body he carried on his shoulders at that moment was immensely valuable. The DNA of that woman must've had some really weird strains or something, she was a freak of her clan and the dead bodies of those mutated freaks were always priceless. The man's muddy reputation was almost redeemed and, with his request, he was reinstated to his previously held yet suspended rank and given another mission – to retrieve his son and bring him back to the village.</p><p>Apparently, after a long while, the village was becoming a little curious as to what happened to the team sent after the Box of Ultimate Bliss. The last report that reached the village expressed interest in seeing an artist in Otogakure in order to decipher some strange clues the team had picked up. That could've been several weeks ago and to a ninja moving at a careful but elevated pace it would've taken much less to travel a quarter of the world. The Administration suspected that the team may have continued their mission as mentioned in the report after the clues have been deciphered. There were some that feared the young teens going rogue on the village... The hooded man accepted this low ranking mission but not because he did low ranking jobs like that, not even because the mission target was his son. It was because he had another hidden agenda.</p><p>The hooded man walked up to a merchant selling fish by a lowly inn. He moved his hood up a little so that his mouth and some of his face could be seen if the man preferred lip reading to auditory speech recognition.</p><p>"Have you seen an Uchiha, preferably with the Mangekyou set of eyes. Last time I saw him he had just one working eye." The man asked but the old man just scratched his head.</p><p>The words "Mangekyou Sharingan" would've said nothing to a lowly fish merchant, they may have sounded funny. Like some myth or a legend to others. To those that knew what it was, it may have invited excitement or a sip of respectable fear. It was a set of eyes unseen for quite some time, someone using those demonic abilities from those accursed eyes would've stood out like a sore thumb.</p><p>"Mange-what now?" The old man giggled, "I just sell some fish, want some trout maybe? Don't tell me, you look like a salmon kinda guy to me." The man chuckled again. His manner of speech and gesticulation suggested low intellectual capacity.</p><p>The hooded man's arm shot like a viper through the air, moving almost instantly. Fractions of a moment itself, if given a set of eyes and a soul wouldn't have been able to track the man's movements. After gripping firmly at the man's collar the hooded man picked the small elder up and pulled him up closer, to an eye-to-eye level but the murky skies and dark rain clouds helped the mystery man's hood form a shadow around his eyes.</p><p>"Think hard, old man, did you see a man with red demonic eyes teleporting around. He may have had just one eye, maybe carrying his dead sister around... Think hard and answer truthfully." The mystery man grunted out angrily, he almost roared the words out right into the petrified elder's face.</p><p>A collection of loud thuds and whizzing blades interrupted the conversation, or rather interrogation, as a barrage of small knives bounced right off the mystery man's back and head as if the man's skin was made of impenetrable armor alloy. To be honest, he was merely immensely tough, but a man of flesh and bone like any other.</p><p>"Fuck off, pirate scum!" Some drunkard yelled out pointing a defective kunai dispenser at the towering mystery man who slowly let the old man go. By doing so the mystery man let him fall down onto the damp and muddy ground, shaking in fear.</p><p>"Even if I was a pirate, you'd not scare me with an unimbued metal trash like this," the hooded man's lower face showed teeth – he was grinning sadistically, slowly walking towards the drunk fool who took him for a pirate and opened fire. Likely a weapon snagged from a lowly pirate anyways. Anyone with a sense of irony would've found a pirate-hating town fighting pirates off with snagged from pirates weaponry a tad bit hypocritical.</p><p>"What? Get away!" The drunk shook in his boots letting the defective weapon drop from his hands only for the hooded man to pick it up and crush it into pieces in his single hand.</p><p>"Let me teach you a thing or two about weapons, idiot, if you want to hurt someone with a stupid blade firing machine like this, you need to make sure the blades are artificially coated with chakra by a blacksmith or do it yourself. Otherwise, it's only good for scaring children." The man winded up his fist for a finishing blow that'd without a doubt have blown off the drunkard's head off.</p><p>"Wait! Wait! Mr. Hood!" The fishmonger screamed out in panic. "I remember now! There was this red-eyed man, he fought a bunch of kids from Konoha looking for a ship that'd take them to the Tako's Reach. They took off on a large ship heading towards the center of Tako's Reach! He had two eyes though, I'm not sure if it's the same man you are looking for." The old man shouted out, after being told everything he wanted to know the hooded man's grip loosened letting the drunkard slip from his grasp and fall onto his butt. After being saved from a most gruesome end the fool only crawled away to fall asleep in an alley somewhere.</p><p>"I see... Well then..." The hooded man appeared to grow on sight, then his feet emerged from under his coat deformed and almost wooden in texture appearing like some sort of jet boots. Lightly and gracefully, the man took off with a backflip off the platform under which was only the shallow sea and the jet cannons on the man's feet fired weak beams of chakra that propelled him like an ocean piercing arrow, booming so loudly and flying off into the horizon so fast that every house rich enough to have windows had them broken. Just like every pint, glass and bottle of beer in the entire port town exploded from the booming sound pressure of the hooded man.</p><hr/><p>Hachiro angrily squinted at the pirates that for a moment stopped beating down on the young teens. The Uchiha's goal was to save the medical ninja first before he got beaten to death. It certainly looked like the young teens were already halfway done in. Shimo looked almost lifeless in his accumulating pool of blood, stabbed by two slightly curved swords because he was so reckless. So defiant and not like his sensei at all. There was a reason why Hachiro feared everything unless completely cornered... It was so that mistakes like those of that defiant little brat weren't made.</p><p>The Uchiha's body blurred as he rushed onward at the five still standing pirates beating down on the medical boy. As expected his wide lightning fast swings were blocked. The cowardly swordsman was seeing the cracks on the shitty pirate sword he snagged already with his naked eye. A thrust from an ignorant but having more power than he knew what to do with pirate tried to pierce his flaring red eyes. Hachiro's figure disappeared leaving not a single dust to be felt from his previous existence, instead appearing right behind the aggressive pirate and slamming his blade into the back of the pirate's head with the blunt back of it. The impact was so shockingly loud and powerful that the sword outright exploded into shatters. Shoddy steel indeed...</p><p>The pirate who was slammed by this overwhelming force only stumbled forward, his eyes were completely whited out but these men could've been hit by the Moon falling on their heads and they'd still have stood their ground. Hachiro weaved a hand seal and his own baby appeared in his arms.</p><p>"Partial Substitution Technique" he uttered replacing the shattered blade handle in his hands with the Audra blade that Shimo wielded before he was cut down, hopefully not lethally. The Yuki had no use for it at the moment anyway. Just like the Substitution Jutsu replaced a ninja with an object instantly, the Partial Substitution Jutsu replaced any object of theirs with that of another.</p><p>Drawing the sword in an instant in a wide-reaching motion Hachiro attempted to cut down as many as he could, his movements fast enough to confuse and disorient even these speedsters capable of outracing greased lightning bolts. All of the pirates lifted off the ground leaping into the air. The crew flew up so high that it would've been difficult to see them from the ground floor. The ears of the cowardly swordsman picked up a ceaseless tirade of booming sounds – the sounds of kunai dispensers firing off fist-sized capsules filled with makibishi spikes that exploded upon impact.</p><p>Hachiro's Sharingan could've screamed in the excitement of being able to show off his handiwork, calculating the exact trajectory of each capsule, letting him see each and every one of them flying down at him at about 500 m/s. It only brought a smile at the cowardly man's face as his sword was resheathed lightning fast and a barrage of kunai followed the capsules detonating them early and making the spikes rain and scatter harmlessly in the water and the sands being washed away and into the depths of the ocean. Now the Uchiha wished to do something about the descending pirates.</p><p>After a chain of hand seals, Hachiro lifted his arms up to his mouth and breathed out hard through a gap between his fingers that made the final hand seal.</p><p>"Fire Style: Rising Dragon Flame!" He shouted out as his lungs blew out hot chakra infused air which ignited and shaped into a spiraling roaring dragon swallowing the pirates and letting their smoky and singed up yet only unconscious bodies slam into the ground like ragdolls dropped from the heavens. Hachiro held back the intensity of his flames. He had no need or wish to kill these men, there was a very specific reason for that – the girl he did this all for, the young magician girl.</p><p>The pirates beating down on Meiko kicked the girl's bloody and bruised but still conscious and still fighting back body aside and began shouting at Hachiro but jumping around like barking dogs, hesitant to move onwards and attack him.</p><p>"Heal yourself, heal the Mana, heal the blacksmith, heal my stupid student," Hachiro ordered Kouta in a voice without tremble or hesitation, this wasn't the voice that the Uchiha wore usually. It was a voice of a man who controlled the situation, a man who chose to involve himself to save the crew he cared about.</p><p>Kouta and Hachiro lunged forward at the same time. As Hachiro's sword once again left his sheath, the medical ninja darted off aside and gracefully flipped around his pirate opponents only to pick up Meiko and move her aside. The medical ninja then began looking for an opportunity to pick up Shimo who was lying unconscious and slowly bleeding out right in front of the pirate captain who just observed the situation – she didn't look like she'd let the Yuki be moved, however...</p><p>Hachiro fought off all the knife and scimitar-wielding pirates at once. He was like a raging lion of battle. His blocks and dodges came through moderate effort and it was not an easy clash for him but he persevered! The Uchiha kicked one of his pirate opponents in the groin after blocking all of the initial attacks and rolled over his shoulder driving the back of his sword into the unfortunate fellow's back. The other pirates attempted a counterattack to stop Hachiro's further rampage but they all were treated to a slam from the side of his Audra blade that knocked most of their teeth out – a blindingly fast wide arcing swing.</p><p>Now that the other pirates were dazed and stumbling about Hachiro closed his eyes to concentrate for a moment – after his eyes opened his Sharingan issued a warning as the time dilated around him. The warning almost burnt his nerve endings in pain – the medic was rushing at captain Read trying to move Shimo's bleeding and unconscious body out of her reach and into where he could be healed. Hachiro leaped at the woman to give her something to work with, his sword clashed with the two of hers but then her blades blurred – the four sabers dancing in a symphony, dropping wild swings and X shaped slashes, attacking high and low at the same time. Hachiro felt a warm splash of his own blood covering his face.</p><p>"Why don't you put them under a genjutsu!?" Kouta shouted out before a kick from Read sent him tumbling back, at least the attack gave Hachiro some time to dash back and examine his own wound.</p><p>"My eyes are not Mangekyou Sharingan, I've placed just about the limit of people I can place into an illusion. If I placed any more the ones I've placed in it before would be released. In addition Read's mind has a sense of duality to it. She and her sister share aspects of their bodies so one could issue her chakra to the other breaking the sister out of it." Hachiro grunted seeing the pirates slowly recovering. Read and the pirates all lunged at him at the same time. There could've been no helping it!</p><p>"Body Flicker Jutsu!" Hachiro roared out through pain as his body became energized by an overflow of chakra sending him to Shimo, grabbing him and then back to his initial place before grabbing Kouta and moving him to Mana in just about exactly an instant. Body Flicker was an instantaneous movement technique, it consumed a great deal of chakra and Hachiro may have mastered its intricacies but not the control of its chakra demands. Still, in that situation, it was needed.</p><p>"Coward! Come on and face us!" Captain Read shouted out swinging her blades about just as Bonny did the same. That troublesome sister of Read's was so immensely flexible, capable of dislocating her joints and snapping her arms back to defend Read's front or defend the pirate captain from the back in her normal state.</p><p>"I intend to..." Hachiro took a small moment to regain his breath after the taxing use of Body Flicker. He felt completely drained and he must've admitted that he'd need the brats' help if he was to survive this encounter as was his full intention. Hachiro's body flashed in a black and brown blur dashing straight at the still standing pirates but careful enough not to get within Read's reach. He was still faster than the woman even if he was two limbs short from being able to sustain a swordfight with her. The smart thing to do would've been to pick off the small fries first.</p><p>Kouta's hands touched Mana's shoulder and tried to gently force her to lie down. Mana shook her head and pointed at Shimo who was bleeding profusely.</p><p>"Please..." She begged her friend to prioritize the more severe and much more useful to the team's strength comrade.</p><p>"No way! I'm gonna be your boyfriend, remember? Plus cow... I mean Hachiro was incredibly precise about me treating you first." Kouta began to argue.</p><p>"I'm just gonna lay down here and bleed while you argue... No pressure..." Meiko butt into the conversation, she was right – arguing only postponed Kouta's stressful duty to see to it that everyone makes it.</p><p>"I'm weak... I can't help you beat anyone now that I've nearly broken my chakra network again, Shimo can. Come on!" Mana begged Kouta who just closed his eyes and sighed placing his hands on Shimo's chest.</p><p>"And here I thought you two were at each other's throats..." He sarcastically added.</p><p>Further away, Hachiro shouted out in pain as the two pirates rammed his ribs with a powerful coordinated shoulder tackle sending him flying through a bunch of trees opening up an entrance to the jungle leading to the pyramid containing the illustrious Box of Ultimate Bliss. The man grunted in pain and spat out some blood from his mouth.</p><p>"Trees can leave splinters in my skin, those can get infectious and then I'm looking at gangrene or even death! You bastards! I'll kill you!" He shouted in his familiar cowardly and paranoid manner. The pirates began the assault together with their captain teaming up on Hachiro just like any smart team would've. The Uchiha's eyes worked overtime, fists and blades were everywhere moving at flashy speeds, the man bent his body in ways that it wasn't supposed to bend, swung his sword around doing his best to block as many attacks as he could.</p><p>Pain, sparks of pain followed by warm splashes of blood running down the hit spots. A strong combination of kicks and strikes from a pair of lowlife pirates sent him through another bunch of trees backward. Read leaped in kicking him through yet another tree and slashing wildly at Hachiro's body, the dazed Uchiha could barely lift his sword up in time, his body was taxed by the Body Flicker and his head was all stingy from being punched and kicked so many times and bashed through ancient tougher than rock trees.</p><p>Luckily enough, with a sly slide, Hachiro managed to dodge the final decapitating scissor swipe and knock Read on her voluptuous bottom. With a quick dash through the confused pirates, fighting off the pain and the screaming head Hachiro pushed his leg onwards to repurpose his force and backflip with a slash at the closest pirate to him. The man screamed like a pig as the Audra steel left a gashing mark on his face, chest, and belly. The Uchiha did his best to follow up his attacks but they were then all blocked. Luckily enough a small tunnel of downed trees let him avoid getting surrounded and made fighting his way back to the beach a little easier.</p><p>The clangs from all the blades and thuds from their knees and kicks clashing became bothersome and taxing for the cowardly swordsman's ears. He felt the soft beach sand beneath his feet again, taking no luxury to check on Kouta's healing process. It was highly unlikely he'd get any help from the kids for a while the way it was going.</p><p>Hachiro's hands went through hand seals slamming his hands together he breathed in deep and spat out a large collection of water just at the same time as he flung a flock of shuriken at the pirates. His body was screaming and he was pushing himself like never before for this magician girl but he had no choice. She couldn't die. If she was to die THAT man would be severely infuriated and then there'd be no place on Earth or the Moon that'd hide Hachiro from him after the madman found out that Hachiro was there and didn't stop it. Mana assumed that the Uchiha was a selfless brave hero... Truth be told, the red-eyed rogue was just looking out for the world and more importantly – himself. As long as the two were traveling together the young lady had to be peachy and happy, that was in madman's best interests and that meant in Hachiro's interests as well.</p><p>"Water Style: Avalon's Kiss!" The man shouted out as the chakra infused water from his lungs and mouth expanded absorbing the humidity from the air and surrounded the shuriken with a mass of watery liquid. The pirates covered up themselves to defend against the upcoming barrage and got their bodies and faces full of shuriken covered with water that blunted but strengthened the hits walloping at their stamina and endurance augmentations. Most of them tried to block using their blades which shattered them instantly due to the fact that simple shoddy swords weren't meant to compare themselves to ninjutsu. Disarming those men was his intention. Read herself stayed behind her puppets and avoided any damage, pity.</p><p>Hachiro cursed, these lowlife pirates were tough, even after all the punishment they were put through – the fight that the blacksmith girl had in her, the multiple attacks from Hachiro himself and now this... They still stood on their feet ready to come at him. They were fazed, injured and staggering, on their last feet but still willing to go. What trouble fearing for his own life got him into this time!?</p>
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<a name="section0208"><h2>208. Survive!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta wiped the sweat from his face. Judging from his calm and satisfied expression and a relieving sigh he managed to stabilize Shimo's condition. Mana had hoped that the Yuki would just pop back on his feet the moment he was healed but that didn't appear to be the case. The swordsman remained downed however his face changed acquiring certain tranquility and peace as if the young man was just catching up on his iffy sleeping schedule.</p><p>The magician thought to herself that if Kouta didn't immediately switch the healing targets he must've spent a lot of effort to heal Shimo. Mana looked at Meiko who had loads of bleeding injuries, swollen beatings and bruises. She may have given those pirates one hell of a fight but she came out of it on the pyrrhic side. Whatever small victories the blacksmith had earned couldn't have been worth the beating she took. The redhead needed attention but not as urgently as Shimo needed it.</p><p>Kouta realized Mana was staring at her friend and rolled back on his butt beginning to patch Meiko up, instead of using medical ninjutsu the young medical ninja used bandages, compresses, and patches soaked with herbal ailments. That told all that Mana needed to know about how badly Shimo was hurt, Kouta may have improved during this trip by leaps and bounds compared to the shy boy who could barely treat a cut in an acceptable timeframe but he was still no miracle worker. No. He actually was, it was just that Mana's definition of a miracle may have been stretched out to the limits.</p><p>"I'll get to you soon, Mana... Just hold on... Do those injuries hurt?" He huffed out.</p><p>Mana looked at Shimo, the knocked out lifelong friend of hers with that horrendous X shaped scar on his chest stretching out from his shoulders to the hips. Kouta must've not even bothered with the aesthetic aspects, a medical ninja could've patched scars up to where they were barely even seen by an untrained eye but it was an unnecessary hassle in the middle of a battlefield. The young man must've prioritized the internal injuries, the lacerations on Shimo's organs and the big blood vessels. Containing the bleeding must've been a handful all by itself.</p><p>The magician's sight wandered to Meiko who looked like an angered war orphan who just barely made out in time from a city siege. Her face was halfway bandaged, bits and pieces of her armor and her tracksuit cut, torn to pieces and mixed with mud and bashed. The redhead looked like a mess who was torn out of an actual war. Then again, looking at the ruined beach and the broken into jungle scenery it looked like the blacksmith had brought some of the war to the pirates as well.</p><p>Finally, Mana's sight met Kouta's tired and hazy eyes. The girl realized the severity of the situation – Shimo alone drained his chakra pool more than the boy had dared to admit and there was no way that the two of them would get treated properly. That meant the worst outcome – Shimo won't be able to rejoin the battle because of his still incapacitated state, Kouta was too worn by his duties as a medical ninja to fulfill those of a capable fighter and Meiko was just barely sewn and patched together to keep her from dying. A rough bump could've reopened all of those wounds. The team was done with the battling or at least so it seemed...</p><p>Mana picked herself up on her feet and extended her hand to Shimo. "Give me a needle and some of your medical string, a couple of bandages and patches..." She asked him firmly, she tried to sound strong but the pain must've made it evident that Mana was both afraid and in pain.</p><p>"You can't be thinking of fighting?" Kouta just barely breathed out, judging from his voice he had just run around the world a couple of times.</p><p>"I'm thinking of doing what we came here to do – I'm going to use the Box. Hachiro-san needs our help, he won't win alone." Mana concluded giving the fighting Uchiha a small glance to reassure her statement to herself before she made any rash decisions.</p><p>"You know..." Kouta said quietly as he removed the requested items from his bag and handed them one by one to Mana who just gulped imagining the process of quick self-patching that was still ahead. "I think there may have been a reason why Hachiro-san asked me to heal you first. I don't think he intended the rest of us to make it. He probably doesn't intend himself to make it..." Kouta uttered much to Mana's surprise.</p><p>She gripped the handed items and stuffed them down into her redundant pouch, emptying all of her cards onto the floor. She wasn't fighting an opponent that could've been scared by some sharp card tricks so there was no use of them.</p><p>"Don't belittle Hachiro-san's sacrifice..." Mana replied turning away and slowly making her way towards the forest. She hoped that all the fighting would help her move unnoticed, her chakra level was reduced to that of a normal civilian and she was stumbling to the jungle very slowly. Just maybe, with a little luck, she could've pulled it through... Just before she moved far away that her normal voice could barely be picked up by Kouta she turned back to him and Meiko and smiled at them.</p><p>"Don't die and make me use the Box to bring you back..." She joked, still, if matters came down to that she'd have sacrificed her life as a ninja and her chakra control for the lives of her friend without hesitating. It'd draw unfortunate tears for sure, it'd cause so much pain for her but it wouldn't be a blaming game, it'd be the natural pain of misfortune. That sad and completely insufferable regret of a situation that just couldn't have been helped.</p><p>The magician looked at the cut on her side, it was by far the most painful wound she had sustained in the brawl with the pirates that was more a torture where she just lucked out than an actual fight. Slowly while in mid-stumble Mana pressed the needle against her skin, she couldn't patch using chakra like the medical ninja, she had to use the ancient stitching method on herself just to restrain the bleeding and the troubling pain in her side. There were countless of smaller wounds but that needed to be taken care of first.</p><p>Mana bashed her head and back against a strong bamboo tree and screamed out in the air as the pain finally hit her. It was something that completely kicked the chair out from under her promise to herself not to raise noise, it was something that completely busted the knees of her wish to keep walking. There was only the pain, that selfish lonely child that demanded all of the attention.</p><p>"Where do you think you're going!?" Mana heard a loud exclamation from one of the pirates. She couldn't recognize which one it was, a tall and quite well-built one wielding a small but well put-together blade. It was fancier than a battle use knife, similar to the short swords used by some ninja but even shorter than that. It must've been used for torture just as efficiently as it could've been used for opening up arteries and bleeding the enemy out in moments.</p><p>Mana relaxed letting her body slump to the ground just barely making the pirate miss with his thrust. They still took her for a weakling civilian and played around with her, then again, this guy looked like he had taken a couple of hits as well and couldn't have been in his full capacity. If she had her physical chakra use she'd have possibly been able to give this guy a fair fight but now she was just a pig at a slaughterhouse.</p><p>The man's body flared up for a moment, usually, chakra augmentation was almost invisible unless used on momentous levels of augmentation where one intended to move mountains. Also, it flared up like that when it was used unskillfully, that was more likely the case, possibly the pirate was taught not by a qualified sensei in an Academy but another pirate. A loud clang made Mana open her eyes and realize that she wasn't dead. A swift thrust of Hachiro's palm smashed the man's face into a tree breaking it down and then slamming it into the ground so hard that the magician felt her body lift off the ground from the quake. The rumbling sounds of trees falling in the distance made the girl realize just in what world of power this fight was. A world she was forced to leave behind...</p><p>"The kid didn't heal you!?" Hachiro angrily asked placing himself in between Mana and the upcoming rushing pirates, the few that remained.</p><p>"I asked him to heal Shimo first. He'd have died if Kouta didn't heal him first." Mana told him. Hachiro ground his teeth withstanding a scimitar slash opening up a wound on his chest. She stumbled back witnessing the pirates surrounding the aged rogue and starting to just kick him and beat the man around, completely oblivious to Mana who was laying on the ground nearby. The pirates flashed around, whizzing by Mana's ears leaving downed trees, blood trails, and destruction in their wake. Some of Hachiro's blood fell on Mana, even on her face.</p><p>"Fuck all of you!" Hachiro screamed swinging his sword in a wide circular arc and sending all of the pirates off of him bashing through trees. The battle was well into the jungle again. Causing untold destruction and sadness to a place that appeared to be completely untouched by man before.</p><p>"Run! Survive! Whatever you do, just survive!" The Uchiha yelled looking Mana straight in the eyes with those bloodshot crazy Sharingan eyes of his. The man's hands flashed through hand seals finishing the chain of seals with the clone hand sign.</p><p>"Water Clone Jutsu!" He chanted out erecting two identical copies of himself that stood close to him. The three attacked the remaining pirates together at once, finally somewhat evening the odds but by the cost of further chipping away at Hachiro's already worn out chakra reserves.</p><p>The water clones were strong, each water clone made by the Water Clone Jutsu carried about one-tenth of the original's strength, speed, and endurance. They could only augment their bodies to the equivalent of the chakra pool granted to them by the user of the technique. Judging from the beatdown each clone delivered to their pirate of choice it was considerable. Hachiro must've decided to win this battle but give up trying to win the whole war with Read. He was too injured and far too worn out to beat her clean anyways.</p><p>Mana escaped dragging her pathetic body through the tangled rising roots of the gigantic trees that made this jungle. The jungle that lead up to the pyramid in the distance, the pyramid where the Box of Ultimate Bliss was. She could hear the noises of Hachiro's grunts and water splashing sounds, the clones mustn't have lasted long. It made sense. Read alone could've dispatched of someone like that in an instant, it was just barely enough over the edge to kick those lowly pirates around.</p><p>It was all her fault, she did all of this! She doomed her team to fight a battle they couldn't have won when it was clear that Flint won't be arriving to occupy Read's attention in time. She caused both the next Pirate War and the death of her team. Mana wasn't sure what entity she spoke with inside of her own body back when she was dying but it was wrong. She did make everything worse just by existing, just by trying to protect as many people as she could she doomed everyone. She directly caused pain and death by trying to avoid pain and death of other people. It'll all be hopeless, the sacrifice of Hachiro and her friends will be hopeless unless Mana uses the Box. The last thing she could've done right was to ensure that a wishing device didn't fall in the Read's hands. Or those of Flint. If the Pirate Lord or any of his sent captains arrived later.</p><p>"I have no right to ask for my chakra... I need to use the Box to fix all of this" Mana realized. Horror and regret began seeping in her heart but she knew firmly what had to be done. She knew that she had to undo what she had done... Otherwise, her chakra won't mean a thing, she'd never redeem for the horrors she'd caused here that day. The greatest thing she could've hoped for was to grant her friends another chance to not get involved with Mana. To not suffer and die needlessly because of her mistakes.</p><p>Only then did the magician note Hachiro's final words to her – he was solely interested in her survival. It was just like that time in Read's ship when she spoke to him about the madman. Whoever that madman was he wished Mana alive, but who was that man, who could he have been? What sort of man instilled such fear that the people knowing him obeyed his wishes even when this madman was nowhere to be seen or heard of? Then Hachiro was acting out of the interest towards his own well-being and there was no sacred story of redemption and desire to help... She changed nothing, her nice attitude towards the man changed nothing about him. He was still just being paranoid about his own life choosing death in the hands of some pirates over dying in the hands of that man he dreaded so much.</p><p>As Mana tread further and further into the jungle Hachiro continued to fight off the remaining barely standing pirates and Read. Giving them enough of his own personal hell to keep them occupied and their thoughts focused on him so that Mana and her agenda completely faded from their attention.</p><p>"Just survive kid, don't make it worse on all of us..." He mumbled under his own nose.</p><p>The rogue screamed in pain as he felt a thundering flash of pain hit his back, a familiar sensation of being slashed deeply. As Hachiro fell his senses numbed down, he saw the tree he was sticking to the side of falling by him and a pirate rushing after him. The Uchiha regained his composure and blocked the follow-up strike intending to finish him. His body, as well as the body of his attacker, clashed, sonic booms exploded all around the general vicinity downing more and more trees as the two clashed again and again in the air before both of them reached the ground. They clashed tens, hundreds and even approaching a thousand times in a single collision of their booming flashes. This was a whole different level of swordsmanship and the Uchiha had to hand it to these pirate scum – he was impressed a single small-time soldier could sneak up on him from the back as well as take what he had to throw like that.</p><p>"My thoughts are too occupied with that girl and my own survival, with that man... I need to be here and now!" The rogue realized before his body flashed in blinding speed even to the speedster pirates opening up an immensely deep gash on the airborne pirate's side so large that it almost split the man in two completely. Only a brief string of flesh held the cut down pirate together as the body hit the jungle floor.</p><p>The Uchiha's assaults did not cease, he went after the two last remaining pirates. A wide gash opened up on the body of a chubby powerhouse pirate soldier, all the way from the man's shoulder to his hip splitting the man almost in two just like his comrade before him. Now that Hachiro was serious and focused, now that he was holding nothing back, fostering no false hopes of keeping strength for the final battle with Read, knowing full well he'd not beat her he was golden.</p><p>The third pirate – the one Mana noticed before and nicknamed him "grandpa pirate" clashed successfully stopping Hachiro's momentum. The chubby elder slammed his shoulder against his blade pushing the rogue away from the clash. Both the beaten and bleeding old man as well as the approaching exhaustion Uchiha just huffed at each other preparing for the following strike but then the sharp command of Read's interrupted the brief notable clash of the two.</p><p>"Smith, return to the ship. Send a message for assistance, we've lost enough crew here!" the captain ordered stepping up close to her subordinate and gently tapping at his side with the blunt side of her sword and pushing the man further. Without hesitation, the old man just nodded and bowed his upper body and clutching at his wounds began his painful stroll back to the ship.</p><p>The pirates used a seal message system, there were several different communication scrolls that upon being unsealed opened up and fired off an inky goo substance into the sky that formed a large symbol. That symbol was intelligible from at least the edges of each Pirate Lord's territory. Usually, it wasn't too wise to use such symbols as they were trackable by both the ships of other Lords as well as the marine hunter ninja. Now Long Smith's only objective was to use it and call for any nearby allied captains to arrive at the scene of battle and aid the crew to navigate the ship to the nearest safe island or port town.</p><p>Hachiro stared at Captain Read and her sister in arms – Bonny. He wasted so much effort, so much chakra and spilled so much blood for a bunch of kids. The man looked at the multiple wounds he had sustained with a short glance down, his raggedy and dirty clothes were all covered in mud and blood. The Uchiha knew he could've cut the old chubby shorty down, his Sharingan noticed that the old man dislocated his shoulder with that last stunt of his. If pressed from that side he would've been open for a finishing strike.</p><p>And yet they were both lucky that Read called that conclusive fight off. After all – she needed men to sail her ship and Hachiro needed to conserve as much chakra as he could to give this woman enough trouble to mess up her day. The man thought back on seeing Mana's injured body wander into the jungle, that meant that his silly student was prioritized by the medical ninja. Maybe if he prolonged this battle as long as possible he'd be able to have his student join in and aid him. Hachiro was still not completely sure about the level of Read's skill but with Shimo's help they just could've pulled it through...</p><p>Read. Read was the final obstacle and a fine looking and even finer sword-wielding obstacle she was...</p>
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<a name="section0209"><h2>209. The Scared And The Betrayed</h2></a>
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      <p>Mana sighed observing the path that supposedly lead to the pyramid. The patches and temporary medical aids she applied on herself held and allowed her to at the very least postpone dealing with the wounds sustained in that last squabble. Truth be told it was less a squabble than a torture session... Once she reached that pyramid and found the Box she had the option of regaining her strength, to once again be able to dream of changing the world.</p>
      <p>Then again, was she confident enough in her full strength? Could she really be arrogant enough to believe that with her full strength and chakra control regained she'd be able to change anything? The much more surefire solution was to ask for the Box to solve the problem at hand: to move the pirates far away or to transport Mana and her team back home. It'd be a huge waste of time to just ask for the Box to return everyone home after the journey they went through to find it. Still, if it saved her friends it'd be worth it a thousand times over.</p>
      <p>These final stretches of the jungle were tough. It couldn't have been more than a couple of kilometers away and yet Mana's troubled by her wounds pace slowed the rush to a turtle's pace. So many thick trees and bushes she had to walk around, so many rivers and suspicious looking lakes she decided to move around. Mana would be lucky to not get lost by the time she arrived... Then again the pyramid was so large that moving towards the island's depths would've automatically lead to it. The history buff within Mana wanted to see the pyramid from within, to explore it in depth and see the architecture and the brickwork. She may not have had time for that.</p>
      <p>If only she could've scaled those trees and all those complicated entangled networks of branches and vines up in the upper layers of the jungle leading up to the ceiling of sharp and thick branches and endless clouds of leaves stuck together in a clamp. She'd reduce the traveling time to nothing. If only she was as fast as other ninja and wouldn't have torn up her chakra network again by using the physical chakra she'd make this dash in seconds...</p>
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      <p>Finally, the clash between Hachiro and Read began. Both warriors lunged at each other ready to cut the other down. Bonny's frail legs and arms twitched creepily as they turned to the other side by the joint ready to assist her sister's defense. The two moved so incredibly fast, by the time the sand particles rose up from the air gusts blowing off each of the combatants the two had already concluded their mad dash towards this clash.</p>
      <p>Neither of the two desired this battle, Hachiro fought because he needed for Mana to stay alive if the madman was to be kept on his leash of sanity, what little of it that he had. Up to now, the mysterious figure was working behind the scenes, some kidnappings, some mysterious assassinations and thefts of scrolls from the countries he's been in. The only thing was clear, the only name the man mentioned to whomever he spoke to was that of Nakotsumi Mana of Konohagakure. Clearly, this girl was important to that man somehow and Hachiro had to place his precious life on the line to keep the girl alive. Otherwise, his escape to Archipelago would mean nothing...</p>
      <p>Read on the other hand felt betrayed. She most definitely intended to strengthen l'Ollonais' military power with those Audra shards. There were few pirates that couldn't imbue their blades and kunai dispensers with chakra. However, the ships could've used chakra armaments, made invincible to anything but the most concentrated chakra attacks. The cannonballs of Green's ships could've been made of the Audra alloy by melting those shards and making them penetrate any pathetic attempts to shield other ships. These shards meant her Lord's superiority in the oceans and she felt betrayed by these brats for them not following up to the end of their bargain. True, they were ninja after all, slimy assassins good for only their missions and silent murder. Still, even pirates didn't stink this foul.</p>
      <p>The feelings of each swordsman translated into their movements. Hachiro aimed for no openings, he moved gracefully and his Sharingan was pushed to the overtime keeping up with all four blades of Read and Bonny combined coming at him. By abandoning any false hopes of ever tagging the woman and realizing just how densely and masterfully her blades were imbued with chakra allowed Hachiro to stop relying on blocking and instead move aside and redirect the woman's blocks where he couldn't avoid them. Each one was flashing almost instantaneously all over the place leaving small patches of blood and deep craters in the sand from the shockwaves of their deflected strikes. Once in a while, a bunch of trees finally caught up to the reality of being cut down moments ago and fell down rumbling in the distance.</p>
      <p>Read's movements were fueled by her rage, by her sour taste of betrayal and deceit. Not only did these brats play her and her Pirate Lord for fools but they also dared to beat them back and strike down most of the woman's crew. The magician brat was right back then – if the two groups would've clashed back in the port town they'd have won, however, they'd have won just having a bare minimum of able handed men. Certainly not enough to sail the seas. That was one disadvantage of Read compared to the children – she needed men, a significant majority of them and she couldn't have afforded to lose any of them and yet... Here it was. She let them play her, let the rage blind her so much that she let her men fall for her, abandon her in the moment of need. The worst part was it was her fault as a captain, she got played into letting her men fight these kids...</p>
      <p>Hachiro's body blurred after it was cut in two, it was just a mere afterimage left by the man's swift movements where the man himself had leaped away. Rustling cloth sounds reached Read's ears too late, it was like the man's movements happened faster than the sound betrayed them happening. The Uchiha swept at the pirate captain's legs sending her down on the ground. Bonny screamed in rage since she had to relocate her arms back into the joints to defend Read from the back again which apparently needed a moment. The captain got sent tumbling down, Hachiro's arm slammed into the sand flipping his whole body to the side while his kick crushed into Read's chest and slammed her to the ground with his sideways kick.</p>
      <p>Bonny's arms finally spent the moment they needed to relocate and tried swiping her sabers sideways at the Uchiha rogue but the swords only cut through a large stone which Hachiro used as a target for his Substitution Jutsu. He had planned it all ahead, his Sharingan observed the movements of the little sister, those barely intelligent and more instinct-based swordplay equivalent of unintelligible rambling and he created this short-term plan of attack in a middle of a clash. That was the scary potential of the Uchiha clan, once widely regarded as the ninja elite but recently spoiled by their own strength. Rotten in the sauce of arrogance they laid in.</p>
      <p>Hachiro spared no luxury of standing around, just as the unfortunate stone he used as a replacement was cut in two cleanly he used the chance for a follow-up attack. Bonny shook uncomfortably on Read's back, she readied her swords but the silly sister felt confused that her opponent would attack her head on – after all, Bonny and Read demonstrated superiority in combining their minds and attacks into one symphony of bladework. Why would an inferior swordsman attack a superior one so blatantly?</p>
      <p>In the middle of the rush, Hachiro's speed slowed down to about the degree intelligible to a human eye and his hand weaved a handseal.</p>
      <p>"Body Flicker Jutsu!" He chanted dashing past Bonny and instead of kicking at Read. The pirate captain shouted out in pain as her body lifted off the ground from the force of the kick. Hachiro wanted to continue his onslaught but he noticed that his kick was blocked by the blunt sides of the swords crossed together to stop his leg. While Bonny's arms were still centered on Read's back the Uchiha gave a couple of deceptive and lightning fast taps with his blade looking to poke something fleshy and soft but his efforts were in vain – Read protected against them despite her offense concentrated style.</p>
      <p>"I see... So that's why you're such a scaredy-cat?" Read grinned wiping her flaming, red hair out of the way of her eyesight with a cocky grin.</p>
      <p>Hachiro felt his muscles twitch in painful pinches – his Body Flicker technique never came very cheaply and it was best used for out of combat scenarios such as traveling, where one had plenty of time to rest up afterward. Using it in a middle of a battle was possible but it needed some cooldown time and it also strained one's body, using it in rapid succession was even a greater strain. Maybe if the Uchiha trained more since his prime he'd have been able to sustain a swordsmanship style focused on Body Flicker, the way things were now jutsu like that were better left for the younger and better-trained folks.</p>
      <p>"Being worried about your life isn't something new, it's quite commendable really..." Hachiro flapped his mouth back in return, trying to catch some breath and some time before he can fight at his full after using that jutsu that Read was so generously giving him.</p>
      <p>"Not like you... Not avoiding eating or drinking if it comes from someone else, not distrusting your own crew, not covering your own door with furniture while you're on the ship. By the way those doors opened to the outside..." Read continued to mock Hachiro's paranoid lifestyle.</p>
      <p>"Well... You'd still need to push that cupboard away and step over the armchair even if you do pull the door open. Of course, doing it myself when I had to take a leak was bothersome..." The man scratched his head before returning to a fighting stance.</p>
      <p>"Those red eyes... You're an Uchiha. I've met some of your kind, killed some of the brash youngsters of your clan myself. Most of them are amazingly talented and that's their undoing. They get cocky, they begin believing like the whole world is just a play in which they're the main characters and like they have no limits. I know why you're so paranoid about "shit-goblins" and all that bullshit. It's to keep your own ego down. You constantly rate everything around you as a threat to your life so that you arrogance never does you in like it does most Uchiha. I'm right, am I not?" Read confidently laughed out before pushing her rampant ginger hair back over Bonny's face. Angrily beating around like an enraged forest spirit the young and frail sister kicked and beat around until she pushed the hair of her sister's off of her own face.</p>
      <p>"Frankly, lady, I think you're crazy for underestimating shit-goblins..." Hachiro grinned before launching another attack. Read's blades pushed Hachiro's sword out of the way. The Uchiha prepared to deal with the two blades of the younger sister before realizing that Bonny held no swords. His knees and feet trying to kick at Bonny's wrists only hit empty air. Read's upfront stamping kick to Hachiro's chest sent the man tumbling backward and sliding over the rocky and root filled jungle floor.</p>
      <p>Suddenly Bonny's arms cocked backward with that heart-stopping cracking noise holding two kunai dispensers that opened a barrage of fire. Hachiro's blade spun around as the man thought he could easily deflect anything that these lazy tools tossed at him. A single bump that emanated through his wrist probably cracking it in the process sent the sword swinging back through the forest and into the jungle grounds.</p>
      <p>"Chakra infused?" Hachiro wondered as a couple of kunai pierced his chest and sent him down onto the jungle floor. Trying to keep up his momentum and not to get caught up in the whole barrage of blade fire the Uchiha continued to move doing his best not to have his mind be absorbed by the burning pain in his chest and shoulders where a handful of kunai blades were lodged in deep.</p>
      <p>Bonny giggled out loud, the younger sister appeared to not speak but emit grunting sounds and creepy laughter. She couldn't have had mental problems, she clearly thought on her own and abused the weaponry arsenal that Read had on her freely. The only ways to telepathically share thoughts were to be a Jinchuuriki and share thoughts with the Tailed Beast or to be of Yamanaka clan and possess the clan's hidden techniques. Read clearly was neither of those things. She also didn't relay any message for Bonny to switch up her style, the Sharingan would've picked it up... Bonny was thinking and acting by herself, quite intelligently one might have added. She noticed patterns and signature moves in Hachiro's style and went around it by switching up her own style and timing. These were moves of a very skilled and intelligent warrior.</p>
      <p>Hachiro coughed out some blood and examined the blades stuck in his chest for a moment without removing them. The way they were stuck they let out a small handful of blood once in a while but if removed they could've really let the red juice loose. Hachiro needed some time and he would have had none if he let himself bleed out like that. These kunai blades launched off of the dispenser were also imbued with chakra separately, actively by Bonny or Read. That was why the Audra blade was launched out of his hands and why his chakra augmentations got completely torn up like cooking paper.</p>
      <p>Read and Bonny lunged forward, Bonny unleashing a barrage of hellfire from her dispensers and Read desperately tried to lop Hachiro's head off with her wide swings and overwhelming offense. Hachiro's hands slammed together as he felt his very finite chakra resources dipping as another water clone rose from a small jungle river nearby rushing to his air. The clone got riddled with kunai blades but it had greater endurance than a simple shadow clone, it was once Read completely shredded it to pieces with her blurry blades slashing the poor thing into a liquid fillet that the water clone met its end but by that point Hachiro had retreated into the depths of the forest and drawn the blade out from where it was stuck in, ready to continue fighting back.</p>
      <p>Hachiro took his blade and leaped up into the upper layers of the jungle. Running along the trees as he sheathed his blade and removed a kunai from his pouch, one of his hands ran by a combination of hand seals.</p>
      <p>"Fire Style: Rooster Flare" He chanted out breathing out a small tongue of flames that enveloped the steel of the kunai leaving the handle untouched. The Uchiha pulled out his other kunai stuck in his body and pressed his body against the tree feeling blood squirting out from the wound and running down his body and down onto the tree he was on. The man pressed the heated blade against his injuries creating a molten chunk of flesh, similar to a pinkish colored molten cheese in consistency, that completely sealed the wound but would leave a pretty nasty scar that would've needed a high-level medical ninja to remove.</p>
      <p>A feeling of weightlessness caught Hachiro unprepared as he felt the tree beginning to tumble down – Read must've found the tree he was on by seeing the blood running down it. It was fortunate that the Uchiha did not count on the tree for anything else but providing a temporary sanctuary for him to seal his own wounds on. Hachiro's hands went through another collection of hand seals in mid-fall.</p>
      <p>A strong sensation of burning pain interrupted his string of hand seals as the rogue felt a piercing pain in his shoulder – almost like hot glass driven under his flesh. Bonny's firing skills must've finally got to him... While Hachiro's fading consciousness looked to his side in mid-fall the man noticed that Bonny and Read switched weapons. Probably for the best having Bonny's crazy overgrown long hair in mind...</p>
      <p>Hachiro slammed into the ground hard. The man felt his hair beneath his body get sticky from the pool of blood behind his shoulder wound. This kunai was so precisely and masterfully imbued with chakra that it went right through his body without getting stuck. The man picked himself up and began crawling a bit further away, he needed time, a bit more time so that he could gather his thoughts and make a plan for properly fighting this woman back. She was making him have his hands full...</p>
      <p>Hachiro's eyes began to fade and his head started to feel dizzy. The man tore off a large chunk of his attire and hastily tied his wound up. Read opened fire upon the surrounding area trying to pin the Uchiha down or hit him with a lucky stray shot. The rogue knew it'd end up similarly like this but he rolled around causing some ruckus in the bushes just to cause a struggle. Hachiro felt like he could still fight, he had to still fight. He had to give this woman more of a fight. After all, he was fighting for his dream. He was fighting for his chance to live freely in the Archipelago without having to look behind his shoulder and dreading to see that man stalking him. In a way he was fighting for the fate of the entire world, that man was mad enough, a little more of a push past this point would've sent him way past the edge and then it'd be a pretty sour party for everyone...</p>
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<a name="section0210"><h2>210. Dancing With Pirates</h2></a>
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    <p>The fingers of Hachiro's mechanical puppet arm twitched emitting barely intelligible squeaks. The darned thing was busted up and cracked, a little bit more beating it into Read's chakra augmentations would've busted it into tiniest shatters. Slowly, to the degree where the Uchiha was unable to sense its flow, the puppet limb, borrowed from Read's ship, was sapping his chakra. The loss was minuscule really, not at all something to worry about. A civilian may have been troubled and exhausted for wearing the thing throughout the day but someone trained in managing chakra and building their inner pools up wouldn't even have noticed such minUscule losses. It wasn't the chakra spending aspect of the puppet limb that worried Hachiro, more the near busted state of it.</p><p>The Uchiha was having his hands full with the pirate captain. If once again he was left one handed he'd be crushed much faster than he'd run out of stamina normally. Still, it was a losing battle either way. Hachiro knew it for a long time but he was just not fond of either alternative: letting go of the battle and dying went against every instinct of self-preservation he had developed over the years and moving aside and letting Mana die would only make his death come later and incomparably more painfully, even more – more sacrilegiously. The madman was known for not respecting death or the dead. Hachiro's rest would not be eternal in that case...</p><p>"Your stolen arm looks pathetic. Matching its wearer I must add!" Read tried to mock the Uchiha, without a doubt she tried intimidating him and making him end this fight early by fleeing. She still must not have cared about the Uchiha that much and just wanted retribution from the Konoha kids that played her.</p><p>"Coming from a woman who has her sister literally stuck to her back this is rich..." Hachiro replied back stretching the squeaking fingers out. This was bad, the speed of his two-handed hand seals would've been greatly diminished just when he regained the ability to weave them again. One-handed seals rarely worked on high ranking techniques, the more complex the technique the less the probability it'd work.</p><p>A loud bang interrupted Hachiro's battle planning – a chakra imbued kunai pierced through the tree behind her. Slowly the large natural pillar of wood began toppling on top of the two. This was just a distraction, these two moved so astonishingly fast that a falling tree would have posed no threat. It may as well have been a turtle's pace.</p><p>Hachiro's body moved aside only to see Read moving in from the side. The Uchiha's eyes were too fast-tracking and analytical of every smallest happening on the battlefield for him not to notice the woman dashing in from the side.</p><p>"Tortuga Sword Style: Dance of Kali" Read announced the name of the technique as her blades attacked all at once, both Read and Bonny slashed at their opponent fast and precisely in lightning swift and wide-reaching strikes that left little to no chance for evasion. It was a total overwhelming of the Uchiha's Sharingan sensory inputs. Four slashes with trajectories so wide and all reaching and coming so fast that anyone would've taken at the very least a single deep and conclusive slash.</p><p>Hachiro's body got severed into several large chunks that then instantly turned into water and collapsed watering the jungle floor that the water clone was cut down on. It was a thing of technical beauty – weaving the hand seal for the Water Clone jutsu and then quickly substituting oneself with it. Everything transpired so fast that not even a skilled swordswoman striking at speeds that make a bolt of lightning look like a snail moving in tar was able to pick anything up at all.</p><p>Now was Hachiro's chance – the woman was occupied with her attack, her highly coordinated and synced up with her sister dance. Now that her momentum and body was invested fully into the attack was the rogue's opening. Hachiro's hands went through a tirade of hand seals. The mechanical puppet arm on the man's arm worked a couple of corks slow and fired off sparks emitting very troubling sounds that may have alerted the woman, not that any of it mattered.</p><p>"Water Style: Lernaean Dragon Jutsu" Hachiro chanted out as strong streams of water rose from the puddle the clone made upon its collapse as well as the multiple small rivers and streams nearby watering the rich jungle soil. Even a stream or two coming directly off of the shore of the ocean came into a round sphere of water in front of the Uchiha that quickly took shape of a dragon's head and fired itself at the open behind of Read.</p><p>With a scream of pain, the pirate captain was sent tumbling off her feet after the roaring waters collided with Bonny's desperate cross-shaped chakra imbued saber block. The pirate got sent crashing back through trees tearing down entire towering wooden structures just by getting tangled in their endless and thick vines. As an additional follow up to the attack the water did not scatter, however, instead of remaining static in its splashing in mid-air stage resembling an aquatic snowflake or a spiky sea urchin made entirely out of the water.</p><p>Out of the static sphere of water, additional eight water dragon waves formed rushing at Read. The woman finally managed to pick herself together and land her feet firmly on a rocky structure, kicking herself and Bonny off of it so hard that the rocky wall collapsed into smallest shatters. The woman rushed right past the chasing dragons of water slashing the waves as she passed them and blowing them up into splashes of water that finally settled down.</p><p>Read huffed out together with her opponent who launched such an incredible technique. It must've been greatly taxing at Hachiro's overall chakra reserves but the man still impressively enough stood on his feet even though one side of his body looked drawn to the ground.</p><p>Read's pouting lips changed into a teeth-grinding expression of anger, she swiped her blades to the side before forcefully sheathing them. The woman was soaking in water and carrying quite a large number of bruises and cuts from the technique and the debris she was crashed through. Both arms of Read, as well as Bonny, pulled out their kunai dispensers.</p><p>"Tortuga Sword Style: Dance of Asura" The woman mumbled under her own lips, a pronunciation which Hachiro's Sharingan was able to pick up just from the way her lips moved alerting the Uchiha to prepare for the woman's comeback attack. It was another one of her peculiar swordsmanship dances, she leaped onwards spinning in a pirouette and firing off in each and every direction.</p><p>Hachiro leaned down and witnessed that the rocks and trees that were supposed to provide him cover did no such thing. The woman's attack shred right through them making the cover explode into a hell of rocky and wooden shrapnel. Then there were all the stray kunai blades fired and the blades that bounced off of other blades changing their trajectory in mid-air – a classic projectile throwing technique.</p><p>While the Uchiha's Sharingan was able to register each and every shrapnel, every wooden splinter coming his way and every stray blade, hear and see every blade bouncing off of another and realize that his dash needed to change direction he was still unable to move fast enough to avoid every bit of damage. The blades were just too fast and numerous for his tired body to move out of the way, the rocks bashing into his bones busting them into dust were far too numerous and coming from every direction and the wooden splinters lodging into his flesh occupied his pain sensors too much making avoiding the rest of them almost impossible.</p><p>Hachiro collapsed on his knee but as he soon found out Read was far from finished with her attacks. The dance continued as both Read and Bonny pulled out blades and assaulted him with madly fast and precise thrusts coming from every direction. The Uchiha pulled out an explosive tag and slammed it to the ground, redirecting his weight and falling backward before he set him off and interrupted Read's technique and sent both of the opponents to different sides of the field.</p><p>The rogue's ribs were pulsing with pain and his lungs burnt up as he drew breath. Still, the fear of the madman's vengeance upon the world if the girl he admired for some reason died the Uchiha picked himself back on his knees and looked around. Breathing heavily and wiping blood and sweat from his face desperately trying to find his opponent. He was on his last legs, final stretches of his chakra pool able to take only several augmentations before giving in or one or two good techniques. His body was about to give in on him. Hachiro glanced at his trashed puppet arm and spat blood to the side.</p><p>"I need to give her everything and go down, no use prolonging this at this point..." He thought to himself forcing the broken and stiffened fingers of his puppet arm into the position that resembled the hand seal he needed.</p><p>"Water Clone technique..." He chanted out creating four water clones. Splitting what little chakra he had into four separate pieces. It was fine, they'd share their chakra input for using that final technique of glory. The magnum opus that would make him going out worthwhile. The last thing Hachiro ever wanted to be was a hero but technically he'd go out as one. He'd have rather lived more as a coward than died as a hero...</p><p>One of his clones smacked the back of Hachiro's head.</p><p>"You bastard, why are you just prancing around splitting our chakra?" He quarreled with the original. Technically they were extensions of his own mind and personality and they were just as lacking happiness of going out as heroes as the original was. Still, they were not made for combat, these clones were made for a singular jutsu after which they'd collapse. That was all. That made the clone technique a little lighter on how much chakra it took and how taxing the clones themselves were.</p><p>"Shut up and do what we have to!" Hachiro ordered beginning to weave hand seals. One of the clones was dedicated solely to adjusting the hand seals of Hachiro's original body's puppet arm while the clones all performed the same technique one-handed.</p><p>"Water Style: Idyll of Avalon!" Hachiro chanted out as each of the clones performed the water chakra infused shuriken barrage technique from before launching numerous barrages of shuriken infused heavily with water chakra. While technically it reduced their penetrating power the opponent's body would've had to spend more chakra on augmentation to compensate for the additional water chakra imbued on the weaponry. That made the technique more exhausting and damaging, more in the blunt way, to the opponent.</p><p>The multiplied barrage of shuriken directed at a wide arc left a wide clearing that soon made a small pond of water. Read and Bonny repurposed their arm position fully to deflect the oncoming water projectiles.</p><p>"Tortuga Sword Style: Dance of Aegis!" The woman shouted out loud as she and Bonny both spun their blades vertically forming two defensive spinning discs of bladework resembling a chakra infused shield that began deflecting the overwhelming onslaught of tools coming at her. One after the other the shuriken began falling on the ground and those thrown by clones dissipated in cloudy poofs whereas those thrown by Hachiro himself stayed. The water coming out of the imbued water chakra began accumulating faster and faster, each shuriken bashing at the defensive formation made such a deafening and powerful shockwave that the crater which Bonny and Read were in began enlarging and deepening. The woman had to activate the Art of Water Walking jutsu, a very primal and basic chakra control technique that was more of a training exercise than an actual technique to stay afloat.</p><p>Still, as powerful and rapid as Bonny and Read's defenses were they began skipping blows. The shuriken blew the swords out of the hands of the women and began pummelling hard and painfully against Read forcing the woman to clench her hands and cross them in front of her face to cover up from the full onslaught of damage coming at her. The woman stopped her water walking technique to sink under to avoid the overwhelming barrage but as the shuriken collided with one another they got sent into the water as well. Even underwater there was no escape.</p><p>Bubbles rose up from the pond combined with small stains of blood rising from where Bonny was. Hachiro didn't foster any hopes of having beaten his opponent. Those shuriken may have been strong enough to pierce through and destroy anything, no matter how dense and thick but they could've been blocked by an equivalent or stronger chakra defensive augmentation. That meant that by throwing enough chakra into it Read could've escaped with grazes and scratches. Still, she'd have spent a great deal of effort and that was what mattered. That for a single moment the woman was crapping her underwear that just maybe she'd not survive this...</p><p>Bonny and Read shot from the water and into the sky, farther than Hachiro could even see. She must've used some sort of technique to be flung off this high. Either that or she reached the very bottom of that manmade lake and kicked off of it to leap up properly from what seemed like ten meters deep, piercing tons of water to be blown off into the skies above.</p><p>"Tortuga Sword Style: Dance of Thor" She chanted, Hachiro's Sharingan tracked the woman's lips even all the way up there. She had made a clone that spun the four armed and legged fusion of sisters right down, piercing the air and the heavens themselves and making a strong gust that propelled up and down in a manner similar to a beam. Above it opened the clouds surrounding the area and parted them leaving a giant gaping hole that enlarged with each passing moment only to completely clear the skies of any visible area. On the lower reaches all the way to the ground it formed a powerful air pressure that locked anyone unfortunate to stand inside of it down with a seeming sensation of immense gravitational pull surpassing hundreds of thousands of g's with sheer air pressure alone.</p><p>Together with wiping away the clouds the air blast also cleaned out the signal sent from Read's ship. The one that attracted any friendly crews to assist, a sort of SOS signal for pirates. The entire symbol that appeared to be made from sky clogging smoke got blasted away and cleansed. If anyone was coming to the island they should've had to have gotten the direction and the approximate coordinates of the signal to follow it now. By now the signal had formed a heart with two swords shaped around it and a lonely otter endlessly running around diagonally. All of that artistic flare wiped out in an instant.</p><p>With her blindingly fast fall from the skies, Read rushed down onto the seemingly paralyzed Uchiha. Despite the nearly impossible to humanly determine speed of the woman, to the Sharingan wielder, she moved so slowly... It was like the man could see his final moments and sense them out, he saw the woman move every inch, cover every last meter of her skyfall. It would've been a motherlode of all aerial sword techniques.</p><p>The red Sharingan in Hachiro's eyes flared momentarily paralyzing Read's movements and forcing her to slam into the ground face first just a couple of meters away from where her target was. Further away pirates that were paralyzed by genjutsu previously started to pick themselves together in a sleepy rage clinging their blades and shaking fists at Hachiro. The Uchiha fell to the ground with one of his eyes closing down in pain. It's been a while since he used his Sharingan so extensively and while he was born with the eye and did not have it transplanted, which was known to cause immense chakra taxing on the body of the receiver, it was still beginning to wear him out.</p><p>As expected Bonny seemed to be able to aid Read in recovering from genjutsu and the woman stood up and cracked her knuckles and neck before picking her swords back up off the ground.</p><p>Hachiro looked at the handful of pirates that looked bloodthirsty and ready to beat him to a pulp. Read dismissed them with a gesture and ordered them to return to the ship instead. The woman was a little pleased that she got more of her men released from genjutsu and that they were in a somewhat able condition to take care of a ship.</p><p>It hurt... Everywhere and everything. The rogue knew that he won't be able to move, even before, feeling crushed by close to a million g's of pure air pressure in his worn out and tired state completely kicked the breath out of his lungs. He didn't expect to do this good. Looking at Read she was bleeding, cut up and bruised. She wasn't doing well herself and just the smallest stretch could've actually changed the entire outcome and yet...</p><p>"What's so funny?" Read asked swinging her own blade up to Hachiro's throat, while the woman approached the rogue couldn't even pick himself off his knees, remaining in his undignified and humiliating position of kneeling in front of the captain.</p><p>"I actually expected to get trounced worse than this. You really had trouble with this, didn't you? Big and mighty pirate captain..." The Uchiha thundered out a powerful laughter from the depths of his chest. His Sharingan closed revealing pitch black tired eyes in its place.</p><p>"Don't overrate yourself, I've only shown you the side of my skill and power that everyone knows. You've pushed me far for this percentage but I am still holding back a great deal - a much more risky power-up." The captain smiled before raising her blade up in the air and preparing for the execution strike.</p><p>The woman's face bent over from a strong blow right in the center of her face. Her body got sent flailing comically back rolling and smashing through trees and rocks until it fell into the ocean waves and began sinking down.</p><p>"I suppose this is a lucky shot then..." Shimo commented on Meiko's punch as the young blacksmith made highly offensive gestures and improper faces towards the spot of the ocean where the pirate captain got sent.</p><p>"Don't expect me to help much..." Kouta huffed out. The medical ninja had just finished the healing process and felt completely drained after it, still, he joined the battle together with everyone else. The team went through everything they faced, the craziest odds together. They would have to face Read and Bonny together as well, no matter how tired or beat individual members felt.</p><p>"I guess Mana's stupid kindness worked out in the end, huh, Scaredy-sensei?" Shimo sarcastically tossed back a remark back at his beaten and kneeling sensei who just handed the Audra alloy sword back to the Yuki swordsman.</p><p>"It would appear so... Had she not prioritized your lives over hers I'd be dead meat," the man admitted.</p><p>"You did great, old man, now you can go and be a scaredy cat again... We'll take it from here." Meiko gave the man a thumb up and a playful grin.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0211"><h2>211. Take It Over From Here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just barely noticeably enough to track, Kouta's fingers moved to his pouch. This clash with the pirates emptied his pouch and medical bags up quite nicely, giving a handful of medical tools to Mana so that she patched herself up on the run didn't help either. The boy removed a blue round candy-like looking pill and tossed it into his mouth cracking it with his teeth and carefully chewing it. It was a Chakra Resource Medical Pill that he ate. After spending so much chakra treating his friends he needed a little boost.</p><p>There were countless different food pills and medical pills that the medical ninja used. Food pills were usually just toned down and less risky versions of medical pills. Due to the higher risk of aftereffects of a medical pill ruining the mission the medical pills were usually prescribed by a medical ninja and usually all intake of them was strictly managed by the squad's medical ninja. This was a rare occasion where the medical pill was slightly less dangerous and carried fewer risks than food pills.</p><p>"Are you gonna be OK?" Meiko asked turning back at Kouta who was still taking deep breaths and wearing the black rings and bags around his eyes and the pale skin proudly.</p><p>"Just ate a chakra boosting food pill, it accelerates my chakra rejuvenation rate from a day or two to an hour or two. As long as I don't take another within two to four days and have some time for some of my chakra to return I'll be fine," the young ninja confirmed his condition.</p><p>"In the meantime stay behind and do some supporting from long range, don't give her a chance to murder you," Shimo suggested.</p><p>A powerful blast of purple and red rotating streams of bursting chakra flares blew out from the ocean. The rotation of these jets emitted an intense shockwave around its center creating an everlasting barrier of shockwaves that continuously grew larger and larger splitting a large crater in the salty waters.</p><p>"I didn't think she'd still have that much chakra..." Shimo mumbled out to himself mostly, his words did carry some semblance of sense. Read was well worn out by her battle with Hachiro and the continuous injuries she had sustained throughout it. The fact that her body was so greatly injured, cut up, beaten and bruised while she still had such immense chakra resources left could have only meant that she was holding it back this whole time.</p><p>Read's body surfaced slowly rising over the surface of the water as the shockwave began to allow the split waters to gather below it, therefore, rising the bubble of concussive force separating it. The purple and blazing fire red streams began to come closer and closer together before they made a singular translucent pillar of chakra, almost like an aura surrounding Read.</p><p>The sight of the three ninja observing their emerging opponent moved more to the half-exposed chest of the woman as her busted clothing offered poor protection from curious eyes and yet the nature of their stares had nothing to do with naughty thoughts. It was more intimidating than erotic as a glowing hieroglyph meaning "Release" began glowing on Read's exposed belly and suddenly the bodies of Read and Bonny began to merge together. The merging only stopped at Bonny's head which remained dangling on the back of Read's lower neck area.</p><p>"Meiko, you're the sealing expert in our team and that looks like a seal, any idea what happened?" Kouta looked at the troubled redhead who just shrugged.</p><p>"It looked to me like a Limiter Seal. Some ninja get so absorbed into their battles that they seal off parts of their chakra in case they forget to leave some for survival needs. The "Release" hieroglyph must mean that the seal is released..." the blacksmith theorized.</p><p>"She must've sealed off her sister's chakra so that the two didn't mingle together making it harder to control her own chakra. This seal release must've opened the floodgates and let their chakra mix together" Shimo deduced. "Let's see just how much chakra she'd regained and how useful it'll be for her injured body!"</p><p>With those words, the Yuki swordsman quickly weaved some hand seals and slammed his fist to the ground.</p><p>"Ice Style: Ice Pillars!" he chanted out the name of his technique as triangular almost cone-shaped pillars formed in his path leading up to Read. The woman weaved and dashed aside sliding over the water graciously using the Art of Water Walking jutsu.</p><p>Angered by the assault Read dashed into all three youths, the woman thrust her sword forward in a wild stab.</p><p>"Gatling Thrust!" she shouted out as another arm appeared right above her arm wielding another saber, just like Bonny used to when the two were separate. The pair of arms began rotating around each other like an actual Gatling gun creating a drill like thrusting attack.</p><p>Right before Read's attack finalized the shape it took Meiko reached for her boots touching the seals on them. Jets of chakra flames fired out off of them launching the young ninja onwards and attacking Read from behind. A strong kick right to the back made Read flinch out of her attack right after it formed giving Shimo some time to move aside from a much less dangerous and conclusive attack.</p><p>The woman may have gained more chakra and new abilities to mesh with her sister and readjust her position on Read's body but the pirate captain's body was still injured and getting injured even more. The three genin felt the possibility of victory right from the start of the battle. Kouta did his best to support the team rushing right at Read and Bonny but dashing aside right before stepping within reaching distance to the woman. The young man distracted her attention and lightly tapped a couple of areas he passed leaving explosive notes that soon began to get covered up by the sand and the remains of wood that he rose up with his speedy movement.</p><p>Read flipped over her front and switched her focus onto Meiko while in mid the woman began kicking with a stomping motion at the redhead blacksmith while the captain's legs multiplied by letting Bonny's legs branch out and off of the flesh of Read's own. Forming a bombarding and blinding assault of stomping legs.</p><p>"Gatling Stomp!" Read yelled out.</p><p>Meiko shouted in pain as the immense force from the woman's kicks crushed her into the sand and the endless barrage of relentless and astonishingly powerful kicks began kicking her deeper and deeper into the ground leaving a wide hole inside of which sand and water began to fall into. The captain didn't even fall into the hole after the crater began to deepen and widen up, she just continued to stomp erratically while the blasting airwaves coming from her kicks continued to keep the woman afloat and crash at Meiko with half of the kick's strength.</p><p>Shimo's hands reached closer to his chest and tensed up, in a combination of muscle tensing and relaxing he flashed through the combination of hand seals formed in less than a measly moment in time. A howling gust of wind came into from the sea bashing violently against Read's side and attempting to break her focus, it did not work, the woman continued to kick and stomp at the blackening crater that had extended who knew how deep.</p><p>The gust of wind was completely freezing, so freezing that snow and slightly larger than usual icicles began following it and piercing right through the captain's flesh and skin. The frigid absolute zero temperature began to slow down her movements to the point where the woman could no longer kick fast enough to sustain her floating and all the shockwave bombardment. The captain was forced to descend firmly nearby the endless abyss she had created.</p><p>The very moment that Read's feet touched the ground they were frozen. The woman's entire body began to freeze up more and more. Shimo launched himself at the frosting and completely overwhelmed by the unbelievable and unearthly colds woman, his hands reached for the Audra blade and that skin tingling and heart freezing steel squeaking noise signaled the pinnacle of his drawing techniques coming.</p><p>"Ice Style: Ice Wolf Rampage!" Shimo roared out feeling the pressure that the chakra cost of the technique placed upon his body. The blizzard continued to rage and cut open new wounds in Read's body, an icy wolf rose right above Shimo's body materializing itself and being shaped by the user's chakra shape manipulation and being sustained by the raging blizzard, thrusting its claws an immeasurable number of times at the freezing woman.</p><p>Read screamed out as Shimo passed her by slashing at her while the ice wolf with its solid icy paws slashed her a great number of times. An immense explosion of the resulting shockwaves and airwaves clashing together rose up forcing the seemingly lifeless body of the woman to lift off into the air and rotate like a ragdoll tossed around by the eruptions of chakra leftovers around her. Just like that the absolute zero storm dissolved into nothingness after getting sliced down like a colossal loaf of bread.</p><p>Shimo sheathed his blade and turned around to look at the woman. Pools of blood began gathering beneath her body. It had to be over, his drawing slash alone would've been strong enough to finish anyone of the chuunin rank off, having in mind that Chuunin frequently sparred with people of world-breaking strength it was no small feat. Then there was his wolf comprised of pure ice style chakra, the bloodline of his clan forming a solid and hard as steel avatar of frost that cut and bit with both its fangs and claws so fast that no one yet in history could perceive the exact number of times it attacked. This was not a technique he invented, swordsmanship users of his clan used it before him but it was a technique Shimo made his own!</p><p>Overwhelming pain! A loud screech killed all of the sounds of the rushing waves or the seagulls around them. Shimo coughed up blood as the overwhelming sense of pain completely turned off his consciousness. His mind faded away before he could realize that Read had jumped off the ground and thrust her blade at him, together with Bonny using their "Gatling Thrust" technique amped up to eleven. A technique that thrust so fast with such ravaging force that it created a drilling airwave passing by anything in its path. Shimo's body was lifted off the ground and sent down on his back.</p><p>Read huffed, she was on her last legs but holding her own. "You idiot. Your own sword drawing technique is so fast that you didn't see Bonny's hands appear from my abdomen and block your sword strike. That ice wolf of yours hurt like hell but at least I didn't get cut in half..."</p><p>"Shimo! You stupid idiot! Get back on your feet, I just healed you!" Kouta yelled out trying to taunt his friend, still unaware of the exact condition of his friend.</p><p>Read coughed up blood, her body was covered with blood to the point where she appeared like one large blood demon standing in front of her opponents. Her body was completely covered with shallow scars and cuts that she managed to survive thanks to the newly released Bonny's chakra augmenting Read's body. The ice wolf really did its damage but it didn't finish the job, they let their guards down too fast!</p><p>"Man, shut up!" Shimo's voice finally broke the eerie silence. "Do you have any idea how this hurt?! Shit, right through my chakra augmentation!" he cursed.</p><p>"Impossible! The airwave of my "Gatling Hell Arrow" is powerful enough to pierce anything within its reach traveling well beyond Earth's orbit, well past the Moon even!" Read screamed out in disbelief.</p><p>Shimo sat up on his butt and wiped the blood off his mouth giving her a crimson daredevil smile.</p><p>"You were too messed up by my ice wolf to aim right, you missed my heart by like a mile. Ninja got stabbed and impaled and messed up bad all the time. Next time wait for your eyesight to line up straight before shooting..." he taunted the woman.</p><p>"Your body is at the limit, Read, please surrender already. If you end up dying of your injuries it won't matter how much chakra you have left. Your chakra augmentations can only sustain a dying body for that long. If you die, Mana-chan will feel bad for you and I don't want that" Kouta shouted out trying to reason with the pirate captain.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess that silly friend of ours really did chance us a bit... Normally I don't hurt nice ladies and actually look out for them, but I'd have never shed a tear for you if I'd have never met Mana. You're done, give up!" Shimo shouted out clutching at the fist-sized hole at his abdomen surrounded by crushed bones all around it. His chakra augmentations would sustain him for a little while but it'd be for the best if he didn't fight. Losing focus on sustaining one's own life would've easily lead to the wound killing him.</p><p>"Yeah, Mana had probably already found the Box by now and maybe even regained her chakra. I sure would've wished to hold it in my hands but... Soon there'll be another ass kicking genin joining our ranks" Meiko nodded staring at Read with a serious expression on her face.</p><p>The woman spat some blood aside and grunted in pain before erupting in a wild fit of laughter. That creepy and disturbing laughter of a dying person that then ceased just as eerily as it started.</p><p>"Sure... You messed me up badly. But just because my body is dying doesn't mean that both of us are. I'll just have to make Bonny take it over from here while I feast on your chakra and heal" Read continued to clutch at her eye-gouging ridiculous wounds as she laughed as hard as her state allowed her. The same jets of purple and fiery red chakra erupted from the woman's body, the "Release" hieroglyph began to glow and other hieroglyphs began running down her beaten and bloodied body in lines. Enough to form an entire poem...</p><p>A hand erupted from the glowing hieroglyph. The hand then slammed at Read's chest and began pushing it, almost like forcing more of something through a hole. All of a sudden Bonny's entire head burst from the released seal, then the other hand which then began to force the entire body out of the seal.</p><p>"l'Ollonais fought hunter ninja and marines for days on end and was attacked by the worst of the worst. I'd be a fucking letdown of the greatest crew in the world to die like a filthy dog now! Take it over from here, Bonny!" Read screamed out in pain as, finally, Bonny's entire body appeared from the seal with only a small patch of Bonny's skin being connected to Read's chest still. This Bonny was different – larger, better formed and more athletic looking, she was covered in blood like she had just finished swimming in a bloody pool but then the color just stayed on the woman's skin as the blood all disappeared falling into sand-like dust onto the ground beneath her feet.</p><p>Read's body began to wither, slowly the injured and battered pirate captain became frail with her crimson flaring hair covering up the woman's face entirely as she began resembling a ghoul who had just risen from its grave. A smile covered Bonny's face as both women lunged forward. They were attacking Kouta – the least injured and yet the most tired member of the group.</p><p>It made no sense for the two to attack the least busted up opponent, did they not wish to win? Kouta was so unprepared for being the target that he not only couldn't focus properly on perceiving the movements of the two sisters, not that he could, even if he did, having his current chakra level in mind. Nor could the youth focus on properly defending himself. Meiko dashed in between the attacking women and deflected their attacks, the blacksmith used her armored plates to defend against the attacks but they were entirely inefficient, the young woman just grunted and flinched in pain as the blades opened up wounds easily busting through her armor.</p><p>The two were different, more ferocious and almost like their remaining chakra was evenly split amongst the two. Having Read's injuries in mind that was probably why the two weren't able to just kill them before they were even seen moving as normally Read's abilities surpassed those of the squad of three by far. This wasn't an actual power up – the speed and strength of the two downgraded but their fighting style became even more aggressive and ferocious. They didn't maim or dismember with a cut nor did they kill instantly, they left shallow cuts because they were so impatient to attack again instead of committing to an attack.</p><p>Meiko tsked with her tongue and touched her boots letting the chakra flares send her forward and tackling both of the sisters carrying them off on Meiko's shoulders. The blacksmith turned up to the skies and after lifting off as high as she could she gracefully maneuvered herself in a loop of death before slamming right into the crater that Read's kicking previously created. Meiko could feel the immense heat before, she could feel the magma so close to her the last time so she counted on the thin earthly remaining layers to crumble.</p><p>Both Meiko and the two sisters submerged into searing hot sludge below firing off a gigantic gazer of magma bursting from the amazing body-slam into it. For a moment longer the ground continued to shake more and more. Meiko must've been fighting the sisters or at least committed to punching them some more while completely submerged. A couple of more gazers began to open up throwing arcs of magma out of them. Kouta ran towards Shimo and moved him out of the way because the swordsman was just too injured to move out of the way himself. It would've only taken a small push in a battle to incapacitate the swordsman.</p><p>The bodies of the two sisters burst through the mantle and out into the sky. As they fell down Meiko with her ruined armor and singed clothes followed. The three appeared to be almost evenly matched and luckily enough it looked like the sisters had lost their swords in the struggle beneath the mantle.</p><p>"Go, you're holding us back, do your thing" Bonny commanded the other sister speaking for the first time, her voice was much more sounding like that of a little boy, tomboyish and playful yet with a peculiar feminine flare that still made it obvious that it was not a little boy but instead a woman sounding like one that was speaking.</p><p>Meiko tried to intercept the freefalling sister that was slung and thrown at Kouta's and Shimo's general direction but Bonny occupied Meiko's attention by trying to overwhelm her with a barrage of punches and kicks. Luckily enough while Bonny was skilled at hand to hand, she was a much better swordswoman than a martial artist so Meiko was easily able to hold her own, despite the fact that she missed one sister rushing at the tired medical ninja and the injured swordsman.</p><p>Kouta clenched his fist tighter, he felt a semblance of his former strength seeping back, not enough to make a real difference but just enough... The young man flipped over his front and slammed his foot against the sister's head driving her into the ground. Only now did the medical ninja get to see this strange technique of the two, whatever they did, dyed their skins completely red and made their eyes glow with the light blue shade of the typical chakra color. It also made their hair turn black and change into a more hedgehog-like look than an actual hairdo.</p><p>Right before the two hit the ground Meiko finally found an opening and broke Bonny's guard sending a kick to her jaw making the sister rotate and fly sideways like a ragdoll. Just as the blacksmith's foot touched the ground she chased after the sister but right before it looked like the redhead was almost within the reach for a good kidney punch the sister blurred and disappeared from sight.</p><p>"Shit!" Meiko cursed throwing her feet forward and forcing the chakra jets to change her direction a full 180 and back at where Bonny was rushing to her sister's aid.</p><p>Kouta's eyes wandered off and onto the oncoming threat, it was too late, there would've been no way that he could move to react in time given his current chakra level. Shimo's figure dashed in front shoving his sheathed sword right into the chin of the demonic looking sister and throwing her into the air.</p><p>"Thanks..." Kouta smiled, "Try not to get hit again" he added.</p><p>"I know, Mom!" Shimo grinned maliciously trying to bite his friend verbally. Despite his painful injury the young swordsman managed to interfere just in time.</p><p>"Who could've thought the two would still give us trouble, after the crazy battle she and Hachiro had..." Kouta grinned looking with surprise at the two sisters picking each other up off the ground.</p><p>"We're having trouble... We need to use that! We need to infect them!" Bonny shouted out angrily at her injured sister who kept on bleeding out onto the sand and barely manage to pick herself up. It appeared that some semblance of Read's past injuries were still maintained in this form.</p><p>Read only nodded while the two picked themselves up and took an offensive fighting stance meanwhile Meiko finally rejoined her own team and prepared to once again give the two sisters something to think about.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0212"><h2>212. The Devil's Parasite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The squad took all the sweet time of a brief cooldown between the sisters' attacks to discuss the flow of the battle. It was certainly much tougher than they expected it to be. After that clash with Hachiro, everyone just assumed that Read and Bonny would be done. Who could've known that they would have so many tricks up their sleeve and such refined mastery over their combined bodies? Reshaping their position, then even splitting completely and functioning as two separate bodies...</p><p>"Scaredy-guy is gone..." Meiko noted after taking the luxury of a brief glance.</p><p>"Must've wandered off somewhere safer, good for us, he won't be a potential target," Kouta replied breathing a little easier.</p><p>"No. Those two are definitely trying something. Something big..." Shimo grunted clutching at his wound. Kouta had the option of healing it but it'd have completely drained what little reserves he had regained up to now. It'd render him from a potential combatant to a helpless exhausted weak link. As long as Shimo could at the very least fend off for himself the two would've agreed that keeping the wound the way it was would've been the best option.</p><p>"Yeah, I don't like this sudden transformation one bit..." Kouta agreed with a nod, "I mean why would these two withhold such an ace from Hachiro? She'd have beaten him much easier using all these crazy moves?"</p><p>"Because she thinks something about these techniques is risky. Both of these changes in her body must have a significant purpose. The first burst of chakra and fusion with her sister must serve as a short-term boost, something to use when there's absolutely no choice because molding two different chakra into one system makes controlling it problematic. This second transformation... It's... Different. They're not fighting openly, almost like they're trying to do something, this one's risky because it exposes both sisters to danger. If Read uses this move she risks losing her sister for good instead of having her close, her intelligence also seems to degrade to instinctual dribble." Shimo attempted to analyze this transformation.</p><p>All of a sudden the bodies of the two sisters moved forward, blurring in and out of perception the two tried to deceitfully sneak up on the young ninja aiming at Meiko. They must've switched up their strategies again. Bonny lunged forward with a strike, Meiko ducked under it and then rolled backward avoiding the wrist spikes as the sister turned her arm trying to slash at Meiko's face using the bony red spikes on her wrists.</p><p>The two demonic sisters leaped forward and backward, zigzagging with each other and cross, slashing Meiko as the two switched together but the blacksmith was fast enough to lean out of the way of the blades they tried opening her up with. A couple of weak punches and kicks did land raising the battle into the air.</p><p>"Above you!" Shimo warned Meiko at the very last moment where the blacksmith just barely managed to look up and cross her arms to block the punch from above aimed at the back of her head slamming Meiko into the jungle ground toppling a couple of trees.</p><p>"They've switched their strategy again!" Kouta shouted out in frustration. He was agitated that a transformation that appeared to diminish one's intelligence still had the pirate captain hold secrets in her fighting style from the ninja.</p><p>"No. It's the same... They just want Meiko out of commission. Must be because she always butts into their attacks standing in their way." Shimo shook his head observing Meiko angered comeback flailing her fists since her armor with all of the seals was broken or molten off during the dip in the stiffer mantle before.</p><p>"They seemed to prioritize me before, though," the medical ninja noted, "It's crazy, they're tired and underpowered, why would they target the least injured member?"</p><p>Shimo looked down at a puddle of black as tar puddle of gooey blood. Whatever this strange transformation was it transformed the entire bodies of the sisters.</p><p>"Unless... It's exactly what they want! They need their target with as little injuries as possible – they intend to heal off of your own life force!" Shimo realized shouting out loud enough for Meiko to hear.</p><p>Bonny smacked Read at the back of the sister's head hard enough to open up a grievous wound that splattered the black goo in a wide arc farther away.</p><p>"See!? Now they know what we're up to! Now we'll never land the blow we need! This Yuki is as smart as his master" the pirate managed to both commend Shimo and belittle her own sister at the same time.</p><p>"I see, so that's why you've slowed down. Whatever you intend to use to leech life off of Kouta with to regenerate your sister must require conscious effort, an intense concentration which is why you can either fight with wild speed or slow down when you wish to set off your technique." Shimo smiled finally seeing through the sisters' plan and realizing the increasing odds of victory.</p><p>"True, true... But don't fret, we'll wear you out and hit you eventually. That is all we need, a single concentrated and focused hit. Then our bodies can infect you like a virus, we'll become one as our cells absorb your very essences, your whole life force slowly and painfully on a molecular level. You inflicted great pain upon my sister, but you will pay it all back!" Bonny shouted out followed by a mad laugh afterward.</p><p>"Hmph. Surely you do realize that now that we know your intentions we won't let you hit us with those kinds of blows. The only way you can match us is if you fight at full speed. Time is also against you because soon Mana will set off the Box and return at full strength, also in an hour or so Kouta's chakra will return. You're done, get back to Read's body!" Shimo smiled, finally, he was beginning to see the end of this intense battle. Mana's gamble may have just paid off in the end, after all, pirates may not have the chance to get their hands on Audra alloy shards after all.</p><p>Bonny just hissed with an inhuman voice pointing her wrist blades at Shimo's general direction and showing her newly grown fangs. The woman's skin began covering with sharp spikes, same with Read. They were beginning to take an even stranger shape still, one more like a mold of a virus cell and a human. The faces of the women faded away as their skins became covered with a thick protective spiky shell and the black sharp spiked hair they wore broke through and erected walls of spikes all over their bodies. Then a crack opened up at the central facial area where now only thick greyed out dull and faceless space was, red bursts of light revealed odder processes still transpiring on the inside.</p><p>"Careful, they must've prepared their technique for use, don't get hit, we don't yet know if their jutsu has an antidote of some sort" Kouta ground his teeth preparing for an attack.</p><hr/><p>Mana breathed heavily walking the endless steps of the pyramid. She was here. At the peak of this structure must've laid her salvation, the object of everyone's desires for it granted them all. The Box of Ultimate Bliss, the artifact that materialized one's own dreams. The thoughts of regaining her identity kept the magician going, only they kept Mana on her feet after such a grueling and bloody run through the jungle and a seemingly endless climb. The girl tripped up and looked down to where she came from just barely managing not to topple up and roll down the steps.</p><p>There was a streak of blood where she went. The wounds she had bandaged haphazardly must've still bled through the bandages and left a faint track of blood. Maybe this was even better. A testament to what Mana was willing to give up, what she was willing to offer in return for fixing this all. She caused this madness, she wasn't sure if Hachiro was able to fight the pirates off but it would've been irresponsible of her to just fulfill her wish, would it not be?</p><p>Before the magician reached for the final step pulling her body over it and standing back up she realized that now that she was closer than ever to the Box she had no idea what she was going to do. She was at a dilemma, whether to use the Box for what she wished to use it for, to begin with, or to ask for her mistakes to be fixed. This dilemma tore her up from inside. Maybe she'd be able to help her friends fight the pirates off once her chakra was brought back. She had learned a lot as a civilian, she basically picked up enough tricks to fight superhumanly strong warriors as a normal civilian, once her chakra returned she'd be much stronger than she previously was...</p><p>Then again, it was arrogant to assume she'd be able to even the odds. Especially when Mana didn't know what the odds were in the first place...</p><p>"I wish you'd have had the chance to hold it in your hands, Meiko." Mana smiled to herself looking at the narrow passageway at the top of the pyramid. It was a small point of entry, the tip of the pyramid was lifted off and held up by ancient looking columns.</p><p>And yet... Mana saw nothing out of the ordinary, she looked around and saw no altar or nothing to stand out, no boxes or other pricey artifacts. No treasure at all nor any bodies to be sealed off. This made no sense, it didn't frighten Mana one bit. Structures like this were not built in vain. There had to be some use, some point to this place if it was manmade. The Box was here, Mana just couldn't feel it! She knew it, she could feel it.</p><p>A strange feeling of fear took her over. An all-conquering desire to bolt, get out of here and just survive. Yes. An overwhelming feeling of a wish to live sparked up in Mana's heart as an only flicker of flame in an all-encompassing shroud of darkness which was present in this place. It was an ancient self-preservation mechanism. The evil that was present in this place was so ancient and so evil and reviled by the most ancient people that it instilled a generational mechanism of fear within the very human DNA. Every man, woman or child stepping onto these stones would've been taken over by fear, such was the very nature of man. To fear this place or rather something hidden inside it.</p><p>And yet the fear told Mana that there was more to it, more to this place than she was lead to assume. The magician stepped onwards and further into the darkness removing a card from her pocket and shaking it in the air, as it contacted with air particles the card lit up like a torch. Mana pointed it at several points of interest before realizing that there was nothing in this darkness – nothing but ancient history.</p><p>"No... NO!" she shouted out beginning to throw a tantrum but then the ground left her feet. Mana realized that she was standing on absolutely nothing and just her reaction catching the ledge she slipped off of saved her from plummeting into obscurity and dying alone, forgotten and afraid in all of this primal fear inciting darkness. The girl let go of the card letting it fall down and down and down. Then it hit something. There was surface below, black and... Beautiful. Alluring even. Attracting Mana to let go, plummet and dye that onyx beauty with her blood, give it color and make it even more beautiful!</p><p>"Wait... What?" she suddenly realized the madness beginning to loom in her mind. "This place... It's just... Evil." Mana realized pulling herself up and looking down at the slowly diminishing flame at least a dozen of floors below her. Mana's took out more cards and swiped them in the air, setting them ablaze and letting them fall before removing a pair of binoculars out of her bag and looking down.</p><p>What she saw made her heart jump up and down in both grandeur and absolute joy. A demon head engraving was present on what seemed to be the floor in that abyss. The magician knew that sight, that same illustration she saw in the history books recounting the numerous appearances of the Box in human history. The walls of the Box each had several of these demon heads showing their ugly mugs and those detestable fangs to any traveler who stumbled onto the Box of Ultimate Bliss.</p><p>"So this pyramid was built surrounding the Box... My God, it's so large!" Mana spoke to herself. "The Box appeared or was moved to this island and so that it didn't attract attention a pyramid was built around it and whoever moved it here must've known that this island didn't appear on any maps."</p><p>Then another scary thought came up – why all this secrecy? The quest for the Box began from scrolls in the Forest of Death of the Fire Country detailing its nature and existence. Then the tracks lead to the Wind Country and the desert ruins where the sphere was. Hundreds of years ago the country where the most skilled musicians were would've been Kirigakure of the Water Country and the Tako's Reach was built equally far from both Kirigakure and Kumogakure of the Land of Lightning.</p><p>Centuries ago traveling through all these locations would've been even more dangerous – the countries were constantly at war as none of Fourth's peace decrees were yet signed. To expect someone to be able to convince all of those countries to allow someone to pass and quest for the Box in their territory... It was as close to impossible as it got. Such a man was either never born or a legendary hero whom every country trusted. Such secrecy would've only been used to protect against a terrible evil, that and all this darkness Mana feels inside this pyramid and close to this Box... Just what is this thing?</p><p>"Just how will I get down there? And, more importantly... Should I even get down there?" Mana wondered.</p><hr/><p>Meiko continued to throw shuriken and kunai avoiding the strikes of the sisters. Sometimes one of them split off from the group and tried attacking Kouta or Shimo but Meiko quickly intercepted them. The blacksmith got sick of her ineffectual long range attacks, the ninja tools just bounced off of the thick armored spiky shell. Meiko leaped off the ground and pointed her foot at Read.</p><p>"Sorry, Mana, I'm borrowing your move! Spear Kick!" she shouted out slamming her foot into Read's shell. A splash of blood fired out of Meiko's thighs and gut as the thin spikes extended to four times their total length and pierced through Meiko's legs and her abdomen. The girl grunted in pain and coughed up some blood before attempting to force the spikes out and flipping back on her feet.</p><p>"Heh, heh, heh..." a mischievous laughter emanated in the girl's mind as suddenly the spike began disappearing and Read's body began blurring out, stretching like a spaghetti before being absorbed inside Meiko's body completely. The girl screamed out in pain as her spine began to feel like it was being pulled outside her body. The blacksmith collapsed on her knees and began bashing the ground beneath wildly from the pain until her knuckles and hands bloodied up.</p><p>With a heart-stopping bone cracking sound Read's head began to emerge from Meiko's back, dangling helplessly almost as if she was always supposed to be fused to the girl's body.</p><p>Bonny's husk crunched and twitched creepily.</p><p>"I see... So you've chosen a more worn out vessel? Oh well, after we suck her juices out nothing's stopping us from killing the others..." thoughts materialized inside Meiko head. The sisters must've had some mental connection with each other and now that Read was inside Meiko's body and mind the redhead was functioning as a make-shift receiver.</p><p>"Get out of my body!" Meiko screamed out in the air. Bashing her head against the roots of the trees and the stumps below her, grinding them into floury sawdust upon each impact.</p><p>"Gladly, after I take your life force" Read's voice appeared in Meiko's mind as if Meiko herself would've thought of it in her invader's voice.</p><p>Meiko felt her very cells being slowly drained. Nausea was forcing her breakfast, second breakfast, and all four lunches out from her stomach, her bones all felt like they were being slowly broken into billions of pieces and she felt a horrendous fever taking over as her body attempted to kill the invading virus.</p><p>"Meiko! What sort of a jutsu is this!?" Shimo grunted out in frustration that despite all the good-looking odds things still hit the shitter.</p><p>"Has to be some exotic clan technique. It acts like a bloodline, one these two are very adept at" Kouta noted attempting to approach Meiko but Bonny's husk just blurred and dashed in between them and the struggling friend. She couldn't speak at the state she was in but the intention was clear – stay back from the regeneration source and wait your turn or die fast.</p><p>Kouta clenched his fists together, he felt a semblance of his past strength running through his veins but it definitely wasn't enough to put up a competent fight. Neither was it for Shimo, he was just one good hit away from passing out and then just a push away from dying. Angry Kouta screamed out in the air. Letting all of his anger, frustration, and despair out.</p><p>"Is that my whiner son? Whining as usual as his ass is kicked by some losers?" Kouta's cry of despair was broken by a familiar voice. As both Shimo and the young Juugo lifted their heads in the air they noticed a familiar hooded figure floating in the air, the man removed his hood revealing wild orange hair that spiked up behind his head leaning into an upwards curve. The man's buff arms broke through the cover of his raggedy cape. He floated in the air on jets emitting chakra bursts from his feet, the man's legs were reformed into literal chakra cannons.</p><p>"Father..." Kouta spoke up in surprise.</p><p>"Yeah, we definitely needed more of this guy in our lives" Shimo hissed angrily at the man whose allegiance was tough to predict as he switched from a friend to an enemy in a finger snap.</p><p>Meiko screamed out in pain feeling more of her actual life force being sucked away. At this point, Read must've regained quite a handful of her strength back. Definitely enough to stand her own and beat the kids.</p><p>"Please... Get away from me!" Meiko screamed out. "They want you now! You're the least injured of all!" she tried to warn everyone.</p><p>"Oh, don't mind me..." Kusagoro locked his arms crossing them on his chest and dismissively laughing out, "I'm not gonna interfere, this is my son's fight and if he can't save his friends – he doesn't deserve them. Try to attack me though, and I'll obliterate you in a femtosecond, you spiky bitches!"</p><p>Kouta's eyes, full of hopelessness, only gapped widely as the young man couldn't believe the cruelty and ruthlessness of his father. The young man knew that to his father a battle was everything. He enjoyed showing off his destructive power and wanted his son to be the same way instead of doing something stupid like healing people.</p><p>This was not the time for his father to fool around – the life of his friend was in danger!</p>
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<a name="section0213"><h2>213. Metamorphoses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana glanced over the shimmering at the bottom abyss. The treasury of malevolent vibes that attracted her to take a careless step, do something reckless and something that, without a doubt, she'd never do anywhere else in the world. A couple of times Mana examined the contents of her bag trying to determine a suitable course of action.</p><p>She had some explosive cards in her pouch, the blast would be strong enough to leave holes and crack the entire surface of the walls she'd be scaling down. Then again, the blast would quite likely shake this whole place and Mana didn't like the odds of starting a small explosion inside an old pyramid. It seemed like a good kick would dislodge some of the bricks in these walls. The thought of getting crushed by the whole roof of pyramid collapsing began strangely attracting Mana, her arm reached for the cards but then the magician fought the evil impulses that surrounded this place.</p><p>It was like the box itself wanted to see its finder kill themselves trying to reach it. The ex-kunoichi browsed her bag some more and noticed she still had some old bandages left, if she tied several layers together she'd possibly have something quite strong to descend down with. Then again, looking down it seemed unlikely that she'd have enough bandage to last the whole trip down. It was much closer to the reality that she'd run out of the makeshift rope and then panic, maybe the evil impulses making her wish to end her own life in this place would get the better of her... It was way too risky. Then there was still the risk of the bandages being too old and worn out and tearing halfway down. That would without a doubt excite that infernal box.</p><p>Mana crept up to the edge, courting death so closely that half of her feet lingered off the solid ground and her body wavered freely above certain doom. Just one weak breeze would've tipped her over the balance and sent the magician tumbling down. The girl's consciousness returned, making her jump back in fear so fast and without care that she tumbled over and opened some new bruises bumping into a wall behind her and tripped over a small crack in the floor. This place was evil, either this pyramid had some strange curse seals placed on its walls or that Box emitted some immensely powerful chakra, evil and vile chakra. As a civilian Mana was much more affected by it just like she was by the Intents of those Justicars.</p><p>"Wait... I'm not thinking clearly, there's a passageway halfway there, there has to be. I'm looking at the Box from the top but if it's the basis of this whole pyramid then I can approach it from the sides instead of from the top." Mana realized. This evil presence within these walls made the magician completely struggle to think a single rational thought. This was perhaps the clearest idea she had in a while, what with all those crazy attractions to the countless ways she could've died in this place.</p><p>"It's just another protection mechanism. There're no traps here, that's because the owner knew the Box could protect itself..." Mana kept convincing herself, "You can handle it. You want this, more than anything. It's the last hope to get your life together... You want this!" the girl tried to pick up all of her remnants of will and stick them together into a plaster castle that could hold back the water flooding at its walls. The difference was that it wasn't toy soldiers that were at risk – it was Mana's life, in a way also those of her friends as well.</p><p>The thought of the people fighting for her making this final stretch invited strength back to Mana's mind like nothing else. This newfound burst of will made the magician almost slide down the staircase edges until she thought she'd reached the necessary height. Mana tossed a couple of explosive cards after swiping them in the air, usually, ninja tools required a fantastically simple ninjutsu technique to set off but Mana's cards were supposed to activate upon coming in contact with something after they were activated by swiping them. This deck was, at least...</p><p>A deafening boom shook the bricks beneath Mana's feet making her flip over and tumble down the basis and onto the jungle floor. The magician slowly picked herself up and examined her re-opened wounds looking at the nasty marks of blood she left on the rocks as well as the grass she was standing on. She'd need some serious disinfectant treatments after this...</p><p>As expected several layers of these large bricks cracked and collapsed, Mana moved aside as small pebbles began to roll down making way for the larger constructions. Finally, the upper corner and part of the edge of the Box of Ultimate Bliss was exposed to the clear and fresh jungle air. Mana observed that malicious and yet equally beautiful obsidian black reflect sunlight off of it like a pitch black colored gemstone. The box looked almost like it was made of dark colored marble but Mana knew that it was merely a matter of appearances. It was old and most likely made of only the First People knew what... Also, only the First People knew what sort of seals and contingencies were placed on this Box. If its purpose was to be a wish-fulfillment device, there should've been no purpose in traps being placed on the Box itself though...</p><p>Mana approached the Box step by step scaling the ruined yet still climbable staircase and touching the Box gently. The girl stroked its edge and its surface and yet... Nothing happened. This was certainly the Box and it looked old and evil enough to be the real thing and yet... Nothing happened still, no matter how gently or hardly she touched it or if she thought about her wish to save her friends or her wish to gain back her chakra control. Nothing.</p><p>"Shit... It wants chakra to be set off. It needs chakra to be activated." Mana realized much to her despair and sadness. To regain what she had squandered away she needed the very thing she lost... The cruel irony of fate must've been having the day of her life!</p><hr/><p>"Dad!" Kouta shouted at the direction of his father who continued to stand around hands locked on his chest granting more of his attention to the spiked demoness fighting his son than his actual son.</p><p>"I've come here to extract you. Technically my objective includes saving all of you but if you let them die by being a little bitch – it's your problem, not mine. I'm gonna get paid one-fourth of my completion reward anyways." Kusagoro closed his eyes and explained with complete seriousness and disgust in his face.</p><p>Meiko screamed out in pain clawing at her arms from the shoulder to the elbow. Sweat and blood began pouring out of her pores in immensely troubling amounts. The blacksmith was put through agony unlike any other, one that would force idealistic fools and clever opportunists alike beg for quicker death. Anyone would've chosen absolute death over what the redhead was going through.</p><p>"Every moment you beg for my help your friends suffer. You're disappointing your wench for letting this kid die... I can't wait to see her eyes when she realizes her boy-toy is a huge disappointment incapable of saving anything" the father cracked a grin through his disgusted face. Bonny remained, observing the amazingly odd situation transpiring in front of her. A man just descended onto the scene, one that looked quite strong and fresh but he refused to fight her even though the young boy she and her sister aimed to drain dry was his son?</p><p>"Fine!" Kouta grunted out clenching his fists together. Rage began pouring out the boy's eyes in the shape of teardrops, not numerous enough to disturb his vision but certainly prominent enough to be seen. Kouta's pores began opening up, what little chakra he had regained began pooling up and exploding in a wild demonstration of expelling all of his chakra in a single burst. "I'll save Meiko myself!" he shouted as some wet rag he tried to smack in his father's face.</p><p>The boy kicked off the ground rushing at his opponent – Bonny. He didn't care if those spikes penetrated and infected him, he barely even cared if he died. His own father took him for some little experiment, his own father showed such unspeakable disgust in his own son! Such examples of fatherhood were unforgivable, Kouta would be everything his father was not if given the chance of parenthood.</p><p>The boy's body tried changing shapes, he tried to expand the size of his toughened wooden textured fist or to create a chakra cannon and blast it up close right in Bonny's face but his body barely changed its texture or size. His hands did not change at all, rather his own body canceled the technique upon realizing it'd be too costly. It was a subconscious attempt of Kouta's to not kill himself trying to impress his father even though he wished to show his father that technique he acquired in Otogakure... The Rising Piston Fist.</p><p>Kouta's punch moved in between spikes just at the last moment, oddly enough Bonny did not extend the spikes which would've skewered the boy and made him a human pin cushion. The punch turned the woman's face almost a full 180 and sent her off her feet. In mid-air, the boy flipped over his front and tried stamping Bonny into the ground, maybe, just maybe his feet would change now and he could fire the chakra cannons off his feet as he stamped the woman to the ground?</p><p>Bonny's arms shot up and into the ground breaking her fall, using the repurposed momentum the virus demon she had turned into kicked off the ground driving the spiky feet right into Kouta's gut mashing his organs to a fleshy porridge and forcing the boy to throw up blood. The spiky devil did not follow up on her assault, however, letting Kouta slide back to where he attacked the woman from.</p><p>"Hmph... You're too weak to attack and fight her head on. Whatever damage lucky shots inflict she'll heal back at the expense of your friend." Kusagoro explained, somehow his twisted mind assumed that his son would still give a crap about what his father had to say at this point after slapping him in the face like that and refusing to use his world-shaking power to help.</p><p>"I may hate his guts but he's right, Kouta..." Shimo said, his voice was weak, still husky and pain ridden but silent. It sounded like his friend had already accepted the hopelessness of the situation. Like he knew it was all over and was now ready to give up already.</p><p>"No! It's not over! I won't let Meiko die! I want to become a medical ninja because that's what would spit in my father's face the most and medical ninja don't let other people die! What would Mana-chan say to me if I let her friend die!?" Kouta roared out, his eyes were almost whited out as he was trying to find resources of chakra to use for augmentation that simply were not yet there. His pill was slowly forcing his chakra network to rejuvenate and metabolize it all faster but the rate at which he wished to come back was simply too fast even for the medical pill he had taken.</p><p>Suddenly the boy's eyes returned to normal. His mouth opened wide in shock before shutting into an expression of anger as he grunted and ground his teeth in frustration. The boy realized what he had to do – what his father wanted him to do. Father must've known that Kouta had grown enough to use his clan techniques at a basic level, however, the tremendous leap he wished Kouta to perform in order to save Meiko... Still... It was the only way.</p><p>Kouta's body straightened out, his hands weighed down and twitched as he portrayed his own helplessness to his opponents. Bonny's spiky shelled head twitched as it eerily twisted and cocked back and forward, sideways and back. The sister must've been confused about what all of this was about. Shimo's eyes sunk to the ground, he saw the acceptance of demise in his friend's refusal to stay in his fighting stance, in how much blood dripped from Kouta's mouth and the wound in his abdomen.</p><p>"I know you don't want to infect me..." the young Juugo's mouth moved finally breaking out of acceptance and shock. "That's why when you kicked me you didn't possess me like your sister infected Meiko, that's it isn't it?" the boy asked.</p><p>"No! Read says that their bloodline allows only one sister can only possess one person at a time, she ordered you to stay quiet and await Shimo's turn!" Meiko screamed out the message that her parasite whispered in her mind.</p><p>"With every passing moment, your friend is being leeched dry. She only has minutes left in her current state, she's half dead already. Make the play or let her die, the difference between your power and that of the sisters is already too great and getting greater every second." Kusagoro warned Kouta as if the medical ninja needed a further warning.</p><p>"I see, so you didn't possess me not because you did not want it but because you literally could not. But it's me you'd like the most, right? I am injured now but I am still the least injured out of us all, my father excluded, he'd be too much trouble for you, huh?" Kouta asked staring at the spiky parasite with a serious and cold expression trying to think through the ways in which he was to do what had to be done.</p><p>"It would be impossible! Your father would protect you!" Meiko screamed out relaying the message, slowly her skin was beginning to pale more and more and her voice began to weaken, death's cold and long fingers must've already begun to wrap around the blacksmith's throat.</p><p>"No, because I agree to grant you my body as an exchange for Meiko's life. Spare her and I'll let you drain me. I have a feeling my father follows me and won't interfere..." Kouta replied, "I am still kicking hard enough to feed you back to full strength, you know that right? How much more power will Meiko's injured and tired body grant you? Why would you nibble on fish-bones when you can eat a whole set of sushi?" the medical ninja tempted the parasite to reveal herself.</p><p>Meiko's body shook and chilling bone cracking noises followed as Read's head disappeared inside Meiko's body. Creepily the poor girl writhed on the ground before a spike protruded from her chest making her scream out in pain, a malevolent stream of chakra fired off of that spike as the whole protrusion exploded into a black liquid which seeped out of Meiko and then took the same spiky virus shape which her sister took except blazing red hair broke from the back side of the demoness' neck.</p><p>"Just for clarification, I don't give a fuck if the parasite revealed herself, I'm still not helping..." Kusagoro whistled carelessly crossing his hands behind his head with a grin on his face.</p><p>"Come on in then..." Kouta taunted the parasite ignoring his father's attempts to misguide the boy. Read's body blurred as the woman charged at the young man, her body stopped to acquire the needed focus but at this point, she had leeched off so much strength and life out of Meiko that the Juugo couldn't have opposed the woman even if he wanted to. Read's spiky arm slammed right into Kouta's forehead peeling a nasty bruise open as the woman was absorbed into the young boy's body instead. Meiko just laid completely passed out from the unholy pain she was just through.</p><p>The body of the young medical ninja bent over and almost fell to his knees. Kouta closed his eyes and tried to single the pain out, ignore it while the affliction was still in its baby stages. He had to pull something inhuman off, something so evil and so destructive, something that while completely despicable made him accept his legacy as a Juugo – just what his father wanted.</p><p>Kouta could no longer single out and tolerate the pain. His body weighed down but the boy clutched it up as hard as he could doing his best to stay on his feet as his muscles tensed up and his whole body shook in pain and focus. The boy closed his eyes and felt the taste of blood in his mouth deciding to focus on that. The absolute rage aimed towards his father, that complete and focused desire to bash the man's head in with something big and as heavy as a planet. Also, Kouta chose to focus on the bloodlust he felt towards the woman currently afflicting his body and leeching off of it like some demonic parasite. Someone who possessed a bloodline just as abhorrent as Kouta's but spared no second thought about embracing it... She had to die.</p><p>Die!</p><p>Kouta's chakra simply blew up, dark purple streams of chakra erupted from the boy's limbs soon fusing into a singular aura explosion of dark chakra. Black spots began accumulating all over his body covering his skin and once the boy's eyes opened he realized that the transformation into an ancient and primitive bloodlusted Juugo warrior had already begun. His mind was somewhere else, fading into the package of thirst for blood, carnage, and fighting. He had set off the part of his bloodline he had hoped to never touch – the Cursed Seal that his entire clan carried in their DNA.</p><p>Kouta's eyes began wandering off since there was no one in charge of his body anymore. He could hear a wild scream of murder but not the one like the millions of voices in his head screaming bloody murder. This one was different, familiar somehow. Almost like Read's own mind and cells were screaming as they were destroyed on a level too small to comprehend inside of Kouta's body. As blood began to run down Kouta's mindless shifting eyes and the boy collapsed on his knees roaring in rage and bloodthirst the head of Read's that appeared on his back after he was possessed turned to a wooden-like statue and then dispersed to dust into the raging winds caused by Kouta's malevolent chakra leaking out.</p><p>A mouth broke open in Bonny's lower part of what seemed to be her sealed again face. The shell covering that part crumbled and slowly began growing back as the transformation was supposed to cover her up completely.</p><p>"What... Did you do? Where is Read? No Read... Only... Silence... I'm alone. All alone!" she screamed into the sky before seeing Kouta's chakra fade out and his evil transformation time out while the boy collapsed onto the sand.</p><p>Kusagoro's face was shifted in surprise and disbelief. "H-He actually did it... I didn't expect him to do it... I thought..." he mumbled unintelligibly under his own nose before Shimo asked him for a clarification of what happened.</p><p>"You may not know yet but everything in this Universe is brimming with chakra. From every human being alive to space bodies and stars burning in the skies. The Juugo legacy is to be able to absorb the chakra around them. To store that natural chakra like a battery and being able to use it for these destructive blasts. However the natural chakra is evil, it is primal and basic and it changes us. Makes us angry and bloodthirsty, when we consume too much of it. When we deny ourselves restraint, it changes our very bodies. That's why our bodies change like they do." the man began the explanation as he walked up to Kouta and picked him off the ground, the man placed a blue food pill into the boy's mouth and forced him to grind it with his teeth.</p><p>"Yeah, so let's say that's how your bodies change and how you're able to waste all that chakra in those blasts you do, but what was THAT?" Shimo asked.</p><p>"That was what happens when we allow that change to affect our entire body. When our chakra pool becomes one-third natural chakra our whole body begins to change uncontrollably. What Kouta did was only the first stage – he absorbed chakra around him until the chakra he absorbed was approaching the majority and it began affecting his very cellular structure, his essence became that of someone else entirely. A warrior thirsty for blood." Kusagoro concluded looking at his son as he opened his eyes and his wounds closed up from the expensive food pill he had just consumed, inferior only to the black medical food pill – one of the priciest ninja tools one could carry in their kits.</p><p>"Father..." Kouta whimpered as he struggled out of his father's grip and stood back up beginning to dust his clothes.</p><p>"Why? Why did my sister disappear?" Bonny still wept on her knees, in a grieving way only a loving sister could grieve.</p><p>"Because we are what our chakra is. If a man's chakra pool was somehow obtained the chakra of a dog, replacing his own, he'd become a dog, not just appear like one, he'd be one. Your sister feasted on my molecular structure, my very life force which was filled to the brim with the natural chakra of nothingness. In the end, since she was no Jugo she became what she ate – nothingness." Kouta concluded his father's speech without knowing it was made in the first place.</p><p>"That is the curse of being a Jugo. That was why our clan was banished and hunted by Otogakure to near extinction before they realized that their unique bond with nature around them could've helped them practice restraint from their bloodline. That they could focus on their bond with nature and all living things instead of fighting..." the medical ninja said as he looked at the shocked face of his teammate as Shimo was handed a green food pill by Kusagoro which he then consumed. The Yuki's body began slowly regenerating some of the heavier wounds it had sustained.</p><p>"It's over, Bonny..." Kouta slowly and with profound sadness in his voice for what he had to do exclaimed.</p>
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<a name="section0214"><h2>214. Hell Hath The Fury Of A Father Scorned</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta, Shimo, and Kusagoro continued to stare at Bonny who was still weeping over the loss of her sister. Truly after a lifetime of sharing a body and a mind this feeling of solitude and silence would've been unbearable for anyone. Loneliness was something that crippled even the strongest ones, even Kusagoro changed greatly after losing his comrades in the Wind Country desert. It granted him a desire for revenge, a purpose.</p><p>Bonny's body disappeared, Shimo and Kouta's eyes opened up in surprise as the boys struggled to breathe a single gasp of air in before they would've been stricken down by the woman. At this point there was nothing that they could've done, even without Read, Bonny possessed sufficiently replenished chakra level to finish off both of them without breaking a sweat, especially since Kouta's lacking chakra level and inexperience made him lose his Curse Seal transformation straight after acquiring it.</p><p>Bonny's body appeared back into the visions of the young men as her thrusting spiky arm was stopped by Kusagoro grabbing her wrist right up close to Kouta's chest where it'd have penetrated the boy and pierced his heart with a single hand thrust. Bonny's virus form wriggled and tried to escape Kusagoro's grasp but the man appeared to be able to restrain the captain without much effort. The arm erupted in elongated spikes that attempted to penetrate the jounin's hand but the armor shell just shattered into pieces revealing soft and fleshy glowing red scar tissue beneath it.</p><p>"Don't touch my son!" Kusagoro cut it short as he slung the woman over his shoulder and slammed her into the ground with shocking strength, enough to crack the island open and cause violent quakes that reopened the earthly scars and made the lava gazers erupt again dancing in graceful yet searing hot arcs. It was as if Earth herself bled dry from just a brief introduction to Kusagoro's strength.</p><p>Right after completing the slam Kouta's father slammed Bonny to the other side cracking her shell open and causing the island ground to rupture again, water began rushing through the island's cracks creating multiple smaller islands that would eventually be split and sent drifting aimlessly through the ocean from sheer water pressure or drown if they were unable to make their stand against the raging waves.</p><p>After completing to assert his total dominance over the remaining captain Kusagoro pulled the crushed and broken captain out from the ground flipping her into the air like a flappy pancake out of a pan. Bits and pieces of her spiky shell began to fall as the pair of slams she received were sufficiently powerful to completely crush the woman open like a shellfish fighting against a pneumatic press. Just as the battered Bonny would've hit the ocean water and likely drifted away to an unknown fate of solitude and silence Kusagoro's kick right into the center of her back sent the captain flying aside to an island at the very least five thousand miles away cutting the oceans she was kicked through like an arrow cut air.</p><p>Kusagoro's body blurred and disappeared flying aside his opponent appearing onto the island he sent her in an instant to only to slam his elbow to the flying by Bonny's face and then driving her to the island floor with both of his hands in a double handed slam. The force completely demolished the entirety of Bonny's armor and left her disabled and broken. It would've been impossible to tell if there was any life left in half of the pirate captain sisters but Kusagoro was a man taking no chances. His foot tightly stepped on the torn and busted scar tissue of the woman's face as his hand morphed into a cannon aimed right at the ground beneath his feet.</p><p>"You're a tough bitch, I'll give you that, pirate. Let's see you handle this... An attack matching the power of the largest dying stars, all focused and controlled to flow purely through your body so that you're the only thing getting erased! Hell's Wrath!" Kusagoro shouted out as his single aimed cannon emitted a powerful white beam that created a flash of light temporarily blinding people on the other side of the world as the island the two were in got completely disintegrated into nothingness.</p><p>The blast of the attack erupted underground into multiple smaller beams that all shot out and left the Earth's orbit creating beacons of light. The ancient legends told of people living on the Moon. If that was true even they would've been terrified of those blinding flashes of light passing through their little homeworld into the oblivion of cold and dead space. After the dust cleared out Kusagoro just sighed and flew back to the island in a blink of an eye right back to his son and his friend.</p><p>Kouta and Shimo had already begun rushing towards the pyramid with Kouta dragging the weak Meiko along. Kusagoro blinked in nearby the two as if he was never gone, to begin with, slowing his unbelievable speed so that it matched that of the young ones.</p><p>"You killed her?" Kouta asked coldly.</p><p>"So the pot developed a sense of morality against the kettle?" Kusagoro smiled carelessly.</p><p>The ninja carefully leaped over the fissures that were separating the jungle island into separate islands. It was hard to believe that even completely restrained power could cause such aftermaths, ninja were warriors of subtlety, a single chunin may have been strong enough to strike with world breaking strength but they always controlled their might so it only affected their target and never the world around them. A powerful ninja hit with the power of Gods and yet not a sign of their presence was seen to testify the presence of a ninja, to think that even with such restraint and control the power that Kusagoro possessed still caused such immense destruction...</p><p>"I gave you a blue food pill. Your friends can have some yellow ones..." Kusagoro said nonchalantly looking at his son with a moderate sense of pride towards the young man. Even in his wildest dreams, the jounin couldn't have imagined seeing his son show such potential while being tested by his father's cruel ways.</p><p>"I was fine, I could've been good with the red one. Shimo's injuries are more severe, he could've used the blue one, or Meiko, she almost got killed!" Kouta grunted out angrily at his father. "We already explained this to you, father, me and mom: the blue one is the most powerful one, it heals any wounds without compensating any chakra back like the black one, the green one is good enough for a single dangerous wound, the yellow one is elementary battlefield patching and the red one is for small wounds and bruises."</p><p>"I know, still, you're the one I care even remotely about..." Kusagoro shrugged, "Anyways, I heard you guys were traveling with an Uchiha," he added.</p><p>"It's my old sensei." Shimo interrupted Kusagoro's impending question.</p><p>"I see, so not the man from the desert then..." the jounin snapped his fingers in regret.</p><p>"No, I don't know what happened to scaredy-sensei anyways, knowing him he bailed on us the moment this island began to fall apart..." Shimo remarked angrily looking at the sky while he cracked a food pill and handed another one to Meiko.</p><p>"You guys should ease up, one can't just fight for days on end by just eating food pills! Your hearts would give up on you. It's a temporary solution, not a second round measure." Kouta warned as Shimo felt up his gaping hole wound that was beginning to close up from the pill. It was likely that wound alone would consume all the beneficiary effects of the pill alone.</p><p>"So are you here to kill Mana again?" Meiko whined out with a weak voice as her eyes opened and fell onto Kouta's father.</p><p>"Not really, I'm kinda ordered to bring you kids back home. The village is worried because the boss lady hasn't received a report from you in weeks, some of the old farts in the council thought you may have gone rogue... Knowing that magician wench I wouldn't have been surprised." Kusagoro shook his head looking on ahead at the pyramid in front of him.</p><p>"Stop calling Mana-chan that! She's a strong and loyal person, she'd never pull something like that nor would she drag us into something as reckless as that!" Kouta shouted out at his father angrily.</p><p>Kusagoro smiled.</p><p>"That girl is really good for you, you'd have never yelled at your old man before. Also, this mission lead to improvements both to your girly healing skills and your ability to throw a punch. I'd have never thought you'd achieve the first stage of the Curse Seal in your entire lifetime, knowing how puny you were and yet you leaped such insane bounds in these couple of months it's tough to believe..." Kusagoro admitted with his eyes closed as if he was ashamed of his pride in his own son.</p><p>"Wait, did you just compliment your son?" Shimo wondered, "Now I have seen everything..."</p><p>While Kouta's face suggested some embarrassment over being praised by his father for the first time in forever, in public, nevertheless, the young man remained quiet and simply looked on ahead. They weren't too far from the pyramid anyways.</p><hr/><p>Mana made her way down the pyramid staircase and sat down against it. Hopelessly she dragged her hands stroking her sticky dark hair and forcing it behind her back instead of its usual messy state. So this was it then? She was unable to interact with the Box and save her friends because the Box needed this one thing she wished to gain back in order to work? Mana closed her eyes and let her mind linger away almost like it used to when she meditated.</p><p>"Please... Just this once... I know that the spiritual chakra is everything I lack, I know that you're keeping me away from it because I'm being reckless with it but... Just this once... Please..." Mana begged her own body to let her use the spiritual aspect of chakra that was shut down from her. Her own mind trapped Mana's identity within a prison of its own making. Just how twisted and cruel was that? To live in the prison of one's own mind and knowing that you're your own worst enemy. To have to search the whole world through and through just to avoid having to deal with one's own inner demons?</p><p>"You're not gonna help, huh?" Mana's busted lips twisted into a weak smile as her eyes remained closed and her mind kept floating as if in another plane entirely. "That's why you won't help – because you feel betrayed and hurt after realizing that I'd rather look for some wish fulfillment artifact that talks to my own body..." the magician spoke to herself realizing her own mistake.</p><p>"The thing is that I'm not the one at stake here... Meiko, Shimo, and Kouta are! Hachiro-san too..." Mana tried to reason with her own body so that her hidden spiritual chakra side would be unlocked. It was to no avail, her own body stayed silent and closed off from Mana. It was like talking to a capricious child or a difficult teen, once they've figured out they've been lied to they'll shut off and won't talk to you again.</p><p>Suddenly, Mana felt something being forced down her throat and a violent slap on her cheek. The magician's mind snapped out of the procession into a deep meditational stage and back into reality seeing Meiko leaning over her and having forced a food pill down Mana's throat.</p><p>"You had to make her crack the pill with her teeth, Meiko..." Kouta rubbed his forehead in annoyance to the redhead's ignorance with first aid.</p><p>Mana coughed as her throat was annoyed with the large pill and upchucked it back to where she actually chewed it up. It tasted like seaweed that had spent months in old soy sauce, smelled sort of like that too. The magician licked her lips and tried summoning some saliva to wash away the weird taste out of her mouth but it was stuck there. Still, she could appreciate the pill helping her wounds even if she wasn't sure where this medical resource had come from.</p><p>"Yo!" Kusagoro awkwardly raised his hand up introducing himself to Mana, the magician jumped up and began backing up in fear of the man that almost killed her multiple times but then realized that her friends were both alive and completely unalarmed by the man's presence which meant that there must've been something she did not know.</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana-chan, dad isn't here to kill us or anything... He's here to bring us back home but he won't care if he does it now or a bit later after we get what we came here for. We thought you'd have evacuated like Hachiro once the islands began to split... Finding you here took some time." Kouta tried calming Mana down and switching the topic away from his father and his deeds in the past.</p><p>This was the first time that Mana had heard about something happening to this island, Mana looked around and witnessed the island being shattered into hundreds of smaller islands all of which slowly drifted apart as the shifting waters that began seeping in between the landmasses started breaking them off and drifting them away. The magician wanted to wonder who may have done this but... It was almost obvious it must've been Kusagoro, then again, the food pills that made her friends look almost in fighting shape must've also come from him as well.</p><p>"I'm grateful you helped my friends," Mana awkwardly bowed her head for the man in gratitude. It looked like the tall warrior was not used to such courtesy as he just scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"Oh, well, you know... I didn't break my back or anything..." he tried figuring out how exactly he was supposed to be nice to a girl whose guts he kind of hated but who helped his son grow which automatically meant he wanted her around.</p><p>"You most definitely didn't..." Shimo squinted angrily at the man.</p><p>"Anyways, Mana, why didn't you activate the Box, I hope it wasn't because that whole "I promised you'd get to hold it in your hands" thing..." Meiko asked Mana looking at the busted up pyramid and her friend with great worry and care.</p><p>"It's a bit larger than I thought so... That part may be troublesome." Mana smiled but then her face got back to sad again, "No, it was because it needs some chakra to set off whatever seals are placed on it... I'm so useless I can't even take my goal once it's right in front of me." the magician looked away completely crushed by her own disability.</p><p>"Oh, well... We're all here, aren't we?" Kouta smiled.</p><p>"What happened to the sisters?" Mana asked, her eyes still carried a small speck of hopeful flares that maybe the pirate captains were still alive and her plan wasn't a total failure.</p><p>"Oh..." Kouta looked at his father awkwardly realizing what he had to tell the magician. The young man she promised to give a shot at dating her and his father just killed someone – someone dangerous and yet still they did a thing she hated most of all. It'd have really put a shaky start to a relationship. Kusagoro looked at his son curiously wondering why did his boy have such trouble owning the fact he beat the enemy. With such amazing transformation, no less! If it was Kusagoro's victory achieving the first stage of the hidden Jugo power he'd own up to that all the way through!</p><p>"I killed them both!" Shimo declared out of the blue. "There was no other way. They were too strong, Kusagoro's appearance bought us some time and I used that chance, have a problem with that?" he rubbed it into Mana's face completely shifting the black mark away.</p><p>Kusagoro's face began undergoing some weird transformations, the man struggled to comprehend the complicated social processes that transpired but looking at Kouta's strangely alleviated face he realized that it was best for his son's case if he kept his mouth shut and didn't declare the swordsman a liar.</p><p>"Well... I'm sure you did your best to find another way" Mana replied trying to hide away her disappointment. It wasn't a disappointment in her friends, it was self-loathing. The feeling of pathetic self-pity that made Mana hate her own guts for coming up with this plan that almost lead to her friends dying and made her trick a pirate captain and her crew only for things to lead up for the pirates to getting killed.</p><p>"Wait... So you used a pirate crew to sail you here and then killed them? Holy shit, that's some real ninja work!" Kusagoro whistled after finally getting the hang of things that happened. "Shit, girly, you're gonna get promoted, sure as fuck, that's ruthless as all hells! I mean, if you straighten the whole powerless situation..." he added which only made Mana feel worse about herself. This whole trip revealed so much to the magician about herself and her own incompetence that she was beginning to doubt her own worth of even acquiring her identity back.</p><p>"Yeah..." she uttered lifelessly standing back on her feet and beginning to walk towards the edge of the island that the team was standing on. A small stretch of land surrounding the pyramid.</p><p>"Wait up, Mana, what about the Box!?" Meiko shouted out.</p><p>"Lift it, hold it in your hands... I promised you that much. I don't want it, I don't need it. I don't deserve it" Mana replied waving her hand back after sitting on the edge of the island and letting her ruined sandals submerge into the bloody and foamy sea water below her feet.</p><p>"Wait, what!? It's yours! Stop acting like a child and claim your wish!" Shimo shouted out angrily walking up to Mana and grabbing the magician by her collar. The young man began dragging her towards the pyramid against her will.</p><p>"Do you really need this in your life?" Kusagoro stretched out carelessly while turning at his son. "Your mother is a lot like that too, it's why I spend so little time at home" he smiled as if he was describing something to be proud of.</p><p>Shimo began dragging Mana up the stairs as the magician kicked and wailed around trying to land a blow or get out of her friend's grip she may as well have been stuck in the gravity field of a black hole. Shimo didn't even budge and it only made her knuckles hurt.</p><p>"Take this wish, it's YOURS!" he shouted as his hand reached for the black exposed corner of the box ready to activate the seal.</p><p>A violent explosion sent Shimo and Mana away from the pyramid as it cracked open and several more structural pieces collapsed revealing more and more of the Box before the entire construction fell to bits revealing the Box in its glory. The skies became dark and thunderbolts started lighting up the night's sky, the bolts of purple light, the lightning of evil chakra surrounding the Box being unearthed once more.</p><p>The magician landed in Shimo's grasp as he wrapped himself around her covering the fall and protecting Mana from any shrapnel or wild wandering bricks from crushing her after they slid away. In the visible horizon, a colossal ship was approaching the island from the other side blasting right through the smaller islands, one of the cannon blasts must've hit the pyramid sending the young ninja down on the ground.</p><p>Mana looked at the ship and the black sail that carried the symbol of a large chunk of meat wrapped around a bone horizontally to the mouth of a skull that was tearing a large chunk off of it. The ship was dyed red and was at least twelve times larger and better armed than that of Bonny's. In the presence of such a juggernaut, the surviving members of Bonny's crew must've quickly fled for their lives if they could still manage sailing a ship.</p><p>Pirate Lord "Red" – Akimichi Francho came to claim the treasure promised to him by a message in a bottle he had intercepted.</p>
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<a name="section0215"><h2>215. In A Heartbeat</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the colossal juggernaut of the seas approached the shocked Konoha crew continued to awe at the upcoming terror. Everything went completely wrong with Mana's plan. Granted, there was little of any better planning to be done as everything that went wrong went wrong, not due to her poor planning but more because of a series of unrelated coincidences. For some reason it was Francho and not Flint who got her anonymous message, also Read's ship found the island much faster than anticipated leaving so much free time on their hands before the messaged ships arrived.</p><p>A round tower of a man stood on the main deck of the ship. He was so tall and so thick in stature that as he stood at the front of the ship half of his body was visible from ashore and his wide shoulders with ancient oak sized hands could've covered the whole ship from one side to the other.</p><p>Just like his name implied Francho wore a red, gold and white coat with decorated shoulders and a bunch of looted off medals and awards decorating his chest. On top of his head, his long brown hairdo was only restrained by a red bandana with a bunch of cut up bent and broken ninja headband protectors stuck up like armor plates for his makeshift classic style helmet. The Pirate Lord was of his later years – well into his fifties and had a dominating beard presence that covered his entire chest which would've looked rude by how strongly it burst from his shirt tearing his own apparel apart. Hanging on his belts were not handheld kunai dispensers, those were literal cannons with mechanized fuses.</p><p>Akimichi Francho was a man who found a way to make the weapon title "handcannon" sound more literally than anyone who came before him. Strangely enough, the Pirate Lord wore no swords, a man of his wealth must've had access to plenty of them so this implied that Francho didn't like that fighting style. It wasn't tough to understand why seeing how tall and round of stature the man was. His short yet thick arms would've moved quite awkwardly and failed to cover his entire body protecting himself from sword blows.</p><p>"Which fucking dog told me to arrive one day earlier to beat that slimy sea-dog Flint to the punch?!" the man shouted out in a voice more common amongst hobos of more humid settlements than a decorated and feared Pirate Lord.</p><p>"It was Mutt!" a wave of shouts echoed amongst his crew who looked so tiny yet only because of contrast with their Lord that it was so.</p><p>Francho's arm moved to his belt removing one of those massive handcannons and blasting it aside so fast and strongly that one half of a man got completely blown off while a whole bunch of men besides the poor soul got tossed aside and visibly injured. Then again, the full extent of their injuries was tough to assess with the poor "Mutt's" blood covering them.</p><p>"Why didn't anyone tell me this fucking ghost island had native savages? Who delivered this message to us!?" the Pirate Lord continued to thrash angrily throwing the whole towering ship off balance and shaking it in the seas it sailed on in the process.</p><p>"It was an anonymous message!" the crew once again rustled fearing for one of their lives since this time no one was actually to blame and therefore none of them deserved being blown to bits. "We intercepted it after leaving Flint's waters from the Parley of the whole Nukata port incident." someone yelled out intelligibly only to those ninja that still could augment their chakra.</p><p>"Your message got intercepted before it reached Flint by Francho," Shimo explained turning his head sideways to Mana. Despite having somewhat healed most of his wounds with the pill given to him by Kusagoro the Yuki was visibly worried and angered by the appearance of this ship. They had just finished dealing with some of those seemingly invincible pirates and now it appeared that there not only was more of them but that they were being led by one of the strongest pirates alive. One of the Pirate Lords.</p><p>"Eh, whatever... Kill those landlubbers and bring that Box aboard! I'll try to think of a wish to ask of that bloody thing!" the man thundered out loud enough even for Mana to hear and his voice was powerful enough to disturb the seas of the already stormy water. The clouds continued to get murkier and darker as the purple lightning storms got more and more intense. The exposure of the Box to the outside world appeared to be tearing the Earth itself apart. It probably needed to be used soon...</p><p>The men on board shared a laugh with their Pirate Lord. "Aye!" some of them thundered back in return.</p><p>"All of these guys are wearing captain coats and triangular hats, just like one on Read's ship. Most of them must be captains loyal to Francho, the guy must've been prepared for a full out war with Flint after coming here!" Kouta angrily noticed before giving his friends a troubled look.</p><p>"We may be better but we're not even in our prime shape. There's no way we can take on a crew of captain level opponents," he added.</p><p>As Francho extended his hands aside a bunch of pirates leaped out from the various decks and floors of the massive ship and aimed to land of the island. It was a literal siege of men throwing themselves at the island with the intention to murder everything at the very moment that their feet touched the ground. Having their individual and combined powers in mind it was quite likely they'd do it.</p><p>Kusagoro sighed, "Well, I guess they're trying to kill you guys, me included. Us dying would make completing my mission a bother. I'll kick their asses so we can finally go home." he noted as his body was no longer on the island floor after the man's words finished ringing in the air.</p><p>One of the pirates charged his body up with blobs of magma and threw meteor sized fireballs at Kusagoro who simply backslapped those heated mountains of rock and fire aside shattering them and protecting the small mini-island beneath his feet. After the meteors proved fruitless the magma blob wielding captain launched a blazing beam of fire at Kusagoro. The man just covered his face up as his jump launched the jounin past the beam splitting it apart like an arrow.</p><p>With a crunchy head-butt the magma captain's body was crushed and a bony snap noise suggested that Kusagoro's head broke the man's spine and was just inches away from piercing the man's whole body apart. The Konoha jounin backflipped kicking off of the corpse's falling body and his feet morphed into small cannons that slowly emanated controlled chakra flames just powerful enough to keep him in the air.</p><p>Another pair of captains around him weaved hand seals in an instant. Kusagoro's body covered up in a crystal cocoon turning him into a pillar of diamond as the captain's arms shifted into diamond blades slicing and dicing the diamond cocoon into small shatters meanwhile a physically strong looking fellow beside him bashed the remaining chips to dust. After a couple of slices the diamond blades got stuck in something and Kusagoro broke himself out of the diamond with an angry yell, with an easy flick of his fingers he cracked the diamond blades and the man who had shifted his own body to take the shape of the pink crystal he wielded to dust which the wind scattered.</p><p>As the powerful comrade of the diamond man launched himself at Kusagoro the man's body disappeared into thin air reappearing behind the powerhouse and kicking him in the back area of his neck instantly snapping it. Black tendrils began tying up Kusagoro's body that swung around and slammed him into a nearby mini-island destroying it completely. All of the captains landed on the ground activating their Art of Water Walking techniques while Kusagoro launched himself out of the water punching the head off of the Nara clan member that tied him up and attacked him before.</p><p>A whole bunch of captains tried to overwhelm the jounin one by one but as they were less and less successful as the wave went on they began piling together onto the man. One captain wearing a large white coat and wearing shades together with a hood that covered most of his head slammed his hands together unleashing a wave of attacks on an invisible scale. Another powerhouse with six arms as a result of his clan's bloodline attacked Kusagoro head on, yet another captain focused the light around him and fused it with lightning chakra into a concentrated beam that if launched carelessly would've easily disintegrated the entire planet. Another captain summoned a shark-like monstrous creature that disappeared underwater before syncing up its attack with the rest of the captains as they worked at slowly chipping Kusagoro into nothingness.</p><p>And yet the jounin appeared barely affected by any of those attacks. His body bloated up as minuscule nano-sized Aburame insects flooded his body and tried blowing it up from inside but with a battle cry of great fury, Kusagoro forced the insects to grind together and overpowered them reducing his body back to normal. Then with a single elbow strike backward he broke the six armed man's face and sent him underwater only to not surface. He placed his hands in front of the light beam pushing it right back at the man who launched it shaping his hands like a scoop that reflected the beam's tip at the user and disintegrated half of the man's arms. Then Kusagoro kicked the beaten captain down underwater. Kusagoro punched the shark creature right in the center of its nose as it emerged sending it spiraling to the bottom before it disappeared to never resurface</p><p>As another captain multiplied creating hundreds of shadow clones he tried to use to overwhelm Kusagoro the Jugo's body created cannon's on the man's back and sides that launched simultaneous beams of chakra and as the man rotated his body around the beams cut down each and every clone before removing large chunks of the original's body and killing him almost instantly. Then the man fused all of the cannons together into a larger singular beam and aimed it straight up since another Akimichi had expanded his body at least fifty times and tried to crush Kusagoro with his oversized foot, instead he got the foot blown off and joined his fellow crewman in the ocean gods' locket.</p><p>A female captain finally finished forming her handseals erecting colossal chunks of manipulated seaweed from down under and forming tendrils out of them trying to tie Kusagoro down into a cocoon and snuff him out by suffocating him or dragging him underwater. The jounin barely tried to resist as the tremendously oversized leaves coming from straight underwater tied him up and began to drag him deep into the bottom. Then with a powerful shine and a violent explosion erupting from underwater the man revealed himself and punched into the captain's gut, her chakra level failed to augment her body enough and Kusagoro's punch ended up going right through the woman's body. With a violent stomp to the back of her head, the man sent the woman where she attempted to send him just moments before.</p><p>"Fire Style..." another captain tried to chant out the name of his technique before Kusagoro's firm grip locked the man's throat stopping him from naming his technique and holding the giant fireball inside the man's lungs where it blew up momentarily sending tongues of flame and smoke from the man's nose and eyes and killing him by tearing his insides apart momentarily.</p><p>"Wind Style: Staccato" a woman shouted out behind Kusagoro as a crushing barrage of airwaves began bumping at his body but it only served as a mean of pissing the jounin off more.</p><p>"Allegro! Brioso! Adagio! Crescendo!" the woman continued to rank up the intensity of the crushing and cutting sound waves but Kusagoro just continued to walk past them without much care. The last couple did tear some of his clothes apart reducing them to smallest chunks and the final technique did open a couple of cuts on the man's face and the exposed half of his chest sending narrow streams of blood trickling down. Still, the man grabbed the woman's neck and snapped it without much effort.</p><p>Ten more captains surrounded him beginning to bombard him with attacks. One of them summoned a strange reptilian monster creature and performed a combination transformation that made him into a gigantic lizard that tried to crush Kusagoro. Another one yet used floating plates with seal glyphs on them from which he unsealed powerful bolts of lightning. The third captain was a taijutsu user that tried to pummel Kusagoro with a quick and barely visible flurry of blows, his arms were so swift that they left afterimages quick enough to make the man strike at eight spots at once.</p><p>The fourth one focused chakra into his palms shaping his hands like the jaws of a wild beast and trying to drive them like a sharp tool into Kusagoro's flesh. The immensity of chakra emanating from the man's hands made the air around it bend and flicker in peculiar ways the likes of which the Konoha jounin had never witnessed before. The fifth one had bandages wrapped around his arms and tried to tie Kusagoro down only to crush his bones with sheer pressure or to keep him in place for his friends to soften the man up so he could finish the jounin up himself.</p><p>The sixth captain wielded a long metal staff which broke into four pieces and moved by itself forming a square around the battlefield. The staff then attracted some of the purple lightning bolts and shaped a forcefield which then began to close in on Kusagoro trying to crush the man or to shock him lethally by the voltage of the mystical purple lightning which the Box emanated on the nearby island where the completely awed genin stared at the combat festival transpiring in front of them.</p><p>The seventh captain tried to capture Kusagoro in a genjutsu which was initiated by the harmless lightning technique. Once the lightning flash concluded Kusagoro felt his body go numb and his vision darken making it impossible to properly assess the battlefield or respond to any attacks. Then he felt the weak lightning signals intercept his own neuron signals attempting to take control over his own body. The eighth captain flashed through a bunch of hand seals covering Kusagoro in a highly corrosive goo while the ninth placed his hands in front and tried to use some strange telekinetic jutsu to pull Kusagoro's very particles apart one by one dissolving the man into dust.</p><p>The tenth captain went through his own share of hand seals while pointing his hands at the bottom of the ocean. An island-sized chunk of solid rock erected up in the air kilometers further and traveled straight above the battlefield extending all the way to the island where the Box and the genin were located. With a careless wave of his arm, the captain ordered the whole battlefield to be smashed by this island sized structure.</p><p>"Enough!" Kusagoro yelled out propelling chakra through every pore of his body as a minuscule beam which fused into a powerful expulsion of chakra breaking the bodies of every single captain and disintegrating every one of their unique manners of attack to nothingness. The overwhelming pressure of the technique even killed the genjutsu user that attempted to take over Kusagoro's mind by manipulating his nerve signals instantly ending the genjutsu. Even the island-sized rock above everyone's head got ground into ash-like stone that began raining on the battlefield.</p><p>The remaining several dozens of captains rushed off after the kids remaining on the island but they weren't nearly as fast as their solitary very angry opponent. The Konoha jounin dashed past the deceitful captains and stopped them in their tracks right up to the island where his hand shifted into a cannon and pointed at them.</p><p>"Chakra Shotgun!" he yelled out as the chakra beam fired off from his arm spread out like an outwards cone obliterating every remaining captain.</p><p>Despite the fact that the kids got blown back by the immense destructive force of Kusagoro's blast the man himself didn't appear to be much affected by the backlash of his own attack. He just coldly turned at the Pirate Lord who continued to think to himself about the wish he'd ask for the Box to fulfill only noticing far too late the destruction of his entire crew. Only a few servicemen needed to run the ship properly remained in Red's ship, contrary to the pirates that had little choice, the Pirate Lords rarely used servicemen for combat.</p><p>"Your crew is dead, go home..." Kusagoro shouted out before turning his back and looking at Mana and the others who only now realized what had happened. This entire battle transpired so fast that both Mana and her friends were equally stumped and clueless about what transpired in front of them and where the whole crew of captains went.</p><p>"And you, little missy, go make your wish, this place is starting to piss me off" the man grunted at Mana angrily. While the rest of the young ninja still struggled to understand just what happened in front of them Mana stood up on her toes and looked right into Kusagoro's eyes.</p><p>"I told you, I don't want it, I don't deserve it! Now let's go home!" she outright ordered the man.</p><p>The Jugo just sighed and scratched the back of his head stretching his muscles out a bit. "Fine, if you don't want that Box, let's go home..." he grumped out under his own nose but then his feet got separated from the ground by a tremendous earthquake emanating from the giant juggernaut ship on the other side of the Box. Akimichi Francho had jumped down from the deck of his ship down onto the island fully willing to join the battle.</p><p>"Her Box!? Her Box!?" he shouted out spitting up chewed shellfish and caviar all over his rich brown beard, "This Box and this whole fucking island is MINE!" he declared pointing at himself with his brick-sized thumb as his red whirly tattoo wearing cheeks twisted in a confident smile.</p><p>The conflict with Pirate Lord Red was pretty much unavoidable now...</p>
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<a name="section0216"><h2>216. Pirate VS Ninja</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After looking at the standstill of Kusagoro and the Pirate Lord weighing each other and measuring their opponent, comparing them to themselves, Mana couldn't help but glance sideways at the fully exposed and shining with malevolent and twisted chakra Box of Ultimate Bliss. Occasionally a pair of purple thunderbolts interrupted her train of thought and made her snap back into the frozen world of reality.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Kouta asked Mana noticing her turn at the Box one too many times for it to be dismissed as being normal.</p><p>"I need to use it..." she uttered. "Before your father gets hurt, before it all gets even worse. Before I somehow screw it all up even more. The Box needs to be used, then Red will have no more reason to be here." she whimpered out in desperation.</p><p>"Don't be foolish, the Pirate Lord will kill us with even more focus and hatred if we squander the Box away. If you activate it and try to use it, there's no telling who'll speak their wish out first. We're still not sure how this Box works but as long as an enemy of this scale is present it may not be smart to activate it." Shimo cut Mana down before placing his hand on her shoulder. "I know you want everyone to make out of here and you feel it's somehow your fault, you always think that way but now our best course of action is to hope that Kouta's messed up father can kick this guy's ass hard and far enough for him to be as far away from here as possible"</p><p>"So you're gonna use the Box?" Meiko curiously got her hopes up as her saddened and feeling for her friends lips finally tipped sideways in a manner somewhat resembling a smile while her cheekbones protruded like a hilt of a concealed sword under a cloth.</p><p>"No. You're just going to touch it. Like I promised you, and we're heading home, mission complete, the Box's location confirmed... The world is better off with me staying the way I am" Mana shook her head still staring at the ruined ground beneath her feet.</p><p>Kusagoro finally leaped directly at his opponent, he did not try and employ any typical ninja fighting methods like trying to scope his opponent from a longer range or hiding – if he got out of Red's vision there'd be nothing standing in between Red and the young ones. The Pirate Lord needed to know that Kusagoro was a persistent pain up his ass as long as the long-haired beardo continued to mess with his mission.</p><p>The jounin decided to scope his opponent's strength out, give him a single powerful punch to the gut, not focused and unchained enough to slow him down but without any conscious effort of holding back. An actual strong and tensed muscle blow. Kusagoro was pleasantly surprised when his punch dove deep into the beer and rum belly of the Pirate Lord lifting his huge body off the ground slightly and making the man slobber up.</p><p>With quick precise blows that had much less force and focus but more speed behind them the ex-ANBU operative tried picking his opponent off, wear him out for a heavy finishing blow at the end of his attacking string. While the Pirate Lord did take damage from Kusagoro's blow, even spat up blood suggesting internal injury from the get-go, the fact that the man's body did not explode into fleshy bits slightly alarmed the Konoha veteran. A punch of such intensity could've accomplished wonders, killed chuunin or weaker jounin ninja with a single blurry and almost invisible shot. Dozens of times more than it took to break a world to rocky shatters, leaving nothing but space dust of an entire planet and yet all it did for this oversized hobo was make him bleed.</p><p>Akimichi Francho covered up his face and tensed his immense belly up, Kusagoro's blows landed, his roaring as they cut speed of pierced air, raced light itself combinations of blows bombarded the pirate's defenses bouncing off of the man's body without leaving much permanent damage. Just bruises, blunt trauma and small bumps. No fractures, no crunched up to porridge organs or a bloody symphony of a weakling's body exploding from the pressure of chakra transferred through their body surpassing their own many times over. Then all of a sudden Francho took a punch to the jaw twisting his face to the side and losing a couple of teeth and a squirt of blood enough to fill a sake cup.</p><p>At the same time, the man's hand reached for his sides pulling out one of his massive handcannons that were many times more massive than any cannon any ship Kusagoro had seen carrying. This man was a walking heavy cavalry all by himself. Francho, still dazed and overwhelmed by Kusagoro's quick jab to the jaw which he purposefully skipped to free up an arm for a counter, fired off a wild cannon blast at Kusagoro's direction. It fired off into the distance meanwhile Kusagoro's body danced in a blurry spin on his dominant leg placing the ninja behind his opponent with a finishing elbow strike to Francho's back sending the Pirate Lord away through the seas like a flat pebble skidding over the surface of a lake crashing into an island a good twenty thousand kilometers away.</p><p>The cannonball which Francho had fired blasted off into the distance, past into the horizon and then silence... Absolute white covered up the sky completely blinding anyone on that hemisphere of the planet. Far away in the cold vastness of space, the rogue cannonball hit a space body completely devoid of a chakra network detonating in its full intensity unleashing a blast zone of at least fifty thousand kilometers as a rampant shockwave emanated throughout nearby planets shaking them up and causing untold cataclysms throughout. Deafening blasting noise tried turning Mana's eardrums to chalky dust but then the magician recovered seeing her friends covering her eyes as well as her entire body up with a human dome as they synced up their chakra focuses forming a protective formation.</p><p>Kusagoro looked into the sky with great annoyance. For a moment Mana could've sworn seeing some surprise in his eyes but then it was passed down to Kouta and Shimo who just stared off into the skies above.</p><p>"That cannonball..." Shimo uttered in respective fear and uncertainty.</p><p>"Yeah..." Kouta nodded before turning at the bloodstained main mast of the giant juggernaut ship in which the Pirate Lord rode. Now it made perfect sense why the poor captain got completely obliterated by one shot from that handheld weapon.</p><p>"What if that was a planet it hit?" Meiko stared off into the sky, augmenting her visual senses using chakra trying to peek into the destruction the cataclysmic detonation had caused.</p><p>"It did..." Kusagoro grunted through grinding teeth before looking into the distant drowning rubble of an island he sent the Pirate Lord through. "It hit a moon and completely blown it to bits, the blast shockwave must've decimated the surface of the planet of that moon. I can see the damage on that planet from a fair distance visually, the whole thing is coloring blaze red..."</p><p>"Father..." Kouta tried opening up a topic but Kusagoro closed his eyes and yelled out interrupting his son.</p><p>"I can take what he can dish out. Don't worry. This is nothing," the man tried calming his son down but there was still some unclear anger in Kusagoro's eyes.</p><p>A rotating brown ball covered up the Sun before beginning to spiral right at Kusagoro who just extended his hand at his opponent stopping the oversized man cannonball that just bounced off after Red realized that he would not hurt his opponent this way.</p><p>"Human Bullet Tank!" the Pirate Lord shouted out after the human rolling cannonball returned to his normal oversized colossus of a man form.</p><p>"Well, well... A lousy pirate learned some tricks from the ninja ancestors that gave him birth?" Kusagoro grinned for a moment before resuming his pissed act.</p><p>"Just before setting sails for this island I was busy visiting a sea-god Ishirrinbu temple. Monks there dismiss all of their previous allegiances so my elders carried no shame with sharing their clan secrets with me for a price... That being said, this technique I've learned long before I deserted the Island of Serenity's navy." the Pirate Lord huffed out after wiping a drool of blood running down his nose and his lip. The man was glad that he was given this chance to catch some of his breath.</p><p>"That cannonball. What is it?" Kusagoro asked pointing at the still fiery skies as the clouds were absolutely wiped away from the tremendous sky pressure momentarily wiping away the dark dread brought by the Box, showing only burning skies above before the Box's evil chakra once again took over the climate ravaging the skies with purple thunderbolts and thick endless layers of dark clouds.</p><p>"Antimatter. Each cannonball holds one ton of it sealed off with chakra seals in a hardened shell. One group of seals is supposed to contain the antimatter from all the matter within the shell while the other one is designed to forcefully transfer all that force right through the object it is aimed at and not blow up the half of the world I'm in every time... I'm not that crazy." Francho grinned popping his cannon open by swinging it downwards so that it tossed out a large ball which he caught and showed off for the young ones and Kusagoro. It didn't look much different from just another cannonball and yet the destruction it carried within was untold and tough to even imagine.</p><p>"Are you interested in this weapon, ninja?" the Pirate Lord laughed out mocking his opponent.</p><p>"Nah, don't care about that. The Boss-Lady might though... If my boy brings back both those pricy shards and those shells back it'll score some points with her." Kusagoro explained in contained excitement.</p><p>"Heh, whom are you trying to fool? Everyone can smell yer crapped up pants from here!" Francho thundered out in a wild fit of laughter.</p><p>"Hmph, not really..." Kusagoro shrugged after punching his own palm a couple of times in frustration, "It's just that after seeing you take my honest punch and seeing all that destruction you can dish out you got my hopes up but truth be told – you're too weak to compare to my best despite pushing me there."</p><p>It was clear that the jounin's remark properly pissed his opponent off who suddenly reached for both of his cannons and pointed them at Kusagoro preparing to unleash hellfire. After both of the Lord's hands were moved away from his torn up and now unbuttoned military coat the darned thing opened revealing pockets and holsters filled with the cannonballs leaving almost no space on the inside of the coat.</p><p>Kusagoro fired himself off at his opponent, breaking off any leashes and completely letting himself off the chain. Fights like this annoyed him so much – when his opponent was strong enough to really challenge him and make him not need to hold back anymore but not strong enough to compare to the very top percentages of power he had to show.</p><p>With a wild battle cry, Kusagoro's fist dug deep into the pirate's jaw throwing a couple of more teeth off into the distance. With another swift motion, the jounin pressed a switch on the cannons letting all the balls just fall off from the cannons and scatter along the floor, all twelve of them were now rolling around and getting lost in the ocean waves through the cracks of the breaking apart and drifting island.</p><p>Kusagoro's fists began to soar wildly, blurring, laying siege on the Akimichi's defenses but Francho merely once again covered his face and head and started turning around with his upper body blocking the upper aiming strikes with his elbows or the sides of his arms meanwhile the lower punches while successful in being landed only appeared to deal temporary damage. For a man his size, Francho definitely took as many blows as his height and weight suggested he'd be able to.</p><p>"Open Hand Slap!" Francho yelled out skipping a couple of blows to his jaw and nose only to land a powerful thrust from both his hands that blasted Kusagoro away into the horizon. Had the man met any islands in his ocean splitting flight he'd have demolished the entire natural structures just like his opponent did before.</p><p>"Don't think this is over!" the Pirate Lord yelled out, his hands momentarily became too blurry to see and the young ninja realized that the Pirate Lord reloaded his cannons in the smallest microsecond before most of them could even realize what was happening. The giant turned his weapons at the young ones but then reconsidered aiming and opening up hell at Kusagoro's general direction.</p><p>Much smaller blasts emanated in the distance. Mana had imagined that shells strong enough to decimate a faraway moon of some distant planet and decimate the surface of the said planet would've made a much more lasting explosion but the blasts seemed not much louder than nearby thunder and the actual blast zone barely even discomforted Mana as the light looked so far away.</p><p>"Amazing! Father's body is absorbing all of the energy in those explosions. He's actually taking those shots" Kouta realized exclaiming in shock. Even Mana, someone who was trained by Tanshu himself found it difficult to comprehend and believe.</p><p>"How about some of this then?" the Pirate Lord screamed out in childish glee as he quickly emptied the rounds of his cannons, eleven shells each and then reloaded them in a blink of an eye doing the same over and over again. The Pirate Lord emptied his cannons, again and again, reloading just about fast enough to fire another barrage.</p><p>After the tirade of fire and destruction began to bore Francho he lowered his weapons and holstered them by his side. His coat now looked much lighter which was understandable seeing how before it was weighed down by all those tons of cannonballs in his pockets. Now the man's coat looked floaty in the evening wind suggesting that he may have emptied most of his arsenal.</p><p>"Now, kiddies, how about you tell good old Pirate Lord Red how to activate this thing and how it works exactly?" the Akimichi giant smiled looking at the young ninja.</p><p>"You bastard! Firing away blasts like that so easily, you could've destroyed the whole world if something went wrong! What if you missed and didn't hit Kouta's father!?" Shimo grunted out, ignorant fools like the Pirate Lord who wasted their power without control or restraint, caring not what ruins they leave in their wake annoyed the young swordsman greatly. They reminded the Yuki of the old Mizukage Daikon who made his family have to flee, the kind of person he wished to protect the world from.</p><p>Only a thundering laughter from the depths of the Pirate Lord's chest followed the young one's question.</p><p>"What do I care? I've got the ultimate wish fulfillment tool in my reach. Once I get my hands on it I'll ask for... Ummm... Immortality? No... That'd be boring... To remake the world with me as its king! No... I don't want to stop plundering... Fine... I'll ask for absolute power unrivaled by any ninja, samurai or any other kind of warrior in the world. I will be the scourge of the seas, no more of this triumvirate of Pirate Lords! The seas and the world by extension whenever I will wish it shall be my Dominion! If the world has to blow up before I ask it, so be it, if I have to cross any lines to do i..."</p><p>A powerful hook to the jaw sent the Pirate Lord away knocking the handcannons out of his hands and completely lifting the man off the ground. The blow was so powerful that even the previously landed blows that failed to lift the Pirate Lord off his feet paled in comparison. Even if Francho had dodged the punch the airwaves from its wake would've blown the man away all by themselves no matter how many tons he carried under or over his belt.</p><p>"You just won't shut up, will you?" Kusagoro grunted with one of his eye closed, momentarily the veteran opened his eye wiping the trickling blood from his forehead away. The jounin's ninja vest was singed up and his clothes were greatly damaged suggesting that whatever chakra augmentation he used to form a forcefield of chakra around himself skipped a little of the blast through.</p><p>"Hundred forty-seven..." Francho yelled out shaking in anger while wiping the dripping blood off his cracked open lip and busted nose. This time he managed to control his flight and not fly off into the distance, he could only risk submerging that many islands before he finally caught the marine hunter-ninja attention. Fighting off all of their fleets as well as this Konoha ninja would've been problematic and even the lacking modesty Pirate Lord knew it.</p><p>"Hundred forty-seven fucking antimatter cannonballs you owe me!" the Akimichi screamed out like a madman lunging into battle. Swinging his fist like a total loony without any aim or reason behind it. His style was that of a drunk bar brawler or at least it was the style that the Pirate Lord had chosen for this specific attack.</p><p>Kusagoro lifted his hand opening up a vent right in the center of his palm instead of changing the entire palm.</p><p>"Chakra Pistol!" he shouted out firing an arm-sized laser blast comprised of concentrated chakra he had sapped out of himself as well as the environment around him.</p><p>Francho's head cocked back after the blast hit and exploded right in the center of the Pirate Lord's face with enough force to not only break the balance of the towering man but also flip him over himself a couple of times while in the air before Kusagoro's leaping kick stomped and crushed the man to the dirt.</p><p>"Do you know why despite the immense power the ninja possess no one is banning their entire order or hunting them like freaks?" Kusagoro calmly began to explain while he nonchalantly hopped off the downed and awkwardly laying upside down body of his opponent.</p><p>"That's because our power is proportional to our chakra levels and as you know – chakra is a combination of both one's physical as well as spiritual sides. Just getting blown up with muscle or reading a billion books won't do – you have to obtain both. That means that with each addition to a ninja's chakra level they become wiser in using it. They know the world ending scenarios they could cause and so this planet continues to float in space for millennia... That's until fools like you decide to trick the natural order – fools with a world-ending weapon or too much physical power acquired fuck knows where but none of the wisdom, none of the control. I don't care if you support the sensitive balance of temporary marine piece, I'm killing you here, that much I can promise you!" Kusagoro declared looking down at his opponent confidently.</p>
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<a name="section0217"><h2>217. Spinach Before Chili</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the purple thunderstorm raged on and the dark clouds continued to encircle the Box of Ultimate Bliss, making what used to be a paradise island colored with unique gloom and grit, the ninja, the civilian and a pirate alike managed to ignore the picking up gusts of wind. Being the one most sensitive to environmental factors Mana wrapped her hands around herself and tried warming herself up. The insane battle transpiring in front of her, of which she could rarely perceive anything at all, seemed to slow down. This gave the magician a chance to analyze both combatants.</p><p>"Your father looks wounded. His uniform is busted up and some of his open wounds aren't looking too good. I thought he said he was too strong for Francho..." Mana spoke out loud only for Kouta to notice her concern and try hugging her for warmth but after the medical ninja saw the uneasiness and sadness in Mana's eyes he decided to just gently place his hand on her shoulder and try calming her down.</p><p>"Father is keeping a lot back, maybe he thinks he can win like this, I'm not sure..." the Jugo mumbled out uneasily. It appeared that Kusagoro's lacking attitude towards this fight worried him somewhat as well.</p><p>"What do you mean by holding back? Wouldn't his body instinctually use as much chakra as needed to withstand that damage? Doesn't the fact that he's taking more damage than dishing out suggest his shortcoming?" Mana worried.</p><p>"Don't worry, Jugo clan folk have a pretty nasty secret weapon up their sleeve. I'm assuming that Kouta's father is keeping it there because he doesn't want to lose control of himself but he can kick it up a whole lot of notches." Shimo revealed while coldly continuing to observe Kusagoro and Francho exchange blows. The Pirate Lord took a lot more blows than he even tried dish out, in terms of technical martial arts proficiency he was a guppy in an ocean fighting a leviathan. Still, whenever Francho did land an occasional hit it looked like it broke Kusagoro's whole combinations and forced the jounin to back up and catch his breath.</p><p>"What does that mean?" Mana shook her head. "Just how much power is your father holding back?"</p><p>Kouta closed his eyes as if he was admitting something he wasn't overly proud of, "Back there while we were fighting Read... We got into a pinch, I was forced to use something I thought I'd never use. You see, Jugo can absorb natural chakra, the chakra present in the environment around them. They can then use that chakra to morph not only their limbs but their entire body. Usually, such natural chakra would be unusable but our modified over generations DNA shifts our own chakra to better accommodate the natural making us primal and enraged but also powerful. There isn't an actual name for it, this transformation but to me it sounds like a curse. A Curse Mode if you will..."</p><p>"It raises too many questions but just answer this, how much more powerful does this Curse Mode make a Jugo?" Mana relented, the historian and lore buff inside her wished to question her friend excessively until she knew everything there was to know. The ability to tap into the power of nature around one, to be one with the world around you sounded amazing! Still, the situation at hand was too dire for research and legends, she needed to know if Kusagoro could use that to beat his opponent if need be or if she needed to work on a backup plan.</p><p>"Well... I'd say the first stage would make father at least more than twice his original chakra level. The first stage just prepares one's body for the unnatural transformation. He'd have to replace at least half of his resources with natural chakra." Kouta admitted.</p><p>"First stage? More than twice stronger?" Mana shook both due to the cold chills of the air around her as well as awe in the amazing bloodline power-up that a clan ninja had over common ones like her.</p><p>"You have to understand, tapping into the fundamental forces of nature makes a person unstable, primal and enraged beyond control. The first stage is just the beginning, however it is the easiest to work with, the user still retains some control over their actions but those violent urges become really powerful. I would never risk going beyond the first stage..." Kouta explained as he saw Mana being under the illusion that it was a power up to be thrown around left and right. "Father must keep it hidden because he values control and style over raw physicality. Even a brawler like him feels that way..."</p><p>"You seem to really dislike that awakening of power, I'm sorry you had to use it." Mana apologized as she was de facto giving orders and had the definitive say in the team. She couldn't help but feel responsible.</p><p>"Back in Konoha I hated my father's clan heritage. That much is true. I saw how kind my mother was and how bitter she felt about father's life choices. I saw how much good being a medical ninja could do and so I ignored that part of me. But out here, throughout this journey I've come to realize that, just like you, by ignoring that part of my identity and overcompensating on others I was incomplete. That was why I was so weak both as a warrior of the Jugo clan and as a medical ninja. I hate that power, sometimes I dislike my father's words or actions but... It's a part of me, I need that power to protect people just like I need my skills as a medical ninja to do the same. It's because of this journey and this mission that I've learned to appreciate it and tapped into it, it's because of this journey that my identity was mended, as was Shimo's. All of us have reasons to feel grateful, Mana, grateful to you." Kouta bravely admitted just standing and trying to tell what was going on in that mad flurry of punches ahead.</p><p>"Shut up..." Shimo mumbled out pouting his lips as if his brave façade was threatened. "Be ready to help your father out whenever you find an opening. We are so weak on this battlefield that it's completely inconsequential but our skillsets may yet serve some use." the swordsman ordered.</p><p>A loud booming sound combined with a deafening shockwave instantly demanded the youths' full attention. Francho's hulking frame was awkwardly twisted as his neck extended well over its intended length after Kusagoro's focused right hook dug deep into the man's jaw. The Pirate Lord rocketed into the oceans beside and crashed into another island decimating it and crushing it to such extent that the poor landmark was beginning to slowly submerge underwater.</p><p>"Don't!" Kusagoro shouted out, "Don't get in my way and make yourselves targets!" he ordered. Usually the man carried an aura of levity in all of his violent and often terrifying approach to things but this yell was totally serious. The warrior of the Leaf village was after his mission objective to bring as many of the youths home as possible.</p><p>"Human Boulder Yo-Yo!" the Pirate Lord yelled out triumphantly as his oversized frame shaped itself into a human ball and rolled at his opponent at immense speeds fast enough to cover the distance between the island he was sent to and the one he was sent there from in moments.</p><p>The first strike knocked the wind out of Kusagoro lifting him high up in the air while the still rolling "human boulder" leaped in the air and began bouncing off rocks, trees and even the Box for continuously assault his opponent in the air. After landing a hit or two, the user of this peculiar rolling technique just rolled aside or bounced right off any surface and rushed at the opponent again and again. The finishing attack was a downwards dive of the oversized human ball that crushed Kusagoro into the ground and began seriously damaging the island.</p><p>As the young ninja fleeted the slowly disappearing island Kouta grabbed Mana in his arms and ran up the Box's surface. For a moment the magician was worried that with the ninja scaling the mystical artifact the chakra used for wall scaling would activate the Box but it wasn't so. The summoner of the Box's mystical powers must've required a conscious effort to unseal its legendary properties.</p><p>This time the Pirate Lord kept track of Kusagoro who was slowly drifting underneath and sinking to the bottom of this seemingly abyssal ocean covering the distance between the mainland continent and the Archipelago of islands as well as Kirigakure.</p><p>Right after Kusagoro surfaced, Francho opened his military coat's inner pockets revealing hidden sealing glyphs which began to glow in the faint blueish glow. Kusagoro wiped the blood coming from his broken nose and his busted open mouth, the man looked pissed and despite the Pirate Lord's overwhelming assault Mana was beginning to realize that all Francho was doing right now was pulling the moustache of a sleeping titan about to wake.</p><p>Francho's hands unsealed a bunch of cannonballs from the storage seals and instantaneously reloaded his handcannons pointing them at Kusagoro. The Pirate Lord began firing unleashing literal hell but Kouta's father simply lowered his head and forced himself through, with a powerful battle cry that only a pissed ruthless warrior could exclaim Kusagoro's fist clenched and morphed into a cannon of the typical primal Jugo skin texture which the warrior slammed right into Francho's face running right through the man's barrage of destructive shells.</p><p>"Chakra Shotgun!" Kusagoro roared out firing a blast right in Francho's face. Mana could hear her friends scream in joy! An attack that completely disintegrated a captain level pirate, fired off from point blank range by a pissed Kusagoro. An attack of such magnitude surely must've succeeded! Mana realized that she was cheering and shouting together with her friends. She didn't like or trust that man, she had her reason and wasn't unjustified in her lack of trust – the man attacked her more than once and almost killed her a couple of times. Hardly a suitable future father-in-law material and yet...</p><p>Francho stumbled back appearing from the cloud of smoke. Kusagoro slid back gripping his own shoulder and painfully breathing trying to control the pain of the damage that the attack inflicted back on him.</p><p>"How on Earth did you take that standing?" the Jugo bruiser huffed out looking at smoked up and bruised but smiling, if a little toothless, face of his opponent. "Your hands were in your coat's pockets, you couldn't have blocked that..."</p><p>"They were in the pockets alright..." Francho laughed up removing his hands out from his pockets and revealing a pill case to his opponent. "My clan's ancestors tried teaching me their ninja arts but they were unsuccessful. There was too little time and I was never good with that technical side of the ninja arts. Instead they gave me these pills and said to ingest them when I need my clan's blessing, despite my ineptitude they are what can win me any battle!"</p><p>"So you flicked a pill and cracked it at the very last second..." Kusagoro smiled, he spent some chakra on that attack and wasn't too excited about that overly durable approach of the Pirate Lord.</p><p>"That's right, the dark green – Spinach Pill which multiplied my power ten times for just a brief moment allowing me to augment my body with ten times the usual chakra augmentation. Two planets could've been smashed together with me in between and it'd have felt like an autumn leaf falling on my face!" the Pirate laughed out frantically before suddenly freezing in place and shaking in pain.</p><p>Kusagoro began laughing at his opponents discomfort, he raised his still morphed hand and aimed it at the suffering Pirate Lord. "What's the matter, didn't your clan elders tell you all power-ups come with a cost?" the Jugo mocked the pirate before grinding his teeth angrily. "Your shells blasted away the tie of my friend. One that meant the world to me and whose memento I carried tied around my arm. I will never forgive you for that!"</p><p>"Chakra Shell Barrage!" Kusagoro shouted out as his morphed arm lit up with chakra being channelled inside.</p><p>A combination of chakra waves fired off from the cannon rushing at the paralyzed and injured target like bullets. The blasts spread off widely and continued to blast various parts of Francho's body, it was fortunate that the man was such a tremendously large target. Even as the blasts continued to assault the pirate, Francho stood on top of the water surface maintaining the Art of Walking on Water technique even as his body was bombarded with intense chakra blasts. Each single blast of this endless wave was as powerful as a single "Chakra Pistol" technique used by Kusagoro before.</p><p>After the technique concluded the Pirate Lord was standing but he didn't look that conscious or willing to keep going. His coat was ruined beyond the point where the seals in the inner pockets could've been used. His whole body was covered with burns and bruises where concentrated pure chakra blasted him.</p><p>"It's a stalemate now... Kouta's father may have taken a lot of damage before but he dishes it all back with benefits. Even without this Curse Mode he can still win" Shimo briefly smiled as seeing Francho withstand Kusagoro's "Chakra Shotgun" attack scared the youth in the beginning.</p><p>"Yeah, but Francho showed five pills of which he had only ingested one." Mana reminded her friend.</p><p>"That's right, that fatso can still pull off miraculous crap like he did before with those things!" Meiko shouted out in surprise.</p><p>"Not just that, I've read about the Akimichi clan and they are only known for using three pills during dangerous situations. It is even said that the final pill actually kills the user by forcing the body to burn itself out. There's no telling what those other two unaccounted pills are or what they do exactly. I am quite glad that Kusagoro-san still has hidden aces because this is a dangerous situation." Mana explained her point.</p><p>"I don't think the Curse Form is very reliable at the moment..." Kouta looked Mana in the eyes seriously. "It dawned to me why father may not be using it even if it means an easy victory. The form unleashes violent urges, the rampant desire to kill, something my father feels even in his normal shape. I think he may be afraid he'd hurt you, Mana, you or the others, maybe even me. That is why he's holding back and grasps to maintain full control over himself..."</p><p>"Wow, you're just having a bad day, huh?" Meiko tried to lighten Mana's mood after the supposed theory that her presence may have been the reason why Kusagoro held himself back. After all, the guy just didn't overall like her to begin with due to the fact that she was closer to his son than he ever was. That was why the man never felt too shy about beating her up near to death even when he was fully restraining himself.</p><p>"Kusagoro-san! Please don't mind me, I don't care if you kill me, just win and bring everyone home!" Mana shouted out to the huffing Jugo warrior who was gathering his strength for the following inevitable clash between him and the Pirate Lord.</p><p>"Don't flatter yourself, brat. If I think Curse Form is necessary to win, I'll use it without hesitation. I don't have to bring all of you home anyway, just some. Plus if I do end up killing you I do have some interesting things to tell the Boss Lady about you and your intent of using the Box against her orders, not like it'll trouble me at the slightest..." Kusagoro responded.</p><p>Francho stumbled around finally regaining something resembling semblance back to his shaking and temporary paralyzed body. Just after the pirate's consciousness kicked itself back into it the large man tumbled and fell on his knees before his shaking hands proved too weak to maintain the man's balance and lead to the man just face-planting into the water just barely maintaining the focus to keep him on the surface.</p><p>"You're lucky the Box fucking floats... If I had to use that thing from the depths... I'd have asked it to bring you back so I could kill you again!" Francho roughed out as he picked himself up and put himself on his feet again.</p><p>It was only then that the young ninja noticed that the Box was perfectly floating on the surface despite being tough enough to withstand all those shocks and nearby battle explosions without any damage whatsoever. It must've been emitting some sort of permanent chakra pulse which kept it afloat just as if it was using the Art of Walking on Water technique.</p><p>Kouta tried calming Mana down, "Don't worry, father will definitely win and he didn't mean harm. That's just the way he talks to people. No need to feel bad about yourself..."</p><p>"I'm not..." Mana admitted, "Well, OK, I am but it's a lot of different things that I will most likely never get over. Right now I'm just really interested in this Box. I wonder if it floats permanently and can never appear underwater or inside mountains or under snow, maybe it has a set dimensional height as a part of the coordinates?"</p><p>"I thought you're a magician, not a scientist..." Kouta softly laughed out feeling lightly amused by Mana's enthusiasm through all those dark and sad feelings she had.</p><p>"Well... Stage magicians need to understand the world around them better than most, they use their great knowledge and skills to fool others for their own amusement, remember?" Mana replied with her cheekbones bending in a somewhat smiling shape if only a little bit, first time in quite a while.</p><p>Francho shouted out loud unleashing a powerful aura of emanating chakra being molded inside his body. "Finally, that paralysis and cramps are gone! Now to kill all of you!" he laughed out as the usual red returned to his cheeks and his almost toothless mouth twisted into a mad yet jolly smile.</p>
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<a name="section0218"><h2>218. ----- And a Bottle of Rum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the purple lightning continued to provide limited illumination to the overall apocalyptic gloom emanating from the skies above the Box it seemed like there'd be no end to this incredible battle. At least there was none in sight. The two opponents had thrown immensely powerful attacks against each other that'd have decimated any opponent not on their unbelievably high level and yet these two only brushed the damage off despite its world-shattering proportions.</p><p>Finally, the Konoha jounin decided to make the first move after Francho had regained his freedom of movement. It was risky to attack the man head on however Kusagoro wanted to scout out just what Francho's current chakra level was as the warrior suspected that the pills may have boosted the man's chakra pool tenfold for a brief moment but it also may have reduced the pirate's power afterward. Such was usually the nature of such risky power-ups. The payoff usually made the benefits not worth the hassle if the opponent survived the sudden explosion of power.</p><p>Francho decided to not wait until his body and face got pummeled by Kusagoro's ground shattering and impossibly fast combinations of punches. The hulking brute threw a powerful straight punch which landed right in Kusagoro's extended hand. The blow however wasn't simply stopped by the crafty shinobi. A silent popping sound suggested a more complicated strategy being in play. The brief smile on the jounin's face only strengthened this theory...</p><p>Suddenly Francho's fist, Kusagoro's body and then his face and the entire area got swallowed in a cloud of smoke as Francho's crushing blow cracked a smoke bomb which the ninja had held in his hand having carefully removed it from his pouch while his opponent's attention was fleeting.</p><p>Loud thuds and cracks emanated from inside the smoke cloud. Francho must've been caught unprepared in a pretty devastating beatdown as the loud thundering blows and the shockwaves coming after them quickly dispersed the dark smoke cloud. Francho's stumbling body looked around not being able to see his opponent anywhere. It was clear that the Pirate Lord had received quite an ass-kicking inside that cloud, his bruises and severely busted nose, eye and lip testified it. Now Francho's greatest concern was finding his opponent.</p><p>Without alert or taunting, Kusagoro crashed on top of his opponent from high above. Dashing from above the layers of black as tar clouds so swiftly that the emanating airwaves split a gigantic hole in the skies letting a brief ray of sunlight in before it closed down again, fueled by the malicious chakra of the Box. Francho's jaw gapped wide open as his throat was crushed by Kusagoro's elbow and drove to the ground so deep and with so much force that it split the waters wide open and went well into the abysmal crater at the bottom.</p><p>After a brief moment the waters snapped back like the jaws of a monster crushing the two fighters underneath them, making it very unclear what was transpiring below. Finally Mana witnessed a bunch of astonishingly wide beacons of light, signaling the upcoming devastation to follow and finally beams of white light shot out from under the oceans into the sky, each at least fifty meters wide or larger and didn't seem to weaken as they left Earth's atmosphere. The ground beneath was shaking and erecting crashing waves that reached the very upper layers of the heavens above and yet standing on top of the Box seemed to absorb any shocks from down under. Almost like the Box had a protecting force field around it that only living avatars of chakra could pass and not destructive forces of nature around them.</p><p>Kusagoro appeared from down under after jumping out from the bottom of the abyss he had crushed his opponent down in. The jounin was struggling to breathe calmly, he appeared grasping for air but then his breathing sort of equalized and the man's hands weighed down. After the life returned to the shinobi's arms he lifted them back up and stretched his numbed up muscles out.</p><p>"Scared me for a moment there... Almost destroyed the whole damned planet" Kusagoro jumbled out as he grinned while looking down at an unseen point deep underwater as if he could see his opponent. Even through his remarkable restraint, even transferring all but inconsequential percentages of his chakra right into his opponent wasting none on the world around them the planet was suffering, both from the malicious effects of the Box seeing the light of day and from the cataclysmic battle transpiring before it.</p><p>After a moment of awkward silence Kusagoro blinked rapidly a couple of times and scratched the back of his head uneasily. Shimo and Kouta looked at each other wondering if the Pirate Lord will even surface. Surely he must've perished after an attack like that?</p><p>"That attack was Hell's Gate - one of father's strongest, he directs the majority of his available chakra into a singular beam that devastates his opponent and grinds them into the ground exploding underneath and erupting back in the shape of countless beams that leave the Earth's surface and travel away. I'd assume that when the attack detonates it doesn't hurt anything living... It's required because most bodies can't take this attack and may die too soon, leaving most of it for the world to handle." Kouta's face began shifting into a smile. Slowly the boy was becoming more and more confident that the opponent must've been destroyed.</p><p>"Or he ate another pill in desperation to survive... That means that right now he is cowering and suffering the after-effects and your father is wasting his time to finish this." Shimo shrugged, as time went on and on it was becoming apparent that no one would surface. Then Francho simply blinked into existence just twenty meters further from Kusagoro as if he was moving at completely untraceable speeds.</p><p>The Pirate Lord was injured, solid chunks of flesh had peeled off exposing his muscle and bone in several spots of his body and large areas of his body were burnt up or singed. At that moment his coat had completely been torn off and incinerated so not a single string of cloth remained. His black tank top had gaping holes exposing the wounds or twitching tense muscle tissue under it. Yet somehow Francho found the time to pick up his captain's hat from wherever it laid in the battlefield. Most gruesomely a beaten body laid in his weighed down arms halfway drowning as Francho barely had the chakra to hold himself on the water's surface at that moment – it was beaten and unconscious Hachiro.</p><p>"Not sure what this landlubber is but I found him on my ship trying to sail away..." Francho grinned lifting Hachiro's unconscious body up and showing it to Kusagoro who just indifferently shrugged.</p><p>"I've no idea who he is either. So you've wasted time running to your ship then? Should've covered your tail and ran while you're at it... I really hope you're not planning on using this unconscious Uchiha trash as hostage?" the jounin coldly replied.</p><p>"I guess not..." Francho tossed the Uchiha aside letting him float with his head down and under forcing Kouta and Shimo to move forward. While Francho's eyes traced the two younglings he did not attempt to intercept them, it could've been quite dangerous to direct his attention to kids and ignore a pissed off opponent he could barely handle already.</p><p>"Yeah, sorry 'bout that, just had to fetch some rum and then pick up my hat, it was floating sea miles away. I kinda need this thing, it's my pride as a Pirate Lord!" Francho explained pulling out a bottle with chestnut colored drink which he flipped up and shook his face rapidly as his cheeks began to blush and his nose dyed red. The Pirate's eyes began to roll around as if he was chasing wild fairies or something.</p><p>Francho tripped up over his own feet beginning to stagger around in a manner in which a drunkard staggered around. Kusagoro punched his own palm before taking a combat stance and rushing at his opponent attempting to take him out. After that last attack there couldn't have been much fight left in the Pirate Lord. The two had been dishing out inhumanly powerful attacks at each other and finally it looked like one of them was taking actual damage. Francho's movements were different, he had to retreat to his ship and fetch a drink all of a sudden – this was not a behavior of a fighter who thought himself in a good place with solid chances of winning.</p><p>The Akimichi weaved back in a wildly unstable manner avoiding Kusagoro's punch. The brawler's eyes wildly shot open in surprise, who on Earth dodged that way? Just weaving back allured one's opponent to just step forward and extend their hand further, to bash the unprotected head. Weaving right back was just a careless move, Francho was wildly untrained in martial arts but not this bad! Then, in a sudden outburst of speed and ferocity, the pirate just tossed his upper body onwards shoving a fist in Kusagoro's face and making the jounin slide back on the water's surface grabbing his bursting with blood busted nose.</p><p>The pirate let a silly hiccup out as he continued to sway onwards and backwards, weaving to the left and right as if struggling to keep his moves straight.</p><p>"Tsk... You had to go ahead and pull that old thing out, didn't you?" Kusagoro complained scratching the side of his head and feeling up his nose until his elemental in battle ninja healing factor took care of his rapidly bleeding nose to the point where it didn't stand in the way of him continuing the battle.</p><p>"Lurrned it from an old haaaag in Neigong island up north..." Francho grinned slurring in a barely intelligible manner.</p><p>"What are those weird moves?" Shimo wondered annoyingly staring at the staggering pirate as he kept embarrassing himself in his drunk sway.</p><p>"The Drunken Fist Style" Hachiro weakly exclaimed as his eyes slightly peeked open looking at the battlefield. The Uchiha eyes must've witnessed this fighting style in the past or at the very least heard of it, it didn't appear to particularly surprise the man and he happened to identify the style immediately having just woken up from his knocked out state.</p><p>"So... You learn how to fight when you're drunk?" Kouta scratched the back of his head looking confused, "That doesn't match what we were taught as medical ninja..." the young man added scratching his chin. To him such a style happened to be a total mystery, it wasn't easy to pick up that the young man has never had much experience with drinking or seen himself get drunk. His wild party on Read's ship may have been the young man's first experience with alcohol...</p><p>"No. You get drunk when you're drunk. However some people, very few – just barely enough to fuel the legends, do not get drunk like they usually would. Instead they awaken a hidden style of martial arts hidden within their genetic code. Something that only very few inherit in any given generation." Hachiro explained slowly picking himself off the top of the Box and sitting up before trying to stand up but collapsing on his knees.</p><p>As the injured Uchiha attempted to explain the style to the young ninja Kusagoro desperately tried to land a single blow on his opponent but the patterns of the drunk pirate were impossible to predict. Right after avoiding a series of strikes the pirate weaved back and delivered a flurry of swift and strong blows in angles and combinations that he must've been making up on the fly. Kusagoro flew back getting blown away by the unpredictable and impeccably odd movements of his opponent.</p><p>"I once tried copying such a style from a wandering ninja who possessed this ability. Even my Sharingan couldn't predict it or copy it. It could easily copy the movements but simply doing that wasn't enough. It just needs that drunkenness and that wild unpredictability factor that only poor resistance to alcohol grants. It's a style only people born into it can use, at any point there can't be more than a handful of people with this ability." Hachiro continued to explain as Kusagoro launched another series of attacks.</p><p>This time Francho leaned back so wide that the fatso tumbled down raising a huge splash of water that washed the opponent away. Once the Jugo finally gathered his focus back the Pirate Lord suddenly jumped up recovering from his peaceful drunk slumber and began wildly kicking the shinobi up in a rapid succession the likes of which he could not pull of sober. Francho was a strongman, he swung wide and tried to hit slow, for a ninja, but insanely strong hits. Such speed and rapid combinations were unseen from his sober state and tough to believe, even tougher to survive...</p><p>"The worst thing is that the moves cannot be predicted, the user's emotions cannot be read because they change too wildly, even the user doesn't know their own movements, they just act... Because of that even if a Yamanaka would attempt reading their opponents' minds they could not accurately predict anything to come from such an enemy." Hachiro concluded his explanation before clutching to his chest wound. Kouta sat down and began treating the man once in a while turning at the battlefield and checking on his father.</p><p>"Wow! I never imagined such a style existed!" Meiko shouted out in disbelief, her manner suggested that the redhead was more excited to see it than scared of Kouta's father losing. "How does one fight it?" she wondered.</p><p>"You must snap the user out of it. Just like their easy access to the style through minimal ingestion of alcohol they also enter the state of heightened awareness easier. A strong blow or drawing of their own blood should do the trick, still, it's easier said than done." the Uchiha lowered his head letting his hair flow all over. The man must've been in a lot of pain and yet his attempt at an escape using Francho's own ship felt a bit dirty. Mana realized that the Uchiha may have only cared about them because of that strange belief that this man he was afraid of wanted Mana alive. She suspected this before but wasn't completely sure, this attempt only helped her make sure.</p><p>Kusagoro shouted out in rage. His feet morphed into jets that fired off chakra flames sending the man forward in manner greatly surpassing his normal combat speed allowing him to boost not only his speed but also the weight behind his punch. The man's hands switched into enlarged fists, almost like gigantic hammers held on human arms.</p><p>"Father..." Kouta mumbled out, "Don't overdo it, you'll enter Curse Mode unwillingly if you morph too much of your body at once."</p><p>Just as the jounin got close to his opponent the pirate leaned back just as he usually did, without a doubt even with his empowered attack there would've been little success to Kusagoro's approach however the brute was smarter than that. Instead of trying to hit the pirate with his enlarged hammer hands he slammed them together unleashing a mad shockwave bubble that extended wide beyond the battlefield raising crashing tsunami waves. Shimo and Meiko had to intensify their chakra flows to form a protective aura of chakra around the young ninja or else they'd have been blown back for tens of thousands of kilometers away.</p><p>At least the attack succeeded, while spitting off blood from his busted up nose and lips Francho rolled backwards tossed around by the shockwave. The young ninja cheered for the jounin that fought one of the three most powerful pirates alive to bring them all home. Such an intense blow powerful enough to raise tsunami waves that drowned hundreds of small uninhabited islands all around the ocean thousands of kilometers away should've knocked the Drunken Fist right out of Francho's head.</p><p>Kusagoro dashed back and raised his arms up for a competent defense, he wasn't completely sure if the Pirate Lord had the Drunken Fist beaten out of him. He decided to play it safe just in case.</p><p>A wild yet slurry laughter pierced the skies and air overpowering even the sounds of purple thunder lightning up the heavens above. Francho wiped the blood off his nose before taking another chug from his bottle of rum. After taking a large enough gulp to send streams of rum down his mouth, beard and all over his belly the Pirate Lord stood on one leg extending one of his arms forward as if he held a cane. Kusagoro's confused expression made him involuntarily tilt his head up. The shinobi was confused as to how the Drunken Fist style could still remain in the Pirate's system.</p><p>"This Drunken Fist isn't any usual Drunken Fist. I've honed my style. The martial artists on Neigong call the uninitiated style – Loopy Fist, mockingly of course. The honed style is referred to as "Zui Quan" because it focuses on imitating and honoring the eight greatest masters of Drunken Fist of the past. Now you've just killed one of the immortal masters within me – Lu Dongbin, forcing me to change into Li Tieguai – the one-legged cripple master!" Francho's drunken laughter once again erupted out loud so loud and annoying that it almost made Kusagoro cover his ears.</p><p>Kusagoro grunted angrily before pointing his arm at the opponent. Francho grabbed one of his feet bending his leg up beginning to hop on his other leg as if he was about to fall.</p><p>"Chakra Grenade!" Kusagoro yelled out building up an excessive charge of chakra into a sphere sending it flying slowly at his opponent, trying to confuse the drunkard with the awfully slow timing of the unstable explosive sphere. The Pirate Lord awkwardly stumbled around leaping on his grounded foot before he bent down and tossed a swiping kick with the dominant leg, tossing the bottle of rum in the air and letting go of the weak leg. The grenade got kicked aside before it detonated. Normally the blast would've still blasted the pirate away and busted him up pretty badly but just before detonation, the drunkard appeared to tumble over his own leg right after he lifted it up to his own hand and rolled aside swiftly and covering some great distance in seemingly no time at all.</p><p>Kusagoro didn't notice the blindingly fast rolling human meatball as it deformed back into the drunkard that was fighting him using a kick with his dominant leg which Francho didn't bother bend and lift up holding. The powerful kick sent Kusagoro flying back and bashing violently into the Box that absorbed all of the force of impact. Then the pirate simply bounced back on one leg to his initial location only to grab his bottle of rum and tease his pissed and bleeding opponent with it.</p>
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<a name="section0219"><h2>219. The Drunkard's Comet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Francho taunted his opponent leaping on one of his legs while he held his other leg bent and in one hand imitating a one-legged cripple, or at least a drunkard's version of one. For a brief moment, a thought had occurred in Kusagoro's mind to target the bottle of rum which his opponent held in his hand however it seemed too much trouble. The brawler already had trouble hitting the illusive drinker, targeting such a small target would've only made it proportionately more difficult.</p><p>Regardless of if Kusagoro would target the bottle or not, there was no denying that alcohol was integral to the style's successful use – the Jugo had noticed it. A sip was required to switch between these "immortal masters of old" that the Pirate Lord slurred of before. To a less skilled mind, such a fact would seem irrelevant however the Jugo quickly combined it with the previous knowledge of his opponent and realized he could use this style to his own advantage.</p><p>The inseparable part of this style was the user's inability to take their alcohol meaning they got drunk much faster than any other person without the ability to use Drunken Fist. That meant that each successive sip must've intoxicated the user more as well. To any solid drinker, eight sips of rum would've been a good and dizzying drink however it could've lead to someone like Francho being completely wasted, maybe the stupid fatso would even pass out? Even such a victory was acceptable to the Jugo rather than resorting to his Curse Form...</p><p>It wasn't that Kusagoro despised the Curse Form, his son hit it in the head right before, he didn't want to lose control unless no other way of winning was possible. Not when that darned girl was in his near vicinity. He hated this girl for quite a long time, she was a distraction for his son, she was a young thing with a head full of retarded ideas and she was instilling those stupid morals to his son too. However when he saw his son achieve the Curse Form before it all changed – somehow despite being so different from the Jugo this magician girl made his son embrace his origins more and more making her presence quite useful for Kusagoro's wishes for his son to come true. He would've killed her if he transformed, most likely, such an outcome couldn't have been let to happen – Kouta would never forgive him after it and his transformation into a true Jugo successor, not the sissy pacifist current ones but a true Jugo of old, would've been ended then and there.</p><p>Kusagoro's hand morphed into a dark-colored cannon and the man aimed it below him.</p><p>"Chakra Revolver!" he shouted out firing a precise and thin beam of chakra penetrating the waters open and reaching deep below. The brute ended the beam before it pierced the core of the world and exited on the other side. A distraction was all that he needed for this. A strong explosion tossed a powerful splash of water up messing up the water's surface and erecting powerful crashing waves rushing at the drunk.</p><p>"Huh?" Francho slurred as the water beneath his feet shook violently forcing him out of his second Li Tieguai stance into a drunken stagger desperate to stay afloat and on both feet.</p><p>"Rising Piston Fist!" Kusagoro yelled out triumphantly as his figure blasted out from underwater with a powerful morphed fist aimed right at the Pirate Lord's jaw aiming to throw the man into the air. Falling backward the drunkard evaded the punch however a cannon opened up on the rising Kusagoro's elbow firing off a separate stream of chakra aimed at the evading opponent. The explosion missed again, thanks to the amazing rolling evasion of the drunken master. Still, the explosion caused a large amount of water from underneath the rolling pirate to toss him in the air. This stance appeared to favor strong one legged kicks and rolling evasion, by lifting his opponent in the air Kusagoro would make sure to deprive the pirate of any ground to roll around in.</p><p>The Kusagoro that used the rising punch technique dispelled revealing himself to be just a clone. The real Jugo veteran surfaced from below as well looking up and preparing his attack.</p><p>"Earth Style: Titan's Drill!" Kusagoro roared out focusing his chakra so intensely that his entire body lit up with erupting jets and streams of chakra that couldn't be contained inside his body. It was a technique so powerful that it could've been used to create entire mines underground, a fist so powerful and focused that no material of any density could've put up any defense and stopped its user.</p><p>The Jugo's body blurred and disappeared into thin air. Mana's eyes couldn't have even dreamed of following anything. She felt completely oblivious to anything transpiring and this whole battle felt like a larger than life event shown to her in skipping fast forward motion. Something impossibly vaster than the limits of her comprehension transpired and then the combatants stopped for a breather or to prepare their next attacks. She was oblivious to all of it!</p><p>Kusagoro's fist dug in deep into the Pirate Lord's gut sending the man flying up in the sky. Meiko and the other younger ninja together with the greatly injured Hachiro looked up. For a moment it looked like they were able to perceive just how far the Pirate Lord had been flung by the fist, just how immense the punching power was but then everyone just closed their eyes. Meiko first, then Kouta, Shimo and after a moment even Hachiro's Sharingan eyes closed.</p><p>"I can't see it..." Meiko sighed in frustration.</p><p>"Not a damn clue..." the Yuki swordsman agreed.</p><p>"Now I see why Hokage-sama stopped father when he tried using this technique on Shimo back in Konoha." Kouta smiled with the right side of his face.</p><p>"That was a much inferior version of this technique. This just may have even pushed Lady Hokage back a little too..." Shimo scratched his tired eyes.</p><p>Kusagoro didn't let his eyes up from the sky for a moment. Then he turned at the Uchiha and yelled out.</p><p>"You! I thought you were running away, hurry the fuck up! Take that ship and leave. If the type-A little lady decided to use the Box I suggest you do it now too."</p><p>Mana blinked rapidly a couple of times, surely he couldn't have suggested that the Pirate Lord still had chances of returning anywhere close to Earth's orbit. Kusagoro scratched his wrists before carefully caressing them and letting the blood flow stabilize as his arms were beginning to feel numb. It was refreshing to finally see an opponent who could actually force him to fight without restraint. It would've been a bit more refreshing to actually use his Curse Mode, as little as he wanted it, in a way Kusagoro wanted to be pushed to that point in a sadomasochistic sort of way... Well... Maybe another time.</p><p>Hachiro stood up and began running towards the ship at a brisk pace. Shimo followed his past sensei with his eyes before something popped into his head.</p><p>"Hey, old timer, don't forget the ship is still full of workers the Pirate Lord kept behind. You sure you don't need help?" the Yuki swordsman asked before seeing Hachiro shake his head and stop for a moment.</p><p>"Nah, they're all on my genjutsu, even the most powerful foes rarely invest in a powerful defense against the illusionary arts... As for this trip, I'll say farewell to you four!" the Uchiha tapped his forehead with the index finger before beginning to rush towards the colossal ship as fast as his injured body allowed him. Kouta did manage to patch up the most severe injuries and Hachiro was actually in a halfway decent fighting shape, still, he was too much of a coward to stick around and see how this whole pirate affair ended up.</p><p>"So, what now?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"I'm not using the Box, if that's what you meant. I thought that I couldn't protect everyone and change the world by an example of kindness because I was weak, but the truth is much crueler... It's what's here that's keeping me back." Mana sadly answered by pressing against her chest with her bruised and covered with blunt force trauma marks hand.</p><p>Shimo nodded, "If that's your decision then let's go home, I suppose this way the mission will be completed so it's not a total waste of time. That's a new record with you..." he remarked somewhat rudely.</p><p>Kouta turned at the swordsman and grabbed him by the torn rags of his kimono pulling him in closer for a punch.</p><p>"The hell is wrong with you? Mana-chan is just sad her careful planning and decisions ended up this way, there's no need to rub it in her face. She had nothing to do with the streak of bad luck we're in. If we did nothing we'd have a Pirate Lord just like Red up there wielding an arsenal of Audra alloy coated weapons! Whatever Mana-chan did, it's still a lesser evil than what could've been." he explained his stance. Mana looked aside, her eyes were beginning to water, it was happening again. Her teammates fighting with each other. Kouta's position was so obviously loaded since the two had feelings for one another.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Shimo... I just can't restore my chakra using the Box under my right mind. It's just not the right thing to do." she explained quietly.</p><p>"Mana..." Meiko pressed her hand against the magician's shoulder.</p><p>Shimo looked completely devastated for a moment before switching back to his angered state almost like this complaining and annoyed Shimo was a persona he was playing.</p><p>"Yeah... Because you always know the right thing to do! Better than everyone else, sometimes I wish you'd get off your high horse..." he complained in a tone that heavily suggested he wanted to end the heated exchange that way. "You've always had such strong ideals, even when we had to fight Tanshu-sensei you stood up for them. Tell me just one thing – why are you giving up on your dream now? What kind of hero gives up on their dream?"</p><p>"That's the thing. Over the time of this journey, I've come to realize that my dream will come true if I stop chasing it much more than if I am after it. My involvement is just that damn intoxicating. If I wish to leave the world better than I've found it, I must stop ruining everything." Mana shouted out in his face. The two had been at each other's throats ever since Shimo stopped her in Takigakure. Now it seemed they've openly begun challenging each other again and it seemed like things were at their worst now than they've always been. Shimo didn't even honor the magician with a reply, his surprised and somewhat disappointed expression just looked away at his rogue ninja sensei boarding the tremendously large ship and preparing to leave.</p><p>Mana turned away from everyone, she had to shut herself in because she'd have broken down if she didn't. She didn't understand why her long-time friend and a teammate she saw so much together with was complaining so much, what possible right did he have to blame her for anything? She was asking that they only did their mission objective, that they successfully completed the mission instead of failing it for Mana's sake.</p><p>"We just want you to be happy, Mana..." Meiko tried adding her own two cents.</p><p>"After everything that happened, I'd be the happiest if you guys completed the mission, got paid in full, scored some points with the village and kicked ass in the Chuunin exams. Just do this whole ninja thing, do it right. I'll be cheering on you from the backseat." the magician forced out a smile. Kusagoro turned around and leaped the whole distance between them in a single bound landing right up next to the young ones.</p><p>"You guys ready?" he asked before curiously looking at Mana, he must've known that look on her face, maybe he'd have seen it in his wife's face a couple of times but he realized it couldn't have meant good, Mana saw it in his eyes. The look of a person lost and in need of guidance about to make the worst decision of their lives that looked so alluring at the moment. The girl was made sure of it when the father pinched Kouta's shoulder painfully enough for the young one to complain. Still, the medical ninja was oblivious to his father's relationship related clue. He left Mana alone, maybe it was for the best, after all her worst beef was with her own self, the cruel body limiters that restrained her own spiritual chakra control from herself.</p><p>"Well then... How 'bout we head home?" Kusagoro sighed out but then his eyes widened once again after a booming splash interrupted the reaction of the genin nearby. Quickly Kusagoro turned back and looked at the tall fatso surfacing bottom-up from the bottom of the ocean where he had slammed heavily from high above.</p><p>"Impossible! I saw your body leave the solar system!" Kusagoro yelled out in annoyance. He may have enjoyed fighting the Pirate Lord in the beginning but then when he realized that his own full abilities were blocked off as long as Mana was around the fight where he had the potential to unleash his full and have his fun but couldn't due to outside conditions did nothing more but annoy him more and more with each passing moment.</p><p>Slowly and lazily, less than graciously, the Pirate Lord flipped over and pulled his half-down pants up so that they fulfilled the purpose which pants were originally intended to fulfill. He slapped his own temples a couple of times before wiping the blood off his beaten face and busted nose and spat a couple of teeth aside. A cruel and slurry, wandering, toothless smile covered his face.</p><p>"That was a pretty mean punch there... I had to take another sip outta my bottle there to get my shit together. Have you heard of the immortal Han Zhongli? The man of amazing strength that decimated his opponents with cruel tackles? He gained his momentum by using his powerful legs and his curved bottom!" the Pirate Lord emitted a powerful thundering laughter by mockingly slapping his own buttcheeks.</p><p>"You mean you farted and jumped your way back to Earth's orbit!?" Kusagoro grunted as all those immortal masters whose styles and variations of Drunken Fist his opponent inherited pissed him off to no end. He just wanted to beat that nonsense style out of the Pirate Lord but that was just the kind of approach that the Drunken Fist worked best against.</p><p>"Yeah, a bit of both, almost ran out of air on my way back..." the Lord laughed out from the bottom of his lungs but then got serious as he switched back to his usual Drunken Fist stagger, before switching up the variation again. Now the pirate held his hands extended almost as if he held a giant cauldron in his hands lifted up and staggered as he carried it completely wasted.</p><p>The Pirate Lord kicked off the ground rushing head and shoulders first at Kusagoro who just leaped into the air and then morphed his arms by extending cannons from his elbows that fired off sending Kusagoro diving head first diagonally straight into his opponent. The Jugo kicked his tackling opponent underwater as the Pirate Lord got careless with such an easily telegraphed attack. If the veteran jounin ended up in close range however it must've been quite amazing...</p><p>Francho surfaced again holding one of his palms against his bottle's top, the man had pressed the bottle of rum to his flappy fat belly so that it didn't burst under pressure where the man commonly ended up after being kicked around. The man popped the cork out and flipped the bottle up again getting drunker each passing moment, a single sip may not have gotten a common man that much drunker but Kusagoro could feel his opponent getting absolutely trashed. That was what the brute wanted – make his opponent use out all of his immortals and then pass out...</p><p>"Lan Caihe!" he shouted out in a drunken slur as the Pirate Lord began dancing a strange belly swaying dance which reminded Mana of the dance which the dancers in Agbarah danced for the Sheikh as entertainment, a highly sexualized dance at that which made the sad Mana crack a grin before she couldn't contain her laugh anymore and began cackling for real. Even if the magician felt embarrassed for laughing out she could hear her friends barely restraining similar reactions whereas Meiko didn't even try. The redhead's laughter was matching the drunken pirate's in its absurd volume.</p><p>Kusagoro launched himself forward setting off the jets that chakra cannons at his feet fired off. He knew that such an obvious attack would've been blocked or avoided but he wished to scope out just how much more drunk his opponent got from switching a couple of his different masters' styles. Before he could easily avoid almost any physical attack but now it should've been different.</p><p>Kusagoro's fist collided in the air with Francho's hip which the Pirate Lord lifted up to interrupt the brute's punch before the hulking brute pranced around and deflected the Jugo's punch with a playful bounce slam from his another hip. Kusagoro tried punching and kicking a couple of more times before setting off a chakra jet at the leg he wasn't kicking with.</p><p>"Chakra Rocket!" he yelled out naming his super-powered kicking technique however it too was deflected by Francho's playful hip swing and his sexually ambiguous dance. Kusagoro braced for upcoming impact but the Pirate Lord's hips hit him with so much force that he couldn't possibly expect to send him crashing back into the Box.</p><p>The brute coughed up and threw a large spit of blood dying the water below him crimson from both all of his wounds bleeding up on it and also this slam into the Box that must've cracked a couple of ribs all by itself. Kusagoro began to hate that thing, he'd have much more rather slammed into a meteor, into an active volcano and bathed in lava, into an island destroying and sinking it in the process, flown off into the goddamn Moon, anything but this Box. It was like this Box absolutely refused to be moved front or back or to the side. It just stood its ground without being affected by anything transpiring around it, just emitting its evil chakra everywhere around it and poisoning the Earth without taking any damage or budging one bit.</p><p>"Ho-ho-ho!" Francho laughed out in a ridiculous feminine manner.</p><p>"T...This bastard!" Kusagoro cursed. He felt another upchuck of blood coming up from his crushed and mangled innards, that last hit must've busted through his amazingly powerful chakra augmentations and dealt some real damage. If he held back any more he risked actually getting hurt. He needed to get this fool sober or to get him completely wasted, this in-between was killing him and his son...</p><p>"Well, at least you're not going anywhere..." Kusagoro smiled pointing in the direction of Francho's ship. The Pirate Lord turned around realizing that his own ship had sailed off, it was just barely seen at the tip of the horizon far far away.</p><p>"Oh no!" Francho covered his mouth up in a comical manner more akin to a courtesan being told that she won't be getting paid than a respectable and feared Pirate Lord, one of the three unquestioned rulers of the seas.</p><p>"Now that there's no way for you to run away, now that you went out of your way and pissed me off I can stop holding back! I've had enough of this little game! Even if I end up accidentally killing all those annoying brats, if I just kill you and spare my son, that'll be fine!" Kusagoro declared extending his spine out proudly and smiling. A purple glow began shining from his entire body, overwhelmingly dark chakra began emerging from Kusagoro's body as black marks began covering it and the man felt immensely powerful dark urges overtaking him inside. Curse mark sealing glyphs began enveloping the whole body of the violent warrior almost like tattoos.</p><p>With a final swipe of his pumped up and toned, muscular arms Kusagoro emitted a powerful scream of rage and pride, also joy that he would finally kill his opponent. The blast force from the warrior's transformation let out such a kick that Kouta grabbed Mana and moved her hiding her behind the Box's upper edge as the rest of the team couldn't help but also hide. Francho got blasted off his feet and rolled back feeling completely sick and just barely restraining his hurls. Kusagoro's arms also slowly transformed into colossal stumps of dark bone-like seemingly wooden material that formed gigantic fists extending all the way to the warrior's elbows. The man's hair elongated and stiffened extending a bit past the Jugo's neck while curling down in a crescent-like fashion instead of standing up like he usually wore them all curled and messed up.</p><p>Finally, Kusagoro's first stage of the Curse Mode was unleashed!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0220"><h2>220. Sobriety At Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After a brief moment the raging outbursts of chakra emitted from the wild and unpredictable Kusagoro's transformation settled down somewhat. The transformed shinobi did not attack or look prepared for defending himself. He just stood calmly and hunched forward with his head staring at the water surface that portrayed his transformation with uneasy murkiness to the dark waters. The full reflection was blocked off by the dark skies and only briefly illuminated once the lightning bolts lit the heavens.</p><p>"Kill..." Kusagoro mumbled to himself under his nose, the young ninja observing the insane battle from the top of the Box of Ultimate Bliss, an artefact that proved itself to be quite a reliable source of safety in this absolutely crazy battle, couldn't even hope to hear a single word.</p><p>"Huh? What wazzat?" the Pirate Lord slurred out, he would've normally had been very surprised by the Jugo's transformation, his immense degree of drunkenness currently blocked off any primal instincts of self-preservation and the drunken fool was just looking for a good fight. He was totally oblivious to the fact that he pushed a much more dangerous opponent slightly over the edge by resorting to that of his own.</p><p>"Kill... The girl... No... That's not right..." Kusagoro continued to mumble incomprehensible verbal garbage to himself feeling completely torn apart by an overflow of mad thoughts seeping through his head. The violent and sadistic urges were impossible to tell from one's own love of bunnies and sunshine. It was a fine line between madness and unrestrained power with the tipping point being as sensitive as flipping a coin.</p><p>Kouta's face looked like that of a serious gambler observing the roulette. Slowly his hands began reaching for Mana and wrapping around her. The magician didn't like it and tried to object but after looking at Kouta's face her own grip loosened and she let him press her closer to himself.</p><p>"This is bad..." he uttered to her. "I remember that feeling, I was completely unable to move when it happened to me. I won not by overpowering the enemy but by simply being insane enough... Every movement is like negotiations with billions of psychopaths inside your own mind. I had thought that father may have found an answer to that problem but... I think he used this transformation so few times that he's still working with that." he continued talking as if talking was the only thing to keep the fear away, his way of keeping himself afloat in an ocean of fear and uncertainty.</p><p>Mana looked at Kusagoro and she could feel for Kouta's worries. She then realized what she made this gentle soul she fell in love with do. The young man she was falling for was forced to cross that line, embrace his clan's cruel origins, that which the current Jugo members had locked under seven seals to never be let loose again. The transformation that caused so many deaths to happen and made Iwagakure hunt Jugo for decades like animals for their cruelty until the warrior clan found peace and adopted their love of nature.</p><p>"I'm sorry you had to do this, Kouta," she whispered in his ear but the young man acted out a smile for her. Despite the fact that those emotions of certainty were false and completely faked the magician appreciated the young man's strength, his devotion to smiling for her when his eyes trembled in fear. It was something she used to do back when she still had the power to change anything at all. Or at least thought she did. What was transpiring below was an actual battle between immensely powerful warriors, the level at which actually relevant forces that could have changed the world fought each other.</p><p>"You won't have to do this again, not for me, I promise," she added.</p><p>"Kill... I'll kill someone... The first girl I see, I'll kill..." Kusagoro jumbled out nonsensical dribble to himself as his eyes looked up and examined his opponent, for a moment the warrior looked confused by Francho's ominous movements but then they switched until they met Meiko.</p><p>"No... Wait... I'll kill the closest girl to my son I see... Yeah... Kill that..." his confused and dazed by the overflowing thoughts of hatred and murder mind switched as his head continued moving after staring straight at Meiko. Kusagoro's body blinked in and out of existence until it had made its mind as to whom he would kill first.</p><p>Kouta wrapped his hands around Mana pressing her hard against his chest, the girl could feel his body trembling in fear and yet he acted out a façade of certainty and control. "You are at your weakest and at your least confident and yet you make promises like that. That's why I like you," he whispered in her ear before Kusagoro's frame flashed right behind the two. The man's gigantic arm was already winded back for a killing blow but then the man saw not the girl he wanted to kill in front of him but the back of his own son.</p><p>Lightly the man's feet landed on top of the Box and looked at his son protecting this magician girl. Without uttering a word Kusagoro turned around and looked at his next opponent.</p><p>"Kill something else..." he mumbled out just barely loud enough for Kouta and Mana to hear. Only then did they realize that the man was so close to them. It was nearly impossible to describe how silently and how fast this ninja moved. It transcended the feeble human understanding of speed and time. Kusagoro's body blurred and flashed again moving right in up close to Francho.</p><p>The Pirate Lord tried to place his hips together and to block the opponent's attack but a colossal morphed fist slammed right into his face, chest and lower body sending the Pirate Lord away beyond where he could've been seen in the horizon. Francho continued to try and stop himself by kicking off islands that whizzed by or driving his arms and feet into the ocean but each time the island he tried to use for leverage exploded from pressure into rocky chunks and the passing water sawed at his arms like a buzzsaw opening grievous wounds.</p><p>Francho took a good gulp of his rum observing how quickly the bottle was getting emptied. Suddenly his legs moved far and wide and he kicked off the ocean covering hundreds of thousands of kilometers in a single leap. Despite nearly having circled the world after the single punch Francho in his drunken state decided to return back the way he came using the powerful leaps of his next immortal's style – Zhang Guolao.</p><p>The drunken Pirate Lord covered the whole distance back in four good leaps. Kusagoro just lazily observed his opponent breathe heavily for air and then try to throw up only to realize that he had nothing to throw up with instead of chucking up air before his gag reflex calmed down.</p><p>"Zhang Guolao!" Francho shouted out leaping at his opponent with a powerful dropkick that emitted a vertical disc shaped shockwave upon impact with a simple block of Kusagoro's gigantic morphed arms that absorbed the entire attack. Cannons appeared on Kusagoro's back emitting brief but relentless tongues of chakra flames that counteracted the force coming from Francho's dropkick and prevented the shinobi from being thrown around.</p><p>"That single punch..." Francho slurred out as he awkwardly tried to pick his drunken frame off the disturbed and raging waters "That single punch before was stronger than that sent-me-space-flying blow! Just what is this transformation!?" the Pirate Lord shouted out in frustration but Kusagoro followed it up with another punch. Right at the moment of collision the fist instead entered inside the giant stump on Kusagoro's arm and left a deep cannon hole.</p><p>"Piston Fist: Style One!" Kusagoro yelled out in an inhuman and terror inciting voice. More jets opened up around the man's elbows firing off chakra which only increased the speed and power of the warrior's punch. Right as the cannon collided with Francho's face a powerful blast of chakra fired off from the cannon leaving a wide opening in the ocean's waters. The intensity and power of the beam were so immense that it left Earth's atmosphere in moments and whizzed away into a point far away in the oblivion of space.</p><p>"Cao Guojiu!" Francho's voice interrupted the brief moment of silence that took over once the beam concluded as the Pirate Lord fired off a flurry of quick blows aimed right at the lower joints of Kusagoro's. The first couple was aimed at the arms' joints but due to their transformation these left not a single mark and just bounced off the thick and hard morphed skin.</p><p>Kusagoro yelled out in pain as the blows to the softer spots of his legs were successful. He had counted on that last punch connecting and Francho's head being blown off, the Pirate Lord certainly was close to that state and yet he kept on fighting. The darned fool took a punch from Kusagoro's cannon but toughened up and managed to avoid the blast. While the chakra cannon raged on the drunkard somehow chugged down more of that rum of his.</p><p>"I know what you're doing!" Francho yelled out after he leaped back a couple of steps before vaulting over Kusagoro aiming at the ninja's softer area right before his flesh molded with the morphed tissue, the place where the strain of controlling these changed arms should've been the toughest. Kusagoro felt astonishingly painful stings in the joints and couldn't help but emit a cry of pain. His legs didn't respond, neither did his arms now.</p><p>"All that water that washed my face back when you punched me before helped me think this through clearly... You're trying to force me to switch the immortals rapidly so that I pass out from being too drunk, huh?" the pirate slurred out barely controlling his tongue anymore. "Well... Let me tell you this! Now that I know your plan that is never, ever..." he began shouting something but then his body just tuned out and belly flopped.</p><p>A loud dominating laughter of Kusagoro's fired off into the distance. The man's lungs must've been quite powerful as even Mana, someone with much duller senses than her ninja teammates wanted to cover her ears. After a good fit of laughter Kusagoro just laid beaten and on his knees for a good minute before beginning to once again get the feel of his joints, finally the shinobi's legs fully supported his weight again, finally, his gigantic arms could move again.</p><p>"You're a pretty respectable man. Living for the thrill of plundering and the adventure of roaming the seas as a free man. That I can respect..." Kusagoro spoke out as his eyes appeared to calm up, the glyphs that covered his entire skin together with the black marks began to move away slowly but didn't fade completely, just gave way for a brief moment of saneness. Then, in a blinking moment, they closed back up letting the madness return.</p><p>"I'll only be that much stronger and more respectable than you if I destroy a man like that!" the Jugo declared grabbing the giant man's head and lightly throwing the pirate up into the sky and while the sleeping drunk landed back down prepared his attack. Kusagoro winded both of his morphed hands backward opening and branching out a network of smaller cannons that enhanced the velocity and power of his thrust.</p><p>"Chakra Lupara!" Kusagoro roared as his palms shifted into cannons and upon impact with the falling sleeper exploded in a diagonal upwards blast of chakra that extended all the way to the upper layers of the atmosphere and lit up the environment around so immensely that it would've completely blinded Mana had she not been moved away from the line of the light. It was so fast that she would've never had enough time to react normally, she was lucky that Kouta was so close to her.</p><p>Kusagoro looked up at the sky and cursed.</p><p>"Even that wasn't enough to blow you to bits, huh? Well, what you have with your tough head, you contrast with piss-poor alcohol tolerance..." the shinobi declared canceling his transformation. Seeing how she was pressed hard against Kouta's chest the girl felt firmly the boy taking an easier deep breath like a stone was just rolled off of his chest.</p><p>"I'm glad father can at least switch it on and off at will..." he explained after letting go of Mana. Despite feeling a bit awkward by the amount of time she spent in the young man's grasp the girl just nodded and looked away trying to move her focus as far away from the medical ninja as possible. She didn't want to blush or do anything that'd betray her awkwardness felt over the situation.</p><p>"W-What's that?" Meiko's shaking voice then shifted Mana's focus onto something truly unbelievable. Right after seeing it the magician's mind's reach expanded so wide trying to comprehend this larger than life sight that she felt migraine kicking in and forcing her to close her eyes and rub her temples to ease the pain. And yet, the blacksmith's voice was more enthusiastic than afraid – at this point, Mana barely believed that the redhead felt anything else than hype.</p><p>"I think that's... A hand... Two in fact..." Shimo gave his version. Mana then reopened her eyes and looked into the sky, it was quite impossible not to notice that epic sight but Shimo hit the nail on the head quite nicely.</p><p>Up in the sky two gigantic palms covering most of the skyline were closing in on the Earth, Mana could already feel the air getting heavier and it wasn't because of her shortness of breath over seeing this sight. It was unquestionably because of the problematic entry of such an object to the planet she was standing on. It looked like those impossibly gargantuan hands covered the span of a large city each by itself, maybe even one of the larger islands.</p><p>Kusagoro nonchalantly activated his transformation again letting black marks cover up even more of his body meanwhile the curse mark hieroglyphs took over the paler patches of his skin. The hair once again curled the same way like before and the hands wrapped in the transformed hardened tissue. The shinobi lifted his palm up in the air and extended his hand catching a dragging drop kick by re-entering orbit and crashing like a meteor Francho. The emanating shockwave sliced off the chunk of the ocean like a lightning fast ninja cutting a watermelon, the immense pressure sliced deep into the mantle surfacing streams of magma.</p><p>Kusagoro's crazy Curse Mode state smiled with excitement, without a doubt under any other circumstances he'd have grunted with annoyance that he still didn't get rid of this pesky pirate.</p><p>"I absorbed more than ninety percent of the shockwave, you'd have sliced a chunk of the Earth off like an onion with that thing alone! Your stupid enlarged hands could've squashed entire villages if you tried! What kind of a stunt you're pulling here!?" he yelled out in excitement. The violent urges present in the reset transformation demanded that Kusagoro bashed his enemy as violently as possible and squished him like a tomato.</p><p>With Francho's body recovering, his elongated and enlarged hands returning to normal and snapping back in place the Akimichi curled into a human boulder and rolled aside to what he thought as safe distance before uncurling himself and clutching his kicking knee and his chest. The man's entire body was trembling and he breathed heavily. It was obvious that he was in an indescribable amount of pain. Together with Kusagoro's previous technique, there was the strain of re-entry as well as the backlash of his kick being stopped so suddenly focusing on his busted knee. The kneecap there must've been a handful of bone dust...</p><p>Meiko shouted out pointing at the pirate. Right after calming her childish shriek of joy after witnessing a clash like that she noticed an important detail – the Akimichi pill case given to the pirate by the monks he spoke of before. Francho was holding it in his teeth. "Look, there are only three pills left!" she shouted out.</p><p>"Yeah, he must've taken another pill to successfully expand his body like that... It's a feat of Akimichi ability mastery and chakra control beyond a simple pirate's reach" Shimo nodded.</p><p>"How is he even alive at this point?" Mana couldn't fathom.</p><p>"Father shouldn't have thrown him into space again, all the cold air, while he left orbit, must've refreshed his head and after a while, he must've woken up..." Kouta shrugged, he also had trouble understanding how both his father and the Pirate Lord were still going at it. If the Pirate Lord had the might to match his father's when the former held back, how come after taking so many hits from the Pirate his father was as fresh and good to go as he was? The endurance and power of both combatants were almost impossible to believe.</p><p>"Now! Father, strike now while the pill's after-effect is working!" Kouta shouted at his father who just looked back at him and then turned back to the Pirate Lord.</p><p>"Wait!" Mana shouted out, "Look at him, his body is ruined, stop this meaningless fight and just let him leave!" she begged the man who was as likely to listen to her begs as pigs were to retell poems by heart.</p><p>Francho stood back on both legs, struggling to do so and coughing up blood, clutching at his burning sides and looking in a mean and banged up state, missing more teeth than he was missing when he appeared before them and with a well busted up nose.</p><p>"The brat's got a point. The second pill's after-effects are permanent. It allowed me to partially expand my body to as large as my chakra pool allowed it to go but I need meds to treat my condition now..." Francho laughed out while clutching at his gut after the laughter got much too painful.</p><p>"And?" Kusagoro asked taking a fighting stance, "Am I supposed to care about any of it? You just admitted your loss to a man who did his best to restrain charging at you recklessly"</p><p>Francho thundered out in laughter again before clutching at his aching ribs once more. "Make no mistake, ninja, I make no requests to spare me, I just inform you why my hand is as forced as it is to do what I must..." he said after opening up the entire pill case and removing the third red pill and lifting it to show.</p><p>"This one's tricky, it is said to boost my chakra and my body more than a hundred times over but it'd also kill me as a result afterward... It's the final Akimichi pill – the Chili pill, the rest are custom made, each a treasure all by themselves" Francho looked at the red pill in awe. Kusagoro prepared to throw a good punch at the central section of the pirate's body and crush his innards to a gooey mass inside. Right in the midst of this momentous concluding blow Francho's fingers crushed the pill and ground it to red dust that the stormy ocean winds scattered.</p><p>Kusagoro stopped in the middle of his charge confused by his opponent's behavior. Maybe Francho didn't know that his odd stunt just saved his life, maybe he did so on purpose but the pirate just removed two other pills and showed them to Kusagoro who was just good four meters away. The ninja could've possibly snagged those pills away and crushed them just like Francho did before with the Chili pill but it would've demanded the total focus of Kusagoro's mind which he didn't quite have. Right now the confused mess still tried to process Francho's actions as well as control himself from lashing out at his allies.</p><p>"I don't want to win and die afterward, nor do I plan to waste the Box for just keeping me alive! Such is the behavior of heroes or cowards! I am neither, I am a pirate! A Pirate Lord, one of the three ruling the seas and such death isn't fitting a man like me" Francho flicked the fourth pill to his mouth crushing it between his teeth.</p><p>"A Pirate Lord just wins and takes what he wants, doing with his booty whatever he wants!" Francho announced laughing out.</p><p>"Father! Stop him from taking the last pill!" Kouta yelled out and his son's voice finally broke Kusagoro out of the negotiations with his own mind. The man leaped in to remove the pill from his fingers faster than any movement he had made thus far but a strong blunt force shoved him away – Francho's arm enlarged and extended again slamming Kusagoro into the Box and holding the man to it. The Pirate had no ability to hold the man down as the Jugo simply broke the arm with a powerful slam and moved on but it bought just enough time for Francho to pop the last pill.</p><p>A moment of silence kicked in before the switch of the two different stages of the battle. Between a battle fought to win and a battle fought to survive!</p>
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<a name="section0221"><h2>221. Mass Matters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite his opponent's greatly boosted confidence, it didn't look like Kusagoro feared the ingestion of two pills at once coming from his opponent. It may have been due to complete madness coming out from the Jugo's transformation being completely unable to process what had just happened and correctly predict the boost in combat efficiency that the pills may have granted or it could've just been great trust in his own strength being able to overcome anything in Francho's arsenal.</p><p>Kusagoro's body blinked, the lines of the entire morphed body of the Jugo became blurry and hard to discern as the man charged right at his opponent. Francho placed a quick block, whatever those pills did, they at the very least completely overcame the negative effects of the previously used Curry Pill that previously had completely broken Francho's body.</p><p>The Jugo's raging uppercut broke through the Pirate Lord's block tossing the Pirate Lord high up into the air from the immense force even if the main source of attack's strength was blocked. Jets of chakra flame erupted from transformed feet of the shinobi launching him right after his opponent. Francho recovered from the initial shock and force of the impact and extended his hands aside disappearing from Kusagoro's strike completely.</p><p>Kouta's father stopped and began floating in mid-air, furiously looking around as his bloodshot and thirsty for carnage eyes wandered trying to find his opponent. Shimo and Kouta opened their jaws up wide from disbelief. They couldn't discern the exact events transpiring in front of them and could only tell what was going once the fighting halted momentarily, Mana, on the other hand, couldn't even tell those brief microsecond breaks that the two combatants took to regain their strength and throw a line or two at each other – the whole fight was like a flash to her that only made sense once the two seriously backed away from one another. She could only tell what was going on with what she was being told.</p><p>"How could Red be possibly faster than father? He never hit me as a speedster type, just what kind of pills were those?" Kouta grunted out quickly telling Mana what happened, she could now perfectly see Kusagoro floating in the sky but not the Pirate Lord who seemingly disappeared into thin air.</p><p>Suddenly loud thunderous shocks began emanating from all over Kusagoro's body. Initially the four young ones thought it must've been the raging thunderstorm but then they noticed that the lightning flashes weren't consistent, it was like gattling gunfire of explosives blowing up all over Kusagoro's body: his face, chest, and abdomen, even around his joints and the four could both feel and see the immense shockwaves emanating from those areas almost like the veteran was being pummelled.</p><p>"Enough!" Kusagoro yelled propelling small sparks of chakra from each of his body pores creating a small blueish forcefield around him that extended supposedly blowing any close range attacker away. "Don't think you're hurting me with those lame attacks of yours..." he taunted the invisible Pirate Lord. It wasn't just empty taunts though, the shinobi was standing and taking all of the punishment nonchalantly shrugging it all off and ignoring the strikes as if they weren't even happening. That was why the four young ones found this peculiar assault so confusing.</p><p>Up from a barely intelligible point of air Akimichi Francho materialized, no... He expanded from it almost like he didn't disappear before but instead minimized and now returned to normal size. The Pirate Lord just laughed in Kusagoro's face.</p><p>"Well then... Perhaps I should try hitting you even harder, huh? I'm just playing around with these new techniques of mine, you'll have to forgive me..." Francho spoke up before laughing out loud again. For a man who just hit millions of free strikes in mere microseconds without inflicting any damage on his opponent, the Pirate Lord was immensely confident and joyful.</p><p>Kouta began describing what was happening to Mana and suddenly the magician began piecing this peculiar manner of attack together. It wasn't that tough to do, Kouta told her of the visual aspects of this odd invisibility aspect and knowing Akimichi clan hidden techniques, as someone who hailed from Konoha, a place where Akimichi were dime and dozen, and being someone who read about the subject before, Mana could easily put two on top of two.</p><p>"He's not fast... He's not teleporting or anything, this isn't Body Flicker. It's size and mass manipulation of an uncanny degree." Mana concluded.</p><p>"Makes sense..." Shimo nodded, "Akimichi techniques do have a lot in common with size expansion and mass gain. They are in fact a chubby lot. That being said, if these pills unlock such incredible ways to manipulate one's size and mass it could be trouble..."</p><p>"That's not even the problem" Kouta interrupted, "Father is too reckless and bloodthirsty in his current form to think this through, he won't understand how to fight this enemy." he worried.</p><p>"Is there even a way to fight someone manipulating their size and mass in an instant at will?" Meiko wondered, she looked the laxest and most carefree out of the four and looked at the fight like a spectacle of fireworks more than a fight that determined her fate and mission completion.</p><p>"She's right..." Mana agreed, "If Francho can freely manipulate his size and mass at will he can just increase his mass to a number as large as the human mind can muster increasing his hitting strength, he can also reduce his size to the size of an atom and be virtually invincible while hitting strong enough to shake the very fabric of reality."</p><p>"That's only if Red has no limiters to these abilities, all Kouta's father has to do now is stall until the negative effects kick in and the pirate is done for, there's hope yet..." Shimo continued to stare at the two combatants who didn't attack, just continued to float in the air as Francho must've reduced his mass to the extent where he could've freely floated in the stormy ocean winds, manipulating it just enough so that he didn't get swept away by them like an autumnal leaf.</p><p>Without saying a single thing or seemingly thinking his plan through Kusagoro charged onwards. Francho once again reduced his size to a totally invisible amount while he appeared right behind his opponent expanding the size of his hands at least several dozen times. The Pirate Lord clutched his hands together crashing his enlarged hands downwards at Kusagoro but the veteran simply lifted his own arm up and stopped the immense crash.</p><p>The shockwave that was emitted from this smashing attack was immense, Mana saw the oceans split open and rage even more than they did before, the bottom ground beneath the waters split open revealing large gazers of magma as everything besides the Box got carried aside. Only because the four were on top of the Box did they avoid having their flesh peeled off their bones from just the pressure of the air alone.</p><p>"Wow, not even five nonillion kilos can budge you, huh?" Francho laughed out but Kusagoro pushed the pirate's hand back before they returned to normal size and Kusagoro prepared for a counter-attack having just provided himself with an opening.</p><p>"Chakra Shotgun!" he yelled out slamming cannon arm against Francho's face and firing off a blast of chakra of amazing concentration and force, focusing its entire might right into being transmitted through Francho's body and not a single flare got loose, as if it did it'd have decimated the entire system.</p><p>Kusagoro's body blurred and moved behind where he had perceived the Pirate Lord to be, roaring out with great fury behind his powerful voice the bloodthirsty shinobi slammed his other arm and repeated his attack blasting at the back of the Pirate Lord's head.</p><p>"It doesn't seem that such a simple technique can break through the mass of fifty nonillion kilos of handsome pirate goodness" Francho's laughter thundered again as the pirate's size decreased again disappearing in thin air. Kusagoro's body began moving rapidly, his movements were so incredibly fast that the shinobi managed to avoid all of the strikes delivered by an opponent as small as an atom whizzing all around him transformed into a human boulder and desperately trying to decimate Kusagoro's defenses. After having seen this manner of attack once, the Jugo could now see and attempt to defend against his miniscule opponent's attacks.</p><p>The Jugo dashed backwards and descended back at the settling down oceans below, avoiding strikes delivered on such a miniscule scale greatly wore him out, he couldn't even comprehend how his opponent was freely reducing his size and mass at will and buzzing around like an atom sized bee trying to sting him with a punch delivered by a man weighing as much as a large black hole. He had to calm down the transformation to some degree, calm himself down a little...</p><p>The glyphs all over Kusagoro's white skin began to fade as the blackened skin marks started retreating leaving more and more exposed skin. The shinobi's black eyes began clearing up and his iris became more like his usual self, being of the combined color of the golden iris he had when transformed and his normal green color.</p><p>"What's the matter, running out of juice already?" Francho laughed out frantically clutching at his fat belly as he almost shook in triumphant childish glee.</p><p>"Just worried about you, if those retarded puny pills before almost got you killed, I'm worried these definitely will" Kusagoro replied with enough confidence and snark behind his voice to fuel the illusion of being in control.</p><p>"Father! Watch out, he can manipulate his mass and size freely!" Kouta shouted out from the top of the Box having found a moment when his father's mind somewhat cleared from the sadistic and murderous urges of his transformation where he was literally unable to think clearly.</p><p>"I see..." Kusagoro uttered to himself.</p><p>Francho laughed out again before smacking himself in the face, "Oh well, it seems I've been found out... That is true, taking the pills beyond the third cures the negative effects of the first or the second pill. In addition, the Aleppo pill removes the natural limiters of the size manipulation of the Akimichi clan techniques while the Cayenne pill does the same for mass manipulation. They also automatically unlock said techniques and use it for the user being only tied to the user's chakra pool."</p><p>"I have to say, for a lowly pirate who is barely an acquaintance of the complicated ninja arts and chakra control your mastery over these techniques, even with those pills, is impressive," Kusagoro noted.</p><p>"Well... I couldn't really learn all those hidden techniques by myself, but if those dumb monks have a pill for that and I could bypass that weakness by just training my overall chakra pool what does it matter? Isn't ninja a person who bypasses their limitations, someone who goes underneath the underneath? In that sense, I'm more of a ninja than all of you!" Red proudly declared pointing at himself with his thumb while cockily smiling.</p><p>This time it was Kusagoro's laughter that killed the eerie silence.</p><p>"You cocky little shit, you think you've studied for what, a day, a week, a year or two and that makes you a ninja? Even those brats down there studied until they were barely old enough to speak properly and express their wish of becoming a ninja. You've just adopted the ninja arts, you've no idea about the responsibility wielding such power carries. Because you, a lowly pirate, dare make such stupid claims while popping pills all the way to power, I will kick your ass!" Kusagoro yelled out angrily as chakra began pouring from his powers, all the evil thoughts he had, all of the malevolent impulses of the Curse Mode and all the primal chakra flowing through his network was focused as Kusagoro resumed his mindless destructive transformation.</p><p>"Dad! You're risking crossing to the second stage!" Kouta shouted out visibly having lost all sense of composure and completely in fear.</p><p>"What happens in the second stage?" Mana asked.</p><p>"A total loss of control, the first stage is all about negotiating with one's primal side awakened by natural chakra. In the second stage it takes over completely." the boy exclaimed in fear. "All this power father is fighting with, it only doesn't destroy the planet, the system, the galaxy or even several because father skillfully controls and guides his output. If he loses control... There'll be none of that."</p><p>Mana's eyes widened in fear realizing what it could've meant. Now all the fear and hunting of the Jugo clan made so much sense. All the fear and hatred and prosecution of this violent clan of warriors by Iwagakure, all the senseless murder began approaching the realm of lazy justification of genocide. Naturally, Mana would've never understood what could've led a village to the bloody edge which Iwagakure crossed with the Jugo clan but she was beginning to see where their lazy justifications could've hailed from.</p><p>"Barrage Piston Fist!" Kusagoro yelled out as his body simply flashed right up to Francho in a literal instant, or at least the difference between it being an instant and any inconsequential part of time having passed was so miniscule it barely mattered. Francho even with all of his acquired might. Kusagoro's fists disappeared deep inside the cannon-like structures which looked more like floating battleships than arms. However, instead of cannons, the Jugo's own fists were fired from inside at incomprehensible speeds creating a barrage of punching madness.</p><p>Francho simply stood still as the punches blasted his chubby body and bounced off of him. Initially, the hulking Pirate Lord was peeing his pants seeing the intensity and might of his opponent's punching power and the speed at which each successive punch was thrown but then Red realized that with a high enough mass increase he could simply absorb all of the force behind this barrage of fists sent at him. Even as Kusagoro's world shattering blows entered the count of sextillions Francho's body continued to stand like a tower taking machine gun fire of pebbles.</p><p>"Father is stronger and faster than Francho but... That stupid ability of his..." Kouta cursed seeing the powerful shockwaves coming out from the barrage of blows blast against the Box's forcefield and get deflected by it. Soon the skies above the four young ninja was no longer dark, illuminated by the purple thunderbolts but dyed bright blue by the color of Box's forcefield protecting them from Kusagoro's power.</p><p>"Now, how about my turn!" Francho laughed out leaning forward and throwing a quick barrage of blows – the pirate minimized the mass of his arms to miniscule amounts so that they flew through the air without resistance, fast as greased lightning and then maximized their mass to the weights approaching the weight of a small star right before the moment of impact maximizing both speed and power of these blows. Kusagoro's body blurred and disappeared from this barrage of blows. The veteran reappeared right above Francho driving his elbow right into the top of the Pirate Lord's head sending the man into the chaotic ooze of magma, sunken islands and rocky bottom minerals and boiling water below.</p><p>For a brief moment Kusagoro observed just how his opponent would react to this attack but then he witnessed Francho jumping out of the watery and magma grave covered with molten rock and minerals only to wipe them off and prepare for an attack.</p><p>"Is that the best you got?" Francho taunted his opponent but there was no laughter or mocking behind the pirate's voice. He was speaking offensively but his voice and tone was anything but, full of fear and strange respect for his opponent.</p><p>"No. This is..." Kusagoro spoke closing his eyes. "I'll show you the amount of power a true ninja can wield, what he is responsible for. Did you know that the residual energy from the explosion that jumpstarted our very universe is still present all around us? The Jugo can tap into that power as it is the most primal and natural chakra available..." the shinobi explained as his transformation ended.</p><p>Kusagoro canceled his Curse Mode because he needed maximum restraint, total control and mastery over his actions because he was about to wield impossibly ancient chakra that was present ever since the beginning of the universe itself. He'd reach all the way to the ends of his comprehension of space and time and borrow as much of it as he could. If that did not decimate his opponent and probably much more than that... It was tough to imagine what could have.</p><p>Kusagoro continued to fly up and up until he bypassed the dark clouds and continued to fly upwards through the crimson red sky above observing the sunlight far away on the horizon. Then the sky darkened and darkened but not because the Sun disappeared behind the horizon – it became larger and more prominent as Kouta's father travelled to the most upper layers of Earth's atmosphere where everything around him was smothered by darkness and the only light came out of the Moon's reflection of the solar light as well as the faraway stars and the Sun itself.</p><p>"All of it... Take in all of it I can reach..." Kusagoro thought to himself closing his eyes and letting his entire skin open its pores and absorb the bright as atomic sized stars balls of primordial chakra, the very first particles of energy, the very first object in the world containing chakra. The Jugo's hands changed into the shape of cannons as he pointed them right at the area he rose from below. His eyes still tracked of the Pirate Lord who didn't bother to run or hide. That fool must still have believed in his pride as a Pirate Lord and ability to survive this. Long pipe-like structures extended off of Kusagoro's morphed up back through which he still channeled the primordial residual chakra that was leftover from the Big Bang aimed right at his prideful and incredibly stupid opponent.</p><p>"Chakra Omnipulsar!" Kusagoro uttered to himself as there was no one as high up as he was to hear it. After a moment of silence, a blindingly bright flash of light fired off from both of his extended cannon arms and the two beams rotated around one another only to collide together into a singular blast of immense size.</p><p>The beam went on and one reaching the Earth's surface in mere seconds before a pulsing shockwave, still visible in its almighty destructive bright glory extended in a circular expanding motion throughout most of the ocean raising crashing waves and outright decimating most islands in the Tako's Reach. A flashing and pulsing inferno of light was left within the reaches of that sphere and yet Kusagoro felt confident enough that the kids survived the destructive aftermath of the attack. Kusagoro's hand changed back to their original shape and the jets on his feet began slowly run out of chakra flares to keep him in the air.</p><p>The tubes on his back through which he absorbed and channeled excessive amounts of primal chakra also faded and got absorbed into his body before becoming skin and flesh. Kusagoro's arms began feeling heavy and the ninja began slowly descending back into the world, large portion of which he shook with his attack even if he perfectly concentrated the flow of the beam.</p><p>"Shit... I did it perfectly but I get the feeling I won't hear the end of it from the Boss Lady..." he complained to himself as Kusagoro slowly descended back to where the skies were crimson red and disappeared into an open continent-spanning hole in the dark skies. Even his chakra resources were beginning to run thin, and here the Jugo veteran thought that he could fight forever... Then again, he never had to tap into the residual chakra from the Big Bang itself to win a fight.</p><p>Now only to see the results of his last resort...</p>
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<a name="section0222"><h2>222. The Price Of Being Whole Again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sound of her own unsteady breathing made Mana weakly raise her eyelids to check if her eyes wouldn't feel like getting stabbed at the mere attempt to glimpse at the immense light. The magician slowly opened her eyes and looked around, there was only an aftereffect of the unimaginable destruction that transpired before. If Kusagoro perfectly transferred the chakra behind his attack into his opponent, how destructive an attack had to be to still devastate an area so large?</p><p>Mana looked around, the shielding that the Box provided to itself still was lighting on, yellow particles of unknown origin or content still floated outside the protective cube shaped field, like a swarm of glow-worms. Only after finishing witnessing these spheres of light that slowly dissipated did Mana notice the aftermath of Kusagoro's attack. Namely that she couldn't really see anything, the entire world around her, as far as the horizon stretched and who knew how much farther beyond was nothing but total blackness, not even a single matter was present.</p><p>The black as tar clouds thundered on, momentarily illuminating the abyss that covered the entire distance of a portion of the world blown to nothingness. From where the girl was standing it looked like the entire world was either destroyed or dying and about to go off, however from the rather stable eerie quiet of this destroyed landscape she could tell that the destruction must've still been contained. After the protective chakra fields dissipated around the Box, the magician took a curious peak down the corner. Her eyes could not see what remained of the ground and if there even was a ground beneath her feet. For all she knew, there could've only been the very exposed core of the planet somewhere deep, deep down.</p><p>"No way..." Mana heard voices nearby and what she first took as an expression of surprise over this fearsome annihilation soon was found out as what it actually was – frustration and disbelief. Further away on a sole remaining pillar of dirt that was slowly sinking into the black oblivion below stood Francho, battered, bruised and singed, entire patches of his beard and his hair were missing and what remained of his clothes had also, let alone few exceptions below the waistline burnt to nothingness.</p><p>How could a man survive such an attack? Mana was almost certain that anyone would undoubtedly perish in such a blast, well, maybe not the Kage or Tanshu-sensei, these categories of ninja were described as being so far ahead of the level of the rest they barely even compared but... Seeing the devastation around her made such statements difficult to believe.</p><p>A bright bluish glow caught the magician's attention – Kusagoro slowly and carefully descended from the layers of think tar-black clouds. The man was breathing heavily and one side of his body was without a doubt drawn to the ground, the Jugo's eyes wavered as they examined the destruction and it looked like the man was fighting himself over not collapsing or passing out.</p><p>"Even if we survive this, I don't feel like the Hokage will praise us for blowing up the entire Tako's Reach, probably even beyond..." Meiko spoke up killing the silence, the usually carefree and eternally hyped genin now sounded worried and almost in grief over the blasted to smithereens world she once lived in.</p><p>"Yeah, it'll take some serious work by the terra-forming ninja to repair this, it'll have to come out of Fifth's pocket if her involvement is suspected... Then again, few people venture into the Tako's Reach it may just be played down to a pirate war gone wrong." Shimo replied. Judging from Meiko's reaction the blacksmith may not have even known that ninja such as the terra-forming ninja existed. Special squads in each village's arsenal that possessed large-scale Earth Release or Water Release abilities and even Wood Release users from each village, even if those were far and few in between.</p><p>"Might take weeks if not months to repair this..." Mana finally spoke up looking in profound sadness at the ruined world and the oblivion above which the Box still floated.</p><p>Francho's grunts ordered that all attention got directed at him. The man shook off a bunch of accumulated ash and dust off of him and stretched out his numbed up muscles, he felt his hands and arms and bent his joints a little to stretch out.</p><p>"You look like this blast really drained you... Then again, surviving it drained me as well" Francho felt his significantly shortened hair and beard up letting a cindering hair fall off of it and down into the abyss below his feet.</p><p>"How did you survive it? I thought I pulled it off right..." Kusagoro finally gathered the strength to ask, Mana knew that Jugo techniques were immensely taxing all by themselves which was why for the larger part of his life Kouta couldn't even perform the simplest ones. Until he trained and grew stronger both as a warrior and a medical ninja in this trip, at least. Still, the degree to which the Jugo struggled to stay floating in the black nothingness instead of plummeting below surprised Mana, seeing Kouta's father exhausted was a new and frightening experience.</p><p>"I can freely manipulate my mass as well as the areas where it increases. I can compactly fit a great deal of mass into the tiniest of particles you wouldn't even see with those fancy ninja eyes of yours..." Francho smiled displaying his mostly missing set of teeth, a bloody drool ran down his nose and began tapping at the exposed chest and fat of the man as well as what little remained of his rags.</p><p>Kusagoro slowly floated on top of the Box where he sat down and stretched his back out. "I still don't get it..." he mumbled out so quietly that only the young ninja were most likely to hear him unless Francho still wasted chakra on augmenting his perception.</p><p>"What he describes fits the description of a black hole – a compact enough smaller than an atom particle of excessive mass bending the fabric of time-space, it would've funneled most of your technique into it like water spilled into a compact hole, absorbing most of it," Shimo explained, Mana looked at the young Yuki with surprise. After a while, she had forgotten that the swordsman started out as one of the highest grade students of the Academy.</p><p>"A black hole, no matter the size, would've gone out of control, swallowed the entire planet and that's if we're lucky..." Mana tried to argue, it was hard to believe the extent to which Francho's abilities allegedly extended.</p><p>"Well if it's made from chakra and it's sufficiently small it is possible that Francho merely contained it and focused the destruction just like skilled ninja do with their attacks..." Kouta shrugged.</p><p>"That would require tremendous mastery and chakra to control to pull off, it'd take a jounin level ninja with great training and restraint at the very least," Mana spoke to herself staring at Francho who just confidently stared at the young ones and his worn out opponent, without a doubt the Pirate Lord needed a breather similarly to how Kusagoro did, otherwise he'd have quickly dispatched of his opponent and interrogated the kids.</p><p>"Didn't he say before that the pills simply unlocked the full mastery of his clan's abilities and the only reason he's using them is that he's too bad at it to master them himself?" Meiko brought up a fair point. The only reason Francho was even capable of pulling such a stunt was that of his pills. He couldn't have known all of the different uses of these abilities, he most likely just wanted to maximize his mass to increase his chances of withstanding the technique when he noticed the effect that saved his life.</p><p>"Shit... The pills' aftereffects didn't kick in yet" Kusagoro angrily cursed trying to stand up but realizing that his body felt too numb and tired. After the extensive battle he went through it simply was impossible to blame him, the chakra pools both of these ninja had were massive. "I think I may be in no condition to keep going" the man admitted. Looking into his eyes Mana saw the blazing rage and pain that admitting it took but Kusagoro wanted to fulfill his mission objective now most of all so he had to lay it straight.</p><p>"In that case, if Francho really did absorb most of the technique, that means you failed to properly control it, father." Kouta angrily looked at his tired father, "I thought a controlled technique was barely supposed to cause destruction and this heavily funneled off jutsu caused too much devastation to be properly controlled, you'd have destroyed everything if Francho didn't save himself the way he did."</p><p>Francho finally finished stretching out and pointed his finger at the young ninja as if taunting them.</p><p>"So, I assume you're ready to tell me how to use the Box now, huh?" the Pirate Lord asked, "I may just let you go after my wish is fulfilled, the kids as a sign of gratitude, the big guy because fighting him was just so much fun and once I get my wish I'll really want to do this again sometime!"</p><p>Kusagoro and the others looked at each other, then their eyes began wandering between Mana and Shimo as the two were usually bickering about every decision each made. Together in a unison, the two shook their heads, agreeing and working as a unit just like in the old days.</p><p>"He has to be really worn out now, I'm not sure how much juice he still has and when exactly the pills will flip the table on him, he's already been buffed by them for a longer period than the other two combined. I'm beginning to suspect his pills aren't related to time and have more to do with his overall chakra pool. If that is the case he certainly is on his last legs, he can't have more than several more tricks." Kusagoro encouraged the kids.</p><p>"Stand back, Mana-chan. We'll do our best to finish Red off!" Kouta declared gently moving the magician behind him while he stepped in front of her.</p><p>Francho's deafening laughter overshadowed the evil lightning cracks going off everywhere at once.</p><p>"Finish me off? Just who do you think you're talking about, brats?" the Pirate Lord raised his arm up as a miniscule black beam of total darkness extended from his palm into infinity. The black beam created from all light in the controlled width and length being absorbed by the bent fabric of space and time – another microscopic sized black hole created and controlled by the Pirate Lord.</p><p>The beam pierced through Shimo's chest attracting the young man to the pirate faster than Mana's eyes could comprehend. The magician couldn't even hear the fateful snapping noise that went out when the young swordsman's body, already broken by the immense gravitational pull hit Francho's closed fist at the end. The only gruesome sight the magician's eyes could even pick up on was Shimo's lifeless body held up for their sight by the Pirate Lord by the young man's neck before being flung into the black oblivion below.</p><p>"S...Shimo?" Mana's lips whimpered as she waited for the body to somehow be a mirage of cold air or a clone or... Shimo having survived the blow creating a path of ice that he climbed back up on.</p><p>"It looks like the Box doesn't really protect things that leave its field." Francho coldly stated before lifting his hand up and smiling with a cruel smile of a filthy pirate who had just murdered a young ninja and disposed of a body in a way ensuring that it'll never be found or get a proper burial.</p><p>"W...Why?" Mana's cold and expressionless face continued to stare at the black unintelligible point in the abyss waiting for her friend to return. It may have taken an eternity to see that moment but at that time the young lady was ready to wait that eternity if it meant her friend coming back to her.</p><p>"Why? Well, I had to show you I'm serious and clearly, it had to be a warning shot, else you pieces of ninja shit would just shut down and stop cooperating accepting your dooms, it had to be someone completely irrelevant. I saw the big man freeze before he hit his boy, also I saw the brat protecting you which meant both of you as well as the big man were out of the question. You three have some weird bonds between you, I still want you believing that you can be a little family if you just tell me how to work the Box, after all... It was a fifty-fifty choice between the redhead and this guy and frankly, the redhead was having way too much fun and excitement before for me to snuff her out so I'm happy with my choice." Francho began elaborating on his twisted logic before repeating his request to be taught how to use the Box.</p><p>Mana kept on staring at the bottom she could not even see, her slowly slipping away and wandering between a billion different things, still trying to cope with the death of her teammate, mind tried its best to deal with the pain but... Instead, it just shut down. The magician could feel a couple of tears running down her cheeks, two or three drops hit the corner of the Box before running down its surface.</p><p>"He killed him..." she spoke to herself, completely without a care if the surviving team heard her or understood what she said. Mana's face then looked up into the thundering black sky. She could feel being shaken rudely and once Meiko's scared eyes entered Mana's direct floating line of vision she realized whom she was being shaken by.</p><p>"He killed Shimo... We never even made peace with one another, I never told him that I've forgiven him for every rude word he's said to me, that I understood why he did what he did in Takigakure... He died thinking I was mad at him." Mana spoke to herself before slipping down on her knees so hard that the fall busted them open at the sharp edge of the Box.</p><p>"Mana-chan, it's OK, we'll ask the Box to bring him back, we'll... We'll think of something just don't do this to us!" Kouta began shouting trying to reach Mana's head but the magician's mind was so far away from where his yells could reach her that his voice sounded to her like she was deep underwater from where she's being yelled at. Just a meaningless, muffled babble from the mouth of a young man she loved. She was drowning... Grief's black rotten hand was pulling her down, firmly holding her ankle.</p><p>"Still feeling hopeful then, huh? I wonder if I killed the redhead..." Francho lifted his arm up and pointed it at Meiko. The blacksmith's watery eyes, similarly shaken by the death of her friend froze open in fear. She knew that she was about to be killed and that the death would hit her faster than she could feel a thing. Meiko wished to say her farewells but couldn't force herself to do so in time...</p><p>Francho's arm lowered after a strange inner realization hit him. He didn't execute Meiko for reasons only known to him. Instead, his black hand of death reached to scratch his bald patch on top of his head, wondering about something.</p><p>"Well... I guess if I killed you all one by one it'd take too long, be too much of a bother. How about we end these games?" Francho frantically screamed out before slapping his hands together. The Pirate Lord's size began expanding more and more, he expanded from being two or three times a man's size to the size of a large ship, then further on. In mere seconds his size surpassed a large mountain and soon the Earth itself couldn't hold him together on its surface anymore.</p><p>Kusagoro, Meiko, and Kouta trembled looking up well over twenty thousand kilometers up to see their enemy with his hands surrounding the entire Earth sphere. They were far too much awestruck to reply or even comprehend the sheer massiveness of their opponent – the limit not of his ability but that of his feeble untrained mind of how large he could grow. As the worn out Pirate Lord wheezed he created sandstorms in the deserts and tsunami waves unlike any the planet had ever seen in their history.</p><p>Yet even with his massive size in mind, nothing prepared the witnesses, of which there were now the entire planet looking up in the sky or to the north as well as to the south – where the two hands towered ready to squish the Earth's ball like a pesky grape, for when Akimichi Francho spoke. His voice echoed in deafening shockwaves only failing to tear everyone's eardrums apart due to how far away the man's head was. His breath and yells suggested a great difficulty of having his words heard and spoken but the volume would've never revealed that.</p><p>"Come now! Tell me how to activate the Box of Ultimate Bliss or I will crush this planet with my own bare hands, all centillion of tons behind each hand. Is this Box really worth the entire planet?" Francho's voice echoed around the world.</p><p>"He's delirious! He must be desperate! He didn't think this through because if he crushes the planet we'll survive inside the Box's field. He's not bargaining with anything!" Kusagoro yelled out angrily wondering if his voice was even heard by the cosmic size opponent.</p><p>"That must it, he didn't kill Meiko because he felt this was the last jutsu he can use – he bumped into his wall so killing Meiko would've left him dry and hitting the negative side effects. That's why he tries to settle this with as large of a mass and size increase as his mind can muster – he's afraid!" Kouta declared what he thought of his opponent's actions.</p><p>"Still, what can we do to him in his current state? Even if our chances to win are the largest now than they've ever been, what difference does it make?" Meiko collapsed on her own knees, clutching at her chest and breathing heavily, the girl's mind had trouble comprehending the size and mass of the Pirate Lord and even beginning to remember how close to dying she just was made her eyes get wet again. The blacksmith just looked at Mana, hoping to find solace in the mad and lifeless eyes of someone who was broken just the way she was...</p><p>Mana sat down there with her eyes closed, her feeble knuckles were grinding together in a shaking with anger fist as the sound of her grinding teeth could've been heard. Tears burst through Mana's closed eyes even if the girl tried to stop them. She bypassed the feeling of helplessness and now only felt rage, she felt anger for the man who killed one of her best friends, somehow who was there with her since the beginning. She felt anger at her own weak and pathetic body and her own helplessness in this situation.</p><p>A bright light inside Mana's own mind flared up, a dark blue figure shaped just like Mana appeared in front of her as the inner spacial baby's eyes opened in the shape of stars. Mana's own body responded to her and no longer shut itself away. After Mana looked into the entity that occupied her mind, an entity that didn't know what it was exactly making Mana's hopes of understanding it miniscule, entity Mana herself may have created as a visual construct representing her inner spirituality, her own body, a voice echoed inside Mana's mind. Strong, loud and dominant, louder than the sound of stars boiling and blowing up visually inside Mana's mental world.</p><p>It was Mana's own voice: "Just... Maybe one day... When I'm worth it and when someone I love is in danger, consider really hard and if I deserve it at that moment and... Please make me strong again..."</p><p>Mana's eyes shot wide open, burning with rage as blue flares of spiritual and physical chakra molding together to create something new and amazing, something lost and reborn was burning inside her. As the limiters her own body placed on itself faded, regretting the decision ever being made, the magician's chakra control returned at long last!</p>
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<a name="section0223"><h2>223. The Bigger They Are</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta and Meiko continued to observe Mana's leaking and overflowing bursts of dark blue chakra flares in shock and awe. To them, it was tough to understand or even to believe that their friend had after such a long time regained the ability to use chakra, augment her abilities and use ninja techniques. While, normally, the two would've felt relief about such an event and that Mana's troubles of identity would've been solved now they were far too stumped to feel such a thing. Maybe it was because of the excessive amount of events transpiring and piling up on one another: Shimo's death, Francho's colossal expansion and weight increase and others.</p><p>"Okay, now I'm totally lost..." Kusagoro flipped his hands up before smacking his forehead.</p><p>"Mana, your chakra is back! The shock must've forced your body to remove the mental restraints!" Kouta yelled out triumphantly. It took a brief moment for the young man to finally catch up with what had just happened. To understand all of the implications of this revelation but he was happy, the girl he loved was finally whole again and he'd get to know the side of her he had never seen before.</p><p>"Your chakra is leaking outside your own body – its size must be massive! Just how powerful were you before losing your control?" Meiko laughed out in surprise. The blacksmith must've seen this revelation as something to pull the team out of a tough spot, something to save them and the joy of finally regaining hope was getting the better of her.</p><p>"It must be all the training I've been doing without my chakra. I've strengthened myself so much that my physical chakra increased at least ten times in the Sun Disc arena, I can still feel my spiritual chakra growing right now to meet the physical chakra size and balance it out..." Mana expressed her own surprise after looking at her body which was expelling rays of darker sapphire blue flames, it was a much darker color than the typical light blue chakra color, which was another mystery of its own.</p><p>"It doesn't matter, Francho might just be ten times the size of the Earth and just his hands possess mass larger than the human mind can comprehend. He's as good as invulnerable..." Kusagoro grunted making the hope inside Kouta's and Meiko's eyes slowly dim before dying out completely.</p><p>"Oh no..." Mana shook her head angrily, her entire body began to tremble overflowing with the newly regained chakra, her whole essence was pretty much soaked with the augmentations that the new chakra could provide her. Yes, Mana knew it was immeasurably inconsequential compared to the force Kusagoro hit Francho with which appeared to be inefficient at best at much lesser mass of the Akimichi's body but Mana was a different kind of ninja.</p><p>"He killed Shimo. He doesn't get to hide behind his invulnerability. I'll beat him down, and just this time... I'll kill him!" Mana shouted out letting all of her built up chakra out before her hands went through a combination of hand seals, one that she had only used once and then lost the hope to master. The magician was seeking use of the elusive technique that she was attempting to control and use properly during the most of her ninja career but lacked control as well as chakra pool size.</p><p>"Sweet Lullaby Jutsu!" Mana exclaimed after setting her hands in the position of the final hand seal and then emitting a soft and sweet melody from her lips in the shape of a whistle. The gentle whistling tune filled the air and then Meiko, Kouta and Kusagoro fell to the ground grabbing at their abdomens and blushing. It appeared like their bodily temperature had risen almost like they had a fever but their eyes were wide open because their whole bodies were paralyzed with pleasure.</p><p>Finally, after regaining her control and drastically multiplying her chakra pool dozens of times Mana managed to pull the Sweet Lullaby off. Now that her body and mind were both as one after Shimo's death, now that both her conscious and unconscious parts wished nothing else but vengeance and justice for her friend's passing, stopping this maniacal Pirate Lord before he destroyed the whole world in his desperation.</p><p>"What... The..." Kouta uttered as he closed his eyes covering them as the sights he must've seen were too much for the boy's composure. "And it smells so good..." he continued to whine in his delirium meanwhile Meiko was jumping in joy and rolling around on the box by wrapping her arms around her legs like a human cannonball of joy.</p><p>"Swords, swords, and food everywhere!" the blacksmith screamed out in glee still blushing while the young redhead's eyes raced around looking at one illusionary artifact after another.</p><p>"No way... What a powerful illusion, even I don't have the chakra in my current state to break it!" Kusagoro shouted out in surprise as even he was grasping at his heart as if the pleasant smells and sights were threatening him with a heart attack. Eventually, he too was forced to fight with himself and close off his senses.</p><p>Mana looked back at her friends and felt a bit bad about not letting them know about this illusion. It wasn't meant to be used as a mean of battle, it was supposed to be something she used on his father, something she worked on ever since he received those injuries in his final mission. Something to alleviate his pain and change it with pleasure. Eventually, the magician understood that she would never manage to hold such a technique focused on him forever and so it could never be used that way. Still, other uses of it were still possible.</p><p>Francho began yelling into the sky, he wailed around frantically tossing his immeasurably heavy arms around through empty space just narrowly avoiding hitting the moon which would've shattered it into pebbles. The Pirate Lord then grasped his abdomen as if trying to clutch at a very irksome spot and began crumbling down as if he was about to crash into the Earth but then his size began to drastically decrease.</p><p>The Sweet Lullaby technique overloaded one's senses with pleasurable sensations, stimulating all of one's pleasure points and affecting pretty much all of the human senses. The affected were all who heard the sweet tunes of Mana's which she emitted after casting the illusion, they saw, heard, smelled and felt whatever gave them most excitement and pleasure. In addition, Mana's voice began sounding like an alluring song of a siren making it heavenly and alluring making it immensely difficult to even wish to cancel out the illusion even if the victim had the ability to do so.</p><p>Just as the minimization ended and Francho got reduced to normal size the tall and fat Pirate Lord slammed on top of the Box right onto his face spreading his disgusting filthy murderer blood all over the Box's top surface. Mana turned around and looked at him with burning fury, one only seen in the eyes of a person whose comrade was just killed right in front of them.</p><p>"How did he... Hear that from up there?" Kouta continued to struggle to even be able to talk as his body was paralyzed and drawn to the ground from sheer intense pleasure just like Francho's.</p><p>"Figured his stupid pills also augmented his senses amongst which was his hearing since he assumed he'd have a way to hear a positive answer from us even from all the way in space. Augmented senses can be used by the enemy just as potently... Because his sense augmentation was purely pill-induced he couldn't have limited it even if he wanted it." Mana replied coldly while she walked up to the beaten up and broken Pirate Lord. The man was shaking with pleasure and didn't even try to resist or pick himself off the ground in the highly undignified position he ended up in after being face-planted into the Box. After a couple of moments passed since Mana stopped whistling the illusion ended by itself.</p><p>Meiko and Kouta struggled to pick themselves off the ground as they had never been so effectively disabled before. Even Kusagoro still huffed on one knee as his muscles twitched after such immediate end of such intense overload of pleasant sensations.</p><p>Francho still remained on the ground, writhing as none of his bodily parts seemed to work. The pirate must've finally hit the after-effects of the pills now that after getting hit by Mana's illusion he was unable to maintain his mass and size manipulation techniques and had to overload his abilities to return to normal size and weight.</p><p>"Mana?" Kouta asked with great worry behind his voice after seeing the magician slowly walking up to the pirate and just standing in front of his undignified and broken pose.</p><p>A lightning fast punch dug right into the pirate's face throwing the man rolling to the other side of the Box and close to plummeting below to oblivion. Mana pulled her fist back and caressed it shouting in pain as she wasn't used to just punching and the damage it did to her own hand, she rarely used her fists but this time it couldn't have been helped. The magician looked at the messed up bloody pulp which was left from the almost completely drained of chakra Pirate Lord as he helplessly writhed on the ground. He didn't say anything or even shout in pain, he just laid there like a goddamn vegetable.</p><p>Mana grabbed him by what little remained of his hair and pulled the man's face up closer smacking him from the sides, slapping him a good couple of hundreds of times in rapid succession. While her speed was unlike anything Mana had even seen her own body pull off before the magician didn't care to admire her own growth. She just worked out of pain and instinct. Mana grew sadder and broke into more and more tears with every smack she gave the Pirate.</p><p>Finally, the barely resembling a man mass of flesh in Mana's arms slipped out of her arms after Mana loosened her grip and collapsed on her knees breaking into tears. She didn't do it, she didn't kill him. The magician could still hear difficult wheezing which made a bubbly mix of blood and air still escape Francho's nose or, at least, the part of his body where it was supposed to be. Kouta walked up to Mana and hugged her from behind, the magician turned around and hugged his abdomen in return pressing her head against his chest.</p><p>"He killed him... Shimo's dead... But I couldn't do it. I still don't want to." she whispered in tears still struggling to believe it.</p><p>"Yeah..." Kouta nodded and looked at the beaten pulp of a Pirate Lord laying in the pool of his own blood. Depending on the fact if his unnatural metabolism provided by the ability to control chakra remained he'd just barely pull it off and recover. There was little doubt in that fact – Akimichi Francho was a tough one. What state he'd return in would be a different matter entirely...</p><p>"Mana decided not to kill him. It'd probably be for the better if you didn't..." Meiko looked at Kusagoro asking him more than ordering. The veteran Jugo just shrugged.</p><p>"She beat the guy, she owns the laurel of pulling all of our asses through. I'll just have to deal with it and respect her claim to that fucker's life." Kusagoro replied after walking up and spitting close to the messy pulp of flesh that Akimichi Francho was.</p><p>"You hear that, you vegetable-ass-looking fucker? She owns your life now and any time she will want to take it, I'll lead her to the depths of hell to find you and help her claim it." the Jugo exclaimed taking a moment to enjoy standing atop of the man who proved so difficult to beat all by himself.</p><p>It was true, Akimichi Francho used out all of his tricks which were meant to shift the power balance between the Pirate Lords and move his crew on top in an all-out war. In that sense the Pirate Lord didn't just fight Kusagoro, he waged war on the man and used out all the tricks he'd have used normally to win the war with the other Lords. He used up all of the aces up his sleeve just to beat one experienced jounin from Konoha and still he failed. History would remember this man as a failure even if he was so immensely powerful. He had the power to literally hold the world in his hands and yet by using that power he ruined himself and got torn down to nothingness.</p><p>"Kid" Kusagoro referred to Mana while still looking at the grave-like silent oblivion of total blackness that surrounded them only briefly coming up with the illusion of being lit up by the purple lightning storm when they stroke. "We should probably head out soon. If you want to use the Box to bring back your friend, I'd advise you to not waste any time. That trick which Francho pulled may have alerted a lot of people – cosmic size beardos usually do that. While I doubt any villages will rush into a cradle of pirate territory a lot of marine hunter ninja might, it'd be troublesome to explain yourselves and reveal your mission objective to them, even if you do – the Fifth's face will be instantly tied with this battlefield."</p><p>Mana slowly stood up and felt Kouta's grip loosen, she stepped out of his embrace and nodded. She understood Kusagoro's worry, after all, if the Fifth is tied to this place she'll have to pay for any damage caused for this area and she'll have to repair this place out of her pocket. That's more zeroes coming out from a village's budget than one could count on their fingers. Also, it'd be a nasty stain on the village's reputation. Ninja weren't heroes, few people would care if the Konoha team just saved the world from a threat they themselves escalated, many more would lose faith in Konoha's subtlety at handling things.</p><p>The magician placed her hand on the Box's surface and allowed some of her chakra to leak out. Normally people couldn't just transfer their chakra from themselves into other people, even medical ninja couldn't pull off such a seemingly simplistic feat and yet something told Mana that the Box would be different. She didn't care if this mission would be a failure. That much she and her team had decided on since the very beginning. Shimo deserved a second chance seeing how his first was taken away from him because of Mana.</p><p>Was it though? Could Mana really blame herself? As the magician's chakra leaked out through the crevices of the Box lighting the whole structure up like some intricate mechanical wonder the young kunoichi wondered if she was actually to blame. Wasn't that the whole point Shimo tried to portray before his death? Wasn't it what pissed him off the most about Mana - that she blamed herself all the time about everything?</p><p>After all, could Mana really have controlled any of the consequences of these actions? She couldn't have predicted or within reasonable thought had seen any of these events coming. Them arriving to the Box sooner than foreseen, Hachiro's aid-giving them false hope about having chances to actually win this battle with Read's crew, Francho intercepting the message in the bottle meant for Flint and rushing to the location triggering a confrontation. She played it all right, none of her choices were wrong... Then why did she feel so terrible? No pirate crew will end up with a full bag of Audra shards now and no Pirate Lord will wield the power of the Box and yet Mana felt like a sobbing loser.</p><p>The chakra present and lighting the Box of Ultimate Bliss dyed black with bright white edges to light the darkness around the black shape that the entirety of chakra began to take. Mana had to hand it that she felt more drained than she had hoped, it felt almost like she had just donated a good portion of her own blood. Together with her chakra, she had given this Box her very life force a good portion of which was drained out of her to give life to whatever this Box would conjure. How would it work? Was Mana supposed to say her wish now or...?</p><p>The chakra leaked out, twirled and rose in vortexes and jets, expanding greatly until it took shape of a gigantic bird-like creature. It looked very primal and bestial in its lower body features as its legs were covered with black feathers that were similarly colored as the dark chakra leaking out from the Box. The oddities started from where the lower body ended – it appeared like the entirety of the creature's spine was extended like a long dragon and barely covered by the black skin covering it but it was very clear that the bird-like creature had no muscle or digestive tract there.</p><p>Right on its chest laid a round sphere which was evidently supposed to be the creature's head as it carried four closed eyes with sets of two on each size and a mouth-like opening that had bones protruding from it in a manner similar to how teeth would protrude. Similarly, bones were protruding from its back as well separately even to its all reaching immensely wide black wings that continuously shed black gigantic feathers of chakra that faded into ashes before they fell to where the ground level was supposed to be.</p><p>The creature was mostly black yet its paws and feet and the claws protruding from the tips were mostly dirty brown. Despite its majestic size and pose the creature was actually quite pitiful and sickly looking as its tail reminded of a broomstick tied to a long string of cloth. Where normally one's head would be there was just a measly stump, similar to the remains of a beheaded chicken had their heads just healed up after their death and remain as a lifeless stump.</p><p>After the entity finished its strange creation ritual it spread its wings widely firing off the feathers far far away, the ninja could see and hear the feathers exploding with all destructing power but they didn't really have much to destroy as the battle that was waged beforehand had finished destroying everything for it.</p><p>"I am Satori!" the entity spoke in a voice that would've belonged to a young man, maybe one in his early twenties or late teens. "What would your wish be?" it went straight to business.</p>
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<a name="section0224"><h2>224. Selfishness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Wow, the wish granting spirit of the Box looks kind of... Sad really..." Meiko turned her head trying to properly etch the portrait of the very shady looking monster that was given birth by the Box taking in Mana's chakra.</p><p>"Fruit of the First People's pathetic tinkering with life, you are a poor judge, sinful one," Satori spoke up in the same voice of a deep and almost singing like a masculine voice of a young man, one that was so soothing that it would've made the Two-Tailed Cat purr. "Now, shall your primitive minds have any questions or do you wish to state your wish?"</p><p>Mana smiled with a flaring spark in her eyes. She was now witnessing someone that spoke like it saw the First People interact with humans which would've made it almost as old as the oldest life on this planet. As a blooming buff of history and legends there was so much Mana wanted to ask Satori. It pretty much dug its own grave by asking this question.</p><p>"What exactly are you? You say that you know our origins and relation to the First People but it is merely a speculation of what that relation was. What is your relation to the First People?" Mana asked. As much as she wanted to just ask Satori breathe life into Shimo's body, first she had to scope the entity out and find out if she wasn't stepping into a trap of some sorts. The Box had numerous legends spun about it and many more descriptions of how it worked. There were no confirmed survivors that had found the Box and used it successfully, many claimed to have done so but their stories were inconsistent. There must've been a reason for this...</p><p>"There is no "speculation", you are merely a product of the First People wishing to create life using chakra – your very existence is a crime against nature. However, just like the First People sinned against you by giving you your pitiful lives they've also sinned against me by trapping me in this Box for eternity." the winged demon spoke out waving its black wings and making more feathers fall off and get incinerated from being separate from their master.</p><p>A booming pillar of flames burst behind Mana, Satori pointed its wings towards the ninja surrounding them in a dark purple force field and protecting the ninja from taking a very unpleasant dip into the blood of the dying planet.</p><p>"What was that?" Kouta yelled out as he witnessed endless more pillars of magma shoot out from underneath and reach out into the skies spilling the searing hot blood of his planet – the molten magma as well as jets of actual scorching flames.</p><p>"I was a bane of the First People, a demon so vile that my very presence is slowly destroying the Universe. That is why the First People thought it necessary to jail me, do not dare pity me, however, to one such as me eternity is just a heartbeat away if loathsome humans didn't interrupt my jail time every once and again." Satori giggled as its upper body which shaped a makeshift mouth turned around in a shape of a smile skewering the whole shape of the entity.</p><p>"How could a Lesser Demon be so powerful?" Mana scratched her head feeling confused.</p><p>"I come from a time before the Ten Tails, before it was split into the Tailed Beasts. Back in my days demons had more pride than to be categorized, I am neither lesser nor higher or tailed, I am me!" the demonic entity appeared to get offended by Mana's question as it moved in its massive brown claw right up to the magician's chest as if meaning to impale the girl on it but then it just lightly touched her as if playing with her. There must've been safety hazards installed into the Box preventing Satori from escaping or killing anyone after release.</p><p>"So you said we are just to call any wish and you'll make it true? Isn't that a bit too generous of you? What is the purpose of this Box and why are you doing this?" Mana asked a more direct question realizing that she was not nearly as competent of a historian to comprehend the time or the nature of this beast in front of her. It claimed to come well before the time which was considered a dark age of legends and only has skewered points of view of specific landlords recorded as history. It came from well before the time when history was at the very best unreliable.</p><p>"You heard me correctly, human, I am trapped in the Box and it is fueled by chakra. One supplied by people sealed into the Box. The Box uses that chakra to protect itself but also to keep me contained. I was forcefully given a function to grant wishes in order to fuel my own jail. That is the nature of your progenitors, human! The ones you speak of with respect and call – First People." Satori answered.</p><p>"I knew it! It's going to seal us into the Box!" Kouta yelled out angrily taking an offensive stance which also triggered Meiko's fighting response as she also unsealed a sword from a sealing glyph and prepared for combat.</p><p>"For someone who is such a pitiful failed experiment of a creature thinking itself competent enough to create life, you assume yourself incorrectly within your bounds while interrupting me. It is for such transgressions that I consider First People's successors a pathetic waste of space and sad even compared to the "Gods" that gave them life." the demonic entity hissed in fury mocking the divine word as much as its manly voice allowed it.</p><p>Mana bowed and apologized to the demon asking it to continue its chain of thought.</p><p>"The rules are simple, you name a wish and if it is not selfish I grant it. If I deem it selfish you who opened the Box shall be forever sealed within the Box fueling my torment and forever watching your own kind stumble and fail to live up to the legacy of maggots that created them." Satori explained, his voice began sounding what the legends described a devil sounding like – conniving, malicious and very tempting. A minute more and it'd have begged Mana to sell her soul.</p><p>"It's too risky, let's seal it back and go home, if we won't use its wish-granting properties it won't change its location, the mission will still be completed, right, Mana?" Meiko gently placed her hand on Mana's shoulder trying to move her friend away from the Box but Mana remained rooted in place.</p><p>This Box was without a doubt demonic and evil in nature, so much Mana knew after seeing its very design. She knew so much just by seeing what terribly evil chakra it leaked out into the surrounding world turning the sky murky and black and unleashing a violent thunderstorm of evil lightning bolts. It claimed now that just its very existence would destroy the whole Universe if it is let to remain in its halfway sealed state. But... Shimo didn't deserve to pay for Mana's mistakes with his life. No one but she did.</p><p>"You are very wrong, girl. If a wish is not made I shall remain half-sealed here continuously destroying the Universe just by being alive, within six hours I shall destroy the Earth, within a day I will destroy the solar system and within a week the entire galaxy, after three months there shall be nothing but empty void and me in my imprisoned state as the end of the Universe will not harm me one tiny bit even in my sealed state. Are you ready for this sacrifice just to remain noble and free? Shall you validate my spite for humankind by dooming me for eternal loneliness as everything around me is decimated to cinders?" Satori raised its voice trying to reach out for Mana as well.</p><p>Only now the magician realized what sort of cataclysm she had unleashed. If she did nothing the entire Universe would be destroyed, if she asked for a wish she risked being sealed into the Box, doomed to a similar fate to that of Satori. She'd be remaining alive within the Box fueling the Box's need of chakra like some sort of a milking cow. It was a fate much worse than death but one much more favorable compared to the end of all things.</p><p>Such was the cruel irony of this world – in her noble intention to save her friend Mana unleashed the devil itself who wished to make a deal and if Mana refused she'd sign the death warrant of all existence. However, if she did ask for Shimo's return the Yuki would only be alive because of this evil chakra running its course. There was no positive outcome to this.</p><p>Kusagoro grabbed Mana by her collar and pulled her closer to his face, the man's smelly breath was blowing in her face heavily as the man sneered and growled at her. "You're a fucking witch of a girl, whatever you fucking do ends in everyone around you dying and paying the price! Why the fuck haven't you cut your wrists yet!?" Kusagoro shouted out. "Right now while you comprehend your own existential problems this creature is destroying the Earth, name your wish and sacrifice yourself, have some guts to do the actual right thing for once and stop stalling just to appear high and mighty!" he yelled out before throwing Mana at the Box over his shoulder.</p><p>Satori's bubble of dark purple chakra stopped Mana in mid-air and gently placed her on the ground. "As expected, the sniveling human is wrong. After the wish is made my power shall reverse all destructive effects inflicted by the Box or my presence. You are in absolutely no rush as you shall be protected as long as you are within the Box's protective field. Everything beyond it is relative, even as the Universe itself crumbles there is nothing absolute, I can and will undo everything. All I need is a wish but if your wish is to talk that I can do for free. This girl is wiser than the lot of you for wishing to scope the possibilities first. This is literally the most important decision in your miserable existences." the demonic entity explained.</p><p>"How is this possible, how can you actually have enough chakra to grant any wish in existence and then undo the destruction of the entire Universe if need be?" Mana asked in awe.</p><p>"I am the one who opposed the First People, the ones that were capable of taming the very chakra of which the Universe is composed of. You are aware of the "chakra over matter" principle of nature, aren't you, girl? As such an entity there is nothing I cannot do. I can destroy the limitless and indestructible and I can create the impossible, I can tame what is yet to be or will never even be, eternity and infinity are but feathers in my angelic wings." Satori explained.</p><p>"You mean..." Mana tried to wrap her head around the complicated and unimaginable might of the First People but was interrupted by the sad looking entity.</p><p>"Yes, the entire Universe and everything inside it is made of chakra on a spiritual level. That very chakra is just another energy which can be tamed and the First People were creatures that could tap into that power. They could manipulate that very energy which the Universe was made of, both the chakra that comprises matter and the one that comprises the dark matter, that of energy and that of dark energy. If you wish to accomplish something within the universal boundaries you simply shape the universe as you see it by tapping into its chakra. The concepts of ninjutsu were made for humans so that you inferior creatures could learn how to properly use chakra but you remained stuck on the training wheels." Satori continued to elaborate on just what kind of creatures the First People – the progenitor of the current people were.</p><p>"So... The concept of ninjutsu, as a technique that gets one specific thing done using chakra is just a first step to manipulating the very existence? The way the First People did?" Mana elaborated on the true meaning of Satori's words which was so mind blowing to believe. Ninjutsu was like using a specific set in stone spellword to cast a spell, like the wizards in stories and legends did, the true nature of chakra manipulation was to accomplish anything one pleased. The closest metaphor to such a being would've been a god but if the entire population of people were gods, then no one was.</p><p>"Exactly. I hope this helps you understand how primitive and failed you are as spawns of the First People's wish to create life using chakra. You were named as their successors after their own hubris swallowed them and gave the Earth and the Moon to populate, to inherit it. And yet you struggle to live up even to the scale of your expectations where you'd be considered a colossal failure. Your miserable lives are lost in battle or due to your pathetically short lifespan and rather than to record your progress and let your successors inherit it you cling to it and drag it to the grave because it's a "village secret". You are pests that feast on the excrement of flies that feasted on the First People excrement – never assume to be more than that while humans remain to be what they are now. Now I'd hear out your wish unless you still want to torment me with your human stench?" the demonic entity almost sang out as it often did when matters concerned belittling humankind.</p><p>At that moment something snapped in the magician's mind, almost like a realization had hit her on the spot about what was going on. Mana lowered her head and clutched at her fists so hard that she felt her own fingernails etching deep into the flesh of her hands causing it to bleed quite potently. She was almost shaking in anger before her head lifted up and stared right at Satori as if she hated the very guts of the being. "You... I've never thought there'd be the day when I'd wish to end a life of another being and today I've seen two such instances. I should wish for your end, you twisted, rotten and hypocritical piece of filth!" she lashed out at the demon greatly confusing her team that stood behind her.</p><p>"Mana, is something wrong?" Kouta tried to reach out to Mana but her hateful eyes that were drowning in tears turned back at him staring with such intense rage that he backed up overcome by fear of what the magician might do. Even to the young man, she claimed she loved.</p><p>The magician's body erupted in chakra as she launched her body at Satori diving with a jumping kick, "Spear Kick!" she yelled out after her kick simply bounced off of a protective field that surrounded Satori and she backflipped back on her feet going through a bunch of hand seals and extending her hands forward.</p><p>Mana continued to rampage going through each and every ninjutsu technique in her arsenal breaking each one of them with a barrage of punches and kicks before the girl fell flat on her butt and couldn't stand back up. It pained her chest to even breathe but she wished to destroy this foul thing with every fiber of her being. It was such a cruel thing that toyed on the death of her friend by its twisted game and selfish desire to seal anyone that opened the Box.</p><p>"Mana..." Meiko spoke up with pity for the suffering that her friend was going through, "You know that sometimes I'm slow to catch on but... This creature clearly caused you great pain but... I don't understand it, you know I am your friend so tell me how it hurt you so I can kick its ass together with you." the blacksmith walked up to Mana and lifted the girl back on her feet helping the magician stand on her feet.</p><p>"Don't you get it Meiko? We can't bring back Shimo – he's dead for good and there's no force in this Universe to bring him back to us! This filthy demon is tricking us..." Mana shouted out with a voice of a sister that lost her brother and it sounded almost like she projected that pain on Satori and not the actual man that killed him.</p><p>"I... Don't understand..." Meiko still shook her head.</p><p>"Can't you s..." Mana stood back on her feet but then a sharp pain made her fall back down. Someone from behind her knocked her down and ran in front of the Box. Mana tried to lift her head up and she heard Kouta and Meiko rushing towards the perpetrator but he was desperately running towards Satori.</p><p>"Listen up you stupid crow-man! Make me the most powerful pirate in the world roaming the eternal seas with limitless adventure and booty for me to plunder! Fill this world with danger and excitement so I can be the greatest pirate ever!" Akimichi Francho shouted out through his crushed face barely intelligibly spouting out bursts of blood with each word but it was clear that the creature understood the pirate's words.</p><p>"I see..." Satori spoke as its mouth opened and suddenly the darkness around the world began seeping into the open abyssal gap that dragged Francho in with the darkness. The entity began shining with a dark purple light as it dissolved into a vortex of evil lightning and returned to the Box. The ground beneath the Box was restored, the island was rebuilt and all was just like it was in the morning before the Box was even uncovered except the pyramid the Box was inside of was no more.</p><p>"I... Don't get it... What just happened?" Meiko shouted out in total confusion, the blacksmith must've been losing her mind as events she couldn't justify or wrap her head around were just stacking up on top of each other.</p><p>Mana got back on her feet and looked at the closed Box.</p><p>"There is no wish that can be made. The answer was in front of us the whole time, I should've known earlier... We can't ask for the Box to fulfill a wish that isn't selfish because the very idea of someone fulfilling your wish mystically is selfish. The Box was designed to trick greedy people into fueling Satori's prison for all eternity. Dreams are something that we must strive towards and wish hard enough to motivate us to never give up reaching for them." Mana spoke up bursting into tears as she slammed her hand into the white sand of the beach she was standing in.</p><p>"So there is actually no way of bringing Shimo back to life, that's why you were so mad at Satori..." Kouta finished her link of thoughts.</p><p>"Oh... Mana..." Meiko finally understood everything and wrapped her hands around Mana so hard that the magician almost suffocated from her friend's embrace and tapped the blacksmith's shoulder asking to be let go.</p><p>"You better hurry, in a moment it will disappear until it runs short of chakra and needs to be refueled and then it'll manifest itself somewhere randomly in the world, claiming more victims until there is no living thing to fuel it anymore in perpetual circle." the magician managed to break out a small smile by turning up her cheekbones. Meiko shook her head in confusion but then remembered Mana's promise.</p><p>The redhead ran towards the Box and moved her fingers under the sandy surface trying to peel the colossal pyramid size Box off the ground. Now that it used no chakra to protect itself and was perfectly refueled Meiko managed to lift the whole three hundred meters tall and wide Box above her head. The blacksmith huffed and struggled to maintain her grip but then the Box became lighter and lighter as it slowly faded and dissipated into nothingness one glowing particle at a time, collapsing into a sandstorm of small glowing particles that then got carried away by the wind and Meiko didn't hold anything in her hands anymore but empty air.</p><p>The redhead grinned to her ears and rubbed her nose with the index finger shyly, "Well, I guess that's that..." she concluded.</p>
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<a name="section0225"><h2>225. A Long Voyage Goodbye</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The pale moonlight lit up the restored by the Box's powers oceans that ruthlessly and recklessly bashed against the small boat in which the Konoha crew traveled back. While the oceans were as disturbed and capricious as the powerful winds and uneasy weather would've normally made them the servicemen aboard didn't appear bothered by the little uneasiness and shaking.</p><p>As much as Mana wanted to be by the rails observing the uneasy storm and the calm nightly drizzle she wouldn't have liked to be seen. For someone with so much angst and inner turmoil observing the beloved raindrops roll off the illuminator of her small cabin was as good as it got.</p><p>The magician had no more tears to cry for her fallen friend. A life so treasured and taken for granted, one tied with so much kinship deep inside and made bitterer by the constant conflicts on the outside. Not crying at any given moment made Mana somehow feel bad, almost like somehow she wasn't grieving enough. Like she was as bad of a friend to her one of the most beloved teammates in death as she was while he still lived.</p><p>There were so many lessons to be learned from this trip. Every step of the way Mana tried to plan things, she tried to create little maps and problems for her intelligent and curious mind to solve and yet every time she was proven not as overseeing and clever as she thought she was. Even more, every time her plans gone awry, there were very few instances where Mana could correctly guess the reaction of the world around her.</p><p>Sitting on her overly soft bed that felt like a drowning abyss, not unlike the shaking and roaring waters outside, swallowing her body every time she placed her weight on it, and watching through the window Mana moved her legs closer to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The first reaction to what happened was to shut in, let go of everyone around her before she could properly wrap her head around what had happened.</p><p>It felt so similar to her childhood – back when Mana still had the mental disorder preventing her from associating facts with an event. Back when mysticism and divine intervention were the only explanations she could understand. Maybe it was for that reason that after overcoming the disorder Mana became so planning, so eager to understand everything around her placing it into shelves with names on them, categorize and plan everything out?</p><p>The world couldn't be planned, the real world couldn't have been prepared for and the only way to know the world was to be released into it. Walls had to be bypassed or toppled in order for one to experience life, to experience freedom, however, life and freedom were scary. Sometimes it felt so much more reassuring to believe in purpose, to believe in mysticism and not even bother with explanations because explanations lead to the cruel realization that there was no purpose but that which we ourselves cause, name and attribute.</p><p>To some walls and constant shelter, protection from the real world – baby wheels of life, so to say, were the most attractive. Living sheltered away from the world outside the village walls, places where one's treasured and taken for granted lives were picked off like flowers under the feet of fire spitting dragons. Knowing what she now knew, processing what she had just seen Mana couldn't blame them in her right mind.</p><p>People keep children away from the reality as long as possible. After all, we ourselves sometimes fear to confront that grim purposeless world beyond the village walls so how could we subject our young and fragile to it? Even after Mana had discovered her purpose people continued to treat her as a child who had never experienced "real life", even after she left the village walls and had seen more death than some villagers will throughout their entire lives people still said that. People feared to confront reality and saying things how they were so much that they silenced others who did it for them out of fear.</p><p>Fear that these loud and brave talking people will force that confrontation, maybe fear that these people will somehow appear taller and better for lacking that fear. Fear of fear itself, fear of those brave enough to defy it. Fear of courage? Mana closed her eyes and burrowed her head in between her knees hunching her back so hard that it began to hurt. She wanted to wrap into a ball and just lay on her bed, let her thoughts take their place and settle down. They were like tea herbs after the water was poured on it, twisting and rushing all around.</p><p>Mana was an only child, she was often left alone in her home when her father was in missions and her mother was working managing her pretty popular and yet small café. Maybe her experience being alone was what invited that desire for solitude in her life's problems, maybe that was just an instinct of comfort being alone to face her thoughts and reflections?</p><p>The door to her cabin slightly opened with Meiko's curious eye peeking through the gap. The blacksmith visibly tried to enter unseen and while she was much better at stealth than Mana due to her general playfulness and lack of use of chakra in the matter she looked more childish than silent.</p><p>"Hey... How're you holding up?" Meiko asked carefully treading the minefield of emotions. By now the redhead knew how difficult it was to talk to Mana without the magician finding something to fret, obsess or blame herself over. The magician was someone who was too smart and mature for her age and yet because of that she felt it was her responsibility to foresee and control the world around her, just like it was her responsibility to help the people weaker than her just because she was a ninja.</p><p>Mana sighed, she didn't want to come off as a bitch but... She just didn't have anything to say, she didn't know what to reply and she knew that she'll be taken the wrong way. That was just how people were, every single time silence was taken as arrogance, as a refusal to interact with a lesser one instead of genuine pain, shyness or just not knowing what to say.</p><p>The magician's eyes widened in surprise and then squinted with warmth when she felt Meiko sitting beside her and shifting the weight of the whole damned overly soft bed. The blacksmith was a better friend to Mana than the kunoichi ever deserved. Maybe it was her playfulness, her childishness or her, at times, comedic immaturity that made Meiko stick to Mana despite how badly the magician must've treated her friends... There was no logical explanation for friendship, to that force that made friends stick together even when the friendship was as lovely as two venom spitting snakes wrangling over one another.</p><p>Friendship and bonds couldn't be explained, couldn't be predicted and put rationally just like the world. Mana's too smart for her age yet not genius level intellect failed to understand either, failed to predict and categorize either. Differently from her mental disorder childhood days, she had no answers to the questions raised by those subjects and it hurt. It was a new realization – that the most logical and what seemed the right way didn't have all the answers, couldn't predict and categorize everything to differently named jars.</p><p>"So... Kouta's father said we're going to Land of Hot Water after arriving at the port, from there it'll be a peaceful couple of days trek back home. We're pretty strong and, with Kouta's beast of a dad with us, we'll be safe." Meiko smiled to Mana, the magician saw that lovely and innocent smile on her friend's face reflecting from the illuminator lit by the candle flame.</p><p>"Oh... That's..." Mana tried to reply literally anything on her mind just so she didn't hurt the one person stepping over herself to still be her friend. Shimo's death and general depressing thoughts were all over her mind but Mana had to step over herself just like Meiko always did for her. The first instinct of anyone meeting Mana would be to stay as far away from that ball of pain, failure, and blame. Mana owed at the very least her best to Meiko for how much effort the blacksmith put into it.</p><p>"You're probably still affected by... Yeah... I've never felt anything like that so... I don't know how to help you." Meiko admitted looking away, Mana saw in the girl's reflection the smile fading and changing into sadness. The magician turned and hugged Meiko from behind.</p><p>"Shimo was a friend to all of us. I wouldn't dare say that you don't know how I feel because all of us are feeling the same pain." Mana spoke up finally finding words that she wouldn't feel embarrassed sharing. It's already been a good couple of days after Shimo's death and ninja got over such events much faster – people came and left their lives like snapping the fingers.</p><p>After her head slowly raised to look at Meiko who stood up and turned around Mana was shocked to see the blacksmith smiling through tears. "You're the best friend I've ever had! Thanks for fulfilling that promise, that Box was really huge and soaked with chakra so I doubted I'd be able to lift it but... I'd rather have torn my body apart rather than failed to lift it after how much you did to get us there!" the redhead raised her fist up to Mana's face to which the magician wasn't really sure how to react. Appreciating her friend's presence Mana decided to be truthful. She looked away into the dark stormy sky looking at the drizzle intensifying into a full on rain.</p><p>"You know, I tried to blame myself... I tried to find something I could pin on myself and hate myself for but... I couldn't really. I think I've done everything I could to avoid anyone dying, there was nothing I could've done to predict anything or change anything. I did everything I could and I can't find what to blame myself for, what to hate myself for... That may just feel worse – the knowledge that things would've gone this way no matter what you did." Mana said expressing her thoughts truthfully. Meiko grinned with that excited full mouth smile, so hard that the redhead's eyes were shut closed just so her mouth could curve like that of an excited monkey.</p><p>"Good! I'd be worried if you did hate yourself. We did everything we could, we didn't hold anything back and we did our best. We all know you did your best, when the Fran... Fran..." Meiko appeared to get stuck by the Pirate Lord's name making Mana helpless and breaking out in a giggle, "The Pirate Lord prepared to kill me my last thought was that I couldn't die there. Not until I justified my presence by your side after everything you did, everything you've sacrificed to make your promise to me come true – that's what it all started from, right? The promise..."</p><p>The magician was about to burst into tears, both those of some of the blacksmith's excitement rubbing off on her and those of built up sadness, but Meiko's hopefulness and excitement and heroic posing forced the magician to smile and break into restrained laughter. The blacksmith was a small anchor to humanity and sanity that Mana still had. That was a little ironic having in mind how weird and childish a neutral spectator would've found Meiko to be.</p><p>Seeing Mana fight over her own emotions the blacksmith decided to leave while she still saw the magician smiling. Mana awkwardly gasped just before Meiko left making the redhead turn around curiously. The blacksmith had that strange trait with her face that she only could have one clear feeling and thought being present at all times – it was almost like she could not possess complicated thought or history of feels nor could she hide anything but she was feeling. If Meiko was sad – she looked sad, if the girl was happy – she was happy no matter what was going on around her. Meiko was simple, Mana's life was anything but. Maybe that was why the magician felt this strange attachment to her friend and a newfound appreciation.</p><p>"I guess the mission is failed now..." Mana said with a strangely raspy voice from all the crying she's done over the last couple of days. "I mean... I may not have used the Box for my own personal gain but..." she tried to stroke her messy hair to at least remind more of what hair of a normal human being looked like instead of the stack of black hay stacked on the head of a ninja magician.</p><p>It was beginning to look like Meiko was getting really angry, more in a playful way, sure, but still... "Didn't we already tell you? That was the deal the whole way. We all knew what we were getting into and while the journey was something greater than any of us could've imagined or prepared for – nothing changed!" she declared bravely and out loud.</p><p>"You guys..." Mana began getting a bit touched by Meiko's words as her nose got caught by a nasty case of sniffles.</p><p>"Before you try and make up excuses for hating yourself, remember this – by kicking Francho's ass when no one else could. By fighting him with illusions and quick thinking and... I guess some revenge brought fighting frenzy you've saved the world. He could've cracked the whole thing into a bunch of space rocks, he held the Earth in his hands but, with a single illusion, you disarmed him knowing he'd have no defense against it. Give poor Nakotsumi Mana a break for once..." Meiko winked before walking out and leaving Mana to cope with her thoughts alone. Meiko had it in her to grow up to be a great hero, one for the history books, she knew exactly what to say and when to leave someone to make the best impression. Mana knew none of those things, she was no hero, she struggled to even say the worst things and always refused to leave someone alone even if that would've been the right thing to do.</p><hr/><p>In a cabin west to Mana's Kouta had just returned after wandering the decks looking for Mana. The young man wanted to see if Mana was handling what had happened alright but he didn't want to just budge into her cabin. He wanted to be a good friend, maybe even a good boyfriend but he just felt too shy to be too persisting. His father was much cruder and yet he always said and did the right thing. He always spoke his mind which worked out both just right and completely wrong but when it did he simply didn't care.</p><p>"So did you find the girl?" Kusagoro spoke up laying stretched out on one of the two beds and staring at the wooden drippy ceiling. It didn't look like the man was even thinking about anything and yet his questions and interest suggested something of the sort.</p><p>"No. A couple of days and I've never seen her leave her cabin for anything but eating or..."</p><p>"Pooping?" Kusagoro laughed out.</p><p>"Dad! Well... Yeah..." Kouta shrugged after getting pretty heated up at his father. "Why would she? Did you even hear what you told her back then? She saved us at the very last moment. If it wasn't for Mana-chan the whole world would be floating as a gigantic cloud of rocks"</p><p>"I stand by my words" Kusagoro closed his eyes. "That girl is something totally different from what I thought she was, from what you still think she is," he added.</p><p>"I will still be her friend! Hopefully, if she forgives me, maybe even more..." Kouta shouted out angrily at his father.</p><p>"Oh, I've got no qualms about that. So far she's done more for you embracing your true heritage than I did through your whole childhood. Her presence is useful, if anything, for now," Kusagoro spoke up looking at his kid with a thumb up.</p><p>Kouta laughed out in a bit of relief. "Wow, I thought you'd insist on sparring with me again so you could kick my ass for being so stubborn..." he admitted.</p><p>"Well... Sparring is the best kind of training, especially when you think you can die at any point for real." Kouta's father smiled vibrantly.</p><p>"Fair enough but... Can't you just apologize to Mana-chan for what you told her? It looked like it really weighed heavily on her. Over our time together I've figured out that fists don't keep her down as well as words do. The worst enemy of hers is she herself." Kouta expressed concern looking at the damp wooden floor with profound worry in his eyes.</p><p>"Tsk... Trust me, maybe it's for the better if that kid stays down. I can't stop thinking about how she pulled us out." Kusagoro said turning his head up and continuing to stare at the ceiling.</p><p>"Yeah, wasn't it great?" Kouta smiled.</p><p>"From a warrior's perspective it was perfect – she knew that her opponent was self-taught and unskilled at chakra control so she attacked him with illusions. That one thing that can only be beaten by focus, clear mind and impeccable control... She perfectly dismantled that man, it was scary if nothing else. All of that summoned from deep inside just out of sheer rage over a killed friend." Kusagoro spoke calmly and with a shallow tone, respectfully even which was a novelty.</p><p>"How unlike you..." Kouta raised an eyebrow reminding his father of how much less restraint he's been showing after the death of his team and how annoyed he got after Remashi's tie got burnt up to a crisp off his arm.</p><p>"Yeah but... She speaks one thing – she says she's a protector of life and that she doesn't like fighting but once she gets ticked off she's so good at it it's genuinely scary. She's also a ball of sadness and depression. If a person so skilled at utterly dismantling any opponent becomes powerful and loses their mind... I bet the Boss Lady would love hearing about that. Everyone keeps laughing at that kid talking about how she will change the world but... I may now be a greater believer in it than anyone else, after what I've seen – she'll either kill everyone and take over, ruling with an iron fist of scorn or kill such a person." Kusagoro closed his eyes again, Kouta looked at his father's face and felt really uneasy about how serious his face looked.</p><p>"Mana-chan doesn't kill, she didn't kill Francho, remember? She thinks no life in this world is given unnecessarily and it's not up to her to take them..." Kouta spoke up but father's raised arm interrupted him.</p><p>"Yeah, but for how long? Did you not see her eyes after she reawakened? She was going to kill the Pirate Lord, those were the eyes of a tyrant in the making. She's dangerous and that's what makes her interesting." Kusagoro admitted.</p><p>"Is that what you saw in mom?" the medical ninja teased his father after settling down in his own bed.</p><p>"Sure, your mother was a kind and supporting woman but she had a murderous stare just like that brat's. As a medical ninja, her scary eyes were even scarier – that was one woman who knows how to take life lightning fast or torture someone for days."</p><p>The father and son shared a laugh together before an awkward silence set in. For the longest time, only the raindrops bashed against the illuminator could've been heard. Nature's lullaby.</p>
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<a name="section0226"><h2>226. Love and Obstacles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After regaining her full chakra control Mana had to once again deal with the enhanced attributes of ninja. Her metabolism shifted drastically to the point where she could no longer properly rely on her sense of hunger to tell her when to eat or her thirst to inform her of an appropriate time to drink. Ninja could remain without food or water exponentially longer than normal humans but it didn't mean they should. For that reason the magician found herself having to remind herself when to eat or drink, or so to say when it would be appropriate to do so.</p><p>Similarly, her physical strength, speed, perception and pretty much every other aspect of her body increased greatly as well. Naturally, ninja's physical stats did not augment much beyond the might of the absolute human limits unless they were stressed or the body deemed such empowerment needed to survive. Due to Mana's erratic power up the unconscious decision to augment her body was in fritz. It took the girl almost a whole week to stop breaking things and begin to actually feel pain, her body used to augment itself just to withstand getting cut with a kitchen knife</p><p>Once again the magician found herself at the mercy of her abilities of meditation, hoping they could help her control what was going on with her mind and body and put everything into place. Mana sat for entire hours contemplating on the complicating processes transpiring in her own body, while she did see representations of her body appearing as space bodies she could no longer feel or hear the mystic entity she once spoke with right before her near-death experience.</p><p>It didn't take long for Mana to identify a blazing gigantic star at her core – the representation of her heart. It looked brighter and hotter than ever and no matter where Mana tried focusing her attention she could never avoid the star's flames and energy bursts. It wasn't particularly surprising, after all, Mana's been dealing with a lot these days and it only made sense that her heart burned brighter and stronger as it was affected by dozens of different feelings.</p><p>"Did you hear about Mijo's ship? Last night it got dragged to the bottom by the Eight-Tails, I hear..." Mana heard voices while in a total trance. It made no sense, she was supposed to be completely absorbed into herself and only been aware of her own body and mind. There should've been no one speaking in her mind!</p><p>While the magician expected a partial increase in her meditational effectiveness after her chakra control returned it was never supposed to be like this. She should've been more absorbed into herself and more capable of identifying physical or mental problems. This felt like something new entirely.</p><p>"Yeah... I guess it's an occupational hazard sailing around Tako's Reach. I'm glad we left that piss-hole behind." another voice replied. It was a strong masculine voice, drawn out as if slowed down in time. Due to the slowness of each word being delivered Mana almost got bored listening to this one sentence even if this was a new event she was dealing with.</p><p>Totally curious by her newly discovered ability to better perceive the environment around her Mana tried reaching out to the voices. Let her mind float free and extend beyond the edges she previously thought of as her limits. Much to the girl's great surprise she could hear and perceive dimmed and blurry images beyond her own body almost as if she was there. These were no premonitions, they felt more like an expansion of her own body.</p><p>It was an impressive ability which could've been shaped into a whole different state of meditation. If Mana subconsciously or consciously perceived of a smell or a noise her mind expanded upon it, identifying the source from her previous memories and experiences and painting an imperfect image of what may have been transpiring. It felt very mystical but it was merely an extension of her own senses. Mana was not sure when exactly this ability was born or where from it was acquired but it must've been something she knew for some time but couldn't use due to her impairment. It currently felt too well defined and perfected to be a new discovery.</p><p>Loud and rhythmic footsteps alerted Mana's attention. Her mind raced and borrowed from her chakra resources to process the noises and smells at breakneck speeds. The intensity of the sound of the person's feet hitting the floorboard suggested their possible weight and mood, the pitch of the sound suggested a possible angle of their steps which helped the magician's racing mind perceive a possible height of that person and also their gender. It was known from the Academy when they were taught to read footprints that males had a wider stepping angle compared to females and these steps were undoubtedly those of a relatively short male.</p><p>"Kouta..." Mana realized as her mind turned off all of the meditational stages and returned her to reality. If her highly educated guess was correct she needed to do something. The magician felt a great urge to not confront the young man as for some reason, unknown even to the girl herself, she did not wish to see him. Still, asking him out would be terribly rude and the last thing she wanted to be to her friends, people who stuck out for so long with her and her problems, was rude.</p><p>After just a couple of moments a pair of weak knocks could've been heard on Mana's door and after another brief moment, the door slowly opened with the boy's cute face peeking in through the gap. The Jugo youth looked around and allowed half of his body to enter Mana's room without stepping a single step inside. The medical ninja looked around and then sighed with sadness and disappointment.</p><p>"She must be out somewhere..." he uttered to himself gently closing the door and walking away.</p><p>With a loud poof followed by a cloud of smoke Mana's shape became visible as she stood with her back against the cabin wall. Her hands were at the hand seal position having just used the "Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu" that every Academy Student learns at some point and yet very few use successfully or see coming. The magician didn't notice how the bed cover she used to cover herself up and disguise in front of the wall slipped out from her fingers.</p><p>It was possible that Mana would've tried simply hiding under her bed and forgotten about this simple technique herself had she not used it as a part of her magic show a year before. As someone just recently out of the Academy the magician had very few tools to trick the audience with during those days having to resourcefully use and manage what she had.</p><p>With a depressing sigh, Mana picked up the cover off of the ground and dusted it off, placing it back on her bed and fixing it so that it looked tidier. She had no idea why she'd rather resort to using ninjutsu to hide than see the boy she had to admit to herself she still liked. Or maybe it was that she knew the answer but didn't want to confront it, finding it much easier to just hide from confronting him or her answer.</p><p>That night Mana did have to move out from her cabin, as usual, to dine. Unlike with the pirate ship, the crew and the voyagers or high ranking officers did not dine together and had different quarters. The higher ranking officers dined with the voyagers in the upper captain decks where the servicemen and the rest of the lower ranking crew dined just above the engine rooms.</p><p>Desperate not to meet Kouta, Mana decided to slip out and eat with the crew instead of dining with the captain of the small ship and the others. Needless to elaborate it was a smelly and pretty loud venture. The crewmen quarters stank of manly smells such as sweat and even contents of someone's stomach as the sailors had a nasty habit of throwing up into their own trash cans or even right onto the machinery in the engine room when they got seasick or drunk.</p><p>The food was not something to write home about, however, since Mana was not much of an eater anyways she decided to suck it up and eat a couple of smoked sardines and the really moldy looking and smelling bread with quince jam. The sailors were a decently loud lot as they often complimented their poor diet with alcohol which Mana found made them much more talkative and jolly.</p><p>In just an hour or so the crew were singing songs and even dancing which, having their very questionable balance and stuffy quarter space in mind, was rather impressive. Despite not feeling comfortable in the presence of these jolly loud sailors Mana decided to sit it through and wait until the dinner was actually over so that she didn't risk running into her friends or getting seen by them as generally, one could see the entire main deck from the captain's quarters where the high-status officers and guests ate.</p><p>Despite the very friendly and generally icky but affectionate drunk uncle-like behavior from most of the sailors who quickly began looking at Mana like the little sister of the room, the magician didn't feel like returning all the friendliness she received from the sailors. She was simply not in the right mood, truth be told, she doubted she'd ever be the same again after what happened. Then again, that was what she thought after Tanshu-sensei's passing as well...</p><p>"Oy, you stinking sea-rats! Stop harassing Mana-chan, she just lost a friend out there, the captain said! Something with that huge man appearing in the skies..." one of the less drunk like a slipper sailors barked out angrily instantly shifting the mood to more nostalgic and lyrical. In just mere seconds the entire room began recounting those they've lost along the way. Mana was surprised to hear that pretty much everyone from the lowest ranking deck scrubber to the more refined maintenance specialists saw many more friends of their gone.</p><p>"And then the Eight-Tails just squished poor Rachi like a paste tube... It wasn't a sight for the little ladies, I'll tell ya that!" a round sailor with a dad-stache recounted. It even forced Mana to squint her eye imagining seeing something like this.</p><p>"Rachi always liked to press his belly for a good fart, always made the table laugh that guy..." someone sadly recounted the deceased.</p><p>"Well it wasn't a fart that came out from his ass when the fucking squid crushed him, those fucking tentacloids of his have crushed entire armored battleships, poor bastard just blew up." someone yelled out from under the table.</p><p>"Hey, would you mind passing out in silence? We've got kids by the table!" the round sailor kicked the man down there and stomped on his gut but only received slurring giggling in return.</p><p>At some point, Mana realized that the men were not going to stop honoring their dead with bottom-ups so she simply excused herself to thin alcohol smelling air and left the quarters. Right after she walked out into the salty and damp sea air the fresh air rushing into her intoxicated with putrid smells lungs made her cough and struggle to keep the contents of her stomach inside.</p><p>"You OK? I don't think you should've drunk for Shimo, I don't think he'd have liked it very much." Meiko's gentle joking voice alerted Mana.</p><p>"No, I didn't drink, it's just that... Those quarters really stink, the food is awful and everyone has more friends at the bottom of the ocean than living. Makes you understand why piracy is so rampant..." the magician replied looking at the black cloud ridden night's sky.</p><p>"You know... We really missed you at the table. Kouta's beginning to really make this disappearing act of yours a big deal and I'm not even sure how my training is going without your supervision." Meiko tried bringing the topic up. Mana had never expected Meiko, of all people, being capable of social subtlety.</p><p>"Yeah... I just... Everything that has ever happened in my life, both good and bad. I'm used to dealing with it alone, I had very few friends, no siblings or boys chasing after me and giving a shit. I just feel like I can only make everything fall into place by my lonesome, just like I always had." the magician replied staring longingly into the distance.</p><p>"You know..." Meiko began a sentence she realized she wasn't sure she wanted to finish halfway, "As someone who joined into the whole Academy generation halfway through the studies as a newbie, I never really got why you didn't have a circle of people around you. You just always ran off to the village center to do something right after the end of the school day. I could always understand why I wasn't too hot, I was a newbie trying to fit into an already built circle of friends. It was almost like everyone was afraid of you or something..."</p><p>Mana sighed, "Yeah, I always had a reputation for being a bit weird before joining the Academy. It could've been the mental disorder thing, I'm not sure... Once I asked of this girl whom we used to be close friends with before what happened to us. She said that the other kids were just awestruck by my performance in the village streets, everyone looked at me like some sort of kid celebrity and were afraid to talk to me. Maybe they thought I was a diva or something, my focus solely on my own magic shows didn't help that image either."</p><p>Meiko grinned before tapping on Mana's shoulder.</p><p>"That's so weird! You're weird!" she said out with a laughter. She could've just been sarcastically referring to the magician's reputation as a kid in the Academy but Mana doubted that Meiko would use sarcasm as a tool. She was most likely referring to how Mana's troubles always were not the usual things people had trouble with, it was rather something usually only Mana understood making her hard to relate to.</p><p>Mana smiled for a first time in a while looking down at the capricious waves smacking against the ship's side making it bob and weave around. "For the longest time, I told myself that it was because of my slightly darker skin or because my mom was from another village. Foreigners always have a stigma with both the kids and adults. I think I thought that way because it was easier to accept that it was someone else's fault of being stigmatizing than my own of pushing people away unintentionally." she said.</p><p>"I dunno, you're still doing it. You keep talking about protecting and helping everyone, may at the very least enjoy the people you help. I'm more of a blade and armor kind of person but I always take time to test the babies I make out and have a blast while doing it. What you're doing is like cleaning the floor but not eating the cookie mother promised." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>Still awestruck that Meiko actually used a metaphor in a conversation, Mana heard someone calling out her name from behind. She turned around seeing Kouta standing right behind her. He didn't look angry, more concerned than anything.</p><p>"Look, I just wanted to examine your network, your chakra control was dormant for much longer than usual and its re-emergence may have caused some issues. I just want to see if you're fine." Kouta mumbled with slightly pouty lips. He must've begun to think that Mana was thinking highly of herself and avoiding him on purpose, just like the kids in the Academy used to.</p><p>"I'm fine." Mana cut down before looking away and blushing, she needed a reason to slip away. The magician grabbed Meiko's elbow and began dragging her away. "I'm sorry, I need to check up on Meiko's training. I was told she hit a slump"</p><p>Meiko cried out in pain as Mana's abilities must've augmented themselves unwillingly pulling on the blacksmith's arm way too hard. Judging from the blacksmith's reaction and jump in pain her arm would've popped out of the socket if the redhead's body didn't augment itself.</p><p>"I didn't tell you anything like that!" Meiko began complaining out of pain as well as confusion, the fact that Mana was making it up must've slipped over her head.</p><p>Kouta closed his eyes and lowered his head like preparing himself for a big blow. "Mana-chan... Are you avoiding me? You spoke to Meiko, you spoke to my father once and even to the servicemen and the sailors but somehow you always evade me."</p><p>Meiko pouting due to Mana's rude push slipped her elbow out of the magician's hands and walked away. She clearly gave a message that this didn't concern her and while the blacksmith was literally incapable of holding grudges she showed quite clearly that this was something Mana had to deal with herself instead of avoiding.</p><p>"Well... As much as I'd want to dismiss that... I actually was avoiding you." Mana admitted looking aside and rubbing her elbow in embarrassment like a child confronted by her parents about a broken vase.</p><p>"B-But why?" Kouta looked at her confused.</p><p>"It's just that... I promised you that we'd be together once I put all of this together, once my chakra control is back and..." Mana felt her eyes getting wet again but she desperately tried pushing all of her sadness deep down, all of her feelings of unhealthy grief. "I do like you, I really do but... I don't want you to be with me when I'm like this. I want that there'd be no obstacles for us but now... It's just too difficult for me."</p><p>Kouta's head unwillingly turned aside like that of a confused puppy. "I never really wanted to confront you about that. I would never pressure you into anything, I don't care if it's a promise or whatever. I just wanted to help you with what you've just lived through, I wanted to see if you're healthy, I wanted to be there for you. I don't care if it's as a friend or whatever you want me to be. Frankly, I even forgot about any "promise" of yours." he joked laughing uncomfortable as he rubbed the back of his head messing even more with his already messy hair.</p><p>Kouta's curious attempt to lighten the situation up a little didn't appear to help so the boy's facial expression softened as he gently touched Mana's hand. "I know it's tough for you and I just want to be there, to keep you from being alone in something like this. Also, one piece of advice – love isn't a business, you don't remove all obstacles from its way before giving into it. Love is the force that removes obstacles and you may just be suffering so much because you try to fight both it and what you think keeps you away from confronting yourself."</p><p>Mana's forehead pressed against Kouta's chest before it raised up and looked him in the eyes. The depressing gloomy mist in her eyes was somewhat clearer as she whispered in his ears. "Did they teach you that in the medical textbook?" she tried to joke before reaching out her lips for a kiss.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0227"><h2>227. Home, Sweet Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Farewell, Mana-chan!" the lower ranking sailors yelled out at the crew of Mana, Meiko, Kouta, and Kusagoro while only the magician saw the departing ship off into the horizon with her eyes. It was a while before the ship totally faded in the misty morning gloom and the all too familiar smells of rotten wet port wood and mashed quince met Mana's nose.</p><p>The mornings were the messiest of all times of the day for small port towns like the one the team was let go in. Fish stands had no time to promote their newly resupplied stocks as they were too busy selling the dead and sometimes still gasping for air marine life of all sorts.</p><p>"Awww, they think the moody savior of the world is cute and they'll miss her, isn't that just adorable!?" Meiko teased Mana pinching her cheek which made the magician laugh out in the sudden painful shock and hit Meiko back with her elbow. By now Mana was used to not hold back when hitting Meiko – the redhead didn't appear to feel a single thing and it didn't look like she used much augmentation. Must've been the natural toughness of the blacksmith.</p><p>"No, seriously it's a little strange though... Am I the only one thinking it's strange?" Kouta scratched the back of his head curiously looking back at where the ship could've been at that point in time as the crew made their way through the port town. Soon they'd hit the long stretching forests and the surroundings won't change all the way until they finally reach Konoha.</p><p>"Lowly sailors shouldn't talk to a ninja that way, they should be afraid she'd be sent after them. It's pathetic, really." Kusagoro noted with disgust.</p><p>"Eating with these "lowly sailors" does wonders. I think the pirates had the right idea there." Mana replied feeling really uncomfortable about having to defend her stance on the more humane treatment of low ranking sailors. It's almost like the lessons of seeing where these inhumane conditions lead washed off of her team completely. Despite her abhorrent dislike of the conditions below the deck where these men ate, she visited those quarters several more times after that one time just to show those men some magic tricks and keep them company before they drank each other under the table. It just felt like the right thing to do at the time.</p><p>"I dunno, I'd like to set sails again sometime, really tear through the oceans, maybe kick some more Pirate Lords' butt when we get stronger but for now, I'm really sick of the sea and this damp weather. All of my weapons and armor pieces are getting rusty and I didn't think my alloys gathered rust." Meiko pouted looking at a couple of her reserve shoulder pieces. Despite repairing and rebuilding her armor out of the spare parts she bought along the way constantly Meiko found herself unable to keep a stable set on her without it melting or being busted to pieces.</p><p>"Pirates only have the right idea when they hang their own damn selves. They're lowly traitorous criminals and they're only good as dead meat." Kusagoro began angrily taking glances at Mana's general direction. It was like built up tension between the two was erupting over a totally unrelated issue.</p><p>"That solves the symptom but not the problem. Pirates only become pirates because of how badly they're treated as legitimate sailors. All they want is to live in dignity and a little respect. They want to make enough money to live and to see their own families once in a while. Those men in the engineering basically make the ship sail and yet if they wish to provide food for their families they have to be away for whole but one week year. They're constantly abused and have no idea if they'll make enough for a living or won't get murdered by pirates the next day. What kind of a way is that to live?" Mana replied becoming more and more annoyed that meeting Francho and Read apparently taught nothing to her team.</p><p>"You're just sympathizing with pirates, justifying their stupid excuses for killing and robbing people. Sailors need to suck it up, if they go rogue – they get killed just like a rogue samurai or a rogue ninja." Kusagoro cut down crossing his hands on his chest.</p><p>"Except ninja or samurai are treated as high-status warrior classes, the servants of the Feudal Lord whereas the sailors are treated like nothing but worthless trash, unworthy the fish fat they rub onto their own ships to their high ranking officers. Ninja never get beaten or bled out 'till near death by their superior officers if they fail an assignment." Mana became more and more passionate. She wasn't really even talking to Kusagoro at this point, she was talking to each and every deep-rooted fanatic of the old rotten murderous order she wanted to change. To everyone who couldn't see the bleeding social issues behind rogue ninja, bandits, and pirates and only enjoyed the given excuse to kill them and satisfy their own deluded bloodlusts.</p><p>"That can be arranged..." Kusagoro ground his teeth raising his fist up and blocking Mana's path. The girl's eyes met his as she stood on her toes to better level her own face to his. She didn't shake or avoid his stare when she was depowered. She'd never back down now.</p><p>"Yet I'm not the only one who failed my mission." Mana managed to find somewhere to bite the veteran in the ass, even if it meant remembering her recently deceased friend. One who has been with her from the start and now just wasn't... Will never be again, in fact.</p><p>A loud and uncomfortable spilling sound alerted the two conflicting ninja to an unsightly horror of Meiko throwing up on a nearby oak. After the two just stared at the sight confused and witnessed the blacksmith's skin dye green before returning to pale white worry began setting inside Mana's chest and Kusagoro and his criminal slaying agenda were completely on the lower level of her priorities.</p><p>"Guys... I think I'm getting land-sick." the redhead complained before throwing up again. Kouta ran up to her and quickly did some tests, flashing his Diagnosis Jutsu over Meiko's body before sighing in relief.</p><p>"Her body is out of balance, she must've gotten used to the sea and how it shakes beneath her feet so now that the ground is solid beneath her feet her body needs to get used to it. She literally is "land-sick"... Meiko must've never sailed on a ship before." Kouta laughed out softly as he had never encountered such a condition before. He barely thought it possible and yet that was the only explanation that made sense since the redhead was completely healthy except for her balance and an uneasy stomach.</p><p>Mana and Kusagoro soon shared a laugh together, one so powerful that they were unable to remember what exactly they were arguing about before.</p><p>"It's not funny, you guys..." Meiko complained before smiling and cracking up a weakened laugh herself</p><p>"We may stay here for a while, Meiko really shouldn't have eaten all those dozens of repeated portions while on the ship." Kouta scratched his temples.</p><hr/><p>Land of Hot Water was a natural wonder, however, it was not all too different from most locations around that region. Tree lines and seemingly all spanning forests as far as the eye could see. There were large Snow Country mountain ranges far away in the horizon to the north but they were actually at the exact opposite direction to where the team was heading. Up north would've led the quartet of ninja to immensely long and tall mountain ranges that separated the forest covered eternal woods of the Fire Country area and the coldest area of the world – the Snow Country.</p><p>There wasn't really a single ninja village in the entire region, however, there were also too few rich settlements for bandits and rogue ninja to rob. Up to Mana's historical knowledge and overheard rumors there were several that were outright taken by rogue ninja and used as covers for their shady businesses but to divert her attention to those would've been senseless. Kusagoro would've never tolerated another diversion, also the other rogue ninja were the worst enemy of the rogues. The cruel conquerors would've been long toppled before the team even reached a single one of them. Or maybe the hunter ninja would get to the desired bounty first liberating the settlements for a brief period?</p><p>Travelling was incomparably faster with Mana's full abilities back. Even with all the amazing power-ups, she had received after regaining her full chakra control Mana found herself a much slower traveler than her peers. Her reaction time may have been more sophisticated and effective as she trained it as a normal civilian but her body failed to keep up with her efficient predictions and vision. Usually, ninja didn't travel at too flashy speeds because subtlety and silence were of great importance, also a ninja traveling faster than sound would've bumped into literally everything in their path if their reaction didn't keep up which would've drained one's chakra pool to keep it augmented.</p><p>"Say, Mana. I see you and Kouta mended things." Meiko noticed slowing down a little so she could talk to Mana close and silent enough that the males running on ahead couldn't hear them clearly.</p><p>Mana smiled a little feeling a bit shy to talk about it but over the time of the trip Meiko slowly became a friend she trusted greatly and it wasn't like Kouta's father avoided making awfully rude remarks about the friendship of the two blossoming into something more...</p><p>"We kissed, actually." she replied, "Back on the ship when we talked."</p><p>"Wha-?" Meiko's jaw opened up, the extent to which this surprised her friend made Mana cheer up a bit from the monotony of traveling in the upper tree line. "You kissed a boy? Ewww? Why would you do that?"</p><p>"Wait, you mean you don't kiss with boys? I find that hard to believe..." Mana returned a question to a fairly odd one of her friend's. Meiko may not have fit the image of the perfect girlfriend material or looked like much of a sensitive princess but she was definitely attractive enough for the magician to believe in the at least moderate success of the blacksmith in the dating scene. She also made armors and swords and weaponry of other kinds which would've made her automatically ten times cooler in the eyes of the male gender.</p><p>"Me? Nah, sometimes when I make a really good sword or a really sturdy plate or an alloy hardens just right I peck it, hell, I peck it a million billion times, even if the alloy is still hot and then my lips swell up and I look like a starlet with lipstick for a while. I've even used a silver bar as a teddy to sleep with as a kid but boys? Nah..." Meiko grinned and began shaking her hands as if Mana asked her of something embarrassing.</p><p>"Honestly, I'm not sure what I was expecting, walked right into that one..." Mana sighed. It was just like Meiko to obsess over her tools and weapons and steel over the attention of boys and Mana should've known better than to assume otherwise at this point. Still, the amount of surprise that the fact of boys and girls interacting with each other with love and affection had with Meiko still didn't cease to leave Mana in awe. Her father looked like a real honest and headstrong man, could he have never explained that sort of thing to Meiko? It looked like in the blacksmith's eyes Mana was somehow perverting the natural order by finding boys attractive.</p><p>To be honest, a lot of boys and girls really rushed that sort of thing. Especially in the ninja line of work. There was something of great urgency in love and family matters having in mind how the population needed to sustain itself and very few ninja lived until the age when the civilians usually settled down.</p><p>"So, what's next? How will this kissing thing with Kouta work?" Meiko asked a surprisingly mature question having her relative lack of experience or understanding in the matter work. Maybe this hidden maturity of the question wasn't intended and the blacksmith didn't even realize just how correct this question was.</p><p>"Not sure, it's not something you think about in those moments. I think we're just going to date for a while off-duty when it's not getting in our way and then... I honestly don't know." Mana thought while looking the other way. Despite not seeing the incoming trees the magician navigated around the obstacles in her way just by hearing Kouta and Kusagoro ahead change directions. Even while Mana's mind was on completely other matters and questions she was still being competent and quick on her feet – she used to miss that a lot before.</p><p>"That's awfully irresponsible of you, young lady..." Meiko joked grinning at Mana and suddenly killing the tension that was beginning to creep up to Mana's heart once again. Right after the matters were beginning to look good, right after she thought she'd finally dealt with losing one of her best friends and found young love... She realized just how shady and uncertain the future was and those cold long fingers of Lady Fear began wrapping around and strangling Mana's heart and gut.</p><p>"Gee... Sorry, mom." Mana let it all off as a joking matter on the outside while making a mental note to interrogate Kiyomi once they return to Konoha. After all, the Yamanaka must've obtained experience what with that secret-not-so-secret romance with a certain rehabilitated Quack of hers. Mana already had problems balancing her life as a ninja and a stage magician. Her mind was begging for some more magic in her life and longed for entertaining an audience. It craved seeing that sense of wonder and excitement in a child's eyes when it sees a magic trick and even the behind the stage antics with the other performers.</p><hr/><p>Seeing the Konohagakure gate after such a ridiculously long time felt like an actual dream. Mana's already messy hair had gone outright unruly and desperately begged for some trimming, lately, actual hot showers were replaced with the cruel sea storms and its salty drops pelting at Mana's face so hard that it felt like it was washing away her very soul. Soaking her clothes in such a short time that the freezing dampness of the sea felt like the literal reverse interpretation of what living in hell felt like.</p><p>The team was stopped after entering the gate. The guards did an elementary headcount and recorded something in their notes. Almost immediately Mana's eyes wandered off into the board of announcements right up to the gate. The girl's heart froze over in horror as she saw the board flooded with reports of missing people, one on top of the other.</p><p>"You're missing one head here..." a guard pouted squinting at the squad.</p><p>"Yeah..." Mana replied forcing her voice to talk even if she felt like the reminded of Shimo had grabbed her by the throat and tried to squeeze the tears out of her like she was a paste tube. Her reaction must've tipped the guards off.</p><p>"Oh... Well, I'm sure that Lady Fifth would like to hear all about it, you guys have been missing for a long time." the other guard spoke up as the first one froze. Despite taking the even remote interest in Shimo's case Mana thought that the two looked a little too used to losing young souls to the outside world.</p><p>"She'd particularly like to hear about the man in the sky trying to squish the Earth between his gigantic space hands." the first guard angrily squinted at Kusagoro who just smiled and shrugged it off.</p><p>"Yeah, the rumor says she almost leaped into action herself. That woman could've just jumped up into space and punched that guy to the other side of the universe, I'm guessing, but you know..." the guard adopted a much more casual tone as he was basically discussing rumors.</p><p>"Hokage working in neutral waters... Yeah... Bad precedent." Mana replied knowing full well why Lady Fifth was nowhere to be seen despite being fully capable of circling the world many times in a single blink of an eye. If a village leader actually involved herself in the neutral waters it'd have sent a nasty message, especially so close to Kirigakure and Land of Waves territory. Those areas had huge government troubles as talks of re-establishing autonomy were beginning to dawn, pretty much every sailor was talking about it both on Read's ship and that which brought them home. If the Hokage settled matters in neutral territory close to autonomy negotiation grounds it'd have sent a disrespectful message and suggested Konoha's hesitance in recognizing international negotiations and Kirigakure's soon to be reborn autonomy.</p><p>"Say... What's with all the missing people?" Kouta also happened to notice the board which scared Mana so much.</p><p>"Oh... It's old news, really. I think about a month ago the disappearances really hit the fan, the rates skyrocketed but then they just ceased. Nowadays not too many folks go missing but those that did way back were never found. No bodies or anything, no one even heard of them. If they'd have been kidnapped someone would've been already asking for favors by now. If they were just killed why go through so much bother to make them disappear so thoroughly. A really weird case this one..." one of the guards replied nonchalantly before the two returned to their post implying that the conversation was over.</p><p>"Well... Let's go. The Boss Lady is waiting for our report." Kusagoro sighed, he really looked like he wasn't looking forward to that part. Something about the veteran Jugo facing an actual Pirate Lord with great excitement being afraid to face Lady Fifth greatly amused Mana. Then again, she had to debrief the Hokage about failing the mission.</p><p>"Two parties returning at the same time, both failing their mission... This is not gonna be pretty." Kouta sighed. Mana wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his. While the young man was surprised by this sudden expression of affection the two really lacked any recognition of what happened on the ship and what that exactly was. This was an official confirmation that they'd be facing whatever's coming together, not just as momentary teammates but also as something much more personal and bonding.</p><p>Mana heard Kusagoro's grumpy annoyance behind her after seeing this public expression of affection and she felt great about that man getting annoyed. With all of his physical might reaching near invulnerability she found one area she could really make him hurt while remaining truthful and within her moral code. Opportunities like that didn't present themselves often.</p><p>The magician shouted out in surprise followed soon by Kouta when she felt ground leaving her feet. Kusagoro lifted the two up and separated them from each other up in the air, carrying them like two fragile boxes. Mana could hear Meiko laughing behind them and following the party all the way to the Hokage Mountain where the Konoha Administration building was located. While the reporting part wouldn't be pretty, at least the blacksmith could enjoy the trip there all the way...</p>
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<a name="section0228"><h2>228. Until We Meet Again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>More and more villagers found their eyes unwillingly settling at Mana's face for longer durations of time than they'd have considered polite which made most of them lower their stares right after they've been noticed. Almost everyone present in the central areas of the village noticed that Mana's features were familiar however because it's been a while since her last show they couldn't put their finger on it. After they've realized who exactly they've been looking at it embarrassed those that stared forcing them to quickly look away, rinse and repeat for too many people for Mana's company to ignore.</p><p>"Everyone's staring at you, are you sure that you didn't get in trouble before leaving?" Kusagoro asked with seriousness in his voice. He may have technically only partly completed his mission by failing to save Shimo but he still had sway debating that his mission was three fourths complete which was still a significant degree of success. Ultimately the judgment of success and failure depended entirely on how the Fifth Hokage would be taking the debriefing. He was genuinely getting worried over Mana's safety due to the degree of uneasy attention coming from the villagers.</p><p>"Not really... I'm sure that my status as a well-known entertainer is catching up to me. It's been a while since my last magic show so they must be confused." Mana pressed her elbow uneasily. Her messy appearance will surely invite rumors which would hurt her attempts to resurrect her shows after months of absence.</p><p>"Wow, I never thought you were this famous..." Meiko whistled in surprise as the attention that Mana appeared to get in her home village amused the blacksmith. "I mean I thought that some people might know who you are, not literally everybody..." she corrected herself since her own family was not entirely oblivious to Mana's second inspiration.</p><p>"Wait... You're a ninja and a stage magician? Are you serious? You're a member of a secret order that fulfills missions and lurks underneath the underneath and you're a star of entertainment?" Kusagoro looked at Mana almost begging for the girl to explain herself as his prolonging face was beginning to suggest madness wrapping its long fingers around the veteran's neck.</p><p>"Well... You see, not many people know me as a ninja yet. I've not done anything noteworthy as a ninja and while people know me as the Konoha's Sorceress, no one ever suspects me of being a ninja. I've actually used my status to help me blend in in the past so it's more helpful than hindering..." Mana tried to explain herself but there was little of explaining that she could have done.</p><p>"Tsk... You have to be fucking kidding me." Kusagoro found little solace in the magician's explanation, apparently. Mana could actually empathize with his point of view. Ninja were supposed to work secretly, they often blended in, did disguises and adopted different personalities, did some real investigative work which a career as a widely known entertainer would've greatly gotten in the way of. The girl could almost see what little shadow of dignity she had with her boyfriend's father scatter away like a handful of feathers during a windstorm.</p><p>"You can be this nasty about any profession, father. I mean I plan on becoming a medical ninja soon, that means that if I get really good at it people will also know who I am throughout the village and a lot of great medical ninja like Guru Ayushi are known worldwide." Kouta tried his best standing up for Mana but judging from Kusagoro's angry glare he didn't really succeed.</p><p>"Yeah, but you'll be known for something worth wasting your time with, like being able to keep people alive which while a girly ninja art, is also a very useful one. Your friend, on the other hand, will be known for a load of bullshit like stage magic. The only enemies she'll beat with her reputation alone will be those she'll force to laugh at her to death." the Juugo actively tried to trigger another quarrel with Mana. The magician however just closed her eyes and decided to ignore the man. She's been treated this way for the better part of her life, both for her ideals to preserve life and her profession. While it always hurt to be belittled by people better at your job than you are, nothing hurt nearly as much as being belittled by Tanshu-sensei. The clash of ideals with one of the most powerful ninja to have ever lived almost neutered Mana's trust and dignity.</p><p>"I'm glad that the village is looking better. Kusagoro-san's attempt to prove something to Shimo shook the ground quite excessively." the magician found another area to bite Kouta's father in while also making a pleasant observation that all destroyed buildings were rebuilt and all craters repaired. Truth be told that could've been done the very same week it happened.</p><p>"Pffft... It was just a couple of fissures. Nothing skilled terraformers can't handle 'till lunch break." Kusagoro shrugged any semblance of guilt off of himself.</p><p>The Administration building was relatively empty. As empty as it could've been during the middle section of the day, usually by this time most missions have been issued and they would usually not be completed until later in the day. The four approached a young woman administrator who handled advanced rank mission debriefings and asked her to inform the Hokage that the team was ready to debrief two separate missions.</p><p>"I'll let Lady Hokage know..." the woman smiled with a nod pressing a button which should've informed the Hokage's assistant of a team waiting for debriefing. These were relatively advanced pieces of technology. Usually, ninja relied on Yamanaka clan members and their mental link abilities to communicate however for incredibly short range transmissions they have several technological marvels capable of accomplishing simple tasks like radios and simple transmission devices that lit up lightbulbs when a button was pressed nearby. While unreliable on the field of battle these technological wonders did great for office work accomplished on a single building.</p><p>The team rushed upstairs and stopped by the closed door, after a short wait the door opened and a bulky and tall ponytail and glasses wearing man with a Kirigakure headband tied to his arm, matching Kusagoro in height left the Hokage's office. The man had an assistant with him, a short and frail elderly man with long facial hair and shriveled face but quite fancy attire made of expensive silks by fine dressmakers.</p><p>"I can't believe how lightly Lady Fifth is taking this matter, this is Guru Ayushi we're talking about, he's nowhere to be found and the last place he was seen in was Konoha about two years ago!" the tall ponytail man expressed his concern completely careless if he was being heard by Mana and the team or some other ninja sitting on a bench nearby.</p><p>"Well, she is a controversial politician, only temporarily holding the seat. Apparently, it shows..." his assistant nodded while playing with his long mustache between his fingers and trying to balance the stacked books and files in his other hand.</p><p>"As a ninja, I have nothing but respect for Chestnut Hanasaku but as a..." the speech of the two faded as they walked away and began descending down the stairs and frankly Mana had no interest in tracking their conversation due to her own personal disdain for Kirigakure ninja.</p><p>While Mana thought herself tolerant and caring for all life, her family's own personal history with Kirigakure made her really feel a bitter taste in her mouth and struggle with a heavy gulp of salty tears whenever she saw one of them in front of her. What right did these people have to criticize Hanasaku when it was the Mizukage that caused the incident that ended her father's career and destined the man for a painful life or anger and burning suffering? How could they even dare utter the name of Guru Ayushi or expect his visit when it was the Mizukage that caused the death of the Fourth and her sensei?</p><p>"Please come in..." the assistant peeked out through the partly open door and nodded with certain boredom despite seeing very unusual and long unseen visitors by the office's doorstep. Lady Hokage, on the other hand, took almost no time at all to notice the missing person in the squad.</p><p>"This has been a very long morning so if you won't mind I'd like to ditch the procedure and just ease this debriefing through. I have a very sensitive investigation to track involving Konoha's image in the world arena so..." Hanasaku pushed aside a huge pile of files letting them simply fall off the table. The woman's chestnut colored hair was messy and looked like stacks of hay piled one on top of the other and her eyes suggested that she's been overworking herself and sick of her high status. Frankly, her being the wrong person for the job didn't help things...</p><p>"I have successfully completed my mission to extract the team sent for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. There were some complications as the team insisted to first complete their mission before heading home and pirates from Tako's Reach got involved." Kusagoro began trying to put together the debriefing that would most likely end up in the total crapper. Had the Kage in charge been more tyrannical the four of them would've likely ended up committing suicide to salvage their family name or behind bars.</p><p>"Lady Fifth need not be debriefed about that which she saw herself through her office window. She would like for what she didn't see to be elaborated on, however... Also you have been sent to retrieve four genin and yet there only stand three, if my Konoha High education taught me to count correctly, that is..." the Hokage's assistant had to weave and direct the conversation to the direction he wanted it to go as he was filling the mission report by hand whereas the Lady Hokage looked to be in a state between listening to the report and napping.</p><p>"Well, the pirate that..." Kusagoro began but then Mana interrupted him.</p><p>"Lady Hokage, this question concerns our mission debriefing more than Kusagoro-san's. You see, we had solid clues to believe that the Box was in an unmapped island deep in Tako's Reach and the only way to get there without threatening civilian lives was in a pirate ship so we bargained with this..." Mana opened the shining with an indigo and purple glow bag and placed a full bag of Audra shards on the floor. What followed that was the explanation of what happened and how the shards were acquired in the first place and who had any number of them as necessary resources for accomplishing the objective.</p><p>"So essentially what you're telling me is that you've freed the Nine-Tailed Fox from its captivity, fought Sunagakure ninja on neutral grounds protected by a peace treaty and then possibly started a war between Pirate Lords to find the Box but ultimately you failed your mission?" Hanasaku's face appeared to begin to tense up and blush as if it was literally boiling as the woman clutched her hands into fists that were so tightly clutched together that they instantly made the air in the room heavier.</p><p>"That is not entirely correct, we did not fail, the Box turned out to be a trap – it was built to automatically absorb anyone making a wish upon it into the Box, no matter the wish. By confirming that we saved a party of high ranking ninja you'd have potentially sent to retrieve it, Lady Hokage." Mana bowed her head in apology despite having a good excuse for her actions. The girl was overly respective with pretty much everyone so the Hokage deserved the utmost courtesy from her part.</p><p>Hanasaku sighed as she rubbed her face angrily. It was clear that the woman was not having the best day and that it wouldn't be easy finishing this debriefing.</p><p>"You insolent youngling!" the Hokage's assistant shouted out, "You've released a Tailed Beast into the wild, one of the most powerful and destructive one, at that. One that we have lost track of! It would've been a better call to simply leave it locked up and give us its location for future tracking! Then you started a squabble between Pirate Lords by removing a whole piece off the sensitive power scale! The whole world saw that stunt that Pirate Lord "Red" pulled, it's all over the news of every village and every settlement with at least two people in it has one telling the other about it. The whole world is still feeling shaken by it. Lady Hokage herself just barely restrained herself from jumping up and punching that fool to another galaxy! She almost shattered Konoha's reputation due to the fallout of your actions!" the young man continuously scolded Mana but the magician didn't falter.</p><p>She obediently stood bowed half way and took the verbal abuse. Frankly, Mana sort of wanted it. She almost wanted to get some sort of penance for every call she took it up to make during the mission, for letting the Nine-Tails free, for interacting with Sunagakure ninja in neutral grounds and seeing the ruins destroyed and many more.</p><p>"Enough!" Hanasaku yelled out with so much power and authority that her assistance jumped up and visibly almost filled his pants, his skin paled like he was just grabbed from behind by a malicious spirit returned to life for vengeance.</p><p>"Just tell me this, Mana... Your friend... Did he die before or after the Pirate Lord threatened the Earth and enlarged himself to cosmic proportions?" the woman asked and Mana realized the nature of her question.</p><p>Lady Fifth wanted to know if Shimo could've been saved if the Hokage leaped into action ignoring every sensible warning and every subordinate of hers telling her not to. Hanasaku was blaming herself for Shimo's death to some extent. It was something Mana knew and fostered deep in her heart, a dark shadowy grip that never stopped choking her and she wished no such thing to befall anyone else – friendly or otherwise. Luckily, just this time she didn't have to lie about that.</p><p>"No..." she sadly shook her lowered head struggling to speak through premature tears. "He couldn't have been saved, Lady Hokage, it happened before any of us could see, he created a miniature black hole inside his palm and focused its gravitational stream on Shimo alone. It happened before Pirate Lord "Red" increased his size and mass."</p><p>Some light returned to Hanasaku's eyes as she was easily pleased by this revelation. The woman was having it pretty hard in a chair she didn't belong in, the last thing she needed was having the death of a young prospective ninja on her conscience.</p><p>"I see... Well then, I suppose technically you all did not fail the missions completely. A failed mission is a very frowned upon mark in a ninja's ledger, it is a mark of complete failure that impacts their careers in a huge way and I do not believe you deserve this mark considering your performance. While you acted out of line asserting your influence as a civilian and a client, Mana, I can't even give you a failed mission evaluation because you're not even a ninja on a mission. The Box's location and nature were confirmed and it was also neutralized so that an unsuspecting party did not trigger it again, you've also provided the village with intelligence about this legendary artifact which is info of great value. Wakizashi Meiko and Jugo Kouta, for these reasons I declare your mission hereby completed!" Hanasaku issued her decision to which Kouta bowed and instinctively pressed Meiko's head down because he just knew in his gut that the blacksmith would not follow courtesy.</p><p>"As for you, Kusagoro, I expected a higher degree of success from someone with your experience and skills. Still, three out of four extracted ninja, all things considered, is a decent outcome for any single ninja sent to such an assignment, however, I am disappointed that someone like you couldn't do better. What is exemplary of anyone else is only tolerable when coming from you, I hope you remember that in the future." the Hokage almost smashed her stamp of approval into Kusagoro's file confirming the completed mission. With the Lady Hokage's lifted hand letting the team go everyone excused themselves by bowing on their knee again and leaving. Mana stayed behind.</p><p>"Will there be something else, Mana?" Hanasaku asked lifting an eyebrow.</p><p>"Actually... In this mission I've... Reawakened my chakra control. If I finally have my health examination by an expert in Konohagakure Hospital can I hope to return to active duty?" Mana asked fostering some hope in her voice.</p><p>"Mana..." Hanasaku's voice softened, "You've just lost a teammate, you are allowed some time to deal with this. Ninja live and die with their teammates, they bond together with their teammates more than they do with their own families. It is not uncommon for ninja to even retire after a loss such as this and I know you two were particularly close. My answer is yes, but please do not rush into certain doom, as alluring as it may sound to you..." Hanasaku replied and once again flicked with her hand signaling that Mana can go.</p><p>Slowly the magician turned around and left the office.</p><p>"Lady Hokage! The way you talk and act around that girl is highly unprofessional!" the assistant began complaining about something which must've led to yet another fight. Mana's eyes closed as she sighed easier. She was glad that she fostered no dreams to ever be Hokage, she'd hardly be able to handle that job. She'd be making decisions such as she made during that mission the whole time.</p><p>After Mana descended downstairs and left the building Kouta and Meiko met her, Kusagoro had gone off somewhere. When asked where Kouta just looked to his right and sighed.</p><p>"Probably the Konoha Memorial, he was also quite close to his team..." he said.</p><p>"Oh... Well, I have some business in the Hospital, I need to get examined so that I can get my license unsuspended. I'll be seeing you guys..." Mana waved farewell before realizing – this was an actual farewell. For the first time in months, she'd spend time completely independent of her team and completely all by herself without having other lives and opinions to consider. This was actually the end of the mission...</p><p>"Yeah..." Kouta nodded.</p><p>"I'll try to see one of those shows of yours, but if it's boring I'll hold up to you treating me to a lunch!" Meiko waved goodbye for Mana with that silly full-mouthed chuckling grin of hers.</p><p>Every time Mana saw that it made her smile back and laugh.</p>
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<a name="section0229"><h2>229. Affections</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Konoha Hospital looked much calmer at this time of day and this particular point in time. Mana had little time to research any news or petty rumors floating around but it appeared that Konoha had a relatively good political relationship with every functioning ninja village and no Feudal Lord felt like screwing up the other making the four old and rich men function almost like a small shogi club of aged gentlemen.</p><p>While there was an occasional youth injured on a mission or a victim of an accident waiting to be treated in the corridors, usually Mana was used to seeing a lot grimmer sights. Ones of mothers and other family members crying, either that or sitting and contemplating the events in silence and emotional moderation. Still struggling to comprehend the ramifications of whatever event ruined the family's day. It wasn't too long ago that Mana herself suffered through such a nervous night...</p><p>"Maybe I should've waited around outside? I'm sure that Eiju is most likely poisoning himself, in one way or the other, still..." the magician thought to herself as she took an illogically long path to the floor she needed to reach. Mana did not simply ascend the eastern wing staircase, she ascended one floor and then entered it, passing all the way to the western wing staircase and then ascending higher. It was just her way of getting accustomed to her home village and seeing which sections of the hospital were having a busy day.</p><p>It was odd how Mana used to actively avoid and dislike seeing Eiju right after the Quack abused her heroic personality for his own gain. While the magician didn't directly blame the rehabilitated medical ninja she still got a bitter throat full of sadness every time she saw him. Now she was actually seeking for the old companion. She figured that Eiju would understand and only bother with the most necessary tests when all the cards would be put openly on the table. Even faking a protocol check-up by filling up documents out of facts extracted from the clouds wouldn't have been too much for a bored ex-Quack.</p><p>"Wow, what have you done with your hair?" a familiar snark-filled voice reached Mana's ears making the magician grin and close her eyes before turning around and facing the old acquaintance. Unexpectedly enough, Eiju was not popping pills or smoking anything, in fact, his eyes and face looked clear enough to suggest a lack of any poison having been used or taken by the young man.</p><p>"Nothing, really." Mana stroke her hair knowing that it was her past companion's way of complimenting.</p><p>"Yeah, I can see that... I believe that's the problem... Not that you would be troubled by having a mouth full of your hairy self when you fight." Eiju popped some pills out from his coat's pocket. Mana had hoped that together with his much tidier hair, his freshly shaved face, and visibly more athletic build the rehabilitated Quack had adopted a more healthy style of life but maybe it was a hopeless expectation.</p><p>"So... Still racing your sickness as to who kills you faster?" Mana tried to return her friend's offensive snark, or at least, one that would've been offensive had the magician still lacked her chakra control and by extension the ability to fight on the ninja level.</p><p>"Nah, lovely, these are supposed to slow that bugger down. I think that qualifies as the exact opposite," he explained showing the much more legit looking container of pills that even had the prescription on them. Before the young man just held his medication in pretty much anywhere he could place it.</p><p>Mana hugged her old acquaintance which greatly surprised him. "It's good to see you having grown to be a responsible adult..."</p><p>Eiju began tapping his right foot impatiently until the magician let go of him and then he eerily squinted at her. "I was just about to make a sly remark about your smell but... After that expression of fondness, I suppose I'd be a rude cunt if I did. Still, I'll allow myself the luxury to ask if there's a point to your visit to this particular floor of the Konoha Hospital this uneventful fine noon?"</p><p>"Actually I was hoping you could validate that fine coat of yours and do the examination on my chakra network, I'm looking to get my license back." Mana smiled enjoying every moment of the medical ninja's shifting expression. Last time she met Eiju she noted that the medical ninja did feel some semblance of the blame for what happened to Mana and did feel bad about her predicament. That may have been why he was eager to continuously slowly kill himself abusing his access to hospital's medication.</p><p>"Wait... You... It came back?" Eiju actually laughed out in surprise.</p><p>"I fail to see what's so surprising, didn't you say it often happens after a certain amount of time?" Mana tried to cheek her old friend and drag his past guilt through the gutter.</p><p>"Well... I mean... If it does, it usually happens within a week or two but... In your case, I was certain it wouldn't," Eiju scratched the back of his head, "I mean I still didn't have a chance to do a proper exam after your chakra network stitched itself together after the tearing you gave it, lovely, but... I suppose that much I can do right now."</p><p>Mana thankfully nodded and followed her friend a couple of floors down to what appeared to be his actual office.</p><p>"I hope you won't feel bad if I skim through it and not bat an extra eye? I really am not one for procedure and it's just your life that's at stake?" Eiju jokingly winked at Mana before gesturing for her to lie down.</p><p>"Frankly, I would've been offended if you didn't swerve a few ethical lines for me..." Mana replied. Seeing someone of her old friend helped her mood a great deal, she could only imagine what actually returning to her casual life and seeing her parents would do.</p><p>"Okay, lovely, take your clothes off..." Eiju said.</p><p>"I'm not that dumb... I've had my network examined before but I can't rely on that person to write the check-up because technically he's not yet a graduated medical ninja." Mana laughed out.</p><p>"Didn't hurt to give it a shot..." the medical ninja shrugged.</p><p>"Are things with Kiyomi so bad you're asking other girls to take their clothes off now?" the magician found a potential topic for a conversation while her network was being checked. Mana had hoped to talk to the Yamanaka herself but Eiju clearly had more experience with relationships, to the ex-Quack it came so naturally and it was so casual that there may not have been a better person to ask.</p><p>"Nah, it's the phase where we're never seeing each other again for eternity to come. It was like that for two weeks now, I'm surprised one of us hasn't apologized and made up yet." the blond youth replied. While he tried to portray a rather casual tone Mana felt his voice getting a bit more serious, it was odd seeing Eiju, of all people, getting his mind and body invested into a single relationship instead of weaving entire webs of them. The ex-Quack just reminded Mana of a master web-spinner...</p><p>"Well... That's a pity, I wanted to talk to her about something, figured you'd know where to find her or maybe you'd be able to help with it yourself?" the right side of Mana's mouth slid down diagonally in a disappointed stretch of lips.</p><p>"Oh... Judging by the brought up topic - has the precious little Mana finally discovered love?" Eiju stopped the procedure just to look his friend in the eyes as he asked the question as the answer to that question was just that ground shaking to him.</p><p>"Could you not interrupt that? I've been told by the medical ninja on our team that interrupting a check requires a complete redo..." Mana objected just trying to stall before she gathered the inner strength needed to admit that she may have actually been into someone.</p><p>"Well if that bloke is such an authority on your medical knowledge, you should just marry him..." Eiju tried to act angry as he resumed his work. For a moment an uneasy silence loomed over the room before the blonde finished his check up and stared at Mana's uneasy and crimson blushed face.</p><p>"That's... Kind of the plan... Somewhere down the line..." she uttered.</p><p>"I see the condition of the great problem Nakotsumi Mana can't solve, I still don't see the actual problem..." Eiju reset his check-up for the second time still cringing, "I mean... Unless it's... It isn't some... Projection thing, is it?" he lifted an eyebrow trying to suggest a much deeper psychological connection between Mana having peeked into another medical ninja.</p><p>"You know it's not..." Mana's embarrassment over the matter was changed into a somewhat demeaning, in a more friendly way, retort. "While Kiyomi may be into that "bad boy" thing, I'm not," she added.</p><p>"Trust me, lovely, no girl is immune to a bad boy..." Eiju casually let out while still feeling the response of Mana's chakra system. Like a bat, the young medical ninja emitted a weak shock of chakra that was supposed to be reflected by Mana's own chakra emitting a backlash pulse. Feeling the nature and frequency of that pulse and recording it was of great importance and enhanced ninja perception was needed to fix on even the smallest changes from the norm.</p><p>"Well... You see, the problem is... I was wondering if I can balance all of my lives. It already isn't easy being a ninja and a successful stage magician at the same time, if I add being a good girlfriend to the mix... I'm not sure I can be all those things." Mana put her concerns into feelings. Eiju was just giving so few shits in any given conversation that he was much easier to talk to about sensitive matters. He attached no stigma and felt no particular way about anything which made him perhaps a better person to ask such a question than Kiyomi. Plus, having in mind that the Yamanaka and Eiju were on a break, it was quite likely that Kiyomi would've given a loaded answer.</p><p>"Sure, it can be done... No matter how many lives you live, a relationship doesn't get in the way of any of it" Eiju answered nonchalantly like an ax cutting down a young linden.</p><p>"Just like that? Sounds a little bit too easy and made-up..." Mana laughed out softly in disbelief.</p><p>"Well, I may not quite relate to your problem, I'm not the overthinking kind, lovely. Can you blame me for making it up? You really need to get laid, lovely." the medical ninja sighed after he pulled his hands off of Mana and turned off his technique used to scan her network. Eiju then kicked off and rolled to the table with his chair beginning to scribble something down in the document he had on his table.</p><p>Mana continued to look at him with a bit confused eyes that clearly portrayed how totally unhelpful that reply was. Upon slightly peeking at the infinite confusion in his friend's eyes Eiju sighed and turned his attention back to her.</p><p>"Look, this whole relationship thing isn't even remotely this magical experience you make it out to be. It's pretty much as casual as changing your bloody socks. The blondie-clan-princess pretty much ends things between us every other Thursday. A relationship is a compatibility check, a lot of flipped coins need to land the right way for it to go right and you're bound to make some very bad calls. Stop giving it meaning, stop making it seem like it means anything more than it does. Just go for it, see how the coin lands and then decide if that's fine with you." Eiju explained with much more truthfulness and fantastically less sarcasm behind his voice and tone.</p><p>"I see..." Mana turned her eyes away, while Eiju's answer provided clarity it pretty much burst the bubble she had blown up. To Mana love really was something special, something greater than anything else and something that was supposed to push every other thing she thought meaningful out from her life instantly making them all meaningless in its infinite and exalted presence. As usual, finding a simple and experienced answer to any given question made the whole thing much more boring and casual.</p><p>"That's as much as I can give you with all of my invaluable experience, you need to live your damned life, lovely. If you don't – what's the point of bloody anything? Saving lives of a classroom of kids won't mean jack squat if you can't listen to them laugh for one bloody second and enjoy it" Eiju turned back at the piece of paper and scribbled something with much more nerve and even fewer shits given. After that, the medical ninja just stood up and fixed his coat and his shirt collar before nodding at Mana.</p><p>"You don't need to trouble yourself, lovely, we'll send this right to Lady Fifth," he confirmed, "It looks like you're back from... Something. So go home and have some rest... Also, by bloody god, cut your hair and just burn these clothes."</p><p>Mana laughed out softly before giving her old friend one last hug and waving farewell as she left his office leaving Eiju sitting in his chair. The magician then rushed through the floors of the hospital without seeing the endless wards and countless people waiting in the queue to see a medical ninja passing her by. She was in a whole different dimension mentally.</p><p>This whole time Mana kept on making excuses as to why she couldn't date Kouta, why she couldn't do anything she wanted or even remotely feared. Again and again, she was told that those excuses were dumb and meaningless and a lot of Mana's problems would actually be made easier by the presence of a certain someone she could actually fall in love with. Now when someone with such profound experience in the matter confirmed it Mana had decided for the one and final time – she's going to do it.</p><p>She's going to be a great ninja – training and meditating like she has never done before but also knowing her limits so her body never breaks like it did before. She'll be just as great at stage magic as she was before, she'll expand her own fame by upping the ante with each successive show. When Mana had lost her chakra control and decided to focus on being simply a stage magician she was reckless and constantly played with death, she'll keep on doing that a hundred times more intensely but this time with purpose and no subconscious desire whatsoever to perish or get hurt.</p><p>She'll also be a good daughter. She'll work with her father on more extravagant and sophisticated trap constructs for her to escape on stage fuelling the inner trapster he once was. Mana will also do her best to be honest with her mother, the poor woman had enough pressure on her hands as a manager of a small but popular café to also worry her head about her daughter's little secrets.</p><p>Despite the still lingering and bitter as ever grief that Shimo died before he could see Mana bloom again, the magician did just that. Despite all the fighting, the two did shortly before he was killed they always supported each other and each knew that the other felt that way. Shimo was always ready to take the blame for Mana's bad calls and he was always ready to say just what needed to be said, he was always there when Mana needed someone to restrain her wild and infinite need to help everyone around her in a way that made her not lose purpose. He always brought her light while at the same time channeling the one Mana shined.</p><p>The magician heard the whole house rumble from the disbelief in her parents' faces when their little girl finally rushed home through the main door. Father leaped straight out of his armchair so strongly that the whole damned thing almost flipped up. While the girl leaped straight into his father's arms she just wished that her mother wasn't working at this moment and could be here to greet her. It would've made this return that much more exciting and fulfilling.</p><p>It was surprising to feel father's hands wrap around her. They weren't soft or controlled movements as his arms were still shaking and very rude in their movements but they appeared to not even pain her father even remotely.</p><p>"There's so much I need to catch up on..." she noted, father noticed that Mana was looking at his arms when she said it.</p><p>"I found some new herbs that really help with the pain... Welcome home!" he shouted out hugging Mana again so hard that the magician released her scared bodily augmentations that raised her endurance thinking that a bear may have caught her and tried to snuggle all life from her body. The girl wished to feel her father's affection in its entirety so she purposefully kept her chakra away from enforcing her body even if it meant going through a little pain and suffocating a bit.</p><p>As much as the magician wanted to postpone telling her father about the mission and how her chakra came back and everything about what she sacrificed and what she experienced and what she lost... Her father was just too persistent to hear it immediately. There were some things like meeting Kouta that Mana wanted to keep on telling again and again to as many people as possible but there were some, like losing Shimo, that she only wanted to talk about once and only to people that really needed to hear it.</p><p>For the second time that day the girl went through everything she and her team had experienced through the past months. She saw emotions shifting through her father's face every step of the way and once it was clear that Mana took the heavy mantle of being the leader in the mission he immediately understood what made his girl's eyes so sad at times and why her head sunk from being so heavy on her shoulders at other times.</p><p>He was a Chuunin before the accident, he knew what it was like to lead and he understood the toughness of making a choice. He also got visibly angry whenever the magician told him for Kusagoro and how he changed from hindering their trip to finally having a decisive role in saving them. While it was clear that her father disagreed with some choices that Mana had made but it was so exciting to see someone live through the same adventure she just went through.</p><p>"Just wait 'till your mother hears of this... Especially about that Kouta guy..." father smiled, "You think fathers are tough on boyfriends? Just you wait..." the man joked and father and his daughter shared a laugh after just being reunited after a long time. Mana jumped at her father wrapping her hands around his neck and pressing her head against his for the longest time until she got over how much she had missed the man and her home. Usually, the magician was not one for affection, she rarely expressed it so openly, being rather much more reserved about it.</p><p>There was just something in losing someone so close that made one careful to never let anyone pass on without knowing how much they loved them...</p>
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<a name="section0230"><h2>230. The Golden Child</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A deafening wave of applause and a standing audience followed the conclusion of Mana's stage magic show. The magician bowed as always and waited for a sign from offstage assistants that the mirrors that surrounded her had been removed and she could freely leave. Had she not done so she risked walking right into a mirror screen bumping both her nose and her pride. She made that mistake during practice, turned out Mana was rustier than she'd thought.</p><p>It made sense that the public ate her return up. After all, Mana's sleight of hand improved immeasurably during her time training with the martial artists of Sun Disc arena. Her perception and general motor control were actually multiplied billions of times after training with Meiko and all of those improvements were multiplied incalculably still when Mana's chakra control returned. The limits of her current abilities still remained untested...</p><p>After the worker offstage gave Mana a thumb up the magician carefully and slowly bowed again and again while catching one of the multiple roses thrown on the stage and playing with it like a playing card, letting it shift through her fingers. At this point, she was just showing off. The girl took a moment to sigh in relief after she left the stage and entered the corridor leading up to the small cabinet she used for prep before the show and trivialities after it.</p><p>Mana was glad that the audience ate her show up like never before, while the audience was much smaller compared to the heights of her magician career it was to be expected – it was her first performance in many months and with events like those happening in ninja world distracting the common villager she was bound to be forgotten until she made an actual lasting legacy.</p><p>"Wow, kid, gotta say... Wow!" Hiro – the owner of the hall where Mana performed clapped for her after letting himself enter the cabin. Normally, he'd have risked running into a performer changing but by now he knew that the magician didn't view her uniform as a stage accessory but actually like a part of her daily attire at times. Mana took her craft seriously, she was a stage magician on the stage, off of it and on the battlefield as a ninja.</p><p>"I'm glad you liked it, Hiro-san, how did we do?" she asked with a smile while putting her various still functional stage props into a large duffel. It probably weighed a ton but to Mana, it was barely anything. The more her chakra control advanced, the more casual enhancing her body seemed.</p><p>"Well the audience was smaller than usual but... It was to be expected from a return performance. If your show today is any indicator – the whole village will be talking about you pretty soon. Just don't go missing for such a long time and you'll be world-famous." Hiro began singing her praise, while some encouragement was usual for people making Hiro money but he didn't usually praise someone thusly. Mana sensed a speech coming up. She waited for a "but" but it didn't come, the magician just turned her chair around and crossed her arms over her chest looking curiously at the hall manager.</p><p>"Look... Here's your payment for the show." Hiro scratched the back of his sweaty neck that made his flowery Hawaiian shirt seem like it was submerged underwater for a good minute or two as it ran down lower to the short and chubby man's body.</p><p>"That's not how we usually do things. I thought you're paying my mother, not me. She's managing my funds. Did something change?" Mana curiously asked just looking at the large pile of cash right in front of her face.</p><p>"Well... Not really, your mother is a brilliant manager, you'll know what I mean one day but... You're really important here, just wanted you to know. I gave you this smelly dark cabin when you started, just a kid in a flowery dress doing silly magic tricks. During this whole time, you could've left, found a better place where you'd be respected but you didn't. Now when you got pretty big... You're kinda my big moneymaker, even when you're not around people know my place mainly cause of you. I just wanted you to know you're being appreciated and... That, as stingy as I am, I appreciate loyalty from my entertainers." Hiro uneasily explained just shaking the thick pile of money.</p><p>"This isn't even how much money I actually make, I think it's like... Eighteen times more. Just pay my mother, just like you two decided to do business. I perform here because I love entertaining people, sure, certain things about this smelly cabin make me feel nostalgic and I do feel a bit loyal towards this hall in specific but... There's really no need to change things between us, I'm not going anywhere." Mana assured the man smiling at him wholeheartedly and bowing her head respectfully before running off. Hiro wanted to object and say something in return but then he just scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"But this is the usual amount..." he just uttered to himself after he realized Mana ran off.</p><hr/><p>"Nakotsumi Mana?" a firm masculine voice interrupted Mana's daydreaming as she was planning to leave the hall and head home. She still planned to see Kouta for their potential first date that day so she wasn't in any mood to host any of the usual after-show sit downs where she met anyone who came to her show for a nice short chat or answered any questions. Due to those reasons, the girl hadn't expected to be stopped.</p><p>"Yes, I suppose if you saw the show you may also..." Mana opened her mouth for a response.</p><p>"No, I'm sorry, I am not calling you by your stage name – I am a firm fan of calling things how they are." the man politely interrupted the magician by shaking his hands in disagreement. His voice was strong and deep, the kind that inspired people but the words that actually came out from his mouth were not overly inspirational for Mana.</p><p>"Very well" Mana nodded uncomfortably rubbing her elbow behind her back.</p><p>"That was quite a show, young lady, I have to say I was impressed despite not being a fan. For observing something I do not like, I was fairly impressed by your skill of doing that thing." the man continued to send twisted messages as Mana was not sure if she should be defending her craft or respectfully expressing her gratitude for the man's praise.</p><p>"Um... Thank you, I suppose." she decided on the latter.</p><p>"I must ask, I'd like to know how did you do that rabbit multiplying trick, you didn't actually use ninjutsu, did you? I believed I'd have noticed a genin using sloppy ninjutsu on stage which surprised me greatly when I did not." the man once again confusingly commended Mana while offending her at the same time. One of the things the magician liked the least was being treated as normal, casual, average. At the very least her craft should've been treated as unique, leaving the definitions of good or bad aside.</p><p>"No, it was just a mirror trick, the mirrors were edited to hide the rabbits while showing you the stage, almost like see-through glass. I often incorporate ninja techniques into the show but this one was just smoke and mirrors. I popped a light bomb and a smoke bomb from my ninja kit to conceal the actual trick, not that most people would follow my hand movements... It was purely for the visual effect." Mana admitted, while Hiro actually tried suggesting her to stick to the secrecy of how her tricks were done rule, the girl had no intention of making it a consistent rule she lived by. Something also told her she'd better tell this man what he wanted to hear.</p><p>"That is... Impressive, for a genin. I mean you are misusing ninja techniques for silly entertainment making fun of the old and respected profession but... You do it in style." the man admitted nodding his head, his cheekbones remained sharply protruded and his chin was almost like a stone sword pointed at Mana. The man didn't feel like smiling or showing any amount of warmth towards her and appeared rather on the offensive about the subject but it didn't look like he was looking for trouble.</p><p>"Excuse me, is this supposed to be... A review or..." Mana began losing her composure, not because her craft was attacked, more so because her time was being wasted on shifty and unclear messages. She could take criticism, she could take being called a good for nothing loser who brings shame to the ninja profession but she couldn't take being held up without knowing what this man's intention was.</p><p>"Oh no, just wanted to meet the young lady that attracted the Council's attention. Those old fools are so quick to forgive and forget such transgressions towards the respected age-old traditions of the ninja order, I am not so sure, even after seeing a quite impressive, for a kid, show." the man shrugged slipping out from under a raggedy cloak. He was certainly a well formed and trained individual, his shoulders were probably the broadest and scariest Mana had ever seen. He could probably punch a head off of a bear without even augmenting his abilities.</p><p>"Council's attention? Am I being investigated? I don't see how my actions during my license's suspension are valid for an investigation, even if they are, what am I facing from the Ninja Council? Double suspension?" Mana began forming some spikes, it may have been just her teenage immaturity but to her, it felt well justified at that moment.</p><p>"No, different kind of attention... They are quite impressed for some reason: busted a crime ring around the small towns surrounding Konoha and Otogakure, brought home Audra shards worth a large town built of solid gold, finished off a Pirate Lord saving the world, traveled to another universe and brought home technology ages ahead of our time as proof. You are like a little five golden star princess in the eyes of the council and I wanted to see such a girl in person." the man explained.</p><p>"I didn't beat Red alone, it clearly states in the report that Kusagoro-san did the actual fighting." Mana found a flaw in the empty and bitter toned flattering that the man began listing.</p><p>"True, but that is what a ninja is, essentially, isn't it? Not the one that fights in an open battlefield, the one that slips a knife in-between the weakened enemy's ribs. I have to say what you did was pretty impressive, even how most of the Council believes your story about... Different universes, omnipotent Gods and... Whatever else, just because you brought a bunch of tech that will spiral us ages ahead in just a couple of months. I know what you are, Nakotsumi Mana, you are no golden child, you are useful. The council loves you because you brought them use, more of it than most bring in their entire lifetimes. You stumble into things that are golden eggs for the Council, that is your sole talent." the man began bitterly speak and the magician started to doubt she was even supposed to be the target of his monologue.</p><p>"Well, I'm glad you have it all figured out, Sir. If you forgive me, I have some matters to attend to." Mana tried politely excusing herself.</p><p>"By all means, I wouldn't like keeping you away from your date..." the man crossed his vehicle sized muscular hands around his chest before flicking a string of hair that began falling in his eyes.</p><p>Mana did her best to conceal the fear and surprise that the man knew all about her plans. She suspected that he even knew about Kouta in particular, who he was and just what his relationship with Mana was like. Just how much research has this man done on her? Suddenly the girl began remembering the crazy mumblings of Shimo's old rogue teacher about a mysterious man being very interested in Mana. Could this have been it? Maybe he was just assuming she was heading to a date? After all, most girls Mana's age were already well into the scene... Such an odd and enigmatic man!</p><p>The upcoming meeting with Kouta went just about as bad as it could – the two just uneasily stared at each other and exchanged awkward and cliche phrases before settling down in silence. They spoke of weather, of every single building or tipsy gent wandering off around them. Hundreds of times the two told each other how their day went. This meeting was just about as far from a date as dates got. Mana had that scary and strange man in her mind this entire time and fear and suspicion of his hidden agenda or what he may know or do made her mind be somewhere else.</p><hr/><p>With her long awaited date getting ruined and supposedly postponed to another day Mana decided to go and let her steam out the next morning with training. It's been a while since she trained alone in the training grounds, maybe that time with Meiko when she was absorbed into the universal anomaly that made her slip into Naruto and Sasuke's universe? It was tough to say... Crazy events like that made remembering the simple things quite difficult.</p><p>Mana began just fighting the standing dummies, the first couple of attacks she forgot to place the seals on them that protected them from physical harm so she busted a couple of them up into small shatters. Feeling ashamed and just all around bad the magician placed the protective seals onto another dummy, while it was no big deal and things like this happened, somehow it affected her more than it should've.</p><p>It couldn't have been breaking the actual dummies itself, nor could it have been the fact that she forgot to place the protective sealing tags she bought on them. It was everything added up: the audience of her shows not being what it used to be before Mana left, meeting that shady tall man and how that whole conversation with him went, how awkward and stupid she was in her date with Kouta. She should've suggested that they'd do something, she shouldn't just have phased out...</p><p>Things felt so optimistic before – even if dealing with Shimo's death was difficult, Mana had reawakened her chakra control, she'd saved the entire world by stopping Francho and giving him enough of a beating to feel better about Shimo's death making it somehow not feel completely unresolved. Then she even was thrown into a whole other universe expanding her understanding of what the world around her was, she met all those amazing ninja of another universe and helped save it. She brought technology from that place that'd help patients in Konoha Hospital, one that'll improve the primitive computing technology and propel the village ages into the future...</p><p>And yet... Here it was again, things beginning to rot, slowly, creepily the pale fingers of wights under dark cloaks began creeping up Mana's neck. She could almost sense it – something bad was about to happen, things never just stayed the way they were. She's been getting the good hand in this card game for far too long...</p><p>"Hey!" a strangely familiar voice reached Mana, the magician hadn't noticed that after throwing a powerful punch she leaned forward and slipped into a trance. Somehow she managed to slip into a deep meditative state in an uncomfortable fighting stance which made Mana's muscles feel numb after she recovered from it. Hearing that voice sounded odd, not because of who it belonged to but where Mana heard it – in the training grounds!</p><p>"Good morning, Lady Hokage!" Mana bowed having turned around and faced the most powerful and important ninja having approached her from behind. What could this woman have possibly wanted from Mana? Maybe it was about this whole ninja council thing?</p><p>"Oh, no need to use that title, I quit the office today!" Chestnut Hanasaku and ex-Fifth Hokage smiled with a full smile so eerily reminding of the monkey-like way Meiko used to smile all the time.</p><p>"W-What?" Mana shook her head and rubbed her tired eyes with her swollen knuckles.</p><p>"Yeah, I was always supposed to be just a place holder anyways... I feel like the council forgot that after all this time. The big chair was never meant for a numbskull like me" Hanasaku laughed out loud as if it was something to be taken proud of.</p><p>"Well, you are wrong, in that case. The title of Hokage is still used even if the Hokage is not in the office. You will be called "the Fifth Hokage" the whole way through and even after your passing." Mana's facial expression somehow softened up when she informed the woman more than twenty years older than her of this fact.</p><p>"Whaaaaat?" Hanasaku's jaw dropped, it was clear that the woman didn't have a clue that the title of Hokage would follow her long after her short stay in the big chair would be concluded.</p><p>Mana couldn't keep a chuckle in but when her companion shared a laugh the two women laughed at each other's laughter before Hanasaku raised her arm and clenched it into a fist.</p><p>"I never took you for a puncher, your hands just looked too cute and fragile to punch invincible dummies" the woman smiled pointing at the protected with chakra dummies. Slowly Hanasaku crept up to them and flicked the thing barely even touching it with her finger. The protective chakra coating burst like a popped balloon and the dummy exploded into a vortex of barely visibly sized sawdust.</p><p>Mana's face shifted in disbelief, the seals were supposed to use a perpetually fuelled protective coating of chakra that was supposed to render those small inanimate objects completely invincible to physical force, even augmented with chakra. It didn't look like Hanasaku put any effort whatsoever in her punch but she destroyed infinite and self-sustaining chakra coating with a single flick of her finger. She barely even scraped the thing with her fingernail!</p><p>"I'm not really..." Mana managed to get herself together and express her thoughts in an actual reply. "I just had a lot of pent-up feelings inside that needed to be let go, can't say I like punching things though, I guess I'll need to keep looking for a better way. Your punch though..."</p><p>"Don't ask me how. My strength defies logic." Hanasaku laughed out shyly stroking her messy chestnut colored hair stack. "Then again, I suppose I should've taught you something with this, I do plan of teaching you after all..." the woman then twisted her lips pouting them and pressing her thinking finger to them.</p><p>"Teaching me?" Mana leaned her head sideways in total confusion like a puppy does when he sees a new concept too big for his little cute puppy head to wrap around.</p><p>"Sure, now that I'm no longer the Hokage I'll be putting a team of genin together. Seeing how you're the student who was so precious for Tanshu, I was really hurt to not be able to teach you sooner. Now I can finally fix that mistake – you're the first pick for Team Hokage!" Hanasaku shyly rubbed her nose like wiping a mean sniffle, "Do you like the name, I came up with it myself, now that I know the title will stick with me it's even more fitting." she giggled.</p><p>Mana was wrong, things won't be getting hard or dark again, they would, however, get inexplicably weirder!</p>
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<a name="section0231"><h2>231. Try Not To Die Too Fast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was said by many that becoming a ninja made a young soul mature and grow up way too fast. Maybe it was for that reason that graduating from the Academy made one emancipated and therefore considered almost an adult. Mana could certainly feel that sort of maturity she'd have likely never had if she hadn't become a kunoichi. For example, when the Hokage approached her talking to Mana about taking her under her wing in a squad, all that the magician could think of it were the implications of what was told to her.</p><p>"Wait, so now that you quit... Is the seat empty? Will the Council place a substitute soon enough?" Mana worried about the political state of her village more than about the exciting possibilities that being taken in a squad by the Hokage provided.</p><p>"Wow, you're really weird, I've just told you that I'm gonna train you and all you can think about is all that boring political stuff..." Hanasaku pouted like an offended child, one who was promised a lick of their favorite ice cream but given none.</p><p>"Sorry... It's just" Mana tried to explain and apologize but she just didn't know how to explain the importance of these things to someone who while sat in the big chair for so long didn't appear to know the importance of it. The ninja villages were in the middle of discussing the Kirigakure autonomy. If the Hokage suddenly disappeared from these negotiations their opinion and history would undoubtedly be overshadowed by the interests of other villages.</p><p>"It'll be fine. They've found a suitable substitute. He'll do just fine, even if no one even knew he existed until like a month or two ago" Hanasaku waved her hand like it was no pressing matter, where the woman began stretching out like preparing for a workout right at that moment after witnessing Mana's puzzled expression she explained.</p><p>"You see, he was a Black Ops operative. When he joined it at a very young age his records were wiped and he had very few notes to begin with in his file. One day he just waltzed into my office and declared that he was ready to take over if I was willing to do the right thing and resign. Going from a Black Ops operative to a public office seems pretty extreme but he looks competent enough to handle it, more chances than I ever had..."</p><p>"Can't anyone else see how shady that is?" Mana scratched her temple feeling a bit confused, more so that no one else batted an eye where she saw tons of problems.</p><p>"Maybe, the Council likes him, they wouldn't have minded me staying a bit longer or maybe even serving a full term but... That place was seriously beginning to strangle me." Hanasaku shrugged, "Now can we fight already?" she almost begged Mana.</p><p>"Wait, fight!?" the magician yelled out in surprise.</p><p>"Obviously! I'm enrolling you in my squad, unlike Kiyomi who will be the second member, with you I only have Tanshu's vouch to go with. I need to know of your abilities to decide about how the squad will function, what I need to teach you and who the third member should be" Hanasaku slammed her own fist into her palm raising a strong gust of wind that made Mana clutch and struggle to stay on her feet. This woman was not only inhumanly strong, she was illogically strong even by ninja standards, judging from rumors, even by Kage standards.</p><p>"I really see no use for that..." Mana said uneasily, it wasn't that she was afraid of the woman, on some internal layer she was, the most important feeling was the absolute confusion as to why this clash was even necessary.</p><p>"If you don't fight me and show me what you can do I'll just pick Yoruma Hisako as my third member." Hanasaku blinked as a tease.</p><p>"Wait, I have no qualms with that. Hisako-san is a great kunoichi and an amazing swordswoman. Plus while she is... Rather... Odd, and curses a lot... I feel like the two of us had bonded a little." Mana smiled as she still refused to take a defensive battle stance.</p><p>"Didn't she stab you which almost killed you? Thoughts throwing her name around would tick you off but it appears to be harder to do than I've initially thought." Hanasaku cocked her head to the side baffled by Mana's feelings towards the Yoruma. "Anyways, I was bluffing, one of the main goals of my squad is to pass the upcoming Chuunin Exams. They were supposed to happen in a couple of weeks but due to the whole Hokage switch, they'll likely be postponed for a couple of months more. Hisako is already a chuunin so she's not a suitable candidate."</p><p>"Great, then we don't really need to fight, you've undoubtedly seen my file and you know all about my abilities. You're just making up reasons to fight people, Lady Hokage. During my time in Wind Country, I've come to understand the importance of martial arts and sparring, and I know that paperwork was suffocating to you but neither of those is a reason to brawl needlessly" Mana turned around and began leaving the training grounds. While she did wish to join Chestnut Hanasaku's team and be trained by one of the most powerful ninja not only of her time but all time she just saw no reason in fighting this woman.</p><p>"Earth Style: Staircase to Heaven!" Hanasaku shouted out slamming her fists into the ground, Mana turned around in shock that the Hokage would just attack her. Didn't the Fifth know the immense difference between their strength? If Mana got hit by a single technique of this woman she'd undoubtedly die unless Hanasaku restrained herself to a barely understandable by the human mind degree.</p><p>The rumbling of the ground beneath her feet made the gravity feel like it was multiplied hundreds of times. Mana wished to step aside, roll aside, jump sideways or otherwise avoid the technique but the quaking ground simply kept her firmly stuck on the shifting dirt. Sky reaching pillars made of dirt and rock shot up throwing Mana up in the air, the girl knew that Hanasaku purposefully aimed to erect the pillars right beneath her feet just so Mana didn't get hit by them, just thrown upwards.</p><p>Mana's hands went through a collection of hand seals quickly trying to activate her Mystical Wings technique and form a wind current beneath her feet which would allow her to carefully float and land without needing to augment her body to withstand the fall.</p><p>"Careless!" Hanasaku's cruel shout interrupted all of Mana's thoughts as her downwards slam sent Mana's body helplessly slamming into the ground. The Hokage moved right up to Mana's face at such inconceivable speed that the girl had little time to even process her thoughts, reacting was another matter entirely. With a cloud of smoke what first appeared like a broken and dead body of a young kunoichi was revealed to only be a broken off piece of the rocky pillars as Mana quickly substituted her body with the chunk of rock.</p><p>"She'd have really killed me with that... That force of impact was all transferred perfectly through the dummy's body." Mana realized as she looked at the stone dust blown off of the crater by the rude noon winds.</p><p>"Wind Style: Ozone BB!" Hanasaku shouted off as she landed on her feet, transferring all the force of her landing into a quick diagonal kick. A slicing wind projectile fired off from her feet, a concentrated blade of pure wind pressure cutting through the whole artificially grown forest of the training grounds. Mana leaped up and hopped around the falling trees before landing in the open. The immense cover that the forest gave her was now demolished with a single kick.</p><p>Mana breathed out intensely a couple of times before fixing her clothes and dusting them off. She hadn't had such a needless and extensive workout for a while. While Hanasaku was holding back, with each attack she was actually trying to kill her. If those rock pillars had hit Mana they'd have busted through right her weak childish chakra augmentations and crushed her body into mush. If she was actually hit by that slam she'd have exploded into a bloody stain that'd have dyed the ruined rocky surface of the training grounds crimson red. That wind projectile was powerful enough to slice through millions of Manas with same chakra augmentation power.</p><p>Even if she held back while at the same time hitting just hard enough to completely obliterate her genin opponent, the woman actually attacked slowly, she didn't overwhelm Mana, she timed her offenses giving the girl just enough time to formulate plans, to evade. In her own twisted way, Hanasaku must've actually been observing the responses to every attack from her potential student.</p><p>"Not bad, any genin would've gotten hit already..." Hanasaku smiled with a monkey-like full teeth grin.</p><p>"Wait... You mean you were actually trying to hit me, you weren't testing me?" Mana blinked a couple of times in shock.</p><p>"Sure..." Hanasaku shrugged, "Obviously I'm holding back as much as I can but... I'll hit you soon enough if you don't counterattack."</p><p>"B-But... Those hits would've killed even a chuunin. If you didn't correctly transfer the strength and carefully angle of that kick it'd have split the whole planet in two..." Mana slapped her forehead.</p><p>"Huh? Really? Oh well... I guess I was out of the teaching game for too long." Hanasaku once again goofily smiled. Kiyomi had a lot of weird tales to tell about this woman during their time working together. It was very clear that the described incompetence of this woman which made the Yamanaka princess grow up as strong as she was wasn't overblown.</p><p>"Had I not been taught advanced evasion techniques and superior perception of enemy attacks by Kouta and Meiko I'd have never even seen those hits coming. They're at least fifteen times faster than the fastest punch I've seen a martial artist throw in Sun Disc arena and Lady Hokage is still just fooling around. This woman is insane..." Mana began getting more serious and in a far-off layer of her heart fear for her life was beginning to spread like cancer.</p><p>Mana prepared herself, took a proper defensive stance just like she was taught. She had never expected to become this good at not getting hit, granted, had she not been this good she'd have met her end.</p><p>"You're really tense..." Hanasaku's voice once again surprised Mana as it came right from behind the magician.</p><p>"I've no time to evade..." Mana closed her eyes, she had too much fear in her body, it was like she locked herself down under ten thousand locks. In fear of death, her body began augmenting itself on top of the normal layers of chakra. She knew it was all useless. Hanasaku just tapped Mana on her shoulder...</p><p>"Don't worry, I've messed up much worse on my other students, this one time I've split this Uchiha kid clean in two at his abdomen with a much weaker kicking technique but I patched him up. Eventually... I'm not as good at treating others as I am treating myself" Hanasaku laughed out.</p><p>Mana threw a wild elbow strike back at the woman's nose. She knew the extremely sensitive spot where the nose always broke, no matter the augmentations it was a certain weak spot. Defenses always worked at butchered rates when hitting certain vital points and when Kouta taught her about evasion it was brought up as a potential counterattack target.</p><p>Her elbow just felt like hitting a brick wall. Mana even screamed out in pain as she couldn't even feel her arm and Hanasaku didn't even look like she cared much. The magician leaped up and kicked with both of her feet right at the woman's chest trying to use the force to kick off and further away from the woman, once Mana did so she performed a roll and examined her shaking in pain arm.</p><p>"That was a sensitive point, wasn't it? I'm a medical ninja too. I know certain vital points are only augmented at 25% efficiency compared to other body points. But if your opponent is aware of your attack target they can simply augment their weak spot with more chakra to balance it out." Hanasaku taunted Mana.</p><p>"See? You didn't want to fight and ran away from the fight. That is why I took an early advantage and now you're fighting on my terms" the woman began explaining to Mana in a motherly tone. "I know you don't like fighting, I know you..."</p><p>"Shut up!" Mana shouted out, Hanasaku's eyes widened in surprise that she was so rudely interrupted but then the magician regained her composure, "Hokage-sama." she added the proper honorific.</p><p>"No!" Hanasaku's voice once again rang right behind Mana, the magician turned around throwing another wild swing, a slick sound of steel slipping through the cloth of her sleeve betrayed the hidden steel tipped card in Mana's sleeve. The magician aimed at the woman's eyes, to blind Hanasaku, the woman was told to be able to regenerate lethal injuries to the extent that she barely ever bothered to dodge on any battlefield. She accepted all harm and dished out it back a thousandfold to the confused and scared opponent.</p><p>Hanasaku wasn't there!</p><p>Mana felt a firm grip slam her head into the ground. The Hokage predicted her successfully predicting that she'd once again shock the magician with her speed and once again blitzed the magician by moving right in front of her, now behind the counterattacking magician. Lady Fifth was just as invisible to Mana as a ninja, as ninja were to her as a civilian.</p><p>"No... You need to hear this. You cannot avoid fighting altogether. We ninja are tools. That means we do what is told, we serve the purpose of any tool that the client needs. Sometimes that role is of a blade, sometimes we need to fight, we need to kill. I know that my thick younger brother tried hammering it into your head..." the woman tried explaining the lesson she'd heard a million times already. Throughout her entire childhood, throughout the Academy, from Tanshu-sensei and her own teammates. They all said the same and a part of their ideology Mana had accepted and taken as her own – she always needed to come at their opponent with full force, intending to kill but never finishing it.</p><p>Mana slapped her hands together right in front of her face that was being shoved into the dirt, with her bleeding forehead being ground into the soil Mana's free lips began to whistle a melody.</p><p>"Sweet Lullaby Jutsu!" the magician shouted out and she felt Hanasaku's grip on Mana loosen. The girl lifted her head and slipped it out from the woman's grasp rolling aside and removing another steel edged card placing it right up to the woman's eyes. Even while holding this advantage, even when she appeared to have won the magician knew she hadn't. It was clear as day that Mana would never finish Hanasaku off and the woman was infamous for her skill at using medical ninjutsu on herself exceptionally well. Even while the Hokage was paralyzed, even with Mana holding a blade by the woman's face she had lost. Mana's only options were to wound the woman nonlethally and see her heal herself or to stall for time and waste chakra prolonging the illusion. Both kunoichi saw that so the magician relented.</p><p>Mana canceled the illusion.</p><p>"You are telling me nothing I have not heard a thousand times before. I've learned that sometimes I need to fight, I've learned that in order to respect my opponent and win sometimes I need to not hold back and fight to kill, I always do. I have no problem with fighting, no problem with hurting my opponent, maiming or disabling them but I will never cross the line, I'd rather die. No life is unnecessary, that is my nindo, my Ninja Way!" Mana calmly explained to the surprised woman.</p><p>"Well..." Hanasaku smiled in pleasant surprise as her eyes closed and looked down, the medical ninja picked herself up from the dirt and gently wiped the dust and dirt off of her kimono. "It appears you've greatly matured from your experiences. While your refusal to take lives will always make you one step weaker from what you could become, because somewhere in the back of your mind you'll always have voice begging you to hold a fraction of your strength back, to have mercy, I believe you'll still make a fine ninja and a great addition to my Team Hokage." the woman admitted.</p><p>Mana bowed with the upper half of her body.</p><p>"But we need to talk about that honorific..." Hanasaku almost begged Mana playfully.</p><p>"Well, if Hokage-sama is troubling to you, I suppose I can relent and call you Hokage-sensei" Mana smiled and bowed her head, as a first submissive act towards her mentor. This was the best possible solution to her not having a permanent and stable team problem – with Team Hokage's formation maybe she'll even have a shot at the Chuunin Exams...</p><p>"That's fine enough, I suppose." Hanasaku shrugged her shoulders still clearly feeling uneasy about the way she was being addressed. The woman didn't appear to have trouble being called Hokage when she actually possessed the title however once she quit being called Hokage must've not felt right.</p><p>"Those illusions..." Lady Fifth once again asked for Mana's attention with an inquiry. "They were unlike any genjutsu I've ever encountered, I know how to defend against genjutsu just fine but... I felt like that technique completely disarmed me. I couldn't just dispel it as easily as the others..." the woman noted recalling the experience.</p><p>"During our trip in Sunagakure, we encountered a sort of ancient insectoid creatures. They used strange primitive kind of illusions, instead of targeting chakra networks and shifting their flow the creatures attacked the victim's brain centers. I began learning such manner of illusionary attack even before I regained my chakra, I've been working on it more still now that I am at full strength. As long as someone has a functional brain my techniques will affect them, the smarter the person is – the more convincing and potent the illusion as the target's own brain is more efficient at fooling them." Mana explained feeling excited about talking of her progress in the field of genjutsu.</p><p>"Hmmm... But people say I'm not that bright..." Hanasaku scratched her chin in confusion.</p><p>"And yet you still had slight trouble fighting it..." Mana nodded. "Ninja have evolved too far and this primitive manner of defense is very effective, something I've learned from my trip to another universe – it also works on beings without chakra quite flawlessly."</p><p>"Can't imagine seeing many of those..." Hanasaku replied. She was right enough, it was fair to expect that fighting omnipotent and omniscient god-people from another universe was a one-time occurrence.</p><p>"So... Kiyomi had quite great grades in Academy. That eliminates one genius requirement, you had average grades which means that I still need a dunderhead." Hanasaku was working that fairly slow brain of hers.</p><p>Mana smiled, "May I suggest someone fitting that description? I know that most ninja teams are composed of two males and a female but we already have two females and... This girl perfectly fits the physical brawler who can take a couple of punches or be dipped in magma and keep on swinging need of our fragile team."</p><p>Hanasaku clenched her fist and raised it up energetically looking excited, "A girl-power team, I like it! Give me a name and I'll look into her!"</p><p>"Wakizashi Meiko. And... It would be quite kind of you to not tell her I recommended her. Meiko often feels a bit self-loathing when things don't quite go her way and knowing she made onto a team because of her friend's recommendation would really make her feel bad." Mana said before jumping high up in the air and carefully and subtly landing on a still barely standing log and settling down in a meditative position. It appeared that Hanasaku had seen all she wished to see and was going to leave the magician to continue her meditation now.</p><p>"Got it!" Hanasaku confirmed it and disappeared with a loud popping sound followed by a puff of dust and smoke leaving Mana alone with her thoughts on the training grounds.</p><p>Mana had a lot of training to do if she was going to excel in a team of peers she admired and respected so much and Lady Fifth herself!</p>
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<a name="section0232"><h2>232. The Autumn Garden</h2></a>
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    <p>"Are you leaving, Mana-chan?" one of the janitors asked the magician as she was packing her things and walking through the empty hall. The magician felt a bit embarrassed to look the man in the eyes as she had often asked him to postpone doing his job when she wished to meet her fans after the show.</p><p>"Yeah..." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Won't be meeting the fans this week?" the man asked with a wide smile that made his black and rich mustache line bend like an upwards crescent moon.</p><p>"I guess not." the magician shrugged, she just didn't feel uplifted enough to show her real face to the fans just yet. There were so many things happening all around her, both present and the past. Acting on the stage was easy, forgetting the loss of a friend on the stage was not too hard but off-stage, when your life wasn't pre-planned and practiced to perfection, anything could've happened. The girl just felt quite likely to burst into tears if certain notes of her deeper psyche were played.</p><p>"That's too bad... People may start thinking you're avoiding them..." another voice came. One from a man who had recently entered the hall as Mana hadn't noticed him during the show. The face of a man she actually tried avoiding, one she should've seen but didn't because it'd have been too hard. The face of Shimo's father.</p><p>Mana blanked out, she felt that her mouth was wide open and that her eyes were gapping to the extent that they were beginning to itch. Still, she couldn't find a word to say, luckily she didn't have to.</p><p>"Maybe we can talk outside?" the man asked after removing his top hat and pressing it to his chest. It made the magician remember how she saw the man when he picked Shimo's unconscious body up after a grueling mission cleaning the dishes. Now the man's hair was rarer in the center, beginning to grow a bit balder and decently greyed out – the stress of losing one of his heirs didn't help...</p><p>"I uh..." Mana lifted her thumb up pointing it to the back exit, trying to make up an excuse to just run away and leave the man behind but she realized that it wouldn't be fair, not to him, not to Shimo. She was there when this man's son died, she asked the Hokage for the mission where he died, she made a lot of calls that lead to the young man's death. Mana didn't really blame herself for her friend's death directly but deep inside she was looking for reasons to do it.</p><p>"Sure..." she relented and followed the man outside wrapping a scarf around her neck and buttoning her coat before leaving the hall.</p><p>"You didn't come to visit, we didn't see you at the funeral either..." the man started, Mana just closed her eyes and lowered her head. If the man had something negative to say to her. If he felt like she had some far distanced role to play in his son's death she'd accept that. Maybe it'd finally be a reason to hate herself, hating herself, blaming herself would've been simpler. Much simpler than to accept that something so terrible just happened because of a call she had no say in. Because she had no possible way of saving her friend and it was something just meant to be.</p><p>"I couldn't... I wanted to come and see him off but..." Mana looked down at her rubbing her boots at the cold and rough road. It wasn't a willful motion, just a mindless instinct. A childish one.</p><p>"I wanted to ask you how you're holding up but... It's like we've feared. Does the other young man know? I'm sorry, I forgot his name..." the man shook his head asking, his eyes were warm and kind and Mana felt a bit confused, betrayed even by how lightly he was letting her off.</p><p>"Sugemi? I'm not sure, last I've heard of him he was still imprisoned but from what I know it's not a mandatory imprisonment. He had a couple of chances to have the prison administration oversee his case but didn't, I think he may have grown fond of solitude and imprisonment." Mana replied awkwardly, despite no negative intent or words coming out of the man's mouth she still felt like she was somehow an enemy of his family.</p><p>"You've been back for a couple of weeks now and... I hope you're not blaming yourself or think we blame you for what happened, right? We kept waiting for you to come and visit us, thought we could help you cope with your loss, having experienced one of our own but you're just... Shutting yourself off, not unlike your imprisoned friend. Having lost plenty of people in my youth, this isn't the way to deal with it, back when we lived in Kirigakure neighbors, entire families living nearby just disappeared. That tyrant was overthrown because all the losses only made people grow closer together, had he driven us apart he'd have succeeded." Shimo's father said.</p><p>Mana felt warm tears running down her eyes and down her cheeks, warming up the dead chilled face of hers. She felt angry, sad and all sorts of boiling emotions she couldn't even comprehend, her clenched fists shook as the magician ground her teeth so she didn't break down in tears. The man hugged Mana with one arm. Just like her own father used to do. She pressed harder against his chest wanting to explode in a confusing fit of emotions but even she was scared of the lack of clarity of what exactly would come out of it.</p><p>"Nobody blames you, for any of it. Even more, you gave us a sense of resolution by seeing to it that the bastard got what's coming to him. Just know that you're always welcome in our house if things get too rough, you seem to be doing quite well financially so I'm not quite sure what other help we can offer. We're grateful to you, Mana, not blaming you." the man's own voice was beginning to shake, clearly, it wasn't easy for him, must've been a thousandfold worse than it was for Mana.</p><p>Shimo's family had lost their son for the first time when he just upped and left on a journey of self-discovery on Hokage's authorization. Then so shortly after his return, the young man left again without giving his family more than a brief hello, barely showing his growth off or talking to his folks. How could these people talk of resolution? What did this primitive form of payback possibly solve? To Mana it was completely inconsequential, the only thing she liked about Francho being sealed away into the Box of Ultimate Bliss was that he'd be unable to hurt anyone else. She looked for no resolution or revenge in his defeat, despite her feelings at the time saying otherwise.</p><p>"We kept fighting, for a long time before Shimo died. We bickered about everything. I just wish I could've told him... I'm not even sure what... I just wanted him to know that he's still my friend." Mana cried out doing her best to weep silently.</p><p>"He knew, give my boy more credit than to hold a grudge on a young woman. He always must've had your best interest in mind, he cared about you and the mission objective most of all. He couldn't have blamed you or hated you, not my boy..." the man persevered even if he clearly had trouble keeping his composure. Shimo's father was a successful businessman in the village and had a reputation for cold and cool-headed, accurate decision making. Still, it was clear that his family meant a great deal to him, it became clear at that moment that he'd give his vast wealth away just to bring his boy back.</p><p>"If I had a chance to bring Shimo back, I would've. Even if that meant sealing my own soul away, I would've..." Mana looked the man in the eyes swearing it like a promise.</p><p>"It wouldn't have stood well with him, that boy would've waltzed right back to the afterlife and dragged your soul back down." the man smiled followed with a bittersweet laugh. Mana wanted to share that laugh but it was too painful at that moment to even put up a smile.</p><p>Having received no message from the Hokage about how testing Meiko went or if the blacksmith was even being tested Mana wanted to meet Kiyomi again, talk about this whole team thing. The magician waited for the Yamanaka to come to one of Mana's shows but for some reason neither Meiko nor Kiyomi did. The magician had a couple of guesses as to why, she didn't think that her friends thought lowly of her skill, more likely they didn't wish to distract her. Maybe they knew that they'd be let in for free and take someone's seat, someone who would make Mana money normally.</p><p>Mana didn't attend the Hokage inauguration ceremony that week, her show was quite crowded that day which meant that people were in festive mood. The newly chosen candidate must've been loved by the village if the mood was so good. Once the kunoichi saw the man's picture in the papers her father read she was shocked – it was the same tall and wide shouldered gentleman who saw her the week before after the show belittling her craft and talking about how "he had Mana all figured out". Knowing who the man was made the girl a bit hesitant about visiting the Administration building.</p><p>Throughout her relatively long walk to the Yamanaka district, the magician heard plenty of rumors and hearsay about the new Hokage – the Sixth. She had read his name in the papers with a little of backstory which was greatly expanded upon by all the rumors and overheard conversations. As a ninja Mana was able to hear it all and process all of it in her head with a slight effort and extension of her senses.</p><p>The man was called Ogame Okoto, he belonged to no clan, which was an oddity. Usually, non-clan ninja didn't amount to much.</p><p>"Did you hear about this new Hokage? Says he was an ANBU for a long time. Probably killed his fair share. The first time a Black Ops sits in the public chair."</p><p>"I like it – a man who can kill any filthy thug in his village, someone with a zero-bullshit policy. The village can definitely use it!"</p><p>"Did you see his shoulders? His strong arms? Probably can snap a bad guy's neck with a flick!"</p><p>"Something trustworthy in a guy who's been killing threats to village security for decades!"</p><p>Various opinions reached Mana and most of the villagers talking about the Sixth just ate the man up. The girl had always felt herself a part of the village but now she couldn't help but feel like a black sheep. She had no trust to hand for a man who was a licensed killer, he was lying, acting behind everyone's backs, spying and killing as an ANBU for decades. ANBU had very limited accountability and the only thing to worry with these people was that they got their job done: torture, murder, deceit was not above a Black Ops operative. A lot of people may have thought of ANBU as heroes while thinking of the Black Ops from other villages as some sort of monsters.</p><p>Mana thought of herself as someone elevated above the simple-minded patriotism. To her such a man was not inherently bad, ninja killed, not all were as pro-life as the magician and it would've been stupid to distrust someone just because he was a cold-blooded killer in this world. That being said, while it didn't take away one's trust it should've granted none either. This was a man who for the longest time convinced the village that he didn't even exist, killing solely by the orders of the ANBU captain who was accountable to the Hokage but barely revealed the full roster of his men or the magnitude of the Black Ops' operations.</p><p>Just being hated by the man didn't make Mana hate him in return, she could take being disliked or distrusted. A man she looked up to as a kid and looked at as a father-mentor figure most of the time shown only disgust in her ideals and dislike towards her personality, after all. Still, after feeling so secure and safe and trusting towards the Fifth, it'd take some time to get used to the man's strict square face.</p><p>It didn't help that Mana didn't approve of his supposed "zero-bullshit policies". Wars have been won by rehabilitating criminals and giving out second chances in return for their services. This sudden realization that her own political beliefs differed from those of the wide village majority awakened new thoughts and feelings inside Mana. She was rarely the one for political banter but maybe that's why the grownups always bickered and fought over these things?</p><p>A couple of chuunin vest wearing blond haired and bright blue-eyed guards asked Mana if she was looking for someone or something. It was odd of them to do so, it wasn't forbidden for outsiders of the clan to walk around the Yamanaka district – after all, the district was filled with fresh vegetable stores and flower stores making up most of the clan's profit. For some reason, the most skilled mental ninja in the village were also amazing gardeners.</p><p>After replying to them that she was looking for Yamanaka Kiyomi the two pointed Mana at the direction where the main residence of the clan elite was. The magician didn't really feel like she'd be allowed to wander around those parts being an outsider of the clan and a relatively unimportant ninja but then the magician heard a sarcastic joke about her aiming to get the clan out of business having brought the village superior communication technology from another Universe. Judging from the giggling faces of those grown men they were goofing around but to Mana, it brought an influx of new thoughts.</p><p>The Yamanaka clan probably had all the reason in the world to look at her with actual hate. The fact that these two even knew who she was as a ninja was surprising but a clear example of how impactful new communication technology was for the Yamanaka clan, the clan who took pride in their telepathy jutsu wielding ninja. Granted, they'd be out of their minds to blame Mana for anything – the magician hadn't brought anything that could control or read anyone's mind which were the signature and by far the better-known abilities of the clan.</p><p>After looking around Mana pushed the wooden chest-tall fence gate open and entered the estate. She wasn't stopped or attacked which actually made the magician feel weird and a bit worried. This was the home where the future heiress of the clan resided, a tall and exquisite classic marvel of architecture and expensive furniture using only the finest woods as its materials. Why wasn't it better protected? Then again, it only protected a simple yet luxurious household and a brilliant garden surrounding it that lead to rows of hills of flowers behind the house.</p><p>"Ah, Kiyomi's friend..." Mana heard a soothing female voice to her side where a woman was tending to a garden of heavenly smelling flowers that spread their gracious present to the world whenever the cold autumnal breeze blew their way. It may not have been the best weather for these flowers but they appeared to be holding their own.</p><p>"Excuse me for trespassing, if I am... You seem to know me. I am trying to find Kiyomi." the magician bowed to the woman without clearly knowing who she was.</p><p>"Ah, my daughter is actually out. She planned to move to train in the clan's resort further east. Not the best time to visit the beach but she said she wouldn't be looking for a tan." the woman smiled before returning to her gardening. Mana was not sure what Kiyomi's mother did with the soil of these flowers but they appeared to be holding up like it was the middle of June. "I am Yamanaka Mei, by the way, Kiyomi's mother, nice to meet you. My daughter told me enough about you to identify you by your chakra alone, leaving your entertainment career behind"</p><p>Mana was about to bow again and leave but then she felt curious, "You're a sensor ninja, ma'am?" she wondered.</p><p>"Yes. While initially I felt troubled by the size of your chakra – it felt like it belonged to a grown-up ninja and not a genin, you have a certain... Calmness to it and Kiyomi always noted how calm she felt around you despite your naïve and childish nature. I think you may develop a very notable signature in the future, one of the colored ones." the woman explained before finishing tending to a patch of flowers and wiping her head, she then gasped after realizing that dirt got on her forehead and began cleaning it erratically.</p><p>"It's just chakra, just like anybody else's..." Mana shrugged with a slightly lyrical tone, she didn't make much of her own chakra signature seeing how she wasn't anyone important or amazingly talented in this world.</p><p>"Not really, while chakra is a universal construct, present in anyone and anything, in a certain state, in people it sometimes grows to resemble the people it is found in. Scary people feel like a dark, swampy abyss, swallowing you up and making you fear for your life and gasp for air, kind people feel warmer and make you wish to be around them." the woman revealed looking at the merciful autumnal Sun gracing the cold soil with some of its warm, motherly embrace.</p><p>"Am I kind? Do I have the signature of a hero?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No. Your signature is not yet developed fully. It feels different, it has a very deep abyssal feeling almost like that of murderers but... It isn't a bad feeling, more like soothing. Your chakra feels like a crystal clear cold lake on a hot summer morning. It's refreshing and nice to be near. You should visit more often, Konoha's Sorceress." Kiyomi's mother explained. It was clear that she didn't wish to elaborate on Mana's signature and its nature but she saw the pain and disappointment in Mana's eyes when the magician was told that her chakra didn't feel even remotely heroic or warm.</p><p>"I will... I should be going though, nice to meet you, Mei-san. I will try to catch Kiyomi before she leaves the village so I need to rush." Mana bowed and excused herself to which the woman nodded before planting a sprout of some sort to the ground, could she have been planting flowers in autumn? Then again, who was Mana to question a Yamanaka gardener?</p><p>"You may not manage. If you don't try to catch up to her on the road. The resort is a good four hundred kilometers east on the Ceylon road. It's surrounded by small cafes and houses and thick forests so Kiyomi is unlikely to speed too much." the woman suggested.</p><p>"Thank you for your help, ma'am." Mana bowed once again and ran off. She was in a rush to catch up to her friend and speeding around the village would've raised too many curious eyes and too much of a ruckus. It was a really odd feeling being able to move really fast, fast enough to get to another side of the world in minutes, but then being unable to use that speed most of the time...</p><p>Still, Mana had to catch up to Kiyomi before the blonde left the village. Chasing her around on the way to the resort would've been much harder as the kunoichi would be unsure about the speed her friend was moving in or if she decided to stop for rest in one of those small inns and cafes on the Ceylon road.</p>
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<a name="section0233"><h2>233. The Gentlemen Of Luck</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Konoha was just about reaching the point where it was at its peak of activity. That was mainly why Mana tried avoiding the big streets in her rush for the village gate. Too many people would've recognized her if she ever appeared in the main central districts, an entertainer appearing on the entertainment districts where people went to relax would've made the magician never leave that place unscathed. Sure she could just deny all requests and questions but she was way too nice for that. Mana knew that if someone asked her something or to do something she'd most likely do it, it was just the kind of person she was.</p><p>A couple of weeks after Mana brought all the things Shikamaru gave her to bring home from another universe the intelligence division of the village devised a new device. Similar in many ways to the clumsy and large devices used to take pictures but much smaller, dozens of times lighter and naturally some tech shop obtained the license to sell it for commercial use. People recently were almost demanding Mana to take pictures with them which, while entertaining to see and do, would've taken too much time.</p><p>The magician stopped suddenly and moved into an alleyway between two living blocks, closing her eyes and focusing. Maybe if she could just filter out all this noise, all those talking people... She was fast enough to have stopped and moved faster than they could track, something she was painfully familiar with, having her current troubles in mind. There was no one close enough to disturb her but a part of the trouble of being a ninja was the higher degree of perception.</p><p>Finally, Mana achieved total clarity, after a slightly longer than usual pause the magician managed to successfully convince herself that the noise of the active and pulsing with life village was just as usual as the silence and comfort of her own room. The magician couldn't sense anything, she wasn't sure what exactly she was looking for. Maybe Kiyomi would've spoken up to someone, maybe she had a particular Yamanaka garden smell to her? A smell of those strange autumnal blooming flowers. Nothing.</p><p>Mana dashed off once again disappearing from the eyes of the villagers. Avoiding bumping into anyone took the most of her concentration at that speed. It was like speeding through a forest at dozens of thousands of kilometers per hour with trees and rocks coming in from every side but Mana was nimble and graceful, also desperate and in a hurry. Had it not been for Kouta's training in evasion and Meiko's training in perception she'd have never been able to successfully cover most of the village in such a short amount of time.</p><p>Mana stopped right by the gate to see if she was stopped, moving at her breakneck speed would've been a detriment to her goals. After all the guard ninja were of higher rank than she was which meant they were most likely stronger, faster and could perceive and react to much faster things than Mana. They'd have stopped her and she'd have been in too much trouble to even bother speeding out the gate for. In the middle of the day, people weren't stopped from leaving the village. Maybe that was why there were so many nukenin wandering the outside walls? The village hardly tried keeping ninja in, what worried Konoha the most was keeping those they feared of out.</p><p>In a casual and slow step, Mana left the gate and looked around. She remembered being told that Kiyomi headed the Ceylon road to the east. It was troublesome having only one exit from the village, only one gate. The magician sighed and began heading forward right up until the cross. Mana rushed it, her pace was unsteady and her breath was chasing but her newly reacquired ninja stamina held it. She could've fought at her peak for hours before running out of breath...</p><p>Mana stopped by the cross sign examining the signs directing at the different roads: Rooibos, Roiyaru, Ceylon, Pu-her, Oolong, and others. Just as the magician decided to take the Ceylon road her foot stopped – something was wrong. With a quick back dash sliding across the sandy surface of the forest road Mana avoided a long streak of shuriken flying at her from the bushes. It was ballsy for bandits to lurk so closely to the village walls, they must've been inexperienced or very desperate. Mana could've taken on anyone who had so little experience so she calmed her racing heartbeat and listened in.</p><p>"Shit, the fuck did you do that for? I told you this wasn't the Yamanaka girl! Are you fucking mad? She looks NOTHING like her!" a voice came from the bushes as no bandit came out to claim their prey or their belongings as their own. Mana's eyebrow rose up in confusion. These guys were really bad at this whole robbing people thing.</p><p>"What the fuck do I know how that Yamanaka brat looks?" another voice replied the first one's question completely ignoring Mana's confused stare into the void, despite looking at a bunch of leaves the magician could clearly tell where her assailants lurked.</p><p>"You wouldn't just carry on, by any chance? We're waiting for someone else..." a third voice finally addressed Mana finally returning the entire matter to humanity.</p><p>Their aim was fairly decent, the ninja tools cut through quite deep – they were a bit more competent physically and skill-wise than they were mentally. Maybe it was a bad move to take these bandits on alone but Mana realized that they may have been talking about Kiyomi.</p><p>"I'm looking for Yamanaka Kiyomi, do you know anything about her? I get the feeling she hasn't passed here yet..." Mana elevated her voice to reach the three gents lurking in the bushes. There was a fourth one, much less skilled scaling the tree and aiming to drop on Mana from above. He was as quiet as a non-ninja could be but to Mana, he was as clear as a drumming loudmouth chimp.</p><p>"A fellow lady of luck, huh? Well, your luck isn't doing that well right now, ever since the bounty on the lady's head was put every scumbag tall and short is after her. Go away, this is our spot!" the bush shook as those lurking within were growing uneasy. Finally, the fourth one decided to drop on Mana, kunai in his right hand aiming to stab at her shoulder – a fair try, had he successfully hit her with enough force he'd have maybe hit an artery. Luckily enough, Mana raised her right leg up with her foot digging deep into the man's gut while her wrists stopped the blade-wielding wrist of the assailant, with a quick throw with her leg the magician flipped the man over her head and down on the ground.</p><p>So there was a bounty on Kiyomi's head? That was news to Mana, she'd have wished to normally find out all about that, who put it there and who exactly was after the bounty but now she had no time. Mana wanted to meet up with Kiyomi before the Yamanaka reached the resort, a place where Mana was unlikely to be allowed to be in without a Yamanaka friend. All higher ranking ninja normally had bounties but this reeked different, more... Personal.</p><p>"You're through!" one of the bandits declared as the group jumped out from the bush. They were pretty swift, moving in a blur – Mana wasn't ready for them to be that fast. The spotted scarves and face rags suggested that they were from Kirigakure, or at least dressed like people from those parts. One of them wore goggles that were meant to help one see through the thick mist. Something inside Mana flared up, she wanted to beat these people without caring if she let Kiyomi get farther away.</p><p>At this point, it wasn't quite clear if these men just missed Kiyomi passing by or if the blonde still hasn't reached this place. Odds were that these guys were just dumb and missed her. After all, Mana would've noticed Kiyomi going up to this place.</p><p>Their knives thrown for a cover-up were pretty fast, Mana's hands flashed through a couple of handseals as she activated her Mystical Wings technique moving her out of the way just in time. The girl covered up her head as she put up her technique so hastily that she was thrown up and through a cover of branches that scratched her up shallowly. Her chakra didn't even bother protecting Mana from something as trivial as branches, the magician on a deeper level feared to lose her chakra again making her very hesitant at using chakra augmentation where it wasn't needed.</p><p>The rustling leaves suggested that her enemies were following her, the magician took a moment to look at the side only seeing a badly camouflaged body flash by. Mana canceled the technique and redirected her legs upwards so she drove them into a charge of a diving bandit. The guy was pretty quick for his size, he could've been a good two times Mana's size but the magician allowed the force of impact flow through her legs redirecting it into a leap back and down on a stronger branch.</p><p>Just like that, the bounty hunters were gone again. Mana had underestimated them at first. Each one of them would've posed a decent challenge to a weaker genin so they weren't completely hopeless, still, they were far too weak to be bounty hunters. They were either new or the vulture kind – chasing weakened or just young prey. Not all bounty hunters wished to be famous, to be legendary assassins taking out high ranking ninja. Some just liked killing little important kids or taking out the sickly or wounded.</p><p>Mana's ears desperately tried to pick up at least a smallest hint, her lips slightly smiled at the left after she realized what to do. A faint tap at the wooden upper branches alerted her of an upcoming attack, the magician's hands went through a collection of hand seals.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Shock Jutsu!" she chanted out extending a long beam of concentrated lightning at where the sound came from but it only set a strong branch ablaze and hit no one. It was a fairly weak technique so even if it hit Mana was hoping for a painful shock and a temporary stun which would've made the others flee and given her a chance to move in on the unfortunate fellow she hit.</p><p>Two bandits moved in from the side, Mana flipped back launching herself off of the branch and onto another allowing the two to miss her. She did her best to keep these two goofballs in her eyesight, now that they moved out she won't let them disappear again. Mana's hand moved out from her inner jacket pocket launching a large amount of floating explosive tags in the air. The kunoichi's hands went through two hand seals launching the whole flock of seals at her opponent.</p><p>"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" she chanted as the wind gust carried the explosive notes at the general direction of her opponents. A deafening explosion echoed followed by loud screams. Mana jumped up and followed her falling enemies allowing her steel wire to tie up in loops around a bunch of tree branches before she swung over a lower branch and let her unconscious enemies hit it. It probably left some internal injuries but it was better than hitting the ground in their speed. Mana looked at the complicated web of steel wire she made and the duo stuck on it, lamenting the loss of her entire steel string from her kit but it was worth it, human life was always worth using all of her wire for...</p><p>The magician turned behind her. She could hear the last remaining bounty hunter painfully grunting and trying to figure out if attacking Mana was even worth it. It was a pretty wise question, having in mind how easily she dispatched of his friends. Truth be told the moment right after the explosion was some of the most fear that the magician had – she figured that these hunters may not have dodged her attack sufficiently to survive it which would've really ruined her day. They took it all head-on and only got knocked out and badly burnt. That was better than dying...</p><p>"That explosion alerted the village guard. You have very slim chances of outrunning me with those injuries. You had pretty decent ones before – I'm not too physically fast or too strong but you wasted your chance. Tell me what you know about Yamanaka Kiyomi, where is she, who else is after her?" Mana yelled out but the Kirigakure bounty hunter began running. The magician's foot twitched to give chase but then she stopped and looked at the unconscious enemies hanging on the steel wire.</p><p>Mana grunted, instead of giving chase she ran up the tree using the Art of Tree Climbing technique and hung on top of the branch where the steel wire was attached to. Knowing she'd regret it Mana removed the ointment from her pouch meant to treat chakra burns and rubbed it on the more severe burns on the bounty hunters' faces and chests, their arms also.</p><p>The magician looked up and noticed guards moving in. She could only notice the signs their environment left as they passed by and not the guards themselves.</p><p>"You okay?" one of the guards remarked before noticing the webs of strings Mana had weaved to prevent the unconscious bounty hunters from getting killed by a long fall.</p><p>"We almost missed you – Dojiro kept telling me about his aunt and how she's seeing aliens looking through her windows and ghosts in the cemetery. Good work here, you beat them so quickly!" the other guard complimented Mana.</p><p>"Shut up, auntie Tonture is a saint! Anyways, maybe these guys are the guys making civilians disappear. I guess they attacked you without knowing you're also a ninja, you were lucky, Sorceress..." the first guard smacked his friend at the back of his head before smiling at Mana while trying to calm her down.</p><p>"No, they're bounty hunters. They spoke about Yamanaka Kiyomi. I was actually looking for her too when I ran into them." Mana explained.</p><p>"They look like they're from Kirigakure... Just when that pisshole started talking of autonomy!" one of the guards crossed his arms on his chest before tying both of the men up and placing seals on the ropes that made the ropes use chakra from the seal to stay strong and not just be a rope restraining a strongman.</p><p>"Every place has bounty hunters, I doubt anyone will make much of a fuss over this. We need to inform the village, Yamanaka Kiyomi needs to return home and stay inside the village walls under our protection." the first guard looked up.</p><p>"You guys need to go back and keep watching the village gate, I'm going after Kiyomi, you can send someone after us too but I can chase after her now. I know where she's going. Once the village puts a team together they can come to our aid." Mana suggested.</p><p>"True, village gate is our priority!" the second guard nodded.</p><p>"Good luck, Sorceress." the first one nodded in agreement and the two disappeared faster than Mana's eyes could even fully track them. They were just two green blurs blending into the forest green perfectly.</p><p>Mana looked onwards at the sign and began rushing onwards across the Ceylon road. She had to reach Kiyomi in time, she still didn't know where Kiyomi was but when Mana reached the first small bar or resting place she could ask the locals if they had seen her, if not that meant Kiyomi hadn't passed through there. The blonde was tough to miss. In that case, the guards had likely encountered Kiyomi on their way back and told her to return. Then Mana could head back while carefully looking for her lagging friend. It was much more likely that Kiyomi was yet ahead, Mana was already behind her friend and now she gained an even larger lead after the young kunoichi was inconvenienced with this battle.</p><p>The magician continued to run onwards until her thighs began aching. Mana's main fighting style was kicking so her legs were strong and durable so the fact that even the magician's legs were beginning to hurt alarmed her. How much longer could it have been since the next stop?</p><p>"Holy shit! Mana, is that you!?" Kiyomi's shrieking voice came from the bushes. The magician looked aside and saw her friend all messy with her skirt lazily pulled up and her hair messy.</p><p>"Were you peeing?" Mana asked in confusion, all questions of assassins and bounty hunters just left her childish mind.</p><p>"Well... I couldn't take it, the next stop was nowhere to be seen! Peeing in a forest for a girl is such a hassle!" Kiyomi complained.</p><p>"Whatever... We need to go back – there's a bounty on your head." Mana began explaining before Kiyomi jumped up and hugged Mana. The magician's worried face shifted to a friendly smile and the magician's hands wrapped around her friend as well.</p><p>"It's been a while," Kiyomi exclaimed vibrantly after pinching Mana's cheek after letting go of her. "Your cheeks are still soft and chewy like the innards of a cucumber!" she declared.</p><p>"Look, we really need to head back, we can catch up after you're safe..." Mana got worried again.</p><p>"No way! We're heading to the Yamanaka resort – at this point, it's just about as far away as the village and it's much safer there, also more fun!" Kiyomi objected.</p><p>"It's gonna get dark in a couple of hours, we need to go back." Mana stood her ground.</p><p>"I'm older than you and I was genin two years longer than you!" Kiyomi playfully pouted her lips into a duck-like beak. She was clearly not taking this seriously.</p><p>"Look... It's better to keep moving onwards, as long as we're moving. We can't stop, we're just sitting ducks then." Mana relented for Kiyomi's great glee.</p><p>"Yay, we're going on a vacation trip!" she smiled.</p>
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<a name="section0234"><h2>234. Two Against The World</h2></a>
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      <p>As the two friends continued to walk the same path on and on Mana was beginning to get really riled up about the lack of a stop in sight. There were supposed to be small inns or just vendors selling junk and supplies everywhere. Maybe the world was just bigger than Mana had imagined it and where she expected these vendors and stops to be everywhere, placed as tightly to one another as they were drawn on the map, there must've been a really long walk between each of them. As someone who took such a brief time returning to the village after leaving the ship, the magician had to admit to herself having forgotten what simply moving at a casual pace felt like.</p>
      <p>"Hmmm... You're being really silent. That's really not like you." Kiyomi pouted still looking to be in a playful mood and completely unaffected by the fact that someone put a bounty on her head and someone wishing to claim it could've been right around the corner.</p>
      <p>"I'm just being careful. You appear to be completely unaffected by the whole damn world wishing to kill you so I must be watchful for the both of us." Mana replied still tense and doing her best to perceive and properly analyze their environment. Just being careful took the better part of her available effort, being social on top of that would've been impossible.</p>
      <p>"We can talk like this..." the cheerful Yamanaka winked at Mana after establishing the mental link between the two.</p>
      <p>"I'd rather not. Talking, while really distracting, is easier than filtering my thoughts and struggling to hide what I don't want you to see." Mana sighed before realizing that her friend would simply not relent and begin properly evaluating the danger to her life.</p>
      <p>"Oh? There's something you don't want me to see? Now you're making me even more excited!" Kiyomi grinned like a little monkey having seen a simple bait and switch magic trick and questioning its primitive understanding of reality.</p>
      <p>"Personal things, both embarrassing and painful," Mana answered trying to hint at painful memories she didn't wish to be brought up. Kiyomi somewhat settled down having gotten the hint.</p>
      <p>"So... That mission you left on, wandering the world completely powerless, were you looking to get yourself killed? Right now your pinchy, munchling cheeks are all covered in scratches and your eye is tearing up constantly like you've been making an onion cake or something, what happened? I'm just being so needy for being social because you offer none of it." Kiyomi asked with a bit more seriousness.</p>
      <p>"It's nothing. I've regained my chakra control and got my license working again. Now my only worry is to not lose another friend, I've already had a run-in with a bunch of bounty hunters looking for you." Mana explained.</p>
      <p>"Wow, a bunch of vultures did these scratches? What did they throw at you, a colossal chainsaw wouldn't leave a scratch on a ninja worth their mettle..." Kiyomi shrugged.</p>
      <p>"It was trees, they were pretty fast so I flew up and I think I did it too fast and carelessly, the branches scratched me up, one even hit my eye making it itchy." Mana recounted because she knew that her friend wouldn't back up if she didn't. To the magician it seemed like a career in the interrogation division was pretty much guaranteed for the Yamanaka heiress. After all – she could extract information even without using her clan techniques.</p>
      <p>Kiyomi began cackling in a childish laughter. "Branches did this to you!?" she grabbed her abdomen in actual physical pain that laughing herself off to no end brought.</p>
      <p>"I'm glad you find my pain hilarious." Mana couldn't help but smile, her warm and friendly feelings for the blonde broke through the worry for Kiyomi's well-being.</p>
      <p>"Well yeah! People are learning to control their punches and fireballs so that they don't blow up the world their whole life and the great and mighty Konoha's Sorceress gets scratched up by some branches! I've not had a laugh like this in years!" Kiyomi kept on laughing.</p>
      <p>"I've already lost my chakra control once, I don't want to strain my network to save me some nuisance level pain. If a world-breaker power ninja punches me I'll be sure to clench myself, I won't risk losing it all again for a bunch of trees." Mana explained why some fledgling wood managed to leave scratches on her.</p>
      <p>Kiyomi's face straightened out, the blonde must've remembered how broken and desperate Mana was back when she still had her network torn. All of the hilarity and fun gone in a poof but the magician knew that it was only because her friend could somewhat empathize with the pain that Mana felt and understand her almost paranoid wish to never go through that again.</p>
      <p>"You know, if it was your life that was in danger you'd not be overly worried either, I know you better than to believe otherwise." Kiyomi gave Mana a sweet and subtle arc of her lips in the shape of a smile.</p>
      <p>"If it was my life that was in danger I'd move as far away from the village as possible – I'd wish to confront my killer alone, with no one to be caught in the crossfire," Mana admitted seriously.</p>
      <p>"Well, in a way, that's what we're doing right now. You're just too considerate to leave me to face it alone. Truth be told, my stay in the Yamanaka resort will be that much better with you there with me. Plus, once we reach it, it'll be full of some of the most powerful mental annihilators in the village – no bounty hunter will dare mess with us" the blonde nodded subtly.</p>
      <p>A little bit after the sky had already turned dark an establishment came into view not too far away. Despite the fact that the two kunoichi were in no rush, with Mana being worried that if they moved at full speed they'd easily get ambushed and be unable to react in time, the magician had expected to reach the Yamanaka resort that Kiyomi spoke of sooner. Staying in an inn was far from her idea of hiding from a possible bounty hunter attack of choice.</p>
      <p>"Where are you going?" Kiyomi's voice reached Mana forcing the magician to stop and backtrack a little, closing half a kilometer in a couple of graceful leaps and landing nearby her stopped friend.</p>
      <p>"We need to keep moving. We can't stop here. If any bounty hunters are still looking they'll check the inns first and this place doesn't look even remotely secure" Mana tried pleading to her friend's sense of reason but judging from Kiyomi's face she wasn't very successful.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, but we do need sleep. We can take turns watching like the old times." the blonde smiled.</p>
      <p>Mana squinted angrily at her friend – the Yamanaka knew perfectly that the two could stay without sleep much longer than normal humans could. Food, water, and other necessary supplies were less necessary to a ninja. The two girls could certainly make it to the resort before their bodies actually begin demanding food or water or sleep.</p>
      <p>"We must move, by staying here we'll endanger other people." Mana turned around and tried to move slowly making her friend follow her but then she noticed that Kiyomi was standing still. Angry after realizing the fact that Kiyomi didn't need Mana and it was the other way around she turned around and returned to her smart-face wearing friend.</p>
      <p>"Forgot something?" Kiyomi grinned making fun of Mana.</p>
      <p>"Come on, this isn't a game! Staying here isn't smart..." Mana tried pleading one more time.</p>
      <p>"I thought you said you are suppressing your ninja metabolism and supernatural physique. That means you need to eat, drink and sleep right. Staying here isn't smart, that's why most bounty hunters won't expect us to do it." Kiyomi smiled and ran up to Mana grabbing the magician's hand and dragging her inside the inn.</p>
      <p>Mana closed her eyes doing her best to maintain composure. Why was her friend in such a rush to get killed? Why did she view this supposed forced field trip as something to make fun on instead of actual danger to her life? The worried magician observed Kiyomi fool around in front of the innkeeper and pay him with a clearly oversized wallet.</p>
      <p>"You're carrying this much ryo with you? It's like you're asking to get attacked." Mana rubbed her tense and pulsing temples.</p>
      <p>"It's fine, you can take this chance to stretch your legs out and rest, also you can examine your wounds." Kiyomi clapped her hands before rushing to the second floor and finding the room she paid for. Mana hesitantly followed.</p>
      <p>Upon entering the room the Yamanaka future heiress just fell on a bed and stretched out yawning and scratching some uncomfortable and itchy spots before settling down like she was ready to go to sleep.</p>
      <p>"Kiyomi. Do you know what sort of dangerous game you're playing?" Mana was getting tired to sing the same song but she had finally realized what her friend was doing. She finally understood why Kiyomi purposefully made every mistake to get herself killed in the middle of the night.</p>
      <p>"I don't know what you're talking about, now... Did Hanasaku-sensei approach you with the offer to join the team yet? I must've really gotten annoying to her with all my nagging that she quit her post and decided to lead our team herself. I just really wanted to rank-up, you know? I feel like I'm ready to become a chuunin already!" the blonde deflected the question.</p>
      <p>"You're trying to lure the bounty hunters out. Whoever is after you – you're trying to make them actually try to kill you so you can beat them out in the open. Do you know who is coming for you? Do you have grievances with that person? Why are you acting so reckless?" Mana revealed Kiyomi's plan and that she finally caught up to it. Honestly, she should've gotten on the same page sooner but the plan was something so silly that the magician just didn't expect her friend to go for it.</p>
      <p>"No idea. All I know is that they're criminals. Criminals deserve to die so when those bastards come after me I'll kill them. Figured after I kill a couple of them the others will reconsider their life choices." Kiyomi replied with seriousness and little emotion past her greatly diminished fun.</p>
      <p>"You know I won't let you do that? You must've known all along, so why would you have me join you in this?" Mana asked as that particular detail didn't make sense to her.</p>
      <p>"Yeah... I knew. I guess if you get in my way – that's fine. I just really wanted to have some fun and see you after all this time, even if you insist on imprisoning those scumbags instead of killing them. This is still just like old times." Kiyomi admitted. This was perhaps the most truthful she sounded and looked this whole time. It meant a great deal to Mana that her friend was both completely truthful with her and ready to change her approach to justice temporarily just because her friend didn't agree with it.</p>
      <p>"Yeah. Hokage-sensei did approach me, I even recommended the third member to her. She seemed serious to start training for the Chuunin Exams soon..." Mana replied leaving the topic behind and trusting Kiyomi to handle this. The magician didn't know if Kiyomi was looking to meet someone specific in here or if she just wished to slay criminals as was always her way of life. Trust brimmed in Mana's heart, trust and the decision to support her friend and future teammate.</p>
      <p>"So..." Kiyomi smiled again, "Who's this third one you've recommended? Is it a boy? Is he cute?"</p>
      <p>"You should just wait for a while, I'm sure you'll mend things with Eiju again. The third one is another kunoichi I've met on my last mission." Mana laughed out sitting down on her bed and crossing her legs and assuming the meditative position. She'd be pretty wise to try and use her increased perception and awareness while meditating to help Kiyomi avoid getting herself killed over her bloody sense of justice.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>A large white owl rested on a branch of a tall oak outside the inn. The well-fed and groomed bird was scratching an itchy spot beneath its wing and continuously scanning its environment. It had already successfully caught a little mouse that day, the owl was looking for something larger but it would've been pretty fine with what it had. It was just sheer primal greed and the animalistic urge to live and eat better than one already was.</p>
      <p>A quiet and lightning fast kunai blade whizzed right past the beak of the majestic bird making the poor thing fly away in terror for its own life. The godly white beauty had assumed that it was quite lucky having a hunter miss his or her mark which would lead to them going to bed hungry that night. The truth was that the hunter did not miss. Instead, the blade was aimed at someone further away from the bird – a second-floor wall of the inn in which two girls were settling down in.</p>
      <p>The hunter was prowling on another branch parallel to the one where the magnificent bird was residing in previously. Despite his rather heavy chest armor and a sophisticated helmet with various hi-tech, constantly switching, visors, telling him things ranging from temperature to X-ray vision and similar sight aids, the man made no sound as he moved through the trees. His pitch-perfect smell could pick up the smell of blood in the veins of the blonde he was after and there was no way that any of the two were expecting his attack. They couldn't possibly have seen him coming.</p>
      <p>The whizzing blade got stuck in the wooden wall making the bounty hunter go through a collection of hand seals launching a blaze of fire nature chakra to run down the steel wire tied to the other end of the kunai which accumulated speed and size by absorbing the air around it and making it fuel the flame further. Once the fireball reached the inn's wall it made the top of the building explode like the top of an erupting sealed volcano.</p>
      <p>This wasn't how he was trained, how he was told to kill and it crossed every principle of a stealthy assassin. He usually hit swiftly and left no trace of his attack, he was a true hitman, he was faster and more graceful than a big cat, he was stealthier than a ghost and he never missed his mark. This, however, this job was personal, it invited feelings of angst and rage into the hunter's heart which would've made him normally refuse such a job. Truth be told he wasn't even doing it for the money – he just wanted the Yamanaka girl dead.</p>
      <p>Looking at the debris flying around the hunter noticed the two girls. He knew both of them but he had hoped that his attack would kill one of them. He had no idea about how powerful this strangely dressed darker skinned girl was, she looked frail enough to be killed by his diversion attack. He must've miscalculated.</p>
      <p>"What the hell was that? Couldn't you have warned me?" Kiyomi yelled out as the blast had thrown her through the wooden wall and slammed her into the Ceylon road leaving a good fifty meters spanning trail.</p>
      <p>"I did... We were too slow." Mana grunted in pain as she forced her body off the ground. The blast had deafened her ears and would've torn her body to pieces if she hadn't used augmentation. The attacker was insanely stealthy – the magician couldn't sense him or her moving, even in her meditation she was completely caught unprepared – it was only once his kunai hit the wooden wall and alerted her that Mana yelled out for Kiyomi to move. The following explosion caught both of them but barely left any lasting damage.</p>
      <p>This was just the scenario Mana had feared this whole time. Being caught unprepared, being unable to know that they were being attacked. Luckily enough they managed to survive this diversion attack and it didn't appear to do anything but blast off the second floor of an almost empty inn. The owner ran off into the woods covering his head, jumping out of the first-floor window.</p>
      <p>"This isn't a game, this bounty hunter has killed people just to piss you off." Mana grumped out. She was beginning to get really riled up and hate this stealthy killer's guts.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, and he'll pay for it. He'd have killed many more if I don't lure him out and kill him here and now." Kiyomi replied. It was clear that the blonde was regretting staying in a more public place than a random camp in the forest. She wasn't really to blame for any people who may have died in this attack, not as much as the bounty hunter himself, but she still felt bad.</p>
      <p>"So how about you find that guy? I thought your meditation was supposed to help with that?" Kiyomi grunted as she was really getting annoyed by the fact that the bounty hunter had clear and open sight of them whereas the two of the girls had no idea where the killer was.</p>
      <p>"I'm trying – he's too quiet." Mana was feeling more and more desperate as with each passing moment the probability of being attacked by a stealthy opponent increased.</p>
      <p>A loud snapping sound scared the magician half to death, she must've stepped into something as a loop tied around her foot and dragged up, leaving her hanging upside down with her leg tied to a large oaken branch. Mana saw her ninja tools fall out from her open ninja kit, she heard a whizzing sound she feared the most, steel-tipped cards shot from under sleeve and in a swift motion, Mana deflected several bladed discs aimed right at her neck. Their trajectories were very deceptive as they twisted and turned, traveled in an arc but Kouta taught her better than to get decapitated like that.</p>
      <p>Mana felt taps at her back before strong chakra coated steel wires tied around her restraining her from the shoulders to her thigs. The hunter had moved in behind her during the time she took to protect herself from getting beheaded. The man landed on a weaker branch right beside Mana and grabbed her by the hair, pulling the girl's face in closer to his helmet. He must've been checking on who Mana was and if she was the prey he was hunting.</p>
      <p>"Stay put." Mana heard a grungy and raspy voice of the man inside. Then, with a louder roar, he disappeared into the shadows of the night, circling around and looking to score a cheap and swift kill on Kiyomi.</p>
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<a name="section0235"><h2>235. Defining Insanity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi clenched her kunai blade tightly. Her body ached from the little bruises she got from being thrown around by a compact yet immensely powerful explosion. Whatever that combination was – it was made to kill ninja. Crafted to overload a small area with awesome explosive power, created to exploit the moment of a downed guard. An exploitative measure.</p><p>"Mana?" the Yamanaka uttered, her voice was too weak to reach anyone in the thick forest surrounding her and the slowly burning inn behind her. Kiyomi was too worried about her friend's well-being to have her voice listen to her commands.</p><p>The only reason her friend even got involved in this was that the blonde was so desperate to kill those that placed a bounty on her head herself, as well as those that came to cash in. She was no lousy target for anyone to put a price on, she was someone who wanted nothing more but to punish people like those that put a price on her head and those that allowed their moral norms to be suspended indefinitely just after seeing a bunch of zeroes with a ryo mark close to them.</p><p>Still, even if Kiyomi didn't see her fault in all of this she felt bad, she felt like Mana's disappearance was somehow on her. The absurdity of it all only added to her anger, her desperation. She was a cornered animal who was both afraid and angry at the same time. Maybe that was why this assassin didn't dare show their face?</p><p>Kiyomi turned aside to avoid a kunai thrown at her from a dark upper layer of trees, the firelight danced on the steel blade's surface giving her a visual cue, the Yamanaka knew how this technique worked, it was just like before. She had seen an Uchiha teammate of hers use such a technique in the past. It was supposed to be one of their signature Fire Release techniques.</p><p>The blonde grabbed at a point slightly further away, farther from the tip of the kunai grabbing hold of steel wire and with a confident smile she wrapped it around her arm. Concentrating all of her anger and feelings she yanked the steel wire augmenting her palm so that the steel wire didn't cut into her flesh opening up grievous wounds. With that gut-wrenching sound of reeling string, a figure flew out from the trees flying straight at her.</p><p>Kiyomi made her set of hand seals, her speed has improved enough to allow her to perform several hand seals fast enough for the yanked ragdoll of an opponent to reach her.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" she chanted out releasing a powerful gust of wind blasting straight in the assailant's face in concussive force strong enough to dent even the toughest steel or that with chakra augmentations inferior to the strength of the technique. A loud bang sound made anyone in the nearest vicinity want to cover their ears, the sound of concussive force from the gust of wind blasting the enemy away with enough force to grind toughest minerals of the mountains into dust hit the armor of the bounty hunter.</p><p>"Die!" a cybernetic sounding voice, edited through artificial sound enhancers, without a doubt came from the attacker's body. Kiyomi realized too late that it was too easy – why would she get attacked from the front? Why would the attacker maintain hold of the kunai string if it got caught? The bounty hunter made too many amateur mistakes to be forgiven, they must've been made on purpose to lure her in.</p><p>Only then did Kiyomi's lagging perception notice that her gust of wind wasn't blowing at the assassin's face or chest – he had lifted his knees and pressed them against his chest slamming into the wall of concussive winds with his boots. The bounty hunter pressed against a specific trigger on his boots making a crimson sealing symbol light up on his boots.</p><p>A powerful deafening explosion sent Kiyomi and her attacker away. The bounty hunter had sealed a Fire Release technique into his boots to use as a make-shift jetpack, by unleashing it right at the last moment when his boots hit the powerful Wind Release ninjutsu technique the bounty hunter ensured a volatile chain reaction – one he must've felt like his armor could withstand whereas the light treads of the Yamanaka heiress would not.</p><p>The bounty hunter stumbled back on his feet, the blow really hit his armor, it shook his body inside of it like canned meat inside its container. Screeching noises and bleeding ears, dizzy head and lack of balance, blurry vision – all of those things were battlefield reality, one the man had been used to already. In the brief patch of clearing smoke, the man saw his prize – the unconscious Yamanaka heiress, her clothes torn up suggesting that her chakra augmentations were pierced through, her face half singed.</p><p>The bounty hunter didn't rush, he examined his own armor before activating wrist blades that extended into claw-like triple blades, two from the upper wrist and one from the lower wrist. Calmly the assassin approached his knocked out prey examining her face, he needed no confirmation, even if half of this young woman's face was peeled off to the bone and burnt off – she was Yamanaka Kiyomi, a face he had plenty chances to commit into his memory, like a torturer's blade cutting that dreadful image of deceitful beauty into his brain.</p><p>The bounty hunter thrust his blade piercing nothing but air as the unconscious young woman disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Before the assassin got a chance to react, the ground beneath the dummy's previous location split open allowing Kiyomi to leap out.</p><p>"Earth Style: Hiding Like a Mole Jutsu!" she yelled out giving the man an uppercut after revealing herself having performed an elementary Earth Release technique – shifting the dirt beneath her feet to become light and shifting like quicksand until it swallowed her up – allowing her to leave a disguised as unconscious clone of hers behind.</p><p>The bounty hunters upper body continued to commit to his previous stab, now clearly aware of the fact that he overcommitted to what was supposed to be the execution move. The girl's attack was clever, it preyed on him overcommitting and opening himself for her counterattack – the moment right before the finishing strike was when the winner was the most vulnerable. However, he was taught better than to let this young woman bully him around like that...</p><p>The bounty hunter's body kept moving, shifting his weight and lowering his head, turning around her uppercut and delivering a swift spinning ground kick while throwing his free hand forward and slamming it against the ground for support – else his supporting leg would've snapped from the force and the weight placed on it by such a risky and very exotic martial arts maneuver.</p><p>Kiyomi grunted as she was tossed back and slid back before tumbling down into the same drag marks she left before.</p><p>She was surprised by this game of chess. This bounty hunter was incredibly skilled, she had underestimated just how crafty the people coming after her may have been. She expected bandits, lowly thugs too dumb to take the hook and pissing off one of the most influential and powerful clans in Konoha, scratch that – the world. Even in Kirigakure, the Yamanaka clan branches were in most councils and seats of power, what little power the village still kept to itself or salvaged after its fiasco. No bounty hunter with enough brain to be a challenge should've taken this job!</p><p>A good fifty meters farther from the young lady, the bounty hunter was scolding himself for appearing to his prey. He underestimated her in his hatred for the young woman, he reveled in how much he was taught since the two had last met, back when he was but a fledgling kitten, unable to hunt even a sickly little bird. Now he was trained by the real deal, he was supposed to be better than this, better than to assume such a tremendous gap in the skill between the two.</p><p>The bounty hunter's visor initiated, a bunch of numbers ran down displaying his prey's stats, the rough estimation of the rank of her leaking out chakra, analyzing her fighting stance and suggesting a possible angle of attack. Searching information from the database to display on the Yamanaka clan, their techniques and how they could have been combatted.</p><p>The girl's breathing was irregular, her heartbeat very intense – she was afraid, she was tired by the sudden outburst of action right after a moment of peace. A lot of ninja knew how to fight for days on end but only if the strain was stable and balanced out, many hatchlings fell for the strain if it came suddenly and overtaxed their abilities all at once. Or maybe she was worried about her friend? Maybe disobeying the professional ethics of his order and taking the girl's life would've been the right thing to do – before his visor suggested that there should've been no one in the second floor, no one else but these two. Maybe had he showed this Yamanaka the head of her comrade she'd have lost her sanity and ran head first into a trap?</p><p>No. His order and his teachings did not kill those that they were not paid to kill. To kill someone whom he wasn't supposed to kill was to take away the potential business offer. What if that oddly dressed dark skinned girl was someone of profound worth in the future? What if her own bounty grows to make for an exciting hunt in the future? If he killed her here his superiors would be disappointed in him, his training would end prematurely and he'd no longer be able to delve into these secret teachings – he had to know more. The magician girl had to live.</p><p>Both combatants raised their hands up going through a bunch of handseals, the bounty hunter's visor analyzed the hand seals and worked to extract the technique hidden behind them from the database. That was useless to the man behind the mask, by the time the search would've concluded the exchange would've been over – it would've been too late to make a proper response. He was better off going with his gut and countering her strategy than analyzing her technique before acting.</p><p>Kiyomi threw a bunch of shuriken moving sideways, rushing for the forest. Clearly an intent to look for her teammate, as a running target she was much more to the bounty hunter's liking. The bounty hunter's image blinked and glitched allowing the ninja tools phase right through him, he had dropped a little ninja tool which he had activated forming a hologram-like image.</p><p>The bounty hunter appeared right behind Kiyomi thrusting the bladed glove through her back and opening three deep wounds, with a powerful downwards swipe he opened up grievous wounds that were only fixable by more advanced medical ninjutsu – not something this young lady would have access here. She screamed in pain as Kiyomi's body split open in three parts where the blades cut her body apart but then something unusual happened.</p><p>The body exploded with a loud pop, crescent projectiles of slicing wind bashed right into the bounty hunter's armor as he was too close to the clone's dispelling radius. This was a different kind of clone – one not only capable of using simple ninja tools but also possessing the Wind Release nature of dispelling counterattack. While he was thrown off balance and felt warm blood squirt from a couple of wounds where the chakra cut through his armor the bounty hunter fired off a grappling hook that zipped him away from his location to where he could examine his wounds and recover.</p><p>Now he had no idea where the young heiress was. She somehow managed to slip out of his line of sight, she outsmarted him by leaving that highly advanced clone behind. That must've been at least a B-Rank technique to create a clone with a dispelling mechanism such as that. It was capable enough to cut through his armor and leave painful wounds – something that the bounty hunter hasn't experienced yet – he has taken blows from chuunin tough enough to punch a hole all the way through the planet, the steel dented but never tore like a tin can... That technique was controlled, concentrated and focused. This blonde was beyond the level of a genin, so far, beyond that, the intelligence he was given would've compelled him to retreat and reconsider his strategy. Make another move later.</p><p>He couldn't do that.</p><p>He couldn't do that.</p><p>This young woman had resisted him just like she did back then. He was supposed to be stronger than her back then and he underestimated her back then. He lost back then and he's doing the same now. With all the immense training he did, all of his power-ups he had acquired all those crazy skills he had honed and he still couldn't change that outcome! How was this possible? No matter how much better he got, she still outplayed him. Her growth in this time period couldn't have possibly rivaled his!</p><p>"Hey, asshole! You're standing in fire! Aren't you hurt at all?" Kiyomi shouted out looking right at him.</p><p>No way! She couldn't have seen him, she couldn't have seen him, no one saw him when he moved – he was the stealthiest of all in the order. No one, even the far more skilled assassins moved quieter than him! She couldn't have seen him... She must've been bluffing or...</p><p>The assassin placed his arms together in a hand seal. "Dispel" he shouted out revealing that the tree he was standing on was just an illusion – he had zipped right on top of the building he had blown up before and landed right in the open – in the middle of raging flames consuming the wooden structure. His body was so honed, his remaining armor was so durable that he couldn't feel being burnt alive. Only once he saw his body standing in the fire did the bounty hunter realize that his body was augmenting itself to protect him from the flame.</p><p>"You are pretty skilled but you fell for a genjutsu as simple as False Surroundings technique... That's a pretty low ranking illusion. Mana really hit the nail on the head when she began focusing on illusions, people just don't know how to deal with them." Kiyomi taunted him. She taunted him of all people. The bounty hunter emerged from the flames and landed right in front of her. This made absolutely no sense – she should've stood no chance against him. The assassin clenched his steel gloves allowing them to once again pop out his wrist blades preparing to bathe in the girl's blood but then he closed his eyes and calmed down. It was how he lost to this girl before.</p><p>The bounty hunter popped back the claws and raised his wrist, Kiyomi prepared to counter-attack but her bluff was already analyzed by his armor. She was bluffing, that last technique made her body irradiate more and more chakra meaning it was in stress – she was afraid, both for her life and that of her friend's, she was also now beginning to feel physically tired as well as running out of gas to go on. That clone technique before really must've cost her...</p><p>A barrage of small explosions made Kiyomi jump on her feet and look around in panic – a bunch of small but loud modified smoke bombs that the bounty hunter had concealed in the bushes blew up covering the place in smoke. The Yamanaka began holding her breath – she wasn't sure if this was some toxic gas or just simple smoke. The smoke was a weird mixture of purple and black suggesting that it had some toxins in it. The typical teaching of Hanasaku – a medical ninja came into the girl's mind. Any poison affecting a chakra user is colored purple or a shade of it meaning that the fog definitely had something shady going on with it.</p><p>Kiyomi leaped up, began running up a tree trying to fake out an attempted escape – she knew she'd get attacked so she backflipped off of it half-way and for good measure – the tree exploded getting hit by the same combination that took off the roof of the inn. The genin went through some hand seals of her own.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" she shouted out feeling her chakra begin to sap out, the smoke began clearing as the technique emitted a strong enough gust to completely scatter the smoke and any semblance of gas away. Any Wind Release user had a natural counter to smoke bombs or gas based techniques.</p><p>What Kiyomi was not prepared for however was her opponent appearing right in front of her – using the dispelling clouds of smoke to creep up to her completely undetected with a wild upwards slash. Instinctively Kiyomi leaned back and tried to jump back and avoid it. A painful sensation on her chest let the girl know that she got tagged, the feeling of warm blood running down her chest and smoking her clothes was similarly a very unwelcome feeling.</p><p>The assailant continued to press on an offensive raising his blade up and aiming for Kiyomi's eye. The pain and shock of getting cut made her body freeze – it disrupted the natural flow, she was good enough to hold the hunter back for a moment but not match him hand to hand. The Yamanaka smacked his hand away leaving a painful and pretty deep cut on her cheek instead of having the blades lodge in her face killing her instantly.</p><p>The manner in which these blades were cutting her like butter – without resistance. The assassin must've been imbuing his blades with chakra - that was a pretty advanced technique. At least he wasn't doing it on a powerful enough level for the enhancement to be visible. Kiyomi could still work with this. Her hands worked overtime, desperately moving any strikes away from vitals where the assailant was aiming.</p><p>She ran out of options – the man closed in the distance and locked her into a lethal dance of blades she was destined to lose. She had no way to match his skill, she could just redirect his blows where it left painful gashes and cuts but didn't outright kill her. By keeping this dance up the man was torturing her, disguising it like a battle. This was no battle – it was a dragged out execution. Kiyomi's mind raced trying to find an opening or a way to get away from this flurry of blades and her own blood covering the bounty hunter's armor and weapons.</p><p>"Get away! Just get away!" she almost began yelling at herself but the man didn't let up.</p><p>A card lodged into the man's helmet, right in the center – had the man's visors not been tougher it'd have gone right in between his eyes and through his nose. The assassin leaped back with a cracked visor and a banged up helmet. Kiyomi looked back clutching at her bleeding injuries so enjoying this moment that she almost shouted out in joy. Her friend had finally decided to come and help!</p><p>"I locked you up in twelve bolas with the capacity of each to adapt to strain – no force in the universe can peel them open with strength alone, be it a being of infinite strength." the cybernetic voice finally once again graced the two young women with its presence. Now it was messed up, broken and even huskier, the tones and strength of the volume shifted. It was clear that whatever tech the bounty had with him was beginning to fail him.</p><p>"I'm a stage magician." Mana smiled benevolently. "Escaping traps is what I do for a living, I could've escaped those mecha-bolas when I was four years old."</p><p>"Yet you couldn't have done it sooner?" Kiyomi complained but truthfully she was glad that her friend was alive and well.</p><p>"I'm a magician, not a miracle worker, plus a good entertainer keeps the suspense alive." Mana shrugged with an apologetic expression. "Seriously though it was really dark in there..."</p><p>Mana and Kiyomi finally were a team again and it seemed like there was no one they couldn't beat when working together!</p>
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<a name="section0236"><h2>236. Fears That Keep Us Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A handful of sparks fired out from the cracked frontal part of the bounty hunter's helmet. The man covered his face before realizing that his interface was broken and that Mana's card penetrating the thing made it more of a hindrance than an asset. The large fingers of the man clicked at a pair of switches on the helmet releasing a trio of thick cords, he then carefully removed the helmet allowing his face to be seen.</p><p>Inside the advanced partially armored set of technology that'd probably have made Meiko swoon all over it for an hour was a strong and bulky man. That much could've been told by parts of his limbs that weren't restrained by the heavy and bulky armor. His dreadlocks fell out from under the helmet, the sides of the man's head looked freshly shaved allowing a more professional look for the bounty hunter as compared to a wild hobo-esque appearance he'd have had if his sides were allowed to overgrow his head with hair like his top and back did. The man's face was covered with scars and one of his eyes was cut grievously and closed forever.</p><p>"It's you!" Kiyomi shrieked out in surprise, Mana looked at her friend in confusion. The magician had expected there to be more fear in her friend's voice if she recognized this man. From the tech he carried and the skill, he had he certainly deserved some respectful fear.</p><p>"That's right..." the man admitted with a slow affirming nod before throwing his helmet away aside. As the techy sphere hit the dirt the visors shattered to pieces. The man reached behind him and pulled out the trio of cords that were still spitting some sort of gas throwing them aside as well.</p><p>"Can I get a little bit inclusion into the conversation, maybe?" Mana squinted at her friend feeling a bit offended that the blonde didn't bother explaining it.</p><p>"What? You mean you don't remember this guy?" Kiyomi snapped back at her friend, "He almost killed me twice! You're just the worst, seriously!" the Yamanaka crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"Nekomata Roe, one of the unlucky souls tangled in Yellow's plan, one of the insignificant pawns you've trampled over in order to subdue the monster that ruined my and my sister's lives." The man finally reminded Mana. He then stared at her with his single functional eye trying to see if the sudden realization would somehow make her feel a bit apologetic at the least.</p><p>"Well, I barely even met you... I've only really seen your figure in the dark, really..." Mana blushed a little after a shrug, "Kiyomi fought you both times, didn't she?"</p><p>"So you came here why exactly? Do you wish to restore your pride? Do you somehow hold me responsible for your sister's death? That was Hisako's doing, not mine." Kiyomi began defensively question this man, his presence did apparently affect her, Mana wasn't sure if it was fear or some sort of mental scars, however.</p><p>"Pride? No. I've moved past those things. My pride was torn to shreds, just like my flesh after I escaped your trap by tearing chunks of my body off. Even if the order that trained me sewn my flesh back together like a jigsaw puzzle, my pride was always left behind in that bunker. Pride is something an assassin gives up on, a hunter leaves such petty things aside. I am also fully aware you didn't kill my sister, I also don't care much about vengeance for her life. She was your enemy, the nature of combat is to destroy the enemy." Roe grunted out, it was clear that it wasn't easy for him to speak, whatever grueling training he went through with this order of assassins he spoke of, whatever injuries he had sustained by forcing out of Kiyomi's trap in the bunker must've damaged his throat and made it harder for him to speak. The cybernetic voicebox now made more sense.</p><p>"So then why? Why are you here? Is the bounty it? Are you now so pitiful as to fight for a bunch of money? If so I can pay you more, you know..." Kiyomi asked again. Mana looked at her friend with a bit of confusion, she had never expected to see her friend try to compromise with someone who was essentially a criminal. Her friend was very adamant about ending the lives of criminals. Maybe the two had some shared feelings of respect hailing from their battle in the bunker before?</p><p>"Tsk, that is all my order cares for. I am different. You represent to me a wall, a barrier I cannot overcome. Had I beaten you that day, had I had the capacity within me to leap over that wall – my sister would still be alive. It's as easy as that. All I want to do is kill you so that I know if I can leap over that wall now." Roe explained with some trouble breathing as his hands weighed down and he took some pauses to huff and hyperventilate the whole way.</p><p>"Do you maybe know who put the bounty on Kiyomi's head?" Mana asked trying to be polite, she didn't know the man's story or his history for Kiyomi but it was clear that the Yamanaka didn't really wish this man a brutal death as she did for most criminals. The blonde looked devastated to find out that she couldn't reason with this man.</p><p>"Sure. I did..." Roe nodded before fixing his wrist gauntlets and checking the functionality of his wrist blades and taking an offensive stance.</p><p>"Wait, what?" Kiyomi broke out.</p><p>"Yeah, the order that trained me only cares about hunting down the bounty. I knew that they wouldn't approve of me just going for you, using their hidden hunting techniques to chase after personal demons. This was the only way of going after you." Roe explained before lunging at the two girls.</p><p>Kiyomi dodged the straight jab of the man's blades, then the secondary swipe by leaning under the blades and rolling over the lower strikes. Mana felt like it was her chance to attack the man now that he focused only on the young woman he wished to destroy so she threw a couple of lightning-fast kicks at his exposed back. The bounty hunter flipped over Mana by gently grabbing her shoulder for support and then pushed the magician at the Yamanaka making the two slam at each other.</p><p>Roe tapped at his chest removing a fist-sized steel capsule and pressing a button on it for it to expand into a sharp steel rod. With a violent husky roar, the bounty hunter tried impaling both girls with a single spear. The rod penetrated through Mana's back and Kiyomi's chest together but the bodies of both girls evaporated into thin air right after Mana canceled the illusion the hunter was under. Once the hunter realized that he was standing still under the influence of Mana's illusion this whole time it was too late – once the magician's genjutsu ended and both girls stood in front of him with their punches sinking into the man's sewn together face sending him flying back into the trees.</p><p>"Fancy Trick Jutsu!" Mana chanted out the name of her illusion. Truth be told she counted on Kiyomi being more receptive to the man's attack but her breathing greatly troubled the magician – she must've spent a lot of chakra on fighting him before which was why the younger kunoichi had to take the defensive initiative.</p><p>"H-How... I didn't even see the hand seals..." Roe grunted out after spitting out a bunch of teeth and blood aside. Mana's palm strike, even if connecting to his face wasn't that tough but together with Kiyomi's left hook it clearly did some damage.</p><p>"If you did – I'd be disappointed in my hand seal speed." Mana smiled politely to the bounty hunter. "A good magician never lets the audience see the moment when the reality ends and the illusion begins."</p><p>Kiyomi looked at Mana and nodded in both approval and gratitude. It was clear that the blonde wasn't really prepared for the cat-man's attack. Her chakra pool must've been dwindling which meant that her physicals weren't at their best, her reaction speed may have been unstable.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Mana, I know you don't like us fighting this man, truth be told I'd like to settle this with him by myself but... He's too strong for that, I'm too tired." Kiyomi admitted. This was probably the first time in a while that the magician saw her friend shed the goofball approach and be serious for once.</p><p>"No problem at all. I'm willing to help out while I'm here, just know that I won't let you kill this man." Mana nodded in approval.</p><p>"To be honest, I don't really want to kill him myself, he's a lot like me – someone who wants to manage his own clan with virtues he sees as right. Back in the day, he reminded me a lot of my brother, except Roe was careless towards his own sister. It seems now that was only a façade but I don't really wish Roe's death, he's not like the other criminals, he's just misguided, made a lot of bad calls and was just unlucky his whole life" Kiyomi admitted, it was clear that it was this cat-like man that made the blonde shed her outer layer of joking and carefree approach to things.</p><p>"No, that would make him just like most criminals I've met." Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Don't you dare talk about me with pity and assume superiority while I'm here!" Roe yelled out charging at the two young women with his wrist blades ready for attack. He was really fast – Mana realized in the middle of his charge that if the man is initiating the attack, at a certain point she had no chance of interrupting him with her own technique. To this man, a lightning bolt would've been as slow as dripping honey. If she was to interrupt him with an illusion she needed to not be caught unprepared, to start her hand seals in early stages of his attack.</p><p>Kiyomi leaped in front of Mana redirecting the man's attacks. Observing her friend's skill the magician was impressed, she thought that her training in redirection made her unique but Kiyomi appeared to have natural skill in it despite, most likely, never having gone through that martial arts training. Mana with all of her experience of being trained in martial arts in the Sun Disc arena saw that Kiyomi had considerable skill in taijutsu, well above that of her peers, still, that would've only been comparing Kiyomi to someone she had long since outranked in true skill as she simply didn't belong on the scale of other genin.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress threw a couple of quick jabs of her own, her misguided attempt at trying to hit a faster, stronger and more skilled opponent was greeted with only hitting empty air and opening herself up for an attack. Still, the blonde must've known that now she could afford such luxury, she had her friend having her back. Roe moved like flowing water, acrobatic and swift, moving under, over or aside from the blonde's blows and positioning himself for a perfect shredding slice at the Yamanaka's kidneys.</p><p>With a poof Kiyomi disappeared where Mana appeared instead, facing Roe and seeing the nature of his attack from behind. The magician used Substitution Jutsu to replace herself with Kiyomi, near instantaneously, having observed the attack from behind and knowing how the blonde was attacked. Mana used the training of both Meiko and Kouta, also all she was taught in the Sun Disc arena to hit the man's wrists lightly and push them away from her body. This odd manner of attack combined with a peculiar game of switcheroo appeared to completely astound her foe.</p><p>Once again the two switched places using the Substitution Jutsu, this time Kiyomi replaced herself with Mana positioning herself right where the magician was after redirecting the man's strikes and ready to hit him. The blonde gave a couple of quick jabs aiming at the still working eye of her opponent, Kiyomi undoubtedly tried to swell it up and rob her opponent of vision. Using her opponent's disadvantages to her own advantages like a real kunoichi would. Right when the moment appeared to be a triumphant one her blows phased through an illusionary hologram of her opponent.</p><p>A loud thick from above made Mana quickly raise her head only to realize that at some point in between the switches their clever switcheroo combination was found out and Roe realized he had no chance of beating it. The man moved above slipping away unseen while he left a hologram behind him. It must've been before the final switch, right before Kiyomi wished to make her attack. The sound coming from above was soon to be revealed as Roe firing his long wrist blades at Kiyomi from above like projectiles.</p><p>These projectiles were as slow as a kilometer per second, around the speed of one of those kunai dispensers the mobsters around Fire Country carried around. Mana felt like she could work with that and she knew that Kiyomi invested too much weight and momentum to do something about those incoming blades. The magician's hands went through a collection of four hand seals and pointed forward firing four projectiles of lightning chakra shaped like short swords.</p><p>"Magic Skewer Jutsu!" she chanted out after the lightning projectiles blasted each one of the fired blades away. One of the projectiles didn't hit anything but Mana in her distress fired off four even though there were only three blades. She still had to learn how to work efficiently under stress when her friends' lives were in danger.</p><p>Kiyomi leaped back finally having recovered her balance and nodded in gratitude at Mana. Both girls knew that they worked well together, they had history working as a team and fighting pretty strong opponents together. They've fought alongside each other on numerous occasions. Even a strong as stealthy opponent like Roe shouldn't have been too much to handle for the two of them working together.</p><p>"He's quick and slippy, quiet too." Mana blinked as she was troubled by these things moderately.</p><p>"Yeah. I couldn't keep track of him slipping in and out of shadow back then, I doubt I could even now. I thought before that your whole meditation awareness thingie was a joke but now I see that you could've never picked him up. He doesn't exist unless he wants to, that's how stealthy he is." Kiyomi nodded clearly feeling similarly annoyed by her opponent's skill.</p><p>Suddenly a sharp explosion of pain made Mana want to scream. She was so shocked by the speed and how totally unexpected the attack was that she didn't have enough breath in her chest to even scream, her mouth just gapped trying to catch the breath to scream but the pain didn't let her. Her body lifted up, she couldn't help it, the magician looked down only to see the tips of the bounty hunter's wrist blades sticking out from her gut.</p><p>"Mana!" Kiyomi screamed but her scream was silenced by a quick spin kick sending her back.</p><p>"I told you to stay put." Roe husked out and grabbed Mana's neck from behind only to snap the wrist blades from his gauntlet and leave them sticking out from the girl's body. He didn't want her to bleed out, he didn't want the magician to die but she was too dangerous and had far too effective disrupting abilities to be allowed to keep on fighting. She had to go down first. "Keep those blades in and don't move. You'll live" he grunted at the magician's ear from behind before tossing her body aside.</p><p>Mana's head screamed, loud shrieking noises, like two metal bars being ground against each other on and on again. The more time passed the more of them joined in. Her vision was blurry and kept on whiting out, the magician knew that her temporal awareness was wonky as these whiteouts robbed her of a couple of seconds.</p><p>"This is nothing... Ninja keep fighting with worse wounds. You need to get this in order..." she tried talking to her own body, she couldn't meditate and actually talk to her own body, as would've been the most efficient way. The pain and the mess inside her own mind made concentrating impossible. Could ninja actually have fought through with these sorts of injuries? Mana had read so much about legendary ninja and samurai fighting through hundreds of swords sticking out from their bodies but now it was tough to believe.</p><p>"Focus your augmentation. Ignore everything else, fight the pain and the bleeding." Mana kept on repeating in her mind like a mantra. The pain was slowly beginning to settle down, she's been stabbed before but this was different. She was careless, she was letting down her guard. She wasn't augmenting her body to withstand such attacks because she was afraid to lose her chakra again. Kiyomi undoubtedly had her body hardened and ready for an attack, she'd have never had those blades penetrate her, at least not the full way through.</p><p>Mana pounded the ground with her fist. She hated herself right now. She hated herself so much, because of her own personal fear of losing her chakra control she now let herself get taken out, Kiyomi was left all alone against an opponent she had no chance of beating. The raven-haired kunoichi pushed her body off the ground and watched a small puddle of blood drip off her gut onto the dirt. Her grip weakened and her body hit the dirt again. How? How did those strong ninja fight through this?</p><p>Loud clangs came from further away, Mana looked on and saw Kiyomi once again locked down in a fatal chain link of attacks. The blonde could barely fend off each successive attack with her kunai. Mana's shaking and covered with blood hand moved to her thigh opening up her ninja kit and removing a roll of bandage. The other hand moved to the slowly but relentlessly bleeding stab wound. Mana's breath intensified.</p><p>She needed to pull out those broken off blades.</p><p>That'd unleash all hell, a motherlode of all bleedings.</p><p>Kiyomi needed her help.</p><p>It'd bleed a lot. She'd need to be quick.</p><p>She could manage it, augment her body to leak a constant small amount of chakra and keep the blood away. She knew how to keep herself alive by just changing up her chakra flow.</p><p>The pain would be immense, it might make it difficult to be precise.</p><p>Kiyomi screamed in pain – she must've been cut... Mana needed to move!</p><p>"Move!" she screamed out scolding herself and damning her stupid fears, Mana's shaking bloody hands moved to the sharp broken off blades and gripped them tightly. The blades were still so sharp, just touching them cut the magician's hands. Mana didn't want to augment her skin, she could withstand some pain, a couple of cuts...</p><p>The magician wanted to just yank those blades out but her hands shook and stayed on the blades. What if once she pulled them out and started disrupting her flow, repurposing it again... What if it stayed that way, what if she lost her chakra control again? What if this time it was permanent? She'd be useless again...</p><p>Another scream of Kiyomi's reached Mana's ears, her friend must've been getting murdered out there!</p><p>What if Kiyomi died, just like Shimo did. Did the magician really have any right to stay down and worry about her chakra control at the expense of her friend's life? No. No, she couldn't. She'd give up her gift, everything special about her in a heartbeat just to save any one life. Mana calmed down her breathing, wiped her tears off with her bloody hand leaving a streak of blood on her face.</p><p>It was better to live as a useless cripple knowing that her friends were alive than to pay for being special with someone's life.</p><p>Mana yanked two of the three blades out letting blood storm out of the wounds. Her terrified screams killed all the other noise around, the sounds of battle transpiring nearby were snuffed out by her own pain. Her sacrifice.</p>
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<a name="section0237"><h2>237. Mana's New Way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi clutched the middle section of her arm and raced her opponent to get some air back in her lungs. Her chest was burning and her muscles felt so weak, so numb – she was fighting to survive and her entire body was running out of juice. She was facing an opponent she couldn't survive fighting alone. He had already placed several nasty injuries on her, with each small cut like that, even if Kiyomi manages to contain the damage by augmenting the affected area and making the passing blade leave just a shallow cut, her speed dropped down even more, her will to fight on lingered due to the collection of pain all over her body she was in.</p><p>Her opponent was no longer fooling around, he was no longer trying to slip into the shadows as there were too few of those left in the surrounding area – the several small fires he had caused took care of those few shadowy corners, he only relentlessly tried to strike his target down. He was succeeding, slowly but assuredly, one cut at a time. There was one particularly nasty cut on her back, obtained shortly after Mana was stabbed from the back, that Kiyomi couldn't even reach, that warm sensation of sticky clumps of blood running down her back annoyed the blonde to no end</p><p>"Mana, where are you?" Kiyomi wondered to herself without trying to reveal to her opponent that the Yamanaka still counted on her friend lending a hand here. The magician got caught from behind, her injuries looked pretty gruesome but it wasn't anything a ninja couldn't keep on fighting with. It would've continuously leaked chakra to keep her standing and in fighting shape but it would've let Mana fight. The blonde knew that her friend wished that more than anything. So why was she not up?</p><p>Roe pointed his wrist at Kiyomi grabbing it with his other free arm, the blonde knew what it meant so she rolled aside to avoid another trio of the bladed projectiles coming at her. The bounty hunter obviously predicted her roll and rushed in from the side trying to kick her in the face – force Kiyomi to waste more and more chakra on keeping her body from breaking down so that when more cuts land on the target's body she'd be caught unprepared by a chakra shortage.</p><p>Kiyomi blocked the kick with her healthy arm while spinning around, using all of the momentum granted to her by the kick and all the weight behind it to her disposal. With a kunai knife in her hand the girl turned around trying to stab at an unprotected spot on her assailant's wrist – if he got careless and didn't notice the knife, if he didn't augment his arm to minimize the depth of the cut, he'd get a nasty injury, one worth retreating for.</p><p>Roe's wrist disappeared from sight, Kiyomi suspected that he'd try to counterattack, she didn't really see his attack clearly so she predicted that he'd go for her abdomen. After her knife swipe missed its mark, swiping only empty air, responding to the counterattack became the priority. Lifting her knee was the only action she had time for, anyway. A deafening boom followed by a shockwave that tore leaves off the trees and shook the ground beneath the duo's feet erupted as Roe's quick jab to the gut collided with Kiyomi's knee. Suddenly the blonde felt a huge upsurge of momentum sending her back and utilizing it she flipped back delivering a weak and weightless jab with her feet at Roe's chin.</p><p>Furious due to the fact that he skipped a blow exchanging fists with a weaker and slower opponent the bounty hunter roared in fury but didn't quite lose composure or rush at the blonde.</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes widened a little as her eyes shortly glanced at where Mana laid. Now the girl knew why the magician was taking so long and expressing so much pain over her injuries – she wasn't augmenting her body when needed. She wasn't trying to protect herself from that backstab, what would've normally been barely an inch of steel breaking her skin now went all the way through like a heated knife through butter. Kiyomi wanted to feel anger but her eyes only shifted diagonally in compassion – she felt Mana's fears and somewhere deep inside she understood them.</p><p>The magician once got burnt from overstretching herself, walking past her limits and ignoring them outright. Chakra control meant to Mana more than her own life, it was quite literally everything to Mana. The magician only cared about her dream – to protect all life, make the world change into a world which treasured life through example. Without her chakra control, she couldn't achieve that. By extension possessing chakra control meant being able to reach out to her goals. Losing it meant losing her goal.</p><p>A spine-chilling scream of pain, unlike any Kiyomi had heard before, reached her. This time even the bounty hunter looked at the magician in awe.</p><p>Mana was standing on her feet, her knees and lower legs still trembling as drops of blood weak yet numerous ran down them. The raven-haired kunoichi's eyes wavered and shook, dazed yet bloodshot. Right in front of the eyes of the two the girl reached in and pulled out the third blade slightly above where the previous two had gone in.</p><p>"Mana..." Kiyomi tried to utter, she tried to shout out, to scream that she understood her friend's dream and why she was so afraid to use the gifts she had regained recently to their fullest.</p><p>"What use is my chakra control if I can't live my dream out with it?" Mana shouted out as the wounds in her gut stopped spouting out blood and began steaming as the passing chakra flow aggressively restrained the wound and kept Mana on her feet and running.</p><p>Kiyomi nodded, her friend's made her decision and that decision was understood loud and clear. Frankly knowing that Mana had conquered her fears by disassociating them from her dreams made the older kunoichi a little bit calmer. Still, she would've been foolish to confuse Mana's chakra augmentations for actual regeneration – the magician wasn't healing herself by pouring senselessly large masses of chakra into her wounds. She was merely postponing the harmful effects and once her chakra resources grew dimmer and dimmer still she'd have to pay up what she had postponed paying up.</p><p>Mana followed her friend in their offensive. The two had finally recovered from getting caught off guard and pressed their offensive back onto their opponent. Kiyomi jumped in right in front of Roe, jumping into the air with a jumping cross punch. Roe crossed his blades but didn't protect from this attack. He was being smart – ninja did not come out into the open like that, Kiyomi was slower, weaker and running out of chakra, slowly but surely. Attacking in such a clear manner would've been suicidal and so Roe kept on the lookout standing prepared for a follow-up attack.</p><p>With a thunderous boom Kiyomi's fist connected to the left cheek of the bounty hunter spinning him around in the sheer force going through it. Kiyomi had snapped her leg back while throwing her cross increasing the punching power greatly – the Yamanaka's taijutsu game was on point. Roe's eyes whited out as the bounty hunter couldn't comprehend how bold such an attack was, he could no longer think clearly as pain and confusion muddled up his perception. Strategies and battlefield thinking no longer worked right.</p><p>Mana threw a jumping kick to the bounty hunter's chest, her gut wound coughed up a couple of droplets of blood forcing the magician to use her hands trying to clutch her wound out but she wanted to not waste this opportunity. The kunoichi rushed onwards after her sliding back opponent with a combination of kicks from her right leg, she hit multiple areas both plated and unprotected. Where armor was hit it bent and tore like cardboard, where unprotected limbs were hit bones cracked and snapped. Roe may have been stronger than each one of them individually but he wasn't stronger than their teamwork. Far from it.</p><p>Kiyomi jumped in with a combination of punches, each aimed at the chest or face and switched up from jumping crosses and diving punches to standing firm boxing-like jabs and hooks. Roe finally regained his composure and managed to stand his ground carefully blocking and avoiding each strike before he noticed Kiyomi leaning and Mana rolling over Kiyomi's back with a stomping barrage of kicks. Roe roared out proudly, like a true big cat of the northern wastelands and slid his wrists in to block the attacks. His wrist protection and all of the wrist blades he held inside the armored gauntlets peeled off and shattered like delicate porcelain.</p><p>The bounty hunter was disarmed and greatly distressed. He continued to grunt as blood gathered on his lip and ran down his mouth and chin beginning to pool on the ground beneath his feet. Surely by now, he must've realized how well these two worked together and that he couldn't possibly hold his own against them both, not even until one of their augmentations fail and they collapse from their wounds. These two young girls were just too accustomed to one another.</p><p>Mana thought that it would've been the moment when the bounty hunter began to speak. The exact manner of speech sort of depended on the kind of man he was, some liked to brag about how losing was a part of their plan, their full intention. Some liked to deny being beaten before they were actually beaten even if the fact was being seen well before that point. Surprisingly enough that wasn't the case, Roe just shouted out a wild battle-cry before slamming at his chest.</p><p>This desperate motion revealed a strange one-time function of his armor. Each remaining and functional armor piece peeled off its steel and positioned in a way that made it a cutting tool, having obtained this improvised hedgehog layer of armor blades the bounty hunter leaped into battle.</p><p>Mana and Kiyomi were prepared for his attack but not for how fast it was. Kiyomi pulled out two more of her kunai blades in desperation to try and deflect as many of the attacks aimed at her vital points, like her neck, as possible. Mana threw a card with a sealing tag out that erupted with a gust of wind chakra. She had hoped that the cutting winds matching a weak Wind Release jutsu would've stopped her opponent but it merely slowed him down as Roe powered through it. Still, the initial shock and awe of his speed and killing power were greatly diminished. After the wind gust was broken through Roe simply dashed past the girls in a blurry flash appearing behind them like an honorable samurai having cut down all of his foes before they could blink an eye.</p><p>The eye of the bounty hunter glanced at his prey, Kiyomi appeared to have successfully blocked most of the strikes and avoided with a minimal injury what she had not blocked successfully. She had a couple of scratches and blood stains over her grey dress and her fishnet which was beginning to get completely torn down and becoming a hindrance over the multitude of small injuries and damage to her clothes sustained through the scuffle.</p><p>Mana, on the other hand, stood completely still. Her gut then trickled with red, spitting out more blood a couple of times before the augmentations restrained the bleeding again. The magician's skin paled as she stumbled forward a couple of steps. A smile covered Roe's face as he noticed the signs of a ninja being cut down right through their augmentations, ultimately augmentations functioned either like a reserve of one's life force, one's very vitality, taken from one's chakra, or like a makeshift coated force field but either use had a finite amount. A punch with more chakra augmentation would always break through a defense augmented by a lesser amount, similarly with blades – a blade with more focused and stronger augments would always break through the shield of a lesser augmentation.</p><p>A smile, matching that of the bounty hunter, then followed up on Mana's face as the magician quickly turned around and wiped downwards with her fingers as if they were a fan. Roe instinctively rolled aside avoiding a bunch of his own armor scraps slamming into the ground, potentially with enough strength to impale him while his augments were down. Only after avoiding the armor pieces attempting to cut him down did the bounty hunter notice a shining string of steel wire attached to them.</p><p>Mana felt proud in her own follow-up, even if it had failed – she had acted out getting hit by the injury, momentarily weakening her chakra sustaining her life and letting some blood out from her wounds for a more dramatic effect, to make her act more believable. She managed to use another card from her sleeve – one with basic ninja tools sealed inside. One of these tools was a good dozen of meters of steel wire which she managed to attach to parts and pieces of the man's loosened and sharp armor. Once the attack concluded Mana only had to swing the dislodged pieces and fling them at the opponent while he lowered his guard.</p><p>"Wow, working with you is gonna give me a stroke one day..." Kiyomi complained, she was clearly distressed by Mana acting out her own demise again. While Mana did do that a lot, to lower the opponent's guard and kick them right into a false sense of security, she only did it so often because it always worked. It was too bad that the opponent was too fast this time...</p><p>"Sorry. I just like sometimes bringing my stage performance on the battlefield." the magician smiled through her pale and weak face.</p><p>"You've lost a lot of blood, you need a medical pill? I've got a handful of green ones and a couple of yellow ones in my kit." Kiyomi suggested, those would've helped a great lot with Mana's injuries, maybe even stopped her bleeding completely. The magician nodded happily. The Yamanaka began burrowing in her pouch attached to her thigh but Roe shouted out in rage before jumping at the distracted Yamanaka heiress – he was clearly set to not letting the two exchange items.</p><p>Mana weaved a single hand seal. Kiyomi felt a card appear in the hand where she held the medical pill so she swiped it in the air, making a simple hand seal to unseal what was inside of it. An explosion of confetti in ridiculous amounts covered up Kiyomi making the bounty hunter's swipe at her with his feline claws miss his mark. While Mana cracked the yellow medical pill in between her teeth and chewed it up Kiyomi emerged from the ridiculous cloud of confetti and pummeled her confused opponent before kicking him hard enough to roll back.</p><p>"Nice substitution, I wasn't sure what this card you gave me was, we need to really practice this move more." Kiyomi gave Mana a thumb up without losing a track of their opponent. The blonde referred to the substitution technique which allowed Mana exchange a card in her sleeve with Kiyomi's medical food pill without Roe's attack interrupting the exchange.</p><p>"That's why I fight in my uniform – I know which cards are in which compartments and which pockets. It's almost like an extension of my own body." Mana nodded with a smile, now that her pain eased up and the wound on her gut closed but didn't yet disappear she feel much further away from dying. The yellow medical pill was a far cry from the rare but miraculous black pill but it actually managed to heal one serious injury at the least or a whole bunch of smaller injuries.</p><p>Kiyomi then clenched her fist and pointed it at Roe, glancing at Mana.</p><p>"Well, ready to finish this, then?" the Yamanaka smiled at Mana surely alarming their opponent who had almost stripped completely naked with the last use of his armor. Roe had used most of his tricks by now, his gear was not meant for extended confrontations as he was a bounty hunter – an executioner more than an assassin.</p><p>Mana politely shook her head.</p><p>Roe squinted at her as the magician walked out in front of him, standing up in between Kiyomi and him. She looked into the bounty hunter's eyes as seriously as she could, for a moment there she could even see the hunter's eyes wavering – in those few stares, prematurely broken off, she understood that her opponent knew he had little hope in fighting off both of the two kunoichi, not with them working together so well and having battlefield experience with each other.</p><p>"What is the name of your "order"? Surely it doesn't just call itself "order", right?" Mana asked a simple question.</p><p>"We don't tell our name to anyone but to the other hunters and our targets, our name does not matter, only what we do," Roe growled out like an enraged dog.</p><p>"Sounds like an impressive organization, I don't particularly like an order centered around hunting people for money, one day I'll be sure to end it. But for now... You're done here." Mana composed the entirety of her inner strength and looked her opponent right in the eye, chasing after his fleeing eyes even as they wandered off. He had to know she was serious.</p><p>Roe laughed out, Mana heard dirt clamping behind her – Kiyomi must've taken steps at her to move her out of the way or away from the bounty hunter who could've only been bested by their most impressive teamwork and not any one of them alone.</p><p>"Our elders do not tolerate retreat!" Roe growled out with much more fun behind his tone and voice as Mana's suggestion must've entertained him.</p><p>"Mana, there's no need to bargain with him, we can beat him, both of us!" Kiyomi encouraged the magician to keep on fighting.</p><p>"No more." Mana shook her head, "This entire confrontation is taking place because you fought him before. Fighting your enemy and even defeating them, even killing them does not resolve anything. I've fought and beaten enemies for too long, I'm going to try another way." she spoke without moving her eyes away from Roe – a single microsecond of her attention fleeing could've led to her instantaneous death or grievous injuries as Roe clearly didn't wish to kill her – as per his organization's rules.</p><p>"Bounty hunter, do your elders tolerate defeat then? You said the point of this encounter is seeing if you could leap over the barrier of Kiyomi's strength. You've done so. You've marked both me and Kiyomi on our backs – the greatest injury to the pride of shinobi and kunoichi alike. You've shown your superiority to us clearly, we've shown you that we can survive you, however, so I say we end this. You proved your point to yourself and us, we've proven that we can ultimately stop you together." Mana strictly laid down her thoughts. She wished a compromise, the only way to permanently silence an opponent was not killing them. That would only incite his kin to strike back on their behalf, the only way to silence the enemy was to let them win. However that victory had to be on your terms, those that you dictate them but those that do not cross their own terms. That way everyone won. It was how Mana wanted to end all conflicts from now on...</p><p>"I see..." Roe closed his eyes, breathed in and... Out. He laughed out before his eyes opened again but those were no longer the eyes of a killer. "You know I can see there's no way to kill my target now, if I walk away with my freedom intact I'll face my organization's punishment but only grow stronger from it, as I've grown from hardships before. Whatever scolding I receive for failing to kill my target is not worse than that of defeat and shaming the organization. You're smarter and stranger than your peers, magician girl. I'd be careful if I were you, people tend to dislike your kind and one day you'll be the target of one of us."</p><p>Kiyomi blinked a couple of times in rapid succession, "What?" she uttered in confusion surprised that Mana's bargain worked. It had never occurred to the blonde that convincing the enemy he got what he actually came for would work. Roe may have been ordered due to the bounty but he actually fought not because of his organization's rules – he fought to know if he had what it takes to leap over Kiyomi's barrier of strength.</p><p>"Oh well, I'll deal with that person when he comes for me." Mana smiled with a friendly nod at the assassin. "For now I can only feel thankful that you see reason." the finger she held at her cufflink button which would've slipped a card into her palm, one she could use to finish the fight off if Roe decided to recklessly attack her, loosened and moved away from it.</p><p>Roe turned his back at Mana and prepared to pounce away from sight. He stopped and turned around.</p><p>"I must warn you before I go. I was not the one to actually place the bounty, I lied... It was a Yamanaka clansman, one from the Kirigakure branch of the clan." Roe revealed much to Kiyomi's surprise.</p>
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<a name="section0238"><h2>238. A Predator Of One's Superiors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Both kunoichi stared at the bounty hunter for a while after the revelation was made. Kiyomi tried objecting first, effectively entering the denial stage, she couldn't really be blamed though. Being told that one's own distant relatives from another village were responsible for trying to have you killed was a tough pill to swallow.</p><p>"Wait, I thought you said you did it? It made sense – you placed a bounty on my head to justify coming after me in the eyes of your organization." Kiyomi objected.</p><p>"That is true, it's a much more believable scenario." Mana nodded in agreement.</p><p>"I lied, it was to raise a false sense of security, let you think that you've rid of the only threat you need to care about. It is a common trick amongst assassins, even if the other killers had nothing to do with me – it's only common courtesy between us throat-cutters. I am no longer tied to the Nekomata clan, I do not have the resources needed to rile up every bounty hunter and assassin organization to kill a child, let alone a future heiress of one of the most important clans of Konoha." Roe growled by lowering his lower lip, clearly annoyed that his revelation was even being questioned.</p><p>Mana stepped up and extended her hand to touch the man's shoulder and try calming him down, she saw that they acted slightly out of line for the courtesy they were shown. When one receives sensitive information like this they shouldn't try and make the one betraying their principles look like a liar. The bounty hunter showed his teeth to Mana in a primal show of aggression making the magician's hand freeze in the middle of the reach and withdraw.</p><p>"We are grateful that you let us know this. This information may have saved my friend's life and that leaves us in your debt." Mana tried to show that the bounty hunter's effort to walk into the clear was appreciated, she even bowed her head for him, a common cutthroat.</p><p>"It's fine, if you have any valuable substance in those heads of yours, you'll head home to Konoha and will not leave the walls until it all brews down. There are many assassins skilled enough to operate inside village walls too so don't even approach the door and hire only the best in the biz to watch over you. With a little luck, we can match wits and blades again one day." Roe growled out but this time in a more melodic and friendly tone. Just like that the bounty hunter's silhouette blurred and disappeared completely as he pounced high up into the treeline and disappeared from sight or any other manner of senses. When the Nekomata wished to be unseen, they remained hidden.</p><p>Kiyomi looked down, she was shaken by the news that her own clan was trying to get rid of her. The magician felt for her friend. She had no idea how it must've felt knowing something like this but she has felt undesired and hated in her life, she has felt like her very existence was hated and that her birth may have been pointless. Such dark thoughts never lead to anything good, she once almost gave up on herself because of them.</p><p>"Were you close to the Kirigakure branch? Do you have any potential suspects in mind?" Mana asked, while she wished to leave the matter alone and lead her friend back to the village, something like this had to remain in the center of attention at all times. Kiyomi could never again underestimate this challenging time of her life or else it'd be the last time of her life to remember.</p><p>"Not really. We're relatives only by last name and some distant bloodline. Some Yamanaka in Kirigakure fled during the wars because they supported the village's stance, some of them moved because they weren't important in the clan's hierarchy here and wished to build something new... Some of them in there are pretty close, brothers and sisters of our parents meanwhile others are distant cousins of our uncle's fathers and so on. It'd be impossible to tell who did it..." Kiyomi recounted what she knew, still totally confused.</p><p>"I see..." Mana cut in after the silence became too awkward to tolerate.</p><p>"Seeing you getting injured like that, risking your life for me... Now I know how you feel all the time. If you care about every life as much as I care about yours. I've seen enough, let's go home" Kiyomi uttered as her eyes began to dampen and it became apparent that the older kunoichi was going to break down.</p><p>"Can you find out who did it from inside the village? Do you have archives, records of your clan in there maybe?" Mana asked looking at the slowly getting incinerated and falling apart inn that Roe blew up and burnt to a crisp.</p><p>"No. The archives inside the village only have records on the members that are part of Konohagakure. We couldn't allow the sensitive information on members working in other villages to fall into the village hands, even our own village, our loyalties lie first to our bloodline, then to the village administration because people in charge change and our family stays the same. Records on the clan members in other villages are in the other archive in the Yamanaka Resort." Kiyomi explained while whimpering and struggling to talk straight over her great emotional distress.</p><p>"Then we shall do no such thing. We will go to that resort and find out who is responsible, we'll go through every member of your clan and see who would have the most believable motive to see you dead. We have no time to leave this investigation in the village's hands alone. That would be to do as genin do things – follow the objective, do what is told. That's how children live their lives. We are no longer children, we're ninja! Ninja take such things into their own hands and, as your friend, I'll support you the whole way through." Mana firmly explained looking onwards the cold and broken road of fallen and burning trees ahead.</p><p>Mana felt painful pinches on her cheeks that began pulling them off like an alligator trying to tear flesh apart from the bone.</p><p>"My soft-cheeked friend!" Kiyomi laughed out through her tears before hugging Mana from behind. The magician was a little bit shorter than her future teammate making the entire scene seem like an older sister embracing her younger sibling while teasing her at the same time.</p><p>"Cut that out!" Mana cried out in pain, "I was having a cool moment there!" she complained before smiling in sync with her friend. A painful sensation made the magician examine a couple of bruises and cuts that didn't get treated solely from the medical pill.</p><p>"You'll need to patch that up, can't just medicate yourself until all the smallest scratches are healed." Kiyomi worryingly exclaimed.</p><hr/><p>Mana grunted out in pain after Kiyomi finished sewing up the final untreated cut on her body. Thankfully the medical pill she had taken almost completely patched up the backstabbing wounds, save for the scars that will probably stay as a reminder for a long time to come.</p><p>"You know most cucumber-cheeked girls don't have kind teammates to sew their wounds for them, you should be more grateful, really." Kiyomi winked at Mana before settling down on the other side of the fire. The girls weren't too far away from the resort, maybe a good four hours more at a casual pace. They could've most likely reached it faster but too much chakra was spent on fighting off Roe. It would've been dangerous to augment their abilities further just for traveling purposes.</p><p>"I guess, but you really don't have a steady hand, you know. You'd make a terrible medical ninja!" Mana complained looking at the strangely crisscrossed wound on her shoulder.</p><p>"Yeah, I suppose even my sober sewing hand won't come close to drunk as balls Eiju's sewing hand... Maybe his drinking was the key?" Kiyomi made a playful thinking face before settling down on a rotten log on the other side.</p><p>"Nah, it was the problem..." Mana smiled finally moving her eyes away from her wound and back at Kiyomi. The girl picked up her shirt and got dressed as the autumnal nocturnal breeze was too chilling for her undershirt to fend off alone.</p><p>"One he often solved with more alcohol." the two girls replied at the same time as if they were thinking the same thing. The coordinated manner of finishing the same sentence made the two laugh out loud for a good couple of minutes.</p><p>Kiyomi's uneasy look broke Mana's fun and lyrical mood. Once the blonde noticed that the magician was curious about what got Kiyomi so riled up the Yamanaka just wiped her nose before pointing at Mana.</p><p>"You got a whole bunch of scars in that fight. You'll get to visit that douchebag in the Hospital..." Kiyomi noted, Mana looked down at where Kiyomi was pointing and noticed cuts and bruises everywhere where her uniform was damaged and she didn't even have the bravery to see the scars on her back and her gut where Roe's blades came out.</p><p>"Nah, I don't like removing scars unless they're a bother." Mana shook her head before uncomfortably looking away, "Feels like a waste of the medical ninjutsu you know. A ninja uses their chakra just to remove a cosmetic problem when there are people they could help with it instead..." The magician's mood then quickly fixed when she remembered Kouta, "Plus I'll have my own guy in there soon, no need to see that self-destructive Quack."</p><p>Kiyomi laughed out, "I guess that's one way looking at it, Hanasaku-sensei was always pretty understanding about fixing wounds on girls, then again, I and she were the only girls on the team... Plus, I wouldn't trust that woman on my broken nose in a lifetime, for an S-Rank ninja she's actually terrible at treating others."</p><p>"Yeah, Hokage-sensei nearly killed me during our first meeting. I'm kind of worried for Meiko... Whereas I am careful in combat that one likes to match her opponent fist to fist, she has the skill and brawn for it. The two are very similar when you think of it." Mana laughed out imagining the two fighting.</p><p>"I wish the Gods to be merciful on any fool matching Chestnut Hanasaku fist to fist, didn't you hear about that guy she punched outside the known Universe during the war? Who knows what the hell happened to that guy!?" Kiyomi waved her hands before placing them on her temples as trying to imagine and calculate the woman's strength made the blonde's head hurt.</p><p>"Actually I've been beyond our universe. I've been in another one even. Even in there they've got ninja, we've faced guys from even another universe. Apparently, they didn't have chakra in their universe so as powerful as they were they couldn't damage me even through the smallest chakra augmentations. I've always thought "chakra over matter" principle was sort of theoretic, I've never seen it hit so close to heart." Mana recounted, for a moment there Kiyomi sat in awe and even respectful disbelief of Mana's story forcing the magician to retell the tale of her being affected by a multiversal anomaly and sucked into what she only thought of as "the Naruto Universe".</p><p>"Wow... That's a... I'd really doubt that story if it wasn't so crazy that I'd doubt the capacity of your imagination to make it up!" Kiyomi exhaled in disbelief. Her entire world was shaken that day with her being told that someone of her own clan wanted her dead and that there was an infinite number of other universes out there, some of them didn't even have that singular universal force that stuck everything together and made everything work, the force obtained and mastered by the First People and handed down to humans.</p><p>"So what do they use in those other universes? How could those "Gods" of those other universes be so powerful without any chakra at all?" Kiyomi shouted out in disbelief.</p><p>"I don't know," Mana shrugged, "Apparently they were just really strong, they also had those weird concepts like "negative speed" and stuff like that on their minds... It was pretty confusing, plus even the ninja in that other universe knew science like I've never even seen before – that's where all that tech came from recently, I was given some samples by Shikamaru-san to bring back to my universe so we could catch up a bit."</p><p>Kiyomi had a devilish grin before revealing what made her so happy, it was a biting thought really. "So it's cause of you every stupid lowlife has a visor analyzing and giving them information and all those hi-tech gadgets, huh?" she tried to annoy Mana.</p><p>"It's not like it was impossible to get before, thanks to our very own Hokage-sensei." Mana grinned as the two kunoichi remembered that time a mercenary group leader started snagging a whole bunch of military technology from caravans coming to Konoha and due to the Fifth's poor paperwork management skills this thievery got lost somewhere and went completely unaccounted for.</p><p>"Ladies..." a loud and confident voice broke the friendly conversation making the two jump up and direct all of their attention into a briefly lit forest path where a suspicious and well-armed and armored man was walking through.</p><p>The man was pretty tall but not nearly as bulky as Roe, even if he was just as well-equipped and looked like bad news in general. Mana and Kiyomi instantly prepared for combat as this man couldn't have been anything other than another bounty-hunter. His approach, however, was foolishly arrogant – to prance out right in front of them and declare his presence was very stupid or very bold. It was either a very foolish approach or he simply thought very little of the two kunoichi when compared to his own skill.</p><p>"Now, I'm only here for the head of the Yamanaka-hime, you little lady can sit down and consider yourself lucky." the bounty hunter finally revealed his nature by continuing to slowly advance towards the two girls, completely careless to move his hands onto any hidden weapons. It was like he was just having a stroll, so confident and so scary, something about this man projected fear. He was fear itself. A lot like Tanshu used to be like but nowhere close as potent.</p><p>Mana's hands began going through the hand seals, her hand seal weaving speed was second to none, even the higher ranking ninja she had met rarely compared with her in that regard.</p><p>"Ah, an illusionist..." the bounty hunter uttered quickly weaving a single seal.</p><p>Mana looked at her hands as they began floating around, suddenly she felt awfully dizzy and nauseous as her balance brain center must've been hit. She tried dispelling the illusion as she fell down but the man closed the distance in an instant. Back when Mana was a normal civilian, in terms of her strength, she saw movements of ninja as flashes and blurs, now this man's moves looked like instantaneous movement to her enhanced perception.</p><p>The man stopped right beside Mana as the magician collapsed on her knees. She felt a bloody taste in her mouth but she held her mouth down while on her knees so that she didn't throw up. The man hit her balance center, as well as other centers, that she actually threw up making her incapable of uttering the needed "Dispel" words to dispel his illusion. It wasn't really an illusion even, it was a genjutsu technique, however, similar to the brain targeting techniques Mana used. A tad bit less advanced, however, Mana felt like she could conquer them as while they targeted the brain they didn't exhibit any illusionary effects, only crushed her balance and made her feel dizzy and nauseous.</p><p>The speed of that man's seals was impossibly fast – Mana realized that he must've been a high ranking bounty hunter, nowhere close Roe's league. This was the man who would've been sent to take out Chunin or Jounin. This was running in with the predator of the higher league, it was a completely unfair match up!</p><p>Mana wanted to scream for Kiyomi to fight or run or... The bloody vomit just kept on coming, the magician couldn't focus on anything but that as she was completely crippled, too much to even properly dispel the genjutsu affecting her. It couldn't have been highly ranked genjutsu, it would've had more differing effects if it was, it was low ranking yet effective.</p><p>Kiyomi tried to move but the assassin closed in so fast that it could only be described as an instant, even by Mana's supernatural senses. The man grabbed the girl's elbow and shoved it gently placing the kunai that the Yamanaka was about to pull out back in its pouch and punching the girl lightly in her gut before pulling out a broad yet relatively short sword with teeth-like spikes on the side, made for cutting and maiming and not stabbing, without a doubt.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and focused, she was a genjutsu specialist, she'd not be conquered by a genjutsu technique so primitive! Her focus paid off as she made her body rapidly burn through chakra in order to accelerate its flow, blow off the cork that the man placed on her chakra network by opening all of the floodgates – break his illusion through superior understanding of her own chakra network, through greater skill.</p><p>"Mind Body Switch!" Kiyomi shouted in panic, pointing at the man point-blank and trying to switch her mind with the man's but by the time her corporeal form moved out from her body, at the speed of a thought, the man was no longer there. The bounty hunter locked in Kiyomi's arms with one hand and kicked her in the shin sending her on her knees just like her teammate was so ungraciously positioned.</p><p>With a rude and strong pull on Kiyomi's hair in the moment of weakness before the Yamanaka's mind wandered back into her own body the bounty hunter exposed Kiyomi's neck ready to saw at the blonde's neck with his peculiar blade.</p><p>Mana appeared behind him with a kick, she moved as fast as she could, kicked as hard as she could augmenting her body just at its limits but the man blocked the kick by raising his hand up without even having to see Mana behind him. Only once the man came in closer to the fire did the magician see his surreal features. Covered in black hi-tech armor, light enough to move around but durable enough to withstand weaker blows and attacks without much damage. His face must've been severely injured at some point in his life as it was now just a plate, some strange mesh of steel, technology, and mangled human flesh. Almost like a mask made by infusing what once remained of his face with some living metal alloy. It made the perfect skull-shaped structure look that more ghastly and terrifying.</p><p>Without uttering a word the bounty hunter turned around and smacked Mana with his elbow driving her body to the dirt in a small crater.</p><p>Kiyomi recovered and wrangled out of the man's hold, rushing to her friend who looked unconscious, her eyes white and rolled back and blood still coming out from her mouth from the crushed internal organs damaged by the back of the bounty hunter's elbow.</p><p>"What a kindred spirit, about to die and worried over your teammate?" the man curiously looked at Kiyomi, hesitating to kill her once her back was exposed and he was handed a chance to do so.</p><p>"She's not involved, she doesn't deserve to die! It's me you want!" Kiyomi cried out trying to desperately find signs of life in Mana.</p><p>"Agreed. That is why I just knocked her out, just because I hit her hard enough to split the planet doesn't mean she can't take it. You two are about Chunin level, correct? That's what the intelligence said, a higher skill than her rank Yamanaka heiress with a possibility of some low ranking ninja getting involved." the bounty hunter estimated before lowering his sword and looking at the crushed bounty he was about to collect. Now that the girl had given up on her chances of beating this man there was no rush to kill her.</p><p>"It doesn't matter. You're just an unreasonable scum who only cares about money, so go on and kill me! Just know that you're killing a future heiress of the Yamanaka clan, a woman with honor and more money than whatever faggot paid you off, know that you kill the source of your inspiration for a lesser source. Go for it now!" Kiyomi shouted out after standing up and extending her hands, exposing her chest and her neck for being cut open. It was a brave statement, one that the bounty hunter must've appreciated as he sheathed his sword behind his back.</p><p>"Go on..." he growled out.</p><p>"What? Do you want a better offer? What sort of scumbag backs down like that? Kill me while I am generous enough to give you a chance!?" Kiyomi shouted out like a little berserker.</p><p>"Eh, I usually charge so much for my services that not many can suggest anything better, I suppose if you're a princess or a clan heiress or something, you could. So can you give me say... Fifty billion ryo? At least a hundred thousand up-front?" the bounty hunter stood there static yet the Yamanaka knew that he could draw that sword and shred her body in half with that odd thing before she could realize the pain of that motion.</p><p>"Yeah..." Kiyomi nodded removing half a million ryo from her wallet and slamming it into the bounty hunter's face.</p><p>"Well then... I guess this is your lucky day, I'll come to collect the rest in the Yamanaka Resort in two days then. Enjoy what few hours remain of your second birthday" the bounty hunter saluted Kiyomi before slowly collecting the money off the ground, turning around and walking away.</p><p>Shaking in fear Kiyomi collapsed on her knees and broke into tears, she remained curled into a ball until the fire died out, then picked herself back up and took Mana's unconscious body beginning her slow and grueling walk towards the Yamanaka district.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0239"><h2>239. Kiyomi's Aku-Soku-Zan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi's speed faltered a couple of times during her trip to the Yamanaka resort. She was given two days to pay up the bounty hunter but that wasn't a problem. As an influential figure in her clan, she'd be able to access even more sizeable resources than she was asked for. That was what troubled Kiyomi – to place a large enough bounty on her would've taken a really influential figure. Granted, knowing the amount of influence one had to have to place a bounty sizeable enough to interest even hunters gunning after Chuunin and Jounin also tightened the loop around much fewer throats of potential suspects. The location of Kirigakure did so even more.</p><p>Mana didn't look good, she wasn't bleeding excessively or vomiting blood anymore but she was simply knocked out, her skin was pale and her weight changed from being difficult to drag around to being light as a feather – Kiyomi's own faltering chakra levels must've influenced the dramatic shift in the weight she carried. It was unlikely that the magician herself shifted her weights so drastically.</p><p>It was because of her that Mana got involved, the magician just wanted to meet up with her future teammate and catch up, maybe train a little together seeing how the two would end up in a team in the future. And then she got dragged into this whole story of bounty hunters of varying power levels, all going for the outrageous bounty on Kiyomi's head. Even more, the magician already placed the responsibility on her shoulders to keep everyone around her alive at all times. As long as Mana could help it no one was supposed to die. Feeling as Mana's older sister made Kiyomi take up some of her silly "sibling's" responsibilities on herself as well.</p><p>There it was, the Yamanaka resort – a giant district of classic buildings built around a large beach resort, like an entire port town all by itself. One main stone paved street extended throughout the grassy plain and then over a sandy hill that led to the majestic beach. It was, in a way, a halfway point between both branches of the clan – Konoha and Kirigakure and while there may have been Yamanaka in other villages in small numbers, their numbers weren't important enough to warrant such sentimental architectural decision.</p><p>Two guards rushed up to Kiyomi and took Mana from her hands. The duo almost instantly recognized the young lady who may possibly one day inherit the rule of the clan and be the most important person. Even if she did not fulfill that role, that was to say she'd have gotten married or there would've been someone else with a better claim to be the clan's heir and rightful leader – her influence would still be immense.</p><p>"Please make sure Mana is OK..." Kiyomi managed to utter before losing her footing. She didn't pass out, that'd have been too much of a mercy for her on fate's part. The blonde wished to pass out but she remained down on the ground, huffing and struggling to breathe with a painfully pulsing chest that hurt evermore with each draw of breath.</p><p>One guard picked the unconscious magician up and rushed her away, the other one called for reinforcements and carried Kiyomi away to have her taken care of.</p><p>"Can we muster up fifty billion ryo for my holiday funds?" Kiyomi cheeked at her carrier who just smiled back at her.</p><p>"That is sizeable but not beyond reasonable. We'll talk about it later, Lady Heiress." the Yamanaka ninja nodded.</p><hr/><p>By the time Mana woke up, it was morning. A male Yamanaka ninja was watching over a bunch of medical machines that surveyed her condition and ran through various diagnostics without requiring the medical ninja spend an ounce of chakra. After the medical ninja noticed that the magician was awake he turned around and nodded.</p><p>"Well, it seems your recovery went smoothly, Lady Heiress shall be glad to hear it" he noted. "Granted, it was so close to being the opposite case entirely" the man complained to himself.</p><p>"Wait... I almost died?" Mana asked. If her worst fears were to be confirmed she wanted to know just how injured her chakra network was. With it having been completely torn to shreds once it was probably very susceptible to being damaged once more.</p><p>"Oh, no, your injuries merely knocked you out. Lady Heiress did not tell us you've ingested medical pills at least a day before, meaning any further attempts to chemically treat your condition would've led to excessive kidney damage and poisoning of your entire body. It would've required an immediate transfer to Konohagakure Hospital which, I assume, Lady Heiress doesn't want." the medical ninja bowed his head slightly to Mana informing the girl that she had some moderate respectful standing with the local folk, likely due to being a friend of their elite figure. The man then left to attend other patients and inform of the updates on Mana's condition</p><p>Mana relaxed and closed her eyes, laying her head down and preparing to meditate a bit, maybe find out if her chakra system and her body didn't take any damage the medical ninja missed. After all, her Ego stage of meditation allowed her to examine her body perfectly, seeing any damage it has sustained, the state of her chakra network etc. If only she could reach the space entity she once spoke to in her own mind, she'd have a direct contact with her own body, almost like it was a separate entity.</p><p>Mana continued to meditate and look for wounds in her body but there didn't appear to be anything notable to spot. She may have missed some minor aching spots or healing small-time wounds but even while her careless glance over wouldn't pick them up, they weren't nearly notable enough to care about them.</p><p>Only a moment after her meditation concluded did Mana remember what knocked her out in the first place – a bounty hunter with a skill rank high enough to go after Jounin and Chuunin. Someone who toyed with them and didn't even bother acting like a real assassin. He was the first to underestimate Mana and not regret it in the end, he was so powerful and experienced that even while underestimating Mana's skill he still beat her. Mana clutched her fists together but then relaxed – the Yamanaka medical ninja spoke of Kiyomi as if she was still alive – that meant all was OK.</p><p>Being the strongest meant little to Mana. She didn't care if she lost a fight or was not the strongest ninja around. She had almost no pride in her power and carried no ill feelings to those that bested her in battle and yet she felt pathetic recalling that encounter with the steel-faced bounty hunter. Whatever his mask was made of, whatever the exact level of skill the man possessed, he was certainly beyond anything Mana had seen before, save some exceptions that would've applied to any powerful ninja. He was capable of matching high ranking ninja and able to accurately calculate and show just the amount of strength and speed needed to best his opponent. It felt painful having lost to him, not because he was stronger but because Mana failed to protect her friend once again. Why was it that she only managed to surpass her own limits once her friends died, why were revenge and rage her strongest motivators?</p><p>Kiyomi walked into the ward pushing the door rudely with her shoulder and leaping up to Mana with a single bound. Mana's body braced for impact with her excited friend but then Kiyomi just stopped right up to the magician's face. Kiyomi just grinned.</p><p>"Happy to see you're OK!" she declared, "Welcome to the Yamanaka Resort!"</p><p>"I feel kind of dirty..." Mana admitted politely, "It's not the amount of luxury I am used to or deserve."</p><p>"Oh, shut it!" Kiyomi laughed out, "Don't even go to that "I'm just a clanless ninja, no one important" bullcrap, you're my friend, that amounts to something, right?"</p><p>"I guess, are you OK? I assume you've beaten that bounty hunter? If so it makes for a pretty interesting story." the magician desired to know.</p><p>"Hell no, that man was on a whole other world, not quite Hanasaku or Sannin level but way above my or your pay grade. I remembered what you told me – all that talk about your new way." Kiyomi scratched her elbow nervously, it was likely that she also felt some moderate embarrassment over losing to that hunter, even if he was immeasurably more experienced and stronger than the two put together and elevated by the nth degree.</p><p>"My way?" Mana looked surprised, she viewed Kiyomi as someone who would've never agreed to make her opponent think they've won, she was someone much more likely to just overpower them and be done with it. The blonde was a kunoichi with a very prevalent sense of justice after all.</p><p>"Yeah, you know, when you beat your opponent by letting them win on your conditions. I paid the bounty hunter off." Kiyomi admitted looking even more embarrassed by how that ended up. To someone who took pride in the might of justice eradicating villainy and killing the scumbags alike to those that killed her brother, such outcome must've been worse than death.</p><p>Mana tried moving up and hugging Kiyomi. "It's OK, you found out what motivates your enemy and you used it to beat them while making it seem like they've won. That's being charismatic for you, that's how you'll have to solve situations as a clan leader in the future. You beat that man, you hold power over him now – money. He acted on your terms. Is that not the same as catching him in one of your Yamanaka techniques?"</p><p>"Wow, you're crafty, you should be a saleswoman or something... Seriously, I bet you can make a surrender sound like a dominating victory." Kiyomi appeared to cheer up somewhat, even if it was more because of Mana's personality than improving her thoughts of how the bounty hunter in her way was beaten.</p><p>"So, for how long was I out?" Mana asked. She wanted to know everything she had missed.</p><p>"A couple of days, my chakra returned by now so yours must've as well. We're paying the bounty hunter tonight, he's a pricey little shit, asked for fifty billion ryo. Could buy a whole bag of black medical pills for that much, or a pretty good house." Kiyomi coldly explained.</p><p>"Oh..." Mana looked away still feeling bad herself that she was so weak that her friend had to resort paying the enemy off. Heroes weren't like that, while Mana would've been completely fine with paying a cutthroat off to avoid hurting someone when her friends had to do the same it was somehow different. It felt like it was all Mana's fault. It was just how Mana was – everything always seemed like her fault and like she could've done something to change it. Truth be told she couldn't have known how fast and strong and skilled the assassin was – it was quite possible that he'd have infiltrated Konoha and killed Kiyomi in her own home as well. His skill implied he had the capacity to do so.</p><p>"It's fine, some of my more pompous clansmen spend more per single weekend spent here. Once my uncle gambled away ten times more and got into trouble with the clan elders. Yamanaka are one of the most influential and powerful clans in Konoha – we can handle paying a single expensive cutthroat. I mean if one of us in another village, without access to the clan's funds could do it – it won't even be a mark on our budget, I guess." Kiyomi tried mending Mana's foolish guilt.</p><p>"So you're not gonna try to take him out or anything?" Mana asked surprised.</p><p>"Nah, I also thought that catching him would be the right idea but... The clan elders even wanted to give him a counter-offer to off whoever hired him. Either way, he's skilled enough to make paying him the better option to do. I don't want the ire of someone like him hanging over my head – better to pay and be done with it." Kiyomi admitted once again feeling really dirty about the whole deal. Paying the bounty hunter seemed like a really dirty and cheap thing to do, even when it was anything but cheap in a more common meaning of the word.</p><p>"Oh, also your clothes were ruined, we have some of ours here, it's not quite what you wear but... No one really wears what you wear so... You know... Don't go all diva on us..." Kiyomi laughed out, Mana looked aside and saw a lovely light blue kimono with depictions of a lovely lakeside with pink lotuses and cherry petals. Mana knew that it would render her tricky stage magician maneuvers useless as the girly kimonos had no pockets in general and they were too loose to fit any of the hidden compartments from her uniform in it. She'd just be made more reliant on her ninjutsu and genjutsu in battle as the kimonos were also not too comfortable to fight in.</p><p>"Sometimes I ponder why our clothes are so shitty to fight in when at least one-third of ninja are female." Mana sighed, "It's really beautiful though."</p><p>"True, it was made to be beautiful though so... Try to use it for its intended purpose, you shouldn't have a problem with that, despite your chewy cucumber-cheeks you're a pretty sightly girl." Kiyomi sarcastically tried to bite Mana while pinching her cheeks again. At this point, Mana didn't even get riled up as she had gotten used to her cheeks being called "cucumber-cheeks" whatever that meant in Kiyomi's mind.</p><p>"So have you found out who actually wants you dead?" Mana wondered just due to curiosity, after all, in the resort her friend was totally safe. Or at least was supposed to be – no one would've dared to invade the resort of a clan notorious for their techniques that made them take over one's mind at the speed of thought.</p><p>"We've got a couple of possible contenders. One of them is Yamanaka Tenma, a nukenin that hates our clan. He's a real handful though, extremely dangerous so it's unlikely I'll even be involved when they go after him... We're not sure if he's in Kirigakure currently but he's a nukenin so he could be wherever he goddamn wants. Makes more sense than accusing an important village figure too." Kiyomi shrugged</p><p>"Could he have paid that much though? Sounds like a lot for a nukenin..." Mana faded into thoughts.</p><p>"The elders said that Tenma was capable of mental control far beyond the Yamanaka level. He has cybernetic augmentations and surgeries implanting his brain with chakra signal emitters that makes him able to control other people like their brains were his own. He was working on some forbidden experiments for years and he had the whole clan and the village fooled by just playing a game of puppets with the officials watching over him. I think for someone like that controlling rich settlement landlord would be as easy as peeing on two fingers, the elders share that thought... Maybe not with the same metaphor but... You get the idea..." Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Wow... I never would've imagined that someone like that could've existed! Makes me wonder just what kind of world is still unexplored out there..." Mana looked through the window and admired the jolly Yamanaka Resort in a festive mood.</p><p>"One more reason to rank up to Chuunin and get access to the Bingo Book, huh? Everyone with a bounty on their head at your fingertips... Just imagine that." Kiyomi dreamingly looked away, sharing Mana's dreamy attitude.</p><p>"Wait, so that's why you're so hyped about ranking up?" Mana suddenly returned to reality, "You wish to have access to the Bingo Book to treat it as a kill-list?"</p><p>Kiyomi shook her head, "Don't be stupid, Bingo Book has both good and bad people in it. Criminals put bounties on village ninja, people they fear and village officials put bounties on scum. I'm only after the scum. Slay-Evil-Immediately doesn't sound that bad to me."</p><p>"Slay-Evil-Immediately? That's the principle hunter-nin used centuries ago during the war. When prisons were overstuffed and the war made it difficult to give people courts and properly execute justice. It was a dull principle of the time – Aku-Soku-Zan." Mana tried reminding her friend of the origins of the principle, she was horrified that her friend strived to go to such extremes in her hunt for justice. She wasn't really sure which hurt more – the fact that Kiyomi was striving for Aku-Soku-Zan or that she was perfectly within the limits of the law to do so...</p><p>Kiyomi rubbed her temples and shook her head with a raging headache, "Can we continue this existential debate some other time? When you feel better I'd like for us to chill out, have some fun. Visit the resort and really let it rip, then maybe tear through the beach. These may be our last childish days, plus we don't get to just kick back and relax too often." she suggested.</p><p>"Childhood died long ago... I don't think I was ever a child after tying up the headband protector and wearing the Konoha insignia, despite what people tell me." Mana lowered her head recalling her earliest days and how difficult they were, even if the present was infinitely more so, now Mana was more experienced and stronger. She had seen plenty of the ninja life so it was merely a matter of adapting. "Though visiting the resort and experiencing your clan's culture is too alluring to refuse." she then bowed her head in gratitude for the offer.</p><p>Kiyomi smiled, happy to see her friend so hyped to experience her clan's culture and see the rich and relaxing Yamanaka Resort which was the resting ground of choice for anyone able to access it.</p><p>"Great, now I just need to take part in meeting that bounty hunter, I assume he'd not show himself unless he sees me." Kiyomi breathed in uneasily, she was clearly a bit intimidated by the upcoming challenge.</p><p>"Oh, I would like to participate as well. I want to see that man again, see what makes him so strong so I could match his strength if I ever had to protect anyone from his like again. Also, I'd really feel bad about it if I was not there to help out, even if I'd be completely out of my league" Mana smiled politely asking her friend who just shrugged.</p><p>"Fine, that's in the evening though, what do you say about some training until it's time? There are a bunch of dojos that are open and all ours – very few come here for the training facilities anyways..." Kiyomi suggested to which Mana agreed, getting up and slipping into the lovely and slick silky attire she was given. The magician's hands froze for a moment while she was trying up the belt but Kiyomi butt in to remind her that she'd be given a gi at the dojo and needn't worry about the clothing.</p><p>"This is a holiday resort after all – if you need more clothes you can always buy any you like." the Yamanaka stretched out like she was trying to hug the entire world. A busy day of training awaited Mana right after she woke up, granted she'd not have woken up if she hadn't been completely recovered. She still felt a bit rusty and aching on the sides but a ninja had no luxury to slack about. She was just shown how little she meant in this world, it was Mana's duty to catch up and tell the world otherwise!</p>
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<a name="section0240"><h2>240. Making Senpai Notice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The dojo owner lifted his arm up preparing to call the beginning of a sparring session. Usually, Mana would've politely refused from a sparring session but after her experiences in the quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss she had learned to appreciate its value, as well as the value of martial arts in general. Before Mana thought of it only as an art of hurting people – something completely opposite to her ideals. It took a lot of hardship to change that around.</p><p>The magician prepared for a tough battle – Kiyomi was a fellow genin who was actually above the rank she was in. Apparently she was supposed to have already participated in the Chuunin Exams but missed them due to unfortunate circumstances. That all by itself made it completely impossible for Mana to underestimate her friend's abilities. The whole time the blonde held that precious role of Mana's elder, almost like an older sister or an upperclassman, in a way.</p><p>True, this was not an actual one on one battle, the two merely wanted to train which meant that they won't be trying to fight each other – they'll just be using moves and abilities that they wanted to try out, compare or perfect. That was much different from how real battles went. Still, it would give Mana a rough idea as to where exactly she stood in comparison to other stronger genin which made her feel a bit intimidated. The magician was rarely excited by a challenge, she was more of the kind to feel fear of challenge and tackle them with their best, respecting it as something of great importance and not some sort of a game.</p><p>Once the dojo owner lowered his hand declaring the beginning of the sparring session Mana and Kiyomi bowed to each other before making an honorable hand seal of confrontation which symbolled that they've challenged each other to battle they proceeded to go through hand seals. Mana completed her set the first by a significant margin – that made the magician's intimidation fade a little bit, she began realizing that she won't be a weak underdog in this battle completely overshadowed in every way by her superior by age and experience.</p><p>The magician removed a blunted blade which the dojo used for training and pointed it at Kiyomi. Despite the fact that the blade was made of rubber, unless it was specially insulated through specific chakra sealing techniques it couldn't at all insulate lightning techniques. Knowing that quite well Mana pointed it at her friend who was still working on her set of hand seals. The entire exchange of techniques would've happened almost instantly and completely unseen to a neutral civilian bystander but to Mana, each fraction of the millisecond felt like entire minutes.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" she shouted out channeling lightning chakra through the rubber blunted kunai that fired off a beam of lightning chakra aiming to shock and paralyze her opponent. While it wouldn't have left much lasting damage to an actual ninja, the pain and paralyzing properties of lightning chakra would've given Mana time to properly set up her following attacks.</p><p>The beam extended on and on, moving just a tad bit slower than natural lightning but Mana's worried eyes began feeling a bit bored by seeing the crackling sparks extend out from the beam as it extended towards her friend.</p><p>"Earth Style: Reverse Hacksaw!" Kiyomi finally finished her technique right before the beam of lightning hit her right in the chest, such an outcome would've burnt right through anyone without the ability to control chakra like a civilian, unless Mana specifically weakened the technique. Knowing the skill level of her opponent the magician pulled no punches.</p><p>Kiyomi leaned down, the beam crept up closer and closer until to Mana it seemed it was almost touching her gi. The blonde's palms smacked into the ground erecting man-sized rock pillars from the ground that lined up and headed towards Mana. The very first pillar blocked Mana's beam breaking it down completely. The ball was now in Mana's court and understanding that as well as wasting no time for being surprised that her friend successfully protected herself from Mana's attack, breaking her ninjutsu like it was a brittle breadstick, the younger kunoichi prepared her own response.</p><p>Going through a pair of hand seals in a flash, Mana began turning around her axis like a ballet dancer making a graceful and complicated pirouette. "Rebellious Twist Jutsu!" Mana shouted out as the wind vortex generating around her from Wind Chakra got hit by the sharp-looking stone pillars that tore through the dojo ground but instead of busting through and hitting Mana the two ninjutsu counteracted each other for a moment before the stone actually broke through Mana's technique, surprising the magician.</p><p>A moderate painful blast to the chest sent Mana sliding back and almost hitting the back wall of the dojo. The collision of her own protective Wind Style technique and Kiyomi's ninjutsu weakened and shattered the stone a fair amount making the hit only sound and look strong but the actual ground shattered upon impact before leaving much lasting damage. Only a small red swelling was left that would soon disappear without a reminder of Kiyomi's impressive ninjutsu showing.</p><p>Kiyomi went through a bunch of hand seals, ready to hit Mana with another ninjutsu technique but the magician prepared her own response weaving a single hand seal many times faster than her older peer could do the same.</p><p>"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" Mana chanted out the name of her technique releasing a strong gust of wind at Kiyomi that would've knocked a person off their feet or propelled any projectiles or paper tags at the opponent as well as hitting them with enough violent wind force to keep them rooted to the ground for things to come.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi shouted out as she herself concluded the hand seals to her technique, once again, just before Mana's picking up speed and strength Wind Release technique rushed at the blonde counteracting Mana's technique, not only that but completely overwhelming it and sending a double powered gust back at the magician as if the blast of wind absorbed the speed behind Mana's own technique using it to accelerate itself.</p><p>Mana grinned, she had planned this and was ready for it, her hands flashed through a pair of hand seals before the overwhelming gust of wind reached her blasting her through the back of the building and toppling it. "Spellword Jutsu!" she shouted out before gathering air into her lungs and blowing it out in large force, strong enough to blast an enemy back and overwhelm him completely, maybe even crack a few ribs through wind pressure alone. The techniques collided right up close to Mana and at first, the magician's gust pushed Kiyomi's back but then both techniques erupted into a violent outburst of the windy eruption and sent both kunoichi on their backs and slamming into the respective dojo walls.</p><p>"Your ninjutsu skills are superior to mine..." Mana smiled admitting it through a little bit of broken pride in her chest. The young kunoichi knew that her teammate had already known in but she wished to express her decision to move on to another area of expertise as there was nothing to gain from continuing to launch ninjutsu nukes at each other.</p><p>"Not entirely true..." Kiyomi shouted out scratching her aching back and coughing out dust and air that filled her lungs after the violent windblast. "The strength of my techniques, as well as their overall mastery, is greater on my side. However, you can launch them much faster as well as in greater numbers – you've launched two times more jutsu than me and we both seem to be in the same state. Our similar degree of exhaustion suggests that your much higher chakra level allows you to fire off a bunch of weaker techniques without bothering much about how much chakra they take."</p><p>Mana's smile disappeared and was substituted by a respectful expression of surprise. Kiyomi truly had more experience and a much more skilled eye to analyze a battle with. That didn't mean that she was smarter than Mana or a more skilled strategist, necessarily, it merely meant that the Yamanaka could focus better on the things she was supposed to notice first. The magician had to admit that she had noticed those things as well, she merely didn't focus on them, choosing to single out the fact that Kiyomi's jutsu were simply stronger.</p><p>"I must admit, I've never heard of your jutsu. Great Breakthrough is a very common Wind Release technique, it's simple to use as well, don't you know it?" Kiyomi scratched the back of her head.</p><p>"I'm pretty sure I've told you that already when we first met, I don't like using someone else's techniques. I invent all of my own techniques and build up my arsenal myself. A good entertainer doesn't rip off the techniques of other people! That still hasn't changed about me." Mana smiled while rubbing her nose with her index finger. Her own personal principles influencing so much of how she fought embarrassed her a bit.</p><p>"That's weird... You should just read up some textbooks and learn some generic elemental release techniques." Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"Nah, I'm fine like this. It has its own advantages – no one knows my techniques when I invent them all by myself, they may be weaker but they also teach me a lot about the concepts of ninjutsu and genjutsu. Practicing and making new techniques teach a whole lot more than some book would – I'd know. I've read most of them." Mana laughed out.</p><p>Kiyomi answered Mana's smile before beginning to go through a bunch of hand seals. She couldn't believe that with all of Mana's impressive hand seal weaving speed built up from specific training as well as her skill of being an impressive stage magician with second to none sleight of hand she still set up her technique first. The younger kunoichi must've lowered her guard and she'd pay for it!</p><p>"Genjutsu: Haze!" Kiyomi shouted out as a bloom of flower petals carried by a gust of wind that appeared from out of nowhere spun around the dojo's inner fighting mat. Mana's eyes began greying out as both her irises and her pupils became dulled out and grey. A flowery clone of Kiyomi's separated from the kunoichi's figure and leaped at the magician, exploding into a blast of cherry blossom petals upon contacting with the magician.</p><p>Kiyomi almost shrieked out in the glee of catching her fellow kunoichi off her guard but as the petals cleared something felt odd. Mana's frame was leaning back like some sort of a malevolent spirit or a serial killer from horror movies, the girl's body then snapped back snapping her spine and exploded into a burst of light that blinded Kiyomi.</p><p>"What? Am I the one under illusion!?" she shouted out in disbelief after seeing clones of Mana come out from the ray of light that appeared to create a glowing portal on the mat. Kiyomi wanted to prepare to dispel the technique but she knew that often times if completely ignored the illusions may cause their negative effects after the illusion successfully goes its course. For example, once the created clones hit their target or created weapons hit the opponent, just because they are illusionary, it doesn't mean that these attacks should be ignored for who knew what sort of negative mental effects they could've had...</p><p>Kiyomi jumped up kicking one of the clones into two pieces with a tornado kick and then rapidly dispatching multiple more through awesome footwork and sharp and precise elbow, knee and fist work. A single connecting hit split the clones into bursts of light but even as the Yamanaka heiress dispatched of the clones quite fast she wasn't anywhere near fast enough – those clones appeared from the glowing hole in the ground faster than she killed them. At that point the Yamanaka decided to take the risk, she placed her hands in a hand seal position and let her chakra flow faster and more rapidly, burning more of it in the process.</p><p>"Dispel!" she yelled out spending a bit of chakra to cancel out the illusion but much to her surprise the clones continued to come at her. When the clones hit her it didn't hurt, but her lungs strangely faltered as if it did – her breathing became erratic which was slowly choking the Yamanaka. How could dispelling a genjutsu not work? Unless Mana didn't actually target her chakra flow... She must've... To achieve such effects she must've targeted her brain specifically, hitting certain brain centers to emulate these effects.</p><p>"Dispel!" Kiyomi shouted out blasting another outburst of chakra straight at her brain's vision center. Being a genjutsu expert herself she knew fairly well of the brain centers and their locations. Had she not had the knowledge of genjutsu she possessed, dispelling this illusion would've been close to impossible.</p><p>Finally, the hole in the ground disappeared and all of the clones faded out. Only a smiling image of Mana holding the rubber blade to Kiyomi's neck was left. As expected, the magician's illusionary skills surpassed those of Kiyomi's by far. Whereas Kiyomi's ninjutsu was superior to Mana's in power and skill, as well as the experience of their use, genjutsu was an area where Mana had few equals, not only amongst genin but amongst older ninja as well. The illusionary craft was not a popular one and very few dabbled in it. Even the more famed village's genjutsu experts could only use illusions categorized at B-Rank at most, some nukenin could surpass that. Soon Mana would hit the wall that the strongest illusionary ninja of Konoha stopped at and it impressed the Yamanaka greatly.</p><p>"Wow, my illusions are no good at all..." Mana worked herself up putting her blade away. "So far I've used them on you and Hokage-sensei and yet both of you broke out of them." she got distressed over it.</p><p>"Heh, well, I have to say I wasted... More chakra than I should've trying. As far as Hanasaku-sensei is concerned - I'm not even sure she has a limit of chakra to hit at all. That was amazing – you caught me in an illusion before I could even initiate my own illusion giving yourself more time to act on me while I was out of it. Your genjutsu expertise is seriously gonna carry you through those Chuunin Exams, I'm not even kidding." Kiyomi complimented her teammate. The blonde was a fairly decent illusion user herself so she knew just how far ahead Mana's skills were.</p><p>"Really? Guess that makes up for you beating me at ninjutsu..." Mana smiled shyly blushing over the compliment.</p><p>"Seriously, I couldn't even see your hands move and do the illusion!" Kiyomi continued to obsess over the exchange of techniques. She was just so dumbstruck that Mana hit her with an illusion without seemingly moving.</p><p>"That's because I used one-handed seals, one of my hands was crossed under the other, that allowed me to cover up my already fast hand seals..." Mana revealed the secret by locking her hands up just as she held them before the exchange happened. Finally, Kiyomi could put together what had happened.</p><p>Suddenly the laughter of the two kunoichi was broken – Kiyomi's elbow strike whizzed right up next to Mana's cheek opening up a strong gash. Such a blow, if uncontrolled could've caused violent earthquakes, just the air beside them could've created entire tornadoes and the shockwave from them could've been felt at the other side of the world. Yet Kiyomi perfectly contained the chakra inside the hit and only meant to transfer it to Mana, as a ninja willing to throw such strikes around must. That was a close call.</p><p>Kiyomi followed it up with a blindingly fast flurry of strikes, Mana's head and upper body moved equally as fast. Both Kiyomi's limbs and Mana's upper body began blurring and disappearing from sight to the dojo owner who continued to observe the battle. He had little time or reason to look surprised – he had seen much older and more powerful ninja going at it, after all.</p><p>Soon Kiyomi's legs joined the fray. Mana could dodge them – the evasive training by Kouta as well as deflection training with Meiko, with the added bonus of martial arts training of the Sun Disc arena, allowed Mana to avoid every single attack no matter how skilled and fast it was. However, she was so taxed, so immensely troubled by Kiyomi's offensive pressure that she had no hopes of responding. The blonde was simply stronger and faster physically and while Mana could easily deflect or evade a strike she couldn't counterattack – it was a deadlock.</p><p>Kiyomi kept on striking, her strikes either only hit thin air, or were gently pushed away from their intended targets by Mana's own palms or feet, or were caught or blocked. Blocking Kiyomi hurt – even through chakra augmentations so Mana tried not to do it. The blonde was seriously insanely strong behind those lightning fast strikes, she hit at least five times faster than the fastest person in the Sun Disc arena, she also appeared to have some taijutsu training giving her decent martial arts background. Enough to keep Mana busy and unable to respond.</p><p>Finally, Kiyomi grabbed the collar of Mana's gi attempting to slam her friend to the ground and shove a fist close to her face. This slow manner of attack allowed Mana to go through a pair of hand seals propelling her palms down and shooting a stream of wind chakra that blew Mana up into the air and Kiyomi down on her butt.</p><p>"Twist of Fate Jutsu!" Mana chanted out before kicking off the ceiling so that she didn't hit her head into it and landing on her feet.</p><p>Kiyomi stood up, Mana turned around and the two approached each other. They made the seal of reconciliation to signal the end of a sparring session. No one really beat anyone but now they knew the extent of each other's abilities first hand, they knew where they were compared to the other which was an invaluable experience. Knowing that she was no weak link compared to Kiyomi made Mana's own self-confidence bloom. She was beginning to believe that she would never be the weak link of a team again, she'd never need saving and her peaceful intent would never again cause her team's downfall or any of her friends to get hurt.</p><p>"You're a better hand to hand fighter, Kiyomi..." Mana admitted.</p><p>"Maybe, still, I couldn't hit you once. That's some weird style and some pretty slick moves!" Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>"Still, my physical style requires counterattack, exploiting openings given or created. You gave me some, I created more, but you were too strong and fast to exploit them. If we were to fight hand to hand we'd be fighting forever – either you'd tire trying to hit me, or I'd tire evading causing the first to tire to lose." Mana shrugged.</p><p>Kiyomi weighed her hands down and bent up to her knees as her sweat began dripping on the ground excessively.</p><p>"Wow... Speaking of exhaustion! Wanna go grab something to eat? It seems this sparring session wore me out!" Kiyomi declared, looking surprised that Mana didn't wheeze anywhere near like that.</p><p>"The illusion you were in made you swing at thin air, you were not fighting just in your mind. All the effort you put into it got transferred through your body and mind which is why you're so exhausted." Mana explained to which Kiyomi only shrugged and nodded. The two friends rushed off to the showers before heading to get something to eat. The evening was approaching rapidly and it would definitely not be a pleasant one for either of the two...</p>
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<a name="section0241"><h2>241. The Night On The Rooftops</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Wow you really don't eat that much, do you?" Kiyomi grinned at Mana while the two slowly advanced towards the old Yamanaka mansion where the meeting for the money that was promised the bounty hunter was supposed to take place.</p><p>"I guess not, I was pretty famished too, haven't eaten anything for days, I needed that," Mana replied with a smile, she was used to just barely finishing a plate meant for one person, no matter how starving she thought she was or what giant animals she imagined being able to eat at those moments of weakness.</p><p>"It's kind of odd how you can even fight as good as you do, I mean ninja should probably be eating a whole lot given how strong they are" Kiyomi wondered about the relation behind the wonderous things ninja did and the number of calories that they consumed.</p><p>"Maybe, then again, I don't think chakra has anything to do with calories, it's just a force our universe has" Mana shrugged with almost utmost indifference.</p><p>"Wait, you said there were also ninja in that other universe you went to, what was that all about?" Kiyomi felt pretty curious about Mana's tale of her adventures in another universe, invaded by godlike people from yet another universe.</p><p>"I'm not sure, I think Sasuke-san said that our universe was special, he looked really surprised by the amount of chakra I had. Come to think of it he mentioned something about some fruit, I think that ninja on that universe are merely descendants of someone who took a bite of a chakra fruit, whereas our universe is overflowing with it which is why they were all so surprised by my chakra level." Mana did her best to recall the experience, strangely enough, it wasn't something she tried recalling that often. She kind of missed all the people she met on that adventure and thinking of what happened made her miss all of them even more, as a result, Mana just filtered it all out of her mind so that she wasn't reminded of that painful farewell.</p><p>"Hmmm... That's pretty weird." Kiyomi bellowed delving deep into her thoughts, trying to imagine a world as described by Mana. "I wonder if we got stronger if we went back there and ate some of that fruit?"</p><p>"I think every fruit is chakra fruit here. Just eat an ordinary apple or something..." Mana smiled.</p><p>"I think eating too many fruits is the problem as to why I'm feeling so heavy right now," Kiyomi complained tapping her full belly while breathing out her final easy breath.</p><p>Not too long after the view of the classical large Yamanaka mansion came into sight. Even from the ground level the ninja waiting for the bounty hunter could be seen. Most may have taken the presence of hooded ninja as an offensive gesture but truthfully it was a welcoming one. For a ninja to just wait around, out of the hiding was some of the most welcoming gesture they could've shown the bounty hunter. Hell, he wouldn't have been too off to think of himself as an honored guest being greeted like that. Mana and Kiyomi quickly ran up the endless flights of stairs until they found the exit to the rooftop.</p><p>"Lady Heiress..." some Yamanaka bowed their heads a little or at least noted Kiyomi's presence. Some others still didn't even bother. Truth be told Kiyomi wasn't an actual princess or her inheritance of the clan's leadership wasn't completely confirmed. Even if she did inherit the reins of the clan, she could still surrender them by getting married, even if she didn't marry someone from the clan.</p><p>"Who is this young lady?" one of the hooded ninja inquired directing their eyes at Mana. The bright blue eyes of a Yamanaka clansman shined bright even through the evening chills and gloom. Many of the ninja had such rich and thick blonde hair that they didn't stay in the hoods and ran wild out of the cover.</p><p>"She's my teammate, she fought to protect me from this bounty hunter, she deserves to be here. Seeing to it that I'm OK is her personal interest, you see." Kiyomi pointed her chin at Mana who just bowed her head for the collected circle of Yamanaka ninja.</p><p>"I do not think little of your ability to protect your heiress' life, I just wish to be here and if possible do everything I can to help you fulfill your duty and protect my friend," Mana affirmed the ninja who just at first appeared quite interested but then ultimately didn't seem to make it too big of a deal.</p><p>"Well, the transaction would've transpired with or without heiress herself, seeing how her participation is optional, there's no harm in letting one more optional participant stick around." one of the folk noted.</p><p>The wait for the bounty hunter proved not as entertaining as anyone would've hoped, then again, it was not quite reasonable to assume that waiting for anything at all to happen was to be entertaining in the slightest. It felt a lot like waiting in an ambush – one of the more boring and seemingly pointless experiences that then excited one for a brief moment before returning to being boring and pointless.</p><p>"So, how do you find our resort, Konoha's Sorceress?" one of the Yamanaka hoods asked Mana while turning at her. The bright blue eyes and blonde hair of the man slipped out from under the shadow of the hood and from the pearl-like shine of the man's teeth, it could've been reasonably assumed that he was smiling.</p><p>"It's really astonishing. I am a big fan of classical architecture, therefore, it is all quite breathtaking. Not only it is very nicely preserved but also quite functional and appears to be flourishing even..." Mana replied politely, still uneasily looking around for the slightest sign that the bounty hunter was approaching.</p><p>"Oh, you're spoiling us. Are you familiar with the asphyxiating traditions of the Yamanaka politics or are you speaking from your heart?" the man asked again.</p><p>"Politics? I'm sorry, I have no political agenda, Sir. I am not of any clan so I have no favors to gain from yours." Mana politely turned her head sideways a couple of times. "I truly am loving these sights, the Yamanaka district is perhaps the second favorite of my seen classical sights, I would say that the Uchiha clan district slightly surpasses it but it may just be because of the circumstances of the visit. Worrying about the life of my friend may not be an appropriate situation to absorb all the heavenly sights this place has to offer"</p><p>The man laughed, "Do not tell the heiress that, she fosters a great distaste for the Uchiha. Can you really blame her though? Whenever one is in the company of one, they let everyone else know how graced they all are to be in their presence."</p><p>Kiyomi stepped in closer to the two squinting suspiciously, "Hey, are you two talking about me?"</p><p>"How not unlike someone else..." Mana tried to cheek her friend a little, it appeared that the man enjoyed that notion somewhat and gifted the magician with another smile.</p><p>While the conversation was about to continue the arm of a Yamanaka figure raised up all the way from its elbow signaling for total silence and attention. The figure then extended their hand and pointed at a blurry sight with its fingers. Far in the distance Mana could make out the blurry movements of a very fast and silent ninja who was so overly worried over being silent that he was not nearly as fast as he had the talent to be.</p><p>Finally, the bounty hunter appeared in all his glory, stuck to the ground with one hand on his blade. After a momentary scan of the environment, the bounty hunter noticed that no one was responding to his appearance which gave him an answer as to why exactly these ninja were rowed up thusly. He had been wondering for a long time as to which option it was – were they ready for battle, or business.</p><p>"The dark skinned girl is here too, I assume she is assurance that you will play nice, therefore I'll kill her in an instant if you misbehave. None of you will be fast enough to protect yourselves and her at the same time." the man uttered in a confident and masculine voice, one that Mana dreaded quite a sizeable amount.</p><p>"You assume a lot, bounty hunter, just be grateful that we decided to play nice," one of the hoods took a more aggressive step forward and towards the bounty hunter who straightened out in all of his size. Mana noticed a very peculiar visor device, almost like a pressure helmet that had various symbols and numbers appearing on it. The man didn't have anything like that before – it must've been a sensory device that allowed the bounty hunter to survey recorded chakra signatures if he didn't possess innate sensing abilities.</p><p>"Play? With what toys?" the bounty hunter laughed showing the man's ninja pouch in his hand. He moved completely unseen not only to Mana but as the magician noticed even other ninja present at the location which confused the magician even more. There had to be a decent handful of Chuunin and at least some Jounin or Special Jounin here. For them all to fail to pick up a single movement... It painted a very sad potential picture of a failed scuffle.</p><p>"Silence! You've demanded a price that was too large for our future heiress to carry on her own. After some discussing, we are ready to pay it, however. Please accept from us forty-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine and a half million ryo as the price you've named." another Yamanaka hood butt in before the younger hooded ninja could escalate a conflict further.</p><p>The attention of the bounty hunter turned at the more reasonable hooded man who was holding multiple suitcases filled with ryo.</p><p>"My deal was with the Yamanaka girl, she will be the one to pay me, even if the money is yours." the bounty hunter declared after a brief moment of silence.</p><p>"It makes no difference to me who delivers our end of the bargain to you." the Yamanaka relented moving away from the suitcases after stacking them on the ground. Kiyomi approached them and lifted them up, briefly examining them with her eyes and sizing their weight with her arms. She then approached the man and placed them on the ground, opening each one of them, one by one.</p><p>"You don't have to go through all of that. I'll trust that the Yamanaka clan won't risk tarnishing its just reputation and risk the streets of their resort being dyed red. You've got better things to do than to wage war against a bounty hunter like me." The man affirmed with a slow gesture of his hand.</p><p>"Nice fishbowl..." Kiyomi bit the man after standing up and turning her back, then walking back to Mana.</p><p>"Paid by your pocket money..." the bounty hunter nodded before tapping the firm helmet he wore. He then turned around and walked up to the edge of the roof, ready to take off.</p><p>"Wait!" the Yamanaka hood shouted out, he took the luxury of taking a couple of steps further, before the realization hit him the bounty hunter was looking him right in the eye with his hand holding the grip of his strange spiked saw-like sword.</p><p>"Unless you're willing to make further business, I recommend you to consider your words very carefully." the man grumped out.</p><p>"It is, actually..." the Yamanaka hood nodded before removing his hood, the long hair and another, even longer string of bright hair flowed free in the windy autumnal night. "We want you to kill Yamanaka Tenma!" the man declared.</p><p>"I see, so you finally figured out who is messing with your clan, huh? Well, sorry, I can't help you there..." the bounty hunter turned around, sounding genuinely sorry to have to decline the offer for another business opportunity.</p><p>"What? Why not? You're a bounty hunter, are you not? Tenma is a known nukenin of Konoha, we are willing to pay you his bounty twofold!" the Yamanaka ninja delved deeper.</p><p>"The creepy dude's got some really influential circle of friends, the sort I wouldn't be willing to mess with. Even if I managed to enter Tenma's nesting grounds with my mind intact. He is a man capable of shattering one's mind or taking it over without you even knowing it, he could be giving me orders without my knowledge. What makes you think that he hasn't planted a program within me to kill your heiress on sight? Right here and now? That is the man that is Yamanaka Tenma. If you really think he's the one you need – leave it alone. That's my professional advice, free of charge." then without listening in on the tirade of angered shouts and people yelling over one another the bounty hunter turned around and blurred before disappearing again. Mana couldn't make out his image reappearing even once for him to leap off of another building, his speed and presence was incredible. When he left it was like a giant boulder was off everyone's chest.</p><p>Kiyomi ground her teeth in anger. It must've pained her to not be able to dispatch of this bounty hunter. She didn't want to use him for her own gain, judging from what Mana saw blazing in the blonde's eyes it was like she'd rather kill Yamanaka Tenma with her own hands instead of sending someone who kills for money after him. Hunter-nin were different from bounty hunters, they hunted just those unfortunate enough to have their faces etched in the Bingo Book and only criminals, nukenin and such... Bounty hunters killed whoever had a sum of money on their head, common kill market or black one. A man such as this one didn't sit well with Kiyomi's moral principles.</p><p>"Well, at least this is over... You should stay here for a couple of days, let the heat loosen up somewhat. Once the rumor that even this guy refused to kill you spreads in the shadowy circles you'll be golden..." Mana tried cheering Kiyomi up.</p><p>"That's too bad, I'd like a bounty hunter face to punch, right about now." Kiyomi breathed out as well looking equally pissed off as she was relieved.</p><p>"Do not worry, Lady Heiress, we know the black market dealer that holds the bounty money. We'll make him an offer he can't refuse to remove that bounty or lie that it has already been claimed. We've got people looking at it even as we speak." One of the hooded figures assured Kiyomi. Mana was glad to hear that this matter would be resolved so effectively and so fast. Had her own head been evaluated so highly, she'd have no family to speak of to turn to, she'd be on her own... That was just one of many advantages of being of noble origins of a well-known and respected clan like the Yamanaka.</p><p>"Oh well, let's hid the beds then. Tomorrow will be a much brighter and more relaxing day now that this whole bounty hunter business is off our minds..." Kiyomi shrugged, pushing all of the hatred and unresolved anger issues into another compartment deep inside. "I know that you ran after me right after finding out of this bounty issue, but why did you want to see me before that?" she asked.</p><p>"Well... Wanted to see you, most of all" Mana smiled, "Then there were things I wanted to talk to you about, many of them we've discussed already such as our common team and all that. Then there were still things I wanted to talk about and work out. I'm glad we've had some time to train together before – it was also on the agenda."</p><p>"Well, we can talk about what would keep you awake at night on our way back. Now let's go, remembering dealing with that dirtbag makes me feel sick." Kiyomi playfully acted out a vomiting gesture before turning onto the passageway that led back to the main parts of the building.</p><p>"We can escort you back, Lady Heiress. If you wish one of us can even carry you two home in an instant. Our ninja know this area well enough to move at full speed even inside this resort, they won't be restrained by their lagging perceptions!" another one of the Yamanaka hoods butted in but Kiyomi shut him down with the gesture of her palm.</p><p>"There'll be no need for that. Mana and I have things to talk about and I have a feeling they are of the girly variety. We're just going to use these lovely layered with stone streets as they are meant to be used – by having a lovely and peaceful nightly stroll. We'll be perfectly fine..." Kiyomi calmed the hoods down.</p><p>"Be informed that there exist bounty hunters capable of sneaking into our resort, there are some that would sneak into even Konohagakure. While this place is the safest one you can be in – you won't be completely safe until we receive knowledge that the bounty that Yamanaka Tenma put on your head has been removed." One of the hoods warned the blonde before the two girls set out. The streets of the Yamanaka resort at night were almost too divine to believe. The autumnal chill was also possibly one of Mana's favorite weathers that only seldom reminded the two that it was slightly too chilly for their chosen clothing.</p><p>The short trip home would undoubtedly be enjoyed, especially when it was lit by the crystal clear shining crescent shape of the moon in the sky, as well as the local sources of illumination such as still open and glowing brightly with neon colors street vendors and various sources of relaxation, entertainment, and similar purposes. Was it not for the classical architecture the nightly Yamanaka resort would've reminded Mana so much of her own beloved Konoha streets at night.</p>
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<a name="section0242"><h2>242. We Are The Imarizu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana threw a stone allowing it to splash further away, as far as her normal strength allowed her to throw it. Kiyomi followed Mana's example but hers flew beyond view, far away into the distance to where neither of the girls could pick up the stone anymore.</p><p>"You could've done better than that..." Kiyomi teased Mana.</p><p>"I didn't throw it to fly, I threw it to disturb the water," Mana replied observing the uneasy waves washing away at the resort's sandy beach surface.</p><p>"This may not have been the best time to visit the beach," Kiyomi admitted and in a way she was right – the beach was closed and it even if it wasn't there'd be absolutely no allure in swimming around in such cold waters.</p><p>"Depends on what you are seeking to gain out of it. A beach is a great place for reflection any time of the day." Mana calmly replied.</p><p>"Still, we should visit some warmer time, take that third teammate with us too." Kiyomi shrugged and tossed another stone, trying to make it skip but the stone sunk like a brick after hitting the wavy surface.</p><p>"Yeah, Meiko would love the beach, she's a lover in general, loves most things actually..." Mana nodded her head with a restrained smile before picking up another stone, tossing it around in her hand and then letting it fall back down as she didn't want to throw it. The magician turned around and just began to walk across the beachside.</p><p>"You still haven't spoken to me about what you wanted to speak with me yesterday. We'll be heading home whenever we get news that this whole bounty business is over and we'll be absorbed into our training and missions and all that stuff so... What are you waiting for?" Kiyomi asked following after Mana.</p><p>"It's just... I'm not sure I need that question answered anymore." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Did you find out the answer yourself?" Kiyomi didn't let it go, strutting behind Mana.</p><p>"Well... Kind of. I figured out I don't need that question answered." Mana looked down uneasily, remembering her talk with Eiju after she came back.</p><p>"So it was just about hanging out with me, training and all that? You won't ask what you wanted to ask me?" Kiyomi looked up at Mana curiously.</p><p>"Well... I just met this young man, Kouta, in the mission I was in. We like each other but now that I've got my chakra control back I just... I don't know where things fit in anymore. I do stage magic, I'm a ninja... Can I really be a girlfriend too?" Mana finally admitted what she wanted to talk to Kiyomi about originally. Talking to Eiju sort of cleared it up for Mana but Kiyomi was in a much closer position to Mana's so it sort of made more sense to talk to her about it.</p><p>After all the blonde was a future possible clan heiress, a bride of another elite clan member, a ninja as well. It was quite possible that she had more on her plate to deal with than Mana. Eiju's answer was inspiring but Eiju was well... Eiju. He did things without thinking, future consequences may as well have been a tale to scare kids away from drinking. He couldn't have cared that much about balancing the many things he was, he acted out of pure impulse, all he was looking for was the pleasure and feeling happy. It didn't matter if such desires were within his grasp or if what he was doing would even grant those goals, doing, moving ahead was what mattered with him.</p><p>"Yeah, that sounds like something that'd trouble you..." Kiyomi lowered her own eyes, she was probably hoping for another question which intrigued Mana a bit more than what she herself was going through.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Mana asked turning around at Kiyomi.</p><p>"It's just..." Kiyomi began speaking but then cut it off.</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"I just thought you'd ask of something different but I guess you're... You." Kiyomi smiled.</p><p>"Oh... Well...That's the only person I know how to be..." Mana tried talking, speaking anything instead of nothing just to kill the awkwardness between the two but then she shook her head and just stopped trying to talk when nothing came up.</p><p>"No, it's... It's a question I never really asked myself." Kiyomi admitted. "I mean, I've always had plenty weight to juggle myself – when I was dating Eiju my clan was pissed beyond explanation. I was supposed to be the clan heiress, I was supposed to marry some big cheese suitor from like... Inuzuka clan or something." Kiyomi scratched the back of her head.</p><p>"Really? That whole princess forced to marry thing? That sounds pretty cliché," Mana smiled.</p><p>"Nah, it's not like I mind. Those Inuzuka guys were always pretty hot so it's not like I care if I have to marry one of them. After spending some time around Eiju I pretty much stopped believing in love, that guy just makes romance seem so... Down to Earth." Kiyomi took a stone and angrily hurled it past the horizon, speeding ahead like a bullet. "Before it looked to me like some magical thing but he treats it so casual. I don't really get intimidated by arranged marriages anymore after seeing that."</p><p>Mana laughed out loud, at first restrained, then her fit grew stronger and stronger still until the magician had to stop walking and bend over because her laugh actually began hurting her cheeks and make her run short of breath.</p><p>"It's just what Eiju told me..." Mana replied, "He made me realize the same thing he made you realize, he told me to not care and just go for it – if it didn't work just break it off."</p><p>Kiyomi smiled lyrically looking at the horizon and the setting Sun.</p><p>"You're a big girl, Mana. You can handle juggling those responsibilities and if you see you can't, you're the only person to accurately judge that. You're also the only one capable of recognizing if it's better to end a relationship. I think Eiju's a big asshole but in this case, he's kind of right" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Yeah, it's pretty much what I figured you might say. I didn't expect you to say the same things that Eiju told me but... I figured that chasing after you wanting to ask you about it was pretty stupid." Mana admitted picking up a stone and hurling it beyond the horizon just as Kiyomi had done before. She was a bit angered by having to admit that it was stupid, this time she wanted the stone to fly and keep flying. It was also certain kind of training of control. Spending just a little bit of chakra to augment her strength and teach her control as well as proper self-control.</p><p>"It's not stupid, honestly, I feel honored you decided to ask me that. There's nothing wrong in asking someone for advice or for help. You know, I was pretty pissed when I heard you left on a mission without asking me if I wanted to come!" Kiyomi lightened up the mood after the two kunoichi turned around and walked towards a stone staircase that led outside the beach and back to the resort.</p><p>"Well, we needed specifically a medical ninja, the rest of the roster just sort of... Built itself up." Mana shrugged.</p><p>The two spent some time wandering the resort districts, admiring the classical architecture, the busy streets and the pretty sights. All the lights and glowing signs. The stone paved streets, the classic buildings of wood, silk and only the most basic material and craftsmanship instead of modern technology. According to Kiyomi some of these buildings had not a single nail in them and used very few tools to build. None of them used more advanced tools like those more modern laser measurement tools used in building those taller buildings that were beginning to pop up in handfuls in pretty much every bigger village.</p><p>A ninja in standard Konoha uniform and headband landed right in front of Kiyomi kneeling in front of her. It startled both of the girls but only because of how calm, peaceful and safe they felt in the resort. There was only one person the kunoichi saw sneaking inside of it and even that one person was allowed to enter. Obviously, it didn't have complicated tracking and protective seals like Konoha but its sensory protection may have just been more advanced.</p><p>"Lady Heiress, the deed is done. The black market dealer that was to pay the bounty was convinced to pay it up to us and has canceled the deal. It is now completely safe for you to go back to the village whenever you wish to leave." the Yamanaka ninja reported.</p><p>"Do we know who put the bounty in the first place? Was it Yamanaka Tenma?" Kiyomi asked the man.</p><p>"The dealer said he didn't know. We read his mind and interrogated him thoroughly there were no memories of the man, it is possible that his mind was altered by a high ranking Yamanaka ninja. No other clan can mess with one's memories and wipe one's mind like that." The man answered without showing any reaction.</p><p>"So the only thing we know for sure is that someone wants you off the picture, someone who is a Yamanaka." Mana looked at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Yeah, at this point I pretty much got over the fact that my own blood wants me dead." Kiyomi clenched her fists and shook in anger before calming herself down with a deep sigh.</p><p>"It's a rogue, there is a reason why this scoundrel acted in secrecy, it's because his ambition is not shared, that much is sure, Lady Heiress! We won't stop looking into it until we find that man, be he from Kirigakure or Konoha we'll find him and make him face justice." the ninja rushed to assure Kiyomi.</p><p>"Oh well, I'm sure you guys will figure it out. Let's go back, Mana, we've no more business here plus I'm sure that Hanasaku-sensei will be gathering us all together soon. We've overstayed our welcome here, not literally." The blonde encouraged Mana while adding the last part to calm down the ninja who jumped up to butt in and assure the Yamanaka that she was very much welcome to stay for however long she wanted to.</p><p>Mana hesitantly followed Kiyomi back to the large building the two spent days at. It was a hotel-like establishment built to guest only the rich or the more elite visitors. It had countless Yamanaka ninja whizzing around non-stop. The two girls had decided to hit the showers as they had been training pretty intensely that morning, they made their way down to the dressing chambers, Mana was glad to hear that her friend was just as willing to engage in small-talk as she usually was.</p><p>"Look, I know my music taste isn't very popular one but..." Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Not popular? What's wrong with Konoha-Pop?" Mana stopped undressing for a moment just to peek at her friend.</p><p>"Wait, you like K-Pop? I thought you'd be more of a... You know, classical girl?" Kiyomi laughed out.</p><p>"Just because I take my magician act way too seriously doesn't mean I like classy things all the time. For your information, I like my popcorn smelling of only the most putrid butter whenever I go to the movies!" Mana shared a laugh with her friend.</p><p>"Can we stop agreeing on everything? Can you tell me that you at the very least hate Waru Kashisetsu, give me an excuse to claw your eyes out for once!" Kiyomi waited around for Mana to finish getting undressed.</p><p>"Sorry... If I did I'd drop dead and make my Tori-Chichi poster disown me." Mana made a guilty expression and followed her friend into the steamy shower room and the two entered the nearby shower cabins. Both gender shower rooms were split by large oaken walls separating them.</p><p>Mana began sniggering when Kiyomi suddenly broke down in a song in the middle of showering.</p><p>"Is this a test? I do know my Tori-Chichi!" Mana shouted out before joining in.</p><p>Right after the second chorus ended and the song was supposed to go sad Kiyomi's voice didn't join in. Mana chuckled at her victory outlasting her friend and knowing the lyrics better but then the deafening silence began feeling eerie. The magician peeked from her cabin and looked into the shower vapor that was all over the place. The shower rooms had specific seal marks on the ground that accumulated water vapor from hot showers much faster, it was one mean of combatting peeps.</p><p>Mana squinted her eyes looking into a specific floaty shape in the fog before she realized it was far too large to be in the female showering rooms. Quickly the magician swiped her towel and tied it on her. She suspected something really fishy. Mana took a leap on and looked into Kiyomi's showering cabin seeing nothing but a small blood stain being slowly washed away. The magician rushed out to the dressing room and quickly got halfway dressed, barely stopping for a second, before rushing off, following the faint trail of water that Kiyomi must've left behind.</p><p>Right after the magician opened the door leading out of the showering complex a fist greet her. Large and dark one but not fast enough to catch her off guard, the magician leaned to the right letting it slip and just barely scratch the pin that held her hair together letting it loose. Standing right in front of her was a tall and muscular man with peculiar red and gold gauntlets that had blade tips at the knuckles. A weapon like that obviously used chakra to keep those tips from breaking off and used shock absorbing seals to protect the man's own knuckles from those hard impacts.</p><p>Having found herself diagonally below the man's extended punch and right up in his face Mana launched her own counterattack smacking him right in his mask which looked like made of some sort of steel micro-chain alloy. Sort of like chainmail but the links were so small that they were like threads. Mana's chakra augmented palm strike tore a small section of the man's impressive and undoubtedly expensive mask off exposing the lower part of his face – namely his jaw.</p><p>The man had dark skin, much darker than even Mana's exotic tan making the magician stop for a moment. This skin tone was native mostly for people north to the Snow Country – the Land of Lightning and the Kumogakure. Why would a bounty hunter come here to kill someone without a bounty on their head, or did this guy just not get the memo?</p><p>Having landed the first strike and successfully cracked the man's lip open making his lower jaw bleed profusely Mana felt confident in her ability to save her friend but... She wasn't here. That realization made Mana's moves stiffen up – this man wasn't the sole assailant. Someone could've been carrying Kiyomi away this very moment but why? Why kidnap her instead of killing her there and now if they were associated with the bounty that was placed? There was something about this attack that didn't quite add up and that terrified Mana – she was in the absolute dark.</p><p>The man was surprisingly skilled, now that he had adapted to Mana's counterattack and the battle officially had set its pace he successfully evaded the magician's attempts to exploit her opening. He also quite persistently covered up her attempts to leave him behind and rush further on, right to where Kiyomi was. This man was insanely skilled at hand to hand, his fighting style was unlike what Mana had seen before – he solely used his arms and fought with jabs, hooks, and uppercuts that hurt the kunoichi from sheer air pressure around them by sucking air right from her lungs. Soon Mana found herself running out of air.</p><p>A painful jab right to her shoulder opening up a gash. Why did it hurt so much? Why did she feel so much warm blood running down her shoulder? These men either had such overwhelming chakra condensed and focused on their strikes that they broke through Mana's chakra augments without them offering much opposition. The blades on the knuckles cut right through her flesh and made her scream as they cracked the bones they touched. The pain completely took her over. Mana tried to adapt, she evaded a couple of quick kidney shots that'd left her bleeding out on the staircase leading to her friend.</p><p>Loud steel clanging sounds made fear tear through her chest and out in the open with steel claws, gripping at her throat and making her moves sloppy. She saw a pair of similarly dressed men swing over the staircases from the floor above kicking her down. Their kicks didn't feel nearly as hard but Mana still got taken down. She was outnumbered. There were three assailants now... Her shirt soaked with her blood began sticking to her skin and it was beginning to make avoiding the combined assaults difficult. The trio didn't relent, they kept on jabbing at different angles, trying to slip through Mana and get behind her so they could relentlessly beat her down with their bladed knuckles. The magician didn't let them. She got her thighs and shins sliced wide open a couple of times when she tried restraining the rushing assailants with her kicks.</p><p>Mana had to think of something, she had to fake an opening, she had to move ahead because she couldn't handle the game of attrition. Her heavy bleeding was beginning to cause blurry vision and dizziness. There was no augmenting herself to survive these blades as they sliced through any chakra augmentations. Maybe eventually someone would come to her aid, she needed to make noise! Mana jumped aside lining against the wall and forcing one of the fists to smash up a stack of dressing lockers. There were no clothes there – no one was here but the two of them at that time. They were too numerous and overwhelming to try and slip an illusion in. Maybe if she was fighting one of them but not all three at once...</p><p>Mana felt sharp and crippling pain in her back. She fell to her knees and glanced back. The fourth assailant stood behind her holding Kiyomi on his shoulders. The Yamanaka looked unconscious but she was also injured as her blood was running down the assailant's steel bodysuit.</p><p>Mana decided to go for it, fighting through the pain and feeling blood literally pouring from her backside where she was hit she ran through her hand seals but a strike intervened, it forced her to lean aside. The four surrounded her and didn't give her any time to do anything else but try to survive. They circled her like vultures and continued to jab and jab and jab at her. Mana moved to the best of her ability, she could possibly avoid one or two of them, now she was surrounded and injured, bleeding out. She couldn't see the angles of their strikes because her vision was betraying her. Mana couldn't remember when she stopped fighting back, all she could remember was the stickiness of her own blood all over the floor.</p><p>Mana's eyes wandered off to the back of the assailant who was carrying Kiyomi, she noticed something that breathed life into her. Something that forced her to remove all floodgates and rush chakra through her network, force it just to survive. Mana flipped over on her back and sat up, pointing at the attacker's back.</p><p>"That sword! Where did you get it, it's my friend's!" she slurred out with unclear and fading in and out tone. The assassin was clearly interested, he turned back and walked up to Mana.</p><p>"Let's go, we're too loud, we'll be spotted and taken out!" one of the others shouted out in a clear Kumogakure accent.</p><p>"You wish my blade? Have it..." the mysterious man spoke, his speech dulled and slightly silenced by his bodysuit as he pulled Shimo's Audra blade and pierced Mana's chest with it before her failing reflexes could react. Mana fell back, even if she could still feel a cold tear of irony run down her cheek after being cut down by her friend's blade, she couldn't feel the blade getting pulled out as her senses were beginning to fade, even her unusually large chakra pool was beginning to run dry having to keep her alive through such extensive injuries.</p><p>All Mana's fading consciousness could make out was footsteps, ninja rushing in and a violent clash. That and one word that was screamed out as final words or uttered in fear before the accumulating squads or ninja uttered before being struck down.</p><p>"Imarizu"</p>
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<a name="section0243"><h2>243. The Girl Who Was Just Kind Of There</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What's wrong, daughter? You are acting like you are ill today, not working at all..." Meiko's father noted.</p><p>The young kunoichi had heard him enter her workplace, it was quite impossible not to hear such a tall man wearing steel gauntlets, shoulder pads and boots enter. Especially so for a ninja. His voice did not sound angry or complaining, he was mostly concerned. Meiko folded the letter she held in her hands and put it down near her unfinished work. A bunch of screws, bolts and gear work, all disjointed and scattered across the workbench.</p><p>"I'm sorry, father. I'll get to work..." Meiko tried to act like she took her father's words as scorn, maybe that way she could have avoided talking about what her father really may have wanted to know?</p><p>"I did not mean it that way, daughter, I hold no grudge for a child who doesn't finish her old man's work. I am just dumbfounded by the lack of enthusiasm in it. You are working on a model of an entire tower operating on gear work. Eccentric clients like that used to get my little sparky all fired up!" Meiko's father energetically gestured accidentally taking down a pile of steel plates and tools. Caught in embarrassment the man quickly piled it all by pushing the mess back into a pile with his boot.</p><p>Meiko looked down and picked the folded letter up, extending her hand up and bending it over her own shoulder as if gesturing for her father to check the piece of paper out.</p><p>"This little speck of documentation is making my daughter upset!?" the man roared out like a lion angered by a too bold approach of one of his cubs. The tall blacksmith smashed his hands together blowing air through his palms.</p><p>"Fire Style: Ash Cinder!" he yelled out as small cinders came out from his lungs and focused into a burning stream of incineration that burnt the letter to a crisp and also singed Meiko's upper body from behind leaving a massive layer of ash on the younger blacksmith's body.</p><p>Meiko angrily shook her upper body shaking off the layer of cinder, she didn't even have to augment her body to withstand a pitiful D-Rank technique that was unpleasant at best. Her father always had a habit of reacting excessively even if he usually stroke the first impression of a cold and unemotional giant like a nail to the head. That trait was multiplied tenfold when his family was in question.</p><p>"That letter actually contained the problem!" Meiko vibrantly yelled at her father who just apologetically shook his hands trying to avoid his lovely redhead's wrath.</p><p>"Really? What problem troubles my little daughter? Who dares send problems to my child!?" the man snapped back beginning to look for the author of the letter as if the man was waiting in Meiko's workplace the whole time just waiting to leap out and reveal themselves like a villain in a bad spy movie.</p><p>"The Hokage... I mean... The Fifth Hokage" Meiko replied quickly remembering that shortly after her return the Hokage had changed. She had managed to miss the final days in office of the Fifth Hokage. That certainly put the temporal length of her journey in perspective.</p><p>"Are you leaving on another mission, my little rabbit in fox's colors?" the man shrugged trying to wrap his quite thick head around the possible problem that could've troubled his daughter so much that she stopped enjoying what usually breathed great enthusiasm into her.</p><p>"She asked me to meet her today. Said she wanted to interview me for a position in her team." Meiko explained with a degree of sadness that was very much unlike her.</p><p>"But munchkin, that is great! Are you perhaps not aware of the honor of being in the Team Hokage?!" the blacksmith charged at his daughter, grabbing her into an uncomfortable hold that would've undoubtedly squished even a strongman civilian into bloody mush but Meiko just uncomfortably squirmed until her head finally appeared from the mountain range of her father's muscle and then allowed herself to push herself out of her father's hold working from the head down.</p><p>"That's the thing..." Meiko returned to profound sadness once her feet landed firmly on the ground. "Team Hokage is always composed of the most talented and amazing students. Usually, genin that are in the Team Hokage are expected to either become Sannin or Hokage themselves at some point. I failed the Academy graduation exam once and I've been ditched from way too many teams to think of myself as Team Hokage material..."</p><p>"But do you not think that Lady Hokage is more perceptive than that? Maybe she sees the little fighter in you and acknowledges that?" Meiko's father lightly tapped Meiko's chest strong enough to punch a man's heart out but barely fazing his little daughter.</p><p>"I... What if the Fifth actually acknowledged Mana? I mean she was the one who finished off the Pirate Lord, not me. What if I'm just being judged unfairly just because of what our team has accomplished? After all, Mana was the one who put the team together, she schemed the entire adventure as an expression of gratitude for our services and us helping her out with her magic shows. I was just always... Kind of there. They don't give awards to people who were kind of there..." Meiko began digging deep into her insecurities.</p><p>The massive blacksmith tapped her shoulder with all the subtlety of an extinction level event and laughed out giving his daughter a thumb up.</p><p>"Even if you are just a "Was Kind of There" kid, you are the best "Was Kind of There" kid ever and you go show that woman that you are ready to just kind of be there wherever you are needed. You are late already! Go! Confront your fears, ask her about it. Don't just sit this out, do you think you'd have gotten where you are now if you sat your puny magician girl's mission out? Making a thousand shoddy spoons is better than to refuse your client at all, at least in the first case it makes you better at making spoons!" Meiko's father encouraged his daughter and for the first time in a while, the redhead's face was finally dyed with a beautiful and dreamy smile.</p><p>"For the record, I really didn't get that spoon thing you did... I do get that I'm late though!" Meiko laughed out before grabbing all of her scrolls needed to armor up and fight. She expected some sort of test to follow this invitation to a team, such was always the case and Meiko quite often failed tests of both the paper and practical variety.</p><hr/><p>"I'm sorry I am late!" Meiko shouted out landing right in the middle of the described training grounds that had a bunch of empty and barely standing buildings put together to emulate a settlement environment. The new Hokage has done his best to revamp the entire ancient system – revamping the training facilities was one of the first things he did as he was a firm believer in good training improving the mission success rate.</p><p>"Well, I was late as well. I've never really figured out how those weird new display clocks worked, things were much simpler with pointy arrows and numbers..." Hanasaku smiled in a monkey-ish smile mirroring that which Meiko often gave Mana. Seeing this simian smile made Meiko understand that maybe being picked by this woman was no mistake. Maybe she could just fit right in?</p><p>"So, Wakizashi Meiko, what say you if I picked you as the third member of my team?" the woman boldly declared pointing at the blacksmith who was still feeling uneasy about this whole spectacle.</p><p>"Ummm... Actually... I was really wondering if it was the right idea..." Meiko scratched the back of her head messing up her red short hair to where they looked even messier than she usually had them.</p><p>"No. Initially I was really wondering if it was the right idea!" Hanasaku declared clenching her index finger into a tight fist and giving her recruit a daring and expressively confident smile. "Then I realized just how similar you are to how I was as a child! Your grades in the Academy are terrible, so terrible that you'd never pass with the current revamped standards in mind. You've been booted out of multiple teams you were assigned to for various reasons. One of which being that a lot of sensei didn't want to work with a student so inept at chakra control."</p><p>Meiko jumped up and began to develop a certain puppy look to her eyes as she was desiring to sink into the ground after each belittling word coming out from her sensei's mouth.</p><p>"In many ways, you're more of a loser than I ever was! At least I had my honorable clan name to hide behind, you are from the "Wakizashi" family which has no ties to Konoha, it's not even in the archives!" the Hokage kept on going after which Meiko finally wanted to butt in.</p><p>"Actually... I made that name up, I was told that I was allowed to dismiss my clan name and make up a different last name when I had my license made. I am actually a Kirikuzu clan member." Meiko shyly explained rubbing her foot into the sticky dirt.</p><p>"Oh? I was not aware of that!" Hanasaku curiously exploded in surprise, the woman had no composure or restraint behind her emotions and seemingly just erupted like a volcano any time she wanted to emote something. To a woman like this, it would've been literally quite impossible to tell a lie.</p><p>"I just... I don't..." Meiko tried to put her feelings into words but then Hanasaku interrupted her.</p><p>"I have also dismissed my own heritage. I was nothing like my other clan peers!" Hanasaku cheered out seemingly viewing Meiko more like a good friend than her potential student. This matching detail made the strange student-mentor relation between the two fade entirely, at least on the Hanasaku front.</p><p>"Actually you kind of should've known that fact, it's sort of in my file." Meiko pouted, she wasn't that knowledgeable of bureaucracy or paperwork of any matter but she knew at least that much. "Wakizashi is so clearly a made up name, it is literally the name of a short blade..." the redhead suddenly realized that this strangely ignorant woman in front of her was in charge of the entire village. More so, people were praising her in the last year for the immense maturity and growth she had displayed while governing the village yet she couldn't see a fake name even if it was spelled out in front of her.</p><p>Hanasaku snickered cheerfully while apologetically rubbing the back of her head. "Yeah, I guess I didn't notice that..."</p><p>An awkward silence took over the training grounds before Hanasaku finished her smiling and chuckling and took a fighting stance.</p><p>"Now, before I accept you and add your name to the file officially, I'd like to test your abilities." The woman declared.</p><p>That was something Meiko feared, being exposed as being as inept as she felt being inside. Then again, judging from the highly physical stance of the woman she was a purely physical combatant. That was a front where Meiko excelled in and made herself look that less incompetent.</p><p>"Look... I think this is all some kind of mistake... You clearly are silly enough to make such a mess up and accidentally check a different name on the list." Meiko's fears were beginning to wrap around her throat but then Hanasaku just kept staring at her.</p><p>"Yeah, it's possible, that's why I'm testing you, that's how tests work – they test. You know, you're not that bright, in reality." Hanasaku snickered in a very unrestrained and monkey-like manner again.</p><p>"Coming from you that's rich..." the blacksmith thought to herself and pulled out a couple of seals from her back pocket. The young woman extended them and made a hand seal unsealing her armor pieces.</p><p>"I didn't have much time to get dressed, I was really late so hopefully you won't object if..." Meiko tried to explain but then she noticed that her possible future sensei was no longer there. Being involved in the field of physical combat Meiko knew both what that meant and how bad of a sign it was.</p><p>Meiko caught the fist of Hanasaku while slapping her shoulder guard. It was pure luck that the blacksmith even guessed the right position to block in – she merely deduced it was the most alluring opening to not exploit. Suddenly a gigantic air pressure shocked Meiko in her boots and blasted her away – the force behind Hanasaku's punch was immense! The redhead had thought she had caught the punch but the actual force behind it was so immense that it took greater time to be transferred.</p><p>Meiko felt the whizzing air in her ears, she felt weak and powerless as her chakra was burning away, like billions of small flames burning their brightest before going out. Her body managed to augment itself successfully to survive the rushing force but it cost her a great deal of her chakra reserves. Not that she was that good at carefully managing what she spent and what she kept, accurately putting just the necessary amount of chakra into each augmentation like really skilled ninja did.</p><p>Tight hands locked in on Meiko's throat and wrapped around her head. The blacksmith felt immense pressure pressing against her throat and from the top of her head as the clutch pressed on, was the woman trying to crush the whole planet or just her head!? The blacksmith wanted to scream out by how much force was put out by the Hokage – it was like the woman was really trying to kill her!</p><p>The blacksmith felt her consciousness slowly fading away, the air so high up was dense, the pressure from Hanasaku's clutch was enough to press the juice out from a diamond... Meiko would've screamed if she had enough air to do so in her lungs, or if there was anyone at all alive in this altitude to hear her. This crash will definitely kill her, definitely! Was this woman crazy!?</p><p>Then again... Those were always the odds. Mana survived these odds even as a civilian, she faced the Nine-Tailed Fox while being completely powerless, she faced the Pirate Lord while he was holding the entire Earth in his hands and was fully willing to crush it. Right after he had killed her friend like it was no big deal, right as he tried to kill everyone else... Meiko's hands were completely free to bend and make hand seals. The blacksmith shoved her other shoulder guard which was still in her hand back on and made a hand seal.</p><p>"C-Rank Seal: Release!" she shouted out but her words fell on deaf ears due to the rushing air. Her eyelids were becoming difficult, her head felt like it weighed ten billion tons and was dragging her to the bottom of the ocean. A powerful surge of chakra erupted from Meiko's shoulder pads from the sealing glyphs she had placed all over her armor. The chakra worked like a jet mechanism slowing down the fall completely – seeing how it opposed no force from Hanasaku's behalf, only the natural velocity of two objects falling down.</p><p>The crash felt more like falling out from bed than being driven down from high above by a crazy murderous woman trying to recruit Meiko into her team. The unleashed stream of chakra slowed down the fall to where crashing into the ground barely even mattered.</p><p>Hanasaku jumped back and released Meiko from the clutch, she looked like her shoulder had taken some damage but then a moment later any accidental injury she had sustained had disappeared. Meiko stood back on her feet and charged at the woman. Hanasaku didn't even try to defend herself. However, Meiko's attack was not gunning for her sensei – it was aimed at the pieces of her armor still laying around. She needed her weaponry, her seals to survive. She needed all of her skills, all of her craftsmanship just to survive!</p><p>Success! Meiko reattached her shin guard and quickly fastened it to hold. The redhead could feel her opponent's presence right behind her, she touched the shin guard and fired off a jet stream of chakra she usually used to fly her around like jet boots. Charging at a couple of remaining armor pieces Meiko extended her arm, she just needed to grab this and then glide up, give herself some time to suit up in the air!</p><p>Hanasaku's laughing image blurred in right in front of the armor piece but it was too late. The woman ruthlessly kicked Meiko up and piercing the sky again. The clouds in the sky exploded like a heavenly arrow would've just burst them away like troublesome pests when the redheaded girl blasted away and into the blue skies above. Meiko recovered halfway in the air, she clutched herself together and forced her feet behind her so she could redirect herself and go right down, swoop down and grab the necessary armor.</p><p>Now Hanasaku was toying around with Meiko – she was hitting with enough force to murder a genin tens of times over. She would've hit hard enough to blow up the whole planet with just a punch, nevertheless, she was clearly restraining herself still. The Fifth's speed was fluctuating and she was getting hundreds of times faster than the last time Meiko saw her with no visible strain. She was being as fast as she needed to be to make her visualized move a reality.</p><p>Finally! Meiko's desired armor piece was in her hand and the blacksmith steered up, desperately trying to flee into the sky where she could place the piece where it belonged. A firm clutch didn't let Meiko take off. Hanasaku slammed Meiko into the ground creating a small crater. Meiko could feel the taste of blood in her mouth, her vision was getting blurry and nausea was beginning to set in – her power was also steadily increasing. This woman lacked any semblance of control to her inhuman abilities. She was a monster. If Meiko had any brain matter left uncrushed in that head of hers she needed to give up and quit!</p><p>Meiko's vision finally returned, the girl realized that she was looking at her own bruised and bloody hand while she was writhing in a small crater of her possible sensei's making. More and more chakra was fading away with each augmentation desperately trying to keep Meiko alive. Training with Mana helped Meiko's chakra control somewhat but she only had about a third of her resources left. She wasted chakra just to survive, she had none to spare for actually attacking her opponent! More so, if she lost that same amount of chakra, the second third, she'd need the rest to stay alive! That was the necessary amount she couldn't spend and if she was hit by those ridiculous punches and kicks again, how would she not end up a bloody stain?</p><p>"Why don't you substitute?" Hanasaku asked almost mockingly, but also with a hint of curiosity. "I mean even a drop out of the Academy knows the Substitution Jutsu, you could've saved yourself a great beating if you used it at least once..."</p><p>Meiko didn't reply. She felt completely powerless and her insecurities were burning her up from the inside. If Meiko used that ninjutsu of the most primitive level and failed just like she botched the Transformation Jutsu in the Katabami Mines or how she botched the Art of Wall Climbing Jutsu in the desert ruins nearly getting Mana killed, how would the Fifth react? She'd not only cancel this test, she'd tell it to the current Hokage and demand that Meiko's license be terminated, Meiko would go back to the Academy again... Struggle with those stares of people making fun of a failure, making fun of someone who failed the graduation test, someone who failed at life and came back to the Academy...</p><p>She was better off just giving up...</p><p>Just give up...</p><p>That wasn't what she had agreed to do. That's not what her father told her to do! That's not what Hanasaku, Mana or anyone she had ever met and admired would do. Meiko shouted out in pain after she picked her tired body off the ground and met Hanasaku's stare.</p><p>She needs her armor back together...</p>
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<a name="section0244"><h2>244. The Limits Of One's Field Of Vision</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko stayed down, sprawled out in the crater she made after getting caught by her foot and slammed to the ground. Somewhere slightly farther away a weak and wobbly building collapsed. Those were mostly for show decorations of the training grounds and served no practical use and were not particularly considered as something of great quality.</p><p>The blacksmith wanted to simply rush for her armor again but she knew better. Her opponent had plenty of strength in her resources to multiply her speed and strength a hundredfold. For a while, the redhead had wondered as to how exactly Mana passed this test as she lacked physical prowess beyond her evasive and redirection skills and counter-attack based fighting style but now the answer was beginning to formulate in the girl's mind – Mana was crafty.</p><p>"Megaton Punch!" Hanasaku roared out as she jumped down at Meiko aiming a clearly telegraphed punch right at the blacksmith's chest. The attack was far too showy and slow for it to be meant to connect. Hanasaku must've wanted the blacksmith to avoid it – the master wanted her potential student to best her internally but she still didn't lower her level to where it would've been insulting to Meiko.</p><p>The blacksmith made a hand seal and focused. All she needed was to replace herself with her empty backpack. Just change up her chakra flow, move to the backpack nearly instantly and changing the two objects up – leaving the backpack in her place while she stayed there.</p><p>"Too slow!" Hanasaku shouted out after her fist dug deep into Meiko's back as the redhead tried to move away. The Fifth Hokage managed to track Meiko's movements and intercept her Substitution Jutsu which meant that it wasn't performed correctly. If done right the switcheroo trick transpired instantly. Something was missing! Meiko screwed up even the most basic Academy technique again, just like in the Katabami mines and in the Wind Country desert.</p><p>The moment Meiko's crushed into rock body finally braved up to draw her first breaths a burst of blood blasted from the blacksmith's mouth – a sign of a grievous internal injury and a requirement to pay chakra to sustain normal functioning. Meiko looked at her shaking bleeding arm and tried to figure something out - this was stupid. Her race for the armor was too predictable, she was trying to fight Hanasaku at her own game while gunning for a far too predictable goal.</p><p>"C-Rank Seal!" Meiko smacked her arm at the crater feeling the dirt soak up from the blood coming out from her wounds. Even the few armor sets she had put on had been bent up from the shockwaves of Hanasaku's fists and her slams.</p><p>"This is disappointing. I'm trying to see you do what ninja do – I'm trying to see what makes you different from a tool. All I've seen is you fearing to even try to do that... This won't do. Won't do at all!" Hanasaku scolded Meiko before crossing her arms over her chest, "We're done here, go and get some treatment and go back to the basics." The woman cruelly declared before turning her back to Meiko and walking away.</p><p>Meiko's hands went through a single hand seal.</p><p>"Displacement Seal!" she shouted out feeling her body sucked into the sealing glyph she left on the ground.</p><p>"What?!" Hanasaku shouted out, the Displacement Seal Jutsu was quite familiar to her as it was a basic trap sealing technique that worked similarly to the Substitution Jutsu but in reverse. It instead transported the opponent to the location of the exit seal, through the entrance seal. It had a tremendously short range and it could've been broken with a precise and powerful application of chakra that disrupted the sealing technique but it was the first attempt of the blacksmith to fight back.</p><p>The Fifth's head instantly turned at the backpack – it would've been a clever move to use the Displacement Seal to transport oneself right to the armor but if such a tool was in the redhead's arsenal why didn't she use it earlier? Only then did Hanasaku realize Meiko's plan, she tried to turn back her attention at the entrance seal before a headbutt lifted her off the ground and knocked the Fifth down.</p><p>Using her jet boots Meiko whizzed through the past Hokage and right to the pile of her remaining armor pieces. The redhead never exited through the exit seal because her armor had none, she tricked her possible teacher into thinking that they had but truth be told they were far out of the range of being displaced to anyways. All the redhead did was temporarily get sucked into the entrance seal before it dissolved and spat her out.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Meiko chanted out pulling on several steel strings that held on her armor pieces and pulled them right onto her own body where with a couple of quick flicks of switches the blacksmith had finally assembled the full set. It was a risky idea to try and trick her opponent like that but ninja usually lived by the principle of always trying to look ahead, sometimes when one looked ahead they missed the fundamental details.</p><p>Hanasaku picked herself off the ground and smiled as she wiped a small streak of blood from her lip.</p><p>"That wasn't bad, I even didn't dodge your attack just to give you the gratification!" the woman grinned with a full smile clearly entertained by Meiko's attempt.</p><p>When the opponent didn't know what the blacksmith was working towards, when they didn't know the full plan of getting there either – that was when Meiko stood a chance against her opponent. Still, it was a bad fight to pick for her. Meiko fought at a close distance and her sealing techniques were mostly for support. It also gave the blacksmith an idea for the future – to place the exit sealing glyphs on her armor just for easier access.</p><p>"It was pretty dirty move though, you attacked when I ended the battle," Hanasaku complained switching between feeling gratified to looking disappointed in a moment.</p><p>"You attacked me while I was getting ready too." Meiko snapped back. The blacksmith was still trying to work out a way how to attack her opponent as she saw no visible way of trumping her opponent here.</p><p>Feeling that her jet boots had wasted enough chakra stored in them and were running low on supply Meiko slowly landed on the ground. She raised her hand up and pressed against her chest plate where a sealing hieroglyph lit up in crimson colors.</p><p>"Sealing Technique:..." Meiko began chanting out the name of her technique before her opponent attacked. It was evident that Hanasaku had reconsidered her refusal to accept Meiko now and decided to continue the test now that the blacksmith began to fight around her weaknesses and insecurities. Using what she did know to achieve what she couldn't or what would've been risky with her lacking chakra control.</p><p>"Mandala Arrows!" the blacksmith finished her technique, feeling sure that her technique will do what it had to. The redhead's armor lit up with sources of light all over it, similarly to a swarm of glow-worms as arrows sealed inside the armor previously fired out from the light sources. With Hanasaku having moved in so close she virtually had no time at all to avoid these arrows but the Hokage did more than avoid them, one by one her blurry and invisible arm had gathered all of them. The woman pushed her previously bent foot to stop her rush and repurpose her rush onwards into a charge backward giving her more space and time to gather every single arrow.</p><p>The right side of Meiko's lips arced into a lovely smile as her hand finished a one-handed hand seal activating the sealing tags on each one of the arrows. A deafening explosion picked up dust and rubble from the floor as each arrow carried the explosive power of a simple explosive tag that most ninja used. Gathering all of them in one handful may have been the worst thing to do.</p><p>Meiko cheered for herself but then after her eyes rose up to track a moving object up above she froze in respectful fear – Hanasaku had outraced the explosion after it started but before it damaged her. Something like that should've been impossible – Meiko clearly saw the woman still hold the arrows in her hands and look at the mandala sealing marks on them, even as the explosion set off Meiko saw the woman still holding the arrows and there was nothing in the sky for her to substitute to.</p><p>Hanasaku landed on the ground smiling like a toddler with a new toy dangling above its cradle.</p><p>"W-What did you do!?" Meiko shouted out in disbelief after the woman landed.</p><p>"What do you mean? I looked at the explosion and the rate at which it expanded and thought that it was a bit too troublesome to augment myself to withstand. Can't go on augmenting yourself all the time, you know, that can leave your network all messed up. So then I kept on watching, thinking what to do, I thought for a microsecond that maybe I should let it hit me and then heal the injuries back. The problem was that I felt a bit squeamish to get chunks of me splattered around so I settled on just outrunning the explosion in general..." Hanasaku explained with a lovely and gleeful face as if she was telling the most adorable baby a bedtime story.</p><p>Meiko's eye twitched erratically.</p><p>"You can't do that... Even ninja can't do that. I mean you wasted too much time analyzing the explosion, I was sure I saw it hit and envelop you – it'd have taken something far too fast for the ninja limits to surpass it." Meiko still couldn't believe it.</p><p>"Oh... I'll know from now on that I can't do that." Hanasaku nodded. Her image then blurred before she rushed onwards. Meiko wasn't ready for such a speedy attack and yet. It was nowhere close to the speed of a being capable of outracing explosions right before they hit them.</p><p>The blacksmith tried to decide on what to do to not get utterly splattered. Her mind slowed things down for her perception to keep up, undoubtedly costing the blacksmith more and more chakra. The redhead flicked a switch on her gauntlet releasing her armor and scattering it in a round formation as the kunoichi took a wild leap backward. Right after Hanasaku moved in and through the range of the still airborne armor pieces a rain of kunai was unleashed from the defensive mechanism on the armor.</p><p>Meiko grunted in frustration seeing Hanasaku evade every single kunai fired at her faster than any kunai dispenser she had seen the ninja mob use during her journey. Even surrounded by these defensive mechanisms and having kunai fired at her at untraceable speeds this woman perfectly evaded them all.</p><p>"You can't do that either!" Meiko shouted out as she formed another hand seal.</p><p>"Entrapment Seal!" she chanted as the sealing marks on the kunai, dodged and etched into the ground, lit up with currents of electricity that formed a makeshift chakra barrier around the woman they surrounded. Hanasaku's body powered through the barrier and delivered a punch to Meiko's jaw.</p><p>Meiko punched the ground in anger and spat out a bunch of blood together with a couple of teeth. Regrowing teeth always hurt, just like most other bone associated treatments in the hospital.</p><p>Hanasaku shrugged, "Why are you so upset? Was I not supposed to do that either?" she curiously looked at Meiko and the blacksmith stood up, wanting to yell it all out in this insane woman's face but then she froze. Looking at the innocent face of her possible future sensei she realized that Chestnut Hanasaku honestly didn't know if ninja could move under the Entrapment Seal.</p><p>"No... Actually, ninja can't move under the Entrapment Seal for a very limited duration of time. They can, however, break out of the sealing technique by supplying it with a burst of chakra matching its own content. However you didn't do that, you broke all known rules and limits! Just like ninja can't move after this! String Reeling Jutsu!" Meiko shouted out pulling on a string of steel wire that collected all the strings stuck on the shot kunai and formed a big and powerful trap of steel wire that wrapped all over the Fifth.</p><p>"You got caught?" Meiko seemed surprised herself.</p><p>"Wait... This isn't something special at all. It's just normal strings, I can move after this, in fact..." Hanasaku realized before she flexed her body and tore the steel wire to shreds, leaving just a couple of shallow scratches on her body and clothes.</p><p>"So that's why you're so special..." Meiko began figuring her opponent out, "You literally don't know what people and ninja can and cannot do which makes your body and its strength, speed and chakra level completely unpredictable. Not only that, if you are too dumb to know your limits, you'd never feel like you've hit them during training. This is such a stupid trait that it's awesome!" the blacksmith declared in childish glee as she began running around the confused Fifth and check out her injuries, pinching her skin and trying to bite the woman or wrestle her just to test her theory.</p><p>"This test is over." Hanasaku smiled before pulling Meiko off the top of her head like a stray kitten and gently placing her down on the ground. "I'd have never thought a simple genin would've figured my secret out. I'll have to ask you to keep it a secret, otherwise, too many people will know and too many people rely on me to be who I am to protect them."</p><p>Meiko made an improvised zipper gesture on her mouth before resuming her strange analysis of the woman's body.</p><p>"My goal here was to see if you are more than a tool. I have seen enough to draw conclusions." Hanasaku explained.</p><p>"What? Why would you think that I'm a douche? I'm the nicest person ever!" Meiko replied before checking how Hanasaku's arm bends and if it does so the same as the arms of all the other human beings do.</p><p>"No. You don't get it, not that kind of a tool. You see, when a person needs something done they can either use weapons and tools to do that thing by themselves or they can hire a ninja. That suggests that a ninja needs to be more than just a tool, more than they are meant to do. They are more than just tools, they are living and breathing, flexible specialists that accomplish a task and can do so in many different ways. They adapt, they survive, they go underneath the underneath. That is what a ninja is. They needn't be strong and firm enough like the samurai, they follow no principles and rules other than those of their own or their village's unlike martial artists and yet they have ancient traditions and principles to uphold unlike pirates or rogue ninja. I can tutor anyone, but I will never tutor a tool. Tools bend under pressure, they corrode and break – ninja do what needs to be done, they think on their own and surpass tools." Hanasaku explained.</p><p>Meiko nodded energetically wondering if she maybe should've written it all down.</p><p>"You have a lot of insecurities about you and I saw why – your ninjutsu and chakra control are wobbly to put it generously. You are also just as much of a thick-skulled idiot as I am which isn't the greatest, but as you've seen, an idiot can often accomplish what a smart guy would never even try to..." Hanasaku's speech was cut short after a face familiar to her landed from the treeline beside her and whispered in her ear.</p><p>"It seems our lesson will have to be cut short. My friend told me that your future team ran into trouble – one of them has been kidnapped..." Hanasaku spoke up before her friend in standard Konoha ninja uniform once again whispered in her ear.</p><p>"Could we... By any chance make this go any faster, I think I'm... Losing a lot of blood..." Meiko complained feeling her aching gut where some degree of internal damage was rapidly burning through her chakra resources.</p><p>"Of course, I need to treat you immediately! It appears also that the Sixth doesn't want us to know this information because he thinks we'd make a mess out of things..." Hanasaku finished retelling what she was told as she settled down close to Meiko to treat the young lady's injuries.</p><p>"You know, Lady Fifth, I didn't tell you all that only for you to retell it to a genin!" the man who was once the Fifth Hokage's assistant complained only to be dismissed by a careless gesture and affirmed that the woman was grateful for his loyalty and the information.</p><p>For a good minute, Meiko felt relieved while Chestnut Hanasaku treated her injuries. Then a dominating feeling of nausea took over as the blacksmith bent over to the side and threw up. Hanasaku used the Diagnosis Jutsu to scan through Meiko's body to determine that a lot of things were really messed up.</p><p>"Oops, this may not be the best time to tell you this but... I'm not the best when it comes to healing other people. My own body is much more durable than that of others so I sometimes really get confused by how other people's bodies work... Sorry!" the woman apologized making an innocent puppy face before picking Meiko up and rushing to the Konohagakure Hospital with the barely conscious and pale skinned genin in her arms.</p><p>"But... I thought... You were... S-Rank medical ninja..." Meiko whimpered out weakly as she was beginning to feel really dizzy and her fever was beginning to really kick in.</p><p>"I'm really good at healing myself, as I've said, I can heal injuries no other ninja can survive but sometimes I mess things up unless I heal myself. My body works a lot different from that of other people so I'm not used to your weakling bodies." Hanasaku elaborated as to how exactly her high rank was granted to her.</p><hr/><p>"Well... There appears to be a set of perfectly functional teeth in your liver, your broken rib has now relocated itself inside your left lung and is poking out from it, also your stomach content is now inside your kidneys... Seriously, how and why would anyone put it there!? I'd say you're lucky to have survived this long and no way you're going anywhere this week!" the medical expert concluded after looking at Meiko's test results in the hospital.</p><p>Hanasaku blushed and with a guilty pair of eyes pulled the collar of her sleeveless shirt as she was beginning to sweat a little. As numb-skulled as the woman was, even she realized that she had messed up pretty good here.</p><p>"I can help!" she suggested to the medical ninja a good couple of ranks lower than her.</p><p>"Please don't!" the medical ninja rudely replied. This mustn't have been the first case of this woman's patient that he has treated. His eyes were looking at the results of her healing far too casually and forgivingly and he was treating there excessively strange injuries like they were a common occurrence.</p><p>"Aw, come on! I'm the only S-Rank medical ninja in the village. Even I get my things right most of the time! This hasn't happened to me in a really long time, I'll have you know!" Hanasaku desperately pleaded to which the medical ninja just sighed and reluctantly agreed.</p><p>Just like that, the Team Hokage was finally assembled and all its members were tested and decided on. Had Meiko not been peacefully asleep after her actual treatment of her treatment had begun she may have been more concerned about the state of the rest of her team. Something that completely slipped out from Hanasaku's mind after she got so embarrassed by messing up Meiko's treatment so badly.</p>
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<a name="section0245"><h2>245. Life Is But A Wheel Of Cheese</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A heartwarming melody of a song, sadly sung by a less than exemplary singer, broke through the bone-chilling embrace of death. Pain equal to that of a bear trap snapping onto her skull worked hand in hand with the overwhelming grace of sunlight peeling Mana's eyelids open and showering her briefly opened whites with its almighty beauty. A feeling containing all the subtlety and softness of acid being poured into her eyes and working its way through the girl's nervous system right into her brain. Living often felt worse than dying in the first moments of one's rebirth, Mana should have known, of all people.</p><p>The girl jumped up and covered her body up with the cover she was snugged under. She was in a wooden cabin surrounded by smoked fish and meats, cheeses and homemade apple wine. The old man who was singing as he worked his butt off peeling layers of old wax off of his wheel of cheese noticed the girl and turned at her, seeing the knife in his hand Mana's body twitched energetically, life rushed back into her body and the magician felt her chakra being at its peak – a bad sign. She must've been out for a while for her network to repair itself completely.</p><p>"Don't worry, if I wanted to hurt you, you'd have already been hurt. Been laying here for quite a while..." the old man said in a rough and masculine voice, his eyes didn't waver or display the slightest sign of fear or weakness, on the other hand, his chest did move quite ecstatically suggesting that he may have even been relieved of the magician's awakening.</p><p>"Where am I, why am I alive?" Mana asked. She was no fool, remembering the exact sort of injuries she had sustained was immensely painful for her recently awakened mind but she definitely realized that she should have died of her injuries. The men working there made sure to leave no one alive, they were fast, efficient, professional and more than anything – strong. "What use can I possibly serve to you?" the magician assumed that she was somehow useful to this old man if he salvaged her dying body and nursed her back.</p><p>The old man calmly laughed out with class and restraint. He was clearly an old gentleman in control of his emotions, at least those he displayed in public.</p><p>"Well, you'll keep me alive, for one..." he appeared to try and jest but seeing Mana's confused expression he just sighed.</p><p>"That's what I feared, you're completely oblivious to what you've been involved into..." he spoke.</p><p>"Wait... You're... You're not Yamanaka Tenma, are you!?" Mana suddenly jumped up and on her feet, beginning to frantically look for her weapons and clothes.</p><p>"Your things are on that chair, luckily enough, you weren't wearing most of your clothes when... Whatever happened hit you. Those are some fancy robes though, you don't look like a Yamanaka snob to me. I'd really like to hear your story but I'm afraid it's more than it is my business to know..." the old man returned to tending to his cheese wheel, slowly peeling the wax off of the gigantic mountain.</p><p>Mana grabbed the clothes that were on the chair and got dressed while the old man worked, she was surprised to find pretty much everything she had on her at that time intact. Even whatever pocket money she had was completely untouched.</p><p>"I am beginning to believe that we both don't know anything about what's going on here, that means there's a third party involved, something connecting us. Mind telling me all that you know? All I remember is bathing, getting ready to go to bed and leave the Yamanaka Resort in the morning, go home. That's when we got attacked, my friend was kidnapped. I should've been killed – it's clear those men meant for me to die. In fact, they should've meant for Kiyomi to die too, at this point I don't understand anything at all..." Mana admitted.</p><p>"You've been brought here by a man, a hooded figure, his head was the only part I saw and it was covered in bandages – he said he had a whole bunch of fresh tattoos made and his skin was sensitive or something. He healed you completely back to life, you didn't look like you even had hopes of making it when he got you here. He said that you were lucky he had found you, anyone else would've not been able to help you. I was told that he did everything he could have and that you'd live, he told me that he'd kill me and everyone I have ever met or as far as exchanged glances with if you died. Apart from some very impolite talking, he was a pretty nice and exalted man. Said he was heading for Iwagakure... Not much more to tell you." the old man told Mana everything he knew.</p><p>The magician sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees, she had no idea what this old man was talking about. Who could've cared enough about her and not all those poor Yamanaka ninja getting slaughtered by the people that got Kiyomi? Who was Mana to deserve such a rescue? It all tied back to what she was told by Hachiro – the rogue Uchiha mentoring Shimo. All those fearful tales of some extremely terrifying man with an interest in Mana.</p><p>"Do you know anything of the accident in the Yamanaka Resort? The one that left me dying?" Mana asked politely, she needed some extra pieces to complete the puzzle, she felt like she was getting close but she was missing a good handful. Namely what exactly was the group involved – the Imarizu, what state they left the Resort in and who they may have been affiliated with.</p><p>"Not that much, a handful of good strong men got themselves killed in an attack. If you had actually died, that'd have meant everybody died. That mysterious man appeared to care very little about anyone else but you, I asked him if he caused that attack but he said he was just passing by. I don't think he liked what you were involved in." the man finished peeling cheese off, he went off and picked up a large bowl from the corner as well as a grater, returning to his mountain of cheese with those tools.</p><p>Mana stood up and flexed herself, she appeared to be back into a fighting shape – she must've been out for at least a good couple of days.</p><p>"Do you know anything about the Imarizu, by any chance?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Not really, no. Are they the ones that left you like you were? May not be a good idea to run after them in that case. Remember, for a while, our lives are interconnected..." the man calmly explained. It didn't seem like he was overly scared of the mysterious man's vengeance. It was just an unfortunate option he tried to avoid, something he felt obliged to remind Mana of but not something he preached.</p><p>"They have my friend, they have my dead friend's sword. I can't let this go. My friend had a bounty on her head and frankly, I'm surprised they didn't kill her. Did you hear about the line of succession of the Yamanaka being passed? Living close to the Resort you should've heard of something major like that." Mana inquired.</p><p>"No." the old man shook his head, "You're right, I should've, usually clan matters are the evening rumors for old spinsters around here. I've heard no such thing."</p><p>"That means she has to be alive, which is incredibly strange. I don't know what's going on here anymore... But I will figure it out or die trying, that's my duty to Kiyomi as her friend and to my deceased friend's memory. That sword needs to rest by his grave." Mana combed her hair in front of the mirror and sat back down on the bed, crossing her arms over her chest and closing her eyes to think.</p><p>"Those men have a long head start on you. If they left when you were injured they may have already achieved what they wanted to do." the old man suggested.</p><p>"No. Kiyomi is a future heiress of the clan, that cannot be a coincidence. It would've been something major like... A marriage." Mana suddenly realized.</p><p>"Marriage?" the old man appeared to be curious while sounding incredibly indifferent to anything but his cheese at the same time.</p><p>"It makes the most sense why those men wanted Kiyomi alive. Whoever put the bounty was no rogue ninja trying to spite the clan – he was in the line of succession somewhere. By removing Kiyomi he or she would've skipped ahead, then at some point after trying to kill her went nowhere they must've realized that marrying may have been a superior option all along and they changed their approach." Mana spoke to herself trying to make these events around her make sense. She made brief pauses, browsed her mind trying to put things together and weave all of this complicated web into something that resembled something with motives and goals that would've made sense.</p><p>"Well, that's just great, you really shouldn't do anything yourself though. A young kid like you will just get yourself killed. Yamanaka folk would love to hear about this." The old man suggested.</p><p>"No. I can't know for certain who's a suspect yet. I know nothing of their line of succession and who's loyal to whom there. Also, I'm pretty sure they would never let me leave the Resort after I enter having survived that attack – I'd be their first suspect and it'd cost me too much time to resolve that. I won't let Kiyomi get married!" Mana jumped out from the bed having determined her next course of action.</p><p>"That's mean." The old man shrugged.</p><p>Mana sighed, "I will need to make a valid strategy for fighting the Imarizu again, I will also need to examine the Yamanaka documents and know who's the most viable to make such a heinous move in the line of succession. That means I'll need to... Wait... You're not gonna report this to the Yamanaka are you?" the magician looked at the old man questioningly.</p><p>"I don't need to report anything. They could just read my mind if they wanted to, then again, to do it they'd need valid proof they are not just wasting their time reading some old farmer's mind. There are thousands of small farms like mine in these parts. They'd take a literal hundred years scanning through everyone – they've got better things to do." The man smiled.</p><p>"You sound suspiciously sharp for a farmer..." Mana squinted.</p><p>"I was a writer before I got my farm here. I wrote Academy textbooks, you should've heard of me if you ever bothered to read the author's name on the textbook, my books even have the bio on the back with my picture – I am Aporius Noregin." The man turned back at Mana with a small grin expecting to be recognized.</p><p>"No. They have upgraded your books already. This generation is studying from Tate Ashuoka's books." Mana let the old man know, she had only stumbled on the old man's name while having a pleasant history read in the Konohagakure archives and she had never seen a single textbook written by the man. She just assumed the whole time that the update was a significant improvement.</p><p>"Heh, Tate was a very skilled kid, a bit flashy but quite bright. He was never meant for the physical side of ninja work but I always expected him to teach the Academy students or to head his own discipline someday. Quite an eccentric kid as well, always wore shades indoors and a green and purple jumpsuit which he never washed." The old man recalled wiping a tear from his cheek when reminded of his old days. "So you were about to tell me how you plan on sneaking into the Resort and obtaining information on the line of succession, weren't you?" the old man asked Mana.</p><p>The magician jumped up in surprise. "How did you know?" she asked.</p><p>"Simple. That's what I'd do in your shoes. If I had no other choice. But you must know that you've no chance of accomplishing that. If you really wish to save your friend informing the clan, even if it means getting imprisoned and being suspected yourself, would be the smartest thing to do." The old man advised.</p><p>"No. I still have hope this can be resolved without killing anyone, plus I cannot allow my friend's sword to fall into anyone else's hands but mine. Yamanaka wouldn't let up owning an Audra blade." Mana shook her head before sitting back down on the bed she woke up in. "Although you are right, I'll need help in both beating the Imarizu and obtaining the needed information."</p><p>"Who can you turn to? Whoever you see will advise you to turn yourself in, who can possibly be crazy enough to help you with this? Strong enough as well..." the old man put down the grate and pushed the bowl of grated cheese away from himself with his foot, turning back at Mana.</p><p>"A question for another time. Right now I need to get stronger, I need to invent a technique that'll help me beat the Imarizu. Luckily enough, I had the honor of seeing how they fight, how they kill... I know just what I will need." Mana wondered scratching her chin as she delved deep into her thoughts.</p><p>"You've no time, girl. It takes weeks to even make up a concept of a new technique. Mastering it might take months if not years, some ninja take entire lifetimes to perfect a single jutsu. Luckily for you, I know a thing or two about jutsu and ninja arts – I quite literally wrote dozens of books on it. I can help you." The man suggested.</p><p>"That'd shorten the time-span of my training. But why would you do something like that? What's in it for you?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Every moment you stay in my sight and train is a moment you aren't getting yourself killed. If you take a good couple of more days training maybe that crazy stalker of yours will stop blaming me for when you do eventually get yourself killed. I'm quite literally saving my own life here. You've no reason to suspect me of being a slimy man." Aporius explained.</p><p>"Well then, I need a genjutsu technique – quick in activation, one hand seal, not more. One that'd allow me to disperse into an illusion after my physical body gets hit, I've read of such illusions existing. One to make me completely invulnerable to a head-on reckless assault at close distance, luring my opponent into a chain of endless illusions that I place them under while they think they are fighting me. A technique like that would cripple all of the Imarizu, the problem is that they are too fast, they don't let me weave more than one hand seal before they overwhelm me so I need a middle piece of the chain, one that'd allow me to cripple them all at once and buy me time." Mana explained.</p><p>"You should've spoken to Budonoki Cheri, she is the strongest genjutsu using ninja in Konoha. One of the prodigies I heard about from my own students once they started teaching students of their own. She possesses the technique you need - Genjutsu: Flower Petal Escape." Aporius smiled, his eyes looked up into the shoddy roof above the man's head as his mind fleeted into his memories.</p><p>Mana blushed and looked away, she felt a bit embarrassed about what she wanted to say so her lips pouted unwillingly. "I can't do that. There's a rule I follow, part of my ninja way – I don't use techniques that are not my own. Truth be told, I have used simple Academy techniques before but those were moments when lives were in danger. This technique would give me a good replacement for the Substitution Jutsu to use."</p><p>Aporius sighed. He was clearly looking disappointed and feeling like he was wasting his time with Mana. A sentiment that the magician saw in many teachers' faces when she was a child.</p><p>"Very well. Then perhaps a similar principle but a different result? A technique that would be undoubtedly immensely similar but not quite a case of artistic plagiarism?" the old textbook writer suggested.</p><p>Mana, feeling guilty that her own personal principles and artistic integrity of viewing the battlefield like the extension of the stage she performed on was getting in the way of her quest, nodded.</p><p>"Alright. I expect you to stay here until your technique is polished. In that case, I would appreciate some help with..." the man began asking Mana before the young girl fell on her knees and bowed her head in front of the man.</p><p>"Can I please cook?" she almost begged the man. The magician had always wished for the opportunity to improve her cooking, after the endless snappy remarks made by Shimo, Meiko, and Kouta during their quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. She never once found time to practice her cooking extensively and this man looked like quite the treasure box of knowledge. His cheeses smelled sophisticated, his wines had fancy looking names and his meat looked well-seasoned and preserved – Mana's clothes were well seeped with the smell seeing how they were placed in the same room.</p><p>"I know I shall regret this decision but... I believe there's nothing wrong with allowing a young lady learn to prepare a proper meal. If you're bad however I shall be stricter as a cooking coach than I shall be as a genjutsu trainer. You also have no time to slack around – those Imarizu punks are making their way towards their goal with your friend as we speak. It is fair to assume that they'll reach their destination halfway through your training so no slacking off!" Aporius laid down the rules.</p><p>Mana bowed again. "I would never forgive myself a moment of levity!" she affirmed the man.</p><p>"I will also only eat things from this recipe book. I am a very sophisticated taster, after all. You have the finest ingredients and recipes so making anything less than a perfect meal and the perfect genjutsu technique will be your failure as a ninja and as a young woman trying to learn how to cook!" the old man pointed at an old book with trashed and ruined cover.</p><p>Mana nodded. She had to work hard to earn back her return to life, one amongst many, the exact count of which she had lost long ago already.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0246"><h2>246. No More Books</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana rubbed her closed eyes a bit too excessively. The pressure inside her skull was getting uncomfortable but she refused to put the book she's been studying for over fourteen hours down. She stopped a couple of times only to make a pair of meals for Aporius and herself, only to be belittled for her lack of experience in the matter and be treated like a child. She was used to training by herself. When there was only her to scold herself because she thought she knew where to bite to make it hurt.</p><p>The knowledge inside this book seemed ancient to Mana, outdated and irrelevant compared to the ones she had read in the Konohagakure archive or the Academy textbooks. It did contain detailed and needlessly long explanations of the human brain, how it worked and how the application of chakra to specific brain points worked. It did contain some impressive knowledge like techniques meant for taijutsu users – applying chakra to their own brain centers to increase their own potential or temporarily boost their abilities without suffering the drawbacks of chakra augmentation.</p><p>That was mainly why Mana was still reading the book – every time she thought that the book was outdated and irrelevant, describing needless information in excessive detail she discovered a thing or two to keep her interest. Most of it was revision but once in a while, for a good four or five minutes, the magician found herself studying about an area of the brain she knew nothing about or stories of ninja who had a unique understanding of the genjutsu subject.</p><p>Despite those far in between interesting attention grabbers Mana felt like her limited time was being wasted on a book. The next morning Mana cut into her finger with the humongous kitchen knife and it was only because of her reconsidered stance on chakra augmentation that she was left with a shallow cut instead of parting with her whole finger. The old man only laughed at her and belittled her saying that her finger would still have needed weeks of being smoked and seasoned before he'd have considered putting it on his sandwich.</p><p>Despite Mana's growing frustration and feeling of wasted time studying a stupid book while her friend was being taken no one knew where for a deduced marriage that could have not even been a marriage, to begin with, such outcome was only the most probable, Aporius suggested helping the magician with lunch. His help would've come included with an actual example of how a good steak is cooked, steaks were not something of the sort Mana was used to cooking so the kunoichi's frustration grew even more – she was wasting time on things she never thought she'd need while her friend's kidnapping made time a luxury.</p><p>"No. I'll do it. I'll do it right this time. I still have reading to catch up on!" Mana rudely shut the old man down and gently placed her palm on his chest, never pushing but keeping him away from where the meal was being made. Aporius looked at her with strange suspicion, almost like he realized the magician was responsible for a murder somewhere but he soon relented and sat down on a criminally short and rusty metal stool.</p><p>"Don't forget the garlic. Rub it into the fried bread as well as the meat..." the old man croaked as if he was just forcefully sat down.</p><p>"The way this room reeks of garlic, I won't need to..." Mana mumbled under her nose as she had to bend her head down every time she entered the kitchen due to garlic hanging everywhere. It was a highly preferred seasoning and ingredient of the man as mentions of its necessity came with each passing lesson of the man.</p><p>After the lunch, surprisingly without a single complaint or demeaning remark from Aporius, Mana finally got a couple of hours to devote to the second book she was given. She hadn't yet finished the first one but she had to do something else, had she not tried a new book she'd have found a way to cut her veins open with a page and tore them out with her teeth if that meant liberating her from another book.</p><p>The old man entered her room, he didn't look too good – his usually slick grey hair was now messy and his bowtie missing, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his vest improperly buttoned as if it was done in quite the rush. One look at the man's pupils gave Mana a clue she didn't wish to tread deeper into. When the old man opened his mouth however it didn't appear to affect his mood at all, whatever made this effect on the man's meticulousness was no drug, at least not one that Mana was warned or aware of. The fact that she would rather recall the effects on the user's mood of all drugs she knew of showed how sick she was of studying people's brains and the art of illusion which was infamous for being gruelingly difficult both in theory and practice, especially compared with the rewards it granted of being able to create illusions.</p><p>"Did you finish all the books yet?" the man asked. Mana looked at him wondering if he was kidding. She was handed a good dozen of books, each of which had well over five hundred pages of some of the driest text recorded on the page. Sometimes the magician was so baffled by entire paragraphs that she had to research the medical terms in a whole other set of books, oftentimes those books left references into other books and like that without an end in sight.</p><p>"I did not, not for the lack of trying though..." Mana admitted.</p><p>"At least seven chapters into the first one?" the man changed his question up a little curiously. He clearly knew the amount of work needed to finish these books – the fact that he almost pinpointed the exact place Mana was in at that time was a living proof of it.</p><p>"Eight, a good four hundred pages in, I really couldn't take it anymore so I started this one, two chapters in..." Mana reported showing the man the second book, one centered on genjutsu meaning much closer to heart subject which was much more accessible to the magician.</p><p>"Good. That's just about what you need to start working on the illusion. Start being the key word..." the man sighed, he managed to sound disappointed even when his sigh was a more of the relieving kind.</p><p>"You aren't going to teach me? Don't you have the needed knowledge? Don't you know all these books by heart already? You have to, how else would you have selected them and known so much about where I was in given the time spent studying?" Mana felt like her frustration over the lack of progress and the passing time was becoming clearer, in fact, it was beginning to leak over and into her casual speech.</p><p>"No. I think you can do it yourself. You've gotten far in sufficiently to know about the subject enough for the invention of a powerful illusion by yourself, especially given your experience on the subject, having created your entire arsenal from scratch as a child..." Aporius shook his head and turned around preparing to leave the room.</p><p>"Wait!" Mana shouted out, she could feel her blood boiling and coming up through her neck, had anyone cut her throat now they'd be washed away by the excess of rage-fueled blood that dyed her skin red instead of the usual far northern tan. "You're lying, I've researched it sufficiently to know that I'd never pull such an illusion off without finishing these books and I'd never finish these books in an acceptable time frame. It's like you're avoiding training me like we decided on, what's the matter?!" she yelled out.</p><p>Aporius sighed. "You're right. I'm having my reservations about training you myself, devoting my knowledge to where it'd be wasted... I'm a practical man. If what I do would not matter – I refuse to do it. I wouldn't help you put your head into a noose unless I'm absolutely sure you can get out of it."</p><p>Mana took a trembling step back. She wanted to yell something out in return for the man's words but the sadness kept her words stuck somewhere in her throat. Instead, she just snapped her mouth closed, her teeth rows smashing against each other like a guillotine that'd have separated her tongue clean off had it gone stuck in between them. Anger and despair made the magician's muscles twitch, she was feeling confusing feedback to the old man's words. He was treating her as a lost cause, he felt like helping her was to waste his time which both infuriated her and made her feel like breaking down into tears. The young teen inside her clashed with the friend who felt obligated to assist her friend in need.</p><p>The kunoichi just sat down on the bed and looked around. She had nothing of value devoted to this room, nothing would've stopped her from just getting up and leaving. Doing her best to mastering the illusion on her way, failing and confronting the Imarizu unprepared, probably dying in the process... There was simply no other option, Kiyomi needed her and any other attempt to relinquish the responsibility on her shoulders would've ended up in someone dying. Mana was the only one who cared enough to make everyone involved walk away alive...</p><p>"Look, today I saw you as the kind of person you were. You refused my aid with the lunch and it was terrible, better than before but still terrible. You're absolutely obsessed with taking responsibility and I know what you're thinking deep down – after you learn the technique you want to learn you'll just face those Ima-somethings alone, that's what you are planning, aren't you?" Aporius softened his tone up trying to clear up the exact meaning of his words.</p><p>Mana looked down as she realized that she had nothing on her. The magician stood up and started walking towards the door from the little writing room stayed and studied in and into the living room. She fully intended on leaving.</p><p>"So what?" Mana uttered as the old man didn't move out of her way and stayed in the middle of the passageway leading to the living room. While she was enraged she fostered not a single idea of forcing the man to move so she was stuck standing in front of him and confronting his verbal beatdown on her immaturity.</p><p>"You asked for my help. You thought this was some kind of a deal, didn't you? You use my study, read my books and do it all alone and you payback your end of the bargain by cooking your subpar meals for me and sometimes cleaning my terribly messy place. You are being kind but you never allow other people to be kind to you by taking all the weight over from them, by treating the people around you like the kind of people would inhabit this monstrous and cruel world. This is not and never was a deal of equal exchange, I want to help you and your friend, I want to help a young woman learn to do what she wants to do. Make your future husband and kids happy by making you better than to poison them with your food. I'm doing what I always did as a writer – looking out for the future generation." Aporius irradiated with a certain shade of kindness and calmness.</p><p>Mana breathed in to reply something but she couldn't, at some point holding her breath in was too painful so she wheezed it all out, probably making herself look like a stupendous idiot.</p><p>"You're right..." Mana finally spoke looking away with an uncomfortable feeling of shame. "I can't do it without help, with or without the jutsu. Not that I have people to turn to at this moment..."</p><p>"Spent too much time pushing them away, like me?" Aporius smiled lyrically</p><p>"No one within reach I can think of... Unless..." Mana suddenly looked up with a hopeful realization. "I guess I'll be rolling the die twice... But I won't be rolling anything unless I hurry up and finish this pile of books." The magician sighed before settling down by the pile and flipping through the pages of the first book.</p><p>Aporius sighed and pushed the pile of books off the table letting their messy and barely holding together pages split off and scatter all over the study floor.</p><p>"No more books! You have the essentials and we can begin. You have just about the same theoretical knowledge that a common genjutsu using ninja has, even more practical knowledge than most users. You are no longer just a genin in that subject, you are well into the category of being intermediate. Let's put those essentials to good use together!" the man smiled at Mana with trust she never saw this man have.</p><p>The two spent the entire evening trying to create the concept behind the illusion. Making it the way Mana wanted it to work – to make her disperse upon impact to her body as if it was a substitution was immensely difficult by itself. The real problems presented themselves soon enough with them beginning to delve in deeper. To make an illusion beyond the power of the certain point required hand seal input, creating the illusion affecting so many brain centers of many people around her while making such an illusion work would've required well over twenty hand seals. While it meant barely a fraction of a second to the magician, it would've alerted the opponent to the trickery. Also, it would've been impossible to pull off around speedy opponents, having no time for hand seals was the problem Mana lost to the Imarizu the first time – they simply beat her down and interrupted her before anything could have been done.</p><p>More to that bag of troubles, to reduce the number of hand seals meant increasing the chances of failure. Either that or weaken its power – making it affect a single person at a time instead of everybody she wanted to would've cut a good seven hand seals off of the complicated chakra molding process in order to properly execute the technique. However that also couldn't have been accepted – Mana wanted the technique to be as powerful as she needed it to be, affect exactly the number of people she wanted it to affect.</p><p>The difficulties were not also that theoretical and conceptual. Last time Mana worked on a high power and area of effect sound transferred genjutsu she took literally years to complete it. Now she had days to be generous. At this point, the magician had settled that making it sound based would be too out of the realm of reality. She had to somehow make it focused on being something else entirely. Maybe it could've been transferred through her eyes like the most of her illusions, while such a focus for illusions could've been figured out, at least exploiting it would've required a second chance which the magician didn't plan on giving the Imarizu.</p><p>As the day ended in nocturnal darkness, ultimately fruitless, Mana's sadness and frustration grew more and more. After refusing to eat her next morning's breakfast Aporius noted it.</p><p>"You are growing impatient, child. Hurry will only lead to mistakes, mistakes will lead to a worse outcome than you doing nothing." The man said after calmly making his own sandwiches for breakfast.</p><p>Mana had to be reminded continuously not to rush things but she couldn't. She had spent multiple days sitting on her bottom and wasting time. While she was growing stronger and smarter in all the right subjects, ultimately her training was fruitless.</p><p>The next morning after that Aporius returned after tending to his potatoes outside and it appeared like he was hiding something from Mana. The man was uneasy the whole time and the magician kept on pressing him, even to the point of being terribly distracted from her training just to find out what her mentor was being so secretive about. Deep inside the girl feared that bad news came and Kiyomi's body was found somewhere having been disposed of or that the marriage had already transpired in secret and it was too late for Mana to change anything about it.</p><p>"It's... I've heard rumors from the old spinsters living in the farms around – Yamanaka Inomame is apparently arriving in the Land of Waves from Kirigakure. It is unknown why, he has little reason to do so, frankly. While a big cheese in Kirigakure and a possible candidate for the post of Mizukage, when the Kirigakure autonomy is restored, he has no power in the continent." Aporius explained.</p><p>"He's the one," Mana stated almost like it was a fact. Like no further research was needed. "Think about it – a powerful Yamanaka in Kirigakure and the Archipelago with no power in the continent marrying a future heiress of the continental branch of the clan. He'd be a pain in the ass to deal with in the world politics – Yamanaka are the intelligence of each village they are in: the best interrogators, the best sensors, the best surveillance ninja... Everyone would be kissing his royal buttocks just to get on his good side, he'd be more influential than the Fourth Hokage ever was... Where Mizukage Daikon ruled his own land through suffering and terror, Mizukage Shirona looked to conquer the world through war – he'd rule the world without actually having the crown or moving a single finger for it."</p><p>Aporius nodded, "I see you are my equal in the historical and political understanding of this. The situation here has grown to be too dire to make this your personal matter, you must give up on this and share this with the Hokage, the Yamanaka Resort – everyone. The political balance of the world cannot depend on this personal pilgrimage of responsibility."</p><p>Mana sighed. The man plotting to marry her friend forcefully was making his move and here she was nowhere close to doing what had to be done. She had no knowledge of who exactly the Imarizu was, they certainly were no common cutthroats, having bested so many Yamanaka ninja on a whim. She was not even close to mastering her technique which would've helped realize her plan on fighting those people off. She had no one there behind her back to help her and even her mentor was no longer aboard this personal quest for responsibility. Mana cared less about the politics of the world being shifted and more about her friend. Politics shifted every day, what Mana wanted was Kiyomi marrying whomever she wanted to marry, not a kidnapper plotting to use their clan for his own influence.</p><p>Even if her friend did not share that sentiment...</p><p>After another day of fruitless training, now with both Mana and Aporius being out of the game, in the morning after entering Mana's room the old man only found a brief note of gratitude and no sign of the magician that wrote it – the last daughter of the wandering ninja. Just like her slaughtered ancestors the kid had no allegiance towards any political alliance or village, even that of her own home. She only had the attachment to people – her own kin whom she would've considered her tribe. Ultimately that was what lead Mana to leave the training and the old man behind and leave towards her next destination without mastering the illusion. The old man couldn't help but weep after realizing the mistake this young child had made. He got dressed immediately and left his own ways. Not to his knowledge, but completely opposite ways to where Mana was headed.</p><p>The magician just hoped that the dice roll in Eden Prison complex would be less of a trainwreck than the one behind her training...</p>
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<a name="section0247"><h2>247. On The Way To Eden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana playfully swung her arms around and over her head directing them to her top hat allowing the invisible extra thin steel strings direct all of the floating in mid-air and bent over spoons to disappear into a storage seal inside her hat. She heard a bunch of applause from random passersby inhabiting a small settlement region. A quiet little town east of the Yamanaka Resort and Aporius' farm. Judging from the looks of things they were all people with things to hide or run away from, just allowing themselves a brief subtle stop to admire the magic tricks of a young girl on a cardboard box.</p><p>To the magician girl it was just like it all had started – she performed without a stage, with no preparation or assistance. Just her own ninja tools, quick thinking and a little bit of healthy magician's improvisation. She was one of the first to perform magic, judging from what she had heard, after her thing in Konoha had taken off there were plenty of people picking up the craft but most of them didn't really threaten her secondary job or her success.</p><p>The kunoichi had gathered a fair amount of money and after a couple of polite bows to her audience the message was out that the show was over and the passersby continued to float away like disturbed spirits on a quiet November night. A single chain of clapping did not cease however. Mana looked at the audience member who didn't try and fade away with some curiosity, this was either a man who lived and quite enjoyed his time in this small murky town or someone who had no particular place to go.</p><p>Either way, that meant that he was beyond the typical understanding of a law abiding citizen. Mana was no romantic fool – she was well aware that for this grey and muddy urbanistic setting adoring settlement to thrive the majority of its providing activities must've been less than legal. To be a successful settler in such an environment was to be a criminal in some way, maybe to have dealings with weapon and illegal supply traders and smugglers or to cut some throats for coin. If this man had no shame and no desire to walk away and hide his face he was a man to be feared.</p><p>"Now why would you take money from struggling and starving settlers when you can just make it using magic. Did you not pull a bill from a fellow's ear, all folded and mangled, just now?" the man curiously inquired. Judging from his tone he was just messing around, having fun. It was a twisted feature in its own way that he managed to still have inspiration for fun after returning to the gritty and murky reality of the settlement around him. Mana did her best to distract the settlers from what was around them but she was no miracle maker…</p><p>"It's a trick. There's no such thing as magic – I need to make my bread somehow and I don't feel like dealing with smugglers" Mana smiled putting the hat her father had given her and covering her brightly colored eyes. While she did not do the best job at concealing her face most of the time she had no need of being identified as Konoha's Sorceress in here. She was lucky no one had even identified her up to now.</p><p>"And yet you just put your hat back on like it's nobody's business, that same hat you just shoved a handful of bent utensils into…" the raggedy man didn't back down and followed Mana a bit further after she had stepped down the improvised cardboard and tin stage she had found for her show, just something to make some money.</p><p>"It's an efficient way of proving someone wrong – agree with them yet show them something that denies them at the same time. It's a form of aggressive sarcasm, some would say – offensive…" Mana replied beginning to feel a bit annoyed that the fan decided to tag along with her. She usually displayed no ill feelings towards fans, even when they got overly excited but this time she was in a rush. She needed that money and she made it the only dignified way she knew how, fighting and magic was all she knew and her magic show was already over.</p><p>"Oh, well I'm not that easily offended, mind if I tag along, Konoha's Sorceress?" the young man asked Mana, before he mentioned her stage name the magician was almost fed up to the point of more aggressively asking him to back off but after being noticed she just stood there with her mouth halfway open to yell out something ever cruder.</p><p>"That's right, plenty of folks around here know who you are. Have to say, I'm kind of a fan… You inspired me to pick up your thing too. I'm a magician as well, nothing like you, obviously – street level. Just a hobby." Mana's fan pulled out a bunch of cards and played around with them showing off his quite fast fingers and relatively impressive wrist control. His sleight of hand was beyond that of a normal human so he had a certain degree of chakra manipulation which troubled the magician.</p><p>"While I could use some help, I'm not sure I want to pull you into what I'm getting into…" Mana replied with her tone having softened. She had no idea if she had any right to ask this rough looking street rat to join her seeing how she little to no understanding of the level of his abilities.</p><p>"It's fine. I'm a Konohagakure ninja, also not unlike you. I'm working in the Eden prison complex, it's sort of my internship towards getting to work in the actual village protection service." The ragged youth calmed Mana down somewhat as if quickly having caught on to her fears.</p><p>"Explains why you know me…" Mana smiled with her right cheek realizing that it wasn't her fame that allowed this man to recognize her. His job was to gather rumors and prevent possible attacks and breakouts from the Eden prison complex. That meant that he must've known about Mana's relation to one particular prisoner still detained inside. After all, she was a possible threat to that prisoner's detainment if she ever showed up so close to the prison.</p><p>"You're visiting this place?" the undercover Eden guard wondered after seeing Mana enter a small book store. "Could this be what you were gathering money for today?" the man wondered out loud.</p><p>Calmly the magician walked up to the desk and smiled to the clerk before gently asking him to stack all the classic essentials of manga he would recommend to a begginer she could buy for the money she had assembled with her street magic. After she had bought the manga and sealed them inside her hat the young kunoichi headed for the door. What she saw outside slightly surprised her.</p><p>The undercover ninja she had just met was standing surrounded by a bunch of children showing them smalltime magic tricks. He wasn't overly impressive – just simple card tricks and elementary sleight of hand illusions but there was some charm in his simplistic approach, also it appeared to better appeal to his crowd.</p><p>"How long have you been standing there?" the man asked after the kids scattered and the magician approached him with a happy grin.</p><p>"Couldn't interrupt your little magical moment." Mana replied before pointing at the man's deck. "Are those steel tipped?"</p><p>"Why would they be? Isn't it a health hazard?" he wondered.</p><p>Mana pulled out one of her multiple steel tipped and elementary chakra storage seal and explosive or storage seal covered cards and showed them to the street magician.</p><p>"Nah, I keep my hobbies out of my ninja life. These look neat but they also look like a load of work…" he shook his head after admiring the magician's tools for a moment. While Mana used to use the typical genin ninja kit she had long since changed most of it for different steel tipped cards with several of them having elementary sealing techniques placed on them.</p><p>"Wait. You waited around for me. Does that mean you're gonna let me tag along with you?" the man smiled.</p><p>"I'm a bit confused as to why you'd do that but… I don't think I could stop you without feeling bad afterwards." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Well… You went in there to buy manga, didn't you? That means that you're actually going in there to see him. I assume you'll want to free him, no? While Eden prisoners are not dangerous to society and are mostly detained for their own protection, you'll need an officer's permission and company to allow him to just waltz out of there." Mana was surprised by how perceptive the man was and how quickly he got the general grasp of things.</p><p>"You're right. I'll need his help and help of anyone else I can get. I am acting as the first response squad and I need to intercept an event that the Hokage would without a doubt wish to interrupt but there'd be no time. I need to stop a marriage from happening, one that would grant a Yamanaka from Kirigakure unlimited influence over the other villages." Mana explained. She knew quite well that first response action usually was covered by a very tight grip of rules surrounding it, rules that she did not entirely follow and so much would've been clear. It was clear, the magician knew it from her companion's eyes and his smug and confident grin.</p><p>"Aburame Yanagi, pleased to meet you, Sorceress…" was all that the street rat replied.</p><p>Mana was reading through the various manga she was handed. Analyzing the tropes, storylines and characters. She had to prepare meeting him again, the last time their paths parted it didn't happen on the kindest of conditions. It was quite likely that her friend would be hostile towards her, even more so after she tells him about Shimo. The two actually had respect towards one another, unlike him and Mana. Odds were that he hated Mana's guts. She'd need something more than just nostalgic memories and promises of freedom and a good fight to get him to help.</p><p>"Okay, I'll bite. Why are you reading all of those? I thought they'd be for him, not for you…" Yanagi wondered finally taking off his black tinted diving googles and stroking his blonde beard out of curiosity.</p><p>"No. He's an otaku, these are essentials – classic manga, he undoubtedly already has them in his collection so gifting them would be useless. I need to know how he thinks, I need to talk to him on the same level he once was on, I need to understand his ramblings of plot clichés and character tropes. Once I thought he was quirky if bordering a bit crazy, I need to be less lazy than that to get him to help me." Mana explained temporarily pulling her attention away from the story of damsels in distress and young teens beating each other up. Seeing these simplistic yet appealing to feelings of various specters stories made the magician better relate to how Sugemi and Shimo acted before. She wasn't relating to them or justifying their actions but she now thought she knew why they did what they did.</p><p>Boys were expected a certain degree of manners, strength and gallantry. It was almost demanded of them to act a certain way and such expectations were seeded within the very cultural roots of the society around them. That was why Shimo and Sugemi could relate and understand the Demon from Kirigakure and why they could perfectly express their feelings through their fists. Violence never expressed any other feelings than anger or hatred but having a rich cultural background these two were able to obtain more from their violent confrontations than anyone else could have.</p><p>"What about you? You clearly know that I have broken several rules of a proper first response. As of now I have not informed the village of the situation and I do not plan to do so. I am also, most likely, criminally underqualified to enter that battlefield. A group called the Imarizu is involved, they have easily beaten me before as well as a whole bunch of more skilled Yamanaka ninja. Why haven't you apprehended me yet, why are you encouraging my quest to self-destruction?" Mana spoke while still calmly reading the colorless pages.</p><p>"Because I myself have an agenda. That is something that makes everyone trust each other around these parts – knowing that the person they just met has their own stakes in something. I wish to work in the village protective service but I am stuck doing the dirty work here. I've been doing what I'm doing for years, saving the world for once is my chance to be noticed, to be the wheat in between a bunch of chaff. Is that not enough to trust me?" Yanagi asked looking at Mana hopefully.</p><p>"I trust people quite easily. All I need to trust you is you telling me you're tagging along." Mana replied calmly without pulling her eyes away from the manga. By that moment the candle inside the lantern used to illuminate their little forest camp was beginning to run out and setting a bigger fire up would've been a bit like asking for trouble.</p><p>"Although I am a bit curious why exactly you are doing what you're doing. Why go after the Imarizu, why bother about all that political stuff, I remember myself as a genin, I was more bothered by doing the dishes at Ichiraku Ramen properly…" the Aburame wondered. His tone was not suspicious in the slightest but it did appear like he genuinely wanted to know Mana a bit better.</p><p>"My friend was taken. She said she doesn't mind being forced into a marriage but I won't let her get married to a man who placed a bounty on her head and is only marrying her because killing her didn't work. I can't let the village know because I've sworn to never take a life, to me all life is sacred and I know that if the village got a wind of this they'd aim to slaughter everyone, people would be lost on both sides. I cannot allow that." Mana replied closing her eyes and pulling the manga away from them. Slowly the girl began feeling real sleepy which wasn't that odd as she hadn't had a proper sleep in a while after waking up from her injuries.</p><p>"That is odd – a ninja trying to preserve life. At some point you'll be sent on an assassination mission. Your beliefs will be put into question and on the stage of the higher rank missions failing would be equal to treason. I pity you for the dilemma you'll have to face." Yanagi replied crossing his own arms around his chest and settling down to a tree, the man stopped playing around with his cards and placed them inside his inner jacket pocket.</p><p>Mana smiled with her eyes still closed and her consciousness still fading. To her it was quite amusing when her companion thought she'd actually live long enough to make it to the high ranks. That was a rarity all by itself. While her Academy teacher didn't really hate Mana or think she was a bad student per se, the man did believe that unless her beliefs changed quickly she's headed for a quick death on the battlefield. Suddenly her eyes opened up and she looked at her sleepy looking companion.</p><p>"Wait, do you know about the Imarizu?" Mana asked curiously as the man appeared to mention their name casually without really wondering what that group was about.</p><p>"Yeah, they're a sort of a hit squad. More like casual Black Ops. They can operate with the Raikage's permission without a bunch of paperwork and they aren't too worried about the rules, most of them are just impressive criminals trained to fight by the village." Yanagi replied slurring a little bit as it was clear he was getting sleepy.</p><p>"Did you say Raikage?" Mana asked to clarify.</p><p>"Yeah, the Imarizu are from Kumogakure exclusively. There's nothing like them in any other villages and they are almost public knowledge to anyone into recent politics. In fact, the formation and the constant use of the Imarizu services is one of the scandals that added up to the downfall of the Fourth Raikage." The Aburame explained.</p><p>Mana sat up and crossed her arms around her chest in frustration. This was some pretty important information. How exactly could Kumogakure have been involved into all of this? Did the Raikage even know of what the Imarizu was doing? Judging from what Mana had read about the Fifth Raikage, the woman was not really a manipulative or that malicious of a leader. On the contrary she was quite honor bound and very old fashioned. Could the reality truly differ so greatly from the stories and reports?</p><p>Mana went to sleep with a highly uneasy heart. There were still a good one day of travelling before they reached Eden. Truth be told, if they used all of their inhumanly speed the duo could have reached the prison complex much faster but Mana wanted one more day to be devoted to training while calmly progressing on the road. After all, she needed all the time she could get to maximize the hopes of learning that blasted genjutsu technique.</p><p>There was a certain blunder in Mana's sight. She had figured out how to make the technique work while she was processing it in her thoughts. The realization came after the magician had wondered if she was left to use the Substitution Jutsu while her replacement was still in the works. All of a sudden the kunoichi realized that the same principles behind the Substitution Jutsu could've been used to transfer the illusion much faster right into the necessary brain centers without any hand seals being made. However the Substitution Jutsu was a slightly limited technique in its use. First it needed something to replace the object one was to use it on, second – it probably would never work on pure chakra like the genjutsu technique… That meant that Mana would have to replace the object with something and it was quite likely that there were no suitable targets for replacement in her opponent's brain.</p><p>While this idea was a step in the right direction in Mana's quest to master her new illusion – it was far from the decisive one. After all, if the Substitution Jutsu worked like that no one would bother simply fighting, everyone would just replace their opponent's brain with something else effectively murdering them. The Substitution Jutsu was a technique on a physical level used on objects within one's reach, in a way it was a simple bypassing of the primitive space laws and speed limitations. Mana's plan on the other hand was of a more mental manipulation, directly transferring a mass of molded chakra straight into her opponent's mind.</p><p>It was becoming more and more clear to the magician before sleep finally claimed her that she was too far from completing her training and that it was quite likely she'd be facing the Imarizu unprepared and needing to rely on her companions. Just like the old man Aporius taught her…</p>
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<a name="section0248"><h2>248. This Is So Meta!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana feasted her eyes at the oversized base, seven hundred and fifty meters long and one-third of that wide. Covered with smaller buildings, office complexes and metal domes. Eden looked much more like a military base than a prison complex. Further in the distance, two main spherical shaped buildings with large rotund roofs stood out – likely the bulk of the imprisoned population was held there as well as the prison administration.</p><p>The massive steel gate closed behind duo's backs making the magician feel strangely locked in for a moment but once her eyes gazed upon the massiveness of the prison complex in front of her she somehow felt much freer and epically overwhelmed inside the massive deforested containment base than she ever did in the endless forests of the Fire Country outside of it.</p><p>Hooded figures in capes and metal masks with red visors gazed at the two visitors from the top of the steel wall that separated the void of trees from the cradle of industry and civilization – almost a small village or a large settlement by itself. Mana breathed in and out looking around. She didn't see that many uniformed or restrained prisoners walking around – mostly just ninja in typical ninja attires and body vests.</p><p>Usually, ninja put their own spin on their attires, some wore additional clothing under the chuunin vest. Some acquired their own unique models of the same vest as it wasn't that strictly regulated. People in the prison dressed exactly the same, strictly abiding the uniform rules which made Mana feel like a standout. Honestly, even her companion who actually worked in the place stood out quite decently.</p><p>"Well... Are you going to gawk about or are we going to see him?" Yanagi wondered teasing Mana's overwhelmed reaction to seeing the inside of Eden. Honestly, the place didn't look like much of a prison. The magician voiced that impression right after being spoken to.</p><p>"Oh, it isn't a prison by the strict definition, it's more like a "detainment community". The reason why this place looks like a militarized settlement is because it is – it has its own laws, administration, and sort of its own military but those contained here aren't technically threats to the village. Some of its most precious prisoners are actually not here to protect everyone from them but for the exact opposite reason." Yanagi shrugged looking around with some pride and a warm smile, emoting was not something Aburame did often so seeing the man acknowledge the size and uniqueness of this place was just as priceless as the place itself.</p><p>"So I've heard... Two Jinchuuriki?" Mana mumbled to herself almost as if afraid she was going to be heard. Sugemi told her that much right before being taken away.</p><p>"Yeah... Look, getting to your friend is going to be a pain in the ass, plenty of check-ups and stuff like that. For the size of this place it has a very strict "go here if you want to go there" ruleset to it – if you want anything done this century we may want to move onto the check-ups right there, besides the staff accommodation area." Yanagi pointed at a greenish metal tinted dome surrounded by simpler block buildings that supposedly housed the ninja watching and running the prison complex for the duration of their stay.</p><p>Mana nodded and the two passed on and through the door. Yanagi wasn't kidding. The magician had to register all of her weapons and tools and it was becoming so bothersome that she simply opted to leave her jacket and all of the spring mechanisms of her uniform by the checkup rather than having to go through the confusing and tedious trouble to register her weapons. She also dumped all of her cards since registering each custom placed seal on each card would've taken an eternity, especially if each check-up would have to happen multiple times as multiple areas had increasing levels of security and something that would've been allowed to have in one area was forbidden at the other.</p><p>"I'm surprised to see how easy it is for you to disarm... Most ninja would greatly fear to abandon their weapons." Yanagi noted after Mana rubbed her elbows and her shoulders as walking around in a sleeveless shirt alone was a bit too chilly for her.</p><p>"My mind is the most resourceful and powerful weapon I have. I'm not a kunoichi that relies on her weapons, they merely supplement my arsenal. You'd be surprised how often I do not expand my chakra augmentation force field wide enough to cover my clothes and they get singed. If that would get under my skin I'd probably have died long ago..." Mana noted. "What about your weapons? You just left your ninja kit at the check-up..."</p><p>"I am an Aburame, Mana. My weapons are swarming and squirming inside my body and I would die without them as they would without me. The ninja here understand that." Yanagi looked at Mana with a bit of a shaming look which was only visible from the way his eyebrows were curved as his actual eyes were still covered by the strange darkened swimming goggles.</p><p>A brief pause followed, Yanagi spoke first, clearly frustrated that something he wished to hear was not said.</p><p>"The concept of thousands of insects living inside of me does not creep you out? That is a common reaction..." he asked.</p><p>"It is kind of icky, I am not overly fond of insects but if that's your thing – it's your thing." Mana shrugged with an honest smile directed at her companion.</p><p>"I am beginning to like you." Yanagi smiled back.</p><p>"How so?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Over our course of common history, you've not called me "bug-guy" once." The man looked away pointing at the next building the two had to check-up in so that they gained access to the containment facilities and left the office part of the complex where all the tedious paperwork got done.</p><p>"Well, in everyone's defense, you are a guy and you do use bugs. However, I like to be original so I am glad to differ from the rest in at least some way." Mana replied fondly as she filled yet another form.</p><p>Yanagi snickered in a rather contained manner as he quickly and lazily filled in his own form leaving endless blanks, the staff member overseeing the paperwork simply clacked their tongue and began correcting the man's papers.</p><p>"Hey, Yanagi-san... It asks here "Have you come to Eden with malicious intent such as causing a prison break or doing criminal activity within its compounds". Do you think I should check that? I mean – we are planning to leave with him, aren't we?" Mana bit the other side of the pen, she could almost feel the sweaty forehead of the staff member sitting behind the hardened glass and sense his annoyance and confusion.</p><p>"This question was asked multiple times before. Why are you making a deal out of it now?" Yanagi slapped his forehead.</p><p>"Well, first it's a really dumb question, second, I want to fill the paperwork right. Paperwork is really important, you know..." Mana complained, "Still, who in their right mind would admit to having the intent to do crime here or break people out?"</p><p>Yanagi snapped his fingers and stole the paper right out from Mana's little-extended platform where it was supposed to be filled up and quickly gave it to the paperwork person to check up and fix.</p><p>"It's a trick, there's an article for lying on a public form about criminal intent. They're trying to get you into more trouble. That's what got Aluminum Lee – the famous gang enforcer caught. The Ninja Tribunal stated there wasn't enough evidence to lock him up for murdering people as all the witnesses were dead but he once lied on a public form like this one and that put the guy into Eden. From there on in a stronger case got built, a bunch of the supporters started believing Arumi wasn't invincible anymore and testified for a bunch of other charges getting him transferred all the way to Jigoku for life." Yanagi explained annoyed before opening the door leading into a massive containment facility and gesturing for Mana to go on.</p><p>"The devil is in the details, I suppose..." Mana wondered rubbing her chin and trying to wrap her head around the complicated Tribunal work and the difficult profession of actually prosecuting living criminals. In her perfect world, there would have to be a perfect legal system. One that would make persecuting people more valuable than just cutting them down and being done with it.</p><p>Having seen a fair share of moving picture productions in her life, the magician expected that there'd be bit more noise inside a functional containment facility but no one was banging at the chakra force fields keeping them inside their cells. In fact, most people inside the containment facility were quite indifferent to Mana and Yanagi wandering about and minding their own business. That was so incredibly odd to the magician that her step slowed down somewhat expecting to get noticed and at least one horrible verbal remark being slung her way but nothing of the sort transpired.</p><p>The duo ignored any stairs and just continued to walk onwards to the further parts of the first floor until Yanagi suddenly stopped in front of a cell. With her chest burning up with excitement and her breath whimpering Mana walked up to the cell and looked through the dark purple glow of the chakra barrier keeping her friend inside.</p><p>"Hello, Sugemi..." she uttered having found no better way to start the conversation. "Is there any way that this barrier can go?" Mana asked Yanagi who simply placed his palm at the center and through great effort channeled a shockwave that sent ripples through the barrier, breaking it down like a broken window. The falling shattered chakra constructs slowly dissipated in thin air beautifully in their synchronized destruction.</p><p>Slow taps emanated from inside the rather well decorated and very reminding of a simple living room cell. From the shadows Mana's friend emerged – thinner yet also much more athletic and balanced looking, hair greatly lengthened. Most Nara had their hair very long but wore them in ponytails or tied and restrained in some way. Sugemi didn't appear to care that much. Feeble and childish remnants of facial hair were beginning to dawn on the young man's face.</p><p>"I seem to remember telling you that if I saw you again – it'd be as an enemy..." Sugemi recalled with his left foot standing suspiciously similar to an offensive stance as if the young man was readying his body to pounce on his old teammate.</p><p>"That's not true – you said we'd eventually clash. You didn't say it'd happen when we next meet." Mana's cheekbones turned up as she shook her head gently.</p><p>"Oh... Well, that'll be an anticlimactic reunion of old friends turned rivals!" Sugemi shouted out in frustration snapping his fingers angrily. "Are you sure there's no reason for us to fight for a while to establish tension between us and exemplify our very human flaws?" he asked.</p><p>Mana sighed, "We may go that way, however, we are not legitimate rivals. I am the female romantic interest in the team formula which means I cannot be your equal rival in skill. That'd be Shimo. Also, the protagonist's rivals who fight weaker female romantic interests are really looked down on in the popularity polls, they generally are known for killing their entire series. I do not recommend going that way. It would also dispel any mystery for your exact power level after such a sudden reintroduction into the story."</p><p>Sugemi stood for a moment in awe.</p><p>"I may have done some homework just to communicate on the same level..." Mana shrugged her shoulders with some playful and acted guilt in her eyes.</p><p>"You are right. My manga would dip in sales if I had the main character fight you." Sugemi wondered scratching his chin.</p><p>"Wait, you're the main character in your manga? You're completely destroying the shounen genre tropes for the main character, also there're entire arcs where you're just imprisoned and doing nothing. That'll bury your manga, I heavily suggest being a rival character to Shimo." Mana objected.</p><p>"Oh... Yeah, as if you're a perfect example of a female romantic interest! Last time you subdued both of us instead of being weak and useless and you are not particularly romantically interested in either of us! You're also far too soft to be a masculine female badass character written as if the author would write of a male because they think a female character that is manly and strong is the same as a strong female character! You're completely breaking the genre yourself so we can go for the parody approach as our story isn't really smart enough to be the trope breaker..." Sugemi replied crossing his arms over his chest and smugly looking at Mana.</p><p>"Yeah. But we're not particularly funny so we can't parody anything either... You need to reinvent your character. Leave on an adventure with me to save an actual damsel." Mana suggested.</p><p>Sugemi looked interested playing with his hatchling soft facial hair stubs.</p><p>"Damsel in distress would boost my character alignment I could use scoring some popularity points..." he mumbled to himself.</p><p>"Actually... The damsel wishes to get married, you'd be kind of kidnapping her from her kidnapper and stopping her from getting married despite her absolute indifference to the matter. I don't think she's in any particular distress..." Mana fixed him making Sugemi pout even more.</p><p>"Wait for a second!" the Nara suddenly realized. "If the damsel is not in distress she isn't a useless weak shounen trope! Although, her rescue from a marriage she actually wants would give my story complexity: am I a hero saving a young lady from a bad choice she'll regret in the future, or am I a monster kidnapping her from a loving groom!? My manga would get some complexity! Complexity, Mana!" Sugemi shouted out jumping in joy and clapping around. He even began packing his things. "As long as you're aware of the fact that we will eventually have to fight, I want our previous dialogue to be foreshadowing for a really wicked volume spanning fight with transformations and very inspiring quotes that, given the context, are absolutely meaningless! That way my story will seem more intelligent than it actually is – making meaningless details into foreshadowing ones tends to do that."</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, I'm sure we'll have an overblown fight over food that makes no sense since none of us really love food that much or a misunderstanding over vague statements or prophecies. Or one of us will get mind controlled at some point..." Mana playfully shrugged. "We are going to deal with Yamanaka so..."</p><p>"Here's to hoping..." Sugemi firmly nodded his head. "But then it leaves only one question... What about my imprisonment?"</p><p>"Oh, do not worry about that, I'll arrange a temporary leave with the administrator..." Yanagi butt into the conversation politely assuring the two past teammates.</p><p>"No. He means incorporating it into his manga... I'm sure you can make it a time skip training arc. It'll save paper and also allow you to make-up hogwash power-ups and techniques without the need of actually establishing them or any character development that would come with learning them." Mana suggested.</p><p>Sugemi sighed cocking his head around like he was not overly fond of that idea but then he decided to just go with it.</p><p>Quickly guards following a chubby short man filled the containment building and surrounded Mana, Yanagi, and Sugemi.</p><p>"We've detected a barrier breach. What is the meaning of this?" the chubby officially dressed man inquired rudely but Yanagi approached him to bargain out a deal for Sugemi's temporary leave on a first response squad. Mana and Sugemi stayed behind and watched the conversation. Judging from the manner in which Yanagi addressed the chubby man, the Aburame was outranked by the man and yet after a brief exchange of words and explanations the man hesitantly agreed to let Sugemi go on Yanagi's watch temporarily just as reinforcement to the first response squad.</p><p>"That was impressive." Mana complimented her companion on his impressive conversational and legal skills. Not many people could barter out a deal like that on the spot quoting actual prison statute and various rules and decrees.</p><p>"Scratch that, teach me how to communicate with that Nara guy. He was annoying to deal with sufficiently that the people he was placed with consistently tried to kill him and then pleaded distress." Yanagi replied looking curiously at the athletic and tall young man following them with a large satchel of things he took from his cell. The trio headed to recollect all of the items they've left behind so they could move on to the Land of Waves.</p><p>"You know, we should've taken Deiji or Nanaba with us too... Don't we still need people for a complete rescue team?" Sugemi inquired. "Maybe Shimo should've come with us too? Three people reunions make for pretty powerful moments that can be illustrated on the cover of a volume or even on the movie box if my manga ever gets adapted..." the Nara shrugged.</p><p>"No way, getting a Jinchuuriki to come would've been incomparably more difficult. They are almost always an exception to each leniency rule. They must stay safe and indoors at all times, that's the policy Konoha has adopted since the Fourth Hokage declared it so..." Yanagi objected.</p><p>"Also... Shimo died, on the last mission we were in. I was pretty sure you were sent a notice with a permission of attending his funeral so I thought you'd know..." Mana sadly informed her teammate.</p><p>Sugemi looked down in confusion, his eyes wandered around the forest surrounding them and the Eden prison complex that was quickly fleeting their view and disappearing in the horizon.</p><p>"There goes your suggestion making him the hero... Did he at least die a sufficiently heroic death that the fans wouldn't petition to bring him back and have closure?" Sugemi wondered. It appeared that after the initial cold shower of Tanshu's death nothing made Sugemi abandon his manga-centered personality. It appeared to become his cover from pain, sadness and the cruel world around him – everything was just a manga story to him now. Mana was not entirely sure which version of her friend she liked more but at least she could somewhat communicate with this one.</p><p>"He did, but I suppose he could make a good surprise time skip revelation to end the first post-time skip chapter on... However you handle it, Shimo died a hero and his death mattered." Mana concluded trying to hide her own sadness behind the adopted manner of the speech she had to use to communicate to her friend. She had never in a thousand years thought that this manga trope world she was studying would become the only way to reach her friend now. It was really a good thing she had studied it extensively before approaching him.</p><p>"Yeah... It'd make a real shocker twist. Even if fans do make a fuss, in my manga no one will come back from the dead... Just my way of establishing some realism into this crazy world..." Sugemi mumbled out clearly affected by the news.</p><p>An awkward silence took over the better part of that day's trip. The ever-lingering presence of death and everyone remembering all those they have lost. It was clear just looking into Yanagi's dark and expressionless face that somewhere inside those dark goggles he understood the reason behind Sugemi's current rambling state. It was the best way the boy had found to deal with the world around him. This change was his only way of not becoming the villain of his story. He likely still fostered those cold views of wishing to eradicate criminals and hating on Kirigakure whether they were criminals or not. Still, the way things were now it was tough to say how much of the old Sugemi or the darker Sugemi still lingered in this young man...</p>
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<a name="section0249"><h2>249. Inspiration From The Most Unexpected Places</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The familiar sound of breaking waves hitting the shores greeted Mana's ears together with the salty sea smell. This beach, however, had no fishing settlement or port town on it, just a couple of separate shipping establishments selling or renting boats together with rowers. The beach appeared to begin suddenly, at some point the endless horde of trees just stopped and a fist-sized extension of grassy plains extended a bit further before running into a rough sandy beach.</p><p>"So do you have money to rent out a boat?" Yanagi wondered looking at Mana suggesting that he was broke.</p><p>"I don't feel like rowing, maybe we should pay a rower?" Sugemi complained stretching out. He must've been getting soft in the prison as early mornings hit him right below the belt.</p><p>"We can't afford to waste time. We're already a couple of days behind the Imarizu. We need to travel to the other side instantly – as fast as we can. That way we'll save one and a half day and possibly still be in time to interrupt the marriage." Mana firmly stated looking at the misty and calm surface of water extending into the horizon. The thick mist made the sea look almost infinite but most people living in the Fire Country knew that the voyage to the Land of the Waves would've taken a bit less than two days.</p><p>"I can do it..." Sugemi smiled smugly looking at his companions with some arrogance and condescension. "Can you though, without running into stupid filler shenanigans?"</p><p>Yanagi nodded, he was a bit intimidated by the challenge but his face beside a shade of seriousness didn't betray any shade of fear. Just the healthy bit of respect for the challenge.</p><p>"Won't even break a sweat..." Mana closed her eyes before stretching out her legs and cracking her fingers.</p><p>"We will. I hope you've taken it into consideration – we'll spend a lot of chakra pulling something like this. We'll be at a disadvantage during the fight, I doubt the Imarizu would've pulled something like this." Yanagi looked at Mana questioningly but the kunoichi didn't answer his gaze.</p><p>The magician leaped up into the air allowing her hands to flash through a bunch of hand seals in a mere moment. A chilly breeze blew the team's way leaving Mana suspended in mid-air.</p><p>"Mystical Wings Jutsu." she chanted out before leaning forward and supercharging her jutsu, the imbalanced super-powered wind current launched Mana shooting like a sky soaring arrow through the ocean. Crossing the entire distance in a bit less than a couple of seconds.</p><p>Once the magician's feet firmly landed on the ground on the other side she breathed out uneasily. Mana had to admit that supercharging and struggling to maintain her technique cost her more chakra than she had wished it to, then again, it was still better than trying to leap over the sea just using simple chakra augmentation. The young woman stretched out her numb and aching muscles and closed her eyes trying to calm down her erratic chakra network and her rushing heart.</p><p>A powerful blast shook the ground beneath Mana's feet raising a wave of sand so immense that the magician had to leap sideways to avoid it. Sugemi was smiling in his showy landing pose in a giant crater of sand blasted away from under his feet, his skin was swollen red, blood vessels shot out and pulsing as they struggled to sate his slowly dying muscles with oxygen. A moment later the gates that Sugemi had opened closed down relieving his tense muscles and returning some cheerfulness into his cheeks. The young Nara's gate mastery appeared to have increased, it came off much more casually to him now. He must've still been training in prison, pretty hard from the look of it. It was good to know – they'd need all the skill they can get pretty soon.</p><p>Seconds passed by before a darker image appeared in the fog and then closed in – Yanagi was riding a cloud of large insects. These weren't the usual Aburame parasitic insects, these were a whole another breed. Where the usual parasitic insects looked somewhat like black small beetles, these massive ones reminded Mana more of locusts or grass hoppers with large buzzing wings. While she was genuinely creeped out by the display she did her best to hide it as while she was not a fan of creepy crawlies she didn't want to offend her companion. Somehow the impression hit her that the Aburame bonded with their symbiotic crawling friends which would've made expressing disgust really offensive.</p><p>After Yanagi leaped off the massive cloud of insects and landed on the messed up beach allowing the insects to disappear into his sleeves and behind his collar like they were never there he just fixed his raggedy coat.</p><p>"I've had my insects eat some of my own chakra to get them fast enough... It's clear that none of us are at full strength. Do you really think it smart to look for a fight now?" Yanagi voiced his impression.</p><p>"It doesn't matter. It was not a fight I fully intended to win anyways, as long as Kiyomi doesn't get married I'll be fine with whatever happens." Mana looked at a small settlement in the distance.</p><p>Land of Waves had no hidden villages and no ninja to protect them. It relied solely on the mercy of other ninja villages and there used to be a big struggle between Konoha and Kirigakure as to who will grant the island the most favors. Influence here was well desired and, frankly, that made little sense. Mana was sure that it was mostly fueled by rivalry and not actual economic or military benefit. Land of Waves had little to no military power other than its settlers, none of them were really soldiers either. If anything, it was sort of useful as a comfortable communication tower location – the signal from here would've covered all the way to Archipelago and Konoha. Still, it hardly was worth the massive conflicts and hidden spy warfare that transpired in this poor peaceful island.</p><p>"Crime is a massive problem in Land of Waves..." Yanagi noted. It didn't really sound like a warning or like anything of great meaning behind it. Must've just been a simple observation without anything the Aburame wanted to say with it.</p><p>"Yeah. But the criminals here reign unchallenged. Without challenge, they never evolve. Their MOs are ancient and outdated, they are weak and no threat to anyone but a peaceful settler. I don't think we have anything to worry about..." Sugemi shrugged. "I don't think they are even worth mentioning in my manga. They'd not be strong enough to serve any role – too weak to be a surprise twist villain, not even strong enough to be filler fodder."</p><p>"It's strange, isn't it? How numbed we are to criminals – as long as they pose no threat to us as a military unit ninja tend to ignore them. That's what leads to them thriving and leeching off of poor peaceful people that want nothing more but continue their lives without having to deal with criminals." Mana closed her eyes sinking deep in thought. Something about this ghastly poor settlement reminded her of all the locations she had visited affected by the Syndicate. The magician wanted to do something about all this but it wasn't why she came there, unlike when she was looking for the Box, this time she was racing with time.</p><p>"So you know the threat, right?" Yanagi asked Mana directly.</p><p>"I've faced the Imarizu before. I lost." Mana replied directly.</p><p>"Well, now you won't be alone, it'll be fine..." Sugemi arrogantly waved his hand at her.</p><p>"I wonder about that... I was training a special technique which I was sure would've granted me victory over them. They are exclusively physical combatants – fast, strong, their punching focused style is brutal and tough to defend against. Even a single Imarizu would give me trouble, I remember barely being fast and slippery enough to evade two of them." Mana wondered.</p><p>"So why did you stop training? If you finished your training maybe you'd have stood a better chance?" Sugemi asked, "I mean, I get it – unfinished training builds up tension before the big battle. It establishes a real threat and if you just mastered a perfect counter technique to the enemy's abilities it'd be way too convenient to allow sufficient tension. Still – it would be a handy tool and a new technique always mixes up the boring repetition of a shounen manga." The Nara shrugged.</p><p>"I don't see myself as a character of a manga, Sugemi. Nor would I see me as the main character. I belong to no clan, there's nothing special about me and I don't like fighting that much, I only do it out of necessity. I like to be ready – challenge doesn't excite me. I'm in no way different from any of my peers. I want to be a hero but I don't assume I'm anything special like being the main character of my own story..." Mana looked at the wet and sludgy mush of mud beneath her feet.</p><p>Yanagi wanted to speak up, say something encouraging but he stopped halfway, the raggedy young man saw a little dirty kid playing on the street and walked up to her. The little girl looked in no way scared of a stranger which just looked so sad. Almost like the kid accepted the inevitability of death and didn't care if the people talking to her were malicious or good people.</p><p>"I'm sorry, young girl. You wouldn't by any chance know about a wedding that has to happen here, would you?" the Aburame inquired trying to make his face as kid-friendly as possible. Still, it would've been impossible to make a face of an Aburame with those silly black swimming googles not look suspicious. The hilarious expression on the kid's face almost made Mana cheer up a bit right after facing her failure.</p><p>"Oh yeah... It'll happen tomorrow in the northern beach at thirteen 'o clock. The whole arrival of the groom will happen in the morning, it'll be a big celebration. We don't see much of those..." the dirty cheeked kid looked down.</p><p>"Wow, Mana. You're gonna be good to go as the villain when you crash that wedding. Ruining your friend's wedding, ruining a celebration for the whole island." Sugemi whistled with his attempt to tease Mana.</p><p>"I'm fine being the villain. As long as I do what is right." Mana cut down. "I kind of expected to get into a fight today though. I don't want those Imarizu holding Kiyomi hostage any longer than they have to, I know Kumogakure's history well enough to know it's not a great idea to leave them with a foreigner for too long..."</p><p>Sugemi chuckled.</p><p>Yanagi shook his head. "No, this is good. We'll have some time to rest a little bit. None of us are fresh and we'll need to be in our best possible state to win this."</p><p>"I'll have some time to practice my technique..." Mana sighed.</p><p>"You still haven't explained to me what you're exactly trying to do. Maybe I can help you out?" Sugemi shrugged, "I'm trying to score points for the next popularity poll and the unlikely antihero savior scores pretty good with the target demographic."</p><p>"It's a genjutsu, cast as fast as possible, a couple of hand seals most. The target is to make a superior faster Substitution Jutsu replacement." Mana explained.</p><p>"What's wrong with Substitution? It's a pretty good bail out from writing yourself into a corner..." Sugemi shrugged. "It also makes for a decent fake-out tool if you want to freak your audience out with a fake death."</p><p>"It's too slow and clunky. It needs me to focus on what's around me, on things to replace myself with. It is also an easily learned universal technique meaning my opponent can pursue me with it or use it against me. I want something faster, more confusing, something that'd buy me time to lock my enemy into a chain of illusions." Mana explained.</p><p>"Oh, so you're like Chip Sipper from My Battle Bikini Goddess. You're looking to stall the plot and annoy both the reader and your opponent." Sugemi smiled.</p><p>Right before the trio reached the inn they decided to stay in Mana wondered why she ever thought that Sugemi could help her. Genjutsu was one of the most sophisticated ninja arts, probably right up there with medical ninjutsu. Sugemi was one of the poorest grades having students, he had little to no genjutsu knowledge. His constant ramblings about manga and tropes that reminded more of madness than something making any semblance of sense.</p><p>After just barely managing to scrape together enough money for one room to stay in overnight everyone was so tired that Sugemi and Yanagi hit the beds. There's been a while since any of them slept in a proper bed, the jury was still out on Sugemi's case as Mana didn't have any experience with prison beds. However, if she proceeded with this tradition of caring more about her own moral principles and well-being of people dear to her than rules she'd soon find out all about it...</p><p>The magician closed her eyes and tried to meditate a bit. Try and figure out a solution to her iron wall that prevented all of her progress. She had one night to master the illusion. Still, the very same limitations plagued her: she couldn't pull off the technique like the one she wanted fast enough. If she could wrap her head around a sufficiently speedy technique it was too weak. That substituting of an illusion formed in her own mind idea she once had was grand, if only it was any closer to reality, not quite there, just far enough she could see it and reach for it...</p><p>"Chip Sipper, huh?" Mana wondered to herself after forcefully breaking her trance.</p><p>She just couldn't meditate right – she was afraid, for both her own life and that of Kiyomi and those of her companions who had agreed to come with her. Too afraid and asking too many questions to either sleep or meditate – she was such a wreck. When she regained her chakra control and helped beat Akimichi Francho somehow she believed that she could somehow make a difference. Be an efficient ninja instead of a failure she had been for so long and yet... Meditating used to be this thing she was very good at and she couldn't even do that anymore.</p><p>Crawling quietly on her knees the magician got to her puffed up a bag and examined its contents. For some reason, she still carried around all the manga she had bought. It may not have been all of them but she at least carried around most of them – who could've said, she wasn't careful enough to guarantee one or two chapters didn't get lost in the forests she roamed the past couple of days. Slowly, Mana's fingers pulled out a bunch of manga and zipped the bag, as quietly as she could.</p><p>A rough sound of Sugemi kicking his cover and flipping around in his bed scared Mana a bit attracting her attention but then the Nara just fell asleep. The magician began running her eyes through the covers and the titles. There was plenty in this pile she still hadn't read but the name Sugemi had mentioned sounded familiar. Finally, the magician's eyes stopped at a very questionably dressed young lady with a beach ball fighting what seemed like the most oddly dressed clan of ninja, then again, who was Mana to judge the attire of other ninja.</p><p>"My Battle Bikini Goddess..." Mana mumbled under her nose almost immediately regretting looking into its contents. She thought she had heard of the name Sugemi mentioned in some huge crossover manga she read when she was researching the crossover subject. This title in specific seemed far too lude for the magician's interest and she tried to postpone researching ecchi battle manga for as long as possible.</p><p>"Kiyomi and Meiko would probably enjoy this..." Mana sighed after finishing the whole volume of some of the weirdest read she had in a while. Apparently as the summary on the back claimed the title in question was a long time classic of the ecchi battle manga genre. While Mana lacked the experience to tell if this manga specifically was the best of anything as she had not properly researched any more ecchi titles nor did she intend to do so in the nearest future, the magician could see some similarities between her and the previously mentioned perv Chip Sipper.</p><p>Something was wrong. Mana's seated frame froze in fear as her chakra flared up, she rolled sideways using her arms as an aide to elevate her into a standing position as a black figure burst into her room through the wall. Differently, from the all-black dressing ninja from My Battle Bikini Goddess who fought exclusively little-underdressed girls (who were continuously stated in footnotes to be over the age of eighteen by the author) in hot sandy beaches, this assailant was perfectly blending into the natural darkness of the night outside.</p><p>A loud popping sound informed Mana that the light bulb got poppet as she guessed that more of the assailants were gathering. Luckily enough the loud entrance raised her companions. It was clear to Mana from the shining blades on the attacker's knuckles that the strike was aimed at a vital on the back of her neck – she was meant to be taken out quickly, leaving the other two struggling to fend off unknown assailants in the dark right after waking up.</p><p>Mana's hands reached in to weave hand seals but more figures flooded in through the hole blown by the attacker as the rest of the Imarizu flooded the room making it too stuffy for showy evasion or overly destructive techniques. For the second time Mana was caught unprepared, it was more than likely that they sensed the really loud arrival of the three and decided to hit before they were hit. While their initial attempt at Mana's life was unsuccessful it was now only a matter of time. The room was completely dark making Sugemi's techniques almost useless as he couldn't form a shadow in total darkness without leaving outside and looking for a light source there.</p><p>This fight for their lives couldn't have found them at a worse time...</p>
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<a name="section0250"><h2>250. The Lowest Point</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Right after the three of Imarizu barged in they proceeded to carry out their objective. Without a doubt, they intended for Mana to die immediately. Judging from how devoted the Imarizu was in their initial clash to keep Mana from making hand seals they must've known or at least suspected some of her skillset at least and for one reason or the other considered it important to not let her perform a single jutsu.</p><p>Immediately the three Imarizu, dressed black as the night that gave them cover and wearing only blank dark masks that removed any semblance of their humanity, charged at each and every ninja remaining alive after their attack. This time Mana did not bother performing hand seals or trying to pull off techniques – she knew it would've been just time wasted as she'd have gotten interrupted again. The magician leaped and rolled over the beds that crowded the room and all the small bedside cabinets that made it difficult to properly evade.</p><p>Just like Kouta taught her when there wasn't enough space to evade, Mana utilized that stuffed space to put objects between her and her opponent. If the room did not allow her the luxury of evasion she made sure that it also got in her opponent's way but with a single powerful hook each object sent their way got bashed and ground to sawdust with a single chakra imbued knuckle duster strike. The blades on the bladed knuckle dusters the Imarizu all used sliced through wood like a jet of fire made its way through paper.</p><p>Mana offered herself the foolish luxury to care for her friends and see how they were doing. Sugemi, impressively enough, was moving in a way similar to her. The magician was terribly wrong to feel surprised about his skill in close range combat. He was a taijutsu user, if anyone amongst the three of them could keep up with the Imarizu it would've been Sugemi. However, Mana saw it. None of them were close to being on the technical level of skill to match fists with the Imarizu. All of them fleeing, moving away and desperately working to stay alive. This fight would not end well unless they changed something up.</p><p>Then there was this sparking thought of the fourth Imarizu. Where was he? Lurking somewhere waiting for their ace in the hole chance to strike for a kill. One good hit would've been everything it'd have taken to kill. This time there was no mystery man to bring Mana or anyone of her companions back from death. It was just what she was willing and capable of doing to survive.</p><p>"Sugemi!" Mana shouted and she felt her friend grab her by her abdomen and move her away as he flipped beside her, letting a potentially heart piercing strike punch through the floor.</p><p>Her friend lit up like a candle, the young man activated his first gate effortlessly without even taking a moment to channel his chakra. The first gate now came off that naturally to Sugemi.</p><p>"Do it!" he affirmed Mana that he had it in the bag.</p><p>As the magician worked with her hand seals, one of the Imarizu pointed their knuckle dusters at her and Sugemi who stood in front of her ready to block or deflect any attacks coming her way. The Nara grunted out loud in pain as he bashed the knuckle duster aside with the back of his palm, getting cut in the process. The tension and strain that the First Gate placed on his body made blood spout out from the Nara's wound like an upchuck of vomit.</p><p>Mana's hand seals concluded. A sweet melody filled the air as she gently and softly hummed out the tune of her genjutsu activating the Sweet Lullaby Jutsu. The lifeless and almost demonic looking Imarizu twitched and began shaking. Their bodies utterly overwhelmed with pleasure, sadly Mana saw Sugemi and Yanagi be affected by the same illusion. For a moment a relief of a possible victory took Mana over but then a sharp pain in her abdomen interrupted that feeling.</p><p>The magician groaned in pain and her eyesight blurred for a moment making a complete and utter mess of the shadow sunken room she was fighting for her life in. One of the Imarizu was leaned down on his stretched out back leg and kneeling on their front leg while they threw a powerful low-aimed punch right into Mana's gut. The magician felt the rushing taste of blood in her mouth as she realized that the Imarizu that punched her was still wearing his knuckle dusters. She instantly devoted a fair flow of chakra to keeping her gut stab wound bleeding as little as possible.</p><p>She heard feint taps of blood but it wasn't hers, it was too far away to be hers and then she saw it – knives stuck in each of the assailants' thighs. They stabbed themselves in their moment of weakness, after being captured in her illusion, to allow the sudden outburst of pain to overcome the pleasure – that allowed them the needed concentration to break the illusion and right after it was broken they moved instantly with the cover of the shade around them. Too fast for Mana's let down guard to keep up with.</p><p>As the Imarizu all prepared to pounce Mana realized that they were going to focus all their attention on her – she's been marked as the sick and weakened animal and they had their highest chances of taking her down if they all focused on her. It was like knives stuck in their thighs barely even slowed them down or affected their thoughts at all, almost like pain did not exist for them. Mana couldn't do this any longer! She'd remove those masks and expose their humanity, their pain ridden faces if it was the last thing she'd do. The demoralizing sight of those steel masks on their faces was too much...</p><p>The kunoichi lifted her hands up, Imarizu jumped at her but then they, too late, realized that she was not weaving any hand seals. Instead, the card spring devices in her sleeves slipped a hand of cards in each of her hands which she threw right at her assailants. The Imarizu leaped over it and landed their feet firmly on the ceiling of the room, kicking off of it they aimed their knuckles right at Mana but Sugemi interrupted two of them, punching so hard at them and stopping halfway that the air pressure would cushion and block the attackers' blows. The pair relentlessly bombarded the Nara with their taijutsu combinations moving in and out, switching between themselves just to give the young one not a moment of rest and it showed. Sugemi skipped more and more blows and was being tossed around.</p><p>A chirping and squirming wall of bugs protected Mana from the bladeless Imarizu but she could have sworn she heard a thick. Like some sort of a switch was being pressed and after hearing the steel string reeling sound she rolled aside only to get another quadruple gash on her back – like a cheetah leaving its marks on the girl, smacking her with its clawed paw. It appeared that the assailants' weapons had the option of being returned to their user after they were used as long range projectiles via string reeling mechanism. Yanagi's bugs continued to swarm wherever the Imarizu who now regained his knuckle duster tried to rush in on Mana, shielding her with their collective effort at their master's command.</p><p>The magician pulled her hands back revealing the steel strings being attached to the cards she had used as the light from the floor below shined through the ground hole made during the missed strike of one of the attackers, illuminating the strings. With her other hand, she weaved hand seals, just barely fast enough now that she had the assist from Yanagi's creepy crawlies. Even as they protected her from being skewered to death the magician still felt glad that there was barely any light coming into the room – else she had seen the nature of insects that were protecting her life right now.</p><p>"Magic Bullet Barrage!" Mana shouted placing her steel wire holding hands in front of her and expelling an intense barrage of small balls of lightning chakra. The lightning chakra spheres rushed right to where they were pointed at, the Imarizu member she was aiming them at easily flipped and vaulted aside but Mana pulled her steel strings trapping the man. The lightning balls transferred their charge right into the steel strings almost like fusing with them – the steel strings attached to Mana's cards directed the lightning chakra spheres right into the tangled Imarizu member who finally displayed a sign of humanity shook in immense pain as his entire body twitched and contracted under immense lightning shock. Even when exposed to such incredibly painful attacks well beyond the voltage needed to kill a normal man the Imarizu did not shout or grunt in pain.</p><p>The magician could smell a tense burning flesh sensation and the brief rays of light from below transferred through the hole the Imarizu punched earlier as well as the countless holes Mana left in the wall with her technique briefly illuminated the streaks of smoke coming off of the Imarizu member and his torn up and damaged black skinsuit and halfway broken mask.</p><p>Sugemi meanwhile slid back after a strong shoulder slam broke the wind out from his lungs. He grinned after realizing where he was located as the Imarizu duo charged at him. The Nara clutched himself together...</p><p>"First Gate: Gate of Opening! Open!" he shouted out opening his first gate with much more focus, molding up incalculably more chakra and becoming just briefly fast enough to match the Imarizu duo blow for blow. The Imarizu simply displayed bad positioning trying to approach their opponent in the straight line but it was not their fault – it was Sugemi's more clever positioning getting them in between another partner of his or a wall, not letting the two surround him.</p><p>Finally, as a massive influx of insects bashed at the wall cutting the Imarizu off of him he could weave his hand seals.</p><p>The two Imarizu members took their time to backflip out of danger of being overwhelmed with whatever kind of parasitic chakra devouring insects Yanagi used.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Barrage!" Sugemi shouted as the light coming in from below was sufficient for him to form a very short shadow, at long last, and unleash a powerful barrage of strikes with the shadow constructs branching out from the ground.</p><p>Sadly the Imarizu were too skilled and evaded the attack, bobbing and weaving from each strike, an impressive feat of agility as the strikes appeared almost simultaneously, before moving too far away for Sugemi's weakened technique's range to even reach them. The Nara's offensive comeback was cut short. Mana looked at her opponents carefully surveying them and their utter silence really was getting to her. They weren't coordinating any plans with their own teammates, they weren't expressing any emotion. They were just acting. They knew their plan, they knew their objectives and could sufficiently enough work together to understand their motions from half a thought.</p><p>Angered by his lack of success Sugemi reached into his back pocket. The Imarizu lashed out at him not feeling overly enthusiastic about allowing the youth to properly utilize his arsenal. A flock of knives and blades enveloped the Imarizu who just in time managed to swing and throw his companion away from the same fate. Surprised by the turnout Mana realized that it was Yanagi's insects that each carried a small blade with them, clutched by their numerous legs sharing the weight effort. It was almost like a storm of swarm minded knives that enveloped their opponent and cut them at the same time as they feasted on their chakra, as most Aburame parasitic insect breeds did.</p><p>A strong gust of wind sent the swarm of knife wielding parasitic locusts away. It was a powerful strike with Wind Release chakra forming a shockwave around it, strong enough to either tear apart a body hit by the initial strike or blow away something like the swarm of insects surrounding the Imarizu member at that moment.</p><p>Bleeding and torn up, with his mask cracked the second Imarizu also leaped back into safety. Suddenly a powerful flash of light surprised Mana – Sugemi set off his flash bomb that most ninja carried in their ninja kits. It was a small pellet-like sphere that when cracked emitted a brief flash that lasted a couple of times longer than an actual flash of light – the light emanating from it persevered for a brief fraction of a moment longer than an actual flash of light.</p><p>Having been given a chance to use his Nara hidden shadow techniques, Sugemi went through his hand seals and shouted out.</p><p>"Nara Clan Hijutsu: Shadow Yggdrasil!" he roared out as his body tensed up to point where it seemed like at any point it could burst in blood. With the whole room being enveloped in a flash of light providing him a faster than a lightning bolt chance to use his technique Sugemi unleashed a gigantic beam of darkness on the floor that was like his own shadow expanded dozens of times from which a colossal pillar of solid shadowy construct came out blasting the two Imarizu who were lined up to one side of the room out with an impressive explosion as the room could no longer contain the battle inside.</p><p>The expanding shadow pillar then morphed into a horizontal tree-like shape of fists that kept on assaulting the two Imarizu members and trying their best to do as much damage as possible. The third Imarizu member just looked on at Sugemi blowing his two teammates away and saw his chance right after the flash of light faded and the Nara's technique was abruptly ended. He leaped at the weakened and exhausted Sugemi but only heard a shout from his side.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" Mana yelled out right as her foot collided with the Imarizu's block. The magician was impressed that the assailant managed to block her attack without actually seeing it coming as she did not chant out the name of her taijutsu technique before it was already blocked.</p><p>After the Imarizu member slid back and bashed his way through the shoddy wooden wall unable to stop from the inertia, falling good two floors down in the process. Mana rushed after him but saw nothing. The trio waited on trying to anticipate the next attack but there was only the cold chill of the night and the howling misty winds rushing through the numerous holes in the battle damaged building.</p><p>No one came at them... The Imarizu disappeared just as fast into the night as they attacked.</p><hr/><p>Mana, Yanagi, and Sugemi wandered the gloomy streets of the island. After the inn got completely trashed they could obviously no longer stay there. That being said, they had nowhere to go to nor did they have any options. They were worn out, made to bleed and sweat before their big battle and that was only the second to worst possible outcome. Even when they lost the Imarizu won...</p><p>Obviously, their intent was to kill the three quickly and efficiently, with a single strike take out Mana – proceed to take out the sleepy duo the same way. Even if the three were still drawing breath they took some pretty nasty blows. All three of them were cut up and bleeding as one couldn't just block the Imarizu's blows. Mana's gut felt burning up even after she had applied an ointment that was supposed to help her wound heal. Sugemi looked like he was attacked by a wild animal with the claws of steel, Yanagi was also decently scratched up but out of the three, he looked the best. Probably because he had his bugs protect him most of the time. Their blade using defense was efficient enough to keep him alive.</p><p>The three did not speak to each other. Just like the Imarizu did not speak with their companions but it wasn't for the same reasons. They just knew that the attack left them weakened and battered, they knew that even at full strength they stood little to no chances of survival. Right now they almost got taken out by a squad of Imarizu that was missing the member with Shimo's sword.</p><p>The trio found a calmer alleyway to turn into. Slowly they wandered in and scared away any smalltime criminals counting their nightly profits from mugging and casual gambling scams. Mana used the seal in her hat to remove some emergency supplies out of the pocket storage space inside it and began changing her clothes behind the cover of a corner alleyway to the one her companions were doing the same in, she also refilled her deck compartment with a couple of cards she was missing. The My Battle Bikini Goddess manga fell out but she carefully shoved it back inside. Mana's eyes shot out wide and she straightened out, looking back, then at her friends.</p><p>Sugemi accidentally slipped in a look at Mana before she was finished getting ready – her slip into her thoughts caused her to not get ready as fast as her looking away male teammates would've thought it to take. Swiftly Mana finished getting ready and placing the decks into their compartments, checking the seals on the decks and seeing if the spring devices still worked. She put on her top hat before letting a handful of blue sparks shoot out from inside it signaling that the seal still worked. Seeing how Mana was no sealing expert and only knew the basics taught in the Academy such checks were often needed.</p><p>In the Land of Waves, it was tough to say when exactly the Sun rose up. It was constantly misty and near impossible to see anything at all. However, at some point in time from the absolute pitch black murky darkness, the day turned into just the casual everyday depressing gloom.</p><p>Slowly, yet at an accelerating pace, Mana, Yanagi, and Sugemi moved onto the northern beach location. No one was quite sure what would come out of it but Mana wasn't about to stop. She couldn't allow her friend's sword being used to kill, she couldn't allow one of her best friends to get married to a kidnapper who tried to have her killed nor could she allow Inomame gain untold influence over the world. Someone who used power and influence like Inomame did couldn't be allowed to have that much power and influence.</p><p>Yanagi didn't slow his step either. The Aburame was determined to rather die than continue being a smalltime undercover over-glorified prison spinster whose job it was to catch and filter through rumors of when a smalltime criminal of even smaller importance would be tried to be broken out. He wanted to move past it and the man knew that the path to where he wanted to get laid in something exceptional, often in risking his life.</p><p>Mana was not entirely sure of what Sugemi was thinking, honestly. He looked equally determined to have another arc added to the manga about his story which would one day inevitably be written. Maybe that was all it was about, the magician was not sure, but she herself liked to think that there was another reason to her friend's presence by her side. Maybe he wished to genuinely redeem his youthful mistakes of the past, maybe he only used those silly mad speeches of tropes and meta-sounding madness as cover for his true intentions? While her short introduction course to manga didn't allow her to state it for sure, as a believer in all the best in humanity, Mana wanted to believe that...</p>
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<a name="section0251"><h2>251. I'll Have It Three-Way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Like in a dimension straight out of a seashell the foaming and turning waves continuously rinsed the rocky beach of the Land of the Waves. A large crowd had gathered to witness the arrival of Yamanaka Inomame – a famous and powerful persona even in the farthest away reaches of the great ocean. It would've been rare for any one man who spent most of their lives shrouded and hidden in secrecy to be so well known past not only Kirigakure but the entire Archipelago.</p><p>The crowd was layered, almost like filtered and lined in the row of their importance as various criminal minds gathered themselves and their crews as far in front as their influence allowed them for they truly ran this island. The poor and the ruined stood at the end even if their despair demanded entertainment and cheerfulness of a high class wedding the most. The more the crowd went on the more influential, rich and powerful the people were and one did not get luxury and influence in the Land of Waves without stepping over someone's corpse.</p><p>At the end of it all, leading the celebratory fray stood the Imarizu four. The three that carried injuries still stood there with their black as night bodysuits torn and damaged, their masks half broken revealing the dark skin underneath. While people of such dark shades of skin were very common in the warmest circles of the northern part of the continent all the way in Kumogakure, here they were standing out and quite exotic. The darkness in their skin, while not surpassing that in their hearts, was a full spectrum darker even than Mana's, who already looked quite exotic amongst her native peers.</p><p>The foreigners standing at the end of the line stood out greatly. Even as their torn bodysuits showed off the athletic perfection to which their bodies were brought and peak shape they upheld at any given time, there were those who got riled up. A tall and bulky man, one whose body was built for managing sails and fishnets or hurling boulders, not combat approached the four.</p><p>"You four look mighty shad…" the man opened his mouth before his eyes shot wide open in painful surprise. Blood began spouting from deep in his throat and as the man wandered back through the crowd the caved in cavity made anyone the giant staggered to step back in fear of being covered in the man's grisly and overly showy demise.</p><p>"Do not assume you have the right to speak to us, pale-skin…" the Imarizu wearing a sheathed Audra blade on his back spoke having crushed the man's throat faster than anyone in the audience could see it happen. The speed at which the giant's fate was sealed could've transpired hundreds of thousands of times slower and still would've been completely unseen by any given islander.</p><p>After a good pair of minutes of coughing and drowning in his own blood the giant collapsed, likely choking from inability to draw breath than bleeding out. Strangely enough the grisly sight of murder did not affect the wedding's cheer in any way for the islanders up to the most snotty-nosed and dirty-faced orphan were used to such sights.</p><p>After casually killing a man for daring to speak to them while wearing the wrong colored skin, one they were not accustomed to in the faraway corners of Kumogakure the Imarizu continued to stand calmly. Standing by them was a blond haired girl wearing just a flimsy and torn brown dress that reminded more of rags that a child from a war-torn country would wear. Despite their distaste for pale skinned people the girl was not touched and had not a single sign of beating or injury on her body – she was an important part of the Imarizu's plan so their strict and historical dislike of pale skinned people had to be swallowed most bitterly.</p><p>At long last a glorious ship appeared in the horizon, the brightest and most angelic, smooth as a marshmallow cloud wood encrusted with only the finest gold worked in the mines of Iwagakure long ago. Such a ship could've only belonged to a man powerful enough to buy it and extravagant enough to flaunt his power with it – Yamanaka Inomame. The Imarizu's strict and unwavering eyes did not falter. The few eyes visible through the broken masks did not grow excited for their ultimate goal coming closer, their convictions did not waver. Nor did they feel any pain from their bandaged thighs, their lips did not pale and their eyebrows did not betray their pain. These were men whose minds were honed and sharpened like the finest blade.</p><p>A platform slammed down from the colossal juggernaut letting down a party of equally extravagant smaller boats. On one of them stood a miracle incarnated in a man – beautiful, long and flowing golden hair and firmly symmetrical facial features. Long, unbent and unbroken even once nose and thin as they were long glossy lips. While Inomame may have appeared effeminate to many, no one could've denied in their right minds that the man was absolutely flawless in his looks. His black and white, diamond incrusted cloak of his sleeveless coat flipped and flattered behind him as the boats were quickly being worked to the shore.</p><p>Accompanying him were a bunch of similarly dressed men – armored bodysuits of black chainmail covering their faces. Their eyes whited out as they were honed to absolute darkness yet altered by cutting edge medical advancements to work in the light as well. Faces covered by their bodysuits up to the noses and eyes and what little was being caressed by the light of day was covered in pale skin tissue as it was clear these men have all gone through hell and back to accompany this highly influential and enigmatic man. The Kirigakure Demon corps that were supposed to be disassembled, probably were rebranded but functioned under some capacity still, apparently, even more, they stood in front of the Imarizu elite, outnumbering the Kumogakure ninja a dozen to one.</p><p>"You've brought men with you?" the Audra blade carrying Imarizu affirmed of the sight he was being exposed to.</p><p>"I see no men here, only Demons…" Inomame snarled before changing his strict face drastically to allow himself the luxury of snickering to his own joke. "Surely you didn't expect me to come to such an event, to claim my bride brought to me by an order of Kumogakure criminals without an army to back me up? Granted, the Demons have been long since disassembled so training new ones is a pain in the ass, especially with the secrecy needed. Though what they lack in skill, these youngsters make up for with their wish to match their legendary predecessors…"</p><p>"Do not test our patience if you don't mean us to test the durability of your nose." one of the battle worn Imarizu growled. Kumogakure was a village that was walled off of the surrounding world by the vast and frigid wastelands of the Snow Country, they had not yet gotten used to seeing different skinned people, those who have been dealing with the more diplomatic side of their work may have gotten more used to the sight of different looking people but the Imarizu didn't appear to want to change their old ways.</p><p>"Oh, yes, threat of physical violence… To be honest, I am as surprised to see my lovely bride intact and unharmed as I was to hear that the highly shushity-shush Imarizu of the Cloud decided to help me out to obtain said bride…" Imarizu bowed in front of Kiyomi who just rolled her eyes.</p><p>"She did not offer much resistance once she woke up. Despite our most honest wish to hurt her she gave us no reason to." The Imarizu holding Kiyomi spoke up slightly nudging her farther on to be shown off in her full beauty.</p><p>"Hey, I'm not against getting married, I figured seeing where this thing goes, seeing if the groom is alright… Just mostly curious…" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Oh my, no one smacked her, I am so honestly shocked!" Inomame snickered to himself. "Have the terrible Imarizu finally gotten over their outdated racist ways?"</p><p>The implication was met with complete silence.</p><p>"Oh well, can we get on with the wedding then my part of the bargain shall come afterwards." the show-off Yamanaka shrugged taking a couple of steps back.</p><p>It all transpired in a fraction of a moment, one microsecond the Imarizu was standing as he was and another he was behind Inomame, aiming his knuckle duster at the back of the Yamanaka's neck. None of the Demons were fast enough to interfere, they were all moving in to intercept the strike but none of them were fast enough to prevent the attack, all of them were hitting just to kill the Imarizu member post-factum. As the frozen moment in time resolved each of the violent combatants found themselves completely frozen in movement.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu!" Sugemi chanted out from the crowd as his hood slipped off. Seeing how they were forced to expose themselves already, Mana and Yanagi removed theirs as well. Upon seeing that a big battle was about to dye the shores blood red the crowd began to flee, it wasn't the first time that a promised festivity broke out in a deadly confrontation so the eyes of even the fleeing poor children were more disappointed that they won't get to see a wedding than afraid for their lives. Even these poor young ones knew that if they were killed in the fallout they wouldn't lose much, only as much as life in such a dump was worth…</p><p>"Mana!" Kiyomi shouted out, glad not that her friend came after her but to see that she was alive.</p><p>"See? Just as I told you…" the Audra blade wielding Imarizu reached for his sword hanging on his back and took a combat stance just to see if he could move. Upon finding out that Sugemi's technique didn't branch out all the way up to him he prepared to make sure that he wasn't captured.</p><p>"You said she was only half-pale so you only half-killed her! I had no idea what that even meant, you creep!" Kiyomi pouted crossing her arms in annoyance.</p><p>"Let's go, Kiyomi, you're not getting married…" Mana calmly stated approaching Kiyomi slowly as the Audra wielding leader of Imarizu stood in front of the Yamanaka heiress to protect her for the groom.</p><p>"That's mean!" Kiyomi shouted out.</p><p>"That's what I told her…" Yanagi smiled with an innocent shrug before tapping Sugemi's shoulder. The young Nara was glowing in translucent air pressure emanating from him as his skin dyed red and blood vessels shot out on his forehead and his muscles. The Nara had to use the weaker instant version of his First Gate just to keep the group captured and immobilized.</p><p>"I hate using this jutsu… I'd much more rather kick their ass, shadows are for punching people, not holding them in place!" Sugemi yelled out as holding so many strong ninja was stressing him greatly.</p><p>"Walk away…" the Imarizu protecting Kiyomi warned Mana, he appeared to feel somewhat softer about killing her as the magician's race was a bit more exotic in a way that was more recognizable for the tradition led organization.</p><p>"I can't do that. You have my friend whom I will not allow to get married to a man who wanted to kill her recently, you have a sword of my friend which you use for killing people, disgracing his legacy, and you're apparently trying to kill Yamanaka Inomame. While I do not have a personal affection for this man, I cannot allow him to die." Mana calmly explained as she continued to walk onwards towards her friend.</p><p>The Imarizu moved like a black lightning bolt, piercing through the air and covering the distance between Mana and him almost instantly, the athletic and well trained arm of the killer tensed up as it drew the shining glade sheathed behind his back and striking at the magician with the same swoop, fully utilizing the force behind his drawing strike beheading the magician almost in an instant. The Imarizu's blade only cut through thin air as what appeared to be the magician at first dissolved into a storm of cherry blossom petals scattered by the wind.</p><p>"Flower Petal Sanctuary" Mana calmly chanted as she continued to walk onwards towards her friend.</p><p>"What kind of ninjutsu is that!?" the Imarizu shouted in surprise before chasing Mana again. The blindingly fast assassin skewered the magician's shape with lightning fast stabs from his Audra blade but the skewered and misshapen shape of the magician only dissolved into flower petals again.</p><p>"Ninjutsu?" Mana's voice ringed in the man's ears before the magician reformed farther away from nothing but a wind carried stream of petals.</p><p>"It must be! Our mind is honed like the finest edge of a blade, we are immune to mental trifling like that of the Yamanaka, we cannot be attacked by illusions. Our minds are iron!" he grunted gripping his blade as the man's shape faded away and continued to slash at thin air, his body moved so fast that it was almost invisible. Only dark purple flash of the dancing Audra blade betrayed that the man even existed.</p><p>"I do not care about your immunities, I do not care about your strengths. As long as you have a functional mind, I can trick it. That is the ancient way of illusions." Mana's voice again rang in the man's ears who continued to slice and disperse each reforming shape of the magician.</p><p>It was a psychological attack, if anything. It cost Mana some chakra to keep the genjutsu loop resetting every time her illusionary self was hit. She concealed her true shape, replaced it with the illusionary self, allowing the Imarizu to only hit an illusionary trick, the entity that dissolved into petals every time it was hit. Even if it cost chakra every time it was hit, it was an effective psychological trick to make the Imarizu look vulnerable, confused.</p><p>She had figured out what she was missing before. She hit the nail in the head when Mana realized she could substitute illusions, she only couldn't fully realize that she needed to substitute the real deal with something. That meant that she had to create a harmless illusion – a genjutsu with no real effect that could be cast faster than an instant for it had no effect to it, then she formulated the real deal in her mind and with a single careless hand seal substituted the two illusions, transferring the harmless one to her own mind while she placed the ones brewed in her own brain right into any surrounding functional brain carrying a harmless and almost costless illusion. In a way this genjutsu technique was an actual spiritual successor of the Substitution Jutsu just as she had intended it to be.</p><p>And to think that a panel of My Battle Bikini Goddess helped her figure it all out, an undressing chess game played by one of its characters, of all things…</p><p>Sugemi grunted out. Mana's eyes turned at him and she saw a wide bloody gash on the young man's back. The angered Imarizu decided to attack Sugemi instead of continuously resetting Mana's loop, Yanagi tried to interfere but his mental link with his insects was too slow for the immensely fast and powerful opponent. The insects only gathered to the Nara's aid once the Imarizu raised his sword to finish the Nara off blocking his blade and forcing the angered assassin back.</p><p>"What's going on here?" Kiyomi wondered looking absolutely baffled as she could barely understand how the genjutsu used by Mana was still visible to her and everyone around her. She also couldn't understand why the Imarizu would attack the man she was about to marry.</p><p>"The Imarizu were never planning just getting you to marry Inomame. They were always working for the Raikage, looking to kill Inomame and preventing him from acquiring the power and influence." Mana explained, this had only became apparent to the magician once she saw the Imarizu attack Inomame. They must've been still loyal to their village which meant that they were in to reduce the Yamanaka's influence and kill Inomame the whole time.</p><p>"The Raikage would've never approved of so much killing… But yes, our aim is killing Inomame. You've impressed me, child. You can still walk away, fighting on two fronts is pretty troublesome, you know." The Imarizu with Shimo's sword sheathed his blade as Inomame's Demons prepared to protect their master from the Imarizu.</p><p>"I can't do that. I won't let anyone die. Too many people have already died for this affair." Mana angrily declared as she looked at Sugemi and Yanagi who nodded in support of her decision.</p><p>Kiyomi shrugged, "Meh, that Inomame guy was a bit of a sissy anyways…" before taking a fighting stance besides her friend.</p><p>"Can I finally hit someone!?" Sugemi shouted out in frustration. Having just stood back up and clearly spent a great deal of chakra to survive the strike to his exposed back.</p><p>Mana sighed before nodding.</p><p>This was a problematic battle, a bunch of newly formed Kirigakure Demons who were always more skilled than their rank. Also the Imarizu on top of that. Granted they weren't all fighting the Konohagakure team directly but they were each a considerable force on the battlefield. These Demons looked pretty young, their bodies were more fit than athletic and buffed, they couldn't have been much stronger than the Demon Mana, Shimo and Sugemi faced early in their career. The magician had improved leaps and bounds compared to that level of skill. Still, she spent a fair deal of chakra on that psychological trick she pulled before abusing a single technique again and again.</p><p>That was when all hell broke loose! The Imarizu, Yanagi's insects and Sugemi's shadows, the Kirigakure Demons all charged at each other. Just like Yamanaka Inomame, Kiyomi and Mana stood behind the main fray. Ready to support the exploding and rumbling mess of explosions, fists, insects, blades and ninjutsu techniques firing left or right from behind and aiming to control the fight to their own ends. That wasn't to say that the two kunoichi were completely out of the battle, many looked to engage the two in battle as they took the two girls for a weak prey that wanted nothing to do with the three-way battle in the beach.</p><p>Mana swiftly avoided all attacks coming her way while countering with swift palm strikes at the openings that displaced and broke the attacking limbs at their joints. An efficient combination of the fighting style taught to her by Meiko, Kouta and the old man in the Sun Disc arena. Kiyomi was handling her own side of things with a much more brutal and hands on approach as while she would've been battered and broken by two Demons attacking her simultaneously she managed to keep one in between of the other while she took care of them both, one after the other with swift strikes to their faces and abdomen.</p><p>By the time the weakened Demons rose up they were overwhelmed by the ever-moving and hectic battlefield, that whirling madness of fists and feet that drowned the weak and injured leaving them broken and crushed.</p><p>While not at all a traditional wedding, it was not out of ordinary ways public events in Land of the Waves went…</p>
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<a name="section0252"><h2>252. The Great Land Of The Waves Wedding</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The seas were getting visibly more unsettling as the battle ashore kicked into a more intense gear. The foaming waves were dyed blood red as the constant aquatic washer tested and filtered the conscious and capable to fight and the beaten ones. Only the capable managed to withstand the alluring pull to the ocean's depths further from the beach of the withdrawing waters. The rippling outbursts of chakra created massive whirlpools that roared with all the might of a divine beast expelling geysers of water and throwing some of the washed away bodies in the air. Several were actually woken up by this aquatic baptism of the bloody foams.</p><p>Mana pressed a trigger under her sleeve firing off a bunch of cards from the deck compartments in her sleeve. The magician grabbed the handful of cards so she could utilize her own strength instead of the spring mechanisms and unleashed the storm of cards at several Kirigakure Demon trainees in her sight. Two of them used Substitution Jutsu replacing themselves with some of their fallen comrades and letting them take it for the living, another three took a pair of steel edged cards etching into their backs, bending and twisting their spines in pain and opening themselves up for the Imarizu's or Sugemi's counterattack.</p><p>Even if Mana wasn't fighting on the Imarizu's side, the dark skinned agents of death from Kumogakure were certainly eager to exploit the openings given to them by Mana. The magician moved her hand into an inner pocket of her jacket only for a splinter squad of Demons to branch out and rush at her from the side. Reacting to this attack, Mana's hand made the hand seals by itself firing off a mad air current below her and lifting the magician in the air as she rode it like a platform. Rising above the battlefield Mana unleashed a handful of steel tipped cards with chakra sealed inside of them, upon weaving a hand seal the cards released their contents exploding with the power of multiple explosive tags.</p><p>As Mana's eyes wandered behind her shoulder they fixed on a pair of rushing attackers. The pair of Demons used steel wire trying to latch onto Mana but missing and grabbing onto a top of a palm tree which elevated them well beyond the tree level. Quickly the kunoichi's head twisted sideways letting her hat slip off of her head and down her shoulder into her palm. The magician placed her hand onto its upper end setting off the seal and firing off a storm of various different cards sealed inside. Cards charged with Lightning Release chakra emitting a painful shock, cards with simple chakra lacking elemental nature that simply exploded or those with various ninja tools sealed inside. One of the Demons used the Substitution Jutsu to successfully evade the mess of epic proportions while the other braced for impact and plummeted back down.</p><p>These Demons were tough. Each one of these trainees was above the level of a common genin and while to an observer it may have looked like Mana and the others were fighting them all off, what was truly happening was they were merely postponing their confrontation – annoying the Demons, leaving injuries and blasting them back but not putting them down for their chakra levels allowed for sufficient enough chakra augmentation to make a compelling opponent for one of the Konoha team – each and every one of them.</p><p>A gut wrenching flesh piercing sound followed as Mana's gut got pierced by a hooking mechanism attached to a chain. A Demon below yanked on it pulling the girl down for a finishing strike but the shape erupted into flower petals that gently descended upon the battlefield. As the confused Demon wandered where the real Mana may have gone while she slipped into an illusion the magician kicked the man from behind at the back of his neck, just as the old man taught her in the Sun Disc arena, sending the Demon asleep.</p><p>This was troublesome – this trainee Demon forced her to move right into the fray of attacks, right into the middle of the messiest battlefield where fists and ninjutsu attacks were exchanged which the magician may not have been ready for. Mana uneasily looked around. And realized she's been noticed. One of the more battle damaged Imarizu followed a Kirigakure Demon as the two combined their effort in order to bring the elusive magician down.</p><p>A black shadow creeped along the battlefield – death incarnate in the shape of the Imarizu. The muscular and battle ready leader of Imarizu carved up his deadly art on the enemy bodies desperately looking for his target – Yamanaka Inomame. If the Yamanaka was smart he wouldn't have moved an inch – moving outside the battlefield would've exposed him, running away would've only revealed his back for the black viper to strike at it and sing its deadly fangs.</p><p>The Imarizu wielding the Audra blade charged at the northern edge of the battlefield slashing at the sides. Blood splattered wherever his ghastly blade danced its deadly tango, blood splattering all over the Imarizu's face and chest but the mask protected the eldest Imarizu veteran from flinching as splattering blood usually did. He was unnerved by how resilient these Demonlings were. For trainees their degree of endurance and chakra augmentation was surprising, if nothing else…</p><p>A foot shoved forward stopping the eldest Imarizu's charge and repurposing his force into a graceful backflip as his sword painted a crescent shape slashing at a Demonling that was pursuing him. His sword was successfully blocked, successfully meaning, obviously, that the defending chain wrapped gauntlet shattered into a million pieces. This Audra blade was something else. And to think that the Imarizu would've found it on a hit mission taking out a black market informant that lived in ancient Archipelago lapis lazuli mines. How on Earth could have a sword like this ended up so deep underground, like the Earth had swallowed it herself…</p><p>Suddenly, much to the surprise of the eldest Imarizu the Demon was blown back by an overwhelming shock of air pressure as a rampaging young shinobi attacked the man head on. Sugemi's fist was blocked by the assassin's blade effortlessly but his troublesome shadow extended from underground and punched the elder up in the air.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril!" Sugemi shouted out as the shadow materialized again attempting to wrap around the airborne Imarizu's leg and bring him down for another, more focused uppercut.</p><p>The Imarizu struggled but couldn't break out of the shadow's grasp. He could only block the upcoming strike with his knee but then Sugemi's hand seals flashed before his very eyes. The Imarizu rushed in to interrupt them, as he had interrupted the girl before. He had to hand it to the little magician, her hand seals were some of the fastest he had ever seen, almost as fast as that of adult ninjutsu specialists. Interrupting this chump's, however, was another deal entirely.</p><p>With a triumphant smile the Imarizu lowered his blade having grabbed the young man's hand and interrupting his hand seals. A swarm of insects blocked his blow, a deafening chirping sound made the Imarizu clutch his ears as the sound of thousands of small knives clashing with his sword was too much for the human ears to sustain without erupting in a bleeding frenzy and shrieking for an eternity to come.</p><p>With a roar that went unheard, deafened by the sounds of battle around them Sugemi rushed out, enveloped in a translucent glow of his erupting chakra and tensed up and swollen body as his open First Gate put pressure on the young man's body. The Imarizu elder's mask cracked as the man was sent flying back. Knowing of the nature of his blade the man stopped himself by thrusting it into the rocky beach floor, knowing that the Audra blade was eternal, broken only by pure chakra and not some pesky environmental factors or rust.</p><p>"Nara Hidden Technique: Shadow Yggdrasil!" Sugemi roared out as a straight rising pillar of shadows blew out from the murky and blood covered floor aiming to blow the elder Imarizu up in the air.</p><p>Focusing all of his hidden physical strength the Imarizu leaped up into air, aiming to rise well above the tallest point the kid's shadows could reach. Then those pesky insects interfered again forming a sphere around him. The sunlight faded from the assassin's view as he was enclosed in a sphere of nasty locust-like creatures and stopped right where the beaming pillar of shadows blasted him out of it.</p><p>Overwhelming physical pain. Nothing the Imarizu couldn't survive. The shadows hit him with such intense physical force that had they been aimed downwards they'd have cracked the entire planet into two. Yet the Imarizu did not grunt or shout in pain, expression of pain was an expression of weakness. The concussive force tossed the Imarizu leader up into the sky as the pillar of shadows branched out into thousands of separate fist constructs each of which continued to rain its assault separately from the others. Absolutely overwhelming and bombarding the leader of the elite Kumogakure hitmen squad with unmatched precision and power.</p><p>Sugemi's hands weighed down. He was breathing difficultly as this attack took some life out of him – combined with the nasty injury he had sustained before it was really beginning to drag him down. The constant attacks by the Demonlings were also beginning to wear him out. Luckily enough for a moment or two Yanagi continued to stand by his companion back-to-back and fend off the upcoming assaults by shielding him with his insects.</p><p>A young Demonling, eager to prove himself rampaged across the battlefield, attacking multiple targets. He saw a young fancy dressed magician girl fly above his head and tried to catch her with his chain attached steel clawed gauntlet, sadly he had missed his mark as one of his kin had attacked her from another angle interrupting her natural progression in the sky and making him miss his mark as the Demonling had aimed a little bit onwards. Right where the girl would've been had she not been interrupted and not where she was.</p><p>The young Demon shrugged and rushed onwards. He saw an exposed back of one of those dark skinned Imarizu assassins from the Cloud. Seeing how they were the only threat to their client, since the Konoha party wished nothing to do with him, they were the priority target. Rushing through the battlefield, leaping over the tripping kick of another Imarizu and then rolling below a rushing swarm of insects from aside the Demon leaped at his opponent with his iron gauntlets reattached and ready to tear chunks of flesh out of his opponent. The Demonling pressed a trigger on his wrist setting off the hidden seals inside his gauntlets.</p><p>Flaming balls of blazing suffering formed on the central part of the palm area. Ready to envelop whomever the iron claws of the gauntlet weapon pierce in hellfire, a taste of the eternity to come for them in the afterlife. The Imarizu member turned almost instantly, lifting his hand up and clenching it in a fist, smacking it back like he had anticipated an attack from behind. He was so deceitfully fast! An absolutely devastating impact crushed the Demonling's mask, everything whited out and the young man no longer felt any pain, he just felt so weightless before his consciousness faded…</p><p>Inomame stood still, at the northern edge of the battlefield in between the field and the row of boats that lead to his colossal ship. He was more intelligent than to flee and turn his back on a buzzing battlefield full of people aiming to kill him. There it was! One of those pesky Imarizu rushing at him… The Yamanaka's hand seals went off, luckily enough one of the Demonlings engaged the Imarizu in hand to hand combat before the racist bastard could even reach him. As trusty and loyal these nameless Demon trainees were, they were no match absolutely for the dominating speed and might of the Imarizu.</p><p>"Yamanaka Hidden Technique: Art of Phalanx!" Inomame chanted out spreading his hands out wide and taking over the minds of multiple Demonlings on his side. Together the young shinobi who had surrendered their identities, their futures and their lives for their village and its glorious rebirth assaulted on the Imarizu. Inomame was well trained in all of the ninja arts: Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, Sealing, Genjutsu, Weaponry… He had the theoretical knowledge and only a body lacking of the ability to use some of them. That only meant that he needed pawns to control, pawns with the skill to use those abilities of which Inomame knew more than the pawn did… Luckily enough he had his hidden Yamanaka techniques that could fix such a situation.</p><p>The Imarizu member exploded in a flurry of fists. An uppercut to finish off the beaten and broken Demonling he was working on before. Sending the young one down with a crushing hook swollen like his face was festered with tumors. A combination of wild and near-invisible even to Yamanaka Inomame strikes dispatched of two more Demonlings as it crushed their chest cavities, blew up their hearts, crushed their throats and skulls all at the same time. Even having lost his deadly bladed knuckle duster the Imarizu was lethal, able to kill even an experienced ninja in five different ways and angles in a mere microsecond.</p><p>Inomame grunted in annoyance as his eyes wandered for more targets for his technique. The man worked his hand seals while the Imarizu was still busy, aiming to take control of more of his own pawns. Sadly he was beginning to run short of those… If only it wasn't for that thing the sword wielding assassin slipped out – that anger ridden statement to that strange magician girl from Konoha about their minds being tempered like steel to resist mental attacks. The influential man didn't even try taking control of the Imarizu… However if only he could get access to one of those Konoha brats…</p><p>"Yamanaka Hidden Technique: Art of the Crimson Valentine!" Inomame yelled out taking control of his already beaten pawns. The men removed their explosive tags and slapped them on their chests launching themselves like human explosives at the Imarizu. Visibly distressed by the upcoming disaster the Imarizu backed up, giving each of the rushing unconscious human explosives a strong hook to the punch that sent them back exploding further away from him.</p><p>Inomame leaned aside to avoid the upcoming pawn hurled right at him. The flying trainee hit the smaller boats and exploded together with them, incinerating all of them to a crisp, up to the smallest wood chip. That was when the Imarizu finally closed in on Inomame with a powerful right hand blow that without a doubt was aimed to take the Yamanaka's head clean off.</p><p>Slapping together just a single hand seal, fast enough to not be interrupted, Inomame replaced himself with another one of his Demonling trainees allowing every bone in the young man's body to be turned into dust upon the Imarizu hitting him with the blunt force of his enraged blow.</p><p>Inomame, having found himself right in the middle of the battle cyclone wandered around, constantly body shielded by his Demons and protected as his eyes wandered around looking for his target. Someone he could use to more effectively get rid of any rushing Imarizu…</p><p>Kiyomi was taking on one of the Demons hand-to-hand. She wasn't sure just how potent these guys were, she saw plenty of them take quite a beating and even jump in to take a beating for their sissy master. And to think that Kiyomi ever felt curious about checking him out and seeing if he was cool to marry her. At this point the Yamanaka just wanted to punch some Demons for being Kirigakure dicks, some of the Imarizu for killing so many of her innocent clansmen and that Inomame's ass for trying to have her killed. She may have forgiven him if he was a dreamy groom but the way things were escalating he most certainly wasn't.</p><p>The Demon leaned out of Kiyomi's attack, it may not have been the smartest thing to engage these guys hand to hand after all, then again, Kiyomi was hungry and thirsty, she also had no ninja tools on her so she couldn't make a proper long distance attack without taking down one of these guys. Using her Yamanaka techniques was dangerous as she'd be leaving her body exposed for prolonged period of time in a middle of a battlefield as it was beginning to encompass her.</p><p>Even Mana, who tried to stick on the outside edges of the raging battle got enveloped into all of that mess. The Demon leaned under her right hand strike and dug his fist right into Kiyomi's gut before kicking her back. The Yamanaka slid back holding the Demonling's ninja pouch in her left hand, she felt her chakra rushing into the wounded spot keeping her conscious and in the fight. Now she had some weaponry on her and was able to fight back properly.</p><p>A whole bunch of Demonlings jumped out from the waging war and joined in on the attack. They hit fast and weak – a clear attempt at taking her alive as she was a precious target of their client. The Yamanaka tried fighting off all four of them, moment from moment her eyes wandered off to see if any of her friends will help her out. That Nara guy was busy fighting the Imarizu, the bug guy was busy keeping him alive while he foolishly engaged an Imarizu all by himself. Mana was twirling around like a magical princess again… Kiyomi hated when she did that…</p><p>One of the Demons socked her right in the jaw, another one kicked her in the gut the third swept her supporting leg and the fourth vaulted over his pal and slammed the Yamanaka into the ground with an overhead kick. These guys were seriously good at working together. All four of them attacked her at the same time while she was down but Kiyomi flipped back evading the attack. She saw Mana getting blown out from the sky as well, the Aburame and the Nara were also having trouble deeper into the whole mess.</p><p>While Kiyomi was glad that Mana wasn't condescendingly pulling her ass out, it would've been way better not to get cornered and picked off by a bunch of Kirigakure Demonlings right now…</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress grunted in pain as she was caught by her long hair and pulled in for a good couple of strikes to the face. Angered she pulled the handful of hair off and kicked the Demonling right in his chest. The Yamanaka then placed her hand on the ground and channeled her chakra through the hair making a hand seal.</p><p>"Chakra Hair Trap Jutsu!" she chanted as the Demon strangely jerked and stood perfectly still. The other three rushed at her looking to beat the ever-loving crap out of her but as she was getting tackled to the ground the blonde placed her palms up and pointed at the frozen still assassin.</p><p>"Art of Valentine!" she chanted taking over the man and compelling him instantly to attack the nearest ally. Blood squirted all over Kiyomi's face as the Demonling punching her downed body while sitting on top of her got skewered by the claws of the steel gauntlet piercing his body from behind. The other Demons quickly pulled back and attacked their friend. They didn't play around snapping the young man's neck.</p><p>Tired, with a bleeding nose and battered bruises all over her body Kiyomi shoulder tackled the two and ran into the insanity of the battlefield to hide. She needed to regain her composure, get a decent fighting plan together and stop underestimating these Demon trainees like they were some cannon fodder. Each one of them was a valid opponent to her alone. This was a battlefield she fought in to survive… She was wise not to forget that…</p><p>"Mana!" Kiyomi screamed troubled over her friend's questionable mean of landing she witnessed shortly before she was occupied by fighting for her life.</p>
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<a name="section0253"><h2>253. An Appetizer For War</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The feeling of weightlessness, so ethereal that it was strange to even describe it as a "feeling" as its consciousness was a matter of great debate, was all Mana could sense as she plummeted down from above. Something big, blazing and explosive had hit her while she was scouting the battlefield below her. She had never experienced war before, she has read plenty about it but now had Mana's mind and eyes been conscious she'd think she's experiencing the feeling of war first hand.</p><p>The feeling of powerlessness, the roaring, confusing whirlpool of madness shedding blood all around. The sensation of fear, for one's own life and those of one's friends and loyal companions. There was no control in war, about as much of it there as there was in madness. Madness couldn't have been controlled, contained or studied. It started, it ran its course and it ended – it was like a force of nature. No one was safe, everyone died. That was war.</p><p>Mana's eyes snapped open, open from shock, a thought so small and insignificant, so spark-like that it was generous to even describe it as a thought. Once the magician's eyes were wide open, the thought grew into a smoldering blaze of fear. In war, people died. In her world there could have been no war, no one was supposed to die. Mana couldn't force her world into being, she couldn't force the people to stop killing and accept her ideals. She could only make them change themselves through example.</p><p>The magician clutched as she slammed into the ground. She could feel her bones leeching off of what remained of her massive, for her age and rank, chakra pool. At this point it cost less chakra to plummet to the ground, clutching to minimize the damage and chakra consumed by forceful augmentation of her body subconsciously as it was damaged, than to do anything else. War was economy, counting one's resources, calculating if after firing this shot one could still wage war for as long as it was waged or if death would be one's only option.</p><p>An uneasy feeling made Mana look behind her, sprawled on the ground and wide open for an attack, an Imarizu was ready to punch her right between her eyes with his bladed knuckle duster. Knowing how intensely coated with chakra those things were – Mana's fleeting chakra resources would offer no resistance. She's as good as dead! A blade came out from the Imarizu's back, all the way through his abdomen making the tanned man spit out blood on Mana's face as the dangerous invasion of her personal space was abruptly ended when a Demon used his signature chained gauntlet to pierce through the Imarizu's gut and pull him back to him, away from Mana.</p><p>War was decisions. Planning before the battle and then planning during the battle when none of the plans worked out. All those little thoughts and decisions one made when all of their plans failed. Those golden thoughts made in a moment's notice that made one be the winner and preferably a living one. Being a winner was not what Mana wanted, she wanted to be a hero. If dying would've made her a hero she was fine with that. But dying in this battlefield would not make her a hero, she'd only be another name, another file shredded in the Administration, one of dozens that hypothetical day. That didn't sit with Mana. Feeling burning infection in her knees and elbows, bleeding all over the rocky beach Mana stood on her feet, stumbling like a baby deer during its first time on its feet.</p><p>She needed to bring this in front of him, she had a way to resolve anything – her new way. It was about time she broke through the ranks and walked up to that man. It was about time she offered him a way to win on her terms. That was her way, the new way. This was no more the time to hold back, no more the time to preserve her chakra. Mana wondered if she had enough chakra for her Sweet Lullaby Jutsu, most likely not, even if she used it the Imarizu would simply maim themselves and escape it. Neither the Demonlings nor the Imarizu looked too feeble in the face of pain…</p><p>The shrieking and crunchy sound of insects swarming behind her alarmed Mana as she noticed Yanagi's barrier of his living symbiotic partners protecting her from the returning Imarizu. Likely the ex-criminal had already dispatched of his opponent. In his current state, beaten and bleeding profusely Mana could take him. There was no time! She needed to stand in front of Inomame, she did not yet know what she'd say to him but… Heroes needed the right thing to say. Always! That was something Mana was yet to learn.</p><p>"What are you waiting for!?" Yanagi shouted when the Imarizu continued to punch and the Aburame built up more and more insects to protect the magician. His own partners since birth were dying by thousands and it was seen on Yanagi's pale and pissed face. Mana nodded, made her hand seals and soared up again, locating Inomame further away from the fray and diving at him like a pelican at the sweet, succulent flesh of fish.</p><p>"We need to talk! This has to end!" Mana shouted trying to reason with the man through the deafening noise of grunts and screams.</p><p>"I have no idea who you are or why you're protecting me girl, but I couldn't agree more. Hand me my bride and I shall get married somewhere in the Archipelago, away from the Cloud's reach…" Inomame smiled at her looking at Mana like he was in any position to order her around, a condescending stare which Mana had seen from her peers many time before and of which she was sick to death already. This was no time to be mad…</p><p>"No! Enough of this! I need both of you to walk away from this, I need to stop everyone from dying and I'll either appeal to you or to Imarizu. Trust me, you do not want to hear my offer to them!" Mana's voice spoke more quietly however it hit visibly a more sensitive chord with the Kirigakure politician.</p><p>"It is I who has a proposition to you…" Inomame smiled, ever the condescending looker. One thing war was not, was the field of negotiations. War was a manner of action which occurred when negotiations had failed, Mana should have known that on a deeper level. If only she wasn't that hopeful, that optimistic about people…</p><p>"The Demon trainees are running thin! Step aside and let us do our job!" the Imarizu warned Yanagi one final time. Usually pale-skins deserved no warnings before being taken out by the dark assassin but the Aburame had deserved his own fair share of respect. He was fighting to protect his comrades, obeying the young genin's word like it was law and placing his own life on the line. That was what intrigued the Imarizu about the girl, the fact that a higher ranking ninja listened to her commands.</p><p>Maybe it was just proof that pale-skins were an inferior race deserving to be ruled by the northerners? If only the Raikage was not so soft-toothed…</p><p>Yanagi lifted his arm up, a swarm of black as night chakra devouring locust-like insects scoured from his long sleeves and rushing in a mad frenzy at the Imarizu. The black assassin began bobbing and weaving madly attempting to avoid getting surrounded and overwhelmed. Insects were more troublesome to evade, even if they had one commanding mind, even when following their swarm mind mentality each and every one was a separate being and they were not afraid to split their formation to land and attack the Imarizu.</p><p>The ruthless assassin was introduced first hand to the painful swarm of blade carrying and chakra devouring locusts. Witnessing that there was no way to evade this crazy swarm, the Imarizu flipped back while forming a pair of hand seals.</p><p>"Cloud Style Taijutsu Art: Pressure Cross!" the assassin shouted out as his powerful blow created a surrounding area of air pressure which blasted the swarming insects away. That was his own natural advantage over the Aburame, insects were light and easy to manipulate using stronger wind or air pressure techniques. Luckily enough the Imarizu successfully practiced a style of blade boxing which came with just that kind of techniques – penetrate the opponent with a bladed knuckle, disabling their chakra augmentation response and tear their flesh apart with air pressure around the punch. It was not an efficient assassination technique, but a good fighting style to rely on when one was exposed.</p><p>The Imarizu began bobbing and weaving again, dodging blows from an imaginary opponent in an almost hypnotic dance that kept him moving. That was essential in any battlefield. He was already weakened by stray Demons attacking him from aside and that battle last night. Yanagi moved back, more chakra locusts came from under his coat lifting the Aburame off the ground lightly and moving him back rapidly, moving him in between fighting units that would've gotten in his way and allowing the Aburame to focus on what was in front.</p><p>"Cloud Taijutsu Art: Glass-Jawhammer!" the Imarizu forcefully threw all of his air from his expanded lungs while throwing a powerful air piercing blow in the direction of the Aburame using his right hand. The surrounding air pressure once again pushed all the insects away, while the taijutsu technique did not connect with its target by a far mile, the air pressure knocked the Aburame off his feet.</p><p>The Imarizu's image blurred, in just a fraction of a moment he appeared right on top of Yanagi's knocked down frame throwing a punch right to his exposed neck, aiming to cut it open and leave the loyal ninja bleeding out in the battlefield. As Yanagi leaped back on his feet throwing up a defense from his living barrier of insects the Imarizu appeared to only be an after-image. It was not a technique, just a natural occurrence of the immense speed of the physical combatant.</p><p>A weakened tap connected to Yanagi's shoulder from behind. The insects failed to completely block the attack as they only rushed in from the side to redirect the blow and not absorb it. The Aburame felt warm blood rushing down his exposed shoulder, a sensation that disappeared somewhere down his elbow where the blood was absorbed by his raggedy cloak.</p><p>The Imarizu member no longer offered any words. He was beyond reasoning at this point and any attempts to do so would only squander his advantage. The taijutsu using assassin leaned his fist back and prepared a powerful and focused cross. Since the mask which the Imarizu normally wore to hide their humanity no longer blocked the sight of the man's face it was quite clear how his thick lips twisted in a smile just a millisecond before the punch connected. The Imarizu's biceps tensed up all the way applying massive pressure on his shoulder muscles that simply exploded from his barely still intact bodysuit through sheer flesh pressure on the cloth.</p><p>Instead of connecting with the singular blow, the Imarizu's arm cocked back again and repeated the same strike as a combination with ten thousand times the same striking speed. It was almost like after softening the opponent's defenses the taijutsu user exploded out of nowhere instantaneously with an impossible to see, block or avoid combination. The first blow being a checking strike for blocks or parries or simply an opener for his combination.</p><p>"Cloud Taijutsu Art: Technical Rabbit Combination!" the Imarizu yelled out as time appeared to freeze around him and his opponent. Yanagi's body began exploding from inside, like each of the strikes carried a small explosive tag which was shoved deep inside the opponent's flesh, but was actually just built in air pressure "injected" into his opponent, pressed so hard that it erupted and made the body implode.</p><p>However where blood and guts was supposed to shower the battle hardened Imarizu an overwhelming and unexpected flock of insects only came at him. It was like Yanagi bled those blasted insects but as the body dispersed it became apparent that the Aburame was only a clone comprised entirely of insects – a clever trap placed to surround the close distance combatant with his worst nightmare.</p><p>Standing further and giving a careful glance at his shoulder wound Yanagi went through a combination of hand seals.</p><p>"Parasitic Insects: Swarm!" he chanted releasing a ten times larger swarm from under his torn clothes than before. Unleashing his symbiotic insects with much greater intensity and carrying enough blades to leave nothing but softened cut up chunk of flesh from his opponent.</p><p>Dashing back the Imarizu began evading the attack, having regained some distance on the Aburame the Cloud assassin began scouring the battlefield and allowing the insects to surround and attack whoever they got their mandibles on. There was no way he'd evade this whole swarm without some dirty trickery. Usually he'd try a smoke bomb but he was aware that these Aburame insects had sensory abilities for they preyed on chakra and so were able to sense it without their smell or sight. He had killed enough Aburame to know that much…</p><p>"Cloud Taijutsu Art: Pressure Cross!" the Imarizu repeated the attack a couple of times to blast the incoming swarm of insects further and then to try and nab his opponent with one or two good aerial long range waves.</p><p>Yanagi clenched himself overwhelmed by the aerial pressure of the continuous combination of taijutsu techniques by his opponent. The Imarizu found his opponent. Placing his palms together in a position of a modified clone hand seal he created three shadow clones, all of whom dispersed throughout the battlefield. The Imarizu himself also charged at Yanagi with his clones rushing in from aside. This time it worked out!</p><p>Yanagi's body bent up and twisted in awkward manner as multiple clones connected their hits with his body, luckily enough not possessing near the amount of chakra coating to their imitated knuckles as the real deal. Still, upon impact the Aburame's body let out a gut wrenching sound as more blood was spilled all over the worn combatant. Focusing his insects on the real deal, following him the whole way and keeping him away from his body the whole time was a good choice of strategy if one wished to prolong their suffering needlessly. Had the Imarizu connected his central attack together with the clones the Aburame would've been assassinated instantly and almost painlessly. There was no use for this kind of bloody and gruesome battle…</p><p>"Parasitic Insects: Cocoon!" Yanagi shouted out in pain as the insects moved in from behind and pushing the Imarizu together with his clones in closer. This obviously gave the assassin a chance to take out his opponent but fearing of what the technique would do if he didn't bother defending from it the Imarizu performed another "Pressure Cross" technique on the approaching and increasing in thickness wave of insects from behind. It was barely efficient – Yanagi figured him out! He let the insects leave some space between them allowing for easier air passage in between the swarm and greatly reducing the pressure force on the overall swarm, given the added weight of the carried blades now the air pressure was almost ineffective…</p><p>The insects closed down in a bladed and spiky cocoon and finally the silent and all-cool Imarizu shouted in pain as both his body and his chakra pool were attacked at the same time. It was so impossibly difficult to augment one's body when one's chakra was being sapped at the same time. It was possibly the most difficult damage to protect against and so the Imarizu assassin was tormented both physically and spiritually. Chakra was both spirit and body therefore getting it attacked directly affected both one's body and mind, no matter how hardened by cruel training it was.</p><p>Through sheer pain hardened force the Imarizu burst out from the cocoon. Carefully crawling away as the insects returned to their usual formation. Finally Yanagi regained some manner of control over the battle and so he commanded his insects onwards. Raising his hand in a hand seal position, "Parasitic Insects: Hive Pop!" commanded as locust-like parasitic insects rushed surrounding the Imarizu. These ones had explosive tags on each one of the blades. Ready to create a whirling vortex of living swarm around the opponent before detonating and completely annihilating them.</p><p>Suddenly the insects dissolved from their formation and rushed in to protect their symbiotic partner from an attack by a pair of Demonlings from the side. The Imarizu smiled as he had ran out of options at the moment and he may have been in trouble had it not been for the inclusion of his secondary targets into the equation. Yanagi fell on his knees struggling to keep off his attackers. An overwhelming air pressure sent both the Aburame shinobi and his assailants to the sandy floor on their knees. Powerful shockwave emitting thuds sent both Demonlings down and out from behind.</p><p>Yanagi stood up and looked around. He couldn't see his opponent anymore. After taking out the pair of Demonlings the Imarizu had fled. That meant that he was lucky enough to match up against one of the Imarizu and survive, even if he did have the natural advantage as a long range shinobi going up against a mostly physical combatant… Yanagi smiled to himself, feeling prouder of himself than he has ever felt. Everything hurt and he was beginning to seriously weaken from his bleeding and internal injuries but it was something he'd have never seen or felt working in Eden Prison Complex. This was what real ninja did and felt. This was the road to doing something great, something he always dreamed of doing to make a mark on the world…</p><p>These guys may have looked surprised that he tagged along with Mana, that he allowed a little girl boss him – an outranking ninja around. Truth be told she gave him what he always wanted – a chance to experience an opportunity to leave his mark. He'd have followed a baby to war if that baby spat out its soother and promised this chance!</p>
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<a name="section0254"><h2>254. What Was Promised</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While Mana possessed no gifts of chakra sensory, these were born with and developed at some point during teen years, she didn't need them to sense the destruction and massive numbers of lost lives in the vortex of battle transpiring behind her and the Yamanaka. She wanted nothing less than to hear any propositions, this had to end. Sadly her reasonable mind, as crushed by her emotional part as it was, suggested that this very offer may have been just such a mean to end this bloodshed.</p><p>"Kill the Imarizu for me." Inomame smiled arrogantly.</p><p>"This isn't a proposition, this is a demand." Mana coldly mumbled out as she clenched her fists, hearing the grunts and shouts behind her made her more and more impatient.</p><p>"Well… More like a… Insisted suggestion…" Inomame shrugged, his smugness faded from his face once he got defensive for just a blink of a moment. "Do you know why I've achieved what I have and what I am? It's because of weakness. Because I do not possess the very common amongst the Yamanaka gifts of sensory. I was unfit for the battlefield, not as one of the elites, anyway. Being anything but exemplary was unacceptable to me, I couldn't stand it. It's me we're talking about, how could me, of all people, not be the focus of conversation?"</p><p>"Shut up…" Mana intruded upon the upcoming monologue, she had no time to waste on monologues, not while lives were being taken behind her. She turned her back to the cocky bastard who tried to have her friend killed, then forced into marriage, which for some crazy reason Kiyomi was not overly objective about.</p><p>"You like monologues? How about this one? I will tell the Imarizu that I'm ready to stop opposing them. That I made a mistake and my mistake cost more lives letting you die would've cost in the first place. I'll get out of their way, it'll be a surrender from my part, yet I'll come out the victor – my friend will be by my side again and you'll be dead." Mana finished as she began walking back into the battlefield at a casual pace. She still had chakra left for a couple of clutch petal escapes, if needed, before she reached the Imarizu.</p><p>Suddenly her body stopped, Mana forced herself into motion but she could only muster a twitch. The light blue glow from below revealed that she was caught by Inomame's hair trap technique.</p><p>"You'll offend your principles, won't you?" Inomame asked her, his tone was not desperate at the slightest.</p><p>"My wish is to save everyone, sometimes that's impossible, I'm too weak to do that so for now I'm satisfied with saving as many as I can. I'll grieve, despair for a fair amount of time, ultimately I'll decide to grow stronger so that the next time I can protect everyone and inspire people to change the world around them into one where all life is respected… I'll somehow deal with it, I've lost plenty and I always deal with it and come out stronger." Mana replied. She felt uneasy, she had no idea what Inomame's plan with this was. He looked completely careless about the battle in which his men were being killed. His play here was still a mystery to Mana.</p><p>"That's fun. You've got spirit. Breaking the spirited ones is always the most fun." Inomame shrugged, even as he expressed his intent to break Mana he didn't move.</p><p>"Go ahead, kill me, it'll be ultimately useless to you. Just like, I assure you, the battle will be over by the time torturing me will give you anything useful." Mana encouraged the man with a brave tone. The only hints of intimidation she had were not due to the imagined death or pain she'd experience, they were because of the fact she still had no idea what Inomame intended to do with this. If it was as easy as she imagined it to be – pain or death, he'd still lose so it had to be something else.</p><p>"It's true, my Demonlings are tough. They won't survive the Imarizu though, maybe pick a couple of 'em off but not all four working as an ultimate fisting machine. You on the other hand… You've survived them before. I can use you for that very same purpose, use you to kill them. Tell me wouldn't you break seeing blood on your hands and cold dead bodies beneath your feet? It is your mouth that burnt its owner, not mine…" Inomame chuckled to himself before placing his hands up. Mana's eyes whited out, she tried desperately to break out of the hair trap but she failed to do anything but twitch a muscle here and there.</p><p>"Mind Body Switch Jutsu!" Inomame triumphantly shouted out.</p><p>Sugemi tripped over something as he rushed towards a Demonling. The ranks of the Demonlings were beginning to thin out. The Imarizu and the Konoha team were hitting them too hard, it was too early to let them into a field of battle. The Demons were exceptional assassins and duelists, not that incredible when used as footmen, scapegoats sacrificed for their master's ambition. They were being used as cannon fodder and that's just what they were. Still, even then they asked no questions or rebelled against their master's will.</p><p>After quickly leaping back on his feet the Nara whirled his legs around upright kicking the rushing in enemies aside before looking at what tripped him. It was a body of one of the Imarizu, still bleeding out and some life still present in his eyes despite the man having been dead for a minute or two already. Sugemi looked around. Before all he saw was the bodies of the Demonlings, he had never considered that the scuffle they had with the Imarizu before could've served as something to bring the assassin group down ultimately…</p><p>Mana dashed right past him, clearly ignoring a dead body and Sugemi's reaction to it. Something was off… The magician was sentimental above everything else. She'd have cried, whined about how she was somehow to blame about it all. Unless… It wasn't Mana in charge of her own body – just as the magician promised him. That fool, could she really purposefully surrender her control to a Yamanaka madman just to fulfil a stupid promise to him. Then again, that promise was hastily made during Sugemi's less gracious periods. He was an angsty little shit affected by grief, promising to fight Mana to the death at some point. Just because he thought Mana's beliefs were wrong, because everything around him was clearly at fault for sensei's death… Everything was culpable to the eyes of a distressed teen…</p><p>Liberating her friend from such a stupid promise would have certainly not been above Mana's level of sentimentality. Then again, if she did surrender her body and he didn't fight her – that'd be just mean. Not giving the magician a chance to liberate him from a promise he barely took seriously anymore, not that she knew that, would've simply been really crappy of him. Needless to say, it wouldn't be the finest moment of the protagonist of his own manga…</p><p>Sugemi dashed after Mana. The magician was simply running, dashing around Demonlings and quickly disposing of them if they attacked her. For some reason her attacks were different from Mana's normal attacks. Sugemi had seen the magician fight, even after their parting. She kicked a lot, dodged and crippled just so she didn't have to inflict too much damage. She finished brawls fast, a light tap at a joint to dislocate it, a stronger focused strike or kick at a weaker open bone to crush it. That's how she fought in the beginning of this very same battle. This Mana was ruthless but also really sloppy, she just punched and kicked, damaging her opponents without purpose or soul behind it. Her goal wasn't to disable her enemy and stopping them from resisting anymore, it was to just hit them.</p><p>Sugemi's muscles tensed up as he quickly opened up the First Gate and rushed after the magician. His body was beginning to sore really bad, he hadn't abused his gates, only using the First one most of the time and only when he needed a quick boost in speed or power. He always turned off the tap when he didn't need water anymore.</p><p>"My love! You're okay!" Sugemi shouted out behind Mana to attract her attention but also to test the girl, hoping that the mind invader would give himself away.</p><p>"What are you talking about, Sugemi? We're just friends, not even that good ones. I've just freed you from prison…" Mana replied turning at him with a smile. The Nara dashed in to defend her from an attack by one of the Demonlings who were then quickly occupied elsewhere by an Imarizu member. The ruthless assassin happened to completely ignore the kids as long as they didn't attack him, pushing the Demonlings back at the direction of their master.</p><p>How could this be? How could Mana act normally but feel so off at the same time!?</p><p>A painful blow to the back of Sugemi's head knocked the Nara down face into the dirt as he heard Mana's sandals running through puddles of wet sand and blood all over and around her as loud beeping in his ears deafened him together with the pain keeping him down momentarily.</p><p>"You stupid idiot!" an unfamiliar voice yelled close by. "A Yamanaka can access the mind they displace into, it's like a library. Why do you think they're some of the most treasured intelligence officers and interrogators!? I thought Nara, Akimichi and Yamanaka knew everything about each other, knowing how often these clans work together." the voice was very annoying, mostly because of how right it was…</p><p>"Hey, you're that… Yamanaka we've come to save, right?" Sugemi wondered after getting up but not before mocking Kiyomi's pretentious manner of speech with an overblown and silly facial gesture.</p><p>"Still, Mana's mind is really determined and strong, it shouldn't be easy for Inomame to hold her down like that. Why is he so easily ordering her around and reading her like she offered no resistance? He must've told her something that broke her mind before taking her over… This guy knows what he's doing." Kiyomi scratched her chin.</p><p>"Maybe Mana is letting him control her. I once told her a really stupid promise and technically this would free me of it…" Sugemi wondered.</p><p>"Maybe, still, I doubt Mana would allow herself to be controlled during such an upheaval. That Inomame is just a really shitty asshole for doing something like this to her. I should really kick his ass for messing with us like that! Mana's like my little sister." Kiyomi pouted crossing her arms around her chest. The battle around them was beginning to slowly fade in intensity as most of the Demons were stricken down and stayed down or kept getting knocked down and weakened. At this point the entire scuffle moved north, that must've been where the Imarizu were centered and the remains of Inomame's forces were focusing them down. Neither side engaged the Konoha forces unless they were engaged on, the Imarizu's target was Inomame and technically the Konoha kids were fighting on the Demonlings' side so the masked killers thought twice before jumping on them and prioritized the Cloud assassins before returning to the children.</p><p>"I'll deal with Mana then…" Sugemi nodded. "If she wants to free me of whatever promises I've made, I'll let her think that's exactly what she's doing."</p><p>As Mana rushed madly towards the center of the repositioned battle, where it seemed like the remains of the Demonlings were all jumping onto a single opponent Sugemi passed by tired and injured Yanagi. He didn't stop to check up on the Aburame's condition, he didn't quite care, to be honest. He may have cared more if the temporary companion looked worse. Now he just looked like he just had enough battling for one day.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu!" Sugemi shouted out irritated. For the second time that day he had to use his technique to stop someone where he usually used his techniques for fighting.</p><p>Mana's body burst into a shower of flower petals scattered by the wind. The Nara rolled onwards before the girl reformed right behind him with a kunai in hand. He wasn't used to fighting a Mana who would've been fine by just slitting his throat like that. Shouting in anger the girl attacked him, even her voice was different – not like someone else's voice came out of Mana's throat – it was her own. The thing was that the anger and tone used by the young magician was completely different to how she used her own voice.</p><p>Sugemi easily leaned sideways from Mana's strikes and drove his knee into the girl's gut expecting to easily disarm her. The magician's figure blasted into flower petals so intensely that they all bashed and pelted against his face forcing the Nara to flinch and take steps back. A couple of strong kicks hit Sugemi's back driving all air out from his lungs – the bastard must've figured out from using Mana's body for a while that her kicks were much more effective and stronger than her lackluster upper body strength.</p><p>The mind-controlled magician used the blade she held in her hand striking at Sugemi's neck but the Nara quickly switched his First Gate back up to simply blitz out from her view like he was never there. Dashing behind the magician Sugemi continuously delivered a powerful combination of blows before blitzing away again. If he broke Mana's body without killing her it'd end the threat before she'd be forced to do something she didn't want to do. A tear ran down Mana's face which distracted Sugemi temporarily. Her body exploded into petals again before reforming further away and throwing some cards from her pockets. Sugemi deflected the carelessly used and clearly telegraphed attack with the back of his wrist just barely getting cut. This man had no finesse or sleight of hand of Mana's, reading his moves and ninja tools was a piece of cake.</p><p>"I'll beat you, you know? You can't fight as Mana for shit even if you do have access to her mind… Reading a book during a battle tends to distract you." Sugemi taunted his opponent, expecting his invading mind to hear and comprehend what was being told. "Mana would've never been so easy to read because she never goes in for the kill, the "what would I do" method never works with her because no one fights like she does. You always go for the open vitals – that's the easiest thing to read." Sugemi explained before his transparent chakra burst from him again and his muscles tensed up overflowing him with the painful fatigue, with a back handed smack he tossed his elbow towards Mana's face as he had predicted the girl to be there, having used an illusion to sneak behind him.</p><p>Both the clearly visible Mana figure as well as the one sneaking behind him dispersed into a whirlwind of petals. Sugemi grinned, Mana would've done differently than this fearful fool – she'd have substituted herself with the illusionary petal entity at the last moment attacking right from where she was not expected to come – from the front. That was how she would've left damage on him – Inomame just ran, creating multiple illusionary images and having all of them come at him.</p><p>A combination of rock hard kicks met Sugemi's lowered attention after his friend's body appeared from the front – just like he imagined Mana would have done except using a double fake-out instead of substitution. The man had some insight into her mind but it was clearly limited, both by what he could access as well as his own mind. Inomame must've doubted Mana's mind, thought he knew better how to utilize her skills, his cockiness was why Sugemi could stand on equal ground with Mana while holding back.</p><p>Sugemi picked himself off the ground and examined his blunt trauma. Mana's kicks left some marks on him – his gates must've greatly softened his body and weakened his augmentation. Mana was tired but so was him. A loud thud focused all of his attention on Mana. Inomame's puppet slammed on her knees so hard she had busted them open. Mana's entire body shook as her skin paled, dark bags began forming around the magician's eyes as blood vessels shot out on her pale skin, looking all the more creepy because of it.</p><p>"Hmph… That's what you get for abusing the only technique you saw Mana do." Sugemi smiled with a playful shrug.</p><p>"The only useful one…" dismissively and arrogantly the man declared. "Lightshow and mirror tricks is all this trash is good for! How did she survive the Imarizu with this useless arsenal!?" Inomame yelled out in great distress for being beaten in a body he placed so much hopes in. "Each successive use of the only good illusion in her arsenal makes each successive use consume more chakra, it's getting exhausting. Soon it'll sap as much chakra as an actually useful high rank jutsu! Useless, this body is goddamn useless!" Inomame's mind forced Mana to keep whining as he pounded the ground.</p><p>"It's true, Mana would tell you that her arsenal is all about how she uses it, not about how good it is. Truth be told it does suck to everyone but her, somehow she makes it work, though… That's why it's much better to use people as pawns by having them work for you, not controlling them yourself. You're only you, you're limited by your stupid narrow perception, even with direct control there are things Mana sees that you don't, even if you're in her body." Sugemi smiled. He realized that for whatever reason Mana's mind blocked out any thoughts about the Sweet Lullaby jutsu from Inomame's mind, else the Yamanaka without a doubt would've called it a worth using technique as well. Had he successfully used it Sugemi would've been in a real pickle.</p><p>It was then that Sugemi realized just how Mana aided him – she didn't resist Inomame to the point where he had access to so much of her thoughts that he thought she didn't resist at all and he had access to everything. That allowed her to conceal small bits of her mind from him without him realizing. The magician was crafty and slippery even when being mind-controlled which broke a grin out of Sugemi.</p><p>Mana's body began shaking in uncontrollable laughter as it stood up and began walking towards Sugemi.</p><p>"What are you doing? I'm gonna strike you down, can't you see how low on chakra Mana is?" the Nara wondered in confusion.</p><p>Inomame kept commanding Mana to walk forward towards the closing up battlefield where the battle was approaching its conclusion.</p><p>"If you use that petal illusion again – you'll risk tiring Mana out! She'll die!" Sugemi tried reasoning with Inomame before he realized it – that's fine by the mad Yamanaka. He risked nothing as his own mind would've just retreated back to his own body at the last moment avoiding any repercussions that damaging Mana's body would inflict upon the controller's body.</p><p>Sugemi closed his eyes and realized that he didn't want to end up killing Mana. He may have talked some pretty mean things to her back then but he never really intended to kill her. He felt like she was his friend, she may have thought differently than him but she was no criminal. It wasn't her fault Tanshu died, it wasn't her fault Shimo died. She blamed herself for everything bad that ever happens and to blame her for those same things was to be inefficient as there would've been nothing one could say to her she didn't say to herself at every moment of her life, it would've also mean that he was as mad as she was for accepting this much responsibility…</p><p>Mana hugged Sugemi out of nowhere. The Nara's eyes opened up in surprise as he looked at his friend who was finally free of Inomame's control. The two stood there for a moment allowing the moment of rekindled friendship to become awkward before splitting up.</p><p>"Wow you're just a… A goddamn asshole…" Kiyomi uttered looking down on Inomame's bleeding and writhing in pain body as she stomped on him some more, just barely avoiding the spot where her kunai was etched in Inomame's subclavian artery.</p><p>"Still, you're just too cute and funny to kill… Be a hunk and don't pull that out." Kiyomi winked before sitting down close to the incapacitated Yamanaka and kicking her feet up. She figured she'd better keep an eye on her supposed groom for a while before this whole thing settled down a little and someone took him over from her or it was safer to leave him alone.</p>
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<a name="section0255"><h2>255. Principles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Only after the brief outbreak of ecstasy did Mana realize how absolutely sapped of chakra she was. Mana tried to move her hands away from Sugemi but she couldn't both stand separately from her friend and successfully walk by herself. While the magician felt like she just needed time to get used to this pale weakness, a feeling likened to that of having most of one's blood drained completely, she still felt embarrassed needing her friend's help to walk.</p><p>"I didn't… Do anything, did I?" Mana wondered looking at Sugemi with barely kicking feeling of hope in her eyes.</p><p>"You didn't kill anyone, no. It's fine, the blonde must've gotten to Inomame and hurt him strongly enough for the technique to end." Sugemi replied looking onwards to the whirl of limbs as the Demonlings circled around the Imarizu.</p><p>"Do you have chakra left?" Mana wondered looking at her friend.</p><p>"Not for all of them…" Sugemi shook his head. While normally he felt excited about beating up a bunch of people with a perfect excuse to kick their collective asses, currently he weighed his chances as quite slim.</p><p>"That's where I can come in…" Yanagi smiled through pale skin, his case however was not due to chakra loss, it appeared to be much more physical.</p><p>"We really shouldn't save them, they'll probably just kill us." Sugemi tried complaining but then after remembering those pathetic begging eyes of his magician friend he just sighed and helped her down on a large rock before sitting on one knee and weaving the hand seal.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu!" she shouted once again using his clan hijutsu in a way they were intended to be used and not how he wanted to use them.</p><p>"Parasitic Insects: Cocoon!" Yanagi smacked his open palms together in a hastily put together hand seal surrounding the entangled Demonlings with his locust-like parasitic insects that at the same time used their carried blades to inflict numerous cuts and lacerations as well as feasted on the enemy chakra.</p><p>"I thought Aburame don't use hand seals…" Sugemi looked back at his companion once the Demonlings collapsed from injuries and chakra loss.</p><p>"We don't have to, but I think they look kind of cool." Yanagi blushed with a foolish grin before stroking the back of his head as if he was ashamed of this revelation. "I can control my Tabekaichu with just a mental command but I'm a big fan of Super Sentai Space Panties."</p><p>"I feel like our journey home will be much more entertaining, my friend!" Sugemi smiled fist bumping with his companion. For a moment there Mana began feeling really threatened by a full journey of these two discussing their pervy manga and while, in a way, she owed a lot to one specific pervy manga a whole journey of it sounded like anything but entertaining.</p><p>Then she noticed the grisly sight in front of her – the eldest Imarizu member standing in the midst of the battlefield which was now eradicated by Sugemi and Yanagi's teamwork. The man's arms and legs were shuddering, his bodysuit torn in most parts and drenched in his own and blood of his opponents where strings of the suit were still connected to each other and not just hanging like pathetic rags. His mask busted and grinded to dust with only a cloth piece dangling on his chin and the right part of his face, revealing a face covered with blood, beatings and still breathing in violence and breathing out punishment.</p><p>"Think we can take him?" Sugemi wondered.</p><p>"If the Yamanaka kid joins in, sure. He's undoubtedly barely on his feet already…" Yanagi affirmed with a serious nod.</p><p>Suddenly the Imarizu's face turned at the three Konoha ninja, still twisted with rage and with completely whited out eyes. These eyes were the only part of his dark face that weren't completely swollen or covered with blood and for that they were that much more intimidating. The man's figure bent backwards twisting his entire body in ways it shouldn't be twisted before his powerful thighs sent him soaring at Mana and Sugemi with a single bound. Sugemi's knee hit the old man in the chest sending him up in the air a good couple of meters before Yanagi's insects formed a fist shape and slammed him into the ground, with each moment of contact draining more and more chakra and stabbing him continuously with the small blades that each insect carrier with their small but powerful limbs.</p><p>"Stop!" Mana tried to shout out but her voice was too weak. "This battle is over, we've captured Inomame, we beat all the Demon trainees for you. I'm sorry for the loss of your friends, it doesn't seem like anyone else of your group made it…" Mana concluded that last sentence with bitter sadness as she herself felt her throat getting choked by grief for people that she didn't know and who tried to kill her a couple of times, almost succeeding both of those times.</p><p>"The mission is to kill Inomame Yamanaka. I will complete it!" the old man roughed out through his teeth spitting out blood with each word as blood from his damaged internal organs sprayed through the filter of his barely remaining teeth.</p><p>"My mission is not completed either. Yet I'm willing to compromise – keep Shimo's sword but give us Inomame. He is no longer a threat to your client, you can let him run free and still what happened here will incriminate him for his last underwear. He tried to kill a Yamanaka heiress and then force her into marriage, he used the Yamanaka influence to obtain even more power and now because of that influence the clan will see to it that he meets justice. Don't derive lady irony of her moment." Mana tried to reason with the assassin, she thought that giving him something for something would've made her win. Not just win, but do so her way, win by giving her enemy something to be satisfied for, something she could have afforded to lose.</p><p>The Imarizu stood tall and straightened his back, upon more pressure being placed on his tattered bodysuit it tore with a loud tearing sound and left him bare-chested and staring at Mana within an extended hand's reach. Still, Mana's eyes didn't waver, she continued to look the assassin right in the eyes even as he reached behind his back and pulled out the Audra blade, lifting his closed wrist and showing her the blade right in front of her eyes, so close he could almost swipe the blade and leave Mana blinded forever.</p><p>"This sword has meaning for you, doesn't it? Back then you begged me to leave it with your corpse, when you thought you were good as dead, now you use it as bargaining chip of great importance. I feel like I can do the same… I'll flip your offer around – fight me, one on one. You win – I back out and give you this sword, I win – I kill Inomame and no one moves a finger to stop me." The Imarizu looked at Mana face to face, his dark brown eyes were so deep and scary that it was tough not to get lost in them. It was clear that the dark skinned brawler meant it.</p><p>"Wait a goddamn second!" Yanagi objected, "This isn't fair! Mana is almost drenched of chakra by Inomame, she isn't a close range combatant, that's your specialty!"</p><p>The Imarizu assassin lifted his still athletic and cut up arm, tensing his muscles so hard that blood squirted through his wounds and drenched his fist.</p><p>"I am injured as well. Also, it was her idea to defend Inomame – the man who cost her this predicament. It is an adult thing to accept responsibility for one's own choices. I do not speak so many words often, make no mistake, I am no bargaining with these filthy pale-skins, I am bargaining with you, my half-equal." The Imarizu rudely cut back at Yanagi making the Aburame visibly pissed and itching to kick the assassin's ass. Still, attacking the man in his current state would've been just taking a man out of his misery.</p><p>Mana still stared deep into the Imarizu's eyes, her deep stare wandered between his own brown abyssal gazers and the Audra blade – the legacy of her good friend which needed to be placed at his grave, it was Mana's responsibility to do so.</p><p>"Very well, I understand…" the Imarizu nodded, finally folding, "You seem to have uttered this belonged to your friend at some point. Someone who has passed away? That means you wish to return this sword to his grave, it has meaning to you. That's admirable, very well – even if you lose, I shall still surrender this blade to your friends after Inomame is dead. What will you…"</p><p>"I agree!" Mana instantly replied interrupting the Imarizu so fast that the old assassin's eyes widened in surprise. The old killer took a couple of slow leaps back to place distance in between him and Mana, Sugemi and Yanagi jumped in to object to the magician's decision.</p><p>"You'll die!" they both shouted out almost instantaneously.</p><p>"If I die, then Inomame dies – it'll be because I was too weak to uphold my ideals. I'll be a failure but it won't matter. I'll just realize that I was always meant to fail in the end, what good are my ideals if I'm always too weak to uphold them?" Mana replied, "He's right. It's my choice to protect Inomame, I need to accept all consequences of that choice – that's what I told Tanshu-sensei all the way back then, remember?" the girl smiled to Sugemi before taking a defensive fighting stance.</p><p>"You're an idiot, Nakotsumi Mana!" Sugemi shouted out, just like he used to get mad at her before. Seeing her friend get so protective again made the magician nostalgic and while he meant well, his feelings were wrong. His friend just made a life-risking decision and the best he could do was to blame her, instead of supporting her. All of a sudden the magician felt like she was standing alone and small in front of the Imarizu leader as well as all of her friends… It made her sad.</p><p>The Imarizu stood up and looked at his opponent. Mana did not attack, she was no attacker, at least not physically. If she tried attacking the man using ninjutsu she'd just pass out from using too much chakra. That would be useless. Her best advantages, all of her strengths were taken away from her. Still, she couldn't afford to lose. Deep inside Mana swore to herself to not stop fighting until she either died, that is was literally unable to protect Inomame anymore, or she won. No matter how many bones were broken, no matter how irreversible the damage to her health. Just keep fighting. As long as she could feel her own heart beating inside her chest, just keep fighting…</p><p>The Imarizu darted onwards, leaping at Mana at such impressive speed that had her mind wavered she'd have never even seen him coming. An immeasurable fraction of his true speed, however still barely visible even to an enhanced eye. Luckily the magician didn't squander her preparation time, she focused herself, went through a pair of scenarios in her mind to prepare her mind for a faster attack than she could react to. All she needed was to determine an archetype of an attack, one of the various the old man in Sun Disc arena taught her about, then just intercept it!</p><p>Mana leaned aside to avoid the strike aimed right in between her eyes and nose – something like that would've crushed her skull and killed her outright. It'd have cracked entire planets in two. Tired, so tired… Mana felt air disappearing from her lungs just after leaning aside. She shoved her palm in to tap the Imarizu's elbow, force his right hand to be displaced in a position where he couldn't counter and would forcefully squander his weight center. To force full conscious overexerted effort into this strike from her opponent but his arm was no longer there!</p><p>The magician lifted her knee – he was coming for her gut, she knew it! In her current state she had nothing to stop herself from not having her innards blown up and mushed into slimy mass of blood and gore. It would've been an efficient and very painful way to take her out for good. The girl screamed out in pain when the man's near invisible fist hit her knee cap. She predicted the strike but it still was too painful to block him – she needed to parry, to find an opening, to counter. That was hopeless, avoiding took all of her air out. All she could do was stand there and get pummeled.</p><p>Maybe if she gets pummeled for long enough her opponent will die of old age?</p><p>Mana fell back on her back, hitting the sand and feeling the sticky puddles of blood covering her hair. The kick aimed at the side of her neck didn't hit her, it did send massive airwave that decimated Inomame's ship far away. The girl pressed her hands above her head to push her body up. The assassin tried to sweep with enough force to separate her body from her legs where his iron kick broke her bones. Mana vaulted over him and stumbled away, gasping for air. Her muscles were burning up from exhaustion. She had never fought having so little chakra left, just the bare necessities to survive, a single drop more and she'd pass out or even die… She had to keep telling her own body to not augment itself for a single moment, just use her natural evasion and redirection skills, somehow survive… Just survive…</p><p>The Imarizu rushed after Mana attacking her from behind. He favored a combination of quick jabs, dominant right hand, aimed for the left side… Having his fighting profile in mind the magician avoided his textbook combination by leaning aside without turning at him – perfectly avoiding his strikes by just sheer memory of his combinations and his fighting style and pure prediction. She was taught to fight that way… So many movements and so much acrobatics cost her too much air again. Once again she was gasping after turning back at her opponent again.</p><p>"Fight back!" he shouted out, good, he wasted air for taunts. Mana avoided his uppercut and tried kicking in his back leg, the one where all the pressure and weight was placed on. Somehow the assassin placed his other leg in the way taking the kick but not falling. He was just as skilled at defensive moves as Mana. The kunoichi leaned from another cross and tried elbowing the man's teeth out, then avoided another uppercut for a downwards stomping kick at his nose. If he couldn't breathe – he couldn't fight. In terms he'd give her time to both avoid and counter, instead of having to use all of her last gasps of air to not get blown up by his incalculable strength.</p><p>Both of her hits got blocked, repurposing his devoted hammy strikes into blocks at the last second to block her attacks. It was clear that Mana's strikes lacked the oomph of the Imarizu's strikes – he could block her no problem but Mana couldn't do the same for him. Blocking would demolish her limbs which in terms would cripple her speed and nail the final nail in the coffin of her hopes to someday counterattack successfully. She needed damage to win!</p><p>The Imarizu threw a couple of weak jabs, so immensely fast but weak enough to be blocked. Right when Mana covered her face so that it wasn't mashed into pus and gore by them she realized their purpose – they weren't damaging blows, they were meant to keep her grounded and in place so that he could then finish her. By the time Mana looked back up her enemy was already in the air. Using his back leg to snap it back and increase the strength of his cross.</p><p>Mana leaned aside letting the floating brawler pass beside her. The magician felt pressure and tearing muscle fibers in her side from how much her body bent. Her spine began pulsing with pain but she forced it on. There it was – her chance! Mana snapped her leg up, falling backwards due to how tense and twisted her body was, she could hold the pressure no longer so she fell with a kick right into the Imarizu's ribs. The bare-chested assassin slightly lifted off higher from the magician's kick as she fell on her back and rolled aside only to somehow pick herself back on her knees and hyperventilate for air.</p><p>She actually hit him! Just like she was taught… Meiko, Kouta and the old man would've been so proud! Mana herself didn't let her momentary lucky shot get in her head but at least she proved herself that she still had the chance and that she didn't walk into this fight just to die a martyr of her own cause. She was fighting for everything she stood for, she was no longer a kid or someone who dreamed of the future as the source of their strength. She fought to protect her ideals here and now!</p><p>Once again, Mana assumed a defensive stance. If she attacked she'd get destroyed. She had no offensive experience and needed to simply find another opening and hope that this time it wouldn't come at such a painful cost of twisting her own body uncomfortably, something that left some damage on Mana's side. She was just as crippled with pain as the Imarizu after a successful shot at his broken ribs.</p><p>The assassin attacked again, kicking right at Mana's head, switching up his style from a very punch-heavy to involving kicks. That was what made this specific Imarizu member so dangerous – a testament of his experience. The magician leaned down, placing her palms on the ground and delivering a cartwheel kick. Her foot ruffled some air. After Mana's body straightened out and landed on firm ground her eyes opened wide and she realized that she devoted too much weight and effort for this counter.</p><p>A straight cross was flying right at her face. With her side still aching from the uncomfortable bending of her body before and her weight still in klutz, Mana had only one possible way of avoiding a sudden planet cracking fist demolishing her skull like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer. She gently leaped up like a rabbit while bending her back backwards, rolling her arms and legs around the Imarizu's extended arm and positioning into an armbar. She had never had the chance to resort to this, she always had better opportunities…</p><p>The Imarizu yelled out loud, lifting his arm up and shaking it before preparing to slam Mana's body into the ground. Something that would've undoubtedly driven all air out from her lungs and left her just like a wheezing fish thrown ashore and waiting to be finished off. Mana let go of the arm at its highest swinging point and then kicked off the back of the old man's head with her feet, rolling aside and farther away from him before clutching her burning side muscles in pain.</p><p>The Imarizu grunted in annoyance, he was having a lot of trouble tagging this little girl he never doubted he'd beat easily. It wasn't like he wanted her death, he disliked killing his own race, plus the girl showed a lot of promise for growth. If she was more ruthless she'd have made a fine Imarizu one day. The old man smiled before stopping in his hasty assault, instead he hopped around letting some air return to his lungs. This slippery and jumpy little rabbit was making him all worked up, rushing to catch it. This critter nearly lured her own hunter into their own bear-trap with this impressive evasive display.</p><p>Both combatants stood still for a moment, taking the brief moment of tranquility to draw more breaths into their lungs. Earning the precious currency for each movement, each punch and each dodge – oxygen.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0256"><h2>256. Live Hatin' Or Die Lovin'</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was beginning to seem to Mana that upon landing the hit on her opponent she may have given herself an opening that'd have allowed her to counterattack with more success. Still, she was hesitant to proceed and open herself up by allowing herself the luxury of being aggressive. After all, while her opponent didn't look too good and was barely staying upright, she herself hasn't fully yet recovered from the battle with the Imarizu last night or this recent craziness that left a trail of destruction and some dead bodies in its wake.</p><p>The Imarizu moved his hand behind his hip. Mana's attention sharpened, she began trying to read the man's movements but they were actually slow enough even for a normal man to see, such lack of speed or attempt to trick her eye, which ironically resulted in Mana's eyes being tricked, knocked the magician out of the rhythm. Her eyes needed to roll back the rate of her perception as to perceive such a movement in her top perception rate would've taken an eternity. It was like the Imarizu's hand moved a light twitch every hour.</p><p>That was undoubtedly the assassin's intent and Mana's mistake, right after slowing himself down, knowing full well that the girl won't risk attacking him. The Imarizu dashed onwards at Mana. Fear sparked in the girl's heart but as she braced herself for impact she realized that she was going to make it – her perception took some precious microseconds to return to its former rate, she took some time to place up her blocks as she was clearly not going to evade this, still – survival was well within the realm of possibility.</p><p>Black cloud of smoke hit Mana right in the face as instead of attacking her head on and injuring Mana's blocking arms and shins the assassin dashed past her, instead popping a smoke bomb. The gust of air accumulated from his movement gathered the cloud of black as tar smoke and bashed it right at the magician's face and into her breathing system, had this been toxic Mana would've been in trouble. The magician turned back to defend herself. It didn't work – she couldn't see the Imarizu's movements but she could read them, predict them – attacking one from behind was textbook manner of advantage utilization.</p><p>Her body froze in pain, Mana's side burnt up from the pain inflicted on herself from before. All the gut injuries from last night all acted up at once forcing the magician to gasp surprised in pain. Then the irritating and burning sensation in her lungs completely flipped the tables on her. Not only was the substance in the Imarizu's smoke bomb highly irritative to Mana's lungs but also to her eyes, instantly making the girl tear up. This pain from the sum of her injuries ruined her defensive measures.</p><p>A light tap to her central facial area opened Mana up for a follow up attack, it stiffened her body and lightly lifted it off the ground. A following cross to her abdomen was completely impossible to block or defend against, evasion was long since out of the question. This assassin was smart above all else, he not only had an immensely overpowering level of power and speed, martial arts mastery but also a true assassin's mind.</p><p>Mana's eyes whited out, she would've screamed out in pain had she anything but toxic gas in her lungs. She only breathed out a light whiff as the final stored semblances of air left them forcefully. Her opponent moved sideways placing his extended arm to stop the magician from falling down, since Mana's mind blacked out he was in complete control of his combination as well as the magician's responses to it.</p><p>The old man pushed Mana's body with his extended arm not letting it fall down, then giving it another quick jab before following up with a strong cross at her lower chest area and then hooking at her head from below. The magician could feel no pain. At some point her mind was subconsciously convinced that it was over – she was dead, however the very fact that some semblance of consciousness was still retained and she didn't just completely turn off tipped the magician to bet on the other outcome. Maybe it was because of difficulties for her opponent to breathe as well, maybe it was because of the broken ribs and countless other bones and severe bleeding but he couldn't hit Mana nearly as hard as he had the potential to.</p><p>Mana's eyes regained their sight and she regained her control in the middle of a graceful flight, up in the air and just about to hit the ground from the power of the hook that hit her in the chin. That disgusting almost rusty iron-like taste of blood in her mouth and something gooey but matching the taste reminded the magician of the dirty and cruel reality of fighting under these conditions. She wasn't built for such fights, she had no chance…</p><p>Sharp pain made Mana gasp out in shock of pain again, the Imarizu smacked her ribs as well as her back from behind her breaking her fall and lightly tossing her back up from the force of the impact. He winded up for another blow, this one was a sluggish cross aimed right to Mana's temple – an off-switch. It would've made a blood-shake out of her brain and it couldn't have been allowed to connect. All of the time around the magician stopped, her perception delved as deep into its ability as it could, deeper than the Imarizu's current state allowed him to. Mana wanted to dodge it but she realized that the weight and positioning wasn't right, no way could she properly repurpose the balance in order to pull off something even remotely dodge-like.</p><p>She needed to attack!</p><p>The magician's thoughts lingered, stopped and directed at what was at stake – a man's life. Not by the longest stretch an innocent man's, in any children's fairytale the magician would be the villain, someone protecting a man who tried to have a young heiress of a clan, almost a princess, murdered and then when that didn't work out he tried to marry her! Protecting such a man, even if protecting him from death to deliver actual justice the way Mana saw it was a villainous act in the eyes of the way everyone around her saw the world. Not her though… Death was never justice, death was the end, a point from which nothing mattered anymore and justice could never be irrelevant. It was the only thing that Mana wanted at this point, it was something tangible and very much material. Inomame needed to live in order to see justice done.</p><p>She needed to attack!</p><p>A deafening crack made Sugemi and Yanagi squint, the Imarizu member's eyes whited out as his neck snapped back, the man's head tossed backwards gruesomely from Mana's fastest elbow strike right to the lower left part of the old man's skull. As the assassin stumbled back with his teeth bashed in the ugly mixture of blood, gums and teeth scattered around him as well as all over the already bloodied and battered assassin's body.</p><p>The man kept on standing. His wish to kill Inomame was equally great to Mana's desire to keep him alive. Two people, young and old, optimistic and realistic, with two different ways of seeing justice done. No. The Imarizu couldn't have cared less of justice, to them Inomame was just a mission.</p><p>Mana stumbled back, grunting in pain and groaning like a stomped and kicked around dog. Her knuckles trembled, her muscles burnt inside and twitched around begging the girl to stop exerting herself. Both of the sides kept on standing and struggling to breathe at each other, mind over matter. The old man's body was all sweaty, he similarly to Mana groaned and grunted as his lungs burnt equally painfully to Mana's – he had breathed in the same gas forcefully that Mana had to. Finally the smoke cloud cleared out.</p><p>"What the…" Kiyomi gasped upon seeing the gruesome sight of a man trying to kill a young woman so he could kill another man and the young woman trying to survive. The Yamanaka looked questioningly at the rest of the team. She knew that Sugemi had a past of some sort with Mana and just assumed that there was a bloody good reason for none of the two interfering. Inomame covered his face as he couldn't stomach the sight of bodies surrounding the two barely standing ninja fighting it out for his life.</p><p>"Mana agreed to this – fighting the Imarizu dirtbag for Inomame's life. If she wins the assassin is relieved of his contract, if she loses – her name gets added to it, either way Shimo's sword is granted to her, whether her hands are warm enough to hold it or not…" Sugemi explained coldly as he watched the needlessly violent battle in front of him. He could see that there were numerous times Mana had sufficient enough opening to kill the man, her elbow strike could've been aimed a bit further down diagonally to the left and hit a sensitive neck weakspot killing the assassin instantly. She could've also killed him during the first onslaught of attacks she was so careful to dodge. Then again, if she was aggressive enough to go for the kill it was hard to predict how successful her defenses would've been, maybe her killing intent would've resulted in too many blows on her front being skipped…</p><p>Still there had to be a better out than this…</p><p>"And we're expected to just stand around and see her kill herself!? What if she dies and the Imarizu decides to kill this little shit? Are we to just let him do it!?" Kiyomi flipped out rolling back her sleeves.</p><p>"It'd be Mana's final will. Our lives are too short to disrespect our final wills. We are under no orders to keep Inomame alive, we'd be violating nothing. Your return is the only thing the village cares about and that is already in our hands, if we recover the Audra sword for the village it'll just be a cherry on top… Even if Mana died, we're all heroes in the eyes of the village, she'd be taking any blame from our reckless actions as an impromptu response squad and all fruits of our labor would be ours to claim credit for. She's acting like a true ninja should…" Yanagi explained calmly placing his hand on Kiyomi's angry fist and softly lowering it back down.</p><p>"Maybe for the first time in her life…" Sugemi smiled looking down at the bloody sand beneath his feet.</p><p>"Do you guys want to know what I think?" Inomame wondered before being smacked by Kiyomi.</p><p>"No!" she shouted. Lightly pulling a steel string tied around her fingers on one end and Inomame's kunai etched in an important blood vessel that was bleeding very slowly until the kunai would have been pulled out. Even if the Yamanaka possessed an immense chakra pool he'd not have prevented his bleeding out for too long. Kiyomi had him like her puppet.</p><p>"Had I known this would turn out to be such an abusive relationship I'd have not tried to marry you…" Inomame grinned through twisted in pain lips as the yanking of the blade in his body locked him down in great pain.</p><p>Neither Mana nor the old Imarizu spoke to each other. They simply didn't believe the matter being worth anything to say. It would've been a waste of their air, something that was more worthy than gold at the moment. Their wills have been sharpened and tempered like the finest steel, clashing against each other like the ancient swords of great heroes. Things to say would only be silken handkerchiefs trying to get in the way of these sharpened weapons.</p><p>Suddenly Mana broke out in a battlecry. Her expression of pent up feelings and aggression greatly surprised the bystanders as her body rushed at the Imarizu angrily prepared to beat the old man down. Equally surprised by the young girl's aggression the Imarizu took on the defensive and took a very passive stance, placing his weight all on his back leg while backing out of a more engaging clash with the rushing at him force of fury.</p><p>Mana knew she was making a mistake, providing the man with endless openings to kill her by exploiting, she didn't care. All she wanted was for fate to finally choose its victor and be done with it. She had pent up feelings that she needed to let soar free with her strikes before she died, if she was to be chosen as the unfortunate one that day.</p><p>Mana's knee strike was blocked successfully, the pitch perfect two handed block completely absorbed all of the force put into it. The other leg of the girl extended and wrapped around the Imarizu's neck, as gravity took its toll Mana yanked it down flipping the man over and slamming him into the ground. The old assassin repurposed the inertia that would've ended his resistance in a powerful slam at the bloody sand into a roll that minimized the damage he'd have taken. He shook and writhed as his broken ribs were slammed into the ground and bent for a roll but he didn't scream or shout – trying to fight pain was the Imarizu way. Hiding away one's humanity irritated and psyched out one's opponent.</p><p>Mana didn't wait for the Imarizu's stance to perfectly be rebuilt from after his evasive action. She rushed right at him with an onslaught of kicks preparing her back leg for a strong jump and her front leg for her signature kick to top off the combination. The first attack successfully displaced and unnerved her opponent, it was a very confusing throw that came out of nowhere since Mana never utilized throws and clinches. She never clashed with the opponent head-on using neither strength nor force of their own. That was why her attack worked as effectively as it did.</p><p>Bobbing and weaving away the Imarizu avoided her lightning fast blur of kicks before quickly responding to a quick upwards jab as a counter. Mana leaned down, she knew that if she took the man's bait and avoided the jab by jumping back she'd lock herself into a devoted movement she couldn't dodge the follow up from, her weight would once again be on the wrong leg and positioned right in her leaning back. There was only a back vault that was available from that position and the skilled and experienced assassin likely had a response prepared for that evasive maneuver.</p><p>The magician's palm tapped the Imarizu's striking arm placing it upwards with his entire right side open. She jumped up with a spinning kick that she prepared to repurpose into a whipping leg grab of the man's neck again. There was no way she'd jump off the ground and give up the advantage of a firm ground helping her build up a stronger kick otherwise. The Imarizu, surprisingly enough did the same as Mana did before, grabbing her leg with his other hand, his raised striking arm locked down in the air in a fear inspiring preparation for a crushing downwards elbow strike.</p><p>The man's elbow slamming down pierced what little air remained between Mana's caught firmly leg – her kneecap and where it was deflected to in fractions of a moment. It was like a lightning strike ended not by an overwhelming roar of thunder but by a smacking sound. The Imarizu assassin's eyes widened – he had expected a loud and equally thunderous as its metaphorical speed and power bone crack that would've broken Mana's leg backwards and finished the fight.</p><p>The man directed his attention at the elbow that was cushioned by Mana's palms absorbing all the force. The magician's lips were bent downwards and twisted, her skin pale and her eyes black and baggy. She was in a lot of pain however her leg was not broken and the two stood in that deadlock for what seemed like an eternity.</p><p>Then Mana's palms slipped out from under the elbow, her body bent backwards throwing her feet up in the air arcing back like a dancer as the magician's feet rose up and smashed at her opponent staggering him back while Mana vaulted back and repositioned herself in a proper attacking stance, running back at her opponent with a combination of kicks in mind. Her speed was so sluggish – her leg still aching even if the elbow strike was muzzled by her palms, it was like she was limping… Such unacceptable speed and yet…</p><p>Mana threw a cross, she knew that she couldn't kick right with her aching and worn out by the dash leg. The Imarizu was faster shooting his own, much longer armed cross and punching Mana straight in the face twice faster than her hand could connect with his already crushed jaw.</p><p>The girl flew back like an arrow rolling through dirt, blasting through other killed or defeated bodies like a rolling heavy ball blasted bowling pins away. The magician's body flew like a weightless sack completely devoid of life and thrown backwards by the awesome force of the strike. It was so powerful and fast, nearly instant in execution that the Imarizu stumbled forward after Mana's body got blasted away.</p><p>The old assassin stayed on his knees with only his broken punching arm and bones that were already visible through his busted up knuckles and his own tapping into puddles blood running down his body and face as his only visual consolation. His head suddenly turned sideways as he heard a very alarming sound of feet kicking off the bloody wet sand.</p><p>Kiyomi was rushing at him, ready to punch the life out of him but then the young blonde's body just stopped in mid rush. The blonde's eyes looked down to see a foreign shadow locking onto her.</p><p>"As someone who saw how actions similar to yours end… Don't. Even if Mana is to die here and now, she'd like to die as your friend rather than live on hating you. She's someone who has no capacity for hatred in her heart. Don't give her a reason to hate you, don't ruin who she is and what she stands for!" Sugemi yelled out angrily as he held Kiyomi tied down with his Shadow Possession technique.</p><p>Inomame's eyes shiftily looked around but Yanagi's voice calmed down his raging ambition to run away.</p><p>"I wouldn't do it if I was you…" he said.</p><p>At that moment Inomame noticed a very loosely focused swarm of scattered insects all around the area, ready to close down in a cocoon formation around Inomame at the faintest desire to do so by the Aburame clansman.</p><p>"We are adamant to uphold Mana's will, she is a girl who has granted me what I always wanted – a chance to become something more than an average prison guard. For that I will see to it that her will, even if it is to be her last will, is fulfilled!" Yanagi shouted with enough intimidation and conviction behind his voice to convince even the shifty Yamanaka.</p><p>Kiyomi's body began shaking and twitching uneasily. The Nara member didn't even try restraining those feint movements but then he noticed the girl's chest lift up and down as it became apparent that the blonde was simply weeping.</p><p>"She's going to die… What if she's already dead?" Kiyomi whimpered out but Sugemi met her question with silence as he adamantly reminded himself of his intention to hold up to Mana's will. He couldn't allow Kiyomi to interfere and ruin Mana's wish to place Shimo's sword back on his grave, he couldn't allow the blonde to butt into the deal between the two.</p><p>Had it not been for friends doing what they thought was best for their friends, Team Oak would not have fallen out. If Sugemi was allowed to kill the Demon from Kirigakure as he had intended, Shimo and Mana would have never gotten into trouble, Shimo would still have been alive… Who knew… Maybe same will soon be fair to be said about Mana as well. The Demon would not have escaped captivity either. Mana's will had no place there for friends who thought who knew better what was best for their friends… That was Sugemi's decision. A tough call to make that would've made a conflicting twist for a main character of the manga that'd inevitably be written about him in the future.</p><p>Even if Mana died… He wouldn't let her dream die, he'd record everything she said, everything she did, everything she stood for and allow her ideals to live forever. He'd make his own manga great enough for many people to read it – just as many as Mana would have wanted to reach. That was his call, for too long he had ignored what Mana wanted, for too long he had ridiculed her. He decided to hear out what she decided to say with her actions, give her a chance at the very least… One that friends ought to give their friends.</p>
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<a name="section0257"><h2>257. Blood In The Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Let me go…" Kiyomi cried out burying her anger and frustration deep in her chest, trying to sound calm and reasonable so that Sugemi freed her from his jutsu.</p><p>"I will. Once I see you have no reason to charge at the Kumogakure assassin who may have just killed our friend." Sugemi mumbled out carefully observing the wreckage of wood and rocks where Mana's body was flung into after the incredibly fast and immensely strong blow by the Imarizu. Even Sugemi found that man's speed to be tough to see at times. It was almost like his attacks were delivered in an instant from his point of perception, they accelerated steadily but then at some middle point of movement they just went out of control.</p><p>"I won't interfere!" Kiyomi shouted out in a way that made it seem that she will absolutely interfere.</p><p>"You shouldn't pick a fight with that man, young lady." Yanagi huffed out still clutching at his own aching sides from a clash with one of the Imarizu. Granted that one was fairly fresh and nowhere near torn down and broken as the leader of the group was right now, still, the unbelievable acceleration of their punches was just as dangerous and deadly. "You should feel lucky they didn't kill you the first time they got their hands on you, usually when people deal with the Imarizu they feel lucky having escaped them and never interact with them again."</p><p>"I am to thank for that, I believe, and also - you're welcome…" Inomame smiled in a manner not unlike a way cartoons depict vipers twisting their anthropomorphic lips. "I could've had the Imarizu kill you at any point but I made sure you were captured alive!"</p><p>"Don't rub yourself, it's only because you were afraid the line of succession would be altered after your plot was found out. Posthumous line of succession alterations are nothing new and the discovered plot of heiress' murder would've been all the proof the clan needed…" Yanagi replied calmly. Being a member of a highly overlooked yet prevalent and important clan he knew the intricacies of clan inner administration well.</p><p>"It's why I don't like it when people focus on the details…" Inomame complained poking his chin with his index finger.</p><p>The whole right side of Mana's face was sticky and warm, the magician tried opening up her eyes but the stench of blood and the taste of it in her mouth was too strong. She had to spit out some blood and teeth aside, only after her right eye did not open did magician realize that something was wrong. Right after her head was lifted up at least in a diagonal position a weak yet relentless streak of warm blood gushed out from her cracked forehead down the right side of her face. None of it reached Mana's eye, the blasted thing was either gone or swollen.</p><p>Usually the magician may have felt troubled about the fact that teeth were painful to have regrown using medical ninjutsu, that replacing lost eyes, if that was indeed the case was astoundingly expensive as a new one had to be cultivated by highly treasured specialists using not just medical ninjutsu but actual organ cultivation through flesh modification with cultivated Senju cells. Right now only Inomame's life mattered. Ignoring the blood and her blurry eyesight Mana got back on her feet and stumbled forward.</p><p>Kiyomi's crying eyes when she looked at her were painful. Mana wasn't sure just how badly banged up she was but the fact that seeing right was difficult and her head was dizzy enough to throw her around if she tried just walking straight told the right answer. She'd not be doing any flips or graceful acrobatics any time soon. At least she didn't pass out… Not just yet… Had the magician not suppressed her body's subconscious instinct to augment heavy damage she'd certainly have been comatose right now from chakra loss.</p><p>Mana had seen so many die. Not all who have fallen here today have died. Most of them were just out, whether from being knocked down and not properly finished off or due to their own augmentations being overworked causing them to pass out from chakra loss, just like there was a decent chance for this fight to end for the Konoha magician. She could've died here but she wouldn't let one more person die, not if she could flex one more muscle, move one more finger and throw one more punch to possibly prevent that. No matter how heinous the man she was trying to save, Mana firmly believed that killing was not justified. It was an escape from justice.</p><p>"I must say I thought you'd walk away from this at some point." the elder Imarizu uttered his first words in a while. "I believed that the next generation couldn't fight with such devotion to their beliefs. That it wasn't nearly as persistent as we used to be. Waging wars for days and weeks on end…"</p><p>"Same was thought of your generation by the previous one. It is the solace of the old belittling the young to make their past days mean something more in the present, build oneself up on the expense on those who are strong enough to take it." Mana uttered, she could feel the weakness in her voice. She tried to say something that tied around her tongue and thoughts felt messy in her head, unrelated memories began flooding her mind and getting in the way of the here and now. The girl desperately tried pleading her body to endure, weakness at this moment meant death and not only that of hers. Surely the end of it couldn't have been in her body's prime interests? Then again, knowing the punishment Mana always put it through…</p><p>The old man began bobbing and weaving aside, his speed was slow initially but it picked up, just like his instantaneous punching techniques did. His punches were not like anything Mana had seen in the Sun Disc arena which was a compliment by itself. Still, she knew what she was hit by. The man threw a punch with great amount of chakra built up in it, focused into a slow power strike but then he removed all of that chakra to accelerate the strike to no end before returning a small fraction of it, just to give it some extent of its former power back. The speed of the blows was irrelevant – they were so fast the speed may as well have been instantaneous and there was no point dodging them without predicting where they'd be coming beforehand. The old man from the arena would've been really pumped up seeing this striking technique…</p><p>Just like with his punches, the Imarizu's image blurred, his moving-in self began playing tricks with Mana, leaving afterimages, whizzing by her and toying with her like all was already over. For a moment there the magician thought it was just her one barely functioning eye playing the trick on her – showing blurs and afterimages instead of clear vision. No – it was on point. At least Mana could still trust her left eye, it was beginning to swell but the bleeding into it was still controlled by her eyebrows and long hair that soaked most of the stickiness.</p><p>The girl bent up from behind like an arc. It felt like ten billion volts had hit her, like she had fallen from the heavens onto a mountain of sharp and heated glass that went through her skin. What an immense jab, so swift and yet still strong, stronger than jabs usually are meant to be. Mana couldn't stay on her feet, falling down on her knees so hard that they opened up again. Another seemingly instantaneous blow punched her so hard that she began whirling weightlessly, like a lifeless sack towards her friends. As Sugemi commanded the held captive Kiyomi brace for impact and move out of the way, Mana's flight was stopped by an uppercut of the Imarizu who has moved in a blink in front of the girl who was about to smash into her friends.</p><p>Mana couldn't feel that last punch, the pain and shock of it escaped her. She only remembered that she was arcing in mid-air and about to smash into the ground. Piercing the air like a precise arrow the finishing cross sent Mana back into the messy pile of rocks she rose from. Honestly the magician had no idea how she was still alive. It must've been a punishment from some cruel deity. That was the only feasible explanation that made sense anymore. It wasn't like the magician was religious to begin with… While at some point the kunoichi had realized that her opponent had wasted too much chakra already to be augmenting his abilities to the point, it no longer mattered to her. She was just standing up to get knocked back down, harder than before.</p><p>Her reads no longer worked. She could predict the following combinations in her mind, base it on the archetype of the sort of martial artist her opponent was placed in but she couldn't precisely compare the angles of blows to her own position letting her decide how and where to dodge them. Where before she could dodge the man's blows without even facing him, now her mind was too dizzy to imagine in her mind's eye her own position to her opponent's and correctly guess the angle and point of her opponent's strike even if she was looking right at it. Had it been a fight just for the kicks Mana would've known it was meaningless to stand up. Sadly a life was at stake… Not just her own life though.</p><p>"Mana, stop this!" Kiyomi shouted out from the depth of her lungs when the magician stood with her wobbly and shaking legs once again. This was no longer a fight, it was in the beginning – a fight where two people clashed their styles, compared their experience and skill. Now Mana just stood up to get hit and see if she was alive enough to stand up for another serving. There was no longer even a meaning to it – usually when one didn't draw the right card they just stalled the game, folded their hands again and again, knowing that the right hand was still ahead. There was simply no higher card in the deck – the game was meaningless. Mana only stood up to lose more until she had nothing more to lose.</p><p>"You said that you wanted to protect a life! How about save your own in exchange of this scumbag's!?" Yanagi joined in hesitantly. Even the Aburame was beginning to feel uneasy watching this one sided beatdown continue. He was told that a prison guard should never be squeamish but honestly watching over Eden was slim pickings – people there were criminals only by a very strict meaning of the word. A lot of them weren't even sentenced with anything, they just used Eden for their own protection. He had seen more blood and guts, taken more than he could have imagined it was needed to. If being great meant doing what Mana was doing – Yanagi would've rather been a watchman of Eden until the end of his days.</p><p>Mana didn't reply, not because she didn't know the words, because she couldn't physically utter them loud enough. Memories flooded her mind, useless ones, not the kind that would've helped her get out from this fight or this predicament. Those of angry people, during the Fourth's funeral when Sugemi cried for deadly justice. Those condescending eyes that wrote Mana down to being just the same as the people that killed their Hokage after she opposed Sugemi's views. Yes, she thought criminals deserved to live, everyone deserved to live. She thought that after justice was served they deserved a chance at redemption. Carnefici from the Sound Village was a mass murderer long ago, there was no "but" to add or justification for his actions. And yet he lived his current life for a young girl who showed him kindness and faith in him, even while he knew there was no redeeming what he had done, believing in Hell and knowing that was his place he still protected that person dear to him to the last of his breaths. Ones that'll hopefully never come…</p><p>Those very people Mana loved more than anything would've had no problem sentencing her to death just because she thought Inomame must have lived to see justice done. She was just as worthless of a life in their eyes as Inomame himself. For that reason she didn't see her own life as something worth treasuring, saving up for some special occasion. This was the special occasion. Mana had no regrets dying hated for what she believed in.</p><p>Slowly the magician began stumbling onwards, her eye still allowed her to perceive that her opponent lingered onto her. Stumbling and weaving not because of his confusing movements but because he was tired. There were no more lifted up hands, no more protecting his busted up open and bleeding face. No more moving left and right, hopping back and forward to confuse and lure out needless punches from Mana. The man was just lingering like a village drunkard on his evening walk home. The two ninja met on a collision course in a couple of moments…</p><p>Mana threw a light punch, the dizziness in her head made her barely contain throwing up as her body weighed down into her opponent's embrace. Pushing her off of the clinch the Imarizu threw a diagonal downwards cross aimed at putting Mana down on the floor. The man hoped that at some point the magician would fall and physically be unable to get up. Unable to properly respond the girl stumbled and dived down under her opponent's punch hitting the man in the abdomen with her head as she fell. The assassin didn't shout but he flipped up and rolled on the dirt in pain as his broken ribs burnt up before standing back up. Hearing the taps of her blood hitting the sand Mana forced her busted face off the sand as well. She was crawling at the man more than walking.</p><p>The girl kicked off the sand, trying to tackle the man with her shoulder, use the natural force of gravity pulling her down to stay down. A force that at the moment seemed infinitely strong to the kunoichi. The Imarizu turned around and fell backwards delivering an overhead kick that hit the magician at the back of her head. It wasn't a kick as much as it was a fall of his leg, fueled by nothing else but gravity as there was little to no energy left in the assassin to fight properly. He had been hitting and killing people whole day, he lacked the needed strength to kill instantly making this young girl suffer more than she needed to and that was something the old man was regretting as he roughly shoved himself staggering back up and down on his knees.</p><p>Mana threw some blood up. All the movement made build it up, she must've had a pretty bad concussion. The Imarizu rushed at her trying to tackle Mana down, he intended to sit on her chest and just pummel the girl's face until she didn't move. He felt enraged that even as she danced right at the edge of death waiting below she still defended this pale-skinned target of his. If he played with her any longer he may not had the strength to even hold up the sword he intended to execute the man with. Mana didn't try to resist, she just fell on her back raising her knee and kicking the man in the jaw as the two fell.</p><p>The Imarizu straightened out on the sand completely immobile besides Mana. The two just huffed heavily with their eyes closed, twitching in exhaustion and pain, wandering which one will gather their strength quicker to climb on top of the other and finish them off.</p><p>Mana flipped up onto the bruised and bleeding chest of the old man, it felt as slippery as a submerged rock covered in sea weed. The magician's back straightened out as she still staggered struggling to keep herself from falling off his chest and throwing up more blood on the sand. If she stopped struggling she'd fall asleep, falling asleep meant death, not only for her but Inomame. Falling asleep was unacceptable! Mana swung her palm wildly slamming it at the left cheek of the Imarizu elder, blood and teeth spilled out. The magician repeated the motion from the other side again and again and again and again. Until one final slam from her palm right at the man's nose completely busting it open, until Mana saw the old man's eyes swell up in front of her and she was sure he couldn't see anything from how much of his own swollen flesh was in his face. Then the magician fell, smiling and peaceful.</p><p>"You didn't kill me…" the old man wheezed from his busted up lungs.</p><p>Mana wanted to whimper "Never" back at him but she couldn't. Her lips wouldn't move, air wouldn't pass her lungs the right way, her tongue wouldn't flip like it had to. If she died then and there it'd have been fine. A loud pop broke Mana's one working eye wide open as she realized that black as tar smoke began filling the air.</p><p>"No!" she thought.</p><p>A loud and metallic string reeling sound followed. Mana flipped on her front trying to grab at air, hoping to stop the second wind of the assassin before he ruined his own integrity as a man, but no one was there. That was it – Inomame was probably dead! As the smoke cleared momentarily Mana saw Kiyomi, released from Sugemi's technique at last, Yanagi and Sugemi with their kunai out protecting Inomame who was sitting with his hands around his head. Mana's troubled and frozen in fear face returned to its usual tranquility of saving a man's life, she looked at her side and saw that the assassin kept up his side of the deal – Shimo's sword as well as a small pouch laid there, right beside her.</p><p>Kiyomi's angry and crying face intruded Mana's limited and reddening field of vision.</p><p>"I'd hit you really hard right now, but I'm afraid you'd die!" she shouted erratically. Trying to find anything in her pouch that was of any medical use. Yanagi checked the sword, pulling it out and letting the Audra steel shine in the afternoon sunlight. He then sheathed the sword and checked the little pouch left by the assassin.</p><p>"It has some yellow medical food pills in it. These may keep Mana in stable condition until we check what amounts to medical care in this place…" Yanagi said.</p><p>"Huh? Why didn't the bastard eat some of those himself before the fight? He would've mopped the floor with Mana if he had even the slightest amount of chakra more left…" Sugemi wondered pouting while he looked around for where the assassin may have zipped off to with his string reeling technique. "Heh, he must've used the Academy Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu… Remarkable use of an Academy technique…"</p><p>Mana closed her left eye as she was in too much pain and too tired to do anything but that. So the old man played fair – both of them being injured was one of his conditions, it was a stipulation he upheld to the end. Had he consumed one of the medical food pills and supercharged his metabolism to heal him up a little bit it wouldn't have been a gamble, it wouldn't have been a fair deal so it was out of the question. After he felt like he had no more strength left he simply used the smoke bomb for escape, covering up with a primitive disguise ninjutsu technique until a medical pill healed him up enough to reveal himself and return to his village… An elite assassin through and through, the Imarizu elder never intended to join his comrades in the afterlife – reporting on his mission to whomever hired him was his goal all along. The gamble was the only question.</p><p>This day fate chose Mana as the victor!</p>
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<a name="section0258"><h2>258. The Red Pill</h2></a>
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    <p>The skin felt irritated and eerily sensitive as the bandages rubbed against it. Once Mana finally returned to her senses she felt up her bandaged face before letting her hands feel below her neck. As the more painful wounds instantly alerted the magician not to be touchy she quickly pulled her hands away from them. Mana looked around seeing a bunch of red medical pills laying around in a little decorative bowl as well as a couple of cups of water. Seeing how one was in a purple plastic cup decorated with flowery motifs Mana sipped from it barely finding a spot on her bandaged head to do so.</p><p>There must not have been much to the Land of Waves' medical specialists seeing how she was still bandaged and very much in pain. Arguably feeling a lot worse than she did during the actual fight, granted, back then she had the advantage of slowly fading consciousness that didn't rag her about how much everything hurt and how nauseous she was. Even a small sip of water, arguably one of the worst problems of waking up after a long period of resting sent the girl's stomach into a full-blown strike mode.</p><p>Trying to rub her tummy to please it somehow Mana laid back down. She really didn't feel like walking around. The magician peeked at the medical pills wandering if she was allowed to take them, that is to say, if they were left there to be taken when Mana woke up, as the water was. Knowing how potent those medical pills were, also the risk of taking too many over too short period of time Mana sort of kept herself from it, despite the pain and unrest. Even if they were the red ones, some of the least potent ones, they still would've helped her tremendously.</p><p>The door screeched as it opened revealing a curious middle aged man walking in. The man had a curious case of bushy facial hair, very thick glasses and wore a typical light blue medical ninja non-combat uniform.</p><p>"Ah, you're awake… What's wrong? You didn't take the food pills…" the man curiously inquired as he made a hand seal bending to the other side of Mana's head allowing the seals with her medical information to reveal themselves to him.</p><p>"I'm… Nauseous. My boyfriend is a medical ninja so I know these aren't too healthy to have too many of." Mana replied quietly, hearing how soft and weak her voice was and how slurring her speech came out.</p><p>The man smiled and waved his hand indifferently, "Don't worry, we don't have the really high risk-high reward kind. Red ones won't hurt too much even if you take one too many. Your liver and your digestive tract were completely grinded to mulch, healing that took a dozen of medical ninja, sadly we don't have any higher ranking specialists here so we had to pool our efforts. You're lucky you're a Konoha kunoichi, even luckier the Hokage specifically asked to have you treated as a very important patient."</p><p>"He did?" Mana wondered remembering very little after what had transpired in the beach. She was under the impression that the man utterly despised her, even more than the girl was willing to accept as being reasonable. People disliked some other people, it was just the way things were. The Sixth however really looked like he was out to get Mana the last time they met. She had figured that the man would be completely out of his mind after hearing what she had pulled – going into such a battlefield alone without informing Konoha and all…</p><p>"Oh yes, a Konohagakure party came in yesterday and took that Kirigakure gentleman away. All of the Konoha Sannin were here, all ready for a fight! It looked like a scene from an epic novel, I tell you…" the medical ninja smiled after handing Mana a single food pill, being wary of the girl's concerns of being careful with the medical food pills. The magician softly opened her mouth – as much as her sore and cracking jaw allowed her and chewed the slimy and chewy red pill that tasted like tomatoes with herbs in some gooey and milky substance. The taste certainly could've been improved.</p><p>Almost instantly the magician felt some of her pulsing pain hotspots ease up and her thoughts began being more intelligible and came more clearly. That must've been a sign of her fever going down. Her sheets smelled relatively fresh but Mana had imagined that she may have been pretty uneasy the last couple of days and sweat her fair share. Brief flashes of pain and uneasiness, the feeling of sluggishness and slipping control of her body as she rolled around the bed feeling heavy and wet… Like a whale out on the beach unable to move or save itself from drying out.</p><p>The magician felt a little bit curious as to how exactly Konoha was informed. After all, she acted as a less than legal immediate response party. Intercepting the wedding was her primary concern, not informing the village. The prison may have sent a quick note to the Hokage about Sugemi being freed temporarily, still, what would that have mattered to a man overworked from a completely bonkers amount of paperwork? Such a silly meaningless note likely wouldn't have even been read for days, if at all. It must've been something more solid, proof bearing and important.</p><p>Maybe the Yamanaka contacted the village? It was certainly a possibility but Mana would've called that they would've been more likely to send a third party of their own to take care of things. Clans had a certain freedom of inner administration of themselves and they just loved exercising that freedom. Whenever they had a matter of purely internal affairs on their hands they always acted like big and independent organizations, often sending their own assassins or hired guns after the problem…</p><p>"How are you feeling?" the medical ninja inquired generally before turning to the door, assuming he would receive the answer before he'd reached it and hear it out before leaving. Surprised that one didn't come in time and interrupted his quick and efficient rhythm of movement the man froze and turned back at Mana with a curious raised eyebrow.</p><p>"Hurt but… Not the first time, probably won't be the last either." Mana shrugged before biting her own lip in pain when something really loudly cracked at her shoulder area.</p><p>"Well, that's to be expected. We are a small island and our medical facility is centuries behind that of Konoha. I was told you're the girl who brought a bunch of technology from… I won't even be troubled to try and explain – you know better than me, anyways, we are yet to receive a single screw or bolt from that. We may as well be praying people to be well…" the medical specialist shrugged before leaving.</p><p>Mana sighed before feeling the overwhelming amount of bandages wrapped around her head and face. She could see with the other eye again – that meant that it wasn't completely destroyed or just the flesh around it had swollen excessively during the fight. Still she wondered about the extent of her longer lasting injuries. Just how much of this would stay to haunt her? Usually skilled medical experts could remove traces of injury, heal it in an out of combat situation quite quickly however a person's body could only be treated without a trace a limited number of times before it broke down. Before cracks began to show in the constantly re-forged and re-crafted set of armor… It wasn't that Mana bet about making it to being hundred years old, still, it was just a case of curiosity.</p><p>The door screeched again as its hinges begged for attention. A pair of people entered the room – one of the two people who had entered was quite familiar to Mana, the other one was yet to be introduced. Her own sensei – Chestnut Hanasaku was being accompanied by another man. A tall and fit middle aged man with darker purplish hair that arced on the outside a bit past his neck. He wore a pretty fancy looking white coat over his ninja uniform and the armored vest on him had some small custom additions to it. Mostly it looked like jewelry but it could've been anything. A lot of sealing techniques could've been conveniently placed into jewelry if one felt like being overly cliché about their arsenal.</p><p>"We were told you are awake. I wanted to talk to you…" Hanasaku uttered sighing uncomfortably before pulling out a chair from under the hospital bed with her foot and sitting down. The woman looked quite tired, then again, maybe she was actually better than she was when she was temporarily taking the seat of Hokage. Her hair was always pretty messy so trying to tell her condition from them was relatively tough.</p><p>"Way to ignore me… I waited with you until the girl is awake, splitting from the rest of our group." the woman's companion smiled with his complaint.</p><p>"That's because you insisted on coming. I wanted to talk to my… Student and you just…" Hanasaku began voicing some complaints of her own before being interrupted by her friend.</p><p>"I was worried you'd be overly passionate with the Sixth's new pal." The man shrugged before bending his passive foot and wrapping around his stronger leg, clearly the man had stayed standing around for quite long and wanted to sit down. As his leg moved it allowed a sword hilt to slip out from under his coat. And another one. And a couple more…</p><p>"She's my student. I have all the reasons to be strict with her, I believe all of them are pretty sound!" Hanasaku raised her voice and stood up facing the man. Curiously enough he didn't flinch or blink when the short she-devil measured up to him, most men would've.</p><p>"What your sensei meant to say was – "this is Zairyo Jitensha – otherwise known as Zairyo of the Wavering Grass, a Konohagakure Sannin". Now that the pleasant introductions are out of the way, please – morals away!" the man rested himself down on an empty bed nearby and extended his feet over another chair below the bed he settled himself down on.</p><p>Mana had never heard of this man. The very fact was incredibly curious as there had to be reasons why a Sannin level ninja was completely unknown to her. Usually ninja of that caliber were sort of celebrities which, while defying the very essence and meaning of ninja, could barely be helped. One could only avoid the fame of their own fine work for so long…</p><p>"I need to be straight with you – I'm incredibly disappointed with you." Hanasaku strictly exclaimed. Mana looked away but then her eyes met with Zairyo who was in her direct line of fleeting eyes.</p><p>"Hey, don't look at me, this is between you two! I will get my own beating for one reason or the other later on…" the man shrugged indifferently as if this was a joking matter of some sort.</p><p>Mana looked down, she knew that something like this was coming. Truth be told she knew it all along, ever since the plan first came to her head, these consequences were accepted and taken for certain. Now they just needed to be faced.</p><p>Suddenly the atmosphere became heavier, an incredible shortness of breath took Mana over, the likes of which she had never before felt. The girl's bloodshot eyes wandered onto Hanasaku's clenched fist which shook in anger.</p><p>Out of nowhere Zairyo's back was in front of Mana and his hand gripping Hanasaku's shaking fist. The man stood coldly staring at the woman and calming her down with just his eyes. After Hanasaku's eyes looked down in submission he wandered back to his resting place.</p><p>"No need to come with me, you'll just get in the way, she said…" Zairyo shrugged making fun of the entire thing like it was no laughing matter. Truthfully to Mana it meant a great deal – one of her most beloved and appreciated icons of the ninja world expressing disappointment. It was just as painful, if not more so, than back when Tanshu-sensei belittled her and treated her as a future failure. "Are you trying to crush this kid's chest cavity or something, ease up on the killing intent…" he advised more seriously looking at the woman as if actually scolding her.</p><p>"You've left alone, without letting the village know or formulate a plan, to go after an enemy far beyond your reaches endangering the life of your friend. A person of great importance to me with whom I have a long reaching history." The Sannin angrily began moralizing Mana. The magician really wanted to look more affected, she wanted to cry or blush or do anything but look at the ground like an idiot but truthfully she had known this was coming all along. She had told all of that to herself already thousands of times and for that reason the actual scolding was infinitely softer compared to what the magician had told herself.</p><p>"Had it not been for the old man, the writer you were staying with, informing us of what you've done, we'd have never known about what was going on until it was too late. Even with his message we barely managed to smell the ashes of the fire. The Sixth actually thought you showed initiative, he's impressed with what we've been told of your actions. That's because of his history in the Black Ops – being a shadow accountable to no one is what he knows and appreciates." Hanasaku finally answered the question that lingered in Mana's heart, about how exactly did the village find out about what was going on. It'd have taken a pretty long time for small-time rumors about the wedding to reach the village, just like Hanasaku had concluded it'd have been far too late to do anything about it then.</p><p>"I didn't want anyone to die. If the village went after Inomame they'd have killed him before even trying to subdue him, they'd have killed the Imarizu too, every Kirigakure Demon trainee as well…" Mana replied, she knew that it wasn't going to fix anything, she knew it was just a pitiful excuse but her mentor was sort of owed at the very least such an elementary courtesy of knowing Mana's reasons.</p><p>"And how did it end up? We've found a bunch of bodies sprawled out on the beach, signs that two or three times more just scattered once they woke up. Inomame was picked up, granted – alive seeing how you've already captured him, three out of four Imarizu also died. The fourth is nowhere to be found." Hanasaku asked before summing up the fallout.</p><p>"The kid does have a point though, Yamanaka are too dangerous to be tried and taken alive – we'd have likely killed the bastard the first chance we got…" Zairyo shrugged before pulling out a donut from the drawer further from the bed he was occupying and digging in after wrapping the damned confectionary out overly loudly.</p><p>"I am this close to punching you!" Hanasaku yelled out showing the man her fist with an approximate measurement of the imaginary gesture size system of how close she was to punching the man with the other hand.</p><p>"I know I failed you and disappointed you and messed up in general." Mana admitted as surprisingly enough her eyes remained dry in one of her saddest moods in a while. Even the immeasurably heavy emotional boulder on her chest couldn't bring out a single tear, it would've easily had made her feel better, after all – crying was venting. Crying would've helped deal with the situation in a way.</p><p>"Frankly I did it because it's just who I am. I know this won't help but given the chance I'd keep doing it again and again, I'd feel bad about it, I'd regret letting you down every step of the way but it's just what I've sworn to do." Mana explained.</p><p>Hanasaku grinded her teeth before flipping out her hands in the air and walking away to the window. The woman looked through it and observed the people coming and going to and from the little Land of the Waves hospital trying to remain some semblance of composure.</p><p>"I really liked you at some point. I liked what I thought I saw in you. Figured that this respect for life and everyone else's beliefs would've made you a fine ninja, one that transcended everyone else. You were an exact opposite of what little bro Tanshu was so I figured I may introduce you to the pack someday, maybe it'd make you a Sage… That's an amount of hopes I've never felt for any other student." Hanasaku cried out as she placed her forehead to the cold glass in frustration. It was clear that she wasn't just angry at Mana, this wasn't like mothers were angry at their children for a couple of minutes before it all passing.</p><p>It was clear that where Hanasaku had massive hopes for Mana, the magician shattered all of them with one thought over action which only hurt that much more because of how much greater they were.</p><p>Zairyo jumped up and rushed to the woman grabbing her by the shoulder. "Wait, a Sage!? So you mean you know where one can actually become a Sage!?" he shouted out.</p><p>Hanasaku remained silent. Zairyo sighed and walked up to Mana before pointing to a sword resting besides her. The magician hadn't even noticed it being there but it was resting in a very unflattering position, almost like it had fell down from Mana's bed and wasn't moved since.</p><p>"Would you, by any chance, agree to making a deal about that blade? As a great collector of various artifacts and swords and a traveler I can see great value in this magnificent craftsmanship." The man's eyes literally ate the sword alive as he pulled it out halfway examining it and allowing his eyes to run down its edge admiring it like a pervert admired the gorgeous body lines.</p><p>"I can't. I need to bring this sword back to its owner." Mana firmly cut him down. It didn't appear like Zairyo was angry or overly disappointed. The man just smiled and sheathed the sword placing it in a more dignified and important position closer to Mana's cupboard.</p><p>"I see…" he sighed before he walked up to the door, "Well, now that you two warmed up to each other, I guess I'll leave you two to sort this out alone." He said almost like he'd have done it to himself. Soon the rather sophisticated and strong looking shinobi disappeared leaving Mana and Hanasaku by themselves as he said he would.</p><p>Hanasaku finally moved away from the window and was about to leave as well before she turned to Mana.</p><p>"I know you need rest. I could heal you a bit better than this, even if I sometimes mess others' bodies up. If I did, however, you'd not learn your lesson. I would kick you out from my team after such a massive loss of trust. I need to believe at all times that you are there to back me up as the team leader if needed and I simply no longer believe that. I think that you're a selfish brat who while takes everything into consideration in the ends only acts upon her own beliefs and interests. The only reason you're still on the team is because I want for Kiyomi to finally get past the Chuunin Exams, she deserved it years ago and there's simply no time to find a replacement or use in a fresh out of Academy genin to take your place. You're still on the team but I won't train you!" Hanasaku thundered out before slamming the door behind her.</p><p>Finally Mana broke down into tears… Despite wanting some expression of emotion to finally break out and stop all that guilt and sadness from bottling inside of her it somehow didn't feel a tiny bit better. It just felt like a woman she had admired for the longest time ever, and still is, had expressed her disappointment and dismissal. It felt like being a disappointment to herself because she was a disappointment to the people she wanted respect and warmth from.</p><p>Most of all, it felt like being alone all over again…</p>
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<a name="section0259"><h2>259. Blood Soaked Tears From Our Fears</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's thighs still shook in pain and burning exhaustion as she made her way downstairs to the lower parts of the hospital. The weight of her backpack dug into the girl's shoulders and whereas, normally, the pain would've only kicked in a good hour or two in, now it began irritating the magician's skin almost instantly. Fixing the still bandaged swellings on her face and moving one band away from obstructing her eye Mana looked around trying to find her friends.</p><p>"The young Yamanaka lady left with the Konoha party already. It looked like the young lady wanted to wait for you to recover but the Sannin were insisting that she left with them. Chestnut Hanasaku insisted that the prisoner boy was returned to Eden as well, as soon as possible, so, I'm afraid, you were left alone to return home." The medical ninja explained to Mana, looking a bit proud he had successfully predicted the girl's predicament like some sort of genius of inductive reasoning.</p><p>It made sense, while a little disappointed with it, Mana didn't really feel angry about it. Kiyomi was the person around whom this whole story rotated, it made sense that Konoha would want the girl back immediately, that the Yamanaka clan would wish only the strongest ninja immediately secure the well-being of their future potential heiress. Still, Mana only departed from the village originally to see her friend and get to spend some time with her. While the two did mess around for a while in the Yamanaka resort it was all surrounded by the drama of bounty hunters being sent after Kiyomi which didn't let Mana lower her guard for a moment.</p><p>The magician just sighed looking around for any friendly face but then seeing none, even with the medical ninja scurrying away to check some emergency, she just shrugged and headed for the door. On her way there the magician checked her pockets feeling a couple of clanging coins, not nearly enough to hire a rower back to the continent.</p><p>"Hey, where the hell do you think you're going, all alone!?" Sugemi's angry voice made Mana turn back rapidly as she was shocked to hear a young man she heard having left her behind not too long ago.</p><p>"I thought you guys left?" the magician asked with a longing and still a bit banged up and raspy voice.</p><p>"Our clones did…" Yanagi smiled walking out from the canteen with a dumpling and a cup of soda being suspended in air by a briefly intelligible swarm of black insects. "I made a pair of insect clones to follow the mean lady and her friend and make it look like we left with them…" he spoke barely intelligibly as bunch of his food he was still munching flew out from his mouth as he spoke.</p><p>"You couldn't have fooled the Sannin with such a trick…" Mana looked away sadly wandering if her friends got into trouble.</p><p>"Obviously they weren't fooled, still, they didn't mind either. If they did find Yanagi out they didn't object so it's basically the same thing as them letting us stay…" Sugemi waved his hand at Mana's concerns before wondering what was next.</p><p>"We head back, I need to put this sword by Shimo's grave…" Mana declared with determination even if her voice was still weak and wavering. "What about you two? Are you going back to Konoha with me, Yanagi? If you showed your face around the Administration maybe you'd get noticed and considered for promotion."</p><p>Yanagi embarrassingly rubbed the back of his messy hair, "Nah, I've had my fair share of trouble. I thought that by becoming someone important despite not being the kind of person whom everyone usually considers important while reaching out for recognition I could be free. You know, the whole nobody becoming somebody thing, it felt like true freedom. Truth be told, I guess deciding what you want to do, ignoring the public expectations for you to succeed, even if you want to stay where you are for a while, is the true freedom. Being pressured and expected to achieve greatness is really the greatest prison of all. I realized that after some while of being pummeled by the Imarizu out there… If I ever want to reach out for a more intense life, I'll just ask to be transferred to a higher security prison complex whenever I feel like it." The Aburame declared.</p><p>"Maybe you'll come with me back to the village?" Mana turned at Sugemi, "It didn't look like they were adamant about keeping you in Eden. You could ask yourself to be signed out of there, I mean you're not even a real prisoner there. I know you want to see Shimo's grave at the very least…"</p><p>"No. I'm going back to Eden. Maybe I'll participate in the Chuunin Exams, though…" Sugemi laid back and looked away. It was obvious that he didn't feel comfortable discussing the way he felt around Mana. "If the audience gets too much of the main character they'll get bored. I need to let the supporting cast get some development. Plus it's about time for my mysterious off-panel training arc anyways…"</p><p>Even if her whole face hurt and felt like a buzzing beehive Mana couldn't help but smile if only faintly.</p><p>"You know, I really feel like you should just write that manga yourself, instead of waiting around to have it written later on. It could be a work in progress even if you don't know the full story yet…" Mana suggested as the two turned for the exit while Yanagi stuffed the food he had bought in the canteen into the bag.</p><p>"Nah, I hate filler. I'd rather know the full story before adapting it instead of having to fillerize the damned thing. Do you want my story to get cancelled like "Samurai Tights"?" Sugemi angrily snapped back at Mana before both friends shared a laugh.</p><p>At least having some company on her trip back to Konoha made the journey more exciting. It also allowed the three to band their funds together and hire an actual rower to get them from one shore to the continent. There was absolutely no way for Mana to fly over the small streak of ocean separating the Land of Waves from the mainland. Not in her current shape. In her ninja pouch she still had some pills given to her by the medical ninja in the hospital to take on her trip home. That way what would've taken almost a full year to heal completely would only take a week at most.</p><p>After the team finally reached the continent and approached Eden Yanagi and Sugemi split from the group. The group said their farewells with Sugemi promising to Mana to see her during the Chuunin Exams by asking to be released around then. The magician wasn't totally sure as to why Sugemi would insist on staying in Eden instead of returning to the village. There was no official decree or punishment imposed on him, at this point he was just punishing himself. The girl couldn't help but smile realizing that she herself was not unlike her teammate. After all, she could've planned a trip to the Konoha Hospital first thing back – have her wounds completely healed and even her scars removed completely. Maybe she'd do so eventually but somehow suffering through her injuries did feel more right to Mana.</p><p>Maybe it was just her way of punishing herself. It didn't sound right – doing the thing she absolutely had to do while knowing that she'd be punished for it. It was like being created to be sick but commanded to be well, a great injustice logically. Still, in a way it still only felt right. As much as the magician searched for a reasonable explanation for her behavior of punishing herself for something she considered the right thing to do, she couldn't. Maybe it was because emotions and inner worlds couldn't have been rational by their very nature. It wasn't like Mana, of all people, was suitable of a reasonable analysis of her character.</p><p>The trip home was rather uneventful. Granted, wishing for it to be something exciting to happen may have been treacherous. In her current injured and recovering state Mana was completely unable to defend herself from any threats that lurked outside the village walls. The very thought of molding chakra or trying to augment her body in any way made the girl's head dizzy and her stomach nauseous. She still had a feint fever whenever she ate, her liver must still not have been completely healed as abdominal pains were quite often.</p><p>After a long trek home, finally, the familiar white wall surrounding a large and epic looking village of towering buildings with colorful rooftops and wires leading uphill to a hulking Administration building and the Hokage mountain met the magician's sight. When she left even in her wildest dreams Mana couldn't have imagined just how long she'd spent away from home. The very thought of returning home sounded completely crazy. Her own home and her own parents somehow began seeming like distant people to her. Father and mother…</p><p>Mana didn't tell them a word about this whole debacle. Sure, they were quite likely to be informed of things after news of Kiyomi's wedding finally reached the village but they still must've been excruciated by all the waiting and having no knowledge of Mana's well-being. After all, the magician was not on a mission, she just left to meet an old friend and then got involved into this whole crazy story. This whole time she completely forgot that she had a family that was worried about her.</p><p>Just another pair of people Mana had failed… Right after she was about to sink into a depressing mess of thoughts the magician smiled unexpectedly. This was supposed to be a good outcome on any other account: her friend was alive and well, unmarried to an ambitious sociopath and also the entire world's political balance was secured. Yet she felt so bitter about this victory. Granted, the political balance would've been secured either way, with Mana's involvement however it was secured without shedding nearly as much blood… Despite a bloody battlefield whirling wild for half a day, it was still the less bloody outcome compared to total annihilation of the Kirigakure party…</p><p>Slowly Mana took her baby steps into the village. Looking around and wandering if she'd be stopped, arrested or encouraged to report to the Hokage immediately but nothing of the sort happened. She just waltzed back into her home village without fanfare or outrage. The guards did give her a couple of curious looks but remained seated, whispering something to each other's ears. Having in mind that Mana still wore half of her bandages and the right side of her face was still bandaged, they were justified to suspect something shady or to discuss her state.</p><p>Apparently the magician was so tired and worn out by the five day trip home that she remained unrecognized by the public. Usually she was famous enough in the village to warrant a two or three times longer trip home with everyone wishing to ask her questions about the next show or just say hello to her. This time she was either not recognized with her right side of the face being bandaged and the left one being still a bit swollen up, yet remarkably less so compared to before, or the people simply didn't want to have any of Mana's current day rubbing off on their own lives. They were simply kind enough to let her be in this state and recover.</p><p>After the magician reached her home she pressed her forehead against the door and breathed in and out erratically. Her hand stayed on the handle but she couldn't will herself to open the door. For a moment her will lingered, she pressed the handle but not to the end, letting it go gently as to not to alert anyone inside. Her head then turned to what laid behind her – all the shining and tidy alleyways and streets of Konoha back there. Maybe it was better off for her to never show her face back home? Does she still have a place back there after just disappearing on a whim like those two most precious people, her literal family had not given her birth?</p><p>Mana sat down on the porch pressing her back against the wall and sighing. She could probably make a pretty decent living by herself. Performing on the streets for a while for the elementary living, performing on the stage and saving up enough to get a place to call her own. It was a despicable feeling – knowing how much you failed everyone in your life and yet not feeling regretful about the specific thing you've pulled. The girl felt firmly – she'd do the same thing hundreds of times over, maybe she'd do one thing or the other differently but… Despite the massive letdowns all around she did what she had to…</p><p>The magician stood up and walked away from her home door. Tears began gathering in her eyes the further away she walked but she figured that before she decided what sort of page this new page of her life would be – it'd be fitting enough to close down the old one. Mana couldn't really remember making the entirety of her way to the cemetery just outside the training grounds, must've been the fever acting up again. There were a few people there kneeling by the graves of people they knew with flowers. The magician took a while to find her friend's grave, still, a familiar face standing by it made her instantly locate it…</p><p>Shimo's mother was calmly sitting by his grave and just blankly staring at the gravestone. Mana's hand pressed against her own chest as if stopping her halfway, her other hand pressed against the sheathed Audra sword she swore herself to return. The magician grinded her teeth in pain as tears soaked her bandages. Everywhere she went was full of people she was embarrassed to show herself to. People she felt like she failed in one way or the other even if the feeling wasn't mutual.</p><p>The girl turned around before tearing the bandage off her right side. As sunlight pierced through her closed and still hurting eye the tearing got out of control but Mana didn't care, she calmly brushed her hair to cover up the right side of her face and hide her eye from the direct sunlight. Hide one half of her tears…</p><p>"Mana?" Shimo's mother's voice reached the magician, the girl began slowly walking away before trying to pick up her step but then with half of her face being covered up in hair she didn't notice a young man she bumped into. The youth apologized himself and helped the magician to get up, his left eye was covered up with an eyepatch and both of his hands were hidden inside his kimono with the one hand he helped Mana with slipping out. The dark shade of his hair looked familiar to the magician.</p><p>"You came here to see him? You don't need to run…" Shimo's mother pleaded the magician from behind.</p><p>"You were a friend of my brother's, weren't you? You've got a right to see him…" the young man who helped Mana up said. His voice was pretty low pitched and strong but from its husky nature the magician could tell he wasn't a talker.</p><p>"My husband told me that you are still blaming yourself…" Shimo's mother uttered before stopping her thoughts. Mana knew what she was about to say and why she stopped. The woman tried to claim that there was no blame of Mana's and no hard feelings but the magician believed that the woman didn't want to lie. She may not have wanted it but the mother still felt uneasy. Mother's feelings were also rarely rationally explained. To her Mana will always be the face of her son's death even if there was no direct correlation.</p><p>"I just wanted to place this by his grave… It was his…" Mana said giving the sword to the mother of her friend. The woman shook her head erratically with her face sinking in tears.</p><p>"This isn't what represents him. This isn't what people will remember about him, there's no place for this blade by his grave…" the woman uttered in tears.</p><p>Once again Shimo's brother's arm extended from under his kimono and touched Mana's shoulder.</p><p>"I am aware that there must've been some trouble obtaining this. Still, this sword represents the confusion of who my brother was, not his final moments of clarity. A sword is a tool of a wandering warrior looking for a purpose. No one who knows who they are allows them to be represented by a sword they used to carve their identity. It is a part of that journey, part of what needs to be discarded along with the past…" the young adult calmly explained being much more skilled at portraying that there were no hard feelings between the girl and the family of her deceased friend.</p><p>"Then can you at least keep it? It did belong to your brother, didn't it?" Mana pleaded.</p><p>The young man laughed softly before pulling out a stump on his other arm and placing it to his eyepatch, softly touching the cloth.</p><p>"I'm afraid I'd do the sword injustice. My father is more of a man of a pen than a sword as well. Despite of how it looks, despite of what you are telling yourself, this sword is no longer that of Shimo, he left it behind…" he explained.</p><p>Mana's head sunk down and her hands began to tremble. "I need to… I need something to…" she smacked her trembling free hand to the left side of her face before she broke into tears. "I need to make it right… Somehow…" she cried out.</p><p>Shimo's brother calmly touched her shoulder before wrapping his one arm around his weeping mother and turning away.</p><p>"Then fight with it. Fight with it for what my brother stood for. If you won't let yourself move past his death, don't let the world do it either. I'm quite sure my brother would've loved to help you make the world you dreamed of, he spoke about it some way back. Shape this new world of yours using his sword, how long do you think an Audra sword would remain intact stabbed into the dirt of a grave before some lowlife uses it to tarnish the memory of its wielder?"</p><p>Mana froze in place still trembling with the sword in her hand. Shimo's mother walked out from her son's embrace and walked up to the girl calmly pressing the magician's grip around the sheath and then softly pressing the hand holding the sword to the girl's chest. It was the woman's way of entrusting this part of her son's memory and passing the sword along.</p><p>As the family of her passed away friend walked away Mana collapsed on a bench nearby looking at the sheathed sword in her hand with tear soaked eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0260"><h2>260. Tarry A While, You Are So Fair!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The door to Mana's home opened crispy clean, no squeaking or hitches. Silent like the year's longest night. So disturbingly without a sound that the magician closed it a bit rough just to alert her family that she was back. This was odd – father's hands were far too damaged for precision work like maintaining the door, mother had too old fashioned of a mindset to do maintenance – man's work. Rubbish. Silly thoughts to distract her from the confrontation to come, yet another pair of beloved people she let down.</p><p>"Oh, God…" mother gently exclaimed before running up and hugging Mana firmly.</p><p>The girl squirmed and moaned uneasily as her aching sides flared up devouring her entire emotional specter, demanding the entirety of the magician's attention.</p><p>"I'm sure this begging for her life is expression of love and how much she missed us, not how much this hurts…" father sarcastically remarked before softly pulling mother away.</p><p>Mana stood there with her head lowered and submissively turned away, waiting for their choice of words to yell at her. Knowing what came next after the primary expression of love and happiness that she was relatively more alright than one would've normally been after what the girl has been through.</p><p>She just stood there waiting only for absolutely nothing to follow. Mother returned to the kitchen and father sat down by some unseen device that was settled down inside an oaken cupboard. The device father was fixed on appeared to show moving images, just like all the screens on the buildings in the different universe the magician had visited. It was like her household, which meant any normal household, had access to a miniature cinema screen. This wouldn't make old man Hiro happy at the slightest.</p><p>"Will you be having pancakes, dear?" mother's raised voice came from the kitchen. She still wore a bit too fancy and formal of attires meaning she must've only recently returned from work and still had no time to change and settle down.</p><p>"Pancakes for din… I mean… Wait, I just disappeared without a single word from me. I know I let you guys down, okay? I'm sorry…" Mana got distracted by mother's question seeing how she completely ignored the issue at hand.</p><p>"Yeah… Okay. I know, no one eats pancakes for dinner but the thing is that one morning I was too busy to finish making them so we had them for dinner and it sort of stuck. We now have pancakes for dinner once in a while…" mother smiled at Mana once again brushing the girl's issues again. "Those bruises on your face don't look too good, you may want to have those scars removed in the hospital tomorrow…" the woman smiled before returning to her kitchen work.</p><p>"Aren't you going to punish me? Yell at me or tell me how worried you were!?" Mana felt her tone rising to uncomfortable heights straining her tired vocal cords.</p><p>"Well, it's made quite clear you already know that…" father's voice came from the guestroom.</p><p>"Plus, we can't really ground you or anything – you have training and missions and the village is really missing those few skipped magic shows…" mother forked a cake from the pan and slammed it into a plate piled with them.</p><p>"That's… What I was supposed to say…" Mana mumbled to herself seeing how she seemed to recall a similar conversation happening at some point before. At this point the magician was well beyond tearing up even though the world she was supposed to know the best – one of her own home defied any conventional laws of logic and understanding. Why weren't her parents mad at her? Why didn't they try to tear their hair out in anger trying to punish her?</p><p>"We're just happy you're okay and that you're back. What's that you have?" mother wondered pointing her chin at the sword packed and sticking outside Mana's backpack.</p><p>The magician's fingers wrapped around her head. She could feel her trembling hands press too hard against her skin leaving small annoying scratches. Nothing made sense anymore, the sword she worked so hard to return by her friend's grave was rejected leaving Mana's grief just hanging in the air, now her parents refused to punish her leaving her craving for punishment for something that Mana barely even regretted hanging as well. All of those feelings, everything was bottling inside of her.</p><p>"You okay, dear?" mother hugged Mana again pressing the girl tightly while still dividing her attention by half to mind the pan.</p><p>"Shimo's mother rejected the sword. This was my anchor… This one thing I could've done to make it all feel better, the grief… You didn't yell at me or punish me for failing you either… Now nothing feels easier, everything hurts so bad." Mana quietly murmured under her own nose just faintly audibly to mother.</p><p>The woman let go of Mana and returned to the pan gesturing for the magician to sit down.</p><p>"Grief isn't supposed to work like that. You don't just do something and make it feel better. Accepting death and how it works is part of growing up, that inevitable realization that people who were always around you, part of your world just won't be anymore. It's scary, it hurts but it's how it is. Even if that boy's parents accepted the sword it wouldn't have magically made it all better, nothing ever will…" the woman explained after, much to her relief, she found out that she was done with the pancakes seeing how not a single spoonful of mix could've been scraped out from a large bowl on the side.</p><p>Mana just sat there quietly, she was too tired to try and object anything her mother did or say. Not that she had anything to object, the woman had lost her entire clan of wandering ninja before. Even more, all of them were wiped out in her youth, arguably the most vulnerable age…. She had to adapt to a whole new society, whole new set of rules but instead of breaking in to the pressure she opened up her own café and did the shit out of her job… Honestly, her mother was a hero to Mana in a lot of ways, an inspiration.</p><p>"As for your punishment…" father joined in on the conversation after switching off the television set and sitting by the kitchen table. "We figured that you'd have told yourself plenty. We know you, Mana, we know that you sometimes want punishment for things you do that aren't necessarily bad or deserving punishment. Not honoring that self-destructive impulse is the best punishment, but also the best decision a parent can make."</p><p>"But I just left you guys in the dark, ran off to fight a bunch of bounty hunters and killers…" Mana's tired tongue jumbled out.</p><p>"Yeah, that wasn't handled completely right, but you're still a child. You had to handle the knowledge that your friend's life was in danger and all those other responsibilities you put on yourself while still grieving. Punishment is no longer productive, dear, you're growing up, learning to accept mortality as an inevitable part of life and juggling responsibilities. Adults don't get condescending talks from their parents, you're not quite there but for the longest time you had to struggle with all the worst of the adult world with none of its perks. It's about time you've experienced having to own up to your own worst punishment, facing your own responsibilities without someone explaining what you did wrong." Mother sighed after the talk.</p><p>Without saying a word Mana just reached out with a fork and began stuffing her face remembering how hungry and tired she was.</p><p>"Also, please take a shower before you go to bed…" father smiled trying to lighten up the mood as he pressed his nose.</p><p>After the mandatory evening rituals of dinner, unpacking and settling down in her room and shower something unusual caught Mana's eye. Something she had not noticed when she was unpacking, likely due to how unused to seeing her own room again she was. The magician opened up a small letter that was unopened and placed just by her bed.</p><p>The magician's eyes quickly scanned through it and then she just weightlessly slammed down on her bed consumed by sadness. It was a letter from Hanasaku, one undoubtedly sent to the rest of the team in its entirety, completely the same. Had the woman written to Mana personally she'd have used a whole other set of words entirely. This one was warm and asking for a training meeting a couple of days later. The meeting was rushed because apparently the woman looked forward to "working with the three of them in the future", granted recalling the words the Fifth had for Mana before such was doubtfully the case. It was quite clear that Mana was only to be present there because the team needed three members capable of working together to pass the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>Thinking about mother's words from earlier the magician sighed. Her muscles and her entire body eased up, the pain from all around felt like getting skewered by the calming needles of resting in a familiar room where everything felt so old and nostalgic. The feeling of the soft and warm bed made the muscle pains not only weaker but also overwhelmed by all the warm feelings of nostalgia. Mana was finally home again!</p><p>The very next day Mana headed to the hospital to have her body looked at. She didn't really want to heal her injuries but she'd need to be at her hundred percent during the team meeting. Even if she wasn't a part of the team completely, in the eyes of the team's leader, Mana still needed to be at her best possible shape to fulfill the purpose assigned to her. All that Hanasaku cared about was getting Kiyomi through the Chuunin Exams and Mana was the woman's tool, a necessary yet disliked mean of achieving that goal. Even if Mana disliked that status quo she needed to obey it and fulfil that purpose if she was to not fail one of her authority figures again.</p><p>Oddly enough the magician didn't meet Eiju in the hospital. Maybe she'd have liked to, seeing the young man's reaction to the fact that Kiyomi just by the skin of her teeth didn't get forcefully married and she was fine with that fact would've been priceless. After the magician had her body looked at, some of the persisting wounds and pains looked at and quickly removed by a more skilled medical ninja and some of her troubling scars removed she settled down on a bench outside the hospital. There were just too many things she still needed to do. Mother was right, adults had it really bad, the juggling responsibilities part was especially difficult.</p><p>Only then did the magician remember that she also was completely dismissing her responsibility as a girlfriend. Before she left her and Kouta had a couple of awkward dates that didn't really work out and the boy may have taken Mana's disappearance from his life the wrong way. It was hardly her fault but becoming an adult meant taking up responsibility for things that may not have been one's own fault. Right when her next course was set for the girl, she realized that she wasn't really sure as to where Kouta lived. She had only met the boy before in pre-determined locations. This only served as a testament of how awkwardly bad their dates were – they didn't know essential details about each other.</p><p>Still, it made things a lot easier. If Mana was to meet her boyfriend she just needed to lure him out, much like she would a criminal she was hunting. It just so happened that doing another magic show was within her agenda, that way she could've made her return public, also she'd give Kouta a chance to see her again. She was well known enough around the village at this point for her return to be quite important news. With a little luck the young medical ninja would still be working for Hiro's medical crew…</p><p>With more purpose than before Mana quickly headed in the direction of Hiro's hall.</p><p>After the show the next day, the stage magician rushed off to the medical crew. After the initial looking around she noticed that Kouta was not there.</p><p>"Sorceress! A magnificent show today, having in mind how little preparation you had it was truly splendid!" one of the medical crew commended Mana. With a little embarrassment to being commended after such a long history of being grinded to dirt by people important to her Mana felt a bit uneasy being praised…</p><p>"Thank you, I had some reserve tricks from the past so it wasn't that difficult, is Kouta here? There was this young kid interning here, short, just a bit taller than me, dark and messy hair, really athletic build…" the magician inquired but the medical crew only curiously looked at each other before one of them appeared to remember something.</p><p>"Oh, yeah, I remember Kouta… No, he's done with his internship here. I think he got what he needed here and was accepted in Konoha's Hospital as an intern. Still has some time of internship left to do before being accepted as a medical ninja but that mission he had abroad really impressed the folks in the hospital." One of the crew informed the magician. Thanking the crew with a friendly bow Mana rushed off.</p><p>Knowing that she couldn't meet Kouta in the hall sort of irked the magician a bit. Still, at least now she knew where he continued his internship which made it possible to find him.</p><p>"M-Mana…" Kouta's voice dropkicked Mana out of her chain of thoughts. The magician turned around realizing that her boyfriend was waiting for her after the show right there in the hall. With a warm and happy embrace the two greeted each other.</p><p>"I was almost certain you didn't want to see me." The medical ninja awkwardly rubbed the tip of his toes at the floor. "Can't say I blame you, I was sort of a loser in our dates…"</p><p>"That's a bit harsh. It was both of our fault, I also acted a bit odd. It's just really tough to… Know what you have to do in those date… Things. I couldn't see you in the audience today, I used to be able to recognize faces but now there's just too many people coming. Sometimes they slip by me…" Mana awkwardly admitted feeling just as guilty for her lack of common dating success.</p><p>"I heard you were involved in something, something with the Yamanaka clan? I'm just glad you're okay, when I heard you were injured I wanted to be there with you…" Kouta admitted shyly taking Mana's hand and leading her outside. The magician hid her blushed cheeks under her coat collar, she was surprised by how different the boy acted. Before during their meetings he was really afraid to show his feelings, it almost looked like he was cold towards her but such wouldn't have made sense so the magician didn't buy those impressions.</p><p>"Yeah it was… Complicated. I am grateful you taught me how to fight though, wouldn't have lived through that if you didn't." Mana smiled finally feeling comfortable enough to pull her shy head out from under her collar.</p><p>"Well, can't take all the credit, Meiko and those fighters in the arena did plenty as well. Were you in the hospital today? Had those wounds looked at?" he asked.</p><p>"Yeah, it's in the past. I didn't want them removed but I needed them gone. I have a team meeting tomorrow noon." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Oh, you're placed in a team? So you'll be in the Chuunin Exams?" Kouta's eyebrow raised suspiciously.</p><p>"Yeah, that's the only reason I'm in the team…" Mana uncomfortably admitted as the subject of her making her second out of two mentors mad was a rather painful subject.</p><p>"Hey, come on! You're smart and crafty and slippery like a little… Pink Dolphin…" Kouta pressed his forehead against Mana's.</p><p>"Little pink dolphin?" the magician couldn't help but cringe a little, "You're the worst at affectionate words. How am I even remotely like a little pink dolphin?"</p><p>"Well you're short and cute, that makes you little and pink because, apparently, pink is the official color of cuteness. That's what the bubble gum commercials say in the TV. Dolphins are slippery, they're sea creatures that swim fast – natural slippery-ness confirmed!" Kouta explained, the magician couldn't pull her eyes off of him. She saw that he knew how goofy and nonsensical he looked but he just didn't care. It was almost like he sensed that these past couple of days were really the worst to Mana and he wanted to make her feel better even if it was at his own expense.</p><p>"Oh, man, I really wish I had one of those… Recording boxes… I'd really love to show you explaining yourself to your father…" Mana chuckled like a little girl. She wasn't even sure which direction they were heading anymore, it didn't matter. As long as this evening lasted longer, if only it could've lasted forever.</p><p>"They're called "cameras", hipster-Mana…" Kouta laughed out loud himself, "Weren't you the one who brought back those samples of technology from wherever you were gone to?"</p><p>"Hipster-Mana?" the magician squinted.</p><p>"To be honest, I'm not really sure what that word means myself, it was in that one sample of what movies are that you've brought back." Kouta shrugged, "I think I used it in a similar context so cut me some slack for not knowing what your fancy future words mean…"</p><p>Mana stopped and turned at the young medical ninja, pressing her forehead gently under his chin. She just didn't want to go anywhere anymore, all she wanted was to stay there and just… Talk. Just let this charming moment extend into infinity. If there was just only thing she could have asked for, that'd have been it.</p><p>"Didn't we have movies before I brought one back?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"I think we did, but we called ours something weird. Can't blame us, didn't know what movies were all the way back in… A couple of months ago…" the medical ninja pressed Mana's head against himself gently before the two sat down on a cold yet luckily dry bench nearby.</p><p>"Another universe…" Mana mumbled with her eyes closed. Smiling wide like a happy macaque.</p><p>"Wha…?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"It's not the future I was in, it was another universe. I'm pretty sure it's the same time, it's just that they had a hero there who had ended all wars… Technology there advanced because people worked together instead of trying to kill each other." Mana recalled that curious trip.</p><p>"Sounds like the world you want to create…" Kouta smiled looking up into the clear sky. "Why did you come back?" he wondered.</p><p>"I…" Mana suddenly stopped talking. She never really asked herself that question. Still, during her entire stay there she never thought about anything else but returning home. "It wasn't my place. Those people won peace with their own hands. I think they had people living on the Moon there…" Mana laughed out.</p><p>"Do you think someone lives on the Moon here?" Kouta wondered, Mana tried to meet his gaze by sitting up straight but she noticed that her boyfriend was looking up in the Moon.</p><p>"I hope so…" the magician smiled looking up into the reflective white disc of moon dust stuck in the sky.</p><p>"Man, I wonder if there're aliens…" Kouta's eyes began wondering across the sky wildly. The confirmation that somewhere at some point people lived in the Moon seemed to make his imagination run wild.</p><p>"No. Aliens feel hokey and spooky…" Mana's mood soured somewhat, for whatever reason she wanted to one day meet people from the Moon but the thought of aliens creeped her out. The thought of there being other worlds with people as scared and lost as Mana was when she herself was an alien in Naruto's universe was intimidating. Maybe it was just that the only aliens she had met were omnipotent godlike beings that tried to destroy Naruto's universe?</p><p>"Okay, jeez, little Ms. Diva, no aliens allowed in your world…" Kouta laughed out wrapping his hand against Mana and pressing her in closer while the two continued to just look at the sky.</p><p>If only they could've sat like that and looked at the sky forever…</p>
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<a name="section0261"><h2>261. Hands Better Than Mine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana annoyingly rubbed her temples to attempt and alleviate her massive headache. This was possibly the absolute worst day to have a headache on. When it hit her it appeared like a bear trap had shut closed on her upper skull driving sharp spikes that bashed through the bone and dug into the very core of her brain, from there it transformed into a more worm-like shape as it burrowed around like a malicious pest with an outright evil intent to cause the carrier more pain and suffering.</p><p>"Something's wrong?" Kiyomi curiously inquired. The two girls have been waiting in the Training Grounds No 32. A very peculiar place that appeared like a typical decorative oriental garden and was artificially kept in a constant season of autumn by the Senju clan members working in the maintenance. While the Senju clan was a highly spoken of and rather elite club of amazingly vital and just as strong physically ninja with the added ability to manipulate trees on top of that, not all members were as elite and exceptional as the mostly spoken of golden apples.</p><p>"It's nothing, to be expected, honestly…" Mana forced herself to smile for her friend as she looked through the thick cover of falling leaves right into the noon sky. While waiting around for her sensei on the first day of training was not encouraging at the slightest, Mana still preferred it to the awkwardness of standing in front of Hanasaku herself this whole time. The woman had acquired a dislike for Mana whereas before she carried great expectations and a playful curiosity of just how far the magician would go. Standing in front of such a person for hours couldn't have been pleasant…</p><p>"To be expected? If you have migraine, that's a serious ailment. They don't authorize migraine patients for the field, it disrupts the chakra molding process, you know… You can't augment your abilities with migraine which will get you killed!" Kiyomi expressed her concerns in a motherly fashion.</p><p>"It's nothing like that, I do not have migraine. It's just that I've been practicing my illusions whole night yesterday, ever since I came back home. It's part sleepless night, part exhausted from being pinched and targeted brain centers acting up…" Mana explained as she rubbed her forehead once again in a desperate wish to ease up the acting up pain that just came and gone acting as it pleased.</p><p>"I see…" Kiyomi finally looked like she accept Mana's explanation, granted, the magician had no idea as to why she even had to explain herself or why her teammate didn't just accept the first version of explanation insisting on having the magician elaborate on what she's been doing last night. "You've been practicing your illusions on yourself? Hitting your own brain? That's dangerous…" she concluded. Her tone was odd. It was like she wanted to express concern but was worried to sound overly protective making her sound rather insecure.</p><p>"Have you been seeing Eiju again? You focus way too much in the medical aspect of things…" Mana sighed as the pain in her very brain finally eased up, it felt almost pleasant in a way, like a longtime cramp finally letting go and the body regaining a full use of an integral body part and flooding the system with happiness hormones in the process.</p><p>"If I was I'd never talk about the medical aspect of things. He's too careless in his job to warrant it being an actual topic he speaks about…" Kiyomi smiled. Her lack of a defensive reaction actually told Mana more than her actual reply. If Mana was asked the same question she'd have likely have gotten overly defensive, even aggressively so, even if she consciously tried not to do it. Comfort in such a question implied that there was no way back for the two of them at this point.</p><p>The orange, yellow and red leaves began wildly rotating in a circular pattern in a highly orderly manner as their team leader – the Konoha Sannin known as Chestnut Hanasaku landed on a small decorative bridge arcing over a little creek. The woman's landing was so swift yet so delicate that she raised not a single one of the layers on top of layers of leaves beneath her feet. Hanasaku wore a light and short flowery dress with the typical of higher ranking ninja protective vest on top of it. Her hair was actually tidy, verily unlike her usual self. The time spent as the Fifth must've made the woman more serious towards her view of the world.</p><p>"Sensei!" Mana bowed her head and her upper body respectfully suggesting respect and some degree of subordination. Kiyomi just continued to gawk at the woman's tidier look, her long spanning personal history with Hanasaku did not allow her to bow even a little. There was too many silly stories of the woman's incompetence in the Yamanaka's memory to force herself the basic courtesy of a respectful bow.</p><p>"Only the two of you?" Hanasaku wondered after winking at Kiyomi and completely ignoring Mana. "I was fairly certain that I let the third one know of my intention to accept her on the team…" the brown haired woman scratched the top of her head trying to recall any strange statements she could've made at Meiko's expense that could've scared the young lady off of training with the Team Hokage.</p><p>"Can't say I blame the third one, it's the first time you come in time to anywhere. Have you finally learned how to read the clock, sensei?" Kiyomi playfully bit at the mentor's expense, something that did appear slightly out of ordinary for Mana but having in mind the lengthy personal history and reliance on each other's best efforts to survive not at all surprising. The two have worked with each other, attended events together, saw members of their team come and go… Experiences like that make people forget courtesies and formalities.</p><p>"Sorry!" a loud shout alerted the team to an approaching bulldozer breaking tree branches and outright breaking some of them and tossing them over, breaking them in half in the process. Meiko with a greasy toast still in her mouth and most of her armor still embraced under her armpits charged at the battlefield with all of her attempts to not be any more late than she already was.</p><p>"Heh, she's kinda cute…" Kiyomi grinned in a very simian-like manner making Mana raise an eyebrow. While not quite masculine, the blacksmith had a certain build and overly heavy manner of dressing that would've separated her from how most kunoichi looked and dressed themselves. Mastery of chakra demanded perfect control of one's body, fine ability to manipulate and control the chakra network allowed the ninja to possess a fit if not a little slim build for most fine controllers of the both bodily and spiritual aspects of chakra. Maybe that was why Meiko looked a bit more bulky than your usual kunoichi, even one focusing on physical strength – her control was lacking, if anything. Either way, it was a very odd comment of her friend to make.</p><p>"Hope I'm not too late! Been a bit busy reconstructing the armor of Jiom Taeyang from the Black Sun Reckoning…" Meiko laughed out rubbing the back of her head in an apologetic manner with a little blush in her cheeks.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at Mana questioningly to which the magician could only shrug with a smile, "She's a geek about armors and weapons. Makes sense she'd spend whole night making an armor of a movie character…" the kunoichi replied to the unvoiced question which was apparent on Kiyomi's face.</p><p>"Well… If it's fine with you three we can start then?" Hanasaku inquired to which Mana uncomfortably interrupted. She didn't burn with desire to stand out in the eyes of the mentor who already sort of didn't feel too hot about her but there was one matter she still had to solve. The magician took off her hat and quickly weaved a hand seal opening up a seal inside her hat, pushing her arm deep into it until it was a good halfway there. As the arm backed out from the storage seal inside her hat the Audra blade sheathe was in her hand.</p><p>Meiko shrieked in joy, clapping like a little child. An expression of childish glee that Kiyomi found quite interesting and even hilarious. One couldn't have been sure what exactly entertained the armored kunoichi: the casual magic trick or the very rare and expensive sword in the magician's hand. It was more than likely it was the total package of the two…</p><p>"I recovered Shimo's sword recently, I went through a lot to get it but then as I stood in front of Shimo's grave I realized that just bringing it back won't do any good. Seeing how the blade was no longer owed to the man Shimo stole it from, I figured I'd give it to someone who knew how to use it and had a fancy for swords… Would you please take it?" Mana presented the sword bowing her head in an almost pleading request that her friend took it.</p><p>Meiko kept on standing there with giant stars burning out in her eyes. The blacksmith's mouth was so gapped and she looked so dumbstruck that anyone watching her would've erupted into a fit of laughter had the scene transpiring not been so touching. After the genuine admiration of the craftsmanship and value of the rare artifact in Mana's hands the blacksmith realized just what the magician was asking her to do.</p><p>"Mana… I…" Meiko uttered a couple of words in a total loss of air as the absolute awe of the amazing sword in front of her being given to her was just too demanding of it. "It's… So beautiful, absolutely unlike anything else!" the blacksmith began dancing around the magician's arms checking the sword out from every angle but wary of touching it as if it wasn't just offered to her and was just an exhibit in a museum. "But I… I just can't…" Meiko almost cried those words out. It looked like Mana's request made the big girl really squeamish and she was about to explode in a fit of tears and cries.</p><p>"I can't use it, my swordsmanship would kill any man or woman it faces but only out of laughter. Shimo's death still hangs over my head and I just couldn't use it and a sword such as this must absolutely be used…" Mana pleaded even more as she got on her knees. "Please take it!" she insisted.</p><p>Suddenly the ground beneath her feet disappeared, shocked by the development the magician screamed out in fear but then she realized that she was just being lifted up and smothered by her friend.</p><p>"This is single handedly the most amazing thing anyone's ever done for me! Still, I can't do what you ask of me, let's just say you lent the sword to me. I promise to give it back to you once your hands are more fitting for it than mine!" Meiko cried out completely taken aback by Mana's plead and what exactly was asked of her.</p><p>Realizing that such a day would never come as Meiko had years of swordsmanship experience on Mana and also trained exceptionally into use of weaponry the magician nodded in agreement. This was no consensus, this was Meiko giving in to Mana's conditions without realizing how little of their meaning she's changed by this common agreement of hers…</p><p>"Well then, are we done with this?" Hanasaku couldn't help but look touched by Mana's notion as even she raised the front of her eyebrows while lowering the ends and smiling softly looking at Meiko freaking out over the newest addition to her arsenal. "I would really like to start our first training session because I don't think you'll be done by evening…" the woman mysteriously grinned.</p><p>"Nah… Its fine, lady… I'm fine…" Meiko whined out while still rubbing her giant teardrops at her sleeve and blowing out her nose into the bandage from her ninja pouch. The Audra sword in her grasp looked tightly held, so tightly in fact that not even the devil itself could've pulled it out from there…</p><p>"So if I want you to smother me, purely theoretically… All I need to do is give you a present? Good to know…" Kiyomi joked with a devilish look on her face, the strange behavior of her friend didn't quite click with Mana. Maybe it was just the Yamanaka's way of making new friends, then again, the magician couldn't remember such behavior from the blonde when the two of them first met.</p><p>"Alright! So the Chuunin Exams are literally a couple of weeks away! We have no time to mess around, whatever training we need to do we need to be done quickly and efficiently. That is why I acquired a permission from the Hokage to take you guys on a little trip where I'll get to test all of your abilities and we can focus on training together." The woman explained with fiery enthusiasm behind her voice. Kiyomi and Meiko looked excited but Mana felt a bit uneasy having in mind what the Sannin had told her in the hospital. She had a feeling that she knew where the speech would turn next.</p><p>"However I don't feel like I can teach Mana anything. Her skillset is entirely a mystery to me. I don't understand genjutsu and as far as I know she refuses to learn any techniques that haven't been invented by her, for that reason I'm afraid I'll have to leave you behind." Hanasaku cut into the friendly cheers and expressions of joy of her team. With a long face Mana just uncomfortably looked away and rubbed her feet at the rustling layers of autumnal leaves.</p><p>"That's so much bullshit!" Kiyomi shouted out, "My skillset is also genjutsu as well as ninjutsu and yet you still trained me! Mana is a part of our team, how can she miss out on a whole training trip!? Do you want us to stay a genin forever?"</p><p>Hanasaku sighed, she must've anticipated such a heated response. "True, your skillset in theory does match that of Mana's, however you use genjutsu as a supplementary skill. Your main focus is your ninjutsu. For Mana that is the other way around. There is nothing I can teach her in genjutsu, she could teach me a thing or twenty, to be entirely honest. She did completely school me in our first training session."</p><p>Meiko sighed before interrupting, it was clear that if it was anyone else the speech was rotating around she'd have stayed quiet but her own friendly feelings towards the magician made her speak up. "As someone who has trained Mana, I must say that even if you train her in a subject she doesn't grasp of specialize in – it's very useful to her. When I taught her taijutsu during our time working together she implemented that as a part of her core skills seamlessly…"</p><p>"I don't believe that would be of much use…" Hanasaku shut the blacksmith down. "She'd just divide the time I can give you two – someone I can actually train. Look, you guys, I'm not leaving Mana behind completely. I just have other plans for her! I've already arranged a more suitable mentor to take her with him on a similar trip. She'll be even training in the Forest of Death and not Land of Lightning like us – arguably she'll be toughening up more than we will!"</p><p>Mana bit the inside of her cheek in sadness, Kiyomi pinched her shoulder to try and speak her mind but the magician just looked away.</p><p>"I'm really fine… Even if there's no one to train me, I can train myself just fine." Mana realized how much pain her tone expressed. The last thing she wanted Hanasaku to know right now was how uncomfortable Maan felt about her decision which, honestly, she should've seen coming.</p><p>In a way the magician understood the Fifth. After all, with just a couple of weeks left until the Chuunin Exams there was no time to treat any life threatening injuries. Any baggage of such an injury Mana would've carried into the exams and with Hanasaku's pent up anger towards the magician and how she treated the whole Kiyomi kidnapping situation it was impossible for someone as thick skulled and clear minded as Hanasaku to be impartial and properly train Mana without exerting too much strength on her and completely crippling the magician in the process. It was clear that Hanasaku didn't want to be in the same room as Mana and she'd have felt that way every time she threw a punch. That was not a safe environment to train in and it was in Hanasaku's interests that Mana helped Team Hokage to go the distance.</p><p>"Please don't feel like I'm benching you. I asked none other than Zairyo Jitensha – a fellow Sannin to train you. He is himself a genjutsu user, I feel like there's much he can teach you and he did express interest in that brain targeting style of illusions you use as well. It's going to be a very beneficial experience for the two of you, that man wouldn't have it any other way, honestly…" Hanasaku explained.</p><p>Both Meiko and Kiyomi just kept standing still and quiet looking scorned yet knowing no ways of properly responding to their mentor's arguments. They knew that deep inside it kind of made sense but Kiyomi could see that there were some bad feelings in their mentor's heart for Mana and she couldn't help but suspect where it came from. As for Meiko, it was never really clear what she thought, still, she must've saw through it all as well, she just didn't share the experiences that Mana and Kiyomi had just before this training session so she was mostly still in the dark as to where this shade on their team came from.</p><p>"As for today's training…" Hanasaku smiled before slapping her hands together and focusing her chakra so intensely that it burst out from her pores and exploded like an aura of silver colored violence that even Mana could see. That meant that it was fully visible to non-sensors which was alarming. Suddenly the woman's fangs began to grow in size and sharpen, her snout extended forward and arms covered in fur as well as her hair began slowly enveloping her face and wildly falling behind her back. A playful wagging tail pushed away the woman's dress. Chestnut Hanasaku began looking like a hybrid of a man and a canine as even her eyes changed into sad puppy eyes that despite it not being the woman's intention just couldn't stop looking like their owner was begging for food.</p><p>"You'll have to catch me…" she growled through her sharper and extended teeth.</p>
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<a name="section0262"><h2>262. Sensei Of The Quantum Variety</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hanasaku's strange transformation surprised all three of the students. It was unlike anything they've seen before. It didn't look like an illusion, granted, they'd not have known that until they've tried dispelling it. It didn't really abide any laws of what ninjutsu usually was capable of. It could've just been a fancy Transformation Jutsu but there would've been no point for that, it wouldn't have enhanced the Sannin's abilities if it was as simple as that. The closest explanation at least somewhat touching the grounds of reality seemed that this was an odd variant of the Transformation Jutsu, one on a much more advanced scale.</p><p>"Catch you?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"That's right…" Hanasaku growled out through her teeth. Her voice became more wild and howling. It was like her entire essence had completely transformed. "Lay your hand on me and touch me, that's all it takes for you to pass this test."</p><p>Meiko gave the two girls an affirming stare before she darted off. Halfway through her charge the blacksmith touched her armored boots only to set off the sealing glyphs on them. In a powerful burst of chakra the girl was propelled forward. Mana had to hand it to her friend – she was fast. While the magician could still see the blacksmith move, while she may have had what it takes to survive and avoid any attacks delivered at that speed in a race Meiko would've blown Mana and Kiyomi away.</p><p>"Blockbuster!" Meiko yelled out as she pointed her shoulder and tensed her upper body for impact. It must've been a newer taijutsu technique as the magician couldn't recall seeing it before neither in the mission she had with Meiko nor during one of her several training sessions with Meiko afterwards. A painful pinch woke Mana up from admiration of her friend's impressive ram, she didn't need to hurt Hanasaku with that, just have it blocked or at least connect…</p><p>"I think she is acting as a distraction, she trusted us to come up with a plan of attack." Kiyomi murmured out trying not to draw attention from Hanasaku.</p><p>Meiko's shoulder charge completely phased through Hanasaku, like the woman wasn't even there to begin with and yet her image didn't blur as it used to do if a ninja was so fast that they left afterimages. It was like Meiko should've hit but then just phased through the woman completely.</p><p>"You can't do that! Human beings can't phase through objects coming at them!" Meiko shouted out before delivering another punch. Strangely enough the woman didn't just allow it phase through her. This time Hanasaku just vanished into thin air, moving so fast that neither of the students could follow her movements until the leaves rustled by her sudden dash gently twirled and settled down on the layer of their peers. "Damn it! I thought I had her…" the blacksmith cursed with a playful snap of her fingers.</p><p>"It's not about you, she's teaching us teamwork. It's a common exercise, we need to work together!" Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"I don't think that even working together we can catch her, or even tag her to begin with… What even was that ability? I thought Meiko's punch connected and I didn't see Hokage-sensei move a bit… To top it off – that transformation…" Mana scratched her chin before her headache acted up. That skull crushing pain that interrupted her chain of thought and got in the way of relating all those new and unseen things.</p><p>Meiko's hand tapped Mana's shoulder with all the subtlety and restraint of a country sized asteroid.</p><p>"Don't twist your head. I figured her out during our first meeting – sensei's skills defy human logic. Her mind is so out of sync with reality that she just does whatever she thinks she can do, when you point out to her that humans don't function like that, when you tell her the limits she can't do that anymore. That's why I thought I had her after the first failure…" Meiko pouted.</p><p>"Huh? We worked with Hanasaku for years and we've never found that out… We just thought she was so strong and fast and durable that she did whatever she wanted… I never thought there was a sense to that madness, well, as much sense as Chestnut Hanasaku can make…" Kiyomi looked surprised. "Nice job! Way to contribute to the team!" she smiled at the blacksmith before playfully punching Meiko's chest plate.</p><p>"Still, we lost her, now we'll need to find her to begin with, even if we do find her – how do we hold her still long enough to tag her?" Mana complained still rubbing her aching temples in annoyance.</p><p>"True, it'd be really awesome to have a sensor on our team…" Kiyomi dreamily looked at the sky.</p><p>"Aren't you one? I thought Yamanaka had by far the highest percentage of born sensors out of all other clans?" Meiko curiously looked at Kiyomi, it was odd thinking that the blacksmith thought that Kiyomi was a sensor this whole time.</p><p>"Sadly…" Kiyomi shrugged, "I either don't have it or I still haven't awakened it…"</p><p>"Still… We have an advantage here." Mana suddenly realized once her headache cleared out and only left an aftertaste of burning synapses in her brain. "This training ground isn't that huge, that limits Hokage-sensei's territory, she can't move too fast or use her speed for an extensive period of time and still fit into the training grounds. Also, it narrows down the area we need to search, I think finding her won't be a problem…"</p><p>"Yeah… How about we just track the trail?" Kiyomi smiled pointing at several broken tree branches and a narrow tunnel of torn off leaves.</p><p>"Yes! If we analyze the altitude where the leaves are torn off, we will know what altitude she moved in, then we can follow that same level of height to where her trail disappears and draw her out. This training grounds is maintained in a constant season of late autumn. That means the leaves on the trees are exceptionally fragile, she won't be able to use the trees to hide or move away limiting her to the ground level!" Mana yelled out, excited by Kiyomi's discovery of a beginning of a trail.</p><p>"You know, I kinda hoped you two would think this thing through while I distracted sensei… That's why I charged at her head-on, you know!" Meiko pouted.</p><p>The three kunoichi began slowly tracing Hanasaku's trail, treading carefully and as silently as they could. Kiyomi had no problem sticking to the ground, barely making a sound as she walked even in a tight forest with endless layers of fallen trashy leaves beneath her feet. Mana was not the greatest in the art of stealth, her talents were at distraction, battlefield entertainment and enemy displacement. That was why she made an occasional trip, from time to time leaves rustled as they got picked up and rustled in an endless chain of autumnal murmuring. Meiko, on the same note, was a walking bulldozer, trampling and breaking any branches she passed by, crushing any twigs and actually damaging tree bark she banged against. Even when she stepped into small webs of little creeks it didn't appear to disturb or annoy the blacksmith at all. Not to mention the revealing sounds her armor constantly made by squeaking and clanging.</p><p>"Just a thought, maybe it'd be for the best that we figure something out. You know… What we do once we do find sensei?" Meiko wondered poking her cheek with her finger, continuously making her shoulder plates clang and jingle as steel plates clashed with each other.</p><p>"It may be a good idea to use your sword." Mana suggested, "If that phasing ability has anything to do with that transformation and isn't just an element of her astonishing speed, an Audra blade should cut through that or at least fare better against it than your bare hand…"</p><p>"I still don't get it, what's so special about that sword?" Kiyomi shrugged, questioningly looking back at her two teammates.</p><p>"An Audra sword doesn't break as easily against chakra, it partially resists the chakra over matter principle." Meiko explained.</p><p>"Wow, I was hoping Mana would explain this to me, no offense, but I didn't take you for a brainiac…" Kiyomi smiled affectionately at Meiko.</p><p>"Meiko is really smart about mechanics and sealing techniques and weaponry." Mana explained. "She has a very specific circle of interests she is very passionate about."</p><p>"Also music!" Meiko pointed out.</p><p>"Also music…" Mana nodded with a smile.</p><p>"It's a hobby…" the blacksmith shrugged, "Blacksmithing is my life!"</p><p>"You got place for a boyfriend in that life?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Ummm… I don't think her dating situation will help us catch Hanasaku…" Mana quickly steered the subject. While it made sense for her Yamanaka friend to scope out Meiko's interests and abilities, as well as the full extent of her fields of knowledge and degrees to which she was educated in them, the depths of the blonde's interests were a bit baffling for the magician.</p><p>"What's there to catch? You two just hit her, displace her, do what you do best. Meiko - smash things, Mana - blast them! I'll hit Hanasaku with a Yamanaka clan technique and we're done!" Kiyomi grinned with alarming confidence in her abilities.</p><p>"Aren't your techniques as fast as a thought? Slowing Hokage-sensei down to such an extent will not be easy, you should use your hair trick first…" Mana suggested as the three kept on following the trail that their sensei left carelessly traversing the trees at immense speeds without caring to think a moment about the state of its leaves. Be as gentle and silent as she may have been, with how weak the season made those leaves they've have all fallen from a lightest breeze.</p><p>"A new rule…" Hanasaku's voice made Mana jump up in fear as she simply didn't expect their sensei to find them instead of other way around. "A ring-out clause, if at any point anyone leaves the training grounds – they're out. If I as much as step out – you win…" the woman explained in her growling voice, with her transformation still intact.</p><p>"No way!" Kiyomi was still shaking, she didn't expect the woman to sneak up on them from the exact opposite side they were tracking her to.</p><p>Meiko only whistled in shock before laughing out. Somehow the blacksmith still found the test highly entertaining.</p><p>"This… It changes everything…" Mana uttered. "There was no way for her to sneak up on us from behind if she was the one who caused those holes in the leaves up there… That means that somehow she doesn't touch them or even travel at that level."</p><p>Meiko leaned down and carefully and overly dramatically examined the leaves on the ground and burrowed a bit deeper to the dirt under them, right below the tree where their sensei snuck up on them.</p><p>"Hmmm… I don't think she travelled on the ground level either…" the blacksmith whined out.</p><p>"Then how!?" Kiyomi shouted out beginning to get frustrated from how little of grasp they had on the situation. It seemed that this transformation had unlocked a side of her mentor that made her defy the laws of logic and reality even more than she usually did.</p><p>"She's still phasing…" Mana concluded.</p><p>"That's impossible, I told her the limit on that ability, she can't do that anymore because it's illogical!" Meiko reminded the magician before settling down and resting by the tree.</p><p>"We need to stay aware at all times. Do you know why she declared that extra cause? It's because Hanasaku is impatient. She'd never allow us to lose by waiting whole day – she needs an escape clause if she grows impatient. If that happens, if she reaches her wits end – she'll just ring all three of us out."</p><p>"But… Wouldn't we win if she carries us out?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Not necessarily, not if she does it so fast that we aren't fast enough to perceive her action and tag her while she carries us. Having who we're dealing in mind, do you really want to bet on yourself?" the Yamanaka explained with a somewhat apocalyptic tone, as if everything was as good as over already.</p><p>Mana looked around, all of a sudden her friends were nowhere to be seen, nothing around her but an unclear distance of forests and trees. The magician couldn't understand where her friends may have gone, the area she was in currently was completely different from the one where she was before. The girl looked up to notice the human-wolf hybrid shape of Hanasaku sniffing the air and licking her snout up right above.</p><p>"Did I lose, did you carry me out of the bounds?" the magician wonder.</p><p>"No. I didn't want to risk that much, your perception is the fastest out of the three. I had the mission report from the Box mission skimmed through to me. You've been trained by Wakizashi Meiko, Kouta Juugo and the Sun Disc martial artists to perceive hits and deflect them or avoid them even as a normal human. I have no idea how amazing your perception is currently but knowing you kept up with an underground Black Ops unit operative recently I didn't want to risk losing the test – not to you." Hanasaku howled out before playfully snapping her teeth at a fly buzzing around her nose.</p><p>"So did you eliminate the others already?" Mana put her hand into her ninja pouch, her eyes kept constant contact with her sensei's eyes trying desperately to make her focus on the magician's alluring emerald orbs and not where her hand travelled.</p><p>"Heh, no. If I just wanted to win I'd have established the rule and eliminated all three of you to begin with. I want to teach you guys something, see how you function both as a team and separately. They're all on different corners of the training grounds…" the woman replied with a more primal, rougher voice than she spoke with normally.</p><p>"Sweet Lullaby!" Mana chanted after her one hand, hidden in the empty ninja pouch on her thigh, made the one handed hand seals. A gentle melody filled the air, a testament of brain targeting illusion that overwhelmed one's body with pleasure. Something like that would've completely crippled the woman and made her tumble from the tree branch, if only the melody reached her ears… If only…</p><p>Hanasaku was gone. She ran away faster than the sound waves that carried Mana's illusion. Not only that, the woman recognized that the magician was using an illusion and then she still managed to avoid even a single sound wave reaching her. Speed like that was insane! There was only one ninja firmly rumored to be faster than sound itself, capable of pulling off such a feat of speed, that was the current Raikage but Mana just assumed that was Kumogakure propaganda meant to scare other villages from conflicting or going to war with Kumo. Seeing her own sensei pull something insane like this off was… Equal part scary as it was inspiring.</p><p>At the very same moment, on the completely opposite sides of the training ground Meiko and Kiyomi were waking up. Each of them met with same looking transformed version of their sensei lurking in the trees, receiving the same explanation of what happened that Mana got. So far neither of the kunoichi knew the extent of how badly they were being played. None of them knew that their sensei existed in multiple places simultaneously without the aid of clone techniques or anything that would've split the limited supply of Sage Chakra she had in her system. The woman simply existed in front of all three girls and spoke to them simultaneously at the same time.</p><p>"You can't run faster than sound!" Kiyomi's raised voice filled the air, a plead desperate to reach the woman and inform her that she couldn't move at the speed that she moved in. The Yamanaka merely supported Meiko's hypothesis of a weakness the blacksmith may have discovered during their training session and limiting Hanasaku's speed would've greatly assisted the three young kunoichi.</p><p>Mana kept on walking forwards, she pulled out a card with apple motifs and red colors on the other side, covered with sealing glyphs and looked at it. She could've used it, thrown it up in the air and alerted her allies to her location with its colorful red explosion. Then something her sensei had said occurred to the magician – they were being observed and they weren't being tested randomly in this test. Hanasaku implied that she wanted to test their skills operating together as well as separately. That meant that there were whole different standards to how Mana needed to behave.</p><p>The girl didn't want to fail her authority figures anymore. No more failing Hanasaku as she had failed the woman before, no more failing her like Mana had failed Tanshu-sensei long time ago. Mana stared at the card before putting it back into a compartment in her sleeves. Using the explosive seal card would've alerted Meiko and Kiyomi to Mana's location but it would be a bad move when working under these conditions in the field – it'd just as equally betrayed Mana's position to the enemy.</p><p>The magician had a feeling that once she'd have used the card Hanasaku would've moved Mana outside the training grounds and declared she had actually failed the test. The girl sighed and looked around, she still needed to alert her friends of her position somehow. She had no idea where they've been taken. It probably wouldn't have made much sense just leaving markings on the trees, Hanasaku mentioned something about taking the other girls to different parts of the field. Mana wondered if that may have meant different corners or different edges. That meant that as long as the magician progressed towards the center of the training grounds, she'd find her friends. Obviously if they came up to the same conclusions…</p><p>"Training grounds No. 32 is in the northern exit from the village… That means it's located north to the village. There is a large pond in the most southern point where the entrance was, if I listen in…" Mana closed her eyes hoping to hear a gentle rippling of a little creek, there were many webs of creeks around that lead into the bigger pond down in southern part of the Training Grounds. Mana had no idea in which point exactly she was so locating that landmark would've helped her understand better where she was taken.</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>Not a single rippling sound which was alarming, she must've been right at the edge of one of the sides of the Training Grounds. Mana had to choose a direction to travel in very carefully. If she walked up to the fence signaling the edge of the training grounds she'd have wasted plenty of time walking the wrong direction.</p><p>Suddenly Mana's eyes shot wide open as she grabbed a nearby stick and began digging through the leaves and then the sludgy mud layers below them. An underground splash of water drowned the magician's dirty hands as it began bursting through the cover of mud and leaves. The magician then ran up to one of the trees and observed the direction where the vegetation grew at. That was it – the underground springs were all going the side opposite from north – where the vegetation was.</p><p>"That means I am at the lowest point below sea level, that's why the springs are so weak and why they're running opposite direction to where the pond is – most southern point of the training grounds. If I am at the most northern point, farthest from the hills and artificial foundations of all those buildings down south – where we entered, as long as I head south I'll reach the center. Right… Opposite to the vegetation on the trees…" Mana thought to herself almost like she was her own partner to communicate with.</p><p>At least now she had a direction. Direction was all she could've asked for!</p>
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<a name="section0263"><h2>263. Transistor Mechanics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi tumbled through the messy autumn forest area of the training grounds. She wasn't rushing, using her immense ninja speed to cover larger distance faster – she wanted to remain vigilant. Nothing could've surprised her now or else she risked failure. Still, how on Earth were they to succeed now? Was the whole team not scattered across the entire battlefield faster than the nerve signals reached their brains, so fast that even their superhuman perceptions could not pick it up?</p><p>Then there was that talk that Hanasaku gave her. It was something that Meiko and Mana probably needed to hear, what if they did hear it? What if that insane woman was just instantaneously moving from one side of the battlefield to another without cracking sweat or leaving a single trace of her movement!? What if she's tracking the future Yamanaka heiress right now without Kiyomi knowing it? The blonde grinded her teeth together in frustration, her anger was beginning to break out.</p><p>A hawk scream awakened Kiyomi from her pent up frustration and inability to achieve anything tangible in this hellish test. Still, it was nothing compared to the utter tragedy of the first test her team went through when they first met with Hanasaku but back then they were still genin. While they shouldn't have been dropped from half the heights one of her teammate plummeted from and arms were not supposed to bend the way that Kiyomi's did, they had little to no expectations on them as just out of Academy brats. By the time genin become skilled enough to take the Chuunin Exams they usually can pass elementary mentor tests and survival drills…</p><p>"Hawk…" the young lady uttered to herself before raising her hands up and trying to aim her technique perfectly. So far she's been wandering around, trying to be careful as to not hit a metal fence signaling the end of the training ground or any ground hazard. This was her way out. If Mana and Meiko really did get the message they would've went towards the center of the training grounds. That's simply the most logical place to meet, close to where they were when they were scattered, also there are some small resting structures meant to kick back and relax. It was a landmark of sorts…</p><p>"Mind Body Switch Jutsu!" Kiyomi chanted as her mind left her own body firing off and heading straight at the hawk at the speed of thought. If she missed it would be no big deal, a minor waste of chakra as well as moments when her body would be exposed to attacks while her mind wandered back into her body. Either way – if Hanasaku wanted to eliminate her she'd have done it long ago. The mad woman wanted something out of the three. That was why they weren't immediately eliminated!</p><p>Mana peeked from over a bush and observed an old and overgrown with vegetation arbor. No one was there out in the open. Maybe the others have already reached this point and were waiting in hiding, afraid to come out? They had a time limit to this test. They had no time to waste on this. The magician quickly weaved a couple of hand seals and ran out into the open.</p><p>"You fail!" Hanasaku's growl came from behind Mana and the magician felt overwhelmed by numerous copies of the woman attacking with all of her unbelievable speed from various angles from all around. Oddly enough it was like those copies just moved instantaneously, like time stopped around them and watching from aside all of them looked like they had incalculable number of arms for their punches were that fast. Still, Hanasaku pulled her punches, clearly, still, she didn't go for elimination - she wanted to hurt Mana…</p><p>The magician's shape burst into rose petals and scattered across the autumnal ground, the illusionary copy exploded from pressure of a dozen Hanasakus striking her an inconceivable number of times with her contained strength. Frantically the woman looked around seeking to locate the real Mana, realizing she's been put into an illusion. As the real shape did not reveal itself the woman placed her hands together and concentrated, overflowing her body with chakra and placing her hands in a hand seal position.</p><p>"Dispel!" she chanted trying to dispel the illusion but nothing happened. The real Mana did not appear. Either those shapes were not illusionary replacements, with the real user who went completely invisible while the illusion is in use, untraceable by even her enhanced smell and hearing of Sage Mode, or the illusion was not yet dispelled. Must've been one of those brain center targeting illusions.</p><p>Hanasaku pulled out a kunai from her pouch and cut herself in the wrist shallowly. The pain needed to be burning enough to break the illusion but not enough to seriously injure her. Right after the initial fiery sensation of being cut ended Hanasaku smelled something, behind her!</p><p>Multiple copies of Kiyomi were all halfway in the air, winding up their punches and kicks and ready to beat the shit out of their sensei. Hanasaku did not move an inch, it was not yet too late for her to move, her student was fast but only for her own rank. To the Sannin she moved at a snail's pace, she had to restrain her own perception in order to not get bored by the Yamanaka's movement. The attacks completely phased through the Sannin. Just as Mana suspected the woman was still phasing, either that or the Yamanaka's illusion did not produce tangible means of attacking the Fifth.</p><p>"Hmph… Not bad!" Hanasaku yelled out before she once again placed her hands together and cast a simple genjutsu dispelling technique that ended Kiyomi's own illusion. It was a much fancier Clone Jutsu, creating a handful of false images of attacking Kiyomi while the real user slipped away. "But please do remember you're the ones who are supposed to catch me, not the other way around!" the woman yelled out to taunt her students who still haven't even come close to catching her.</p><p>Mana, Meiko and Kiyomi were taking some quick but stealthy moves away from the central area where they so chaotically met up. Mana smiled at her friends, feeling proud and happy that they made it.</p><p>"I wondered if you guys would find your way here… How did you do it?" she asked trying to dumb her volume down a bit so that their attempts at a stealthy retreat would still be respectable.</p><p>"I surveyed the area by placing my mind into a hawk, traced my own location and then figured where I need to go from there to reach the center. Obviously the central area was the key landmark we all knew, the southern entrance was close but it made sense that one of us was placed at the farthest possible point from it – the northern edge so it'd have been not too productive for one of us to get there. The central landmark made more sense…" Kiyomi explained her own thoughts.</p><p>"I found a creek and followed it to the southern point, then when I didn't find anyone there I just headed from there to the center, after finding that point I knew where I was exactly so finding the center was no issue at all…" Meiko explained hers.</p><p>While Meiko blundered the most out of the three, wandering around to the southern point before scurrying for the central landmark, the fact that she managed to not get eliminated or get lost was impressive. The blacksmith was obviously the person Mana was the most worried about.</p><p>"I have to say, Meiko… I, for a moment, doubted you could follow our emergency scenario, having in mind we haven't decided on it before we got scattered and pieced it together just from trying to figure out how each one of us thought." Mana voiced her doubts, it was obviously meant as a compliment that the blacksmith scattered the magician's ill thoughts of her intelligence somewhat. While Meiko was not the sharpest thinker, she was just resourceful enough where it counted.</p><p>"Yeah… My first instinct was just to wander around and hope to bump into someone. But then… I thought about getting on this team and how much it meant for me. Kiyomi was always a part of this team and Mana earned her place with that mission and the Fifth's test following it. I was recommended by Mana, I was the odd one out… I just can't let myself fail, I want to prove that I'm worth being here!" Meiko firmly declared with fiery determination in her eyes and seriousness that the blacksmith's voice rarely had.</p><p>The other two couldn't help but smile hopefully.</p><p>"So now that we know that sensei is still phasing… What will we do?" Meiko changed the subject as the three settled down in an unusually large pile of leaves where they hid in. It was pretty wet and smelled of dirt and rotting trashy leaves everywhere but it had to be persevered.</p><p>"Do we? Sensei knows my Mist Servant Jutsu quite well, she is likely to know that my illusionary attacks are just that – illusionary. Have we really seen her phase?" Kiyomi scratched the top of her head still reluctant to admit of what she was facing.</p><p>"Either way, phasing or not, there was something unusual about her – I assume all of you got her message, right after we were scattered?" Mana asked just for clarification.</p><p>"Yeah… You mean she told you that same thing at the same time?!" Meiko shouted out loud forcing Kiyomi to press her palm up to the blacksmith's mouth and shut the overly expressive teammate up.</p><p>"That means she was in multiple places in one time. That was after she heard Meiko yell at her about her limits. She must've known that she was unable to move that fast." Mana concluded with a firm whisper.</p><p>"You mean it's that transformation that grants her that ability?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Truth be told? I don't know…" Mana pushed a bunch of leaves out of her face before dashing out of the hiding spot and taking a different spot of concealment behind a very thick tree, choosing to relocate before dashing up that tree and hiding inside the frail yet still thick cover of leaves on the tree's upper level.</p><p>"I do have an idea though… Meiko's speech is delivered through sound waves, just like everyone else's. That means that Hokage-sensei would've been just as able to outrace those sound waves or allow her body to phase through them. She may not have heard those words. Back when I met her in the forest I tried hitting her with a sound channeled illusion and she simply retreated faster than sound before my illusion reached her…" Mana explained still looking back and worrying that sensei's interference could've broken all of them off once again.</p><p>"It makes sense. Meiko can't be the only person to ever stumble onto Hanasaku's gimmick. It's too simple a weakness to have no countermeasures against. While in her Super-Dog-Mode she has to phase through sound waves informing her of her weaknesses and limits…" Kiyomi nodded. She looked a little bit more relieved at the very least to have figured out the point of that transformation.</p><p>"Phasing, huh? So she can filter what reaches her and what doesn't, kinda like a fancy human-transistor." Meiko smiled before she head off to another hiding spot. Mana and Meiko soon followed.</p><p>"Transistor?" Mana asked for a clarification, she felt embarrassed that in this case Meiko was visibly smarter and more in control intellectually. Usually the opposite was the case, her intelligence and perception allowed Mana to feel worthy of being in a team that surpassed her physically so much.</p><p>"Wait, you don't know what a transistor is?" Kiyomi cringed before breaking out in laughter.</p><p>"Shut up!" Mana whispered out embarrassed, struggling with herself to keep her whisper from breaking into a shout. Meiko joined in on the laughing tirade.</p><p>"Wind Style Collaboration: Rain Song!" two synced up voices sounding just like Hanasaku sung out as one as they blurred through hand seals. One of them blew out a powerful wind current that blasted all of the girls back, Mana and Meiko slammed against a tree before being violently thrown down and buried in the mud and fallen leaves. It was immensely wide and strong, like an actual storm current strong enough to send people flying. The other one spat out a built up mass of water from her lungs right into the storm gust which made a rain-like pelting water affect.</p><p>Mana grunted as she picked herself off the ground, she saw Kiyomi and Meiko already up on theirs and ready to answer. The two Hanasaku copies soon became four, then eight and twelve. They were no clones, they couldn't have been. There was actual sound from where their feet touched with wood and they weren't just Shadow Clones as there was no actual jutsu being performed. The clones just appeared out of thin air.</p><p>"That's right… It just doesn't make sense. So much that it actually does…" Mana looked at her bruised knees and torn up clothes when she realized something. The magician weaved a pair of hand seals. Then her body just froze, her eyes rapidly raced around but nowhere near as quick as her mind tried to sum up what she had just realized.</p><p>"Retreat!" she issued out an order for her team. Her hands went through a pair of hand seals again.</p><p>"Enough! This test is over!" Hanasaku barked out before her canine shape changed into a more human shape yet her numbers still remained the same.</p><p>"Huh?" Meiko scratched her head confused, looking at Mana and then back at their mentor. "Did we win?" she ask.</p><p>"No, you failed… Because of Mana." Hanasaku pointed at the magician.</p><p>"Oh, come on! Enough of this subjective bullshit!" Kiyomi growled out seemingly believing that her mentor's decision was because of how she disliked Mana's behavior during the whole Yamanaka wedding plot.</p><p>"Would you just let me explain?" Hanasaku asked her student for a chance. Kiyomi pouted and looked away just in case her angry stares could kill Hanasaku, the girl's arms firmly locked on her chest betrayed how angry the Yamanaka was.</p><p>"You see, Mana found me out, just now. Those hand seals she made were Transformation Jutsu, the basic Academy Technique. My enhanced dog-like ears allowed me to hear what she said to herself just now too allowing me to put it all together." Hanasaku pointed at Mana who just nodded. "Go on, tell your friends everything, if you won't, I will and I won't be subtle about it." The woman demanded.</p><p>"I read this thing… In a history book once, this theory from a scientist in Iwagakure who discovered a way to mine especially tough minerals. He discovered this theory in physics where nothing particles do at a certain level makes sense – things can be in multiple places at once, things can phase through electric waves and other particles. This thing Hokage-sensei did, these techniques made no sense, they couldn't have been explained by any logic so I figured it was that. My plan was to transform into a small object and catch her unprepared, maybe transform into an animal or a plant. I figured that the animal would have the message transcribed on its back…" Mana began explaining, she was beginning to finally understand where she had failed. Her body just froze during those moments right before the transformation and she made the wrong call, she knew where and she knew what it would've cost.</p><p>"And it would've worked. I couldn't have avoided something I see in front of me, something I subconsciously read instead of a spoken sentence." Hanasaku nodded seriously, then her eyes flared back up and looked at Mana like trying to transfer that flame at her, incinerate the girl with a glare. "Keep going. Tell your team what you did."</p><p>"I froze…" Mana cried out, she was becoming embarrassed. "I… I don't want to use techniques that I didn't invent myself, I don't like it. I wondered if I should use Transformation Jutsu at all – it's a basic Academy technique. I've used unoriginal jutsu before but those were moments of life and death, this was a survival drill, a game…" Mana stopped talking, she realized that she was just making excuses at this point so she just sat down on a rock nearby and stopped talking.</p><p>Hanasaku sighed. "You see, Mana had the option of transforming and stepping over herself, removing my new techniques from me, my limitless potential to function like those laws of physics that don't make sense. She didn't, instead she cried out to retreat, without a doubt, intending to explain herself to you and asking that someone else transformed in her place."</p><p>"So?" Kiyomi glared at Hanasaku.</p><p>"So… If I was fighting with the intent to kill you – I'd have killed you then and there. Mana faltered, I would've simply attacked you two because I knew that she'd have used some tricky illusion to slip away like she did before. You two were wide open, caught in surprise. I would've moved you outside the training grounds, or killed you in real life, and you wouldn't have possibly seen it coming. You'd all be dead because Mana decided to back out instead of stepping over her stupid principles." The Fifth finally explained why she flunked the team.</p><p>Without uttering a word Mana stood up and began walking off. Her head hurt again, her chest hurt from the pressure of just having flunked her team. Hanasaku was right, had she defied her own principles and stepped over her principles for this stupid survival drill she could've helped her team pass. Her decision to back out without thinking it all through was selfish. It was stupid and it was undoubtedly wrong. Mana's hand grabbed her collar and gripped it as hard as she could while her body tensed up from the stress and uncontrollable weeping. She couldn't hold it inside her anymore. She failed everyone again. Even more, it was exactly mirroring the last training with Shimo and Sugemi – she dragged her team down, her principles did.</p><p>Just like the last time her mentor belittled her for her principles, obviously this time it wasn't her refusal to kill, it was her entertainer originality principle. One that she sometimes ignored if lives were at stake or she deemed it important but the very fact that she stopped to consider that principle at all cost them this test. Even if Mana did transform, even if she did step over herself… She'd have faltered fighting an opponent who was fast enough to kill her team. Because of her faltering she'd have seen Meiko and Kiyomi die before transforming…</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko caught up to Mana. The magician couldn't look at them at that moment. Meiko softly wrapped her hand around the magician's neck and friendlily teased her. "So you know about some stupid impossible theoretical laws of physics but you've no idea what a transistor is?!" the blacksmith laughed out.</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes were strange, she didn't look angry, she didn't look like she'd detested the magician or what Mana did but it was impossible to tell what she really thought. She certainly didn't look happy.</p><p>"Hey, don't feel bad, if I figured it out and tried transforming I'd have failed too – remember how bad I am at ninjutsu!?" Meiko tried lightening the mood and then comically acted out a malformed animal she'd have likely transformed into making Kiyomi crack a grin from how ridiculous the blacksmith looked.</p><p>Mana dashed ahead, augmenting her abilities to try and get away from her team. She didn't say a word or react in any way. Deep inside she knew that both Meiko and Kiyomi could've caught her if they went after her, they were both faster than she was. Neither of them did. Meiko just stood around looking at the hand that Mana rudely escaped from under before looking in the distance where the magician went off to.</p><p>"Wanna go get something to eat?" Kiyomi coldly suggested.</p><p>"In the name of blazing caramel hellfire, YES!" Meiko shouted out jumping up with her fist in the air like she'd have just passed the Chuunin Exams already. While the blacksmith still felt bad for her friend, she was quite easily distracted…</p>
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<a name="section0264"><h2>264. Insomnia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The moon that night was humongous, its illumination put all those neon lights on restaurants, small shops and gambling houses to shame. Not for the lack of trying, however. One particular establishment – the Minakuji Casino was especially bright, shining brightly with its golden shades together with skylights of various eye scratching colors. Without those lightshows Konoha may have seemed like a depressing place, young people dying left and right, people ambitious enough to leave the protection of the village disappearing and being sacrificed for the natural darkness in wild ones' hearts…</p><p>The lights and bright colors helped shake off that impression. It did for Mana all the time… Even if Minakuji, when approached closer, smelled of vomiting alcoholics thrown out so that they didn't disturb the other clients' illusions of luxury and cheer. Even if brawls were more than common with the only concern of the staff there being that they happened off the social screen, out of sight meant as good as averted, the casino's bright colors still had that cheering effect for whatever reason. Even if people unable to express their violence yet drunk of their feet commonly harassed the small-folk. Mana could recall hearing Hisako tell her a story about that place once, how she had a mission to scatter one such group of drunkards…</p><p>Or maybe it was no mission? Maybe she said she was just beating on a bunch of lowlifes? No. The violence had a goal, Hisako needed intel from them because she was chasing some maniac. Either way, knowing Hisako there was plenty of murder and "justified" bloodshed because the blood being shed was that of filthy and drunk as a slipper scum. The less details of that story Mana remembered the better…</p><p>The door to Mana's room nudged slightly and mother's curious eyes slipped in.</p><p>"You're not asleep yet?" she whispered.</p><p>"I'm just watching the lights, I need to cheer up a little, it'll be tough acting all enthusiastic and entertaining people in tomorrow's show if I'm…" Mana didn't want to say "sad". For whatever reason whenever someone uttered that word she actually began weeping when she actually was down. Even if she wasn't down, that word being thrown around made her mood somewhat bummy.</p><p>"Oh? Need a kiss to help?" mother suggested emanating that same cheerfulness Mana was looking for.</p><p>"No." the teen cut down firmly. Somehow she'd have felt embarrassed if mother pecked her on the head, almost like that moment would've been instantly transmitted to all of her friends even if no one would've known. Mana would've known and that would've been enough.</p><p>"Suit yourself, don't stay up too long now." mother suggested and quietly closed the door.</p><p>Mana's cheek bumped against her bent knees and she burrowed in her bed cover. She wanted someone there, someone who would've understood her, someone who shared her views or at least made a genuine attempt at getting them. It seemed like with each passing day people like that were disappearing from her life. Everyone who marveled her love for all life were weighed over to the other side, changed or even died. She was becoming more and more alone every passing day.</p><p>"No, I said…" Mana whispered to herself, "What an idiot…"</p><p>The magician was jumping over the tree branches, carefully positioning her leaps, moving as fast as she could. She braced for impact with the leaves that burst and scattered upon her crashing through them like a juggernaut. The girl's thighs were burning up, her dashes were becoming slower, she covered less and less distance with her leaps and her pace was becoming slower and slower until she moved at a turtle's pace. Her leaps were focusing on height instead of distance, lying that she was moving at the same pace.</p><p>Finally Mana stopped, slipped over one of the branches and slammed her body into another. Gripping it so hard that it almost exploded from pressure and her own fingernails drove into the tree and her own flesh at the same time. Shouting in pain Mana pulled herself onto the branch and surveyed the grasslands that laid ahead, where the forest ended.</p><p>There they were: Hanasaku, Kiyomi and Meiko, all lined up and facing off against the enemy. Mana couldn't see the enemy's face, it was black and blurry. They had glowing red eyes and wore a twisted smile, curled upwards like a crescent moon and shining pearl white with sharp teeth. The magician focused all of her strength and leaped off of the branch, landing to her team, covering what was left in distance by stumbling forward.</p><p>The dark shadowy figure lifted its hand, Mana knew that motion, she had seen it before. Meiko, Kiyomi and Hanasaku were banged up, they looked like they were on their last feet, bleeding and torn up. They must've been through one hell of a battle, why wasn't Mana there? Why was she lagging behind so much?</p><p>No. She won't lose another friend to that mass altering technique, she's seen it before, analyzed it, every aspect of it, thinking through what could've been done differently. Mana's hands went through the hand seals. Don't be late, just don't be late!</p><p>The shadowy man screamed out, he was reacting far too violently for what was supposed to be just a simple illusion but people reacted to pleasure in different ways. Perhaps what his brain perceived as pleasure was locked away from him for so long that the resurface of those feelings pained him? The man shook and fell on his knees, banging his head against the dirt, peeling his skin away with his nails as he scratched his skin.</p><p>Mana looked down only to see a burst of blood explode through her chest. Someone's fist was staring out through it as she was hit from behind. There was no pain, the magician just saw red, blood everywhere as she fell on her knees and Hanasaku quickly dispatched of Kiyomi and Meiko and ran to the shadowy man's aid.</p><p>"They were anchors. The village said to make it look like a mission gone wrong…" the woman explained to the man before delivering a flurry of ground shaking blows and completely decimating and leaving him only as a bloody puddle in a fraction of a moment. Sour for the woman's betrayal and seeing her friends' lying beside her Mana breathed out her final breath…</p><p>The magician's eyes opened up. It was just a nasty dream. Mana may have felt alienated from her team and her mentor but Hanasaku was no traitor. The whole thing felt suspicious from the start. It was just a dream… The magician burrowed under her cover before she began running out of air and had to "resurface". Her mouth felt dry. Should she go down and get some water or some juice? Trying to contain her anxiety Mana just switched the sides and closed her eyes. Maybe in time the memories of that dream would go away?</p><p>A loud screech, likely that of a bat made Mana cower and cover her head. Something really hairy and big past above her but the magician felt compelled to keep on moving forward. Her objective laid onwards and she couldn't have stopped and looked around. A small orb of light floated in front of Mana, slowly floating forward and with it carrying the only light source. Without it the magician would be left in total darkness in some weird rocky and smelly cave.</p><p>After a good while the sphere stopped. A quick inspection following the feint light track allowed Mana to determine that this was a large central ground where various narrow cave paths met. Out of nowhere the sphere just rocketed upwards before completely getting swallowed up by the darkness. Suddenly Mana was all alone again, in total darkness. Her objective laid outside this cave. The magician slipped her bag off and removed a lightstick, cracking it and returning to the dwarfed world of green feint light.</p><p>Ahead of her laid at least thirty two different pathways. The entire cave was filled with holes that lead to different pathways to the point where there could've been at least a good sixteen hundred floors up each riddled with entrances or exits, a matter of perspective really, up to where light didn't even reach Mana filled with countless pathways and little roads, each of which lead her to a different end. Some of them had to be dead ends.</p><p>There was no time to waver. Illuminating her way forward with the barely decent light source in her hand Mana kept on walking forward. Inside the first cave she instinctually picked. Her sandals clacked against the rough rocks and minerals beneath her feet for quite some time before they began slurping, the ground must've been becoming wet. With a single daring step the magician completely submerged underwater.</p><p>Panic took Mana over, she scratched and clawed, desperately trying to surface but her light stick was nowhere to be found and she was underwater and in total darkness. Again and again the magician pushed herself through the water, trying to find and out. Twenty minutes passed, maybe an hour. Even with all of her augmentations her lungs were burning up and begging for air, even if her augmentations allowed her to cheat the instincts to breathe it didn't help the pain of not breathing for what seemed like an eternity.</p><p>A blasting force of water threw Mana out, like a gag reflex of the cave slamming her into the rocky ceiling and then tossing her on a solid and slippery rocks below. The magician stood back up feeling bruises and bleeding cuts at the wet and slimy rocks she just cut on. There were sharp. Just taking a step carelessly could've resulted in the rocky surface cutting right through her sandals and into her feet. Mana continued to walk forward. Onwards and onwards through the dark cave until she ended in another crossway, just as tall and impossible to navigate through as the last one. Or maybe they were the same one?! Mana couldn't tell…</p><p>The magician's knees gave in, she fell painfully on her bottom and curled into a ball.</p><p>"Where to now?" she whimpered before screaming loudly into the endless void of the cave that without a doubt only lead into more endless crossways. Crawling on the painfully sharp ground before her hands finally managed to get a grip on this whole balance thing and get the girl back on her feet Mana wandered into another completely dark pathway. Wandering in complete darkness again…</p><p>Mana's eyes burst wide open and she lifted her head just to see if she was okay now. She was in no cave. She was back home, trying to get some sleep before a show next evening. Ahead was a day of pretty tough rehearsals and preparations and she'd still end up improvising on quite a lot of tricks she'd be demonstrating that evening. Maybe that whole show was a bad idea?</p><p>The magician once again switched on her other side and looked at the turned chair that obstructed the view of whomever may have been sitting in it. If there was a judgmental mentor figure or a shadowy man willing to hide Mana in a dark cave sitting in it, they would've fit in perfectly and still remain hidden. Smiling as their victim laid anxious and confused, too scared and spilled with cold sweat to check if the chair was empty.</p><p>Angry Mana burrowed her head under the sheets again. She was such a stupid brat… God she was thirsty, her mouth was dry as a desert!</p><p>Konoha was beautiful at night. All those lights, all those different people just walking around admiring the place. Children running around, fighting each other with sticks and throwing smaller wooden leftovers from the ground at each other like shinobi running from an ambush just having found the clutch kunai in their pocket and using it to escape with their life. For a dream so easily about to become reality they tried very hard to live it…</p><p>So many people to meet. Mana often forgot how known she was around the village for her magic shows. Very few to none knew her as a ninja, mostly those who have had Mana or some roster of her team work for them as her clients. Sometimes people who heard about it through hearsay and refused to believe it at first… Either way, Mana had done very few notable things as a ninja. Even the whole technology from a different universe was often either forgotten or dismissed to another, more famous ninja.</p><p>Contrarily, numerous ninja knew Mana's status and deeds. Fellow shinobi and kunoichi were rather good at identifying different missions and attributing them to fellow ninja. Had anyone asked a random vest wearing ninja of higher rank what some random chump with a headband had done they'd be able to recall one or two objective fulfilled by the person with remarkable accuracy.</p><p>"Mana, you bitch!" Kiyomi's voice made the magician's heart freeze as she slowly turned to face her friend.</p><p>Surprisingly enough the girl was dressed in a white wedding gown. The last survivor of the wandering ninja could only scratch her temple in confusion of how weird the sight looked and how normal it seemed to passers-by around them. The magician couldn't muster up a word, she was completely oblivious to what she was even being blamed for.</p><p>"Don't you just stay silent with me! Come on, tell me, why did you miss my wedding!? It was the most important day of my life!" the blonde outright screamed at Mana flailing her arms around frantically and forcing the magician to lean and dodge those gloved hammers of wedding doom in fear.</p><p>"Uhm… You're getting married?" Mana said the first thing in her mind only to be punched in the face. For a lady in a wedding dress Kiyomi punched lightning fast and as strong and subtle as a rampaging dinosaur.</p><p>"Do you have any idea how Meiko feels!? You were our best friend! You missed the most important day of our lives! We're through! You hear me? Through!" Kiyomi leaned up to Mana's face yelling so loudly and articulating so clearly that there could've been no rumors about this. Just about every word was cold factual proof all by itself to just about anyone around the world.</p><p>Somehow Mana picked herself off the ground. She was surprised that no teeth scattered or her jaw didn't get completely blown off. Her augmentations worked on point and on time but maybe it would've been better if they didn't. How could she have missed Kiyomi's wedding? Clearly it meant a great deal to her friend…</p><p>"Wait, Meiko? I thought if you were to get married you'd go for Eiju and not for some more years in the future?" Mana still caressed the part of the jaw she was socked in.</p><p>"Eiju!?" Kiyomi turned around and ran up to Mana again picking the girl up by her collar like she was a ragdoll before winding up another punch. "How fucking dare you!? After you completely missed his funeral!? After you were on a mission while he wondered where you were in his deathbed! How fucking dare you!" she screamed before dropping Mana and just storming off.</p><p>Mana remained speechless. Her legs just didn't move. She didn't know how to react to all those things. Wait… They couldn't have actually happened…</p><p>Slight peeks of Sun began showing far away into the horizon. There may have been a good couple of hours left till morning. The magician finally gathered the courage to stand up and walk past the mysterious cushioned chair and leave her room. Slowly descend down the stairs and head to the kitchen. Even her mother wasn't up yet, it must've been really early but the magician didn't check the clock in either her own room nor the living room, or the kitchen for that matter.</p><p>A large purple jug sat on top of the table. Mana peeked over the edge of the doorway leading into the kitchen. As a little kid she always dreaded walking into the kitchen in the evenings or the nights, even passing it by. That damned purple jug always looked to her like a little demonic imp sitting on the table and smiling at her. Granted little Mana couldn't see any eyes or teeth but they were there in her imagination.</p><p>With a relieved grin the magician walked into the kitchen and picked up a glass, trying to be quiet so that she didn't interrupt the couple of hours of sleep her mother still had before getting up and leaving to work. With blank eyes showing a spaced out expression the magician walked up to the jug and spilled in some carrot juice from it. It was so silly that her mother stored Mana's favorite drink in her most dreaded object. Or maybe it was just right, that way as a little brat she wouldn't get plumped on carrot juice and explode.</p><p>Mana giggled while looking at the purple jug and easily twisting it around a bit before she finished her juice. It was no imp, just like there was no one sitting in her chair. Subconsciously the magician may have known that, she was no little child anymore. Still, even if people she was thinking about so often or dreading weren't even close to sitting in her chair and watching her sleep, they were far too indifferent about one silly magician girl from Konoha, they still existed.</p><p>In more ways than one, they were much closer to Mana than sitting in her room's chair watching her sleep. They were inside her the whole time. In her mind, in her heart. They weren't just watching her sleep, they were with her this whole time. Chestnut Hanasaku would never betray her team and leave them for dead. She probably won't get lost in some cave or miss Kiyomi's wedding, whomever the Yamanaka decides to marry. Those were just some silly dreams… They didn't mean anything in the end. Just like this jug was no demonic imp sent to claw Mana's eyes out for wandering around the house at night…</p><p>Mana kept telling herself that before returning to bed and burrowing herself under her warm sheets and settling into her round and warm pillow. Hope to still catch some sleep was still alive. Hope always died last.</p>
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<a name="section0265"><h2>265. Stars That Come Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A crimson curtain closed to a storm of applause and flowers. Mana sighed and still struggled to calm her racing heart. It's been a while since she was so ill prepared for a show and had to improvise so much. She may even have slipped in tricks she had used before, something that she wasn't entirely proud of but in that moment there was simply no other choice. Plus while all sort of ideas twirled through her mind there may not have simply been the props on the ready needed to act on those ideas. All things considered it was a good show…</p><p>"Never seen so many people entertained by simple ninjutsu…" Hiro scratched his greyed out and oversized for his build head as if the weight of the thing dragged his body to the ground like the overpowering force of gravity.</p><p>"It's not always what you show, context and presentation is equally important." Mana smiled. It was not unusual for the manager of the hall to come and congratulate the performer after the show but the man tended to avoid visiting Mana in her little smelly and soaked in darkness and tangled spider silk room. The man used to wonder if Mana would ever choose to take any of the larger and fancier, scarlet suede covered wall rooms he had offered her. By now he must've gotten the clue.</p><p>"Well… You're all about presentation, kid. Everyone's missed you…" Hiro nodded before opening the trashed and holey wooden door to leave Mana and letting her finish her after show preparations and head her own ways. "Did you see the Sixth sitting in the middle row? Stinking hell!" the man laughed out before waggling his short stature.</p><p>After a quick and frankly a bit lazy job packing her things Mana rushed off. She decided to change out of her uniform home. For some reason she just wanted to get home as fast as possible, while today was pretty rough, mainly because of this show, the next morning she'd have to leave for the training trip with one of Konoha's Sannin.</p><p>"Hey, Mana!" Kouta's voice reached the magician as she was quickly making her way through the endless hallways, already hearing the loud noises of the actor troupe preparing for their upcoming play. After that the entire hall was to be quickly adjusted, the lighting tools removed, the stage reworked into a cinema screen and a movie must've been airing. Mana would've always thought that if the Sixth ever attended a show, that he'd be more of a movie kind of man.</p><p>"Hey… Didn't know you'd be here today." The magician blushed a little, she'd have done a bit more careful job in the dressing room if she had known that her boyfriend thought of coming and finding her after the show.</p><p>Kouta embraced the magician and pressed her tightly. His control was impeccable, for a young man who could've crushed boulders of densest minerals with his hugs he was surprisingly gentle.</p><p>"So are we doing something after this?" Mana dreamily wondered. That night with the young Juugo before the survival drill really helped her getting her mind in order and appreciating what she had back in Konoha.</p><p>"I just figured I'd give you a walk home, see where we'd go from there." Kouta grinned before rubbing his nose, he tended to do that when he got shy or withheld something.</p><p>"Well, seeing how last time we did that we went to the stars, you've got a pretty tall bar to leap over." Mana teased the medical ninja as the two quietly walked out through the side of the stage, catching a couple of glimpses of the magnificent play being performed onstage.</p><p>The weather outside was much chiller than the last time they did this. As the cold streams of air ran down one's lungs it couldn't help it but pinch the entire way down. Once the air was warmed up and exhaled it was so warm that it felt like burning the chest all the way up to the nostrils. Mana quickly burrowed herself into her coat. Even if the air was a bit chillier than usual a surprising dance of evening snowflakes joined into the fray laying the autumnal Konoha streets and gardens with their own first yearly layer of snow.</p><p>"It seems this time the stars have come down to us…" Kouta smiled admiring the view as in the evening lights contrasting the clear night's sky the slowly descending snowflakes indeed resembled the white orbs of light in the sky.</p><p>Despite the chilly and burning at the same time sensation Mana couldn't help it but breathe in the air around her, gasp and embrace it with all of her chest's capacity until it physically hurt to breathe in any more. Similarly her mind tried saving the moment, in her life these didn't come often yet they reminded her what a gift life truly was and why she fought for it with such ferocity.</p><p>Mana and Kouta were not the only people out admiring the snow. Shop keepers were just as awe stricken, obviously, also a bit peeved for they had to pull off their brooms and wipe the terraces where their clients sat down for chats or a not that common outside dinner. Children began hurling snowballs scraping the first snow as it touched the ground, contrasting it with fireballs that ninja often spat at their enemies in one of the most common games they played.</p><p>Finally in the distance laid Mana's home. The lights were on, yet dimmed. Obviously it was in the evening minimal lighting mode so her family must've been enjoying the magical evening in their own way.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Mana asked finally noticing that Kouta's expression changed after he saw the magician's home.</p><p>"It's just… I guess that's it." he pouted with an indifferent shrug. Almost like he was angry about it even if he was the sole judge of that.</p><p>"That's it? You're heading home?" Mana asked a bit confused, she thought that Kouta would've liked enjoying the village experiencing the first late autumnal snow a bit more. "Was it something I said or did?" the girl wondered even if in her mind it made little sense as she had done and said very little, allowing the magic of the moment to take it over.</p><p>"No! It's just… I want to do some training today and father promised to help me prepare. I think it's best if we don't let this thing of ours get in the way of our training. I mean the Chuunin Exams are pretty important…" the young man shrugged looking at the direction of his home as if it was just right there within his reach, imagining the family and the training waiting back home.</p><p>"Oh… Yeah, training is pretty important, I guess…" Mana shrugged trying to hide her disappointment. The worst part was that she kind of understood it, Juugo were brawlers who lived for the thrill of a good fight. They were a unique kind of ninja that contrary to the ninja teachings thrived in fighting and destruction they themselves caused. She should've seen something like this happening at some point.</p><p>"We can resume where we're leaving off when I get back, right?" she then wondered.</p><p>"Well… We're gonna be competing in the Chuunin Exams in separate teams. We may end up fighting each other at some point. I think it's best we leave this alone until the exams are done with and there's nothing distracting us." Kouta uneasily concluded. "To be honest, I kinda thought you'd be telling me that, your will to keep training past the edge where it makes sense to do so is what charms me about you."</p><p>Mana squinted at him just barely containing an urge to spout out something angry. At that point of boiling anger it was almost a temptation really.</p><p>"Oh, so that's what you like about me… Fine. Until the exams are done so are we." she sighed in anger. It was an emotion she rarely engaged in, this time the magician barely fought it off, she just let the boiling point keep rising up until it kicked every other neighbor off the boat.</p><p>"That's… A bit of a strict way of putting it…" Kouta laughed in a very clearly faked manner. At this point he must've realized that he's said something wrong but he either didn't know or didn't care enough to try and mend it.</p><p>"It's how it is, isn't it? Good luck with your training." Mana a bit more angrily cut the young man off before barely containing another temptation inside her. This time it was an urge to storm home in an overly demonstrative manner, a way to show him that she's actually pissed about the way he played this.</p><p>"Thanks!" Kouta exclaimed in a surprisingly rather ridiculously cheerful manner as if he was completely oblivious to how angry Mana was. His naïve nature must've forced him to take the good luck wish a bit more directly and seriously than it was meant to be taken.</p><p>The young kunoichi shoved the door open so loudly that she actually felt bad about it and closed it overly carefully, so peacefully and slowly that she actually failed to completely close it a couple of times before getting angry again and slamming it shut harder.</p><p>"Wow, was the show that bad?" father's voice came from the living room. "Knowing how your mother is when things get out of hand, I'm glad you don't have a knife in your hand now…" the man tried to lighten the situation up. The magician decided to better ignore her father's attempts at to brighten the mood and just angrily squinted at him as she stormed to her room with a glance that had the incinerating properties of hellfire itself. Something she'd probably later regret doing, not that the magician cared at that moment.</p><p>She didn't even understand why she got so angry about it. It wasn't that big of a deal actually, Kouta decided to devote more time to training with his father than hanging around with her. It was really understandable, all things considered. She herself planned to leave on a, possibly, couple of days taking trip tomorrow. Without even bothering to change out of her uniform the magician just dropped lifeless on her bed and pressed against the area under her chest as if trying to ease an imaginary pain that simply was not there.</p><p>Her anger just didn't make sense, and here she thought she was done with the whole puberty thing. Why did it hurt so much? Why was she acting that way? Most of all, why did fate always tempt her with friendship and love, everything she wanted most out of her life before yanking it from under her and making her more alone than she ever was. With each passing day more and more was pulled out from under her and she felt lonelier and lonelier. First it was her mentor whom she admired, then her team was being played against her and now even Kouta…</p><p>"There's some barbecue on the kitchen table if you feel hungry…" mother's soft voice came in as the woman spoke without checking in. She must've known how Mana felt, of all people, mother was someone who must've felt the most alone at one time. After all her entire clan, her family, everyone she ever befriended got killed for almost no reason at all. Even realizing how selfish her anger was, how miniscule her problems were in the grand scale… It didn't help squat. If anything it only made Mana feel more pathetic that she let her childish anger burrow so deep to her heart.</p><p>She wouldn't go down to eat, she wouldn't eat anything ever again! Just lay down in her bed and die forgotten by everyone and alone. That was apparently the fate's plan for her. Sometimes Mana felt like one of those badly booked fighters from those lame television programs father liked, her manager seemingly had no idea what to do with her…</p><p>Mana's stomach growled so loud that she jumped up. Quickly the magician changed out of her uniform into more casual and comfortable clothes and slowly made her shameful walk downstairs for some barbecue…</p><p>"Hey, glad you came!" Zairyo smiled after seeing Mana hastily making her way down the village street. "I figured that you'd be late or not show up at all, Sixth said you left the hall with some fellow your age yesterday after the magic show and…"</p><p>"It's nothing…" Mana blushed puffing her cheeks. "I would never miss it and keep my team down. I promise to take this training seriously!" she firmly declared and bowed in front of the Sannin.</p><p>Zairyo was a really tall and broad shouldered guy, wearing a fancy white silken kimono with red embroidered edges and a green long flapping cape attached to his shoulders by fancy looking metallic brooches. Still, even if he had a physical build and look of a hero, his gestures and mannerisms reminded Mana more of an opportunistic weasel.</p><p>"Training… Right…" the man played with his purplish ponytail of his slightly longer grown since last time the girl had seen him hair uneasily, his eyes shifted from wandering around and rolling in circles to uncomfortably meeting Mana's gaze. This man may have been a worse liar than Mana, something the magician thought hardly possible, also quite a hindrance for someone like the impression of what kind of a man Sannin Zairyo was the magician was getting.</p><p>Mana's left eyebrow shifted up a little bit, something easily missed having in mind of the girl's darker complexion and how thin her eyebrows were but it was obvious that Zairyo noticed the girl's suspicion.</p><p>"It's… Training, in a… Manner of speech… I promise…" he made up something that sounded just like a made-up excuse from his poor lying tone. After the magician caught up to the man he turned around and started to slowly walk outside the northern village gate and towards the training grounds. At least he was still supposedly heading to where Hanasaku said Mana and Zairyo would be training in – the Forest of Death, that is, if he doesn't make any adjustments to the course later on.</p><p>"You're going to use me for something…" Mana realized before sighing and saddening up her determined and ready expression.</p><p>"Look on the bright side!" Zairyo tried cheering her up, "If someone your age is useful for a Konoha Sannin – isn't that amazing!?"</p><p>Mana did not honor that with a response, all of the respect and formality that her speech had when addressing the man suddenly poofed like smoke. Now he was just an adult gent whom the magician was just barely an acquaintance with.</p><p>"By the way, I see you don't have your sword with you, what happened to it? I hope you didn't lose it, for something of that value it'd be a terrible waste!" the Sannin wondered showing genuine worry for the sword's well-being. Surely more than he'd likely show for Mana's if this charade of his would ever turn bad. Mana was not worth a lot of money or was of little collector's value after all… Now all those fancy sword by the man's side in expensive looking sheathes began to make sense. He was a collector, an ambitious scavenger who tried getting his hands on everything valuable but never risked his life or tried too hard. Just like he didn't try too hard with Shimo's Audra blade.</p><p>"I gave it away for someone who was supposed to have it after the sword's owner passed away." Mana explained as vaguely as she deemed needed. This man was owed no details or else he'll drag Meiko out on just such a quest as well just for a chance to get her sword from her, by trickery or bargaining or a little bit of both.</p><p>"Well… Can't say I'm not a little bit disappointed, I mean I took you with me on this adventurous trip. I wouldn't have resisted too hard if you decided to reward me with that fine Audra blade for my trouble…" the man dreamily laughed out looking at the sky as he spoke like he could see the sword but it was just outside the reach of his grasp but not outside of his dreams.</p><p>"You need me…" Mana looked ahead with an ashamed pout that already felt bad about her being dragged out on this trip. Here she thought that Hokage sensei may have let her out on an actually beneficial trip where she would learn from an actual professional just like Meiko and Kiyomi currently were learning from one.</p><p>"Ah, true… I suppose I should be rewarding you… So, what do you want? I've got some gems, rubies, emeralds, diamonds… You look like a sapphire kinda gal to me…" the man began burrowing into a large satchel by his side.</p><p>"Holy… Are those actual gems?" the magician looked as her shame and disappointment faded instantly.</p><p>"Yep, when you're walking around shady places and bartering with black market dealers they may feel awry about village issued funds that still smell of banker's soap and printing machine. Gems are a universal language that every rascal speaks, gold is similar but people can use gems for actual things whereas gold is just chewy and soft… I tend to bury boxes with nuggets whenever they start to accumulate." The man laughed out.</p><p>"And you're a ninja?" Mana's eyebrow ended up raised in disbelief. "A Sannin, no less…"</p><p>"Yep, got appointed right after the spot freed up. They call me Zairyo Jitensha or Zairyo of the Wavering Grass, get it, because I travel and wander a lot and grass bends a lot and rustles as I walk around but "Wavering grass" just looks better on paper." the man grinned.</p><p>"But you never look at nicknames on paper, you say them out loud, they don't even add nicknames on your ID." Mana pointed out surprised that the man would've been as silly as failing to see something like that.</p><p>"That is quite true, that's a low-blow…" Zairyo admitted almost like he got offended that the magician pointed it out, it was evident that the man knew that and possibly even had it pointed out to him many times before.</p><p>"It's… It's no big deal, it's your nickname, you can change it, just tell people to stop referring to you that way, truth be told, I've never heard anyone refer to you that way so it won't be that tough." Mana tried softening her voice, if she'd spend time helping this man out and training with him maybe it would've been better off not to make him hate her guts too. At least not for something as stupid as the man's silly reasoning for his nickname.</p><p>"It's whatever… Forget it. They don't even consider me a real Sannin, it's because I'm always gone somewhere, chasing something to collect." The man began sulking while his feet barely dragged his body on, at that pace it would've taken weeks to get to the Forest of Death.</p><p>"No, that's great, it makes a lot of sense now. I haven't heard about you but now I'll know it's because you're never back in the village, that's fine. I guess grass kind of wavers when you pass it by, that's fine. Don't lose your mojo over it." Mana began almost feeling bad for how badly the man took it.</p><p>"Thanks, nice to see you being so cool about it, Chestnut's so mean to me about it, always making fun of me or poking fun of the nickname. I keep telling her to just imagine posters behind me with my nickname written on them and confetti in the background when I introduce myself but she keeps laughing it off." Zairyo cheered up a bit.</p><p>Mana stopped to look back at the slowly fading in the horizon Konohagakure, her eyes then returned to her temporary mentor whom she was supposed to be useful for. That must've been all the man looked for in people – how useful they were as it was the only reason he had chosen her. Still, someone who saw her as useful was better than no one at all. The magician dreaded the idea of poking her own brain with illusions again and the headaches it'd cause. With a hopeful smile she looked back at Zairyo and picked up her pace to catch up to the man.</p><p>"So why am I so useful to you? Hokage-sensei mentioned it's the special kind of genjutsu I use, would you like me to teach you that?" the magician wondered</p><p>"Oh? No, I made that up. I need you because of a mission you once did with Uzumaki Tanshu, you've been in the hidden archive once, you know where it is, right?" the man looked at Mana hopefully.</p><p>The magician just nodded, a bit surprised that the man would care about an old low-ranking mission like that.</p><p>"Wonderful, I need to pick something up from that archive! Something you guys left behind." the man grinned with little golden stars lighting up in his greedy eyes.</p>
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<a name="section0266"><h2>266. Slither In</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana had forgotten that trek to the Forest of Death before. Back when she first made her way there with Team Oak she saw it as a lengthy and exhausting trip all in of itself. Since then she had travelled much further and wider and after expanding her scope what was supposed to take a couple of hours of casual strolling now seemed like just a blink of an eye away.</p><p>Finally the two had reached the place and the familiar fences covering up a gigantic forest that was dark on the inside due to the incredible competition between its towering trees for sunlight. A couple of hooded ninja stopped the two ninja but and requested to see their documents. It greatly surprised Mana, how could have two at least Chuunin level ninja have not recognized a Konohagakure Sannin? Zairyo must've been away quite often and for lengthy periods of time.</p><p>Once the hooded ninja saw the man's documents they began bowing and apologizing erratically which was quickly dismissed by Zairyo who just rubbed the back of his head and sighed as if all of this was just a big pester. The magician felt a bit bad for those two, Konoha ninja had a feeling of comradery and honor between each other. Everyone was ready to lay their heads for their comrades just to bring honor to their families and their service. Something like that must've stayed in those poor guards' hearts and pressed against their chests for some time to come. Embarrassment was not a pleasant companion.</p><p>After being let inside the fenced off area through a large wooden gate Mana looked around and made sure to breathe in as much of the outside weather as possible before the massiveness of the forest overwhelmed her. Almost instantly the magician felt the painful sensations of insects trying and suck her dry, something that shocked the girl a bit as she had never went through a similar experience with an accompanying Sannin before. Then it hit Mana, something she didn't notice feeling, or rather not feeling before.</p><p>"You don't have Killing Intent, do you?" the magician realized. Then again, she never checked if Chestnut Hanasaku had one either, the girl was just so used to Tanshu's absolutely crushing Intent that one had to combat every moment of being nearby that man that she just assumed Hanasaku had one. The warm and epic sensations in her skin when facing that woman could've been just her status reflecting on Mana and not her Intent.</p><p>"Oh no! I'm a pretty swell guy, when you're as chill as me it's literally impossible to get that…" Zairyo laughed out with a bit of embarrassment. "I recall the last time you've been here with Tanshu, right? That must've saved you a lot of trouble…"</p><p>"Yeah… It wasn't as trouble-free as you might imagine, he left us alone to fight for our lives." Mana recalled still struggling to decide which trip was worse, the last one where locating the archive was comfortable and safe but she was left to die facing off those gigantic centipedes or this one.</p><p>"Heh… I'm sure that's not how he meant it to be seen. Still, didn't you run into the inhabitants? For a kid that young fighting off even the insects that live here must've been a hassle!" Zairyo whistled with surprise.</p><p>"It doesn't matter…" Mana puffed up her cheeks in embarrassment remembering the dip into centipede goo that she had to go through last time. "Anyways, I find it really hard to believe that I could've missed an important scroll. I know a lot of common dialects of historic periods: Uluru, Anansi, Anchel and several more… What could've been stored there that was so important?" the magician lifted her eyebrow with some bitter memories flooding through.</p><p>"Oh? Can you just read normally though? It's supposed to be written on the scroll "Bailong – the White Dragons"." Zairyo explained with a bit of hesitance before revealing the object he was seeking.</p><p>"Is it a history scroll? Bailong are legendary animals, you can read plenty about them in the legend and tale scrolls I've brought back and countless others…" Mana still couldn't wrap her head around what exactly the man was after. She took it a little bit personally when the man implied she could've missed an important scroll after she took so much care in selecting the ones to salvage.</p><p>"No…" Zairyo planted his palm onto his own face before dragging it down slowly, "It's a Summoning Contract scroll."</p><p>Mana restrained her first instinct which was to erupt into laughter. Still, not too long ago she left on a trip equally as crazy with some of her best friends, the odds of Box of Ultimate Bliss existing were just as small as those of the Bailong contract scroll.</p><p>"The Bailong are supposed to be large creatures, the largest of them – Longshirisu covered up the entire sky. Even if their contract scroll does exist, where do you believe their sacred region is? Where would the entire species of gigantic dragons that can wrap around the planet hide?" the magician inquired, her tone was not dismissive or trying to poke fun of the man's desired treasure, she just wanted to hear what his theory on the species illusiveness was.</p><p>"Look, kid, I've lived my entire life wandering from one place hiding one legendary treasure to another on nothing else but rumors and hunches. I've been disappointed and proven wrong more times than I can count, I've also found more of them than anyone would believe – it's how I got to where I am today. I don't care about where the Bailong are, how they can remain hidden or anything like that – I just want to see if the scroll is there or not." Zairyo replied with bitterness in his voice.</p><p>"Hmmm…" Mana rubbed her temples as the man's disappointing reply made her feel like her brain was actually attacked, "What kind of a collector are you? Treasure is something you seek, something you imagine and see in front of you and strive to reach! Treasure is what drives you forward, it's what makes you fight people you'd never cross otherwise because your dream burns that brightly. Why are you so dry when faced with a possibility of such a discovery?" she almost yelled out.</p><p>"I've found nothing but more clues or an empty vault dozen times too many after spending decades too much time looking for them…" Zairyo shrugged with indifference.</p><p>"Oh, come on! Something like that would be such an amazing historic discovery! Have some enthusiasm behind your steps, own every single one of them!" Mana yelled out vibrantly before taking a happy leap and bumping straight into the face of a giant brown head, at least four times her size and very lacking in its attempt to be concealed behind a bush yet darkness and the extending tree branches helped it compensate what the reptile lacked.</p><p>Slimy and wet layers of skin-like substance unwrapped revealing giant yellow eyes as the small and sensitive nose which Mana bumped into lifted up revealing a large brown snake covered in black stripes. In its entirety the thing could've been well over eight meters in radius yet it slithered so flawlessly in between the slim forest spaces utilizing it so perfectly and leaving large cave-like gaps that Mana couldn't help but be impressed on top of her shock which soon turned to fear for her life.</p><p>The creature lifted its head wrapping around trees and extending a good thirty meters above the girl, running in just short from reaching the top layer and seeing the sunlight yet if it wanted to it'd easily be capable of such. The entire length of the thing was impossible to tell as it barely only lifted its head to slither a bit higher and position itself for a better strike at its potential snack. Frankly the energy wasted of impaling this little speck of human flesh on its oak-sized fangs would not even be compensated by eating both of the little humans that bumped into the snake.</p><p>Mana stood perfectly still listening for the leaves or a faintest clue of where the snake's head was. Zairyo just carelessly picked his nose and lamented the fact that their way was blocked by the parts of the snake's slithering body. A deafening sound of the snake's body slamming against the trees and its tail being slapped against the ground forced Mana to cover her ears – now her only reliable sense was disabled. The snake was really smart, using its massive body to hide the sound of when it'd decide to strike.</p><p>Then all of a sudden the sound stopped, Mana looked up only to see the snake's mouth shut closed and its head awkwardly bent backwards, without a doubt, after trying to bite at Mana and kill it with one swoop. The handle of Zairyo's sword was imbedded in the snake's nose, the man completely nullified the force of its rush stopping both of them in a flight of weightlessness before the Sannin just kicked the massive snake's head aside allowing it to tumble over the trees and actually letting in some sunlight.</p><p>"Sorry, I kinda need the kid to show me the way…" Zairyo mumbled before beginning to check his belt and the multitude of swords in sheathes, each fancier than the last, to see which one of his swords should he use to dispatch of the beast quickly.</p><p>"This snake isn't local to these parts…" Mana mumbled out in complete shock of the Sannin's level of strength and how lightly he was taking the situation.</p><p>"No. It's too large… Either it was summoned by a Snake Contract user or it followed a prey here, either way, it's quite impressive." Zairyo nodded before finally settling on a sword he'd use.</p><p>"It's an underground snake, it burrows underground, that's how it got here, that's the only way it could have bypassed all the barriers and security." Mana suggested before the Sannin grabbed her and leaped away from the colossal snake's charge from underground. The majestic reptile tried to tackle the two with enough force to send them tumbling through trees, possibly breaking some bones and softening them up for a quick kill.</p><p>"Good call… It could've still been summoned here." The man suggested another theory.</p><p>"No, a giant snake like this getting summoned would've stressed it, it would've caused too much ruckus and would've exposed the summoner to the security. I believe your theory about it following a prey here, something smaller…" Mana replied before the Sannin pulled out another blade which was similar to an extended whip and tied around one of the standing trees, with a yank the man pulled himself and the magician to it and placed her down.</p><p>"This thing's above your paygrade, stay here…" Zairyo warned Mana with a surprising amount of indifference to his voice for a man warning someone he needed for this quest.</p><p>"Could you maybe, please, not kill it?" the magician wondered.</p><p>Zairyo opened his mouth to argue, he had good reason to as the reptile was from faraway lands and so long way from home that it'd be impossible to move it without unnecessary hassle for a giant snake. Then, for whatever reason she just closed his eyes and relented, realizing that he didn't really care if the snake lived or died as long as it was out of his way. The man's body disappeared from the branch he was standing on so fast and without a single trace that it would've been impossible to tell that he ever even was there.</p><p>Mana turned at the snake and tried to follow the man's movements, clearly he was a bit too far away and moved too fast, even in complete indifference to the battle at hand, still, she could make out at least some details from the way the snake reacted to the completely invisible to it movements of the man.</p><p>The reptile appeared to be using its tongue quite often, maybe it was using it to hunt a very specific prey as using it to just take in air particles like most snakes did would've been useless for its size. Having the size of its tongue in mind it would've taken in far too many different scents and ultimately it would've just confused the creature and made it use too much of its brain just to discern and interpret the various smells. It must've used it to sense some sort of residual chakra that a creature used when fighting or using it. That would've limited the prey it hunted but it would've been a lethal hunting mechanism, it also would've explained how the creature managed to avoid being cut to pieces for so long against a Konoha Sannin.</p><p>"The tongue!" Mana shouted out, "Cut it off!"</p><p>Even before her yells were finished being formed the reptile's tongue exploded in blood and spiraled from its mouth crashing at another part of the forest in a crimson flash that created a powerful scarlet spark so intense that the girl had to turn away for a moment. The man must've been using one of his collected weapons for that.</p><p>"Don't tell me what to do!" the Sannin's voice reached back shortly after the man grabbed Mana again and relocated her as the snake's tail attempted to crush the tree she was standing on. In a flash the girl was relocated on another spot.</p><p>Now that the snake could no longer sense the Sannin with its strange tracking ability, validating Mana's theory, the man quickly dispatched of it. To the magician it all looked really vague, first a feint yellow flash of light below made bright yellow lightning-like bolt pierce the clear late autumn sky and smash into the snake's head quickly making it fall to the ground before the Sannin, rotating vertically cut at its upper head again summoning another lightning bolt to pierce the sky and smash against the creature's head. The man then pulled out a long katana with a light purple tinted steel and cut the snake's skin.</p><p>The air around the predator began to whirl and bend as it appeared like the wound ate the entire snake up by having it swallow itself with the speed a ramen addict eats a mouthful of noodles in. Just like that the reptile was gone. Mana didn't even notice when the Sannin dashed to her and brought her down and further away from the messy part of the forest that'd need to be repaired by the people maintaining order in the place soon.</p><p>"Don't worry, I stored the snake in a pocket dimension. Didn't kill it. I'll release it somewhere where I'll think it could make a living in once this is done." the collector shrugged before sheathing the blade he used to store the snake away.</p><p>"Without its tongue it'll have a tough time catching prey…" Mana longingly looked at the sky a bit worried for the reptile's future.</p><p>"Pfft… It's a sneaky devil, I had to sweat it to dent its scales. I've seen those same concentrated chakra bolts completely swallow up and reduce a trained ninja to ashes. It definitely was someone's pet… Even if it got here accidentally." The man scratched the back of his head before beginning to slowly walk ahead. Noticing that Mana didn't keep moving he turned back.</p><p>"What's wrong? Going the wrong way?" he wondered.</p><p>"No. It didn't get here by accident. It followed something… Something that's its usual prey but uses chakra, probably another ninja animal or a ninja that's native to the snake's habitat." Mana looked back at the hole in the forest roof left by the snake wondering just what could've drawn it here.</p><p>"You just let me worry about whatever that thing is." Zairyo urged her to keep walking with a chin gesture pointing onwards. After a couple of moments Mana calmed down and continued to show the man the path to the archive, at least as much as she remembered it as there was plenty of running for her life involved the last time she found it.</p><p>"Still, what an absolutely bad timing, just when I decide to look for something, someone decides to look for the same thing… I mean there's nothing else of use in this dump. We strand kids here for fun as a rite of passage…" Zairyo sighed looking a bit down on his luck.</p><p>He had some moderate point, for a ninja to come here and invade Land of Fire's territory seeking for something it must've been pretty important. There was nothing of importance in this place except a large region of forest, giant animals and an entire ecosystem of cruelty and life economics. Everyone weighing life on the scale if more energy would be gained than it would take to end it. Everything Mana hated about the world she lived in wrapped with a fence and closed off like some sick experiment.</p><p>The magician began to chuckle a little before breaking out in a fit of laughter. Zairyo looked at her funny before wandering what that was about. As Mana kept on laughing the man became visibly more annoyed and desperate to laugh as hard as she was. That mystery of her cheer held a certain power over him, compelled him to reach out to it wider and wider.</p><p>"Look on the bright side, if someone bothered to come all the way down here to look for it as well – it means that there's a solid chance of it really being here…" Mana finally settled her emotions down to explain what made her smile this much.</p><p>The man's eyes wandered up as he thought for a brief moment before his lips also tipped up in a smile. Then his cheekbones curved his face in a weird manner before he could restrain his laughter no more. Mana was glad to see the man a bit more energetic and happy about this quest, everyone looking for a grand discovery needed to live for that discovery, burn with that fire of curiosity and craving for that moment of finding what they seeked. If Mana was that indifferent to the result when she looked for the Box of Ultimate Bliss she'd have given up all the way back in the Land of Wind's desert ruins. She'd still be unable to control chakra, most likely…</p><p>Then again, Shimo would most likely still be alive. Mana had not yet discovered this point, by giving up on this one quest when it seemed too much of a bother the Sannin saved himself more disappointment and loss. He focused only on the artifacts he could actually obtain instead of obsessing over his failure locating this single one he just couldn't find. Still, discovery needed to be obsessed over, it needed fire, enthusiasm. Mana truly believed that, she had to.</p>
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<a name="section0267"><h2>267. Into The Rabbit Hole</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was certain rhythmic monotony to the duo's trip. Mana's pace had slowed down significantly, she was trying to be more careful and mindful of her surroundings. Last time she left the archive it was completely totaled. It was very likely that there'd not be a breath of air between the massive stone pieces that filled the underground facility. If an object as ancient as the Summoning Contract of the Bailong was even in the archive to begin with, it'd be either completely turned to dust or greatly damaged at this point.</p><p>With Mana being used to the monotony of her steps clacking in tandem with the thuds of her companion she was instantly made aware of the fact that Zairyo had stopped moving and began looking up. The magician's own gaze followed only to greet a swift blur of brown feathers that latched onto the swordsman's arm and hesitantly began clawing at it, causing irritation but still not breaking the skin, rushing the wielder to take away the contents that the hawk had carried.</p><p>"What is this?" Mana wondered out loud.</p><p>"My orders. My servitude for my village is what separates a man who is constantly journeying and is simply absent from the village affairs from a rogue ninja who is having people sent to take care of him. I am still a subordinate of my village, most of the times…" the man replied indifferently as his eyes struggled to read the letter's contents due to the rather difficult to work with lighting. The Sannin pocketed the letter and gently flicked the hawk on the top of his head, it must've been a way to commend the animal for breaking through the difficult upper layers of the forest as the hawk let its voice be known and expressed in joyful pride.</p><p>Soon the bird departed.</p><p>"I thought the Sannin are as good as retired, do you still take orders from the village?" Mana stopped walking as the Sannin's explanation confused her.</p><p>"Technically Sannin are considered ninja of great value that have paid their dues. They take up the missions they themselves want to be part of, in a way, they do not get orders. They get suggestions of open jobs that may require their expertise. That being said, I was not a Sannin my whole life. I've been receiving orders from the village through messenger hawks for many years, all the way until I've become Sannin." Zairyo sighed, the magician's curiosity must've really begun to get to the man.</p><p>After a brief pause the kunoichi turned around and kept on walking, carefully looking around to identify clues around her that may have helped the magician identify the archive or at least that she was getting close.</p><p>"So you've been making the grass waver for pretty long, huh?" Mana asked, still keeping her eyes occupied.</p><p>"Ever since my team spirit died out. I was a bit older than you when I left, at first ninja were sent after me but after several encounters and proof that I haven't deserted, given the circumstances of my background, I was allowed to work while constantly on the move. I'd like to think I have made myself useful…" Zairyo closed his eyes beginning to recall the memorable moments of his past deep in his mind. Even with his eyes closed and his mind fleeting the man managed not to bump against a single tree in a forest infamous for its thickness and cruel conditions.</p><p>The magician's emerald gaze met the man's eyes once they opened but then wandered off and began surveying the environment again. The Sannin sighed, he knew quite well what exactly the girl wished to ask but didn't.</p><p>"My team betrayed me and tried to kill me. After the Second Great Ninja War ended, the mood with the young brats was not too pro-ninja village and pro-war. Young kids right out of Academy died out by thousands, entire classrooms sent to war and eliminated in their entirety. The desertion rate was so off the roof that they began skewing the statistics. I refused to desert with my team so I was betrayed, taken out and left to die. My teammates may have been deserters but they were also wimps who couldn't finish me off. I think that the Third Hokage may have gotten a bit squeamish of forcing me work, he just let me work it out the best way I saw how. If he had pressed me with orders and reminders of the "ninja way", I'd have snapped too, I think…" Zairyo recalled.</p><p>Judging from the man's voice it didn't look like he had that much hidden negative feelings or pent up suffering towards the events he described. He was talking of his team like they were already dead, granted, it could've been because they were, but his lack of grief or regret for his past was so evident that it rudely clawed at the listeners ears.</p><p>"I'm sorry. I didn't want to dig around painful memories." Mana uttered more like out of habit, sad but knowing full well that her words would likely fall on deaf ears.</p><p>"Everyone's got a dark past, everyone's got painful memories. The people who do despicable things for that reason I really cannot stand… I think those two statements are in direct relation to each other." Zairyo looked on before reaching out to Mana's shoulder and stopping her in the girl's tracks before pointing forward. "You've gotten distracted." He stated more as a general statement than a scolding.</p><p>Ahead, past a vast layer of bushes and low hanging trees laid the tough wrangled chitin shell of a gigantic centipede. A very common yet lethal predator of these grounds. Mana leaned down hoping to avoid getting noticed by the insect but Zairyo did no such thing.</p><p>"Where there's one there may be more. It wouldn't be wise causing a big ruckus so close to the archive. I still hope there are some stones left unturned there." Mana suggested that the man took a more cautious approach but Zairyo just glared at Mana before returning his strict eyes back at the centipede. The magician peeked through the leaves and kept on staring at the static centipede that just stood there completely straightened out before seeing what Zairyo saw and what she should've seen sooner.</p><p>The centipede was a scarecrow. The chitin shell was completely scratched out and rid from its fleshy contents, the goo was evidently rid somewhere else as it would've emitted too bad of a stench not to notice immediately. For now the magician couldn't tell what the armored shells were filled with but it certainly was no living being. Someone killed a centipede and left this as a tool to scare off smaller animals and inferior predators from pestering the killer as they did something else.</p><p>"This is bad." Mana whispered. "If that person can take out a centipede and chose to do this, likely to avoid conflict, that means they also wish to save themselves from trouble. What other reason would someone capable of killing a larger predator have for doing this if not wishing to preserve what's underground and very sensitive?"</p><p>Zairyo smiled. He must've been pretty impressed by the magician's perception. "We've no time to waste then, let's move and try to pick up our pace." The man nodded before disappearing in the upper layer of trees. Mana sighed, the last thing she needed was a struggle to keep up with the man, she was nowhere near as fast or as strong as even genin that were her peers. She always came out on top due to sharpness of her thought or knowledge where to strike rather than how strong. And yet the girl followed, to the best of her ability.</p><p>A calm breeze managed to make its way past the thick layer of leaves and down to the stuffy stench of the ground level of Forest of Death. A rare gust of fresh air managed to do the same. With a quick appearance of two figures all the smaller rodents that thrived because of how small and inconsequential they were, nearly impossible to catch and keep hold of by the colossal predators that lived here, scattered in fear.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Zairyo asked as Mana kept on wandering the area looking at every corner of every tree. "You stopped, I had to blitz a good twenty kilos back for you…" he asked for a clarification.</p><p>"This is it. This is the place." The girl explained as she kept on searching for the faintest clue as to where and what could've remained of the hidden archive she once visited.</p><p>As the Sannin's eyes wandered around he noticed countless more centipedes cut down and into smaller pieces by the shells of their hardened armor. Like a field of chopped up predators that alerted anyone that whoever did this was not going to play around. These were also still gooey and dripping with the smelly innards of the creature they were peeled off of and filled with… Something else.</p><p>"That's not the smell of centipede goo…" Mana realized as she turned her attention from the total lack of any remains of the archive to the field of insectoid remains stuck up on sticks and left hanging. Each one of them was as large as a human being so it did have a certain degree of creepiness and fear factor to it.</p><p>"Don't get distracted!" Zairyo shouted, "Is the archive here, or not?"</p><p>"It… It has to be…" Mana returned to the beautiful and pristine smooth grassy plains that laid where there was once ruins of an archive that had its own building as well as an underground facility. "It was here, this makes no sense, there was supposed to be at least some stony remains of the building. The way it looks now… Unless I was wrong, unless I got lost…" the magician looked away beginning to feel bad about wasting the Sannin's time. Once again she found a way to screw up.</p><p>"Are you okay?" Zairyo asked, his voice lacked empathy but it was curious and did have some feeling to it, Mana just wasn't sure what exactly it could've been.</p><p>"Not even remotely…" the magician admitted. "My friend paid the price for my gift, my sensei hates me and I am beginning to think that I've wasted your time…"</p><p>"What are you talking about? You got me right where you said you would get me." Zairyo smiled with a half-assed grin. Almost like he mocked the magician.</p><p>"No!" Mana shouted out. "No, this can't be it!" she walked past the stage of self-pity and began getting angry. "There has to be more to this place."</p><p>"There isn't. The Bailong scroll is just a big dud, my sources lied, let's go home." Zairyo sighed and began trekking back with his hands in his pockets and his multiple swords, tied around his belt, dangling.</p><p>"B-But that person, the one who killed those centipedes and that snake…" Mana wrapped her hands around her face, closed her eyes, even while her visual orbs were closed they were running around as she rapidly ran through multiple scenarios and theories in her mind, none of them making even a remote nick of sense.</p><p>"It's not here. It's gone. I can't see anything here but pristine well maintained grass and pear trees." Zairyo coughed, he had stopped in his tracks and angrily looked back at Mana, "Now let's go back. You're wasting your own time you could spend trying to catch up with your teammates who are now being trained quite extensively."</p><p>"Wait… Pear trees?" Mana looked up noticing the sudden change of the flora in the trees that the surrounding area contained. The girl placed her hands together in a hand seal position, "Dispel" she whispered as the smells of citrus and fresh air, also freshly cut grass as well as the sights of a well maintained forest ground decorated with pear trees faded like smoke.</p><p>"It was an illusion, not even a very good one. I'd have expected a genjutsu user identify one faster. Your mind really wasn't in the game." Zairyo once again just stated the fact coldly without any judgment behind his rather judgmental words. "Team problems and being the odd one in your pack is nothing special, you're the one who gives it too much meaning. Trust me, Hanasaku doesn't really hate you deep inside, neither do your friends. Maybe they think you're awkward or weird, Chestnut may not even like you but they don't care enough about you to hate you. No one truly hates people that don't mess with them with malice. I don't hate my own team that betrayed me because they didn't betray me because they hated me, they betrayed me because they wanted a way out."</p><p>Mana looked down feeling a bit ashamed but then she just smiled to herself before her face changed back to bitterness.</p><p>"That still doesn't qualify as "training"." She bitterly noted. "As far as I'm concerned you still ripped me off…"</p><p>"Was worth a shot…" Zairyo shrugged. "Still, I may want to pay you back, you may be useful in the future and useful people need to be kept happy so that they keep helping you in the future."</p><p>"And that's just… Mean and… Objectifying to people in general." Mana noted once again with disdain in her voice, not malicious one but more of the playful variety.</p><p>Without playing along Zairyo walked up to the demolished and caved in stony building of which only caved in floor remained. "What are the odds of the scroll making it?" he wondered.</p><p>"Not great…" Mana replied while sadly shaking her head.</p><p>"Earth Style: Mole Cricket!" the man chanted out weaving a pair of hand seals with his single hand while firmly holding the other on the endless layers of stone. The demolished stone pieces all shrieked in pent up pressure built up inside them before exploding in violent shrapnel that all got reduced to mere dust before it could hit anything. As the stone dust collapsed only a wide hole leading to total darkness remained.</p><p>"Stand back, arsehole, or de girlie gets it!" a loud and very distinctively south-western speaking voice alerted the Sannin who stood up from his accomplishment of opening up a hole to the archive without demolishing it any further and gazed upon the situation he ended up in.</p><p>Behind him holding Mana hostage with a long one edged blade to her neck and a knife to her lower abdomen was a good half a person sized rabbit standing on two feet. The rabbit had a darker and grittier shade of pink as its dominant fur color, a scar on one of its eyes and wore a very traditional warrior armor not seen on any ninja for hundreds of years. Its facial features looked pretty seasoned and serious despite its overall cuteness.</p><p>"It will be very difficult to "get her", having in mind she's holding you hostage…" Zairyo closed his eyes in disappointment in his enemy's skill as the person that the rabbit held as his hostage erupted in flower petals and a kunai was pressed against the rabbit's own throat from behind.</p><p>"Goddang it, damned hatchlin'!" the rabbit cursed. "I'ma kill ye when I get outta dis!" he kept on cursing which contrasted his cuteness. With a metal slick sound Mana's kunai found its way back in one of her hidden pockets while the magician grabbed the rabbit by its throat and began smothering it.</p><p>"Oy, oy, oy! I'm an esteemed warrior of de ninja-rabbits, tasked ta return da long lost Rabbit Contract scroll! You will stop treatin' me as a pet and unhand me at once, ye filthy hatchlin'!"</p><p>"Can I keep him around?" Mana asked enthusiastically giving her companion the puppy eyes.</p><p>"As long as you can keep him from killing you." Zairyo shrugged.</p><p>"Wait, what did you say your mission was?" Mana wondered after letting go of the giant two legged rabbit that angrily stared at her trying to behead the girl with sight alone. The rabbit reached for his sword but an annoyed growl by Zairyo made the ninja animal reconsider engaging the two ninja and further irritating the high ranking shinobi. Zairyo's immense hidden power and high rank was emanating so clearly that it soaked right through the rabbit's cells and was apparent even to a non-sensor.</p><p>"I am Usuzoku, the Rabbit Swordsman! I came from faraway lands 'ere ta recover a Rabbit Contract scroll stolen long ago, unless we sign da Contract with a powerful ninja, I fear we may go extinct and forgotten…" the cute rabbit rogue explained with utmost urgency in its working lagomorph cheeks.</p><p>"Wait, you mean to find it here?" Zairyo looked at the rabbit in confusion.</p><p>"Aye, de scroll is 'ere alright. The sneaky mongoose that dun stole it brought it here, where it remained hidden for centuries with the ninja rabbits unable to sign another contractor." Usuzoku nodded, despite his eyes being absolutely adorable, he was clearly believing in what he was saying and had absolutely no doubts that the scroll was here.</p><p>"Hundreds of years is a long time to not look for a stolen scroll…" Mana teased the rabbit, she just couldn't help but feel more cheerful around such a peculiar and strangely cute looking creature that felt as deadly as it was dainty.</p><p>"Ye stupid hatchling broad, we were deceived by de filthy mongooses! We had no idea it was 'ere ta begin with! Then there was also the matter of pride – after beating the mongooses we kinda felt like we didn' need no humans. We rabbits are a proud species of ninja animals! We figured that humans would line up to be our partners after beating dem pesky mongooses!" Usuzoku freaked out once again threatening Mana with his longsword before backing down himself. If rabbits could have growled, that was exactly what the pink furred rogue was trying to do at Mana.</p><p>"There was a war between ninja rabbits and ninja mongooses?" Mana asked curiously.</p><p>Usuzoku just screamed out loud with a cry of lost hope with a good mix of unhealthy pent up rage built up in her face. Then he turned away and hopped up to Zairyo who was just indifferently looking down at the ruined archive and back at the rabbit.</p><p>"So I assume it was you that lured that snake here? Killed those centipedes?" Zairyo looked around wondering.</p><p>"No, it was a filthy mongoose that dun did it! I found 'im and lopped its head off, I did! The darned bastard must've known I was sent here and came to relocate the scroll. Mongoose spies are slimy but intelligent – they are everywhere and know everything. They musta done somethin' to make humans forget about us too, no one went lookin' for us for ages!" Usuzoku growled angrily before nodding to himself.</p><p>"Who cares about any of this? I came here for the Bailong Contract scroll, not ninja rabbits…" Zairyo sighed in dissapointment.</p><p>Usuzoku pulled his ears hard, yanking them down in frustration as his jaw opened wide in shock. "Ye mean ye ain' even gonna sign our contract!?" the ninja rabbit shouted out in surprise. "Yer a damned solid ninja, we need summoners to thrive and return to our former glory!" the rabbit almost resorted to pleading but then he remembered his pride and quickly jumped back.</p><p>"I can sign it…" Mana raised a possibility.</p><p>"Screw you!" Usuzoku screamed out in frustration.</p><p>Mana looked aside disappointed that the cute rabbit refused her, "Fine, can I then maybe at least help you find the scroll? Most species hold their Contract scrolls in their respective sacred grounds and summon them when they need it."</p><p>"We did that, it was stolen by mongooses, ye filthy hatchlin' broad!" Usuzoku shouted back at Mana.</p><p>"Say, how powerful are you, rabbit?" Zairyo wondered.</p><p>Usuzoku stabbed his sword at the ground letting it get stuck in the forest soil as he leaned against it proudly. "I can split dis Oyth with dis 'ere sword as I stand!" he bragged.</p><p>"Fine. Someone like you sounds like something a fruit of "training" would be like, wouldn't you say, Mana?" Zairyo asked the girl only for the magician to nod in energetic agreement. "Therefore, if you sign this Rabbit Contract and acquire the ability to summon ninja rabbits, I will, by definition, have trained you…" Zairyo concluded his suggestion to Mana. Usuzoku visibly didn't like where this was going.</p><p>"The kid expressed genuine wish to help you finding your scroll. That's ninety nine more shits than I will ever give. Now let's go down there and look for that scroll." The Sannin annoyingly ordered the magician and the rabbit before leaping down into the hole he made earlier.</p><p>Mana smiled before looking teasingly at Usuzoku who just sheathed his sword behind his back and crossed his hands around his chest.</p><p>"Fine, I guess I'll let ye allow yerselves ta help me, just dis once 'ere time…" he concluded before following the magician behind and hopping into the hole together with Mana.</p>
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<a name="section0268"><h2>268. It's Not Like I'm A Friend Or Anything</h2></a>
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      <p>"It's in a remarkably great condition." Mana noted while looking around. Zairyo had used a ninjutsu technique that created a small light emitting sphere in his hand and walked up front, leading the way. At this point the trio were just wandering around the archive looking for the scroll that Usuzoku needed. "The centipede that used to block the entrance also appears to be gone…" the magician recalled the obstacle that prevented her from leaving the archive all the way back.</p>
      <p>"Aye, de centipede goo is a great delicacy for dem mongooses. I must admit its slimy qualities hold certain power over me too, however, da very fact that the mongooses find it alluring deters me." Usuzoku explained only for Mana to throw up a little bit of illusionary bile in her mouth. She had every right to despise the material, she once literally swam in it for her life and mission objective.</p>
      <p>Zairyo was obliviously nodding, when his eyes met Mana's questioning gaze he just shrugged, "What? It's rich in protein and food is scarce when you wander…" the man waved his hands feeling a bit on the defensive side.</p>
      <p>"So what if the scroll really is destroyed?" Mana wondered, "What happens to the ninja rabbits? Do they become just rabbits?"</p>
      <p>"Don' be stupid, ye dirty hatchling. We'd just make a new one." Usuzoku squinted at her fighting the impulse to physically hurt the magician.</p>
      <p>"So why didn't you make a new one when this one was stolen?" Mana scratched her head in confusion, also to remove the excessive number of cobwebs that tangled in her long dark hair.</p>
      <p>"Gee, I dunno, maybe it's because it's our Contract Scroll!? Why don't you humans build a new Hokage mountain and just blow this one to pieces fer no reason?" Usuzoku stopped and used his large toes to lift his body up to meet Mana's eyes on her level. The two just stared each other down for a while before Zairyo sighed in boredom.</p>
      <p>The man bit his thumb and quickly made a bunch of hand seals before driving his hand to the ground.</p>
      <p>"Summoning Jutsu!" he shouted as a cloud of smoke erupted after a loud pop of air and a flash of light. Where the smoke soon clear stood a pair of zebra-like looking creatures except they both stood on two hind legs and had strong looking horns on their foreheads. The creatures had completely red colored eyes which made the magician take a cautionary step back after the duo revealed themselves but then their expressions pacified somewhat and they just stared blankly at their summoner.</p>
      <p>"Help me find a Rabbit Contract Scroll. It's supposed to be here somewhere…" the man grumped it out to his ninja animals who quickly scattered through the archive that wasn't really even that large and could've been examined in a good twenty minutes of careful observation. Had the Sannin shared this part of the plan with the magician she'd have disagreed to further worsen this place's integrity.</p>
      <p>"Wait, you have a contract with ninja zebras?" Usuzoku stared at the recently performed summoning technique with shock. Almost like his entire life choices were just put into question.</p>
      <p>"Yeah. They're useful and quite powerful runners. This pair also possesses the horn mutation which is rare amongst the species, they are a valuable specimen." Zairyo shrugged.</p>
      <p>"YE IDIOT!" Usuzoku yelled out, for the first time the magician saw the rabbit being angry at someone else than her, "You can't be signed ta two species at once! Why did'ya even look for de damned Bailong scroll anyways if it's useless fer ya!?"</p>
      <p>"Huh? I once fought a guy who used both a snake and a panda summon. I thought you could sign to as many species as you can convince to sign it… I thought the one species rule is more of a recommendation to deepen the "bond" between the summoner and the animal or some bullcrap like that…" the Sannin explained his position only for Usuzoku to facepalm.</p>
      <p>"Un-frickin'-believable." The rabbit sung out to himself, "Ye idiot, ya can sign the individual contract with any number of given individual members of da species, but the species contract only works for one species at a time. Even if ya had found the Bailong contract it'd have been useless fer ya! Some summoner ninja choose to never sign the species contract, instead opting ta go for countless different individual contracts with different species. Dat's the idiot ye fought!"</p>
      <p>Two combined loud poofs interrupted the conversation. Both Zairyo and Usuzoku looked on ahead at the cloud of grey smoke with great shock.</p>
      <p>"What's that?" Mana wondered after a loud sizzling sound interrupted her own desire to nag her companions for answers.</p>
      <p>A powerful explosion lifted the floor in the particular area of Forest of Death up, opening up by making the ceiling of the ruined archive pop up like a lid of a pickle jar after the air pressure inside builds up however it was no air that caused this particular eruption of dirt and ground that rained from the sky together with a downpour of rock and paper.</p>
      <p>An arm erupted from the hole pulling out from underground a ponytail wearing man – the owner of said arm who was quite pissed judging from the expression on his face. In a moment's notice something, like a furious rocket, blasted out from underground in a pink flurry of fur and bladework, cutting and kicking air for the rabbit's little paws could get their hold on nothing else to cut to pieces. Zairyo picked himself up and got himself together, even if he was caught in the explosion he had little to no injury to his clothes, opting instead to augment his body and simply take the explosion instead of choosing to avoid it in some more wasteful manner. A sword found its way into the man's arm, gripped firmly the blade that extended past the hilt was of solid gold color with a hieroglyph positioned at the tip of the blade meaning "giraffe".</p>
      <p>"The scroll… It's… Gone…" Usuzoku cried out looking at the falling and still smoldering pieces of paper and leather that covered some of the scrolls' backs. "So many years of questing, so many investigations…" he still couldn't believe it as the animal tried to grab paper from paper but every single scrap burnt up just as it touched the paws of the poor crying animal.</p>
      <p>"Forget that, where's the kid?" Zairyo asked Usuzoku who kept on weeping over the raining storm of scorched knowledge that was never to be read by anyone again.</p>
      <p>"Heh, heh, heh, eat shit, ya stupid rabbit scum!" a sneaky laughter chuckled from behind. Usuzoku jumped up and turned around in a feat of acrobacy, foreseeing an attack from behind to come, which didn't come. Still, his aerial maneuver permitted by his immensely powerful lower body strength was remarkably impressive regardless.</p>
      <p>"Mongoose!" he hissed out in anger. "There's always another mongoose!" the rabbit growled to himself.</p>
      <p>"I assume you will take care of it?" Zairyo sighed before sheathing the sword. Even if the swordsman realized that the ninja animal that attacked him had greatly pissed him off, it was still a much more personal opponent for the pink rabbit rogue and the Sannin respected the rightful right of dibs for those with a personal history with an enemy.</p>
      <p>"Aye." The rabbit nodded before he pulled out his large sword with both of his ears by allowing them to wrap around the blade whilst the rabbit's own arms pulled out two smaller daggers from his belt holsters.</p>
      <p>The ninja mongoose that stood on an emptied centipede carcass stand brandished its claw gauntlets that had double clawed threat to them – one was the mongoose's natural claws, fully capable of decapitating a person or a large snake and fully capable of chakra imbuement due to their natural origin with them being a part of the mongoose's body. The other – steel claws were likely made from high tier chakra conductive alloy for they glowed bland blue – the color of base and lacking an elemental affinity chakra.</p>
      <p>Usuzoku leaped at his opponent clashing with them, using his large sword to distract and occupy the animal's gauntlets, placing two quick swipes from his short daggers that danced as fast as lightning. Soon the deceitful mongoose realized that there was no following that particular pair of daggers once the skilled eviscerator – Usuzoku the ninja rabbit got his hands on them.</p>
      <p>The mongoose quickly responded with a counterattack swiping with those clawed gauntlets of his. Usuzoku was no longer where the mongoose wished the rabbit to be, however, instead explosive tags of the rabbit himself sizzled trying to give this mongoose something of his own medicine. After the dirt and smoke picked up from the blast cleared out Usuzoku tried to survey his environment, there was nothing of the mongoose left.</p>
      <p>"Ye stupid mongoose!" Usuzoku yelled out as his ears flung the large two handed sword into the air and his hands quickly tossed the pair of blades up only for the rabbit's long ears to lock around them while the rogue's hands made hand seals. Once the long sword landed the switch was reversed and the rabbit hopped slightly slamming the ground with great force that sent a crushing shockwave through the surrounding area, powerful enough to make the ground bend and wave like an ocean and crushing the surrounding trees from the sheer immensity of the force passing through them, surfacing their underground roots in great quantity.</p>
      <p>"Earth Style: Exo-co-ét!" Usuzoku yelled out looking at the lifeless sack of flesh, fur and bones that got tossed out from underground. The rabbit lunged at the seemingly unconscious mongoose swinging his larger sword with the intention of cutting the ninja animal in two, just inflicting enough damage to kill it instantly and not letting it return to its native territory in case it was summoned here.</p>
      <p>Just as the sword was about to collide with the mongoose the unconscious body poofed into smoke revealing a clone. The real mongoose dived out from underground with some tears and cuts and an awkwardly hanging broken hind leg, having chosen to remain underground and take more damage from the earthquake technique than expose himself for the finishing blow.</p>
      <p>A red flash made Usuzoku flip over his axis and plummet down, on his chest a crimson X identified the scar he had received with the mongoose's curved blades bypassing his quick attempts at blocking as well as the primitive and limited armor that the rabbit wore. The rabbit smashed down with immense force, enough to kill any man but Zairyo did not choose to interfere knowing that such an impact would be close to nothing for someone of the rabbit's level of skill.</p>
      <p>"Enjoy oblivion, stupid rabbit dirtbag!" the mongoose laughed out. "Now that your Contract Scroll is gone no one will ever sign to you stupid rabbits, you may have won the war, but we – ninja mongooses have won the… Bigger war, comprised of smaller… Less important wars!"</p>
      <p>"One thing, ye filthy mongoose bastard…" Usuzoku huffed out as being tagged by his opponent's blade and the double threat manner of his strange weapon leaving a bigger wound than it reasonably should've had drawn most of his breath out. "I see ye ruined all of my centipede scarecrows, huh?" the rabbit asked while glancing around and seeing most of his centipede towers being toppled down.</p>
      <p>"That's right, I even toppled all of your stupid towers! No mongoose will ever allow anything built or given birth by a rabbit to stand! For every plan you make, there'll be a mongoose to ruin it all!" the mongoose was really enjoying his wickedness on top of a strong lower tree branch. Then the animal hopped down and brandished his weapons again preparing to go in for the finish.</p>
      <p>"So what yer sayin' is… Nothing's stoppin' me from doin' dis…" the rabbit leaned down, the mongoose leaped forward aiming to decapitate his opponent as Usuzoku's movements left countless of openings but the pink rabbit had concluded his movements faster, pulling on a handful of steel wire hidden underground.</p>
      <p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Usuzoku shouted out as the steel wire picked up on other loops of strings and more and more, triggering a chain reaction that soon locked around the mongoose's body and locked the ninja animal down to the tree. The rabbit charged up to the mongoose and lifted his ear-held blade up for the finishing strike before a loud wheezing and coughing of a young magician girl interrupted him and forced the rabbit to take a hop back and observe as Mana crawled out from underground moving like a caterpillar because the object she had her hands and legs wrapped around didn't let her use anything but her body and her head.</p>
      <p>"Hatchling…" Usuzoku declared the obvious in surprise.</p>
      <p>Zairyo just smiled feeling relieved that he would not have to confront Chestnut Hanasaku about one of her students dying to an explosive trap set up by a ninja mongoose.</p>
      <p>"You have the Contract Scroll!" Usuzoku suddenly realized as his eyes fell on a brown leather covered scroll with royal pink ribbons all around it and the hieroglyph for "Rabbit" being dyed on a white circle in purple colors – some of the most expensive colored paint found in the world.</p>
      <p>"I figured that you should've outraced that explosion, the only reason for you to have stayed was if you tried to find the scroll after the explosion triggered but before it reached us, then shielded it with your body…" Zairyo walked up to Mana and helped her get up as the magician was pretty banged up and her uniform had suffered some damage. A bunch of her cards were no longer held inside their pockets so they just scattered on the ground forcing Mana to pick them up and seal them inside her hat. Struggling to stay on her feet the magician stumbled up to Usuzoku and handed him the scroll that she had trouble holding in both of her extended hands.</p>
      <p>With genuine shock and tears in his eyes the rabbit took the scroll from Mana's hands and placed it in his back scabbard where his two handed sword previously was held. The rabbit took the sword and slammed it right above the mongoose's head, tying up all of the steel wire strings and with a twist of the blade locking them all around the sword.</p>
      <p>"That's odd…" Mana whimpered out with a weakened voice. "You've locked the trap up more firmly yet you also gave the mongoose a chance to escape. If he struggles long enough, in an hour or so he'll be able to escape the wire by having the sword cut through it." she explained.</p>
      <p>"Hmmm… That doesn't fit the profile you've painted for us…" Zairyo looked at the rabbit questioningly, "Did you really cut off the head of that mongoose before or did you make all of that up?"</p>
      <p>Had Usuzoku not had a dark pink fur with darker stripes all over it the two ninja could've seen the ninja animal blush in embarrassment.</p>
      <p>"Shuddup, ye filthy humans! I've killed a thousand mongooses, a million billion of dem over de years! I'm Usuzoku – da great rabbit hero warrior!" he shouted out hopping on his large feet just to shout from higher up position than the two humans talking to him.</p>
      <p>"Well, I guess that's that then. The brat fulfilled her end of the bargain, good luck with that whole rebirth of the ninja rabbits thing…" Zairyo waved as he started to slowly move back towards where the two entered the forest before.</p>
      <p>"Wait, what about the ninja zebra you've summoned?" Mana worried, "I couldn't find them down there… The explosion must've swallowed them first."</p>
      <p>"No. The summoned animal can return to their native territory as long as they were summoned to their location at that time. That's the sound you've heard before the explosion." Zairyo shook his head coldly, something made Mana wonder if the Sannin collector would've even cared all that much if these priceless zebra would have truly perished.</p>
      <p>"Wait…" Usuzoku touched Mana's shoulder as the magician took her first difficult and painful steps forward. "Da summoner of de species is a very special someone. De ninja animals don' just sign contracts wit' stupid hatchlings like you! Da summoner needs ta represent da species dey sign da contract with, advocate dem and make a name fo' dem!" the rabbit explained with a strict voice. Mana just smiled back.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, I know. Take care and best of luck finding that person…" she waved the rabbit goodbye, lifting her hand made Mana's ribs burn up but she really wanted to let the rabbit know that she had no hard feelings for the pink fellow, he was far too cute for anyone to hold anything against him.</p>
      <p>"Shuddup, ye stupid broad!" Usuzoku shouted out making Mana turn around while halfway having caught up with her companion. "Come 'ere an sign de damn thing!" he yelled out angrily while covering up his eyes with his ears, half the reason being so he couldn't see the person he hated so much signing the contract because he'd have done something stupid to hurt Mana if he saw it, the other was because he had round crystal orbs of tears running down his cheeks.</p>
      <p>Mana's eyes opened wide in happiness as she quickly stumbled back to the scroll and opened it. Just as the scrolls contents became visible a large brush got unsealed from inside the scroll and fell on top of it. Wielding the scroll was really difficult as it was a good deal larger than Mana herself but with moderate effort the magician scribbled her name on the empty signee spot before biting her finger and signing in the second row with blood.</p>
      <p>"Dere! Now ye can call on all of us that are willing ta answer yer call. Don' expect to see an elite warrior like me ever! I dun work with de likes 'a hatchlings like you! Just use the Summoning Jutsu whenever ya need us, we're now contractually bound as partners – the ninja rabbits are now your partners, hatchling, don' make light deal of it!"</p>
      <p>Mana scratched her chin before slapping her forehead.</p>
      <p>"Sorry, Zoku-chan, this won't work…" she realized. The rabbit slammed the giant brush against Mana's face splattering paint all over and making Mana tumble back into a tree from the force of impact.</p>
      <p>"Call me dat again, I dare ya! Why de frick won' it work? The Summoning Jutsu is simple, even a total twit can do it!" Usuzoku yelled out.</p>
      <p>"Yeah… But I don't like using jutsu I didn't invent unless it's a life or death situation, I will most likely never use the Summoning Jutsu ever… Sorry." Mana bowed for the rabbit to the ground realizing that she had already signed the scroll and it was too late to go back.</p>
      <p>Usuzoku hopped up to Mana's hat and peeked inside.</p>
      <p>"It's a B-Rank storage seal, ain' it?" he wondered.</p>
      <p>"Yes, my father made it and I can seal and unseal things from it as I please, it was modified to be useable by me even though I couldn't replicate it even if I wanted to. I use it out of respect for my father and his gift." Mana explained feeling curious as to what the rabbit had in mind.</p>
      <p>Usuzoku put his paw inside the hat before it disappeared far past its bottom and a shine of purple right erupted from it. The rabbit rogue then took some blood off his chest wound and let some of it drip into the hat before the seal began glowing more intensely and closed down.</p>
      <p>"If yer stupid rules allow ye to use dis thing 'ere, now ya can summon us from just using the seal by first summoning us into the storage seal's pocket space, then pulling us out. It'll cost ye some more chakra but it's not like you care, do ye, ya stupid hatchling?" Usuzoku explained before tossing the top hat back to Mana and quietly beginning his journey back to wherever ninja rabbits were naturally located.</p>
      <p>"Mana!" Zairyo's voice broke the magician out of her daydreaming, "Come on, we've got some decent distance to cover before nighttime, you don't want to stay here past then…" he reminded the kunoichi. Mana picked herself up and quickly limped back to her companion, still feeling a bit banged up.</p>
      <p>The total result of that day was overall much more entertaining and fruitful than the magician had initially foreseen them to be!</p>
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<a name="section0269"><h2>269. Shadows Of Greater Things</h2></a>
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    <p>Reading on history of the Great Settlement period was always quite the fascinating subject for Mana. After all, while reading the words "Great Settlement period" made it sound so ancient and integral to the entirety of the ninja village history, truth be told it happened less than four hundred years ago. Compared to the totality of the history it was a completely meaningless step that barely even lasted enough to be seen on a total scale of the cosmic totality. A miniscule space-dust in a vast universe that to the magician glowed deceitfully brightly because it was integral for her own existence.</p><p>Even if four hundred, give or take, years didn't sound like much on the historic scale, actually it was quite something in the hectic mess of recent history. The Hokage came and gone, from Fourth to Sixth, the reign of the Fifth breezing through in a record shortage of time. Most of the early heads of villages ruled for their entire lifetimes which were quite impressive. More impressive still having in mind their hectic periods during which they lived.</p><p>"Hey…" a shy voice alerted Mana that someone had entered the archive and wanted not to consult an old book but instead to talk to her. After the magician took a glance back she decided to close the book and divert all of her attention to Meiko who was tapping her foot impatiently. Normally the blacksmith would have annoyed the folks doing their research here with the annoying and repetitive foot tapping but she was lucky that it was sort of work hours and very few people fit the criteria of both being off work and giving enough shits to read ancient scrolls in the Konoha Archive.</p><p>"Oh, you're back already?" the magician exclaimed in surprise as she pointed a seat nearby to her friend. Frankly, it should've looked a bit confusing and offensive. After all the place was damn empty so if Meiko wanted to sit she needed no pointers as to where to settle down. Sometimes Mana did some technically understandable things that, given the social context were just too embarrassing to remember for no reason at all and this may have gone under the shelf of moments not unlike those very ones.</p><p>"We were just gone for a weekend. I mean tomorrow's the sign-ups for the exams… How have things been on your side?" the redhead asked. Mana had to get used to Meiko's moves no longer causing clangs of her armor clanking against other pieces as the girl was now wearing a much more casual tracksuit and not a single steel plate in sight. Meiko even looked a bit thin, if not somewhat tomboyish, without her armor, the magician was used to seeing this firm, stiff and masculine brutish shape whenever she looked at Meiko's armored frame which now simply was not there.</p><p>"Well… The Zairyo thing was kind of a bust. Picked up one new skill in particular but… Doing my own training most of the time, you?" Mana went on to be honest without going into too much detail. Maybe she should've – after all Meiko was a teammate and would've benefited from knowledge of the magician's ability to call on ninja animals as partners. Still, knowing Meiko, she'd have simply gone off rail and overly hyped over the animals and the ninja rabbits were so cute that Mana would've simply never shook Meiko off her tail, begging to summon more and more cute bunnies until Mana would've been dry. Mana knew her friend at least that well…</p><p>"Oh… Too bad." Meiko looked away extending her lips into an artificial duck beak with her eyes jumping all around the place. She smelled of ashes, oil and coals but also something sweeter, something very honey-like or waxy. If calls were to be made Mana would've guessed from Meiko's change of attire and still blackened cheeks as well as the collection of smells on her that she was working in the father's forge.</p><p>"How was training with Hokage-sensei? I bet you guys left me in the dust…" Mana tried lightening up the mood by commending her friend on her implied growth but she was very wary about treading those grounds. Normally, Meiko would've been training so close to Chuunin Exams, if she wasn't, and instead spent her time in the forge, it meant that either the work was of profound importance or that something really bad had happened out there.</p><p>"Can't vouch for that… I messed up a Transformation Jutsu again, it was a total bust. The only good thing to come out of that was that me and Kiyomi got to kick some nukenin ass of some wandering girl with an oversized sword and her creepy friend." Meiko mooed out almost humming the words as if she regretted sharing the experience but really had to do so. Mana sighed and extended her hand over Meiko's shoulder and rubbed it gently, trying to calm her friend down a bit.</p><p>"Did you take them in?" Mana smiled, choosing instead to direct the talk all the way to the nukenin fight because that way Meiko would simply not delve deeper into the darkness of her own belittlement as she often did when things didn't work out in the chakra control department.</p><p>"Nah, they didn't seem like doing harm. They were just looking for a fight or something, I don't think the zombie kid was even wishing for a fight but that swordsman girl was a savage…" Meiko sighed.</p><p>"That sounds like… Trouble, actually…" Mana sarcastically cheeked her friend's statement that the encounter was innocent when in fact it sounded anything but.</p><p>"I dunno, it just… Felt right letting them go. The blonde had the opening to kill us multiple times but something was wrong with her, she didn't strike me in the back or attack Kiyomi when she was lying down, she waited for us to face her or stand back up. She felt like… Not right in the head or something. Turning her in felt like putting down a sick animal." Much to Mana's frustration Meiko was beginning to sound less and less cheerful, luckily after she finished focusing on the moral implications of letting two rogue ninja walk free, something that couldn't have went very well with Kiyomi, implying she had little say in the matter, and focused on the fighting experience she was beginning to brighten up a bit.</p><p>"Oh, I can't believe I forgot…" Meiko then turned around and looked into her backpack, oddly she faked her hesitance to confront the magician with whatever lead Meiko into an over glorified library, of all places, and changed it into forgetfulness. "I made this for you." She smiled innocently before presenting the magician with a tool or a very blunt looking weapon.</p><p>It was an elbow-to-wrist long wand of very soft feeling, burgundy colored steel tip which shined from its sharpness and lead all the way to a narrowing which ended with an azure Audra steel orb on the top. It had a rabbit-like face decorated from a silver layered tougher material which made Mana suspicious. After examining the weapon she realized just what it was.</p><p>"You reworked it…" was all she said. Judging from Meiko's face the redhead understood and felt rather bad about it but still wanted Mana to have it. It was the sort of useless self-loathing Mana felt with the whole Kiyomi's wedding debacle, Meiko clearly understood that remolding Shimo's very soul into a wand could've been taken the absolute worst way but she didn't regret gifting it to Mana in that manner.</p><p>"I… I told you I was borrowing it, that I'd give it back once your hands were more suitable to wield it than mine. You're a magician, magicians should be using wands, not blacksmiths. I put a cute rabbit face on there out of the blade's hilt, it uhhh… Just seemed suited for a stage magician. It's completely chakra conductive also, it can take blows from conductive weaponry better than the original ever could, it won't break that way after a couple of blocks…" Meiko sat still, thinking over something in her mind, "Still… Don't… Go out of your way looking for ways to break it… It might just break if you toss it into a… Tailed Beast's condensed chakra blast or something…"</p><p>Mana's eyes teared up, she carefully placed the wand on the table by the books and hugged Meiko in gratitude.</p><p>"My father worked on that orb on top. It's what is known as "120%" alloy, Kirikuzu molecular tinkering and all, he condensed more of the blade into that one orb. It's really intensely pulsing with chakra every time you give it some, I dunno, maybe you'll use it for jutsu or something. I recon you telling me about something to catch the victim's attention when casting an illusion, maybe it can be used that way…" Meiko shrugged. Her smile betrayed that she was really glad that Mana didn't flip out over her melting Shimo's sword and making a whole new artifact from the materials.</p><p>"Awww… You were listening, really breaking my heart here." Mana smiled before examining the wand again.</p><p>The lights died out, only the natural reflection of the moon in the dark evening sky broke through the narrow windows of the archive. It was the archive keeper's fancy way of saying that the place was closing down for visitors. Looking at the moonlight made the magician a bit uneasy.</p><p>"Ummm… What time is it?" she wondered.</p><p>"I dunno, 'round eight, I guess…" Meiko shrugged.</p><p>The magician's face paled she quickly took the wand and sealed it inside her hat before flipping the thing on and picking up all the books in a rushing erratic manner.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Meiko wondered. "The signups are tomorrow at two-thirty…"</p><p>"No! I need to be at a show right now, this wand was so amazing that I got distracted!" the magician yelled out.</p><p>"Can I come?" Meiko followed the magician as she rushed to place the books in their right stands and then rushed out through the entrance door and to the keeper.</p><p>"I'd bully you into it if you didn't…" Mana laughed out, having someone with her now that Kouta was obsessed with training and Kiyomi looked like she had a couple of problems with the magician the last time for flunking them in the survival training felt really amazing. The loneliness and dealing with rejection by people around her these past couple of days made it really difficult to feel hopeful about the future and when the future inspired no hope there was a big problem which demanded quick changes.</p><p>Mana dreaded the next day to come, not because of what was supposed to happen during the day itself but for what it meant. The sign-ups for the Chuunin Exams was a rather formal procedure, their team was already signed up by the team's leader and approved by the village administration. Either way, even if the sign-ups were just a highly formal procedure it still meant that nothing would be the same anymore.</p><p>It wasn't that the Team Hokage wouldn't be children anymore, they were so far past that point that it was not even funny. It was that it meant that the village genin, if only for the duration of examination that could've lasted a whole month, if not longer, would be competitors. The only friends Mana would have were her team, her very own boyfriend was even her possible opponent in the exams. It was impossible to analyze and predict just what would happen during the Chuunin Exams, the tests were usually different each year with the patterns mixing or repeating every couple of years or so.</p><p>With a hesitant step, after a long and grueling morning of meditation training releasing all the pent up masses of built up chakra resources that were completely unused until a strong direct pulse released them into Mana's own chakra network, fooling her body that these were her natural chakra demands which greatly increased the produce of the resource in the future, effectively increasing her chakra level by a bit more, Mana treaded out into the village. Almost instantly the atmosphere outside was completely different.</p><p>The village streets were totally tidy, paper and neon signs were all over the place, hung up almost overnight with a good portion of them still being hung up. People unlike any Mana had ever seen before were walking around in ridiculously slow paces and pointing fingers at various structures, monuments and momentous places of the village. People of different colors, clothing, builds and facial features, people from all over the world and from far away. This felt so burning up bad inside. So many foreigners meant that this year's exam would be bigger than usual, more competition meant more chance to fail and higher up bar she needed to vault over.</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko were sitting on a bench nearby Mana's place with ice cream in hands. Late autumn was a very curious time to eat ice-cream, Meiko usually ate anything that was in her path, no questions raised, so this had to be Kiyomi's idea.</p><p>"Mana!" Kiyomi shouted out jumping on her feet and quickly finishing up her ice cream before wiping her hands into a hanky she then tossed out. Even if the blonde had some pent up frustration over how the training with Hanasaku went, she definitely didn't show it now.</p><p>"Wow, big and varied crowd…" Mana uneasily replied after the greetings were out of the way, examining the influx of people wandering the streets.</p><p>"Yep! Have to be the biggest Chuunin Exams in fifty years! Judging from what I'm seeing even teams from Getsugakure have made it through the selection of teams!" Kiyomi shrieked out looking really pumped and excited about the event.</p><p>"Yeah, not really like you to get scared of crowds, Mana." The blacksmith curiously stated before finishing up her ice cream and then wiping the remains on her cheeks and lips into her sleeves, or with her hands to her trousers.</p><p>"No, I guess I'm a bit glad, really…" the magician shrugged. The three got together into an actual team and began their trek to the given out address of a small office building collecting the teams' own signatures. It was a very odd and highly formal procedure meant to affirm the members' own desire to participate in the Exams.</p><p>"Glad? You look like peeing your pants." Meiko pulled the magician through the cheek.</p><p>"I mean… The challenge is a bit daunting but… So many villages participating this year in Konoha's Chuunin Exams, that means that more villages than usual are considering themselves as Konoha's allies. The world is growing closer together and that's wonderful." Mana had to admit with a realization that calmed her down somewhat and made her a bit more willing to tackle the challenges ahead.</p><p>"Allies? Growing closer together?" a rude voice behind interrupted forcing the three to turn around and face the hooded figures. Their skins were of much darker shade than that of any locals, similar to that of Mana's yet nowhere near the complexion of a Kumogakure ninja. "Get real, a lot of villages simply can't put together their own Chuunin Exams and must rely on kissing Konoha's ass to rank their talents up. How much closer do you think Kirigakure is to the Great Villages, a village beaten into submission and denied this year's entry?"</p><p>The young man with a verily annoying voice which reminded the sound equivalent of a rusty sickle being rubbed against the brick wall if given voice removed his hood revealing a tattooed face with rich and thick locks of black as tar hair extending past his chest and back. His two teammates also removed their hoods, the female one with long and silky silver hair pulled her teammate back.</p><p>"Come on, Mr. Political Activist, let's not cash out checks we haven't even signed yet…" the young woman pulled the young man by his elbow further ahead.</p><p>"Doma has a point, though. All requests and applications were judged by Konoha Administration. What makes them good enough to tell the wheat from the chaff? Why did our team make the entrant cut but so many did not?" a much deeper and stronger voice of a man who still remained hooded spread across making Mana shake a little, something about the large individual just felt off.</p><p>"It's the fees, our village sent only the best teams because each additional team sent to be examined taxes the village more." The young woman started explaining it to her much more frustrated and trouble-looking friends as she quickly dragged the two far enough away for them to not pick a fight with anyone around.</p><p>"How is that okay with any…" Mana still held feint leftovers of the rebellious one's voice before they were too far for her perception to keep track off and the trio drowned in the surrounding cacophony of the crowd around them.</p><p>"Didn't see their headbands, I wonder what village these guys are from…" the magician finally shot the awkward silence its kneecaps off.</p><p>"A lot of poorer village ninja don't show off their headbands, it's not a thing to be proud of…" Kiyomi depressingly explained. "The meaning of the headband in general is as a badge of honor, they are worn and required by etiquette only during an honorable sparring match. Other times it's just a sign to identify someone by, a mean to draw labels."</p><p>The trio then resumed their trip to the sign up office. Oddly enough it was in a highly forgettable office building which was etched right in between two blocks of flats, a long queue was beginning to build up outside. Could've been more than a hundred people long and the waiting conditions inside couldn't have been overly comfy.</p><p>"Well, let's buckle up, here comes the toughest part of the exam – waiting in line." Kiyomi shrugged with a playful smile, it wasn't hard to tell that the Yamanaka felt fairly confident in her skills of passing the Exams and ranking up. Even with her immensely cautious nature Mana had to admit that Kiyomi was quite just in her expectations to rank highly amongst the examined teams. All three members of the Team Hokage had experience in spades surpassing that of most reasonable examined genin participants. They could've both held their own against Chuunin and sometimes even did. The magician only hoped that their overly confident nature, even if righteous one, did not turn out to be their downfall.</p><p>Chestnut Hanasaku had made it crystal clear that after the Exams the magician had nowhere else to go. For that reason Mana had to pass, no matter the cost. She's been through enough teams and had seen too many of them crumble, with a little luck Team Hokage could tumble the whole way through the treacherous pass before their wobbly bridge crumbles down…</p>
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<a name="section0270"><h2>270. Just Strawberry Jelly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I'm hungry!" Meiko yelled out in an annoying tone, the likes of which is given by nature to babies to be so annoying that they raised their very parents from dreams, sweet and horrific alike, in order to feed them.</p><p>"Yes, let us leave from this point of the line and just dump everything to stuff your cute belly up. That's why you're not the main strategist of our team…" Kiyomi cheeked at Meiko playfully poking the blacksmith's abdomen with her thumb, something the blacksmith found hilarious as she began to chuckle like a baby whose parent was blowing air in a tickling manner on their abdomen.</p><p>"Manaaaa!" Meiko mooed like a bored cow.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I have to agree with Kiyomi on this one. This is very tiresome but it's a part of the process." The magician could only innocently shrug at her friend advising her to get herself together and toughen up.</p><p>"Hey, isn't that Kouta? Could we maybe ask him to let us cut the line behind him!?" Meiko's eyes began to wonder, as did those of children when they were denied their capricious desires and were looking for satisfaction of their very down to earth fix on colors and noises elsewhere.</p><p>Mana's eyes unwillingly wandered a bit further down the line as she took a couple of steps forward since one more chain of the line had filled up the documents and left. Indeed the young man she had feelings for was standing around and chatting with two other people farther in front. One of his friends was a tall and equally fit to Kouta young man with a large sword on his back and a messy hairdo of dark purple shades that extended well past the young man's shoulders. The swordsman's affinity for denim could literally not escape the observer's eye either.</p><p>"Wow, that guy is pretty hot!" Kiyomi smiled shyly while messing up her own hair by rubbing her ponytail with her hand out of emotional and physical tension.</p><p>"His sword looks pretty amazing too, look at those curves, the craftsmanship, the rugged material of the scabbard!" little stars lit up in Meiko's eyes as her slobbering tongue very nearly escaped the confines of the blacksmith's mouth.</p><p>Despite her friends' mad obsession with the young man Kouta was talking to, whom Mana also secretly found to be quite a looker, though with more success concealing that, her own attention easily focused on the very energetic young girl with braided grey hair and flaring heavenly palm leaf colored eyes.</p><p>"That guy may be pretty hot, but I'll never betray you, Meiko!" Kiyomi jokingly slapped the blacksmith's back to which the blacksmith responded by catching the Yamanaka's arm halfway back to neutral position and bending it in a very uncomfortable hold. Ignoring the childish squabble of the two friends of hers, Mana kept her eyes on the short young soul who wore a very pocket and pouch heavy belt with a beetle-themed buckle that had fake plastic gemstones in it. Something uncomfortable was beginning to stab at Mana's lung from deep inside, ripping and tearing as it crawled all the way to her throat beginning to gnaw and attempt its escape from deep down.</p><p>"Smelly Mana, eating vermicelli, nothing but a belly full of J-E-L-L-Y… Shit, doesn't rhyme nearly as well as it did in my head…" Kiyomi smacked herself in the face after realizing she messed up the modified childish tease.</p><p>"Jelly? I'm not jealous, why would I be jealous?" Mana pouted crossing her arms on her chest, hiding the fact that she may have been immensely jealous of the attention that the young female teammate of Kouta's must've received as the three looked to be pretty close, likely from training they've been doing together.</p><p>"Mmmm… Jelly…" Meiko began daydreaming and humming a tune from some strawberry jelly commercial she once saw on the primitive boxes that passed for television in her universe. A far cry compared to the sophisticated panels of the Naruto universe Mana had visited some time ago…</p><p>"Look, it's fine, trust me, as someone who once tried romancing that scumbag Eiju, I. of all people, know jealousy." Kiyomi teased the magician, one of very few things that the Yamanaka future heiress found entertaining in this immensely slobby day which wasn't even close to being likely to get better soon.</p><p>"It's just… He pushed me away, I'm not mad at him, I don't feel anger or think badly about that teammate of his or anything it's just… It hurts… Being alone." Mana sighed sadly.</p><p>"Heh, we should go out and shop for clothes or something, that much is long overdue…" Kiyomi grinned in a suggestive tone.</p><p>"Nah, I'm fine, I have like five more T-Shirts left that aren't even torn once…" Meiko dismissed with a mouth full of a chocolate bar she remembered in her backpack. "Though my ninja kit supplies are running bit thin, refilling it often feels like a chore. Guess it'd feel better if a friend was there with me, feel more compelling, you know?"</p><p>"Done." Mana smiled pleasantly struggling to move her completely irrational feelings of hurt and dismissal deeper down. Something she knew never lead to good as that which was shoved to the bottom of the luggage always resurfaced with a boom which ended up tossing the clothes all over the room.</p><p>At least the other girls completely forgot about asking Mana to get them to skip the line. After a long and just as tedious of a wait as it sounds the three finally approached what seemed like the upper part of the line. Once Kouta and his team had finished signing up for the exams and left with a bunch of documents in their hand the two shared a bunch of uncomfortable looks. Luckily enough Kiyomi's playful "Hello" directed at the medical ninja's moody eyed yet upbeat lipped friend distracted and cheered Mana up a little.</p><p>"I could beat him in a fight, you know…" Meiko crossed her arms on her chest raising an eyebrow.</p><p>"I never doubted it for a second…" Kiyomi giggled.</p><p>"There are so many ninja here… From all over the world." The magician raised her eyebrow noticing a couple of her old classmates in the Academy – Inuzuka Kidenshi and Aburame Juhi further back in the line as well as a bunch of strange looking people wearing the Kumogakure headbands like an albino boy with a flashy training hoody and torn up halfway green hat that reminded more of a sock. Then there were some very tough looking young men and women from Iwagakure, several of them wore battle armor similar to Meiko's but with much flashier designs and tougher looking alloys as Iwagakure was the country of the most luxurious gemstones and rarest minerals as well as the most plentiful steel markets. Some headbands like the one on the head of a short young man with spiky brown hair and a very early stubble of facial hair the magician couldn't even identify. Having in mind that the symbol on it looked like a star they must've been from the Hoshigakure – the Village Hidden in the Stars but Mana only assumed that much and didn't confidently know it.</p><p>Finally the three were called up to an office in the second floor, after waiting their time and slowly ascending a spiraling staircase all the way up there. The three girls were gestured to sit down and take up the pens that were placed in front of them.</p><p>"So… You three are an all-girl team, huh? That's a bit unusual, must be a custom requested team, let's see… Oh boy, I see now, kinda feel bad, the expectations must be immense!" the office worker tried making some small talk as he struggled to input the endless tables and pictures into his computer. The digital advancements were at a very early and experimental stage… The man of course noted of the fact that the trio was gathered by the Fifth Hokage by her requesting each and every member of the team instead of them being assigned to her. Then he noticed Mana in her typical magician's uniform.</p><p>"Oh, big fan…" he smiled before giving them a bunch of papers to sign. "We actually had a test in mind for this stage, maybe a bit of good old misdirection about the office's coordinates or a riddle but given how many entrants there are into this year's exams… We'd be here all night." The man smiled before wiping his sweaty forehead with a hanky.</p><p>"Yeah, what's with that?" Kiyomi wondered after putting her signature down and gently handing the office worker the documents.</p><p>"Well, it appears that a lot of teams in other villages missed the timing of their own Chuunin Exams and opted not to wait for three whole years until the next ones. A lot of them chose to instead send Konoha their applications after finding out that we're holding one just now." The man smiled before admiring the endless piles of documents he had filled up on his desk. "Over a hundred and fifty teams this year, goddamn insane, usually we barely get one fifth of that to begin with, by the time the finals roll down there are supposed to be ten or so genin left… Will be a tough competition this year."</p><p>"What do you mean?" Meiko relaxed on the back of her chair, very nearly opting to raise her legs on the poor office man's table but then somehow finding the common sense to not do that.</p><p>"Don't you get it? The more competitors there are, the stricter the rules are, the tougher the tests must be to eliminate so many people…" Kiyomi explained with her face souring up and getting serious all of a sudden. "On one hand it hardly seems fair, the one year I finally make it in time and am ready to participate is the toughest year ever, on the other, there would've never been any competition otherwise, bring it on!" the smiled as the blonde's face shifted from seriousness to hype.</p><p>"That's not all we've heard." Mana couldn't settle down and fill her papers. "A lot of more obscure villages are also participating but only because they have no funds to host such an event themselves. What's that all about?" she remembered the unpleasant encounter outside.</p><p>"Ah, yes. You see… Every hidden village wishes to breed many high ranking ninja, it's a competitive market, a village must attract clients to come to them with their missions. If a small village doesn't have the funds to host the Chuunin Exams of their own, that may be a problem because they'll be stuck with a bunch of low ranking ninja and incapable of competing. It's a sad cursed circle that leads only to oblivion…" the office man stroke his too scarcely shaved stubble and then wiped his sweating forehead again. Even if outside was almost total winter conditions the heating inside and the tense schedule kept the poor man sweating out of his last trousers, thankfully, not literally.</p><p>Mana contemplated the sad and depressing situation before signing the papers and being given more and more files to sign.</p><p>"Alright, this looks like it's all set!" the office man checked through the signed papers and placing them amongst the pile of the completed ones. "There'll be a written test tomorrow at three PM, we thought of omitting it this year because the usual gimmicks were getting stale but… With this number of teams? No way, that shit is definitely happening…" the man rubbed his tired eyes before wishing the girls farewell.</p><p>"So I assume there'll be no more shows until the exams are over?" the office man then asked one final question before Mana was almost out the door.</p><p>"I think so, I really need to pass this one…" Mana admitted.</p><p>"Doesn't everyone? Anyways, too bad. It'd be a good chance to show your tricks off to a vastly different international crowd, a business opportunity, you know…" he smiled before returning to the papers.</p><p>"Yeah." Mana just nodded. After apologizing herself and wishing the man the best of luck she then finally left. Almost instantaneously a feeling of liberation hit her chest – the excessive wait was finally over! Then again, it was followed by a sense of looming threat not too long after. The Chuunin Exams were here at last, and as she said to the overworked gent in the office – she absolutely had to pass or else she'd get booted off the team.</p><p>That evening Mana was meditating. She hadn't done this in a long time, something was very off with her Ego stage. The meditational stage where she could almost communicate with her entire body, like she could view it all in the shapes of an infinite cosmos with stars, large flaring ones and little dwarf white ones. This wasn't how her body usually looked, how it was supposed to be. The magician tried looking around, browse the endlessly vast spaces of her own inner mind and figure out what was wrong but she couldn't influence those stars.</p><p>Usually, when she was in a state of complete calm of mind and tranquility she could not only see the flaring supernovae of the problems in her body but she could somewhat focus her own body and prioritize it into fixing them. It was a promising meditational skill which may have one day made Mana skilled enough to overcome the effects of poison or especially powerful illusion through the power of her mind and communication with her body alone. Now this was nowhere near to being the case. She was stuck just watching at the stars, large and small scattering around like she had absolutely no control over them anymore…</p><p>A large, bursting with nuclear reactions, like fiery dragon heads extending from it, star closed in to Mana. The magician tried to wrap her mind around it, to comprehend the size and the absolute might of it but she couldn't. The kunoichi was abruptly woken up from her meditation screaming. Her father was standing right in front of her with a curious set of eyes and an eyebrow or two raised, clearly wanting an explanation for Mana's distress.</p><p>"I'm working on meditating battle scenarios in my mind…" Mana lied shyly, allowing herself to be seen like that by father felt embarrassing, she just wanted to burrow herself deep underground and never come out. "Not going too well…" she then kept on talking just to distract her and her father from the game of "catch the liar".</p><p>"Hmph, sure…" father's eyebrow raise sharpened, "One "Juugo Kouta" has come to see you. I assume you know him?" he wondered.</p><p>"Now!? Here!?" Mana jumped up on her feet and ran downstairs.</p><p>Mother with the richest ironic smile was feeding the young boy some of the remaining chicken wings that the family had for dinner. The magician could only imagine how much the boy had told her mother over the moments they were left alone. Chicken wings were a powerful interrogation device. Kouta may have been mighty but to someone who loved food as much as he did the battle was hopeless.</p><p>"So you and my daughter are… A thing, huh?" the woman smiled staring at Mana while the boy was stuffing his face full, completely unaware that the magician got downstairs. "I seem to have heard something of this manner but it's strange that she never invited you over…" the woman's eyes sharpened, they were actual knives stabbing at Mana's general direction.</p><p>"Mhm…" the Juugo finally stuffed whatever was in his mouth down before noticing Mana had come. His childish glee of being treated to some tasty chicken switched to embarrassment and shyness.</p><p>"You're not too subtle about it…" Mana bitterly cut him down trying to look and act angry.</p><p>"Hmmm? Well, I tend to be a pretty simple guy, I answer what I'm asked…" Kouta innocently shrugged with a smile on a face that the magician just physically couldn't be angry at.</p><p>"That's why you were invited in and fed chicken, instead of being sent off. My husband is quite in a sour mood since his injury." The woman sighed.</p><p>"So…" Kouta let on dragging before switching into a playful whistle, "Ummm… These are good." He noted, switching the subject from what he came here for to compliments about food.</p><p>"Yeah? Mana mostly made those. God knows where she improved this much, you'd have never believed her horrendous cooking before a short while ago… Well, I'll leave you two alone for a while…" the woman shrugged before making her way out the kitchen.</p><p>Kouta stopped eating and wiped his face and his greasy fingers before an uncomfortable silence took over. Mana just couldn't realize why would he come here now of all times, right when he should've been at the peak of his training.</p><p>"Look… I told Budoki, a teammate of mine, about our last encounter… She has a habit of being interested and invested into our relationship. She sorta informed me that I'm an idiot and that I need to apologize and make it up to you." Kouta uncomfortable explained.</p><p>"You don't. My reaction was illogical and overblown. The Chuunin Exams are important for both your own career and the interests of the village." Mana shook her head sadly. Seeing her boyfriend here, for some reason, just hurt her more. Her own wrongness and immaturity being rubbed in her face, the young man feeling like he had to apologize for something the magician felt.</p><p>"That is true but… I shouldn't have let it cut into the middle of our date. Now our bad-to-good date ratio is kinda lame." Kouta uncomfortably stroke the back of his head. "Also I don't care who was right or wrong, it hurt you, I don't want you to feel hurt."</p><p>For the second time that day, the magician felt that uncomfortable entity inside her claw at her innards from in her guts, her lungs and throat. Trying to cause her so much discomfort and pain that she'd cry like a little baby. No. She wouldn't cry. Mana's hands wrapped around Kouta, she calmly whispered to his ear and backed up a bit, feeling uncomfortable about her position since father was walking past the kitchen to check if the door was locked.</p><p>"Tomorrow's the written test, you want to stay over?" Mana asked with a smile, realizing that maybe just this once she could balance the young man's training with their relationship as no one was quite sure what the written test would be about.</p><p>"Awww… I'm really not feeling confident about that. No one knows what that'll be about, father said they usually mess with one's mind in those and make up crazy tests that aren't as much quizzes as they are psychological torture." Kouta sighed looking into the dark starry night's sky and observing the dance of the late autumn snowflakes outside. His eyes actually looked pretty worried.</p><p>The boy turned his head back once a surprising sensation of warm and gentle worms wrangling around his hand alerted him. It was just Mana placing her hand on top of his and wrapping her fingers around it locking them both together. "You don't really have to shoulder that alone." she faintly whispered. Exerting a very minimal amount of force the girl slowly lead the young man upstairs to her room.</p><p>Father, following the two with his eyes briefly wrapped his still aching and wounded arm around his wife's frail figure and pressed her to him only for the woman to rest her head on his shoulder while the two kept on blindly switching the channels. The man placed the remote down settling down on a funny strawberry jelly commercial, feeling the chill of an approaching winter biting at him, the man breathed in and out living in this moment in time, letting his roots in completely.</p>
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<a name="section0271"><h2>271. Trypanophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana gently pressed on the shoulder of her friend's body, the young medical ninja was totally passed out on the table with his head pressed at a book he was reading. This was odd as the magician couldn't remember Kouta reading anything before she finally went to sleep last night. He must've either lingered for a bit longer than she did or woke up early to study.</p><p>"What time is it?" the young ninja smacked his lips before flipping the book closed and shoving it aside. A moment later he began feeling a little bit bad about passing out right on top of Mana's book.</p><p>"Wake up 'o clock. Really shouldn't have read that, they won't test us on books we've read or math. It won't be a basic knowledge quiz." Mana sighed in playful irritation over her boyfriend's refusal to listen to what she told him yesterday.</p><p>"Can't know that…" the boy objected after finding his shirt and quickly slipping into it and carelessly stroking his hair using his hand in front of the mirror in Mana's room.</p><p>"Yes I can. The Exams are not quiz shows, they are practical procedures meant to find out not our knowledge of certain subjects but to ensure that our thought process matches that needed. It'll be a psychological or a mental test more than a usual written test." Mana argued, she had woken up earlier and left the medical ninja asleep in his unflattering position so she could have a shower and comb her hair. She didn't want to be seen in the early morning and was quite glad she wasn't.</p><p>"Well… I just wanted to know, when I look at that test today, that I've done anything and everything I can to be ready for it. Just so that I don't blame myself if I fail." Mana was always impressed by how fast the guys got ready, even right now Kouta just jumped on his feet and was completely ready to go in just a couple of moments and elementary self-checks.</p><p>"Can I use the bathroom?" he wondered.</p><p>"Sure, don't worry, mother wakes up early for work and father's gone for herbs and medical check-ups. By the time they come back we'll be out." Mana explained. It's been that way for a long time with mother and father, at least in mother's case the café she managed was becoming somewhat of a famous spot for small-time dating activities and just simple coffee breaks. As far as father was concerned there was little to no hopes for improvement of his injuries, after multiple Mystic Palm sessions his hands were looking almost like they weren't almost completely incinerated but what looked normal hid agonizing pain that nothing was able to cure, just temporarily calm it down.</p><p>"Alright, give me ten, I'll be ready to go." Kouta nodded after his face betrayed the boy's relief that he didn't have to waltz around the house in fear of the awkwardness of bumping into the magician's parents.</p><p>Obviously the relationship between the young man and Mana's parents was nowhere near as toxic and complicated as that of Mana's with Kouta's father. Come to think of it, the magician hadn't even really met her boyfriend's mother, not to her memory or knowledge. It may have been possible that she met the woman in the hospital and simply didn't know it though…</p><p>Kusagoro Jugo was a terrible man, pushing and manipulating the events around his own son to have him make all the same choices he did. He wanted Kouta to become an ANBU captain or at the very least an operative. From the way Kouta sometimes looked at Mana it was clear that the young man was conflicted about it. He wanted the training and attention of his father, obviously, the two did have some sort of a bond and even Mana could see it every time the two spoke or the magician saw them training in the training grounds. Still, whenever he accepted the man's training or allowed himself the pleasure of interacting with his father figure he knew he's accepting the deal with the devil who wanted him to be mixing the pot of sinners with his own fork one way…</p><p>Her own parents didn't look to mind Kouta, for as much pain as father was in during the late evenings, when his pain management herbs wore off, he was quite chill about the whole thing. Mother even teased Mana and fed the young man. Mana's guess was that they must've seen the darkness that the ninja life, the life of an adult, was rooting in their daughter and didn't mind some more down to earth bonds to be made. Something as simple and innocent as a young love to keep the shadows of the life of a living tool of the village from taking over. A flaming sword to fight off the inner demons.</p><p>The magician sighed and slipped into the blazer of her uniform and checked all the pockets, all the strings and devices, she then took a magnifying glass her father gave her and placed it above her hat observing the state of the seal. There was almost a whole pocket dimension inside there, a good couple of hundred square meters worth of storage and Mana didn't always remember if she refilled the hat with tools and cards that were meant to be used.</p><p>It was too bad that she herself was no sealing expert like Meiko or her father. In that case she would've had so many ideas about what could've been done with the seal. It could've been altered and connected to multitude of other seals so that the magician could've used any hidden pocket of her uniform and pulled out tools from her hat from those pockets and pouches.</p><p>In a manner of stretching out the magician quickly blurred her speedy hands through a bunch of hand seals. It was unlikely that a single jutsu would have to be used in the written test but it didn't hurt to stretch one's muscles.</p><p>Hearing the rustling from the bathroom coming from the shower the magician quickly ran in and knocked on the steamed glass.</p><p>"We've got two hours, I'll make something to eat!" she let Kouta know.</p><p>Usually, way back during the mission looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, she'd have received some sort of sign of frustration or disappointment from her boyfriend. After multiple nights cooking the other three of her companions never failed to come up with new ways of telling that her cooking sucked. A genuine and wide smile was on Mana's face the whole way downstairs, she was glad that she took some time to learn how to cook better with old man Aporius.</p><p>Once the gathered crowd of over a hundred and fifty teams was already well in sight Mana and Kouta wished each other good luck. They also parted ways as the team of the medical ninja was waiting for him outside whereas Kiyomi and Meiko were nowhere to be seen so Mana assumed that they were waiting inside. Politely making her way through the stuffy hallways and staircases the magician looked around for the two in multiple floors until she found them when approaching the second floor from another, more western staircase, as she had missed her friends when looking at the same floor from the eastern wing.</p><p>"Mana!" Kiyomi yelled out before greeting the magician with a friendly hug. "You better compensate for Meiko's lacking score with a killer score of your own!" she playfully taunted the blacksmith as well as tried complimenting and somewhat relaxing Mana. Judging how nervous Meiko looked it may not have been the best of ideas.</p><p>"Look, Meiko, it's going to be just fine…" Mana tried calming her friend. "They're weighing all three of us as a team, in the past there were some simple mental tricks that just tested one's drive to be a ninja or their determination. You'll be great! I know of very few people who work nearly as hard as you do." the kunoichi tried to solace her friend a bit.</p><p>"I'm gonna screw everything up…" the redhead kept on stepping around and thrashing the little air that remained, all the people overcrowding the place just added to the kunoichi's panic. "I'm so stupid, I'll never pass a written test! I was never good at those, I'll drag you two guys down!"</p><p>Kiyomi looked pretty surprised by Meiko's lack of confidence. She must've not seen the redhead frustrated and self-destructive before or when she saw it she must not have paid it too much mind. The blacksmith could've gone outright depressing when she was seriously into self-belittlement.</p><p>"Don't worry, you won't screw up. There's no use worrying before you even see the test…" Kiyomi tried to play the comforting more for laughs as she kept calmly and softly laughing the whole way through but it was clearly not the funny kind of self-hatred. The Yamanaka must've never encountered that kind of self-aimed negativity before.</p><p>Any semblance of firm ground beneath her feet disappeared as Meiko lifted Mana off the ground by the magician's collar, the redhead's eyes were beginning to water slightly and she was clearly acting in total panic. Not even when Akimichi Francho threatened to kill her after he did so to Shimo did the magician see this much pent up apprehension in her friend's eyes.</p><p>"Why did you recommend me to Hanasaku-sensei!? Why did you force me to fit all those expectations!? I'm not as good as you guys, I'm gonna mess this up, I don't deserve to be here!" she began shaking in fright.</p><p>Mana softly focused her chakra into her fingertips and smacked the blacksmith's wrists at the side forcefully relaxing the grip. She grabbed Meiko's head by the back by firmly holding a fistful of red hair and pressing the blacksmith's face to hers. For a brief moment the magician just stood there allowing her friend to just stare at Mana's serious and friendly eyes. She could almost feel her friend's breathing steady out, her panicking orbs focusing and her eyelids finally lightly blinking again.</p><p>"It's going to be fine, even if it won't, it's no big deal. I recommended you not because you're my best friend but because I have utter trust in you, because there's no one else I'd rather have watching my back. Please have faith in my trust." Mana quietly whispered to her friend. Meiko was already hers the moment the magician freed herself – the redhead was much more skilled martial artist and an incredibly faster one. Had she not wanted Mana to get her hands on her – the magician would be lying knocked out on the floor about now.</p><p>Meiko didn't say anything, she didn't really have to. Her newfound tranquillity was all of the answer that was needed. For that short magical moment even the surrounding harmony of twaddle all died out.</p><p>"Wait, you mean I'm not your best friend?" Kiyomi teased Mana making all three girls crack up a bit.</p><p>Finally a strict looking man walked up to the one of the office doors and gestured with his arm to let those scheduled to take the test there in.</p><p>"We're going in!" Kiyomi chanted out, obviously referencing some movie she had seen, her highly acted out manner of speech suggested so. Seeing how Mana was no movie buff, as her older model television set could only be watched for four hours at a time before given time to cool down and not burst into a ball of flames, the reference flew over her head. Meiko was too worried clashing her own fingers against one another in fear, the magician could only hope that the blacksmith's irrational dismay for the first stage of the exams would settle down somewhat once the test is done.</p><p>"No, only one of you comes in here, the other two choose rooms besides this one." The man who let the genin in fixed his glasses. His most effeminate looking long, brown and curly hair got in his way and partly covered up the man's strict eyes.</p><p>"Hanasaku-sensei said that we're scheduled to take the exam here!" Kiyomi objected.</p><p>"There's been a change in the examination order. Teams will take the test in separate rooms, if everyone would please cooperate and split into three rooms it'd go much smoother…" the middle aged man informed after he stretched out blocking the entry to the classroom.</p><p>For a second there Mana was worried that Meiko would flip out again as all blood stopped reaching the upper part of her body, apparently. The blacksmith paled out like she was being separated to face an executioner or something.</p><p>"Stupid, red turtleneck wearing…" Kiyomi kept on bumbling as she worked her way through the crowd holding Meiko by the hand until the blacksmith split off right up close to the room Kiyomi entered to take the test.</p><p>Mana was one of the first people to get into the classroom, choosing to sit down at the nearest front corner seat she could find. Waiting for the test was not easy. She was so busy soothing Meiko that she completely forgot how worried she was about all of this. There were more than enough reasons to be worried. If she and her team failed this test they'd be eliminated from the Chuunin Exams and would have to wait for years before the next Exams. They'd probably have to leave elsewhere to take the exams in another country like so many sitting there had.</p><p>Even if she did find another country with a closer examination date, she'd be being examined as a part of another team. Chestnut Hanasaku had made it clear that Mana was no longer a welcome sight for her eyes and that she was no longer trusted, therefore she'd be kicked out of the team as soon as the exams ended. Things would be even worse if Mana was the one to fail this test and cost Kiyomi and Meiko the elimination. That would piss off the woman who was such an authority figure for the magician even more, not to forget how more difficult things would be with Kiyomi who still couldn't have forgotten that survival training not too long ago…</p><p>Being a stage magician, Mana knew that fear was an inevitable part of any performance. When standing behind the closed curtains one imagined all sorts of various failure scenarios, each worse than the other. This fear somehow felt welcome in the girl's chest, it made her body prepare for the upcoming trials, take this exam more seriously.</p><p>"Well, I sure hope that everyone's here…" the man who unlocked the room smiled before locking the door to the office which was quite recently reworked to resemble a classroom more. A couple of genin taking the exams gulped heavier realizing that what was transpiring in front of them was very real and very serious. The red turtleneck guy then approached a large collection of papers stacked on top of one another and pulled in his kunai to cut the ribbon that tied them all before giving the whole office another pitying look.</p><p>The man then took the impressive pile and placed a single piece of paper on each office table still having a huge stack left after he finished. Mana didn't as much as glance at the paper, not feeling sure if she was allowed to as the test had not yet started. Her theory of this all being just a psychological trick of some sort was beginning to nag her more and more, what if those who stared at the test before it began would be eliminated for some sick reason? Only after she saw almost every other genin staring at the paper in confusion and analysing it thoroughly, flipping it to see the other side before looking at the examiner with confused stares did she bother to take a look.</p><p>The paper was almost completely blank. There were only some sick looking, completely identical grotesque needle devices, that instead ending with the typical sharp needle ends ended with a nasty looking crescent shaped horizontal blade, on each side of the paper printed out as they were just artistic representations of some sort of gothic syringes. Besides her, already on the table was a purple marker and each of the syringe had a blank glass-like middle area, possibly meant for colouring.</p><p>Finally the examiner finished with his laborious task and sat on the front table carelessly, almost flipping the damned thing over with his sloppiness. He then giggled into his knuckle before pointing at himself and beginning to speak in a silky smooth voice.</p><p>"Well then, now that this is out of the way we can begin…" he sung out. "My name is Akina Ishi. I will be your supervising officer today, overseeing this exam. It will only be me and no one else so feel free to attempt and pull something funny if you feel cornered and hopeless, I'm just one man and I may just miss it…" the man laughed at his own sentence with a surprising degree of creepiness to it.</p><p>"This sheet of paper you've been handed is all there is to this exam. If you finish it I will accompany you to the door and unlock it for you and you're free to have a nice day. Sadly, because there're so many of you we're forced to improvise and come up with a very difficult, in a way of looking at it, written test. Our aim is to leave at least ten to fifteen teams in the end, that's right – this is the one-in-ten success rate test!"</p><p>The office full of genin just questioningly weighed the paper in between their fingers looking at their neighbour and trying to figure out if anyone here had figured out what was the deal with this test.</p><p>"The test is simple – you've been captured by the enemy and given a box full of syringes. Two thirds of them contain poison, one sixth of them contain a truth serum chemical that forces you to reveal all the information you have after which they will undoubtedly kill you. The remaining one sixth are harmless." the man began, after this sentence was uttered a handful of genin started to raise a ruckus.</p><p>"You mean this is it? That's stupid, we had this test in the Academy! It's not an actual test. It cannot be done right!" yelled out a small brat in bone rimmed glasses.</p><p>"This has to be a joke! The Chuunin Exams reduced to a simple game of chance!?" another genin – a taller young man in a ragged and worn out sleeveless shirt and a vertically striped bandana objected.</p><p>"No. There's more to this than that. You see – the test some of you may have taken in the Academy has been modified with an additional condition. This test was usually given to Academy Students to demonstrate their thought process. The purpose of the written test of the Chuunin Exams is the same. However we've added an additional condition, your objective in this test is not only to survive but to also to pick the same syringe your teammates pick. That means that you pass this test if you fulfil both of these conditions: a) your choice ends up leaving you alive, b) it is the same choice your teammates picked. You have forty five minutes…" the man topped his briefing off with a sadistic smile.</p><p>Just as he finished speaking the magician could almost feel time beginning to tick, the cruel ticks overpowered every other noise around her sinking the surrounding office room in total silence and isolating Mana from everyone else going through the same exam she was taking.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0272"><h2>272. Blank Sheet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With the single one, yet remarkably complicated question in front of her Mana continued to focus on nothing but the sheet of paper in front of her. In these kinds of tests how one started often laid the foundation for the right or wrong answer. The right start was essential as if one started to pave the ground the wrong way they'll never finish building that road they needed to build.</p><p>The problems of this test were numerous, it was capitally overcomplicated and deliberately designed to eliminate most of the genin taking it. Establishing and understanding the ground rules of the test may have been beneficial, having all the answers and cards on the table flipped up may have helped Mana think more clearly. The magician took her marker in hand and quickly counted the grotesque syringe devices that looked like they made their way there from a horror novel from one of the classic periods.</p><p>In general there were thirty six syringes to pick. Judging from what was said, two thirds of them – twenty four had terrible poison and were the most obvious wrong choices. Then, one sixth of the remaining ones had an intricate truth serum in them that will make the captured ninja useless as they will relay all there is to tell, undoubtedly that was the goal of the imaginary captor and, after such a syringe is picked, the ninja will count as good as dead. That leaves six empty and right picks.</p><p>Indeed such a task, to pick not only the right one, but also the same her teammates would pick, was troublesome. That may have been the most difficult criteria to fit. Mana wasn't sure if it was entirely reasonable. Such a requirement completely eliminated the luck factor out of the equation. One matter was to accidentally guess one of the six right syringes, to guess the same one one's teammates would pick as well was outright impossible.</p><p>Mana could recall such a test being given in the Academy, back then it seemed odd to her, even in its easier and modified version. Back then it only had four syringes, one of which had poison and one of which had the truth serum. Back then it was a fifty-fifty call but back then the test didn't even have a right answer. The passing grade was determined based on how the student picked their syringe, did their reasoning make sense, could they analyze the situation correctly and other similar factors. Here an actual right answer was expected.</p><p>Finally the circulating blackout that left only Mana and the test in an isolated personal dimension of dark oblivion faded and other genin came into view. The magician allowed her glance to waver just to see how her peers would deal with the situation. Judging from what the man said, "cheating" was not forbidden so it was not cheating in the technical meaning of the word. In fact, it was encouraged, likely because it cost precious time and made one wander in the dark woods treading the completely dark path in a random direction. Cheating was a waste of time so it was permitted.</p><p>No one was trying to contact their peers, not with the limited perception of the five senses that Mana had available to her. The magician was quite surprised that Kiyomi didn't try and contact her using the mental transmission ability that the girl had. Either she was located far past the technique's range or the walls were infused with chakra barriers that would've prevented any similar abilities from being used. If this office building was an important establishment of the village administration it likely had all sorts of similar protections.</p><p>Then Mana noticed something creepy, a wave of ants was crawling right beside her in a very blurry and thinned out line only to walk through the small space under the door, likely to look for the controller's teammate and relay some sort of message. Following the path of the insects the magician tracked them all the way back to a short but broad shouldered young man with sunglasses and a rather geeky looking bowl cut of his ginger hair. Could he have figured out the solution to the problem?</p><p>Mana stopped looking for clues, she knew that the others were likely contacting their peers in other ways as well. She was the only one who had absolutely no way of contacting her team… Frustrated and stressing over potentially failing the first obstacle in the Chuunin Exams, Mana returned to the test.</p><p>"Mana…" she heard Kiyomi's voice in her mind, albeit greatly weakened and breaking up. Somehow the Yamanaka must've broken through.</p><p>"Contact Meiko, calm her down. I'll work this out in a moment…" Mana relayed a thought wondering if Kiyomi even received it as after its transmission a long silence kicked in.</p><p>"Mana… I can't… These walls… Reduce my range… Need different frequency… Just us." Kiyomi's voice continuously broke up and began splitting into different weirder tones, must've been the negative effect of the girl differing the frequency of her mental chakra signals.</p><p>The marker almost broke in two in the magician's hand when she realized that Meiko was left all alone. From the training with Kiyomi and Hokage-sensei she must've known that Kiyomi was capable of telepathically communicating within certain distance. For example the telepathy may not have worked back when they were scattered in the whole training grounds by their mentor but in a situation where the girls were just an office room away from each other there was no reason for it to not work.</p><p>Mana could only imagine how scared and alone Meiko must've felt confronted by such a daunting task and left to deal with it by herself as her friends didn't try anything to contact her. The girl tried desperately to think of a way of how she could've contacted Meiko, calmed her down, maybe told her how she'd soon work it out and how she needn't worry.</p><p>"Thirty minutes left…" Akina Ishi hummed out before sitting down in a very undignified position and raising his feet on the front desk.</p><p>The kunoichi closed her eyes in frustration and bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. This was all going so bad, she couldn't waste time contacting her friend - she needed to work this out. She needed to at least start working on the problem.</p><p>The magician looked outside as the weak late autumn sun was beginning to hide behind the clouds and preparing to disappear beyond the horizon. Something was wrong outside, small particles of what seemed like cotton were accumulating and riding the wind in a highly synchronized shape. It must've been a doing of someone from the other office but no one else was seeing it or even bothering to check the window. Even worse – the magician couldn't identify what the code of symbols that the cotton made before being thrown around by wind currents said.</p><p>The magician pressed her palm against her eyes and face before dragging it down and covering her ears. She needed to do something, she could've tried to come up with ways to contact Meiko, she could've written down those cotton symbols and tried figuring out what they said and hoped that the message helped her to figure out the right answer.</p><p>Mana sighed and leaned down to her test. That message outside made her realize something – how amazing that young man/woman was. All of these people sitting in that office were outright amazing, so great that the villages they came from were willing to pay the entrance fee and a whole bunch of other taxes for them. What right did Mana have to look down on her friends? How could she have been so arrogant to think that they needed her protection? Meiko and Kiyomi were strong, in many areas they blew the magician right out of the water. It was about time that she let her friends walk on their own feet and focused on getting this exam right herself so that she didn't end up dragging her friends down while worrying over them too much.</p><p>This test was too complicated to be solved. That must've been the point. After all there were almost no clues given to these syringes, their positioning or anything else to work any clues out. The genin were all completely in the dark. In tests like this the key was usually in something that the examiner said, in something that the magician overlooked. This was no algebra or geometry, there were no mathematical skills required in this, there were no given or hidden data to be worked out – everything important was said by Akina as he described the test.</p><p>"Twenty minutes left…" the examiner once again interrupted the complete silence with his lazy and bored voice.</p><p>Seeing how the criteria were all that mattered to passing the test, it may have been for the best if Mana focused on them entirely before returning to the conditions. In order to pass the magician needed to pick the right syringe. Not only that, she needed to pick the same syringe that both her teammates picked… Okay, that didn't help, Mana could've spent as long as she wanted analyzing those words, making up different linguistic interpretations of them and still not have come back with the clue.</p><p>Maybe if she interpreted the test and what it was aiming to examine correctly she could've placed herself in the right mind set, that, in terms, could've assisted her with better understanding the question and how to work with it? Given how the genin must've picked the same syringe as their teammates it obviously condoned teamwork, all three ninja were supposed to mold their minds together, especially if they were unable to contact each other like the ant-boy earlier contacted his own team with a suggestion.</p><p>"Mana, look outside… window… answer…" Kiyomi's mental signal again broke through.</p><p>"Don't close the link, I may get close to the answer soon." The magician interrupted the Yamanaka before turning her eyes at the window only to see the cotton reforming into a pair of numbers. One of them looked incredibly similar to a number "3" whereas the other one combined into making a formation similar to the number "4", they were lined out to make out the number "34". It was odd that the same signal was also visible from Kiyomi's office room, it didn't seem that large to be seen from all the way over there.</p><p>"It's a misdirection. I've noticed that person communicating with their team before, their previous messages were coded. It makes no sense for them to communicate in decoded messages now. If you could also make it out from your office, that means that the person in charge of this is making multiple copies of this signal, that means that either we are lucky to both be in the same offices that person's allies are or that they are spreading the misdirection as wide as they can to eliminate as many teams as possible, after all, less teams – less competition for them as well as simpler exams in general." Mana relayed her thoughts, she wasn't sure how much of it Kiyomi got. She could sense the link still being open, after one got used to the mental link they could sense it being open and when it was closed as well as control the thoughts that were sent and what was left within one's own mind.</p><p>"Fifteen minutes." Akina declared. The desperation around the office room was visible as well as able to be smelled from where Mana was. Her nose was never the sharpest tool in the shed and yet even she could pick up the intense perspiration of both boys and girls in the room.</p><p>The more Mana thought about the problem the less certain she was where she needed to approach the test from. Everything seemed like a clever trick meant to misdirect, everything and everywhere was a conspiracy meant to trip her and her team over. Then it occurred to Mana that "picking the right syringe" was never what Akina Ishi really said, his exact words were: "the choice ends up leaving you alive". That implied that picking a syringe was not even necessary at all, one only needed to choose to fit this criteria and choose thusly so that they survived.</p><p>That meant that Mana could pick nothing at all and just hand in the paper blank and empty. If she was captured and given a box of syringes to pick, most of which were poison and some of them were truth serum, it implied that she had something that was worthwhile to acquire. What if she was told the wrong information in general? What if all of the syringes had the truth serum? Picking a syringe when only six of them were allegedly empty was simply too risky. The whole choice of choosing anything at all was too risky.</p><p>It took Mana far too long to realize that… She simply flipped the paper face down and sighed. Closing her eyes and trying to focus onto the weak and lingering mental line with Kiyomi she tried to jump into the telepathic conversation she had put on hold before.</p><p>"It's nothing, the right answer is to choose nothing, don't color any syringe, don't write or pick or mark anything. Just write your name and the date on the corner as instructed…" the magician concentrated her thoughts waiting for quite the while of uncomfortable silence before a hesitant confirmation returned from Kiyomi. Clearly the Yamanaka thought it was a stupid answer, frankly, Mana wasn't sure this was how the test was supposed to be solved but, technically, she wouldn't die from this choice, also Kiyomi will pick it as well.</p><p>"What… Meiko?" Kiyomi's worried mental signal came back, the magician simply assumed that the blonde was worried about their blacksmith friend whom she could not contact. Mana herself was worried, that was by far the worst thing about their current situation as no one could've predicted how Meiko would act. She could've picked just a random syringe hoping she hit the right one and completely wagering it all on a game of chance, she could've thought of something she thought was the right decision as well. Lead down a confusing and lengthy path of reasoning and stumbling into an overly complicated and wrong answer.</p><p>Judging from Mana's silence the Yamanaka must've realized that the magician had no idea.</p><p>"Five minutes" the examiner sighed, being the eternal economist of his energy and breath he repurposed the influx of air into a coherent yet not lengthy sentence.</p><p>Mana began to crack a grin before a weak laughter started cracking her up. She was so stupid, this whole situation was so immensely stupid, knowing the right answer yet tripping over not being able to help and contact her friend. Her only hope now was to just hope and rely on her friend to come up with the right answer or else all three of them would be eliminated from the Chuunin Exams and miss the chance to rank up for the following three years. Everything, her entire ninja career lingered on Meiko's decision.</p><p>It was so amazing that the blacksmith did not know this, else she would've been incredibly nervous over how much depended on her call. Then again, trusting Meiko may not have been the wrong idea – if anyone could've been trusted to think outside the box, that person was Meiko.</p><p>"Alright, hand 'em in, boys and girls and… Grown-ass boys and girls…" Akina picked his lazy butt off the chair and started picking up the tests referring to a whole bunch of people taking this exam who were well into their twenties and thirties even. Mana would've felt ashamed if she was one of those people, technically there was nothing wrong with being a genin into one's adulthood. There were several known cases of people serving as genin for well over fifty years before retiring. Still, she wouldn't change the world as an elderly genin, no one would've been inspired by such a person. There were ninja who were already in the black ops and past the rank of jounin in Mana's current age… Still, Mana didn't want to be one of those ninja either, being this good at killing people and lying to them only placed responsibility to fulfil those talents to the best of one's ability…</p><p>"Well, good luck in the next Exams, for the most of you…" Akina laughed out. "Okay, wait up outside, once all the tests are checked the results will be hung all over the wall, we'll also inform your sensei in case you have to be somewhere else or are just too lazy to wait a couple of hours."</p><p>With a completely droopy and defeated face Mana walked out of the office, seeing Kiyomi exit from the neighboring room with a much more hopeful face felt almost unbelievable. Seeing Meiko walk up to them from further away felt even worse, the blacksmith was completely devastated. Her skin was pale as the embodiment of death itself must've looked like, her eyes were beginning to water but then her tears stuck somewhere halfway out due to how dysfunctional and shaking the blacksmith's whole body was.</p><p>"Guys… I'm… So sorry…" she covered her face before finally gathering the strength to cry.</p><p>"I tried contacting you…" Kiyomi embraced Meiko, taking maybe a bit too much pleasure from her friend's moment of weakness and being the shoulder she leaned on during it. "I don't know what that office room you were in used to be but it was more warded off than any other office room."</p><p>"It's okay…" Mana pressed her own forehead against the cold and rough wall, turning away from her friends just so they couldn't see her beaten and crushed. "You guys can try again in three years, maybe sooner… If some other country hosts the Exams earlier."</p><p>"I… I didn't even notice the thirty four floating outside… I'm such a stupid klutz… In the end I just… Froze up and… I'm sorry, I accidentally forgot to write anything. I just gave in to the stress and handed a blank paper… Sorry…" Meiko kept on weeping onto Kiyomi's shoulder as the two kunoichi just stood there brooding before the words sunk into their brains.</p><p>Kiyomi and Mana looked at each other completely knocked out of their boots and then Kiyomi began just shouting out loud. Mana smiled and then joined in as the two girls ran in to hug Meiko and squeeze the life out of her.</p><p>Meiko was so silly sometimes… But Mana wouldn't trade her on her team for the world's strongest genin.</p>
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<a name="section0273"><h2>273. The Oldest Rock In Wrestling Entertainment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took some time to explain exactly what the written test was about to Meiko. Someone who just stumbled through the dark throughout most of it and then just somehow, just barely, managed to luck out and come out with the right answer, even though what she actually thought she had done was give up. After the whole point of the test was explained the blacksmith seemed to catch up quite fast.</p><p>Mana really had a great deal of respect for her friend, the feeling of being completely oblivious of everything that's going on was a genuinely scary concept. Just sitting there for almost an entire hour and observing a test one had no understanding of and people all around you work their way through it must've been absolutely terrifying. So many people would've seen such a scenario in their absolute worst nightmares and yet Meiko managed to overcome that, through sheer luck, maybe, but still she did the right thing.</p><p>Then again, the magician was a little biased in her blazing adoration for Meiko's success that's been set ablaze in her chest. She was spared entire years of being stuck at the lowest grade and getting no closer to fulfilling her dream. Mana was already feeling ready to begin working her way up to trying and living up to her nindo, she no longer felt like a child nor like a child ninja. Even if everyone around her kept amazing her and making her feel like everyone's so much superior to her in so many ways, Mana still felt obliged to charge at her dream and reach out for it. She'd seen too many people suffer and die around her while she was struggling to become a strong enough ninja to change that.</p><p>"That's kinda lame though…" Meiko pouted as the three made their way and settled down on a bench with some chili snacks in hand. "I expected a bit more… Something, that's something rather than nothing." She scratched her blazing red hair that were beginning to grow a little longer and more feminine than the manner she had them in when Mana first met the blacksmith where the hairdo looked more tomboyish and under all the armor she wore Meiko could've easily been confused for a young man.</p><p>"If it was something – we'd all have failed." Kiyomi laughed it off still breathing full lungs of joy and failing to get over how lucky they all got. Even if the answers of the test had not yet returned, for some reason, none of the girls questioned the answer Mana gave them. To the magician it felt flattering and a bit frightening, Meiko tended to have utter and complete trust in Mana's calls and Kiyomi was so obsessed with her weird shaped friendship with the blacksmith that she just went along with it just to see Meiko do things in her own way and giggle at that.</p><p>"Not Mana… She would've gotten it right." Meiko suddenly got all dreamy and serious as she relaxed on the bench and just looked at the murky noon sky.</p><p>"We'd all have failed." Mana repeated Kiyomi's words seconding the blonde. "The Chuunin Exams are all about the team. It doesn't matter how smart one is, how strong one is, what techniques they know or what bloodline they come from, as long as the team fails to keep up with them and the standard of ninja that become chuunin – they're not passing."</p><p>"Hmmm… Your dango are chili flavoured, gimmie some!" Kiyomi yelled out before munching all over Meiko's arm nearly swallowing the blacksmith's entire fist with it. An impressive feat, having the redhead's physical strength and rather buff physique in mind.</p><p>"Goddamn it!" Meiko shouted out peeved over Kiyomi's affections over the blacksmith's chili dango.</p><p>"I thought you hated spicy food…" Mana wondered as her mind slowly began to float away from the written test and prepare for whatever may have still been to come. Even if she didn't want to feel overly confident, something told her that the Team Hokage had it in the bag.</p><p>"Yeah, but Meiko's hand tastes like sweet potato so it evens it all out!" the Yamanaka cheerily explained, still struggling to speak over the amount of food she stole from the blacksmith.</p><p>"Oh yeah? Here's more of it!" the powerhouse of the team began playfully bullying the Yamanaka as Mana turned her head away in shame. She wasn't really embarrassed for her team, frankly, she was beginning to grow a bit attached to the two goofballs. Meiko was just the kind of person that lightened people up, remembering how Kiyomi was before meeting the blacksmith it was impressive seeing the blonde open up and goof around a bit. She certainly had enough of a sad past and weight on her shoulders to have every reason to brood.</p><p>"Is that how Konoha's teams behave?" a chubby and tall young lady raised her eyebrow alerting the three that she and her two companions were standing behind them.</p><p>For a miniscule wink Mana had wondered if the three were just looking for a fight. They certainly looked like they could bring some, if needed. The chubby young lady in front was even larger and bulkier than Meiko, her attire was a mixture of the traditional Akimichi clan armour combined with some of her own personal and flashier plated protection. Her two companions were more casual looking with nothing but long dark grey cloaks that topped off with hoods that were hanging around their necks.</p><p>"Because if it is, I'd like to ask your team leader for some advice!" the chubby powerhouse then erupted into a fit of laughter. "I wish my own team was so friendly with each other, I just can't get all of us on the same level of fondness for each other." She smiled.</p><p>"That's because attachments to one's team are pointless." The young man walked out from being overshadowed by his massive teammate and began walking away from her. "The genin stage of my life is just about over and after it is I won't have to stomach your stupid attempts at leadership for any longer, Choroina." The young man indifferently waved his hand like he tried to stuff all of his disdain for the strong looking teammate into a single gesture.</p><p>"Awww, come on, Gunoi! Would it hurt you to work together just once? Can we, maybe, at least grab some food together?" she ran after her teammate.</p><p>The third genin who looked like he was well into his twenties just looked onto the scene that his two teammates were making before nodding at Team Hokage and running after them.</p><p>"We'd better not take as long as you usually take, Choroina, we need to be back here in an hour for the results, I'm sick of us being late everywhere!" the third one yelled at his two quarrelling teammates before the trio ran off.</p><p>The three girls just continued to stare at the three for a brief minute longer before looking at each other, still wondering what had happened there.</p><p>"Maybe we're being a bit loud…" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, let's bring it way down, it attracts all sorts of attention." Meiko nodded in agreement.</p><p>Mana had noticed the crescent moon symbols on the headbands that the three wore. The tall and bulky girl – Choroina had one right on her forehead as well as having the village symbol carved out on her shoulders. The other three were much more subtle, the second, rather rude and narcissistic seeming fellow briefly flashed it tied around his arm as he dismissed his friend. The third one had it tied around his neck, protecting a much more sensitive area. It showed his calculation over tradition approach and some innovativeness. Those symbols must've been the Getsugakure ones, the Village Hidden under the Moon.</p><p>An hour didn't take too long to pass. After a long while of seeing people from different teams mix and mingle around, most of them just indifferently talking over to their teammates, some quite frustrated over the way that the written test went, finally the firm and strong shape of Chestnut Hanasaku gently made her way through the crowded rabble of genin.</p><p>"Hey, you three!" she winked at them, "Everything's alright? I heard the test was pretty rough this year…" her voice sounded more silky and cheerful than Mana was used to whenever the magician was in the same room or even the same training ground as her mentor.</p><p>"Sure, Mana kind of pulled my butt out, kind cucumber-cheeks as she is! Meiko just stumbled blindly the right way I guess…" Kiyomi reported in the usual happy manner that was slowly beginning to define her role in the team. The Yamanaka was a channel of sorts, a channel between the other girls and the sensei. Given that one of the girls didn't really feel like she deserved her place on the team and another was actually unofficially booted out of it and still must've scorned the woman a fair bit. Also a bridge between the simply joys of life and plenty of things that could've easily soured it. Both Mana and Meiko still had those bitter spoons of tar in the honey basket whereas Kiyomi either kept hers so deep down or simply learned to deal with it that her psychological strength inspired the other two.</p><p>"Oh? You seem pretty confident you got it right…" Hanasaku tried cheeking her team but she also held a remarkably proud composure and posture signalling that she may have known more than she initially let them know. Mana couldn't help but notice a couple of uneasy yet thankful glances her way. If she was any bolder in her assessment she'd think that Hanasaku may have felt bad about the way the magician was treated for some of the past week.</p><p>"Oh, we got it alright! It does make me wonder though… How did you pass this test though? You're not the sharpest tool in the shed, you know, sensei…" Kiyomi couldn't help but wonder and imagine her long time mentor in the same role as the three girls over two decades ago.</p><p>"I had a little smart-mouthed pup hide in my bosom and whisper me answers. The instructor got a bit suspicious but when I encouraged him to check my chest he chickened out…" Hanasaku smiled with her cheeks blushing a little.</p><p>While the other girls couldn't stop their bellies from the pain of their own laughter, Mana instead felt a bit overwhelmed by realizing that her own mentor was already capable of summoning ninja animals and had enough trust with them to ask one of them to hide under her clothes. The magician couldn't really even begin to imagine asking someone like Usuzoku to hide anywhere close to her. She hadn't even tried summoning any of the ninja rabbits nor did she know anyone except the nasty-mouthed bunny she met in the Forest of Death. Mana did find Hanasaku's story quite funny, regardless of what surprised her more in the pair of the two.</p><p>"So you cheated? I don't know what I expected honestly…" Kiyomi tried teasing the sensei who quickly changed the subject.</p><p>"Anyways, judging from the early results I got, you guys passed. Two of you didn't pick a syringe and just signed on top of the paper, Meiko didn't even do that so the commission kinda wondered what to do with it. It didn't express an actual desire to choose nothing like the other two did but there was no one else who filled nothing in so I just… asked them kindly… to realize it's Meiko's test and just pass it." The woman explained.</p><p>"So what's next?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Not really sure. From what I've heard only a bit over thirty teams passed. There will definitely be an extra elimination test but it'll be something more… Physical. So far we've been given instructions to tell you guys to prepare and meet us near the western village gate in an hour. They said to get ready just like you'd get ready for a serious mission, don't get cocky yet." The woman encouraged her team and gestured for them to leave as she went into the office to straighten something out or fill out some paperwork that still needed to be done.</p><p>"Well, I guess that's official. We passed!" Kiyomi thrust her fist up in the sky in joy of passing the written test and, judging from the looks of it, already began planning what could've laid ahead.</p><p>Meiko just breathed out uneasily, like rolling a stone off her chest before beginning to hype herself up for the upcoming part of the exams. This was shaping out to be more on her alley and she hoped to be more help to the team than she was so far. Mana certainly hoped so, after all – she didn't want to see her friend sad or belittling herself anymore.</p><p>There wasn't much that Mana wanted to do back home. She just kind of checked her gear for the nth time and did some warm up exercises before wondering just what kind of test laid ahead. If over thirty teams remained the village could've held a three on three single round elimination exhibition, the fact that they suggested that they were treating this exam as more of an entertainment spectacle than anything else troubled the young kunoichi. Not that many people chose to observe any part of the exams but the finals so the choice to treat it so much like a cruel reality show was a bit baffling to the magician.</p><p>Seeing how the magician went into the written test fully prepared for a fight, as there was a strong possibility of the second exam following immediately after the first, she had little else to do for the remaining time so she just settled down to meditate. Sadly even that didn't really work out too well – there were just too many unclear fires in the vast blackness of her mind, like heated comets and little stars sparking and exploding only to reform again all around and the magician couldn't understand them at all.</p><p>With her meditational skills out of whack, Mana felt a bit uneasy. Was she just incapable to concentrate because of the stress that the exams brought? Maybe it was something more physical, some sort of a disease that her body tried to warn her about? No. It couldn't have been, Mana was incapable of even accessing the Ego stage anymore, at this point her meditational concentration ability was worse than even that of Meiko's and Mana barely even taught the blacksmith anything during the training of the two.</p><p>Worried over whatever that strange sign could've meant Mana picked up a small backpack and headed out to the western gate. She was beginning to relate to Meiko quite a bit right now. After all – the written test was something where Meiko felt like a fish out of water and with the upcoming physical test the magician felt almost the same. She was so much behind training with her peers, Meiko and Kiyomi trained with the Konoha Sannin for entire days on end whereas Mana had wasted so much time. Granted, she was training by herself but she didn't feel like she had made tremendous leaps in growth, just keeping herself in shape. Not regressing was not the same as moving forward.</p><p>With similar troubled thoughts the magician located her team in a greatly thinned crowd – just thirty two teams out of over hundred and fifty that came to take the written test. Plenty of the influx of ninja were still walking around the busy evening Konoha streets, wandering around to pass time until the finals. If they got eliminated so early, may as well pay for the tickets and see the entertainment of the finals.</p><p>"Hey! Wait a second, I know you!" a strong grip of an old woman locked around Mana's arm, the magician was surprised how her first instinctual yank didn't free her. The woman's grip may just have been stronger than Meiko's and Kouta's combined even though she didn't apply any pressure. Had she wanted it – Mana's entire arm would've been bone dust, hell, she could've yanked the whole thing out with a little more than a mean caprice.</p><p>"You're Konoha Sorceress, aren't you!? I've seen your show once!" the old lady laughed out erratically, geeking out over Mana which, frankly, was beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable.</p><p>"Oh… I'm glad you are so enthusiastic about it…" Mana grabbed the slight sips of happiness of meeting a fan and surfaced them over her shock and fear of this encounter.</p><p>"Heck yeah! I was told by my manager to check you out, just to know what real entertainment is all about! Travelled all the way from Iwagakure two years ago to see you and I would've travelled twice that distance. You helped me elevate my own entertainment tenfold!" the woman kept on jumping around energetically before her teammates noticed. A much younger attractive young man with a guitar case on his back gently pulled the old lady off of Mana.</p><p>"Enough, Gyllfa-san, just let the waitress take your order before you ask for any more food on top of that…" he advised the old lady whom he held in high regard as he used a very respective tone and honorific after her name.</p><p>Mana's lips couldn't help but pout after she was confused for someone in the service staff.</p><p>"She's not a waitress, Trest, can't you see the Konoha headband on her waist? She's a ninja." A much more mature man with dark green hair and eyes equally as blue as those of the musician shinobi who offended Mana informed his friend butting into the conversation.</p><p>The blond musician ninja began apologizing excessively, Mana played it off for laughs. It didn't help the fact that the young man's words cut deeper than she should've let them, even if they weren't deliberate. It was just that they were sharp enough and delivered at the right enough moment to stab straight through Mana's lowered defences.</p><p>"You're an entertainer too?" Mana asked, while she did feel uneasy in this company, she did try to show her interest in the woman and the woman's hint at her secondary profession was really genuine.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm a professional wrestler back in Iwagakure. Our wrestling industry isn't anywhere near as developed and world famous as that of Kumogakure but we have one…" the woman explained before noticing Mana's lingering and saddened eyes.</p><p>"Anyways, I won't hold you here for too long, hopefully we get to chat under better circumstances soon. It's clear that this half-wit here can't see a real entertainer when he sees one, don't blame him, blame his bad musical ear." The old woman bit back at the teammate of hers. While Mana politely excused herself and rushed away from the Iwagakure team that had interrupted her regrouping with her own team she still felt something hurting and squirming deep inside. It was apparent that the damage was already done…</p><p>Right after Mana joined her team a familiar frail and glasses wearing frame stepped onto a small stage positioned right in front of the Forest of Death. It was a familiar to the magician short frame covered up by a slick silky blue dress with yellow flowery motifs and draconic symbols. She was supposedly one of the jounin that were present during Team Oak's attack on the Konoha's junkyard district, she had not really met the woman face to face back then but she had seen her face on files and had her described to her by Shimo and Sugemi whenever they recalled that night.</p><p>"Attention, all of you!" she demanded, her voice was authoritative and strict enough to warrant it when she requested attention. "We are now going to begin the secondary exam of the Chuunin Exams – the survival drill! My name is Hozuki Shibari, I am a Konoha jounin and I will oversee this part of the exams."</p><p>While the woman spoke, without a doubt, seriously the smiling and rather playful tone of her seemingly strict voice somehow made her look like even more of a peculiar personality than the previous examiner – Akina Ishi.</p>
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<a name="section0274"><h2>274. Big Balls Of Gas And Liquid</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Took you a while" Kiyomi muttered twisting her lips at Mana's direction. Maybe the blonde was worried that the trio that stopped her before had told her something disheartening or tried to play dirty, then again, she could've just been curious.</p><p>Meanwhile on the plain and wooden elevated stage Shibari turned at a large covered up spherical object and removed a dark yellow cover off of it revealing a bloated sphere of some sort of gooey and colorless liquid, on the bottom of the rather impressively sized unidentified object laid a bunch of consoles and four flat monitors.</p><p>"I was a little distracted by Gyllfa-san. She's a wrestler from Iwagakure and a fellow entertainer." Mana explained trying to reveal as much as possible without skipping too much of Shibari's show and briefing of the rules. Something told her that knowing all there is to be known about the assignment would be of great value. Still, she wanted to calm Kiyomi down in case she suspected foul play of some sort.</p><p>"Holy shit!" Kiyomi shrieked while at the same time snuffing her voice emitting a very undignified whine similar to that of an injured dog. "An actual wrestler!? I love wrestlers! I mean Kumogakure is where the real wrestling is at but still…" the Yamanaka future heiress playfully punched air as an expression of hype and happiness.</p><p>"This here is a tracking device, capable of keeping track of chakra signatures in a large area. Most of the time – an entire battlefield during times of battle." Shibari explained pointing at the watery sphere. The two teammates directed their attention at the briefing almost the same instant that the woman started talking again.</p><p>"Normally tracking you in the Forest of Death, where the survival drill will be taking place, would be difficult. There'd be too many large chakra signatures of giant sized predators that lurk inside, identifying the exact signature would also be a problem. That's where these come in…" the woman walked up to a large cardboard box and removed the top of it revealing a bunch of ordinary looking kunai with odd tags attached to them.</p><p>"These are designed by our sealing expert ninja to slowly drain you of your chakra, in rates so small and insignificant that it'd take entire days to even notice anything. They however emit a very barely felt signal with the signature traits of each individual user's chakra which will keep track of specific ninja inside." Shibari revealed pointing at the watery sphere that lit up with a crimson spark at its eastern side, as a demonstration, no doubt, the symbols above the red signal read "Like this".</p><p>"I wish those kunai kinda looked cooler… They're pretty bland." Meiko pouted rather indifferently before snickering about how silly her remark was.</p><p>A much more angry reaction came from the blacksmith's backside. A whole bunch of angry murmurs that were slowly evolving into a ruckus of raised voices. Lightly tantalized by the uneasiness of the genin, Shibari raised her hand and gestured for the loud side that they were allowed to speak.</p><p>"What does that mean? How would you tell whose chakra signature it is just by taking in a small amount of it? Does Konoha have our chakra signature samples? Isn't that a bit much? What if you decide to use that information for military purposes?" a familiar face from before yelled out, slipping out from under his hood. It was the same young man who previously scolded Mana for assuming that the vast number of participants had anything to do with long periods of peace or the allied nature of the countries involved.</p><p>This time the young man wore a symbol on his cloak, the forehead protector carrying the village insignia was not attached to a piece of cloth but instead sewn directly onto his hood, just like it was for his immensely sized one and frail and feminine figured looking teammates. Now that the young man had attracted attention to himself and his team, Mana had noticed how his shorter female teammate had her hands tied around one another and her fingers tensely pressed at her elbows and the young lady was quivering as if she was cold.</p><p>It made little sense for her overly sensitive reaction to be so clear. While the air certainly was cold, Mana didn't feel too uncomfortable under a simple autumnal coat whereas she wore a full body covering hood and had it cover her head and her face. It made little sense for her to be cold. The magician remembered her previous nasty feeling about the tall man of that same team and realized that maybe creepiness was a more common trait as the young lady seemed to be the reasonable one before.</p><p>Shibari stroke her tired eyes after lifting her glasses a little before explaining herself.</p><p>"Yes. Yes we do have your chakra samples, we do have the chakra samples of anyone taking the exams. You cannot be guaranteed we won't use them for military purposes as we cannot be guaranteed you won't kill someone inside of there or purposefully sabotage the exams. It's a common feeling of tension we'll have to live with, unless you want to turn back and head home to Getsugakure, Nacasa Doma, of Team Phobos?" Shibari inquired.</p><p>"We do not!" a firm and masculine voice from under the hood of the larger team member rudely cut down. Still visibly peeved over this whole situation the shorter male of the Getsugakure team kept on growling to himself and grinding his teeth.</p><p>"You know, it's kind of weird how you're a ninja and a magician and then there's that old lady and she turns out to also be a superstar wrestler too…" Meiko almost hummed out through a tune she was whistling just to entertain herself throughout the briefing.</p><p>"Quiet down." Kiyomi slammed her palm at the top of Meiko's head rudely shoving it downwards to shut the blacksmith down. The redhead just yelled out in pain louder as a result. Luckily enough everyone was still busy discussing the current revelations and verbal exchanges between themselves to be overly offended by Team Hokage's overly expressive nature.</p><p>"I thought I was the only one trying to be a ninja as well as an entertainer behind the scenes…" Mana admitted. "I guess the idea of hiding one's identity in plain sight is a bit older than me." She whispered much quieter than Meiko before her.</p><p>"Anyways, before this whole thing needed to be cleared out, I was about to explain the rules better. This here's a hunting/survival test. Before entering through that door you'll have to pick a file from the pile right on that table. Inside that file you'll find one name – the name of the person you need to eliminate. The file is an excerpt from that ninja's own ninja record file, obviously, sensitive information is sealed with utmost care to ensure protection of their country's secrets. It was also made during that person's graduation from the Academy day meaning that you'll only get the info on their skillset not too long after they graduated – predicting their current abilities is a part of the test. That person is your ticket to the semi-finals, eliminate them and move to the northern gate of the Forest of Death." Shibari explained before staring awkwardly at the bunch of genin staring back at her in a level of awkwardness not quite unlike that of her own.</p><p>"Questions?" she wondered as the woman had expected the crew to be a bit more proactive in their hunting/survival drill.</p><p>An athletically built young man with golden dyed hair and red facial tattoos marking their eyes and lines that went over his cheeks and down to his chin as well as the typical Kaguya clan facial tattoo on his forehead lifted his hand revealing an Iwagakure headband tied around his strong arm.</p><p>"Jekleifer Kaguya, Team Corundum from Iwagakure. So it's every person for themselves? I fail to see the teamwork aspect here. What if we see the name of our teammate in that file? Could you, please, clarify the team matters regarding this test?" the young man requested with a very polite tone and equally as restrained and well taught mannerisms. His skin and arms were too well defined, too clean and smooth to be a worker of the Iwagakure mines, they were very clearly artificially buffed up from scratch instead of being a result of hard work.</p><p>An energetic young lady wearing a maroon colored jacket smacked her teammate in the back with a smile similar in its intensity and goofiness to the monkey-like smiles which Meiko liked to adorn, the edged up strings of her short darker shade of teal colored hair fell on her face making her comically struggle to move all of her hair out of her face. She must've commended her teammate on a good question in that way.</p><p>Shibari sighed before scratching the side of her very tensely stretched back into a hair bun hairdo, she did so in such speed and carelessness that a string of her hair let loose and began maliciously ruining her rather firmly established first impression of a cold, strong and strict woman.</p><p>"Well… We haven't really considered the part where you may find your teammate's name in the file. Truth be told, there're thirty two teams here so the odds of it happening aren't that great. Anyways, the whole team is only eliminated if at least two of its members are eliminated and surrender their ticket to the semi-finals to other ninja. That means that one person in your team can, in theory, be eliminated and you'll be just fine. The only thing you may not do is trade or try and switch out your own files so you'll have to confirm your candidate in secrecy with a staff member before entering." Shibari concluded.</p><p>"So at least two people in a team will be required for the semi-finals' exam…" Mana uttered to herself already beginning to count the chickens before they hatched. She realized that to trouble her head about the semi-finals was not overly wise however she was concerned with the entirety of the exams and not just a single round.</p><p>"If we find one of our names in the files we'll strike a deal of some sort, right?" Kiyomi suggested. "Let's not just go on backstabbing people, right?"</p><p>An uneasy sensation began burrowing in Mana's gut. She just felt like she was going to get Meiko's or Kiyomi's name and that this whole thing will blow out of proportions. It was just her natural luck… She couldn't fail, she couldn't allow herself to be eliminated for the sake of the team because in that case she'd fly right out of the team after being eliminated. Kiyomi and Meiko probably didn't know that and they wanted and deserved a shot at the semi-finals and finals just as much as anyone else did.</p><p>With certain anxiety Mana approached the pile of files spread in front of her and with a lightly shaking hand she reached out and pulled one out. It was like her heart had gone cold, she had the name in her hands, just inside the file but she didn't want to peek in. She didn't want that confirmation that she'd need to backstab her own friend in order to pass. Luckily enough Kiyomi and Meiko didn't pester Mana to show the name written inside the file, no one checked the files out in the open where someone could've taken a peek from behind. The names inside those files were astoundingly sensitive information.</p><p>The teams were then lined up by the entry and let inside, one by one. Mana stood behind a rather unimpressive looking young man with flappy and frail looking arms, stature even shorter than Mana's and very underdressed for the season, choosing to wear just a light blue sleeveless shirt. The young man proudly tied his headband protector right on top of his forehead like it was meant to be worn. Mana could recall seeing this boy in the Konoha Ninja Academy but he was younger than her, in the later generation that graduated one year after Mana did.</p><p>Right before the magician stepped in between the area outside the forest and the quiet darkness of absolute death that laid inside the forest she closed her eyes. Sounds of rustling leaves with no end to the height of where the rustling came from or how far away it came from in each direction. The darkness swallowed her whole and just as the magician opened her eyes on the other side did she witness a swarm of giant centipedes engaging the kids right there and up close to the southern entrance to the forest.</p><p>Meiko shrieked in joy, the prospect of battle must've excited her as she rushed at the gigantic thing with unheard of glee but Kiyomi's firm hand grabbed Meiko by her collar as well as Mana by hers and with great force dragged the two away.</p><p>"Don't waste your energy. Let's see if we can sit this out…" Kiyomi whispered before hearing ear deafening buzzing and looking up only to see a swarm of wasps at least three times her size diving in down to join into the feast of the young flesh let in to feed the forest.</p><p>"Storage Seal Rank-C: Unseal!" Meiko yelled out opening a large scroll and unleashing a flock of burning shuriken at the diving in swarm. It slowed the offensive on that front down somewhat but the swarm redirected their efforts elsewhere. The blacksmith merely tossed the scroll up in the air before touching a sticking out piece of her chest plate, unsealing a short one handed sword and jumping at the giant insect swarm, leaping from one wasp to another, slashing at them blindly like a madman and covering herself in sizzling white goo that shot out from the wounds. The poison that the wasps had within their system must've also been corrosive, as well as served the delivery function that blood served in most other species of animals.</p><p>"That idiot! She's wasting chakra augmenting her body to protect against that acidic goo. She's wasting stamina by fighting those things too! We need to get out of here fast!" Kiyomi grunted out seriously raging at Meiko and showing obscene gestures the likes of which should never be elaborated on.</p><p>"Aim at the lower part of the wings!" Mana screamed out from the depths of her lungs, she figured that Meiko wanted to fight it through the unexpected offense of the insectoid assailants so at the very least she should do so meaningfully.</p><p>Right as instructed the blacksmith began lobbing off the wasp wings one by one, disabling the insects completely by making them smash down raising storm of wood chips and bark flying all over the place as they smashed and busted down trees in their trajectory of freefall. Covered in sizzling acidic substance inside of the wasp's bodies and past their highly armored shells the blacksmith leaped off with a confident grin. The places where the acid stuck on her were lightly swollen but the blacksmith's system managed to fend off more gruesome effects of corrosion than just a light swelling.</p><p>Kiyomi angrily grabbed Meiko by the ear as the three began fleeing the total madness of the area right by the entry point. More and more genin entered the fray beginning to fight the insects off. The girls tried to focus on simply evading the battle to the best of their abilities so they could find a pocket of empty space to dash at high speeds through, the primary objective was to get away and find a safe spot. Then read out the names inside the files and come up with a strategy of some sort.</p><p>An even larger dark red colored centipede blocked off the girls' path, a loud popping sound alerted them to a ninja tool blowing up nearby. The trio tried to evade the explosive force but there was none to evade – only purple gas came out, poisonous gas which obviously the insect was immune to. Most of the more advanced poisons targeted very specific and complicated areas of the human body, areas and organs which insects such as those in the Forest of Death may not have had. Only the most primitive poisons could've worked on these beings.</p><p>A swooping sound of a blade cutting through air and sizzling sound of an explosive tag blowing the entire area up followed by a powerful explosion which knocked Mana off her feet and nearly deafened her completely.</p><p>"The gas bombs were flammable too…" she realized. That was one sneaky long range genin taking on that centipede, or maybe he was already rushing at her? Could he have identified one of the girls as his target? If the files really did have the Academy information on Mana it would've been easy to identify the young woman she'd grown up to be from the chubby cheeked brat in the picture. A steel string with a powerful scythe attached to it lobbed the centipede's head off before spinning in an erratic and impressively fast manner shredding the armored tissue and the goo inside to mush alike.</p><p>"Let's go!" Kiyomi shouted out pulling Mana by her elbow away from the madness.</p><p>Further away a large snake was assaulting a bunch of kids. Mana pointed at the trio and looked at Meiko with shock.</p><p>"Look there, it's Menna, Tala and Tiwul, Izem-san's team from Sunagakure!" she shouted out, her surprise was interrupted by Tala's sand bullets tearing holes through the snake's flesh and leaving it holey as a chunk of fermented cheese. Tiwul used her weapon puppetry to control a massive hammer in a manner that smashed the incapacitated snake dead.</p><p>"Can we just can it with the friend reunion and get out of here!?" Kiyomi angrily yelled out, all the yelling and ordering around was beginning to make her lose her voice a bit.</p><p>"You're just jealous you don't know Menna, Tala and Tiwul from Sunagakure…" Meiko grinned with that signature monkey-like dumb smile before Kiyomi remembered that the redhead had a yet untouched ear that she had to be pulled for great and highly painful effect.</p><p>And thus began the second part of the Chuunin Exams!</p>
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<a name="section0275"><h2>275. The Brutal Ramen Destroyer Gwido</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the Team Hokage graciously danced around the various centipedes, humongous wolves and snakes and other manners of beasts of excessive sizes Mana offered a glance at Kouta's team which was engaging a humongous flock of predators that were focusing down on an unintentional grouping of genin. These beasts were smart. They weren't the species that commonly cooperated however now they engaged their prey in a manner that drove large groups of genin together. That meant that each genin got into another's way whenever they overextended themselves. That also made them a larger serving for a predator that would eventually succeed.</p><p>"Come on, Mana!" Kiyomi hurried the magician along as she was beginning to slow down. The magician's figure began falling down to the edges of speed that was intelligible to the various creatures hunting for an influx of genin, none of whom possessed an Intent ability that was needed to keep them at bay like the older and more experienced ninja could.</p><p>Seeing how Kouta stopped the charge of an underground viper with his bare handed slap, absorbing and deflecting the entirety of the forty plus ton weighing snake. How his angered and desperate yet controlled chakra cannon blasts blew off the upper half of the snake's body and how it broke right through the hardened shell of the giant centipedes that immediately rushed into the fray, how his immense honed speed and agility allowed him to evade the scythe-like cuts from the giant praying mantises that stalked the genin by the entrance gave her confidence in her boyfriend's abilities to handle it. Even if his team's choice was to fight through the hordes of predators that engaged the entering genin right out of the bat.</p><p>While Mana's affirmed confidence allowed her to boost her speed and once again become nearly untraceable to the many predators that flocked in great quantities by the southern entrance, Kiyomi however did begin to lag behind, becoming lightly entranced by Kouta's cute looking teammate and how effortlessly his two handed sword split the attacking predators of the Forest of Death to pieces. Having finally understood and agreed to the retreat plan, Meiko just grabbed the blonde's ear and began dragging the Yamanaka away by force, in a manner similar to that which was required to drag the blacksmith away from the battlefield before.</p><p>Finally the girls found a solid straight line to speed up in, without needing to circle around smaller scale battlefields they could finally just leap with a single powerful dash and distance themselves properly from the southern entrance battlefield. With the final sight of Mana's brief glance back at it being a giant centipede stepping into a wire trap set up by Kouta's female teammate - Budoki before being cut to pieces by his male teammate the girls dashed away from the utter madness that greet them.</p><p>Everything around them blurred. Green and black environment that surrounded them began brightening and mashing together into a sick milkshake-like esthetic and any sounds of yells, grunts or reptile hisses became dulled out and monotonic shrieks in Mana's ears. Almost instantly she felt her chakra burn up inside her system, it was like someone had set up a combined system of needles that pierced her body in multiple select vital points and drained blood itself out of them leaving small painful fires where blood once was that slowly simmered and discomforted the young kunoichi.</p><p>"That was one mean dash…" Kiyomi panted before patting her messy and dirty grey dress and fixing her black vest from completely slipping off her body. Their dashes weren't perfect – all three of the girls had small bruises from where they failed to completely move out of the way of all the smallest branches and thick and sharp edges of cutting leaves and grass below. Focusing so much on speed augmentations and integrity of one's own body in such intense speeds left one's overall endurance augmentations a bit shoddy.</p><p>"Yeah, if we get attacked soon we won't be our full selves…" Meiko nodded before beginning to whine over her scratched armor paintjob. It was no branch that left those marks, these were tooth and claw marks as well as acid melting large chunks of it. Most ninja had the ability to extend their chakra augmentations a bit past the point of their own bodies and cover their entire clothes, Meiko's augmentation abilities may have still been a bit raw, her control was quite shabby and her armor pieces intricate and extensive which didn't let her offer her armor the same degree of protection she could afford to grant herself.</p><p>"Let's slow down the pace and keep moving, it's a good one and a half day of casual trekking before we reach the northern exit…" Mana suggested before putting her hand on the file that was hidden in an inner pocket of her jacket and pressing the file's corner hard in fear of what may have laid within it.</p><p>"We still need to take on three teams to hunt down our targets. Ideally some of our names will be in the same teams, that way we'd only need to fight two or less teams before we reach the exit." Kiyomi sighed pulling out her own file from under her vest and lightening the belt on her abdomen that she had tightened before to secure the file to her body.</p><p>Meiko removed a partly molten file from her pocket, the yellow cover of the file was halfway corroded from all the acidic goo dipping the blacksmith had done earlier in her quest to slay as many gigantic wasp creatures as she could, the file inside of the cover was just barely visible and barely even "confidential" anymore by the strict meaning of the word.</p><p>The trio slowed down before looking at each other and peeking at their respective files. Meiko clacked with her tongue before slipping the messed up file out from the burnt cover as most of it was exposed anyways. The blacksmith then looked with genuine reservations and some respectable composure, for her at least, before showing the file to her team. The lighting in the area was limited but some details could've been made out with effort, once the day got darker they'd likely need some illumination for pretty much anything. The picture had a young boy of more western darker complexion and a somewhat devious looking smile and shades.</p><p>"Qarsufly from Team Maruf, Sunagakure…" Meiko grinned as if that revelation really meant anything else but a person she was supposed to defeat or take out with deceit. "I think I accidentally melted off the second name of the poor guy…" the girl innocently rubbed the back of her head making a mess out of her blazing red colored hairdo.</p><p>"No, people from Sunagakure usually only have one name unless they hail from a clan. You've salvaged a surprising amount of information." Mana comforted her friend even though judging from the genuine composed and contained hype of the blacksmith she needed none of it.</p><p>"Oh yeah… Tala, Tiwul and the others had none…" Meiko scratched her chin while her eyebrows were continuously emulating impressions of smart people when they thought really hard.</p><p>"Alright, let's see what I got!" Kiyomi smiled demonstrating more of Meiko's hyped out nature in that one expression than the blacksmith did during the revelation of her target. The girl opened up the file and as carefully as it was possible while leaping around a gigantic dark forest, at least they were located in the upper layers of the trees where limited sunlight still broke through. After reading through her file the Yamanaka showed it to Mana and Meiko.</p><p>"No fricking way! It's Othello G from CWF – Cloud Wrestling Federation! Apparently he's in Team Cumulus from Kumogakure. I guess names like that are normal in Kumogakure too, Ms. Historian?" Kiyomi cheeked at Mana after the team got a better look at the dark skinned young man with feint clues of a facial hair and a silly looking green woolen hat.</p><p>"No, it's not his real name. Kumogakure doesn't prohibit uses of nicknames and stage names in personal documents. It must be his wrestling stage name, you're the authority in that…" Mana smiled, she was glad that at least two of her teammates didn't receive any names she wouldn't have liked to see in there. Not only that, Kiyomi found a name in her target file that was a known to her wrestler which meant she'd be vaguely familiar with his abilities.</p><p>"Come on, Mana! Show us yours!" Meiko hurried Mana, a sentiment of pure hype which Kiyomi soon joined in on.</p><p>The magician held her file ahead of herself, hesitant to take a look. Even while the passing trees and branches passed by at great speeds and the trio of genin kunoichi evaded them while focusing entirely on the files in their hands, the magician's utmost attention was fixed on the yellow neatly packed file. Slowly she removed the rubber band off of it and clicked a metal pin to open up the file, not because of any desire to know what's inside but purely because of need to do so.</p><p>"Junipu-R. Team Cirrus, Kumogakure." Mana finally sighed in relief as the worst case scenario of finding Kiyomi's or Meiko's name, or even that of Kouta or any of his teammates was just that – her silly worrying over too many things, anxiety for anxiety's own sake.</p><p>"Huh… I guess we really will have to take on three teams in total. Too bad…" Meiko wondered before realizing that the prospect kind of excited her. "At least we'll get to see a whole bunch of different genin from different countries and see how they fight and operate!" the blacksmith then rubbed her itchy nose.</p><p>"G and R… What kind of last names are that?" Kiyomi expressed her annoyance over foreign customs. Likely they were made up parts of the nicknames that the young Kumogakure ninja adopted as their own. Historically no Kumogakure ninja had similar names, even if the legislation regarding nicknames in documents was ancient, so it had to be a newer fad. Some old Kumogakure ninja supposedly used to shorten their credentials to avoid the humanity of having an actual name – that was the whole purpose of the previously mentioned law. The current generation must've used those laws for the sole purpose of giving themselves stage names that sounded weird and loud…</p><p>"Don't make fun of foreign customs. The only reason why allied countries even take Chuunin Exams together is to promote cooperation and friendship between different countries." Mana pouted giving Kiyomi an uncomfortable glare one gave their older and quite fascist relative who held the century old opinion that all ninja countries needed to wall themselves off from the surrounding world.</p><p>"I just wanted to come to the conclusion that we need to find them and ask them directly, mom." Kiyomi shrugged without skipping the opportunity to cheek Mana.</p><p>"Could you guys stop talking already?! I want to fight." a loud grunt right behind them alerted the three girls and made them freeze in place, or at least feel like all time had frozen whereas their bodies moved forward out of sheer instinct. Kiyomi didn't waste any time to bend her body backwards and throw an elbow strike that hit someone right in the nose, Meiko followed by dragging her arm down her armor and unsealing a short fingertip to elbow length one handed sword which she swung backwards and having it collide with a flock of sparks with another sword.</p><p>A strong shockwave nearly threw Mana off the frail branch she was on at that moment. Whoever the woman who taunted the trio of Team Hokage was – she was equally as physically mighty as Meiko which was terrifying in of itself, her blade was also made from quite valuable and expensive materials as it could clash with Meiko's own well-made blade and not break.</p><p>Meiko and the mysterious sword wielding kunoichi assailant disappeared from sight. Dozens ranging into hundreds of small clashes with sparks and shockwaves downing trees and blowing them into storms of chips firing off like shrapnel followed before light taps made Mana's ears twitch and realize that the duo had landed firmly on the ground level below. The only person still up there and curiously glaring at Mana and Kiyomi was a young and very short brat grasping at his nose which got pounded by the Yamanaka heiress' elbow strike.</p><p>It was such a curious looking fellow – clearly ready for a harsh winter as he wore a pompous looking, fancy, dark blue detective hat with furry ears buttoned to the sides with golden colored embroidery and a uniform-like looking attire that was purposed for colder weathers. The little thing was almost as large as the duffel bag that he wore by his side and was quite similar to a little male snow fairy as the boy's white as snow hair directly contrasted the bleeding nose that was spouting blood excessively all over his knitted woolen gloves with beautiful golden colored stars that were now tainted with his own blood.</p><p>"You guys again!?" Kiyomi's jaw dropped to the ground as she appeared to identify the individual. Having in mind that once the little boy lifted his face and Mana saw him wearing a fake black as tar moustache and even faker glasses that lacked any glass inside their rims at all the fact really interested her. "I thought we kicked your asses back then enough… You were lucky Meiko didn't feel like bringing you guys in!"</p><p>"Shuddup, you old hag! It's not my fault that Teia wanted to fight you idiots again! She dragged me with her!" the young boy freaked out lifting off the ground almost like he could fly. After looking at the rustling moss and leaves beneath his feet the magician identified a Wind Release ninjutsu similar to that of her own but on a much more casual and weak scale – the young man was very light in weight so weak wind currents he generated casually could've levitated him easily like a plastic bag.</p><p>"Teia? You know this guy?" Mana curiously looked at her friend who just sighed and began running down the tree they were in stuck to the bark using the Art of Tree Climbing technique, an elementary exercise jutsu known to most ninja and generally used to hone their chakra control. Needless to say the magician had to follow her friend to get her answer.</p><p>"Yeah, they attacked us when Hanasaku-sensei left us two to train alone for a while during our training trip. The big blonde bitch is Yoruma Galateia and the little brat's called Aoi Yuki. They weren't really up to no good, they just wanted a fight but they're technically missing ninja, at the time they had Kumogakure headbands. The girl he referred to is actually a Yoruma clan member from Kumogakure, she's different from Hisako though, this one's much more numb-skulled but hundredfold less sadistic. She's a fighting-obsessed nutjob but she's not really up to murder or anything like that. Me and Meiko kicked their asses but the bigger conflict was when we feuded over bringing them in, I wanted to either kill them on the spot or bring them in but Meiko resisted and… Who can argue against that cute smile of hers." Kiyomi blushed before looking away with a very suspiciously angry face, angry not for any other reason but for the fact that Meiko's puppy eyes affected her own decision in any way at all.</p><p>Finally once the two girls landed down firmly on the ground near Meiko, followed shortly by the floaty little brat that the similarly fully armored to Meiko Yoruma girl was accompanied by the magician could get a better look at those two. Actually there were three people – the duo must've gotten some other guy to tag along to fool the village that they were actually taking part in the Chuunin Exams. This kind of thing was not unheard of entirely but it was really not going to reflect too great on their prison record once their fraud was exposed.</p><p>"Look, Galateia, we don't really want to do this right now. We have a whole Chuunin Exam ahead of us. We have no stamina to spend on you…" Meiko tried to reason with the opponent whom she slowly walked towards, mirroring the swordsman's own movements before the two clashed their blades again. The duo pushed their blades onwards, desperately struggling to overcome their opponent but it was a deadlock – Mana was surprised to find out that there was another person about her age that perfectly mirrored Meiko's physical strength and skill with a sword.</p><p>"Wait, didn't you imply there were two of them? So who's that guy?" Mana pointed at a western darker complexion young man in a red tracksuit and spiky dark hairdo that was staring at Mana and Kiyomi with his dark brown stare and very refined and puffy lips.</p><p>"Oh. This is just Gwido." The young white haired brat pointed at his comrade.</p><p>"Hi, I'm Gwido." Gwido introduced himself by raising his hand and yet his face showed no emotion. Gwido was brutal and cold, from where Mana was standing, he smelled of onions too.</p><p>"We needed three people to fake our entry into the exams, Gwido here was eating ramen when we found him. Galateia liked ramen so she automatically liked Gwido and a team of three was born." Aoi explained.</p><p>Mana's eyes moved away from Gwido and onto Galateia – a very bright and almost golden shade of blond haired girl that was clashing with Meiko. Her technical skill with a sword was actually a notch above Meiko's, it was just that Meiko appeared to be faster in general that she managed to respond to Galateia's highly acrobatic and swift assault. That Yoruma woman troubled Mana the most, while Aoi may have been just as powerful, he very clearly had little to no wish to even be here.</p><p>After a powerful spinning slash that was mirrored perfectly by Meiko the two young women slid away from each other and panted as the clash took more than just a couple of breaths from them. Even so, they were very clearly still warming up.</p><p>"How did you three idiots even fool the Administration? Aoi is wearing a fake moustache and he's like what… Eight? Galateia is wearing shades that have an actual honest to God plastic moustache. You'd have had better chances at hiding if you didn't try to disguise yourselves at all!" Kiyomi grunted out as she didn't appear to like Galateia and Aoi very much, her opinion of Gwido remained to be seen. Then again, anything about Gwido was still to be seen as Gwido was yet to do anything at all.</p><p>"Alright. Leave me alone to fight Meiko. You two do whatever, if those two girls interfere you can beat them up!" Galateia appeared to be immune to Kiyomi's belittlement as she just gripped her man-sized two handed sword and prepared to re-engage.</p><p>"Right. If anything happens I fight the blond Yamanaka, you, Gwido, you can take the hotel receptionist." Aoi ordered his friend. Or whatever Gwido was in this case.</p><p>"Me? I can't fight…" Gwido shook his head with an equally as cold and brutal expression as he had when he introduced himself.</p><p>"Well then… Stay here and just be Gwido. I'll take them both on…" Aoi scratched his eyes in irritation.</p><p>Mana was suddenly broken out of the most unbelievable daydream she was blasted into by these even less believable events transpiring in front of her that offered little to no chance of a breather to comprehend what was even going. The feeling that broke her out was her own a bit chilly fingers clutching into a fist and her thigh muscles tightening in anger.</p><p>"I'm a stage magician, actually…" Mana interrupted Aoi with an irritated and ready for an engagement tone. This was the second time she was treated as less than a member of the Team Hokage and things had to be proven. The magician disliked violence but in this case it needed to be quickly resolved before their team wasted too much stamina fighting these goofballs.</p><p>"I apologize, ma'am. I happened to be wrong." Aoi politely nodded his head. Something truly was off about these missing ninja, they didn't act or feel like one's usual batch of criminal rogues…</p>
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<a name="section0276"><h2>276. The Floating Jiangshi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's eyes carefully weighed the curious case of a rogue ninja who stood and didn't move her eyes away from Meiko. In a lot of ways this young woman was very similar to the blacksmith, she was strong, her face was by default always in a curious expression, dazed and confused by a reality she couldn't comprehend before some trigger hit her senses changing the mask on her face permanently to the corresponding emotion of a fitting response for that trigger.</p><p>In many more ways she was different – overly tall and thin. Hair so long they absolutely had to get in her way unless she somehow incorporated their movement into her fighting style and so bright that they didn't really seem natural. Then again, hair colors like this were common to the Yoruma clan. Sometimes the color of one's chakra aura irradiating from them impacted the natural color of one's eyes and hair, that'd have made this girl an owner of an immensely bright colored chakra – a reflection of noble intent, sacrificial and pure hearted character which Mana doubted a nukenin to have. Even given her optimistic attitude towards people.</p><p>Similarly to Meiko the rogue was armored, however only in certain areas, choosing to wear casual light clothing where armor was not of prime necessity. All of her major arteries and sensitive areas where a skipped slash would've opened a battle or life ending wound were covered up: neck, shoulders, lower abdomen. Her stance with the sword suggested a heightened focus on protecting her chest making heavy chest plates redundant. She was already working with a lot handling that two handed longsword of hers.</p><p>Meiko playfully teased an attack, swinging a quick slash that was not as focused in its swinging force as it was focused on a quick return to position afterwards. Teia's feet danced beautifully placing her aside and avoiding a clash, in response she swung her longsword upwards aiming to chop off her opponent's hands. From a vibrant smile on the blonde's face it was easy to read that she didn't count on Meiko's hands dropping anytime soon. A brief metallic sound suggested that a very narrow part of the blade's tip did come in contact with the blacksmith's wristplates.</p><p>"Don't interfere." Meiko cautioned the two kunoichi in her team. "There's no need of wearing out our whole team. It's best we put this to rest now and play along." Her voice was unwavering and demanded to be held in some amount of authority.</p><p>"We could quickly beat that brat up and then assist Meiko in taking this plank-wench out…" Kiyomi pouted blowing out her cheeks in frustration.</p><p>"It's fine. We're not at our full power from that dash, while we observe this fight we can recover somewhat where we would exhaust ourselves even more if we involved ourselves. We'd be left mostly worn out, all three of us, against the odds of needing to fight three teams and fight off whomever comes for us." Mana grudgingly accepted Meiko's request. She didn't like this way of looking at things one bit but her own attitude had to be sacrificed.</p><p>"Good, I really don't like fighting that much. Seeing Galateia do it this often and put us in trouble makes it look like such a troublesome thing…" Aoi nodded looking a little relieved that the two kunoichi agreed to play along his friend's terms.</p><p>"Don't lower your guard. After this is done we're absolutely taking you in. Fraud of such high caliber and kidnapping of a Konoha villager, you're looking at years of punishment in Rengoku, you may even spend some months in Jigoku if the Tribunal feels particularly nasty that day." Kiyomi sneered at the little boy.</p><p>Looking at Aoi from the side it was difficult to say his age for certain. He may have been in his early teens but he looked that damn young and innocent. It didn't help that he was far too short for a teen and floated in the air using his strange weakened version of Mana's levitation technique. Honestly, he looked like a fairy or something.</p><p>"They didn't technically kidnap me, they said I could watch the earlier stages of the Chuunin exams for free by just sticking around them and acting like I'm all business." Gwido butt into the conversation. "Didn't know I'd get to see Konoha's Sorceress too… I'd have joined in immediately." The young man grimaced.</p><p>Galateia stopped swinging her sword at thin air only to switch onto dancing away from Meiko's blade. For a while the two swordswomen kept on slashing at each other without blocking, just parrying and avoiding damaging their blades as it was made quite clear that the matching craftsmanship of their swords would've made it quite impossible to quickly shatter the shoddier blade.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress?" Galateia suddenly broke her stance before sheathing her sword. "Are you good?" she shifted her attention completely at Mana making the magician question just how intelligent she could've been to pick a fight with Meiko and then completely drop it after a single attention trigger coming in.</p><p>"I don't want to brag…" Mana shyly shrugged.</p><p>"Are you kidding? She does some wicked fricking magic, and I've seen a shitload of magic on the streets after her shows picked up – nothing's as good as the real deal." Gwido started to sound quite obsessed with Mana's shows, frankly, the magician thought his input may have overrated her a bit, or been a little bit biased, but she was glad to hear that she was still ahead of those that may have picked up her odd and previously unseen craft in the ninja world after her.</p><p>"Magic!?" Galateia flipped the fecal contents of her innards completely before dropping on the ground and smashing her head into the dirt, like she was beginning forgiveness. "Please don't witch me, I merely wish to challenge Meiko to a fair fight so we can settle this! I have no wish to offend you, witch!"</p><p>"Does she know my magic isn't actual magic, just stage magic?" Mana wondered squinting as she leaned over to ask Kiyomi.</p><p>"It doesn't seem so. Please be advised, she's quite mentally challenged and it doesn't seem to be caused by a disease or anything – she's just of profoundly low intelligence." Kiyomi replied, she didn't appear surprised by this sort of behavior, a bit riled up, if anything.</p><p>"I don't know… I sort of need my Meiko strong and ready to fight for me, rogue ninja… I am considering severe bewitchment…" Mana played along with Galateia's silliness.</p><p>Galateia stood back up and pulled her blade out before pointing its tip at Mana's direction. Her eyes looked cold and emotionless, she didn't sound offended or anything of the sort, she just turned her attention completely at the supposed witch that threatened her goal with a barrier of bewitchment.</p><p>"Hmmm… What am I to do? Fighting a frail witch with troublesome magical powers is boring, but I do want to fight Meiko a lot…" Galateia muttered to herself as her eyes rolled around signaling a desperate shift in her thoughts. "Witch, may I strike you with a deal? My companion here is a Jiangshi, a flesh eating undead being of a boy that died a tragic death and is looking for vengeance before he can return to the spiritual plain. If you would choose to direct your righteous magical fury at him instead of my fight, we could settle our differences afterwards."</p><p>Kiyomi smacked her face. Aoi dashed up to Galateia's face and shouted out in her face, "You stupid idiot, I told you already, I'm no Jiangshi! I'm a human boy, a really short one and pale one but just because I was sickly as a child!"</p><p>The Yamanaka, still stroking her aching forehead turned at Mana, looking to question the sanity of this situation, only to find her nowhere to be found. A tip of the magician's hat was located further behind a tree. Confused the Yamanaka slowly walked up to said tree leaving Meiko and Galateia to fight their problems out. Mana was sitting and wheezing on the other side of the tree, for the most part the magician didn't even notice that she was found and jumped up in surprise and shakes when she found out she was discovered.</p><p>"You do know he's not a real ghost, right? I mean for Pete's sake, you were supposed to be the smart and reasonable one of us…" Kiyomi sighed realizing that even Mana was consumed by the madness of this conflict.</p><p>"Sorry… Couldn't help it, she just said "Jiangshi" and my legs sort of gave way. I just really don't like ghosts…" Mana whimpered out before standing back up and fixing her messy clothes and hat and returning to the battlefield with her teammate. "He does look like a Jiangshi though…" the magician leaned in to whisper at her friend's ear so that she wasn't heard by the Yuki boy and didn't offend him.</p><p>"He does…" even Kiyomi had to admit.</p><p>"Jiangshi aren't even ghosts, you know… They're flesh eating undead." Aoi sniffled in both significant melancholy and defensive anger.</p><p>"She's a sucker for ghost stories, I suppose other kind of undead too… If you asked me it's a psychological thing, she hates letting people die so I suppose it symbolizes failure to her." Kiyomi rubbed her temples in annoyance waiting for Meiko and Galateia to finish fighting it out but it seemed like neither of the two even landed a solid hit on each other as Meiko held back significantly trying not to waste too much stamina and chakra whereas Galateia didn't fight all out by default, choosing to enjoy the battle in its dragged out entirety.</p><p>"Hmmm… Teia doesn't like killing either. I really don't care, though… She thinks that a person she kills she can't fight later so it also makes sense when you look at it from their eyes. Though she had gotten a bit overexcited before, she's not the brightest judge of when one is already dead or not…" Aoi chuckled.</p><p>A bombastic barrage of shockwaves with sparks emitted from the two clashing swords devastated the surrounding. A pair of large spiders tried catching Galateia and Meiko in their web or wrap their eight legs around them and inject their poison forcefully but the two quickly sliced their respective predators to pieces with just several quick slashes of their swords. Galateia finished dealing with hers first – after all her sword was sufficiently large by itself to do the dirty deed, she didn't need the additional effort of added movement to finalize the cut.</p><p>Meiko, just having finished dealing with her spider turned back and swung her blade backwards from instinct, she met nothing but a face full of blonde almost golden colored hair, making the blacksmith waver backwards and try listening in to her moving in opponent so that she could defend in time. It was a clever manner of attack – utilizing Teia's long hair and letting Meiko's sword just cut some of it where the patches that passed through slammed right into the redhead's face dazing her momentarily.</p><p>A quick and disorienting pull completely confused Meiko before she identified her opponent's motion – she was grabbed by her own chest plate and pulled in for a stab. That wouldn't have worked. Meiko was too fresh and her augmentations were too solid – the sword wouldn't cut too deep into the skin so early on so it slightly confused the weaponry user before an eruption of pure pain hit her right in the nose making a warm blast of blood cover her face from the blacksmith's nose. It was not a stab that Galateia pulled Meiko in for – it was a headbutt.</p><p>After Meiko opened her eyes from the burst of tears coming out from inside her tear ducts a somewhat soft kick sent her flying back. Differently from the strong and focused headbutt, this attack was barely even registered and was, most likely, solely meant to send the blacksmith further away.</p><p>Meiko quickly slid her unprotected elbow through her nose where the steel wasn't covering up the green tracksuit underneath allowing her to quickly wipe off this burst of blood and buy her seconds of time before another one came. Too slow… Galateia was already behind her!</p><p>A loud clang followed by an immense shocking sensation followed as Meiko bent her back in pain, her opponent's focused strike cut right through the armor on the back, strongest exactly where the redhead's spine was located as that part was to be protected at all costs. As the blacksmith worked her way to roll and dash away from her brutal opponent as fast as possible she lamented the damage she allowed to be inflicted initially as the countless distractions from pain coming from all sides and irritation in her entire facial area prevented from her focusing and substituting properly. A focused and good at controlling themselves and their chakra ninja would've been able to…</p><p>Meiko gritted her teeth in pain as the warm feeling of blood trickling down her back and soaking her clothes didn't let her forget this moment of getting careless. Galateia had certainly gotten better in the handful of days that the two hadn't fought each other, she was leaps and bounds ahead in just that short amount of time. Still, Meiko felt like it wasn't yet something she couldn't handle.</p><p>Suddenly a whistling and crashing buzzsaw emerged from the trees, Galateia lifted her hands up with her blade and continuously flipped overhead emulating one and slicing through wood and likely steel alike. With a gentle leap Meiko avoided the strike, she dragged her hand across the wristband of hers as a sealing glyph made itself clear and a steel string with a weight on the end got unsealed which the blacksmith used to yank herself farther away from her opponent and get on the upper layer of trees.</p><p>"I was really looking forward to this fight, Meiko. Ever since we first fought! I trained really hard to not disappoint you like the last time, please let's do our best!" Galateia grinned, for someone who described a process of two people horribly murdering each other she looked awfully excited and optimistic about it. Sometimes the blacksmith felt a bit too excited about fighting too, it was that one thing she was confident about, something she could've been useful to her friends in. But never to such extent.</p><p>"You just got me with that hair attack because I didn't expect it, let's make this clear…" Meiko answered with a smile of her own.</p><p>"I see… You've sealed your sword though, do you surrender?" Galateia wondered, "Because I won't accept such an end to our battle. I'll chase you to the end of the Earth to settle this!"</p><p>"It is tempting to just let you get bored handing me my ass and then be done with this but I need to pay my dues for my team. They worked really hard to get me to this stage of the exams, I absolutely cannot let that effort go unrewarded." Meiko replied as her smile faded and was substituted by a determined expression.</p><p>Galateia didn't offer any words, she just leaped at the tree Meiko was standing on slashing at its base aiming to bring it down. Break her opponent's sense of balance and concentration before attacking her while she had no footing. It was a grand idea but Meiko had an even grander one. With a mad battlecry the blacksmith focused her chakra all in her feet, the blacksmith ventured back to all of Mana's lessons, she relied on herself not failing with this simply trick as the redhead kept stuck on the tree even as it began sliding down only to leap behind it and kick it with her feet thusly that it wound end up flying right at Galateia.</p><p>A single silver colored blur and the golden swordswoman cut the tree in two allowing the two parts of it to split off and not harm her. With a relatively cold yet also anticipating the upcoming hype of Meiko's attack stare the rogue swordswoman continued to observe Meiko's response. Without even a sword in hand the blacksmith dashed out from the nearest bush, having hid there during the distraction that the falling tree had provided her. Teia instinctively swung her blade aiming right at the blacksmith's abdomen but was suddenly caught off balance as red sticky blood burst like a balloon bomb had just exploded in her face. The golden haired swordswoman took a couple of graceful leaps back, swinging her longsword in front of her just to ward off any attempts to capitalize on Meiko's clever offense at using her own relentlessly bleeding nose.</p><p>Teia's scream colored the dark and dangerous forest as Meiko's palm strike tensed her back elbow too much for the sword to remain in her hand.</p><p>"I made a mistake before." Meiko uttered attacking Galateia's entire body, every unarmored point with her bare fists. "I fought you – a skilled swordswoman with my own sword." The blacksmith continued after she noticed Teia's feet attempting to move and simply unsealing and tossing a pair of kunai blades that grazed her shins and stuck straps of her denim trousers to the ground. Tearing those straps required additional motions, motions that weren't getting away from Meiko's relentless offensive and bought her time.</p><p>"I don't plan to make that mistake anymore!" Meiko finished after unsealing a knuckle duster and fitting her fingers inside it while it was still in mid-air after being removed from its seal inside the blacksmith's wristguard. The redhead threw a powerful cross with it throwing her opponent off her feet and downing her. Quickly, Meiko unsealed several more shuriken and launched them at her downed opponent pinning some more of her clothes to the dirt and wooden roots beneath her.</p><p>Again Meiko angrily sniffed her nose letting some more blood burst out so that her breathing was unclogged. It was difficult attacking so relentlessly with a bleeding nose and teary eyes, she'd have been able of inflicting so much more damage if it wasn't for the damage she had sustained…</p><p>"Stay down…" Meiko quietly growled before turning her back to her opponent.</p><p>"Where do you think you're going!?" Galateia's angry growl made the blacksmith turn around. The brutal nukenin swordswoman had torn her clothes up by forcing her way out of the lock of steel that she was placed in and stood back up. Apart from cracked lip and a bad situation in her mouth resulting in a mouthful of blood coming up from time to time she didn't look too badly damaged.</p><p>"You had my back exposed…" Meiko groaned in frustration. "Should've just finished it!"</p><p>"That'd have not been fair. I only attack from the back when you anticipate me to. Not when your guard is down." The blonde shook her head before picking her sword back up and resuming her fighting stance.</p>
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<a name="section0277"><h2>277. Meiko's Approach</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The soft soughing sound calmed Shibari down greatly. During moments like this when there was no action to be seen, only relaxing sounds around her, she could just sit down and float away. Just let her consciousness fade and slip into a sweet cottony dream.</p><p>"Ma'am, we've got action between Team Hokage and the Rogue Element." a strict masculine voice reported, he sat slouched over, shoulders narrowed and his neck combatted the weight of the heavy visual equipment on his head. A concoction of steel and glass, a combination of visual monitors and a combat helmet.</p><p>Clacking the heels of her sandals against the rough stony forest outskirts Shibari made her way to the sensory mechanism and observed the problem point for a brief moment. She was biting her lip subconsciously, nibbling on the inner soft skin in her mouth while the woman stared blankly at the watery orb and symbols on it.</p><p>"Shall we send someone to collect the nuke and her accomplices?" a different chuunin asked for further orders as, in case of a positive answer, starting earlier on opening the communication programs from inside his helmet was in order and would've greatly diminished the amount of work he had to do.</p><p>"If I wanted her arrested I wouldn't have let her in there in the first place. It's fun shaking the boring games up with a Rogue Element once in a while." Shibari smiled to the man, something he could not see given the excessive headgear placed on his shoulders.</p><p>"As you say, ma'am."</p><p>"What about the other teams? I assume you are ready to report grievous injuries and takedowns, Konoha High?" the woman asked with disdain and somewhat of a playful tease towards the educational institution that the chuunin came recommended from as an intern.</p><p>"Yes, ma'am! There are no relevant injuries to speak of yet. No contacts so far, the situation at the entrance is mostly resolved, the wildlife is returning to its rightful habitat."</p><p>"Nice work, Intent Ops…" Shibari sighed before walking further off and observing the entirety of the messy looking liquid orb, her lips sharpened and ducked out from her mouth in concentration.</p><p>"Ma'am!" a squad of chuunin not wearing any headgear working by a fancy looking green and rotten grey scroll let out as a collective unit affirmed their acknowledgment of her compliment.</p><p>"Let me know when the Rogue Element is taken out. I'll go in and take the trash out personally." Shibari gave a knowingly unseen glance at the sensory team positioned by specific corners of the sensory mechanism and overseeing their own attributed patches of the Forest of Death battlefield.</p><p>Galateia's blade was caught by Meiko's arms, with a cheeky smile the blonde pressed her sword's handle harder attempting to force it through. A wound like that would've certainly made the blacksmith's day worse, right on the center of her chest, from one shoulder to the pelvis.</p><p>"You seemed to have more fighting spirit during our first meeting." The rogue ninja noted.</p><p>"That was different. I was just training, eager to push myself to the limits to move past them. Here I must preserve my resources…" Meiko grunted as her opponent's physical pressure was formidable.</p><p>The redhead growled in pain and tiredness as she pushed the blade's edge to the shoulder plate – one of the more armored parts of the body of both of the kunoichi. The heat and flashing light of the sparks that fired out as Galateia's blade slipped through the plating and smashed into the ground blinded Meiko temporarily and made her flinch. It was a wonderful thing, however, as she instinctively closed her eyes and avoided them being filled with dirt and wood chips from the ground Galateia's sword busted open.</p><p>The loud clang of Meiko's armored foot stamping right in the weight center of the sword combined with the pain and tension on Galateia's wrist from her holding the blade disarmed the girl. The blacksmith tossed a good pair of punches that'd have cracked the whole world in two but it appeared this nuke's jaw was tougher than that. Each time she was hit, Galateia turned back with an almost psycho smile. She didn't enjoy the process of being hit, she didn't like pain, clearly. She enjoyed the overall process of fighting, facing an opponent who disarmed her and exploited her openings.</p><p>The redhead just cursed aside over her left shoulder and raised her arms up, her left palm reached over the wristguard just to be able to unseal one of her bucklers if she needed to.</p><p>Galateia's response was quick, after picking her weapon back up, she slid her palm over the handle of the longsword, twisting it like a spinning toy horizontally. The blasted thing rotated so fast that a howling sound smit the blacksmith's ears, just after the nukenin's vertical palm thrust at the end of the handle of her sword Meiko realized she hadn't enough air for a proper dodge. Struggling with a bleeding nose spouting blood both on the outside and inside was more troublesome than she had initially predicted it to be.</p><p>"Sunray!" Galateia shouted as she pressed her second palm against the first, despite it being quick and barely noticeable, Meiko could pick up on her focusing significant force into her feet. A great amount of force now flowed through her entire body, perfect footing and perfect channeling of the force from her feet to the palms resulted in a kenjutsu technique that utilized a longsword like a spear.</p><p>A sharp pain in the gut shocked the blacksmith, it was so similar to cutting oneself or smashing one's own finger with the hammer as it had so often happened to the blacksmith kunoichi. However it didn't feel like getting impaled all the way through, so much pain meant only that her body hadn't gone into shock and soon enough the visual aspect of things caught up to the physical pain that Galateia's attack made Meiko go through. This darned nukenin was just so damned fast!</p><p>Meiko was broken out of her thought process as her body slammed against the ground with its back heavily. It appeared like the drilling stab had merely tossed Meiko backwards after opening a nasty pelvic wound. Like a turtle struggling to stand back on her feet the blacksmith rolled on her front and pushed against the firm ground strong enough to push her body off of it. That allowed the redhead to avoid Galateia's jumping stab at the ground and the follow-up quick horizontal slash that quickly split a handful of trees in two de-foresting a decent patch of land and cutting the grass of at least five meters in radius clean.</p><p>"Pull out your sword, Meiko." Galateia ordered like she had some authority of the situation. "I took you for more than your lowly witch companion, swords are meant to allow light to dance on their surfaces, not be hidden in pocket sealing dimensions."</p><p>"You know how seals work then? That's a first… I'd have taken you for someone who'd think it's witchery." Meiko forced a smile even though her eyes were clearly relaying a message of great pain and one of her arms had to constantly be held on the abdomen wound, at least until her ninja metabolism quickly stopped the bleeding.</p><p>"The fencing master of the peculiar "rapeer" blade from Land of Snow taught me a bit about them, she suggested I carried my own blade sealed. Negotiations ended when I showed no talent for it."</p><p>"I had expected to be able to keep some of my chakra for later. My team had done so much for me in the previous exam that this one is all mine, I must pay my dues for my team. That means I cannot fail them. I'll just have to settle for being tired now and skipping one round, rather than getting shamefully beaten whole way through." Meiko growled before touching both of her shoulder armor pieces. The damaged one from the time before when the redhead sacrificed it for Galateia's blade just spouted out a handful of sparks and the glyph faded. One less seal to maintain…</p><p>"C-Rank Seal: Release!" Meiko chanted pulling out a buckler from the armor piece and slinging at like a frisbee, right after the plate of steel left the blacksmith's hand she engaged into hand seals, hoping to make it in time. That was not the only worry on the blacksmith's mind – chakra control was an equal enemy of hers to the blonde in front of her.</p><p>Meiko made more hand seals than Substitution Jutsu needed, she made more for pure concentration, get her body in the right mind set. Knowing how easily she could've messed up such simple techniques made her wish to be absolutely certain with this.</p><p>A deep lung filling whoosh of air alerted the blacksmith that it worked, she had successfully replaced her body with the tool she just threw before she touched her armored boots in mid-air, unsealing them too. The pure base chakra lacking any elemental nature burst through launching Meiko in a mad dive down, like a fish underwater she rotated her entire body to spin over the quick desperation thrust made by her opponent.</p><p>A pillar of smoke and brutal shockwaves erupting and tossing trees, dirt and rock aside fired out from the ground as Meiko slammed at her opponent's throat, aiming to crush it with her own forearm and leave the nukenin just as struggling to breathe as the blacksmith was so shortly ago. It took a while for the murmuring and rustling to settle down and for the dust and rubble to clear.</p><p>Meiko didn't think about how tired she was, how difficult it was to lift her opponent off the ground and throw her into the air before reaching for the belt pieces of her armor and the buckle protecting her lower abdomen and upper thighs. Even more chakra got sucked right out, felt like long and thick needles being driven under her skin and sucking lifeforce itself right out. This had to work!</p><p>With handful of tools Meiko unleashed a prideful barrage of shuriken and kunai, custom made thrown knives that were more aerodynamic than the kunai most ninja used, boomerangs, tomahawks, circular blades of sharpened outer edge, smaller javelins that were meant for quick throwing right after they were unsealed, darts, throwing knives with three different sharpened blades that pointed upwards and to each side respectively appearing almost fork-like in shape.</p><p>The absolutely overwhelming storm of weaponry coming at her opponent would undoubtedly missed their mark, there were simply too many of them, thrown too fast and without focus or aiming. Meiko was a skilled weapon user, as she was skilled at making them, but her marksmanship was not the greatest in the village. After Galateia's eyes finally opened in mid-air she braced for impact. Obviously she expected most of the weaponry to just whizz past her barely grazing her.</p><p>A blue sealing glyph lit up on the blonde's chest, the spot where Meiko grabbed onto to throw her into the air. The points of each of the thrown weapons directed themselves onto the sealing glyph correcting their shoddy trajectory and hitting their mark.</p><p>The sound of steel hitting steel of Galateia's armor as well as weaponry banding together into a focused stream of edges and pure death was unbearable. The noise of thousand men screaming in agony. Meiko tried to come up with a cool sounding name for this technique she came up with after returning from the quest for Box of Ultimate Bliss with Mana, something that reflected the abhorrent noise it made when all of those weapons collided with each other with force enough to focus them all into a stream of steel. Nothing really came to mind at that moment of its discovery or in this particular moment.</p><p>Names for techniques usually allowed for a ninja to focus their mind. It was like a code for their body to move a certain way, an instinctual lock that was unlocked once those usually cheesy and strange words were uttered. They allowed for chakra to be concentrated more successfully and with greater ease, they allowed the body to move faster and more fluently performing them. This particular jutsu needed a name…</p><p>Galateia's body weightlessly slammed to the ground together with the emptied weaponry reserves of Meiko. She was covered with grazes, slashes and cuts. For her thumb-skulled brain she managed to focus her remaining chakra resources into to limited patch of her body where the seal was applied flawlessly. It hardened up the muscles and the skin and anything underneath to deflect the weaponry but as it slid past or got deflected by her body they grazed and cut open any other fleshy bits they passed by.</p><p>She probably wouldn't get an option to use this jutsu again, not until her entire reserves are replenished and that'd take some time.</p><p>"What was that?" Mana's shocked voice ringed in Meiko's ears, parts of it still got lost in the ringing clangs deep in her ears that invited the unwelcome guest of motherlode of all migraines.</p><p>"Tons of awesome, that's what it was!" Kiyomi's cheers were tough not to identify. Sometimes the Yamanaka's voice was deep and sad but whenever she spoke of Meiko or her abilities her voice changed into something of a pile miserably full of hype.</p><p>"Teia!" Aoi yelled out as he floated to the criminal. Mana looked at Meiko questioningly. The magician had no idea about Meiko's stance on killing, she had never seen the blacksmith restrain herself purposefully in order to preserve the life of her opponent or knew any reasons why she'd do it.</p><p>The redhead didn't want her friend to be disappointed in her. In a way, after their initial meeting the two lived in a constant cycle of mutual approval. Each tried to make the other happy by hitting the strings that rang the most sensitively for each other. Meiko worked on Mana's custom stage magic show orders, the magician appealed to Meiko's love for crafting and legendary artifacts… Even if Meiko had no conscious desire to preserve her opponent's life, because of that she'd do it subconsciously.</p><p>This time she may just have overdone it… With great self-scolding the blacksmith just shrugged and looked onto her opponent's body that just casually extended her arms forward and leaped back on her feet like she was just simply decked in the nose.</p><p>Meiko had to hand it to the blonde, she was very persistent and incredibly vital. It was like being cut dozens of thousands of times all over her body meant nothing to her, she even had the audacity to grin foolishly as her golden hair drowned in her own blood beginning to lose their appealing and exotic color.</p><p>The curious visual orbs of the nukenin swordswoman glared in confusion at Meiko who did her best to collect as many of her thrown and undamaged tools and seal them back to their rightful places – a less dignified and spoken about process of Meiko's battles.</p><p>"What's wrong? Do you surrender?" the swordswoman uttered.</p><p>"What? Have you even seen yourself?! Get yourself treated, I don't care how. This is done, I have no need to continue this any further and end up killing you…" Meiko angrily replied.</p><p>The blacksmith gave her magician friend a glance back, Mana tried to mask it but she approved of the blacksmith's decision and was greatly pleased by it. Her wish to hide her approval of Meiko's non-lethal approach was not something that the armored kunoichi understood, not really. Didn't she wish to lead through example? Maybe she just didn't want to be too preachy? That permission of Mana's for her friends to choose their own path made her way more alluring for the blacksmith but also it made the chances of success seem even more pitiful.</p><p>The ground beneath Meiko's feet disappeared. A foul stench assaulted her nose as the sight of an underground great snake trying to dive out from underground and swallow her whole met the blacksmith's eyes. As fast as her abilities and fatigued physique allowed the redhead reached for her chest plate removing a palm sized rod that extended into a steel bo staff and drove into the snake's mouth keeping the jaws open.</p><p>With a quick yank the armored kunoichi leaped out from the predator's mouth where Mana tackled her further from the snake's mouth using her own levitation jutsu – the Mystical Wings technique.</p><p>Further away Aoi pointed his arms towards the surfaced tail of the reptile aiming to smash the criminals and Gwido to a bloody stain.</p><p>"Glaciation Jutsu!" he shouted out freezing the humidity of the air around the snake's limb as well as the liquids inside it. The blond swordsman leaped up into the air.</p><p>"Sunray Kick!" she shouted out through pain and battle fatigue as her swift kick shattered the snake's tail to pieces.</p><p>The ground beneath began to rumble and shake, tunnels of raised dirt pillars began appearing from below signaling that more of these must've been on their way. They were nowhere as large as the usual underground snakes living in the Forest of Death but the fact they were so young and relatively small made them travel and hunt in larger packs.</p><p>"Must be the runt from the litter!" Kiyomi gritted through her teeth before gesturing to get as far away from the battlefield as possible.</p><p>With Galateia's blank stare, her eyes being the one of the few white and clean bits of her blood soaked and cut up face, being the last sight Meiko saw before dashing off and away from the troublesome pack of snakes the Team Hokage bolted away. Their supernatural speed allowed them to simply disappear from any senses of these underground predators and Aoi with Galateia soon followed, heading the opposite direction. It couldn't have been too comfortable for Gwido to travel being constantly held by his back collar like some ragdoll…</p><p>And thus this brief engagement came to an interrupted and quick ending!</p>
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<a name="section0278"><h2>278. No One Can Understand The Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The dash away from just another attack from the local fauna was not a lengthy one. Granted, it was not easy to tell exactly how far away the three girls had moved, it could've been solid twenty to thirty kilometers, could've been anywhere below that. Judging from how eagerly Kiyomi looked ahead, she wanted to get as far away from Galateia and other useless fights as possible.</p><p>Meiko's loud grunting and wheezing made the trio reconsider their grandiose plans for covering grand distances. After realizing that they weren't going anywhere Mana slowed her pace down to get closer to Meiko and signaled her that the three of them were going on the lower levels with her eyes. While the injured blacksmith took some sweet time to follow Mana, it was Kiyomi's annoyed grunt that truly worried the magician.</p><p>Once the three had reached the ground floor Mana and Kiyomi carefully aided Meiko to sit by the tree. It was only then that the magician saw her friend's clothes underneath the armor drenching in blood which made her ask for the blacksmith to remove them. Meiko's movements were a bit sloppy and slow, it was painfully clear that she was combatting blood loss and dizziness. A few more dashes and she'd have bumped head on right into a tree and plummeted down the fast and direct way.</p><p>"How much chakra did you use?" Mana inquired noticing some familiar symptoms in Meiko's blue lips and bloodshot eyes.</p><p>"Probably more than half…" the blacksmith shrugged.</p><p>"Doesn't look like more than half, looks more like more than half more than what you should've used in any reasonable fight." Kiyomi expressed her own less than expert medical opinion. Despite her lack of expertise she was right.</p><p>Meiko's gut wound was no longer spitting blood, almost immediately once the kunoichi stopped moving around the wound's bleeding ratio diminished almost a dozen times. While it looked like she was hit by a large scale mining drill as the magician's fingers could've fit halfway into the mess that Galateia's weaponry made of Meiko's lower abdomen, it was not something a ninja couldn't survive and recover from over time.</p><p>"Keep watch. I'll treat this." Mana sighed before taking Kiyomi's own ninja pouch and removing some bandages from it. The magician lacked medical supplies of her own, she was too busy filling her hidden pockets and hat seal with gimmick cards to have any.</p><p>"No. I'll treat Meiko, you keep watch!" Kiyomi whipped Mana back carrying a surprising spice of passion in her voice. Despite having no idea what that was all about the magician shrugged and allowed the bandages to be bullied off of her.</p><p>Scaling up a tree wasn't that difficult nor did it take too long, still, feeling uneasy about using the Art of Tree Climbing – an unoriginal technique the magician quickly used her own Mystical Wings to levitate onto the upper layers. Honestly she'd have preferred Kiyomi keeping watch, she had more ways of effectively intercepting an attack, also more experience in general.</p><p>Subconsciously Mana knew why she wanted Kiyomi's assistance in this aspect and not the other – her friend had no qualms about hurting people badly or killing them if needed. She was nothing like Mana nor, it turned out, like Meiko, who kind of felt lukewarm about Mana's non-lethal approach.</p><p>The magician just sighed, breathing was not easy at this moment – a result of two desperate abuses of speed augmentations. She couldn't even begin to wonder how Meiko must've felt now, she not only dashed around at speeds that weren't really recommended to be used by younger ninja but she also sustained a full-on fight with an almost equal opponent.</p><p>Things were about to get even more complicated, likely they'll get worse but hopefully the saying about things getting difficult and the result afterwards would carry out both parts of its bargain. Mana was afraid to think of how it ended since she didn't want to jinx it.</p><p>A trio of ninja leaped gracefully from one strong and thick branch to another. A short casually dressed young lady turned at her teammates looking at them with curiosity.</p><p>"So any of you got anyone we know?" she asked</p><p>The sword wielding and denim loving Kouta's teammate shook his head. He looked at his teammates who also shared his lack of knowledge of whom exactly they'd be fighting.</p><p>"Zahafbit, Team Pahlavi from Sunagakure." the young swordsman spoke up showing his file face up to his teammates.</p><p>"Relta Ginn, Team Scuti from Hoshigakure." The kunoichi answered in return before the sights of the two lingered on Kouta who was deep in thought. After noticing that his team was curious and beginning to get a bit worried about his pull he shyly smiled and shook his palms in a pacifying manner.</p><p>"Trest Bregger, Team Kyanite from Iwagakure. Seems we lucked out…" Kouta smiled. "No one will have to fight someone they know and don't want to fight."</p><p>"Like your girlfriend?" Budoki, Kouta's female teammate teased him. "I hope you won't dash off to check up on her…" she locked her arms around her chest while raising an eyebrow.</p><p>"No. She's kind and likes helping people but she doesn't need being guided. My father thinks that's stupid and makes her weak but I like that. She weakens herself by limiting what she can do. Always exposing her weaknesses to everyone and as a result she grows stronger than people who don't. If I checked on her or even tried to contact her she'd probably get mad at me…" Kouta laughed out uneasily.</p><p>"Plus we can't know if she or her team didn't get your name on their file. Also, obviously, this is a test of skill which means if you guided her through it you'd only lead her to an untimely death on a battlefield she wasn't ready for. Tests are there for a reason, you know, and cheating hurts the cheater more than the examiner." His male teammate nodded in agreement. "Plus, she's not the only one purposefully limiting herself with artificial challenges…" he lingered on that thought.</p><p>"I thought we were already past this, Yushijin. I won't use my Curse Seal. I'd also very gladly only serve a supporting role in this, healing you after the fighting is done. It's not like you can't take care of the opposition…" Kouta pouted. His eyes weren't eyes of an expression of playful distaste, they were dead serious.</p><p>"I thought your clan was one of warriors. All I'm saying is that you're restraining yourself needlessly, weren't you training with your father almost every time we came to visit you? You're wasting that time you've spent doing it."</p><p>"Don't assume to know anything about Juugo. Even I used to hide behind a fake name just because I didn't know my clan well enough, only what I saw in my father, for years. Restraint is our mantra, my father is the odd one out. Every single one of our living members is taught restraint and pacifistic ways from birth. My mother went out of her way to have me spend years amongst my people. Do you know what happens to the likes of my father? Young hotshots who fight needlessly and enjoy the destruction they cause? The elders execute them, that's because they cannot allow to be identified as a violent and threatening clan to Iwagakure ever again…"</p><p>The trio just kept on moving in silence. The eerie atmosphere gripped all three of them by the throat. The knowledge of what was done to the Juugo clan by Iwagakure was not common one but due to having a representative of the clan in their team both Budoki and Yushijin knew about it. A genocide unlike any other, ended because the perpetrators themselves felt sickened by their own actions and yet one that could break out at any given point all over again if one bad seed ever got out of line.</p><p>"Look…" Budoki finally broke out of the mean shade that messed up the friendly atmosphere around them. Kouta pushed her out of his way, jets spread off of his feet blasting chakra from them and raising him above his team to intercept an upcoming attack.</p><p>A colossal fireball so immensely blazing that it wasn't interrupted or detonated by any barriers in its way, it simply incinerated them by its astounding heat. Kouta thrust his arms upwards, chakra cannons split off from his arms firing beams of concentrated chakra blasts at it that barely looked like it did anything to the upcoming destruction.</p><p>Yushijin darted past the medical ninja and caught the blazing ball of flaming gas by his own hands. The chakra so intensely focused into his palms formed a barrier that stopped the gas in its path whereas normally it'd have simply swallowed Yushijin whole and incinerated him not unlike all rock and trees or wild predators that got in its way.</p><p>The blast stopped in a deadlock, slowly the genin swordsman removed one of his arms which reached for the sword on his back and quickly pulled it out cutting an opening into the flames. The young man pressed on pushing his blade onwards deeper into the blazing inferno before splitting the superheated ball of fire in half.</p><p>"This is no ordinary Fire Release technique…" Budoki gasped looking on ahead and trying to locate the assailants. Kouta and Yushijin landed beside her.</p><p>"My, my… All three of us put so much love into this technique, surely, we thought, this compacted heat mass, split amongst the three of you, would singe you guys up and take you out." a young teen with shoulder length greasy black as tar hairdo sighed as he hung on the very top and some of the weakest branches of the tree-line.</p><p>"What is this?" Kouta growled observing the fact that there were indeed four of the assailants: the greasy and untidy haired boy, a dark and gothic clothes loving young lady with an obsession with white and black make up and eye piercing hair dye and a tall and bulky young man with blonde hair worn in a ponytail and dead inside looking eyes. The fourth member of the team wore a red dress and the signature Iwagakure jonin uniform – a young woman with long black hair and the red bandanna that the Iwagakure ninja often wore.</p><p>"Is that… Their sensei, accompanying them!?" Budoki shouted out in disbelief. "We need to get out of here, no way can we take on a jounin!"</p><p>"Nor can we escape from one…" Yushijin looked down before strictly turning his attention back at the attackers. "If that woman also joined in on the Fire Release attack she'd have boosted its temperature ten times of what it had before. They'd have knocked us out instantly blowing any augmentations of ours away."</p><p>"You're saying the reason she didn't join in and beat us, like an ambushing party would ideally act, was because she couldn't?" Budoki wondered.</p><p>"Hey! What's the meaning of this? Why do you have your sensei accompanying you? Is this a trick of some sort?" Kouta shouted out at the quartet that continued to eye at them from above.</p><p>The jounin woman closed her eyes in annoyance and shook her head. "No. My signature is being followed closely at all times. I'm here to keep an eye on this young girl. She is on notice and to be very closely observed, I will not interfere into the battle unless the conditions fit the scenario where I was allowed to interfere."</p><p>"You mean there's a scenario where you're reasonably allowed to take us out by the examiner?" Yushijin raised his eyebrow. Fear was beginning to slowly stun his facial muscles.</p><p>"Oh no, you misunderstand. I will not be fighting you, I will be taking out my own team. You see, this young lady here is the rebellious kind with a very suicidal personality. Two years ago, when she crossed the planetary barrier, she purposefully didn't control her abilities which would've destroyed our very world. For that reason I am to closely watch her so that she doesn't try it again…"</p><p>The eyes of the three Konoha genin gapped open wide in shock. A lot of ninja were capable of otherworldly destruction if they didn't control their abilities properly. Chakra was a universal force that tied the entire universe together therefore control was valued more than flat out destructive potential. No one had ever heard of a ninja that purposefully didn't focus their attack exactly onto the body of their opponent and not the surrounding environment.</p><p>The loud sound of laughter made Kouta snap out and look at his swordsman teammate.</p><p>"In other words, you won't interfere with our fight." Yushijin finally restrained his laughter and got serious. "You must be after one of us, which means that by taking you guys out of this exam one of us will be guaranteed survival of this round. Our strategy actually was to wait until we are attacked until we can take out at least two of our hunters – guaranteeing our team's survival. Who would've known we'd be so lucky!" he smiled wickedly.</p><p>"We'd have been even luckier if one of them was a person of our own interest. Still, this is just fine." Budoki shrugged before relaxing her body and taking a dive backwards aiming to disappear in the vast dark green cover of the leaves, bushes and vines.</p><p>"And there she goes taking the support role…" Kouta sighed before taking an offensive fighting stance besides his teammate.</p><p>A flesh cutting sound following a wild spray of crimson bodily fluids cut into the boys own assault. Further away, the long tongued greasy haired punk got cut down by Yushijin's sword. The scared eyes of the young man that couldn't understand how the genin swordsman had moved in what seemed an instant and his twitching in shock body fell on his back and tumbled down hitting multiple thick tree branches and flipping over them only to continue its fast journey down.</p><p>Despite just seeing one of their teammates being cut down, the goth girl didn't respond at all nor did her face betray any emotions. She just raised her foot telegraphing a powerful stomp as her arms worked on hand seals. The ponytail behind Yushijin had wide and shocked eyes and a verily gapping mouth but he did not utter a word.</p><p>Sealing glyphs lit up on the ponytail shinobi's palms which unsealed two daggers sealed inside them, his grip didn't wield them as daggers were to be wielded, instead he gripped them upwards like one would hold a blade before repositioning his thumbs to wield the knives in an almost scalpel-like grip. He aimed for a precise cut at Yushijin's throat only for a steel wire to gently yank the swordsman out of the way.</p><p>Without uttering a word the scalpel wielding ponytail shinobi dived down after his opponent. The goth girl, after stopping her own technique mid-way, followed him after stabbing a wire tied kunai on the branch she was on only for the team's jounin leader to follow her closely. The woman shadowed her pupil but her stance was neutral and overly full of openings, it was clear she was merely watching over the angsty young lady and didn't intend to protect her from being defeated.</p><p>Kouta angrily growled before placing his palms onward.</p><p>"Chakra Missiles!" he yelled out firing small blasts of pure chakra at the gothic chick that followed her down.</p><p>The young lady yanked her improvised landing tool pulling herself up to avoid the location where Kouta predicted her to be but the chakra projectiles turned up at the last moment detonating on impact as the change of their trajectory was simply too quick and unexpected to avoid. A deafening scream finally made the Iwagakure kunoichi show some emotion.</p><p>Kouta's body straightened out and tensed, like a cat waiting to pounce, his excited eyes followed his opponent plummeting down before snapping out of his battle high. The youth's eyes turned away in embarrassment, he pressed his knuckles tightly by his thighs as his breathing raced. The medical ninja slowed it down trying to calm himself down. This wasn't who he was, not who he wanted to be. Not like his father… Never like his father.</p><p>A loud tree rustling sound woke him up, a large falling log smacked the greasy haired genin away by slamming at him at the side as he tried to sneak up on Kouta from behind. Must've been Budoki's doing, she liked to just disappear and set traps for people. She was good at supporting him and Yushijin from behind… Kouta had no time to mess around, he needed to get his shit together and get back into the game.</p><p>"Ma'am! Team Pyrite from Iwagakure just engaged Team Fir. Zircon Trot, a genin from Team Pyrite is trying to take out his target – Juugo Kouta!" one of the heavy headgear wearing sensory display tracking ninja reported.</p><p>"Everyone's really passive about this… Maybe we should've given them a time limit?" Shibari bit her lip.</p><p>"Team Pyrite suffered minor injuries, their chakra levels dipped significantly."</p><p>"How's the… That girl, Jord Kvasir. The one that didn't channel her chakra right on purpose." Shibari inquired.</p><p>"Seems to be behaving."</p><p>"Well, I suppose if Iwagakure believed her to be a threat they would've never allowed her to take the Exams… And how's Yoruma Galateia?"</p><p>"Her chakra level is reaching critical but she appears to be moving, albeit slowly. Will you be intercepting, ma'am?"</p><p>Shibari checked her ninja pouch before walking up to the entrance, a young chuunin rushed up to open the gate for her. The woman didn't even wait for the gate to open completely, just as the gap between the two steel chunks was large enough she just disappeared into the darkness of the forest. Another chuunin took of the headgear and was substituted by the door opening chuunin and assumed command in Shibari's absence.</p><p>"Report!" he barked out an order.</p><p>"Shibari-san is moving in really fast… The chakra signature of Galateia Yoruma has faded, that of her accomplice however just flared up. His distress gave him a small boost…"</p><p>"This is Hozuki Shibari we are talking about, a Konohagakure Jounin. Yoruma Galateia is just a footnote in the Bingo Book, barely even worth her own entry, her accomplice doesn't even have his own bounty, just a boost to Galateia's." the substitute commanding officer remarked.</p><p>"Report! Both Galateia Yoruma and her accomplice have been taken out, both of them are moving in to the gate, Shibari-san is so fast!"</p><p>"Oh well… I suppose I better get ready to strain my neck with that giant thing again." The commanding officer massaged his aching neck muscles before switching with the young chuunin who just rushed in to open the gate.</p><p>From the open gate, completely unscathed stepped out Hozuki Shibari with the unconscious bodies of Aoi and Galateia floating in a large water bubble. Most of Gwido's body was submerged in it as well, just his silly looking head was sticking out.</p><p>"Contact the Administration, request a pickup." Shibari stretched her body out like after a good warm up.</p><p>"Ma'am!" the entirety of the sensory signal tracking corps replied in unison.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0279"><h2>279. Problems Abrewin'</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A loud sound of cracking wood reached Kouta's ears as he continued his freefall below. After fixing his position in the air to one more suitable to protecting himself the young man noticed a humongous chunk of wood flying at his face. Nothing a quick but focused strike at the centre couldn't fix.</p><p>Right as the boy's fist connected to the large wood structure he felt an intense shock from the other side – the goth must've snuck up stuck to it. A more inventive use of Art of Tree Climbing technique. Kouta's arm had only fractions of a second before the immense earthquake causing pressure would've completely obliterated his arm into bloody mush of flesh and bone.</p><p>"Chakra Shotgun!" he shouted out as cannons split from his forearm unleashed a quick close range burst of chakra that both tossed him backwards and not only compensated for the force of Earth Release earthquake technique that the goth girl tried hitting him with but also blasted her back.</p><p>Down below and a bit to the south Yushijin continued striking at the greasy haired young man. He wielded kunai blades, curved and modified for nasty stabs and bypassing blocks and shields. Luckily, Yushijin still had a confident range advantage, still, the grease was surprisingly quick.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Last Resort!" Yushijin chanted out.</p><p>Blood burst from the side of the blood of his opponent as the entire right part of his body nearly split off. Just a little bit more strength in Yushijin's cut and it would've been lethal, splitting the young Iwagakure gent in two like nothing. Such was the strategy of the swordsman. He didn't mean to kill his opponent in this friendly competition, just injure him so much that he had to be removed from further competition.</p><p>"Genjutsu, huh?" the dark haired Iwagakure genin laughed out as his cut down body burnt up in flames and disappeared without sparking even the slightest fire on any of the leaves, moss or grass beside him.</p><p>"A subject I see you also are familiar with…" Yushijin grunted feeling a bit annoyed by his opponent's survival. The first slash he landed up there was limited in potency, his body was hardened in its entirety allowing only the tip of the sword to pierce the flesh. This time he protected with genjutsu.</p><p>"I assume that's the secret behind your incredible speed, no?" the sly Iwagakure fox smiled with all the subtlety of a viper crossed with a weasel. "No genin can be moving that fast, you're using genjutsu to affect my comprehension of time, that's my educated guess as a genjutsu user. You make anyone affected perceive your movements as instantaneous, time perception is difficult to mess around with, I must commend you!"</p><p>"You're here to talk or are you here to fight?" Yushijin grunted before playfully swinging his large sword around just so his muscles stayed in their peak preparedness.</p><p>"Ah, before I defeat you, I, Zircon Trot of Iwagakure must commend a skilled colleague… That and the fact that I must stall you before I reach my true target. Girls always had the softest backs to stab!" Trot smiled with his wicked smile once more.</p><p>Finally understanding that he was being played Yushijin weaved the genjutsu dispelling hand seal. Just like the corpse before, this Zircon Trot standing in front of his immolated in seconds. Without wasting any time the swordsman charged for Budoki, the girl was a more hands-off combatant, combat heat was something that may have greatly troubled her.</p><p>Meanwhile Budoki herself was being a bit occupied by taking on the silent giant wearing a ponytail – Horein Ptet from Iwagakure.</p><p>The brutish man pounced in gigantic leaps, swiping left and right at Budoki who just gracefully flipped back and sideways, cutting and pulling strings that triggered more and more of her traps. One kunai dispenser firing upon a wire trigger was pulled on launched a stream of kunai that riddled Ptet's right side, one even etched into the poor brute's ear.</p><p>The man stumbled and bashed into a tree as his sense of balance began to fade. The brutish mute pulled out the blades from his side and his ear and quickly began patching them up. Even when he used medical ninjutsu he did not speak. Using ninjutsu without speaking the name of the technique required much greater unity of mind and body, both spiritual aspects and physicals. Not to mention amazing concentration.</p><p>Budoki couldn't let her opponent recover. With a bountiful leap she reached for a tree branch above and tossed an explosive kunai. This time Ptet was a bit more careful and stepped to the side and right into a trap she had prepared for him – a falling pit. Using her free from hanging on the branch arm, young Budoki used a wire string loop to catch her opponent by his foot and keep him hanging in the air. She didn't have enough time for anything but a little trap hole so just having him fall down would've meant jack squat.</p><p>"Boy you're making me use a lot of resources!" she playfully teased her mute opponent before demonstratively triggering a wire trap she had placed and connected to a previously set up trap when the mute giant was still brawling it out with Kouta above.</p><p>A pair of giant tree logs were released from their hold and fell like chopping blocks right on top of the medical ninja throwing him into the hole and smashing into him as well as covering the hole up with debris.</p><p>"Hmph… It's eerily quiet, this can't be it…" she wondered out loud while scratching her soft chin and looking around. The forest around her, despite supposedly being a battlefield of genin fighting it out all around, was silent as a nightly graveyard.</p><p>"Wonder if that jounin lady is anywhere nearby, I'd ask her for directions, she looks like she's more on our side…" the young lady joked to herself before swinging her trident kunai hook on steel wire and pulling herself onto a tree farther back to get a better look.</p><p>Kouta, meanwhile, was still quite busy with the goth genin kunoichi. Despite him apparently outclassing her in physical department and mastery of martial arts, she continuously kept charging in close distance and trying to use her slow earthquake ninjutsu on him. Granted, they were powerful, a single one would've shocked the medical ninja's lower body and broken bones as well as opened fissures that swallowed him up. Still, they didn't matter as long as a quick jab or a cross to her abdomen broke her concentration.</p><p>"I wonder if Mana would be this easy to fight, she relies on hand seals as well…" the boy wondered before evading another pair of displacement kicks and using his knee to lift the girl's leg in an uncomfortable position where she'd lose balance. Oddly enough she mastered her balance and simply vaulted back using his own force to regain balance.</p><p>Utilizing all opportunities the young Juugo charged in with an elbow crack to her skull. After it connected the girl just staggered, flying back like a ragdoll. It was strange how badly she took hits and how recklessly she charged in close quarters, almost like she craved being beaten…</p><p>Kouta's legs burst up with chakra propelling him in the air with a kick to the gothic girl's abdomen. Once again her body got propelled upwards like a rocket, obviously she used chakra augmentations not to die, but this was nothing like a skilled close range combatant. When one hit a person skilled at augmenting their endurance the hits simply bounced off like off of a brick wall, this girl, however, just took it all and used chakra just to not die.</p><p>At this point Kouta kind of felt bad for her. Hitting her and hearing those painful and gut wrenching screams started feeling as painful as getting hit himself. After a couple of more of juggling slams the taijutsu user finally crashed the kunoichi into the ground and landed farther away. He suspected that she had wasted a significant part of her chakra but he couldn't have been certain it wasn't a substitution or a clone technique.</p><p>A bad feeling in his gut… Almost instinctively Kouta grabbed at his throat only to feel sharp pain in his arms, had he not moved as fast as he did his throat would've been cut open in a mere microsecond.</p><p>The medical ninja tried throwing elbow strikes and wide roundhouse kicks with some of his chakra jets mixed in to the combination but no one was there. This felt so weird, was this all just an illusion? The wound on his palm suggested differently. The greasy knife wielding boy – Trot from before, leaped in with kunai in both hands aiming to stab them at Kouta's eyes.</p><p>The young Juugo's arm moved much faster, he simply lifted it up and giving his assailant nothing more than a cruel and cold look blasted from his arm which malformed into a chakra cannon halfway before his assailant reached him.</p><p>"Chakra Pistol!" the young boy uttered as a fist sized sphere of pure chakra fired out and blew a hole in the kunai wielding genin's chest. How could he have taken this much damage!?</p><p>Kouta leaped in to check up on his opponent, feeling regret and inner anguish for having just possibly blown a hole where his opponent's chest was. Did he purposefully not block it? His chakra augments couldn't have been this diminished, he only had a pair of mean scratches as well as a giant slice all over his body, lengthy yet shallow, where Yushijin had cut him earlier.</p><p>A liquid tapping, almost leaking, sound alerted Kouta and woke him up from almost a dream-like state. A blade of a knife was sticking out from his chest, the handle of which was behind him, the clone of Trot he had just blasted burnt up to a crisp.</p><p>"The kind ones are always the easiest to fool…" the sly weasel's voice hissed from behind before kicking the medical genin in the back and off of his knife.</p><p>Kouta stumbled forward before hitting the ground. He reached for his heart, his natural chakra augmentations working in sync with his honest attempts to use his Mystical Palm jutsu and heal up at least part of his heart injury. Whatever didn't kill him immediately could've been survived. Now Kouta only begged that his chakra didn't plummet so low that he was treated as eliminated from the exam. He wanted to survive this, not to keep on living, not just the elementary prolongation of his existence. He wanted to keep competing, to show off his skill as a medical ninja to his own team and to Mana.</p><p>Trot just snickered into his fist. "Hey, Jord-chan, don't you feel glad about this plan to sucker this loser in? The moment I saw his affinity for medical ninjutsu, even early after the Academy, I knew this guy's gonna lose his stomach hitting a poor defenceless girl!"</p><p>Wiping the blood off of her nose Jord Kvasir, the goth genin kunoichi from Team Pyrite stood up. "Everyone's just in it to use us. You're using me for your own gain, this loser's using my pain to feel like a big kind hero!" she growled before kicking at Kouta's bleeding body angrily. She reached in and grabbed the boy's hair before pulling his pale face closer to hers and licking his lips.</p><p>"I feel so fucking jealous… I wish I was dying in your place. After all, our lives are so useless. Dying beats being used anytime…" she whispered into the young man's ear before licking it.</p><p>"Hey, Jord! Don't you go starting that shit again, sensei's believing your redemption. No ending the world! Bad Jord!" Trot teased his teammate by smacking her in the back of her head.</p><p>A flesh freezing cutting sound made the greasy knife wielding genin freeze in his stance. Agonizing pain took him over and freeze-framed his muscles in a state of shock. Again and again Yushijin's blade carved its name into the kunai user's back diminishing more and more of his chakra augmentations. The unwilling and instinctual chakra augmentations were the most costly, after a couple of good hits the entire arsenal could've been emptied.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Last Resort!" Yushijin roared out as his own body was beginning to feel taxed by the sheer number of ruthless slashes he performed from behind. The world around the two young men froze solid, Yushijin cut again and again and again and again. Even he felt the strain of his own illusion, usually fitting for a handful of moments, freezing a sweet moment in time for some willing extension. Now he just wanted more chances to punish the lying Iwagakure genin.</p><p>As the coup de grace, Yushijin delivered a jumping sideways kick right to the genin's neck sending him down. This time he wouldn't mess up, he extended the timer for his own illusion so long past the recommended limit that he was absolutely certain had the illusion been a clone, it would've already long since immolated.</p><p>"You lied to me, you bastard…" Yushijin kept on hyperventilating, using his longsword by stabbing it at the ground to keep standing after the immense stress he willingly went through to punish his opponent. "You didn't go after Budoki, you went after Kouta… At least now I know who your target is."</p><p>"So he used you too? Feels so exquisitely painful, doesn't it?" Jord moaned out madly stroking her own hair and rudely pulling them between her fingers. Some of her pink strings or the dominant tar black darkness stayed on her fingers, so deep was her sickness.</p><p>"So, you got caught off-guard again, huh? Heal yourself, Kouta. I'll take care of them for you." Yushijin closed his eyes awaiting his opponent's attack. He found that sometimes he could lure a less composed enemy into charging right at him just by closing his eyes.</p><p>Kiyomi leaped up with a pair of quick leaps and landed right beside Mana, taking a careless seat by her side and sighing.</p><p>"How is she?" Mana asked curiously.</p><p>"Better. Her nose is kinda already under control, the gut wound still troubles me. Do you maybe have some food pills?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Sorry…" Mana shook her head.</p><p>"I think you should know… That wound isn't slowing down bleeding. I think she wasted too much chakra and the ninja metabolism won't kick in until her chakra levels return to normal. I'm not a medical ninja, Mana… The fuck do I know what to do?" Kiyomi whimpered out.</p><p>The fact that Kiyomi, of all people, was breaking down scared Mana to no end. The Yamanaka was always like an older sister to her. She always could've been counted on to do something or make calls. The two didn't always see eye to eye but the Yamanaka was somewhat of an authority figure whom Mana held in high regard. Her breakdown scared the magician all by itself.</p><p>"I… I picked up a new skill. I can summon ninja rabbits."</p><p>"Sorry, Mana. I never really found the long-eared suckers be that charming to begin with. I'm not a child, a fluffy bunny won't calm me down…"</p><p>"No, you don't get it… Maybe… Maybe one of them knows a rabbit, or a rabbit that knows a rabbit…" Mana shrugged. Slowly, she was beginning to realize that her own voice was shaking. Her own older sister was slipping into despair, how could Mana not?</p><p>"It better… If not… We may need to call it quits. This exam means everything to me but… This is Meiko's life. Don't tell her I told you this, as far as she knows she has a cold. She's so goddamn gullible, like an honest to God child!" tears began running down Kiyomi's cheeks.</p><p>Mana lifted her palm trying to comfort Kiyomi before she felt a quick and strong embrace almost crush her ribcage. The Yamanaka's weeping was getting uncontrollable, she was really worried over Meiko's life and not in a way that the magician had ever seen anyone being worried.</p><p>After the hug had become too prolonged and almost awkward the magician slipped out of it and leaped down. Remembering the Summoning Jutsu from one of her elementary ninjutsu techniques textbooks she made a bunch of hand seals after biting her thumb hard enough to draw blood from it.</p><p>"Boar-Dog-Bird-Monkey-Ram… Summoning Jutsu!" the magician listed the hand seals by mumbling them to herself under her own nose before placing her hand deep into the bottom of her top hat that erupted in darker shades of indigo as intense light began emanating from it. Moments later a cute yet very deadly and verily familiar rabbit pulled his head out of Mana's hat before leaping out in his entirety.</p><p>"Well… Not 'verly pleasant trip, if ye kno' what Ah mean!" Usuzoku yelled out before looking around frantically and noticing desperate Mana standing behind him and uneasily considering how this conversation needs to go.</p><p>"Atcha! Ye stupid hatchlin', still rottin' in dis damn 'ere Forest 'a Death!? Are ye so dead in ye brainbox that ye can't find yer way out!?" the sword packing mammal shouted at her.</p><p>Pressing her hand against her chest, as a sign of honesty and a request for help, Mana finally gathered the courage and strength to speak up.</p><p>"Zoku-chan… I know you don't like me very much and promised me you'd never work with me but… My friend, my very best friend, Meiko is dying. I was wondering if you maybe knew, or maybe knew a rabbit that knew, some medical ninjutsu?" she pleaded.</p><p>"Eh!? Nah, I dunno no healin', we rabbits are really tough in de head, when we get smacked around we get back up, ye see? If you maybe showed me yer stupid hatchlin' friend, maybe I could help…" Usuzoku shrugged but judging merely from his expression he wasn't overly willing to help her.</p><p>"I… We don't want to expose her to the possibility it's anything more than a common cold."</p><p>"Cold? Is she fucking stupid?" Usuzoku scratched his back as the silliness of Meiko's usual character made him so dumbfounded he unwillingly started wanting to socialize to Mana.</p><p>"Something like that…" Mana shrugged. "Look, I'd do anything for her life. You are literally my last lifeline, the next step is ending the Chuunin Exam…"</p><p>"Chuunin Exams? You mean our own Stupid Hatchlin' is growin' and makin' us less ashamed of being affiliated with 'er?" Usuzoku teased the magician.</p><p>"Not anymore, I guess…" Mana rubbed her elbow as her own eyes began to water.</p><p>This was it. Maybe the examiner will allow them to continue without Meiko, likely not though. They are calling for outside assistance, even more, they'll be open for attack during their trip back. All that was left for her now was to depend on the mercy of Hozuki Shibari and permission to continue, or else this exam and Mana's own presence in Team Hokage was over…</p><p>"Sorry, kid, yer friend is good as dead, is what she is…" Usuzoku rubbed some more salt into the wound before taking Mana's hat and trying to stuff it onto his nose to fit himself back into the seal. Even the cuteness of the sight in question was not noticed over the distress and potential loss of a friend and an important part of each ninja's growth…</p>
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<a name="section0280"><h2>280. Promises We'd Rather Not Keep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While Usuzoku was busy playing around with Mana's hat the magician turned around and went Kiyomi's way. Momentarily, a loud poof with a cloud of smoke signaled that the rabbit had chosen to return home the easy way. Mana's chest, crushed by the weight of her friend's injury and the risks they had to take, barely moved. The psychological pressure alone made breathing difficult.</p><p>"Zoku-chan said that he couldn't help us. I'm beginning to get an impression he doesn't like me very much…" Mana scratched the back of her head, her eyes wandered down as she felt quite guilty about not being able to help out.</p><p>"Goddamn it!" Kiyomi screamed out clutching herself into a fetal sphere of pain and rage.</p><p>"We need to move back to the southern entrance. Move Meiko there and ask them to treat her as eliminated." Mana admitted what Kiyomi must've been thinking as well.</p><p>"No! Meiko can't know. She'll fight back, she'll make her own injury worse by trying to escape. Can you contain her if she decides to flip her shit?" Kiyomi began losing it.</p><p>"Actually I can."</p><p>"Please tell me you haven't just said that!"</p><p>"You're right…"</p><p>"We can't move her there. There's a genin out there that is out to get Meiko. If she is eliminated they'll lose their chance and fail. Removing her from exam isn't fair, they'll likely consider removing our whole team from the exam." Kiyomi started thinking of the worst.</p><p>"Maybe they'll just count Meiko as eliminated and just count a win for that guy? I don't know… We won't know until we give it a shot." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Mana… Please…" Kiyomi grabbed the magician's shoulder forcefully stopping her from relaying the news to Meiko and asking to have her moved the southern entrance.</p><p>"We won't fight. We absolutely cannot fight over this. It's a luxury we can't permit ourselves." Mana's voice cut back strictly.</p><p>Kiyomi's hand moved back, shaking. Even in her extreme duress she realized that if they raised their fists against each other everything would've ended – they'd have wasted too much resources to continue to compete.</p><p>"If Meiko is out they won't eliminate anyone. They must have a scenario where a genin is eliminated due to hunger, natural causes or sickness. The most reasonable case would be just to pass the genin whose target the eliminated person was, granted, the genin without a takedown would risk approaching the northern entrance…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"What are you guys talking about?" Meiko's weak and lingering voice surprised both of the girls.</p><p>"You should stay tuckered in!" Kiyomi jumped to the blacksmith who just rudely stepped aside from being gently pushed back, avoiding the Yamanaka's arm. The girl then staggered and fell on her butt as even such elementary evasive action was too much for her paled and weakened state.</p><p>Kiyomi felt up Meiko's forehead. "You're burning up… Go back to the campsite!" she lied.</p><p>"What were you talking about? "If Meiko is out" part, what's about that?" the blacksmith demanded to know. She began wriggling in Kiyomi's embrace and almost fighting out of it.</p><p>"Your cold is very suspicious. We are considering giving you up to have you treated. Granted that'd eliminate you from the exams." Mana admitted starting it off with a sigh that both demonstrated her hesitance to admit it but also heralded her honesty.</p><p>"No!" Meiko objected, her bandaged gut began briefly flashing red, the bleeding was very weak but it was there and its weakness was quite likely because the smith had diminishing liquids left to bleed with.</p><p>"We know you don't like it, Meiko. Still, I won't allow you to die on us. I'll disable you and drag you there by force if I have to." Mana walked up to Meiko and stepped on her toes to elevate her eyes closer to those of Meiko just to show that she was serious.</p><p>"No! You don't get it! This is my contribution to the team, this is what I'm good at, you can't take it away from me. You can't just snuff out the part where I feel useful. Promise me you won't!" the smith demanded.</p><p>Mana answered with silence. She genuinely didn't know how to respond to it. She kind of related to how Meiko felt. The redhead was strong, strong enough to fight off rogue ninja by herself. Strong enough to be the powerhouse and the wall of the team that protected those she held dear without fail. The only time Mana saw Meiko so distressed was when her death at Akimichi Francho's arms was all but inevitable. When it began to be clear that her protection of her friends was about to end and all of them will soon die right after the blacksmith.</p><p>"Meiko, you can't possibly ask that of…" Kiyomi tried softening the situation.</p><p>"Promise me! You're a shitty liar so I'll know if you don't mean it!" Meiko demanded it again. Her strong will was the only thing that even betrayed some semblance of life still beating in her chest.</p><p>"Alright. Whatever we do, we won't end this for you." Mana caved in, almost collapsing due to the weight she just placed on her shoulders.</p><p>"Now I know why Hanasaku-sensei doesn't want you on the team. Why she's such a bitch to you…" Kiyomi cried out. "Or is this related? Maybe you're just afraid to lose because you know what it means to you as the part of Team Hokage!?"</p><p>Tears began running down Mana's face, she couldn't stand where she stood any longer.</p><p>"Watch over Meiko." Her shaking voice ordered before she leaped away into the shade of the forest. Now that the sun was beginning to hide behind the horizon the darkness of the Forest of Death became just that much more apparent.</p><p>Mana grazed her uniform on a tree while leaping past it carelessly. A deck of sealed cards fell out and scattered all over the forest's mossy floor but Mana kept on leaping ahead before she reached a tall and thick branch positioned by one of the few holes in the leafage where some sunlight could still pass through. She just wanted to see the sky…</p><p>Her teary eyes made seeing the road ahead difficult. That was exactly why she so carelessly slammed into an obstruction. At least her body chose to instinctively augment itself and protect the magician from needless bruises and risks of infection. Of all things she needed that the least.</p><p>The kunoichi wasn't mad at her teammate. If anything she admired Kiyomi's friendship and affection for Meiko. At this point, seeing to what depths of irrationality both she and Kiyomi were willing to sink for their friend made Mana wonder if one of them felt more than friendship towards Meiko. Mana knew that she didn't, to her Meiko was always just her best friend. Why did she actually promise her that? Maybe Kiyomi was right?</p><p>Brooding here alone and courting ambush wasn't smart. She needed to go back. While similar thoughts of return continued to brew in Mana's head she just kept on sitting until the sky completely changed from early evening to a starry sky.</p><p>The magician sighed and picked herself up, she felt embarrassed to face her friends but she needed to swallow her own social feelings about the situation and face reality – the three needed each other, more than ever before. One skip by another, she kept on making her way back wondering if her friends had it in them to not make a fire.</p><p>After Mana finally returned she noticed Kiyomi having her hands wrapped around Meiko and pressing the sleeping girl against her body in desperation to keep her warm. Obviously whenever the two lied to Meiko about her burning up, truly they meant absolutely different – her skin was feeling chilly and looking just as snowy.</p><p>"I'm... I'm so…" Kiyomi opened her mouth to whisper but Mana just pulled out a card from her inner pocket and removed her bag.</p><p>"Let's eat." She said out loud which instantly woke Meiko up. Somehow the magician wasn't surprised that the only thing to keep the blacksmith up and conscious instead of passing out and going to sleep for good was the prospect of food.</p><p>"Is it a good idea? I mean it's her gut that was injured, the injury isn't too deep but it's fair to assume some of her innards burst and released something out there." Kiyomi sadly exclaimed.</p><p>"True. It may make her infection worse, but it'll also give her energy. It may also accelerate her natural metabolism a little bit and make her feel better short term." Mana wondered before removing a cup of instant ramen and a blue backed card which she positioned on top of a pack with silver colored powder inside. Making fire was a bit risky when most of the genin in the forest wanted them hurt or dead so chemistry needed to be used to heat the ramen…</p><p>"You have a card with just a flask of water sealed into it but you forgot to take food pills?" Kiyomi raised her eyebrow when Mana unsealed the small amount of water inside that card into the contents of the pack, the powder inside reacted to the water bloating the pack and heating it. After placing the cups of ramen onto the bloated bag of heat Mana allowed them to heat up a bit.</p><p>"I didn't forget, I chose something else over that. I took ramen with me. Makes sense I'd also take something to heat it with." The magician replied.</p><p>"I thought this exam would be easy… We were so strong, so much stronger than any normal genin. We haven't even faced off against any genin in the exam and we're already almost wiped out…" Kiyomi sighed watching the instant ramen cups slowly heat up from inside and waiting until the paper stickers on top bloated from the built up air pressure inside before bursting and signaling it was ready to eat.</p><p>After the ramen was done Meiko instantly dug in. The food and the energy it provided livened her cheeks up a bit. Her supernatural ninja metabolism found some more energy to draw strength from and attempt to quicker compensate her chakra loss so she could recover from her wounds. Meiko needed days to even begin to get better and the trio didn't have that amount of time, neither did the redhead herself. After finishing the ramen, the blacksmith fell asleep on Kiyomi's lap who continued to rub Meiko's skin to heat it up. The chemical pack used to heat the ramen was a bit too hot at the moment to be used for that purpose.</p><p>"She looks peaceful enough. Don't think she's in any danger for some time…" Kiyomi noted. "You haven't eaten anything though, we may need you still."</p><p>"I hate ramen…" Mana replied before closing her eyes for a brief nap while Kiyomi was still watching over Meiko. "It's easy to prepare, it's really easy to carry around also Meiko likes it and you don't hate it. I may despise it but it was the reasonable ration choice for a short term exam."</p><p>"Look… About what I said…" Kiyomi brought it up again.</p><p>"Forget it. You like Meiko, you're not yourself when her wellbeing is threatened. I get it…" the magician spoke while continuing to briefly twist her lips upwards. "I can't imagine how much things I'd later regret I'd do if Kouta was in danger."</p><p>Kouta's shaking and blood hand moved into his ninja pouch and pulled out a yellow food pill which he quickly cracked between his teeth, chewed up to gooey and mustard-like paste and let it slide down his throat. Within an instant he began feeling his racing and spouting blood heart calm down and his Mystical Palm technique slowly becoming more effective as both the food pill and his own ninjutsu assisted his efforts to treat his injury.</p><p>"You bastard!" Trot growled out, standing up all covered in blood stains and cuts. Several cuts appeared to have really gotten deeper into his muscle and flesh but most of them didn't hit any vitals. Granted, if Yushijin wished or tried to kill him he had plenty of time for it.</p><p>"I assume that jutsu of yours was an illusionary technique? That's how you move so fast, you trick our minds. Still, how did you do it before – the first time you cut Trot? Didn't hear you say any words or make any seals…" Jord wondered apathetically.</p><p>"Then I barely strained myself. I forced your brains to skip out on maybe a millisecond. Making you believe time has frozen for seconds is difficult and needs the package deal: hand seals and name and all that…" Yushijin replied switching his deadly cold stares between the two opponents of his.</p><p>Trot looked like he should've considering calling it quits. He was certainly past his fighting point and was now pushing at his limits to find power to keep standing. Maybe he could go for a couple of more rounds but a focused and connecting cut from Yushijin's sword would cleave him in half for certain this time.</p><p>The jounin mentor of Team Pyrite landed nearby closely observing the situation and keeping herself from speaking. Any advice she could've given could have been interpreted as cheating, after all. Her very presence by Jord's side was an exception granted for her country and her team all by itself.</p><p>Jord laughed out, finally breaking into an uncontrollable and very prevalent emotional fit. "It appears we've got even more toys to play with!" she declared pointing at a bush behind Yushijin that split open revealing her third teammate – the tall and powerful mute - Horein Ptet walking out with Budoki resting on his shoulder, seemingly unconscious.</p><p>"Hmmm, it seems it's three against one. Time to play it safe then and gamble two on one!" Trot finally mustered the strength needed to show his bloodied teeth through his smug and cut up face as he took steps back to hide behind his female teammate.</p><p>"If you wish, after this I can heal you a little so that these wounds don't leave scars!" Kouta suggested as he was standing on his feet again, granted, somewhat slouched and with a face twisted in pain but standing nonetheless which very few young men who have been stabbed from behind right through their toughest defenses could do.</p><p>"Well well…" Jord licked her lips.</p><p>Yushijin smiled, finally busting through the façade of deadly swordsman assassin he was putting up recently.</p><p>"I believe you've miscalculated…" he expressed in a happy and bashful manner before laughing more energetically.</p><p>A sizzling marble-sized orb rolled out from Budoki's unconscious body and without giving ample time to react simply exploded right by his feet. After the smoke had cleared large chunks of hay and leather started to fall from wherever the explosion had blasted them, the medical ninja who thought he had caught up to the crafty kunoichi from Kouta's team was resting on a nearby branch waving her legs like a go-lucky child. She used a dummy of leather and hay disguised as herself to appear like she's been beaten and caught.</p><p>"Gotcha, big guy…" she grinned with a full-teeth smile.</p><p>The explosion had torn skin and coaled up muscle tissue for the mute giant. It also released his tidily kept blond hair from their ponytail. The big man just followed up with a bunch of hand seals placing his palms against the most grievous wounds and sticking out bone to patch the injuries up. It wasn't even close to being the first time that this crafty and slippery young lady had inflicted such damage to him and caught him in a trap of her making.</p><p>"Well… This just got a whole lot of fun!" Jord smiled as her figure straightened out and she took a modified crane stance, ready to pound the ground with any one of her palms or one of her feet to use one of her powerful earthquake Earth Release techniques.</p><p>"You kidding? I'm on my last legs here… Let's scram!" Trot growled with his broken up voice before all three of the genin ninja erupted into flames, burning up like life-size paper cutouts of their originals.</p><p>Kouta and Budoki sighed easier. Yushijin kept on standing and waiting for a stealthy strike but as time kept on passing nothing came. The jounin lady looked at her side and immediately dashed away in speeds that appeared almost matching the Body Flicker Technique that a lot of higher ranked ninja used to amp their speed.</p><p>"I hate fighting without preparation like that… I really need time to set my stuff up, I almost got caught for real." Budoki complained before wiping her dirty cheek with her thumb and checking one of her two hair buns that was ruined and now lazily spread hair all over her face and behind.</p><p>Kouta laughed it up before his chest pain made itself clear again. Yushijin sighed before sheathing his sword and looking around the bloodied and devastated battlefield. Trees and lurking predators laid cut up from the gusts of cutting wind emanating from his previously deadly use of the sword. The young man almost felt bad about losing his composure like that.</p><p>"You know… I think I understand your clan a little better now." Yushijin caved in with a submissive bow of his head which allowed his long and messy hair flow all over his shoulders and his face.</p><p>Kouta looked around, finally getting the chance to see what losing one's composure for just one moment could've done. He had seen plenty of similar sights, one of the more gruesome ones was his father's gritty display of nearly blowing up the planet despite perfectly channeling his energy all into his opponent when fighting Akimichi Francho.</p><p>"You guys… Don't lower your guard just yet. That creepy mute is a pretty wicked medical ninja, maybe on par with Kouta. He'll have that Trout-guy patched up in no time." Budoki warned her careless teammates.</p><p>"Trot…" Kouta fixed his teammate's mistake.</p><p>"He may treat Trot's body but his chakra reserves he spent on not dying will take time to replenish. I'd say it'll be days before we hear from those guys again." Yushijin concluded.</p><p>"Ma'am! Engagements all over the map! It appears the teams have all settled in and are now gunning for their targets!" the sensory corps officer reported energetically.</p><p>"It appears the exam has finally truly begun. Prepare to report target takedowns. A chakra dip below ten percent is considered a takedown! If it falls below four percent let me know, we'll send a retrieval squad for immediate medical attention." Shibari kept on managing the corps.</p><p>"Ma'am!" all sensory units reported in unison continuing to observe the glowing liquid ball with red sparks signaling engagements all over the liquid representation of the battlefield.</p>
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<a name="section0281"><h2>281. Desperate Times, Desperate Measures</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the morning no one felt really well. Mana and Kiyomi had slept about as peachy as someone switching in for someone to stand guard could've, despite their supernatural ninja metabolisms allowing for more leisure and skipping some nights of sleep altogether, that didn't mean they felt all that great about it.</p><p>Meiko may have been the only one of the trio feeling just fine, initially at least. Some coloring returned to her cheeks and she was looking plenty cheerful, if a little floaty. She didn't stand up or jig around or anything but she looked a lot less like a dying person compared to last night which was probably the best scenario imaginable.</p><p>This, obviously, was a very quick and short term improvement. It was very much a postponing of the worst of the troubles – her inner infection which may have only been made worse by her eating something to give her body the energy to fuel her metabolism. It was a gamble at best – if Meiko's metabolism treated her injuries by itself she'd be set for combat in a pair of days, if not and the fueled infection managed to overcome the out of combat healing factor of a functional kunoichi she's looking at significant trouble. Maybe even lethal…</p><p>"What are the odds of someone finding us here?" Kiyomi wondered as she sat around Meiko, a little melancholic since the blacksmith refused her suggestion to warm up her still a little paled skin through close skin contact.</p><p>"Fairly in our favor. We're so close to the northern exit that most teams will stay as far away from here as possible. Most of them will likely wish to take down their targets before coming here, no one in their fair mind will look for their target in that one place every team, including the teams after them, will be gathering in. Still, it'd be foolish to rule it out completely, after all – we're here, aren't we?" Mana replied bitterly.</p><p>The promise she made for Meiko pressed heavily against her fragile shoulders. The day went on with no activity, waiting this thing out until the injured got better and the active ninja beat each other up was a smart option. If anything, it was a very ninja thing to do. If Tanshu-sensei ever saw Mana in this situation he'd likely love her mindset. Then again, knowing that made the magician wonder if she was supposed to feel glad about it or not.</p><p>The further the day went on the worse Meiko got. Her gut wound was now nothing but messy soft scar tissue having completely closed up, its coloring was petrifying to observe. A man may have made a fortune if they got a ryo every time the girl's scar tissue changed color, from red to blue to greenish pale back to black and red.</p><p>What was worse was that Meiko's attitude started to change with it. She started getting sleepy, lazy and once Mana picked some mushrooms she could somewhat identify and made a stew out of them in a sealed clay jar heated underground by scorching hot stones she refused to eat it. That was a signal of the worst things yet to come. That "I don't feel very hungry" sounded like a drummer of the Apocalypse raiders kicking a very passionate solo.</p><p>Kiyomi dragged Mana away by her elbow. The aggression of the blonde visibly troubled Meiko but she was too weak to do anything about it. Unlike last evening when she argued somewhat passionately, current Meiko looked better visually but was apathetic and very sleepy.</p><p>"We have to give her up. This is getting scary…" Kiyomi whispered in a pretty aggressive tone. Almost like she knew what Mana would say and had played this argument out in her mind multiple times.</p><p>"No. I promised her I wouldn't do it." Mana refused.</p><p>"Which would you rather be, a liar or someone who let her friend die in front of her?" Kiyomi tapped her feet, her smart looking face revealed that she knew this phrase would cut deep, especially so for Mana. "Haven't both of us lost enough people already? We can give her up and still salvage our standing, move on to the other round."</p><p>"You know I'd lie a thousand times before I'd let Meiko die…" Mana cut back with a tone just as sharp, the fact that her friend would try to manipulate her by cutting at her most painful spiritual wounds hurt her all by itself.</p><p>"As long as she's not on your shoulders on the way to the southern entrance you've got nine hundred ninety nine lies left… The fact that she's not here arguing for herself shows how bad the situation is. We've no time to bicker about this – we need to hit those targets already, every moment we spend the possibility of being hit ourselves grows."</p><p>Mana turned back and stroke her sweaty and dirty face, Kiyomi's thoughts and words really were well thought out and sharpened. Not a word was used that didn't cut Mana personally, attack her own positions and stances, her own nindo itself. If the trio were attacked at any point, while Meiko was the way she was she was a possible weak link to be utilized by the enemy.</p><p>Ending the conversation by simply walking away, Mana walked out to Meiko and knelt by her side taking her hand and feeling its scorching heat. Her temperature did a full 180 turn overnight, where previously the blood loss threatened to drop it to a freezing point, now the infection was searing her up.</p><p>"How are you feeling?" Mana asked with a smile, she knew it was faked, she knew that Meiko must've seen through it and focused on the tears on her friend's face.</p><p>"I don't remember the Earth's mantle being this hot…" the blacksmith faked a smile back at Mana.</p><p>"Want to eat something? Play cards?" she wondered.</p><p>"Nah… Not feeling hungry." The blacksmith reached out for cards but once the distance between her hand and the deck of cards placed on the grass would've required her to physically move the infected area she froze. "You know what? I'd be a fool playing cards against you, a goddamn magician. Your strategy yesterday to feed me to deal with the blood loss was genius, sometimes I forget which one of you and Kouta is the medical ninja, you know?" she joked.</p><p>Mana's eyes lingered on the horror of realizing her friend couldn't even more her lower body due to the pain. The magician took her friend's hand and pressed her against her face.</p><p>"Do you want me to bring you to the entrance? They're gonna patch you up in minutes… I just can't do that from where I am now." Mana cried out trying and failing spectacularly to restrain her tears as the promise she had made was tearing her up from inside.</p><p>"Mana… You promised me… No matter what…" Meiko mumbled out, even through crippling pain which the blacksmith herself feared of, even with a sickness that made her resent food – one of her biggest passions she still held up her own about this.</p><p>Mana stood up and walked away, a quick glance back betrayed that her friend lacked even the strength to follow her with her eyes and her head just flopped down as she kept on staring at her bloodied and pus covered bandages.</p><p>Even in this situation… If Meiko maintained her inner strength, how could Mana give up?</p><p>"See? She won't last till the next morning… You're supposed to be the smart one out of the three of us! How about you use that brilliant yet thick head of yours…" Kiyomi hissed angrily. The worst part was that she was right, at any point in time, she was just right…</p><p>"Let me try one more thing. Please. Before I lose my last friend… One more thing." Mana whispered a request. An awkward pause took over as the future Yamanaka heiress considered it.</p><p>"Don't take too long. If I see her life really fading I'm using all of my chakra on one mad dash back – not only will I give her up but I'll also diminish my own chakra greatly which means more work for you to pull us through. Only because Meiko isn't the last friend you've got, not yet…" Kiyomi sighed before walking back to the blacksmith.</p><p>Mana jumped onto the tree branches and started dashing onwards. The worst part of this whole thing was that she couldn't rush. If she moved too fast she spent too much chakra, similarly like the energy expended to travel fast, chakra was to match those resources being used. There was a certain threshold beyond which the cost of each additional ounce of speed cost an almost Faustian bargain. The magician was wise and self-controlled to travel just on the edge of that line.</p><p>Yet her friendship towards Meiko and respect of Kiyomi's love for her wanted her to just ignore it and move past all lines, beyond all the limits and spit in the face of the future, struggles yet to come.</p><p>Kouta. He was Mana's plan. One shot in a billion, she knew, he was not the only medical ninja in this place but he was certainly the only one who would actually consider helping Meiko. The magician was aware of the odds of finding him in this vast nothingness. Given her speed of travelling it'd still take forever to scout the entire forest and track him down…</p><p>Before she gave up on her promise, before she earned Meiko's eternal scorn, she figured that she should at least waste all opportunities, try every shot and every stupid idea in her mind and she had plenty yet in mind. At least now her eyes had few tears left to shed, swollen and twisted in sadness as they were, at least they were functioning.</p><p>The magician scoured through every corner she could find, she homed in on every wildest sound trying to find anything at all. Even if she found an opposing team of other competitors, as long as she didn't engage them it'd be fine. Just like the predators of this forest, everyone here must've followed the very same rules of economy. The energy needed to take out a random kunoichi passing through was simply too much unless the magician was their intended target, in which case the odds of meeting that person were just about as slim as bumping into Kouta.</p><p>An explosion echoed from a faraway area, a burst of light and shockwave emanating from the area made the magician cover up and just barely not get blasted aside with the debris. It wasn't that uncommon to find a field of active combat in this case. A significant amount of time had passed since the exam started and plenty teams may have already concluded their first engagements. Many have already been baptized in blood and steel.</p><p>Even if she greatly doubted her odds, Mana followed the trail of destruction. Whatever clues she got about a possible location of any ninja she had to check. One of these fields of active combat could've been that of Kouta's team. The odds weren't great but as puny as they were – they were Mana's last chance at doing something before betraying her friend's trust.</p><p>The magician was never the stealthiest out there or even amongst the best dozen of such individuals, she only exceeded in stealth when her opponent's own reason combatted against them. Under normal circumstances she was about as quiet and sneaky as any normal genin that graduated the Ninja Academy. That was why faking death was such a common strategy for her – she needed her opponent convinced she died and ignoring any signs of her existence she gave out.</p><p>Still, given that the two teams were engaged in active combat – they had plenty more to worry about instead of troubling their heads over Mana. The magician was standing in a smoky and decimated battlefield with a crater at least thirty meters in radius and at least five meters deep of nothing but dirt and coal. Something very hot clearly caused the destruction she felt before.</p><p>Inside the crater knelt a tall and strong looking genin wearing a blond ponytail. Nearby him fought his teammates: a gothic attire wearing and very edgy looking your lady and a greasy dark hair possessing young man wielding two kunai knives. They were facing off against a trio the magician knew about quite well – that mysterious trio that scolded her before signing up for the exams, together with that hulking giant that gave the magician a bad feeling about him.</p><p>If she focused really well, Mana could just about see what they were doing, even see the hand seals they were making as none of their speed matched that of her own. She could also hear and focus on every word, as long as something much louder did not demand her undivided attention…</p><p>The magician wondered if she should just move on. Just like her thought before indicated – the battlefield of two teams was nothing special at all and given how Kouta or his team took no part in this scuffle it just didn't really make any amount of sense for her to do anything about this but flee.</p><p>An angry tsk of tongue alerted the magician as a woman in a red dress and an Iwagakure jounin uniform leaped down from just below where Mana was situated. Who was that woman? Why a jounin of Iwagakure was present in the second stage of the Chuunin Exams!? Curiosity took the better of Mana, she continued to sit atop of the branch she was on, where the previously unnoticed lady was also situated as it was a comfortable spot for observation and continued to observe the battle between the teams.</p><p>"Damn you three! If I wasn't so injured in my previous fight… And lacking of any chakra to spare…" the greasy haired weasel-boy yelled out, it didn't take an unnaturally gifted ninja to hear his words as he made sure to make just about everyone in the nearest vicinity heard them with his tone.</p><p>"Wanna try cutting me again?" the silver haired female who appeared to be somewhat reasonable and restraining her teammates of much more conflicting nature before suggested. It didn't look like she wanted any of this battle, if her own tone was to be judged separately, she couldn't have been hunting her target here…</p><p>"Fuck you, bitch! Just one cut, one cut will be enough!" the greasy haired knife fighter cursed at her before rushing at her shorter and much more volatile and annoyingly voiced teammate. He oddly enough extended his arms and accepted the slashes that came his way, with a throat spraying blood as well as an open chest the young man staggered back yet didn't fall. With an off handedly raised hand he and a sadistic smile he weaved a hand seal.</p><p>The body of the greasy haired fellow flew back as the cheeks of heavy make-up wearing teammate of his dyed crimson red from the bleeding teammate of hers. She just offered her downed friend an off-handed look.</p><p>"You mean if you didn't use Ptet like you use me until he was of no help in this battle?" she taunted the young man despite the appearance that he couldn't really care any less of these taunts and was quite knocked out and bleeding out as well as drowning in the pool of his own blood.</p><p>Those sharp crescent cutting wind projectiles that the shorter weirdo launched before didn't evade Mana's eye. However they were blindingly fast, if they were used against her Mana would have some trouble evading them, maybe if she didn't invest too much into her attack that was countered like the greasy haired young man did.</p><p>The man who was just called "Ptet" by the young eccentric kunoichi collapsed on the floor after a period of heavy panting and kneeling by his attackers. If her words were to be believed he was completely dry of usable chakra reserves, a fate not unlike that which once befell Mana hit him right in the face making him pass out from the exhaustion.</p><p>And yet… Energetically as ever the young lady shrieked in the air like a wild fury willing to murder the living hell out of her enemies before charging at her opponent while weaving hand seals. The silver haired female stepped up in front of her teammate who was the target of the gothic chick's furious wrath. A deafening shockwave relentlessly sieged Mana's ear drums and blew her off her feet and back into the trees which were somehow not assaulted heavily enough to be completely downed by the powerful earthquake causing punch of the young kunoichi.</p><p>Just as swiftly as she was knocked back, doing the best she could to keep up on her stealth, Mana scaled onto a pile of trees before hiding between the still intact leafage of some of them. Using them as improvised bushes she kept on observing the battle. It may not have been overly safe to move past now as she no longer had the cover of rich tree-line to protect her.</p><p>The first clear sight that the magician got was the silver haired member of, if Mana's memory served, Team Phobos from Getsugakure placing two of her fingers by the gothic kunoichi's chest area and the poor young woman just gasping for air with the most terrified expression. Her eyes were rolled back, the decorative pink strips of hair were torn up and scattered all over revealing a much more natural blackness of hair. A small stream of blood ran down from the girl's nose before she collapsed on the ground, dead or knocked out, it was tough to say…</p><p>"They were not that strong…" the female member of Team Phobos concluded before she flipped her hood back up and allowed her palm to slip deep into her dark sleeve until it was of use again.</p><p>"Only because they were already worn out. I believe they'd have been more competent if they were fresh… Maybe even troublesome." the larger member of the team from Getsugakure remarked, just looking at him made Mana's heart pound uneasily. At this point just sheer curiosity made her wish to witness his actual combat prowess.</p><p>"Yeah… I think one of them let it slip that they retreated from a previous fight against their target, let's see…" Doma from Team Phobos, previously named by Shibari during his expression of hatred for Konoha's way of handling the Exams, checked the file that laid right beside the knocked out knife fighter of the three. The file was soaked in blood alerting Mana that the young man was in desperate need of medical attention.</p><p>"One… Kouta Hirano." Doma read out loud.</p><p>"Kouta Hirano? That's Kouta's fake name he went with until recently…" Mana's eyes shot wide open as she was happy to find out that the odds of Kouta's team being somewhere nearby were halfway decent. "Judging from his chakra control grade, I'd say he's more than likely a medical ninja, we may pay him a visit if we get injured…"</p><p>The injuries that Doma had sustained from the greasy haired knife fighter's attacks were completely gone now, almost like he had regenerated them away however Mana saw no ninjutsu in effect which made her just blink in confusion about the young man's abilities.</p><p>"So… How about we kill those three pricks? They're nothing but trash that flee from their objective, run away from their target. Hypocritical ninja like that just make my blood boil!" Doma shouted out before a kunai slipped out from his sleeve and he trust it at the unconscious goth girl's chest while kneeling on one knee.</p><p>His hand was caught halfway by the Iwagakure jounin lady.</p><p>"While killing is not explicitly forbidden in the Chuunin Exams, I cannot allow you to kill these three. Sorry. I will admit that they've lost and take them to the entrance, whichever of the three is your target – you've now eliminated all three of them as I don't feel safe leaving them unconscious here with you three…" the woman coldly explained before letting go of Doma's arm rather rudely. Liquid masses of greyish blue and metallic in texture looking mass surrounded the three and raised them up in the air like floating vertical donuts. After the woman turned around and left carrying her team behind her the steel donuts followed her.</p><p>"Hmph…" Doma angrily growled, a bit unhappy by the fact that he didn't have a chance to kill ninja that spit in the face of his own understanding of what ninja should be like.</p><p>"I guess that's it. Your target is down, Gasco…" the female member of Team Phobos smiled before reaching out to tap as close to the shoulder of the giant scary fellow of the team as possible.</p><p>"No… This isn't it. I sense a sneaky little owl eyeing us. Her chakra signature is very distinct, impossible to miss. It's the little missy from before, before the sign-ups…" the voice of the large young man thundered loud and wide. Mana's heart froze up. That man was a sensor!? Those were quite rare and few in between as sensory was a genetic trait and not a talent one could just train…</p><p>"Oh? Konoha's cheerleader? Let's go and play with her a little bit…" Doma smiled before looking at his hulking teammate who pointed at Mana's exact location relatively to them.</p>
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<a name="section0282"><h2>282. Between A Rack And A Chokehold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A cold shiver heralding great fear tore its way out of Mana's heart after she saw the tall cloaked Getsugakure genin point at her. She was completely ill prepared for such a battle, not to mention she still needed to find a medical ninja capable and willing to help Meiko to not get eliminated.</p><p>"You barely got to do anything, Stea. Want to kill that Konoha cheerleader?" the Getsugakure genin who was referred to as Doma previously smiled.</p><p>It didn't appear like the Getsugakure team was overly rushing to engage Mana. The magician stayed glued to her spot since she wasn't sure how exact the Getsugakure giant's sensory was. If she moved or turned her attention off of her opponents they may have utilized that time, her best bet for now was to sit tight and obtain as much information about them as possible while looking for a good spot to slip away from their sensory range.</p><p>"She's not my trouble. I couldn't care less, knowing why she's here alone would be interesting to know though…" Stea, the silver haired kunoichi of Team Phobos, shrugged.</p><p>Doma, the raven dark haired and tanned skinned young man of his team just squinted angrily at his teammate before his cape floated open and his arm extended to the side. As Mana's senses sharpened she saw shiny tips of at least a good dozen blades coming at her general direction. This was as good of a time as any to slip away, if anything, just for the sole purpose of avoiding being made a pin-cushion, and so she did move away.</p><p>The magician's senses sharpened and she dashed sideways allowing the blades to skewer her hiding spot and etch into branches and wood behind her where she no longer was. Mana felt her chakra surging at an accelerated pace within her body, making her stronger, faster and more durable. She would've been outright impossible to perceive to any normal man and just a black blur to a simple genin.</p><p>A thick tree sized arm blocking her path stopped the magician in her tracks. The large and creepy feeling emanating member of Team Phobos stood right up front to the tree where Mana was leaping through and simply placed his hand as a barrier preventing the magician's passage. He was no ordinary genin. Faster, visibly stronger and seemingly with superior perception being able to not only see Mana's movements but read them and intercept them. He alone would've troubled the magician, together with his team fighting them would've been suicidal.</p><p>Mana stopped and gifted the large man a desperate and angry glare, her eyes flared up as she felt cornered and placed her hands in her fighting stance, ready to blast off with her untraceably swift hand seals. To be able to weave them fast enough to confuse her opponents was something Mana felt fairly confident in.</p><p>With a graceful leap backwards Mana landed on the lower ground level of the forest, soon she was surrounded by Team Phobos as the tall and broad shouldered genin removed his hood revealing a middle aged man with a face tattooed similarly to the face of Doma's. The magician's eye could spy on a bunch of golden flares as the dark brown eyes of the large and creepy man couldn't distract her from his excessive flare for wearing golden accessories all over himself: earrings, necklaces and chains all over. The man even had a golden chain etched onto his forehead and extending past his bald head, disappearing like a braid somewhere into the back of his skull.</p><p>"She's all alone here?" Doma wondered turning at the bulky teammate of his who just calmly nodded, delving deep into his chakra sensory ability, no doubt.</p><p>"Why?" Stea asked Mana, her eyes were strangely kind and the silver haired kunoichi didn't really look at the magician as an enemy or even as an opposing competitor.</p><p>Mana smiled with the tips of her lips and lowered her hands, she had managed to weave a pair of hand seals seemingly without her opponents noticing in mid jump. It was a moment when they were likely not to be too invested into perception of what Mana was doing. Realizing she was prepared for an unexpected attack, the magician lowered her fists and clenched them. Being just one step ahead wasn't really enough, she needed a greater edge.</p><p>Doma's hand flashed in a metallic blur, he slashed at Mana as his coat allowed him to slip out one of the many kunai knives he had under it seemingly unexpectedly. The magician's figure simply burst into flower petals and scattered in the wind. The real Mana kept on dashing away from there, doing her best to heighten the distance between her and the enemy before a kick in the chest drove all the oxygen out from her body and sent her flying back. It didn't look like it meant much for her opponent to dash right in front of her and punish this attempt to escape. Doma flashed through a bunch of hand seals, the magician could see that much but her eyes were more occupied looking out for his teammates.</p><p>"Earth Style: Bridge Rack!" he yelled out.</p><p>Pulsing pain made Mana's consciousness black out for just a fraction of a moment as she let out a combination of a scream and a gasp for air she so desperately missed. She hit something rock hard and emanating with chakra, must've been the ninjutsu her opponent used. She had to move, moving was her chance of staying alive but by the time her mind got back into the game it was too late – rocky arcs smashed into her wrists crushing them by the rocky torture rack made by the Getsugakure genin.</p><p>She should've repeated her genjutsu again but it'd have cost chakra, a lot of it and also increased the cost for any successive uses for the rest of the day. She wagered on keeping it for the future but the way it was going there may not have been any future.</p><p>Warm streams of blood ran down Mana's wrists to her body, another stream of red just dyed the stone rack she was locked onto. Another set of rocky arcs locked tightly onto her feet. It was a torture ninjutsu, not really something to take out one's opponent, more like something to make them talk.</p><p>The creepy bald sensor of the team walked up to Mana and grabbed her by the hair before placing a kunai by her throat.</p><p>"Why are you here all alone? Did you three split? What are the names of your teammates?" he tried interrogating Mana without noticing her escape.</p><p>Mana was a stage magician, escaping binds was something she did for a living and she was beginning to slip out before her legs were even getting tightened. It hurt to weave hand seals with bruised and bleeding wrists, still, her ability to weave them using one hand proved very useful to Mana. She used an experimental concept for a new ninjutsu, bare and not quite ready, she began perfecting it and shaping it into an actual technique after returning from her trip to the Forest of Death before the exams.</p><p>It wasn't something anyone couldn't do, anyone with the ability to use Lightning Release elemental ninjutsu, that is. Simply separate a stream of chakra from the rest of the network and transform it into lightning chakra, no shape manipulation needed. It was an as of yet nameless technique, more of a concept but it functioned as a taser of sorts.</p><p>With a forceful shove of her leg Mana broke the rocky restraint and drove her kick to the back of her attacker's head while her freed arm pushed the elbow of the kunai wielding arm away from her throat. Saving her neck right before pulling her entire body away from the torturous rack and allowing it to crumble to a pile of lifeless rocks.</p><p>"What the…" Doma whistled before exclaiming in surprise.</p><p>"Lightning Release is known for its neutralizing advantage over Earth Release…" the creepy bald sensor of Team Phobos smiled before nodding, it was like Mana hadn't even put a scratch on him with her kick at all.</p><p>The technique Mana wanted to perfect using this taser-like concept was a taijutsu countering ninjutsu technique. A quick surge of lightning chakra over her body while simultaneously augmenting her own endurance to not take damage from her own ninjutsu, it would've shocked anyone coming within close distance to Mana. It appeared like it could've been used the way it was used in the current predicament as well…</p><p>"That wasn't an ideal use of the technique, you could've used it when Gasco was holding your hair, instead of right after you were locked up – you'd have shocked him as well…" Stea remarked landing nearby her teammates.</p><p>"I don't want to fight you three. None of you are my targets, none of you identified me as your target either…" Mana grunted before feeling her aching and still slowly bleeding wrists.</p><p>"It's true that you're not our target, still, we don't really know who your teammates are and they may just be our targets." Gasco cracked his knuckles before flexing his neck around, completely shaking off one of Mana's stronger kicks.</p><p>The magician took a fearful step back. The dark feeling coming from the man called Gasco of Team Phobos combined with her inability to decide if it was better to tell them the names of her team or to keep trying to escape without it made her tremble in fear against these three.</p><p>If she did tell these three the names of Kiyomi and Meiko nothing would've stopped them from coming after them. They would've fought Mana until the magician couldn't resist anymore and tortured her until she either passed out, told them where her team was or died. Something told her that these three didn't particularly care about which outcome it came down to. Then again, if the gamble went her way and neither of the three was a target there was a possibility of these three just moving on and leaving her to searching for Kouta.</p><p>"You've seen my teammates before, if you'd have seen their faces in the files, I'm sure you'd recognize them. Those pictures weren't taken that long ago…" Mana tried talking her way out of gambling with her team's lives. Then again, it wasn't wise to gamble with her own life either – at this moment Meiko's ability to compete directly depended on Mana's ability to find a medical ninja that could heal her.</p><p>"She's right, weren't both of her teammates female? All of our targets are male." Stea nodded calmly.</p><p>"Still… To wander off alone without a team, I bet those three losers were looking to beat their targets alone. Such arrogance, not unlike Konoha… Thinking you're so big and so strong! Arrogance like that must be punished!" Doma broke out into a fit of rage rushing at Mana, his speed completely caught the magician unprepared.</p><p>The kunoichi leaned aside trying to avoid getting stabbed right in the center of her chest, a painful shock made her stumble back as a gash bloodied up her uniform where she was about to be stabbed. Mana took a leap back, she couldn't pin down just how she was injured – her opponent missed, it was like the air around his thrust was just as sharp as the actual attack.</p><p>Mana's scream made a bunch of curious birds scatter away and look for worms and smaller insects elsewhere. Doma had moved in behind the magician's back and tackled her with his shoulder sending her bashing into a tree ahead before he kneed the magician down below like a ragdoll, smashing her and grinding the kunoichi to the ground. Luckily enough, Mana managed to roll aside right as soon as she recovered and avoid three more knives coming from under Doma's cloak trying to skewer her while she was down.</p><p>The thrust that she was meant to be stabbed by only grazed her chest, still, it was a painful reminder that her opponent possessed strange and as of yet misunderstood ability. Dodging was dangerous around him. It was like his entire skillset was centered on torture: dodging only slowly scratched and cut away at one's will and body until nothing but a tortured broken victim remained. His entire ninjutsu arsenal appeared to be focused on capturing and dealing a great amount of pain to his opponent.</p><p>Mana needed the young man to speak. Speaking was almost like a dance of swords all by itself, it revealed things about one's opponent, things that made them easier to read. If she knew her opponent was psychotic she could better predict their actions, if she knew them to be tranquil she'd know they'd aim for finishing the fight quick or not fighting at all. She needed Doma to speak…</p><p>An iron grip locked around the magician's neck catching her by surprise. She should've sensed the impending doom from the large Getsugakure sensor ninja but she was too occupied observing Doma. These three were just too much to take all by herself… No air… The bulky giant was firmly crushing her throat with his lock from behind, vision was getting blurry, Mana gasped for air but as her mouth opened Gasco only found an opportunity to crush her throat further. Mana tried kicking around, augmentation took some time to work right, she was too weak at that point. Brain was getting lazy and slow. All sorts of stupid thoughts clogged it when she needed clarity and firm decisions.</p><p>"I'm waiting for you to stop me…" Gasco's voice still found its way to the magician's fading senses. Vision was growing dim, sounds were dulling and starting to slip past her registry. It would've taken at least twenty minutes to kill a ninja out of air deprivation, why was she fading so fast?</p><p>"Stop you? Why would I care about that? Just snap her neck and be done with it. Arrogant fools that think they can take on other teams all by themselves are a weak link for their villages, a pointless existence…" the short shinobi of Team Phobos sat down on a nearby rock before turning away from Mana struggling for her life.</p><p>Whenever she wasted chakra to kick or strike Gasco with her elbows the man's own chakra augmentation countered it by toughening his body. Her strikes were completely useless against a much stronger physically opponent. Only once Mana realized how fruitless her struggle was, how this feeling of creeping certain death which she would experience for almost half an upcoming hour would be prolonged to eternity by that freaky dark feeling which Gasco carried around him her brain started working separately from her own body.</p><p>"I… Need… Help…" the magician begged her own mind to cooperate, sometimes talking to her own body in her mind helped. She'd have never given her opponent the satisfaction to beg them, judging from Doma's words he hated ninja that were incompetent in his eyes and such begging would've only made him angrier and made Mana seem more incompetent. Meiko and Kiyomi needed her help… If only she could've found Kouta… Kouta… Where was he?! Mana's eyes closed focusing on her slowly fading mind instead.</p><p>An influx of oxygen sieged the magician's chest. Like a thirsty person being thrown under a crushing tide of water all at once she began coughing and shaking, the space under Mana's eyes began pulsing madly as her blurry and dark vision started to slowly return.</p><p>"Hey, what gives? Now you'll have to choke her all over again…" Doma complained at his teammate.</p><p>"We can't kill her." Gasco shook his head, the magician heard his loud and wide footsteps thudding away from her. This man was done with her.</p><p>"What? Why not!?" Doma shouted out before jumping off of the rock he was on and running after his teammate.</p><p>"Maybe because it's just good sportsmanship not to kill people just because you aren't forbidden to?" Stea sarcastically cheeked her teammate's obsession over killing people he saw as useless ninja.</p><p>"No. That's because she's a rare breed, she'll be a very useful kunoichi to her village in the future." Gasco's voice still reached Mana, the surprise that his words invited made her struggle back on the magician's feet and stumbling after the trio just to hear what was it that Gasco felt.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Doma wondered, all malevolence in his voice disappeared in an instant. He stopped and looked back at Mana with a whole different set of eyes, less bloodthirsty and enraged and more curious.</p><p>"She's a sensor. That's why her signature felt so weird and was so recognizable to me, tell me, girl, I feel different than other people, don't I?" Gasco's low pitched and rumbling voice thundered out as he also turned at Mana.</p><p>The magician nodded after a short confused delay.</p><p>"Sensors are able to tell if the chakra signature belongs to a sensor, it feels like that person is eating up the chakra that one's body emanates and spits it back out. Her abilities are still undiscovered and latent that's why I wasn't able to feel them initially. Then she turned them on subconsciously and I felt it clear as day, she must've sought someone using her entire essence, cleared her mind in her desperate plea for her life. Remember what you did, learn that ability. It's what very few ninja have…" Gasco explained before putting his hood back on and concealing his creepy bald head.</p><p>After a surprised but somewhat vibrant shrug Doma also concealed his tattooed face under the hood, Stea also followed hiding her silver locks. The trio dashed away, they had no further use for Mana at this point.</p><p>The magician crawled on all fours to the nearest tree, her body collapsed right after the dark and scary feeling from Gasco disappeared completely and nothing but whistling forest winds and rustling leaves were left as her only company. Mana closed her eyes and lifted her chin up, truthfully that revelation sort of did make sense. Didn't her meditation work very weird recently, displaying some strange images of stars and space-like imagery. It must've been some sort of symbolism, the spacial imagery must've been some strange way for her body to use the sensory ability that was beginning to bud inside her.</p><p>She only saw those strange moving stars whenever she moved past her entry-level meditational stages. Mana closed her eyes and focused onto her own body before calling out to the surrounding environment, calling out to Kiyomi, Meiko or Kouta like she did when she felt like her life was slowly being choked away. In a loud blazing roar a bunch of stars materialized in front of her in the total blackness of space. These must've represented chakra signatures, the size of these stars must've symbolized the size of the chakra signature.</p><p>"I can see three of them one by the other…" Mana spoke to herself inside her own mind. She saw the stars at least lightyears away from her, that must've symbolized her sensory range, at this point she had no idea about the proportion of her mental imagery and actual distance she sensed the signatures in. At least it was a clear indicator of where she could've found ninja. The signatures were south-west from her whereas Stea, Doma and Gasco moved north-east, they belonged to someone other than Team Phobos.</p><p>Pain brought the magician back to the world around her. Once again her sensory abilities disappeared and she was left with the five senses available to her from birth. Even with all the hard work and training she did in preparation for the Exams or before trying to become strong enough: strong enough to catch up to her peers and the world around her, strong enough to change the world and make it better than she found it after being born, even with all that, she still needed training. Training to sharpen and blossom her chakra sensory abilities, training to perfect all of her concepts for new techniques.</p><p>It felt like being smacked in the face by a dirty wet blanket… But still, she was alive, she had a sense of purpose and the next clue.</p><p>"Wait, Meiko… Please. just wait a little bit longer." Mana mumbled under her own nose while pushing herself back on her feet. Her head still felt dizzy but it didn't look like her wrists were bleeding or the scratch on her chest was something serious.</p><p>Slowly, one step after another, Mana headed south-west where the next chakra signature clue tipped her off to go.</p>
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<a name="section0283"><h2>283. Heroes Don't Use Cheat Codes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was dark around, granted, it was tough to say exactly just what time it could've been outside the thickness of Forest of Death due to the dense cover of trees above. Insects of every sort, flying and crawling have started their nocturnal procession to fuel their further existence. That suggested a later part of the day, maybe past even the climax of the night. Time was running out.</p><p>A couple of times Mana dashed to the location where the straws of her sensory picked up ninja to be. The previous tip turned out empty as the ninja had moved on past their stop. A handful of more wild goose chases like that followed. As wet and frail spray of rainwater began weighing down the leafage that shielded the grounds below from it, Mana had begun to wonder if her quest was entirely pointless.</p><p>The cold didn't matter, even if the rain soaked her entirely. At least it helped to numb the pain in her chest, her wrists and just above her feet. It didn't do jack squat about the inner pain though, the desperation to do whatever it took to save her friend's health and fulfil the stupid promise she never should have made in the first place.</p><p>The next tip of Mana's sensory picked up on two signatures moving her direction from the southern entrance to the Forest of Death. While it would've been unfortunate and very unlikely that Kouta's team would be reduced to just two members so soon, missing checking it was still a luxury the magician couldn't afford. For that reason she moved their general direction to meet them sooner than they ran into her.</p><p>Her sensory was beginning to define itself as a new feeling, to sharpen somewhat. Each time she closed her eyes and tried to broaden the scope of her mind's eye it came off easier and easier. The ability must've been unlocked for the longest time, every time Mana remembered being exposed to these spacial views of giant stars whizzing past her floating body must've been it. What she took as a failure of meditation – something she usually excelled at, was truly just misinterpreted awakened ability to sense chakra.</p><p>It was a very raw and unsharpened sense. The magician needed training to make it available without meditation, just as a default feeling of hers, as usual as seeing with her eyes. Feeling up those large glowing stars of chakra, seeing their vibrant blazing colors and their immense or smaller sizes was not unlike seeing new faces. If this ability was ever trained and defined it would have been immensely valuable as Mana would've been able to remember and tell apart entirely different people by their chakra signatures alone.</p><p>Saving Meiko this way wouldn't have been a mistake. As much as Mana wanted to hate on the promise she had made to her best friend – subconsciously she knew it was the right thing to do. Meiko was someone with damaged self-worth, she lived a cheerful and goofy life but when she was reminded of the disappointment and sadness from the times she failed, such as she'd be reminded of if she was eliminated like this, she just shut down and gave up. Never seeing her friend crushed like that, crushed as she looked all those times she failed a simple ninjutsu technique or failed to concentrate on Mana's training, was worth all this. It had to be…</p><p>Hearing rustling beneath her Mana stopped and looked down. She had purposefully moved on the upper levels of the branches to be able to move quietly and survey the owners of the signatures if she ever ran into them as she predicted to be able to. A familiar young lady slowly walked down on the mossy floor of the forest raising Mana's suspicion.</p><p>A feeling of cold sharp steel pressed by her cheek from behind alerted her that she was caught.</p><p>"What are you doing here? I thought the two of you could restrain yourselves from all of this during the Exams…" a firm masculine voice spoke up.</p><p>A clang and black blur surprised Kouta's teammate as in a flash Mana had pushed the blade's edge aside from her face, stood up and pressed a steel tipped card by the young man's throat.</p><p>"That was an impressive illusion, time perception manipulation is truly something even I cannot fully master. That being said, your control is sloppy, whenever you use it you freeze the perception of not only your movements but the environment in general. Natural shifts in temperature, rustling and falling leaves and small animals all freeze making you predictable and your illusion very clear. Don't lower your guard even while your opponent is under it…"</p><p>Kouta's friend's face shifted from a serious and somewhat cold expression to amusement and even gentle laughter as he sheathed his sword, something Mana quickly followed allowing her steel tipped card to slip under her sleeve and disappear.</p><p>"We should train with each other sometime, you'd teach me control and better mastery of what I have, I'd help you with time perception manipulation… I'm Yushijin, in case you didn't know. That girl down there luring your attention is Budoki."</p><p>Mana sighed before looking around frantically, her heart was beginning to pound uneasily inside her chest and her breathing ran out of control as sometimes she struggled to draw breath and sometimes she drew too much in, so much that she began choking on it.</p><p>"Where's Kouta?" she asked worryingly.</p><p>"We've been… Tricked. We fought this team from Iwagakure and Kouta got injured. We thought it was nothing too serious, he healed himself and used up some of our food pill supply. Then he… The symptoms started."</p><p>Shaking her head uneasily Mana jumped down, from one branch to another before she landed right up to Budoki who just greeted her with an uneasy raise of her palm. The girl's eyes were sad as if she actually felt ashamed about something, as if she had wronged Mana in some way and the way this entire situation was breaking down just… Didn't rub the magician the right way.</p><p>"That poison was so smartly designed. The symptoms weren't serious but they were just annoying enough: blurry vision, popping in his ears, pain in his bones and joints. One by one he tried every antidote and every time it looked like it worked only for the symptoms to return soon enough. We went through our all medical supplies in just half of one night…" Yushijin explained rubbing the back of his head uneasily.</p><p>"We've… We've turned him in, we couldn't see him suffer anymore. He made the call – he needed too many supplies to function and not drag us down." Budoki looked at Mana with sad puppy eyes. "I'm… So sorry."</p><p>While Budoki really seemed to make a big deal out of this elimination, likely attributing Mana's mental breakdown to the closeness that the two felt for each other as a pair, Yushijin looked a bit confused about Mana's presence and her sad reaction to the news.</p><p>"Why did you come here? Why did you come alone? Is any of us your target?" he suspiciously wondered.</p><p>"No, it's just… He was my last hope…" Mana shouted out before falling on her butt and crawling to sit back to a wet and crooked tree. She could no longer control her tears and the scorching fiery tornadoes of fear for the future burning up inside her chest.</p><p>"Ummm… Maybe you should explain to us what's going on, we don't quite get it…" Budoki slowly approached Mana before sitting beside her.</p><p>"There's no time…" Mana shrugged it off and jumped up onto a taller reaching branch while gracefully avoiding the other surrounding branches by flipping over them or swinging off of them up higher.</p><p>"Hmph… So that's Kouta's girlfriend?" Budoki crossed her arms around her chest.</p><p>"Yeah, should've known better than trying to catch the Konoha's Sorceress in my illusion…" Yushijin smiled.</p><p>"She's really weird…" Budoki bitterly declared.</p><p>Seeing where she was going was getting awfully difficult. Tears were running down everywhere and that, as always, made everything more problematic. So many people used to tell her to just stop crying, they tried finding out what exactly made her cry and then after they couldn't understand it they were so fast to fire off labels. As if pain was as simple as submissive to just being willed away, being stabbed or burnt could always have been healed. No medical ninja alive managed to treat inner pain, not yet.</p><p>Knowing that Kouta was out of the picture just made Mana that much more nervous about her promise. Not only was she left all alone to deal with the ramifications of her promise but now her entire quest was rendered pointless. She was just dashing and leaping around for no reason, following no particular purpose or goal. All she was doing at this point was postponing having to face Meiko and Kiyomi after she returned.</p><p>Mana tumbled over a branch that was larger than she had predicted it to be with her eyes completely sunk in tears. She covered her face instinctively despite knowing that the fall would only shave off some chakra off of her reserves to make her survive the fall with nothing but insignificant bruises. Her newly reopened chest wound started hurting again in a very peculiar burning pain – likely an early sign of a possible infection to come. It needed to be washed…</p><p>The magician sat down and closed her eyes, she didn't even need to delve deeper into her mind to see the clusters of stars representing chakra signatures rise up in front of her. She saw several more signatures than usual, she must've been getting closer to the central parts of the forest by now, hence the more intense and larger quantities of signatures. She had used the ability many enough times to finally gain easier access to it. Still, a far cry from where she wanted it to be though… That would take time, more of it than one hectic night.</p><p>How was she supposed to save Meiko now? How was Mana now to remain both Meiko's friend and keep her promise as well as help the blacksmith to get over her wound. She did everything she thought was right – she gave the blacksmith more energy to deal with it by feeding her food which was supposed to help the superhuman ninja metabolism start dealing with the wound. She helped Meiko however she could, tried being a good friend and a good teammate at the same time…</p><p>Maybe that was impossible? Maybe being a good friend and being a good teammate were two different things and Mana had to give up on one to be the other? Even Kiyomi, someone with clearly different and much more intense feelings towards the redhead was ready to be hated, to be yelled at for the sake of doing what was right. She was willing to compromise, why wasn't Mana? It would've been the easy way out to just sit down there, just let her mind slip away into hazy deep sleep and let Kiyomi carry Meiko and give her up.</p><p>No. There was one more thing Mana had to give up, one more redefined compromise. A Faustian bargain under her own rules, it sounded empowering but truly it disgusted the magician, every time she tried to consider what she was about to do made her sick and throw up a little inside. It needed to be calculated, considered and weighed though, the inner turmoil was unavoidable…</p><p>A trio of young genin was camping peacefully around a feint and ghastly chakra lantern construct that was fueled by an unknown elemental but provided a powerful but unseen from afar, similarly to how a fire would be seen, glow. Mana observed the trio from afar, a young girl with the hair of brown and an instrument case on her back was keeping watch with her teammates sitting peacefully with their eyes closed by the lantern.</p><p>When the magician closed her eyes she could feel an extension of sorts from the dark skinned young man's chakra signature to the lantern suggesting it was a construct of his making. Judging by how the lantern stayed constantly and separately without sucking out any chakra from its owner, allowing them to even fall asleep while maintaining the jutsu, it must've been a sealing technique of sorts which didn't appear like a bunch of sealing glyphs or hieroglyphs but instead as a chakra construct.</p><p>The magician leaped down and began slowly approaching the trio, her hand was already halfway into her pocket and pulling out a bunch of cards to be thrown at her opponents before the young lady with the instrument up her back noticed it and jumped in to block Mana's attack. The magician's cards dug in deep into the instrumental case, ignoring the damage to the case the girl simply unzipped it with one fluid motion and retrieved a beautiful spruce and maple violin. The kunoichi transited between watch-mode and fighting stance flawlessly, she was undoubtedly skilled.</p><p>Taking mere moments, gentle tunes filled the air. The magician stopped in her place, jerking her body and twitching in her attempts to move that just stopped. Hearing the melody based genjutsu being set into play the teammates of the young kunoichi woke up and leaped to her aid. The lighter skinned and slightly chubby young man extended his hands as a cloud of strange dust emerged from under his sleeves surrounding Mana. The magician did her best not to breathe but the dust made its way right into her lungs and her airway.</p><p>"Well this is weird…" the third teammate of the violinist and the chubby Kumogakure paleskin yawned before extending his hands at Mana. "You couldn't have come here alone, where's your team, what are they plotting, which one of us is your target?" he kept on questioning Mana.</p><p>As the magician continued to sit silent longer and longer, almost defiantly to his request the dark skinned and dreadlock wearing sealing jutsu user turned at his chubby teammate.</p><p>"Yo, paleskin, I thought your stupid spores should've affected her will and forced her to talk?"</p><p>"They should've…" the chubby shrugged.</p><p>"This is remarkable…" the young violinist stopped playing and placed her violin back into the case.</p><p>"You say remarkable, I say dangerous!" the seal user pointed his finger at Mana making his hand shaped like a handheld kunai dispenser before he "pressed the trigger of it" materializing a flat and round sealing glyph around the tip of his extended finger that then blasted a lightning fast beam of pure chakra out and through Mana's chest blasting her down on the ground.</p><p>"Hmph… I think she actually attacked us alone." The sealing jutsu user looked around after realizing no one came to the deceased magician's aid after he blasted a hole through her chest. "Shit, I didn't really want to kill her, I thought this was a clone or… I dunno…" the young man shrugged.</p><p>"Wait, where's your ninja pouch?" the chubby pointed at his teammate's leg where a pouch containing all of his ninja tools and his supplies, medical supplies included laid. After a brief moment of confusion the young violinist noticed that the cards stuck in her case have also all disappeared as well as the corpse of the young magician that seemingly was never even there to begin with.</p><p>The violinist kunoichi started laughing uncontrollably before the team realized that they've just been bamboozled by someone who didn't even need to take them out as their targets. Upon that realization and the upcoming pondering about the unsure future without medical supplies or some of the weapons the laughter and cheer sort of died out into a more melancholic silence.</p><p>"You're just in time. A good ten or fifteen minutes and I would've taken Meiko up on my shoulders and carried her right to the southern entrance." Kiyomi faintly smiled upon seeing the magician returning with a pouch of medical supplies.</p><p>Without replying a single thing and still pale and confused about what she had just done Mana simply kneeled by Meiko's side and removed one green pill, placing it right into the blacksmith's mouth and asking her to chew.</p><p>"Where did you get those supplies? Did Kouta give you those? I figured you'd go ask him for something like this…" Kiyomi wiped her sweat in relief after seeing Meiko's physical condition improve right before her eyes. The blacksmith's cheeks and her entire skin regained its human blooming color. Her eyes opened up and started clapping together like a baby who was just really happy to be awake.</p><p>Mana didn't reply a thing. After Meiko opened her eyes the magician just fell on her side and curled into a fetal position right down there on the grass. Initially Kiyomi thought Mana was injured and even forced one red food pill down her throat to help with the wrist and chest wounds.</p><p>"Holy shit, there are two more yellow pills and two more red food pills. No way Kouta gave you this, if he had you'd be contractually obligated to marry him on the spot!" Kiyomi whistled looking into the pouch that Mana brought back after tricking the trio of sleepy genin using one of her oldest genjutsu techniques she often used on stage. A technique that created a visual double of Mana and had her die on stage and even temporarily duplicated a lifeless corpse for a good minute or two – Fancy Trick Jutsu.</p><p>It appeared that after seeing the knives and shuriken that also came in the package of the pouch the blonde realized what may have actually been done to get Meiko these food pills. Her face didn't look horrified or judgmental over what Mana may have done, in fact, it completely got absorbed into making food and taking care of Mana's and Meiko's injuries.</p><p>The magician wrapped her head around with her arms and covered her crying face up. She stole someone else's medical and weaponry supplies. It wasn't against the rules, it wasn't in any way considered wrong in the ninja world, in fact, Kiyomi was one step away from commending Mana for tricking someone else successfully for her own gain but she may have had the common decency and insight to realize how the magician must've felt after something like this.</p><p>At the very least, now there may have been four teams that wanted Team Hokage out of the competition…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0284"><h2>284. Honor Among Ninja?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Next morning Meiko was cheerful and running about like nobody's business. It was like any injury or infection had never happened with the food pills healing all the damage completely. Granted, the green or black ones were quite capable of preventing even more lethal injuries from claiming a life so the potent effect of the pills was not at all surprising.</p><p>"So what are we waiting for?" the blacksmith flexed her muscles after treating herself to some powdered soup that revealed its true taste and colour in heated water. "We've not taken down a single target yet…" she pouted.</p><p>"It's like she doesn't even remember what caused us this setback in the first place…" Kiyomi sighed after whispering it to Mana's ear.</p><p>The magician just sat there with her head down and her hands wrapped around her bent bruised knees. More and more often she snapped out of the chain of deep thought only to discover she's been staring at a blank point and creeping her teammates out but she didn't feel like lightening the mood up at all.</p><p>"I feel really great, I call dibs on being the first to get to hunt down her target!" Meiko yelled out energetically, quickly pushing away temporary wondering about why Mana was so down.</p><p>"Slow down there, how do you even plan on taking your target out in the first place?" Kiyomi squinted in suspiciously motherly eyes as Meiko was acting overly childish not to deserve a scolding of a more paternal nature.</p><p>"We'll just jump at them and kick all their asses, three on three!" the blacksmith grinned with her signature ape-like smile.</p><p>"You know it'd be much smarter to somehow separate your target away from their team and take them down that way, that'd save us trouble, chakra and time treating injuries…" Kiyomi once again kept on fighting Meiko's instinctive impulses. Was the blacksmith really to be blamed, she just woke up feeling chipper after a quite scary injury followed by even more terrifying infection taking its place.</p><p>Kiyomi's warm hands dragged Mana back to the world at hand instead of the mental one she was exploring. The blonde examined Mana's bruises on her wrists and then without bothering too much about common decency checked the wound on Mana's chest.</p><p>"It's still pretty red in there but having in mind the state it was in…" she noted. "We have a whole bunch of normal medical supplies, bandages and ointments, they may ease up the irritation and pain, if you want. Clearly they're no million ryo costing food pills but…"</p><p>"I'm fine." Mana turned away.</p><p>"Really?" Meiko smacked her forehead against Mana's to check for fever. "You don't really look fine. I mean you look fine but you're not acting fine…"</p><p>Even in her grinded to the dirt mood the magician couldn't help but crack a small smile seeing Meiko's rude and careless manner of checking her teammate's temperature. She must've thought that the only suitable way to check someone's temperature was to check with the same place of one's body which was why she almost cracked the magician's skull with that headbutt that was supposed to be a kind and playful gesture.</p><p>"Don't dig too deep. While I watched you yesterday Mana ran off and stole some medical food pills from some team, must not be quite up to her almighty moral code or something." Kiyomi shrugged while digging into the instantly prepared food cup she was yet to eat. It was simply too hot right after preparing and the Yamanaka was one of the people who let her instant soup or stew chill the longest, at least she didn't gobble it all down like Meiko and then complain of a scolded mouth…</p><p>"Really? Good job!" Meiko commended Mana by smacking her back.</p><p>That was the way it always went. Praises for things that should never receive praise, Mana bet if she started killing people she'd be commended for that as well. It was always the best killers, the best thieves that rose above the rest. Those that not only stole the most but also got caught the least. Somehow it wasn't the act of stealing that was a moral stigma but instead the misfortune of being caught. Instead of hurting other people and taking away what was theirs, what they needed and they've earned, what was a crime instead was lacking the skill needed to get away with it.</p><p>"You're really overplaying it, you know. There's no need to lose sleep over it, this is a competition where people are allowed to be hurt or even killed. It's not like you took a candy from a baby or anything…" the blonde shrugged with a mouthful of noodles and chicken.</p><p>"Come on… Let's go do what we need to do already!" Meiko began smacking about like a baby before deciding to better devote her limitless stamina to working out.</p><p>"I agree with Meiko." Mana unexpectedly decided to join into the conversation. "Other teams have already been through one or even two conflicts with the others. The more time passes the higher the chance that someone will have three or two targets by their belt – they'll come here for the northern exit to finish the test. Soon enough this place won't be safe anymore."</p><p>"I'm fine with kicking some ass, all I'm saying is that we may not be able to carry out a full out brawl. We'll get injured, it'll need nursing back which'll cost us time. It may be better to find our targets and separate them from their teams before quickly taking them out." The Yamanaka once again suggested.</p><p>"We're probably stronger than most people here. We're not ordinary genin, you know!" Meiko roughed out through her painful looking and gravity defying push ups.</p><p>"I wouldn't rely on that. While it is true that our overall strength and skill dwarfs that of ordinary genin, we're not dealing with ordinary genin. While I was looking for the medication I saw genin capable of playing with one's perception of time using genjutsu, I saw sensors and people capable of firing blasts of concentrated chakra like they were a Juugo clan member…" Mana lowered her head.</p><p>"Yeah… It may just be that we're unfortunate enough to take the Exams the same year the rest of prodigies and people that skipped too many Exams ended up doing it. I still feel confident in my ability to beat anyone in this Forest but that doesn't mean it won't be tough." Kiyomi looked at the dark void of the Forest of Death behind her with worry in her eyes.</p><p>"Wow, look at that! I told you hiding near the northern exit was a good idea! Maybe if we did that Aya-K wouldn't have gotten eliminated!" a voice of a young man scared the three kunoichi who were in the middle of planning out their further actions.</p><p>They were so troubled about Meiko's sickness and how much it disturbed their overall game plan that they somehow completely forgot about setting traps or some other alert mechanism. Then again, when there were thousands if not millions of different altitudes and angles they could've been attacked from, such a task would've been difficult without Meiko's sealing jutsu knowledge.</p><p>"Shut up, we got our targets, didn't we?" another young man replied. His tone was clearly on the defensive and conflicting, neither of the two was playing a leading role and they were clearly butting heads. Maybe that much could've been exploited…</p><p>There Mana went again. After she realized that the first thing she thought about when meeting her peers was thinking about how to take them out more efficiently the magician got even more sorrowful. What if she was starting to lose her own humanity? What if she was losing that sense of naivete which she wanted to guide her through her lifelong desire to change the violent world around her? What would be guiding her instead in that case?</p><p>The two young men leaped down from their higher up positions and slowly walked up closer to the girls' camp without coming too close and beginning to feel imposing. They did mention something about having already taken care of all of their targets which was surprising to hear and a little alerting, then again, they clearly only had two members left which meant that they only needed two targets to pass.</p><p>The duo was clearly from Kumogakure or even more to the north. Their skin was plenty of shades darker than Mana's and their hair was just as wild as that of Kumogakure ninja. The first impressions after hearing those horrendous nicknames that the young generation made up for themselves in that place couldn't have been strengthened any more after seeing the punky hairstyles and wild exotic colours they donned. The second, larger one was completely bald which also didn't help his case as very few young men his age made that life choice.</p><p>"You've already taken out your targets?" Kiyomi wondered in awe. Her voice was a little thorny, Mana started feeling a bit worried about the blonde being a bit too hostile and leading this right into an unnecessary conflict.</p><p>The first one, a short but vibrant young man who dressed in a long red and almost feminine looking coat and a modified black coloured forehead protector stepped up closer. Mana noticed that the other, bald fellow also subconsciously took a couple of steps forward, her best guess was that he couldn't stomach the thought of his teammate talking for him or standing ahead of him.</p><p>"Yeah. Sadly we lost one of our own too. Got attacked in the middle of the night, she got focused on since she was keeping guard at night and taken out. I'm Kei-J, Team Stratus, Kumogakure, this is Roh-D." he explained before introducing himself.</p><p>"Hey, you don't need go around yelling our names out like that!" Roh-D objected, "What if they're gunning for us!? No one yet tried to take me out, my hunter is still in the dark. It could be any one of them!"</p><p>"If you were our targets we'd know your name and how you look like anyways, we do have these… Also sorry for your loss." Kiyomi lifted her file up in the air showing it off before hiding it again.</p><p>"It's not like she died or anything. She just got injured too bad to continue, that's all. Well, if you ladies have no objections, we'll be passing by and getting the hell out of this Forest." Kei-J smiled. His eyes were still careful and very clearly observing the girls and looking out for any danger from their side.</p><p>"Wait a second. How did you find your target? This is awfully fast for locating two right teams out of thirty two in this massive Forest…" Mana raised some thoughts into the clear. If these two were not a threat and they were already lowering their guard and preparing to quit the Forest, they may as well have shared some information. Namely something that'd quite likely raise a lot of trouble.</p><p>"Oh, that's quite simple, we traded information. A lot of teams did and still are. When two teams meet up, if they trust each other, often they'll trade the sightings of one team or another for some information." Roh-D shared this insight, it was surprising how he warmed up to the girls just after realizing they had no interest in fighting him.</p><p>"You're from Kumogakure. It's more than likely you know the location of Team Cirrus, also from Kumogakure. We've no information to give you in return but you don't need any, seeing how you're already done with it." Kiyomi asked.</p><p>Kiyomi's bargaining strategy was remarkably odd. The blonde just said out loud what she needed assuming that it could be provided for her without anything in return. Usually the common bargaining strategy was quite opposite – name a starting suggestion for a fair trade just to establish that trading options are on the table. Mana would've tried offering some supplies in return, Team Hokage had plenty of bandages and simpler medical supplies, also enough food and drinks to last a week even if they all ate like normal civilians and never skipped a meal.</p><p>"Sorry, Team Cirrus are our friends, we go back all the way to the Ninja Academy days. We wouldn't sell those guys out…" Kei-J politely shook his head in refusal.</p><p>"That being said, there are teams we may want to screw, teams that screwed us over that are too risky to go for at the moment. We'd appreciate if someone would screw them in return, namely: Team Zumurrud, Team Hickory, Team Dunyazad" Roh-D suggested. Judging from his tone he really wanted to screw those teams over and that suggestion was most likely trustworthy. The genuine need to screw someone over was always something to bet on and not question.</p><p>If only Mana had uncovered her sensory ability much earlier, if only she had trained it enough to where she didn't need to focus on it so extensively for it to work. Now it worked just questionably enough to not even tip her off when she was being approached, granted, she was deep into self-destructive thought processes so noticing the duo would've been difficult. If only she had awakened those abilities earlier and developed them, maybe then she'd not need the help and information from these two. Maybe then she'd have memorized the signatures of everyone as they were gathered by the entrance and found them all when needed…</p><p>"Team Hickory? That's Konoha's team…" Kiyomi scratched her chin.</p><p>"I bet it's Pagu that screwed you guys over, he's kind of an asshat…" Meiko leaned back before snickering and rubbing her itchy nose.</p><p>"A member of Team Hickory tried to feed our sick friend actual supercharged acid just to test how it works. Had we not noticed a fly getting dissolved in it right before our very eyes, Aya-K would be dead or alive with very disintegrated innards right now. Tough to say which fate is worse…" Kei-J looked to the side, his eyes actually squinted in anger and his entire body was shaking. He really looked like regretting not being able to kick this Pagu's ass himself.</p><p>"Yeah, typical Pagu…" Meiko shrugged, "We graduated the same year. He was pretty bright but never too shy to let you know he knew it. I'm down with kicking his butt just for fun. He once injected bile of vanillitus cells in my tea."</p><p>"I thought vanillitus wasn't contagious…" Mana looked at her friend with a questioning glare. It was certainly a scary disease to develop but it not only never developed in ninja or people capable of controlling chakra, it wasn't contagious at the slightest.</p><p>"It isn't, he was like six back then. Smart enough to cut a cat open and into its tumor and extracting it but not to fully understand what he's doing. Doesn't make him less of an asshole." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"No. We don't have the time to waste. None of these teams are teams we are looking for, sorry." Kiyomi cut the conversation short.</p><p>Kei-J bowed his head slightly in respect. "I see, I'm sorry we couldn't be of more help. With your permission we'll be on our way."</p><p>"Actually… You may just help us out tremendously. Wasn't Team Dunyazad the name of Menna, Tiwul and Tala's team? We may ask them around, offer some supplies, info or food in return." Mana suggested.</p><p>Kei-J and Roh-D turned around and looked at each other. "Fine… Just take care around this Tala guy. Him and his team beat us three when Aya-K was still with us, we had to flee but he was Aya-K's target. Once she was eliminated we no longer needed to fight him. The last time we saw them they were in the south-western quadrant of the forest, I'll write down the coordinates for you…" Kei-J removed his backpack and scribbled something on a paper where a rough map of the forest was previously drawn.</p><p>"That's a pretty good map…" Kiyomi observed as she twisted and flipped the paper around marvelling at the masterful job done with it.</p><p>"Roh-D is quite exceptional with maps and blueprints. Must be his Kirikuzu blood…" Kei-J nodded with a smile. Mana noticed Meiko's fists clench and her teeth firmly shut inside her mouth. The redhead's face shifted to a more firm and serious expression, she mustn't have really fancied seeing a member of the Kirikuzu clan.</p><p>For a moment there the magician thought that the blacksmith would just leap at the tall bald member of the Kirikuzu clan but after a gentle tap on her shoulder and redirecting of her attention the blacksmith managed to somehow eschew from lashing out.</p><p>Not too long later the duo from Kumogakure had left and Team Hokage was left just with a map with where the clash with a team familiar to them previously took place. It wasn't much, just a tip to where they could find friends that may have had information. Mana had met the team she stole from before, she also encountered that creepy team from Getsugakure again. Neither of the two fancied as information she'd like to disclose, even to friends. Even in return to useful info.</p><p>Team Phobos from Getsugakure was dangerous and ridiculously strong. Their abilities were so odd and deadly that even now Mana couldn't entirely comprehend the short battle she had seen between the poor trio taken out by Team Phobos and the Getsugakure competitors. The team from which Mana stole the food pills, on the other hand, was not a team she wanted to expose to danger. The problem with that team was more of the inner variety. It was almost like the magician owed them something, like she had to look out for them just because she left them without their food pills for the duration of this exam.</p><p>"Alright. I guess this Team Dunyazad is the best chance at information we've got. If that doesn't work we may as well just blindly wander around and look for teams that are either our targets or have intel on our targets. We've wasted enough time, let's go!" Kiyomi leaped up into the swallowing oblivion of the forest's natural darkness first, Mana and Meiko followed the Yamanaka shortly.</p><p>"Can you really give this Team Dunyazad anything they want? Like information on teams? Can we trust this Tala guy to not be a dick?" Kiyomi turned her head at Mana after slowing down a little bit.</p><p>The magician wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged uneasily. She felt uncomfortable about disclosing anything about her experience running frantically and looking for the faintest glimmer of hope that her best friend could survive. It was not an overly pleasant experience to look back on.</p><p>"I see…" the blonde sighed, "Then let's just hope they either really like you guys or that they really need the supplies we have."</p>
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<a name="section0285"><h2>285. Do Squirrels Dream Of Golden Showers?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just closing her eyes while continuously moving at high speeds didn't work that well with Mana's latent and untrained chakra sensory abilities. She needed to stop, close her eyes and concentrate for that and even then she was looking at the ability to sense something up to a kilometer away. A distance completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of the massive vegetation which was the Forest of Death.</p><p>"You were away the whole night, I'd have thought you'd be covered with massive mosquito bites like Kiyomi." Meiko grinned after looking back at Mana, breaking the magician's concentration. Not that it mattered anyways since it clearly wasn't going anywhere.</p><p>"Yeah, they were annoying but I guess the food pill treated that." Mana shrugged while taking a moment to look onwards to Kiyomi. Her arms were covered with large and quite wide for a mosquito bite spots of red. Even her face, which clearly was an area of prioritized protection had a couple of spots on it.</p><p>After hearing the silence that took over the conversation Kiyomi looked back with wonder before squinting at Meiko, "I'm not taking a medical food pill just to treat a bunch of itchy bites…" she hissed out. "Don't you know how expensive those things are?"</p><p>"Kouta seemed to have them on him in great quantities…" Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"That's because he's a medical ninja, he can probably make his own himself from herbs and common spices. The medical food pills are actually pretty expensive and rare for non-medical ninja. The black ones are particularly difficult to obtain, I had to save up dozens of tool refill funds before I could get my hand on them and it still took a whole two and a half years to make enough money for just two of them." Mana explained.</p><p>"That doesn't seem right, food pills can heal people just like medical ninja, right? Wouldn't that make them a replacement for medical ninja, in a way?" Meiko bellowed in confusion.</p><p>"Food pills don't "heal" people. They accelerate and boost the ninja's own metabolism which is already far surpassing that of non-chakra manipulators. They have very specific limitations and shouldn't be taken in larger quantities or too often. It'd be better if me and Meiko refrained from taking them for a day or two. It's because of these limitations that they are so expensive, the Administration doesn't want non-medical ninja, who don't know all the factors involved, dealing with them."</p><p>"You'd probably be alright, you took the red one, right?" Kiyomi looked back. "Those are child's play. You could probably get away taking a couple of those at a time… My brother used to tell me about taking several of reds to emulate one yellow pill, I can remember at least several stories about his missions where he did that."</p><p>"Maybe, our best course of action is still to avoid picking fights…" Mana noted while she jumped up higher as she noticed a pair of giant centipedes crawling and wrangling up a tree. As their armored shell rubbed against the bark it greatly damaged the plant and if the insect really wanted to it could snap even the toughest trees in half by just pressing it harder.</p><p>"Someone's following us…" Mana whimpered out as she sat above on a large tree branch. Kiyomi looked up at the magician in surprise. Meiko quickly zipped her pants back up and hustled and rolled out from the bush she was peeing in like a scared chubby penguin before fixing her clothes and fastening all the belts and harnesses of her armor.</p><p>"How do you know that?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Mind link." Mana whispered, she remembered how well she could hear a conversation when she tracked Team Phobos. If she revealed she was a latent untrained sensor she might trigger the people following them to attack. Kiyomi closed her eyes and weaved a hand seal before opening them and looking at Mana, momentarily the blonde's voice as well that of Meiko were linked together with the magician's mind.</p><p>"I'm a sensor. My abilities are a bit raw and I've only found out yesterday night. One of the ninja I was following was a sensor and sensors can tell other sensors, so he told me." Mana focused on her thoughts, putting them into a mental message.</p><p>"I wonder if squirrels pee while they're stuck on a tree or if they hide in bushes or something…" Meiko's thoughts echoed out loud, almost like the blacksmith was yelling them out loud.</p><p>"What? Wait… Also, Meiko, we heard that. Don't focus on thoughts you don't want us to hear. Imagine speaking in your mind, keep your needless thoughts at a less material level, just let them float freely while you focus on things you need to transmit." Kiyomi explained. "I thought we've done this already a couple of times?"</p><p>"Sorry… I'm not too good with control…" Meiko actually blushed in the material plain while only her thoughts could've been heard. "Plus, I don't remember that being established, I must've just not thought about anything else back then…"</p><p>"So what's our plan?" Mana tried returning the team back to reality of being followed by a team of unclear power and intentions.</p><p>"How unrefined is your ability? Can you tell how far away they are? How strong they are?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Not exactly. I can estimate with something better than an educated guess, they should be about five hundred meters away. I can only tell their strengths apart from each other if it differs greatly, for example I would absolutely tell a difference between a chuunin and a genin but I'm not yet good enough to tell how strong they are precisely. Also… I'm pretty sure there're four signatures." Mana kept feeling out and exploring the four large stars in the mental meditative imagery she was perceiving.</p><p>"Four? Could it be an alliance between teams? If neither of the teams are going after each other, it's possible." Kiyomi theorized.</p><p>"True. But they're following us too persistently, that smells to me like one of us is their target. They wouldn't have bothered otherwise…" Mana suggested.</p><p>"Seems a little bit lucky to just bump into your target, doesn't it?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Exactly, that means they are capable of some sort of enhanced tracking abilities." Mana deduced.</p><p>"Inuzuka…"</p><p>"Most likely…"</p><p>"Awww. I don't like beating dogs…" Meiko grunted.</p><p>"So what do we do?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Right now they have a drop on us, they're the hunter and we're the prey but we know they're there. We need to flip the table on that. They've also got an advantage – we're useful to them whereas they aren't to us. I don't like the idea of fighting them but they've got an Inuzuka, we'd never escape them for long." Mana kept thinking while keeping the entire thought process revealed to the team on the link.</p><p>"So, what you're saying is – we need to break that damned dog's nose?" Kiyomi grunted as the thought of a needless conflict was just as irritating to her as it was to Mana.</p><p>"That's not enough." Meiko butt in. "Even if we do injure the sniffer, they can still recover just like I've done, plus an Inuzuka is part the sniffer their dog is. Safe bet is taking them out completely, I'd also say – let's find out which one of them needs which one of us and take them out as well. That'll reduce the width of the degree at which we need to watch our backs."</p><p>"Seconded. Full-out brawl it is." Kiyomi let the team know of her agreement.</p><p>Mana could just sigh. Still, she began transmitting her suggestion of the plan on how to flip the stipulation of the battle over. She didn't like the idea of screwing someone else over, eliminating someone else from the exam and therefore from the opportunity of becoming chuunin this year. She needed an inner reminder of what was at stake for her to get more of her heart into the game.</p><p>"Alright, punks! We know you're out there!" Mana yelled out with her voice echoing into the dark void lacking happiness and sunlight beyond in all sides.</p><p>A rumbling roar emanated from beyond the void and shortly after the dark of the forest began to slowly light up. Tree rustled, crackled and fell down as a sharp ellipse of searing blaze tore its way past them. Surprisingly enough the heat was contained and didn't even set the trees it downed ablaze. All jammed and packed into this tablet of destruction, almost like a rocket of scorching red blaze. A long and spraying watery tail fired off from the end of the projectile only strengthening this impression.</p><p>Mana and the rest of the team scattered away from the projectile as it slammed into the ground before erupting into a pillar of absolute destruction. Twenty million degrees and hundred megatons of explosive power compressed into a singular fifty meters radius pillar that extended beyond Mana's field of vision up in the sky. A technique like that would've taken all three of the girls out and left them incapacitated or on the edge of dying. Even dodging it by half its radius felt like hell itself and the pulsing chakra shockwave nearly blew Mana away like a Wind Release technique of its own.</p><p>A jet of Caribbean blue darted off of the pillar of flames and darted off right at Mana. The watery tail of the Fire Release technique was no tail of a rocket – it was an actual person rotating nearby the technique. It was a smart strategy, a skilled Water Release user could've manipulated the temperature of the water around them and kept themselves from getting boiled or incinerated by the technique while they also followed their opponents after they've avoided the clunky devastative distraction of the technique that came earlier.</p><p>"Kraken Fang!" an enraged roar surpassing the lingering roars of the destruction that it shortly followed darted off of the watery rotating drill – a version of the Inuzuka signature rotating technique except with Water Release properties giving it greater shredding drill-like properties.</p><p>The rotating Inuzuka tore through Mana's flesh and through her chest clean leaving a gapping hole where it drilled through. The ease at which the young genin dispatched of his target surprised the Inuzuka greatly as after piercing Mana's body the young man turned around immediately and ended the technique, focusing on regaining his composure and defending against the enemy's counterattack. After weaving a hand seal the young individual whispered "Dispel".</p><p>Mana's corpse faded away like a mirage and so did the dashing away figures of her teammates. Now the hunter has become the exposed prey with the magician and her team remaining hidden and having clear vision over the Inuzuka and his Fire Release using teammate nearby.</p><p>"That was impressive…" Kiyomi smiled.</p><p>"Yeah! Did you see that explosion!? It'd have really hurt! I think I'd have barely survived that! I'd have been a steak after it… Wonder if I'm tasty…" Meiko kept on freaking out overloading the mental link with loud and headache inducing pulses of mental energy before biting her own arm softly and nibbling on it for a while.</p><p>"No, I meant Mana's illusion. Leave it to Konoha's Sorceress to expand the illusion to affect all of us…" Kiyomi commended Mana's trick.</p><p>"Fancy Trick Jutsu is an old illusion I've mastered as a child. I wasn't completely sure if expanding its effect would work but it was likely. Now all three of us are concealed. Truthfully, the corpse should've been emulated for far longer. The technique usually ends when I begin using chakra for my own counterattack or disrupt my mental state with a physical attack."</p><p>"He must've dispelled it, fairly easily too. He knows of your genjutsu prowess, must've seen your file. You've been skilled at genjutsu ever since the Academy, your skillset hasn't varied too much after then, that's not good." Kiyomi looked on at the Inuzuka who remained in his current position and on the defensive, choosing to stand still and be able to perceive his own environment instead of moving and exposing blind spots. A furry grey and black husky growled by his side with fangs as long as a senbon needle and as wide as a banana.</p><p>"I thought Mana's illusions weren't this easy to dispel…" Meiko curiously cocked her head to the side.</p><p>"If they are perfected, used against an opponent of lesser, equal or only slightly higher skill, they aren't. This Fancy Trick Jutsu was out of balance, using conceptual expanded effect and range as well as being unstable. A simple push would've toppled it down…" Mana explained.</p><p>"There they are…" Meiko pointed surprised at the two figures faintly sticking out of their environment, only because they looked so extravagant that concealing their presence would've been nearly impossible.</p><p>Just like the Inuzuka genin from before, judging from the side which they were seen from, both teammates wore Hoshigakure protectors. As evidenced by the clear star symbol on their forehead protectors. One of the duo, likely the one who launched the Fire Release technique before, was dressed in bulky and almost stone-like in texture metallic armor with loads of small constructs that looked almost like exhaust pipes. He wore a dark bandanna so it was tough to tell much about the genin's hair but several longer strands stuck out from under it.</p><p>"Nice eye, Meiko…" Mana praised her teammate as she liked the fact that she didn't need to focus on sensory and expose herself more than she needed to in order to locate the other two competitors.</p><p>"I'd notice sweet armor like that anywhere! Maybe we can strip him of it?" the blacksmith wondered.</p><p>"Cheeky… Anyways, what's that other one?" Kiyomi noted asking for the attention to be directed at the third teammate of the Inuzuka standing right by the side of the heavily armored ninjutsu user.</p><p>A long and flowing cape-like purple dress covered the entire feminine shape of the kunoichi. Her lips were so eye-scratching in how gleamingly they were covered with lipstick that she certainly stuck out in the dark and gloomy green of the surrounding forest even without much enhanced perception needed. She wore the strangest headdress of a large metallic axe-like shape that covered her head from the nose up. The young lady looked demonic, almost like a monster from some sort of a horror movie.</p><p>With a gentle twitch of his eye, the Inuzuka youth betrayed his movement. His ninja hound fellow leaped beside him, ready to protect his master in mid movement. Mana realized that their position must've been already been known by the ninja dog and its Inuzuka owner. Those guys possessed an intense sense of smell which the magician had a chance of finding out back when she fought Inuzuka Noji and his partner Sunomaru during the mission she first met Kiyomi on.</p><p>Intercepting that leap to safety would've been a mistake. The young man wouldn't have moved if he wasn't sure his team or his canine friend was ready to cover him. They likely had some sort of ace up their sleeve or the young man would've merely substituted with something which would've in terms left the attacker in a very exposed position.</p><p>The axe-head young lady suddenly turned her head right at Team Hokage's location, followed by the heavy armored genin that leaped on another branch and turned their general direction as well. At that moment both teams knew of the location of the other but neither one of them was exposed needlessly. At least Team Hokage could make the best out of the bad situation and move into a less exposed location as well as scout out their opponents.</p><p>"So. Your target is Mana?" Kiyomi asked out loud. She must've put it together from how the Inuzuka prioritized the magician after the blast even if the other girls were clearly just as exposed, even if they knew from her file how Mana was a genjutsu user and very likely prepared for a simple physical assault – the most cliché way of coming after an illusion user.</p><p>"Yeah…" the Inuzuka grinned confidently before pointing at himself with his thumb. "Name's Clarmac Inuzuka, this lovely fur-ball is Basto. The waitress girl is kinda my target, sorry…"</p><p>"I'm a stage magician!" Mana yelled out embarrassed to be confused to a servicing worker yet again. "I do magic tricks on stage, this is my uniform!"</p><p>"It looks cringy…" Clarmac's female teammate noted. Her teeth were as white as her pale skin, clearly contrasting her blood red lips and dark purple dress as well as her metallic headdress.</p><p>"You're the one to talk! You're wearing someone's axe handle on your head!" Kiyomi yelled out. "I'm taking this metal-head down, I hate edgy bitches!" she relayed on the mental link.</p><p>"Anyways, my lady friend is Ieiria Deargli. The guy you've already met before by him nuking you is Teclaim Laoch. We're Team Sagitarii from Hoshigakure. I suppose since we've already located each other and established our need to fight this out, may as well do it honorably." Clarmac grinned arrogantly.</p><p>"Okay, I'm Wakizashi Meiko, this is Yamanaka Kiyomi. We're Team Hokage from Konoha. I suppose we'll be fighting 'till one of the sides refuses or physically can't go on, we've no interest in killing anyone today." Meiko replied before unsealing a buckler shield and a one handed, two edged and firm gripped, one arm long sword.</p><p>"Neither have we. Killing in an examination like this is distasteful and lacking any sportsmanship. I'm glad we can agree on that much…" Laoch nodded with a firm approval. His eyes were firmly stuck on Meiko, he must've established her as the main physical threat of Team Hokage.</p><p>"This fight isn't gonna be pretty, it won't be to our favor either. Look out, Mana. They'll be looking to finish this quick." Kiyomi warned the magician mentally.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm Clarmac's target, neither of them is ours. They don't want to be injured so they'll be out for my blood… I'd rather not use Flower Petal Sanctuary Jutsu again and keep increasing the chakra cost creep again." the magician agreed.</p><p>"Don't worry, you won't have to! After being side-lined for so long. After having my life and participation in this exam saved by you so many times… They can sling a galaxy at Mana and I'll just kick it aside like a ragball!" Meiko grinned, her thick and muscular thighs were shaking in excitement for finally being able to repay the debt to her team in a meaningful way. She's been sidelined and out of her comfort zone for so long, having to rely on Mana's intelligence or Kiyomi's experience and skill for so long. Now was an opportunity for the blacksmith to cut loose. Protect her friends and bash some heads in.</p><p>There was absolutely no way that the blacksmith would fail her team now. These three wanted the blood of her friend, they'd have to take it from over Meiko's dead body.</p>
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<a name="section0286"><h2>286. Duffel Bag Of Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A quick metallic clang signalled the beginning of the clash between two teams from two different villages. The exhaust pipe-like extensions of Laoch's armor hardened and extended outright before bending in half at Team Hokage's direction. It was a rather slow manner of attack suggesting it being some sort of a setup or a distraction of a more complicated combination.</p><p>Light emanated from the deeper end of the cannon-like armaments as a beam of superheated Fire Release flames spewed out at the general area of the Team Hokage. Instinctively expecting to be targeted Mana leaped aside, feeling the heat from the blast as it extended and erupted into a dome shaped explosion with intensity and heat matching that of the genin's previous attack. The immeasurable heatwave from before was no outlier, it was a hellish reality of what had to be overcome.</p><p>Mana saw Kiyomi gracefully bouncing from one branch to another away from the multiple dome shaped and still expanding explosions. Mana stopped not wanting to retreat too far. As the domes of fire and smoke disappeared Meiko stood right in the center with her shield placed with in front of her. She appeared to choose to block the beam's intensity by only taking the damage from the explosion, choosing not to open herself up by moving away and dodging the blast. Her slightly scorched clothes and singed skin suggested at least some damage being taken from the explosion that surrounded the shielded kunoichi.</p><p>Hearing the noise of rustling waters behind her the magician leaped up without looking behind. It was a risky strategy but it allowed her to avoid taking some damage from Clarmac's repeated Kraken Fang. They used the same strategy as before – allow Laoch's overwhelming blasts to distract their enemy and make them scatter before Clarmac picked them off one by one. Deargli's role in this was still unclear as the young woman remained still and standing in her place with an apathetic expression and a completely open to attacks stance.</p><p>Kiyomi appeared to have noticed it as well as she threw a pair of kunai at the kunoichi to move her, just to scope out how she'd deal with a little heat from a simplistic attack. Without a doubt the Yamanaka had hoped that Deargli would reveal her abilities to some extent, clearly not having expected to be targeted for an attack when her teammates represented the clear present danger to the enemy team.</p><p>Laoch moved in with his wide armoured hands placed together in a primitive blocking stance allowing the steel knives to just bounce off of his greaves. A barely audible clicking sound alerted Kiyomi of danger. She instinctively tried to move away allowing her adrenaline to command her body to some extent. Sharp pain in her arms and legs alerted her that she's been tagged. A visual observation of the pain cause allowed her identify the problem – a handful of senbon launched from Laoch's armour during his block had successfully hit her.</p><p>Senbon were very peculiar tools. They were tough to see in high speeds, large for a needle but very thin for a projectile. They didn't do much lasting damage unless they hit a very precise vital point of one's body. It took a very knowledgeable of the human anatomy ninja to successfully utilize senbon, Laoch didn't remind Kiyomi of one and seeing how she felt no ill effects that usually followed a successful use of senbon showers she must've been right with her presumptions. It was merely a tool to cause her pain and make her think twice before repeating similar attacks in the future. With a rude pull Kiyomi yanked the needles out, grunting in pain as a pair lodged deep enough to hit some bones which was never a pleasant feeling, a small stream of blood trickled down the affected areas.</p><p>Laoch was overly proud of his successful protective action to notice the fact that Meiko's buckler dug right into his cheek throwing his entire body in a stumbling spin around his axis. The blacksmith's hand went through some hand seals, remarkably fast, one may have added. It appeared that the redhead had taken some lessons of Mana's in hand seal speed in mind. Triggered by Meiko's sealing technique the sealing glyph on the buckler lit up triggering a fairly weak explosive blast that further threw Laoch off his feet and tumbling down below.</p><p>Meiko was relatively skilled with sealing techniques but her low ranking seals couldn't have contained too much chakra in them. That was too bad since her move may have actually caused some damage to both opponents had she sealed more chakra into the seal placed on the buckler.</p><p>"Don't rush after him!" Kiyomi's voice ringed in Mana's mind.</p><p>"I know. I'm not moving one inch…" Meiko's calm mental response followed.</p><p>"It didn't look like he took too much damage from that. May need to hit him harder than that." Mana let her own observations be known.</p><p>"Above you!" Kiyomi's alert reached Mana in time, a tiny bit earlier than the magician would've naturally heard her friend's response usually and went through the hand seals. The magician hopped back avoiding the crashing Kraken Fang from above that tore the tree she was on like a rolled newspaper in a shredder sending small wooden chips at every direction and forcing the magician to hide behind another tree.</p><p>Mana reached into the hat while holding it with her teeth and weaving a hand seal with the other hand. Her hat lit up with dark blue hues as the seal inside it opened up and the magician pulled out the wand that was made by Meiko before. She hadn't had much time to practice with that thing yet but she'd need it. A particular set of techniques came in mind as very useful to the magician but she remembered that it required a chakra channelling tool. Normally a simple kunai would've sufficed, but Mana wanted to try something stronger, more efficient and conducting to chakra moving through it.</p><p>"She pulled it out! My wand!" Meiko's shrieking wand almost made the magician grasp at her temples as it caused moderate headache but she couldn't help but crack a grin at her friend's excitement.</p><p>The magician noticed Clarmac resuming his technique, she once again leaped off from her branch onto another continuing to move further away from the relentless barrage of Kraken Fang assaults as he continued to aim to beat the magician down with it. Her free of holding the wand hand weaved a pair of one handed versions of the normal hand seals used by ninja as she swung her wand around, feeling the surge of lightning chakra moving through her body and through the wand, wasting not a single ounce of it… Audra steel was amazing.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" Mana yelled out pointing the lit up wand at her opponent and firing off a beam of Lightning Release chakra at her opponent. It was a fairly simple and not overly powerful technique with relatively short range of around nine meters, and yet, range was of no matter here, when her opponent was closing in on her and trying to chase her down.</p><p>Once the beam hit the tunnelling water stream with Clarmac rotating inside it, the whole damned thing lit up with lightning bolts firing aside. Oftentimes with concentration good enough a Water Release user may have overcome the natural weaknesses of water like naturally produced electricity or intense heat that'd have evaporated it all in a second but this was no natural weakness – it was all ninja magic.</p><p>Not too long after the Kraken Fang was hit by Mana's response, the formation of water simply exploded like an explosive kunai was detonated from inside. The Inuzuka inside of it plummeted down clearly having taken some damage but Mana knew it wasn't nearly enough to keep someone like him down. A lot of her arsenal was fairly outdated, techniques created by Mana when she was just a child with high naïve hopes of pacifying her enemy with weak lightning bolts. It may have hit a sweet watery spot and multiplied the effect greatly but it was still not enough to keep a decent ninja down.</p><p>"Don't get too excited, Suppressing Fire Barrage!" Laoch's voice broke Mana out from her little moment of joy as the armoured genin managed to sneakily get on a branch below and unleashed fire of kunai at the magician from his gauntlet devices that appeared to function like multiple automatic kunai dispensers attached to his boulder width arms.</p><p>Step by graceful step Mana leaped away and hid behind trees trying to evade the suppressing stream of bladed hell unleashed on her. A painful scratch to her back suggested that the blades were launched fast enough to pierce right through even the thickest and toughest of trees that grew in the Forest of Death. To make matters worse, loud sounds of steel rubbing against itself alerted the magician of worse problems to come as Laoch's shoulder cannons once again aimed at her and fired off fiery jets at her as well.</p><p>The magician's hands went through a bunch of hand seals and she breathed in deep. Had the fiery blasts simply been fiery projectiles they'd have been easier to dodge but they weren't, they flew up into the air before reaching max altitude and plummeting down. That made Laoch's assault especially dangerous because it required to focus one's attention at the bombardment from above while the endless sharp hell of kunai storms continued to be fired from other directions.</p><p>"Rebellious Twist Jutsu!" Mana yelled out while blowing out all of her air inside her lungs and starting to spin against the direction she was blowing it out at. A weak vortex of wind chakra formed around her, just strong enough to deflect even the most intense ninja tools launched at her at the highest speeds. That still left the downfall of fiery doom to deal with. A loud blast above following a great fiery light emanating downwards suggested that it was no longer Mana's problem as Meiko, having once again regained her buckler, jumped up and blocked the fiery projectiles.</p><p>The force of the blast still flung Meiko down at great speed but the blacksmith stopped herself by digging her buckler into the tree besides her and breaking her fall, or at least minimizing the damage and speed of it since she still ended up hitting the ground below somewhat. The shield's attempt to break the fall had only cut the tree open deep enough for it to collapse down and cover up the devastated area from Laoch's initial explosive pillar of fire.</p><p>"I've got your back…" Meiko grinned with a dirty face and slightly singed hair. Her shield appeared to have taken some punishment as it had turned black as coal in its center expanding like a star of total darkness to its edges and darkening its initial emerald color.</p><p>Mana nodded in gratitude before sensing impending danger and turning behind. The danger always came from behind as being caught off guard was the easiest way to deplete the ninja's chakra reserves, augmentation without control and fuelled by surprise was always the most wasteful. It was the difference between carefully picking the pennies from your wallet to pay the exact price and randomly grabbing a bunch of bills and tossing them at the clerk.</p><p>Luckily enough Mana found just enough time to shove her wand down the throat of Clarmac's kind of cute yet scarily adult dog – Basto. The dog whined in shock of having a hard metallic tool shoved down its throat and kicked off of Mana before pouncing away into darkness again. A loud explosion from where the fight initially started made Mana and Meiko turn their glances at it, flipping back a couple of dozens of times, Kiyomi appeared from the cloud of smoke before grabbing a weaker branch to break her mad acrobatic swing and landing not too far from Mana.</p><p>"Didn't you say you could summon ninja rabbits? How about evening the odds a little bit?" Kiyomi suggested while panting a little as the show of acrobatics before clearly cost her some air in her chest.</p><p>"Not worth it…" Mana linked her thoughts. "The only rabbit that shows up is Zoku-chan and he hates me. If I call him every time emergency strikes I will never earn his respect, plus if I summon him and he refuses to help I'll have wasted a whole bunch of chakra on a B-Rank ninja animal that just kinda sits around and looks cute."</p><p>"Ninja animals, am I right?" Kiyomi cheeked it.</p><p>"Wait, you can summon bunnies!? I wanna see!" Meiko's cheerful voice once again summoned headaches for everyone listening in on the mental link of the three.</p><p>After looking around and realizing that she won't be this lucky to respond to Basto's attacks from behind consistently enough, and if she doesn't – she'll likely have her throat in between its jaws, Mana had to reconsider. She playfully flung her wand in the air before biting her thumb and placing her hand inside the hat after flashing through a whole bunch of one handed seals and lighting it up once more.</p><p>Soon enough the magician had to quickly move her hand out as Usuzoku simply dove out from the hat and landed on a branch beneath Mana's.</p><p>"Are you serious!?" his angry voice rumbled out. "I was in the middle 'o my trainin'!"</p><p>"Sorry, Zoku-chan…" Mana blushed before rubbing her messy hair. "I thought you guys choose who comes out of the hat…"</p><p>Usuzoku, completely ignoring Mana's wonders, sniffed the air with his cute nose. "Izzat a filthy mut!? Izzat a mut I smell!?" he shouted out before grabbing the handle of his blade that hung on his back.</p><p>"Eh… It's cute, I guess… Not my kinda cute though. Not sure what I was expecting, really. Don't like pink fluffy things too much." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>The enemy team just stared in shock at the actual rabbit that was pulled out from the hat. Neither one of the ninja present there was actually categorized as a B-Rank threat. As such, Usuzoku clearly demanded the enemy's full attention.</p><p>"Actually I believe Basto is quite well smelling for a dog…" Clarmac raised his voice at Usuzoku. "Plus, don't you dare play the big badass here, dogs hunt rabbits, that's common knowledge…"</p><p>"Tsk…" Usuzoku played with his tongue inside his mouth, he was clearly pissed beyond belief that he was summoned again but the desire to kick a dog in the teeth was too alluring. "I'll have ye hatchlin's know I hate filthy mutts… I'ma kick 'em in de teeth and den be on mah way!"</p><p>"I am grateful, Zoku-chan… Although… I thought you hated centipedes and mongooses." Mana scratched her chin trying to clearly draw the circle of the species Usuzoku hated. If he cleared that out for once, maybe she'd know exact opportunities to summon him on.</p><p>"Don' even get me started on 'em mongooses!" Usuzoku growled through his front two chompers before pulling his sword and taking an offensive stance.</p><p>Kiyomi giggled right beside Mana, "Yeah, this guy's weird enough to be your summon…" she let it out on the mental link.</p><p>"Alright, ye bastard, ye son of a lots-a-fleas! Come at me!" Usuzoku yelled out as he leaped behind Mana and straight into the darkness of the forest. Clarmac only gulped in worry of what difficult fight awaited his canine friend.</p><p>Leaves right below Clarmac rustled intensely before Deargli landed right beside him and extended her hands over the burnt areas and injuries that the Inuzuka had sustained.</p><p>"Mystical Sealing Variant Palm!" she uttered as her hands lit up with black and red light instead of the usual greenish emerald hue of most medical techniques.</p><p>Trying to interrupt the healing Meiko tried to leap at the duo but fiery beams from Laoch's cannons stopped the blacksmith by firing right where she would've been had she carelessly jumped at them. Kiyomi pointed both her arms at Clarmac who was being healed.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance Jutsu" she shouted out aiming her technique carefully. A miss would've left her exposed for easy counterattack for far too long for comfort. Using blue flame jets in his boots Laoch once again dove in to block the technique with his own body. A loud howling sound echoed through the forest area before the strongman turned with a backhand smack at his teammates knocking both of them aside.</p><p>Still holding her hands at the extended hand seal position and struggling to keep control of the brutish genin Kiyomi grinned. The healing session was interrupted successfully and now she had a puppet under her command for a brief while.</p><p>"I'd appreciate some protection for a while." Kiyomi uttered out loud as she probably couldn't keep her mental link running as efficiently as before while struggling with this B-Rank technique. Just the fact she could use it at all was fairly impressive for her rank, then again, having her higher than usual genin experience and skill in mind it was of no surprise at all.</p><p>"Alright…" Mana nodded stepping up front and allowing her wand to light up lightning release chakra and beginning to emanate the Audra's signature coloured glow. Similarly Meiko hopped up a couple of branches to get to a better position to intercept any unexpected attacks coming at her teammate.</p><p>"As long as I can keep this hand seal going, he's my puppet. He's resisting so if my concentration wavers, like if I get hit or something… He'll break it himself. He's pretty strong and I'm not too good with this jutsu yet, just holding him like this is pretty rough…" the blonde smiled feeling proud that she gave her opponents no other choice but to protect their teammates by shielding them with their own bodies.</p><p>"They won't be holding back anymore, they need Laoch, Deargli is a supporting ninja so they'll lack offensive without him. They'll pull out all the hidden techniques now to get him back. Get ready." Mana tried mentally getting herself there as well.</p><p>"Yeah, but now their focus should be split, they won't be one-tracked on taking you out, Mana. This is a good thing, as long as it lasts…" Meiko grinned.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0287"><h2>287. All Stops Pulled</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a loud roar signaling not only his enraged lunge at his friends but also his inner struggle to gain back the control of his mind Laoch leaped down at his two confused teammates. The armored genin was quite fast but Mana noticed that the blue flares on his boots similar to Meiko's own sealing technique that made her boots into jet-boots was missing.</p><p>"You can't make him use his techniques, can you?" Mana questioningly glared at the Yamanaka.</p><p>Kiyomi was visibly struggling keeping complete control of her opponent but she still managed to shake her head erratically, shaking off some sweat off of her tired and twisted face.</p><p>"I don't really understand his armor, a lot of his techniques appear to be based on his armor and switches inside it, setting off sealing glyphs placed inside and such… I think we're stuck with only his physical prowess." Kiyomi concluded.</p><p>Laoch's assault was still completely successful as his massive armored arm dug deep into the team's medic gut lifting her off the ground and sending her back through a bunch of trees. While the woman clearly took damage, it wouldn't have been wise to bet that she hadn't augmented her endurance to survive such a crash.</p><p>"What the hell, you asshole!?" Clarmac yelled out as he continued to dodge Laoch's offensive taijutsu pressure. Mana possessed more intimate knowledge of evasive prowess and to her it became clear that landing a blow on someone like Clarmac would've been immensely tough for a highly physical combatant such as Laoch.</p><p>After one of such dodged blows, where the nimble Inuzuka leaped over his friend's strike that attempted to crush him into the dirt Clarmac tied his legs around his friend's arm and applied pressure on the back of his elbow that had a separate steel piece on it. Laoch yelled out in pain as a snapping sound could be heard in his arm, Mana noticed Kiyomi starting to breathe a little easier for a while.</p><p>"Aren't you in pain?" the magician wondered remembering her previously witnessed Mind Body Switch jutsu which completely transferred Kiyomi consciousness.</p><p>"No. My mind is in my body here. In fact, pain helps me because it focuses his mind on other things instead of having him fight my influence." The Yamanaka smiled.</p><p>With nimble jumps and kicks, vaults and flips Clarmac continued to completely blitz and dominate his friend. Vaulting and avoiding any attempts to grab hold of him or to pin him down with power blows while landing a kick or a quick jab when his feet got back firmly down. While his counterattacks were impressive and matching the abilities of Mana's, if not surpassing them, in that department, he still left little lasting damage on his taller and better geared friend.</p><p>"Kraken Fang!" Clarmac yelled out quickly jumping in the air and positioning himself right vertically above his teammate before beginning to spin and coating his tunneling vortex of claws and fists with water.</p><p>A dark mass crackling with red lightning blasted Clarmac away with great force, enough to disturb and interrupt his finishing attack but not quite enough to leave too much damage on him. His medical ninja teammate appeared from the rubble of trees and wiped blood off of her face. The streak of bloody crimson matched the shade of her lips and greatly contrasted the white of her pearl teeth and her pale cheeks.</p><p>"Don't fight him, Clarmac." she grunted before pointing at Kiyomi with her dyed red fingernails that looked long and sharp enough to scoop out an entire eye.</p><p>"She's got control over him. The fact that Mana's team didn't follow Laoch's offensive suggest they wish to protect their teammate – hit her to free Laoch." the kunoichi explained.</p><p>Clarmac smiled confidently before turning his glance at the trio of Team Hokage. Mana and Meiko braced for an upcoming attack. Kiyomi breathed out in pain as Laoch's mental defenses quickly returned to lay siege on her own mental foundations. Her body tensed up as her muscles began twitching erratically.</p><p>"Alright, let's pull all stops, let's not hold back. Screw the other fights, let's just win this one!" Clarmac roared out at Deargli who continued to leap away and avoid Laoch's simple power swings at her by simply increasing the distance between her and her teammate.</p><p>A loud whistle emanated from Clarmac's direction, followed by a barrage of a loud energetic barks and a whine. Basto leaped out of the shade and right to his lifelong partner's aid. Usuzoku landed nearby Mana placing his blade defensively as a barrier in front of her.</p><p>"Dat arsehole is a slippery mutt…" he growled angrily.</p><p>Even if Usuzoku hadn't managed to take Basto out in the few moments he was given, the white and grey wolf-like canine still had streaks of red covering his body and running down his majestic fur in places where the rabbit's huge sword actually found its marks.</p><p>"You've done great, Usuzoku… We couldn't have lead this fight this favorably to us so far without you." Mana whispered to him, her voice was weak in volume but judging by the rabbit's affirming glance back and the way his massive ears twitched – he heard what he wanted to.</p><p>"You misunderstand me, Hatchlin', I ain't done carvin' 'em yet. I'll make a filet of that dog still…" Usuzoku threw back at her.</p><p>Clarmac clapped his hands together and began yelling loudly, the strain and effort he had to put to manipulate and accelerate his natural chakra flow must've pained him physically as much as the growing influx of power made him confident and proud to yell this battlecry of his. Mana turned back at her team.</p><p>"Watch out, I've seen this technique before, his speed will increase many times over and his strength will become animalistic. Sharpen your senses to the limit and hope to survive, plan out ahead a clutch survival jutsu or two, just in case…" she warned her team remembering a similar chakra flow manipulation from her fight with Noji way back.</p><p>"Four Legs Technique!" Clarmac roared out as flavorless bland blue chakra burst from all his pores so intensely that Mana could actually see it. Something like that was remarkable. It couldn't have meant anything good…</p><p>"Let's partner up, Basto!" the Inuzuka barked out as the overgrowth of fangs in his mouth and sharpening of the more animalistic features of his body made it difficult for him to speak clearly. The great white canine leaped on top of Clarmac's back and showed the Team Hokage three its massive fangs.</p><p>The jutsu had a very clear flaw – a massive start up period of chakra channeling, sadly neither Mana nor Meiko wanted to leave Kiyomi's side to interrupt it and it wasn't likely something like a kunai would've helped that much with the degree and amount of chakra channeling in question. One look at Laoch revealed why Kiyomi couldn't tell him to intercept – the armored genin struggling and waled around in the air like a beetle on its back as black with red crackling lightning mass of chakra had tied all around his body and held him in place. That was Deargli's doing, hers and some unknown technique she used.</p><p>"Secret Art: Kraken Fang over Fang!" Clarmac shouted out as both him and Basto leaped in the air and began spinning separately. It was a similar combination technique to the one most Inuzuka used and not that much different to Noji's technique, except Clarmac coated his version in water which made it more penetrating and powerful.</p><p>Mana and Meiko leaped in to protect Kiyomi as she was clearly the main target of the technique. The blacksmith placed her buckler in front of her whereas Mana lacked any similar tools so she chose to weave a pair of hand seals and breathe out a powerful gust of wind to weaken and slow the opponent's technique down.</p><p>"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" she chanted out before the blast of wind flew Clarmac's direction.</p><p>Where the two tunneling vortexes of water were slow to start up, choosing to wind back and make half of a circle back before lunging at the three, once they decided to come at their intended target the duo dashed in a blue flash that made anything else difficult to perceive. They blitzed and whizzed past by completely evading Mana's sights and breaking through her measly low ranking jutsu defenses.</p><p>A powerful force flew right past Mana, cutting and shredding through what little it managed to graze and sending the magician plummeting down from the immense force of air pressure emanating from the watery drilling technique. There were so many sensations all around her: the feeling of pain in her chest where she was grazed by the passing by taijutsu and ninjutsu combination, the taste of her own blood, the screeching sounds of Meiko's shield shattering and Kiyomi's screams.</p><p>Darkness faded slowly. Right after Mana realized that she was alive and needed to get up her eyelids flapped together faster before opening wide and before the girl rolled back on her feet holding a hand full of cards from inside her sleeve and ready to use them against anyone brave enough to come to finish her off. There was no one. Mana looked up and allowed her blurry vision to sharpen, Deargli and Laoch were standing up above on a pair of mid-level stronger branches.</p><p>Meiko was nowhere to be seen but Kiyomi was resting on Usuzoku's back up where Mana was tossed away from. The magician leaped up and reached out for a branch to help her quickly flip and cover the distance to where she fell from. Before she could sharp pain on her chest made Mana trip and fall back down. She looked at the nasty graze full of dirt and still spitting out blood. It didn't look good but it was still just a bit more than skin deep of a cut. She was lucky to only have the amazing nintaijutsu miss her and pass her by.</p><p>Now fully aware and no longer surprised by the pain that came from her chest wound Mana made her way back up. She wasn't interrupted, Basto and Clarmac were resting back on the higher levels of branches up above. Mana glanced at Usuzoku's body and his dirtied up and blood covered fur. He looked like he took some decent battle damage from that attack which frankly scared the magician a little bit. No normal genin could've whipped up a technique powerful enough to damage a B-Rank ninja animal this much.</p><p>"You interfered…" Mana mumbled out in gratitude seeing Kiyomi in Usuzoku's arms, the rabbit placed her down once the shock of pain passed and the blonde started getting back to her rightful mind.</p><p>"She'd 'a taken too much damage if I haven't…" the rabbit grunted. "I don' like to help ya out but… That dog is still mine." He declared before ruthlessly dashing straight at Basto.</p><p>It was a foolishly bold move – Laoch and Deargli were ready to step in and protect their teammate, Clarmac would've likely offered his life before allowing his ninja dog to die or get badly injured. It didn't look like either of those prospects mattered to the rabbit swordsman as he rushed at his opponent. Laoch pointed his arm forward activating an explosive blast inside his gauntlet which launched out a strong weight attached to a chain which Usuzoku simply rotated around in mid-air making it miss him by a rabbit's hair.</p><p>All that Mana heard after that was a loud whine of an injured dog as Usuzoku's powerful foot decked it right in the nose sending it back and crashing through and into trees, sometimes bouncing off of them like a lifeless sack of vegetables. With a rough grunt Usuzoku leaped right after his target pressing his blade tightly by his side. Now that he knew the signal which Clarmac used for calling up his dog partner and the fact that once his master calls for him the dog loses concentration and rushes to him, Usuzoku must've been just waiting for that moment of an opening…</p><p>"Where's Meiko…" Kiyomi grunted wiping blood off of her nose and lamenting over her torn, dirtied and bloodied clothes. Of the three genin she took the most damage since she was the initial target.</p><p>"Here I am!" the blacksmith laughed out with a mouth missing a certain something and bleeding where that something should've been. "Missing a tooth too, here, look!" the redhead stepped up and opened her mouth to show off her trophy of battle damage she had taken.</p><p>"Just give me a couple of seconds guys…" Clarmac breathed out and stood back on his feet again, "Then I'll call Basto up again and we'll finish this!" he firmly stated.</p><p>"You think so?" Mana asked him with a soft look at his eyes.</p><p>"What, you think you're tough because you survived this? I'll have you know that you two meddled into my attack splitting my force and attention, I only hit your friend with maybe one third of the intended force, the rest was split amongst you two and the rabbit." Clarmac confidently explained before locking his arms on his chest. He had expected this revelation to come as some sort of a shock to the girls but he was the one shocked when neither one of them were that surprised.</p><p>"Then go on ahead, call him." Mana called Clarmac's bluff. "Even if you have the chakra left needed to pull this jutsu off again, Zoku-chan is just waiting for an opening to behead your dog."</p><p>"Y-You wouldn't!" the Inuzuka jumped up in anger.</p><p>"I wouldn't. Did it look like I have much control over him though?" about at that moment Mana felt Kiyomi's mental link return from being briefly muted. That was a sip of good news when they were useful.</p><p>"Don't worry, we're still here and now we can continue this as intended!" Laoch grinded his metallic gauntlets against each other before taking an offensive stance, his injured arm moved a bit slower and looked pretty numbed up but mostly functional which was unfortunate. Close to him Deargli extended her arms forward and also prepared for a battle.</p><p>Gripping the wand in her arm more tightly Mana hardened her own focus and took an offensive stance. In before any of the girls could figure out a further course of action Deargli's hands went off into a collection of hand seals.</p><p>"Tainted Sealing Method: Release!" Deargli yelled out as a red sealing glyph appeared just past her extended palm unleashing the previously seen mass of dark chakra with reddish crackling lightning around it.</p><p>Meiko's reflexes were fast, the blacksmith reached behind her all the way to the back plates of her armor unsealing something of her own – a gigantic shuriken that appeared to have been made out of four longswords put together into a cross-like shape and stuck together by a sharpened metallic ring that would've lopped a head off of an actual dragon if such creatures were not a being of mythology and imagination.</p><p>The shuriken pierced right through the black mass of chakra that simply molded around it and continued to rush at the trio of ninja. Mana didn't anticipate such reaction as most destructive techniques were highly volatile to any damage, no destructive technique she had seen could've withstood being cut in two and just effortlessly keep moving forward after reshaping. At the least the technique should've been detonated if not completely dissolved.</p><p>The two separate string of chakra began rotating around one another like a braid before it reached the three girls in close proximity. Meiko was too invested into the powerful toss of her ninja tool to be ready to dodge, Kiyomi was quite injured so one shouldn't have overestimated her own agility either. The technique didn't injure them at all, however. Instead of hitting them with anything it just dissolved right nearby the girls' faces.</p><p>After the immediate danger to their health and lives was over, Meiko looked on ahead to her own shuriken only for her mouth to open in a wide gap – her shuriken had successfully hit its mark and penetrated Deargli through the area from her lower chest all the way to her upper gut. The injured kunoichi just wheezed in pain before blood violently broke out her mouth. Her stance bent into one crooked in agony.</p><p>"I-I didn't think…" Meiko whimpered out. Usually murder wouldn't have mattered too much to the blacksmith but she had showed her best friend so recently that she was ready to support her views and her nindo… Meiko didn't want to kill, not like this where it wasn't necessary.</p><p>"You… Could've cut me in two if you tossed it harder…" Deargli's ghastly voice emanated through the entire battlefield.</p><p>Mana's eyes squinted in suspicion as they turned at Deargli's teammates who didn't appear to be worried the slightest.</p><p>"Watch out, it's a trap!" she declared on the recently re-established Kiyomi's mental link. "She can't be lethally injured, her friends don't appear to be worried over her health at all – it must be her ability."</p><p>The shaking bloody fingers of the pale axe-blade wearing woman reached for the massive shuriken and pulled it out violently gushing out some more blood before tossing it aside and allowing it to plummet down and get lost in the void of darkness of the Forest of Death. The young woman spat out a mouthful of blood aside before feeling up her wound with her fingers allowing her pale skin to go fingers deep into the redness of her own flesh.</p><p>"Hmph… Not enough." She uttered. Her voice was weakening, shaking in pain and she was clearly injured but for some reason it was almost like she wanted to be injured.</p><p>A loud clang made Mana's confused face to turn back at Meiko, the blacksmith had fallen on her knees and started shaking. The magician reached out for her friend but then she realized that… She just didn't care. She didn't care if Meiko lived or died, she didn't care that much if Kiyomi lived or died. She didn't care about her own life either. The limitless depths of apathy beneath her feet in which Mana was sinking was scaring her to no end, the magician's shaking hands weaved a hand seal.</p><p>"Dispel" she yelled out focusing her chakra and sending a flux of it forward as intended to break genjutsu, she expected to meet a wall of chakra that allowed her to know how much more chakra she needed to send to break it but… Nothing happened.</p><p>"Awww… Meiko is afraid. That's so bad." Kiyomi started weeping before ramming her back rudely at the tree she was standing on and slipping down on her bottom. "Mana is so quiet… That's so sad. I like it when she talks, I like when Meiko is brave!" the Yamanaka cried out as tears began running down her eyes so erratically they mixed in with the blonde's own blood.</p><p>"Illusion? You think this is a cheap illusion like your knockoff tricks, stage magician?" Deargli smiled through her rapidly paling lips. "I've no idea what emotion you're feeling right now, but I assure you, it's no illusion – it's your downfall."</p><p>Following their teammates words Clarmac stood on all fours and concentrated his chakra into his "Four Legs Technique" and Laoch aimed his cannons at the three girls crippled by some odd technique of Deargli's. Just like that with a flick of a wrist Team Hokage was moments away from being eliminated entirely.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0288"><h2>288. Life Is But Failed Dice Rolls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a triumphant look Clarmac leaned in for a crushing move. Laoch aimed his heavy cannon hands at Mana as well. It only made sense that he'd target her, after all – she was the target of Clarmac's to begin with. Mana tried to force herself to move, she could. The magician stood back up on her feet and prepared to defend herself but her movements were so clumsy and slow. Her body didn't respond to impulses to augment herself willingly, still, it'd likely have augmented her unwillingly with a much higher chakra cost.</p><p>"It's too bad that no surrender rule was established. It'd have spared you of this…" Deargli lamented before Clarmac's feet kicked off of the ground and he began rotating.</p><p>"Kraken Fang!" he yelled out enthusiastically, feeling almost sure about his victory. A strong elbow strike to his cheek cancelled out the rotating watery drill technique sending the Inuzuka crashing through the trees aside and leaving a large track of devastation behind him.</p><p>"He… Is he OK!?" Kiyomi wept out loud without even bothering to contain her cries of sadness. At this point everything saddened her. Mana couldn't understand just what on Earth could the deal behind her own apathy, Meiko's fear and Kiyomi's sadness have been.</p><p>With a bloody forehead mixed into her messy front hair that fell all over her beaten and crimson face Meiko stood in front of Mana with her elbow raised and staring angrily at Deargli and Laoch who just stared at the blacksmith completely shocked. Deargli was particularly having trouble dealing with the fact that the blacksmith managed to intervene.</p><p>Just about then Mana realized that it was Deargli's technique before. The one that just dissolved right in front of their faces without inflicting damage. Somehow that ninjutsu must've affected their emotions, it wouldn't be an impossible concept for a ninjutsu technique – smells, pinches at certain brain centers as well as tastes could've achieved subtle mood manipulation. Who knew if given enough chakra same couldn't have been amplified a dozen times over. Granted, such effects would've rather be left for a genjutsu technique as it had more diverse points of entry into the opponent's chakra system for a more guaranteed effect but, if Deargli lacked the skill for it, ninjutsu would've been a fine substitute.</p><p>"Impossible… The chakra I seal is filled to the brim with my darkest feelings and emotions. It is built to instill matching dark emotions into my opponent! Pain matching my own, no one can overcome those emotions!" Deargli angrily yelled out punching air at her right side.</p><p>"I am afraid…" Meiko grumbled, "Afraid to disappoint my team, afraid that after everything they did for me I won't be able to pay them back. Afraid that Mana recommended me for no reason and that I'm unable to match her expectations. That very fear makes me fight to my limits and beyond!" a declaration cleared the air and killed all other sounds in the area.</p><p>"I see…" Deargli giggled, soon her lovely restrained chuckle exploded into a confident and somewhat alluring laughter. "So my jutsu worked, it's just that the emotions that the presence of my dark chakra in your system invited plays into the action of fighting back."</p><p>"What does that mean? Did she overcome your abilities?" Laoch wondered.</p><p>"By no means. I was scared for a moment but it appears I've only lost the dice roll." The strange headdress wearing medical kunoichi explained.</p><p>"I see…" Laoch grinned before firing his cannons without any signal or telegraphed motion to read his attack.</p><p>As the smoke cleared it appeared like the tree that the Team Hokage were positioned on had been trashed and completely incinerated all the way to the smallest dust. In its place, however, stood another pillar, one of very impressively stacked rocks. The rocky pillar looked like it was built in a rising circular pattern. After its purpose was served the first couple of stones began falling from the top and crumbling on the ground.</p><p>With a loud and maddening battle cry Meiko burst from the rocky wall, her boots flaring with blueish chakra flame as she burst towards her opponent giving him a strong cross from the weaker numbed arm side of Laoch. The armored genin flipped gracelessly in his journey wherever the force of the impact carried him off to.</p><p>"B-But how!?" Deargli lost her composure after seeing the rocky pillar beginning to collapse again.</p><p>"Seeing Meiko hurt would make me even sadder…" Kiyomi cried out pathetically, she had managed to pull off an Earth Release ninjutsu that raised chunks of dirt and smaller rocks into the air with a burst of explosive force below it, transferring her chakra through the tree she was on and through its age old roots and into the minerals, such was Mana's guess, at least.</p><p>"I don't care about anything anymore… May as well fight to the end." Mana sighed indifferently as her own Rebellious Twist Jutsu created a gust of Wind Release chakra that rotated just strong enough to focus Kiyomi's dirt and rocks into a rising pillar pattern that matched the vortex of wind that she had created.</p><p>None of this would've been enough without Meiko's input as well, it was just a stacked pile of rocks the way it was after Mana and Meiko matched their techniques together but it was Meiko who sealed chakra from inside the wall to transform the messy and shaky pillar of dirt and rocks into an actual barrier technique that held together using her sealing jutsu prowess. It was an actual three-way combination technique, each girl useful in her own special way and it all adding up to a defensive sarcophagus strong enough to withstand even Laoch's powerful cannon blasts.</p><p>Deargli's infuriated facial expression betrayed that the kunoichi actually understood how the trio had overcome their emotional distress. They had given purpose for the desired actions given the context of their disarrayed emotional state, assigning a justification for each action from the point of view of a person feeling that particular emotion. It required maturity and understanding of one's own personality and feelings in order to pull something like this off.</p><p>"I don't care what you feel like…" Mana mumbled out to herself as her hands flashed through a combination of hand seals. The magician's eyes flashed with a blinding yet momentary burst of light, a result of great amount of chakra focused straight into her eyes.</p><p>Usually genjutsu techniques required some sort of a very loosely defined condition to be fulfilled. It was a method of placing one's chakra into their opponent's body, one of the methods was the opponent looking into one's eyes or a specific object the user had, them hearing a sound that the user makes was another. It was a slightly higher level of a genjutsu user to specifically allure one's opponent into fulfilling that condition with another visual or auditory tick.</p><p>"Polymorphy Jutsu!" Mana shouted out the name of an old favorite of hers which she hadn't used for a long time. It was a bit too goofy and random to be chosen as a technique of choice but given her current state of overflowing apathy there were no more shame or limiters to hear out.</p><p>Deargli straightened out her spine and bent her arms over, her eyes squinted for a moment before starting to racing across, turning and bending. The kunoichi bent her knees and stood in a firm standing position before beginning to lightly hop on her feet while holding her arms bent over as if they were completely busted or too weak to use.</p><p>"Huh?" Meiko wondered curiously over the strange behavior of her opponent. It was a very bad choice of actions as the blacksmith quickly got socked in the teeth, albeit not too strong, by the "polymorphed" opponent.</p><p>"It's my illusion… She believes she's an animal of some sort, it's a random choice of something she had witnessed in her life." Mana explained.</p><p>"That's a weird illusion. Granted, that doesn't look like any animal I've seen, I've seen so few animals, it's so sad!" Kiyomi once again burst into tears.</p><p>"I really don't care what animal this is." Mana shrugged before allowing her eyes to wander off.</p><p>Deargli began hopping around like a kangaroo before tripping and beginning to fall all the way down. Meiko quickly followed her falling opponent to give her a few good hits. One couldn't be sure if the medical ninja could augment herself properly in her confused animal state, it didn't last too long anyways as eventually anyone would get a little used to the different point of view and soon awoken from the feeling of dreamy confusion before remembering that they were human and the illusion ending. One of few of Mana's genjutsu that ended naturally after a minute or several, depending on the opponent's mastery over their own will and the ability to remain lucid in the dreamy state.</p><p>Mana and Kiyomi followed Meiko and the falling Deargli into the crater caused by the initial Laoch's explosive pillar blast. Meiko wiped blood off her lip.</p><p>"Goddamn it, I think she boxes better in this state than she did normally…" the blacksmith noted.</p><p>"Well… Sometimes behaving like an animal changes one's behavior, their strengths and weaknesses. Like I care…" Mana sighed with a shrug.</p><p>"She's wasting chakra augmenting her punches and push kicks… So sad!" Kiyomi whined out.</p><p>"Hey, it's an illusion I came up with together with a textbook as a child. Not that it matters…" Mana replied. She was beginning to feel the bitter apathy in her chest slowly letting go. Whatever intense sensations Deargli's dark chakra nature made her go through were beginning to fade. Her thoughts were becoming clearer and clearer.</p><p>One's chakra was essentially everything the person themselves were. If that person's specific trait perfectly defined them – even one's chakra color signature could've changed completely. A bright and cheerful person would've had a bright and yellow chakra signature. A gloomy sadist would've had a dark chakra signature of murky or black colors. Since chakra was pretty much the essence of everything around, having to deal with different feeling chakra affected one's mood. Consciously or subconsciously and the sensors had it the worst of all. Just for now Mana had to feel thankful that her sensory abilities hadn't fully developed or else she'd have been completely broken by Deargli's tainted chakra containing all of her darkest thoughts and experiences.</p><p>"Want to see a magic trick?" Mana playfully asked her opponent, it may not have been a good strategy to reveal the fact she was overcoming her emotional duress but it appeared to work for Meiko. After all, this revelation appeared to have some sort of shock value for Deargli before. The magician flicked the cufflinks sideways before pressing on them slipping out a deck of cards that she shuffled and played with so fast that it was nothing else but colored blurs mixed in with Mana's stained and dirtied white gloves. The magician pressed on her shuffled deck harder shooting off a mess of cards at Deargli, as those cards floated in mid-air she made more hand seals.</p><p>"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" Mana chanted as the blasting gust of wind thrust the cards expulsed from her deck right at her opponent at high speed. Deargli raised her arms up, crooked and strangely contorted as they were to cover up her face. She emitted a strange murmur as the steel tipped orange and red cards whizzed past her leaving cuts all over before landing right behind her. Momentarily the cards exploded with the shockwave tossing Deargli forward, right into Meiko's combination of blows and the blacksmith was rushing in, almost like she was waiting for Mana's part of the combination to play out.</p><p>Sadly the teamwork of the three was nowhere near perfect, Meiko hesitated maybe for an insignificant part of the second before realizing it was her turn to rush in and that Mana's "magic trick" was just a mean to blast her opponent into the air and right at Meiko, disabling any chance for the medical ninja to defend herself or dodge the redhead's strikes. That microsecond of hesitation made a powerful blast of chakra overwhelm Meiko before she could conclude the Mana-Meiko combination and toss her away like a lifeless sack. All the way to the other side of the crater.</p><p>Laoch burst into the air, his shoulder cannon reshaped again, instead moving behind him and the chakra blasts served instead as a jet blast throwing him upwards in much greater speeds than he could muster up before. The genin weaved a pair of hand seals relatively quickly before placing his palm onto his chest revealing a lighting up sealing glyph on his armor which the armored genin turned clockwise. After a loud poof a flock of rotund falling devices separated from the young man's armor in great quantities yet speed so lacking that it became instantly clear they weren't meant to be projectiles.</p><p>"Sealing Technique: Field of Ragnarok" Laoch grumbled to himself as he carefully landed below.</p><p>Upon the technique concluding the fallen rotund devices lit up with bright yellow light and began blinking on and off.</p><p>"It's clearly a minefield technique. Be careful." Mana warned her friends.</p><p>Deargli's crimson lips twisted and turned into a shape of a sick smile before her own hands began weaving seals. Mana realized how bad this situation was – the three were stuck completely paralyzed from movement in a battlefield full of mines, which left them totally open for another emotional distress ninjutsu from Deargli's arsenal. So much displacement and stunning in the strategies of Team Sagitarii.</p><p>"Tainted Sealing Method: Great Sphere Release!" Deargli declared a different variant of her technique, instead of just releasing a shapeless mass of her tainted chakra she compressed it all into a watermelon sized sphere. The sphere was crackling with red lightning much more intensely than the other variants did before.</p><p>The blast was completely physical and very real this time. Even Mana's illusionary clone was completely overwhelmed and dissolved into flower petals, there was no such completely overwhelming effect of physical damage before. Kiyomi and Meiko got blasted aside from the shockwave as well. Upon the quite undignified landings of the two kunoichi the field mines detonated. They were not overly powerful explosions but Mana realized that it would've chipped quite properly at her teammates' augmentations. Kiyomi was not getting up, while still unseen by her opponent who only saw an illusionary clone from Mana's Flower Petal Sanctuary genjutsu, the magician felt up her friend's chakra.</p><p>She completely lacked skill in this sensory thing. Despite a certainly grisly appearance of her friend having taken damage: bloodied and torn clothes, bruised and bashed about face and exposed skin and messy hair, Kiyomi's chakra signature appeared to be burning like a faintly dimmed star still. The Yamanaka's fortitude didn't surprise Mana at all, the blonde was long since on the chuunin level experience wise and trained for several years longer than Mana or any other genin in the Exams likely has.</p><p>Much to Mana's surprise, once the magician returned to her more physical senses instead of focusing on the chakra sensory, Kiyomi began trembling before picking herself off the ground. A small puddle of blood remained where Kiyomi picked herself up and wiped her face. By that point it was a given that Team Hokage would spend those medical food pills to survive this exam, much to Mana's disappointment as on some degree she had hoped that they'd succeed at somehow paying the team she stole those from back for the longest time.</p><p>"I'll kill you! All of you!" the Yamanaka laughed out maniacally. Once again Deargli's emotional dice roll proved to be somewhat unlucky for her as Kiyomi's psychotic edginess would prove a very useful distraction for Mana. It'd also give Team Sagitarii plenty to have their hands full of. It was just unfortunate that Mana had to use Flower Petal Sanctuary again and reset the timer on the cost increase again. The cost kept on growing and growing every time the jutsu was used and it only reset after at least a good couple of days.</p><p>"You guys… You're here but are you really there for me? I just feel… So lonely…" Meiko wrapped her arms around herself as she sulked aside from Kiyomi. With a loud and frankly quite bold roar the blonde rushed at her opponents head-on. Her strangely dark emotion of cruelty must've impacted her decision making as well. Just as Kiyomi was about to deck Deargli, Clarmac dashed up from behind, having recovered from a very powerful and direct hit and ready to get back into the fight.</p><p>The Inuzuka kicked Kiyomi at the back of her knees sending her kneeling down. The future Yamanaka heiress yelled out like a rabid dog and continued to swing around madly before the combined might of the three opponents overwhelmed her with taijutsu combinations and blows. Even if the chaotic cruelty felt by the Yamanaka granted her the vitality and sheer bloodlust to try and block most of the strikes, even the blocked ones looked like they hurt. Mana wanted to scope the situation out, find a better chance to strike once Clarmac's defenses were down but…</p><p>Kiyomi was in trouble and Meiko was overcome by her own imposed loneliness which, ironically enough, prevented her from helping out a friend right in front of her. Laoch growled to warn his friends of Mana who was rushing in and weaving hand seals, the moment that her mind began concentrating on another chakra utilizing technique her illusionary invisibility ended and Mana just faded into the full view.</p><p>"Hell Skewer Jutsu!" Mana shouted out as Clarmac's body bent over strangely and crooked over. The sight and feeling of him getting skewered by dozens of swords that just materialized above his head and rained stabbing at the dirt was too much to take. The magician bought herself a distraction and some time, this had to work, or else the situation would've been too desperate – just her against a team that wanted her out cold.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" Mana shouted out as she leaped in the air and pushed her foot against Clarmac's gut before stomping him into the ground. Something soft and gurgling shifted in the young man's stomach, he had taken so much damage from Meiko's previous attack. Mana was right to target him – all the damage he had sustained and chakra he had wasted on all the failed Kraken Fangs instead of protecting himself had finally begun to really mess things up for the young Inuzuka. He couldn't have been more than a couple of good strikes away from passing out.</p><p>Pain. Bright lights began flashing all around as Mana realized she was knocked down, it was difficult to see exactly what did so. If she had to guess, Laoch's shoulder charge betrayed by his kneeling current stance must've had something to do with it. Damn it. She was so close… And still, she couldn't take on the entire Team Sagitarii all by herself.</p><p>She needed to persevere until Kiyomi and Meiko's emotional disarray ended.</p><p>Just survive… Somehow!</p>
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<a name="section0289"><h2>289. Rabbits Don't Have Middle Fingers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The heavy tolls of Mana's respiration silenced all the other measly sounds on the battlefield around her. Her heavy breaths came like bells and her chest was a very energetic ringer. She was decently battle worn, sustained notable damage in this scuffle and was surrounded by enemies whereas her allies were still recovering. Things could've been better than they were at that moment.</p><p>That being said, they could've also been worse. Mana had the intelligence on her enemies, she noticed a couple of weaknesses in them. Some of them were sustained and originated from this battle and some of them were innate and born from the nature of their abilities.</p><p>Deargli was very similar to Mana in some cases: she used ninjutsu and supportive healing techniques. That made her overly reliant on hand seals and the protection of her teammates at close range. Mana knew her own hand seal speed completely left Deargli's in the dust, with moderate chakra enhancements her kicking speed would knock the medical kunoichi down before she concluded her dangerous techniques.</p><p>Laoch was dangerous, beyond just dangerous. His armor was thick enough to brush off Mana's strikes. She knew a bit more than a handful of ninjutsu techniques, most of them created by Mana long ago when she was still studying ninjutsu and chakra control from textbooks. They were all just inconveniences, smoke and mirror, all look and no punch. None of them would leave a dent on him at all. That being said, his numbed arm was certainly something to exploit with high chance of success.</p><p>Clarmac was a match for Mana. If both of them were at their full potential with their bodies and minds completely rejuvenated they'd put up a good fight. That being said, his Inuzuka nin-taijutsu relied on his team's distrations to hit his opponent. If Mana managed to beat Noji way back when she was still not enhanced by the tremendous boost of chakra and skill during the quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, she'd take Clarmac as well. Even more, currently Clarmac was beaten and bruised to a very alluring degree and if fight broke out he'd likely be Mana's prime target.</p><p>Laoch charged again. He aimed to just bash and throw Mana around until she either passed out or gave up. Given the short time to get her mind together, provided to her during the time Team Sagitarii ganged up and regrouped, the magician was ready for him. She leaped up placing her feet firmly against the armored genin's broad shoulders before relaxing and plunging down while grabbing his weakened arm by its upper armor piece and pulling it.</p><p>Yelling in pain the armored genin shook it rapidly but Mana wrapped her legs around it and kept on yanking it and pulling it off its socket. Very uncomfortable sounds kept coming from inside, like the tender meat of a turtle being grinded inside its still intact and very thick shell.</p><p>A fresh breeze went past Mana's ears fondling her hair as a feeling of weightlessness instilled fear in her heart. Laoch lifted her body up for an attack by one of his teammates. That was her signal to get off. Using the large genin's weakened and numb arm as a very flimsy pole the magician extended her feet and kicked at the back side of Clarmac's head as he attempted to leap in and strike her down and off of his teammate's arm.</p><p>The Inuzuka boy's jacket and shirt torn off as his body hit the ground. Normally one's body would've augmented itself and withstood such damage. This slip that left a bloody puddle on the dirt informed the magician that her hunter had taken significant damage, so much so that his augmentations weren't completely reliable and were beginning to slip and skip some blows.</p><p>Deargli didn't attack, just as it could've been predicted. She instead dashed wildly to Clarmac's side. Medical ninja always looked for opportunities to do what medical ninja did best. Gathering the final ounces of breath in her lungs before she'd need a breather Mana kicked off the ground shortly after landing aiming to plant her foot into that grotesque headdress of the Team Sagitarii kunoichi.</p><p>No firm shock to her joints. Mana's kick missed its mark as the evasive medical ninja ducked at the last moment avoiding getting kicked right in the sweetest part of her cheek. It was nothing to be surprised at – medical ninja were possibly the most evasion focused field of ninja art mastery, Mana herself studied evasion from Kouta, a fairly decent medical ninja on his own feet.</p><p>The magician tossed a pair of cards at her target trying to prevent her from reaching out and healing Clarmac. The damage that the Inuzuka had sustained so far was her only shining star of hope, if he was somehow treated to any extent and the finishing line raced on ahead Mana's hopes and dreams would sink under all the way to the bottom.</p><p>Deargli simply flipped over the projectiles. Her limbs stuck to her body and under the cloak she really did look like a grisly and slimy spirit of some kind, without a doubt a distracting tactic of intimidation was a part of her attire. Mana's own dressing code would've been deemed weird even by somehow as eccentric as Deargli but even it had its own functions.</p><p>As the medical ninja's arms extended over her friend Mana hopped in right at her. Deargli may have been evasive but she needed to stay in place to heal the Inuzuka and knowing where she'd need to stay gave the magician an advantage. It would've been more efficient and much smarter to use illusions or ninjutsu but Mana didn't want to use that much chakra. She'd need every ounce she has if she got hit again or needed a clutch Flower Petal Sanctuary escape.</p><p>Right in the middle of her graceful leap the magician shoved her feet down, the noise of steel clanging against itself and those disgusting metallic screeches made her identify a nearby threat and stop herself from getting clotheslined by Laoch. The giant genin held his weaker arm bent and pressed against himself while he threw strong punches and kicks at the magician trying to keep her away from his teammates.</p><p>It would've been so easy to just bypass him, leap away and gain some distance on him… That would've been foolish however. She was lucky that Laoch decided to involve himself personally and physically and not just blast Mana away. He must've been preserving chakra as well, or maybe possibly he was running out of chakra he had sealed away. For someone reliant on sealed chakra resources to run out of it in the first fight for the target would've been catastrophic. It would've taken days to regain one's natural resources and then weeks if not months to resupply those seals.</p><p>And so Mana was stuck in a loop of dodging and redirecting while still trying to stay closer to her enemy, just close enough for him not to consider using his more destructive blasts. It kept her away from the enemy, however. The nagging feeling of her consciousness eating at her for not managing to keep Deargli away from Clarmac annoyed the magician to no end. Even if she couldn't feel Clarmac's body being healed or his chakra being somehow restored or boosted, the phantom feeling of her opponent growing stronger every passing moment persisted.</p><p>"Mystical Sealing Variant Palm" Deargli's voice echoed around the fairly wide crater that Laoch's initial offensive had created.</p><p>Enraged Mana leaped in the air and kicked with surprising devotion to her move aiming right at Laoch's elbow. She herself felt a little relieved that her opponent weaved back and retreated as the kick could've severed a broken arm all by itself. At a certain degree of damage to a broken limb it would've been impossible to augment it anymore and at that point even the measliest of kicks and punches would've severed those limbs completely. Mana would've hated ruining her opponent's life like that…</p><p>Clarmac stood back on his feet and cracked his knuckles, working out his neck and his numb limbs at the same time and warming up. Mana's eyes widened in shock, Clarmac's body looked almost halfway back to its full health. While medical ninja of higher rank were quite capable of high caliber healing techniques that'd have quickly placed an incapacitated ninja back on their feet, genin should've taken half an hour to a whole hour to heal someone completely. The entire exchange between her and Laoch couldn't have taken more than a second or so…</p><p>"What is this?" she grumbled in disbelief. Bitterness was beginning to take over her voice. At this point her hopes of solitary victory were beginning to get choked out, by now, if they were a choking victim they'd have let go and went to peaceful eternal slumber. Mana felt her hands shaking having realized that half of the entire damage sustained by her opponent was just magically shaken away like it had never happened. Quietly the girl moved them into her pockets, acting like she was preparing for an attack whereas she just didn't want to tell her opponents she was scared.</p><p>The weak tapping noises of Deargli's bleeding gut wound focused the magician's attention. It was the one element of the entire battle that made no sense – the young lady seemed fairly excited to get hurt, she didn't move away from that attack of Meiko's and took a whole giant shuriken to the gut. She didn't even spend time healing that damage at all, her bleeding was being controlled through chakra sustenance payment alone. She devoted a small burst of chakra to that area with each heartbeat to keep herself from bleeding out – she wanted that injury there. She was willing to struggle with the pain of such an injury, tolerating it while in the middle of a battle.</p><p>"I see…" Mana closed her eyes and lowered her head finally having realized something about Deargli's medical abilities. Something she had already seen in Team Phobos of Getsugakure. Deargli stored the pain and negative emotions converted into a unique mixture of bodily and spiritual chakra and the remnants of chakra used to injure her away into damage seals, similarly to how Team Phobos utilized damage seals in their fight before. Once those seals were filled they appeared to augment Deargli's medical abilities which meant that she healed more potently the more injury she herself sustained in battle.</p><p>It was a very lethal ability for a supportive ninja, medical ninja and support role ninja were the main targets in a fight. Even their own first instinct was to target Deargli because she was so hesitant to fight that her hesitance was mistaken for weakness or lack in useful techniques. This was hopeless. Damage seals were at least a B-Rank concept, genin usually couldn't use such difficult sealing techniques because sustaining injuries disturbed one's concentration all by itself. It was immensely complex to maintain full control of one's chakra in pain.</p><p>Clarmac leaned to his all fours as chakra began leaking out from his body, his facial features became more defined and primal, his fangs sharpened and elongated and his hair began growing a couple of inches on sight. His eyes widened and his irises began thinning down to a rather savage look.</p><p>"Four Legs Jutsu" he roared out before launching himself at Mana. A loud crack in her mind almost made the magician turn off. It was like a firecracker had been blown up right by her ear when in fact it was just the sound of world cracking blows planting themselves in her jaw at barely even traceable to her speed.</p><p>A powerful shock to Mana's side pushed her away, the magician's mind was beginning to fade in and out as she rolled aside like a lifeless sack before finally gathering the strength to lift her bloody face and push aside her sticky hair to see.</p><p>Roaring like a madman in her sadistic cruelty, still affected by Deargli's emotional distress ability, Kiyomi matched Clarmac claw to a kunai knife. Kiyomi always was a better hand to hand or knife to knife combatant than Mana and even if the blonde had much more severe injuries than Mana, even now, her complete berserk rage made her push past the pain and try to stab the Inuzuka's eyes out with her knife.</p><p>This was stupid. Clarmac was a mixed taijutsu - ninjutsu user, he'd have eventually gained an upper hand even on bloodthirsty Kiyomi and slashed her down. The Yamanaka would've been better off using her clan techniques but her cruel mind didn't want anything to do with tactical thinking – she was all rage and madness. That needed to end. Looking at Meiko, the girl was still wrapped with her own arms and cowering in her crippling loneliness as well.</p><p>Shouting loudly to brave herself up Mana leaped in between Clarmac's claws and Kiyomi's knife. In total shock both of the two stopped their attacks, Mana could feel the sharpness of the Inuzuka's paws scratching against her bruised and beaten body in the back and the coldness of Kiyomi's kunai by her throat.</p><p>"Move aside!" Kiyomi roared like a wild animal. "I need to kill them all!"</p><p>"Not before you kill me. I'm a criminal, remember? I stole those pills from some those genin before. What about your hatred for criminals? Your Aku-Soku-Zan?" Mana played with fire there. So much so that Clarmac backed up grasping at a pair of fresh scratches at his side where Kiyomi successfully grazed him. He had decided to use this moment to have Deargli heal him some more. That was just too troublesome of a turn to permit but Kiyomi and Meiko's minds came first.</p><p>Shaking in her hand the kunai broke as the girl's pressure to the handle was too great. The blonde collapsed on her knees before picking herself up again. There Mana heard that familiar respiration in Kiyomi's own lungs, the two stood by each other's side and now the blonde no longer looked around frantically with racing bloodshot eyes looking for a victim to kill.</p><p>"She used the instilled emotion to force her friend into an illogical action she stands against with all her essence. Essentially she shut her friend's mind down out of internal conflict between the instilled emotion and her own will before it rebooted itself. I've never seen such a weakness of my techniques before." Deargli peacefully commented while continuing to heal Clarmac's injuries even more.</p><p>"And yet this is the second gap in your jutsu that these three found. Don't use it again, soon it'll be completely ineffective against these girls and it wastes chakra you could use on healing us. Once this fight ends it'll be a much more integral ability." Laoch grunted angrily while carefully warming up his numbed and busted arm but failing to do any difficult and precise motions with it.</p><p>"I've gotta say, for a moment there I believed you'd cut my throat open…" Mana sighed with a smile.</p><p>"No… You're like my little sister, remember, I've lost a sibling already, I will not lose another." Kiyomi shook her head, still breathing heavily and her voice a bit tired over all the shouting and all the crazy obscenities she yelled out so recently. "Have any idea how to snap Meiko out?"</p><p>"Sorry…"</p><p>"Well, I wish I could tell you to sit back and let me take this over for a while but… I'll need you in this." Kiyomi looked on ahead, Deargli quickly moved away from Clarmac to free up his space for movement if he was targeted.</p><p>"Twin Rabbit Blitz!"</p><p>A silver and pink blur flashed right past Mana's eyes before a spray of crimson red flew in the air, like petals of roses scattered in the wind. Laoch stumbled forward before he realized that his impressive armor was cut into four big chunks that one by one fell off his body as a large rabbit landed in front of the three genin holding his sword by his shoulder as it was too large to hold anyhow else.</p><p>"Missed me, ye losers?" Usuzoku angrily exclaimed before turning his eyes fiery with rage at the Inuzuka. "Go pick up yer filthy mutt, ye asshole. Teach 'em somethin' else dan just runnin' away, I had ta take a breather chasin' after 'em"</p><p>"Zoku-chan…" Mana's pale lips turned into a smile before the tip of the rabbit's long sword pointed at her face, just a thumb's length away from digging into the girl's eye.</p><p>"Call me that again, ye filthy hatchlin', I dare ye!" he yelled out. Laoch grunted out loud charging after Usuzoku but with a careless swing of the blunt side of his blade the rabbit knocked the now unarmored genin away and down to the dirt. The large young man spat out a fair amount of blood and teeth as a bonus of the fall, his own chakra augmentations were beginning to skip some beats as well.</p><p>Showing the two middle fingers on each of his paw to everyone around him Usuzoku poofed into a cloud of smoke, now having fulfilled his goal of kicking an Inuzuka's ninja hound's teeth in and feeling content with the battle, or rather the chase he went through.</p><p>"This is weird. He doesn't have thumbs so the whole concept of flipping someone off doesn't really work on him. I get it when he wields his sword with his ears sometimes, that's bypassing natural thumblessness like a boss, but flipping the bird just looks hokey on him…" Meiko's lazy voice made Mana and Kiyomi rapidly turn around and hug their friend who appeared to have overcome her crisis of loneliness in the middle of a busy battlefield.</p><p>"Both of our sides are injured. We'll both need to hide and lick our wounds after this, avoid battle for a long time… We aren't even your targets. Just give Mana up, you're wounded much worse than us and one good hit would keep any of your three down for the count." Clarmac growled out.</p><p>"I can attest to that…" Deargli lifted her palm up.</p><p>"There's no need to keep this up and risk more grievous injury or even death. Mana, be reasonable and give yourself up for your team." Clarmac looked the magician right in the eyes. "All three of them are going through injury that'll minimize their chances once they'll need to fight for their targets, you're being selfish clinging to survival this hard. If you just walked out the front gate now and gave up, your friends would only need to fight two times instead of three – you'll redeem the pain you put them through right now for your own survival."</p><p>Mana lowered her head, her black sticky from the blood hair slipped all over her face and down her shoulders. She looked like a creepy vengeful spirit of some sort as her head slowly and gently moved to the left and to the right in denial.</p><p>"I'm sorry. I have a nindo to live up to and I've no safety net to back down on. I have no more team if I fail and it'll take too many years to try this again if I fail. People who take this long to rank up to chuunin aren't the ones that change the world, they aren't the heroic examples that people would follow. I'm sorry, Kiyomi, Meiko, please allow me to be selfish just this once…" the magician smiled as she lifted her head and looked at her teammates.</p><p>Vertigo took Mana's perception over, all ground began shifting from under feet and Meiko grabbed Mana's head into a headlock and began painfully rubbing the top of her head and pulling on her hair like a violent older sister.</p><p>"She grew up so fast…" Kiyomi grinned. "It seems our common sense is rubbing off on the stupid little Mana who would've ran off alone to fight a chuunin all by herself or taken on a member of the Imarizu one on one." The Yamanaka laughed it off.</p>
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<a name="section0290"><h2>290. Royal Flush</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A sense of broadening, as if her mind had exited the confines of her own head into a much wider harmony, tingled in Mana's temples. Kiyomi had reestablished the mental link she had previously opened up. There were small and barely comprehensible hissing and almost static fizzling in the mind signals. An impression hit Mana that Kiyomi must've struggled with the remaining chakra resources which caused this secondary effect.</p><p>After activating his All Fours Jutsu Clarmac rushed onwards. He was likely the only member of Team Sagitarii with considerable threat left to him: he was more than halfway healed up by Deargli's innovative mixture of healing and sealing jutsu, he appeared to still have chakra ready to be utilized in his system. Also his main weapon was not cut into pieces as it was with Laoch.</p><p>Clarmac swiped his arms in a flashy blur, he was so immensely fast combined with the fact that Mana was beginning to feel so fatigued that even after ordering her body to move aside from his attack it didn't budge. A stream of red squirted out in the air but it wasn't Mana's, the magician felt no pain as Meiko stepped right in front of her and took the mauling slashes of the Inuzuka's elongated claws and teeth.</p><p>And the canine ninja kept on mauling, swiping and slashing with his claws, spinning to cover wider and wider area, hoping that one of those swipes caught Mana or Kiyomi as well. Meiko's body was evidently undergoing some serious augmentations to survive this ruthless and primal offensive, the claws pierced her skin and began budging into her flesh but made little relevant progress. Then with a more focused and powerful slash Clarmac sent Meiko sliding back and gripping the dirt beneath her feet to stop herself from sliding too far away.</p><p>The Yamanaka and Mana stepped aside from Meiko's path, just getting hit by the blacksmith's inertia fueled slide back would've sent one flying back further than getting hit by a speeding train. Clarmac lunged at Mana, now that Meiko had moved out of his way, but now that she was given enough time to prepare, and that Clarmac was himself slightly worn by his brief mauling of Meiko, the magician managed to move aside with just a pair of shallow scratches on her cheeks and her shoulders. The young man was like an enraged typhoon of claws, teeth and pain.</p><p>Laoch charged in from behind, Mana could hear his furious roar. Even without his armor the young man was a considerable physical force and a true brute on the field, granted, a more vulnerable one.</p><p>"String Reeling Technique!" Meiko grunted as she pulled on a strand of steel wire with her teeth and her arms manipulating a complicated combination of loops of wire to pull Mana aside. The magician felt the steel wire cutting into her skin and leaving uncomfortable pressure marks as well as multiple scrapes but it was better than having most of her skeleton pressed on by whatever equivalent of force her opponent was coming at her with.</p><p>"They're focusing on Mana again, punish them for each failed attack!" Meiko almost yelled out into the mental link.</p><p>With a kunai in hand Kiyomi charged at Laoch, together with Meiko. As expected the weaponry user had little experience fighting in a way that didn't result in him getting hurt. The blonde and the blacksmith danced a graceless and brutal also a highly coordinated dance of blades, whizzing and dancing around the large youngster, cutting into his blindspots and switching positions. Moving so fast that even his enhanced perception failed to keep up, let alone his tired and injured body. They were like botflies circling a worn bull. One feasted on blood while the other pestered the poor animal with its relentless buzzing and itchy landings.</p><p>"Guppy Fang!" a shout came out of nowhere as Clarmac's sea blue nintaijutsu whizzed right past Meiko's face and dug deep into Kiyomi's lower body sending her crashing backwards in a furrow as wide as it was deep through the dirt.</p><p>"Guys… Give me a sec… Then, Meiko, the Triple Pin-Cushion Formation, like we practiced." Kiyomi's pain ridden thoughts broke through the static of the mental link.</p><p>Seeing Clarmac in a sensitive position of recovery after the focused movement of his weaker yet faster version of the Water Release infused Inuzuka technique, Mana decided to exploit the occasion. With a quick dash, the magician retrieved the hat that still laid on the floor, making her way out of Meiko's steel wires that have long since loosened after they were first used. The kunoichi's remaining free hand scurried through the hand seals before digging deep into the indigo colored glow inside Mana's hat.</p><p>She pulled one boxed deck of cards, then another, third one and then a pair more. Throwing all of them as projectiles. Clarmac leaned aside from the first two before realizing that the decks were neither dangerous nor that carefully aimed. They were also thrown far too strong as they flew a fair distance past his location. His erratic and scared reaction, using complicated aerial and acrobatic maneuvers to avoid Mana's improvised offensive, only played into her trick.</p><p>Mana's second arm flipped the hat back into the air and as it lingered, flipping and spinning around before landing right on her head, her arms worked with hand seals. The final item she pulled that fell out right before the hat landed was her wand. Mana pointed it at Clarmac who at this point was still on his right arm and upright – an uncomfortable position to continue dodging in, given also that he spent so much air and effort into dodging harmless boxed decks of cards.</p><p>"Magic Spark Jutsu!" Mana shouted out unleashing a wild flock of sparks at her opponent. The poor Inuzuka had nothing else to do but land on his feet and cover his face. He had prepared himself for a powerful attack – seeing this technique as Mana's real play, which it sadly wasn't. Just another fake-out before the real show-stopper.</p><p>Mana was a very different genin, she spent so much time as a child studying textbooks and reading into different concepts of genjutsu and ninjutsu, inventing weak and relatively harmless techniques that looked rather impressive but ultimately were just smoke and mirrors. Magic Spark Jutsu was one of the dirty dozen – it looked flashy and cool but, unless somehow improved, it was relatively harmless to a worthy opponent. That being said, its flashiness and the uncomfortable sensation of these illuminating sparks exploding right in one's face forced Clarmac to back up a bit to where these sparks lost their flashy flare.</p><p>By the time that the Inuzuka realized that he was right in front of all the cards that were flung his way, flung too strongly to be aimed at him, but just strongly enough to cover some ground he'd be stumbling back as flashy sparks exploded in his face, it was verily too late. With a one handed hand seal in one hand and the Audra wand in another, Mana pointed at the various cards located in those boxes before setting them off.</p><p>All sorts of hell ran havoc. Small amounts of water erupted from ones, weak lightning jolts from the others, sparks of flames and just old fashioned explosive tags. It was the world's most beautiful artistic cacophony and Clarmac was up with his face in it. The magician could hear no sounds, the noisiness of the mess she had created by emptying her supply of cards sealed in her hat was enough all by itself. Shrapnel of steel tipped cards began flying outside from the absolute colorful chaos that transpired.</p><p>Once the smoke cleared Clarmac laid positively downed. So much so, in fact, that Mana got scared for a moment that she'd killed him as his eyes were closed and his fangs had well retracted from his All Fours Jutsu state and back into the usual slightly elongated state of a normal Inuzuka clan member. Surprisingly enough, Clarmac Inuzuka was knocked out.</p><p>"Hey, Clarmac!" Laoch yelled out as he had tried to rush to his friend's aid a couple of times before being cornered by Meiko and her fisticuffs pummeling his face to keep him in his place. This time the blacksmith moved aside and allowed the tall genin to pass, moving in closer to Kiyomi. Proceeding to activate a seal to proceed with Kiyomi's previously suggested combination.</p><p>"Move aside, Laoch! I'll heal him!" Deargli declared. Her mouth opened again but before it could an arrow pierced her knee, then another below the biceps and another through the palm of her hand.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance!" Kiyomi yelled out triumphantly as after Meiko's quick release of the sealed bow and a handful of arrows her opponent was pinned.</p><p>Laoch rushed at Kiyomi madly. Meiko previously wanted to seal her bow and quiver back into whatever pocket dimension they came from but she had to drop it and run at her enemy to intercept his attempt at harming Kiyomi. The blonde's grasp of the medical ninja of the enemy team was simply too precious to waste.</p><p>A powerful jumping punch from Meiko stopped Laoch in his tracks, the two began trading brutal punches before Laoch's knee in the redhead's chest pushed her back. The now unarmored genin had a more powerful body build, he had more chakra and much less injuries compiled and even with one fully functional arm he managed to successfully bombard Meiko with elbow strikes, hooks and powerful kicks before elbowing her at the top of the redhead's head and crashing her down into the dirt so strong that the shaking ground threw both Mana and Kiyomi off their feet.</p><p>Meiko drastically pulled her aching and burning body off the dirt. Blood dripped and pooled beneath her in alarming quantities as her remaining chakra must not have been enough to contain her bleeding anymore. Kiyomi, missing her consciousness, was still laying lifeless in the dirt. Mana had started to rush in to Kiyomi's aid even before Meiko and Laoch clashed in their exchange of blows so she managed to make it first to the blonde and stood in protection of her friend.</p><p>Slowly the hulking genin cracked his knuckles. "Step aside" he ordered. "I'm larger than you and a better physical combatant."</p><p>"Our chakra resources must be around the same at this point – you've spent a fair deal of it in those concentrated blasts from your cannons. I was trained to fight better people than me. You have a fair reason to trust me when I tell you – you won't pass." Mana declared angrily stepping in and on her toes to stare at her much taller and bulkier opponent.</p><p>And so Laoch threw the first focused punch. He was fast for his size but he was tired. He also had just one functional arm for Mana to read where the other one was completely numb and just hanging by his side like a flimsy vine. The magician avoided the blow, ducked under the back elbow strike that she simply read beforehand before striking Laoch's elbow from behind, the one of his numbed and injured arm. The brute stumbled back screaming in pain, clawing at his eyebrows and temples from how much pain her carefully placed strike caused.</p><p>"It's true that in a physical fight, if I was to fight honorably - fist to fist, you'd crush me completely." Mana allowed herself the luxury to taunt her opponent before she dodged a jumping knee from him by rotating around her tensed up foot like a dancer. The style of a Water Country taijutsu as taught to her by the old man from the Sun Disc arena. A martial art focused on dodging and redirection with the following up sharp counterattacks – that of her own.</p><p>"That being said, I don't fight honorably." Mana let her opponent know as she leaned aside, seeing at least sixteen angles to counterattack like she was taught but waiting patiently. The more attacks her opponent whiffed, the better her chances to cripple him with just one good counter. The more breath runs out of his lungs. The more time Meiko gets to pick herself up and finish Deargli, who now just stumbled around with Kiyomi's consciousness inside of her.</p><p>Laoch swung his fists in a wide arc, trying to catch Mana but she simply ducked under and then moved in behind him from the side of the push kick he tried to lure her into. The weightless numb arm just flapped around strangely as it was attempted to be used for attacks.</p><p>"Fight me!" Laoch yelled out so intensely that he could barely breathe afterwards.</p><p>"I don't want to. Incapacitating Clarmac was my main goal, knocking Deargli out is another one – so she can't heal him. I don't wish to fight or hurt you but I am skilled enough to prevent you from landing a hit on me as well." Mana smiled gently as instead of striking the man's spine with her palm causing him immense nerve pain she just casually leaped back before kneeling and taking a breather of her own.</p><p>Deargli leaped up high in the air. The magician followed her with a glance before observing Kiyomi who just laid lifeless. The blonde must've been fairly injured but she wasn't that injured – this course of action was undoubtedly Kiyomi working her magic inside Deargli's mind and body. The medical ninja flipped upside so that her head stuck down and she'd have fallen from high up straight onto her head. It would've been neck-breaking for a normal human but just overwhelmingly painful and dangerous to a ninja, even one without control over one's chakra circulation and body.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Harakiri!" Kiyomi chanted in Deargli's voice from the young woman's body.</p><p>Laoch dashed in, Mana jumped on her feet preparing to protect Kiyomi again but the tall genin didn't rush to hurt the Yamanaka – he ran to catch his friend safely. He did that successfully, saving Deargli from a great deal of pain.</p><p>Finally Meiko picked herself up and bolted at Laoch, with Deargli still in his hands. The blacksmith jumped in the air and flipped over herself to deliver a diving punch which the brute dodged by stepping aside. Due to the complicated and skilled manner of the redhead's punch she concluded it in a roll, however before her roll was executed Laoch picked her up and slammed her to both of his sides before trying to finish her off with a strong push kick which was blocked by Meiko's knee.</p><p>"Meiko, back up, you're injured, this is getting dangerous. We don't know how much chakra Kiyomi has left…" Mana encouraged her friend while her attention got directed at the lifeless body of Deargli's hitting the dirt behind Laoch after being rudely tossed aside after he prevented her suicidal dive. The fact that Deargli was not on her feet and fighting with Kiyomi on the wheel suggested that her friend was seriously injured, even while controlling another body, the mind of the Yamanaka couldn't stand up.</p><p>A strong punch sent a brutal shake of teeth and blood flying from Meiko's mouth as she turned a full 360 around, focusing the force in her turn into a strong kick to Laoch's weak arm. The unarmored giant roared in pain before falling to his knees, right at the same time Meiko did in front of him but the two didn't want to end their clash. Angrily the two bashed their foreheads against each other as the thought of a powerful headbutt hit them both at the same time but their equal strength cancelled each other's attempts out.</p><p>The two kept grinning at each other with bloody mouths as they kept trying to push the other's forehead away. It was a deadlock that could've lasted forever. Mana didn't want to attack Laoch now, Meiko had that look in her eyes where it was evident she had things to prove to herself. Whenever Mana tried to take a pair of steps forward the redhead just glanced at her with that judgmental look. Meiko wanted to prove herself worthy to fight on this team, to fight on this level. So far Mana and Kiyomi have been pulling her weight which was too painful for the blacksmith to bare.</p><p>The magician stopped to consider some things before turning away. She would allow Meiko to finish this herself. She was in no mood of fighting Laoch anyways, Deargli was the one she wanted to knock out. That, however, was complicated – Kiyomi was still inside the medical ninja's mind and the poor sack of bones and flesh was just writhing on the ground helplessly.</p><p>"Leave this mind and rest." Mana spoke after approaching the helpless Deargli. With every passing moment Kiyomi was losing chakra that she could've used on staying conscious with her overwhelming injuries. The magician weaver her own pair of hand seals before the familiar howling sound alerted her that Kiyomi had returned to her body.</p><p>"Scary Trick Jutsu!" Mana chanted out a name for her genjutsu technique as even after Deargli's will to fight on returned and she tried to stand up, the poor girl just froze.</p><p>In her eyes she saw herself covered with snakes, insects, and other parasites, drowning in their endless swarms as if the entire ground was covered in them. A loud and piercing laughter distracted Mana.</p><p>"I am someone who seals the pain of her past, the loneliness of an orphan, the disdain of one's own true family, the disappointment of life lived with a skin condition, the apathy towards my own life instilled by cruel people around me, the sadness of everything that I'd ever known being either a lie or sand that shifted through my fingers into techniques other people get crippled by just getting a taste of. Do you truly think I'll be scared by crawlers!?" Deargli yelled out before hooking Mana right in the jaw and knocking the magician down.</p><p>The sheer unexpectedness of her illusion being completely inefficient like that made her completely oblivious to the incoming strike, one she'd have normally dodged a multiple different ways all at once. One she'd have normally danced around flawlessly.</p><p>"The more injured I am, the more potent my healing techniques are. Clarmac and Laoch will soon crush you three with all of their returned might!" Deargli yelled out as she towered above of Mana's downed body intimidatingly. Her voice sounded pathetic, a cruel mixture of a young lady who feared and hated pain but needed it to heal the people she genuinely loved and treasured, people that replaced all that darkness she spoke about previously.</p><p>Deargli's arms lit up with chakra of her unique medical techniques just for a brief fraction of a moment before two firm hands locked around her peculiar headdress before slamming the girl's face into the dirt by using her entire body weight and the remainder of her physical force.</p><p>"Welcome to the toothless club…" Meiko slurred out as she could very hardly stand on her two feet. Beside her feet laid Laoch, he still had some fight left in him but at this point he must've seen how pointless it was.</p><p>The fight was over. All that was left was to scoop up the ashes…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0291"><h2>291. Don't Ask How Sterile The Balloon Is</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Surveying the battlefield was a bitter pill to swallow. The giant round crater jawed where Laoch blasted at Team Hokage in the beginning with trees continuously falling and sliding down as the inverted orb continued to sink further. Blood, rags and small fires didn't paint a better picture either. Mana just sighed before turning at Meiko.</p><p>The redhead just sat in dizziness spitting blood aside and doing some elementary battlefield patching up. She didn't look great but she was in no danger of dying like before. Kiyomi, on the other hand, switched between passing out and just laying sprawled in the dirt with each passing moment.</p><p>"Everyone's out cold, we did what we wanted to do…" Meiko smiled at Mana with a half toothed smile. The blacksmith was going to have quite a night at some point in her nearest future, teeth were painful to grow back – Mana had first-hand experience with that.</p><p>"No. We were stupid." Mana realized looking back at Kiyomi and then back at Meiko before examining her own injuries. Feeling up her own stamina and roughly how much chakra she could still spend informed the magician that she escaped this fight pretty cheaply. Most of the highly devastative moves just blasted her aside or barely grazed her and Meiko consistently protected Mana whenever that wouldn't have been the case.</p><p>"Why?" the blacksmith curiously looked at the magician, her eyes were almost childish. She really had no idea what Mana meant but she didn't object the magician but instead wanted to understand her position and maybe learn something. It was an admirable trait in a person.</p><p>"We kept on fighting well past the reasonable limit. This wasn't a life or death fight, we should've just retreated at any point, they should've also. This test is tricky – it punishes over-extending oneself. The clever strategy would've been for them to escape, heal themselves, while keeping our tracks in mind, before attacking us again. We have no medical ninja – we were at a disadvantage." Mana sat down as her own thighs were beginning to burn up with fatigue.</p><p>"That's their mistake…" Meiko shrugged before falling on her back and extending her arms, letting them sink into the softened and grinded dirt and ashes, picking it up and letting the mix sip through her fingers.</p><p>"No. It's ours as well. We were fooled by their relentlessness. At some point we lost the track of what's at stake. We won, but what did we win exactly? All we did was remove a person who may have attacked us to take me out but we didn't advance in the test at all. This isn't the winning strategy of this exam…" Mana complained before reaching to her pouch and removing a handful of medical food pills she stole from a team of genin previously.</p><p>"And you know what is?" Meiko wondered lifting her head off the dirt, her hair was messy and sticky as the ash and grinded sand mixed with the blood which her hair was soaked with.</p><p>"I am beginning to get a feeling… It's blitzing this exam – just like those two guys we met by the northern exit did. A team that wishes to pass shouldn't engage their hunters, they should evade being found while simultaneously diverting their efforts and resources into what's absolutely necessary – the targets. It's an exam of all that is essential to a ninja – the ability to evade enemies while completing an objective."</p><p>Mana continued to stare at the pills in her hand, rolling them around and playing with them like she played with marbles as a girl. She wasn't the most popular kid, she had few friends so she mostly played marbles with herself at home. The small group of friends she did have liked playing ninja anyways…</p><p>"Hmm? Anything wrong?" Meiko curiously hummed after stumbling back on her bottom and curiously staring at Mana's distress over the food pills she clenched in her hand.</p><p>"Yeah…" the magician smiled. "I felt so bad about stealing them. I hated myself for what I had to do. I hate myself for having had that thought or having honored it, having gone through with it makes my stomach churn…"</p><p>"It saved my life, probably…"</p><p>"It did…" Mana clenched the pills in her hands, her face turned away from the tightly pressed fist before her lower lip began to quiver, when her eyes finally opened they were wet and leaking salty tears that soon mixed with her blood into a dirty red cocktail that was both sweet, bitter and sour at the same time. "I wanted to return these, wanted it so much, thought maybe it'd somehow make what I did better…"</p><p>Meiko uneasily scratched the back of her hair making the sticky clogs of ash and sand crumble off of her hair like a blizzard of dandruff, except a bit less revolting, for whatever reason.</p><p>Mana picked herself off the ground before slowly but firmly walking up to Meiko and extending her hand with an open fist, the medical food pills gently rolled in the magician's hand.</p><p>"Mana…" Meiko uttered.</p><p>"I can't… You two need them, it wouldn't have made what I did any better anyways. The deed is done, you can't just return part of what you stole and change it. That's not how it works. What you do lives with you, the people involved may forgive you, you yourself may forgive yourself but… It never goes away."</p><p>The blacksmith reached out to pick up a green food pill but then Mana coughed before faintly rolling her hand to make a yellow pill, one of a pair, to roll outside the bunch. Slowly and with a hesitant hand the redhead took it and placed it into her mouth, looking sadly at Mana with each passing moment. With a painful cough she spat the pill back out covered with blood.</p><p>"I can't. The few teeth I have can't crack it… They hurt and start bleeding immediately." the kunoichi childishly complained before blushing. Mana could barely tell that fact seeing how dirty and bloodied her friend's face was.</p><p>Mana took the pill from her friends' hand and smashed it in her hand before gently dropping the gooey mass into her friend's open mouth.</p><p>"You need to treat her." Meiko looked at Kiyomi worryingly.</p><p>"Probably should've treated her first, she took the worst beating." Mana nodded in agreement.</p><p>Slowly the magician walked up to Kiyomi and smashed the last yellow food pills before opening her friend's almost lifeless mouth and dropping the gooey mixture of herbs, chemicals and actual food into her mouth. The blonde just uneasily rolled around in the settled cloud of ashes and sand. Medical food pills were no miracle medicine but they were a guarantee for a quicker and more successful treatment in the nearest future.</p><p>"As you were!" a firm masculine voice made Mana get kicked out the window of her own thoughts and plummet back down onto the reality around her. A tall and seemingly mature ninja in a colored bird mask and a black, long, leather coat stood in the middle of the battlefield. He wore Konoha's headband tied around his arm. "I'm here to pick these three up…" he added before pointing at the knocked out Team Sagitarii.</p><p>Mana's eyes sharpened and squinted suspiciously, in a lightning fast moment they turned soft and kind before she turned to Meiko and Kiyomi examining their quick recovery. She encouraged them to leave.</p><p>"Some battle you had here. All those dead centipedes, wolves, foxes and bears around you are all your doing too? Impressive for genin, must be at least thirty dead animals all around this place…" the masked ninja remarked before picking Laoch, Deargli and Clarmac up onto his shoulder.</p><p>"No. Must be my summon's doing, he's a B-Rank…" Mana confidently stated before turning to leave, only for her team to follow.</p><p>The medical pills didn't just magically regenerate her friends. Kiyomi was still clenching at her wounds, they no longer bled externally but they were still quite aching and would be for a little while more. The pill merely boosted her chakra regeneration and metabolism which would've accelerated the rate that her body recovered naturally, which was already superhuman to begin with.</p><p>"How long was I out? I can remember bits and pieces…" Kiyomi grumbled out before stroking her neck carefully so that she didn't invite any pain.</p><p>"A minute, perhaps a bit more." Meiko replied before stroking her own fair share of wounds and removing a piece of armor that was cracked inwards and was poking right into a flesh wound that the blacksmith had sustained. Now that not the entirety of her body was flaring up with unbearable pain the blacksmith could tell such pain sources from numbed spots.</p><p>"Damn, that ninja sure didn't waste any time. If he even was a Konoha staff ninja…" the Yamanaka remarked.</p><p>"I don't think he's staff either. I mean, for God's sake, he didn't even take the dog with him, doubt he even knew there was a dog. Must've been a transformed genin from one of the teams… Real staff members would've waited until we left to do their job so that they didn't disturb the natural progression of the exams. Think about it, have you seen any staffers so far? They were the ones who removed all the eliminated ninja, they also are to maintain order and observe the rules, few as there are… Staffers don't get seen, they're the real ninja here." Mana nodded as such was her impression as well.</p><p>"Hmm? Leaving the beaten and unconscious to a disguised ninja? That's ruthless, Mana!" Kiyomi sarcastically cheeked the magician.</p><p>"It was the best choice. There's no use for a team of ninja to just kill unconscious people off, it wastes time and effort. Plus our battle was loud enough to attract every team in this damned forest, we're wise to get out of there as soon as possible. I'm sure our battle was being observed by at least several teams from the halfway point."</p><p>"Hmm? Why didn't they attack us?" Meiko wondered, slowly she was beginning feeling pretty comfortable about the speed that the Team Hokage were travelling in.</p><p>"Because fighting us is not in their interests. We lucked out that neither of the teams to make their way there was anyone who is targeting us. Even if they were to target us – they must've known that this spot was pretty loud and by exposing themselves they risked attracting the fish after them as well. In that case it'd be six on three against the hunters…" Mana scratched her chin.</p><p>"Maybe they're tracking us right now?" Kiyomi glanced back. In agreement to her fears Mana stopped and began meditating. It took quite a while before she managed to reach out to her gift of sensory, halfway through the process of delving into her mind the magician wondered if maybe she couldn't just do it on will and every time before she did do it she was just lucky.</p><p>"No. No one's in the vicinity." Mana concluded after standing up and stroking her numbed and tired legs as sitting in a meditative position really began taking its toll.</p><p>"Wow… You really need to learn to pick up the pace of that!" Meiko whistled into the air as she carelessly laid sprawled out by a tree before getting up and yawning.</p><p>"Excuse me if my ability to tell someone's presence just from their unique signature and mark they leave in the force that holds the universe together isn't to your utmost comfort…" Mana raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"So then most of the people there were only there to obtain information…" Kiyomi suggested a theory.</p><p>"Possible, information is the currency of this exam. As long as they felt safe and confident they wouldn't be seen or taken out they would've had no reason not to check out that scorching pillar of sky piercing super-flames and all the sounds of earth-cracking explosions." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"But it'd have been the strongest teams, in an environment like that the ones that move the most freely and take chances like this are the strong. Weaker teams that struggle for their survival and are hiding wouldn't have taken the chance…" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Yeah. And this information would only have deepened that gap as the strong and the bold hunters obtained another bargaining chip whereas the weak ones just enjoyed not being in the heat for a moment longer…" Mana acknowledged the irony.</p><p>"Still, I don't believe that Team Sagitarii are in danger of being murdered. Enough time has passed for the real staffers to reach that place by now. I don't know just what the goal of that transformed genin was, maybe he wanted to loot the unconscious, maybe he was looking for bloodlines to salvage for his village, couldn't tell for certain. Either way, the staffers would soon have arrived and taken the three completely unseen." The magician added</p><p>"Still… What if that guy was targeting to take one of us out up close? Maybe we should've kicked his ass? I mean transformed ninja can't fight seriously and keep up their disguise at the same time." Meiko voiced her opinion.</p><p>"True, that'd require too great of chakra control and precision the use of the Transformation Jutsu. Not something most genin could pull off, then again, I've seen at least two people pull of a damage sealing jutsu this week. An exceptionally skilled face-swapper wouldn't surprise me one bit…" Mana shrugged. "Trust me, if I thought for a moment that Team Sagitarii was in any danger at all, any more than that which we put them in, I'd not have moved one inch…"</p><p>"Yeah, I've known Mana long enough to vouch for that… Still, even if we did engage that guy – his team couldn't have been too far away and we'd have soon been overwhelmed in the chaos of everyone aiming to take everyone else out. We've already had too much ass kicking hitting us to survive anything remotely close." Kiyomi firmly put an end to that discussion.</p><p>"So we're still moving the same direction?" Meiko wondered, "Still looking for Menna, Tiwul and Tala?"</p><p>"Yeah." Mana nodded firmly before allowing her eyes to shift from firm determination to lingering worry, "Except now we have even less resources to offer them – I spent almost all of my sealed card decks on that chaotic ninjutsu combination…"</p><p>A heartfelt sigh came from Kiyomi's side. A soft touch on her shoulder made Mana look back at her friend's apologetic face.</p><p>"I know how bad you felt about those pills, I know you wanted to return them after this. I'm sorry you had to spend more of them…" the blonde whimpered out.</p><p>Mana's pale face smiled faintly, the tips of her lips twisted up but the sadness that ate at her from inside made it a difficult campaign to wage war for every smallest inch of that smile. Kiyomi's eyes wandered lower onto Mana's chest where a red spot continuously widened on an already torn and exposed part of Mana's uniform making the magician's remaining rags look even more pitiful and blood soaked.</p><p>"You need to treat that, a single green pill would…" she began.</p><p>"No. I'll see what I can do about it once we stop for a break." Mana cut the topic short before trying to accelerate but the dizziness from the moderate blood loss made the magician stop daydreaming about being cool and leading her team ahead and slow down a bit.</p><p>Kiyomi wanted to speak up again but Meiko shook her head. "Just let her work this out by herself. She always had plenty of needless things to worry about but she always works them out." The blacksmith whispered close to Kiyomi.</p><p>"That's not really how being a friend works." Kiyomi crossed her hands for a brief moment. The thought wasn't told but instead transmitted through the mental link from which Mana was excluded. A link of just two people so close to each other came to Kiyomi almost naturally, without much effort or hand seals.</p><p>"It is with her…" Meiko smiled.</p><p>A good half an hour later the girls stopped for a break. Their departure was so erratic and sudden that they needed something to slow down their pace. Kiyomi and Meiko hadn't recovered even remotely fully yet and Mana still needed to tend to her moderate yet not overly important injuries. Plus it was starting to get dark.</p><p>With a slow and soft motion, yet not nearly so as Mana would've wanted it to be, the magician peeled off the improvised cover of her wound. Quite thick expulsion of blood came out after the pressure was removed and the magician instantly felt dizzy, she was lucky to be sitting down. Strangely it didn't really hurt… Or maybe it did but Mana was so used to pain that a pain of this magnitude felt as numb as no pain at all… The chaotic and heart-chilling screams of Laoch echoed in Mana's ears from after she punched him in the busted arm. The magician closed her eyes and delved into her erratic and scary memories that came flooding before remembering that she was patching herself up.</p><p>"I haven't got too many medical supplies, bandages and such…" Mana admitted after returning. "If I tear one more string of my own shirt for a cover of a wound it'll be getting really cold at night…"</p><p>"And more skin for those buggers to suck into…" Meiko noted as she was catching bloodsuckers from the air at an inhuman speed. Entire flocks of them, young and matured sensed a night incoming and felt obliged to ruin the day of anyone foolish enough not to be hidden.</p><p>"Those pests aren't even remotely the worst part of it compared to the kinds of things I had to kill to keep watch of you while you were out, Meiko." Kiyomi smiled as she had a bunch of stuff just piled up and waiting for Mana.</p><p>The items were very odd looking long balloons that were pulsing full of water, a bunch of herbs and mushrooms and several slipper sized insects murdered by stab through the head shell. Kiyomi's stabbing power must've been either astoundingly precise to bypass the armored shell or amazingly strong to pierce it. Just a bit over a year ago Mana struggled piercing the shell of a single crustacean herself.</p><p>"What is this?" the magician yawned.</p><p>"I collected some water from a river nearby in these… Balloons… We can make a stew from them, Meiko was scared speechless of your cooking but, while we were waiting for you outside the Forest of Death before the exam, Kouta told me that it's something to try sooo…" Kiyomi bellowed suggestively.</p><p>"Okay. I'll do what I can with these." Mana nodded. She unsealed one more chemical heating bag from inside her hat to help heat the water. It'll be difficult to make anything tasty without proper heating of a fire but it wasn't impossible…</p><p>"Wait, don't animals usually poop into the water?" Meiko wondered out loud something she should've just kept inside.</p><p>"Usually a water source containing leeches and slugs is extremely contaminated, if that's what you meant. That's why I picked it up with my own sock to filter out the mud, and I contained it in these… Sterile balloons… And we'll be boiling the water as well. A ninja's metabolism is already extremely resistant to natural contaminants so whatever remains won't worry us." Kiyomi explained.</p><p>"Fine, I'll drink the water from your condoms as long as it doesn't give me explosive diarrhea in the morning…" Meiko suspiciously locked her arms around her chest.</p><p>Kiyomi bashed the redhead's head before the two started wrestling. "I told you those aren't condoms, they're… Sterile balloons!" the Yamanaka kept on yelling. Had the two been even remotely serious it wouldn't be much of a match but Meiko was somewhat hesitant to hurt her friend who was both physically weaker than her and also got the worst beating out of the three during the last fight.</p><p>"Whatever, why would you even bring condoms to the exam, you creeper!" Meiko tossed Kiyomi aside before the blonde leaped back into the fray of playful wrestling.</p><p>"Sterile balloons!" she screamed out loud.</p><p>"Calm down a bit, you guys." Mana warned them before not being able to help herself and breaking into a bit of composed laugh. She had plenty on her mind but watching those two bicker around about meaningless things made her think less about what really hurt to think about.</p>
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<a name="section0292"><h2>292. A Helping Hand</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Leap by leap, Team Hokage was traversing through the Forest of Death towards the region where Team Dunyazad was last seen in. It would've only taken about half an hour to cover the entire distance, the trio didn't want to spend chakra on going any faster. Maybe if they focused hard and decided on wearing themselves out they could've covered the distance of over hundred kilometers momentarily, still, given their situation it would've been less than reasonable.</p><p>"I still think we should've fought that bear…" Meiko pouted, killing the silence that had reigned for most of the early morning.</p><p>"It had an arm taller than an oak and many times thicker. Its claws were twice the length of a banana. It'd have taken too much effort." Mana firmly shut her down.</p><p>"Yeah, but we left so fast that I left my bag behind…" Meiko whined.</p><p>"Your bag!?" Kiyomi flipped out, "You mean the one with the map and your spare ninja tools and supplies?"</p><p>"No. That's my main bag, I'm talking about my beef bag." Meiko smiled.</p><p>"Mana was preparing for you out of her own supplies for two nights already, I've stored water for you in condoms! You didn't tell us you had a bag full of beef." Kiyomi launched herself at a diagonal angle to slam her shoulder at Meiko and throw her off balance, the blacksmith just kicked off of a nearby tree and launched herself back at her rushing teammates rejoining the formation.</p><p>"Now that I think of it, it sounds like something Meiko would do. We should've seen it coming." Mana smiled. It may have been the short moments of bliss watching her friends behave like people that knew no sorrow and fooling around with each other that made her this ignorant to the troubles she went through to satisfy Meiko's hunger but something left just that kind of an effect.</p><p>"So you admit it then!" Meiko yelled out, "It was condoms!"</p><p>Mana was surprised that she was able to hear the sound of Kiyomi's teeth being grinded. While the blonde blushed and really didn't look like she took the right things from all of this situation, allowing herself to be dragged down into an immature game Meiko played to make everyone forget her own offense of hiding food, the magician found it as just kind of hilarious.</p><p>"Although, I have to admit – Mana's cooking kind of got awesome all of a sudden!" Meiko vibrantly cheered for her teammate.</p><p>"It was one of the several things I've trained during the whole Yamanaka clan affair." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"How much further ahead?" Kiyomi looked around before Mana stopped, only for the rest to follow.</p><p>"Not sure… It'd be naïve to expect to find Tala, Menna and Tiwul in the same spot they were last seen in. That being said, I believe that they may not have changed their quadrant. Moving around so drastically is just looking for trouble, as we've found out…" the magician scratched the back of her head before settling down and preparing to meditate.</p><p>"Is this gonna work? Will you be able to recognize their chakra signatures?" her armored friend raised an interesting conundrum.</p><p>"Obviously not, still, we'll head towards the nearest signature I can find." Mana shrugged.</p><p>Once again it took her a good while to calm herself and reach the right degree of concentration. It took longer still to reach out with her entire consciousness to the environment around her and until all of the chakra stars flared up in her imaginary visualization of the chakra sensory ability. It was such a flawed and early stage of the ability, Mana would've liked to devote so much more time into this genetic trait, at least as much as it'd take for her to sniff chakra signatures out as easily as she could tell smells.</p><p>"There are six signatures that way, they're really close to where we were told Team Dunyazad last was. It must be them…" Mana jumped back on her feet before beginning to move that direction.</p><p>"Oh… We lucked out, maybe if we help them with their fight, they'll help us with the information trade?" Kiyomi shrugged, the two teammates quickly joined Mana moving to a location nearby.</p><p>Tiwul's long and round bottom bashed into the face of a handsome tanned blond male who appeared to have been caught unprepared by the highly unnatural manner of attack. The chubby young lady lifted her arm up and, like clockwork, a handle of a weapon poked out from her large metallic backpack which she pulled out and revealed to be a scythe.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Tool Expansion Jutsu!" she yelled out in a tired and resentful tone that so immensely contrasted her usual cheerful tone. The scythe expanded to tremendous size dwarfing its primary shape at least several dozens of times and extending in its massiveness way past the proportions defined as "necessary". With a graceful guiding of its path to absolute destruction, the massive tool slammed into the ground where the shaken handsome shinobi previously was.</p><p>After the ginormous cloud of dust, wood chips and torn leaves settled and the gigantic ninja tool returned to the size of an ordinary scythe and got placed back into the bag, after being minimized to the size of a toy a little doll would wield, the tanned blond opponent of Team Dunyazad was revealed to be completely out. His forehead was cracked and the poor young man was bleeding profusely from his busted forehead.</p><p>"That's what you get for hurting Menna, you mean bastard!" the chubby young lady panted. She herself was not holding on her most gracious and strongest legs. Her usual lovely bandana was missing as it was recently completely incinerated, the young lady was beaten around and bruised up, her tomboyish futon t-shirt was torn up together with her strapped jeans.</p><p>Tala slid back beside her, having been tossed backwards by some considerable impact force but somehow managing to maintain his upwards stance and remain on his own two feet. He angrily glared at his teammate.</p><p>"Don't stop moving! Do you want to get taken out like Menna!?" he shouted out ferociously as if he was scolding a person he actually hated the guts of.</p><p>Tiwul's eyes wandered briefly at her knocked out friend by her side, seeing his whited out eyes and grit together in a painful expression teeth made her chest burn up with anger and fear for her own well-being, but also rage and desire to pay back the pain caused to her friend.</p><p>A strong impact at her chest sent Tiwul tumbling back, had the hit not been tremendously soft and coming from a cotton ball she'd have tumbled over and flew crashing through multiple trees way back.</p><p>"Don't move your eyes away, Tiwul…" a blonde, glasses wearing kunoichi with a white coat covering her shoulders uttered in a mocking tone.</p><p>"You do realize you've just hit me with a cotton ball, right?" Tiwul snapped back at her opponent before charging at her with a jumping kick. The powerful and highly unpredictably manner upper thigh kick caught the opponent medical ninja by surprise knocking her aside and giving her a nasty nosebleed. Just barely did the young lady manage to regain her consciousness and balance and recover with a backflip.</p><p>"I think I'll be just fine…" the chubby Sunagakure kunoichi grinned at her opponent with an equally cheeky manner, even going out of her way to make an offensive facial gesture her way.</p><p>Without uttering a word, the enemy medical ninja smacked her hands together in a hand seal making the cotton ball explode into smaller cotton balls that continuously flew around and bashed at various openings they could find in Tiwul's larger than average frame which struggled to keep up with the intensity and number of the attacks.</p><p>"This… Doesn't hurt… Dammit!" Tiwul kept on shrugging the balls off before she realized that the balls were too painless to be the young kunoichi's main mean of attack. The more the Sunagakure weapon puppeteer tried to remove those cotton balls off of her body the quicker they rolled aside and less success she had at pulling them off their skin as they got stuck to it like leeches.</p><p>"Hmph… I figured a larger person like you would require higher number of attacks as compared to singular more powerful attack." The opponent mocked Tiwul who lazily ran at her with a running strike. The cotton balls stuck to Tiwul's body rolled onto her eyes making her miss the enemy's counter attack of lazy pair of slaps at her sides. They were incredibly weak but soon the Sunagakure kunoichi realized that she had several more cotton balls stuck to her body.</p><p>"What kind of retarded-ass strategy is this? What happened to you, Dubia, you graduated the Academy with amazing grades!" Tiwul tried attack her enemy with words. She needed to catch some of her lost breath back and think of a way of getting these off of her skin as they were moving nowhere peacefully. They also quickly relocated onto her other body parts. As the weaponry user of Sunagakure opened her mouth, one even tried to even roll into her mouth and try suffocating her from inside her throat.</p><p>"What's wrong? Feeling tired yet?" the blonde who was revealed to be a fellow Sunagakure kunoichi fixed her glasses while she triumphantly stared at her worn out opponent who was getting more and more pulled to the ground. "These cotton spheres are a newer jutsu of mine. They are a ninja tool used by medical ninja to drain blood off of a wound quickly, they use the residual chakra inside the blood traces to fuel their usage."</p><p>"But… I'm… Not… Bleeding…" Tiwul panted as she fell to her knees.</p><p>"No, but you're sweating. Profusely. This effect is magnified on someone of a more muscular or chubbier body build. Your build is great for manipulating greater weights but it doesn't conserve energy too well, now does it?" the opponent taunted Tiwul. "Soon enough you'll fall ill to extreme dehydration of the body, not to mention tremendous chakra loss of your ninja metabolism trying to compensate the incredible strain your body is going through."</p><p>Farther away Tala kept on firing bullet sized capsules of Wind Release chakra at his opponent. The young man that the red headed conservative Sunagakure ninja was fighting was an odd looking one, wearing vibrant colors and a humongous ribbon on his neck. He also appeared to use an electronic keyboard instead of a sword or a similar tool suited for battle.</p><p>The musician moved quite skillfully and his evasion skills were certainly not lacking. However Tala's skill in cornering his opponent soon forced the young man to drag his arm through his electronic keyboard playing a bunch of its black and white, well maintained keys and spreading a melody of deplorable quality. Each of the keys had a yellow colored hieroglyph on them which served as a visual aid for the boy himself for the correct use of his ability.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Bandit Jig!" the enigmatic young gent sung out.</p><p>Tala's hands shaped into a pistol hand sign and firing off a stream of wind bullets at his opponent froze before beginning to shake. The red haired shinobi soon found his feet shaking similarly as well. Against his will his right leg began to tap the ground, soon the left leg joined in. It was just a diversion for the dark haired musician to pull off his ace ninjutsu. As Tala was immersed into the illusion of being placed in front of a live audience in a theatre far far away and feeling obliged to dance, the musician bit his thumb and flashed through a handful of hand seals.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" he chanted after slamming his hand to the ground.</p><p>As Tala's iron will finally understood the absurdity of dancing in front of a live audience and how against his character it was and forced his hands to make a hand seal required to dispel illusions, the very ground beneath his feet began to shake as from the massive cloud of smoke a bunch of green, human sized ogres started charging at the Sunagakure ninja, armed with scimitars, clubs and even large boulders tied around their arms – hand to elbow.</p><p>The forty summoned ogre soldiers began charging at Tala who had no time to prepare sufficiently for their cruel horde rush. Surprisingly enough, they didn't attack him, instead they started scattering wildly, so close to the young man's face that he could feel their foul stench as they ran across or aside him, all over the battlefield and slashing at bushes, trees and anything but something living. The red haired Sunagakure ninja just observed the mindless rampage of the ogres in confusion, was it within his character to giggle, the sight of an ogre smashing a little daisy with a giant rock tied around his arms over and over again would've certainly invited such a reaction.</p><p>"I apologize for the stupendous idiocy of my summons…" the musician shrugged. "For a more lethal jig, a more hands-on approach is needed…" he smiled before pulling his hand out of the pockets of his cartoonishly oversized purple tuxedo and beginning to play his electronic keyboard, this time with sufficiently more skill.</p><p>"Demonic Keyboard: Illusionary Bandit Manipulating Melody!" he sung out as the forty well, as well as significantly less well, armed ogres started rushing at Tala with a ferocious frenzy and thirst for blood matching their past desire of destroying pretty flowers and bushes.</p><p>"Wind Style: Jet Surfing!" Tala chanted out managing to push in a pair of hand seals in between his mad evasive maneuvers as he avoided getting completely surrounded and overwhelmed just by the skin of his teeth. A strong gust of wind picked the young man up and blew him to a more remote and farther place where all forty of his assailants had to chase after him.</p><p>"Wind Style: Automaton!" Tala shouted out as the relentless barrage of cutting wind bullets started firing upon the ogres. The beasts just covered themselves up with their weapons. The rocks easily got penetrated, the swords got shattered and several ogres got immediately taken down. Had they been their usual stupid selves, they'd have continued to try and find cover, block or otherwise defend against Tala's offensive. However with a cruel stroke of some more electric keyboard keys the entire horde was sent in a suicidal rush that'd have destroyed more ogres but also allowed them to reach Tala.</p><p>A loud howling sound made the Sunagakure's redhead shinobi look at his right, then to the left frantically as the battlefield around him appeared to have frozen. After looking behind him Tala noticed that the cotton balls had fallen off of Tiwul's body and laid peacefully by her side, twitching but not moving any bit more. After turning at his electric keyboard using enemy the young ninja, much to his surprise, saw his opponent grinning with astounding idiocy and hopping around on all fours, scratching the divide of his behind frantically before smelling his finger and making odd sounds of an exotic ape.</p><p>"Double takedown!" Meiko cheerfully chanted from high above as Mana and Kiyomi landed down and revealed themselves. Kiyomi still held her arms up in the hand seal she used to cast the Yamanaka clan technique to take over the medical kunoichi's mind, similarly, Mana also held her right hand up in a modified, one handed, hand seal position, having just successfully cast her illusion on the electric keyboard player.</p><p>"We probably shouldn't have waited this long…" Kiyomi smiled with the edge of her lips.</p><p>"We had to find a perfect opportunity." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"So, what now, kill them?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"You can't!" Tala energetically opposed to the idea, rushing up to the armored genin and grabbing her by the shoulders.</p><p>"Don't worry, I was just fooling around…" Meiko apologized before getting out of the weak hold of her opponent by herself.</p><p>"They may be scum but they are still Sunagakure ninja… I won't advocate the spilling of another comrade's blood." Tala growled out as a warning.</p><p>Mana lowered her hand seal before gesturing with her chin for Kiyomi to do the same. The blonde questioned Mana's decision and quite clearly opposed it for a brief while but then, with a disappointing sigh, let down her hands letting the medical ninja slip out from her control and the temporary paralysis she placed the medical ninja in.</p><p>"Scram!" Tala angrily warned the enemy team who appeared to have weighed the pros and cons of fighting five enemy ninja at once before picking up their unconscious pretty boy of a teammate and fleeing.</p><p>"Wow… Thanks!" Tiwul smiled, still too tired to stand back up on her feet.</p><p>"Hmph… We could've handled it by ourselves. Matters of Sunagakure do not concern you three." Tala objected softly, knowing him, Mana took it as a sign of gratitude.</p><p>"This goes beyond matters of any single village. This is the Chuunin Exams, I don't think you've noticed it yet…" Kiyomi objected.</p><p>"Don't listen to that pouty-face. We're grateful you pulled us out, wait… Where's Kouta and Shimo!? Is this your actual team?" Tiwul wondered.</p><p>Shimo… Mana turned away after a mere mention of him. She could stomach the topic being brought up, she cried too many tears over her friend to break down every time people spoke of him but it never got any easier…</p><p>"He umm…" Meiko looked at Mana uneasily, it was easy to tell that she wasn't sure if she should even say it out loud.</p><p>"Got eliminated already, huh? What about Kouta?"</p><p>"Actually… Shimo died. At the very end, just when we found what we've been looking for. Kouta's been eliminated already, he's on another team." Mana somehow toughed it out to utter those words.</p><p>"He was… A good friend. He appeared to be lost in many ways when we met but… I just hope he could find who he was before it happened." Tala sat down, his face softened up somewhat. Whenever a sip of sadness entered a face of absolute anger and strictness, it couldn't be helped but change a little bit. "This damned exam… Comrades turned against each other. Pisses me off." He changed the subject. He probably wanted to do something good with that.</p><p>Mana kneeled by Menna and checked out his injuries. Even she could tell that these burns and deep marks on his body weren't going to end up bringing anything good. Her arm lingered on the bag of medical food pills by her side. With the inevitable regret of her own actions, not due to the fact that she was treating someone, the fact that she was doing it with stolen supplies, the magician pulled out a pair of red food pills and placed them by Menna's mouth. Opening it through his intensely grinded teeth was troublesome.</p><p>"Don't bother." Tala angrily cut her down. "He's injured well past what a single red pill can solve. Even if you gave him two – he'd only recover enough to drag us down and suffer more."</p><p>After a sigh Mana placed one red food pill back into the bag and pressed Menna's nose forcing the knocked out shinobi to shortly loosen the lock of his teeth just enough to push a mashed pill down into his mouth.</p><p>"It'll ease his pain, at least…" Mana observed after looking at the burns and dark grievous injuries all over his chest. His entire top was signed and blown off, must've been quite the powerful blast he got caught in.</p><p>"Tsk. Sentimental as always…" Tala sighed in annoyance.</p><p>"What's wrong with you!? She's trying to help!" Tiwul yelled at her teammate.</p><p>"She's being pretentious, acting like the boundaries of villages don't matter. One day she'll die just like the rest of us and her ideals will die with her. It's easier to just hate the others. People will be at each other's throats just because the other was born in another village. People will sack entire villages just because they're defenseless. Her pretentiousness won't change a thing." the Sunagakure shinobi pushed his friend aside rudely before jumping up and sticking to the side of a tree before dashing up to the top.</p><p>"What's that guy's problem?" Kiyomi whispered into Mana's ear.</p><p>The magician just sighed. She knew that it was because of young Tala hearing about the recent history of his village in the Sunagakure Academy and feeling appalled by the behavior of "civilized" ninja villages jumping at Sunagakure's throat just because the war weakened it sufficiently enough for a finishing blow. Frankly, she understood the young man's character and anger perfectly, even if she couldn't really relate to such nationalist feelings.</p>
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<a name="section0293"><h2>293. Walls Of Glass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tiwul lingered uncomfortably, tapping her feet nervously. Mana's eyes barely picked it up while switching between the unconscious Menna and back to the Sunagakure kunoichi. The magician turned at her foreign friend and raised her eyebrows faintly to gesture that the girl's need to ask something was acknowledged and that she was encouraged to go ahead.</p><p>"Ummm… Look, we appreciate the help, me and Tala, even if that dick has a mean way of showing it. That being said…" she lingered still.</p><p>"You want to know why we came here?" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Yeah, I mean it'd be naïve to think that you just wandered into us, I mean us… Of all people." The girl shrugged before wiping her sweaty forehead with the torn rags of her purple t-shirt with a futon symbol on the chest.</p><p>"Yeah we… Were kind of hoping you guys would be willing to trade information. We know a bit of something about several teams, we need intel on certain others." Meiko butt into the conversation making matters short and clear.</p><p>"Frankly, given your situation, we wouldn't rule out an opportunity of an alliance as well…" Kiyomi looked at Tiwul with hopeful eyes. "We've got information on a lot of teams but we haven't picked off a single target yet. We saved your butts here that has to count for something."</p><p>"Very well!" Tala's firm voice cut Kiyomi's lingering suggestions down. "We agree to an alliance, to share information. Anything you want." The young man leaped down from quite a high distance up, the landing only deepened the few holes he already had on the knees and elbows of his black, white and orange jumpsuit.</p><p>Mana looked shocked at the Sungakure ninja for a brief moment before looking at Menna again. The boy's eyes were closed calmly, his teeth were no longer grinding together so hard that they cracked or broke off and he didn't look like bleeding that much. His chest lifted up and down peacefully as if he was sleeping. That deceitful tranquility… He wouldn't recover and Tala knew it.</p><p>"No." Mana shut the Sunagakure redhead down. "You're just trying to justify your own stereotypes here. You're trying to make it like we're just here because we need you for something. By agreeing to our terms you make Konoha ninja look as sick and twisted as they are in your mind. We will not bargain under those terms."</p><p>"You are here, are you not? Clearly you wanted something out of us… You can't back out from where you are to your usual moral high ground!" Tala snapped back at her with a cold stare. "We know plenty of information on Konoha's Team Walnut, Kumo's teams Cirrus and Stormcloud, Getsugakure's Team Iocaste."</p><p>Mana's heart jumped a few beats after hearing that Tala's team knew about Team Cirrus. The team of her target - a young kunoichi named Junipu-R.</p><p>"We didn't came here to use you, we came here for a trade." Mana realized that her shock after hearing a familiar name was evident to Tala who was already making a smug expression as he realized he was in full control. He had a chance to expose Mana as someone only he wanted to make her out to be. She was one of few people who, so far, didn't bend to his sick vision of foreigners and he'd never bend without playing the cards in his hands the best he could.</p><p>"And trade is something different?" Tala squinted at her almost mockingly.</p><p>"It is. Using you would be asking for something only because of something sentimental – using our past history and friendly feelings. Pressuring you to help us as we've just helped you. We want none of those things, we only want an honorable trade." Mana rubbed her elbow, she didn't like the manner in which her body language folded under pressure but she simply couldn't help it. Tala knew something that she had to have, if she didn't – it'd all be over for her, her time with Team Hokage, her chances at becoming chuunin and even her lifelong dream. She had no room to compromise her and she couldn't stop biting her lip because of it.</p><p>"You need information about who? Team Cirrus, based on your surprise of hearing that name? Fine, tell us what teams you have information about, we'll see what we can work out…" Tiwul took a step forward, she must've seen how uncomfortable this conversation was making Mana feel and so she decided to take some initiative.</p><p>"We know of Team Fir – Kouta's team, we know that Team Stratus has already completed the exam, we know the last location and the abilities of Team Phobos of Getsugakure, we know Team Pyrite has been eliminated and we've eliminated Team Sagitarii ourselves." Mana carefully listed the bits of intel known to them, carefully observing Tiwul's and Tala's reactions. They may have spoken one thing after she was done listing, their faces may have said another.</p><p>"Team Fir! We need that one!" Tiwul just yelled out right after Mana was done, "We can trade what we know about those two teams!" she turned at Tala for his hesitant approval. "Team Hickory is also from Konoha, maybe you know something about them too?" the energetic Sunagakure kunoichi leapt on her feet vibrantly.</p><p>"Wow, Pagu made a big mess of himself, quite a popular guy. Everyone wants a piece of him!" Meiko whistled.</p><p>"We don't…" Mana shook her head before realizing the deal made. She had to give up information about Kouta's team in order to get to her own target. Sure, Kouta was already eliminated, that being said, how would he feel knowing that Mana told these guys all about the last location of his team and lead Team Dunyazad right into the right tracks to catching up to his team? He'd probably be mad at her.</p><p>"Can we… Trade information after we bring Menna to the southern exit? He clearly won't recover without help of a medical ninja, unless you know one willing to cooperate?" Mana tried buying some time.</p><p>"I thought we did… But Team Haddar went after us so I doubt Dubia will still help us, she'll probably just drain the rest of my fluids out with those creepy cotton balls of hers for what we did to each other's teammates." Tiwul shrugged sadly. "There's no need of bringing Menna anywhere, one of the things we've found out was that if you leave your teammate behind, after a while, the staffers will pick them up. You can have that bit of information for free."</p><p>Meiko unzipped her tracksuit's collar to let some air in after realizing that if Kiyomi left her alone when she was injured, the blacksmith would've been picked up and eliminated from the exam. That thought looked like it scared the redhead a great deal.</p><p>"No way! We're going to carry Menna to the exit, it's the equivalent of burying your comrade yourself in this battlefield simulation. No Sunagakure ninja will be left behind!" Tala growled as he rushed up to Menna and flipped him over his shoulders before giving the rest of the girls a mean stare, "Let's go now. We've no time to waste."</p><p>The quintet of ninja took off, moving towards the southern exit. Tala wasn't rushing too fast, as expected, he was using just the right amount of speed to maximize a weak chakra output and achieve optimal speed for minimal costs. He was a skilled and wise ninja, not only sufficiently strong in combat but also a great micromanager outside of it.</p><p>Not too long after the five took off to surrender Menna to the Konohagakure staff, the magician picked her pace up to catch up to Tala.</p><p>"Are you ready to hear our information now? I will give you no trade. You know my conditions – I tell you about Team Cirrus and you leave." Tala spoke firmly but quietly, almost in a grumbly whisper.</p><p>"I… It's not about that. Why is it so important for you to prove that everyone from the other villages is some sick monster looking to use you or screw you over?" Mana asked him honestly.</p><p>"Tsk. Because I know they are. You keep fooling yourself and everyone around you and that confuses me. Not on a conscious level, on a subconscious one. I can feel like every time I am reminded of your lies to yourself and the world around you that I don't fight as efficiently as I could be. Information about Team Fir is pointless until you admit that you're no different from the others – even if I fight them now, I will not be strong enough, ruthless enough to do what needs to be done." He replied.</p><p>"You're already weaker than you used to be – last time we met you told us you used Wind Release ninjutsu to close sand into bullet-like projectiles. There's no sand in this forest's soil – your jutsu here is much weaker." Mana brought up.</p><p>"True. All the more reason to at least get my mind together."</p><p>"I see…" Mana slowed down to lag behind the quintet. She looked down at the green and black blurs beneath the level that the ninja were dashing at. Once in a while she raised her head up to check on the path they were moving in but it was more and more difficult to do so every time she did so.</p><p>"What's wrong? Why didn't you just trade them the information?" Meiko slowed down to talk to Mana while the quintet moved towards the southern entrance.</p><p>"I… He offered to give us the information for free. All Tala wants is for me to ask it of him." The magician mumbled.</p><p>"Even more reasons to do it. I mean… I guess if you give up Kouta's team – he'll be mad at you, he looked quite friendly with those guys. Tala offered you a way out." Meiko's voice softened. She must've really wanted for Mana to take the easier path, no, it was something else – she and Kiyomi must've already spoken about this and they wanted some kind of a deal to come out of this. They've come too far and spent too much effort for it all to be pointless.</p><p>"A way out that will dishonor my entire village, that'll expose us as something we're not. A way out that'll make Tala's sick and twisted vision of the world a reality for him. He'll be sad and hopeless, drowning in his own apathy and we'll just fuel the fire of his hate. My ninja way is to unite everyone, make all life mean something, not just escalate building walls around the villages and hate for each other." Mana felt her voice slightly picking up, maybe even a bit more loudly than she wanted it to be heard. It couldn't be helped anyways…</p><p>"I see… So if you take Tala's offer – you'll object your ninja way and if you take Tiwul's you'll make Kouta feel betrayed." Meiko snickered. "Just like the paper test, isn't it? No right answer…"</p><p>"No, it's like Tala said. This is a simulation of actual mission conditions: a clearly set objective, people hunting after you and people with unclear motivations and information you need. It's all in how sly you are, the deals and compromises you make and what you're willing to offer for the mission objective… It's just like the life we'll be living as chuunin. What's weighing heavily on me is that I don't have the answers to this life's questions. What if I'm truly not ready yet to enter that stage?" Mana's voice was beginning to tremble, internally she hated that, tried to restrain herself as much as possible from breaking down but the more she tried to fight the more evident her emotional distress became.</p><p>"So screw it… Don't make any deals. Sure, Kiyomi will be mad but I think she kinda likes me so I'll smile really nicely and rub my head against her side and she'll break, eventually. A pointless outcome is better than one which breaks us apart from inside." Meiko shrugged before trying her best to make her best little kitten impression as she illustrated the ways in which she'll be trying to calm Kiyomi down. Even with all the despair in her chest, expanding and clawing at her lungs, trying to burst out with the last of its efforts, Meiko's faces and the noises she made cheered Mana up a bit.</p><p>"I can't. That's the worst part, maybe I am selfish, maybe… Maybe Tala is right?" Mana's slightly fixed mood went to the crapper again. "I can't be eliminated. That'll be the end of it all. After the Chuunin Exams are over, as Hokage-sensei made it clear, I'm out of Team Hokage. I'll be waiting for years to be assigned to a team, then even more years until the other Chuunin Exams will take place. I'll be an adult genin, you know how it's like to be one…"</p><p>"Yeah… Those guys don't have it easy…" Meiko looked up as she scratched her head heartily. "They're kind of the laughing stock of the bunch."</p><p>"Exactly, I'd have no problem with being looked down on and laughed at, in a way, I've been like that my whole life. The problem is that my nindo compels me to be someone people look up to, someone who makes people appreciate life through example. If I fail here… It's all over, I'll never build myself up to someone people will follow." Mana covered her face up with one hand while still keeping a half sunken eye open to keep watch of the way in front.</p><p>"I… I don't know how to help you…" Meiko murmured. She looked away herself, it was evident that the blacksmith was beginning to feel bad about not being able to be a good friend in the way that counted.</p><p>Finally the quintet reached the southern exit, Tala walked up to the massive gate and softly placed his foot at it. A strong rumbling wave of force rippled all the way to the edges of the gate making it slowly open up. A pair of ninja rushed in to the five ninja. Judging from the sight of it – chuunin. They wore a simple chuunin uniform with complicated headgear that looked like hi-tech visors of some sort.</p><p>"Do you quit? All five of you?" the ninja asked in a highly robotic voice, the fruit of a cybernetic voicebox he used.</p><p>"No, we just brought our teammate here to give him up. He's had enough and we want him treated. We're going back in." Tala softly spoke as he surrendered Menna to the chuunin's hands. The ninja nodded and watched the quintet leave back.</p><p>"You know, you don't have to do this. I shouldn't be telling you this but you can leave your teammates behind, they'll be watched after…" the ninja spoke up.</p><p>"Yes, I do have to do this. No Sunagakure ninja gets left behind." Tala firmly cut the man down with a cold stare. Before the man's reply or thoughts on the matter could be heard the iron gate closed up and total darkness enveloped the squad.</p><p>"So… How will this thing of ours work out?" Tala looked at Mana curiously. Right as his face finished its turn at the angle he imagined being able to look the magician in the eyes, just an extended fist placed right by his face laid. After the young man turned his head a bit to the right Meiko furious face stared right back at him.</p><p>"However this will turn out, I'm gonna kick your ass for hurting Mana later." She pretty much promised the Sunagakure genin. Tiwul chuckled a bit seeing how similar Meiko was to Tala in a lot of ways, her face turned bitter after she looked back at her teammate who clearly couldn't see the irony staring right in front of him. It was tough to say just what may have went through his head.</p><p>"I… I want to trade." Mana submissively lowered her head. She almost dragged her feet to Meiko's bag, removing the rough draft of a map that the others scribbled for her before taking out a pencil and circling up a zone where she encountered Team Fir before. Obviously Kouta's team was no longer there but they left tracks. Any ninja worth their mettle would've picked up enough tracks to track down the team that stayed there: footsteps, marks on trees, remains of food, other similar things.</p><p>"Mana…" Meiko uttered looking at her friend's crushed expression.</p><p>"They were here when I last saw them, it's tough to tell time here but it was a couple of days ago. They fought not too far from there so you'll find examples of their combat tracks there. Eventually you'll bump into them. There are two of them: Aozora Yushijin and Erumo Budoki. From what I remember about them from the Academy days, Yushijin is a genjutsu user and a swordsman, Budoki never had specific skills, tough to say what her skillset is exactly."</p><p>A long drawn out silence followed Mana's words. Tala looked to be going through a combination of frustration and shock, he didn't really expected Mana to choose to give information on her own village to foreigners instead of using the Sunagakure ninja to get intelligence from them for free. No reasonable ninja behaved this way, loyalism to one's own village was instilled to children since childhood, before even the Ninja Academy.</p><p>Seeing how Tala was tapping his feet, stepping around impatiently and angrily grunting, Tiwul stepped up and took the pencil over from Mana's hands. She looked carefully at the map, without a doubt, examining the thing as she hadn't seen this version of it before. Then she scribbled some things around on the map as well before marking the circle amongst other circles with a Kumogakure insignia.</p><p>"You'll find Team Cirrus here, when we encountered them there were three of them: this weird beanie wearing guy named Inaba, a short stature and even shorter tempered guy named Quill-B and a girl named Junipu-R. We've bargained with them only so we've never seen them in combat. I wish we could give you something more but we don't have much. This Quill-B guy wears two swords so he may be a swordsman, the rest of them look pretty puny so they may be specialist ninja of some sort – maybe ninjutsu, genjutsu or sealing techniques." Tiwul carefully explained.</p><p>Another overdrawn pause killed it once the chubby young lady was done talking and the trade finally transpired.</p><p>After the duo of the Sand Village took off, rushing to start following the tracks of Team Fir of Konohagakure Kiyomi stared at Mana in disbelief.</p><p>"You just gave up a team from your own village…" she uttered in a clearly objecting tone.</p><p>"I gave up the team of my own boyfriend. Things like villages I couldn't care less about…" Mana rudely snapped back at her friend before rushing off ahead.</p><p>"Can you believe it!? She had the option to just get the information, they would've just given it to us!" Kiyomi freaked out just as Meiko had predicted. Mana couldn't hear what the two were talking about, she didn't know if Meiko's planned soft cuddles strategy helped please her friend and calm her down.</p><p>If the staffers were following the progression of the exam and if they heard of this – Mana's participation in this exam was as good as done. The final exam of the Chuunin Exams was always this massive fighting extravaganza under a clear sky with officials from all the villages involved participating and admiring the next generation. The promises of what's to be. Winning that event didn't make one chuunin, a committee of anonymous ninja still decided if the ninja demonstrated the skills needed for a chuunin to have and if they were ready to join the circle of the higher ranked ninja.</p><p>Needless to say, people who gave up teams of their own villages would've never passed. Not because it's against the rules, it wasn't. Not because it's illegal in some way, it wasn't. Because of the social stigma betraying one's own comrades brought up, the unwritten social mark of loyalty one must have upheld. Obviously there'd be no such stigma eliminating a team of one's own village if they were one's targets, that's just following the rules. What Mana did just now was unforgivable in the eyes of plenty of the more conservative villagers.</p><p>What she did was unforgivable in her own eyes. Meiko finally caught up to Mana.</p><p>"I… I think Kiyomi will be fine. She's only half a national loyalist herself, nowhere near as conservative as Tala so… You should be fine… Eventually." The blacksmith tried calming Mana down as the magician just silently kept moving ahead with her head sunken down, tears running down her cold and lifeless face.</p><p>"If I'm ever injured to where I weigh you down... Promise me." Mana uttered quietly.</p><p>"Yeah, just like you, I won't give up…" Meiko cheerfully barked out lifting her fist up for a fist bump.</p><p>"Give me up immediately." Mana shook her head angrily before stalling back to allow angry and betrayed looking Kiyomi to take her over. The blonde didn't even look Mana's way. Obviously she was angry, even more obviously their friendship lasted too long and they did too much for each other for it to end like this. But just for this moment in time, neither one of the two wanted to even look at each other.</p><p>The irony still was that Mana hated herself much more than Kiyomi must've done on an irrational and highly emotional level.</p>
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<a name="section0294"><h2>294. Chasing The White Rabbit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With decent pacing it didn't take Team Hokage that much time to reach the marked location where Mana's target was last seen by Team Dunyazad. While initially there was little holding back the trio's speed of movement, after they got a bit closer to the location the speed had to be diminished. One couldn't track their opponent moving at a breakneck place and thrashing the forest around them as they moved. Ninja could move at unbelievable speeds in combat but moving at anywhere near those speeds while travelling or tracking raised too many problems.</p><p>"We should've asked Tiwul when exactly they've spoken to Team Cirrus. Measuring time is important when tracking…" Mana mumbled out while observing the environment around her for clues.</p><p>"There are sensors in our clan. They're able to track people by the residual chakra signature leading them to the actual chakra signature far outside their range. Maybe you should try it?" Kiyomi shrugged. Her tone was strict yet not as strict as her eyes when she looked at Mana. Then again, the magician knew where she was going into when making the decision she made.</p><p>After a brief pause of hesitation the girl knelt down and closed her eyes. She placed her hands calmly on her thighs so that neither her feet nor her arms went numb in the lengthy process of calling for her sensory to surface. Sometimes accessing her natural gift came easier, sometimes it was incredibly difficult.</p><p>A good twenty minutes later the magician opened her eyes and stood back up, rubbing her tense shoulders and ankles she shook her head with sadness and disappointment.</p><p>"There aren't even actual chakra signatures within my range." She uttered.</p><p>"Oh well, you tried…" Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"Well…" upon Kiyomi's mouth opening Mana expected something offensive or edgy thrown her direction as there was no way that something as controversial as relaying intelligence on a Konohagakure's team would've been let go soon. "It's way too tough to tell time in here anyways. Even if we did ask Team Dunyazad about it we'd have received nothing exact. Then we'd only have that approximate to compare to our own approximate measurements. We'll need to fly a little blind with this tracking quest of ours." the blonde surprised Mana with her composure from being overly confrontational about how the information came into their hands to begin with.</p><p>Kiyomi had plenty of reasons to despise Mana's decision. Her own brother, the only person to look at her like something more than a delicate Yamanaka heiress, a soft and tender crimson rose surrounded by walls of thorns of much more poisonous and defensive plants, was killed by bandits. Those very same rogues had to obtain information about her brother, it was more than likely that Mana's sellout of Kouta's team ringed too close to whoever sold out her brother.</p><p>"Well… Let's go in a straight line, filter the surroundings, observe several branch layers. Watch for traces on the moss, as subtly and quietly as they went, we should pick up some tracks if they got too tempted to dash around at breakneck speeds at any point." Meiko suggested. Mana nodded in agreement submissively.</p><p>"I'll watch the upper layers, Meiko can watch the middle layers, Mana watch the bottom layer." Kiyomi shrugged before disappearing in a single leap up. There was an area of around five kilometers to observe for the smallest traces or damage on the tree bark or the moss that vegetated on the old as the Leaf Village itself branches of the Forest of Death.</p><p>Meiko and Mana scattered as well. The magician allowed herself to immerse in the plunging down, she knew that with proper balance she could've stopped herself by vaulting off one of the thicker lower branches anyways. The air whizzing by refreshingly by her cheeks and fondling her hair just felt too tempting in her greatly stressed state. A feat such as stopping herself close to the ground, as inhuman as it sounded, would've required no chakra augmentation from her part at all.</p><p>The Forest of Death was utterly magnificent. Deadly, primal yet magnificent. It was especially beautiful and beloved to those who were looking to track someone located inside it. All around the year the conditions barely changed, no rain, no snowfall or other kinds of unnatural weather conditions to disturb the natural traces. Someone from the mountainous regions like the Kumogakure wouldn't know how to move on such a delicate mossy environment. Maybe Team Cirrus could hop around fast and free on the rocky surface of the Land of Lightning's rocky wastelands and deserts but they'd leave plenty of marks on the local moss or damp forest soil.</p><p>Whatever rainfall that fell over the Konohagakure got absorbed through the leaves of the tall and widespread plants. Then all that humidity got filtered and transferred straight to the soil through the plant itself and through its roots watering the soil and benefiting every smaller plant that was less lucky to break through. The vines that wrapped around the tall and thick trees sapped that water straight from the barks of the trees without bothering to wait for their share below. They were the corner cutters of the forest.</p><p>Carefully so that she didn't leave too many traces of her own, those that could then be confused with traces of Team Cirrus, Mana leaped from one lower part of a tree to another, scanning the soil and lower branches like an owl. More so – her vision as a capable young ninja was thousandfold that of the hunter bird. A single scratch on the overgrown with moss bark would've never slipped past her quick and accurate sight.</p><p>"Nothing…" Mana sadly sighed before quickly making her way back to where the search started and scaling her way back to where Team Hokage split from.</p><p>"I've got tracks – those are man's tracks, the guy walks like an elephant and the space between the several tracks I've found is too wide for it to be female's tracks." Meiko grinned with a thumb up.</p><p>"Yeah, I've got several too. One man, one female. Judging by the spaces between the separate same person's tracks one is of average height where the female is much shorter. They were moving to the north-west from here." Kiyomi nodded before looking at the direction she predicted the team to have gone.</p><p>"I found no footprints…" Mana looked away.</p><p>"No surprise, they'd not have moved on the ground level…" the Yamanaka shrugged.</p><p>"I found a bunch of these though…" Mana showed the team a plastic bag of instant noodle packs and cups left behind.</p><p>"Okay, so we got something… Still, can't say for sure if those tracks are Team Cirrus' without templates to compare them with." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"We may." Mana interrupted. "All of those cups are single brand. That means that whoever took them with them either bought them in bulk or they prefer this brand. As someone who recently purchased a bulk of instant ramen, such as those Meiko devoured while recovering from her injury, I've never seen this brand of noodles in the local stores."</p><p>"Okay, so we have a reason to suspect that whoever left the trash behind liked instant noodles and was a foreigner." Kiyomi closed her eyes deeply in thought.</p><p>"It was a single person that left the noodles behind. There were multiple packs scattered in highly consistent distances and matching numbers, just about enough in quantity to feed a single person with a relatively small appetite." Mana added.</p><p>"Are you saying that these were found in multiple locations and were eaten over separate occasions? Then yeah… I suppose Mana has a point, I'd have eaten that much as an appetizer all at once!" Meiko smiled before shyly rubbing her nose.</p><p>"Except these aren't ramen cups, they're instant noodles of spaghetti." Kiyomi noted after examining one cup and one pack separately, noticing that both of them matched in their content and even taste. "Marinated tomato flavor too… Ewww."</p><p>"Instant spaghetti are most popular in Kumogakure. Instant ramen is more common in Land of Fire, fish burgers are more common in Kumogakure and the Archipelago whereas Land of Snow is proud of their tomato and chili soups, Land of Wind with their desserts and sweets and Land of Earth with their baked goods. Any cheese, non-ramen noodle or non-soup tomato or chili snacks would be most likely bought by a Kumogakure villager." Mana recounted her short acquaintance with various cuisines back in old man Aporius' library.</p><p>"Still, we can't be sure it's not someone with specific taste in Kumogakure cuisine or someone wanting to confuse everyone by making themselves seem like a Kumo ninja, for whatever reason." Meiko bellowed while scratching her chin. "Plus no one's that much of an idiot to just dump their food in the open like that, that's how you get attacked by giant bears."</p><p>"We got attacked by giant bears…" Kiyomi looked at Meiko ironically.</p><p>"That's how we found out how you get attacked by giant bears." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"Either way, we don't need to sit here and try to find out for sure – all we need is a reason to believe that the tracks belong to Team Cirrus which, I'd say, we've got. Let's move after those tracks north-west, slow and steady." Kiyomi ordered before leaping off and disappearing in the vast dark green of the forest.</p><p>"Well, she didn't wait long before appointing herself as leader…" Meiko grinned before dashing off to follow the blonde.</p><p>Mana looked back and rubbed her elbow uncomfortably before following her teammates. Maybe it was for the best that Kiyomi started calling the shots. Mana has been the de facto leader of the squad that went off after the Box of Ultimate Bliss and because of that experience Meiko fully trusted the magician's calls. That sort of made her leadership on the battlefield more efficient even though the matter was never fully discussed between the girls. Given the recent events, Mana had no problem with relinquishing any chances of ever calling the shots in the team. Team Hokage needed someone more reliable and more experienced anyways.</p><p>The trio moved slowly and with their eyes and ears open, Mana tried reaching out for any chakra signatures whenever they took short breaks or whenever Kiyomi felt like the great forest beyond needed a little scoping out. It didn't take more than thirty five kilometers to run into seven chakra signatures a full hundred meters ahead.</p><p>Carefully so that they weren't found the girls positioned themselves on top of the trees to observe the thick and messy bush field below. It was a less than ideal fighting plane, usually one would've preferred finding a small grassland opening or a larger crater where there was hope of seeing the Sun break through the thick layers of the leafage of the colossal tree structures laying one over the other, competing for light and rainwater.</p><p>The hectic field of battle below had various different combatants. Mana's eye excitedly caught a glimpse of her target, the girl she almost instantly recognized from the file but there were simply too many other factors involved. The fight appeared to be four on three, stacked against Team Cirrus' favor.</p><p>"Do we watch or do we get involved?" Meiko looked at Mana before receiving her answer from the other side making her turn fast and feeling like she just got scolding boiled water thrown on her from Kiyomi's side.</p><p>"We watch, the four of the enemy of our enemy may reveal their abilities to us which will be useful in the future. Not all teams in here are our friends and Mana only has one boyfriend she can sell out – we need information like this for potential bargaining in the future." Kiyomi whispered quietly.</p><p>Her friend's words really did sting deep, not because Mana was misunderstood or because Kiyomi was somehow wrong with her statements. The magician did sell out her boyfriend's team because when the choice of giving up on her ideals or her love came to be she made a choice. Even now she still thought it was the right choice, granted, she still hadn't seen all of the fallout to come from this decision.</p><p>The trio of Team Cirrus were just like Tiwul described them: one blond haired beanie wearing young man, one swordsman with typical Kumogakure uniform and a casually dressed young lady – Mana's target. The pale skinned beanie wearing young man stuck out from the bunch almost the same as Mana did among Konoha peers. Just like Mana looked to be of more far off northern Kumogakure descent of darker skinned people, this youngster looked pale enough to be more of the cloudy and murky Kirigakure, instead of scorching hot Kumogakure.</p><p>Junipu-R, Mana's target girl, looked almost like a civilian. She wore casual clothing that'd have completely blended her in somewhere in her native country where her skin color didn't stick her out like a sore thumb. As someone several shades darker than most people around her, Mana could relate to sticking out in that way. Being called adjectives like "rare" and "exotic" by people who wanted to note her difference without offending her.</p><p>The swordsman to whom Tiwul referred to as Quill-B previously was a more typical looking Kumogakure shinobi. Dark skin, typical Kumogakure native features. Strict looking face and orange hair that really scratched at the beholder's eye. Tiwul's intel was wrong, however, the young man didn't just wear two swords – he wore four shorter ones. It was a simple mistake to make if she didn't observe the man's back carefully. He only had two long cross shaped sheathes but short swords were located diagonally on both his upper and lower back. Judging from how he handled himself, he wielded them with great skill as well, switching in between them on the fly effortlessly. Flowing like a river and striking precisely and lethally like a viper.</p><p>Finally what appeared to be a hectic clash of swords, fists and feet, was slightly brightened up by a show off of one of the enemy kunoichi abilities. A tall and bulky built young lady from the team of four confronting Team Cirrus bit her thumb as she was blown back by beanie wearing Inaba's overhead kick which missed her head but landed on her shoulder and chest. The enemy kunoichi wore round plates on her chest and around her shoulders and wore her long blond hair in a slithering braid that had a sharp steel weight attached to it, likely to turn something most long haired girls considered a nuisance into a controlled battlefield tool.</p><p>After the braided kunoichi completed her set of hand seals a strange looking blue skinned equestrian being charged from the cloud of smoke. It looked like a combination of a nasty amphibian and a horse as it had fin-like features around where horse's ears would've been. The rampaging amphibian equestrian continued to tackle, kick and bite at Inaba throwing him around like a ragdoll. That was when another one of the enemy ninja appeared behind the beanie boy and tried cutting him down. The teammate of the braided kunoichi was a strong looking brawler of blond hair and verily similar features when compared to his teammate. Yet he wielded a signature weapon of sorts – a blade of black obsidian-like alloy, when it set ablaze shortly before it'd have cut poor Inaba open Meiko almost screeched in joy, only due to Mana and Kiyomi's quick thinking they managed to keep themselves concealed and cover up the redhead's ecstasy.</p><p>Luckily for the short beanie boy, his injury was prevented when the four blades wielding swordsman he had for a teammate blocked the blazing sword with a cross shaped block of two of his own blades. It looked like the blaze that came off of the enemy swordsman's blade was an intense fire blast that radiated with considerable force of its own as the young Kumogakure swordsman struggled to maintain his perfectly timed block in place against the immense force of the opponent's blade. Luckily enough, before the beam of blasting flames engulfed and incinerated him the blade's fire went out and the two swordsmen pushed each other away.</p><p>Quill-B only slid back right into the relentless physical offensive of the other two ninja. A tall and bulky brown haired and long faced stud that continued to strike at the overwhelmed swordsman with elbow jabs and knee strikes relentlessly and a much smaller and more frail looking young man with bland grey colored hair and poor rags for an attire. Mana noticed how the second frailer young man held his hands, she could tell that while the frail shinobi could fight hand to hand he kept his hands in the ready for impromptu hand seals and any quick ninjutsu combinations he could perform.</p><p>"Is this enough observation?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Not really, we still only know the abilities of two of the enemy combatants. Plus, what do you care if Junipu-R's team is taken out? She's your target, the enemy is doing your job for you." Kiyomi looked strictly back at Mana.</p><p>"Those four are clearly an alliance of teams, likely they both lost one member and decided to pool their efforts together. Such alliances are too dangerous for us and we'd be wise to work with other teams to break them before they grow and come after us." Mana noted.</p><p>Kiyomi opened her mouth to speak but she noticed that Meiko was already out of hiding and leaping down with her kunai in hand shrieking in joy.</p><p>"Yahoo! We're fighting an enemy alliance!" she cheered like a little brat.</p><p>"OK, what the actual shit? We need a tipping factor but this ain't exactly it…" Inaba the beanie guy remarked watching Meiko land less than graciously and dash to his aid.</p><p>"Well, Steinck, it seems you may need to use your ability after all!" the frail enemy ninja of the alliance grinned after the relentlessly striking teammate of his got pushed back by Junipu-R's lightning bolt ninjutsu technique and hit a tree. Junipu's technique didn't appear to be strong enough to have left any lasting damage however.</p><p>After the tall enemy alliance striker, to whom his ally referred to as Steinck, observed Mana and Kiyomi quickly leaping out from hiding to join Team Cirrus in their defense he indifferently glanced back at the amphibian horse summoner and her burning sword wielding ally.</p><p>"Corot, Hafred. Don't bail on our alliance now. We see this to the end! I won't tolerate you two bailing when we've found my target!" he angrily warned his own alliance.</p><p>"Don't worry, for the medical help your friend gave our friend Vespiga, this alliance won't shake even when the odds are against us!" the summoner Corot replied confidently.</p><p>"If it weren't for your medical ninja friend, we'd have died. What's elimination compared to that? Our alliance stands!" her teammate Hafred affirmed.</p><p>Something about the fact that the alliance of four wasn't scared off by Team Hokage leaping in to the Team Cirrus' aid felt off to Mana. Either way, an alliance of genin sounded dangerous and needed to be stopped, if that meant teaming up with her target's team temporarily – so be it.</p>
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<a name="section0295"><h2>295. Fickle Alliances</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was six on four in this situation and yet the enemy refused to back down. That meant that either this was an all or nothing effort for the alliance or it was the final target before the entire alliance passed this exam. In the first case Mana would've wanted to know what exactly caused such a desperate approach to hunting for targets, in the second – she could've split the alliance in half by determining which team already had all the targets and which was one short.</p><p>The enemy didn't let Mana think, try and pick up the required clues to piece it all together and make something of it all. The towering genin with the Iwagakure headband called Steinck rushed forward, separately from the rest of his alliance and it didn't seem like any of the four hurried after him to support the brawler. Now that Mana looked at him from the ground up, she realized how absolutely terrifying the Iwagakure genin was. He was not simply tall, he was more than twice Mana's size and almost half of his frame taller than any normal ninja his age.</p><p>Steinck ran in a mad dash after Kiyomi, it was a smart strategy – she was a Yamanaka who was capable of massive battlefield disruption with her hidden clan techniques. The fact that the Iwagakure ninja could even identify a Yamanaka to prioritize her in the first place was impressive, Yamanaka weren't too common, if at all prominent in Iwagakure. It was something one would've read about or heard from hearsay.</p><p>The worst part was that Steinck was deceitfully agile. His muscles moved in all the right ways, his limbs looked elastic and fit as those of a ninja in their physical prime. Had Kiyomi not been above most genin in skill, even if her skillset wasn't quite focused on martial arts, she'd have been absolutely devastated. Luckily enough she managed to lean and vault aside from the standing push kick into a diagonal stomp and knee strike combination. After Steinck began cornering the blonde with his ceaseless taijutsu combinations Quill-B, one of Junipu-R's teammates came in to back Kiyomi up.</p><p>Quill-B came in to block Steinck's combinations with his blades that were positioned at the backs of his arms up to the elbows, similarly to how Hisako used to wield them and strike with those blades using elbow strike motions. Something odd happened, Steinck jumped up caught in an unexpected sensation and dashed back as the alliance prepared to back him up. Quill charged in regardless. Kiyomi stood there and observed the Kumogakure's swordsman's motions, she wasn't familiar with his fighting style, she couldn't fight together with him, just watch him and wait for familiar strings she could join in on.</p><p>Quill-B's blades stroke and slashed wildly, the young man spun like a spinning toy on his feet, his knees and his arms. There were buzzing blades everywhere. Mana was barely able to even see anything more clearly than just a silver whizzing flashes and blurs. Just what on Earth was this fighting style? Had Kiyomi tried joining in on Quill-B's attack in attempt to prevent Steinck regrouping she'd have been torn to shreds herself. Glowing in crimson streaks Steinck backed up. The bright red goop dripped from his wounds reminding how real and intense those attacks were.</p><p>"Those blades are high quality. So much chakra weaved into the alloy, not much imbuement or augmentation is needed…" Meiko noted. "I don't know how to complement his style…" she uttered looking at Mana questioningly.</p><p>The equestrian amphibian charged at Quill-B with a wild stomping barrage raising dirt and dust off the ground. Wherever the amphibian stamped the ground holes and devastation followed, the ground shook in the wake of its rampage. The other swordsman named Hafred charged in with his pitch black obsidian blade slashing at Quill-B, who was on the defensive now.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Thunder Wonder!" Inaba yelled out as a lightning bolt fired off from his hands bashed right into Hafred's right jaw sending him rolling aside. The lightning chakra enveloped the swordsman's entire body and continued to send shocks. Judging from the intensity of the ninjutsu and the sound it raised it didn't look like it dealt that much damage, regardless, Hafted remained down on the ground.</p><p>"Transportation Seal!" Junipu-R chanted as Inaba's response to enemy alliance's pressure allowed her to weave a technique of her own. Mana was so invested into observing the battlefield and its conditions and making mental observations about the things she had noticed that she completely forgot to analyze her potential opponent's strengths and weaknesses. She didn't see how many hand seals Junipu used in her sealing technique and how proficient she was at weaving them.</p><p>Large and intensely bright circular sealing glyph discuses made of solid chakra constructs materialized around Junipu-R's hands. The girl slung one of those discs onward meanwhile she gently laid down on her knee and placed the other one on the ground, as it was placed the sealing glyph stayed on the ground whereas the other one stopped at less than eight meters from where it was launched from.</p><p>"Multi-Kunai Jutsu!" Quill-B shouted out as he threw a handful of knives at the first transportation seal on the ground. In mid-air those kunai poofed in a cloud of smoke and multiplied several times over before getting absorbed and disappearing into the first seal and exiting from the other one in the air. The summoner Corot braced herself as the rain of knives enveloped her. After the initial shock of several knives grazing her, the aquatic equestrian shielded her with its large body taking all of the damage for itself and disappearing.</p><p>Meiko launched herself at the opened up and vulnerable body of Corot, the burning sword wielder Hafred interrupted her madly fast swipes that'd have quickly opened the girl's throat and gut in mid-swing. The previously stunned swordsman had managed to pick himself up, even if weak crackles of lightning still lit up and stunned him painfully, slowing him down for a brief moment or two. For a moment Meiko carefully backed up from the much longer reaching weapon, carefully using her inferior and shorter ninja tools to deflect dangerous swings and lean to safety. The two danced a very intimate dance of blades as Meiko took the role of a wary mountain cat. Attacking with relentless and lightning fast swipes of her short kunai blades before backing up as the larger and longer reaching dancer responded.</p><p>A streak of flames separated from Hafred's sword decimating Meiko's kunai blades completely. The steel just crumbled into dust right in the blacksmith's hands like the heat and concentration of the sword's flames was so intense that the massively inferior tools skipped the heating and melting stages entirely and just went straight on to being reduced to dust completely. Meiko's banged up chest plate fell apart finally folding under the immense heat and pushing force of the scorching blast of fire coming out of Hafred's blade and the red streak on the redhead's chest was hit with so much blaze that it got cauterized immediately. Meiko just coughed up in pain and shock of how powerful the swing and its aftereffects were.</p><p>Then in an instant the blacksmith dashed in with a crushing dropkick out of completely nowhere right at Hafred's own sword that bounced back from the crushing force and slammed into the young man's armor. It didn't look like she had successfully forced the obsidian sword to pierce Hafred's vital or important blood vessels in his shoulder area as the cut into his primitive armor was too shallow. Regardless of that – a branching streak of red shattered off like cracks of broken glass down the young man's shoulder.</p><p>"What an impressive comeback…" Quill-B noted in surprise. "I didn't expect her to snap back like that, evidently, neither did the opponent. Even if she wields no weapon, she used the opponent's own sword and his lowered guard!"</p><p>"We're both marked now…" Meiko grinned as if her own chest injury didn't bother her at all. It appeared that within fraction of a millisecond that it took for her to switch between injured and dazed off Meiko into murderous warrior Meiko she completely forgot about the hellish pain of the wound on her chest.</p><p>The Iwagakure youth who had stayed behind the alliance's fight weaved a pair of hand seals. The boy breathed in deeply. Mana's eyes caught his attack immediately, such a foolish manner of attack. Everyone was on their guard and ready to avoid it. Was this boy, this foolish or was this just a first string in a longer and more lethal combination?</p><p>"Water Style: Water Assault!" the young man gurgled out before spouting a large mass of water from his mouth rushing at Mana who had remained stationary for so long. He must've thought her to be a medical ninja who would only involve herself once her teammates got hurt. With a graceful and calculated back step Mana leaped back and behind a smaller tree – a sufficient enough barrier to stop any damage that such a low ranking ninjutsu technique would've caused.</p><p>"You're being reckless with your techniques, Erblau!" Hafred angrily grunted at his alliance mate who didn't appear to listen to him, just continue to weave further hand seals.</p><p>"Mystical Palm: Vapor Variant!" the Iwagakure genin, previously referred to as Erblau, continued to chant out as the small puddle of water created by his low ranking lackluster jutsu evaporated in thin air, indigo colored vapor circulated around Hafred's armor before disappearing in the crack of his armor completely as the blood stopped leaking from inside the cracked plate.</p><p>"A medical ninja…" Mana realized to her frustration. Someone of the boy's low ranking couldn't have been too efficient with healing ninjutsu but either way, it'd make her quest of defeating and splitting this alliance more difficult.</p><p>"For someone invested into scattering this alliance you're not very active, waitress-girl." Junipu-R noted curiously looking back at Mana.</p><p>"They actually stand a chance of winning this…" Mana uttered it to herself before angrily correcting the ebony Kumogakure girl on her exact profession and the nature of her odd attire.</p><p>"So you've noticed too?" Quill-B smiled. "Konoha ninja are quite impressive, I'd expect nothing less from a half-tan."</p><p>"Again with the skin thing, Quill?" Inaba the beanie guy angrily objected, he had a reason to be offended by the whole "paleskin" cloud hanging over him as he looked about as tan as someone who spent a lifetime living underground.</p><p>"You've earned my respect over time, Inaba, paleskins are simply less intelligent and that's a scientific fact proven by actual scientists! Proven again now by this waitress-girl's remarkable show of perception and strategic thinking." Quill-B explained slowly.</p><p>"What do you mean, Mana?" Kiyomi asked slightly irked to be reminded of the casual racism she herself endured in the hands of the Imarizu who had kidnapped her some time earlier.</p><p>"We may have the numbers but… The numbers are working against us. Everything in here is working against us – we don't know our allies' abilities, their fighting styles, strings and moves. We know nothing of how to strengthen their styles and back them up. If we'd try to we'd simply get in their way or get injured ourselves. In addition the battlefield is too tight and thick to allow us these mistakes. In order to fight together we need to pretty much rub our shoulders…" Mana explained. Much to her surprise the enemy didn't appear to object or try to intercept her explanation, it was an odd thing to notice all by itself.</p><p>"What are you waiting for, Hafred?" Corot noted that as well.</p><p>With a confident smile Hafred lifted his black sword and pointed it at Meiko, "Any time now, young lady…" he taunted her before relaxing and taking a more open stance.</p><p>"Guys, no need to worry over me, just go at them, really, I'm fine!" the medical ninja of the enemy alliance blushed as he began rubbing his cheeks awkwardly.</p><p>"It appears the enemy is having second thoughts. If the waitress-girl and her team decides to retreat it'll be better off for us, let her talk…" the giant named Steinck thundered out looking at Corot and completely ignoring his medical ninja of an ally acting out.</p><p>"So you're done helping us? You haven't really done anything yet…" Junipu-R squinted angrily at Mana. Her strangely confrontational personality didn't completely evade the magician's analysis and mental safekeeping.</p><p>"That's not what I said. I'd also appreciate if you stopped calling me…"</p><p>"To the point, Mana!" Kiyomi butt in.</p><p>"Fine. We just need to change our style. I won't blab about my suggestion like this with our enemy standing nearby though…" Mana looked back at Kiyomi suggestively. Within moments the mental link was established and the enemy team realized that Team Hokage wasn't about to back out.</p><p>"Don't freak out, guys, this is Kiyomi's mental link hijutsu. It's a hidden technique of her clan's…" Mana let out a mental signal.</p><p>"Wow… That's… A lot of people…" Kiyomi grunted in pain, it was likely she wouldn't be able to keep all six on the link while engaged in active combat.</p><p>Mana's attempts of explaining her suggestion got put on halt. The colossal genin Steinck quickly went through a handful of hand seals before smacking his arms together. His giant thigh and foot got rotated around and flexed out like that of a sumo wrestler before being smacked into the ground.</p><p>"Lava Style: Wet Floor!" the giant thundered out as the cracked dirt began to glow red. The force of the rising magma wasn't too great but it was remarkable regardless, enough to heat the dirt and turn it into a finger thick layer of searing molten rock. The magma slowly enveloped the lower areas of the trees in flames beginning to incinerate them and swallow them up at a turtle's pace while the smaller bushes got completely scorched up almost instantly by just being near the glowing red liquid.</p><p>The combined forces of Team Cirrus and Team Hokage scattered to the tree line.</p><p>"Was that actual lava?!" Meiko yelled out making all the ninja inside the mental link cover up their aching temples as the intensity of the girl's thoughts gave them all a small headache. The link even began breaking up and breaking into static as the effect was multiplied even worse for Kiyomi.</p><p>"That's the nature of all elemental ninjutsu – manipulation of the elemental forces. We've seen his friend evaporate water before, it's likely that Steinck simply used his chakra to elevate the temperature and melt small amounts of rock and minerals and raise the mixture up." Kiyomi replied.</p><p>"They all work together so well… And appear to get along with each other too." Mana noted.</p><p>"It's too troublesome to keep them all online, I'm just keeping the beanie guy on because he's the closest." Kiyomi explained. "You'll relay whatever Mana suggests to the others."</p><p>"We need to fight them differently. Not to try to take them all at once while attacking all together. Instead we need to fight one at a time, quickly switching in and out, wearing one select member of their alliance down one by one." Mana quickly got to the point.</p><p>"What Quill-B said previously was true, with all our minds together we'll kiss them adieu!" Inaba chanted energetically before his own signature faded away.</p><p>"I could really do it without all of his rhyming." Kiyomi admitted.</p><p>"I don't remember your technique having a quantity limit. From what I remember it is mostly limited by its range…" Mana relayed through the link before noticing that the summoner girl Corot was following her and hearing some more movement not too far away from her. Seeing how her involvement so far was so lackluster she was likely targeted as the weakest link of the two teams.</p><p>"Of course I could've kept all of them online, I just needed to make an excuse to drop them eventually so that someone really silly doesn't accidentally slip the fact that Junipu-R is Mana's target on the link…" Kiyomi relayed back.</p><p>Mana leaped and swung around the branches using the tree for cover as a barrage of kunai and shuriken flew her way, piercing through the tree easily but the fact that she hid behind it at least partially covered her up as a clear target.</p><p>"Nice thinking…" Mana commended her friend.</p><p>"It's true, it does sound like something I'd do!" Meiko giggled out. A loud cracking noise followed her speedy shoulder tackle at the enemy alliance that was evaded leading to Meiko crashing through a pair of trees. Corot flipped gracefully in mid-air before kicking the blacksmith down. It didn't look like the impact carried that much force, likely Corot wasn't a physical combatant and just used this as a free hit exploiting an opening provided for her.</p><p>Mana's own hands blurred through the hand seals before she pointed her hands at the enemy and leaped out of the cover.</p><p>"Hell Skewer Jutsu!" she chanted quietly as Corot began frantically shaking and trying to block invisible attacks in mid-air. It was a simple scare tactic technique that made the enemy believe that swords were materializing from thin air and aiming to skewer them to the ground. It had absolutely no effect other than visual distraction but Mana wondered if she had allies hidden that could've exploited this opportunity.</p><p>The magician screamed out in pain as a sword pierced her own thigh and pinned it to the tree. Mana looked at the wound with teary eyes realizing how miniscule her chances were to fight her target now that her own bone was sticking out from her leg and blood was squirting from the wound where a sword was gapping from. A shocking painful sensation made her shaking frantically body freeze in a creeping up feeling of panic fear – her hand was also pinned up to the tree by another identical looking sword.</p><p>"Wait a second…" Mana realized that this technique matched none of the profiles of her previously observed enemies and it suspiciously matched her own genjutsu she just used. Now that her own mind realized the trick she just somehow cast on herself her hand weaved the needed hand seal with little to no trouble.</p><p>"Dispel!" she firmly shouted out as the swords slowly faded like a mirage together with her wounds.</p><p>How on earth did she get hit by her own illusion just now?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0296"><h2>296. Goats On A Bridge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We're closing in on the summoner." Kiyomi's thoughts echoed in Mana's mind through the link. "I think Team Cirrus are working on the flaming sword guy."</p><p>"Wait." Mana quickly interrupted her friend. "She's got something. Some unknown ability, don't fire anything at her just yet. Try picking off the medical ninja first. I'll hold Corot here for a while."</p><p>"The numbers are on our side. If she summons something else we'll lose that advantage." Kiyomi tried to object.</p><p>"She reflected my genjutsu back at me somehow. Just think of what if that's an ability she can use to reverse your clan hijutsu. It will definitely make everything worse unless we learn what exactly happened there." Mana angrily snapped back at her friend.</p><p>An uncomfortable pause took over the link. For a moment there it was difficult to tell if the link was active at all. A short "I'll leave you to it then", issued by Kiyomi, ended the pause after the Yamanaka finally understood how much worse the situation could've gotten if Corot's abilities weren't properly analyzed.</p><p>"If that's true… You won't be able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu against her, can you do it?" Meiko wondered with a seed of worry in her thoughts. The signal was getting weaker as the two retreated slightly to assist Team Cirrus in picking off the splintered ninja of the Iwagakure alliance.</p><p>"It has to be me. I need to understand how her ability works." Mana firmly replied. Truth be told, the realization of the fact that she was left with nothing but her almost emptied card supply and entirely defensive and reactive martial arts style made Mana's heart skip a beat whenever she thought about it. When she put this plan together she really didn't realize what she was signing up for, it was ironic that the least analytical member of the Team Hokage brought this down to ground level.</p><p>A thud made Mana's eyes snap back open. She leaped off of the cover of the tree she was hiding behind. A kunai could've been tossed fast and hard enough, provided it was made as a custom order from tougher stuff than the bulky commons, to pierce right through even the toughest of wooden materials. If this specific kunai got stuck it could've meant only one thing – such was its purpose and the only kunai whose purpose was to be stuck to a barrier in the way was an explosive one.</p><p>A powerful blast scattered larger chunks of wood, several got stuck in Mana's flesh or scratched her shallowly by grazing by. The girl insisted and suppressed her chakra augmentations on purpose to save up some chakra and not to further kick her network out of balance. She knew that it'd hurt but she was in the safe zone, technically, her limbs wouldn't have been pulled apart at that distance, having reacted so early.</p><p>The magician extended her arm to stop her fall and swing off onto another branch a bit higher up. This time certain miniscule augmentations needed to be used, else her shoulder would've popped out. Sure, a more physically intimidating ninja may have pulled something like this off with just their physical training and impressive agility and strength but Mana was a different kind of ninja.</p><p>"I need to see Corot, get to see her up close. I need to see her deflect my jutsu, see if it's a weapon, a seal or a jutsu of her own." The kunoichi thought for herself. Her hands flashed through more hand seals. Her palm lit up with bright glow of concentrated chakra. By itself it was absolutely harmless, even if Mana punched someone with this glowing hand it'd have done no additional damage than just punching them normally. This was the one of the first illusions she made up but she rarely, if ever found a use for it. She never needed to be crappy on purpose…</p><p>There was a first time for everything. Mana dove down, using her unenhanced palm and her legs to swing from lower branches or to slow down her leap. She could pick up feint sounds of footsteps after her. There were certainly people used to a more mountainous environment, they walked like heavy machinery. They wouldn't have bothered of leaving traces behind, somewhere deep in their minds they were still walking not over the mossy brittle wood but on mountain rocks and minerals. It was something instilled, something learned and kept deep in one's subconscious. It needed to be eliminated and done so over time.</p><p>They weren't loud, the toughness of the ground their feet treaded usually warranted one learning to step silently. That being said, complete disappearance to a ninja's ears and eyes was something very few ninja could do. Most just accepted the common Academy training in stealth and variated very narrowly off of it.</p><p>Right after Mana's feet planted firmly on the mossy and wet forest dirt she quickly looked up. She couldn't see anything. They were fighting like ninja were supposed to, they'll try to pick her off. Yes, they. The footsteps Mana heard before, the rustling of leaves was too widespread, too rapid. There had to be multiple ninja involved in this.</p><p>However Mana wasn't planning on getting taken out by textbook techniques. She placed her glowing hand onto the ground and after her palm was lifted the glow stayed and flared momentarily. It was too weak a glow to signal someone but it was certainly direct enough to attract attention – genjutsu needed a medium to be transmitted. Sometimes the user needed to attract one's attention with an unusual object, a sound, often enough a glow sufficed. It was very useful for illusion using ninja to utilize such unusual environmental details – most ninja had remarkable perception and details rarely evaded their senses. That could've been used.</p><p>The glow on the ground faded completely. Feeling shock that her illusion didn't work Mana looked down. It wasn't reflected back at her like before. The illusion just ended. Mana could even feel it in her network – the illusion no longer demanded further chakra input of her. It was over.</p><p>A sword pierced Mana from behind, all the way through the chest. The magician's eyes widened in pain, tears ran down her cheeks before the entire frame shook like a bag of skin filled with fireflies trying their best to let loose before her body dissolved into flowery petals.</p><p>Mana couldn't let this opening go unpunished. Her mind raced trying to remember which of her pockets still had cards she hadn't used before. Just to give her more time to think she threw a pair of hook kicks, striking at her taller opponent using her upper leg before wrapping her leg around his neck and leaping over him. She landed a pair of palm strikes, targeting Hafred's nose. Anything to make his eyes tear up and mess up his precision with that sword.</p><p>The swordsman swung his blade around but he was just a cornered and desperate opponent. Mana could have probably dodged such desperate swipes even as she was still a depowered civilian. She had hoped that her greater than usual experience in the field before taking this exam would've helped out before this all started. This was one of those few moments where she felt a bit more skilled and experienced than her opponent. His nose was burning from being slammed and cracked, his eyes were teary. Not ideal conditions for prime swordsmanship.</p><p>Four small equestrians rammed straight into Mana's side. They were so fast, so silent. So that's why Corot wasn't here to back her friend up – she was still hidden, trying to conceal her uses of Summoning Jutsu and whatever skill allowed her to cancel or deflect back opponent's jutsu.</p><p>Mana gripped her sides as a taste of blood made itself present in her mouth. That must've been a pretty nasty impact, she wasn't expecting it. Even with elementary augmentations she only managed not to immediately get splattered and still took some damage inside. That blowback force from the iron skulls of those blasted ponies sent Mana sliding back and rolling all over the dirt, she had to augment her body in several places to avoid breaking bones needlessly in that powerful blowback.</p><p>Still, for someone granted an almost free hit on an unsuspecting opponent engaging in combat with another ninja so that said ninja didn't recover and attack more efficiently, those little ponies carried little kick to them. A higher rank summon would've easily knocked Mana out with such a successful hit.</p><p>This was good… Those two were so thrilled by hunting down Mana that they forgot that two of their alliance mates were now taking on five other genin.</p><p>"Is that all you've got?" Mana asked taunting her opponents. She needed them on edge, even if together they could've easily injured her or sidelined her.</p><p>"Corot, I'm going back to supporting the others. Your Folkrumnir counters her abilities the best, keep her away!" Hafred yelled out finally having come to the same realization Mana had come to. As the swordsman rushed up and away at immense speed, his Iwagakure teammate took his place. Now that she showed herself Mana realized what changed in the formula – she held a round, green and brown buckler in her arms with variously colored diamond and flower shaped enhancements.</p><p>This weapon must've been the means of deflecting and absorbing Mana's jutsu. While the magician was overall quite satisfied with her level of experience and skill in this exam, this encounter reminded her that she could've used having a technique to destroy such weaponry. Surely nothing of the sort could've been used in exactly identical situations, seeing how any technique would either get absorbed or deflected back at Mana, in general, an ability to destroy weaponry would benefit her greatly.</p><p>"A lightning bolt could do… But it'd have to be intense enough to be qualified as a B-Rank ninjutsu and I don't know if something like this could be learned easily." Mana thought to herself as Corot remained stationary and watching Mana. The kunoichi knew exactly why this was so, while Mana previously avoided showing off her abilities, what little she had shown and had deflected must've already made it clear for the summoner that she'd be unable to beat the magician. Her goal was to stand there and keep Mana from aiding her team.</p><p>After a brief stare-down of the two girls, Mana just fell on her butt and relaxed her back. Corot turned her head in confusion before lifting her shield up and holding it tighter to her body, the ponies also surrounded her in a closer circle, wary of somehow being tricked.</p><p>"What're you doing?" Corot asked, judging from her voice she was almost afraid to ask it, almost like the magician's revelation as to what exactly made her so relaxed and confident would reveal something terrible, something that'd just make it all hopeless for the Iwagakure girl.</p><p>"Backing down so both goats can pass. The difference is that while I'm going to pass second, I'll be passing to facing more stubborn goats whereas you'll be headed to a freedom. Although given how our society works – I'm supposed to feel like a big winner here!" Mana sighed.</p><p>"What do you mean? Explain!" Corot demanded as her ponies lowered their heads and prepared to charge for another painful tackle.</p><p>"Your goal is to keep me here – that's fine by me. Your shield blocks any low ranking techniques I can throw your way, you've efficiently restricted most of my options here. Fighting you hand to hand would make me spend too much effort, I don't know if you've noticed this but this forest is all about the economy of effort." Mana explained.</p><p>"So, if you submit, nothing stops me from beating you!" Corot took an aggressive step forward, "I could join my team and help them, they need all the numbers they can get!" she slowly reduced the space between herself and Mana.</p><p>"True. But we both know you can't beat me. Your ponies are a low ranked summon, I have experience with summons and higher ranked summons cost a load of chakra and aren't too cooperative with genin summoners. These guys would never touch me and you know it. You could summon some aid but I wonder how much chakra you've got left after summoning that B-Rank amphibian horse and these D-Ranks, plus unsealing your shield. The shield also takes its own chakra cost to use, doesn't it?"</p><p>"Don't assume to know anything about my Folkrumnir!" Corot warned Mana, she stopped moving in and her eyes appeared to be getting rid of their aggression as well.</p><p>"I know enough. It has two special abilities, both of them cost chakra to use, like a technique of their own. That's how weapon abilities work, right? It can either absorb and nullify or deflect back a ninjutsu or genjutsu technique, right? But not only it is limited by rank, you also can't choose which of the two the shield chooses." Mana smiled trying to befriend the Iwagakure kunoichi.</p><p>"And how do you know that?" Corot sat down as the ponies around her poofed away, returning to where they were summoned from.</p><p>"Well, the first genjutsu I've used was Hell Skewer Jutsu – a very specific imagery based low ranking technique. If reflected I'd have easily identified my own technique which I did and dispelled it. A smart kunoichi would've instead chosen to absorb it and make me think you're incapacitated, luring me in for a surprising counterattack. The second one was Many Faced Jutsu – a technique that creates mirage-like genjutsu copies of me that appear from the light on the ground, your shield absorbed it instead of confusing me with copies of you appearing. Something like that would've simply baffled me and given more chance for your comrade of catching me by surprise. The odd choices gave your shield away." Mana slowly and in detail explained it to the Iwagakure girl who just calmly listened, with her shield still raised up and placed in between Mana and Corot.</p><p>"What about the rank of the jutsu it affects? You've only used low ranking illusions, how would you know how it affects a higher ranked technique?" Corot wondered. By now she realized that Mana had a bit more experience than her and was more curious than wishing to escalate a fight between them, especially given that the magician submitted so easily to just sitting this one out.</p><p>"A shield that affects all ranks of any abilities would simply be too powerful for a genin to wield. A village would not entrust a tool so priceless to a genin who is as likely to die in battle against a more powerful enemy as they are to accidentally lose it. Then there's the unwritten rule of chakra usage – commensurability. Usually to dispel or break a technique a chakra input matching it or greater needs to be applied. You'd simply not possess the chakra to wield a tool capable of such a wide reaching ability. I was completely assured of it when your shield failed to affect my Flower Petal Sanctuary Jutsu which is a B-Rank genjutsu technique, it also didn't affect Kiyomi's mental link technique, my guess is because it was used before the shield was unsealed." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"You're right. About almost everything… Folkrumnir is a shield entrusted to me by my grandfather and you've pretty much pinned down what it does. However the cost of chakra to use it doesn't come from me, the shield feeds itself from the jutsu it absorbs." Corot admitted.</p><p>"That's a pretty strong ability. Let's keep it a secret from Meiko – the armored teammate of mine. She'll be all over your shield if she finds out and will probably try to challenge you for it." Mana laughed out.</p><p>For a brief minute Corot shared that laugh before getting serious. "Why didn't you keep fighting? Don't you wish to support your own alliance? With your experience I'm sure you'd have beaten me eventually."</p><p>"I already told you – it'd have been pointless. I'd have wasted chakra, I'd have gotten injured and injured you. Before I used to not like fighting in general, now I really despise pointless fights. Plus, my team isn't used to fighting alongside Team Cirrus, I'd probably just have gotten in their way." Mana replied, slipping back in her memories to how she was before meeting Guru Ayushi and Hanasaku-sensei. Where Tanshu wanted to make a killer out of her, without compromises, Hanasaku and Ayushi tried to just shift her ideals into a more favorable direction creating the Mana that she was right now.</p><p>"So then there's a point in stopping us from beating Team Cirrus?" Corot pondered.</p><p>"Several." Mana nodded.</p><p>A party of ninja approached Mana and Corot, the six were surprised to see Mana and Corot just peacefully talking over things. Inaba, Quill-B and Junipu-R appeared to be mostly alright, so were Meiko and Kiyomi. They had several small scratches and bruises but nothing major that a little rest couldn't fix. Surprisingly enough Steinck also followed the temporary alliance of Team Cirrus and Team Hokage. He held on his shoulders the knocked out bodies of the other alliance mates of his.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Steinck. If I'd have come to rejoin you – she'd have followed and rejoined the enemy." Corot apologized her alliance comrade.</p><p>"It's fine. She must've realized that there was no need for her to be there. Somehow those five knew to focus specific targets. They just sat on our asses until they landed the successful hit." Steinck grunted angrily while looking away, clearly ashamed by his loss.</p><p>"Mana told us how to fight, the Team Cirrus guys knew which people were whose actual teammates." Kiyomi triumphantly smiled. She looked at Mana and nodded, her eyes were much softer than before and it looked like while the deep insult of the magician choosing to betray her own comrades rather than her ideals still hurt, Kiyomi was willing to look past it.</p><p>"I see. So you've eliminated the two members that were both members of separate teams, seeing how the alliance was made between two teams with one eliminated member in each – further fighting is now pointless. Corot and Steinck are from separate teams. I was too busy analyzing their abilities to think of such a simple solution." Mana admitted with a smile.</p><p>"Me and Erblau were members of Team Monazite. Seeing how Corot's Team Rutile is also from Iwagakure we kind of knew each other. We've both lost our teammates early on so we could've used each other's help… We lost our genjutsu user – Kepdur, Team Rutile lost their ninjutsu powerhouse – Vespiga. I guess alliance was ultimately just a temporary solution that prolonged the inevitable." The towering genin angrily admitted to himself as he was clearly frustrated over getting eliminated from the exam.</p><p>"Well then, now that we've helped you survive the attack of Iwagakure's alliance unscathed, I want to challenge Junipu-R to a one-on-one fight." Mana nonchalantly declared. "Junipu-R is my target."</p>
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<a name="section0297"><h2>297. Wild Dances</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You damn, dirty snake, I'ma make your slimy fangs ache!" Inaba angrily grunted holding his fist up and tensing himself up. The only reason why he didn't lash out and strike at Mana was because her teammates were close enough and Meiko has proven herself to be fast enough to intercept him midway.</p><p>"So that's your plan…" Kiyomi thought out loud before shrugging her shoulders lazily and looking around at the wildly unstable Kumogakure shortie and his darker tanned teammate who just calmly observed Mana's further actions.</p><p>"If you want me, you should've let them beat us up. Just watch us lose to them. What gives?" Junipu-R squinted angrily at Mana, stabbing with her eyes like they possessed the ability to poison somebody.</p><p>"It's pretty simple, really. I want to change the world, make it value life as something magical, just like I do. I hate causing people pain, I hate fighting meaningless battles…" Mana began explaining.</p><p>"So you're guilt tripping Junipu-R into fighting you alone. Just because you helped her and because accepting this deal can spare our participation in the exams further…" Quill-B grinded through his teeth. It was clear as day that his opinion of Mana changed from when he first saw her.</p><p>"I'm not manipulating anything. I just wanted to give Junipu-R an option to settle this by ourselves and spare our teammates the trouble. The participation of the Iwagakure alliance would've ruined that idea. By now you guys must know that three on three battles are terribly wasteful." Mana shook her head beginning to plead Junipu, her tone softened to match her lowered position somewhat.</p><p>"I don't think you know how this ninja thing works, you need to take your X out, no fireworks!" Inaba grinded his teeth again, like a dog ready to pounce but still restrained by the leader of his pack. Judging from the eyes of Team Cirrus, as Mana observed them, that was Quill-B.</p><p>"Jeez… She once stole a bag of food pills and she still won't let that go, if she stabbed someone in the back while they're peeing, or something, we'd never hear the end of it!" Kiyomi groaned.</p><p>Both Inaba and Junipu were switching their sights from Mana to Quill-B, watching both. One deserved a portion of their attention just to have her actions surveyed, the other, meanwhile, called most of the shots in Team Cirrus. Quill instead chose to look calmly at Junipu-R and ask a simple question.</p><p>"Do you think you can do it?"</p><p>Junipu lowered her head submissively before her eyes wandered off aside. She was clearly unsure, Mana didn't show her abilities off too much so it was tough for a non-sensor kunoichi to just go on a hunch. Mana, on the other hand, saw a general skeleton of R's abilities. She could begin formulating a plan, figuring out ways of how to overcome the Kumogakure kunoichi.</p><p>"It doesn't matter if I can or cannot do it. I need to." Junipu-R firmly declared by nodding her head.</p><p>"But you provide our team support, fighting head-on isn't your forte!" Inaba looked hopelessly at his teammate.</p><p>Just looking at all the emotions in the eyes of the Kumogakure ninja made Mana feel like scum. And yet it couldn't have been helped – she needed to fight, she needed to win. It wasn't a fight she was used to, not like the others. Mana wasn't fighting for someone's life or a chance to save it, she was protecting absolutely no one. This fight was bloody and dirty and completely selfish – just a primitive need to further herself in the competition and advance to a higher rank. It made the magician feel dirty and made her want to clean herself for hours after this, not even for the reasons of personal hygiene after being stuck in the Forest of Death for so long.</p><p>Honestly, it shouldn't have felt this bad. Mana didn't like that feeling of guilt crawling up from inside her lungs and all the way up to her throat before locking it with a cold and strangling grip. She went out of her way to give R an option to leave her teammates out of this, to have her team still survive in the exams even she lost, have them remain completely unharmed in this battle.</p><p>Steinck carefully placed his unconscious friends nearby and settled down. "We've raised some noise to these parts, if an enemy comes looking we'll help keep this matter between the two of them." The giant declared after looking at Corot who also nodded in agreement.</p><p>"Fine. We'll make it a sparring match." Junipu-R nodded. "A one on one fight until one of us is knocked out and unable to battle. I don't think either of us would trust each other with a surrender clause?"</p><p>"I would've…" Mana shyly admitted before rubbing her itchy nose, allowing her dark hair to cover her blushed face.</p><p>"Wanna call the countdown, Inaba?" Junipu-R looked at her teammate curiously.</p><p>"Are you speaking seriously? Asking a rapper to count down is total idiocy" Inaba crossed his arms around his chest.</p><p>"You're not a real rapper, Inaba, no one trusts you with a microphone back home." Quill-B rubbed his temples before calmly walking a few steps back and settling down on a larger stone. An old and mossy testament of an old structure that got totaled around these parts with a part of it landing all the way there.</p><p>"I'll do it!" Meiko ecstatically jumped up, "Finally taking on one of our targets is a refreshing change of pace for us!" she chuckled before extending her hand forward.</p><p>After the redhead finished counting down from three to one and swiped her hand signaling the beginning of the sparring fight Junipu took a wild dive sideways, shooting her arm out to calm her momentum down and steady her aim. Mana hadn't yet seen this movements and aiming this unorthodox, instinctively she reached for her cufflink trying to pull out a pair of clutch bladed cards to deflect any ninja tools being thrown her way.</p><p>Nothing slipped out.</p><p>With there being no time or proper balancing to her body, Mana covered up her face with her arm feeling sharp pain in her mid and lower arm. It was just senbon… While needles this long and this sharp penetrating her flesh and hitting the bone with their tips, damaging them ever so slightly, hurt immensely, Mana wondered why would Junipu-R use such a weak manner of attack for what basically ended up a free hit. She hadn't anticipated her card reserves having run down so drastically after taking down Clarmac with her newly improvised move.</p><p>A painful blast of force sent the magician rolling forward on the ground and struggle to pick herself up. The Kumogakure kunoichi had used the opening to move behind Mana with what she thought as a strong knockout kick to the back of her head. Sadly, Junipu's taijutsu skill, precision and chakra level was nowhere near the level needed to knock someone as experienced and skilled as Mana out immediately. Not that the magician didn't momentarily regret not having been knocked out as her busted and bleeding head let droplets of blood run down her sticky dark hair.</p><p>"You're lucky not to have blocked that kick…" Junipu smiled. It was a confident smile of a girl who thought she had the control of the battle, then again, while Mana felt like this display of force and exploit of an opening gave her confidence in the fact that she could eventually take Junipu-R down, R very much was in control so far.</p><p>Mana's eyes lingered down on the bunch of senbon still sticking deep in her arm. The girl's eyes widened for a moment before she pulled them out in a hurry, Junipu-R probably meant to drive them in and through the magician's bone by having Mana block her slow and relatively well telegraphed kick with the same arm. That'd have likely disabled her arm completely for the duration of the exam. As the bloody senbon hit the wet grass, clinging against each other in a high pitch, Kiyomi's pleading voice reached Mana.</p><p>"Get yourself together! What was that?"</p><p>She must've been confused, rightly so. Mana she knew was faster, smarter, stronger, more elusive. That one hitch with the missing cards threw the magician's entire fight out of its rhythm. It couldn't have happened again, it won't.</p><p>The girl's hand dragged through the bloody and wet grass picking up her fallen hat. Junipu once again tried to intercept the magician's actions with a well-placed barrage of shuriken. After the ninja tools left the kunoichi's hands they instantly raced to weave a bunch of hand seals.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" she chanted out as the shuriken multiplied four times over and expanded into a cloud of steel which all of itself was a pretty serious threat to Mana's health and, quite possibly, her life.</p><p>A metallic sounding chain of clangs symbolled the fact that the shuriken incoming at the magician got completely deflected by Meiko's masterfully crafted wand of Audra steel which was gifted to Mana and came out from the seal in the magician's hat. The girl's heart skipped a couple of beats, she had never before deflected this many tools with this much success. Only when she realized that it wasn't too much different from redirecting strikes and counter attacking, treating the wand as an extension of her own body, that Mana realized she could do it.</p><p>Without wasting any time, Mana extended the wand while weaving hand seals with her free hand.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" she chanted out as a beam of lightning chakra channeled through the chakra conductive Audra wand fired off at Junipu-R's general direction. Had it connected it'd have meant a painful shock for her opponent, also a temporary opening for Mana's more powerful attacks to come. After all, while she did successfully invent about a dozen techniques as a child, with this one being one of them, neither of them was of much actual use besides being flashy distractions.</p><p>The poor Kumogakure girl extended her arm forward, like a primitive self-defense instinct as the beam passed through and into her body. It was not a piercing lightning chakra projectile, merely a jolt of electricity capable only of painfully shocking the enemy. Still… When the other part of the beam exited through Junipu's other hand and blasted into the air before dissolving a pair of meters higher Mana's jaw opened up. That was no primitive covering oneself up, it was a controlled sealing technique transferring the jutsu upwards.</p><p>"It's that transportation seal she used before…" the magician realized before finally observing the small glyphs on Junipu's hands. "It was performed imperfectly though, she probably strained her chakra network with that. There were no hand seals, no name for the jutsu to help her body cope with the strain."</p><p>"Don't do that again!" Mana angrily scolded her opponent.</p><p>Junipu curiously raised her eyebrow.</p><p>"Don't treat your body like a rag like that! Don't abuse your network and spit at all rules of control. You can tear your entire network apart and it might ruin your life!" Mana pleaded with her opponent. Granted, she did so out of her own personal experience. It was she herself, after all, who abused chakra augmentation, something most genin should've had nothing to do with, to the point where it tore her system apart once.</p><p>Junipu's face changed into a warmer smile. "You're not a bad person, I can tell. You really were concerned about my team before, weren't you?"</p><p>"I'm not just picking on you. Obviously, I don't want both of us to fight needlessly beyond the point of reason. We've already been through a fight like that…"</p><p>The Kumogakure kunoichi then swiftly moved her hands into a hand seal position. Mana just prepared herself for an upcoming attack, having realized that she had little to no ninja tools to waste on simple distractions. The magician decided to instead rely on her evasive skills rather than get lured into an overly aggressive attack while trying to interrupt her opponent's hand seals.</p><p>"Transportation Seal!" Junipu-R yelled out as bright circular glyphs of much larger size and intensity extended around her hands as discs. Junipu placed one of them on the ground while throwing the other one Mana's general direction. The magician just smiled faintly.</p><p>"Magical Sparks Jutsu!" she chanted out firing a flock of her own Lightning Release chakra sparks through the secondary seal which closed down after absorbing most of them with the sparks blasting out from the one below Junipu-R. While Mana's technique wasn't overly damaging it still knocked the girl off her feet forcing her to roll backwards and prepare a kunai knife in her hand and get ready to defend from follow-up attacks which didn't come.</p><p>"The weakness of your technique is that your opponent can use it, if they know how it works…" Mana calmly stated while standing still.</p><p>"You didn't attack me just now, then you also failed to block that attack before…" Junipu-R mumbled to herself but Mana's superhuman ninja perception allowed her to pick up on bits and pieces of it. The Kumogakure kunoichi jumped at Mana with the kunai in her hand having come to the conclusion that Mana's poor hand to hand showings and reluctance to engage in close distance combat must've meant her lack of skill in it.</p><p>The magician leaned aside avoiding a simple strike and gently redirected Junipu's kick to where it threw the girl off of her balance and she stumbled. When Mana leaped in to exploit this opening by cracking at Junipu's knees from the side, effectively crippling the opponent temporarily, the Kumogakure kunoichi pushed off her body with her arms kicking at Mana's barely timed block.</p><p>Mana jumped back, she wasn't used to blocking. Blocking just a single strike by even a less physical opponent made her forearms twitch with pain before going numb. Exploiting this brief moment of numbness Junipu leaped in with swift jump kicks and palm strikes. Interestingly enough, this Kumogakure youngster had a very similar fighting style to what Mana used to use before learning her improvised newer one. One key difference was her unorthodox movements on the ground, using her arms and legs to spin around, almost like an entire dance on the floor turned to a fighting style.</p><p>Mana couldn't compete with those fast strikes, spin sweeps and rising palm strikes. Not with her numbed arms so she tried weaving away but for each one of her movements was a well-timed rolling kick or a strange headspin kick. It reminded the magician of Quill-B's style of swordsmanship. This must've been native to the region, this curious case of floor dancing.</p><p>"Mana is getting tagged, that's pretty impressive…" Meiko smiled after relaxing her aching neck and stretching out.</p><p>"Yet you seem awfully confident and relaxed, pale-skin" Quill-B noticed coldly.</p><p>"Sure, Junipu-R is clearly an unskilled and untrained taijutsu combatant. Mana hasn't really fought someone like that, she hasn't seen these wild strings and random strikes so her defensive style sort of falls short. Once Mana will see all of Junipu's moves she'll map them out and beat her easily. Anyways, which one of you likes instant spaghetti?" the redhead carelessly waved her arm.</p><p>Inaba raised his hand.</p><p>"Wanna share some, beanie guy?" Meiko winked his way.</p><p>"Are you crazy or do you just not care? Instant food is useless without boiling water. That's how it's best to be prepared, instant spaghetti ain't no simple matter." Inaba cheeked at the girl who just waved her hand.</p><p>"Just throw me a pack, scrub." She bellowed.</p><p>Mana fell on her back again and only avoided getting painfully grinded to the dirt because her opponent who couldn't even breathe properly when throwing strikes ran out of breath. The magician rolled back clutching at her aching ribs, cracked teeth and bleeding nose. Her right eye felt like just about swelling up. She couldn't believe that she still couldn't properly weigh and map out Junipu's style. She skipped so many blows and her moves were almost impossible to read. She could've sworn she faced some Kumogakure martial artists in the Sun Disc arena and none of them fought this way. It must've been a signature style of the newer generation, half dance, half fighting style.</p><p>"At this rate I may need to spit at my own advice and start augmenting myself more intensely instead of relying on my natural strength." Mana realized as the natural fear of losing her chakra control sparked in her chest again. She would've rather died than felt so powerless again, so crippled and unable to live up to her dream.</p><p>Mana's hands weaved a single hand seal as she tried catching her opponent's gaze with the tip of her wand. When Junipu's head began turning left and right in panic and she desperately tried to avoid thin air Mana knew that her illusion connected.</p><p>"Hell Skewer Jutsu!" she mumbled out to herself. It was such a simple illusion – appearance of decorative swords, similar to ones Mana used as stage props during her magic shows. She had seen that image so often, hundreds if not thousands of times that she's been able to recreate it with extra accuracy and lifelike qualities. She's been accidentally cut so many times by failing to do a trick just right, making the audience member's heart skip wondering if they've finally witnessed a trick going wrong, that she's been able to perfectly recreate the pain of those swords grazing her. Such a simple illusion was difficult to tell from reality.</p><p>Mana's hands raced through more hand seals. The swords that grazed and penetrated her opponent forcing wild screams of pain to come from her chest evaporated in thin air as the magician chose to dispel the illusion herself. She extended her wand forward again.</p><p>"Finger of Fate Jutsu!" the magician chanted out as she pointed her wand forward and a gust of wind extended onwards from the tip, aimed right at the center of Junipu's thigh. Thinking it was another illusion and not wanting to be caught in a chain of genjutsu that'd have worn her down to no end the Kumogakure ninja instinctively weaved the dispelling hand seal and tried dispelling it.</p><p>As the weak cutting blast of wind chakra pierced Junipu's thigh about as strongly and deeply as a kunai knife would've the young kunoichi must've realized that this technique was no illusion. Clutching her bleeding thigh the girl collapsed on her knee realizing that her odd taijutsu style may be immensely more difficult to rely on with this injury.</p>
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<a name="section0298"><h2>298. The Empirical Clause</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi's tapped her foot uneasily as if a terrifying theme of a tense thriller was running. She wasn't sure why but she was worried about Mana more than she'd have liked the people around her to see. She put up a tough façade but every time Junipu-R's peculiar attacks landed on the magician opening up a new bruise the blonde noisily objected.</p><p>"She shouldn't be taking this much damage…" the Yamanaka expressed her worries. "She's better than this, she should be able to dodge those attacks!"</p><p>"Not really. I'd have trouble dodging them too. Mana hadn't yet fought an opponent who has little to no experience and training fighting hand to hand. She honed her skills in a martial arts grinding house arena seeing and being trained by the best of the best. She probably can't understand it herself but that lack of experience facing someone as bad as she used to be is hindering her…" Meiko shrugged after sinking her teeth into the dried up pack of noodles that were so dry that they cracked and crumbled like biscuits.</p><p>"Tsk… This makes no sense!" the blonde objected, truthfully she just refused to believe that the magician had taken much more hits than it was healthy for any combatant to take willingly before changing their strategy.</p><p>"Usually when a skilled ninja faces this problem they augment their body to withstand the skipped strikes until those lacking strikes are all mapped out. Mana must be saving her chakra for something else, she probably doesn't see the threat in those strikes." Meiko began analyzing the exchange of fists and feet more carefully.</p><p>"You're the best close range combatant out of us three. Is there any hope for Mana to win?" Kiyomi asked with a worried expression.</p><p>"If you asked me – she's already won. Junipu-R tossed everything she had – every odd looking combination and Mana's already beginning to see through them. Just look at it carefully. Unless her opponent launches something huge soon, something to knock Mana out with a single hit – R will lose." Meiko smiled confidently before asking Inaba to give her another pack of spices to enhance the taste of her bland unprepared snack.</p><p>"Please don't call Junipu just R, nicks are solely for friends to refer." Inaba calmly noted.</p><p>There was some truth to Meiko's words. Mana was beginning to see pathways around Junipu-R's odd dancing fighting style. She saw dozens of openings for swift counterattacks and yet she restrained herself from exploiting them – that's exactly what lead her to getting hit the last handful of times. Now Mana was just using the space advantage she was creating to see all the strings and wait until Junipu will begin repeating them. Bit by bit, Mana was seeing where the dancers' legs could stretch, how far her reach was and how much she favored each limb. Small details like that were beginning to draw a profile and soon, the magician felt, her opponent would no longer be able to as much as touch her.</p><p>"One thing that's bothering me though…" Meiko scratched her head. "Why doesn't Mana use her odd flower petal illusion thing? She could've avoided getting hit each and every time…"</p><p>"From what she told me before, I gather that that the strain of that technique increases drastically every time it is used. It then takes days of time for the cost to reset again." Kiyomi replied calmer, now having seen the bigger picture of what seemed like a losing battle before.</p><p>Junipu's long spinning overhead kick got blocked by Mana's daring dive in. Just as the second leg of the Kumogakure kunoichi snapped back hooking on the magician's neck and locking around it in a crushing stranglehold Mana's own push kick blasted off into the girl's chest throwing her like a ragdoll flying away and smashing into nearby trees.</p><p>Mana wiped the traces of blood on her mouth crawling out from a cracked lip and wondered deep inside if she could even outlast her opponent like previously expected. Slowly she was beginning to gain the advantage on close distance encounters and she had already revealed to her enemy that their ace technique was useless against Mana. Normally she'd have had this fight in the bag, that being said, as the magician's vision blurred and her right eye began to swell up she wondered if she could even outlast her opponent to that point of certain victory.</p><p>The opponent's king piece was already within sight. Her own pieces were about to launch an imminent and crushing siege on it in just four turns, still, the Konohagakure kunoichi wondered if she was to have any pieces left to enact that finishing maneuver in four turns.</p><p>Junipu must've been thinking the same thing. Her thigh was bleeding quite relentlessly and it was no small deal. Mana's combination of illusionary and ninjutsu attacks tricked her into skipping a real deal right through her leg which slowed her down greatly. It skipped Mana's victorious climb to success a couple of turns but it may not have been enough. All the little pawns she lost and sacrificed in the beginning of the game were beginning to really leave the feeling of choking on options.</p><p>The magician's hands raced through hand seals, the opponent tried to interrupt her but somewhere halfway through her mad dash to kick Mana in the face, struggling through the pain of a stabbed through and bleeding thigh, Junipu-R realized that Mana's hand seal speed was hopeless to match or interrupt. Not by anyone on the genin level. That area of expertise required the equivalent of space travel of hand seals to match.</p><p>There it was – Junipu-R got lazy and desperate. She had devoted so much effort and speed into this dash to interrupt Mana that she decided to finish it. The girl leaned forward thrusting her hands to the ground while her back leg bent over her back and her head in an odd looking upside kick aimed at Mana's face. The magician caught her opponent's hand with her glowing hand while she placed her other hand right up to Junipu-R's face.</p><p>"Many-Faced Jutsu!" Mana chanted with a smile, knowing that there was no way for her opponent to avoid the stimuli of bright light emanating from her hands at that distance. The illusion got initiated.</p><p>As countless copies of Mana appeared from a glowing hole in the ground the Kumogakure kunoichi did her best to deliver a head spin kick, a back handed elbow strike or any other improvised manner of strike to the illusionary clones that appeared. All of them dissolved right after being hit like mirages of bright flashing light. Having successfully faded from her opponent's view Mana prepared for her finishing attack.</p><p>Junipu-R used out so much chakra for augmenting her abilities before, for breaking her own physical and mental limits. Mana knew that with a pair of precise strikes in places where the girl didn't expect them with her guard all lowered she'd go to sleep. Carefully walking up from behind her opponent Mana opened up her fist to a palm and prepared for the strike at the side of Junipu's other leg. A pop to the backside of her knee will cripple her, then a quick strong spear kick to the back of her head will knock her out…</p><p>"What are you doing punching air? She's behind you so better beware!" Inaba yelled out shocking Mana that he'd interfere like that.</p><p>Something changed, Junipu's body lit up with flames, as the magician's eyes looked back at her opponent she noticed that R placed her hands in the Tiger hand seal position and her entire body felt like it was pulsing with immense chakra pressure. From this up close – there was no need of sensory to know what's coming up.</p><p>Using all of her ingenuity, all of her agility and all over her gathered information on Junipu's movements Mana carefully navigated around the girl's blazing foot as wherever the breakdancing ninja tossed her kicks a blazing projectile of Fire Release chakra scorched through.</p><p>"Crap!" Mana screamed out as her aching back made her botch a proper lean backwards and a blazing fireball grazed her chest slightly tearing off the bandages and singing them off – exposing the past wounds. The girl fell to the ground clutching at the wound, the heat wasn't intense enough to knock her out even after direct contact but it still was enough to cauterize the reopened wound almost instantly. The painful pulsing sensation in her body made it impossible to stand back up, like miniature hot glass pieces being driven all through her body.</p><p>"You inbred son of a special person!" Quill-B shouted smacking Inaba in the back of the head. "You interrupted in the fight!"</p><p>Only then did Junipu realize what happened, her face changed into shock as she ran up to Mana observing her wounds.</p><p>"I'm sorry. I… My body acted all by itself! I didn't realize what happened – right after hearing that information I just…" she began crying out excuses. The fact that she exploited her teammate's interruption must've greatly troubled her.</p><p>With a painful grunt Mana rolled back on her knees and stood back up, tying the remaining rags of her clothes together into something resembling a protection against colder breezes and parasitic insects.</p><p>"It's fine, let's continue this…" the magician coughed out as her chest still felt the crushing pressure against it and it felt like all the air in her lungs had been burnt out by the fireball that just narrowly missed her body.</p><p>"Hey! What kind of childish nonsense is this? Let Mana take a minute to rest or let her take a food pill. This hit was dirty." Kiyomi yelled out energetically, growling like a caged animal that wanted to let her fangs and claws out on the people attacking her pack.</p><p>Hearing such intense defense from a friend whom Mana thought she may have surely lost gave the magician some new life and confidence. A smile covered the beaten magician's face and somehow at that point she realized – it's all going to be alright. Kiyomi is still her older sister. No matter what Hokage-sensei said, no matter what quarrels made their friendship bitter, they're too close at this point for it all to end like that.</p><p>"I don't need rest. If we take a break Junipu-R will get some rest as well so it's not an equalizer. Let's just finish this now." Mana happily replied looking at Kiyomi with friendly and inspiringly warm eyes.</p><p>Kiyomi's own bright blue visual orbs lit up with trust for her friend's judgment before a firm nod.</p><p>Little by little the magician sent orders for her body to move her limbs one by one. She wanted to see just how potent and quick was response. As expected she was just too injured and thrown off balance by that last attack. While Mana's perception remained just as sharp, her body was far past its prime condition and to the enhanced ninja perception of time it looked like an entire eternity before her limbs responded. She could probably still weave hand seals, if only she prepared and raised her hands up first.</p><p>Mana wondered if she could properly avoid her opponent's attacks now. She had Junipu's style all mapped out and she could've easily just walked past her assault unharmed and counterattack harmlessly at some point. That being said, her mind and her body no longer worked in sync anymore. There was significant lag between what Mana thought to do and when she performed the action. Just as her plan went, Mana raised her hands up. Hand seals was the only thing that she could do better than her opponent at that moment.</p><p>"What's wrong? I told you to continue…" Mana taunted her opponent.</p><p>"That's right but… You kind of have me at an impasse." Junipu admitted with laughter.</p><p>"Oh? So that's it for your abilities then? No more hidden aces?" Mana then realized what her opponent meant.</p><p>"Right. If I perform my Transportation Seal you'll simply use your own jutsu as a counter and use it against me. If I attack you physically you'll once again interrupt my attack with an illusion which I'll be rushing head-on into. I'm sort of out of options." The Kumogakure genin admitted.</p><p>"Then surrender. I'll trust your word that you'll quit the exam." Mana replied.</p><p>"No. Not yet… That isn't how this exam is supposed to go. You must knock out your target and you can't really do that in your tired and bruised condition either, can you? You yourself are afraid to attack me too. Else you'd have long since pressed an offensive on me."</p><p>"No. My fighting style is completely defensive. Every technique, every move in my arsenal serves as a defensive measure. I'm waiting for your move." Mana shut down her opponent's theory. "I can assure you that I have profiled and understood your unique fighting style and am able to crush it."</p><p>"You're bluffing!" Junipu-R confidently declared before launching her body at Mana. Her knees shot forward and her entire body bent backwards at her lower back, throwing herself forward like being shot from a catapult at an impressive speed. While this was a new move, previously unseen in Junipu's arsenal, at this point the magician knew which strings it was supposed to lead into. She could predict what strikes and combinations would follow.</p><p>"She'll be rolling first. She prefers overhead ground attacks…" Mana thought to herself as she thrust her left leg to the side blocking her opponent's roll and with a hard push shoving her opponent back on her feet – back where she was out of her comfort zone. With a single movement Mana threw the entire dancing routine out of balance. Junipu-R threw a sloppy palm strike but the magician ordered the precise movements to counter it before even the rolling attempt to stick to the floor.</p><p>Mana's wrist grabbed Junipu's wrist firmly as her other hand slammed the palm right into the girl's nose, letting go of the wrist entrapment just temporarily to throw her off balance before reapplying the same entrapment and driving the same palm at the elbow snapping it upsides and throwing a palm hook upwards to knock the Kumogakure kunoichi on the floor. This time she was too dazed to perform her dance. It required sensitive balance and timing to perform all the flips, jumps, head spins and overhead attacks.</p><p>After Junipu's guard returned back to its place the panicking opponent jumped and vaulted back a couple of times to put distance between Mana and herself. The girl was shaking, stumbling and bleeding from her nose as well as clutching her backwards sticking arm.</p><p>"I told you, I'm ready to accept and trust your surrender. You yourself said there's nothing else you can do here. It's over." Mana pleaded, still standing still, wary of taking a simple step forward so that her opponent doesn't assume she's trying to take control and assume dominance of some kind. If Junipu-R was to do the reasonable thing she shouldn't have felt cornered.</p><p>"There's something I can do!" Junipu-R firmly declared after grabbing her busted arm with her healthy one and pulling intensely while an immense air pressure fired off from it. Mana had seen this and done so several times before herself not to recognize Junipu's last resort. She was using chakra augmentation as a mean for her busted arm to work.</p><p>"Don't do this." Mana calmly advised her opponent by raising her palm up and taking a calm step backwards. "I have fallen for this temptation before – thinking it's OK to do this just once. Prolong my life just by little bit to keep on fighting using chakra augmentation. It cost me everything I held dear, it cost me my own identity. It's not something genin should do at all. Please…"</p><p>Junipu's hands bent over and took a hand seal position. Knowing that she could weave a hand seal with her single extended hand Mana didn't antagonize her opponent by preparing to defend herself.</p><p>"You don't understand!" Junipu cried out. Her voice began to shake as her hands raced through hand seals. One after the other, one after the other in a combination that extended into the hundreds. Had an ordinary civilian watched this battle he'd have actually been able to perceive Junipu's movements as a blur which served as a testament of how many hand seals she placed in this last resort of hers. "I have my target." That single explanation was all she offered to help Mana understand.</p><p>So that was it. Junipu-R had already taken down her target which meant that if given the mercy of walking to the gate and surrendering she'd have tremendous difficulty and regret doing it. It was a very artificially planted reason, a foolish one to spit at one's own vitality and chakra network but she was young, about as old as Mana but evidently not as experienced. It must've been her first time fighting against such odds, being driven so far whereas to Mana it was an almost every other day occurrence.</p><p>"I trust you to be strong. To make the right choice. I trust you to be able to do it, to walk away from this all and return stronger." Mana shouted out like a mother scolding a child, except this time the child was about her age.</p><p>"She won't do it!" Quill-B interfered by raising his voice. "To a Kumogakure ninja, a kunoichi from a country so closely and deeply intertwined with the Iron Country samurai and the bushido code to walk away with their objective already completed would be unthinkable. If she is behaving as foolishly as you claim she is – finish her off before she crosses the line."</p><p>Tears ran down Junipu-R's face. "Don't make me do it. Don't make me choose between surrender and deceit."</p><p>Mana understood her opponent's dilemma. She was basically forced to either surrender and quit while she has already fulfilled her objective to hunt down her target or to lie to Mana's face. Usually to a ninja it'd be absolutely no problem to lie to someone's face but it visibly plagued Junipu to do so. Mana's trusting and warm attitude towards her made it more difficult to betray the magician's trust, in a way, the Kumogakure girl was already broken which made her desperate. Desperation made her dangerous.</p><p>"I could show her the Flower Petal Sanctuary, show her that I'm able to dodge anything she throws at me and that she'll be damaging her network for no reason… But if I do, I may not have enough chakra to pay the enlarged cost again – if I show it off and she decides to attack me anyways, I'll get taken out." Mana grit her teeth beginning to grind them angrily as she struggled to find the right words or options and judging from the expanding air pressure her opponent was done.</p><p>"Mass Transportation Seal Jutsu!" Junipu-R shouted out as she began throwing glyph after glyph Mana's way, creating a massive system of small transportation seal discs around the magician, this time she placed no seal right beside herself to avoid being countered. That meant she needed a precise hit on the right seal close to Mana.</p><p>"Stop!" Mana screamed out. "My nindo… The thing I tried to accomplish my entire life had to tackle the fact that people aren't tools. That they can't be useful or useless. That life by itself is valuable. For once just swallow your damned pride, your stupid code and stop crippling yourself!"</p><p>"Could you?" Junipu-R whimpered to herself as her body lit up with Fire Release chakra and she began dancing again, firing off dozens of fireballs Mana's way that upon missing got absorbed by the complicated transportation seal system and transferred right back at the magician from another angle. It was the absolute excess of all of Junipu's abilities. While Mana would've gotten absolutely incinerated and greatly injured had she remained standing, unable to avoid all of attacks from all the angles, this time the cleverly kept in her pocket Flower Petal Sanctuary pulled her out as her shape dissolved into flower petals and her real body disappeared from the view of anyone within the area of the genjutsu effect.</p><p>"She's right…" Mana cried out in her own thoughts. "I couldn't step over my own principles, my own nindo to protect my life. How am I supposed to save her if I myself am such a hypocrite? No words will make her stand down… No words would make me stand down and swallow my own nindo." She pondered as the magician calmly walked up to the exhausted girl in front of her.</p><p>The moment she'd tense up her muscles and chakra flow intensified for an attack she'd become visible again. Even so, if she could quickly take her opponent out before she could pull that crazy trick once again, this time tearing her body apart for sure… No. Violence won't be Mana's answer. It has been for far too long. The magician threw her first forward stopping it right by Junipu's face right before she became traceable by the others' perception again and the magician's illusion of flower petals faded.</p><p>"What are you doing!? I'll kill you from this close, I'll do it, I'll attack you again!" Junipu cried out.</p><p>"Go ahead, I'll just dissolve again revealing that this is all just another illusion and afterwards your network will surely be torn and your body broken and unable to manipulate chakra ever again." Mana falsely encouraged her opponent, acting like she could perform another use of her illusionary technique when in fact it'd surely push her to the point of exhaustion where she'd pass out for certain.</p><p>"My team needs me…" Junipu cried out. "My friends… My village."</p><p>"You'll be hurting all of them if you do this. They'll all be disappointed if you break your body apart, they're your friends after all. Being reckless and dying or crippling yourself is the easy part, facing your loved ones afterwards is what hurts the most. Trust me, I've been in your shoes before." Mana came up closer while lowering her hand. At this distance Junipu could've probably attacked the magician a different way but something told Mana she wouldn't.</p><p>"How did… How did you deal with it?" the Kumogakure kunoichi wondered.</p><p>"I've lost people. People I loved." Mana admitted while looking away. "I gave up my chakra control to save a life of a criminal and my lifelong friend died in my quest to restore it. I live in grief and debt everyday but what hurts the most is the feeling of inevitability, knowing that if given the chance to change something I'd likely do it all over again the same way. There's none of that in your case, you can still do the right thing."</p><p>Junipu raised her hand to remove the headband tied to her arm and let it gently slip through her fingers down by Mana's feet. After it fell the girl leaned over to pick it up and tie it back where it was.</p><p>And just like that R invoked the surrender clause.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0299"><h2>299. A Bigger World Ahead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana smiled at her target. For once her attempt to shake the foundations beneath the set in stone ninja system and the truths ingrained within the minds of everyone living in it brought some fruit. For once she didn't feel guilty about the way she won in. As she had come to learn previously from many dear people and experiences – fighting in this world was inevitable but, for the first time, Mana felt in control and knew the perfect balance of fighting and peaceful resolution.</p><p>"You are a great ninja, Mana…" Junipu-R complimented the magician after she settled down on a larger stone to rest. Inaba shyly walked up to her and handed her the medical supplies. Mana herself probably needed even more treatment of her own injuries. Still a bit dizzy she sat down on the dirt, Kiyomi and Meiko rushed up to her aid.</p><p>"I'd like to think I'm not…" the magician mumbled as if only meant for herself to hear. She didn't want to just be "a great ninja" because what most people treated as being a great ninja Mana despised in its entirety. She didn't want to be a sneaky deceitful tool that carried out assignments without a hitch, one who killed and stole just because such was their mission.</p><p>Regardless of that – she had her own unique understanding of who ninja were and she wanted to live up to that idea. It may have been childish, it may have been misguided but it was Mana's ninja way. To her ninja were people with responsibility, people entrusted by nature with the power to manipulate its laws and therefore had the weight on their shoulders to protect and live up to their own ninja way.</p><p>"We don't have much supplies left. You may need to take the food pill…" Kiyomi groaned after realizing that all the bottoms-up fighting they've been doing had exhausted their supplies almost completely.</p><p>"I'll be fine, let's just find a water source and purify some water. I'll wash my wounds and they'll be just fine. I've eliminated my target already, hopefully we'll find ways of eliminating yours without extensive three on three fighting…" the magician gently refused.</p><p>Steinck stood up and picked up all of his knocked out teammates. He gave Junipu-R a strict stare. Before he could speak up Meiko's surprised yell interrupted him.</p><p>"I completely forgot you guys were here!" she exclaimed before realizing that she actually found it extremely hilarious and laughing it all off.</p><p>Steinck cleared his throat before addressing Team Cirrus. "Me and Corot are heading towards the southern exit. We'll take Junipu-R there and protect her. Being honest with the Konoha ninja will be hard knowing that you've already eliminated your target and can just complete the exam by leaving through the door. We'll help you uphold your part of the bargain." The giant suggested.</p><p>Having patched up her busted arm and several less grievous injuries Junipu nodded in agreement.</p><p>"Wait a second, before we part our ways, can we maybe trade information? It'll be troublesome to go through the whole ordeal for us again just to find our targets and surely you guys may benefit from our end of the bargain as well." Kiyomi suggested. "We have intelligence on Team Stratus, Team Phobos, Team Pyrite, Team Sagitarii. We'd appreciate some intel on Team Maruf and Team Cumulus"</p><p>Steinck stopped as he was already lingering on just leaving the battlefield. After hearing out Kiyomi's offer he sighed, thinking it through carefully.</p><p>"Well… Our alliance has been eliminated, we've got no use for our gathered information so may as well… We have intel on Team Maruf, also teams: Alto from Kumogakure, Quartz of Iwagakure, Iocaste of Getsugakure, Zumurrud of Sunagakure and Cephei of Hoshigakure." Steinck listed.</p><p>"Wow, that's so much information!" Meiko whistled before shouting out in surprise.</p><p>"We've pooled our intelligence when we entered the alliance, also we've made it an important goal to gather as much info as we could now. After all, other teams may need information considered worthless to us and, if we passed onto the next exam, we'd have used it during other rounds of the Exams." Corot smiled, realizing now that all of their efforts and strategies were running down the drain, unless they entrust all the knowledge to the others.</p><p>"We have intelligence on Team Dunyazad of Sunagakure, Team Iocaste of Getsugakure and we knew about Corot's Team Rutile before you guys attacked us. Our strategy was to gather intel on teams we either needed or teams someone with intelligence on teams with our targets needed." Quill-B shrugged having decided that staying for a while and hearing about the exchange of intelligence may be beneficial to all teams involved.</p><p>"Please, Mana. Have some of my bandages. I served a more supportive role in my team and was determined to patch the guys up after fighting, Inaba is quite a troublemaker and often gets beat up…" Junipu kindly bowed before handing a Mana some medical supplies for her injuries. With a bow in return Mana took some bandages that were offered to her and one jar of ointment for her wounds. The rest were then given back to Quill and Inaba.</p><p>"I don't know what makes you exaggerate, I'd say my abilities are pretty adequate!" Inaba shyly waved his fist as his blushed cheeks prevented him from looking and acting too angry and annoyed.</p><p>"Well… Since Team Cirrus has intel on people we either know of, or of whom the Iwagakure alliance also knows, it'd be least wasteful to know of what Iwa alliance knows." Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"What about you? You've got intel on some fairly unheard of teams. Willing to share?" Quill-B squinted suspiciously at Kiyomi.</p><p>"I thought you guys didn't need intel on teams you're not gunning after…" the blonde teased the Kumogakure swordsman. "But fine, if you decided to change your attitude – we are willing to share."</p><p>The Yamanaka then took some time relaying what she knew about the teams she previously mentioned. When the speech turned to Team Phobos Mana had to elaborate on quite numerous occasions as Kiyomi only knew of those guys from what Mana told her about and the magician's first hand word was more exact and trustworthy. Also, something Mana greatly appreciated, was that somehow Kiyomi managed to hide the fact she knew plenty about Kouta's team – Team Fir. While the Iwagakure alliance had no reason to withhold information, it was highly likely that both sides withheld some information about known comrades or teams with exceptional bonds of friendship involved.</p><p>"I see… Those Team Phobos guys seem pretty capable. We'd be wise to stay clear of them." Quill-B noted after Team Hokage finished sharing information.</p><p>"It's not that simple – if you can see them or know of their presence, they've likely known of yours for a long time. One of their members is an amazing sensor." Mana nodded feeling a bit petrified herself when remembering those fearsome three. "They also take people down without actual need. They hurt and are willing to kill ninja they simply don't like or consider useless to their respective villages."</p><p>"Hmmm… Hearing about all those ninja, it only makes me wonder that we may have rushed with this Chuunin Exams thing." Junipu-R joined the conversation while longingly looking far off into the thick dark layers of leafage above her head.</p><p>"Yeah… We also thought we had this thing almost in the bag, after all, me and Mana had faced chuunin level opponents under several occasions and we've got several times more experience than it is required for the Exams." Kiyomi grinned in overwhelming sense of dread.</p><p>"True, it took us long time to learn that in this world it's not the one with the most power, speed or the most amazing jutsu that wins. It's the ones that manage to control themselves, pace themselves right and plan ahead. Had we joined last exam we'd have undoubtedly been eliminated halfway…" Mana nodded.</p><p>"Anyways, if you guys are done, you may want to hear about what we know." Steinck interrupted the current topic after clearing his throat. "Team Maruf is positioned in a structure they've built of dead local animals' carcasses: centipedes, their bodily secretions, snake skin and giant bear pelts. One thing is for sure – they're not hiding." Steinck took the map that Kiyomi held loosely in her hands and marked the spot where they've last seen the Team Maruf camp as well as the last known locations all the other teams they had intelligence on.</p><p>"Team Maruf is composed of a girl named Squlra, she wields exotic round blades, native to Sunagakure. Her entire body is covered with belts of those things. She's also rather composed and protective of her friends but ruthless against anyone else. She nearly beheaded Corot the first time our teams came in contact. The second member is named Faqsadid – you won't miss him. He's the enormous fatso with zits and ulcers covering most of his body. We've never seen him fight. He, or what's wrong with him, is a total mystery to us. The third member, likely the leader of their team, is named Qarsufly. He doesn't strike as an overly wise leadership figure as he's aggressive, picks fights easily and the only thing holding him back is the objective. He was the one to restrain Squlra from beheading Corot because he wanted intelligence from us and only because of that reason alone."</p><p>"Sounds like a handful…" Kiyomi sighed, "We'd most likely be stronger than them three on three, normally, but… Right now, with Mana worn out and all that… I wonder about that."</p><p>"They're holed up in a structure. That gives us a unique opportunity to take Qarsufly out silently." Mana coldly suggested.</p><p>"But I wanted to punch them in the face for being mean to Corot…" Meiko groaned.</p><p>"Awww… Isn't she cute when she's acting like a little justicar?" Kiyomi teased her friend. "I must agree with Mana on this, stealth would be our way to go."</p><p>Steinck coughed angrily in order to make his case that he was ready to speak and didn't want to be interrupted again.</p><p>"We haven't met Team Iocaste in battle. We only know their names and appearance: Calliastro, a blond guy who dresses like a waiter, not too differently from Mana, a really messed up girl named Vinda and a meathead-like looking Armasar." Steinck began relaying intelligence on other teams, while Meiko looked jumpy and eager to leave, Mana and Kiyomi sat still and listened carefully. The information may have ended up being useful at some point later. They were basically being handed free bargaining tools on a platter here.</p><p>"We've fought Team Iocaste – Calliastro was R's target." Quill-B grumbled. "We attacked and knocked him out quietly, he put up little resistance but from what we've seen he was an able taijutsu user and had several Fire Release techniques in his arsenal. Also, while we were making our getaway, the Vinda girl launched a peculiar corrosive Water Style jutsu at us. It looked powerful so it may be wise to be careful with her. Half of her face is masked so that may be a mean of identifying them." The swordsman added some details on the team.</p><p>"Is it OK if we share intelligence on Team Alto – they're from your village." Steinck wondered to which Quill-B just indifferently shrugged. After an awkward pause the giant opened his mouth again to speak.</p><p>"Team Alto is composed of Neph-T, a young lady with two one handed swords by her side."</p><p>"I've sparred with her once, she is capable of covering her body in a rubbery substance, like an Advanced Bloodline of sorts. Swords cannot cut it so, at the moment, to me, it seemed like a useful sparring ability." Quill-B added some information on top.</p><p>Initially feeling a bit annoyed that he was interrupted, now, Steinck felt glad that Quill-B decided to add some intelligence on top of it, where he seemed it fit. While giving information on a team from one's own village was touchy subject for most ninja, having much to do with the matters of patriotism, it didn't appear to bother Quill-B too much.</p><p>"The second member is Oto-B, we've not seen his ability but he didn't look too fit and able to fight, he's overweight and wears glasses. Most of the time he was just barking out orders and concerning himself with the battlefield decisions and strategy, a lot like Mana was during our fight." Steinck added before turning at Quill-B and wondering if he had something to add.</p><p>"I've never seen him fight either. That being said, I've no problem with you guys taking Team Alto out. I've got issues with their third member – Kres-T" Quill-B revealed. "He's killed people, people I loved and held dear to me. One of my friends had decided to abandon the village while in the middle of a mission and Kres-T volunteered to help the authorities eliminate them as well as supplied them with all the information needed to do so. Legally I can't screw him over for such a reason, but if someone kicked his face in in a competition like this – I wouldn't mind. He's mainly a weaponry user focusing on custom made smoke bombs with special toxins and gases. They're all his own concoctions and while a genin couldn't devise anything too scary or too lethal, he's still dangerous. Overall, I'd recommend avoiding Team Alto just like you'd avoid Team Phobos."</p><p>"Well, good thing we've got no trouble with any of them…" Meiko grinned.</p><p>"Heh, actually, one of our fellow Kumo teams has been asking around about you teens. We've not told them anything prime, mostly because we had nothing to fling at the time." Inaba recalled. Quill's angry stare made him shrug and quiet down.</p><p>"I'm guessing info on those guys after us is out of the question?" Kiyomi curiously wondered with an "I had to try" face.</p><p>"Sorry…" Quill-B looked down and away.</p><p>"We'd rather not go into too much detail on Team Quartz either. We aren't too warm with them nor do we have any grievances. You'll see that they're ones I haven't marked on the map, after all – you're leaving out something as well." Steinck pointed out. After Kiyomi checked the map she noticed that Team Quartz wasn't amongst the teams marked on it.</p><p>"Wow! How did you know!?" Meiko shrieked out in excitement. Her reaction sounded awfully similar to all the children Mana entertained with her magic tricks.</p><p>"No team ever doesn't have some knowledge about another team from their own village. There's too many possible bonds for them all to be ignored: some of them may be one's siblings, friends or sworn enemies. Never one team or another means nothing at all. You've given us nothing on any Konoha teams but we've pretty much taken it as obvious sign of loyalty and no offenses were taken." Quill-B smiled confidently, glad that his past opponent also saw through Team Hokage's play.</p><p>"Actually Mana has no problem giving intelligence on Konoha teams…" Kiyomi found a place to bite the magician again where it kind of hurt.</p><p>"Yeah, she's straight out stabbed her own boyfriend in the back! Don't worry though, he's nice so he'll forgive Mana…" Meiko laughed out.</p><p>"Really?" Quill-B raised an eyebrow, while initially his face looked a bit surprised and disgusted, eventually it shifted to a bit more curious and involved expression. "I'm a bit surprised and… Interested. Good for you to be able to twist the knife!" the Kumogakure genin teased Mana as well.</p><p>"Another team we've ended up feuding with right from the get-go was Team Zumurrud of Sunagakure." Steinck mentioned.</p><p>"One of their members – Salnisa injured out teammate, Vespiga. She's a bladed fan user, her fans are able to not only enhance her Wind Release techniques but they also are used for bladed projectiles to be used in a combination. Vespiga never recovered to full hundred after that…" Corot longingly mentioned. Seeing how Steinck stopped talking to let Corot finish her recalling of the experience of facing the team she continued.</p><p>"The other members are Dhaogu, a peculiar looking young man with dark purple hair who appeared to wield liquid gold of some sort. It could've been hardened and liquefied again with almost no delay, we couldn't really pin down his ability."</p><p>"Maybe it's a Hozuki clansman? A lot of skilled clansmen put a spin on clan abilities, manipulating and inventing new variations even. Hozuki can control liquid water, most can easily harden or evaporate it with a little of focus into their clan techniques, maybe one figured out how to use the same principles on liquid gold?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No. It's a completely different principle. Hozuki are tied to watery liquids. I could see a very skilled Hozuki manipulating blood or some chemical made mostly out of water but not a completely different substance like a liquid metal. Gold and water are too different, it has to be something else…" Kiyomi shut down Mana's theory. She had more credibility as an important clan figure of Konohagakure, she's been interacting with plenty of important clan figures and children of other clans since her youth. She must've knew more about the general principles of how clan specific techniques worked than Mana.</p><p>"Anyways, it's hard to say what the third one's ability is either. The third one named Lazimo refused to fight seriously." Corot ended her recollection.</p><p>"You've been beaten by just two people? That's intense!" Meiko asked brimming with excitement.</p><p>"No, you misunderstand, Lazimo did fight but he didn't use any of his abilities. He also retreated and let his teammates do heavy lifting whenever opportunity came. It's likely his abilities are quite chakra consuming since he refused to use them so early on." Corot concluded.</p><p>"Either that or they're too destructive or too precious for his village to be revealed." Mana added, truly there were too many possible reasons for a ninja to hold back to such an extent so early on in the exam.</p><p>"You mentioned another team – Team Cephei." Kiyomi raised the issue. "We've discovered so much, may as well hear out anything useful about those guys too. They're from Hoshigakure, right? Not the crowd favorites to do well in this exam but…"</p><p>"We've seen them take down another team: a team of a violinist genjutsu user, an odd sealing technique that fires chakra stored inside them user and a fellow using what appeared to be spore based techniques." Steinck recalled before delving deeper in his memories to bring back any specifics. "Team Cephei consisted of a brown haired girl using vines and flower petal based ninjutsu named Rosanna, a summoner boy named Bennow using ninja crow summons and Faeras – he just screamed a lot and had a huge saw-like sword with dented teeth attached to a chain rotating around it."</p><p>"Awesome!" Meiko shrieked out like a fangirl hearing about her favorite band. "Can we go see him? I wanna see the design of that chain-sword so I can make one for myself!" she began nagging Mana who unexpectedly stood up, sulking while looking down, and started walking off. Seeing how Mana was having none of it, the redhead started nagging Kiyomi instead.</p><p>"What's wrong with her?" Steinck wondered seeing Mana off with his eyes as she walked off further away and just started looking up into the endless covers of leaves and wood above of her.</p><p>"I may have a feeling but… Anyways, it seemed like you traded information with them?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Yeah. They didn't have much to offer at the time, that Faeras didn't look to stable, if you catch my cold, and so we never considered contacting them again." The Iwagakure genin nodded.</p><p>After seeing Mana beginning to break down, Kiyomi stood up and thanked for the successful exchange of intelligence. The two girls politely said their farewells before the remaining Team Cirrus duo disappeared in a flashy blur and Steinck took his unconscious allies back on his shoulders before beginning to head towards the southern gate. After Corot and Junipu yelled out their farewells to Mana the magician just faintly waved back but it was clear that something was wrong.</p><p>"Anything you want to share?" Kiyomi carefully treaded around Mana's mental state while the trio travelled through the tree-line despite having no particular set destination in mind. The magician's mood had obviously seen better days. Her eyes kept wandering away from the road ahead, she didn't involve herself into the conversation of where to head next and her lower lip kept twitching like she was about to break down into tears.</p><p>"The team of a violinist, spore user and that sealing guy… It's the team I stole the food pills from." She grumbled out after a long pause. Kiyomi's eyes widened in a sense of clarity before squinting in sadness and the realization why the magician felt so plagued about it.</p><p>"We'll talk about that later. Also, you seriously need to wash all that blood off your face. For now let's just look ahead and not cry too hard because you'll bump into a tree." The blonde smiled before observing Mana's ragged clothes situation and pulling out a t-shirt from Meiko's backpack to which, initially, the blacksmith took great offense but after she saw it was for the replacement of Mana's destroyed uniform she stopped arguing.</p><p>"You took clothes with you?" Mana asked the blacksmith curiously.</p><p>"Sure." She nodded happily.</p><p>"Didn't take food pills or medical supplies or… More food?" the magician wondered.</p><p>"There'd have been no place for the clothes, for the t-shirt you're wearing right now." Meiko noted before curiously pointing at the magician's attire.</p><p>Mana just stared at the blacksmith's face that looked so innocent and confused as to why to her friend it seemed so odd that she'd stuff a bunch of clothes into her backpack. At that moment Mana wondered if she was just approaching insanity by thinking it was odd or if it was just another weird thing about Meiko. After a drawn out pause of the two just staring at each other Mana couldn't control a smile that shimmered through the cloudy gloom in her mind.</p><p>"I've got nothing…" she uttered. While Meiko's choice to fill her bag almost up to half with snacks and spare t-shirts looked absolutely bonkers, Mana did just need a clothes replacement so it ultimately proved somewhat useful.</p><p>"Exactly. I'm always one step ahead…" Meiko tapped her temple with her index finger before making a face she considered being emotionless and badass and just taking off ahead of the trio.</p><p>At this point, Mana wondered how gloomy her life would be without her friends…</p>
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<a name="section0300"><h2>300. Of Spiders And Flies Again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Team Hokage settled down to rest and prepare for the upcoming stealth quest. Usually times like this could've been spent for training, particularly - Mana training Meiko in the art of chakra control and combatting illusions. While Meiko was no slouch in that department, Mana, and therefore any more skilled users of the illusionary art, could've easily sent a more complex illusion Meiko's way. The blacksmith was too distracted most of the times to pick up on more subtle temperature changes, absence of weather factors such as humidity and chills, etc.</p><p>It was tough to tell night from day when being surrounded by dark murky gloom all the time. The team rested when they felt tired, mostly coordinating their resting sessions through communication. Usually ninja wouldn't have needed resting sessions, eating, sleeping and other similar activities due to their enhanced metabolisms allowing them to bypass such natural limitations. Now, after so many battles and emergencies straining the girls' chakra network they could no longer ignore it. It was an endurance game as much as it was one of mind or body.</p><p>This time Mana wasn't training Meiko. The magician was washing her face and her older injuries. While a lot of her wounds and bruises were patched up haphazardly, they still needed to be observed. Some of the oldest injuries were already completely healed, some of them had old bandages singed, torn up or grinded into this strange gooey white mush that only made the injuries they covered more painful. The magician wondered if now with her chakra level taking a larger dip than usual she had to worry about infection. She didn't like being so weakened but it was worth it…</p><p>"Hey." Kiyomi's voice quietly alerted the magician of her friend's presence. The blonde had to be sitting on the watch. Being attacked now was a bigger danger than ever: they left the unusual safe-haven of the northern parts and the teams still remaining in the competition must've been more daring and desperate.</p><p>"I left Meiko on the watch. We have at least five minutes until she falls asleep or gets distracted and chases off a wild animal…" Kiyomi smiled as if knowing Mana's exact thoughts at the moment. She had all the reason to know them, even without her clan abilities she was a skilled and experienced ninja and therefore she'd have known what another experienced genin would've been thinking. Especially one she'd spend so much time with.</p><p>"Does this look familiar to you?" Mana blandly asked before lifting her fingers with the grinded white goo of the bandages on her wounds. Kiyomi just shriveled in disgust before observing where they came from.</p><p>"That thing spent a lot more time on you than it should've. You're patching same areas of the body over and over again, then the bandages get torn, burnt or cut off. You get pummeled with the amounts of force I dread even to think of… Frankly, this is kind of new to me as well. If you feel something… Troublesome, keep me updated." Kiyomi replied before helping the magician change the bandages spanning from her left shoulder to her pelvis and applying some ointment on her back.</p><p>"It was nice of Junipu-R to pass on to you part of her supplies." Kiyomi noted shortly before the magician finished washing the blood off her body and tending after her wounds. "Most ninja would've just fought her to the end and wouldn't have obtained those supplies. I think a lot of people are quick to criticize your way of doing things while they ignore the good that your way brings."</p><p>"Yes, R means a lot to me. She's the first person in a while I managed to defeat my way, without hurting her or ruining her life trying to help her…" Mana looked away before settling her sights on a large fish deep underwater, visible only when its gigantic head came thumb's length from the surface to swallow up tons of leeches out of the small lake and then dive back into the depths.</p><p>"You're still sad about what happened to the team you stole pills from." Kiyomi didn't ask that. She deduced it with a firm statement.</p><p>"How can I not be? If I've not taken those pills from them they've remained in the exam. Even more, I stole those supplies from them…" the magician sighed. "For someone who hates all criminals I'd have thought you'd be a lot less fine with this than you are."</p><p>"It's not a crime unless you break the law." Kiyomi cut down firmly. "You were engaging an enemy team, alone against three opponents. You were doing it in a competitive examination environment, in those conditions it'd have been fine to beat them, cripple them, even kill them, if you're a poor competitor. Stealing tools and weapons from them isn't something that should weigh down your conscience. Even when you gave up Team Fir, while it was a dirty and needless move, you broke no actual laws. No matter what happens, you'll always be my little sister, Mana. Maybe not by blood but definitely by heart."</p><p>Mana remained silent, looking onwards to the other side of the lake as if there was something to see there.</p><p>"This reminds me of a story." Kiyomi smiled after settling down closer to her friend and wrapping her hands around her knees while looking onwards to the other side just like Mana was. "From my childhood. Back when I was still forbidden to do anything but be a little princess, banned even from running around so that I don't bust my elite knee, I often joined my mother in the garden. It was the closest thing to dirt I could get without making everyone mad."</p><p>Mana smiled subtly. She had never experienced similar prohibitions but with Kiyomi putting them this way she was somewhat glad that she didn't. Her parents just observed everything Mana did and supported her from behind. When Mana wanted to play with other children they didn't hold her back, when the other children made fun of her for being "special", back when she still had her mental disorder to hold her back, they told her that friends like that weren't real friends anyways. When she decided to join the Ninja Academy they supported her even if they thought she'd certainly fail with her ideals in mind. Overprotectiveness has never been a scorn in the magician's side.</p><p>"Once, when I was helping mother with weeds by the shed I saw the hugest web being spun all over a tall patch of ragwort and a fly caught in it. The thing was struggling with all of its survivor's heart and just getting in trouble more and more."</p><p>"That's how webs work…" Mana closed her eyes.</p><p>"For a moment I just sat there on my butt, dirtying my white dress, and watching nature do its thing right in front of me. Then I saw the spider resting on the top of a pair of taller ragworts, just watching and waiting until the little thing ran out of breath. It was a pretty large bugger, could've been a joro spider or some other kind, memory is a bit murky. Anyways, obviously I pulled the fly out and tore the webs up. After a while of awkward rolling around the prey just flew away so I ran to brag to mother."</p><p>"Looking for approval." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Right. But mother kind of looked horrified. I thought that here, after being continuously told what I could and couldn't do, I've done something good all by myself, something deserving praise and something I came up with all by myself. I guess my mom was a big fan of spiders and she told me I ruined the spider's work of art it took hours for them to build and I let its food get away which it waited for hours to catch." Kiyomi laughed out in a way that people laugh bitterly when remembering a sadder memory that currently seems kind of funny with how troubling it seemed at the time.</p><p>"Joro spiders probably eat small birds and snakes anyways, how much satisfaction could it have gotten from a fly?" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Right? And here comes little ass-hat Kiyomi Jr. and rips its web apart over a measly fly. Now that I think about it seems like a ripoff for the spider…" the blonde smiled. "So the point is that by saving the fly I probably killed or caused that spider loads of trouble. Maybe it starved, maybe it went to hunt elsewhere and got smashed by my brother – he may have been able to breathe fireballs from his mouth but he feared spiders and wasps and all sorts of insects."</p><p>"So by saving the fly you doomed the spider but by leaving the fly alone you'd have let it die." Mana summed it up bluntly.</p><p>"Right, so the thing is – you did what you had to. You saved Meiko but took something away from someone else. You didn't even kill anything. If you didn't take those pills that team would've most likely won and eliminated their opponents but also Meiko would've definitely had been eliminated. You can't really stop everyone from dying, sometimes we can only barely control who gets the sharp end of the stick but nature and what happens isn't always up to us. The important thing is that you did what you thought was right, you didn't lose your way, you've got nothing to sulk and brood about. I used to have this Uchiha teammate guy, he was an asshole – always brooding for no reason. Don't be like the goddamn Uchiha, no matter what happens, do what an Uchiha wouldn't do."</p><p>"I've never met one. I'd not know what an Uchiha would or would not do but… I'll have it mind." Mana nodded somewhat cheered up.</p><p>"Well, now that this is done, I better check up on Meiko…" Kiyomi lazily picked herself up and began walking off. "When you're done here join us for the whole planning out our assault thing. We could use your bright head out there."</p><p>"Kiyomi…"</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"Thanks."</p><p>When Mana looked back at the point of darkness at the other side of the lake she realized that it was scary how much better Kiyomi was of a leader than she herself could've ever been. First of all – her friend took the role formally, she may not have declared it just like Mana never has but she took it and wore it proudly. Secondly, she took it onto herself to watch over her team, whenever someone had problems the blonde may not have even understood or agreed with, the responsibility pressured her into putting her teammates back together and helping them get back into the action.</p><p>Back when they first met, to Mana, Kiyomi was this more experienced and older admirable kunoichi. Almost an entire year may have passed since that day but nothing truly changed in that regard. The magician may have walked a mile forward but so did the Yamanaka heiress. For every firm step Mana took, Kiyomi took one even bolder and while both advanced forward it just felt like the overall distance remained somewhat the same.</p><p>She was just so cool.</p><hr/><p>Just about when Mana felt confident she could join in with her team with the planning Kiyomi's grunts reached the magician's ears and before she could turn around and get back on her feet the girl's head peeked out from the bushes followed by her entire body.</p><p>"Meiko's missing. I've no idea what the hell happened. What if she got taken out!?" the blonde lost her cool. Maybe Kiyomi was the most solid choice for a leader of the team but, for some reason, whenever judgment of Meiko matters was concerned she always lost her composure and began panicking.</p><p>"No, it wouldn't make sense. We were close enough to hear an engagement and even if they were this silent – they'd have just knocked her out and left her behind." Mana began stroking her chin before an idea struck her and Kiyomi momentarily later, almost at the same time.</p><p>"The chainsaw-sword guy!" they both proclaimed together before picking up their things and rushing off.</p><p>"At least she had the common decency to leave the map behind before running off to fight some crazed lunatic with an overrated sword!" the blonde grumbled out looking where Team Cephei was supposed to last have been seen. With any luck they'd have moved along and Meiko wouldn't have enough moxie to track them all the way to where they were. When it came to matters of brawling and weaponry Meiko was pretty sharp but that was pretty much it, it was doubtful that she'd be able to track a team all by herself.</p><p>"Do we rush?" Mana questioningly looked at Kiyomi. It was an important call – if they wasted chakra just to move incredibly fast they'd have gotten to the location almost in an instant but they'd have definitely raised noise, also they'd have most certainly worn themselves out which would've left them weakened before a possible combat encounter.</p><p>"No." the blonde made a call. "We proceed at our top physical speed but don't use augmentation."</p><p>An immediate, excruciatingly painful flash blinded Mana forcing her to cover up her eyes. The flash was so immensely overflowing with chakra that even if she tried to somehow attempt to augment the endurance of her eyes and build resistance for similar techniques she'd have never succeeded to do so. It was like the flash completely bypassed any natural or artificial resistances and just stabbed daggers made of solid light right at every sensitive part of one's eye.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu!" a bellowing and somewhat smug voice interrupted the monotony of Mana and Kiyomi painfully moaning over the loss of vision and the completely overtaking all bodily functions pain in their eyes.</p><p>"Mana! I can't move!" Kiyomi yelled out somehow managing to speak intelligibly through the pain.</p><p>Almost instinctively the magician dived backwards, she knew that if she was still unaffected by any technique she'd be the next target for the enemy attack and based on the loud popping sound of muffled thunder she was right. As her body was pulsing with adrenaline the magician felt wood chips and branches just bounce off her skin – her petrified and panicking body was augmenting her all by itself. She bypassed the level of subconscious fear over losing chakra again and entered the level of panicking where her body augmented itself to protect her from even the most insignificant amounts of damage.</p><p>"Damn, I missed!" a female sounding voice declared something Mana noticed. With her hands shooting out and feeling anything she could catch or cling onto the magician finally found a tree she could cling to with her feet and stick onto.</p><p>"Do I go?" a lazy sounding voice asked. It sounded strong and coming from deep in someone's lungs, it must've been a fairly large and bulky opponent.</p><p>"No, definitely not!" the Nara replied his teammate.</p><p>Mana tried to climb down and hide behind the tree she was stuck on. Not only she was completely blind but also the immense physical pain in her eyes made it impossible to concentrate on other senses. It was a lot like that time in the Wind Country after the Shaphac detonated that huge explosion and took all of her senses away. This time Mana had her ears to rely on but the pain made it difficult to listen and process what she experienced.</p><p>"Tsk… I don't have all day here…" that same voice that previously used the Nara clan technique declared.</p><p>"This isn't right, there's only two of them. I thought there's supposed to be three…" the female voice that targeted Mana before complained. Kiyomi's scream echoed – she must've been attacked. The magician's heart pounded in her chest, this was bad, not only could the magician not see or hear right but if Kiyomi passed out it'd probably be treated as elimination.</p><p>Mana groaned as she relaxed and fell forward. By that time she had a good feel of everything around her and was beginning to recover from the initial shock and blindness but she needed to draw the enemy way. As her body slammed against the puffy moss and grumbled painfully as her gut hit a rough edged rock the magician screamed out, her pain at that moment was very real. Deciding to keep up the act Mana crawled away, she was almost tempted to yell something suggestive at her opponents, draw their attention from her paralyzed teammate.</p><p>"That other one is down." The Nara voice declared.</p><p>"Gee, you think? I'm going after her!" the female voice angrily snapped back at him.</p><p>"I'm coming with you, Faeino, we were told that the weakest smarty-pants girl was the most dangerous. My bet is that she's luring you in!" the strong sounding male voice seconded.</p><p>"Hold her here!" the female voice instructed the Nara. "I'm not getting eliminated by a fucking killdeer act, I'm taking Saol for backup."</p><p>"Fine, she's not going anywhere while I'm here…" the Nara lazily bellowed.</p><p>Mana crawled and rolled onwards, she could feel burning pain in her gut and something inside her made her feel thankful that her eyes were still in relative dark, albeit a blurry and brightening one, unable to see just how bad her gut wound looked. Fighting back or even defending herself was out of the question now. Not so soon after the big fight with Junipu, not with all of her injuries so fresh and still very much healing.</p><p>The magician heard foot taps further ahead. Her hands instinctively weaved a hand seal. A thunderous blast pierced the magician's body that erupted into a storm of petals that scattered into the wind. Normally ninja would've never allowed their footsteps to be heard like that unless they were certain they were going to finish their opponent off, unless they wanted to make it big and flashy. Unless they wanted her enemy to bleed and feel at awe at the opponent's finishing blow.</p><p>This was wrong. Those people after them were not behaving like normal competitors. So far they haven't expressed interest in them as a team, they haven't shown much care in any of the girls as their target. Mana couldn't have been their target since she'd eliminated her target already, had Kiyomi been their target they'd simply have taken her out already but they followed Mana to finish her off. This was personal.</p><p>"This is personal…" the magician whispered to herself as she rolled aside and breathed heavily just laying on a pile of organic trash, roots and moss as her opponents walked past her and looked ahead. By the time that the illusion wore off and they'd be able to see Mana she'd have been in plain sight but they kept on walking ahead slowly. Looking around and wandering where their injured prey had gone off to.</p><p>"She aimed for my chest, several times now – she tried to kill me…" the magician's mind kept on racing as she laid completely exhausted and sprawled out, yet momentarily still invisible to her enemy. Her chakra was very barely beginning to return to her, she may have still had enough to pay the enlarged cost of her illusion and not pass out but she was completely powerless to as much as even move.</p><p>This could've been it. Not only for their participation in the exam but their very lives…</p>
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<a name="section0301"><h2>301. Ino-Shika-Cho-Ino</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's breathing continuously slowed down to a crawl before stopping completely. After her vision began returning from the complete eye-scratching dark red agony into bright blurs she saw that the two ninja that were looking to hunt her down had passed her current position and were now walking further, filtering through their surroundings step by step.</p><p>If only Mana could fight back, resist in any way. At this point her ninja tool supply was nearly emptied, her chakra resources strained to such an extent that she lucked out to not pass out after saving her own life. That last saving grace left the magician in a state of exhaustion that left her completely incapable of moving a muscle. Just the little involuntary twitches of her aching muscles or her bleeding abdomen or her chest when it began frantically lifting up and sucking in air.</p><p>There was this strange reaction to exhaustion when one's chakra was approaching the edge of complete depletion that one's lungs began working overtime. The body began taking in air as if breathing in so much air that it bloated out one's chest would somehow help replenish one's chakra reserves. Mana tried moving her head in a way that'd have allowed her to see Kiyomi but she couldn't. Her neck simply wouldn't bend backwards that much.</p><hr/><p>Meanwhile, the blonde's vision was similarly beginning to return. That being said, with her body being paralyzed and unable to protect or rub her eyes from the immense pain that the flash of light ninjutsu technique before caused made the girl's eyes teary and slightly swollen. It looked like she had been crying for hours on end. As the vision finally returned, in limited blurry shapes and forms, Kiyomi finally saw the mysterious assailant that attacked her and Mana for seemingly no reason at all.</p><p>It was a young Nara clan member of average height and frail build. That much was evident from his dark hair tied into the spiky ponytail mostly seen on Nara clan members. He also wore silver earrings with the kanji symbol for "deer" on it, something that, as a Yamanaka, Kiyomi also had a general read about. He worked with the members of Akimichi and Yamanaka clans, these three clans had a very close relationship and whenever the members of their clans were placed in a single team they always symbolled that momentous bond spanning generations with the silver earrings with kanji symbols of "boar" for the Yamanaka member, "deer" for the Nara member and "butterfly" for the Akimichi member.</p><p>"That's rich, you bastard!" Kiyomi growled angrily showing off her teeth like a wild animal. At that moment she was truly ready to claw the frail Nara's eyes out with her bare hands. "Attacking a Yamanaka member with the fucking Ino-Shika-Cho earrings, that takes fucking nerve!"</p><p>The Nara didn't reply but from what little Kiyomi could tell, with her still barely functioning eyesight, his face did undergo a painful and worried reaction – the clan traditions still meant something to him, evidently. As seconds passed, the Nara refused to honor Kiyomi with a reply or even a version of a pathetic excuse as to why he attacked a Yamanaka member. As more and more of Kiyomi's vision started to return, the return being accelerated by Kiyomi's mostly completely peaked chakra resources, she could identify more and more details about the bright blue jumpsuit wearing oddball of the Nara clan.</p><p>One of the more important details of the Nara's attire was the Hoshigakure headband tied directly onto his forehead, like most ninja on the field usually wore them. This traditional approach to the ninja attire pissed Kiyomi off even more. This guy looked like a pretty mindful and submissive to the clan rules individual and yet this collection of details on him when paired with his behavior kept on rubbing off on Kiyomi in all the wrong ways.</p><p>"Hoshigakure?" Kiyomi grunted out, "I wasn't even aware Nara had members in that village. You sure as hell won't anymore after this shit. I'm Yamanaka Kiyomi – member of the Konoha's elite Yamanaka branch, future heiress of the Yamanaka clan. I don't care what pity grievances you have with my team, they end here and now, let us go!" she commanded the Nara who appeared to be somewhat troubled by the revelation.</p><p>"Faeino, we've got a big problem!" he yelled out looking over Kiyomi's shoulder as if trying to pick up sight of his teammates. Then his eyes widened even more and his entire body froze. Kiyomi could tell that the boy saw something really interesting as her own body mirrored his actions perfectly while she was bound by the Shadow Possession Jutsu.</p><p>"Mana…" she realized what the Nara must've seen.</p><p>"Look, I don't care what your stupid names are, your entire village's Nara population will be murdered if something happens to me here. The Nara, the Akimichi, the Yamanaka will all rather choose to cut off their black sheep branches in their entirety than risk their long lasting tradition of cooperation. Hoshigakure will never see a member of those clans working for them ever again." Kiyomi spilled words out in a hurry, trying to overload the mind of the worried Nara with words so that he couldn't alert his teammates to the exact location of Mana. By now the Yamanaka believed her friend was in plain sight, Kiyomi's worried heart just worried that her friend wouldn't be knocked out.</p><p>"Faeino, Saol, BIG problem!" the Nara shouted out grabbing his hair with his hands before pulling on them so hard that he actually let his shoulder long dark hair loose, tearing a fair chunk of hair out in the process. Kiyomi's body mirrored those motions perfectly, grabbing her own hair and sifting through them with her fingers.</p><p>He must not have known that Kiyomi was a part of Team Hokage when he took up whatever this was. Kiyomi's mind raced trying to put together what exactly could've been their problem with Team Hokage. Technically Mana helped out Team Cephei of Hoshigakure by weakening the team she stole pills from, allowing them to get eliminated. Then again, the three of the Team Hokage did eliminate Team Sagitarii – the team of Clarmac Inuzuka who targeted Mana, could this have been about that?</p><p>"Shit… Sorry, I'll need to take you out and hide your body. I won't kill you, just eliminate you so that the staff can remove you from the exam." The worried Nara explained with his voice slowly heightening in pitch and his forehead beginning to sweat more and more. "Shadow-Neck Binding Jutsu!" he shouted out weaving his hand seals to command the shadow that binds Kiyomi to reach out and suffocate her until she passed out.</p><p>For a moment the two ninja stood in place and stared at each other, then Kiyomi's eyes began to gleefully glow to match her triumphant smile as the Nara realized that his body was completely paralyzed and unable to move whereas the Yamanaka was completely free of his restraints. Even his Shadow-Neck Binding technique was interrupted before the second hand seal could have been formed.</p><p>"Chakra Hair Trap Jutsu!" Kiyomi declared as the hair traces on the ground lit up with strands of blue glowing base chakra color reaching out into a long channel from Kiyomi all the way to the paralyzed Nara.</p><p>"W-When?" the frail youth exclaimed. "When did you tore strands of your hair out?"</p><p>"Back when you did. My actions mirror yours, remember?" Kiyomi smiled. "That's why the Konoha branch of Ino-Shika-Cho is the elite one and the Hoshigakure one is just a bunch of exiles and runaways. Mind Body Switch!" she chanted as her mind exited her own body with a loud howl and entered that of the Nara, completely taking it over. Almost immediately Kiyomi, in the Nara's body, rushed in to grab her own limp body and place it in a safer angle and position, preventing it from tumbling down.</p><hr/><p>"There's nothing here, not even any blood!" the Akimichi complained as at that point the two felt like they've wandered off too far for further search to make sense.</p><p>"Shit!" the girl who was referred to as Faeino cursed, "Could you shut your stupid mouth for one moment! I thought I hated you when you're stuffing your stupid face but it's worse when you talk!" she waved her hands frantically jumping right at his face.</p><p>"I'm not wrong though…" he let that last noise drag on for a while.</p><p>"No… You're right…" Faeino slapped her forehead. "I can't believe a blind, wounded and tired girl escaped us." She began furiously rubbing her face in annoyance.</p><p>"Yeah, but if we eliminate both of her teammates – that's still fine. We'll still get the bounty…" the Akimichi tried to calm his teammate down by softly tapping her back.</p><p>"No, Saol, no we won't, because how will we do that when there's only two of them here, Saol?! How will we do that, Saol!? When there's only two of them here, Saol!?" the girl began losing it and pulling the skin and muscle, pinching and scratching her teammate all over his body to which he appeared to be almost indifferent due to his large and strong build, he just slowly contemplated what was said as it appeared the young Akimichi was slightly slow to understand things.</p><p>Just when it appeared that the Akimichi was ready to speak he began consulting his hands in the complicated calculation of how many Team Hokage members he had just attacked.</p><p>"I can't believe how stupid you are, Saol! Can't believe it, how stupid you actually are, that's what I can't believe, Saol! If there's only one thing I can't believe, it'd be how stupid you are, Saol!" Faeino yelled out as she smacked her foot right into the left temple of her teammate. The tall and gentle fatso just kept on counting things with his hands continuously bending and straightening out fingers.</p><p>"You're doing it all wrong. This is how it's done!" an angered voice came from the side before a sound of a chakra flare emanating from the blacksmith's boots, followed Meiko's foot digging deep into Saol's cheek followed. The redhead's foot disappeared almost halfway into her opponent's cheek before the laws of physics demanded to be listened to and the Akimichi's body got sent crashing, rolling and tumbling to the other side of the woods.</p><p>Meiko had arrived to the battlefield to rejoin the Team Hokage!</p><hr/><p>With a pair of strong leaps Kiyomi closed the distance between Mana's lifeless looking body and where she took over the Nara's body. It seemed odd to the Yamanaka that the two enemies missed the magician just laying out in the open like that and barely even moving, it appeared that she was completely drained of chakra and wouldn't have been able to protect herself from pretty much any kind of assault.</p><p>Mana's eyes widened as she saw the enemy land close to her. Her mind raced through a whole bunch of possible scenarios as to what could've happened to Kiyomi. Her only exposure to the Nara tactics was her own past teammate – Sugemi. The one member who went out of his way to spit in the face to the usual way that the Nara fought and devolved most of his battles into fistfights so she had few things to work with trying to understand this guy's abilities.</p><p>"Relax, it's me." The Nara said as he kneeled down to Mana and picked her up. The young man appeared to be troubled while doing it, the body she changed into must've been less than physically fit.</p><p>"What's the plan?" Mana asked, for the first time in a while she had no ideas of her own and felt completely powerless. She could barely even move at that point.</p><p>"I can't let him go and return to my body, if I do he'll come after us. I could try to move this body as far away as I can but if I try to the others might come back here and finish you off as well as my powerless real body." Kiyomi began thinking out loud as she moved Mana's immobile body into a more hidden and safer location. "It's good that I know of the Nara techniques and how they're performed. I may use the element of confusion and surprise to catch those two losers un…"</p><p>A loud rumbling noise followed by the thundering sound of trees falling and clouds of dust and tree chips whizzing by interrupted the blonde's train of thought.</p><p>"I think someone's fighting them." Mana wheezed out through pain.</p><p>"Shit. I need to see what's going on there." Kiyomi cursed before running off.</p><hr/><p>Meiko's quick combination of strikes overwhelmed the Yamanaka's defenses. All semblances of oxygen instantly left the girl's body after being hit as well as greatly shaking up her chakra network as it struggled to keep her body intact. The blonde didn't look like someone keeping up with her physical training or placing great importance on her endurance training which forced her to use the risky tactic of chakra augmentation to withstand Meiko's ground shaking blows. Seeing the advantage she had on her hands and a successful offensive pressure at play, Meiko pressed on harder, finishing her lightning quick combination with a spinning back elbow strike that even while blocked sent the opponent flying back.</p><p>The flares on Meiko's boots lit up with chakra flares as the blacksmith launched herself in a mad chasing dash after her airborne opponent. The blacksmith knew that in a battle against an opponent like this, someone frail, someone likely to possess weird abilities, similar to the kind Mana and Kiyomi had in their arsenal, she needed to not hold back. Press on, keep punching, just keep punching. A single breath caught, a single moment of hesitation or a microsecond for her opponent to recover and the redhead could've found herself caught in a fearsome ninjutsu technique she had no capability of escaping from.</p><p>Meiko's rampaging fists tried their best to tear through the Yamanaka's abdomen and punch a hole in her opponent. Try as hard as the blacksmith did, the blonde's augmentations proved mighty and she just got flung higher and higher up forcing the blacksmith to try and smash her back down before reaching the highest levels of the Forest of Death, even though the possibility to try and amp her fists up to the limit and punching her opponent into the atmosphere did tempt the redhead.</p><p>Faeino covered up the top of her head to avoid having her skull smashed by Meiko's ruthless finishing blow. Something of that intensity and limitless physical might would've undoubtedly cracked the whole round earthly orb into pieces and the Yamanaka didn't believe her head to be able to withstand something of that might in a healthy state. Like a piercing arrow from the heavens the Yamanaka plummeted down, Meiko pointed her feet upwards before firing off another pulse of chakra from the seals placed on her boots to jet after her plummeting opponent for another finisher.</p><p>Just as the Yamanaka's body appeared to be in sight, just as Meiko's eyes locked onto the injured and defenseless target and just as her strongest punch was ready to knock the enemy out her punch met something soft and something large. As Meiko's own perception caught up to the present she found her fist being caught and stopped in place by the Akimichi who had recovered and rejoined the battle.</p><p>With a busted up head and lower lip, missing a few teeth, battered and bruised the Yamanaka girl of Hoshigakure picked herself up and began yelling at her teammate.</p><p>"You idiot! Could you not have joined in faster? She's been beating on me for a damned while, you idiot, how about joining in on it faster? To maybe stop having her kick me around like a ragdoll, do you know for how long she's been kicking me around? Pretty damned long. It'd have been a lot less long if you joined in sooner…" Faeino kept on shouting at her large teammate who tried smashing Meiko to the ground after swinging her around by her entrapped fist, only for the blacksmith's hand to stop her fall and her two feet push her opponent further away and free her tightly squeezed in her opponent's enlarged hand fist.</p><p>"You're an Akimichi? I've seen a guy like you before…" Meiko noted before looking at the Yamanaka girl, "Your teammate talks weird and repeats things a lot."</p><p>"Faeino speaks that way when she's really angry." The Akimichi smiled before his hand returned to normal size, normal relatively to his clan.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu!" a loud yell alerted the entire battlefield. Seeing how it was familiar voice coming from a friendly face the enemy team didn't bother to avoid the technique that followed. Meiko, on the other hand, was too surprised and confused by the appearance of another opponent to properly avoid the technique. Luckily for her the shadows didn't tie her down but instead her opponents – both of the Nara's own teammates.</p><p>"What the hell, Rarifa! You stupid asshole, you're supposed to restrain her, not us, that's how your technique works – it paralyzes the enemy, it's not a support technique, you idiot! You're supposed to target the enemy and then the shadow ties them down by connecting to their shadow! Does all this dark gloom mess up your shadows' aim that much? That's not how your technique works, Rarifa!" Faeino kept on freaking out.</p><p>"What are you doing, you cuddly goof!" the Nara scolded Meiko who looked completely oblivious to anything that's happening. "Stop fighting those guys, we don't need them, just run!"</p><p>"Wait… Why are you giving me orders?" Meiko scratched her blushed cheek as something inside compelled her to obey but her rational mind was still completely confused.</p><p>"Oh… I get it! So the Yamanaka-like looking girl in their team is actually a Yamanaka and is now Rarifa and her real body is unconscious somewhere because her mind is in Rarifa's body!" the Akimichi vibrantly declared before giggling goofily.</p><p>"Oh, wow, really? You caught on? How cute… You're so damn smart…" Faeino squinted her eyes in annoyance as if her sarcasm actually physically hurt her. Her facial muscles were the only part of her body that could move properly.</p><p>"Look, just head the direction I just came from, grab my body as well as that of Mana's, she's hidden in a bush near a pool of blood, right below my own body. Then head as far away as possible. I'll leave this mind when it becomes too difficult to hold them here and fight off the Nara trying to regain control of his own mind." Kiyomi, in Rarifa's body, explained to Meiko who just nodded and dashed off as fast as she could to pick up the bodies of her teammates.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0302"><h2>302. Class Meeting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko was quickly moving through the upper levels of the Forest of Death, even while she held Mana carefully on her back the blacksmith moved incredibly fast even without the aid of chakra augmentations as her physical shape was by far the greatest of the three in her team. For a while the girls dashed around in silence.</p><p>"You know, you really took your time with returning to your body. If I didn't know any better I'd have thought you just wanted to be a freeloader and enjoyed the free piggyback…" grumpy Meiko complained.</p><p>"Me? What? No!" Kiyomi blushed momentarily before switching the topic, a simple verbal riposte that always worked to disarm her simpleton friend, "You of all people should be more ashamed than you are!"</p><p>"Yeah, Meiko, we were worried…" Mana gently joined to Kiyomi's side of the argument.</p><p>Meiko laughed out loud from the bottom of her heart and only shook her hands defensively once the curious and judgmental stares of her friends turned her way.</p><p>"You guys suck at these pep talk things. Mana's too soft in general and Kiyomi isn't too good on letting me have it…" the redhead noted.</p><p>"I'm… Fairly decent at… Letting you have it." Kiyomi shrugged before looking away in shame.</p><p>"No, in all seriousness, I know that what I did was wrong. I left during my shift keeping guard and I made you guys chase after me like an idiot. I'm sorry, when we were told there's a guy here with a chainsaw sword I just wanted to see it really badly." Meiko looked down clearly showing shame and regret in what she did. It was good that she did realize what she did was wrong because Mana started to suspect that Meiko's remark before about the two being soft on her was sort of right.</p><p>"What's important is that you're back…" Mana smiled as she could do little else in her powerless state. She did feel a little dizzy after losing a bit more of blood before, luckily enough Meiko stopped temporarily to apply ointment and some of their remaining medical supplies before continuing their trip. "It kind of makes me wonder why you returned in the first place. Did you even get to see the guy's chainsaw sword?" she wondered.</p><p>Meiko nodded. "I did, though when I heard those three discussing coming after us I realized that you guys may have been in trouble. Instead of snagging that sword to check it from the inside and how it's made I'm stuck with just the outer visuals. I'm pretty sure I could replicate it somewhat but it wouldn't be an exact replica until I make it show me some skin inside of it. I'm just good like that…"</p><p>"What did you mean by them talking about coming after us?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Well, initially my idea was to steal Faeras' chainsaw sword and see it from the inside, make some blueprints before giving it back to him. Then as I kept watch on them, looking for my chance, I overheard them considering joining in on a hunt for our team. Apparently, a whole bunch of teams don't really like us for a whole bunch of reasons and want us gone, they're even all pooling some resources together to make a "bounty-pool" of sorts to whoever eliminates us." Meiko explained.</p><p>"What other teams have you heard about? Surely they should've mentioned some other names for us to look out for…" Kiyomi looked fairly troubled by this revelation.</p><p>"Well, Tala and Tiwul got eliminated by Team Fir. Team Fir apparently did express dislike of our team but they didn't join into the pool. That much those three discussed. Then there was a whole bunch of Hoshigakure teams who were friendly to Clarmac's team we've eliminated. They didn't mention any more names." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"That means Yushijin and Budoki know about my betrayal. Tala probably spilled it out after being beaten just to spite me…" Mana bit her lip in anxiety.</p><p>Kiyomi just sadly looked at Mana trying to find something to say to comfort her friend but she couldn't really find anything. It was probably tough to comfort someone with actions they did of which the comforter disapproved themselves.</p><p>"It wasn't a betrayal. People exchange information in here, remember how Quill-B just out and spilled the beans on his comrades too?" Meiko took initiative in consoling Mana.</p><p>"Yeah… On people who went out of their way to hunt down and murder his friend." Mana replied bitterly.</p><p>"I, for one, am really glad you returned when you did." Kiyomi smiled. "I was really beginning to sweat about how to pull me and Mana out. She was just sprawled out and completely helpless and I was not strong enough to fight everyone myself. Your help really put the plan together." The Yamanaka changed the subject again with a happy yet deceitful smile that hid the intent of changing the subject for the sole purpose of making Mana forget about what she indirectly stirred.</p><p>"Yeah, well… I saw the chainsaw blade, it was pretty cool, I loved it. Not even remotely as much as I love you guys, though!" Meiko grinned with a bright smile. Mana looked up into her friend's bright and goofy grin and, much to her surprise, realized that there was absolutely no regret of her choice. "I was pretty lucky to just stumble into you guys. I just went back all the way I came figuring it'd be the fastest way back…" the redhead shrugged.</p><hr/><p>A murder of crows, the size of a large mammal, lifted off the trees rushing through and outside the upper thick layer of leafage and into the bright sky as the ground wildly shook in a tremendous quake that sent ripples of its awesome might to at least fifty kilometers in each direction. Meiko just stopped in her tracks and grabbed firmly to Mana's thighs so that her friend didn't fall off her back. Mana yelled out in pain as in her weakened state her friend's grasp seemed almost like two mountains crushing her leg in between and after her expression of pain the redhead loosened her grip quite extensively in her apology.</p><p>"I vote we check it out." Meiko grinned after looking at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Oh, yeah, our sabotage, distraction and escape expert is weakened and almost completely paralyzed on your back, who knows how many teams are after our necks… What's the worst that could happen?" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"It's fine. Stay quiet and stay down. Whatever's causing it is probably making a lot of noise which will make detecting us almost impossible." Mana softly tapped Meiko's shoulder.</p><p>The magician thought to herself what caused her encouragement. It was so many things that ran through her head that making out a singular, most important reason was quite impossible. On one hand, Meiko was quite likely to slip away and still look for whatever caused that shock, regardless of what the popular decision was. Maybe the recent events shook the blacksmith off this independency, maybe not. On another – it could've been genuinely useful seeing what they could find. Maybe it was another team, more intelligence to add into their quite rich package of information?</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi carefully leaped down a pair of jumps, descending a good twenty meters lower before hiding in the thick branches that hid them from a large and more open field with a large swampy pond lurking further away. Only after they've safely positioned themselves to observe the ground shaking events did the trio dare to peek and analyze the transpiring situation below.</p><p>"Whoa! It's Pagu the Asshole!" Meiko shouted out quite loudly, yet her yells were very effectively drowned out by the noise that the situation below made. Situation being the colossal centipede at least a good six times larger than any that Mana had ever seen in this area, almost matching in size that enormous snake that she saw in this forest previously when the Rabbit Contract was rescued.</p><p>"I vaguely remember that guy…" Kiyomi shrugged her shoulders. "That is a Konohagakure team below us then? Friendlies?" she curiously inquired.</p><p>"He was in a class one year below me in the Academy. His reputation as a troublemaker was well known to me though… Even if he was younger than me I still was a bit wary of him and tried avoiding him for a long time. Not because he was aggressive or a bully, because he was just outright disgusting with the stunts he pulled." Mana recalled her experiences with the young short boy of dark chestnut colored hair and flashy azure eyes, murky green jumpsuit and silver rimmed glasses.</p><p>"When I failed the graduation exam once, I was transferred to his class. I can assure you that he is a complete ass-hat. He rarely ever won a fight he picked but he always scared everyone decent away and pulled anyone remotely as messed up as him closer." Meiko nodded looking at the team fighting below with genuine discontent that Mana had rarely seen in her friend. Then again, having in mind how much anxiety and stress the stories of the boy's behavior drove into Mana's own young mind, it was not overly surprising to see such vibrant reaction from someone in the same class as him.</p><p>"Is it true that Pagu Aphonei once peed all over the swings in the Academy yard in public view?" Kiyomi wondered in disgust.</p><p>"Is it true that he salvaged all of his ninja tools from a disposables container and then actually missed his targets on purpose, trying to infect his friends during target practice?" Mana's face shriveled in discontent.</p><p>"You don't even know the half of it… Like that time he rubbed himself in feces during sparring training so that his opponent freaked out and couldn't hit him." Meiko nodded.</p><p>"Please stop…" Kiyomi grimaced with her tongue in disgust.</p><p>"His poor team…" Mana shook her head.</p><p>Meanwhile the battle below raged on. The massive centipede let out some strange crackling sounds as his mandibles cracked together in hunger and anticipation of cracking some bones, letting out small spits of acidic goo that weren't intended to hit his prey of three but instead just trickling down his titan-hard shell without leaving as much as a scratch on its surface. The massive insectoid smashed two of its seemingly endless limbs somewhere in the general direction of the three ninja but all three of them jumped aside in an instant. They moved quite fast for ninja of their experience and rank. Even in her weakened state, Mana could tell that if she ever had to fight these three she'd be dodging their blows through reads and prediction as she'd have little chance of seeing them actually move.</p><p>Pagu had grown a nice fistful of hair since Mana last saw him. They ran carelessly all over his face which must've further inhibited his limited vision which required the silver rimmed glasses he wore. The young freak smiled sadistically as he swiped his hand tossing a bunch of empty syringes at the centipede's softer mouth parts before lunging in to its shell, using two others to take in some of the massive insectoid's secretion.</p><p>"It's a Hundred Kilometer Centipede…" Mana identified the massive creature sticking out of the ground. The astonishing earthquake before must've been caused by its surface from underground where it must've usually resided. Appearing from larger caves and crevices or just bashing through the ground and rock with its immense head to poison and dissolve its prey into mush.</p><p>"What!? A whole hundred!?" Meiko yelled out in excitement. "That's like… Whole Forest of Death in length!" she pondered long before the answer to a question she herself raised.</p><p>"Less than half of it, actually…" Kiyomi squinted at her silly friend before expressing her own doubts, "I don't think it's that large, really. Looks more like ten, if not less… Judging by the head part."</p><p>"It's not really hundred kilometers long, it's just a name. It refers to the insect's limitless potential to grow larger as it doesn't usually die of natural causes and lives underground after it matures. Usual specimen found range from five to ten kilometers in length but they can potentially grow to a full hundred and even more. They don't usually live too long and are commonly found in pieces. Full remains are quite rare." Mana explained. "Unlike another ground-shaking giant I've met around these parts, this one's actually native to the Forest of Death."</p><p>"Byakugan!" a loud yell from below forced the magician to stop discussing the native species and focus back on the three genin fighting for their lives below. A young lady with raven dark long hair had just activated her clan's signature ability, the Byakugan which the Hyuuga clan used to observe chakra nodes and intelligence gathering for generations. It was an old, elite and respected clan in the village with the smaller branches in other villages being treated almost as rogue second-rate ninja by the clan members themselves.</p><p>"It's Kuren…" Mana identified her past classmate.</p><p>"Is she as messed up as Pagu?" Meiko wondered as Kuren proceeded to run around and scale the insectoid's massive body looking for weak spots in its intensely hard shell and the softer flesh inside. Despite Kuren's most genuine attempts to strike at the weaker parts of the insect it appeared to be completely unfazed and what little chakra she inserted into the strikes didn't transfer past the powerful armor of her enemy.</p><p>"No, although it's tough to say. She didn't talk to me or play with me when we were kids. She had her own circle of friends she considered equally important as her. She once broke the hand of Chominu – another classmate of mine for touching her sandwich with a single tap of her fingers." Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Sounds like she was mean in her own way…" Kiyomi look at Mana with sad eyes, this was possible one of those few moments when the Yamanaka wondered what it was like not to come from any respected ninja clan. While most of the times it didn't make much difference in the social interactions, the more conservative people probably made a big deal out of it. It caused experiences Kiyomi, as a future heiress of the Yamanaka clan, couldn't really relate to but she was quite curious about them. In a way, she even wanted to experience them.</p><p>Another young lady with bright violet hair began dancing gracefully holding two sticks in her hands with long strands of silk tied to them. It was a curiously attractive sight to lay one's eyes on but not overly effective fighting technique, or so it seemed looking at it with a naked eye.</p><p>"Wind Style: Fifty-Knot Crescent!" the girl chanted out as a powerful shockwave emanated from the silk cloth of her peculiar weaponry hit the insect whose body leaned backwards as if blasted away by a powerful force.</p><p>Pagu landed off of the staggering insect down on the ground beside his two kunoichi teammates before teasing Kuren. The young man spat onto his palm before attempting to tap her shoulder in consolation that her attack brought no fruitful results. The freak's attempt was met only by a light lean backwards by Kuren, avoiding Pagu's gross move, and a knee to his gut that made the young man lean down and wheeze out air he had lost.</p><p>The monstrous centipede returned to its upwards positioned, straightening out the part of its body that was aboveground before spouting out a whole wave of acidic goo from its mouth that was likely the poison it used to degrade the still living prey to something it could consume.</p><p>"Eight Trigram Palms: Revolving Heaven!" Kuren yelled out loud as she released large amounts of chakra from all of her chakra nodes all at once before beginning to spin rapidly to form a rotating sphere of shielding chakra. The technique only covered up the kunoichi herself and didn't bother to encompass her allies. However the powerful force of the rotating shield blasted Pagu away from any harm in a rude and painful yet saving manner.</p><p>"Wind Style: Fifty-Knot Full Moon!" Kuren's ally yelled out as she continued her graceful and acrobatic dance with her silk and wood sticks creating a strong defensive pillow of storming winds that blasted a significant portion of acid back onto the centipede's own shell making it wrangle uncomfortably even if its shell didn't appear to be affected in a meaningful way.</p><p>"That was rude, Kuren-chan!" Pagu teased his teammate as he crawled back to the battlefield on all fours, clearly injured from being tossed around.</p><p>"Shut up or I'll break your spine, lowly trash." Kuren gave his teammate a cold stare. "I apologize I did not protect you, Zephra, I believe you to be able to protect yourself sufficiently."</p><p>Kuren's other female teammate just blinked a couple of times in confirmation before resetting the patterns of her dance. This was good. A clear chance of seeing these three in action, surveying their abilities as well as seeing and mapping out their movements for further use. Just seeing her reset her dance made Mana a quite hopeful that she'd be able to read this Zephra girl with more success in the future.</p><p>"This Zephra, I think she was one year older in a different class." Mana tried to remember but could only remember vague recollections. Zephra was not really the kind of student to stand out too much, she was more of a textbook grey filler of the classroom. As an older student she was equally admired by everyone in Mana's class but she was certainly no celebrity in the school for her behavior, good and bad things included.</p><p>Pagu scratched his messy and greasy hair before pulling out two handfuls of syringes, holding them in a textbook kunai and shuriken throwing position. He must've used syringes instead of normal ninja tools meaning he bothered to modify his arsenal with custom orders, similarly to Mana and her different decks of sealed cards, but also that he was skilled enough to concoct different chemicals to place inside of those syringes. With a jumping and spinning toss, maximizing the momentum and force, Pagu lobbed his syringes to the upper parts of the aboveground centipede's head.</p><p>The insect merely shook before placing the top of his head in front of the three and allowing the syringes to bounce off of the forehead toughened section of his shell.</p><p>"Oh no…" Pagu lamented in an overly dramatic manner, as if he was just fooling around. "It appears my attacks are completely ineffective against this monster! Maybe I should've acquired greater weaponry than just measly syringes!?" he gripped at his lower jaw as if he was going through a life crisis.</p><p>"Stop making excuses for being useless!" Kuren scolded her teammate before turning to Zephra. "It looks sort of pointless but he's definitely taking damage. If we were to kill this thing it'd take more effort than we should spend on it. I advise retreat."</p><p>"True. I'm sure if I amped up my ninjutsu I could cut it to pieces but it'd be a hassle. We need to save some chakra for the real enemy." The dancer girl nodded.</p><p>The ground beneath began to rumble and shake again. Team Hokage curiously looked down before realizing that a swarm of building sized ants was bursting from a large pile of dirt that was beginning to build up from right below in such quantities that it displaced and threatened to completely topple the tree they were on. Kiyomi and Meiko quickly leaped onto another tree before observing what transpired further. They observed in horror as the swarm rushed right past the three genin and began snapping the centipede's shell open with the gigantic mandibles on their heads shaped, as it appeared, exactly for this function.</p><p>Squirting acid and whatever else involuntarily was released from its soft innards the centipede cracked its head part off and twisted into a rolling ball of solid armored shell before rolling away, looking for a quieter spot or a cave that could've lead to its favored hiding spot where it could've restarted its journey of growth to become a ten kilometer centipede once more. Soon the giant ants began burrowing into the ground in search of the massive body that its fleeing prey left behind as its escaping speed was a bit too troubling to pursue.</p><p>"Hmmm… I wonder where these Snapper Ants came from!?" Pagu shouted out in surprise in an overly dramatic manner once more as if all of this was just a game. While his kunoichi teammates looked troubled by the swarm's appearance initially, they now observed as the blind in their savagery insects disappeared once more into the same hole from which their previous opponent had surfaced.</p><p>"Snapper Ants?" Mana wondered out loud. "It's one of the natural predators of the Hundred Kilometer Centipede."</p><p>"I know they're from around these parts but… Wasn't that quite lucky that they surfaced right now and completely ignored the three people right in front of them?" Kiyomi inquired. Something seemed suspicious to her.</p><p>"Of course it was the Snapper Ants. A certain cast of females die right after giving birth and decompose especially quickly, their pheromones are incredibly easy to harvest or emulate using the Awashan mushroom." Mana began wrapping her mind around what Pagu's move was exactly.</p><p>"He must've known that his syringes would get busted but that's what Pagu wanted. He wanted to spread the food trail pheromone all over the centipede…" Kiyomi followed the trail.</p><p>The three girls observed for a while more, even after Pagu's Team Hickory had left in a blurry flash, as the crazed Snapper Ants surfaced only to disappear in the hole where the rest of the centipede's body laid, abandoned by its head part to make a successful escape.</p><p>In his teen years, Pagu Aphonei was just as scary as he was during his kid years. Just in whole different ways…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0303"><h2>303. The Splintered Cell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi rolled the two remaining food pills in her hands. So far, Mana has been the only member of the team not to use the pills she had stolen from one of the teams. Maybe it was her own guilt tripping her over, maybe the magician genuinely thought it'd be more reasonable to save them for later. Either way, for the Yamanaka it seemed a foolish oversight which couldn't have been allowed to continue.</p><p>Meiko was gulping down water sounding more like a thirsty horse than a decent and composed human girl. Water was not something that was completely unavailable as various lakes and ponds and smaller water sources were all over the place. Obviously, the water needed to be boiled and purified for ideal drinking experience but it rarely was a problem. The redhead could've gobbled down all of the water the trio had and it could've been replaced. After the initial glances at her thirsty friend Kiyomi started to completely ignore her expression of thirst after remembering all those things.</p><p>"Mana, you need to take these", the blonde raised the problem out loud. The magician was positioned by the tree and sat up on the branch the trio was resting on. The trio weren't too far away from the marked Team Maruf hideout so strategies needed to be drawn and preparations needed to be made.</p><p>The magician pondered on something, trying to come up with an excuse not to take the pills but she couldn't really figure anything out. The usual accelerated ninja metabolism began recovering chakra resources pretty soon after leaving a field of active battle and consuming one's stamina. Her chakra was already regenerating to some extent, similarly to how normal resting worked. That being said, it almost always took a day or two to fully recover chakra resources for a ninja. Even their bodily injuries ached and troubled their body less in two or three days even if they took longer to fully heal.</p><p>"I know what you're thinking – we don't have the time. We've wasted enough of it as it is. We don't have two or three or five days, however long it'll take. These pills can return you to half your peak in couple of hours. Even your wounds will stop stagnating and bleeding and will start to slowly heal. We need you". Kiyomi pressed on harder.</p><p>"Well, we may need you less in this mission, it'll all be stealth and sneaking around but… You are an important part of the team", Meiko nodded energetically, Kiyomi realized after looking right into the redhead's happy eyes that the blacksmith missed the point of this conversation completely. Meiko thought this was about Mana's self-confidence so she felt obliged to compliment the magician's importance but it was more than that. It was about proper teamwork and getting back into track after spending so much time fighting snuck in rogue ninja and their own hunters in battles that took too much time and too much effort to fight.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and looked down, she looked kind of defeated and submissive but it may have been the general look of her – she was pretty banged up from all she had to go through recently. Kiyomi's pouting frown turned upside-down as she witnessed the magician fondling the food pills for a moment before placing them in her mouth.</p><p>"These are red pills after all – they're by far the least stressful to your body so you'll be able to take two of them no problem"! the blonde energetically cheered on her friend.</p><p>There were better tasting things than the red food pills that Mana chewed up for a while and swallowed. It sort of tasted like dragée made of old mashed tomatoes, paprika and chili peppers. It was bitter, sour and sweet, hot and acidic all at the same time but it was a little less chewy and seaweed-like than the green pills. Almost instantly the magician felt an influx of energy that was quick to burn up but it felt like her entire body hit the reset button and was quickly beginning to fire up again with newfound strength and stamina.</p><p>"My chest itches a bit", Mana noted after scratching it softly to alleviate the uneasy feeling.</p><p>"Yeah, well… Those are medical food pills after all – they do stress your body even if those are the least stressful to take. You should be clear of heart attacks just yet", Kiyomi shrugged before lightly tapping on Mana's shoulder and looking on ahead to the empty space of the forest where Team Maruf hideout was supposed to be.</p><hr/><p>It was truly an impressive camp that Team Maruf of Sunagakure put together. It was a complicated construction of peeled off shells of centipedes and snake skin, it was all held together with mandibles of insects that appeared to pierce everything like laundry pins and act almost like nature's nails and stitches. The camp would've been completely immune to an attack from basic ninja tools or weak ninjutsu attacks or physical blows.</p><p>"I could tear it down", Meiko bragged as if she knew exactly what everyone was thinking. "I'm almost regretting sneaking around, it'd look really cool to see this thing fall down".</p><p>"Jeez, Meiko"! Mana expressed horror at her direction. "Didn't know you were such a demolitions enthusiast".</p><p>"Hey, it's a thing, and as long as it fits that condition I like taking it apart and putting it back together equally"! the blacksmith grinned while rubbing her nose.</p><p>Mana didn't really feel easy about this whole thing. On one hand taking the target down silently would've been the quickest and least painful for everybody method. On the other hand – stealth was probably the one aspect of her arsenal she was the least confident in. Her stealth grades in the Academy were just barely passable and as an entertainer she actually liked being showy and very in your face so she wondered if she could even assist her team on this as she was expected to.</p><p>At least the medical food pills were working as they should've been. Feeling one's chakra network and metabolism working in an overdrive felt odd. That inner sensation of spiritual and physical energies growing back to their peak with each passing second felt strangely… Tickling and warm. Even her mind was slowly sharpening and she began perceiving things and thinking much faster than she was with a reduced chakra reserve. It was nowhere close to full recovery, Kiyomi's estimations were just about right though. Mana could feel her wounds hurting less and less every minute and her chakra was approaching half of its total capacity.</p><p>With Kiyomi giving the signal the entire team took off. It felt really refreshing moving so fast. It felt almost like moving instantly. With a couple of leaps the girls made an entire circle around the camp and observed it from various corners. Surveying multiple possible entries.</p><p>"The head piece is made of giant centipede's head shell. It has four holes where the insect's eyes would've been stuck up with bee wax. We can melt that with a weak flame or cut through it. Melting it would be the least noisy but it'd take longer and none of us, to my knowledge can use D-Rank Fire Release jutsu". Kiyomi whispered.</p><p>"Cutting it is", Mana nodded. Meiko also gestured her approval of the idea.</p><p>"Mana, I'd appreciate a quick sense of the place, try to figure out if they're inside at the very least. I know your ability isn't too precise but if there're any signatures nearby we'll take it as a positive". The Yamanaka then ordered.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and tried to sit comfortably in a meditative position as she extended her consciousness beyond her own mind, trying to feel the outside world as if it was something she could just reach out and touch. It took a good ten to fifteen minutes before the magician managed to slip into the proper meditation mode that fit the description of what chakra sensory usually looked like but it worked – three moderate sized stars floated in a cluster orbiting around each other nearby enough to be the real thing.</p><p>The team blitzed away and in a single superfast leap turned up right on the piece of the upper floor made of the giant centipede's head. Meiko pulled out a knife and thrust it at the waxy parts but the kunai blunted out in her hand from a single thrust. Kiyomi closed her eyes and gritted her teeth together as a louder than she had desired clang combined with a fleshy wax damage sound emanated through the entire construction. The team lingered for a moment waiting to find out if they've been discovered but they appeared to have been lucky.</p><p>No one heard their moves just yet. Kiyomi sighed with relief as she gave another kunai to Mana. The magician nodded, she realized the problem as well – the kunai needed to be heated. It didn't appear that the wax of the local giant bees could be damaged with blunt or cutting force and required heat to be passed through. The magician gripped the knife tighter in her hand before weaving a pair of hand seals and pointing it into the sky. She needed to half-ass the ninjutsu, just enough to heat the blade but not enough to make a flashy effect that'd attract attention…</p><p>"Magic Skewer Jutsu" she whispered to aid her focus as the usual rod shapes of lightning chakra formed around her, this time just barely matching the size of the kunai and drove into the wax together heating it up to the shape of a gooey white substance. The magician drove the kunai in firmly and dragged it across the hole of where once an insect's eye was letting some of the wax drip on the inside despite her genuine efforts to drive it on the outside.</p><p>"Nice. We're in", Kiyomi nodded while shaping her lips to form words yet uttering no sounds. Luckily enough Mana and Meiko could read her lips just fine enough.</p><p>Right before the team settled on entering the structure Kiyomi weaved a hand seal and initiated the mental link. It was entirely possible for her and Mana to communicate using sign language taught in the Ninja Academy however Kiyomi knew better than to rely on Meiko's knowledge of any languages other than her first one. Something about memorizing hundreds of different signs and all the ways they interact together just didn't seem like anything Meiko would pull off, having her skillsets in mind.</p><p>"When we're in stick to the walls." Kiyomi let out an authoritative mental signal. "Meiko, I trust you still have your T-shirts with you?"</p><p>"See? I told you two stuffing half of my bag with clothes will come in handy!" Meiko emitted a powerful joyful thought.</p><p>Mana bit her cheek on the inside. She knew what Kiyomi's idea was and, frankly, it was quite genius. The Yamanaka wanted the team to use the Cloak of Invisibility jutsu which was one of several E-Rank ninjutsu techniques taught in the Ninja Academy. It'd have allowed the team to stick to the walls while using Meiko's pieces of cloth to disguise themselves perfectly while they moved throughout the area unseen.</p><p>"Mana"? Kiyomi signalled for her to follow but the magician lingered. She just tried figuring out a way for her to avoid using a generic technique which she herself didn't invent. She had used generic techniques before but only as a mean to save someone's life. Now she tried to run through all of her options before crossing her principles.</p><p>"She doesn't want to use a technique she didn't invent", Meiko reminded Kiyomi casually.</p><p>"Oh for… Do you have a ninjutsu or an illusion to replace this one"? Kiyomi wondered mentally.</p><p>"Not anything I can think of", Mana shook her head feeling ashamed and disappointed in herself.</p><p>"Goddamn kindergarten is what this is… Fine, let's go, Meiko. We don't need all three of us and it might actually be better to use less space while sneaking", Kiyomi cursed before the following thought occurred to her. The less people will be sneaking around inside, the less the probability of them failing or bumping into someone or messing up their technique.</p><p>Both girls activated the Cloak of Invisibility technique which weaved chakra into the cloth used for the ninjutsu and made it large enough to cover both of the users individually and morphed their shape and color into being perfectly fit for a disguise when sticking close to a wall. Usually when performed by a low ranking ninja the technique didn't adapt to movement but with additional chakra input it could've been done by a more skilled ninja. The only things the two girls had to worry about now was spreading betraying noises, smells or someone bumping into them accidentally.</p><p>"Wow, it actually worked"! Meiko emitted a happy thought onto the link.</p><p>"Of course it worked, it's a generic Academy ninjutsu. It's like jumping in joy after pulling off a Transformation Jutsu, you're in the goddamn Chuunin Exams, Meiko", Kiyomi cheeked at her friend's direction, Mana wondered if the blonde had ever seen Meiko fail basic ninjutsu techniques and mess up proper chakra control quite as many times and on such basic things as the she had seen during the search for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. Even while this Meiko here was much different from the girl that left with Mana to look for the Box, she had plenty to cheer on about with pulling this jutsu off.</p><p>"This may turn out for the better yet, sit tight and observe the area, Mana", Kiyomi sent a signalling thought Mana's way.</p><p>Even knowing that Kiyomi couldn't physically see her, Mana nodded and dashed off to the sanctuary of the woods, careful as to not to trip over or make too much noise with her movements. She probably did make some troubling noises which a careful ninja would definitely pick up but no reasonable ninja would ever react to every noise they hear in the Forest of Death. This place was full of creatures crawling and buzzing with all the subtlety of a Tailed Beast.</p><p>"Alright, let's look for this Qarsufly fellow now. I trust you know how he looks like"? Kiyomi began guiding the sneaking process as the two girls carefully sneaked outside the little attic-like room where the insect's eye socket would've been and into a larger skull area lit by small torches and full of different rooms where the other eyes were as well into the rooms left by spaces where the massive mandibles and antenna of the creature were.</p><p>"Definitely"! Meiko nodded firmly. That was one person whose face she allowed to sink deep into her mind. In a massive forest filled with thirty two different teams and almost a hundred different genin she most certainly made an effort to memorize the person she was after.</p><p>"Good, now let's carefully look for him, slow and steady, then take him out quick and get the hell out of here. After he's down we can ditch the subtlety if we're found out, I'm confident we can outrun most people in this forest", Kiyomi breathed in and out deep before shutting her breathing down completely. A ninja could've held their breath down for twenty minutes at average, longer if they spent chakra to sustain their bodies but after fifteen minutes or so the body began to react – heart rate accelerated, sweating intensified and hiding would become difficult.</p><p>"Now that I think about it, how do we plan to take him out? Won't his body instinctively augment itself when we hit him, even if we do it from behind"? Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Don't worry, Hanasaku-sensei taught me a trick to bypass that sort of thing when his back is open", Kiyomi sent a calming and happy thought back on the link.</p><p>Team Hokage carefully snuck about the place, they've seen a person of slim feminine dressed in all black and wearing a peculiar headdress that made her face completely covered up and a belt full of circular in shape blades with sharpened outer edges and with varied sizes as well. The smaller ones on her waist were of around fifteen centimeters in size but she wore many larger ones as accessories holding her complex and verily concealing attire together. The young lady was meditating in one of the side jaw rooms so the two kunoichi sneaked past her.</p><p>"This must be Squlra, of whom we were told about, the one with a nasty attitude. Wouldn't have taken her for the meditating type", Kiyomi noted.</p><p>"Faqsamalopolis is probably in the kitchen, stuffing his place. I wish I could help him with that noble goal", Meiko emitted a longing thought back on the link.</p><p>"His name is Faqsadid, although, yes, I agree with that assessment. Still, we've no idea which room they've chosen for the kitchen. We've no time to properly map this place out, let's just find Qarsufly and hit him fast and rough", Kiyomi corrected her teammate before moving onwards and past Squlra's room.</p><p>Right as her step would've touched the middle step of a long and round staircase which channelled two different levels of the structure Kiyomi's foot froze. Meiko felt the mental link growing cold and an uncontrollable feeling of dread that began to chill the overall mental image.</p><p>"What's wrong"? the blacksmith wondered before quaking in her boots in anticipation as Kiyomi was in front of her and was halting the duo's progress.</p><p>"Mana just went off the link for no reason", the Yamanaka whispered vocally, almost like the whisper was meant only for herself.</p><p>The feeling of firm ground beneath their feet shifted as Kiyomi and Meiko got tossed backwards and slammed into the armored shell wall as a powerful ram built of purple crystal penetrated the structure from multiple sides skewering and crushing it almost completely.</p><p>"What the hell"? Kiyomi yelled out mentally before grabbing the t-shirt and shooting up the stairs and into the first little room she saw, only for Meiko to follow.</p><p>"That was no one we know about", the redhead stated the obvious.</p><p>"Yeah, Faqsadid is an ugly fatso, Squlra is a circular blade using weaponry user. Maybe it's Qarsufly? We haven't heard about his ability yet", Kiyomi tried piecing it all together but the more she thought about it the less sense this all made. Whatever ability Qarsufly had he'd have not sensed and taken out Mana first, whatever threat this was – it came from the outside.</p><p>"Faqsadid, we are Team Corundum of Iwagakure, we've come for you", a firm voice of an athletically built young man with golden dyed hair declared. His face was completely covered in red markings and tattoos attributed usually to the Kaguya clan and he pointed his hand upwards holding an elbow-to-hand long blade that appeared to be made completely of bone. That much the two Konoha girls could see through a small crack, likely left over from when the creature was killed for its shell and parts to be used in this structure's construction.</p><p>This got out of hand pretty fast…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0304"><h2>304. Gifts And Curses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi and Meiko continued to observe the fight that was about to erupt between the invading chaotic factor and their own target team. They did not sit easy as the duo were constantly doubting every little move they made, even their current position of sitting quietly and observing the battlefield.</p><p>"If Mana's out, does that means she's eliminated"? Meiko asked mentally, somewhat vaguely.</p><p>"I… I don't know… I don't want to jinx it but… It's more than likely". Kiyomi gritted her teeth as a brief ray of light illuminated the mostly dim little spherical shaped room that the two observed the scene below from.</p><p>Kiyomi turned at her friend and teammate just to observe what reactions were running down her face. Meiko was quite unpredictable in her usual state and right now Kiyomi, as Team Hokage leader needed unpredictability the least in her life. The blonde herself wanted to just run out and start taking over minds and kick asses but her more rational part demanded to think her plan through.</p><p>"We need to get out there, we need to fight"! Meiko demanded as her mind became murkier, her thoughts raced through and burnt out before they could be clearly read by Kiyomi who was beginning to worry more about her teammate than the odds of them taking out their target.</p><p>"No! Sit tight! For now at least… There're too many factors we still don't know about all of this". Kiyomi silenced the blacksmith as the two continued to observe the situation below.</p><p>A circular blade of Squlra's shot out from out of nowhere aiming right at the golden haired Kaguya's neck. It whizzed so fast that Kiyomi found tracking the blade quite difficult as to her it moved in a faintly visible silver blur. If seeing this thing was so troublesome, the blonde couldn't even begin to imagine the trouble it'd be to actually avoid it.</p><p>The Kaguya youth of the invading team leaned aside allowing the blade to whizz right by the skin of his neck. It seemed a very arrogant and berating way of dodging. If the opponent had any afterthought of this attack, such a careless dodge would've left countless openings to exploit.</p><p>Such was actually the case as another blade flew at the Kaguya from the side. Squlra herself dived out from one of the upper floor hallways and stuck to a wall as she launched her rotund blades at the enemy. The golden haired young man lifted up his hand and trapped the spinning circular blade in his bone weapon like a horse-shoe on a pin. The bone began to spark violently as the blade must've been of higher quality materials and craftsmanship but the bone didn't even come close to relenting.</p><p>In a final motion the girl pulled on a string attached to the second blade which only became evident once she wished it to be revealing that it was tied on another piece of string tied to the first blade she tossed.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu"! The young lady yelled out in an energetic and relatively low pitched voice for a girl, her somewhat masculine voice was further muffled by the headdress she wore that covered almost the entirety of her face except for her dark brown eyes.</p><p>As Squlra pulled the second string it pulled on the first one making the spinning first blade whizz right back in a circular motion and saw a wide arc in the walls of the structure before re-entering the manmade building and whizzing in straight at the Kaguya's neck for decapitation.</p><p>Without caring too much about the incoming decapitation Jekleifer Kaguya grabbed on the steel wire on the second blade and pulled on it firmly, pulling his opponent in for a close distance battle. A flesh slicing buzzing sound followed by a metallic clang heralded the contact between the buzzing circular blade coming in contact with the Kaguya's neck as he pulled his enemy in. A small amount of blood squirted out from the damaged flesh but it appeared as if the circular blade had lodged into the young man's neck very shallowly.</p><p>As the body of the young lady clad in black whizzed by in a whirling vortex of dark cloth and Kaguya slammed his opponent's body to the ground leaving a bone in the center of her chest where he had punched her. As Kiyomi and Meiko observed the exchanges of murderous strikes and were just about to bury both of the opponents Squlra's body disappeared in a cloud of smoke leaving just a log with several circular blades lodged in it, joined by Jekleifer's hard as steel bone blade.</p><p>An athletic young man with shoulder long dark hair looked at his teammate with a mocking glare.</p><p>"Got tricked by a Substitution Jutsu", he stated the obvious.</p><p>"I expected some manner of a trick. Substitution, clones, something. That's why I chose to approach this lethally, I knew she'd wriggle out of it somehow", Jekleifer closed his eyes as he removed the circular blade that had left a small flesh wound on his neck, just past the skin and several bits into the flesh. "You may have known that I'd place a bone plate under my skin but you could've helped me out with that".</p><p>"I would've… I just didn't care enough to", the Kaguya's comrade shrugged with a seemingly innocent grin.</p><p>"I would prefer if we took this outside", the female teammate of the golden haired Kaguya mumbled quietly making it difficult to distinguish what she said with hearing alone. She looked relatively odd compared to her teammates – she wore a thick leather jacket covered with fur and dark sunglasses that looked more like swimming goggles.</p><p>"I intend to, don't worry, Maurlon", the Kaguya nodded affirmatively. The firm and calm look on the young man's face heavily implied that he understood why his teammate asked of it and had it in mind before attacking the place to begin with.</p><p>"They want to take down Team Maruf just like us. They're pretty capable too", Kiyomi mumbled to herself.</p><p>"Maybe we should show ourselves and help them fight? Six on three we are sure to win", Meiko suggested.</p><p>"No way. We don't know what their intentions are towards us. Also, if we show ourselves too early we can scare Team Maruf away into fleeing. We need them to think that they are in control. Besides, how willing would you be to cooperate with the folks that took Mana out"? Kiyomi shook her head listing multiple reasons from the top of her head she had for remaining hidden and tracking the battle. Even though she appeared firm on this question, the possibility of revealing themselves has crossed Kiyomi's mind early on as well.</p><p>The eyes of the attacking team turned at somewhere right above Team Hokage's hiding spot, as well as on both sides of the staircases around them. Judging from that, Kiyomi assumed that the enemy team had revealed themselves. So Team Maruf decided to take on their enemies in a full out three on three brawl…</p><p>"Stay down and wait for me to move in. We need to wait for a good moment to strike, when we find an ideal opening we take out Qarsufly and we run. Hopefully those Iwagakure guys won't care enough to pursue us and Team Maruf will be pinned down by them and won't follow us either". Kiyomi ordered.</p><p>"What about Mana"? Meiko looked worryingly.</p><p>"The only ways she could've just disappeared from the link like this would've been if she's out, dead or she left by her own choice. There's nothing we can do but leave her for the staff to take care of", Kiyomi looked away from the brewing brawl below and turned her eyes at a blank point in the dim room the two were hiding in. At that moment she felt the weight of a leader, the pain of wrestling with one's own self and making a tough call. It wasn't a life or death call, not a real one anyways. Either way, it was a simulation of what a real higher ranked mission was like.</p><p>"But… Maybe she blanked out to warn us"? Meiko still tried to fight that decision. It made sense, Mana and the redhead had a pretty close background and they've bonded quite extensively over that trip the two kept mentioning briefly.</p><p>"It doesn't make sense that she would. She would've just let us know about the approaching enemy mentally instead of leaving the link and leaving us to wonder. We could've communicated more efficiently like that, Mana's smarter than that. If she left – she's out cold", Kiyomi stood by her decision firmly, she had to admit, her own minds fluctuated and wavered similarly to how Meiko's did when she first realized what Mana's unconsciousness meant.</p><p>The entire structure rumbled forcing Kiyomi to direct her attention at Team Maruf that had gathered in the circular hall surrounded by staircases that lead into the "brainbox" of the second floor. The ground floor likely was the insect's mouth before it was reworked to look more like a hall.</p><p>Team Maruf were just like they were described: Squlra, whom Team Hokage and the invading team wearing Iwagakure's forehead protectors had already met, a tall and fat, seemingly genderless and featureless, thing covered with green bubble-like features that were described by Steinck as "ulcers". The team leader was Qarsufly, a youth with shoulder long dark hair with two longer strands extending past his back and quite formally dressed, wearing a long and dark jacket over a simple white shirt.</p><p>"So you've shown yourselves? That's good", Jekleifer calmly closed his eyes in approval. He appeared completely confident in the total victory of his team if he allowed himself the mocking luxury of closing off his eyes right before battle.</p><p>"Make no mistake, the fact that we're standing in front of you means that Squlra sized you up and decided that we can beat you", Qarsufly raised his fist up angrily, it appeared that the utmost confidence of his enemy annoyed him.</p><p>"So that's what it was"? Jekleifer noted calmly before taking a fighting stance.</p><p>The fat and mushy member of Team Maruf, Faqsadid, leaped straight from his staircase post aiming to crush his enemies using his own weight. Only once the large and rotund genin extended his arms and legs and stretched out in the air that the trio of the attacking team realized that their opponent was large enough to do it. Right as the slow downfall of the massive genin concluded the invading team had dispersed in a quick blur of movements.</p><p>Like a swarm of highly coordinated insects the Iwagakure trio decided to focus on their belly flopped opponent who was currently writhing on the ground doing his best to get back on his short but bulky feet. Jekleifer threw a combination of quick punches testing out the bulk and toughness of his opponent, knowing the precise limit of one's opponent's endurance allowed one to precisely calculate the amount of force needed to overcome them instead of killing them. Despite emitting powerful shockwaves and threatening thundering thuds upon impact, Jekleifer's powerful blows bounced off the large body of the Sunagakure giant.</p><p>"Crystal Style: Diamond Ridge"! Jekleifer's comrade yelled out as he quickly weaved a pair of hand seals and slammed his hand to the ground. Tall crystalline pillars with sharpened edges shot out in a straight line completely tearing to shreds any structural obstacles on its way to the giant genin. The crystal appeared to be powerful and sharp enough to toss the massive genin into the air and make him grunt in pain, it even left gruesome looking shredding wounds on the exposed body of the heavyweight.</p><p>Attempting to aid her comrade Squlra sent a whizzing barrage of her circular blades her opponent's way. Had they connected it'd have been entirely possible that the buzzing barrage of blades would've left the crystal ninjutsu user in pieces but at the very last moment a swarm of insects surrounded him in a sphere protecting him from harm. Judging by the extended arms of the female teammate of the Iwagakure team it was the female Aburame's doing.</p><p>"And who's protecting you?" Qarsufly yelled out as he attempted to kick the female member of Team Corundum with a deceitfully fast divekick.</p><p>A gut-wrenching sound of tearing flesh and blood splattering on the ground followed as Qarsufly's kick did not connect to the chest or head of the female Aburame but instead to her Kaguya clan teammate's exposed back which had bones protruding from all over his body as he stood in a hunched over position so that the protruding bones could do as much damage to the enemy as possible.</p><p>Jekleifer's female teammate followed up her comrade's caring guard with a quick kick that sent the bruised and injured Qarsufly sliding back to his initial position. While the Sunagakure genin managed to perform basic course protection in mid-air, thanks to his up to par superhuman perception being able to follow his opponent's movements, he still didn't avoid grievous cuts and lacerations. Attacking the Kaguya clan physically was the equivalent of headbutting a defensive echidna.</p><p>With pain caused grunts the Kaguya straightened himself out, allowing his bones to painfully return to their places from where they pierced his own body. Shortly after the bones disappeared a white cartilage tissue covered up the wounds where Jekleifer's own generated bones pierced through his body. It was a highly efficient combination of offensive and defensive techniques however it didn't come pain free.</p><p>"Hmph… A Kaguya member with the Shikotsumyaku ability", Qarsufly uttered in relative surprise. "You'll have to forgive my oversight, it is not something that one sees every day…"</p><p>"You know about the Kaguya clan"? Jekleifer grunted as he still felt the resonating pain inside his own body from creating new bones on the fly and making himself a human hedgehog in a fraction of a second.</p><p>"This and that. I've heard about the ability to control one's bones, mostly as an example of a rare ability that only a few members of a clan inherit", Qarsufly smiled as he observed the bleeding cuts on his lower arm, biceps and his thighs as well as one on his abdomen. He was lucky to avoid more serious wounds as at that moment his body was focused entirely on delivering as powerful of a kick as possible and not bothering with defensive measures.</p><p>"It's not like you aren't a bunch of freaks either", Jekleifer's crystal ninjutsu using teammate grinned after seeing his crystal pillar collapse into chips and dust and seeing some bright red liquid goop out from the wounds of the massive genin he had injured. In his life Tolkre Guren has seen blood but this thing leaking out from the giant was not it.</p><p>Qarsufly's hands moved first, the Sunagakure genin quickly bit his thumb before running through a bunch of hand seals and driving his extended palm to the ground. In a large cloud of smoke a quartet of bulldog sized beetles emerged aiming their horns at the enemy.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu", the young man chanted out as the four beetles rushed at the Kaguya.</p><p>"Dance of the Tulip", Jekleifer shouted out as bones once again protruded from his upper arm and under his biceps from where the blades were pulled out with the Kaguya's own arms and wielded as blades in a relentless barrage of lightning fast thrusts that created this ruthless rushing offensive combination.</p><p>One of the beetles got skewered by the bone blade thrusts, that were completely invisible when used with these coordinated thrusting movements of the dance, almost immediately. The others persevered the multiple stabbing wounds and rushed on, grazing and bruising the Kaguya using their horns and tossing him over their large bodies like a ragdoll. Adapting to being tossed around Jekleifer fixed his mid-air position and began relentlessly thrusting his blades with the same dancing combination of thrusts vertically downwards skewering and heavily injuring the insects even more.</p><p>Slightly to the right the massive Sunagakure genin slammed his own belly as if he tried to beat his own guts out forcing a handful of the dark green ulcer-like orbs all over his body to pop. However instead of blood or some pus a bunch of small and creepy doll-like humanoid figures, with knives at the end of each limb, emerged rushing straight at the crystal ninjutsu user. The young man was completely surprised by the highly unorthodox manner of attack, by the time he tried weaving the hand seals to protect himself it was too late.</p><p>The toy-sized puppets began whizzing by and around the Guren clansman slashing and cutting him with small blades on their hands and feet without giving him space and time to counter properly. Before too long the young Iwagakure genin was covered in crimson stripes and bruises but the ruthless hands-off offensive of the massive Sunagakure genin continued. The puppets began attacking with purpose, buzzing around in loops that tried to tie Faqsadid's opponent down and leave him powerless. Luckily enough he managed to weave a pair of hand seals, struggling through the pain, right before the loops tied around his hands.</p><p>"Crystal Style: Crystal Needles", he yelled out sending a storm of crystal shards his opponent's way, the wide reach of the technique allowed to damage Faqsadid's puppetry strings, pin down some of the annoying little dolls he used as well as damage the giant again leaving more leaking cuts on his massive frame.</p><p>"A little help next time, maybe"? Tolkre the crystal ninjutsu user complained at his teammate noticing too late that she herself was slightly occupied avoiding Squlra's ceaseless offensive.</p><p>However Faqsadid's own attacks have not yet ceased, right as Tolkre turned around to face his opponent he noticed that some of the damage he inflicted popped more of his green pulsing ulcers releasing another group of toys that intended to pester and cut him up to a more lethal extent. This time, however, the genin was ready. He rolled forwards weaving a pair of hand seals while he avoided the initial swipe of blade strikes and grabbed the puppetry strings of the massive Sunagakure genin.</p><p>"Crystal Style: Crimson Fruit"! Tolkre chanted as a large dome enclosed around the toy puppets shutting them off from their puppet master's control and leaving them completely powerless and useless.</p><p>While the crystal ninjutsu user was busy dealing with the weird puppetry attacks of his massive opponent and Jekleifer was matching strength and speed with Qarsufly's beetles, Squlra was attempting to cut down the female Aburame member to pieces with her deceitful and quick bladework. However every time that she managed to trap her opponent with strings before pulling and shredding her to pieces or successfully beheading the girl it turned out to be just another insect clone that collapsed into a lifeless swarm of insects upon being stricken down. Both young women realized that the Aburame was just wasting chakra fighting defensively like that but for some reason the Iwagakure girl just continued to attempt to evade the sadistic kunoichi's attacks, waiting for something resembling a chance to strike.</p><p>As the bloody scuffle between Team Maruf and Team Corundum was heating up, Kiyomi and Meiko waited patiently for their chance to incapacitate Qarsufly. So far, while the young man was occupied with Jekleifer, he sent his summoned ninja animals after him leaving himself quite ready to intercept any upcoming attacks. While his back was turned and his attention focused on his brawl with the Iwagakure ninja Kiyomi still waited for a better chance since Team Hokage only had one shot before exposing themselves.</p>
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<a name="section0305"><h2>305. Kiyomi's Secret Ultimate Technique</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the swift Dance of the Tulip tore through Qarsufly's four beetles forcing them to flee the Sunagakure summoner took a wary step back. It was just a momentary tremble of confidence but it was not missed even by the two kunoichi observing the battle from above the hall where the battle took place.</p><p>"Those bone moves are amazing"! Meiko cheered out in excitement overloading Kiyomi's mind with loud shrieks of joy, "They're so fast and powerful, they'd tear any shield I have like wet paper"!</p><p>"Hey! Just whose side are you on? You may just end up fighting guys like this in the next rounds", Kiyomi complained so that her friend lightened up her overwhelming excitement. "Better start looking for weaknesses while you have a chance" the Yamanaka tried to direct her teammate's energy to something more productive than vain obsession.</p><p>"You're just jealous he's cooler than you!" Meiko joked, her thoughts were more collected this time but somehow they managed to sound even more insufferable. In a way, Kiyomi didn't really feel too fond about Jekleifer, maybe it was just his clan in general. Maybe there was a hint of jealousy in that hatred, similar to how Kiyomi hated Uchiha.</p><p>That being said, the jealousy and hatred for Uchiha felt more warranted somehow. Those were people praised for being the total ninja elite, the highest and the most amazing bloodline one could've been born into. Uchiha were destined for greatness, they had every tool handed down to them to be Hokage, to be the most powerful and amazing ninja. To be strong, smart and handsome. Whenever Kiyomi felt proud to be Yamanaka somehow Uchiha always were brought up as if somehow Kiyomi's own blood was less worth than that of theirs.</p><p>It wouldn't have been that bad if those guys used their blood right. Rose above the occasion, lived up to their potential and sacrificed their lives working for their village and doing their best. Instead they lived their lives in vanity and arrogance, thinking that their natural prowess and talent was all they needed. That was how most of them died off or got retired early – they got careless and cocky. That was likely the bottom of Kiyomi's beef with those people. The fact that they were naturally superior to everyone else, constantly shoved in her face about how that was the truth, and yet they wasted everyone's time with all that potential.</p><p>Then what was the problem with this guy? He clearly was fit and well trained, he used his abilities properly and even innovated on them. He was cocky but he could back up every word of it. He wasn't like the Uchiha Kiyomi knew or heard of at all.</p><p>Qarsufly's hands danced gracefully in a combination of hand seals after his teeth drew more blood from his thumb and he summoned another beetle. This one however was the size of a rhinoceros. Its side horns extended halfway throughout the entire hall and the central nose horn was as tall as the entire floor and looked like it could've crushed every bone in someone's body with a single ram.</p><p>With a whooshing sound the side horns snapped shut, trying to cut through Jekleifer like scissors. The golden haired Kaguya spread his hands to the sides catching the horns right before they pierced him. Blood squirt from his hands as he struggled to keep the horns away from impaling him. As the beetle intensified its pressure Jekleifer's hands should've caved in from the ceaseless intense pain but the young man held the horns firmly. Instead of squirting blood only a bone cracking and grinding sounds followed every attempt to press the horns together and impale the Iwagakure youth. Jekleifer managed to form cartilage tissue on top of his hand injury which provided him with enough protection and toughness to his grip to hold the horns away.</p><p>With a mad dash forward the beetle tried to force Jekleifer back and crush him against the armored centipede shell wall to loosen his grip and crush him with the large central horn. Another barrage of crystal pillars tried to derail the beetle's forceful advances but they were toppled halfway by Faqsadid's shoulder ram. Upon hitting the crystal the pillars shattered into smallest pieces together with Faqsadid's shoulder. Despite that the strange inhuman giant kept on standing with the same look on his face, that dumb smile.</p><p>"I'm your opponent", a cybernetic sounding voice came from somewhere deep in Faqsadid's chest.</p><p>Shortly Jekleifer's body gave in to the pressure, his feet lifted off the ground and his body got slammed against the wall with the oversized horn of the beetle crushing the young man between the armored centipede shell and its horn. The wall that Jekleifer got smashed into collapsed outwards but the Kaguya youth managed to avoid being flung outside.</p><p>Jekleifer's female teammate attempted to move him further away from the cornered position he was in but a speedy whizzing circular blade buzzed right past her face stopping her. By leaning left and right the young Aburame avoided multiple more attacks from the circular blades before leaping up and sticking to the ceiling of the floor.</p><p>"Outside"! She yelled out turning at the messy and dusty corner that her team leader was cornered into.</p><p>Much to Qarsufly's surprise, Jekleifer stood back on his feet. The flesh on his chest appeared to be completely stripped off and only a hardened bone tissue that was generated on his actual skeleton protected that part of his body before it changed into a softer but more flexible cartilage tissue.</p><p>"That should've grinded your bones to dust"! Qarsufly's mouth opened up in disbelief from what he had seen his enemy survive. The beetle he was standing on and whom he was controlling was the most powerful member of the ninja beetles he could use in combat. The combination attack that the Sunagakure genin had used must've been his most powerful hit and yet it didn't appear that it fazed his enemy at all, except numerous flesh wounds.</p><p>"That guy can take a punch too!" Meiko once again emanated overloaded with excitement thoughts onto the link.</p><p>"Yeah. But by now you should've noticed it. His weakness", Kiyomi smiled. Somehow it gave her joy now that she saw a way to defeat this genin if she ever had to fight him head-on.</p><p>"Weakness? Nothing he's hit by hurts him too much, what are you talking about? He's next to invulnerable. That white stuff completely covers up all the fleshy wounds and his bones are harder than anything in my arsenal", the blacksmith continued to remain in total awe at the Iwagakure genin's strength and endurance.</p><p>"That's right, physically he's next to invulnerable but not mentally. Every time he uses his ability he creates new bones under his flesh as well as stabs himself from inside to create weapons and counterattack it hurts him. That sort of agonizing pain wears on you and eventually the fatigue will just keep you down even if your body is still alright. Technically speaking, he damages his own body every time he both attacks and defends, his ability is a curse as much as it is a gift", the Yamanaka explained.</p><p>Without even weaving any hand seals Jekleifer placed his hands onto the ground. The skin on his flesh started twitching and shifting like large objects were moving through his flesh and his teeth grinded in pain.</p><p>"Dance of the Seedling Fern"! Jekleifer almost screamed out in crippling pain. It was clear that momentarily his enemy wondered if he should've tried and attacked the youth again as the start-up for his jutsu was incredibly sluggish and he took several seconds just standing there and letting his body shift and twitch before the technique initiated. That being said, once it did – it transpired instantaneously.</p><p>The entire structure built by Team Maruf was completely annihilated and blown away by a rising forest of colossal bones totally tearing anything in its way to shreds. Kiyomi couldn't even fathom what had happened for entire seconds after the tremendous forest of bones erected and completely ravaged the landscape for a good fifty meters in radius. She even wondered if she was still alive before realizing that she was mostly unhurt and in Meiko's hands.</p><p>"Thanks", the blonde expressed her gratitude to the quick thinking of her teammate. Meiko just nodded before sighing more easily. They were sitting on top of a strong branch inside the forest and not holed up in some room in a tight and armored structure. This was a much more comfortable location to launch the intended stealth attack from.</p><p>From a single look at Qarsufly's eyes it became clear that the genin didn't expect the manner of widespread and total destruction of the building he helped Faqsadid build. Had his beetle not taken off and avoided every bone spike protruding from the ground in its mad flight to the air he'd have been completely overwhelmed and impaled, without a doubt.</p><p>His team however were not as fortunate. Faqsadid laid on the ground with his strange body completely torn and lacerated. He looked like he got gutted by a rampaging boar as he laid outside the forest's range, without a doubt being tossed there after the spikes erected shooting out from the ground so suddenly. Squlra also carried massive battle damage from the suddenly emerged forest as her highly concealing outfit got almost completely torn apart to shreds and her exposed skin revealed endless streaks of cuts and shallow stabbing wounds she received. The young woman was hanging on a circular blade attached to a steel wire that she lodged onto a tree branch, using it to pull herself away after taking massive damage to both her body and her chakra reserves.</p><p>"Still want to try your luck against that Kaguya guy"? Meiko mumbled with a cheerful smile as the overwhelming attack against the entire battlefield caused Kiyomi to break the mental link.</p><p>Without answering anything Kiyomi just pointed her finger at the Kaguya who stood in right outside of the forest of bones surrounded by his teammates. Jekleifer was breathing heavily and sweating profusely, trickling drops of blood forced their way through the cartilage tissue and somehow found its way outside his body. It was evident that the Team Corundum leader took a great toll using this technique.</p><p>"Whaaa!", the blacksmith shouted out loud enough for Kiyomi to temporarily feel worried that they may have given their position out.</p><p>"I mean… Yeah, I know I was right but I didn't expect you to be that excited. Jutsu like that have their cost, you know", Kiyomi shrugged as she started getting drawn into her own lecture before Meiko grabbed the Yamanaka's soft and squishy cheeks and turned her head against a pink pillar of crystal laying on the ground a good twenty meters behind Team Corundum.</p><p>"Mana", Kiyomi uttered finally realizing what caught her friend's attention before. While finding her friend did feel a little clarifying, at the same time it sort of kicked Kiyomi straight in the groin. As if her face was dragged in the dirt of her failure. Her own immobilized teammate frozen in a chunk of crystal just laid out besides an active battlefield.</p><p>Before the blonde could figure out if she wanted to risk being seen while moving the magician's crystalline prison away from the battlefield, the squabble was resumed.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Chakram Whirligig"! Squlra yelled out taken over by rage of being cut up and damaged. She saw the weakened state of the Kaguya and went for it. Ten chakram blades flew right at the worn out and self-injured Kaguya who clenched at his own wounds. Right as the blades would've hit her teammate, Aburame Maurlon placed her hand against the ground. Powerful jaws emerged from underground deflecting the blades aside before submerging again.</p><p>Angered by the lack of success in injuring her opponent Squlra grit her teeth before pulling on all the strings attached to all of the chakram and driving all of them to their intended location. Despite her repeated attempt to hit the enemy the entire team was protected by a crystalline dome surrounding them.</p><p>"You actually helped this time", Maurlon noted in genuine surprise of the very uncharacteristic behavior for her Guren clansman teammate.</p><p>"Tsk, don't get any wrong ideas, if those blades actually hit Jekleifer I'd have gotten dirt and blood into my eyes, that's too annoying to allow to happen", Tolkre replied sarcastically.</p><p>"Go. I'll watch both your backs"! Maurlon asked for her teammate who just nodded and weaved a pair of hand seals before charging alone at his enemy.</p><p>"Crystal Style: Crystal Lance!" Tolkre yelled out as his hand hardened with an outer layer of crystal which kept growing thicker and longer until it began resembling a large lance made entirely of pink crystal material sharper and harder than titanium.</p><p>Momentarily Tolkre's eyes wavered as he saw little to no support from the Aburame coming but soon his feeling of ground beneath his feet wavered. The Guren clansman realized that he was mounting an immensely sized insect causing movements underground that forced the ground beneath his feet to shift, moving him at his opponent's direction like a surfboard.</p><p>"The beetle, Tolkre"! Maurlon commanded to prioritize the insectoid partner of Qarsufly.</p><p>"Forget it, let's just get Jekleifer his stupid target and be done with it!" Tolkre smiled as he thrust his spear at the laying giant.</p><p>Before the crystalline spear could pierce Faqsadid, however, Qarsufly's beetle swooped down and rammed Tolkre from the side tossing him aside and off of his surfboard of shifting dirt. It appeared that the impact shook the young man up and injured him pretty badly as he didn't move or attempt to get up after being tossed aside.</p><p>"Fine, I'll finish him off myself", Maurlon grunted as she slammed her hands against the ground setting off her ace technique which she was waiting to use this whole time.</p><p>The dirt beneath Faqsadid's massive frame exploded like a gazer of stone and soil before beginning to sink down. The sinkhole grew in size and depth with an alarming rate.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Teetotum!" Squlra yelled out sending a bunch of chakram blades attached to steel wire through which she channeled Lightning Release chakra to grant her blades more cutting power and completely imbue them with chakra. With cutting power like that the young Sunagakure kunoichi could've cut through most of any weapons found in genin's arsenal and even through elementary chakra augmentation using genin like nothing. As the blades got swallowed up by the rotating and shifting blackness of the sinkhole in which Faqsadid was getting absorbed in a strong lightning pulse came out from Squlra's chakram before the tools got completely swallowed up.</p><p>"What!?" The injured Sunagakure kunoichi yelled out in surprise, "My Lightning Release chakra should've broken your Earth Release ninjutsu apart"</p><p>"Earth Release ninjutsu?" Maurlon smiled confidently as she confidently straightened out her back and rubbed her nose triumphantly, "Who told I was using something like that?"</p><p>"But", Squlra hesitated before observing the shifting dirt inside the ever deepening and widening sinkhole more clearly. It looked like every smallest grain of the soil was a living, moving and squirming organism struggling for its life which caused the sinkhole effect.</p><p>"That's right. Those are all insects, burrowing through the ground, desperately fleeing from something larger that lurks in the center of my technique", Maurlon grinned before Faqsadid's massive frame got grabbed by two pincer-like gigantic jaws and dragged completely underground before the insects all settled down and burrowed underground. After one more violent quake of the earth the sinkhole got completely covered up and collapsed in on itself, the doing of all the miniscule insects who didn't sink below to the absolute giant lurking below.</p><p>"Don't worry, we'll give your teammate up to the staff. We'll claim him as our target, of course", Maurlon laughed out in triumph. Her technique utilizing two entirely new species of the Aburame chakra devouring insects required open space or a more suitable floor than the armored shell of a giant Forest of Death centipede which covered Team Maruf's camp before. All the burrowing little insects attacked the enemy eating away at their chakra resources and making it difficult to escape the sinkhole while the large predator awaited in the deep center of the sinkhole waiting to lock its tight jaws around the sinking and weakened prey and either hold them captive or just crush them in its grip.</p><p>Squlra's cocky feminine laugh pierced the silence. Not too long later Qarsufly's laughter followed.</p><p>"Our teammate? We tried to save his puppet, not his body. Replacing the big one will be a big pain in his ass, that's all", Squlra mocked the Aburame who lingered for a moment before a light tremble gave away her suddenly rising fear.</p><p>Dirty little hands burst from underground grabbing firmly on the Aburame's heels and holding her in place.</p><p>"I… I can't contact Arijikochu. What have you done to her"!? Maurlon tried to still maintain an image of being threatening despite being firmly restrained and all of her attempts to call for her underground swarms ending up in vain.</p><p>As Qarsufly's buzzing beetle prepared to ram the enemy of its summoner and break her body Squlra could've help herself from bragging.</p><p>"It's Faqsadid's giant puppet, the gooey red secretion that spreads from its wounds is poisonous" she giggled, "If I had to guess, your buggers are all probably all knocked out or dead for trying to eat his chakra up from up close".</p><p>After lowering its massive ramming horn the beetle swooped down. Maurlon closed her eyes, she could probably have used some more of her chakra to form an insect clone using the parasitic insects already inside her body but it wouldn't have stopped the incoming horn, nor would it have allowed her to somehow get loose from the real Faqsadid holding her from underground.</p><p>"Konoha Secret Taijutsu: One Thousand Years of Death!" Kiyomi's voice echoed out of the blue as she and Meiko blitzed behind Qarsufly in his moment of lowered guard. The Yamanaka pressed her hands together inserting her index and middle fingers into Qarsufly's rear end forcefully. Meiko had definitely not expected Kiyomi's secret anti-augmentation method to be this embarrassing but she appeared to follow up her attack flawlessly, if cringing ever so slightly.</p><p>The blacksmith's hand chopped Qarsufly in the back of his neck subtly, knowing that Kiyomi's technique neutralized her opponent's ability to augment his body using chakra. In his moment of constipating embarrassing agony the chop hit Qarsufly where it was sent knocking him out instantly and slamming him against his summoned beetle so strongly that it derailed the insect and slammed it to the ground shaking it up greatly. After the beetle dispelled with a loud poof followed by a cloud of smoke in its location being left behind Qarsufly's unconscious body rolled out from the smoke cloud.</p><p>Initially the two girls intended to hit and run but now the two just stared both weakened and feuding teams down angrily. Kiyomi had previously thought that the magician was knocked out from behind or cut down. Seeing her covered up in crystal and locked inside that crystal pillar it inspired hope that maybe there was still hope to rescue her and have her maintain consciousness.</p><p>They'd convince Team Corundum let Mana go and bring her back even if it took giving Tolkre a thousand kancho pokes to do it.</p>
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<a name="section0306"><h2>306. Someone That I Used To Know</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Who are you"? Maurlon's worried voice broke through the suddenly dominant silence that took over not too long after Meiko and Kiyomi revealed themselves and knocked out Meiko's target. The blacksmith straightened her body out and began walking onwards approaching Maurlon.</p><p>The Aburame raised her hands up defensively but her unique breed of parasitic insects was rendered virtually useless by the poison of Faqsadid's puppet and she was effectively left defenseless. Several meters aside Tolkre Guren – Maurlon's teammate was picking himself back up and getting on his feet, just trying to acquaintance himself with the situation transpiring around him.</p><p>After Meiko got dangerously close to Maurlon the Aburame just stared at the Konoha kunoichi angrily as if trying to stare her down into submission. Meiko's arms shot downwards faster than the Aburame could've responded to, aiming to grip firmly onto the wrists that held the Aburame from underground and pull onto them firmly and pull out the little puppet user from his underground hiding place. A buzzing sound alerted Meiko from behind.</p><p>As Squlra attempted to prevent Meiko from removing her teammate from underground the girl got covered in a crystal pillar similar in size and density to that which enveloped Mana. Jekleifer also leapt into action, finally recovered and somewhat capable of attacking, as bone tissue wrapped around his fist creating a makeshift spear-like shape, which Jekleifer thrust at the crystal pillar crushing it into little bits and knocking the female blade-wielder out in the process. After Squlra got knocked down and out of the crystal prison Jekleifer just nodded at his crystal ninjutsu using teammate as a sign of successful cooperation.</p><p>Meanwhile, while the attempt to attack her distracted Meiko, she noticed that the small wrists that restrained Maurlon's feet from underground had disappeared once she turned back. Only at that moment did Maurlon realize that the redhead was trying to free her and pull Faqsadid out.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at the unconscious Squlra before nodding at her with her chin and turning at Jekleifer.</p><p>"Is she out"? The Yamanaka asked it straight and strict.</p><p>"Her augmentations prevented her from getting impaled, that being said, she is out of the competition", Jekleifer confirmed with a grumpy and tired tone, the pain and weariness he had experienced in this battle were all reflected in the way he replied to Kiyomi's question.</p><p>"Well, I assume that beetle guy was your target, thank you guys for an assisting hand, we'll be going on ahead then"! Tolkre cheerfully attempted to slip away from confronting Team Hokage and answering all of their questions. Oddly enough it wasn't just Kiyomi's voice that stopped the Guren clansman from leaving the battlefield, it was that of Jekleifer as well.</p><p>"You incased our friend in crystal. Free her"! Kiyomi demanded first, before the Kaguya could reiterate what it was exactly that he said. It was a social play, a display that she considered what she had to say as being more important than whatever it was the Kaguya wanted to say.</p><p>Jekleifer looked back at Mana who stood incapacitated and completely incased in crystal, almost like she was frozen in time at the exact moment she figured out that the Iwagakure trio had snuck up on her. Distress and anger went through Jekleifer's face once he realized the relation between Mana and the team that just revealed themselves. It was likely that he expected a problem during the time when he could've used some time to rest and recover from the pain and fatigue he had caused himself.</p><p>"Look", he tried to reason with Team Hokage before, much to his shock, Tolkre leaped up to the pillar and punched it with great force shattering the crystal to pieces. Fortunately enough, Mana's unconscious frame fell down freed from the prison instead of being shattered together with it.</p><p>"You dick!" Meiko charged at Tolkre blasting out flares from her boots and looking to absolutely wreck his entire face. Her fist only stopped a hair away from Maurlon's face when she jumped in to shield her teammate. It was only because Meiko had observed the battle and knew that the Aburame girl was completely defenseless that she stopped her fist in motion. The self-sacrificial drive to protect her team while being completely powerless oneself was something that Meiko couldn't help but respect.</p><p>"What are you so fussy about? That's the only way to free her from the restraints", Tolkre teased the blacksmith who only growled through her teeth at the smug Guren clansman. "You should feel lucky my crystal hasn't come in contact with Earth Release and turned into Emerald Release – then it'd have been really tough getting your friend out".</p><p>"Enough. There's been a misunderstanding between us. We didn't count on someone standing in our way and we weren't sure about your friend's motivations or abilities. We succeeded on sneaking up to her, she looked like she was occupied somehow with something else so we used the opportunity to imprison her. Tolkre's crystal covers up the entire body, even the inside spaces, like all the way inside her lungs, she is most definitely passed out right now. We're sorry about that" Jekleifer apologized trying to still stitch some semblance of social peace together.</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi went up to Mana checking her condition, judging from their faces they weren't happy. That troubled Jekleifer but his thoughts were more focused on something else entirely.</p><p>"As I've said, we apologize for what happened. That being said, this is a competition. Eliminations happen. Our goal now is Faqsadid. His team may be out but he is still my target" Jekleifer spoke up firmly as he was looking on ahead and at the ground beneath his feet.</p><p>"Are you kidding me? His team is eliminated, he bit his tail and ran away! He's none of our business now"! Tolkre complained out loud.</p><p>"That's right. That being said, we aren't sure that's how the rules work. Technically Faqsadid is still not eliminated, even if his team is out of the exams. Even if he was counted as eliminated, I want to know that I can fulfil my assignment, it's a matter of honor", the Kaguya grumbled out through his injuries.</p><p>"She was busy communicating with us on the mental link to watch out behind her", Kiyomi grunted out while gripping her fists together so hard they were shaking. The blonde felt that the Kaguya was right, this was a competition and eliminations like this happened from time to time but this just wasn't fair. As a leader none of these excuses helped the guilt she felt. Her rational mind managed to calm itself but on the inside the Yamanaka was shaken.</p><p>Maurlon looked at the distressed Team Hokage. It was tough to say what her exact thoughts were or what her feelings were as her dark shades covered up the girl's eyes but a feeling told that she was actually regretful towards the way things worked out. About how her team ended up eliminating a genin they had no reason to eliminate.</p><p>After a brief moment of just looking from aside Maurlon walked up to the two and bowed respectfully before offering some medical supplies.</p><p>"It's fine, your leader will need those more." Kiyomi angrily shut the Aburame down.</p><p>"What are you doing, Maurlon"? Jekleifer turned back at his teammate enraged and desperate to pursue his target. "We need to move"!</p><p>"You're tired and injured. You can't just throw your techniques haphazardly like you did before. You sit down and treat your wounds, then we'll move to look for that guy before we head to the northern gate", Maurlon refused to follow calmly, choosing instead to reason with her team leader, almost pleading him.</p><p>"Heh heh, yeah, loser, sit down and rest or else you'll run out of breath and faint like that time during survival drill", Tolkre teased his teammate, after being given a heart-freezing stare the Guren clansman just shrugged. "I mean, chasing after that puppet user now is a waste of time anyways. I'm all with Maurlon here" he made his true position more clear.</p><p>"While we sit around here Faqsadid will get eliminated by the staff and removed from the Forest of Death premises, I'll lose my chance to fulfil my assignment", Jekleifer complained before sitting down on a nearby rock. His usually more tidy and restrained golden hair broke out from all restraints and fell chaotically all over his face and exposed naked upper body, covering up his grievous looking flesh wounds and grazes and exposed bone tissue and cartilage patches.</p><p>"Mana was a lot like that too. She talked a lot about how little this warrior code meant to her, how she was willing to cut any corners but the idea of being tested and being actually ready, honoring the conditions of the test meant a lot to her. More than she was willing to admit", Meiko smiled looking at the grumpy Kaguya who looked like he was actually forcing himself to sit still and treat his wounds. "She also acted like she could take much more than she was actually able to"</p><p>"You've no idea", Kiyomi smiled kindly looking at Mana's peaceful expression. "Don't talk about her as if she was dead though. That shit is creepy"</p><p>"That is annoying, isn't it? Especially when you care about your friends. That total persistence that they are alone despite your utmost effort to be by their side and that their problems are theirs alone", Maurlon laughed out before looking at Jekleifer who just glared back at her angrily before once again resuming applying bandages and ointment to his grazed chest, shoulders and arms. Tolkre just settled down further from both of his teammates and pulled out something packed up to eat during the break.</p><p>"Say, now that Qarsufly is dealt with, you wouldn't be willing to trade information, would you"? Kiyomi inquired as she still had a target to locate and defeat.</p><p>"Well, this fight is actually our final one. We're pretty much ready to move on now, I'm surprised you guys are still missing a target. They may have already finished the exam as well at this point", Maurlon shook her head uneasily gesturing that her team had no need for information.</p><p>"That's not true, we do need information. We'd be willing to trade whatever we have. After all, the exam is still not over. We'll tell you all about whomever we know in exchange about the abilities of people you know about", Jekleifer suggested as he joined into the conversation shortly after finishing watching over his injuries.</p><p>While it was much more difficult to pull off without Mana's aid, Kiyomi and Meiko told Team Corundum everything they knew about the teams they've met along the way and the abilities they possessed. The intelligence trade extended so far ahead that at some point Tolkre got interested and joined in on the whole exchange.</p><p>"I see", Jekleifer exclaimed after the briefing was finished. "We have information about Team Kyanite of Iwagakure, Team Hickory of Konoha, Team Pine of Konoha and Team Zumurrud of Sunagakure".</p><p>"You've met Team Zumurrud? Do you maybe know of the abilities of their third member? We've obtained intelligence about them from another team but the third one remains a mystery", Kiyomi recalled the long information trade with the alliance of teams they've met earlier.</p><p>"I'm sorry, we do not. Despite our utmost push to reveal his abilities, Lazimo didn't use them", Maurlon shook her head.</p><p>"Yeah, we would've had them on the ropes but they gave us the slip", Tolkre grinned confidently recalling Team Corundum's experience with the discussed team.</p><p>"Did you eliminate any of their members"? Kiyomi raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"We did not, as I've said, abilities were as valuable to us as the information of the team's location. Sometimes we pressed on teams with unknown to us abilities to reveal them even if they weren't our targets", Jekleifer elaborated.</p><p>"In any case, for reasons we're sure you'll understand we won't reveal about Team Kyanite's abilities. You didn't appear to let out that they are your targets so snitching on people from our own village would be wasteful in such a case" Tolkre teased the Konohagakure duo.</p><p>"Fair enough", Kiyomi nodded. "They aren't my target, none of your listed teams are so feel free to give as much info as you feel like sharing".</p><p>"You've shared plenty with us, it'd only be fair if I told you everything else we know", Jekleifer sighed, "Team Hickory is comprised of…"</p><p>"We've met them recently, you can skip them", Meiko interrupted.</p><p>"Very well, I just felt like that would've been useful information. We've found that plenty of teams are seeking Team Hickory for some reason. I must say, Team Hokage also doesn't have the best of reputations, I'd watch out if I was you", the Kaguya noted before resuming his part of the sharing process.</p><p>"At this point the warning is way overdue", Kiyomi sighed remembering about the bounty she recently found out about and the team that attacked her and Mana.</p><p>"Team Pine is comprised of Aburame Juhi, a girl with a very refined version of the Parasitic Insects Jutsu. She can shape her kikaichu species parasitic insects with much better precision than most Aburame", Jekleifer began briefing the two kunoichi about the ninja he found out about.</p><p>"I can attest to that, many Aburame choose to seek for different species than the bland basic kikaichu. But Juhi chose to polish the controlling technique instead", Maurlon added.</p><p>"We've eliminated a second member of their team – Tohi Jomya, he was a very unimpressive ninja lacking the ability of chakra control. From what we could gather it was due to abused chakra augmentation early during their career, a rookie mistake. He tried building various gadgets and traps and using weaponry to compensate but without chakra control he wasn't too difficult to take out", Tolkre added the part of the encounter with Team Pine he cared about the most.</p><p>"The third member was an odd one. His name was Tanko Shigin. He was able to extend his body and withstand physical blows as if he had no bones or sensitive organs inside his body at all", Jekleifer recalled, "I'd say of the three he is the most dangerous, so far we have not come up with any way to injure him or take him out".</p><p>"No bones at all, huh? I don't really even remember Tanko from the Ninja Academy, do you, Meiko?" Kiyomi pondered.</p><p>"Nah, doesn't sound like anyone from my class or anyone I've met or heard about. But now that you bring it up, I'd really like to see Jekleifer fight that guy – a guy with an excess of bones against a guy with no bones or organs at all. It just sounds pretty hilarious"! Meiko grinned before breaking out into laughter.</p><p>Shortly after exchanging information Team Corundum left towards the northern gate, still arguing about possibly trying to locate and eliminate Faqsadid themselves once more. Their departure left Kiyomi and Meiko to their own. While that concluded a part of their exam trials, it also opened up a new question – what to do with the unconscious body of their friend.</p><p>"We should probably bring her to the southern gate. She's offered so much for us, it'd only be fair that we go out of our way to safely bring her there ourselves, just feels more honorable that way", Meiko angrily grunted, it was clear that she didn't take it too well that Mana needed to be eliminated at all. The feeling was, very obviously, shared by Kiyomi as well.</p><p>"Hmmm. While I do agree but… We're running out of time. We need to find information about my target, find them and take them out", the blonde complained trying to come up with a solution. She did want to properly honor her friend's performance and with this whole Forest of Death stage of the Exams being a simulation of a real-life mission situation it was the equivalent of burying one's friend.</p><p>"Yeah but… It's Mana. She really worked hard and…", words simply stuck in Meiko's mouth.</p><p>"I hear you, that Tala dickbag surrendered his teammate himself. No way we're being bigger dicks than him", Kiyomi shrugged empathizing with her teammate's state of mind. Even she had to agree that where usually Mana never was on the same page with her team, always looking out for her own ideals and inner feelings over the mission objective, this time was different. There was this feeling like she took these Exams seriously, like to her it was an all or nothing affair which only made this failed effort more painful for all of them.</p><p>"Earth Release: Practice Brick Jutsu!", a loud chant alerted Kiyomi and Meiko forcing them to look up and into the trees for their assailant as four tall walls of solid, rough ground rose in the air cornering them and shutting them inside the ground walls.</p><p>"Break this wall, now!" Kiyomi yelled out an order as Meiko angrily tackled one of the walls with her shoulder and grabbed Kiyomi by her shoulder and tried dragging her away from the cornered quarter. A black blur and a little twin red flash inspired great fear as well as great rage in Kiyomi's heart, the blonde would've told those red orbs from any other eyes in existence. Seeing how one of Meiko's hands was occupied with dragging Kiyomi further away from the battlefield she got overwhelmed by a flurry of punches and kicks and sent crashing back into the cornered area.</p><p>"Human Bullet Tank"! a loud cheerful voice made Meiko look up and realize she'd just be too late to dodge a slamming giant taijutsu attack that converted the user's own body into a massive human sized ball that body slammed right into the area surrounded by walls of dirt that were raised before.</p><p>Knowing that dodging in time was out of the question Meiko rolled on top of Kiyomi and braced herself to take most of the impact. As the rolling human boulder slammed on top of the two kunoichi it broke through the weak and filtered ground itself sending Meiko and Kiyomi tumbling down into a deep dark hole underground. The cave system of the Forest of Death full of supermassive insects and other creatures that couldn't fit to survive on the surface or needed a different stage of competition to better thrive.</p><p>It seemed like Meiko and Kiyomi were falling for a whole eternity, nothing but total darkness with brief rays of light overhead that now seemed like solar objects compared to all-encompassing darkness that surrounded the two girls. Meiko could her a string reeling sound followed by a loud clang of steel cutting into rock, someone grabbed her collar firmly and stopped her fall before the girl slammed into the rocky wall but it was nothing compared to falling all the way down and smashing into the bottom of wherever this plummet went.</p><p>"Still alive, Kiyomi-chan?" a loud yell came from way up, Kiyomi's eyes filled with hatred and burning rage could tell those infernal red eyes staring down the hole straight at her.</p><p>"Fucking Lithia, I'll murder her stupid face…" the Yamanaka just kept on repeating to herself. A tearing sound signaled that the Uchiha girl from above managed to sever Kiyomi's last string that held her clinging to the wall by her side and sent her plummeting all the way down instead. As the blonde kept on diving further and further down all she could hear was the cocky laughter of the arrogant classmate she once knew in the Academy – Lithia Uchiha. The source of all of her hatred for that cocky overrated clan. The sole reason why the Yamanaka will recover, climb her way out of this stupid hole and kick her shit all the way up until it is thrown up from her arrogant elitist mouth.</p>
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<a name="section0307"><h2>307. Keep Rolling, Rolling, Rolling, Rolling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A thundering thud broke Kiyomi from a tiresome tirade of dizziness. Meiko's quick reaction and tough body allowed her to recover in time and pull Kiyomi out of the harm's way. The powerful punch that was aimed right at Kiyomi's face went straight through and into the iron hard layers of rock located below in whatever cave system the two tumbled down into.</p><p>"It was an impressive trap, Kiyomi. You were always pretty smart, should've talked Lithia out of underestimating you", a low-pitched and slightly slurry voice echoed through the darkness of the underground ravine where the trio ended up in.</p><p>"That's right, Chominu. But that always was her problem, no one ever is worth a second thought unless they come in dark hair and an emo package", Kiyomi cheerfully raised her fist up trying to act like tumbling down into the ravine and separating the chubby teammate from his team was the idea the whole time.</p><p>"But you haven't done anything, it was the bug girl that softened the soil and messed up the dirt with her bugs", Meiko pointed out making what she thought smart faces looked like.</p><p>"Shut up, Meiko! You're not helping this at all, Meiko!" Kiyomi hissed turning back at her teammate. If Lithia ever came to hear about this streak of good luck, she'd never let Kiyomi get over it which would only piss the Yamanaka off more in the long term.</p><p>"Now you sound like that other Yamanaka girl, repeating things when you're angry"! Meiko cracked up laughing pointing her finger at Kiyomi mockingly, which only infuriated the Yamanaka heiress even more.</p><p>"So, I'm Lithia's target then? Fate's a cruel bitch, isn't it?" Kiyomi quickly changed her expression into a façade of a cool and composed face.</p><p>"Not really, Lithia doesn't really care about you. In fact, when I brought up Team Hokage to begin with, we had to remind her that you were in it and that the two of you shared history in the same class. Your teammate here is actually my target", the chubby Akimichi from a different class in Kiyomi's year pointed at Meiko who just pointed at her own inflated and swollen from laughter cheeks in confusion. A moment after the whole matter sunk in Meiko erupted into a more chaotic fit of laughter.</p><p>"Your… Academy rival… Doesn't even remember you, she doesn't even care about you and they're actually here… After me"! The redhead kept on breaking up and bending over in pain that the intense laughing caused to her abdomen. The blacksmith was one stage of laugh away from writhing on the ground.</p><p>"Shut up, Meiko…" Kiyomi closed her eyes and rubbed her temples furiously. "Fine, I take it that Lithia is coming down here eventually as well. It'll be a chance for me to remind her just who was actually the talented one in the Academy. As for now, these are very poor odds for you, Chominu".</p><p>"Lithia won't be coming down here. The climb is too much trouble for her, Kidenshi may come down here to even the odds, though", the Akimichi shook his head carelessly. It didn't appear to trouble him that he'd effectively be facing off against two people all by himself for a short while. "Knowing Kidenshi, however, he'll be arguing his pants off trying to convince Lithia to come down here as well. Those two tend to argue a lot, so if it's not too much trouble, I'd not mind waiting for them to come down here and finish you two off".</p><p>"Okay", Meiko nodded and dropped her large behind on a rough looking oval stone formation on the ground.</p><p>"Okay"? Kiyomi squinted in fury at her teammate. "They want to eliminate us from the competition, you're their goddamn target"!</p><p>"Not really, we only care about Meiko. If you wouldn't involve yourself at all, Kiyomi, that'd be just ideal", Chominu nodded his head with a cheerful grin, happy that Meiko had decided to sit and wait for Chominu's reinforcements, Team Walnut, to descend and eliminate her.</p><p>All of a sudden, Meiko jumped up and clapped her hands together, like she had just forgotten something. Curiously, Chominu looked the blacksmith down, wondering what it was exactly that changed the redhead's opinion.</p><p>"Wait, Mana is still up there with them. Unless we get up there we can't pick her up and bring her to the southern gate"! Meiko recalled.</p><p>"Exactly, that's why we need to kick this guy's ass, eliminate your hunter and then bring Mana to the gate", Kiyomi cheered on Meiko's decision for the sole purpose of wanting to return to the surface just so she could shove it down Lithia's face.</p><p>"That's right! That's what we're gonna do, sorry, Chominu", Meiko smacked her fist against her palm before taking a fighting stance, a decision which Kiyomi soon joined in on.</p><p>"I see, that's too bad", Chominu nodded to himself before launching his tall and round frame off the ground in a mad shoulder tackle charge aimed at both girls. It was quite brave to take both of them on alone.</p><p>Kiyomi graciously leapt aside from the tall-and-chubby's charge, Meiko, on the other hand, chose to intercept it and take the young man head-on. Right as the blacksmith's palms interrupted the powerful rush, Meiko quickly responded with a strong and precise right cross straight at the Akimichi's jaw which was left completely open. Despite a powerful shockwave rumbling the underground ravine and disturbing the quiet creeks and water sources it didn't look like it'd keep the Akimichi down for long as he jumped up with an uppercut of his own.</p><p>As Meiko's body lifted off the ground, Chominu's large hand tied around the girl's ankles and pulled her down and over his shoulder and slammed her weightless frame into the dirt shaking the ravine up once more. A wave of freezing water covered Kiyomi from behind, a testament of the great damage and disturbance that the fighting between the two was causing. Kiyomi looked up with a clever squint.</p><p>"Meiko, keep the fisticuffs up, the more we shake this place up, the tougher it'll be for little Ms. Cocky-pants to get down here with her fancy boots and her sensitive fingernails", the blonde alerted her teammate.</p><p>"Ms. Cocky-pants in this case being"? Meiko wondered as she picked herself off the ground and leaped aside from a powerful earth-shaking stomp coming from her opponent and wiped blood off of her cracked lip, "I'm sorry, it's just that this resurfaced Academy life of yours is a little confusing", she grumbled.</p><p>"Lithia"! Kiyomi yelled out as she leaped into the fray to join in and aid her teammate.</p><p>A wild swipe of Kiyomi's kunai went completely unseen in the darkness of the underground ravine, with a little of wet slippery rocks being mixed into the equation the swipe sent Chominu stumbling back and falling into a underground pond of freezing crystal clear water.</p><p>"Nice work"! Meiko commended Kiyomi for utilizing the battlefield just right. Despite the attack being a simple kunai swipe it was perfectly timed and placed, utilizing the natural darkness of the battlefield as well as the other natural conditions. It was also just quick enough to open a small and barely significant scratch, but also just strong enough for the painful shock of the cut sending Chominu tumbling over.</p><p>As the standing pool of water erupted in a mad blasting gazer, Chominu's massive frame, expanded by the signature Akimichi clan's Multi-Size Jutsu, leaped up into the air. The genin's arms and legs disappeared in the bodysuit of the young man forming a ball of human meat that got propelled by the chakra used to drive it forward and control it, applied by the user.</p><p>"Human Bullet Tank"! The Akimichi clansman yelled out sending himself down into the two girls in a mad rolling frenzy.</p><p>The gigantic human boulder slammed against the elevated rocky grounds where both girls originally stood crushing the entire structure and sending it underwater. Chominu may have only understood too late that he was only crushing small, dislocated stalactites placed in harm's way by both girls using the Substitution Jutsu simultaneously in great sync.</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko stuck upside down to the wall where the stalactites they used to replace themselves originally were. Both of the girls were struggling to breathe properly so they had to take a breather before being able to talk right.</p><p>"That technique is pretty annoying", Meiko acknowledged.</p><p>"Yeah, but there are plenty of weaknesses to it", Kiyomi smiled as she couldn't help but feel inspired by how well they've executed the synchronized Substitution, as any team leader should.</p><p>"Really? Go ahead and exploit them in that case", Meiko cheerfully nodded before pointing her blunt and rotund chin at the rolling enemy human boulder that dived once more out of the water and used the walls and ceiling of the ravine now like some mad bowling ball in a rush to topple all the annoying pins, no matter where they were stuck.</p><p>"It's gaining acceleration with each passing second, soon we won't be able to stop it. Attack it, he won't be able to properly defend himself while rolling"! Kiyomi commanded as she placed her hands forward in the signature position for most Yamanaka hidden techniques, ready for Meiko to lure her enemy into an exposed position where she could've hit it with one.</p><p>"No problem"! Meiko grinned with a monkey-like full-toothed grin and placed her hands by her lower sides. Sealing glyphs lit up in bright red light before two curved blades got unsealed from Meiko's sides and the blacksmith leaped to work. It was a very sensitive moment, a clash between two techniques, especially ones based on physical prowess.</p><p>As Meiko's body dashed onwards, both blades in hand, Kiyomi began seeing the attack almost like it transpired in slow motion, despite any stage of the exchange being completely invisible to an untrained eye. Meiko must've aimed to slash with a wide X position slash, straight at the exposed and defenseless boulder. It was a bold move that could've resulted in an injured opponent and interrupted technique but she needed to play all the cards right. Chominu's speed and force of impact would be immense. That meant that Meiko needed to activate her chakra input for the dashing slash at the exactly right moment where it'd overpower her opponent's chakra input and broke his jutsu. Not to mention compensate for the growing acceleration and therefore force…</p><p>A powerful rumbling shockwave following a loud thundering crack shook Kiyomi wildly, almost strong enough to dislodge her off the ceiling and send tumbling down to the roaring and whirling, foamy waters below. Meiko messed up, she decided to clash with the opponent with brute force instead of a subtle and quick slice. She just rammed her blades bluntly right into the rolling boulder, slowing it down greatly as the boulder attempted to push Meiko away and knock her off her feet. Blinding, lightning bright sparks emanated from Meiko's blades.</p><p>For a moment Kiyomi wanted to interrupt her own carefully positioned into hand seal positions hands to assist Meiko but… Her trust in her friend paid off. With an inhuman, almost bestial roar Meiko overpowered her opponent sending him flying back and smashing through stalactites way back. With lightning fast backflips, still horizontally and upside to the ravine floor, Meiko backed up some before pushing at the tips of the blades she just used with her thumbs.</p><p>With a loud steel clanging sound the twin blades revealed themselves to be giant windmill shuriken as they transformed into shape. "Not done with you just yet"! Meiko yelled out as she launched both of the windmill shuriken at her opponent in an odd crisscrossing trajectory the specifics of which were relatively difficult to read. Chominu quickly braced for impact locking his hands around his knees into the shape of a human boulder before beginning to spin in place.</p><p>It appeared that Chominu's unorthodox defense had worked out somewhat, where normally the shuriken would've went right through the young man or cut him in two completely, the added chakra input and swift rotation caused the blades of the shuriken to just graze at the Akimichi's back opening up an X shaped crimson wound.</p><p>"How's that"? Meiko arrogantly laughed out after glancing back at Kiyomi.</p><p>"You threw him out of the range of my jutsu, you absolute monster", Kiyomi commended her teammate. While she was troubled by Meiko's excessive show of physical force and complete balls it took to engage the enemy that way, commending the redhead went a longer way, ultimately, than trying to tell her why she should've been more subtle with her approach.</p><p>Emerging from the clear freezing water Chominu stumbled onto the first rocky floor platform he could find before sitting up on his butt and feeling up his cut up back. The young man didn't like to admit being pushed put even he could see that taking on both of the fellow Konoha genin this way may have been a rushed and foolish decision.</p><p>"Our friend is lying unconscious up above", Meiko began explaining after her face turned serious for a moment, as matters often did with the blacksmith when the well-being of her friends was concerned. "You cannot win here taking us both all by yourself, all we want is to pick up her body and bring her to the gate."</p><p>"It's too late for that, I am not looking for victory, I am merely trying to buy time for Kidenshi to finish his silly argument and make Lithia follow him down here. Frankly, I'm sure by now they're at least done fighting and have left your friend by herself. Don't worry, the staff will take care of her for you." Chominu explained before pulling out a sweet smelling flask, flipping it over, and wiping a bunch of juice he let spray down his face in his voracity off.</p><p>"You bastard, I said let us pass"! Meiko grunted before launching herself off the stalactite-filled floor straight at the enemy.</p><p>"No! Meiko, don't rush"! Kiyomi pleaded aloud before biting her lip in the painful realization that her opponent was still too far for her to use any of her clan techniques optimally. In that range they would've certainly missed their mark and it didn't look like the enemy intended to move in any closer. For all the dissing that Chominu did – he was wary of Kiyomi and incorporated a careful range from her into his strategy.</p><p>The Akimichi clansman smacked his hands together before extending those outwards at Meiko and slamming his wide and long foot down.</p><p>"Earth Style: Stalactite Rain"! Chominu yelled out as all the rocky and sharp stalactites on the ravine ceiling rumbled and cracked off in a wild rain, aiming to derail and down Meiko. The blacksmith shifted her body's direction upwards to attempt and protect from the stalactites but it barely helped as the raining rocks overwhelmed and downed her nearby Chominu's position. The Akimichi rushed to weave more hand seals but Kiyomi's quick counter of shuriken and kunai forced him to leap back and stick onto a back wall avoiding Kiyomi's own barrage of ninja tools that interrupted his hand seals.</p><p>Gripping onto a string of steel wire she had attached onto one stray kunai that the blonde launched at the ceiling of the ravine, Kiyomi pulled on it with all of her strength zipping with a flying kick aimed right at her opponent. She needed to buy Meiko some time to recover. Luckily enough Kiyomi's kick hit Chominu straight in the side leaving a strong and wide dent in the rocky wall and sending the chubby tumbling and rolling aside. The Yamanaka didn't relent, however, she pressed her offensive on.</p><p>The Akimichi appeared to be a very solid hand-to-hand combatant, the chubby weaved to the side avoiding Kiyomi's push kick. Her multiple palm strikes were also gently redirected and even when she leaned forward to shift her weight into a roll, deceitfully pulling off a smack at the side of her opponent heel to twist his foot the opponent managed to avoid it. Kiyomi tried several more stomping kicks at the heavyweight's knees – what she took for his weak-spot but the leg-work of her opponent was on point. As Chominu collapsed on his bottom and began spinning, using his extended sideways legs for sweeping kicks, Kiyomi found herself in need of evasion and quickly retreated from the close range clash.</p><p>Without wait or warning Chominu turned at Meiko and began weaving hand seals. At that point Kiyomi wondered if her assault had made her opponent cocky as she, together with Meiko who was still a bit further below launched a combined storm of kunai and shuriken at the enemy to interrupt the hand seals. Surprisingly enough with a loud clang all of their ninja tools got deflected in mid-air and the hand seal string got completed. Chominu smacked his extended palms together and stomped his feet firmly onto the wall he stood on.</p><p>"Earth Style: Practice Brick Jutsu"! He yelled out raising a bunch of flimsy dirt walls all around Meiko.</p><p>Kiyomi rushed at the Akimichi, desperate to stop his attack, she was really reckless and failed to notice an opponent from above, or her right, respectively. A powerful right cross from her side sent the blonde crashing down into the freezing waters below. A fluffy ball of fur and teeth and cute doggy eyes stopped whizzing around the attacker's arm and settled down inside the boy's that attacked Kiyomi jacket as he confidently felt up his own bicep as a gesture of strength.</p><p>"Multi-Size Jutsu"! Chominu yelled out as calories in his body got converted into chakra at intense rates massively expanding his size into a round, boulder-like shape.</p><p>"Human-Pinball"! The Akimichi yelled out as his round boulder-like frame fired off the wall he stood on and flew straight at Meiko. The blacksmith covered her body up with a block as the massive body slam sent her flying back together with the human boulder technique and through several of the erected dirt walls. By the time that Meiko realized what Chominu had raised those walls previously for it may have been already too late as the human rolling boulder bounced off the dirt walls and rushed at Meiko repeatedly in rapid ceaseless succession.</p><p>At some point Meiko guard lowered down and she stopped blocking or trying to brace her body, trying to predict where the hits would come from. Finally, the expanded human boulder slammed her to the rocky platform busting it to pieces and toppling all of the dirt walls through the devastating impact shockwave it let out. For a moment the foamy crimson waters kept on whirling and waving, the glowing red eyes of a girl stuck to the ceiling wall continued to observe the water.</p><p>A good minute later Chominu surfaced, gasping for air erratically. "Took you guys a good while to get here"! The Akimichi complained out loud.</p><p>"Blame Ms. Stick-Up-Her-Ass, she couldn't even be bothered to come down here and help you", Inuzuka Kidenshi pointed his finger at his Lolita-style favoring, crimson-eyed teammate.</p><p>"Oh… I figured you two would be fighting over it", Chominu sighed before swimming up to the wall and finally crawling up it to catch a breath. "Oh well, at least I knocked Wakizashi Meiko out", he sighed easier.</p><p>"Actually, they both escaped", Lithia giggled mockingly at her own hand. "Kiyomi-chan salvaged her dizzy teammate and swam to the lower levels, catching a stream that carried them away, you were still floating about when it happened too", the pompous girl yawned into her hand. After her eyes closed for the yawn and opened again they no longer glowed red, having changed into a pitch dark shade of black.</p><p>"And you only tell us now?" Kidenshi got outraged, "Should've dived after them instead of standing around there!"</p><p>"And get wet? Are you mad?" Lithia crossed her hands onto her chest angrily squinting at her teammate with frustration, "It's not my fault they escaped in the first place".</p><p>"If you knew they were escaping, I'm pretty sure it was, you dumb bimbo"! Kidenshi growled at his teammate showing off his sharp fangs.</p><hr/><p>While the team of Meiko's hunters bickered, Kiyomi grasped firmly at the struggling and beaten up body of her teammate as the underground stream carried them to a falling stream that threw them even deeper underground.</p>
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<a name="section0308"><h2>308. Gear-Man Sentai Tokusatsu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A bitter mouthful of water got tossed out violently from Meiko's lungs after an erratic series of coughing. Had Kiyomi looked back she'd have noticed that a considerable amount of blood was present in the water running down Meiko's body, clothes and out from inside her body. It was tough to see exactly how much blood was present for Meiko as well seeing how the beating she took made her right eye well swollen up and her entire face was busted in several places, her messed up ribs made breathing hurt.</p><p>"Thanks…" Meiko gathered enough air in her lungs at last to let out an expression of gratitude. After all, Team Walnut was after her all along. "Pulled my butt out of the fire", she admitted.</p><p>"You probably could've taken Chominu, when the others interfered it just got too hot for that", Kiyomi angrily dismissed her teammate's sensitive moment.</p><p>Meiko looked up sadly at her friend who was just looking away at a random point in the moist cave system, occasionally the blonde reached her hand up to wipe her nose or to get her wet loose hair out of her face. The blacksmith stood back up, staggering considerably as she did so before reaching out and touching Kiyomi's damp cold shoulder.</p><p>"I know what this meant for you. You really wanted to show up that Lithia girl but you chose to run away to save me. Thanks for that", Meiko quietly muttered before scratching the itchy cold swelling on her eye.</p><p>"Whatever, I'd be a lousy leader if I couldn't step over petty nonsense for my own team", the Yamanaka dismissed the notion on the outside, even if she clearly still hated herself internally.</p><p>Little by little, Kiyomi was beginning to understand what being a leader was all about. Often in her past she had to step up to do the right thing properly when her own sensei messed up or simply didn't know how to do the right thing, still, this exam and her stepping up during it gave the girl perspective. Another point of view about how difficult things would be from here on out, after she became a chuunin.</p><p>"So… What now? They may come after us", Meiko wondered before looking around. The cave system they'd ended up in looked pretty narrow and straightforward. The ravine's lake of water appeared to have a channel that lead into a long submerged tunnel, which dropped water on the lower level of the underground caves. The room where the girls were in was a round cave with only two ways out - to swim and scale up to the fall the stream tossed them out from, swim upstream through the tunnel or head onwards through the caves.</p><p>Looking ahead through the darkness ahead Meiko blinked a couple of times rapidly before looking up. The redhead then looked down at her clenched fist.</p><p>"You know, I could probably bust us out. Probably wouldn't even need augmentation, my natural strength should easily bust through a good kilometer of rock", the blacksmith suggested.</p><p>"No. We'd cause a downfall of the whole thing. Maurlon's bugs have already weakened the soil as it is. You'd cause a ruckus that'd attract attention and we'd risk getting buried under the rubble. Having in mind that a large amount of teams wants us dead… Well, you know…", Kiyomi shook her head before looking on ahead to properly weigh all of the options.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess my idea sucked", Meiko bit her lip.</p><p>"It was a good idea just… Don't rush this, you've taken a beating, focus on getting through this and resting up", Kiyomi sighed after seeing Meiko frown a bit too much for her liking. The redhead was by far at her strongest and most beastly when she was enthusiastic and not looking down on herself, that was the version of Meiko that Kiyomi wanted to have around about now.</p><p>"Alright, let's go on ahead then, we don't want to sit around here and get followed", Meiko sighed before slowly walking up ahead and into the tunnel, walking far enough for the complete darkness of the cave to envelop her and too far on ahead for Kiyomi's enhanced ninja vision to be able to track her sufficiently.</p><p>Before rushing on ahead after her teammate the blonde frowned and looked up and to her back. Where she had imagined Mana to lay out cold. Having been left all alone and by herself she was probably already taken in by the Konohagakure staff. These were the odds, as a leader she knew them. That was the reality on the battlefield as well - sometimes not everyone made it. In the real world her comrades won't just get eliminated, they'll get taken out permanently. This was the part of ninja life she had to accept, something she had to own up to as a soon-to-be squad leader.</p><hr/><p>"Keep your ears stretched out and your eyes open", Kiyomi warned her teammate as the two carefully treaded ahead through the long and narrow cave corridor. It looked a bit too small to be made for all the massive underground denizens of the Forest of Death. Something about it really smelled suspicious, it looked just too fitting for human shapes to tread through.</p><p>"Ironically enough, you're crowding my ears with your mommying", Meiko pouted giving her teammate an angry stare back.</p><p>"Mommying isn't a real word, even if it was, I'm not mommying"</p><p>"It is totally a word and you totally are"!</p><p>A loud wooden popping sound interrupted the quarrel of the two girls. From underground a bunch of rods with kunai blades attached to the tips shot out. Just due to their superhuman reaction time and vision did the two girls manage to bend and twist their bodies in ways that allowed them to avoid getting skewered and impaled on them, twisting and turning their bodies to only receive minor scratches where they were unavoidable and avoiding a single makeshift spear from impaling them. This was no trap for a ninja, this was either a warning sign of something meant to hunt down animals and this corridor didn't look like it could fit any animals that lived down here.</p><p>"You know I saw this horror movie once, this brings up memories of it", Meiko's grumpy voice informed her teammate before both girls tensed up their muscles and broke the spears around them giving them some freedom.</p><p>"I find myself too hard to scare watching those, I mean they really lost their effect about by the time I learned to control other people's bodies remotely", Kiyomi smiled as the two walked onwards.</p><p>"Shit"! Meiko yelled out as she tripped over something and fell down. Having in mind that they were just narrowly almost skewered by a death trap, Kiyomi's mind worked lightning fast. Her arms worked through myriad of hand seals and she slammed her hand to the ground.</p><p>"Earth Style: Rock Shelter"! Kiyomi grunted out fast enough to create a formation of rocks and dirt from around her, forming a dome around her and Meiko that deflected the seemingly ceaseless barrage of kunai that got launched from the second deathtrap triggered by the steel wire that Meiko tripped over.</p><p>"I didn't know you could use Earth Release too"! Meiko shouted out in surprise.</p><p>"I'm pretty sure I told you when we were training together, it's my secondary elemental affinity. I don't know too many jutsu though. Normally you'd have been fast enough to catch one of the kunai and deflect the others even in total darkness but since you so hilariously ate shit on the floor I had to step up", Kiyomi teased her friend before letting the dome collapse into a lifeless pile of rock and dirt.</p><p>"I dunno, my eye's really messed up so I may have missed some", Meiko shrugged, "It's good enough that you decided to pull this out of nowhere…"</p><p>"I told you already, I didn't hide it from you or Mana"! Kiyomi complained out loud waving her hands in the air frantically as the two girls made their way out of the narrow cave corridor.</p><hr/><p>Right as the corridor was about to widen up and the cave to which the long and narrow tunnel lead to expanded into a massive structure full of Snapper Ant eggs that glowed in the dark with an almost phosphoric blue hue Meiko noticed someone, or rather something that looked out of order.</p><p>"Those Snapper Ants, they're all knocked out", Meiko pointed at a bunch of massively sized insects stuck to the walls by some white cotton-like substance.</p><p>"I knew we were walking into a fight", Kiyomi grunted before looking around, trying to locate anyone or anything out of ordinary.</p><p>"Hey, look over there, it's someone's puppet armor completely not making any effort to hide and completely in plain view"! Meiko shouted out with excitement as she rushed on ahead. The gear-headed heart of the blacksmith demanded that she conducted a thorough and long investigation of the two times larger green metallic and mechanical structure.</p><p>Right before the redhead closed in on the puppet armor, the blue glowing orb on the center of its head part lit up and the thing extended its arm firing off a large rocket propelled fist attached to a long metallic wires strung together and wrapped around each other for density and greater thickness. The blacksmith braced herself and blocked the hit, the force of impact sent her sliding back and staggering at the end of the slide as her shaken brain struggled to keep her body upright and balanced.</p><p>"For your information, fair maden, I was blending into the environment!" a completely human voice, unaltered by a cybernetic voicebox which sort of was expected from someone hiding inside a puppet armor, thundered out. "You see, it is completely normal for ninja to look for what is hidden underneath, so normal that it is not unusual for them to miss something in plain view"!</p><p>"Yeah, that's stupid, I mean maybe if you were a cloaked man standing by the rocky wall in the darkness, I guess… But you're a large green robotic puppet with armor, it sort of stands out", Kiyomi scratched the back of her head feeling a bit mixed feelings about this odd man in the armor. There were too many questions to simply attack him outright.</p><p>"Yeah, but I had to point at him before you noticed", Meiko grinned teasing Kiyomi.</p><p>"I was getting to him, also, shut up", the blonde grumpily snapped back at her friend.</p><p>The cracked and bruised steel all over the robotic body of the gear puppet lit up in the cracks and spaces between the steel plates and gears. That must've been the sign of the puppet being activated and prepared for combat use. The more focused and intense lighting also allowed Kiyomi and Meiko to observe the oddity in its full appearance. It was a peculiar construction of thick and large, even sluggishly looking steel plates on its feet, groin, body and chest as well as head and its lower arms. There were bent arm sized gears sticking out of the armor in the places where joints were supposed to be.</p><p>"This isn't very functional, you know", Meiko pointed out addressing the puppet-master inside the armor. "Those gears are too sluggish for quick and precise movements, they're also all exposed making them one foreign object away from clogging and getting stuck. Those tied wires around your arms, neck and legs also don't look comfortable, in battle they'd rub against your clothes and skin and irritate them."</p><p>"Look… This isn't the point", Kiyomi grinned after hearing Meiko disassemble the strange robotic armor standing in front of them. "We're not here looking for a fight, in fact, we're running away from one. All we need is to find a way to the surface. If possible, we could also trade information".</p><p>"I am well aware of the problems with the armor. I am the one wearing it, after all. The functionality and efficiency of the armor doesn't bother me. It has a more personal value to me" the puppet-master spoke.</p><p>"You mean how it's a complete rip-off of Gear-Man from Gear-Man Z manga"? Meiko squinted suspiciously at her new acquaintance.</p><p>"It's like none of them are even listening to me at this point", Kiyomi smacked her face in frustration.</p><p>"That's right, it is indeed heavily based on Gear-Man from Gear-Man Z", the puppet-master admitted after a heavy sigh.</p><p>"A complete rip-off", Meiko didn't relent. "It's like I'm looking at the full-page panel or a cover art right now".</p><p>"Look, it's not about what it is, it's about what the armor means to me."</p><p>"Not to mention how it defies the very function of puppet armors, those are usually used to trick the opponent and provide protection for the sensitive and frail puppet-user. Looking at Gear-Man here, one would instantly figure you out as a puppet-armor", Meiko shrugged continuing to argue with the man inside the shell of gears and steel.</p><p>"Gear-Man is not just a puppet"! the puppet-master exclaimed. "It is a personal hero of mine. The symbol of my outer layer of physical strength with my own sensitive inner core resting inside. I do not care if it is useful or not, I do not care if it is functional or not. For what Gear-Man means to me, I simply cannot choose another way to fight"!</p><p>"So you admit it then", Meiko cheeked the large gear-bot.</p><p>"Yes. It does take the shape of Gear-Man, with all of his abilities and gadgets recreated as accurately as I could pull it off. Obviously, the Gearbeam couldn't have been actually shaped like a gear, I do not possess the needed chakra shape transformation skills yet. That being said, my Z-rangs are a superior copy even to those used in that terrible Gear-Man movie"! The young man explained before reaching for a section of the armor protecting his thigh, which opened up and allowed him to remove golden colored Z-shaped boomerangs.</p><p>"I mean… I do myself often rebuild weapons and tools from stories and manga and I love cosplaying within the confines of my own room, so… I guess you're alright, Gear-Man", Meiko smiled kindly.</p><p>"And now she's befriended Gear-Man", Kiyomi rubbed her forehead in irritation.</p><p>"Make no mistake, I do not call myself Gear-Man, my name is Masen-Z from Team Cumulus, Kumogakure. My team is now resting in a cave nearby here and I am tasked with protecting them and standing guard. That is my job in the team, as a true Mechanical Hero of Maximum Justice"! Masen stroke a heroic pose standing up straight and placing his hands by his sides.</p><p>"Dude, I think your team is just abusing you so that you could stay on duty all the time", Meiko approached the robotic armor and jumped up so she could pet its shoulder softly.</p><p>"Wait, Team Cumulus!?" Kiyomi shrieked out.</p><p>"That is correct, what is the source of your surprise, maiden?" Masen inquired, clearly taken aback by Kiyomi's surprise of just stumbling into the team member of her target by accident.</p><p>"Well, never-mind…" the gear giant dismissed the notion as quickly as he brought it up before turning back at Meiko, who looked forgetful enough to have forgotten that Team Cumulus was the team Kiyomi needed to locate. Had she known or remembered halfway, she'd have undoubtedly let it slip out in one context or another, so maybe it was for the better that she was forgetful.</p><p>"Indeed my comrades are using me for all sorts of things. Othello G is constantly trying to wrestle my armor while I am outside it, using it as a dummy and constantly performing only his sickest suplexes and leg drops on it, Sunny-Lee keeps trying to power my armor using her cotton discharges when it's not even electricity based". Masen sat down on a nearby rock only for Meiko to follow him and settle down nearby while Kiyomi was left to try and come up with something resembling a plan.</p><p>How was she supposed to think when everything was constantly hitting her with all of its worst right in her face like this? Mana got knocked out after a combination of misfortunes and misunderstandings, bad calls from all teams involved. Lithia and her team were possibly chasing after Kiyomi and Meiko, seeing how Meiko was Chominu's target. Meanwhile, while on the run they run into the team which Kiyomi needed most of all, yet found in the worst of times.</p><p>Should she engage Masen right now? No, that would take too much time, fighting anyone here and now will cause Lithia's Team Walnut to catch up to her in the most inconvenient moments, as usual. Not to mention the remaining members of Team Cumulus which were resting somewhere nearby… This Masen person looked like a loser who cares more about being faithful to his stupid manga hero than making a functional armor but the rest of Team Cumulus may have been too strong for tired and busted up Meiko and Kiyomi to handle by themselves. Being a leader and calling the shots sucked! No wonder it tore Mana to pieces internally…</p><p>"But then again, such is the nature of man. Being but a machine, a robot of clockwork and gears, grinding without emotion to the outside world of other gear-men and robots. We are all just steel masks of functionality, hiding our true souls inside but we are too afraid to reveal them or we simply don't know how. That, in my mind, what Gear-Man Z is actually all about and that's what I represent as the real life Gear-Man! That's why I chose "Z" as my nickname as well, wearing it beside my first name proudly!" Masen declared as he once again stroke a heroic pose much to Meiko's clapping amusement.</p><p>"Earth Style: Rock Avalanche"! the familiar slurry voice of Lithia's overweight teammate finally made Kiyomi realize her time for decisions had officially ran out and the decision was about to be made for her.</p><p>The Yamanaka turned in desperation at her blacksmith friend standing beside Masen-Z. The desperation came from the realization that Meiko was bit too far from Kiyomi's protective Earth Release techniques to reach. Once the smoke and rubble cleared the powerful Gear-Man armor pushed the stones that he had protected Meiko from off of his raised chakra barrier.</p><p>"Blue-Gear Formation: Protective Hero's Barrier of Maximum Justice"! Masen-Z chanted out the name of his technique before turning to Meiko. "I have to say the name of the technique after I perform it, because it's too long and if I try to say it while I'm doing it, I'm a bit too slow and if I try to speak as fast as ninja do during battle my tongue gets twisted".</p><p>"It's fine, you just need practice, Gear-Man"! Meiko cheered on the brave young man who loved a hero from the comic books he was passionate about and recreated it in real life.</p><p>"Foul villains, you have attacked my recently met friend, Meiko. If you target Meiko, you pick fight with Gear-Man"! Masen boldly declared shaking fears into… Someone's heart, somewhere.</p><p>"Yeah… Maybe don't go around yelling Gear-Man's name out loud… That's kind of a lawsuit waiting to happen. I heard those became pretty common after the movie industry bloomed." Meiko warned her new friend.</p><p>Kiyomi laughed out, realizing that this weirdo may have been an ace up their sleeve after all. She quickly dashed up to the crafty duo of Meiko and Masen before turning at the Kumogakure craftsman with a cheerful grin.</p><p>"You're pretty alright, Gear-Man, you're pretty alright!" she over-joyingly declared both to herself and to her newly met friend.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0309"><h2>309. The Explosive Squabble</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"They'll be targeting Meiko, she's the chubby one's target", Kiyomi muttered. She felt confident that her teammates could've been spoken too in a more quiet tone, avoiding the revelation of her mental communication ability to the possible future enemy. While the Yamanaka was gleeful to team up with this Gear-Man fanatic now, she kept it well in mind that he may become an enemy soon enough.</p><p>"They will have to go through me first"! Masen-Z energetically declared as all the possible lighting under the heavy armored shell lit up building up an image of a powerful and fired up gadget-using ally.</p><p>"So do we run at them"? Meiko grinned excitedly, somewhere under her bruised and busted face there was that very same vibrant redhead. Kiyomi was glad to see her ally mostly ready for combat after a brief period of tranquility.</p><p>"No. We scope out their abilities, we see what Masen-Z can do and put a proper strategy together", Kiyomi denied her ally's enthusiasm for attacking the enemy.</p><p>Chominu's hands flashed through a collection of hand seals, Kiyomi could identify that specific set even if she could just see them briefly with the entire package of poor lighting and blurry speed being in play. The chubby was preparing for his signature combination of techniques but her gut told the blonde that there was something different, something more she didn't incorporate.</p><p>"Earth Style: Practice Brick Jutsu"! Chominu slurred out slamming his palms at the ground while bending and widening his feet and taking a more headstrong fighting stance.</p><p>As the ground beneath their feet rumbled Kiyomi noticed the shoddy dirt and rock walls rising significantly farther behind them. Was it an attempt to trap them off from the remaining members of Team Cumulus? Did Team Walnut take Team Cumulus as Team Hokage's allies after seeing Gear-Man aiding them out? No, there was something different in play.</p><p>"Let's go, Pomumaru"! Kidenshi, the third member of Team Walnut encouraged his little pom-pom like looking canine fellow. Almost immediately, the little ball of fur dove out from its safe hiding spot inside his partner's jacket and began running erratically in circles all around his master's body.</p><p>"Intercept that attack"! Kiyomi ordered after remembering the damage that this particular combination of ninjutsu dealt before and just the amount of force that this combination carried. The blunt force from the impact she could vaguely recall was nothing short from astounding, it was like the little critter built up force and momentum while running in circles around his partner before joining into his punches, kicks or tackles.</p><p>"Too late, Pom-Fang"! Kidenshi shouted out as he planted his fist firmly into Meiko's chest making the redhead blank out for a moment and throwing her body rolling backwards like a ragdoll. Just as Kiyomi theorized, the little critter he took for a dog ran around his master frantically, building up momentum and further boosting the increase in force using chakra in a combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu. The two worked in a perfect close range synchrony.</p><p>Luckily enough, Meiko had ample time to prepare a response for the attack. Shortly after it appeared that her body would've gotten flung backwards and into the surrounding of the dirt wall structure her injured body poofed away in a cloud of smoke. What remained in its place was a ball of cotton that held all those incapacitated Snapper-Ants that made their nest here before Team Cumulus found this hideout.</p><p>"Substitution Jutsu? Such crude and basic techniques", Lithia Uchiha taunted Kiyomi and Meiko standing behind both of her male teammates and playing with her knee long black flowing locks. It was odd for the Uchiha to wish to see more complex and powerful techniques but perhaps that was just her arrogant personality speaking over the girl's reason.</p><p>"Wow, heard that, Kiyomi? An Uchiha clansperson thought my jutsu were basic and crude! You're so cool, Lithia"! Meiko got a serious case of starry eyes over the famed young lady of the Konoha Ninja Academy. The blacksmith never had the opportunity to see Lithia Uchiha in action but there was a certain flare of idolizing of most older students, being a member of the elite Uchiha clan, Lithia naturally hogged all of the starry eyes meant for her entire class.</p><p>"Seriously, Meiko! I'm gonna punch you right now"! Kiyomi grunted in anger.</p><p>"Calm yourself, fair maiden, please, remember the true enemy. If you eliminate the one of great thick belly they will lose interest in your team"! Gear-Man reminded Kiyomi as an attempt to get her head fully in the game. The blonde grabbed her head with both hands and growled like a wild dog.</p><p>This was just so unfair. The one chance when Kiyomi finally got a chance to show up Lithia Uchiha, the one girl who tormented her all Ninja Academy years by getting all the praise and all the worship and all the popularity despite doing literally nothing but being a snobby ass-hat, she had to focus on someone else entirely.</p><p>"What's wrong, Kiyomi-chan? Finally realized that you just can't cut it to fight on the chuunin level? Oh, wait, why am I even trying to comprehend your problems, they're so beneath me anyways", Lithia smiled confidently before lazily erupting into a controlled and very composed laugh that lingered on the edge of appearing faked.</p><p>That remark made something snap inside the Yamanaka's mind. Her hand fired up and darted off from tearing into her rich blond hair and into her tool pouch grabbing a large handful of explosive tags before launching all of them into the air wildly as she emitted her strongest and deepest battle cry to vent out her rage and frustration.</p><p>"Are you insane, fair maiden, you'll blow all of us up! You're supposed to use those tags on the enemy"! Gear-Man tried to calm Kiyomi down before seeing her hands work a bunch of hand seals.</p><p>"Earth Style: Traveling Rock Pillar"! Kiyomi muttered out as all of the air in her chest had long been drawn out by her battle cry and the burning anger for the smug Uchiha that she always failed to expose for who she truly was. A great formation of rock burst out from underground grabbing the floating explosive tags and allowing all of them to stick onto them before beginning to move towards from underground, appearing like a fin of a rocky shark, right at Team Walnut.</p><p>"No, Kiyomi, you're wasting your time, Lithia will just see through your attack and dodge it, you can't up-show the Sharingan"! Meiko scolded her team leader before looking at the trajectory of Kiyomi's technique and how it drastically bended at the last second to reach Chominu instead of Lithia.</p><p>The chubby yelled something unintelligible out while the rest of his team dashed away at incredible speed, managing to outrun the explosion after it was set off but before it reached them in just a narrow speck of time. Kiyomi looked content with her fake-out. Yeah, she wanted to hand Lithia her ass more than anyone else in the village, still, sabotaging this fight and risking her friend's well-being was the wrong way to do it. A much superior way was eliminating that self-righteous snob from the competition.</p><p>"Kiyomi…" Meiko uttered in amazement at how good at acting and faking out Kiyomi was.</p><p>"We're going to eliminate two members, Meiko, you hear me? Two members. It doesn't matter who they are", Kiyomi breathed out heavily as she may have spent a bit too much stamina and breath with her acting effort.</p><p>"Ouch"! Chominu's slurry voice interrupted the conversation as the cloud of smoke parted and cleared enough to reveal the young ninja having used the Multi-Size Jutsu right before Kiyomi's attack hit him. He may have realized that he would've failed to escape the explosion when it was going off right at his face, luckily he didn't need that much movement and effort to set off a simple signature jutsu of his clan.</p><p>"That doesn't make any sense", Meiko grumped out, annoyed that her hunter wasn't eliminated which would've normally been a strong possibility. "He used the expansion technique, how did it help him, exactly?"</p><p>"He expanded his body size, increasing the area of effect to which the force of the explosion was applied to which reduced the overall force his body was hit by", Kiyomi sighed in disappointment that her fake-out trick failed.</p><p>"Now is our chance to strike, however"! Gear-Man realized before reaching to the compartments by his thighs and pulling out a pair of Z-shaped boomerangs before striking a heroic pose and launching them at the expanded yet slightly injured opponent.</p><p>"Z-Rangs of Complete Justice's Optimal Bringing"! Masen-Z chanted out as the elaborately named technique, which consisted of two simple actions, him removing his boomerangs from the compartments and him tossing them at the opponent was set off successfully.</p><p>"Pom-Tunneling Fang"! Kidenshi yelled out as he kicked off of the ground and positioned himself above the two boomerangs as they flew in the air before striking twice while his little Pomeranian companion built up momentum and force almost instantly, sending all of it out in a mighty wave of air pressure that deflected Gear-Man's Z-rangs.</p><p>"Thank you", Chominu thanked his Inuzuka clansman ally before his body returned to normal size and he collapsed on his knees clutching to his aching body. "That being said, the feeling that you did not have to do it just can't completely fade from the mind. I mean those boomerangs were shaped like the letter "Z", that can't be a very practical shape for a projectile weapon…"</p><p>Kiyomi had settled a while ago on the idea that she'd need to resort to her clan techniques in this battle. That being said, she still had to single out an optimal target for her disruption tactics. She saw Chominu clashing fists and limbs with seemingly considerable powerhouses like Meiko and Masen-Z, on the other hand, Kidenshi was a quick and strong disruption factor himself. Still, if Kiyomi switched into his body she'd be unlikely to properly setoff any of his hidden techniques as it involved cooperating with his little critter.</p><p>Before Kiyomi could single out a target for her mind displacement techniques, Meiko took initiative in attacking the opponent. She reached in to her lower left waist area where a sealing glyph symbol lit up allowing the blacksmith to unseal another one of her hidden weapons. The drawn tool was a large round bamboo ball with bark strips wrapped around it. One of the most stand-out features of the weapon was the large number of kunai blades sticking out from it and the crystal clear seen explosive note stuck on its left and right central areas.</p><p>Grabbing the spiky explosive sphere by one of its dulled blades, Meiko winded up. The redhead used her entire body, making it work together in order to be accurate and powerful at the same time. She was like a baseball player preparing to make some mad plays. She needed to pitch the sphere strong enough for it to gain too much speed for it to be intercepted, yet she had to reserve enough strength not to damage it or mess up her aim mid-way.</p><p>The sphere disappeared from clear sight the millisecond it left contact with Meiko's hand. It flew seemingly instantly to its location being aimed right at the chubby hunter of hers. Before Masen-Z, Meiko or Kiyomi could celebrate however an obstacle stood in their way, with her flaring red Sharingan eyes Lithia leaped in and grabbed the exact same blunted grip and lobbed the sphere up the exact same way Meiko did to the most exact twitch of her muscles.</p><p>"I didn't notice her activating the Sharingan", Kiyomi grumbled as the blast splattered a bunch of knocked out Snapper-Ants around and sent rubble of rocks and scattered kunai blades scattering all around the area.</p><p>"I wouldn't expect you would…" Lithia cockily taunted the Yamanaka with a snobbish smile, not even bothering to observe the rubble falling from above and the dislodged massive layers of rock and splattered body parts of Snapper-Ants raining down. She had successfully calculated and read the trajectory of every smallest pebble of that debris almost instantly using her Sharingan eye and already knew there was no need to trouble her elite little head about it.</p><p>Both teams covered up from the resonating blast shockwave and from the chain rumbling of the massive debris raining all across the large cave room. Lithia was the only one completely unfazed by any of the surrounding events shifting the very battlefield that the squabble for further competition in the Chuunin Exams took place.</p><p>The very moment that the final rock landed the newly improvised Kiyomi's squad scattered across, hiding behind whatever cover they could find as such a messy battlefield was more akin to the ones they were taught to fight in. Chominu and Kidenshi also dashed for the rocky or hardened chitin cover with the female Uchiha following her teammates shortly without uttering a single word.</p><p>Meiko felt Kiyomi's mind reaching out for her and she relaxed her head to allow her friend entry into her mind. It was tough to say for certain, at least until the gear giant didn't speak mentally, but Meiko was guessing that Masen-Z was excluded from the mental link.</p><p>"Did you see how many tomoe symbols Lithia had?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Does it matter"?</p><p>"I guess not, if she could copy your movements so perfectly, she could copy my own Yamanaka techniques as well"! Kiyomi raged.</p><p>"Wait! So that's why you don't like Lithia that much, because she can just copy your clan's hidden techniques by just observing them. In front of her, you're not special",</p><p>"There are plenty of reasons to dislike Lithia but… I've gone through many difficulties to learn and master everything that makes me special. Lithia, meanwhile, can just look at what I do and repeat it, all the hidden jutsu of my clan. That perfectly reflects everything that's wrong with her. She just gets everything, praise, being called "elite" and "special" for the sole reason of the clan she was born in. That's simply not fair, I've tried to prove her and another Uchiha clansman in my team that their fancy eyes don't compensate hard work but… They're too busy to listen to anyone else." Kiyomi vented out.</p><p>A strong roaring engine sound alerted the two kunoichi and made them peek from the relative safety of their covers and observe Masen-Z appear from his cover. It was probably smart for him to attack first, this makeshift cover barely did conceal him anyways and his own large size robbed him of subtle and restrained movements while in cover. Every slightest movement would have betrayed his position whether it was visually or audibly.</p><p>"Flying Strong Fist of Get-Closer Justice!" Masen-Z yelled out as his mechanical puppet armor shot its lower arm piece extending it through a long piece of wrapped together hardened strings of steel wire. Oddly enough the fist wasn't meant to demolish cover as it was shot in an odd trajectory, it flew over the cover and then bent over the top to slam into whoever was behind it. Despite Masen-Z's strongest guess he only picked up a bunch of crushed rocks in his grip when the mechanical extending fist returned.</p><p>"Multi-Size Jutsu"! Chominu yelled out after jumping in the air and over his cover, revealing his true position. Meiko and Kiyomi must've realized Lithia's clever plan all along, the Uchiha didn't just lob off Meiko's weapon to the upper ceiling of the cave for the show – she created a perfect rocky battlefield for her teammate's innovative style of Akimichi clan technique use.</p><p>"Human-Pinball"! The chubby shinobi shouted as he launched his expanded and rotund frame rolling like a human boulder at the large exposed robot.</p><p>Masen-Z's palms extended as if he was intending to stop the hurling massive human boulder with his armored hands but before he could even try such a silly thing the palms opened up firing off searing jets of flames at his opponent.</p><p>"Super Hotheaded Justice Shine of Fiery Passion V2!" Masen-Z declared the hilariously too long named technique right after the flames covered the ball of rolling human flesh.</p><p>"It won't work", Kiyomi worried, with good reason. She saw that technique hit her ally not too long ago and had seen Meiko struggle to overpower its weaker version before. A simple jet of flames may singe the Akimichi a little bit but it won't even come close to stopping the jutsu or its momentum.</p><p>"No, it's not just flames, it's a contained explosion that he lets out. Those gauntlets must have a bunch of explosive tags that all detonate at once and he merely directs the built up force and heat through the channel in his gauntlets", Meiko smiled seeing the fiery blaze blast Chominu aside completely and crash him into and through a large debris boulder that had fallen from the ceiling earlier.</p><p>At this point, Chominu's endurance had to be admired. He had taken some damage, even if it was greatly reduced, before from Kiyomi's combination of clever ninja tool use in sync with her Earth Release ninjutsu. His clothes were tattered and he had burns and bruises all over, his headpiece with the Konoha headband protector got all torn up by the blast and constantly was in the danger of falling off and getting lost somewhere. And yet the Akimichi still stood, he may have been the second most durable and gutsy Akimichi member Meiko had ever seen.</p><p>It didn't appear that the impressive technique left without taking its toll on Masen, however. The gauntlets were bent awkwardly from the inside with a large hole sticking out from the left one, as if part of the force had exploded right out from the gauntlet from the inside and it appeared like the Gear-Man was beginning to fall apart from the awesome might of his own techniques.</p><p>"I'm moving out to cover him, you with me"? Meiko wondered without waiting for Kiyomi's reply to dash out into the aid of her newly met friend. Meiko's defensive formation advances were not vain as Kidenshi had revealed himself almost at the same time to engage with the two.</p><p>"No, but it's OK, neither will Lithia reveal herself. She tries to make it seem like this is all beneath her but she's waiting for what I'm trying to avoid – she's waiting for me to show her a Yamanaka clan jutsu. We're deadlocked into standing still and waiting for the other to make a mistake", Kiyomi revealed her version of why Lithia was so inactive as well as her own reason for reserving the use of the Yamanaka hidden techniques.</p><p>"Hasn't she seen your jutsu in the Academy before"? Meiko wondered as she clashed in a taijutsu exchange with Kidenshi who was just as desperate to take the blacksmith out as he wouldn't have refused to completely trash the Gear-Man suit.</p><p>"She has, that being said, the Uchiha can only record techniques for a set period of time. I'm not sure what that period is, but it's something that my uncle taught me when I was a kid, training my ass off to kick Lithia's ass. Unless the Sharingan is at a very mature perfected stage, she can only copy bits and pieces of movements or whole techniques she's seen recently", Kiyomi replied.</p><p>"Alright, stay put and wait for Lithia to make a mistake then. I've got this handled"! Meiko yelled out as she kept on dodging and dishing out punishment of her own. The blacksmith was blocking and dodging rather successfully for the longest time whereas her fists constantly found their target. Once after she opened up a bit too much and got a bit too greedy in pummeling her opponent she got a nasty cross to her ribs to drive the air out. It was a desperation move, Kidenshi clearly wanted to retreat so Meiko decided to exploit it.</p><p>The blacksmith shot down at the same time as she was breathing in and swept at the Inuzuka's legs before dropping at his gut with an elbow drop and flipping back up before dashing to a safer distance. She could've kept on punching but the redhead decided to back up, just in case one of the other Team Walnut members decided to remove her off of their fallen member while she was too busy punching him while leaving herself completely open.</p>
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<a name="section0310"><h2>310. Anvils And Bushy Armpits</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Thank you for the distraction, Meiko", Masen-Z huffed out before his cracked and worked up puppet armor straightened out and prepared for combat again.</p><p>"They shifted the entire battlefield to better suit Chominu's style, we'd appreciate if you helped us clear it up", Meiko relayed verbally what Kiyomi told her mentally making it look more like her own strategy. It wasn't that Meiko hadn't noticed how well this shifted battlefield played into Chominu's fighting style but she wouldn't have placed such a high priority on wiping the surface clean.</p><p>"It appears I shall have to use the Gearbeam, I will require some time to concentrate and charge it up. It uses both my own chakra stored into the puppetry wires as well as the momentum energy from the gearwork inside" Masen-Z rumbled out to which Meiko affirmatively nodded. Holding her own for a while, as long as Lithia chose to hold herself back to scope out Kiyomi's abilities, didn't sound like too much of a problem. As long as the payoff was cleaning the slate and making Kiyomi's battlefield preferences satisfied.</p><p>"I'm surprised your team hadn't involved themselves, we're making quite a ruckus here", Meiko grinned observing Kidenshi rolling aside and with difficulty getting back on his knees before spitting out a bit of blood aside and picking himself back up. Whatever damage her exchange of blows with the Inuzuka had left, it must've convinced him to throw all of his limiters out the window and go all out.</p><p>"I doubt they would, they are using the Snapper-Ants' nesting pods for resting, they possess both minimal healing properties and sound insolation. It'd take a much louder blast to make them suspicious. Also, they may be a bit mean to me but they do trust my abilities so even if they do hear something they'd just take it as me doing my job as someone standing guard", the gear giant rumbled back at the redhead.</p><p>Unexpectedly to everyone, a white flash with two crimson red trails blurring behind her like a tail of ionized gas and dust that commonly followed a comet burst out from a rocky cover. Closing the distance between where Lithia hid and Meiko's location in an alarming rate, the Lolita style favoring Uchiha attacked Meiko head-on.</p><p>The first palm strike dug in deep into Meiko's lower abdomen driving air from her body and slightly elevating her higher from the force of the strike. It was like the Uchiha girl saw events in slow-motion while she herself moved at hyper speeds even for a ninja. The Uchiha then proceeded to throw a blindingly fast chain of punches that almost disappeared from the range of vision even to the three genin ninja. Even confronted by exceptional close range threat of the Sharingan, Meiko placed a firm block that allowed her to cushion most if not all of Lithia's chain punching force.</p><p>Seemingly seamlessly Lithia transitioned her chain punches into a jumping cartwheel kick that smashed straight into the top of Meiko's head smashing her head, face first, right into the ground shaking the ground strong enough to move even the larger rubble rocks slightly.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance"! Kiyomi's voice echoed from somewhere aside, Meiko's head was too dizzy and spinning to identify her ally's exact direction but with Lithia's guard potentially being lowered the Yamanaka was finally free to hit her hated rival with the Yamanaka hijutsu.</p><p>Lithia casually leaned her body back before transitioning her painfully uncomfortable evasive motion into a back cartwheel and landing gracefully on her feet, almost like she was just showing off.</p><p>"You are aware that the Sharingan allows me to see chakra, right? I can visually see your mind projectile coming at me from over there and avoiding it is child's play." Lithia arrogantly laughed out into her palm, Kiyomi hid behind her cover once again. The Yamanaka was properly furious with Lithia baiting Kiyomi into showing her Yamanaka hijutsu to a hated rival.</p><p>"Partial Expansion Jutsu"! Chominu yelled out as Lithia's body twirled aside seamlessly allowing her ally's enlarged fist to pass at her side without even ruffling her skirt. The fist sent still dazed and kneeling Meiko flying back and smashing through one of the larger fallen rock structures making it completely collapse.</p><p>Bursting with tiny lightning crackles the Gear-Man armor worryingly looked back at the injured blacksmith being tossed around by the combined forces of the entire enemy team. He was busy charging up the only equalizer his team had meanwhile Kiyomi was temporarily defenseless and disorientated while her missed mental projection returned to her body. There was no one to aid the redhead fight back.</p><p>"Meiko! Stop holding back, you've not used a single ace jutsu yet, please take this seriously or you'll get hurt"! Masen-Z pleaded before realizing that the trio of his opponents have all gathered in front of him and prepared to disable his armor before proceeding to team up on Meiko.</p><p>"Sorry, Gear-Man, I can't", Meiko's pain ridden yet still cheerful voice came from the side of the rubble causing Team Walnut to redirect their attention at the standing and injured target that surprisingly enough was just as durable and wanted to win just as much as Chominu, who himself took more than his fair share of beatings.</p><p>"I beg of you, Meiko, take this seriously"! Masen-Z shouted back at her, "Use all of your ace techniques now, no use holding back for the other rounds if you won't reach them"!</p><p>"You don't get it, do you, gear-head"? Kidenshi smiled before looking back at Meiko's crooked and staggering figure walking out from the dusty rubble. His glare was not belittling or offending by any means, there was a hint of admiration and respect in his eyes. "Meiko's chakra control is lousy, she was the only genin to fail the Graduation Exam in our year. Even now she still has to fully concentrate for Academy Techniques, that is why all of her techniques focus on unsealing and using her immense arsenal or physical strength".</p><p>"Hm? You mean she can't even use one jutsu without worrying if she can pull it off correctly? That sure is lousy, what good is a ninja without jutsu"? Lithia yawned.</p><p>"She packs a good punch", Chominu commended his target before the trio of Team Walnut passed Masen-Z who was still charging up his technique and continued to walk towards Meiko, slowly preparing themselves and building up their chakra for an intense rushdown which would leave the redhead completely unable to stand.</p><p>"What good is that?" Lithia dismissed her teammate, "I can nullify her physical strength and kick her ass up close, just by being genetically superior. My Sharingan makes her sloppy movements look slow like a glacier".</p><p>An intense flare fired Meiko's body off the ground at a powerful rush forward, charging into three opponents before she was attacked and hunted down like an injured wild animal. The jet boots positioned Meiko's frame as close to the rocky floor as the girl could get without hitting it, she aimed for Chominu's shins and feet with her tackling flight.</p><p>The painful shock to her shoulders suggested she did it, she hit Chominu in the shins making him trip up and flip over, Meiko repositioned herself to grab her opponent's feet and toss him in the air. Only then did she see Kidenshi's fist and Lithia's kick coming right at her face. She had already invested too much momentum and force into her movements for her to dodge, the counters were too close to properly avoid them. All of Meiko's responses were too late, all she could've done was look at the two incoming attacks and wait for them to take her down.</p><p>Kidenshi's fist changed direction mid-way and flew straight at Lithia's face, forcing the Uchiha to change her course of action immediately in order to avoid a strong hit. The Uchiha's left hand quickly shot sideways and up to lock down on her ally's traitorous attack before twisting his arm and disabling him. Kiyomi's grunting moan betrayed her pain before Kidenshi got broken out from the blonde's Yamanaka hijutsu.</p><p>Meiko's attack got initiated successfully with a little help from her hidden ally who recovered and launched another attack just in time, this time one not aimed at Lithia and timed at a very sensitive moment. When all of Lithia's attention would be fixed elsewhere, even if the Uchiha would've been able to see Kiyomi's hijutsu coming, in that moment she'd have not been able to change anything but protect herself.</p><p>Gripping firmly at Chominu's shins and feet Meiko soared as high up as the cave height allowed before turning off her boots and allowing the natural laws of physics to do the rest of the work for her. The blacksmith flew crashing down with her hunter in her grip with a supersized piledriver slamming Chominu into the ground.</p><p>"Anvilstone"! Meiko yelled out right before the impact driving chakra in a mad rush to add extra force to the slam.</p><p>"Taijutsu techniques are jutsu too"! Masen-Z cheered on his friend excitedly as the smoke and dust cleared and both Meiko and Chominu laid sprawled out and huffing, both damaged and worn by the long lasting battle. Lithia and Kidenshi leaped farther aside to avoid the shockwave and earthquake caused by Meiko's slam.</p><p>"She's mad, she could've cracked the whole planet in half if she didn't control the augmentation right"! Kidenshi laughed out, laughing at how reckless Meiko's taijutsu technique was.</p><p>"There was no risk", Meiko boldly declared before picking herself up and stumbling a couple of times before she stood back up on her feet. "A friend of mine has been teaching me how to concentrate and control my chakra to defeat genjutsu for a long time, the general concept appears the same", she shyly rubbed her nose with a confident grin as she declared it.</p><p>Chominu grunted with a rather scary sounding cough that suggested a large amount of internal injuries being present in his body. Either way, it was impressive he could even move being slammed head first into the rough underground layers of hardened rock and minerals.</p><p>"Y-You really think some… Puny hit like that could take me out"? The Akimichi taunted Meiko before his eyes widened in a painful shock before closing and the heavyweight collapsed, falling right on his face. There could've been no confusion about it – Chominu was out. The unquestionable and crystal-clear air pressure that a ninja with an active chakra level put out was missing and the young man looked almost lifeless as he laid down on the ground.</p><p>"What? Chominu should've taken that hit, what the…", Kidenshi started losing his cool before looking at Chominu's back which was covered in kunai knives being driven in both vertically and diagonally in various angles and depths of penetration. Both Lithia and Kidenshi stood there in silence observing the environmental factor that had taken out their friend and a small puddle of blood started accumulating under the chubby's body.</p><p>"I see… It was an impressive amount of foresight", Lithia commended Meiko's attack and the complicated amount of planning needed to scatter all those kunai blades with her previously used explosive weapon only to use a high-flying slamming attack to drive all of those blades in. If the body didn't expect consciously a certain angle or manner of wounds, the chakra augmentation on that area would've been subconscious and therefore strained and multiplied exponentially, proportionally multiplying the true amount of damage dealt by the taijutsu attack as well.</p><p>"Actually, I kind of forgot those were scattered here and just sort of lucked out", Meiko smiled with a blush as she stroke her red hair energetically feeling a bit ashamed of being praised by an Uchiha who recently handed Meiko's ass to her in close range combat – an area in which the blacksmith previously thought she excelled.</p><p>"It's over, Lithia", Kiyomi jumped out of her cover and leaped on top of the large rock that used to conceal her. "With Chominu unconscious you have no more quarrel with us".</p><p>"Oh? I thought you told your friend here that you'd take down two of Team Walnut's members to eliminate us from the Exams"? Lithia turned back at Kiyomi.</p><p>"I did, back then. But something I've come to learn after taking leadership of Team Hokage is that being a leader means to rise above one's own self and one's own problems and rivalries. I can see that forcing myself, Meiko and Masen-Z to fight against you any further would mean injuries and pain that would be completely pointless and would harm my reputation as a leader. How could Meiko trust my judgment in the future if I asked her to fight meaningless battles motivated by my own lowly rivalries"? Kiyomi longingly looked at Meiko and Masen-Z who was still trembling and twitching as electricity continued to build up and crackle all over the armored puppet.</p><p>"Rivalry? What gave you the idea that you're my rival? I forgot that you existed the moment I left the Academy grounds after the graduation. You were never, nor will you ever be my rival", Lithia indifferently chuckled into her palm before playing with her hair and taking a couple of steps towards Kiyomi. "As of this whole thing… I've heard that gearhead say something very interesting. Something about the Snapper-Ant nesting pods and their healing properties. Chominu may be out cold right now but as long as he isn't eliminated, he is not out of the competition. All we need to do is to place him inside one of those pods before the staff removes him".</p><p>"Whaaaa! That's pretty clever, as expected from Lithia! Hey, Kiyomi, we should've done that with Mana"! Meiko yelled out in surprise of the Uchiha's decision to continue the battle.</p><p>"We may have, but it's too late now. She's been out of our sight for way too long, also we only figured out about those pods right now", Kiyomi replied.</p><p>"Well, if you foul villains still want to continue, have some of this – Gearbeam"! Masen-Z roared out as his armored suit began twitching and its parts began stressing and breaking apart before all of the built up electricity and chakra concentrated on the chest gear piece and the chest piece started to glow in a blinding white light.</p><p>A destructive and blindingly fast wave of compressed electrical energy and chakra fired out to the farther diagonal upper left corner of the cave as the shock and kick of the blast forced Masen-Z to get blasted back. He had to activate his jet boots to even maintain proper balance and control the beam so that it could be swiped to the right and all the battlefield obstacles could've been wiped clean. Obviously, if the jutsu ended up knocking out one or two enemies it'd have been just perfect too…</p><p>Having anticipated the blast coming sooner rather than later, Meiko leaped up in the air almost momentarily after it was activated. She could still make out the Gearbeam completely swallowing and overwhelming Kidenshi with the blinding and incredible speed of the blast and burning him up as well as violently tossing him out of the concentrated wave of chakra. Even trying to look at the blast's general direction was painful and stressed Kiyomi's eyes. All she wanted to see was the awesome speed and power of the Gearbeam tripping up Lithia and shoving all of her talk down her throat. Kiyomi just wanted to have that much…</p><p>Where it appeared that Lithia would also be overwhelmed and swallowed by the beam before being singed up and tossed aside with grievous battlefield injuries, the Uchiha appeared to manage to react just in time and arc over the beam with an acrobatic dodge. The beam only barely grazed her back tearing off a large chunk of her jacket and leaving a small burn where it grazed the Uchiha.</p><p>After the beam narrowed down to the form of a simple ray of light before completely fading, Lithia landed firmly on the ground but she didn't try to counterattack or exploit the massive opening on the Gear-Man armor which Masen-Z provided. Right after the Gearbeam concluded the armor appeared to almost completely shut down and just uselessly crook over and get weighed down by its own weight. It was a great opportunity for a powerful ninjutsu response but Lithia restrained herself and just stared at the enemy.</p><p>While initially the girl's response proved odd to Kiyomi, once the Yamanaka looked at the girl's eyes she noticed the reason – her Sharingan was missing. Instead of those fearsome red orbs with tomoe positioned symmetrically over its iris, only the void black depth was present. She must've abused and strained her Sharingan quite extensively to avoid this impressively quick and powerful blast, this was the first time Kiyomi had seen the Sharingan being shut down to give it some rest. It was a massive weakness and a possible ace under her sleeve in the future.</p><p>A loud masculine battle cry made Kiyomi change her focus from Lithia to Kidenshi who proudly stood back up on his feet and prepared a follow-up attack seeing how his teammate decided to rather remain stationary, instead of utilizing the opening she was given. It was an easy question to answer, as to why she did that. Uchiha were arrogant and the Sharingan was the reason of their arrogance, it was easy to see that without easy access to it Lithia had little faith in her abilities and chose to rather sit tight and wait for her eyes to rest a little bit.</p><p>It reminded Kiyomi of her own teammate Yamashiro so much, that young Uchiha boy also overly trusted in his Sharingan and after he had lost it in a poorly chosen battle it completely crushed his confidence to the point where the young boy chose to leave the profession behind for good and retire. Their bond with their own eyes was probably the only human trait of that forsaken clan.</p><p>"Pom-Pom Fang over Fa…" Kidenshi yelled out enraged before winding back his fist for an attack as his canine partner started building up momentum and molding chakra for something massive. This must've been his ace technique, one he was saving for the final stages of the Chuunin Exams, if hit with it head-on, without any protection, Masen-Z would've certainly been doomed.</p><p>A pink, black and red colored boa locked around Kidenshi's body, completely out of nowhere in an instant. Stretching its body from locking down his legs completely by the joints as well as around his elbow joints and even on his neck. The snake even coiled around his little cuddly critter, whereas the dog lacked severely in size, the boa only coiled around with simple loops around its waist.</p><p>"Hidden Wrestling Style Taijutsu: What-What" an energetic mumble came from the further passageway of the corridor leading further into the cave system from an extravagant and highly flamboyant older man. Upon his command the colorful boa constricted and with a bone snapping sound knocked Kidenshi out completely, allowing the boy's unconscious body to just collapse on the ground. After performing the constricting taijutsu move, the reptile then disappeared in a cloud of smoke as unexpectedly as it had appeared.</p><p>The newly emerged ninja, wearing the Kumogakure protector on the upper shin area of his wrestling boots as well as on the colorful tights on his groin, was wearing only the minimal required wrestling attire consisting of black, red and pink colored trunks and rainbow colored boots. The middle-aged man had an immensely toned and beefy body build yet it was somehow made much less impressive by the excessive body hair he was sprouting on his chest, his abdomen and armpits. That was to remain completely silent of the bushy full beard and the excessively shaved pate leaving a long bushy strand coiling around the man's head. The shaved pate was obviously to show off the "Boiga" tattoo written in blood red with yellow and black borders right on the right side of the man's forehead. All was topped off with stylish pink shades that, frankly, kind of mixed in well with the darker complexion of the flamboyant Kumogakure ninja.</p><p>"What the fuck's with all this ruckus"!? He angrily screamed out, judging from the dripping salad green goo on the wrestling gear wearing shinobi, the Gearbeam had woken up and forced out of the Snapper-Ant nesting pod where he was healing his injuries and resting.</p>
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<a name="section0311"><h2>311. Sob Stories For Everyone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Othello G"! Masen-Z yelled out in great joy as his friend's well-timed appearance had saved him from taking a considerable blow, which could have, for all intents and purposes, wrecked his Gear-Man suit completely or even damaged the real soft and fleshy Masen inside of the puppet armor.</p><p>Lithia clenched her fists angrily, this was probably the first display of real human emotion that the young lady had shown over the past hour. Visibly distressed she looked down on her teammate trying to maybe see a twitch or any other sign that he wasn't completely out and yet nothing of the sort came her way – both Kidenshi Inuzuka and Chominu Akimichi have been eliminated, effectively ending Team Walnut's participation in the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>Another, much younger than the middle aged Othello G, kunoichi appeared besides him, walking out into the field of vision of everyone from behind her tall and bulky teammate. She also looked quite flamboyantly with her full-body yellow and pink tights separated with white streaks that made her suit look almost hi-tech in its motifs.</p><p>"You heard Othello, Masen. What the heck's going on here?" the young lady, previously referred to by Masen-Z as Sunny Lee, spoke up.</p><p>"I apologize, allies, it is because my new friends were attacked by these three foul competitors that I was forced to use the Gearbeam"! Masen-Z bowed his head apologetically, his attitude towards these two appeared almost submissive, as if these two held a certain degree of subordination over Masen-Z.</p><p>"Well, two of your friends are down, I suggest you scram, Uchiha. I'm in no mood for your typical gloating so if you stick around I may break your bones as well", Othello-G pointed at Lithia who just arrogantly turned her head and started moving back into the parts of the cave where she came from, leaving her teammates behind. It was then that the muscular wrestler turned his eyes down to see Kiyomi geeking out over his stature and presence, little stars in her eyes and drooling included in the total package.</p><p>"Ummm… I dunno what's your shine, but you're freaking me out", Othello G raised his pink shades revealing deep blue eyes underneath. While they looked rather unnatural given his dark complexion, it was within the range of what cosmetic medical ninjutsu could achieve in a strong ninja village such as the Kumogakure given the right amount of money.</p><p>"Othello G from CWF!" Kiyomi shrieked out.</p><p>"I think she's a fan or something", Sunny Lee turned her head sideways trying to examine the odd symptoms of the Yamanaka genin.</p><p>"Ugh, I don't really care about all that stuff, she can shove the groupie shit way up", Othello G grumbled out after his face twisted and he shoved his palm into Kiyomi's face forcing her to fall down on her butt, even as she was humbled and rejected by her beloved wrestler, the girl's geeked out expression remained the same.</p><p>"I personally think it is awesome", Masen-Z laughed out as he lifted and swung around his bulky armored arm on which Meiko hung, trying to shake her off. The girl's arms and legs wrapped around it like a those of a monkey gripping at a fruit tree. The blacksmith was overly obsessed examining the exposed and damaged suit's inner workings.</p><p>"Fans are a nuisance. One thing twenty years in the biz has taught me is that fans make no sense. They cheer and boo like sheep, collectively one after the other and their behaviors can't be predicted. Their stupid voices interrupt the art I do in the ring"! Othello G flexed his impressive muscles before turning around and walking back into the cave, which he woke up in.</p><p>"Wow, he's keeping up kayfabe even outside the ring"! Kiyomi turned at Meiko with a childishly gleeful smile.</p><p>"I think he's just an asshole in real life", Meiko scratched her head in confusion after having just jumped off of the exposed parts of Masen-Z's Gear-Man suit.</p><p>"So you know a little bit about wrestling? I'm impressed to see fans of Othello G in Konoha, what's your name"? Sunny smiled to Kiyomi before extending her hand to help the Yamanaka get up off her knees from the highly undignified position which the blonde was obsessing over her beloved wrestler in.</p><p>"Kiyomi Yamanaka, Team Hokage from Konohagakure", Kiyomi introduced herself completely throwing any hints of caution into the wind.</p><p>"Alright, come on over, we'll look at those wounds", the brown haired and expressively dark blue eyed girl smiled warmly.</p><hr/><p>Under the bioluminescent bright green light of the Snapper-Ants' nest, , and surrounded by the sound of Othello G smashing boulders ten time his size in his grasp into dust Sunny Lee was tending to Kiyomi's wounds, rubbing the glowing green goo from the nesting pods. All the living inhabitants of the cave hung all around, knocked out cold and stuck to the walls using the same cotton-like substance. Meiko, who got her body rubbed completely with the nature's ointment and waited until it helped her natural ninja metabolism deal with the entirety of the injuries she sustained was hanging out with Masen-Z, helping him fix his armor.</p><p>"You know, when Masen-Z told us about you guys beating on his armor, I kind of imagined you guys as real dicks, bullying your friend like that", Kiyomi admitted laughing out loud over her own preconceived impressions of the two other members of Team Cumulus.</p><p>"Well, Othello G really does bully Masen-Z, initially I thought similarly to you, but when he told me the reason I kind of felt like joining in", Sunny smiled while rubbing off the shiny green goo until it stopped emitting that creepy shine on Kiyomi's skin. "You see, Masen-Z isn't like Othello, he's not really a mighty powerful guy, nor is he like me – a descendant from a powerful and elite ninja clan. He's just a hard-worker with a passion for both his silly superhero stories and actual justice. Othello merely tests his passion, his suit, he keeps on wrecking Masen's armor and bullying him to make him strong, to keep him on edge and encouraging the goof to upgrade his suit every time it gets trashed".</p><p>Kiyomi looked to the side, she smiled seeing both the puny and short, ebony skinned and bright cream blue afro wearing gearhead running around with Meiko, screwing in nuts and bolts, rebuilding and improving on the suit where it didn't desecrate the original "source material" and didn't look too far off of the Gear-Man Z manga book. Seeing those two goofing around and just messing with the armor made Kiyomi realize that she hadn't seen such a peaceful moment in a while.</p><p>"Actually… I keep wrecking Masen's armor for another reason entirely", Sunny blushed admitting it to Kiyomi.</p><p>"Oh?"</p><p>"Yeah, has he told you what the armor means to him? Not just the whole "I love Gear-Man Z" story, the deeper meaning"? Sunny wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, something about people all just being machines, showing off their robotic outer facades", Kiyomi shrugged making Sunny accidentally drop the rubbing cloth which made the Kumogakure genin give the Yamanaka a scolding look only to be returned an apologetic shameful smile.</p><p>"Basically… You see, Masen-Z is a very sensitive boy. People weren't really kind to him that much in his life. His parents only saw him for what he could have become, the job he could have attained given his talents. His friends… Well, he wasn't too popular as long as I remember him. Everyone just used him because he could have gotten them the best things they wanted while expecting those things from him each and every time, like it was just his function. Like he was a machine or something"</p><p>"You said you were in an elite ninja clan, what's that all about"? Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"I'm from a branch of the Senju clan, I suppose us clan-people kinda get our own fair share of this utilitarian façade treatment, huh?" Sunny looked at Kiyomi.</p><p>The two girls shared a prolonged session of laughter, both remembering similar experiences in their life where each one was treated only for the sum of what they had in them and what they could do instead of for the people they were.</p><p>"I hate those feelings, that sentiment that makes Masen-Z hole himself into a suit of armor. To Masen it's a form of protest, a statement – "All of you show me your armor and hide your fleshy bits inside expecting me to be the same, so here it is, my armor" kind of thing", Sunny sulked giving the energetic and obsessed Masen-Z to her right a pitiful look. "To me it's his surrender, a retreat. He becomes that which people treat him as because he can no longer bare the pain".</p><p>"Which is why you keep sabotaging the armor, to keep forcing Masen to show his sensitive, fleshy body to the world around", Kiyomi smiled lyrically.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess him updating the bucket of rust once in a while is also a good motivation to kick that metal can's ass", Sunny sighed.</p><p>Shortly after Kiyomi's treatment and the brief conversation about Masen-Z's life's disappointments was finished, Othello G in his full sweaty muscular goodness walked up to wash himself and treat the little skin irritations he had acquired after a long session of grinding hardened minerals and rock against his skin and reducing boulders to dust.</p><p>"Maybe later you can sign one for me"? Kiyomi wondered after handing the bulky giant, who still favored his weird pinky shades for whatever reason, the towel with his actual name and face on it.</p><p>"I don't owe you or fuckin' anything"! Othello G rudely cut Kiyomi off before tossing the towel aside and running off to train again.</p><p>"Don't hate Othello for being like that", Sunny advised.</p><p>"Hate him? I love him, he's my favorite heel ever"! Kiyomi cheerfully smiled at the Senju girl. "Well, maybe that's Porfirio D, either way, he's one of my all-time favorites so I kind of can't help it. I mean how can I hate a guy for taking his in-ring character seriously enough to keep the kayfabe up even outside the ring"?</p><p>"It's not kayfabe", Sunny sadly shook her head before looking back at the possibly the oldest participant in the Chuunin Exams that participated in it. "He really dislikes wrestling fans in general. I think that may be why he doubled down on being a ninja instead".</p><p>"What do you mean"? Kiyomi wondered with the sad eyes of a fan who had just met their idol and found out that they may not be as perfect and innocent as they had made the man out to be.</p><p>"Well, maybe a decade ago, maybe even more, Othello G was a big time wrestling superstar. Back then he still had the Bordello Othello gimmick, it was a different time – the Angst Period where the more aggressive and ridiculously edgy the wrestlers were, the better they were received. At some point, Othello had reached his physical peak and began thinking about retirement, maybe managing some new talent, as wrestlers often did past their prime. He cut this tear-jerking promo about leaving, all the awesome memories he had as the Bordello Othello and how it was time for him to leave the yard for the new guys".</p><p>"I've never heard of that"! Kiyomi leaned back, squinting suspiciously, as if refusing to believe what she was hearing about her idol.</p><p>"That because back then wrestling could only be experienced by seeing it live or through wrestling magazines that were too busy with flashy pictures and wrestler bio pages. The actual storylines and feuds remained a closed secret to keep the business going and profiting." Sunny sighed.</p><p>"Oh, that makes sense. I've had a couple of Bordello Othello posters, have a bunch of magazines with him and even more about him after the gimmick change – that's when I really got into liking him." Kiyomi scratched her head apologetically since she had realized she was surprisingly casual with her passion for this conversation. It didn't appear, from the lack of excitement in her speech, that Sunny Lee was too much into wrestling and she still knew more about the culture than Kiyomi did – a foreign fan.</p><p>"During that retirement promo he kind of hinted that he may be starting his own thing, his own promotion. Just when taping wrestling and running it in theaters and all those big tours became a thing – he sensed a market shift and wanted to exploit it. The public really looked completely over that idea, even the management didn't mind promoting a possible competitor as long as they could do a couple of shared events and crossovers, invasion angles etc." Sunny continued to explain. "Right after he finalized his supposed retirement and started managing the big shot new company, initially the money started rolling. Then the fans just stopped getting into it completely out of the blue, they turned on Othello beginning to boo him for selling out, for being a has-been and then the worst happened – they just stopped interacting with the events at all".</p><p>"Yeah, I guess when taping and theatre scene kicked into the wrestling business there was a lot of money to be made in that. It doesn't seem that bad for fans to boo him, he was known as a heel before, he could work a heel manager character pretty well working the heat off of that fan hate. It doesn't make much sense that they'd stop supporting him altogether though", Kiyomi kept on pondering to herself about what could have been the problem. The more she thought and listened the more she realized that she knew little to nothing about the business and how it was handled. It was a scary realization but also an exciting one as it appeared that one of her past time entertaining passions had more to explore about it.</p><p>"That's 'cause fans are stupid. There's no logic to their behavior, the most random shit gets over and the coolest stuff has to be aborted because it just doesn't interest anyone. They can cheer for you one show and then boo and chant profanities during a match just because the ring apron is of a color they don't like. When they band together they're like animals", Othello G butt in having overheard the conversation during his training before picking up a red mineral-textured rock and smashing it against his head. A pudgy orb rolled out from the tough shell only to be tossed into the wrestler's mouth and munched enjoyably before being swallowed.</p><p>"It looks like that rock brings you more joy than your job", Kiyomi sadly noted only for Othello to grin.</p><p>"These are what Snapper-Ants feed their young, they smash it with their huge snappers above the nests and let the pudgy thing fall right on their stupid faces, tastes like truffles. That's the reason we're here, amongst some others, we're resupplying on food". Othello G explained.</p><p>"You know what, though? I have heard of you during the whole Bordello gimmick run, but I've mostly admired your work as Othello G, it's the gimmick I grew up with and I was always really entranced by the ruthless aggression and utter distaste for everyone's faces you brought with you into the ring", Kiyomi admitted. "Even if you don't like having to return to your old home after having retired and doing this whole new gimmick run, just know that you're really sick at it".</p><p>Othello annoyingly played with his tongue, "Did you know that those asshole suits are planning on transmitting the shows on the TV now? Like some stupid strawberry jam commercials… The high class art of wrestling completely lost all meaning, back in my days people used to dress up to watch wrestling", the grumpy middle ager complained seemingly to himself before grinning at Kiyomi.</p><p>"You're Kiyomi, from Team Hokage, huh? You're here to take one of our team down, isn't that right? I think that it was me you're after?" Othello G asked the girl completely leaving her breathless.</p><p>"Don't worry about it, there's this guy from our village, Otto-B, he's a genius of sorts, real good with the numbers, and he had made a highest probability hunter-target chart which we had a chance of looking at when we exchanged information. He managed to narrow it down with very few question marks, exchanging intel with many different teams, after a dozen of "this guy's after that guy" the rest sort of put itself together", Othello G shrugged before standing up and stretching out.</p><p>Kiyomi jumped on her feet facing the twice-larger man and staring at him face-to-face, if the Deceitful What-What Heel Othello G ever tried to pull one of his unexpected attacks on her, the Yamanaka wanted to be ready for it.</p><p>"Look, you seem like a nice kid, so if you want a go at it, I've no objections as long as we do it clean and wrestling style. If you want to go at it the shinobi way we'll have to take you on three on two", Othello cracked his knuckle emitting a strangely terrifying thunderous sound, having in mind what those fists and hands could tear asunder and crush it was of no surprise.</p><p>"Wrestling style? You'll trust me to surrender after being pinned, because I sure as hell won't trust you", Kiyomi pouted as this whole situation smelled off. Sure, Othello had no reason not to just wrestle her, after all – he was the superstar and she was just a kunoichi from Konoha. Granted, this match would have the additional chaotic chakra control element to it, which was sort of an equalizer but both options smelled equally stinky for the blonde.</p><p>"Alright, we can make it a hardcore match without pins. The only ways to win are breaking your opponent's body through submission or knocking them out", Othello shrugged his massive shoulders, Kiyomi took a pair of steps back because the bushy armpits of the wrestler very nearly were exposed to her face and she found the emitting smell atrocious.</p><p>"Cool, I guess I'll just visualize the ring", Kiyomi grinned confidently before warming up, with a disapproving sigh Sunny Lee backed off a bit to observe the match from a distance.</p><p>"No need for that, I always carry the ring with me, wherever I go"! Othello smiled before biting his thumb and swiftly working through hand seals before driving his extended palm to the ground. "Summoning Jutsu"! He chanted out.</p><p>After a loud popping sound and a tremendous cloud of smoke a long wrangling constrictor appeared behind Othello G who proceeded to run right at Kiyomi. The girl just stood there watching the man run right past her while the constrictor's tail extended to right behind her, allowing the man to bounce off of the snake's tail as he would've done off of ring ropes before returning to his primary position to where the snake's immense body once again aided him with his rope game.</p><p>"So are we gonna do this, or what"? He asked excitedly.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0312"><h2>312. Food For The Ninja Gods' Minds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko looked back at the unexpected ruckus caused behind her. While working on Masen-Z's Gear-Man puppet, all the cheer and joy included, was relatively noisy and messy, something about those noises back there seemed more chaotic. Just as the girl turned around, she witnessed a black and white striped crimson constrictor wrapping itself around an area of eighty meters or so, creating a ring suitable for a close range brawl.</p><p>"What the… Are they going to fight"? Meiko yelled out in surprise as she jumped off of the shoulders of Gear-Man. She wanted to dash right to her friend but her gear-headed attitude forced her to turn back and admire the upgraded and rebuilt Gear-Man. It had much more bright yellow coloured plating and much more protection on what Meiko thought of were weaknesses, even if Masen-Z actively objected making the puppet too efficient, he didn't want to sacrifice its authenticity in the process. The boy cared more about it looking like he wanted it to look rather than it being optimized, just like with his entire weaponry system…</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, they'll just have a friendly wrestling match. Your friend is after Othello G, isn't she?" Masen-Z carelessly waved his hand.</p><p>"Wait, what!? She is!? What the hell is going on"!? Meiko freaked out continuing to switch onto the wrestling match about to start behind her and the Gear-Man armor.</p><p>"Yeah, we knew it all along. I was wondering why we were being so quiet about it and I was worried that Othello G or Sunny Lee may try to pull something funny while you were resting but I'm glad they decided to settle it with wrestling". Masen-Z smiled, paying little to no mind to the craziness behind him, continuing to adjust the yellow shoulder pieces of his puppet.</p><p>"B-But if Kiyomi gets beaten up…", Meiko was beginning to worry.</p><p>"Don't worry, if she gets beaten – you guys get eliminated, right? Well, that's how this thing works. You don't want to fight three on two under any other conditions, right? Now come up here and help me with this, if you do, I promise I'll show you something cool when we're done", Masen-Z smiled ecstatically pointing at a point of shoddy gear-work where the gears fired off sparks in every direction once they started working.</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi carefully moved around the constrictor's controlled ring area, she didn't try out approaching the snake too close, worrying that it may not allow her to use it as wrestlers usually used ring ropes but the snake's eyes were hypnotizing even in their calmness making the girl's heart calm down slightly, at least as far as that was concerned.</p><p>"Do not worry, Anaron is just a ring tool, he will not be attacking, you unless he's acting as the ring corner. If you want, we can edit the rules, establish an interference DQ clause", Othello G suggested as he continued dashing around the Yamanaka in blinding speed, his already incredible swiftness accelerated even more with each rebound off of the ropes.</p><p>"Sounds fair enough", Kiyomi replied, quickly turning around with a punch. She needed to slow Othello G down if she wanted to begin to hope catching him with a Yamanaka hijutsu at any point. At a soon enough point, given a few more rebounds she'd have been unable to follow her opponent's moves at all.</p><p>Othello's figure blurred, he moved so oddly and grotesquely, a bended up and mangled speed mirage made following his moves nearly impossible as the lightning swift wrestler bent over Kiyomi's punch, drifting like a lightning bolt to the other rope and shooting off of it, coming at the blonde in speeds escalated to an unforeseen degree.</p><p>The large brawler leaped in the air, flying like a bird with his arms stretched out wide. Running right at Kiyomi the wrestler decided to punish his opponent's slow movement with a forearm smash.</p><p>"Egoi Smash!" Othello shouted out, Kiyomi knew that he was aiming at the back of her neck, he was far too fast for a proper response, the best she could have done was just turning around and taking the hit with the front of her body, doing her best to raise a block. While turning around the kunoichi did her best to bend and relax her knees to not tackle her opponent's superior smashing power with her own, such a competition would've either busted her bones and completely decimated her or caused her to spend too much chakra trying to overcome the enemy's offensive.</p><p>With an awesome flying forearm smash the blonde got sent flying down but, having done all she could to minimize the impact, she could roll aside and bounce back on her feet relatively easily. When one trained under the logic defying physical monster of utter incompetence that was Chestnut Hanasaku, one learned to deal with absolutely unfathomable physical power coming right for one's head.</p><p>At least the exchange, while costing Kiyomi some painful bumps and chakra to not get her arms blown up in fleshy bits from the force of impact with the very particles that compose her body being smashed out of her, stopped the accelerating level of Othello G's threat.</p><p>"That wasn't bad", Othello G commended Kiyomi as he continued to move across the ring, little by little his circular running forced the blonde into the center of the ring.</p><p>"As good as your normal human opponents, I wonder"? Kiyomi taunted the man.</p><p>"As if you don't know that it's all scripted", Othello smiled before diving in, shoulder first, at his opponent, only for Kiyomi's side palm chop to hit the exposed part of his neck and stop the giant lump of flesh in his path. During the giant's moment of stumbling, Kiyomi kicked him at the side of the man's leg, loosening his balance and potentially damaging some of the more sensitive bones near the area of the heel. To top it all off, Kiyomi thrust her palm straight into Othello G's face sending the wrestler tumbling back and hitting his summoned snake. This time his heels got too damaged to bounce off or to regain his balance so he just slammed into the reptile.</p><p>"I do know that, it's what I like about wrestling. The soap opera aspect of it", Kiyomi grinned, "I have one friend who doesn't like violence all too much, she'd probably like scripted expression violence where no one gets hurt as well. Our free time hadn't been peaceful enough for me to introduce her to wrestling yet".</p><p>One oddity that demanded Kiyomi's attention was the behaviour of the snake Anaron. When Othello G was running around he was using the snake's body to be bounced off, sometimes the reptile even aided that goal by using its tail to repurpose the force of momentum and push his summoner. Yet now the wrestler just slammed into the animal with a rough thud. It was so odd how erratic the snake's behaviour was but it appeared that it could control the elasticity of its own body, which was likely why the wrestler used it as a portable, summonable ring.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance: Art of Valentine"! Kiyomi yelled out, having found a perfect moment to hit her opponent. Using Yamanaka hijutsu was risky, one of the first things she learned was to never use them just blankly as if they missed she'd be completely exposed for a brief moment. The travelling speed of her projectile may have been just slightly slower than the speed of thought but in the ninja world such speed may not have always cut it.</p><p>Othello's body rolled right under Kiyomi's Art of Valentine variant, the quick evasive roll was fast and sharpened, the man wasted not a single moment and each and every movement of his body was up to its potential. The man may have reached the very peak of human physical condition meaning that every time Kiyomi wanted to attack him physically she'd need to use chakra augmentation – the only way of surpassing the barrier of humanity.</p><p>Othello finished his roll right up at Kiyomi's face, while the girls mind raced to return to her body, having just missed her seemingly dazed opponent. As her mind did its best she couldn't help but notice her opponent's body tense up, something big was coming.</p><p>"Dahomey Eyes"! Othello G yelled out as he picked the girl's body up and tossed it in the air. Anaron the snake looked directly at Kiyomi, the petrifying reptile's gaze being the first sight that the returned mind of Yamanaka allowed the girl to perceive. As her perception sharpened, her mind scurried to find a solution from the incoming attack she realized that those scary eyes were observing her from closer and closer on – the snake was tackling her.</p><p>As a rumbling shockwave blasted out from the upper part of Kiyomi's body and her back twisted the mortifying sensation was followed up by a heart-chilling snapping of a spine sound. The gruesome illusion of Kiyomi's painful demise was cut short by the body poofing into smoke and getting replaced by a bag of the sweet truffle-like rock hard nuts, the food for the Snapper-Ants' young which Othello G enjoyed previously.</p><p>Before Othello G realized and properly processed that this was no genjutsu, but instead a Substitution Jutsu, Kiyomi's image blurred in right in front of him, stunning the fleshy giant temporarily. The Yamanaka's foot shot right behind him as her palm slammed against his face and nose and shoved Othello G down, using her augmented by chakra strength to slam him against the rocky ground before smacking his open central chest area with a powerful heart punch and retreating from counterattacks.</p><hr/><p>Meiko just could not distract herself from the rumbling and raging battle, surprisingly somehow managing to contain itself within the snake's coiled ring. More and more often the blacksmith's eyes slipped away to glance worryingly at her friend's struggle to overcome her target. Where before they could decide how they'd engage, here things were completely different – the conditions for the battle were thrown at them and they were the only straw they could grasp for.</p><p>Masen-Z sighed before leaping his own height in distance off of the puppet armor and down on the rocky ground. Following his example Meiko leaped down, her eyes still locked on the battle that transpired. She couldn't exactly make the specifics out but it seemed like an even enough fight for there to still be hope.</p><p>The young man grabbed under a plate of armor and began yanking it wildly, after a short while the annoying steel clanging noise distracted Meiko and made her return her full attention to the puppeteer.</p><p>"What are you doing"? She wondered, slightly confused as the young man proceeded to tear the armor plate off. He was lucky that the plate had to be loosened there so to contain the large two-handed sword blade and the gear mechanism used to spring it out and pull it back in. That was the only reason why such an effort brought results in the first place.</p><p>"I want to show you something. Like I promised, you're someone who was nice to me and shares my passions so it's only fair you see this and enjoy it as much as I did", Masen-Z smiled confidently before falling down from his strange tampering with the armor before picking himself up with an embarrassing blush in his face. In his hands the young man held the exposed sword taken off of the puppet. Its handle was just an uncomfortable chunk of gears and solid steel so it was less than desired battlefield weapon while unattached from its original location.</p><p>"You know, if you wanted a sword for your… Whatever this is, I could've pulled one from my seals. I'm sure I still have one or two left there somewhere", Meiko began rummaging all over her body, tapping over herself, trying to remember where exactly she had sealed what as some of the lesser used tools may have went forgotten after a long while.</p><p>"See? That's exactly the point. You were friendly to me, so I want to share a technique with you. One that I can't really pull off, hopefully you'd have more success", Masen-Z energetically jumped right up in Meiko's face, almost impaling her on the giant blade. Once again the awkward young shorty pulled the larger than his own body blade aside with a blush before focusing his chakra so intensely that his whole body tensed up and the boy had to cry out from the strain building up so much chakra caused.</p><p>Momentarily, the sword lit up in flames, a completely inflammable solid steel blade was blazing like a chunk of wood with the flame feeding off directly off of Masen's chakra pool.</p><p>"Ummm… I don't know what they teach you in Ninja Academy back in Kumogakure but… We kind of already know you can imbue your weapon with chakra. It's called "Chakra Flow" and you can channel your chakra through pretty much anything, although I'll admit it, transferring Elemental Release through it like this is impressive for a genin", Meiko shrugged looking somewhat unimpressed.</p><p>Masen-Z then put the sword down allowing the flames to extinguish as his own breath intensified and he started to huff from the exhaustion of maintaining the chakra flow for as long as he did.</p><p>"Then why don't you use it?" Masen-Z wondered, "If you know how it works, the basic principles of it, how come you barely ever channel your chakra through your weaponry? Your physical force will only take you so far, you know".</p><p>"Well… I don't know if you knew but… I'm not the best with chakra control. I thought Team Walnut have mocked me enough to give you the clue", Meiko pouted feeling ashamed of admitting her own flaws in front of Masen-Z. She turned around but, for the first time, not to watch Kiyomi's battle but to turn away from her newly made friend.</p><p>"That's not true, you're using Sealing Techniques that are quite difficult on the whole scale of things. They're above ninjutsu in complexity, lower perhaps only compared to genjutsu and medical ninjutsu. How could a failure of chakra manipulation ever pull that off with such ease and high degree of success? Just how many Sealing Techniques have you failed to do?" Masen-Z objected pressing on Meiko's shoulder which he needed to step up on his toes to even reach. It was a result of a combination of both higher than average Meiko's height and his own, much shorter than average.</p><p>"Sealing Jutsu are different, they're almost a second nature to me. I've practiced them since I was a little girl so I pretty much got the hang of them. They sort of naturally came to me. Maybe it's a counterbalance of my other failures, like a lack of use of my clan's bloodline…" Meiko pouted before walking further away and sitting down on a rock, pressing her puffy cheeks against her fingerless gloves.</p><p>"Well, you must know that while your physical strength is impressive, you won't survive for long relying just on it and weaponry. You need an expansion of your arsenal, you need to improve or else you'll get left behind. This Chuunin Exam, is there something you want to prove with it"? Masen-Z wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, it does mean a lot to me. My friend – Mana, she's helped me out so much, she lead me on an insane expedition to give me the honor to hold a legendary artefact just because I like legendary weapons and artefacts. It's because of her recommendation that I am on Team Hokage and sometimes… I can't help it but… I feel like I don't belong amongst the others", Meiko sadly turned her face away.</p><p>"Well… You may not belong for much longer", Masen-Z cut the sharp edgy truth ruthlessly, yet trying to use as soft of a tone as possible.</p><p>Angry and shocked that the Kumogakure ninja would even say that when he was the one wearing a nearly dysfunctional suit of armor with more flaws than a horror movie divinity had tentacles, opting to go for what looked cooler and what he liked more compared to functionality.</p><p>"You see, your friend here - Kiyomi, she's a Yamanaka, with time she will only grow mightier. I haven't seen much high ranked Yamanaka in Kumogakure but we've read plenty about them, so should have you. She'll be able to read minds, influence them, mentally torture her enemies and execute people with just a glance. She'll be crushing people mentally before you know it. In a world of such people, you need your own thing to compare. If you don't grow past your limits, you'll never be protecting your friends, you'll never fulfil your promises made and you'll always be protected by them. You must've seen that limit you've reached as a genin, that bar being raised today", Masen-Z sat nearby to Meiko trying to be as frank and as soft as possible. The last thing that the blacksmith needed now was a tough and condescending talk.</p><p>"Yeah, a girl everyone admired in the Academy, with a better bloodline than she probably deserves, beat me at my own game." Meiko stuck out her lips bitterly recalling when Lithia Uchiha kicked her butt up close, something that rarely happened. Almost never when faced against someone as puny as Lithia was physically. She had little to no taijutsu skill but her Sharingan was all the edge that the Lolita teen needed.</p><p>"Well, there's one thing I tried to pull off. Something I invented and have never heard of it being used elsewhere…" Masen-Z jumped up and stood in front of Meiko as he picked up a kunai out of his pocket and extended it right in front of Meiko's face so that the blacksmith's attention focused onto it.</p><p>Wind and dust picked up from the intense concentration and chakra being built up, jets of hot air circled around the shorty as the kunai once again lit up with flames, this time with much more strain and focus than it was used before.</p><p>"You know, when you channel your chakra into a less conductive weapon, or one not conducting it at all – you need to use proportionally more chakra to channel it", Meiko pointed out with a bored and saddened expression as she saw little to no point to what Masen-Z was showing her. The kunai knife he used was not a generic one sold in bulk for filling ninja tool pouches, it was a custom order but the alloy still looked shoddy and had small percentage of chakra conductivity, most likely. The boy was selling an arm and a leg to even make it heat up, at this point.</p><p>Then, with one swift energetic shout the flaming chakra got changed with base chakra lacking any elemental properties before the colorless and almost invisible channeling of chakra got turned slightly red. Masen-Z was balancing out the percentage of Fire Release chakra in his imbuement, with a lower percentage he could still make the chakra visible more easily to a naked eye while not having to strain himself so much to maintain elemental release. Masen-Z gripped the kunai as he would a reverse grip short blade before an elbow sized blade made out of nothing but transparent light red chakra extended from the kunai before fading away. Almost immediately after the young man collapsed on his knees.</p><p>"One day… I tried replicating Gear-Man's… Crimson Blade… Of Positron Maximal Ultimate Justice Bringing… Then I found this out…" Masen-Z huffed out before extending the kunai for Meiko to examine. "You don't have to use a sword to imbue a weapon with chakra. With enough intensity, control and skilled shape manipulation you can create a sword of chakra through anything. I don't think there are limits to this ability. Just imagine – a massive mountain-sized sword coming out from a kunai, or a shield large enough to protect the entire village. Imagine a suit of armor made of nothing but solid chakra channelled through some unimpressive object like a simple chest plate", Masen-Z fell on his back as his chest rapidly lifted up and down.</p><p>Meiko's hand shook holding the kunai, tears ran down her cheeks falling onto it before she placed it beside Masen-Z and clutched her fists.</p><p>"It's not something I can ever achieve. I can probably flow my chakra through weapons with enough intensive training, make it natural to me. Shape manipulation? That is well outside my world, that is a weapon of ninja in the class of Gods but… Positive Chakra Flow. That's an amazing ability"! Meiko kept on brooding before exploding in excitement with the final words. It was the most amazing thing she had ever seen, like a child being showed the most astounding and breath-taking, yet the most expensive, toy in the shop. One they could probably never ever own in their life unless a miracle happens.</p><p>"Positron Blade… Positive Chakra Flow… I like that name", Masen-Z laughed out still breathing heavily on the floor.</p><p>Seeing this ability was better than telling Meiko a secret. It was making her believe and hope in a miracle. A miracle that she could at some point control and use this Positive Chakra Flow.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0313"><h2>313. Of Safe Roads Not Worth Taking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I thought your snake would not attack me", Kiyomi twisted her lips upward in a deceitful display of discontent. Truthfully, she just needed some time to relieve the strain of the Substitution Jutsu, a technique that allows a person to replace themselves with an object around them, allowing that object to take the damage even thought for a moment it'd appear that the person was damaged.</p><p>It was a commonly used and an incredibly useful technique but it was no panacea to any manner of attack. First of all, it only worked on physical or material attacks, taijutsu and ninjutsu were fair enough but illusions couldn't have been substituted out of. Secondly, it was useless against an opponent with a greatly higher amount of speed as such an enemy would've seen through it and possibly intercepted it. Third, the object needed to be focused on, similarly to how Academy instructors told students to keep their eyes on the target when they threw knives at it.</p><p>The object needed to be clearly thought of and it needed to become the sole, dominant thought to focus the entire body's effort into the technique. Then finally, after the boost of speed and replacement transpired, the user was left strained, usually it doesn't really impact other techniques like ninjutsu and the sort but it makes the body completely numbed when performing speedy or overly acrobatic techniques such as the Body Flicker Jutsu and others.</p><p>"I told you already, Anaron will attack when he acts as a part of the ring. Dahomey Eyes is a taijutsu technique that involves the ring corner, tossing the opponent into the air making them land and smash their head right in the ring corner. Anaron's tackle was fair game", Othello G stretched himself out as he continued to nimbly move around the ring, never stopping in one place and allowing Kiyomi to take target for her signature clan hijutsu.</p><p>Finally remembering that she was in the middle of a wrestling ring, Kiyomi timed her movements to perfectly mirror Othello's, moving around the ring in a perfectly opposite angle before dashing back, heading for the Anaron's extended body for a bounce off of the elastic flesh and skin of the reptile. Just as predicted, it appeared that Anaron had read Kiyomi's intentions and relaxed its body allowing the girl to bounce off of it as if its body were actual ring ropes, maybe even softer. The Yamanaka felt the surge of speed gained from the bouncing movement as she headed towards her opponent who proceeded to bounce off of the opposite side and come at her.</p><p>"Uranus Uppercut"! Othello G yelled as he threw his fist, forearm and the entire hand up to the shoulder up trying to dig it under Kiyomi's chin. However all that Othello's uppercut hit was just a surge of air as the blonde dove under him with a sliding movement before pushing her upper body off the rock with her palms shoving herself upwards while she positioned her right leg vertically upwards in a knockout sky kick aimed, similarly to her opponent, under Othello G's chin.</p><p>The resistance that Kiyomi's foot encountered after her foot slammed into the middle-aged wrestler's lower chin was intense. Almost matching that of trying to kick a small planetoid away but with a strong intensified flow of chakra in her lower area Kiyomi managed to make her force move things up a bit by tossing her opponent into the air from the force in her kick.</p><p>Focusing a strong flow of chakra into her lower legs and her thighs Kiyomi froze momentarily before freezing the intensified masses of chakra in her feet. Then, in one motion, she forced it all out of her feet, creating another miniature circle of chakra flow in her legs before her body fired off after her opponent in a pursuing dash upwards. The girl's hands firmly locked around the wrist of her airborne and still dazed opponent before flipping the man over her shoulder in a powerful throw down, however she didn't let go of the man's hand. While Kiyomi risked a possible recovery and counterattack, the young woman chose to instead of finish her over the shoulder throw right before hitting the ground so that the force behind the throw as well as behind both their falls was focused on her opponent's back.</p><p>The gamble paid off!</p><p>Othello G yelled out in pain and confusion after his body smashed into the hardened underground minerals and endless layers of rock. The sheer intensity and force of the impact made the ground where he hit the floor crack and scatter, forcing Anaron to intervene and cover up the rocks that collapsed with its body while pulling its summoner's body out and placing it back onto its own coiled back, still seemingly lifeless. The sound of bones cracking and twisting deafened by the thunderous crack that the conclusion of the throw made upon its climax.</p><p>Just as Kiyomi wondered if her opponent was out she paid for the mistake of lowering her guard. Within, seemingly, an instant a grip locked around her own wrist, lifting her hand horizontally to her side as her large opponent picked himself up and quickly pulled Kiyomi in to his own side before falling on his back. The backwards fall with Kiyomi's dominant arm locked in an iron grip made the girl's head smash into the Anaron's body, which, wonder of wonders, toughened up right before the impact.</p><p>"One-Lock Demonic Down Technique!" Othello yelled out after he bounced back on his feet and stretched his aching back and shoulders out. Kiyomi writhed on the ground for a while before she heard a loud thudding noise – a signal for her to move. Only due to a roll aside did she avoid a backdrop of her lightning fast and deadly strong opponent.</p><p>Kiyomi tasted blood in her mouth and felt the warm sensation of a small drop running down her forehead in several places. It was no simple grab and drop, chakra augmentation was involved and yet…</p><p>"You could've torn my limbs apart, you had your hands on me. With your strength this battle should've ended then and there. I can't use Substitution Jutsu for a while after using it once", Kiyomi wiped the blood off her lip and the burning spot on her forehead.</p><p>"I told you already – this is a wrestling match. I'm not gonna just tear your limbs off, I'm gonna wrestle. That's my Ninja Way, fangirl", Othello G raised his hands up as if flaunting his well-built physique and showing off his physical superiority even if he was the one who took by far more damage in that last exchange of blows.</p><p>"The audience is getting a bit bored, what do you say about kicking it up a notch"? The oversized wrestler taunted Kiyomi by flexing his biceps which almost made the girl throw up seeing the amount of bush coming out from his untrimmed ever since he was born armpits.</p><p>"Audience"? Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>Othello G's body blurred once more as the mirage of his immense movement speed made his proportions appear contorted and almost snake-like. In a dark brown blur, matching the color of the man's dark complexion, blur Othello G drove his elbow and the lower arm right into Kiyomi's chest but it was no augmented strike. Any semblance of force was sacrificed for overwhelming speed so that the push and shove effort connected.</p><p>The Yamanaka took almost no damage from that impact, yet she felt stupid having wasted some chakra investing into augmentation, expecting a more powerful hit. The blonde imagined a clothesline or a lariat with the power to split even the most colossal mountain in two and what hit her was just a strong push, essentially. As the air whizzed past her and fondled her hair, the Yamanaka wondered just what technique could this have been. Just as Anaron's tail bounced her back, as ring ropes would have if she was a normal wrestler, did she realize what was coming her way.</p><p>"Liwui Backdrop"! Othello G yelled out simultaneously as Kiyomi's racing mind identified the move in her mind. This was bad, at this point most of the setup for the technique was already done, without Substitution Jutsu there was little to nothing Kiyomi could've done!</p><p>As the blonde's body bounced off of the tail of the massive summoned snake and flew right at Othello G, the wrestler once again focused all of his physical might into another shove. This time, however, Kiyomi got tossed upwards, as high as the cave would let her however hitting the ceiling of the cave with her head was the last of the girl's concerns. It was the painful backdrop that troubled her. The entire move sequence kept replaying again and again in Kiyomi's mind, a flow of pictures in her wrestling journals with numbers by them and a painful sounding description of the move.</p><p>Othello's large frame dashed upwards, losing none of his incredible speed as he buzzed right up to airborne Kiyomi and grabbed her by the abdomen with a single hand. His wrist somehow, just barely, managed to cover the girl's entire body as the wrestler turned around his axis in the air before simply lobbing the girl from her airborne position back down into the "ring".</p><p>For a brief second there Kiyomi blacked out before hitting Anaron's body from up above. She was tremendously lucky that they were in a cave and not outdoors where only Othello's own imagination limited the height of his throw move. Due to the amazing luck of blacking out she couldn't feel her organs shifting and her bones struggling not to shatter upon the massive impact surpassing many times the force of being hit by an actual asteroid. Frankly, for a moment, seeing the rocky ground just whizz right at one's face may have reminded of such a sight…</p><p>Dizziness couldn't go away, popping in her ears didn't let her hear a single thing while the Yamanaka tried to at the very least show a single sign of being alive. She couldn't have been out, for a moment she thought she was nearing it as blacking out was only substituted by shrieking sensation of white sparks that erupted out of nowhere waking the girl up before disappearing again. Finally, Kiyomi's eyes snapped back open, only to see her opponent showing off to the non-existent audience as if he was actually in the middle of a match. She was lucky he wasn't punching her face off this very second and was wasting time on his showy gimmick.</p><p>"Move"! Kiyomi kept ordering herself mentally. Her mind kept bringing up the images of Chestnut Hanasaku and her encouraging gestures. Failing here, after all that time of being forced to skip the exam, would only kill her momentum. How would Hanasaku-sensei ever feel like Kiyomi was ready for another go if she failed now.</p><p>"Mana is already out, don't go to sleep now"! Kiyomi ordered herself again remembering everything that the girls had went through up to now. Every battle and every moment of pain and struggle they went through leading up to this peculiar wrestling match.</p><p>"You're the team leader, damn it. You wouldn't pull this shit on Meiko, you wouldn't pass out making her fail for no reason! Move, damn it"! Kiyomi kept thinking as she writhed on the ground before finally managing to peel her bleeding face off the ground and pick herself back up. She was stumbling and twitching in the bleeding and injured spots but upright which was a thousand times better than what she had before.</p><p>"You're up"? Othello wondered as he restarted his default stance of taking a wide and open position while dashing around the ring, trying to push Kiyomi into the middle of a circle so he could control the "ropes" and the outer part of the "ring".</p><p>"I could go for two or three more of these, can you"? Kiyomi taunted her opponent as she wiped the blood off her lip and her right eye. Right as the blood was wiped off her busted forehead fired off more. That was bad, it meant that Kiyomi had to keep her right eye closed due to the blood.</p><p>"Just how large is your chakra pool, you're no ordinary genin"? Othello G exclaimed in surprise. He had expected his opponent to either be out or be really softened up for his finishing move, seeing Kiyomi in semi-fighting condition greatly surprised him.</p><p>"I've skipped several Chuunin Exams already, one because me and my team were away on a mission when it happened, another one because I had no team at that moment. Me and the other two members of my team have long since surpassed any genin, we've faced plenty of hardships and streaks of bad luck in this exam and it's only due to our larger than the genin standard strength and chakra pools that we managed to get by. You're an amazing wrestler, my idol, that being said, you're my target which means I'll use all of my advantage and all of my skill and strength to beat you", Kiyomi calmly declared before charging at the physically stronger and much larger opponent which confused the man for a moment.</p><p>Othello leaned in for a move involving Kiyomi's legs, no doubt. It was an uncharacteristic behavior for him, which was why similar moves blasted Kiyomi, someone who knew well about her idol's moveset out of the water. Othello G never behaved this way against physically lesser opponents, he only went for the lower body against stronger and larger enemies. And yet Kiyomi was ready, her tremendous, for a genin, chakra network flow accelerated granting her perception and reaction time infinitely surpassing that of normal humans assisting her in her flip over her opponent's body.</p><p>The girl landed right on Anaron's body, the ropes of the ring, with a jumping turn she kicked her opponent right in the jaw the same moment he turned around to try and catch her. The impact thundered throughout the cave system, the huge lump of flesh staggered back and forwards as Kiyomi's kick hit him in the ear causing great damage to the more sensitive parts of his inner ear as well as his brain.</p><p>Kiyomi leaped off of the ropes trying to lock her legs around the opponent. Her intent was to throw her unbalanced opponent over using all of her force to bend the neck and then, once the enemy is down, beat on him until he can't move. That didn't quite work out as Othello G locked his wrists around Kiyomi's leg instantly bringing her plan to a threat of a sudden and painful close.</p><p>A quick barrage of elbow strikes to his forehead, busting his pink shades to tiny pieces and cracking Othello G's forehead open made him stagger but then Kiyomi felt a powerful thud in her back. She felt her overflowing chakra surging out, realizing that her body instinctually augmented itself to withstand a crushing blow that'd have broken all of her ribs and her back, instantly killing her. It was that blasted snake again, still, Kiyomi was at the corner of the ring which meant that Anaron could butt in as the ring corner.</p><p>An asphyxiating influx of air caressed her hair throwing them into her breathing tract through her gapping mouth as Kiyomi got dazed herself in the wild painful ride to take her opponent down. Othello G was running with Kiyomi in hand, looking to slam her in the center of the ring. He'd likely leap up high and use immense elevation again to further chip at Kiyomi's stamina and chakra pool. That was bad…</p><p>With a quick pair of jabs Kiyomi thrust a pair of fingers into her opponent's wrists that held her thighs as firmly as bridges of titanium built around them would. Hit at the pressure point the wrist weakened allowing Kiyomi to pull her thighs out and jump off of her opponent. She wasn't just planning to escape however, right as the Yamanaka's feet touched the ground, her own grip tightened around the massive numbed wrist of her opponent before Kiyomi pulled and turned it forcing her opponent to flip over and smash against the snake's body. After the throw was completed, with a sharp and swift kick to the back lower neck area Kiyomi sent her large opponent rolling aside.</p><p>Just as she had suspected, at the moment when Othello G would've hit a ring corner in an actual ring, Anaron's head smashed into the giant lump of muscle crushing him under it in between the snake's massive snout and its body. It appeared that Othello G was playing fair – he was utilizing Anaron as an actual ring, it was just that Kiyomi didn't think utilizing her environment until now for extra damage.</p><p>Just as the blonde started feeling confident about her chances and thanked for all the times she overtrained thinking these Exams would just be a breeze with enough training, Anaron's titanic head started twitching and lifting off. With massive effort Othello G forced the head off of himself and after being pushed for a sufficient amount of time the snake gave in and raised its head off of its summoner taking a position of a neutral spectator from above once more.</p><p>"Not bad… But you won't beat me like this", Othello grinned with a smile that demonstrated him missing a tooth, a thin red streak of blood burst from the giant's mouth the moment the toothless smile was revealed from the damaged gum.</p><p>Kiyomi had in mind what her opponent was saying. Othello G's finisher move, the one no wrestler ever stood up after, one of the most protected finishers in all of CWF if not the entire industry was the "What-What" move. A seemingly out of nowhere counter that had a summoned snake wrap around the enemy in an instant and break most of their bones at their joints, cracks and other weakspots. Seeing how it's a counter move, timing was everything and sufficiently weakening the opponent and their bones also had to be done. Timing was what separated a one hundred percent KO move from a whiff and opponent's counter-counterattack.</p><p>While the Yamanaka wished to give her idol wrestler no openings for a "What-What", she couldn't really help it. Her physical might was insufficient to put Othello G down quickly and her Yamanaka hijutsu were either missing or inefficient.</p><p>"You're right, it seems I'd be pummeling you for days on end before you'd stay down. I may just need to take some serious risks and get really unsafe", Kiyomi sighed with some worry in her voice. She didn't like taking risks but she had neither time nor the luxury to jump around her enemy. Othello G was stronger than her physically, he was far more meaty and could take more punishment than even Meiko. Punching him down was out of the question, sadly.</p><p>Kiyomi may just need to get creative if she was to eliminate her target and keep Team Hokage in the competition.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0314"><h2>314. Ninjutsu VS Puroresu! Resolution!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Come on, Kiyomi, you can do it"! Meiko cheered for the Yamanaka unexpectedly from the side. The sheer surprise of realizing that both Meiko and Masen-Z were watching made Kiyomi's mind, kind of, snap out of the trembling sensation that realizing she needed to take high risks in this battle brought.</p><p>While the blonde felt that Meiko's attempts at cheering her up were really cheesy, somehow, they worked. They worked at least at calming Kiyomi down. The pressure of knowing that losing here meant the end for her entire team stopped mattering as much, the expectations that Chestnut Hanasaku as well as her own clan and her team had for her stopped holding Kiyomi down.</p><p>One thing that was crystal-clear at this point was that Kiyomi needed to stop trying to outwrestle Othello G or even fighting using that style. When fighting fair she had little to no hope of beating the man, her punches and kicks simply bounced off of him leaving little to no damage no matter how augmented they were and she was just tiring herself out and getting herself ready for a "What-What" finisher.</p><p>Still, she had little to no options of changing her style up in this ring. Her ninjutsu affinity was for Earth Release techniques, at this moment Anaron was covering up the busted ring floor with his body, which meant that Kiyomi would be unable to use them unless the rocks somehow broke through the snake's body. That meant that the jutsu would come out later and weaker as they would struggle to bust through the snake already. She needed to think smarter, think broader and improvise.</p><p>Just as Othello's feet propelled the large wrestler forward, throwing him into an acrobatic roll forward, aimed at placing him behind Kiyomi so that he could lock her into a suplex or strike from behind, the blonde's own hands occupied themselves with hand seals. It was a lethal race as to who would get to their attack first. Luckily enough, the technique on Kiyomi's mind was simple enough and required very few hand seals.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough"! Kiyomi chanted as she jumped up and turned her upper body around, stretching herself to turn back so much that her sides started hurting. A little bit more and she would have most certainly flexed a muscle.</p><p>At the same time Othello placed himself behind Kiyomi as a smaller snake burst through and out of Anaron's scales. The purpose of the smaller reptile was to wrap around Kiyomi, it didn't look like the snake that performed the "What-What" but it still looked quite capable of constricting Kiyomi until she could no longer breathe or move and would end up passing out of air shortage.</p><p>Luckily enough, the Wind Release technique of Kiyomi's secondary, weaker, elemental affinity delivered a powerful pushing shock which shoved the user herself out of harm's way seeing how she was in the air and didn't use her feet for holding her balance still. Kiyomi's weightless and relaxed body was thrown backwards from the aftershock while the windblast hit Othello right in the face up close.</p><p>Shaken by the powerful wave of wind, Othello G braced himself as the smaller snake once again disappeared under Anaron's scales from where it initially appeared. The powerful wrestler soon regained his full composure, having not only withstood the tremendous toppling force of the raging windstorm containing all the power of a hypercane compressed into a single wave but also recovered from it far sooner than any ninja of his rank reasonably would. The first sight that met his eyes was Kiyomi in a jumping punch stance, her fist cocked back and winded up, ready to wreak havoc upon Othello G's face.</p><p>"Apep Suplex"! Othello G yelled out as his body moved many times faster than even the mental command for the blonde to unleash her prepared punch. The speedy powerhouse dashed right behind the airborne opponent trying to grip at her lower abdomen before dropping his body back for an immensely powerful suplex. He would have knocked Kiyomi out completely had it not been for the minor detail that his vehicle sized arms phased through the girl's body dispelling a floaty mirage.</p><p>"Clone Jutsu"? Othello G realized too late once his body was already halfway falling to the ring floor.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Art of War"! Kiyomi shouted out placing her hands forward in the hand seal position used for the Yamanaka hijutsu. The Yamanaka's mind floated out of her own body, entering that of her opponent's before dissolving in a powerful mental pulse that was able of causing an excruciating migraine and returning to its owner's body.</p><p>Oddly enough, Kiyomi could not feel her mind having affected a living being. Something about her well set-up ninjutsu finisher felt… Odd and only once the mind returned to her did she realize that she her mind was reflected back off of a sweat stained towel which Othello G substituted with at the very last moment before her mind would've entered his.</p><p>Othello was huffing outside of the ring, feeling ashamed and breathless over the dangerously close exchange that transpired just now. Kiyomi smiled bitterly from inside the ring at her target who finally stretched his tired muscles out and jumped back into Anaron's ring, over the large reptilian tail.</p><p>"That's not fair"! Meiko complained, "I thought this was a wrestling match, or something, how come the bushy baldy used that snake thing from under the large snake"?</p><p>"It's not like your teammate is fighting like a wrestler either", Sunny Lee replied, appearing slightly offended by Meiko's suggestion. "Still, it's a bit unusual to see Othello using ninjutsu as well, he must've been pushed really far".</p><p>"It's fine, Meiko. Snake submissions are how Othello G fights, it's his whole gimmick. I'd have been a fool if I didn't anticipate the smaller ones sliding out of his tights or his boots or his bushy armpits or chest at some point", Kiyomi couldn't shake off her bitter smile, "Still, I was so close…" she lamented.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm a bit ashamed to have used such a dirty method of getting away but in the end of the day, I am a heel, ain't I"? Othello G shook his head in disappointment.</p><p>This was horrible, Kiyomi's mood began to change from proud disappointment into outright respectful fear. She had almost reached the halfway of her chakra pool and using techniques like "Art of War" or "Art of Valentine" without success really choked her in that area. To think that she planned such a nice set-up only for it all to get substituted away…</p><p>"Even when I outsmart him I can't seem to pin him down, he's that flexible and agile in the ring. Somehow I feel like I'm still clashing with his strengths instead of his weaknesses, does he even have any"? Kiyomi kept on wondering in her mind.</p><p>"Kukulkan Scissors"! Othello yelled out slamming his hands together, Kiyomi's eyes widened as she knew that move and still felt like she was screwed. Even while she could not quite see the two smaller snakes appear from under Anaron's body again, she knew that they would, from both sides. The only way was forward! Kiyomi charged blindly at her opponent, desperate to avoid his clutches but the gut wrenching pressure around her abdomen locking her in place and dragging her down and back thought differently.</p><p>"Seth Choke"! The wrestler yelled out pressing his palm against Anaron's scaly body as another golden colored snake shot out from under Anaron's scales and tied around Kiyomi's throat. Kukulkan's Scissors was not a powerful move, but it was near inescapable. Kiyomi could not quite remember any wrestler being able to evade it as much as they broke out of it once it started, then again, the whole blasted thing was scripted anyways so relying on her fan's knowledge proved to be quite perilous. Those damned snakes were far faster than they were on camera, where Othello G slowed them down so they could be captured on film.</p><p>Othello G still remained on his knees, pressing his palm against Anaron's body. In real life he must have needed to maintain chakra input and constant focus to apply these holds successfully but it barely even mattered when they already gave Kiyomi too much trouble to begin with. Othello G being able to move would have been an overkill. Where the first double snake lockdown drove all oxygen out of her body, applying further pressure to the lower abdomen, the second one tied around Kiyomi's throat choking her out when she had no air reserves to begin with.</p><p>Kiyomi would have screamed out had she the ability to use her voice, not just blankly stare into the darkness above, and gasp for air. Her best attempts to break out were not even close to bringing any use and judging from the burning pain in her entire body and the grotesque sounds coming from her slowly crushed body she was getting weaker to keep resisting in the future as well.</p><p>"This is… Cruel", Meiko lamented aloud running up to the ring, as if her proximity had any supportive effect for her friend.</p><p>"Yeah, a person would pass out almost instantly under such a hold, granted, if the hold itself would be weakened so that the person wasn't crushed instantly into a puddle of blood and guts. A ninja, meanwhile, has the ability to prolong their suffering, asphyxiating a ninja may take twenty to forty minutes, I wonder if your friend can even take that much pain", Masen-Z's voice weakened as he too was disgusted by the double hold applied by his teammate.</p><p>"Stop this, Othello, she can't even surrender, this isn't a wrestling match, you need to knock her out. This is torture"! Sunny shouted out, appalled by the method of victory used by her teammate.</p><p>Kiyomi tried struggling, at that point she knew that her strength was being drained. The best chances of getting out were right in the beginning. Now with her head and few areas of her body that were not being grinded and crushed pulsing in pain and feeling like a bloating balloon it was next to impossible. Still, the Yamanaka did not want to give up. She was the leader of Team Hokage, she had no right to call it quits, give up and tell her opponent she would abandon the competition.</p><p>Heart pounded erratically, by this point a normal human would've long since passed out whereas Kiyomi was fighting to prolong her body's endurance and ability to withstand this immense pressure and shortage of air. Then, in a momentary swoop, the blonde felt the pressure loosen for just a brief bit. It was then or never, Kiyomi expelled a massive amount of chakra from her body through her pores as she accelerated the flow to maximize the amount of strength her weakened body could muster up. The snakes holding her down all popped loudly and dispelled in a cloud of smoke, choosing to escape instead of continuing the submission move before beginning to wander what it was that caused this loss in pressure power.</p><p>"What the hell are you doing"? Sunny Lee curiously wondered, as her head failed to comprehend her teammate's peculiar movement as the wrestler was running around the ring and flexing his muscles by the corners at the spaces where the audience would have been seated.</p><p>"I'm taunting and firing up the audience"! Othello G yelled out proudly.</p><p>"Huh? But we're the only audience here, there's no need for that", Sunny Lee slapped her forehead realizing that it was because of her teammates two decades lasting experience as a wrestler, taunting his opponent and firing up the audience after every move that Othello enabled his opponent to break out from his hold.</p><p>From the cloud of smoke, created by the smaller snakes escaping, a handful of shuriken flew at Othello G before a raspy feminine voice came from inside the cloud. The voice tried to utter a name of a technique but failing to do so as her damaged body and numbed arms slowed down her hand seals to a crawl and made every hand seal a painful agony. Where usually the name of a ninja technique allowed the body to jump into a mode of pre-memorized movements and made it easier to concentrate and perform the technique, without the aid of her vocals Kiyomi failed to perform the technique she wanted to do.</p><p>Othello G covered with his hands taking the handful of shuriken as he tensed up his muscles making them barely pierce his skin shallowly. With a firm and harder flexing his body expelled all of the ninja tools etched into his body. Finally, the smoke cleared and Kiyomi and Othello G clashed their eyes again.</p><p>Kiyomi grunted in pain and frustration, realizing that Othello's submission combination, as it damaged her body. With a little bit of time she may be able to muster up the strength and the ability to speak properly, maybe activate a technique or two. Now she was left with the requirement to engage Othello G in a wrestling match – just like it all started.</p><p>All was not nearly as hopeless as it initially seemed, Othello G wasted a lot of chakra on using two of Anaron's snakes at once. He clearly was concentrated on maintaining the hold of that technique meaning it required his full attention and conscious effort. Using two techniques in sync like that probably once again dipped his remaining chakra far below Kiyomi's current level. It was an equalizer of sorts.</p><p>Othello kicked his body off in a wild dash at Kiyomi's direction, there it was – weariness caused by a whole battle of augmentation and chakra usage, the decrease in speed and strength after that last scary combination. Kiyomi rolled diagonally avoiding her opponent's shoulder tackle before jumping on her feet and flipping over her shoulder with a double kick to her opponent's shoulder and lower jaw. The mass of dark flesh fell on his knees, this was an amount of damage Kiyomi could have never have hoped to inflict before – this was her moment to wail on her enemy and hope she recovered her ability to use ninjutsu and clan hijutsu in time.</p><p>Kiyomi's body rotated like a spinning toy, she threw wild kicks and elbow strikes at her dazed and weakened opponent from each and every direction using momentum to boost the power and speed of her blows. Her muscles burned in pain but she persevered through grit and determination not to let her team down. This was the amount of hidden willpower she would have never been able to access if she was not the leader of Team Hokage. Leadership appeared to bring out the best in the Yamanaka, it could not have been other way – she was the future clan heir, after all!</p><p>Pain! An unbearable shock of pain, an aftereffect of abusing her body caused the Yamanaka to trip up and fall on her own knees right before her half-finished opponent who didn't take long to recover, jumping right on his feet and grabbing Kiyomi by her abdomen before slamming her outside the ring, right over his shoulder.</p><p>"Wadjet Slam"! Othello G roared out proudly before flexing his muscles at the audience and taunting Kiyomi again.</p><p>"I've no idea why Kiyomi likes this guy, seems like he's really full of himself", Meiko pouted locking her arms around her chest.</p><p>"It's just the way wrestlers fight, they keep taunting and flexing out. Taunts convey the wrestler's character and gimmick to the audience without needing to tell them about it, you know"? Masen-Z laughed out into his fist. "It's a weakness Othello G will have to overcome in the future".</p><p>After finishing flexing out, Othello smacked his hands together before rubbing them as he stretched his upper body forward while shaking his lower body like the tail of a rattlesnake. It was an immensely cringy taunt and yet Kiyomi, as a fan of Othello G, knew far too well.</p><p>"It's the I-See-You Serpent taunt… He's informing the audience that he'll be performing the What-What, so he thinks I'm weakened enough"? Kiyomi grunted as she struggled to stand back up, getting back on her knees being the best she could muster up. "I can't give him a space for counterattacking, I need to time my moves right and keep him occupied or it's all over", the Yamanaka realized as her body finally allowed her to stand back up.</p><p>Kiyomi's voice felt raspy and her throat burned with every thought attributed to the pain in her neck. Her whole body felt tired – she had to admit, she was busted and ready for a What-What to finish the match. She was out of ideas and out of moves – what What-What needed was an opening, provided by a too slow and too reckless attack. That meant that if Kiyomi attacked physically she would be finished off with the first provided chance but she could not really attack any other way.</p><p>Only Academy techniques were so ingrained into a ninja's mind that they required no words to be uttered and the hand seals were fairly simple. Kiyomi just needed to figure out an Academy technique fitting for this moment, something to help her tough through it. Her opponent was on his last legs as well, she just needed this one final addition. Sadly, no Academy technique happened to seem helpful or the Yamanaka had already used them all and using them again came with a risk of her enemy seeing through the repeated pattern.</p><p>As Othello G charged at Kiyomi with an elbow strike, aiming to crack her jaw before sending her bouncing off the ropes and back into his grasp the girl's hand raced for her ninja tool pouch before reaching for a marble-sized, white colored bomb. Cracking the little orb in her hand the girl unleashed a powerful light burst that the nearby wrestler had no idea he needed to avoid, without his pink shades he was left just screaming in pain and tearing up from his eyes as he stumbled around the ring.</p><p>She was no wrestler. The idea that she could wrestle with her childhood idol was a naïve and a foolish one. Othello had over twenty years of experience and training, his skills, his moves were so ingrained that even now he couldn't shake off old habits that came with them. How could Kiyomi ever compete with Othello G in a ring? No, she was no wrestler. Kiyomi was a ninja and only fighting like a ninja she stood a chance to beat not only a wrestler but any kind of opponent.</p><p>Given the brief space of time to attack her blinded and tearing up opponent Kiyomi cracked a smoke bomb as well before disappearing into the cloud of smoke. Her fists, knees, kicks and kunai flashed in the dark murkiness of the smoke cloud created by her smoke bomb finding their way at the opponent's blindspots. The weak generic smoke bomb was able to leave nothing but brief shapes being perceivable in the smoke. Given the limits of the Anaron's ring, Kiyomi was able to see her opponent clearly and attack him whereas Othello G was blinded before the smoke bomb was activated and his vision was temporarily too impaired to perceive Kiyomi's rough shape in the smoke cloud.</p><p>Finally, Kiyomi felt slight alleviation in her throat, she dashed back outside the reach of her blinded, beaten and tired opponent before raising her hands up in the Yamanaka hijutsu signature hand seal position.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Harakiri"! Kiyomi yelled out from farther away as her weakened and staggering opponent froze in place before leaping up in the air and flipping over halfway so that he landed on his head. Despite the painful sounding snapping noise, the giant's chest still erratically rose and deflated signaling that he was alive, albeit out.</p>
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<a name="section0315"><h2>315. A Special Case</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first couple of seconds after the fight ended Meiko looked around, worried that Othello's team would lash out and jump at Kiyomi. From where Meiko was standing, Othello G beat her friend up quite badly and the Yamanaka would not have been able to defend herself properly. With such an explosion of anger being completely by the rules and legal, the probability of it only increased.</p><p>After those chilling couple of seconds of silence Sunny Lee sighed disappointed by the outcome before moving back a bit and letting Meiko rush in, as Anaron dispelled himself, also to catch Kiyomi in her arms. It looked that the Yamanaka was able to stand on her own but the angle she was falling in looked pretty bad so the blacksmith's body just acted on their own.</p><p>Kiyomi rubbed her face into Meiko's left side. "Never let go, Meiko" she dreamily exclaimed before the blacksmith jumped back, accidentally letting the blonde fall on the ground. Rubbing her aching head and elbow, hurt when Meiko's instinctive jumping trigger going off caused the Yamanaka to get dropped. Kiyomi stood back up on her feet chuckling to herself.</p><p>"Come on, let's see your wounds. Sunny, you're gonna tend to Othello"? Masen-Z wondered asking his friend.</p><p>Sunny just nodded as she ran at a casual pace to her teammate before smacking her hands together.</p><p>"Wood Style: Static Cotton"! She chanted out as four buds of wood burrowed from deep underground as well as few more from up above, making short work of the incredibly tough minerals that made the walls, ceiling and floor of this Snapper-Ant cave. The trees quickly burst their buds revealing a large white cotton-like substance that then parted off of their source and floated in mid-air, emitting lightning sparks in their static state.</p><p>Carefully the cotton chunks forced themselves under Othello G and lifted him up. It was more than likely that Sunny Lee was well able to lift her teammate herself, even given his respectable weight, still, her decision to instead use the Senju bloodline ability of Wood Release revealed that she considered that technique a lighter strain on her chakra resources than trying to lift her teammate with her natural strength.</p><p>Once the static cotton wrapped around Othello G it appeared to stick to the man as if he was magnetically attracted to it. Maintaining the hands locked into the hand seal position, Sunny Lee strolled to the Snapper-Ant nesting pods with her teammate floating carefully by her side as the lightning sparks coming off of the cotton appeared to electromagnetically levitate off the ground.</p><p>"We should just go", Kiyomi suggested, even while Team Cumulus were quite polite and nice she felt like she should've stayed around as shortly as possible. Maybe it was just her own uncomfortable feeling having just butt into their day and beaten Othello G, eliminating him from competition, but she didn't like sticking around the cave for too long.</p><p>"Nonsense, in your current state you're far too slow. You'll be keeping Meiko down and you may get attacked halfway there. You're already one member short and you are injured, what are the odds of Meiko fighting off any attackers alone"? Masen-Z objected.</p><p>"He has a point, let's just stay around shortly and then we can go to the gate and finish the exam. We have nowhere to rush now, we've done it"! Meiko energetically cheered on Kiyomi after encouraging her to heal at least a little bit.</p><p>"It won't be that short of a time. Even elementary patching may require hours. These nesting pods have a very useful secretion being emitted but aside from a tremendous amount of stem cells inside of it and other useful elements for regenerating and growing new tissues it isn't a miracle cure or anything", Masen-Z brought Meiko down to reality. "Just lay down inside and relax, try to get some sleep, there are some relaxing chemicals being released inside there too so you may just get some rest done"!</p><p>As Kiyomi laid inside the horribly uncomfortable, bioluminescent, bright green pod and felt the warm and gooey substances being emitted she thought that she'd have never laid inside anything like this under any other circumstances. Now, with all of her innards, bones and joints hurting, with her voice still raspy and husky, with her muscles burning and her chakra reduced to less than third of her total pool, a little disgusting smelling and feeling goo was the least of her problems.</p><p>"Othello was really unfortunate to face your friend", Masen-Z smiled. Even while his face showed content he was clearly disappointed that his friend had lost.</p><p>"Huh? I'm pretty strong too, you know, I'd have beaten your friend too"! Meiko objected feeling a bit offended by Masen's implications.</p><p>"No, you don't understand. She knew all of Othello's moves, it was evident in the way she fought. She gave Othello no opening for a What-What at all, even when Othello tried balancing the scales by damaging her body, disabling her ninjutsu, she managed to come out on top", Masen-Z shook his head.</p><p>"This "What-What", is it really that strong of a move? I've been hit with a lot of tough moves, I'm pretty confident I could take it", Meiko pouted, still feeling a bit competitive about the implication that Othello would have beaten her.</p><p>"No one who has been hit with it has ever stood back up. It completely breaks most of the body's bones. It's a certain-win move. Still, it's no use if one can't find an opening to counter with it, like all powerful jutsu, What-What has a counterbalancing weakness. It's best used when the opponent doesn't know about your presence or is too reckless and wide open", Masen sighed.</p><p>Meiko just dreamily looked up in the trees that burrowed from up higher, close to the surface. By now, the trees had begun to rot away slowly before collapsing to dust. Seeing how chakra gave them life, without its support they could not survive being completely encompassed by rock hard minerals. Seeing those trees rot made Meiko remember the Academy, back when the kids were taught that higher rank Senju clansmen were able to create entire forests that did not rot away without chakra input at all.</p><p>"Maybe I do need an equalizer of sorts", the blacksmith pondered to herself, recalling her conversation with Masen-Z as well as the fight with Lithia's team before.</p><hr/><p>"What in the holy shit are you two losers doing"!? As pretentious as it was loud yell penetrated the peaceful moment of rest, making Meiko's sleepy eyes shoot wide-awake and have her jump on her feet and running at the source of the noise.</p><p>"Wood Style: Static Cotton"! Sunny Lee jumped in to protect her still recovering teammate with surprising ferocity. The kunoichi flashed through hand seals and unleashing a large forest of smaller in size bushes erupting from the floor and ceiling and unleashing a larger concentration of much smaller cotton chunks than before. All of the cotton projectiles rushed at the unknown trio of opponents who had entered the cave through unprotected previous cave and the corridor of disabled traps further back.</p><p>One of the trio, dressed in baggy pants and wearing odd armored boots and chest armor that extended over the ninja's upper body, wearing an iron plated mask with red eye pieces and a breathing device of sorts, extended their hands forward unleashing a powerful wave of steam that incinerated the cotton up to the smallest speck of dust just from the intensity of the heated steam alone.</p><p>Dashing from the side was Masen-Z, jumped into his newly repaired and slightly updated Gear-Man armor. A heated scorching red sword extended from his arm piece as he aimed to slash at the trio of invaders and shake them off. The invader from the right jumped in to meet his advance, right as the caped blond haired girl closed in six mechanical arms appeared from under her body-covering coat as she unleashed a steel bending flurry of blows straight to the core of the Gear-Man armor.</p><p>Grunting from the power of the blows Masen-Z skid back, thrusting his heated sword into the rocky floor to stop his throwback force before his tall robot armor got thrown into the back wall and busted up most of the nesting pods. The blond girl then graciously leaped back to her position to the right of the trio.</p><p>"Can you just stop this shit and listen"!? The invader from the center yelled out as he pointed at the Konoha headbands on the center of the well-armored genin's forehead to his left as well as one on the head of the blond haired girl with six mechanical arms added to two of her own to his right.</p><p>"Nara Sugemi"? Kiyomi's voice, now sounding slightly more feminine and healed after a good handful of hours of regeneration inside the nesting pod, yelled out in surprise as the Yamanaka crawled out of the pod. She didn't leave the pod because she felt rejuvenated but because of the sounds of fighting made by the interaction between Sugemi's team and that of Team Cumulus.</p><p>"Yeah, it's me, calm the fuck down, will ya"? The Nara scratched the back of his neck, "Jeez you guys are trigger happy", he complained afterwards.</p><p>"Well, your introduction wasn't very polite", Meiko shrugged as she looked at Sunny Lee and Masen-Z with a reaffirming glare, suggesting them to stand down.</p><p>"Hmph, maybe we better pack up and leave this place. It's becoming too publically accessible for my taste", Sunny Lee bitterly noted as she settled down on a rock and waited to hear what Sugemi and his team had to say.</p><p>"To be honest, one has to work through kilometers of dirt and rock, then, swim through a freezing lake and into an underground stream to even end up in the cave system. How was I supposed to know it'd become so crawling with people"? Masen-Z laughed out after he jumped out of Gear-Man. The boy then loudly lamented the dents in the frontal area of the armor before picking his tools and preparing to fix them. A little bit more and those punches could have drilled right through the most armored part of Gear-Man and that alarmed Masen-Z as well as informed him of the strength of that Konoha trio.</p><p>"We were looking for Team Hokage for a while, we knew from quite recent information exchanges that you two were supposed to be around here but we didn't know where exactly. Then we met Lithia Uchiha climbing out of the cave and learned a bunch of things", Sugemi shrugged.</p><p>"Like that Lithia Uchiha is a stuck up bitch", the blonde from his right remarked bitterly locking her normal, fleshy hands around her chest.</p><p>"So what do you want from us? Don't tell us that I am your target"! Kiyomi wondered out loud.</p><p>"No. I just wanted to know why you left Mana alone to be kidnapped and bargained for a shitload of supplies to other teams"? Sugemi calmly asked before a vein began popping out from his forehead suggesting a massive rage impulse raising up.</p><p>"Wait… Mana"? Meiko's jaw gapped from surprise.</p><p>"That's right, I know that in my time I wasn't the best teammate for one of my childhood friends but at least even at my worst I never forgot about her existence"! Sugemi shouted aloud as a bit of his pent up rage began spilling over the top.</p><p>"I mean… She was… Knocked out, by the way, we didn't leave her behind. We got attacked and separated and we just… Assumed she was taken away by the staff because she was out cold", Kiyomi looked down in disbelief. She just could not wrap her head around the fact that for some reason, despite being completely knocked out, Mana was still not removed from the competition, at least according to these three.</p><p>"Wait, what!? She was knocked out"!? Sugemi took a step forward at which point he was stopped by his heavily armored and covered up teammate from his left. "You guys are seriously the worst teammates, and I'm including the asshole that I was to her before in that assessment", he cursed after painfully lowering his head. It was clear that Mana and Sugemi still had issues to work out that the Nara boy was suppressing.</p><p>Snakes burst from underground, wrapping around Sugemi from out of nowhere, reaching in for a complete lockdown of the young genin's body. And yet the "What-What" could not have been completed, the reason why could've been observed once one looked down and noticed a long string of shadow extending from Sugemi and all the way to the massive lump of flesh and muscle who had emerged from his pod. Sugemi may have struggled to keep Othello G paralyzed under normal circumstances but with the wrestler's weakened state he was still fair game.</p><p>"Who the fuck are you three"!? Othello G thundered out, roaring like a proud lion and trying to toughen out through his injuries that were still evident even after some time resting.</p><p>"Ah, my name's Nara Sugemi, this armored fellow is Daidao Deiji – the Five Tails' Jinchuuriki and the other one's Nanaba Aomyaku – the Seven Tails' Jinchuuriki. We're a special team from the Eden Correctional Facility with special permission from the Sixth to participate in the Chuunin Exams - Team Hawthorn", Sugemi calmly introduced himself and his team, upon being introduced each of his teammates bowed respectfully with the Nara remaining the only one unbowed.</p><p>"Now, maybe you will consider not attacking us, please"? The girl Jinchuuriki of the Seven Tailed Beast – Nanaba bowed once again respectfully upon which request the "What-What" snakes withdrew and slithered back into the bushy cover of Othello G's chest hair as well as his boots and his trunks before disappearing there.</p><p>"Two Jinchuuriki"? Sunny Lee scratched her head looking a bit overwhelmed by the fight she very nearly picked. The casualty at which the information was relayed as well as the contents of the information surprised her equally. Usually Jinchuuriki – the people inside of whom laid sealed dormant the Tailed Beasts were a guarded secret and a treasure for each Ninja Village to have. Like a human weapon of mass destruction.</p><p>"That is correct, we may be Jinchuuriki owned by Konohagakure but we are also ninja, not just prisoners. We are usually located in Eden for our own safety, not due to criminal activity in our past. It is useful for the village to train us as well as rank us up once in a while", Daidao confirmed with his voicebox enhanced yet calm in tone voice.</p><p>"Can we just get to the matter why we came here"? Nara angrily shouted out before crossing his arms around his chest.</p><p>"Ah, yes, your Mana. Please, carry on, Sugemi", Daidao bowed.</p><p>"She's not mi… Look, whatever, the point is – you guys must've missed something because the information we got from one of the teams we spoke with was that Mana was kidnapped when you three weren't around and she's being bargained for a caravan-load of supplies", Sugemi explained. "The worst part is that the info is solid, we have no reason to not trust this team and we've confirmed it with yet another team".</p><p>"But… Why would they even care enough to kidnap Mana"? Meiko wondered, "She's just a lifeless, knocked out body".</p><p>"Because she wasn't eliminated, for whatever reason", Kiyomi realized before scratching her chin as her mind raced to develop that thought, "A passing by team finds a body, one that's been knocked out, but sleeping peacefully all by itself and yet not eliminated. That'll raise some questions – she's valuable as a possible bypass of the rules. If a medical ninja examined Mana they may determine why she wasn't removed despite being knocked out".</p><p>"Wait, examine? You mean they'll cut her open"!? Sugemi freaked out.</p><p>"That is a possibility, Team Hokage is widely hated by the other teams so subtlety is not a necessity with those teams. Wasn't there that whole huge thing about a bounty on your heads"? Sunny Lee suggested.</p><p>"That asshole Pagu will probably donate his liver just to get to cut Mana up, that stupid asshole, always taking jokes too far"! Meiko grinded her teeth.</p><p>"Wait, that's a bit of a logical leap, don't you think"? Kiyomi smiled.</p><p>"Oh yeah? Do you even know Pagu Aphonei"? Meiko freaked out before beginning to pack up all her tools and things that she had unpacked during her brief stay. She was in a rush to find the team that had kidnapped Mana and wanted to bargain her off.</p><p>"Wait, Meiko. If we go look into this – we may risk needlessly. We've beaten our targets, all we need to do is walk out the gate now. Even if we recover Mana, we can't be guaranteed she'll even be allowed to continue", the blonde tried to calm the blacksmith down.</p><p>"Excuse me!? We're talking about Mana! She crossed half the world to save you from your fucking arranged marriage"! Sugemi jumped up and started rolling back his sleeves angrily, intending to punch the Yamanaka right in the nose. His calm and calculated proceedings were stopped by his armored teammate.</p><p>"Wait, arranged marriage"? Meiko squinted at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Technically, I wasn't entirely opposed to that marriage, she went a bit rogue on that one but… Fair point", Kiyomi looked away, feeling ashamed slightly by her calculated leader's approach to the matter.</p><p>"There is logic in what Kiyomi Yamanaka says, her team has won. Anyone looking for Mana's body will likely have to fight through numerous teams and is very likely to be beaten up and eliminated. There is zero use in risking one's life for a dead-weight teammate that's already out of the exam." The mechanical ninja explained.</p><p>"Daidao-kun, please stop talking this way. This is mean for poor Mana-chan"! Nanaba shrieked out horrified by her teammate's words.</p><p>"Nanaba, I merely am stating that this Yamanaka is a capable and logical leader. We are wise to rank her possibility to rank up very highly", Daidao shrugged.</p><p>"I can't fucking believe it"! Sugemi yelled out. "Fine, you just run away, tuck your tails and go. I made Mana suffer enough way back when, with my words and my actions. I'm gonna go there and beat everyone up even if I need to fight off the summit of all of the teams present here, I'll be the kind of man manga are written about"!</p><p>"Wait… We're going too", Kiyomi sighed after picking up her things and quickly waving her farewells to Team Cumulus.</p><p>As a leader she had to weigh the pros, the cons, the advantages and disadvantages, the risks and consequences of each action her team performed. This action was profoundly stupid and yet… It felt like that was what needed to be done. Just looking at Meiko's face it made it feel like the right thing to do. Meiko promised Mana and Kiyomi that she would protect the two, she wanted to pay back the favor of getting the blacksmith through the first half of the exam and for sticking to the promise not to give Meiko up during her injury.</p><p>While no sane leader would have agreed to take up this madness of a hunt, who was Kiyomi to deprive her teammate of a promise she had made. Technically, it was justifiable even from a leadership point of view – a happy teammate was a teammate who would coordinate better in the future. While Mana's well-being meant a lot to Kiyomi, she had to delve deep into her own mind in order to make up excuses for sticking to this hunt for Mana's unconscious body mission.</p>
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<a name="section0316"><h2>316. Need For Answers: Most Wanted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Light partially seeped into Mana's eyes inviting a familiar dreadful headache she had felt so many times before. A painful reminder that one was still alive which momentarily made one wish they weren't. The magician realized that something was wrong almost instantly, she felt tight bindings around her and an almost supernatural force holding her still, pressing against her chest and emanating from a glowing paper tag placed there. While the magician wanted to remain still and keep quiet so she could carefully survey her surroundings and evaluate her situation it didn't work out. A stinging sensation in her breathing tract made her cough erratically almost within seconds of waking up.</p><p>The magician felt the taste of blood as the rough yet small shards of crystal left her throat through her mouth, bruising and cutting at every soft fleshy wall it passed. The wounds were not troublesome or deep but Mana realized then that her total chakra pool was smaller than half her total, right when her body instinctively tried to protect itself through chakra augmentation and had to be eased through it.</p><p>"Interesting, she's awake", a crude sounding and lingering masculine voice made Mana's eyes turn to meet a young man, in his middle twenties or slightly older, whom the magician couldn't shake off the feeling she had seen somewhere already. Despite her best attempts at recalling details of this blond haired, glasses wearing young man she could not quite put her finger on it.</p><p>"Oh, great, you know, we should've just brought her to the gate, that or killed her", another young man, this on looking in his teens and with much greasier and messier dark hair running past his shoulders advised coldly.</p><p>"Aw, come on, you guys, Crus said that she was supposed to be eliminated but wasn't", a rather low pitched and strong yet strangely more feminine sounding voice made Mana flip her head back to observe the third member of the team that sat around her, having placed her on the ground after the magician woke up.</p><p>"Eliminated"? Mana muttered to herself. Her memory could vaguely recall something terrifying, something covering her up, getting all into her nose, mouth and filling her lungs and on the inside. The exact details still eluded the girl's memory but the shock and the panic fear she felt at those moments returned flawlessly.</p><p>"I stand by that, her presence is a paradox. She was, by all signs, knocked out and should've been withdrawn from the competition, her team abandoned her, after all", the bright haired young man nodded, using his palm to keep his glasses in their current positioned as he gestured with his head. His face was not quite malevolent, his eyes showed no pleasure in holding Mana against her will or intent to hurt her but he did look somewhat indifferent towards it, almost like he held himself above this.</p><p>"They did"? Mana raised an eyebrow, wondering internally. She worried about Kiyomi and Meiko as something must've happened to the two as they wouldn't have just dropped Mana and went on without her, at least the magician believed so herself.</p><p>The girl moved her hands around, tied behind her, placing them closest she could to the requirements of the Academy technique ninja used to escape bindings – the aptly named Rope Escape Jutsu. Then her hands faltered, was this really a sufficiently threatening situation to warrant her breaking her own rule about generic techniques? Slowly her hands parted away as she continued to lay low and listen.</p><p>"Hmph, still… Our time would be better spent seeking our targets, I am almost ashamed to talk in front of this girl how badly we're doing at that"! The other male teammate of the team remarked.</p><p>"Aw, come on, Gunoi, if Crus says that the girl may have stumbled into a way to cheat the system, it might be useful to find the secret out. Remember how many close calls we had recently"? The young lady once again butt in. After looking at her closely, Mana remembered bits and pieces about her from before.</p><p>"Hey, I remember you three, we met after the written exam shortly. Your name is… Choroina, I think? You expressed frustration that Gunoi wasn't following your leadership and your team didn't get along like the three of us did", Mana spoke up.</p><p>"Wait… Oh yeah, the cheerful Konoha team"! Choroina clapped her hands together, "Sorry, still can't let you go. The team we stole you from said something about your genjutsu being very dangerous".</p><p>"The team you stole me from"? Mana's eyes squinted as she realized just how much must have happened while she was out and how foolish this whole situation was to an uninitiated obeserver.</p><p>"Yeah, you're pretty much the most popular girl amongst the teams still competing – your body holds the answer why you weren't eliminated." Crus remarked.</p><p>"And don't even bother using the Rope Escape Jutsu, we've placed a chakra seal onto your bindings. You'd need at least a C-Rank technique to break it, definitely a more powerful technique than a generic Academy ninjutsu", Gunoi mockingly addressed Mana as if gloating over his superior standing.</p><p>"No problem, I've already escaped", Mana showed her hands holding the rope with a smile and before the enemy team could comprehend all the ramifications of her words those hands went through a collection of hand seals.</p><p>"Partial Expansion Jutsu"! Choroina yelled out as a giant fist slammed at Mana, large enough to break all of her bones upon impact as the giant had no problem breaking her opponent, knowing she wouldn't get eliminated anyways. Instead of a rough hit upon her opponent's body the female Akimichi with a Getsugakure headband hit only a twister of flower petals that scattered away into the wind that her own impact picked up.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Shock Wall"! Gunoi yelled out as lightning bolts lit up in a net formation around his fingers and expanded flying fifteen meters or so at the general direction of the young man's intent before dissolving. The young man repeated the technique a couple of times in several directions trying to aim with luck and intuition instead of sensory input or skill.</p><p>"There's no use trying to hit that on an opponent you cannot see, Gunoi", Crus remarked mockingly.</p><p>"How about you try to do something"!? Gunoi flipped out.</p><p>"That's because I am a medical ninja, I am useful to this team in other ways".</p><p>"You should've done like those other guys intended to and cut that bitch open then"! Gunoi cursed again, "This is why we are the underdogs in this stupid exam"!</p><p>"Whatever caused this girl to remain in the competition was not a medical problem, it was a trick of some sort. I scanned her already using the Diagnosis Jutsu, cutting her open would be redundant. You dare doubt my judgment"? Crus arrogantly stepped up into Gunoi's face as the two teammates collided with each other, firing off lightning bolts between the eyes of each other.</p><p>Mana breathed uneasily on a tall branch up above. She may have wanted to use another genjutsu to disable these three but she was working with a much smaller chakra pool already. While the first instinct she had was to run, that was not a priority. Most of all Mana wanted to know about exactly what everyone wanted to know – how she remained in the competition after having been knocked out.</p><p>While escape was very alluring, she was still dazed and much slower right now. If these three were stronger than they were predictable, that would have made them catch up to Mana if she tried to run right away. One of those stray lightning bolts may have even hit her as the ninjutsu dissolved. Even more importantly, one of the three mentioned something about Mana being hunted by every team still in the competition. That meant that eventually she would need to confront more heat than she was comfortable with. When that time came, her best option was to tell those people what they wanted to know but for that she needed to know it herself.</p><p>"Man, I guess cooperation just isn't in the cards for Team Adrastea", Choroinu sighed sadly as her two teammates bickered before smacking both of them and encouraging them to keep on searching ahead. Shortly after, Mana was left all by herself to sit and contemplate her further plan.</p><p>It was a good thing she was a stage magician who escaped bindings for a living, even without needing to use the Rope Escape Jutsu or any chakra at all. Removing a seal was as easy as removing a paper tag once her hands were freed by natural means. Working through a simple rope bind should have taken Mana far less but she was still a bit wonky and the information she overheard did interest her.</p><p>A thunderous crack interrupted Mana's train of thought as the large branch she was sitting on cracked and made the magician plummet down until she could grab onto another and try to pull up. That was before a purplish chakra sphere flew right past her head, right where Mana would've been if she would've blindly pushed herself onto the branch.</p><p>A strong looking middle-aged man leaped right onto the branch Mana was holding herself onto before trying to kick at her, luckily enough, the girl managed to read his intentions and let go before the kick was delivered. As Mana grabbed onto another branch and swung onto one right in front of it, on another tree, she saw the strongman take a nosedive down holding what looked like an elbow length two-edged short sword in his hands.</p><p>"Residual Style: Sparrow Bolts"! The female ninja of the strongman's team yelled out launching a wild barrage of purple colored flares that appeared textured almost like chakra itself. Mana reached for her own wand inside her pocket and under her shirt while her one free hand weaved hand seals.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Spark Barrage"! she chanted out as a wild flock of Lightning Release spherical projectiles fired off channeled through Mana's wand to match and detonate the enemy kunoichi's odd ninjutsu technique. As it was intended, the two barrage techniques clashed mid-way, detonating one another.</p><p>A strong hit threw Mana off-balance and made her fall from her branch. It must have been the third one, it was hard to believe that anyone could've thrown a hit as fast as this one did.</p><p>"Nice teamwork, Harpalke, Iuteb, keep pressing her"! The strongman commanded as he picked his buckler up from the ground and prepared to join in on the offensive to take Mana down.</p><p>The magician closed her eyes before weaving hand seals and breaking her fall with Mystical Wings Jutsu. She lost the wand somewhere, the hit to her jaw was that strong that she completely lost concentration. A bit stronger and it could have completely knocked her out. This was dangerous, probably the most dangerous situation Mana has been in throughout this whole exam. These people may have been underdogs and Mana may have been well over-trained and over-experienced for this exam but if they ganged up all at once she stood no chance to survive against them.</p><p>The wild card of her chakra sensory kicked in. Right as her visual senses closed, Mana's sensory overwhelmed her without her will beginning to show her those blazing orbs of chakra. This caused the magician to quickly open her eyes, cancelling the sabotage of her own sensory abilities instantly. She leaped back to avoid the diving attack of Iuteb, the speedy taijutsu user who clocked her before. She delivered a kick to his exposed back right after he missed his diving punch.</p><p>"She dodged Iuteb's punch"!? The strongman, who appeared to be the de facto leader of the team remarked in great surprise.</p><p>Truthfully, it was only possible because of what Mana's sensory had showed her. The unasked for sensory sensation showed off some of the specifics behind Iuteb's taijutsu style and some signs of this Harpalke's "Residual Release". Mana placed her hands up in the hand seal position, preparing them for a genjutsu which she needed to time just right if she wanted to escape.</p><p>This Iuteb boy bent light around his body using chakra. That made his chakra signature light up with activity once he moved and it was what caused his body appear to move much faster than it actually did. Where the opponent never saw Iuteb coming, the boy was attacking normally but merely bending the light around his body to make his attack appear instantaneous. It made it appear like his body flashed in out of nowhere.</p><p>The chakra signature of this Harpalke girl appeared to stretch and thin out once it lit up with activity. Mana saw the star-like representation of her signature expand and reach out for the surroundings, she must've somehow been able to utilize the chakra from the environment around her, using her own chakra to mold it all together, not too much different from the technique Kouta's father once used, except on an immensely smaller scale.</p><p>Iuteb posed very few problems, Mana had already seen him move with intent to hit her twice. She had the approximate calculation and rhythm of his speed and he would never lay a hand on her again. Harpalke, on the other hand was more problematic. Mana's sensory appeared to work all on its own, like a capricious child. Sometimes it took half an hour to tap into it, sometimes it did not work at all and sometimes it turned on all by itself robbing Mana of another sense in its place. There was no way to know the specifics of her ability.</p><p>Mana jumped back and onto a tree, she wished to gain elevation but the leader of the team that attacked her jumped up and right in front of Mana, swiping with his blade to force the magician to stop on her tracks and jump back to avoid getting cut almost in half at her chest. Right afterwards the swordsman followed the move up with a buckler bash, following the same wave of momentum and wasting no movements. Mana grunted in pain as the buckler drove into her and sent her crashing back down.</p><p>Instead of hitting the ground, purplish flames enveloped her in a wide sphere before exploding suddenly and violently leaving the singed and injured magician to finish her fall. Hearing a rumbling of the ground beneath her Mana timed her roll aside to avoid a powerful jumping strike from Iuteb before getting back on her feet and wiping the blood off her nose because it made breathing a struggle.</p><p>The leader of the attacking team landed right in front of Mana right before his team joined in with him by his sides.</p><p>"We needn't fight, we just need your secret", the man calmly asked of Mana.</p><p>"I'd tell it if I knew it", Mana shook her head as her eyes wandered chaotically across the battlefield.</p><p>"Why don't you try to withdraw? You seem smarter than to consider taking us three on by yourself", the enemy strongman wondered before raising his buckler to his face and raising his sword wielding hand over it, preparing to stab over his shield if the magician chose to attack him head-on.</p><p>"I lost something here, my wand." Mana admitted.</p><p>"This wand is worth getting injured and hunted down for"? Harpalke yelled out in disbelief, she spoke in a strange southern dialect. Her pronunciation reminded Mana to that of Team Phobos suggesting heavily that this trio was from Getsugakure or another southern country.</p><p>"It's worth dying for", Mana replied firmly.</p><p>Harpalke was troublesome. Chakra was a fundamental force of the universe, present within each and every object in certain concentrations and quantities. Right now, without her gift of sensory cooperating, Mana could not possibly know the amounts of chakra she could concentrate from her surroundings and just how much of her own chakra went into this concentration process. Planning was useless without this information. This was pathetic, Mana needed to scoop off more chakra from her already lacking pool…</p><p>The magician's hands clutched onto an area over her ribs, Mana faked out being in pain, or at least more pain than she was really in, as her hands dove under her shirt where they could freely weave hand seals without being clearly seen.</p><p>"Sweet Lullaby Jutsu"! Mana yelled out before Iuteb's body bent the light again, trying to psych her out and believe he moved instantly when in fact he merely hid inside the pocket of light he bent. The magician's hands and her lips did not tremble as she began whistling a sweet and soft tune that quickly spread her illusion throughout.</p><p>Iuteb just unceremoniously slammed into the ground, shaking as his bodily sensors were overloaded with pleasure making it impossible to resist in the early stages of the illusion. His teammates followed but with more self-control and grace as they were not quite as engaged by trying to attack Mana.</p><p>That magician leaped up onto the nearest tree as she continued to hum and whistle the tune, staying within an audible range for her tune to be heard as her eyes raced wildly to find her wand.</p><p>A sharp pain at her shoulder made the magician scream out due to the surprise of the painful shock as she witnessed a small scalpel digging into the back of her shoulder a good couple centimeters. Had her chakra not been so stressed she may have been able to completely make it bounce off but now the girl felt her right hand go completely numb since the blade must have hit a sensitive point of her body.</p><p>"If you escape, don't just stick around and get into another fight", Crus of the trio that previously kidnapped Mana from someone who kidnapped her from her own team playfully suggested as his teammates quickly joined in.</p><p>"Partial Expansion Jutsu"! Choroina thrust her massive expanded fist straight at Mana. Crippled by the pain in her shoulder Mana tried to jump off but it would not have come in time.</p><p>"She's ours"! A loud and authoritative yell made Mana open her eyes and lower her left hand, which braced her head for impact. The blond strongman from the other Getsugakure team dashed up and blocked Choroina's attack with his buckler.</p><p>"Fuck off, Staeg, we stole her from Team Quartz of Iwagakure fair and square"! Gunoi angrily taunted his fellow Getsugakure ninja by raising his fist before placing his hands in position for hand seals.</p><p>"You disappoint me, Gunoi Azbur. As a fellow Getsugakure ninja I was ready to share the secret with you", the strongman wielding shield and sword, now known as Staeg replied as he stood right in front of Mana after the blowback threw him back at her and he managed to maintain both her and his own balance.</p><p>"I'm fine with sharing with Team Eurydome, really", Choroina apologetically bowed her head before her expanded hand returned to its normal chubby size.</p><p>"Fire Style: Burning Ash"! A voice came from out of nowhere as a wild cloud of ash covered the forest area and Mana felt Staeg grab her by the abdomen and dive down. The magician figured to resist for a moment but remembering how low her chakra pool was and how it might come in use later she didn't resist a man whose prime interest was to protect her until she could disclose her secret to him.</p><p>"Gunpowder"? Staeg muttered to himself before the black ash surrounded him and Mana and a violent explosion, caused by a small spark coming from a ninja hidden inside the trees further away detonated it.</p><p>A cocky laughter came from the western part of the forest before a loud thud silenced it.</p><p>"You're a fool, Fulgasa, what if you killed the girl"? A very frail and a rather feminine looking drab red haori wearing youth scolded his teammate as a team of five was revealed standing to the west, once the aftereffects of the gunpowder cloud explosion cleared up a little.</p><p>"Team Quartz of Iwagakure"? Choroina gasped in shock.</p><p>"That's right, we caught up to you! And this time we've brought some friends"! The energetic young man who apparently cast the ninjutsu and was referred to as Fulgasa earlier laughed out while pointing at the four ninja to his side, one of whom held an unconscious teammate tied to their back by a piece of cloth. "They really could use this girl's secret for their defeated comrade"!</p>
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<a name="section0317"><h2>317. The Best Kind Of Spirituality</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the smoke from the detonation of the gunpowder cloud cleared it became evident what became of Mana and Staeg, the leader of Team Eurydome of Getsugakure who chose to make it his personal responsibility to keep Mana and her valuable secret in his hands. An orb of purple chakra flames had enveloped the two, created by Harpalke of Residual Release style ninjutsu at the last moment, keeping the two from harm.</p><p>Looking around, Mana was surprised to see that while the flames did appear flame-like in texture and appearance, they were not quite hot when their user did not intend them to be harmful. The magician could only speculate as to why they appeared that way. It could have been because chakra was very flame-like in its purest form, it took the appearance of bland blue flames when visible and unenhanced. Or maybe it was because Harpalke's own Fire Release elemental affinity that the Residual Style appeared this way, taking some of its signs from its user.</p><p>Staeg landed on the ground before placing Mana down and looking up at the battle that erupted between the two Getsugakure teams - Team Eurydome of his own management and Team Adrastea and the attacking two teams.</p><p>Without waiting around too much, Mana dashed further away from the hectic battlefield but Staeg jumped in between her, the forest thickness, and the nearest tall tree.</p><p>"Your team is fighting right now, they could use your leadership", Mana uttered as she lowered her face making her hair slip over her eyes so her enemy couldn't read her distress and see her sweating forehead. To a ninja such details would be a clear indicator that Mana was tricking him and trying to avoid combat by all means which might have been taken for weakness.</p><p>"They are fighting Team Pahlavi of Sunagakure and Team Quartz of Iwagakure, Team Pahlavi lacks a member which makes it five on five. I'll manage watching you just fine", Staeg bravely responded raising his buckler to his strong and broad chest. Despite not being able to see the man sheathing his short sword, Mana could hear the sound of steel rubbing against the sheath – he was ready to punch her out if needed but her life needed to be preserved.</p><p>Up above a fierce battle was in its early stages. It was unusual to see teams from two different villages working together like Team Pahlavi and Team Quartz did. Needless to say, the desperation of a lost team member combined with ages of common history being abused by the larger ninja villages and ignored in the grand political scale made Iwagakure and Sunagakure grow a little bit closer than most other ninja villages would've. With those two elements combined, believing in the cooperation of the two was not that tough.</p><p>Fulgasa of Team Quartz, the young man who used the ash cloud technique earlier pulled out a strange long reaching weapon comprised of a long steel rod and a plough-like tip. Aiming to strike at the enemy team the young man charged diagonally down, aiming at the slightly worn out Harpalke who was beginning to hunch over the strain caused by her techniques. Luckily for Staeg's team Iuteb managed to clock Fulgasa straight in the nose using the same overplayed light-bending trick again.</p><p>"Partial Expansion Axe Handle"! Choroina yelled out leaping into the air with her hands raised over her head, aiming to smash her attackers into the ground. After a brief fraction of a second her hands expanded dozens of times, inflating in size and increasing in weight drastically.</p><p>As her arms drove down, however, they met a powerful resistance from the enemy as Fulgasa's female teammate with shaved sides of her thick, shoulder-long, maroon hair jumped in to assist him. In mid-leap rocks and dirt rose from the soil beneath Mana's feet and covered Fulgasa's teammate in an innovative rock, dirt and mineral armor technique allowing her to block Choroina's strike, however the immense force from the impact still cracked and shattered the Earth Release user's armor.</p><p>"Thanks for the assist, Taudall" Fulgasa grinned like an idiot, feeling sorry for being repelled and nearly taken out this easily.</p><p>Using the steel wire combination with the String Reeling Academy ninjutsu, Taudall, with Fulgasa in her strong and thick arms, zipped away from trouble with their teammate, the effeminate looking Yuki, providing some support.</p><p>"Ice Style: Diamond Mist"! The dark haired youth from Iwagakure chanted out as the air temperature around the tree where the five were situated, expanding to the tree where Taudall and Fulgasa were zipping off to chilled drastically creating a mist-like effect of dry ice and small ice chips floating weightlessly around, getting tossed around by the gusts of wind.</p><p>The golden haired, tanned young man standing calmly beside Team Quartz finally extended his arms from his praying stance to reach out to two scrolls crossed on his back, the size of which surpassed the feeble looking young man himself. The youth then quickly tossed the scrolls in the air after removing the pin that held them together and allowing them to open before he once again placed his palms together in a praying stance.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Śrāvakayāna, Pratyekabuddhayāna", the feeble youth spoke in a praying-like tone as a bunch of bits and detached parts unsealed from the scrolls.</p><p>"Whatever he's doing, don't let him"! Gunoi turned at his teammate, the medical ninja Crus who just shrugged innocently.</p><p>"What am I to do"? He replied much to his teammate's annoyance.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Shock Wall"! Gunoi quickly worked through his own hand seals, before electrifying multiple strings of steel wire and swinging them by parting his close placed palms. After the steel wire had expanded to its limits and stopped in place, the Lightning Release chakra continued to flow and move outside its initial medium.</p><p>The cloaked teammate with a purple mohawk, standing beside the feeble looking member of Team Pahlavi quickly bit his thumb and started working through his own set of hand seals, right as Gunoi moved to attack his teammate. As the strings of Lightning Release chakra expanded the tall man had already completed his Summoning Jutsu.</p><p>A violent eruption of smoke and loud popping noise followed the resolution of the Summoning Jutsu and for a moment it was unclear if Shock Wall had hit its intended target, or any target at all. After the smoke cleared however, a massive spider, standing in between two trees and right behind teams Pahlavi and Quartz was present, having created a large round web which absorbed the lightning shock and was glowing and sparkling with the intense amount of Lightning Release chakra running through it.</p><p>"Darn it", Gunoi cursed after realizing that his most powerful and advanced jutsu was so effortlessly absorbed into the web.</p><p>"Hurry up, Buhakim", the punky man encouraged his teammate who did not appear to be reacting to his ally that much nor to the massive spider behind him who continued to climb up and up until it seemingly disappeared in the upper layers of trees. "Skip the early stages and go right for Bodhisattva"</p><p>"I cannot do that, Zahafbit, you know very well that without Vehicle of Disciples and Solitary Awakening there'd be no Enlightenment. That is the path of Uber Spirituality", the frail youth explained with a soft smile. After his words ceased, the young man's fingers extended from their praying stance revealing strings of puppetry, glowing with chakra being channeled through them.</p><p>Soon the seemingly useless floating body parts began merging, forming two separate puppets. One of them reminded of a creepy fusion of bodies and body parts, with eight legs, thirteen, or so, hands and a number of limbs and heads that was too numerous to count from a quick look. It was covered with a red piece of cloth that ran down from one of its mouths and wrapped around its entire grotesque body before disappearing in another open mouth of a malformed face with four eyes yet no nose.</p><p>"Śrāvakayāna"! Young Buhakim prayed out as the puppet took shape and stretched its multiple body parts.</p><p>Then the second one fused together from a floating bunch of parts, forming a weird iteration of the dharmachakra shape, reminding of a ship's wheel, with arms for handles and an obsidian eye at the center, controlled entirely through a single puppetry string, whereas the first puppet demanded whole nine fingers to control.</p><p>"Pratyekabuddhayāna"! Young Buhakim repeated the praying ritual before the odd non-humanoid puppet activated.</p><hr/><p>"Let me leave"! Mana yelled out in a demanding tone right at Staeg who appeared completely stunned at the massive fight that was about to break out above.</p><p>"You're in no condition to make demands", the strongman took a step towards Mana, bringing the shield closer to her, as if pressing his stance towards her.</p><p>"Don't you get it? A massive fight will break out soon, it already has. Nothing good will come of it. I don't know what you wish to know so you'll all fall for nothing"! Mana tried to explain as she felt her voice breaking in desperation. "Please, there's no need for any of this"!</p><p>"You're right, there isn't, tell us what we want to know and this fight can end right now. All of us just want the secret, but they're fighting for the right to beat it out of you". Staeg lowered his shield as he saw in Mana's pleading eyes that she wasn't about to harm him. He saw the truth as the magician had settled on wasting no more chakra for fruitless attempts of escaping and trying to reason with her captors and all of her re-captors.</p><p>"Please, just let me pass and find my wand. You can all chase after me together after, I don't care. Just don't fight", Mana pleaded.</p><p>"I'm not moving one inch, if you want to save everyone from this fight, you'll have to think harder and remember what you did to bypass the rules. I have no leeway to offer you. I won't move or take bribes. If you want to pass, tell me what I want to know – those are my conditions", Staeg firmly cut the conversation down. "Or you can fight me yourself, see where that goes".</p><p>Mana bit her lip in frustration, hard enough to draw blood. She was not sure if Staeg didn't get it or if he simply was that desperate for the secret. His team was tired, sure, they were not the strongest people in this forest but he did not need it that badly. If the fight broke out it'd only end with one side or both of them utterly wiped out, that's to rely on the lucky chance that another team won't join into the brawl halfway – half of the Forest of Death wanted Mana right now.</p><p>Mana fell on her knee as a sudden feeling of dizziness began drawing her to the forest floor. The magician moaned in pain before reaching back to the source of her pain and feeling Crus' projectile scalpel that was still stuck in her back. So many things have happened, one after another, that the girl had completely forgotten to deal with that injury. It just remained there sucking chakra out from her network and draining her stamina until the pool grew too thin for it to be ignored.</p><p>"Oh, are you OK? Do you need help?" Staeg jumped up and rushed to Mana, helping her up, "I have some bandages in my pouch, sorry, no food pills or anything like that".</p><p>As the strongman helped Mana sit down on a rock and began burrowing in a pouch attached to the belt wrapped around his body, shoulder to pelvis, something popped in the magician's mind. A realization, or rather an idea, which required external simulation and a calmer situation to have a mind be properly wrapped around it.</p><p>"Food pills…" Mana lips muttered out moving seemingly all by themselves.</p><p>"Huh? No, I told you we have none. Those are too expensive for our team and they're even more difficult to get in Getsugakure than they are in Konoha", Staeg waved his hand before pulling out a bandage and examining the wound. He must've been trying to judge if the wound would be sufficiently patched up by a bandaged ninja's metabolism or if it required stitching – a rather rare occurrence in the ninja world, mostly applicable when ninja's chakra was dwindling low and had little to no hopes of recovering soon or with exceptionally deep wounds.</p><p>"No, that's the secret", Mana quietly explained with a weakened voice as her skin began paling at a crawling pace.</p><p>"That doesn't make sense, plenty of ninja consume food pills. I believe that many of them would've brought a handful here, at the very least, and yet all of them got eliminated, I'd assume", Staeg wondered before taking a couple of steps back to think before placing the bandage back in his pouch. He must've lacked trust in his own ability to treat the wound.</p><p>"Yeah but not right before an accidental knockout. Also not two in a row. Usually ninja consume them right after the battle or during its end, whereas I took them just in time for them to be at their peak effectiveness when I was taken out". Mana shook her head before realizing that it made her dizziness even worse and made a nauseous note to herself not to emote so energetically in the nearest future.</p><p>"How would medical food pills keep you from being knocked out"? The Getsugakure ninja still felt defiant and mistrustful towards Mana's explanation. He then gestured for the rest of his team up above who quickly withdrew from the heating up battle and surrounded the two ninja, shortly followed by their opponents.</p><p>"She says that medical food pills helped her prevent elimination", Staeg cut it short for the rest of the ninja gathered there.</p><p>"They wouldn't just keep me from being knocked out but they'd hide it from the staff. Think about it, how does the staff know about a ninja being knocked out"? Mana asked, trying to guide her pursuers through the thought process themselves. It was a psychological trick of sorts, if the others arrived to the same conclusion as Mana all by themselves they would be more likely to buy it.</p><p>"That huge sensory ball, right"? Gunoi confidently stated before looking at the other ninja around him, waiting for one of them to butt in and correct him but no one did. That was because he was correct.</p><p>Seeing that Mana was cooperating Crus slowly took a larger pouch off the back of his belt and started checking Mana's wound out. The attacking teams of Sunagakure and Iwagakure initially reacted jumpily but then eased up a bit after seeing him start to stitch and bandage Mana's wound, before rubbing numbing powder to kill the pain in the area and an ointment to slow the bleeding down. Crus was a really skilled medical ninja, more so than Kouta, since unlike the Juugo youth Crus knew exactly when he needed medical ninjutsu and when he could've handled the situation with medical supplies and which ones exactly. There was dedication and experience in the Getsugakure genin's moves as opposed to Kouta's usual desperation and fear for his friends' health.</p><p>"Exactly, the sensory ball. Once a ninja's chakra signature drops below a given point – the staff treats them as knocked out. They can likely tell when a ninja is knocked out and when they're just really low on chakra but it must be a tough detail to tell apart. That's how medical food pills work – they slowly, partially refill ninja's chakra pool boosting their bodily metabolism in the process. Since I was knocked out in the middle of my recovery – my body was still quickly regaining chakra which tricked the sensory ball." Mana explained her best guess at what exactly must have happened.</p><p>"I see… There is one problem, however", Zahafbit, the punky looking attacker, mumbled out before placing his hands together in a hand seal position.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Speyeder"! The ninja chanted out as a bright green light flashed from high up above. Mana could barely make out the shapes of a giant spider with a humongous eye with luminescent green iris that was spreading the blinding light before her mind blacked out for a moment. The last sight she could consciously make out was the eyes of all surrounding ninja blanking out. Everyone but Team Pahlavi appeared to have dulled out grey eyes, like hypnotized zombies almost.</p><hr/><p>Mana opened her eyes after a rude shake when her carrier failed to maintain his balance and subtlety while moving alongside the thick branches of the Forest of Death. Her head ached, she could clearly remember the last moments before she blacked out, still wondering if it was Konohagakure staff that carried her with intent of eliminating her.</p><p>"Don't worry, you're not out of the woods yet, get it, because we're in a forest"? Zahafbit turned around with a mocking smile. His teammate – Buhakim sighed in disappointment.</p><p>"Don't mind him, he doesn't get jokes", Zahafbit snickered addressing Mana who remained tied with what appeared to be spider silk on his shoulders.</p><p>"That was dirty, we could've all just parted ways with the information. There was no need to eliminate us all". Mana bitterly expressed her sadness.</p><p>"I told you – none of you were eliminated, in the beginning at least. You just can't remember the illusion that I cast on you. I did knock everyone else out after they went to sleep, though", Zahafbit coughed back at her in moderate annoyance. "Sadly, we did have to leave Alsamryf behind as well, she was knocked out before taking any pills so even with the information you have we couldn't have helped her".</p><p>"What business is it to you if I'm eliminated or not? You should've just finished me off", Mana grunted as she tried her usual rope escaping tricks, sadly, the material she was bound with was more of a sticky, glue-like bodily secretion than a rope she could work with.</p><p>"And what if I go to pee and Buhakim looks away, with one lightning fast swoop you'd be removed from our grasp. We need you for one last exchange and its safer if you're not in danger of being removed by Konoha ninja whenever we look away at the same time", Zahafbit smiled, this must've clearly been his idea as he looked too proud explaining it all to Mana.</p><p>"You see, while we are grateful for the information you've provided, we have no medical food pills or that much supplies left so it is useless to us. There is however a way to obtain those food pills and other ninja tools – the bounty on you", Buhakim explained calmly. The odd golden haired boy leaped at tremendous speed without even opening his eyes or moving his hands away from praying position.</p><p>Mana felt tired and whatever medical supplies were used on her to numb the pain in her shoulder was beginning to wear off but a genuine laugh still escaped her chest.</p><p>"Zahafbit was wrong, I may be Uber Spiritual but I do enjoy a good laugh, may you share with us what was so funny"? Buhakim wondered.</p><p>"Last time a big chunk of ninja met together in one group, one guy ended up screwing all of them over. What do you think will happen now"? Mana smiled.</p><p>"Shut up, the bounty's real. Multiple teams we've exchanged information confirmed it", Zahafbit dismissed Mana's words but his face could not quite shake off the uneasy feeling that sparked up in his chest. The man even went as far as to scratch his chest.</p><p>"Really? Who do you think still has enough ninja tools to pay a bounty? This is the very end of the road – most teams have already finished the exam. Everyone who's left now are on their last legs, their supplies emptied and they're all ready to jump at each other's throats. Everyone's worried about everything, why do you think my survival has inspired so much trouble? Everyone is looking for any smallest straw to devote all their effort to because at this point they feel like their main objective may just be pointless", Mana twisted the knife she believed she had firmly planted in Zahafbit's chest already.</p><p>"Buhakim, help me out here"! Zahafbit complained.</p><p>"There is little to say, what the girl says has some reason. Lucky for us, Uber Spirituality and reason has little to do with one another", Buhakim coldly explained as he continued to pray silently as he continued to dash ahead.</p><p>"My wand"… Mana lamented quietly in her mind, due to Team Pahlavi having moved her so far away from Shimo's sword, reworked into the wand, which was so precious to her.</p>
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<a name="section0318"><h2>318. Message In A Beetle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi, Meiko and Sugemi with his team were quickly making their way through the dark depths of the Forest of Death. Their speed was slightly higher than usual. It was because Daidao Deiji – the steampunk Jinchuuriki of the Five Tails had a bright green lantern by his side which illuminated much farther than the ninja's usual supernatural perception allowed them to see. This increased visibility granted the merged teams the ability to allow themselves to pick up the pace.</p><p>Finally, Sugemi's rate slowed down and the Nara landed on a thick tree, from which one could have seen a larger circular field. The trees around the field had bent to surround its upper layers with leafage, which still kept it in relative gloomy shade as every tree tried to exploit the small hill's breakout spot for extra light, covering it up in the process.</p><p>"Strange", Sugemi scratched his head as his eyes squinted while he was deep in thought.</p><p>"It appears Team Scuti is no longer here", Daidao stated the obvious.</p><p>"It was so mean of them to leave this suddenly, without letting us know of it", Nanaba pouted as she camped it up with her gestures and jumpy stance.</p><p>"They haven't left too long ago", Kiyomi looked around noticing small weight pressure signs on the grass that usually weren't present when an area was left for a longer period of time.</p><p>"Yeah… The fries are still warm", Meiko cheered with a full mouth having stuffed her mouth full of unknown gooey food.</p><p>"Really"? Kiyomi squinted teasingly, "They don't smell fresh".</p><p>"No, it's a fine observation, if a bit icky, Relta of Team Scuti would eat actual garbage for food", Sugemi shrugged after examining the camp more closely.</p><p>"So who are these guys anyways, how are they supposed to help us find Mana"? Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>Sugemi sighed. "We formed a sort of an alliance with Team Scuti. We constantly exchanged information and shared useful advice and intelligence", he explained, putting it short.</p><p>"Nana, would you please"? Sugemi wondered turning at his teammate in annoyance that the girl had not followed the social cues already. After being encouraged the young lady hopped on her feet for a moment before glaring at her thumb regretfully and biting it with some scare in her eyes. Her first nom failed to draw blood so the squeamish girl had to bite again ending up paying twice for her penny pinching.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu"! She chanted out after weaving a bunch of hand seals and slamming her extended palm to the ground. A moderate cloud of smoke rose up revealing a small beetle with obsidian shell with golden colored edges and blood-red compound eyes on the front.</p><p>"Contact Team Scuti, please, Bushika-chan", Nanaba asked of the beetle, without answering the insect lifted off and buzzed away into the darkness of the forest.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu"? Kiyomi wondered to herself aloud.</p><p>"Yeah, it's not a common skill among genin. Not many partners trust low ranking ninja, naturally a Jinchuuriki would be taken more seriously", Sugemi sighed before sitting down on the grass and taking a couple of breaths to calm himself. "Once I get my manga out there, I'll have all the animals begging to be my partners", he grinned.</p><p>"Your summon is much cooler than Mana's lame rabbit", Meiko grinned, still following the beetle with her eyes far away in the darkness.</p><p>"Mana's summon"? Sugemi raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Yeah, Mana acquired a Rabbit Summoning Contract right before the Chuunin Exams", Kiyomi waved her hand, "It doesn't look like those guys trust her too much though so she has to bargain with the critter to get it to listen to her".</p><p>"Nothing's ever simple with her", Sugemi smiled before looking away again and trying to wait more patiently for Nanaba's beetle to contact Team Scuti and get their current location.</p><hr/><p>Zahafbit and Buhakim stopped all of a sudden, making Mana, who was still resting on Zahafbit's shoulder shake painfully from the sudden stop. Her attempts at freeing herself from the gooey spider silk substance was still unfruitful, had she performed a similar escapist trick on stage she would have probably used something sharp to puncture the glue-like material and weaken its overall integrity. Without a single bit of damage on the glue it was rough to work with.</p><p>"Hey, Team Nimbus, the deal on Team Hokage is still up"? Zahafbit calmly asked dropping Mana in front of the Kumogakure trio who just lazily looked her up.</p><p>Team Nimbus was an interesting trio. One of them was a massive middle-aged ninja with rock-hard physique and six arms that looked strong enough to crush boulders, one in each arm. The six-armed giant wore what appeared to be a skinned pelt from a white canine, which reminded Mana eerily of the breed of dogs that the Inuzuka clan used. The other two were a similarly built pair of two ninja, male and female, of light brown hair and matching, slick steel armor. Both of them were covering up their faces with cloth from their nose and their eyes looked so eerily similar that Mana took them for siblings almost immediately.</p><p>"Who's this again"? the six-armed giant wondered pointing a ripped off limb of a giant centipede at Mana before finishing slurping the remains of flesh and bitter protein goop inside of the shell.</p><p>"Are you serious, Spyder"? This is Nakotsumi Mana – a member of Team Hokage, the one you agreed to hunt down, amongst several other teams for the bounty pool", Zahafbit laughed out uneasily, as Mana couldn't keep her laughter inside her chest the punky shinobi just glared at her but still moved his hands off his chest and in a more ready for combat position.</p><p>"Do you have any idea how long ago that was"? The slick female member of Team Nimbus jumped up and approached Zahafbit, removing the piece of cloth from her face so she could speak more comfortably and loudly. "Most of the teams that pooled their efforts on this side-job have already finished the exam, southern gate and northern gate kind included".</p><p>"Don't be mistaken though, Team Hokage does interest us, just not this member of it. The only reason we even are after Team Hokage to begin with is our target – Yamanaka Kiyomi, not this girl", the third member of Team Nimbus spoke up as he stood and approached Mana just to watch her over. Once the man stood up, Mana noticed his long sword hanging on his back, almost as tall as the man wearing it himself. "The blonde is the only reason we've stuck around for this long, if you're looking to cash this girl in for supplies – you're out of luck".</p><p>"Not necessarily, she does still have the elimination secret, doesn't she"? The female member of Team Nimbus stepped up to the swordsman teammate of hers, completely ignoring Mana laying right next to her or Team Pahlavi. "Not that we'd need such a thing. We're far above the level of all the remaining teams".</p><p>"So are you willing to trade her for something, or not"? Zahafbit growled in annoyance.</p><p>"She might be useful to us but we have no wish to part with any of our supplies for her", Spyder laughed out as he started packing the kitchen tools chaotically scattered around the place.</p><p>"So it's a fight you're after"!? Zahafbit raised his fists up and weaved a hand seal exposing his massive spider companion from the upper layers of leafage with its lower bottom eye open and spreading its deceitfully beautiful light. Mana closed her eyes, this whole situation really felt off to her and she would rather not go to sleep when both teams were in the process of finding out they barely even needed her anymore.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Speyeder"! Zahafbit yelled out using the technique he had set up right before entering the negotiations. Mana's mocking attitude and belief that the deal would go bad was partially the cause of Team Pahlavi entering the negotiations with the giant spider already summoned and hidden in the upper layers of trees.</p><p>Oddly enough, both the two Team Nimbus armored ninja as well as the giant and intimidating Spyder followed up to the technique in a similar way. After the light, which initiated the genjutsu, stopped shining and Mana opened her eyes, she saw a peculiar sight of an attack frozen in time.</p><p>Zahafbit's fist was tightly enclosed in Spyder's grip with the pelt of an unidentified animal having covered up the giant's face to the point where the fangs of the beast laid right below the man's nose, covering up more than half of the man's massive head. The two others, meanwhile, had shifted their cloth from their neck and lower mouth up to their eyes so that the light wouldn't affect them and were now fully armed with the male armored ninja holding the handle of his massive sword, ready to unsheathe it at any moment meanwhile the female held two long knives in her hands ready to plunge at any nearby enemy. Only the uber spiritual Buhakim remained calm and steady in his praying position.</p><p>Spyder flipped the pelt of the animal on his shoulders up with a quick head banging movement letting his bloodshot eyes get exposed and meet Zahafbit's gaze.</p><p>"Did you really think we'd have deals with your team without knowing about your abilities beforehand"? the female member of Team Nimbus smiled confidently before pulling the cloth down and sheathing her knives as Zahafbit withdrew slowly, his fist slipped out of Spyder's grasp without resistance from the giant Kumogakure shinobi.</p><p>"My sister is right – we're not still lurking here because we're the underdogs. Don't put us in with the other teams. We're here because Yamanaka Kiyomi evaded our sights for too long, that is it", the male swordsman confidently stated as he moved his hand away from the hilt of his sword.</p><p>"That being said, we're not looking for pointless fights either. Normally Jean or Jon would've long since cut you down, Zahafbit, but we're well aware of just how dangerous your teammate is. He'd give us too much trouble, for what it's worth, for what this Konoha kunoichi is worth as well", Spyder cracked three of his fists in the other three palms making Mana just imagine how threatening of a close range combatant this man truly was – he stopped Zahafbit's punch which carried full knockout intent with just one of his arms.</p><p>"Wait, me"? Buhakim wondered, looking genuinely curious about why he was so revered by the enemy. "I'm just an uber spiritual ragamuffin, trying to raise my awareness and spirituality".</p><p>"Sure you are", Spyder laughed out before he flexed his muscles out and continued to pack the things.</p><p>"You're leaving"? Mana wondered as Zahafbit looked too angered and crushed at the same time to oppose or even talk to Team Nimbus.</p><p>"Oh? You guys didn't know"? Jean, the kunoichi of Team Nimbus, asked teasingly. "There aren't too many ninja left. At this point, it's a big hide-and-seek game so all the remaining ninja are pooling together in the center for one big fight. It's a last chance to find out if one's target is still present and take them out. Who knows, maybe someone there will give a shit about you, Nakotsumi Mana".</p><p>"Oh, I thought you may have found Kiyomi. I'd have bargained for getting to go with you guys", Mana looked down in disappointment.</p><p>"Oh, she'll be there. At this point most teams know about it and they'll make it their business to let every other team know of the battle as well, it's within everyone's best interests to end this already", Jean shrugged as she nonchalantly started walking away.</p><p>"It's so cruel of you to just waltz around like that", Spyder complained, his bloodthirsty mood had seemingly evaporated completely since a couple of moments ago.</p><p>"What are you talking about, Spyder-Wolf, you've got six arms, that makes you good for carrying six bags and there're only three of us. If you asked me – you got off easy", Jean teased her teammate using his full nickname, suggesting that the relationship between two was less than being soulmates.</p><p>"Hey, Nakotsumi Mana", Jon of Team Nimbus turned around and looked Mana right in the eyes, halfway to dashing after his team who had bolted away. "When you meet Yamanaka Kiyomi, please tell her that Spyder-Wolf, Jon-D and Jean-D are coming after her. She may not know of us, but I want her to break a sweat before we take her out". The enigmatic swordsman calmly and with a serious expression asked of Mana before pulling his sword and swinging it in the air.</p><p>Mana felt the glue that stuck her body together, preventing her from making even the subtlest of moves loosen somewhat. That was just the little amount of damage needed to break the sticky goo easier. The magician's hand started working on the binds almost immediately and she was surprised by how quickly she broke it completely and simply slipped out of it. It was a very quick escape considering her inability to weave hand seals and low chakra level.</p><p>"Hey, what the hell are you doing"!? Zahafbit yelled out aggravated by the fact that Mana escaped her binds as well as Jean-D's involvement in her escape.</p><p>Mana took a pair of defensive leaps back prepared to defend from her opponent with all of her clutch evasive and counterattacking skills. She suddenly remembered just how useful this kind of fighting style was as she had kind of forgotten its nature and life-saving properties after having regained her chakra manipulation. Zahafbit may have only had one notable trick and has been belittled by Team Nimbus considerably, still, even if he wasn't the strongest threat out there, he was still a considerable challenge to weakened and injured Mana.</p><p>Unexpectedly to all, except maybe Team Nimbus who just walked away from the mess they themselves had caused, Buhakim's hand softly pressed against Zahafbit's shoulder.</p><p>"Calm yourself, my non-uber-spiritual friend", Buhakim calmly asked, "Remember what our goals are and do not be wasteful with your meaningless gripes".</p><p>"Are you serious? The girl we were supposed to trade supplies for escaped"! Zahafbit pushed his friend's hand off his shoulder before turning at him. Mana wondered if she should have just taken the chance to book it but it may have been taken the wrong way. She wanted to remain as genuine as possible and she was quite interested to see just what further information she could obtain. If things got especially wrapping around her throat – she could have done something she really did not want to and further diminish her last remaining chakra for an escape measure.</p><p>"And why do we need her"? Buhakim firmly and just as calmly asked, "Did we not hear about the rest of the teams' indifference towards these lousy games? All everyone cares about now is the finish line. Do you really wish to involve yourself in this petty fight and risk advancing"?</p><p>"B-But…" Zahafbit turned back at Mana, he was clearly conflicted about just letting the girl go.</p><p>"You needed me for your injured teammate but now it's too late. You wanted to trade me for supplies but now that won't work either. I feel like I am getting a feeling of the kind of man that you are, Zahafbit", Mana spoke up greatly interesting the tall Sunagakure genin who curiously stepped up closer to Mana. He walked up so close that the old man from the Sun Disc arena would have already scolded the magician for not defending herself but she knew it was a power play. Team Nimbus demeaned the man, he was desperate to get some of his power back.</p><p>"Oh"? He wondered.</p><p>"If I reach Kiyomi and Meiko I can promise you one thing – knowing that she is hunted more intensely now, my friend will leave the Forest of Death immediately, robbing Team Nimbus of their chance to beat her and advance for one of their members. I can see you'd like that very much", Mana smiled.</p><p>"Embrace your uber spirituality, Zahafbit, think about it, we have no more targets to eliminate. All we need is leave the Forest of Death. We wanted more supplies for the next round but it won't be quite working out that way, how about you stop this senseless fight and just allow yourself to win"? Buhakim asked once more after seeing Zahafbit's lips twist to match Mana's warm smile.</p><p>"Whatever". The punky Sunagakure genin flipped his hands in the air as he turned around and walked past his teammate, gesturing for Mana to leave which she didn't have to be asked twice about. He turned suddenly to tell Mana one last thing, "We're gonna buy those supplies we are short on from the local stores after the exam, your freedom changes nothing. You better be ready for us in the next exam".</p><p>Mana nodded before both genin continued their walks. Buhakim cleared his throat after turning at Zahafbit.</p><p>"North is that way, Zahafbit", he mumbled pointing at the direction ninety degrees to the direction where Mana took off to.</p><hr/><p>Nanaba's beetle finally buzzed back, carrying a small green scroll in its limbs, pressing it against its armored chest very tightly. Right as the insect approached its master, it dropped the scroll by her feet and landed nearby, waiting for the scroll's content to be read and if its summoner wished to send a reply. The insect did not look too powerful with its natural offensive however it did appear well armored, which explained why it was used as a messenger.</p><p>"Gentib says that all the teams are gathering by the central watchtower to resolve their problems with each other. That's where we'll all know who's still in the competition and will have a chance to take down our targets." Nanaba read the contents of the scroll aloud.</p><p>"He didn't include his current location? I thought we settled that was what an empty messenger meant"? Sugemi grumbled to himself before sighing and realizing that the tip about the big meetup was significant enough. After all, it was clear that if Sugemi asked about Team Scuti's location he had no idea about the big brawl about to happen, only one who doesn't know about the big fight wouldn't have realized that current locations are rendered irrelevant in the face of this big battle.</p><p>"I suggest we move out, it will be there that we shall find your Mana, Sugemi", Daidao suggested.</p><p>Both Team Hokage and Team Hawthorn picked up all of their remaining things and set out to the central watchtower for the big fight. While it was most definitely going to be messy, the team could not have cared less about the brawl itself. All they wanted was to find out about one specific ninja that may have possible been used as bargaining chip or a valuable ace in the big fight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0319"><h2>319. The Final Countdown</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>An underground dweller, living beneath multiple layers of the Forest of Death, unearthed itself. It was a foul looking being, eyeless, covered in hair loosely, each one as thick as a thorn on an echidna's back. Its flesh looked as relatively white and fleshy but it was just a matter of deceitful appearances as the being lived well below the rocky layers of underground making its fleshy bits as hard as diamond themselves. Its gapping mouth was covered with round rows of teeth, each fang was the size of a banana and capable of rotating a full 180 if it ever needed to grind something tough or replace a missing row of teeth.</p><p>The dweller carefully flipped its exposed upper half around, waggling like a surfaced whale but only because the soft air pressure on the surface felt odd for the eyeless abomination. It waggled for a while more, trying to understand why it wasn't grinding any rocks or encountered trouble moving forward, why it sensed no vibrations on the ground of smaller underground insects or animals as it rarely hunted surface dwellers.</p><p>"Idol: Applegate Crescent" an energetic male voice yelled out as a concentrated wave of slicing gusts bent in a crescent shape which appeared highly unnatural considering the angle of turning and an odd direction which the blast was fired from. The pressure of the windblast blew the underground dweller's upper body completely off before the cutting winds tore it to small shreds.</p><p>"That was unnecessary", a brown haired boy with blue facial markings, resembling feathers of a peacock remarked. Judging from his face it did not appear like he lamented the death of the grotesque abomination however his tone did suggest distaste for his teammate's actions.</p><p>"I think Gentib did us all a favor, I mean look at how ugly that thing is", a red-haired girl remarked pointing at the still tingling lower body that was so rock hard that the upper half being blown off forced it to forcefully expel its inner body like a tube of toothpaste.</p><p>"I mean, it could've been dangerous, it looked dangerous", the young man, previously called Gentib, shrugged before stroking his spiky brown hair making them spike up even more than they've already have been. "And it's not ugly, Relta, I'm sure to this creature's mother it was the most beautiful thing in the world. There are no useless things in this world, they all have a purpose and all are beautiful in their own way. I was merely worried it may be dangerous to us".</p><p>The third member of Team Scuti sighed as the deceased underground abomination disappeared from their vision completely and got swallowed in darkness. It was inevitable that soon some massive pincer wearing insectoid will snap the remains in half before sucking them dry, that was just how dangerous and cruel this whole forest was. The unholy economy of energy where life was worth only as much as how much energy would one have wasted in extinguishing it.</p><p>"Sometimes I am thankful that I was given the burden that I bare and not you, Gentib", the third boy with the facial markings sighed. "One positive of slowly dying with each passing second of combat is that you pick your fights very carefully and weigh every existence against that of your own".</p><p>"You know, Gorm, for a guy who is slowly being killed by his fighting style, you really picked the wrong profession", Gentib looked at his friend with some worry in his eyes.</p><p>"No one forced me to accept the Sky Gift, I had that stone put inside me because that was the only thing that made me special. I wanted to be a hero, to make my life mean something and, unlike you, I am not some sort of a talent who can master enough techniques for multiple personas or like Relta who has an abnormally large chakra level for her age. Hosting a chunk of radioactive rocks inside my body was the only way I could fight alongside the likes of you", Gorm replied with a pain ridden expression as his teammates sadly looked at each other before looking on ahead.</p><p>"Gorm… You know that these stones don't really hurt you that much until you use their chakra. You don't have to overdo it. I messaged Team Hawthorn already, they'll back us up if we need it", Relta tried softly comforting her teammate.</p><p>"I am slowly dying with each passing second. I have no time to fail a Chuunin Exam if I want those stones to mean something. You've no idea what my family had to give up so that I could even have those stones put inside me. How many straight days me and my parents had to work in the factory to earn, or rather, buy that right. Forgive me if I think that taking my time isn't really my style." Gorm replied uneasily as he looked on ahead, seeing the larger field in the open covered in fallen trees with the surrounding leafage and vines having taken the place of the fallen, draining the fallen for all there was to drain until nothing but rotten trash remained. Until even the parasitic insects and plants thought themselves above feasting on the fallen and moved on.</p><p>"I think you might want to change your clothes, we could use some of your undefeated persona's might here", Relta smiled at Gentib who nodded and separated from Team Scuti.</p><p>Relta and Gorm, meanwhile landed in the open, joining a circle of other teams that continued to stand in a circle and observe each other. It appeared that no one was yet fighting anyone, meaning either the very unlikely possibility that there were no more hunter-target combinations left in this forest or that the countdown still hasn't taken place.</p><p>"Introduce yourselves"! A darker skinned young lady with a patched up nose, vibrant azure colored short hair and leather work clothes that reminded of clothes that richer blacksmiths wore, wearing a Sungakure headband tied around her rolled up right sleeve.</p><p>"It's only good manners for people requesting introductions to do so first themselves", Gorm looked down in cold irritation. He did not feel too good about the prospect of fighting of this scale, then again, given his life choices, such attitude towards unnecessary violence was not hard to understand.</p><p>"Fair enough, my name is Bukhande, this is Alemyat and Daseaut. We are Team Shahryar from Sunagakure", the strong of body female nodded before proceeding to introduce her teammates and herself. "I assume you'd have known some of us, at least, if one of us was your target", she then smiled.</p><p>"Or he is just messing around to shake off your attention, like a true ninja would", the one teammate of Bukhande's she referred to as Daseaut noted following up on Gorm's cold and irritated attitude by locking his hands around his chest. Daseaut was a taller and slimmer kind of athletic shinobi with dark curly hair and tanned skin, wearing a standard martial artist's gi that appeared to have been made from shreds of many other different colored gi.</p><p>"Very well, my name is Relta Ginn, this is Gorm Cleiti, we're Team Scuti of Hoshigakure", Relta politely introduced her team feeling a little bit ashamed by her teammate's cold attitude towards the others. For a young man who did not like violence and only fought when absolutely necessary he didn't appear to trust or like people too much.</p><p>"What the fuck? Did you guys strangle Gentib in your sleep or something, of all you lot I'd have expected to see him eliminated the least. He still owes me a good brawl"! A longer grey haired young man in a yellow jumpsuit exclaimed waving his hands erratically in a manner not at all different from that of a crazy person, yet due to past familiarity with the genin in question Team Scuti didn't take it too seriously.</p><p>"Calm yourself, Faeras. Gentib will be here once he changes into his Tankobaji persona", Relta calmly explained, smiling confidently as she knew the effect that this revelation would cause to the entirety of Faeras' Team Cephei – a fellow Hoshigakure team and the only other Hoshigakure team to survive this long as both other teams: Team Westerlund and Team Sagitarii got eliminated already.</p><p>"Oh, it appears he's taking this very seriously. I'm very curious to know just who he is expecting to see here", a dark brown haired young lady in classical maroon colored gomaido style chest and shoulder armor smiled politely at Team Scuti, feeling a bit ashamed of her brutish teammate who just took a couple of steps back waving his palms.</p><p>"Hey, hey… Now I feel like this shit's gonna get really interesting"! Faeras wheezed out before reaching for a large weapon on his back, wrapped in cloth and silk and tied together. After the ties were unbound and the cloth and the silk slipped off most graciously, what was left exposed was a wonder of engineering – a chainsaw sword, which took a very physically powerful individual to wield properly.</p><p>"If the rest of the teams present wouldn't mind, we'd appreciate if they all introduced themselves to us as well. It'll help us pass the little bit of time it'll take for Gentib to get into his Tankobaji persona. It shouldn't be too long until we're ready, please understand", Relta bowed her head respectfully as the other teams rustled in conversation between themselves, both in calm and heated manner.</p><p>"I'd advise for it, we can start right after this, whether "Tankobaji" is here or not. It'll serve as a nice last stretch that'll allow the late teams to show up", the third member Team Cephei, a seemingly composed and modest individual, nodded in agreement before expressing his thoughts out loud. "Just to show good manners and faith, my name is Bennow Vingcro, this is my team: Rosanna Senju and Faeras Gabscrue, we are Team Cephei of Hoshigakure".</p><p>"Alright, we may as well tune in", an elegant and pompously dressed male shinobi with a handful of scrolls sewn into his exquisite purple and white jacket stepped forward. "My name is Trest Bregger, this is my team – Gurker Gliesse and Gyllfa Ellidani. We are Team Kyanite from Iwagakure"</p><p>An awkward silence dominated the field as the three teams realized that with that last introduction all the formal matters except one were out of the question – all the teams have already introduced themselves. Given how much time had passed since the meeting was supposed to take place, it was highly unlikely that anyone was still out there, and if they were – it was their bad.</p><p>A fire pillar so intense that it lit up the entire area and so searingly hot that it actually emitted a loud roaring shriek scorched the deceitful silence as the pillar of flames bent over and torching everything in its way arced right at the general location of the gathering. As the arcing searing flame smashed into the battlefield center the flames splashed off like waves of water before quickly dying out as a single completely unfazed young man kneeled demonstratively in the center of the fiery blitz.</p><p>"Tankobaji… Such a showoff, as usual", Rosanna Senju rubbed her temples with a smile identifying the different persona of the young man from her village, known as Gentib de Vitt but one adopting different persona suiting the occasion and mood of the young man as he fought.</p><p>Gentib now adored a white haori over a red kimono, hand guards and wooden sandals, as well as intricate white and red face paint and crimson red wig of lengthy and spiky hair tied in a ponytail with two long strands flowing freely over his chest. His right hand was extended forward whereas his left one held a long iron staff with clunky steel rings attached to it that clinked and tolled every time the staff was moved creating an almost demonic jingle. Tankobaji just gave Rosanna an angry glare with pouted lips and raised nose yet he offered no words. Mainly because the Tankobaji persona did not speak except for the names of his techniques to aid his concentration.</p><p>"That was very showy, thanks for that, my friend", Daseaut of Team Shahryar, Sunagakure, was first of the non-Hoshigakure teams to speak up. "That being said, the purpose of this meeting is to fight it out between the last teams left. It'd be easier if teams with targets present would identify themselves".</p><p>Tankobaji once again angrily turned his head in a degree that surely flexed and made Gentib's neck hurt, a moment later the oddly behaving persona jumped up making Tankobaji's body catch up to his angry glare and turn with his full body at Daseaut of Team Shahryar.</p><p>Without uttering so much as a word or an angry grunt, Tankobaji fired off the ground like a man launched from a cannon, blazing at Daseaut at lightning fast speeds and making the Team Shahryar genin try and take defensive measures, winding his palm backwards as if preparing it for a defensive jutsu. Before Daseaut could execute it, however, Tankobaji's clinging ring staff dug into the ground right by the foot of the Sungakure ninja before the inhuman-like Tankobaji flipped over his staff and then bounced the completely different direction – instead aiming to slam his staff right at Gurker Gliesse's of Team Kyanite head.</p><p>Gurker revealed the hand placed inside his jacket and holding a one handed seal in place as water gurgled in his lungs before shooting out in large quantities defensively.</p><p>"Water Style: Cucumber Farm"! he wheezed out after the mass of water clashed with Tankobaji's advances and sent the almost demonic acting young man flying back, only to recover in mid-air and land right on his feet before resuming his demonstrative and showy posing.</p><p>"So… Gurker is your target, weirdo", Trest, Gurker's teammate, sighed looking greatly annoyed at the unfortunate meeting.</p><p>"It just so happens that Bennow Vingcro is my target" Alemyat, a dark red haired young man of a well-trained and tanned by the Wind Country's desert body and a teammate of Daseaut and Bukhande noted, "We are willing to aid fending that fiery weirdo off if you'd be willing to give us a hand. Senju is a troublesome bloodline and his teammates will undoubtedly defend Bennow".</p><p>"Well, you're not wrong. With the two of us being the last Hoshigakure teams remaining, we'll sure as hell fight together"! Rosanna raised her fist up with a brave grin.</p><p>"I suppose it's settled then", Gurker fixed his jacket before placing his hands forward in a position prepared to weave hand seals, implying he was a ninja relying heavily on ninjutsu or genjutsu instead of a more close-range, physical approach. "I kind of liked your weird gimmick, Gentib, that being said, you made a mistake by attacking me". The young man calmly stated before his hands began firing off hand seals rapidly.</p><p>"Water Style: Cucumber Spring"! he yelled out as the remaining water still soaking Tankobaji's clothes suddenly puffed up and expanded into bubble-like spheres that hardened and became more gel-like in consistency instead of being liquid water.</p><p>Tankobaji's eyes widened out before he began stumbling forward and back. His mouth opened wide for a wild and loud roar of pain but it was so dry that it did not appear like he could even breathe. Air itself could not make it down his throat, as the humidity in the air was painful for the intensely dried out mouth and palate of the young man.</p><p>"Wood Style: Surfing Dragon Jet"! Rosanna yelled out after weaving four hand seals and jumping in the air and clapping with her sandals. A wooden rod emerged from underground catching her and quickly rushing her onwards at Gurker who kept on draining the humidity out of Tankobaji's body with his odd combination technique. Something that did not quite look lethal but was quite an inconvenience and painful enough to restrain one of the most unpredictable and most promising young ninja of Hoshigakure.</p><p>Gurker leaned aside, avoiding the wooden rod that kept on extending before rotting away almost instantly, once the Senju girl hopped off of it and threw a jumping roundhouse kick at Gurker's chest. Old and long fingers unexpectedly wrapped around Rosanna's leg before Gyllfa – Gurker's teammate and the old wrestler lady whom Mana met shortly before entering the Forest of Death caught it firmly and swung the Senju around in a spinning toss.</p><p>The old lady was surely mighty as Rosanna, underestimating the old lady's strength, flew back far away, crashing through multiple trees and creating a widespread line of destruction. It appeared that the Senju girl got temporarily removed from the battlefield just due to the length of the distance she slid through the ground after landing down and the messy aftereffects of the throw.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu: Murder"! Bennow, Rosanna's teammate, yelled out after biting his thumb and weaving a bunch of hand seals before driving his palm into the ground, summoning a murder of crows with blood red glowing eyes and ivory bright beaks.</p><p>The wild murder of birds darted off at the old lady Gyllfa's general direction, right before the wild old crone prepared to fight the onslaught off by giving a chop and a slap for each wild bloody crow, the birds darted up high in a coordinated manner. It looked like the strain of moving so quickly and changing directions so erratically and unnaturally caused significant strain for the bodies of the crows themselves as quite a handful of feathers fell from Murder's, the murder of crows', wings and bodies in their mad ascension.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Murder"! Bennow clapped his hands wildly before repositioning them in a hand seal and setting off the genjutsu channeled through the fallen feathers of Murder.</p><p>The old lady wriggled uncomfortably as even her experienced eyes were horrified by the sight of the still falling crow feathers turning into rusty knives and piercing her skin, her body feeling numb and paralyzed and completely unable to resist. Meanwhile, the feathers that have already fallen turning into black leech-like parasites that wriggled and bit their way inside her flesh and roamed her body with grotesque looking skin bumps showing their burrowing journey off in the most terrible way possible.</p><p>Before Bennow could grin confidently, feeling glad about his successful attack, the granny poofed in a cloud of smoke leaving only a rotten piece of Rosanna Senju's wood pillar she used to move around on previously. It appeared that the old wrestler had replaced herself well before falling victim for the genjutsu, or maybe once it already affected her, either way - she used the safety of the Substitution Jutsu to dispel the genjutsu while the substituted wood provided the transformed illusion that the old woman was caught in the grotesque genjutsu.</p><p>As Bennow's crows, collectively known as Murder, the murder of crows, settled way high in the trees. The battlefield appeared to have frozen as each ninja waited for even the slightest twitch of the enemy betray their further maneuvers so that they could exploit that telegraphed attack with their own appropriate response. It appeared that round two of this wild battle would not be held up for too long…</p>
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<a name="section0320"><h2>320. The Genin Waterloo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The battle between the last remaining genin teams inside the Forest of Death raged on as each team got entangled in some sort of a bond with another participating team, making them duke it out in a large twelve people scuffle. Gentib, now in his Tankobaji persona, had a fight to pick with his target – Gurker Gliesse, meanwhile Team Shahryar wanted to beat another Hoshigakure ninja forcing them into an uneasy alliance with Gurker's team.</p><p>Seeing a chance for the offensive, Daseaut, the member of Sunagakure's Team Shahryar breathed in and out, closing his eyes to calm his body before using his technique. Just like before, when Tankobaji faked him out, the young genin winded up his extended palm as he begun molding large concentrations of chakra. Where before the surrounding ninja were completely oblivious to Daseaut's subtle chakra build-up, once the immensely powerful Wind Release technique of the genin picked up momentum and started creating powerful gusts of wind, powerful enough to blast even the battle-hardened ninja off their feet, the entire battlefield suddenly turned at the distrustful Sunagakure genin.</p><p>While the enemy alliance waited for Daseaut to reveal just what nature of jutsu this build-up of chakra was, the Sungakure genin simply gracefully focused force into his lower feet and bounced off the ground, flying head-first and winded up palm aimed at the enemy. The spiraling intense winds that very nearly pulled the surrounding ages old, birthed by powerful chakra, trees out with their entire roots began settling down in a glowing sphere in the boy's hand. The sphere's shape was uneasy, trembling and whirling, too large to suggest optimal and compact containment of the storming chakra within.</p><p>"No name"!? Relta Ginn trembled in her boots once she realized that the previously considered completely unremarkable Sunagakure genin pulled off such a technique without uttering its name – suggesting that Daseaut had made his technique so perfected and practiced inside his body and mind that it no longer needed verbal aid to prepare his body for performing the technique.</p><p>As the boy flew straight at Tankobaji, the showy and demonic persona pushed his staff against the ground at remarkable force, pushing his entire body out of the way of the rushing genin who decided to attack him with such a powerful yet straightforward technique in such a brutish way.</p><p>As Daseaut passed the location where his intended target was supposed to be, the spiraling sphere of rotating chakra faded in the boy's palm as he found himself wide open and completely without cover in the enemy lines. Tankobaji's teammate – Gorm charged at the wide-open Sunagakure genin with a rushing elbow strike. Daseaut just coughed painfully as the powerful strike dug deep in his jaw, lifting the young man's body off the ground even.</p><p>After the initial strike connected, Gorm didn't intend to stop with his offensive just there as he continued to attack the weakened young man with continuous chain strikes, with each successive strike, it appeared, the rest that followed were faster and stronger, continuing until no one could have even counted properly how much strikes had Daseaut received.</p><p>The genin's teammate, the athletic looking female blacksmith stepped forward to help her teammate before her own other teammate stopped her. After being given a death-wishing ice-cold glare, Alemyat just shook his head.</p><p>"He knew that the jutsu was incomplete and that he still needed training to use it. He placed himself in the enemy lines and if you attack like that you'll just further scatter our ranks", Alemyat explained himself.</p><p>Finally, the Wind Release ninjutsu user managed to catch one of his opponent's punches successfully. With one of his opponent's arms trapped, Daseaut stepped in to strike with his other hand and, once the other hand was shoved aside, headbutt his opponent, sending Gorm sliding back with the foreheads of both boys bleeding profusely. Granted, it was tough to say just how much of blood on Gorm's forehead was his and how much that of his properly softened up opponent.</p><p>After a brief stalemate and angry glares, with most of the genin breathing heavily and racing to regain some of their stamina and breaths, Rosanna finally rejoined the brawl, having leaped out of the trail of destruction she was sent crashing through almost unfazed, just donning some twigs in her newly messed up and flowing wildly dark brown hair.</p><p>The stint of silence was killed by Faeras' mad fit of laughter. The genin placed the turned off chainsaw sword on his shoulder as he stared down at Daseaut like the Sand Village genin was a tasty sandwich and Faeras was in danger of starving out.</p><p>"That jutsu! It was fucking amazing! My feet started shaking a little bit, show it to me again"! The chainsaw-sword wielder yelled out maniacally as he pushed the sword off his shoulder before yanking hard on a trigger that set the sword off. In a mad dash, not unlike that of Daseaut's before, the mad chainsaw genin charged at the exposed Sunagakure genin.</p><p>"Wait"! Bennow tried to stop the brutish teammate of his as he still wanted to properly analyze the opponent's technique and give Rosanna some time to regroup and stand by the line of her team. Now Faeras was just repeating the mistake of overextension, which Daseaut just paid for.</p><p>"What's the matter? I thought by now you're used to Faeras just charging out this way"? Rosanna playfully addressed her teammate with a warm glare as Faeras got blown back by Daseaut's teammate – Alemyat moving in at a very odd and seemingly impossible angle of movement, appearing to switch his position and angle mid-air. The Sunagakure genin moved as if he was using some sort of wire or rope, almost like he flowed freely around the trees and didn't lose any speed at all.</p><p>Hit by such a powerful jaw-buster, Faeras just stumbled back, swinging his massive chainsaw-sword in a wide circle but Alemyat withdrew as if he saw such an attack coming. Something that confused Bennow even more.</p><p>"That team… They're really dangerous", the more composed and calculating member of Hoshigakure's Team Cephei angrily grunted out. "Are you absolutely sure it is our business to face them right now"?</p><p>"Huh? Hell yeah! Team Scuti are our Hoshigakure allies, me and Gentib participated in the same drama clubs in the Ninja Academy"! Rosanna objected vibrantly smiling confidently at her friend and teammate.</p><p>"That Daseaut guy… The technique he used was so odd, it was powerful beyond measurement but it felt… Incomplete. Like it was used at an early stage, but why would he have used it when it was incomplete and in such a reckless way, surely he has more reliable and complete ways to fight. And then he used the jutsu without its name, how can you both be unskilled enough to use it at such an early stage and skilled enough to use it without its name"? Bennow continued to mutter to himself making Rosanna look at the deceitfully brash Sunagakure genin in completely new eyes. She was rarely the one to overthink her attacks or advances, she just tossed herself head-first at any wall, hoping the toughness of her head would break it.</p><p>"Yeah… That Alemyat guy ain't no slouch either", Faeras smiled with a maniacal giggle that sometimes really creeped Rosanna out. As the trio observed Gorm try to use some of his competent taijutsu skills against the enemy, clashing with Alemyat to almost a stalemate of blows and blocks, then Relta providing some ninja tool support, helping her teammate return back to ally lines with a barrage of shuriken for cover, they kept on discussing the oddities of Team Shahryar.</p><p>"What do you mean by that"? Rosanna wondered curiously, Faeras was quick to get fired up but this time he was almost… Aroused by the opponent's skill. That rarely happened but when it did, she saw a whole new cold side to her teammate that enjoyed fighting and carnage. The two of them were different in those exact moments of ruthless attacks – where Faeras enjoyed fighting and hurting people, Rosanna just did it because she needed to.</p><p>"Did you see that angle at which he charged at me? Almost like a puppet, don't you think"? Faeras laughed out finishing his laughter with a drawn out and immensely creepy moan. "That would mean I don't have to be a good sport, huh? That I can let loose a bit, shred and grind"!</p><p>"More so, the quickness of his retreat after the first hit. The first instinct of a successful taijutsu strike is exploiting the self-created opening with follow-up attacks, as we've seen Gorm do. Alemyat withdrew, almost like he saw through your swing, like he had an outsider's perspective from a comfortable vantage point, controlling his body with that superior information input. I second your conclusion, Alemyat is most definitely a puppet body", Bennow nodded, it was not often that he agreed so easily with his teammate which troubled the Hoshigakure strategist somewhat.</p><p>Relta's hands quickly went through a collection of hand seals once her teammate successfully withdrew from the clash with Alemyat. Even while the hand seals were still being made, large chunks of rock began rising from underground, shaking the very foundation beneath the battlefield and somewhat evening up the hill on which the teams clashed.</p><p>"Earth Style: Rising Stars" she chanted out before gracefully flailing her hands to command the rocks to move onwards, after her signal, it almost appeared like the rocks were launched from an invisible catapult, judging from the trajectory at which they were tossed at the enemy. Relta was not done, however, the girl weaved yet even more hand seals before keeping her hands in the Tiger hand seal position and breathing in deep.</p><p>"Fire Style: Star Birth"! The girl wheezed out as she breathed a jet of flames from her mouth, hot enough to set the hurling rocks on fire and scorching them so intensely that they flared up in bright white light.</p><p>The combination of the rocks rising in an powerful earthquake shock, as well as the bright light coming out from the combination technique would've provided a sufficient distraction for the enemy to be rooted in place as the falling scorching rocks devastated the battlefield in a massive explosion. Tearing the surrounding trees out and incinerating them as far as fifty meters away and bending most with a powerful shockwave as far as hundred meters away.</p><p>After the dust clouds settled down and the downfall of debris calmed up, Relta observed the remains of the enemy lines carefully, hyper-ventilating as she just pulled her most powerful combination ninjutsu out of nowhere, aiming to trick her opponents into underestimating the destructive power of her jutsu and possibly even scoring some early eliminations. Much to her shock, the enemy team continued to stand calmly and stare around. Judging from the reaction of Team Shahryar, namely the absolute loss of their shit, it must've been one of Team Kyanite who protected the six.</p><p>"It was me"! The handsome and extravagant clown-like jacket wearing blonde – Trest Bregger of Team Kyanite, Iwagakure smiled in excitement. Upon a more inspecting look the additional detail of a large yet light looking harp, worn around the body of the young man stood out.</p><p>"Judging from the awesome power of that jutsu combination, I'd assume you just threw your most powerful jutsu, right from the get-go, huh? Do you know why ninja don't do that"? Trest playfully teased the enemy alliance who just angrily stared at the young man, wondering just what the nature of his abilities was. It would have been easy to just try and attack him, shut him up, but the might of his defenses proved powerful enough to easily overcome Relta's ace jutsu combination and that was too scary of a level of skill to rush at blindly.</p><p>Relta did not honor her opponent's confident smile with an answer. The smiling blond ninja musician carelessly stroke his hand through the cords of his harp creating a mellow yet, on a barely audible side of the spectrum, screeching melody. Sharp, piercing pain took over the girl's body as she took a late step back, struggling to keep her body upright as the force of impact forced her to take a pair of steps back. Equally as gruesome as seeing her own blood splash in a wide arc on the messy grass and dirt in front of her was seeing Tankobaji grunt out as similar superhuman force tossed him aside.</p><p>A loud clang came from Bennow's side. A handful of shuriken clanged as they hit the ground, getting bounced back from an invisible force right up at the level of the eyes of the young man.</p><p>"We don't do it because during the beginning of battle our opponent is at their peak. Their body is free to use the Substitution Jutsu, it's free to use their chakra in millions of ways they have of avoiding your most powerful technique or augmenting their body to survive it – landing one's ace successfully is an art in of itself. It's as complex and beautiful as writing a verse of a song", Trest laughed out seeing the fear and confusion in the eyes of his enemy.</p><p>"Careful, his music sends air projectiles at you. Watch closely and you should be able to see them"! Bennow grunted at Relta and Tankobaji who picked themselves back up with the female member of Team Scuti clutching at the wound on her lower chest inflicted by a diagonal cut of her opponent's attack.</p><p>"Not only that, but during the beginning of the battle you are completely oblivious to your opponent's abilities. Right from the get-go is the absolute worst timing for using your ultimate jutsu, what you just did was hand me an opportunity of using mine against you". Trest played his tunes again, this time both Tankobaji and Relta managed to see bent airwaves just barely skewering the view in front of them as the airwaves sliced at them at speeds slightly lesser than the speed of sound.</p><p>"Wood Style: Birth of Trees"! Rosanna chanted out, slamming her palms together and erecting a healthy and seemingly ages old tree right in front of the injured Hoshigakure girl almost instantly. The shape and consistency was not perfect but the speed at which she needed the tree up demanded something to be sacrificed. Seeing the airwaves cutting down not the impatient and inexperienced genin, but instead a tree made of concentrated chakra with a network of chakra all of its own made Trest tsk with his tongue annoyingly.</p><p>"Watch out, you guys, those airwaves detonated those falling blazing rocks and cushioned the explosion all by themselves, didn't they? You were lucky he split the waves amongst you three before, if a concentrated set hit you – you'd really be in trouble"! Rosanna encouraged Team Scuti to be more careful.</p><p>"Don't get over-excited or careless", Alemyat spoke up after the scare of witnessing Relta's technique somewhat settled down amongst the Suna-Iwa alliance. "We're being watched".</p><p>"What"? Bukhande yelled out, breaking the illusion of composure the alliance had before the information was given.</p><p>"I'm not sure who that girl is but my puppet can see her. Her skin is darker than most locals, long raven-black hair, casual t-shirt and moderate battle damage over her body", Alemyat replied.</p><p>"Wait, his puppet"? Gurker Gliesse wondered looking at Alemyat suspiciously.</p><p>"Well… I didn't want to leak my fighting style so early but, that's right. This body is my real one, the puppet is controlling it from afar. It is conveying me a broader battlefield view, allowing me to make better decisions and see enemy attacks coming with more perspective. I won't go into details how it's done, we don't have the time", Alemyat smiled with a hint of disappointment that he had to leak out the details of the way he fought.</p><p>"It's fine, it's not like our team has no more hidden aces up their sleeves, right"? Bukhande happily comforted her teammate.</p><p>"Oh, I know her", old lady Gyllfa laughed out as she turned around and waved at the blackness of the forest. "Mana-chan! Please show yourself"!</p><p>"What's she doing"? Gorm wondered from afar, seeing his enemy turn around and wave at a random point of leafage, further away in the forest.</p><p>It appeared that Tankobaji was not about to wait for his enemy to turn back and decided to use the moment of lowered guard. The young man grunted and roared like a man possessed and gripped the ringed staff firmly in both of his hands, allowing his chakra to leak out and make the steel turn red in heat. Tankobaji placed his palm by the large ring at the top of the staff before winding it back and driving it forward again.</p><p>"Tankobaji: Asmodeus"! he roared out in a primal, animalistic voice as the Fire Release chakra stored inside the staff erupted all at one through the large ring upon being forcefully pushed out in a ring of fire that blitzed off at Gyllfa.</p><p>From the farther off corner of the forest, a bit to the west to where Gyllfa waved at Mana, a beam of almost invisible Wind Release chakra fired off. It was not a powerful technique, about as powerful as a well tossed kunai with its penetrative power however its Wind Release elemental affinity allowed it to detonate the Asmodeus jutsu halfway, before it reached the confused enemy team.</p><p>Not too long later, Mana bounced out of the cover and into the limelight. The magician was confused as to how exactly she was spotted. For her to be found out someone of these six should have been a sensor. She was sure to keep her head down and her body low and hidden. Her intentions were to wait this thing out, just sit tight until her team showed up, as it inevitably would have. After all, was Team Hokage not still short on targets? A place like this would have been a perfect place to locate any wanted people.</p><p>"Ah, the service girl? Finally changed your weird attire, I see", Trest laughed out to his palm reminding Mana that she was not too fond of that guy. Still, from her impressions of Gyllfa from meeting her before the exam, the old lady seemed like a pretty nice person.</p><p>"What's this? Your reinforcements"? Gorm grunted as Tankobaji growled like a wild animal right by his side, turning at Mana.</p><p>"I don't wish to involve myself in this, I dislike fighting, I'm just looking for my friends", Mana explained, trying to get the alliance facing off against Gyllfa's team to take their aggression down a bit.</p><p>"You're all alone? Are you sure your friends are still even here"? Bennow wondered as he found a straw to grasp for – Mana's reluctance to join into the battle on the enemy's side.</p><p>"I'm… Not", Mana looked down realizing how bad her situation was. Even if she had her target hunted down and could've just left the Forest of Death at any point, hoping that her team would eventually join her in that venture, she still wanted to regroup with her team and help them out if they needed help finishing the exam.</p><p>"You're breaking my heart, service girl, come on, help us take that creepy crow guy down and we'll help you out with finding your friends", Trest promised.</p><p>"We have reinforcements of our own coming soon, you'll regret joining their side, they're from your village too so they might know more about your team", Relta pleaded with Mana as all of the fighting temporarily stopped just to convince the chaotic factor to join their side.</p><p>Mana clenched her frail fists so hard that her hands shook from the tension. Was she truly expected to pick a side here? In a fight she didn't want to even take place in the first place? This meaningless squabble where only a set amount of people needed to take on another set of people but other people got involved needlessly just to ensure the destruction of the opposing side.</p><p>"I won't take part in your fight", Mana declared after raising her eyes back up and firmly glaring down at both sides of the conflict. "Not only that, I encourage that you settle it between the people that need to settle things according to the rules so that only the people forced to fight each other would get hurt and no one else. If you won't and will continue this stupid battle I will stop all of you".</p><p>Finally, both sides of the conflict were united in one thing – laughter as Faeras, Daseaut and Gurker all laughed their breath all out meanwhile the others either stared at Mana in disbelief or desperately tried to hide their laughter.</p><p>Only Mana's firm face testified that she was serious with her resolve to stop this fight, a moment later making those that laughed at her to join the side of people that stared at her in disbelief.</p><p>"Care to back that shit up"? Alemyat smiled</p><p>A sound of reeling string alerted Mana to an attack coming from behind, the girl dashed aside while turning to the side where she could see both the incoming attack from the back on her left and the other potential threats on the right.</p><p>A mannequin-like looking puppet smashed its hand, filled with long claws with multiple joint sections that looked sharp enough to leave deep gashes, matching those of kunai that ninja used except in greater quantities and much leaner, into the ground, missing Mana narrowly. The puppet's eyes had wide black lenses, possibly for recording, or snapping pictures, its right hand also was extended towards Alemyat. The usual glow of chakra present in puppetry strings could've been seen only with intense concentration.</p><p>It appeared that the magician now antagonized both alliances with her desire to rationalize their outburst of violence. It was just great, standing in between the unstoppable force and the immovable object was always the position Mana wanted to take in life, as long as the two were planning to destroy one another. These Chuunin Exams were a test of if a ninja was ready for their future, for the higher level and it was a fitting simulation of a life Mana wanted to lead.</p>
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<a name="section0321"><h2>321. If You Can't Rasengan - Power Strike</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As it would not have been too tough to imagine, Mana was afraid. She was just crazy enough not to be absolutely shaking in her sandals, however, facing off against twelve ninja at once, even if it was unclear how many of them wanted to go at her, with only a lesser amount of her chakra still useable was one of the toughest challenges she had faced. In fact, the girl had considered herself so mad that she couldn't accurately tell if it was just a challenge that'd push her abilities and quick thinking to its edges, or if it was outright a suicidal plan.</p><p>"What'll be suicidal is when I'll face these odds on the field, placing myself in between actual enemy and ally teams", Mana thought to herself as her eyes carefully observed both of the frozen in place alliances. "If I cannot shoulder all of their hatred and all of their violence and stop it, there's really no use advancing to the next stage", she concluded.</p><p>Where the Hoshigakure teams appeared to be somewhat hesitant in attacking Mana, the Sunagakure team showed no such hesitation. Daseaut dragged his left foot backwards, preparing for a powerful dash, or so Mana had read from his movements from just what she had seen. The female blacksmith girl, reminding Mana painfully of Meiko, or rather, a more exotic, western version of her, pulled a scroll out of her large pocket and placed it in front of her, letting it unravel.</p><p>"Hey, they can't be serious, attacking that girl all at once"? Relta looked back at Gorm who looked back at his teammate just as confused.</p><p>Alemyat's puppet pulled out. As Mana's eyes tried to follow the dangerous bladework of the grotesque mannequin, a strong punch from an attacker from the side tossed her back and rolling off her feet and aside. Her eyes blacked out, screeching noises and child's laughter were all the things Mana heard, just blackness and bright stars popping in her eyes but the girl powered through and pushed herself up on her feet.</p><p>Puppeteers should have never been this strong! Mana did not expect a puppeteer with such focus and training in taijutsu – such speed and skill. Puppeteers were supposed to be frail and focused on precise chakra control and crafting their intricate puppets, not powerhouses in their own right. As Alemyat's punches and kicks further pummeled Mana, giving her few chances to properly evade or counter his attacks due to her impaired vision, hearing and dizziness that made it hard to stand, let alone use her acrobatics to evade much of anything her sensei's words ringed in her ears.</p><p>"In the field, when facing a puppeteer, always target the puppeteer himself. Puppeteers are usually pretty frail and powerless when hit, also you'll always disable the puppet by beating down the puppeteer and even if you get poisoned by their weapons – most of them carry antidotes on them in case they get some of their own medicine", the mid twenty year old said to a class of children. Spoken by a man who had spent no time at all in the field, a man who had read about Ninja Arts from a book and attained a degree in them by talking about them, drawing from someone else's experience. Mana was not ready…</p><p>Alemyat's puppet dashed at Mana from behind, a strong punch made Mana stagger backwards, by the time the magician's eyes fell on the puppet it may have already been too late as its sharp elongated fingers extended to pierce the girl's back. It would have been a lethal wound for a normal human but only a disabling one for a ninja. Mana had no luxury to be disabled, she had no right to cry or complain about how difficult this was – it was a life she had chosen, stand in between both sides of the conflict.</p><p>The girl's hand pressed onto the puppet's shoulder as she graciously flipped back and over it, avoiding having an entire arm pierce through her body. Mana's body staggered as even after landing firmly on her feet she struggled to stay that way. Blood trickled down from her cracked forehead onto the left eye, the right eye was beginning to swell up again. Just one attack, she withstood just one attack…</p><p>"Power Strike"! She heard a noise come from behind her, another one was coming after Mana. The magician turned back and leaned her body backwards, avoiding a body shattering headbutt coming from Daseaut generating his odd wind sphere technique in his feet and propelling his body off the ground at the enemy at a break-neck pace.</p><p>A forceful shove at the ground made Mana roll aside from her exposed laying position on the ground to avoid a large blob of oil from covering her. Bukhande – the third member of Team Shahryar to join in on trying to knock Mana out and get her out of their alliance's way had unsealed a massive tube-shaped cannon mechanism that fired liquid oil-like substance, attempting to soak Mana in it. It would have taken an utter idiot not to know what she intended to do with oil, the magician could not let her land as much as a single drop on her.</p><p>A rumbling noise made Mana groan in frustration – Faeras, one of the Hoshigakure genins leaped in to cut her into shreds with his massive chainsaw sword. At least the blasted toy Meiko wanted to gander at so much earlier made so much noise that it would have been impossible to catch the magician unprepared with it. Once Mana picked herself up on her feet, avoiding the massive and sluggish weapon was not outside even what her out of breath and weakened self could pull off.</p><p>"Faeras"! Rosanna yelled out angrily, disapproving of her teammate's ecstatic and blood thirsty manner of attack. Mana didn't bother trying to hit him back with a counter attack – she was saving up her strength for her intended ace, it was not like she could leave a dent in his fresh, chakra augmented body with her out of breath puny strikes anyways.</p><p>"Haven't you caught on to it yet, Rosanna"? Bennow grunted as he placed his hands together, ordering his summoned murder of crows, aptly named Murder, collectively, to swoop down from their resting positions up above and right at Mana. Once the crows approached close enough they all dispelled with a poof of smoke, surrounding the magician in a blinding cloud that naturally came as an aftereffect of certain jutsu, such as Summoning Jutsu, in this case, when ninja animals were summoned or un-summoned.</p><p>"She's the one, Nakotsumi Mana of Team Hokage, one of the Team Hokage which eliminated Laoch, Clarmac and Deargli", Gorm recalled suddenly as he pressed his fists tighter, for a moment purple, foul chakra rose up from inside the boy, cloaking his entire body in it while it emitted a nasty shade of salad green in glowing aura. However, the young man calmed himself, controlling his deadly to himself ability and restraining it for a better time.</p><p>"Wood Style: Double Helix"! Rosanna yelled out, smacking her hands together as two wood structures rose out from the ground inside the large cloud, created by Bennow's crows disappearing and aiming to restrain Mana as they coiled in a double helix shape.</p><p>All twelve ninja stood with an uneasy feeling and observed the cloud of smoke where their desired distraction was last seen in and where she now stood supposedly restrained. Faeras screamed out maniacally, charging into the cloud of smoke with his roaring chainsaw blade, swiping at the double helix madly.</p><p>"Faeras, don't be stupid"! Bennow raised his voice, something he rarely did but he did not want the insane Konoha girl to end up dead in this, that much warranted an unusually energetic reaction from his part. Luckily for his intentions, the chainsaw blade only cut through chakra infused wooden double helix structure and thin air, scattering the cloud of smoke and dust as well in the process.</p><p>"She's gone"! Bukhande yelled out in surprise.</p><p>"She must've retreated, why would she bring this up on herself to begin with"? Gurker Gliesse pondered as he uneasily looked around, trying to determine if Mana was insane enough to try and sneak up on one of them or if she had actually withdrawn and was reasonable.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Sweet Lullaby"! Mana's voice mellowed from an undetermined place inside the dark green of the Forest of Death. As her soft and sweet whistled tune echoed through the battlefield all of the ninja found themselves entranced by the girl's tune and completely frozen in place. Overcome by unearthly pleasure of all of their bodily pleasure centers firing off at once, they quaked and quivered, some even fell writhing on the ground.</p><p>"B…B-Rank… Genjutsu"? Bennow groaned, struggling to even breathe or speak as he writhed and clawed at his own skin, trying to cause enough pain to overcome the pleasure, pain was one of the genjutsu cancelling effects after all, as a genjutsu user the crow summoner knew it. Still, the intense pleasure served as a painkiller as well, no matter how much blood the young man drew and how deep his nails burrowed into his own skin, not an ounce of pain was significant enough to overcome the beginning stages of Mana's genjutsu.</p><p>As Mana sat tight in her position on a lower branch of one of the trees, having found a chance to slip out once she realized what Bennow was doing with the crows and used the smokescreen to her own gain to slip out, she was beginning to realize the severity of the situation. Sweet Lullaby was an immensely powerful technique – subduing as many people as many of them heard the tune she whistled, sung or hummed. However, pleasure was a curious thing. The human body got used to it very quickly, where in the beginning stages no one was able to move or do much of anything – as time passed they'd be able to weave hand seals, even dispel her illusion of beautiful sights, divine smells and majestic melodies that affected all of those under her genjutsu.</p><p>Her choices in this case were slim. She could either jump out of her cover, carefully, without using her chakra augmentations so that she did not disturb the calm and steady genjutsu lock she had everyone in, take everyone out, one by one, or she could have kept still and waited for her illusion to time out. Eventually her genjutsu would end: be it by her chakra draining too low to keep it up, her opponents getting used to its effects and finally managing to break it or a different factor entirely. Either way, the problem was time.</p><p>Mana told those teams she would take all of them out if they did not stop their irrationally massive brawl. Do so skillfully and painlessly, as it was her nindo. So far, she had managed to calm it down a bit by engaging everyone and locking them down in a time-out of sorts. If she was to try and actually beat the enemy who hesitated, underestimated and even made fun of her, she had to harm them actively, going out of her way to injure them. Mana did not want that. Therefore, she kept on sitting calmly, holding the lock in place. Despite knowing exactly how she would lock the hostile alliances down, Mana wondered if she truly thought this whole thing through.</p><p>Mana kept sitting still, she saw the affected genin easing down before their bodies regained a certain degree of mobility. A few moments later, a number of larger aquatic looking masses on Tankobaji's body imploded into gooey liquid and ran down his body. It did so like it was nothing but a puddle of water. Slowly, one by one, each member of each separate alliance was regaining an amount of their mobility and raising their shaking hand up in a hand seal position. They were preparing to dispel Mana's illusion.</p><p>"Dispel"! Bennow grunted, being the first of the entire group to overcome Mana's illusion. While he identified being under a genjutsu long ago, his body only recently regained enough freedom of movement and control to actually fight back. His prowess of illusionary techniques must have helped him out to be the first one.</p><p>Once the genin stood up, he bit his thumb and went through hand seals. Mana knew what the collection of hand seals was – it was the Summoning Jutsu. She may have engaged the escaped genin but it would have been detrimental if not foolish to do so. She was worn out by all the previous fights and struggles to escape captivity. Even once she started out back then, she had only about half of her total chakra level brought back by the pills.</p><p>"Seppuka, find her"! Bennow commanded ordering a much larger crow with an exotic black, purple and silver colored feather pattern. Whereas Murder was a collection of relatively normal looking, if a little ravenous, crows, Suicide was more akin to what a partner ninja would have summoned looked like.</p><p>"It was pretty smart of you to lock us in a genjutsu together. Overcoming a high-ranking illusion requires a high input of chakra, higher, without a doubt, than the cost you had to pay for the technique. Seeing how you want to stop us from fighting this way, I'll assume tiring us out by forcing us all to dispel your illusion is how you plan on achieving that"? Bennow confidently theorized, calmly observing Suicide swoop up in the air.</p><p>Mana wondered just how would the large bird go about finding her. After all – Mana hid pretty well. Needless to say, the bird was far too large for a head-on assault as it struggled to even maneuver around the thicker layers of upper Forest of Death trees. It was then that the large bird cawed harshly, while the sound was blood chilling, it did not disturb the concentration needed for Mana to maintain the genjutsu.</p><p>Then the oddest thing appeared to happen, it was almost like the crow's intense caw forced it to shed a couple of handfuls of feathers, sending them like sharp projectiles, piercing random angles and locations all around it like large rods falling from high up. Still, neither of them appeared to come even close to Mana, could to fire away randomly have been his plan? Why would he be so reckless with his approach?</p><p>"Genjutsu: Suicide Sphere"! Bennow chanted, slamming his palms together as he activated the illusion.</p><p>"The feathers are a medium"! Mana realized as she swiftly closed her eyes. Luckily enough, she managed to do so before the genjutsu initiated, or so it seemed at that moment. The magician decided to stay mindful of her environment in order to identify any potential changes that'd betray an illusion.</p><p>"Wood Style: Hand Tool Manipulation"! A feminine voice ringed in Mana's ears realizing that Bennow had counter on the magician identifying a genjutsu medium in time and closing her eyes – in fact he wanted that very thing to allow his teammate to attack when her guard was down.</p><p>It was too late. Sharp pain made Mana scream out in pain and lose concentration of her illusion as she plummeted down from the top of the tree she sat on. A brief glance at her shoulder allowed her to identify a wooden kunai, made entirely of Wood Release chakra and therefore brimming with more chakra and hardness than a regular steel kunai having lodged deep inside. The Senju girl probably aimed to trap Mana by placing the wooden knife in her artery – a trick she herself once used, long ago. Luckily enough, she missed due to having a very unclear idea of where the magician was exactly. It was merely a flesh wound at that moment.</p><p>The real trouble was that the hostile alliances all got released from the genjutsu at the same time. Whereas Rosanna had to not only use chakra to break out of Mana's illusion but also her own Wood Style technique, which had to be pricy, the rest of them got released by Mana simply failing to maintain the high ranked illusion.</p><p>A loud and powerful booming blast came from the direction opposite to Rosanna, just as Mana was still in mid-air, having hit another branch very painfully and bounced off of it, continuing her fall. The magician remembered that noise – it was that "Power Strike" technique – that intensely powerful sphere of chakra.</p><p>As Mana fixed her falling position to prepare to possibly intercept the incoming enemy, or at least try to control where she would be hit, she saw more and more of those spheres form in the young man's palms and down on his feet. The boy used the first two spheres to propel himself at break-neck speeds right at Mana, to waste no time or give her no breathing space to evade, where now he formed four more of those incomplete spheres in both his palms and feet.</p><p>Mana realized painfully that this was it. There was only one thing she could have done – the Substitution jutsu but no object would have come in mind, not only that but she wasted too much time on the very thought of if violating her shaking principle of using someone else's techniques. Bit by bit, the racing Sunagakure genin was coming closer, there was nothing Mana could have done but brace for impact and hope not to die...</p><p>"It was a noble effort", she thought.</p><p>A booming howl absolutely overwhelmed Mana's ears, shortly rendering her completely deaf. Something was wrong, she wasn't in pain, besides her bleeding ears that gave up before giving Mana any trouble for being in pain. The "Power Strike" barrage never hit Mana. As the rotating expanded storm of Wind Release chakra cleared out somewhat, a brutal yet, in a way, absolutely awesome sight of a blonde wearing a long cape, with six mechanical puppet arms punching wildly at each continuously forming "Power Strike" her opponent threw at her met the magician's eyes.</p><p>"I see it now…" Gurker smiled, "He uses an incomplete early version of this high ranking jutsu because of the way he uses it. He does not just form one sphere, running at the enemy with it. He attacks forming entire dozens of them, using them and their unstable force naturally to complement his fighting style. It's why he needs not utter the jutsu's name until he uses it at a certain later stage"! The young man yelled out for the sole reason of feeling absolutely at awe at two genin, the cute six-puppet-armed brawler and the Sunagakure Wind Release sphere ninjutsu user continuously wailing at each other with everything they had until a blowback of exploding chakra from a more concentrated stage of "Power Strike" tossed both genin apart from one another.</p><p>Mana observed the resolution of the clash between the mysterious six-armed genin and Daseaut from the comfort of tough yet feminine arms and a familiar goofy face. That of Wakizashi Meiko who had managed to catch Mana successfully.</p><p>"You're such a meanie! Ruined my hands fending off that technique of yours"! The blonde complained, whining out loudly and slightly dipping the cool impression Mana had made of her.</p><p>"Calm down, Nanaba, your opponent, in his desperation to blow you away, wasted a lot of chakra. Work with that for now", a voicebox enhanced, almost cybernetic voice calmly exclaimed as yet more genin joined in on the battlefield. Amongst them was the mechanical armored genin, who, as Mana assumed, was the one to speak with a voicebox, Kiyomi and a very unexpected face to see.</p><p>"Sugemi", Mana muttered before Meiko carefully put her down and helped her stand up, before reaching to yank at the wooden kunai stuck in the magician's shoulder.</p><p>"Please don't, it'll be better if we remove it once we can properly treat it", Mana asked after moaning in pain from her teammate's unexpected initiative at yanking the thing out.</p><p>Sugemi's face did not look happy. While Mana felt glad that her friend had arrived with Team Hokage and that the team finally regrouped and joined in together, something told her that only more fighting would come out of her attempt to minimize the pain and suffering from all this fighting.</p>
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<a name="section0322"><h2>322. What Stays Left Behind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sugemi stared angrily at the entire gathering of teams, for reasons known only to him, his eyes changed from being full of cold indifference and calculative wary to complete disgust and a clearly translated desire to punch someone when the Nara's eyes wandered at the side where Team Scuti stood.</p><p>"What the fuck was that all about"? Sugemi coldly asked, staring angrily at the Hoshigakure alliance's direction, his eyes lingered on the ghastly looking Tankobaji the longest. The Nara knew better than to let his eyes slip away from this more unstable persona of Gentib for too long. "Mana shows up and suddenly you betray our alliance, is that all that it was worth to you guys, you knew fairly well that I was looking for her before we parted ways".</p><p>Relta stared at the Nara with guilt in her eyes. While she hesitated to engage Mana directly, she did nothing to stop those of her alliance that did attack her.</p><p>"Don't even bother denying it, Daidao saw everything with his goggles. You bunch taking Mana on, don't go on bullshitting me that you didn't know who she was either", Sugemi growled through his teeth.</p><p>"It is true, my googles can lock onto heat signatures, within visible distance, and even see in the dark, they are indeed handy", Daidao noted before tapping the dark tinted goggles of his with his finger.</p><p>Tankobaji reached to his chest, Sugemi's eyes followed Gentib's movements very carefully, observing the Hoshigakure genin pull hard on his attire before pulling it all off at once. A whirling cover of flames surrounded the young genin, just a lightshow from a chakra seal placed in his inner pocket. Once the lightshow concluded, Tankobaji was no more and Gentib stood in his usual clothes, his facepaint smeared all over, but otherwise his Idol persona had returned.</p><p>"It's true, we didn't do anything to protect Mana, we're sorry. It was a tough call to make – betray our alliance with Team Cephei, who wanted to avenge another team of Hoshigakure, or our alliance with you. Don't take this out on my team, they didn't have their leader amongst their ranks so I couldn't make the call", Gentib replied firmly, showing some genuine regret over not behaving in a very ally-like manner as far as Team Hawthorn was concerned, yet still determined and strong. There was no sign of breaking or subordination between the firm clashing stares of Sugemi and Gentib.</p><p>"What were you even doing right here"? Kiyomi asked of Mana.</p><p>"I was looking for you guys, I wanted to find you before this fight broke out, I needed to tell you something but… They met further away from the watchtower than I thought. I tried to circle them and just keep on moving but they spotted me", Mana explained.</p><p>"And then you took on twelve ninja at once while still recovering from being completely knocked out recently"? Meiko chuckled, teasing Mana.</p><p>"It was a question I needed answered. They were fighting in such an impractical manner. Dragging along teams and friends, risking their participations needlessly, I felt like I had to do something", Mana shrugged guiltily.</p><p>"Against twelve ninja"? Nanaba smiled at Mana from further away, the girl hid her busted up puppet arms inside her colorful wool and leather cape before walking up to the magician. "You could barely even compete against any single one of them, maybe against two of them if you're lucky. You lucked out they didn't know how to cooperate and attacked you one at a time so that they didn't get in each other's way".</p><p>"It doesn't matter how powerful they are", Mana objected, "It was a miscalculation on my part. I am taking this exam seriously because I know what it represents. Everything went just as I planned it to go but then…"</p><p>"You froze and couldn't finish what you started, as usual"? Sugemi turned around to squint shamefully at Mana.</p><p>"It's not that. I've long since moved past that fear of all violence. It's just that I planned to knock everyone out and… I only considered what elimination stands for outside of this simulation once everyone was already in the genjutsu", Mana bitterly grunted.</p><p>"Oh? You eliminating them would've meant you killed them in this mental simulation of real life you ran in your head… Still, exploiting the collective underestimation of twelve people, impressive", Daidao commended the magician before turning away in shame after seeing the eyes that looked his way, after Mana looked back at him.</p><p>"Look, you can join in as the third side here, try to take me out. This is entirely on me". Gentib spoke up again.</p><p>"Fair enough", Sugemi breathed out before his body blurred as his immensely fast movements made it nearly impossible for a less skilled ninja even to realize he had moved from his place.</p><p>"Idol: Crescent Line!" Gentib chanted out, smacking his palms together before blowing out a breath of air from his lungs, infused with chakra, as an invisible yet powerful gust of wind blasted at Sugemi's upper body, sending the young man down and rolling backwards. The Nara of Konoha bounced back on his feet, pushing his entire body off the ground and pressed his hands to his sides, extending his feet to the sides for a more widespread and balanced stance before Daidao's voice broke him out of the technique he was about to use.</p><p>"Enough, neither of our teams has a further need to involve ourselves in this pity grievance. Team Scuti betrayed our trust – leaving them to cope by themselves in here is more than a fitting consequence to those actions", the mechanical Jinchuuriki spoke.</p><p>"I guess", Sugemi placed his hands inside his pockets as his flowing in the air black hair settled down after the immensely focused chakra exiting his body at the moments leading up to him using his technique ceased. "Let's move then" he uttered before dashing away.</p><p>The rest of Team Hawthorn and Team Hokage followed, leaving the two sides to finish battling it out by themselves.</p><hr/><p>"So, Mana, what was that thing you wanted to tell us"? Kiyomi wondered after turning at the magician as the two teams advanced towards the northern gate – the exit from the Forest of Death.</p><p>"Oh… I think you're about to find out. I met the team that's after you – Team Nimbus", Mana explained. "They kind of lured me into thinking they'd be in the big fight back there. They must've thought that I'd tell you and you'd chicken out of it – rushing for the northern gate immediately. That's likely where they're waiting for you right now".</p><p>"Huh? Me, chicken out? Are they strong"? Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Well… Tough to say. I've only seen them messing around. One of them was a six-armed powerhouse – Spyder-Wolf, he looked pretty strong and keeping up with six arms may be troublesome up close".</p><p>"Hmph, no one's original these days", Nanaba turned her nose up like a snobby young lady.</p><p>"No, I think his four extra arms are actually natural, maybe a trait of his clan. It didn't appear like he built them", Mana shook her head, "The other two are siblings, the brother – Jon-D wields a large sword, looks like a fancy, oversized kitchen knife, honestly. It looked pretty well made and whoever made it used high-tier materials, as expected from Kumogakure blades. His sister looked more of a fast and stabbing type, she had two shorter blades. It is quite possible her fighting style is similar to Hisako-senpai", Mana noted.</p><p>"I always hated that stuck up, potty-mouthed bitch, now I'm kind of excited to take those guys on"! Kiyomi punched her palm with an ecstatic smile.</p><p>"I'd like a look at that sword", Meiko grinned rubbing the back of her head innocently. "Kumogakure swordsmanship is possibly the best in the world".</p><p>"Only because their masters of the past have been taught by the samurai of the Iron Country. No ninja will ever defeat a samurai in a fight", Daidao noted.</p><p>"I wouldn't recommend getting involved in this, Mana", Sugemi grumped out.</p><p>"Huh? It doesn't look like we'll have a choice, it's most likely they'll literally be blocking the path to the gate", the magician replied.</p><p>"Well, we'll be moving on ahead. I just chose to involve myself because I heard about your misfortune and wanted to see it by myself. I still consider you a teammate, Mana, but Daidao had a point back there – this isn't our fight", the Nara noted.</p><p>"They don't write manga about heroes that run away from a fight. Also, you'll look really bad if all you do after coming back is get yourself knocked flat by that Hoshigakure weirdo. You need a good showing to improve your feats". Mana teased her old friend.</p><p>"Letting you learn the manga tropes was the worst mistake I've ever made", Sugemi sighed. "Fine, I went so far to ensure your safety, it'd be counterproductive to let you get flattened by some asshole with six arms".</p><p>Mana knew that Sugemi was way past that whole obsession from his youth and all those silly manga tropes. What he was truly looking inside was a justification to help. He wanted to help Mana but he did not want to cross his team or what he thought was reasonable to do. It was one of those moments where the boy's principles and his heart clashed.</p><p>"Ugh, if only I still had my arms… I'd show that rip-off too"! Nanaba steamed in anger and regret of events of recent past.</p><p>"You know, you don't really need your arms to fight, Nana-chan", Daidao noted ironically, "You're the Seven-Tails Jinchuuriki, after all".</p><p>"Yeah, but if I fight him without my arms it kind of won't be the same. At that point I'm just picking on him for no reason. It should be Battle of Arms or no battle at all, I think Mana's philosophy is rubbing off on me, kind of", the cheerful blonde giggled before cocking her full of air head to the sides to some tune she had stuck in her head.</p><p>"That's not even close to my nindo". Mana sighed in disappointment.</p><hr/><p>After a while of casual paced dashing, interrupted once in a while by wild explosions and shockwaves emanating from behind, coming from the massive scuffle left behind, Meiko slowed down her pace of excited dashing to match up to Mana's pace. The magician was moving a bit slower than the rest of the Konoha alliance as she was tired, wounded and a bit on the down side.</p><p>"Is everything OK"? Meiko wondered. "You don't look excited about the fight at all, I guess that's pretty much you, but you don't look too excited about moving on either".</p><p>"It's just… I don't think I'm ready anymore. I've tested myself again and again in this exam and failed. That last fight was just how it'll be in the real world – just me in between two fighting sides and I failed to find the right answer, to calm them down and be rational. I'm thinking about quitting the exam, I was so obsessed with survival in it, so unwilling to be thrown out of Team Hokage if I lost that… I didn't think about what's coming up next. I need to grow even more still, I need to find an answer", Mana vented out uneasily.</p><p>"Yeah, you've got a massive weakness and now they'll all know it – when you're forced into a situation where the only way out is to kill someone – you fold. I've got weaknesses like that too: I've had them rubbed right up here recently", Meiko tried comforting her friend by pushing her index finger all the way up her cheek while doing so, gesturing at her face. "Everyone's got weaknesses, everyone's a different person. There may not even be a right answer to what you're looking for, but if our journey to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss taught me something it's that the treasure often blows – the journey is the toughest training. You didn't quit that quest halfway, did you? Why give up now"?</p><p>"I… I lost the wand. The one you made for me, out of Shimo's sword… I lost it", Mana cried out, grinding her teeth to resist breaking into tears.</p><p>"I mean… Yeah, you were knocked out for a long time… It's probably still around here somewhere, of course you've lost it. I've scattered most of my arsenal all over this place", Meiko laughed out.</p><p>"None of those weapons are gifts from your best friend crafted out of the last remaining memento of your old friend", Mana muttered.</p><p>"You're really an idiot, Mana", Sugemi butt in, he did not turn his head or slow down when he spoke up, the Nara just kept looking on ahead as his feet worked like a well-oiled machine. "Do you think Shimo would give a shit about his stupid sword? Do you think Meiko would give a crap about that stupid wand"?</p><p>"I mean… It was a pretty neat wand…" Meiko shrugged with a bitter face. "It's a bit of a waste to just lose it"</p><p>Mana could not help but crack a grin, seeing Meiko's face just shift and be molded by her conflicted emotions as her passion for crafting clashed with her friendly feelings towards Mana.</p><p>"You idiot, I mean who do you think Shimo would rather sacrifice – his stupid memento or his living friend. He's an idiot who lived his life trying to make women feel better, you were different though, you wasn't just a faceless woman he had an obligation to be courteous with, you were his comrade, his equal, if not his superior".</p><p>"Yeah, he kind of moved along with that whole "serve women" stuff, he just wanted to see Mana live up to her dream in the end. He was a man without a nindo, someone who was still discovering himself and Mana was someone who knew exactly who she was", Meiko shrugged recalling Shimo and all the fights Mana had along the way with the Yuki swordsman and the strong bond of friendship that even death couldn't sever, one that tied them together regardless of anything.</p><p>"That's right, he admired Mana for having one thing he never had – a sense of purpose, sense of self. People live too short in this world of ours to know who they are or what they're dying for, Shimo must've wanted to become someone who knew exactly why he lived, what he's leaving behind. He didn't want to be meaningless…" Sugemi just stopped talking for a while as it clearly was difficult for him to go on. Mana had to admit that she was barely holding it together as well.</p><p>"In a way, he wanted the same thing as I did – to change the world", Mana looked on ahead, lifting her teared up face and letting her messy raven-dark hair move aside and clear the murky and gloomy line of sight for her.</p><p>"Yeah, where you want to make people's lives matter, make everyone realize that there aren't any worthless people, Shimo wanted people to discover themselves, like he never had a chance to do", Sugemi nodded.</p><p>The party of teams continued to dash onwards in silence.</p><hr/><p>After the northern gate of Forest of Death came closer and closer – the Konoha alliance stopped in their tracks right at the last stretches before the gate. Right in front of them, sitting on a large stone was a six-armed brute, wearing a pelt of a white canine all the way to the upper half of his face. That gave the man almost a bestial and primal look, dehumanizing him. To the right of the resting Kumogakure ninja stood Jon-D and Jean-D, Team Nimbus was truly waiting for Team Hokage right by the gate to the exit.</p><p>"Yamanaka Kiyomi, we've got unfinished business", Spyder-Wolf grinned with a full mouth of white teeth that matched the row of massive fangs covering up the upper half of his face, as the bloodshot eyes of the young man stared at Kiyomi from the pierced out eye holes of the animal that once wore this large pelt as their natural suit.</p><p>"Sorry, I'm more interested in your female friend here", Kiyomi firmly shut the six-arms down by nodding with her chin at the short sword wielding, light armored Kumogakure kunoichi. "She brings up memories of someone I really don't like, a face that's very punchable".</p><p>"Huh, it appears we've got ourselves a handicapped bloodfest, six on three"! Spyder-Wolf gave every single member of Team Hawthorn and Team Hokage a mean glare.</p><p>"Well, good luck with that, Spoods", Jon-D and his sister waved the six-armed giant farewells before turning around and quickly running through the gate and onto the other side of the Forest of Death, leaving both the Konoha alliance and Spyder-Wolf confused on their feet.</p><p>"Ummm… Hey…" Spyder-Wolf just exclaimed but no allied ears were present to hear his ill worded complaint.</p><p>Mana started to boldly walk towards the six-armed genin, her boldness appeared to confuse him even more than the sudden departure of his teammates.</p><p>"Wait, what are you doing"? He muttered.</p><p>"This is pointless, you're not beating all of us, move aside", Mana calmly exclaimed.</p><p>A blindingly fast cross from his top left arm, diving down, flew at Mana's direction, the magician leaped back only to be surrounded by punches and fists from all sides. She bobbed and weaved with the best of her ability, her unique martial arts style worked its magic. The magician decided to finish it quickly with a strong tap at his elbow – dislocating it and breaking the entire arm.</p><p>Unexpected blazing pain blinded Mana's vision - something went wrong. As she whited out from a sudden onslaught of pain, still not very sure about where it came from, the magician weaved backwards before deciding to break up and rolled back. Spyder-Wolf's arm raced after her, reaching in to grab her fleeting foot and smash her to the gate, a well-aimed kunai stopped the advance of his hand mid-way. The magician didn't see who threw it, but she was thankful for the neat timing and aim of her ally.</p><p>With her arm broken and dangling pathetically Mana jumped back to the party line. The fighting style of this man was unpredictable and completely unlike anything the magician had seen before. She was used to dodging, countering and disabling people with two arms, she performed her dodges and the counter pitch perfect but the overabundance of arms present on that large lump of flesh, muscle and stolen fur broke her arm with a single lightning fast jab at the side of her elbow. Maybe he'd have not been so successful had Mana's chakra levels been full and more consistent but it wasn't like he threw his most powerful punch either.</p><p>"Everyone stays in their place, I have six-arms on me and each one of them is worth three of you weaklings at the very least. That makes all of you losers completely outnumbered"! Spyder-Wolf laughed out like a berserker standing in between a bridge passage to his castle and an entire army.</p><p>One thing was for sure – the Kumogakure brute wasn't about to make leaving the Forest of Death easy…</p>
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<a name="section0323"><h2>323. Six Arms Are Better Than Four</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"This is absurd, Sir, grant us passage"! Daidao exclaimed in annoyance, "Team Hawthorn has nothing to do with your hunt for Yamanaka Kiyomi".</p><p>Spyder-Wolf laughed out sincerely, even occupying two of his arms to wrap them around his aching belly to alleviate the pressure from inside.</p><p>"How dumb do you think I am"? The six-armed genin wondered, "You're just gonna pull a Substitution switch once I let one of you through. No, I'll body all of you right here, or as many as I can before one of you weaklings lands a good hit in that keeps me down".</p><p>What Spyder-Wolf referenced was indeed possible, with two willing cooperators, Substitution switch trick would have allowed one ninja to switch positions with another, as long as both of them were in on it and neither one of them resisted the switch, complicating the Substitution.</p><p>"Are you OK, Mana"? Meiko looked at Mana's broken arm that had a gruesome looking bump sticking out, yet not yet through the skin, somehow managing to contain the fracture.</p><p>"I'll manage, I doubt I'll be of much help though", she lamented. "That six-armed fighting style is really tough to keep up with. With so much of my evasive moves being pure muscle memory, having none of his moves recorded and a right profile drawn – I'd stand no chance against him anyways".</p><p>Meiko nodded before raising her hand up, like she was answering in class and stepping up in front of the duo of teams. She raised her fist up confidently with a grin at Wolf's general direction. "Fine then, I'll take you on", she declared confidently.</p><p>"Didn't you want a piece of him, Nana-chan"? Daidao wondered curiously looking at his teammate.</p><p>"Are you crazy? Without my arms? Such a battle would be ridiculous, the only condition I agree to fight with is that it's a six on six armed bout"! The airheaded blonde firmly stated.</p><p>"This is my responsibility too", Kiyomi sighed before stepping up besides Meiko.</p><p>"No, you're still tired and hurt after fighting Othello, sit this one out and let me handle it", Meiko objected.</p><p>"You're also not at your strongest, those wounds from the underground battle are still holding you back, your arsenal is almost emptied and your chakra can't be too high up", Kiyomi snapped back at her teammate.</p><p>"Just play Rock-Paper-Scissors or something", Spyder scratched his head, slightly tipping the fur that he wore on top of his massive well-trained body.</p><p>"Stay out of this"! Kiyomi and Meiko both yelled at the Team Nimbus member.</p><p>"Fine, fine… Just trying to help, I've got no problem taking all of you on, honestly", Spyder-Wolf shook his palms defensively in front of his chest, trying to pacify the heating up situation.</p><p>"I must say that the redhead is right", Sugemi concluded as he stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "You're a different style of combatant, you can't take much of a beating and you've already taken more of it than anyone would bet on you taking. Sit this one out", the Nara advised.</p><p>"Awww yeah, let's do this"! Meiko's fist shot up in the sky as the blacksmith cheered on the Nara, feeling excited to measure her strength against Mana's previous taijutsu using teammate. Showing this guy up meant a great deal to Meiko and validating her own inner worth on the team.</p><p>"So are you guys finished fighting"? Spyder shrugged in confusion.</p><p>"Yeah, me and Meiko will be your opponents", Sugemi nodded before taking an offensive and quite open taijutsu stance. The time she spent studying defence against taijutsu suggested to Mana that Sugemi was using a very aggressive and offensive style, focusing on overwhelming the opponent with strikes and giving them no chance to attack instead of returning his hands for blocking after his attack concluded.</p><p>Mana wanted to tell her friend it was madness to attack Spyder-Wolf with such a style. There was no way that Sugemi would've overwhelmed someone with three times the number of arms, all of which moved precisely and lightning fast, striking with mountain shattering strength. The hit that broke Mana's arm was a desperation strike, it was not a planned strike or one with significant force behind it and yet it still broke her arm. The magician feared to even thing about how powerful a focused and intentional strike would be…</p><p>Sugemi's body fired off the ground like a kunai launched from a dispenser, bouncing off of it like he was using a spring, and winding up for a straight forward strike. As expected, Sugemi's straightforward elbow strike to Spyder-Wolf's blindspot, right on the nose where fur covered up part of the genin's vision was still blocked with a single arm, where Sugemi's other arm was pushed away while the third one threw a wicked strike to the Nara's own face, sending the genin flying back and sliding on the ground.</p><p>Meiko's body blurred and moved in behind Spyder-Wolf at that moment. Spyder's arm shot up in a right angle block to stop a predicted strike from behind, it appeared like his arms covered all blindspots and that he always had spares to use. However, Meiko didn't fall for the block, instead using her leg to hook and wrap around the right angled block, pushing her body around with a straight push kick right at Spyder-Wolf's face.</p><p>Spyder-Wolf appeared to flinch for a moment but then his face colored in a sadistic grin as all six of his arms prepared to grab Meiko in a lethal hold and tear limb from limb off her body. A metallic reeling sound signaled Meiko's plan to escape, Wolf's eyes wandered upwards seeing a feint metallic piece of string attached to a branch above.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu"! Meiko yelled out as she used the piece of string to zip out of the dangerous situation. As her body moved away in a blink of an eye, Sugemi was revealed to have moved in right behind her, using her body as a cover for his movements, coordinating his attack with Meiko so that once the girl's body moved away he could immediately throw in his hit without giving the enemy time to deal with it.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Jutsu"! Sugemi yelled out as he smacked his palms together, a long black tendril moved out from his pocket, striking Wolf straight in his face, but dissolving upon impact.</p><p>"You fool, how powerful do you think your shadows will be in this limited lighting"!? Wolf taunted his enemy before Sugemi's punch right to his nose silenced him. The staggering brute slid back a good fifty meters before settling down on his knee and then picking himself back up on his feet. "So your ninjutsu was just a smokescreen to flinch me and cover up my eyes…" he commended his opponent.</p><p>"He's right though", Sugemi gritted through his teeth, "My shadows won't be too effective in this gloom, hey, Daidao"!</p><p>The mechanical genin pulled out his green glowing lantern and flung it at Sugemi, who quickly caught it and flung it at Meiko. The redhead quickly wrapped a couple of loops of string around the object of illumination and left it hanging there.</p><p>"Wait, didn't you beat a giant snake before in the Forest of Death, back when Tanshu-sensei brought us here"? Mana wondered loudly.</p><p>"Back then I was too stupid to realize that gloom weakened my shadows and that they were completely inefficient in total darkness", Sugemi grinned. "I beat it without realizing that my jutsu were being weakened".</p><p>Sugemi's face looked strangely troubled, it did not look like he was that excited to continue his battle further after this first exchange of blows. It must have been how inefficient his strikes were, his full force blows were casually being caught and shrugged aside, meanwhile every blow that Spyder-Wolf threw his way greatly affected the young Nara. He realized it by the time the first exchange finished.</p><p>Pulling two of her kunai out of her ninja pouch, Meiko prepared to coordinate her movements with Sugemi. The two have not worked together in this way, their combined attacks were slower than they could have been, they were still two separate well-trained ninja trying to work together, not one combined unit. Both she and Sugemi still observed each other's movements and took some time to adapt and coordinate a response.</p><p>With a diving kick Meiko leaped into battle, bravely, having in mind how she clearly saw Sugemi being overpowered by their opponent relatively easily. Wolf stepped aside allowing Meiko's foot to smash into the ground, sending a powerful quake throughout the surrounding area even while the blacksmith did her best to contain the force of impact. Wolf's fists quickly countered, a hook to the chin made Meiko flip in mid-air and drop her two kunai blades, before a double axe handle strike smashed her back into the ground.</p><p>Sugemi's rushing strike got caught by the free arms of Spyder, right before the Nara leaned down to sweep at Wolf's legs, causing him a great deal of pain as his sweep hit the side of his knee caps. With a powerful combination of chain strikes from his two middle arms, Sugemi got sent flying backwards. Once Wolf recovered from the pain and tried stomping and pummeling Meiko, he realized that she no longer laid by his feet and had used the small window of opportunity to escape.</p><p>"This isn't working", Meiko huffed out after the two genin picked themselves up and grouped together.</p><p>"No, it isn't. Those darned hands of his, the upper pair covers up any aerial attacks or attempts to vault over him, his central arms are covering his front while the lower two cover his lower body, rolling around him is also impossible. We're not fast enough to dash behind him without him intercepting us… Not yet", Sugemi grinned placing his arms beside him and tensing up his entire body.</p><p>"First Gate: Gate of Opening, OPEN"! He chanted out, focusing his chakra into removing the restraints on his body, allowing him to utilize the entire inner physical prowess that his body can potentially muster up. He did not necessarily need to telegraph opening the First Gate that clearly, he could have done it much faster, almost instantly in battle. However, he wanted to do it right, he could not afford make any mistakes right by northern gate.</p><p>Confidently, Sugemi leaned forward, preparing for an attack. Spyder stumbled back, hesitant to believe that after two whole fruitless exchanges his opponent would still attempt a close range attack. He was not prepared for Sugemi's awakening, however. The Nara's body darted forward in a single flash, like an arrow of light with a powerful blow that completely blinded the man and made his face bend uncomfortably inwards, tearing apart the head piece of the white fur that Wolf wore, also donning it crimson with the genin's own blood from his busted nose, lips and a cracked eyebrow.</p><p>"Amazing"! Kiyomi shouted out, she may have seen Sugemi under this technique's effect during her "wedding", however at that time the Nara didn't bother himself with correctly performing the opening of his gates so she may not have been aware of just what exactly it was that the Yamanaka saw.</p><p>"Right"? Nanaba freaked out with an excited smile.</p><p>Only Daidao and Mana were more composed about seeing Sugemi pull out the First Gate. It was tough to say exactly what Daidao was thinking as his face was concealed completely by the gas mask-like mask that covered his face but his gestures were more reminiscent of those of a troubled young man than those of an excited one.</p><p>"The First Gate", Mana muttered catching Kiyomi's attention, right when Sugemi's mad chain barrage of punches caught Wolf completely unprotected and continued to bombard the genin's face and his well-trained body with crushing power strikes that came off like speed strikes as well. From the sight and sound of the attacks it seemed like every one of hundreds and thousands of strikes delivered crushed and grinded Wolf's bones to dust and gore.</p><p>"It's said that at any given time a person is only capable of utilizing their muscles to 20% efficiency and the First Gate removes this natural limitation. It isn't a difficult technique to learn either but… It takes a special kind of person to use it", Mana spoke with a hint of worry in her voice, not only did this technique leave a sour taste in her mouth, knowing what it was like exactly, but the memories it brought with it weren't pleasant either.</p><p>"So just using the First Gate multiplies your power and speed five times"?! Kiyomi wondered, surprised by the fact that such a technique existed, but also that it was not taught more commonly. One would have thought that a relatively easy technique to learn like this with such mighty effects would have been taught in the Academy.</p><p>"That's right. But the human body isn't built to function at 100% for a long period of time. 100% can be willed into, without using the First Gate for a momentary boost of strength and speed, like when a person is enraged or using their will to empower their body to its limits. But the body imposes such limits on itself for a reason, just reaching 100% by itself fully exhausts the body, using it for more than a heartbeat approaches the territory of burning more energy than the body has. Muscles and tissue begin to break down and tear apart. It's not a technique that should be used for long", Mana looked away from the sight of Sugemi trying to hit his opponent with an overhead kick, focused and empowered with so much strength it may have pretty much served as a guillotine and broke his opponent's neck.</p><p>"That's not what worries me", Daidao rubbed the rubber-like material of his mask, still keeping his eyes at Sugemi's failed effort to finish the battle quick as Wolf managed to maneuver around the kick and with three powerful double axe handle strikes send Sugemi flying. The Nara groaned out in inhuman screams of pain as his tired and beginning to tear muscles were hit by the powerful strikes he'd have only barely withstood in his unopened state. By easing the tension of the gates, Sugemi eased his tension and used a thick branch as a vault pole so he could land by Meiko's side.</p><p>"I never really encouraged for Sugemi to use the First Gate, not in this stage. The problem is the damage it can potentially do to Sugemi's body so early on. No team wants traumas this early in the exam. We don't know when or how the next exam will take place, if he used this technique to break his body he'd be useless in the next exam in case it takes place right after this one". As Daidao explained his worries, Sugemi, brimming with a glowing, transparent glow of chakra breathed out easier and reduced the shining aura brimming from him even more.</p><p>"So that's the mastery over the First Gate he had acquired", Mana smiled seeing Sugemi restrain the explosive power of the First Gate.</p><p>"Huh? What did he do"? Kiyomi scratched her head in confusion, "Is the awakening already over"?</p><p>"No, when we were kids, Sugemi constantly strained his body past his breaking point with this technique, just with the First Gate. I can see now that he obtained perfect control over his First Gate, right now he isn't using 100% of his muscle control, he's using 75%, reducing the output to 25% whenever he draws back from his opponent for catching his breath". Mana admired the clever use of such a brutish technique, seeing it for the first time she had an impression that such a jutsu should've been labeled as a forbidden technique – a kinjutsu, however seeing her friend using it without losing his cool made her reconsider.</p><p>Just like she once reconsidered on the thought that martial arts being nothing more than the arts for suffering and murder.</p><p>"Did you see my moves, ready to join in"? Sugemi spoke to Meiko who just nodded before taking a different offensive fighting stance, one favoring her left side of the body instead of her usual right.</p><p>"That's a pretty neat jutsu", Spyder-Wolf laughed out before cracking three of his knuckles in the other three palms and taking an offensive stance himself, "I'd say I'm just about done getting assaulted by you two, I've had just about enough of this warm up fight, I've got four more people to beat up after you two, after all"! Spyder-Wolf laughed out before rushing at Meiko and Sugemi.</p><p>"Six-Armed Assault"! Spyder shouted out as the muscles on his six arms tensed up and his powerful legs launched his body horizontally right at the two opponents. In his charging position, with his six arms extended, Spyder-Wolf looked almost like a star shooting right at them.</p><p>Wolf's arms began slowing down their movements momentarily, right before shooting off in a powerful focused cross strike, all six of his arms, repeating the same rhythm again and again. Meiko covered her body up with her hands, lifting them up in the air, before placing them in a position where her palms reminded of wings of a butterfly and pushing them at Wolf's wrists, whenever his arms tried to strike Meiko down with focused power strikes. Sugemi's body lit up with First Gate chakra once more as he bumped up the speed of his body again, using all of First Gate's added bonuses to avoid his opponent's strikes. Wolf's chosen taijutsu attack was relatively slow, but Sugemi could already see it would've been immensely powerful and crushing had it connected.</p><p>Sugemi's knee pushed one of Wolf's arms upwards with a quick knee strike to the brute's elbow whereas Meiko followed the attack up with a combined strike with her knee and her elbow aimed to scissor at the weak spot of Wolf's arm, aimed right at the middle part of Spyder's arm and the back of his elbow. The brute shouted out in pain as his mad offensive ended abruptly allowing Sugemi and Meiko to counterattack.</p><p>Sugemi threw a powerful cross at the armpit under Wolf's injured arm. His fist dug in deep into the softer part of his opponent's flesh and emitted a painfully sounding churning noise from the place of impact, utilizing the upper left arm clutching at the broken middle left arm Meiko dashed up and behind her opponent with a spinning kick to the back of his head. The impact sent the genin down on his knees and confused.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Barrage"! Sugemi yelled out, focusing the maximum output of force as he fired off his innovated Nara hijutsu at his opponent, using the light from Daidao's lantern to minimize the weakening effect of Forest of Death gloom on his shadows. The powerful blows ran rampant on Wolf's body as the Team Nimbus powerhouse struggled to block his opponent's attacks right. Wolf managed only to shrug off or block a percentage of the barrage of shadow tendrils smacking him around before one of the tendrils wrapped into a spherical shape and smacked Spyder-Wolf back, smashing him into the gate, denting the massive structure and nearly toppling it down.</p><p>The shining glow of Sugemi's First Gate faded down to just the minimal 25% muscle control glow as the strain on the young genin's body eased up. Stumbling forward the Nara nearly fell on his face, having to shove his arm in the way from falling down as the strain on his body began building up, despite using out maybe just a quarter of his actual chakra pool.</p><p>"Holy shit", a confident and masculine voice exclaimed in excitement. Meiko's and Sugemi's eyes widened in shock as they saw Spyder-Wolf's large muscular frame shake strongly and bounce off of the massive crater he left in the northern gate and back on his feet. "Okay, now we're getting somewhere…" he declared as he wiped the blood trickling down his nose and his cracked forehead, coloring his light brown spiky hair a shade of bright blood red.</p>
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<a name="section0324"><h2>324. The Great Equalizer</h2></a>
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    <p>Seeing Spyder-Wolf just pop back on his feet after attacks that no genin, maybe even few higher-ranking ninja could take with nothing else but a few cases of missing teeth and a nosebleed was more intimidating than any amount of trash talk the six-armed genin did.</p><p>Without offering any more words, the giant leaped forward to take out his opponents. Sugemi quickly maxed out his First Gate usage before leaping in to intercept his opponent. Knowing that Meiko's arsenal was limited and that she was at least five times slower than the First Gate user it was a smart, and a rather altruistic, decision.</p><p>A push kick of considerable stopping power blasted Sugemi back on his back. With all of his efforts and boosted physical power, the Nara managed just to contain and somewhat muffle the impact. The force of the kick tossed Sugemi rolling wildly backwards as Spyder-Wolf kicked off once more to prolong his forward rush, swinging his arms wildly and widely to hammer at his knocked down opponent repeatedly.</p><p>After taking way too much damage for his comfort, Sugemi's legs wrapped around the bottom pair of Wolf's arms before his own hands locked around the upper pair. Despite taking a couple of nasty rib shots from the still unbroken middle arm, Sugemi pushed off his legs before ramming them at Spyder's chest and flipping the large genin over himself, straight at Meiko.</p><p>With a mad battle cry, Meiko slammed her extended arm straight at Wolf's face, bodying him and driving him back first to the ground – something that proved itself troublesome to do before. The blacksmith rolled backwards and grabbed Spyder's feet, leaning back to lift the brute off the ground and throw him in the air. A powerful and lightning fast barrage of elbow strikes from the flurry of five of Wolf's functional arms cracked Meiko's head open but the blacksmith persevered and sent the brute flying with a strong roundhouse kick aimed diagonally upwards and straight at Wolf's chest.</p><p>Utilizing the moment when all air was driven out of her opponent's ribs and while the pain of shock to his ribs was very much alive, Meiko leaped up in the air, aiming to finish the job with a newly improvised taijutsu drop. The redhead locked her arms and legs around her opponent's shins and feet, dropping him from as high as the Forest of Death scenery allowed her to piledrive her opponent from.</p><p>"Anvilstone"! Meiko yelled out triumphantly as Wolf's impact to the ground sent rumbling quakes and caused small fissures to open up well beyond the point where any bystanders were observing the battle.</p><p>Carefully so that she did not get caught unprepared in a quick recovery counterattack, Meiko jumped up and dashed back to Sugemi who had turned his First Gate off and was waiting around for his ally to finish off the combination of attacks that he set the opponent up for.</p><p>A pair of Spyder-Wolf's arms erupted from the ground, grabbing hold to the edges of the sinkhole he got sent crashing through and pulling himself out. The genin was covered in bioluminescent goop and wore a strange insectoid shell on his head, replacing the ruined fur he usually wore. Must have been a local denizen of Forest of Death that found Spyder-Wolf crashing into his hunting ground but whom Spyder-Wolf quickly dispatched of.</p><p>"We did some damage", Sugemi huffed out.</p><p>"I hoped that whatever's down there would occupy him for longer, we may be slowly chipping at him but we're wearing ourselves out faster than we're kicking his ass and every time he lands a strike we have to sacrifice options or get taken out", Meiko grunted overcome with frustration. "I don't have any jutsu or weapons left that'd keep him down for good".</p><p>"This isn't working as well as I've thought, but your attack gave me an idea, we need to take him to the air. Keep him from building up momentum or using the ground support for stronger strikes", Sugemi suggested.</p><p>"I'll need you to buy me some time, in that case", Meiko glared back at the Nara.</p><p>"What? What for"? Sugemi looked back at the redhead mortified.</p><p>"I need to reseal some of my chakra into my boots, I need it for aerial movement", Meiko admitted.</p><p>Sugemi laughed out sincerely. "Oh well, I guess I'll need to use those stupid cowardly hijutsu of mine. I really dislike it but there's nothing else that buys time quite like those".</p><p>"Keep your eyes on your opponent"! Spyder-Wolf taunted his two opponents as he lunged at the two. At this point he had taken quite some damage from the combined attacks of Sugemi and Meiko, greatly slowing him down, however not only were his opponents similarly weakened, but he was also still quite damned fast. In an instant the large six-armed man slid right in between the two genin, extending his to the sides before he jumped off the ground in a mad spin of limbs everywhere.</p><p>"Wolf-Spinner", he yelled out the name of his taijutsu technique as clotheslines, hammer strikes and stiff kicks were flashing everywhere around, crashing into Meiko and Sugemi and sending them flying back. As Sugemi's eyes opened up, after wiping off the blood tricking from his forehead and cracked eyebrow right over his eyes, the Nara noticed Meiko holding her glowing bright blue hands up to her boots with a sealing hieroglyph lighting up on them. That meant that this was his cue.</p><p>Sugemi kicked off the ground, winding up his fist and roaring like a berserker charging into a warzone with nothing but a cherry blossom petal covering his sensitive parts and an axe in his right hand. Except, in his case, he may not have actually had an axe, just his bare fists. While his right hand was winded back, preparing for a strike, his left one was concealed behind the young man's back, weaving a handful of hand seals.</p><p>Right before Spyder-Wolf prepared for an answer, smacking Sugemi away with a backhand smack, the Nara stopped in his tracks before launching himself in a trajectory circular around his opponent. Shortly afterwards, a whole squad of Sugemi clones joined in on the frey.</p><p>"Clone Jutsu"! The Nara yelled out, it was no proud jutsu to declare the usage of, it was a simple Academy technique creating illusionary clones that weren't too difficult to tell from the real deal with enough skill and time. Yet Sugemi hoped that with his clones dashing madly around Spyder-Wolf in a circle he may have bought a little more time before the real him was identified.</p><p>"Take this"! The Nara yelled out as both the real deal and all the copies launched themselves at the surrounded opponent with identical right crosses.</p><p>Sugemi's punch connected to Spyder-Wolf's jaw, busting up and knocking off his improvised insectoid shell helmet, which he pulled off of a recently deceased living thing and just popped onto his head. The illusionary copies just phased through the staggering and confused brute before Sugemi once again weaved the hand seals and repeated the technique, dashing around the barely more injured than he was before Spyder, yet plenty more pissed off.</p><p>"You're gonna run out of breath before I feel any of your punches"! Wolf roared out frustrated.</p><hr/><p>Mana looked at her friend who was worrying over the battle she wanted to be a part of. Kiyomi shook on her feet like a twig in a hurricane but she did not try to interfere or launch a stray clan hijutsu, which confused Mana slightly.</p><p>"Why aren't you trying to help Meiko, you've never stricken me as the honorable kind of combatant", Mana asked when her curiosity finally tipped over the edge.</p><p>"I'm not, I just don't really have much chakra left and any jutsu I use right now risks getting me over the lifeline", the blonde smiled back at Mana.</p><p>"And yet you insisted fighting Wolf before", the magician tilted an eyebrow in surprise.</p><p>"After seeing how seriously you take this exam, yeah, it's a little inspiring. After hearing so many times about how this exam is an emulation of what soon will be our life, I am beginning to see it the same way", the Yamanaka admitted while she looked down, feeling a bit down that the battles of the recent past had tired her out so. Once her mood had elevated somewhat, however, she looked up before turning back down at Mana.</p><p>"What about you"? The Yamanaka heiress wondered, "Usually you have ideas about everything, what do you think about this fight"?</p><p>"Right now I have two ideas of how to beat Wolf, I've also seen most of his patterns and strikes and I'd be able to evade him, if my hand was healed and I had more chakra to spare. Also, that shoulder injury is really killing me right now, it's a bad place to be injured for evasive acrobatics", Mana admitted, she felt similarly ashamed admitting that she would've come a bit short had she joined into this fight. Despite hating violence and fighting she did have a certain amount of pride and desire to win when involving herself in a fight, a little bit going beyond just her need for stopping violence and protecting people, a bit more on the selfish part than Mana would've liked to admit.</p><p>"Shall I establish a mental link between us"? Kiyomi lingered on the thought, you can relay your plans to Meiko.</p><p>"Look at her eyes", Mana smiled shyly. "She's having a time of her life, I've spent plenty of time amongst people that take pleasure from fighting to know those eyes. She'd feel offended if I butt in and tipped odds even more to our favor".</p><p>"You know, if she doesn't like it – no one's forcing her to use your ideas, at least let her know of them", Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Fine", Mana sighed before Kiyomi quickly established a mental link, a bit on the shoddy side with mental static and varying length of the signal and volume, saving up chakra wherever she could, but it would possibly come to Meiko's aid when she ran out of options.</p><hr/><p>Sugemi and his illusionary clones continued to dance around their opponent, distracting from Meiko recharging the seals on her boots with chakra to be used for aerial combat. Without the solid ground to bother balance and force from, a physical powerhouse would be greatly weakened which could just prove as the equalizer the duo needed to finish this fight.</p><p>"Your big boost has run out, is that why you're prancing around, trying to wear me down with your barely felt punches"? Spyder-Wolf angrily taunted Sugemi, who just continued to move forward and attempt to distract his opponent for as long as possible.</p><p>On one hand, repeating the same strategy was risky, especially one based on an Academy technique which most ninja could see through given enough time and if they were perceptive enough. However, this move has proven to be an effective time waster for now.</p><p>Spyder-Wolf's hands went through a collection of hand seals, slow and sluggish. Mana instantly saw through the weakness to the large brute but she wondered if Meiko or Sugemi had as well.</p><p>"Fire Style: Flame Spout Jutsu"! The Kumogakure genin yelled out blowing solid masses of compact flames concentrated into masses of solid heat, exploding into jets of flames that expanded, swallowing oxygen and flammable mater all around them, hot as the surface of the Sun, yet lightning fast in losing and distributing that heat and burning it all up.</p><p>Sugemi's clones got swallowed up in flames. Disappearing as the pyroclasm of superheated death itself incinerated the air that gave them shape and dissolved the light that gave them form on a particle level. Only a black, rock-hard arc of hardened molten rocks and dirt surrounded the Kumogakure taijutsu user as he observed no remaining clones in front of him. Then, as he tried moving his hand, he realized that something paralyzed him completely and his body simply would not budge.</p><p>"Shadow Possession, completed" Sugemi grumbled from behind the brute, annoyed to have needed to resort to such a cheap distraction tactic. Using his clan hijutsu in a way they were intended to be used disgusted him. He was an active hands-on hero, one the likes of which deserves stories to be told about him. Techniques like the clan hijutsu he was taught and innovated on were cheap and cowardly lot…</p><p>"Sugemi"! Mana raised her voice, knowing that asking Kiyomi to expand her mental link would be pushing against the remains of chakra she still had.</p><p>"Yeah, I know"! He shouted back, silencing Mana. "He can only use two of his arms for weaving hand seals which means three things: first – he can't perform three techniques by weaving three different sets of hand seals at the same time, second – his number of arms is the same kind of weakness as it is a strength as his brain must only be able to properly control a pair of them precisely, whereas the rest are just thrown about without much thought put into them, most importantly – he has a preferred pair of arms for performing hand seals and he didn't use it, his hand seals were too slow for the top row to be his preferred one. This only means that the one with one broken hand was his preferred pair – the middle one".</p><p>"You both figured out this much just from the way I used a single ninjutsu technique"? Spyder-Wolf grunted in frustration.</p><p>"Not just that, Mana just told me how to weaken you even more", Meiko grinned after she stood back up on her feet and clanged her boots against each other as the sealing hieroglyphs faded from being seen, at least until they'd be used again.</p><p>"He's all yours", Sugemi smiled at Meiko who just nodded and pressed two of her fingers against her heels, setting off the seals and releasing a blaze of bland blue colored base chakra. The burst of chakra sent the blacksmith propelling forward and winding up for a powerful punch. Spyder-Wolf tried to overpower the Shadow Possession technique repeatedly but it may have yet been too early to do so.</p><p>Meiko's fist dug deep into the Kumogakure genin's jaw, twisting it in a grotesque manner and at the same time overpowering the Shadow Possession technique and breaking the opponent out of it for him. The blacksmith sent her opponent hurling right at Sugemi with a single blow, with plenty of heart and strength put into it.</p><p>Like kid playing ball, Sugemi dropped on his back, extending his feet upwards to fire his opponent upwards. Wolf shouted out in pain as his large frame bent backwards in uncomfortably painful looking ways before being fired off into the air.</p><p>"Let's go, all of it"! Meiko fired herself up before unsealing all of the limited supply of chakra she managed to seal in the short time she was given, charging at her airborne opponent, utilizing the momentum that her jet boots gave her, whereas Spyder-Wolf had no ground to draw strength and balance from. Meiko punched again and again, blasting her opponent farther away before catching up to him and punching him further again. There was a specific location, rather a finding, she was looking to smash her opponent into before the chakra from her boots ran out.</p><p>With the last ounce of her strength, Meiko punched at the center of Wolf's face, sending the dazed and confused opponent crashing down into a large pond of water. Her ribs and her own jaw ached from the weakened counterattacks that the Kumogakure genin threw back at her but it was worth powering through them. Now with her chakra inside the boots being completely drained, Meiko plummeted down right beside her downed opponent.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu"! Sugemi's voice interrupted Meiko's worries of dropping into the same pool of water her opponent fell into as steel wire pulled hard on her abdomen, pulling her back onto a branch where her ally was standing on.</p><p>"I told the others to move on ahead and leave the forest. Let's finish up here though, I don't want any last second surprises", Sugemi muttered.</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana's equalizer will bring him down to our level. You won't need to use the gates anymore to fight him hand to hand", the blacksmith smiled, wondering why she had not thought of this before. She was in the Forest of Death – the place where everything wanted everyone and everything dead, not utilizing those natural laws for one's own gain was almost a crime against this natural economy of energy preservation.</p><p>Wolf's arm burst through and out of the water, grabbing hold of the little bridge that arced over the pond, pulling himself out and dropping onto it. Meiko sat down by the tree, clutching at her aching ribs before pointing at Spyder-Wolf and smiling at her Nara ally.</p><p>"He's all yours", she uttered.</p><p>Spyder-Wolf staggered back, avoiding a rain of kunai blades that flew at him before regaining composure and leaping back at Sugemi, still thinking he was faster and stronger than his opponent, as long as the First Gate wasn't in play. Wolf's upper right blasted the Nara right in the jaw, something that should have been a killshot, given how much focus and oomph that the Kumogakure giant put into it. Strangely his opponent just bounced back for more, as if it was nothing but a simple spring breeze blowing his way.</p><p>"Finally, grown some balls"? Spyder-Wolf laughed out as he continued to send endless barrages of punches Sugemi's way, the Nara leaned back, desperately placing blocks for each strike he could perceive. A number, which increased with each passing second allowing the Team Hawthorn member to block more and more of the six-armed blurs. "I thought you couldn't block my strikes unless you were using that flashy boost of yours"? Wolf bravely taunted his opponent after Sugemi staggered back and wiped blood off of his cracked lip.</p><p>Spyder-Wolf grinned sadistically as he prepared what surely should've been a finishing blow – a blow that'd have sent the planet itself bouncing off of her sisters like a marble had the massive amount of chakra augmentation imbued within not been perfectly contained and channeled right through his opponent.</p><p>The blow was stopped by Sugemi's lightly extended hand and got stuck in his palm.</p><p>"Impossible"! Spyder-Wolf shouted out. "I'm stronger that the two of you, faster, more durable. You'd have passed out of exhaustion before you finished me off with your weak strikes"!</p><p>"Maybe so", Sugemi lightly taunted his opponent, pulling the powerhouse in for a counter-attack and kneeing the giant into the stomach. Wolf staggered back, struggling to breathe in even once. "But those fellows all over your body can do you in almost instantly".</p><p>"Wha…" Wolf's bloodshot and rabid eyes looked all over his exposed skin, witnessing hundreds of small canine sized leeches with lamprey-like mouths sucking into his flesh and draining him of both his vital fluids and chakra as a secondary unwanted effect as his body struggled to keep the genin in fighting condition.</p><p>"You won't succeed at being a ninja by just being strong and fast, you need something that's up here too", the Nara tapped lightly at his temple before turning around and putting his hands inside his pockets. "Looking forward to not seeing you again", he teased the giant who boiled in anger and twitched realizing how fast and how much blood he was losing. All attempts to tear the leeches off only opened gruesome looking yet relatively small wounds that simple refused to coagulate.</p><p>"This… This isn't over"! Wolf roared out, flexing all of his muscles to their absolute limit as he intensified the chakra flow all over his body before leaping at Sugemi in one final charge, right before the blood and chakra loss would have made him pass out.</p><p>"Second Gate: Gate of Healing! OPEN"! Sugemi's voice echoed in the surrounding area and in an unperceivable flash, his opponent fell onto the ground, completely out cold.</p><p>"Let's go, it's best if he gets removed by the staff sooner than later", the Nara turned at Meiko, encouraging his temporary ally to move along.</p>
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<a name="section0325"><h2>325. Out Of The Forest At Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A pair of higher ranked Konohagakure staff ninja were standing beyond the northern gate. There was a moment when Mana's eyes had to get used to the brighter gloom of a simple Fire Country forest and the deforested areas where the roads were made. In this case, a small dirty zigzag that lead further into the main road, which headed west, towards the Land of Wind and many smaller pleasure towns in between Land of Fire and Land of Wind.</p><p>"Huh, there are no other genin around", Kiyomi wondered loudly while looking around, pondering why the area outside was so empty.</p><p>"Each team that has completed the exam and exited through the gate has done so at their own time, some of them did so days ago. It'd have been strenuous to keep all of them here just so the underdogs could hear the same thing they've heard", one of the cloaked yet unhooded ninja noted.</p><p>A long braided, brown haired kunoichi walked up to the two Jinchuuriki placing her hand on their shoulders. "You two OK"? I'll have your supervisors brought here at once", she asked.</p><p>A group of four cloaked ninja positioned themselves behind Daidao and Nanaba until their "supervisors" would arrive as the shortest baldy of the staff ninja stood out in front before listening in and muttering something to the little microphone he had positioned by the ear-set he was wearing. A raspy and unclear husk was all that could be heard from the other end so it was tough, if not impossible, to tell exactly what the conversation was about.</p><p>"Alright, Team Hokage and Team Hawthorn, you appear to have completed the exam successfully, congratulations", the baldy nodded as he addressed the handful of teams.</p><p>"This is not it just yet, Sugemi and Meiko will be joining us soon. They've been left behind to deal with some unpleasant business", Daidao's voicebox matched the unclear rasp, which came out from the bald ninja's ear-set.</p><p>"I see, then maybe it would be better to wait for at least a good twenty minutes longer before we explain what comes next", the baldy nodded.</p><p>What transpired after was an uncomfortable and awkward stance as both the staff ninja and the genin just stood around, looking at each other, before glaring back at the northern gate and wondering if Sugemi and Meiko would even be back. It barely even took five good minutes after the pause was given thought that the two walked through the gate, slightly beaten up and bruised, even more than they were before Team Hokage and Team Hawthorn were encouraged to leave them behind.</p><p>"Well, now that everyone is here", the baldy cleared his throat before addressing the squad again, "Do not worry, the next stage of the exam will not take place immediately. It was initially a thought for our consideration but once we saw more eliminations than it was predicted, with some teams eliminating plenty people they had no obligation to eliminate and the natural conditions of Training Grounds No. 44 eliminating its own fair share of contestants, it was quickly reconsidered".</p><p>Sugemi laughed out loud before rubbing the back of his head relieved, "Ha, that's great, I used the Second Gate in there so we'd have been in a pinch if I had to fight again right afterwards", he let his weariness go down to being just another joking matter.</p><p>"Did Spyder-Wolf have some unseen weapon up his sleeve that you needed to resort to such measures"? Daidao wondered, as the Nara's revelation appeared to hit a chord with the Jinchuuriki.</p><p>"Nah, I kind of did it just to look cool for the manga panel, when that episode inevitably makes it to my story"! Sugemi laughed out, rubbing his own nose in shame.</p><p>"Imbecile", Daidao crossed his hands around his chest. "It appears that me teaching you more about the effects of the Gates on your body had no effect on your mindset about using them".</p><p>"Oh, come on, Daidao, none of us are going to live forever", Nanaba smiled before leaning over to Sugemi's side, "I bet it looked pretty cool".</p><p>"It didn't look like anything to me, I could barely even see it", Meiko pouted, crossing her arms in disappointment as well as she figured she'd have offered the technique more attention had she known about its nature and the fact that it'd be used.</p><p>"By any means, would you know what the next round is going to be like"? Kiyomi wondered, addressing the staff ninja.</p><p>"I was just about to get to that, before I was interrupted", the baldy nodded before stroking his greying black beard with his fingers. "The next stage of the exam will take place in 7 days from when the last contestant leaves that forest. From what is known to us, that'll most likely be either today or tomorrow, given how far the exam has advanced up to now. You will be contacted with further details once the second stage officially ends. It'll take place in the sports hall of Konoha High."</p><p>"Hmmm… So the people who left first will have more time to recover and train in preparation", Mana realized.</p><p>"That's right, they are the top dogs, after all. Good performance needs to be rewarded with higher chance of completing the exam", the aging man agreed before proceeding, "Seeing how right now there are confirmed more than forty eight eliminations and more than half of the genin that entered this forest have been eliminated, there'll be two more stages. The specifics of the next stage will remain a secret, however. That will be all, you are now dismissed".</p><p>"Actually there's one more thing Team Hokage may want to know", the braided brown hair kunoichi interrupted. Mana's heart started jumping multiple beats, realizing that it was likely related to her knockout. She would have liked to be eliminated differently, not just be told about it right after helping her team through the gate…</p><p>"Your sensei, Lady Fifth waited here for a while wanting to congratulate you but she said she got bored just sitting around and went away, that was two days ago. You may want to know that you'll need to contact her if you wish to make a training schedule with her, she doesn't appear to have any plans nor has she left any messages for you three".</p><p>"Sounds about right", Kiyomi rubbed her temples, she was well used to Chestnut Hanasaku's inadequacy as a mentor figure and the leader of the team.</p><p>"I suppose our next course is the Konohagakure hospital then. All of us have wounds, which will require a more skilled look". Mana sighed. The emotion was not a sigh of disappointment in the team leader, more like a sigh of relief that the exam was over.</p><p>"Yeah, then we can hit a place to eat, I'm starving"! Meiko cheered out, all wounds she may have suffered in the Forest of Death appeared to fade away whenever the prospect of good food came into picture.</p><p>Just as the Team Hokage trio gathered together, said their temporary farewells to Team Hawthorn and exchanged gratitude for help and cooperation, started walking away to enter the main road, leading back to the village, Mana felt something gnawing at her chest. Something bitter and painful, something she had to shed away or else she would never feel the same ever again. It would either eat her up alive or, one day, just stop hurting altogether, changing who she was as a person fundamentally where nothing of similar note ever hurt again.</p><p>"I… I can't go on", she muttered before rushing up to the cloaked staff ninja and repeating what she said again, this time to their curious faces.</p><p>"Do you wish to withdraw from the competition"? A more muscular and rough around the edges shinobi raised an eyebrow, lacking the capacity to believe what he was hearing right now.</p><p>"No, no such thing, but I can't be allowed to continue. I want to go on but I can't – I was eliminated but you missed it", Mana shook on her feet as she admitted it, little by little, the gnawing sensation in her chest which moved further down with every passing second began to calm and fade away, the more she spoke about what troubled her.</p><p>"If we missed it – you're in the clear", the baldy cut it short.</p><p>"B-But… I got encased in crystal and… Just a bit before I ate a food pill and my chakra was slowly growing, resulting in me being knocked out but my chakra appearing to be just fine to the sensors to the south. I was knocked out", Mana explained it in more detail.</p><p>"If you weren't eliminated, you aren't eliminated now." The braided lady repeated what the baldy said before just in different words.</p><p>"There were at least two teams that used continuous medical ninjutsu techniques to keep their knocked out members from being eliminated, one of them even inquired about it after the exam. As long as their chakra signatures never hit the elimination spot – they're in the clear", the stronger looking staff ninja added.</p><p>"Ninja are supposed to go underneath the underneath. Oftentimes finding holes in the system and tricking it is more important than being straight. Don't play your luck and pull the mean fate lady by her hair, kid. You're in the clear, don't piss me off and make me repeat it", the baldy smiled kindly before switching to a more annoyed face as he turned to watch the gate for any incoming ninja that desired to complete the exam.</p><p>"Let's go, Mana, you heard what they said", Kiyomi softly uttered close to Mana's ear.</p><p>"B-But I stole things and cheated… I shouldn't be moving on ahead", Mana pouted as she felt disappointed by the fact that she wasn't eliminated or punished in any way. Less training time, restriction from using any medical facilities, anything would have been fine than nothing.</p><p>"You're trying to rank up as a ninja – killers, cheaters and thieves are the people that move on, as long as they do it with the village's blessing", Kiyomi pulled on Mana's shoulder harder, making the wound on the other side of the magician's body resonate with painful impulses that made her twitch and grunt in pain.</p><p>"Now let's go to a medical facility, then we're going to Yakiniku Q and I'm treating"! Meiko shot her fist up into the air, jumping up in excitement.</p><p>"Do you have any money, please don't tell me you had money on you but not any medical supplies"? Kiyomi suspiciously looked at the blacksmith who then shyly rubbed her snotty nose.</p><p>"Nope, I have none"! She then admitted, "Kind of figured that the prospect of me treating would make you guys more cooperative with going out to eat, then – once I tell you I don't have any money, you'd just pay up because it'd be too late".</p><p>"I can't believe Mana felt bad about something she has ever done, you're the real supervillain"! Kiyomi cringed into her fist before jumping up on Meiko's shoulders and beginning to bash at the blacksmith's head playfully.</p><p>"The Forest of Death stage is now over", was all that Mana could think about as she looked at her playfully fighting teammates and smiled innocently, feeling the looming threat of the tests yet ahead but, for the moment, still happy about how far they've all come together.</p><hr/><p>Mana had expected the Konohagakure Hospital to be more crowded than it usually was. After all, the second stage of the Chuunin Exams had just concluded so plenty teams must have needed medical attention, both extensive and otherwise. Contrary to that belief, the hospital appeared to be just as occupied as it would have been any other day. The three girls parted ways in the endless corridors of the hospital as the receptionist signed them up to different rooms for their examination.</p><p>Not too much later, a young woman wearing the standard chuunin flak jacket and a white coat entered with a bunch of files in her hand, signalling for all waiting for check-ups to enter. Before Mana got there, there were a pair of people waiting with minor injuries. One of them appeared to have a possibly broken arm, judging from the worker's uniform he must have been a builder or an interior decorator of some sorts, it was something that Mystical Palm session would have quickly solved. Then there was the token old lady, the likes of which constantly rubbed around medical establishments for the sole purpose of being bored of retirement.</p><p>It may have seemed cruel to attribute the old lady to that archetype so soon but she didn't appear to have anything too bad going on with her and she was rather talkative and cheerful. The only person she actively avoided striking a conversation with was Mana, it may have had something to do with the fact that the magician looked like she had returned from an active war zone – covered with bruises, scratches and lousy field first aid bandaging.</p><p>Once Mana's turn came, she entered the room. The young medical ninja was quick to examine her wounds, scribbling a bunch of stuff onto the sheet of paper before handing Mana a handful of documents for the rooms she had to visit. One of them was a pharmacy for the medical food pills to aid her recovery, another one had a changing shift of medical ninja perform Mystical Palm jutsu treatments meanwhile yet another one was for Diagnosis Jutsu scans as some areas of the girl's body seemed suspicious for the medical kunoichi. She apparently did not perform any medical work herself, merely used her experience to better manage the hospital's staff and grant every villager the aid they needed. After all – if a medical ninja working their Mystical Palm ran out of chakra too early when a larger disaster struck, the consequences would be severe…</p><p>Once all the healthcare business was taken care of – something that spanned well into the later evening, Mana found Meiko and Kiyomi sitting downstairs and dangling their feet lazily in the waiting room with Meiko crunching a bunch of lollipops in a, admittedly, not too optimal way to consume the candy.</p><p>"Wow, you must've been pretty busted up, huh"? The Yamanaka smiled seeing Mana descending the stairs. She was not too far off the mark, it wasn't the severity of Mana's injuries that took this long to treat but rather the number of them. The broken arm, specifically, was a rather painful treatment as healing bone was always some of the most troublesome treatments.</p><p>"I didn't think they handed out lollipops to people your age, Meiko", Mana quickly diverted the subject, feeling a bit uncomfortable talking about the fake-out medical disaster that could've been that ended up being just a false alarm. One trouble with ninja was that they could have walked for an entire day with their vital organs busted and some of them may not have even realized it until they were actually in their dying breaths. Such was not uncommon in the world of ninja, people that could endure a very varied amount of beatings, depending on how strong and competent at chakra managing they were.</p><p>"I asked the four-eyes pretty nicely and he gave me a handful of lollipops"! Meiko smiled with strangely coloured mouth.</p><p>"Well done, you", Kiyomi stroke Meiko's hair with the redhead possibly not even realizing she was being cheeked by her teammate.</p><p>"I figured you'd be the last one to finish your business here, didn't you even go say hi to Eiju"? Mana smiled, teasing her friend.</p><p>"The Quack? Nah, my heart is eternally bound to Meiko now", Kiyomi pouted before elbowing Meiko in the back, something that the blacksmith took as an invitation to throw held back punches each other's ways, something that could not and did not end in Kiyomi's favour.</p><p>"Ummm… Okay…" Mana looked at the exit awkwardly.</p><p>"So, what now? What are you guys going to do to prepare for the next stage"? Meiko wondered with Kiyomi's head still placed in a tough headlock and with the future Yamanaka heir choking out with each passing moment.</p><p>"I don't really know. These past trials my sensory abilities would have been pretty useful. We would have taken no time at all to find Hokage-sensei during the test or any team we wanted in the forest. If only I would have had polish and control over them... My skillset is not one that requires training of speed or strength, those things are irrelevant to me. Likely I'll just try and master my sensory abilities and try to sharpen one particular ninjutsu I've been working on", the magician recalled her rough use of very unrefined lightning technique back when Team Phobos of Getsugakure attacked her.</p><p>"I know what I'm going to do, I'm gonna ask Sugemi to teach me the Gates", Meiko grinned with a shy smile as somehow admitting her week training goals made her ashamed for whatever reason.</p><p>"You don't need to be taught the gates by a special person, it's not rocket science, you know", Kiyomi squinted back at her friend before realizing she had not shared anything with the team yet. "My training is a secret, I'm going to head to the Yamanaka resort to train with the clan elders. It'll probably be a huge drag but you know what they say about pressure and diamonds…"</p><p>"What"? Meiko curiously looked at her friend, wondering if perhaps almost beheading her with the headlock caused some damage to the blood flow to the Yamanaka's brain.</p><p>"I mean… I don't really remember, but it's about pressure, diamonds and it applies to the current situation rather nicely", Kiyomi pondered before shrugging.</p><p>"Hey, Mana, you planning on doing any shows in the meantime, like the magic kind"? Meiko wondered all of a sudden.</p><p>"I do, actually. I'll be pretty busy but I'll manage putting one show up halfway through the week", the magician nodded. "Why"?</p><p>"I don't know, seeing you work out there, I just kind of wanna check out your shows, see maybe I get inspired for some new techniques or gadgets", the blacksmith smiled.</p><p>"It'll be an honor performing in front of you, although if you're interested in ideas for gadgets, you may try talking to my father. I do recall you being somewhat of a fan of his"? Mana suggested.</p><p>"Oh, that's right, you're Konoha's Great Trapster's daughter. I completely forgot that over all those wish granting boxes and everyone around trying to kick the shit out of us"! Meiko remembered all of a sudden.</p><p>"Alright then, it seems that Team Hokage is all set and has its training planned ahead. Let's get out there and work our asses off"! Kiyomi cheered on as the trio of girls stood up and walked out of the Konohagakure Hospital tired as all living hells yet healthy and ready to tackle the world in front of them… In the morning, at the very least.</p>
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<a name="section0326"><h2>326. A Requiem For The Rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chakra sensory was a rare and an incredibly valuable ability. When Mana sat down in a meditative position and relaxed her mind, reaching out for it, she felt excited about improving her control over it. It was something unlike any other skill, one could not just been train it until they had it, it had to be born with and even those with the ability within them possessed it to various degrees. Some sensors could have sensed kilometers around themselves, identified specific chakra signatures to people they have met in their lives, other peaked at rather unimpressive ranges, being barely able to sense chakra inside one room at their peak concentration.</p><p>There was never anything particularly special about Mana, even areas where she excelled such as genjutsu and prowess of martial arts focused on evasion and counterattacking solely anyone else could just train harder and match, or even walk further than the magician. Chakra sensory was different, it was something that could've made her special, valuable to any team that had her. It was new feeling, feeling of self-worth and belonging. It was an exciting feeling.</p><p>Every morning of the week Mana spent just sitting down and accessing the chakra sensory ability until it came up easier and easier. Now she no longer had to worry about a hostile team attacking her or trying to take out her friends, that certain feeling of comfort, if made more bitter by the urgency to master the ability to a useable degree within a week, made training chakra sensory simpler.</p><p>Mana had it all along, she has always seen those weird flares, those strange spacial images inside her. She just never quite knew what all of it meant before. To her it was just a flashy visualization of some mind processes, too complicated for her to understand completely. Whenever she tried meditating those same images went first, by now Mana knew that it was the Ego stage of meditation – a visual representation of her own body, beyond laid what Mana used to call the Omnes stage – now known as the chakra sensory part.</p><p>The first couple of mornings of the week there was unrest inside her body as the wounds gathered in the Forest of Death were not that quick to heal up, once Mana's chakra level shot back up to full, however, things started looking up and she finally noticed the usual spacial serenity inside of her body. Whenever she tried expanding the horizons of her mental reach outside of that pocket little universe, she entered what she now knew was chakra sensory – the ability to perceive everything else but her own self.</p><p>There were so many tests that Mana had to do every morning, testing the reach of the ability, trying to perceive the specifics of the chakra she was seeing. Trying to access the ability more easily. Mana's mother was a good representation of smaller chakra signatures, those somewhat representative of the ordinary villagers, it was useful when knowing what to filter out and exclude, so that the image was clearer and more attention could be given to the larger signatures. Konoha was full of these small signatures after all.</p><p>Initially her own father's signature scared her, it was like she was floating completely naked in this dark void, positioned right in front of a large booming star. The size of the thing was beyond anything Mana had seen before, she had sensed something similar before, but that was earlier – when she was using sensory by accident. Now that she sharpened her ability day by day, with many more days, weeks and months of training yet ahead, she was able to make out more about what previously was just a blurry massive ball of light.</p><p>With some more touch ups, with a bit of expansion of scales and zooming out, in a way, using her sensory, Mana finally managed getting used to floating in front of this chakra signature mentally. She also started feeling comfortable enough around it to feel up what made it different from others of the same size – the ninja that passed by her home on their day to day activities. Her father's star was less round, oval and squished from the side, almost like an egg in a way. The patterns of maroon colored flames that burst all over her father's star also had their own pattern. One Mana had gotten used to and memorized.</p><p>Knowing how to memorize chakra signatures thusly made it simpler for the girl to memorize new signatures. She didn't know the names of the ninja that passed by her home daily but she was beginning to remember chakra signatures and gave them names of her own making, just to help her quickly memorize and identify chakra signatures of people she'd met before. Her reach of about 30 meters still sort of annoyed Mana. She was beginning to worry that it may have been her peak and that she may have been quite an unimpressive sensor, all things considered, something that'd have made the excitement of studying this new ability of hers all the more sour.</p><p>It could not have been her limit, as the magician soon found out, with daily bashing against the "barrier", Mana felt she was expanding it. Slowly, meter by meter every day, but it was budging. Just like muscles and jutsu, it had to be refined through training. That was just fine with Mana, training was something she could do and very much liked doing. Studying this new ability kind of felt like studying history in the Konohagakure Archive, in a way. It was a very fitting replacement for that hobby, which she was currently unable to indulge in.</p><p>One of the more important tasks for Mana's chakra sensory training was to gain access to the ability easier. She couldn't have taken the time to sit down and meditate in battle every time, even if she now no longer needed minutes on end of meditation to even reach the stage, having memorized the feelings and sensations that lead to chakra sensory almost pitch perfect. It was not as tough of a thing to do, as Mana thought it would be. Chakra sensory, apparently, was always meant to be more of a different kind of sensory ability so it was not too tough to bring it out to the forefront, still, Mana usually needed to focus quite extensively to access the ability, regardless of which way she went about reaching it. It was less than needed, less than Mana was comfortable walking to battle with and relying on.</p><hr/><p>After the mornings got spent training her chakra sensory at home, during the middays, reaching to early evenings, Mana went to train in the Training Grounds. It was really tough finding completely free of people places to train seeing how now the entire collection of Training Grounds was also occupied by genin teams from different villages sharpening their skills and improving their teamwork.</p><p>It was not like the magician was that afraid of showing off, she was an entertainer to her core so she rarely struggled just training around other people or when other genin came to train at the same training grounds. Some younger ninja, preparing for their Academy graduation exams or in their early years, commonly observed older genin train as the older genin were not yet in a whole other world but they were quite awesome to see working out and often times gave ideas for one's own improvement and training.</p><p>Several days later, just like the staff ninja watching over the Forest of Death stage said it would, a letter came. It had within some more details about the next stage. It was now known that thirty two genin out of ninety six that entered the Forest of Death, excluding the two stowaway nukenin and poor Ramen Destroyer Gwido whom they tagged along, had made it to the next stage. It somehow thinned the herds quite nicely… It also made Mana feel that gut pinch of worry because she needed to pass the next stage as well, it was only in the final stage that it was determined if one would be promoted to Chuunin. Only in the final stage and it was not victory that decided the promotion but instead the commission of highly skilled ninja composed of the host village's most skilled, respected and powerful, also honorary guests from other participating villages.</p><p>The physical training in the Training Grounds required the help of Usuzoku – Mana's rabbit summon, who, strangely, despite telling her she'd never see him again, always came out whenever she used the storage seal inside her hat. It was not easy talking him into helping Mana with her training…</p><p>"Ehhh… Ferget about it"! Usuzoku grunted, crossing his arms around his chest but not dispelling himself back home.</p><p>"You said you needed strong partners, that if the name of the Ninja Rabbits is to be out there, luring really strong ninja to re-establish the partnership web between ninja and the Ninja Rabbits you need a strong face", Mana reminded the rabbit, overcoming her impulse to break down over how cute Usuzoku's pouting face was.</p><p>"Das rite! We needs dem real ninjas, not stupid Hatchlin's like you"! Usuzoku glared with one eye angrily at Mana's direction. The magician noticed a pair of new scars over the rabbit's face, while they did interest her, she figured that it was sort of par for the course for the rabbit warrior who constantly expressed his hatred for pretty much everything living and picked fights with everything moving.</p><p>"Well, if I fail this exam, which I may very well do, if this training doesn't work out, you'd not have moved forward with that seeing how I'll remain a genin", Mana argued.</p><p>"Yer just lucky I really hate yer dumb face so I'll help freein' some space of dem tooths ya got in dere", Usuzoku squinted at Mana's direction.</p><p>"You meant sparring"?</p><p>"Ehhh… Yeah, sure…" Usuzoku shrugged.</p><p>"Well, before we start training, there's something we need to recover from the Forest of Death", Mana urged her animal partner to follow her.</p><p>And that was pretty much how Mana went about tricking Usuzoku into helping her search for her wand in the Forest of Death, as well as assist the magician every midday to early evening with the more physical aspects of her training. With Usuzoku's tracking abilities, unique perspective at searching and almost dogmatic hatred for pretty much every species the rabbit and Mana encountered, finding the wand proved to be one midday's job in the emptied Forest of Death.</p><p>Training with Usuzoku was another thing entirely. The rabbit swordsman was fast, his lower body was so tense and well-trained that it appeared that he charged instantaneously as the rabbit was behind Mana before the girl even registered her opponent having moved at all. His skills with a sword must have been neat. Usuzoku constantly belittled Mana for her hand-to-hand skills and the magician quite consistently tripped up over herself but she learned to realize something in the process. Meiko and Kouta were holding back tremendously when they trained Mana, Usuzoku did no such thing and while it hurt both Mana's face and her pride to get cut up and pummeled every day, she did ultimately enjoy the fact that she was at least facing the best of someone's abilities and learning to overcome them.</p><p>"I gotta say I'm impressed, Hatchlin'", Usuzoku grumped out one day, it was a particularly successful day where his world splitting feet hadn't yet met Mana's face and his sword had never forced Mana augment her body to prevent getting disemboweled. While Usuzoku came at Mana with full intent of killing her, it made the magician feel more respected as a ninja in her own right, someone who required Usuzoku's full skillset to be taken on. It was a liberating and inspiring feeling.</p><p>"Yeah, maybe today I won't need to see a medical ninja at all", Mana smiled, closing her eyes and feeling the chilly breeze in the air. That was before she felt an alarming sensation. It felt like an unstable wayward star of massive size, surpassing that of her father's, was heading straight her way, the magician stepped back out of instinct and not perception. She was glad she did so in a moment as Usuzoku's foot blurred right past Mana's face with a push kick that would have sent a moon hurling through space like a football.</p><p>"Dat sixth sense 'a yours is pretty handy, eh"? The grumpy rabbit noted in surprise that the magician avoided his surprise attack.</p><p>It was then that Mana realized something new about her sensory. Just like Spyder-Wolf's brain struggled to keep up with controlling all six arms efficiently, hers also must've had trouble managing six senses efficiently, it could only mean that only by shutting down one of her senses could she utilize her chakra sensory in this early relatively untrained stage. It was because Mana's eyes were closed that her chakra sensory worked like a charm, unlike it ever has before. This small instance of her chakra sensory helping her out also gave Mana ideas for more practical uses for chakra sensory.</p><p>It could have been a foolproof way of tracking movements she could not track otherwise, also of seeing what her eyes and ears failed to see. Then again, Mana had over fifteen years of experience of training her eyes, it may have been way too early to dream about her chakra sensory ever surpassing Mana's eyes.</p><p>"Still, yer sensory won't be ready by da time ye'll hafta fight", Usuzoku noted strictly, the rabbit was always brutally honest with Mana and the magician knew deep inside that her sensory won't be ready by just a bit over a week later after it was discovered.</p><p>"I have an idea that'll fix that", Mana smiled before allowing Usuzoku to return to the natural Ninja Rabbit habitat. Truth be told, she had no reason to smile about her idea, seeing how rather twisted it was. The trip to the Konohagakure Hospital that day was not an easy one, the girl found her legs halting and lingering multiple times.</p><hr/><p>"Ah, training injuries again"? The medical ninja seeing Mana's injuries, a middle aged, frail man with intensely thick glasses, wondered. "I do see a rather unpleasant overtraining experience in your record, I would've hoped it'd have taught you something". It was not even remotely the first time Mana saw that particular medical ninja that week in the afternoon check-up.</p><p>"I need you to disable my sense of smell", Mana shot directly to the point.</p><p>"Any particular reason"? The medical ninja removed and cleaned his glasses after closing the relatively small file containing Mana's medical records. "You have to understand, you are pushing yourself way too far with a recorded incident of overtraining. Then you come out with such an odd request… Your mental state has to be put into question. It'd be an easy procedure to perform, possible to reverse, still, unless there's a valid reason there's no way I'll authorize it".</p><p>"I've recently uncovered chakra sensory abilities inside me. I'm training them but they won't be ready to the degree I need them to be by the next stage of the Exams. I need to kill another sense to replace chakra sensory with it and alleviate the process for the brain to deal with. Smell is by far my least potent sense", Mana tried to put her decision into words but still the realization of how silly it all sounded had not escaped her notice.</p><p>"If that is the case, you may pick a stronger sense, like your vision, it'd instantly shock your brain into accepting sensory as the default sense. You've studied history, haven't you"? The medical ninja realized with a sly smile referencing an old practice of Kirigakure ninja administration of blinding their less potent sensors to make their access to chakra sensory easier as well as make them more accustomed and comfortable with the ability. It also made them immune to vision-based genjutsu as an added bonus.</p><p>"That'd be an overkill. Vision is integral to my taijutsu style, smell will be enough", Mana submissively looked down.</p><p>Being injected with the chemicals that were supposed to burn off Mana's nerves was profoundly painful. Despite being warned ahead of time it'd be, the magician still jumped up and began clawing at the back of her head like a madwoman. After a several seconds lasting boom of pain, followed by aches that persisted for a little bit longer, echoes of the burning feeling from before, Mana realized that there was only blandness to the sense she once took for granted.</p><p>"It is likely that chakra sensory will be automatically adjusted by your brain to compensate for the missing sense. Or, if that doesn't happen, you may need a little bit encouraging to make it work, how familiar are you with meditation"? The medical ninja asked after a whole series of questions about how Mana was feeling after the procedure.</p><p>The question honestly made the magician laugh.</p><p>"Just know that the longer you delay restoring the sense, the lesser the odds of the procedure succeeding and the percentage of your scent returning. The nerves can still be restored, recent advances in medical ninjutsu and technology are astounding, but only to a point", the ninja advised Mana but had she any doubts about going to these lengths she'd have not been allowed to even undergo the procedure. It wasn't like Mana would backtrack the progress and the sacrifice she'd made, for her – this was for good.</p><p>"I feel a little bad about this", the geeky looking medical ninja admitted, stroking the back of his messy, shoulder length, greasy, brown hair. "The Bloody Mist is a poor example to follow, it may be my license that pays the price".</p><p>"It's fine, you've helped me a great deal. I'll owe you if I rank up to chuunin", Mana smiled like she always did to her audience during the show, the carefree, bubblegum-pink smile of an entertainer. The only thing that scared Mana was her own indifference to the matter, she felt like she had conned nature itself that day to accelerate her growth. It felt nothing like she had just given up on a sense she used to have since childhood.</p><p>"I can only hope it won't affect Konoha Sorceress' magic shows", the medical ninja said for a farewell.</p><p>The world that greeted Mana outside the hospital was a strangely bland and somewhat depressing one. Droplets of rain were tumbling down from the dark and cloudy evening sky of the cold season. Mana remembered loving the rain, absolutely adoring it. The most ravishing part of it was the rainfall itself, seeing the frozen in time drops of rainfall showering everything and washing it all, coloring the surroundings in brand new, fresh colors. Another part of it, however, was the smells: nothing quite beat smelling the pines, oaks, birches and the cherry trees after a good summer downpour.</p><p>Nevermore.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0327"><h2>327. Tales Of A Ninja Magician Annual No 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Huh? A mission"? Mana stared for a moment at the closed, thin, blue file positioned on the Sixth's desk in front of her.</p><p>"Is there a problem, Nakotsumi Mana"? Lord Hokage's assistant, a lovely young woman, short of stature but compensating her lack of height with massive curly pile of dark hair, asked.</p><p>Mana quickly grabbed the file off the desk, swiftly flipping the four or five pages through, letting her eyes absorb the most basic information. She needed a reply, seeing as the magician was already not at the greatest of odds with the Sixth with the few encounters she had with the man, her reply needed to make sense as well.</p><p>"Well… I just hoped I'd have the week to train and prepare for the next stage of the Chuunin Exams", Mana shrugged, scolding herself for sounding so unsure of her reply. To her it made perfect sense – it was simply unfair to give her a mission and hold her back from her training, compared to the other contestants.</p><p>"It isn't a difficult mission, a D-Rank, if you caught that fact while you skimmed the file. It'll only take you one night to complete. It's also very important, despite being relatively simple. We figured we'd give it to our most handy genin asset – the Golden Child. That's what you are, isn't it? Handy", Lord Sixth sighed before explaining the mission to Mana. "That being said, you are in a position to decline the mission, due to the ongoing Chuunin Exams. It'd be troublesome for our administration to find a fitting replacement for you but…"</p><p>"It's fine, I'll do it", Mana bowed submissively before picking up the file, bowing again for a permission to leave the office and left. She needed this, a chance to please Lord Sixth and maybe earn more of his trust and respect. Judging from certain remarks in her past, his stance on Mana has softened slightly in the past, as a man with history working for a special department of ANBU, Sixth was impressed by Mana's performance fighting off the Imarizu in the whole Kiyomi's marriage affair. This could build something on top of that…</p><p>Mana had disappointed enough of her mentor figures and superiors to know how much it hurt and to earn some trust points with menial jobs like this, jobs where she did not need to compromise or choose between sacrificing her own ideals or the mission objective, was simple enough. Being the upmost authority on herself, Mana knew all too well, which one of the two she'd more likely sacrifice. She needed this, this menial job of…</p><p>"Babysitting", Mana sighed after checking the file again and sighing. "An experienced C+ Rank ninja is needed for babysitting". Yet when the magician noticed a question mark scribbled by the mission rank tab she realized that there may have been more to this baby-sitting mission than she thought there being before.</p><p>Question marks, such as that one, usually meant that the mission had an "unofficial" rank. It had a "question mark", a questionable aspect to it, which, technically, should have raised the rank of the mission but it wasn't solid enough to actually do so. All missions were graded accordingly with the universal ranking scale, agreed on by the five Feudal Lords. If a mission was graded freely, every village would simply rate all of their babysitting, and others of the sort, missions as being S-Rank simply for the bragging rights and looking better in front of the clients. "Question mark" missions were an iffy legal loophole but they were sort of an unwritten rule, not even one taught about in the Academy, Mana learned about that solely from her own job experience.</p><p>Feeling slightly intrigued, Mana rushed home to re-check her supplies and prepare for a possible combat scenario, something she didn't expect she'd need to do when she departed to answer the Administration's call in the early noon. There must've been a reason why Sixth chose a C+ Rank ninja like Mana, beyond the abilities of a genin but not yet consistently competing with the B-Rank chuunin ninja in skill, experience, knowledge and power. Mana would have been wise not to look down on this mission, it may have yet proved to be nice practical training for her after all…</p><p>After preparing and explaining the whole ordeal to her father, before the man left to buy more pain-killing herbs from the market for his arm wounds, Mana dashed through the door and rushed away to the north-eastern district of the village, one of the more illustrious and high-class districts. Various well-known public figures, heads of ninja clans, Ninja Council members, businessmen and "thieves within the law" like Hanada Katsuo lived in this district. It was nothing but fancy gardens, sophisticated lawns, mansions and smells of cherry tree rings. Obviously, the last one remained unexperienced in the present case, both because of the cold season and Mana's recently lost sense of smell.</p><p>"Oh, Konoha's Sorceress, were you invited to perform privately tonight"? A private bodyguard lifted his shades in surprise of seeing a rather well known entertainer asking for entry. Mana simply flashed her forehead protector to the brutish looking muscle and was granted entry.</p><p>"Is there anything wrong with the young master, is he in any danger"? Mana wondered, usually bodyguards would have known a less loaded with bullshit version of the story, seeing how they were down in the trenches every night.</p><p>"Not necessarily. It's not gonna be a tough job, Sorceress-chan, the brat doesn't really do anything but play his stupid game through the evenings. It's just that Tomoko-san is a pretty wealthy businessman and recently he's denied a business proposition to the one man one doesn't piss off – Hanada Katsuo. Obviously he is a criminal by reputation only and the Konoha Police Force has nothing on him so officially the mission can't be ranked any higher…"</p><p>"But the young master may need protection for a short while", Mana realized. She most of all people knew the dangers of ticking off Hanada Katsuo, she once saved his life which sort of bought her more luxury when dealing with the man than most were offered but then her team went ahead and crossed that favor off of the girl's file when Sugemi attacked the man once. It was safe to assume that there would be no reasoning with Katsuo's people, luckily, at this point, Mana was far outside their league.</p><p>"Exactly, anyways, that's your job. Just watch the kid play that game of his and keep your ears sharp and wide – it's likely we'll be taken out before you need to step in. Protecting the premises is our job and we've been doing it for a pretty long time", the bodyguard smiled confidently before showing off his strong and muscular arms.</p><p>"I'll leave you to it then, sir", Mana nodded before proceeding into the main guest room and going up the stairs to the youngster's room, just like instructed by the bodyguard during the mansion tour. She was no common babysitter and seeing how she needed not explain that to the bodyguards she was shown possible choke points, points of entry, panic rooms, introduction with all of the maids and house staff working for Tomoko – her client and pretty much every safety detail she needed to know about. Young Sayaki was now entirely in Mana's hands.</p><p>When Mana opened the door to Sayaki's room, after knocking softly on his door, the young one was working on a black scroll littered with odd patterns of glowing bright blue. The boy was so occupied with this little activity that his cheeks were spotted with and brushed with paint, so were his hands and the sleeves of his expensive and pressed and well-ironed formal white shirt.</p><p>The little one curiously tilted his oversized for his small body head and his murky green eyes stabbed with a curious glare at Mana's direction. The light brown haired young body picked himself off the ground in a very clumsy manner, fixing his black shorts and suspenders before bowing politely, stuffing his little round chin into a rather excessively sized bowtie.</p><p>"My name is Sayaki, ma'am, pleased to meet you"! He read almost like it was written on a cue card in a textbook monotone, yet it sounded genuine enough for Mana to take it that there was no malice in the boy's voice or intentions. It must simply not have been his first time being babysit by someone from outside the house staff. "Ah! I know you, you're all over those posters"! Sayaki exclaimed in surprise, which was delivered much more excitedly.</p><p>"My name is Nakotsumi Mana, young master, I also perform as a stage magician under the stage name of Konoha's Sorceress", Mana bowed introducing herself, "I'll be watching over you tonight".</p><p>"Whaaaah, you're so formal"! Sayaki blushed rubbing his little cheeks shyly, "Could you please address me by my name, Mana-san"!? He wondered.</p><p>"Very well, Sayaki-san, if that would please you", Mana nodded. "I take my job rather seriously so I do have trouble with familiarity, please take it as a sign of your assured safety and not hostility".</p><p>"I'm eight year old, please talk to me accordingly, ma'am, if possible", the little wonder just glared at Mana with his massively curious eyes before returning to his brushing at the scroll. "I hope you didn't prepare a routine or anything today, I was planning to play Yokai Mash tonight, like every night so I doubt I'll be a very responsive audience member, Mana-san".</p><p>"Ummm… Yokai Mash"? The magician tilted her head to the side curiously before taking one-step closer to see what exactly the kid was drawing on that scroll. It certainly was no sealing hieroglyphs – those were already drawn onto the scroll. The boy was signing something that from the bottom up appeared as the spelling of his name whereas the second line looked like words and numbers written in seemingly random combination, still in the process of being completed.</p><p>"Yeah, it's a dimension game, haven't you heard of it"? The eight year old yelled out excitedly like he was talking about his life's dream.</p><p>"The only games I know of are the games played by kids outside with rag balls and carved wooden weapons and those handheld "video games", I don't think I've heard of any "dimension games" though", Mana shrugged curiously after walking behind the eight year old and observing his drawing in closer detail.</p><p>"Want me to show it to you"? Sayaki exclaimed out loud.</p><p>"I'm not sure I even want you playing it just yet, let's take baby steps while I decide if it's what's best for your safety, Sayaki-san", Mana strictly crossed her arms around her chest. With her experience with inter-universal travel, the last thing she wanted was anything to do with any "dimensions".</p><p>"I suppose you'll want to come with me then"? Sayaki pondered as if something about another person playing this Yokai Mash game was some sort of a problem.</p><p>"I-I'm not entirely sure what I'm signing up for, honestly. I'd appreciate if you ran this thing down by me first, Sayaki-san", Mana insisted as her foot began to tap impatiently and she realized that she was liking this idea less and less with each passing moment. "You can begin by telling me what these "dimensional games" are and what exactly Yokai Mash is".</p><p>"Well… You know how there are these bland black and white handheld video games? Dimensional games are sort of similar to them, except they take place inside of a pocket dimension and they require limited interaction from your part, you don't control a character, you play it yourself", Sayaki explained, waving hilariously with his small and fragile child's arms.</p><p>"Pocket dimensions? Like the ones used for sealing techniques to store their content"? Mana looked up in confusion. She had seen these "video games" that Sayaki mentioned before, in fact, she brought a sample of them from Naruto and Sasuke's universe. These dimensional games must have functioned similarly… By the time Mana's eyes moved back at the young one she had to babysit while he sealed parts of his self in a pocket dimension had placed an open empty scroll, identical to the one he himself was brushing on.</p><p>"You first need to register yourself by drawing blood and signing with it", the dirty faced kid cheeked at Mana before resuming his sloppy attempt at calligraphy.</p><p>"Like the summoning contract"? Mana recalled, this dimensional game had a lot of basis in ninjutsu and sealing techniques.</p><p>From what Mana's uninitiated mind could gather, these "dimensional games" utilized a somewhat confusing concept from Sealing Ninjutsu. The world that the people perceived was only a three dimensional one, however more dimensions existed, they were simply unperceivable to the common limited senses. Just like a seemingly infinite number of different universes existed in the vast realm of the Omniverse, a seemingly infinite number of different dimensions existed in each separate universe.</p><p>Whenever a seal user utilized a storage sealing technique or needed to transport anything through space-time, they utilized these pocket dimensions. Each person possessed a different dimension of their own, which was why items and chakra sealed away never interacted with one another. Mana couldn't tell how exactly each person gained access to a different pocket dimension of their own for their sealing techniques, it was simply how it worked, one of the plenty things something the limited science of the Ninja World had not yet discovered.</p><p>This scroll that Sayaki was brushing on must've "registered" each user to the same dimension so that they weren't all sealed away in their own personal dimensions. That much Mana's mind could wrap itself around, it was no demonic ritual, if such things even existed. Realizing that she could somewhat wrap her head around the science of Yokai Mash calmed her a little bit and she quickly bit her thumb drawing blood and scribbling her name with blinding speed on the black and bright blue scroll.</p><p>"Wow, you're so fast, Mana-san"! Sayaki yelled out in surprise after seeing how fast and how easily Mana drew her blood and scribbled, with perfect precision and artistic integrity, her name onto the scroll. "You also need your "password", it's a unique symbol that you are identified by and it validates that you are the one who's joining in. I'm not quite sure why it's needed but… It's a hassle to write, I'll tell you that much", Sayaki whined as he finally completed his own password and sat down on the ground calmly. His eyes stared blankly at the wall in front of him which weirded Mana out.</p><p>"Hey, Sayaki-san"! She shouted, gently placing her hand on the boy's shoulder and moving him around a bit, yet failing to achieve anything fruitful as the boy's senseless body just kept on staring at the wall.</p><p>"Babysit the kid they said…" Mana cursed after she scribbled a hieroglyph she chose for a password onto the scroll before sitting down like Sayaki did previously.</p><p>Being sent to the Yokai Mash dimension felt similar to falling asleep, one's eyes became blurry before the entire body started falling forward, except, whereas normally the body woke up after feeling freefall, logging into Yokai Mash was completely out of Mana's control as what appeared like her "soul" seeped out of her body. For a moment, the magician could see her body sitting calmly in a meditative position, left behind staring at the wall. Then, in a flash, the procedure just completed itself resolving the transfer.</p><hr/><p>"Ha ha, you actually logged in"! Sayaki chuckled before falling down on the grass and rolling in it.</p><p>Almost instantly after her senses started feeling the environment around her, Mana felt the warm embrace of sunlight touching her cheeks gently, the soft journey of the wind caressing her hair and the bright visions of spring just outside a small village.</p><p>"Hold your horses, young master, I'm only here to bail you out if I don't like this and think it's not something you should be doing. These pocket dimensions aren't meant to store people, their conditions are varied, some of them are hotter than anything in the known universe and most of them have intense gravitational forces as the entire universe is compressed into a space about as large as a moon. They aren't places young boys should visit"! Mana freaked out as she explored this dream and her own body, trying to see if she had not accidentally lost a limb in the journey.</p><p>"You worry too much, Mana-san! My dad wouldn't have bought the company that made this game if it wasn't safe for the public. Granted, it's pretty expensive so there aren't that many people playing it but… Maybe soon enough"! Sayaki's eyes were shimmering like planets made of literal diamond in close proximity to the brightest star imaginable. The eyes that were an equivalent of the galactic disco ball.</p><p>"How is this even possible, are our bodies safe? What if you want to eat or go to the toilet? I recommend you log out immediately and maybe invite some friends over, do something safer. As a ninja with knowledge of these dimensions I cannot condone this reckless game", Mana calmly asked Sayaki.</p><p>"Relax, the scroll only seals part of you in this dimension, it keeps just enough of you back home so that the sealed off consciousness can easily log out and return. Your body back home is in a state of deep sleep and does not require food, water, rest or anything else. You could stay here for entire days on end before you'd need to return to recharge the scroll with the universal chakra batteries", Sayaki laughed out seeing Mana's horror to being trapped in an interdimensional game world. If there was any irony to be found, that a skilled illusionist feared this transcendental entertainment, it was certainly not the first thing on Mana's mind.</p><p>"So it needs to be recharged? What if it runs out and you stay here forever? There are so many things that could go wrong! How is this even possible? There are entire villages stored here and… What the hell is THAT?" Mana shrieked out pointing at a duck-like critter drinking from a pond nearby. The creature was sluggish in its appearance, bony protrusions for eyebrows yet it took a humanoid shape. Antennae and a duck's beak were also added to make this abomination even more confusing to look at.</p><p>"Can we just… Slow down, Mana-san. Please, this is a part of my life, I love this game so… Please… Give me a chance to convince you, OK"? Sayaki pleaded with Mana, grabbing her hand and placing it by his chest as he stared at her with puppy eyes and a slobbering miserable expression of a crying child. Seeing that face was a weakness Mana had never encountered before, such a person would convince her of almost anything.</p><p>A group of more of those duck-like critters burst out from the reed surrounding the pond and pulled the green slimy looking duck-creature underwater. Initially a burst of bubbles came up from all of those diving monstrosities before the water resumed its calm. Mana could identify the behavior of a surprise-attacking predator anywhere – they were predatory creatures like the crocodiles of Kumogakure and other warm swampy areas. This place was beyond dangerous!</p><p>"So… First, you wanted to know… Ummm… Oh, right, yes, the scroll needs to be recharged once in a couple of days. If it comes close to running out of chakra, it simply logs you out automatically before it goes empty. You also needn't worry about this place being dangerous, no harm can come to your physical body inside this dimension as you're existing both in this dimension and outside it, there are few exceptions of physical discomfort purely for realistic effect, that is all. Any attacks from these Yokai will simply phase right through you and leave no harm. You exist both here and back home, but your body back home can actually be touched physically, if needed. Then again, if you're getting murdered in the physical world – it's the same thing if you're here or there". Sayaki kept on explaining, counting things on his fingers and skimming through a peculiar leather bound booklet. One he held by his side, the book just appeared to materialize whenever Sayaki scribbled things into the scroll he used to transport himself here.</p><p>"I don't think it's safe for us to be doing this, I'm supposed to be protecting you from possible harm", Mana argued.</p><p>"Our outside bodies remain in a limited state of awareness, if your stress level rises even a little bit on the outside, you'll immediately be logged out", Sayaki calmed the magician down again.</p><p>Mana sighed, "You are breaking the rules of reality to play a different kind of video game…" she couldn't stop staring at her own body and the environment around her. It was no genjutsu – all the details were emulated properly, there were no missing links, this was no dream. All these buildings, natural wonders and all this nature was actually sealed here from back home.</p><p>"This world is crafted by developers, they seal different things they want to create in here, editing this dimension to their will. They cooperate with the Senju clan to create new trees to seal here, with actual architects that build these villages and real ninja that create these pools of water and Sealing Ninjutsu experts to assist them". Sayaki kept on talking as he showed Mana around with gestures, pointing at where they needed to go and dragging her hesitant body by gently yanking her hand. He was so happy, so excited that Mana broke out of her mental breakdown just to admire the happiness that this game granted this young boy.</p><p>"Okay, let's say I believe that this place is safe, still… Those things back there"? Mana shook her head, keeping her eyes on the calm dirty pond where those duck-like creatures hid themselves. Their short round bodies looked too bulky and fat for them to move that fast, their legs were almost non-existent and absorbed within the layers of fat of their bellies with only their flat long feet being visible from outside.</p><p>"Oh, those were Kappa, they are the Yokai around which Yokai Mash revolves. You're supposed to seal them inside these scrolls and carry around with you", Sayaki grinned as he showed Mana five scrolls that just materialized from thin air in his hands.</p><p>"Like Ninja Animals…" Mana wondered aloud realizing that so much of this game was just emulation of the ninja life, the supernatural, which must've astounded people unfamiliar with the completely bonkers things that ninja called their everyday life. "You know, with enough will and training, you could learn to tame real Ninja Animals. They're not very nice to beginners but they don't require existing in between two different dimensions to summon. It's still not too late to go back, invite some friends over and…"</p><p>"I have no friends…" Sayaki sniffled. "I'm not sure why but other kids laugh at me, they tell me I'm weak, tease me with their pets and bully me".</p><p>"I see…", Mana sunk deep in thought. There was no way in which she could have helped this young man at that moment. Not without changing the world and making it stop value strength over all things. It could not have been just that Sayaki was frail, short and all those other things. It was his father – the other kids knew who his father was and must have been jealous of life where strength was not needed and money could buy everything he ever wanted, without asking first if that even was Sayaki's life.</p><p>Sayaki's family was rich, by all means, that placed them as being more important than those of all those other kids. The kids were frustrated and angry at Sayaki because of that but they were too young to delve into themselves and realize that. Such social frustration was not something a few mean pointing fingers or cheerful words would change. This world was the only happiness that Sayaki got, he interacted with other players, of similar social status of his and he was powerful inside this world – he could befriend any creature in his sight, talk and trade with any person he saw because the other people played the same game and it was within their interest to do so.</p><p>"Fine, we'll play your game for as long as you want, Sayaki", Mana dropped the honorific, finally stepping over her dislike of familiarity just to show Sayaki that she was her friend and not just his baby sitter or someone obligated to play with him. Mana rarely, if ever, broke her own rules and principles, it was one of her greatest weaknesses, but when these eyes of a crying child begged her to do it – she would do it a hundred times over.</p><p>"Yes! You'll see, Mana, this game is awesome! One day video games will maybe get better and catch up to this technology, then no one will need to seal themselves in between dimensions to have fun. I know that'll happen, I'll make this world a reality even if I'll have to build it myself"! Young Sayaki declared vibrantly raising his fist into the sky.</p><p>Smiling softly, Mana knelt before the boy before taking his other hand, clutching it into a fist and placing it by his chest.</p><p>"That's your nindo then. Your Ninja Way", she uttered.</p><p>Sayaki nodded with glowing eyes and a shimmering childish smile. One of the most beautiful kinds of smiles there was.</p><hr/><p>"Come on"! Sayaki encouraged Mana to hurry up.</p><p>"What's the rush"? The magician just pouted shyly in hesitation. Just now she realized that she may have simply been too conservative and stubborn about feeling bad about Yokai Mash. It was something that made her feel almost old.</p><p>"You need to get a Yokai of your own, that's why I added the transportation to the starting town command before logging in", Sayaki grinned, brimming with hope and excitement. It almost seemed like this boy discovered life all anew inside the Yokai Mash world. Seeing him this way, in contrast to the shy and reserved state he operated outside of it was a refreshing experience, which almost made Mana relive the excitement of discovering new rules about the world around her, almost like she herself was a child.</p><p>"Wait, what"? Mana freaked out, "Oh no, I don't need a Yokai, I'll have nothing to do with emulating this cock fighting, for your information, I happen to despise needless violence"!</p><p>"Hmm?" Sayaki squinted at Mana before skipping to the pond where all the Kappa were hiding and opening his scroll. Much to Mana's shock and fear for Sayaki's well-being, four of the Kappa dove out like ravenous predators, flying straight at the boy before they froze in time and just carefully landed on their webbed feet, simply moving around in a static stance as if they were moving to a very slow and calm rhythm.</p><p>"You"! Mana wanted to yell out her worries about Sayaki getting hurt but then she remembered that no one could have gotten hurt in Yokai Mash. "Do you plan to murder these creatures just to make a point? You don't need to do that"!</p><p>"Yokai Mash isn't about fighting, also, you must play it – you'll need Yokai to pass some farther away areas, which you'll need if you plan on following me", Sayaki stared at Mana with those eyes that children usually looked at their elders that had no idea what they were talking about. "You know, for someone who supposedly hates violence, you really jumped to violent conclusions".</p><p>Mana looked away with a blush, feeling ashamed that she was put down by this boy with such accuracy and sharpness that it almost hurt. Children often were the ones with the ability to be painfully honest, yet Sayaki also had this spark of intelligence on top of that as well.</p><p>"W-Well then, what's it about"? Mana mumbled, still ashamed.</p><p>As the opened scroll in Sayaki's hands started shining with a blinding azure flashing light, the boy's glare just softened while still focused at Mana's eyes.</p><p>"It's a dance-off, silly", the little one grinned.</p><p>The light fired off from Sayaki's scroll, booming in a bolt of what appeared like azure lightning before blasting an area right in front of him. As it expanded in size and demonstrated the massive power required to unseal these "Yokai" from their scrolls, the beam started taking humanoid shape. That of a tall young woman, that wearing a white attire which miko priestesses wore when performing Shinto rituals. The curious case was that the woman had the face of a sly fox with dark grey fur yet her eyes were oddly human and oozing spirituality and innocence from the blue shine.</p><p>"Miko Kudagitsune, use the Kagura dance on all four Kappa, one at a time"! Sayaki ordered the strange humanoid and it complied, beginning to twitch initially before breaking out in a ritualistic dance as she knocked her ringed staff around at an imaginary circle altar around her, igniting floating tongues of flame, almost like she was lighting up invisible candles on the ground of which only the flaming tip was visible. Unexpectedly, a strong gust of wind picked up, blowing a shower of black cherry blossom petals at the way of the four Kappa creatures and making them stop moving and cover up their faces and bodies from the strong storm of petals pelting at them.</p><p>A peculiar case of this whole affair was that a floating table appeared besides this "Miko Kudagitsune" creature with numbers shooting up from zero, counting up an unknown number, as if estimating something. At the same time, at the diagonal upper right side of each Kappa, another table appeared displaying a number that was shooting down. After the numbers above the heads of each Kappa hit 0, they fell on their knees and punched the ground, freezing in that state for a while, before diving back down to their lairs in the pool of dirty water.</p><p>"Okay…" Mana muttered to herself. She struggled to find an answer as to if this was the weirdest day of her life, having in mind that she once travelled through different universes and faced inter-universal, eight thousand years old, hi-tech, godlike travelers, the answer should've been much clearer than it actually was.</p><p>"See, just an innocent dance-off, their Footsies got reduced to 0, meaning they lost the dance-off. They didn't even get to dance though, that's because they're the starting fodder for weak players to step their dancing skills up and get their feet loose". Sayaki smiled innocently through the whole explanation process, causing Mana to notice an innocent blush on the boy's cheeks as well. He must have realized how boastful he sounded and was a little ashamed of it in front of his new friend.</p><hr/><p>"Okay, baby steps now", Sayaki sat down on the soft and emerald-green grass of the Tatami town, the starting town of all new Yokai Mashers. "Those Kappa like to band in gangs, you may wish to challenge someone weaker and smaller than that, like the Tofu Kozo that come out in the evenings".</p><p>Mana glared at the scroll she was given by a weird priest man inside Tatami town in a complicated process where she had to listen to a bunch of different Yokai talk over one another in what Sayaki called "an event" and listen about the rich lore of Yokai Mash. While the historian inside Mana was sort of interested, she sort of blacked out after the story got to Kusaguyagi, apparently the Goddess of this world, being betrayed by her third betrothed in that one event and Mana could swear that coma and evil twins were weaved in into the story at one point.</p><p>"Hey, what are you doing"? The boy jumped back on his feet and ran up to Mana, grabbing her by the elbow and starting to drag her away from her calm attempt at reading the massive "Instructions" tome she was given.</p><p>"What"? Mana looked at the boy confused, at this point she invested so much of time into Yokai Mash that she wanted to actually at least play it with Sayaki until he had to log off and go to bed. "These look important"!</p><p>"Throw away the damned book, Mana"! Sayaki laughed out after angrily jumping in the air to swipe at the magician's book, making it dematerialize into some sort of blue glowing cubes and scatter in the wind like dandelion fluff.</p><p>"But the IVth tome of "Terms and Conditions" said it's necessary to read the rules and section 3659 said that I am responsible for not reading through the instructions and that I answer for breaking the rules", Mana pouted as she objected.</p><p>"What!? You read the "Terms and Conditions" too!?" Sayaki's jaw dropped in horror before he broke out in laughter and started rolling on the ground, his hand never dropped down from pointing and Mana and laughing at her humiliation, one Mana did not quite understand. "No one reads those, the only learning experience is actually playing the game. Experience it, instead of reading about it"!</p><p>"Ummm, okay… How though"? She squinted at the boy before her eyes opened up and realized something – Sayaki was not using the honorific when addressing her for some time now. He must have finally actually considered Mana as an actual friend and she was not even the part of Yokai Mash rich arsenal of characters or that more technical term which Sayaki used to describe them, an acronym which now evaded Mana's memory. That gave the girl hope that the little boy may just find friends in life from wider circles and that all he needed was unifying experiences and relatability.</p><p>"Just run into the Aggro-Range of a Yokai, then, when its attention is focused on you – open up the scroll", Sayaki explained.</p><p>Looking around frantically for these "Tofu Kozo" was quite easy now that Mana has acquired all of the "elements of the interface" through a tedious "event quest" which involved listening to long explanations of what they all meant and saw the names of each Yokai floating above their heads.</p><p>Finding one of them, the ghostly purple bloated child figures, carrying a plate of tofu and moaning like the unholy undead as they shuffled the outside regions of Tatami town, Mana ran up to the dressed as a rice farmer Yokai and upon meeting its gaze opened the scroll. Beaming light fired off from Mana's scroll, firing off in the air and taking shape right in front of her.</p><p>An attractive young woman, wearing celebratory kimono and with majestically well-done hair, singing melodious tunes appeared from the beam of light as she danced around, flowing freely like water yet remaining static.</p><p>"This is your Yokai, you can see her name, right? To the right is her base Mairyoku – it's sort of the scale for how awesome your Yokai's dance is", Sayaki pointed at the attractive young woman. Somehow, Mana felt like she failed to see the "monster" part of the strange Yokai she received and to her it seemed like just another attractive young lady.</p><p>"Alright, Iyaya, you've got the Mairyoku of… 3", Mana rolled her eyes after remembering a much larger number on Sayaki's Yokai scale.</p><p>"Okay, now, order it to dance, pick one of its dances from the list… Oh, wait, it appears your opponent has looser feet than you", Sayaki gasped looking first with surprise and moderate horror at the Tofu Kozo, then with pathetic pity at Mana's Yokai. That could not have been a good sign.</p><p>"What does that mean"? Mana wondered loudly after the boy did not reply for a prolonged time and continued to pity the magician for her poor choice of beginner Yokai. He appeared genuinely surprised by this experience so it did not look like he knew about weaker stats of Mana's creature.</p><p>"It means it'll perform its dance first, it'll probably also use its step-up too, it's a hidden ability that each Yokai possesses that adds to the dances they use or raise their Mairyoku together with the dancing multiplier. Some step-ups can even be used by other Yokai you possess in the middle of battle to help your dancing Yokai", the boy explained, Mana was almost impressed by how much complex terminology came out of the youth's mouth. During that age, Mana may have been studying the ways of ninjutsu, and how to kill the enemy more efficiently, however, plenty of kids still ate boogers being of that same age.</p><p>The Tofu Kozo started to slowly walk up to Mana's Iyaya, extending its hands forward and suggesting the rotten-green colored tofu it carried around with it, all while laxly hopping to its right and left feet, this counted as "dancing" only by a very strict definition of the word. As it initiated this odd "step-up", a sign with the words of "Monstrous Tofu Swindler" appeared above Kozo's head. Mana extended her hand at the direction of the name, just like she still managed to read in the "Instructions" book to request an explanation.</p><p>"Offer the other Yokai tofu which has gone bad a century ago and carries terrible poison reducing their Mairyoku greatly and diminishing their ability to dance "wide-feet" type dances"</p><p>Mana looked with a sorry look at her measly weakling of a Yokai as it turned around and tried accepting the poisonous and rotten tofu from the undead swindler boy, she almost felt bad about the massive fit of stomach problems that were about to attack her illusionary and non-existent pet monster. Maybe it was her human appearance. It was then that Tofu Kozo froze in fear and its eyes became wide whited out circles as its jaw dropped to the ground as foam started dripping from the boyish Yokai's mouth and its whole body began shaking.</p><p>The sign with flashing hieroglyphs spelling "No Way!" appeared above Iyaya's head which Mana also requested explanation on with her gesture.</p><p>"Upon being targeted by a step-up, Iyaya will reveal its face, diminishing the Mairyoku of any "male", or any of this type's sub-types, Yokai. This step-up becomes "No Way! Uh-Oh!" after Sapphire Dance Revolution"</p><p>With her disbelieving face still twitching in misery, Mana lifted it to see the reflection of Iyaya's face from the nearby pond, where the Kappa laid dormant and waiting for someone to come close enough to catch their attention. A wrinkly and abhorrent face of an old twisted man stared back at Mana, making her stomach churn.</p><p>"Okay, use the "Surprise, Traveler!" dance", Mana uttered, knowing full well that she'd regret asking Iyaya to do it. Even while she purposefully avoided looking at the pond to see just what sort of terrible grimace her abominable Yokai performed as it danced, Mana could still make out its massive, filled with warts tongue flipping about as it performed a relatively harmless and pretty native dance.</p><p>"Multiplier X10" a table above Iyaya's head stated before these words and numbers became one with its Mairyoku table, making the Mairyoku rise to 30. At the same time the Mairyoku of Tofu Kozo remained at 1, after being dropped down by Iyaya's step-up ability previously.</p><p>Circling around the tired Tofu Kozo's frame, Sayaki rushed up to Mana, laughing vibrantly as Iyaya returned to Mana's scroll and, despite it being the other Yokai that had to endure this terrible dance-off, the magician felt somehow violated by this experience.</p><p>"That was amazing, Mana, I've never seen this Yokai before"! Sayaki laughed out before grabbing Mana's hand and starting to drag her somewhere else.</p><p>"Say… Not that I regret my choice of starting Yokai but… How do players change their Yokai"? Mana wondered, clearly regretting her choice of starting Yokai.</p><p>"Oh, that's simple, each Yokai has a determined Mairyoku Standing Ovation value. Once you meet that value with your Yokai's dancing, or surpass it, you approach the defeated Yokai and ask it to join your Magic Hike by materializing a free scroll. It then is rented out and hikes with you until it is claimed by another player in Player VS Player dance-off or until you send it to reserve when another Yokai takes its place in the hike".</p><p>"Sounds like a hassle", the magician pouted before checking the Standing Ovation value, written under the SOV acronym by the submitted Yokai.</p><p>"Well, this whole game will improve, it's a work in progress. My father's sinking money into it, you know, financing like that will make this game really awesome one day, even more so than it already is"! Sayaki fell down on his back and played with the grass that shifted between his fingers of his extended arms.</p><p>"Look, little one, you seem like a really weird and weak Yokai but… That's pretty much my specialty and the only kind I can get an ovation from, your SOV appears to literally be 1, please join my Magic Hike", plenty of people she knew would've thought the name of the select five Yokai of the player's party was odd. That being said, Mana herself was quite a cheesy enough entertainer to oddly enjoy the weirded parts of the game.</p><p>Tofu Kozo jumped on its little feet and exploded into a standing ovation, Mana let it go for a bit longer than it needed to go before she found out how to materialize an empty scroll and seal the Yokai inside of it, all of which only transpired with the aid of her eight year old newly met friend.</p><hr/><p>It was truly surprising to find out how differently time was passing in this dimension. From what Mana had heard through hearsay, she knew that the handheld kind of games usually helped one pass time, which meant that it made a long period of time just fly by. Not quite something that would help with an unpleasant visit in the doctor's office, seeing how it required concentration, but still – a valid mean to one's timewasting ends.</p><p>Things were quite different in the dimensional game world. Seeing how, technically, a seemingly infinite size of the universe in which everyone lived in was compressed into a dimension the size of a single planetoid, the immense gravitational forces slowed down the passage of time astonishingly in the Yokai Mash dimension. Mana was not quite sure how come the objects present in the universe did not simply get spaghettified and crushed under their own untold mass, or how these Yokai creatures could survive these effects. She could somewhat guess that it was due to their "artificial" or "illusionary" nature as they were referred as such by the little boy she was keeping an eye on.</p><p>Entire days on end passed with Mana following Sayaki along, encountering new Yokai and improving her own Magic Hike for the sole purpose of being able to bypass the scripted events that were required to be beaten in order to progress through the game. By far Mana's least favorite part of the game was the strange section of each town where she needed to defeat other people at a specific kind of dancing competition. In the first town Sayaki traded Miko Kudagitsune for Mana's entire Magic Hike which she had gathered by that time. The magician would not agree to a different trade as she felt like it simply was not fair otherwise, even if it was not fair even with the way it transpired, seeing how all of Mana's Yokai were beginner bait.</p><p>The studio in the next town, which Mana had to pass through, was all about native dancing, meaning that the only dances that multiplied a Yokai's Mairyoku value were the native type dances. Using Miko Kudagitsune's Kagura dance made that studio just too easy as the entire Magic Hike of that studio's crew failed to match up to even one tenth of Miko Kudagitsune's Mairyoku. It had something to do with something called "power leveling", as Sayaki explained.</p><p>"Say, Sayaki, why on Earth was the Shiranui that the studio head used colored differently from the ones we've seen"? Mana wondered, "Was it the result of this "power leveling" too, if so, why was your "power leveling" stronger than the studio head's"?</p><p>"Oh, right, I haven't told you about Dance Revolutions yet…" Sayaki smacked his forehead, "Truthfully, I didn't think you'd need to worry about that, but seeing how we're power leveling you, you may have your Yokai go through a Dance Revolution pretty soon".</p><p>Mana just kept on staring at the young boy curiously. "How am I doing the "power leveling" now, also, please explain those Dance Revolutions".</p><p>"You're power leveling because you're in my party, watching my Yokai battle the hidden Yokai scattered through each starter area. Because the developers wanted to make a point for the more experienced players to return or have something to do when they help out their newbie friends, they left a bunch of hidden Yokai dancers, which you've seen me challenging all this time we've been walking around aimlessly. Since you're in my party, your Magic Hike grows in base Mairyoku equal to a percentage of the growth my Yokai go through", Sayaki tried breaking it down.</p><p>"So the players are encouraged to gang up and gather around high level players, similarly to the relationship between studio players and studio heads, because it accelerates their growth, meanwhile the strong players get an added benefit from getting to grow in power by challenging those secret Yokai"? Mana simplified what she heard loudly to herself. She had to hand it to the creators of this dimensional game – it was a very useful tactic to learn. It was not too difficult to see that the influence from the ninja helping shape this world for the developers may have rubbed off on the tactical aspects as well as the physical state of the world…</p><p>"You know, real world is a lot like that too. Except, I guess, there doesn't need to be an incentive to hanging around other people, it's rewarding all by itself". Mana wondered as she closed her eyes, trying to smell the air around her but when only a bland sniff of cold gloom hit her nose, reminding her of her recent sensory losses, she was kicked right back down to reality. Even in an imaginary world, she could not smell anything at all.</p><p>"Is it though? Other people are mean, they bully me, try to tease me with their dogs, they chase me around, and stuff. I mean, maybe if each bullying session made me feel less pain the next time, I could level up and become strong but the game of real life is stacked from the beginning. I'm sick so I can never be strong, even if I could, it's not my weakness that deters other kids, it's who I am". Sayaki pouted bitterly as he stared up at the sky, differently from the three-dimensional world, here one's eyes didn't hurt at all when staring at the sky or directly at the Sun because they weren't technically real and they didn't lead to anything but the dimensional wall, cleverly covered with clouds and a fake sky.</p><p>"That's the worst kind of injustice I've ever encountered, people hating other people for no other reason than them being born. I hate violence and hatred itself, it's a bit hypocritical but I do. But, sometimes, when I talk to other people, killers, brawlers, nasty people, I can kind of understand their point. It's interesting really, it's kind of like the "leveling up" you get from this game – you grow and improve yourself by exposing your views to those of other people, even those opposite to you. One point of view I never could get, however, was hatred of something for that person or thing being alive though", Mana looked down at the kid who just slowed down his pace. Truthfully, this whole game thing was beyond weird, she had spent way more time watching him in this dimension's time than just one night and yet…</p><p>"I'm gonna go dance-off with that Tenome, it's pretty creepy and it hangs around graveyards, you'll need some more Mairyoku if you're to win at the Dirty Dancing studio", Sayaki changed the topic as he fired off running towards the graveyard. Mana looked at the sign that laid right in front of them, right on the path they were walking on. The Tsuto-u Town was just a good five minutes of walking ahead and Mana's hike had a good 265 Mairyoku lead over anything she's ever seen around.</p><p>Yokai Mash was just Sayaki's escape, whenever real life hurt him too much, whenever painful memories pushed him to a corner he danced it off. Was it really all that harmful, all that bad? Mana truly has seen people deal with pain in much worse and more destructive ways. Real, bloody ways, ways that merely accelerated the circle of hatred instead of using the momentum of it for a positive mean, like using a flowing river to generate electricity, that kind of thing…</p><hr/><p>After Mana ran up to Sayaki, the young man was angrily yelling at a seemingly random grave. The gravestone had no name to it, just "Blind Old Geezer" carved onto it, not even a date or mean of death, no candles, flowers or other honoring accessories either. Only bags of bones, so filled with them that they fell down and let their contents scatter all over the grave, placed where usually there would be candles and flowers. Even if one didn't know an exact number or location of the grave of this Yokai, they'd still have discovered it merely by glancing at how odd this grave was.</p><p>"Come, Blind Old Geezer, have a glance at your killers' faces, come, use your true eyes", Sayaki kept yelling, then repeating it over and over, sometimes adding something similarly odd and out of place.</p><p>A hand burst from the grave, elderly, crooked and broken. All of the Yokai's fingers were twisted and busted up, it certainly did not go in peace. Another hand burst from the dirt before placing its palm against it to let the whole figure of the Yokai to reveal itself. Whatever ritual Sayaki tried to perform – it worked flawlessly. A hairless and wrinkled head burst from the ground, screaming with a muffled scream of a man with lungs full of dirt.</p><p>The Yokai was a ghostly kind, looking like a pale elderly man with empty eyeholes and an overly expressive mouth with a hanging dry tongue, likely a result of its violent death, which must have left its jaw broken and dangling grotesquely. The undead was dressed in common villager's clothes, a bit on the dirty and simple kind, even before the old man's death it couldn't have been too nice of an attire.</p><p>"Tenome, Base Mairyoku: 665" said the glowing red table above the Yokai's head as the hidden monstrosity pulled its surprisingly tall and hunched, frail body out of the ground and stretched out in all of its almost skeletal manner of twitching movements. Tenome then raised its palms, only for two large eyes to open up inside them as the hidden Yokai began to dance lazily and statically, waiting for the player who caught its attention to call his Yokai.</p><p>"You're strong, let's see, my strongest base Mairyoku Yokai is… This one"! Sayaki chuckled before opening up a scroll and unleashing a jolt of light that left a long loose haired, demonic faced woman without any eyebrows and crooked, bony protrusions in their place as well as twisted long fangs in her mouth. The woman's hair flowed loosely up and down her back, almost like she was submerged underwater.</p><p>"Hari Onago, Base Mairyoku: 710", the table above this Yokai's head stated. Mana raised her eyebrows in an expression of contained surprise. She hadn't yet seen Sayaki used a Yokai with such high base Mairyoku level, it must have been one he had convinced to join him in the later towns, judging from the rest of his Magic Hike – perhaps even as recently as his last playing session.</p><p>"I didn't know you had Yokai with a base Mairyoku level higher than that of secret bosses, all of your other ones had ones lower than the boss', it was only due to the dances you've used and your step-ups that you've surpassed their Mairyoku in the end". Mana uttered, her gut feeling, honed by participating in countless real life battles where life was hanging on a thread as well as experience in reading her friends and opponents thoughts in battle suggested something she didn't want to believe in.</p><p>"Yeah", Sayaki chuckled again, "This one's actually not too compatible with this battle but I've never seen "Vengeful Despair" archetype before nor do I know this boss' step-up".</p><p>Mana knew what the boy failed to tell her – he acquired mastery over this game not by reading information but by experience. He got beat by a certain Yokai, then, he just kept on challenging it again and again until he either overpowered it or discovered a hidden winning strategy he needed to win. He had no such experience with Tenome's archetype or its dances so he just used his highest Mairyoku possessing Yokai without considering strategy.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Sayaki", Mana's lips softly moved by themselves. The only reason why this foolish boy rushed into battle was because she brought up something that felt hurtful to him – the relationship between other kids his age and him. Even when the decision was to accompany him through the game, she kept on trying to fix him by bringing up that which he had abandoned. In a way, she was responsible for him rushing head-first into this battle to avoid confronting Mana's words.</p><p>"It's fine, as long as the step-ups…" Sayaki acted out a cheerful smile and offered Mana a thumb up before the step-ups for both Yokai activated.</p><p>"Tenome: Step-Up – "Resentful Death" – Yokai feasts on opponent's bones, changing any X20 Multiplier and higher dances to "Worthless Flapping" – a dance of X0 Multiplier"</p><p>"Hari Onago: Step-Up – "Accidental Lashes" – Yokai accidentally whips the opposing dancing Yokai for X0.75 Multiplier of their Mairyoku, if facing off against a Yokai with additional loose feet enhancing Step-Up, reduce Hari Onago's Mairyoku times the number of loose feet based Step-Ups the opposing Yokai possesses".</p><p>Mana instantly saw a problem in the compatibility of these two Yokai, it didn't take a very experienced player to see it – Hari Onago was a Yokai of later stages of the game, which meant most of its dances would have had a way higher multiplier than X20. Even her puny starting Yokai had its first dance with a multiplier of X10.</p><p>"Oh, it's fine, let's just see how it goes", Sayaki grinned, he appeared to have absolutely no idea or wish to calculate an approximate outcome of the dance-off. He just pointed his finger at Tenome and commanded it to dance the "Barbed Ends" dance, as Mana predicted, it was a X35 multiplier dance but, as Mana saw on the list of her party member's dances, it was the lowest multiplier having dance Hari Onago had.</p><p>"Hari Onago: Mairyoku Total: 0" the table above its head stated.</p><p>"Temome: Uses the "Bone Slurp" dance, Multiplier X25. Mairyoku: 16625"</p><p>Mana knew what should happened next, depending on whose feet were looser, the Yokai compared their Mairyoku and the loser received damage to their Footsies. Mana was no Footsies scientist, but she was pretty sure that even Hari Onago didn't have 16625 Footsies to spare, the most she saw a Yokai have was a bit over 8000.</p><p>"It's okay, my feet are looser, that means I can pull out this"! Sayaki pulled out a scroll from his pocket, unleashing a second Yokai. Even when Mana had no idea something like that could even have been done, that was when Sayaki's battle went completely to the crapper. As once the fiery will-o-wisp appeared from the boy's scroll its step-up automatically activated, there also were no options to control that Yokai. Mana paid close attention to this will-o-wisp's step-up:</p><p>"Ruby Hitodama: Base Mairyoku – 126, Step-Up: "Stomach Filler" – use this Yokai in the middle of a dance-off to have the other Yokai feast on Hitodama and feel too satisfied to dance. When your Yokai has looser feet - negate that dance-off. This Yokai leaves your Magic Hike after its step-up is used".</p><p>What Sayaki did not count on was that the secret boss lit up with another step-up the moment that Ruby Hitodama appeared. Mana felt completely lost – not only did she have no idea about the "Ruby" prefix to the Yokai's name but she also only half understood how or why Ruby Hitodama was even used.</p><p>"Tenome: Combined Mairyoku – 16625, Step-Up #2 "Fast Chaser" – Due to its natural affinity for chasing its unfortunate prey, Tenome always has looser feet than any Yokai without loose feet enhancing step-ups. Also, any escape or dance-off negating step-ups or actions are negated".</p><p>As the countless interacting step-ups and dances worked their magic and the complicated set of sealing jutsu that comprised the code and programming of this dimension did their thing, not only did Ruby Hitodama just disappear into thin air but also Hari Onago bumped into Tenome during their dances after which her flesh just collapsed. The Yokai just rolled around pathetically, behaving like a blobfish on land.</p><p>"I lost"… Sayaki cried out in frustration, kicking the pile of dirt under his feet. "Not only that, but Ruby Hitodama is gone as well and with nothing to gain"!</p><p>Mana knew why the boy was upset – losing meant losing a percentage of Mairyoku from the participating Yokai, also all of his other Yokai in his Magic Hike by a smaller percentage. That meant that his strongest Yokai was now weakened, or would have been if the tables did not just keep glowing suggesting that the dance-off was still going.</p><p>"Wha-What's going on"? Sayaki looked at Mana. "Hari Onago's Footsies are at 0, she's done for. Don't tell me…"</p><p>"Yep, I'm in your party, remember"? Mana smiled, "Which means that I can take a shot at him after you with it being treated as the same dance-off".</p><p>"Yeah, but you could have chosen not to do that, you stand no chance against Tenome", Sayaki uttered in disbelief that Mana would follow him into a battle like that. "You'll never win in the Dirty Dancing studio if you get your Yokai crippled here".</p><p>Without saying a word Mana walked up in front of Sayaki, in between the boy and Tenome before turning back at the boy and smiling.</p><p>"You do know that the fourth page of "Instructions" says that "Party Member" and "Aggro" are two different player statuses, right"? Mana asked the boy who laughed at the idea of reading the instructions and burrowed through this world through experience and muscling through it alone.</p><p>Sayaki just kept on staring at Mana with slightly wet eyes, he would have long since cried out in frustration but the happiness in Mana's eyes made him more confused than frustrated.</p><p>"It means that a "Party Member" can intervene into other "Party Member's" battle once, it's a rule you still haven't used because you entered the battle as "Aggro", once Tenome kicks my ass, you can dance his blind butt off again", Mana comforted the boy before revealing the scroll in her hands and unleashing her Yokai.</p><p>"Gyochu: Base Mairyoku: 1" the table above a wet puddle of blood declared.</p><p>Tenome obviously had looser feet than Mana's Yokai, one from the Tatami Town – the begginer's area of the game where only the weakest Yokai with the oddest step-ups laid dormant, easy to convince to join. Their prime purpose must have been teaching the player about counting basic Mairyoku values and making accurate judgments about which Yokai deserved the limited spot on one's Magic Hike and which ones did not.</p><p>Tenome dove right into the puddle of blood, stomping as it danced on it and scattering it away effortlessly. Mana felt the immense gravity of the dimension pull her down on her knees just for a brief moment, it was restrained, controlled, just as a mean to cause the losing player discomfort and tell them clearly that they have lost the dance-off and that their Yokai were being weakened. I t must've been the "exception for realistic effect" to the no-harm done in Yokai Mash rule which Sayaki spoke of earlier.</p><p>Upon loss, Gyochu's step-up ability activated:</p><p>"Gyochu: Combined Mairyoku: 0, Footsies: 0, Step-Up: "Intestinal Tattler" – upon being defeated in a dance-off, Gyochu infects the winning Yokai and tattles on its secrets from inside its intestines, as a result - Gyochu shall display the winning Yokai's hidden in-game information".</p><p>Mana turned back at Sayaki, still on one knee, just so her eyes were on the same level as those of the rich kid. So they could talk like friends.</p><p>"You've taught me plenty about this game, about your world, the contents of your very soul. Let me teach you something – read that information, count the multipliers, strategize and you will never lose. Because one day, mistakes like that will cost you friends, it may be just a game, it may be in real life. All I know is – when that happens – you'll never forgive yourself knowing that you haven't done everything you could've done to avoid your friends sacrificing themselvesyou're your well-being", Mana spoke honestly as images from the quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, the Sun Disc arena, Shimo's death flashed through her eyes waking her own eyes tear up momentarily.</p><p>Sayaki nodded firmly, wiping away his tears and running up to the massive table displaying various different weaknesses and hidden multipliers when the Yokai faced off against certain types. It was something that usually was learned about through experience, accidental discovery. This seemingly useless Yokai which Sayaki himself proclaimed as useless when Mana took it under her wing proved to have some sort of use after all. Nobody wanted to view hidden information about a Yokai AFTER losing a dance-off because that was simply impractical. Mana was many things but practical was rarely one of them…</p><hr/><p>"I can't believe that Tanome had a hidden X0.25 Mairyoku multiplier to Shinto archetype Yokai", Sayaki sadly muttered after Mana and the kid were making their way to Tsuto-u Town, wet from the rain that was pouring down.</p><p>"Well, at least you beat it", Mana nodded happily, things turned out quite fine in the end. She herself did not lose any Mairyoku from her Yokai after Tanome was beaten in a dance-off by her party member initiating dance-off after her defeat. Still, she did not get any bonus from it, neither did Sayaki as, apparently, his first loss counted to limited capacity – not granting him the reward from beating the Yokai.</p><p>"That Ruby prefix", Mana wanted to ask that for a long time.</p><p>"Oh yeah, I wanted to explain to you the Dance Revolution but things kind of went wild, didn't they"? Sayaki smiled, "You see, after being empowered multiple times, Yokai will undergo a physical transformation, certain cosmetic changes of color to their entire body or just one of their accessories. There are multiple stages of those changes: Copper – Crystal – Ruby – Sapphire – Onyx – Jade".</p><p>"Oh, I see… Sorry you had to lose a Yokai that had undergone several revolutions already", Mana sadly looked away.</p><p>"What you've done, I know that you won't be playing this game after you stop babysitting me but… You did it just because you knew what this game means to me, right"? Sayaki asked looking up at Mana, searching for her eyes but finding only the magician's messy hair covering her face up.</p><p>"I'll… I'll try making more real life friends. I'll try sacrificing my own comfort and safety like you do for others, be more in real life like I am acting in this world", the little one whined out, seemingly touched by Mana's mute positive answer to his question. "Just like you heard me out and tried opening yourself to Yokai Mash", the boy smiled.</p><hr/><p>"Well… So much for the Dirty Dancing studio", Sayaki yawned after he and Mana left a two floors tall rectangular building that was quite dirtied and rotten from the outside, just as much so as it was from the inside. To say just that much about it was to stay absolutely quiet about the building's inner state or its older than Mana neon signs that blinked in and out with darkened pink haze that was almost hypnotic.</p><p>"Say, you haven't even come close to catching up to the town where you currently need to compete in, right"? Mana wondered, feeling a bit bad about the slow progress they have been making.</p><p>"Yeah, if I am to go to bed by ten, we've got three Yokai Mash hours left, hardly enough time to reach the town I was previously in", the boy nodded before checking in the game time as well as the three dimensional world's current time.</p><p>"You won't have made any progress by the time we leave, is that OK with you"? Mana tilted the left corner of her lips upwards, regretfully predicting the situation at hand.</p><p>"It's fine, I don't play this game too competitively. I play it just for fun anyways. I was never that good, always needed to grind Mairyoku to beat those studios and you're only six studios behind from my current progress. From what I've learned watching you, I'll progress much faster and maybe get good enough to threaten some better players", Sayaki grinned with that childish hope in his smile. The childish naivete inspired hope in Mana as well.</p><p>A middle aged woman ran past Mana and Sayaki, despite looking not too different from most of artificial humans placed in the dimension to guide the players through it and serve as the service staff of the dimension, she acted just recklessly enough for Mana to recognize another real player. The woman must have been quite rich in the real world for her to be able to play the game, from what the magician recalled.</p><p>"Ma'am, what's going on"? Mana asked the woman as the mix of shock and frustration in the woman's eyes was simply too out of the ordinary and freaky to ignore.</p><p>"The Hotel "ABCD" has been occupied by a madman. Something seriously freaky is going on around the place, I think he's breaking the game, or something. He can't be an artificial human, someone should report him, or something"! The woman shouted out and ran away, not before pointing at the direction of the "ABCD" hotel.</p><p>"Yeah, I know the place, it's a very respectable establishment for players to rest up and trade Yokai for some items", Sayaki nodded, looking a bit scared himself, not due to the situation described but by the manner that the middle aged woman was acting. Just from seeing how experienced Sayaki was at the game, it was easy to forget that he was just an eight-year old kid, after all. He got scared seeing adults acting all freaky and weird.</p><p>"Let's go check it out then", Mana suggested.</p><p>"Don't get reckless, Mana. Player dance-offs work differently from dancing-off with other Yokai and artificial humans. If they're really strong they'll just recruit your Yokai to their Magic Hike after the dance-off", Sayaki reminded that rule which he had explained to Mana seemingly a lifetime ago.</p><p>"I'll have it in mind, if we see the perp's Mairyoku being insane we can always just walk away. This is just a game, no one's lives are at stake", Mana nodded cheerfully before the two slowly head out to Hotel "ABCD" together to see just what the trouble.</p><p>Hotel "ABCD" was a tall building, seemingly reaching the sky, separated in endless patterns of similar sections of well-renovated and modern looking architecture. Plenty of glass, plastic and various outdoor decoration achievements. Looking orange, white and purple when all dominant colors were taken to consideration, wearing a proud and eye-raking neon sign on the roof high up, proudly proclaiming the hotel's name, no, bleeding it all over the sky above.</p><p>"Something's wrong, artificial humans are all acting weird"! A player yelled out running away from the building. "This is creepy, I'm filing a complaint for the administration"!</p><p>"That was a player, someone at least Tsuto-u Town's level. Just how good were you, will the two of us be enough"? Mana wondered, she could see similar fears flashing through Sayaki's eyes. This was quite different from the walking in blind and learning from experience kid she had met before – Sayaki was calculating, strategizing and weighing his abilities. It was beautiful to see the kid's growth like that, as a ninja, Mana could recognize those cold strategizing thoughts right in the kid's eyes.</p><p>"I'm not too sociable, as you've seen, this game rewards being social. Leveling up in a party will always result in stronger players, that being said, I've played long enough to surpass anyone around my town, even if I achieved it through longer playtime and aiding you along while fighting secret bosses along the way. I may have leveled up more leveling with you than I did in the past two or three days by myself…" Sayaki kept mumbling to himself, his childish mind still struggled with making efficient decisions. He was afraid, trembling. For a moment Mana felt bad about teaching this child pre-emptive fear but it was a feeling of self-preservation.</p><p>"Well then, we can turn around and walk away, wait until the developers solve this, you can log on tomorrow and play again from where you're leaving off. No pressure, your call", Mana kneeled down, looking Sayaki right in the eyes after removing his lengthened hair from the boy's face.</p><p>"This man, whoever he is, he is messing with my game. A part of my life. I can't forget or leave it behind. Something that helps me when I'm sad, when other people are mean to me. That makes me… Angry", the boy uttered as irritation rose up like hot smoke escaping a boiling stew.</p><p>"Very well, then let's go dance his butt off down from there", Mana nodded as the two slowly and confidently walked into the hotel suite.</p><p>The two proceeded to walk forwards, it was a gruesome and almost sisyphean climb up, dancing-off every artificial human running at them one by one. This definitely was not normal, these poor creations acted completely out of their character to the point where Sayaki was shaken to fight them off, despite having a large Mairyoku advantage over them. It was just the human fear factor of seeing whited out eyes and that twitching body that was under something's control, forced the defy its programming as its body both tried to perform actions according to its own programming and defy it at the same time.</p><p>Mana may have increased the Mairyoku of her most active Yokai several times over just from that one long and tedious climb. It took the two several floors before they decided to try the elevator, which was broken, either way, Mana thought that the artificial humans would've stopped them at every floor regardless, trying to dance-off them to exhaustion and make them back off. As the last artificial human fell on their knees, letting Mana and Sayaki pass, the two finally reached the top floor and gained access to the roof.</p><p>Once Mana and Sayaki stepped onto the roof, they noticed that the dimension around them had changed. The dark purple, gloomy clouds whirled in a twister shape up above with lightning cracking its thunderous whips every other fifteen seconds. Air was getting a bit heavy to breathe – some amount of damage was actually being caused to the whole of this dimensions sealing integrity. Whatever seals were placed to balance these very sensitive conditions out may have slowly been being worn out.</p><p>A businessman wearing a long sleeved grey, golden lined cloak over dark purple undershirt with dark green spiky hair turned around. His eyes were quite shady and closed down in a perpetual squint that appeared to calculate and weigh heavily everything it saw. Determining the value of things or their threat level instantly before throwing what remained and had no value away. Such were the eyes of this person. He stood besides a kneeling artificial human, judging from the glow of their scrolls the two were still engaged in a dance-off even if it appeared the artificial human was passed out.</p><p>"You haven't ran away"? The man wondered, "I don't think you've noticed but you've got a child beside you. This isn't a place to be in with a child".</p><p>"You're messing up my game, Mister. Please stop", Sayaki said with a childish and shaking voice.</p><p>"I don't think I will. I've come too far and done too much to stop now", he grinned with a slimy smile of a weasel who thought he had won the roulette. Mana had seen those eyes far too often for her liking but she was curious to see how would Sayaki react to them. She had taught the kid to think things through rationally, to never rely on chance or experience. In a way, he was now confronting the opposing side of everything Sayaki was before – the boy's perfect antithesis.</p><p>"By the time you'll be stopped by force you'll have done even more and gone even farther", Mana intervened seeing Sayaki just stand there silently as the drizzle pelted at the boy's soft cheeks and his little young heart shook after each lightning crack.</p><p>"Oh, by then it'll be too late. It's really funny how no one saw this coming… I mean doesn't anyone read the instructions"? The businessman laughed out as he turned back at the collapsing dimensional hole above him. The more time passed the more the whirlwind above was forming a cyclonic construct of rotating clouds and roaring winds. The man's estimation may have been right.</p><p>"You're Meta-san, aren't you? Hiniku Meta?" Sayaki shouted back at the man, "You've visited our home before".</p><p>"That's right, I am, in a way, another businessman, just like your father", Meta smiled.</p><p>"In other words, a competitor", Mana caught on to the point. "I don't think you need any more explaining, Sayaki, initiate a dance-off immediately and disable all of his Yokai. One of his Yokai must be causing all of this, his chakra level is like that of a common man so he's destroying this dimension by the game's own rules".</p><p>"Oh? You're a ninja, little missy? That's hilarious. You'd very much like to punch my teeth out, huh? Too bad, no one can get injured while they're in-between dimensions… That whole thing", Meta spread his hands out wide, breathing in the air of the storm he had caused. He was definitely right, whenever the developers intervene, it'll be too late by the crazy time dilution going on in this dimension. "Plus, industrial sabotage is a matter for the Police Force, not ninja, don't you think"? He taunted the magician.</p><p>"I don't get it, why are you doing this, Meta-san"!? Sayaki pleaded with the man but Mana realized that there was a reason why Meta was so glad just standing there and talking – he had the luxury and the need to wait this thing out.</p><p>"He wants to destroy this dimension's rules, cause a big mess so that the game is deemed unsafe. That's when he'll buy the game from your father and continue to develop it himself", Mana quickly summarized what she had pieced together. "We've got no time to run away, we have to dance him off, now" she grunted materializing a scroll and extending it in front of Meta.</p><p>"Hmmm? Why should I dance-off with you"? Meta sung out triumphantly. "All I need to do is wait here for this place to fall apart".</p><p>"It's a step-up that's causing this, isn't it"? Mana stated before pointing at a kneeling artificial human by Meta's side, "You're breaking this dimension through dance-off and we've danced-off every single one of your artificial humans – you need to dance if you're to win. If you won't – the damage you've caused will stabilize eventually, I'm a ninja, I know a thing or two about sealing jutsu. It also doesn't look like that artificial human will function for too long, he'll soon dematerialize just like all those we've beaten back on the lower floors".</p><p>Sayaki pulled on Mana's skirt softly, asking for her attention before looking her in the eyes longingly. "I should be dancing against Meta-san. I'm more experienced and I've changed a lot, you've helped me grow stronger and become a better player", he suggested.</p><p>"This is too dangerous. He's breaking the dimensional walls apart, we have no idea what'll happen to the loser when they'll be exposed to a portion of the gravitational waves from this dimension, when their Yokai will be weakened. You may not be able to survive the experience in this calamity", Mana noted pointing at the sky and reminding the boy of the experience the losing player goes through. "You're too valuable. If he takes your Yokai – there'll be no chance in hell to stop him".</p><p>"Very well, Konoha's Sorceress, I'll take you up on your offer and dance, or rather, I'll make you dance for me", Meta grinned with a slimy smile before kicking at the face of the artificial human, throwing the thing away like a ragdoll. The businessman materialized a scroll and unleashed his own Yokai.</p><p>Mana unleashed her Miko Kudagitsune that she traded with Sayaki to be a bit more efficient at improving and so that she was able to recruit stronger Yokai than the beginners usually could.</p><p>"Crystal Miko Kudagitsune. Base Mairyoku: 12450" the table lit up above the creature's head, the Yokai was enhanced well past what Mairyoku it had before after the countless grueling battles with the weak yet numerous artificial humans. Having undergone two whole Dance Revolutions, Miko Kudagitsune now wore a cat mask that was completely made of crystal and its fur was bright and shiny now.</p><p>"Oh, this Yokai is much more powerful than anyone's would reasonably be in this town, maybe I've picked yet too advanced of a town for my business venture", Meta exclaimed in a contained and somewhat ironic and mocking surprise.</p><p>After Meta unleashed his Yokai, the powerful pulsing energies from his scroll took shape of an emerald colored dog, dressed in ceremonial garbs with extended long sleeves and a ceremonial symbol glowing in emerald green beneath the dog-Yokai's feet. Once the three-meter tall beast took its stance, fully extending its back the table above its head stated the obvious and quite horrific.</p><p>"Jade Inugami. Base Mairyoku: 1 650 000"</p><p>"Inugami! That's a Mythical Yokai, and to top it off it's in its Jade revolution"!? Sayaki shouted out in disbelief so intensely that the boy lost his voice and collapsed on the ground, shaking in fear over what will become of his favorite game and seeing a player whom he would have never matched up to in a thousand years of his pace of progress.</p><p>"What's a Mythical Yokai"? Mana asked, clearly intimidated by the seemingly cosmic tier numbers and majestic emerald glow of the beast.</p><p>"A bit late for tutorials, isn't it, Konoha's Sorceress"? Meta grinned mockingly.</p><p>"It's a one-time recruitment only Yokai obtained through an event boss dance-off. There have been several of them released so far, there's usually one of those events going on every week. There's only one of each Mythical Yokai, the only way for it to change the Magic Hike is for another player to recruit him from its original hike", Sayaki coughed out in shock and awe. For someone whose entire life rotated around this game, it must have been pretty much an actual divine revelation going on here.</p><p>"Good luck with that, young Sorceress, now, shall we dance? Jade Inugami, Emotional Waltz dance"! The businessman ordered letting his Mythical Yokai dog out.</p><p>"Jade Inugami: Combined Mairyoku – 65 985 000" the merciless table stated as the Jade Yokai came at Miko Kudagitsune, Mana bit her lip until she drew a drop of blood in desperation before submitting and ordering Miko Kudagitsune to use the Kagura dance.</p><p>"Crystal Miko Kudagitsune: Combined Mairyoku – 435 750" Mana read the cruel reality before seeing Miko Kudagitsune just getting swatted aside by the psychic emotional waves firing off in shockwaves from Jade Inugami's barks as it danced.</p><p>"Inugami. Step-Up: Mind Control – Using Inugami's psychic abilities, you may instantly recruit any Yokai with a lesser Mairyoku value and tighter feet to Inugami to your Magic Hike",</p><p>"Jade Inugami. Step-Up: Soul Drain – You may drain the Mairyoku from a Yokai with lesser Mairyoku value and tighter feet to Jade Inugami and add it to your Footsies"</p><p>"You know what? I won't do any of that pathetic babble, just crush your puny trash Yokai." Meta smiled before revealing another scroll and unleashing another Yokai, it must have possessed a similar step-up to Sayaki's Ruby Hitodama, which was used when a different Yokai was dancing-off.</p><p>"Jade Tengu: Base Mairyoku – 3 250 120" the table above the newly revealed Yokai stated.</p><p>"A-Another Mythical Yokai"!? Sayaki cried out in desperation. His hopes of saving his beloved game have already been crushed just after seeing Jade Inugami, witnessing someone like that making an appearance only deepened the emotional wounds.</p><p>"Ah, I think you've come to understand already… Yes, I control ALL of the Mythical Yokai, that is to say, I've recruited all five of them, filling up my Magic Hike with nothing but Mythical Yokai", Meta triumphantly laughed out before pointing at Jade Tengu which reminded of a forest troll in sage hermit's clothing made entirely of emeralds. "This one, however, is the key"!</p><p>"Step-Up - Time-Control: During a dance-off, use this Yokai to control in-dance time. Can be used to travel through special event temporal portals", the Jade Tengu's table stated.</p><p>Suddenly Mana felt a crushing pressure at her chest, before collapsing on the ground.</p><p>"What the…" she muttered but she could feel how desperate and muzzled her voice sounded. The gravitational forces were just crushing her chest and throat and her entire body, while the seals were still very much functional, they could only reduce and control the true gravitational pull of the dimension and not completely neutralize it, which became especially clear when the dimensional game purposefully leaked out some gravitational pull for a demonstrative effect.</p><p>"That's right, my Jade Tengu will prolong this dance-off, every time my Jade Inugami crushes your weakling Yokai, Jade Tengu will use its step-up to rewind time and crush it again. Now our dance will last as long as I need it to, not only that – the pain and pressure you feel now will grow infinitely the more time passes and the more the dimensional seals collapse. Maybe if a village sweetheart like the lovely idol Konoha's Sorceress dies in Yokai Mash, I can get the Ninja Council involved at forcing this brat's father to sell me this game"? Meta overjoyed at his clever ploy.</p><p>"How… How did you obtain all those Yokai"? Sayaki still shook in disbelief. "I know for a fact that you didn't win any of these events, I've read about other people winning them on the info boards…"</p><p>"Try wrapping your limited child's brain around it, I'll love to see you try working this all out", Meta cringed biting his finger as he enjoyed seeing Sayaki's torment. "You know, if we make a weapon that sends enemies here, it might work as a nice military contract with the Ninja Council, what do you two think. Oh boy, once I get the license for using this dimension and the Yokai Mash game, the things I'll do with it"!</p><p>"He… He used Jade Tengu", Mana huffed and choked out as she felt the gravity intensifying, it was no longer something she could just withstand without chakra augmentation as the gravitational forces probably surpassed even the crazy Mairyoku values of Meta's Magic Hike where the breaking apart Yokai Mash defied its one rules of invulnerability of a player.</p><p>"That's right, magician girl, I did. I used Tengu's step-up to travel back to in-dimension time when the various Mythical Yokai events took place and collect all of these Mythical Yokai, once I bought this one, I could obtain any other. Jade Nurarihyon could multiply the Mairyoku growth and accelerate Dance Revolutions, Jade Shuten-Doji can break apart this very world in sync with Jade Kitsune's step-up. It's all a clever and flawless plan to take over this business", Meta explained his plan with a sadistic grin. "At this point, seeing the power these Yokai grant me here, I may just have the ninja that modify the rules of this dimension change a few things over but I may just keep the game aspect – it's just too much power in my hands to throw it all out. I'll bankrupt those stupid video games with this and then, once everyone's playing this, I may as well control the world. Sure, I'll be in control of the Yokai Mash world but if everyone's playing it – what's the difference"?</p><p>"No… This isn't Yokai Mash, this isn't how those step-ups were meant to be used"! Sayaki shouted out angrily as he jumped on his feet and started slowly walking forwards.</p><p>"Who cares what they were meant for, business was always about finding loopholes and breaking things to rebuild them in your own sandbox. This whole dance mechanic though… Has to go, I'll have Yokai beat the shit out of each other, I think… Yeah, the power will just feel greater when I can physically see the weakling Yokai getting crushed", Meta kept on pushing and teasing Sayaki, that last proposition was the straw that broke the camel's back. Sayaki just roared out in rage, rushing at the older man and punching at him, clawing and kicking at him wildly but he was unable to do anything. Seeing how he had not lost the dance-off, he was not stuck in a vulnerable state like Mana was.</p><p>"I give up", Mana's gurgling declaration dominated the attention of both men, the young one and the businessman. Her surrender ended the dance-off prematurely, before Jade Tengu could prolong it. Granted, had Meta known that she had that option, he could have probably still rewinded back to a dance-off state before the surrender. It was only due to the sheer surprise factor that the stunt even worked.</p><p>"What the…" Meta muttered before Sayaki ran up to Mana and shook her chest trying to wake her up. The magician had collapsed from suffering through the immense pressure for too long so her chest was just barely moving. "You can't do that! You can only tag out to a different member of your party. Even if you log out – I'll just continue our dance-off as long as I want. A dance-off must be carried through to a conclusion"! the scorned businessman shouted</p><p>"Mana"! Sayaki cried out.</p><p>"This is your game, always was. Beat this fop and claim it", Mana softly smiled through pale lips that still betrayed the girl suffering tremendous pain. Sayaki's shaking hand reached out for the magician's hat, picked it off the rooftop before placing it onto his own head. The boy stood proudly in front of the man that wished to brutalize everything his beloved game stood for and almost killed the girl who taught him so much and actually treated him as his friend, not just her "young master".</p><p>"Huh"? Meta exclaimed in surprise that Sayaki did not try to run or otherwise trouble his plans for ruining this dimension.</p><p>"You're gonna pay, for wanting to ruin my game, the one thing that was my sanctuary all this time, that helped me when times were tough and nobody wanted to talk to me or when people bullied me and hated my guts for no particular reason. For cheating to get hold of Yokai that other people rightfully earned. Most of all – for hurting Mana", the little one yelled out from the bottom of his childish chest.</p><p>"Oh? And how will you do that?" Meta chuckled, "My Yokai are Mythical and possess game-breaking step-ups and Mairyoku all surpassing one million. How will you save your game and just how will you "make me pay", boy"?</p><p>"The way Mana taught me to fight, by being smart", Sayaki smiled, tipping the magician's hat forward so that it partly covered his eyes leaving only his smile to be seen, not his scared and crying eyes.</p><hr/><p>With a stroke of hand, holding his fingers and his hand in a hand seal-like position, Sayaki summoned an information table, which he scrolled through using his hand. Meta laughed out from the bottom of his lungs, in his head he had already won. All he had to do was just to let the kid read to his heart's content and let his Yokai dance this dimension to its inhospitable original state. All of it for his own monetary and egomaniacal gain…</p><p>"Oh, don't mind me, read, kid, read to your heart's content"! Meta smiled.</p><p>"I'm sorry if I am disappointing your expectations, if you thought I'd just run head-first into battle, or something", the kid smiled, his eyes were calm and confident, they only wavered from the walls of text to gaze at Meta for a moment before returning to resume his work.</p><p>"You know, there's a limit to how much time you've got to make a decision", Meta sadistically toyed with the boy, even if he wanted Sayaki to just stand around and read for a good twenty more minutes, he didn't want to let go of the opportunity to taunt the boy and tease him.</p><p>"We both know you'll use Jade Tengu to rewind the dimensional time until the beginning of my turn anyways. You don't want this dance-off to end", Sayaki calmly replied without even giving back the usual burning glance, which he used to offer his opponent.</p><p>"What are you doing, child, humor me, just what thoughts run through your mind, how do you intend on beating these unbalanced, utterly unfair Yokai"? Meta inquired, placing his back comfortably against a chimney to relax himself as he listened to what he thought would be little kid's delusions that'd crumble upon his first shake of their foundations.</p><p>"No, you tell me. What fun is it playing a game just to abuse its rules? To break it all the time? Why would you look at a game merely for how to utilize its most optimal components, play it in any way imaginable, even if it is not a way the game is intended to be played, only to be the strongest"? Sayaki wondered, "Have you lost your sense of entertainment? Has fun lost its meaning to you?"</p><p>"Fun? To me, utilizing my businessman's mind to crush the competitors is fun. When other people read a set of laws all they see is restrictions, what I see is an opportunity and an open challenge to live up to it. Not that a foolish child would understand, all you care about is "having fun…", Meta replied with an inspired speech before switching to a mocking tone in the end.</p><p>"I see… To answer your earlier question, I was reading through private messaging section of the Instructions", Sayaki grinned before closing the information table he had previously opened and opening up another one on the other side that was surrounded by a border that made it appear like an envelope.</p><p>"Private messages"? Meta nodded his head to the side, he could not understand what Sayaki's game was and that inevitably forced the businessman to lose his stupid mocking grin, "You cannot send a private message, all social menus are inaccessible during a dance-off. It's done this way to prevent players from getting outside help except from their party, or read through social sections during their turn, wasting everyone's time, all social functions are closed, except…"</p><p>"Administration support", Sayaki finished Meta's sentence for the businessman.</p><p>"What the… You plan on contacting administration!? That won't work, if they could've been here or changed something they'd have done so long since. No moderator or administrator counted on a game-breaking bug coming from an early town where everyone wields useless and weakling Yokai with simple and overly conditional step-ups. My plan was flawless, no administrator will stop me in time"! Meta acted confident and tried letting out a fake laugh but something in his chest felt itchy and irksome, the man started scratching and clawing at his chest erratically to ease the tension. Chinks started forming in the man's emotional armor and Sayaki had barely done a thing except talk to him.</p><p>"I'm not looking for their interference", Sayaki shook his head. "I'm looking for their expertise and knowledge about the game. Even if an admin has no options of getting here physically or if they're all logged off, if at least one of them is logged on, they will take no time at all to exchange private messages and knowing what you're doing here – they'll help me out with everything they can do to help".</p><p>"Hmph, pathetic, hiding under skirts and backs, are we"? Meta mocked the little boy opposing him. "Hid behind your father's back your whole childhood, let your babysitter do the fighting for you even though she's not even at amateur level and thirty studios short from Ranked Play. Now you're running to admins for help".</p><p>"My whole life I was mocked, rejected and bullied. My father was rich so everyone thought I just had everything handed to me, they resented me and pushed me away, all of them. It made me angry, it made me hate them and think "what's the point?". It made me play alone and never ask for help, instead, learn from experience of loss. But this game isn't made like that, it's built to encourage social interactions, partying with friends and helping out new people joining the game. Yokai are dancing-off and not fighting because they too are friendly creatures, even the scary ones. You'll never win by just buying things and building on top of them all by yourself", Sayaki proudly and bravely replied, feeling no shame in asking for help.</p><p>A notification lit up on his social tab, one that the boy quickly opened up and ran his eyes through it before smiling and closing the tab. He then fixed his hat and pulled out a scroll, waving it around like a wand before pointing it at Meta.</p><p>"Now, for my next trick, I'll make this dimensional calamity disappear", Sayaki grinned before glancing back at Mana, who was slowly starting to get back on her knees and attempted standing up. The magician looked up to the brave young boy and smiled, his confidence and playfulness inspired hope in Mana, he was already a hero, the kind, which Mana always wanted to become. This was Sayaki's world after all – he was the only one who could have been its hero.</p><p>"Don't be foo…" Meta grinned sarcastically and raised an eyebrow before being interrupted.</p><p>"Step-up chain loop. That's how you're breaking this dimension. I was wondering just how could step-ups break this very dimension apart, seemed like a security threat to me. My father would've never bought and funded such an unsafe product. The administrators told me that they believe the problem is the massive endless loop of your step-ups", the boy explained.</p><p>"Oh? Please tell me more…" Meta tried using a more mocking tone, but truthfully he was feeling uneasy and merely wanted to buy more time. Whatever time he bought would not have been enough, his Yokai could only manipulate time in-dance or through scripted portals so he couldn't dance himself more time. A man who believed in one man building his own opportunities was left at the mercy of social interactions…</p><p>"Your five Yokai, they all have additional step-ups that are usable in the midst of a dance-off, just like your Jade Tengu. You are using all of them simultaneously to clog with one another, they are immensely powerful so each one strains the chakra capacity of the seals that hold this dimension together, but you're smarter than just that. You chain those step-ups to one another in a loop by re-activating those very same step-ups as a response to the step up of the last Yokai, creating an endless, unresolving loop of step-ups, which is tearing the seals apart as they try to wrap themselves around the paradox and resolve it. You're a devilish man, Meta-san, if a paradox would be finite, the game would simply shut down, ejecting all players in the process but you've created an endless paradox which the game cannot comprehend, no matter how hard it tries". Sayaki calmly explain before opening up his scroll and unleashing his Yokai, before his opponent even showed off his own.</p><p>"Ruby Momonjii. Base Mairyoku: 26" the information above the little group of thumb-sized ogres with tiny hammers, clubs and maces stated.</p><p>"That's…" Mana whimpered in pain, "That's one of the Yokai I traded you for Miko Kudagitsune. You added it to your own current Magic Hike"?</p><p>"You're a very smart little boy, you'd make a fine businessman, a much better one than your father. What do you say? Just stand around here, dream about how successful we could be together and I'll let you become my apprentice. Oh, come, you'll never get a better internship and apprenticeship than in my company"! Meta offered.</p><p>"Send out your Yokai, if you won't, I'll force a dance-off to your active step-up using Yokai and force the loop to close. I'm letting you to match minds with me before I dance you out", Sayaki taunted the businessman who just scoffed.</p><p>"Very well, you've just signed your own death warrant, you fool. When you lose the dance-off, the gravitation will leave not a single spaghettified string of flesh out of you left"! Meta barked out as he unleashed his own Yokai.</p><p>"Jade Shuten-Doji. Base Mairyoku: 3 666 666", the table above a massive ogre demons with long bony arms and a mace the size of its entire colossal body with a large onyx skull at the end. Where the entire entity looked to resemble the demonic king of ogres, the world breaker, its texture was now completely made of green shiny jade making it appear more majestic than apocalyptic.</p><p>"Yanari. Step-Up: "Breaker of Shiny Things" – your opponent cannot switch into or use step-ups of Yokai with Dance Revolution of Sapphire or higher" the step-up of Sayaki's Yanari activated immediately.</p><p>Meta laughed out so hard that he had to hold himself together to keep himself from tumbling over himself.</p><p>"That's your Yokai's step-up? What utter idiocy, I mean sure, it sounds scary on paper, but please remember that I have no need to switch out or use any other step-ups – my Shuten-Doji will stomp your idiotic useless weakling himself and you'll lose the dance-off. Don't you get it? All of those beginner Yokai are utterly useless, just like this one"! Meta kept enjoying himself before commanding Shuten-Doji to use the "Ogre Mash" dance.</p><p>"Yanari, use the "Squeaking Roof" dance", Sayaki calmly ordered as the calculations transpired.</p><p>"Jade Shuten-Doji. Step-Up: Hell Smasher – If your combined Mairyoku is greater than that of your opponent's Yokai, boost Jade Shuten-Doji's Mairyoku to infinity", the horrific step-up of a Mythical Yokai activated.</p><p>"Yanari: Combined Mairyoku – 32" VS "Jade Shuten-Doji. Combined Mairyoku – Infinity" the two tables clashed against each other, they must have not been able to tell just yet how hopeless this match-up was. The two Yokai started dancing before Jade Shuten-Doji's massive foot lingered on top of poor Yanari, looking to stomp on the Yokai and snuff out its dancing spirit completely with its infinite dancing might.</p><p>Sayaki quickly revealed another scroll, which materialized in his hands, and opened it immediately, unleashing a Yokai he could only use in a middle of a dance-off, similarly to how Ruby Hitodama and Jade Tengu were used.</p><p>"Sapphire Iyaya. Mairyoku 1300. Step-up: "No way! Uh-Oh!" – You can use this Yokai in the middle of any dance-off to reveal Sapphire Iyaya's scary true face and force the opposing player to switch our their Yokai with another in their Magic Hike or their reserve bank, the Base Mairyoku of that Yokai gains an additional X1.5 multiplier before the dance multipliers are calculated". The empowered step-up of the first Yokai Mana obtained stated.</p><p>"Ha ha ha, you've only prolonged your death and… Wait…" Meta belatedly understood the implications of Sayaki's step-up chain.</p><p>"That's right, Yanari prevents you from using Jade or higher Yokai, except for the one you use in the dance-off, effectively shutting off any ability to switch out or use another high ranking Yokai's step-up. Together with Sapphire Iyaya – the Yokai cause a simple, finite paradox – you cannot switch, but you must. Also, because of…" Sayaki could not finish the sentence as the entire dimension around him sunk in total darkness. Mana felt her entire body getting dragged through a tunnel of air, as if she was flying at immense speeds before waking up in Tomoko's Mansion, right beside Sayaki who was leaning over Mana, worried that whatever injuries she sustained in Yokai Mash would've carried through to the home dimension as well.</p><p>"Because of Yanari's step-up, he couldn't rewind time using his Jade Tengu either", Sayaki finished the sentence before sitting down and breathing in and out as the immense pressure rolled off of his chest. He had shut down the game he intended to save using a finite paradox, just as the admins instructed him, all because he read the Instructions and studied, strategized, and wasn't afraid of asking for help when he needed it.</p><p>"Are you okay, Mana"? The boy worried.</p><p>"I think it's your bed time", Mana pouted, she still felt aches all over her body and felt blunt traumas forming in several more sensitive places but she was definitely in a better and more combat-ready state than she was inside Yokai Mash.</p><p>"Yeah… Too bad the finite paradox triggered the game to shut down. I'll need new activities to entertain me until it gets back up", Sayaki dreamily wondered before slipping out of his clothes and into PJs before hiding under a bulky cover sheet.</p><p>"I am a stage magician, as well as a ninja, remember? If you want, I can get you tickets to my show the day after tomorrow. It's pretty popular around Konoha so you may bring any new friends you meet, as long as you never stop giving people chances", Mana suggested.</p><p>"Nah, I think I'd rather earn those tickets and pay for them. I don't want no freebies", Sayaki smiled before turning onto his side and going to sleep.</p><p>A good half an hour later a bodyguard came in to check up on Mana and ask if she needed anything and if everything was alright. He also reported that thing were quiet outside and then hurried to return to his post.</p><p>"It's alright, I'm not gonna let his kid out of my sight the whole night through. No one's going to harm Sayaki-san on my watch", she said, returning to the more informal referral once the boy couldn't hear her, it just felt simpler and more right to her.</p><p>"Sayaki-san? Not "young master", so the kid's made you go all soft, huh"? The bodyguard laughed out before leaving, not waiting for a reply from Mana. The magician just wrapped her hands around her knees and tipped her hat a bit so that she got a clearer view on the sleeping boy and softly tilting cover that protected him from the almost freezing outside chill.</p><p>She had a long night ahead, but somehow, she didn't mind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0328"><h2>328. One's Own Growth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sounds of explosions, rumbling thuds and shockwaves emanating from ground shaking punches and steel clanging followed anyone who would have spent a day in the Konohagakure Training Grounds complex. Smells of smoke, burning, sweat and packed lunch both annoyed and caressed one's nose as they passed by a duo of old friends working out together or a team of newly graduated genin in their team survival drills.</p><p>The smell of someone's egg and bacon sandwiches tightly packed together made Meiko's stomach churn and her mouth water, the blacksmith just kept rubbing her tummy, despite having eaten maybe a good thirty minutes ago. Thirty minutes spent wandering around Training Grounds and looking for one particular person. Ever since the blacksmith saw the Eight Gates technique and heard about the fact that it was easy to pick up, she thought it was a perfect jutsu for her. Now all she needed to do was pick it up in the over seven days that she had for preparations.</p><p>After prolonged searching, so long, in fact, that Meiko considered finding Mana first and asking her to use her chakra sensory to help the blacksmith out, the redhead finally found Sugemi's team training in one of the training grounds. In the cold season the whole place was different – the ground was rougher, frozen solid, grass was rare and greyed out and the lakes looked oddly calm and waited for the surrounding weather to drop one more degree so it could freeze over.</p><p>Daidao pointed his armored arms at Sugemi and fired off a blindingly excessive cloud of smoke in his general direction, which was supposed to surround the Nara and blind him completely. Sugemi barely even resisted the smoke surrounding him. He just calmly looked around and listened in, as his teammate charged in, using the sounds of clanging armor pieces, turning gears and smoke getting pushed out to enhance the speed and strength of Daidao's strikes to aid him in tracing the direction, angle, number and velocity of his opponent's attacks for a successful evasive dodge.</p><p>"You should've joined into the attack. Sugemi is a taijutsu user, my sole efforts won't be enough to push him sufficiently for an actual work out", Daidao objected, staring angrily at Nanaba who just sat on her butt, capriciously, and pouted, firing blazing glares at the boys who were working out as if they were to blame for the reason for her ire.</p><p>"I told you! I lost my arms! I can't fight without them, I feel like I'm naked without them!" Nanaba shrieked out in a rather annoying pitch, which made Meiko rub her ears, figuring that the high-pitched screech would make them actually bleed.</p><p>"I… I don't even…" Daidao twitched for a moment trying to comprehend a single response for this utter insanity.</p><p>"You invented those arms like… Months ago, you've been fighting for over three years completely without them. You're a goddamn Jinchuuriki, to top it all off – your chakra pool surpasses that of anyone in the higher ninja ranks by at least couple of hundreds of times, or something…" Sugemi noted as he sat down, feeling annoyed about the lack of good challenge.</p><p>"Ummm… Sorry to intrude…" Meiko let Team Hawthorn know that she was present seeing how neither one of them bothered to notice her, their quarrel must've been so intense and people must've been passing by so frequently that arrival of another ninja passed completely by their radars.</p><p>"Oh… Sorry, do you have this place booked, or something"? Sugemi squinted at Meiko dismissively. "Because if you don't, we'd really like to keep on training here. We won't mind if you just train somewhere nearby".</p><p>"Uh… No, I… Wanted to ask you something", Meiko rubbed her foot in the dirt, still trying to figure out if asking Mana's past teammate for a favor was that smart of an idea. Did Masen-Z not give the blacksmith that weird idea for a potential future technique she could use? No, that technique utilized concepts that may have very well been in space, from where Meiko was staring. Imbuing weapons with that much chakra sounded like fiction to Meiko, pretty good one, yet fiction nonetheless. She needed this.</p><p>"Well"? Sugemi encouraged Meiko to shoot it with a bored expression. By then he may have realized that hoping to push his abilities by training with his teammates while everyone held back to their utmost ability to avoid injuries was foolish. He may as well have seen how deep this thing with the blacksmith went.</p><p>"Actually, I was really impressed by the Eight Gates technique you used. I'd really wish to learn it and I know it's not that difficult to learn but… I'm not that bright and I will need a teacher even for a simple technique, such as that one", Meiko asked with a very practiced and honed pleading expression. Faces like that usually worked on Mana, there was more than a solid probability it would work on one of her past teammates as well.</p><p>"Nah, sorry, I'll pass", Sugemi flipped his wrist dismissively at Meiko, before blowing out air from his mouth, through tightly pressed lips, in a manner not unlike a horse would have done it.</p><p>"B-But… I…" Meiko stopped there. She wondered if there was anything she could've offered or bargained with the Nara with. That was always Mana's way, the magician was always smart about things and always pulled perfect bargaining chips and aces – things she knew she could bargain with but also things that would please the opposing party enough to accept unfavorable conditions. A compromise that only the opposing side mistook for a compromise. There was nothing like that in Meiko's mind, nothing at all.</p><p>"I don't want to end up facing off against another gate user in the Chuunin Exams, that'd just be too boring. Plus, it's just like you said - you're not too bright. Using the Eight Gates that way would only lead to premature permanent retirement and a crippled body. Not something I need on my conscience", the Nara calmly explained, this time granting the blacksmith a bit more attention than he did before and treating her a bit more welcomingly instead of outright dismissing her request.</p><p>"Trust me, you're better off treading your own path, this imbecile keeps overdoing it and he's just on his Third Gate. One of these days it'll outright cost him a battle…" Daidao angrily glared at his teammate, even though the emotion in question was more implied as it was impossible to tell his exact feelings through the rubber mask and goggles. Then again, it seemed pretty angry, gesture-wise.</p><p>"I see. Thanks for your time", Meiko flicked her wrist before placing her hands inside her pockets and walking off saddened by lack of success but also a slightly new perspective from Daidao's words.</p><p>Would she truly succeed in the exams treading Sugemi's walked path? The boy had years of experience with the technique, she would just be picking it up. In a fight she'd be pretty much signing her loss warrant by focusing onto just the Eight Gates. She also had to agree with Sugemi's conclusions, she wasn't too bright and would be just the type of person to wreck herself by getting too emotional or too trigger-happy.</p><p>Meiko would just have to walk her own path. Become her own kind of strong and define that word in her own kind of way.</p><hr/><p>Journey to the Yamanaka Resort was not nearly as adventurous as it was when Kiyomi had travelled there recently. Frankly, it was kind of boring, not that the blonde would've needed or loved a long forgotten nemesis of hers trying to claim her head out of nowhere… By now the kunoichi had reached that level of strength where travelling alone to the resort was sort of achievable and even the minor bandits and lowlife mercs that roamed the area weren't too threatening to her.</p><p>She was not quite a clan heir just yet. It was Kiyomi's uncle who held the title of being the clan head but the title was supposed to be passed on to Kiyomi the moment she got married. Still, she held considerable influence in the clan and was pretty much little royalty, hell, she was treated as such her entire childhood, she may as well have gotten something out of it…</p><p>Once Kiyomi arrived to the Yamanaka Resort on the second day, doing her best to train and meditate a little bit on the road all throughout the first one, she did not make that big of a deal as she entered the Yamanaka Mansion and requested a meeting with her uncle. She did not quite like the man, that being said, she did not have to meet him too often, meaning that he was not quite her actual nemesis or that the kunoichi wished him his eventual passing.</p><p>Kiyomi was glad to hear that uncle picked up on her small details and agreed to meet her without a big fuss, just calmly talk to her alongside his silly assistants who went everywhere uncle went and oftentimes spoke on his behalf even. While it did kind of tick Kiyomi off, it was not that off-putting remembering how old uncle really was and oftentimes he appeared to doze off or even appear almost dead-like in the middle of conversation. Certain amount of advocacy was kind of expected at this point.</p><p>"Kiyomi-san"! both assistant girls bowed, they both had awfully exotically colored hair, one having it bright blue whereas the other one wore it gloomy green and wore Chinese style dresses with the Yamanaka symbol on them. Their apparel looked quite sophisticated and expensive but their shape looked sharp enough for them to not look completely useless in battle either. Despite the apparent strong look, there were two additional guards present in the conversation, something Kiyomi was not overly fond of either.</p><p>"Uncle", Kiyomi nodded, making the gesture appear close enough to a bow that she did not raise any lumps but far away for her pride to remain intact. "Thank you for agreeing to meet so soon… Uncle"? The blonde addressed the massive dumpling of flesh with human sized ponytail of snow-white hair, the bright Yamanaka locks appeared to grey out in an especially unique shade of white.</p><p>"We've heard you've moved forward with the Chuunin Exams, you're honoring our clan, future heiress", one of the assistants smiled deceitfully. Kiyomi wasn't sure why exactly the youngling faked the smile to such a disgustingly venomous extent, was she planning on marrying uncle, thusly prolonging the reigns' passage until her own untimely death, or was she merely trying to annoy Kiyomi for her own personal amusement.</p><p>"That is exactly why I'm here, uncle", Kiyomi addressed her slumbering giant of an uncle who appeared to only wake up to stuff his massive face, drink up with wine and then lift his weights a couple of thousands of times to compensate for the massive gain of calories but never burning it all off. No amount of weight lifting would compensate his solitary, narcoleptic lifestyle. "I wish to learn more of the Yamanaka hijutsu, something to help me honor the clan further by actually ranking up. I think I've deserved this much…"</p><p>The two assistant girls oddly looked at each other before whispering something to each other's ears. The green haired one then removed a large chained hook from behind her back, sized like an anchor and rubbed Kiyomi's uncle's back, trying to hook his flesh just to wake him up.</p><p>"Hmph… Yes, indeed…" the massive lump of flesh woke up, thundering out with his voice as his large whited out ocular orbs wandered down at Kiyomi.</p><p>"You would deserve being taught another Yamanaka hijutsu, if there were any more left to learn", Kiyomi's uncle yawned lazily, shifting the butt-cheek that had to maintain more of his bodily weight as he laid slothfully in his stony throne befitting more of a large monumental statue rather than the man in whose honor it'd be built.</p><p>"Wait, what"? Kiyomi raised her eyebrow, "This can't be true, uncle"?</p><p>"Want to bet on it, my sweet niece? I have massive gambling debts so some of your sweet dough would help cover it up", the man stroke his rugged chin, the fact that the gargantuan relative of hers even dared bet on it made Kiyomi back off a little bit. Her uncle was not a bad gambler, not by a long shot, it was just that he often fell asleep during his gambling and skipped entire matches and would've gotten robbed clean if it wasn't for his assistants.</p><p>"I won't… But I am pretty sure I've seen plenty of Yamanaka use techniques I've not heard of before. Aunt Chanbara is able to kill people with the Yamanaka hijutsu alone, that is no hijutsu I've ever heard about", Kiyomi stated her case.</p><p>"That's true, Kiyomi-san", one of uncle's assistants spoke up seeing how the massive giant nodded off asleep again, "Chanbara-sama is able to destroy people's minds from the inside using nothing else but the Yamanaka mind transfer techniques. Your uncle Bakuchi is also capable of crushing his enemies by simply transferring his mind. All of these are no Yamanaka hijutsu – they're their signature innovations on the basics".</p><p>"Innovations…" Kiyomi looked down confused. It was not something she was used to, not something that could just be mastered in one week. She had no experience innovating on anything. Her whole life she just asked for clan hijutsu to be taught to her and she got it, she was skilled at them and picked them up quickly. Due to her skill picking the hijutsu up she thought that it was all that was required of her. Innovation was completely outside her alley. Creating new techniques on the basis of the old was more of Mana's thing…</p><p>The other young lady picked up a large dislodged chunk from a column towering nearby and smashed it right to the center of the top of uncle Bakuchi's head. The massive shinobi slowly opened his eyes as if warm sunlight had softly kissed him in the cheeks.</p><p>"Hmmm… Yes, as Cho and Han already explained, you've already been taught the basic and the intermediate - all of the Yamanaka hijutsu. What separates the advanced and masterful Yamanaka clansmen from the intermediate ones, or the beginners, is their ability to innovate and create new ways to dominate their enemies while drawing from the same roots everyone came from", Bakuchi explained with a raspy and irritated voice.</p><p>Kiyomi looked down frustrated, she had just wasted a couple of days just getting here, if she was to return home empty handed she'd have wasted almost half of her allotted to training and recovery time for nothing but travelling and on the road training that could've been compared to daily warm-ups at best.</p><p>"Can't you just teach me your jutsu"? Kiyomi wandered before realizing, much to her outrage, that uncle was already asleep, having sprawled out and almost completely slipped down from his massive stone throne as he snoozed peacefully like a baby.</p><p>"If it's training you seek, Kiyomi-san, we can train you for however many days you have left. Taking care of Bakuchi-sama is basically watching a narcoleptic old man sleep whole day and we often get rusty", Cho spoke up before Han stretched out nearby before nodding in agreement.</p><p>This was not that bad of a deal. Cho and Han were competent kunoichi and while they were not exactly Yamanaka clan members themselves, having just very irrelevant percentage of blood relationship to the clan, they were capable combatants in their own right. Cho was fast, she could wield that chained anchor in a manner deceitful enough to give Meiko headache and Han was much stronger physically than she looked.</p><p>"That's not quite the deal I came here for…" Kiyomi shrugged realizing she hesitated to consider the deal for quite a long time.</p><p>"Well, we can say that your perception could still use some work, you've been giving everyone in this room weird looks, almost like you didn't trust them. Me, Han, those two guards to the left and to the right… But you forgot the rest, or did you not see them"? Cho teased Kiyomi as at least six more ninja with Konohagakure chuunin uniforms came out of the shadows. They stood in a submissive stance, not a threatening one so this must have just been a show of force.</p><p>"You sly foxes, you", Kiyomi could not help but crack a grin, "You knew why I came here so you planned this show this whole time. Was it all just to train me"?</p><p>"To our defense, serving our duty to Bakuchi-sama is a very limited part time job. We get plenty of spare time and nowhere to direct our energy. Why don't we all play together like we used to in childhood, huh, Kiyomi-san"? Han grinned, softly stroking the chunk of the pillar she had pulled out previously and used to hit Kiyomi's uncle in the vital point of his head to wake him up.</p><p>"You may have come here for Yamanaka hijutsu, but you're just fine in that front. What you lack is basic ninja arts. We can make you faster, stronger, more perceptive, remind you of your ninjutsu and genjutsu which you've forgotten over the years", Cho brandished the chained anchor blade in front of her, stroking the chain and clanging it demonstratively.</p><p>"Because make no mistake, Kiyomi-san, you'll need to use every tool in your box to survive our training. None of us want you to disappoint yourself and the clan, do we? Bakuchi-sama would be so disappointed when he woke up if he was to hear you being taken out so early…" Han added.</p><p>"We may have played together as children but, once you joined in on the rank of every pamperer in the clan, I really came to despise you two harpies. Fine, I'll take whatever chances I've got for a decent training", Kiyomi bowed even if it almost made her throw up a little to do so.</p><p>It was the most grueling and scary training week in a long while for Yamanaka Kiyomi. Those same two girls that were once her good playmates, turned into her guardians pampering and spoiling her every step of Kiyomi's path, whether the girl liked it or not, now felt like the exact opposite of who they once were. Where before the goal of these two was to turn Kiyomi into a pretty spoiled princess, now they trained her as a true future heiress of the clan. As a proud, strong and diversely skilled kunoichi.</p>
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<a name="section0329"><h2>329. Death To Love, Birth Of Strength</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko disappointedly trekked back to Konoha through the brief dirty path that stretched through the endless woods of Land of Fire between the Training Grounds complex and Konohagakure. While she did feel somewhat clearer about what she needed to do, the "hows" of the matter still remained a mystery. She was lightyears away from inventing her own techniques and her most innovative jutsu was a simple storage seal. The two towering pillars of Masen's chakra imbuement technique and the Eight Gates loomed atop of Meiko's head, as if a dragon over the mountain, spitting flames at her direction and taunting to come with something stronger.</p><p>"Hey, it's you again"! A slightly familiar, cutesy voice attracted Meiko's attention as the blacksmith raised her eyes up and met an unexpected pair of ninja. "You stay away from us, Teia, let's get the hell away from this girl, don't even think about challenging her again"! Little Aoi Yuki exclaimed, pointing a finger at Meiko as he hovered in the air like a weightless snowflake.</p><p>"Whoa! Just the person I wanted to see! Let's fight again!" The blond swordswoman shrieked out as she enthusiastically rushed up to Meiko and grabbed the blacksmith's hands, pulling them on her chest. The redhead could feel Galateia's heart just pounding with excitement, despite Meiko beating the young woman there was not a hint of malice in the girl's eyes, just a desire to fight it out again.</p><p>"I thought the two of you were captured, or something…" Meiko squinted pointing fingers at Aoi, by far the more reasonable of the two nukenin that traveled around together looking for people to fight.</p><p>"We were, turns out that we aren't actually wanted in the Fire Country for any actual crimes and the international relationship between Konoha and Kumogakure isn't cohesive enough for an extradition." The floating pale kid locked his arms around his chest, feeling immensely annoyed by his experience in the Konohagakure Detainment Facility and the interrogation in the Police Force headquarters.</p><p>"Tee hee, he said "cohesive"…" Galateia giggled innocently before Aoi floated above her head.</p><p>"It's not a bad word, Teia, it means the characteristic of possessing cohesive properties"! Aoi shouted out right next to Galateia's ear. The tall blonde just stared into the eyes of her angered short companion in innocent confusion.</p><p>"You know, it's a really lousy explanation to someone who isn't aware of what the word means…" Meiko grinned with a shrug.</p><p>"Whatever, anyways, it was either execute us or let us go, they had no reason to keep us detained, on top of that, Teia's been deemed hopelessly stupid and the Police Force officers thought that executing her would've been like putting down a disabled person", Aoi explained. "They tried to pin kidnapping on us but Gwido just gave them an ominous stare and told them he did it just for the kicks of it. He'll probably land into some public works for being such a badass though".</p><p>"They did tell us to leave the village, that's too bad, there were so many strong ninja just walking around", Galateia dreamily stared into the sky.</p><p>"I may begin to understand why they insisted on you leaving the village", Meiko noted before getting an idea. "Are you two heading anywhere specific"? She wondered.</p><p>"Not really, we're kind of wandering, wherever the mood takes us. Teia's mood changes all the time so as you may guess – that's all over the place", Aoi managed to complain with his answer, something that flew completely over his oblivious companion's head as a little sparrow landed on her shoulder plate to rest.</p><p>Meiko stared in hesitation, for a moment, she felt truly psyched out and thought that the blonde-haired young woman would crush the poor bird but the silly girl just kept on staring at the little thing and just giggling.</p><p>"Not yet, little one, one day you'll grow up to be a giant dragon, then I'll fight you"! She declared.</p><p>"See what I'm dealing with here"? Aoi sighed with a hint of glee in his voice, while Galateia's antics must have gotten them in loads of trouble, it didn't look like the kid hated the swordswoman or needed her that much. There was some kind of a bond between the two and that must have been the reason why they stuck around.</p><p>"Would you mind training with me? You're both nukenin so I'm sure you're used to living outside the village walls. I'm sure you can find an inn to stay in around these parts. I'll craft training equipment for us and repair your gear whenever it wears out, maybe I'll even make something for you for the road ahead", the blacksmith suggested. This was just what the redhead needed, Galateia was a spectacularly tough opponent and she probably did not know the definition of holding back – she will be just the right training partner for the week.</p><p>The blond swordswoman kept on playing with her hair as she appeared to be deep in thought.</p><p>"That does sound like a plan, which is better than what we currently have, that'd be jack squat. What do you think, Teia"? Aoi looked at his companion's approval.</p><p>"You've no idea what I just said, do you"? Meiko smiled feeling pity for the tall potential training companion of hers.</p><p>"Nope! You just said so many things, I kind of got lost, none of them really involved fighting so I lost interest", Galateia laughed out.</p><p>"You know, training would probably involve a lot of fighting", Meiko teased the nukenin.</p><p>"Sparring is a form of fighting", Aoi prompted his companion, helping her out with this fancy word.</p><p>"Glorious! If it involves fighting Meiko again, I'm all for it", Galateia grinned before getting a bit serious, the blacksmith had an itching feeling that the nukenin got excited about facing off with Meiko for the entire week straight. It was actually quite a beneficial deal for both girls.</p><p>Meiko spent the rest of the week training with Galateia in the wilderness of the Land of Fire. Every evening the blacksmith returned home to lick her wounds and repair her armor and gear whereas the duo of nukenins returned to the inn to rest, eat and drink up and prepare for the series of tough hardening battles the next day.</p><p>Facing off against Galateia was truly a limit, as well as the body, breaking experience. While the swordswoman herself may not have been able to tell initially – Meiko held herself back, she only fought using a sword, which was why she got trounced so many times. The blonde was an amazing prodigy of a swordswoman, she may have been a bit slow in everything else but as far as swordsmanship went she may have been a genius. She was reading strings and predicting next moves better than Mana did after the combined evasion training. Once the blonde started catching up to Meiko's lack of varied skills, the blacksmith had to go full out just to snuff that impression, even then Galateia sometimes bested Meiko in battle. It appeared like the nukenin was growing more skilled and powerful when facing off against that same opponent each time she dueled them. It was quite scary…</p><p>Regardless of how scary of an experience this past week was for the blacksmith – her physical strength, agility, endurance, chakra level have all improved significantly. It would have been completely foolish to ignore the leaps and bounds that her swordsmanship has improved by, Galateia oftentimes explained Meiko's mistakes just to make the blacksmith a superior opponent to her. Eventually, however, it appeared that the nukenin's interest in the redhead was beginning to dwindle. Like a child who played with their favorite toy and therefore became sick of it, Galateia was beginning to just train by herself. Even in those cases, Meiko saw how a physical monster swordswoman trained, allowing herself to train using similar methods.</p><p>Once the blacksmith trained that same way but outdid Galateia, the rivalry picked back up again and the blonde-haired kunoichi was willing to duel Meiko again. It was a remarkably silent and gruelingly physically tolling week, maybe one of the most such in the blacksmith's life but as the days approached the deadline of the next exam, Meiko was beginning to feel more and more confident about her growth. To top it all off, after Aoi warmed up to the blacksmith, as a ninjutsu using Yuki clansman he picked up Meiko's chakra control training from where Mana left it off which helped the blacksmith improve her sealing techniques and chakra control as well.</p><p>Not relying on cheap and body breaking Eight Gates to multiply her strength and speed for her, but instead training her body to be more overall balanced and capable of outlasting such a risky fighter in battle was a superior choice, Meiko knew it by now. Even if Galateia and Aoi decided to take off to Land of Lightning one day earlier than it was agreed on, the blacksmith felt confident in her abilities to pick it up from where she and Teia left off all by herself.</p><p>"It's thirty-three to thirty-three, I figured you'd have wanted to settle it once and for all", Meiko grinned as she waved goodbye to the nukenin friend she never figured she would have.</p><p>"Not now, fighting as we are now would be boring. Get stronger, learn new techniques and moves and I'll do the same. Then let's fight again. That'll make the tie-breaker more exciting and it'll give us something to look forward to", Galateia waved her farewells to Meiko as she walked off down the forest path, followed by the little Yuki clan shortie, floating by her side.</p><hr/><p>Training and the unexpected mission she was given had kept Mana so preoccupied that despite having decided on hosting one show during the week she had to prepare for the next stage of the exams, Mana still only barely found time to squeeze the show in at the very last day of the preparations. Maybe it was because of the time restraints of preparing for a magic show while actively training throughout the day, maybe it was so because of Mana's perfectionist attitude towards her shows, maybe both conditions had something to do with the timing of the show.</p><p>Once the magic show had concluded and the curtains closed, Mana sighed and rushed out of the hall and into the long service corridors behind the stage. She did not have time to change out of her less than comfortable uniform since another troupe of actors preparing to perform their play right after Mana's show occupied her little closet for the evening. It was only because of the quality and appeal of her shows that she was so spontaneously even granted time by the owner of the hall, Mr. Hiro, so her service closet was a very modest sacrifice for the ability to perform tonight.</p><p>Mana quickly moved into her coat and rushed through the corridors before noticing one of the actor troupe – a guy named Gani. As a little girl, when Mana first started performing in the hall, the magician used to have a bit of an innocent crush on the guy. It probably had plenty to do with the fact that he commonly played Shikio in most of the adaptations of his adventures. It was a well-known fact that most of young girls idolized both the character and the young actors portraying the lion-hearted legendary ninja.</p><p>"That ending was pretty loud, busy night, huh"? Gani welcomed Mana in his own way, excessive amounts of smoke went out his mouth as he spoke. The kunoichi wasn't a big fan of the way smokers smelled usually but now she had the advantage of not being able to feel it, still, the unpleasant memories of the lingering smell kept unpleasantly reminding Mana of the worse parts of the olfactory spectre.</p><p>"Hey, I'm only here for one night, heard you guys are leaving on a tour"? Mana smiled out of politeness, stopping to briefly talk to her old time colleague in the craft of entertainment.</p><p>"Yep, kind of a drag, really. I'm thinking of dumping the acting biz and moving into writing plays. Let other jackasses sweat while I get pockets full of ryo every time my property is adapted and toured with, ya know"? Gani continued to smoke, nonchalantly filling the corridor that the two in with a murky cover of smoke. While Mana couldn't really smell any of the disgusting odors that the man subjected himself to, her eyes still felt a bit itchy from the toxicity breathed out. It sort of became clearer why her little unused janitor's closet smelled of smoke so often.</p><p>"Writing isn't easy either, you know. Can't just write anything and expect it to break it big, have you tried writing something"? Mana wondered. She appeared to have stepped onto a mine as her pal gleefully pulled out a sheet of paper and showed her a sketch of a Konohagakure Police Force shinobi facing off against masked opponents with two massive kissing faces taking up space in the background. It was an impressive concept art for a writer, the magician suspected that he may have gotten one of the sketchers from the morning to early afternoon times to scribble it.</p><p>"In a world where bad guys control people's minds through tainted meat in burgers, one Police Force ninja has his hands full saving the world"! Gani enthusiastically read the pitch to Mana as if she was an executive in charge of making actual films.</p><p>"Well… Why didn't the Police Force ninja get infected then"? The magician wondered as her impressions were mostly comprised of utter confusion.</p><p>"He's vegetarian – he doesn't eat meat", Gani explained as he put out his cigarette and dumped it into the trash can, he tried looking really cool as he did it, thinking his concept was going to knock Mana out of her sandals.</p><p>"Yeah but… Burgers are just breaking through, I'm not sure those people making them will appreciate this, they have their hard times competing as it is", Mana scratched her chin.</p><p>"Egh, everyone's a critic… Anyways, do you really trust those burger-things? I mean the first burger came from a whole another universe, didn't it? Why would you trust something like that? What if the other universe tainted the burgers to wash our brains so occupying us would be easier"? Gani tried blowing Mana's mind. He was a curiously oddball of a soul, then again, he was an artist.</p><p>"Uh-huh", Mana raised an eyebrow, being the person who brought back the inter-universal package from Naruto's universe she almost felt offended by the implication.</p><p>"Look, I'm not saying they are… But what if… You know? The Police Force should look into it, never know what you're gonna find…" Gani shrugged as the two friends said their farewells and Mana left into the cold snowy streets of cold season Konohagakure.</p><p>A familiar face of a short and well-trained young boy with messy hair in a shearling jacket met Mana as she left the show. The magician always scanned the audience for familiar faces during the show but this time she found no one. Not too surprising not seeing Meiko and Kiyomi during these busy times but it appeared like only young Sayaki bothered to show up. Then again, once Mana started seriously filling the seats it became almost impossible to tell for sure who showed up and who didn't.</p><p>"Hey", Kouta mumbled out, his tone was just as confused and irritated as the magician had predicted it being. She had foreseen this talk coming a long time ago, pretty much when she did something really stupid, or something that'd look really stupid in Kouta's eyes.</p><p>"Hey. Didn't see you at the show. Just waited outside the whole time"? Mana tried somehow to soften the blows that will soon inevitably come. She had this coming, really. That pathetic circling around the topic was all she could do at this point.</p><p>"Yeah, well… I wanted to see you but I wasn't sure where I could find you. Figured you'd definitely be here in your own show. Didn't want to barge into your home with something like this", Kouta grumbled out in irritation. He was almost as bad as Mana was with hiding something, be it emotions or half-assed truths. He was livid and it was crystal-clear.</p><p>Mana looked away, she knew she was guilty and she knew she deserved everything that'd come but… She just wished that he'd hurry up and explode already. This hesitation and his inner hesitation of just blowing the lid off wasn't doing anyone any favors.</p><p>"So… You mind telling me why you betrayed my weakened team's location to a team from Sunagakure"? Kouta finally stabbed straight for Mana's heart.</p><p>"I… I did it and… I'm sorry", Mana mumbled out, just barely holding herself together. She really would've rather had this conversation any other day than the night before the next stage of the exams but as someone who really crossed her own boyfriend she had very little say in when she was to be confronted about it.</p><p>"I know you did it, Yushijin told me you did. It's not like those Sunagakure guys were very loyal to you either, they spilled the beans on you before they even got to the fighting – they wanted this on you. You're my girlfriend, Mana, at least, I thought you were, so I'm giving you a chance to explain why you did that. This isn't some stupid joke, people used to get executed for stuff like that", Kouta was beginning to sound really angry and desperate, he was just as pained and scared as he was angry. Mana didn't even have to look him in the eyes, she wouldn't have needed to smell his sweat, even if she could do that, to know it. That pain was the worst part about this whole interaction.</p><p>Mana remained silent. Honestly, she just did not want to try and excuse herself, she did what she thought was right, she acted upon her principles and it may have been the wrong thing to do by anyone else's scale but hers but… Even if it hurt her inside to admit it – she would do it again.</p><p>"Was it your principles again? Your tangled web of responsibilities and "right things to do""? Kouta angrily wondered. Mana's lips felt like they were hammered shut, her throat felt dry and short of air, as if she was actually being choked up by the guilt she felt, guilt not for what she did but for how what she did made her boyfriend feel. She could only offer a pathetic nod. Kouta threw his hands up in the air before ramming his back at the wall of a building and falling down on a thin layer of first snow.</p><p>"Being someone's girlfriend means to trust that person, also being able to trust that person to trust you. It's a bond of trust and love, one can't go without the other. You betrayed my friends, I don't know if you knew or not that I was out by that time, you probably did but… Stabbing at them is the same as stabbing right into my back. I… I don't think I can do this anymore. Being in love with someone means that your principles and rules have to come second to the common interests of the entity that you and your other form. You must be able to sacrifice your own good for that of the ones you love. Of all people, I thought you'd understand it. You weren't able to do that, Mana", Kouta started rambling calmly.</p><p>Mana just stood there locked down and crushed. Her hands trembled from the failed attempts not to cry. Sometimes being able to read people, read situations and predict what was coming was the most painful thing ever. Reading situations and events, like ninja were able to do, to the extent where it was almost knowing the future was no blessing – it was poison, a virus that rot one's own guts from inside out before making them blow up once the predicted future came to fruition. Most sadistic killers always told their victims ahead when their deaths would come, it was not for no reason at all…</p><p>Kouta stood up and placed his hands inside his pockets, his face looked calmer, even while a vein was shot out in the upper left corner of his forehead, it was slowly starting to dwindle down as the boy's eyes gained clarity.</p><p>"When I look into your eyes I see a lot of things, pain, maybe still a whole lots of love we feel for one another. The thing is that I don't see regret. We both know you're not sorry for betraying me and that's what hurts, that's what twisted the knife and cut us apart. Now I know why Shimo used to be so angry and rude with you, he just knew you all too well. I just really hope that whatever you got out of this deal with the Sand Village was worth it…" Kouta calmly explained, looking both a little lyrically happy but also still in pain over what he had to do. Having just cut his bond with Mana apart the young man calmly turned around and walked away while Mana broke down in tears onto the newly fallen snow.</p><p>Mana's crying and silent sobbing went completely ignored by the rushing people all around her, some of them bothered to look at her with irritation and disgust as her mental breakdown sort of disturbed the nice and quiet evening in the rather busy village street and fouled their own good mood. Left to deal with her pain all by lonesome in one of the busiest streets of the village, the magician shed her tears until she realized that while she still loved Kouta, crying wouldn't fill up the massive hole in her chest that him ending their relationship tore out. She weeped until she realized that for someone who saw it coming she really failed to anticipate just how efficiently crippling the blow would be.</p><p>This was over. Arguably, the most important night in her life was still ahead though.</p>
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<a name="section0330"><h2>330. Finally, The Semi-Finals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Standing in front of the Konoha High gym hall made Mana realize just how much the ranks of the genin still competing were trimmed. There were no more long queues or waiting for the better part of the day to get anything done. While plenty of the genin still stayed around the village just to get to see the finals, which took place right after this round, they were not allowed inside for this one, meaning they had no reason to crowd the place needlessly.</p><p>Mana sighed as she just stared at the large, modern, orange building made of three thick towers rotated around a large prismatic glass center, making an almost flower ring like of a shape with the rotating colorful towers looking like petals whereas the glass center was the ovary. While the place was certainly amazing, this just was not the day nor the mood for Mana to give it the credit it properly deserved. This whole morning she was just kind of functioning on autopilot.</p><p>Her parents really wanted to know why Mana came back home so crushed and did not talk to them. Their daughter's pain was a big deal to them and denying them the information for the sole reason of her not feeling like talking to anyone for the duration of last night just made Mana feel worse about herself. Not only did she feel guilty for ruining her relationship with a young man she very much still had feelings for but now she felt bad about just shutting down on her parents as well.</p><p>"You've come this far, going to let a door stop you"? A happy-go-lucky sounding voice speaking with a foreign, northwestern accent kicked Mana out of her little box of depression. The owner of the voice was a genin Mana had not gotten the honor of meeting in the previous stages of the exam. It was a young man with tall, brightly orange hair that laid on the boy's head vertically, like reeds on the shore of a lake, a simple, dark green shirt and baggy black pants that were part of the standard ninja uniform around the world. The boy had a slightly darker tanned skin suggesting he was from one of the warmer island countries. Only then did Mana's eyes linger down on the Getsugakure headband he wore as a belt.</p><p>"Not very talkative? Okay… We're all a bit nervous today, best of luck in there, if you consider actually walking in. Unless you face off with me, of course, in that case – worst of luck"! The tanned ginger started laughing out at his own joke so hard that he almost broke up. His large, held by his strong and broad shoulders arms reached for the handle of the door, failing to grab hold of it initially due to him cracking himself up but then finally overcoming the difficult task of walking through the door.</p><p>Mana sighed before grabbing the door, before it could shut right in front of her face and pushing her body gently through it, without pulling on the door too hard and using effort to open it wide up again. In a bit of confusion she wandered through the corridors leading to the different faculties of Konoha High before finding a sign that directed her to the gym hall. With her relationship done with and her mood as crushed as it was Mana felt almost naked walking up to the gym, seeing the light at the end of the dark hallway she was walking towards almost choked her up.</p><p>This would be it. If she failed here the world would not just explode, no one would die but… It would be it for Mana. She needed to win this, whatever difficulties came her way she needed to grit her teeth and push through. She had no team to go back to, she had no right to fail if she was to still believe in her own strength and wisdom being able to eventually change the world. Just keep walking, just keep pushing through…</p><p>Mana slowly crept through the various teams that stood lined up in a rectangular shape, surrounding a square in front of several higher-ranking ninja and an empty tall chair that, obviously, was reserved for Lord Sixth himself. It was not uncommon for the Hokage to observe the later stages of the exams as well as the teams and the team leaders of all other teams. The leaders of other countries and villages would only join in to see the finals, however.</p><p>"Mana"! Meiko's cheery voice made Mana finally peel her half-shut hazy eyes off the ground and look at her teammates standing around together with Lady Fifth – Chestnut Hanasaku behind them. Mana certainly was not in a rush, what with all of her dreamy and autopilot-like state the whole day long. Only made sense she would be the last one of her team to come, even with Meiko's tardiness when it came to procedural affairs and training in mind.</p><p>Without saying anything in return the magician just walked up to her team and joined their ranks. Trying to act natural and not drag her feet too much or seem too crushed with the last night's events. Mana was never good with the masks and the lies so it was obvious that they sniffed something being wrong.</p><p>"Is everything alright"? Kiyomi wondered, she seemed chipper and very fired up, Mana could sense her chakra having grown considerably which the magician found rather odd – from what she recalled Kiyomi did not intend to do basic body training and wanted to learn new Yamanaka hijutsu. Meiko's chakra had also grown considerably as well, the sheer size of it was impressive and both of the girls were already breathing at Mana's neck in terms of pure chakra size. An impressive feat knowing that Mana did specialized chakra boosting training in her off-time whereas these two probably just weight lifted and sparred their way there.</p><p>Just when Mana tried opening up her chakra sensory, all sorts of scary signatures began overwhelming her but utilizing her experience and training in controlling the ability the magician tunneled her sense just to wrap around Meiko and Kiyomi. If at any point she needed to broaden the horizons she could do so to include anyone else, but she made a mental note not to try and measure the higher ranking ninja as their chakra could've easily paralyzed the magician in fear. The larger sized chakra signatures were so large, in her experience, that one's mind had difficulty wrapping around them. It wasn't too difficult to imagine a chakra signature of a Jinchuuriki or a Tailed Beast sending a sensor completely insane from the sheer intensity and size of it.</p><p>"Yeah… Didn't sleep very good, that's all", Mana pinched her own thigh until she managed to force out a broken smile. Technically it was an efficient deflection tactic, the events of last evening truly did make Mana's night sleep less than of desirable quality so she wasn't lying per se. That should have helped the believability of her delivery at the very least.</p><p>"Oh, well, cheer up. Plenty of teams only have two members available. We've got all three of us. We've got such an advantage in numbers that your night sleep won't matter", Meiko tried cheering Mana up but she then got silenced by Kiyomi's sharp elbow to the gut. Even without using ninjutsu the blonde must've been a natural face reader and she went through enough boy trouble romancing Eiju for so long that she must've known those despaired eyes of Mana's.</p><p>"Oh, you wanna go"? Meiko grinned with confidence, "You wanna go now"!? the blacksmith grabbed Kiyomi's hand and tried breaking it up before the antics of Team Hokage got broken up by Lord Sixth entering the hall and settling down, surrounded by his two assistants. One of them was the cute young woman that accompanied him back when Mana received a mission whereas the other one was yet unseen to Mana young gent with a hedgehog haircut and thick glasses.</p><p>Gladly enough, Meiko did not need to be silenced and restrained. The sight of the Hokage himself making his way into the hall sort of restrained her desire to pay back the painful bump in her side. A gentle whisper at her ear made Mana's own eyes shoot wide open however.</p><p>"Nice work with that mission couple of days ago", Hanasaku's restrained voice uttered. There it was. That feeling when it seemed like she was drowning in wet cement however somehow a small hole peeked open giving Mana some hope to keep groveling through and out. Her mentor figure commending her with this small venture really did feel like the small motivation booster she needed, just what was required to stay afloat.</p><p>Shortly after settling in his big chair the main man in the room picked himself back up and walked up to the stand before extending his large hands widely to gesture him addressing the entirety of the hall.</p><p>"Genin, their mentors, welcome having made it this far in what is probably the most competitive and… Most massive in scale Chuunin Exams in quite a while. I won't lie by telling you that I know what you're feeling, I studied here at Konoha High and then moved on to working underground. I wasn't promoted in large events like this but through envelopes slipped into my room with my food. I have no idea what it is like knowing that this is the event that will make you suffer for fifteen minutes before escalating you to higher fame and recognition. What I do acknowledge, however, is your skill that was needed to get here". After giving this brief speech the man slowly crept back to his large chair and settled down meanwhile the short curly hair assistant lady of his rushed up to the stand.</p><p>"As Lord Sixth said before, you've demonstrated great skill and ingenuity, maybe even a bit of good luck sprinkled on top, getting here. However, you didn't all pass these last stages equally, some of you are in teams of three, some of you are in teams of two. This makes the competition aspect somewhat unfair and meanwhile, life isn't fair either, we want to make at least the competition aspect fairer. Therefore, until the end of the Chuunin Exams, all your teams are disbanded, each one of you is a competitor in their own right. In this competition, you may face off against your teammate and you'll be expected to beat them".</p><p>The teams around the hall rustled, raising a moderate amount of noise. Mana wanted to feel surprised or shocked but all she could find was the same unrest that she felt right when she entered the Forest of Death – the uneasy fear of facing her teammate and being forced to eliminate them, crush the dream of someone whose dreams she knew about and helped support. There was no liberation, no joyful shock of the conditions being shaken up from their grounds up. At least, at this point, she was the only person she could let down.</p><p>A jounin wearing thick, geeky glasses and a bandana, being of rather unimpressive and slim build approached the center of the gym, knowing full well that eyes of all the genin around him followed his each movement. This particular jonin was well known to Mana as he had once rescued her from the Hanada estate, what seemed like a whole lifetime ago. Curiously enough, judging from Sugemi's reaction all the way from the western parts of the gym, Mana noticed that the Nara also had experiences with this particular jonin.</p><p>The jounin then removed two scrolls he had on his back before carefully positioning them at the opposite ends of the rectangular space meant for competitive sparring and physical games. With a bright red glow, the scrolls stuck to the ground they were positioned on and begun floating, surrounded by maroon colored chakra aura emanating from them. The man then weaved a pair of hand seals before driving his palm to the floor, similarly to how the Summoning Jutsu was performed, except without actual summoning being involved.</p><p>"Earth Style: Terraforming Jutsu", the jounin chanted as the rectangular area with two scrolls floating at the opposite poles rose up a good meter in the air as the foundation of the building rose up with the wooden tiles elevating the rectangular shape into an improvised arena.</p><p>"Greetings, genin who have gotten to this point. I am Konohagakure jounin – Dorimi, the leader of Team Walnut, which, unfortunately, didn't make it this far. I shall help clear things out with the rules of this stage…" Dorimi started talking in a rather monotonous and dull tone, appearing to very clearly only have a professional interest in the matter and little to no excitement.</p><p>"Yawn, this guy's so boring", Meiko complained, actually yawning, after acknowledging how boring the terraforming jounin ninja was.</p><p>"No wonder his team got eliminated, he can't explain anything at all", Kiyomi tried to joke to elevate the team's mood, even if there was no longer any team nor was it within her interests to do so.</p><p>Dorimi went on to talk for a good twenty minutes about the establishment they were standing in – Konoha High. About its purpose to further shape ninja who have graduated the Ninja Academy into more specialized shinobi ready to tackle specific professions of the ninja world. Such as being part of the "Intelligence Division", "Village Protection Services", Konoha's recently formed "Barrier Corps", as well as a medical ninja and how it was the only such institution of its kind. It could have been all so very interesting for the foreign ninja but even Mana had to admit – it was outright boring to any local ones, Dorimi's dull, boring and uninterested tone did not really help things at all.</p><p>"Thank you, Dorimi-senpai", Lord Sixth's male assistant interrupted Dorimi's clearly completely fireless speech before politely bowing multiple times as he stepped into the recently built up and erected arena and addressed the genin, looking up from below. "Your speech was highly… Informative, however, I would like to still explain the rules of the competition before the youths are completely lost and over-informed".</p><p>Dorimi laughed innocently from his own long-winded speech and happily apologized the audience before stepping down and allowing the assistant to take over.</p><p>"Greetings, hopefully, future chuunin. I am Haiji, Lord Sixth's assistant and I shall explain the rules of this exam, as well as be the judge of this stage, in Dorimi-senpai's stead." The strict looking ninja bowed to the audience before turning sideways and pointing at the erected arena. "This is where you'll be fighting for your right to participate in the finals. Make no mistake, however, it won't be as simple as just the honorable Traditional Shinobi Kumite you are used to from your Academy days, it'll be a Tag Team match, as per the traditional exercise of improvised teamwork skills building game played here in Konoha High".</p><p>Haiji then turned around and patiently waited for a monitor to light up behind him. As the title screen of the monitor proudly declaring "Konoha's 32nd Chuunin Exams" lit up, the ninja then turned back to the audience before gesturing with his hands at the glowing monitor.</p><p>"This system will determine the Tag Teams that will compete in the semi-finals of these Chuunin Exams. They will still call you up by the names of your old teams, just for the sake of national and personal pride, as well as your own name. When called up, step up to the arena and determine if you are planning on being the active combatant or the passive one through dialogue with your selected partner." Haiji then turned at the two scrolls positioned at the opposite ends of the arena.</p><p>"These scrolls are for the passive combatants. When the passive combatant appoints himself, they must place their hand onto the sealing glyph inside the scrolls and they shall be sealed away, unable to perceive anything happening outside. Meanwhile, the active combatants will be fighting it out, following the same rules that are applied to the Traditional Shinobi Kumite – fights go on until ring out or the opponent is no longer able to fight, or until they surrender". Haiji stopped talking for a breather, letting the rules sink in for the genin who'd soon be participating in the exam.</p><p>"The twist of the exam comes in the Tag rule – at any point, any active combatant can open the scroll and unseal their passive combatant, also giving both of them three seconds to attack their opponent together. After the three seconds pass – the active combatant becomes passive and is sealed into the scroll. A team wins the exam by eliminating both their opposing competitors. Any questions"? Haiji looked across the audience waiting for the audience's questions.</p><p>"It's a trick, this unsealing rule. Unsealing requires letting your eyes down from your opponent and opening the scroll. It's a risky move." Kiyomi thought aloud, scratching her chin as she pondered on the most efficient timing to tag herself out with her partner.</p><p>A hand came up from one of the teams, a muscular and fit, tall dark-skinned young woman with short blond hair that spiked out at the front of his head raised her hand, the headband tied around her arm betrayed the young woman to be from Kumogakure.</p><p>"Yeah, what about a situation when the active combatant is knocked out, or ringed out, but the passive combatant remains sealed"? The Kumogakure kunoichi asked.</p><p>"A good question, in that case, I, as the supervisor, shall unseal them for you and they automatically become the active combatant", Haiji nodded before explaining.</p><p>For a good while, Haiji waited for more questions but it appeared like none came from the audience. At which point he turned to the monitor behind him and allowed it to activate before scrolling through a sheet of names, slowly, one by one picking out four of them and lighting up the screen with the selected names.</p><p>"Gasco Patura (Team Phobos/Getsugakure) &amp; Dhaogu (Team Zumurrud/Sunagakure) VS Armasar Fulgertun (Team Iocaste/Getsugakure) &amp; Neph-T (Team Alto/Kumogakure)"</p><p>Mana's heart stopped for a moment. She had a very bad vibe about Team Phobos and she has had first-hand experience in witnessing their tendencies to cross into the weird side and be a bit unhinged. The towering sensor, whom Mana had a bad feeling about all this time, later to be revealed as just her sensory abilities going haywire when encountering another sensor, stepped out of the line of his mysterious and dangerous team. Team Phobos were cloaked, as usual for them, the fronts of their cloaks were decorated with a large white crescent moon shape that made the trio stand out amongst all other genin but also sort of served like larger headbands for the team.</p><p>"Weren't those guys the weirdos that hurt you while you were looking for a medical ninja, Mana"? Kiyomi turned at the magician who continued to observe Gasco walk past her, momentarily looking at her with a stone cold face.</p><p>"Your sensory abilities have improved tremendously in such a short time", he muttered looking straight into Mana's eyes with his scary paled out, almost white, ocular orbs, before resuming his slow crawl to the arena and leaping onto its grounds with a single restrained bound.</p><p>"Maybe he'll be more restrained when facing someone from his own village"? Mana spoke up, hopefully. "They have displayed some nationalist tendencies before".</p><p>A silent young boy with a bit excessive love of eye shadow and ragged baggy clothes, that made him look like a desert traveler, stood up from his seated on the wood position and walked up to the arena, much faster than his partner and leaped up onto the stage as well. His dark purple hair made the blurry, lightning fast, moves of the boy appear like a dark purple flash.</p><p>"That Steinck guy told us about this Dhaog in the Forest, hasn't he"? Meiko wondered as she stretched out and relaxed, ready to observe the tag battle that was about to break out in great anticipation and excitement.</p><p>"Yeah, maybe seeing him do his thing will help us clear up his ability since Steinck wasn't too clear on that", Kiyomi nodded with a confident smile. Observing these battles closely was very useful, as it would serve as valuable experience for the future. One would have been wise to reveal as little of their abilities as possible, or else risk exposing their strategies and fighting style to the opponent, which they would end up facing in the finals.</p><p>"Alright! I get to go first"! The curious darker skinned ginger boy whom Mana met before entering Konoha High earlier raised his fist into the air. His name must've been "Armasar Fulgertun" since he was the one from Getsugakure. Mana calmly observed the broad-shouldered and fit young man run off and excitedly leap into the ring.</p><p>The spiky haired blond dark skinned young lady from before stretched out before stepping into the ring in a much more reserved manner, instead choosing to carefully jump up and use her unaugmented physical abilities to pull herself the short distance up onto the ring. She was the Neph-T of Kumogakure.</p><p>"Would it be alright with you if I was the passive combatant"? Dhaogu of the Sand Village inquired Gasco calmly. "I very much intend to not use my ability until the finals".</p><p>The hooded man then removed the cloak on his shoulders and tossed it aside, revealing his tall and muscular state and a black vest encrusted with gold colored rings that held it together from revealing the by far most buffed up chest amongst the genin present in the ring. The darker skinned, matching Armasar's complexion, bald head lit up with popping out veins as he took a fighting stance.</p><p>"Very well, it makes no difference to me. I planned on beating both of them by myself anyways", the creepy bald sensor man grunted out.</p><p>"That's a mean amount of trash talk, Gasco, you sure you can back it up"!? Armasar grinned excitedly as he shadowboxed all around the arena, moving at impressive speeds from one part to another.</p><p>"Not against you, ginger, I'm itching to sear something"! Neph-T, Armasar's partner grinned in a disturbing and almost sadistic looking way. Just that smile alone creeped Mana out and made her temporarily divert all of herself to the present situation and not her own inner turmoil. This young woman has undoubtedly tortured and killed people in her life.</p><p>"Well, well… You seem really fired up, you've never really met anyone from Team Phobos though, be careful and soften him up for me then", Armasar smiled before opening the scroll and getting sealed inside. The Getsugakure ninja's actions were mirrored by Dhaogu on the other side of the arena. After the maroon colored shimmer emitting sealing process concluded, there were only Neph-T and Gasco Patura left at the opposing sides of the arena.</p><p>Haiji lifted his hand up, without even bothering to request the two to follow the proper kumite procedure as neither of them looked like they wanted anything other but to utterly annihilate their opponent.</p><p>"Let the first round of the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams begin"! he declared swiping his hand down and signaling the beginning of the next stage of the exams and the start of the first tag battle.</p>
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<a name="section0331"><h2>331. Let The Boxer Beware</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neph-T, the significantly smaller of the two combatants present in the arena stared boldly at her opponent who towered in front of her, in height and in bulk. To an uninitiated eye, such a match up would've appeared completely unfair, but once the fundamental principles of martial arts came into play, oftentimes the larger opponent was on the lower end of the table. Not to mention the complete table flipping element of chakra also being in play, the fundamental force of nature that could have been utilized for various techniques and body augmentation.</p><p>Neph-T darted off, charging straight at her opponent. It was an even bolder and more shocking method of assault – a smaller opponent just mindlessly rushing at their opponent. Gasco responded with a slow, yet powerful, downwards hook that shook the very ground beneath the feet of the two and emitted a thunderous cracking sound. Neph-T blitzed with a sideways vault, moving behind her opponent before her arms pulled forward revealing an object she had pulled from her tool pouch in mid rush – a roll of bandages.</p><p>"That was amazing"! Meiko yelled out in surprise, she wasn't alone – the entire hall watching the battle rustled in awe of how masterfully the girl kept her tool concealed and how skillfully she utilized the size of her opponent's own arm to conceal her act of pulling the bandages out. Even Lord Sixth shifted his seat in excitement.</p><p>As the dark-skinned girl yanked on the bandages, they tightly wrapped around Gasco's arm and locked it behind the towering man. It was a temporary augmentation of strength, also it would've only worked for a brief heartbeat, just before Gasco recovers and reads the situation and utilizes his own strength against the girl. That would be something she would have no way of competing against.</p><p>Neph-T leaped in the air with a sharp and swift kick right to the center of the man's back. Judging from how awkwardly and grotesquely Gasco's back turned – it was a mighty and well-aimed kick that dealt some damage and really tickled some nerves. Gasco yanked on the bandage, having finally mustered enough strength to put some of his own initiatives in. His recovery speed was near instantaneous, and it seemed like getting a crushing blow planted into his spine and the excruciating pain of it was nothing of note for the giant.</p><p>Gasco threw a sharp and straight punch, the howling sound of the fist crushing air was something to awe at. Instead of getting pulled in for a crippling blow, Neph-T used a kunai to cut her string of bandages and then quickly cartwheeled back, effectively switching places with her opponent, from where they started and blocking Gasco off from the scroll that'd unseal his partner, but also blocking herself from hers.</p><p>"That's confident, maybe too confident", Kiyomi pouted her lips before turning at Mana. "Hey, you're a sensor, right? Is there anything we can't see going on"?</p><p>"I can't tell that much, I can just compare their chakra sizes and confirm that they're actually there. If we were under genjutsu I'd be able to tell you where the real enemy is. In this case, my abilities are not very useful, I'm afraid", Mana shyly admitted. As a briefly trained martial artist she was able to tell that these two were just starting out – poking each other and keeping good eighty percent of their potential in their defensive and evasive maneuvers.</p><p>"That Gasco seems like a real powerhouse. Many people would've been broken in half by a kick like that and he just bounced back effortlessly". Meiko grinned in excitement. Mana had never noticed the concept of fighting being so exciting for her friend, maybe something happened during this last week that made her appreciate it more?</p><p>"It's not his natural strength. It's his sensory, it completely shames my own. He knew where Neph-T's kick would land and he augmented just that specific area of his body, without wasting an ounce of chakra on unnecessary patches of flesh. Normally a ninja would augment their entire back in such a situation, wasting chakra and greatly raising the risk of something going wrong, like them losing their chakra manipulation, yet Gasco didn't waste a single ounce of his energy", Mana admired her total superior in sensory prowess. It looked like to Gasco Patura sensory was as natural as moving his arms and legs, like having eyes in every chakra pore of his body.</p><p>To the magician, it barely seemed even possible – to sense such exquisite shapes of one's opponent. All the magician could see was dazzling and shimmering stars, sometimes the nature of one's chakra changed the shade of the flames that one's signature burned in, but it always had that blazing round shape. Gasco must've been seeing things differently, his signatures were sharpened, as crystal clear and precise as an art examined through a scientific microscope. Seeing feats like that in her peers made Mana wonder just what exactly was she doing in this building. Team Hokage was supposed to be overqualified for this exam…</p><p>Quickly and with well-trained precision, Neph-T wrapped the dangling strings of bandage still clutched in her arm around her right arm before taking an offensive stance. An incredibly peculiar one at that and one that made Mana's eyes widen in confusion. The girl simply lowered her hands and extended her body out straight, leaving herself completely open, it was then that her feet began hopping and carrying her gracefully across the arena, forcing Gasco to move or risk being attacked from behind.</p><p>What was even odder – Gasco took the gamble, choosing to remain in place and simply continue staring at the short opponent he was facing with strict and emotionless eyes that displayed little to no pain being present in his back. It wasn't a sign of invulnerability as much as it was his fearsome pain tolerance when Mana focused and closed her eyes she could feel it – Gasco's star burning overtime and shining brightly, much more intensely than Neph's was shimmering.</p><p>Neph-T moved in on the offensive again, leaping in with a crushing uppercut using her bandaged right, aimed straight at her opponent's back of the head – blows like this could knock out or kill instantly. Gasco turned around with a back elbow – the precision and angle of that counter! Once again Mana was left completely washed away by how much Gasco could see without even looking. This would have been it – Gasco had more powerful, longer arms, he was going straight for the dead center of Neph's forehead, a kill shot or an incapacitating strike in its own accord. Neph-T had invested too much into her momentum to strike with full force, she had no chance of redirecting herself into an efficient dodge.</p><p>A full attention demanding, deafening thud followed by dust gathering and window shattering shockwave – Gasco's elbow was stopped by Neph-T's extended palm, relaxed and pillowing the strike like a shield of flesh.</p><p>"The strength of that girl"! Someone in the audience yelled out.</p><p>Mana could not help it, she looked at the trio from which Neph-T entered the stage – Team Alto. The chubby, shades-wearing shorty of the team stood there with his hands crossed on his chest, smiling smugly whereas the third one – a shaved bald in streaks with just long thorny patches of his red hair remaining young man just observed the battle in a calm and reserved manner. From what she could recall, her informants in the Forest of Death recommended avoiding Team Alto in the same manner as one would be wary of Team Phobos. This was truly a clash of monsters in the arena…</p><p>Neph-T grinned before repeating her uppercut, now with her opponent's hand entrapped, knocking Gasco's head back before it quickly returned to its primary position. Once again, the pitch perfect augmentation control of the genin allowed him to bounce back and counter immediately as he was hit in the face. Gasco continued to press on an offensive, throwing a quick and powerful combination of chain strikes, all of them caught and shielded against by Neph-T's "shield arm" whereas her bandaged arm continued to bombard the giant's face and ribs with thundering mighty strikes.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist"! Gasco shouted out, nonchalantly inserting a ninjutsu enhancement technique into his combination but at that point, his opponent was too caught up with her own success and the relentless barrage of defending and counterattacking.</p><p>An odd thunder-like sound followed by a blinding flash of light that momentarily made the vision of anyone who kept close attention to the fight blurry and floating. Once Mana's vision return she witnessed Neph-T's defensive arm being busted up as if knives had penetrated it from inside in multiple areas and squirting blood.</p><p>"Did anyone see what happened"? Mana muttered.</p><p>"Yeah, probably that guy from Neph-T's team with shades…" Kiyomi grunted feeling equally taken aback by how oddly Gasco tricked his opponent into a fake sense of security.</p><p>Everything in this fight was played into his advantage pitch perfectly – the two members of teams that were described as monstrous prodigies to be feared guaranteed that his opponent would be prideful and not tag out, fixed on winning the fight by herself just to prove a point of who the true monsters were. Then the plentiful successful strikes would make her believe that she was strong enough to block Gasco's strikes and quick enough to capitalize without punishment from her opponent's part. Just when it looked like Gasco was just swinging to get hit again and approaching the point when he could hit no longer – in a single flash of lightning chakra infused ninjutsu and taijutsu technique combination his opponent's shield arm was busted and disabled and Neph-T was slowly bleeding out.</p><p>Neph was clearly peeved. She was erratically biting her lip and clutching her fist, even her busted up hand's fist which only made her bleed out faster. It looked like the Kumogakure kunoichi simply had no time to realize she was bleeding out before she slowly turned and approached the scroll.</p><p>"What's she doing? She'll get killed"! Kiyomi wondered loudly.</p><p>"No, by now she's realized just what kind of ninja Gasco is. She knows that he is a minimalist and will take as long as he needs to, suffer through as much pain as he needs to – but he'll get things done. He'll let her tag out", Mana nodded remembering her own experience being attacked by Team Phobos in the Forest of Death. Those three not only appeared to know everything she was thinking, but they were also in control physically and were not afraid to taunt the enemy with psychological stunts like letting them switch like this.</p><p>In a maroon colored flash of light, Armasar was once again dragged out. He looked at his teammate with the world's clearest "I told you so" expression, wearing a strangely smug and not quite so at the same time grin. The kind of smile of an older brother who lets their sibling make their own mistakes but then always comes in to fix those mistakes and pull their siblings out of trouble at the same time.</p><p>The two traded looks, Neph-T's eyes lingered on Armasar and Gasco but Armasar just shook his head and pointed his chin at Neph's busted arm and the bandages she had on her right arm. The meaning of the exchange was crystal-clear – Armasar must have known enough about Team Phobos to know that attacking together for the three seconds they were granted was useless with Neph's busted arm. The ginger of Getsugakure took a leaning back raised and swinging fists fighting position and prepared to clash against the Team Phobos member himself.</p><p>"Come to think of it, didn't Steinck describe Neph-T as using two swords"? Kiyomi suddenly recalled.</p><p>"It was probably a fake-out fighting style", Mana nodded, "She likely is skilled with two swords but it isn't her prime choice of weaponry. She is simply too good with throwing fists for this to be her fake-out. Some people will go to great lengths to conceal their fighting style until they are forced to reveal it".</p><p>"I think that Steinck mentioned something about "rubber-armor" or something… That sounds like a more physical ability, doesn't it? More fitting for a taijutsu user than a swordsman as well", Meiko observed without moving her eyes off the arena.</p><p>"So how did the lady do, did she give you a couple of bumps"? Armasar teased his fellow Getsugakure ninja who didn't look like he was going to give in to the red haired fellow's attempts to brighten up the mood.</p><p>"What are you doing here, Armasar? We both know you can't fight without getting up close to me. You've seen how that ends, you know what happened to the girl as well. Switch back out", Gasco engaged in an actual attempt of reasoning, greatly surprising anyone who at this point believed the man to be some sort of a monster.</p><p>"Aww, you care…" Armasar grinned as he bobbed around, shadow boxing to stretch out his numb limbs and get ready for an immensely painful clash that was yet to come. "Never took you for the reasonable type, and you know me too – I'm plenty things but reasonable…"</p><p>Armasar dashed onwards with his left winded back and ready for a good cross. Gasco placed a vertical block absorbing the force of impact, yet once his taijutsu using opponent withdrew his punch, Mana noticed black bruises on Gasco's arm. "I am not", the red-haired boy finished his sentence.</p><p>"You idiot"! Gasco roared out as he answered Armasar's call for fists with less than a kind response. Armasar's fists delivered a pair of crosses straight to Gasco's ribs as the giant responded to a straight cross to Armasar's face, turning the young man's jaw aside in a painful looking manner. However, instead of letting the force of momentum blast him away Armasar persevered and threw another couple of lightning fast chain hits at his opponent's blocks in return.</p><p>"They're trading blows, fist to fist…" Meiko noted. This engagement was significantly less skillful and mind blowing as the previous clash of Neph-T against Gasco seeing how Armasar's entire fighting plan was just to run in and wail his fists around madly, hoping that his opponent would pass out faster than he did.</p><p>"He's counting on Gasco being somewhat worn out from the previous fight", Kiyomi added, "It's a gamble".</p><p>"This boy is not at all bothered about protecting himself. A single jutsu like Gasco used previously could kill him, all Gasco needs is one punch to connect", Mana shook her head in disbelief and horror at how little Armasar must've thought about his own life to just fling himself at an opponent he knew was so much stronger than him.</p><p>"Yeah, the ginger's pretty lucky that Gasco isn't using that thing he did before", Meiko grinned.</p><p>"He must have his own reasons", Mana sunk deep into thought, worried about the red haired boy's life and health. Being hit by that lightning eruption technique so close in would mean the end of his career if not his life. Maybe a higher ranked ninja could take such a hit without injury or incapacitation but not a genin.</p><p>"You're holding back"! Armasar roared as he threw another focused cross at Gasco's jaw, aiming to put all of his momentum, all of his built up and drawn force and balance into it to smack his opponent off his feet.</p><p>"You know very well why"! Gasco roared back at his comrade, having lost all of his cool and returning the favor. Both young men ended up socking each other in the jaw and stumbling back, struggling to keep their balance. Where Armasar managed to break his fall by forcing his hand forward and stopping himself from tumbling over, Gasco hit the ground looking to be out cold.</p><p>"I can't believe it, his gamble paid off". Mana muttered to herself as she felt her heart burning up, she wasn't completely sure if it was excitement from being reminded about the value of martial arts and the old man's teachings in the Sun Disc arena or if it was all consuming anger at the young man's disregard for his own life, gambling it all on a strategy as foolish and risky as this one.</p><p>"Y-You imbecile"! Gasco shouted out from the top of his lungs, the cold and emotionless, calculating stare was now no more, Gasco was looking to maim, crush and destroy now. "You're a Getsugakure ninja, just like me. Ours is a small ninja village yet a proud and strong one. We have no right to throw away our lives like this! Our village cannot afford this"!</p><p>Wiping the blood off his lips and feeling the swollen jaw and his busted eyebrow, Gasco stood up, his eyes were blazing at Armasar, looking to scorch him alive.</p><p>"Switch out"! Mana shouted out, she knew that the other teams would think her mad or that she'd seem like she wasn't all there, interfering into a match like this. If what Gasco told before was right and boxing was all that Armasar could really do and Gasco only needed to connect a punch to execute his "Thunderstorm Fist" and destroy his opponent, there was no hope or use in Armasar staying in. He was committing suicide.</p><p>Armasar stared at Mana curiously, wondering why this weird girl from before would care this much about his choice to fight this meaningless battle, a couple of moments later he switched his attention back at his now risen opponent before taking his odd leaned back and fists swinging stance. Armasar's own body was seeded with bruises and blunt force traumas all over, on a lesser extent than the body of his opponent but it was clear that Gasco's power strikes hit home even without the addition of "Thunderstorm Fist".</p><p>"So, finally gonna use it"? Armasar wiped his nose, smiling in excitement.</p><p>"Don't get your hopes up", Gasco slapped his opponent back verbally, "The power to channel lightning chakra so intense, that it passes from your own fist through whatever surface you touch, creating slicing outbursts of lightning that erupt from point of contact. That's Thunderstorm Fist. Your main strategy is to engage your opponent up close if I want to incapacitate you and not cripple you, I need to just keep you back in long distance…"</p><p>Gasco raised his fist up as if he was aiming to strike using a hammer fist strike, but instead, his fist began glowing faintly, before sparks and jolts of lightning covered it like a boxing glove. Crackling and shining visibly outside his arm. Then, unexpectedly, instead of charging at Armasar, Gasco brought his fist down and punched the ground diagonally downwards. The arena beneath the feet of the two shook, rumbled and quaked, cracked and fissured as the fissures lit up with lightning bright glow and slicing crescent moon shaped lightning projectiles jolted off at Armasar's direction.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist"! Gasco yelled out.</p><p>Mana's heart, still worried over the young brawler's life, and angry for his complete disregard of it, skipped a beat watching four, ground-splitting lightning chakra projectiles homing in on Armasar, who still struggled to keep a firm, both feet on the ground, fighting stance…</p>
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<a name="section0332"><h2>332. Exam Photo Finish</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A smoking and rumbling blast erupted from the point of impact where the combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu in a projectile shape hit Armasar. Before she covered her face up, because it was more efficient and rational than augmenting her body and wasting chakra, Mana's skilled eyes did notice the ginger boy weaving a hand seal successfully. She hoped that he would have substituted out of the wave of projectiles in time but something made her doubt Armasar's success, he may not have had much time to sufficiently focus on possible objects for a substitution nor had items to substitute with.</p><p>Once the smoke, dust and the annoying aftereffects of crackling sparks of lightning that persisted in the air, electrifying the atmosphere, cleared, a sight of injured and bracing Armasar met the audience. Mana groaned to herself worryingly, the recklessness of this young man made her both relate and despise this young man. Areas of ruptured and lacerated flesh ran all over the boy's body, as the lightning projectiles appeared to have shattered into hundreds of smaller cutting lightning edges.</p><p>"My God", Mana exclaimed in horror.</p><p>"Wait a second… What's that"? Meiko pointed at Armasar's shaking frame, still static in the same pose of defensive block. The detail that interested the redhead so even forced her out of her comfortable relaxation and made Meiko take a few steps towards the arena just to get a closer view, not because she couldn't make out the detail but because it was so unbelievable.</p><p>The area under Armasar's flesh looked padded with a gooey liquid substance, instead of blood from under the lacerations all over his body only goops of water fell out before imploding into more liquid drops and wetting all over the ruptured ground beneath Armasar's feet. The boy grunted in pain after the persisting lightning in the air still shocked his body painfully, making him break his defensive stance and tumble forward.</p><p>"Hmph, so you used that to soften my blows before", Gasco straightened out and cracked his neck and knuckles before stretching himself out, before beginning to plan and prepare for the next outbreak of fists flying and genin doing their best to knock each other out. "I wondered if you'd use it, given that I use Lightning Release ninjutsu enhancing my taijutsu", he added.</p><p>"Yeah… I encased myself in it while I was sealed, didn't waste any time", Armasar grinned cheerfully before scratching his itchy nose.</p><p>"What is that"? Kiyomi scratched her head in confusion.</p><p>"It looks like… Water under his skin", Meiko curiously and quite rudely pointed at Armasar. The rest of the teams were discussing this odd technique as well so, as usual, exchanges of blows and techniques were followed by genin discussing what they have just seen and exchanging information of possible weaknesses of such strategies. It was because of audience like this that it may have been wise to hide one's real combat abilities for as long as possible…</p><p>"He coated himself with layers of chakra infused water under his skin to pad blows. It's a similar strategy to using layers of fat to protect oneself, he must've fine-tuned the substance to redistribute blunt force, making himself a perfect close distance brawler", Mana noted. "While he did take some damage from Thunderstorm Fist, it didn't come from inside his body, like it did for Neph-T, it came from underground, meaning the jutsu had lost part of its force. It still must've hurt like hell".</p><p>"Yeah, the guy definitely has pain tolerance to spare", Meiko laughed out before relaxing again as the room died out. The audience was waiting for what next the two young men had in mind.</p><p>"Your no-guard confirmed hit close range strategy, added to your water armor, may be effective against a slightly worn me. That being said, you're still forgetting one thing – you'll never walk up close enough to utilize it", Gasco coldly stated the fact before he raised his hand up in the air and once again channeled lightning through his fist, preparing to punch the ground again and send another wave of lightning projectiles rumbling through the ground. A ruthless jutsu aimed to cut up and shock his opponent even more.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist"! Gasco shouted out as he punched the ground with his enlightened fist unleashing the crescent shaped lightning projectiles all around him. Once again, a dust-raising, deafening explosion rumbled around the arena.</p><p>Moments passed after the technique seemingly detonated and the rubble raised by it was beginning to clear. A blond and black flash blurred from out of nowhere, appearing behind Gasco and surprising the towering brawler. The Getsugakure giant swiftly turned around, grabbing two chokuto blades in his hands. With a small squirt of blood dripping and trickling down his hand and his arm coming from a shallow wound on Gasco's hands, that was all the damage that Neph-T had inflicted.</p><p>"Useless"! Gasco taunted the kunoichi, tightening his grip and augmenting the narrow areas of his hand that were required to break the chunks of steel he held in his hands into hundreds of steel shards.</p><p>"Bendigo Fisticuffs"! Armasar yelled out, as the smoke completely cleared, revealing the ginger fighter having moved in right behind Gasco in the exact moment when the giant turned back to defend against Neph-T. The ginger threw a wild combination of strikes at Gasco's back, punching without stop, without mercy, without any semblance of any mental limits or restraint. The horrifying look at Armasar's whited out eyes as he delivered the punching combination made Mana shiver, it was like the young man dropped any semblance of humanity when he delivered those punches.</p><p>Gasco stood there, stumbling forward and backward, before his dazed and confused eyes regained clarity and he jabbed at Neph-T's direction, completely ignoring the ginger brawler throwing punches right behind him. Just when Armasar had concluded his combination of blows the maroon flash of sealing technique of the tag scrolls enveloped the boy and sealed him, completing the tag. Being shaken by Gasco's powerful blows, Neph-T trembled and tumbled over before pushing her body up to perform a kick at Gasco's gut. After suffering the pain for just a moment and shoving the girl's foot away, the Getsugakure giant backhanded the Kumogakure kunoichi aside sending a splash of blood splattering over the arena floor – a petrifying sign that augmentations have failed the kunoichi and she had taken some damage.</p><p>"Wow, they're moving and making decisions so fast, I'm kinda getting lost here", Meiko spoke up quietly, her voice was quite affected by the rather gruesome sight in the arena.</p><p>"And to think that Armasar timed the tag at the right moment, concealing the maroon flash in the light of the lightning projectile exploding, coordinating his three seconds with his teammate to perfection like that", Kiyomi sighed feeling bad for the poor Kumogakure kunoichi who appeared to be too proud to give up. Usually, a failure of augmentations such as this one signaled that a fighter was beginning to feel the exhaustion of the battle and further augmentations could lead to further failures or loss of chakra control, temporarily and otherwise.</p><p>"Gasco is just on a whole other level. I could barely even see Armasar's punches and Gasco perfectly augmented his body in each and every spot targeted for a punch, completely neutralizing the force of Armasar's taijutsu technique", Mana looked down at her twitching thighs and trembling hands. From what she could tell, solely from the chakra signatures, Gasco's chakra was the smallest out of the Team Phobos trio and yet he was such a fearsome ninja…</p><p>Neph-T stood back on her feet, tripping over herself and trembling, she wiped the blood trickling from her nose and her cracked lip before bravely meeting the cruel and emotionless eyes of her opponent who just kept standing there, having an answer for everything that his opponents threw his way. Her previously busted hand rose up in the air, now patched up using bandages that she carried with her, a tirade of sighs echoed through the audience. Who could have blamed the girl for quitting, really?</p><p>"Yes, contestant Neph-T, do you surrender"? The Hokage's assistant overseeing the exam fights asked for a clarification.</p><p>"I do not. I want to ask, how tight is this building really? Can you maybe have a barrier ninja erect a barrier around it"? Neph-T asked, her voice clearly betrayed that she was in a significant amount of pain.</p><p>"I don't think that's up to the rules. Ring outs are very much a way of elimination, if you can use barrier ninjutsu, please use it, if you deem it necessary. That being said, we cannot do anything of the sort", the assistant shook his head firmly.</p><p>"But my true fighting style is quite taxing on the surroundings when used indoors. It may raise the temperature several thousands of times over, I'm sure that the audience won't feel very comfortable in these conditions, plus the whole building may melt away", Neph-T grumbled in frustration.</p><p>"I assure you, this building has withstood sterner stuff than you. This gym was built with combat drills of Konoha High students in mind, plenty of them moved on to becoming medical ninja and even working for the ANBU, your worries are pointless", the assistant shrugged. "As for endangering the audience, if your technique lacks control, it shall not be permitted. A real ninja contains their destructive effects to where cataclysmic, world-ending jutsu barely even look stronger than a pocket bomb. A technique lacking such control is incomplete and shouldn't be used until perfected in training".</p><p>The mentor of Team Alto raised his hand, adding his own input into the brief interruption of the battle. The tall, simply dressed man had managed to conceal himself in the surrounding teams, avoiding Mana's gaze when she glared at the curious Kumogakure team earlier. Given the man's shut-in stance and the strange angle that he wore his red beret on his head at, making it conceal most of his face, it was not too tough to justify.</p><p>"Excuse Neph-T, instructor, she is able to restrain the effects of her heat emitting fighting style, she'd be a poor ninja if she wasn't able to do so", the man calmly explained before turning at his pupil. "Girl, this isn't the time or the place for your games, you have your opponent in front of you, no need to open your jaws any wider", he said to her.</p><p>"What does that all mean"? Meiko looked at her teammates in confusion, "Why would Neph-T lie about the range of her ability like that? Is it another diversion from the details of her fighting style"?</p><p>"Not necessarily, I think it's much more disgusting than that – she wanted to attack all of us as well. Didn't you hear what her mentor said? She was trying to deceive the instructor about the true nature of her ability so that when she killed an innocent bystander with it, she'd be innocent because the use of her jutsu was justified", Kiyomi grunted expressing great amount of disgust at Neph-T's attitude. Judging from the anger reflected in the blonde's eyes she'd have enjoyed switching places with Gasco in that arena.</p><p>Mana looked down, if Kiyomi's guess was true and Neph-T was simply a sadistic savage trying to kill people for no reason, just to eliminate future competition in the middle of an exam, that would've made the extent of sadistic premeditation of such caliber almost too baffling for her to understand.</p><p>The way in which these ninja fought was completely different from the mindset Mana harbored. Neph-T was concealing as much of her abilities as she could, just so her future opponents wouldn't have a chance analyzing them, she also secretly plotted to kill weaker bystanders by indirectly attacking them if she was forced to pull this jutsu out at any point. That may have been disgusting and immoral but it was how a true ninja thought, it was how Mana was expected to think out there in the field.</p><p>Neph-T hunched over as her body began to sweat profusely, washing away the blood trickling from her wounds and making them look like they were bleeding more intensely than they actually were. Then, Mana was beginning to feel it, an intense, dominating presence of heat that made it barely possible to breathe. It was not a rise in temperature to the extent that the Kumogakure kunoichi previously described, it was controlled to an extent, however, it was still something that'd kill an ordinary human bystander instantly.</p><p>"Hmmm"? Gasco emitted a strange sound of curiosity as he glared at Neph-T with an odd look of interest that quickly changed his cold and calculated ordinary look. "I see what you're trying to do, it's a very original way of molding chakra but… You are just needlessly stressing your body like that", he warned his opponent.</p><p>"That's because I'm not done yet, jackass"! Neph-T yelled out, she was clearly struggling like she was holding weight above her head that she could barely even lift. With so much heat being thrown out from her body, the inner burning feeling was absolutely unbearable. "As sensei said, I can build an armor around my heated body to protect the surroundings before I really go wild", she grinned before weaving a bunch of hand seals.</p><p>As the girl's clothes singed away, a dark and immensely hard and heat proof layer of dark material covered her body like a suit of armor. The exposed areas of Neph-T's body began brightening rapidly like they were covering something intolerably hot. At this point, the kunoichi was just a star with a layer of skin and narrow strips of flesh dragged over it. Neph-T's glow was too bright for Mana to even look at her directly, even if the armor she had enveloped over herself and her own skin dimmed the unsurpassable shine.</p><p>"I see", Gasco closed his eyes before raising his fist in the air and letting lightning chakra envelop it. "You've developed a ninjutsu that begins, develops and dies inside your body, secreting heat through your chakra pores as an aftereffect. That armor appears to be a variation of the Transformation Jutsu, needless to say – much higher rank. I assume the rise in temperature of your body, and around it, as well as the energy produced in such a process inside your own body is the goal of this jutsu".</p><p>"You idiot, you won't dare puncture the armored layer now. If I'm busted open, it won't be blood that'll come out, it'll be a burst of radiation and heat more intense than any weakling around can take"! Neph-T smirked, as her mouth opened blinding light seeped through, just like the shimmer leaking through her eyes.</p><p>Without saying a word, Gasco winded up his fist and charged at his opponent. Mana didn't even risk augmenting her body to even bother looking at what was transpiring in the arena. From brief looks at Kiyomi and Meiko, the two girls were staring right at the source of all that light.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist"! Gasco shouted out as he unleashed his fist, charged with Lightning Release chakra, aiming to unleash those same crescent shaped projectiles from inside his opponent, skewering her from inside, like he did before.</p><p>"White Nova"! Neph-T shouted as she answered Gasco's gamble with an augmented to the brim and intensified punch of her own. As more and more chakra built up in Neph's arm, the dark layer of hardened skin that covered and protected the people around Neph-T peeled off, revealing the burst of energy contained inside Neph's body.</p><p>After the resulting explosion and flash of light cleared out, Mana finally dared to look. She was surprised by the fact that she barely had to augment herself to survive the aftereffects of the clash between the two, that was how in tune their chakra control was and how precisely they channeled their prodigious skills solely through their opponent.</p><p>The sight that was revealed, to the magician after she finally dared to look was a sad one. Neph's body laid sprawled out on the floor, covered up in her mentor's white coat as her own clothes got singed off. The whole arena that was erected by Dorimi previously was completely totaled and laid in smoldering piles of rock all over the place. Gasco was kneeling and holding his own burns and bruises as he was definitely brought down to his knees and was having trouble standing back up.</p><p>"Both contestants: Gasco Patura of Getsugakure and Neph-T of Kumogakure have been eliminated via ring out, for the sole reason of the fact that there is no more ring left to compete in", the overseer of the semi-finals ruled after pointing at both competitors. From where Team Phobos was initially observing the battle, Gasco's male teammate – Doma, ran up to him and helped him back to his trio.</p><p>"It's fine, you'll be back into the finals once that Dhaogu guy wins the match for you, you did well", Mana could make out the one with the fiery temper explaining to his clearly injured and a bit dazed teammate. While Doma was right and Gasco would only be eliminated from the whole exam in the case of Dhaogu losing the tag match for the whole team, the thing that surprised Mana the most was how soft and friendly the trio she feared was with the members of their own team.</p><p>She had so often thought of Team Phobos as some inhuman monsters, quite frankly, their abilities certainly qualified them as such. They were masters of their strange unseen jutsu and excelled at their fighting styles. Gasco's "Perfect Augmentation" defense only proved Mana her point further, but there was a very soft hint of humanity inside those three, whenever other ninja of their village were concerned. Gasco clearly held back from seriously crippling Armasar for life, Doma was clearly less crazy and more leader-like when comforting his own team and the trio did appear to have this warm bond of kinship between each other.</p><p>The overseer then slowly walked up to the center of the has-been arena and weaved a bunch of hand seals before extending his hands to the sides, making sealing glyphs light up in the air in round circles where his palms were positioned.</p><p>"Remote Unsealing Jutsu"! he chanted but then was interrupted by Armasar's team mentor, yelling something out unintelligibly.</p><p>"Won't you repair the arena? What's the point of unsealing them both like this? They'll just be ringed out as well"! The well-built and plenty scarred jounin expressed his outrage.</p><p>"A part of being a good ninja is being able to defeat your opponent without making a ruckus. Big and flashy techniques like this, even if they are controlled, will be useless on an assassination mission. Consider this penalty for wrecking the arena, it will only be repaired for the next match", the instructor firmly stated before resuming his remote unsealing and setting off the seals, making them light up with maroon flashes.</p><p>As the bright flashes of light took shape in the air, Armasar simply landed on the arena floor, Dhaogu however quickly weaved a hand seal, right after realizing that he was a good meter in mid-air and about to touch the floor – it was very much an instinctual desperation move. Sand began seeping from Dhaogu's sleeves, boots, and his baggy pants.</p><p>"Water Style: Paradise Oil"! Dhaogu chanted as he spat out blobs of liquid goo that looked mostly like sunflower oil, covering the sand and giving it an odd gold-like color. As the sand rushing from the boy's boots slipped them off, Dhaogu's naked feet softly touched the gooey mush of gold colored sand and his own secreted oil before slipping on it, in a comedic fashion, and tumbling over on his back and down off his golden cloud of oiled sand.</p><p>The audience just observed the oddball's antics for a while in silence, trying to wrap their minds around what had just happened.</p><p>"Well, I suppose, technically, Dhaogu's back and head hit the floor a bit later than Armasar's, the winners are Gasco Patura of Getsugakure and Dhaogu of Sunagakure"! the overseer declared pointing at the poor frail Sunagakure boy who was struggling to scratch his aching from the fall head and keep his squirting tears inside his eyes.</p><p>"We'll now declare the next match, before leaving on a break, we'll erect the arena again and make some slight adjustments in the meantime", the instructor turned at the big screen, that appeared to still be functioning, as it must've been built to withstand harsher conditions.</p><p>The names on the screen shifted around and rolled one over the other before the screen became static with a random collection of names:</p><p>"Wakizashi Meiko (Team Hokage/Konohagakure) &amp; Deiji Daidao (Team Hawthorn/Konohagakure) VS Sugemi Nara (Team Hawthorn/Konohagakure) &amp; Gentib de Vitt (Team Scuti/Hoshigakure)"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0333"><h2>333. The Groove That Cannot Be Contained</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I bet this place has a really nice canteen", Meiko sighed.</p><p>"You've got a really important match up ahead and all you can think about is eating, go figure", Kiyomi tried to lecture the blacksmith who then turned around and shook her head frustrated.</p><p>"Nah, I'm not gonna eat right before a battle. That's asking for an accident", the redhead grumbled out.</p><p>Mana could not really believe that Meiko ended up fighting Sugemi. These battles were supposed to be matched up completely randomly and yet it kind of felt like a cruel twist of fate. Of all the different teams and villages participating in the exam, two teams from Konohagakure had to clash, as well as two members of Mana's past teams.</p><p>"So how are you feeling"? Mana tried shaking the gloomy thoughts away by talking to her friend, realizing she has been awfully quiet since the battle was declared.</p><p>"Hee hee, I'm kinda excited, really. I mean I asked Sugemi to train me before and he refused. Now I'll be able to show him just how strong I've gotten without his help", the blacksmith raised her fist up looking mighty competitive.</p><p>"What kind of training did you do? Both of your chakra signatures are significantly larger", Mana wondered loudly. She did not even need to elaborate on what she has been doing for training, her training plans pretty much came true and, except for her loss of smell, it all went without a hitch. Just the fact that Mana could even easily sense and compare Meiko's and Kiyomi's signatures like that should've told them that her sensory abilities were finally awakened fully and the magician was beginning to control them.</p><p>"I trained with Galateia and Aoi. I think she's already over me, we've been fighting over and over again, nonstop", Meiko grinned.</p><p>"I see, emptying your chakra supplies again and again would've slowly increased your overall pool, just like contracting a muscle again and again makes it grow. Also, just like a muscle needs food and nutrients for growth, you needed physical and spiritual growth to feed your chakra's growth", Mana realized, mumbling to herself.</p><p>"Yeah, well… Our scuffles were nothing if not physical, plus, fighting alongside a maniac like Teia kind of made me appreciate competition differently too, maybe that constituted as spiritual growth"? Meiko shrugged as she calmly rubbed her back against the wall. She tried to look calm but it was clear that the blacksmith was not entirely at peace.</p><p>It could not just have been that, Meiko fighting continuously on edge, always pushed to her limits must have made her innovate, create new fighting styles and techniques to overcome the difficulties of training which must have increased her spirituality sufficiently to satisfy and match the physical aspect increase and greatly enlarge her chakra signature in general. Had her training been any less balanced, such an increase would not have been possible.</p><p>"What about you, Kiyomi, did you learn any hidden clan techniques, like you intended to"? Mana turned at Kiyomi. Meiko just snickered unexpectedly.</p><p>"Nah, she's been training with her uncle's servants because her old man's been too busy sleeping", the redhead snorted mockingly.</p><p>Mana could see a vein twitching on Kiyomi's forehead but she restrained herself from physical actions.</p><p>"I'll have you know that the two servants I trained with were purposefully pushing my physicality and my spirituality to their limits every day. Whereas you stumbled into a spurt of growth by accident, I was lead there through skill and experience", Kiyomi explained, finding a way to bite back at her friend. "Anyways, what's with all the curiosity", she wondered.</p><p>"I'm just worried, that's all", Mana looked back at the open door of the hall. Seeing that last battle scared her tremendously. These were no ordinary Chuunin Exams, every step of the way, every surviving member proved themselves to be prodigious monsters of their respective villages. While before Mana thought that it was just a pair or trio of ninja who was truly outside her league, the more she observed, the more worried for her own well-being, also that of her friends she was.</p><p>"Hmm? Well, aren't you able to compare my chakra signature to that of Sugemi's? Haven't you seen both of us fight? You should be willing to make a pretty educated guess of what'd happen if we crashed against each other…" Meiko grinned, from her oddly curious face the magician could tell that the redhead very much wanted some manner of encouragement.</p><p>This was something that worried Mana, the kind of Meiko that she'd see in that battle. When the blacksmith was all herself, confident, excited and fired up, determined to fight for what she's fighting for at that moment – she was unstoppable. Truly a physical and stamina monster to match Team Phobos and all other monsters. A member of her team to scare other genin with. However, over the time searching for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, the magician had seen a very different Meiko as well. Hints of her showed even during the exam, desperate, self-loathing and sad.</p><p>"Judging from what I can tell, you've got it in the bag"! Mana cheered on Meiko, even though it was nothing more but a lie. She had never seen anyone successfully clash with Sugemi's Eight Gates techniques up close and that would be the range where Meiko will try to keep the brawl in. It was a fifty-fifty gamble, really and Mana knew it. Before her training Meiko would have come up short, now – plenty of things were still in the air.</p><p>Kiyomi's odd stare caught Mana's lie. Had Meiko not been absolutely clueless, she would have been able to do so as well.</p><p>"Plus, if anything does go wrong, you still have Daidao to pull you out, right, he's a Jinchuuriki, after all"! Kiyomi added more encouragement on top, Mana wasn't sure why the Yamanaka would do so, but Mana's intentions must've been successfully picked up by Kiyomi who also must've witnessed Meiko's self-roasting tendencies on one occasion or another.</p><p>And so, the moment of battle had successfully been reached. The wandering and resting, discussing the battle they've just seen ninja quickly gathered into the Konoha High gym hall witnessing a barrier having been erected over the newly rebuilt arena. Seeing how this went against everything that previously said by the overseer, plenty of mentors raised even plentier amounts of ruckus.</p><p>"Please, settle down, everybody", Lord Sixth spoke up, instantly easing the rising tensions and encouraging everyone to take their places and settle down as once the man spoke up, everyone else fell silent.</p><p>"As you see, we've easily rebuilt the arena. That's Dorimi-senpai's specialty, after all"! The overseer cheerfully gave the bandanna-wearing jounin a thumb up. "However, we've also discussed something with the Village Protection Services' recently established Barrier Corps division. They seem to have understood our troubles and agreed to erect a unique barrier, one you see right here".</p><p>Mana looked up, examining the rectangular shape surrounding the arena and admiring the glowing glyphs and complicated symbols glowing on its bright purple walls. She did not know much about barriers, but there was something to be admired in the ability to erect protective walls to protect people dear to you. If there ever was a specialty she'd be choosing as a ninja, it'd certainly be that of a Barrier Ninja.</p><p>The overseer quickly went over a handful of hand seals before breathing in so deep that his chest greatly inflated. "Fire Style: Blaze"! The Sixth's assistant shouted out as he breathed out a mass of fire hurling at the upper corner of the barrier walls. The mass of flames exploded upon impact in a moderate and rather puny blast as it was a simple technique most Fire Release users could have learned in a handful of days. Not a single breath of smoke nor a tongue of flames escaped the protective hold of the barrier.</p><p>"Yeah, we know how barriers work", Chestnut Hanasaku spoke up looking with a bored expression at the unharmed barrier. "I'm sure that the problems everyone had with the barrier were concerned with ring outs", she added.</p><p>"Were they now"? Lord Sixth's assistant triumphantly sung out as he jumped out and completely phased through the barrier as he passed through. Hanasaku smiled seeing the amusingly complex nature of the barrier that was erected.</p><p>"As all of you are aware, the arts of Barrier Ninjutsu and Sealing Ninjutsu are intertwined. Sealing glyphs serve as commands of how a Barrier should behave, with enough commands, complex behavioral patterns can be created. Therefore, this barrier shall protect the audience from powerful aftereffects of jutsu used by competitors, however, it will not interfere with intents of winning via ring out", the overseer of the exam demonstratively gestured in awe towards the barrier.</p><p>"Hmmm, impressive", a female mentor of one of the teams noted, "I was certainly worried that after enough clashes like that last bout, my team would be exhausted just observing and surviving being in the audience of such battles. But how powerful this barrier truly is"?</p><p>"It is true that giving barriers more and more commands makes them weaker, that being said, this barrier was designed with higher echelon chuunin rank ninja in mind. It is safe to say that even the most powerful of your students will not as much as leave a dent on it. The White Nova nintaijutsu we've seen before was truly impressive, compacting the amount of chakra present in a massive dying star by emulating similar conditions inside one's own body. This barrier, however, could withstand a blast billions of times stronger and less properly channeled than that", the overseer explained.</p><p>Meiko punched her own palm and made her way onto the stage, without saying anything to her friends behind her or her mentor who just followed her student with a supportive glare. Further to the eastern point of the room, Daidao and Sugemi both casually walked off from their trio and casually made their way onto the arena, turning to different poles of the structure and walking there back to back.</p><p>As the three gathered Konoha ninja stared at each other, Meiko standing beside her teammate, they began looking around for Gentib, the member of Team Scuti who appeared to have survived and advanced to the next stage in the big genin brawl right before the end of the Forest of Death stage. Seconds, even a pair of minutes had passed but Gentib was nowhere to be seen, his mentor and his other competing teammate – Gorm just blushed and hid from mean public eyes staring at them, shrugging lazily with any questions about the genin's location.</p><p>A popping sound made everyone turn towards the door, confetti and white and golden ribbons began floating from the exit in a highly coordinated manner, being guided by a weak wind current before a handful of flash and smoke bombs exploded. These were custom made, weakened and muzzled, no doubt. The flash bomb was mostly just for a flashy effect whereas the smoke bomb spread very non-intrusive and stinging one's nostrils smoke.</p><p>Gentib slid out from the corridor on his knees like a massive rockstar before rolling forward and springing off the ground high up in the air, only to land right in the center of the arena in a flashy stance. The genin was dressed in a bright silver disco jacket, wore stylish shades and had his hair spiked in front of him, his jeans were completely tattered and he barely looked like ready for combat.</p><p>"You can see that guy's a real entertainer, you planning on doing something like that"? Kiyomi cheeked Mana, trying to just tease her but seeing the magician's composed and worried face she eased up and just calmly watched the ensuing shenanigans on the arena.</p><p>"Contestant Gentib, are you ready"? The overseer stuttered, confused and taken aback by this whole show of dramatic flare.</p><p>"You know it, daddy-o", Gentib stood up and swiped his shades off before throwing them aside, the shades landed in the hands of a very confused and flustered young lady who just jumped after realizing she caught the shades and dropped them. "Name's Takemito – the Flashy Silver Idol"!</p><p>"Whoa, you got a face like the Bloody Mist banner, longhair, you need to check into a community joy ride or else we're both getting the Kirigakure sunset", Takemito pointed his indexes at Sugemi in a showy manner before moonwalking his way to the scroll, I'm too straight outta fridge to hang around those two cubes, I'm outta here, daddy-o"!</p><p>As he continued to baffle Sugemi with his odd manner of speech and a completely changed personality from his Tankobaji persona or his default self, Takemito pulled on the scroll and in a flash of maroon light he was gone. Leaving Sugemi with a gaping jaw, still trying to express his disdain of working with a double crosser from the likes of Team Scuti.</p><p>"Okay, I'm not even going near that guy", Meiko pointed at the levitating, glowing with chakra scroll. "Is it OK if I go first"? She inquired her temporary tag partner.</p><p>"More than fine, honestly. You've seen me trying to match up with Sugemi already, even without the Gates, I'm a poor match up for him physically, it'd be better if you wear him out for me, I can finish things off". Daidao nodded before slowly walking up to the scroll and pulling on it, as the scroll opened, the young man got enveloped with a maroon light and sealed off inside.</p><p>Meiko and Sugemi continued to stare each other down long past the moment when the overseer declared the beginning of the second match. Neither one wanted to make the first move and show a card from the hand they were playing. Granted, in Meiko's case it was less a result of careful planning and more like the excitement of it all that rooted her in place.</p><p>"So have you found a better training partner than me? Have they taught you anything useful"? Sugemi inquired as he fixed his wristbands and placed his hands in a hand seal weaving position, in front of his chest.</p><p>"You'll just have to come at me and find out"? Meiko teased her opponent, taking a purely offensive fighting stance, Mana found such a stance to be awfully brave, edging on the verge of being stupid, but, then again, the blacksmith was not fighting the magician, someone who was well versed in countering highly aggressive taijutsu offensives.</p><p>"Yeah"? Sugemi smiled, changing his stance into a one hand on his tool pouch, one focused on physical defense, adapting to Meiko's stance. "Just what kind of trap are you luring me in, I wonder? What foul villain tactics will you use to make conflict worthy of a golden chapter in my heroic manga"?</p><p>"Do I look like the type to scheme? I'm just gonna punch you until someone outranking me tells me to stop punching you", Meiko didn't cease smiling, letting her powerful legs kick her body off in a lightning fast rushing dash straight at Sugemi. It was a gambling approach, usually, physical fighters may have wanted to scope their opponent more than this before matching speed and power with them, trading fists. Else they risked getting completely outmatched in a rush they themselves initiated, clashing with a totally unfamiliar style.</p><p>In Meiko's case, it was a gamble, the blacksmith just tossed caution to the wind, running at her opponent, caring little about if they were stronger than her and just by how much. If she could not take on Sugemi without his gates, she'd be completely overmatched clashing with him even in his First Gate. This careless thinking had gotten Meiko this far, the redhead figured it would keep carrying her further.</p><p>"My kind of girl"! Sugemi yelled out in excitement before launching his own body forward as a response to Meiko's offensive, thrusting his own forearm onwards to clash with his opponent.</p><p>Meiko's backup hand weaved a hand seal, moving her hands to her shins and opening up a chakra storage seal, unleashing a powerful jet of chakra erupting in the form of blue flames that boosted her speed and precision. A boost in velocity will boost her force, something that Meiko learned from experience when coming up short against Galateia's force during training. She did not understand the physics behind it, she just knew it happened and that was enough for her!</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Jutsu"! Sugemi shouted out as the hand resting inside his ninja pouch formed a one handed seal, firing off a strong, long ranging dark tendril from inside the pocket of his gi. The flames bursting from Meiko's shoes intensified, firing her lower body upwards and forcing the girl's body to flip over and avoid the flying tendril's hit. It disturbed the force boost, worry sparked in the girl's heart about the success of the clash.</p><p>As her upper body kept moving she slammed her forearm against Sugemi's, both competitors winced in pain that the shock of impact force caused to their bodies. It appeared that Meiko was first to recover, reaching for her elbow and her chest and setting off seals located on those parts of armor.</p><p>"C Rank Seal: Release"! Meiko commanded as her seals unsealed a two-edged short sword and a buckler shield as the chakra output in her boots intensified on the right side making the blacksmith spin rapidly to add momentum to the strike of her sword.</p><p>Previously she would have unsealed her sword in the beginning that was before she obtained the experience of clashing with Galateia using countless different weapons. Not knowing just what weapon she would use made the opponent confused, it made them make gambles and try out safer yet weaker guards and stances. Had Sugemi known that she would be coming with this specific sword he'd have read her possible moves, found a way to gain an advantage.</p><p>The instance when Meiko felt her sword slipping through something like a hot steel wire went through butter she realized something was wrong. Then the cloud of smoke hit her in the face and she realized that it was a Substitution Jutsu. Feeling a sharp pain of a blow from above bringing her down made Meiko desperate, she raised the buckler up to defend against Sugemi's downwards vertical leg drop and pushed him off of her.</p><p>Quickly the blacksmith got back on her feet with a graceful roll and took a fighting stance using the same combination of weapons. Meiko allowed herself the luxury of her eyes wandering down and witnessing a stone tile of the arena laying split in two, the object of Sugemi's Substitution Jutsu, something he must've noticed and focused on way before the battle.</p><p>"Is that it"? Sugemi grinned as he warmed himself up some more, cracking knuckles, "If this is all you've got, I'll make minced meat out of you the moment I turn the gates on, maybe I should save it for when I really need it, spare myself the strain"? he taunted, trying to apply psychological pressure.</p><p>Mana's heart skipped a beat, psychological warfare could've been awfully effective against Meiko. If only he hit a softer spot, that could've crumbled Meiko's whole tough suit of armor, made a loser out of the competitor inside of her. The magician's eyes opened wide, shocked that Meiko answered her opponent with a grin.</p><p>"Right back at you. If you felt like using Substitution Jutsu so early, maybe I don't need to pull out my new jutsu just now"? The blacksmith teased her opponent back with more confidence than Mana remembered her friend having. There was no mistake, this was no Art of Tree Climbing failing Meiko, this was the Meiko than tangoed with a powerful pirate all over the Earth's mantle. This was the best possible Meiko.</p><p>Substitution placed a strain on the user's body, made it difficult, next to impossible to use it for a while after it was used. That meant Meiko had a chance, Sugemi just lost a powerful ace, also handed one to Meiko, giving her an idea what to use in her own substitution. She could win, this time Mana did not need to doubt herself as she lied, she honestly believed her friend could win…</p>
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<a name="section0334"><h2>334. The Paradox Of Meiko's Ship</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sugemi threw himself at Meiko in a wild dash, it appeared that he had noticed Meiko's lack of affinity for planning ahead. The blacksmith was purely a running at the enemy type ninja and the Nara clearly loved that. Lack of distinct planning from Meiko's part allowed Sugemi to just stop overthinking and cut loose. See just how far everything he had acquired up to now guided by pure instinct could carry him.</p><p>The Nara threw quick three jabs at Meiko, the blacksmith leaned back, answering with swift blocks before pressing her own advantage with her blade. The flurry of fists and knee strikes, shield shoves, sword thrusts and slashes was impressive, their speed would've been troublesome even for someone extremely defensive and evasive, like Mana, to deal with and they never invested enough force into any of their strikes for an opponent to find any openings, always perfectly returning to guard. Sugemi slid out of the brief clash with a bleeding cheek and an aching side, a result of a pair of skipped handle blows and swipes.</p><p>The blacksmith pressed her offensive on, rushing at her fleeing, on the defensive opponent and trying to exploit her opportunity and his stumble. The blacksmith threw a chain of weak sword thrusts at Sugemi's face, the Nara had to brace himself and weave around the attacks. As a taijutsu user himself, he knew that jabs, whether thrown with a sword, or using fists, were usually a setup for something greater. That was why he managed to entrap Meiko's turned sideways, extended leg, when the redhead tried kicking her opponent down, and throw her in the air.</p><p>"These two are going at it like crazy"! Kiyomi's cheeks shined in excitement before the blonde energetically cheered for her teammate. The Yamanaka's eyes were oddly fired up following Meiko, a combination of a very quaint sort of worry and the blazing desire for one's favorite to come out of the trouble on top.</p><p>"Yeah", Mana admitted wondering if the two had some sort of training she wasn't aware of together as it may have been the first time she noticed such a fond stare in Kiyomi's eyes.</p><p>"Atta girl, Meiko! She's holding her own, no, she's on top"! Kiyomi shouted out once Meiko successfully brushed aside a flurry of Sugemi's strikes and the two began exchanging fists and swipes at breakneck speed and enough brute force to deafen the audience with every blow in the tirade of sonic booms they have emitted. That barrier was paying off big time…</p><p>"She pretty much has to be. If she can't pressure Sugemi like this, she'll never survive his Gates", Mana looked away from the battle worryingly, she had seen just how powerful the Eight Gates can make Sugemi. It was a desperation technique but it could rarely, if ever, be matched, only survived.</p><p>"Shadow Spin-Top"! Sugemi shouted out as he weaved hand seals with his free hand, using the shadows coming from the shades of his own uniform to reach for the ground and provide support, whereas the Nara himself used that support beam of solid shadows to flip overhead and spin using one hand, delivering a crushing barrage of kicks aimed at Meiko. The buckler in Meiko's hands shattered to pieces, blown away by the force, the girl managed to control her fall down, landing on her feet and her hands.</p><p>"Dammit, it's busted again…" Meiko cursed looking a bit crushed over the falling splinter sized chunks of solid steel that used to be her trusty blocking and redirection tool.</p><p>"That's right, get angry over that old thing, come at me seriously", Sugemi taunted his opponent who lifted her scorching gaze at the Nara before looking back at Kiyomi and Mana and smiling. Slowly she turned around and began walking towards the scroll, likely intending to tag out.</p><p>"Don't think I'll let you"! Sugemi shouted out desperately, charging at the blacksmith with a divekick, butting in between the redhead and the scroll, before throwing a wild barrage of jabs her way that seriously threw Meiko off her guard and sent her tumbling and flying back, heading right at the edge of the arena.</p><p>"No"! Kiyomi screamed out when Meiko disappeared over the edge, from that angle only the officials and the Hokage himself would've seen the fate of the redhead, much to the blonde's relief, however, huffing and whining like a wounded dog, Meiko crawled back onto the arena, having hung on by the last tip of her fingers. Mana breathed out as the pressure from skipping a pair of breaths over her friend's troubles made her blush and her vision begin to feel a bit hazy.</p><p>"It's been a while since I fought someone like you, someone mindless and just looking to punch things. I'm gonna see this brawl to the end"! Sugemi claimed raising his fist up to his face in a threatening manner. "I won't let the momentum of my life's manga slow down because of a strategizing fool clashing with… Whatever show Gentib has decided to put for us".</p><p>Wiping the blood off of her cracked lip Meiko threw her one-handed short sword around in her sword hand before rushing out at the opponent. This must've been what Sugemi had wanted but to Mana such an approach seemed awfully odd. She's just been kicked around after lowering her guard, what use could there have been to just drop her plans of a tag and continue brawling? Why foster the thoughts of tagging at all, in that case?</p><p>"My God…" Mana sighed, "Meiko's planning something, she's thinking in the middle of a battle".</p><p>Kiyomi looked at the magician in confusion, "Meiko's planning? Now there's something to fear", she cheeked.</p><p>Just as Mana had predicted, the blacksmith was not just about to throw blind strikes at her opponent. Right when Sugemi prepared himself to defend against Meiko's attacks, she gently shoved the handle of her sword with her sword hand, switching her sword hand and throwing a blinding barrage of thrusts at the enemy using the shield hand.</p><p>"That was a clever ploy, fighting with one hand this whole time, then switching her sword hand, revealing matching if not greater mastery of the blade with the other hand. I can see such a trick fooling that dumb nukenin broad", Kiyomi cheerfully met Meiko's successful pressure on Sugemi.</p><p>But even that ploy didn't appear to be all, Meiko's previously used sword hand was used to focus into a shoulder charge while her sword holding arm thrust the sword into the arena ground, freeing the hand for hand seals. What remained was a contest of speed, if Meiko had practiced her hand seals enough to manage to push her jutsu through before Sugemi intercepted her endless misdirections with an actual counterattack.</p><p>It appeared that she was not, before Meiko's hand seals were concluded, Sugemi's fist dug deep into the softer parts of the blacksmith's abdomen, making her white out and fly backward from the combined force of the impact.</p><p>"This isn't fighting like you, that's why you're failing. You're still trying to be someone else, someone you're not. You're not trying to move me by force, you're trying to think strategically, conserve chakra and stamina, something that'll never work because you're not built for it", Sugemi scolded the blacksmith before winding back his fist and weaving hand seals using his free arm.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Jutsu"! he shouted out throwing his fist out and ordering his shadow to form a tendril-shaped form before whipping at Meiko's direction, while she was still stunned and struggling to breathe from having all air and guts almost completely beaten out of her.</p><p>Meiko kept on forming her hand seals, resetting the combination instead of grabbing the sword sticking from the ground right beside her and running at the enemy. Mana closed her eyes and gasped from the loud thud of Sugemi's ninjutsu whipping the blacksmith straight in the gut, where the armor was still just a thick layer of leather under the blacksmith's tracksuit and where the redhead was already badly hurt.</p><p>"Weapon Transformation Jutsu"! Meiko shouted out, forcing herself through the pain. The sword in her hand, grabbed after she was already struck and concluded her combination of hand seals poofed in smoke, greatly surprising Sugemi, who took a pair of stumbling steps back before getting tied up with thick, glowing with chakra steel chain, which the sword transformed into using Meiko's new jutsu.</p><p>"So that's what she was trying to do, that's her new jutsu she spoke of", Kiyomi muttered, still a bit shocked by Meiko's tenacity and guts to take a free hit just to complete her hand seals and tie her opponent down. "But if she needed a chain, why not just unseal it"? The Yamanaka wondered.</p><p>"Because Meiko doesn't have the chain sealed in her armor", Mana realized, "It's a "Weapon Transformation" technique, meaning that as long as she has one of her weapons, she has all of them. That'd be the only explanation why she'd choose the longer to perform and much more advanced ninjutsu over simply unsealing her weapon".</p><p>Meiko charged at her opponent, throwing a crushing headbutt straight to his forehead with such ferocity and intensity that the foreheads of both competitors split open and erupted with rapid bleeding, dyeing their faces red in moments and mixing in with the sweat of their energetic scuffle. Sugemi appeared to have lost consciousness for just a moment as he got violently knocked down, still enveloped in chains. Meiko clutched her bleeding forehead as she yelled out in pain and stumbled to the tag scroll.</p><p>"To answer your question from before, there are three things I've learned when you rejected my request to train with you. First, being to think on my feet in battle, as well as a bunch of tricks I've used during my training. Second, the Weapon Transformation Jutsu and third – basic weapon imbuement with chakra skills, which is why you won't break out from these chains easily", Meiko declared triumphantly before pulling on the scroll.</p><p>In a maroon glowing flash, both Meiko and Daidao leaped at Sugemi with their most powerful and open power strikes. It wouldn't have taken much to knock Sugemi out cold in his current state.</p><p>"He already used Substitution, no way he can use it again so soon"! Kiyomi cheered on for Meiko as the blacksmith's victory over the Nara appeared to have come a bit prematurely.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Jutsu"! Sugemi shouted out desperately, using just his one hand to weave hand seals and force the shadow tendrils to yank him violently off the ground and towards his own tag scroll.</p><p>The Nara's teeth caught onto the edges of the scroll, opening it up completely, something that stopped Sugemi's rapid momentum that'd have lead him to fly out of the arena completely had the Nara timed it wrong. The maroon colored flash of light signaled the unsealing of the wild and unpredictable Takemito. The duo didn't have to wait too long, as the wild and groovy one rushed right at them at untraceable speeds before grabbing their faces and shoving them down as he passed through them.</p><p>"Yo, this is gonna be a total gas"! Takemito shouted out, all fired up as still writhing in pain Meiko got sealed into the scroll with still tied up Sugemi following not too much later.</p><p>"You have not the slightest idea how ironically right you are", Daidao jumped back on his feet, raising his fist up and letting jets of steam fire out from little pipes and pumps around it.</p><p>"Hmmm… I wonder why Meiko would change her entire plan and tag out before taking care of Sugemi", Kiyomi sighed in both relief and slight disappointment as she was just promised more worries in the future. "Wasn't that their entire fight plan"?</p><p>"It was, yet oddly Daidao looked fairly content with Meiko tagging into him", Mana scratched her chin.</p><p>"Either way, I'm sure Meiko will be tagged out again once again after Gent… I mean Takemito tags out", Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>It wasn't only Meiko's uncharacteristically scheming behavior that troubled the magician. Sugemi's plan was equally as odd, he had a strange reluctance to use his First Gate, the least straining of his desperation techniques. Perhaps there was a causality between the two – Meiko noticed Sugemi's changed attitude and the newly gained ability to pace himself. That made her reevaluate her presence fighting him – she was her teams out to his Gates, if she used her stamina out fighting gateless Sugemi it would all be over for the duo…</p><p>Takemito hopped on the tips of his toes before cartwheeling straight at his geared opponent. The boy's movements were immensely odd and unlike the grotesquely brutal and offensive fiery dance of Tankobaji that Mana saw in the Forest of Death, yet she could recognize the face as being mostly the same. Just the facial mimics were different, less brutal and more confident, even to the point of arrogance.</p><p>Daidao extended his arms forward, letting heated steam blast from his armor straight at the opponent. Now Mana noticed why Daidao didn't want to face Sugemi, it certainly wasn't because Daidao was necessarily outmatched, it was because the fighting style was simply incompatible against the sort of opponent Sugemi was. The eyes of the magician followed the swift and acrobatic Takemito as he leaped around, cartwheeling and rolling, narrowly avoiding the jets of steam that failed to keep up with him. It may have looked like Daidao pressured Takemito, as a long range ninja, however nothing could have been further from the truth – Takemito was completely safe.</p><p>The bouncing groove machine finally moved in close enough for a cartwheeling kick that sent Daidao kneeling to the ground, clutching the top of his head where he was hit. Swift as lightning, Takemito jumped up and stomped on the back of the head of his kneeling opponent, stamping and grinding his face into the ground. As Daidao quickly rolled aside, avoiding another stomp from connecting, Mana saw the cracks in his helmet and mask, even his red tinted goggles.</p><p>"Who knew you'd be all show and no go, daddy-o, come on, tag me the badass skirt from before, she looked like she could swing", Takemito taunted his opponent with a hand gesture that demanded his opponent to come at him.</p><p>Pulling on a handle on his shoulder, Daidao made certain pieces of his steam armor crank. A single hand seal set off a burst of heated steam from his lower legs, throwing the gearhead forward with a right hand cross. To add even more force to it, the steam vents around Daidao's fists were revealed to have been the pieces that turned around, now blasting steam right behind the young man and accelerating his punch.</p><p>"Erupting Propulsion Fist"! Daidao shouted out, his cybernetically enhanced voice strained from the tension of holding his body together in the massive internal pressure of the overflowing with boiling steam armor.</p><p>Takemito darted off downwards with an elastic and fast ducking motion, throwing a sweeping kick, his movements were so dance-like and filled with rhythm of an non-existent, melodic tune that they were flowing like water, yet with enough skill, Mana was sure she'd be able to read them eventually. The rhythmic nature of the taijutsu fighting style made it immensely easy to predict past the first couple of overwhelming and surprising bursts of speed and strength. Daidao tumbled over and fell flat on his face, his armor cracked and shrieked some more as the steel plates loosened and began dragging against itself.</p><p>"Idol: Ray Burst Guillotine" Takemito yelled out as his chest inflated at the same time as he jumped up and extended his right leg forward. As the young man breathed out, a whirlwind of Wind Release chakra surrounded his foot before being driven down on his opponent's neck.</p><p>An ear bursting metallic thud emanated through the arena making most of the bystanders cover their ears. It was foolish to doubt the fact that Daidao's armor was fairly effective at preventing the young man's body to break and his bones to be grinded to dust from similar inhumanly powerful hits but his armor was beginning to fall apart, plate by plate.</p><p>Daidao slowly picked himself up, tearing his neckpiece off as it was bent and crushed his windpipe, slowly strangling him by just trying to fulfil its function. It was safe to say that the Jinchuuriki was in a pinch. It made Mana wonder just how much tapping into the Tailed Beast's chakra was he permitted before he entered the exam. Given that multiple Jinchuuriki were taking part in the exam, the magician was fair to assume that there were multiple people in this arena capable of suppressing an overly ambitious and youthful Jinchuuriki tapping into too much power and losing control. Still, to her it seemed like a natural out to the immense mismatch of fighting styles.</p><p>"Is he holding back"? Kiyomi wondered, "What's going on, he's gonna drag our girl down"! she expressed frustration by shaking her fist at the battered and slowed down Jinchuuriki.</p><p>"It's tough to say just how much he's holding himself back. I'm afraid to even look at his chakra signature, I'd probably lose my mind doing that, even chakra of chuunin are sometimes hard to wrap my head around and they make my chest pound really fast and get adrenaline pumping by how vast they are", Mana looked down, feeling a bit sad about her own inadequacy and limitations at chakra sensory that few more advanced sensors had.</p><p>"Huh, so you could have a heart attack just by sniffing someone really strong? That's insane", Kiyomi settled down somewhat, watching Daidao straighten himself out and prepare for his own answer to Takemito's unusual fighting style.</p><p>"Burn some rubber, candyass, I'm getting a five finger discount on this here battle", Takemito jumped around on his feet just to warm himself up some more. Mana would've called showing off his moves any more than he already has risky – at this point she'd be reading the young man's jumpy moves like a book and she'd be able to nail his joints and pop them with her eyes closed. All it'd have taken for Daidao was a single instance of a lucky shot with his boiling steam or enhanced taijutsu power strikes.</p><p>"I won't even try making out what that means, but it appears to me you are disappointed…" Daidao wiped the dripping blood that squeezed out through the tears and chinks in his steampunk looking armor. The young man looked to the side at his mentor and his fellow Jinchuuriki who were watching him with a bit of worry and irritation, Mana let her eyes follow the elder and scarred mentor who just closed his eyes submissively and nodded.</p><p>"Well then, I guess I'll just have to lose a little bit of control", Daidao extended his hands to the side as they inflated from an outburst of steam before the excess got fired out through the cracks and tears in his armor. The young man bent forward on all fours yet it did not look like the Jinchuuriki had borrowed this quadrupedal position – it looked strangely natural and his own. Red chakra began leaking through the holes in his armor and evaporating in the air, just like his steam did previously. His red tinted goggles burst revealing ferocious and primal glowing green eyes of something more massive, more powerful lurking inside the boy.</p><p>"Yeah, I know, you don't like this one little bit, Kok… I mean… Fiver, it's a good thing you owe me a favor for those poachers I've killed for you", the man started rambling to himself like a madman. Even if this sharing of control and explosion of chakra and physical force meant that Meiko was more likely to win, Mana didn't like this one little bit. She had bad memories having met a way different in both power and malice Tailed Beast herself, bad experiences were tough to shake off…</p>
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<a name="section0335"><h2>335. Assuming Shared Control</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"W-What's wrong with that guy", Kiyomi uttered before taking half a step back in disbelief. The radiating aura and chakra of the Tailed Beast made the girl move back precautionary, on an instinctual level and completely obliviously to her own movements.</p><p>"He must've leaked out some of the Tailed Beast's power", Mana continued to stare in certain disdain and pity at the leaning forward on all fours Daidao, the young man kept dragging his right arm across the arena floor like a horse preparing to charge.</p><p>"It's so… Freaky, even I can feel it, he's partially… Someone else. Like he's possessed or something", Kiyomi grunted, jumping forward in frustration. By then she must've realized the instinctual fear that took over her and lashed out to compensate for the show of weakness. Judging from what Mana had seen all around her, pretty much everyone, no matter their rank or strength level reacted similarly. Eyes and body full of fear, then came anger and hatred for the being inspiring said fear.</p><p>"Tailed Beasts are essentially chakra itself, they're entities made of chakra and living embodiments of it. Letting some of its chakra to leak out means letting part of its consciousness take you over, their essence is inseparable from chakra", Mana muttered as she looked at Daidao with different eyes, realizing just how much rage was present in the eyes of people around her.</p><p>These people didn't hate Daidao and his like for something they did, they hated them for something the Jinchuuriki were – containment for the Tailed Beasts who were unequaled monsters in power. If all of the Tailed Beasts were put together in one spot, one would have essentially all of the chakra in the world in one room and chakra was the essential natural force that tied the universe together. In that manner, Tailed Beasts are forces of nature, indestructible and unkillable, forcing mankind to toughen up and deal with it differently than destroying it.</p><p>And, if Mana knew mankind, it was stingy about things it couldn't destroy, if needed.</p><p>"Wow, what a freak, just who should I root for now? I kinda want Meiko to win but that'd mean this freak would advance as well", Kiyomi sneered at the leaking with unnatural Tailed Beast chakra Jinchuuriki who still struggled to maintain his humanity and control himself right, now having two consciousness on the steering wheel.</p><p>Without acknowledging the hateful eyes staring all around him, Daidao darted forward like an arrow. Moving on all fours naturally, like it was his natural state. Just as the Five Tails' Jinchuuriki approached his opponent it froze in place. The awesome speed of Daidao had shocked Takemito who appeared to snap out from his persona just for a moment and looked at his opponent with eyes that were taking him completely seriously.</p><p>Like a trapped wild animal, Daidao began leaping around wildly, bouncing off of the very edge of the arena just to get to the other side and bounce off again. At this point the Jinchuuriki was just thrashing and rampaging around, still trying to share control with the entity inside of him right.</p><p>"Hey…" Takemito raised his hand up, trying to talk to his opponent when enraged Daidao appeared right in front of his face with a blunt force upwards hook. When the Jinchuuriki punched diagonally upwards, the leaking snow-white chakra of his Tailed Beast formed a bubbling square construct around his fist that looked like a hoof. Takemito cartwheeled aside, the suddenness at which he had to perform the dodge made the genin trip up and tumble over on his back.</p><p>The Jinchuuriki charged forward, aiming to stomp at Takemito just like he had been stomping Daidao around before but Takemito's feet shot upwards, throwing his opponent high up in the air before the boy's entire body threw itself up in pursuit. Takemito threw fist after fist, overwhelming his confused and struggling to maintain a consistent defense opponent and pummeling Daidao ruthlessly before flipping over in mid-air and smacking the overflowing with Tailed Beast chakra Jinchuuriki down to the ground.</p><p>"This doesn't make any sense, a Jinchuuriki should be more powerful and faster than any genin. Why is Genti… I mean Takemito still in complete control of the fight", Hanasaku finally broke her streak of silence as she had finally gotten invested in the fight of younglings happening in front of her.</p><p>"He's not, not entirely", Kiyomi shook her head, "He's hitting Daidao a lot, but that doesn't give him the advantage. Daidao is confused, it's easy to see that the entity partially in control doesn't want to fight, it doesn't want to be in control and just wants to stay hidden. The damned thing moves similarly to Mana, I've learned to see a reluctance to fight by now".</p><p>Mana looked away, disliking the implication that she and a Tailed Beast had anything in common. She didn't know this "Fiver" or whatever name Daidao almost referred it to but she had met a Tailed Beast before, a being that answered to Mana's kindness with intent to kill her and her friends. In the end, Mana still freed it but only because she thought of it as being more right than the alternative. Could the Tailed Beasts really be THAT different from one another?</p><p>"Come on, Fiver"! Daidao screamed out in both rage and pain as he effortlessly stood up from the beating he just took. Mana observed in shock as the boy's scratches and wounds began covering up as they lit up with an almost majestic white glow. "I'm gonna grant you more and more control, if you don't stop resisting and fight", the boy taunted the beast inside of him.</p><p>"This is cruel", Mana cried out.</p><p>"Huh? Yeah, it kind of is, why should Gentib be forced to fight against a freak of nature like that? Tailed Beasts should be banned from being used, it's unfair advantage", Kiyomi nodded in agreement.</p><p>"They are banned, to a certain extent. Surrendering complete control and using the Chakra Cloak mode to manifest tails is forbidden. Just tapping into the beast's supply of chakra without losing control is permitted", Hanasaku sighed.</p><p>"No, it's cruel to force Five Tails to fight like this. It just wants to sleep peacefully inside Daidao. I don't like it, I don't like Tailed Beasts but… No one should be forced to fight, not even for their partners or friends. The importance of someone choosing to fight is the free choice to fight for something", Mana looked down as she could no longer observe the barbaric struggle for control of Daidao's body with the Jinchuuriki forcing the beast inside him who wanted nothing to do with anything to fight.</p><p>Takemito looked at the audience. As he saw their rising tensions over the situation, he nodded and charged off ahead. Jumping in the air and performing his flashiest and most powerful jumping cartwheels and kicks, pulling out all stops as he continued to pummel the Jinchuuriki but every blow was simply shrugged off as the young man's best efforts failed to out damage the natural regenerative abilities that leaking Five Tails' chakra granted.</p><p>At that point, Mana could notice the weariness in Takemito's performance. The high-flying and acrobatic fighting style was beginning to lose its flare as the young man in control failed to catch and maintain his breath. At that instance, Daidao simply disappeared from Mana's sight before reappearing seemingly instantly right before his opponent with Daidao's head diving deep into Takemito's gut, driving all the air out of the young man.</p><p>"Atta girl, we agreed on this, remember? I help the animals and the green for you – you fight in this exam for me, remember"? Daidao grunted through his teeth as his face was beginning to take more primal. Bony features became more apparent as his cheekbones stuck out and became more profound, his chin appeared to elongate as the mask of the Jinchuuriki began to completely tear apart, revealing the boy's brown hair as they stuck out and flowed upwards from the intense stream of chakra leaking out of his body.</p><p>Takemito lunged forward, jumping in the air and trying to dropkick his opponent right in the face. After the young man's feet connected to Daidao's face, damaging his already torn and tattered mask even more, the youth kicked off in the air and weaved some hand seals.</p><p>"Idol: Babcock Stream"! he yelled out placing his arms in front of him as he blew out an intense air pressure from his lungs. The immensely powerful Wind Release ninjutsu stream enveloped Daidao completely, since the blast of wind was completely transparent and the barrier completely protected the audience, Mana could see Daidao's steampunk armor tearing away from the youth's body in pieces before his flesh and skin just barely didn't meet the same fate. Cut up and crushed by the incredible air pressure, Daidao collapsed on the ground momentarily before the leaking Tailed Beast chakra intensified again and allowed the young man to pick himself back up.</p><p>"His body isn't healing anymore", Mana noticed.</p><p>"Yeah, they must've noticed that the beast is acquiring too much control. Since neither Daidao nor the Five Tails want that, they settled down on the amount of chakra he is drawing out. It appears this is Daidao's limit before he starts manifesting tails", Hanasaku noted, she must have fought a Jinchuuriki, or several, at some point in her life since such on point knowledge was very uncharacteristic for the Fifth Hokage.</p><p>Many in the audience could not even see Daidao move. All they could hear was another battered shout from Takemito as Daidao's head tackled the young man, sending him sliding back the arena, flipping over in an arc and leaving a dirty trail of blood as he slid back from all of his bruises.</p><p>Takemito spun his legs in a circle to pick up momentum and get him back on his feet, spinning his lower body like a windmill. Just as the more idol-like persona of Gentib got up on his feet, his eyes instantly noticed his airborne opponent closing in with a closed palm strike. The acrobatic Hoshigakure ninja leaped back, successfully avoiding a crushing thrust of air pressure emanating from the hoof shaped chakra construct shaped around Daidao's palm strike.</p><p>Gentib's Idol persona gained speed and momentum, charging at the place where his opponent would inevitably land and hopping in the air, rotating his lower body in a vault-like manner for a double windmill kick. It was a move of massive weight and setup required, investing a lot of force and momentum but it must've packed considerable force and knockout potential. With Daidao being airborne, it was tough to imagine just how could the Jinchuuriki avoid the gruesome duo of kicks.</p><p>With a bone snapping sound, the windmill kicks connected, the entire grisly scene froze in time, seemingly, as Daidao's head cocked down so low that it almost looked like the young man would crush his face against his own chest and whatever armor remained. Then, with a loud popping sound and a puff of smoke, the Jinchuuriki was gone. Only his own tag scroll remained floating in mid-air.</p><p>"Horn Breaking"! A triumphant wild shout of the Jinchuuriki echoed through the arena as Daidao seemingly blasted out of nowhere at his opponent from behind, having just replaced himself with Takemito's own tag scroll and rushing at the dual persona user with a tackle from behind.</p><p>Takemito kicked the scroll with his foot, catching the wooden base of it with his arm and spinning around, trying to utilize the rather heavy scroll as a swinging blunt weapon at his blind charging opponent before realizing that the charging Jinchuuriki had whizzed right past him – the attack was just a fake-out.</p><p>As Takemito tried turning back to the front and dealing with a full frontal assault of the shared consciousness entity he was dealing with, a powerful tackle hit him right in the face. Mana covered her eyes right before the hit took place, such a hit could've ended pretty sadly and the sound of impact was unbelievably gruesome, filled with deafening thuds, emanating forceful shockwaves that forced the barrier to light up all over and bone twisting and snapping sounds.</p><p>Takemito floated up in the air weightlessly, but after the full force of the impact played out, making him blast at the other side of the arena from the force of impact, the boy just stopped in mid-air and got snapped back to the initial location of impact. It appeared that right after the tackle had connected, Daidao managed to grab hold of the edge of the tag scroll, meanwhile, the rest of the scroll was in Takemito's hands and as the tackled young man got thrown back, rather violently so, the scroll unraveled and the unsealing process initiated.</p><p>"What the…" Kiyomi muttered incoherently as many of the audience members rustled in a manner, not unlike that of the future Yamanaka heiress.</p><p>Mana was forced to blow all of the accumulated air out of her chest as she had barely found a peaceful moment to breathe properly. Now the Jinchuuriki had decided to force a tag into Sugemi, someone that the monstrous two-in-one genin initially tried to avoid.</p><p>"Why on Earth…" the magician found herself muttering as well as to her the combined decision of forcing a tag was confusing. Maybe either the Five Tails, or its host, thought that Sugemi was still tied up and unable to defend himself, which would lead to an easier ring out? Then again, Takemito could have either gotten ringed out or come really close to it just from the overwhelming impact of the tackle that bloodied his face.</p><p>"I think, with Five Tails' help, Daidao finally realized why Meiko tagged him out. Now he's trying to fulfill that function until he can't fight anymore", Hanasaku leaned back to the wall, her content face betrayed just how much the past Hokage was enjoying this match.</p><p>"Why Meiko tagged him out"? Mana wondered out loud, the escalating tensions of the match made her forget all about her more down to Earth problems like her lack of confidence in her readiness for the next stage as well as her relationship problems that have disheartened her whole day.</p><p>In a maroon flash, Sugemi got busted out of the sealing scroll, no longer covered in Meiko's chains. He initially intended on commencing a double assault on his opponent but then he noticed Takemito's busted face and his badly wounded state. It didn't appear like Takemito was in danger of dying or passing out, but his facial injuries and the profuse bleeding needed some quick first aid.</p><p>"What's the meaning of this, Daidao"? Sugemi sneered at his friend, as Takemito got sealed away with the allotted seconds passing, who just dragged his clenched fist across the crushed and damaged arena floor like a horse or a bull signaling an impending charge. The human part of the young man's mind was slowly beginning to make way for the more primal and force of nature part of his dual identity, Daidao must've known the rulings against submitting too much of his conscious to the Tailed Beast which was why he rushed thusly.</p><p>"Finally grown some balls to take me on"? Sugemi further taunted the genin with a brave and wide-open stance of his hands wide open and his chest and face completely exposed.</p><p>"No, that's what Meiko asked to let her do", Daidao growled.</p><p>"Huh? Then go ahead, switch out", the Nara encouraged his teammate by playfully waving his hand in the direction of the Jinchuuriki's tag scroll.</p><p>"She's the only one strong enough to beat you when you're using the Gates, Fiver told me that must've meant that we're supposed to kick your ass until you bust them out"! Daidao struggled to keep his voice from a flat out roar, growling and grunting as he spoke. Despite the illusionary conflict of consciousness, there was none – the fast and precise movements of the Jinchuuriki betrayed total unity and agreement with the beast inside of him.</p><p>Faking out a notion of speaking something, Sugemi quickly jumped to action, throwing a kunai to the side. Daidao jumped at his teammate with a winded up palm strike, focusing an immense amount of his borrowed chakra into another massive "hoof" strike to blow his friend away. Then, in a moment of truth, the Jinchuuriki froze in place. Shaking as he tried to overpower the shadows tying him down, Daidao looked aside, noticing Sugemi's shadows moving to the shadow of the kunai he had thrown further aside, before being channeled through it in an almost static angle and moving from the side right around his own.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu"! Sugemi chanted out as even his own impressive body struggled to keep his shaking and raging friend contained. The shadow that tied around Daidao kept backing out before reaching out and tying around the Jinchuuriki's body again.</p><p>"I see what you're trying to do. The moment I activate my Gates I'm on a timer. Even if I deactivate them, I'll still be weakened and strained continuously until the end of the match. You're trying to force me into the timer for Meiko to outlast because she's not strong enough to both force me into it and take me out once the clock starts ticking", Sugemi mumbled. "Scheming and strategizing like this… Such a bother. Then again, maybe it'll make a nice heel plot for my manga, increase the tensions for the main protagonist to overcome"?</p><p>Sugemi quickly let go of his opponent, suddenly and on his own terms, as the still rampaging and shaking Jinchuuriki stumbled over the sudden freedom of movement, the Nara charged up to his friend, weaving hand seals with one hand to unleash his innovated Nara clan hijutsu.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Jutsu"! He shouted as the shadows formed a whip-like construct outside of his pocket, whipping the Jinchuuriki straight at the face, before Sugemi turned around and repositioned himself and his weight, unleashing another hijutsu attack, just as suddenly and skillfully.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Barrage"! Sugemi roared out as several more tendrils slithered out from his pockets before branching out into several more tendrils halfway and the whole formation began rapidly smacking about at Daidao's general direction. Preparing for a finishing blow, Sugemi switched his hand seal weaving hands before turning around again, just to be greeted with Daidao's bloodshot eyes and his shattered armor finally being completely shed away with the leather straps still hanging awkwardly from the boy's pants.</p><p>It was a contest of agility and minds, also the jutsu that each young man had prepared for his opponent. Sugemi knew that he couldn't waste any more stamina or chakra. Meiko was going to make him have his hands full, he had to settle this with this exchange or he'll really need to clutch it out afterwards…</p><p>"Horn Breaking"! Daidao roared out with a bestial undertone to his voice, almost like another female sounding entity was speaking alongside him.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril Heart"! Sugemi shouted out as the tendrils slithering out from under his uniform all wrapped into one, almost round, more oval in shape construct in his palms and the Nara thrust it right at his charging friend.</p><p>Even if the barrier protected the audience around it from needing to risk their chakra control and their bodies any more than absolutely necessary in the arena, the resulting blast and howling sounds of Daidao's body charging through the erupting heart of shadow tendrils made the audience cover themselves and turn away. Upon being hit the heart of shadow tendrils burst open in a wild storm of swatting and whipping constructs of shadows. The intense light show and sounds made it impossible to follow until the resolution became clear.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0336"><h2>336. Long Past Reason</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the tremendously destructive after effects settled down, initially, it became difficult to tell just what had happened. Sugemi was kneeling and breathing heavily as sweat profusely sprayed onto the cracked and a bit wrecked arena floor, it took a natural progression of sight to the right before Mana noticed Daidao being slammed into the wall, right beside the team she stood to the left to. Slowly, the Jinchuuriki weighed down from the crack he had made only to be caught by Jean-D, the ruthless Kumogakure ninja Mana had met in the Forest of Death, who stood to the right to the team nearby which Daidao slammed into the wall to.</p><p>It didn't appear like the Kumogakure kunoichi had much fondness for the Jinchuuriki as she just gently dropped him to the floor from a bit shorter height, feeling a tad bit lazy to bend all the way to the floor. Shaking in strain and exhaustion, Sugemi straightened out and struggled to keep an upright fighting stance, his eyes wandered back to the tag scroll before he looked back at the exam overseer who was making his way to unseal Meiko. The Nara chose to take a fighting stance and wait for the blacksmith to hit the field.</p><p>"Contestant Deiji Daidao - ring out"! the overseer ruled before enveloping the tag scroll where Meiko was sealed.</p><p>It all happened in a flash of dark brownish light, the blacksmith appeared right in front of the scroll before looking back and noticing Daidao sprawled out and calmly passed out outside the arena. Mana wondered just how her friend would feel realizing that so much pressure was on her shoulders. Would she despair, rush things and burn through her chakra or push past her limits and work herself to passing out? Or would she rise to the occasion and…</p><p>"Who's that"? Meiko pointed at the injured and almost completely unarmored comrade of hers, "Where did Daidao go, I thought I was supposed to have his assistance in a team attack for three whole seconds"? The blacksmith pondered loudly making everyone around her laugh out.</p><p>"That young man right there is your teammate, you have never seen him without his armor, I assume"? The overseer smiled while politely explaining.</p><p>"Oh…" Meiko noted, processing the news for a moment before her face exploded in a horrified expression, "Whaaaa! You mean I'm the last one left"!? She yelled out in shock.</p><p>"That is correct, competitor Daidao failed to eliminate any other genin, even with a remarkable performance and control over his… Ability", the overseer nodded before leaving through the barrier.</p><p>Meiko looked at Sugemi curiously as the fight was resumed. She pointed her finger at him rudely, "Hey, what's wrong with you, don't you wanna tag"? she wondered.</p><p>"Figured you'd be running your mouth, during the yapping time I got plenty of breathers", Sugemi grunted, lying through his teeth, before leaping in at Meiko with a rush of fists and kicks. Meiko gently pushed Sugemi's blows away before responding with a painfully looking punch right back, in both of the boy's jaws, his forehead, his lower abdomen, an elbow to both of his sides and a jumping knee strike to blow him completely flying away.</p><p>"Wow, you've really worn yourself out. Might wanna pull out your gates just about now", Meiko taunted her opponent as her movements were rather casual and it didn't appear like defending and replying demanded much effort from her side. Even if Daidao was eliminated, her plan appeared to have been set into motion and possibly have worked.</p><p>"You know what? Nah, I'm good, come on, pull out your weapons again, let's go at it like I always wanted us to", Sugemi suggested as he wiped the trickling blood off of his forehead and nose. The crack on his forehead looked especially nasty.</p><p>"Sorry, my sword and shield were the only weapons I've brought with me, well, except for the ninja kit. I figured since I had all of my arsenal in any weapon, I only needed my default pair", Meiko grinned, guiltily rubbing the back of her head in apology to both herself and Daidao.</p><p>"Well, I suppose expecting Meiko to completely change over a week was a bit naïve", Kiyomi squinted at her friend while whispering to Mana who just narrowly pushed the ends of her lips upwards in a minuscule smile. Leave it to Meiko's shenanigans to brighten her mood…</p><p>"Whatever, I left your chain, which is to say - your sword, in another dimension. That means that you're empty. Even better that way", Sugemi nodded before resuming his fighting stance. Mana wondered just what could he have had in mind, now that Daidao was knocked out, the magician tapped into her sensory which she previously purposefully left muted just to realize something shocking.</p><p>"He had wasted at least half of his usable chakra", she muttered horrified, recalling the state of her friend's stellar chakra signature representation before, compared to his current one.</p><p>"Well, not that tough to believe… He used like… Three jutsu in a combination before", Kiyomi nodded in confirmation, as if just to herself. "This means he'll be using augmentations more sparingly, worried to do it wrong. He'll take more damage, he'll hit slower and weaker, Meiko can do this"!</p><p>"Not necessarily", Mana noted, "Sugemi always had an amazing amount of natural strength, he may not have very much to spare for augmentations but he may not need that much in the first place".</p><p>Sugemi kicked off the ground, rushing at Meiko, before leaping up and spinning his body around in a triple spinning kick combination.</p><p>"Leaf Whirlwind" he yelled out, attacking Meiko with a common Konohagakure taijutsu technique. The blacksmith leaned back to avoid both of the first two kicks before grabbing Sugemi's leg with her own trapping lock and slamming the young man over her head and into the ground. Rushing chain punches, Meiko relentlessly kept up her counter offense, initially, Sugemi managed to deflect a pair of punches but then he had to dive down with a sweeping kick to disrupt Meiko's combo before it overwhelmed him.</p><p>"Leaf Gale", the Nara shouted out as knocked Meiko off her feet with a rotating kick, before switching the kicking side and throwing another spinning kick to send the blacksmith rolling aside as she was beginning to apply some pressure and push him towards the edge of the arena.</p><p>Sugemi was hyperventilating and had significant trouble to regain his composure, compared to Meiko's rather cheerful and relaxed straightening out and getting back up. The redhead grinned once more as her hand moved inside her ninja pouch and pulled out a kunai knife, wielding it in her right like a common combat knife in a reverse grip.</p><p>Mana leaned her head to the left, had she been in Sugemi's shoes she'd have been very suspicious of such a textbook reverse grip. While it betrayed none of Meiko's knife-fighting style as it could've been used both for slashes and thrusts meant to stab, it also was a textbook Ninja Academy knife fighting style and therefore it was too simple for this level of competition by its very nature. There was more in this than the blacksmith let on to.</p><p>Meiko darted off at her opponent, swiping and slashing wildly but rather slowly. Just as expected, Sugemi easily saw through such a primitive style and trapped her wrist, making it near impossible for her to damage him without either switching her knife hand or…</p><p>As the Nara threw a rapid combination of blows of his own, Meiko forced through her own collection of hand seals. "Weapon Transformation Jutsu", she grunted through pain and sweat as the kunai in her hand transformed into a long polearm, a combination of naginata and a simple spear as it had a straightened out double blade tip as long as a shorter wakizashi blade.</p><p>"Take this"! Meiko roared out triumphantly as her siege of bladework relentlessly blurred in silver flashes at Sugemi's direction, while Mana's hear stopped in worry over her friend's life and health, the Nara quickly leaned down before throwing a strong bear-grip strike diagonally up and breaking the weapon easily and kicking Meiko aside with a strong roundhouse kick.</p><p>"Nice try, I'm smart enough to figure out that your transformation technique doesn't mystically grant stronger properties to your weapon. Your lacking quality generic store shelf weapons will only have the endurance of that same category of tools, no matter what shape they take". Sugemi firmly declared tightly pressing his lips together as he extended his fist at Meiko, as if challenging her to try out his new cool stance and see what fighting style and moves he'd pull out next.</p><p>Meiko snickered like a little brat, enjoying a flashy balloon show. "This is fun, too bad I'll be kicking your ass, unless you bring out your gates", she threatened the Nara with what Mana perceived to be a truthful, yet a little goofy, tone.</p><p>"She's become quite a bit like Galateia, hasn't she", Mana muttered to herself bitterly. She had to hand it to the blond nukenin, the magician was jealous of the blonde's ability to tap into Meiko's interests and completely affect and alter the blacksmith's entire personality in just a week of sparring together. Meiko was really precious to Mana and something the magician kind of wanted to have a similar effect on Meiko, then again, the blacksmith did declare a certain distaste for killing of her own, something Mana undoubtedly had an influence in.</p><p>"Yeah, except tighter muscles and messier hairdo", Kiyomi cringed out, realizing what Mana was saying, "Seeing Meiko like this after training will make it really bitter to kill Galateia when I next meet her. It's easy to see that the broad's mood had a cheerful influence on Meiko."</p><p>"Kill her"? Mana turned at her friend with a bit of horror in her eyes.</p><p>"Yeah, I mean, did you forget? My Aku-Soku-Zan?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow back at Mana.</p><p>"No, I just… I guess I thought you lightened up a bit about that conviction", Mana turned away a bit saddened by the realization that, while she considered Kiyomi a close friend, there were gapping differences in ideology between the two that may just end up needing to be settled one day. Some of Mana's most horrible experiences were similar settlements of ideology and the thought of ever fighting with Kiyomi over one matter or another made her anxious.</p><p>Meiko continued to stand there with a cheerful, if not a little cocky expression. Sugemi tried to take her stares for longer than a moment but he found himself unable to do so for too long. The more the two stared each other down with Sugemi trying to visualize every different approach and technique he had, the more of those options got shot down as, compared with what he had seen Meiko do so far, the Nara found his opponent capable of shooting any of his options down.</p><p>As seconds went and gone in complete silence, Sugemi darted off at Meiko, jumping off the ground right before her face and preparing to throw a simple jumping punch, using his hind leg for some extra momentum to make the punch stronger as he kicked it back in the air. This was some kind of a trick, it had to be. By now the Nara had seen that Meiko was in much better condition compared to him and quite able to match and return what was thrown her way…</p><p>"First Gate: Gate of Opening, OPEN"! Sugemi yelled out as transparent shimmer erupted from his body, his natural chakra circulation system was working overtime to keep up with his body's strength and speed increasing five times over, which meant that all of the servicing processes had to intensify five times as well.</p><p>As Sugemi's fist shot much faster than the blacksmith had predicted it to go initially, having not predicted the gates coming at all, Meiko received a full brunt of the punch and got slammed into the ground quite strongly. She should have felt quite grateful that most of the force was focused on her face, causing only her upper body to slam down while her lower body just arced awkwardly causing the redhead's body to bend in an uncomfortable and painful looking manner but remain at a relatively same position inside the arena.</p><p>Sugemi jumped up in the air, throwing his feet at Meiko rapidly and using them for quick, stomping kicks while he used the force of gravity itself to his advantage. The intensity of the First Gate being open only multiplied his speed and power further as large holes were crushed open where the young Nara's kicks grinded through the stone.</p><p>Meiko lifted her hands up and over her head as she pushed her body up and activated the chakra jets on her boots, which she usually used for jetpacking purposes. Her improvised chakra jet kick was blocked by Sugemi but the force of it threw the genin spiraling away, not with enough velocity to throw him out, unfortunately.</p><p>The blacksmith grinned as she wiped the blood off her cracked lip, only to be replaced relatively soon by a new drop, and then another one. A punch like that was lucky not to have pummeled all of her teeth out even if Meiko's mouth was bleeding at a rather alarming rate. It betrayed to the audience, as well as her opponent, that her chakra augmentations were either withheld or staggering due to troublesome chakra resources remaining but Mana knew that Meiko was doing leaps and bounds better chakra-wise compared to Sugemi.</p><p>She had all the reason in the world to feel good about this recent exchange – she's survived the initial explosion of speed and power of Sugemi's First Gate. That meant that she could have continued to do her best and just outlast her opponent since now that Sugemi had crossed the threshold there were only two options – burn out using the First Gate or walk the risky path further and up the ante.</p><p>"Shadow Push Jutsu"! Sugemi slammed his palms together before extending one forward as a massive shadow blob materialized behind him before rushing at Meiko, shaped as a large palm.</p><p>The blacksmith screamed out in pain, Mana could make out red droplets flying in the air, as the redhead got smacked backwards and blasted off, heading towards the other end of the arena. Her chakra may have still been in a relatively good standing but her physical state was already approaching critical, any further damage could have knocked Meiko out for good.</p><p>It was no longer healthy for her friend to continue this fight. Yet the blacksmith persevered, bending her legs and clutching her body for a massive inertia force flow as she activated her jet boots to help her dash back at her opponent. Sugemi's eyes jarred wide, he had all the reason in the world to be surprised, even as her armor fell apart from her own body, even as new and new bruises opened up and his blows finally cracked all the way to the bloody flesh of the kunoichi she kept coming. Surviving him was her job…</p><p>Sugemi kicked vertically upwards making Meiko fly up in the air after her body bent uncomfortably back. Mana couldn't keep herself from jumping and gasping out in horror, Meiko soared upwards all the way to the ceiling before once again changing her position and flying back at her opponent.</p><p>This was no longer about winning, Meiko must've understood this. Somewhere, deep inside she must've been smart enough to know there was no way she could win this at this point. This was just all about her pride, her wish to upstage the youth who had dismissed her before, do what was her role in this battle, even if her teammate was no longer conscious enough to acknowledge Meiko serving her part.</p><p>Sugemi slammed his hands together before extending his palm upwards. "Shadow Push Jutsu"! he grunted as his chakra was slowly beginning to approach critical levels. He was in an exactly reverse situation to Meiko – his physicals were relatively alright but his chakra was beginning to cross into the red zone, soon he'll risk either using his life reserves that were required to sustain one's life, or he'll have to stop using ninjutsu techniques in general.</p><p>Meiko thrusted her fist forward, skydiving straight at the massive blob of shadows hand coming at her and overwhelming her eyes in its size, her jet boots blazed on, helping her direct her crashing fist-dive. A deafening thud followed by a particularly odd slurping sound followed as Sugemi's large shadowy palm begun to quiver and shift mass and balance erratically, like an air balloon on top of which an unwanted skydiver had just landed before bursting to pieces letting Meiko punch her way through.</p><p>"Sugemi's body, it's no longer shining", Kiyomi pointed at the Nara letting Mana realize how Meiko could bust through and hit her opponent successfully instead of getting completely overwhelmed. It was Sugemi's muscle control again, he wasn't utilizing all of his 100% potential increase in order to reserve chakra which he must've realized he was running out of. Mana looked around, seeing all of the higher ranking mentors and instructors ready to interfere at any moment and stop the two youths as both of them were long past the reasonable limits of how long they should keep struggling.</p><p>Meiko rolled erratically, as gracefully as a bag of potatoes, getting back on her feet. Sugemi got up on his knees, as Meiko stumbled at him, she used the momentum of her stumble to try and clock him a good one.</p><p>"Second Gate: Gate of Healing! OPEN"! Sugemi shouted out overflowing with the transparent shine of chakra firing off from his pores as he leaped at Meiko with a tackle. Meiko screamed out in pain as the shoulder of her opponent dug in deep at her abdomen, carrying her back like a bull trying to skewer a nasty visitor of his quarters.</p><p>Screaming pain, Meiko slammed her feet at the stone floor, getting past multiple layers of rock and damaging her legs to the point where she exposed several bones before fracturing them. The gruesome gesture managed to stop Sugemi in his tracks, however and the duo got stuck in a standstill. As the two genin stumbled over one another, falling onto their knees, still embracing their opponent, Meiko kneed Sugemi in the stomach a couple of times making the Nara throw up a fair amount of blood as her own open fracture was leaking quite some of her own.</p><p>"Third Gate: Gate of Life! OPEN"! Sugemi screamed out in desperation as his muscles tensed up so tremendously that the increased blood flow turned the youth's skin crimson red.</p><p>"Nara Hijutsu Secret Technique: Shadow Yggdrasil"! Sugemi pressed on as he pushed Meiko on her back before shadowy fist constructs appeared from all over of his shadow, branching out from one massive fist into a tree-like shape where instead of branches there were fist shaped at the end tendrils, all coiling and branching at Meiko to finish her off.</p><p>Meiko clutched in and placed blocks in front of her face, feeling shadowy fists overwhelming her and breaking her shoulders, her ribs and churning her organs inside. The adrenaline and the wish to push through made her do so, tumble over and crawl through a storm of shadowy fists that weakened with each passing second before falling apart, her efforts were unsuccessful as the fists kept throwing and pushing her backwards. Sugemi's chakra finally hit the danger zone. Mana saw the eyes of the Nara white out as he just weightlessly slammed his face into the busted rock of the arena, his chakra shortage forced him to pass out and end his hidden technique prematurely before it could do most of its damage.</p><p>"Contestant Sugemi, unable to battle"! The overseer ruled before raising his other hand, "Contestant Meiko, ring out. The team of Gentib de Vitt and Sugemi Nara wins the match"!</p><p>Meiko laughed out with blood as she could no longer open her eyes and turn her head to check if she was really sprawled out on the ring out floor or still in the arena. Not that she had any strength left to argue any further. As the adrenaline in her body slowly began to settle down and her heart stopped trying to crawl out of its busted ribcage, the redhead blacksmith passed out due to injuries.</p><p>"I pushed through…" these were her last laughing through pain whimpers, right before a peaceful slumber and getting carried off into the Konoha High infirmary by Chestnut Hanasaku and another jounin mentoring one of the Kumogakure teams.</p>
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<a name="section0337"><h2>337. Decency</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Before you leave on a short break, so that everyone who needs it can get medical help and evaluate what they've just seen, let's see who the participants of the next match shall be", the overseer said and turned to the large monitor with flashing letters.</p><p>For the third time that day, letters rolled around, forming random names on the list of genin that have still not been examined in this stage before the names scattered and were replaced by others. Eventually, the board settled on the teams that were supposed to clash inside the sealed off arena next: "Stea Tesprea (Team Phobos/Getsugakure) &amp; Erumo Budoki (Team Fir/Konohagakure) VS Kei-J (Team Stratus/Kumogakure) &amp; Juhi Aburame (Team Pine/Konohagakure)"</p><p>"Another person from Team Phobos, huh"? Kiyomi wondered rhetorically before slowly advancing towards the exit. Ninja may have been tremendously fast in combat, but as far as leaving a hall in a calm and orderly manner was concerned – they may as well have been turtle-paced.</p><p>Mana sunk deep in thought about what she could remember about the silver haired competitor from Getsugakure. Her eyes were really bright and kind and Mana couldn't recall any semblances of malice or attempt to seriously injure or hurt anyone in her. She also was always the voice of reason for her more patriotic and rash teammates, as evidenced by Team Hokage's first meeting of the three right before signing up for the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>Either way, even if Stea was a kinder and more reserved member of Team Phobos she still was considerably powerful. Mana still got the shivers whenever she recalled the dominating and chilling manner in which Team Phobos dispatched of an Iwagakure trio back in the Forest of Death and, while Stea did not look overly excited about that battle, she still completely overwhelmed her opponents back then with an ability Mana still could not completely understand.</p><p>"Wow, you're really moody today, don't worry, I'm sure Meiko will be fine", Kiyomi placed a hand on Mana's shoulder as the two rushed to the infirmary to see if their friend was OK. Her wounds were quite gruesome but this was not a field of battle and medical attention was just a couple of floors away. Despite her most genuine intentions to calm Mana's racing pulse, the blonde was significantly worried herself as the tone of her voice betrayed.</p><p>"I'm thinking about the next battle. I'm kind of glad that Kouta's teammate found herself teamed up with someone from Team Phobos, those guys are strong, means she'll have as high chances of proceeding as possible", Mana tried coming clean about her inner turmoil, Meiko's injuries were only a part of that hurricane of emotions.</p><p>"You need to really stop worrying over your quarrels with those guys. You've been all like on a carpet of needles whole day. You made a choice, you've tried your best to make it right with them. If they want to hold it against you – that's on them", Kiyomi grinded her teeth in irritation as the two burst into the infirmary.</p><p>Luckily, for them there were no complex surgeries being performed, Meiko was out cold and a medical ninja was carefully treating her legs using Mystical Palm. Whereas previously Meiko's legs were shreds of bone and flesh, now they were just swollen and beaten lumps quite resembling human legs. The medical ninja still was to get to Meiko's other injuries.</p><p>"Meiko"! Kiyomi shouted out as she ran up to her teammate. "What are you doing to her? What are you doing now? What is this jutsu? What are those tools"? The Yamanaka continued to pester the medical ninja like a nagging wife much to the male nurse's irritation.</p><p>"I'm sorry about her, are we interrupting something important"? Mana asked a fellow female nurse who was just standing about and observing the procedure, ready to step in if the male nurse ran out of chakra or tired out. While the medical ninja working here were qualified professionals, they were not exactly the cream of the crop enough to heal people in the field of battle or in the Konohagakure Hospital.</p><p>"No, that's quite alright, she's your teammate, I assume"? The female nurse smiled before gently trying to drag Kiyomi a bit further from where she pestered the male nurse invested into Meiko's treatment, her lack of success in that venture forced her to be a bit more forceful with the Yamanaka, until the blonde finally budged. "It may be for the better if you give Chinso-senpai some space though" she politely smiled at the Yamanaka heiress.</p><p>The female nurse lead the two girls outside to have a calm conversation about what they have come to understand about the blacksmith's condition.</p><p>"She's going to be just fine. She's within our capacity to help, she doesn't require the transfer to Konohagakure Hospital. She's got plenty of reserve chakra in her body, it's naturally accelerating her metabolism and fueling her own regenerative properties, with our own Mystical Palm sessions we are confident we can get her up to fighting condition soon enough, provided she stays out of combat and lets us and her own metabolism do the job", the pleasant nurse lady reported.</p><p>"I'm not sure she even needs the fighting condition, she lost. Maybe one of us needs to be here in case she wakes up and tries something stupid"? Mana wondered with a gloomy tone.</p><p>"Oh, come on, Meiko is smarter than… Yeah, on second thought, I think this might not be such a bad idea", Kiyomi scratched her chin.</p><p>"Don't worry, she won't be back soon. We've considered forcefully waking her up but our machinery can monitor her condition quite fine while she's out. This place has the second most advanced medical facilities after Konohagakure Hospital, after all", the lady nurse replied, "Even if your friend does come about, she'll do it in a couple of days if not for the duration of a week. Her injuries aren't life threatening, but she's still had the better half of her bones broken and her internal organs are pretty banged up. There's no need staying here for any of you, I'd recommend just carrying about with your exam business and checking on your friend after it is over".</p><p>After this brief rundown of Meiko's condition, the nurse lady entered the room again to observe and assist the blacksmith's treatment. As the magician turned around, Mana was surprised to see a familiar silver flash in the rather murky waiting room beside the infirmary – Stea of Team Phobos was standing right beside her.</p><p>"What do you want"!? Kiyomi growled as a warning of her rising desire to vent out her aggression.</p><p>"I just felt a bit worried about your friend's condition. It was quite a bloody and gut churning battle that she just had", the silver haired lady nodded her head to the side, undoing the facial shroud that she wore right beneath her eyes, instead of donning the hood that dangled uselessly under her long and rich silver locks. Looking at Stea's hair was like looking at pale moonlight itself, it would have been easy to miss her shining green eyes over it.</p><p>From the looks of it, Kiyomi was stepping up to say something pretty antagonistic but Mana pulled on her friend's sleeve gently and stepped in front of her and in between the tall Getsugakure woman.</p><p>"Meiko will be quite fine, she is wounded pretty severely, but it isn't something immediate medical attention can't help with. You'd be wise to focus on your battle up ahead", Mana calmly reported, swallowing her own sadness, swallowing any hints of fear of the woman or the trio that she belonged to or the fights still left up ahead. Just now she wanted to look professional, she wanted to look strong and tell this kunoichi what she wanted to hear.</p><p>"Oh, I see, that is good to hear. I was ready to offer my services if they were needed but I am glad to see she will be OK, thank you for calming me, Mana", the silver haired kunoichi bowed her head with a pleasant smile before turning and slowly walking away.</p><p>"Wait", Mana stopped Stea halfway, "You know my name? I could assume you obtained it after seeing me in the Forest, thinking you'd have to clash with me again at some point. Why bother memorizing it after the Forest stage though"?</p><p>"Because I'm a polite and decent human being"? Stea grinned as she turned halfway around to face Mana from a bit further away, "Also, I was not the one to memorize your name, it was Gasco. He was quite impressed by your growth and what you had to sacrifice for it, your smell, was it"?</p><p>Mana bit her lip almost to the point where she could taste blood in her mouth. Not only were Team Phobos members absolutely fearsome to face in battle, but they also had the control of every conversation, apparently.</p><p>"Oh, please don't fret over it. You are simply walking pathways that Gasco was exploring nearly ten years ago, of course he guessed correctly that the only way to grow your sensory abilities so fast was to sacrifice another sense. He saw you responding to him and talking verbally, that eliminated the option of hearing, you're clearly not blind – it wasn't sight either. Touch is too important for a ninja to sacrifice and taste is not important enough to warrant your level of increase", Stea calmly explained her friend's thought process before turning around to keep walking away, she turned back before she could walk off, however.</p><p>"You know, it is rare for a ninja from another village to deserve Gasco or Doma's respect. Even though I've beaten them both in battle before, Gasco has never admired me the way he admires your devotion to serving your village", Stea excitedly exclaimed before putting her face shroud back on and walking back to the arena hall.</p><p>"We should head back too, the fight will be starting soon", Kiyomi quietly muttered.</p><p>If only Stea knew that it was not for serving her village that Mana sacrificed a part of her senses to increase her chakra sensory by leaps and bounds. It was because she had no other option but to do so, it was the only way not to fall behind and drown, her way to just keeping swimming ahead and not letting her head go underwater. Even if Meiko did the same, her controlled growth just was not enough. Deep down Mana worried that even her sacrifice may have been in vain.</p><p>She wasn't as fast as Sugemi, she wasn't as strong as Meiko, probably not as smart and experienced as Kiyomi. She knew too little about all of those competitors to imagine a matchup where she could actually help her team come out on top. What burned even hotter was the realization that this exam had to count, there could be no other options, she had no team to return to. Mana was this close to doing something really stupid like asking Gasco to tutor her during the breaks in between the battles. She was both sad and apathetic towards her own life due to a painful break-up and screaming in pain over her own imagined incompetence. The two switched with each other over time, again and again, making Mana ask for the other to finally return to torment her because the one that was simply was too good at its job.</p><hr/><p>The teams gathered back inside the gym hall, ready to sit through yet another battle, hopefully just as blazing with the fire of youth and desire to show off one's own determination, but, also, not nearly as gruesome and bloody as the last one. As Mana and Kiyomi settled into their old spots, right in front of Chestnut Hanasaku who didn't appear to have even left the gym in the first place, the magician noticed another familiar face approaching her. Dark purple flowing locks and an overabundance of denim on a well-toned and incredibly handsome young man's body.</p><p>"I saw you talking with Team Phobos before. I hope you didn't sell any more secrets or anything"? Yushijin, Kouta's teammate, grunted out. "What are we supposed to be on the lookout for? Will Team Phobos know our abilities? Names, weaknesses? Told them anything else"?</p><p>"Honestly, you should be glad if I did. Stea is on Erumo's team, remember"? Mana mumbled, clearly clutching at the deep verbal stab at her heart that this meeting made her suffer. "If you absolutely must know, I told her about Meiko's condition because she was interested in it".</p><p>"Right, because you're such great buddies and all…" Yushijin nearly restrained an instinct to curse in front of a handful of higher ranked ninja.</p><p>"No, because Stea's a decent human being and gives a shit, unlike some people who can't see past their own, really well buffed, if I may say so, chest" Kiyomi interrupted.</p><p>"Whatever… It'd take an absolute idiot to promote you after that stunt, it'd take an even bigger one to work with you after what you pulled", Yushijin growled out as he walked off to cool his head off.</p><p>"I'm never going to be allowed to get over this, am I"? Mana tried to smile but actually could not, had she wanted to burst into tears, however, she would have been very easily been able to do so. "Well, I guess I knew what I was getting into", she decided.</p><p>"Look, I'm not going to lie that I wouldn't normally take their side or consider what you did a stab in the back. I will not justify what you did, because I criticized you back then and still think what you did was irresponsible and wrong. Just… Don't let them get to you and mess up your future too. It's your choice, may as well own up to it, plus, their way of confronting you is really assholey"</p><p>Mana sighed, as she observed Stea entering the arena. She walked in a slow yet dominant manner, demanding attention and taking it by force, whether one wanted it or not. It was an impressive feat given that most of her body was concealed with only her eyes being completely visible from under the impressive black cloak with the white crescent moon motif decorating it. Once the Getsugakure kunoichi stepped onto the arena, slowly and carefully taking the small steps on the side that no one yet seemed to even notice, she calmly removed the hood and stroke her hand carefully over her silver locks. Also, removing the facial shroud that covered her face as well.</p><p>Erumo Budoki, the female teammate of Kouta's, rushed onto the stage right after her teammate so calmly strut onto it. The gray haired braided kunoichi appeared to possess great energy and cheerfulness in her movements as she even took her time to give some poses to her friends from the Academy and Yushijin who encouraged her to do her best from down where he was standing. She also shared an enthusiastic nod with her one-time tag teammate, seemingly surprising herself that Stea even played along with her routine.</p><p>"Wow, people are really eating her up, huh. Guess she was really popular in her class", Kiyomi scratched her temple trying to remember if she ever met Erumo in the Academy but visibly struggling to do so. "I mean, her team came out on top even after being betrayed, that's a pretty fame building story all by itself".</p><p>"Do you think what Yushijin said was true? That no one will agree to work with me in the future?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"I mean… I don't really know. I think he's really making too big of a deal out of it. I used to get angry at you and your weird decisions all the time too. Then I saw the conviction in your eyes when you made them. You felt absolutely adamant about them being the right thing to do and… I just feel that I can't be angry at someone who feels that way about the things they do, maybe it's just because we've been friends for so long", Kiyomi shrugged. "I mean, you wouldn't have told anyone about them if that meant their deaths. It was just a strategy for a survival game, a drill. People will come to understand it eventually. Don't just assume that because everyone is so cheerful towards someone you kicked in the butt, they automatically despise you".</p><p>A familiar looking dark skinned and punky haired young man with a modified Kumogakure headband stepped out from the crowd of ninja before acrobatically leaping in the air and dive-kicking at the arena floor, landing gracefully on his feet and standing up off of his knees before eyeing his two kunoichi opponents. The young man was getting to the place where he wanted to be mentally in order to fight at his best. Team Hokage was quite familiar with this young man – Kei-J was one of the two Kumogakure ninja that completed the Forest of Death stage at record time, about at the same time that Meiko recovered from her first bout with Galateia. The two teams met and had a pleasant chat as they weren't obligated to fight, it was from his Team that Team Hokage even found out about the information exchanges that were transpiring amongst all the teams.</p><p>A red haired young lady wearing a sleeveless long winter jacket decorated with furs at the collars and sleeves and wearing red tinted diver's goggles on her eyes and a strange bow tie tying her red messy hair rushed clumsily onto the arena, tripping up a couple of times as well. Mana knew Juhi from the Academy days, the two exchanged a couple of talks once in a while but they were rather neutral towards each other. While Juhi was a pleasant person to know, she was rather clumsy and not overly fond of social situations, something that did not make her nearly as popular as Erumo seemingly was with her peers.</p><p>Both duos spoke for a while about who should've been the main combatant from the start. Mana couldn't quite make out what the teams were whispering to each other but it appeared that Erumo had managed to convince Stea that she should be first. While initially it seemed odd, given the aura of tremendous confidence that Team Phobos possessed, Mana could recall Stea being rather hesitant to fight, similarly to the way she herself was. Maybe that was why Erumo was given the freedom to fight it out to her heart's extent.</p><p>Kei-J tried energetically to convince Juhi of something but it appeared that the young Aburame girl was just as difficult socially as Mana could remember her being. In the end, she herself nearly ripped the tag scroll apart trying to figure out how exactly it worked and which side she needed to pull on. Blushing and embarrassed the overseer helped the Aburame to get sealed inside properly and so the third match of the day could begin.</p>
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<a name="section0338"><h2>338. Konoha's New Great Trapster</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just as the overseer's signal to begin the match echoed through the gym, Kei-J leaped in the air an impressive distance with a jumping spinning dive-kick aimed straight at Erumo. The high-flying genin didn't hit his mark, however, instead, he simply disappeared in a cloud of dark smoke, emanating from a simple smoke bomb that most ninja carried in their arsenal.</p><p>From what little the audience could see inside the smoking cloud that the Kumogakure competitor found himself in, it was evident that the young man struggled to read Erumo's future movements. He flailed around, trying to predict where his opponent's next attack would come from and just what kind of an attack it would be. He did not know Erumo's abilities as his team had finished the exam early on, the advantage of having been near the last teams that left the Forest of Death was that there was enough time to know pretty much everyone a little bit better than not at all.</p><p>Smoke bombs were not a usually employed strategy. It was easy to understand why Kei-J was so confused and continued to look for a follow-up attack that simply did not come. Very few higher ranking ninja even had enough grasp of strategy in their minds to utilize tools like the smoke bombs, the more tools one had within their reach – the tougher to come up with an efficient way to use them all. That was where patterns came into play, Erumo must have been a very specific kind of ninja, her use of smoke was not random – she needed it for something.</p><p>"What is this foolishness"? Kei-J impatiently raised his fist and shook it in thin air. "Referee, disqualify her at once, she isn't engaging me"! He demanded.</p><p>"Not fighting isn't against the rules. There is not a time limit to completing a match either. Continue the fight", the overseer grumpily overruled the Kumogakure genin's objection.</p><p>If he was not so hot-headed and looking to directly engage his opponent, perhaps Kei-J would have noticed that his opponent had slipped into the Cloak of Invisibility technique, using her green jacket to cover herself up partially. Even from a lower angle, she would have been completely disguised had it not been for Mana's higher than usual degree of perception, given her prowess in weaving illusions herself.</p><p>It was tough to say just what exactly the kunoichi was doing, just crawling around the arena, covered up and disguised to appear just like the floor but she was not moving randomly – there were a purpose and planning involved in her movements. Finally, having had enough of his opponent just completely having escaped his perception, Kei-J weaved a handful of hand seals before pulling out a bunch of larger than the normal bunch shuriken from inside his cape, the shuriken were folded as a singular blade but. upon a trigger on them being pressed, they unfolded into a more familiar shape.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Minefield Trigger"! Kei-J shouted out as he flung the bunch of large shuriken at random locations around the arena, trying to base them at around each corner of the arena. As the shuriken landed on the floor, they fired out a powerful stream of lightning chakra upwards, the electric discharge around them must've been considerable as well.</p><p>After the rumbling lightning streams calmed down, there was nothing to be seen being damaged. Mana tried not to focus her eyes on the location of Erumo too much either, had she done so, an accidental glare at her direction could've betrayed the trapster's location and the magician was already on shaky grounds with Team Fir as it was.</p><p>"Hey, calm down, man"! A shout came from where Kei-J's team was standing. Mana could remember the voice, it was Roh-D, the large and broad shouldered teammate of Kei-J. "She's just hiding from you, calm down and start scanning your surroundings".</p><p>The overseer glared at the large genin assisting his friend verbally in irritation but he decided not to take any action and just let the fight play out. Kei-J nodded at his friend before breathing in and out and pulling out a little bar of steel from his ninja pouch, upon pressing a trigger on the bar, it extended into a steel staff. The steel must've been high-quality chakra conductive steel as the genin focused his chakra through it and soon crackling blue lightning sparks started running down the weapon as if it was being electrified.</p><p>It was an early stage of chakra imbuement into weapons, far surpassing the primary invisible stage but not yet honed and perfected to where the chakra clearly formed a visible weapon shaped coat of its signature shimmer around the object. Such a weapon could have easily busted through anything that was not using chakra imbuement and would have matched Audra steel in potency but not yet matching true chakra imbuement. A single perfectly imbued weapon would have cut through this staff like a kitchen knife cut through a cucumber.</p><p>With an energetic grunt, Kei-J thrust the staff vertically at the ground, sending electric ripples of sparking shockwaves all around the arena, missing not a single tile and not a single corner and shaking the entire structure. That would have done it, Mana could only wonder just how much chakra was used in such a stunt as it couldn't have been an easy sacrifice to make for seeing one's opponent. From what she could roughly estimate, Kei-J's signature was already missing a sizable chunk of the flaring star it once was.</p><p>The technique was fairly effective, however, as Erumo leaped into the air, the invisibility cloak she formed slipped off her shoulders and returned to its visible state as the generic Ninja Academy jutsu was canceled by the user, the jacket floated around weightlessly before settling down on the rocky floor of the arena. The cheerful young lady rubbed her nose in laughter before showing a "Peace" gesture at her opponent and taunting him with a more nasty gesture.</p><p>"That was a close call, but I've managed to complete my preparations", she smiled at her opponent first, before glaring back at Mana. The magician's eyebrows bent down turning her face sour as she just couldn't understand the purpose of that glare. Was Erumo just trying to psyche Mana? Why would she take the fight on hand so lightly?</p><p>Kei-J closed down his staff back into the chunk of steel it was before it was extended and pocketed it, then he unveiled his sleeve, revealing a sealing glyph on it and he activated the seal, unsealing a long twin bladed sword-staff before charging at his opponent. Mana was really tempted to yell something out at the girl who was just dauntingly staring back at her while standing in front of a charging opponent with her chest left completely exposed to an attack and her head turned away.</p><p>That was when Kei-J tripped over and fell face-flat onto the arena floor, smashing his head so loudly and painfully that most of the audience actually flinched from the sound and the unexpected nature of the fall. Only a secondary inspection revealed a thin string of steel wire being extended through the corners, a trap that went completely unnoticed and underappreciated before the opponent was completely laying flat on his face.</p><p>Erumo kneeled to touch another string wire and channel chakra through it, setting off another seal on the other side of the arena. A sealing glyph that lit up only once it was set off, remaining completely disguised and camouflaged with the floor it laid on before Erumo activated it. A massive steel ball with large bumps on the sides poofed in a cloud of smoke right above the center of the arena before the gravity did the rest of the work and the thing slammed onto the temporarily stunned and entrapped opponent.</p><p>Luckily for him, Kei-J managed to at least somewhat recover from having his face planted into the mat nose-first and dive out of the way, getting only a shockwave of the hundreds of tons weighing bumpy sphere throwing him away and testing the integrity of his joints and ligaments. The fall aside also earned him a couple of painful bumps and bruises but the boy managed to stop himself with his feet just in time before he approached dangerously close to the edge of the arena and risked a ring out.</p><p>"She's so cocky, she's gonna eat that arrogance eventually", Kiyomi angrily locked her hands around her chest. She must've gotten some nasty Uchiha vibes from this completely normal and unaffiliated with any ninja clans girl and she absolutely hated it.</p><p>"No, it's not cockiness, it's honors being paid", Mana muttered when she realized the fighting style of this young lady fully.</p><p>"Honors? To whom"? The Yamanaka heiress squinted at Mana like the magician had completely lost her mind over her recently afflicted sadness.</p><p>"To my father, this is a similar style to the one he used in combat. Entrapping his opponents and disabling them. She's not as good as my father used to be. If she had been – this fight would have already been over. She's a little bit of my father and me, a showoff and a trapster", Mana admitted while looking down. She wondered if her father knew what Mana did to earn the scorn of Team Fir and saw this girl honor his fighting style thusly, would he consider Erumo a better daughter than Mana turned out to be…</p><p>"So? She's fighting just like your father used to, what of it"? Kiyomi grunted as she raised her nose up.</p><p>"She's rubbing it into my face, it's a way to get back at me. She's trying to show me that I'm a disappointment to my village, him and that she can do what I was supposed to much better than I can. It's a dance of spite." Mana muttered out. Even if it was childish and silly, she could not believe how deeply the stab went. Maybe it was just a matter of poor timing, after all, she had just parted ways with a youth she genuinely had feelings for yesterday and just got a face full of what caused her to fail Mana's beloved not even five minutes ago.</p><p>Mana gave the overseer a brief glare, undoubtedly the fighting style didn't escape his mind either. Her father was sort of a B-tier sensation, a chuunin ranked average man with a memorable gimmick to the way he fought his enemies. He may not have been overly powerful but he sure as hell made his mark by being memorable. It was clear from the nostalgic smirk on the higher-ranking ninja's face that the sentiment and the tributes did not escape his sight. The same probably went with everyone else too.</p><p>The massive ball of solid steel poofed away in a cloud of smoke, as suddenly as it had appeared, returning to whatever sealing dimension it was temporarily called from. Kei-J began to slowly pick himself back up on his feet, after wiping the blood off of couple of bruises he had gathered, the genin picked his double bladed sword-staff and charged at his opponent again, throwing a pair of odd looking, ring with two blades attached at three sides, shuriken-like tools at her as a distraction.</p><p>A blade blurred in Erumo's hand, flashing with the almost silver-like colors as the young woman deflected two of the tools with careful swipes of her blades, avoiding the third one to the point where it only shallowly scratched her long head biceps, spilling a few droplets of blood. As the sword-staff wielding genin moved in, Erumo worked on her hand seals bravely. It was a bold call to not attempt to defend herself and instead work on hand seals. After weaving a pair of them, another seal activated firing off a piece of string from the ground where another one up in the air unsealed a massive rocky chunk that stuck itself inside the loop of wire and swung right at Kei-J's direction.</p><p>The stone smashed Kei-J straight into a wall outside the arena, completely bypassing the barrier and making the audience around gasp in shock. That was when the seemingly lifeless and crushed boy's body poofed in smoke and got substituted with Erumo's own jacket which the girl had slipped out of once she had leaped in the air. The jacket plummeted outside the arena, making retrieval of it and another attempt at hiding that same way rather complicated.</p><p>After a moment of catching his breath and realizing how close he was from getting eliminated, Kei-J glared aside, noticing that Erumo was making rude gestures his way and touching her tag scroll.</p><p>"Really got you in a pinch, didn't I"? She showed the young man her tongue before yanking on the tag scroll and unsealing her teammate for a quick tag out, now that her opponent was distracted. As the maroon flash cleared out, Stea graciously took her place by her teammate, giving the energetic young trapster complimentary glares.</p><p>"I assume you've setup your traps, support ninja"? Stea calmly and composedly inquired.</p><p>"Sure, I went and used out a pair of them though, got caught on the opposite side and needed to reach you", Erumo shyly rubbed her nose, feeling a bit embarrassed by her newbie mistake.</p><p>"That's just bad positioning", Stea politely smiled allowing her teammate to get sealed inside the tag scroll as she calmly looked at the briefly worn out and lightly injured opponent.</p><p>"Well then, are you going to try and beat me, or will I have to lead the waltz"? Stea taunted the young man who just grinded his teeth and jumped on his feet, before looking aside at his teammate and his female team mentor and stopping in his tracks.</p><p>"Ladies first", Kei-J managed to pull out a pleasant and confident smile, not having himself rush into another trap. Clearly, Stea couldn't use any of Erumo's traps, but her own ability, equally as fearsome, was still a complete mystery to Kei-J and so the young man resorted to calmly scoping the young woman's abilities out.</p><p>"Very well, I shall then move in", Stea closed her eyes as her black robe flashed and fluttered due to her lightning fast movements. The young woman moved in behind her opponent, throwing a pair of quick and precise kicks Kei-J's taijutsu prowess simply outclassed her completely. Mana's eyes widened both by how skilled Kei-J was at close range combat and by how bold Stea's approach was, given her lackluster hand-to-hand potential. The mysterious Getsugakure kunoichi was barely as good as Mana was at offensive taijutsu, which would've counted as a failing area in the handbooks of many aspiring ninja.</p><p>As swift kicks and sharp elbow strikes overwhelmed the rather improperly dressed for her manner of attack woman, she gurgled some nasty sounding sounds which made Mana even more confused – was she not augmenting her body to weaken at least some of the damage she took by this odd approach? Kei-J raised his twin bladed weapon above his head and spun it rapidly, blitzing with his blades in many angles and countless different altitude and varied strength and speed slashes. Even Mana would have found such variety difficult to evade unharmed.</p><p>The blade staff pierced through the black cloak of Stea like a hot knife through butter. Cutting the young woman apart to pieces in the process, or so it initially seemed by it only cut through a floating piece of clothing as the wearer of said attire had slipped out of it and moved back. In that way, efficiently disengaging from her incredibly bold offensive and leaving only her cumbersome and very puffy cloak to get shredded into small raggedy chunks of cloth.</p><p>"Why would the Getsugakure chick engage so hot-headedly if she sucks so badly at taijutsu, seems to me like she's asking to get cut", Kiyomi nodded firmly to herself, imagining herself scolding Stea as if the young woman was her student or something.</p><p>"I think that's the point", Mana lingered on that thought before looking very carefully at the young Getsugakure kunoichi who wiped the blood running down her lip and cracked eyebrow and felt her busted innards that kept on bleeding internally and must've caused quite a painful moving around experience. "I've never seen her true ability, by the time I arrived to observe Team Phobos battle, she had already dispatched of her opponent unfazed and challenged him to attack her, as if she wanted to get hurt. Then the third member of her team – Doma took the hit for her".</p><p>"Hmm? Sounds to me like just a very devoted teammate", Kiyomi observed before resuming her curious glare at the briefly slowed down pace of the battle in the arena.</p><p>"That's what I thought back then. Then I saw Doma's strange ability, somehow he empowered his own ninjutsu through the damage he took something called a Damage Seal. I wonder if Stea's ability isn't a similar one to that of her teammate's. Usually, most villages have common patterns amongst the abilities of their ninja: Kumogakure has more swordsmen, Sungakure has more puppeteers etc", Mana theorized after witnessing Kei-J charge at his opponent with his twirling sword-staff in hand, ready to cut up the real deal this time.</p><p>Stea gracefully moved aside from the first couple of combinations but she must've seen the problem instantly, it didn't take great skill in weaponry combat to see it – there were no blind spots in Kei-J's attacks to counterattack in. A staff or a sword-staff was a perfect weapon for the young man as it doubled down on his incredibly aggressive pressure-based style of combat. He is going to wear his less skilled opponent down and eventually he will either find an open spot for a finishing thrust, or a slash or create one.</p><p>The Getsugakure kunoichi gracefully sprung forward, trying to disengage but Mana noticed a string reeling device shining, as the lighting of the gym reflected off of the steel hidden under the bandages wrapped around Kei-J's wrists. The young man fired off a kunai on a steel string device that etched into the rocky floor and pulled on the wire, pulling himself in for a powerful jump kick. Stea grunted out in pain as the young man's boot dug deep into her ribs and his sword staff added a several of deep cuts at randomly cut spots all over her body. The force of the kick and the added sword-staff attack sent Stea rolling back, dangerously close to the edge of the arena and over the edge.</p><p>"Hey, hey"! Doma shouted out wildly from the other side of the arena as the woman in a tight black silk dress and plenty of bronze, copper and iron jewelry disappeared off the edge.</p><p>Normally, Mana would've counted this as a part of Stea's strategy, but now that even her own team got worried over the young lady's safety and further participation, even her own heart skipped a couple of beats. She didn't want to admit it but… She didn't want Stea to lose, in all honesty. The magician had no idea of the kind of person that the Getsugakure kunoichi really was but so far she stroke the impression of a kind and noble soul. Needless to mention, that the two shared their general distaste for fighting even if circumstances forced them into it so often, there was a sense of relatability to the kunoichi of the Moon.</p><p>"Wow! What a use of the Art of Tree Climbing"! Even the high-ranking overseer whistled out in surprise after seeing Stea's body straightened out like a board horizontally and completely over the edge, sticking to the arena side merely by the tip of her finger that was glowing blue, suggesting an intense flow of chakra at that point. With a gracious flick of her wrist and hand, Stea flipped back into the arena and dusted off her black dress.</p><p>"A nice attack. Shall we continue then"? She smiled.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0339"><h2>339. Switcheroo After Switcheroo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The muscle of Kei-J's hand twitched, it was a telegraphing signal that the exceptionally skilled weaponry and hand-to-hand user shall resume his relentless and, so far, tremendously successful assault. The Kumogakure genin shot his hand up, unleashing a handful of his custom made, larger than normal triple bladed shuriken at his opponent. Stea moved aside to avoid the attack but a sound of tearing silk suggested that she did not escape the shuriken completely unharmed. At that moment Kei-J's free hand moved into a hand seal position.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu"! He chanted out as strings of steel wire lit up in the air, as the light it reflected danced on its metallic texture, tied around the shuriken he had just previously tossed. As an additional method of assault, the genin threw another handful of shuriken with his hand seal weaving, free hand as well, while his other hand used the wire to reel his fired shuriken back at his opponent from behind her.</p><p>Stea's pain ridden shouts filled the hall making the audience feel uncomfortable as she managed to bend her body in a manner where the shuriken, both coming and passing from behind, managed to miss her, yet still left their marks on her body. Both the highly elastic manner of her gymnastic dodge and the injuries she had gathered from this improvised shuriken assault, in addition to the internal injuries already present in her body from the previous battle, made it difficult for Stea to keep going.</p><p>"She's seriously injured already", Kiyomi noted, "If she was holding something back, wouldn't you think she'd have shown it at this point? She'd have to be some sick bitch not to feel pressed to the wall right now".</p><p>Mana remained silent. Had she been in Kei-J's place, knowing what she knew currently, she would be more scared than she would be being in Stea's. The magician felt equally baffled by a highly self-sacrificial manner of Stea's fighting style. She just kept getting hurt more and more, it was not like her attacks were inefficient, she barely even showed any incentive to attack, to begin with.</p><p>Stea's hands weighed down from clutching at the wounds on her shoulders, biceps, her abdomen as well. She coughed up some blood from her mouth, Mana noticed the extent of injuries that were acquired. These were injuries caused due to lack of any chakra augmentations, Stea's chakra signature felt just as massive as it was when she started the match – she had not even begun spending it. Every damaging blow or cut she took with her body and physical endurance alone. It was easy to notice a fighting style which Mana herself used to incorporate into hers for so long, until so recently.</p><p>"I'd advise you to surrender", Kei-J firmly stated as he took an offensive stance, picking back up his sword-staff and preparing to attack his opponent with more of his relentless and, seemingly, flawless and immensely aggressive weaponry style. "Haven't you suffered enough already"?</p><p>"Suffering"? Stea grunted out through the pain of her inner bleeding injuries as her hands quickly flashed through a bunch of hand seals. "What would a native of a Great Ninja Country know of suffering"? She asked as her hands lit up with emerald green glow so intense that it transcended anything Mana had seen before, the intensity of the green glow went into a bland indigo colored glow at the end making the Mystical Palm Jutsu she perform appear almost a little majestic and divine visually.</p><p>"Have you seen parents cannibalizing their own children because the village hasn't got enough income to feed its villagers?" Stea's voice cleared up as she kept on healing herself, regenerating almost momentarily in her opponent's eyes. Had the speed of her regeneration not been so rapid, Kei-J may have considered trying to interrupt her but seeing what he saw just made him freeze in place.</p><p>"Have you seen your village leader address his people, in the midst of a war, and commit suicide in front of their eyes right after telling them it's not all hopeless"? Stea angrily asked her opponent as she straightened her hunched back out and moved her hands away from clutching at her injuries and back into an offensive pose.</p><p>"It's over", Mana stated.</p><p>"Yeah", Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>Both girls had realized something absolutely terrifying about Stea just now. They've pieced her fighting style together in just what little Mana had shared about seeing Team Phobos in the Forest of Death and seeing Stea's Mystical Palm Jutsu transcend anything that a kunoichi of her rank could show.</p><p>The Getsugakure kunoichi was empowering her own ninjutsu and medical ninjutsu she used by using parts of the damage she stored inside the damage seals. Doma of Team Phobos must've had a similar ability, but he was unable to use medical ninjutsu and was therefore limited in his potential damage seal ability, after all, a damage seal user still took damage to their body from whatever part of the damage they took they sealed away. Not only would Stea's ninjutsu and sealing potential grow with time she spent getting injured, but she'd be able to heal herself more efficiently as well while keeping all the damage she had stored inside her seal.</p><p>"Do you know any shortcomings, ways to beat this ability"? Kiyomi turned to Mana who just shrugged with scared and saddened eyes.</p><p>"There's something we don't know. Maybe a time limit, maybe a storage limit… Other than that…" Mana wondered in the dark.</p><p>"No genin can use Mystical Palms to heal this much so fast", Kei-J still stumbled in even more dark himself.</p><p>Stea's body weightlessly hung in the air as she relaxed her muscles, letting go of her balance while she fell forward before instantly tensing up her lower body and shooting off at the direction of her opponent. Kei-J twirled his sword-staff around, trying to catch Stea in a couple of cheaper blows but the Getsugakure genin avoided the handful of slashes before punching with all her might right at the center of the staff, cracking it in two as her punch smashed at Kei-J's chest, sending him flying back at neck-breaking speed.</p><p>"Contestant Kei-J – ring out", the overseer ruled seeing the Kumogakure genin whizz past the barrier and smash into the wall beside it. He may have had enough prowess to recover had his senses not been temporarily punched out of him by the unexpected burst of speed and power of the Getsugakure genin.</p><p>"Look at me", Stea loudly declared, "Do I look like any lesser ninja than you Great Ninja Country elites? Yet, in times of disarray, no client willingly comes to a village such as ours, they choose to ask for one of the Great Ninja Countries for help instead. Things are even worse in times of peace. I despise violence and conflict so it sickens me to wish for war, just so the children in our village can eat".</p><p>"You tell them"! Doma loudly chanted, raising his fist up in the air as he cheered his teammate on, "We're gonna become chuunin, then jonin, then we're gonna steal the bread from all you pompous assholes! We're gonna steal it back"!</p><p>"My intents are not as violent as those of my teammate", Stea shook her head calmly after the entire audience shook in an uneasy rumbling. "I merely wish to show my abilities on the grand stage of the Chuunin Exams finals, so that more people saw the power that us small and poor villages have been forced to obtain in order to survive. While Doma may not believe in a bright future, I do believe that just being seen would be enough to be acknowledged and change our village's situation at least a little bit"!</p><p>Overseer let the audience sit in calm silence for a while before walking up to the tag scroll and unsealing the clumsy Aburame girl from it. Stea placed her hand on her own tag scroll and unraveled it almost at the same time as the overseer, tagging out into her teammate.</p><p>"Huh"? Juhi curiously muttered seeing the oddity of her teammate getting dragged away and helped to stand back up from outside the arena while both of her opponents stood right in front of her.</p><p>"I know you are a support ninja and therefore a front line, one on one battle scenario isn't your comfort zone, Erumo. However I would like to rest for a while, please let us switch", Stea politely requested as the two girls switched places and the Getsugakure young woman got absorbed in her tag partner's place.</p><p>"Hmmm? You think Stea's actually tired"? Kiyomi wondered, "Could it be her weakness"?</p><p>"I'm not sure", Mana shook her head, "I don't think she's actually tired, I think that she's just feeling bad about beating Kei-J like that and that she just wanted to switch, and that's all. However, her chakra has certainly decreased visibly after that Chakra Enhanced Strength punch. There may not be a limit to her potential growth using the damage seal, but she uses chakra for her techniques just like all of us do, that may be her only limit and weakness".</p><p>"Such as it is", Kiyomi sighed, "We also use chakra for our techniques, so does everyone else".</p><p>Seemingly ignoring Kiyomi's concerns completely, Mana could not help the feeling that Stea may not have even been of the typical ninja mentality like the others. She may have been just someone who wanted to help her village shake off the horrors of famine and economic difficulties and enrolled into the Ninja Academy. Stea did not look like someone seeking fame for the sake of fame itself, more so, she sought fame to expose the problems she fought for.</p><p>"Stea is just like me", Mana muttered under her own nose, alerting Kiyomi, "She's just like me, except she's actually strong enough to change the world around her. She's just one step away from actually doing it. All she needs is to look good in the finals for all the potential influential clients".</p><p>"Is that why you can't expose her weaknesses? You feel bad for her, or you're already on her side"? Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Not really. She's probably still hiding plenty. I'm not even sure she's shown her ace jutsu yet. If she enhances her offensive abilities using the damage she's storing as well, she's shown very little of her offensive capabilities of exploiting it. Her hand-to-hand skills aren't the greatest either. She can't possibly be relying on her enhanced strength alone to end her battles". Mana shook her head gently.</p><p>Aburame Juhi, meanwhile, extended her hands wide after forming one hand seal. It was similar to all of the Aburame clan's Parasitic Insect jutsu uses Mana had seen or read about, yet when Juhi extended her hands no insects were seen. Usually, there were entire swarms of black insect clouds aiming to overwhelm the opponent with their chakra devouring properties meanwhile now it looked like Juhi was just cosplaying as an Aburame.</p><p>"Huh? Are you having performance issues"? Erumo curiously and innocently wondered, taunting her opponent as well. As a trap-using support ninja, Erumo despised the close and personal type of fights so she wished to stay back and just weave her traps. Her abilities got rendered useless by inactive or not overly aggressive opponents that refused to engage her in battle so certain ability to irritate one's opponent was useful for such a ninja.</p><p>What an odd innovation on the Aburame Parasitic Insect jutsu. Juhi could not have been using nano-sized insects in her rank. That was for advanced users that were capable of handling and commanding these types of Parasitic Insects, no genin could've done that so her innovation on the clan ability must've laid elsewhere.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect Jutsu: Grip"! Juhi calmly chanted out as she weaved her hand seal again, commanding, seemingly, a non-existent army of insects to move in on the opponent. Even Erumo took a couple of worried steps back, the enemy she couldn't see scared her more than a casual Parasitic Insect Jutsu would have.</p><p>Out of nowhere, a cloud of black, crawling minuscule insectoids wrapped around Erumo. The audience rustled uneasily, the creepy crawlies appeared out of the blue and in such massive quantities that they completely blacked the girl they covered out up to her neck, burrowing her under where the pressure of the insects must've been suffocating from inside. That was the least of Erumo's troubles, if these insects started leeching off her chakra – she'd be emptied almost instantly.</p><p>"Where did these insects come from"!? Erumo grunted as she tried to overpower the swarm, a fruitless effort.</p><p>"These are my custom bred species of the Parasitic Insects. They have most in common with a simple Constructor Ant of the Kumogakure savannas." Juhi explained. "Their Constructor Ant properties allow them to form complicated shapes and move in from underground. Most Parasitic Insects fly at their opponent, I find restricting the ground as being more effective".</p><p>"Jeez, never get an Aburame talking about their insects". Kiyomi scratched her temples. Her frustration didn't appear to be completely based on some sort of freaky fear of insects but it didn't look like a topic that the blonde would've loved to speak about. Mana had to admit that she shared that sentiment and found insects equally creepy.</p><p>"It was a clever strategy though. She commanded her ants to spread out and move in on her opponent, not in a swarm, but separately which rendered them almost completely invisible unless one knows what they're looking for. Once the limited arena space was completely dominated by insects – she snapped the trap shut", Mana smiled a little. While Juhi was a pretty awkward girl and assumed that most people wanted to talk about her insects way too often than they actually did, she was quite clever.</p><p>"I see, thanks for letting me know"! Erumo grinned at her opponent after the entire clutch of insects lit up in flames, the ants appeared to be even less resistant to flame than their more common generic counterpart. They also didn't look like they felt any pain or heat at all as they simply stood still and chose to burn to a crisp as Erumo shook their crispy corpses off and dove out of the flames, using very limited chakra augmentation to protect herself from the low ranking flame trap she had set.</p><p>"Not bad", Juhi bitterly admitted.</p><p>"A weak flame trap was the first trap I set when I realized we'd be facing you", Erumo gave herself the thumb up before pulling out a kunai and wrapping some string wire around it. She must've had a limited supply of traps left remaining and setting up new ones in plain sight would've been quite difficult, not to mention very inefficient. Her kunai and steel wire combination could have functioned as a makeshift grappling hook when used in tandem with the String Reeling jutsu.</p><p>"It was a brave way of obtaining information about my abilities, however", Juhi placed her hands up commanding her insects to move in again. "Just how much chakra did you sacrifice in captivity to obtain that information"?</p><p>The ants once again scurried from underground and the sides of the arena, forming a human palm and trying to crush the trapster, effectively burying her under a sea of chakra eating insects. Erumo gracefully leaped away but she underestimated the splashing effect of the ants smashing against the arena floor as quite a handful of insects landed on her, beginning to scatter all over her body, looking for spots where they could feast on the trapster's chakra unnoticed for prolonged periods of time.</p><p>"Crap"! Erumo shouted out as she did her best to remove the leeching insects quickly by jumping around erratically and trying to shake the ants out of the girl's clothes and off her skin. Having spent so much time in the Forest of Death, Erumo had a clear idea of the danger of a leeching insect being allowed to suck on her chakra or blood for a prolonged period of time unnoticed.</p><p>"Wow, she's lost a large chunk of chakra already", Mana muttered in surprise by how simple yet effective Juhi's offensive strategy was in a limited area. "She's dangerous, chakra is the only wall Stea can hit as well. Juhi may not just be out of the exam yet".</p><p>Erumo slung her innovated grappling hook to the ceiling of the gym, pulling herself up in the air by using brute force. It seemed quite a risky strategy, given the limited maneuverability in mid-air, yet the trapster just kept on using the grappling hook to zip herself away, using it to root herself to the ground when she ran into the danger of a possible ring out. It may have given her a possible aerial space to move in, which helped her evasive measures tremendously, but Erumo lacked a proper offensive strategy, a common weakness of most supporting role ninja.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Twin-Mace"! Juhi shouted out, ordering the ants to form two horizontally aimed massive mace shapes that smashed from both sides, aiming at Erumo. The trapster pulled out a tag from her ninja kit just before the insect maces slammed her between them. When the maces collapsed into just messy piles of parasitic ants, however, they appeared to have been only feasting on a log.</p><p>Juhi picked up the tag that got left in the place together with the log, the tag appeared to be a sealing tag, similar to the explosive tags that ninja used in conjunction with kunai to create projectile explosives. However, this tag carried on it the symbols of "Substitution Jutsu", symbolling that the Konoha kunoichi carried around sealing tags not of explosive nature, but instead with the generic Academy techniques sealed inside of them, in case she was herself trapped and unable to use them otherwise.</p><p>A loud and ground shaking rumble alerted the entire audience, there was restraint in the detonated explosives, they also had quite a curious placement, an entire bucket load of dirt fell out from the basis of the arena as the whole northern part of the structure crumbled into just specks of dirt.</p><p>"Contestant Juhi, ring… No, wait"! The overseer already wanted to rule the possible ring out but then he noticed that a bridge of ants, connected from the still standing southern part of the arena held the Aburame in the air and prevented her from falling down together with the collapsing northern arena.</p><p>"Tsk", Erumo angrily grunted as she landed on the southern edge of the arena and lamented the vastly diminished space of the arena for her to lay traps on.</p><p>"This must've been your last trap, Erumo", Juhi smiled with relief. "There is no way you'd have detonated entire chunks of arena without it being your last resort".</p><p>"Sorry, I am not Erumo", Erumo smiled when the shape poofed in a cloud of smoke revealing Yushijin, the trapster's teammate standing in the girl's place.</p><p>A deafening thud made the confused audience members cover up their eyes after Erumo swung in from above, driving both of her feet at her opponent and trying her best to ring her out. Juhi's injured shape got slung at immense speeds outside the arena and smashing into the side wall, way past the barrier.</p><p>"Ummm… I'm gonna need some explanation here before I can make my ruling", the overseer scratched the back of his head. "How come an audience member is standing in the ring, transformed into contestant Erumo"?</p><p>"I used Substitution Jutsu to replace myself with an audience member before pulling myself up, during the messy affair of the arena falling apart. You see, the Substitution Jutsu can be used to replace one with people, but only willing participants, therefore I had to use my teammate for this. He didn't interfere with the match either, I used this sealing tag with the Transformation Jutsu already sealed into it. I just slapped it onto Yushijin's chest when I replaced myself and forced the transformation", Erumo cheerfully explained.</p><p>"Oh… That's… Highly unconventional, you've clearly premeditated this strategy if you've made those tags", the overseer scratched his neck lazily. "Alright, as long as contestant Yushijin clears the arena grounds, I'll allow this move, seeing how it's highly unlikely that any other genin premeditated and made such a tool themselves".</p><p>The overseer looked back at Lord Sixth who just lazily nodded in approval of the ruling, as a past Black Ops member, the Hokage was quite likely to look at similar dirty stunts more leniently. It was something Mana decided to remember for a possible clutch situation in the future. Looking a bit confused by the complicated switcheroo trick, but also happy for his teammate, Yushijin leaped off of the arena and outside the barrier.</p><p>"Contestant Juhi, ring…" the overseer raised his hand for a ruling before he noticed that the Juhi that was kicked out had just collapsed into a mass of insects and scurried away, revealing it to have only been an Insect Clone.</p><p>The arena ground of the southern, still remaining arena wing rippled, revealing the insect user pulling off a Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu off of her formed using her sleeveless long winter jacket, the Aburame quickly shoved her hands forward commanding her insects to move in according to her orders.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Shove"! She grunted out as the insects gathered into a shape of a vertical pushing palm and darted off, shoved by the other ants positioned under and from behind of the construct. Erumo braced herself for impact as the limited arena space gave her very limited options for moving around…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0340"><h2>340. Pest Control</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The massive palm made of nothing but cross-bred Aburame Parasitic Insects slammed into Erumo, enveloping the kunoichi with swarms upon swarms of insects before the concentrated construct of insects pushed her out of the palm and sent the trapster flying back.</p><p>Erumo recovered very near to the edge of the arena, pulling out one paper tag from her ninja kit and catching it in her mouth while she pulled a kunai knife with the other hand and drove it into the arena surface she was sliding over to slow down her momentum as much as she could. Once the Konoha kunoichi weaved a hand seal and set off the "Art of Tree Climbing" sealing tag her feet stuck more firmly to the sides of the edge of the half-busted arena.</p><p>Breathing heavily and bleeding from the numerous bruises she has accumulated, Erumo climbed back onto the edge of the arena, just barely managing to save herself from getting ringed out. Mana could not help but tap into her sensory abilities to see just how much fighting spirit was still blazing inside the young kunoichi.</p><p>"I'm not sure why Erumo worked so hard to stay in the match", Mana sighed, "She's got about half of her usable chakra remaining and her body isn't in the greatest of shapes. She's got virtually no capability of setting new traps with her opponent constantly on her feet. It would've been much better for her to surrender and let Stea take care of the rest".</p><p>"No, Erumo is really smart. Knowing that she's just a trap-setting support ninja who doesn't like active combat made everyone look down on her but she's pretty amazing", Kiyomi grinned with her right side of the lips.</p><p>"She's stalling, Mana", Hanasaku butt in, "You see, it's obvious now that Erumo had lost, that being said, she's trying to see just how much more she can tire out her opponent before passing the baton to her teammate. That's pretty smart"!</p><p>Erumo dashed to the right corner of what still remained of the arena, diving on her knees and focusing her chakra onto her palms, something that was required of her when she wanted to set seals with more of her traps sealed inside. She had tremendously limited time to set any traps, she was covered with those pesky bugs that were too numerous and troublesome to remove entirely at this point. It was not too difficult to see that Erumo's movements had become number and slower, as her chakra pool lowered from its peak, her body displayed more and more physical signs of exhaustion.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Pillar"! Juhi yelled out as a towering pillar of insects crawled on top of one another, surrounding Erumo and closing her inside the improvised structure of insects.</p><p>Mana was beginning to feel a little worried for the well-being of Kouta's friend before a powerful blast helped the girl free herself through the weaker structural side of the pillar of insects. Armed with kunai in her hands and in her teeth, Erumo decided to stop gunning for setting traps in the middle of a battle and decided to double down on her berserker strategy. The trapster leaped straight at her opponent, aiming to test her capabilities for close range combat.</p><p>A little string of Juhi's hair scattered across the arena as the Aburame narrowly evaded the barrage of swipes and thrusts aimed at her before preparing to launch a counterattack herself.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Gloves"! she yelled out forming two much smaller than before fist constructs that fit right around her own fists and could've been used at a closer distance. Juhi certainly was merely moderate at close distance combat but at least she had tools to dabble in it if forced to.</p><p>While the added insect formation gloves added some oomph to the genin's physical blows, it also slowed them down somewhat as Juhi's physical strength struggled a little to adapt to the increased weight around her wrists. When one punched as fast as most ninja did and as often, in as varied ways, even the slightest weight imbalance could've tipped the scales more to one's opponent's advantage.</p><p>Both of these two kunoichi were absolutely amazing. Erumo with her throw-all-caution away type self-sacrificial strategy aimed merely at wearing her opponent down and more skill at close range than she had any right at possessing. A significant amount of training must've been put into honing these skills as support ninja usually lacked the capability of doing anything more than withdraw from the front lines quickly and efficiently.</p><p>On the other hand, Juhi managed to perfectly command and control her insects like they were an extension of her own body. The bond between the socially awkward Aburame and her insects surpassed the Summoning Jutsu or the bond between any Inuzuka that Mana had met and their canine. She also managed to keep her insects in check from feasting on her own chakra when they were all over her own skin in full combat mode. That could not have been easy to accomplish and required fundamental trust in one's partner, discipline, and control from both sides of the partnership.</p><p>Erumo slashed a couple of more daring combinations of kunai swipes. This was just the moment for a counter attack that Juhi had been waiting for. The Aburame leaned under the chest-aimed swipe and smacked both of her "gloved" fists into the arena floor with enough restraint to barely even shake its foundation but waking up her insects to scatter in a mad crawling formation that scattered across the greatly diminished arena grounds.</p><p>Forced into a hasty retreat, Erumo dashed back before rubbing and shaking off as many of the ants as she possibly could. Mana could feel the trapster's chakra signature dwindling, whereas just so recently it was still halfway full, now it was already approaching critical zone. On top of that, Erumo's rush caused her body to take more damage. The trapster collapsed on her knees, clutching at her chest and ribs. The magician focused so hard on observing Erumo's chakra signature that she had not considered that Erumo's body might have caved in first.</p><p>As noble as Erumo's sacrificial strategy was, Mana wasn't impressed with Juhi's decrease in chakra or the lack of any significant damage on her body. Was all the pain and chakra loss really worth such a miniscule decrease, it was quite clear that Juhi may have at least noticed the more reckless approach of her opponent and paced herself a little better in the face of it.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Trap Pit"! Juhi yelled out as she smacked her hands together, forcing the parasitic ants to band up from their scattered formation right from under Erumo, there was only one possible move that'd have postponed the inevitable end of the match a skip further – to leap backwards and use her improvised grappling hook to stick to the ceiling. She'd have dangled helplessly straight above the ring out territory, leaving her wide open for finishing blows, but at least it'd have been something else than just giving in. That was just what Erumo tried to do but her tired body was simply too slow. The black swarm of parasitic chakra devourers crawled all over her feet and up to her knees, trapping her lower body completely in place as they worked their magic.</p><p>A strong gust of wind blasted the gathered insects away as the overseer of the exam caught the collapsing and unconscious Erumo, the ninja interfered right after he received a faint gesture from the bunch of ninja protecting Lord Sixth. One of them must have been a sensor and relayed the important information that Erumo's chakra crossed far over the critical zone. At this point, she needed medical pills to accelerate her natural chakra restoration processes or she risked losing the ability of chakra manipulation.</p><p>"That was dangerous", Kiyomi sighed in relief, Erumo's noble strategy got the Yamanaka heiress quite invested in the fight and made the trapster a clear favorite in the blonde's mind.</p><p>"Yeah, she's lucky to have passed out and gotten rescued before that line was crossed", Mana looked down as resisting to the painful stream of memories from when she lost her own chakra manipulation was beginning to seem quite impossible.</p><p>The overseer then rushed to the tag scroll and unsealed Stea back onto the battlefield. While both combatants had seen combat previously, Juhi was slightly more worn out chakra-wise, not to mention the amount of damage that the Getsugakure genin had already managed to store in her damage seals.</p><p>"Not to sound too mean, but I kind of hope that Stea is pushed to reveal all of the hidden cards she still has. Opponents like that are too dangerous to have any cards still concealed", Kiyomi noted.</p><p>"Erumo's strategy was reckless", Mana grunted, still feeling a bit uneasy after seeing the extents to which Team Fir was willing to go to advance to the next stage, "She should've just tagged out and shared intel on her opponent's abilities, now Stea is entering onto a completely mysterious to her battlefield".</p><p>"You, of all people, should be the last one to point fingers and call people reckless", Kiyomi quite accurately and in a verily low-blowing manner cheeker her friend.</p><p>Still, judging from Stea's composure, it did not appear like the Getsugakure kunoichi cared very much about what kind of abilities her opponent may have possessed. Her eyes merely traced Juhi's relatively tamely injured body being carried off through the door, Stea was smart, she should've figured out that it was loss of chakra that did her tag partner in by just that one glance alone. Anyone who had seen Meiko's match would have known what a ninja beaten into unconsciousness looked like…</p><p>Stea darted off, heading straight for the left corner of the arena, launching a pair of kunai at her opponent as a distraction. This was a textbook scoping approach, it would've been instantly been clear to any ninja that has worked at least one day in the field what the purpose of such an elementary behavior was. The Getsugakure kunoichi went straight for that priceless information.</p><p>The kunai bounced off of the piling parasitic ants that erected themselves in an extended horizontally hand position, using its "fingers" to deflect the kunai whereas the clutching of the insect fist would've served as a makeshift tomb for the young Getsugakure ninja.</p><p>"It's tough to see what's going on inside that squirming thing", Kiyomi squinted her eyes, trying to see something inside the messy mass of insects.</p><p>"Yeah, I wonder how Stea will adapt to this fighting style", Mana wondered finally finding enough will inside herself to keep her eyes fixed firmly onto the battle instead of getting distracted occasionally by her own inner turmoil.</p><p>"Yeah, it's interesting to see how will her damage seals deal with attacks that devour one's chakra as well", Kiyomi grinned.</p><p>"It's not just that. I believe that the amount of damage Stea seals away matters to her, meaning that the more damaging the attack she stores inside the seal, the more potent her own long-term strategies become. Aburame insects are not overly dangerous in terms of the physical damage they deal, they're more of a chakra draining hazard. The Aburame are not favorable opponents for damage seal users, it seems", Mana replied.</p><p>With a thunderous roar, Stea punched her way through the insects using the Chakra Enhanced Strength technique that most medical ninja were able to use to a certain extent. To be able to overpower even the swarming tactics of the Aburame insects and punch through and outside their enclosing construct must have required significant force, it was an alarming sign as far as judging Stea's growth of potential strength was concerned.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Mace"! Juhi shouted out, appearing from the other side of the closed and now busted insect hand. As commanded, the Aburame insects quickly reshaped themselves into a giant mace before slamming from above straight at Stea, who had very little space to move in, given the amount of arena that kept crumbling to the floor every passing moment. A powerful shockwave emanated from the clashing forces when Stea raised her hands to block the smashing construct with her hands. It was less than the cleverest of strategies…</p><p>Open skin contact with the insects meant that they were free to keep draining the Getsugakure kunoichi of chakra continuously. Whereas firstly, Stea could match the strength of the tremendously large construct and even overpower it somewhat, as moments went on, she found herself quickly getting drained of her Enhanced Strength as the constant chakra drainage made it impossible for her to sustain the jutsu.</p><p>With a decisive and cracking thud, the mace smashed on top of Stea, making her completely disappear in the ocean of parasitic ants as the construct dissolved. A mighty blast from below signaled that Stea wasn't quite at the point of giving up as the bugs got blasted out of her way as if the kunoichi had detonated an explosive from underneath, as she dived up in the air, jumping all the way to the ceiling and sticking to it, using the Art of Tree Climbing jutsu.</p><p>"So she's come to the same conclusions as Erumo had", Kiyomi crossed her arms over her chest. "It's weird. I previously thought that Stea would have this easily in the bag but… Juhi may just pull it through. I always thought she was a bit creepy, what with all the insects but… You know what, she's kinda cool".</p><p>Once again, Stea's hand lit up with the emerald-indigo glow as she ran her hands over the aching areas of her body, using the Mystical Palm jutsu to heal herself quickly, at least giving herself what was supposed to be the elementary battlefield treatment.</p><p>"Look at that, she's completely healed herself, not a single scratch or speck on dirt on her body"! Someone from the genin watching the battle exclaimed in complete shock. Mana had to hand it to the person – they were quite right with that assessment. Stea went from moderately banged up and numerous inner injuries, evidenced by black blunt force traumas all over her body, to looking completely refreshed and even cleaning her skin pristinely clean.</p><p>"But her chakra dipped below Juhi's for the first time", Mana noticed measuring the signatures of the two combatants. Seeing how she, a moderately amateur sensor could tell such a detail, the difference must have been considerable enough to tell the two apart.</p><p>"I can't reach you up there, it'll take too long for my insects to stack that high, could you please kindly come down, or at least swing a bit lower than the actual ceiling, like Erumo"? Juhi asked making the audience glare at her in confusion. This must've been one of the cases where Juhi's lack of social interactions kicked her in the shin – she just validated all of Stea's theories about her ability for a question that had an invisible chance of a positive answer.</p><p>The parasitic ants were highly intelligent and minuscule crawlers, capable of lightning quick coordination and amazing swarming strategies as well as a great variety of shapes they could collectively take with enough training. Their main weakness was gravity – they needed to stack on top of each other to reach taller places.</p><p>"No", Stea firmly denied the request of her opponent.</p><p>"I see, that is unfortunate", Juhi nodded.</p><p>Mana noticed a pair of boys peeking up Stea's dress as her tight silk struggled itself to keep providing the cover that clothes were supposed to provide. For some reason their reaction in the middle of battle greatly amused her, whereas normally it'd have been a cause for a bit of outrage. To tempt their dirty thoughts even more, Stea moved the hanging part of her dress aside for a brief moment just to reach inside her ninja pouch and pull out a handful of kunai and explosive tags, making a handful of explosive kunai on the spot.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect: Spikes"! Juhi chanted as she slammed her hands together, extending them at her opponent right afterward. Mana noticed a significant dip in the girl's chakra, evening their signatures up somewhat, which meant that the jutsu she used was quite a powerful one. However, once the swarms of insects shaped elongated spikes that shot out at the high-hanging opponent at a moderate pace, Mana realized, that it must have been one of few jutsu that simply permitted the insects of reaching that high within an acceptable timeframe.</p><p>Stea remained in her place, throwing her quickly combined kunai with explosive tags right at her opponent before she weaved a bunch of hand seals.</p><p>"Multi-Kunai Jutsu"! She declared after the hand seals were complete, in a loud banging noise and a large cloud of smoke, the thrown explosive kunai multiplied several times over. Clashing with the spikes of the Aburame girl. Juhi braced for impact as she realized that her insect spikes got blasted away and that a part of the explosive barrage was coming to her.</p><p>Mana had realized the point of Stea's attack too late, as the barrage of explosions decimated the arena completely, leaving it just a handful of intact stones, whereas the other tiles got turned into dirt and dust afterward. It looked like Juhi took a while to realize she was slipping down as well, but the insects formed a large landing pad for her to fall onto.</p><p>"Hey, overseer! This has to count as a ring out, has it not? I mean she's practically touching the ground, by extension"! Doma, the more in-your-face and hotheaded patriot of Getsugakure and a teammate of Stea's, objected.</p><p>"We've permitted a substitution with an audience member earlier, didn't we? As long as no part of the genin touches the actual floor, or the side walls, it does not count as a ring out", the overseer ruled, raising his hand to shut down the boy's objection.</p><p>"I give up"! Juhi vibrantly declared with a raised right hand.</p><p>"Are you sure"? The overseer glared at her confused.</p><p>"Yes, I may have a protection from a ring out currently, however, I'll need a constant input of chakra to keep myself on my insects. Needless to say, I have no way of effectively attacking my opponent up there so it's just a race against time. I do not wish to waste the audience's time or needlessly kill any more of my partners", Juhi bowed gracefully before jumping off of the insectoid platform. Stea landed on the floor with a quick dive from up above, softening her landing with a pulse of chakra from her feet that made it look like time itself slowed down upon her landing while the pulse merely cushioned the fall.</p><p>"It's a commendable decision", Stea bowed her head at her opponent before dusting off her dress and rejoining her team.</p><p>"Very well, let's determine the next pair of examinees to battle it out, before we leave for a short break and we can fix the arena", the overseer sighed before turning at the screen that began scrolling through random letters and names before settling on the two tag teams to fight it out in the next match:</p><p>"Jean-D (Team Nimbus/Kumogakure) &amp; Gorm Cleiti (Team Scuti/Hoshigakure) VS Buhakim (Team Pahlavi/Sunagakure) &amp; Kres-T (Team Alto/Kumogakure)"</p>
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<a name="section0341"><h2>341. Questions That Hurt To Be Axed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So… Team Alto is going to be in the next match, huh"? Kiyomi sighed, voicing her thoughts out loud. Frankly, it was something that first caught Mana's attention as well after the next match up was announced.</p><p>"Yeah, Quill B claimed that he had a qualm with Team Alto and wanted to take Kres-T's life for killing his friend. I've seen Quill B among the genin in the audience so things might get a bit heated up", Mana agreed.</p><p>The two girls found themselves calmly waiting outside of the infirmary where they were told that Meiko was still in the same condition she was left in after her match and was being moved to Konoha Hospital. Her moving, based on what the girls were told, was not due to changes in the blacksmith's condition, but merely because more and more injured genin needed medical attention and Konoha High was ill-roomed and staffed to deal with the demand.</p><p>"Yeah, but… Can you really blame Team Alto and call them monsters, ones like Team Phobos? More so, why are we calling Team Phobos monsters to begin with"? Kiyomi uncomfortably shrugged, it was becoming clear that she knew how Mana would react to these questions but she wanted them raised regardless.</p><p>"We don't call, or consider Team Phobos monsters, really. Not in terms of their humanity. They are referred to as such because of their monstrous skill gap, compared to the rest of the genin. In a way, we were supposed to always be monsters as well. We are still overtrained and overly experienced for this exam, remember"? Mana replied, feeling equally as uncomfortable because she sensed where Kiyomi wanted to turn this topic to and she did not want to argue with her good friend about that, at least not now.</p><p>"Alright, but I mean… Why are we supposed to dislike them? Team Phobos are nothing but really patriotic folk. I cannot ever blame someone like that. They love their village and want all that is best for it. They're willing to do whatever is necessary just to make it one of the Greats, not even for monetary or economic reasons but just so it doesn't go through famine again", Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, but they aren't all just one kind of people. Just because Stea doesn't like violence and doesn't like kicking her love for her village to the extreme, doesn't mean her teammates don't. Gasco and Doma advocate taking of another's life just for the sake of that person being weak and a detriment to their village's military strength. I've seen it with my own eyes, you can't ever place your heart and moral support behind people like that", Mana objected passively. It wasn't that she lacked passion for her arguments, it was just that the pressure of all that has happened recently was sinking her head beneath the surface and it took all of her flailings just to stay relatively afloat.</p><p>"Yeah, but then why are we supposed to treat like Kres-T did something wrong? From what Quill B told us, he killed a traitor, a ninja who planned on leaving their village, becoming nukenin. There is no greater honor for a ninja than killing someone with such traitorous intentions, it is Quill B who truly is out of line, wishing to kill a fellow ninja for the sole reason of him killing a traitor", Kiyomi became more passionate and less uncomfortable with her arguing with each passing moment.</p><p>Somewhere deep inside she must have felt a bit misguided to voice these thoughts at first but now that she had let them out, they quite nicely aligned to her own ideals – Aku-Soku-Zan. The ancient code that demanded the complete annihilation of any evil one saw at their sights. It wasn't even pure Aku-Soku-Zan that fueled Kiyomi, a true follower of that code would've slaughtered Mana with no hesitation for stealing supplies from another, they'd have gone on killing other killers without any qualms about it. The two sides of the same idea: the pure Aku-Soku-Zan and its modernized version were tearing Kiyomi from inside, Mana could feel it.</p><p>"Life is life. No life is to be thrown away meaninglessly. I don't care if that life belongs to a traitor or not. I'll stand behind a man wanting justice for a death of his friend but I will not let Quill B kill Kres-T if they ever meet in combat either", Mana firmly stood by her stance, "That, after all, is still, and always will be my Ninja Way".</p><p>"Well then, you better get ready and prepare to fight more battles than you need to", Kiyomi brightened up, her tone was soft and almost motherly. Almost like she displayed a very worried care for Mana's health.</p><p>"What do you mean"? The magician wondered.</p><p>"Look at it, the man you hate is about to fight in a grueling tag match. When is the best chance to slip a knife between their ribs than after such a match – when your hated enemy is tired and injured"? Kiyomi calmly explained as she stood up and followed the stream of flooding genin back into the gym hall.</p><p>Mana sat there dazed and lightly shocked for a while. What Kiyomi said was so true that it had to be an accurate read on the situation. It was one, which Mana had to take to mind but what was she supposed to do? She could not afford to waste any chakra or her own health, she will need all of it for the exam and she has been hammering again and again into her own mind about how important this exam was for her.</p><p>"Save a life of a killer? Win my match, what should I do"? Mana whispered to herself. It was not really a conflict, the moment the question was raised she knew which she had to do but the realization of what she would be giving up on in return plagued her immensely. She was about to give up on her image as a great ninja, the possible inspiration to the people around her that'd have helped her live up to the ideal way of changing the world – inspiring people to change through example. Still quivering like an autumnal leaf, Mana stood up and walked into the gym hall, even as the weak and plagued winter sun shined through the windows, the magician felt the darkness wrapping around her head and her throat, smothering her and driving fear and uncertainty into her heart.</p><hr/><p>A restrained clanging piqued Mana's interest once she took her place by Kiyomi's side and in front of her sensei. The female member of Team Nimbus – Jean-D, a spitting image of her brother, was making her way to the arena. This time, the armored kunoichi didn't wear her face rag on her face, instead, she used it as a scarf of sorts and let it just fall and wave loosely behind her back, partly wrapping around the twin knives she had sheathed behind her and knocking about on her hips.</p><p>"These are the Team Nimbus that wanted to claim me as their target back in Forest of Death, right"? Kiyomi asked.</p><p>"Yeah, they're also quite strong. I've met a pair of ninja, well… They kidnapped me… Anyways, these guys managed to scare their powerhouse member like a little kid. They're no joking matter", Mana worryingly confirmed. The more powerful the enemy, the more troubled she had reason to be as the odds of Quill B being tempted to attempt and assassinate Kres-T would have been greater.</p><p>"No joke, didn't that one guy from their team take both Meiko and Sugemi to beat"? Kiyomi confidently smiled, she was right to be smiling and to feel relieved, now that Team Nimbus had no business or quarrel with her.</p><p>"Hey, look, that's another one of those Team Scuti guys, those traitorous assholes that tried to hurt you after having a truce agreement with Sugemi's team", Kiyomi pointed at a brown haired young boy with a black top making his way hastily onto the arena and taking his place by the side of his female armored teammate. The shiny face paint on the boy's face was by far the most eye-scratching feature that simply demanded attention whenever one looked at Gorm Cleiti.</p><p>Then, Mana noticed another familiar face calmly making his way onto the arena – Buhakim of Team Pahlavi. The golden haired, dark skinned young man obsessed with some strange moral code he called "Uber-Spirituality" and his odd style of puppetry techniques. While he did act in a very comedic and joke-inviting manner, his skill and puppets were considerable and his reserved and cool-headed mindset had to be commended and revered as well.</p><p>An athletically looking young man, wearing sleeveless baggy clothes separated from Team Alto and calmly made his way to the arena. Even by Kumogakure's relatively exotic standards, the youth was in the league of his own. Wearing two odd bracelets with axe-handles attached to them, shaved bald except for the five sharp sticking out spikes of hair that were dyed red, with a face that could've been honestly imagined quite easily from the uneasy history Kres-T was described as having with Quill B, at least as far as psychotic first impressions were concerned.</p><p>Jean-D and Gorm discussed something between themselves. Initially it appeared like they both had differing opinions about who should've lead the match, after something very short and emotional that Gorm said, however, Jean reluctantly agreed with a nod and warmed herself up, drawing two long knives and playing with them skillfully in her grip. Gorm went up to the tag scroll and got sealed inside.</p><p>On the other side, however, Buhakim and Kres-T stood completely silent, refusing even to talk to one another, that being said, once the overseer insisted that one of them finally agreed to be sealed inside the scroll, Buhakim, without any objections from his tag partner, strolled at a slow turtle's pace to the scroll. The boy's strut was almost mocking to the overseer's attempt to proceed with the matches optimally and in a rule-abiding manner, and sealed himself inside the scroll. Not only did Kres-T not object to this, he appeared excited and glad that his partner didn't want any of the battle ahead.</p><p>"Look at those eyes, tell me honestly that you believe this young man to be a just follower of his village's code and not a sociopathic murderer, glad to have an excuse to kill someone, and I'll start supporting your side immediately", Mana taunted Kiyomi's previous hesitance to believe in the cruel words said about Team Alto.</p><p>"Can't judge a person about how much they've allowed this world of ours to get to them. Aren't you all about judging someone by their actions, not their degree of crazy"? Kiyomi returned the sentiment.</p><p>The battle started without any additional encouragement from the overseer, the moment when the higher ranking ninja cleared the way for the combatants to begin, they charged at each other, thirsty for blood yet careful in their approach. Even when their shouts and grunts sounded primal and scary with how animalistic they were, inviting hidden instinctual fears of the more basic parts of our nature, their moves were cold and calculated. Scoping out their opponent's skill, carefully poking and backing out, nothing more, nothing less.</p><p>Finally Jean-D found herself brave enough to slightly overextend with a double assault – using her left kick for a jumping kick and her knife for a slash. Kres-T swiped his axe blades attached to his bracelets in an X shaped swipe, aiming to disarm his opponent with her brave assault and then injure or open her up for a finishing stroke.</p><p>Jean-D grunted out in pain as the overwhelming force and hold-nothing-back sadistic approach to fighting of her larger opponent triumphed, smashing the knives out of her hands through brute force while Kres simply powered through the kicks, choosing to take a little bit of damage just to potentially end the battle quickly.</p><p>Kres-T soared high and dived low, aiming to injure his opponent but Jean-D was simply too agile, even when disarmed, being completely able to both avoid his axe swipes and deliver a pair of good quick kicks and palm strikes to his face in return. Kres only noticed too late that he had pressured his opponent too much, pushing her all the way back to her own tag scroll. It wasn't difficult to notice the moment of hesitation in the young man's eyes, the conflict of whether he should sate his bloodlust for Jean's blood, or if he should back up a bit and wait out the inevitable tag.</p><p>The more sadistic side of Kres-T won, the young man swiped his axe downwards, leaning the swipe in angle a bit to the left to cover more space, Jean-D read him like a book, waiting his attack out before opening the scroll. In a maroon colored flash Gorm appeared from the scroll and, together, both teammates relentlessly overwhelmed their opponent, fists flew from every direction, kicks aimed at Kres-T's joints and his vital spots did all the damage they could do in the mere three seconds that were given. A quick glance to Jean's knives revealed that the young woman found her moment even to retrieve her primary weapons during the brief time of physical advantage she had obtained.</p><p>Blood was trickling down at an alarming rate and quantities from Kres-T's nose, cracked and swollen lip, busted eyebrows and random bruises he had obtained from Jean and Gorm pummeling him, with the duo being two highly physical and athletic combatants of their respective teams. Nevertheless, Kres-T remained on his feet. Even though the relentless opponents downed him a couple of times during the ceaseless barrage of fists and kicks. Just the very scent of his own blood must have sent the young man to a psychotic frenzy even bigger than the one he had before. Whereas previously it looked like he had some sort of a choice in his fighting style, now his sadistic side dictated it completely.</p><p>Kres-T's arms moved onto his hips, this alarmed Gorm but he was not yet familiar enough with his opponent to rush straight into interrupting his every action. He didn't know the extent of his opponent's speed, the nature of his jutsu, various skills and abilities, how fast his hand seals were and a great number of other things. Rushing this way, without knowing that sort of information lead into rushing straight into a trap.</p><p>The young man removed a pair of black orbs, similar to the smoke and flash bombs that most ninja carried in their kits, except these ones had streaks of glowing red steaming inside, visible through what appeared to be glassy parts of the orb's surface.</p><p>With a cruel grin, Kres-T lobbed the two spheres straight at Gorm, forcing the Team Scuti genin to get on the defensive and evade the bombs with great agility and acrobatics. It did appear like the boy was putting in effort in evading these explosives. Once evaded, the bombs hit the barrier and the force of impact detonated them, forcing Gorm to struggle to even stay on his feet. It was not difficult to imagine a more skillful and relentless barrage of similar explosives landing their mark a pair of times though.</p><p>By then Gorm must have realized that while he had more than a chance fighting Kres-T hand-to-hand, or hand-to-axe, with these various explosives in his kit, Kres had the option of controlling the battle from long range. With agile back vaults the Hoshigakure genin moved in to his tag scroll. Despite Kres-T's charge, attempting to disrupt the tag, Gorm switched out again, unsealing Jean-D.</p><p>However, this time, it did not appear like the two were in a rush to attack their opponent again. As three seconds passed quietly, in a maroon flash, Gorm got sealed away and Jean-D calmly stood in a fighting stance wielding both of her long knives.</p><p>"They exchanged information", Mana muttered to herself.</p><p>"That's clever", Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>"It's all about decisions, this stage. Will you choose to attack, but leave your teammate in the dark, risking a potential screw-up down the road for a little bit of a temporary advantage and damage, or do you share intel with them and play the long but steady game", Mana realized now. "It's like each team learns something with each passing match and change their approach".</p><p>Jean-D rushed onwards, slashing with her knife, rolling aside to avoid the quick bomb thrown her way, before getting inside knife-fighting distance as she stabbed downwards, using her knife with a dagger grip. Even as her knife was deflected, the young woman chose to proceed with her stabbing motion and stab into the ground. Not hard enough to damage her knives, yet still strongly and willfully enough to be seen and noted.</p><p>Jean deflected Kres-T's axe slashes with her remaining arm while she stabbed at him again. Kres raised his block upwards to interrupt the daring thrust but then he felt sharp pain below – where the previous knife stab hit the ground. After seeing his blood trickling on the ground, coming from a shallow cut on his thigh, a place where he was not even attacked in, Kres-T roared in rage and slammed a flash bomb into the ground, forcing a temporary cooldown of both combatants.</p><p>"What was that"? Kiyomi wondered, "Did you even see that? You've trained in defensive martial arts so your perception should be better"</p><p>"Yeah. Her other hand was nowhere near that thigh, also her thrusting knife appeared to blur and shorten right as it was thrusted forward, right when it was about to hit Kres-T's block", Mana confirmed Kiyomi's confusion about the exchange of attacks. "I'm not sure what this was, one thing's clear – she's not just a knife-fighter, there's some ninjutsu or genjutsu involved and it had something to do with that pointless thrust at the ground before".</p><p>A muffled and conserved laughter echoed through the Konoha High gym hall before transitioning into a full-on psychotic fit of laughter. Kres-T appeared to have been having a time of his life here as he was letting go of his composure and, seemingly, his sanity itself.</p><p>His laughter continued to spread through the gym hall and creep out the audience, before the psychotic Kumogakure genin took a slow step forward, transitioning into a slow walk towards his opponent.</p>
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<a name="section0342"><h2>342. The Drawbacks Of Recklessness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I bet you're wondering what's so funny, eh"? Kres-T finally spoke up, interrupting the awkward yet brief standstill between him and his opponent.</p><p>"Not really, more like admiring the degree to which you're taking your refusal to cooperate with your tag partner", Jean-D replied before lunging at her opponent. For the Kumogakure kunoichi this was it – she saw her opponent getting tricked with her hidden technique. She smelled blood, both figuratively and literally.</p><p>The kunoichi danced with her knives without stopping, inserting quick kicks into the equation to both disorient and fill the rhythm of her attacks with new notes and beats so that it didn't become too stale and predictable. Mana curiously turned her head aside and looked at Jean's brother, wondering if he employed a similar fighting style. Something stroke her as immensely odd about Jean-D, namely her affinity for useless moves.</p><p>Then again, oddly enough, Kres-T was playing along, employing seemingly pointless parries and dodges into his own routine, as if he was fighting both the Kumogakure kunoichi and an invisible ghost of some kind. Both contestants utilized so many unnecessary moves in their arsenal that one was left to wonder if they were lacking the very fundamentals of close range combat or if the observer was not quite on their level and simply oblivious to what was going on.</p><p>Kres-T's hand shot forward, locking firmly onto Jean-D's scarf and pulling her in for a strong elbow strike. The kunoichi grunted as she forced herself out of her neck accessory and desperately worked on moving backwards, she then was gifted with a strong jumping knee strike, which, while blocked with her arms, was strong enough to throw her off balance and force the kunoichi to stagger back instead of gracefully sliding back into a gracious fighting position.</p><p>"See? I figured out your trick, you're done for now"! Kres-T grinned with a full-teeth smile which kind of made Mana feel bad about staying oblivious to what was happening, given that Kres-T didn't appear to be the most perceptive and intelligent of combatants.</p><p>"What's he talking about"? Mana wondered, finally giving in to the pressure and realizing that outing herself as unable to fully perceive everything that transpired between the two genin in the arena was worth learning something new.</p><p>"I'm not quite sure…" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"He's talking about her Dimensional Blade technique", Hanasaku enlightened both girls, something that surprised both of them as their sensei wasn't really the kind to overthink any battle. Usually her complete excess of power, speed and endurance warranted an automatic advantage in any battle, enough so that she had survived to this day, even though not all of her battles may have been victorious.</p><p>Given that both of the girls just stared at the woman in confusion, Hanasaku sighed and elaborated. "I once fought a man in Kumogakure who possessed a similar technique, he stood in the way of my objective as both of our villages had issued us conflicting mission objectives. After a long fight and tiring out of hitting me with his dimensional techniques he withdrew".</p><p>"Yeah but… How does it work"? Mana wondered.</p><p>"It's fairly simple, the user just opens up one seal, then opens up another. They attack the first seal, the hit comes out through the other hole", Hanasaku explained, oversimplifying things, as always. She looked pretty content explaining it that way too…</p><p>"There's nothing simple about it", Kiyomi angrily squinted at her sensei, "You're talking about Space-Time Ninjutsu here, Hanasaku-sensei. One of the most elaborated and complicated jutsu to pull off".</p><p>"Not if one is transporting a very simple projectile through a very limited space and in a very short time", Mana pouted her lips as she often did when deep in thought. "If someone was skilled enough in Ninja Arts ninjutsu, and with grueling training, one could, in theory, pull it off on something as short as a kunai or a shuriken, all the previous limitations in mind".</p><p>"As I said, push the stabby end on one end, it comes out through the other", Hanasaku grinned with a goofy smile.</p><p>Jean-D quickly vaulted back to her tag scroll, aiming to pull on it hard to pull out her teammate, before she could do it, however, Kres-T was already holding her chest plate, having blitzed to the young woman and read her intent perfectly. With his opponent in hand, Kres-T leaped into the air as he began punching her face repeatedly, trying to force his way through her augmentations and draw blood.</p><p>Before Jean-D's face could have been turned to a mushy sludge of smashed bone, blood and brain matter, however, the young woman disappeared in a cloud of smoke with only her scarf remaining in the brute's hand, she meanwhile proceeded with her previous plan to unseal her tag partner.</p><p>Gorm appeared in a maroon flash and the two once again attempted to exchange information, despite Kres-T's explosive attempts at disrupting their communication with a pair of explosives from his pouch, the two successfully avoided the blasts and appeared to exchange some info before Jean-D got sealed in again.</p><p>"It appears I have no choice then…" Gorm closed his eyes and flexed his body out before tensing up all of his muscles at once. Just in time for Kres-T's landing and a bloodthirsty charge for his head. "Mysterious Peacock Method"! The young ninja shouted out as a purple glowing mass began leaking out of his body. It was no simple shine or shimmer, it was no aura, it was an actual material manifestation of some peculiar form of energy and, from the look on Kiyomi's face, even the non-sensors could perceive it clear as day.</p><p>Kres-T froze in mid charge and took a pair of reserved leaps backwards, blowing up a pair of smoke bombs in his way so that his opponent wouldn't speed-blitz him right after setting off his strange purple glow technique.</p><p>The purple shimmering mass coming out from, and enveloping, Gorm's entire body formed numerous tail-like endings behind him that spread widely like feathers of a peacock – something that must have given the jutsu its name. The consistency of the glowing mass must have been really intense as it was ruffling the boy's clothes and slowly burning them up.</p><p>"It's like… Radiation", Mana muttered to herself.</p><p>"Radiation"? Kiyomi wondered, feeling equally as confused as the magician was, without a doubt, therefore grasping at weird sounding straws that may have helped her better understand the technique.</p><p>"It's a strange phenomenon, a particular way in which energy moves through space or bodies. I've read about it in a book in the archives when I was researching more about Hanasaku-sensei's quantum branch of her abilities", Mana explained.</p><p>"That's not very nice", Hanasaku playfully winked at the magician.</p><p>"What kind of chakra is it"? Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"It's not… Technically chakra. It can be chakra, but essentially, anything that moves in a specific kind of way can be radioactive, even chakra. It is possible but… Most of the times I've read about it, radiation is observed in space and space bodies like stars, meteors and the like", Mana still struggled to believe what she was seeing in front of her own very eyes.</p><p>She was not the only one who was confused about this. The shape that this strange chakra molding method took was oddly similar to the appearance that a Tailed Beast took when they took on Tailed Beast Chakra Cloak and started manifesting tails – when they completely lost control over their Tailed Beasts. If the number of Gorm's "tails" formed behind him had not surpassed the number of most tails a Tailed Beast, namely, the Nine Tails, was known to have by a good handful, the outrage would have been significantly greater.</p><p>"Peacock Method: Beast"! Gorm yelled out as if he was combatting excruciating pain in every cell of his body each passing second he manifested this odd technique. The odd purple glowing chakra around the boy's body took shape of a bestial entity and rushed at the Kumogakure genin.</p><p>"Don't make me laugh"! The young man grunted out and took it into the air, moving his axe hands behind his back and reaching for his pouch. With a single careless movement of his hand the Kumogakure bombardier had unleashed a massive dark purple cloud all over the arena, one that the barrier didn't fail to shield the audience from, using the murky cover to escape the projectile of radioactive chakra coming his way.</p><p>"Is that… Poison"? Gorm's voice thundered through the murky depths of a cloud, which took the color with the universally acknowledged color of all poisons. "I give up a little bit of my life every time I use this technique, do I look like I'm afraid of a little bit of poison"!?</p><p>Following that bold declaration, loud bangs, shockwaves and rumbles, clangs and cracking sounds echoed throughout the arena. Once in a while, the loud roars of pain or forceful grunts could've been heard from inside.</p><p>"So his chakra is radioactive then", Mana uttered in disbelief of the extents to which Gorm was willing to go to become strong.</p><p>"Is that bad"? Kiyomi wondered. "Can he really kill himself using that, how much worse than the Eight Gates can it get"?</p><p>"You've no idea. Radiation literally attacks our bodies on a cellular level. We may be able to protect ourselves from it using chakra manipulation of greater intensity but Gorm himself would not be able to do so. He'd be constantly exposed to whatever intensity of radioactive chakra he's putting out, completely tearing apart the chemical bonds in his body and destroying every single system bit by bit", Mana explained horrified by the boy's resolve.</p><p>After a short wild of wild clashing and the two highly physical fighters rampaging all over the arena, the dark purple smoke cleared out somewhat. Shockingly, Gorm was trading blows with his opponent completely hairless, his head and the exposed parts of his skin were glowing with purple shimmering lacerations as if his entire body was tearing apart and his own flesh was slipping off the boy's bones. The radiation appeared to singe the user's flesh, but instead of turning it to charcoal, it turned it into whatever glowing radioactive rock remained of the rotten parts of Gorm's flesh.</p><p>With a wild laughter, due to the enjoyment of the destruction of his opponent's body, Kres-T tossed a handful more of his explosives at Gorm, who just powered through them as the radiation, while quickly killing his own body while active, did appear to provide the boy with some degree of protection against strong attacks.</p><p>"Peacock Method: Destroy"! Gorm shouted out, throwing a strong cross fist forward as the feathers behind his back stiffened up and rounded out their ends before launching themselves at the boy's opponent before unifying into a single large feather that knocked Kres-T back. Most of the blunt force got absorbed by Kres' block by crossing his arms together in front of where Gorm's technique hit him. The axes of the Kumogakure genin shattered to smallest steel chunks upon impact as the force they had absorbed through the block was so great that it caused them to simply blow up. The chunks scattered all over the arena, some of them ripping into Gorm's flesh.</p><p>Kres-T breathed in wildly, clawing at his chest, as it appeared he had significant trouble doing so, before laughing out wildly once more. The brute moves his hands towards his hip, reaching in for his ninja pouch but it did not look like Gorm was going to let his opponent do anything of the sort.</p><p>Gorm's glowing body blitzed in a single flash, right up to his opponent, throwing a strong cross at his left cheek. Kres-T flew backward, bouncing off the ground like a flat little pebble skillfully thrown to bounce across the lake surface. Weightlessly, like a sack of vegetables, the broken and injured Kres-T fell out of the ring, raising a large chunk of dust as he did so. Before the overseer could rule out the brute's elimination, however, the Kumogakure ninja revealed himself to have substituted with a bunch of his broken axe chunks that scattered after being broken off his bracelets.</p><p>Gorm turned his face at his opponent, who was kneeling and wheezing by his side before preparing to charge at him again, aiming to use all of his Peacock Method time optimally, for pummeling his opponent into the ground. The boy could feel it – he could feel his every single cell being torn apart and popped inside of him but he could also see his opponent caving in already. Kres-T has already used his Substitution Jutsu, he had very few defensive options as he was so used to being the most powerful ninja on the field that he did not bother dabbling too much in those.</p><p>"Turn that off and switch out"! Mana shouted out as she jumped towards the arena. She felt a firm grip of her sensei wrapping around her waist and pulling her back. "Stop poisoning yourself, you're going to die"! She shouted again wondering if the young man could not feel just how quickly his own life was being consumed.</p><p>"He can't switch out. Not until he wins", Hanasaku whispered in Mana's ear as she carefully placed the magician down and kept her hands on the girl's shoulders just in case she tried something again. "The jutsu may be killing him but if he turns it off – his body will collapse. He won't be able to activate it again, probably. He means to use it as long as he can, while his body is rushing with adrenaline and he can still move".</p><p>Kres-T laughed off again, getting back on his feet and making a dirty gesture at his opponent's expense. "Hey, asshole, I left you a little present", he chuckled out before pointing at the floor under Gorm's feet. A little green orb was rolling about, like a little marble that children played with sometimes. Right when Gorm looked down, the orb burst, releasing a cloud of dark purple gas across the battlefield again – another dosage of the poison Kres-T used.</p><p>Stumbling and tripping over himself, Gorm crawled out from the cloud, scratching his nose, throat and eyes as the poison burned through them, together with the radiation treatment he appointed himself. Gorm's left hand was twitching and hanging stiffly by his side, his jaw got completely paralyzed and was snapping open and shut like that of a cartoon skeleton in cereal commercials. There weren't enough studies being done about the effects of radiation on the human body, Mana couldn't be sure if this was Kres-T's poison, or Gorm's own Peacock Method causing these effects.</p><p>"I can't afford… Can't afford to lose"! Gorm roared out as he quickly picked himself up and rushed at his opponent like a madman. Now it became apparent that he was racing with time, racing with death, even, possibly. "Peacock Method: Wrap"! the youth shouted out as his radioactive coat extended into tendril-like ropes that shot forward, aiming to subdue and gift his opponent with some of the inhuman pain and radiation sickness that Gorm was going through.</p><p>Kres coughed up as the ropes lifted him in the air, tying around his neck and slowly beginning to choke him out as they burned into his flesh with intense heat and something else. Something sinister, that didn't hurt but penetrated deep inside his body… Something the Kumogakure brute, crazy as he was, had enough reason to focus all of his chakra augmentations to protect from.</p><p>"Peacock Method: Destroy"! Gorm roared out, as profuse amounts of blood trickled down from deep inside his own body out from his mouth. The purple glow, the searing marks of the radiation killing him from inside began creeping farther across his body, his clothes were beginning to fall apart string by string as the marks on his flesh became wider and more intense.</p><p>The glowing concentrated mass of chakra feathers punched straight into Kres-T's chest, throwing the man flying wildly back, as the previously cast technique kept him hanging by his neck in place. Kres-T's neck extended in a very disturbing manner as he continued to struggle to breathe or efficiently fight back the constricting radioactive chakra binds that restrained him and hung him. Mana took a horrified step back, realizing that Gorm was willing to literally hang his opponent if it meant winning before his time ran out. At that moment, Hanasaku's grip on her shoulders slightly tightened before loosening up again, once the woman realized that Mana wasn't about to do anything stupid and was just shaken by the battle she was seeing.</p><p>Suddenly, the grip around Kres-T's neck loosened, letting the brute go to fall on his face and his knees to cough up and try to wheeze some air in. It did not look like Gorm was in any condition to utilize this moment of his opponent's weakness, however. He was going through something extremely grotesque and horrifying, something that multiple members of the audience turned away from and chose rather not to witness.</p><p>The boy's neck area swelled up, massively increasing its size, to the point where it appeared like it was balloon being blown up. The glow around Gorm's body began to weaken before completely disappearing. The boy's fighting pose disappeared with his stature changing into a hunched and weighed down pose of weakness and fatigue. His right hand began twitching just like his left one while the boy's eyes rolled back and whited out. Blood began spilling in profuse quantities through every orifice of the boy's body before the bald and pathetic shape of what looked like a healthy young man before the battle collapsed on the floor.</p><p>It did not appear that the young man was going to be let go of his part of the bargain, which he had to pay up due to overusing this peculiar and exotic technique. His entire body began seizing up, shaking and twitching as he continued throwing up blood while on the ground. At that point every single medical ninja in the audience rushed out to the boy's aid, without caring much of the ongoing match. The more aggressive and younger medical ninja withdrew to let the higher ranking and more mature ninja examine the boy. It did not take them long to awkwardly back up, shaking their heads and wiping sweat off their faces.</p><p>Gorm Cleiti was dead.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0343"><h2>343. The Uber-Spiritual Low-Blow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana blinked a pair of times in rapid succession, failing to comprehend what had just happened right in front of her own eyes. The body of a young man, not that much different from her, no ninja clan, no special background or advanced bloodline, had just fallen apart.</p><p>The magician's eyes started to water, she wriggled in Hanasaku's gentle but unreleasing hold before the woman pulled Mana back and started calming her down. It looked like the medical ninja in the arena were a little bit baffled by failing to prevent this death as well. While no one's life was guaranteed in such an event, such a guarantee was simply impossible, a village that managed to host peaceful and simple Chuunin Exams would have had plenty of bragging rights and the aura of control about them.</p><p>"When you gamble with your own life, this sometimes happens. He knew the odds and the risks and he chose every element of this outcome", Hanasaku softly mumbled to Mana, trying to prevent her from doing something that'd disturb the confusion that the higher ranking ninja buzzing in the ring raised. Needless to say, Gorm's body was quickly removed. Even as the medical staff carried it away, it continued to fall apart as the youth's flesh itself appeared to be as cohesive as a lump of jelly.</p><p>"So can we continue the match? Unless someone has the world-changing resurrection jutsu hidden away, death means elimination, right"? Kres-T managed to overpower his struggle to breathe and exhaustion and his distressed face quickly changed to that of a triumphant sadist as the young man grinned at the overseer of the exam.</p><p>"Well… Let's see what his teammate has to say", the overseer rubbed his sweaty forehead before using his remote sealing technique to unseal Jean-D from the scroll. Upon the girl's shape materializing, the young woman looked around before her eyes lit up by the cruel realization, her own image of the transpiring events based solely on Gorm's disappearance and multiple massive blood pools around the arena.</p><p>"Examinee, your teammate has unfortunately passed in the middle of the match. Sadly, we can't offer you anything else but to either surrender or resume the match, treating his death as elimination", the overseer quickly ran the situation down by the girl.</p><p>"Hmph, why are you even bothering to ask, of course, I'll keep going. It's just my luck to lose the draw and get a fragile teammate", Jean-D angrily distressed before pulling her knives out and preparing to continue the match.</p><p>"What the hell"!? A loud objection echoed from the western side of the audience surrounding the arena. Gentib, the only advancing member of Gorm's team stepped forward aggressively. "You're Gorm's partner for the match. Can't you at least be bothered to acknowledge his sacrifice? He knew that he needed to eliminate his opponent to win and he did everything he could, placing his life on the line to get you both to the next stage"! The boy growled through his teeth.</p><p>"Of course he knew it, I told him that. He claimed he had a way around his opponent's bombs and that he was the safer bet for fighting him and I trusted him. If he died here, he'd have never become a Chuunin. A Chuunin understands the meaning of the words "shortens your lifespan" and knows their own limits", Jean-D calmly replied without even offering as much as an apologetic look at the grieving teammate.</p><p>"That's the spirit…" Kres-T coughed up, "They don't get it, but we do"!</p><p>"Don't get me wrong, Gentib, or whatever persona you're wearing now is called, your teammate was quite useful, he appears to have weakened his opponent enough for me to have what it takes to tip him over. And yet he still refuses to tag out, interesting", the knife fighter smiled in excitement.</p><p>"Will they at least declare Mysterious Peacock Method a kinjutsu now"? Mana muttered sadly, "Will Gorm's death at least save lives of the people who'd have used this technique in the future"?</p><p>"I'd like to tell you so but… I'm afraid you know Hoshigakure's political situation better than I do", Hanasaku honestly smiled at her sad student.</p><p>Mana did not know all that much about Hoshigakure's political situation, to be entirely honest. She was not quite sure if the village even had a singular leader, in a way that Konoha had the Hokage and the other villages had their leaders. Its rough location on a map was all that Mana knew about the place, it was too small to even be mentioned on most maps, with Hoshigakure being only marked on the most precise ones. The village was as small as a crater of a centuries old meteor that leveled a large area of the forest.</p><p>Jean-D blitzed at her opponent, aiming to press on whatever pressure Gorm's beatdown allowed her team of, currently, one get. She was not direct enough though, the girl still was wary of her opponent's considerable physical strength and explosive tools so she danced around him. In Mana's opinion, she would have been much more successful had she pressed her opponent directly and just relentlessly kept on attacking with everything she had. Then again, it was entirely possible that Jean-D was merely thinking of the other battle she still had ahead…</p><p>Kres-T grunted sadistically as he drove an orange bomb sphere into the ground, enveloping the area in flames. Covering himself head to toe in the blazing wall but also both blasting and slightly singing his opponent up as Jean-D got tossed aside by the shrieking shockwave emanated from the explosion and then took a couple of moments to remove all remnants of flames on her.</p><p>That proved to be a mistake as Kres-T simply dove out of the flames and clotheslined the young woman to the ground, before turning around and trying to crush her beneath his feet. It appeared that he actually wanted to be covered in flames that appeared to turn his skin boiling red but his chakra augmentations held quite well. It was clearly something he had done before, an alternative fighting style.</p><p>"He must be short of his bombs by now", Kiyomi noted, "That's why he's employing this new strategy".</p><p>Mana wanted to commend her teammate on figuring something like that out but she just didn't find the resolve in her to even breathe in deep enough to gather the amount of oxygen needed to do so. It was like seeing Gorm's death right in front of her was just another blow right to her gut that kept the magician from getting up from all the previous ones she had. As the equal scuffle continued in the arena, the magician's eyes wandered off onto a particularly angry young Kumogakure swordsman, Quill-B.</p><p>Even if he did not plan to do anything before, even if Mana wanted to believe in the best in people, she would have been lying to herself if she had told herself that she did not see it. Seeing the man who killed his friend, probably in an extremely sadistic and brutal way, given his fighting style, claim another life, albeit indirectly, must have been unbearable to him as the young swordsman was brimming with rage. There was no doubt – he's about to try something.</p><p>"Sensei", Mana turned away from the battle and spoke directly to her team's mentor, "There's something I need to warn you about".</p><p>"Warn"? Hanasaku raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Yeah, that young man over there, the one with the dark Kumogakure complexion, orange hair and four short swords on his back. He's admitted to us that he has a grievance with Kres-T. Given what had just happened and the extent of Kres-T's injuries…" Mana explained what has been troubling her for a while.</p><p>"You're afraid that he'll be trying something"? Hanasaku concluded. "Don't worry, this place is well staffed to handle infiltration or outright assault. Still, if it'll calm you down and make you focus on your own upcoming match, I'll alert some people to be extra careful".</p><p>Mana thankfully nodded. It genuinely felt like a rock off her chest. She may have felt a strange connection to the matter and a desire to keep standing watch around where Kres-T would be lead to rest but the people working here were outranking Mana by a long margin and had infinitely more experience than she did. There was nothing that the magician could do that these people couldn't do better.</p><p>"I can't believe you'd worry over a scumbag like him. I'd feel really tempted to kill him myself if our paths crossed in the field", Kiyomi coldly raised her nose up as she continued to carefully observe the clash of genin transpiring in the arena.</p><p>"Frankly, I'm a bit proud of Mana. She's grown a lot from the kid who just followed her bloodthirsty teammate into a prison with hopes of extracting him herself", Hanasaku commended Mana with a pleasant smile. It was something that Mana didn't actually expect, given the recent bad history between her and her mentor. Actually being acknowledged for something was almost equally as satisfying as disappointing one's mentor was crushing.</p><p>A loud, masculine roar distracted Mana and forced her to stick her eyes onto the battle transpiring in the arena. Blood trickled from multiple stabbing wounds all over Kres-T's body, it was clear that by now Kres-T had slowed down, lost his axe bracelets and gathered an impressive array of inner and outer injuries. At any moment, the Kumogakure's explosive powerhouse looked a one powerful jutsu away from utter defeat.</p><p>Soon Mana figured out the secret to Jean's impressive progress in the fight – she fundamentally changed her fighting style while still using the same Dimensional Blade technique. Instead of using it purely offensively, trying to catch her opponent unprepared and confuse him, she observed his own movements and countered using her Dimensional Blade. It was a genius strategy, using his flaming, showy and destructive fighting style put Kres-T into a time limit, that meant he had to be aggressive which was for Jean-D to capitalize on. The fight was on her terms.</p><p>"Why doesn't he switch? He's about to lose", Mana wondered loudly.</p><p>"It's all in his eyes. Can't you see? In the beginning, he contemplated switching out multiple times, his gaze wandered to his scroll but he shut himself down every time. Now they're fixed on Jean-D, imagining thousands of ways he could tear her apart and brutalize her, they're madman's eyes and he no longer thinks like we do. It's disgusting to even try to get into his head", Kiyomi sighed. She appeared to very much agree with Mana's conclusion.</p><p>"I don't know, I think I sort of get it", Mana muttered. "He's weighing tagging out against something he likes, something he lost himself in. It's the same as me weighing backing from a fight where lives are at risk or you backing from a fight where a nasty criminal is involved. He views the bloody gamble the same way, he may know somewhere deep in his mind that the odds of his bloody desires coming to life are slim but… He just can't help it".</p><p>"Only you could empathize with a psycho killer like that", Kiyomi noted before sinking in her own thoughts. She may have realized that with the way Mana put it, she herself may have understood Kres' motivations a bit better, still, her eyes betrayed Kiyomi to still be the same, unwavering in her strict beliefs.</p><p>"Dimensional Blade: Flower of Daggers"! Jean-D chanted out as she threw her knife backward, making it disappear halfway into thin air. Kres-T bent his body backward as if a sharp pain had crippled him completely before the tip of the knife thrown away appeared from multiple angles and places of the young man's body simultaneously.</p><p>The overseer rushed into the arena, interfering with the match to check on the young man's condition. Just as he entered, the high-ranking ninja unraveled a scroll from the chest pocket of his chuunin vest that unsealed a large mass of water, which put out the flames enveloping Kres-T's body and beginning to actually burn him, now that his consciousness had faded away. The overseer appeared somewhat relieved after a brief inspection, the flames that enveloped Kris' body must've completely cauterized his wounds so it wasn't a completely self-destructive and reckless instinct as many have initially believed, but a clever strategy to use against a knife fighter. Shallow burns were after all very much treatable.</p><p>"Get him to the infirmary", the overseer ruled as the several present staff ninja rushed to the young man and carried him away.</p><p>"Contestant Kres-T is unable to continue the match", the overseer ruled before unsealing Buhakim from Team Pahlavi out of his scroll. The golden haired youth appeared somewhat confused about what it had taken so long for him to get to come out of the scroll. Strangely enough, he did not appear to be at all concerned or stricken by the elimination of his partner as he followed the staff ninja carrying his partner away with his eyes.</p><p>Mana's eyes almost instinctively glared at Quill B, who first just followed Kres-T being carried away with his eyes, then he muttered something to Ripper Inaba – his other not yet eliminated teammate, and his mentor before running off. Mana wanted to look at Chestnut Hanasaku questioningly but it appeared that the woman had personally taken it upon herself to see this to the end, she no longer was standing nearby the two kunoichi.</p><p>"Huh? When did she slip away, that's pretty impressive, actually"! Kiyomi praised her mentor's ability to slip away undetected. "Anyways, didn't you see this Buhakim guy in action once? You think he can take Jean-D down"?</p><p>"It depends. I think it might depend on what Jean-D still has up her sleeves. We've seen genin possess multiple fighting styles and countless techniques in their arsenal whereas Jean only relies on this one. She'll need something more to win this one", Mana gave her best shot at predicting the outcome.</p><p>"I'm not sure about that. Have you noticed that Jean-D did not need to speak the name of her technique or weave any hand seals to use it? That means she has intimate knowledge of the jutsu she uses, the kind of knowledge and mastery that only a lifetime of training can bring. It's unlikely that she has anything else under her belt", the Yamanaka heiress voiced her thoughts.</p><p>That insight was a very sharp one. Mana had herself invented a good dozen of weak and barely useful ninjutsu techniques just to graduate from the Academy under special conditions. Even if she used some of those ninjutsu techniques to this day, she had not mastered a single one to the degree needed to use them without needing to speak their names or weave any hand seals. Jean-D must have spent all of her time polishing her skills with knives and that one jutsu, otherwise, such mastery over this fighting style would have been impossible.</p><p>"You appear to be wounded and a little bit worn out at this point. Yet the amount of blood and hair present in the arena doesn't match your injuries or those of my partner", Buhakim unexpectedly spoke up in a calm and reserved manner, "It wouldn't be very uber-spiritual of me to not offer you a peaceful resolution. It is quite evident that your partner has been eliminated and you're left alone. Ring yourself out and spare yourself the…"</p><p>Before the sentence could be finished, Jean-D threw her knife at the opponent. Buhakim leaned aside before the young woman launched her other knife at him as well. By the time that Buhakim noticed the other knife disappearing in thin air it was too late as the second knife buzzed through his cheek and his thigh, opening up small cuts on them. Jean-D then rushed forward at her opponent with a sharp elbow strike, while using her free limbs to collect her knives from up close to where they landed.</p><p>Buhakim gently deflected his opponent's ruthless strikes with his palm, all the way while keeping his second palm extended in a praying position before shoving it forward at her crotch area while falling to his knees. After his opponent leaned forward to writhe in pain, Buhakim kneed the young woman in the face, sending her sliding back with her knives still in hands.</p><p>"Spiritual my ass…" Jean-D writhed in pain before slowly trying to regain her composure, "That was a cheap shot"!</p><p>"I am no monk", Buhakim spoke up, slightly opening his squinted eyes, "I am a ninja, therefore my uber-spirituality is not a path to restrict myself for spiritual experience. It is to make others think that I am behaving spiritually, when, in fact, I am not. It is the only spirituality that matters"!</p><p>"He really made it sound like it's a very noble thing, but he just hit a girl in the crotch", Kiyomi squinted at the Sunagakure puppeteer.</p><p>"What's with those scrolls on your back, anyway"? Jean-D grunted out after finally managing to get back on her feet and somewhat resume her fighting stance.</p><p>Without replying, Buhakim reached behind his back and removed a pin that held the scrolls together before tossing them up in the air. At this point Jean-D knew better than to blindly charge at her opponent, she took this moment of her opponent setting his figures up to play for a moment she could use to catch her breath and regain as much stamina as she could. The scrolls opened up in mid-air before Buhakim slapped his palms together into a praying position.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Śrāvakayāna, Pratyekabuddhayāna", Buhakim chanted out in a prayer-like tone as seemingly complete junk scattered from the scrolls where they were sealed in. The long fingers of the praying false-monk extended as the strings of a puppetry user lit up brightly with chakra that was being channeled through them. Upon receiving chakra signals the seemingly useless hunk of junk began shaping together into somewhat more cohesive shapes.</p><p>"Śrāvakayāna", the puppet-using youth chanted out as one of the puppets took the shape of a grotesque molding of bodies and limbs with over twenty arms and legs sticking out all over the puppet and way too many heads for comfortable looking. Several of its mouths shut firmly to keep the ragged red cloth that covered some of its parts up in place. "The Vehicle of Disciples", the youth mumbled to himself.</p><p>"Pratyekabuddhayāna", Buhakim continued to pray as the second puppet stuck itself together, taking the shape of a ship's wheel with arms for handles and an obsidian eye at the center. The remarkable feature of this puppet was that it apparently only took one string to control. "The Solitary Awakening", the youth concluded his prayer.</p><p>Something dense in the air suggested that this match was about to be concluded. It only made watching it from aside that much more difficult…</p>
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<a name="section0344"><h2>344. The Six Perfections</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The second, wheel-shaped puppet, to which Buhakim referred to as "the Solitary Awakening" began emitting odd sounds. In a way, they were rather displeasing for they reminded of the stomach growling sounds or one's own innards shifting inside one's own body in a case of bowel unrest. The central parts of each of the puppet's arm handle popped open, releasing a handful of strings, likely chakra conductive ones, like the ones used in the puppetry technique.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Solitary Awakening"! Buhakim muttered out, humming his words through his teeth like a prayer as the countless strands of wire were launched at Jean-D's general direction.</p><p>The skilled kunoichi fought the advancing strings off rather valiantly, her movements were swift and precise and she struck with the full knowledge that the puppetry strings could not be cut unless chakra imbuement of higher concentration was used. Eventually, it became evident that the wired offensive was simply too overwhelming and wide ranged for it to be avoided, then something incredible happened – the knives of Jean-D lit up with blueish base chakra colored flares, visible even to non-sensors. Apparently, Jean-D had the ability to imbue her knives with chakra.</p><p>With a swift X-shaped slash with both of her long knives, Jean-D cut through the puppetry wires, separating the chakra channeling coming from the Solitary Awakening and making the separated surrounding wire collapse on the floor around the girl like flabby wet noodles. Jean-D sighed easier before charging at her opponent with a strong slash at the puppeteer a crimson line opened up on Buhakim's chest with a weak spray of blood following right after, slightly tainting the spiritual and composed look of the golden haired youth.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Vehicle of Disciples"! Buhakim chanted out in prayer again as his fingers moved at an incredible speed. Even to Mana, someone who focused on quick sleight of hand tricks as a part of her living, Buhakim's fingers appeared blurry and difficult to follow. That must have been the skill of a well-trained puppeteer…</p><p>The grotesque molded shape of multiple faceless bodies stuck together began erratically flipping and rolling around, striking with all of its limbs at the same time. Whereas normally such a wild attack would have been somewhat easy to read, creating a profile of such an abomination of nature would have been impossible. It was just a mad combination of blank faces, arms, and legs.</p><p>Slowly, one by one, Jean-D danced around the puppet, slashing and cutting at it as she found herself too overwhelmed by the highly unorthodox fighting style of the puppet to properly focus on rushing down the puppeteer. Anyone, who graduated the Ninja Academy, would have remembered that engaging the puppets and playing the puppeteer's game was the worst mistake one could have made against the puppeteer. As satisfying as the idea of destroying one's precious tools of combat and leaving them defenseless was, it was simply an inefficient way of combat as most puppeteers had entire arsenals of puppets in reserve, also the Puppetry Jutsu cost much less to maintain than pretty much anything one would've used to destroy these puppets, even if its strain on the user slowly increased as time of use went on.</p><p>Something odd happened in the middle of the ceaseless string of strikes, Jean-D got hit out of the blue, when just a moment later she appeared to have total control. Again and again, she continued to skip strikes before letting up and getting pummeled ceaselessly by the grotesque abomination of artistic liberties. Luckily enough, the kunoichi still had enough in her lungs to manage a quick evasive action that put some space in between her and the puppeteer.</p><p>"Dimensional Blade"! Jean-D shouted out as she thrust her knife into thin air, still lighted up with base chakra flare of blue.</p><p>A knife with all of its channeled chakra flow intact pierced Buhakim's chest from behind, making the young man's body bend backward in a grisly manner as his body collapsed lifelessly like a sack of potatoes before puffing into a cloud of smoke. The flashy show revealed that the object impaled through a dimensional rift was not Buhakim himself but his Solitary Awakening puppet.</p><p>"Puppet Replacement Jutsu"! Buhakim chanted out in prayer as the Solitary Awakening dropped a couple of pieces before spinning wildly and locking the knife in place, inside the dimensional rift.</p><p>A loud and popping clang echoed throughout the hall signaling the immensely powerful reaction from the knife stuck in between dimensions snapping in half. Whereas normally a chakra channeled tool would be nearly indestructible, save by impacts of more intensely channeled tool, with the blade being stuck in between two dimensions and the Dimensional Blade jutsu only being able to keep the invisible rift open for moments at best, this limitation was overcome by the Uber Spiritual One.</p><p>"Uber Spiritual Puppetry Technique: Enlightenment Mind"! Buhakim chanted out in prayer as the cracked and breaking apart wheel of Solitary Awakening once again sent its strings at the now weakened and partly disarmed kunoichi opponent.</p><p>The kunoichi roared out loud from the depths of her chest, gripping the handle of her last remaining knife in two hands and raising it above her head as if she was wielding a two-handed sword.</p><p>"Dimensional Slash"! she shouted out as she kept up her chakra channeling, despite, as Mana could sense, it taking more and more of her chakra as time went on, similarly to how Mana's own Flower Petal Sanctuary jutsu continued to increase in strain over time.</p><p>The strings sent by the Solitary Awakening parted ways as the base chakra projectile fired off from the powerful swing of Jean-D's knife split them apart before disappearing half way, leaving the string mass split in the middle in a V-shaped formation.</p><p>The Vehicle of Disciples puppet moved in from behind Buhakim, to block an incoming projectile that had traveled through another dimensional rift to appear back in its original dimension, but behind Buhakim. By now the puppeteer was able to read his opponent's intents and moves somewhat, partly due to the ever increasing desperation of Jean's strategies since her drastically shrinking chakra pool made her attempt and solve the battle as quickly as possible.</p><p>As blood sprayed wildly from Buhakim's back, the eyes of the young man opened wide in shock. He remained turned, with his back open to the projectile attack, sending his puppet to block it and thinking that'd be enough, had he turned around he'd have witnessed the Vehicle of Disciples being split in two and shattered by the immensely powerful chakra channeling sword fighting and ninjutsu combination.</p><p>Buhakim fell flat right on his face as his simple clothes dyed blood red on his back side as well. Jean-D huffed heavily as her forehead began to sweat profusely and black circles and bags started to form around and under her eyes – typical telltale signs of chakra shortage. She must've been slowly approaching the limit she actually required for sustained life and any other jutsu may have lead to her just passing out at this point.</p><p>"That was reckless of you, sister. It was my jutsu you just revealed with your cheap imitation", Jon-D angrily crossed his arms over his chest, grumbling. "I mean what am I going to do now during my match"?</p><p>"It's not my fault your ace technique is so basic I can imitate it with a little practice", the knife fighting kunoichi pouted her lips before wiping the sweat from her forehead with her backhand. "Plus, that useless dead weight teammate of mine has made my situation very desperate here, I'm being pushed to my limits. I was not very lucky in my draws, I am afraid".</p><p>Mana's eyes almost instantly wandered to Gentib who continued to angrily grind his teeth and attempt to incinerate the young woman with his stare alone. She had to admit, she had taken Jean-D and her brother for better people than demeaning dead partners that literally gave up their lives for the Chuunin Exams. Still, in a way, the magician got Jean-D's point. Both Buhakim and Kres-T were amazing genin in their own right, some of the favorites to advance to the final exam. Jean-D, while a powerful competitor in her own right, was certainly unlucky in that regard…</p><p>"Examinee Buhakim is still able to fight, please finish the match", the overseer ruled after checking Buhakim's vitals. The Uber Spiritual one rose on his feet, failing to even reach the deep cut in his back that had taken him down unexpectedly and undoubtedly cost him a whole lot of chakra in chakra augmentation efforts to not get cut in two himself.</p><p>"Oh, come on"! Jean-D grumbled, "What in the Hell can you still do? One of your puppets is sliced in two, the other one is falling apart as we speak".</p><p>"There is one thing…" Buhakim shook his head as he also appeared to have been in a lot of pain from his injuries. "The most Uber Spiritual manifestation of my puppets."</p><p>"I thought the whole point of your Uber Spirituality thing was that it's a sham"? Jean-D wondered, feeling quite glad in an opportunity to catch her breath and run her mouth for a short while.</p><p>"That's right. However, just like with all of my Uber Spirituality rulings, this one has a faux-spiritual explanation. My ultimate puppet – Bodhisattva is a combination of Vehicle of Disciples and Solitary Awakening, awakened further to the next and final level through an Enlightened Mind", Buhakim explained, as he did, he was giving more and more time to his opponent to gather herself together.</p><p>"The names of your puppetry arts…" Jean-D noticed.</p><p>"That's right. A spiritual person would say that I merely believe that before I use the Bodhisattva, I intend to play out all of my puppetry arts. Like a spiritual ritual of a sinner's prayer. Truth be told, I just need my puppets in pieces before they can be molded together", Buhakim smiled innocently before lifting his right hand up, with the puppetry strings still attached, yet lacking their blue base chakra glow.</p><p>"Why is he giving her time to recover"? Mana began getting irked, deep inside she began rooting for Buhakim as she didn't want someone as disrespectful to human life as Jean-D getting a shot at becoming a chuunin.</p><p>"Because he needs it himself, it's a compromise, haven't you faced puppet users before"? Kiyomi explained.</p><p>"I mean… I may have, I can't remember any off the top of my head though. I only know the basics about the Puppetry Technique from the Academy", Mana admitted a bit shyly.</p><p>"They've both used techniques that begin draining chakra at increasing rates with time. At some time, these techniques need to be halted so that the chakra flow can repair itself and the technique's strain returns to normal. They both need some time to get themselves together and use their respective techniques with the much more economic starting chakra strain and not the procedurally increasing one". Kiyomi must have felt really proud of herself, having found one area where she was more experienced than Mana in and where she could actually sound like a smartass and not be smartass'ed at.</p><p>"I see", Mana scratched her chin, trying to memorize as much about this flaw of the Puppetry Technique as she could. It was a much more practical thing to know compared to the common knowledge from the Academy she was equipped with.</p><p>"Hanasaku-sensei and my last team spent some time in Sunagakure on a mission once, we fought several puppeteers there. That's where this experience comes from", Kiyomi rubbed her nose proudly.</p><p>Buhakim's strings lit up with chakra flares again as his Puppetry Technique initiated again. Giving life to the crushed and plenty damaged puppets he controlled and making the bits and pieces raise in the air and reconfigure. Instead of the puppets repairing themselves, they were becoming something else altogether with both puppets shattering into the pieces they started as and reconfiguring again with the parts of the destroyed puppet merging with the verily damaged one.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Bodhisattva", Buhakim prayed out as the puppets combined into a new shape, one of a large faceless humanoid, towering so large that he didn't even fit into the arena and had to bend its upper body forwards as additional parts began flowing from the scrolls that were used to unseal Vehicle of Disciples and Solitary Awakening before. The newly built puppet had multiple faceless heads stacked on top of one another, each smaller than the other, unlike the previously more abstract shapes, this one had precisely six arms and two crossed over legs as the only way it could properly fit into the hall was if it sat in a meditative position.</p><p>Jean-D, overwhelmed by the most powerful and the final puppet in her opponent's arsenal, reactivated her own chakra channeling through her one remaining knife. Mana could sense that she didn't have that much chakra left and the only way she could've tricked her opponent like she did before was if her Dimensional Slash derivative jutsu could cut through this odd, massive puppet.</p><p>"Dimensional Slash"! Jean-D grunted out, risking her remaining chakra on a technique she merely imitated from sight, wielding her last remaining knife in two hands and swinging upwards, aiming the off-shooting chakra crescent-shaped projectile at one of the faceless heads of the puppet.</p><p>"She's aiming at the control bar"! Kiyomi shouted out, realizing this odd trajectory of the strike.</p><p>Buhakim moved his hands around, manipulating the strings in his hands all of whom lead up to an area of the largest faceless heads on Bodhisattva's body.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Six Perfections"! Buhakim prayed out before shifting his hands around again. The massive six arms of his puppet began slowly cranking and moving, throwing splinters and wood chips with each movement as the puppet must not have been perfectly polished and used that often.</p><p>The hands, each of which had a different hieroglyph symbol on the palm, each of which had a different virtue listed on it: generosity, morality, patience, vigor, contemplation, insight, moved to work, mainly, to intercept the crescent-shaped chakra slash projectile.</p><p>Right before the slashing projectile would have split the massive structure comprised of faceless heads of decreasing sizes, it simply faded away, only to burst from the underground and aim straight at Buhakim's upper body. Jean-D's last resort followed the typical Academy teachings – attack the puppeteer, not the puppet, since the puppeteers were frail and defenseless when they were occupied with controlling their puppets.</p><p>A powerful explosion echoed throughout the hall, contained within the barrier placed around the arena, yet the raging shockwaves, dust and rubble made seeing anything but the edges of Bodhisattva's massive body impossible.</p><p>"So she wasn't going for the control bar, she went for the puppeteer, pretty predictable", Kiyomi sighed, "I guess if she placed that many dormant seals around during her clash with Kres-T, she can't be blamed for wanting to utilize all of them…"</p><p>"What's this control bar you're talking about"? Mana wondered.</p><p>"You see, some puppets are too complex to be controlled by the puppeteer's hands alone. The strings would be too long and numerous and they would tangle too much, the puppet may be too massive. That's why more skilled puppeteers place a control bar inside their puppets with strings inside of it, they don't control the puppet itself, they merely control the control bar that controls the puppet remotely. It usually only takes one conductive string to fully control a control bar so more complex puppets may have entire control bars for each of their limbs alone", Kiyomi grinned, once again feeling proud of her experience fighting puppeteers.</p><p>"So Bodhisattva's control bar is in its head"? Mana asked without hoping to get a clear answer just yet. "I wonder what lead Jean-D to that conclusion".</p><p>Once the smoke and rubble cleared out, Bodhisattva sat completely unharmed with Buhakim squeezed tightly in between its two hands, whereas the other four were resting where the arena once stood. Jean-D was kneeling on the now destroyed area of the arena, sneering at the massive puppet and hyperventilating from the exhaustion as Buhakim peeked through the spaces between Bodhisattva's fingers at his opponent.</p><p>"Contestant Jean-D – ring out. Your team is eliminated", the overseer ruled as Bodhisattva poofed into a rain of parts. Before they could scatter senselessly around the hall and possibly annoy or injure someone, the Uber Spiritual One bit his thumb, drawing blood from it and dragged the blood across both of his scrolls initiating a vacuuming wave that drew all of the parts back into his scrolls.</p><p>"I bet Buhakim didn't count on having to use Bodhisattva", Kiyomi grinned, "Now that we've seen him, we can begin planning on taking that thing out".</p><p>"My father's a really skilled engineer. Maybe if I gave him the sketch of the thing he'd give me possible optimal locations for a control bar to be located. If I assume correctly, if you take that thing out – the whole puppet stops working, right"? Mana wondered to which the Yamanaka heiress just nodded in agreement.</p><p>"Alright, let's announce the next match before going into a break, this one will take full fifteen minutes, the whole arena will have to be rebuilt from scratch and we'll consider adding some improvements to its integrity", the overseer sighed before raising his hand, pointing at the screen. Even if he did appear a bit frustrated, no one looked more frustrated than Dorimi – the jounin in charge of rebuilding and making the arena out of scratch.</p><p>A whole mess of names shifted through the screen before it settled onto two teams, one of the names looked eerily familiar to Mana before her mind completely comprehended all four names announced to be competing next:</p><p>"Roh-D (Team Stratus/Kumogakure) &amp; Nakotsumi Mana (Team Hokage/Konohagakure) VS Jon-D (Team Nimbus/Kumogakure) &amp; Oto-B (Team Alto/Kumogakure)"</p><p>"You're next, huh"? Kiyomi softly stated the obvious. "Your opponents look… Strong, don't you think"?</p><p>Saying so was an understatement. Jon-D, without a doubt, would have had everything to prove after both of his teammates were already eliminated. Team Alto was described as monsters on par with Team Phobos by a source of intelligence in the Forest of Death as well. Both Team Nimbus and Team Alto were amongst the more fearsome teams that have dominated and trounced their way through the Forest of Death whereas Team Hokage somehow stumbled their way through with Mana still feeling as if she had somehow cheated by being allowed to continue in that one instance of her getting encased in crystal.</p><p>What laid ahead may have been the scariest and the most difficult trial yet in Mana's ninja career and her entire life. Even worse yet, she'll have to walk with that feeling of butterflies in her stomach and neck breaking long and cold fingers of fear creeping up for fifteen more minutes before the test even starts…</p>
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<a name="section0345"><h2>345. Into The Maroon Light</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana gave off a breathy sigh. Her hands could not stop trembling, her abdomen kept burning up. The magician could remember feeling less intimidated when her life was literally at stake. Maybe because in those difficult times there was simply no time to feel worried, it was always just do or die. Now, meanwhile, the magician was left to wonder, keep thinking everything through to the point of overthinking. Her own personal issues did not help things, Mana was still really anxious and down about her break up and Meiko getting badly injured.</p><p>"It's going to be alright", Kiyomi smiled in encouragement after patting Mana's shoulder to which the magician just backed up like the eye of a snail after being poked. "You're the most resourceful person I know and being resourceful is what being a ninja is all about"!</p><p>It was true that Mana already knew the tiniest bits and pieces about her opponents, due to Jean-D's desperate grasping at straws, the magician already knew of Jon-D's signature technique. From his frustration, after it was revealed, she could put together that beside that jutsu, the young swordsman had little else to focus or rely on. In that, way he was very much like his sister, an incredible master of one thing only.</p><p>Team Alto was so much more difficult to comprehend. From what Mana had seen about Oto-B, he was the small and plumpy little man with a massive hi-tech looking backpack that may have contained just about anything. The first guess of the magician would've been that it contained a puppet, but puppetry was a rare craft in Kumogakure – the native land of the world's greatest swordsmen and crude but effective grappling style of wrestling martial arts, also – the Nimble Style of taijutsu that greatly contrasted Konoha's Strong Style.</p><p>"See? You're overthinking it, this isn't some sort of the end of the world scenario. If you fail now, if you see it's too difficult, you can always just back down and try next year in another country. No one will blame you, this year's exams are crazy with the insane teams and ninja competing"! Kiyomi tried consoling Mana differently. She must have still been oblivious to the falling out that Mana and Hanasaku had just before the exam.</p><p>"You wouldn't quit", Mana mumbled out.</p><p>"I mean… Yeah! That's because I've been a genin for what seems like eternity. I'm stuck here and I feel like I've been ready to move up for ages. No matter who I end up facing, I won't stop until I prove it to everyone"! Kiyomi grinned raising her fist into the air energetically. "But you're not supposed to be anyone else. I know you used to look up to me as someone you could be but you don't owe it to anyone to be anyone else but yourself".</p><p>"I owe it to me to be better than that", Mana replied before looking Kiyomi in the eyes. "I owe it to everyone in Konoha, and everyone in the whole world to become the person that'll be great and amazing enough to change the world through example. Someone who will appreciate all life, and be so skilled, that everyone else will follow them and learn to appreciate life for themselves. A person who fails the Chuunin Exams is not such a person, a person who gives up before they do everything they can is not such a person. This exam is life or death to me, just like it was for Gorm Cleiti, if I fail, nothing else matters".</p><p>Kiyomi looked away trying to get into Mana's shoes but she appeared to struggle to do so. Just about at that time, Erumo Budoki from Team Fir stumbled around with the help of her teammate Yushijin, as the girl, now adorning a pair of bandage stripes and plasters, passed by Mana and Kiyomi, the new Konoha's Trapster gave Mana a nasty gesture before the two walked past them.</p><p>"I know you are used to being cheered on, what with all of your Konoha Sorceress gig you have and all, but don't be surprised if you won't have any home spiritual support advantage, besides me, of course", Kiyomi grunted, feeling that Erumo's attitude towards Mana would be somewhat reflected onto the others of these past few Ninja Academy generations. Given how popular Erumo's gimmick and antics were. Before now, pretty much every Konoha examinee had a significant amount of rumbling and incoherent support from their fellow villagers, similarly for most other villages. The Yamanaka wanted the magician to not feel too surprised if that was not the case with her, given her choices in the Forest of Death.</p><p>"I know this isn't one of my magic shows. This audience is completely different from the common Konoha villagers. Some of them think I'm just playing ninja, some of them may hate how I'm using ninjutsu for entertainment and stage magic. Some of them may hate my nindo, think I'm childish or hate my choices and the way I think. I've already been an underdog once, I've already been hated and discriminated once. It won't be anything new to me", Mana sighed before recalling her time in the Sun Disc arena back in Wind Country.</p><p>Angry and clearly rushing steps that sounded almost like infuriated stomping attracted the attention of Mana and Kiyomi to such an extent, that, for a moment, Mana forgot all of her worrying and fears before the match.</p><p>"It was you, wasn't it"? Quill B shouted out, rushing up to Mana and shoving a finger up in her face, the young man looked like he was combating the instinct to punch the magician in the face with each passing moment.</p><p>"Actually, I gave her the idea that you may want to try something funny. Mana just dealt with it in her own way which, she thought, would prevent as much conflict as possible. Frankly, it appears, she was right", Kiyomi shrugged trying to step in between Mana and Quill B.</p><p>The Kumogakure swordsman shoved Kiyomi aside and grabbed Mana by her collar before raising her up by it and winding up his fist. He was clearly referring to the fact that the protection of the injured youth he wanted dead now included Lady Fifth herself, something completely beyond even the most unreasonable and bloodthirsty fool to attempt to bypass or piss off.</p><p>"I thought you understood! Back in the Forest of Death, the way you handled things. The way you cared about the efficiency of elimination and all that! I thought you were different!" The swordsman shouted out, alarming everyone in the corridor but, so far, no one bothered to interfere. It was the same economy of effort and resources that lead to passiveness in the Forest of Death, that same guiding principle, that lead to such a reaction. Mana could've very easily gotten her neck snapped and very few people would've bothered doing much other than reporting it.</p><p>"But you aren't different from everyone else, are you! You did not even have the guts to protect that scumbag yourself! You cried to your superiors and told them to protect him"! Quill B shouted out, "Because you're afraid! You're weak and you're nothing but a coward"!</p><p>"Yo, your disappearance was so bizarre, I've been looking for you, there you are! Come on, Quill, stop being miserable, the magician's involvement simply isn't reasonable"! Inaba, Quill B's teammate from Team Cirrus, ran up to the furious teammate and tried defusing the situation.</p><p>"Of course he's not being reasonable", Mana muttered, "He's grieving a loss, suffering people are the least reasonable people there are".</p><p>Quill B pulled Mana in almost up to his face, just so that she could see the pain and grief coursing through his eyes and the entire face.</p><p>"Dammit, girl, you're making me curse. Your words are just making it all worse"! Inaba helped Kiyomi pull the scorned swordsman away from Mana, letting the magician slump down on her knees before getting back up.</p><p>"If you asked me, I'm on neither of your sides. Kres-T killed a traitor to his village, if you killed him right now, like a coward, while he was down, you'd have been even worse of a scumbag than you and Mana can possibly see him as being", Kiyomi threw haphazardly at the direction of the Cirrus duo.</p><p>"You're right. It wouldn't be right if I killed him while he's injured or passed out, or whatever… Your friend may be crude, but at least she's the one making the most sense", Quill B calmed down somewhat, his friend helped him stand back up after he stumbled back at a wall in an expression of pain. Before the two could walk away, he turned at Mana curiously. "You will still stand in my way, as long as you are able to, right"? He asked.</p><p>"As long as your plan is to kill him, yes", Mana calmly nodded before fixing her clothes.</p><p>"I guess that makes you his accomplice then, just another person I'll have to overcome and kill in my way of vengeance", Quill B exclaimed coldly before turning away and walking off with his friend who appeared to be freaking out at the swordsman the whole way to the hall.</p><p>"Wow, that guy is both intense and crazy", Kiyomi whistled out.</p><p>"He's in pain. I cannot hold him accountable for the things he says in that state. If our paths will ever cross, I'll just have to shoulder his hatred and vengeful thoughts and hope I can help him that way" Mana sighed.</p><p>"I mean… I'm technically on your side, I think, I wouldn't let him kill a righteous man whose sole crime is fulfilling his duty and killing a traitor, but… Doesn't that mean you'll be shielding a killer, someone who did a thing you despise almost to ridiculous degrees"? Kiyomi raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I will be, yes", Mana affirmed.</p><p>"That's an awful amount of scumbags and killers you've protected so far from people wanting to give them what's coming for them. I'm not implying anything but…" Kiyomi shrugged before encouraging the magician to make her way to the hall.</p><p>"I'm not justifying the actions of people I protect. I do not care who it is that I protect from death. I do believe that those people need to face justice for their actions but death is no form of any justice I believe in. Death is an escape from justice in my book. If it ever comes to me standing in between Quill B and Kres-T, I'll be the one making sure that Quill B's desire for justice is met, not him", Mana argued.</p><p>"Except even if you protect that guy, no justice will ever come to him. Killing a traitor is no crime in any of the ninja villages – he's perfectly justified, he'll even be honored for it", Kiyomi poked a hole in Mana's beliefs, the magician felt that hole very painfully.</p><p>"I've seen a man who was renowned for his carnage and murderous ways protect a fragile young civilian from harm for years, in search for redemption. Had it not been for that man, that young lady would've been in a lot of trouble, likely not even alive at this point. In that way, I believe that not even a life of a killer somehow transcends necessity, even those lives of people I hate or I don't think are right. Punishment may not find Kres-T now, or ever, but maybe, someday, he'll do something he is meant to do and make someone else's life better", Mana looked away, feeling a bit uncomfortable about not having a precise answer for her friend's and superior's posed problem. It has become a habit between the two to discuss their clashing beliefs and yet this may have been the first time that Mana felt unsure about her stance and position in some way.</p><p>"Ummm… Either way, what the hell are we talking about!? This isn't what you should be troubling yourself with! Think about the match"! Kiyomi suddenly broke into a supportive smile and began encouraging the magician after seeing that she was beginning to get to Mana to some ideological level.</p><hr/><p>"Alright, I assume everyone's ready to start"? The overseer glanced the slightly thinned out audience over. The matches were already halfway over and therefore almost half of the observing audience had already left the hall, whether having their injuries treated in the infirmary facilities or just resting. These tag matches proved to be taxing even on the greatest of favorites to rank up, perhaps more so on them, for they had plenty of things to prove and often had most trouble cooperating with their tag partners.</p><p>"Just do your best, it'll all be just fine"! Kiyomi patted Mana's shoulder in encouragement, the magician breathed in and out before stepping out and preparing herself for the unknown. The audience rustled for a while after Mana walked out from the thinned out mix of the audience and into the clear before stepping gracefully and slowly onto the arena.</p><p>Much to Mana's surprise, she heard several familiar Academy classmates' voices cheering on her, suggesting that her thoughts of herself as the most hated person in Konoha were plentily exaggerated. Even Yushijin and Erumo nodded at Mana, while still scowling at her with rather displeased, grudge holding eyes.</p><p>With the first examinee of the following match having officially made their way onto the arena, the tall, buff and bald Kumogakure genin separated from his similarly thinned out team composition, currently composed of only him and his mentor figure – a tall red-haired young woman with the typical Kumogakure uniform. Almost at the same time, Mana's opponents also took their steps onto the arena with Jon-D nodding at his own team mentor and jumping onto the stage before stroking his wild hair and sizing Mana up with his gaze.</p><p>Jon-D was a tremendously attractive young man, of similar build to his sister, skin about as dark as Mana's, which was a couple of shades less tanned than the Kumogakure standard. His hair had very clearly experienced rather sophisticated attention and grooming as from that feature alone he would've reminded to the neutral observer more of a member of a boy band than a shinobi assassin. The massive hilt hanging from behind his shoulder made Mana wonder how someone looking as unimpressive in terms of his physicality could wield a sword of such size without needing to waste too much stamina and chakra on augmentations. His armor was also oddly white and didn't look used at all. Either he was more of a show-off than a combatant, or he simply rarely, if ever, got tagged by his enemies.</p><p>Roh-D of Kumogakure then rushed onto the arena, jumping high up in the air before landing right beside Mana and giving the girl his enthusiastic thumb up of excitement.</p><p>"Hey, we've met before, right? Looking forward to working with you"! He vibrantly spoke up</p><p>"Likewise, you were one of the first teams to complete the Forest stage, I'm honored to team up with someone like you and I hope to learn much from this experience", Mana bowed her head respectfully. A gesture that appeared to greatly confuse her partner as he started rubbing his cheeks and nose awkwardly and stuttering something incomprehensibly.</p><p>In a very sluggish and fumbling manner, the fourth combatant took his place onto the arena – Oto-B of Team Alto, the final member of the much revered and feared team, which Team Hokage was lucky to never encounter first hand inside the Forest of Death. The abilities and fighting style of the plump one were an absolute mystery – the intel that Mana could recall from the Forest of Death only referred to the man's exceptional strategizing and observation ability and not his actual fighting style. The youth looked very unimpressive up close – curly bright hair, short and round stature, shorter even than Mana who was a rather frail figure in most comparisons. Early yet quite timed and developed facial hair covered the youth's face, whereas Jon-D was quite the groomer, Oto-B could have used some of his partner's excess on himself…</p><p>"We didn't have the chance to receive any intelligence on you guys, or our opponents in the Forest. I'd be glad to know a bit about your abilities, or any immediate heads up about our opponents, decide who's going first and all that", Roh-D muttered, entering the quick whispering stage of the pre-combat break that most teams went through. Oddly enough, it didn't appear that Oto-B and Jon-D were going through any similar discussions as Oto-B simply refused to even look at the direction of his teammate.</p><p>"I'm a genjutsu and ninjutsu user, I can defend myself at close range but I'm not much use offensively at close range", Mana did her best to quickly describe her abilities to her partner. "This match-up is bad for me – I don't know much about either of these two which means I won't have a profile of their fighting style in my head. That might lead to some skipped blows and early injuries".</p><p>"Huh, we're a pretty sweet team. I can brawl pretty decently up close, whereas Kei-J was more of a technical martial artist, I was always the more brutish and bulky one. I can both take hits from those guys and dish it out, don't worry about that! My mid-range abilities rely on Wind and Lightning Release ninjutsu and these babies", Roh slipped his sleeve aside to reveal to Mana some odd looking tubes and holes that were covering his arms and appeared to be surgically placed.</p><p>"These look like holes on a reed pipe", Mana whispered.</p><p>"Well, that's the gist of it", Roh-D grinned, feeling glad that his partner caught on so fast to the nature of his surgical enhancements. "They release sound waves that enhance my Wind Release jutsu as well as serve as a tunnel of my Lightning Release".</p><p>"It seems your abilities are much more sophisticated and defined than mine", Mana commended her teammate who once again got flustered over being praised before raising a fist up Mana's face and smiling confidently.</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana, I can wear them out and serve as your sacrificial lead. All you need to do is finish them off afterward"! Roh-D bravely declared before stepping up and raising his fist up to the overseer's question about if the examinees were ready to go.</p><p>Mana tried to object, she wanted to ask to be a sacrificial lead herself seeing how she perceived Roh-D to simply be a more rounded up and versatile ninja. Sacrificial leads needed to wear their opponents and gather information on their abilities, do as much of wild swinging damage as they could before being taken out, also set up any battlefield conditions that their partners could have used. With her genjutsu and disruption tactics, Mana could've served that role much better and she felt like she was less useful to the finishing touches of the battle overall.</p><p>"Is there a problem, examinee"? The overseer raised an eyebrow looking at Mana's hesitance to follow Jon-D's example and step up to the tag scroll and get sealed inside.</p><p>"I guess not…" Mana sighed before slowly creeping up to it and opening the scroll. A blinding burst of bright maroon light enveloped her entire essence, the magician's body got dragged out and getting spaghettified, loud, howling sounds followed that unbearable sensation of being dragged through space-time and outside her very own dimension into somewhere else, somewhere wilder…</p><p>Mana's match had officially begun.</p>
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<a name="section0346"><h2>346. A Rollicking Good Start</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana snapped out of the overwhelming sensations of being sealed inside the tag scroll after the attraction sucking her inside of it ceased. First of all, the magician examined her own body, feeling sure that such phenomenon would've surely torn her apart. Even if she saw plenty of ninja get sealed multiple times, the sensations were so odd that she couldn't help but still check the integrity of her own body and make sure she was completely intact.</p><p>Neither there were injuries on her body from all the oddities, that the sealing process made her go through, nor did Mana feel any weaker from being forced to augment her body. In fact, she could not even remember using augmentations for a mere moment. There was certainly a fair amount of time dilution in the process as at some point the sealing had begun to feel slightly frustrating to go through with the endless sensation of falling inside a roaring and spinning tunnel of flashing lights with nothing but void below her starting to bore Mana instead of scaring her. The creator of the tag scroll must have modeled it with seals that protected the transported person perfectly from the inhuman conditions that other dimensions may have possessed.</p><p>Only after making sure that both her physical form and her stamina were both in perfect condition did Mana notice the odd dimension she was floating weightlessly in. Deep below her, farther even than her augmented superhuman ninja perception could scope, was nothing but whirling clouds of gas and crackling lightning – a violent expression of the massive chakra present inside this dimension. Above her laid the same sight, the same thing to be said of wide and far around her. Nothing but crimson red skies with lighter tone gas whirling around in a never-ending storm. The area where Mana was stored in was protected, however, in a bubble of unknown and invisible chakra that held the stormy conditions of the dimension as well as the outrages of its energy further.</p><p>"If the time dilution was so sensible just being sealed, just how long will I have to wait until I am unsealed"? Mana wondered to herself. "It may take a couple of minutes outside, but it may feel like hours waiting here".</p><p>All this senseless waiting frustrated Mana to no end. It was not because she was an impatient person – far from it. There may not have been a more patient and reserved genin inside that entire hall back in her home dimension. It was because of the innate fear that she felt, the nervousness before the big fight. She had to wait and tolerate it for fifteen minutes before the match, now she may sit here feeling nervous and eating herself alive, thinking all the thoughts imaginable for hours… Not that it could've been helped or anything. It was just the way she was supposed to behave. All just a part of the test…</p><p>"It won't be any different if I get promoted, really", Mana tried to reason with her own gut that was booming and squirming with butterflies trying to sprout through the magician's own flesh and fly into freedom. "I'll be sitting in ambushes or collecting information for hours, in missions far more important to me and the village. Better get used to it now".</p><p>Feeling rather reasonable with her own bodily reactions, Mana simply crossed her legs before taking a meditative position and closing her eyes. One advantage of meditation was its ability to calm Mana down and give her complete awareness of her body as well as the limited capabilities of affecting her mood or bodily conditions. It did not take much time for an experienced meditator such as Mana to calm herself down through meditation.</p><p>"I could still make out Jon-D being the one to get sealed inside the scroll. That means I am much more likely to get to face him. That's good. I know what he can do, I know the abilities he will rely on. Oto-B, however, is a complete mystery. I should only need to deal with him if Roh-D deems him an unfair match-up, choosing to tag out instead, or in the unfortunate eventuality that he loses without eliminating anyone. Such outcome is unlikely, yet possible", the magician began running through streams of thought, she found that thinking and strategizing, trying to predict what exactly it was that she would have to face helped her stay calm the best.</p><p>Mana may have been a patient person but even she had to admit that she was beginning to grow bored, then again, it could have simply been the adrenaline in her blood slowing things down a crawl. That was when the familiar tunnel of light and intensely whirling gas opened up and sucked her in, once again, the same way out as it was on her way in, the magician blitzed through the shrieking gas tunnel with nothing but total blackness in sight before an overwhelming influx of light nearly blinded her completely. Her body was unsealed back from the scroll in a beam of maroon light.</p><p>Right as the magician realized what had happened, she saw the ugly and busted open mug of Oto-B grinning nastily up in her face, peculiar sounds of dirt shifting through someone's feet behind her. The audience surrounding Mana witnessed eight sharp steel scythes attached to countless steel bars with a wire running inside of them, each part of the unique construction folded and extended to their user's command, wrapping around the magician and enclosing her in their lethal grip. On the other side, right as Oto-B forced his eight scythes apart, ripping the girl's body to bloody shreds, Jon-D delivered a crushing sword slash aimed at Mana's middle body, aiming to slice her clean in two.</p><p>It was not blood from Mana's shredded body that rained and splattered all over the arena, but illusionary flower petals, after the magician managed to slip out of certain death on two fronts. As the words "Flower Petal Escape" softly echoed around the hall, Mana's body gathered itself together slightly further from the two assailants. She could've attempted to exploit her successful genjutsu and escape, but she wasn't sure which one of her assailants would soon be sealed inside the tag scroll, something that'd give the second an easy escape from her attack, which inevitably would divert too much of her attention to the wrong target. She also needed more time to assess the situation – examine the state of the arena and the ultimate fate of her partner.</p><p>Oto-B lit up in a maroon light, shortly after, his dematerializing form got sucked into the tag scroll in the shape of a crimson laser beam before disappearing completely. So it was Jon-D who was switched into. A quick look around helped Mana put two on top of two – Roh-D was being carried away in a busted up state, not too dissimilar to the one Oto-B was in suggesting quite a brutal battle has transpired between the two, that meant that he was eliminated. The state of Oto-B was pathetic, he was injured and bleeding all over, his long overcoat was in tatters and he was a pair of good blows away from passing out. The innate slowness of the genin, caused by the pain all over his body, the lack of physical conditioning on his own part and the injuries helped Mana escape in time.</p><p>It was a clever plan on Oto-B's behalf – to use his sealing tag right after Mana was beginning to be unsealed. That caused his three seconds of a coordinated attack to kick in right after the magician entered the battlefield and had Mana not gotten used to the oddity of being tagged in and out, as well as the ridiculous injuries of Oto-B, she would have joined the body count of the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>Jon-D leaned his body to the ground, spreading his legs out wide and bending them at the knees, his hands moved to the back, reaching for his massive blade. This wasn't very good, Mana was used to evading unarmed taijutsu attacks and excelled at it, evading a skilled swordsman would've meant that all Mana had to rely on was the training with Meiko en route to the Wind Country. The magician breathed in and out, calming herself down – her team was losing, Roh-D got eliminated already but… It was not over yet.</p><p>Jon-D blitzed in a bright and brown flash, his tanned skin, shiny armor and bright colored hair, that gained an almost bright pink hue while on the move, caused an amalgam of those dominant colors to flash about as the swordsman rampaged all over the arena. He was not trying to cut Mana down, a painful blow to her chin that sent the magician tumbling towards a hole in the arena, wide enough to tumble into and get ringed out, testified that much. He was just trying to utilize his insane speed and ring the magician out. Another skipped blow made Mana fly off and aside, she managed to get back on her feet just before she tumbled into another hole, another strong kick to the back… He was just toying with her at this point. The origin of those holes must've been a curious story in of itself!</p><p>Mana wasn't planning to just play around.</p><p>The magician quickly moved into weaving hand seals, biting her finger and drawing blood from her thumb before attempting to push it into her hat, to use her modified version of the Summoning Jutsu. Time appeared to have stopped still as a painful shock to the right side of her chest smacked her out of summoning Usuzoku successfully. Before Mana could process the fact that the massive sword of her opponent actually went through her body a whole third of its length, her body instinctively began pouring chakra into keeping Mana alive and upright. A superhuman version of the more human desire to survive. A rude kick to her chest helped Jon-D to pull out the massive sword from Mana's chest and sent the magician down.</p><p>"Those ruthless attacks! Are they trying to kill her"? Someone in the audience rustled uneasily. Mana didn't previously realize just how much all of those constant little dialogues between all those genin teams could've been heard inside the arena. Or maybe it was just her own body in whack augmenting itself in areas she didn't ask it to.</p><p>"No, I think he missed her vitals", someone in the audience replied, voicing Mana's own thoughts. Hers, however, were much more hectic due to recently being impaled through by a sword about as large as Jon-D was himself. She was injured far too early into a fight for this wound to be disabling or fight ending but… It placed her on a very strict and vital timer. The chakra sustaining her will not be running forever. She needed to settle this and Oto-B as fast as possible…</p><p>"Did you know what I was going for"? Jon-D stopped moving rapidly all across the ravaged and hole filled arena and took a more defensive two handed sword wielding stance. Despite the inhuman size of his blade, the wielder was not by any means slow. If Mana used all of her perception, all of her foresight, it was enough, just barely enough to track the youth's moves.</p><p>"Not really, I only noticed after getting injured", Mana grunted in pain, even when there was a massive wound on her side of a large sword going right through her one third of its length, she still had enough chakra to breathe and fight back with that injury. Instinct yelled at Mana to rush at her enemy, use all of her allotted time to ring him out or trick him into her mercy. That would've been a mistake – she needed a better plan than to just rush at a much faster and stronger competitor with such a grievous injury.</p><p>The plan that Jon-D was referring to was a massive hole right behind Mana. Had her body undergone all of the chakra augmentations that a ninja would've normally went through while being attempted to be impaled on such a weapon, she'd have been pushed backwards with tremendous force, as the sword's tip failed to penetrate her augmented flesh much farther than the skin, and possibly tumbled in, causing her to be ringed out. Had it not been for Mana's incredible worry over using chakra augmentation, given birth by her burns using it overzealously in the past, and careful weighing of each situation before applying augmentations, that thrust would've pushed her out like a marble hit by a flick.</p><p>"Reckless idiots like you are why my sister's been eliminated. I will actually take some pleasure in taking you out", Jon-D shouted out in a fit of anger as he lifted his sword above his head, channeling chakra through it, just like his sister did before him, except on a much more massive scale and intensity. There was no comparison between a Dimensional Slash of a long knife and a massive sword that Jon-D wielded.</p><p>"Dimensional Slash"! Jon-D shouted out, swinging his oversized sword downward and smashing it into the arena floor beneath his feet, the overflowing chakra that was being channeled through the blade shot off in a tremendous crescent shaped projectile straight at Mana's direction.</p><p>Right as it would've hit the magician head-on, splitting her in two, without a doubt, the projectile faded away, before reappearing to her side. Mana took a strong leap backwards as she let her magician's hat roll down off of her head and into her grip. Mana weaved a hand seal with her free hand and pushed it into the hat, unsealing the wand she had retrieved from the Forest of Death during the week she had to train.</p><p>The projectile faded away once again, confusing Mana. It disappeared and reappeared again, like a mysterious figure in a hall of mirrors as it materialized and then got sealed away again, setting off every seal of the Dimensional Blade fighting style that the young swordsman had setup in his blurry blitz earlier.</p><p>"Mana"! Kiyomi's scream echoed as the projectile shot right from below the magician, piercing the floor beneath her feet and cutting her in two completely. The separated two pieces of Mana then dissolved into flower petals that didn't appear to confuse Jon-D that much as he quickly resumed a defensive stance, his eyes constantly scurried left to right, scanning the environment around him and wondering just where would his opponent next attack from.</p><p>A deafening clang echoed through the Konoha High gym hall, much to the audience's and Jon-D's shock the oversized sword he held firmly in his hands got split in two. Mana shifted her weight from her upper body, from the powerful sledgehammer motion, which she used to swing her Audra steel wand to smash through her opponent's blade, into a strong right kick that would have forced him into one of the eight different tunnels from underground that riddled the arena.</p><p>Jon-D locked his hands around Mana's foot and swung her around before releasing her to properly resume his position as all he managed to do in response to her unexpected siege of his defenses was to drop the useless handle part of his sword that he still held in his hands.</p><p>Mana coughed up a moderate amount of blood, her head shook in pain as the girl peeled it off the ground and as she moved her wild raven black hair out of the way the gruesome sight of her own blood trail smudged onto the arena floor met her eyes. This was an alarming sign that her chakra that sustained her fighting shape and even possibly her consciousness and her life was beginning to fail to do its job properly and was beginning to leak some blood out, more of it than it should've, anyways.</p><p>"That stupid sister of mine… You've noticed it when she used it, right"? Jon-D spat to the side before wiping his nose and removing the rag that he adorned to cover up the lower part of his face. Mana must have made him sweat enough for breathing with that thing on to become rather uncomfortable.</p><p>"Yeah… For a handful of moments after you use it, you can't channel chakra through it", Mana wanted to smile but the bloody taste in her mouth made her wish to contain that thought and hide it away lest her entertainment turned into a more gruesome and bloody sight. Something she did not really want.</p><p>"Still, I wasn't expecting you to both possess a high-tier enough weapon and the needed skill to channel chakra through tools yourself", Jon-D commended Mana before taking a martial arts stance, this was Mana's area, she could read that basic stance when woken from a deep slumber late at night.</p><p>"I don't, this wand is made out of Audra alloy", Mana grumped out before biting her thumb and beginning to weave hand seals using her free arm. Hoping that now that she knew exactly how fast her opponent was, now that she disabled his main and most lethal weapon, now she would be able to complete the set of hand seals. It was surprising that she couldn't before, Mana used to take pride in her hand seal speed for so long that she had never considered that there'd be someone fast enough to still exploit that moment of slipping attention…</p><p>Jon-D blitzed into action. Pressing his hands and folding them by his sides, preparing to unleash a chain barrage of punches at Mana's undefended and already injured body. Before he could even move up to her, falling just that much short of length, now that his sword was laying broken in half by where he previously stood, a shiny silver flash made the audience rustle uneasily before a splatter of blood colored the already messy and incredibly bloody arena tiles – this time it was Jon-D's own fluids from a wound in his abdomen caused by a long sword, wielded by a deceitfully cute rabbit warrior.</p><p>"What de hell"? Usuzoku's annoyed grumble came out from the cloud of smoke and the dark blueish violet light shining from inside of Mana's hat. "Can't ye do anythin' without mah help"?</p><p>That was when Usuzoku moved his cute snout back at Mana to give her an angry glare but his eyes instead shot open wide in surprise of Mana's condition. The magician was clutching at a wound on her chest that not even both of her hands could cover up completely. Blood switched from being perfectly contained to leaking out in handfuls before once again being contained by the diverted chakra flow.</p><p>"Sorry, I didn't want Ninja Rabbits to remain only be contracted by a lousy genin, Zoku-chan", Mana smiled kindly through a pale face as it was clear that her timer was approaching the dangerous zone of the scale. "Although, now that I think of it, are summons banned in the exams"? She then suddenly realized before looking questioningly at the overseer.</p><p>"If you can pull them off, no", the overseer shook his head. "It's a rare sight in the Chuunin Exams so we didn't bother setting any rules for it".</p><p>"Well den, I'll have ta pull both of our weights, won't I"? Usuzoku gave Mana a thumb up, "As much as I hate yer guts, I'd hate lettin' ya disappoint mah proud species even more"!</p><p>The rabbit swordsman pulled out his blade before pointing it at Jon-D's direction. "Ye just sit back and see what ye can do about that wound, Hatchling" he confidently grinned.</p>
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<a name="section0347"><h2>347. One Of Those Days</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After instructing Mana to deal with her injury Usuzoku simply dashed off at Jon-D without saying anything more or sparing anything else than a single blink of an eye to worry about her. As Usuzoku danced around Jon-D's feeble attempts to predict the rabbit's location before kicking and headbutting the young man off his feet with each missed shot, Mana realized that this was not quite the rabbit she had come to know.</p><p>Usuzoku did not need any convincing, despite claiming that Mana would never reach the level needed to summon and fight alongside him, whenever the magician called for the Ninja Rabbits, he always came out to her aid. Just one sighting of his summoner having difficulties staying on her feet and bleeding out sent the rabbit into a cold outrage as he continued to toy with his opponent, kicking him around with his larger than half his entire body combined feet or slamming his sword handle at the back of Jon-D's head.</p><p>Mana slipped out of the blazer that was part of her uniform and pulled a sharp steel tipped card out of her sleeve before slicing the cloth apart into strands she'd use for tourniquet later on, after placing the card back into the pouch on her thigh. Mana pulled out another card with a rooster mosaic drawn on it before channeling a minuscule bit of her chakra through it and placing it on her gaping wound. Wild tongues of super heated flames erupted from the card, not the type of card to be used offensively, except for showy entertainment – flashy sparks, nothing more. The magician screamed out loud in pain as the flames enveloped her wound and her clothes, momentarily crawling over her entire body, her hair and aiming to cover her whole but dying out before the heat even properly registered in the girl's brain. By the time the fiery coat covered Mana, the flame was already snuffed out.</p><p>"Holy shit, yer one crazy gal, Hatchling, 'ere I am tryin' hard for ya an' yer settin' yerself aflame"! Usuzoku chuckled madly after backing out of holding off and toying with his lesser ranked opponent.</p><p>"It's gonna look nasty and need treatment, even with it, it'll stay with me for life but… Scar tissue like that doesn't bleed", Mana grinned through a pale face that would've reminded one of a ghastly apparition more than a healthy human girl.</p><p>"If it did, my father would've already been dead", Mana sadly looked down, thinking to herself.</p><p>Jon-D drew out a kunai and dashed at Usuzoku. A normal mass-produced kunai knife was made of too shoddy of materials to have chakra channeled through it, it snapped quite easily from the slightest chakra-based resistance due to the chakra over matter principle so Usuzoku was right to not feel overly threatened and move in to intercept his opponent. Right before Usuzoku's claymore would have stopped Jon-D's puny knife and snapped it easily, Jon-D gently flicked the knife to his other hand before swiping at Usuzoku's right eye and leaving a shallow cut across the rabbit's face while his free hand gripped Zoku's wrist and stopped the incoming blade that way.</p><p>"Zoku-chan"! Mana shouted out in worry over her partner's well-being.</p><p>"Shut up, damn ya, I don' need no worryin' from some stupid Hatchling"! Usuzoku grunted, "I hate yer guts and I'd rather we'd find someone else so ya could just die"!</p><p>Mana's hands went through a bunch of hand seals, much slower than she used to be able to do before the large blood loss but still remarkably fast for her rank.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Skewer" Mana chanted out as Lightning Release chakra poured out from her palms before forming six rod-like shapes in the air surrounding the two clashing weaponry-users and driving themselves into the ground around Jon-D. The swift swordsman leaped aside, gracefully dancing around each and every rod before releasing the kunai as a projectile incoming at a very dangerous trajectory. Mana leaned aside but her vision was getting a bit murky, the kunai scratched her in the cheek much more deeply than she would have liked it to.</p><p>Usuzoku launched himself in pursuit after the young man, he found himself in trouble navigating around the large holes all over the arena. Seeing how he was not technically Mana, he couldn't get ringed out, either way, those holes were still troublesome enough to trip him over, if he wasn't careful.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Technique"! Jon-D yelled out after stopping his back dashing to empty his ninja pouch supply of shuriken at Usuzoku so that he could halt the rabbit's pursuit and injure him. Despite getting some brief close calls, the dark pink rabbit easily deflected the blurry and whizzing stream of shuriken using his sword.</p><p>"It's not true, though, is it"? Mana smiled at the rabbit who sheathed his sword and leaned to the ground, preparing his awesomely powerful feet to propel his body at breakneck speed, even by ninja standards, at his opponent.</p><p>"Rabbit Art: Double-Draw"! Usuzoku shouted out before letting his feet kick his body off as he dashed past Jon-D's quivering shape. After the rabbit landed firmly on his feet, his sword in hand, he confidently sheathed his sword before his opponent's body erupted into an X-shaped stream of blood showers. That turned out to be just for show, however, as what previously looked to be Jon-D was revealed to be just a substituted upper piece of his large, kitchen knife shaped sword.</p><p>"What do ye mean"? Usuzoku straightened his back before glaring at Mana as Jon-D rolled aside before weaving a handful of hand seals.</p><p>"Multi-Kunai Technique"! The Kumogakure youth shouted out, emptying the kunai supply at Usuzoku as well, it looked like something of great weight troubled the rabbit as Usuzoku failed to deflect a couple of whizzing by ninja tools that cut him shallowly. Mana better settled this relationship between the two once and for all before denying it dragged Usuzoku down and lead to him getting injured.</p><p>"You told me that when I called, someone else would answer. You told me that I'm way below the rank where you'd consider me a worthy partner and yet… Every time I call – you answer. I think that there are plenty of other Ninja Rabbits capable of fighting alongside me, ones weaker and slower than you, more fitting my rank. I think that you actually do like me, I think that you actually do trust me and consider me more than just a nuisance or temporary holder of the contract"! Mana declared boldly.</p><p>Usuzoku's gaze widened in surprise before squinting in anger and turning away. He glared away to process something for a while before turning back at the magician.</p><p>"So yer gonna help me or what"? He casually asked her, "If yer gonna be my partner, ye better drag yer own weight behind me, at least two leaps behind"!</p><p>Mana nodded, smiling. The tone in Usuzoku's voice was crystal clear - he no longer had to lie to Mana, lie to himself, keep thinking about how to trick everyone and himself about his true relationship with the magician and the fact that the Ninja Rabbits needed her as much as she needed them. The fact that after the stunt Mana pulled saving the Rabbit Contract scroll he respected her enough to lend his sword to her aid and pull her out of the mess she constantly made of things. Usuzoku's mind was now clear and free to make him into the rabbit rogue he always was before he met Mana.</p><p>After releasing a powerful battle cry, Jon-D dashed straight at Mana, winding his broken sword behind his back and channeling chakra through whatever remained of his broken blade.</p><p>"Dimensional Slash"! The Kumogakure genin shouted out before cutting at Mana his blade didn't meet the soft resistance of human flesh, however, it met a firm resistance of an opposing claymore blade in a thunderous clash before Mana, rather clumsily, leaped over Usuzoku, and still feeling dizzy from the blood loss, kicked at Jon-D's teeth.</p><p>"Spear Kick"! She yelled out, feeling confident and proud of the combination and the newly defined bond between her and Usuzoku.</p><p>However, before her sandal could even fullu connect to the boy's jaw and transfer the force of the impact and grind him to the arena ground, the broken blade of the Kumogakure swordsman cried out in pain, unable to properly channel and contain the chakra channeled through it, instead of unleashing a tremendously sharp cutting projectile, it merely blew Mana and Usuzoku away.</p><p>Mana struggled to get up. Her head kept screaming and buzzing, the dizziness in her head and the constant shaking feeling, feeling almost like she was on a ship sailing through the stormy seas, made her nauseous. The only thought that the more she writhed in pain and injury, the more chances she gave her opponent to stab through her exposed back.</p><p>"Rabbit Art: Block Breaker"! Usuzoku's voice echoed in Mana's ears as she lifted her head up and bothered to move the messy and sticky hair out of her way to see her partner do his best to buy her time.</p><p>Jon-D screamed out in pain, dropping his sword and grabbing his broken dominant hand before Usuzoku sheathed his sword and began kicking the genin about lightly, before finishing the attack with a powerful jump kick to the jaw.</p><p>"My… Hand"! Jon-D writhed on the ground, about as pitifully as Mana did moments earlier, however his condition was not due to previously sustained injuries, dizziness or blood loss. It was because of shattered pride as a swordsman. "You filthy animal, using a man-made tool"!</p><p>"Tsk, if I'm just a filthy animal, what does that make ye? An arsehole dat went ahead and got himself beat by one"! Usuzoku taunted his whining opponent before jumping up in the air and dropkicking his opponent flying towards a possible ring out before Usuzoku quickly leaped back to his feet and casually began hopping towards Mana, aiming to help her back up.</p><p>"Contestant Jon-D – ring out"! The overseer ruled making Usuzoku confidently grin to himself and how his smug refusal to see his opponent fall out the ring paid off and earned him some cool points with the audience.</p><p>"So, what's yer plan fer dat last basterd"! Usuzoku grunted after, with his slight aid, Mana got back on her feet.</p><p>"I'm going to talk to him", Mana smiled.</p><p>The overseer placed his palm in the general direction of Oto-B's tag scroll as his hand lit up with a slightly visible bland blue glow of base chakra color. Using his Remote Sealing technique, the higher ranking ninja unsealed Jon-D's partner, still in his pitiful bleeding and hunched over condition with his odd scythe contraptions still dangling bent up and busted up on his back. He looked like an insect, squished but not enough to kill it, with its long limbs crooked and broken.</p><p>"Well, dis guy 'ere has seen bedder days", Usuzoku tilted his snout up confidently.</p><p>Mana concentrated and reached out to her opponent's chakra signature just to confirm her thoughts a second time before she attempted this plan of hers. As expected, the genin had a visible lack of chakra, what little remained got spent up just keeping him upright. He did not have much time to lick his wounds in an active battlefield either.</p><p>"A Summon? Of all the lousy, miserable…" the battered genin started grumbling before Mana gently stepped up in front of Usuzoku.</p><p>"Give up, it's over. I can sense your chakra signature, you have one good technique left in you. You've already seen the capability of my illusions, the question remains, will your one technique be able to beat me or will I just disperse into flower petals and finish you off"? Mana boldly asked, temporarily she allowed small bits and pieces of her remaining chakra pool to accelerate its flow, augmenting the stance and perception of her body, moving past the blurry vision, the dizziness and the unconquerable pull of the gravity that allured her to succumb flat right on her face.</p><p>"Why would I ever surrender, you lousy tart"? Oto-B grumbled again, his scythes rose up as Mana admired the intricate mechanisms making those blades move, extend and retract. He was like a blobby arrogant insect where instead of legs there were steel rods, interconnected with wire, tipped with large scythe blades at the end.</p><p>"Save yerself de beating while Hatchlin's feelin' merciful"! Usuzoku grabbed the hilt of his sword and pulled it out halfway threateningly.</p><p>"The thing is, you pathetic hussy, that I can see you looking a bit bruised and broken yourself. Almost half of your chest looks like a molten stump and your raggedy clothes are soaked with blood, that's an impalement wound you've molded up, right? Just how much does it hurt? I bet it hurts a whole lot", Oto-B shouted out after placing his hands in a hand seal position commanding his intricate scythe contraptions to overflow with chakra channeled through them and shoot right for where Mana was standing.</p><p>Slowly, the magician started walking forward, leaning aside and gently yet precisely avoiding the attacks that could not have come at her in a more predictable straight trajectory. They probably would have missed her even if they were allowed to come some further – such was the extent of Mana's injury. Oto-B took a pair of scared and trembling steps backward when Mana walked up right to his face, he continued to try and stab her on his rushing scythe blades but he kept on missing.</p><p>"W-what are you doing, you poon? H-How are you doing this"? Oto-B freaked out, continuing to stumble backward. Mana slapped him with an open hand, she didn't augment her slap, not because she wanted a more effective mocking tool but because she was afraid to overexert herself, using ninjutsu carried no similar drawbacks to augmentation, which the magician already had a bad history with using. She was not really doing anything to avoid those strikes, the blood rushing into Oto-B's eyes was simply obstructing the view, not to mention the beating he must have taken in the back-and-forth with Roh-D making his head all dizzy and spinning. He had far too little chakra left to risk augmentation.</p><p>"Didn't you see my face on all those posters? I'm the Konoha's Sorceress, I do stage magic for fun, I escape death traps for a living and fool eyes for entertainment", Mana bluffed. It was about time she picked one or two things out from late Tanshu-sensei's book and learned to look as piss-pants intimidating when she spoke as he used to. Obviously, she could not be Red Dog Tanshu, still, if her cuteness and young age got in the way of outright intimidation, she could've added them in and made something new out of it.</p><p>Oto-B jumped back on his feet, he thrust his blades at where Mana was standing aiming to skewer the ground. Mana jumped back but felt a sharp impulse burning up on her shoulder. She could not even feel blood trickling down her shoulder, her entire right part of the body felt numb from the wound cauterizing trick she used earlier.</p><p>"You're just a poony witch. I am Oto-B from Team Alto and in Team Alto we don't throw fights away meaninglessly. If you lose and get killed off, you weren't worthy of survival in the first place. My Team's honor hinges on my victory"! Oto-B kept shouting madly as he swung his blades around in a blinding barrage of strikes that didn't even look very accurate or having much aim put behind them, that was what made them rather dangerous as they were completely unpredictable.</p><p>"Hatchlin' what the feck are ya doin', defend yerself"! Usuzoku's desperate voice made Mana snap out from the fearful delirium of the dancing blades before she noticed his point – her entire body was covered with cuts and lacerations as she must have been tagged at least a good dozen of times with various depths of cut. The rushing adrenaline and her numbed nerve endings made her completely oblivious to hits that came to that area of her body and Oto-B exploited it.</p><p>"Pathetic"! Oto-B huffed before erupting into a battle cry. "A loser like you stands no chance of finishing off Team Alto"!</p><p>"I see…" Mana looked down in disappointment. She then gave Usuzoku a narrow look surprising the rabbit.</p><p>"So yer gonna use dat jutsu then"? He mumbled to himself in a barely audible fashion.</p><p>"Shut up"! Oto-B screamed out, pain and anger were making him blind, pride and arrogance were making him oblivious of his chances of winning this match and just what the extents of his injuries and remaining chakra were. His conscious decision to keep on fighting was a danger to his own life. Mana had to take him down.</p><p>"You said I still had enough chakra for one "good technique", right? Take it then"! Oto-B shouted wildly as his scythes cut into the arena floor, descending underground. The entire arena began to shake as the already ruined and damaged floor was beginning to crumble and shift. That must have been what caused those holes in the first place – Oto-B's scythes burrowing and attacking from underground.</p><p>Mana let her hands work on hand seals freely, completely unwavering by the rushing incoming attacks that brought only death and dismemberment. Oto-B seemed completely unworried by the magician's calmness as he commanded the first wave of his scythe assaults to emerge from underground and begin slowly cutting her apart. After Mana's body was shredded to at least six pieces Oto-B must've realized that this was going way too easy, it was then that Mana's flesh turned into a streaming jet of flower petals that floated away before fading like the illusionary images that they were.</p><p>"Where are you, quim"! Oto-B croaked as he began swinging all eight of his emerging scythe tendrils around the arena.</p><p>"Stop running yer mouth, ye dick, I'm yer opponent now"! Usuzoku roared as he drew his long sword and charged at Oto-B forcing the genin to re-shift the positioning of his scythes to block the rabbit's charge. With powerful swings, Usuzoku cut through two tendrils, leaving the third one ruined and beyond use but still technically intact, in the strictest manner of speech. Oto-B's fleeting enhanced perception barely registered Usuzoku's face blur right up in his face but instead of a sword piercing his body in its whole, the rabbit poofed away in smoke, using the Substitution Jutsu and replacing himself with Mana, a willing participant, who appeared in the rabbit's place and put her hand onto Oto-B's forehead. Something was different about the magician however, lightning sparks were crackling and running up her down her body, almost like she was leaking massive amounts of Lightning Release chakra and emanating lightning shocks around her.</p><p>"Lighting Style: Magician's Touch"! Mana chanted as brief sparks of Lightning Release chakra crackling around her body intensified and the charge rushed right into Oto-B's head, where Mana's body came into contact with his. With his eyes whited out and rolled back and his mouth foamy from the shock of Lightning Release jutsu he was hit by, Oto-B collapsed on the ground and started convulsing.</p><p>Mana nodded with a smile at Usuzoku. This rabbit had seen the magician fail again and again to perfect this B-Rank jutsu she had first thought up during her time chasing the Box of Ultimate Bliss and used in its imperfect stages in both the Forest of Death and her short trip to the Naruto and Sasuke's universe. Magician's Touch – a taser-like concept, a taijutsu countering Lightning Release ninjutsu that lets a short surge of Lightning Release chakra to run through her body that was strong enough to temporarily boost her own resistance to Nature Transformation techniques and shock anyone touching her.</p><p>"Hmph, contestant Oto-B is clearly unable to continue. This match is over"! The overseer's final ruling made all the fear and all the petrifying sensations in Mana's heart all crumble and burn up at the same time as the magician collapsed on her butt and started just breathing heavily, unable to believe what had just happened.</p><p>She won!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0348"><h2>348. Things Pretty Heads Needn't Worry About</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After an affirming nod, Usuzoku disappeared in a cloud of smoke, returning to wherever Mana summoned him from. He really was not one for long-winded speeches, sentiments or after-brawl congratulations, knowing that, Mana let him go without anything but a grateful nod back. She knew so little about these ninja rabbits but she was beginning to rely on them more and more. Knowing how every sentiment needed a faked justification of the upkeeping a cool façade variety, as well as Usuzoku's prowess at close range combat, maybe a trip to the ninja rabbit home, masked as training, was due sometime in the future…</p><p>Seeing how Mana had trouble comfortably and easily walking downstage, the staff rushed to her aid, helping her get down from the wreckage of the arena. Kiyomi also ran to Mana's aid, congratulating the magician so often and so energetically that the details of each separate congratulation slipped the magician's notice. Given how dizzy and nauseous Mana felt and the innate weakness that would've claimed her if the fight continued ten to fifteen minutes longer, it wasn't something to feel particularly surprised about.</p><p>"That was amazing, Mana"! Was one of the calmer congratulations that Mana still managed to hear en route to the infirmary. One of the staff members overseeing the orderly procession of the Chuunin Exams stopped Kiyomi and told her something in a demanding tone that, judging from her face, greatly annoyed the Yamanaka but, with a displeased expression and arms tightly wrapped around her chest, she stayed behind.</p><p>"A B-Rank jutsu as well as the Summoning Technique, that's quite advanced for a genin"! One of the assisting staffers helping Mana to get to the infirmary spoke to her. It was just little talk to keep her mind busy and inform the staffers that she was still conscious and that her motor and communication, as well as sensory skills, were intact.</p><p>"I may have taken this exam later than most genin. I thought I was overtrained and overqualified, all of us in Team Hokage did", Mana mumbled in return just to calm the staffers down somewhat and help them do their job.</p><p>"What was that variation on the Summoning Jutsu though? You pulled your partner out of the hat"? Another staffer expressed surprise and admiration, judging by their tone.</p><p>"Leave it to Konoha's Sorceress to make a big show out of it"! The first one replied before Mana could muster up a response and calm her nauseating impulses. She may not have been concussed, comparing to Hisako's violent reaction to concussion all the way back, but something pretty bad must've been going on there.</p><p>"I don't like using jutsu I didn't invent, that being said, space-time ninjutsu like the Summoning Jutsu are a bit outside my reach to innovate on. I'd tell you more but a good stage magician never reveals her secrets", Mana tried to smile warmly to the staffers that did their job admirably while still finding kindness within them to take a step or two beyond just the duties of their job. She had no such principles though. She just felt a bit too dizzy to talk about storage seals and combinations of jutsu and chakra control efficiency at that moment.</p><p>A different duo of medical ninja greeted Mana in the infirmary. A female senior medical ninja with a young male assistant. The senior medical ninja quickly scanned through Mana's injuries with the Diagnosis Jutsu looking fairly worried about what she saw.</p><p>"This one's beyond our capabilities. She is in no danger though, now that the fight is over. I'll give her the basic active battlefield type Mystical Palm treatment, then we'll transfer her to Konoha Hospital", the senior medical kunoichi mentioned to her assistant who wrote it all down into the log of the exam notes. She then started listing a bunch of Mana's injuries to be written down and added to the girl's medical history once she was actually admitted to the Konohagakure Hospital.</p><p>"These cuts look fairly careless, did you lose"? The middle aged senior medical kunoichi wondered as she pointed at the lacerations gifted to Mana by Oto-B's scythe contraptions.</p><p>"No, I… I'm not sure how those happened. I was easily dodging these one time and then… Next thing I know, my body is cut up like that", Mana grunted in pain as the medical lady tried judging the wounds and deciding if they were minor enough to just be sewn up and healed naturally or if chakra needed to be used. There it was again… The economy of life and death. Mana saw it in the woman's eyes, the eyes of a skilled medical ninja, there was a certain worth to Mana's life and the woman was comparing that worth to the worth of the chakra she still had remaining.</p><p>"Do you need food pills"? The medical ninja snapped out of her deep thought process.</p><p>"Ummm… No, I'm fairly certain I still have a bit more than half of my chakra pool remaining", Mana curiously took the time to communicate with her own body.</p><p>"More than half"!? The medical superior raised an eyebrow, "You shouldn't be lying to the medical ninja, girl. Pride be damned…"</p><p>"If that's how the winner looks like, I'd hate to see the other guy. Probably got rushed to the hospital immediately", the younger male assistant smiled at Mana, he looked a bit more inclined to believe Mana's statement.</p><p>"It's the truth, I am training my chakra pool through meditation and specific physical exercise. I'm training both the spiritual and the physical sides. I'd say, at this point, there were two or three people in the entire gym hall with higher signatures than mine, Jinchuuriki excluded", Mana explained before the woman began patching Mana's bleeding cuts up.</p><p>"Hmmm, impressive… I know what caused those cuts, girl. I have seen it with my own eyes. People with extreme pain tolerance, powering through injury to the point where they become so obsessed with something they do not notice the fact that they are standing as nothing more than a crispy skeleton with their vitals exposed. There's a reason why pain management medical techniques are considered forbidden and it's kept to spiritual meditation and medication, herbs and pills. Pain is necessary, it's an alert mechanism and your body doesn't like being ignored", the woman gave Mana a lecture about pain, as adults tended to do, the ratio of lecturing was proportionately higher in the medical profession as well.</p><p>"I know… But", Mana tried to argue – a fatal mistake.</p><p>"But? There is no but, girl. What is more important than your own health? Didn't a young man just collapse dead in this very same exam? It used to be a pretty often practice to kill other competitors but even now when it isn't… You young folk are so obsessed with getting as high as you can as fast as you can that you completely ignore your own bodies and health", she kept on lecturing. At this point, Mana resorted to just nodding and taking the woman's words to heart. She did have more experience than the magician did, after all. Technically, Mana had no right to speak against her, not even a reasonable case to make against her arguments.</p><p>The door to the infirmary burst open with Kiyomi slowly creeping in. Something was wrong in her mind, she clearly had a package that she pushed deeper down as she sat closer to Mana and smiled like a big sister would.</p><p>"So, how are you doing"? She asked.</p><p>"Fi…" Mana was about to reply.</p><p>"Don't you even finish that word. Tell your friend, why won't you? Tell her the cost you paid going as far as you did. Honestly, none of you youngsters will make it past twenty naturally, even if some bastard doesn't kill you before that", the medical kunoichi interrupted Mana, the magician felt like the reasonable response would've been to be a bit offended by the woman's rudeness but… She kind of found the bluntness of the woman hilarious.</p><p>"Well, I got cut up pretty badly, my chest will probably stay scarred like this for life but… One step closer to the next rank", Mana smiled.</p><p>"I mean, it probably won't look this bad. We can restore the damaged nerves so you'll be feeling that pain in no time, I'm sure you can't wait", the assistant butt into the conversation with a joke, putting his notes and documents he put into Mana's file aside. "There are plenty of scar treatments that really show promise cosmetically as well".</p><p>Mana did recall just how much years of systematic medical ninjutsu visits to the Konoha Hospital helped her father's arms. Those were almost completely charred up when the man was first brought to the hospital whereas now they were just looking slightly scarred and pale. Still, there was always an extent of injury and scarring which went a bit beyond even those treatments and Mana did not feel like the kind of girl who would sit around the village for years, visiting the hospital just to remove the scars she could easily hide from her audience.</p><p>"It's fine, nobody will fall for you for your chest anyway, it'll be because of your smile and cucumber cheeks"! Kiyomi grinned with a manner of monkey-like smile that was more akin to Meiko's as she pulled on Mana's cheek teasingly. The magician fought back valiantly with a storm of playful slaps causing Kiyomi's pinching forces to retreat from their foolish venture of pinching the magician's cheeks.</p><p>"That was one impressive jutsu you used at the end, something like that doesn't just come up within one week. You've likely been practicing it for a while, how come you've never used it? It'd have helped us so much"! Kiyomi jealously laughed out, commending Mana on a great addition to her arsenal of techniques.</p><p>"Yeah, I had the concept in mind since the training in the Sun Disc arena in the Wind Country. Still, it was far too early to use it until now. I don't like to use that word but… It was kind of useless until just a few days ago. It's a defensive very close range technique transferred through touch so I had to polish it to the point where I wouldn't need any hand seals or excessive concentration to pull it off. It only reached that state very recently, even though I was forced to use it a couple of times in its imperfect state", Mana calmly explained.</p><p>"Well, we've done about as much as we can. You'll be moved to the Konoha Hospital now", the senior medical ninja informed the two teammates with a softened tone as even her strict heart was crumbling in front of the sisterly bond between the two genin girls.</p><p>"Yeah, I think I feel pulsing pain in my chest now…" Mana clutched her messy and stinky, molten flesh wound.</p><p>"Well, you did cauterize it with… I'm not even honestly sure what", the woman shrugged, "Humans usually don't just melt like this, I'm not sure just what that temperature you've exposed yourself to was and how much you've lowered your own defenses to cauterize the wound. That's for smarter heads than mine to figure out and deal with. You want a lollipop"?</p><p>"I'm a big girl already", Mana pouted, answering the woman's kind stare. After a pair of moments of pouting, the magician swiped the candy from the woman's clutches before stumbling to the wheelchair and letting the medical assistant remove her from the infirmary and begin rolling her down to the door, from where she'd be taken to the hospital.</p><p>"You look really… Down. What did those guys tell you after the match"? Mana wondered giving Kiyomi a warm look, one that invited the Yamanaka to share her feelings but didn't presume to be entitled to be shared anything with.</p><p>"They… Just asked me to wait and see the next match, you know, they didn't want the next possible competitor wandering around oblivious to the fact they'll need to compete in fifteen minutes", Kiyomi shook her palms at Mana with an attempt to defuse the magician's worries.</p><p>"That doesn't sound like something that'd claim the competitive spirit of Yamanaka Kiyomi, the poster child of the entire Yamanaka clan elite, trained by the greatest of the Yamanaka Resort", Mana noted.</p><p>"Yeah, that doesn't… I'm fighting next", Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Really? Against whom? Partnered with whom"? Mana's curiosity made her jump up to the point where she inconvenienced the medical assistant transporting her.</p><p>"Oh, no one important. Don't worry, my partner is… Well, you haven't met him in the Forest, you were encased in crystal by that point, he's really strong. He'll be of great assistance, I'm sure"! Kiyomi quickly attempted to defuse the situation once again. Still feeling a little bit uneasy, Mana let herself get taken to the door, from where she was picked up by a duo of medical ninja with easy carrying seats attached to their backs.</p><hr/><p>After the party of medical ninja carrying Mana and a pair of other injured examinees left to Konohagakure Hospital, Kiyomi sighed heavily before placing her hands on her hips and slowly turning around and beginning a tedious and worrisome walk to the gym hall.</p><p>In retrospect, maybe Mana would've wanted to know that Kiyomi got the bad end of the draw and ended up needing to face a team that included Doma Nacasa of Team Phobos, the third member of the team Mana was so worried about. From what Kiyomi could gather from the bits and pieces Mana let her know, also, the biggest asshole out of the three, or at least, the most vocal one.</p><p>Then again, everything had to be translated from the original angle it came from – Mana's angle. Kiyomi didn't particularly feel any animosity towards a young man so enthusiastic about serving the best interests of his own village. Even if that placed him directly on a crash course against her, the Yamanaka could respect that. What else did matter besides the village? The Feudal Lord, maybe. The entire country, possibly…</p><p>Either way, sometimes Mana's moral principles really made things too murky to understand. The girl had a moral code and a way to see the world. That was respectable enough. It was just that this code was not too mature. She involved so many different variables and needless worries, problems of all sorts and sizes and degrees of ridiculous. This exam was somehow vitally important to her, for whatever reason, a dumb moral principle and her own self-drawn image of some childish "hero" she tried to become.</p><p>"Then again, maybe that sort of devotion to the exam is admirable in of itself", Kiyomi smiled while thinking to herself as she entered the gym hall and walked up to the completely empty corner that was previously occupied by her team. Now it felt so… Empty. Mana was probably already being rushed to get her treatment, Kiyomi wouldn't be surprised if Hanasaku-sensei just up and left after shutting down Quill B's hopes of killing Kres-T, feeling bored by the exam at this point. The woman did get bored rather quickly by things she had to see over and over again…</p><p>"Meiko", Kiyomi left the most worrisome for the end. Every time that the blonde thought about the grisly vision of the blacksmith charging in to face off against someone using the Third Gate and its bloody consequences it made her shiver. Kiyomi's care for Meiko was different compared to the worries she felt for Mana, burning hot to an almost illogical degree and choking up.</p><p>Kiyomi had to be snapped out from her daydreaming by a nearby standing Konohagakure ninja. Blushed, after apologizing with a bow of her head she ran up onto the stage and joined her partner – Jekleifer Kaguya from Team Corundum, someone who went from being a short-term opposing force to becoming a partner she would have to count on. There was simply no other way, her opponents were too strong to just power through by her lonesome.</p><p>"You just turn around and walk aside. I'll take care of those two all by myself easily"! The towering Zahafbit of Team Pahlavi bravely declared after raising his fist all the way up and shoving it up in Doma's face. Clearly looking annoyed by the idiotic confidence of his teammate, yet choosing not to clash with it just yet, Doma withdrew and calmly approached the tag scroll.</p><p>"Do you know this Zahafbit's abilities and fighting style"? Jekleifer wondered, feeling too familiar with Kiyomi and Team Hokage to go through the formal introductions.</p><p>"Sorry, I can recall Mana mentioning running into this guy's team, she probably knew it but… I forgot to ask her", Kiyomi played with her hair like a spoiled brat, clearly, she did not just "forget". She just did not want to talk to Mana about the opponents she'd be facing and be forced to either lie to a friend who was like Kiyomi's little sister at times or confess about having to face Doma Nacasa of Team Phobos and then make Mana worry all throughout her stay in the hospital. Something like that could not have been good for one's health…</p><p>"Well then, how shall we play it? As I recall you were the leader of your team, weren't you"? Jekleifer raised an eyebrow, clearly looking disappointed by Kiyomi's act, choosing to take it for granted.</p><p>"If memory serves, your abilities are actively hurting you too. However, yours is still one of the most powerful bloodlines in this hall. I say I wear both of those guys down, not switch. I let them eliminate me while I let them switch, again and again, then, when they're both weakened and treating the fight as already theirs – you do what you do best", Kiyomi pitched her idea in an uneasy mumble.</p><p>"I may have underestimated you before. If anything, your maturity and mind are matching that of a chuunin already", Jekleifer nodded submissively before walking back to the tag scroll and placing his left hand on it, waiting for when preparations would be completed and the fight could've started again on the newly rebuilt arena.</p><p>After both seconds tagged out and got sealed up in the sealing dimension, Kiyomi rubbed her itchy nose in nervousness as she was eyeing her opponent.</p><p>"I bet you say that to all the girls", she mumbled to herself just to keep her spirits up before a tough and purposefully a bit suicidal battle.</p>
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<a name="section0349"><h2>349. The Flaws Of Apexness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi carefully observed her opponent. Without a doubt he'd have noticed her last name when the match was announced, even if he was numb-skulled enough not to have recorded that, Kiyomi's ridiculously flashy blond hair and her bright blue eyes were a dead giveaway of her Yamanaka bloodline. He will know what she is capable of, he will know that one missed hijutsu will lead to a loss and he will be careful.</p><p>"Or he could just go right ahead and try the Summoning Jutsu", Kiyomi ironically thought to herself as she saw her opponent reaching in for that very thing.</p><p>Kiyomi dashed in. Feeling grateful for all the close range training and overall improvement to her non-ninjutsu related fighting skills during the week of training. She could feel how lightly her each movement made her, the air picking up and rustling her hair and her clothes, pressing them tightly against her skin and the back of her head as she blitzed in, smacking her left elbow to the wrist of Zahafbit's right arm and stopping his hand seal mid-way.</p><p>A strong smack to the side of his neck, the towering summoner appeared to white out blank from that blow alone but the blonde simply couldn't risk him waking up from the dizziness and punish her bold close range advances with anything he still had to show. Another barrage of quick chops to the exposed neck and a push kick to the side of his knee before another palm strike straight to his nose, just as he recovered and tried to get back up and respond. That last strike may have been borrowed from Mana's arsenal but the magician was not anywhere near to be able to see it and call Kiyomi out on it. All the sparring they did in the Yamanaka resort seemed to be mutually beneficial.</p><p>Zahafbit shot his hands up, palms to the ground and pushed his body back into a rather impressive back vault. Kiyomi just informed the young man that she will not just let him do whatever and that he had to play it smarter if he was to pull off his Summoning Jutsu. Blood still dripped from the thumb he bit into, that may have been dangerous, as he would now take even less time to complete his string of seals…</p><p>The young brute reached in for his collar, pulling on his long cloak and removing it with a single motion. Kiyomi followed his movements carefully before realizing what he was doing, once again, the Yamanaka moved in to counter the tricky attempt to hide behind the casual act of removing one's clothes for lighter and unrestricted movement.</p><p>Kiyomi's arms grabbed the large wrists of the summoning ninja and kept him from completing their strings, for a brief moment the two toyed around with the floating cloak. Zahafbit attempted to wrap it around Kiyomi's head before delivering a barrage of cheap blows while she was blinded, Kiyomi attempted to tie her opponent's hands in it, restraining his ability to weave hand seals.</p><p>The blonde delivered a softening push kick that made Zahafbit flinch for just long enough for her to jump onto his shoulders and wrap the long torn cloth around his wrist before she dived down, wrapping another string around the man's throat and putting him into a neck and hand lock.</p><p>Kiyomi tightened the lock, again, then again. She was ready to struggle down there for the whole half an hour needed to choke out an ordinary lower ranked ninja to the verge of passing out. Zahafbit grunted in pain as Kiyomi controlled and was continuously wearing out both his wrist and his throat, which effectively provided air and therefore the source of strength for his entire body.</p><p>With a strong roar, Zahafbit used his other arm to help him tear his cloak apart before reaching in for Kiyomi's own throat. The brutish genin lifted Kiyomi up and despite the girl's rapid attempts to smack at the soft spots on his wrist, managed to slam her around a couple of times before kicking her rolling away.</p><p>"Those kicks were strong", Kiyomi coughed up, feeling the faint taste of blood in her mouth. "I shouldn't take too many of those or try matching strength with him or I'll be in trouble".</p><p>She was lucky that instead of keeping up the tug of war with Kiyomi's physical strength, the genin reached in to tear the cloth. Had Zahafbit gotten the other free hand on her earlier, with the cloth still being a factor, she would have ended up in an even stickier close range situation.</p><p>Kiyomi grinned, feeling a strand of her hair shiny blond hair irritatingly rubbing against her fingers. She may have needed to approach this big guy up close one more time. It was a gamble but one with a very pleasant possible payoff, if things went her way.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress relaxed, letting her body completely go numb before flexing all of the muscles requiring for a charge forward in one quick flex, maximizing her movement speed. Her discus elbow missed the large youth entirely as her hand brushed only against floating torn coat of Zahafbit.</p><p>"Substitution"! She instantly realized as the large genin used his torn clothes for substitution just to give him a brief time advantage to squeeze his hand seals into.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu"! Zahafbit triumphantly declared as each of his past failures lead to a successful summoning technique return – his first failure helped him draw the blood from his thumb, his second one provided him with an object for substitution and briefly weakened Kiyomi.</p><p>A towering red and yellow patterned spider with striped black and golden legs spread out wide and holding his entire frame by supporting his body while using the out of the arena walls of the gym hall for support. Kiyomi wondered why this kaiju-esque monstrosity would ever be one's summon of choice in such a small and tight arena.</p><p>Zahafbit's massive spider lowered its diamond shaped belly lower, placing it down against the out of ring floor as a large eye opened up on the lower part of its abdomen. The bulky genin once again initiated a bold attempt at completing a string of hand seals.</p><p>Kiyomi placed her hands in the specific Yamanaka hand seal position. She had the advantage, her opponent may have started performing hand seals faster and had a slightly superior hand seal weaving speed but she only needed to perform one.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance"! Kiyomi shouted out, finally unleashing her risky roll of a dice. She wouldn't be sending her consciousness away like it was in the case of her weaker jutsu, but, as a B-Rank hijutsu, this version cost significantly more chakra to perform so it was a risky move all in of itself.</p><p>Zahafbit's body blurred and moved sideways, it was a nice read, as irritated and shocked Kiyomi was from being read so easily by her opponent, she had to admit that much. The spider resting behind Zahafbit shook as if overtaken by chills, feeling foreign chakra entering its primitive nervous system, the arachnid raised its front legs as a warning but it was all in vain.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Speyeder"! Zahafbit grinned after completing his interrupted string of hand seals. The colossal eye located on the abdomen of the arachnid opened up and lit up in quite a light show. A bright green flash began seeping into Kiyomi's eyes and a creeping up feeling of falling and the ground collapsing beneath her feet began to overtake all of the other thoughts. Kiyomi was slipping away into unconsciousness, feeling that sensation of helplessness extended over what seemed like an eternity.</p><p>"Release"! A commanding voice roared out in the darkness. For a brief moment, Kiyomi wondered whose voice it was. Then, just as her sight, smell and other senses began returning, she began feeling her own chakra pulsing and racing its way through her network and the control over her own body and mind returning as well, the Yamanaka heiress realized that it was her own body and mind that issued a command.</p><p>A tremendous shock of pain and gravity shock hit Kiyomi right in the knees, the girl bent down, managing to grab hold of her knees with her hands just barely in time before planting her face all over the arena. The chakra strain of cancelling that genjutsu was tremendous, twice the cost of any jutsu Kiyomi had ever performed which meant that it must've been a high ranking illusion, to dispel it one had to match the amount of alien chakra inserted into their system and then some so Kiyomi tired herself out quite worryingly right there.</p><p>"Hmmm. That's impressive", Zahafbit grumbled, looking both sorry and a little bit impressed. It was not an emotion this youth showed often as his face looked weird caught in that weird expression. "To identify that you were under an illusion and then have the chakra needed to break out of it…"</p><p>"Next time, when you're trying to surprise someone with genjutsu, don't name your genjutsu starting with Genjutsu", Kiyomi snapped back at her opponent. Truth be told, she herself had basic knowledge and skill in genjutsu, she just never really applied herself in that area since before meeting Mana she kind of had to compensate and perform other roles in her past team. After meeting Mana, such skill would have been irrelevant as Mana was an innovator and a genius in the field. Kiyomi spread her specializations all too wide to be able to match someone as focused on improving that one field as the stage magician was.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress could not let Zahafbit perform that jutsu again, under no circumstances! It took such a massive toll on Kiyomi's chakra pool even right now, at the beginning of the battle to dispel this illusion. By using her most potent Yamanaka hijutsu, then dispelling Zahafbit's illusion, Kiyomi wasted nearly half of her chakra already. She needed to pull all the stops. No hijutsu, no matter the strain or the risk, was riskier than letting that illusion hit Kiyomi again!</p><p>He used that spider to initiate the genjutsu and yet… Kiyomi had invaded its nervous system with her Mind Body Disturbance. It was supposed to have been under her complete control and attacked Zahafbit by smashing him with its massive front legs and spitting web, poison, acid, or whatever it was that dripped from its detestable mouth right at its master.</p><p>Then again… It was a spider whose mind Kiyomi had invaded. It was no insect but an arachnid, yet it may have just had too primitive of a nervous system to be assaulted through illusions or mental ninjutsu. Kiyomi could vaguely remember hearing that observation from Mana during their training together and seeing refusal to target such feeble targets for illusions by some other genjutsu users. So it was Zahafbit himself, and only him, that needed to be hit by hijutsu. That could have been troublesome!</p><p>Zahafbit's hands once again started rushing through hand seals, aiming to initiate his illusion. At least he was a one trick pony, had he had more summons to aid him or more techniques to quickly identify and counter, he'd have been a fairly troublesome opponent.</p><p>Kiyomi reached out for her ninja pouch the moment that Zahafbit's arms weaved the first hand seal, she threw a quick pair of kunai knives at her opponent to interrupt his movement and hand seals before she could plan further ahead. Kiyomi's ninja tools got easily swatted aside, that left a shallow cut on the back of Zahafbit's palm but he managed to outwit Kiyomi's attempt to exploit Zahafbit's blockhead nature. Had the genin simply leaped aside again, using his impressive speed and reading Kiyomi's moves, he would have let the Yamanaka hit his spider right in the abdomen eye, disabling its ability to use Speyeder.</p><p>"Genjutsu:…" time seemed to slow down when those fateful words left Zahafbit's mouth, Kiyomi's entire body was overflowing with adrenaline and raced to perform the actions she had started before those fearsome words were spoken. The Yamanaka had launched a handful of explosive tags in the air and had begun weaving hand seals for a little ninjutsu of her own. Now it was just a race of time, her own ninjutsu, against the time it would take for Zahafbit to finish that sentence and for Speyeder to set in and overwhelm Kiyomi's mind completely.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Speyeder" Zahafbit shouted out.</p><p>"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar" Kiyomi responded, racing with her opponent, not too long after.</p><p>The blinding emerald glow once again blasted its salad shine onto Kiyomi's eyes, after the initial needle-like poke of pain to her ocular receptors, soon the illusion completely hypnotized the Yamanaka. Just as the blonde felt at ease and about to fall into a comfortable and warm sleep, a powerful blast of both the fiery blaze sight, bitter smoke smell and the ear-sieging shockwave noise variety made her snap out of it. Making the girl shake her head in a desperate attempt of shaking off the lingering smolders of the illusion still in her network.</p><p>A painful pulse emanated through Kiyomi's temples, making the Yamanaka rub them worryingly as her entire body felt an intensified tenfold pull of the gravitational forces. The answer was one of the two: either the forces of physics just decided to challenge the girl and change the gravitational pull of her world, or it was merely a way for her own body to relay the information of how strained she was.</p><p>Kiyomi tumbled onto her knees, her arm muscles tensed up as she clearly struggled to keep her body standing. She had seen similar signs of fatigue in others. So far she had only the shortness of breath, muscle pain and general feeling of exhaustion. There was no failure in chakra augmentations, failure of chakra control or the black bags under her eyes or bloodshot rings around them. And yet… It was still so difficult to just stand up and keep going.</p><p>"It's just a matter of time…" Zahafbit grunted, moving away from his body-shielding pose and trying to look confident in front of his opponent. "You've clearly hit the nail in the head in attempting to settle this – you know that one successful use of Speyeder signals your loss but you can't avoid it forever".</p><p>He was talking. That was good. That meant he needed to talk, he needed to stall for time. Those bruises and tears of open flesh and bone all over his muscles betrayed just how much damage he had taken. Sure, it was just grazes and bruises, but it was something. It looked painful and on top of that, it showed something very interesting to Kiyomi…</p><p>"So that's what it's like. To know, to see your limits but choose to move past them. To try at the very least…" Kiyomi thought to herself, choosing to completely ignore her opponent's deceitful web of tempting her to end this test. "You two have hit this wall so often, you move past it with such ease that you make it look easy but… It isn't, is it"?</p><p>Zahafbit looked back at his spider, the massive arachnid danced with its front legs aggressively shaking the whole arena and cracking several tiles, bumping through several holes in them. The guy may have been a pretty cocky prick, but he did display certain care for the spider, even going so much as to not move away from an upcoming barrage of rising ground pillars carrying explosive tags stuck onto them – one of Kiyomi's more classic combinations.</p><p>"You look like you're beginning to hit a wall there. If you try to dispel the illusion now – you may really begin to choke yourself out then. It's always a risk, approaching your limits, not knowing how far you can truly go before you pass out", Zahafbit tried, again and again, to intimidate Kiyomi into surrendering. He talked some mean game. Maybe, three or five years ago Kiyomi would've bought it too…</p><p>"You're right", Kiyomi finally gathered enough strength, enough will to keep going and stood back on just one knee. "I just saw a young lady, very dear to me, push herself to her very limits. Past them even. Sacrifice her own body even if it meant that she may as well never walk again! All not to win, not to rank up, but to just prove she's where she belongs to be, to prove someone else wrong and punch them in the face".</p><p>"How closely have you been observing the fight of that magician, really"? Zahafbit taunted Kiyomi with a shrug, trying to mock how her recounting of Mana's fight barely even matched the truth.</p><p>"I'm not talking about Mana"! Kiyomi shouted out, "Although she also has things to teach me, even though she keeps treating me as if I'm her older sister. She's someone who always counts on the outcome she wants, betting it all and going all in on it, not accepting any other outcomes".</p><p>"What of it? Those two are crippled and passed out right now, hardly very fitting role models", Zahafbit shook his head, mocking her friends again. Somehow, Kiyomi was strangely calm about it.</p><p>"True, but I wish to be a chuunin, a squad leader. Truth be told, I have played this role in our team for a short while now. Do you really think that after seeing my teammates, those I have lead, give their absolute best and more, I'll accept anything less from myself"!? Kiyomi finally lost her cool. Still, this was no blind anger, this was hype and it most certainly was not blind.</p><p>"Suit yourself, as far as my Speyeder goes, it only takes one to knock you out", Zahafbit grumbled as he placed his hands in a preparation stance of hand seal weaving.</p><p>"Oh, but one is all you have, isn't it"? Kiyomi smiled, her eyes may have been sunken under her unruly blond hair but her hyped grin was evident from all the way under it.</p><p>"What? How much do you underestimate my training to suggest I am only capable of three shots at a B-Rank genjutsu"? Zahafbit grinned, it was a vain and scared smile though, Kiyomi could see it now.</p><p>"I'm not talking about you", Kiyomi slowly lifted her arm up, her finger was pointing at the repulsive head of the spider, snapping its large jaws above the arena, due to its size looking too clunky to be able to reach the Yamanaka with them. "I'm talking about your arachnid".</p><p>Zahafbit shut his mouth, his smile was changed by a desperate expression of a young vain man grinding his teeth in rage.</p><p>"It's a creature of nature, it hunts using that illusion. Why would it have enough chakra for a second, leave alone third shot, if one is all it takes for any prey, small or large, to fall asleep", Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"That's what you're basing your final strategy on? Presumption?" Zahafbit bellowed.</p><p>"Oh, no! It wasn't my mind putting it together that told that to me, it was you looking at your partner with such fear after the second shot. You've never done two in a row, have you? You're wondering if you can pull it off, you're treading new grounds threatening me with a third one", Kiyomi concluded.</p><p>"No! I just care about my partner, that's all"! Zahafbit lied.</p><p>"Huh? An ass like you couldn't help but care only about yourself. The only reason you care about that spider is the same reason a jock cares about their geek pet. The geek gets them through Projectile Trajectory classes", Kiyomi pouted her lips. "You've never once even referred to the damned thing by its real name, can you even remember it at this point"?</p><p>"So come, fire away with your third and final shot. Let's settle this already, I have your partner to beat up still", Kiyomi punched her other hand with her knuckle menacingly. Just this time, just this once, it was Zahafbit, the one who usually acted like the apex predator of genin, who looked sweaty and afraid. People who won through one shot jutsu usually couldn't handle the tension of betting everything they had. They felt so often like they had so much else they were holding back, that the very prospect of pulling all of that out petrified them.</p>
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<a name="section0350"><h2>350. The Premature Conclusion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zahafbit put his hands together, preparing to execute the third strike of his Speyeder illusion. His face was sweating, similarly to Kiyomi's. His hands were slow and heavy, compared to how they moved before. It was not tough to see that the strain of using both the Summoning Jutsu to call for such a giant creature as well as repeatedly bashing his head against the wall with a B-Rank illusion was weighing on him as well, not to the same extent as it was on the spider itself, however.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Speyeder"! Zahafbit shouted out, slower, in a more husky and tired tone and with an odd expression on his face. The expression that a rat had when wandering into a maze, knowing that it'd likely result in its death or it getting lost but still wanting that cheese and counting on that slim chance of the fact that maybe the unfortunate will not be happening.</p><p>Kiyomi made three quick hand seals with her hands once the illusion of her opponent was concluded and Zahafbit was locked down in just standing still and controlling the stream of chakra that was transformed into light and transmitted through the target's body.</p><p>"Transformation Jutsu"! Kiyomi chanted casually, wasting a minuscule speck of chakra on a technique taught to Academy Students.</p><p>After a poof of smoke covered the girl, before quickly dissipating, Zahafbit opened his jaw wide. He may have expected Kiyomi on once again counting on overcoming his illusion through dispelling it, something that'd have cost her tremendous effort and even more of her already sliced in half and depleted even further chakra pool.</p><p>He may have suspected an attempt by Kiyomi to launch ninja tools at him or the spider, to attempt one of her Yamanaka hijutsu and try to hit it this time. One thing he did not expect was for his opponent to transform into a large anchor and just nonchalantly wait out the emerald glow of the illusion, due to her anchor'y nature being unable to see the emerald light, therefore - harmless to the light-based illusion. Kiyomi waited, while still transformed, for a couple of moments before returning to her original form.</p><p>Zahafbit's hands weighed down, swinging weightlessly. His head sunk to the bottom of where his muscular neck allowed it to go. As the youth's handy giant spider dissipated into smoke, leaving large marks and grazes over where it had scratched into the walls and the arena floor to stand upright, he felt completely defeated.</p><p>"It's just a matter of time", Kiyomi grinned confidently. "You look like you're beginning to hit the wall there", the blonde teased her opponent with his own words again.</p><p>"Transformation Jutsu", Zahafbit chuckled bitterly to himself, "Transformation Jutsu"! He shouted out before he lashed out, rushing at Kiyomi with impending physical attacks. He was smarter than to throw the fight away.</p><p>This fighting mode defied and eliminated surrender as a viable option. It may have been reasonable to surrender in a one on one match when there was no hope of beating one's opponent and it was apparent. In this match, one had to maximize the strain that their fight placed on their opponent, surrendering would have wasted potential battle damage and exhaustion that fighting placed on someone. Too much depended on one's refusal to surrender in such a match…</p><p>Kiyomi gracefully stepped aside from a powerful downwards cross intended to punch the breath out of her body so that Zahafbit could properly work on her face. The blonde responded with a pair of quick chops and palm strikes where she found the most offensively gaping openings. It did not hit hard, but it annoyed her opponent more and an enraged opponent was easier to read.</p><p>Kiyomi kicked her opponent straight in the gut, bending him over and letting her flip over her front and lock her legs around Zahafbit's throat in a reverse choke hold. As she hung downward, tightly wrapping her thighs around her opponent's face, she could freely overwhelm the tired brute with strikes.</p><p>That was what she did. Kiyomi just continued to punch, after one hand fired off into a punch, the next one was cocked back and ready to strike again. A barrage of blindingly fast chain punches, unaugmented, just pure physical strength and the fruit of Kiyomi's training with her uncle's assistants. This was the scenario she was preparing herself for – her hijutsu were too slow or predictable, all she had to rely on was her taijutsu.</p><p>Zahafbit roared out loudly, gripping hold of Kiyomi in a lightning fast bear hug and forcing her to scream out in pain as her legs got painfully caught out of place and diagonally locked in the bear hug. The genin gained momentum and speed, rushing forward and diving outside of the barrier – heading straight for the ring out. Kiyomi kept on pummeling her opponent's body but Zahafbit was approaching dangerously close to that final diving leap outside. He was too close even for Kiyomi's hijutsu to connect. She only had time for a pair of hand seals now!</p><p>"I'll eliminate us both!" Zahafbit huffed out loud, taking a strong tackling leap outside the arena and landing in a body slam that almost dislocated and broke Kiyomi's legs straight outside the arena.</p><p>"Contestant Zahafbit, ring out", the overseer ruled.</p><p>"What the fuck? I tackled her outside of the ring"! Zahafbit objected after pulling his hands off of Kiyomi and then looking at her again. Blood was seeping from the kunoichi's thighs, hands and her cheek as steel wire was cutting into her body.</p><p>"Stwing Weeling Jutfu" she wheezed, still biting into the steel wire. Much to his shock, Zahafbit realized that Kiyomi wasn't really touching the floor outside the ring but hanging by a literal bunch of threads, like a puppet, on steel wire attached to his own tag scroll that was floating immobile through an unclear ninjutsu technique used by the exam staff.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu! You dare mock me with Academy Techniques again"!? Zahafbit snorted in pure rage before throwing a powerful downwards hook and smashing Kiyomi into the ground, tearing all of the steel strings apart.</p><p>"Contestant Zahafbit's team is disqualified for attacking an examinee after elimination. The winning team – Jekleifer Kaguya from Team Corundum, Iwagakure and Yamanaka Kiyomi from Team Hokage, Konohagakure", the overseer ruled.</p><p>"W-Wait"! Zahafbit tried to argue but a whole mess came up as he did. Kiyomi rolled on the ground, writhing in pain as her gums and several loose teeth bled profusely and made her spit up blood from time to time. She would not have minded a little bit of help, truthfully, and it felt like a whole eternity until that help came.</p><p>"Doma will be really pissed that he got eliminated due to his teammate losing his shit", Gasco Patura of Team Phobos thundered out with his husky voice as staff members helped Kiyomi get up and get to the infirmary and the party passed Team Phobos by.</p><p>"True, but it's a little funny, don't you think. The second most powerful genin in the building getting eliminated this way", Stea chuckled to herself before answering Kiyomi's worried glare with a calming and cheerful glance of her own.</p><hr/><p>Mana sighed, looking through the hospital window. The day was turning into the night outside as corrupting gloom claimed more and more of the daily light in the sky. By now, the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams must have been already over and yet she had not heard anything that transpired there. Obviously, the finals would be made into a big deal, with the big breakthrough of television as of late, and movie theatres it would be broadcasted pretty wide. Much more would gather to see it live…</p><p>How did Kiyomi do, just what is Meiko's current condition… So many questions plagued the magician and yet… There were other troubles, ones of the more emotional kind plaguing her internally. Kouta did not come. Sure, he was not allowed to be present in the hall during the semi-finals as he was not an examinee anymore but he was allowed in the hospital. Several other Konoha genin present in the hospital received a lot of attention, not from their team but from their past classmates in the Academy and other people who held them dear.</p><p>In a way, Mana felt like a foreigner in her own village. Sure, as Konoha's Sorceress, a stage magician, she could gather full halls of people and entertain them pretty well but… As a ninja, she seemed to be either completely unseen or outright disliked due to her Ninja Way or just the way she did things.</p><p>Maybe this was a sign, a sign that it was enough. A sign that she wasn't quite ninja material and should've devoted her life just to entertain people on stage? Then again, she did win her match. If she could have advanced onwards, lead her own squads of ninja into missions and even eventually become jounin and saved lives while doing it… Wasn't it her responsibility to walk that cold and gloomy road to its very end?</p><p>"Yo"! A familiar rugged face, speaking with an oddly familiar Kumogakure dialect entered the ward. Eiju had changed plenty, his hair had been groomed to be tidier and was combed backward. He had a butter colored stubble and was dressed more formally, which in ninja terms was to say more casually, compared to the more militaristic outfits of most medical ninja who were ready to be called on into extreme impromptu missions at any time.</p><p>"Hey, Eiju", Mana smiled softly, "You feeling OK? You look… Tired".</p><p>"Well, you're the one in the literal hospital bed with a pretty wicked scar on your chest, love, I know a losing battle of "compare the scars" when I see one", Eiju played it off, as he was known to do, before popping some pills out of his front white jacket pocket.</p><p>"Since you're visiting this late, it must mean Kiyomi was sent here too. That means her battle went awry. Is she OK"? Mana sat up worryingly.</p><p>"Wow, I forgot when talking to you became… Just standing in the doorway and letting you read me. I could've taken this long because it's been a pretty pissy day what with all those teens almost killing themselves in handfuls"! Eiju sighed before dropping onto shoddy hospital chair and handling it to better fit his confident and cool sitting pose.</p><p>Mana kept on staring at a figure from her past awkwardly, with almost scolding eyes that she herself used to get as a child when her mother scolded her.</p><p>"Yeah, she's been here. Apart from some missing teeth and several of tears and lacerations on her hands and feet from steel wire – she is just peachy, won the match by herself by having the other bloke break the rules or something. Taking her away from that redhead's ward was a hassle though…" Eiju looked through the window, Mana imagined that her friend must have been glad that the ward was dark and that the magician could not see him look embarrassed after being figured out.</p><p>"Meiko's ward? What's the matter? Is everything alright with her"? Mana jumped up and tried to get back up on her feet. It was not a difficult feat since she had gone through plenty of Mystical Palm sessions that day and drank way too many pain numbing herbs teas.</p><p>"Wait, you didn't know? Well… That's gonna be a doozy to explain. The redhead's fine, won't be walking for a week or four but... Kiyomi...", Eiju smacked himself in the forehead before stroking his hand up his rich hairline and messing it all up. Not that the young man appeared to care as his workday was pretty much over already. "You see, when a girl loves another girl very very much… Ugh… No, wait…"</p><p>"Wait… Kiyomi is in…" Mana blinked a couple of times rapidly. "How does that even…"</p><p>Eiju whinnied his erratic laughter out. He was eating Mana's inexperience and childish naivete up. "You know, for an advocate of love for life and an opponent to violence, you sure beat a lot of people up and are quick to judge love", he coughed out, still laughing.</p><p>"No, no" Mana shook her palms wildly, with a face as surprised as it was confused, now it was her who felt glad that only the starry sky and the third quarter moon lit up her ward as the lights in the outside corridors were slowly going out, one by one. "I mean… It's fine, I just… Didn't think about it that way… Kiyomi and Meiko, that is".</p><p>"Well, what do you know, traveled around the world and still hasn't seen shit. Weren't you visiting Otogakure that one time? That place is the queer capital of the world, well, they don't call it that… I mean… I do, everyone gets pretty pissed when I do so... Then again, people do get pissed when you tell the truth, whatever, I'm just mumbling at this point", Eiju mocked Mana's lack of experience again, something that was becoming a habit of their interactions as, for some reason, whenever they met, they'd always have a short talk of those matters.</p><p>"Fair warning though, love, don't call her out on it, or anything. She'll clock you in the face. Learned that one the painful, personal way", Eiju rubbed his right cheek. "Anyways, I recall us talking about some bloke that time, how's that going? Surprised he isn't kneeling by your bed, singing praises like it's your deathbed, which it isn't"! It looked that Eiju felt really obligated to affirm that last part after Mana's blank and pale face after he mentioned it.</p><p>"Oh, uh… He broke it apart. I hurt him too much", Mana mumbled under her own nose, just loud enough for her friend to hear, it may have still been a wound spraying fountains of blood but the magician didn't want to repeat those words again so she had to force it out in a way that she'd be properly heard the first time.</p><p>"Oh, wow, people usually don't use those personal blame taking mannerisms in those kinds of things. They say "it didn't work out" or shite like that, even if it's all their fault entirely", Eiju rubbed his nose awkwardly, realizing he hit a sensitive nail in the head.</p><p>"Speaking from personal experience"? Kiyomi mumbled in the doorway, sounding quite scornful at the blond doctor who jumped back on his feet, fixed his tie and quickly rushed out of the ward, after offering quick farewells to both girls.</p><p>"Oh… I thought you'd have left home", Mana mumbled out.</p><p>"Yeah, but I have a feeling that sensei of ours hadn't come to visit you today", Kiyomi sighed before entering Mana's ward and sitting down where Eiju was sitting recently.</p><p>"I don't think if you noticed but she doesn't like me all that much. Call me paranoid, but I think it has something to do with me risking the life of her favorite student in that forced wedding situation in the Land of Waves", Mana sighed remembering another painful wound still bleeding in her heart after all this time.</p><p>"That's not what I meant. She was supposed to brief you about how the semi-finals went and about the finals five weeks from now", Kiyomi replied with irritation, initially Mana felt like her friend was just in a foul mood but it appeared that her ire was not aimed at the magician but rather at the neglectful sensei of theirs.</p><p>"Oh… So how did your fight go"? Mana tried to make this situation a bit less of a formal briefing and more like two friends talking on a cold season evening.</p><p>"Not as brutal as that punching contest of your crazy partner's but… We won", Kiyomi waved her hand at it.</p><p>"I'm pretty sure, when things go like Eiju described them going, the scientific term is "you won"", Mana smiled. "I heard something about Roh-D's battle being a bit wild, was it really that brutal"?</p><p>"Girl, you've no goddamn idea! Both Oto-B and Roh-D spent their substitutions early on and had to play safe, right? Except they didn't, they just leaped at each other and started doing their thing, without bothering to defend themselves. Roh-D kept punching, hammering and blasting that chubby bastard but somehow the fatso persevered and after just lobbing scythe combination after scythe combination came out on top. It was beyond brutal"! Kiyomi shook her head as her mind sank back into the awe she was observing those two just standing in front of each other and throwing wild punches and scythe slashes at their opponent.</p><p>"OK, so what about the Chuunin Exams, how did the semi finals go, what about the finals"? Mana finally let her friend proceed with what she wanted to tell her in the first place.</p><p>"Oh, so after you left, I was partnered with Jekleifer Kaguya, you won't know him, I beat this Zahafbit guy, one sided battle, absolutely no chance for him, trounced him completely. It was so sick that the overseer disqualified his whole team so then your home girl eliminated Doma Nacasa from Team Phobos without even confronting him", Kiyomi grinned with great confidence while giving Mana a thumb up.</p><p>"Uh-huh… I am feeling like you're slightly overselling your epic achievements but… For the sake of getting this done, please proceed, eliminating Doma is impressive though, even if it's the first time I hear about you facing Doma", Mana nodded before realizing the weight of the secret that Kiyomi withheld from her. The magician could put it together that it was "for her own sake" and so that Mana would not worry, still, she would've loved to know that Kiyomi would be fighting Doma Nacasa of Team Phobos in her next match back then…</p><p>"Okay, so then… Let's see… Tanko Shigin from the Ninja Academy days teamed up with Nanaba from Sugemi's team. Nanaba still hadn't fixed her arms but Shigin completely crushed both Quill B and Ripper Inaba teamed up together with his complete invincibility to actual damage ability. Inaba eliminated Shigin with a genjutsu which he cast using his stupid rhymes as a sound channel but Nana managed to finish the match by that point", Kiyomi recounted.</p><p>"Ummm… Okay, I don't remember Shigin being so strong, I think he was always kind of bullied and made fun of in the Academy", Mana scratched her chin before realizing that she may just end up facing him in the finals, "We may need to figure out how that ability of his works, it does sound powerful".</p><p>"So, then, in the final match, Yushijin – Kouta's hot as shit teammate teamed up with this Vinda bitch who used some sort of acidic water and burnt both Tolkre Guren, the guy who encased you in crystal back in the Forest of Death, and this Salnisa girl from Sunagakure who threw knives at people using her fan to create wind currents for them to fly through. They were both really badly burnt but I think they're OK now, chakra based acid is very easily removed and its wounds are much more manageable than chakra based fire", Kiyomi sighed after finishing to sum up the matches that Mana had missed.</p><p>"Okay, that's some pretty powerful examinees that proceeded to the finals. What are the match-ups"? Mana asked, feeling her heart pumping and breaking out of her chest, in moments like that she almost did not want to know.</p><p>"Oh… Ummm… Well…" Kiyomi was clearly quite uncomfortable to tell Mana the exact match up.</p><p>"I mean… You came here to tell me, right. If I don't know, it'll just be worse off for…" Mana tried to reason with her hesitant friend before Kiyomi just clenched her fists and shouted out, completely shutting Mana up for good.</p><p>"Stea Tesprea from Team Phobos, that's who you'll be facing in five weeks"!</p>
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<a name="section0351"><h2>351. The Silence Before The Tempest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning both Mana and Kiyomi went to see Meiko. Mana had not had the chance to see her friend while she was awake since the Chuunin Exams. The blacksmith appeared to be in a very odd mood that happened to change from time to time from one side of the radical emotional spectrum to another. When Mana and Kiyomi first entered the ward, the blacksmith was just blankly staring through the window. A moment later, she was stuffing her face with some chicken and rice like she had not a care in the world…</p><p>"So I lost, huh"? Meiko wheezed out with a husky tone.</p><p>"Yeah, but you did really well", Mana tried consoling her friend's doubts.</p><p>"You pushed yourself way too far though, Meiko. The medical ninja told me you may not walk for up to a whole week and even when you stand back up, it might take a couple of months until you're up on your feet and fighting like you used to", Kiyomi expressed her worries, pressing Meiko. This may have been the wrong approach in all the wrong ways. Then again, given what Mana heard last night this may have been understandable…</p><p>"I… I just tried being like you two. This Salnisa girl that had her acid burns treated here earlier told me you two plowed through your opponents all by yourself", Meiko gloomily jumbled some words up.</p><p>Mana sighed, "Look, the difference between ninja ranks is tremendous. A young genin is merely just a kid out of the Academy, by the time they become chuunin they're a legitimate threat to their entire world. Jounin are stronger than chuunin proportionately, Sannin and Kage level ninja blow even those amazing ninja away. It is said that a ninja who opens all Eight Gates is capable of competing with and beating a Kage level ninja, no matter their rank. The person you faced was someone who opened three out of the eight gates, still, that person didn't beat you – it was a draw between you two. You have nothing to be ashamed of".</p><p>Meiko just glared at Mana with wet shimmering eyes before jumping back to her food. The fact that she felt hungry again and wasn't just rolling around in her bed feeling pity for herself was something that relieved Mana greatly.</p><p>"So, these Team Phobos guys… Kiyomi told me yesterday you'll be facing that chick from that team, right? Got any plans yet?" Meiko wondered with a mouth full of rice before she got a chicken bone in her throat and, in a very messy manner, coughed it out.</p><p>"It's nothing, I'll think of something. I've got full five weeks for that, it's an exciting challenge really – I know her fighting style, now all I need to do is break through it", Mana dismissed her friend's worries. As simple and naïve Meiko was, even she knew that Mana's match-up five weeks from now was trouble. By confronting it and encouraging the magician to do the same she displayed more maturity than Mana did, who until now has pushed the grim thoughts of the upcoming match deeper down.</p><hr/><p>Once Mana returned home, her father turned to the door, his eyes blanked out before he jumped up on his feet and began pointing at Mana like he had seen a ghost. For a moment, the magician felt a bit confused and raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Who's this intruder in hospital-borrowed clothes"!? The man shouted out, "Someone call the Police Force"!</p><p>Mana's eyes softened before her little pouty lips turned into a warm smile.</p><p>"Very funny, dad".</p><p>"So, you're just going to disappear again then? Where are you headed off to now? Another country, another planet, another universe or dimension? I sure hope that place has mail"! Mana's father cheeked the magician again after turning off the wooden box he had for a television in this household and sitting down at the other end of the armchair.</p><p>"So you've heard", Mana closed her eyes, she kind of wanted to surprise her parents by relaying the news about her successful Chuunin Exams.</p><p>"Oh, yeah, plenty of my old comrades are working on keeping that whole thing running. They told me the whole thing, about how amazing my girl was, beating both opponents alongside her trusty rabbit pal… "Rabbit pal" was what I asked myself because I had no idea my little girl was hanging around with rabbits", father said.</p><p>Mana breathed in and out before dropping onto the armchair, closing her eyes and realizing that she was home. Nothing but the assignment five weeks from now…</p><p>"So, look, I know that they don't really let all the microbe sharing thing happen in the hospital…" father began a topic that was about to get really painful.</p><p>"Kouta broke it off with me", Mana sighed, pressing her hand against her closed eyes so that she did not erupt into a fit of tears. She did not want to talk about it but, honestly, she should have told her parents immediately after it happened. This was on her postponing doing what had to be done.</p><p>"Oh… That's odd. Oh well, that's his loss", father cut it silent for a while until it got awkward. "Don't worry, me and your mother cut it off multiple times, once for a seemingly unrepairable reason. In fact, ours was a relationship born out of some of the least functional properties there are so don't model yours after ours. What I'm trying to say is… Just don't think this is the end of the world".</p><p>"Dad… I've seen a colossal pirate man literally try to crush the world in between his hands, I kind of know what the end of the world looks like", Mana was glad to be able to successfully change the topic. "I think I'm going to go get a shower".</p><p>"Oh, that's not working, I sort of broke it with my clunky insensitive lumps of flesh and… Well… I'm not in any capacity to fix it", father looked at his scarred hands that were shaking just from the brief contact with open air and truly did not look fit for any sort of delicate labor.</p><p>"Oh… Well, I'll think of something. It's cold season, the lakes and rivers in the edge of the village are completely empty", Mana sighed.</p><p>"No, no… I think I found a pretty helpful concoction of herbs for my hands. This asthmatic and frail young bald man is selling them under the counter, he works night shifts on Wednesdays", father sighed. "So just wait until evening for all your showering needs, I'll be fixing plumbing like in my old days soon".</p><p>"I don't know, if that guy is that promising of a healer, he'd do something about his asthma, frailness, and baldness", Mana pouted, it was just her way of softly objecting about her father buying some unheard of medicine from some odd-looking men.</p><p>"Look, kid, I worked plenty of shifts watching the Konoha gates in my days. I also patrolled the village and with the regulations and the security in place, he couldn't sell anything less than stellar in quality and, therefore, sky-high in price in this village", father came back at the magician with a fairly solid argument. Smuggling something inside the village with all the barriers and Village Protection Services officers patrolling the streets would be too difficult for a reasonable profit to be made out of it.</p><hr/><p>A couple of days passed with Mana doing nothing in particular but recovering from after her grueling match in the semi-finals. By that time, the magician was preparing to train and was beginning to come up with a plan of doing so in a remarkable and efficient way. That was when she found out that Meiko was being released from the hospital, still unable to walk around but otherwise having completely recovered.</p><p>After the ordinary morning rituals, Mana rushed to the hospital to see her friend getting released and being sent back home. It was impossible to miss the blacksmith's parents waiting, especially the girl's father who, despite being a pretty massive brute all by himself, also had a very distinctive wheeled contraption with him.</p><p>Once Meiko was lead downstairs by some medical ninja and driven to her parents and all the soft and mushy family reunion rituals finished, the blacksmith was quickly repositioned from the hospital's wheelchair into that made by Meiko's father.</p><p>"You know, this isn't really necessary", the medical ninja objected, "We are borrowing those to our patients that require them for the short duration of their need".</p><p>"Nonsense", Meiko's father rumbled with an authoritative tone in his odd northern dialect and speech pattern, "Daughter wheels around in my wheels, if trouble happens she drives away in under 1267 kilometers per hour using chakra storage seals in exhaust pipes"!</p><p>"Awesome"! Meiko shrieked out like a material girl having found the perfect outfit. "Look how smooth the metal-work is! Look how crude the handles are, just imagine how much I can strengthen my upper body using these rough handles at full speed"!</p><p>"Meiko is the only person excited to drive around in a wheelchair", Kiyomi rubbed her temples in gentle irritation.</p><p>"True, that's why we love her", Mana smiled looking at her friend performing sick and menacing to the passers-by tricks with her hi-speed wheelchair before circling the block and stopping just in time in front of her family and friends.</p><hr/><p>At some point, Mana had to confront that whole finals of the Chuunin Exams thing. With the lightning-fast speed of her recovery, she only had a couple of days as an excuse to keep pushing it away. The tremendous challenge of figuring out a way to confront and defeat her opponent was just too big for the magician's head not to start spinning every time she thought of it.</p><p>Mana sat down by her desk and began scribbling on a piece of paper. Writing down every jutsu she knew, starting from her starting dozen of almost useless light show tricks to her most recent powerful additions. She then stroke out any damaging moves because they would only be storage for her opponent to use. Mana still wondered just what kind of jutsu Stea's ultimate technique she did not get to use in her battle was, likely it'd have been something highly offensive since from what Mana had seen, the mysterious kunoichi lacked such a technique.</p><p>It was not tough to figure out that this ultimate technique of Stea's used the damage stored in her seals in some way. In the most predictable case – it would have been a big blast of some sort, increasing in power the more damage she stored, and with her healing capabilities in mind, Stea had the potential to store a seemingly infinite amount of damage.</p><p>"Chakra is a possible weakness", Mana spoke to herself, chewing on her pencil, deep in thought, "Stea's signature dipped significantly in her last fight. If I hit her with an illusion, she'll be forced to dispel it which will cost additional chakra, pushing her to the limit. No, that's stupid…"</p><p>Mana was no fool. She wasn't going to fall for such a simple mistake – clearly, Stea will find out from Gasco about Mana's tremendous chakra signature and know about her own shortcomings. The Getsugakure kunoichi was fairly intelligent to have studied and learned medical ninjutsu effectively at her age. She'll put two on top of two and will see through Mana's training focus if this would indeed be it, she'd improve herself in that area in five weeks, no doubt.</p><p>Figuring that one was the only one training during these five weeks was one of the most elementary mistakes to make…</p><p>Moreover, even if Mana does force Stea on the defensive chakra-wise, she will still need to drive her opponent to heal a couple of times for that to happen. That will just give the starry-eyed opponent of hers additional damage storage. Not to mention the stupid loophole Mana hadn't noticed – what shall she do after Stea falls under a genjutsu? It's not like Mana can force someone to surrender, controlling their mind, like Kiyomi can, nor can she just kill her opponent while they're down like Hisako would've. All Mana could do was to beat on her opponent which meant kept fattening her damage storage.</p><p>This was hopeless…</p><p>"But then… What about… No… What was that guy's name, the one who died using Mysterious Peacock"? Mana thought to herself before sighing and changing her clothes quickly. She just could not keep on working now that the brave sacrifice of the young man was on her mind, she needed to vent her head, to read up on his country and, maybe find out what she always wanted to – if his sacrifice meant something.</p><p>No, that was not enough, Mana needed to relax, all those things: break-up with Kouta, Meiko's injury, her opponent in the finals, the death of that poor youth… It all kept stacking up. She needed to cool off and there was only one way Mana could cool off – magic. She will go to Hiro's Hall, ask Mr. Hiro to get a spot to perform this evening and magic the shit out of her problems.</p><p>Mana may have been a martial artist, more exactly – had formal martial arts training, but she didn't have a warrior's heart. Fighting didn't calm her down, it only made it all worse. Performing on stage was the passion that never ceased to entertain both her audience and Mana herself. There was nothing more calming and pleasing than seeing a child's eyes upon laying his eyes on magic trick…</p><p>Quickly, using the rooftops, poles and wires – the standard ninja method of travel in Konoha, Mana dashed to Hiro's Hall and met up with Mr. Hiro, arranging an impromptu magic show. He didn't want to host it initially – Mana was a big earner, she deserved a week-long advertising and promotion before each show. Such an erratic show will barely gather half the audience she usually gathered and Hiro could only fit Mana into a late evening hour. None of those things mattered, as long as Mana could perform on stage that day and clear her head.</p><p>Then the magician rushed to the Konoha southern gate and read the posters on the info board. Apart from loads and stacks of posters about missing people, a problem to worry about for another time, one that plagued the village for quite a while, as Mana could recall, there was a big flashy poster advertising the Chuunin Exams and the match ups:</p><p>1. Roh-D from Kumogakure V.S. Aozora Yushijin from Konohagakure</p><p>2. Dhaogu from Sunagakure V.S. Gasco Patura from Getsugakure</p><p>3. Buhakim from Sunagakure V.S. Nanaba Aomyaku from Konohagakure</p><p>4. Nara Sugemi from Konohagakure V.S. Vinda Calkem from Getsugakure</p><p>5. Yamanaka Kiyomi from Konohagakure V.S. Tanko Shigin from Konohagakure</p><p>6. Erumo Budoki from Konohagakure V.S. Jekleifer Kaguya from Konohagakure</p><p>7. Gentib de Vitt from Hoshigakure V.S. Kres-T from Kumogakure</p><p>8. Nakotsumi Mana from Konohagakure V.S. Stea Tesprea from Getsugakure</p><p>Mana's match was last. that meant it would have been the main draw of the event. It was no surprise that it was positioned in a flashy background and there were more separate posters with Mana's and Stea's faces for promotional material against each other. The magician had spent enough time around show business to know how to promote a big event. So if Mana royally flops on her face, it will be on the grandest stage in her village and failing the hype of everyone gathered there from every village and corner of the world. Having no heart-crushing pressure on one's chest seemed to be a luxury these days…</p><p>It was not like Kiyomi had things that much better – she'll be facing the unspoken about monster in Shigin. He was always very faintly whispered about in the Forest of Death, his invincibility ability was continuously scared with like some sort of boogeyman for ninja. But, it wasn't until the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams that the ability truly was comprehended by the competitors. Mana only wished to have been able to see it first-hand, must have been quite impressive.</p><p>With mixed thoughts, but having finally seen the final match-ups table, Mana rushed to the Konoha Archives to read up a little bit. As expected, there was little to nothing to research about these "damage seals", however, they weren't the prime interest that drew the magician into the archives. It was the political standing of Hoshigakure that did.</p><p>From what she could've figured out from a bunch of old de-classified intelligence gathering mission debriefings, Hoshigakure was founded in a crater of a large meteor strike, right on top of the irradiated soil. Apparently, a shard of that meteor had fallen off in mid-air and fallen further west to the village, later located by the villagers of the newly established village. The ninja that spied on Hoshigakure reported that the meteorite shard found there was valued for its radioactive properties and that plenty of ninja, with authorization from the local authority, calling themselves the Hoshikage, could train and meditate in the presence of the stone.</p><p>If that was true, it may have explained why the users of this Mysterious Peacock Method jutsu were able to tap into radioactive chakra. However, it also greatly crushed Mana internally. The Hoshikage was not loyal or acknowledged as a leader by most other villages or any Feudal Lord. The only reasons why the village was not swept away in the first place, despite being located in Fire Lord's property, was because the irradiated land was fairly useless to the Lord and not worth the squabble.</p><p>All that this information meant was that poor Gorm Cleiti died for nothing. His death may have alerted the officials of the other countries that the Mysterious Peacock Method had a weakness but what it did not do was have any meaning to it. No village will bargain with a renegade leader of an unrecognized land to ban the only technique that keeps them on the map. It was the diplomatic disaster to even try. Gorm Cleiti died to no avail and so will more and more youths with bright pink dreams of standing in front of strange space rock to gain its powers…</p><p>Mana pushed her chair back before she weightlessly slumped in it and laid seemingly lifeless for a while. All she wanted to know was if Gorm's death will possibly save some lives in the future, which now she found out that it won't. This was the last thing she needed on her consciousness when already struggling to think straight and prepare for the biggest match of her life.</p><p>Gorm's death was entirely pointless unless someone makes it mean something…</p>
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<a name="section0352"><h2>352. The New Plan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Feeling a little bit down, after the revelations that the research about Hoshigakure lead her to, Mana rushed to the Hiro's Hall where she was supposed to perform in a very erratically put together magic show. Despite her rush, the magician's eyes did notice a couple of posters stuck on info boards and building walls with her face on it, desperately trying to capture some eyes and do some tragic, non-advertised show course correction.</p><p>The hall had an awkwardly smoky and stuffy feeling about it, something that was not its usual feature. Mr. Hiro liked to keep his properties classy, obviously, as long as it cost as little as possible. Mana tried remembering if Mr. Hiro mentioned something about what was supposed to happen in this hour instead of her show but nothing came up. The magician did not want to infringe on anyone's time and she was a big enough earner for Hiro, when she did actually perform, for the man to move his performers around just for her.</p><p>This show was no silly and unlikely miracle, the hall was not filled, not anywhere nearly so. It appeared that only the people in whose lives sleep took a tertiary, supporting role, as well as those who just happened to accidentally stumble into the reserved and smoky light show of Mana's impromptu show showed up. Mr. Hiro will not praise her too much, but he was still making a profit, which, given the state of his hall currently, would not be happening if he screened some late-night movie.</p><p>Mana's show was hardly anything to write home about as well, not her finest work, coming, obviously, because of the erratic nature of the performance, lack of overdrawn weeklong preparations and long-term planning. She did not use any fancy metallic death traps of anything like that. It was just cold, calculated magic. It was some good as shit magic, but it was completely devoid of emotion or Mana's usual love for the craft.</p><p>If there was emotion behind Mana's performance, it was rage. Desperation and rage. Anxiety for the unknowns in the future that was more mature than most gave it credit for, desperation and rage. Mana forced her magic, not in a way that the tricks looked forced or that she was easy to see-through, in a way that an angry martial artist threw punches. The punches were quick, strong, lethal and ruthless, more than capable to do their job and then some… Nevertheless, dark and somber emotions still fueled them, which influenced the "art" part in martial arts.</p><p>After Mana finished and bowed to the audience. She received very reserved but consistent claps. There could have been more than forty people watching the show, most of them displayed some sort of a warm reaction but this audience was different from what Mana was used to. These were the people who ruled and thrived in the night, both because the day was too bright for their goals and desires and because some of them simply liked the night better because it was the time when everyone else was asleep and needn't be their problem.</p><p>Mana decided not to even go back to her little closet to change and just go back home in her uniform. She felt tired but also quite satisfied. This emotionally fully loaded show kind of helped her do what needed to be done – clear her mind for a good forty-nine minutes and just let go of everything that was holding by her foot tightly and dragging her underwater.</p><p>"Not bad, kid. I promised an after-show meeting on the poster, figured I needed something special for this shitty case. Hope it's not a problem"? Mr. Hiro mumbled, as he counted up and handed to the magician her much more modest than the usual fee, in his childish-like tone. It was tough to say if he was angry at Mana from just his eyes, they were always squinted shut and rarely ever let anything but a little bit of light in.</p><p>"No, it's fine. I'm sorry, Mr. Hiro, I just… Really needed this, I know nobody came…" Mana apologized because she figured it was in order for her.</p><p>"What? Come on, kid, I'm still making money when, otherwise, this place would be only occupied by moths. If you want to see more faces, plan something a bit further ahead, you've got the chops to fill these halls, don't forget that"! Mr. Hiro nodded erratically a pair of times slapping his round belly according to some gloomy music tune that was filling the air in between the shows.</p><p>"Right. Better make it to that after-show then", Mana bowed her head and rushed off back to the stage.</p><p>She really could have filled this hall. She could have gone from high hundreds to even thousands, over stuffing this hall with people and selling out all of her weekly tickets easily. She used to be that good… Then, all those things happened, she just up and gone off and around the world, then, this whole Chuunin Exams thing happened. Mana had always thought that balancing these two parts of her life was natural for her, maybe it wasn't as easy as she had thought…</p><p>Mana sat behind a small desk, talking for a while with any curious fan and giving out small merchandise to all who wanted it. This whole merchandising thing was actually Mana's idea, well, technically, it was someone else's idea in the Naruto's universe. After seeing Boruto walk around with an "action figure" of a movie character from his universe way back during her short trip there, Mana brought some of that back home.</p><p>
  <em>"That was quite nostalgic, Sorceress"!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I liked it, very refreshing to see your show again"!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"This is hokey and your old show was way better"!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't even know why people go see your shows, these movie things are the future"!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I keep wondering how you did that thing with the cards and the swords and the… I don't think I'll sleep tonight, keeps bugging me, as expected from Konoha's Sorceress"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I almost missed this show, such strange advertising model, I never miss a show"!</em>
</p><p>Mana engaged with each and every fan, or someone who waited for fifteen minutes after a show they disliked just to tell her they hated the show. Honestly, those people she liked the most. Obviously, the criticism like "it's boring" or "magic is shit, movies are better", or "give up" didn't help but many people did express some interesting thoughts. There were even folks that claimed that they usually disliked Mana's shows but her new, aggressive style really drew them in, those very same people advised her to innovate and incorporate something of today's show into her more cheery and child-friendly usual approach to magic.</p><p>A middle-aged man with greasy hair and shaking hands approached Mana's table and pulled out a kunai knife. He did not charge at the magician or throw it, the youth just stood there, shaking like a leaf.</p><p>"Damn it, I didn't think I dropped anything, how did this slip through my clumsy fingers", Mana smiled and grabbed the blade out of the man's hands faster than his eyes could comprehend. Had he been a real ninja he would still have had troubles following Mana's wrists move, while the magician was no speed demon, her wrists were leagues beyond what most genin her age could muster up.</p><p>"It… It was mine. I… I thought of cutting myself with it", the man admitted. Quickly, Mana's neck stretched out, after seeing that only a very minuscule minority remained in the hall, and those few that did showed no interest in approaching or talking to her, she looked at the young man again.</p><p>"In my show"? Mana grunted, she wanted to be softer, she wanted to be more understanding and she knew that her tone was not what she wanted it to be. It was no way that a hero spoke to a depressed person but… She may not have been having a day nearly as bad as this youth, hers was still pretty heavy.</p><p>"No... Maybe, initially I thought of doing it just somewhere in an alleyway, where no one could find me, then I saw the poster... I'm usually good at staying unnoticed, I'd have laid dead for weeks before anyone would've found me, I bet", the young man huffed out heavily, as he kept on speaking, weight slightly shifted deep in his chest and it was reflected in his clearing out voice.</p><p>"Would've made an awesome ninja then", Mana smiled before standing up and taking her coat off of her chair, then, quickly slipping into it. "Come on, let's go for a walk".</p><p>"I… Yeah, I guess I could use it", the man ruffled his messy, shoulder-length, greasy hair. "Not gonna get to enjoy the stuffy air for long".</p><p>"Look, I'm not going to let you kill yourself, not while I'm there to stop you. Obviously, I am not going to just follow you around your whole life so if you will it – you can always go through with it some other time. I just… We both had pretty rough days, I feel, so may as well breathe some fresh air and relax, you know"? Mana tried calming the overly passionate youth before he tried something she would have to stop him from doing.</p><p>"It's not that, I reconsidered. You can leave me alone, just like Mikise did. I'll play along, go to prison and all that", the young man tried shaking Mana's company off. Frankly, it offended the magician a little that even a recently suicidal man did not want to walk to the village center with her.</p><p>"Look, you just showed me that you thought my show was a fitting place to commit suicide in. You owe me an apology, you know. Not to mention a blow to my confidence after refusing my offer so soon after I was left alone by someone I love myself", Mana energetically objected but did not make any forceful gestures. The youth played along and just followed Mana around with his hands in his pockets.</p><p>"I-I didn't think your show… Okay, I did think it'd be a fitting place but…" he tried apologizing for it like it was something that needed an actual apology.</p><p>"It's okay, I was just kidding, you weren't yourself when you made that decision", Mana shut him down in a bit softer tone.</p><p>The previously suicidal companion of Mana's scratched his chin as he walked awkwardly beside the magician. He did not appear to care where they were heading to and was, similarly to Mana, just breathing the fresh night's air and enjoying the never dying neon lights illuminating posters and informing the passersby of just what sort of establishment they were wandering past.</p><p>"I must admit though, I sort of imagined that the show of Konoha's Sorceress would attract more of an audience. You are certainly capable of it, most of the locals know your face which is rare for a non-ninja", he said after a moment of awkward silence.</p><p>"I actually am a ninja, I am aware that my gig as a stage magician has made me rather well-known but rarely does anyone acknowledge anything I've done as a ninja", Mana hummed out with a calm tone, matching the longing mood of the cold night. "I am well aware that my advertising strategy was horrendous tonight. That being said, I do not care to do things in a way that would make me successful, I just do things the way I want to do them. I am a magician because I love performing on stage, not because it'll make me successful and noticed. It's something I have got to do, because I feel like it".</p><p>"You are acknowledged though, everyone knows who you are, at least in Konoha", the man mumbled in a strangely humming tone.</p><p>"Wait a second, you did want me to fill that hall, right? You wanted it to be full so that you could kill yourself surrounded by people"? Mana turned at her companion in horror.</p><p>"That doesn't make any sense", the man coughed out. He was caught, Mana knew it, it was impeccably important for a ninja to be able to read people.</p><p>"It makes all of the sense. You said it before – you feel lonely, ignored by the people around you and neglected. You imagine this world to be neglectful towards you and out to get you by making you feel lonely and depriving you of that crucial need for human interaction. You're like a kid, I swear…" Mana shook her head. She tried not to sound judgmental, at least from her own subjective perspective she thought she succeeded.</p><p>"How is killing yourself because everyone can't even be bothered to even hate you properly childish"? The man rubbed his cold hands.</p><p>"Because it's the way children behave. They believe that the world is out to get them and they are interested in proving that theory. Like a child, you wanted your frustration and anxiety to be justified by killing yourself in a full audience, surrounded by people who just can't be bothered to care about your life – the most important thing there is. I know that much, I am, after all, still a child, as people sometimes let me know", Mana scolded the man.</p><p>"You really think my life is that important"? The man raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Everyone's is. No one is unnecessary. nothing is pointless. That is my Nindo, my Ninja Way", Mana smiled before flicking her long dark hair off of her face.</p><p>"Teens", the man mumbled after another awkward pause.</p><p>"What"?</p><p>"Teens do that, not children. Children can't understand the world around them sufficiently to suspect that it's nothing but an evil cabal they had no part in building out to get them. It's usually the shock of transition from a childish point of view to the better understanding that causes this shock", the man clarified his point.</p><p>"That's way too smart for me, I am, after all, still a teen, often called childishly", Mana rubbed her forehead, both to alleviate the pain of trying to comprehend the man's words and to warm up her chilly forehead.</p><p>"Sorry, I worked in the Konoha Police Force, I was the guy talking to deviant teens", the man softly apologized.</p><p>"Worked"? Mana wondered.</p><p>"Painful divorce. My wife lied about me beating and raping her in front of the Civilian Tribunal so that she could divorce me", the man admitted, clearly suffering a great deal to recall it.</p><p>"Divorce"? Mana slowly spelled the word out, trying to recall what the term meant. "Sorry, not big on the laws that govern civilians".</p><p>"Oh, it's… Basically, it's a way to cancel out a marriage, the only way you can divorce is if you prove your husband committed an act of violence against you or that is a threat to his partner's health and life", the man explained. Mana did not feel too happy about forcing the man to explain the parts of his life that completely flipped the table on him but she needed to know.</p><p>"I see. It does sound a bit cruel", Mana poked her chin with her index finger trying to come up with something encouraging to tell the man.</p><p>"Wanna know how she "proved" the act of violence"? Mana's companion took the initiative. It appeared that the unconfronted anger, that the man still had in his heart, fueled a rant, which, Mana thought, should have helped. "She told the arbiters about it. It was her word against mine".</p><p>"Ummm… That doesn't sound right", Mana mumbled, she did not feel too brave making this statement. As she told the man before, she had little to no understanding of how Tribunals and laws really worked. All she was trained to do was fight and do what she was told, it was as simple as that.</p><p>"It's not… Sorry… Forgot how young you are and… The whole ninja thing", the man ruffled his hair and rubbed his cheeks again to revitalize them with rushing blood as they were beginning to get numb from the cold, not too long later, Mana did the same.</p><p>"Look, what happened to you was cruel, you mentioned something about prison in your future, that's messed up. You could kill yourself, hell, I am sure plenty of people in similar shoes to yours have already done so… Or… You could pick yourself up and take this chance for a fresh start, leaving everything behind, do what I do when I get struck down. Just get back up, cover up your wounds and realize you're going on stronger than you went down", Mana spoke until the cold in the air was beginning to make her throat a bit itchy.</p><p>"That makes no sense at all. How can you get back stronger after getting punched down? Don't your injuries make you weaker"? The man raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"That's… That's a very good point", Mana pouted. She recalled the many times when Meiko managed to lift her spirits up with words. If only the magician could find that perfect, honest and uplifting thing to say… Sadly, it appeared, she could not even do that most simple thing heroes do.</p><p>"Nah, don't worry, I told you already, that damned cards and swords trick will keep me awake at night too. Literally made me rethink my life", the man laughed out before placing his hands inside his pockets, breathing in and out, letting a powerful stream of vapor out from his husky sigh. "Figured I'd try some of that village propaganda bullshit they feed you ninja guys", he shrugged.</p><p>"You're stopping here"? Mana raised her eyebrows.</p><p>"Yeah, told you that Mikise took my house and kids, got nowhere to go", the man sniffled a pair of times.</p><p>"Oh… You could sleep at my place. I mean… All rooms are occupied but the guest room has an armchair you could drop on", Mana suggested.</p><p>"Hell no, that sounds awfully awkward and uncomfortable. Plus, I was a parent yesterday too, I know how I'd react if my little girl brought back a hobo", the man sniffled with a smile that Mana just could not understand.</p><p>With smiling lips, Mana shuffled around the pockets of her coat before pulling a bunch of folded bills and handed them to the surprised vagabond.</p><p>"This is what I've earned this evening. It will not build you a new life, not even close. It should cover up the cost for a room tonight, maybe even dinner, if you are not into lavish seafood. Just promise me you'll…"</p><p>"Yeah…" the man nodded before Mana could finish that sentence and walked away into the gentle mist of the approaching winter. "Did I just… Help someone"? She wondered to herself long after the man had walked away and she was left all by herself in the village center.</p><hr/><p>Half an hour later Mana quietly returned back home, trying not to disturb anyone who was sleeping. Her mother usually got up pretty early to open up and manage her little café throughout the whole workday so she was probably already asleep. Father was watching that wooden flashy box again, rubbing his scarred arms. The pain must've been keeping him awake again.</p><p>"Hey, kid, how's the show"? He asked with slight irritation in his voice, Mana knew it was the pain.</p><p>"Someone actually came, didn't thought they would. How did you know"? She wondered.</p><p>"Saw a poster near the herb shop", he nonchalantly replied.</p><p>"I… I think I'm going to lose in the Chuunin Exams and retire", Mana spoke up after walking up to her father and sitting down by his side.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0353"><h2>353. Date Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Lose your match and retire, are you sure"? Mana's father looked at his daughter in confusion. To him, this announcement must have come out of nowhere.</p><p>"Yeah. I saw today that I can help much more people as a performer on stage. Ever since I became a ninja all I've done was fail. I've failed Shimo, I wasn't there to help Sugemi in a tough moment, I wasn't strong enough to stand with Tanshu-sensei and help him survive that Kage Summit… I could sit here listing all the people I've let down and failed to save for days. Today I've seen how being a simple stage magician can help people, instead of foolishly dreaming of power strong enough to save the entire world. I've been told many times in the Academy and outside that I'm being childish with my dreams, maybe it's about time I take note of those remarks", Mana fired up.</p><p>The magician was afraid by how tough her conviction was. Her heart was ready to denounce what she had worked for over a decade to build and give it all up, just to push all of her chips on another passion of hers, one that usually worked alongside the first but now got neglected for too long.</p><p>"Okay", father nodded and rested his head back on a cushion, extending his legs and resting his scarred and shaking in pain hands on his hips.</p><p>"Okay"? Mana raised an eyebrow. She expected her father to argue, even worse than that, Kiyomi and Meiko will probably outright try to punch her back into the path of a ninja.</p><p>"What do you expect me to tell you? My life is never going to be the same because I was a ninja and walked that path to its end, do you truly want me to bully my daughter into taking the path that took away my arms, my night sleep and part of my sanity? All that will satisfy me and your mother is if you're happy", the man huffed out. "Unless… You want to be talked out of it"?</p><p>"No"! Mana firmly crossed her hands, "Although... I can't just quit the Chuunin Exams now, if I put up a good fight, Stea may still get promoted. It'd be really rude of me to back out and ruin her chance at getting promoted and saving her village".</p><p>"Her village"? Father asked the magician to elaborate.</p><p>"Yeah, she once said something about that… Her village is really poor and struggles with basic resources, they're in dire need of higher ranking and more famous ninja to attract more clients", Mana nodded. "Frankly, I'd feel bad about beating her even if I tried".</p><p>"It's not about that", father coughed, "Promotion in the Chuunin Exams has nothing to do with winning or losing, remember. It's all about impressing the Ninja Council".</p><p>"I know that, dad", Mana nodded before looking through the kitchen window further away into a wilting apple tree in the yard.</p><p>"Okay, if that's what you want to do, go ahead. You're making a fair fee from your shows, you'll be capable of living a pretty lavish life that way and we won't have to worry about some cosmic size pirate crushing our daughter alongside with the entire planet every week", father mumbled it out in a slurry manner. He was getting really sleepy so Mana just smiled, covered him with a blanket and quietly tip-tapped into her own room to call it a day.</p><hr/><p>Two weeks had passed, marking halfway of the preparation time for the final match, something that came completely unnoticed to Mana. The girl had been working double time on her shows, putting on a magic show every other day while working on said magic show during the days off.</p><p>Mana had to admit she was happier than she was in a long time. She had reconnected with her parents as her father helped her work on props with his amazing insight into engineering them. He even helped her make a couple of after taking some of those miraculous herb mixtures he spoke with Mana about before. Initially the magician was worried about her father taking unknown mixtures without consulting a medical professional but seeing him happy and tinkering like that swatted those worries away.</p><p>Mother's smile was equally invaluable and a treasure to see. It required no higher intellect to sum up her thoughts whenever the woman returned tired from a busy day of managing her own respectable establishment and doing business work to a happy and functional family, working together towards something beautiful. Could Mana really have been blamed for letting this pink childish dream to lull her in?</p><p>Hiro's Hall was getting filled and even overfilled each and every show. For the first time in a while, Mana was performing in a prime time spot and it was not just a one-time thing. She was holding and owning that spot consistently. Obviously, things could have been a bit better – Kiyomi and Meiko could have come to see the show, at least occasionally, but Meiko was still busy recovering and Kiyomi was most likely away training hard in preparation for her match.</p><p>One evening, while walking out from yet another successful show, Mana accidentally noticed a scene transpiring. A circle of people surrounded something that attracted their attention, the fact that it did implied that it was either something wondrous or something terrible.</p><p>"You motherfucker! You have some nerve showing your face in public after the stunt you pulled"! A familiar and, frankly, terrifyingly so voice reached Mana's curious ears. Mana's heart froze over just hearing Doma Nacasa's voice after managing to keep her ninja and her stage magic worlds apart.</p><p>"Me? What the fuck is your problem? Konoha's Sorceress' show is the place to relax, you're here too, aren't you"? Another slightly familiar voice from Mana's past echoed out, this one was a little more obscure and the magician couldn't exactly remember the name of the young man who owned it. She had to gently rub shoulders against the crowd to get to the center of it to identify the tall and muscular figure with a purple mohawk donning head.</p><p>"Sure, but at least I'm not a fucking embarrassment to my village! I was never beaten in battle, just eliminated by a pitiful excuse of a partner"! Doma grunted winding up a punch.</p><p>As the Getsugakure genin's arm extended, a firm and down-pulling grip of a lightning fast wrist met it in a split-lightning moment, before the magician's leg extended upwards and descended down after a gentle leap up resulting in a powerful axe kick, which Doma only had one hand to defend from. While Doma placed his block up just right and blocked Mana's smashing kick to the back of his head, it still visibly dealt some damage to both his head and the blocking hand.</p><p>"Cut it out", Mana firmly demanded of the two genin.</p><p>Doma's eyes appeared to try and incinerate the magician with a furious blazing ocular flare unlike anything else. Mana's glance momentarily wandered onto Stea who quietly consulted Gasco, who stood right beside her. These two didn't look that willing to interfere, it looked like they rarely did, whenever Doma ran his mouth into another fight.</p><p>"Hey, what do you think you're doing, I don't need your help", Zahafbit's voice thundered behind Mana who placed her body in between the two feuding genin.</p><p>Even now the magician could hear slithering whispers about the feat she just pulled, it infuriated her to no end, exposing her audience who longed for nothing else but entertainment to this kind of violence and rudeness. All she wanted was to perform onstage, rethink her life but it appeared that there were people willing to drag her back down and try mix those two worlds of Mana's together. That was something Mana could not forgive.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Zahafbit, this must've been really uncomfortable for you after a difficult time at the Chuunin Exams. I hope you don't let this experience define your opinion of Konoha and that you and your dear ones choose to visit it sometime again", Mana smiled back at the less than polite brute.</p><p>Gasco approached Doma in slight confusion before whispering something in the young man's ear. After hearing the whisper out the Getsugakure genin raised his eyebrows in surprise and exclaimed something unintelligible back to the large brute. Gasco walked back to Stea who had by then joined into the crowd that circled the violently escalating situation outside Hiro's Hall.</p><p>"Gasco says that your chakra signature hasn't increased at all since the semi-finals, neither, he says, has your sensory abilities", Doma exclaimed in confusion. "The fact that you're wasting time on some magic shows, instead of your training, confuses me".</p><p>"So what if I do spend more time performing on stage than training"? Mana asked.</p><p>"You cocky bitch, ninja like you, a waste of their village's money and time, I cannot stand the most in this world"! Doma grunted aggressively before checking his wrist and taking a fighting pose. "I'm gonna take you on and show Stea just what kind of training you've been doing before your match in the finals. Then she's gonna mop the floor with you in front of your beloved village"!</p><p>"There's no need for that", Mana placed her hands behind her back and straightened her back in a pacifyingly passive pose. "My chakra or my sensory abilities have not grown at all because I have not done any training at all for two weeks".</p><p>"Tsk", Doma clicked with his tongue angrily as he composed himself and placed his hands inside his pockets. This youth may have been a loose cannon and quite explosively violent and rude towards ninja he deemed "a waste" but he was smarter than to start an all-out brawl in the middle of the village. "You've done it now, you've gone and pissed me off".</p><p>"Frankly, I don't particularly care about how you feel about it. Cut this fighting out already", Mana threw back at him as she turned around and considered walking away herself.</p><p>"Oh no, I'm not letting it go like that. Fight me, seriously, one on one, in the Training Grounds No. 28 in two hours", Doma calmly and confidently challenged the magician.</p><p>"I won't. I thought I told you already, I'm quitting this ninja business and doubling down on being a stage magician", Mana replied without turning back, nodding slightly towards Zahafbit, who was still shaking in his boots, whether of fear or of anger that he wasn't included in this conversation at all.</p><p>"You don't get to back out, you wasteful bitch"! Doma grunted out loud, taking an aggressive step forward, "If you don't fight me, or if you half-ass it, I'll kill that mohawk bastard. If you take me on, win or lose, that'll be the end of my problem with him, you won't have to bother me killing him anymore or causing problems".</p><p>"Fine", Mana threw back carelessly. Doma was strong, he was basically as strong as Stea herself, except he had no ability to heal and recover from the damage he took and stored into his seals. From what Mana could remember, he had powerful ninjutsu in his arsenal as well to worry about. They would be made even more powerful by his damage seals too.</p><hr/><p>Two hours was basically no time at all, barely enough time for Mana to change out of her magician's uniform into her modified for combat version. Check and recheck the storage seals inside her hat, stretch out and figure out her strategy. She wasn't counting very hard on winning, all she had to do was stand back and wear Doma out until he ran out of chakra. Make him swing his fists blindly without landing a single blow. Mana had faced more skilled opponents up close with great success.</p><p>Training Grounds No. 28 was a short trek away past the village gates. It was a hundred and fifty meters in radius wasteland, surrounded by rocky cliffs. All erected artificially. Maintained and repaired daily by Earth Release users. It made for a pretty easy and danger-free C-Rank mission for them.</p><p>Mana was surprised to find Zahafbit sitting around by one of those tall rocks, nonchalantly whistling a tune to himself. Upon being given the magician's confused glare, the Sunagakure ninja just shrugged.</p><p>"This battle concerns my fate too, I'm just here to check that you're not being screwed over and tag teamed all of a sudden", the genin claimed. He was not a complete non-factor, Zahafbit was, after all, a genjutsu user which meant he had a very handy skillset which damage seal users had little to no defense against. While Mana had faith in Team Phobos' moral compass, Zahafbit was a fair countermeasure against dirty play.</p><p>"Hmph, you showed up", Doma grumbled with his hands crossed over his chest.</p><p>"I thought that much was clear", Mana raised an eyebrow, wondering what exactly did she do wrong by this young man this time.</p><p>"So you're a waste of your village resources and you're brave… What a pitiful combination. Just how much manpower is wasted healing your reckless weakling ass"? Doma grunted before taking an offensive fighting pose and thusly letting the magician know that his question was rhetorical.</p><p>"I don't quite understand your gripe with me or Zahafbit", Mana answered, taking a neutral defensive stance, "Zahafbit came farther in the Chuunin Exam than most, I have completed plenty of missions successfully and have been a fairly handy asset to my village as well. Neither one of us is a detriment to our village's military force or a waste of their resources".</p><p>"I didn't invite you here to talk things over nor do I have a duty to make my position make sense to you"! Doma shouted out before launching himself at Mana. The Team Phobos member was fast, as it was to be expected, his speed and strength were at the very least above the average, his technique was painfully average. He was clearly not a taijutsu focused ninja but his fighting style mirrored Stea's – get hurt in close distance and trick your opponent into a false sense of security, then overwhelm them with damage seal enhanced jutsu.</p><p>Mana carefully avoided most of the wild swipes and kicks thrown her way. She may have skipped a blow or two but they weren't strong enough to throw off her defensive rhythm. Doma's martial arts style was odd, it wasn't any martial art Mana had seen or studied. It was like the young man had simply watched an Inuzuka clansman fight up close and then decided to copy their moves with a very raw understanding of that style. That raw and unpolished manner was what threw Mana off and made her tagged a pair of times.</p><p>Wiping her lip and noticing no blood on them, Mana just resumed her defensive stance. She was about to sum up her opponent's style, then he would land not a single strike on her from that point on. After that, he will get frustrated, start lobbing random jutsu her direction.</p><p>"You know, if you're just here to get the shit beaten out of you, you may as well stop wriggling and weaseling out of my punches", Doma grunted before throwing another similar series of punches and kicks. He was luring Mana into countering, he wanted Mana to exploit his lacking style. He was the real weasel. Mana tapped the young man's feet and wrists lightly, deflecting every strike he threw before butting her hip against his and pushing him tumbling over and rolling back to where he charged her at.</p><p>It was clear that Doma was beginning to lose it. Doma grunted out before flipping out and pulling two kunai out from under his long hooded cloak and charging at Mana with them. The magician leaned aside from every swipe, every flip and slash thrown her way before angrily stomping on the genin's foot making something churn and crack painfully. That opened the youth up for a barrage of kicks all over his face and body.</p><p>With a loud poof and a cloud of smoke, it appeared that Mana had been damaging the genin's cloak, which Doma had substituted with. She had suspected that much, there was no way that Doma would let Mana crush his foot normally, he may have used the damage but he also valued being able to walk. He fought so much differently than Stea, he evaluated the damage he would take and store, whereas Stea just took it all in and healed it up later.</p><p>Mana quickly turned around to catch a knife that would have penetrated her from behind before breaking Doma's wrist and forcing him to drop it. She then grabbed Doma's other wrist and pummeled the youth's chest with a barrage of palm strikes to force him to slide back and let go of the second kunai before letting both knives clang down on the ground.</p><p>"You bitch, I told you, no half-assing it"! Doma roared out. He was furious, Mana had placed him in an uncomfortable situation – he was stuck strategy wise. He couldn't get damaged to store enough damage into his seals and his ninjutsu would've wasted too much chakra to be worth using as they were, without being empowered. He was completely out of options.</p><p>"No, this is the strategy I plan to use against Stea, isn't that what this fight is all about? I doubt you'd be as pitiful as to hold a grudge against Zahafbit so long", Mana shook her head. She was careful not to put too much force into those palm strikes, make them just dull enough to push her opponent away and drop his weapon but not aim to crack any ribs.</p><p>"Y-You're just playing your stupid games"! Doma shouted out before jumping high up in the air. He definitely used a bunch of chakra to aid him in that jump, Mana could feel a pulse of it all over the ground beneath her feet. The young man spread his frail arms aside as kunai began flocking from the pockets of his vest and his ninja pouch, floating in mid-air around the young man.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Assault Blade"! Doma shouted out as he moved his hand as an order for the blades to flock and assault the magician down below. Mana carefully and gracefully danced around the raining knives, avoiding each and every one of them. She was trained to be faster and better than this. Finally, she had pushed Doma to him being forced to use his ninjutsu in their base, weakened state to bail him out of the deadlock. Still, something was wrong, this attack was far too basic.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu"! Doma chanted out, in mid-fall as he pulled on steel wire that became visible only once he began channeling chakra through it and changed the direction of the blades he had unleashed on Mana. A disgusting fleshy noise and the noise of blood splattering over the wasteland dirt echoed as Doma raised up the scattered blades that have missed their mark and brought them back for a new dance.</p>
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<a name="section0354"><h2>354. Mana's Gamble</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The blood that splattered over the wasteland dust rose up, together with the lifeless body of a stage magician girl, skewered by knives, joints broken and twisted by steel wire. Together the gruesome sight transformed into crimson rose, white apple and pink cherry petals and scattered across, dancing gracefully wherever the wind carried them.</p><p>"Finally you're fighting for keeps", Doma grumbled to himself sarcastically after landing firmly on his feet and preparing for the petals to reassemble into the magician's shape. He had seen this illusion before, the genin had full knowledge that Mana could reappear anywhere instantly. Her stealthy walk while disguised by the genjutsu was near untraceable while her spirit remained calm.</p><p>Just like that, Mana had revealed her strongest defensive escape technique. The girl scolded herself internally for showing it off any more than she already has. If she showed it a couple more times, both Doma and Stea would have figured out that its chakra cost grew progressively with each use.</p><p>Mana appeared from behind Doma, the genin had anticipated such bold approach and successfully deflected a bunch of crippling kicks, packed with chakra augmentations that would have shattered his body and while they would have loaded up his damage seals, they would have also made his body too battered for that stacked damage to be of any use. The magician was persistent, however. She managed to force in one good kick right in Doma's abdomen before leaping into the air and shifting the weight to make it into a push kick.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch"! Mana shouted out as she felt the strain of focusing so much Lightning Release chakra in her body and augmenting it to withstand the charge running through her body before being channeled right into her opponent's hurt her rusty network and muscles. A strong lightning pulse fired off and out Doma's body, running over his chakra network and interrupting all sorts of bodily functions before sending the Getsugakure genin rolling aside and smashing into the mountainous structure farther away, shattering it into bits from the force of impact.</p><p>Her chakra control was lacking. This was dangerous, even after all this time this jutsu was difficult to pull off. Of course, it was, not only Mana pulled out a B-Rank technique, but also she did it on a high enough level where she neither took additional time to focus and channel her chakra nor perform any hand seals. It was a dangerous method of using ninjutsu, even ones she trained with for as long as she did with the Magician's Touch.</p><p>A flash of lightning emanated from the messy rubble of rock and dust, splitting the larger pieces of debris that covered Doma up once the mountainous structure collapsed. Overloaded with the force of chakra coming from the strikes, the rock just exploded into smaller pebbles after being cut into pieces instead of just falling apart. Looking excited, Doma burst from the rubble and landed in front of the magician.</p><p>"So that's your strategy…", he mumbled.</p><p>"You, of all people, can't blame me", Mana huffed forcing her strained body to straighten up and stop betraying her moment of weakness. "I'm being efficient, am I not"?</p><p>Yes, she was technically storing Doma's seals with damage by attacking him but that was inevitable. She needed to inflict damage to beat him, that was the essence of battle. Mana's answer was the way she damaged him – hit him with all of her strongest techniques, aiming to take him out quickly. Risking both missing her most costly and powerful jutsu and running out of chakra in the process, it was the most gambling strategy one could've employed. Still, odds were tipped slightly to Mana's favor once one remembered her larger than usual chakra pool.</p><p>"Efficient"? Doma cried out with a hurt voice, it must have played a note deep somewhere, so much so that the young man did not exploit a visible momentary weakness after Mana had just used her Magician's Touch with less than completely optimal success. "What do you know of efficiency"? He asked longingly as his eyes looked down.</p><hr/><p>Little Doma laid quietly in his room. Holding his roaring stomach, wrapped in a fetal position on the wooden floor, he had no bed to cry on. The material possessions went away first of all – bargained away for food. That was when everyone was still chipper and optimistic. When everyone thought this famine was just a little bump on a long and prosperous road, little did they know that famine was the road in its entirety…</p><p>Jewelry, furniture, comfort items, later on even the plumbing got disassembled and pawned into the metal shop for the coins that shit covered aluminum in it was worth. Then came the real desperation… By the time caravan drivers started eating their horses in the middle of the street it became clear that all stops were pulled, nothing was sacred anymore. It was survival of the fittest.</p><p>Sister was wasteful. Last week she threw away a can of rotten, moldy… It was tough to say what it was at this point, with one rotten olive remaining somewhere in the bottom. Father brought it from someone's garbage bin, he said that the owners of the house must have been dead inside or else the can would not have ended up there in the first place. Doma and sister used to look for food earlier, they were smaller, burned fewer calories that way – it was the less wasteful way.</p><p>After Jinuya, Doma's friend, got cannibalized while looking for food by a family whose territory he stumbled into, father took over that duty. It was a bit more wasteful but for kids to be outside all by themselves it was profoundly dangerous at this point. Sister was wasteful last week but father was nice, he only ate sister's arm. Most parents had long since eaten their children at this point. Was there ever to be an end to this hunger?</p><p>Mommy used to be a ninja, she said that it was all hopeless. No one was hiring them anymore, no civilian wanted anything else but food and no ninja had enough energy left in them to do anything but eat for themselves. Even their supernatural metabolisms did not hold too well. Mommy did not need to eat for months once she ate one time, still, as her chakra was running low, these impressive stretches shortened with each passing dinner.</p><p>Sister was wasteful again yesterday. For someone so small, for someone with just one arm she ate just as much as father. That did not look right. Father and mother will probably eat sister soon, too wasteful. Doma looked at a burst purple balloon that he cradled and played with in his hand, his one and only friend. Frankly, only because it was rubbery and didn't taste too well, Doma would never eat it, it would never feel the need to eat Doma. The balloon slipped off of the boy's skeletal fingers but Doma lacked the strength to pick it off the ground.</p><p>"Doma won't eat sister, balloon", the boy mumbled, he felt bad, not the stomach pain, that was a part of Doma at this point. It was the different kind of stomach pain, one that just eating fingernails and dog droppings didn't help with. "Doma knows it's wrong but… Doma feels like eating sister would be more wrong, balloon".</p><p>"What am I talking about"? Doma wanted to bang his head against the wooden floor but couldn't, lifting his head off the boards would have required more strength than the boy had to give. "You can't hear me, balloon, you've long since burst".</p><p>Something loud rumbled below, people started shouting. Doma turned his head in a way that lifted his right ear off the floor so that he could hear the mumblings below. These boards were trashy, the palm leaves that were inserted in between layers of boards were long since pulled out and eaten.</p><p>"Is anyone in this house a ninja, boy"? Someone loudly asked, mother was crying, father could not be heard.</p><p>"Yeah, this woman. The boy on the upper floor also has an above average chakra level, this woman must've trained him to make him more resistant to famine", a loud still breaking voice of a male teen reached Doma's weak ears.</p><p>"You have cannibalized your own daughter. We understand, it is too common occurrence for me to judge you these days but ninja are too valuable. Ninja are the only hope to make money, money is the only hope to make food now that the Eight Tails had scared all the fish away from our shores…" the shaking masculine voice posturized while mother wept. The door to Doma's door opened. Doma had no power left to resist the tall bald young man in a leather vest who picked him off the floor and flipped over his shoulders.</p><p>Mother and father laid by sister's bloody body. They were crushed, they both knew what they were doing but somehow this old man seeing them do it, even if he displayed a surprising amount of understanding and tolerance for their difficult time, made them remember their humanity that was long lost in this perpetual struggle for survival.</p><p>"Please… Take our Doma…" mother begged. Her voice had returned to resembling the old days somewhat, the days when food was not necessarily plentiful but at least not nearly as luxurious. "I will never be able to live with what we've done once this is all over but… He's different. He still has a clear conscience…".</p><p>"I understand", a short and balding elder nodded, "Let's go, Gasco, let's feed this boy and start his training. We are one ninja short from a real ninja team".</p><p>"This boy is weak, are you sure you want to waste as little food as we have on revitalizing him"? Gasco looked coldly at the old man, who just nodded in determination before giving the barely lively Doma a warm look.</p><p>"Maybe, just maybe we can complete a B-Rank mission, at least one would buy us enough food to revitalize several more teams for a month. If we completed an A-Rank… This whole famine could be over", the old man dreamed looking away longingly. Doma felt the wind caressing his cheeks, he felt the stench of death all around him but his eyes were too weak to open and face the world he now called reality.</p><p>"That's wishful, old man, just who will request for an A-Rank mission of a near-dead village"? Gasco scolded his elder with a lifeless look. This strong teen must have done quite terrifying things to survive and thrive this long, to even be able to walk at this point. "Also why would we bargain with the other villages for food? Didn't we get to this point by offering them our food just so our village was excluded from their wars, back when food was plentiful"?</p><p>"It's true… What a pitiful paradox this world of ours is. The ninja are the ones who can survive the longest with the least amount of food. But the ninja cannot work and make profit if there are no weakling civilians requesting missions. That is why the ninja we train must be carefully weighed, it all needs to be calculated and weighed… Gains against the costs…" the old man postured again, speaking seemingly to no one.</p><p>"You hear that, pipsqueak"? Gasco shook Doma, just that one shake made the boy's joints and fragile body hurt all over, "If you're weak and useless – we'll let you off on your own. Let's hope your mother taught you some good stuff".</p><hr/><p>"He just spaced out", Mana noticed her opponent's attention slipping away. During that time her cramped and fatigued muscles got revitalized by the chakra constantly, still richly flowing through her network. "This is the time to hit him with everything".</p><p>The magician's hands flowed through hand seals, even if she had only neglected training for a couple of weeks, Mana could see her wrists feeling rusty and working a tad slow already. This will not do, she cannot just attack him from the front this way. She needed a distraction…</p><p>"Magical Entrance Jutsu"! Mana chanted out as a flock of sparks erupted from under her, shooting blindly up in the air before exploding into a burst of light. It was the flashy light show that the magician used during her magic shows for a flashy entrance, it got the audience all fired up and ready for some magic to follow.</p><p>Doma covered his face and looked away, as expected, in a battle ninja's perception was at its peak. So eager to follow every move, every flash of light, every slightest change in the battlefield conditions that a blinding flash of light would've completely crippled them. Mana's distraction was especially effective, it appeared, as Doma began clawing his teary eyes.</p><p>"What the fuck is this? It's not a real jutsu!" he grunted, he must have meant the fact that it did no actual physical damage to his body, therefore he stored none of it in his complex damage seals.</p><p>"No, but this is"! Mana shouted out as she took a chakra molding stance, channeling her chakra for a moment before forming a handful of hand seals and whistling a gentle tune.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Sweet Lullaby"! Mana sung out in the melodious tune she was whistling and humming in which forced her impaired opponent clutch at his mid section and tumble over on the ground, writhing in all of his bodily sensations getting overloaded. His body was being overrun with so much pleasurable impulses that even dispelling the illusion was impossible until a few moments after they began – this bought Mana even more time.</p><p>Mana's tired and numb feeling wrists went through a collection of hand seals again, "Lightning Style: Magic Skewer Jutsu"! she grunted out before extending her palm outward, towards her writhing opponent. The moment when Mana's flow of chakra got disrupted by the offensive ninjutsu, the genjutsu she had used to cripple her opponent before faded, but most effects of it persisted for a longer time, pleasure such as that ignited by Mana's illusion did not disappear so fast.</p><p>A mass of crackling Lightning Release chakra formed above Doma's writhing body before forming six rod-shaped forms and charging down at the ground, the name of this jutsu was deceitful as it didn't really "skewer" anything. Upon hitting their target, the bolts of lightning simply discharged and shocked their target or, if they missed, just casually dispersed all over the surrounding area due to them being grounded.</p><p>Doma yelled out in pain as the rods of lightning all hit him at the same time, shocking his body. The jutsu was relatively weak, it increased in power from the way it was initially, when Mana invented it as a graduating Academy Student, but it was still weaker than even other ninjutsu of its rank. Still, the shock of its effects not only damaged her opponent's muscles, his heart and his will to keep fighting, but it also temporarily paralyzed him in shock, it allowed the magician to continue her combination of attacks.</p><p>Doma shook his hazy and pulsing with pain head and rubbed his teary and tired eyes before noticing that his opponent was charging straight at him. Somehow he managed to get together just enough force in his numbed and shocked body to charge back at her, he had more physical strength, he knew that! In that fateful moment when Doma was supposed to tackle his opponent to the ground, and in the lucky occurrence of having her below him and in his hands, pummel her until he thought it'd be enough, the young man simple phased through his opponent like she was some sort of an apparition.</p><p>"You fool, she's a clone! How can you get fooled by an Academy Technique"!? Gasco roared out, looking about as surprised as his fighting friend was when he missed his spearing charge.</p><p>"Don't bother, his eyes were too tired and teary from that light show before to notice that she's not ruffling any grass or that the dust carried by the wind pass right through her. She's weak, that Mana, but she's clever", Stea smiled peacefully seeing the real Mana charge in from behind her disoriented opponent and place her hand right on top of Doma's face.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch"! Mana roared out as her body was beginning to feel extremely fatigued, not due to shortage of chakra, but because of the strain which she wasn't used to due to skipping out on training for so long. A pulse of lightning passed through Mana's body before violently shaking Doma and blasting him backwards, head first, as he flipped over and over again, flying back past the same pile of rubble he had hit before and through the fence that signaled the end of the Training Grounds.</p><p>"That was my all…" Mana huffed, she risked a lot just exploding with techniques and damage left and right. By now she must've stored a dangerous amount of damage inside her opponent's seals. She didn't dump all of her chakra, not nearly so into these jutsu but she certainly was straining her body in terms of stamina of just attacking relentlessly over and over.</p><p>The sky turned hazy, it was the middle of the night already when the two started fighting but the sky used to be clear. Now, murky clouds covered it all up, Mana looked up in disbelief. Such effects could only be created through immensely powerful jutsu or very lacking chakra control. Could it have been that Doma could not control his own jutsu? And here Mana went through all that strenuous effort to channel all of the force of her jutsu just from her into her opponent, without letting any leak out and destroy her surroundings.</p><p>Trees started flying apart, ground itself had begun to crack and split into fissures beneath Mana's feet as a flash of massive lightning, shaped as a thirty-meter tall fin of an underground shark devastated all in its path towards Mana. The magician clutched herself for impact, she'd rather get hit by that and get seriously injured than reveal to Stea the weakness of her Petal Sanctuary Escape.</p><p>"Gasco", Stea softly asked her teammate who just grumbled unintelligibly.</p><p>The brute jumped in front of Mana, winding back his strongest punch. The heat from the incoming, ground-splitting colossal ninjutsu blast singed off the brute's hood and burnt up his cloak revealing the pulsing veins all over his massive muscles as the Getsugakure genin threw his clashing punch.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist"! He roared out as his fist clashed with Doma's wild attack. For a while Gasco struggled with Doma's jutsu before getting blasted back and thrown away wildly by the jutsu's immense force. However, surpassing Gasco's Thunderstorm Fist and knocking the brute flying appeared to be all that Doma's technique had in it.</p><p>"What the fuck"! An infuriated Doma shouted out as he leaped from the devastated parts of the forest outside the Training Grounds and back onto the battlefield. "Why did Gasco interfere"?</p><p>"I thought you got ringed out, also, you attacked her dirty", Stea replied calmly.</p><p>"What? We're not going to let no ring out decide this! We're settling this for good"! Doma yelled out, "Also, how am I playing dirty"?</p><p>"Your jutsu was slow, I could've dodged it any time", Mana chose to reply instead of Stea. "But it was also fired off in rage, without control. It was devastating to everything it touched and if I had dodged it – it'd have headed towards the edge of the village".</p><p>Doma grunted in annoyance, realizing that Mana decided to stand in front of his technique and take it just so the village wall and the small settlements by the edge of the village were not blown away. He was very short tempered and he could get a bit mean but… Mana saw that Doma did not want to hurt any innocent villagers by the guilty and embarrassed expression he carried.</p><p>"That jutsu… It would have seriously injured me, I'd have been in no condition to keep fighting. I fired everything I had at you, the whole combination and you stood back up, if that is the extent of the damage stored in your seals, that they would empower a simple C-Rank jutsu that way… I have no hope of beating you", Mana admitted. "There's no point in continuing this fight, I did everything I could, threw everything at you and it was for nothing, I concede".</p><p>Crushed in her defeat, and after Doma showed her just how pointless all of her strategies were in front of even someone weaker than Stea, Mana turned away and started her walk of shame and defeat back to the village. Somewhere, amidst all of that destruction, Zahafbit had also found a moment to slip away, realizing that Mana's defeat was imminent at that point.</p><p>"Please wait, I have one more plead to make with you", Stea gently placed her hand on Mana's shoulder, preventing her from leaving</p>
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<a name="section0355"><h2>355. Stea's Plea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana saw Stea's eyes linger on and waver. It hit the magician as a little bit odd as she had always taken the young woman as mentally mature and spiritually strong. It was very much unlike Stea to roll something on and around her tongue before speaking it out.</p><p>"Your strategy was solid. You didn't waste any time loading the damage seal, you found an opening then exploded on Doma with everything you had – you could have beaten him like that", she uttered.</p><p>"I could have but I didn't. My best was not yet enough to keep him down for good, my gamble did not pay off. In the past I used to hold back tremendously in fear for my opponent's life, I would like to say that that was why Doma won but… That was not the case. I no longer disrespect my opponents like that", Mana replied.</p><p>"This fighting style of yours, the way you think, how you analyze other people's fighting styles and match the cards in your hand just right… Your flashy techniques… I believe you can beat me if you got stronger, much stronger", Stea admitted, "Not only that, you can beat me in a flashy and impressive enough manner to promote us both. My skills are leagues above those of the other genin but unless I can put up a satisfying match, it will be for naught. Please…"</p><p>Mana could not believe what she was seeing shimmering in Stea's eyes. Crystal, wet and genuine tears. This was a pleading cry of a sky soaring dragon. One that required descending beneath the clouds to devour a cow but needed help to do so. Stea was so immensely skilled that in order to impress the Ninja Council and show off all her skills she needed a powerful enough opponent to challenge her, someone to rise to her level.</p><p>"I can't do it, Stea. Two and a half weeks have already passed. I cannot match your pace in just half the time I had before. Whatever talent you see in me, it simply is not there. I was always the unimpressive one, really", Mana politely smiled, squirming uncomfortably out of Stea's gentle grip.</p><p>"I thought you were a hero. Those things you said in your show, things about human life being magical and wondrous, do they mean nothing to you really"!? Stea shouted out in desperation. "The famine in my village is no longer what it used to be, people do catch what little fish that have returned to our shores, now that the Eight Tails isn't scaring them away, but instead of dying in a month from hunger, they die in three to six months of malnutrition. I need your help to save their lives for good, please"! Stea cried out falling on her knees, Mana turned around, feeling awfully uncomfortable in the position she's been placed in.</p><p>She had denounced this life, she had decided to convincingly to leave it all behind and just perform on stage. It looked like this one last time, this one last time she'd need to fight before leaving it all behind but there never was "just one last time". It's a deceitful and despicable trap, just like with "killing just this one time", it's never just "that one time". If Mana agreed, if she promised Stea to beat her the way that Stea wanted to be beaten, not only would Mana accept an unbelievable responsibility on her shoulders to virtually redefine her in just two and a half weeks but she'd also be a hypocrite, she'd end up agreeing to such proposals again and again, every single time after "that one last time".</p><p>This won't be just "this one time". Unless she proves here and now that she's quit for good, there'll be another time and another one. She needed to make a statement here and now, just tell Stea now, just shut down her childish hopes of settling her village's problems all by herself. That was not how the world worked!</p><p>"Okay. I will beat you in two and a half weeks. I'll match your pace and get both of us promoted. I'll help you save your village", Mana replied with a shaking voice.</p><p>Stea's eyes brightened like two newly born stars, like sparks of superheated iron being molded under the gentle care of a skilled blacksmith. The young woman jumped up to her feet and ran up to Mana, grabbing her hand and pressing it against her own chest, caressing it with her cheeks like the magician had just promised something tangible. Something that was possible, which it was not.</p><p>"Thank you, Mana"! Stea kept repeating, in various voices, tones, with both shaking and determined mannerisms. "Thank you, Mana"! She just could not stop.</p><p>"What have I done"? Mana kept scolding herself mentally, "I can't match Stea in two years, what can I possibly do in two and a half weeks? My best now wasn't nearly able to match Doma Nacasa, someone who wasn't able to flip the table while keeping all the good cards in his hand with refreshing his body anew. I'll get slaughtered, I'll disappoint her…"</p><p>Worst of all was – now she felt like she would be disappointing the whole of Getsugakure as well. With a single powerful leap, using a copied, similar chakra control technique to that she saw Doma use, also using her "Mystical Wings" jutsu to boost her up halfway, she leaped atop one of the mountainous structures in the banged up Training Grounds.</p><p>Mana's cold and shaking hands wrapped around her sweaty, dark hair, letting them sift through her fingers as she covered up her face. She wanted to just squish her stupid head for accepting Stea's plea. Something was wrong… A powerful chakra signature was moving in, Mana moved her hands away and saw Gasco Patura land nearby her and standing by her side. Maybe he was smarter? Maybe he knew what Mana had just signed up for and…</p><p>"It was an incredible thing you've just agreed to", the thunderous-voiced giant gently smashed Mana's hopes of being proven having just acted unreasonably.</p><p>"Was it? I could sense how much chakra Doma still had after my attacks, he was less than halfway done after everything I threw his way. If I don't finish Stea off in one quick swoop, if at least 1% of her stamina and will to fight remains – she'll stand up and heal up, becoming thousandfold stronger for the duration of our battle making her undefeatable and me a failure", Mana explained things the way she saw them to the giant.</p><p>"Hmph, after spending so much time as a sensor, I'd have hoped you'd be able to tell the difference between chakra and one's ability to keep fighting, their life force. Chakra, stamina, life force, all of these are different and you are only seeing just one of them. Regardless, you've advanced remarkably in just one week, in between the Forest of Death where you were just a toy for us to play with to the point where someone like Stea sees promise in you. Your sensory abilities have jumped a whole year ahead in just five days. I can't say if you'll be able to do what you've promised to do but you've jumped at the chance to help someone, no matter if you're strong enough yet to do it. In the end, isn't that what heroes are"? Gasco sighed before sitting by Mana's side.</p><p>"Maybe, but is it really that great - jumping into action when you're not strong enough to help? Won't you just make things worse if you do that?" Mana voiced her fears of disappointing the young woman she just promised to save her village to.</p><p>"I didn't say being a hero was all that great. Heroes died first in the famine, you know. Anyone who didn't do horrific things did, it was a social contract of ours to leave what we did behind us, it was a difficult time, leave it all behind and move on", Gasco looked longingly at the endless forests as far as the eye could see, just naked trees soughing.</p><p>"Can you? Can you just move on after doing something as terrible as promising someone to save their home and failing"?</p><p>"Obviously not. Neighbors promised to forgive and forget the fact that they may have cannibalized each other's children who were just looking for food, that they ate and killed things and people they shared feelings for. That whole sense morality went away for the sake of survival but don't think for a second that they were truly left behind. Memory is a cruel thing. You've taken up responsibility on your shoulders, it won't be ignored or forgotten but that only means you're an adult now. You should be proud of yourself because being a hero may be worth rabbit's piss but being a mature adult is a worthy and remarkable thing" Gasco spoke more words now in this one dialogue than Mana had heard him ever say before.</p><p>"Rabbit's… Piss…" Mana mumbled under her nose. A crazy idea was beginning to dawn in her head...</p><p>"Oh, it's just a manner of speech, an expression we have in…" Gasco tried shrugging it off.</p><p>"Tell me", Mana interrupted him, "Tell me about your home, tell me about the worst it got. I need to know what lays on my shoulders. I need to know the people I'll be returning to the ways I denounced for".</p><hr/><p>A gloomy fog haunted Getsugakure in the prime of the great famine that appeared to not linger and budge for one single moment. A little party of heroically minded individuals who had not lost their hope for both surviving and maintaining their humanity wandered the village streets, knocking on each door of every little gloomy house they could get to over the streets littered with dead bodies. The ghastly expressions of the emotions they had in their final moments and their endless misery forever ingrained on their faces.</p><p>"Why do we bother", one of the teens asked with a feeble voice. "We can shelter enough corpses by just picking them off the streets. Why take them off people's hands"?</p><p>With this hopeless sentiment, the young teen left the party, running off whether to the direction of his home or just trying to see how long he would survive outside the weakened and dying village's walls. A place where bandits and mercenaries roamed, avoiding the village like the plague, likely considering disease to be the reason of the quickly dropping population, decrease in caravan activity and the foul stench of death from miles away.</p><p>After yet another door fit the description of either not opening the door or refusing to surrender their dead bodies to the social activists taking them off their hands, an elderly man sighed.</p><p>"What's the point, they either can't deal with the fact their dear ones are dead or they plan on cannibalizing their dead ones instead of surrendering them to us for a burial", with those loudly exclaimed thoughts, the old man left the party and wandered off.</p><p>"Tsk, this is fucking ridiculous", the large yet quickly rotting away man pulling the cart of the dead grumbled. "As if I got enough strength to both survive by my own and bury some dead meat. Eating them before they're too bad and suffering through the symptoms may be better off than just burying them"!</p><p>Just like that yet another social activist declared a mutiny to his own social activism and left the party. Eventually, only two remained, a young silver haired girl, like a twinkling little star, and a young man, similarly plagued by his hunger and clearly decently worn and damaged in his battle against certain death. Both too young and too naïve to give up, both pushing onwards on the noble but pointless goal to bury everyone who died properly.</p><p>"We don't have their names", the young man mumbled.</p><p>"You giving up too"? Little Stea hopelessly looked at her friend with sad eyes.</p><p>"Only over my dead body", the youth shook his head, filled with great determination. "Just noting the fact that the gravestones won't be what I'd like them to be".</p><p>"That expression stopped being funny…" Stea worryingly replied, "You don't look too good lately".</p><p>The young man stopped pushing the cart with piled dead bodies to roll up his shirt and slap at his painfully swollen stomach. "Look how well I'm doing, my stomach's full of something" he laughed out.</p><p>"Something's full of something else, alright", Stea let her worries down to a laugh. She knew her friend would never show weakness in front of her. That was just the kind of kinship these two felt for each other. Now just keep pushing this cart, just keep moving. These poor people deserved it…</p><p>Stea did not talk to her friend, they just kept pushing the cart, doing what they had to do. The boy kept on making short breaks to run behind a house, or another, even when he was pushing the cart, he kept spitting blood to the side from his dried out and cracked lips and bleeding gums. Stea thought he just needed a break, granted, she was also glad to find an excuse to rest a bit herself every time her friend ran off holding his abdomen like a mad man.</p><p>"Valor"? Stea called out her friend's name but only the wind carrying the ever-present foul stench of death answered. Worried, the girl ran off, following the direction where her friend last ran off to when she still saw him.</p><p>Stea quickly vaulted over the small wooden fence before noticing it was unlocked and could have simply been opened. That was the most likely way that her friend got into the yard in the first place. The girl looked around in worry, she saw some puddle of stinky substance at the corner of the house but, honestly, even if it was what she thought it to be, it couldn't overpower the usual smell of death in the air so it was impossible to identify. Given how much rotten and bad food starving people ate, Stea could only guess what the likely contents of that puddle were.</p><p>"This doesn't make any sense, if something bad had happened to him there'd be blood", the girl looked around trying to see some remains of her friend. Maybe he just got away, finally feeling sick of this whole pointless affair, but that wasn't really Valor. Valor was Stea's soulmate, he was the knight that gave her strength to keep making her feelings surface into reality.</p><p>Even if she fully knew how dangerous it was, Stea knocked on the back door of the house of the yard where Valor had disappeared. If the locals had not seen Valor, that could only have meant that he did actually leave her. Strangely, the back door was unlocked and opened up immediately after Stea knocked on its palm tree frame. This was stupid, it was dangerous… Stea wandered inside.</p><p>"Excuse me", she muttered out before repeating it loudly so that her presence did not surprise the masters of the house. If she was invading their home, temporarily, with good reason, she was better off letting them know she was looking for someone.</p><p>"You shouldn't have followed", a weak and husky voice came from the guest room, a man collapsed and barely breathing, sprawled out in an armchair jumbled out before Stea ran in the direction of his voice, the heart in her chest kept thumping to the point where it felt it would soon be busting out of the cavity that housed it.</p><p>"My friend, he disappeared, have you seen him"? Stea asked the weak and dying man trying to step up in front of him as he didn't bother to turn at her, maybe he was too weak to even do so. "We can bury your dead too, do you have any"?</p><p>"Me and my brother... We are ninja, we only need to eat a little bit once in a month or so, the smallest chunk of food suffices. You shouldn't have come here, we don't need you", the weakened man kept repeating the last part again and again.</p><p>"Y-You…" Stea mumbled out.</p><p>"He was already halfway gone by the time we…" the man could not finish what he was saying. Something was wrong, all the feelings tumbling inside of Stea, all the anger, all the thoughts and despair of the unfair world around her, all of it erupted at once in a bright white blaze, as bright and hot as the flame of the hottest stars and as compact as the room she was located in. There were no remains of the man in front of her, not anymore, the pressure of her chakra splattered him around the room but the heat and intensity of it instantly evaporated his remains.</p><p>"B-Brother, what was that"? a voice thundered from above, the man descended from the second floor only to freeze in motion, witnessing the devastation that the awakening and the sudden eruption of the thousands of different malicious feelings and thoughts inside this young girl's mind had brought.</p><p>"D-Don't come any closer"! Stea screamed out, she was no longer acting of her own conscious mind. It was pure instinct. She realized by now that these two had attacked and kidnapped her friend for food, one corpse would have likely sustained them for a while, given their background. They did not even need the whole thing but they were ninja, killing was what they knew best.</p><p>Stea couldn't even see the man move. She just felt sharp pain in her chest. Her eyes wandered down, thinking of a thousand things: why didn't the power she had before manifest again and help her, why didn't she move, more so – when will this nightmare they were living in ever end? One thing the girl knew for sure, as she looked down to affirm the man's butcher knife piercing her heart, she would not be there to see the end of this nightmare…</p><p>Two fingers were holding the blade right by her heart, twitching slightly as blood trickled from them, the tip of the blade had penetrated the girl's skin slightly but the rest of the blade was stopped.</p><p>"I… I didn't see you", Stea muttered out before falling on her knees and covering up her head. It was the final impulse of a collapsing mind.</p><p>"I am a ninja, dear girl, just like you have the potential to be. If you did see me before I intended you to – I'd be very bad at my job", the old man smiled as his rich moustache line moved upwards, his eyes brimmed with confidence and dreamy hope, just like Stea's used to before she wandered into this home.</p><p>"Shit, old geezer, you're crazy fast, got here entire seconds before us"! A bratty voice rumbled from behind Stea before the front door and the front wall of the house fell apart, revealing a little brat and an older, more muscular and cool-looking young adult. Whereas the eyes of the little boy were overflowing with emotions, rage, excitement, annoyance, all at once, changing every second, the eyes of the brutish looking bald-headed youth by his side were boring and calm. Just how many resident nightmares like this had these eyes seen?</p><p>A flashy dance of clanging blades, invisible to Stea's broken, teary and blanked out eyes erupted all over the house: the kitchen, the second floor, then the guest room before the old man slumped on his knees, covered in cuts and bruises and the other ninja fell violently crashing through the kitchen appliances and through the kitchen wall, all the way outside. Deader than the dead get.</p><p>"You're so amazing, girl, Gasco could sense you from all the way back! We did not even intend on looking in this neighborhood this week! Why didn't you fight back yourself, with your chakra level you'd have blasted them away easily"!? The brat kept on prancing about the broken Stea asking his series of questions.</p><p>"Idiot, look at her, it's clear that she can't control her latent talent. She's untrained, just sheer chakra signature size isn't everything. Old man, you wasted too much chakra on this trash. You didn't need to use your damage seals on the likes of him", the baldy just angrily grunted, closing his eyes and smugly walking away from the battlefield, as if everything that interested him had already been resolved.</p><p>"Nonsense. These two may have been too weak for me to need to use my ability but… They were ninja after all, not just any ninja, deep inside they regretted the actions they had to take in order to survive. That is why they wanted no witnesses – shame", the old man closed his eyes before gently helping Stea get back up on her feet.</p><p>"Who are you people"? Stea cried out, still shocked about the table where the game she played was located on being flipped over, fundamentally changing its rules, and making it difficult to put the pieces back together.</p><p>"We're the last hope this village has of overcoming this shitshow, wanna help"!? The brat gave Stea the thumb up before wiping his snot off of his nose and laughing out in embarrassment. "You're pretty strong yourself, we could really use your help"!</p>
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<a name="section0356"><h2>356. The Legacy Ace</h2></a>
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    <p>Young Stea and Doma were trading fists. It's barely been a handful of months after she was picked up by the old man and since her training started but she was matching up to Doma almost flawlessly. The girl disliked all of this fighting, it somehow felt like she was using all of her talent in all the wrong ways, instead of directing it at ending the starvation, she was just throwing fists randomly at people she could call family.</p><p>"She's not bad", Gasco breathed out forcefully, observing the two kids duking it out at impressive for their age and rather short time of training speed. "Still, I don't quite understand how she beat that first ninja. Her signature went from that of a normal human to outright monstrous, had I not sensed the second one's signature evaporating, we'd have never known he was even there – she completely disintegrated him".</p><p>"She's a talented kid. The one in a million kind. Every person has the capacity in them to be an average ninja, only a few handful can achieve the tallest heights there are without making excessive sacrifices. Stea is one of those talented kids", the old man nodded his head a couple of times before continuing to follow the two kids as they blitzed around the dojo. "One should never underestimate the power of emotion in molding chakra, it was because of her boiling feelings that her already tremendous latent chakra potential grew temporarily to the unbelievable heights that it did".</p><p>"She isn't fighting seriously, her mind isn't behind this", Gasco mockingly grunted after Stea got punched in the cheek and then kicked down hard enough to devastate the old master's floor. The girl appeared from the muddy depths below the house, the sludgy layers that required most houses to be elevated with wooden or stone platforms or be built in a manner that would make the whole house rise with each passing wave of muddy waters.</p><p>"That was a simple right cross, I thought she'd see it. Guess I'm just that good"! Doma laughed out childishly stroking his own itchy nose in both embarrassment and childish pride in his accomplishment.</p><p>"I'm sorry, master Haldus… I just… Can't focus", Stea wiped her muddy eyes so that she could open her eyelids without getting excessive handfuls of mud in them.</p><p>"Something on your mind"? old Haldus wondered. "You didn't seem to have this problem when I trained you in the basics – you were one of the most focused and reserved students I've ever taught".</p><p>"I just… Can't lose the thought that… I'm wasting my time here", Stea rubbed the back of her head shyly. She was not a bold enough girl, not like Doma at all, she had trouble relaying her honest thoughts to authority figures and figures did not get any more authoritative than old master Haldus.</p><p>"Oh, is that the case"? The old master closed his eyes in consideration.</p><p>"I mean… All we've been doing so far is fight each other over and over again, train more and more and that's fine and all but… The village has not gotten any better. Yes, the rampant murders have stopped, but only because the people lack the energy to even kill each other for survival anymore." Stea was becoming bolder and bolder with each passing sentence she was allowed to utter. This was her chance to make an impression on her old master and she had to utilize it.</p><p>"And what do you suggest we do"? Haldus asked curiously.</p><p>"Well… It's no mystery that plenty of people wanted to escape Getsugakure when things got rough. They would not get far because of the bandits that are circling the village further to the shores of the island. Even if they made it to the beaches, the pirates would pick apart what little is left of their party while they're making their way to the continent…" Stea vibrantly explained, she was not wrong either.</p><p>"So instead of wasting your time working towards the strength required to embark on a high-rank mission, you'd use it to fight pirates and bandits with our limited food and resources so that the people could leave our village instead of bringing it back from its pitiful state? You'd rather make them surrender all that was built on this island, all that was lost making the international community acknowledge Getsugakure as a village worth of their recognition"? Haldus strictly scolded his student.</p><p>"I'd rather give them another option than to sit tight waiting for death", Stea sadly mumbled out.</p><p>"If you focus towards eliminating bandits and pirates, you'd be betting all of your resources to do it. You would be giving up on the dream to bring our village back by doing that. Then you would give a starving and dying person a choice between sitting down in their home without any hope of its return or to settle in another location. What do you think they would choose? It's a willing decision to give up on one's home", Haldus strictly cut Stea's proposition down.</p><p>"P-People are dying by hundreds every day", Stea quietly wept out after a brief silent pause.</p><p>"And do you think that no one will die when their caravans are attacked by bandits and mercenaries? Do you assume that starving villagers will make a great army to fight rampaging pirates with? Do you perhaps theorize that you can take on the Eight Tails if it ever decided to smash a ship full of starving families with a single swipe of its abyssal tentacle"? Haldus replied with a softer voice, "You must understand, my students, that from this point on, your decisions affect everyone around you. It's survival or extinction for us".</p><p>"Hmph, don't fuck around with us, old man", Gasco smiled calmly, "We know why we've received no help from the Ninja Villages that "acknowledged" us. Usually, they'd be all up and running to flaunt their wealth and bullshit altruism by flinging food our way, proud to show off their power by busting pirate clans and bandit rings in the archipelago surrounding our village. It's because of the fact that our administration, or what remains of it, denies the very existence of this famine internationally".</p><p>leaped up to Gasco, grabbing him by the youth's collar, having to jump up to get a strong grasp, instead of pulling the tall baldhead down to his eye level, he just awkwardly kicked around as he hung there angrily throwing a fit.</p><p>"You bastard, you gonna bad mouth our village now"!? Doma grunted, trying to throw a lazy punch or two by letting go of his teammate.</p><p>"No, neither will I defend its administration with my life" Gasco sneered at the little snot before forcefully tossing him over his shoulder and slamming him to the ground. He did so restraining his superhuman force to the extent where the floor shook and cracked but did not bust open and sink the poor brat under half a meter of shit, mud and decomposing organic materials accumulated below the dojo.</p><p>A flash of black blurred across the room, Gasco grunted in pain and shock as the sound of blood splattering over the walls followed his pale and shocked expression of pain. Stea and Doma just stared completely dazzled by what had just transpired as a figure wielding a bloodied tanto in a black bodysuit, wearing his Getsugakure headband proudly landed behind the tall fallen baldhead.</p><p>"Damn it, I was too late", Haldus lamented as he had jumped in to aid his student a microsecond after the appearance of the attacker became known to him but it was much too late by then. This attacker was too much for their starved and fatigued over their long-term training selves.</p><p>"So that's what old Haldus is doing these days", the attacked caressed his bruised shoulder – the place where he was tackled by the old man, which prevented a lethal blow to be struck on the unsuspecting Gasco. "Gathering his little army of kiddies for a coup, planning on going on unauthorized missions"?</p><p>"Not a coup, you idiot, saving this village"! Haldus grunted angrily, scolding his younger and faster comrade. "The Getsukage denies this famine even as he himself starves to death, saving this village will never be achieved working in accordance with the administration"!</p><p>"You should've never abandoned the headband, old fool", the assailant raised his tanto up as Gasco's blood still dripped from it, "Can you sleep at night knowing you left Lord Getsukage deal with all the bandits and homicidal, treasonous villagers all by himself, without your trusty ability at his employ"?</p><p>"Is that why you're here"? Haldus angrily roared before launching himself at his opponent. The old man had seen how fast his assailant was, likely a high-tier chuunin if not low-tier jounin rank. In his current old and starving state, Haldus was no match for such a challenger, he'd need to foolishly risk his life so that his damage seals got charged to their peak if he was to defeat this threat.</p><p>Sparks and loud metallic clangs emanated through the dojo, Stea grabbed Gasco and dragged his unconscious body outside. She had assumed that Doma would follow her after but a quick glance back after Gasco was safely positioned outside revealed that it was not so.</p><p>Hearing a loud cry of desperation, Stea rushed back into the house witnessing a gruesome scene of old Haldus being stabbed from behind through his heart, while shielding Doma who foolishly attempted to aid his old master in combat. Haldus coughed up and vomited a whole bunch of blood over the shocked and mentally crushed, shaking like a twig body of his little student. He collapsed on the ground with a smile, attempting to stroke the boy's hair and calm him down but his life force gave way.</p><p>"Did the old geezer not truly show you your place in the feeding chain? That was his fatal mistake", the assailant wiped the blood on his tanto before pointing it at Stea.</p><p>The silver haired girl shook in anger and fear, the two emotions whirled in a typhoon that was soon calmed down by a pulsing sense of despair – even if she summoned all of her latent ability, all of her chakra – she'd never stand a chance against someone who had penetrated through old Haldus' augmentations with one strike. She knew that much… As much as she didn't want to admit it – the killer was right, sensei never did tell them just how powerless they were compared to people truly considered strong. It'd be fifty years in their current pace before they'd be able to fight this man here and these were fifty years that the trio didn't have.</p><p>They were all as good as dead. Stea fell on her knees, crushed and giving into despair, just like she did before, just like she did back at that house. If only… If only she was braver, if only she was calmer and didn't fear this much.</p><p>"D-Don't cry…" Haldus' voice reached Stea's crushed mind, making the girl and Doma both turn at their fallen sensei.</p><p>The assassin just looked back at the fallen master but decided that while he was not dead, it was, at this point, too late to save him.</p><p>"Will you kill my students too"? Haldus asked the man, coughing and choking on his own blood while he spoke.</p><p>"I normally wouldn't personally care about them, really… I was under orders to watch you and gather intelligence about your intentions. If you were planning a coup, I was supposed to snuff it out completely. I suppose that'd include killing these kids…" the assassin expressed his irritation, he clearly was looking for a way out of not having to kill these kids, now that he saw just how powerless they were.</p><p>"And what if you lie? Isn't that what we ninja do best"? Haldus coughed up more blood, his final moments were approaching but he spent them negotiating the lives of his students.</p><p>"Go on. I'll feel no better if I kill slobbering and despairing kids, I prefer my night sleep smooth and lengthy, like most", the assassin sighed.</p><p>"Bring them back to Getsukage, tell them you found them practicing and that they're unrelated to me", Haldus begged.</p><p>The assassin drew his tanto again and swiped it aside before preparing to charge at one of the kids. "They'll never believe something as stupid as this…" he grunted.</p><p>"Wait"! Haldus roared spitting blood out like an erupting volcano. The man was pale like a wraith by that point. "They may not believe you but… They'll take them in once they see their ability anyways – the Damage Seal".</p><p>"W-What? You taught them that? How!?" The assassin froze in fear.</p><p>"I haven't, it's not something that can just be taught. It took me thirty three years to master completely but it can be transferred through a Curse Seal", Haldus pleaded.</p><p>"Tsk. Even if they'll suspect who trained these kids, the temptation of employing a pair of damage seal users will be too great... Fine, but make it quick. I'm not dragging that knocked out fucker's ass back here. These days chakra is more precious than it used to be", the assassin shrugged.</p><p>"Gasco can defend himself without the seals, I don't have the time to have him dragged back here. Quick, take off your clothes and kneel with your backs to me"! Haldus commanded as his fingers lit up with bright green flames like each one of them was a matchstick sparked up and lit aflame.</p><p>Stea cried but she did not scream or grunt in pain while the flesh on her back was being painted on. She could even imagine how terrible Doma must've felt right now, this pain of the Curse Seal floating through his body and clashing with his chakra network, fighting for compliance. That evening she was gifted the complicated dark red circle littered with complicated sealing glyphs and surrounded by artistic looking "rays" of the Sun etched on her and Doma's backs.</p><p>That evening Stea lost the only family she could even remember. The only family that did not try to devour her for food to survive. She did not even get to say farewell, the old man was already dead by the time the Curse Seal was transferred and she turned around to hug him goodbye…</p><hr/><p>Mana sat on the edge of the same hill where she heard out Gasco's relatively lacking in descriptions, details and emotion tales of his home village. From the impression that has stricken Mana, she wouldn't go as far as to say that the tallest of Team Phobos didn't care about the famine and poor economic situation of his village, it was that he was not one for words in general. Had she wanted sentiments, she would have asked Stea to tell her about it, had she longed for needless outrage at every tiny bit, she would have asked Doma to tell her about his village.</p><p>After the lacking in length and details tale, Team Phobos had decided to move back to the village, without saying anything but implying that the magician was welcome to return in their company but Mana chose to stay and think her options through. She had never picked up smoking, it appeared to be a very vain and useless habit to her but this brooding reminded her of the several plays and movies she had seen where such moments were translated as "smoking moments".</p><p>There was one straw she still had to grasp at, things were not completely useless. In one or two days of just training around in the training grounds she could regain what little of her form she had lost and eliminate any remains of combat rust. In a week or two, she could learn the basics of a new technique, maybe, but basics were nowhere near enough. She could just train her physical shape but it would be to no avail – Mana was never a physical combatant to begin with and physicality was exactly the opposite type of combat that was rewarded against opponents like Doma and Stea.</p><p>She could've meditated and worn herself out daily to greatly improve her chakra pool again, if her past experiences were to be trusted, Mana estimated she could make her chakra pool grow about twenty five percent of its current state in two weeks if she focused on it heavily and nothing else. That would be a whole bag of useless – she did not even spend half of her chakra pool in this battle, chakra pool was not a problem nor did it automatically equal combat potency.</p><p>She could have created new, longer strings of techniques. Tried to create a combo of jutsu that, once initiated would achieve greater results than the one she tried against Doma. That may have been foolish as most of her techniques were useless in terms of combat damage and sheer power, but it was the most reasonable out of all of the piss-poor asylum of options she had.</p><p>Mana sighed and jumped off the cliff, releasing a feint pulse of chakra upon landing on the ground to soften her landing. At this point such simple chakra control tricks came off almost naturally… Naturally… The magician walked up to her holed up and battle ravaged magician's hat before weaving a bunch of hand seals with the hand that wasn't occupied holding it before placing her hand inside of it and pulling Usuzoku out of it. Mana let her rabbit partner just tumble on the ground after the basics of pulling were completed, almost like a big, pink, potty mouthed baby.</p><p>"Well dis ain't surprisin' at all", the rabbit grumbled before patting his leather armor and fixing his shoulder pads and angrily glaring right into Mana's eyes and seeing the gloom and seriousness in them, realizing this was no time for their usual fooling around gig.</p><p>"I need your help, Zoku-chan", Mana firmly cut down. The rabbit warrior did not even object her cute honorific or the manner in which she addressed him. Something had changed between the two in the brief while they have been working together and even more in the last battle they fought alongside one another.</p><p>"You need help trainin', rite? Big whoop, dat's what I've been countin' on after dat last battle. Took ye a while to start trainin' though…", Usuzoku stated seriously, the rabbit did not raise his voice, knock and kick around or object. He felt the weight in Mana's voice and act accordingly.</p><p>"It's not just that. Just training together won't be enough", Mana shook her head before stroking her wild dark hair and rubbing her hand down her bruised forehead and tired eyes. "I promised the strongest genin in the Chuunin Exams I'd beat her. At the moment there is an entire world of difference between us, she uses an ability that just doesn't feel natural for a genin to possess and I can't for the life of me figure it out. I've given up on even trying before today".</p><p>"Eh, come on, what could be so scary dat not even Hatchlin' an' the Great and Noble Rabbit Warrior can't stop"? Usuzoku waved his large paw at Mana before looking at the unwavering gloom in her face, after that moment Mana could almost see the rabbit's ears turn flabby and sink to the ground and his face shift into cold and emotionless stony expression. "Dat bad, huh"?</p><p>"Can you reverse-summon me to the rabbit homeland? I'll need to train with the Ninja Rabbits for this, I know I may not be ready, but… That I don't deserve it but… You know me, I wouldn't ask this of you if I…" Mana tried reasoning with Usuzoku.</p><p>"Will that be enough to win"? Usuzoku interrupted what he must've seen as pathetic and hopeless whining, he had no tongue nor the ears for it. He respected Mana more than he let her know, more than to let her beg him something like that and reveal all of the desperation she felt.</p><p>"Honestly, I'm not sure. But it's the highest hitting card in my hand…" Mana shrugged, "If that will turn out to not be enough, nothing I could've done in those two and a half week would be".</p><p>"When do you need it? I may need to arrange some things…" Usuzoku grumbled, rubbing his neck. "Right now"?</p><p>"Let me let my parents know, cancel all of my shows and all that…" Mana turned away, her voice shook in gratitude. She knew that Usuzoku let the Ninja Rabbits seem like a bigger deal than they actually were – a ninja animal species verging on extinction that nobody else wanted a contract with. It meant the world for her that he was willing to risk that illusion bursting for the sake of her well-being.</p><p>"Awight, I'll have ye reverse-summoned tomorrow at three past midday, be ready", Usuzoku nodded before disappearing in a cloud of smoke and a loud, high-pitched poof.</p>
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<a name="section0357"><h2>357. Return To The Seventh Circle</h2></a>
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      <p>"Seriously"? Mother raged on after Mana explained her plan of spending the next two and a half weeks in a distant, unknown land, training with a bunch of talking, highly socially developed and intensely opinionated in many matters rabbits.</p>
      <p>"I mean… Technically we had expected this before, dear", father shrugged, Mana may have forgotten her mother's oddly fiery temper but the man undoubtedly remembered it and tried pacifying the situation by reminding the woman that they'd expected Mana to leave somewhere unnatural to train.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, that was before she got back to sound mind and almost turned her life around"! Mother yelled out. While her fury always kind of crept Mana out, she could understand mother's point, in more restrained and tempered words, at least… The magician had been leaving home so often that she may as well have not lived there anymore. "If you just followed your plan along you could've removed all the ryo from your account, bought yourself a mansion and settled somewhere more peaceful in weeks from now"!</p>
      <p>The woman broke down in her own unique way – dropping on the sofa and angrily rubbing her temples and playing with her exotically unruly and dark colored hair. Most women in mother's shoes broke down in tears, Mana's mother chose to boil and simmer instead of erupting.</p>
      <p>"I have a separate bank account"? Mana mumbled out confused before shaking the odd slip-up off since it had little to nothing to do with the situation. "Anyways, it's something I have to do. My opponent in the Chuunin Exams is fighting for a very noble cause, the only sure-way path of helping her is beating her in a very specific way, one that'd impress the council and allow her to show off all of her skills."</p>
      <p>"That's what you always say. "Something I have to do"", father replied before sitting down by mother and keeping a watch on her so that she didn't remember her old more rampage-prone fiery ways. "You don't have to do anything, this is not one of your missions. The only objective in life is that which you set for yourself. You do realize that right? The way you've been living these past two and a half weeks – you were happy, you can't fool anyone trying to deny it".</p>
      <p>"I was happy", Mana nodded before picking up her sizeable bag and flipping it over her shoulders. The bag could have weighed like another human being all by itself, not to mention the steel tools and supplies she has been carrying and a bunch of scrolls with training equipment. "I love magic, I love entertaining people and seeing them smile. I love making them forget the world they live in, if only just for a second. The world that can erupt with war, natural catastrophes or get destroyed if some sicko doesn't control their own power for one careless moment and no one could stop them. The world that can end at any second. A terrifying world".</p>
      <p>It was too late to reconsider now. She had canceled all her shows in the morning, disappointing Mr. Hiro and her audience yet again. She had postponed this talk with her parents to the point where it was almost too late to leave. It was too late the moment she took Stea up on her plea and decided to help her and her village out.</p>
      <p>"Most of all, I loved seeing you two happy. Your smiles made me happy as well. But if I don't do this, if I know for the rest of my days that I didn't do everything I could have done to save this many starving people… I'll never be happy again, that'll only result in a perpetual circle of mutual sadness for everyone", Mana didn't want to say anything more, she rushed away from home in a hurry because farewells made her tear up, always and consistently, yet somehow if she didn't say her farewells it was almost deceiving in a way. At the very least, it helped.</p>
      <p>The sky was beginning to sink in its darkest. It tended to do that in winter. Mana looked up in the sky, feeling snowflakes grazing her cheeks and landing on them only to melt and mix into the girl's tears. A crushing pressure locked up around her, Mana could feel her body tense up in shock and automatically attempt to augment her body to compensate for her body being dragged through an interdimensional tunnel in order to instantaneously transport her to wherever she was reverse-summoned from.</p>
      <p>Smoke began seeping into her nose and mouth in the most sensitive moment when the uncomfortable gravitational pressure ceased and Mana could feel her legs standing firmly in some sort of a cave, her head still woozy and her chest prayed for one bit of air.</p>
      <p>"What is dat? Tears? What's de matter with yah? Grow up, for feck's sake"! Usuzoku's familiar grumble made Mana realize that her journey had already ended but she couldn't quite put her finger on where exactly she was.</p>
      <p>"I think you messed up your reverse-summoning, Zoku-chan", Mana blinked a couple of times rapidly if only to affirm that what she suspected was true. "I'm blind".</p>
      <p>A wave of laughter echoed in the room, making Mana grasp her ears, the sound began coming in more sensitively and it irritated her to no end. She was not even attempting to enhance her perception, it just naturally traveled more intensely.</p>
      <p>"You are not blind, Nakotsumi Mana", a grumbling elderly voice of someone other than Usuzoku echoed through the strange room she was in. "The Ninja Rabbit Cave System is sunken in complete darkness because we're underground. Very, very deep underground".</p>
      <p>Mana could feel it, the searing heat of the room she was standing in. The heat was so immense that it felt like if the magician shoveled some more of the stone and minerals beneath her feet she'd hit the outer core of the planet itself. Initially, the magician had attributed this to the bad performance of the Summoning Jutsu, now it all made sense. The magician adjusted her chakra network to enhance her perception and to allow her to withstand the seemingly unbearable heat better.</p>
      <p>"Dat's why it may ave not been da best idea to come ere", Usuzoku growled apologetically, "If ye can't deal with da darkness and da…"</p>
      <p>"No. This is great. Constant strain, always having to mind how I'm managing my chakra or else I'll break my network again, but if I'm not doing that – I'll die on the spot. This is just the kind of place I need", Mana shook her head, she wondered if her partners could see it. Then a loud cringe left her mouth, once her enhanced vision noticed the cotton-like puffiness of Usuzoku's fur. The warrior rabbit looked around in confusion as to what could've set his partner off to laugh so hard before looking at his own body and realizing the truth.</p>
      <p>"Don't laugh"! He growled out. "Seriously, don't ya laugh at dis"!</p>
      <p>Mana couldn't keep it in, the white and puffy cotton-candy like substance of the rabbit's fluffy skin made her bend over in laughter as her abdomen got locked up in pain. From now on, for two and a half weeks, she would have to mind it – the upkeep of her chakra augmentations, visual – to see, endurance – to not get fried instantly by this heat, surpassing anything that Mana had felt or seen before. When she is laughing, when she is sleeping, when she is tired after immense training. It will quite literally be an incarnation of hell but it was what was needed.</p>
      <p>"Dammit, it's normal! It's what happens to our furs in winter"! Usuzoku shouted out, jumping in to brawl with Mana, to abuse her limited perception but the magician tumbled aside lazily, avoiding the rabbit's tackle and his attempts to kick her in the face.</p>
      <p>"We've been told you are a genin, Mana, are you sure you can handle this heat? If your augmentations fail, if your focus is broken for one second or if your network breaks apart – you'll die instantly here. This place barely has breathable oxygen and its conditions are inhuman even for most lower ranking ninja", the familiar elderly voice feared for Mana's well-being.</p>
      <p>"Don't worry, I've already had my network broken once, I won't let it happen again", Mana confidently shook her head before stretching out and realizing that the nearly non-existent oxygen has already turned into a problem.</p>
      <p>"This… Doesn't encourage me one bit", the elderly rabbit chuckled, he was white and fluffy, similar to Usuzoku but Mana could not perceive his eyes as much as she invested into her perception augmentations. It was a short while before the magician realized that the elderly rabbit had none and that his eyes were covered up by excessive fur growths on his forehead and his massive moustache-like locks under his nose.</p>
      <p>"It will be fine", a feminine voice of a rabbit to Mana's back-right replied to the elder's worries, "She can use the escape to surface really quick, Kusagakure is not that dangerous of a territory to be in"</p>
      <p>"So the cave system is somewhere in Kusagakure"? Mana wondered.</p>
      <p>"True, but our cave system is intricate. Even our own zealous young get lost in it sometime, we don't even know how a human girl will receive it. It's the size of a small country, after all", the rabbit elder shook his head worryingly.</p>
      <p>"Small country"? Mana exclaimed in surprise, "No need to worry then, it'd take me a whole day to memorize it all. I'd rather spend that time training. If I die – that'll be a rather unfortunate and abrupt end of that".</p>
      <p>"I can see why you like this reckless girl, she's just like you", the elder rabbit played with his moustache-fluffs of fur in disapproval, not all rabbits must have been as aggressive and rough-headed as Usuzoku, in fact, right now Mana saw not a single rabbit behaving in a manner in which Zoku was behaving around her. They sounded and looked like quite tranquil and peace loving species. That was quite glad to see… Mana was beginning to fall in love with the Ninja Rabbits a little bit more the more time she spent with them and they seemed very fitting for a contract she chose.</p>
      <p>"Shuddup, old geezer, I dun like 'er at all, she ain't anythin' like me either"! Usuzoku angrily barked out crossing his arms over his chest in objection.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>"Dis is gon' be a real pain in de ass", Usuzoku grumbled as Mana and him were making their way down a rocky, spiraling downwards tunnel that lead to the main cave that qualified as the "outside" of the entire cave system.</p>
      <p>"It better be", Mana smiled cheeking her rabbit partner, "I need to be within an inch of death every day or else it won't be enough. Even if the training goes perfectly it may not work out at all".</p>
      <p>"So wats yer plan"? Usuzoku wondered, "You just want to train with me to improve your physical condition? You want to live in the constant total darkness and in almost three thousand degrees of heat for two and a half weeks to improve your chakra control and help you learn to deal with similar situations in the future. That it? Do you have any spectacular techniques you wish to learn here?"</p>
      <p>"No", Mana shook her head, "That'd take too much time, even if I did pick up a jutsu or two in here, I would never master them sufficiently to use them fast enough and easily enough for them to matter. What I want is to perfect myself to a full one hundred."</p>
      <p>"Perfect yerself"? Usuzoku raised an eyebrow, Mana was impressed she could tell in total darkness.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, most ninja tap into their latent potential with a jutsu, reach fifteen percent or so of that potential before the jutsu becomes obsolete in their eyes. They move on, find more powerful techniques leaving gaps in their forms. I do not seek to reach out for new heights, I'm going to master the ground I'm standing on. I'm going to master every jutsu I know, I'm going to master every skill I know to their peaks. I'll become Perfect Mana, if you will".</p>
      <p>"Not to burst yer bubble, Hatchling, yer jutsu suck", Usuzoku sighed as the two left into the large yard of caves. Mana looked around in confusion, focusing more and more chakra into her augmentations to see the edges of this massive cave but it was tough to do so. Even more, the edges she could see lead to smaller tunnels that inevitably must have lead to more massive miniature cities like this.</p>
      <p>"They are meant for specific means, also, if this works, they won't suck after we're done with them. This cave is massive. Just how many Ninja Rabbits are there"? Mana gasped after finishing explaining her crazy idea for training.</p>
      <p>"Not as many as ye'd think. Dis whole place is the most occupied cave, there used to be two hundred thousand of us – we multiply pretty fast, our love heats up as fast as it goes out. Wars and abandonment caused us to relocate and every time we relocated in history we left massive empty systems just like this one behind. That's why we said the whole system spreads through the whole country", Usuzoku explained before leading Mana to a hollowed out mineral orb. "You can put yer things here, dis is where ye'll be settlin' down for a while".</p>
      <p>"Is this your place"? Mana looked around, looking a bit surprised by how simplistic, yet at the same time very intricate these housings were. This entire cave system was nothing but a massive spherical gap filled with smaller hollowed out spheres of rock and dirt where rabbits settled in. "I was wondering, just how many rabbits that can fight are here? Maybe we could employ someone stronger than you for help. The signatures around this cave don't seem too impressive".</p>
      <p>"We 'ave… Loads a dem really, amazing warriors all over da place. Ten thousand million a rabbits with sharpened teeth, ready ta tear into yer flesh an' soft choky furs dat're lookin' ta suffocate yer stupid face" Usuzoku mumbled out before Mana asked him to repeat more loudly and clearly but he just shook his hands angrily at her face.</p>
      <p>"You don't have anyone else, do you"? Mana longingly asked in a manner that was more confirming in total horror than asking.</p>
      <p>"Look, things 'aven't been goin' too well for us Ninja Rabbits ere, wars with Ninja Mongooses, getting almost wiped out by da Ninja Snakes who, coincidentally, also share affinity for caves, which caused us to dig deeper and deeper…" Usuzoku mumbled out with a sad voice. "Dere was no one from the peoples ere, or anywhere else, to help us out, not dat we needed it, we're all fine warriors, strongest dere are! De strongest, I tell ya"!</p>
      <p>Mana reached out and placed her hand onto the rabbit's fluffy white head before stroking it. For a moment it appeared like Usuzoku's eyes were trying to make Mana blow up spontaneously where she stood but then he just lowered his ears in a submissive and demeaning manner and just looked away.</p>
      <p>"That's fine, Zoku-chan, I'm here now. I won't forget this, whenever you're up to bullying some mongooses or taking your territory back from the snakes, I'll be here", Mana smiled.</p>
      <p>"Are ye smilin' cause sometimes I honestly can't tell, its cause yer so stupid and your face is dumb", Usuzoku's voice trembled, he couldn't see because he was tearing up. "Anyways, don't tread south more dan two systems back, dat's where dat terrorist madman Usujitsa is blowin' stuff up. Nobody knows wat his deal is, if you hear stupid gigglin' and see his mindless, white, rampagin' face, just run north and deeper down into the tunnel".</p>
      <p>"I'm not sure if I could tell him apart, honestly, you are all white to me, really", Mana shrugged apologetically.</p>
      <p>"Why I oughta"! Usuzoku leaped right at her again trying to kick Mana's head off of her shoulders. The power in his thighs, in the leap at her and his speed was incredible. However, Mana was slowly growing more accustomed to the dark. She could almost hear pebbles being grinded into dust beneath his feet, the entire ground pulsing in shocks as the force in Usuzoku's feet was being transferred through it. That minuscule growth was just enough for Mana to avoid decapitation by a rabbit's massive feet.</p>
      <p>Mana spent entire hours launching weak jutsu she learned as a child at Usuzoku, feeling how they worked, what purposes they had and getting more used to them than she already was. Using one needed to feel like flicking her fingers. Her useless starter dozen, or so she used to categorize them. They were not weapons, they were tools, each doing something useful but very specific for her: Mystical Wings let her generate wind currents to, sort of, fly a limited distance up, the rest had similar very contrived purposes and uses but were useless in any other situation.</p>
      <p>All of that had to change. Every single technique she crafted as a child reading the basics of ninjutsu from a massive books that weighed more than she did had to be perfected and polished to where Mana could call upon them instantly and execute them perfectly. Not only that, they should've been elevated to a status of perfection in both speed and power. Just like Mana had improved the speed and maximum altitude of her Mystical Wings Jutsu over time, each of her starter dozen had to be polished and, honestly, that was the easy part.</p>
      <p>Weak jutsu like that were easy to polish and improve. Mana was a kid when she made those jutsu, she used plenty of unnecessary hand seals when making them, she knew much less than she knows now and she had little to no experience on the field of battle, somewhere in her heart she had hoped to have none even when she changed the world… The tough part would be to improve her most recent jutsu, ones she invented and polished as a genin surpassing some chuunin in skill already. That will require literally bashing her head against the wall of her limits to do and, seeing the progress she made in a single afternoon, Mana was not feeling all too hopeful about it.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>"Say, Zoku-chan", Mana whispered laying on a tough platform of minerals which substituted bed for the rabbits. The magician could hear Usuzoku putting layers upon layers of softened sand and dirt inside his rocky "bed" as if it was a bath being filled with water for comfort. Mana would rather sleep on the polished, literal diamond-hard minerals than sleep on actual dirt. "Is that elder guy in charge of the community"?</p>
      <p>"Yeh, dere used to be dis other 'uge guy. I don' even remember his name anymore…"</p>
      <p>"I'm fairly certain it's Usu-something", Mana interrupted her partner.</p>
      <p>Usuzoku just painfully grunted something to himself before resuming his answer, "Anyways, he was dis uge guy. Like, a hundred a meters tall, he was de last a de ancient rabbits. Dey used to all be like dat…"</p>
      <p>"So that's why your halls are so huge…" Mana mumbled to herself, "And he just left"?</p>
      <p>"Ye, musta gotten sick a it all… Doubt he's even alive rite now, he's a big guy, if he as much as stepped on somethin' da whole Kusagakure would hear it", Usuzoku flipped over, face away from Mana. "De old geezer Usugiji was in charge ever since".</p>
      <p>"Insane white rabbit terrorists, kaiju-rabbits… You guys would really be amazingly powerful if you all worked together", Mana sighed as she dreamily looked at the total darkness of the ceiling above her. She did a lacking job today, Usuzoku was afraid to let Mana get too worn up or damaged. He talked a lot of mean talk but deep inside his heart was as fluffy as his winter fur…</p>
      <p>"Ye, yer de one ta talk…" Usuzoku grumbled half sneezing already. He was more right to reply this way to a human than he knew…</p>
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<a name="section0358"><h2>358. The Beginning Of The End Of The Road</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Konoha was rustling. The time for the finals of the Chuunin Exams has come. Both the local villagers and the foreign visitors, both those arriving for a pleasurable event of young ninja competing for higher ranks and guests of honor who came here for political reasons were buzzing all over the village.</p><p>Those of the villagers who still held idealistic attitudes towards the world would have found this common relaxing sense of enjoyment truly beautiful. For the first time in a while, villagers of every village and country around the world have gathered in one place just to feast their eyes at a combat extravaganza that only came around once in a couple of years or so.</p><p>Whereas the earlier stages of the Chuunin Exams have been shrouded in secret and closed off from the public eye, the trials of the finalists – the strongest of the strongest, fastest of the fastest, the cleverest and the most skilled of all other examinees were open for all to see and gaze at. For one day and one day only, all politics, feuds and battles, both in the open battlefield and political, got swept aside.</p><p>Even the newly elected Mizukage from Kirigakure that has recently regained its autonomy was marching across the village with his following party of ninja, who were both his protectors and his intent to later feast his ocular orbs at the magnificence of children or less successful young adults attempting to enter the rank of ninja maturity. Even those who did not know the man's high status from rumors of the papers would have noticed his massive height, undercut hair and immensely rich mustache line as well as his fine silk attire.</p><p>Wherever the visitors came from, wherever they were wandering about, all of their paths lead up to the north-western part of the village and the Chuunin Arena where the finals took place. Seeing how the main event of the day was about to start in an hour or so, the place was already filling up with clouds of people and was only about to become more hectic.</p><p>"Meiko!" Kiyomi shouted out, waving her hand towards a familiar blue-green tracksuit wearing blacksmith who now appeared to be walking on her own two feet rather firmly and looked back in her cheerful original shape.</p><p>"Yo!" Meiko replied with a cheerful nod before running up to Kiyomi, where the Yamanaka heiress took care in gently working her way through the crowd, Meiko was like a rampaging elephant in a forest. Plenty of people got brushed aside and were about to object before they saw the size and the build of the blacksmith girl who had just shoved them aside and swallowed their objections or even went as far as to blame themselves and apologize for getting in the way of the careless rampaging bull of a girl.</p><p>"I see you've recovered", Kiyomi smiled, her hair had grown much longer and more unruly, it was not tough to see that the young lady of the Yamanaka clan was occupied with her training to take much care in personal hygiene and grooming except for the most necessary emergency procedures last night before the match.</p><p>"You bet. I'm not sure if I should be fighting but…" Meiko pouted her lips around at various sides before frantically looking around. "I wonder where Mana is, she's gonna be fighting today, right?"</p><p>"You know her, she probably won't be showing up until right before the match, not with this many people to pester her. She's a celebrity after all", Kiyomi shrugged, feeling pretty wise about having predicted her friend's thoughts so sharply.</p><p>"Yeah, that would have actually been pretty smart", Mana's voice ringed right from behind Kiyomi making the blonde jump up and turn around at the speed of lightning. She hadn't even sensed the pressure from her friend sneaking up, granted, Kiyomi was no sensor but most ninja possessed an innate ability to sense danger to a limited degree and Mana projected none of it.</p><p>"What the hell happened to you!?" Meiko exclaimed before covering her abdomen in laughter. The magician barely reminded of her old self – covered in burns, swollen red skin and a cloth bound around the girl's eyes, her hair looked so incredibly messy that it appeared to hold branches with actual bird nests sticking out from them. Mana reminded more of a crazy hobo than her normal self.</p><p>"Oh, my eyes are really sensitive to light right now. I really hope they'll recover by the time I have to fight", Mana laughed out innocently like it was no big deal. Kiyomi's eyes twitched in surprise after she noticed the magician's skin slowly beginning to pale back to its original tanned shade in speeds that were almost traceable to the human eye, almost like she was regenerating right in front of her from severe skin burns.</p><p>"You're on food pills, aren't you?" Kiyomi muttered.</p><p>"Yeah, I've spent a lot of time training today, had to catch up on a lot of time I've wasted. Then it dawned on me that I may not be able to return here and I lost it", Mana laughed out again, as her head tilted up, Kiyomi got a glimpse of her friend's lifeless eyes under the cloth. It made the heiress' heart tremble in wonder just what kind of torment did the magician go through in her training. Despite the fact that Mana's eyes appeared lifeless, the magician had noticed Kiyomi concern with her eyes turning to meet those of her friend's.</p><p>"Return here? From where?" Kiyomi wondered just where did Mana get such intense burns. They were weak enough to suggest that Mana used active chakra augmentation to prevent getting completely melted away but they were consistent and present enough to suggest intense temperatures unlike any that can be found around the world.</p><p>"Oh, I was the in Rabbit Caves in Kusagakure. Zoku-chan reverse-summoned me there", Mana casually explained as the girl began making their way through to the arena and flashed their Ninja Registration IDs to the chuunin acting as guards.</p><p>"You're not on the list as an examinee", one of them sighed addressing Meiko, you'll have to join the main queue right there.</p><p>Meiko sighed, "I knew it and yet still I tried. I have no regrets!" she exclaimed loudly before skipping to the main line as if the concept of standing around for an excessively prolonged amount of time excited her.</p><p>"I thought summoned contracts can return to their original location at any time", Kiyomi curiously wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, I thought so too, it appears there's a time limit to how long one can spend in any given location. Then they need to be summoned again if they want to return. Usuzoku sent one of the messenger rabbits to Hokage-sensei but…" Mana tried explaining.</p><p>"That's not a very good idea", Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Right?" Mana shrugged, "She completely forgot she had to summon me using a Reinforcements Scroll today so I had to dash all the way back from Kusagakure. Didn't take me long but I wasted a whole bunch of chakra and had to blast through a whole bunch of trees. Had it not been for my chakra sensory I'd have never gotten home right, when you move at those speeds you can barely even see things".</p><p>Kiyomi sighed, then the magician noticed that something dawned on her, likely the fact that Mana just dashed from the other side of the world in a course corrective dash that couldn't have taken her that long to complete. Given how stopping to correct her course and avoid more sensitive obstacles were the only stops she must've made – the magician likely could've completed that dash in mere moments.</p><p>"So, then you reconnected with Kouta?" Kiyomi's cheeks blushed slightly, Mana was impressed, she sensed the elevated body temperature of her friend and heard her heartbeat rise, had she still had her sense of smell she'd have likely been able to smell the sweat and hormones emitted from her body but that was long since dead.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Mana wondered before tightening her blindfold as her eyes were beginning to water. She did not even need her eyesight for anything other than the match – by now she had learned to rest her eyes and rely on other senses such as chakra sensory, hearing and touch. Right now touch was especially strong, given Mana's sensitive slightly burnt skin that was still regenerating slowly.</p><p>"Didn't you know?" Kiyomi wondered, "He completed his internship and spends time working in the hospital now".</p><p>"Oh, I thought…" Mana mumbled something softly before turning away, her senses became all jumbled up and it suddenly became difficult to tell things apart so she slowed down and reached out for the walls around her to help her guide her way to the preparations room. "I thought he was going to follow his father's footsteps".</p><p>"I don't know about that", Kiyomi shrugged, "He used to be your boyfriend, didn't he? It's been one and a half month since you last talked, you should really catch up with him".</p><p>By that time Kiyomi had realized that Mana needed some help and helped guide her temporarily blinded teammate to the preparations room and helped her fix her hair from all the branches and wood chips that the magician had gathered. By the time Mana's senses got back into perceiving her surrounding accurately the magician noticed an odd increase in her teammate's heartbeat. She must have been considering something intensely, it wasn't healthy for her to worry about anything but the upcoming matches.</p><p>"Actually, Eiju hooked me up with some of his own pills. I figured he'd be conning the pharmacy for some of his own medication, given his habits, I blackmailed him into prescribing me some blue medical food pills to help me recover", Mana explained where she got the food pills she used to slowly recover her fatigue, chakra loss and bodily injuries.</p><p>"Let's just hope they finish working until your match comes up", Kiyomi worryingly exclaimed.</p><p>"They might. Say, when I told you about how I got back to the village, your heartbeat escalated but not in a way that would have made you scared. You have gotten much stronger that you were before, didn't you? I need to know, Stea is still by far the strongest genin in the building so I need to know how you'd rate my results" Mana asked straight.</p><p>"I haven't seen your results yet, all I see before me now is a broken and fatigued version of you. You returning back home on foot so soon is impressive but it's not completely outside my reach either", Kiyomi shrugged, her heart was calm, her chakra signature rustled like a calm flame as well. "Granted, I'd have likely never tried it, too wasteful and reckless in general to travel so fast".</p><hr/><p>Not even twenty minutes later more genin started gathering in the preparations room. Seeing how the kunoichi had a separate room from their male peers, a more select roster of ninja had begun gathering around. The first one to enter after Kiyomi and Mana was Vinda Calkem, the ruthless with a hint of crazy, dark punky haired and clothed kunoichi from Team Iocaste of Getsugakure.</p><p>The girl was a relatively short and frail looking one, if one ignored her more wild hairstyle and constant smug and sadistic grin that she walked around adoring, she'd have looked quite similar to Mana if the magician had adopted a more wild style of hair and clothes. Granted, Kiyomi knew that the two had little to do with each other internally. Where one disliked inflicting too much pain and damage in combat, the other took great pride and enjoyment in her destructive and corrosive abilities and blamed the damage she did on her opponent's own recklessness in accepting to fight her.</p><p>Seeing how neither Kiyomi nor Mana had any previous interactions with the sadistic young lady from Getsugakure she completely ignored the two girls, save for sparing a moment to lick her lips and smile when gazing at Mana's condition. It appeared to Kiyomi that this was a very cruel and rude way to act around people one didn't even know or have any grudges against. Then again, she was the one who showered a bunch of opposing opponents in acid until they ran out of chakra to neutralize its effects and the fight needed to be stopped so that the medical team could neutralize its effects for them.</p><p>Kiyomi glared at Mana who appeared to completely ignore the raven-haired punk as she changed into her dark sleeveless shirt and standard military trousers of the Getsugakure uniform. The Yamanaka wondered if that was because Mana could not see the cruel looks that the girl was giving the magician or because her friend simply did not care all that much about it.</p><p>A handful of moments after Vinda changed and started warming up and stretching out, Nanaba found her way to the preparation room, followed by Stea Tesprea. Both girls noticed Kiyomi and Mana warming up, Kiyomi by actually performing stretching exercises and shadowboxing whereas Mana just sat hunched over on the bench and stared blankly at the door.</p><p>"Heeeeey!" Nanaba shrieked out in a manner of affection and friendliness that, honestly, Kiyomi had assumed the two had not reached yet. Apparently, Nana thought differently herself.</p><p>"Greetings, you two", Stea nodded. Kiyomi looked at Mana worryingly, wondering if the magician actually had time to interact with the Getsugakure's favorite, seeing how otherwise there would be no reason for the kunoichi to even bother talking to them.</p><p>"Phew! I finally had my puppet arms fixed, that saga of the Chuunin Exams is officially over, I'm back at full strength"! Nanaba cheered on herself before posing a bunch of times like a caricature of the colorful superheroes in rice cereal commercials on TV or one of those more exotic wrestlers from Kumogakure.</p><p>"Mana… Are you going to be OK? Did something go wrong?" Stea instantly grabbed the bull by the horns. Something Nanaba completely ignored, proceeding to small talk instead.</p><p>"Oh, don't worry. I've given it my all during training, I'm on food pills and it should all go away in time", Mana raised her head up to look over at Stea's location, something that convinced the Getsugakure kunoichi that even blindfolded and suffering from some burns the magician was not completely powerless.</p><p>"You don't look like you had much sleep, honey! What happened! You really have been taking your training seriously, haven't you!" Nanaba shouted out in surprise before pointing at Mana in horror. This girl was a wild tornado of emotion and lack of subtlety, not too much different from a certain someone both Team Hokage kunoichi knew which appeared to entertain both of them at once.</p><p>"That's because I haven't slept, well, not completely, for the duration of the two and a half weeks", Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Wait, what!?" Kiyomi whistled in surprise before asking in shock.</p><p>"You see, it appeared that if I was to completely fall into a deep sleep, my augmentations could have gone down which would have meant I'd have been exposed to the entirety of the inhuman conditions of the Rabbit Caves. That is why I did not technically sleep. I meditated to rest instead. It did some of the job but…" Mana explained making Kiyomi feel uneasy.</p><p>It was true that, technically, Kiyomi trained extensively in the Yamanaka Resort. She continued her training with her uncle's assistants while simultaneously attempting to innovate on the Yamanaka clan hijutsu to finally take the next step that most of the more advanced ninja of her clan had taken. She had advanced forward by leaps and bounds, she was a totally different ninja now compared to the way she was before the Chuunin Exams but…</p><p>Hearing every bit of detail about Mana's training made Kiyomi curious about just how effective her training was. It also made her feel uneasy as if somehow, there could have been more she could have done. As if, somehow, she was the only one who slacked off and everyone around her was in this crazy new world, completely unknown to her and that, in just twenty more minutes, all of it would be made painfully clear to her. Suddenly, deep inside Kiyomi's own mind, everyone around her began looking so massive and mocking.</p><p>With a self-calming sigh, Kiyomi shoved those dark thoughts down. She did not slack off, she trained her ass off both before the semi-finals and during the last five weeks. She has transcended the line between just an average Yamanaka clansman and a pride of her clan by successfully innovating on her clan hijutsu. She was someone who eliminated both of her opponents in the semi-finals all by herself, the second one being one of the strongest genin in the Exams. Who cared if it was all due of a technicality, she was Kiyomi, the badass!</p><p>Someone banged loudly at the door, the sound of their boots walking away suggested that the person wasn't looking to gain entry into the preparation room but was looking to warn the kunoichi that the preparations were complete.</p><p>"That's odd", Mana softly spoke up. "I didn't sense Erumo around. She did proceed to the finals, didn't she"?</p><p>"Oh, she's messing around near the observational platform already, she came prepared", Nanaba waved her hand at Mana before standing up and stretching out. "Let's go, everybody"!</p><p>"We've trained for five whole weeks for this, it's about time", Kiyomi threw a pair of rapid-fire blows in the air before following Nanaba to the door.</p><p>"Mana, I hope that your training fatigue and wounds recover until the time of our match. Luckily, we fight last. Know that even if you don't regain your eyesight and don't fully recover, I will not hold back one bit"! Stea declared. Mana could hear and sense the seriousness emanating from the girl's entire body. Once the magician opened her eyes for a brief moment she could see the confident shapes of the figure of her opponent, illuminated by the light on the ceiling, standing tall in front of her, coldly looking at her.</p><p>"I know", Mana stood up and closed her eyes as they were beginning to itch and water from the influx of light flowing into them even through the blindfold. "You better not. I nearly killed myself training and cashed in some massive favors so that you show off everything you got and get promoted. I wouldn't accept anything less than that".</p>
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<a name="section0359"><h2>359. Sounds Of Limestone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A fresh influx of air blew in the direction of the girls who have gathered in the front observation platform that was positioned right beneath the audience, which in terms laid beneath the VIP areas where all the important political figures were placed. Kiyomi warily looked around, moving her mind away from the upcoming battles to wonder if it was that safe to host all of the political elite that have decided to come and enjoy the festivity.</p><p>That moment was when she noticed rows upon rows of uniformed ninja posted in between the vertical rows of steps that lead to in and out of the arena. Konoha spared no expense at security and extravagance of the whole thing. Except for that one unexpected accidental death in the semi-finals, the whole event was going without as much as a hitch. Given the insane security, as well as the personal security details of all of those big cheeses of politics, attacking such an event would have been an equivalent of declaring war upon multiple ninja villages at once.</p><p>"You should see it", Kiyomi turned and pouted her lips at Mana's direction. "This whole place is rocking. As someone who loves entertaining people, you'd appreciate it".</p><p>"I… This isn't good", Mana gasped for air. "I can't use my sensory here".</p><p>Kiyomi looked at her friend with concern, so did Stea, for some reason this Getsugakure girl had an investment of some sort in Mana's ability to compete properly. One that the Yamanaka could only understand halfway, obviously, a good match consisted of two strong contestants so Stea may have been interested in Mana being as strong as possible for optimal chances of being promoted but… The eyes of the young woman were more invested than just that. These two were kindred souls with similar goals in mind.</p><p>"She can't sense anything", Kiyomi explained to Stea who kept switching her gazes between the magician and back at the blonde.</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, it's because of the all the ninja around. Each single one could throw the emotions of an unseasoned chakra sensor into overdrive. Multiple Kage are attending the event, their sensors should suppress the chakra signatures once the matches begin", Stea sighed more easily after finding out the reason behind Mana's worries.</p><p>"Where are all the boys"? Nanaba voiced her inquiry in a more complaining tone than an asking one.</p><p>"Right there, on the opposite side, silly", Vinda pointed extending her hand forward and pointing at another dark blue platform hosting a party of male competitors on the other side of the arena.</p><p>A uniformed ninja stepped out into the middle of the arena, modeled after a typical training grounds battlefield with sandy wasteland patches, a patch of grass transitioning into a small, crystal clear pond and surrounded by lines of trees that would've simulated a forest environment. To the northeast, there were large rocks placed on a more rocky wasteland patch of land. Such refined battlefield manipulation must've been created by Dorimi, just like the arena was during the semi-finals. That jounin was unmatched in creating and shifting battlefield conditions to better suit his needs.</p><p>"Villages of Konohagakure and honored guests, welcome to the final stage of the Konohagakure hosted Chuunin Exams! This year's competition was fierce, we've had to filter through almost a hundred competitors in the Forest of Death stage alone. The genin that will be competing today are the best of the best all of our villages have to offer and, quite literally, the future of our ninja world." The overseer of the exams, a strict faced man with rapidly balding head and wrinkly yet thick and fleshy face declared.</p><p>A roaring wave of applause followed, drowning out the overseer of the finals and forcing him to stand silently. Kiyomi gave her friend a worried glare and noticed that Mana had covered up her ears in desperately tried shutting down the noise. To her hearing was immensely important and much more sensitive, hearing something like this must have totally overwhelmed her senses yet again. The magician was evidently not having the best of days leading up to one of the most important brawls in her life.</p><p>"The genin gathered here will compete in one round of one on one competitions in pre-decided matches. There are no rules, the only ways to lose are to be knocked out and unable to fight, removed from the battlefield or killed." The man continued his explanation of the few rules that even applied at this point. "In the end of the day, the Ninja Council comprised of members from all competing villages will decide on which genin will get promoted. The world of the ninja is a crazy one, it is entirely possible that one of you youths will pull out an unexpected jutsu and surprise us and our ancient rigid rules, as you've already done several times this year. Then I, Oke Ebamoto, shall rule if you've broken any rules and a battle is to be ended or not".</p><p>Overseer Oke stopped talking as if to allow the audience to express their applauses but the arena fell dead silent. Then, catching up too late to the cue, several hundreds of the audience members started to awkwardly clap their hands before a handful of more joined in.</p><p>"Hmph, they outright went on and said it there, we can kill anyone we want!?" Vinda barked out extending her hand forward and letting a weak stream of water rotate down her skin. The stream dripped and sprayed off her fingers down to the ground, as the water touched the ground it began sizzling and letting out a faint vapor but it did not corrode the floor, likely due to the tough materials it was made of.</p><p>"It's a trap", Stea calmly stated, "Killing someone is the first way to get the Ninja Council to not vote in favor of you. Killing people used to be all the rage back in the times of war, when such abilities could've been used to show off and flaunt village's strength. Now it would cost the village hosting the killing ninja some diplomacy points so even the council of your own village would not vote for you".</p><p>"Am I the only one impressed we can even hear him?" Nanaba pressed her lips forward in curiosity.</p><p>"It's all in the limestone materials from which the arena is made of. The materials suppress the sounds of background noise and filter what needs to be heard, way in the back the materials reflect the sound waves back at the back row enhancing the noises from the arena", Mana explained. This was a basic Konohagakure history fun fact which she looked glad to share with a girl she was not entirely sure when she had befriended to the point of such a casual conversation.</p><p>"Now, let's begin this astonishing noon with the first match of the day, between Roh-D of Kumogakure and Aozora Yushijin from Konohagakure. Examinee Roh-D was one of the first genin to leave the Forest of Death, alongside his teammate Kei-J, he also put up easily the most brutal and breathtaking match in the semi-finals against his fellow Kumogakure ninja, surprising even the seasoned veterans with its sheer brutality".</p><p>Kiyomi glared at the right side of the arena and at the dark corridor from which Roh-D's powerful and broad shouldered figure appeared, walking out into the open, this time completely uncloaked and ready to fight without holding anything back. The finals were when all the genin pulled out any stops and fought utilizing their true fighting styles and using any abilities they may have wanted kept secret earlier on. The bold and uncloaked, battle ready outfit of the dark-skinned powerhouse from Kumogakure reflected that.</p><p>The audience erupted into a relatively calm and restrained wave of applause. It was obvious that not too many Konoha villagers applauded for this impressively put together young man. Despite the foreign factor, multiple villagers chose to applaud the young man only for his impressive physical shape, exotic looking tubes sticking out from the bottom part of his arms and his described achievements.</p><p>"Looks like you'll miss yet another match of this guy", Kiyomi bit Mana playfully, reminding the magician of the brutal match between Roh-D and Oto-B she already missed when she was sealed off during their tag match in the semi-finals. Now she'll miss the match due to her eyes needing to get used to sunlight again.</p><p>"I may just be tracking this match more closely than most of you", Mana calmly stated. Kiyomi wondered just what that could have meant when both Mana's eyesight and her chakra sensory were somewhat closed down, not to mention her ears constantly being sieged by the relentlessly loud applause of the filled arena.</p><p>"This impressive youth will be facing off against our own Aozora Yushijin! This young man may not belong to any clan but he still proved to be an impressive ninja with an unmatched ability in genjutsu!" The overseer explained in quite limited detail. Seeing the lack of interest from the crowd, as if still waiting for a reason to cheer on their home-grown shinobi, the man continued, "Somehow, throughout this entire exam there has not been an occasion when this young man was pressed to the wall or injured. Despite revealing his abilities relatively early on, no ninja yet were able to crack it"!</p><p>Aozora Yushijin walked out from the left entrance to the arena with a sleeveless denim jacket, his hands and shoulders covered up by subtle yet finely crafted armor plates instead, his claymore sword hanging on his back and almost dragging on the ground. The dark purple hair of the youth had grown even more unruly, falling well past his shoulders and down his back and over his chest. It was not tough to tell that the physical shape of the young man had improved significantly as well with his shoulders looking somewhat broader, his chest much beefier in size and his eyes looking wild and ruthless, firing off sparks at his opponent before the match even started.</p><p>"They really did a crappy job introducing him. He's a dangerous competitor, one of the most capable to say the least", Mana said.</p><p>"And one of the best looking", Kiyomi sighed before leaning over the rails and relaxing in preparation to observe this insane match.</p><p>"He managed to pull off time perception manipulation in his illusions – easily the most advanced of genjutsu concepts that even very few jounin manage to grasp", Mana bitterly explained, "His genjutsu talent rivals if not dwarfs that of mine".</p><p>"Pffft, genjutsu is lame anyways, why would anyone specialize in a ninja art that doesn't even do any lasting damage"? Vinda Calkem raised an eyebrow attempting to laugh Mana off.</p><p>"I don't think you understand what Mana was saying – Yushijin can make you believe that no time had passed at all, when in fact a full hour had passed and you were cut down multiple times over with that sword of his. It's a dangerous ability", Stea explained, looking a bit irritated by the ignorance of her native.</p><p>"Well, there's no way his ability is that advanced. He can likely just manipulate very short periods of time perception, I'd say that the style of using such an illusion would matter – if he uses it without uttering its name, without using any hand seals, the time perception he can manipulate would be shorter, if he does use those cumbersome elements – it'd be longer". Mana speculated based on her own experience with the art of illusions.</p><hr/><p>Right after the overseer signaled the beginning of the match, both combatants lunged at each other with Yushijin's hand moving behind his back and grabbing the hilt of his blade whereas the Kumogakure ninja prepared for a more brutal physical assault. In less than a single moment, both rushing forces collided, erupted into a barrage of spark emitting clashes of massive power.</p><p>"Can you tell what's happening"? Kiyomi wondered looking at Mana, who stood as calmly while observing the match as she did before it. Given her composure and emotional stillness, it was tough to say if the magician was confused or if she had a way of perceiving and reading the battle in her own ways.</p><p>"Most of it. Their speed isn't translated through sound but I can hear how often they clash. I can't really sense their chakra though, I've suppressed my sensory because the overwhelming dread from the VIP area doesn't let me concentrate and keeps sending me into an anxiety attack", Mana calmly reported.</p><p>These were particularly early moments of the match, both examinees spent considerable time poking and observing their opponent, measuring their abilities and fighting style as well as how well they could deal with pressure. It was all vital information to these two. Then Kiyomi noticed a small breakthrough in the relatively equally matched bout.</p><p>Roh-D's hand shot forward, locking onto Yushijin's long hair before swinging the young man around his body and tossing him wildly to crash down below. The ground shook beneath the feet of the girls making Mana almost tumble over, only being able to hear the after effects of what was happening made it difficult to react to such outrageous expressions of one's strength. The audience gripped to their seats and covered up their faces. Fortunately, none of the debris flying out from under the crash zone hit anyone, instead hitting a round barrier surrounding the fighting area and tumbling back down.</p><p>This time the audience was not comprised of powerful ninja, they needed to be properly protected so proper barriers were integral to hosting such an event.</p><p>Yushijin stood back on his feet before sheathing his large sword and dusting off his shoulders. Kiyomi, purely for scientific and observatory reasons, observed the boy's suffered damage closely but she couldn't really see any – his augmentation game was on point, augmenting him just a tiny bit, to where it was almost no risk and the rest was all natural endurance of a strong, well-trained body.</p><p>Roh-D extended his buff arm forward as the wind howled in the surrounding area, streams of blue chakra began rotating around each pipe emanating that ghastly howling noise from each pipe separately before the jutsu was ready and the youth's hand beefed up even more, overflowing with an internal pressure of sound waves being infused with chakra.</p><p>"Sonic Polka"! The Kumogakure genin roared out, his voice pressed and distorted by the effort he put and the pain and pressure that such an unnatural jutsu, requiring surgical body manipulation, required.</p><p>A compressed barrage of sound blast waves colored greenish blue and slightly visible as a distortion of air coiled like arcing projectile waves and homing onto their target.</p><p>"Where are you firing"? Yushijin's mocking voice emanated throughout the entire arena due to both natural and architectural, artificial enhancements of the materials, perfectly designed to augment and transmit any amounts of noise coming in from inside the arena making it unnecessary to use any voiceboxes or additional voice augmentation.</p><p>The Konohagakure genin was charging in from aside, a place where he began dashing off to long before Roh-D's jutsu was fired but for some reason the Kumogakure genin insisted on firing it at the same location. It confused Kiyomi somewhat initially but then she remembered what exactly Yushijin was capable of doing – now that she saw time perception manipulation live, she felt a bit easier knowing that she won't be fighting this youth today. Even if her opponent was just as considerable.</p><p>"Isn't Yushijin great"? Erumo cheered on her teammate while sneaking up to the girls from behind. Everyone turned around to check on the entering examinee but Mana remained strangely fixated on the battle, as Kiyomi noticed. Could the magician have heard or otherwise sensed the girl coming or did she simply ignore the girl who was not on best terms with her normally?</p><p>Yushijin swung his sword, using his blunt side to smack Roh-D away and send him flying and crashing through a row of trees and right into the side of the arena's walls.</p><p>"You know how to beat him, don't you"? Mana calmly mumbled out.</p><p>"Maybe, in theory, Yushijin told me that, technically, so do you. He holds your genjutsu skill in high regard, for whatever reason", Erumo shrugged.</p><p>"How did you know?" Nanaba exclaimed in shock.</p><p>"Kiyomi, do you know of a way to beat any given illusion of mine? Do you have a jutsu to bypass my chakra sensory?" Mana wondered, turning at the Yamanaka heiress with that odd, blindfolded look of hers.</p><p>"I mean, I did dabble in chakra suppression techniques in the Yamanaka Resort, where I trained. It was just for fun and I started focusing on countering the abilities of my real opponent", Kiyomi nodded. "I am myself fairly well trained in genjutsu, it used to be my semi-specialty but I stopped improving in that department once Mana joined my team".</p><p>"Teammates have a natural, subconscious need of coming up with abilities that make them able to beat their own teammates. Maybe it is a sense of rivalry. Maybe each one of us is just so impressed with the abilities and growth of our peers that, for whatever reason, we indulge in momentary distractions for a counter to our best friends' abilities, just in case", Mana turned her blinded face back into the arena.</p><p>"Meh, all of you genjutsu users are weird, praising each other for the weirdest things and obsessing with achievements of the other, when none of you get any stronger really, none of you develop stronger abilities", Erumo grinned before joining Mana closer to the railings. Kiyomi had not seen these two being anything other than confrontational before but now they appeared to be almost chummy.</p><p>"My jutsu is literally a sound wave, enhanced by chakra. These tubes are merely for a superior way to direct that immense pressure at you. And yet you managed to easily dodge them", Roh-D grunted as he stood from the rubble and dusted off his own clothes and chest. "This confirms what I've heard about you. I didn't have the honor to see your battle but, I've obtained information on your ability otherwise".</p><p>"And yet you casually engaged me in battle as if not knowing of it"? Yushijin raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Oh, this exchange told me plenty. Not many people in this world are able to dodge sound, seeing how fast you were against me, then – how much distance you covered using your illusion to start dodging earlier and mess with my time perception I've realized the limits of your ability". Roh-D grinned confidently before wiping his own nose and hopping on his nimble feet just to make sure his body was completely fine and just a little bruised. "Still, why didn't you just cut at me, why use the blunt part of the sword"?</p><p>"The more area you augment, the more chakra you waste. I didn't harbor any illusions of cutting you so early on, I'd be a fool to hope that way. At this point my goal is to kick your chakra network to a state of stress where you'd be unwilling to augment anymore", Yushijin calmly explained before taking an offensive sword-fighting stance.</p><p>"They're clashing with words", Stea noted, "It's just as much of a scoping battlefield as clashing with fists. You reveal a bit about yourself and judge from the way your opponent reacts to it about what kind of a person they are. These two are no longer fighting like genin. This is the way we need to fight if we are to impress the Ninja Council".</p>
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<a name="section0360"><h2>360. Control Of Our Own Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yushijin charged at his opponent, sword sheathed behind his back, hands clenched by his side and ready to shoot off into a barrage of straight punches. Roh-D extended his hands once more, aiming to derail his opponent's charge by firing a pair of weak and compressed sound wave blasts in his direction but the resonating airwaves only hit thin air.</p><p>This time, however, Roh-D was not about to get caught unprepared. He moved differently, placing generalized defensive moves and swatting his pesky opponent away before he should have been able to even see him move. Roh-D was getting into Yushijin's head by predicting where it would be most alluring to attack him from. Kiyomi took a brief moment to glance at Mana. The Yamanaka could recall hearing about Mana receiving some amazing martial arts training during her trip to Wind Country, just how much more would she have been able to read from these moves if she could have seen them?</p><p>An impressive dance of Yushijin's fists bouncing off of the tough and surgically altered body of his opponent continued on. After getting a few of nasty smacks across the face, packing enough wallop to throw him to another country had he not properly defended against them, Yushijin appeared to alter his tactics. Make more fake-outs before finding a softer spot in Roh-D's back and giving it a good, slow and packed with all the force he could gather, cross.</p><p>That was Yushijin's chance, the long-haired swordsman gripped the handle of his blade, drawing it lightning fast before smacking right at the top of his opponent's head, likely to stun him shortly so that he could prolong the opening that he had created and cut his opponent a pair more times, than he would have normally been able to.</p><p>A loud poof echoed throughout the arena with the modified limestone carrying the haunting sound all the way to the end of the audience rows and up to the VIP skyboxes. Roh-D chose to substitute himself with a stone piece that had been dislodged from the wall when he hit it earlier, after being smacked by Yushijin's blunt side of his sword. By the time Yushijin noticed the substitution taking place, he was already invested into the slash that would've split his opponent in two, his sword cut through the stone piece cleanly before the genin sheathed it back as lightning-fast as he had drawn it from its sheath before.</p><hr/><p>"So Roh-D used his Substitution first", Kiyomi whistled in surprise, the noise that escaped her pressed lips got completely drowned out in the applause of the audience that found its place in between two series of engagements between the genin. It was a serious statement in a battle – Substitution caused focus, stamina and could not have been used for a while after being once used due to the strain it caused. Meanwhile, the option still remained for Yushijin.</p><p>"That was pretty good", Vinda chuckled, "The Kumogakure bastard almost got cut into pieces. He pretty much had to use that Substitution".</p><p>"Yeah, Roh-D's plan was pretty impressive – he purposefully left clean openings, knowing that Yushijin would exploit them after toying with his time perception. That way Roh-D always knew where he'd be attacked and, given him scoping Yushijin's timer earlier, when", Erumo grinned, "Of course, it didn't matter once Yushijin read what Roh-D was doing and stopped letting his opponent dictate the pace of the battle".</p><p>Kiyomi looked at the girls who appeared to be impressed by the battle transpiring beneath them in the arena. Only Mana was curiously glancing at the VIP skybox for some reason, completely ignoring the battle below or refraining herself from making any comments.</p><p>"Something wrong? Did they suppress their chakra?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"No. I don't think they intend to… That places me and Gasco at a disadvantage", Mana replied, brushing the question aside like it wasn't important or anywhere close the reason why she was staring at that point blankly.</p><p>"Actually, it won't trouble Gasco one bit. He's a much more seasoned sensor, the only way to beat his sensory would be to suppress one's signature to make it disappear, not let it blaze freely", Stea corrected Mana, validating her worst fears – that she still had plenty of improvement to do in terms of her chakra sensory. Chakra signatures as large of those of jounin, or abnormal ones, still made her freak out and caused massive anxiety, just like they did when she first awakened the ability.</p><hr/><p>"I think I just about know what you're capable of, I'll be picking up the pace, try to keep up", Yushijin taunted his opponent. Getting into the head of one's enemy was just as important as finding openings in their stances or defenses, often one directly lead to the other.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Last Resort!" The genin grunted out, pressing his hands together into a position of a hand seal and clearly chanting out the name of his technique – a sign of maximum effort being placed into casting the illusion. If Mana's guess was correct, that meant that the effects would have been at their maximum as well.</p><p>Yushijin dashed right up to the soundwave blasting genin and unsheathed his sword, letting it dance freely all over his opponent's body while Roh-D just stood there blanked out and stared at a blind point in space and time, stuck in the moment where time perception was halted completely in his mind. It may have only been for a handful of heartbeats but a ninja capable of cutting through a bolt of lightning would've accomplished a great many strokes or cuts in that excessive frame of time.</p><p>"It's horrible", Kiyomi blankly stated, as Roh-D's time perception appeared to return to normal and the large brute collapsed on his knees, bursting with blood spraying injuries all over his chest, shoulders, sides, upper arm, forearm and his thighs. It appeared that an entire masterpiece was drawn over the Kumogakure genin's body with a sword instead of a brush.</p><p>"He made a mistake of assuming that the limit of the illusion he was shown earlier was the limit of Yushijin's ability. That's why no ninja worth their rank uses all of their most powerful jutsu to the peak of their ability right from the get-go – there is a time and a place for one's ace techniques", Erumo nodded with great pride in her teammate's abilities.</p><p>Kiyomi noticed the eyes of the Konoha's New Great Trapster wander off at Mana's direction, without a doubt awaiting praises from the magician and her complete capitulation as the most skilled genjutsu user in her generation. To the great shock of the trapster, Mana was still looking at the VIP skybox blankly, her eyes may have been blindfolded but the girl's ears were twitching, like those of a rabbit listening in for a stalking hunter would have.</p><p>"Hey! You're missing Yushijin's fight, he respects you a great deal, you know! You'd be wise to respect him enough and observe his battle, oh, wait, you can't…" Erumo tried to bite Mana but even Vinda, who appeared to be the craziest and sadistic person on that platform glared at the trapster with strict eyes that betrayed that even the Getsugakure sadist thought that was too much.</p><p>"How are the VIPs reacting to the fight?" Mana asked boldly, completely ignoring Erumo's attempts to poke fun at her.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at the skybox and looked at the Hokage smiling and applauding Yushijin's flawless attacks together with the audience. "Ummm, they're pretty impressed, I'd say", the Yamanaka replied.</p><p>"I see, do you guys feel Yushijin's genjutsu effects?" the magician kept asking.</p><p>"No, it kind of looks boring, honestly, Roh-D just freezes in place and stops moving", Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Hmm… So, it is fair to assume that he is capable of including select targets into his illusion, as far away as that skybox over there. He does conserve chakra by excluding targets he doesn't care about impressing but showing off to the Ninja Council is important so he specifically included them, as well as his opponent", Mana scratched her chin before tilting her blindfold and rubbing her watery and itchy eyes with her knuckles, then reapplying the blindfold.</p><p>"Very perceptive of you", Stea smiled. "Do you think this young man would beat you with this ability? Because if he would… I'd be disappointed".</p><p>"What!?" Erumo flipped out after one of her peers appeared to ignore the impressive display of her teammate while another one claimed that it was nothing too impressive or worth her time.</p><p>"No, it's a relatively simple ability to beat. And, given by how masterfully Yushijin wields it – it's the only capable jutsu he has. Given his age, he would not have had enough time to master another jutsu after mastering this one to this extent, given how astronomical the concept is to grasp for a genin in the first place", Mana shook her head, "The illusion has a natural weakness, after breaking it using it, Yushijin would run out of tricks to show".</p><p>"So he's like Zahafbit? A one trick pony?" Kiyomi wondered, feeling proud of her teammate's implied skill and ability to piss off Erumo, whose sung praises for her teammate were beginning to get on the Yamanaka's nerves as well.</p><p>"Not completely, Yushijin's trick is a very versatile one and a much more impressive one but… Essentially, in a manner of speech, yes. This jutsu comprises most of what he can do, besides, I'd assume, impressive swordplay", Mana shrugged.</p><hr/><p>Overseer Oka approached the fallen genin and examined his wounds. Before the official could make a hasty decision, Roh-D grunted loudly as his mind and body got jump started back into action. Granted, the action was severely limited as due to the ravaging numerous injuries he could only get back on one knee.</p><p>Roh-D lifted his large arm up while pressing the other one to his chest, while blood still dripped from his extended hand, forced outwards by the tremendous effort it took for Roh-D to fight so soon after being struck down with such ferocity and efficiency.</p><p>"Sonic Khorumi!" Roh wheezed out as the surgically implanted air pipes began absorbing the passing airwaves inside the youth's muscles where they Roh-D infused them with chakra and channeled further through the central pipe right at the center of Roh-D's palm. The infused with chakra soundwaves fired off in a shape of a powerful beam of a blueish, base chakra hue.</p><p>Yushijin swiped his hand back and closer to his ninja pouch before placing his other one to his chest in a hand seal position. It appeared odd to Kiyomi, who was keeping close attention to the exchange that after whiffing with a similar attack fired even less openly Roh-D would attempt to blast his opponent with something like this. It appeared that the most likely outcome of this manner of an attack had transpired when Yushijin carefully dashed aside before preparing a powerful dash with a sword strike that would have put his opponent down more convincingly.</p><p>Right as Yushijin's powerful frame moved close enough for a rough slash of his sword, enhanced by the momentum and power of it leaving its sheath and its massive size, Roh-D's arm moved in position again, aiming right at Yushijin's face.</p><p>"Sonic Khorumi!" The Kumogakure genin grunted, easier this time, as a tenfold stronger and wider covering concentrated soundwave left the genin's arm, overwhelming Yushijin's body with tremendous sonic force and blasting him backward with grievous injuries. That was before the lifeless body poofed away, replaced by a chunk of fallen wood that the weaker beam before had downed.</p><p>Yushijin exclaimed something unintelligible in pain and frustration after he stood back on his feet and in a flashy manner repositioned his sword to a more defensive stance. Without a doubt, the Konoha genin had already considered his opponent eliminated, now it appeared that, somehow, he had managed to bypass his Last Resort and managed to attack during a time that he should have considered frozen.</p><p>Given how Yushijin required a brief break to put his body back into fighting shape after a strenuous and impromptu Substitution Jutsu, and Roh-D required a moment to get back up and keep struggling on in this immensely important fight, both combatants just glared at each other with respect and adoration for each other's resolve and abilities.</p><hr/><p>"How could he have beaten Yushijin's ability?" Erumo flipped out before her expression changed from anger into a rather cruel and broken acceptance. Acceptance that her teammate who she had idolized as almost invincible for so long was just like everybody else – a young man with weaknesses and the ability to be outsmarted and outplayed.</p><p>"However he did it, it was wasteful to fire off two same ninjutsu shots of such power", Kiyomi noted, she would've never wasted so much chakra as to fake-out her opponent with one costly ninjutsu, only to blast him again with the same technique.</p><p>"That was the same jutsu, really?" Mana asked for clarification. To her both blasts must have sounded differently, given their great difference in power and intensity.</p><p>"Yes, he appeared to refer to it by the same name", Stea nodded.</p><p>"That's incredible, that means that he doesn't forget the ability to use his ninjutsu in its earliest stages. Without a doubt this first weak blast was meant to displace his opponent and lull Yushijin into a false sense of security, the second one was the real one", Mana commended the Kumogakure genin.</p><p>"Isn't it wasteful to use the same jutsu twice just to hit it once?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Maybe it would be, that's why Roh-D's prowess and control are impressive, he used his ninjutsu in two different stages of his life. The first one must have been the version from when he was still learning the ropes of his ability, the second one was the real one – the chakra he spent on those techniques also would differ wildly", Mana explained with awe and strange bitterness. Almost like a more healthy expression of jealousy. Kiyomi used a similar tone in the Academy when she was describing a problem halfway to the teacher and realized she had solved it wrong but still needed to finish reading it.</p><p>"But how did he break Yushijin's ability?" Erumo pressed her lips together as her eyes longingly looked ahead at the two combatants, one appeared relatively chipper yet too wounded to fight at full power, the other one had barely received a scratch up to now but used out plenty of chakra and lacked in stamina what he had in great physical condition.</p><p>"A simple Dispel", Mana mumbled. "That's all it would take to break out. Obviously Dispel has its own weaknesses and it may take some time to learn how to dispel a time perception manipulation technique but, in theory, it would break it".</p><p>"That's a pretty weak-sauce jutsu then", Vinda shrugged before moving up to the rails and leaning over to observe the fight more closely. "If it can just be dispelled like that, why didn't Roh-D do it from the get-go?"</p><p>"He probably tried, to dispel a genjutsu you must first understand and convince your entire body in spirit and mind that you are under it. Very few bother to train their bodies to use that simple technique with enough efficiency to successfully pull it off the first time they try. Often enough, you need to take in and survive an illusion to learn how to quickly dispel it and adapt to it. Yushijin's ability is so amazing that it took that many tries before Roh-D could even dispel it", Mana explained.</p><hr/><p>"Running out of juice yet?" Roh-D taunted his opponent, noticing that Yushijin must have already crossed the halfway point of his chakra that he could use. From the start, he was using that illusion of his left and right, aiding him in most clashes and exchanges, worried that he would not survive a battle that got as brutal as the bout between Roh-D and Oto-B in the semi-finals.</p><p>"You better hurry up and do what you have to do. You're literally losing your own juices every passing moment", Yushijin calmly replied before switching his defensive sword-fighting stance to a higher placed, thrust oriented response.</p><p>"Point taken", Roh-D shouted out as he lifted his hands up into the air, the tubes on his arms began soaking in the air and preparing for another technique. Yushijin appeared to have chosen to not use his ability, wait and scope his opponent out. Now that he was figured out and his genjutsu was broken for the first time in this exam, he had to use it more sparingly and more cleverly.</p><p>"Sonic Barynya!" Roh-D shouted out as he drove his extended palms into the ground, a loud shrieking pulse echoed through the arena, followed by a powerful shockwave that forced even the barriers placed around the arena into action.</p><p>"It's that combo he used against Oto-B!" Kiyomi loudly exclaimed.</p><p>The peculiar underground usage of sound waves forced the entire arena to rumble and shake. That kept Yushijin firmly stuck to the ground, as he couldn't muster up the force to jump up and away from the unstable ground. The nauseating quake forced the genin to just flop and stumble around, tumbling over his knees and struggling to regain his standing stature.</p><p>After locking his opponent down and in place, Roh-D extended his monstrously inflated from overflowing sound waves arm and began drawing in even more air from the surroundings. Whatever he intended to use against his opponent was huge enough to be reasonably assumed to be his most powerful soundwave jutsu. Kiyomi had seen this particular combination against Oto-B, after it was used successfully was when the battle turned particularly bloody and uncontrollable, with both competitors just throwing jutsu at each other wildly, without concerns for their own safety. There was a chance this battle could end up the same…</p><p>"Sonic Butoh!" Roh-D roared out as the flesh on his strained and inflated muscles began tearing, pouring down even more blood all over the lacerations acquired in the duration of the entire battle. The soundwave that left Roh-D's palm was a massive beam that dwarfed his previous Khorumi technique entirely. Creating a large tunneling crater and rising a good three or four meters in radius with a shrieking calamity of devastation the very noise of which triggered the barriers around the arena to light up like mid-winter streamers and neon lights in late evenings.</p>
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<a name="section0361"><h2>361. An Ode To Brutality</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the dust and the destruction of Roh-D's most powerful sonic technique began settling down, a chilling sound of a battlecry broke out. From a cloud of rubble, sand and floating blades of frosty winter grass, a masculine figure with bleeding years, eyes and nose, tattered denim jacket and the shirt underneath and covered with bruises and intense tears all over his body dived out. The eyes of the desperate young man were brimming with determination and the desire to embrace the brutality of battle without anything being held back.</p><p>From the beginning of this match, Aozora Yushijin attempted to play this fight his own way, in his own field, by his own rules: impress the council, instead of fighting, avoid fighting on Roh-D's brutal terms instead of just fighting, show off his impressive technique which took him his current lifetime to polish and refine instead of fighting. No more. Now just fighting remained. Yushijin wished to bring the brutality, that Roh-D craved in his battles and shove it down his opponent's throat.</p><p>Yushijin swung his sword around, silver blitzes flashed wherever the massive chunk of polished and sharpened steel buzzed past his opponent's flesh before a loud clang emanated a shock downwards the blade and past its handle, continuing to pulse down and seep into Yushijin's bones as the blade got entrapped into the surgically implanted pipes of Roh-D.</p><p>The Konohagakure genin grunted in pain and let go of his sword, jumping back as his temporarily disabled hands made him unable to properly defend himself if a response came. And come it did. Roh-D lowered his hands and the air howled in the shape of sound waves getting forcefully sucked into the pipes on the genin's arms before exhaling all that air outside, bashing it against the ground beneath Roh-D's feet and throwing the genin wildly at his opponent, feet forward.</p><p>"Sonic Missile Kick!" The surgically enhanced genin roared out, throwing a flying kick that drew influence from the moveset Cloud Wrestling Federation's many talented and acrobatic performers.</p><p>Yushijin ducked under the kick, shooting his palms down and deep into the dirt while he threw his knees up, smashing them right into his opponent's back and making his yell out in pain. By this point the chakra augmentations of both combatants were slowly fleeting away, still holding, but more and more blood spraying and bone churning tragic melodies played after each strike and kick.</p><p>Right as Roh-D's body flew upwards, thrown by the tremendous force of Yushijin's kick, the Konoha genin shoved his body upwards with a soaring sky-high kick of his own, just to throw his opponent even higher into the air. Before Yushijin's feet connected with Roh-D's spine, playing it with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball playing the piano, the Kumogakure genin turned around rapidly with a swift back elbow strike that smashed his opponent back down into the dirt.</p><p>The audience was going mad, this was just the match they wanted to see, two combatants moving at break-neck speeds, stopping just for a brief moment right before they hit their opponent just to accumulate and focus their awesome power and momentum into a more awesome strike. This was just the kind of battle that Roh-D fought against Oto-B in the semifinals, those who have seen it knew that much.</p><p>Roh-D released a quick burst of soundwaves out of his pipes, jetting his body down at his opponent who managed to get back to his sword. The dark-skinned powerhouse extended his hand, attempting to grab the face of his opponent and grind it into the ground before firing off his sound jets again to drag his face across the arena. It was such a clearly telegraphed move that Yushijin countered it perfectly, twirling around the large and brimming with youthful vigor appendage of his opponent and throwing a swift slash upwards.</p><p>Blood splattered across the sandy ground as Yushijin's sword managed to get past Roh-D's skin and dig shallowly into the genin's flesh. The built up force and momentum of the blade spiraled the brawler up in the air, and Yushijin leaped after his opponent in a mad chase.</p><p>Roh-D extended his hands at the chasing opponent firing off his "Sonic Polka" technique again, sending rapid and loose sound wave projectiles to distract and lightly damage his opponent and give the genin time to recuperate but his opponent simply was no longer where Roh-D last saw him to be.</p><p>Yushijin's image flashed up to Roh-D's shocked face, who, too late, realized that Yushijin's illusion had duped him again. The silver blurs of Yushijin's blade danced their triumphant and erratic dance all over Roh-D's body while the caught off-guard genin did his best to use his surgically altered arms to defend from his opponent blade with a notable lack of success.</p><p>"Fire Style: Flame Bomb!" Yushijin shouted out as he expelled all of the remaining air from his lungs, infused with Fire Release chakra in close proximity to his injured and blacking out opponent, which immediately detonated the man-sized flame bullet.</p><p>Covered with a coat of flames, like a falling star, Roh-D crashed down on the ground, leaving a small crater and almost covering himself entirely in dirt as Yushijin landed a handful of meters farther from his opponent, bashing his knees into the ground and driving his sword into the dirt to keep himself from falling down. The Konohagakure genin was breathing heavily and it was not difficult to see how much this last attack demanded of him.</p><hr/><p>"To execute a Fire Release jutsu so close to a sword attack, with so few hand seals. It appears that Yushijin had surprised our expectations", Stea commended the young man who was doing his best to get back on his feet as his opponent laid lifeless and the overseer approached him to check on the vitals and the remaining will and ability to fight of the fallen genin.</p><p>"He held his breath inside his lungs this whole time, to attack so rapidly with a blade without breathing, then using that oxygen for a Fire Release jutsu so seamlessly… It's a combination technique all in of itself", Kiyomi noted.</p><p>"Fire Release is pretty rare and tough to work with. I always secretly hoped that I'd possess the Fire Release affinity but… Water Release is all I got", Vinda crossed her arms over her chest in a fit of jealousy and adoration of the impressive display of competition inside the arena.</p><p>"It's pretty common in the Fire Country and Konohagakure. Most villagers possess some genetic background of it and it's actually the most common Nature amongst our villagers. It's either the primary or the secondary Nature of everyone around", Mana sighed.</p><p>"And yet…" Kiyomi cheeked the magician by butting her with her elbow fondly.</p><p>"I'm glad I do not possess the talent for it. It's a very destructive nature and brings nothing but pain and blazes wherever it goes. Plus, technically, my roots are from all over the Ninja World. My ancestors didn't confine themselves to a single village so my genetical background is a mash of a bit of everything", Mana calmly stated.</p><p>"So you're basically a ninja mutt?" Erumo teased the magician.</p><p>"Yes, unlike the highly esteemed Budoki clan, my ancestors accomplished nothing of value", Mana smiled with tips of her lips teasing the lack of a clan background from Erumo's own part when she went out of her way to attack the bloodlines of others. Kiyomi could not help but break into a chuckle over it.</p><hr/><p>"It's okay, I can go on", Roh-D hurled out with an alarming amount of blood coming out from his smashed insides and his shallowly striped and streaked body. "The flames cauterized most of my wounds! I can go on!"</p><p>Yushijin looked quite amazed at his opponent's ability to shrug off pain. This surgically altered body of his must have had something to do with the amazing endurance of the genin but the Konohagakure examinee looked like he could feel how close he was of putting his opponent down for good.</p><p>"Your vitals are at a very alarming state. If you get hit again like that – you may die. Any hit you take from this point on threatens your life", overseer Oke tried to argue with and inform the darkly skinned genin but it was all in vain as he was pretty much brushed aside like a troublesome insect. It appeared that the youth would have rather died than admitted failure and that he has come this far only to fail.</p><p>"Come on! Was that the best you've got!?" Roh-D teased his opponent, who finally managed to force his body stumbling straight and pulled his sword out of the ground. Taking his sweet time to sheathe it and prepare for yet another round – one that was certainly the last one for both combatants were severely short on chakra and maybe had one or two more jutsu in them.</p><p>"I've shown you my best long ago, so have you", Yushijin closed his eyes to calm and steady his breathing. Roh-D kicked off the ground and darted off at his opponent in a mad dash as his body could no longer withstand the tremendous pressure of sound waves being used to flow throughout his body and jet him around like a madman.</p><p>Roh-D threw a powerful cross but Yushijin leaned down and grabbed his opponent's arm over his shoulder, attempting to drag Roh-D over him and slam him into the ground one or two good times to keep him down for good. Surprisingly enough, the Konoha examinee found out that attempting to move his opponent was in vain as Roh-D remained where he stood even after his most hearty yanks.</p><p>A thunderous punch sent Yushijin flying and rolling backward before the youth managed to push his body off the ground and get back on his knees to meet his opponent's madly brutal offensive. Yushijin leaned aside, avoiding another power strike only to smack the side of his arm into Roh-D's carotid but even that did not look like it would keep the powerhouse down.</p><p>Roh-D collapsed on his knees as well, deceitfully spitting some of his coughed up blood right at Yushijin's face and confusing him momentarily. The first that greeted Yushijin's eyes when he wiped the blood off of his face and out of his eyes was a glowing palm of his opponent about to unload a burst of sound waves right at his face.</p><p>"Sonic Khorumi!" Roh-D roared out.</p><p>After a brief moment of silence, the Kumogakure genin fell down and on his face, while Yushijin re-sheathed his sword, standing upright, right behind his opponent. The back of Roh-D bled out profusely as the lacking chakra resources made even the more erratic and instinctual bodily augmentations fail.</p><p>Overseer Oke rushed up to Roh-D to check his vitals.</p><p>"Don't bother, I couldn't take him getting back up and back up again so I paralyzed him all the way down his waist by cutting into his spine. He quite literally couldn't get up, even if he has the will and the guts to do so", Yushijin coldly stated.</p><hr/><p>"Well, it appears that's that", Stea smiled with satisfaction, having just seen an incredible show from two of her peers.</p><p>"Did you see that? Yushijin's the best there is!" Erumo cheered on her teammate, jumping onto the rails and madly throwing her fist up into the air and yelling her lungs out. "Even if he can get a little bit scary when he gets serious", she added, quivering for a brief moment.</p><p>"Hmmm, I wonder why Roh-D didn't break out of Last Resort again, was he that short on chakra?" Kiyomi wondered out loud.</p><p>"Possibly, or Yushijin once again surprised us. His technique supposedly allows him to manipulate the time perception of his opponents, yet he had always used it the same way – make them believe that the time has stopped completely. What he could have done, was make Roh-D believe that more time has passed than it actually has, manipulate how fast he appeared to be moving, anything of that nature. His opponent would have had to learn how to break out of each of these all over again, especially if they felt confident enough to think they nailed down Last Resort already. What Yushijin could have used could have been different enough from Last Resort that it was its own separate jutsu, given that he had five weeks to prepare, such innovation on his talents would not be outside the realm of possibility", Mana mumbled before slapping her own cheeks. She was checking just how much had her skin condition improved over the duration of this one match, Kiyomi could sense the innate worry in her friend's heart.</p><p>"Your skin has healed a great deal – the color looks normal, well, what's normal for you", Kiyomi teased her friend playfully.</p><p>"That bastard", Vinda laughed out before grinning with a monkey-like full teeth smile. "He didn't help this trick either, he refrained from using Last Resort too much after it was "broken", just to trick his opponent into thinking he had him pinned down, right before he pulled out that improved version".</p><p>"True", Mana nodded before pulling up her blindfold and crying out in pain before slipping it back down, it appeared her eyes still had a long way to heal before they could face even the gentle and chilly winter sunlight. "But Yushijin will not advance his rank, most likely".</p><p>"What do you mean, he was amazing!?" Erumo flipped out, almost jumping in to punch Mana in the face.</p><p>"He was more amazing than the Ninja Council realizes. Very few ninja specialize in illusions, it's a tricky and very unrewarding craft to work with – as all of you have pointed out already. It's unlikely that anyone in that skybox even understood what exactly Yushijin had pulled off and just how impressive it was. In the end of the day – that's what it is all about, not winning or losing, not just looking good but making them understand how good you are as well", Mana explained with frustration.</p><p>And Kiyomi understood it – it looked like everything that day was stacking up against Mana: her training resulted in massive injuries due to overtraining that may not even finish up healing before her match, due to the VIP area hosting immensely powerful ninja she was unable to use her sensory and had to keep it suppressed in order to avoid anxiety attacks, now she just found out that illusions – the core of her skill set may have been completely useless as very few ninja understood just how intricate and complex they were to work with.</p><p>It appeared that with the finals of the Chuunin Exams the village administration was less interested in repairing the arena or doing casual maintenance. Right after both examinees left, or were taken out through the passageways they entered the arena through, they were immediately replaced by the competitors in the next match – Dhaogu and Gasco Patura.</p><p>"It's a bit unfortunate how things ended up with Roh-D, isn't it?" Stea sighed, calmly observing her mighty teammate walking out into the arena and facing his opponent, whose main strength in this competition was the mostly maintained mystery surrounding his abilities. Dhaogu only briefly flashed them to avoid getting ringed out at the very last moment during the semi-finals whereas Gasco had shown his off plenty. If Gasco was anyone else, he would have been at a great disadvantage as five whole weeks of preparation time and training would have let any ninja to crazy heights against an opponent they knew so much about.</p><p>"I disagree", Mana shook her head, Kiyomi turned at her friend with such disbelief that it seemed that her friend had been switched out with a psychopath – Yushijin's actions seemed very ruthless and cold. Even Erumo was shocked to see Mana on Yushijin's side.</p><p>"You don't think paralyzing Roh-D from the waist down was an excessive attack?" Stea wondered.</p><p>"Yushijin saw his opponent's iron willpower. Roh-D was going to keep going until his final moment. It is unclear what his surgical alterations are or if he obtained new ones during this time but… They clearly had an impact on his ability to survive damage that would have knocked out anyone else. Roh-D, in the heat of battle, was not a clear judge of consequences of his own actions. I consider paralysis a more welcome outcome to accidentally killing Roh-D any day of the week", Mana explained while her blindfolded face blankly stared at an unclear point in the audience.</p><p>"Damn, you're pretty alright", Vinda grinned, just barely restraining the impulse to smack the magician's back playfully. Figuring that with her injuries and pathetic bodily state it would have actually done her harm.</p><p>"Death is a cruel end, but sometimes it is better than certain kinds of life", Stea objected. "Take it from someone who's seen plenty of lives spiraling down to its most grotesque elements".</p><p>"I disagree. As someone who defeats your opponent, one is stronger than the loser. That grants them the responsibility to protect and watch over them, not destroy them, whatever state they may be in. A broken man can still become a hero, a broken man can still inspire other misguided people, people like they themselves used to be. Destruction is only fitting for useless things and no human life is truly useless", Mana calmly replied to her opponent.</p><p>"I will enjoy settling our debate in the arena. We will let the fortune choose the winning side of the argument", Stea smiled as she looked on at her teammate, looking supremely confident in his victory. She looked with verily different eyes compared to those that Erumo looked at Yushijin with.</p><p>Erumo cheered on her friend, she was, in a way worried for him. As someone who saw a beloved person facing off against truly terrifying odds, Kiyomi knew that feeling. The feeling of trust in one's beloved but also worry over their well-being. Stea had none of that in her eyes. She looked at Gasco as if he was doing a casual chore, like taking the trash out. She clearly felt fondness or some sort of tolerance of her friend and teammate but she felt no worry over his safety nor did she worry to attempt and support him.</p><p>"Our match shall settle nothing of the sort. Truth is not by the side of one who pummels the other side to the point of no return. Are you so worried over your arguments that you need to bet them against a physically broken, weaker opponent to feel more confident in them?" Mana smiled. I, that smile Kiyomi saw something, certainty, will, what was not there when Kiyomi spoke to Mana about her convictions herself during the semi-finals.</p><p>Mana had grown, she had grown so much… If there was only such a thing as fortune, only it knew just what exactly was stirring in that mature beyond her years mind of hers. Kiyomi could only worry, not unlike she worried over Meiko five weeks ago, that Mana's injuries regenerate sufficiently before the hour of the fateful match.</p>
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<a name="section0362"><h2>362. The Thunderstorm Net</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took a while for the audience to stop rustling and focus down on the two contestants that were about to clash. Overseer Oke cleared his throat before presenting both combatants to the audience and the Ninja Council that must have been blown away by the last battle, if a little confused by the erratic ending, given their lack of intricate knowledge of the illusionary arts.</p><p>Almost like it was his intention to create these conditions, the drizzling snowflakes intensified their downfall, quickly sinking the sandy and grassy arena in a layer of white, creamy cover of snow.</p><p>"For the next match – Gasco Patura against Dhaogu!" Overseer Oke declared, raising his hand in the air and letting the audience pay their respects to both examinees about to clash.</p><p>"The first contestant – Gasco Patura of Team Phobos from Getsugakure is one of the fearsome trio that has decimated all competition. He actually won his tag team match in the semi-finals all by himself and is one of the most refined sensors amongst the genin", Oke gestured with his hand at the still hooded with his dark purple coat covered with silver colored smoke motifs genin. It occurred to Kiyomi, as she admired the tall and broad shouldered man, or someone who come from a poor country, Team Phobos certainly had plenty of matching hoods and cloaks to wear.</p><p>"His opponent – Dhaogu of Team Zumurrud from Sunagakure! A young man who has managed to keep his abilities and his fighting style mostly hidden throughout the entire Chuunin Exam managing to grant himself a cloak of mystery and a massive advantage in this fight!" Oke hyped the young Dhaogu up, the short, like a gothic ball of rags looking youth just carelessly flexed his feeble muscles.</p><p>Once Oke ruled the beginning of the match deadly silence took over the snowy arena that was beginning to remind of the snowy fields of Snow Country, deceitfully covered with snow, concealing grasslands and frozen lakes that spanned entire kilometers alike. Both examinees were hesitant to make the first move as neither one of them was too into aggressive attacking.</p><p>Then, in one blur it all began – Gasco just moved in a blur right behind his opponent, reaching in to wrap his hands around the little boy's throat. Kiyomi noticed Mana reaching for her own throat at that moment, subconsciously. She must have had unpleasant memories related to that move or one of a similar nature.</p><p>Sand began streaming from Dhaogu's sleeveless top and the boy's baggy pants, forming jets and whip-like tendrils that whipped at Gasco's general direction, just fast and precise enough to tear up the cloak of the Getsugakure genin and leave red whiplashes all over his chest and side. When packed together those streams of sand must have packed a significant wallop.</p><p>Yet Gasco did not relent, right after returning to a combat mentality, he snapped back into a relentless and vicious physical assault, attempting to overwhelm his physically shorter opponent with rapid-fire yet considerably powerful blows. The result of the youth's naturally impressive stature and considerable physical training, without a doubt, aimed to help him connect his "Thunderstorm Fist" from an up close and personal distance.</p><p>Gasco's assault was impressive, the sounds and the shockwaves sent from his punches blasted away the snow around him and swatted away the falling snowflakes in a visually appealing manner of devastating after effects of his blows. The style didn't appear like anything fancy, just a firm punching focused self-taught martial art aimed at strong balance using neat footwork and lightning fast punching when one punch fired off, the other one was already winded up and ready for firing.</p><p>Yet each and every one of Gasco's attacks only hit a powerful mass of sand accumulated and placed in between Dhaogu and his opponent. Sand was naturally shock absorbent, it appeared, as the awesome force behind Gasco's strikes got distributed evenly across the entire blob of chakra infused sand and gently controlled with fluid motions that allowed Dhaogu to easily block the physical attacks of his opponent with fluidity and relative ease.</p><hr/><p>"Hmmm, interesting. It looks like Gasco's improvements are not just physical. He's thinking quite differently as well", Mana declared.</p><p>"That's right, Gasco has improved a great deal over these five weeks, sometimes I wonder now who is stronger between him and Doma, whereas before there used to be no such hesitation of declaring the winner", Stea smiled. "He worked on innovating on his Thunderstorm Fist and has achieved one impressive feat that has lead him to improving his fighting style in multiple different ways. One improvement opened so many doors…"</p><p>"I don't know, to me, he seems rather boring. Why does he keep trying to punch his way through that sand? He's not making any progress?" Kiyomi turned her lips sideways in doubt of Gasco's battlefield strategizing.</p><p>"True, he's pressuring his opponent though. He, without a doubt, knows that Lightning Release nullifies Earth Release jutsu, he was the one who pointed it out during our clash in the Forest of Death. Still, he is keeping his Thunderstorm Fist back until Dhaogu tires and lowers his sand, he isn't about to waste it on just nullifying the sand when it can just be raised up again". Mana grinned, even given her blindfold, she would've heard the impressive booms and the splashes of water of snow that reached into the audience and even up to the genin platform. It was impressive that she could tell the churning sound that the pressured sand particles made and identified just what was going on though…</p><hr/><p>Dhaogu shoved his palm forward with his fingers bent up, aiming at the direction where he had predicted Gasco to come from. Streams of sand separated from the big blob that surrounded and helped the Sunagakure genin in his defensive ventures and smacked Gasco's large frame about, completely blowing away his cloak and revealing quite large blunt force injuries over Gasco's body.</p><p>Even with these quite successful blows landing where they were sent, Dhaogu was not about to stop, he commanded the separated streams of sand to circle his opponent. Smashing into Gasco's back and then pushing onward, then the remaining blob of sand in front of the young boy hardened and shaped into spikes, making the intent of the offensive streams of sand clear – to crash Gasco right into the hardened spike wall of Dhaogu's sand.</p><p>Just as it appeared that the wall of spikes impaled Gasco in a most gruesome manner, that made the entire audience shake and cheer at the same time, with a poof of smoke the Getsugakure genin substituted with a large chunk of his cloak. It was a quite unexpected turn out to see Gasco use his Substitution Jutsu first, paying with the considerable strain of stamina so early on in the battle. Then again, Substitutions were usually performed early in the battle, as the textbooks of ninja theory advised, so that the strain cooled down before the end of it and the ninja had enough stamina left to perform another substitution later on.</p><p>The mass of sand quickly swallowed up the cloak before pressing it so hard inside that nothing remained of it. A show of frustration as in this snowy and filling up with snow continuously field of battle an object such as rags of clothes were useful to be used for one's own Substitution. The snow considerably obscured the details of the surroundings and made it troublesome to focus on anything but the blinding white wherever the eye was trodden.</p><p>Gasco breathed in and out a couple of times to calm himself down before snapping his fingers a pair of times and carefully circling his opponent in preparation for the next attack. These two were staring each other down like two ronin preparing to draw their swords just when the sun disappeared in the horizon. Kiyomi found Gasco's refusal to use his signature jutsu quite interesting if a little silly. Given how much this guy and his team terrified Mana this whole time, Kiyomi would've been afraid of him just because she had no idea what Gasco's plan was. There was absolutely supposed to be some sort of a plan.</p><p>Dhaogu extended his arm forward, commanding his sand to come in low, forming multiple long tendrils that aimed to wrap around Gasco's thigh and keep him firmly in place. He was planning something of his own, without a doubt. Gasco danced gracefully, dashing back and around the endless stream of growing sand appendages but their sheer speed, unstable and unpredictable manner of movement and numbers overwhelmed him and one managed to wrap around his foot whereas a pair more tightly covered up his arms.</p><p>With another gesture command, the Sunagakure genin sent his entire sand mass reserve floating up and above Gasco, shaping into a horizontal spiked wall threateningly dangling above the genin's head.</p><p>"Give up", Dhaogu mumbled out as if it would have been just a formality he had to offer instead of a genuine concern. Despite the emotionless ness of his delivery, he still showed more care for his opponent's life than most would have. After Gasco did not offer an answer, the frail youth waved his hands down in a wavelike motion signaling to his floating mass of sand to crash into his opponent.</p><p>The crashing sound was mighty, sending waves of sand aside. Doing so easily like the snow was just chunks of paper and mixing the white and innocent puffy cotton layer of snow with the light brown hue of sand that created a muddy mush all around. A small amount of crimson trickled into the mix making the color of the dirt in the arena seem even messier. Battlefields were rarely beautiful…</p><p>The audience settled down in silence, discussing with their closest neighbor if they may have just witnessed an actual murder but with a powerful burst of chakra, blasting through the colossal layer of sand that appeared to no longer possess the bond with Dhaogu's chakra that kept it cohesive and submissive to the boy's commands their fears were thrown away. Gasco's indigo vest was torn up and the metal rings that kept the vest on the boy's chest were bent and ground into smallest pieces by the immense pressure of the sand that crashed onto Gasco.</p><p>The large Getsugakure genin wiped the blood off his nose and cracked lip before placing his fist back and preparing an attack of his own.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist!" He roared out as he sent his fist crashing down into the mushy ground, channeling his technique into a crescent shaped projectile, traveling through the ground and under and rushing at his opponent from farther away.</p><p>Dhaogu leaped away from the large projectile before responding with a barrage of ninja tools, even managing to mix in an explosive kunai into the mix, trying to deceive his opponent's eyes. Then, unexpectedly to everyone on the observer's platform, Gasco turned around before repurposing all of his momentum into another crushing fist.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist!" He repeated his technique once again with such casualty and ease that made all of the watching genin quiver uneasily. The follow-up attack blasted through all of the tools and detonated the explosive tagged kunai before nonchalantly continuing its journey to bust up the opponent of its user. Before Dhaogu could even begin to evade this second projectile, Gasco smashed the ground again with his other hand, also overflowing with the crackle of Lightning Release chakra and sending a third Thunderstorm Fist projectile.</p><p>"Water Style: Raging Wave!" Dhaogu yelled out before spitting out a mighty wave of water that gushed from his mouth downwards. Using the backward momentum of the rushing water, Dhaogu leaped up in the air, above and over the rushing twin projectiles as they smashed against each other and detonated one another in an impressive thunderous vortex crackle that provided quite a show for the audience.</p><hr/><p>"So is that what your mate did for improvement? Learn to spam his crazy-dangerous jutsu? Cause I kinda could have done something like that…" Nanaba chuckled. It was not all that surprising that she would not have made a big deal out of this as she downplayed pretty much everything she did or that transpired around her.</p><p>"Oh, he elevated that jutsu to whole new heights. He's just waiting for the right chance to show it off. The main area of his focus was extending the range of his jutsu and learning to channel it in different mid-to-long distance ways", Stea grinned.</p><p>"Let's pretend like using the same jutsu three times in a row in a combination like that isn't impressive all by itself, shall we?" Kiyomi thought to herself as she observed the two combatants staring each other down. Now it sort of became clearer to her as to why Gasco didn't use his Thunderstorm Fist before – all he would have achieved was that the sand defense of his opponent would've been destroyed.</p><p>Given how Dhaogu's sand manipulation is a jutsu of some sort all in of itself, that meant that he spent chakra with each passing moment just to maintain it and keep it active. Therefore, Gasco would've spent a whole bunch of chakra on just disabling something that was wearing his opponent out. Given how nimble and evasive Dhaogu already was, it may be a good idea to wear him out a little bit before finishing him off. Gasco was clearly thinking on his feet, this way even if he lost the battle he'd have been promoted. He was not thinking like a brash child throwing a fist tantrum in the battlefield, he was thinking like a ninja with an objective and a handful of sub-objectives that were required to fulfill that objective.</p><p>"Dhaogu is a really talented ninja if that was the roaring of water that I have heard", Mana suddenly interrupted the chatty girls' observatory platform. "Back in Sunagakure I was told that manipulating sand is an advanced ability that combines both Wind Release and Earth Release. This jutsu that Dhaogu used means he can use three elemental natures at once. That is the absolute limit that any ninja can master in a lifetime and he knows the basics of them already at his age".</p><p>"The Sand Release advanced bloodline is just a carbon copy of One Tail's ability anyway. Probably not even as strong", Nanaba squinted her eyes at the muddy arena that was slowly beginning to drown in a thin layer of white snow again. As a Jinchuuriki herself, it sort of made some sense that she'd know of all the unique abilities that other Jinchuuriki possessed.</p><hr/><p>"You're having difficulty breathing, don't you?" Gasco interrupted the moment of peaceful breathing and staring down with a loud question, he made sure that even the VIP areas would hear it. "Using your Sand Release in a middle of a snowfall with the air staying so humid is difficult, isn't it? Your chakra dips more than it should every time you order it around".</p><p>It was no accident or mistake that Gasco revealed what his sensory told him – he wanted Dhaogu to know why he was running out of breath when normally he wouldn't be. Even more importantly, he wanted the Ninja Council to hear his chain of thought, how much he perceived and noticed and how it affected his strategy. If they knew how he could analyze the battlefield and after they see his next move – they'll all be blown away. Gasco may as well cash his promotion in right after leaving this pit.</p><p>"Water Style: Paradise Oil!" Dhaogu chanted as he commanded his sand to manifest at the same time. A yellowish and transparent, oily liquid burst from the boy's mouth in the shape of bubbly orbs, enveloping his sand and covering it in an oily substance that made the sand look almost golden, as well as changing its consistency to a more sludgy one.</p><p>Without uttering another word, the boy sent the oiled up golden colored sludge rushing in jets at Gasco's direction while keeping the reserve shaped like a shield in front of him. The Getsugakure brute leaped back, quickly manifesting Thunderstorm Fists to neutralize the approaching oily sands that fell on the ground lifelessly in a shape of wet sand after being as much as touched by Gasco's jutsu.</p><p>The creepy baldy treated this exchange of blows like he'd have treated an actual clash of fists, smacking and redirecting each jet with a careful Thunderstorm Fist jab and, in that way, disabling the technique. His watchful eye noticed a certain twitchy reaction in the user of the oily jutsu, at which point he changed his approach and began heavy evasive action, attempting to evade as much of the offensive siege of oily sand as he could. His best attempt was to gain distance that not only carried a hidden possible gain of moving past the effective range of Dhaogu's sand, which there did not appear to be, as Gasco just found out, but also helped him by giving the youth more time to react to the boy's attacks.</p><p>Gasco grunted unintelligibly when he noticed something quite scary – a mass of oiled up sand resting on his back and branching out in veins of sand, wrapping around his arms and legs before enveloping the covered areas in sand completely. The Getsugakure brute could feel it – his body parts getting affected as the oily substance hardened his body wherever it managed to get to. Even at this point he could barely move his body in meaningful ways or get away too fast without breaking his spine as that was where the most of the jutsu's effect was based in – Dhaogu meant to disable him completely, just like Yushijin had done in the earlier match.</p><p>"You're caught in my jutsu. This is why I didn't want it to be revealed before it was absolutely necessary – it's an ace jutsu that can win me any match. It hardens around the parts it touches and encrusts them in its hard, rocky material. If you stress the affected areas or if I hit them hard – they will shatter alongside with your body. Surrender", Dhaogu demanded without any assertiveness at all. His eyes looked more tired than triumphant really.</p><p>"That so?" Gasco smiled "Have you noticed, I wonder?"</p><p>Given his opponent's confusion, the bald giant continued.</p><p>"The environment around you, have you noticed? The falling snowflakes? This battle was doomed for you from the very beginning, I was waiting for you to pull out your oil jutsu from the semifinals because I needed to find out something", Gasco explained before lightly lifting up his arm by the elbow, something that caused pressure and pain to the creepy baldy but didn't break off his arm completely.</p><p>"Thunderstorm Fist!" He roared out as he channeled the Thunderstorm Fist over his hand and overloaded the chakra channel, maxing the jutsu out. The cranked up chakra output made small lightning sparks crackle around, reaching up and around even to the surrounding barriers. The small lightning sparks began catching each falling snowflake, before firing off to the next, creating an intricate glowing net of Lightning Release chakra as the other branching off crackles traveled through the snow mixed with the mud.</p><p>In desperation, Dhaogu coated his body with his oiled up sand but that appeared to be a mistake. Once the intricate net of Lightning Release chakra reached him, it enveloped the young man completely, charging up his oily armor to the point where it outright exploded around his body and sent the young man unconscious and face-down on the ground. The massive injuries and lightning flowers all over the boy's body suggested that his chakra augmentations could do little to help his case.</p><p>The hardened substance over Gasco's body collapsed into yellow powder dust, the bits that made it into his flesh stayed in his bloodstream, it would likely be eventually removed from his body in one way or another.</p><p>This match was over.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0363"><h2>363. Dust To Dust</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even after the match had ended, it did not appear that Gasco was willing to leave the arena. His choice of actions after overseer Oke ruled his victory was surprising to everyone except, it seemed, Stea. The tall powerhouse walked up to his knocked out opponent and just watched him strictly from up above. Then, slowly and calmly, he bent over and picked the young boy up with one hand wrapped around the youth's head, holding the powerless opponent in front of him.</p><p>Kiyomi looked at Mana uneasily. This would have normally been a cue for her to do something stupid that would have lead to her getting disqualified. And yet… The magician stood still, lips pressed together, head firmly fixed on one point she couldn't really see in an unwilling instinct that took over when all of her remaining senses were fixed on something else.</p><p>Could Mana even tell what was transpiring? What was she thinking? Kiyomi's knuckles pressed tightly, she settled firmly on stopping Mana if she as much as twitched at that direction. It was her duty as the girl's friend to stop her from ruining a journey this long, perilous and one that cost as much to them both as this one did. And yet… The magician just kept on standing calmly.</p><p>Gasco's fingers pressed against Dhaogu's temples, he must have considered crushing the boy's head like a grape in between his fingers and he certainly had the strength for it. Had the young Sunagakure genin not been knocked out he'd have been in a lot of pain.</p><p>"So pathetic and merciful, asking your opponent to surrender when you believe you have the upper hand. Unfit for service. And yet… Strong enough to be of some use to your village. The potential for developing a Bloodline Selection in the future too. Yes, killing you would be an injustice to your village", Gasco settled as his hand went frail, letting the boy slip from his grasp and slam to the ground weightlessly as the giant turned around and walked away.</p><p>Kiyomi breathed out easier. She looked at Mana with a faint smile, "I thought you'd do something stupid, honestly".</p><p>"Why? It was obvious that Gasco would not kill Dhaogu", Mana wondered, "Gasco and Doma only kill people they think are wasting their village's time and money with their service as ninja, people they deem a disgrace to the ninja name and reputation. Dhaogu has three active Elemental Natures, which means he may develop an Advanced Bloodline or a Bloodline Selection in the future. Such a man cannot possibly be unworthy of life in their eyes".</p><p>"Yeah but… How can you tell what they're thinking, they're just so… Crazy", Kiyomi sighed easier before looking at the large screen that displayed the next match-up. "No offense", the Yamanaka quickly shut Stea down as the Getsugakure kunoichi gave her an off-handed glare after the remark that the blonde made.</p><p>"There's a method to any madness. I understand theirs well enough to be able to read it", Mana calmly replied.</p><p>"I hope you haven't filed me up with those two in that mind of yours", Stea smiled giving Mana a challenging glance.</p><p>"I haven't, your different way of thinking is what makes you more dangerous than your team", the magician admitted.</p><p>"Well, girls, I guess I'm next!" Nanaba shrieked out in excitement before running off and turning down the staircase that lead to a long corridor leading up to the arena. She may have heard a couple of good luck wishes before she disappeared or she may not have wanted or been able to hear them, given how excited and fast she was.</p><p>On the other side, the familiar frail desert dweller in Buhakim stepped out. The Uber-Spiritual One already had his grotesquely strange looking puppets unsealed and screwed together, wearing them around his body as accessories as the one with many limbs, the one Buhakim called Śrāvakayāna, laid wrapped around his body like an overly clingy lover. Meanwhile, the more abstract shape of a ship wheel covered with fists, Pratyekabuddhayāna, laid behind his back imitating the spiritual enlightenment present on religious art glowing behind important figures.</p><p>"He doesn't plan on fooling around", Kiyomi noted recalling how slowly the puppeteer usually unveiled his puppets, almost like it was a religious ritual of sorts, which, of course, it wasn't. The whole point of his Uber-Spirituality was about breaking the stereotypes behind deeply religious people.</p><p>"For the next match, you've got our own Nanaba Aomyaku from Konoha's Team Hawthorn. A curious girl who loves her puppet arms deeply and advanced through the semi-finals through sheer luck as her beloved arms were busted during the Forest of Death stage!" Overseer Oke tried hyping Nanaba up but he sort of came out a bit short. Kiyomi found it rather odd how the official did not reveal her status as a Jinchuuriki of the Seven Tails to the audience or list any of the people she's beaten in the Chuunin Exams to hype her up at all.</p><p>It was almost like the village wanted the girl's status and anything impressive and noteworthy about her to remain a complete secret…</p><p>"She will be facing off against the self-proclaimed Uber-Spiritual guru – Buhakim of Sunagakure from Team Pahlavi. Someone who has been in plenty of intense battle royal style clashes in the Forest of Death and managed to impress us with his massive amalgam puppet in the semi-finals!" Oke hyped Nana's opponent up a bit better. Still, judging from the audience's reaction they did not overly enjoy the prospect of watching a puppeteer fight or feel nearly as invested in into this match as the previous couple.</p><p>"Whenever any of you two feel ready, you can begin the third match of the Chuunin Exams finals!" Oke cheered out pumping his fist into the air wildly before taking a strong and hearty leap backwards so that his involvement did not factor in any way into the proceeding match.</p><p>Not overly surprisingly, the battle did not just erupt from the moment it had officially begun. Buhakim prepared his puppets for battle by having the many-limbed abomination unscrew its tight grip around him and positioning it in front of him while the other one remained firmly attached to his upper back, protecting him from that front.</p><p>Nanaba stood there with her head sunken down, hair falling over her face, fists clenched and shaking by her sides. Kiyomi was surprised to see the energetic and normally cheerful girl tear up a little as she revealed by throwing the flowing hair off her face.</p><p>"Promise me, promise me that you'll help me make this battle one that will stand out! They must see us!" She firmly ordered her opponent.</p><p>"The path of Uber-Spirituality is not one of the meaningless aesthetics. It's one of hustling towards victory while acting religious, no matter how dirty the means one must take!" Buhakim declared by sending his offensive amalgam of appendages into battle. Normally such a monstrous freak of artistry would have overwhelmed any close range combatant, merely by its sheer number of blurring fists and feet as well as the highly disturbing and unnaturally twitchy manner of movement.</p><p>However, Nanaba matched the overly zealous expression of the artistic freedom with the impressive mechanical arms that were completely repaired from the end of the Forest of Death stage. Even as Śrāvakayāna turned and twisted its many joints to achieve impossible striking angles and directions, Nanaba calmly matched the offensive pressure with her own mechanical wonders.</p><p>"You must promise me!" She strictly shouted out before pressing on her own offensive barrage of whizzing flashes that could have only been called blows by a manner of speech as their overwhelming number and speed defied the likes which it would have been clumped with had the category been assigned to it. "We will not be invisible!" The girl declared.</p><p>"I have been invisible my entire life! I will make them see us!" Nanaba roughed out, wheezing from her lungs as she continued to pressure the handy puppet, her lack of focus on where and how often she was striking instead of the emotions that lead to her accepting the Tailed Beast being sealed inside her made the blonde skip a good pair of blows.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Vehicle of Disciples!" Buhakim chanted out as his abominable puppet had made quite a painfully clear opening by succeeding to bombard the opposing girl with strikes where she opened herself up due to her emotional outburst.</p><p>Buhakim's fingers appeared to completely disappear into thin air as they moved so swiftly and flawlessly, controlling the many-limbed puppet and ordering it to flip and roll abrasively and in a grotesque manner which only this thing could move in, striking and slamming its limbs where the puppeteer's limited flashing fingers could not be bothered to properly wind them up.</p><p>Nanaba slid back, still on her feet even after the painful and seemingly endless combination of hammer strikes, punches and kicks that she received from the Vehicle of Disciples puppet. The girl flashed through a handful of hand seals before breathing in deeply. The motion from her opponent to reposition the Solitary Awakening puppet to in front of him in order to shield him from an upcoming technique revealed that even Buhakim knew and respected the fact that a big technique was coming.</p><p>"Scale Powder!" Nanaba coughed out as a flow of fine powder blew out from her mouth, shining so brightly that the flash triggered the protective barriers and despite the light being filtered very selectively, it still forced Buhakim to cover up his eyes and writhe around in pain. Even the people watching in the audience covered their eyes up as they began watering excessively to the extent where even closing their eyes or trying to rub the stress out of them did not help.</p><p>Mana grabbed her eyes lightning fast, taking a pair of steps back before beginning to outright scream and claw at her temples in pain that the bright flash of light, even as little of it as it passed through her blindfold caused.</p><p>"Quickly, go inside the corridor!" Kiyomi jumped up to Mana, covering her friend up with her body and leading the magician into a darker corridor outside to recover. It did not appear like her eyes were in any better condition than they were in when this whole thing started, even if magician's skin had regained its healthy darker hue that it usually had.</p><p>"Wow, that powder thing was really bright, wasn't it? Like a little star was stored inside each dust particle..." Kiyomi tried to calm her friend down as Mana cried in pain, sitting by the cold and damp wall in the middle of a dimly lit corridor. The Yamanaka heiress tried to smile and gently tap her friend's shoulder but… She was worried deep inside. So far, the training that her friend did appeared to only be hindering her. Just how could Mana hope to face the strongest genin in the bunch with these eyes and with her sensory shut down to prevent anxiety attacks.</p><p>Looking at Mana the way she was now, her hair flowing wildly and more unruly than they've ever been as a haircut was long due for the magician, her skin having just barely recently regained its normal color and all the swelling having just recently disappeared, her senses of sight and smell robbed of her in order to catch up to the insane demands of the Chuunin Exams that were supposed to be just a cakewalk… Kiyomi's heart wimpered for a moment, seeing a young soul broken so much and going through so much physical suffering at her age.</p><p>Just how long before their bodies will have nothing more to give? Just what kind of price they pay each time something like this happens and they have to compromise with their own bodies just to keep on breaking them when normally they'd be able to bend be broken no longer?</p><p>Buhakim was writhing on his knees, his puppets dangled lifelessly and got dragged around with the puppeteer as he wandered around the stage with his blinded eyes. Nanaba leaped in for a focused cross from the central right of her mechanical arms, aiming to punch her way through the enemy. As the gut wrenching punch connected, sending shivers through the audience who were just recovering from the last flashy show just from how gruesome the sound it made was, another sound followed it – that of a loud bang.</p><p>Instead of Buhakim erupting into a fit of vomiting blood that burst through from his innards due to excessive internal bleeding, his body was replaced with the Solitary Awakening and busted into smallest bits and pieces. In his blinded rampage, the puppeteer sent his Vehicle of Disciples chasing off after the blond Jinchuuriki but with a pair of careful and graceful dashes, the girl avoided the overly expressive artistic liberty personified in one creation.</p><p>Nana's hands once again blurred in hand seals and her chest inflated from the tremendous amount of air in her lungs before it all got expelled at once.</p><p>"Honey Dust!" she wheezed out through a bright cloud of sunflower-yellow powder that covered the entire arena, making the snowy battlefield dye brilliant yellow.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Vehi…" Buhakim tried to order his puppet to dance again before noticing its twitchy and unresponsive movements. The Vehicle of Disciples was stuck in its initial pose and wouldn't do anything other but twitch meaninglessly.</p><p>"Don't you just hate my Honey Dust? It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere, even in between your puppet's countless joints and gears!" Nanaba cheeked her opponent with a playful wink at the audience. As Buhakim desperately tried to walk away from his rampaging opponent and regain his composure, Nanaba moved in and with a sledgehammer strike of her hands crushed the overrun with coarse and annoying powder puppet.</p><p>Buhakim stumbled about, trying to perceive where his opponent would come from. The Uber-Spiritual One was scratching his skin to blood as the Honey Dust was causing it to swell and itch, his eyes were still watering and bleeding from the flash of light that Scale Powder caused. He was surprised to see his opponent just calmly standing about and waiting for something.</p><p>"Now, come on, fuse your puppets together! Hit me with your strongest shot!" Nanaba commanded, almost bullying her opponent into action.</p><p>Mana, with Kiyomi's aid, managed to return to the observation platform. After the returning girls were greeted by the others with a brief welcoming look, Kiyomi just smiled, trying to downplay Mana's painful reaction to Scale Dust's filtered flash. "What did we miss?" She jokingly asked.</p><p>"Not much, that cheery girl bashed the shit out of the puppets but she's waiting around", Vinda yawned.</p><p>"Oddly enough, Nanaba keeps asking Buhakim to use his Bodhisattva. Something like this will cost her her promotion. No way will the Council be happy with such carelessness and arrogance", Stea noted.</p><p>"She's not arrogant or careless, she's using Ukemi" Kiyomi wondered before letting go of Mana after the magician gestured that she will be fine and rushing up to the edge of the platform to get a better look and listen onto the arena.</p><p>"Ukemi?" Mana asked. "How is she minimizing her damage by asking to receive more of it?"</p><p>"I'm not talking about Ukemi in martial arts, I mean it in professional wrestling terms. She's asking to be hit with Buhakim's hardest and best looking spots to entertain the audience. Without a doubt she intends on taking the shot head-on, she knows deep inside that some of the audience wants her blood." Kiyomi explained.</p><p>Buhakim wiped the blood off of his eyes, leaving a grisly stain over his face and then placing his hands together in a praying position. Invisible strings lit up with chakra flares as the lifeless pieces of his puppets came back to life, twitching and rolling around like pieces of a crushed body before rolling together and reconfiguring into a tall, epic shape.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Bodhisattva!" Buhakim prayed out as the destroyed Vehicle of Disciples and Solitary Awakening became something else entirely. A large humanoid shape without a face. Taller than the entire arena as its head could have likely be seen from outside of the arena and people just passing by at the same district. A pair of more faceless faces attached to the sides of the epically proportioned puppet as twelve arms rose up from the back and assumed praying position and three legs crossed together, putting the Bodhisattva into a meditative pose.</p><p>This Bodhisattva was both larger and differently configured than the one in the semi-finals! This one had twice the number of arms, which implied a great increase in the puppeteer's skill.</p><p>"There it is, the Icon of Uber-Spirituality, the Bodhisattva!" Buhakim shouted out through the shocked and awe stricken cheers from the audience. It appeared that Buhakim had caught on to Nanaba's game and purposefully had the puppet strike impressive poses and prolonged his attack until the audience had gotten used to seeing this massive faceless humanoid towering the arena.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Solitary Awakened Perfection!" Buhakim prayed before moving his hand forward in a special hand seal position, which ordered the towering puppet to raise its hand up. As the massively proportioned arm rose and winded up for a palm strike, the entire arm lit up in blue chakra flare before the towering palm slammed at where Nanaba was last seen standing, crushing the area to bits.</p><p>The tremendous force of Bodhisattva caused such a massive shockwave that it blasted away all of the snow that had gathered and layered across the arena, causing violent whirlwinds of powerful gusts that scattered Nana's Honey Dust and changed the brilliantly yellow battlefield into a more rocky and devastated one. Just like before, the protective barriers that were usually invisible, placed around the arena lit up to protect the civilians in the audience but the sheer sound and the spectacle of it made the crowd jump on to their feet.</p><p>As the devastation began settling down once more, revealing the remains of the Bodhisattva's wrath, the chakra flare around the puppet's arm faded away.</p><p>"No way!" Kiyomi shrieked out in complete disbelief. The other girls, except for Mana, who was still to sense what was transpiring in a meaningful way, joined in on the emotional outburst of the Yamanaka.</p><p>Nanaba's feminine figure quivered under the pressure of the Bodhisattva's palm before a mad battlecry and a burst of crimson chakra cloak from her body gave her the physical power needed to overpower the Bodhisattva and lift its heavy arm. Nanaba was not content with just lifting it up, the girl's hands wrapped around the edges of the humongous palm and twisted it sideways, throwing the entire puppet aside and crashing at the audience. Only the protective barriers prevented a massive calamity with thousands of casualties and the destruction of half the arena but the shocked audience got to see Bodhisattva's faceless heads from up too close for comfort.</p><p>In just five minutes, the girl who wanted to stop being invisible, the young soul who just wanted to be noticed and in the center of attention so that she could be seen captured the hearts and admiration of Konohagakure and its honored guests.</p>
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<a name="section0364"><h2>364. The Spiritual Outrage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Buhakim's hands erratically moved around, doing the youth's best to get the partially downed giant Bodhisattva back on its feet and ready for battle. Nanaba grinned with energy and vigor before spreading her feet wide and leaning her body down, preparing for a powerful leap. The intensity of the chakra flowing through her body scattered the remnants of dust scattered on the ground and the fallen snow, as well as creating a violent vortex that blasted away the continuously falling snow as well.</p><p>"Fire Style: Shooting Star!" Nanaba chanted out, weaving her hand seals before breathing out a turbulent jet of flames, the stream of blazes formed a man-sized fireball with sharp angles, somewhat resembling a cartoonish star shape.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Solitary Perfection!" Buhakim ordered his puppet, before it could fully recover with three hands being occupied with pushing the puppet off of the barrier it slammed into. Lazily the puppet shot forward its palm, driving it right into the star-shaped fireball and pushing it right back at Nanaba. The size of the puppet's arm was too great for Nanaba to dodge, given how she had dashed at the puppet right after blasting it with the fireball, aiming to attack it physically as well.</p><p>This time the jutsu actually appeared to hurt Nanaba as her heart-freezing scream echoed through the audience and her limp, partially blazing body fired out of the resulting explosion and slammed into the arena wall.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Solitary Awakened Perfection!" Buhakim once again commanded Bodhisattva to attack the weightlessly dangling, stuck in the hole in the wall she herself left Nanaba. The upper right arm of the puppet lit up with blue chakra flare as it slammed its palm right to where Nana was stuck in. An explosion of blue flame vortexes and smoke erupted taxing the protective barriers to once again work overtime in order to protect the awestruck audience.</p><p>A loud popping sound made Buhakim's eyes widen in shock. Ripples and cracks started splitting all across the arm that slammed the downed girl deeper into the wall as splinters and larger chunks of wood and metal began blasting off of the splitting appendage of the Bodhisattva. As the pulsing reactive force of Nanaba struggling against the Bodhisattva reached the colossal faces of the puppet, the entire structure got violently jerked and tossed backwards, falling on its bottom and opening up completely.</p><p>Kiyomi had expected to see Nanaba leap out from the rubble of the crushed wall and fire away at the puppet, continue the endless streak of brutal madness that these two have created but it appeared that the Jinchuuriki girl couldn't quite do that. Wiping the blood off of her busted lip and nose, trying to open up her swollen right eye, the vibrant blonde stumbled out of the rubble, rolling large chunks of it aside of her.</p><hr/><p>"She's fighting the puppet", Mana noted. Usually it would have been advisable to target the puppeteer, especially once the puppet was brushed aside, as it was twice already in the resulting brawl.</p><p>"She wants it to look good, she wants to destroy the puppet and see the audience's reaction to it. She wants to be seen and acknowledged", Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"I can sort of relate to that, but that will cost her the promotion. Being acknowledged by the Council of professionals and being visually appealing to capture your audience are two different things. A true ninja is supposed to be the opposite of an entertainer", Mana shook her head.</p><p>"What do you know of her thoughts?" Stea sneered at Mana, it appeared that even the magician herself was surprised by the rather passive aggressive reaction from her opponent. "You have been an entertainer for the most of your life, from what I've heard. These people loved you since even before you stood on the stage, they spoke something about cardboard boxes and flowery dresses during your show. That feeling you have during your shows is the desire to selfishly indulge in that love you already captured, Nanaba wants to be acknowledged for the first time. She feels invisible and wants that to end. These two sensations are fundamentally different."</p><p>"What an idiot!" Vinda scoffed before leaning over the rail to observe the battle more clearly, seeing how Mana stepped off of it and moved back a bit. "She's the fucking Jinchuuriki, if she wants to be seen, just blow fucking shit up…"</p><p>"That wouldn't be her", Mana realized. "That would be the Tailed Beast inside of her. Nanaba wants to be acknowledged for what she is herself, not for what she has been made into".</p><p>After seeing Stea's more reserved nod, Kiyomi finally understood the tragic irony of Nanaba's life. The girl had no clan, no famous background or remarkable abilities. So far she barely showed anything but crafty mechanical arm engineering and Fire Release – literally the most common of the Chakra Nature types found in Konohagakure.</p><p>The girl must have accepted the Tailed Beast being sealed inside her because she wanted to be something more. Because she tried and failed to be acknowledged but all it did was cause the schism between her and everyone else to split even deeper. Her status as a Jinchuuriki was kept secret from the ordinary civilians so she could not truly show herself off to them, meanwhile those that did know of her special case were afraid of her because of what lurked inside of her. Some others yet were jealous of the power she held…</p><p>That was even if Nanaba had any choice on the matter of the Seven Tails being sealed inside her. Sometimes the Tailed Beasts were being sealed into actual babies so that the secret could be kept from them as well, with the possibility of it being revealed when it is most necessary and useful to the village. Even if the toddler did know the secret, by a freak accident or someone spilling the beans, they would still grow up without any biases. Biases which have formed around the Tailed Beasts and treat their power differently from those who have grown up without their Jinchuuriki status and accepted it later in their lives.</p><hr/><p>A crimson aura burst through from Nanaba's pores, creating an off-putting image of a wild girl who appeared to have been evaporating her own blood, when in fact it was merely some of the Tailed Beast's power letting loose. One's personality and dominant emotions had a feedback on one's chakra, how intense it was, sometimes its properties even. Seeing how most Tailed Beasts were forces of nature, their chakra always had a corrupting influence.</p><p>Releasing some of the inner demons always started out great. The first slip of the Tailed Beast's chakra only granted some extra chakra, enhanced one's physical strength, speed and empowered one's techniques. The more this exchange happened over the short period of time – the more the user would have been corrupted by the beast inside. Overseer Oke appeared to be watching Nanaba very carefully for overly corrupting influence, his face betrayed a clear distaste for the reliance on the Tailed Beast's chakra by the young lady contestant.</p><p>Nanaba charged at the massive puppet, jumping off of the ground like a human-arrow with a winded up flesh fist and six mechanical ones prepared to fire off behind her back.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Dual Awakened Perfections!" Buhakim huffed out, as his arms continued to dance gracefully, controlling the colossal puppet. Bodhisattva lifted up two of its top row arms before locking them up in a sledgehammer slam position, then driving them down as they fired up with blue chakra flares.</p><p>Nanaba's downfall was telegraphed by the lightning-fast blue pillar of chakra that started at the point of impact and ended resonating in pulsing shockwaves across the arena ground leaving nothing but the ravaged ground where she busted down into. The shockwave from this one slam caused the entire arena below to shatter and left only a messy pile of rocks and rubble from what was previously a stage of combat designed to incorporate multiple stages from all around the world.</p><p>It took a couple of moments before the bland blue glow that shocked and emanated from under the rubble stopped glowing. With her jumpsuit partially tattered and her skin covered with bruises and beatings, Nanaba leaped out from where she was crushed into. The swollen eye, cracked lip, and a busted nose were no longer bleeding – the regeneration that the Jinchuuriki granted its host when they allowed the beast's chakra to leak out was quite impressive.</p><p>But something was wrong – Nanaba's eyes were whited out completely and a layer of red, wispy chakra was completely enveloping and surrounding her. The civilians in the audience may have looked rather confused and thought that this was just some sort of odd technique they have never heard of but most ninja present and observing the match shifted in their seats uneasily.</p><p>Nanaba Aomyaku had entered the Initial Jinchuuriki Form, she had not yet surrendered her will or control of her body to the Tailed Beast but she was quite close to that point. Right now it was tough to say how much chakra that Nanaba leaked out from her body was hers and how much of it was the Seven Tails'.</p><hr/><p>"You're fairly skilled in lore and history of the Ninja World, what kind of personality does the Seven Tails have?" Kiyomi turned at Mana uneasily, wondering if these protective barriers could even withstand the power of something as wild and scary as a Tailed Beast. Given how worn out they already were, that was unlikely.</p><p>"Well, it's tough to say," Mana shook her head, "There are speculations and several historical recounts of Seven Tails having rather cheerful and go-lucky, fun-loving personality. Given Nanaba's own nature, these two would be compatible if that was the case which would make them more willing to work together and a more efficient weapon. That must have been why the village sealed the Beast into someone of an unimpressive background like Nanaba. It would make sense that it would be the most likely personality of the Beast."</p><p>"Hmph, you brainy types are always speculating and wondering. Never a clear-cut answer…" Vinda sneered at Mana mockingly, with a sadistic smile, without doubt imagining melting the girl's flesh off her bones.</p><p>"Personalities of someone as unstable as the Tailed Beasts differ. In our journey to the Wind Country we have met a worn out and starved to near death Nine Tails. There was no method or malice in its eyes, just its beastly nature and the desire to escape and destroy its shackles. Even Seven Tails could turn destructive if it is unhappy about being imprisoned or if it hates its host. They aren't math equations, they are beasts with personalities and feelings."</p><p>"It is said that the Tailed Beasts together comprise the 98 percent of the universe's chakra. All the people living now and the endless universe itself only share the remaining 2 percent. Given that knowledge, even a playful and happy Tailed Beast sounds absolutely terrifying", Stea smiled bitterly, it was a smile, which was meant to acknowledge the fragility of her own existence when the girl remembered the insane universe she lived in.</p><p>Kiyomi caught a glimpse of Mana's objecting face, she had something to say to Stea's quoted claim of the Tailed Beasts' properties but for whatever reason decided not to do so. Perhaps too many painful memories laid in the story that the magician wanted to tell with her objection... If anyone had a bitter memory to accompany every one of their experiences and stories, Mana would have been that person.</p><hr/><p>"Puppetry Technique: Vehicle of Three Awakened Perfections!" Buhakim roared out, throwing both of his arms forward. Following his command, the massive faceless icon of Uber-Spirituality winded up for a ruthless assault using three of its arms.</p><p>Answering her opponent's call for battle, Nanaba emitted her own fearsome battle cry and kicked off the ground, once again sending her body on a collision course with the massive Bodhisattva and preparing her mechanical arms for a vicious rampage she would unleash to tear down the puppet's body.</p><p>Just as the flaring with blue chakra flames three arms began pummeling at the aerial shape of the Jinchuuriki girl, Nanaba answered with her own assault. Her own awakened borrowed power matched, if not outdid a little, Bodhisattva's innovated offensive, compared to the limited pool that the Bodhisattva possessed in the semi-finals. As the fists of the massive puppet and Nanaba clashed, even more cracks began emanating through Bodhisattva's arms and even more spear-sized splinters and scrap shot out from its overstressed body.</p><p>"Fire Style: Spirited Shooting Star!" Nana shouted out with an inhuman, wild voice. Certain fearsome undertones were present in her voice, almost like an actual demon more ancient and terrible than the world everyone shared was speaking through her. The girl breathed out another large tongue of flames, still in mid-air, before shouting loudly behind her. The concussive force of her shout instantly lit up the protective barriers and propelled the girl forward in the moment of lost momentum.</p><p>Nanaba drove her arm forward to grab the star-shaped fireball she had fired at her opponent and to drive it into its face using her own hand. Before she could do that, the girl failed to notice the darkening skies and all-consuming shadows of the Bodhisattva's slapping palm before it was too late. Detonating the Shooting Star and smacking the girl back down under the rubble, the Bodhisattva quickly shut Nanaba's hearty streak of vicious attacks down.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Six Perfections!" Buhakim pressed his arms by his side and tensed his body up, preparing to a great physical strain that performing this technique would have required of him. The Bodhisattva extended its main set of arms, the ones that had a hieroglyph of a different virtue inscribed on their palms before slamming them all at the pile of rocks and rubble where Nanaba flew and got buried under after being slapped down.</p><p>Before the hands could crush and grind all the debris into dust with the intense pressure and force of impact, it appeared to meet an invisible force of resistance. That was before a fearsome sound emanated through the stage, forcing everyone to close their ears as it was both intimidating and heart-piercing by how loud it was. Not just loud: wild, uncontrollable, angry… It was not the Tailed Beast that was corrupting Nanaba, it was Nanaba's own desire to be acknowledged and witnessed and the frustration of failing to achieve the goals she had set for herself that corrupted the playful seven-tailed demon inside her.</p><p>The resulting shockwave threw the six virtuous arms of Bodhisattva aside from the sheer force of it. Once again the protective barriers dyed the lower central part of the arena bright purple. Buhakim stumbled back before gripping his pain-ridden chest with his right hand before extending his left forward, shifting his fingers and doing his best to work the Bodhisattva's control panel to command it to press onward.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Six Perfections!" Buhakim roared out, using its six remaining, undamaged and unaffected by Nanaba's shockwave generating and ground leveling battlecry arms to repeat the six-armed assault on the downed Jinchuuriki.</p><p>A fiery star-shaped fireball, supersized compared to the previous size of fireballs unleashed by Nanaba burst from underground with the glowing crimson and completely enveloped by a chakra cloak of red, boiling aura Jinchuuriki driving her hand into it and pushing it onwards. Numerous explosions rippled through the additional six arms of the Bodhisattva while the six arms that were used for the second Six Perfections exploded into shatters as the fireball ripped right through them. The Spirited Shooting Star then blasted the epic puppet straight into its central faceless orb, sending it crashing back until it slammed into the protective barrier where it would've normally crushed through an entire side of the arena killing thousands in the audience.</p><p>Kiyomi took a moment to look at the audience, even she – a trained and fairly hardened in battle ninja was leaning down and covering herself from each of the resulting shockwaves and in complete disbelief at all times of the awesome clashing powers in the arena. She could only imagine the horror in the eyes of a simple civilian who only gets to chance of experiencing such awesome clashes between what must seem to them as gods themselves during such events.</p><p>The audience was rustling alright, but those were no longer the screams of acknowledgment and entertainment. Even behind the protective barriers the audience was completely scared shitless for their own safety and screaming in discomfort and petrifying fear. Kiyomi's wavering eyes moved up to follow the events transpiring in the completely totaled arena. Seeing the amount of devastation and lack of control in the match made the Yamanaka wonder just how was continuing the event after this match possible.</p><p>Nanaba did not even look to be at all worn after that last attack, just as her shrouded in the crimson chakra cloak feet hit the first solid chunk of rubble, she kicked off, completely smashing it to bits in the process, and charged at Buhakim himself this time. Nanaba may have no longer been in control, it used to be her firm objective to total the Bodhisattva, the Seven Tails may have willed to end this battle quicker so that this madness finally stopped…</p><p>Buhakim shouted out in pain, at this point, it appeared, even merely moving his arms was beginning to burn up his fatigued muscles. He was suffering from extreme chakra shortage and it became clear almost immediately after his first response to the upcoming deadly attack. The Bodhisattva merely froze in place before beginning to collapse into small pieces of Solitary Awakening's and Vehicle of Disciple's wreckage that it was constructed from. Buhakim fell on his knees as he began sweating profusely on the remains of the totaled arena.</p><p>Before the Uber-Spiritual One could even accept or realize his incoming demise, however, a giant black tub, decorated with horned skulls and covered with rings full of spikes crashed on top of Nanaba, following a loud and authoritative voice of Overseer Oke.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Parliament of Obsidian!" he chanted out.</p><p>Loud bangs and roaring noises emanated from under the dark tub but not even in its worsened state could Nanaba budge the tub one bit. It appeared that light itself was bent as it traveled around the tub, distorting its view whenever one tried to lay their eyes on it. The pressure inside could've been unbearable, or it could've been completely normal and this jutsu was just a restraining mechanism, which would've made Oke perfect for overseeing a similar event.</p><p>Buhakim mumbled something unintelligibly before Overseer Oke gestured at his direction. "Examinee Buhakim is declared the victor. Examinee Nanaba is disqualified for breaking the rules. The Chuunin Exams will undergo a twenty-five-minute intermission so that the arena may be repaired and the protective barriers - examined".</p><hr/><p>"Disqualification? That doesn't make any goddamn sense!" Vinda flipped out, she appeared to be just about the only person around admiring the devastation that the clash between the two had created.</p><p>"It does not", Stea did not look happy to agree with her much more erratic and hotheaded peer. "The overseer did not see the necessity to interfere even when Gasco was about to kill his opponent. Killing is also supposedly allowed by the rules. It is painfully obvious that this had everything to do with Nanaba's Jinchuuriki abilities leaking out. The rich and powerful Konoha is protecting some skeletons in its closet, as usual".</p><p>"Did you hear what Buhakim said when he collapsed?" Mana mumbled to herself in a melancholic tone, seemingly ignoring Stea's demeaning remark aimed at her village and at the same time interrupting Kiyomi who was about to object to it as well. "He said he couldn't control chakra, he kept repeating it was unfair, that he still had chakra left…"</p><p>"You think he broke his network through reckless augmentation?" Kiyomi wondered, fully knowing Mana's own painful history with this mistake.</p><p>"Probably", the magician shrugged. "Most likely", she lowered her head sadly.</p>
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<a name="section0365"><h2>365. Live And Let Live</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The party of girls in the observatory area slowly proceeded outside and through a staircase that eventually lead them to bump into all of the audience members who, similarly to the girls, have decided to leave their seats and roam around. There were plenty of vendors offering their goods and services just outside the arena and they were about to have an unexpected field day.</p><p>One thing that almost instantly captivated Kiyomi's attention, besides Mana's continuous attempt to remove her blindfold, which resulted only in painful grunts and more tears before her tightening it back, was the head of Gasco towering above the rustling crowd. That meant that the boys had also chosen to leave their observatory on the opposite side and walk off their slightly sore from standing around feet as well as refresh their heads.</p><p>Kiyomi was surprised by how quickly, and rather rudely, Erumo shoveled the other girls away to run up to her teammate and congratulate him on his victory. Frankly, the Yamanaka had forgotten that the trapster was with them in the observatory to begin with, given how silent she's been throughout the whole last match. The blonde just sighed in frustration before looking around for more familiar faces. She expected to see Meiko shrieking about how crazy the battles were or at least complaining about how she fell asleep halfway through overseer Oke's hype talks.</p><p>Mana also shared Kiyomi's healthy curiosity about where this crazy shuffling of the crowd would take them. She was clearly looking uncomfortable by all the noise and stuffy air that must have troubled even her dead nose, untainted oxygen must have been a universal need. Gently moving his teammate aside, Yushijin approached Mana and Kiyomi, something that greatly confused the two, even if Kiyomi would have appreciated Yushijin's symmetrical and angled in all the right ways facial features any day for as long as she would need to.</p><p>"So, how did I do?" He sighed, looking both at Mana and Kiyomi.</p><p>"You're asking us?" Kiyomi coughed out.</p><p>"Well, I do recall you being somewhat competent in genjutsu in the Academy, meanwhile Mana is a little short of a prodigy in the field currently", Yushijin shrugged.</p><p>"Don't look at me, I've been ditching my focus on the illusionary arts for a while. It's kind of hard to stand out in the team when Mana spends so much time and effort on it", the Yamanaka shrugged, looking at Mana, the girl still looked uneasy around the two and looked like she'd rather drill right underground like some drill-wielding mole to avoid talking to them. Although, it could have just been the crowded and uncomfortable space causing this behavior in the magician.</p><p>"You were nothing less than amazing", Mana nodded, for a moment Erumo's eyes glittered like two little proud diamonds before shifting back to their spiteful initial state.</p><p>"That's not what you told everyone while watching the match, two-face!" The trapster scoffed at the magician. "Then again, why am I getting surprised by that kind of behavior, from you of all people…"</p><p>Yushijin lifted two fingers, just an inch short from pressing them against Erumo's lips in an attempt to silence his friend. He must have seen Mana's lingering thoughts, which she chose not to express initially. Now that she was "cornered", the magician realized that she kind of had to.</p><p>"To be entirely honest, I don't think you'll get promoted. Your skill was so intricate and your work and focus on a pair of jutsu instead of an entire arsenal of techniques was so fruitful that it is quite likely there were only one or two members of the Council that successfully read your movements, even if you did your best to include the Council into your illusionary arts". Mana mumbled it all out. Kiyomi felt bad for her friend having to get cornered by people who didn't quite like her and must have just tried to validate their twisted and skewed views of her.</p><p>"I see…" Yushijin closed his eyes with a bitter smile. It may have been full of foul tasting feelings but it was genuine and did not look malicious or like any of his distaste was directed at Mana. Quite the opposite, it felt more like the context of his bitterness was entirely pointing at mental self-immolation.</p><p>The four gently worked their way outside the arena, moving through a loud and a rather obnoxious crowd of civilians who expressed opinions of the spectrum so broad and in such numbers that it was difficult to even the trained ninja to filter specific ones out. It would have been much more reliable to read audience's reactions in the arena instead of listening to this cacophony of masses.</p><p>"You did not give a team from another village intel on our team's location out of spite or malice, did you?" Yushijin asked out of the blue, surprising everyone but Mana. Truthfully, it was tough to say just what the magician was thinking or how exactly she reacted to the youth's question seeing how she covered up her eyes.</p><p>"No. I did so out of a conflict of ideology with a certain lost friend. I made a choice, fully knowing the consequences of each of the possible choices I could have made at that moment. If you feel like I deserve your spite forever, I have accepted that outcome as what I had to gain from that choice outweighed that", Mana answered as the first cold breezes of fresh winter air met the nostrils of the ninja.</p><p>"You predicted that Kouta might react the way he did?" Yushijin raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I knew he'd be really mad and that he'd have problems trusting me, the way things turned out was always a possible outcome of those results", Mana lowered her head making her face sink under the long and greasy mess of raven dark hair.</p><p>Yushijin snickered for a second before restraining his emotions and shifting back to his cold face again. In that moment, Kiyomi realized how much this youth reminded her of an Uchiha, it would be very difficult to enjoy the aesthetically pleasing sight of this young athletic man after this link was once made and will forever stay in her mind…</p><p>"That is not at all how I would have imagined you think. No offense, but from how Kouta used to be in love with you, imagining you mirroring those feelings completely… It's tough for someone to just cut it all loose for their Ninja Way. Sure, everyone says they are ready to do it, never give up, become the Hokage, greatest in something… Whatever their objective in life is… Everyone always stands by their word when it's easy, few do so when it's like it usually is", Yushijin observed.</p><p>Mana remained silent. It was not usually something that befits her. The Mana that Kiyomi knew would have probably talked her way into something stupid and then solved that stupid situation with the most stupid decision she just made up, ignoring those that are available to her. The silence extended for so long that Kiyomi and Erumo even shared uncomfortable glances at each other as if encouraging the other to kill it.</p><p>"Hey! There you two are!"</p><p>Meiko's cheerful as always voice did the deed for any of the two. Yushijin quickly extended his hand for a shake and after Mana accepted it just as quickly, Team Fir just walked off to their own ways. The redhead ran up to her friends, maneuvering around the numerous people in ways that would have made one question the fact that her legs were just bloody stumps just a bit over a month ago.</p><p>"How crazy was that last fight!?" The redhead yelled out, loud enough to embarrass Kiyomi in front of the passing by civilians and discomfort Mana.</p><p>Just a step away from the two, Meiko froze on her feet and freaked out, jumping back and tumbling over a bunch of people. All of whom decided to express their grievances with the blacksmith girl but upon gazing their eyes on her physical shape decided it against their best interests even in a village of such medical excellence where Meiko could now freely walk and successfully dropkick people.</p><p>Mana and paled out in her freakout Meiko shared a long and uncomfortable staredown, even if Meiko was staring at and Mana was staring through a dirty blindfold.</p><p>"Oh… It's just Mana, I kind of forgot she looked like a crazy swamp witch lady now", Meiko snickered innocently while shamefully stroking the back of her head and bowing it in front of the magician as if she could see the blacksmith doing it.</p><p>"I looked even worse when we met, you know", Mana looked away, crossing her hands on her chest, visibly a little bit flustered over being taken for an undead malevolent spirit from a swamp. The magician may have been slightly butthurt, but she was right – her skin and swellings significantly improved over the duration of the three matches.</p><p>"Seeing Nana flip out like that kinda reminded me of the time we met the Nine Tails, remember?" Meiko laughed out cheerfully, walking alongside the two teammates all relaxed-like.</p><p>"We all almost died, several times even before we even got to the beast's lair. Hard to forget", Mana replied.</p><p>"If that Daidao guy went as far as Nanaba did, maybe Meiko would be in the finals now", Kiyomi pressed her lips together in an almost cute pout.</p><p>"We all lucked out with the opponents we got", Mana bluntly exclaimed with a hint of fear behind her voice. "Those Jinchuuriki folk are in a completely different league to us or anyone in the Exams. I've never seen something quite like Nanaba's fight, she just got hit and bounced right back, freely letting the Seven Tails corrupt her just so she could fight longer. Her chakra and stamina appeared almost infinite, they are opponents that do not seem to tire, care much for injuries or ever run into chakra shortage problems. We should be glad that Daidao showed as much restraint as he did".</p><p>"You didn't see Nanaba's fight", Meiko flicked Mana's forehead before slowly removing the magician's blindfold and dangling it in front of her face, "This thing obstructed your view".</p><p>The ends of Mana's lips twisted upward and her cheekbones shot out, the magician grabbed the blindfold with almost pitch-point precision before wrapping it around her closed eyes. After her eyes were safely protected from even the most limited winter sunlight of this gloomy gray day the magician burst into laughter.</p><hr/><p>About twenty-five minutes later, just as scheduled, the matches were ready to continue with the arena being completely restored to its initial state. The snowfall was still getting in the way and ceaselessly covering the field with thin layers of white but it was not something that the officials could or wanted to do something about. They have seen Gasco utilize this element in a clever way already and wanted to see what the other competitors may think up of with this unusual for the matches condition in play.</p><p>The large screens hanging at the top of each corridor entrance displayed the names of the next contestants: Nara Sugemi and Vinda Calkem. This matchup explained why the sadistic young lady hadn't joined the other girls in the observatory area after the break.</p><p>Even if it took the matches twenty-five minutes to resume, the finals were actually halted for a bit longer than that as the flow of people returning to their seats took longer than expected to clear up. It was not until at least ten minutes extra that everyone returned to their seats and the arena was filled enough to where the officials chose to continue the match by having overseer Oke strut out and declare the next match.</p><p>"For the next match, we have Vinda Calkem – an impressive young kunoichi that blew us all away in the semi-finals with the advanced ability of Water Release, managing to eliminate both a competent Sunagakure competitor and a prime physical condition Guren clansman all by herself!" Oke pointed at Vinda who was entering the arena from the right before arrogantly crossing her arms on her chest and sneering at the opposite side of the arena and a corridor sunken in total darkness.</p><p>"She will be facing Nara Sugemi, a provider of a supremely brutal and impressively physical match where he showed off all of his taijutsu prowess and a unique spin on Nara clan techniques!" The crowd turned left to witness the other competitor enter. Sugemi had changed a lot since the semi-finals. His hair was a lot longer and still completely unrestrained, something that most Nara used to bother with. His physical condition also appeared to have improved as the young man had easily gained large amounts of weight through sheer physical training. Not to mention his raggedy vagabond-like clothing.</p><p>Almost immediately after overseer Oke finished talking Kiyomi could hear the audience below mumbling to each other dismissively about Sugemi's introduction. Even mere civilians seemingly have heard of the profound intelligence of the Nara clansmen and their proficiency at amazingly entertaining and efficient strategies. Hearing that Sugemi was a physical combatant above all else made them speak of him in a dismissive tone, almost like he was a reject or a failure already.</p><p>"People in Konoha are deeply bound by tradition and very unwelcoming of change, it seems", Mana muttered, given her sensory training she must have also overheard more than she would have like from the civilians below. Kiyomi had almost forgotten that Sugemi was once Mana's teammate and still a good friend. In fact, even if Sugemi suggested that there was once a falling out between her old team, he still quite obviously cared for her. He was the one to gather Team Hawthorn and Team Hokage together to rescue the magician after all…</p><p>Just as the match was declared having begun, the Nara charged at his opponent almost instantly. The speed at which he closed the distance between the two was remarkable and easily dwarfing the speed at which he was fighting Meiko in his base, unmodified by the Gates, state during the semi-finals. In fact, he may have matched his previous First Gate speed just the way he was now.</p><p>A strong barrage of kicks overwhelmed Vinda, stiff and painfully sounding, they bombarded everywhere from the girl's head to her chest and abdomen, then - her knees. A loud poof, not unlike that which the Substitution Jutsu leaves emanated through the arena but this was no Substitution even if Vinda evaporated in a cloud of white smoke, similar to how a Substitution unveiled itself. It was an advanced clone jutsu that Vinda had used. One that left a corporeal clone.</p><p>That was not it, one small detail caught Sugemi's eye – a seemingly harmless paper figurine floating right in the middle of the white cloud. The youth's eyes twitched in shock when it realized that this sphere was no cloned ninja tool but instead an origami water bomb. The lantern-like shape burst in mid-air, splashing its contents all over Sugemi who grunted in pain before stumbling back. Loud and skin crawling sizzling noises could have been audible coming from the young man but with a single flare of chakra the harmful effects of the acidic contents of the water bomb were disabled from causing too much harm.</p><p>"Not bad, huh?" A voice echoed from somewhere inside the arena. "I let my Shadow Clone enter the arena instead of me and you fell right for it… Did your little heart shutter when you realized you may melt away? Did you feel the chills crawling down your body when my special Water Release acid covered you, waiting for the pain to kick in and stressing to counter its effects?"</p><p>Sugemi smiled from under his long helm of sweaty hair. The smile transcended into a composed snicker and then into a full out laughter. It looked like the entertainment of her opponent shut Vinda up for good.</p><p>"You mean to tell me you were so stupid as to split your chakra in half before the match even started? Just to coat me in your stupid acid once? I barely broke a sweat neutralizing it, it'll take more than this for me to register this as even a try", Sugemi verbally assaulted his opponent.</p><p>His verbal attack revealed itself to be quite effective as sizzling shuriken shapes made of acidic liquid flew straight at Sugemi from an unclear point behind the trees standing at the south-western part of the arena.</p><p>"Water Style: Acid Shuriken!" Vinda yelled out after Sugemi covered himself up and allowed the shuriken constructs to hit him in the back, sizzling his dogi away into nothingness and revealing the scarred and iron-thick back of the Nara.</p><p>After a twitch, Sugemi's body flared up in blue chakra flames to counter the corrosive effects of Vinda's acid before the Nara turned his head sideways just at the location where the shuriken came at him from. Sugemi's blood-freezing eyes would have been enough to make anyone freak out and switch locations.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu!" Sugemi yelled out pressing his hands together into the position of the signature Nara hand seal, which all of their clan hijutsu required, and sitting down on one knee as a long tendril extended from his shadow, reaching up all the way into the dark embrace of the artificial patch of snowy forests where Vinda was hiding.</p><p>Without offering as much as a word, Sugemi leaped straight at the little patch of snowy forest forcing the kunoichi caught in his jutsu to mimic his movements and leap straight at him. Sugemi did not release his technique until it would have been too late for his opponent, in mid-air jumping punch position, to alter too much of her movement and the two ended up trading punches.</p><p>Vinda's lifeless body got violently yanked back at the trees, downing the whole row of them at once as while Sugemi got decked in the cheek as well, the difference between the strength of the two was simply too great.</p><hr/><p>"Something's different about Sugemi", Mana noted. "The Sugemi I used to know would have never considered that the entire forest is sunken in shade in this lousy winter weather, which molds with the shadow of anyone hiding in there, meaning he only had to touch the shadow of the forest to connect with his Shadow Possession".</p><p>"Look at those burns on his back", Kiyomi uttered in disbelief how recklessly Sugemi was fighting. "He let himself get hit twice just to land that one blow…"</p>
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<a name="section0366"><h2>366. The Swood Acid Trap</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sugemi crouched down on one knee, placing his hands together in the Nara hijutsu hand seal position. Deciding to press on his advantage, he mumbled out the name of his "Shadow Tendril Jutsu" sending an elongated shadowy line across the thin layer of snow and toward the broken collection of thinly grown together trees.</p><p>Emerging from the large clump of shadows, which Sugemi once again utilized for his Nara clan hijutsu, the shadowy tendrils smacked Vinda around, from one to another before the final one wrapped around the girl's neck, swung around and slammed her hard into the ground. The slam was so strong that the resulting shock lifted the downed trees lightly up in the air while shaking those that Vinda's flight after she was punched had not cut down just yet.</p><p>The kunoichi picked herself up and dashed her way outside the small patch of artificial forest and into the opening, where the limited sunlight would have been enough to make it more difficult for Sugemi's hijutsu to connect properly and would have required a direct contact with her shadow to be set off. Her hands moved at a respectable pace while they worked on hand seals.</p><p>"Water Style: Acid Shower!" she yelled out with frustration and deep-seated pain that she tried to hide away but the battle damage she had sustained spoke louder than her intent on hiding it. The girl spat out a direct, powerful stream of water right at Sugemi who simply disappeared into thin air before the acid could cover him head to toe.</p><p>Using his superior speed and physical strength, the Nara moved in for a beatdown, delivering a combination of powerful straight punches as his blurry body moved up close to his opponent. After a powerful uppercut and a spinning kick right to Vinda's back while the girl was still airborne following her being knocked up by the uppercut, the Getsugakure native was sent dragging across the battlefield and eating dirt again. Sugemi's ruthlessness and complete silence was alarming and, frankly, a bit scary.</p><hr/><p>"This is a complete curb stomp, he didn't even use his gates yet…" Kiyomi pouted, she felt a little bit glad that the outspoken and rather sadistic girl got shut down and up by Mana's ex-teammate but still, the match barely even seemed entertaining.</p><p>"I don't think you're reading this quite right. Sugemi is not using his gates for a very smart reason – the strain on his body", Stea interrupted. "Didn't you see how the second splash of acid did more damage than the first? That's because there's more to Vinda's Water Release ability than meets the eye and Sugemi instantly picked up on it – each successive neutralization of her acid requires more effort and chakra. Her acid is corrosive in more ways than one, it corrodes his bodily and spiritual defenses just like it does his flesh".</p><p>"So if he used his gates, that looked pretty painful and tiresome to him back in the semi-finals, he'd have an even harder time neutralizing Vinda's acid? She locked down his most powerful ability like that…" Erumo exclaimed in wonder.</p><p>"This must have been the focus of her training during these five weeks. Seems a bit too lucky of an ability for her Water Release to have developed given the occasion for it to be otherwise", Mana concluded.</p><p>"So what kind of Advanced Bloodline even is Acid Release?" Erumo asked, "Water and Fire Releases combined, water and lightning?"</p><p>"It's not an Advanced Bloodline at all nor is it a clan ability". Kiyomi shook her head. "A part of manipulating an elemental nature is being able to control its properties. Acid Release is an actual Advanced Bloodline – a combination of Earth and Water Releases but the acid that Vinda uses is merely an advanced manipulation of Water Release, which is why it is so easily nullified by even opponents of matching or lesser skill".</p><hr/><p>Covered in bruises, donning a cracked lip and an eyebrow and with the right half of her attire tattered, Vinda tumbled back up on her feet. It was quite interesting how neither of these two had used the Substitution Jutsu quite yet, knowing of how explosively lethal their respective opponent's abilities were and that there will undoubtedly be more useful times to play that card.</p><p>Vinda grinned sadistically before making a move, reaching in for her ninja pouch. Sugemi did not appear to be in a mood to let that ninja tool façade set off, he immediately darted off, using all of his impressive superhuman speed to make it to his opponent. Before he could, however, Vinda's other arm slipped out a kunai knife, held separately and outside her ninja pouch and swiped at Sugemi, leaving a cut on his chest and very narrowly missing the one eye that carried no previously acquired scars.</p><p>Now, with a blood red dyed kunai blade in one hand and a handful of them in the other, the kunoichi dashed sideways before unleashing them at split intervals and timings, aiming to catch her opponent unprepared and knock him out of the peaceful fighting on his terms rhythm. Sugemi easily evaded each and every kunai, as his impressive speed and composure after being tagged once helped him do. Pulling his own kunai outside the pouch by his side, he even managed to deflect a whole handful of them on his mad dash towards his opponent and plant it into her abdomen.</p><p>For a moment the girl's body jerked and twitched in pain before poofing away, having replaced herself with a piece of wood from the trashed trees from before. Using her newly acquired position beside the trees, Vinda took a powerful leap into the air, whereas Sugemi, having realized he got his shoddy mass-produced kunai stuck into Senju-grown wood, let go of the tool and moved back to return to a stance where he'd be able to defend himself.</p><p>The airborne kunoichi sent a kunai with a small parcel attached to the other end, where usually explosive tags were located before the thing popped, letting a mass of marbles wrapped in explosive tags roll out and detonate all at once in a chain of explosions. With the range and spread of the blasts being too wide for him to dodge properly, Sugemi covered himself up to protect his most sensitive spots like exposed wounds and his eyes from the resulting blasts.</p><p>"Water Style: Water Assault Jutsu!" Vinda shouted out as the small pond of freezing cold water formed a tendril of water, which smacked Vinda to throw her even higher up into the air and help her maintain her airborne position. The unusual manner in which the kunoichi used an offensive Water Release jutsu on herself, instead of commanding the appendage of water smack at the enemy confused Sugemi, that much was evident from his expression.</p><p>As she was diving higher up in the air, the Getsugakure kunoichi went through another collection of hand seals before breathing in deep so intensely that her chest inflated.</p><p>"Water Style: Acid Shower!" Vinda roared out as she spat out the intense stream of an acid shower from above, aiming to wash her opponent away with this spraying acid hose.</p><p>Sugemi prepared to evade the straightforward attack before he noticed that the entire arena was filled with knee-deep craters from when Vinda calculated all the explosive spheres scattered all across. The riddled with craters battlefield was almost impossible to properly navigate with powerful super-fast dashes and required a more slow and subtle approach so that one didn't trip up or sprain an ankle or bust a knee open.</p><p>The shower of acid covered Sugemi head to bottom but with a loud popping sound, the young man telegraphed his desperation escape using the Substitution Jutsu to replace him with another piece of wood from the broken down trees from before, letting the wood completely melt away.</p><p>Vinda turned her head aside, controlling the stream and keeping propulsion of her acidic stream that kept her afloat and airborne. Sugemi grunted and prepared for the difficult task of evading the continuous stream but then he realized that the girl was no longer even aiming at him. He kept on frantically looking around before, much to his horror, he realized – she was filling the craters with her acid, creating a bunch of small acidic ponds all over the place.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Vinda yelled out with a slightly winded voice as she used steel wire to reel herself on an unlikely trajectory and onto one of few remaining standing trees in the arena, landing on the thickest top branch that could support her weight.</p><p>"You aimed so intensely and still you missed?" Sugemi shouted out, taunting his opponent. He wanted, no, he needed to get her talking. He needed to get her taunting until he could figure out her plan. It could not have been as simple as to create this intricate speed-limiting battlefield. It required too much chakra for that, she probably wasted half of what she had after using that Shadow Clone Jutsu just setting all of this up – it had to be her ace move. Not some big bad amazing jutsu – a strategy of some sorts…</p><p>"Nope, I hit all the marks I needed to!" Vinda grinned sadistically before reaching in for her ninja pouch and removing a handful of identical looking cyan colored scrolls.</p><p>Whatever Vinda was planning, Sugemi did not wish to allow her to proceed with it unimpeded. He had to at least try to intercept her jutsu, at least try to keep her moving and too busy defending her life to complete her plan! Problem was that there was too little he could do. The ravaged battlefield would have impeded his movement speed and his hand seals would have been too slow to interrupt her…</p><p>"Water Release: Great Gunshot!" Vinda shouted out triumphantly before flipping the scrolls up in the air and pulling on their tips at the same time using steel wire attached to their ends. As the scrolls unrolled, a giant pressurized water bullet fired off from all of them together.</p><p>Sugemi prepared to carefully scope the bullets' trajectories and avoid them if needed but… Neither one of them was aimed at him, that would have meant that there could have only been one possible target – the acid pools.</p><p>Upon impact, the water bullets caused a violent reaction. Almost instantly, the temperature rose up drastically to the point where it felt like the pools of water were boiling and heating up the entire arena. The pools of water began splashing about and foaming, releasing corrosive vapor and raging about. Rising tides of violently vibrant acidic waves came crashing down from all sides, in addition to the boiling temperature air surrounding the arena and the corrosive mist, the resulting combination was completely unavoidable.</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi's heart whimpered after she heard Mana's desperate scream. It was so unexpected, almost like the magician did not see the reaction coming before it was absolutely too late, similarly to how it would have been for Sugemi as well. For someone so brutal and destructive, Vinda sure had a clever combination under her sleeve. It took a pretty clever and twisted mind to surprise Mana this way.</p><hr/><p>A powerful ripple of air pushed the air away from Sugemi's surroundings, blasting away the corrosive vapors and holding the foaming and crashing waves of acidic waters away with sheer chakra pressure. A bright green pillar rose up from Sugemi and emanated all the way to the protective barriers that lit up to contain Sugemi's chakra pressure inside the arena, just as it protected the audience from Vinda's ace exothermic reaction combination.</p><p>Sugemi's body was twitching, veins shot out all over his body as he tilted his face up and let his eyes scan the surroundings, looking for his opponent. The creepy ocular orbs of the young man were completely missing irises or pupils, white as the snow that was coming down.</p><p>Vinda leaped aside from the branch she was situated on, a small splash of acid fell down on her arm forcing her to move backward. She had performed this combo before, she knew that this distance was safe and she should not have been affected. That only meant that her opponent used something to survive Vinda melting him away.</p><p>Slowly, perfectly controlling his stressed and overly strained body, Sugemi moved his hands behind him before putting his palms open and up front, like he was preparing to perform a palm slap before his shadowy tendril began wrapping around the pillar of chakra he was emitting which was keeping the acid away from consuming him.</p><p>"Gate of Life: Shadow Push Jutsu!" Sugemi shouted out before shoving both of his palms up front, letting the massive shadow tendril form a shadowy blob and rush at his opponent in the shape of a giant palm. The range of his selected jutsu was tremendously too short for the distance it needed to cover so it was no surprise that the palm just froze suddenly, having made a good half of the distance.</p><p>Sugemi's attack was no empty effort, his palm, thrust forward, had pushed and redirected the flow of the acid and generated a massive crashing wave, about to drown Vinda in a tsunami of her own medicine. Oddly enough, just as Sugemi finished his jutsu, his Third Gate faded away just as suddenly as it had appeared, making him also drown in the lingering small pools of acid.</p><p>With a powerful burst of chakra, Sugemi neutralized the lingering effects of the acid he was drowning in after the wave had moved away and smashed at the side of the arena where Vinda was in. Shaking in pain from the multiple patches of burnt skin where his chakra augmentations and attempts to neutralize the acid had not done as stellar of a job as the Nara had wanted it to, with hands lowered down and his body hunched over, Sugemi observed the wave of acid washing Vinda away. Then, as it smashed her against the protective barrier before settling down and spilling back into the craters.</p><p>"The match is over!" overseer Oke raised his hand, emerging from a tub of obsidian and moving the demonic skull and spikes decorated lid off of where he hid for safety.</p><p>Within an instant medical ninja in cloaks swarmed the battlefield, using Art of Tree Climbing to balance on the surface of the acid they pressed their hands against its surface to neutralize it all and extract Vinda from one of the pools. The girl was covered in severe burns and it became evident that she ran out of chakra to use to neutralize all of the overflowing acid, which she was literally drowning in. One of the medical ninja quickly pressed his hand against her chest, emitting a pulse of chakra that neutralized the present corrosive effects of her Water Release before quickly covering up the almost completely naked, as most of her clothes got corroded completely, and burnt up girl with one of their cloaks and moving her to the infirmary.</p><hr/><p>"There's no way they'll let us fight in this arena…" Kiyomi sighed. "There will definitely be another break." She nodded as if affirming herself.</p><p>"Do you think Vinda will be OK?" Mana wondered, "Those burns looked really bad."</p><p>"The wounds of her opponents in the semi-finals were much worse. I've seen them completely recovered within a week or so with minor scars, she'll be fine", Stea calmed the magician down before looking up at the screen telegraphing the beginning of the next match. "Although, it appears you've been wrong in that assessment, Kiyomi. They will let us fight in this battlefield."</p><p>"Yamanaka Kiyomi V.S. Tanko Shigin" glowed on the screen, telling the contestants to make their way down the corridor and enter the arena.</p><p>"Be careful, don't fall into one of those pools. There are better things to spend your chakra on", Mana warned her friend with an encouraging smile to which the Yamanaka just gulped and nodded.</p><p>Here and now was the time to show off what all of this time and these entire exams had lead up to. Now she had to show off all of her training in creative enough ways to impress the council. More so, as the de facto leader of her team, she had to display and prove her strategic mind being just what the mind of a chuunin needed to be: calculating, capable of cleverly managing a team of ninja and utilizing their strengths and exploiting their enemy's weaknesses.</p><p>The blonde turned away and began slowly walking towards the corridor that lead to the arena entrance. Mana gently pressed her hand against Kiyomi's shoulder making the Yamanaka turn around and look at her blindfolded friend.</p><p>"I wish I could see you fight clearly. Good luck, I'm sure you'll do great", Mana smiled.</p><p>Kiyomi lightly wrapped her fingers around Mana's hand, clenching it into a fist before bumping it with her own. The blonde then turned around and boldly rushed to the corridor while staff ninja wearing Konoha chuunin vests performed menial maintenance job and quickly repurpose the battlefield into a version of its previous self, riddled with pools of acid.</p><p>As the Konoha kunoichi made her way downstairs she noticed a curious sight – the dumb, square-shaped face looking at her through those small, round eyes and thick dark brown eyebrows and rubbing its spiky brown hair.</p><p>"It looks like both of us took the same side of the entrance", Shigin laughed out loud with his silly, nothing kept back laughter. As if something like that was worth laughing at. "Let's enter the arena together, side by side, all epic-like!" he cheered, lifting his fist up into the air, almost hitting the lamp that illuminated the place.</p><p>"Whatever", Kiyomi closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. She knew what Shigin was capable of, she was preparing for his curious ability for five weeks and it would be shameful of her to lose. Together, shoulder to shoulder, the two genin left the corridor and entered into the gloomy light of the arena. Only at that moment did Kiyomi notice all the eyes watching her, the Ninja Council, the villagers, Mana and the other girls, the boys, most importantly – Meiko.</p><p>It would be shameful of her to fail here. She'd rather burn up where she stood than revealed to the world that the future heiress of the famous and noble Yamanaka clan could not properly prepare for a powerful opponent in five whole weeks! Her life as she knew it would be over! Kiyomi's eyes wandered up and to the right, meeting a faint shape she perceived as Mana. The magician was always ready to bet her whole life, her ideals and her reputation on a roll of a dice just like Kiyomi did now. How did she do it?</p><p>No, this will not be a roll of a dice, chance will have nothing to do with this fight. That was how Mana did it – she realized that. She realized that there was no place for chance, she was either prepared for her trial or it all could have gone to hell because no other outcome truly mattered!</p><p>"Bring it, Shigin!" the Yamanaka heiress thought to herself while she took another deep breath and calmed her racing heart down.</p>
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<a name="section0367"><h2>367. No Surrender!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"For the next match we have – Yamanaka Kiyomi, a young lady of the Yamanaka clan – one of the most honored and well-known ninja clans of our village. She validates her clan's reputation in all the right ways, controlling and toying with the minds of her enemies both using her feared clan techniques and without them. Her feats include manipulating her opponent into disqualifying their entire tag team, resulting in her winning the match all by herself without even needing to resort to her famous clan techniques!" Overseer Oke continued to hype Kiyomi up.</p><p>Kiyomi wanted to have more tangible and amazing feats attributed to her name. Her clan background demanded her having eliminated a whole bunch of people, passing the paper test all by herself and carrying her entire team on her shoulders as well as being the prodigy ninja everyone feared of facing the most. Sadly, her ability to piss people off appeared to be the only thing worth mentioning, the only thing of mention that she has accomplished. She was no prodigy, just a hustler, squiggling and crawling her way onto barely surviving this long.</p><p>"Her opponent is the freak of nature, one of few known survivors of the mysterious disappearances that have been plaguing our village. Tanko Shigin used to be the most unimpressive ninja, now, as his sensei put it – "If there is a way to injure this young man, we have not discovered it"." Oke gestured at Shigin who just lazily picked his nose before shyly chuckling after he was caught in the act and pinched the boogers away.</p><p>The audience ate him up. Why would they not have? For one – he was the underdog, everyone always cheered for the good for nothing loser when they faced off against the elite because it was the ultimate fantasy for those people in the audience. A much more sensitive reason was that he survived. So many people just disappearing without any rhyme or reason, this one not only returned but also brought back amazing abilities which inspired hope that one's own beloved ones could also make such a miraculous return from the unknown.</p><p>"Do you remember anything from what happened when you were gone?" Kiyomi quietly asked her opponent before Oke walked back and prepared to declare the beginning of the match.</p><p>"Not really. All I can remember is our mission going wrong, everyone thought I was already gone so they left me behind to lure the enemy away. From what they told me when they returned to pick my body up – I was gone. Ain't it crazy!?" Shigin laughed out as goofily as he could. "Now I got all these amazing abilities, maybe that's what's happening to everyone disappearing, they're gonna return eventually just like me?"</p><p>"He comes back completely invulnerable one day and they say that I'm the favorite and he's the underdog. Othello G was right – audiences really are crazy." Kiyomi thought to herself minding her opponent's crazy unbelievable story of obtaining his invulnerability. Granted, she had only heard of it so it may have been just a story. It would have been a very ninja thing to do to make up a story of being invulnerable but too many people who had no reason to lie also went along with it. He had to be invulnerable and no one had any explanation of just how he pulled that off, or rather, what even happened to him while he was making the disappearance without a trace statistics…</p><p>Immediately, once the match started, Kiyomi moved her hand for her back ninja pouch, removing a prepared handful of explosives before weaving hand seals. She needed to scope out and witness this invulnerability first hand before she made any big moves for her victory. She needed to see if the invulnerability was biological and passive or if an additional technique needed to be used, if it was based on the toughness of his body or a regenerative technique.</p><p>"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar!" the blonde yelled out as a pillar of stone and dirt shot from underground, making the floating tiny explosive tags stick onto it and voyage at the opponent, splitting the ground beneath. Without even bothering to attempt to dodge the jutsu, Tanko waved his hands around playfully, as if he was warming up as the stone pillar smacked him right in the chest and his chin, throwing him up in the air and detonating all of the explosive tags right up in his face.</p><p>Kiyomi waited for the smoke to clear up, but, apparently, Tanko did not, as he charged out from the open with a lively punch. Kiyomi raised her hands up for a block, as expected, her well-trained arms that have blocked blows from opponents hundreds of thousands of times stronger than this punch cushioned the blow while the blonde delivered quick and sharp jabs at the tall doofus' joints, scoping if his bones were par for the invulnerability course. She needed to know it all – if her opponent had any vitals to be hit, if his joints could break and his tendons could snap.</p><p>So far, the answer was frustratingly negative as Kiyomi's two fingers merely dipped into the fleshy skin of her opponent without hitting any bone or inner resistance. Quickly, the Team Hokage leader flipped back into safety and outside the close-range distance. It did not look like her opponent was willing to let her go, however, as having just giggled at her attempts to hurt him, Shigin bounced like his heels were made of jelly strings right after Kiyomi, throwing flappy smacks and kicks using his wrists and feet. Her clothes and elbow managed to slightly dip into one of the acid pools which annoyed and distracted the girl for just long enough, requiring additional chakra for the environmental hazard to be neutralized. Shigin was all up in her face once she was done, even if it only took half of a moment.</p><p>This was so bad! No damage he took did anything other than amuse him, the worst of all was that now he trapped Kiyomi into a ceaseless dance of him trying to chase her down and hit her. Eventually, her defenses would lower, even if she was superior to him in terms of taijutsu skill, it would not matter if she could not fight back. From close range, she could not even rely on her hijutsu…</p><p>A flabby kick made Kiyomi cough up with blood as she rolled back and stretched out in the frozen dirt and snow. Her opponent leaped up in the air, not satisfied with just this much damage as he threw his feet forward in a barrage of similarly stringy and flappy stomps. Kiyomi tried to shield her head and whatever areas the stomps targeted but her opponent's strikes were just too quick – it was like the boy's body didn't weigh absolutely anything and the air around him offered no resistance. Like his blows were launched from a slingshot…</p><p>After Shigin's stamping combination satisfied him, the goofy young man just landed besides Kiyomi before kicking her aside in the gut. Worn out by Shigin's endless attacks, the blonde covered up her face and skipped a very light but quick flappy smack of the opponent's foot right at her abdomen that lifted her body up in the air and sent her tumbling back. Once again she slid over the surface of another pool of acid, splashing some of it all over herself and having to stress her chakra network to fix the acid before it even took effect. Not only did it strain Kiyomi's chakra network, but thinking and reacting so fast pelted at her mind as well.</p><p>Even after this, her opponent did not let up, he pressed on, charging at Kiyomi and forcing the Yamanaka to fight for her space to breathe. It was like this goofball did not even had lungs to draw breath in and like he functioned completely by some miracle of nature alone. The Yamanaka heiress delivered a fast and deafeningly loud slap before detonating the explosive tag that was in her palm, sending both her and her opponent tumbling back from the concussive force.</p><p>Feeling the ache all around her body and her ribs just burning up, Kiyomi quickly hustled her way back on her feet before raising her hands up. She wanted to find out if her opponent was truly invulnerable and how it worked, she had achieved one of those things. Understanding something that smarter people than her failed to do would have absolutely killed her, she needed to work this fight through instinct and gamble her victory. That was the only way she could have possibly won.</p><p>The ends of Kiyomi's lips lightly twisted upward, she was the absolute worst opponent for Shigin. She, similarly to Mana, did not even attempt to match her opponent's speed or power. Kiyomi was a different category of ninja entirely and a physical fight was her backup plan, unlike the most ninja. She had obtained plenty of knowledge of her opponent in these painful exchanges of blows. Kiyomi knew how her opponent fought now, he arrogantly placed his trust in his invincibility and that would be his downfall.</p><p>The Yamanaka threw her hand back, stroking through her rich and thick bright locks before working through a collection of hand seals. Her opponent charged at her again but, at that point, it was too late, her ninjutsu was ready.</p><p>Shigin charged through an empty cloud of dust, trying to wail his stringy flaps he called blows all around but to no avail as his opponent appeared to have disappeared completely.</p><p>"Earth Style: Submarine Voyage!" Kiyomi yelled out delivering a powerful strike from underground, it was like whatever Shigin's flesh was made of wrapped around Kiyomi's punch, as if his each cell moved away and shifted around her attack and her punch just punched a handful of hit resistant rubber. Still, her intent was not to punch her opponent into submission…</p><p>Shigin's powerful spin kick smacked Kiyomi right in the face, sending her sliding back, after the girl moved away her hands from cover she saw her relentless stamina monster of an opponent right up in her face again. This time she was ready, the girl lifted two of her fingers up in a hand seal position.</p><p>"Yamanaka Hair-Trap!" she chanted out as her opponent's eyes shot out wide and his body tumbled lifelessly on the ground, locked firmly in the winding up for a punch position that he held before being completely stunned and frozen in place. Like a fallen statue…</p><p>"Impressed?" Kiyomi winked at her writhing and wheezing opponent, she remembered Yushijin's mistake and she would not make the same one – she needed to make sure that the Ninja Council knew exactly how badass she was and how successful her training with her clan elders and servants was. "It's the famous Yamanaka Hair-Trap, you're now completely at my mercy and this is no illusion – you're completely frozen in place".</p><p>Shigin chuckled, "Oh yeah? We're both trapped here, there is nothing you can do to me in this state, or any other, that will hurt me!"</p><p>"You see, normally I would have required a string of hair to connect me to you, using that hair to channel my chakra, similarly to the Nara clan hijutsu and how it needs shadows to connect", Kiyomi continued her victory speech, ignoring her opponent's taunts. "However, I have gone far past that, as you can see by my rich and untrimmed amounts of flowing hair… All I need to set this jutsu off now is for one hair of mine to be present on your body, your shoulders, your hands, your clothes, it doesn't matter."</p><p>"T-That underground punch…" Shigin grunted as while he clearly could not feel pain, the experience of being brought down to his knees and completely frozen in place was a humiliating one, without a doubt.</p><p>"That's right, it's when I planted my hair I have carefully removed beforehand on to your damaged clothes. In addition, your previous assessment was incorrect as well – I do have a handful of ways to defeat you, ways without directly hurting you. I am a Yamanaka, the natural counter to an invulnerable ninja like you!" Kiyomi declared before placing her hands forward. Now, with her opponent completely frozen in place, she was free to enter and take over his mind as she saw fit – her victory was all but assured from this point on.</p><p>"Mind Body Switch Jutsu!" Kiyomi yelled out as a loud and ghastly howl followed her apparition-like mind leaving her own body and ramming into that of her opponent's. Once Kiyomi's mind left her body, the hold that she had on her enemy faded but the fraction of a moment of freedom was not enough for the stunned and still confused invulnerable genin to move out of the way of his opponent's jutsu, let alone concentrate on something hard enough to substitute with it.</p><p>Shigin's face hit the dirt, the young man began screaming in pain and scratching at his own temples but his elusive jelly skin eluded damage, instead of allowing the fingers to leave temporary grooves that soon filled up with whatever liquid filled his body from inside. Kiyomi's collapsed body suddenly sprung to live and crawled backward in fear.</p><p>"What are you!? What's wrong with your mind?" She kept on muttering. The boy's mind was completely messed up. Controlling it or even treading its grounds was like to read hieroglyphs of an alien language scribbled on each grain of sand in a beach. Shigin had no mind to grasp control over, it was like his entire body was composed of miniature organisms, parasites with each one carrying a mind of its own. As someone who has fought a mercenary that has replaced most of his body with technology, this young man was the least alive and soul possessing ninja Kiyomi had ever faced.</p><p>"I guess you can't control my mind, huh?" Shigin chuckled like an idiot before taking an offensive stance and preparing to charge at Kiyomi. There it was – his unavoidable and ceaseless barrage of attacks!</p><p>Shigin charged out at Kiyomi, throwing fists left and right. Kiyomi dashed back, pushing his rubbery flaps away or trying to trap them before the young man forced the Yamanaka to let go or manipulated his body in the strangest ways. He was no rubber man, Shigin was more of a slug – whenever one mass of his body elongated, the others needed to reduce proportionately but when he swung his body around it certainly seemed like he was swinging rubbery fists.</p><p>Shigin was wrong, his mind was not invincible, as his body was, it was merely very complicated. His was the being summed up of millions if not billions of organisms all living in one body. What he did not know was that these minds were remarkably simple and incredibly alike one to another. The only reason why Kiyomi had failed before was because she was not prepared and used to controlling such a weird mind. This granted her a degree of surprise before her next attack. The blonde kicked Shigin right in the groin after using her foot to push the flesh around his groin and thighs away from it, as if she intended to hit the boy's core all the way from that embarrassing vital area. As expected there was no response…</p><p>"Give up, you can't hurt me!" Shigin laughed confidently while rubbing his nose.</p><p>Kiyomi's hands laid raised and extended in the Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal position and right up at Shigin's face once he opened his eyes from his cocky expression.</p><p>"Mind Clone Switch!" Kiyomi yelled out, preparing for the massive strain of splitting her mind into billions of smallest parts. Had Shigin hosted the minds of more than a dozen or two of different minds, it may have been outside Kiyomi's immediate ability to occupy all of them but given how lacking in personality and anything but elementary hive mind these souls were – she could do it. The Yamanaka heiress knew she could!</p><p>Shigin's hand raised up in the air. The boy's head was sunken to the ground and the raised arm was the only body part displaying some sort of signs of life.</p><p>"I surrender!" He declared firmly and willingly.</p><p>"W-What are you doing, examinee?" Overseer Oke stumbled backward before squinting at Shigin's direction.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Shigin freaked out in a manner more akin to Kiyomi's mannerisms than the goofy and laid-back nature of the invulnerable one. "I'm giving up, Yamanaka Kiyomi is the greatest kunoichi of all time, needless to say, the prettiest as well! She has smitten me with her untold skill and beauty and I therefore surrender!"</p><p>"Where did you get the idea that surrender was a valid way of ending the match?" Overseer Oke sighed, "Plus, you can cut it out with the theatrics, I can clearly see your body limply laid out on your knees right there, examinee Kiyomi."</p><p>"Drats! It has never occurred to me!" Shigin, still hosting Kiyomi's mind, freaked out. Then, the young man just snapped back and started darting for the corridor before dashing his way through the labyrinth of the arena's tunnels and corridors to the outside area.</p><p>Kiyomi's consciousness returned back to her mind as she stumbled forward but her hand managed to stop her fall before she could plant her face into the snowy dirt. The young Yamanaka pushed herself back on her feet before gesturing overseer Oke a peace sign before turning at the Ninja Council's observatory area.</p><p>A deafening battlecry made the audience cover their ears as a blob of flesh and skin split the skies and smashed itself right onto one of the acid pools before crawling out of it and straightening himself out. Shigin took a fighting stance one more but overseer Oke placed his hand in his way to stop him.</p><p>"Now that's better. I did say that a plausible way to win a match was battlefield removal and technically Shigin did leave the arena." The overseer ruled, raising his hand up in the air.</p><p>"Wait, that doesn't make any sense! I came back, didn't I!?" Shigin began arguing but Oke's mind did not budge.</p><p>"No, even if you only lost for a brief moment, before removing the loss condition, technically, you still lost the match." Oke argued before gesturing for Shigin to remove himself from the arena. As she was declared the winner, Kiyomi leaped up and down in joy.</p><p>She did it – she justified all those hopes and all that pressure, she validated all that training she did for five grueling weeks and even if her originally concocted plan to force a surrender out of her opponent did not quite work out – it all turned out just fine in the end.</p><p>Irradiating with glee, Kiyomi jumped and cheerfully skipped back to the corridors where Mana and Meiko were waiting for her, ever since the Yamanaka's victory was declared. The blacksmith extended her hand for Kiyomi but this moment was too happy to restrain herself like that – Kiyomi just jumped into the redhead's embrace, shoving her chest all over the blacksmith's face and almost bullying the blacksmith into manhandling her down and off of her. She was so happy!</p><p>A rough voice cleared his throat, the three girls turned to the mysterious young man standing by the corner and awkwardly pressing a pair of shades by his chest and Kiyomi decided to grab hold of Meiko's hand, beginning to drag the confused and vocally complaining of her teammate's behavior blacksmith aside.</p><p>"Mana, we need to talk", Kouta uttered revealing to the still recovering and confused magician just who this raspy and tired voice belonged to.</p>
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<a name="section0368"><h2>368. Shades of Trapped Bones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Kouta?" Mana uttered, still doubting if she heard it right. The young man she still had feelings for and whom she had a particularly spiritually eviscerating break-up with.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm going to reach for your blindfold now, don't punch me in the face please." He shyly asked the magician as Mana felt the tight pressure on her temples and her hair loosen, she closed her eyes but that did not prevent from her eyes exploding into a flood of tears and sparks of painful itching and irritation. Then something plastic and light touched Mana's nose and the unpleasant sensations lightened up somewhat.</p><p>"You can open your eyes now", Mana could hear Kouta take a couple of steps back after he said that. Uneasily and slowly, the magician let her eyes open up just for a moment before closing them again, then repeating this process a couple of times before she could open them up a bit easier as the irritation was no longer as prevalent as it used to be whenever the magician tried opening them up before.</p><p>Kouta had put the shades he was carrying around on Mana.</p><p>"Wow, thanks, that's much better, I can almost see like this", the kunoichi turned around a couple of times, examining everything around her as closely as her dark and shady glasses allowed her. It has been a while since she could see this clearly… Just the sweet spot of where she missed being able to see but have not yet forgotten how amazing it was. The vision of ninja rabbits was really amazing if they did not suffer any of these symptoms. Then again, most of the rabbits that left the caves were adults, they younglings most likely underwent training to prevent just this same kind of outcome from happening.</p><p>"Do you have everything you need? I can still make a run for supplies…" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"What is this?" Mana calmly confronted him. "What are you doing exactly? Your own teammate is up next. You should be encouraging her."</p><p>"Have you even seen Erumo? She needs no encouragement, she was the only out of the three of us that never struggled with self-confidence." Kouta rubbed the back of his head, "Plus… Shit, I told her I wouldn't tell you this but… Those two kind of forced me to come see you."</p><p>"Wow. Okay…" Mana lowered her head before turning back and heading for the staircase that lead back up to the girls' observatory. Over the five months, she spent training in the rabbit caves she could navigate steps and stuffy, hard caves in total darkness. Now, with these shades, it'd be a cakewalk. She could probably put up a respectable effort against Stea with them…</p><p>"No, wait, it's… Not like that." Kouta reached out to stop Mana from leaving. "I kind of… I wanted to tell myself that I had no baggage from before but… They opened my eyes. I was so adamant to finish my shift in the hospital before coming here and yet I went out of my way to get those glasses for you. You see, the problem was that you kept changing in between two extremes, complete illumination or total darkness and you need to ease your eyes up…"</p><p>"You're babbling", Mana cut her beloved one down.</p><p>"Sorry. I guess I wasn't exactly without baggage. I guess I always thought I'd have no problem thinking of you as a friend but…" Kouta tried putting something cohesive together but he was too shy and too unfocused in his own feelings to say anything within a respectable timeframe.</p><p>"That's impossible?" Mana suggested a possible conclusion for him to draw.</p><p>"Right. No matter how cool I think I am, how completely devoid of bad karma between us I think I am… I can't ignore what happened. I don't hate you, I don't blame you, strangely, neither do Erumo and Yushijin but… I just can't think of you as just my friend. That's why I kept on avoiding you. I should have been there in the semi-finals, I should have known better than to let you tackle it all alone after having your feelings crushed. I need to clean that house." Kouta finally began making sense.</p><p>"Why are you telling me all of that? Yeah, it hurt having to compete being completely broken inside but I never waited for any apology from you. You're still my friend, right?" Mana hopefully wondered.</p><p>"I'm… I'm leaving the hospital, I'll enroll into Konoha High to become an ANBU, like my father." Kouta put his fingers around his eyes, he had difficulty admitting this to Mana.</p><p>"You'll become a killer?" Mana repurposed Kouta's words into something blunter and to the point.</p><p>Mana tried but she could not take it as anything but a slap in her face and a stab in the back while she was flinching over it. A young man she loved decided to break up with her and, because he could not handle it himself, go against his nature to destroy it and become a killer.</p><p>"I finished my medical ninja studies. That path is still open to me but I need to work on my nature. I need to learn to control my feelings and ANBU is the way of doing that." Kouta firmly replied, such stubbornness and firm grip onto something was not usually Kouta's way. He was quite shy and usually very submissive to debate, this was one of the few issues he really felt firmly about and it did not look like he was ready to change that.</p><p>Usually, Mana did not pry into people's choices and their souls. She was someone who swore to never take lives but she tended to overlook other people taking lives because she thought that was their way, their choice to make. She dreamed of being the kind of hero that would inspire and convince everyone to make those choices for themselves and refuse taking lives all of their own free will but… This… She could not let this go.</p><p>"Don't… Please. You're a kind and strong young man. To squash your nature is not the same as to control it. Don't let them make you into just a mindless tool", Mana could her pleading in her own voice. She did not care about pride or similar things but she never resorted to something of this nature. She never pleaded people to reconsider, even if she tried to make them reconsider she always tried reasoning. Pleading seemed so… Petty, so pointless.</p><p>Kouta stood his ground and just looked back at Mana's dark, reflective, plastic gaze. His pressed together lips quivered as if he was about to break but his eyes were tough, eyes of a fighter who has decided what he would be fighting for.</p><p>"I thought you'd react differently, I thought you'd eventually come to see the things my way. Weren't you the one who helped me embrace my Juugo legacy?" Kouta replied with just as much wavering and uncertainty, even if his eyes were firm about having decided to study for eventually making it to ANBU.</p><p>The path was still long for him: years to study specialized ANBU skills and jutsu, techniques of stealth and murder, then emotional and mental tempering to make him into a perfect tool for his village to send away and have dirty work done. He would still need to rank up a couple of times before he actually made the list but…</p><p>"Really? You truly thought that I would approve of you striving to burn down orphanages and kill people for the village? I guess then you never knew me at all", Mana snapped. A vocal part of her own mind instantly demanded that she apologized but some other part of her, a more devious one just ordered to keep on attacking. To let everything out and test the boy's hardness and preparedness for ANBU life truly.</p><p>Mana ran away.</p><p>She could not do either. She knew that she was in the wrong, at least she thought she was. Nothing really made sense, like it usually did, when Kouta was involved. She wavered and questioned the very fundamentals of what she believed. She crossed every line she swore she would never cross when he was looking at her… She pleaded him and tried to convince him to change his mind in all the ways she would never do usually. This was the man she loved declaring that he wanted to drown his life in blood and build his home of bones of the people he killed. He told HER that, of all people, right in her face…</p><p>For the whichever time, as far as heartbreaks with Kouta were concerned, Mana slammed her back against the wall halfway to the observatory and slid down on her bottom, crying. Letting tears run freely was so easy. It was almost like all the built up pain and stress in her troubled eyes had finally found a way to be released.</p><p>For the second time in a row, Kouta broke her heart right before some of the most important moments to come in her life. If the magician did not know any better, she would think he did it on purpose…</p><hr/><p>"So, what did I miss?" Mana sniffed while returning back to the observatory platform. In her worst daydreams, these couple of remaining battles would have unexpectedly concluded and she was about to go next. Of all times, now she was in no mood or preparation to fight in one of the most important battles of her life, especially one where lives of so many people may have theoretically, in a very detached manner, been on the line.</p><p>"Not much, they just gathered in the arena and the hyping up has already concluded. Erumo and Jekleifer had already clashed a pair of times and used their substitutions already…" Kiyomi briefed Mana quickly and efficiently. Luckily enough, none of the girls appeared to even notice Mana's shades that have effectively hidden the signs of her emotional disarray. The magician wanted to talk about this with her friends the least, at least at the moment.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Erumo yelled out letting the screeching sound of dragging steel wire drag her out of danger, like a clutch zip-line. Mana could barely see the specifics as the shades skipped a very limited amount of light and with the winter days being rather gloomy as they were. However, she did make out the surprise and shock of the audience and noticed how quickly the string reeling pulled Erumo out of the incredibly dangerous and fast clash with Jekleifer Kaguya from Iwagakure.</p><p>Regardless of how fast and efficiently the technique was pulled off, as if a significant amount of focus was placed on this jutsu used in a defensive zip-lining manner during the five week training, the more impressive feat was how little the zipping appeared to wear on Erumo.</p><p>For someone with such a limited and mostly supportive role in her team, focusing on setups and clever trapping of her opponents, as opposed to directly confronting them, Erumo was doing remarkably well, having survived this long against a Kaguya clansman.</p><p>Jekleifer worked on approaching his opponent physically, wielding erupting shoulder to elbow long swords made of his own immensely tough and sharp bones as only his clan bloodline permitted him to fight. Erumo appeared to be prepared for just such an outcome, the young lady was removing a small scroll from her ninja pouch even before her opponent went after her, as if she knew just how he'd go on attacking her.</p><p>With a loud grunt, signifying the strain that the sudden unsealing of her ninja tool caused, Erumo unsealed a large umbrella in a horizontal, spinning position. In an instant the umbrella opened up, firing a shower of senbon needles at the kunoichi's opponent. This was not her main manner of attack, clearly, one would have been quite foolish to rely solely on something like this…</p><p>Jekleifer covered himself with a quickly put together block. Regardless of his careless defense, loud clanging sounds echoed when the storm of senbon attempted to tear through the Kaguya's flesh as they hit the bone plates quickly grown underneath Jekleifer's skin. Despite the senbon having little to no effect and being just a minor distraction, it was evident that it was all that Erumo wanted them to be.</p><p>"Multi Bomb Jutsu!" The kunoichi smacked her hands together about the same instant that the umbrella was beginning to run out of smoke. She was putting a lot of chakra into these jutsu, just to survive, just to keep her opponent away but it could not have been any other way. She was frail, slow and rather physically average whereas her opponent was a force of nature in terms of physicality, unpredictable techniques and skill of wielding his bone weapons. She was a little bee, trying to sting the elephant in front of her enough times to make him back off… Such was the difference in their power.</p><p>The visibly straining ninjutsu that Erumo used appeared to multiply the amount of the marble-shaped bombs she had used by a large amount. Mana could recall Shimo using a similar jutsu way back, it barely multiplied the number of kunai he used a handful of times. This was an entire swarm of little marbles, all buzzing right at Jekleifer's face.</p><p>For a brief moment Mana thought the kunoichi mad for multiplying the her explosives this way. She'd hurt herself, she'd obliterate what little remains of the arena and create one large acid pool she herself would have significant trouble navigating. Then another thought popped into Mana's mind, just fast enough to theorize about what Erumo was doing before it happened but too late for her to have been able to do something about it if she had been down there in the battlefield, facing off against the trapster herself.</p><p>Instead of what the audience expecting – that being an endless chain of devastating explosions erupting, the bombs that Erumo multiplied all popped releasing blinding, black clouds of smoke, covering the entire arena in darkness, with only the protective barriers containing the widespread dark reaches of irritating smoke.</p><p>It was not that tough to imagine why the girl who strived to shove it down Mana's throat that she was about to follow the steps of the magician's father, employing traps in her arsenal instead of confronting her opponent face-to-face like the magician and most other ninja did used such a tactic. Neither of the girls in the observatory questioned it either.</p><p>Still, once the black tar of smoke cleared out, both the people in the audience, the observatories and Jekleifer himself looked impressed. The arena looked pristine clean and almost like Erumo had restored it and covered the place with bright sand and little blades of tidily cut grass.</p><p>"So you have setup your traps, support ninja?" Jekleifer grinned with a reserved expression of content.</p><p>"Yeah, I don't foster that much hopes of winning this match but it is like Oke-san said – I am a support ninja and that's what the Ninja Council expects of me. No one would demand the same standards from support ninja as they do from powerhouses like you, nor would they of medical ninja. The Council sees how well each of us fulfill our own roles instead of blindly throwing us into the same basket." Erumo smiled before taunting her opponent with a hand gesture, "Come now, take a step."</p><p>"As you wish", Jekleifer quickly opened his eyes, revealing a ferocious glare as he charged forward. "Dance of the Tulip!" he roared out in both pain and physical strain as his chakra aided his body in forming new bones as well as breaking the old ones and having them burst in a bloody and disturbing fashion from under his biceps. It would have resulted in an impressive high-stance combination of strikes.</p><p>In a quick swoop, Jekleifer disappeared underground, collapsing into a concealed pool of acid that appeared to be covered up with a strange cloth, one that was colored similarly to its surroundings, conveying an illusion that it was solid ground. A clever spin on the usual Cloak of Invisibility jutsu, where instead of concealing oneself, Erumo chose to cover up a previously created trap instead. Also it was a relatively clever way to utilize the remains of the environmental destruction left behind after Vinda's match.</p><p>Jekleifer burst from under the acid pool, overflowing with bursting chakra aimed at dispelling the corrosive effects, covered in patches of singed off flesh that only revealed plates of bone, completely unharmed by the acid residing under it. The hair of the young man had also broken loose as the ties that bind it had corroded away, together with his top and part of his lower clothes.</p><p>"What's the matter? Hesitant to move?" Erumo taunted her opponent before swiping her kunai at the side, severing a piece of wire that set off another one of her traps – a part of broken wood fired off by a sealing tag that emanated a pulse of chakra upon being set-off by the cut wire setting off the lighter placed below it.</p><p>Jekleifer blitzed like lightning, remaining in place and slicing through the flying cut down tree, shredding it to smallest chips and pieces before placing his hands forward.</p><p>"Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!" Jekleifer roared out in pain as the bones in his fingers burst through from the tips and fired off like bullets aimed at his opponent. Erumo was clearly unprepared for a long-range attack of such manner. There was her mistake, at least the way Mana could see it, she was too busy preparing for this match herself that she neglected trying to predict how her opponent would be preparing for his match as well. After all, the five weeks to train were meant for both combatants, not just her.</p><p>A wide-spread arc of blood splattered all over the ground, shot from both Erumo's shoulder, her arms, legs and lower body where the bone shred through her flesh and left her body, breaking bones where it met it, leaving gruesome entry and exit wounds. The kunoichi stumbled before falling down and planting her face into the ground as a small pool of blood started accumulating from her wounds.</p>
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<a name="section0369"><h2>369. For How Long Will One Try?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just as overseer Oke began stepping in closer, aiming to check on Erumo's condition, the girl squirmed and began slowly getting herself together. Her shaking arms pushed her body off the ground, then, began stroking the crimson marks over her body, in an attempt to wipe the bloodstains over her skin, clothes as hair.</p><p>It did not appear like the Kaguya Shikotsumyaku ability was very prone to submitting to chakra augmentation based defenses. Usually, breaking through the flesh of a ninja who was not overly worn out in combat would have been hard, requiring a significant difference in power or a miscalculation on the victim's part. There could have been no doubt that Erumo did not underestimate Jekleifer for a moment. This clean injury was proof of how penetrative and powerful the Kaguya bloodline was.</p><p>"It appears your opponent can still fight", overseer Oke turned at Jekleifer who nodded coldly, as if displaying his approval over Oke's permission to continue the battle and agreeing to his conclusions.</p><p>"Don't tire yourself out, feel free to stay down", Jekleifer taunted his opponent who forced a grin on her pale and smeared with bloody stains face.</p><p>"Same applies to you", she said inviting a moderate amount of surprise on Jekleifer's face. The trapster appeared to have noticed what Mana had seen as well – Jekleifer was actively damaging himself with each of his techniques. He may have been able to create bone but surfacing it and removing it through his flesh still spilled blood and was tremendously painful, mentally wearing the youth down a bit by bit.</p><p>The Kaguya clansman extended his palm forward, before pointing his fingers at the kunoichi he was facing off against. He intended to repeat the jutsu he had just used. That may have been the wise thing to do. If he took as much as a step forward, he was subjecting himself to risk to the traps that Erumo had set up. Hanging back and firing at his opponent, chipping down at her vitality, chakra, and willpower to keep going was the safe bet.</p><p>"Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!" Jekleifer grunted out loud. Erumo's fingers twitched, revealing a string of steel wire being tied around them.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" she chanted out before zipping away from danger and into the north-western part of the arena. "Wanna try this again?" she grinned, such confidence must have completely blown any mystery about if Erumo had a hunch about the strain the Kaguya bloodline jutsu had on Jekleifer to the Kaguya genin. Slowly, Jekleifer lowered his hand. He had landed a lucky blow. He would not land another of the same manner. Jekleifer needed to look for new opportunities…</p><p>The golden-haired Kaguya stretched out his tired and crimson-stains-wearing muscles, mentally preparing for something immensely painful. Mana could see unrest in Erumo's eyes. There was little she could do offensively – attacking the Kaguya was pointless due to his ability to form bone plates under his skin to soften blows and create bones from his body, which would have skewered one if they tried attacking him physically. This youth was a defensive fortress as much as he was a devastating spear.</p><p>"Don't turn your eyes from me!" Erumo yelled out pulling on another wire of string and unleashing a strong current of wind from a sealing tag stuck to one of the downed trees, that picked up and scattered a swarm of explosive tags all around the Kaguya. With an easy hand seal shape of her one hand, Erumo activated the tags and made them all detonate.</p><p>This really did hurt Jekleifer. The body of the young man was covered with nasty tears of where chunks of flesh were torn from his body and where bone plates covered him up, protecting his organs and his vital parts and preventing the damage from spreading too deep into his body. Still, the explosive trap had left its impact.</p><p>"You are an impressive kunoichi, for that reason I gave you time to impress the Ninja Council", Jekleifer huffed out in a tired and ridden with pain voice. The pain tolerance of this young man was out of this world – he suffered dozens of explosives detonating right up in his face while he created bone plates where there were none, burrowing under his skin like an opponent's blade, like an insertion of a foreign object. "However, that time is now past."</p><p>Jekleifer slammed his hands onto the ground, the skin on his flesh began twitching and shifting, as if something solid was wrangling and burrowing deep under it. The young man ground his teeth together in pain, but he did not shout, nor did he fall down. He stood tall.</p><p>"Dance of the Seedling Fern!" The Kaguya shouted out in searing pain. Judging from the red shade of the blushed skin that the golden-haired genin had, the pain was just about to cause him to go unconscious. Mana struggled to even imagine the amount of pain this youth must have gone through at that moment.</p><p>A rising forest of colossal bones tore its way from underground, creating a whole new battlefield, one of towering incredibly hard bones standing tall as pillars while pools of acid gathered at the very bottom. Jekleifer fell to his knees before crawling up onto one of his bone towers, once the gathering acid began submerging his feet and rise up to his knees. Using the Art of Tree Climbing, Jekleifer slowly made his way upward the bone pillar.</p><p>Zipping from the backside of Jekleifer's bone pillar, Erumo swung in with a swinging kick aimed at the Kaguya's side. However, what she hit was not the weakened and trickling with blood flesh, Erumo's ambitious feet got impaled through with bones protruding from Jekleifer's ribs. The trapster screamed out in pain before her opponent lazily fired a kick of his own, aiming to kick her aside.</p><p>Erumo's body got tossed aside by the force of the impact, she flew back before hitting the bone pillar with the back of her head and body and tumbling down into the acid rivers below. Still hanging to the bone protrusion by the skin of his feet, breathing heavily from the loss of chakra, stamina and the astonishing pain resonating all over his body, Jekleifer took a glance back to check on his opponent.</p><p>A strong blue flare below signaled to him that the young kunoichi had managed to get herself out of the pooling acid before it did too much damage however she would not approach him head-on again. Judging from how relatively okay she looked when she tried to swing kick him, she managed to zip away and avoid the destructive rise of the bone forest unscathed.</p><p>Erumo's effort was noteworthy. Still, she was desperate. Initially, it was clear that her goal was just to mess with Jekleifer until the Kaguya managed to put her down but… Something changed. At some point, the Konoha girl had seen a chance for victory, something completely unbelievable to her and now she changed every bit of her previous strategy to grasp that chance of fortune's smile.</p><p>The problem was that she did not get this far through willpower and desperation. It was all fruit of her preparation and careful planning of each and every move. Taking into consideration every single manner of strike, slash and bone technique that Jekleifer had shown to anyone, questioning people and gathering information during these five weeks, most likely. Now that her traps got completely devastated by the drastic shift of the battlefield… It was tough to accurately weigh Erumo's chances. She no longer had the benefit of planning and preparation, her carefully laid plans have no ended.</p><p>Yet, on the other hand, the mettle of a ninja was tested best in just such conditions – when one was required to go beyond their comfort zone and improvise a little. Something distinctive caught Mana's shades-covered eyes – it was the body of weightless Erumo plummeting from one of the tall bone towers. Now that she had regained the ability to see, Mana's eyes hungered for activity and caught on to every little detail out there.</p><p>Overseer Oke rushed in from the bottom parts of one of the bone pillars to swoop in and catch the falling genin before examining her wounds. He raised his arm up with a gesture pointing at Jekleifer.</p><p>"The match is over. Examinee Erumo Budoki of Konoha can no longer contain the bleeding using her chakra augmentations and cannot continue this match." He declared with his voice echoing thunderously across the arena.</p><p>"That was rather clever of her", Stea smiled, it was a kind smile, it was evident that the Getsugakure genin had obtained an uncanny amount of respect for the Konoha's new trapster. "To purposefully stop resisting the bleeding so that she could get eliminated now that she has shown everything she had to offer."</p><p>"What do you mean? She could have continued the fight, she was just about to wear her opponent down. It was a clash of willpower and attrition, she could have had this!" Mana vibrantly objected. She had not noticed how much she related to Erumo in this battle, so many times she had been the underdog, fighting people of elite clan backgrounds, of higher ranks. Fighting battles where only her ingenuity and unorthodox skillset could have carried her through and kept her alive.</p><p>"Have you not noticed that Erumo was doing nothing but suffering needlessly? She had ran out of ninja tools, of steel wire and her traps got devastated by that massive forest of bones. She was low on chakra and bleeding out slowly. That chipped at what little reserves she had. In battlefield conditions, a ninja would withdraw at this point and that was exactly what Erumo did – she let go, stopped resisting so that she didn't need to get pummeled and skewered by Jekleifer's bones anymore. She protected her body, her future. She had done everything she could do and more, it was enough." Stea explained calmly.</p><p>"She was so close, she could have kept pressing on. Even if that meant getting cut by those bones, even if that meant bleeding some more. Even if it meant more pain – she was almost there! Her opponent could have collapsed from cutting his own body just as easily." Mana did not want to believe that. It was one of few fundamental disagreements that she and Stea had, despite their similarities. Mana was the push beyond her limits type, whereas Stea advocated survival to fight another day.</p><p>"I can see you've pushed yourself too hard and for too long in your training. And what have you achieved exactly? Blinded yourself in more ways than one? Weakened yourself to where a victory against a crippled opponent such as you will bring more shame than respect to my name? A skilled combatant knows their limits and plays around them, just like Erumo has done. She is quite likely to earn her promotion for this." Stea explained, slightly firing up to match Mana's own slipping temper.</p><p>"I mean… Sometimes I would appreciate if you didn't push yourself so hard, Mana. Don't forget what happened when you decided to face Hisako one on one, or that needlessly violent bloodfest against the Imarizu leader…" Kiyomi tried to intervene without raising too many flags. Mana pouted her lips and crossed her arms on her chest before turning and walking away. could not believe it, that Kiyomi, of all people, would take Stea's side in this. With just one more match left until her turn to fight comes… She needed the support of her friends, she needed any kind of support she could get. She tried so hard to shine brightly, to be the symbol of good will and peace that could inspire people to change and what has she changed truly? Her past boyfriend decided to become a cold-blooded killer, her friend, someone who was like an older sister to Mana, took the side of Stea in an argument…</p><p>The magician could not believe it, that Kiyomi, of all people, would take Stea's side in this. With just one more match left until her turn to fight comes… She needed the support of her friends, she needed any kind of support she could get. She tried so hard to shine brightly, to be the symbol of goodwill and peace that could inspire people to change and what has she changed truly? Her past boyfriend decided to become a cold-blooded killer, her friend, someone who was like an older sister to Mana, took the side of Stea in an argument…</p><p>"Hey, are you okay?" Kiyomi carefully approached Mana in the sunken in shade corridor before placing a hand on the magician's shoulder. The blonde may not have seen the tears coming from Mana's eyes but she must have heard her weird and wet sniffling. "I mean… I don't think that argument was that big of a deal, honestly. Sometimes… It's just that sometimes you do push yourself too hard, it would be nice for you to not hurt the people that love you like that, that's all what we meant."</p><p>"It's… Not that…" Mana whimpered out, possibly revealing pretty conclusively that she was crying. She should not have been crying. She was supposed to be stronger than this. She was supposed to become perfect, Perfect Mana was what she called herself jokingly all this time. The training was amazing, she achieved great heights and accomplished everything she wanted to and more but… No amount of sparring, no amount of meditation will ever prepare for life. No matter how heavy of a stone Mana would lift above her head, Kouta will still aspire to become a cold-hearted assassin.</p><p>"Sometimes I'm not sure about what's right and what's wrong." Mana admitted, wiping her tears and slipping the shades back on after the on and off lights had decided to work with half power, lingering, but stay on. "It used to be so easy… Just help anyone who asks for it, fight back anyone who tries to hurt people. Do whatever the village tells you, that's what's supposed to be right. Now… Kouta decides to train for ANBU, how am I supposed to react?"</p><p>"Wait, what? That's what it was all about? I honestly thought you two would be getting back together. Frankly, I think that whole trust thing that made you guys fall out was a bit overblown. The Forest of Death just a survival game, anyways…" Kiyomi sat by Mana's side before pressing Mana's head against her shoulder. "Plus, I know why you'd feel betrayed by him but… Being an ANBU is a great honor for a ninja, one of the highest things you can aspire for in our profession."</p><p>"That's the point. I feel like I'm wrong but… I don't want him to kill, I don't want him to destroy and suppress who he is. I know it's not up to me, I know it's selfish but…" Mana wiped her tears again.</p><p>"Being selfish doesn't always mean being wrong." Kiyomi playfully teased the magician by shaking her head like she'd tease a little puppy by shaking their head while placing her hand on the top of its head. "You want what's best for him. There's nothing wrong in that. It's just that you two have conflicting opinions about that. All you can hope for is that when you let him know your stance on things he'll… Reconsider his own stance. You're not a criminal, you're not some super-villain just because you question yourself and think what you're doing is wrong – that's just life. If you're not asking any questions about everything that you do – that's when you're treading dangerous ground. Stop getting worked up about things and start getting ready, you're the showstopper of the evening, remember?" Kiyomi smiled. At least Mana thought she did. It was tough to say in this limited lighting with wet and slippery shades hanging loosely on her nose.</p><p>Mana picked herself up and got back on her feet. The two girls returned to the observatory. Over the span of the finals, the place had thinned out significantly. Erumo was injured, although nowhere near as she would have been had she pushed even father, it was likely she'd be somewhat recovered by late tonight, Vinda was severely burned by her own acid and looking at weeks until she would completely recover, Nanaba was taken somewhere by the staff. Her state was a complete mystery at the moment.</p><p>Standing atop one of the bone pillars, using the Art of Tree Climbing to keep his feet perfectly stuck to the edge and keeping perfect balance on it, overseer Oke declared the beginning of the next to last match of the finals – Gentib de Vitt from Team Scuti of Hoshigakure against Kres-T from Team Alto of Kumogakure.</p><p>"Talk about rough matches…" Kiyomi noted, Stea nodded by her side with a reserved yet content expression. She may have harbored similar beliefs to Mana deep inside but she did appear moderately curious as to which one of these two young men would defeat the other, even if the history between these two suggested that neither one of them would allow the other to be beaten by anything other than complete humiliation and absolute brutality.</p><p>"These two have a very complicated history! Gentib de Vitt of Hoshigakure is known for his intriguing personalities, all of which have subtly different fighting styles and use different sides of his Fire Release and Wind Release arsenal. These two have unresolved business due to the fact that one of this year's fatalities, Gentib's teammate Gorm Cleiti, came as an indirect result of Kres-T pushing him to that point. This will be a very personal bout, made even more complicated by the odd battlefield they will end up clashing in!" Oke spread his hands wide as if encouraging the audience to explore and feast their eyes on the lingering forest of near-unbreakable bones with foaming rivers of acid below.</p><p>"They appear to focus heavily upon the personal struggle between these two", Mana stepped up to the edge of the observatory. "Oke-san did not even mention anything related to their arsenals or combat achievements."</p><p>"He is a showman", Kiyomi shrugged indifferently, "He did note the two most alluring aspects of this clash: Gentib's different personalities and the personal history between these two."</p><p>"He did not even skew the scales at all, that is quite professional of him. He may have mentioned Gentib's abilities while leaving out what exactly Kres-T could do, however, he was aware that both of them had seen each other fight." Stea smiled.</p><p>A whirlwind of searing crimson flames erupted from the entrance, arcing up to one of the bone pillars and smashing into it so hard that the flames appeared to splash aside like water being spilled from a bucket at rock-hard wall. The protective barriers managed to contain Gentib's fiery entrance, but the flare and sparking shimmers of the rampaging blaze persisted in the air, captivating the audience and getting them instantly on Gentib's side as the boy was an entertainer, if nothing else.</p><p>Atop the completely undamaged bone tower stood Gentib de Vitt, in his Tankobaji persona, red kimono, white haori, clashing, blood red and snow-white face paint and the ridiculous red and spiky wig included. He even still carried around that oversized rod that he had during the great clash of genin teams in the Forest of Death but left behind during the semi-finals.</p><p>Kres-T, however, had a much more subtle entrance, jumping off from one of the audience's observatory platforms before landing on a side of one of the towering bones and running all the way up top and smugly sneering at his opponent. Waiting impatiently for his time to beat the crap out of him.</p><p>With the overseer Oke's signal to begin, Kres got it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0370"><h2>370. The Beast Of Molten Fangs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The competing genin did not wait long after the beginning of the match was declared to start their courses to crash collision. Just before the end of the sentence that left Oke's mouth stopped resonating in everybody's minds completely, Tankobaji darted off like a javelin, wielding the iron staff with both of his hands and growling like a wild animal.</p><p>Kres-T crossed his wrists in a manner that entrapped Tankobaji's iron staff, making it get stuck in between the two axe handles that laid sharpened and maintained at the sides of Kres-T's bracelets. A loud clang ringed as the iron rings attached to the staff kept on moving out of inertia whereas the staff had fully stopped. With a pair of strong motions, fueled from both his shoulders, strong arms and his beefy chest, Kres-T attempted to break the staff and had it been something made of shoddier stuff he would have undoubtedly succeeded.</p><p>In this case, he did nothing else but waste his well-earned time to counterattack.</p><p>Without telegraphing his movements or letting out as much as a warning, Tankobaji let go of his iron staff and leaped onto it, using the time that Kres-T took to return to fighting position and prepare for a counter to his own gain. Unfortunately, to the ferocious persona, Kres-T read his moves completely and entrapped the young man's leg between his arms before swinging and tossing him aside, making him smash into one of the bone towers.</p><p>With a ferocious and sadistic yell of a psycho who had sniffed weakness and blood of his opponent, Kres-T attempted to drive his flying knee right into his opponent, kneeling him in between his stiffened by chakra augmentations knee and notoriously difficult to break Kaguya bone pillar, crushing and grinding his opponent's bones and innards with such a strike. Tankobaji was ready for this attack, however, using his tight grip he pulled his lower body up and wrapped his thighs around the sides of the bone pillar, appearing almost like a spider lurking for his prey before launching himself with a vicious tackle at his opponent who had missed his mark.</p><p>The two continued to plummet down as Tankobaji forced the thighs of his opponent up on his shoulders and wrapped his own legs around the upper body of Kres-T, sending both of them spinning and crashing into the rivers of acid below. A mighty roaring whirlpool of acid burst into motion together with stone, dirt as well as rubble from the sheer force of impact. These two appeared to hold nothing back, the ferociousness of the Tankobaji persona matched the psychotic brutality and the thirst for blood that Kres-T displayed blow for blow and even found chances to return it with some bonus.</p><p>A splash of acid followed by a blue flare of chakra neutralizing its persisting effects followed in a short while, signaling that both combatants had hit the bottom of the acid pools and jumped out from its corrosive waters, using the bottom of the rivers for support for their wild leaps. Kres-T utilized the String Reeling Jutsu to zip-line himself to a nearby tower, having the steel wire wrap around the narrower parts of the bone pillar while he zipped himself to its surface, sticking to it with the Art of Tree Climbing.</p><p>Tankobaji, on the other hand, simply burst from under the acid's surface surrounded by his hellish flames, using the same showy jutsu that he used for his entrance, the blazing vortex arced in the middle, placing him right in the middle of another bone tower where Tankobaji used a matching method of remaining stuck to it with his feet as his opponent did.</p><p>The reason why the primal persona of Gentib took longer than his piledriver'ed opponent to surface was revealed once an audience member glared at the iron rod decorated with clanging iron rings that the bestial genin held in his grasp. The spiky crimson wig, however, had slipped off Tankobaji's head revealing the youth's natural, much shorter than the wig he had adorned, brown spikes.</p><p>"Good… You've had enough brain in that head of yours to adorn this persona for me, the brutal one, your strongest one, from what I've heard. That's the only way you'd stand a chance against me, after all!" Kres-T smiled.</p><hr/><p>"He's wrong though." Mana noted. "Gentib isn't taking this seriously at all, after all, he's still playing his persona game. Each one of his personas uses a different part of his own arsenal, doesn't it? That means he is still dividing his arsenal on purpose and not fighting his best."</p><p>"Not necessarily", Kiyomi shrugged, "There's power in simplicity. There's confusion in complexity. If you have five different ways to do something, you'll take time to think things through, you'll hesitate and in a brutal brawl like this it might be lethal."</p><p>"I think you underestimate these personas, Mana", Stea sighed, "They are not just flashy entertainment for the audience, they are entirely different personalities, a different mindset with which Gentib views the world, can't you see?"</p><p>Stea's words made the magician note something of interest to her – from what she remembered during the brief encounter with the persona in the Forest of Death, Tankobaji was all instinct and no forethought. The persona did not speak, while when Gentib was in the other persona, sometimes it would have been preferable that he refused to speak. Perhaps there was more sense to it than Mana thought initially. Only a persona that did not speak or think things through too hard and acted on pure instinct and rage was fitting to fight someone as intimately and painfully linked to Gentib as Kres-T.</p><p>Had Gentib been himself, fought the Kumogakure genin with his full arsenal and full emotional and strategic baggage at his disposal he would have faced a young man who was partially responsible for his friend's unfortunate passing. There could have been no way that Gentib would have managed to fight right under those conditions.</p><p>Tankobaji roared out as if to vent the built up rage and the pain from his early exchange of blows before making his hand, that which he made free from having to hold his iron staff, weave a bunch of hand seals before clenching it into a fist. The fist lit up with the searing heat that first started as superheated vapor before bursting into actual flames flowing through the youth's pores like sweat would have normally done.</p><p>As the overflowing chakra continued to channel through Tankobaji's fist, the construct of flaming fist continued to build up and grow in size and power. Kres-T moved his hand behind him, reaching in for the pouch on his hip before filling his hand with a good grip of small purple marbles, which he proceeded to fling wildly at Tankobaji's direction. Once the handful became short of explosive marbles he removed some more again from his pouch, trying to pin his bestial opponent down before blowing him back down.</p><p>With previously unseen, animal-like agility and ferocity, Tankobaji acrobatically maneuvered around the explosive barrage of spheres flying his way, using the cover of the bone towers when him being pinned down made it impossible to completely evade disturbance in the channeling process. Then, out of the blue, Tankobaji leaped out from behind one of the bone pillars and dived down in a flipping arc, aiming to land where his opponent was and deliver the gut-wrenching strike from his channeled Fire Style punching technique.</p><p>"Too slow!" Kres-T almost singed out of pent-up sadistic glee as he drove the final bomb he had kept, having played possum this entire time that he had run out of bombs and waited for his opponent to move in close. The little explosive marble detonated right up in Tankobaji's face, blowing the upper body of the poor genin right off clean.</p><p>"Wait, where's your staff?" The sadistic explosive expert mumbled to himself, having noticed that Tankobaji was rushing to him without his iron staff, a tool which he showed placing great importance for. With a loud poof and the disappearance of the bestial genin in a smoke cloud, the substitution with the iron staff was revealed as the iron rod swung wildly, having been tossed away by the explosive force of the detonation of the bomb at point-blank.</p><p>"Tankobaji: Belphegor!" Tankobaji roared out with a rising fiery punch from his blazing construct, flying up from below, where he substituted with his hidden staff from. The back of Kres-T bent uncomfortably and in an angle that invited the audience to clench in their seats and turn away before the gruesome result of forceful impact was hidden away from them by a powerful firestorm that resulted from the successful punch.</p><p>Kres-T darted upward, tossed and toyed with by the forces of resulting shockwaves, bashing lifelessly against the protective barrier as the speed at which he was moving proved dangerous to the audience and the integrity of the arena itself making the genin get treated as a projectile by the barriers. A moment later, gravity did its work, sending the Kumogakure examinee tumbling back down.</p><p>The audience jumped up to their feet in shock when the bloodied and burnt up hand suddenly grabbed the tip of the bone pillar, breaking Kres-T's fall and the sadistic grin once again colored the face of the ax-wielding Kumogakure ninja. With brute force alone, the injured ninja pulled himself up and stood up on the very tip of the bone pillar, using what seemed like impeccable balance for his state of injury to balance on it. The young man clenched for his wounds and blood was trickling relentlessly from his mouth, suggesting rather heavy internal damage.</p><p>Without uttering as much as a word, the brute removed his ax bracelets and tossed them aside. Not without care, thusly so that they caught onto the other bone pillars, rotating and clinging on them like horseshoes around nails in a popular game for shepherds in the Kumogakure wastelands.</p><p>"Who do you think you're fooling?!" Kres-T roared out, it was not only pain speaking from the bottom of his chest. It was certain excitement as well. "You dropped your staff when you hid behind the bones to fool me and substitute with it when you needed it. That's not how brutal and mindless animal thinks. That's all your stupid personas are – charades! You're still thinking, you're still feeling deep down!"</p><p>"Come, think of your dead jerkoff friend as you choke on the gas he choked on before death!" Kres-T roared out before revealing that the hand he was clenching his wounds with was full of dark purple spheres that he scattered wildly to fall below and burst into thick clouds of poison gas.</p><p>The audience covered up their faces in fear, plenty of them wondered momentarily if the protective barriers would hold, if they would protect them from the noxious and toxic gases that Kres-T used to sink the entire lower to middle layers of the arena in a complete, purple shade. This formula was a new one, thicker, almost like it carried more mass and density to it, almost like it was sludgy to an extent, it was as much poison gas as a smashed apple was apple juice.</p><p>"Idol: Shooting Hubble!" Tankobaji's voice echoed from somewhere deep inside the corrosive and irritant toxic hell as a powerful concussive windblast split the clouds of gas apart, greatly weakening them in. Kres-T covered his face up, just this minimal protective measure was enough, at the distance he was standing in, to not receive what little of the concussive force came at him.</p><p>"Calm your swing, daddy-o," Takemito smiled from below, still in full Tankobaji make-up and outfit, "You're losing your groove".</p><p>The genin on both observatories, those that were not using the lucrative services of the local infirmary all collectively shouted out in disbelief. Gentib was changing the rules of his game, switching his persona on the fly, or rather mashing them together as he saw fit as he could have easily used the Transformation Jutsu to change his appearance, but he did not. It was clearly a statement of sorts.</p><p>Kres-T grunted before moving his hands away from obstructing his vision. He removed what he still had left of his explosive bombs and began using them to rain destruction from above. Gentib, with whatever persona occupied his mind, leaped aside attempting to evade the relentless raining outrage of his opponent but he met a wall of poison he was unwilling to dive into, getting hit by multiple explosives head on and sent tumbling down into the acid river.</p><p>"There you are!" Kres-T shouted out diving like a bird of prey after a measly rat from atop of the bone pillar, catching his opponent by his real hair before sticking his feet to the bone tower and beginning to beat down on the weakened and injured Gentib as he saw fit. "Revealed in your hypocrisy, defying the rules you set for yourself, the way you fight. Abandoning your personas just for the sake of not getting hurt!"</p><p>At some point, it was becoming uncomfortable to watch as Kres-T's rampage continued. Both young men began spewing an alarming amount of blood accumulated from extensive internal injuries, Gentib's face had swollen immensely and become near unrecognizable from the amount of surface-deep acid burns, the much more severe explosion caused injuries and seemingly endless pummeling he had received up close. Kres-T even playfully nudged his opponent's face into the closing down clouds of poison gas that were beginning to surround the two brawlers.</p><p>Kres-T grabbed Gentib's head firmly, pressing hard on the genin's temples as he toyed around with his opponent's body, smashing it against nearby bone towers and dipping him into the poison fog while cleverly retreating further from it himself to where only his opponent got submerged at his most desperate for air moments.</p><p>"You cannot abandon your petty, stupid self and surrender to that dumb persona, can you?" Kres-T looked down at his properly pummeled opponent whom he so easily held in his hand and could have let go and lost in the foaming acid pools below whenever he pleased. "You want to lose yourself in the battle but your jerkoff dead friend keeps the real you surfacing up, is that it? You just can't forget good old Gorm, can you?" Kres-T kept on teasing his seemingly powerless opponent before Gentib's strong fingers dug into his wrist which he held the boy's head with.</p><p>"Are you writing a book, actor?" Gentib smiled, at least as much as it was possible to tell from his swollen and beaten expression. Before the iron grip forced his head to be freed from Kres-T's grip as his fingers dug into some sensitive nerves. "You've been a big tickle, daddy! Now I'm gonna cut your gas though."</p><p>A quick combination of blows aimed at various sensitive vitals confused Kres-T with its unexpected nature. The Kumogakure brute desperately leaped back to run away both the enclosing gas clouds and the out of nowhere rising second wind of his opponent.</p><p>"Idol: Babcock Stream!" the battle-worn yet still intimidating nonetheless voice of Gentib reached Kres-T right before a powerful wind pressure enveloped Kres-T and started sending him flying wildly upward, towards the tips of the bone pillars. Gentib's hands raced with hand seals so that his opponent did not finish this trip.</p><p>"Tankobaji: Chantico!" Gentib's voice took the former ferocious and almost bestial tone for Tankobaji momentarily as the entire body of the young man got enveloped in flames that he breathed out before he dashed at his opponent, aiming to reach the still enveloped in the gust of Babcock Stream Kres-T. The aim was clearly to use the highly volatile reactive nature of both Wind and Fire Releases to finish off his opponent, overwhelming any possible leftover chakra he had to invest into his augmentation and to show the amount of power that would break a ninja had they tried to augment themselves to tank it all in.</p><p>The result of the collision of the two techniques, both the Tankobaji's fiery Chantico tackle and the resonating gusts of Babcock Stream was a devastating blast of white light. The flare was so intense that it matched the blinding powder that Nanaba used earlier despite it being only the aftereffect of the combined techniques. What remained of the forest of bones and rivers of acid was revealed not when the white flare faded but when the audience emboldened to confront the results of the match.</p><p>It was almost like the forest of bones had melted away, it was still unclear what the bones were made of as it resulted in the pools of acid, which had evaporated completely in the blast, become filled with an odd black and blaze colored sludge that awkwardly rustled with weak flames on its surface in the place of the acid, meanwhile only small sharp charcoal stumps remained of the once astonishing pillars of white.</p><p>Slowly and with increasing boldness overseer Oke stepped into the protective barrier, firmly laying his eyes on the standing on his two own feet Gentib and his passed out opponent. Gentib rushed up to the tall Kumogakure brute and carefully nudged him with his foot so that the giant did not slip into the fiery sludge of the molten Kaguya bone material before looking at his unconscious opponent from his upright position.</p><p>"You were right, you know", he mumbled out, barely audible to the audience and, more importantly, to the Ninja Council area. "The only way I could have matched you up close was if I embraced my brutal Tankobaji persona. However, I found a better way. By confronting what happened with Gorm, I managed to move past his death and forgive you and Jean-D for the role you played in it. You did not care much if he lived or died, you were disrespectful after his passing and, I could see it then, you enjoyed knowing that he died. Fighting with that burning inside me would have been unbearable so I managed to become the better man and move on, forgive everything that burnt me up. Only because of that forgiveness could I embrace all of my personas at once, instead of facing you as just Tankobaji. Your only mistake was assuming had not moved past my friend's passing and enjoyed the rage, the power that my desire for revenge may have given me for a cheap yet empty thrill of payback. No, I moved on, that's what true ninja are and what they do."</p><p>Gentib left his opponent downed at that, his victory was confirmed and officially declared as he walked away and approached the edge of the protective barrier, stepping into the corridor and disappearing there.</p><p>"Yeah… We're probably going to fix this place before we proceed to the final match of this year's Chuunin Exams!" What began with a confused and unsure mumble ended up with a declaration full of hype and intention to inspire it in the audience. Oke comically jumped around trying to wipe the easily flammable sludge that kept getting stuck on his feet and coughing on the toxic and nauseous air of the evaporated Vinda's acid before a pair of staff ninja rushed in to begin cleaning the air inside the barriers and fixing the arena.</p><p>"The flash of light after the two jutsu collided… You did not display anywhere nearly as painful reaction to the light as you did before. Good. Perhaps you will keep your promise after all…" Stea politely smiled while avoiding looking at Mana as she spoke to her before turning around and heading toward the maze of corridors. She still had some time left as the arena was being repaired so it was unlikely that she was heading straight to the final destination. Either way, Mana was better to worry about her own matters if she was to keep that promise she suffered and worked for so long to be able to keep.</p>
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<a name="section0371"><h2>371. A Game Of Chess Of The Lunar Variety</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana was warming up in the preparation room during the short break while the arena was being repaired. It was nothing much, her body was mostly recovered from the stress and the damage of the intensive training as the finals served as a nice time-out for the food pills she took before to take effect and fully work its magic. Kiyomi was sitting nearby, nervously observing Mana's preparations.</p><p>"So you've recovered?" The Yamanaka asked once again.</p><p>"I think so", Mana shrugged, breaking the warm-up for just a second before resuming it. "I won't be able to rely on my chakra sensory due to massive chakra signatures in the Ninja Council but other than that I feel great".</p><p>"And you're sure you can win?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"You're the one who fought someone who was literally invincible. Don't worry, it doesn't matter what I think now, what I am worried about. What matters is that I've done everything in my power to prepare and that, whatever happens, I'll have no regrets after this." Mana finally finished stretching her neck out and after checking the hidden pockets in her vest finally finished the last, rather spontaneous check-ups and warm-up.</p><p>"Alright, good luck out there. You've done crazy stuff in the past focusing on what you're doing it for. Just keep thinking about your dream and keep going for it." Kiyomi assuredly placed her hand on Mana's shoulder in encouragement before walking together with the magician to where the corridors crossed. One path lead to the staircase going up to the right observatory used by female contestants that day, the other one lead straight to the corridors leading up to the arena entrance.</p><p>As she said the momentary farewells to her friend, the magician kept on thinking of the fact that her dream has actually changed throughout this exam. For the longest time, she saw this exam as an opportunity to prove herself as having the potential to become the legendary hero who would change the world. It was as abstract as abstract dreams got, just something to prove to herself that she had the guts to go that desired distance.</p><p>After meeting and getting to know Stea, Mana's dream changed. This was no longer about Mana's own promotion or proving anything to anyone. After accepting her own retirement when the five weeks of training began, Mana had no problem moving past just having things to prove. Now it was about being a translator, a worthy challenger to Stea's inhuman skills that would match her in a way that she could show off herself in the right way to the Council. Mana sighed as she looked onto the gloomy and repaired arena and saw the buzzing audience with the corners of her eyes.</p><p>She was the ordinary girl, telling an angel which way to fly down to so that the people on the ground could see the angel the way the girl did and begin believing in her. In a way, both Mana and Stea were on the same side in this, both of them were fighting for the people in Getsugakure and the chance for a better life.</p><p>After remembering that, Mana bravely stepped out through the entrance, waving her hands aside and allowing her "Magical Entrance Jutsu", just a little of sparks and dazzle for the visual appeal, she used to start off her magic shows go off without hand seals or words. Only now did Mana realize the full ramifications of this match, she was exposing herself to this audience as a ninja now, granted, she was exposed as a ninja this whole time, certainly after her name was announced for the final match but… After seeing her here they will all have no other choice but to believe that she was more than just a pretty face playing ninja.</p><p>The worlds of Mana the Konoha's Sorceress and Mana the Konohagakure kunoichi will forever be intertwined. There will no longer be any divide between them, ironically, just as Mana wanted to snuff one of these worlds out for the other…</p><p>"Take these shades off, stop embarrassing yourself", Stea playfully teased the magician now that the two ended up facing each other with overseer Oke standing by their side, preparing to address the audience. God, Stea was a bit taller than Mana, the magician had not noticed that before.</p><p>"So you know…" Mana smiled as she slipped the shades off and played with them by waving them around before pulling off a disappearing act with them as the girl slipped them into her back pocket for future use.</p><p>"Gasco told me not to underestimate you, he said that your chakra has grown a little bit in the two weeks you've spent training and that you've mostly recovered." Stea grinned.</p><p>"Mostly? I'm completely recovered." Mana pressed her lips together playfully.</p><p>"Really? A pity that your training was so inefficient then… Gasco was worried that your chakra signature barely grew in size this time." Stea locked her arms on her chest.</p><p>"There is more to training than just raising your chakra reserves. Don't worry, I'll show it to you in a moment." Mana calmly replied before overseer Oke stepped in between the two and raised his hands up, addressing the audience.</p><p>"Ladies and gentlemen of the audience and the honorable Ninja Council, and so we've arrived at this point! The final match of the finale of this year's Chuunin Exams! What a wild ride it was! Something tells me that these two will give us a show that will sum it all for you just nicely…" Oke, a showman, as usual, began hyping the two chillingly calm examinees who continued to boldly stare each other down.</p><p>Mana did not like this one bit. This may have been a battle just for fun, nothing of the sort of battles she had experienced, nothing like the deathmatches of the Sun Disc arena but… Her peaceful nature did not relent. She was worried, she was frustrated about this battle being a certainty lodged in her path. Still, she was an entertainer, she needed to sell the kind of battle that the audience and Council wanted to see. She needed to look full of herself, she needed to look bloodthirsty and ready to go.</p><p>Some part of Mana was ready to go. Some part of her wanted this over with, that part was quite burning up to make her preparations come to fruition and then have her be done with this.</p><p>"For the final match of the day, we have Nakotsumi Mana, famous around the village as Konoha's Sorceress, the stage magician! Most of us have seen what she can do onstage but few of her fans have seen her unorthodox tactics in the arena! As someone who was trained by both Red Dog Tanshu and Lady Fifth herself and has beaten both of her opponents in the semi-finals, Mana has deserved to stand here and face her opponent…" overseer Oke turned for Stea's side.</p><p>"Stea Tesprea from Team Phobos of Getsugakure. A fearsome trio of ninja that has left a path of devastation wherever they trodden. Not a single member of their team has officially been bested by any contestant, they've left the Forest of Death effortlessly and went plowed through the semi-finals without as much as being issued a proper challenge. The only fallen member of their team was eliminated due to disqualification!"</p><p>The audience appeared to eat that hype speech up. Something about Stea's aura as undefeated monster granted her more of a connection with the audience. It was an odd thing for Mana to hear and a little painful, given how many of the people there were fans of her magic shows. The thought of her just playing ninja using dirty magic tricks must have rooted itself quite strongly, things needed to be done about that.</p><p>With overseer Oke raising and lowering his hands, the match officially began. This was no honorable kumite, given the rule alterations so there were no formal rituals like bowing or ceremonial hand seals being made. Right after the man withdrew himself from the dangerous distance the two kunoichi went at it.</p><p>With a slick, silky sound, knives slid out from under the shroud that Stea wore around her face and shoulders, concealing the upper part of her body except for her flowing silver hair. Like that the young kunoichi attacked the magician, sloppily, but that was the point. Stea begged to be injured, attacking well enough to test her opponent and make them sweat a little, but possibly to be overcome.</p><p>Mana noticed that her opponent had gotten better at that part – whereas in the semi-finals it was painfully obvious that her intentions were to be hurt and just how much she held back during her attack, now – she made that illusion disappear. Had the magician now known intimately of her opponent's fighting style she would have possibly been fooled for one exchange or a pair of them.</p><p>Stea's knives slashed right through Mana's throat, sending the gurgling magician down on her knees before slamming on the floor face-first. The Getsugakure kunoichi took a large leap back as her confused eyes began scanning the environment. The audience jumped off their seats as well.</p><p>What confused Stea mostly was that she saw Mana performing absolutely no hand seals. The kunoichi was ready to confront the magician's impressive hand seal speed but she could never believe that the magician managed to perform them so fast that her eyes were so utterly and completely fooled. This was impossible.</p><p>This was no substitution either – by the time when Stea's mind reached that conclusion, the corpse that kept on gurgling and choking on her own blood would have soon been replaced and switched out. Stea clearly saw that this was a trick, there could have been no way that the magician would have gotten killed so soon and so easily but it was evident that the specifics of the trick Mana had pulled still eluded her.</p><p>In a slow and delicate manner, Stea's hand moved towards the side of her head and removed one-half of the veil that covered her face. As the silks slipped off of her face, her lips were revealed to be in an upwards crescent of a smile.</p><p>"I know what you're doing", Stea exclaimed. "It's a pretty clever tactic, had you used it five weeks before, it may have worked. Granted, it is so obvious I'm quite disappointed you're even trying it now."</p><p>Mana remained calm, standing right in front of Stea as her opponent struggled to see the real magician. All that the audience and the Getsugakure genin saw was the perfectly emulated corpse, it was a common trick Mana used in her magic shows as a fake-out and sometimes in combat. When the magician still needed to utter the technique's name, she called it the "Fancy Trick Jutsu".</p><p>"You're counting on me continuously dispelling your low ranking illusions as you keep stacking them up and, in that manner, wasting my chakra so that I cannot indulge any of it for my high-costing fighting style, which, otherwise, you still cannot defeat", Stea closed her eyes, she was deceitfully calm, almost like she knew exactly where the real Mana was standing but the magician knew it was just a mind-game. Stea had no idea, all smells, sounds and sights of the real Mana were hidden once the illusion set off, all she could perceive was the dying illusion, thusly was her mind convinced, thusly it wanted to believe that Stea had won this easily. Even if the better parts of logic advised against this.</p><p>"Problem is that you will need to attack me eventually and I know that pain dispels illusions as well. I have no problem bleeding a little and letting you dispel your own illusion for me", Stea triumphantly lowered her defenses.</p><p>Mana bit her lower lip in anger. Stea was playing dirty, didn't she want to put up an entertaining match and to be promoted? Why was she consciously slowing the match down like this and forcing Mana into purposefully making mistakes just so she could win?</p><p>Maybe the magician could strike a vital point hard enough to instantly knock Stea out. No. Mana's opponent was smarter than that, she thought this through ahead of time – if Mana tried she risked bumping into even the most elementary chakra augmentations that would work like armor against strikes. Mana would need to augment her own strike to penetrate the augmentations, chakra over matter, and all that.</p><p>Problem was, that if Mana augmented her strikes, she would disrupt her own chakra flow and reveal herself by canceling the precisely balanced flow needed to maintain the genjutsu. Stea certainly read up on the illusionary arts. That much was for sure. Very few ninja bothered to study an art that did not directly attack or cause damage to the opponent, Stea was much wiser than to underestimate genjutsu like that.</p><p>"Well? Aren't you going to attack?" Stea taunted Mana again forcing the magician into a position she wanted no part in. With a light wave of her palm, Mana canceled the illusion, by applying another one in its place.</p><p>Stea looked around, her eyes shot open in horror as she saw her worst fears surround and cover her from her toes up. The girl took a few cowardly steps back before tumbling on the ground and starting to scream.</p><p>Mana had spent the better part of these past two and a half weeks polishing her weakest links, making them as natural to her as a wave of her hand but she had never counted on such a simple illusion ending up to be so effective. Just what could the girl have been seeing? Once the lingering thought of a particularly scary possibility unveiled itself in the magician's mind, Mana reached out to end the illusion herself.</p><p>It was too cruel to force the girl to see that. Usually, people saw rats, spiders or similar creepy things that weirded them out but someone like Stea had much more terrifying horrors in mind. Much bloodier and darker sights to return to. It was too cruel to subject her to that again but… Mana's hand stopped halfway to canceling the illusion before lowering lifelessly.</p><p>It had to be done. Mana had spent quite a sizeable percentage of her chakra already to no avail. She needed to force Stea to tap out to this horror and dispel the illusion herself. No matter what horrific past horrors haunted her, it didn't matter how many starving friends wrapped their bony fingers around Stea's throat. The decision to leave that illusion needed to be hers. Guru Ayushi and Lady Fifth taught the kunoichi to respect her opponents at least that much.</p><p>Stea was not someone to underestimate and dispel illusions for.</p><p>Screaming in pain and panic, Stea weaved a hand seal and screamed out "Dispel" before fumbling back on her feet. Her eyes pulsing in fury and her long and delicate fingers bent like the paws of wildcat aiming to claw the eyes of her prey outright.</p><p>"How dare you?" She mumbled. Uncertainty dawned in Mana's heart after these words. Had she gone too far? She did not know just what sights this illusion would show, she had no control of that but had she thought about it for one moment longer she could have at least made an educated and a quite correct guess. What else than the lives of her friends who succumbed to hunger and the worst parts of humanity could have haunted this young lady?</p><p>"You needed a reminder of what you're fighting for. You were sinking yourself into a tar pit with that slow and dirty approach. I won't allow you to fail the people you care about", Mana firmly stated. She felt like a monster inside. She's struggled so much with telling right from wrong recently… What if… What if she was wrong right now, yet again, just like with Kouta.</p><p>"Don't you dare!" Stea screamed out, jumping at Mana with previously unseen ferocity. Mana gently hopped aside, avoiding the anger-driven and careless attacks of her opponent and once again waving her hand. A powerful burst of light burst from the sandy ground beneath the feet of the two girls as illusionary clones of Mana appeared from the light.</p><p>Mana merely jumped aside, observing as Stea realized her wrath and the beastly thirst for Mana's blood on those clones. Every time one of the clones created by the magician's "Many-Faced Jutsu" was hit, she burst into light instead of blood and every time one was killed, four more took her place. It was an ultimate jutsu for toying with someone's mind, someone's as vicious and thoughtless as this enraged Stea was.</p><p>It was obvious that Stea knew these clones appearing from the source of light on the ground were just illusions. Why would she not instantly realize that? But, even knowing that, the Getsugakure kunoichi continued to spill out her violent intentions onto them, wearing herself out slowly. The intricate and impressive murderous feats and maneuvers she performed on these clones were almost impressive, Stea definitely had a lot of suppressed feelings about it.</p><p>Seeing weariness in her opponent's muscles, her newly found difficulties breathing, Mana tipped her magician's hat forward, letting it tumble down her shoulder right into her hand before pushing her hand into it. A bright purple light lit up as the seals of her father's activated allowing Mana to tap into their storage and pull out the Audra wand of Meiko's making out.</p><p>Waving the wand around, Mana set off another genjutsu onto Stea's undispelled chain. The Getsugakure kunoichi lazily observed illusionary decorative swords popping above her and thrusting at the ground, aiming to skewer her. She may have initially taken it for a game, but once her body showed her that while the damage dealt to her by these swords was not real, the pain very much was, Stea began taking the jutsu much more seriously.</p><p>The Getsugakure kunoichi tumbled on her knees, huffing and wheezing in front of Mana. There was worry in the magician's heart – her opponent refused to dispel the illusions and therefore hadn't wasted that much chakra whereas Mana was very much doing so, creating elaborate yet easy to execute chains of illusions that'd have greatly cost her before these two weeks, yet came off relatively easy after the training in the Rabbit Caves.</p><p>Something was off with Stea, Mana could see it. The kunoichi had one of her eyes closed and sweat ran down her face, she looked tired if a little delirious from the complicated assault on her mind that transpired with her refusing to spend chakra dispelling these illusions before they did their worst. Most of them were relatively harmless, visual or one-sense based C or D rank illusions but… They stacked up to quite nasty combinations when used one after another.</p><p>Then, Mana finally realized what Stea was reaching out for. An efficient lockdown of Mana's illusions. One so crazy and so reckless that very few would even think up of such a strategy, needless to say, attempt it. While illusions did not directly damage one's body, they did do a number on one's mind. Continuous strain under the illusions could have completely torn one's mind apart resulting in madness or even a comatose shut down of one's body.</p><p>Could Stea's fatigue and current symptoms be early prophets of that? Could this have been Stea's game all along? To play dirty and guilt trip Mana into refusing to use her genjutsu once things really got dangerous and the mental damage that Stea suffered was too much. If it was, Stea was certainly using dirtiest tricks to win, however… Given that such a strategy required research on her opponent's personality… It just may have been crazy enough to work and secure Stea a promotion!</p>
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<a name="section0372"><h2>372. Mutual Insanity Society</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The more time Mana spent figuring out her options, the less she liked the situation she was in. It felt almost like Stea had planned on being in this highly disadvantageous position the whole time, almost like she preferred it. With each consecutive illusion Mana would use, the damage inflicted upon the mental health of her opponent would keep on corroding until… One of few worse scenarios would occur.</p><p>"Polymorphy Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, requiring to utter the name of her illusion yet having mastered the illusion to the point where a wave of her palm was enough to initiate the illusion and no hand seals were required.</p><p>Stea's body became locked down, momentarily the veins on her forehead began shooting out as if the mother of all migraines had locked her up before the rustling silver locks hid the hideous signs of tremendous mental strain inflicted to her psyche. The girl fell on all fours, shaking and rustling like a little possum. Mana raised her arms up, attempting to intimidate the little "critter" that Stea saw herself transformed into but instead of scurrying outside the battlefield, the kunoichi fell on her back and rolled her hands and feet up in front of her.</p><p>"A possum, huh?" Mana mumbled to herself, smacking her forehead since the trick she intended to use did not work, given Stea's illusionary transformation. A rat would have scurried away, a rabbit would have hopped off without looking back, away meaning outside the battlefield. A possum would have played dead until at least parts of Stea's psyche would return.</p><p>This was indeed a problem, given the damage already inflicted upon Stea's mind up to now, Mana had a limited handful of illusions she could use before she drove her opponent mad completely or made her go comatose. She would be of no help to her villagers in that state, nor would she get promoted and the Getsugakure villagers were the entire reason Mana even fought this battle.</p><p>And yet, seeing Stea play possum before bits and pieces of her human mind returned and her weak genjutsu began timing out, bit by bit, Mana noticed something interesting. A lot of what exact animal one saw themselves transformed into when under the effects of Polymorphy Jutsu depended on the animal on their mind. Their behavior also was influenced by what the victim knew of the animal in question.</p><p>The fact that Stea transformed into a possum and played dead when threatened could have been a coincidence, but it also could have meant that the idiom may have run its course in the mind of the Getsugakure kunoichi. In that case, she was well aware of what was happening with her body and purposefully heading the battle that direction.</p><p>With a wave of her wand, Mana canceled the illusion herself. There was no use continuing it, given that the magician could not have exploited the opening she was given without storing damage in Stea's seals. She was locked on a crash course – each illusion she weaved continued to damage her opponent's mind and head her towards potential madness or total collapse. Soon physical battle, something that meant certain defeat, would have been all Mana had to do.</p><p>"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Mana asked with bitterness and desperation. "That headache, the fever, the symptoms of dawning madness don't matter to you then?"</p><p>Stea laughed out, through pain, through tremendously disadvantageous to her battle, she laughed still.</p><p>"I know who you are, Nakotsumi Mana. I know my enemy, I know that you have the chakra and mastery over those illusions to wave them around the whole day but you won't, once things will get dangerous – you'll lock yourself down and fight the battle on my terms. It will be a losing battle, make no mistake." Stea grunted as she returned to her feet. "You could have killed me while I was under your illusions but you didn't, because that's who you are. There are no risks involved for me fighting this way because I know you."</p><p>Firestorms began raging inside Mana's gut, firestorms of anger, worry and betrayal. Her opponent did not care about putting up a good battle for both kunoichi, Stea could not have cared less if Mana looked good in front of the council and she had the options to fight such a battle. Instead, Stea took the safest, most ninja path out – play dirty all the way to the end and gamble with her nindo.</p><p>"Does it make you mad?" Stea calmly asked Mana. Why would she care? Previously Mana made Stea mad because angry opponents were easy to read. Perhaps Stea purposefully played Mana attempting to infuriate her?</p><p>"You're playing dice with your nindo, what if I make a mistake, what if your mind is weaker than I give it credit for and you slip into madness or coma? You won't be able to help all those people then!" Mana responded, as much as she tried, she could not hide her feelings at all. She blazed in anger and desperation. For the first time in a while, she had no idea how she should fight. She was completely confused.</p><p>Stea was not just a powerful kunoichi. She was madly intelligent too. She completely crushed Mana's mind with that approach, broke any strategies that Mana prepared for the battle and to the magician this was a whole new experience. She was used to having a plan for everything, yes, occasionally they went wrong, often those plans ended before the battle did but at that point, she was always better off ahead. Now, it seemed like Stea broke Mana from the first few steps of the battle.</p><p>"Isn't that exactly what you are doing every time you gamble with your life in the field?" Stea replied with a crushing blow. "How exactly do you plan on changing the world around you if you keep on standing on a narrower ledge every passing day? Don't you now see how mindless your "all or nothing", "limit breaking" approach is?"</p><p>Mana smiled. Her eyes were closed, her raven dark hair streamed over her face and thrown about by the cold winter breeze of an approaching evening. This was not the kind of battle this audience was used to seeing. They have seen plenty of those battles already. This one was as much about breaking your opponent mentally as it was about actually winning because pushing your opponent into fighting the battle on one's own terms literally meant one's victory.</p><p>"It makes you powerful, doesn't it?" The magician finally explained the stream of thoughts that served as the source of her smile. "This gambling approach, putting everything on the line. You have adopted it and you are winning. Bit by bit, you're forcing me into fighting the battle that means my own defeat. But I have changed you, did I not? Now, when you become a chuunin, you will be the kind of ninja I inspired you to be, the ninja that forced me to fight you on your terms, the better ninja."</p><p>Stea could not reply with anything but silence. This was possibly the first time that the magician found out Stea's true state of mind and began pushing back her impositions. Mana's training was more than just physical. Suffering heat, pain and lack of oxygen as deep underground as deep underground went, the magician had plenty of time to think her reasons and inspirations through and temper her resolve.</p><p>"Plus, I wouldn't go as far as to say that you know me… You take me for some naïve, good, little girl. The only reservations I have concern killing, anything else is fair game…" Mana bluffed, waving her wand again and setting off the only thing in her arsenal that even remotely pissed her opponent off and actually got deep to her heart.</p><p>Stea's eyes darted around as whatever horrors of her past that terrified her before, brought to life by the magician's illusions, resumed. Her hands moved backward as if they were being bent that way and broken. The gaze of the petrified girl raced all around her, like she was literally drowning in her own worst nightmares. Mana could only imagine the ghastly sights of starving people, on the verge of death, wrapping their long and fragile fingers all over Stea's body. The nightmares must have been properly asphyxiating as well, seeing how not much more than lowly gasps for air escaped the girl's throat.</p><p>This was no act before, the girl was properly terrified of facing these horrors and it only was about to get worse, given her creeping about madness, fatigue, migraines, and fever in mind.</p><p>"Valor…" the girl gasped as if she was begging almost. "Valor…" it came out again.</p><p>Mana placed her hand on her mouth, she felt like the emotional nausea was about to turn to very much real spasms of the stomach variety as she ceased the illusion. She should have let it go on, by all means, she should have. But… Seeing her opponent literally begging for the determination required to persevere the illusions just broke the magician. She was not nearly as ruthless as she thought she was.</p><p>Mana took a defensive fighting stance, one comprised of many fighting styles she had learned in the Sun Disc arena. A very crude and default stance that would have allowed to defend against very basic attacks of any style but masterful of none. Still, it would have done the deed of helping the magician draw a fighting style profile of her opponent and, eventually, she would be untouchable.</p><p>Not that it mattered… Mana caved in to her own morals, she was preparing to fight Stea the way she always fought, the way she always dominated and defeated her opponents.</p><p>"You're quite bad at reading people", Stea rushed at Mana, giving the magician a long and stiff kick but only cutting through the air with her elegant and graceful movements as Mana moved about with quick hops that allowed her to avoid her opponent's kicks with the minimal breaking of her stance.</p><p>"You mean you were bluffing!?" Mana shouted out in shock as her mind just blanked out, her leg moved by itself, delivering a strong kick into Stea's abdomen and sending her opponent sliding and tumbling back before she fell on her knees.</p><p>"Did you really think that the sights of people dying of starvation, breaking my arms and legs, strangling me and blaming me for their deaths have any effect on me anymore? It's a foolish thought, given how those horrors defined the better part of my life and the woman I am now, don't you think?" Stea grunted as she wiped the little trickle of blood that spouted out from her gut after Mana's kick.</p><p>The young woman was quite content with herself, she finally received payment to feed her damage seals. The starvation would finally cease, the figurative one quite literally, the literal one being a work in progress…</p><p>"I know it did affect you", Mana confidently raised her desperate face and faced Stea's glare with that same flare of strength and noble defiance. "My genjutsu does not show people things that are meaningless to them. People do not beg for valor when faced with useless nightmares".</p><p>"Is that who you think Valor was?" Stea mumbled in confusion, keeping her words mostly to herself and Mana, as they were a bit too quiet for the limestone to channel them properly for the audience to hear.</p><p>"Who?" Mana wondered to herself, raising a doubtful eyebrow.</p><p>The Getsugakure genin stood calmly, channeling her chakra, most likely. Mana could almost feel the pressure oozing from her, just how much did that simple slipped out kick store in those seals of her? The magician closed her eyes, her teeth ground against each other. She needed to know, she needed to feel Stea's chakra fluctuations in order to properly fight her but… If only she could filter, restrain her chakra sensory somewhat.</p><hr/><p>"I'll enroll into Konoha High to become an ANBU, like my father", Kouta's voice ringed in Mana's ears. That fool, he is no killer, he's a sweet and kind person. He will need to completely crush everything human about him if he is to become an ANBU, he will have to become everything he used to despise about his father's heritage to succeed… If only Mana could have made him see that.</p><p>Mana kept on suppressing her chakra sensory, without her eyes, without her sensory, there was nothing but complete darkness all around. A vague, mirage-like shape resonated through Mana's mind before a beam of darkness pierced its chest, pulling it deep into the darkness' grasp. Shimo… There was nothing Mana could have done but… Maybe if she did anything, what ended up happening would have been different?</p><p>Mana's chakra reached out, her sensory enveloped like a scroll, releasing its contents upon the world in a wide, uncontrollable flood. The magician tried to tunnel it, restrain it like Gasco was able to do, focus it into one point only, ignoring the massive signatures that made her so anxious.</p><hr/><p>A frightening surge of intense fear sunk its fangs into Mana's chest making the magician's eyes white out. Shocked by the sudden change in the state of her opponent, Stea took a pair of careful steps back, wondering if this was another technique in her opponent's arsenal but the pathetic whimpering and the overwhelming fear that Mana's body irradiated tipped the true reason of the magician's change off. The Getsugakure kunoichi had seen her teammate struggle with similar difficulties a long time before.</p><p>"You fool!" Stea yelled out charging in with a chop aimed at the magician's neck. Her body emanated with the flowing supercharged chakra sourced from the what little damage she had stored inside her seals, empowering the young Getsugakure woman. Mana's neck bent awkwardly once the chop of her opponent smacked into it like a sword aiming to behead the girl. While the magician's spine held firmly and did not allow the gruesome outcome to come to pass, it was unclear just what the difference between the attacking might of chakra augmentations and the defensive force was.</p><p>"You can't just attempt something like that on the most important battlefield of your life! You're just a brat, you're nothing special… There are no chosen one of no prophecies, like all those characters from your Konoha movies, no one believes you stand a chance, you're just… Just you!" Stea continued to scold Mana's foolish and desperate attempt to control her sensory right then and there, on the battlefield.</p><p>The young woman continued to chop at her opponent, smacking Mana at her temples, her neck, her chest and her various joints before turning around with a backhanded slap that sent Mana tumbling down and back on the dirt. Stea's own hand was shaking. Her forehead was sweaty and blushed from the fever of the moderate brain damage she had sustained early on in the battle, her speed was clearly affected by that but she still hit strong.</p><p>Yet it was not Stea who felt like she was going crazy. Mana curled on the ground before fumbling back on her knees, she tried to fight back the feelings of slipping control, the overwhelming fear of dying or passing out on the spot, the urging desire to escape the arena she was fighting in, where all those scary gigantic chakra signatures were located.</p><p>"What the…" Stea mumbled to herself, seeing the symptoms of Mana's sensory overload-induced anxiety not fading. The Getsugakure genin was clever enough to realize what that meant – Mana was learning to deal with the anxiety of sensing a humongous chakra signature using the cold turkey method.</p><p>The Getsugakure kunoichi stretched her legs out wide, bending them at the knees and bringing her balance center lower to the ground. Her right hand moved back while she forced her left elbow forward before lunging at the magician with a blindingly furious and swift barrage of chops, so fast that it would have appeared she had adapted various knife-fighting styles into a hand-to-hand martial art of her own.</p><p>Mana screamed out in pain as she could barely even count the amount of blindingly fast and deceptive chops that attacked her all over her body, and that was just one of Stea's arms, the second one kept on the winded back with an extended palm, ready to shoot out and help the kunoichi defend herself. Soon, Stea's long and slender legs joined into the offensive as with a powerful jump kick straight to Mana's cheek the magician was sent down again, then, with a powerful flipping leg slam she was attacked once more while down. Stea immediately settled her flowing wildly dress upon landing down on her own two feet with elegance and grace.</p><p>Stea watched the magician struggle with newfound respect. It was clear that the Getsugakure genin had empathy for Mana's situation – her genjutsu was completely disabled due to magician's own morals and the very reason she was fighting in the first place. Then there was that foolish persistence to keep her chakra sensory free, instead of suppressing her. Even if it was suppressed, what exactly were Mana's options anyways? To fight Stea and fuel her damage seals, even more, make her medical ninjutsu and taijutsu attacks more powerful? That was no answer.</p><p>One was clear, however, to Stea, to Mana, to the Ninja Council. By witnessing how Stea effectively locked down Mana's options and read the magician's character like an open book, the Konohagakure kunoichi had shown off her opponent in the best of colors. Perhaps it was gratitude for that very thing that prevented Stea from continuously kicking and stomping Mana while she kept writhing on the ground, dealing with her own racing heart and dizziness, not to mention the internal bleeding from all of Stea's attacks and dizziness from important blood vessels getting chopped pretty strong and damaged.</p><p>"Get up…" Stea mumbled quietly, Mana could barely hear the voice of the young woman in the darkness and the blur of dizziness that violently kept her eyes shut and her body trembling like a leaf. "You will get promoted, you will show them your fighting spirit, I will repay your favor, so get up."</p><p>Pale and huffing heavily due to the anxiety of the massive chakra signatures present above in the Ninja Council lodge, Mana fumbled back up on her feet. Her knees shook like an aspen in turbulent, stormy winds.</p><p>Nothing but darkness all around her. Little, bright specks of space dust surrounded her by dozens of thousands, then, massive quasars and blazars, star giants unlike any that Mana has read about floated right beside her. The magician felt like she would go mad if she would as much as turn her head to feast her eyes at them. Kouta and Shimo floated right beside her, one continued to sever his bonds with Mana before fading away, only to return to repeat the cycle and the other kept getting skewered by the darkness surrounding Mana.</p><p>Pain. More of it all over her body, Mana kept on burning up inside while it was freezing on the outside. Just where was all this pain coming from? The sight of dirt met Mana's opening eyes for a moment before her eyes whited out again, cold snowflakes gently rubbed against the girl's cheeks but it didn't help Mana's tired bumping heart or the internal fever.</p><hr/><p>She was in an endless void of oblivion… Mana grabbed her own throat, ripping her collar open and tossing the bowtie that tied around her neck flowing aside in the cold winter breeze, it faded away in the darkness just like Shimo's dying body. Even as she continued to choke, a powerful blow to her abdomen sent Mana crouching over and falling on her knees. Where was this pain coming from? What was going on? Was she going mad?</p><p>Again, something fast and hard smacked her across her cheek, almost ripping her jaw apart and sending her flying past the mirage of Shimo's dying body, right as it faded away in agony. She needed to float away, leave all this behind. No. She's been taking this fear of being exposed to all the chakra around her for so long, she had nothing to shut it all down for. She had no other options but to open her eyes right, or not at all.</p><p>Mana's hand slowly raised up, catching some invisible, silky limb and stopping it in its path. A feminine figure slowly formed out of stardust thrown off by all the massive phenomena nearby, the magician focused on the feminine shape before a powerful palm strike sent her tumbling back. A warm, wet feeling of blood busting out from her nose broke Mana out of the anxiety induced sensation of fear.</p><p>She could see her, no, she could feel her. Stea. The Getsugakure genin was standing with her elbow pointing forward and her other hand winded up, her palm placed in a defensive vertical state while her legs were spread out wide. The vast darkness of space faded, the stardust took thousands of shapes, those of people while Mana restrained her sensory, reducing its range instead of tunneling it, Stea was right to a point, she was no prodigy so she had to fight cleverly and differently instead of try to talent her way out of every problem. Even reducing her sensory range came through tremendous difficulties, tunneling with full range intact? That was still a little bit outside her reach.</p><p>"Welcome back, I kind of missed you." Stea smiled with a playful tease as Mana took a small handful of snow off the ground, using it to wipe the blood off her face and hands as her chakra augmentations did what they could to temporarily prevent her nose busting out in crimson showers again. It would not need to do so for long, soon the blood would stop all by its own.</p>
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<a name="section0373"><h2>373. Mana Pushes Back!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Was it worth it?" Stea breathed out, forcing air through her throat and nostrils before throwing her body forward at Mana. Swiping her palms in the manner of chopping motions, as if her palms were knives and Stea danced in a complicated martial arts style.</p><p>The magician put her hands up, she was not used to seeing such completely innovative fighting styles. It was by no means a deep style or a difficult one to master, or understand, yet it was one of Stea's own making nonetheless. Hits continued to slip past the magician's staunch, sluggish and generalized defenses, a result of still persisting dizziness of recently very crippling anxiety she felt so very recently. Whenever a chop hit her in the liver, her sides or her joints, exposed areas of the magician's neck, it was like being cut by a sword that inflicted all of the pain but none of the actual damage of a sword strike.</p><p>With every skipped blow, Mana's entire nervous system lit up like the sky in the Snow Country did during aurora borealis. It was like all of the magician's pain receptors went off at the same time, branching out in a system, a river of pain from the source of Stea's impact. There was no time to comprehend the manner of attack and focus on each individual strike when they sieged Mana's sloppy defenses by hundreds of thousands each second.</p><p>"Was it worth betting all of your chips on chakra sensory and losing everything? This battle, your future, your team!?" Stea kept on pushing on. Mana knew what the girl was doing – her opponent attempted to piss Mana off, try and make her fire up, bring about the second wind of the Konoha's Sorceress to make this battle appear like less of a one-sided beating.</p><p>Mana was not that kind of person. She was not a pent up bottle of emotion looking for a verbal or any other reason to lash out with all of her built up might. She was different. Words did not build her up, words did not inspire her to blaze hotter and strike harder, they tore her down because each word registered, each word passed through Mana's mind and each one of them was paid and given Mana's utmost attention.</p><p>Throwing up a mouthful of blood, Mana collapsed on her knees. Stea's martial art style was simple, it was one of the eight varieties of Land of Wind knife-fighting. It was basic, the foundations for this style could have been found in any library, leave alone Konoha's extensive Archive building. It was polished somewhat, the second arm laid entirely winded back for defense, that was clever. Many desert knife-fighters used it sloppily for balance or just left it dangling, some of them used it as a reserve attacking hand, always attacking with fifty percent efficiency. Stea also had her legs spread as widely as her long silken dress allowed her to spread them without tearing – a strong balance was also a weakness of Land of Wind knife-fighters.</p><p>"I had to", Mana responded, wiping off the remaining blood that leaked out from her damaged liver off her lips. "Tracking just your pressure was about as accurate as relying on dreams to tell your future. I am not playing cards, I needed more certainty and clarity."</p><p>Mana's eyes lingered sadly across the arena, the audience did not look excited. They looked appalled. Most civilians thought they were a bloodthirsty bunch. That was only because they have never seen a truly bloody battle. There must have been some mercy and decency hidden deep underneath even the most violent soul. That hopeful observation gave Mana the strength to get back on her feet. Her knees and elbows had gotten grazed quite nastily by a number of times she'd been forced down on them.</p><p>Stea dashed off again, using the same form, that was just careless. Mana easily danced around the same strikes leaving her opponent looking like a fool. Still, that would lead to little actual success. The magician could not effectively counterattack, disabling half of what her own taijutsu-style was supposed to achieve. Every counterattack would have only made her opponent stronger, both as far as her jutsu and her medical techniques were concerned.</p><p>A blindingly fast combat roll. Stea had changed the adapted and modified form of knife-fighting. That was clever, the prodigy must have had suspicions about Mana's highly defensive style as being more of an analytical nature so she did not approach the magician by any completely textbook simple styles, she invented her own. A lesser one and more basic, but comprised of very unpredictable forms and spots and a variety of elements that required experiencing them first to read them right.</p><p>An upwards thrust of Stea's palm split the air around it, aimed at Mana's throat, such a strike would have knocked the magician out cold, if not killed her by crushing her windpipe completely. Breathing would have been impossible until medical attention was received. An adapted thrust of Kirigakure style knife-fighting, using her palm instead of a knife… She was a reader, not a practician. Mana had enough perception and agility left in her to hop back, avoiding certain humiliating defeat.</p><p>"What's the matter? You're fighting sloppy, even now that you're back in your body, your mind is still solving problems far away from this battlefield." Stea closed her eyes, looking offended that Mana was not entirely in the here and now, it was true, her attention has been slipping in and out, moving away to face the sights she saw in the prison of her own mind before being forced back.</p><p>"I'm sorry," Mana placed her extended palm on her chest, as a gesture of apology. "It's just that the anxiety that overtook me made me confront things that tend to make me anxious in the first place. You hit hard, fast and with purpose but… I have no fears of dying here so it does not scare me nearly as much."</p><p>"So that's it then?" Stea grunted out before charging at Mana with an entirely different form, this time, both of her arms were stiff and extended wide, the young woman attacked using the sides of her palms, her elbows, both front and the back, and her shoulders like the most common forms of staff fighting would have allowed their user to do.</p><p>Mana's hands rose up, bent at the elbows as she carefully applied just the right amount of force and speed to redirect the wide swinging attacks of her opponent. Arms made a poor substitute for an actual staff for they lacked the middle part. That was such an obvious weakness that the magician wondered for a second if she was being lured into a trap before throwing a cautious palm strike that stopped right up and in front of Stea's shocked face. In surprise and intimidation, the Getsugakure kunoichi flipped back a pair of time to gain distance and use her gracefully moving feet to keep her opponent from pursuing her.</p><p>"What is your battle plan exactly?" Stea carefully moved around just to keep moving, there was another reason for it, the young woman attempted to hide her suspicions that Mana was up to something and her thighs were shaking a little. Her conscious mind kept on convincing the genin that there could have been nothing that Mana could have used but… Stea clearly gave Mana enough credit not to submit to such confidence.</p><p>"Right? We both know I won't cross the line and leave you with brain damage so using genjutsu is impossible for me. Any physical attacks I use will only empower your own abilities through the damage seals so I am effectively disabled here", Mana confidently extended her arms, the magician saw her opponent's surprise when Stea realized that Mana was acting and explaining her problems for the audience. Since Stea had seen Mana's show, she knew where Mana would turn the speech to next. It was time for the "But…" part.</p><p>"But there is one more, absolutely insane and reckless, suicidal even, option." Mana raised one finger up playfully teasing the audience, the Ninja Council, her opponent and, also challenging Stea to figure it out at the same time.</p><p>"You can't possibly mean..." Stea broke her stance out of the absolute bafflement of the crazy strategy she just realized Mana chose.</p><p>"That's right, it was absolutely integral for me to regain my chakra sensory just so I could even consider trying it", Mana bowed with a smile, dusting off the snow and dirt off her knees and her skirt before clenching a raised fist and extending one finger. "Now that I have regained a limited access to my chakra sensory, with limited range, I can tell that you have, so far, used one-third of your chakra. Even given your conscious efforts not to combat my illusions, just that lashing out at my clones cost you more stamina and chakra than it would have taken to dispel that illusion".</p><p>"You can't attempt to fight me directly, that will charge my seals up to where you'll be completely outmatched, remember your fight with Doma!" Stea objected. She wanted a cool fight, she wanted the fight to look flashy for the audience and the Council. Maybe she did not yet realize that if Mana was to make a calculated gamble that way, she'd make the singlehandedly most flashy and over the top battle this audience had seen that day.</p><p>"It's always the same with most ninja. All they are looking at are the new heights: more power, more speed, stronger jutsu, larger chakra signatures and denser bones. By reaching out to these new heights, very few ask the question if they are truly ready for them, just because they can reach them. That is why I made sure, in these past two and a half weeks, to perfect my current state, my old jutsu. I do not like gambling but… I will bet that I now have the ability to drain you out of chakra before you can beat me with that monstrous ability of yours." Mana boldly declared.</p><p>"Very well", Stea once again took the offensive stance of her chop-fighting martial art. "I will take you up on that bet".</p><p>Blood trickled down Mana's thumb as her teeth dug into it hard enough to draw some of it out. The magician's hands raced for hand seals, Stea did not even attempt to interrupt it, why would she? She was so absolutely sure that she could beat Mana before passing out due to a shortage of chakra.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" the magician yelled out, pushing her hand down into her hat before forcefully yanking Usuzoku out of it. Given how large her partner was, Mana was lucky to be able to call her partner out through her father's seals in the first place.</p><p>"I didn't expect ta be out 'ere", the rabbit warrior voiced his disgruntlement almost immediately after Mana's version of the Summoning Jutsu concluded. He was right to not have expected to be called upon, Mana's original plans did not include the rabbit being called on.</p><p>"I'm doubling down on this. Just hit her as hard as you can, as often as you can. I'll be doing the same." Mana grinned at her partner, it was possibly the first time of them working together that she saw the rabbit do an almost dirty grin.</p><p>"Dat I can do!" he nodded before using his oversized feet to dash forward at Mana's opponent. The rabbit's large sword danced gracefully and with purpose, it was fast and successful.</p><p>Still, as Mana rushed to her wand that had slipped off and got lost nearby the little decorative forest erected in the arena, she noticed that Stea took some of the blows on purpose. She got tagged by almost each and every one of Zoku's attacks, just shallowly enough to graze her flesh but none of the attacks that would have cleaved her into pieces connected right. She was quite impressive to be able to control the amount of damage she received so tactfully.</p><p>The Getsugakure genin flew back and hit the wall, just above the entrance to the arena before flipping back elegantly and sticking to the wall with her feet and racing across the circular ring of blocks that surrounded the arena, while being relentlessly chased by seemingly gone rabid Usuzoku.</p><p>Finally, the magician's fingers tightly wrapped around the wand of Audra alloy before Mana could join in on the ceaseless offensive. Just as the magician rushed to close in on the perfect range, she noticed a pair of cleverly placed hits landing on Usuzoku as well. These two were dancing almost as equals… No, Zoku was slightly better, even if Stea wanted to get hit. Carefully, Mana took aim at Stea. It was tough pinning the two down when they were racing and jumping across the entire place.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, extending her wand forward as she needed no more seals to perform a technique as familiar to her as one of her starting dozen. All she needed to weave this one properly was a conducting object like a well-crafted kunai or her Audra alloy wand.</p><p>A white-blue beam of lightning chakra fired off from the point of Mana's wand, darting off towards nothing, but where her opponent would soon end up at. Suffering to regain chakra sensory was the right call – it helped the magician aim more clearly as her eyes were not always capable of following the two.</p><p>Stea kicked off of the wall, turning and flipping around to avoid Mana's jutsu that only managed to hit the wall of where her opponent would have been, had she continued to engage in combat with Usuzoku.</p><p>"Not so fast!" the rabbit warrior grunted out, appearing right above the acrobatic Getsugakure kunoichi, with his sword raised high up and ready to strike down. Zoku's feet were so amazingly strong that he could perform incredibly fast dashes at breakneck speeds, tough to follow even for more experienced ninja, leaving the likes of Mana and Stea in the dust.</p><p>Instead of the petrifying fleshy sound of a young woman getting cleaved cleanly in half, a loud popping sound following a strong puff of smoke materializing out of nowhere followed. As the smoke cleared out, it became evident that Usuzoku had cleaved not Stea herself, but her previously discarded shroud she used to substitute with.</p><p>"That was great, Zoku-chan!" Mana commended her partner who perfectly followed off her whiffed move. Had Stea still been strained from having substituted earlier in the battle, she would have ended up getting filleted.</p><p>"Figured ye'd have not forced 'er ta waste 'er Substitution yet. May as well go fer de kill and let loose just fer a moment dere…" the rabbit grinned, his fluffy white fur curved very oddly around his highly spherical cheeks that turned in a very awkward manner due to him feeling somewhat uneasy about getting praised in such a cutesy manner.</p><p>Stea's arms lit up with lights of salad green as they moved past the multiple bloody cuts all over her body and the scratches across her face from her unsuccessful attempt to compete with Usuzoku at close distance using nothing but her martial arts.</p><p>"She's wastin' chakra ta heal?" Usuzoku gripped his sword tighter, feeling uneasy about his opponent using chakra for something considered a rather higher tier of ninjutsu techniques in terms of complexity and control.</p><p>"It will cost her chakra but less so long-term than maintaining chakra augmentations to prevent all of those wounds from bleeding too much. She's being very strategic about it, actually", Mana huffed in unease seeing her opponent managing chakra a bit better than she had normally expected Stea to do it.</p><p>Stea re-entered her fighting pose once the quick patch-up work was completed. She barely wasted any time or effort to completely heal herself back. She left little to no openings to exploit and the jutsu was of the lightning-quick, blink and you will miss it variety.</p><p>"Just like dat, she's back to a chipper state!" Usuzoku grunted with great irritation.</p><p>"Do not get discouraged my cute, winter-furred friend. We are not trying to beat her to a pulp, remember?" Mana smiled, normally she'd have been just as irritated as Zoku to see her opponent just flash green and completely regenerate all the damage she took in the course of the battle. However, with her chakra sensory in a working capacity, she sensed the toll it took on Stea's resources to accomplish this fresh regeneration.</p><p>While the Getsugakure genin used a very crude and weakened version of the Mystical Palm Jutsu, it was empowered by the damage stored in Stea's seals just enough to completely heal her up. Even if she had seen this ability before, Mana could not help but admire just how amazing her opponent was.</p><p>"Well, I'm goin' at it!" Zoku grumbled before dashing forward again.</p><p>"Godspeed…" Mana whispered to herself, seeing her partner darting off and assaulting her opponent, whizzing past her before changing direction and flashing past her again, then repeating the process. Slashing the Getsugakure genin with a sword strike with each passing dash like a samurai of the old tales.</p><p>"Go-Fish!" Usuzoku grunted, finishing his oddly named sword fighting technique with a mean hip-forward dash. A sizzling sound alerted the ninja animal. It was one sound, that was quite familiar to someone who had seen as much combat as Usuzok0u had throughout the years. The rabbit threw his sword up in a mad swing before the explosive tag cleverly placed on his blade detonated. It was quite impressive of Stea to avoid all of Usuzoku's attacks like that.</p><p>"Magic Spark Barrage!" Mana chanted out, having used Usuzoku's opening provided to her to move in behind her opponent before pointing forward with her wand and channeling more of her lightning chakra into a barrage of lightning spark projectiles, fist-sized spheres that buzzed and crackled with electricity in their journey at and all around the magician's opponent.</p><p>Using her palm, Stea swatted the spheres aside, Mana's eye managed to notice the Lightning Release chakra crackling around the genin's hand. It must have been at least halfway decent in mastery to manage to swat Mana's jutsu aside like that, the speed at which the genin deflected the attacks was similarly impressive. Then again, Mana has had enough chances to get impressed by the speed of Stea's smacks before, when they ran rampant all over her own body.</p><p>"On your toes, I see…" Mana smiled.</p><p>"Hmph, you've tricked me, I thought that this jutsu possessed a similar paralyzing effect to the previous one. It would have been pretty dangerous getting temporarily stunned with a sword-wielding rabbit right beside me…" Stea sighed uneasily. Encasing her palm in enough Lightning Release chakra of enough intensity to deflect Mana's jutsu must have costed even more chakra than the magician spent using the jutsu in the first place.</p><p>"It's in the name and the job description", Mana smiled, teasing her opponent. As the hand she used to wave her wand around and channel the chakra through it went a little weary, the magician realized that she should not underestimate the chakra she herself spent either. Hers was one of the highest signatures across the finalists, that being said, she used it much more often than most of them as well.</p><p>Mana needed to make sure that every bit of chakra she spent summoned equal or greater spending from the side of her opponent as well.</p>
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<a name="section0374"><h2>374. The Decisive Strike</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I'll move, you follow", Mana exclaimed so that Usuzoku who was right beside her could hear. The rabbit only nodded with excitement.</p><p>With an azure colored blur of the wand, Mana's next effortless hand motion was revealed. Lightning Release chakra surged from the elbow part of her arm before channeling through the wand and firing off in multiple directions in the shape of long and thin lightning noodles.</p><p>Stea did not budge one bit. That was the correct reaction to Mana's "Magic Skewer Jutsu". The lightning surges formed rod shapes before thrusting at Stea's direction, aiming to shock the young woman as they skewered the ground she stood on before getting grounded by it. The body of the Getsugakure genin jerked violently as the mastered low-ranking Lightning Release jutsu surged through her body, the pain of the shock forcing her to lower her guard forcefully but not yet drop down.</p><p>Luckily, a dropped guard was all that Usuzoku wanted, leaving only a spiraling horizontally vortex of snowflakes and dirt, the rabbit dashed at his opponent with his sword in hand.</p><p>"Block Breaker!" he yelled out swinging his massive sword at an upward-diagonal direction from the bottom down, leaving a wide furrow where the sword's tip dragged across the arena floor.</p><p>The white and puffy, cotton fur of Usuzoku was dyed blood-red, the body of the young woman lifted off the ground from the force of the slash flying in an arc upwards before landing further onwards, right next to the entrance to the arena. The crowd observed this in such graveyard-like silence that everyone could hear the tatters of Stea's dress blowing about on her way slamming down.</p><p>Usuzoku took a strong leap back, quickly moving into Mana's guard as the magician was clutching at her pain-ridden ribs, jaw, and liver.</p><p>"She took it all…" Mana mumbled out.</p><p>"Was it wrong, with dis kind 'a opponent ya can't tell, ey?" Usuzoku winked at Mana.</p><p>"She could have coated her palms in whatever she used before. She's shown her Lightning Release ability off before. She was fast enough to dash back and minimize the damage from your blade…" Mana shook her head, observing her opponent in a certain glare of respect and intimidation as the young woman stood up, covering up the giant, bloody gash extending all the way from her right thigh to her left shoulder in a failing manner with just one hand.</p><p>"So is hitting 'er good or is it bad? Who is ta be hit 'ere?" Usuzoku pouted with irritation. Mana had to resist the temptation to focus on that cute pouting in anger face and let her attention waver from her opponent's side for even a moment.</p><p>"It is good, she's just doubling down on my bet. She chooses to get hit so that she could store more damage." Mana nodded in approval. The magician knew that if she was to blatantly praise her partner she'd make him lose attention to his childish flutters and blushes.</p><p>"Is this how you feel now? You poor thing…" Stea taunted Mana. The magician raised an eyebrow, what was her opponent implying? That the level of their suffered damage was anywhere near the same? She was right to some extent, Mana was not someone who could take plenty of punishment and she has taken more of it than she'd like. "I imagine you wish you could do this…" Stea blinked with a tease at Mana's direction before her hands lit up bright green again.</p><p>"Ye ain't doin' dat again!" Usuzoku forced the words out before leaping with all of his tremendous speed straight at the Getsugakure kunoichi, without waiting for Mana's follow-up or distraction. That was foolish but the magician could do little but scold her silly, hot-headed partner by trying to reach out to him. She was too slow for that…</p><p>A ground-shaking slam forced blood out through Mana's ears as the entire ground beneath her feet shifted, a massive pulse emanating from the epicenter of that impact fired off like a hellish cone that reached out as high up as the protective barriers allowed it. The sheer violence of the impact sent the layers of dirt and snow peeling back like the skin of a carved orange, throwing Mana rolling on her bottom backwards as a result.</p><p>The heat was intense, matching that of the rabbit caves easily, if not surpassing it, the force should have totaled the entire arena. Mana felt worried about the well-being of her partner and the audience as she genuinely doubted that anyone in the Barrier Corps had any idea just how powerful of a force her opponent could expel. What if no one was ready for this kind of impact? What if it broke through?</p><p>Mana wanted to raise her head up and open her eyes. The sky had turned gloomy and dark a short while before with the early sunset of the winter but it was still uncharacteristically dark. Something burrowed inside her nose as the magician girl drew breath, was it… Dirt? Anxiety kicked back into Mana's heart as she began burying herself up from under layers upon layers of dirt and shifting rock before the cold winter air finally greeted her nose and allowed her to cough the dirt in her nose out properly.</p><p>Stea still breathed heavily with her fist firmly placed onto the massive crater she had left of the arena. All of the water from the little creeks, all of the wood that was raised by the Senju clansmen in a commendable terra-forming effort… All of it gone. Just a dirt and sand covered hole remained.</p><p>"Zoku-chan…" Mana expressed her worry with a whimper, expecting to hear an energetic response but… Her partner must have sustained too much damage and got forcefully de-summoned back to the Rabbit Caves. For Stea to incapacitate a B-Rank summon with just one punch like that… She must have gathered a considerable amount of damage in those seals of hers.</p><p>"Still think you can take me out before anything of this nature happens to you?" Stea raised her world-breaking fist in a demonstrative gesture, placing it right up to her face and forcing a smile to color her sweaty and bloody face.</p><p>"It was clever to trick Usuzoku into thinking you were about to heal yourself, when in fact you used the medical ninjutsu of another side of the spectrum entirely." Mana wheezed out, she had to admit to herself, as dire as the implication was, even she did not notice Stea's chakra glow changing from salad green to bright blue, the signature color of the Chakra Enhanced Strength technique used by the medical ninja.</p><p>"I figured he was hot-headed during our clash, tricking him was a piece of cake." Stea entered her fighting pose again.</p><p>This was bad! Mana had never seen a damage seal user storing this much damage in their seals. Now, knowing just what kind of wallop Stea could pack with each one of her smacks, Mana was legitimately a bit afraid of her opponent's quick-chop style.</p><p>With a bright blue glow of her hand, Stea dashed right back at Mana, waves of dirt and ground moved from her way, revealing a glowing protective barrier on the underneath as well. Now, with her mind completely focused and all external worries rooted out like weeds in a well-maintained garden. Mana danced around her opponent, utilizing all of the observations she had previously learned about Stea's style.</p><p>That was right. All of the anxiety-inducing thoughts about Kouta and his decision, all of the regrets and grief of Shimo's death, all of the fears of her life and career as a ninja in the Team Hokage being over after this exam, no, this fight… Root out all of it! Tear them out, no matter how much it all hurt or how much it will bleed on the inside, if Mana did not – she'd die on the spot.</p><p>Nausea pulsed creeping up the girl's stomach as she moved far too fast for what her injuries allowed. Keep it down. Push the pain back, persevere! Just keep moving around, keep dodging, keep weaving like it was a fancy knife-fighter that Mana was facing, like she was back at Sun Disc, fighting for her life again with the old man watching her every move!</p><p>"Spear Kick!" Mana roared out, letting her pain, her anxiety fuel that kick as she leaped up and kicked right at Stea's widely extended leg, right in the middle of it, at the side of the knee. Transitioning from a kick into a leg-driving stomp and forcing it as far as it went! Transforming all of the built up chakra augmentations in that kick into additions to her mass and just driving it down!</p><p>Stea screamed out in pain as her right leg snapped, the spray of blood was too overpowering to let the sticking out bone show. Suddenly, the girl's hand moved down to her knee, while the other one grabbed at the large gash covering all of her body that she failed to heal while she was focusing on tricking Usuzoku.</p><p>The green glow of bursting and overflowing chakra from Stea's Mystical Palm jutsu was blinding. It even forced Mana to take a few steps back, before retreating further for good, in fear of her opponent transitioning from healing back to smashing as fast as she did before. Even with her vastly empowered healing ninjutsu, Stea failed to heal all of her damage – bruises and little, relentlessly bleeding scratches covered all over her body. Still, the massive open fracture of her knee and the giant sword gash were both gone completely, replaced with insignificant, vastly reduced versions of their former selves.</p><p>"Still around one-third of your chakra left? It's gonna get a whole lot worse before any rays of light shine through, huh?" the magician thought to herself, observing Stea's heavy breathing and profuse sweating. Mana had no doubt that she was wearing her opponent out but… Could she really weather this cosmic scale storm before Stea passes out?</p><p>"If I let her keep on attacking like this, I won't be able to take in all of the pain, I'll slip up and I'll have to reveal that jutsu. If that happens – the whole fight will turn murky for me. I won't be able to read her moves anymore, not as clearly. I need to read her, one slip up will be all it will take", Mana closed her eyes, concentrating on her surrounding, hearing every pebble roll down the wreckage of stone and limestone around. Hearing the wind scattering dust around in messy clouds and gusts.</p><p>"That means I cannot let her attack again. I need to take initiative and pressure her into spending some more chakra. I need her to heal, to make healing a must, anything less she will shrug off. She's conserving chakra more than I gave her credit for." Mana realized opening her eyes and glancing all over the wreckage of the arena. A detail of a dusty, torn up magician's hat laying about further away made the girl smile. It's been a while since she used that combo, at least since the Forest of Death.</p><p>"I'll have to break a couple of my own rules, I guess, but it cannot be helped." Mana realized as she slowly raised her hand up. Stea was hesitant to respond, she was tired, that was good. Both of the girls were worn out and injured, Stea was not used to fighting injured and decently worn out as she was always showing off how quickly she could heal herself back up. Mana may not have been the most enduring combatant but she was used to taking a bit of punishment, knowing how quickly it all accumulated. She was used to fighting at the very end of the line because she always pushed herself to that point where most gave up.</p><p>This was her turn to attack. Anything else will mean her certain loss!</p><p>"Substitution Jutsu!" Mana yelled out as a pair of shades appeared from her bruised and dirty sleeve, the pair that she had effectively made disappear in the beginning of the battle. With a loud puff of smoke and a powerful popping sound, Mana replaced the pair of shades in the girl's hand with her tattered hat.</p><p>The Konohagakure kunoichi rubbed the tip of her Audra alloy wand across the edges of the hat before placing the wand back into the seals and pulling out a box of steel-tipped cards. With lively energy, Mana flung the box right at Stea, the Getsugakure kunoichi leaned aside, letting the box whizz right by her. Mana saw it – Stea noticed the seals and almost sprained something performing a valiant combat roll to avoid an explosion of steel-tipped shrapnel cards right in her face.</p><p>Much to Stea's surprise, as she gathered herself up off the ground, nothing of the sort transpired. Mana continued to pull out steel-tipped card boxes of different colors, mosaic variations, and weight out of her hat before flinging it rapidly at her opponent, like some unique sort of shurikenjutsu. Stea leaped aside from each projectile with bountiful ease and interest in this curious manner of attack. Had these boxes hit her in the face, they'd probably just leave the Getsugakure ninja with certain discomfort, not actually injure her.</p><p>The more rapidly Mana began throwing her boxes at Stea, the less accurate she became. At some point, her opponent just stood there and let the inaccurate projectiles just whizz past her, scattering all over the battlefield. Stea's eyes were growing a bit gleeful. She thought she was resting whereas Mana was desperately wasting her stamina and her chakra, she was not entirely wrong, finishing this combination would require a decent chunk of Mana's remaining chakra but… It was key for her planned victory.</p><p>Instead of pulling out another box of cards, Mana pulled her Audra alloy wand back out, letting Lightning Release chakra surge down her elbow, her hand and through the wand before the orb at the tip lit up with a charging surge of it.</p><p>"Magic Spark Jutsu!" Mana yelled out as the wand fired off a mostly annoying rather than powerful barrage of lightning sparks at her opponent. The reach and range was quite wide, vastly improved over the time Mana spent honing her old childhood techniques instead of focusing on new ones. Certainly outside the realm of dodging possibility for both of the injured kunoichi duking it out.</p><p>Stea covered her face and shifted her blocks all over her body, protecting from the painful and irritating, if nothing else, lightning sparks that made her stumble back, just to avoid the buzzing flock of sparks that kept intensifying as the technique went on. Using her free from wand-wielding and chakra channeling hand, Mana pointed her extended palm at all the scattered card boxes detonating them to set all of their seals off.</p><p>With that signal, all hell broke loose. Some of the cards unleashed spouts of water, some of them fired off jolts of electricity, some of them launched small fireballs where the others simply blew up whereas others did the same but emitting confetti and streamers instead of an actual explosion. With all of this havoc joined together, the combination concluded with a massive, stage rumbling blast.</p><p>The audience jumped up on their feet, responding to Mana's newly discovered and highly aggressive attacking style. So far she has only avoided the attacks of her opponent and responded to them, leaving the attacking to her summon or just resorting to quick jabs if only to keep her opponent on guard.</p><p>Smoke and quite a lot of heat emanated from Stea's seemingly lifeless body. The Getsugakure kunoichi laid sprawled out, covered in burns and flesh wounds, at places her flesh was torn out of her body resulting in rather gruesome looking injuries. Her impressive and complicated dress comprised of jewelry and fancy embroidering was now just a rag of cloth that did its best to cover up the girl's body in places where the outfit was not singed or blown off. Stea's eyes were closed and her mouth laid open as if she was dead but Mana knew that, after healing herself with that much damage stored in her seals empowering the medical ninjutsu, Stea would not get knocked out or killed by even Mana's most powerful shots. Still, as the awkward pause of staring at her downed opponent went on, even the magician's confident heart began trembling uneasy.</p><p>Then, with a pain-ridden cough and intense wheezing, trying to force the blood rushing into her lungs from her caved chest Stea calmed Mana down by sitting back up.</p><p>There it was… Stea's hand lighting up so brightly with the signature emerald shimmer of the Mystical Palm jutsu that Mana had to close her eyes for a moment as her opponent patched herself back up. Attacking Stea through this intense flash of light would have been close to impossible. Not with any hopes for accuracy, at least. After just a single flash of light, as quick as a ray of sun that traveled showering Mother Earth with its warm embrace, it was done – Stea had completely refreshed herself, save from a couple of grazes of her skin and cheeks at places.</p><p>The difficulty breathing, the rings around the girl's eyes were unmistakable. Mana knew these symptoms all too well, Stea was slowly creeping up to the very edge of her limits, as conservative as she was through this battle: saving chakra on dispelling illusions, only healing when absolutely necessary and only using low ranking healing ninjutsu… The damage seals were inherently meant for more experienced and powerful ninja, they were not an earned ability, she had clearly obtained them by some supernatural means.</p><p>"It's impressive, outright. I can't believe it that you managed to push me to the very end, just like you promised." Stea chuckled with a smile. "There are so many details about my damage seals that I have managed to keep secret, just because nobody ever pushed me to where I needed to reveal them."</p><p>Mana's eyes peeled open, the end of that thought could have flipped the tables completely on her.</p><p>"For example, I'm not sure if you know it but…" Stea started.</p><p>"There is another jutsu that you have in your arsenal, one that you kept secret this whole time." Mana finished her opponent's sentence, it may as well have been a mercy – Stea was struggling to speak as it was.</p><p>"So you knew…"</p><p>"Ever since your match in the semi-finals, your arsenal seemed… Incomplete. Planning around it was truly tricky as I could only imagine what it could be. I thought it was a highly offensive ability as your arsenal of techniques missed something of that sort." Mana admitted.</p><p>"That is correct. Although, honestly, I don't want to use that ability right now. You see, the damage I store in the seals is present in another sealing dimension. You will have no way of avoiding that jutsu and, given how much damage I have stored…" Stea tried to explain. "You may actually die".</p><p>Mana grinned confidently before spreading her hands out. "We both know what will happen once you use it. You were not the only one avoiding a certain jutsu – I avoided the use of a certain illusion of my own just to trick your mind into forgetting about it."</p><p>Stea gasped in surprise before bursting into a reserved chuckle. The Getsugakure genin placed her hands together in a strange and exotic looking hand seal position. "Damage Seal: Release!" she chanted out in confidence and a sort of bitter acceptance of what was to follow.</p><p>Mana's body twitched as blades of invisible force, as numerous as the stars that began appearing in the winter sky shredded her body into tiniest chunks of flesh, all of whom transformed into rose petals upon the technique's conclusion. Carried by a gentle yet cold winter breeze, the shower of petals gathered behind Stea and reshaped into Mana.</p><p>"Flower Petal Sanctuary", Mana muttered to herself upon taking her old shape.</p><p>Having run out of chakra to a rather dangerous extent, Stea fell down on her knees, her eyes closed peacefully as the girl finished her faint whereas Mana just fell down on her knees, clutching at her pain-ridden sides and abdomen but very much conscious.</p><p>"Examinee Stea Tesprea has lost consciousness! The winner of this match is Konohagakure's own – Nakotsumi Mana. Ladies and Gentlemen, the honored members of the Ninja Council, this concludes the finals of the Chuunin Exams!" Overseer Oke declared, from high up, still sticking onto the round walls of the arena as he addressed the audience.</p>
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<a name="section0375"><h2>375. Falling Toward The Finish Line</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tumbling and panting deep, drenched in bloody stench breaths, Mana slowly made her way to the inner corridors outside the arena before placing her back against the wall and sliding down on her bottom. Nausea and dizziness made her press her cold and paled hands against her forehead and the pressure against the magician's eyeballs demanded that she gently caressed the bags that were beginning to form on her face.</p><p>Even when Mana prepared for every causality, even when she analyzed every movement and matched her opponent on the field in both the physical and the mental plains… She just barely pulled it off. Winning was not necessary, just going the full distance would have been fine. It was only at the final moments of the battle that Mana saw that opportunity, the golden canary buzzing by as both girls plummeted to the ground at the speed of terminal velocity.</p><p>Something powerful wrapped around Mana, the magician's eyebrows telegraphed her aggravation with the rude approach but the forceful limbs of her best friend ruthlessly lifted her off the ground and spun her around.</p><p>"You crazy bastard, you suicidal maniac!" Meiko kept on screaming right up at Mana's ear. It was something, which did not help her sensitive and vulnerable state. "You pulled it off!"</p><p>"You did it, Mana!" Kiyomi gently placed her hand on Meiko's shoulder as a signal that the redheaded blacksmith was wise to stop crushing her vulnerable strength with the might that could have juiced the very world like a bag of curd.</p><p>"Excuse me, girls! Please, let us take care of your friends. You can see her in the resting room tonight, or tomorrow, during visitor hours!" The medical staff intervened, placing Mana's weightless and floaty feeling body on stretchers.</p><p>A young woman ran down a scan of Mana using the Diagnosis Jutsu. "She's relatively stable. She's not critical but the internal injuries will build up to a critical state soon. Take her to the infirmary, then to the resting wing of the hospital!" She ordered while the other medical ninja firmly nodded and rolled Mana off.</p><p>The girl's mind kept turning on and off, here she was watching the lights of the Chuunin Exams arena, here she was glaring in curiosity at the dark winter night sky. There were no more stars, grim clouds had accumulated to a large shroud that covered the entire thing, it would probably rain throughout the night… Here she was watching the lights of the Konoha hospital buzzing by, here she was watching kind and masked faces leaning over her and feeling the warm, emerald light shining over her. The refreshing feeling of cold water surrounded her, chilling her just enough to counteract the warmth of the Mystical Palm Jutsu and make the chill feel invigorating and almost soothing.</p><p>She won, not only that – Mana pushed Stea enough so that the young woman could reveal and show off all of her abilities, all of her battlefield strength, all of her supporting care and capacity to help her comrades on the battlefield conditions. There could have been no chance in hell that the Council would not promote Stea to chuunin after that clash of the two. The rest was all in the hands of the Getsugakure kunoichi, the well-being of her people, the ability to provide it and create it with her own hands and make the future of her village better than the one she grew up in.</p><p>To end the horrors she was forced to confront under Mana's illusions…</p><p>"You did good, kid. You're pretty young. You did pretty good though, I've never seen a recent transfer patch someone up as easily and quickly", Mana heard the praises nearby her. She opened her eyes and looked at the direction of the acclaims that were being given out.</p><p>"Thank you, ma'am. Mana and I have had plenty of experience together, I know her body inside and out which is why I have asked to perform the procedure on my final day working here." Kouta bowed his head in respect and gratitude for the kudos that he was being given. "I know the patient's system inside and out, I've healed her a thousand times, perhaps I am even being literal with this statement, ma'am".</p><p>"Well, it's not like she was in any immediate danger… Still, you did good, it will be sad to lose promising hands like yours", the medical kunoichi cheered on Kouta again before walking off to continue her shift.</p><p>Mana looked around, beside her laid Stea who looked completely healed and was sleeping peacefully. On the other side, there was a bald and incredibly pale young woman. The magician took a pair of sniffs before recalling that the smells would no longer tell her anything, she was fairly sure that the patient on the upper left was Vinda though.</p><p>After all, the acid ninjutsu user was the only one in a condition severe enough to require skin treatment as radical as the one her father had received – a complete refreshment of it to where her skin looked completely new, like the kunoichi had only been born yesterday. She was lucky that her acid was not of high enough rank or not an actual Advanced Bloodline, in which case the career of the young woman would have been over, just like that of Mana's father was.</p><p>"Don't stretch around too much, some phantom pain in your gut may still persist overnight", Kouta smiled, Mana had not noticed that her friend witnessed her being awake and had walked up to her.</p><p>"Thanks for helping me again", Mana thanked with an amount of cheer and gratitude that she herself was surprised. It was like there was no longer any bad blood or awkwardness between the two, just phantom pain and great memories of the old times like Kouta had said.</p><p>"That was an amazing fight. If my father had seen it, you'd be pretty much family to him…" Kouta smiled, pulling in a chair and dropping onto it like a sack of vegetables. It was late, he has healed Mana up after his shift. He must have been quite drained after that crazy day.</p><p>"I don't know, wasn't exactly his type of fight, was it? We weren't just fighting, it's like we were… Dancing, you know? It felt more like one of those rap battles from Kumogakure. We were matching minds as much as our fists." Mana blushed, so she wrapped her cheeks in the covers before realizing that it was far too dark for her friend to tell.</p><p>Kouta did not reply initially, he just smiled while the two shared a look together. Just enough light from the corridors outside made way through the glass for Mana to look right at her friend's eyes and for the two to connect with each other like old friends who have been through many hells and made their way through mounts of both salt and chocolate.</p><p>"You're gonna get promoted, definitely." Kouta gave Mana a thumb up, closing his eyes all of a sudden with that gesture. He must have felt the slowly forming awkwardness that was beginning to seep out from them just building bridges with their eyes.</p><p>"It does not matter. I'm quitting anyway. I only fought Stea because she asked me to. Because I wanted to help." Mana moved the covers off her cheeks as she felt too hot. "You know… When I was out there and Stea kept on attacking, I felt really weak. I felt weaker than I should have been, all sorts of attacks kept slipping past me and… I got really scared. It was because of us that used to be, I was scared of what will become and what has already become of us and that fear fueled the fear of failure. It was a perpetual cycle of fear that just kept wrapping around my throat and snuffing me out."</p><p>Mana stopped talking because she had predicted that Kouta would stop her, that he would get sensitive or interrupt her. Get angry, anything. Anything other than reestablishing the encouraging and friendly glare, reconnecting the bond they previously shared. Maybe she did not know Kouta as much as she previously thought, after all the sensitive moments the two shared, after all the walls of their own building they tore down for each other…</p><p>"Then, I just… Ripped it all out. It bleeds, it bleeds really hard." Mana pressed her fist against her chest, questioning if Kouta understood her feelings with just her eyes. Kouta's eyes were not goofy or confused, he knew what Mana was talking about, she could see it.</p><p>"That's too bad. I wish I could say that stopping your bleeding is what I will do but… That's not who I want to be anymore. Although… I'm bleeding too, just a little, I think." Kouta rubbed the back of his head, messing his hair up again. Mana sat up, pouting in pain that burnt up in her gut but continuing the motion after pushing through it. The magician stroke the hair of her friend, fixing it with a couple of motions and settled back down. Kouta grinned with a full-teeth smile before standing up and yawning.</p><p>"Don't leave too early tomorrow. There's this guy who's feeling like a broken mess, I told him to see you. I know how much you like helping people and… You're quite capable of helping him out. If you're going to change the world, may as well do it one broken guy at a time." Kouta waved Mana farewell with a mutual sendoff before disappearing in the dimly lit corridors of the Konohagakure Hospital.</p><p>Soon enough, the Sandman had claimed Mana as the next target of his magical sleep-inducing sand shooting practice.</p><hr/><p>Cold air whizzed past Mana's face, making her ears pop and crack and wildly blowing about her hair. Upon opening her eyes, the magician noticed that she was floating, or rather, spiraling down with no bottom to be seen. The more time Mana spent looking around her, the more familiar faces she noticed. All around her, other examinees of the Chuunin Exams were falling in no particular order or altitude.</p><p>This made absolutely no sense. Just as Mana blasted through one layer of clouds, hoping to see the ground below, all she saw was more oblivion of blue and puffier clouds below. Some of the clouds were dark and heavy, others were soft and loose like cotton. Mana changed her position to see what was falling behind her, she wanted to see where she was falling from. Sadly, all she could see up above were the plummeting examinees, both conscious and lifeless.</p><p>Down below her, Kouta was going down at much greater velocity, Mana tried to somehow make herself arrow down faster than her friend but she failed to do so. After cracking apart another layer of clouds, the magician finally saw the solid ground. All of them were plummeting heading straight for a strange village street. This was no street that Mana was familiar with and it had buildings both familiar to her and ones the likes of which she had only seen in pictures. Several of them were only remembered from Mana's short time in a different universe.</p><p>Much to Mana's vocal despair, Kouta's body smashed into the ground, followed by gruesome bone snapping sounds and showers of blood, the examinees beside the young man continued to bash one by one at the ground. Some of them fell impaled on the large antennae or the pointy structures present on the rooftops of the buildings in the street they crashing down to.</p><p>Mana screamed out, covering her face right before hitting the ground, just a moment behind her waking up peacefully sleeping in her hospital bed.</p><hr/><p>A new rainy day was upon Konohagakure with the festivities of yesterday continuously sinking into the massive bog of the past, soon to be forgotten and replaced by other days just like that. Meaningless to all but the people that laid their lives on the line that day.</p><p>"You're awake…" Stea stated. It was not even a question. The young woman was laying in her bed with her eyes still clapping weak. When Mana had no luxury of receiving medical food pills, back during a mission in the Forest of Death, when she first experienced a shortage of chakra, she was laid out much longer than it took Stea to recover. "So, how did the strongest genin of our generation sleep?"</p><p>"We both know you've made up that title", Mana politely shook away the honor of taking the praise and the honorary name she was being given. "Combat is more than just a ladder, one person being stronger than another. It's all about compatibility of fighting styles and choices they make in combat. Had I faced anyone else but you yesterday, or had things gone even slightly differently I'd have soundly lost that match."</p><p>Mana sat up, feeling better than she had felt in a while. It was wondrous what just one day of professional medical attention and medical food pills could give her. Kouta's hands really did know her body and soul all too well, she had recovered flawlessly.</p><p>"Where's Vinda?" The magician blinked a pair of times, noticing an empty bed where yesterday there was another young woman, resting after nothing less than miraculous recovery from grievous injuries.</p><p>"Besides a case of acid melting her hair right off and a whole new baby-soft case of skin on her flesh, she's good to go. Everyone's leaving the village today, the Ninja Council had already made their decisions last night and sent them to the respective leaders of each village." Stea explained as she also sat back up and walked up to the ward window, only for Mana to shortly follow.</p><p>Rows upon rows of foreigners were clogging the streets in this rainy and snowy day that was making the mud on the streets into a mushy mess that was only lacking the color to perfectly emulate what remains of a massive battlefield would have looked like after a war was finished being waged there.</p><p>"It will be tough adapting to the much emptier streets. I had somewhat grown fond of the foreigners buzzing about and having a good time during the Exams." Mana admitted.</p><p>"Still the pink-shades idealist we first met on our way to sign-ups, huh?" Stea laughed out in a reserved manner.</p><p>"It would be tough loving people and wishing the best for them all if I wasn't", Mana answered Stea's question before the two past opponents turned at each other and bumped their arms, fist to the elbow.</p><p>"Maybe we'll meet sometime…" Stea said her farewells as Mana began walking up to the ward door, she did not have many possessions with her, save for her uniform, her hat and her weaponry and tools.</p><p>"Definitely, your village will be in a much better place by then, I trust their fate in your hands then", Mana nodded before walking off. She still had to meet someone, as per Kouta's request, but she did not quite know whom or how exactly she could help that person.</p><p>"Yo!" a loud exclamation stopped the magician in her tracks right as she left the ward with the intention of finding Kouta, or someone who knew what he was talking about yesterday.</p><p>A familiar young man with an affinity for mocking spiritual people through his path of "Uber-Spirituality" approached the magician. Just by looking at the dull and greyed out eyes of the young man, Mana could tell that he had his chakra control taken away by an accident with chakra augmentation. It was a dangerous power that genin had no business using. They were too skilled for their own good to be wielding it this young.</p><p>"I'm glad you kidnapped me in the Forest of Death, you know what I look like now…" Mana smiled for Buhakim.</p><p>"Nice match yesterday, I'll shave my own hair and eat it if you don't get promoted." The youth congratulated the magician while rubbing his exposed elbow and his bare foot across the floor.</p><p>"I would not like to stack that up on what happened to you for my life, don't worry. You were not too bad out there yourself, fighting a Jinchuuriki must have been quite petrifying." Mana tried to encourage the young man as the two walked further from the wards and across the hospital halls.</p><p>"It was something alright, nothing ever wore that girl… That thing out. I broke myself just trying to make her sweat a little." Buhakim growled quietly, like a wounded animal. "Even if I would have ended up getting promoted, what's the use of it now?"</p><p>"Don't say that. Plenty of inexperienced ninja overdo it, most of them don't do so to the extent to cripple them for life. Their control returns to them eventually with very few exceptions." Mana tried inspiring some hope to the young man, just like so many tried instilling her when Mana was the one feeling broken.</p><p>With a pair of uneasy, deep breaths, the magician realized that it was not enough. No matter how much people tried telling her that what she was going through was just temporary, it felt like they were downplaying the weight and importance of that torture of feeling lost of useless to the world. Those were two feelings that carried the most weight of all with them… What Buhakim needed was a new purpose, a drive to ignite the flame that had gone out.</p><p>"You know, even people without chakra control can still lead others. It's not always your strength on the battlefield that makes the difference, if it did, I'd have lost yesterday. What you have on your hands here is a unique chance to make Uber-Spirituality into something more than just a mockery of what makes people spirited and willful. You have an opportunity to decide what it truly is, most people do not get such opportunities. Once you achieve that, once you find that drive, I can personally attest that your power will too return."</p><p>Buhakim looked on ahead before turning back. He was thinking about something quite hard and looking at the floor before turning back with soulful eyes.</p><p>"Thank you, I was told yesterday that you knew plenty about this and you speak like someone who does. I guess Uber-Spirituality really did leave me, together with my power, and all I need to do is find it again." Buhakim declared. "Vehicle of Disciples, Solitary Awakening and Bodhisattva are all just puppets, they can be rebuilt, once the Uber-Spirituality that makes them move is recovered, they will live again!"</p><p>Mana nodded her head with a genuine desire to encourage the determination she saw burning in Buhakim's eyes to blaze on. Maybe he would go on and pass along that very same flame of determination along to someone else, tying all of those who are lost in a bond of fire that burns hot and wills them to go on. Keep moving, no matter how grave their losses because any fallen temple can be rebuilt as long as the priest finds faith inside of them to place the first stone on the foundation…</p><p>It did not really matter if Mana got promoted or not in the end. She had changed the lives of a handful of people already, people that would go on to pass on that Will of Fire along to the people they meet along the way. These were her first bold steps.</p><p>First bold steps towards changing the world!</p>
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<a name="section0376"><h2>376. Past The Broken Bonds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana pushed a greasy dumpling around the wooden board with her chopsticks. Her cheek was feeling numb to the point where the magician wondered if the imprint of her fist could actually stay engraved in her flesh after such long period of time she spent resting her face on it. Mana was not quite a believer in the old spinster tales but… She switched her hand from a fist to a palm, just in case.</p><p>"That's odd, you usually love dumplings, is the filling bland?" Mother raised an eyebrow, she had long finished eating and had only briefly entered the kitchen to pick up a coat she left resting on the chair.</p><p>"I still love dumplings, it's just… I'm thinking that's all", Mana wanted to jump up, acting like she did not hear her mother coming ever since she ran upstairs to get dressed and was now occupied with minor blitz-chores to occupy the five minutes she had until she planned to leave the home for work.</p><p>Mother clacked to the guest room with elegance, before placing her coat in the wardrobe and returning to the kitchen. She fixed her skirt and her blazer before settling down and pressing her cold hand to Mana's forehead.</p><p>"I'm not sick, mom", Mana growled. She had to admit though, feeling her mother close after spending so much time away from her and in the big and mysterious world, or in the caves of total darkness and scorching heat did feel cushy and intimate.</p><p>"Oh, yeah, big ninja girl… You know, your father actually got sick more than other people. Sickness is an immunity reaction, you know, a supercharged immunity means monstrous flu", she teased Mana while glancing at the clock with just the side of her eyes.</p><p>Mana quickly stuffed her face with the final dumpling, not because she wanted to, as evidenced by how cold and unacceptable the little piece of her meal tasted and how difficult it was to keep down. The magician just barely fought off the instinct to sip some of the soy sauce down just to wet her palette a little and help it down.</p><p>"Don't worry, you were amazing out there, you'll get promoted. Or do you not want that anymore? It's tough to tell with you…" mother teased. The lack of time remaining for family matters made her approach the matter in a much blunter manner than she'd have usually done it.</p><p>"I was not the last one to complain about me resuming my training…" Mana snapped back at her mother. Almost right after the sparrow had left the nest, she felt a bit rude for the manner it came out and wanted to apologize but… Somehow, the timing for apologies seemed wrong. What was wrong with her? Why did she keep offending people she loved like that recently? Or was it longer than just recently? What if she spent more time being blunt like this than she did how she wanted to behave?</p><p>Did that mean Mana was blunt like that, no longer what she was raised and taught to be?</p><p>"I just wanted you to be happy like all parents do. If being a chuunin, like your father, will make you happy, so be it. Granted, I have trouble imagining you playing a role in snuffing people out and spying for the village. This is where things get serious, you know…" mother jumped up and fixed her clothes again.</p><p>Mana did not reply, after one final look at the clock, mother began slowly collecting her immediate possessions, like her handbag and the like, and leave. Somehow this felt… Wrong.</p><p>"Mom", Mana raised her voice up, mother's scarcely blushed face appeared in an odd angle from a side of the kitchen doorframe. "How is the café doing?"</p><p>"Just great, with the influx of foreigners we really made a huge profit. Maybe one day you can just actually retire and I can keep you two safe and strictly under my supervision, a girl can dream…" mother's eyes eased to a degree of devotion and a spice of affection before the woman ran off.</p><p>Knowing what Mana knew about mother's history with the village and her family it was not tough to understand why mother felt like she felt. She did not want Mana serving Konohagakure, the village that played a hand in the extinction of her "people". If there even was a "people" as the Wandering Ninja were more of a social group than a "family". To her, Mana being a tool in the village's disposal would have felt too close to a complete subjugation and surrender from her part.</p><p>Getting into mother's shoes was elementary to a degree it was scary. Had Mana lost her entire family due to the decision of an establishment, the last thing she'd like in her life was to marry a member of that establishment and then have her child serve that establishment. It just felt so… Prideless and submissive. Two things, Mana knew, her mother was not.</p><p>With a deep sigh, Mana stood up and washed the wooden board under a running stream of water, followed by washing her tools and running up to get ready. Her preparations were interrupted by a loud bang on her door, in her mad dash Mana ended up leaving the house without her hat or all of her equipment, she didn't completely finish getting dressed, leaving all of her more detailed and fancy accessories laying on the bed untied, as they were placed by Mana earlier.</p><p>"That was a heck of a match". Hanasaku commended Mana. There were no hints of anything negative or somehow belittling, then again, the magician doubted someone as blunt and simple-minded as Chestnut Hanasaku even had the capacity to bite verbally as elegantly and subtly as many of her friends and enemies could. If her sensei disliked anything she barely even cared about it to keep watching, she either punched that thing until it disappeared or just left the room.</p><p>"Oh, so you watched it that long?" Mana felt both impressed and humbled simultaneously. "I had thought someone of your caliber would have gotten bored and left… Wait, you weren't in the Ninja Council, were you?"</p><p>"No, Ninja Council requires more than just strength. It's as much about perception and analysis as it is about the experience. Strength is only optional with that group…" Hanasaku shrugged.</p><p>"You're early, that's unlike you, Hokage-sensei", Mana felt a bit uneasy about calling Chestnut Hanasaku "sensei" again, she always did after the woman voiced her displeasure with Mana's involvement in Team Hokage but more recently, the chestnut-head appeared to have no problem with that word or any of its implications.</p><p>"I just… Wanted to get something straight, before Kiyomi joins us", Hanasaku sighed.</p><p>That was so unlike her! Even if this was the basis of social scheming, such elementary social strategizing could have only come from her experience as the Fifth Hokage. Mana was almost curious as to what exactly was so important that the Lady Fifth wanted her to know but keep secret from Kiyomi.</p><p>"Your performance was impressive, you beat someone much stronger than you, that's pretty cool. Thing is… I may respect you but…"</p><p>"You don't trust me, still", Mana completed the sentence for her mentor. Judging from how Kiyomi described being trained and participating in missions with this woman in the roster, she would have been in for a whole lot of that, if the course stayed the same.</p><p>"Yeah, I'll give you more recommendations than I can count to, it may not be that many but… Kiyomi and I go way back, we're more than just student and mentor, we're basically family. I've not had bonds like that since… Little Bro and Misu".</p><p>"It's okay, really. I plan on quitting anyway, focus on my magic shows." Mana mumbled out captured by shyness and embarrassment teamed up in one nasty group of feelings.</p><p>Mana looked up to Hanasaku. Lady Fifth was definitely a respected mentor of Mana's, an example of what a remarkable kunoichi was, even with all of her simple human flaws. Being told by such a person that they distrusted Mana and, given all that happened and how long ago it did happen, that they may never trust her again was discouraging and crippling.</p><p>"Oh, that's too bad. I think you could have become a truly amazing ninja if you kept going." Hanasaku replied with surprising honesty and straightness. The anger and resentment that the woman first looked at Mana with, when the magician woke up in the hospital after fighting the Imarizu was gone without a trace. Just a hole and the shattered shards of trust remained.</p><p>"For all it's worth, I do respect you, Hokage-sensei, I think you'll be the best for Meiko and Kiyomi and the future generations. I could not have asked for a better mentor during that tough time of having lost Tanshu-sensei. I'm glad to have had the chance to meet you", Mana tried to speak with the same carelessness for the consequences and implications that it may summon and honesty that was present in Hanasaku's voice whenever she spoke.</p><p>"Are you implying that Kiyomi won't get promoted?" Hanasaku winked at Mana with a teasing question.</p><p>"Not at all," Mana shook her head with gentleness, she was clearly misunderstood in what she intended to say. "I just know that it does not matter if she does end up getting promoted, or not, you two will always remain sisters for life."</p><p>"Oh, you seem to have gotten the hang of our bond", Hanasaku looked away to greet the approaching Yamanaka teammate with a warm smile.</p><p>How could Mana not get the hang of it? After all, she once wanted to share that very same bond with her teammates. When she felt alone, when she felt far from home. She wanted to look at Lady Fifth as she looked at her mother, she wanted to look at Kiyomi like she would have looked at an older sister, if she had one, an epitome of beauty, strength, and wisdom. She wanted to look at Meiko as both her best friend and her sibling too…</p><p>It did not appear too much to want back then but… Maybe it was. Maybe those bonds were occupied and in order to obtain them, Mana would have had to sever old ones and step in between their ruins. That was simply not the kind of person Mana was, or ever aspired to be. She would rather spend her life a wanderer, sad and alone, as long as she could see other people all bonded and happy, while she wandered on, from one family to another, doomed to never find a place of her own.</p><p>"Hey, Kiyomi! Got a good feeling for us…" Mana grinned with a teary smile as she raised her fist for a bump.</p><p>"Awww, you little softy, of course you do, after the match you had…" Kiyomi hugged Mana, leaving her extended fist hanging before it withered away into a soft and weightless mess of fingers and hand-flesh.</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi, Mana and Hanasaku were the last three to arrive at the Hokage's office. By that time, all of the other Konoha genin and their mentors were already grouped up in his office and waiting for Team Hokage so that the hearing of the Ninja Council's decision could officially begin.</p><p>This was the first time Mana had seen all of the participating Konohagakure genin lined up like this. Naturally, none of the genin who did not qualify for the finals were present, even if the number of jounin was greater than the total number of teams, meaning that even if their team did not qualify, the mentoring jounin were still required to participate.</p><p>Dorimi and Shibari, the duo that saved Mana, Shimo and Sugemi were present but standing the whole office apart. Another young woman with dark flowing hair, red knee-long bodysuit, and the Konoha flak jacket was present, as was an athletic looking jounin with broad shoulders and rich hairline both on his face and on his scalp. The only Konoha finalist Mana could not see in the office was Nanaba Aomyaku – given her hearty performance in the Exams, it was surprising to not see here to at least hear her case out. Her letting so much of Seven Tails' influence slip out must have really ticked the Administration off the wrong way…</p><p>"Well, I suppose we can begin now", Lord Sixth noted, seeing Hanasaku enter the office and carelessly nod her chin at his direction. Technically the Team Hokage trio weren't really late so there should not have been any irritation caused. The tension Mana felt in the air must have just been the worry planted deep in the hearts of every genin present there.</p><p>"Alright, I'm not gonna hold you here for long. Going to go straight to the point as most of you already know why you're here. There are much more important things I have to tend to today", Lord Sixth stretched his tired neck out before sifting through handfuls of papers and files on his tables. "Once you hear the decision of the Ninja Council – it is final. The roster of the Council was a secret to all except the Council members and assembling them again for a complaining procedure would be incredibly hard, which is why, starting from the Second Hokage, complaint procedures were shafted when Chuunin Exams and the Ninja Council are concerned."</p><p>"For someone who is trying to get straight into the heart of things you're wasting a lot of time", Hanasaku sneered at her superior with a bored pair of eyes.</p><p>"Not all of us wish the cacophony of whining children on our schedules, not all of us have the tolerance, or the number of tables to express our frustrations on, Lady Fifth. Some of us would rather word things in too much detail to avoid having that fiasco of yours on their hands." Lord Sixth responded. There was no bitterness or frustration in his voice. The man was absolutely cold and calculated.</p><p>"Now, Aozora Yushijin, please step forward", the Sixth instructed, Kouta's teammate did as requested, bowing his head and body halfway as he approached the Hokage.</p><p>"The Council was impressed with your show. Perhaps it could have been the fact that there was a noted genjutsu specialist amongst them but they were able to clearly see your talent in the field. For that reason, your value as an infiltrator and a saboteur would be of great use to the village higher-ups. You are promoted to the rank of chuunin."</p><p>The assistant of Lord Sixth pulled out a green flak jacket from a stack in a box and a tanto blade, handing them over to the humble genin who bowed again as he took the accessories of his promotion over from the assistant with courteous politeness</p><p>That was a great shock to Mana. Not because she did not consider Yushijin worth being promoted, he definitely displayed an impressive amount of knowledge and raw talent in the genjutsu field, possibly surpassing Mana in that regard. He also performed a fine fake-out at just the right time to pull off his victory. Still, the magician realized, with some unease nagging at her chest, that she underestimated the perceptive abilities of the Ninja Council and just how much they could see.</p><p>"Nara Sugemi, please come forward", Lord Sixth requested with Sugemi following the request except without the overly formal bowing that Yushijin did in front of the Sixth. Sugemi's eyes were different, they were just as cold and apathetic as those of Lord Sixth when he looked the young Nara right in the eyes.</p><p>"The Council noted your amazing hand-to-hand skills but they were expecting something entirely different from a Nara clan member. You appear to lack the strategic insight common amongst your peers and appear to still focus your approach on brute force, only resorting to strategy when brute force does not cut it for you. Because of that choice in fighting style, the Council advised not to promote you to the rank of chuunin. I have also noticed that you have not completed an actual mission in quite a while, choosing to stay in the Eden containment facility instead. You are free to choose between continuing your containment with an indefinite suspension of your license until the day you choose to return to active duty, or return to active duty as of today and end your stay at Eden."</p><p>"In that case, I would stay in Eden, if it is all the same to Lord Sixth…" Sugemi replied without his face as much as twitching. It was not like Mana did not see the shadow of disappointment cover up the face of her friend but it was not a literal shadow, more of a bad aura surrounding him while his face remained cold and distant. Some would say, a face of a true shinobi.</p><p>"Very well, I will suspend your license, please be advised that it will be terminated within three years of you choosing not to fix that situation and you will require to take the Academy graduation exam again if you will wish to return to active duty in that case." Lord Sixth glared at Sugemi, trying to instill some fear or at least respect for the ninja profession in the young man's heart but the rock that was Sugemi at that point stood adamant.</p><p>"Sugemi…" Mana whimpered to herself, almost breaking the strict line-up by stepping forward towards her friend. With nothing but a soothing look right at her eyes, Sugemi left the office after being addressed.</p><p>She could not believe that her friend would throw his ninja license away like that. As if his ninja status, his rank as an advanced genin with countless missions in his record and powerful techniques in his arsenal meant absolutely nothing to him. What would he do, where would he go? Why did he wish to return to Eden this much? Why would he choose that place over Konoha, over her? Was he that close with Nanaba and Daidao? Did all those days together in Team Oak mean nothing to him since he was ready to just throw it all away and leave it all behind?</p><p>"I know it's tough but please don't do something rash", Kiyomi's whisper reached the magician's ears breaking her out of a desperate and sad train of thought.</p><p>There may have just been plenty of surprises in the hearing of the Ninja Council's decision, as Mana have come to learn from the first two decisions.</p>
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<a name="section0377"><h2>377. Countdown To A Better Future</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Tanko Shigin, please come forward", Lord Sixth proceeded with the hearing procedure. The genin of a goofy face, brown spiky hair and a dopey smile that he barely ever dropped stepped forward. He moved with energy and great confidence in his abilities, his invincibility must have had such an effect on how the young man approached life. Then again, Mana could barely imagine living like that. When nothing threatened her at all, life seemed pointless and dull.</p><p>"You've shown absolutely nothing of interest to the council. Your curious ability is intriguing but as a ninja your mindset is entirely missing the mark of what the Council was looking for when promoting people. Almost unilaterally, the Council chose to keep you in the rank of genin", Lord Sixth read this rather derogatory report with the kind of indifference that made these sharp words register in a dull and toothless manner. Even if this man publically made fun of someone, as long as he delivered his tirade in that tone – the person would be none the wiser.</p><p>"I understand and agree completely!" Shigin laughed out, making Mana raise an eyebrow in an uncomfortable expression. This youth really did act and appear like an idiot. Maybe it was for the best that he had come to acquire this ability of his, that will make him losing his head somewhere impossible.</p><p>It appeared that the Sixth entirely seconded Mana's thoughts, even if he was not quite aware of them as he also gave the young man a curious and surprised glare. He had expected the youth to erupt into a forceful, bordering violent, attempt to convince him otherwise but nothing of the sort had happened and the Sixth looked to be checking if he had heard and seen things right.</p><p>"Very well, Erumo Budoki, please step forward." Lord Sixth proceeded as the young lady took a worried step forward. Mana could sense the sweat coming off of Erumo's body, she could almost hear the intense heartbeat. There was a wedge between the two. Mana was not overly fond of the girl's constant attempts to bite her and Erumo had shown to be outright hateful towards Mana but, at that moment, the magician sort of felt bad for the genin in the same manner she felt bad for a classmate in the Academy when they were called up to answer a tough question in front of the class.</p><p>"The skills you have demonstrated were impressive. The Council noted that as a support-type ninja you have done remarkably well against one of the more powerful ninja in the finalist roster. Those skills deserved praise but they were troubled to see you effectively surrender to your opponent when you felt you have shown enough. A true ninja must be ready to give up their life on the line, not just impress some objective criteria of their own design before giving up, there was a reason why surrender, as a rule, was ruled out. Even if it came through great pain and consideration, the Council chose to keep you in the rank of genin due to your approach in battle." Lord Sixth finished reading the file before closing it and placing it in another pile.</p><p>Erumo's dedication and inner fortitude were admirable as the young woman, clearly weeping, bowed to the Sixth before taking a step back. Waiting a short while before she stepped behind the line of genin to wipe her tears, choosing to hide them under her thick, hue of almond hair. The magician sighed in unease, wondering if she should maybe try and mend things with Erumo, it was painfully clear that the girl needed some company.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana, please step up", Lord Sixth exclaimed, for a moment Mana jumped up in fear, the tone of the Sixth implied he was repeating the request so she just shuffled forward with a careless leap before bowing her body to an extremely submissive degree.</p><p>"The Ninja Council was confused by your public status as an entertainer and first saw it as a conflict of profession. That being said, one particular member raised an interesting case that it could perhaps be utilized in infiltrating other countries effectively. While this idea seeded unease amongst the Council, their prime purpose is seeing ninja as potential chuunin and not focus on judging them as threats to their own national security", Lord Sixth began.</p><p>Mana's feet shifted in unease. Standing in front of her peers while she was being judged was an agitating experience, to say the least. She also could freely imagine the discomfort of the Ninja Council considering her a possible security threat. Seeing how the identities of the Ninja Council were a secret, for the most part, there must have been non-disclosure of information clauses somewhere playing a part. Why else would these men and women feel so uneasy about Mana's infiltration potential as a star entertainer? They could just warn their superiors ahead of time about her eliminating the threat…</p><p>"In any case, the match you and your opponent put up was stupendous in terms of skill, strategy and devotion to both your respective nindo. I can only speak for you, not your opponent, but the Council was particularly impressed with your ability to use summons and easily considered there being no point in keeping you at your lowly rank any longer – you are promoted to the rank of chuunin." Lord Sixth looked at Mana.</p><p>For a moment the two ninja shared an awkwardly long glare, the lips of Lord Sixth shifted around, making his thick moustache brush around in a rather entertaining manner as he wondered if he should say something to escalate this along. For as long as it lasted, the man chose to just let Mana experience the joy of being promoted.</p><p>Mana bowed, repeating the angle and the intensity of her previous bow before approaching the Sixth's assistant and taking the chuunin flak jacket and the ceremonial tanto off of his hands. She bowed her head to the administration servant as she did so before moving back to the lines of the genin without turning her back to the Sixth of his table and chair. Mana was adamant on behaving herself as courteous as possible.</p><p>After the uneasy start between Mana and Lord Sixth, she saw the congratulating glare that the man gave her as a sign that he admitted possibly have misjudged her, or, at the very least, a shift in the possible usefulness of the girl in his eyes. As a past Black Ops, the man clearly valued possible assets for infiltration missions such as intelligence gathering tasks and assassinations. Granted, given Mana's psychological profile and nindo in the file, as someone who wanted his assassination actually done, no leader in their right mind would have assigned her with such a mission.</p><p>"Yamanaka Kiyomi, please come forward", Lord Sixth looked at the gold-headed Yamanaka heiress who took a confident step forward. The eyes of Kiyomi were probably the least wavering and the most mature alongside all of the genin, granted, she was one of the most experienced alongside them.</p><p>"The Council found your match with Tanko Shigin rather underwhelming. Perhaps it was a case of mismatched opponents… Given your clan heritage, the Council had expected you to make short work of your opponent but you failed your attempt at beating your opponent mentally multiple times. While the Council did see some impressive and innovative techniques and experience out there, the performance you gave did not fit what they wanted to see from an esteemed Yamanaka when facing a favorable opponent." Lord Sixth intended to just keep reading before something he did not want nor expect happened.</p><p>"Excuse me?" Kiyomi objected. "The only reason I failed to take over his mind was because his mind was like none other I've scoped before. It was like controlling millions of feeble minds at once."</p><p>"That's right", Shigin chuckled like a hillbilly, "Sometimes when I concentrate really hard, the voices in my head just all start buzzin'!"</p><p>With a cold glare of a man who had ended more lives in his day than one could fit a file cabinet of a reasonable size, Lord Sixth silenced both of the two with just a glare. Mana could feel the Killing Intent seeping off of him like crazy, nothing like Tanshu-sensei used to have but the fact that he possessed it to a sensible extent in the first place terrified her. She had to use every long dug up trick in the book on controlling her emotions to not get completely paralyzed in fear and the man was not even looking at Mana to begin with.</p><p>"For the listed reasons, whether the Council had all of the information on the matter, or not, the Ninja Council chose not to promote Yamanaka Kiyomi to the rank of chuunin." Lord Sixth breathed out easier once the reading and the hearing was complete. With a comforting glance, Mana looked at Kiyomi's shaking fists and her barely controlled from crying face.</p><p>"Promote her, right now" Mana was almost blown off her feet from a tremendous pressure of chakra erupting from right beside her. The magician just barely managed to tuck away her chakra sensory before her heart exploded to a bloody pulp from the world's most intense and early stroke. Chestnut Hanasaku was about to go postal right by Mana's side and the woman looked blood-serious.</p><p>"I can't do that, Hanasaku", Lord Sixth sighed, for someone who was the focus of ire of the most powerful woman in the world whose strength defied all logic or common sense, he was behaving remarkably calm. "That is why I knew that starting bit was integral – I figured something like this would happen".</p><p>"Hanasaku-san, you're behaving a little bit unreasonable here…" Dorimi tried to disarm the heated situation with a friendly smile but he just froze in mid-step closer when Hanasaku looked at him.</p><p>"Kiyomi was one of the most powerful genin in those Chuunin Exams, certainly the most experienced. She barely has failed a single mission while completing missions a genin should not be even taking a part in." Hanasaku was heating up again as her blazing eyes switched back on Lord Sixth.</p><p>"Surely you don't intend to count missions you yourself overs…" the Hokage's assistant tried to speak up before his own windpipe was also paralyzed by a single glare of a woman who usually never behaved in this manner.</p><p>"The members of the Ninja Council that rule over promotions are to remain secret at all times. You can just promote Kiyomi and no one will dare reveal anything or question her rank." Hanasaku glared back at Lord Sixth.</p><p>"You know I cannot do that. This isn't the Establishment Period, we don't just make-up ninja ranks here. The only cases where we promote ninja to the rank of chuunin are once they are promoted in the Chuunin Exams or, in very select few cases, after a notable display of extraordinary skill and judgment. Even in the latter case, the procedure is much more complicated than slapping a mark on the file." Sixth answered all of Hanasaku's heated assaults with calm and collected, if a little irritated, manner. "I do acknowledge the injustice of the Council not possibly having all the information, granted, making that information known to the Council was part of the test, as many genin have shown."</p><p>"Promote her or I'll leave", Hanasaku took a firm step forward, the assistant or the jounin would have stepped in but they were too frozen to make a move. Anyone who has seen Chestnut Hanasaku play around on the battlefield would have been wise to stay out of her way when she was pissed, there was a certain level that no numbers could have beaten, a level that required an equal threat to defeat it and there were few, if any, equals to Chestnut Hanasaku in the world.</p><p>"Hey, Hanasaku-sensei… What are you saying? Stop…" Kiyomi began course correction, stepping up to Hanasaku and grabbing her elbow, trying to pull the woman back but no matter how hard Kiyomi yanked her, the woman did not budge one millimeter.</p><p>"Are you threatening me, the appointed by the Fire Lord and our Council leader of our village, with what you think with your weak mind treason is? You are a Sannin, you can leave whenever you want, Zairyo is barely ever even here, to begin with." Lord Sixth dismissed the woman's threats without a spice of care.</p><p>"Can you afford me leaving? Can anyone you control even stop me if you ever wanted me stopped? What will happen to you and your Fire Feudal Lord when the other villages find out that Konoha has no more Sannin watching over it? Unless you count Zairyo as a Sannin, he's the Sannin of the entire world and you know it…" Hanasaku kept on digging the hole of rebellion deeper. By the point she was finished, the woman was staring at the man's face so close they were inches from touching their noses.</p><p>"You speak of very interesting times, Hanasaku. Times of shadow games and conflict but you forget whom you are speaking to. I grew up and refined my skills serving the village in those same times. I was killing people behind the enemy lines and preventing wars before even Howoku's time. I would enjoy nothing more than for those shadow games to return once again", the Sixth replied with probably the most honesty he had used in his voice since forever. This time, for sure, he was speaking from his heart. "You were Hokage because there was no one to take the seat, you were disgracing this chair every moment your bottom was warming it up for me. As a Sannin, you've paid your dues already so feel free to walk out the gate, I will even come wave you good riddance. Your student stays a genin for at least one more year."</p><p>The atmosphere in the office was so heated that Mana could almost hear it screaming in her ears in a phantom moan for the tension to stop.</p><p>Hanasaku just shrugged, in an instant, the pent-up anger and pressure emanating from her disappeared, just as fast as it has come to be. "Oh well, I tried, I guess you'll have to try next year, Kiyomi." The woman relented, looking at her protégé with sorry and soft eyes. It was like the banshee of physical obliteration that just inhibited her body was gone in a blink of an eye.</p><p>Kiyomi just nodded with a heavy gulp. The rest of the jounin breathed out easier while the genin only began to comprehend what had just happened. It was not tough to see that Hanasaku and Lord Sixth did not like each other, their backgrounds, or the way they behaved as Kage. Still, neither one of them outright hated the other and crossed the line of firing verbal arrows and angry glares from the other side. It appeared to have worked best this way until now.</p><p>The Sixth's assistant cleared out his dry throat and fixed his tilted headband that was beginning to slip off his head. "I-If no one else has any objections, you are free to leave. Business as usual from now on…" he announced as Sixth settled back in his chair by finally pressing his back against it.</p><p>"A-Actually there's something else I wanted to discuss. It doesn't have anything to do with the Chuunin Exams so… Maybe I can…" Mana politely requested some time with Lord Sixth. The assistant nodded and encouraged that the rest left the office at their own pace with a lazy gesture.</p><p>"Speak, Mana", Lord Sixth exclaimed with a tired tone. For a moment, the magician was stunned that the man referred to her with her proper name and did not use either her stage name or the name she was called in the Council – "The Golden Child" which she acquired through sheer luck of being tremendously useful to the village in a couple of affairs. Whereas the Council referred to her thusly due to her remarkable usefulness in the aforementioned affairs, Lord Sixth referred to her that way in a rather demeaning manner.</p><p>"I'd actually like to discuss my retirement." Mana wondered in a timid manner. She was relatively familiar with the laws that governed her own village but the complicated red tape procedures still were not entirely clear to her. It would have been much easier to be scoffed at by a man who barely liked her, to begin with than it would have been to research this matter properly with countless laws and revisions to be researched.</p><p>"If you abandon your duty before the rank of chuunin, it's considered a unilateral termination of your service to the village. It can be done in a manner that does not leave you in criminal responsibility but you would wave farewell to any social welfare you'd receive when actually retiring." Lord Sixth answered with a raspy voice, while he began working on some paperwork residing on his table.</p><p>Mana blinked a pair of time, she hesitated to point out that the Sixth Hokage appeared to identify the case of her relationship with the village wrong but then his assistant intervened.</p><p>"The reason why Lord Sixth referred to your case as being "abandoning your duty before the rank of chuunin", is because you have not yet served the mandatory six months as a Konohagakure chuunin. Therefore, you are a chuunin by the letter of the law but not in this particular case, and this particular case alone, treated as such." The man explained.</p><p>"Six months, huh?" Mana wondered, rubbing her elbow shyly. Had she known she would have considered if she even desired the social welfare and a proper sendoff or if she was fine being released in a more disgraceful, unceremonial manner.</p><p>"Look, Mana, your father is retired with an injury and receiving a rather shy pension for it due to his average rank. Your mother may be a bit more successful with her business venture and, honestly, I've no idea how well your entertainment business pays. My point is – just sit tight for your mandatory six months. As a chuunin you'll no longer be obliged to wash dishes in the name of the village. You may not even see action during those six months at all if nothing deserving your rank comes up. My advice is – do it right and do it by the book, retire honorably with the appropriate welfare. You never know what might happen in the future." The Sixth Hokage advised the magician with a much softer tone.</p><p>The big chair was literally changing people from their core outward. Chestnut Hanasaku became a much smarter and more sensible woman after what little time she served as the Fifth Hokage. Sixth also appeared to act and talk like a village leader who could see when which face was more appropriate to wear when he has spent the entirety of his life living in the shadows and snuffing out the wrong people before they even knew whom they have wronged.</p><p>Mana bowed in a static angle, as politely as she could, before leaving the Sixth's office with a better sense of purpose in her chest. Before her future seemed kind of murky but now she had a date for her service, she had a limit to look up to and there was a way of leaving that life of violence behind honorably, without shaming her veteran father or well-respected mother. That was indeed the ideal way.</p>
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<a name="section0378"><h2>378. The Last Ride Together</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Holding the chuunin flak jacket and the small tanto blade pressed to her chest, Mana carefully descended the Administration stairs and left the building. A wave of curious stares offering brief congratulations rose up from a seldom administration clerk ninja before they returned to their busywork.</p><p>"There she is!" Meiko's loud exclamation reached the magician's ears right after she left the building, making her focus on the gathering of what used to be the Team Hokage. Mana's second official genin squad and quite a fateful one as it lead to her acquiring her promotion. Her victory was just as much the victory of Kiyomi and Meiko as well, even if the two were not rewarded in a manner Mana was.</p><p>From this point on, it would be just Mana managing a quickly put together squad of genin or observing their work with her watchful eye. She was not quite skilled enough to get her own squad of genin, that would have had to wait until she officially became jounin. If Lord Sixth did not keep anything hidden, she'd never even get to see a day of the dangerous chuunin work before she can retire and focus on her magic shows.</p><p>"What were you talking to Lord Douche about?" Kiyomi pouted her lips. If not from the content of her words, judging from her face, she clearly disliked the village leader who oversaw the administrative duties for the Fire Lord just so his royal highness need not interrupt his highly important game of shogi and lavish aristocratic life.</p><p>"Nothing much, just wanted some things cleared up. Why are you guys still here?" Mana wondered out loud, letting her eyes track the entire roster of Team Hokage, Chestnut Hanasaku included stand around the Konohagakure Administration building as if waiting for something.</p><p>"We've been waiting for you, dummy, seeing how you've moved up the ladder, we won't let you leave us without a proper sendoff!" Meiko raised her fist up with great energy and vigor in her eyes.</p><p>Mana's eyes lingered on Hanasaku who just looked at her with soft and motherly eyes, the woman wondered if right now she should even have involved herself in these team matters, given how difficult taking the lack of Kiyomi's promotion was for the woman. The magician wondered if perhaps her team leader would have wanted to spend a day with her protégé alone, instead of spending it with someone she voiced having troubles of trust with.</p><p>"That's right, maybe whatever made you impress the big cheese in the VIP areas will rub off onto these two if we have a relaxing day while those guys in the Administration struggle with the aftermath of the Chuunin Exams", Hanasaku smiled while maintaining an eye contact with Mana. Something the magician knew would have been impossible if the woman still felt any resentment towards Mana at all. Chestnut Hanasaku was simply too simple-minded to act one way and think another.</p><p>"I see, alright then, I would just like to return home and place all this stuff back, if it's okay with you guys, I mean, if not, you can just go ahea…" Mana tried giving her friends an option to ditch her but Kiyomi pulled the magician in by her elbow. That was rather odd of her to do, usually the manhandling and the more aggressive side of friendship was more of Meiko's forte.</p><p>"Who do you think you're kidding? Sure, go put all of your baggage back home and let's go out for a girl's day out! We haven't had that in… I think… Ever", Kiyomi curiously rubbed her cheek and her chin with her long and elegant fingers.</p><p>Mana's lips couldn't help but turn a bit to the upward side as she nodded, feeling rather pleased with the prospect of spending a nice day cooling down with her friends before resuming her training for six more months, just in case she'd need to put those skills to use at one point or another.</p><p>Due to Meiko's request, Mana gave her flak jacket and tanto for Meiko's inspection. The blacksmith examined the jacket first, spreading it out and poking around it, inside and out. She went full one eye closed and tongue sticking out inspection mode, which was always amusing to witness.</p><p>"I guess this jacket could offer better protection than what you usually wear. It looks like it has tiny bits of chakra weaved inside every thread, which could cushion a nasty blow or stop some projectiles without chakra imbuement." The redhead shrugged before handing the magician the jacket back, only for Mana to carefully fold it into the roll she received it in.</p><p>"I'm not sure if there's any point in wearing it, I've grown somewhat accustomed to my magician's uniform, really." Mana sighed, "My style was always not getting hit in the first place".</p><p>"Could've fooled me", Kiyomi teased the magician by poking her in the kidney area with her thumb making Mana jump up in alarm. She completely let her guard down around her team, honestly, what use could there have been to try and keep it up with Chestnut Hanasaku strolling beside them.</p><p>"This blade's not half bad. It looks to me like it could do some damage to an inexperienced opponent, elementary chakra resistance would shatter it, most likely, though. With a little tampering, I could make this baby into something to be proud of!" Meiko whistled out before juggling the short sword around making Mana freak out after the blacksmith tossed the unsheathed blade her way and catch it in its sheath through a mixture of luck and skill.</p><p>"It's not really meant for combat. Only support-type ninja actually use it offensively, to most it is more a ceremonial tool. Seppuku and some executions are performed with these, you know. By giving this, the Hokage gives you the honor of leaving this world without dishonoring your family name, this ceremonial blade informs you that an honorable suicide ritual is an option for you know – you have some honor to lose." Mana politely explained the meaning of the ceremonial aspect of the blade that the chuunin was given. While Meiko was a beast of a swordsman and an amazing prodigy of crafting tools, she appeared to think that the village was just handing out shoddy tools just for the sake of it like welfare.</p><p>"So… What's next for you guys? I don't mean today, I mean in terms of your service…" the ninja magician raised an uneasy topic straight out of the gate.</p><p>"Eh, Chuunin Exams were supposed to be a piece of cake, right? This year was just really difficult, compared to the other years, that means all we'll have to do is get a third stand-in member and drag his or her sorry butt into stardom", Meiko rocketed her fist up the sky, even lifting her feet off the ground in her joyous proclamation of this plan.</p><p>"Pretty much", Kiyomi nodded, looking a bit sour due to what had just happened in the office but it did not look like she was discouraged or depressed or anything, just a tad bitter. "Not sure where the next one's gonna be but we're sure as hell not waiting until the party comes back to Konoha, we're chasing after it and grabbing the bull right by the horns".</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi bumped their fists with Meiko running full hype-mode and Kiyomi looking somewhat reserved but both girls adamant about their future. Ironically, their failure in the exams may have only made them more determined to press on forward, whereas Mana's success made her more resolute about quitting.</p><p>"You guys going to come in?" Mana invited her team to visit but the three shook her heads. Mana and Meiko shook theirs in sync, starting and ending almost at the same time, whereas Chestnut Hanasaku looked like her eyes were wandering and floating somewhere in the horizon of endless woodland and took a while to catch on to the fact she was included.</p><p>"Little Bro Tanshu was a bit familiar with your father, me - not so much. It would feel a bit awkward…" the woman quickly sowed together a reply due to sheer necessity. "We'll just wait outside."</p><hr/><p>Mana was not surprised one bit to see her father home, his daily replenishing of his miraculous over the counter pain herbs was completed and while the daughter was not entirely approving of the manner in which her dad was dealing with his pain, she did acknowledge how he was more chipper during the day and slept much easier when his hands did not relive getting fried to a crisp every passing evening and night.</p><p>"Well, what do you know!" Father exclaimed in joy as he spread his arms out wide. Mana blinked a pair of times before throwing the tanto and the flak jacket aside and running in her father's arms. A bit too late she realized that it was careless of her as the man may have been in pain and unable to answer her hug but the rather strong pressure at her back informed her otherwise.</p><p>"I made it, dad!" Mana shrieked out after placing her face and teary eyes against her father's shoulder so that the sound of her excited screams could be muffled somewhat. After she parted herself from her father, the magician's eyes calmed somewhat.</p><p>"I'll still have to spend six months on active duty before I can retire, with welfare and all. I was not sure if we needed it but… Mother works hard to support us and sometimes missions take me really long to complete so the payment, while great, is not quite stable. The magic shows can also always go wrong, you know." Mana kept on talking before father broke into laughter.</p><p>"You don't have to justify welfare, kid. Retire properly, by all means. You'll get the bare minimum of recognition for your service but it is better than nothing. At least you will be remembered for something by someone. You'll have left a record that will not need to be shamefully skimmed through, something your successors will add on to." Father calmly replied with happiness gleaming from his gestures and face.</p><p>"And before we can talk about my "successors", I'm off!" Mana jumped up with her cheeks bleeding red before bursting out the door.</p><p>She did not even get to hear what father told her on her way out. Could have been something important but it most likely was just something fathers said before a fun night out with one's sisters in arms. This iteration of Team Hokage may not have rustled any feathers, it did not appear that any of its members will be quite Sannin material, leave alone Kage. Mana will retire eventually, Meiko will achieve great things but, given her skill set and mindset, likely not epic. Kiyomi's fate was leading her clan as a clan head, very few clan heads became Kage due to a possible conflict of interests and their devotion to clan affairs made devotion to missions and service complicated.</p><p>Still, these three were Mana's team. The treasured part of her life she would always remember!</p><hr/><p>"So, what are our plans?" Mana enlivened the colorless waiting party by letting her friends know she was done with the brief visit home.</p><p>Hanasaku looked at the watch on her wrist and up into the sky. "Well, right now we've got about nine hours until everything except nightly establishments closes down", she uttered.</p><p>Kiyomi smiled as she rubbed the heel of her sandal into the dirt before raising her hand. "We should split the day amongst every one of us. That would help us remember each other by who we are by sharing a part of our soul with everyone else. Let's each select one thing we want to do and then we must all do that thing for two hours."</p><p>Hanasaku snapped her fingers, "Right, that just about covers you three".</p><p>"Actually, it covers all four of us", Mana curiously glared at the distant eyes of her mentor who laughed out in an apologetic and embarrassed manner before fixing herself.</p><p>"Right, right, anyway, I don't really feel like making you three do anything. You guys just split the day into three hours for each of you then", the woman insisted.</p><p>"Yeah, Mana was the one who got promoted so she should pick first!" Meiko heartily declared.</p><p>Mana pondered what she wanted to do with all of her friends together but, actually, she could not for the life of her put her finger on it. There were things she wanted to do, sure, but they all seemed either too specific and niche to her exactly or they were too bland. The last thing that Mana wanted was to bore her team on her last day in it.</p><p>"If you guys don't mind, I'd like to skip my turn. I would appreciate being last, maybe?" the girl squirmed in discomfort. Kiyomi and Meiko looked at Mana with some objection in their eyes but then Kiyomi's eyes changed into a more understanding glare of an older sibling.</p><p>"Very well, I shall then accept the responsibility of telling all of you what to do!" She declared after sighing in disappointment. Judging by the devilish horns that Mana could almost make out on Kiyomi's head and her outright impish face when she uttered those words, Kiyomi's activity would have a hidden agenda or be something pretty nasty. Not that Mana would have objected to pretty much anything that the blonde could have suggested.</p><p>"We will go shopping for clothes!" Kiyomi declared. "But just like that time when Hanasaku-sensei trained all of us, we won't just be buying clothes for ourselves, we'll be buying clothes for each other."</p><p>"Okay…" Mana shrugged. So far, this seemed rather tame, given Kiyomi's devilish mimic when she thought up of the idea.</p><p>"I dunno…" Meiko squinted, moving her face right up Kiyomi's as if a wild animal trying to sniff fear seeping out of their prey. "Seems kind of shifty to me".</p><p>"Too bad, you don't have a say in the matter!" Kiyomi pressed two of her fingers right up to Meiko's lips. "Meiko will buy clothes for Mana, Mana will buy clothes for me, I will buy clothes for Meiko, what could go wrong!?"</p><p>"Just because I don't know what you are up to yet, doesn't mean it's a good idea." Meiko kept on forcing air out of her nostrils like a raging bull, desperately trying to figure out the prank that Kiyomi would attempt with this.</p><p>"Oh, come on, it's either this or gardening in the garden in my estate. I trust none of you would like that, as tempting as it is to employ all of you to slave for me for three whole hours!" Kiyomi ground her teeth in a triumphant smile before glaring at Hanasaku. "Sensei can be the ref for what goes and what doesn't".</p><p>"Well, last time I got swindled into gardening for Kiyomi I got in trouble with the Yamanaka clan for messing up their treasured garden and almost sinking her estate in a sinkhole. I second the shopping." Hanasaku nodded with a clearly faked expression of a wise adult. She was most likely just as clueless as Meiko in terms of what exactly Kiyomi's game was.</p><p>"Alright! Shopping it is!" Kiyomi jumped up with a missile containing a fistful of joy fired off into the sky.</p><hr/><p>"I can't believe this…" Meiko walked like a gingerbread man or a depressed penguin, shifting her feet around with her shoulders raised up wearing an actual multi-colored circus tuxedo with stars and stripes, a giant cylinder hat and an oversized rainbow bowtie. "You've bamboozled us all!"</p><p>"I don't see why you're complaining, Mana did agree to switch clothes with you afterward." Kiyomi pressed her lips together before letting them tremble like those of a child ready to cry over a stolen candy did. The young Yamanaka lady had a giant bump on the side of her head, something that would have come up after something hit it with all the might of a crashing rogue planet. "I had a dream… A dream to see Meiko in a frilly dress and you two smashed it into pieces…"</p><p>"You technically did see her in a dress." Mana crossed her hands over her chest, wearing the sunflower-yellow dress with a matching sweater that Kiyomi had chosen for Meiko. "We only switched after the shopping was done out of the respect for Hokage-sensei's decision. You're honestly the last person that should complain after suggesting a bathing suit for Meiko to begin with."</p><p>"Plus, you definitely saw more than you should have seen after the second dozen of peeks into my cabin clocked in", Meiko raised her shaking and covered in pulsing veins fist.</p><p>"That is true, it sounded a little bit too cruel to let Meiko walk around in that in the middle of winter, even if the snowing has stopped somewhat." Hanasaku shrugged with her hands in her pockets.</p><p>"I'm just more confused as to why Meiko bought me a circus tuxedo…" Mana's face soured once the more immediate quarrel went out the window.</p><p>"I dunno, you kinda always dress like a fancy little man, magicians should be bright and colorful and flashy, kind of like the circus. Also, you should tell more jokes when onstage.", Meiko shrugged. "Plus, they did not really have any armor which would have been my first choice."</p><p>"That's because it's a clothing store, Meiko. It's not a blacksmith workshop", Kiyomi showed her interest her tongue while making a nasty grimace at her direction. She had all the reason to tease her friends and feel lucky, after all, Mana had selected a rather nice outfit for her in the same vein to what she usually wore. "You just wait, I'll get you in a dress for good when Team Hokage gets Mana's replacement and we do this bonding day again!"</p><p>Mana looked down at the dirty streets covered with patches of snow. The weak rays of the winter Sun broke through partially from time to time providing some warmth and illumination and making the village, still recovering from the festivities of the Chuunin Exams, look all the brighter and hopeful while spearheaded straight into the unknown of the future.</p><p>"My replacement…" she thought. The magician recalled feeling so uneasy after finding out she was a replacement member in the Team Hokage, replacing two friends that Kiyomi had already made in her previous years of service. She felt so uneasy and unwanted, uncertain if she could fulfill the expectations of her friends and fill that role. She kind of felt bad for the poor genin that would wriggle their feeble shoulders into this team, just like she had done before.</p><p>Will that replacement member feel like an unwanted intruder? Mana certainly hoped that he or she would not. It was not one of the better ways to feel. Or maybe they will be unsure of their place due to the extent of their abilities and mastery over the ninja arts like Meiko used to be? Such thoughts were probably quite hopeless, given that Mana didn't even know who her replacement would be.</p><p>It could have even been one of the genin from the newly restructured old Konoha teams, it was doubtful that a newbie from the Academy could ever hope to keep up with Meiko and Kiyomi, even if their current attires did not quite match their skill.</p>
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<a name="section0379"><h2>379. Expensive New Experiences</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, Mana, you feel like calling it now?" Kiyomi looked at the magician, leaning over to her side.</p><p>The question pulled her out from deep inside her thoughts. That in itself took a moment for Mana to recover from. After having realized that she left her friend hanging on a thread awkwardly, Mana smiled and shrugged, her face irradiated apologetic innocence as she did.</p><p>"Sorry, maybe Hokage-sensei actually wants to take my place?" Mana glared at the team leader again, she was well aware that Hanasaku had opted to not involve herself in the game of her students, instead choosing to preside over it, but she had secretly hoped that seeing Meiko and Kiyomi in their usual antics would cheer the woman up and help her get in the mood.</p><p>"Nah, the only thing I'm up for is a visit to the Shushu-ya. You guys may be emancipated but I'm not dragging a bunch of teens into a pub to get wasted", Hanasaku chuckled, pressing her fists against her sides and spreading her arms out in an almost heroic pose. Only Chestnut Hanasaku could speak about wanting to get a drink in a heroic pose.</p><p>"You wouldn't happen to have a date with someone, sensei, would you?" Kiyomi poked Hanasaku's back with an elbow. The Yamanaka did have a point, due to its mostly adult-focused clientele, Shushu-ya was a popular dating spot, particularly for couples who were well past the first date stage.</p><p>"What are you talking about!?" Hanasaku chuckled throwing a lazy smack, aimed across Kiyomi's back. Wisely enough, the Yamanaka dodged it just in time. After spending so much time with the woman, Kiyomi was a fair judge of how unpredictable the strength of the Sannin was.</p><p>"It's Meiko's turn, in that case. I guess it's Yakiniku-Q for us", Mana sighed while looked at Meiko who was just grinning with a dumb face while watching Kiyomi and Hanasaku talk about the team mentor's secrets.</p><p>"How do you know that?" Meiko objected before pouting and blowing out her cheeks as she was deep in thought, trying to prove Mana wrong by coming up with a superior alternate place to spend her allotted time in. After a short while, the blacksmith folded her hand and breathed out a heavy cloud of dust, air and frustration, one she had held pressed inside her lungs for quite some time. "Fine… It's Yakininku-Q".</p><p>The trio that accompanied Meiko laughed out together. Mana found her eyes warmly growing fond of the time she was spending with her friends. She loved by how easily she had read Meiko, why would she not? After all, the two things that the redhead loved most of all were constructing and eating and she had not done that last one in quite a while. Most ninja could be without food for an extreme amount of time, Meiko was just of the kind that chose not to be.</p><p>Yakiniku-Q was decently crowded, as usual. Mana exhaled in frustration after remembering the smells of meat, all the exotic sauces and spices from all around the world being prepared in the widest array of ways, the aroma of flowers, cooked vegetables, and smoky cheese circulating in the air and softly caressing one's nose with a lover's touch. Now the only thing pulling on her nostrils was the nihility of stuffy air inside, a costly, yet the least so, price for her improved sensory abilities.</p><p>It was at empty moments of lowness like this that Mana enjoyed recalling the fact that she was by far nowhere near to being a food consumption aficionado, she just liked preparing it. What actually did aid her in pushing away the vile price she had paid for power was seeing Meiko drooling all over her flashy circus tuxedo and continuously tumbling over her large boots and losing her cylinder in the process while she made her way to the table.</p><hr/><p>"Ewww! What's that?" Meiko shriveled when observing the sticky crawfish in Mana's plate, the poor thing looked like a zombified yet still remarkably fishy version of itself. Looking quite dead with pale and empty white eyes but retaining its dark, lake-green color while its shell appeared to behave more like a dry potato and crumble upon the first poke of one's utensil.</p><p>"It's shellfish prepared in the acid of the slugs of the Shikkotsu Forest." Mana smiled before she raised the exceptionally dead carcass of the crawfish and slurped the oozy remains from inside its crumbly shell, leaving the remains to collapse into dust that, Mana knew from bitter experience from her youth, tasted like wet sand.</p><p>"Is it good? It looks really atrocious, which means it must be good!" Meiko sobbed like a child looking at Mana gulping the slimy mass down her throat and closing her eyes to appreciate the taste. Despite it sliding down her throat rather heavily, the delicacy was a long requiem of what Mana once used to taste when consuming it.</p><p>"It is. I consider the acid of ninja slugs to be the best marinate solution." Mana grinned. It was a deceitful smile, the painfully absent sense of smell also came with an unpleasant side effect of robbing the magician of more than two-thirds of her taste reception. Things tasted severely different to her from that day on, only the most profound tastes ever registered on her scale whereas everything she used to love as a child and young teen tasted like cardboard.</p><p>Eating no longer felt like an enjoyable experience, as little of it as Mana did, it was more a mandatory ritual of self-preservation that brought the magician no pleasure whatsoever. At least when she tasted something as vile-smelling and exotic as shellfish prepared in this special solution she could feel remnants of what the food would have tasted like had she retained her senses intact.</p><p>"Wow, Mana, I never took you for a savant of food…" Kiyomi looked at Mana with concern. The magician pushed the plate off her side suggesting that this one crawfish was as much as she could handle. Meiko looked at Mana's emptied plate, with only the dust of the crumbled crawfish shell residing in it and whined out.</p><p>"I want it!"</p><p>Sensing opportunity for profit, the waitress appeared by Meiko's side almost immediately. Mana had to give Yakiniku-Q credit, this time the establishment was far better equipped and staffed to handle Meiko's legendary appetite and capricious eating tendencies.</p><p>"I want that! That molten crawfish thing!" Meiko declared by shooting her fist up into the sky.</p><p>"It will cost you, ma'am, we are getting our shellfish and marinate solution from the Shushu-ya and preparing them or reselling them here." The waitress nodded her head, warning Meiko that what she was about to order was quite expensive and to be eaten in smaller quantities.</p><p>"I'll have to agree, don't overdo it. The taste is also quite overpowering so, even if you manage to stuff it all down after the multiple helpings of barbecue you've had, your appetite will fade away after the first few contacts of your tongue with the goopy flesh of the shellfish." Mana seconded.</p><p>"Whatever, I want all of it! Mana makes it sound so appetizing!" Meiko pouted her lips, smacking the table with surprising restraint as the thing did not as much as flip over, let alone break, as was usually the state of affairs with Chestnut Hanasaku or her more physically gifted student.</p><p>"Very well…" the waitress sighed before disappearing gracefully, dancing around the crowded tables like a swan before reaching the kitchen.</p><p>"That's not what I meant at all!" Mana objected, barely managing to keep down her instinct to erupt into laughter as Meiko once again completely took her warning the wrong way. "The acid of the ninja slugs is very potent, the most powerful slugs can melt away even B-Rank ninja in mere milliseconds with the solution, it is also overflowing with chakra stored in the slime of their fat bodies. Granted, the solution used here is not the offensive type acid but a largely neutralized mixture but…"</p><p>"Ugh, stop it Mana! I can't take it. I wanna try it even more now!" Meiko pressed her large hand against Mana's face, shutting not just Mana's mouth but covering over two thirds of her face.</p><p>"This can only end in disaster." Kiyomi shook her head.</p><hr/><p>While the magician seconded the worries of her high-blooded friend, she had to admit that she would enjoy future visits to Yakiniku-Q after finding out that they were making Shushu-ya's more exotic menu items available in their menus as well, albeit with a bonus to the price as greasy as their barbecue. Shushu-ya had a reputation as an adult-oriented restaurant which lead to kids that enjoyed liquor sweets or the more exotic recipes that Shushu-ya offered having difficulties treating themselves.</p><p>"Ugh, I wish I had not eaten so much of it… The taste was so authoritative and the dish was so stuffing!" Meiko shrieked out before lavishly sprawling out in the seat making Kiyomi turn aside before realizing that Meiko's newly redefined boundaries of personal space were much to her liking, after which case, she playfully acted offended but began moving in closer to her friend bit by bit.</p><p>"There…" the waitress provided the check with a devilish smile.</p><p>"I don't suppose Mana's preferred activity of the evening is washing the dishes for a thousand years." Chestnut Hanasaku tsked after looking at the cost of what the great red-haired demon of consumption had just devoured.</p><p>"For this price, I'd have to do missions for my entire lifetime and then my grandchildren would still be indebted…" Mana exclaimed in shock after glaring at the small sheet of paper that was now by far the largest roadblock in her team's path.</p><p>"Meiko, you gorgeous idiot!" Kiyomi smacked the blacksmith at the back of her head before rubbing and dragging the sharper parts of her fist all over Meiko's scalp but the redhead refused to defend herself from this righteous punishment. "After we pay this up, I won't be able to look at a plate for my entire life! We are genin, we may end up having to wash dishes for the next foreseeable year! We're so dead!"</p><p>Mana rubbed her forehead. This felt like the time that she had to do something. She could recall once spending her time during a training holiday at the Yakiniku-Q outside tables after Tanshu-sensei had left for the Kage Summit but before she had found out the terrible outcome of it. She knew that one of the waitresses that worked here was a fan of her shows. She did not know what to do with the two clashing facts of the debt and the tremendous love for magic that the staff of Yakiniku-Q had but… Something had to be done.</p><p>If nothing else worked, well, nothing quite united parting friends like mandatory menial labor.</p><p>"Ma'am, we have a big problem with…" Mana started talking, she was far too embarrassed to admit the problem and the surrounding noises of people interacting casually collided into a cacophony that completely muzzled her speech.</p><p>"Wakizashi Meiko's table, right?" The woman sighed in unease. The feeling in the woman's eyes was not horror, it was more akin to slight irritation, almost like this was not the first time that Meiko caused the establishment logistical and financial issues. The fact that the woman knew Meiko's name only added to that assessment. "The price of the Shikkotsu shellfish is too much?"</p><p>Mana's lips turned to the side, the child in her chest kept trying to pull at her strings and try to lie, wriggle about and deny any responsibility. Luckily, Mana had paid her inner child no mind for the longest time now.</p><p>"Uhm… Yes, unfortunately. Even if one of us was allowed home to get more money, I doubt that any of us, even Hokage-sensei, would be able to get this much money. I'm not sure if you know but… I do magic shows downtown, maybe I could perform here to attract more customers or give your restaurant exclusive rights to ads or something?" Mana rubbed the back of her head, ruffling her wild black hair erratically.</p><p>"I'm… Really not the person you'd need to talk to about this sort of thing, I'm just serving here", the waitress appeared to be getting just as uneasy. This was a good sign, even if she was not important enough, Mana's suggestion was alluring enough, which meant her brand was strong enough, for the woman to not dismiss the opportunity outright.</p><p>"Ladies, I have accidentally overhead your conversation." A formally dressed, tall and well-aged man stepped in. "I may have a solution that will satisfy both of you."</p><p>Mana did not like this. If this man was just a kind soul, he had no idea what type of sum he is walking into, that will just make this situation less and less stable. If he was rich enough to cover Team Hokage's debt, he'd likely ask for something just as heavy in return. An unfitting outcome to the Team Hokage's last ride together.</p><p>"Are you planning to cover Sorceress-san's debt?" The waitress sighed in ease. She clearly liked this development, her eyes also appeared to be familiar with the man as they looked at him with similar closeness as the woman looked at Meiko with. This one must have been a regular in this place, but to what end?</p><p>"Well… Not really but… In a manner of speech, I suppose." The man countered. Mana knew that face, that subtle twisting tongue, it was the tongue of a man who had something to hide. She had met enough of those in the years she's worked as a ninja, most of her co-workers were just this type of people, it was a trait of occupational excellence so it really could not have been helped.</p><p>"Wait a second, Sir, do you work for Hanada Katsuo?" Mana stepped in. The last thing she wanted was to be somehow indebted to that vile man again after cutting all ties with him so effectively.</p><p>"Ummm… Well, this is not the correct question, in a manner of speech, I, of course, do. But… In this case, it isn't quite relevant as to why I am here." The man began wriggling again, like a worm. And yet… His stature, his speech and tone were oddly not worm-like, Mana could read that the man was being very foreclosing and merely caught by a barrage of wrong questions. In that case…</p><p>"Before I ask you to explain yourself, please tell me one thing. You do not have ties with the mysterious nukenin who is, for some reason, interested in me and may be related to the disappearances around the village?"</p><p>"That one I can shut down very firmly. I do not know what you are talking about, my business is strictly related to other legal and physical persons residing their interests solely inside the walls of Konohagakure." The man looked relieved to have finally gotten the chance to speak clearly, without revealing things he could not reveal or otherwise incriminating himself.</p><p>"Ugh… I'm wasting my work hours here. Could you please explain if you're paying for Sorceress-san, or not?" The frustrated waitress tapped her foot impatiently.</p><p>"Oh, well… Technically, she will be paying the debt herself but… Oh… Just… Forward the debt to this account please." The incredibly well-spoken old timer handed the young waitress a sheet of paper.</p><p>"Sir, are you aware that forwarding transactions will be charged with an…" the woman tried informing the man of some extra payments but the man just gently silenced her.</p><p>"Yes, please, you will find that the debt and whatever service tax you apply will not even scratch the surface of this account. I apologize for interrupting, but you said you were in a hurry to settle this matter, young ma'am." The man explained.</p><p>"Whatever…" the waitress just waved the sheet of paper above her head before disappearing into the kitchen.</p><p>"What was that all about, whose account was that?" Mana raised a curious eyebrow.</p><p>"Oh, excuse me, young lady, I am merely a manager of finances for a specific client I cannot disclose the identity of. I believe this case to be within both my liberty at controlling my client's finances and my duty to work for her best interests. As of the owner of this account, you will come to know the answer to that question in due time." The man smiled before bowing his head, almost like he implied some moderate amount of subordination to Mana. This gesture confused the magician a little.</p><p>"Well, I suppose I am lucky that you like barbecue as much as you do and happened to overhear this conversation." Mana looked at the man with a sharp glare. Her tone was slow but distrustful. She was being courteous with the man as well as grateful but his secrecy rubbed her off in all the wrong ways, even if it appeared to be duty-bound and professional type secrecy, not a conspiracy-type malicious one.</p><p>"I am afraid you misunderstand, young lady, this establishment merely hosts another one of my clients whose finances I manage. This was no suspicious accident that I overhead this conversation, so please, rest your mind at ease." The man tried to calm Mana down. "You may return to your very hasty friends now if you wish."</p><p>"Well, anyway, thank you, Sir for the… I'm not sure if I should call it a favor or just doing your job. I hope I find out whose account it was soon then. I can't stand mysteries." Mana managed to both be grateful and warn the man all at the same time. The magician almost felt proud of how much subtext she managed to stuff into just one handful of dull toned sentences.</p><p>"Oh, it's just my duty, young lady. For your sake, I hope you don't find that out for a long time to come. Have the best of what's left of this day." The manager of the finances of the mysterious someone nodded their head letting Mana just nod in gratitude again and return to her confused team.</p><hr/><p>"It was really kind of that guy to pay off our debt!" Meiko whistled into the air as the girls wandered the village streets that have already begun to grow dim.</p><p>"Gee, I wonder whose fault it was that we got into that pickle, to begin with?" Kiyomi squinted at Meiko's side, the redhead just laughed with innocence and apology in her eyes, yet her extended palms tried shaking off any remnants of responsibility.</p><p>"I blame Mana, personally. Her description was what hyped me to try it!" Meiko joked.</p><p>"Is everything okay, Mana?" Hanasaku leaned up to Mana's side, noticing that the magician was walking rather quiet and tuned out of the conversation.</p><p>"It's just… With the Chuunin Exams, I have come to forget just how many questions the world around me made me ask. So many secrets all around me, so many people doing so many things for reasons that are a mystery to me and I don't like it." Mana replied, still feeling a bit suspicious of what happened in Yakiniku-Q.</p><p>"Hmph, you're just like one of my brothers. I could never understand them, really. Meiko, on the other hand, I get perfectly – both of us don't care who is doing what and for what reasons. If we don't like them – we pound them. Things we don't understand don't worry us, but people like you are much different. Things you don't understand are things that make you worry the most." Hanasaku rubbed Mana's head, messing the magician's hair but Mana did not mind. This was the first time that the woman ever treated her like an equal student of hers to the rest of the Team Hokage. Perhaps there was no better time for that than Team Hokage's last day together.</p><p>"Tanshu-sensei was like that?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Oh, not Little Bro. Misu of the Vapor was like that. Always bothered what other people knew, what other people were thinking. Always working in the shadows so that his family and friends could live easy and did not need to worry about those things." Hanasaku recalled.</p><p>This revelation shocked Mana to the core. The magician's nose sunk down to the ground and tears started accumulating in the girl's eyes. Being able to relate to the killer of her mentor was not something she ever hoped to achieve. Seeing the magician's distress and how Mana tried to hide her tears, Hanasaku stopped without as much as a warning.</p><p>"Well, it's been a fun and busy day. I'm afraid we'll have to cut it short." She said.</p><p>"What? But Mana still didn't have a turn!" Meiko objected. "She was the one that pulled us out of trouble in Yakiniku-Q, it's so unfair!"</p><p>"Mana… What's wrong?" Kiyomi saw Mana's tears despite her attempts to hide them away to the best of her ability. The magician was never the best at hiding and sneaking things behind people's backs, this made her success as a ninja all the more surprising.</p><p>"It's… Nothing, I just really did not look forward to saying goodbye." Mana made something up. Then again, she was not lying that badly. Had her eyes been dry by the time they parted ways, they would have surely been running in rivers once that time came.</p><p>"I see. We aren't walking separate paths forever, you know. We'll just be working separately for a while until we can catch up to your rank, that's it." Kiyomi tried easing the pain of separation a bit more.</p><p>Mana's feet could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet after the magician tried wiping the tears out of her eyes she noticed that the strong pressure around her arms did not let her do even that much. Meiko had hugged her and lifted her up and off the ground.</p><p>"If someone, at any point, makes you cry like this. You tell us. We'll kick their ass for sure!" Mana could somewhat make out Meiko's smile through the tears.</p><p>"Well. I guess we're off then. Shit, I think Hanasaku-sensei just did this to get to spend more time in Shushu-ya." Kiyomi spoke, her voice was shaking too. She tried to be the big sister but it was clear that her eyes were about to water too.</p><p>The girls bumped their fists against each other before separating and walking their separate ways. This entire day Mana felt like she was not a part of the Team Hokage family, Meiko and Kiyomi just seemed to be so close, tied by more bonds than just casual friendship and kinship of comrades. Chestnut Hanasaku will probably never completely trust Mana but…</p><p>Only walking away from a true family ever hurt this much!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0380"><h2>380. Destination - Shukuba</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sky-wide blue and purple bruise was beginning to fade away, giving in to the fountain of bloody sunlight that squirted from the horizon before stabilizing into a shape of a burning sphere. The gaseous cotton was like a canvas for illustrations of Mother Nature as she performed another masterpiece. The jury was still out about if it would bring a downfall of frost on the land or if something different would define the color palette of the ground beneath Mother Nature's aerial masterpieces.</p><p>Mana had little time to observe the shifting and breaching dawn, her attention was solely focused on a white rabbit of a cottony fur, just like the clouds above her head, except the rabbit's white was yet to be tainted by dirt and blood. Usuzoku was a mighty opponent, once he may have been even mightier, like when the two had first met, she could not have ever dreamed of matching the rabbit in skill and speed.</p><p>Now the matters were entirely different. Even as Usuzoku brought his best, Mana was quite able to, for the most part, avoid getting demolished. Just for the sake of preserving chakra for the day and not to needlessly risk breaking her system again, crippling herself potentially for life, Mana asked Usuzoku to use a bokken instead of his massive and quite deadly cleaving blade.</p><p>That was not to say that getting hit with a hardened wooden sword swung by someone much faster and about as strong as a B-Rank ninja did not hurt or did not carry the potential of leaving calamitous injuries. Yet being hit in the face by wood, as much force as it carried behind it, was much easier to treat afterward than getting dismembered or cleaved in half.</p><p>Mana danced around Usuzoku's quick barrage of hits but she was getting tagged. Every single impact burnt the surrounding area while it temporarily made the point of impact completely numb, only to return with tenfold the searing sensation and a nasty bump afterward. As she was getting hit more and more, continuing to dance around Zoku's attacks was getting progressively harder, just like in the arena with Stea.</p><p>Except this fight was nothing like that time. This was just a game, a pointless sparring session meant to just keep Mana's skills sharp. Despite her being about on the same level as her summoned rabbit partner, she was holding back significantly as her goal was not to fight the rabbit. It was to push herself to her mental limits and then sharpen her willpower. She needed to get hurt, to get cornered and then accept that pain, learn to deal and live with it.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Usuzoku yelled out, the frightening sound of steel wire shrieking like a scorned apparition as it tightly pressed against Mana's wrist, digging into her flesh and breaking her skin but failing to leave anything but a nasty skin-deep cut due to the magician's chakra resistance. Good, her reaction was on point, she managed to toughen up a limb that was previously lacking any augments faster than the pain of it getting hit cruised through her neurons.</p><p>"Double-Draw!" Usuzoku yelled out, using his massive rabbit feet to dash near-instantaneously up to Mana as he drew his blade, driving it against her locked up by steel wire arm at her elbow and her armpit. One hit – a drawing slash with his bokken aimed to break her hand by the elbow, re-sheathe, draw again and thrust it towards her armpit to disable the opponent completely.</p><p>Mana's body burst into flower petals, scurrying away from harm before reassembling her bodily shape farther away. She was not proud of having to dodge the attack this way, the magician intended not to use this jutsu during training. Had the opponent been anyone else, had they been a microsecond slower… She could have relied on her stage magician cred to pull her out from the binds. She could have surprised the opponent by being free before they even prepared to exploit the bound state of their opponent.</p><p>"Yer holdin' back. Dis ain't even fun!" Usuzoku grumbled, sheathing his sword before raising his cute, pink, little nose in the air like a pouty little curmudgeon that he was.</p><p>"This is not about fun. I need to be cornered, I have no interest in an even battle. This is not a contest of which one of us is better." Mana stretched out her tired neck before grunting in pain as she caressed a couple of painful bruises where Usuzoku's bokken made through her defenses. She had to hand it, Usuzoku was even faster without that massive blade, not that something as petty as an eight-kilogram sword would drag the rabbit down any, he just fought differently and the wood was much more difficult to keep up with in partial darkness of early winter mornings.</p><p>"Dat's still me, by the way!" Usuzoku opened one of his eyes, attempting a sudden-death glare on Mana but the magician was so close to him by the time he had opened his eyes up that the rabbit lost his balance and began stumbling back, only to be saved by Mana's sudden finger pincers pulling on his soft and furry cheeks.</p><p>"As long as it lets you sleep easier", the magician smiled.</p><p>"I am, I'm tellin' ye! What's the deal about you getting yer crapper kicked, anyway!?" The grumbler did his usual thing.</p><p>"That's the way it usually is. I fight differently to most ninja. I have morals and goals holding me back. For that reason, I either need to become stronger than anyone else or learn to fight from the position of a hopeless underdog." Mana winked as she took her coat from a damp little stump of wood where it was placed for the duration of the training session.</p><p>"Fightin' without tryin' ta kill can't be dat hard…" Usuzoku raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"It slows you down. Every time I dodge an attack, I see dozens of openings for strikes. Neck, thighs, liver, kidneys, so many pressure points and arteries. In that fraction of a moment, you need to weigh in which strikes will be lethal and which ones will just hurt really much, hopefully, enough to shake your opponent off any dreams of keeping it up. The old man from Sun Disc kept trying to slip in lethal attacks in his training, hoping I would not notice. I guess he figured that once I actually had blood on my hands it would be easier to draw it again and embrace that, he might have even been right. Once blood is drawn, you cannot return to the place you were before."</p><p>"Heh, dis handicap sounds fun, I'll try it next time…" Usuzoku ground his voice soothingly, fighting was about the only thing that made him do so. Something about being able to fight really well-made people really fond of it and excited about new opportunities of testing their mettle.</p><p>"Anyway, I'm off home. Still haven't checked the mail today, left earlier than the mailman dropped by." Mana wrapped herself in her coat, "Got about fifteen more minutes of a magic show to plan out too."</p><p>"What, ain't gonna run to yer boyfriend to get all kissy-huggy askin' him to lick yer wounds?" Usuzoku cut pretty deep. Letting him get as close to Mana as the magician did make him catch on to a pair of things that were like exposed nerves to her, used to be anyway, before Mana tore them out.</p><p>"You don't hit hard enough for that. I'll walk it off." The magician replied with something that was just as likely to make Usuzoku flip the table and jump at her.</p><p>"What was dat!? Dat's it! Next time I'm kickin' yer ass real hard! I'm serious, don't ye mess around da next time, ye'll die!" Usuzoku began grumbling before returning to the rabbit caves, leaving just a puffy cloud of dust and smoke that got carried away by the chilly winter winds in a breeze.</p><hr/><p>Mana did not expect to get summoned to the Administration this early after having the talk with Lord Sixth. It has only been a couple of days and she was already about to be sent off on another mission, in a rather peaceful period, when the villages were cooling down after the rather turbulent Chuunin Exams, no less.</p><p>One thing that will take a lot of time for Mana to get used to was being addressed with respectful honorific of "-san" which she barely ever heard added to her name before. Being a chuunin did grant certain status and warranted respect. A chuunin was a full-fledged ninja, not only by name but by the contents of their character, experience, and skill. Most ninja did not ever surpass that rank and were still regarded quite highly, chuunin was the standard rank of ninja.</p><p>That being said, the gap between a chuunin and what laid further beyond was also much wider. If the gap between a genin, a C-Rank ninja, and a chuunin was a world of skill, power, and speed, the gap between a chuunin and a jounin would have been the entire universe in comparison. When genin just started out, their heads were full of something else, Mana could even recall feeling somewhat hopeful when she and the rest of Team Oak were being tried out by Tanshu-sensei…</p><p>Something made silly people feel as if they knew a real lot, whereas when a ninja grew more experienced, they were made more and more humbled.</p><p>The last person waiting for meet the Hokage in the waiting room had left with the assistant glaring at Mana and briefly thanking her for coming. Sitting down on this chair and waiting for Lord Sixth to call her up all by her lonesome felt so insanely awkward and unnatural. It was almost as if she had messed something up and was awaiting punishment, this was how unnatural being issued a solo mission was.</p><p>"Lord Sixth!" Mana bowed in the respectful and submissive way. She had considered a kneeling greeting, having decided to play this ninja game to the best of her knowledge and abilities for as long as it still lasted, but she was not sure if the Sixth invited her to receive orders or for another matter entirely.</p><p>"You look injured. Is everything OK?" The assistant of Lord Sixth raised the issue by pointing out numerous dark bruises that showed even on Mana's darker than most of Konoha villagers skin tone.</p><p>"I was just training. It's nothing but a couple of bruises and I am ready to do my duty." Mana quickly brushed the matter aside.</p><p>"That's a good answer." Lord Sixth praised the magician, something that she was not quite used to hearing from the man, reminiscing their first meeting, one would have been quite foolish to prophesize the two developing a respectful professional relationship. "I have a mission for you."</p><p>Mana kneeled on one knee as Lord Sixth placed a file on the edge of the table for her to pick up once she stood back up. This manner of etiquette was ancient, genin barely ever observed it, even some older ninja saw themselves beyond these trivialities but Mana, as someone decently read up on historical matters, loved the traditional way ninja received their orders.</p><p>"The mission is not too difficult, that's why I'm sending you all by yourself. It's a B-Rank assignment because you will be handling some secret information and you'll see some sensitive numbers on the documents you'll be looking at out there." Lord Sixth began briefing Mana in the traditional way, while the Hokage deposited the mission file for the ninja to see, it was polite of them to also provide a brief summary of the assignment as well. It was just a proper answer to Mana's highly traditional reception of orders, quite likely.</p><p>Mana picked up the mission file and pressed a one-handed seal to its edge, unsealing the elementary seal used to seal up information that did not belong being feasted on by too many curious eyes.</p><p>"It requires clearance to handle secret information, I did not yet undergo that evaluation," Mana noted pressing her finger on the mission requirements.</p><p>"We went ahead and submitted your file for the clearance already. It's a trivial and quick procedure. All you need to bother about is the mission." Hokage's assistant bowed his head, looking quite proud of himself, it was more than likely that he was the one who pulled those strings.</p><p>"You look disappointed, is there a problem? Anything that might impact the mission?" Lord Sixth raised a suspectful eyebrow.</p><p>"Not at all, it is just not the kind of mission I thought I may see as a chuunin." Mana admitted out of the duty of being completely honest with her superior, more than the desire to complain.</p><p>"These type of missions are ALL chuunin see. You showed remarkable intelligence in the Exams, do not dirty up that impression. You will be making decisions that will impact Fire Lord's finances, this is beyond important because your failure will reflect on me and the village as well. You are long past just washing dishes and manual paperwork in Konoha Police Force." Lord Sixth disciplined Mana.</p><p>"Understood!" The magician relented.</p><p>"Dismissed." Lord Hokage noted a while after he had already returned to his paperwork and moved his mind forward and past the mission he had just handed out.</p><p>Mana pressed her hand seal against the mission file, sealing it up again. Seeing this mission made her feel divided. Something she could not have predicted when she got out of bed this morning was that she was handed an immensely important assignment – it was a village issued mission, likely a matter that rose from the direct orders from the Fire Lord himself. Apparently, Shukuba Town, a small pleasure town in the Fire Country a little bit down the path outside the village had a possible finance leak problem.</p><p>The kunoichi quickly dropped by home to gather her tools and examine her father's seal as well as her uniform and any seals present on it for preparedness. She then quickly scribbled something for her parents, something her father would see first, given how he did not spend more than a couple of hours shopping for his herbs and ointments and health drinks. In addition, Mana added the official summon letter by the note, just to show her parents she was not running off and doing something reckless like the time with the Box of Ultimate Bliss.</p><p>The reason why the magician despised the sight of this mission was that she hated economy, finances, and money matters. That was why her mother managed her show funds and mission pay separately even past the point when Mana got emancipated as a kunoichi of Konohagakure. The fact that she'd have to sniff about drawers and lockers of old files trying to find the leak or a possible laundering scheme which explained where the Fire Lord's money went, made the magician feel dirtier than washing the dishes at Ichiraku Ramen.</p><p>The gate guards stopped Mana, not because of any particular reason but just because they felt jumpy. Stopping random people leaving and entering must have been the new modus operandi for those two. They had to justify their salaries and going above and beyond in the line of work more now than at any other point. With all those mysterious disappearances, the village authority and the commoners sneered at and expected of them to do their duty in stellar ways.</p><p>After being informed that she was on official Konohagakure business and shown the file, the contents of which they did not even think of checking, after all, Mana was now an equal ninja to them, not just a newbie, the duo backed off and even went as far as to wish her a safe and relaxing trip.</p><p>One never thought about safety while en route to any place inside the Fire Country until they actually went past the massive village gate and left the safety of all the barrier and protective seals behind. Now it was only Mana, her wits, and skill, against the rest of the world. A single well-timed and executed raid by bandits or mercenaries could have ended her career early, just like it happened to father, every mission, even such as trivial and petty as matters of Fire Lord's financial aid could have resulted in Mana losing her life.</p><p>She had never previously thought about that, she has never experienced being forced into life-threatening situations on official village business. Sure, her life was threatened from time to time, the magician faced off against her fair share of deadly threats and enemies she had no rational right of surviving against but it was always her call. Never, in the magician's recent memory, was she shoved in between being labeled a traitor or a failure or death in the line of duty.</p><p>The Fire Country woods looked so peaceful and white. It would be tough to see steel wire or other traps in this blinding frost, the Sun bouncing off the snow and solid ice, poking at Mana's eyes was doing more than just caressing her cheeks with all the warmth that one could have gotten in this season. It was also adding to the danger of traveling these roads all alone.</p><p>Her logical mind kept telling the magician that the likelihood of being attacked on the road in between Konoha and Shukuba Town was reasonably slim. Even those few bandits that would have hung around these well-traveled and protected parts would have been bandits of desperation, not professionals. People who could have actually used that Fire Lord's money, people whose lives were broken by a couple of bad life decisions or bad dice rolls, sometimes even completely without their role to play in the collapse of their very own totality.</p><p>One could not have helped but thought of the possible dangers lurking outside when traveling the lonely and dead-silent woods, even in the early morning. Of how worried Mana's parents will inevitably be when they find the Administration's summon papers on the table in the living room and will eventually realize the cause of the summon when Mana won't come home in the evening.</p><p>It was all a matter of welfare. The Fire Lord felt very charitable and generous supplying welfare for various matters, ranging from monetary support to the more severe and public cases of life hitting someone in their country too hard to a public venture like a big play or event being put up to entertain the villagers or townsfolk of the Fire Country. All her life Mana had taken welfare for a good thing, a monetary version of what she wanted actual people to be like.</p><p>The kunoichi had a bad feeling that her idealistic view on the matter may actually change the deeper she investigates this matter of hers, possibly even shaking the very core of her understanding of how it worked and what it was used for… That was, of course, if some lowly bandit did not hit a well-placed shot with a kunai while Mana's defenses were down and end it all prematurely…</p><p>The next destination was Shukuba Town!</p>
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<a name="section0381"><h2>381. The Governor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shukuba was one of those odd towns that just started suddenly. One brief moment one was traveling through a blinding growth, completely consumed by the shadows of the forest and swarmed by the myriad of wildlife that lived there, then a small building popped into the view.</p><p>Each building spreading the outlier of the pleasure town by a little bit more was surrounded by yards and patches of trees and what could best be described as hopeful attempts at controlling the overgrowth around them. As Mana kept treading onward, the wood to signs of civilization ratio was beginning to increase. Such oddity made telling if she was in the town or not a bit murky, the case with Shukuba was completely unlike that with Konoha or any other ninja village, where a massive gate clearly showed the territory of the village and one could feel safe and infiltrated after entering it.</p><p>If anything, this odd, no walls or barriers state of the growing pleasure town suggested that the place was thriving. It was growing and the buildings that symbolized that growth could by no means be described as tumors of the town, these were more like luscious and flowing locks of hair that made someone already gorgeous that much more irresistible.</p><p>Mana shook her head, she could not believe how shallow the metaphors she was drawing in her head were. Tearing the part of the wounds, scattered over the girl's heart, that was defined by her being in love with Kouta must have bled harder than she had predicted it to. Such was the nature of matters rooted out before one could address them and deal with them properly.</p><p>At long last, the concentration of buildings and people, young and old, rich and less so, convinced Mana that she was closing into the heart of the small pleasure town. That meant that setting her mission plan in motion was in order. Did Mana even have one? One thing was dreaming about big missions, traveling around, seeing the world and bravely fighting for what one believed in. Another one completely was being pulled out from one's life, being told what to do and expected to get that objective done impeccably, without failure.</p><p>The magician kept walking around the squares and narrower streets, mingling with the crowds of the happy people who were glad to visit restaurants, pubs and other establishments littered throughout the town. It was not like expecting the information just fall into her hands was Mana's plan, she knew it would not be that easy. Then again, if it was a big issue or a topic of interest for the locals it would not have been completely outside the realm of possibility.</p><p>No. Mana merely trod the village streets, absorbing the views and the local merchants into her system. She was walking in circles but surely she walked so convincingly that she could not have been mistaken for a love-struck teen without a firm grip on what she wanted to do for her time in the Shukuba pleasure town.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress" this brutal combination of words struck fear into Mana's heart. She did not want to walk out or reveal her presence to the locals until it was her adamant and well thought out decision to do so. If someone with more intel than a common townsperson had caught a whiff of that information they'd figure out that a ninja of Konoha was sniffing about the place and while that was nothing special, Mana did not want to reveal her presence until she was one hundred percent sure it was good for the mission objective.</p><p>What a failure! Even with her desperate tries to evade the unseen threat of her fans recognizing her, Mana was surrounded by them. Had they been enemies out to hunt her down, had it been a part of her mission objective to infiltrate the pleasure town and hunt for intelligence in secret, she'd have failed that mission, if not paid for that failure with her life. Mana had no choice, she played and interacted with her audience, so that she could slip into a shadier alleyway for a good plan of action.</p><p>Everyone who came up got what they came for, from those who were content with just yelling greetings at Mana and commending her for a glorious battle during the Chuunin Exams or being able to create such a wondrous atmosphere during her magic shows to people wondering when she'd perform in Shukuba. The masses were so huge, people just kept swarming like ants having caught a whiff of potential food to serve their nest. Where one curious bystander in the middle of the square was happy that the famous Konoha's Sorceress winked and waved their way, three or four more took that person's place.</p><p>"Now, now! Please don't wear out our guest!" A deep and fairly warm voice, strengthened by being released from inside the mouth of someone of a very bulky in a chunky way kind of build. Before Mana could pinpoint the direction from which the authoritative voice came, a broad and flabby hand tapped on her shoulder before pulling her towards a man of the aforementioned bulky frame.</p><p>Honestly, had it not been for something in the appearance of this man, maybe his balding head, orange-pink hair that lightly occupied the sides of the man's attic, maybe his very grandpa-like sweater with large nacre buttons or his thick moustache that wiggled like a troubled caterpillar with each huff the man's giant nostrils made, Mana would have felt uneasy about being manhandled this way. In the current case, however, she was willing to allow the man to do so, for the sole purpose of getting out of this disastrous beginning of her mission.</p><p>"Greetings, Konoha's Sorceress, I am Kokkappa Sho, the governor of this fine pleasure town! Please, allow me to take you into the administration building so that we can get away from all of this noise." The man introduced himself before dragging Mana away from the crowd, his hand still wrapped around her and pressing her tightly to his side.</p><p>Of all the things that could have gone wrong, she could have, at the very least, not gotten recognized by one of the Shukuba authority figures, judging from his title, the very tallest one at that. Just then, with her ashamed and embarrassed cheeks glaring red light as she tried to hide her face away while the massive frame of Shukuba's governor attempted to aid her from removing herself from the crowd, did Mana realize that she had taken so many ill-fated fears of just such a thing from much wiser people for granted for far too long.</p><p>Then again, perhaps this was for the better – either way, whether it was by stealth or deceit, her paths would have ended up bringing her to the Shukuba administration. Was that place not the den of the vipers that spat venom onto the paperwork that made Fire Lord's funding disappear? Perhaps she could still not only salvage the situation but make it even better than it would have been had Mana not been recognized instantly by hundreds of people…</p><p>As the wide door of rich and well-worked redwood slammed behind the backs of Mana and the town's governor, the bulky man just breathed in and out easier before removing the hand off of Mana's shoulder and frame before smacking his wide belly and wiping the sweat off of his forehead.</p><p>"What a crowd, huh? Perhaps you should have been wiser than traveling alone, in the middle of the day, right in the most pulsing veins of our fine town, Sorceress-san?" that damned honorific was like a kitchen knife being dragged across a plate, emitting the auditory equivalent of how baby's hundred-year-old diaper would have smelled.</p><p>"I apologize, Sho-san," Mana bowed, "I am young and a bit inexperienced in matters outside my own village. I was not aware of how wide the word of my shows had spread or the ramifications of my trip."</p><p>"Well…" Sho tapped his warm hand on his sweaty forehead a couple of times, clearly looking confused by the politeness and non-confrontational nature of the young lady in front of him. "I mean… We were all once young, we've all made mistakes, if something like this is as bad as it gets, you are truly blessed!"</p><p>As Sho gestured for Mana to follow him and as he proceeded through the first floor corridor and into a small office that transitioned to a much larger office complex on the second, third, and who else knew how many more floors, the magician attempted to dodge the curious stares from the public servants glaring at her general direction.</p><p>"Excuse me, Sho-san, but is there a reason for me to follow you into your office?" Mana expressed her curiosity as an attempt to poke at the situation to see how it responded, maybe even to find out if her status as a ninja and her objective was known to the large man who was kind enough to help her out. After all, the miraculous rescue and the assault of her fans may not have been a coincidence.</p><p>"Oh? No, not at all. I simply suggest that Konoha Sorceress-san rests in my office and has some tea while the people outside thin out and your appearance becomes less of a novelty of the day. That is unless, of course, you have other places to be, other business to attend to, or merely dislike the mere mention of my company?" The man poked back. While his manner of speech and the words that came from his mouth were beyond polite, even addressing Mana in a mostly forgotten third person manner that could only have been found in historical movies, plays, and books, the magician could sense that this was just as much of a piss into a viper den, looking for any snakes to come out, as her inquiry was.</p><p>"No, not at all, I'd be honored by Sho-san's company!" Mana replied in the same manner, feeling a little elevated deep down to be able to politely poke the man. While his façade was quite friendly, his words welcoming and the meaning behind them relatively harmless, the magician felt it would have been wise to remember that he was just another politician, not just that – one of a high status. That meant he may have been well into whatever was going on with Shukuba's funds and his hands may have been dirty, or even bloody, with the filth sinking so deep that it touched the man's bone and could not have possibly been soaped off.</p><p>"Perfect then! I'd feel overjoyed to share some of my newly acquired Gyokuro tea!" the plumpy sung out like a coloratura soprano.</p><p>Mana only dreamed to be well versed in tea enough to identify the brand. She could have only imagined how much the tea that the man drank could have told her. It could have been a sign that the man meant well, or it could have been a hallucinogen, for all she knew, or a massive warning sign of another nature.</p><p>After being lead into the expensive office, that made the Hokage's own little quarter look like a broom closet after the water was put to boil in an electric device of some sort, the magician was encouraged to sit down. This was her chance to acquire some information, at the same time, Mana had enough people reading skills to realize that the kind uncle look of the Shukuba governor was also merely a front.</p><p>"I never realized Shukuba had a governor!" Mana acted out excitement. She did not really have to act that much so her pathetic lying skills did not need to be put to the test – she was legitimately interested in the political state of the pleasure town which was so dependent on Konoha's protection and the monetary investments of Fire Lord himself.</p><p>Sho cleared his throat. He looked a bit on the edge, he did not call Mana's bluff and attempt to check her prior knowledge about Shukuba's political state, she'd have flunked that as when she was doing reading the magician focused mostly on places far and wide and periods long gone. A place like Shukuba that resided right on her nose evaded her attention and interest, for the most part.</p><p>"Ah… Well… Yes… Not many people know, that is… Of course, because it is a recent development. The title is a descendant of my decree, hmmm, yes. Administrator just sounds so strict and official. Governor is more… Human, I took it." Sho rubbed the back of his rapidly balding head. He was like a dirty politician reporting about his dirt to a tyrannical dictator, sweating and jumping from point to point.</p><p>"Ah, so the title is just a change in name alone…" Mana breathed out. "Sounds a bit like a waste of public funds, I'd imagine a change of title for the sake of change alone would cost money and work hours to have plenty of documentation changed. So many laws and rules, so many communication issues with neighboring and foreign towns and villages." She attempted to sound more on the pondering side instead of accusatory. At the same time, she was luring out information about the exact implications of the title change, maybe a more clear motivation behind it.</p><p>"You're a very clever girl for your age. That being said, the change is not just an empty change of words. I'd say it is more of a spiritual change as well. Over time I have granted the governor one or two higher shots to call in the matters of Shukuba politics." Sho admitted. That was shocking to hear, not that he was gradually building up his own authority behind the Hokage's back, more that he was willing to admit it over accusations of wasting public funds. That meant that the latter was the thing that he feared investigated more, it was a common bargaining tactic – throw a painfully extracted but essentially unimportant bone to the dogs below to save those that kept your heart in place.</p><p>Something was definitely off and Mana needed to see some paperwork…</p><p>"And what about young Sorceress-san? Why would you travel to Shukuba so freshly after your big fight, it appears the bruises you wear are still quite fresh…" Sho pointed at the small patches that Mana applied over her black bruises that Usuzoku so kindly provided her by kicking the shit out of her during training.</p><p>Mana thought for a moment, she had made up a version of lies but she wondered if it was solid enough and would hold up to scrutiny. No time for that. She needed to say something, a badly weaved lie was better than all of this silence.</p><p>"Oh, I'm just scoping out opportunities for magic shows in the future. I cannot believe I have never performed here, or at least I can't remember if I have…" Mana quickly spat out the version she had made during her trip. It was a solid lie but… The execution clearly made Sho see right through her, this was bad. He may have suspected something now, especially after Mana outed herself as a ninja so publically and on such a grand stage as the Chuunin Exams finals.</p><p>"Well, Shukuba town would be honored to host your shows!" Sho slapped his massive hands together in ecstasy. "You will find that we have plenty of experience with show business and we treat our stars well. I have to tell you upfront, I am not responsible for you deciding to leave Konoha and host your shows here until the end of your career!"</p><p>The man took some time to laugh at his own jest, Mana joined him but her laughter felt forced and uneasy. This was not entirely bad, he clearly suspected something but he very subtly suggested Mana to join in on whatever was going on here. It may have been wise for Mana to feed him something, just a scent of a carrot to lead the stumbling lost pig to the wrong path…</p><p>"Oh? I consider retiring from this whole ninja business altogether so you have given me much to consider, Sho-san!" Mana emulated the overjoyed mood of her conversant beat to beat. This may have been one of her better acting jobs, the magician was finding out that she was getting better and better at this lie-but-not-really-lie thing. Lying was easy when one merely told the complete truth in ways that one's conversant took the wrong way. That was the only kind of lie Mana could tell convincingly, after all.</p><p>This nicely weaved deception appeared to have softened the suspicions of Mana being up to tearing down this intricately put together house of cards. House of cooked books, more likely. The magician had suspected for quite some time that had she just waltzed up to Sho, revealed her credentials and mission objective and demanded the right papers she would have been shown a bunch of accounting farce. This more subtle and secretive approach was much more fitting, even if Mana was irradiating inexperience and screwing up at times with certain angles. She would get better, eventually.</p><p>"What did you mean exactly with that whole experience with show business thing? Sho-san's voice sounded quite confident with that statement, excited even. I've been at Tanzaku once and…" Mana tried to poke deeper.</p><p>"Bah, Tanzaku… Those fools know nothing of managing a pleasure town. Gambling where ninja have a clear edge at robbing the town blind? What sort of money making strategy is that?" Sho appeared to get a bit passionate about the subject as he took a sip of his blazing hot tea before handing a cup to Mana.</p><p>The magician just looked at the bubbling and greenish brew that steaming so intensely that it may have as well cooked something else entirely if something else entirely was placed on top of the cup and allowed to simmer. She just sighed. All she wanted to achieve was to poke at Shukuba's experience with show business and exploit a possible hole where the money may have been laundered to. Now she'd have to listen to old man's rants and ramblings about Tanzaku to no end… At least she was not exposed completely, Sho was too passionate about his rant to read Mana's face and think about her possible motives.</p><p>Talking to people was harder than Mana had anticipated…</p>
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<a name="section0382"><h2>382. Yak Milky Way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The meeting with the governor of Shukuba town could have gone better. Mana spent no time hesitating before admitting that to herself upon reflection. She could have picked up on a possible further lead to investigate, she could not have mentioned the name "Tanzaku" to the man and furthered the brief talk into a downward spiral of a rant about the place.</p><p>Then again, it could have also gone much worse. The way it had gone now, Mana salvaged her presence in Shukuba becoming tomorrow's morning news. In addition, she managed to convince Sho that the magician was not here to tumble whatever house of cards he had built here and was willing to join it by adding her own tower by the side. Granted, that was verily false.</p><p>While the magician's theory about a town-wide conspiracy of money laundering was only fed more biscuits, she needed a more solid lead to look into. Perhaps she could have lingered about the place, concealed herself amongst the civil servants and waited until Sho left his office, entered it and performed a quick scan of the man's drawers. For that to happen, the magician needed to have fewer doubts about her ability to remain stealthy, also, the possibility of a satisfying reward for the massive risk was minuscule – Sho may have been a goof but he was no idiot who kept his "uncooked" books in his drawer.</p><p>Mana played an innocent and spoiled little show business idol by playfully inquiring one of the public workers about the location of a bathroom. If she was to gain any leads, they would come from down below. If the leads did lead to Sho's office, in that case, the previous plan will be the current work in progress. Avoiding high risk for an improbable reward until absolutely necessary was a praiseworthy course of action.</p><p>After she safely concealed herself in the ladies' room, the magician weaved a hand seal, concentrating hard on a different shape she was planning to take.</p><p>"Transformation Jutsu!" she mumbled emitting a large cloud of smoke from the stall as well as a loud popping sound that signaled the transformation being completed. Mana disliked using generic jutsu or jutsu she did not invent herself but this time was one of dire need. She could not afford getting recognized and throwing the town square out of whack again. A more controlled and calm crowd was much more to Mana's liking as a working environment, easier to read, easier to single out people who may have provided her with information.</p><p>Mana left the stall and examined her new shape in the mirror. She was lucky that nobody was in the bathroom or the magician would have had to blush and explain the awkward sounds and smoke coming off of her stall. Luckily enough, the natural ninjutsu after-effects were quick to completely dissipate, unlike actual smoke, and left little to no trail. It would have taken a chakra sensor to identify after-effects of a distinct ninjutsu signature.</p><p>The transformation was a massive success. Mana had made herself grow a good half-a-meter, changed the color of her hair and made them short and curly. She also made her body more feminine and more complete, imagining Kiyomi's shape in her mind as something that she needed, as, otherwise, the magician would have been a tad bit inexperienced with the proportions. She did not change her uniform, however, changing clothes and maintaining that change using Transformation required a bit more chakra and Mana decided to be stingy with it, just in case…</p><p>Maybe it was fear of her network breaking down again, maybe it was paranoia of men in black watching her every step, one of assassins with hidden weapons looking to snuff the magician's curiosity out to protect some imagined wild conspiracy. Either way, this new Mana looked like someone she was comfortable working with. For a brief moment, the magician even wondered why Meiko could ever screw such a simple jutsu up when she pulled off much more complex feats of chakra manipulation that were not ninjutsu in nature.</p><p>Unseen by the public servants, Mana slipped out from the ladies' room and innocently trekked downstairs before leaving the building. It was a good thing that Mana had memorized how it looked like and where it was, something told her that this building would be quite useful to her in the future. She, in her new shape, may need to visit again just yet.</p><p>When she first set foot in Shukuba, Mana had thought about approaching a vendor owner with requests of information. One of the hundreds that thrived in Tanzaku town, gambling the ordinary townsfolk and passers-by out of their money with games and entertainment, before losing it all to ninja who excelled at those same games. Now, given the governor's distaste for the place, Mana knew better, she returned back to the square and while her slightly unusual attire and attractive makeshift shape attracted multiple curious glares, she did not stand out nearly as much as she used to in her original shape.</p><p>The girl kept working her eyes overtime, looking far and wide for popular spots of attraction and, curiously enough, an ice cream vendor had caught her attention. For a little wagon selling milky sweets, it was doing surprisingly well in terms of public attraction. This ice cream man looked like a person who knew and saw a great many things.</p><p>Mana had plenty of time to stare out and observe the ice cream man. He was very clearly not from around this town. Likely an immigrant looking for a comfortable place to do business, one who stayed, apparently, as he often interacted with locals and their children, oftentimes even using names and their popular fancies for particular flavors. Finally, Mana's turn had come…</p><p>"Take pick, ma'am", the man spread his large and quite thick arms out, almost reaching across his entire wagon with their width. From far away Mana had not noticed how large the man was. That accent too… Just like Meiko's father's, he was likely from the more southern parts of Kumogakure or the Land of Snow, made sense why a man living on the edge of the two would know a thing or two about ice cream.</p><p>"Ugh, I just don't know what to pick…" Mana playfully placed a finger to her luscious lips, just as she had seen fellow actresses do during plays when they took the roles of attractive or ambitious women.</p><p>"They all winners, trust me! Yak milk not make losers, ma'am, I guarantee it!" The man laughed out before beginning to show off different flavors to Mana.</p><p>"Yak milk? Whatever happens, don't taste that goddamn ice cream!" Mana screamed out desperately in her own mind as she just toyed around with the man nodding and acting surprised when seeing a new flavor. The magician was quite surprised by how patient the back of the line was with her antics. It obviously helped that three or four people standing behind her were male and didn't mind the artificial distraction.</p><p>After Mana dismissed every flavor for various extremely idiotic and verily made up reasons, the man just sighed. "You're not from here, right, ma'am?" the towering ice cream man wondered.</p><p>"Just passing by. I'm a stage magician you see, looking for a place to perform in." Mana recounted the made up story about a made-up person she became.</p><p>"Well, this place might be too close to Konoha, may want to move further, maybe all the way to Wind Country?" The man walked back to some room at the back of the wagon to pull out more samples of ice cream he had for sale. Some kids in the back, who were previously beginning to grow impatient, now ran up to Mana and asked to see some magic tricks. Likely, they knew all about the Konoha's Sorceress and wanted to see the next best thing. Mana could have used a defusing mechanism for another demographic in the crowd so she showed them a pair of tricks until the ice cream man returned.</p><p>"Awww, boo, Wind Country is so mean, sand gets everywhere in my clothes and my magic set. It ruins my cards every time I shuffle, rubs the pretty pictures off." Mana playfully rubbed her eyes, leaning over the counter. "Although that Konoha's Sorceress does seem to be killing the industry by leaving no place for competition."</p><p>"So I've heard. You talked to governor about start-up?" The ice cream man wondered.</p><p>"Start-up?" Mana raised an eyebrow, dropping the airhead act for a moment.</p><p>"Yes, entertainers come flocking in Shukuba for start-up. Few get seen by governor but very good conditions. Magic may be bad business, try movies." The ice cream man pointed at some idiotic poster, made so by the fact that it featured an alien spaceship crashing down through the Hokage mountain and some young and busty actress snugging it out with what appeared like a green-skinned alien.</p><p>"I see, thank you... You know, maybe I am not in the mood for ice cream after all. Thank you for your help though!" Mana thanked the ice cream man leaving a handful of ryo that would have paid for a cone of ice cream before walking off. She could hear a bunch of displeased women chattering about how ungrateful and rude Mana was holding the line like that only to leave but if that was the worst of the fallout from Mana acquiring this information about "start-ups", that would be just golden!</p><p>With a little bit more chipper in her steps than it would have been advisable when on an assignment with an objective to blend in, the magician rushed back to the Administration building. She was curious to see if "start-up" was some sort of a trigger word for the Shukuba governor. She was beginning to get a bad feeling about where these Fire Lord's funds were going, bad being a very subjective and dependent on one's point of view kind of claim.</p><p>Almost like a child, afraid to check under their bed after hearing a sound at night, Mana was a bit reluctant to let the wild conspiracy theories in her head take a solid shape. She needed more evidence, more leads, something more solid before she could point fingers. Her objective was to find the leak in the way the Shukuba funds were managed, a single sheet of paper validating her suspicions would have been enough.</p><p>Problem was, Sho was unlikely to keep records of these "start-ups" if they truly were the leak. Even if they were, the paperwork was likely cooked in a way that made them seem inconspicuous upon inspection. Finding proof of this leak may have just been the most problematic aspect of Mana's assignment. The magician felt like she was expected to bring tapes that a murderer kept of all his murders, which felt illogical at best.</p><p>"Hello, I'd like to speak to the governor, please." Mana used her soothing and playful voice again, unfortunately to her, the reception was handled by a female secretary and as much imaginary credit as the magician attributed to her flawless transformation, this time she'd have to actually work for any credit to be added to that account.</p><p>"Please sit down right there, he'll call you up when he's ready, ma'am." The receptionist smiled at Mana with cutesy and confidence that matched that of Mana's, but with beauty that was much more natural and down to Earth.</p><p>And so the wait began. The magician saw people coming and going, apparently, all of them had "appointments" or were "emergency meetings", as explained by the receptionist the whose sass was beginning to ruffle Mana's feathers. Before that torturous afternoon, Mana had considered herself a patient and very composed person. She was not afraid to sit patiently and wait for all she knew, sadly, it had appeared that the bureaucracy of this place had broken her.</p><p>Mana sighed and decided to try something desperate, this was completely not her style. Stealth and the typical ninja activities were not technically Mana's forte and the magician had very poor grades for the lightness of her feet in Academy. What else could have been expected from a girl who had joined the Academy out of responsibility to use her abilities to help people and change the world instead of actual talent for the craft?</p><p>After the receptionist disappeared for a coffee break, or something of that sort, moving for a brief moment into a small room behind the chair from which this crow oversaw her domain of the Administration reception, Mana stood up and moved her increased in volume hips around. Moving in this changed shape required a bit of getting used to, just another disadvantage for the madness Mana was about to attempt.</p><p>When the receptionist returned to her post, she found that the curly haired blonde in a magician's uniform was no longer waiting in the saggy and deceitfully soft armchair where the woman was last sighted. She could not have possibly made a big deal out of it for the poor thing had been waiting for hours until her breaking point. Somewhere in the record that the receptionist kept in her head, the woman had attributed the curly haired one a surprising amount of points for perseverance.</p><p>There were people all over the place. Wandering the corridors, sitting in cubicles that looked just as recently renovated and just as deluxe as those that Konoha's civil servants had. What was extremely vexing, despite the irony of it, was that nowhere was this inequality reflected upon the lower layers of society. Even the lowly townsfolk looked happy and content, lullabied to a sweet slumber by the entertainment, good food and luxuries of their home.</p><p>Reflections on the junk district and trashy neighborhoods of her own village residing at the western and eastern edges of the village haunted Mana as she quietly danced the waltz of the ninja step. Moving surprisingly light on her feet and unnoticed by the weary and bored eyes of the administration workers. The zombified looks on their pale faces suggested that none of them truly wanted to spot Mana.</p><p>With resounding success, the magician had made her way to the round staircase she had walked with the governor all the way to the top floor. The magician listened in to the steps and casual conversations that were supposed to keep the staffers intrigued in the second part of their busy workday. If these office rats did not feel like squirrels running in spinning wheels, they had a poor way of showing it or could deceive their beholder better than Mana ever could…</p><p>The magician slipped off her jacket before slipping to the wall and weaving a hand seal. With the help of the Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu, she had perfectly camouflaged to the boring glass wall that rotated all the way to the top. Despite a pair of difficult and close brushes with being discovered, like someone's hand accidentally slamming against the magician's face as they tried using the glass wall for support in their descent, Mana had moved past the busy staircase and onto the top floor.</p><p>Quickly, the kunoichi slipped her cloak of invisibility off and slipped her arms into its sleeves again. She ended up crossing the principle of general distaste for generic jutsu twice that day. The very thought of it made Mana feel uneasy and ashamed. It was a similar feeling to how one felt when they consumed something fatty or plenty of somethings past their dinnertime. Maybe that was the reason why Mana was so careless with the flowing motion of her jacket and how it ended up smacking against some office plant and knocking it over.</p><p>With her cheeks dyed red as a bell pepper, Mana looked at a young office worker holding a multiple men's worth of paperwork in his arms. The man came up to the embarrassed magician before placing the paperwork on the windowsill before examining the wreckage.</p><p>"Don't worry about it, ma'am, this is just a little teaspoon of nature's green to spruce up the boring environment, I'm sure someone will offer a sample their personal flora for replacement. Where were you headed, exactly?" The man inquired.</p><p>"I was supposed to see the governor. I have an appointment." Mana lied.</p><p>It was painfully evident that the man was about to have none of it. And yet he was standing still, thoughts shifting through his eyes as they rolled about, shifting from Mana's changed shape to the busted plant on the floor. Leading curious sightseers outside of the top floor was clearly outside this one's job description as he made it painfully obvious.</p><p>"I don't think you do, ma'am, please leave this floor or I'll be forced to inform a security officer." The clerk was being a good sport.</p><p>Mana could take this guy out and cover him with her jacket, crossing her principles in more than one way. Just a quick, restrained and precise blow to his gut could knock the wind out, a fluid motion into a "Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu" and it would be done. No one without a significant ability at superhuman perception could even register it before it was already done… She could see the governor right now.</p><p>No. That was what everyone meant when they pointed fingers at Mana and laughed. Every time she claimed she'd change the world, every time she talked big about being kind and not hurting or killing anyone. Situations like this were what everyone had in mind, everyone expected Mana to cross every principle in her book for the sake of success. She was already halfway to proving them right. The magician bowed her head submissively before turning to the staircase.</p><p>As she was considering leaving, thousands of possible thoughts of infiltrating the governor's office ran through her head. From scaling the walls of the Administration building to using her Mystical Wings Jutsu to control her descent from the roof. One dumbed than the other… How many people would see her scaling the walls? Could she move fast enough to evade sight yet restrain her speed enough to make a quick stop at the top floor? Why would the governor even offer his time to someone who entered their office through the top floor?</p><p>Maybe there was one more thing she could try… Right as her body hid from plain sight in the staircase, Mana weaved a hand seal, dispelling her Transformation. If the governor would not sacrifice an hour of his day for the Konoha's Sorceress, this venture would indeed be hopeless. Just for the sake of fending off association between Mana and her transformation, the magician had transformed again, this time only changing her clothes.</p><p>A handful of security officers and the young civil servant from before rushed into the staircase, taking the smoke and odd noises as a sign of fire, instead of that, seeing only Mana.</p><p>"Sorry about that, I bumped into a very clumsy woman on my way up here." The magician smiled. It would take her best act and a little bit of good luck to talk her way into the governor's office.</p><p>"And I'll tell you what I told that woman, this place is off-limits to civilians!" The ticked off office worker was having none of it.</p><p>"Wait, isn't this Konoha's Sorceress?" One of the security guards raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Sorceress or not, she's civilian and this is an off-limits floor." The persistent office worker ranted.</p><p>While Mana severely hated his guts at that time, she had to admit that he was very devoted to his job. With public servants this dedicated to their duty to serve their people, it was tough to imagine why this town would be suffering a case of Fire Lord's fund laundering.</p><p>With the official sources being walled off as if Sho was beginning to suspect something, Mana was forced into a different course of action, a more indirect and improvisational one, yet one with much greater chance of proof. She could have played a big ninja girl with this security, pointed out the close ties between Konoha and Shukuba and barged into Sho's office. Still, all it would have lead to was the utter destruction of her facade as a peaceful entertainer looking to join in on the money laundering and seeing a whole bunch of clearly cooked accounting books.</p><p>She needed to see the lights of the Shukuba pleasure town, examine some cameras and not be afraid of a little action to find where the movies were taking their funding from. Once she had something solid, she can force her way into the governor's office and stop relying on his mercy and will to see her.</p><p>Mana was different from the other ninja, she'd do this thing her own way, without killing anyone or violating anymore of her principles. She needed to stop trying to be and act like someone she was not and embrace who she actually was.</p>
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<a name="section0383"><h2>383. Discretion Of Justice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tanzaku town was not an overly sizable township. It was not too difficult to locate a district cluttered by a large concentration of rusty metal warehouses and concrete paved streets yet still residing around charming enough scenery to be considered as an on-location movie shooting paradise.</p><p>The whole town was a good thirty-minute trek long, to begin with. After talking with one or two locals and using the incredibly useful skill of using one's eyes, Mana managed to locate the district that looked as ugly as it was insecure about its repulsiveness. Using movie posters and even pictures of finer looking folk to distract from its rough essence.</p><p>"Aliens… It had to be darned aliens." Mana sighed, letting her sickened head to sink down and the light yet chilly winter drizzle soak her raven hair. Somewhere in an open warehouse covered with cheap cardboard and squinting and otherwise uncomfortably grimacing crew, a story of a forbidden love between a green-skin tentacle monster with one eye to perceive the beauty of its lover and a thirty-year-old woman in a schoolgirl uniform was being conceived.</p><p>It was not that Mana was afraid of aliens. The phobia that made her chill up from the core moving to the surface was always reserved to ghosts. Ghosts were much more final, ghosts did not sleep or eat, they could not have been reasoned with and they were absolutely brain-dead dumb. They did think that the best way of spending their eternity post-mortem was to mess around with their mortal victims by moving objects across their homes, after all. How would you reason with that? How would you try explaining to such a being that they were being ridiculous? To someone who considered turning your tap on in the middle of the night a good way of exacting revenge?</p><p>You simply cannot, because it could not be done. Ghosts were the epitome of horror and the whole alien trend was just a natural progression towards something different. Something more physical and armed with more tentacles. Mana was never about having any of their shit. Whereas ghosts were scary because they were incoherent in terms of their motivation and course of action, aliens were just moronic.</p><p>What was she even thinking to achieve by just waltzing into this warehouse? Hiding from the drizzle that was beginning to soak the magician from inside out, for one. Why would the people in charge ever talk to her, leave alone expose their dastardly deeds, if there were any to be exposed? Mana usually enjoyed the rain but this drizzle was not much to her fancy, it was baring everything cold and wet about the rain but it had none of the rain's natural Mother Nature kind of charm.</p><p>Movie making business looked to be quite loud, for something that started out as a silent slideshow of pictures that beat a local gallery by offering the luxury of changing the pictures for the beholder's static, couch-potato kind of needs, it involved plenty of people yelling at each other.</p><p>It was also so… Hectic, reeking of cheap. These cardboard cutouts of characters, these lazy yet shallow, attractive yet rotten personalities attempting to portray the intimacy of one's own mortality or having one's sexual freedom controlled by a one-eyed cardboard cutout with more tentacles than the script of this movie appeared to have pages.</p><p>This was pathetic, aliens were just basis for the first impression, the production was deplorable enough for Mana to just twirl around the scurrying staff and ask the director whatever questions she had. If she asked the man about being in the movie and the man wasted as much as a second on this foolhardy request, it would be the most forethought this production had seen before being decided to be given birth in the first place.</p><p>"Excuse me, who are you? We are shooting a picture here, young lady, please leave these premises."</p><p>Someone asked Mana nicely, but not before placing their hand on her shoulder. This entire place was bustling with so many microscopic chakra signatures that the magician had not even noticed that she was being noticed. In a town of few to none ninja, this may have been a problem. Sensing people in such a busy hotbed was similar to trying to count atoms with a naked eye.</p><p>"I need to talk to the person in charge about being in this movie." Mana tried her best, granted, her best was quite absurd when judging from an objective point of view, but the objective scale of the quality standard was not the norm when this tentaclicious disaster was involved.</p><p>"Very funny, girl! Hey, I need help with this!" The whoever of whichever movie yelled out at his coworkers as their attempts to move the magician out of place by yanking at her elbow had proven themselves to be verily laughable.</p><p>"Why is this minor in this facility? We have nude scenes shooting in five minutes!" The second of the movie shooting crew that was impressive for its size, if only for the reason that so many people could have been so deluded as to consider this picture a good idea, yelled out, trying to move Mana as well.</p><p>"Can you at least tell me the name of the director?" Mana asked as her eyes wandered on each chair of the more important crewmembers having a name in sticker form placed on them, yet lacking their respective position in the production. Just another testament to how mismanaged this whole deal was.</p><p>"Tokuse Bonda, please leave now!" one of the people that had noticed Mana enter their glorified tin den insisted before noticing that neither of them had the magician in their grasp, to begin with, and that Mana had simply disappeared from their sights as if she was never there at all.</p><p>"Bonda-san, I want to talk to you about your motion picture." Mana boldly declared as she had approached the director's chair fast enough to just instantaneously appear to the limited perception of the director's mind. Something that made the man flip out and almost fumble out of his chair.</p><p>The appearance of Tokuse Bonda really did not remind the magician of how she had always imagined artists she thought were responsible for making movies to look. She was not sure if this was ground for suspicion of merely a false projection she had failed to justify, her mind leaned more for towards the former. He was a slim and quite boringly dressed bald-headed and sickly, moderately aged man.</p><p>"W-What the hell are you talking about, unless you have governor's permit I won't show you anything!" the man fixed his shaky position in his overly comfortable and expensive for his merit and artistic integrity chair.</p><p>"Yeah, I don't think that will happen. I am Nakotsumi Mana from Konoha, you may know me better by my stage name – Konoha's Sorceress and I want to get involved in the whole start-up business." Mana wondered if the man identified her right as he was treating her as some sort of Shukuba Security Force officer in charge of investigating his picture. Not that his production was not a crime against humanity and art in general…</p><p>"Oh… I mean… Just go to his office and mention the magic word - "start-up" to his receptionist. He obviously won't waste his time with any appointments otherwise." Bonda breathed out easier, Mana wondered if the man was an imbecile or if her attire legitimately gave him grounds to suspect her being a Shukuba Security official. Either way, his jumpy reaction to the possible danger of Security Force attention suggested Mana was looking the right direction to say the least.</p><p>So "start-up" really was a trigger word of the sort. Mana now realized why someone who looked so excited about the magician performing in his town was as excited as he was and yet refused to see her. Apparently, the word served not only as an alleged description of everything that was wrong with this town but also was the only way of ever being welcomed into Sho's office without kicking its door down and leaving a trail of unconscious bodies behind, not quite Mana's way.</p><p>"If you told me more about your picture and the whole start-up gig in general, maybe I'd agree to show up in your movie. You could use some star-power, right?" Mana grinned, she was just barely managing to restrain her childish embarrassment when in presence of artistic liberties of that specific variety, seeing the ladies in the warehouse shedding an alarming amount of clothes and being rubbed with coal and dirt as if they had survived a point-blank explosion in a comic book strip world.</p><p>"We have plenty of star power!" Bonda pouted his lips like a capricious heir to fortune who was being told that their piano skills could use some work before meeting Mana's mocking gaze and folding like a sweaty cheater in a game of poker when gangsters joined the table.</p><p>"Yeah, who?" Mana gambled by trying to look like she knew some names in the movie industry, she did not. Despite her lack of convincing lying skills, she guessed right, when she deduced that this bum was a poor judge of acting quality and a director by name only. This whole production set reeked of fund laundering of the most pathetic lack of skill in disguising it variety. The picture of the answer to the questions Lord Sixth raised was beginning to take shape in Mana's mind.</p><p>"Fair point…" Bonda wheezed out.</p><p>Just as the magician had thought she had Tokuse Bonda playing her game, just when he was about to spill everything about the start-ups, a formally dressed and official looking duo approached the director's chair. For a moment the duo confused Mana, they seemed to evade the hectic and hostile reception newcomers were granted upon entry into the loosely secured territory but when the magician noticed the dark flak jackets zipped up under their suits, she realized what was going on.</p><p>She may have sensed a buzzing swarm of low-signatures incoming. By all means, she could have, had it not been for how low their signatures were, had it not been by how invested Mana was in pursuit of her leak and how deep in thought she was trying to say the right words at the right time and analyze her conversant. Even if she was a sensor, sensing a handful of people rushing into such an already crowded place was the same as counting fruit flies from a kilometer away.</p><p>The wolves of justice of the Shukuba town had beaten her to the punch. The situation had escalated even more as she could not afford either option – engaging the Shukuba Security would have complicated her stay immensely as she would have found herself complicating the relationship between Konohagakure and the pleasure town that served as almost a legal person vassal to the great ninja village.</p><p>On the other hand, she needed to hear what Bonda had to tell her before it was spilled to the Shukuba Security, or even at the same time, the point was – Mana needed that information.</p><p>"Shukuba Security, Mr. Bonda, please come with us." A blond haired woman informed the uneasy director who looked just as confused as Mana was inside.</p><p>Why would the Security come for this guy, was this not a town-wide scheme? More so, why now? Surely, there have been countless other directors laundering Fire Lord's funding to make a shameful excuse of movies and flush the rest of the funds down their own pockets and the pockets of anyone involved in this scheme.</p><p>"I-I don't understand, have I broken any laws? I am shooting a movie here, the governor knows about this and approved of this production himself!" Bonda writhed like a slug who has found himself dropped out of the bucket into a field of salt.</p><p>"The perp rolled around the butter of corruption and everlasting decay that has come to envelop this town. Ironically enough, someone who would normally denounce any ties to their schemes and filthy little plots, now wrapped around them with all of their long and scaly hides." The second security officer, a relatively aged man wearing a somewhat loose and untidy shirt with messily tied tie began spouting what appeared to be strictly inner monologue out loud.</p><p>Witnessing Mana's confused look at the rambling security officer, the female officer shook her head.</p><p>"Don't mind my colleague. We're taking you in for an up to seventy-two hour period, even if you are not officially a suspect yet, as is within our competence as Shukuba Security officers." The woman reached out and broke the director's arms behind his back, making the man wriggle uncomfortably as he was forced to turn on his chair. As the magician's eyes wandered through the crowd, she saw a handful of better-armed and geared officers making similar arrests across the warehouse.</p><p>She had to come out, there was simply no other way. The situation was slipping from her hands and if she was to get any answers she had to get them here. Whether it was from Bonda or these two clowns.</p><p>"This is bullshit, I tell you, Okasune-san, I thought you were a woman of justice, a hero of the town. Making unlawful arrests like this, Sorceress, make sure to tell the Hokage when you return just what madness is transpiring here!" Bonda squealed and looked adamant about not stopping to do so.</p><p>For some reason, Mana's status, once it was revealed to the so called "woman of justice" and "hero of the town", looked quite troubling as she quickly transferred the locked up director to the care of other, better-geared officers before approaching Mana.</p><p>"Just what is your involvement with this picture, Konoha's Sorceress?" Officer Okasune attempted to intimidate Mana by using a strict and accusatory tone. Frankly, by all means, this psychological pressure should have worked. This Okasune woman had an aura of confidence and strength about her and the magician would have had no trouble believing that she had made plenty arrests and achieved great success in this town just by Bonda's word alone.</p><p>The question was, why was she pursuing a money launderer with such ferocity? Was this truly the right type of procedure for such an arrest? Mana did not know the Konohagakure penal procedures nor ones of Shukuba well enough to confidently doubt Okasune's use of discretion. Right or wrong was a fifty-fifty call in Mana's mind.</p><p>The magician crossed her arms under her chest. "I'm a Konohagakure kunoichi investigating a leak of Fire Lord's funding by Hokage's orders."</p><p>"That is an odd place to be investigating it." Okasune backed off a little, "May I see some proof?"</p><p>"I am not at liberty to show you my mission file, it contains confidential information, all I can show you is my ID." Mana parried Okasune's ocular thrusts aimed at her side.</p><p>"The brat claimed to be a Konohagakure ninja investigating the leak herself. If this thing attracted the attention of the big cheese in the big chair, that would have explained why a slayer of the dragon named organized crime and exorcist of the demon named serial murders – Kita Okasune herself decided to investigate a financial crime for once and switch her usual routine as the woman of action for a cup of coffee and a pile of paperwork. That is if the kid truly was who she declared herself to be. The call was Okasune's, as usual…" The oddball male officer kept rambling to himself.</p><p>"I think your partner misses the point of the inner part in inner monologue," Mana noted just to ease the tension as Okasune was staring at her ID in a manner that attempted to incinerate the document with her eyes. Even if she did try such a thing, Mana could tell that Okasune's chakra signature was lightyears behind the level needed to accomplish such a thing.</p><p>"We get that a lot, Nakotsumi Mana. Itemi does write very detailed and impeccable reports making him an invaluable officer." Kita Okasune sighed as she handed Mana her ID back. The Security officer was really displeased by Mana's presence her for whatever reason. That was when Mana noticed something suspicious, she had spent enough time around a monster of Killing Intent such as Uzumaki Tanshu, she was too well tuned to detect it or avoid its petrifying grasp upon one's throat and heart to miss out on it rearing its ugly head.</p><p>Mana's body blurred and disappeared as far as the perception of Okasune Kita and her oddball partner was concerned. The kunoichi appeared right in front of a well-equipped and armored for war Security officer, grabbing the barrel of his massive kunai dispenser and lifting it up fast enough so that the stream of forty kunai fired at the blinding speed of three thousand meters per second did not instantly fill Bonda's body with steel.</p><p>Mana was sure that murdering suspects immediately after arresting them for a seventy-two hour period was not textbook Security procedure. Of that much, she was fully certain. Finally, something provided clarity, the man tried fighting back but Mana had disassembled his skewer automaton before he as much as reached for its trigger again. She had seen its like wielded by the Syndicate during her brief run-in with the gang and the weaponry trigger a whole bunch of bad memories.</p><p>With a light push of her palm, slamming into the officer's helmet and gas mask, the magician brought the officer down with enough force to shake up his very murderous and misbehaving brain enough so that he would be unable to stand back up for a while.</p><p>"Shit, get on him, now!" Okasune commanded with authority in her voice, upon being "encouraged" by their superior, the other officers scurried around Mana and the downed officer and assaulted their murderous colleague, locking him up just like Bonda was locked up previously.</p><p>Both arrested people were lead up to two separate caravans with a bunch of masked, geared up and armed Security officers joining them in their trip.</p><p>"In a blink of an eye, rather at the speed of cracking atoms, the kid who liked cosplaying as a waitress in spare time revealed herself to be everything she told us she was, and more, if the manner in which she took one of Shukuba's finest was to be paid attention to. I would have liked to commend the beauty and grace inside her movements, I would have liked to commend her great grasp of martial arts, restraint in using her inhuman force and speed, the unimaginable ability to realize that a person whom most would have entrusted their security to was now ready to fill someone's body with kunai knives with such speed that it would have shredded it to fleshy, unrecognizable bits." The male officer kept on rambling as Okasune and he approached Mana.</p><p>"Damn, what the hell was that all about…" Kita Okasune scratched her chin in confusion as she appeared to have been caught unprepared by the measures that her own men were prepared to take in this scenario.</p><p>Was she trustworthy? It was still not completely outside the realm of possibility that Okasune specifically instructed her men to shred her perp on sight, it was still very much possible that her arrest was unlawful in the first place and Mana, for the first time ever, came up with a unique regret of not carrying a local lawbook in her neat magician hat.</p><p>Then again, Okasune could have just been an innocent town hero who decided to cash in an easy arrest and caught unprepared by conspiracies beyond her comprehension. What made matters even more complicated was the fact that Mana knew specifically why a Security officer would attempt to silence the "start-upper". Just as the "start-uppers" exploited financial leaks of Fire Lord's attempt at commendable welfare supporting local artists, the dirty officer was worried that the leakster was about to leak something else entirely, something Mana very much desired and needed to make a return home.</p><p>"I'm going with you two to the Security HQ." Mana calmly stated. "There are things I still need to find out before I call it mission complete."</p><p>"Young lady, after what I've just seen, we may need you there…" Okasune admitted, relenting to Mana's demands.</p><p>While the road to exposing the leak was a bumpy one, Mana appeared to have revealed herself just in the right time and to the right people to possibly maximize the utility of her status for her case. The day was still at its peak, but at least that part of her mission was a massive victory…</p>
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<a name="section0384"><h2>384. Pleasure Town Perils</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The day was not getting any younger. There were no worries about staying here overnight, we only had seventy-two hours to hold the guy after all. I had no problems slurping down a cup of chili noodles, the chili and black pepper scorched my entire mouth, just as the need to book this guy and bust this case was grilling all of our collective asses." Itemi, the male security officer and one-half of the pair that arrested Bonda earlier, was busy doing his thing.</p><p>By now Mana had gotten used to his inner narration being heard by anyone located in the same room as him. True to his vocalized internal monologue the guy was downing a cup of something that had an effluvium of garbage coming off of it with an intensity that perfectly contrasted the bored tone at which Itemi delivered his vocalized inner thoughts to the outside world.</p><p>"The magician girl kept staring at me. Wanting, craving to get into the interrogation room and get the information she came here for. Okasune had made sure to keep her within quite the distance from the perp, even if she kept the girl around. I knew where she was coming from, the kid was pretty useful. Muscle and an alarm detector all packed into one and delivered to us in a tightly wrapped package. Nothing could have passed by her, it seemed." Itemi kept talking to himself as his eyes ran down a pile of files, the fact that Mana was sitting directly in front of him either evaded the man's comprehension or was simply irrelevant to him.</p><p>"You know, you raise a valid point. All I need is to hear what the guy has to say. Once I confirm my suspicions I can return to Konoha and get out of your and Okasune-san's way." Mana tried to strike up a dialogue with the man. Not necessarily because she thought it possibly resulting in something useful, merely because two dialoguing people sitting right in front of each other made the world seem saner than letting Itemi go on.</p><p>"She tried sending her fleet, riding the stormy waves at my shore. She did not know that Itemi Manin was a wall and that none of her figurative sailors would return to their families – my composure was an iron rock, to persevere and weather the storm was my objective. Let Okasune do her thing. She was the best at it. Act intrigued by paperwork, chow down the noodles, stonewall the magician girl the best I can until Okasune finished another miracle arrest." The man mumbled to himself.</p><p>"Wait, who's that woman?" Mana pointed at a tall, raven-haired woman of darker skin, possibly Land of Wind complexion, wearing a red leather jacket and a short black dress underneath.</p><p>"When the kid first pointed me in the direction of my fate I thought it to be just an attempt to distract me. The more I thought about it from that point on, the more foolish it seemed. The brat needed no distractions, she could have just blitzed to the interrogation room and we'd all be none the wiser, no one could have stopped her. That was when I turned to see the hottest piece of femme fatale knockout I'd ever seen, it was the type of woman that literally changes your life. The fire of this western hotness and Okasune's ice were about to clash as the gorgeous goddess strut into the interrogation room unimpeded."</p><p>"Oh for the love of…" Mana slammed the table she was banging her fingers at for a while now as she jumped on her feet and walked into the interrogation room, a bunch of officers tried to halt her progress towards the room, perfectly executing Okasune's orders to keep the magician out. It was not like they ever had hopes of touching Mana to begin with, with gentle bobs and weaves the magician evaded their grasp, dancing around them and evading them like a skilled swordsman evades drops of rain in an autumnal downpour.</p><p>"Oh, come on, is no one watching the door?" Okasune grunted seeing Mana enter the room right after whoever that other woman was.</p><p>"I just need a confession, after that, I'm out of this town. That's all I need." Mana pleaded with the woman. If she was anything of what she was described as being: a wolf of justice, a hero of the town, she'd understand.</p><p>"Yeah, you and me both, missy." Okasune bit her thumb nervously as the woman in red unbuttoned her jacket and sat down by the side of Bonda, placing it on the chair behind her.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress has permission to be here. As per the treaty signed by the Fourth Hokage and Shukuba administrator, the Shukuba security and Konohagakure ninja cooperate where Shukuba's criminal, civil or administrative law crosses with the objectives of Konoha ninja." The woman ruffled her long and curly hair, flaring her dark blue eyes at the Shukuba Security officer, infuriating her.</p><p>"The treaty does not go into detail of how much liberty exactly do Konoha ninja have in terms of criminal procedure. The fact that Konoha's Sorceress is here, to begin with, is "cooperation" enough." Okasune slammed her hands against the steel table, lowering her face up to the face of the mysterious western woman. The eyes of the Shukuba Security officer shimmered not just with rage, they were outright hateful towards the other lady, just who on Earth was she?</p><p>"Well, as pleasing as it would be for me to educate you in the matters of international law, officer Okasune, I'd like to request that you release Tokuse Bonda immediately as his arrest is entirely unlawful." The woman requested, her calm and triumphant face showed the entire Security HQ that she held all the aces in her hand and she was not afraid to alert the world of it.</p><p>Itemi entered the interrogation room. When Okasune's eyes sparked hellfire at his direction for failing to contain Mana in the outside area of the interrogation room, the man just shrugged, shaking it off. It appeared that sometimes the man was capable of silence. Maybe it was just the sheer pressure of the presence of the western woman in the interrogation room that uneased the aged man and caused him to break out of his usual routine, just like a stammering man could sing clearly when they were pronouncing their words accompanied by a melody.</p><p>"I find it extremely suspicious that a woman associated with Yokotomo Donyoku involves herself in this case not even one hour past Bonda's arrest." Okasune growled like a dog about to lunge. Something about this situation was seriously setting the hero of Shukuba off the wrong way, she knew something Mana did not, something that clearly terrified her and it was abundantly clear to the magician that the officer was not about to let the magician in on it.</p><p>"It does not matter what you find suspicious, officer Okasune, you arrested Tokase Bonda on the grounds of a possible detainment without cause for seventy-two hours, for the sole reason of identifying the man in question and recording his ID in any relevant case documents. Has Tokuse Bonda provided any identification?" the westerner looked at Bonda with a questioning glare.</p><p>"I did, ma'am, the first thing I did, honestly! Okasune-san just won't back off my tail, however. I'm just an innocent artist trying to create some art, this is a very soul crushing experience, I think I'll come down with depression or something." Bonda wiped the sweat off his face. If this man provided his ID the first thing when delivered to the Security HQ, he was better versed in local laws than Mana, which in itself was shady enough. There was no better master of laws back in Konoha, nor a shadier man back home than Hanada Katsuo, Mana made sure to remember that for the future.</p><p>"Well then, why is this man not released yet then? This whole depression thing and the delay on the movie's production sounds to me like an application to the governor for compensation of damages waiting to happen, Okasune-san. Your first, if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it would be more tact to just release this man and not stain your stellar record?" This lady revealed herself to be incredibly well versed in the local laws.</p><p>The situation unwinding in the interrogation room was pinning more and more pictures and connecting more and more rubber bands on the conspiracy board inside Mana's head. She needed to slow it all down, catch up to all that she had found out up to now.</p><p>First of all, the leak of Fire Lord's funds is due to governor Sho's abusive executive decrees and treaties with the Fire Lord that support local artists with massive welfare payments that result in absolute disgraces to the artistic world and bucketloads of money laundered down the drain. That much was crystal clear, it also pretty much fulfilled Mana's mission objective.</p><p>Regardless, this case was much dimmer lit than that. Why did Okasune Kita, an officer with a flawless arrest record, someone regarded as a hero of her town and so well-received by her coworkers and the general audience, as proven by everyone Mana meets singing her praises, book in such a shoddy and, apparently, unlawful arrest? More so, just who was this woman, who was this Yokotomo Donyoku person associated with her, according to Okasune? Why did some completely unrelated officer try to murder Tokuse Bonda violently in the middle of his arrest, was this man connected with this western lawyer woman and this Donyoku or was he his own player?</p><p>This was six leagues above Mana's comprehension, she had most of what she came here for but this mystery kept pulling the magician in. Like the imaginary scent of an attractive female cat that drew in a male cat in one of those weekend cartoons and newspaper strips, drew them levitating above the ground towards the core of their affection, this mystery drew Mana in as well, in a manner not unlike those male cats were drawn in by.</p><p>Much to her frustration, Okasune had to allow Bonda to leave with the western woman. The sweat on the officer's forehead, the messy bangs falling over her face and constantly gritting teeth telegraphed her mood quite nicely. One did not have to be that much of a people's person to know exactly how the woman felt. Then, in a moment of levity, the woman just sighed and swallowed all of her anger before tumbling onto the same chair where Bonda was sitting just now.</p><hr/><p>"Why did you do that? Why did you arrest Bonda unlawfully, knowing quite well that he'd be released like this?" Mana confronted the woman, that may not have been the right approach, Okasune was nervous to the verge of breaking down just a moment ago, her current emotional serenity could have been a façade.</p><p>"Never mind that, it does not matter now." Okasune sighed, breathing out a huff so light that it reminded of a breath that a person who has been tortured for ages let out upon the sweet release of death embracing them. "You have everything you need. I'll give you everything we have on the leak, the Hokage won't demand as much evidence as the local tribunals. As long as the leaks stop, it's a mission complete for you, isn't it?"</p><p>Mana nodded in unease. She was not sure what troubled her more, the fact that Okasune was so deceitfully calm right after losing a man she pursued and pressed on so hard or that the magician did not want to leave this town just yet.</p><p>"Actually, I will stick around this place for a bit longer. I'll send a pidgeon to Konoha Aviary with my report and the files you give me." Mana declared.</p><p>"That was surprising. Did the kid think we were in on the leak or did she think we've missed something? Either way, I was not sure how to take it. Regardless the reason for her decision to stick around, it was negatively reflecting on our work in the brat's mind. That made me simmer, we may not have been able to quite breathe the amount of fire this kid's been used to spitting but we were every bit as devoted as she was. Who was I kidding? Half of this HQ would have sold justice out for a cup of bitter and dark coffee straight out of the jungles of southern Fire Country. Maybe that was it, the fact that Okasune and I weren't the same and yet this kid filed all of us together, the paperclip of her words sticking its sharp end straight through my chest and bleeding me out…"</p><p>Mana waited for a while for Itemi's vocalized inner monologue to cease, she actually felt a bit surprised by how well the man could control his breathing and the emotion he put into his words. It was like he was quoting it all for some sort of audio diary recording or something…</p><p>"I don't recommend jumping on the leak bandwagon, not right after you exposed it to your superiors. You'll get suspended if not demanded a seppuku." Okasune waved her hand indifferently. Wrapping her long fingers around her tired face and rubbing her eyes to fight off the weariness.</p><p>"It's not that. Bonda was almost killed today for reasons that I still do not fully understand. I have a feeling that these leaks are the least of this town's worries. Living in this town is dangerous and I'm going to change that. As a ninja I have a responsibility to use my greater power to protect those without it, change the world and make all life worth something in the eyes of the people that inherit it. That is my nindo, my ninja way." Mana declared.</p><p>She was going above and beyond her mission objective. This was no longer about the mission, this was Mana's own decision and her own actions. She no longer would have the official back-up of her superiors to use, no more mission objectives, international treaties to wave around. No more legal or procedural corners she could cut. Whatever happened here, she'd be responsible for it. Just a single word from Lord Sixth and she'd have to trek home and receive new mission objectives, leaving this behind.</p><p>Redemption was a common motive all over Mana's life, she met plenty of people in look of redeeming themselves when she was looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. In a way, Itemi and Okasune were attempting to redeem the reputation of this entire Security HQ, if Itemi's inner reflections made public were to be trusted. This would be the redemption of Mana as a kunoichi. Once more she would try helping people the way she wanted to as a ninja, using the skills she had learned and putting the fruits of her lifelong training to labor.</p><p>"I guess she was a good kid. Hopelessly naïve, would it take a day, a fortnight maybe, in this town before all that naivety was shredded to bits by high pressure blade firing cannons of cynicism, before her rose glasses were busted up by the bat of sarcasm, before she began drowning a blabbermouth ratty colleague in alcohol and decided to sell her soul on a roll of a dice or a draw of a card in the gambling house. Seeing stuff like that would never stop feeling crushing." Itemi lit a cigarette, despite his bleak predictions for Mana's goal here in Shukuba, he breathed out a mouthful of smoke through a reserved grin.</p><p>"Itemi's right, you are a good kid, Sorceress. I wish more stars would be like you. I wish you good luck in whatever you're looking to find here." Okasune nodded with a hopeful smile. "As for me, the workday is officially over. I'm off to drown my sorrows back home. How about it, Itemi, wanna raise a glass for another one that got away, to another day of justice well-served and tax money well-spent?"</p><p>"She asked me knowing full-well that I have changed my poison from sake to cigarettes. The old fox knew that liquor was pulling me in every time I lit a smoke of what I considered a lesser evil. If I started again I could never stop. Once more I'd give in reports soaked in rings of sake glass where I slammed them down right on my worktable. Was she just checking if my defenses were still up, like a cruel classmate that punches you in the gut in the gym shower just to teach you a cruel lesson that life will never fail to keep punching you and your abdomen needs to be tensed up at all times? Women… Who knew what they were thinking truly…" Itemi kept doing his thing. His rambling was being a bit less comprehensive as he held his cigarette tightly pressed in between the rows of his yellow teeth.</p><p>"Before I end this day, I'd like to talk to the officer that tried to kill Bonda", Mana voiced her intention, expecting to hear some more information about where the man was being held and a possible way she could do that.</p><p>"Doubt that's possible", Okasune raised her palm to interrupt a pain-ridden monologue that Itemi was about to go into again. "The guy's been taken to an arrest home already, it's a facility of much higher security and after tomorrow's tribunal hearing he'll be transferred right to prison, I'm afraid. The best time to do that would be first thing tomorrow morning, before the hearing."</p><p>Mana noted that information. Okasune did have a point, talking to a prisoner post-tribunal hearing would be immensely difficult for a Konoha ninja who had no official business of being in town. Mana's attention for today would have been best served drafting the report and the message and making sure that it is sent out and delivered by the end of today's workday in Konoha Aviary. That was not such a likely thing to happen but in terms of work progress it was better to shoot for the impossible and then deal with the best reality could offer.</p><p>"Do you have a place to go?" Okasune stopped halfway through the door of the interrogation room, with Mana standing up and following to woman, intending to use the worktable of either Okasune or Itemi to draft up the message and include the files that the hero of Shukuba promised her and Itemi was already out gathering.</p><p>"No." Mana shook her head. "I figured I'd find a hostel or something like that later. I need to focus on my report first."</p><p>"I see, well, I'm sure you'll find something, you're a bright kid. Good luck with your future ventures." Okasune playfully paid Mana respects with two of her fingers pressed to her temple before departing with a hopeful smile. There was a scent of acceptance of Mana was not quite sure what in the woman's voice.</p><p>Her reply was so odd, given her personality and what the magician came to learn about Kita Okasune, she had expected to be offered to sleep over at the officer's place. Granted, Mana would have most likely refused that suggestion either way, feeling a bit too embarrassed about such a thing, but the fact that the woman simply shrugged it off with such indifference troubled the magician for some reason.</p><p>The first day in Shukuba had proven to be nothing like Mana expected it to be or could wrap her brain around.</p>
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<a name="section0385"><h2>385. Drowning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The streetlights had gone out for the morning. It was not something of great significance, not quite a life or death type alert. Regardless of that fact, Mana opened her eyes and stood up from the bench in the middle of the town square where she was residing the whole night, meditating. It may have been a tad too early to declare an end to the night, given that the sky would still be dark for hours, but the magician was finished with that town square.</p><p>It was not that Mana could not have paid for a shabby roof over her head and a bedbug-ridden place to rest her head on for a single laydown. She just found herself conflicted and at a bizarre case of inner strife. There was something about this town, something about that last day that, not all by themselves necessarily, but in a peculiar combo of the two prevented the magician of even thinking about sleeping.</p><p>It was as if this entire town leaked out some strange incense of malice at night. At this point, the magician was not sure, if she was imagining it or if the mysterious, town-size mass of reek of bloody murder was real. One part of Mana told her that she could not have caught a whiff of anything – there was no logical reason for her to worry, nothing solid, anyways, she could not have been sensing anything at all.</p><p>But then… Even civilians sometimes had bad hunches that were justified. History was full of stories of people who sensed something bad in the air around them and did not depart on trips that would have been fateful to them. In theory, if a great combination of chakra signatures of outright wicked, twisted, beyond redemption scumbags all gathered in one place, Mana, as a sensor could sense their inner natures impacting their chakra signatures.</p><p>The problem was – Mana did not quite know for sure how dark and corrupted chakra signatures felt, only had it told and described to her. What was to say this wasn't just her making stuff up. The report was out, her mission was over, and yet… Mana stayed in Shukuba, rotting in its reek and letting it soak her in its corruption, making her shake from her very core.</p><p>Indeed, Shukuba was different at night compared to the happy-go-lucky ball of cheers, carnivals and ice cream vendors it was during the day.</p><hr/><p>With a yawn, Mana entered the Security HQ, looking to meet with Itemi and Okasune. It felt odd referring to one with their first name, while Mana always thought of the other referring with their last name. It was just that whereas Itemi was so goofy and weird and officer Okasune described as such a big and deserved servant of her town that an honorable referral seemed to be in order.</p><p>"The kid waltzed in like she owned the place, the sentiment present not in her strut, hell, she was basically dragging her feet behind her. It was just that she came back even though she had no reason to. No one in their right mind ever took a one-two Shukuba beatdown and came back for more with a bloody smile. Rough night? I asked her." Itemi did his thing.</p><p>"Not really, I found it quite productive training my chakra capacity through the night. I've spent some yesterday while I was sneaking around, figured some meditation and chakra node stimulation was in order while it was recovering." Mana yawned again. It was unlike a kunoichi to get tired this easily. Ninja were used to taking multiple sleepless nights with their chakra augmentations sustaining their systems. Maybe there was more to this "Shukuba beatdown" than the magician heeded.</p><p>"Right… Chakra… That was that spiritual thing ninja had. I had no idea how would one even go about training such a thing, figured that with the unjust world we live in, you'd live with what you're born with." Itemi shrugged as he sipped a cup of something very aromatic.</p><p>"Not quite. It's not only spiritual either. Chakra is both physical and spiritual in nature, only by training both parts of one's body can it be made to grow efficiently." Mana replied feeling oddly honored that Itemi was genuinely interested in ninja. Given how most of her interactions with the civilians was about her profession as a stage magician, talking about this to someone who had not undergone the ninja training felt very exciting.</p><p>"Huh. Spiritual mumbo jumbo, I guess momma was right, I could have never made a ninja. I was always more of a lift a bunch of weights – punch someone in the face as hard as the weights you've been lifting let you kind of guy. Okasune may have been pretty intrigued by this shit, she was into the whole spiritual way of life kind a books. Speaking of the big starlet, where the hell was she? I kept nervously looking around, figuring that maybe during one of my smoking breaks I missed her coming to work. Figuring… Yeah right… Hoping, more like it".</p><p>Itemi's growling outer monologues were making Mana's sleepless night feel that much more draining but the officer raised a pretty solid point. Officer Okasune didn't appear to be present in the office, the magician tried to figure out if anything on her table was moved the slightest since the three left the HQ yesterday. Even if a hint of a migraine and general snooze was plotting against Mana's skills and memory, she could easily see that nothing was even remotely moved.</p><p>That could have waited. Mana's interview with an attempted murderer could not have.</p><p>"Can we see that officer as soon as possible? Okasune-san promised she'd let me do that this morning and this is on a schedule." Mana looked at Itemi who just raised his eyebrows before sipping from his cup again and putting a bunch of shiny accessories in the pockets of his jacket before zipping it up and standing up.</p><p>"Sure thing, I answered the kid. For all the talk she gave about healthy spirituality and all that shit, she was as obsessed as the best of us, or rather, those that let their obsessions drag them under. The healthy ones could move on, wave their hands and feet and surface before they breathed too much of that filth in, the rest were stuck, staring at the surface with bloodshot eyes while the swampy yuck filled their dead lungs. Speaking of filthy lungs…" Itemi cracked a spark, lighting up a smoke as he waved for Mana to follow.</p><p>"Okasune was a big girl, she could take care of herself was what I kept telling myself. Still, it wasn't like her to miss the early hours of work. Back when we were both young interns her office window was always open in the morning even when the janitors arrived at the place first."</p><p>Mana had expected Itemi to be much more vocal during the brief drive of a caravan that took the two of them to the local arrest facility. Maybe it was his nervousness and worry over his partner and friend but the man was just staring lifelessly through the half-open glass, occasionally letting the smoke from his simmering puff leave the caravan through the window.</p><p>It was not until the duo stood on the first step of the stairs leading up to the arrest house of Shukuba that the man remembered to talk, given what Mana had learned of him up to now, him not talking was the same as him forgetting to feel which creeped her out.</p><p>"Shukuba arrest house. A processing facility for beat meat before it's sourced, evaluated by a pretty well-fed butcher and sent to an appropriate home. Tough shit, these deviants weren't even decent enough to be categorized as meat, meat fed some people after the butcher identified and worked his magic with it. As the case was with the deplorable, usually the people had to feed them."</p><p>"I disagree, Itemi-san. I view prisons as a sort of reformation facility and welfare of supporting them as an investment for the future, once the prisoners leave and are reformed." Mana stated with a smile.</p><p>"The kid remained hopeful as usual. The hypocrisy in her sprayed like blood from someone stabbed in the alleyway for their fancy pair of shoes. She's spent one day in Shukuba and she already had bags under her eyes. A week later, she may have been the one running around with carnage in her eyes, killing people because they had fancier looking cardboard boxes to sleep in." Itemi mumbled as the two approached the door of the arrest house with the officer removing his smoke and tossing it away.</p><p>A short while after the door closed behind the two, Mana ran out from inside the arrest house to step a pair of times on the cigarette before trying to enter again but, still feeling uneasy about it, picking it up and throwing it into the trash just a few meters away.</p><p>By the time Mana found Itemi inside the facility, he was already working on some kind of a deal with a security officer that looked about halfway geared compared to the task force sent to arrest Tokuse Bonda yesterday. The girl just stood behind the two talking men, rubbing her shoe uneasily against the floor until she was called up.</p><p>"Okasune-san referred to some "Yokotomo Donyoku" fellow yesterday when speaking to that woman. Who is he?" Mana wondered. She meant nothing by it, just something to kill some time and, maybe, make the overall picture at least a little bit clearer.</p><p>"The smoke-police asked a silly question about a nobody. Someone who played one too many scavenger hunts and accidentally found a treasure in someone's backyard. Yokotomo Donyoku had nothing to do with anything so it felt interesting why the brat was so interested in him. Then again, it must have been overwhelming just jumping onboard a moving train and expecting to know which way the coal on it was going."</p><p>Mana and Itemi got lead into a room with the officer, the man looked about as rough as a man who spent most of yesterday arrested would look. That was a pity as the officer was pretty young and, Mana could tell, quite attractive.</p><p>"Why'd you do it?" Mana jumped to the point. The sleepless night, that worked her like a rider worked a mare they rode overnight, despite her better willfulness of admitting it, was her reason for doing it.</p><p>"Just following orders." The man shrugged his shoulders, tossing his hands as high up as his binds allowed him. Mana squinted suspiciously, what did that mean?</p><p>"Just following orders my ass. We all got the same set of orders, Okasune was running the whole operation. There could have been no way that she ordered some ambitious schmuck, straight out of Security boot camp with high marks and shoot-for-the-top attitude to just shred a guy in the middle of the op." Itemi raged, moving in on the guy and grabbing him by the hair, attempting to slam his face into the table before Mana stopped the man by placing her hand on his shoulder, having moved up from behind him right after he charged up to the poor man.</p><p>"Are you implying that Okasune-san ordered you to kill Bonda? Why would she do that?" Mana wanted some more clarification if she was to buy this man's version. Still, at the very least his side of the story deserved to be heard.</p><p>"I dunno, one morning she just whispered it into my ear. Had to do it, she's always been pretty indifferent and cold. She played me like a jack thrown out onto a field of kings. I've been wanting her affection, as much as a pleasant wink that the mere suggestion of what she desired just flung me that way. It stopped mattering what the thing she asked me to do was, it had to be done." The deviant kept talking, he was clearly crushed by the whole experience. So much even that Mana was beginning to believe parts of what he was saying.</p><p>Itemi did not look like about to buy into it, the Security officer grabbed the man's head and smashed it against the table, leaving a good, bowl-deep dent in it while the nose of the ex-officer spilled with red all over.</p><p>"I couldn't believe what the guy was saying. Kita, a treasured friend, an old-time colleague was sleeping around with this loser? No way. Wasn't having any of that. My fist pounded and pounded on his face, like a hammer trying to call some sort of sick sense upon the world, if any of that sense was the master of the mansion of rational mind I was knocking on, it would have come and opened the door. It took the brat a while to stop me, she must have gotten worried about the asshole getting killed."</p><p>Mana did take longer than she should have. She should not have had Itemi laying hands on the guy to begin with. The whole thing with Okasune being thrown into the line of fire and how little sense it made, but how convincingly the story was weaved and told, made Mana submerge down under. She couldn't swim any longer, the dirt, the blood and, most importantly, the irrationality of its mysteries and lack of any progress towards them moving forward made the magician sink slowly to the bottom as her lungs were beginning to fill with the filth.</p><p>Like a saving grace, a hand of some Security officer pulled Mana and Itemi out of the interrogation room before beginning to yell at them. While the magician felt grateful that she was moved from that gruesome scene but the words of the officer just rang through her ears like shellshock. There may not have been a shell to be shocked by, the real shells would have still been to come when the dust settles and the two have to make any sense out of everything that remains.</p><p>"There can't be any doubt, he told us what he believed. I could tell that much, I can stand by my word." Mana ruffled her hair before sitting down on a nearby bench and wrapping her fingers around her head as if trying to squeeze a single rational thought out of it.</p><p>"The girl was freaking out. No wonder, she was trying to sift through more quicksand with her fingers than she could possibly even imagine existing. She wanted to be the rational problem solver but at the moment she was just breaking down. Just a bother. Then again, given it's Kita we're talking about – I was afraid that so was I. The moment the Security officer in me awakened from the voluntary breakdown, I would have had to confront the painful truth."</p><p>"You mean, you believe Okasune-san could have been in on it?" Mana looked up.</p><p>"The kid was talking hogwash. Her mission was over, this was long past just the Fire Lord's goddamn money. This was about the integrity of the last good woman in Shukuba and how quickly its foundation was crumbling. No, Kita was not in on it. She could not have been in on it, she'd have had nothing to gain from killing the self-righteous fop, good, old-fashioned Security dirt, however… Yeah. I understood it perfectly now, not because of the lack of trying to forget it all and stumble in the dark like the little magician girl was."</p><p>Mana was not quite sure what Itemi was talking about, she could put some pieces together. So the officer believed that Okasune may have had some dirt on her hands and, somehow, this action was supposed to keep that dirt hidden? It was a shoddy explanation at best.</p><p>"We need to visit Okasune-san's apartment." Mana may not have known exactly what was running through Itemi's brilliant mind but she knew at least that much. She'd catch up to the man eventually, he had an incredible ability to be unable to keep something like this hidden.</p><p>"The kid was right, of course, I lit another smoke. Shit, for this I may as well start drinking again. Before Kita's record got dirtied by the footsteps of someone with boots just as shitty as Kita's final days were, I needed to set the record straight. A fucking brilliant bitch irony was – for once in her life when Kita was looking for redemption, she was about to be caught red-handed for all the skeletons in the drawer of the great Shukuba hero. Had she kept rubbing hands with the boneheads - she'd have been just fine. Just another gold star in her starry ledger."</p><p>The duo rushed back into the carriage with Itemi tipping the coachman with Okasune's location. As the carriage was passing by a small lantern where a dark blue pidgeon was sitting, Itemi whistled and the bird caught up with him, settling on the leathery arm of its summoner.</p><p>The man attached something he had just scribbled with an off-hand while it was not holding his cigarette before letting the bird take flight.</p><p>"What was that?" Mana inquired.</p><p>"The kid was completely oblivious to the procedure, hell, she was oblivious to what Kita was up to until yesterday. Should she have been let in on it? Shit… Kita liked the brat, she looked at the Sorceress with that kind of hopeful eyes that I and her got when we were training to become Shukuba Security. Where in the hell did those eyes go? Where in the hell did those times go?"</p><p>"That's not a viable answer to that question." Mana insisted. The bad feeling in her heart that was ever-present through the night and kept her awake persisted, not only that, it was slowly growing as it pulsed like a tumor in her gut.</p><p>Before Itemi could explain, the carriage stopped and he threw himself outside, rushing to Okasune's door and slamming it down. Shukuba Security appeared to possess a moderate amount of physical aspect training, it would explain how Itemi managed to hurt that ex-officer back there that badly that fast and how he so effortlessly blasted the door out.</p><p>Laying in the pool of her blood, Okasune laid sprawled out on the floor. While Mana covered her mouth and took a couple of moments to let this sight sit with her, Itemi did not appear nearly as surprised. This entire way here, he was expecting to see something like this. Secretly hoping that nothing like this would have happened but…</p><p>This was the reality. Just a beginning of another workday in Shukuba.</p>
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<a name="section0386"><h2>386. Murders Most Foul</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the initial shock of seeing Shukuba's hero laying down murdered and in the pool of her blood, Mana's eyes started racing across the room, trying to figure out who could have done this. There could have been no mistake, Okasune was capable as much as she was intelligent, even given the recent incriminating information that Itemi and Mana got. She would not have just been caught off guard by just anyone.</p><p>"There it was. The one of a kind moment that shatters the stained glass window of your life and begins violently breaking down any walls that separate the isolated rooms of your mind's palace. My friend, colleague, and sister-in-arms laid dead, her essence stolen from her violently right after she did the unthinkable - tried to do the right thing. I needed to know the whos and whys, but I just… Kid, I need to know I can trust to involve you in this, give me a rundown of what happened here before the Security forensics do, then I'll let you work with me on solving this."</p><p>"Are you serious? A life was taken, there's no time to fool around. We need to work together on this. Work this out by pooling our efforts, not playing games." Mana snapped back at the officer. Itemi's eyes looked dead-serious.</p><p>Despite noticing a whole bunch of details all over the place, they just didn't connect. How was Mana supposed to know just what kind of wound the opening on Okasune's chest was? The blood splatter patterns, while distinctive also told Mana nothing. Only one detail of note, one thing Mana has been trained in as a ninja – tracing.</p><p>"She was killed by a woman." Mana uttered before covering her face. Staring at Okasune's dead body was just too painful. Initially came the self-blame, Mana did sense something off in the air, there were signs, Okasune felt so worried over Mana yet wanted to remain so distant, almost like she knew she was going to die.</p><p>"A woman? What was the kid talking about? I could see a whole bunch of clues, but I could not see any distinctive feminine tracks amongst the blood stains on the floor. Maybe she was making it up? She was desperate to work this case and she did mean well but… Good intentions don't matter. A nice fellow can go fuck themselves for all I care, it's how good you are at what you do that makes it or breaks it in life and right now, the kid was tanking her assignment hard."</p><p>"Look, I'm not as well versed in investigations like you. But look at the spaces between these blood stains, they're left by a woman's step, the spaces between the tracks and smears are not wide enough to be those of a man. She was also not as tall or bulky as a man as the front of her tracks are much more defined, meaning the angle of her step made her lean more on the front of her foot, like she was used to wear more feminine footwear."</p><p>"The kid may have had a point, ninja could have been trained to track someone, whether someone they had to kill or just someone to capture. I guess we used a whole different way of tracking, reading papers, vouchers, receipts and tracking where the money goes, not the actual footprints. I needed a drink. This looked up to be a pretty long week…"</p><p>"Itemi-san, you need my help. I won't leave you, whether you like it or not. It's clear that if you look in deeper, you'll end up the same way as Okasune-san. I cannot allow that." Mana's resolution was iron-hard. She locked her hands below her chest and tapped her heel to the floor.</p><p>"The kid was stubborn but delusional. She may have had the force to play some sick marble game with worlds themselves and the speed to move between countries in mere moments but in this town and case she was limited to what her mind could tell her and her mind was that of a child. I won't waste my time training her in this business, people with the skillset of mine and Kita's and the mindset of the Sorceress had a nasty tendency to end up dead and I've had way too much blood soaking my consciousness."</p><p>Itemi stepped outside, Mana closed her eyes and tried making a split-second decision. To follow her ass of a… Whatever Itemi was to Mana at this moment, or to try and work out this murder scene and play Itemi's game. It all depended on the girl's confidence to convince the man that he was wrong dismissing her like that but, being confronted by her failure as an advocate and protector of life, Mana had very little of that left to go around.</p><p>Mana tried, again and again, to work out what had happened here, read into every detail she could. Obviously, she knew not to mess around the scene too much and touch anything but as long as she did not change anything the forensics should have been able to work their magic out anyways, this state of the scene of the murder was enough for Itemi to figure his version out, was it not?</p><p>This was pointless, Mana could not tell if the gaping laceration on the center of Okasune's chest was a stab wound of a blade piercing her heart or if it was delivered by a kunai dispenser of a lower firing power, she had seen the Syndicate wearing smaller handheld versions of those death-firing tubes after all. The blood splatter also told Mana nothing, mainly because she could not quite tell if the splatter was supposed to tell her the manner of weapon that was used, the position of the victim when she was attacked or something else entirely.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress!? What are you doing here?" A young female with chin-length brown hair gasped. "You would not happen to be related to this murder, would you!?" She pointed at the magician in an accusatory and a strangely triumphant manner.</p><p>"Don't mind Burgoniya, she's trying to move up the ranks and out of forensics. The Sorceress has nothing to do with the murder, it was her and Itemi that sent the message, to begin with, remember?" Another forensics officer gently lead the quirky investigator towards the body as the forensics officers swarmed Okasune's apartment.</p><p>Mana waited outside the place for the forensics to do their thing. She hated herself for being so weak, not quite literally so but just about in all the ways that mattered. Whenever she looked at a dead body she felt strength leave her body, her usually brilliant mind suddenly started racing and firing self-inflammatory arrows right at the magician's own heart, hurting herself in ways only she knew she could have.</p><p>Itemi may have been halfway around the town now. He could have been foolishly confronting the people he held responsible and getting himself killed in the process. He was not at his best either, his lifelong colleague has just been murdered and he found out about it just moments after finding out the woman was hiding plenty away from him. Of course, he wanted to wall himself off from the rest of the world, not let anyone else in and just do the dirty deed he had in his mind.</p><p>Mana could barely believe how easily Itemi bought what the ex-officer told him. Sure, she had no way of affirming that he was lying and, at the very least, as far as she could tell, the man was believing what he was talking about most genuinely. Mana could have listened in on his heartbeat by enhancing her perception and she'd have not noticed a deceitful skip of a beat, just the usual tragedy in the man's voice of being betrayed by a woman who used him and whom he loved absolutely. Regardless of that, Itemi clearly treasured Okasune and yet he barely ever faltered before accepting the truth of her shady businesses. Just how many times did he have to make such a realization before that it came so naturally to him?</p><p>The magician stopped the one young lady she knew alongside the forensics, she needed to know what had happened in the place so she could find Itemi and convince him to let them help each other out. They were both weak, both in different ways but victory could only have been found in ways they were each strong separately and the ways that separate strength could have been used to help each other out.</p><p>"Ma'am, I need to know what happened in there." Mana pleaded with the woman.</p><p>"Absolutely not! This is Shukuba Security business!" she looked angered merely by the fact that Mana even suggested being told something.</p><p>"I am a Konohagakure ninja, Konohagakure and Shukuba have international cooperation treaties, do they not?" the magician tried recalling the conversation between Okasune and the westerner yesterday. "We are under obligation to help each other."</p><p>"Only if you are here on Konohagakure business and not your own, Sorceress-san!" the woman stomped the ground angrily before moving past the magician and leaving her sadly glaring down and back at the body that was being taken away now, together with Mana's last hopes of convincing Itemi to work with her on this.</p><p>Maybe she could have forced her way into Itemi's vengeful rampage, trying to figure out who was to blame and bringing those people to justice. Regardless, the investigation where Mana was forcefully tagging along would be more toxic and, possibly, even less successful than if Itemi was acting all by himself.</p><p>Damn, now it all made sense, Okasune's determination to arrest Bonda yesterday and her quiet acceptance of her own mortality when she was proved unable to do so. Okasune must have known she did not have the time to do the investigation right, she must have known something, something that made this leak business spread farther and wider than originally believed. The money laundering could have only been the peak of an iceberg of corruption that enveloped and spread its roots under Shukuba's foundation.</p><p>Even if she knew all this, Mana had no idea where to begin looking for those roots. Her only link between the underlying criminal element of the town and the Shukuba Security was the western woman that came to bail Bonda out yesterday. The magician had no idea who the woman was, no name, only hints at a profession but the fact that there was no intricate elongated dialogue between Okasune and the westerner clearing that up suggested that the woman was familiar to the Security officer from before.</p><p>If there was a person X, the man or woman underneath this town-wide bog of filth and they were connected to the leak of Fire Lord's funds and Okasune, that connection could have only been established through that woman. She was the linking element and Mana suspected that she may have not only linked the person X with Shukuba Security but also with every single element of his criminal activity.</p><p>Person X, if he existed, was just like the Fire Lord, except his fire was that of corruption, manipulation and building up a treasury for himself from the misery of other people. All of the smaller managers of his individual criminal elements were like his vassals, all buzzing with their own activity, all resonating back to him through the western woman.</p><p>Knowing that Mana needed to find the person X, and she knew one of the deviant vassals of his, as well as knew of the westerner woman, all she needed to do was add the two elements she knew together to find out the third. It was simple math.</p><p>The solution to the magician's problem annoyed her to no end. For the third time in this blasted town she'd have to perform a technique she did not invent herself and it was a rule that the magician did not overly enjoy crossing, even if it was one with much lighter standards and not as adamant as Mana's other rules. The magician disappeared in an alleyway, placing her hands together in a hand seal position.</p><p>"Transformation Jutsu!" she chanted out, transforming her body into what she could recall the western woman looking like. Now all she needed to do was squeeze Sho and see what vile fluids leaked out from his bursting puss. Wearing this shape, she would have little to no problem reaching the man's listening ears.</p><p>Wearing her new face, Mana entered the Shukuba Administration building and approached the receptionist, just like before she requested to see the governor of Shukuba, the woman smiled and played the good receptionist, encouraging the magician to sit down and wait, just like before.</p><p>"I'd like to see him about a prospect for a new start-up." Mana let the bait out into the pond. Within seconds, the fish burst from the abyss, devouring it whole and the receptionist jumped up from her seat, leading the magician into a room behind her, pulling out a file adding to it a form, which she quickly filled and handed the fake westerner.</p><p>Sho didn't look too excited to see Mana, or, more exactly, the face of the woman she was wearing. The man wriggled like a worm, turning to his side with each step, forward or backward as if he was waiting to be stabbed and was weaseling out of it. With each gesture of his face, each little movement or gesture he was emanating fear. Just who was this westerner? She was somehow involved, that much was made crystal clear.</p><p>"My employer was not overly fond to hear about yesterday's arrest. He was even less fond of seeing a Konohagakure kunoichi mingling with Shukuba Security." Mana approached the matter from a neutral corner, she did not know just what the relationship between the westerner and Sho was, or what both of them had to do with the person X. All she knew was that her theory was being given more air to breathe with each passing second.</p><p>"Ummm… Your employer? That's not what you usually call him. More so, I have nothing to do with that. Show yourself, Sorceress!" Sho declared unexpectedly.</p><p>Biting her lip in frustration of being discovered, Mana canceled the transformation, appearing before the governor in her original shape. It may have been wiser to approach Sho when she had more information about the working relationship between the leak-folk and person X, regardless, with just an exchange of a few words, Mana was assured that a person X existed.</p><p>"Interesting, you knew who the woman was, you did not deny the existence of a third party, the party that's calling the shots. How did you find me out?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"When the presence of a ninja is involved, even the slightest tip off the mark is a reason to worry about even the most obvious of things. Deceiving my eyes is the most basic party trick of your kind." Sho fixed his sweating and messy collar.</p><p>"Yeah. Repeating other people's tricks is usually not my thing for that same reason. Your case has reached the Hokage by now. He knows all about it, the leak business is through. I wonder how else you can be useful to whoever is in charge? We both know what people like that do with things that aren't useful to them." Mana tried playing up to the man's fears. She needed to pick up on every detail, that was how she'd earn Itemi's trust back.</p><p>"I'm useful in more ways to… Someone who may or may not exist. You're presuming too much, Konoha's Sorceress, not only that, you've played your hand now – before too soon every lowlife in the town will know who you are and why you're here." Sho sang a whole different tune and in a much more shallow tone.</p><p>"Good, it will save me the trouble of rooting all of them out, they'll save me a lot of time by coming to me." Mana winked. The Syndicate has been a moderate trouble for Mana when she was a civilian, back when her only strength was a decent ability to fight. Their mightiest weapons would barely make it through Mana's skin. The only reason this hidden society of deviants were still uncaged was that the magician had trouble finding and getting her hands on them. She was no Security officer, that much was for sure, that was why Itemi's experience was so invaluable for her to learn.</p><p>"Really? Well, the ability to find new ways of hurting people they are inconvenienced by is what separates bad people from the worst." Sho removed the howling kettle from its stand before filling his cup with tea.</p><p>"That is what will do the worst in. Right now a really pissed Shukuba Security officer is ready to flip the town over, shuffle dirt with the feathers of the heavens for the sake of the person he has lost." Mana shrugged, trying to act like she did not care about the downfall of such a conflict. "Just think about what such a massive clash will do to your reputation as a governor, on the other hand, you could just give me one word, the name of the western woman in the red jacket or the name of whoever employs her."</p><p>"Massive clash?" Sho laughed out, spitting the small sip of tea he had ingested back into his glass cup. "Officer Itemi is just one man. Men have a nasty tendency to get shredded to fleshy bits when high-velocity blades are involved. This city is built on people that disappeared from its history or were edited out. You have no more official cover here, your business here is done and you are seriously overstaying your welcome here, I tell you this as the governor of Shukuba – stay out of this and leave."</p><p>Mana's eyes tried incinerating the round man where he sat sipping on his tea, unfortunately, for all the many powers she did possess, the ability to do that was beyond her reach, at least for now. She hated this face-swapping, sunken to his chin into manure bastard. Then again, she was the one to talk. It was her third face she tried to wear when talking to this man this week…</p><p>"I dropped by the Aviary on my way here." Mana smiled, letting her wild dark hair slip down to cover up her eyes to the point where her face sunk in the afternoon shade as her hand rose up, waving an envelope in clear view of the confused governor. "It's from Lord Sixth, he says he has no more business with me and that my mission of finding the leak is completed."</p><p>"Good, congratulations. I hope you'll understand if no one sheds a tear when you leave and if your face will be remembered around these parts, making it impossible for you to conduct future ninja-related activity here. Not that you were too good, to begin with…" Sho sneered at the magician.</p><p>"The second half of the letter says "…as per your request to stay in Shukuba due to your personal business, related to your nindo, proceed at your discretion." The angle of Mana's smile sharpened. As the magician used her free hand to brush aside her unruly locks, she saw Sho's face turn pale. "I will give you a strong suggestion as to what "my discretion" entails. I will root out the filth from under your city, even if it will leave wounds in its foundation. I will pull as hard as I need to, whether I end up flipping this city over to expose the most sensitive nerves of whatever's sleeping underneath."</p><p>A loud gulp was heard coming from Sho's side. He understood what Mana meant, she was not going to cause a revolution all by herself, that would be a scandal inside the Fire Lord's domain. It would cause unwanted tension between Konohagakure and Shukuba that the Feudal Lord did not need. However, Sho could see that if Mana was to merely expose what was transpiring behind the curtains – he'd end up the sacrifice to a revolution of the people. He knew the only way to possibly stay in his high-position seat.</p><p>"I don't know the woman's name, I've only heard of her. She's a part of the Diamond Hand. It's what the people underneath call themselves. I'm sure you're familiar with Okasune-san, she's been arresting the competition of the Diamond Hand's for years now, one by one, leaving the Diamond Hand the ruling criminal element in this town. She was given freebies by the Diamond Hand as well, people no longer useful to them. She was their legal executioner, making her a heroine in the eyes of the town and completely under their control. They could have squeezed its air supply just as easily as they have allowed the hero spirit of the town to breathe." Sho wheezed out, by telling the magician this much he had crossed some sort of a line.</p><p>"I'd ask the Shukuba Security for protection if I were you…" Mana nodded in gratitude. This information was not overly useful in terms of what she could or could not do with it but it was something to come to Itemi with. At the very least she could coordinate her actions with a specialist in this case.</p><p>"There's no use for it. At this po, nt it isn't clear who is fed by the Diamond Hand and who hasn't been approached by them yet." Sho sighed before turning his chair around. "Go, though. Act at your own discretion as you were told to. I have wondered if the Diamond Hand would be as fond of me as they have been up to now. One does not come into favor with people like them without making preparations for the worst case scenario. For a short while, I can evade their wrath."</p><p>"They won't avoid mine." Mana sighed before bowing her head for the man she had decided to pay respect to once more before leaving Shukuba Administration and feeling the cold and heavy rain pelting at her outside as the afternoon sky turned murky grey.</p>
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<a name="section0387"><h2>387. Anarchistic Takeover</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The winter night moon spread its gleam, as bleak as the skin of a dead man, the light it lustered across the misty Shukuba streets just as cold as the blood that moved through the cadaver's veins. Every vital intake of breath required a sniff to follow it up. More and more often people chose to breathe inside the collars of their own outer layers of clothing to warm up the air they were sucking in.</p><p>A short woman of dark complexion and refined eye-lines, lush eyelashes, and overpowering make-up pressed her heels across the frozen dirt passageway of a more resolute district of Shukuba. One comprised of modern metal sarcophagi that surrounded a large lake, where much of what was not meant to be found upon inspections was dumped, when a watchful eye, less willing to compromise, came to scope about the place. There was always certain scoping about to be done there.</p><p>The woman stopped in the limelight of an ancient lantern to light up a smoke, her right hand threw her rich and wild dark hair backward as she set the end of her cigarette blazing. A dark shadow whizzed past the woman, temporarily covering up the light gleaming above her, like a shadow of a hawk swooping down to grab its prey. Loud, metallic thuds and fleshy tearing sounds accompanied the impressive flight and flip of the shade that finally stopped moving fast enough to be given shape by the human eye.</p><p>The woman in red reactively jerked to the blades that skewered her frame before collapsing on the ground. Itemi stood back up, scratching the back of his head and his neck as his impressive skydiving trick did not leave him completely unscathed. The man removed a bottle of pills from his back pocket before swallowing them down his dried out throat through vocal and rather gruesome-sounding struggle.</p><p>"I knew I'd lure you out here by taking this shape. You've covered your tracks quite nicely, not even Shukuba Security knows what you're up to, they are considering you rogue." The voice of a young girl echoed eerily through the officer's ears, the echo of her voice sounded so dreamy and mind-shattering that the man had to take a couple of stumbling steps back to preserve his balance. Helping him to deal with the mental pressure of genjutsu, Mana dispelled the illusion, letting the body of the westerner woman that Itemi had just gunned down fade like a mirage from his view as the image of Mana appeared into his view in a similar manner. A combination of the Transformation Jutsu and her own Fancy Trick genjutsu technique working in a combination helped Mana feel a bit easier about once again using a jutsu of a foreign invention.</p><p>"I'd figured it was too easy…" Itemi grumbled before pulling out his handheld kunai dispenser and firing a bunch of blades at Mana's direction.</p><p>The magician effortlessly grabbed the first blade that was approaching her out of the air, disrupting its trajectory and using it to deflect the rest, protecting herself against the entire series of high-velocity kunai projectiles fired her way. She did not expect such a violent reaction from the man, then again, he was going on a rogue rampage across the town and he did warn her multiple times to get out of his way. More so, he must have realized that such an attack would not harm Mana too much even if the magician let it all connect.</p><p>"For a man who is not a ninja or can mold his chakra, your speed is quite impressive. I'd say you are well in-tune with the physical aspect of your chakra." Mana smiled as she let go of the heated kunai she still held in her grasp once the man had emptied his dispenser in her direction.</p><p>"I told the kid to get out of my way. She may have been a monster in all ways but the ones that actually mattered but she was no master detective. There was a thought in my mind to just direct her at my enemies and watch them burn but… This was something I had to do by myself. As a depressed ex-alcoholic, disillusioned with the world, I needed it to stop the dreams and the constant voices. Which ones were mine, which ones were those I attributed to the people I've killed? I could no longer tell… I needed sleep, so did she but… Pills and smokes were all the joy that was left."</p><p>"I know how Okasune-san died." Mana closed her eyes. "She was clearly prepared to leave to work. Her kunai dispenser laid by her side, meaning she had pulled it at some point but dropped it, likely due to the shock of sudden pain. It was not a quick death. She was about to leave but the marking on the wall parallel to the door suggests that a noise of kunai being fired in that direction surprised her, causing her to pull out her dispenser and inspect her own home. While the stab wound in the center of her chest was what killed her, it did not go all the way through and yet the pool of blood behind her was considerable – she was stabbed in the back first, disarming her and dropping her on the ground while the assailant – the western woman, most likely, enjoyed her kill. It was personal, just Diamond Hand taking care of business." Mana needed to take a breath.</p><p>Explaining the final moments of Okasune-san was much easier when the sign of Mana's failure was not staring her right in the eyes. It was almost like being in the company of someone the magician had failed to protect sapped all of her strength away, made her mind just turn on and off erratically, firing strands of useless thoughts that did not connect to anything.</p><p>"I see someone's read the forensics report… The specifics of how the kid described Kita's final moments were too detailed for an uninitiated eye. It was like she knew too well where to look, which details were important and which ones weren't. A complete newbie would have gotten some things right but they'd have also mentioned a whole buttload of hogwash that was irrelevant to the case. The brat was singing it all like she had it memorized. All on point, too good even for the little magician. I'd be pissed that she was cheating if I wasn't so impressed she managed to sneak around Security HQ to read it all..." Itemi concluded as he sheathed his weapon after preparing it for firing again by loading it with another belt of kunai. "Who's the Diamond Hand, I wondered, that was one secret that the crime scene could not have tipped me off on and none of the people I've silenced that day would have, for all they knew, they were already dead either way."</p><p>"I did sneak around the Security HQ, I needed to see if they had any idea where you were, also, figured intel on Okasune-san's death would make you more talkative. The Diamond Hand bit was something I got out of the governor Sho-san. The town's under a secret shutdown, the governor is going to hiding and every executive and legislative work is put on hold." Mana sighed.</p><p>"That meant that no one was truly in charge. All the public institutions, like the Shukuba Security, officially powerless. Maybe it was for the better, I couldn't be sure that the Head of Security wasn't also in the pocket of… The Diamond Hand. I was the only trustworthy one, I guess the kid was too. After all, there was no other point for her to be here at this point." Itemi scratched his chin as he monologued.</p><p>"We need to work with the Shukuba Security, Itemi-san. You need to check back in, take your orders and do this by the book. We cannot fight both the Security and the Diamond Hand at the same time." Mana tried to reason with the man.</p><p>"Shukuba Security may have been the Diamond Hand, for all we knew. Telling the wheat from the chaff would have been too much trouble, too much focus put on things that didn't matter. If Kita was in Diamond Hand's pocket, so could have been literally everyone else. No one was clean, no one was trustworthy until proven otherwise and I wasn't about to play lethal roulette with a bunch of dirty Security officers." Itemi spat aside before turning to the small passageway leading back into the town through a narrow forest path. Mana felt inclined to follow.</p><p>"It was a smart trap to parade around the town wearing the woman's face, kid. I couldn't help but commend her. Goddamn it, she read me like a book, maybe I was getting too old. Kita knew she was, look where that got her. She knew she had no time to hit the Diamond Hand, she knew that with the first action she was not specifically instructed to do she'd be shredded. Every passing day at work she was surrounded by her potential supervisors of the lethal kind, every one of whom could have put a blade through her head just while casually passing by if she did not dance to the melody of bastards." Itemi kept rambling to himself. Mana's lips couldn't help but crack a small grin.</p><p>It was not that the magician found Okasune's highly tense and deceitfully lethal work environment funny or that there was comedy in the woman's tragedy of any kind. It was just that she's been parading around the town disguised as the westerner for hours and couldn't hear Itemi following her despite him constantly rambling all kind of stuff to himself out loud. A couple of times she could sense remnants of killing intent, a very overpowering, passionate kind. Now that Mana knew the context behind the ex-officer's attempt to murder Bonda on the movie set, the fact that she picked him up made so much more sense.</p><p>"Even though Okasune-san spent her entire life as a puppet hero, I can't help but respect her. Anyone who has sunken so deep and has the willpower to make it all right deserves it." Mana dreamily looked up at the moon.</p><p>"She knew that the only thing she could do before she was killed was hit the Diamond Hand right at where it hurt – their money. The Diamond Hand were like vampires, leeching off Fire Lord's treasury to build up their own strength. By cutting the leeches off of blood she'd have delivered the only kind of blow she was strong enough to deliver. She even went as far as to play that poor chump and slip him the idea to off Bonda… That's because the moment she'd have actually tried to build up a case – she'd be killed before even one legitimate piece of evidence was collected." Itemi grunted.</p><p>"I admired the serenity in Okasune-san's eyes when Bonda-san was released. I thought that those were the eyes of a woman who was accepting her mistakes, accepting she was wrong and willing to punish Bonda-san justly. I guess Okasune-san knew already she was not going to last that long, she accepted it and went out serenely because she knew that she would go out trying to make it all right." Mana looked down, her throat constricted by sadness. "She was no hero, even when she tried to fix everything she did so by manipulating people and resorting to murder but… While I do not approve or agree with her actions, I can at least understand and respect her reasons, somewhat."</p><p>"Listening to the kid honoring Kita by my side, talking about the woman like she knew her, felt odd. It was like two good friends remembering a common acquaintance but… The kid barely even knew her. And yet… She managed to take in just the stuff that mattered. I remembered Okasune's final words to the kid, it felt like a passing the torch kind of moment. In her last meeting with the kid, she recognized the enthusiasm and the genuine desire to help people that she herself used to have at some point, before the lines turned blurry, before the clean and bloody money smudged against the other pile, turning all of them smudged and making it impossible to tell which pile was which."</p><p>"We need to find the westerner, Itemi-san. She's the only lead we have." Mana turned at the rogue Security officer.</p><p>"It's like you're reading my mind." The man smiled. "Don't go around ruining that by telling me some bullshit like that you won't let me kill anyone…"</p><p>"That's not for me to decide. I realize that the ideals I hold are extreme and that they are not what other people uphold. For that reason, and several others, I do not enforce my nindo, I will change the world and make people stop killing each other by making them decide that with their own free will." Mana shrugged. She wasn't sure if that kind of attitude didn't make her the worst kind of hypocrite but it was just the way she had decided to do things. She had worked alongside some of the most talented fighters and killers and had she confronted and preached to each of them every time they fought – she'd have achieved nothing.</p><p>Let alone, if she achieved world peace through exacting force, whether physical or legal, like Lord Fourth did, she'd only be crushing everything she ever stood for. The world wouldn't really change, no one would truly change, they'd just bury those killing intentions deep down under, letting them spread their roots and grow in the shadows before they would blow up in Mana's face. Too many times the magician had seen Fourth's endless peace treaties be brought up in the negative light not to become disillusioned by them.</p><p>"While the kid may have been pretty on-point as to decide to gun for the woman in red, she was a little bit hopeful about actually knowing where she was or how to get to her." Itemi scratched his head.</p><p>"We will not be gunning for the woman in red just yet. Before we do that, we'll deal with Shukuba Security and your rogue status." Mana insisted. "We can't just cut off a root off of a tree and hope it to die. We need to separate the tree from its foundation first before we can fully focus on unearthing the roots."</p><p>"I sighed uneasily. I knew the girl was right but… That was not your most successful metaphor, I told her, trying to drown my disdain of what she suggested in some levity. Drowning my problems, whether in levity or alcohol, has always been my preferred solution…" Itemi rambled on. "Her plan was for me to submit and work with the Shukuba Security, mine was to send them to go fuck themselves. If we were to work together, a more coordinated solution needed to be found. That may have sounded generous of me, but I liked old man Chontai, he was a pretty nice boss, all things considered, and, had it not been absolutely obvious, I'd have never believed him to be dirty. I guess that's the painful part of a dirty Security office."</p><hr/><p>The Shukuba Security HQ was slowly clearing out. The only officers present were the ones staying to work overtime, whether with cases they have not done enough in through the day or with, as Itemi explained to on their way there, shady businesses like making evidence disappear overnight during an unexpected electrical outage.</p><p>The lingering Security officers batted only curious eyes when Mana entered the HQ and slowly walked up to the northern wing of the building, heading straight for the office of Shukuba Head of Security. The man was sipping on something dark as he worked on a bunch of files stacked on his table. Upon the magician's entry, he gave her a bemused look.</p><p>"A bit late for work, isn't it?" The man wondered. For a Head of Security he was relatively short, well-aged and reminded more of a sickly man than a powerhouse that could contain a criminal in this crazy world Mana lived in. Still, she was a living testament that looks were deceiving.</p><p>Without uttering a word, Mana walked up to the window and opened it up, after she moved back, Itemi leaped in before fixing his clothes and confronting the Head of Security. The little man was sandwiched between Mana and the rogue officer.</p><p>"W-What are you doing here? We're looking for you, you know? You've gone rogue, you've been suspended, you'll be lucky to avoid prosecution!" The man objected</p><p>"Shukuba Security is going to close down. Everyone is going to be suspended unless stated otherwise." Mana cut it short. "Shukuba Security is in dire need of a "reboot" of sorts."</p><p>"Chontai started laughing, could I really blame him? What the kid said, without the context, sounded like speech of a madman. One of those idiots with cooking paper wrapped around their heads in the shadier alleyways of Shukuba, thinking they were blocking mind control waves that the Yamanaka spread to take control of the world. While it felt a bit triumphant, I always hated that moment when those happy smiles faded. Too many bad memories associated with the core concept…" Itemi rambled off topic. The chief was undoubtedly used to the ramblings of his subordinate as he paid the man no mind.</p><p>"The governor is in hiding. Behind the scenes the town is in disarray. There's no more administration to speak of, it's all a farce with no actual power. Sho-san decided that'd be for the better until the Diamond Hand are rooted out." Mana calmly explained why she had every right to make such demands.</p><p>"Poor Chontai leaned and squirmed after a single mention of the words "Diamond Hand", like a demon hiding from a praying priest. Of course, he was on their payroll. He was the only official in this town that was worth having in one's pocket. If the Head of Security was not getting paid by you – what's the point of buying anyone else?" Itemi noted, seeing the chief's reaction to Mana uttering the name of the criminal organization lurking underground.</p><p>"Your last executive decision will be to call for a meeting. Every single Shukuba Security officer. Here. Tomorrow. Itemi-san will build a task force out of the people he trusts. The others are free to honor their allegiances to the Diamond Hand or get out of our way." Mana finished naming her demands and the plan that she and Itemi worked out.</p><p>This may have seemed like a distraction, spending so much time doing something as trivial as job interviews and task force gathering but… If the end result will be clearly drawn lines, a full trust between Security officers, that assurance that one's own comrade was nothing else but that and that one won't be pierced by a blade from behind, fired by their own best friend in the moment of greatest need, it will be worth it.</p><p>Even if Itemi did not entirely agree, even if he would have rather waged a two-person war against the world, Mana wanted clarity amongst who was fighting whom, even if that gave the Diamond Hand time to regroup and plan ahead. Without a doubt, they knew all about what was going on by now.</p><p>Mana expected the little elderly man to fight her more. Surprisingly enough, the man sat down and scribbled up the executive order right then and there. When the magician looked into the man's eyes she was the same thing she incorrectly identified in Okasune's eyes last evening – regret.</p><p>"Even if I can support my family and retire in dignity, it won't be worth it if I cannot sleep calmly at night." The chief sighed before handing the order.</p><p>"Just like that the river has been crossed. As old man Chontai handed us the order he had written up right here and now, I wondered just how many more officers were looking for an excuse to defy the Diamond Hand for the sake of a clear mind. For the sake of fighting what they have always wanted to fight. I couldn't help but look back at the kid and wonder, what if she's been right all along to enlist the Shukuba Security. What if behind all of her naivety, childish mistakes and idealistic glasses she saw us all for what we were – like-minded children who have at some point lost their way and burnt down the bridges. Now dreamily watching from the other side at the poor and bare but beautiful shiny grasslands they have left behind while they were breathing the choking corruption of the city air."</p><p>For once Itemi's outer monologues actually left an impact on everyone in the room. All three of the people present turned their eyes away from one another, the fight up ahead will be a tough one, likely not all of the Shukuba Security will be so wishful for redemption and plenty will choose the wrong side. Before it is all over friends will have to fire on friends, people may die and for the sake of public order all of this underground war must remain under the civilian radar. As a Konoha kunoichi, Mana would have certainly preferred it that way…</p>
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<a name="section0388"><h2>388. The Curious Case of Oribu Panther</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next workday took almost no time at all before turning hectic. From tackling the complaints from disgruntled Security officers who have now found themselves suspended indefinitely until the licenses of those who were verified and approved for the clash with the Diamond Hand were unsuspended and joined the taskforce, to the elementary difficulties of building such a taskforce, to begin with.</p><p>The old Security chief was a massive help, lending his great experience in managing the force and giving insight into the experience, personalities, skillset, and history of the people Mana and Itemi were going through. The magician had never imagined Itemi to be this skilled with managing paperwork, skimming through towers upon towers of files, instantly identifying cooked documents or "freebie" arrests with a pair of glares on the files.</p><p>Okasune-san was right, whatever the man took away from the force by being a rambling machine of little to no ability to keep something to himself, the officer was amazing at writing detailed and textbook-right reports or identifying when reports were either rushed or otherwise tampered with.</p><p>"You know, all those men and women we've suspended will now join the Diamond Hand's ranks, most likely." Chief Chontai cleared his throat, raising a valid yet long discussed between Mana and Itemi point.</p><p>"Yeah, that's kind of the plan. We'll draw clear lines, let everyone choose instead of having to worry about being backstabbed all the time in a game of who's who." Mana sighed.</p><p>"The kid was not entirely truthful to what she was thinking. This was just an idea she cooked up, a plan. Somewhere inside she still worried about it, wondered if the plan was too cold and calculated to be put to use when human lives were at stake. Sometimes I wondered if this kid ever planned around civilian lives before. If she knew what a powerful internal factor it was or how it could derail a perfectly good plan." Itemi kept on rambling to himself as his eyes ran down another file.</p><p>"You know, if the enemy force is too powerful, if there is no hope for victory, even the most idealistic and hopeful will tip to the Diamond Hand's side. Not because they agree with them but because they want to survive." Chontai scratched the back of his neck.</p><p>"The old man was tired, hell, I was tired. The girl had not slept for a pair of days either. She looked much better now than she looked yesterday, she must have been getting back into shape. That was the only explanation, still, even given her supernatural body and mind, she'll begin getting weary eventually and it didn't look like she had anything to seek solace in." Itemi pulled out another smoke before lighting it up. It was a massive fire hazard but whereas earlier in the night Mana stopped the officer from doing it, now she had grown accustomed and somewhat numbed to it.</p><p>"You should move your family and hide. As a defector, they will come after you. Even if the dirty and scorned officers have not already leaked the information of your involvement – they soon will." Mana looked softly at the old man.</p><p>"Do you truly think that I was as foolish as to bring up a child in this world, given my status and circumstances? My wife has accepted the consequences of being involved with me long ago, she's been nagging me about being secretive and grumpy for too long. If anything, she'll be glad to hear about the fact that I pissed some thug badly enough for us to be targeted." Chontai laughed out. His laugh was not genuine, there was a hint of bitter in it.</p><p>"So instead of bringing up a child who could potentially face danger because of their relation to you, you'd rather derive them from life completely?" Mana asked quietly, almost like leaving the question out in the air, like she herself was still trying to determine what her stance on such a decision was.</p><p>"It's not deriving a child of life if they haven't been born. You cannot derive from life something hypothetical. Just by living your life you're deriving thousands of children of life. It was a sick way of thinking about it but, then again, the magician girl was just a child. That train of thought gave me an idea…" Itemi decided as he flung his smoke aside, letting it spread its black and blazy powder across some downed paperwork. Mana hurried from her chair to pick it up and properly dispose of it, something she's found herself doing quite often recently.</p><p>If anything, it was a battle of wills. Mana was almost sure of it that she was being tested, smokes represented Itemi's abandonment of what he once stood for, what he once embodied when he started working in Shukuba Security and he was merely testing to see just for how long Mana would stick to the old ways of fixing everything she saw out of order. There was actually no reasonable way for Mana to win this clash of wills for it was perpetual but there was a painful way to lose – let the discarded paperwork light up in flames after she missed just one careless act.</p><p>"Tracking all this history, conducting all those interviews will give us shit. I knew that. Chontai secretly knew that. The kid may not have known that yet but she'd have found out. Waste of time – all of it. That being said, it was not all hopeless, there was a way to mold together Sorceress' idea for reforming the Shukuba Security and the way reality operated. We'd employ the newbies. People of no history, no loose ends to track. Anyone skilled enough to graduate could have done the job, their freshness and move-the-world attitude were just what we needed in this…" Itemi concluded.</p><p>"That's a great idea. Where are you going?" Mana's face changed from ecstatic to irritated in just one moment. Itemi was standing and getting dressed for leaving.</p><p>"I needed to pick up my herb potions. Before this whole fight was done, I'd be shot at, stabbed at and whatever other sick methods of execution and torture the Diamond Hand employs. It was a sick fight, so sick that we needed people who had no idea about how sick it was to fight it. That told me everything I needed to know. The potion seller arrived in the late morning, just a few steps shy of the main square. Next stop after Konoha, then to gather intel for the rookie squad…" Itemi kept rambling to himself but his ramblings sort of put the general picture together quite nicely.</p><p>"There's no use in stopping him. Itemi, fill her up for the whole squad!" Chontai yelled at the man who just flipped his hands up in the air before leaving the door to slam. He then unwillingly tackled the rising storm of confused and outright infuriated Security officers before redirecting them to the chief's office.</p><p>Herb potions that arrived in the early mornings in Konoha before moving to Shukuba for some late morning sales… Mana felt an unpleasant rush of memories from home, could those potions have been the pain-numbing herb concoctions that her father has been using? Chief Chontai looked like he knew about them and even encouraged Itemi to pick them up for the whole squad.</p><p>"What are those potions Itemi was talking about?" Mana asked with unease.</p><p>"Oh, it's just… This miracle drink from Konoha, or somewhere close. Renders you completely painless for a while before filling you with a pleasant, numbing sensation for hours on end that sort of counteracts pain that is yet to come. It's probably meant more for recovering veterans or elderly people with knee pains but… Nothing better to power through having high-velocity blades shred your flesh multiple times." Chontai shook his head before helping Mana gather a bunch of files about younger and less experienced officers.</p><p>"Don't you have medical ninja working here? They could patch you right up after injury. They work really fast and they don't just mask the pain – they deal with the problem." Mana wondered.</p><p>"Not anymore. Not unless Konoha sends some here on a mission or something. They sometimes do, it makes for fine practice for the inexperienced ones just... They haven't for a while now." Chontai shook his head. He then handed Mana a file, the magician felt a bit confused about it before looking at it more closely and getting the old man's point. The file was of the ex-officer who was seduced and played by Okasune. He was pretty young too. Mana needed even less experienced people in her squad.</p><p>As the magician went on through the files, gathering a handful that actually fit all the criteria, she realized just how dire the odds were. There could have been less than a couple of dozens of files there. Chontai saw Mana's lingering eyes and tried consoling her but he just couldn't find the right words. Seeing just how many people were even eligible for consideration, Mana felt like she was sending these poor people for slaughter.</p><p>"You know, maybe this whole reformation idea was a bad idea after all. Maybe I'm better off doing it all alone. I mean…" Mana placed the file she held tightly in her hand, slamming it onto the small pile.</p><p>"Oh, are you invulnerable?" Chontai raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Well, I can withstand something as trivial as dispenser fire for a while, even easier I can avoid it. Even if I'm attacked when I'm unaware, my body will instinctively react to it for the cost of a more strenuous drain and pressure on my chakra network… I'd rate my chances quite high against the likes of common thugs." Mana breathed in and out heavily, glaring at the small pile of files comparing them to the towers upon towers of personal files and reports positioned on the floor because the table ran out of room.</p><p>"Eventually even the most fortitudinous of men and women are brought down. Do not underestimate the enemy. They are too numerous for that, too influential. In addition, people with gifts like yours are not nearly as difficult to come by as you think. I'm sure that the leader of the Diamond Hand surrounds himself with people who'd be more than a challenge even for you, Sorceress-san. Mercenaries, rogue ninja, wandering samurai or disgraced pirates hiding out where the navy of no country or crew of none of their peers would be looking for them – solid ground. Diamond Hand has influence, money, and power. That means they have the access to all of them." Chontai wisely warned her.</p><p>Even if there were a couple of dozens of suitable candidates to begin the selection from after the secondary selection was finished only eleven young officers remained. After that, there was the unpleasant matter of confronting the rookie eleven and explaining the situation to them.</p><p>"I'll send out the messenger hawks." Mana sighed after the roster was settled on and all that was left to do was to draft the summons.</p><p>Mana had never drafted an official document in her life. Amongst most other things she has never done and yet would have to learn to do if she was to help this town rid of its shadowy oppressors and make it what its pleasure town façade made it out to be.</p><p>"You don't have to go all the way to the Aviary, we have a local facility for that. It'd be a hassle to go there every time someone wanted to send something…" Chontai pointed before relaying the directions to Mana. "I think the building's clear by now. You seem to have a handle on things. I'm off, best of luck to you and your rookie squad."</p><p>"My rookie squad?" Mana repeated uneasily, questioning the chief's choice of words.</p><p>"But of course, you are a chuunin, are you not? You better get used to managing a squad." Chontai laughed out.</p><p>"B-But Itemi-san is more experienced, he knows all the procedures better. He'd be better suited to lead the rookies."</p><p>"That is not true. Itemi may be more experienced but he is ridding responsibility wherever he is confronted by it. He'd rather walk around and do his own thing, gather intelligence, shoot up smaller criminal dens instead of taking people in, draft a mean report up all by himself. You may not know a thing or two, but that is why you have a squad, is it not?" Chontai nodded at Mana before standing up unceremoniously and heading for the door.</p><p>Before Mana could even find an argument to object the man with, he was gone. The magician contemplated what she had started. She'd have gone nowhere if Shukuba did not want to get rid of the Diamond Hand itself. If the governor did not wish to aid her, if Chontai did not wish to clear his name before retirement so that his night sleep was more peaceful in his final days, if Itemi did not burn with passion to avenge his friend. She'd have been labeled and forced out of the town. Even the Hokage did not object her intent and actions.</p><p>In that case was it Mana's own decision and actions to rid the town of the Diamond Hand or was she just a tool, just a useful opportunity that everyone superior to her is exploiting to their own ends? Whatever the case, the Diamond Hand cost human lives with every day of their existence. They stay hidden and unseen, exposing themselves only to leave bodies that are written off by their agents. Whether Mana was the actor or the agent, in this case, it was only her Ninja Way to tear down the Diamond Hand.</p><p>The office was awfully quiet. Mana stood up and went through the same door the chief had left through, looking around the mess of paperwork left by the outraged Shukuba Security. Many of those that were employed must have rushed to their Diamond Hand contacts, offering their services, without a doubt. Still, without an actual access to the Security, they'd be mostly useless to the syndicate of criminals, as good as the amount of muscle they carried with them. As good as a spare pair of arms and legs…</p><p>As the hawks soared into the sky like arrows launched upward, or like salutes of explosive spheres launched from a kunai dispenser at a formal funeral, Mana's hopes and fears all left skyward with them. Just how many of these rookies would report back? They had all the reasons not to – for a significant portion of their lives they were trained to join the Shukuba Security and now they were told that the establishment no longer existed. Then they were called up by a foreigner to wage some war, outside the procedures they so closely studied, lead not by a fellow officer they knew or could trust but a ninja – the very definition of a trickster and deceiver.</p><hr/><p>It may have been useful to find Itemi, whatever he was doing, he could have used Mana watching his back. Still, it was not like the magician could once again transform into someone he hated with hopes of luring him out. At this point she'd just be wandering around, looking for trouble. For that reason, Mana stayed indoors, studying the files of the rookies, again and again, their physical capabilities, their mental preparation etc.</p><p>That was when the unexpected happened – a knock came to the heavy wooden door of the chief's office before it opened. A shaken and frail looking, yet well-dressed, man entered and lifted his top hat to Mana, given how the magician was also hatted with a similar garment she wondered if, maybe, she needed to follow up that gesture but that intent somehow timed out by the man offering the first words of this curious meeting.</p><p>"Ehm… Is this really the Shukuba Security? I am here to report a foul lawlessness in our fine establishment of a town and there appears to be not a single representative of law inside." The man spoke up in a very formal and highfalutin manner. Must have been a local big cheese, fears of possible contact with a Diamond Hand agent lit up inside Mana's gut almost instantly.</p><p>"Yes, this is the… Well, Shukuba Security has been disbanded for a complete re-staffing. I'm not sure that's an actual word but it relays the idea. We probably will not have an active force until at least tomorrow morning." Mana rubbed the back of her neck in unease. Duty called, someone needed to answer it and Mana was literally the only person for the job.</p><p>"Curses, I have no idea what to do with this curious predicament. If I cannot rely on our finest lawmen to shield me from transgressions most foul that hangs over my head on a delicate thread, how am I to behave? Next morn may just be too late." The man looked quite distressed by this news, perhaps more than even a decent actor would be able to convey.</p><p>"Well, it would most likely be fitting if you sat down right there, breathe in and out and tell me what's the trouble. I am keeping this chair occupied until buttocks better than mine show up to take my place." Mana tried imitating the man's manner of speech but it did not work nearly as well as she had envisioned it in her mind.</p><p>"Not that I do not value your proposition, young lady but… I am well aware of your prominence and the cause of it. I do not believe that a… On second thought, mayhaps a stage magician would be the best person to ask the favor from." The snob was quite conflicted with himself, it seemed.</p><p>"I don't like to brag but there is a reason why I was left to safeguard this chair for the while, Sir. Please tell me what brought you here." Mana encouraged the man to go on as the possibility of any kind of criminal activity peeking from the corner and showing the yet unformed Shukuba Security where to aim their dispensers and watchful gazes at sounded exciting and very fortunate.</p><p>"Well… My name, for you may not be aware of this, is Oribu Fuun, my mother – Oribu Toun was a famous theatre actress and personality. She had accumulated somewhat of a fortune, you see." The man finally relented.</p><p>Mana just kept on nodding while trying not to let her multiple sleepless nights get to her, she was quite an admirer of history but she could not have cared less about aristocrats and fortunes that people made. The magician was not the best at managing or counting money, making this entire Shukuba affair very unsuitable for her, yet remarkably less so than an assassination would have been…</p><p>"Her remarkable jewel necklace, a relic of my family, is still residing deep in my estate, on the outskirts of Shukuba. I verily appreciate the countryside, you see. Do not take me for some pompous and airheaded fool, young lady, I very much appreciate and protect my dearest matriarch's legacy but…" The man appeared to get a bit stuck on his explanation.</p><p>"It was stolen?" Mana raised an eyebrow. While she did not feel very confident about her ability or interest to solve a case of theft or the relation to the Diamond Hand of the entire affair as it was too "on the nose" and obvious for the shadowy criminal syndicate to be related to it, theft was very much something Shukuba Security would trouble themselves with.</p><p>It was Mana's responsibility, therefore, to occupy herself with things that Shukuba Security would have occupied themselves with because she was the one that robbed this town of their, Security force. A bit on the corrupt side, albeit a notable one nonetheless.</p><p>"Well… No. The burglar… That crook, thankfully, did not complete the… Big job. They have successfully disabled multiple of my guards and several of my security measures, bypassing some very intricate traps in the process, very impressive… Yes… But the necklace still remains, I can affirm it is the real deal and not a switched fake. In fact, the very final room where it is contained has not a single trap or security measure tampered with. To make matters worse… Or better, depends on the point of view entirely, nothing appears to be missing at all. I've had my servants do the full inventory check this morning, something they are quite bitter about at the moment."</p><p>The man stopped talking to bemuse himself with the prospect of the difficult and menial labor of his servants. It was perhaps less menial than the man realized as he had provided Mana with many useful clues about his case. While the man must have handed the assignment to check the full inventory of his mansion out of spite and for the sheer reason of the fact that he could do so, the fact that he did was very useful to Mana.</p><p>"Very well…" the girl smiled, "I shall accompany you to the place of… Incomplete crime and examine the clues. I will do everything I can to give you same results, or, hopefully, more than Shukuba Security would have given you had they not been disbanded. Also, I'd appreciate if you kept the fact of the Security being disbanded a hush-hush type of matter".</p><p>"Very good, off we go. And do not worry, Konoha's Sorceress, I do not interact too often with the townsfolk. My days are best spent hunting and entertaining myself in mother's garden and the deforested fields that I own with sport and games." The man assured Mana before standing up and readying himself for departure. "I even arrived here with my own personal carriage so our journey will be most swift and as comfortable as it can get!"</p><p>And that was how Mana got entangled in the case of not-really-missing jewel necklace and a mysterious not-quite-yet burglar.</p>
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<a name="section0389"><h2>389. Security Blanket</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So forgive me if I ask you, Konoha's Sorceress, but why are you in Shukuba, exactly? I've heard plenty of rumors about it a couple of days ago from my servants." Fuun wondered as he had finally grown bored of staring through the window. Mana was fine occupying her time with some small talk and forgetting all the awkwardness that traveling in the same carriage as this aristocrat made her feel.</p><p>"Just had some business here. Now that it is done, I'm working with the Shukuba Security for a brief while on something I'd rather not discuss." Mana shrugged the attempt at poking deeper into her business.</p><p>Honestly, it did not feel like Fuun was quite out of the involvement with Diamond Hand accusation woods yet. He was potentially a victim of an attempted crime, however, the crime was so random and, apparently, unskilled that Mana could not have possibly connected it to the hidden criminal syndicate. She could have easily seen Fuun as an agent of Diamond Hand though, covering himself up with a made-up crime just to get in close to Mana. Make her drop her defenses…</p><p>Fuun himself sent out a weak chakra signature, similar to that of a common man, perhaps a tiny bit larger. It was not abnormal, the man could have been fairly intelligent or had a very spiritual connection to a certain passion, elevating the spiritual aspect of his chakra above the average. Given how the man was fairly prosperous and looked cheerful it was definitely highly likely that he enjoyed fine arts or something of the sort.</p><p>"Ah, yes. The ninja thing… I've heard you've been involved in those Chuunin Exams, quite the worldwide attraction, weren't they? Sadly, I missed out on them. I don't leave my estate too much. Just the kind of person I am, even coming to the Shukuba Security for help was quite an adventurous trip for me, you see!" The man thundered through the entire carriage with his deafening laughter. Had it not been due to slight suspicions Mana had, she would have maybe found the cheer of this man rather enjoyable and contagious.</p><p>"I do plan to one day broaden my horizons as a stage magician, Shukuba could be one of the locations I'll visit with a tour." Mana tried smiling for the man as it was rather unfair of her to sulk and keep observing the surroundings for assassins or possible ambushes.</p><p>"Oh, that would be splendid! I've heard so much from so many acquaintances of your talents, you see. They make a monthly pilgrimage to your shows and enjoy them tremendously. I'd simply cherish the chance to see something that inspires that sort of glee in my companions." The man clapped his hands before shifting about in his seat rather erratically. It attracted Mana's attention and kept it.</p><p>It turned out to be just a false alarm as the man was simply overly excited to see his own estate come into the view from the thinning out collection of lowly establishments and new construction jobs that were expanding the territory of the pleasure town well into the Land of Fire forests.</p><p>The Oribu family resided in a much larger establishment than Mana had imagined it to be. A good five or six floors worth of a tower of classic architecture of constant renovation of its exterior while at the same time maintaining the classic look. A true heritage of the Settlement Period, or at least perfectly emulating it. While architecture was a part of history that Mana was less passionate about, a small fire simmered in her chest regardless of it.</p><p>Fuun lead Mana around, showing off the multiple security measures he had taken to protect his late mother's treasured memento. A great deal of decently trained guards laid outside, the magician could see that some of them were recently patched up and looked quite rowdy. Upon the most basic of inquiries, they responded to have slight headaches after being knocked out.</p><p>"They may not look like a lot, Sorceress, but I assure you they are well trained and in quite numerous quantities. Trustworthy not only for the protection of my mother's legacy but also the estate and my own life!" Fuun looked quite confident in the abilities of his own guards. That was not something Mana had expected of the man as she had taken him for someone much shallower. She'd figured that he'd go around blaming them and maybe even having fired the people responsible for protecting his home despite their relative success of keeping the necklace where it belongs. Looks and first impressions were quite deceiving in this case.</p><p>"On the contrary, their quick defeat does not make me doubt their competence. It makes me worry about the competence of the thief." Mana revealed her thoughts as she was beginning to view Fuun as someone trustworthy and more intelligent than initial impressions made one believe.</p><p>"What do you mean? Could this have been a rogue ninja?" Fuun gasped in an almost comical and effeminate manner. Very unfitting for a man of frail yet masculine proportions and looks.</p><p>"I am almost completely certain that it was. The symptoms of your guards suggest that they were taken out by a chop to the back of the neck after completely blitzing them. I suspect even the involvement of the Shadow of the Dancing Leaf technique." Mana scratched her chin after observing the wonky and sluggish manner at which the very bulky and intimidating looking guards moved.</p><p>"Shadow of the Dancing Leaf? What do you mean, how could someone take out such strong men with just one chop?" Fuun gasped again.</p><p>"It is a technique commonly used by Konoha's Strong Fist martial arts users. Utilizing amazing mastery of the physical aspects of one's chakra, the user moves behind their opponent in lethal silence and speed beyond comparison. Combined with a strong and controlled chop to a vital point – it's an instant knockout combination." Mana explained to the surprised aristocrat.</p><p>"So this is all done by a Konohagakure ninja then!?" Fuun flipped out, had his fears been validated it would have certainly been a worrying predicament. With the Shukuba Security being non-functional and the most important government institutions disbanded there'd be little way of reaching the Hokage's ear and work out a decent investigation of the matter. It could take entire weeks to reach the man's listening ear and get a mission going, in that time the skilled ninja would undoubtedly snag the necklace.</p><p>"Not necessarily. This is Fire Country, after all, that means that the Strong Fist is a rather widespread martial art amongst both ninja, mercenaries, and rogues. I do not think it was a work of a Konoha ninja on a mission." Mana calmed the man down before they entered into the main hall where the necklace was held.</p><p>The marvel of jewelry artisanship laid unveiled, behind a thick and translucent material where an observer of any intentions could admire its emerald, diamond, ruby, topaz and obsidian lusters but not touch their source. Mana questioned her host with a curious glare if it was safe to approach the jewelry to which the man nodded and encouraged the magician to proceed as she saw fit.</p><p>Mana stroke her hand through the air, just barely keeping it from touching the column of enforced glass. This protection alone would have costed more than most jewelry, glass alone was quite expensive, let alone a custom work of weaving chakra into it to make it impenetrable to anything but forces with higher chakra concentration than was weaved into the material upon its conception. The glass itself also appeared to be completely conductive to chakra, making it fitting for imbuement of entire coats of chakra on top. A useless measure as no one in this estate knew how to even do it or could have done it even if they did know the specifics.</p><p>"I'm not sure how much chakra is weaved into this glass, it is indeed high craftsmanship, regardless of that, I still cannot see a ninja skilled enough to perform a Shadow of Leaf Dance failing to breach it." Mana mumbled to herself as she curiously examined the protective case, like a child admiring a fully uniformed ninja model in a museum. She sort of wondered just how loudly would Meiko shriek had she been here to see this.</p><p>"Well, that is still not all..." Fuun cleared his throat before opening up a section of what appeared to be a large cupboard and pulling on a horn of a rhinoceros that was found inside with fancy cutlery and porcelain sets found all around the odd switch mechanism.</p><p>Right after the horn was pressed, Mana could hear the painfully familiar screeching sound of reeling steel wire all around her as the lights in the room dimmed. The electric lanterns went out, windows opened for a brief moment to let in gusts of wind to blow out the candles and then shutters slammed down to sink the room in darkness.</p><p>"Was that a fake rhino head in your cupboard, with the horn serving as the security switch?" Mana's voice echoed in the dark.</p><p>"Yes, acquiring it was a hassle, I had to remove the back of the cupboard and wreck my wall just to fit it in there. The wall is remarkably reinforced forcing me to acquire a special set of tools just to deal with such materials. It cost me almost as much as this house, but I really wanted the head of a rhino in my cupboard, you see." Fuun explained with more vitality in his voice than someone describing spending a mansion-worth of money on renovations reasonably should have had.</p><p>Even if the magician could not see or hear anything, bringing up painful flashbacks from her training in the Rabbit Caves, she knew the purpose of this trap. All around her were steel wires that would have triggered some sort of security measure and, possibly, a painful demise for her.</p><p>A loud clang shortly intervened, the windows opened up again before the glass slamming shut instead of the shutters that covered them when the security of the room was still on. The steel wires screeched again as the trap dismantled itself making the room safe for use or crossing again.</p><p>"The other rooms have similar protective measures that are engaged at night: steel wires that set off deadly nerve gas and shuts the perpetrator in rooms of reinforced walls, flame traps and bottomless pits with spikes below, not to mention those most gruesome buzzing blade things." Fuun sighed, likely feeling a bit regretful about how close all of his security measures came from being completely useless.</p><p>"That is interesting." Mana moved down the stairs and closer to her host, thinking what she had seen through carefully. "That means that the burglar knew about the security measures, they chose to specifically enter through the main front gate which was protected by guards so that they did not need to work through multiple floors of your security arrangements meant for more sneaky and lighter feet."</p><p>"That means that the burglar considers my men less of a threat than steel wire traps…" Fuun shrunk and collapsed like a deflated balloon. Signature to him, this outburst of depression was as short-timed as his eruptions of joy.</p><p>"Regardless, I find it very odd that someone skilled enough to speedblitz and take out this many guards so quietly was worried enough about such simple traps so that they retreated. It is likely that they may have found out something they have not prepared for and merely withdrew until a more convenient time when the specific tool is in their arsenal. Have you checked the jewel necklace and made sure it is not a replacement, faking a failed burglary?" Mana reflected her thoughts.</p><p>"Indeed. It was one of the first things I did, advised by my men, you see", Fuun nodded. "I must insist that you move my mother's memento to the Shukuba Security HQ and take personal responsibility for protecting it. I think it will be safer there than to have it lay here, a place where the burglar has already scoped out."</p><p>That was a curious and very heavy request. Indeed it would have been foolish to just leave the necklace as was but the Shukuba Security actually had infinitely worse security to its facilities, resorting to simple safes and locked doors as security precautions of choice. On one hand, the present security measures have already scared the burglar away, on another – the burglar knew exactly what they needed for a successful burglary now and there was not enough time for a complete security and staff overhaul.</p><p>"Shukuba Security is disbanded and has publically funded security measures. Its security is nothing compared to yours, Fuun-san." Mana tried to object. While she did want to help the man, feeling personally responsible for assisting in the collapse of Shukuba Security, the magician felt like her time was best spent planning the upcoming clash with the Diamond Hand and not watching the immeasurably luxurious necklace. Once again, the magician's general disinterest in riches and money matters played its inner part.</p><p>"It has a security measure I cannot obtain - you, Sorceress-san." Fuun bowed his head making the magician blush slightly after being addressed with an honorific she was not quite yet fully used to hearing, especially from the aristocratic circles which Mana imagined to be airheaded and arrogant.</p><p>"I can stay here, if it would not trouble you. That way you would not need to move the necklace and I could be here in case the burglar returns." Mana tried to make the man get the hint that she was not overly fond of babysitting his riches. It was a bit insensitive of her, especially given how she kind of screwed the man over with her obsession of stopping the Diamond Hand, but it was just the way she felt, even if she was not overly fond of her own character.</p><p>"I am well aware of the scale of two ninja clashing, I would rather not have to renovate my entire mansion, you see." Fuun shook his head and hands in a sprightly manner. "Plus, if the Shukuba Security measures are as undeserving of my mother's memento as you claim, it will serve as a fine bait for the deviant. I am quite a hunter myself and I therefore appreciate the application of such tactics in the hunt of hooligans as well, you see!"</p><p>Mana sighed as a sign of capitulation. It appeared that she would have to babysit this necklace until the morning came and the replies from the rookie squad came flooding in. Speaking of that, Mana was not fully sure which she would have appreciated more, the colts accepting their call of duty or dismissing Mana's pleads for help entirely. In the second case, even if her pride would have been stabbed in the chest and hung to bleed out, she would at the very least have been only endangering her own life. The kind of risks she preferred and was used to.</p><p>Fuun was even kind enough to request that Mana was driven back with the same carriage. Even if she'd have taken one tenth of the time returning to the Shukuba Security HQ all by herself even at the most leisurely of paces. By the time that the magician had returned with the necklace wrapped into an unimpressive little package and gently placed it into a safe alongside with files that Mana had not even read through or seen that the old Shukuba Security had been working with, the winter sky had grown dim.</p><hr/><p>Having no sleep for so long seemed so profoundly odd. The magician's feet dangled in the air as she occasionally moved them away from where they were positioned on the chair only to spin her chair around and keep staring right at the safe where the necklace was being kept. It all just felt like a single long day, had it not been for the perpetual switch between light and darkness, would Mana have even noticed that she's not slept for days on end?</p><p>Her supernatural metabolism let her make a lesser deal out of it than the magician normally would have been making, still, Mana could feel her chakra network buzzing in unease, like an old, barely functional electric panel. Controlling her chakra accurately, moving with her usual precision would have been impossible. The magician was lucky not to have snoozed on the job to begin with.</p><p>"So you've come…" Mana spoke up quietly, like there was someone present in the room, someone sleeping, someone she did not wish to wake.</p><p>"You've noticed…" a feminine voice noted with the same amount of rhetoric which was present in the magician's statement.</p><p>"I've sensed you from a while away, it was actually quite amusing feeling you try and avoid my attention." Mana turned the chair around and stood up to face the burglar. "I have little time or interest in this so I do plan to make this quick."</p><p>"Oh…" the woman in black leather that made her look rather elastic and stealthy and flashy red with white streaks hair that completely smashed that impression into pieces at the same time groaned. "But I planned this so long, moving my pieces on the board. It is at the very least very anti-climactic to just kill you and take the necklace like that."</p><p>"I figured you wanted it moved here. There was no way someone of your skill would not be able to maneuver around some invisible wire traps and breach that protective glass." Mana slowly walked in front of the table that was blocking her way to the woman. The burglar did not take a single step backward, she was confident in her ability to beat Mana, that was because she could not sense the magician's chakra signature and had not yet seen her fight. Because Mana was a complete mystery for the burglar whereas Mana both sensed the woman well and has seen what she could do by reading her movements inside the house she was robbing.</p><p>"Awww, I feel like you're not all here. And here I thought you were so adamant about defeating the Diamond Hand..." the burglar grinned, she knew full well about the reaction she'd invite from Mana by bringing that name up.</p><p>"You're... From the Diamond Hand?" Mana's eyes widened in surprise. Maybe the underestimation was mutual, for she may have read pretty much everything in this burglar's plan except the most important part - her involvement with the organization.</p><p>It seemed that the first battle in the war against the Diamond Hand would erupt earlier than Mana had anticipated. Before one of the sides was even completely formed yet.</p>
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<a name="section0390"><h2>390. Songs Of Diamond</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This mysterious burglar being a part of the Diamond Ring was something Mana could not have predicted. Everything about her crime seemed so sloppy and too on the nose to be applied to someone of such secrecy and proficiency in the art of crime that the Diamond Hand displayed. That changed all plans, Mana needed to first make this woman leak information. Fortunately enough, she was almost begging to tell the magician all about her amazing plan and how, the burglar thought, she had played the kunoichi.</p><p>"Alright, you've got my attention. Speak", Mana said.</p><p>"Awww, come on. I like to dance while I sing." A reply came not too soon and not too long after.</p><p>The burglar moved fast, she certainly had some kind of training and while she may not have known what chakra was or how it worked, someone had explained to her how to make herself stronger by training it. Mana heard the tension on the floor beneath her feet, back in the Rabbit Caves she had learned to fight in complete darkness by picking up on just such details while suffocating on blazing air and occasional noxious gas leaks.</p><p>The woman was trying her thing – use the Shadow of the Dancing Leaf to move in behind Mana and then knock her out with a single strike to a vital on the back of her neck. Cutting off the flow of blood as well as the flow of chakra around that area and disrupting the entire network for a good while, depending on the strength of the strike and the augmentation resistance to the impact.</p><p>While Mana was struck with a sour case of a surprise that her opponent had mastered the Shadow of the Dancing Leaf to the extent where she did not need to even utter the name of the technique anymore, the burglar was slow and predictable. With a controlled motion, purposefully restricting her speed to an irrelevant fraction of it so that her opponent was not scared off from the attack before it concluded, Mana locked her arm around that of her opponent's at the elbow before snapping the burglar's arm to break backwards.</p><p>Where usually the blood-chilling screams of pain followed such a counter, accompanied with the unnerving racket of snapping bones and blood of an open fracture being splattered across the surrounding walls, the limb of the burglar merely bent backward like an elastic sandbag. With a strong yank, the burglar had pulled her arm out of Mana's lock before her fleeing body was cornered by the wall where the safe was located in.</p><p>The cruel irony was that while the object inside the safe was seemingly everything that the woman had wanted, she could not leave with it even if Mana gave her enough time to extract it without going through the stage magician.</p><p>Those arms were something Mana had not seen, something that surprised her but not enough to break the magician's composure or cost her anything too pricey. "I hope you sing better than you dance." Mana taunted her opponent, she had no doubts that the burglar had already hammered into her skull just how outmatched she was and that she would have been completely crippled by a single exchange of blows had she not possessed those weird enhancements.</p><p>"Well, well… Maybe I have been a bit too ambitious, planning to both kill you off and loot the necklace right from your cold dead hands." The burglar-lady exclaimed in unease.</p><p>"Those were body augmentations, weren't they? Where did you get them?" Mana pressed on with the questions. Her opponent was unusual in terms of her physical condition but the magician saw no problem in holding her here and keeping her occupied while the woman talked.</p><p>"Why? Jealous? I can introduce you to my guy in Otogakure." The playful tone of the woman's voice echoed from around the room as she had leaped up and stuck to the walls. Initially, it had appeared that she was using the Art of Tree Climbing to stick to the hard surfaces but an odd clang noise reached Mana's ears making the magician suspect a sharp weapon attached to both the hands and feet of the highly elastic woman to be at play.</p><p>The clacking noise rang all around Mana, the woman tried to confuse the magician with her speed and crawling prowess, scaling around the walls and the ceiling, transitioning from the floor and the top of the room while wasting no time at all. Almost like a swift spider hunting its prey. Except Mana was no helpless prey.</p><p>In a lazy motion, the magician thrust her palm down, shifting her weight and body in a vault forward while her feet drove right in the back of the chin of the diving assailant. Mana could feel the woman's neck dragging and snapping back, an impact like that should have paralyzed her for life and yet the elastic burglar just rolled back on her feet. That blasted clacking steel claws noise told Mana that much, it then proceeded to betray the woman further as she started scaling the walls again until she hid in a corner, hanging stuck to it and observing Mana from what she thought as a safe retreat.</p><p>"So you're a part of the Diamond Hand then? What sort of part? Just a hired hand or a footman?" Mana closed her eyes to try and focus on her sensory and the noises that she heard as keeping them open in an almost completely sunken in darkness room was wasteful.</p><p>"We have a structure. The each… Department is called the "Fingers of the Diamond Hand", with each commander serving as a Ring of their Finger. I am the Ring of the Thumb." The woman bragged while Mana worked trying to pick up the slightest noise of her crawling. Curiously enough, there were no clacking sounds until it was too late.</p><p>It was like this Ring of the Thumb woman was completely lacking any joints or restrictions of movement. Whatever her weaponry was, she had disabled it which had confused Mana in the beginning, before the magician had caught on with the fact but by that time it was too late. The burglar had wrapped her body tightly around Mana's body like a constrictor but instead of continuing to apply pressure, that dreaded metallic clang ringed, telegraphic that she had triggered her weaponry again.</p><p>Sharp metallic hooks shot out wherever the impossibly elastic burglar had her hands and feet around Mana while the criminal leaped off of the magician's body. The four hooks attached to her palms and her feet made sure to leave dragging marks as they moved towards the magician's neck, looking to cut her throat open. She moved both like a bird of prey, a snake and an arachnid at the same time.</p><p>Mana gripped the front and the sides of her throat, somehow managing to encompass all three shallow cuts around her neck and felt the weak pressure of blood trickling down her fingers that tried to contain the cuts. Naturally, Mana's chakra augmentations had kicked in, leaving her much inferior physically and spiritually opponent no chance of tearing Mana's throat open lethally, as she may have intended, but she still had left some narrow cuts across it.</p><p>The fighting style of this burglar was so unusual, her elasticity made her moves so unpredictable that Mana may have had some trouble keeping up with her even if she was fighting seriously. Now she was just toying with the burglar for the sake of any information she could muster. The reason why fighting this woman normally would have been difficult was because this burglar was no fighter, she ran and hid before she saw her opponent leave her an opening, then, she focused all of her augmentations into one quick crawl or a swoop, wrapping her body all around her prey as she sunk the hooks into them. Had Mana not completely outmatched her opponent, this one attack may have even been lethal.</p><p>Still, for now, this annoying hit-and-run style was very useful for Mana's goal of fishing for information. The burglar thought she had Mana cornered and that there was no way for the magician to utilize her natural advantages as a well-trained ninja of Konohagakure and not slightly tutored on ninjutsu, surgically enhanced burglar.</p><p>"I see… A whole Ring? In that case, there are four more of you. I don't see you five sharing the leadership over the organization so one of you is calling the shots over the other Rings – a Ringleader." Mana stated, needing or waiting for no verification. Her suspicions of a person X were confirmed just like that. "I'd imagine that woman from two days ago was a Ring as well?"</p><p>"Huh? Oh, the Index Ring? Yeah, she's actually the leader of the Index Finger, the assassins of our syndicate." The burglar ran her mouth. That was good, she was opening up more and more, likely proportionately to how her odds of leaving Mana dying and drowning in her own blood increased in her mind.</p><p>The Thumb Ring tried her luck attacking again, this time Mana knew not to solely rely on her hearing and the clacking of the woman's steel, crooked nails. The magician danced around her assailant's attacks and silly attempts to grab hold of her again, Mana's hands locked around her own back, not because she didn't want to counterattack her opponent but because she did not wish to grant her opponent extra spaces to wrap herself around.</p><p>Mana could feel the sharp pain rise up in her neck and the warm feeling of several drops of blood trickling down the shallow cuts and down to her collar. It may have been wise not to keep this going any longer. She had already thrown out the hint that the magician had more in her than she had initially shown to her opponent.</p><p>"When Okasune-san saw that other woman, the Index Ring, she said something interesting about this Yokotomo Donyoku guy. I think I'll look into him after I capture you." Mana threw a bait out to lure her opponent into a preemptive strike.</p><p>"You're deluded if you think you can escape here alive to try that!" the Thumb Ring shouted out, she was clearly smelling the blood in the air, however, she should have known that attacking when she was being lulled into it was a bad strategy. Her hands and feet wrapped around Mana's body, pressing tightly.</p><p>"I may not be able to cut deep enough into your neck but I can easily suffocate you to death, crushing you more and more with every breath that leaves your chest." She declared triumphantly as if it was something that changed the entire mechanic of the battle.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch!" Mana huffed out as lightning sparks crackled and ran up and down her body, exuding powerful lightning shocks from her body.</p><p>Stunned and overwhelmed by the Lightning Release technique, the Thumb Ring fell to the ground, her eyes white as the pale moon that occasionally peaked its sharp crescent forms from the murky clouds in the sky above. Using a bit higher rank technique on the woman burglar may have been slightly excessive but Mana needed an efficient way of disabling her. Deciding what to do with her now was much more complicated: she was elastic enough to escape through bars or handcuffs and she could have been able to use the Rope Escape Jutsu that even Academy Students could have used.</p><hr/><p>It took hours after the Ring's muscles stopped shuddering for any signs of life to kick in. This entire time Mana just calmly observed the woman from her seat, carefully sensing her chakra signature to avoid being duped. A skilled ninja could have easily slipped away, leaving a fake body with an illusion similar to Mana's own Fancy Trick jutsu while she silently removed the necklace from the safe currently behind Mana.</p><p>Not too far away from dawn, the Ring's eyes started fluttering and the space under her eyes twitched, suggesting that she was beginning to snap back and would awaken shortly. This woman would have served as a fair challenge to Mana before she lost her chakra control, facing someone this much weaker to her yet still so remarkably strong was a relatively fresh experience. Magician's Touch was never intended to be an ace technique, just a powerful surge of electricity, powerful enough to restrain trained ninja temporarily and yet… Both times it was used it knocked out the opponent.</p><p>"Speak. What does the Diamond Hand want with the necklace?" Mana inquired in a strict tone upon the first opening of the Ring's eyes.</p><p>After grunting over her aching head for a while, the woman started chuckling. She may have been relatively weak compared to the ninja Mana had faced in the Chuunin Exams but she was not dangerous because of her chakra level or her overall strength, the burglar's most dangerous trait was her unorthodox but effective fighting style that would have bought her several seconds even if Mana fought seriously before.</p><p>"How's your neck? I guess you'll have to postpone some shows now, that or rebrand yourself as the Wonderful Fish Girl." The woman tried taunting Mana. Her words did bite a little, she at the very least could get into someone's mind effectively by analyzing who their conversant was and what such a person would be afraid of. More importantly, she declared her intention of not telling Mana anything.</p><p>The thing that was the scariest of all was that the first idea that popped into Mana's mind was torture. She could have easily tortured the information out of the woman, whether by using Hisako's blade-to-the-gums method or a more illusionary, fear-based mental torture. She could even wear on the woman's brain with illusions like Mana did in her match with Stea.</p><p>No. Even if that method would have granted Mana the information she needed to save lives, the magician had already reached the conclusion that she's been straying from her code and looking sideways for too long up to now. She would do this thing her way or no way at all, in which case, she'd accept the consequences as they came.</p><p>"And here I thought you were itching to tell me everything, brag about how wonderfully you've played everyone. I assume your "plan" duped the other Rings as well? I can only imagine how they'll reward your betrayal and failure, given Okasune-san's fate." Mana, fortunately for her, was also a dabbler in the arts of biting someone where it hurt. She had to be, when torture and other methods of effective interrogation were out the window, talking her enemies into talking back was her only way of obtaining intel.</p><p>"Then I was fairly certain that you were already dead. No one has any qualms about telling dead people secrets." The Ring grunted as she picked herself off the ground and rammed her back against the radiator. Mana was at the very least kind enough to push the woman's unconscious body closer to it before the wait started as the winter's bite was the sharpest in these night-to-morning hours.</p><p>"Your only chance at survival is me. The faster I take your colleagues down, the faster you are safe from their wrath and you are only prolonging that by staying silent." Mana tried reason once again. Honestly, she was not sure what she'd have to try if that failed.</p><p>"Tsk… You think you're so cool and strong… The Index Ring is much faster and stronger than me. She's also not just light shows and smoke like you, pure business. Even if you took her on one on one, you'd probably die." It became evident that the Ring was aware of her butt-on-fire situation, regardless, she was still on the fence about the success rate of cooperating with Mana as opposed to running away and using all of her skillset as a trained burglar to hide from the Diamond Hand's retribution.</p><p>"I don't think you're evaluating this situation right. You are currently severely weakened as your nerves are overloaded with the shock you've just received. Your moves will feel numb and lazy for quite a while, meanwhile, I've clearly shown you I am faster even than your best showings. Even if you are not tied up, as inefficient as that would be, you are going nowhere from this office. Your running and hiding skills could not be any less relevant here so I am your only hope." Mana laid the situation out as she saw it.</p><p>The Ring, with her full face now visible and uncovered by the black mask that covered the lower half of her face before, pouted and bit her lip, considering her options. At the very least she had to see and appreciate the fact that Mana was truthful and honest about it.</p><p>"The Diamond Hand just needed the necklace for money. You've cut off a pretty important supply of it by hitting us at the movie business, there's a reason why Okasune tried to hit us there before her departure – it's because it was a very powerful hit. The Pinky Ring – the guy behind the financial crimes and the leader of the Pinky Finger is working overtime already to compensate for the loss of money." The burglar explained.</p><p>"I see, so you've screwed your team in a quite powerful way by deciding to abandon your assignment."</p><p>"That's right. In my defense, I thought that I could take care of two of our problems that way – kill you and take the necklace off of you after it was transferred here. I wasn't certain if the snob would even think up of transferring it to your protection, even if he hadn't – I'd have just completed the job the next night so it would have been no harm done either way." The woman was becoming quite talkative and quite useful. Mana's sensory began stretching out in an attempt to scope out her surroundings so that some annoying assassination attempt, just like all those irritating scenes in the crime movies her father liked, wouldn't interrupt this precious moment.</p><p>Movies appeared to be quite stupid as there was nothing within Mana's sensory range that could pose even a remote threat. The magician felt confident in her ability to stop a more powerful long-range kunai dispenser blade before it reached her conversant, frankly, the woman was powerful enough to survive such an attack in the first place.</p><p>At long last, she will know everything about the Diamond Hand. A strong breakthrough was at hand, it was just about the only thing Mana could smell these days.</p>
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<a name="section0391"><h2>391. One-Man War</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The bizarre symbolism of tunnels was not lost on me. The whole life and death thing, I tried to brush it all away. Acknowledge the existence of these thoughts while I calmly keep walking on and under an arching bridge that formed a long tunnel underneath. After sundown, it did not look nearly as afterlife-like, more like the center of the void, like a black hole, almost. More like what I imagined dying to be like."</p><p>"I couldn't see Mika waiting but I knew he was there. We've arranged a meeting because I needed information. He needed to meet me even more than I needed him so I was completely certain he'd show. Seeing this cone of oblivion stretching out in front of me made me grip my kunai dispenser tighter to my side and wonder if it was a good idea to pull it out and hold it even tighter."</p><p>"Mika was undercover for some time. We had some in the Security like that, how many of them were trustworthy and didn't get drowned in that swamp of shitshow they encountered on a daily basis was beyond me. How many of them did things that they were not allowed to do and incriminated themselves forcing them to cut ties was known only to old man Chontai."</p><p>"I had to dive myself deep into it. Remind me of what Kita's last moments must have been like. I lied to myself that she was afraid, I had to. I lied to myself that she begged for someone to be there because that was what would have motivated me to take the step and let myself get drowned out by the darkness of the tunnel. Kita was better than that. She knew what was coming and accepted it but I'd be better off not thinking about that."</p><p>"Walking forward in all of that gloom was next to impossible. It was so dark that telling straight from the left was as fun as bumping my shoulder or elbow against the mossy stone was. There was one little light, one that I created, my raft in the sea of shadows. The light from my match soon went out as the smoky smell of tar filled the air. As my smoke smoldered it spread a pleasant sparkle that was enough to calm my aged chest."</p><p>"You still talking to yourself, Itemi?"</p><p>"Mika addressed me from the dark. The bastard must have been as scared of the dark as I was. No one ever stopped fearing the dark, the contents of that fear changed, sure, but standing all alone with nothing but pitch black to each side as far as the eye could see could not ever be not scary. I was almost tempted to snap back at him, take a stab at his weight the last time I saw him but I was not nearly amused enough to partake in this childish nonsense."</p><p>"Fair enough, what's with all the noise coming from your end?"</p><p>"My contact was worried about the whiffs he got coming from the Shukuba Security, rightly so. The Security was his salvation if ever things undercover got too hot, if ever he got what he went down for. It was quite lucky that Shukuba Security getting dismantled kept its head down at the rumor level, it won't stay that way for long. The kid was better off rushing along with her little war."</p><p>"Wait, what? Shukuba Security has been dismantled?"</p><p>"It's not like it made any difference to Mika. His operation was not authorized nor was it by the book, he went undercover hard, so under the cover that not even his superiors knew he was doing it. Mika smelled the filth reeking off of Security for a while, he was a lot like the magician brat that way, including his actions. Regardless, I needed him doing his thing until this war thing of ours was done. If he had one way of escaping the burning building it would be when it is all crumbling down around him and the people there too busy trying not to die to throw hellfire at his fleeting feet."</p><p>"Fair enough. I have something for you. Have in mind that once this goes out, it'll be on. Whoever is in charge of the Diamond Hand, they'll be kicking you in the nuts, you'll have their full attention."</p><p>"It was a fair warning. Up until now, the Diamond Arm may have been curious about the state of Shukuba Security, wondering why so many of their lapdogs came running back at them begging for work and cover from the rising storm. I suppose all this curiosity had to grow into a full-on rage at some point, whatever the contents of the storm were we'd have to weather it."</p><p>"There's going to be a good old heist tonight. Three to four hours from now, they're going to hit the vault. One group coming in through the sewers, another one using the evacuation tunnels. Whoever came up with the plan behind this is afraid that once the Security gets a whiff of the thing, they'll all see the sewers coming so the whole pack will retreat through the evac tunnels with all their loot."</p><p>"Some sick sense of irony. The evacuation tunnels were supposed to be used for civilians to withdraw from the town's premises during times of war or another extraordinary occasion of such caliber. In a way, the evac tunnels will be used for evacuation but not the kind of evacuation they were built for. This info was useful, good old Mika paid off big time. If this was a Diamond Hand op, which it should have been, after the movies were hit and exposed to Konoha they must have felt a shortage of money, there was a fair chance of bumping into someone important and finding some space for a kunai to fit inside their face."</p><p>"So that's how you guys are doing it now, huh? No more laws, no procedure? Sounds a bit scary…"</p><p>"Sit tight, Mika, was all I could tell him. Whatever hole he scurried into, whatever peaceful corner of his crime den he ran off to and whatever lowlifes he surrounded himself with for protection would have had to do for a short while. After the Diamond Hand went down, the Shukuba Security would have to slowly be reformed. During that time Shukuba will remember where every man stood when they were needed."</p><p>"Yeah, right back at you…"</p><hr/><p>"Three to four hours was ample time to go back and pick up the kid. I don't know if it was my lack of sleep disturbing my judgment or maybe I was just too pissed. I wanted to do this alone. Kita faced whoever came for her alone, attacked from behind. The kid sounded like a decent person, she'd not like what I had in mind for dogs that were capable of doing something like that."</p><p>"My mind tuned out as I walked the squishy mud roads of Shukuba, slowly transitioning into the occasionally pleasant and occasionally irritating stone roads. My body was working almost on an autopilot as my mind worked on other things. It couldn't have been a good sign that I could barely control the contents of my own mind. I reached for my belt, the dozens of bottles all placed around my waste. They did wonders for pain but maybe they could help some for lack of good night's sleep too?"</p><p>"My hand slipped down, even if this was legitimate medicine, which was a big if, it probably had rules about being used too often. I had a feeling that if I went in all by my lonesome I'd end up gulping down a bottle or two of those to numb one or two blades sticking out of me. That was just how my job was, I knew it, I always knew it. Maybe that's why for a decent while I kept the arrests for Kita and stuck to paperwork…"</p><p>"Nah, the kid stayed out of this. She talked a nice and tolerant game but I couldn't risk involving her. She said she was fine with murder as long as it wasn't her doing it but I didn't buy it. So far she was really honest, no one was completely genuine, she had to be full of shit about something and this was not something I could allow myself to gamble on. They killed Kita, they lead to the collapse of the entire Shukuba Security and possibly even the collapse of the whole damned town. I'm going to kill every last one of them I see. The kid can stay above all of that and pick up the pieces."</p><hr/><p>"Hey, so since when are we doing hit jobs like this?"</p><p>"Yeah, sounds more like the Syndicate's forte, don't it?"</p><p>"Heh, I wonder what even happened to those assholes. One day they just stopped being a giant pain in our asses…"</p><p>"Just a pair of steps into the sewer and I could already hear the sound of filth rubbing off on my shoes. I was lucky enough not to step right into it and lean to a nearby wall, listen in around the corner for all it was worth. It was not like they were talking about anything useful so I moved my kunai dispenser out of my holster and pressed it to my chest, mentally readying myself. I wasn't afraid, I was enraged and a furious hand shook just as much as a terrified one."</p><p>"Ey, who the fuck is speaking?"</p><p>"What the fuck?"</p><p>"I jumped out and put a kunai through each of their eyes. These were just some smalltime shit stains. Not worth any more steel, before this night was done, I may as well have run dry of blades to put into these scumbags. It would be best off if I checked what they had, just in case. Each one of them had a handheld, standard choice for Shukuba Security. Well well… Someone must have been smuggling some inventory on the side. That kid may have been onto something, just ending the whole damned thing all at once."</p><p>"There were more and more voices all around the sewer. They were leading me to where I was supposed to go. I guess I was lucky that our sewer was not as small and compact as the Konohagakure sewer. My time interning there before Security days left me less than impressed with how they treated the flow of their royal shits. Our establishments were pretty fancy, all things considered, nice stone walls, lights on the side, was it always that well designed for rats scurrying around or was it a more recent development? I guess Diamond Hand has a union…"</p><p>"Just like I guessed, it wouldn't all be quite a smooth sailing. I missed the head of some lowlife and my stinginess towards ammunition cost me. They pulled their dispensers and opened fire back at me before I could raise my hand up again and fix my mistake of not putting those two fast enough. I took a quick roll behind a nearby wall, I didn't plan on wearing this jacket anywhere else anyways…"</p><p>"I gave them a pair of quick blades back, judging from the clanging sounds they hit something hard and stony, likely bounced back. They were built pretty durable this way, couldn't believe that ninja used these things to stab at each other like kunai were some goddamn kitchen knives. A handful of blades bounced right off the wall dangerously close to my ear. Nothing like the impending death by high-velocity blades shredding through your flesh to wake a sleepy head up."</p><p>"My heart was pounding, I leaped out and dived under all of the dirt and shit. Had to close my eyes and think about something else entirely. I needed to rush, else a bunch of dirtbags from farther ahead will come back and give these assholes a hand at putting me down. I fired a bunch of blind ones from underwater. Doing my best to open my burning and itchy eyes as fast as I could I leaped out from underwater, having swum behind those two bastards. The time it took for them to turn away was just about enough for me to calm my sore and full of shitty water eyes."</p><p>"This time I was not about to take any chances or waste any more blades but one. I pulled one from the side of the dispenser and ran in on close distance. The blade slid right in under the shitstain's ribcage and I turned him sideways to block the barrage of invitations to hell coming my way. Kicking the bastard I just stabbed was probably the most pleasant thing I felt whole week. Surpassed maybe by stabbing his pal right in the eye up close and personal and watching him disappear into the same river of shit that I was forced to swim around in so recently."</p><p>"Pain and stars in my eyes lit up almost simultaneously. Maybe I was a bit too ambitious with my approach, got too blind. The asshole grazed me with a pair of blade shots that cut me clean in the sides. Just pissed me off more, honestly, but the infection would do more than just piss me off in a short while. Was not looking forward to that part but I had a job to do. Shit… I forgot to loot the blades from those bastards, either way, the last pair handed me more than I was bringing into this anyways. It would have to do."</p><p>"My sleepy head blacked out completely. It was all nothing but one big vortex of blood, blade-fire, clangs and fleshy sounds. By the time I realized I was past the sewers I was standing in front of the ladder up to the lower sections of the Shukuba vault surrounded by dead bodies and with good four kunai sticking out of me and making me leak myself out. Grunting, I downed one of the potions I had bought that afternoon. The pain disappeared but not the wounds…"</p><p>"Regardless, the absence of pain that looking like a pin-cushion made one feel was a welcome addition to what my life has become. I picked up one of the larger kunai dispensers off of one of the corpses lying beside me, the bastard took a nasty blade right through the side of his face and was most definitely not about to use that. I heard a loud rabble being roused up in the vault, the evac crew must have arrived."</p><p>"These dispensers that the last bunch carried were all just like what Syndicate used to carry around in their prime. Four times bigger than the handhelds that the Security used, one guy with one of those would have scared the entire squad of Security away with one of those. No cover would have protected from the speed and shredding power of one of those. Could the Syndicate and the Diamond Hand have reached some sort of agreement? That would be a new one, but also about as welcome as a blade in my foot."</p><p>"Whenever the assholes back in the Security HQ used to tell fancy lies about their biggest arrests, how they plowed through thousands of criminals without getting as much as a speck of dirt on their cheeks, they left out the fun details, like climbing the ladder with just one hand while the other one struggled to keep hold on the demonic machine of murder that I was carrying with me."</p><p>"Another problem was once I finished scaling up the ladder and bumped my head into the round cover that separated the lower sections of the vault from the service sewer entrance. I had no arms to spare for this shit, I bumped my head hard against it, raising my foot one step higher just so I could kick up better and ram my shoulder into it as well. Seeing how these assholes were expected to get into the vault through here, I figured it'd be left unlocked and so it was."</p><p>A good handful of bastards sat around the service room where the entrance lead to, I was not quite whom they intended to see and their weapons were nice and placed on their side. I was simply faster at taking them out, I was the first at raising a real lot of noise too. However much of these guys were present in the vault, they were quite likely to all swarm down my way now. Those Syndicate type dispensers were way too loud for what I had in mind."</p><p>"Like clockwork the scumbags started bursting through the door, I was still using the service ladder hole for cover as the steel of the walls of the most secure facility in the entire Shukuba was just about the only kind of thing that could stop a shredding, high-velocity kunai in its path without leaving me even fuller of holes. The bastards were plentiful, all crammed around one doorway, desperate to get in and kill the only thing between them and a whole lot of money. I was nothing else if not patient…"</p><p>"Making my way up the steps over a pile of dead bodies was tougher than I thought it'd be. I also ran out of the kunai belts used to keep this machine of murder running so I had to dump it. Not too long ago I was swimming through shit and piss, now I was plowing and swimming through blood and dead bodies in an almost too literal manner."</p><p>"What the fuck? Who is that man? He's not part of the plan, kill him!"</p><p>"The piece of shit yelling that at me was a small guy, looking more like an accountant than a criminal. I wondered if I had just hit the jackpot and saw the man behind this brilliant plan to make the town's finances into those of Diamond Hand's own in a more official manner that it was a custom for those guys. It was time for yet another fight. I crouched behind a cover, not because it would have protected me too well, just to hide my position from the endless streams of blades coming my way."</p><p>With quick rolls from behind where I was hiding, I took out a good handful of them. Got those blades that were stuck in me stuck even deeper too, I could feel the pressure of the blades and the warm spray of blood running down my body but no pain. The magic of the potion seller's mightiest potions, without a doubt. After a couple of close-calls, I disabled another four or five with a bold dive from my cover."</p><p>The little round-faced, glasses-wearing and half-bald weasel shrieked in horror and ordered his goon-squad to hit the road. I wasn't about to let them do that so I ran after but the suppressing barrage of fire was too hard. I felt the intense pushback from a couple of more blades sinking into my shoulder and bringing be on my back. Yeah… It was safe to say that I wasn't going to give those assholes any chase. The full extent of my senses returned to me slowly. The world stopped blacking in and out, that must have been the adrenaline kicking in, pushing away the general sleepiness."</p><p>"The sight of the decently emptied Shukuba vault was even more painful than the sight of my front side being riddled with blades and me laying on my back, slowly bleeding out."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0392"><h2>392. Meet The Youngbloods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Early in the morning, Mana noticed a quick shifting of the shadows on the other side of the office. She was so focused on observing her new captive Finger of the Diamond Hand or looking out for potential assassins that a handful of civilian-level chakra signatures completely evaded her attention. At this point the weariness that Mana felt made her mind a tad slower and her minds blurrier. More and more did she catch her train of thought riding on non-sequiturs.</p><p>By now the Diamond Hand must have realized that something bad had happened to one of their Fingers. At least Mana presumed this much. If there truly was someone sent to keep the magician's new guest from talking too much, they'd have seen that the woman was being too calm around a self-declared enemy of the Diamond Hand.</p><p>"You going to invite them in? Maybe scattering the boys in black and blue was a hasty choice?" the burglar teased Mana. Her tongue stabbed through a bit deeper than the girl wanted it to be able to get. While the office was shut down, it didn't stop from some more ambitious people seeking out Mana's own attention. At some point, the magician may face the ire of groups upon groups of disgruntled people who were unable to rely on the Shukuba Security anymore.</p><p>"Stay here," Mana told the burglar, the magician respected the woman's intelligence enough not to have to warn her excessively about how much of a kick in her own groin it'd be for her to try anything funny now.</p><p>The shadows that were moving about an empty and rundown office of Shukuba Security belonged to the rookie squad that Mana called out to. From her first sight, she just about realized that it would not be a pleasant work environment, less than half of the calls she sent out were answered and even the four that did answer the summons looked disgruntled and more ready to laugh at Mana's face than face the threat in front of them seriously.</p><p>"In here, please." Was all that Mana could muster up to say at the time, her mind raced for ways she could win these four over. Even if her own mind kept switching between her need of a squad and the attempts to soothe herself, however this meeting went, she had to try to get these four on her side regardless on her own stance on things.</p><p>The four walked in erratically but then lined up in an orderly fashion, standing like soldiers hearing the speech of their general before riding into battle, except Mana didn't feel like much of a general at all. How could she convincingly plead to these four if she barely believed in her need for their aid herself. This was much bigger than her, she had to at the very least reach out, if she got rejected, the decision on how to act would be made for her.</p><p>"Four people? Well, at least you've got the numbers on the Diamond Hand." The Ring of Thumb chuckled to herself. Clearly, she had doubts about the ability of these four to apprehend the other Rings of the Diamond Hand. A sentiment that carried some weight, seeing how Thumb had encountered the other Rings and knew of their strengths and weaknesses and their identities. The burglar had no reason to lie or to build up the power and influence of her organization needlessly, she was a target of their wrath after all and survival must have been her core interest.</p><p>"Who is this woman?" one of the four rookies, a short yet athletic and very attractive young man with long dark hair tied behind his back wondered. His tone did not suggest respect or subordination but it was not mocking either. He sounded more on the open to suggestion side, very much on the verge of being won over. That was, of course, if Mana's people reading and listening skills weren't doing her in.</p><p>"She's one of the people spreading corruption and holding this town hostage – a Ring of the Diamond Hand." Mana answered the question honestly and with brevity, hoping that was the type of answer that the young man was looking for.</p><p>"W-Why isn't she locked up? All of the local arrest facilities are being unmanned, there is not a soul in the office, your aviary box is unattended to and there is a small crowd outside trying to reach you." The other rookie – a young woman whom Mana had already met before, the girl from forensics named Burgoniya who was less than willing to cooperate earlier. All of that spite and disbelief in Mana's abilities and actions were soaking into her speech.</p><p>"I'm… Short on hands currently. The reason why Thumb is unrestrained is that she found herself on the wrong side of her own organization's favor by stepping out of line and failing her superiors. We both think that she is living on borrowed time which is why it is beneficial for her to cooperate." Mana tried not to escalate the situation or lie. The fear and unease of screwing everything up was leaking into her tone and voice, how could she have missed a gathering of an entire crowd? It was true that they must have been a fair distance away – outside the building and they couldn't have been sizable enough to stand out of the usual movement of civilians outside the Security walls, while Mana was constantly on the lookout for threats with chakra signatures millions of times surpassing that of the crowd of civilians. Could have been any one of these, could have been all of those combined.</p><p>"That and the fact that I can escape any restraints, I'm just that good…" Thumb chuckled again, she was not helping Mana's impression in front of these rookies.</p><p>"So you're saying that you called out to us to do your dirty work like work on the local containment facilities, handle the paperwork, answer the mail and… Soothe irritated crowds of bemused people?" the fourth recruit, a ginger young woman of attractive looks and rather frail for a Security officer build exclaimed in discontent.</p><p>"I mean, it's not exactly different from what you'd be doing normally, given that you're a youngblood…" the first recruit grinned with half of his face. "Then again, maybe the people would be less on the edge if they did not have to find out about the collapse of the Security from their fleeing government official."</p><p>Mana stroke over her tired face with her palm, running it down her hair before pushing it back as it was beginning to flow over it uncontrollably. She spent so much time here sitting on her ass and watching a woman she could not contain but could not entirely trust yet either that she missed out on the shutdown of the entire administration and the Security Force slipping out into the open.</p><p>"You must have really pissed the Diamond Hand off if they hit you that low, well done, kid!" Thumb clapped her hands together with a playful and sarcastic cheer aimed at Mana's direction, suggesting that the Diamond Hand had finally had enough of Mana and hit her back where it hurt her just as badly – by turning the public against her while doing nothing illegal. They just exposed something Mana did not want reaching the public's attention until after she was done apprehending the Diamond Hand.</p><p>"This is absolutely pathetic. I'm out of here…" Burgoniya grunted before turning around and heading toward the door out of the chief's office.</p><p>"Wait, please. Look, I'm not doing this for no reason at all or just to promote myself or because the Hokage has ordered me to shut down the local institutions as a gross abuse of power. I did what I did because I saw the Diamond Hand taking lives, both literally and taking them hostage. I saw them treating human lives as inferior to their influence and riches. Treating life that way goes against everything I stand and live for and I cannot stand for it." Mana jumped off the seat, stopping the rookie in her tracks.</p><p>"I worked in forensics for a while, I had gathered experience for a position as an investigator in Security and the very next day – you dissolve the whole thing." Burgoniya gave Mana a spiteful glare, "Not the governor, not chief Chontai himself did that, a goddamn stage magician from Konoha decided to topple my livelihood."</p><p>"This… Diamond Hand… I assume it is some sort of a crime syndicate then?" the first recruit wondered out loud. "Correct me if I am wrong but this is exactly the opposite of a situation when you scatter the town's Security Force."</p><p>"I'm in", the red-haired young woman who stood fourth in the formation of rookies declared, pressing her fist to her chest and bowing her upper body. This came as a shock to Mana who was beginning to sense like being beaten down from all fronts and was starting to feel more and more hopeless.</p><p>"Wait, didn't you just start a family? You should be the first one to leave this foolishness behind, Toiya." Burgoniya switched the target of her ire from Mana to the young woman who decided to answer Mana's plea.</p><p>"That is exactly why I will work with Sorceress-san. Because of my family, because I want Shukuba to be a town where my family can live safely and peacefully. What happened to Okasune-san was terrible, her reputation being dragged through the dirt in the public one day after she lost her life. I disagree with Sorceress-san's methods but I, Toiya Kazama, will fight the Diamond Hand under her supervision." The red-haired woman declared.</p><p>"I am grateful for that trust. I will do my best not to fail it. However, please know that you are signing up for more than you know. Once this war with the Diamond Hand is over, it will be up to you to reform the Security Force as well. I am not a local, I shall have no role to play in Shukuba's reformation after the Diamond Hand's defeat." Mana nodded at the young woman who had signed herself up on the magician's side.</p><p>"Wait, isn't this woman an important figure in this Diamond Hand? How come you didn't ask her about the leader of the organization already? You could have known all of their identities and eliminated them already…" the recruit with the ponytail pondered. His voice was youthful and very soothing but the contents of his words appeared to continuously expose Mana's failures.</p><p>"She will not talk about that, I tried asking her about that. Also, I will not kill a single person in this war, just so we're clear on that." Mana found herself rubbing the tip of her foot against the floor, a thoughtless tick when she was ashamed.</p><p>"Why won't you talk about it, did your life not wager on that?" the ponytail recruit identified in his file as Sora Kanoji threw his hands up in the air. His brief and controlled outrage was well placed and Mana realized that she may have poked around the Thumb's resistance to mention names a bit too feebly.</p><p>"It's not that I won't, I cannot…" Thumb poked her tongue out, revealing a hieroglyph present, "The Middle Finger had hired some bigshot rogue seal-master to place one of these babies on anyone worth a shit in the Diamond Hand. Not even being able to tell anyone my own name is a bit of a bother, as you may imagine. Names of the Fingers are a big no-no. I'm not going to give up my life for it, saving my life is exactly why I'm playing on the other team, to begin with, boy."</p><p>Mana had seen similar seals, not quite like this one specifically, but seals placed on one's tongue. They limited the speech on certain matters and, as one started treading secretive roads, the seal began restricting the spokesperson's breath before killing the person if they told something they were forbidden by the seal to say. Konohagakure sometimes still employed this method of protection of information but only for the most secretive of matters, cases of national security or secrets the exposure of which would have threatened the lives of people or undermined the basic values Konoha stood for. The seals were removed immediately after they overstayed their immediate need.</p><p>Protection of such matter was too extreme a measure even for the highly secretive ninja, it would have had to be a rogue ninja who had applied such a seal without any hesitation as limiting one's speech in such a way would have been a taboo for any seal-master worth their title. Even more, a seal-master capable of placing such seals leaking to the black market was something the Hokage would like to hear about as well. Mana would have had to use the Aviary, not even the local one as local birds may have been identified and intercepted, especially when the Diamond Hand was this pissed off.</p><p>That left the matter of why exactly they were so ticked off at Mana and why right now. What had Mana done to earn their utmost attention right now. Had it been because of the governor or the shutdown of the Security Force, they would have exposed her to the public yesterday, maybe even earlier. An uneasy flame simmered in Mana's chest that whatever Itemi was doing behind her back had something to do with it.</p><p>"Well, this may be completely stupid and not what I signed up for at all but… I've trained for so long, went through years of internship in Tanzaku and all that… Turning down this would leave me jobless and that would be very wasteful. I, Sora Kanoji, will help you out, Sorceress, I guess…" Sora shrugged with hands in his pockets. While he did maintain formation, his posture and stance completely disregarded any Security regulations, that was to say, those Mana knew of. While this one agreed to work with her, he may not be entirely under her command.</p><p>Mana nodded in acknowledgment and gratitude regardless.</p><p>"You have been awfully quiet", the magician addressed the third recruit, a two and a half meter giant with a physically fit build and facial scars splitting his strictly regulation abiding buzz-cut in three places. For a young recruit, this third rookie looked like he was an experienced veteran.</p><p>"What is there to say?" he rubbed his nose, a telltale sign of feelings of some sort rustling inside his gut, it could have been a sign of both honesty due to social shyness or nervousness over his lies. The way Mana saw it, had the youth been lying, he'd have been better at it. "The person who busted Syndicate in Otogakure and a fellow survivor of their torture asks me to fight by their side. I was on your side before you even spoke up."</p><p>"Wait, what?" Burgoniya raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I was interning in Otogakure for the last six months. The town's been overrun with Syndicate for four of them, the Police Force there was basically a non-existent charade. They surveyed information back to Syndicate sources and the criminals dealt with their competition accordingly. I did not play by those rules." The giant unbuttoned his uniform and lifted up his black shirt underneath, revealing a body riddled with scars all over his hardened muscles. "At some point my torturer got afraid that I'd not relent. They started scaring me about how good his torture supposedly was, how only one person managed to sit through it all without a peep. At the time I thought I was delirious, Konoha's Sorceress, a stage magician surviving torture?"</p><p>"The Chuunin Exams…" Sora suddenly interrupted the story with a snap of his fingers.</p><p>"That's right, after I saw Sorceress' name on the posters, I realized that this was no delirious dream. Konoha's Sorceress and her cohorts kicked the Syndicate's ass so hard over just one night that they shortly lost their power all over the region. Now she's here, in my hometown, ready to kick more asses. It does not get any more in, so to describe the manner in which I am in this. I, Shira Hayafu, will fight the Diamond Hand."</p><p>For a while now Mana has been plagued by this same feeling she could not shake off after telling on Kouta's team's location to Team Dunyazad during the Chuunin Exams. The feeling that she's been doing everything so wrong, and that she was so delusional that she could not even see how wrong she was tackling everything around her. This was the first time since the end of the Chuunin Exams that Mana had heard her being praised as a kunoichi and not as a stage magician.</p><p>Usually, her magic was the object of praise and success whereas Mana's work as a ninja got labeled with bemusement and mockery from everyone she met. People thought her being naïve and childish due to her dream, they mocked her for being a known stage magician and she's struggled being taken seriously due to her double occupation. This was probably the first time that Mana had managed to shake the foundations of her unease, just this once she was able to look at the events in Otogakure and what was going on here with a different light. It was a really good feeling.</p><p>"Well, as much as I dislike all of this. I will not go back to being an overpaid oracle reading bloodstains and body positions at forensics. All of this may be stupid, but it's the only option I have. I, Burgoniya Hogofuse, shall work with you." Just like that, the most skeptical of the four had also agreed to work with Mana.</p><p>"What are your orders, ma'am?" Shira inquired while tensing his body in a very official-looking pose, driving a knife over Mana's ears with the official way he addressed her.</p><p>"Please man the containment facilities. I am going to address that small crowd outside and assure the public that the Security Force is operational, I'll do my best to turn Diamond Hand's social assault at us back on them. I will need you here while I send a message to Lord Sixth about something and address the public. You will hear their complaints out and do whatever Security Force usually does, you must maintain the illusion that the Shukuba Security is functional, if with a slightly limited capacity." Mana sighed realizing the weight of the position she was now in.</p><p>In a way, she was not leading these people, not in a way a chuunin, which she was, should lead a squad of ninja. It was not even that these four weren't ninja, it was that Mana was afraid to take command and order them around as she would have thought fit if she was marking answers on a sheet of paper on a test. While her choice of assignments was somewhat sound, she was just shaking off responsibility while she was about to tackle it all by herself, just like she was afraid she'd do…</p><p>"Wait, containment facilities? Honey, I'm going with you. If Index ever decides to show her face around here, she'll redecorate this place with their blood before they even realize she's here, no offense, guys. I'm not leaving your side…" Thumb crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>And so, at the end of the day, despite her most extreme attempts to not place herself in the situation where she'd constantly have to look behind her back and fear betrayal, Mana had ended up in just such a situation. The magician leaned in over Thumb's ear, having to slightly step up on her toes to do it.</p><p>"I know you can't mention any names, but your reaction when I mentioned the name of Yokotomo Donyoku told me everything. Itemi knows that name as well, even if you do end up betraying me, just know that the name is out there and it's all your fault." Mana played her highest card just to ensure Thumb's cooperation for a slightly longer amount of time she usually would have had it.</p><p>Even if Thumb was playing Mana, by showing the kind of violent and offensive reaction to the name before, the magician ensured that if she was ever betrayed, she could also place Thumb under lethal fire by telling whoever in charge of the Diamond Hand was that the name became known to her and the reformed Security Force due to Thumb's disobedient actions.</p>
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<a name="section0393"><h2>393. Public Relations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Before Mana had even left to confront the small crowd of people she could feel a slight disruption in the rhythm in which the chakra signatures outside used to move. Given how minuscule the signatures were and how used she got to feeling various numbers of them just bustling about outside the Security building, Mana had reconciled with the fact that she completely missed the crowd, given how she was looking for a signature which was an entire planet, compared to the ants of these civilians. One often missed an unnatural behavior of ants when looking at the stars…</p><p>The magician left through the door, but not before giving her team of rookies a confirming glare back. Seeing the four take up on the given assignments, as lowly as they were. These guys were good people: Sora was a bit of the handsome douchebag type, Shira had seen plenty of pain in his life and held his feelings and thoughts inside too much, Burgoniya had a nasty and rebellious temper and Toiya would have betrayed the squad if that meant protecting her newly built family due to her conflict of interest but… None of them deserved what the Diamond Hand were willing to dish out to their enemies.</p><p>"You know, The Middle Finger will keep on stacking troubles on top if you don't keep moving and just stand around." Thumb objected with a whiny voice. Mana dismissed her with a gesture before walking out the door.</p><p>"So the Middle Finger is the one in charge then? Is Yokotomo Donyoku the Middle Finger?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"I feel like you know full well I can't answer that question but you asked it regardless…" the burglar objected.</p><p>"I figured maybe as long as you didn't say any names, you could answer yes and no questions. The seal on your tongue looks different to the silence seals villages use. I've seen some pictures in history books, your hieroglyph is different and the seal is weaker. It probably has some loopholes we don't know about." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"And you're just willing to risk my life to find out those loopholes? You're so cruel…" Thumb teased Mana with her playfully sarcastic whining.</p><p>The crowd outside was not even what could have been qualified as a public outrage. There were a good thirty people standing around the Security HQ, just talking and occasionally yelling out something of the demanding nature at the closed Security door. The crowd got collectively shocked when Mana and Thumb opened the door to greet them as they must not have expected any attention from the officials at all at this rate.</p><p>"My name is Nakotsumi Mana, I came out here to answer all your questions and, hopefully, ease your minds somewhat." Mana bowed to the people politely, standing on top of the staircase that lead into the Security offices. It was a good thing that she was used to performing in front of crowds hundreds of times larger than this, she may just need to lie, as bad as she was at that and as much as Mana hated that option, for the sake of maintaining the public order.</p><p>"How come we can't see the Security?"</p><p>"I heard that the Governor has run away, is that true?"</p><p>"Is our town shut down? Are we just fishes in a barrel? What if mercenaries and criminals invade us, do we have any defenses working?"</p><p>These and countless more questions flew from every corner. It was once she heard the thirty people fling well over a hundred questions in her general direction that Mana understood just what she has signed up for. Frankly, in that moment, as much as Mana loved standing in front of people and easing their worries, she'd have preferred having given this assignment to someone better spoken and wittier, like Sora, and taking up the task entrusted to him for herself.</p><p>"Yeah, okay, I guess this is not happening, how about I just tell you everything I know, while I have your most pressing concerns in mind?" Mana shouted out with a slightly raised voice to silence the crowd somewhat as sixty curious eyes penetrated her with glares willing to dissect everything she said, just waiting for her to trip up. It was not that much different than the first few times Mana performed on stage. When new performers started out it was quite common for the villagers to dissect their performances and judge the value of the money they paid for seeing them with completely different sets of eyes compared to old and established wolves of the stage.</p><p>"Shukuba is not shut down. It is just suffering from a backlash of a grievous corruption ring. Plenty of public figures, entertainers and Security officers were involved in it. I did not want it to become public to avoid a state of public outrage but it appears that the criminal organization named the Diamond Hand wants to play it differently, I am ready to play this game by their rules. I will bring this out to the public if that's the way they want to play this." Mana felt the slowly creeping up anger, it was affecting her words and strategy significantly, she tried to control it and push it down.</p><p>Thumb grabbed Mana by her shoulder and shook it.</p><p>"What the hell are you doing? Calling the Diamond Hand out?" The woman hissed into Mana's ear.</p><p>"Why are you talking to us? Why can't we speak to the Security or see the governor about this?" Someone in the audience yelled out.</p><p>"Who told you that you can't? Shukuba Security is currently short-staffed but operational. The clean-handed officers are willing to accept your complaints and do their job. As far as the governor is concerned, he may have fled from the town, but you can talk to him at about the same percentage of success as you could when he was actually here…" Mana nodded in the direction of the public addresser. Her speech soothed somewhat when the Diamond Hand was not the main subject and cause of what she had to talk about. She even made the audience break into a few controlled laughs by acknowledging how inaccessible the governor was, somewhat she had herself learned when trying to reach him.</p><p>"As far as why I am speaking to you is concerned, I am a kunoichi of Konohagakure and I am cooperating with the local Security force with the orders of Lord Sixth Hokage, in order to defeat the Diamond Hand and free your town. I assure you that Konoha will play no part in your reformation after the criminal ring is busted, we will not impose on your political rights in any way." Mana did not have to work too hard to make her speech believable. Her complete disinterest in political and monetary matters must have leaked out like water from a busted dam.</p><p>"Would you stop saying their name already?" Thumb kept objecting quietly to Mana's ear.</p><p>"What about the incident in Shukuba's vault, what comments does the Security force have about that?" Someone spoke up from the public. Just when Mana felt like she was almost freed from this and ready to tackle the task at hand.</p><p>"What are they talking about?" Mana turned at Thumb with a whisper, the female burglar just shrugged.</p><p>"I'm… I'm afraid I am not entirely aware of which accident you are addressing." Mana whimpered in embarrassment. Being someone who liked to over-prepare for every event in her life, there was nothing that drove the breath out of her lungs and made her voice tremble like an aspen during autumnal winds than being oblivious to something important so close to her.</p><p>"There was a big blade fight in Shukuba vault. Most of the town's funds are reportedly gone and a barely alive body of a Security officer was found riddled with blades inside. Rumors say that more than two-thirds of the budget of the town has been emptied." Mana gathered from the audience, one member adding on to another's recollection. Some fixing the finer details of something the other said.</p><p>"Itemi…" Mana whispered to herself, her lips paled realizing that by giving someone so despaired and disillusioned so much freedom to do as he pleased she may have driven a kunai into her own foot. Mana's voice just froze in her chest. She wanted to talk, to try and explain something, give the audience anything that would sound the least bit affirming but her throat just dried out and her heart pounded heavily in her chest with fear for the officer's life and blame for giving him this much freedom.</p><p>"No comment…" Thumb smiled like a mischievous child whom everyone knew to blame for a busted priceless vase but who was not quite caught in the act and therefore stubbornly denied any responsibility. The woman dragged Mana away by her elbow before the magician could completely collapse in front of the audience. After a brief while of confusion and bemusement, the gathering thinned out as some of them entered the Security HQ while the others just left to do their thing, being somewhat reaffirmed that the sky above their head was shattered but not yet falling on top of their heads.</p><p>"No comment?" Mana wheezed, taking far too long to regain the ability to speak. Whenever lives were at stake, whenever the magician felt like there was any way she could have blamed herself for a failure of any kind, she just froze and collapsed. She may have grown stronger, older and wiser but… Some things never changed.</p><p>"That's what Security says, instead of saying anything, you should learn that phrase, it's quite useful…" Thumb gave Mana a thumb up before letting go of the magician's elbow and tilting her chin and shrugging her shoulders.</p><p>"So… Where to next?" She wondered.</p><p>"I… I must see Itemi-san…" Mana's eyes changed, she could feel that much, the wetness in her eyes, the sorrowful look… She probably no longer looked in charge, her calls and her decisions had almost cost someone their life and they definitely cost this town most of the budget kept in the vault.</p><p>Itemi was an adult, more so, he was significantly more experienced than Mana at this crime-busting business, even if he kept himself occupied with paperwork more than anything else recently. He was not someone who would have listened even if Mana had told him to stick by her side, nothing useful would have come if Mana restricted him by force either. Still, just like most things in life, the magician couldn't help but feel responsible for not being there and not helping him, even if her mind, one more creative and imaginative than most, failed to find a plausible way for her to have done so.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Thumb stopped and looked back after Mana stopped in her tracks and looked back for just a brief moment. In that instance, the magician's eyes changed from those filled with regret and sinking in despair to those of a ninja, ready for combat, analytical and goal oriented. That change lasted for just an insignificant fraction of a second, too frail in the flow of time for anyone but the most perceptive and quick on their feet and minds to notice.</p><p>"Nothing, let's keep moving." Mana lowered her head and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket, hunching over and continuing the trek to the Shukuba hospital.</p><p>Compared to the relatively hi-tech and colorful Konohagakure hospital, where modern décor, colorful renovations and technological marvels adapted to serve the medical needs of the ninja village reigned, Shukuba hospital was a grey and dreary, depressing hole. Cracked tiles, rotten wallpapers and the stuffiness of air that made Mana wonder just what sort of reek she'd be picking up on if she still had her ability to smell. If she ever ended up placed in such an establishment, the magician would be thankful to never wake up and just stay asleep as just catching rare glimpses of what the inside of wards looked like, what with the barred windows and such, she couldn't imagine feeling any semblance of hope for recovery in such a building.</p><p>This is where people could have only been brought to suffer and die. The corruption of the Diamond Hand now just made Mana feel even more infuriated.</p><p>There was almost no security and no one asked any questions when Mana asked to see Itemi. This almost made the magician feel outraged but if she voiced a single qualm with this place to anyone, she had no reason to single this one out. She'd have to go on a rant that would continue for weeks upon months to no end or a possible thing to gain.</p><p>"Wow, they just let you in, no questions asked, we'll be lucky if the Diamond Hand hadn't already gotten to your pal here." Thumb grinned.</p><p>"Would they do such a thing?" Mana looked back at her companion of questionable allegiances.</p><p>"I mean… Not unless he really pissed them off. The Diamond Hand was always more about control and getting rich off of someone else's account. Murder and racketeering always came as a final resort or a capital punishment. Very few of the Rings are actually bad people, this just the only way they see to get ahead." Thumb looked around, likely getting tackled by similar depressing thoughts about the place that Mana had.</p><p>The lack of any manner of medical ninjutsu healing was evident. People walked around in casts, bandages that were so soaked in blood and medication that the fluids dripped on the ground leaving repulsive looking trails testifying on where and when someone was going. Mana could not even begin to imagine how long these people would have to suffer such treatments and recovery without the aid of medical ninjutsu and only natural and scientific healing methods.</p><p>"All this must look really shocking, huh?" Thumb noticed Mana's creeped out eyes and trembling lips, her pale expression. Not surprising given how Mana didn't attempt to cover it up in any way whatsoever.</p><p>"I mean… It's obviously depressing and makes me want to do something. Becoming a medical ninja is something I always wanted as a student but… I lacked the skill for it. My grades were average, my chakra control was average, I was rejected both times I applied for Konoha High before graduation." Mana walled herself off by wrapping herself in her arms, walking across people that looked and grunted like the walking dead was seriously freaking her out and she had seen some quite messed up stuff in her short life.</p><p>"That's not what I meant. I'm not blaming you for not being able to change this. I'm just saying… You know how that scarred giant fellow showed off his scars and said something about how you survived an even more gruesome version of that torture? Well, it's just that you have no scars to show for it. You've been having it easy back in Konoha, compared to this, huh?" Thumb voiced her thoughts, Mana was not sure if this was supposed to be teasing, as it was always the case with Thumb, or if it had some even deeper hidden meaning of some kind.</p><p>"I have plenty of scars to show. Not everything can be removed with medical ninjutsu. Chakra over matter and all that. My father was burnt by something so dense with chakra that even medical ninjutsu could not treat the nerve damage. Even I carry some nasty scars down there, I just am in no rush of removing them because they don't get in my way, as ninja or a stage magician." Mana replied she had no idea why she came off as so defensive as there didn't appear to be an assault of any nature to defend against.</p><p>Itemi looked strangely calm and peaceful, laying in his room, halfway covered up with hospital sheets, his lower body wrapped in a sarcophagus of bandages with red stains dyeing it in several places. Thumb pinched her nose, suggesting to Mana that the stench of medication was especially powerful in this room.</p><p>"Eye for an eye, huh?" Thumb spoke up in a high-pitched and distorted voice, similar to that of a piglet. One that would have normally made Mana laugh if the circumstances were not so sorrowful.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Mana looked at her companion.</p><p>"Well, that's just the way the Diamond Hand seems to operate, it's a psychological play, I think. It's not a rule or anything, more like a coincidence of Middle Finger's decisions. Okasune hit the Diamond Hand where it hurt – she got killed, Itemi hit the Diamond Hand by attempting to stop their attempt to recover financially, he got put down. Because he failed, his punishment was less severe." Thumb somberly explained her point.</p><p>Mana seemed to understand Thumb's point. It was a psychological play. The Diamond Hand seemed to ignore you when you were no one of importance to them. Whenever you hit them in any way, they hit back just as hard, making any sort of attempt at defeating them look fruitful. If Shukuba Security ever tackled the Diamond Hand, the syndicate would hit them back in places where it would hurt them proportionately to the degree in which Security attacked the Diamond Hand. It's a crushing psychological play when subjected to it one couldn't help but feel the hopelessness of fighting back.</p><p>It was not even close to how different criminal organizations operated. It had its own specific taste to it. When you crossed the Syndicate in any way, they may have just killed you, if they needed something – they tortured it out of you. It was dead simple, they operated in a very cold, logical and efficient manner that lacked any moral semblance to it. The Diamond Hand was not cold, was not efficient. It was the perfect mirror, the perfect contrast to what its opposing force was. It was psychological and it played games. It did not beat their competition by being better or stronger than their opposition, it beat them by making their competition get worse, get sloppy and question their every action.</p><p>"Itemi-san…" Mana's lips whimpered out, just barely breathing out enough air to ruffle the stuffy air in the ward. That was enough. Mana was prancing around the matter for too long. She tried to do this rightfully and by the book for too long. She had a clue rolling about in her hand and she was hesitant to exploit it, getting involved by distraction after a distraction. No more. No one else will suffer because Mana wasn't willing enough to be a bulldozer when she needed to be.</p><p>"Hey, where are you going? You just saw your friend, don't you wanna stay around some more?" Thumb raised an eyebrow after seeing Mana just jump up and head for the door.</p><p>"No. I'm going to pay Yokotomo Donyoku a visit, I'm going to expose him as whichever ring of the Diamond Hand he is, then I'll tear everything the Diamond Hand calls their own down. I'll give them no quarter to counterattack from, I'll just keep pressing them until they break. I won't let this happen to anyone else, not the rookie squad, not you, not a single person in that audience or this town." Mana muttered out from a position of blinding rage, but still not blinding enough for her to yell in the middle of a hospital.</p>
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<a name="section0394"><h2>394. Obsession</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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      <p>Thumb burst through the hospital door, not the one that Mana and the burglar had entered through but one that lead to a small alleyway leading to an important vein of the city, pulsing with movement and inhabitants.</p>
      <p>"I don't think it's such a good idea. You can't just burst into the place and start punching people." The tone of the woman was different from before. She was no longer teasing or being playful, Thumb was genuinely concerned. Whom for exactly Mana couldn't be sure. Her buzzing and tired mind couldn't be sure of anything lately. The pulsing veins in the side of her head demanded chakra input to remain functioning properly but Mana was purposefully denying them it. Was it Mana's instinctual phobia of needless augmentations or some other reason that made the girl behave this way, she could not entirely remember.</p>
      <p>"I've tried anything but that. Yes, if I do this right and if I do this how I always do things, I shall succeed. But when I do things how I've always been doing them, other people suffer. Good people." Mana tried shutting the woman down. The searing pain in her mind did not let her put together a better answer so she went with the outer layer of the feelings that bubbled inside of her chest.</p>
      <p>"You cannot do this alone, that's why you've put together the team, isn't it? Where will you even find… That man?" Thumb almost broke her taboo in fear of Mana doing something either very smart or very stupid.</p>
      <p>"I have my ways." Mana cut it down again.</p>
      <p>"Oh, please. You won't torture anyone, of all people I know that the best. Stop lying to yourself. All you're going to do is get yourself killed or hospitalized in there." Thumb persisted. "I know how powerful the other Rings are, most importantly, how cunning they are. You can't do this alone."</p>
      <p>"You don't know anything about me. You've only seen the shell of what I can do, only what I've allowed you to see." Mana turned back at Thumb, meeting her panicking gaze with a contrasting one of her own. The magician may have been delusional to think so, she acknowledged that much even in her hazy mental state, but she was beginning to think that it was not her or the youngbloods that the burglar woman was protecting by being this cautious. "You insisted on coming with me. I know you're afraid to head to the den of your predators but it was your call to follow me around whole day. You are more than welcome to head back to the Security building."</p>
      <p>"Why are we standing about? How will you even know where to find that man?" Thumb placed her hand on Mana's shoulder.</p>
      <p>"I'll ask them." The magician replied leaving the last part ominous, a pair of moments after she left it hanging in the air, the little capillary leading into the busy town street filled with people of questionable intentions. Some were all muscle, some looked all grace and speed yet all of them were entirely composed of murder and violence in varied ratios of the two.</p>
      <p>"Who are they? Do you think they're after me?" Thumb took a couple of cautious steps back.</p>
      <p>"I don't know nor do I care. They've been following us for a while, since Heiho Square at the very least. I could sense them but they were too minor a concern to stop our progress then." Mana turned against the handful of thugs rushing into the alleyway so she could stand against them face to face.</p>
      <p>One by one, the bandits spread out to both sides, letting a tall and intimidating figure approach through the middle. One with the smallest chakra signature of them all, strangely. It was a tall and incredibly well-trained physically individual. He wore nothing but a tank top underneath an unzipped military vest that was supposed to keep away an injury from simple swords, kunai, and shuriken at bay. The vest was far too short for the man, which was why it was worn so loosely and was in a constant state of tension, moments away from tearing.</p>
      <p>"Is this one of the Rings?" Mana looked back at Thumb.</p>
      <p>"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" Thumb flipped out on Mana.</p>
      <p>"You told me you were a Ring. That means that yes or no Ring-related questions are a loophole in your Taboo Seal." Mana explained with a calm and calculated face.</p>
      <p>"Not even a gasp?" the muscular man with the Kumogakure military vest spread his massive arms wide, adopting a mocking grin on his ugly and scarred mug. He apparently expected Mana to recognize him but the magician couldn't really put a finger on his shaved brick-shaped head and his face that looked like it was flattened by a titanium wall when the man hit it face-first while traveling at great velocity.</p>
      <p>"Unless you are a Ring of the Diamond Hand, I do not care who you are. Unless you have information about them, get out of my way." Mana shoved air out of from her chest as anger was making her breathing highly irregular. The old man in the Sun Disc arena would have been quite disappointed with her breathing had he seen her now.</p>
      <p>"Those fuckers? They only sent the woman who directed me your way, my only association with them is that they gave me men and a goal which both of us could agree on – snapping your little body like a twig!" the giant almost roared out, spraying an alarming amount of bodily fluids from his mouth as he did so.</p>
      <p>"I think he harbors some kind of grudge against you… The woman he is speaking of could be the Index Ring though." Thumb noted the obvious.</p>
      <p>"I do not care," Mana exclaimed, still brimming with anger for what happened to Itemi, for the misfortune of it all and the betrayal of someone she considered a friend to go off on a raid all by himself, before starting to slowly walk towards the gang of armed men lead by this mysterious titan of physicality. "Seeing how you don't know anything, move."</p>
      <p>Seeing how none of the sixteen men that the gigantic mystery-man brought with him planned to move, instead deciding to twitch and display all the signs and gestures of an incoming attack. Each one of them was taken down in a split-instant, collapsing before their bodies could complete the first motion of their attacks.</p>
      <p>The man in the middle was left with a twitching right eye, watching Mana approaching him. The magician did not attack him because she was actually quite curious, not about his origins or why he was so fixed on killing Mana, maybe that would be of interest to her if she was in a better mental place. What interested the kunoichi was what exactly the man would do, would he surrender some useful information in hopes that Mana would not harm him or if he would remain adamant about his strange quest for vengeance.</p>
      <p>"Y-You ruined my life, you little bitch!" the man roared out, charging forward. He was either very mindless or very skilled in hand to hand, compensating the difference of chakra Mana had on him to augment her abilities with would have been profoundly difficult, next to impossible even.</p>
      <p>With careful leans back, a very flawed dodging motion admittedly, Mana leaned away from the massive arms that aimed to punch all that was soft inside Mana's body out of her. The manner of her evasion was mocking to anyone who knew a bit about martial arts. Leaning backward or sideways only invited a very simple counter but, at the same time, it was a very psychologically vexing dodge, the equivalent of a verbal abuse in martial arts form.</p>
      <p>"I do not remember you. Had I done something of the sort, I'm sure I would have remembered it." Mana closed her eyes. She decided to calm her nerves, her current boiling state would have lead to her accidentally killing this weakling of a man. He was a mere civilian in prime physical condition, the very human peak of strength and endurance. It must have taken an entire lifetime of grueling training for this man to acquire this shape, he would have been an amazing ninja had he had a semblance of spiritual training to balance his physicality.</p>
      <p>"You little bitch, you left me impaled on a moose horn! Captured by a little magician girl, I was the laughing stock of the entire prison! I was given six years for my crimes but I had to swallow my pride, to almost beg to be placed in Jigoku, that way I only had to suffer one-third of that punishment." As the man continued to express years-worth of suppressed feelings Mana was beginning to remember the man.</p>
      <p>How did he expect her to recognize him? Last time she saw this man he was wearing full mercenary military gear, admittedly, he had this same armored vest but his face was almost completely concealed behind a gas mask, not only that, he had a quite rich head of greasy hair back then. Granted, remembering this man did calm Mana's heart a bit for his identity had some sentimental value for Mana.</p>
      <p>"It was a deer horn from a deer trophy." Mana fixed the man's mistake. Given how much blood he was losing and that he was impaled through the back, he may not have seen the exact animal that had foiled him. "And I am afraid you are giving me too much credit. I did not ruin your life. You decided to capture Hanada Katsuo and beat his life out of him, threaten his family and children, also a room full of innocent children who just came to wish their friend a happy birthday as well."</p>
      <p>The once leader of a mercenary gang did not wish to listen to Mana's words at all. He continued to throw fists without a moment to hesitate or to stop at the magician's direction, using them as both thrust punching weapons and hammering the ground beneath his feet in an attempt to mash the magician to the dirt. A rather symbolic gesture given his searing hatred for the girl. Neither of the mercenary's fists landed on their desired target. Mana was like a mirage of a spectacular oasis to a man stranded in a desert, alluring yet untouchable.</p>
      <p>"You had a choice, you could have left this hateful cause of yours behind, move along with your life as you have left your hatred for Hanada-san behind, in pursuit of my life. Instead, you chose to keep on subjecting yourself to that flame, to keep simmering in a pot of hellfire. All this time passed and you haven't moved on because of it. All because of choices you made. If you want to hate me, if you wish to kill me that is fine, just don't lie to both of us that I have anything to do with the wreck your made of your life." Mana kept on taunting her opponent.</p>
      <p>Even if this clash did not even begin resembling a fight, in the meaning that the opposing forces were nowhere near equal in this case, Mana did feel a semblance of worry. This man was completely normal in terms of his chakra signature, the physical aspects of his chakra were peaked but that was not the correct path to strength. She would need to hit him at some point but Mana felt a slight hint of worry that she was in no state to properly control the force of her strike so that it isn't ineffective or doesn't outright kill him.</p>
      <p>If she hit this man too weak, the hit would just bounce off without any use. If the hit was to be too strong, she would completely demolish this man beyond any point of reasonable dignity for his remains. It was once Mana caught a glimpse of the sweaty and grimacing pure, unadulterated hatred face of her opponent that she got an idea of what she would do.</p>
      <p>"That's right, I suffered profoundly in Jigoku, bested by a little girl, I was the laughingstock amongst the world's most dangerous people. I had to swallow my pride, my dignity and any semblance of self-worth! All that left was hate!" the man smashed the ground beneath his feet, shattering the rock tiles and pavement and raising broken off pillars of dirt and shattered stone from underground while his arms burst with blood. Mana vaulted over the man, scaling his massive, veiny chest like a wall before flipping over the man's head but instead of exploiting any of his openings she just took a graceful hop back to get some distance.</p>
      <p>"You think you've become strong after lifting some weights and sparring with some blockheads, after picking up scraps from truly strong men but they saw you for what you truly were this whole time. You were weak because you abandoned your spirituality, you've abandoned your humanity because you needed space to stuff all that hatred somewhere. Those men in Jigoku used you for entertainment, Index used you just for fun, directing you my way just to see what will happen." Mana's voice softened. Even if she was exploiting the man's anger and hatred for a plan on stopping Bakku for good, she felt that realization soothing the anger and hatred inside her own heart too.</p>
      <p>"You really think pissing this guy off is a good idea?" Thumb intervened, just narrowly avoiding a wild backhand swing from Bakku coming her way.</p>
      <p>Bakku had clearly picked up some moves in Jigoku, some self-taught criminals taught him basic forms of Strong Fist, clearly. The most ironic part was that by surrendering to the basic principles of the Strong Fist – dominating physicality and brutal destruction and breaking of all bones in one's opponent Bakku made Mana an insurmountable wall to overcome. The very core principles of Mana's evasive style were designed to evade such styles, the magician needed no time or draw no profiles to understand Bakku's fighting style. No form of pure Strong Fist would ever lay a finger on her.</p>
      <p>"Why? He is just a toy, always was. Hanada Katsuo toyed with him and his men back home, the prisoners in Jigoku toyed with him so that they could laugh after seeing a worm train to fly so it could hunt down hawks, Index played with this man just for chaos' own sake. Whether he dies and she loses nothing or I die and she gains something – to the Diamond Hand Bakku is nothing but a toy." Mana replied while she danced around her sweating and wheezing opponent who desperately tried to realize all of the sick dreams he had of breaking the little girl that, in his mind, caused his life to crash down and burn.</p>
      <p>It was then that Mana saw her chance when Bakku extended his hands with an attempt to block off Mana's escape. The magician extended just one finger, placing it lightly to Bakku's chest as lightning crackled down her body.</p>
      <p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch", Mana calmly whispered.</p>
      <p>Bakku's body began jerking wildly as he fell to his knees in an instant, collapsing without a sign of life, pulse or any hints of consciousness. Mana had to step aside just so the collapsing giant did not fall right on top of her. A moment of deadly silence reigned in, Mana closed her eyes and placed her hands inside of her coat pockets. Just as that happened, a bunch of men and women in white coats started flooding the alleyway outside of the hospital backdoor, likely having observed the entire thing. While they did pick up the downed giant, Mana and Thumb had already disappeared into the busy street further down the alleyway.</p>
      <p>"That was mean of you. To belittle a man so much and crush his dreams before you killed him." Thumb spoke up, her tone was no longer mocking or playful, it was serious and a little respectful even.</p>
      <p>"I did not kill him. He suffered a cardiac arrest right outside a hospital. It is dangerous, it might result in death but this facility has the technology needed to treat it. Itemi-san survived getting riddled with kunai blades, didn't he?" Mana bitterly replied. The suggestion that she would have intentionally killed a man she felt so bad for was quite sickening but she did not blame Thumb for that. The burglar did not know Mana's dislike of ending life.</p>
      <p>"So… You just shocked him and he had a cardiac attack?" Thumb raised an eyebrow. "For someone trained to kill, that was awfully inventive of you to keep him alive like that."</p>
      <p>"His training was that did him in. I barely had to supply a spark. Did you not see his pitiful state?" Mana looked away, feeling her eyes moisten.</p>
      <p>"Oh yeah! The guy looked like he could lift a building over his head with his right arm, what a pathetic fellow…" Thumb's cheekiness and sarcasm returned about at the same time that the blood in her pale cheeks did.</p>
      <p>"Don't laugh. I was taught my entire life that strength was acquired through rigorous improvement of one's body and mind, both spiritual and physical selves must grow in harmony in order for a person to grow strong. Bakku-san had ignored his spiritual side, trained himself to the point where his body was on the verge of breaking down already. He was wheezing and sweating, his facial muscles were twitching and contracting irregularly, he was a wreck while in complete physical prime. The spark was just a catalyst for the cries of help from his already dying heart." Mana mumbled as she snuffled with her running nose, luckily she was in cold enough environment to leave everyone fooled about the source of those sounds.</p>
      <p>"You mean his heart was messed up or something? Well, a cardiac arrest won't help that. My grandpa had one of those after a heart attack, he couldn't do anything strenu… That was your intention, wasn't it?" Thumb pushed Mana playfully before shaking the girl by her shoulder.</p>
      <p>"Yes. It is more than likely that he will never be able to fight or train his body again without suffering another attack to his damaged heart. He could keep on fostering his hatred and choose death, in that case, I'll have failed him truly. But there is still a chance that he will change his ways now that the other option is sure to kill him." Mana explained, wiping her tears and working up a smile for her companion.</p>
      <p>"That's pretty kind of you, for someone so determined to end your life as painfully as possible…" Thumb smiled back.</p>
      <p>"Not true. Bakku-san helped me see what reveling in hatred and wish of immediate payback does to someone. How it can undo all training and all the growth someone had accumulated throughout their life. I just… Wanted to help him, that's all." Mana looked on ahead, only for her stare to freeze and widen in disbelief of the youth standing right in front of her.</p>
      <p>"You've done enough here, Mana. I'm here to bring you back." Aozora Yushijin, Kouta's ex-teammate from back in the Chuunin Exams, was standing right in front of Mana, staring her right in the eyes with determined and driven eyes.</p>
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<a name="section0395"><h2>395. Rivalry Pressure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Confusion, uncertainty and a batch of other things ran down Mana's head when she saw a fellow Konoha ninja present in front of her, looking to be in full combat preparedness and ready to bring her back. Did Lord Sixth not grant her full permission to act upon her discretion, she did send him a quick intel report together with the last message sent out with a hawk, could that have been it?</p><p>"Why are you here?" Mana asked just to push the inevitable pressure of making a decision a little bit further, just stall for time until she figured what to do next. It would have been quite dangerous to attempt and engage Yushijin all by herself, even if Thumb was by her side, she was an unreliable ally at best.</p><p>"I already told you, I am on a mission authorized by Lord Sixth to bring you back," Yushijin replied with a bit of edge to his tone, he clearly noticed Mana's attempts to bargain for time and did not appreciate it. If she was to get this situation under control Mana needed to work it smarter, although… She was so tired, sleepless and beginning to grow hungry and thirsty to the point where her chakra network was starting to strain itself lightly just to keep her going like this.</p><p>"I thought I had Sixth's full permission to act in Shukuba's best interest until the criminal organization was disbanded. Was my intelligence flawed or forged?" Mana continued to inquire, at this point she didn't even abandon the possibility that her fellow Konoha ninja was a transformation, someone wearing his shape and robes, then again, who in this pleasure town could have known enough about her to know not only about Yushijin but also about the unpleasant sense of guilt that Mana felt towards Team Fir?</p><p>"I don't know. Lord Sixth was looking for people to bring you back, I volunteered." Yushijin grinned with half of his face, his grin was brimming with confidence, he felt almost excited to confront Mana this way. His stance, the confidence in his face, this had to be Yushijin, he felt excited about the opportunity to get to fight Mana officially.</p><p>"That is interesting, I cannot seem to sense your presence even when you're in front of me." Mana bent her head to the side in curiosity, extending her sensory abilities to their absolute peak and yet failing to pick up anything but the chakra of a civilian irradiating from Yushijin. She would have long since dismissed her colleague had it not been for this one curious detail.</p><p>Yushijin pressed his hands together in a hand seal position, releasing whatever technique he was using. As he did so, a chakra signature started flowing freely like it had just toppled a massive dam and was about to drown Mana's senses, attempting to overwhelm them completely. Fortunately enough, it was not nearly powerful enough to do so, even given Mana's novice mastery of her sensory at that moment. Yushijin's unleashed chakra signature was still a bit below Mana's, regardless, it was impressive for someone his age and rank to have his signature at these heights for Mana did engage in special chakra level training almost regularly with her meditation and exercises of chakra control and flow.</p><p>"I guess this new jutsu I've learned has something to do with why I was selected." Yushijin's pride could not keep his grin contained. "Now leave this village behind and come home."</p><p>"Answer me this, before I answer your request, was your mission treating me as a potential rogue ninja? Does Lord Sixth treat me as someone who has abandoned the village?" Mana wondered.</p><p>This was an important question, the answer to it determined the rest of Mana's life, possibly. If the magician was treated as a rogue ninja – that meant that Mana's reports back to the village had never really reached the Konoha Aviary and were intercepted, which caused this miscommunication. If Lord Sixth considered not Mana's status, but her actions, dangerous, that would have been a different matter entirely.</p><p>"No, you are not considered a possible rogue ninja. As far as Lord Sixth briefed me, you have not left the village, as far as loyalty goes. I am under orders to bring you back alive." Yushijin replied. His face was an iron wall when it needed to be and a pitch black fog of mist when it was appropriate, Mana couldn't tell if he was telling the truth or lying. Yushijin had grown very good at keeping a cold and emotionless face when he wanted to… It was even a little bit commendable, really.</p><p>"Well then…" Mana turned her nose and face down, pocketing her hands inside her coat and calmly walking forward. From what her sensory could tell her, as the magician's eyes remained closed, Thumb was trembling in her boots a little and refused to move. Mana almost felt a little bit offended that despite being confronted by a ninja of relatively same or similar skill, Yushijin clearly intimidated the woman far more than Mana did. "This is pointless."</p><p>Yushijin swung his sword at Mana's back, aiming to leave a wide and deep enough gash to cut her down immediately if she was cocky enough to lower her defenses. The magician crouched down, she had expected the youth to react this way from the beginning, his pride would not take being antagonized and belittled this way. Just like that, she had Yushijin played… That would tip the scales to her favor whereas in an even battlefield they would have been relatively equal.</p><p>"Can't you see this, you idiot? Lord Sixth just sent you for the show." Mana spoke up as she stood back on her feet and gently gained some distance from her colleague. While the first strike attacking her exposed back was easy to read, the rest of his attacks would at the very least deserve being seen and analyzed by Mana visually as she would have stood no hope against Yushijin if she looked down on his tremendous skill.</p><p>Talking was beneficial to Mana when Yushijin was busy talking or enjoying this clash with Mana he would not be nearly putting in as much forethought and sheer fighting ability in his attacks as he would be distracted.</p><p>"For show? I figured there was something off about him sending just one chuunin to apprehend and bring back another chuunin but… I did not want to believe it." Yushijin exposed his blade again, taking a fighting stance, by that time their standing about became visible to common civilians who would have missed the duo moving around when Yushijin first attacked.</p><p>"Why? Why did you go so far to come here for me to begin with? Didn't you volunteer for this mission?" Mana wondered as that idea still confused her. "Are you still mad at me for what happened in the Forest of Death?"</p><p>"Tsk, not that old thing again…" Yushijin showed his teeth. First, in discontent and then again as a property of his enthusiastic grin. "I just wanted a reason to face you and find out truly which one of us was better."</p><p>Yushijin attacked with simple sword strikes, his swordsmanship was competent but nothing Mana could not easily evade given her advanced focus on that subject. She had less experience evading a blade than she had evading punches and kicks but beside a much greater skill needed in space management and the lack of ability to trap the blade with her bare hands alone it did not provide an ample challenge to her.</p><p>The townsfolk around the two began freaking out. They were not panicking yet, just retreating into corners where they thought the fight was unlikely to move into. This may have been why Yushijin was so limited in his offensive arsenal, for now, he was buying time for the townsfolk to move away and give them space. Not that the two needed that much. Had they remained moving, they could have likely kept on fighting around the civilians, moving fast enough to not even be noticed until they slowed down or bumped into an unfortunate passer-by.</p><p>"A reason?" Mana wondered out loud. "What do you mean by that?"</p><p>"This whole time when I improved my genjutsu skills, sensei kept on comparing me to you in terms of improvement and promise in the field. I was naturally curious, I never intended to compete with you but when the comparison was drawn… I just can't help it." Yushijin smiled. "I even went as far as to learn a way to suppress my chakra signature from being sensed just so I could fight you better."</p><p>"That was foolish, by suppressing your chakra you also depower yourself. When your chakra is suppressed you cannot augment your abilities at all." Mana replied, crossing her hands over her chest as Yushijin's eyes finally noticed the villagers having cleared out somewhat, giving him ample space to attack Mana seriously.</p><p>There it was… The magician sensed an invasion, a burst of foreign chakra flowing into her system from her abdomen, moving upward. It was a more advanced method of genjutsu use to the one Mana used, the one she borrowed and mastered from the insects lurking in the deep caves of the Wind Country. One taught to young ninja in the Academy and one Mana knew about all too well, both as a genjutsu user and a chakra sensor.</p><p>Yushijin's body froze in place, alongside with a complete stop of every environmental factor around. Horror and bemusement paused in the eyes of the villagers hiding all around, a drizzle of snowflakes impeded and stuck in their place, floating in the air. Time itself appeared to have frozen. It was Yushijin. He was messing with her time perception, such a dangerous ability. Even when she knew all about him from seeing Yushijin fight, Mana still could not stop admiring the youth who had mastered it. She'd like to learn all about temporal perception manipulation from Yushijin if he wasn't so proud of his skill and so adamant about proving his superiority over her.</p><p>"Dispel" Mana concentrated on the word, letting a burst of her own chakra blast the foreign invader chakra off through her body's pores in the shape of thin light needles. The girl bent her body back to the point where it almost hurt her back, in a quick and life-saving vault backward that helped her avoid a devastatingly focused and strong slash at her upper body section.</p><p>This could have been dangerous. From what Mana recalled, Yushijin did not need to weave any signs or utter the name of his genjutsu as long as he used it on very weak percentage of its full potential. She already just barely avoided having her body cut in two with the usual dispelling method. Had she not mastered every basic technique she had known in the Rabbit Caves before the finals of the Chuunin Exams – she would have been finished.</p><p>"I think I understand," Mana spoke up, she needed time to think of a different way she could use to evade a stronger version of this illusion. Maybe if she augmented her endurance she could make these devastating slashes of Yushijin's great-sword more shallow, maybe where it just slightly cut into her flesh but even that was just a temporary solution. "I'm not a very combat-friendly person." She admitted.</p><p>"That's right." Yushijin nodded, slightly lowering the tip of his sword but staying in stance. "If I just came up to you, you'd have told me to get lost or just half-assed our battle and lost on purpose just to keep me off your back. I want to fight you seriously, I want to really know who's better. Especially now." He grinned again.</p><p>"Now?" Mana felt curious.</p><p>"After the Chuunin Exams, I wanted to face you even more. You and I were the only genin of our village that got promoted. Everyone kept talking about how you and Stea stole the show back then… Don't you feel even a bit curious?" Yushijin winked before raising the tip of his blade and preparing to attack again.</p><p>"Not really. I understand your feelings, I've met plenty people in my life who would feel similarly but… I just don't really care about which one of us is better. I think there is much we could learn from one another but fighting just to know which one of us is stronger seems stupid to me." Mana admitted with a shrug. She did not want to continue this fight, not only because of the way she felt internally but also because of her fatigue, hunger, and thirst. Chakra was a combination of both physical and mental and her weary had dimmed both to the point where Mana doubted she could even summon her best at will.</p><p>Yushijin stopped in place again. His illusion was so treacherous, Mana had no idea but her gut to rely on by just how much he would mess up her perception of time. He could have as much as doubled the amount of time she thought had passed or froze and to her, it would have looked all the same as before. Yushijin's sword slipped through Mana's gentle frame, splitting her into two pieces and making the collapsing two parts of her body spray a profuse amount of blood.</p><p>Before Thumb's gasp and disgusted grunt even concluded, the blood and gruesomely split parts of Mana's body turned into flower petals and dispersed all around before beginning to form right behind Yushijin.</p><p>"So cocky!" Yushijin yelled out as he threw an unexpected kick behind him, before Mana's frame even completely reassembled itself. The kick, which felt like the strongest thing to ever hit Mana, sent the magician tumbling back, hitting her right atop of her chest and just narrowly too low to hit her in the neck where it'd have crushed her air supply, leaving her powerless and gasping for air for quite a while.</p><p>Grunting in pain and fatigue, Mana stood back up before she noticed that both her opponent and the environment around them was frozen in time momentarily. A blade thrust right through Mana's chest, completely impaling her on it as she could not properly time her counterattack due to Yushijin's illusion continuously messing with her time perception. He was using it so often, starting it up and ending it that even when it was over, returning to the normal perception became increasingly more difficult after each of his use of the illusion. Mana's body once again dispersed into a shower of flower petals, she could feel chakra leaving her body like blood being drained out of her through a pipe.</p><p>"Seriously?" Yushijin grunted, this time throwing a wild swing of his massive great-sword behind him, this time it was met by Mana's wand, extracted from the seal inside her hat as the magician felt she could not risk escalating multiplying the additional cost of her Flower Petal Sanctuary even more. She used it three times in a row just now and just by doing that, she made each successive use feel almost twice as draining. The Konoha swordsman slammed his shoulder into his blade, shifting the weight to his left leg before forcing Mana off her feet and flying back. She was lucky that her wand was made from just about the sternest stuff there was.</p><p>"Goddamn it!" Yushijin cursed, looking at his blunted up and damaged sword. "Just what is that fairy-stick made of?"</p><p>Mana grunted in pain and exhaustion as she pulled herself off the ground. She was not ready for this fight, not now, not here. Her opponent was slowly unraveling his abilities to a higher and higher extent and she could not afford to let him step into the serious territory without risking serious injury or death. How would she destroy the Diamond Hand then? The blood-chilling thought of the insurmountable wall that beating both the Rings of the Diamond Hand and Yushijin here brought gave Mana another idea.</p><p>"You'll need to fix your sword. Also, I've seen your Fire Style jutsu in the arena during the finals. You'll need a way bigger and more secure space than this to fight in." Mana tried working up some magic.</p><p>"Alright, what are you suggesting?" Yushijin grumbled, clearly looking unhappy that the fight he was waiting for such a while was being postponed.</p><p>"The Shukuba Museum", Thumb intervened into the conversation, within a fraction of the moment, her face began paling and she grabbed her throat as if she was beginning to feel short of breath. For a second there Mana feared that her Taboo Seals would have set off for some reason but after the woman stopped talking for a while her airway seemed to open up again.</p><p>"That seems like the least likely place to be able to let loose in…" Yushijin complained.</p><p>Mana felt like Thumb was up to something clever but her own mind could not yet grasp the connection. She curiously stared at the burglar, trying to piece everything together so she could free Thumb from explaining herself. If Thumb spoke about the museum some more, that would have triggered an even more dangerous reaction from her Taboo Seal.</p><p>Then she remembered what Itemi had told her about Yokotomo Donyoku, the man was someone who came into his public status as a rich man after finding a treasure in someone's backyard and keeping part of it. Likely he expanded on that fortune through numerous income sources from his criminal activities but… A man like that of a great sense of where to look for treasure and a desire to unearth it, someone who went public with the treasure and was known for it… Of course, he gave it to the museum, he was someone of profound artistic sense. It was possible that Thumb was suggesting that the museum was a place where Mana could find Yokotomo Donyoku.</p><p>"Yeah, let's fight in the museum. Shukuba's museum is very unlike other museums that you know. It is entirely privately owned and very well protected, I feel." Mana explained as much as she could put together herself. Thumb had stumbled on the idea to use Yushijin in the fight against the Diamond Hand, leashed on the promise that he could then fight Mana. The woman saw that the magician could not have cared less about the winner so she saw no problem suggesting Mana gambling on that "rivalry" by mixing the Diamond Hand into the occasion.</p><p>"Whatever, you still haven't explained about why you said Lord Sixth sensed me "just for show"," Yushijin squinted his right eye in confusion, as he could not stop examining his blunted and damaged blade.</p><p>"I'll explain it later." Mana tried to dismiss the matter.</p><p>"No, you'll explain it right now or I won't let you out from my sight…" Yushijin objected.</p>
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<a name="section0396"><h2>396. Follow The Money</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The glares of Mana and Yushijin were pushing against each other, firing off an amount of mental and emotional sparks not too different from the number of physical ones they had let out when their weapons clashed not too long ago.</p><p>"Lord Sixth approves of my actions, he's told me as much when I messaged him before. He has no reason not to. The Diamond Hand, in other words, the organization I am fighting against here is draining Shukuba of its last drops of blood. They operate in the Fire Country. The Fire Lord would be quite happy if the Diamond Hand stopped leeching his own resources and slowly turned his domain into a desolate crime den." Mana began hesitantly explaining her train of thought to her colleague. Something she did not entirely wish to spend time doing but it appeared that Yushijin would not back off unless she let him know exactly what his role in this all was.</p><p>"But if the Feudal Lord himself would be content with the completion of your objective here, why would the Hokage call you back? He is the one who has everything to gain, the Feudal Lord does not even know your name, to him you're just a tool, the only one to gain his praise would be Sixth himself." Yushijin flexed his weary shoulder after sheathing his sword back and putting his cloak back on to protect him from the pelting snow.</p><p>"Exactly, Sixth is a Black Ops man, he knows the ins and outs of what he has to gain but also of what he has to lose if I fail here. All he will have to talk about with the Fire Lord, in that case, is a dead kunoichi in Fire Lord's backyard doing hell knows what and dissolving the political state of one of the pleasure towns with nothing to show for it. It would be a sign of his weakness and that he is unfit to remain in the big seat for too long. He is a man of strength, he continuously flaunted that against Hokage-sensei when the two met, his competence is a matter of great pride to him." Mana elaborated, hoping that Yushijin would catch on to what she was saying.</p><p>Even if the eyes of the handsome Konoha ninja were confused, clearly seeing the contradiction of his mission objective and presence here to the Lord Sixth's better interest, he still was not perceptive enough to put the picture together. This was typical of boys in Mana's eyes, too fixed on figuring out who was stronger than whom and planning complex schemes to face their preferred opponents in the field of battle instead of figuring out why the fights needed to be fought in the first place. So lazy and hesitant to look one pace up from where their eyes were at just because they enjoyed the view.</p><p>"You are Lord Sixth's way out of an apology to the Fire Lord, Yushijin. By sending you here he can show something that denies his inaction, he ensures that whether I win or fail here, whether my reputation is mixed with dirt or elevated, he has nothing to lose because he can always reasonably deny his involvement in the matter. If I topple the Diamond Hand – Lord Sixth will take all the credit the Fire Lord has to dish out, if I die in the process – he'll just point out how he tried to retrieve me by sending you here and that'll be that." Mana pointed it out.</p><p>"I can't believe I was played like that. The Hokage doesn't even need me to complete my mission in that case…" Yushijin looked down, looking a tad bit disappointed.</p><p>"That's who Lord Sixth is. These are the games that shaped him as a man behind the curtains where he once lurked. He is a politician, maybe because of that he is the best man for the seat he is in right now." Mana shrugged. "Repair your sword and meet me tomorrow at midday in the museum. I'll give you your fight and you can go home, with me or without me."</p><p>Yushijin looked Mana in the eyes, something was in the process of being snowballed down the hill in his mind but he looked hesitant to word those thoughts. Perhaps he was still hesitant to let Mana out of his sight, maybe he wanted to suggest his own aid in apprehending the Diamond Hand before they settled things. Whatever the case was, the young man decided against speaking up and simply nodded before walking off.</p><p>"It's cute, you know…" Thumb teased Mana by poking her with her elbow.</p><p>"What is?" the magician wondered, following her peer as he walked away and faded in the falling snow.</p><p>"How much time he spent thinking about you. He caught you unprepared with that illusionary thing when he kicked you, right? He did not just see you, he felt you, he knew what you were thinking at that moment and that was why he caught you." Thumb sighed dreamily, Mana blushed, not liking the woman's tone one bit.</p><p>"He saw me fight once. He noticed a pattern of how I moved after dissolving my illusionary body, that is all." Mana dismissed it. Thumb had a point. While using specific illusions, the user's real body became concealed, often emulated and recreated in an illusionary shape, such was the case with Flower Petal Sanctuary too. Mana's illusionary body got injured and dissolved into another illusion of a shower of flower petals while the real body remained hidden to all who were under her illusion. And yet Yushijin knew exactly where to attack not once but twice without any chakra sensory abilities and with his very brain being fooled, not just his chakra network as was the case with normal genjutsu.</p><p>Either Mana's movements were too predictable, or the young man really did get into her head at that moment.</p><p>"So what now? You still storm the museum, all alone or will you actually enlist this boy's help tomorrow?" Thumb grinned.</p><p>"I begin to wonder if sieging the entire establishment is the right idea. I have no doubt that Yokotomo Donyoku surrounds himself with the other Rings, both for the security those orientated into combat provide and the convenience of administrating them all in one place. It is quite likely I will find them all there." Mana sighed, closing her eyes and trying to will her weary mind into thinking straight.</p><p>"Although it would not make sense to keep the nerdy types around there, right?" Thumb teased Mana. The magician opened her eyes and fired her ocular arrows at her companion who was giving off these same annoying smartass glares back. She knew something, the "nerdy type" of Rings apparently was not residing in the museum for whatever reason.</p><p>"We go back to the Shukuba Security, we'll find out where Yokotomo keeps his newly stolen money and we'll hit that. I suppose we'll be catching the weasel who did this to Itemi-san after all." Mana smiled faintly.</p><hr/><p>The Shukuba Security was already in turmoil. Civilians buzzing about where they were being heard and even more buzz generated by those waiting in queues to still be heard by someone with a free set of hands and ears. The institution was pathetically understaffed and all because of a call Mana made. Confronting this only made nausea that was wrestling with the rabid hunger in Mana's gut slowly gain the upper hand by bodyslamming its competition down under.</p><p>"Shira, when you're done with this, please come to the chief's office." Mana murmured to the ear of the gentle and scarred giant.</p><p>"You mean your office, ma'am?" he let out rhetorically. Despite his utter devotion to the cause of beating the Diamond Hand and complete trust in Mana and her abilities, he was probably the one getting under Mana's skin the most.</p><p>"Gonna try and work this out with a yes-man?" Thumb teased Mana as well when her input was the least appreciated. Then again, that was how teasing usually worked. Had it come when Mana was in her best moods it would not have served its purpose.</p><p>"Can you please not? I am this close to snapping…" Mana rubbed her tired eyes after collapsing into chief Chontai's chair. Her voice betrayed her weariness and a difficult state of perpetual questioning of her every action. At this point the magician cared too little about what would happen to her and if Thumb would stab her in the back eventually to even try and change how she appeared to those around her.</p><p>"Hey, my life literally hangs on your ability to catch all of them. You're close to doing it too. Just get yourself together and pull it through!" Thumb objected.</p><p>"Yeah but… I have no idea how to find the stolen money or how to catch… Whichever Ring is in charge of financial crimes in the Diamond Hand." Mana slammed her head on the table, covering it up with her hands and pushing it down further.</p><p>"There is a reason why The Middle Ring built the Diamond Hand this way, you know. Each Ring knows one area of criminal activity better than anyone else the Middle Ring had access to. Only by pooling their collective knowledge can the Diamond Hand operate. You have a bunch of rookies eager to prove themselves, how about you get all of them together and find something out?" Thumb replied, her tone was not soft because soft would not have cut it. Her tongue was like a whip, sharp, cold and iron, wearing a hook at the end that dug deep under Mana's flesh and exposed all the nerves as it peeled the skin and the muscle off on its way out.</p><p>"Yeah… Let's do that." Mana calmly composed herself and got herself together, preparing for the next attack on the Diamond Hand.</p><p>A good fifteen minutes ago, Thumb had left Mana to put herself back onto her emotional saddle and prepare to do the work she decided to accomplish here. Something that was too important for Mana to just collapse under the pressure and to the immense fatigue now. While the burglar had returned with the information that she has informed every member of the reformed Shukuba Security, only Shira had shown up in the Mana's office as requested.</p><p>Mana knew what this meant. It was a sign of defiance. A sign of lack of trust. Also, a sign of the rookies finally realizing what it was Mana asked them to do. One thing was to declare that one was ready to topple a cabal of criminals, a whole thing entirely was to do the work of an entire Security Force with just four people. They were pissed, scorned by the fact that Mana left doing hells knew what while they were busy with a bunch of documents and busywork.</p><p>"I think that the others are too busy, ma'am. Maybe we should start already…" Shira spoke up with a firm and thunderously low-pitched voice. Despite his great respect for Mana, his voice or tone did not shake or question his actions or words for a moment. Mana could only dream of having this much confidence in what she was doing. It seemed as of late that everything around her was just falling apart not only on her own head but on heads of everyone in the same room.</p><p>He was right – the youngbloods may have agreed to work together to beat the Diamond Hand but they defied Mana. They did not trust her just like Itemi didn't when he ran off to fight them alone. Why was it that the criminals rarely ever had trouble working together? It was only due to Thumb's ambition and her own defiance that Mana even came to capturing one of the Five Rings.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess it's only fair enough. The Shukuba vault was hit hard, the town's funds are all but drained and in the Diamond Hand's possession. That is our first priority. The Diamond Hand believes that money is power, it appears that both the village and the Security shares that belief so we need to get it back." Mana raised the issue she decided to focus on.</p><p>"That will be difficult, ma'am. Officer Itemi appeared to have acted in brutally lethal force, there was not a single survivor we could interrogate or detain in the incident. All that was left was bodies. I would not advise asking Burgoniya about what those bodies could tell, she is on the verge of going postal right now. She's self-appointed herself as the head of forensics again." Shira reported.</p><p>Of course, she'd be the worst she's ever been. From the very beginning, Burgoniya distrusted Mana if not hated her guts. It was not tough to see why Mana was not even a Security officer with proper training. In the woman's eyes, she was just an entertainer, a pompous stage magician with delusions of grandeur and the illusion of power to stop all crime in the town. The woman had spent her entire life growing and training to leave forensics and become something more and once she had gathered that experience – Mana just flipped the table and Burgoniya had to do all of her despised work all by herself. Had Mana not known better, she would be expecting the colleague to try and murder her for how much of her misfortune and stress was directly brought up by Mana.</p><p>"I see, is there any way to find that money without interrogating anyone involved in taking it? Any public way of tracking it?" Mana asked, knowing full well what the answer would be like. It was not like the Diamond Hand lacked brainpower needed to not just shake a bag of money the size of two-thirds of the entire budget of a pleasure town to buy something.</p><p>"Highly unlikely." Shira shook his head adamantly without breaking the stance.</p><p>"Not entirely true…" Thumb scratched her elbow uneasily, knowing she'd tread some suffocating grounds and possibly risk getting strangled by the seals her ex-employers left for a while. "Most public money is marked with a pheromone that Aburame insects are capable of tracing. In cases such as this, that means they could be traced."</p><p>"If your accomplices are as smart as an average thug they'll know to remove those pheromones." Shira voiced his doubts.</p><p>"True, but a lot of pheromones means a need for a lot of removal substance, right? Could we not track the substance that is meant to remove the traces of the pheromone?" Thumb suggested. The woman was giving off vital information, vital enough that Mana suddenly started to doubt that Thumb was out to betray her and it definitely started to appear like she was being genuinely interested in bringing the Diamond Hand down.</p><p>"It will be difficult. We do not know if the Diamond Hand will buy it from a black market dealer or a local one." Shira replied.</p><p>"I don't think they will be using local dealers. As alluring and ironic as paying the town with their own money sounds, it would be a dead giveaway for anyone smart enough to look. They'll use black market dealers for sure." Mana massaged her temples.</p><p>"Then you are in luck that I know them all, sister." Thumb grinned. "I usually bought gadgets from black market dealers in contact with the Diamond Hand."</p><p>"I don't know about that." Mana sighed. "It's been almost twenty-four hours since you have not reported back. Probably double that since you started working against the Diamond Hand's interests by failing to steal the necklace on purpose. By now they know you are compromised if they know to not use local dealers, they'll know enough to avoid anything we can retrieve from you." Mana pointed out.</p><p>"They would most likely assume that you have been tortured and all information has been extracted from you. Ninja are unmatched in knowing when to use torture and when to use more psychological interrogation methods for maximum effectiveness and the Diamond Hand will know that." Shira voiced his thoughts.</p><p>"True, but Mana-chan is such a sweetie, she wouldn't hurt a fly…" Thumb teased Mana again by sending her an air kiss.</p><p>"Well, the Diamond Hand does not know that." Mana stone-walled the yet another attempt by the burglar to get under her skin. By this moment the magician was almost certain that the woman was not looking to betray her, a traitor, the way Mana was taught, would do everything in their power to stay under the radar, not try and poke the person they're about to betray with every chance they get. "They would be smart to assume I am just about as ruthless and effective as any ninja of my rank."</p><p>"That means we require to locate a black-market dealer who is not a casual acquaintance of Ms. Thumb. It will be a difficult task, it is likely that such a transaction would have already taken place or will take place shortly. It is highly unlikely that we will catch the Diamond Hand red-handed." Shira pondered.</p><p>Mana sighed and stood up, taking her coat and slipping into it. "Very well then, you two see what you can work out."</p><p>It was evident in Thumb's face that she hated the idea of staying in the Security with the rookies who already had too much on their hands to babysit her from would-be assassins. Especially now that Mana affirmed her fears that her status as a captured agent was already a given in the eyes of her ex-employers.</p><p>"Where are you heading to?" Shira wondered.</p><p>"First I'll need to enter the den of the dragon and talk to Burgoniya, after I am inevitably rejected by her and feeling as trashed mentally as I have ever felt, I'll be off to the Aviary with my plan B. I'll message some of the Aburame clansmen I may know from my Academy days, maybe they'll know ways of tracing the chemical used to delete the trace of their pheromone. They're pretty impressive and crafty and nature is a handy mistress, I'm sure they'll have a bug for that." Mana sighed before approaching Thumb and leaning up to her while standing up on her toes to reach the woman's ear.</p><p>"I had expected more of a fight from you about this. You sure you are OK staying here and helping Shira?" Mana wondered quietly.</p><p>"I saw what a wreck you were before. I figured you needed more of my shit the least right now. I was mistaken before when I thought all of this could go comfortably, it seems that it will get worse for us before it gets better for people we don't know…" the burglar closed her eyes submissively.</p><p>"Guess that is why you're the adult here…" Mana tried to work up a smile before the trio parted ways after entering the chaotic soup of the Security offices in the peak of their activity, approaching the end of the workday.</p>
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<a name="section0397"><h2>397. Educated Guesswork</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Telling Shira and Thumb that she'd message some Aburame she knew was easier to brag about than to actually do. Mana may have been quite a popular stage magician but, as a kunoichi, she had few favors to cash in and was not all that popular. The popularity that a known entertainer gathered was quite different to the intimate bond of friendship and mutual trust that ninja shared. A popular actor could not within reason just call for one of the people who knew them to go out for lunch or ask for their help, these were different things entirely.</p><p>Mana's exhausted mind could only muster up a pair of Aburame known to her. She may as well have sent one message to the clan district in general, just to see if someone was up for helping their colleague out. Given how Mana's entire going rogue was a charade of sorts it would not be completely impossible for her to receive help from the clan but due to such a factor existing at all the chances of it were as slim as they got.</p><p>The name of Aburame Juhi was one of the names that came up. Mana had known the cheerful kunoichi from Team Pine since Academy, albeit quite to a limited extent. The two had talked about vague topics just to maintain the sense of common fondness that many children shared at that age but it had never gone beyond that. Juhi was quite popular due to her very vigorous attitude and personality, she was not stuck up or vain, in fact, very few Aburame were. She was the second least reliable source of help.</p><p>The man whose help was by far the most plausible, even if the most did not mean all that much, in this case, was Aburame Yanagi. The man whom Mana met when she traveled to the Eden prison complex to retrieve Sugemi during the whole Kiyomi's kidnapping upheaval. Recalling all that it seemed like it was years if not entire decades ago but it could not have been farther than a pair of months back… The man would certainly recall the Konohagakure girl who involved him in a war between the Black Ops of Kumogakure and Kirigakure.</p><p>Mana did not ask for much, she did not have any leverage nor was it within reason or her personal principles to do so. All she wanted was some information about the Aburame pheromones used to trace money, the ways it could be removed and if the chemicals used in the removal could have been traced by some breed of insect or other methods. While the hawks may have been intercepted mid-trip, Mana did her best to describe the reason why she needed this help and what was at stake to the point if not slightly less in detail. The trip between Shukuba and Konoha would have taken five hours for a civilian to walk, far less for a caravan, a ninja or a speeding messenger hawk so Mana would not have to wait too long before replies came back.</p><p>After that came the difficult part… Asking Burgoniya for help or any possible tips about tracing a chemical used in the removal of money tracing pheromones. This felt the most difficult part of her role in this investigation for entirely different reason most people disliked talking to people who hated their guts. Most of the time, people felt this way because people hated being criticized or felt like such toxic discussions had nothing productive to bring. There was a reason why Konoha took pride in the comradery between their ninja.</p><p>Mana hated these conversations because hearing what angry and hateful people had to say only enforced the bad things and fears she already felt about herself, they validated those thoughts by proving to her that it wasn't just all in her head. Proving that people on the outside felt that way as well and that it wasn't just Mana being quirky, the exact opposite of what Mana often told Meiko whenever the blacksmith used to get discouraged about her own weaknesses.</p><p>When Mana entered the small wing of the building used for forensics, as limited as the department was in its size and usefulness, Burgoniya was conversing with a strange elderly woman of dark complexion, likely a result of dirt and not an actual tan, and odd fashion choices all around.</p><p>"Burgoniya, I need some help with the investigation," Mana spoke up, knowing full well the minefield she was walking into.</p><p>"Your energy radiates death and gloom, young lady, begone from these premises!" the dirty and messy woman flipped out, throwing her hands around madly in a desperate attempt to "accidentally" claw Mana in the cheek or to poke her eye out.</p><p>"On this, we agree, Gofuri-san," Burgoniya sighed.</p><p>Lazily evading a flurry of clawing motions from the woman and after restraining her hands by the woman's wrists Mana glared at the poor thing trying to figure out why she was inside the forensics wing. A place of science where outsiders were especially unwelcome with the term being used in an especially liberal definition included even other officers at times. It was easier to attempt and make sense of things all by herself than to try and ask Burgoniya directly.</p><p>"She senses aura and weird energies." Burgoniya noted, butting at and then eventually poking the woman with the back end of her pen that was usually located pressed in between her teeth.</p><p>"There's no such thing." Mana murmured. She was quite aware that Burgoniya brought this woman in just for the sake of this mock conversation and to play some sort of a sick joke on Mana, even if she was aware of the humiliating trap she was walking into, she did so nonetheless.</p><p>"It's about as reasonable as expecting one woman to spearhead the whole forensics lab, a wing that's already one step away from communicating with fucking ghosts." Burgoniya blew at the brown locks that fell on her face as she rushed to some calculations on a notebook she was making, likely having figured out the answer while making fun of Mana at the same time.</p><p>"No one asked you to do this, you took this up all by yourself, you know. I'm sure that other officers would appreciate your help with their workload while you leave the lab unhandled for just a short while." Mana tried to be about as nice with the forensics intermediate as her slightly past puberty mind that was beginning to feel the results of being severely deprived of sleep would allow.</p><p>"And yet it's the only thing I'm adequate at. You can go now, Gofuri-san, your use here is done." Burgoniya sighed while addressing the crazy old woman who left the forensics wing wailing her hands about.</p><p>Mana approached the messy table of the extremely passive-aggressive youngblood only to be greeted by countless same pictures, some of them having a ruler placed inside of it next to some object, quite accurate and impressive in artistic quality and realism sketches of dead bodies, various crime scenes and pitch perfectly recreated blood splatter drawings with intricate angles and geographical calculations that looked pretty much like hieroglyphics of an ancient language from afar. The closer Mana approached them, the more impressed she was by the scientific language and fluidity at which Burgoniya expressed her thoughts in mathematical form.</p><p>"Well, it does seem like you're doing some impressive work here," Mana noted, noting the countless stored pictures being analyzed as well as boxes of what seemed to be random objects, possibly evidence, being examined, as well as the highly impressive and fluid mathematical calculations on all of Burgoniya's sketches. Mana was no mathematical genius but she at the very least felt fluent enough to appreciate just how great Burgoniya was at her job.</p><p>"It's nothing short of educated guesswork. Hasn't it occurred to you why the forensics offices and the labs are so small wherever you go? Police Force or Security, whatever you call it, everywhere forensics is just what you give young and enthusiastic rookies to kill their spirit. You spend countless hours calculating the angles and distance of footprints, taking pictures of locations in both scorching heat, chilling frost, and downpouring rain as it washes away your clues and evidence mercilessly and all you can do is make a good guess." Burgoniya collapsed in a screeching chair with certain familiarity and comfort to the defective piece of furniture.</p><p>"The reason why I knew "aura" and "energies" that the old woman was reading was all hogwash is because I am a chakra sensor myself. I suppose it would be great if criminals left some sort of a trace at the scene of a crime, an essence of themselves that you could pick up and identify. Sort of like sensors identify chakra signatures?" Mana tried to appeal to Burgoniya's dreams and her likes. It did feel nauseating that even when she had noble purposes of befriending the young woman Mana used washed up Academy psychological tricks.</p><p>"Yeah… I think I've read in an article once about a forensics expert in Kirigakure who is of Hozuki clan descent, capable of ingesting blood samples and identifying people like that. I suppose reading people's "chakras" or "auras" or "kenki" or whatever, lifting some kind of rock-solid proof of someone's involvement in the scene of the crime would be pretty neat, would definitely make me feel less useless… What a load of bullshit," Burgoniya pushed a pile of papers and files so that they would topple over and scatter all over her miniature little closet of a lab. "What is it that you need?"</p><p>"We're after the stolen vault money." Mana scratched the back of her head while looking away from the inquiring and rather uncomfortable glare of the Security officer.</p><p>"Smart, you do know tomorrow's the tenth, right?" Burgoniya turned back at the toppled files, resorting to picking up what she had scattered in a moment of anguish and despair.</p><p>"The tenth?" Mana raised an eyebrow. The magician wondered if the woman meant the tenth day of the month, on her way to the labs Mana did catch a glimpse of the hanging paper calendars located all over the place in separate cubicles.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess it's hard to understand for a ninja, who gets paid for a job well done, but ordinary people get paid by the month. Tomorrow's the most common payday, it is modeled after the public model. Public institutions pay their servants the tenth of each month so a lot of business owners copied that without much forethought." Burgoniya explained.</p><p>This was really bad! The pleasure town was missing most of its resources and it was all controlled by the Diamond Hands. It was a hostage situation that even someone as generally disinterested in money as Mana could understand. Approaching the payday, people would be getting a bit on the edge and pushing their financial limits. Using the funds they now held hostage, the Diamond Hand could pretty much come out into the light and turn the entire pleasure town against anyone else, money, in this case, was the scepter of power. It would be Otogakure all over again…</p><p>"May have played into their hand by dissolving the Security Force, huh?" Burgoniya chuckled mockingly as she focused her attention on calculating something based on measurements and angles of a blood trace she had sketched and photographed.</p><p>"No, they just answered my actions with ones of their own, making my attempt at fixing this place work for them. They will do the same no matter what we do, it is how they act." Mana sighed. "The money is traced with Aburame pheromones. We think that the pheromones will be or are already removed, is there any way of tracing these chemicals to where the money is held?"</p><p>"Sure, for an Aburame. All sorts of insects are attracted to weird smelling trace removal chemicals, not even any specific ones. Chemicals like the ones that remove pheromones smell unique to them and insects do not have the brainpower to tell the difference between weird and what they like. They'll check it out regardless. Either get an Aburame here and have one use some of their creepy crawlies or catch the black market dealer that sold the chemicals and put a knife in between the socket and the kneecap." Burgoniya replied with disinterest.</p><p>Mana rubbed her tired eyes and her pulsing with pain and pressure temples, the dim light in the lab coming from extremely focused beams of light that Burgoniya used on her many tables made the magician a bit sleepy. A single focused application of chakra augmentation would have made it all go away but Mana was burnt one too many times by it. She did not want to do it unless absolutely necessary. Then again, if she would even know absolutely necessary if it came tolling bells was still unknown.</p><p>"The workday's coming to an end. You'll have to accept the town hating your guts tomorrow so sleep up, you'll need plenty of strength to plow through the bullshit coming at you." The brown haired forensics expert looked up at Mana with a hint of empathy in her eyes. In that one hint Mana noticed something. Something warm and friendly if one was okay with stretching the definition of that something out. More like empathetic pity.</p><p>"I'm not going to let the hard work of Shukuba's townsfolk go unrewarded. My workday does not end until the Diamond Head is toppled, this entire week just feels like… One big workday." Mana sighed before noticing the door opening up and Sora with Toiya peeking in. Their uniforms were slightly torn up with Sora's being almost completely riddled with cuts, some of which still bleeding and both of their faces shining with bruises and cuts.</p><p>"Boss brat, you'll like to see something…" Sora addressed Mana with his own hint of both submission and respect as well as belittlement.</p><p>"Do you have your hands full?" Mana looked at Burgoniya with curiosity.</p><p>"When you scattered the Security Force there were six active cases being investigated. This is twice of what is usually the norm for the start of a month and they are quite old, I suspect they were being frozen deliberately so… Kind of." Burgoniya shrugged.</p><p>"Alright then, I won't bother you with that, I trust you know what is best for the lab." Mana nodded and followed Toiya and Sora to where she was being called.</p><p>The two Security officers lead Mana through old but quite well-maintained wings and corridors of the Shukuba Security into the containment facilities, a place where people were being held before or shortly after being questioned and sent away into a specialized containment facility, kind of like Konoha's own Police Force's establishment did as well. One cell, in particular, stood out as it housed a middle age man with similar cuts and bruises that Sora and Toiya had on them.</p><p>"I'd appreciate someone telling me why I'm here…" Mana rubbed her elbow in unease as the silence of the injured Security Force kind of put her on edge.</p><p>"We're afraid your hawks did not leave the Shukuba woods," Toiya answered with lingering anxiety. "Whatever your latest message contained, the hawks were shot down by these two. The second one's already awaiting interrogation."</p><p>"We received reports from interested townsfolk of messenger hawks being shot down, we've got a pretty strong and active nature preservation movement who are mostly a big pain in the ass due to the town spreading farther and farther into the woods. Just this once, I guess, they did us a favor. Currently, all of our Security hawks are down so we will need to use the town's own Aviary for a while, at least until the four newly hatched ones can be trained." Sora explained.</p><p>"Sadly, we did not manage to detain them before they shot down your hawks…" Toiya added as the trio finally reached the steel door with barrier seal placed in the center of the interrogation room. "Had they not been focused on taking down your hawks, they'd have likely killed us. These guys are quite well-trained fighters."</p><p>"It's the Diamond Hand. They're putting a squeeze on us. With the town funds being missing, we won't be able to use the Aviary until the workers are paid. Then the mighty and kind Diamond Hand will waltz in on white stallions and pay them and just like that they'll have the communications of the town in their hands too." Mana mumbled out almost to herself entirely.</p><p>"Well, it's good that these guys kicked our asses so hard then – we know they're Diamond Hand, now all you need to do is to put a squeeze on them like your folk can do. Cut their gums, threaten their kneecaps, break and cut fingers… No wrong answers, really…" Sora shrugged before nodding at the shut door where one of the hawk-slayers was awaiting interrogation.</p><p>Mana sighed and was allowed into the room by the Security officers. When an authorized and recognized by the seal officer pressed on the sealing tag, the seal lowered the glowing barrier around the thick door allowing one entry or exit. The only shining beacon that gave Mana hope now was that she knew she wasn't lost anymore. Whatever she does, however this interrogation goes, she would not resort to torture and that strangely made things more clear for her, it actually inspired her even though it should have been a massive disadvantage in her case.</p><p>The poacher sat with his hands locked up and sealed, as well as his legs. His expression was tough but not completely devoid of emotion. He was no stone wall, that was to say he was by no means afraid of torture or a little of Shukuba Security trademarked rough-housing. He was expecting it, embracing it even. What his face emanated was confidence and a certain degree of smugness. He was feeling triumphant as all he had to do was sit here and get tortured until the dawn, then a little bit more until the entire town goes out of whack and his superiors gain control over it. Until the Diamond Hand becomes the new administration.</p><p>"Alright then… Let's begin." Mana smiled, her face shining with relaxation and clarity, with the fear of the darkness she may sink to in order to save this town being completely vanquished in her mind, for the first time, she could match the confidence of her enemy when she was staring it face to face.</p>
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<a name="section0398"><h2>398. Interview With A Poacher</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Chimo, Okyuri. Three-seven-seven-two-four-three. Self-employment license." The slightly scratched up and bruised man mumbled out to Mana shortly after her entry and settling down with the intention to see what she could find out from this hawk-slayer.</p><p>Mana pouted her lips before shifting them to the right side of her face while her eyes squinted instinctually. She was confused by the man's choice of words so she hesitated to answer anything, instead choosing to look back at the door she entered through.</p><p>It did not instantly register to the magician that Shukuba law enforcement appeared to have a thing for identities. That was, technically, what she was offered by the man and it did not appear like he was offering anything else. Seeing Mana's confusion, the man repeated his routine a couple of times before shutting up and lowering his head as if he was preparing to go to sleep in his tight and uncomfortable position.</p><p>"He identified himself, gave me some vague number and then his occupation." Mana thought to herself before standing up and leaving the room.</p><p>"What's he doing?" She lifted an eyebrow at Sora and Toiyo. She was surprised that these two decided to stick around instead of preparing to end their workday. It could not have been much farther away before Mana would have no moral reason to ask them to stay with her for any longer and their own moral compass would be the only thing binding them.</p><p>"He's giving you his name, registry number in the registry of legal and natural persons and his occupation, in other words – where he can be found during the day by law enforcement if the need arises," Sora explained with a bland face, he appeared really bummed by hearing this information being supplied for whatever reason.</p><p>"It's what he has to tell us by regulations that govern the Security procedure. Anything beyond that he is under no obligation to say. Someone in the Diamond Hand taught him to deal with clear-minded officers…" Toiya sighed, running her hand up her sweaty and bruised forehead and down her shoulder-length ginger hair.</p><p>"Which is why having you around is so comfy, go poke him some more, preferably literally…" Sora jested following Mana back into the interrogation room with his eyes.</p><p>The magician settled back down into the chair opposite to the detained poacher, for a short while she stared right at him with serenity and complete calm but then the magician approached the man and leaned up to reach for his lower body.</p><p>The man did not waver. He did not as much as move his eyes to follow Mana's hands, he just defiantly stared right at the girl's face as her hands, strong enough to punch out the very matter he is made of right out of him, moved down, close to the area behind him where his heart slowly pounded blood all across the body. The sheet of metal that protected the man's back in the shape of the chair would have been no barrier at all for Mana's hand to bust right through the man's chest from behind. The magician weaved a hand seal with her other hand. Even knowing the full range of incredibly painful ways someone like Mana could have made silence difficult to maintain, the poacher was defiant to the very end of the loud clanging sound.</p><p>The sound that signaled the breach of the protective seal and the steel of the man's cuffs.</p><p>Without saying a word or receiving one from the man in return, Mana slowly walked back to her chair and sat down comfortably. She may be held up in this room for a while now.</p><p>Rubbing his hurt hands and feeling what little chakra he had running in him, as usual, mostly comprised of the physical aspect of it, the man glared back at Mana with bemusement. Delve as deep as Mana did, she saw no gratitude or desire to cooperate whatsoever.</p><p>"You're fucked. All I have to do is stay silent until the morning, maybe around twenty-four hours until the townsfolk really get riled up. You lost." The man finally said something that was not his name, registration number or occupation or the combination of the three in any particular order.</p><p>And yet, he was not cooperating, he merely felt that by giving leeway and giving some space in this rope pulling contest, Mana somehow made him feel less in control than he would have felt had he been tightly bound with whatever manifestation of his physical chakra suppressed by the seals. He tried compensating that feeling of lost control by showing dominance, he was assuring himself as much as he tried to assure Mana. It was cute, really…</p><p>"Yep. Doesn't mean you have to stay silent though. This may end up being a long night after all," Mana smiled, settling herself down more comfortably in her chair.</p><p>It had appeared that the man did decide to sit tight and stay silent, at least for as long as he could muster it. The man's eyes and the previously cocky stare turned into a confused one as he hid his eyes from contacting Mana's glare. He may have been trying to protect himself from the easiest way of projecting genjutsu or Mana may have been overthinking it a bit. He may have just been avoiding her attempts at profiling him.</p><p>This short exchange of words was very much like a clash in the arena, just like Mana could read and predict the more likely attacks and styles coming from her opponent, to profile them from just the first few strikes, she began to wrap her mind around this poacher as well. He was strong physically. He was quite intelligent and decently invested in by the Diamond Hand if he was taught the basic legal Security trip-up routine. Yet he was no ring, he was not smart enough to be a more physical leader of a Diamond Finger nor was he smart and spiritually prepared to be the head of a more intelligence-based division.</p><p>Still, he was quite aware of the recent proceedings in the organization and the town. Whichever Ring the thieves of Shukuba budget answered to, whichever Finger they belonged to – he was a part of that Finger, at the very least. The man thought he was not giving Mana anything but he gave her plenty even through defiance. His skill in deflecting Security questioning taught her more than incoherent and deceitful answers would have ever done.</p><p>"You guys really did me in…" Mana complained, rubbing her tired eyes, running her hand down her messy raven hair after removing her hat and placing it on the steel table. "Jeez, the whole town's going to be after me by tomorrow evening. I have both Konoha ninja and Diamond Hand sent assassins after my head, I haven't slept in a while, eaten or drank anything and it would not be too wise for me to start doing those things now…"</p><p>The man looked at Mana, breaking his streak of defiant evasion of her eyes. He was not empathetic to her situation at all. Here she was, a teenage girl describing her all too adult problems and telling him that actual assassins of both her side and the enemy side were after her neck and the man did not as much as blink. That, once again, was a sign and something to record in the profile of hers. Just like the one emotion which Mana did see – pride. The man was fairly gleeful and proud, seeing Mana exposing her weaknesses like that, lowering her guard and luring him to get his licks in.</p><p>Even if he was being read, even if he gave information with the mere fact of him refusing to give her none, the man was not stupid enough to attack Mana while her eyes were turned away. He was no ordinary grunt or an idiot incapable of thinking one step ahead of his current actions. He had some sort of a plan, he was a someone in his Diamond Finger for sure. That was good, it was possible that Mana did slightly disrupt the Finger's operations by catching this man, albeit not very likely.</p><p>"Yeah well… Don't count on living far past tomorrow." The man grinned, his eyes staring at the floor but his smile escaping his control. It was something deeper, instinctual, something the magician lured out by hooking the shark that the man was on the live bait of her beating heart.</p><p>"That is quite alright with me. I will be arresting the Middle Finger tomorrow morning anyway, I've told the young man after me that he can face me tomorrow morning in the museum." Mana shrugged. "As long as Shukuba is peaceful again, as long as the Diamond Hand is shattered and the Middle Finger arrested – dying is fine with me."</p><p>"The museum…" the man raised his head up, he was struck under the belt by that. "Middle Finger… There is no Middle Finger, only the Middle Ring. Only Thumb calls him like that, so I guess she spilled the beans after all…"</p><p>"Oh, yeah, her seals were protecting some information but she gave me enough. You can hold up until tomorrow evening all you like. Tomorrow morning is what I'm waiting for myself. Want me to grab you a donut or some tea?" Mana kindly nodded her head before jumping to her feet vibrantly. Once again, the cracks in the unbreakable façade of this poacher revealed something interesting – he knew who the Rings were and was to some degree having business with them, enough to hear about them interacting with one another.</p><p>"Sure…" Chimo grumbled, feeling a tad bit weaker with his authority and understanding of what was going on and a whole much more confused about Mana's interrogation methods. It must have certainly been completely different from what he was taught ninja interrogation methods were like.</p><hr/><p>Whatever confusion Chimo felt before was only inflated further when Mana returned with two boxes of rice balls neatly wrapped and seasoned in one hand a plate with a handful of teacups positioned on it.</p><p>"This looks suits you. Fits your waitress getup perfectly." The poacher mocked Mana with smugness and disdain, something that he pushed in front of his disorientation of where this interrogation was going.</p><p>"It's a magician's uniform." Mana smiled, acknowledging she was being mocked but playing it off like she took it as a bit of friendly teasing.</p><p>"Whatever you say…" the man grabbed a rice ball and began stuffing his face with as much of them as he could, still expecting the magician to use food as some sort of leverage or completely accepting the fact that she would pull them from his grasp once she thought he had taken a liking to them.</p><p>"I mean, I was the first stage magician that I know of, I get to decide what stage magicians look like." Mana smiled. She liked it that Chimo tried to make it personal. Without his knowledge, he was acknowledging Mana's existence and delving into her for details he could fling back at her. That meant that the possibility of a connection of some sort, voluntary or otherwise, was much more likely now that he was not completely walling off.</p><p>"I'm really grateful that you spoke to me a little." Mana smiled with gratitude after taking a small bite of a rice ball and warming her hands by placing them on the cup of tea. "You've actually given me more leeway than my colleagues. I don't think they will ever get over the kid layer."</p><p>The man coughed on his rice ball all of a sudden before he managed to get his things in order and properly swallow the massive bite he took. "It's not like I did this for your sake, it's how we're taught, that is all. Silence attracts the attention of the interrogator, meaningless words – less so."</p><p>"I see." Mana pouted her lips, looking a bit disappointed with the man's answer even while she was anything but on the inside. She was trying to guilt trip the man into feeling a bit bad. Working together with Uzumaki Tanshu since the early days, she realized instantly that she would go nowhere trying to be intimidating because she simply was not. She lacked the "cool" factor, the age and the certain stature required of intimidating people. Initially the magician had dismissed herself and burnt herself on the inside but, later on, she realized that it only meant she had to use different methods for the same purposes.</p><p>"I have a friend who'd laugh his butt off of your words. He is a manga nut and with my brief research into the medium I discovered that certain romantic interest, females mostly, speak similarly to you in that case." Mana smiled letting her genuine enjoyment of talking to the man surface a little.</p><p>"A weird girl has weird friends, go figure." Chimo closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his chest, likely taking for granted his freedom to do so when in the pale and bland interrogation room. "I'll tell you something interesting if you tell me something interesting in return." He suggested out of the blue.</p><p>Mana was well aware of the man's profile and type. He would not have abided by Mana's rules of conversation and played her friend if he would not have had something handy for the Diamond Hand to gain in return.</p><p>"I like this game, I'll take you up on it." Mana cheerfully nodded. Already she was the warmest and cozy with this poacher, who was just acting friendly for his own gain, than she was during her whole stay in Shukuba.</p><p>"Your methods are very different from how we were taught to respond to interrogation. You are not violent, you barely actually ask me anything and you do not appear to have any torture tools on you." Chimo noted, "Is our information on ninja interrogation methods incorrect or are you a unique case?"</p><p>Of course, he wanted to know this. It would have been of profound use for the Diamond Hand to know something like this given that they were about to walk into the open public as the overlords of Shukuba by simply holding the town hostage economically.</p><p>"You will believe my answer? You warm my heart, Chimo-san!" Mana smiled.</p><p>"You didn't lie about how much intelligence Thumb give you, you didn't do that bullshit approach about acting like you know everything and you've already loads of evidence against me and my superiors…" the poacher smugly rubbed his nose with his index finger, feeling quite confident and happy with himself. It appeared that compliments were fairly effective with this person as they were of much use opening him up in the beginning as well.</p><p>"True enough, then again, if my version was that I had ample evidence of your guilt and merely needed some silly confession or something, I would not have spoken with you in the first place, don't you think? I dislike lying, I detest sloppiness similarly." Mana shrugged back at her interviewee.</p><p>"To tell you the truth… I am not entirely sure. I believe that most ninja would have subscribed the typical torture methods you are so well prepared for. If you were captured in Konoha the intelligence division would have cracked your mind into shatters and exposed everything inside within moments. Someone of your chakra size and strength would not pose a challenge even to an initiate interrogator." Mana admitted, giving this man more than it would have been reasonable and more than it was needed to answer his question.</p><p>It was like drafting a contract with an enterprise in a way. Mana gave this man more than he asked for but just about as much as she was willing to give, just to enforce the illusion of either her inadequacy, which was a more likely way he would take it, given his profile, or her childish naivete and gullibility.</p><p>"I was instructed by the leader of the Pinky Finger, the Pinky Ring to take out your hawks. I do not believe he was under any orders to take them out, he looked pretty sweaty and upset, he's paranoid about everything lately. I guess both of us have a very inhospitable work environment, huh, kid?" the poacher shrugged before finishing his tea and letting its refreshing, minty taste wash down his rice balls.</p><p>"That is more than I needed." Mana relaxed in her chair, thanking the man with just her eyes alone. She had no problem admitting that much to him, clearly, he would see it as a type of belittlement, a claim that she had triumphed him in this interrogation game but it was not what Mana meant entirely. She was really grateful and feeling glad that her method worked even better than something detestable like torture would have.</p><p>"You think you can find him or the money on just what I gave you?" Chimo raised an eyebrow.</p><p>Even if she had finally finished her interrogation officially, Mana felt like staying in the room and talking to the man for a while. Who knew, this may have been the last human interaction of complete neutrality she would encounter for a while or even in her life, if it for whatever reason was cut shorter than Mana had planned it to be.</p><hr/><p>"We… We have nothing." Shira rubbed the back of his neck in aggravation and profound disappointment of his own abilities when Mana entered the pitch black and empty office complex of the Shukuba Security long after Toiya had left home to her family, Sora left to lick his wounds and even Burgoniya had shut down her lab.</p><p>"Sorry, kid. We went through all black market dealers I knew about and none of them were as much as sighted in the entire Fire Country. We checked the pharmacies and chemical factories too, worked our asses off but we have no idea where the chemicals were sold from or how to effectively track them to the money." Thumb looked a bit frustrated as well, she wanted to help Mana because keeping Mana happy meant the magician was at the peak of her interest to keep Thumb alive.</p><p>At least that was how Thumb herself saw Mana's mental state. Truthfully, Mana did not care just how helpful or "useful" any of the youngbloods or Thumb were. She'd protect their lives with her own on the line purely out of sheer principles of her life she subscribed to. Just her inherent moral roots, nothing more.</p><p>"That is fine, say, you've heard about any Pinky Ring?" Mana smiled.</p><p>"Of course!" Thumb smacked her own hand with her fist thrown in a hammering motion. "It makes sense that he would take up my Finger after I am gone. He's in charge of the…"</p><p>"Financial crimes," Mana mumbled, interrupting Thumb just because of her own paranoid fear that Thumb's taboo seals would trigger for no reason. "Financial to thievery and burglary seems a pretty qualified and reasonable jump indeed. Know where we can find him?"</p><p>"Can I tell you?" Thumb wondered, pressing her trembling hand to her throat.</p><p>"There did not appear to be a reaction when you spoke of the museum. I'd assume so." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Great, we can siege his home and take him in if your efforts proved more fruitful." Shira nodded. "The Diamond Hand appears to value their monetary strength most of all, they will be really pissed." The youth appeared to be enjoying this prospect remarkably.</p><p>"Not quite, I have a really weird feeling in my gut, I'd appreciate if you'd called on anyone you can trust in the force to put a squad together and head somewhere else…" Mana shook her head.</p>
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<a name="section0399"><h2>399. Maximum Alonessness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was the calm time of the night. The time when even the depressed and the wicked, the likes that were the least likely to find solace in the activity of sleeping were already asleep. Whether it be willfully or otherwise, it was the kind of sleep for those people that they would not even remember having in the morning, whether it lead to them looking into the source of the problem or addressing the ills of the soul that lead to it was a different story entirely.</p><p>With a silent clank, unlikely to be heard even by the family pet if they had one, Thumb screwed her hooked claw-like blades into the locks, beating the simple ancient lock of the mansion that the two women found themselves in. The mansion that apparently housed the Pinky Ring, leader of the Pinky and, apparently, Thumb Fingers.</p><p>After the door opened, Mana and Thumb disappeared from the realms of the human perception, blitzing past the rooms and past any feeble attempts to protect the estate. Steel wire about as thickly positioned as the raindrops during a violent storm were still a poor defense against Mana's inhuman and surpassing even the ninja range of evasive skills. Thumb danced around like a cat let out to play after a long-term of house imprisonment. Clinging to the walls and swiping her hands and feet around madly, cutting the steel wires in her way, oddly with enough finesse and soft, feminine touch to her impressive speed that the swipes did not trigger the security traps attached to the wire.</p><p>The two met together near the same room, one where a middle-aged woman was peacefully sleeping in a half-empty bed, clearly meant to bed two people. As Thumb mockingly chuckled and pointed her long and slender finger with a sharp hook attached to the end of it at Mana, the magician entered the master bedroom and turned on the light, waking up the woman bedded inside, or at least so Mana thought initially.</p><p>There was no struggle in the woman's awakening, one moment she was looking on the window, longingly positioned on her side and observing the gentle snowfall outside, the other she was up and staring at the two invaders of her home fort. Oddly enough, not only was the woman not asleep, she was also not at all worried by the presence of a young magician girl and one of her husband's known associates from his less than honorable craft.</p><p>"Trouble sleeping?" Thumb grinned with her crimson lips, making an almost creepily delighted smile as she bent her upper body closer to the woman. Strangely, the wife was not any more intimidated by Thumb's imposing approach than she was by the very fact of the two having found their way inside.</p><p>"My consciousness is not the reason for my insomnia." The woman defiantly stood up to face Thumb's playful stature with dignity. "I am worried."</p><p>"Heh, it seems like your gut instinct was right after all!" Thumb turned back at Mana, laughing out loud as she addressed the magician. The burglar found something about the fact that Mana had guessed correctly that Pinky would be skipping town tonight but did not trust her gut feeling enough to be present in the party sent to apprehend him there inherently hilarious.</p><p>"When I found out that the Pinky Ring was being paranoid about his job performance, I figured he'd try to flee the town." Mana sighed, feeling like a complete fool that she did not go on her gut instinct, instead of sending a small squad of people Shira trusted together with the Security officer to the path that lead out of Shukuba and into Konoha.</p><p>"This whole affair with the town budget. It was messier than the Middle Ring had wanted it to be. Muriya always thought his life would be in danger…" the woman bit her index finger, clearly she was working through a lot of distressful emotions.</p><p>"And he left his family behind?" Mana raised a doubtful eyebrow. "I think I noticed two children sleeping right at the end of that corridor, what sort of man would just leave his family behind like this?"</p><p>"The biggest kind of pussy you ever met, like you would not believe!" Thumb grinned with a hint of sarcasm and a healthy attempt to dirty Pinky's personality a little.</p><p>"Don't you dare!" Pinky's wife shouted out. "Muriya may not be the brawny type, but he knew full well he would not be fleeing to a happy and successful life away. There is no escaping the Diamond Hand, he had counted on at the very least distracting their wrath from back home."</p><p>"Lovey-dovey, totally skipped town on her…" Thumb whispered, leaning up to Mana's left ear.</p><p>"Please, keep him safe…" the woman pleaded, pressing her hand up to her chest before running up to Mana and almost falling to her exposed by her nightgown knees. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, as they have been for the better part of the night, whatever kind of personality this Muriya "Pinky Ring" guy was, his wife clearly loved him unconditionally.</p><p>"Well, luckily enough, people with enough guts and devotion to work overnight for no bonus pay or reward are likely booking him in right now. Seeing how Muriya-san is fleeing from the Diamond Hand, it is unlikely that he was surrounded by goons or anything. He is as good as caught as we speak. That being said, we will be arresting you and your children, ma'am, for twenty-four hours to determine your identity. You will be held in the Shukuba Security detainment facility, if you wish you can take some comfort sheets and hygiene items." Mana sighed before addressing the woman.</p><p>The wife appeared to get flustered and agitated but after a brief while she caught on to Mana's intention.</p><p>"Twenty-four hours?" the woman muttered.</p><p>"Yeah, by that point I will have torn the Diamond Hand's hideout to the ground with my bare hands." Mana smiled at the woman with warm and affection, encouraging her to gather her children and follow the two to the safer location for them. If someone of the Index Finger decided to assassinate this family and send their parts for Muriya to fret over in Konoha, Mana would much rather hold them closer to herself and within her sensory range.</p><hr/><p>Shira and a bunch of muscle-heads with mean looking physical preparation but warm and cuddly faces were congratulating each other on a job well done by the time Mana and the whole tail came back to the Shukuba Security late that night. By now the magician had given up completely on any semblance of peaceful sleep or as much as getting some rest before she headed out for the museum. At least before she left she would know that a family was reunited and being protected for all it was worth.</p><p>"I assume all went well?" Mana asked Shira directly after his friends, under her request, lead the woman and her children closer to where Muriya was being held and preparing the accommodations as comfortable as reasonably possible.</p><p>"Even better than well, he told us where he hid the money and even told us what chemicals he used for removing the traces." Shira bowed his head to Mana making her blush a little as she was not used to being addressed as a superior still.</p><p>"That was… Quick." The magician rubbed the back of her neck.</p><p>"Yeah, I do not think that man is very resistant to torture, just me entering the room made him spill everything. It took… No effort at all, ma'am." Shira reported.</p><p>"Good, so you can retrieve the money then?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Not really, his description is a bit vague and it is too concealed to have a formal address. He also said that he would not leave the containment facility under any circumstances, even threatening him with torture did not work, as entertaining as it was to watch…" Shira bowed his head while replying again.</p><p>"That is not a problem, send a man to Burgoniya's place. One with a bonier head as she will be likely to throw punches their way, ask her to assist with locating that chemical and have Muriya assist her in tracking the money if needed." Mana rubbed her tired eyes with a somewhat delighted expression. It was a while since her desperate attempts to just smash her head at a figurative rock wall, which only kept getting colored with the magician's blood with each impact made the wall as much as crack to pieces.</p><p>"Yes, ma'am! Will be done by the morning!" Shira nodded before rushing off and initiating a conversation with one of his trusted brothers in arms.</p><p>With a little bit of luck, the contract workers and public servants alike will be paid rightly without the Diamond Hand's intervention and temptations. While initially it seemed a little dire, having given such a narrow time limit to herself and asking Yushijin to meet her in the museum so early with so much still needing to be done, as the case unraveled, little by little, Mana may have just had the Diamond Hand toppled by the time Yushijin even arrived at the museum. In which case she would have no reservations about pulling a prank on him and simply returning home with him peacefully, without the fight he desired so much…</p><p>Seeing that Muriya and his family were appropriately housed and making sure that the money retrieval operation was set in motion took more time from Mana than initially expected. By the time that the magician finished checking on Pinky's family, Burgoniya had arrived at the office, exhausted and ticked off that she was being called for outside her working hours.</p><p>"There's been a breakthrough with the stolen money. Can you trace any of these chemicals?" Mana handed the young woman a sheet of paper on which Muriya had scribbled a bunch of chemicals he had bought.</p><p>"Shit, he memorized all of that? It's so convenient that it is almost suspicious." Burgoniya yawned before speaking up in a grumpy voice.</p><p>"Not really, Pinky's pretty resourceful. He's one of the recording and memorizing, responsible types. The obsession with which he categorizes and records things is remarkable if not a bit irritating." Thumb waved her hand indifferently at the curious Security officer.</p><p>"So, you have Pinky caught as well. It appears you have the same number of Rings in your control as the leader of the Diamond Hand does…" Burgoniya sighed. "Anyways, yeah, Shirukaphol is a strong cleansing substance with a very overpowering seaweed scent, any canine can pick it up and track it without much training."</p><p>"I suppose that makes having to work for your pay take a literal sense," Thumb teased the Security officers who just gave her an annoyed glare and continued to work towards the operation of retrieving the stolen money. Even if they retrieved it as swiftly as possible, it would still take quite a while before the wheel of bureaucracy turns sufficiently enough to make the pay money work and fixes all the built-up gaps in the town's budget. Shukuba may still get rowdy and bleed a little before it all gets better…</p><p>"You're coming with us?" Burgoniya raised an eyebrow, after stroking the head of an old and very indifferent towards everything around it hound. The canine was acquired from an old man who owned a dog shelter and was quite willing to help out the Security officers even at this late time of night. "Does that mean we have a reason to be worried? Will anyone try to blow us up or cut us down before we can even see them coming?"</p><p>"No, I have some business of my own. While you will be retrieving the money, I will be attacking the Diamond Hand head-on. I suppose I shall be your distraction and guarantee that you will be safe." Mana sighed before doing her best to fire herself up before this bold attack that she was about to commence.</p><p>"What if any of the Rings see us coming and are watching the place for Security officers? Won't we get slaughtered without you?" Burgoniya wondered now that the option was on the table.</p><p>"We are Shukuba Security, the danger of death is always there, whether it is death in a blade-fight or death by being disintegrated by a fireball of a rogue ninja," Shira grumbled out looking a bit bothered by Burgoniya's desire to ensure the safety of the Security squad sent to retrieve the money, even if it affected the whole operation.</p><p>"If I notice one of the Rings are missing or find anything of the sort out, I will be there within moments, no matter how much chakra I will have to spend to rush to you or how much I will risk my network's integrity enforcing such augmentations. Human lives are still my priority, it always is." Mana tried calming down the forensics officer who appeared to be working through the same kind of emotions that many of young ninja had.</p><p>No matter how brave one was, or rather how brave they said to themselves they were, they would always feel that same feeling when things really went wrong on the field. That cruel realization that one's entire life, one's dreams, and aspirations could have all ended there. That horrendous, asphyxiating emotion that made one realize that while they may have thought they were ready for anything, they may have gotten themselves in something way above their heads.</p><p>"Don't worry, Burgoniya-san, after this you can always return to forensics. However your experience and expertise in reading the environment and locating key clues would be invaluable in locating the warehouse faster, also, I think the doggo has taken a liking to you…" Mana smiled before looking at the hound who has gotten up on its feet for a short while after seeing the hustle and bustle of the Security officers before realizing it was a false alarm and slumping its flesh and fat down, right beside Burgoniya's feet.</p><p>"Do you really have to be attacking the Diamond Hand now?" Thumb raised a doubtful eyebrow. She was really interested in keeping Mana as close as possible for as long as possible so that she would maximize her chances of saving her own behind if her ex-employers actually sent people after her.</p><p>"Sadly, yes. We told Yushijin that he is to meet me at the museum at midday. That means that by that time I need to be done there. In my current state of fatigue, I cannot beat him so I will have to go with him when he calls me out on having lied to him." Mana sighed with the all too familiar feeling of bees swarming and buzzing all over in her gut.</p><p>"I see… I still do not believe you should confront both the Index and Ring Rings. Hell, I'd have told you even Index Ring alone would give you ample trouble. You should wait for little cutiepants to come for you before tricking him into helping you with them." Thumb looked away as she spoke, Mana found that very funny, for whatever reason.</p><p>"When we first met you tried to kill me. Not just because that was a life or death decision, you edited your entire plan and defied orders of a man whose orders are not defied without consequence to kill me. It is strange to see you worry about my life now, that is all." Mana explained the source of her laughter to the burglar when she turned at the magician, surprised to hear giggling from the girl.</p><p>It was evident that Thumb tried to desperately browse for a logical and selfish reason she could have wanted to keep Mana alive and well but she then just shut her mouth and shared a smile with the magician.</p><p>"I should hope that you kick their asses. If you do I shall have to worry about them coming after me no more." The burglar nodded before turning to the Security squad and suggesting joining their efforts at locating the stolen money. They had every reason to distrust her, she was quite significantly stronger than all of them combined, faster and had a specific craving for money and material possessions that would have made allying with such a woman incredibly dangerous but… The Security squad accepted the woman's help regardless.</p><p>Seeing that, Mana could not help but think that if she was to die in that museum, at least she'd have died remembering a sight of young Security officers with loads of potential accepting a genuine offer of a hand from a criminal in need of slight attitude adjustment and reforming. At least she'd die believing in redemption before even those beliefs were inevitably shattered by the world around her. She'd die with some of her beliefs still intact.</p><hr/><p>Men in black bodysuits and mercenary-type armored jackets were protecting the yard and scouting the town for potential threats. Scoping the place through the optical equipment attached to their kunai dispensers, some of them observing the town from very comfortable vantage points that were provided by the tall and sophisticated museum.</p><p>"The magician bitch, she's here!" one of them yelled out, moving his eye away from the optic sight for just a moment after catching a glimpse of a young girl in magician's uniform just casually bouncing on top of the gate and letting everyone see her coming.</p><p>Before even those who saw the magician emerge as suddenly as she did, just phasing into the plain view, could fire a single blade at her direction, the girl moved her hand upward and revealed a yellow colored card resting in her hand with a glowing hieroglyph. A blinding flash of light, just like the one present in the typical light bombs found in a ninja kit of any genin, enveloped the yard and the balconies of the museum where the well-armed mercenaries were already waiting for Mana.</p><p>Before any of the mercenaries could recover from the irritation and the watering eyes, Mana had dispatched of every man she could hear or sense within her sensory range. One advantage of being a sensor was that she did not need to rely on her eyes to find enemies. Smoke bombs or light bombs, sealed into her cards were now fair game.</p><p>Some of the men in the upper floors did not wait around to recover, they actively tried to flee which was an odd strategy when being sieged. Usually, in their situation any grunt would have been expected to man their kunai dispensers until they could no longer do so. Luckily enough, Mana managed to subdue all seventeen men present and watching the yard before they could flee or recover. Like clockwork, a scary chakra signature lit up in the shape of a powerful and as fast as its shape lightning blast heading her way, forcing the magician to flip backwards and off the building she was scaling only to gently land in the center of the yard and open her eyes to meet the Rings who have come out from hiding to play with her.</p><p>"Usually, strategists let their footmen wear the enemy down before letting their stronger figures attack," Mana shouted at the all too familiar woman in a red leather jacket and an oddball fellow in a tight leather bodysuit cut in a way that exposed his chest from the abdomen up and a ridiculous-looking shaved sides with a long strand of hair running back down hairdo.</p><p>"Middle Ring values his men and would rather not waste them by blindly throwing them at a Konoha ninja." The woman replied before unbuttoning her jacket and reaching for a mysterious weapon held inside.</p><p>"You've been a pain in our ass for a while, it was very thoughtful of you to present yourself like that for a good, crisp fry…" the oddball gent lifted his arm up, revealing sealing glyphs crackling with lightning on his palms. He was likely the user of that incredibly fast and dangerous Lightning Release jutsu before, just as fast as natural lightning, used without hand seals or words… Dangerous did not even begin to describe it.</p><p>Thumb was right to be worried, these two were bound to make Mana have her hands completely full…</p>
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<a name="section0400"><h2>400. Perfect Rate Of Success</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's little finger twitched, a momentary reaction to her thoughts continuously introducing new, clashing conclusions. That powerful lightning bolt was faster than Mana could avoid, had she not sensed it in its forming stages and taken evasive action before it fired at her, she'd have likely gotten hit. She needed to make a decision and make it fast now, to attack or to try and scope some more information about her opponents.</p><p>Attacking them knowing that she had no idea about the weapon or fighting style of one of the two, the leather jacket woman and that the speed of the jutsu of another was surpassing even her own fastest evasive capabilities was foolish. Then again, standing here and waiting for death may have been just as foolish as well. Mana closed her eyes, focusing on her sensory, her opponents stood in complete tranquility. Farther ahead, inside the building, there were at least fifty-seven signatures Mana could pick up – just like Index said before, the Diamond Hand preferred not sending their fodder out to wear Mana out at the expense of their labor force.</p><p>A disruption in one of the chakra signatures, Mana's eyes snapped back open only to see the erratic movements of Index picking up, almost in complete slow motion even though most would not have even registered them. The woman's hands pulled out a kodachi blade, flinging it at Mana like an arrow at impressive speed. It was so immensely fast that Mana could not even evade it, she could merely choose where she would be hit, adjusting her body and shifting it around so that the short sword only left a nasty cut on her side instead of driving into her and nailing Mana to the ground beneath her feet.</p><p>That was just a distraction. Right after Mana's perception stopped working on the blitzing blade they picked up the woman herself rushing at Mana from up on the museum roof where she was positioned before. She was quite an experienced fighter, she clearly knew that if she had just lunged at Mana from where she was she'd be countered and beaten, no matter how much faster than the magician she was. Instead, Index chose to use the blade projectile attack as a distraction and that distraction alone had already drawn blood from Mana.</p><p>This was not an encounter Mana could brush off easily!</p><p>Index threw a powerful cross downward, only for Mana to leap back and avoid it. A silver, almost metallic blur and a sharp pain in the area slightly above Mana's chest and just lower than her throat followed by a trickling feeling of warmth running down her chest informed the magician that Index had a second short blade on her, one Mana's eyes could barely even follow. Not only was this woman incredibly experienced and skilled but she was also immensely fast, not many people without great cred in the ninja world could have landed two hits on Mana after two attacks with a perfect rate of success.</p><p>That blasted lightning! Mana registered it too late, her sensory inputs were overloaded by dealing just with Index alone and she only registered that scary feeling of Ring Ring's chakra signature swelling up with crackling lightning before it spilled out of his seals without hand seals or spoken name of the jutsu when it was all too late. When the only thing Mana could do was brace for pain and hope she'd not get electrocuted instantly.</p><p>The pain was intense, dominating and leaving nothing else to think about. Crippling and forcing Mana's body to lock up in pain and fall down on her knees, the lightning crackled all over her body, overloading her own neural signals and burning the magician out long after the lightning bolt had ceased. It was not only as fast as a natural lightning bolt but, possibly, a thousandfold as intense.</p><p>There was no time to feel bad about herself or to lament the numbness all over Mana's body. That dreadful sound of steel buzzing through the air, informing Mana that Index had taken a quick evasive roll forward and removed the secondary kodachi she had lobbed at Mana before, then taken a mad flip backwards and attempted to nail the downed opponent with both of her weapons, forced the magician to work some of her own magic.</p><p>With the Audra wand slipping out for the seals inside Mana's hat, as it rolled around nearby, having fallen off of the magician's head when she was being shocked earlier, Mana found her salvation. Using the wand with confidence that it was stronger than whatever quality steel Index's blades were made of and would absorb any differences in speed and built up momentum force inside them due to Audra's natural properties, the magician deflected the stab that was meant to nail Mana to the ground and bleed her out like a pig.</p><p>With an impressive for her degree of fatigue and rushing adrenaline feat of acrobatics, Mana picked herself off the ground, ready to launch an attack of her own. She was quite lucky to possess some mastery over her own Lightning Release jutsu after the training in the Rabbit Caves, without a doubt these two would have been fast and perceptive enough to deal with Mana trying to speak or weave hand seals. Mana thrust her wand forward, channeling Lightning Release chakra through her wand and having it build up at the tip before firing it all off in the shape of a beam of Magical Shock Jutsu.</p><p>The idea was to have the weak shock penetrate her opponent and have her momentarily stunned, giving Mana ample time to wail at her opponent with powerful kicks, ones that had within them all the force and aggression Mana could muster up as she needed to hit hard and fast if she was to come out of this encounter alive. She could under no circumstances face off against both of these two, even while the second guy was just providing long-range Lightning Release support.</p><p>Mana's eyes widened in shock as her beam bent around the woman before completely collapsing into crackles and sparks of lightning that all gathered around the sparkling palms of the Ring Ring. It appeared like all of the lightning she had fired off got redirected and absorbed by the man from farther away.</p><p>"Hmmm, I guess you're a Lightning Release user too? That's too bad…" Index lamented as she launched a barrage of a powerful elbow and knee strikes and outright stiff kicks to soften Mana up and condition her for a finishing strike from her kodachi. The magician placed her blocks and redirected the woman's strikes the best she could, but quite a handful of incredibly painful and stunning attacks did land regardless, the woman was an amazing hand-to-hand combatant as well, possibly matching if not exceeding the mastery of the martial artists of the Sun Disc in Wind Country.</p><p>"I'd have counted on a kunoichi knowing of Lightning Release's properties!" Ring Ring laughed out wildly atop a small wall surrounding the museum yard meant for art demonstrations during the warm season. Currently, the only arts it had to show were of the martial and deadly varieties.</p><p>Mana wiped the blood from her lips, she was not hit in the face hard enough to crack her lip or her teeth, it was blood that came from inside. Internal bleeding was much more dangerous than just a cracked lip or a kicked out tooth. What did Ring Ring mean by that?</p><p>He was not nearly a skilled or powerful enough ninja to use ninjutsu without hand seals or words, he did not even look like someone who was ever a ninja at all, likely being just a crook who was taught the arts by someone who was and went rogue. He must have stored the jutsu inside seals, those glyphs on his palms were the glyphs of the sealing jutsu he used. If only Meiko was here. The seal looked sloppy enough to be able to be forcefully unsealed, forcing all of the sealed Lightning Release chakra out from the man's arms at once. Something like that would have destroyed Ring Ring's arms completely, whoever taught him this method of fighting was either not too bright or merely did not need Ring Ring to last too long.</p><p>That meant that Ring Ring spent time separately, absorbing Lightning Release jutsu, storing them inside the seals in his hands to be unleashed in infinitely larger quantities compared to what he was able to muster. Store the equivalent of a lightning bolt every day and one day you'll have an entire cosmic scale storm stored away…</p><p>Just as thoughts worked their magic inside Mana's strategic, yet at the moment very tired and clunky, mind, Ring Ring extended his palms again, sending fissure-making lightning blasts scattered all across the yard and spreading out from his position atop the yard wall. The lightning blasts looked almost like shark fins splitting the ground apart due to their intensity and sharpness, yet when they approached where Mana and Index were fighting each other, they scattered into smaller electrical coils.</p><p>Index backed up, releasing some of the pressure she was applying on Mana, the magician was not a complete idiot. If Index was fleeing, that meant she was giving space for Ring Ring to continue his rampage. Sky splitting pillars launched from the ground, rising up in the air and incinerating all in their path. Gently and with precision, Mana danced around them, managing to evade them as she was able to sense where the pillars would form ahead of time due to her chakra sensory, even if it was often a bit lagging behind. The advanced warning of her sensory may have just saved her life right now as there was no way for the magician to dodge multiple lightning storms as compressed and astonishingly fast as the ones used on her by Ring Ring.</p><p>"Farewell, young lady…" Mana heard a gentle farewell, luckily for her, she had suspected Ring Ring's attack to be just a distraction to throw Mana out of her formation so that Index could finish her off. The blade that was aimed to pierce Mana's heart from behind the magician, where the clever Diamond Ring assassin had sneaked up, only cut through a pocket of thin air left behind after Mana's desperate for survival movements.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" Mana shouted out, dusting off all the old techniques and using all sorts of forgotten tricks in her book just to survive. Index contorted her body sufficiently to catch Mana's heel with the X formation of her blocking kodachi and allow them to absorb Mana's kick. Mana's powerful kick sent Index sliding back, her kodachi having taken a noticeable bump but the assassin herself still relatively unharmed.</p><p>"This is bad…" Mana thought to herself. "Trading fists was never my style but I can't use my ninjutsu or else it will just get redirected and absorbed by Ring Ring. If only I had a higher ranked Lightning Release technique, it is unlikely that whatever charge Ring Ring is putting out could absorb it."</p><p>It was counterproductive to think about these things in the middle of battle. It was not like Mana could just learn a new technique or somehow manage to drive herself out of the corner she was driven into, being forced to fight Index close range while Ring Ring just slings lightning bolts at her from afar.</p><p>Index thrust both of her hands forward, sending her kodachi spinning like buzzsaws in their travel towards Mana. The magician bounced sideways, using her left hand as a spring to throw her body away from the second buzzing weapon projectile meanwhile her side dive allowed her to avoid the first one. This was less than ideal and Mana acknowledged it, she was so desperate to avoid these swift attack that she left herself open and exposed in the standing on one arm position. There were few defensive options left to her in that stance, at least until she could place both of her feet firmly on the ground.</p><p>A metallic string reeling sound made the thick blood vessels around Mana's heart freeze up and pump liquid, chilly fear instead of blood. With a strong yank on the handles of the blades, where the steel strings were attached, Index returned both of her kodachi almost in an instant and lunged straight at Mana. Planting both blades firmly within the kunoichi's heart and liver.</p><p>Mana's body dispersed into flower petals that scattered across the battlefield. Just as a scattershot of lightning bolts blasted all around Index, likely a precaution had Mana somehow managed to survive Index's previous attack.</p><p>The magician was lucky that Lightning Release was not only not her only skill but also not even her only elemental affinity. Mana's body was quick to return to form after the lightning bolts only hit thin air due to Ring Ring being similarly unable to find Mana's real hidden body, only seeing her illusionary self that got stabbed before dispersing. As if Mana would make such an amateur mistake as leaving herself open in a questionable pose like that…</p><p>By the time Mana's shape appeared to both of her opponents she was positioned in between Ring Ring, who was still atop the yard wall right behind her, and Index who was standing to the side of the main entryway. It was a dangerous position to be in as Mana could no longer see visual ticks from Ring Ring whenever he conjured up another blast to take at her, however, she still had her sensory which was reliable enough for the short while.</p><p>Mana pointed her hat's opening towards Index, allowing a flurry of cards to fly out from inside it and scatter pointlessly in the air, the woman covered her face up as the steel tipped cards provided ample annoyance and irritating cuts all over due to their wide spread, not to mention the visual cover they provided for the short while. Then the magician pointed her wand at the cloud of cards, activating her Friendly Gust Jutsu without words or hand seals, letting the training in the Rabbit Caves mastering her old weakling jutsu pay off once more.</p><p>The swirling vortex of fireballs and small explosions added up to quite a significant, rumbling inferno that would have surely incapacitated someone of Index's caliber. While the woman was an unmatched martial artist and a swordswoman proficient enough to hand Meiko a good beating, Mana was lucky to face her in the wide open where she could let her devastation out instead in a compact space where she would be forced to play Index's lethal blade dancing game even more.</p><p>All sense of balance slipped from under Mana's feet, the magician turned her head sideways, seeing vague blurs of her female opponent through her own messy raven hair scattering in the air. Index used her own arms as a tripping mechanism, tripping Mana over by driving them right at the magician's heels and sending her down. Before Mana could figure out how to pick herself up fast enough to avoid getting skewered by Index's kodachi, a stiff kick slammed her gut and chest, planting the girl firmly onto the ground and making her intestines let out a loud churning and wrangling noise.</p><p>The taste of blood in her mouth did not let Mana fall asleep and pass out in peace, Index had such an insane experience edge on Mana. The assassin knew quite well that she'd be too slow to stab with her kodachi as it would have required a complete repurposing of her bodily momentum so she just redirected the one she had gathered to throw her body into a whirling tornado kick, a less lethal attack but one more certain to land firmly.</p><p>Complete white enveloped Mana as her consciousness appeared to fade out. An odd metallic taste switched out the disgusting feeling of her own blood gushing from inside her body in her mouth. Only a few moments later did the magician realize that she was hit by one of Ring Ring's Lightning Release pillars, a much weaker version apparently as the one before would have surely killed her. The girl worked with the adrenaline rushing through her body to get her body back on her feet but the ugly sound of her own body letting out smoke from the spots where her augmentations were the weakest leaving burns and the intense pain only let her writhe helplessly.</p><p>"You almost hit me with that, do it again and I will kill you." Index turned at Ring Ring, her voice was tired and winded. She was pacing herself quite nicely before, it must have been the spontaneity of Ring Ring's attack that threw Index on edge. More so, Mana was beginning to understand the nature of Ring Ring's seal now.</p><p>It was a storage seal after all. Storing Lightning Release jutsu inside only to be fired at some point later in the shape of differently formed lightning bolts. That was why Mana was so surprised by the power of the first sky-scorching pillar of lightning but the second one only caused her intense pain and a momentary white out instead of just disintegrating her to a cloud of ashes. Ring Ring had used out a significant portion of his charged up techniques and each successive jutsu was weaker than the ones that came before.</p><p>"Oh, come on. You wouldn't dare to kill a whole Ring, Middle Ring would be so pissed, he likes keeping his members alive so much!" Ring Ring teased the woman. He appeared to share a more playful and teasing personality with Thumb, except one a bit more to the murderous psycho side.</p><p>"As if a Ring of racketeering and other roughhousing crime managing Finger is so tough to replace. You're a newcomer, aren't you? Ever wondered what happened to the guy you replaced?" Index suggested. It was something that creeped Ring Ring out as he promptly shut his mouth and leaned back. The disagreements between the two gave Mana time to push her face off the ground and get herself together, sadly, it also gave time for Index to regain her breath.</p><p>This fight was not looking good. Mana was approaching her limit, forced to fight a type of battle she did not do favorably fighting while being chipped bit by bit until once when brought down, she would not be able to stand back up. She needed to change something…</p><p>Her sleepless, fatigued mind had completely shut itself down, nothing of substance, nothing but delirium came up…</p><p>Mana could not die here. So much depended on her right now, this entire town did! That very thought may have been what gave her the willpower to even remain on her feet at that moment of exhaustion mixed with pain all over from the beatings and shocks she had received so far.</p>
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<a name="section0401"><h2>401. Taking A Bump</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With most of her Lightning Release jutsu disabled by Ring Ring simply using a more intense lightning technique to neutralize and absorb them, Mana was quickly running out of options. The only jutsu in her arsenal with enough intensity and rank to possibly overpower Ring Ring's absorption was Magician's Touch but it was a very close-range jutsu anyways. It would have been risky opening herself up to use it when the risk of it being utterly useless again and charging up Ring Ring's seals as well was out there.</p><p>"Shit, I'll need your help, Zoku-chan" Mana looked down at her discarded wand that was laying around a couple of meters further from her. Likely she had lost it from her grip during one of the multiple beatdowns she took. Her chakra and well-being were approaching their tipping points and if Mana did not bring out a breakthrough she'd soon be fighting a completely pointless losing battle.</p><p>The magician swiped her hand, raising it up. A typical projectile tossing motion that made Index crouch a tad bit and stiffen her muscles up in preparation for an incoming projectile before she realized that Mana was faking out. The assassin lunged at the magician only to see a grey mosaic glaring right back at her right on top of a back of a card that Mana had pulled from her sleeve. Before Index could act on her notes an irritating cloud of smoke overpowered the assassin, sinking the entire yard in smoke.</p><p>Mana dragged her thumb through her mouth, leaving a little bleeding bite on it while she worked on her hand seals as fast as she could. Before she could finish them, an iron grip locked around her wrist and another one around the middle point of her other arm, keeping the two limbs from connecting into a hand seal that would have finished the combination.</p><p>An overpowering kick that drove all the air out of Mana's lungs threw her sliding backward on her knees, busting them open and leaving dragging blood trails on the dirt and stone track present in the museum yard. Her chakra augmentations were slipping, normally being dragged through stone would not have hurt this much, leave alone open up wounds as grievous as the ones on Mana's knees.</p><p>"You were too fast for your own good, the sound your hands made moving at such immense speed betrayed your location." Index swiped her kodachi, cutting through the fading smokescreen as she left it and playing with her blades just to keep her hands busy and combat-ready.</p><p>"She's too trained to combat ninja, she knows that hand seals are of great importance. She's not looking right at my eyes either, knowing she could fall for an illusion." Jumbled and disorganized thoughts ran through Mana's head. The only way for her to perform jutsu she had perfected without hand seals or words would be to channel them through either her own hands or the wand. Channeling them without her wand would require a little bit of setup time, time that would undoubtedly be enough for her to be interrupted.</p><p>Mana crossed her arms over her face before swiping them aside again, this time a pair of cards did come out from her sleeve as projectiles, explosive ones. As Index became covered up by the explosion and overwhelmed by the concussive force and the flames that swallowed her Mana dove for her wand. A single illusion may have helped her slow the pace down.</p><p>A sharp tip of a boot dug into Mana's cheek, throwing a gruesome arc of blood spraying from her mouth and rolling back into one of the stone lanterns present in the lawn areas of the museum yard. Mana's eyesight became blurry, she could just barely pick up her scattered cards all over the yard. The girl glared at her sleeves and felt a sharp stabbing sensation at her wrists. The devices dispensing cards on her sleeves must have been busted and the inner pockets of her uniform holding spares busted. There went her weaponry and tool arsenal…</p><p>"I almost thought I would need to intervene there…" Ring Ring taunted his partner, the man was crackling with an alarming amount of lightning sparks all over. Likely he was spending the off-time charging up his seals with his own techniques, it was not a very impressive battlefield recharge as he spent chakra for techniques he stored for future use but it was still something.</p><p>There was no point fighting Index in her own battle. Mana was no bruiser, she wasn't like Meiko and not even like Kiyomi. Meiko could go throwing fists for days before fatigue or bruises showed up, Kiyomi had her extra years of experience and survival skills training with Chestnut Hanasaku forced her to learn to back up to. A couple of skipped punches and kicks and Mana was almost done…</p><p>Sore all over, bleeding internally and externally. She couldn't keep this up. At this point, her speed had dropped at least a good dozen of times due to injuries and how sore her joints and her gut was. Index was not stupid, she hit Mana's abdomen to make every twist and turn an agonizing experience, she hit the ribs to make breathing excruciating and she busted Mana's knees open to reduce her kicking off speed. With her being trained by the Ninja Rabbits, Mana used the ground for balance and needed her legs and knees fully functional to gather speed.</p><p>"I need to pick Ring Ring off." Mana rushed at Index, holding her burning in pain abdomen with one spare arm as she scooped any cards from the ground she could get her hands on. Her mind was too tired to focus on specific colors on markings she could have normally picked out before Index even noticed her reaching for them. She would have been more subtle with her attempt to reach for them too, under normal circumstances.</p><p>Index swiped her kodachi by Mana's throat, seeing the magician completely open in the neck area and splitting her throat open. With her head partially separated from Mana's body, the girl collapsed on one knee before dispersing into flower petals. This was the second time Mana had used this jutsu within forty-eight hours or at least a second time she could remember currently. Given her lack of sleep, judging the period of forty-eight hours was quite difficult.</p><p>To go after her wand again would have been too predictable, Mana would have to just work channeling her jutsu and revealing herself and her target a little earlier than she would have liked. Mana channeled the Lightning Release chakra through her body, going back to the techniques she started off using as a genin, ones she invented just messing around with ninjutsu with a textbook in hand. She pointed her finger forward before wrapping the other hand around her wrist.</p><p>Mana saw Ring Ring's eyes widen in surprise when she just popped into the view, with her illusion being canceled by her own concentration on another jutsu. Her pointing finger was centimeters away from his nose and he should have felt the intense Wind Release buildup emanating from her.</p><p>"Finger of Fate Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, propelling a thin stream of Wind Release chakra from her finger in an attempt to pierce it through Ring's body. The jutsu was weak, even on someone of Ring Ring's caliber, it would have merely bashed in between his eyes leaving a bleeding gash as it was not quite enough to penetrate through his skull, if it was, Mana would not have used such a jutsu from close range, to begin with. She just really needed to make sure it hit.</p><p>The field of Lightning Release generating around Ring Ring intensified, blasting Mana back before the stream of wind chakra could even reach her opponent, with her finger going up and driving the stream through the scalp of her opponent, leaving a scratch on the left side of his shaved part of the head. The white took over again, the voices of people talking in her head picked up again, too silent for Mana to tell just who it was that she heard inside her own mind.</p><p>Push away. Just push all that nonsense away and rise to the surface… Blurry and in pain from the light rushing in, Mana's eyes opened. The girl turned her head aside slowly, a large track she made sliding back after the expanding field of lightning coming from Ring Ring tossed her aside and shocked her again. Stand up… It will not be long until Index recovers from just almost losing her partner and comes in to finish the kill. Mana could hear her feuding with Ring Ring in the distance.</p><p>She just wanted to snap her head back and fall asleep so much…</p><p>"Shit, she's moving!" Ring Ring yelled out, pointing at the magician.</p><p>"Whose fault is that, using your ace too early…" Index objected again. The woman proceeded to pull out her short blade from the inside of her jacket and beginning to walk towards Mana.</p><p>"I can't get up…" Mana thought to herself. It has been a while since she was beaten to a point where she could not even stand up. Something was wrong, she should not be this beat. It was like her entire body was not only sore from the beatings and the wounds she has sustained but also completely numb. Her muscles could not tense up and she could not focus her body on completing any action except meaningless flapping and writhing about.</p><p>The magician grunted in pain when Index picked her up by her collar and lifted up. "I'm not usually this bad at killing people. Feel certain that I will kill the traitors and your Security squad much quicker." The woman mumbled out for Mana to just barely hear as she pulled the magician's body in for the finishing thrust with her short blade. Mana closed her eyes and focused her chakra on her perceptive abilities. It would make time feel like it had completely stopped which helped when fighting against speedy opponents.</p><p>It would prolong the pain of the killing blow to an entire eternity but if Mana wanted to notice a moment in time before she was finished off when her body could move again, this was her best shot.</p><p>Instead of the sharp and burning sensation of being stabbed, all too familiar to the magician, she felt complete weightlessness. When Mana opened her eyes, Index was no longer there. She was no longer holding Mana up by her collar and the magician was floating in front of a beam of blinding white light.</p><p>A thick beam of concentrated lightning blasted through Mana's abdomen, the magician's eyes whited out and rolled back as she fell lifeless on the museum yard lawn. The heat from the blast was so intense that it had cauterized the massive hole it left in the girl's lower body completely with it dropping only a few extra trickles of blood.</p><p>"You bastard, were you trying to kill us both with that beam?" Index gave her partner a death glare, turning back at him.</p><p>"I'll never tell…" Ring Ring placed his pinky fingers on his lips playfully before pouting them at his colleague in crime.</p><hr/><p>Index walked up to the magician before placing two fingers on her neck and examining her for life signs. The blast should have been intense enough to kill her immediately as it blasted through even her shoddy augmentations. Fighting this girl was different from what Index was taught about ninja by mercenaries. Her augmentations were not skillful or strong, in fact, this one appeared to be keeping herself from augmenting her abilities at all. Was she holding back? If so, her hubris cost her her life this time…</p><p>"Is she dead?" Ring Ring yelled out from atop the wall.</p><p>"Yeah." Index replied while sheathing her swords and looking down. Her weirdly androgynous partner whistled out loud, after being given a signal a bunch of men scurried into the yard, surrounding Index and the dead girl in two separate circles, waiting for further orders.</p><p>"Kill Index!" Ring Ring put his tongue out before licking his lips and blowing his eyes out wide in an almost maniacal fashion. After his men trembled in their boots and did not obey the order, the Ring just leaned back, thrusting his pelvis forward and biting on his index finger. "Just kidding…"</p><p>"Clean up the yard, we need to have this place presentable as an actual museum in an hour before it opens to the public." Index ordered after closing her eyes back after they were radiating deadly glares at her partner.</p><p>A strong-armed and broad-shouldered thug picked Mana's lifeless body before dropping it back down. Index turned back and raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Ma'am, I think she's still alive, I can feel a heartbeat." The man mumbled while the rest of the crew took careful steps backward. While their allegedly deceased opponent was a teenage girl, she was also a ninja, of the very few professions that drove fear into the hearts of anyone around.</p><p>"You cheeky murderer, you, you lied to me, didn't you?" Ring Ring leaned forward, almost losing his balance and toppling over and down the wall.</p><p>"Of course she's alive now. That's how ninja work. Their bodies do their best to keep them alive for a short while, even through fatal injuries. Look at the gapping hole in her abdomen. Not even ninja can survive that, her short-term survival instinct will soon fade." Index answered with a hint of irritation in her tone.</p><p>"B-But what if she wakes up and kills us while we're disposing of her body?" the thug quaked in his boots.</p><p>"Out of the two of us, which one trained with a mercenary band and has killed ninja before?" Index turned back, reaching inside her leather jacket before her hand froze as an intimidating gesture, halfway to pulling out her weapon.</p><p>It appeared that the gesture was successful as a pair of thugs agreed to dispose of the girl's body while the rest got busy fixing the yard by doing their best to make the garden, the lawn, and the various stone yard accessories look presentable to the public.</p><p>"She used illusions of some sort before", Ring Ring noted after jumping down from the yard surrounding wall and doing a pair of bunny hops just to warm his feet up and make the slight discomfort in his feet go away. "Are you sure we're not being duped right now?"</p><p>"It's been way too long. It is possible that she pulled a switcheroo of some kind but she looked too adamant to beat us. Even when it became clear that she'd lose the fight she made risky gambles and continued to struggle, it is unlikely that she would have just dropped everything and fled. If her goal was killing us, after she pulled the illusion off, we'd already be dead right now and in no condition to discuss if it was an illusion or not." Index explained her reasoning.</p><p>"Can I kill Thumb and Pinky?" Ring Ring slapped his palms together, bending his knees a bit to playfully beg his partner.</p><p>"That's not your department. You'll leave too much of a mess and drag it out for no reason. I'll do it quick and spotless." Index rejected him.</p><p>"But they deserve to suffer, a little bit, maybe?" Ring Ring energetically pinched his fingers right up his partner's face, something that annoyed the woman a little bit, judging by her expression alone as even her cold and detached façade was crumbling. Her androgynous fellow Ring had a habit and a unique skill of getting under people's skins.</p><p>"Middle Ring is looking for their replacements. We have no time for games, if they find charred corpses, they'll probably suspect Raitoncide, the wandering serial killer, won't they? You are incapable of killing without imitating your exact M.O." Index blocked her colleague's advances to take up the task once more.</p><p>"If we slaughter the whole Security force, who'll suspect anything?" Ring Ring, or Raitoncide, as Index referred to him, leaned back. He pouted his lips like a spoiled child.</p><p>"Do you think Konoha will let a death of one of their own go? Things may get a bit troublesome in the future, we may need to go deeper underground than we normally are." Index rubbed her tired eyes, at this point she regretted not having been killed in that last fight, she was beginning to utterly detest the new Ring Ring.</p><hr/><p>"Do you think we're the bad guys sometimes?" the man carrying Mana's body wondered before grunting out loud as he tossed it in an alleyway.</p><p>"I mean… We do work for a literal criminal organization..." his friend tried to enlighten his pal to the concept.</p><p>"Yeah but… I always looked at us like… The honorable outlaw types. Isn't the whole point of the Diamond Hand to gather riches and get ahead in an unfair system? Look at this kid, she's about as old as my daughter. I wouldn't appreciate if someone left my own girl like that." The man scratched his bloated belly in discomfort.</p><p>"We're whatever someone seeks in the Diamond Hand. Some guys got in just to get ahead, sure. Some just want a free chance to kill and hurt people. Either way, Diamond Hand is all of those things because it serves all of those functions." His buddy slapped his partner in the back before turning around.</p><p>"I hate it when you get all philosophical on me." the soft-hearted criminal sighed.</p><p>Just a dull thud separated the moment in time where the two criminals were standing and talking to the one where they fell to the ground knocked out cold. A young man landed by their side after both men were downed in an instant and examined Mana's body, feeling up her vitals before removing a pair of green food pills from his pouch and placing them inside the girl's mouth, cracking them using the girl's own teeth and then forcing them down her throat.</p><p>Yushijin flipped Mana's lifeless body over his shoulder and disappeared in the alleyways of the Shukuba pleasure town.</p>
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<a name="section0402"><h2>402. Hard Wake-Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time Mana had found it in her to open her eyes it was dark. She was in a dimly lit hospital ward, a surrounding all too familiar to her as she had a somewhat notable memory of her stay there after the finals of the Chuunin Exams, not to mention the time the fight against the Imarizu left her hospitalized as well.</p><p>Upon her awakening a bunch of people gathered around her, some were worried, for some their worries were alleviated by Mana waking up. It was surprising to see Thumb, Muriya, and his family, Shira all gather around her with various thoughts to voice about Mana's awakening.</p><p>"You still owe me a spar," Yushijin mumbled. He was sitting on an empty bed farther away, in a whole other corner of the ward. The young man stood up and approached the magician, the circle of people moved aside letting the young man in. "I may have been a bit of a dick to you during the Exams but seeing you alive does make me glad."</p><p>"Why is everyone here?" Mana spoke in a weak voice, even if her body did feel a bit numb and sore in places, for the first time that week she felt well rested and her mind was finally flowing clearly.</p><p>"I figured that after those guys thought they'd disposed of you, they'd go for your crew. I carried them around me so that I could have them within my sword's reach if the need to protect them came." Yushijin sighed, glancing at the very odd bunch.</p><p>"I had two green pills on me when I arrived in Shukuba. Figured you'd make it a tough fight before coming with me so one was for me when you kicked my ass too much for it not to be a pain to move around. The second one was for you if I accidentally went too far. Given how you had a gaping hole where the overdose of food pills hits you, figured the odds of you surviving the ordeal were present, if slim." Yushijin explained. He tapped his ninja kit pouch as he did so.</p><p>It did not matter that Mana's sides ached like all living hell. It did not matter that she felt nauseous inside and every moment felt like the moment when she would inevitably throw out all of the gut that the food pills helped her close up and heal, Mana jumped up on her bottom and kissed Yushijin in gratitude. She could feel all the chakra signatures covering their faces and walking away slightly, looking through the window or otherwise occupying themselves. Had they not been in danger, all of them would have left the ward wearing the discomfort of seeing such a passionate expression of gratitude on their faces.</p><p>"A "thanks" would've been just fine. As I've said, I may have been a bit hotheaded during the Chuunin Exams and let Erumo be just as hotheaded alongside me when usually I chill her out." Yushijin shoved his hand inside the rich mane of his hair, rubbing it against the back of his head. Shyness was not usually an emotion one would attribute to the young man but now he struggled with not feeling a bit embarrassed and unsure of what was going on.</p><p>"You had all the reasons to dislike me and even hate me. I am grateful to you for looking out for these people even when you did not have to." Mana bowed her head, almost letting it slam into her own knees and bed cover.</p><p>"Erm… Okay… So I'm pretty sure that Konoha's Sorceress can sense that chakra thingy anyways so… Maybe we can all leave the room now for you two to catch up…" Thumb pointed everyone to the door, assisting the cringing children of her ex-colleague outside the ward. "We could all use a breather, there's only so much hospital stink one can muster anyway," she declared before slamming the door behind her as loud as she could.</p><p>"Look…" Yushijin shrugged his shoulders after sitting down on another empty bed, it was surprising to see the whole ward being cleared out but, given how the Shukuba Security had recently saved the entire town budget, not entirely outside the realm of possibility. "You're cool and all that… I mean the jury's still out as to which one of us is cooler…"</p><p>"Yeah, no, I get it. I got a little bit too excited." Mana rubbed the back of her head overcome by shyness and wishing she could take that energetic kiss from a bit before back right now. "It would never stop being weird between us, I mean with the history behind me and Kouta and all…"</p><p>"Yeah, then there's the fact I could never look at you as girlfriend material… I mean, you're always someone I'm compared to whenever I show off my skills. I could not imagine buying someone like you flowers or imagining you baking cakes and all that. One-uping you is always on my mind and to me, those two things don't really mix well." Yushijin acted like he was examining his newly made blade just due to how uncomfortable the topic made him feel. Neither one of the two youngsters had enough experience in the matter to not stumble on their words or blush when talking to one another.</p><p>"So I guess you'll want me to go back to Konoha with you…" Mana looked away with a hint of longing. She did not necessarily long for her home but more for the opportunity to rid the town of the Diamond Hand she had squandered by losing.</p><p>"Not immediately." Yushijin grinned with a sip of smartass snark in his tone. "Injuries like yours, leave alone the erratic nature of the treatment, cannot be just walked off. I'm sure Lord Sixth will understand that. Nor will there be any pleasure in beating you right now so we'll settle our scores back home. How you spend your time recovering, that's a different matter entirely."</p><p>"I'd kiss you again but… I think I reek really bad, my skin is of weird color…" Mana's eyes shot all around the patches of her skin that the hospital garbs left exposed noticing an odd hint of yellow in the shade of her usually darker toned skin.</p><p>"Oh, I'm sure it's just the reaction to how you were healed. Should pass in a while," Yushijin smiled. "I'm not sure someone's liver could even take two green food pills downed all at once, luckily enough, you had no liver, stomach or kidney to speak of when I gave you them, you've grown new ones in just one day, so you should be fine."</p><p>"I think this is my third bunch." Mana laughed out before clutching at her aching sides after she moved quickly to cover her sores. The magician realized she had dozens more all over the places she got beaten up and bruised back in the Shukuba museum. Her constant tradition of being hospitalized and falling into a critical condition from time to time was no laughing matter. She was warned not to be so reckless with her body or suffer the potential consequences even after the first time she almost died fighting Hisako.</p><p>"In all seriousness, the local doctors did not like my impromptu solution at all. Your liver, kidneys and the digestive tract will recover, oddly enough, they said your heart is something to be worried about. Your chest was pounding like crazy to the point where we genuinely afraid you'd not survive, as the only overworked organ damaged by the abuse of food pills, it suffered greatly." Yushijin looked at Mana with some worry in his eyes. "Let's just say we're squared now: you gave intel to an enemy team about our location during a survival game, I doomed you for possible heart problems later down the line."</p><p>"By saving my life…" Mana looked at the hospital window with closed shutters before closing her eyes. "When that beam went through me it was like… I knew somewhere deep down that after I was finished off they'd go to kill off the Security, Thumb, Muriya-san and Muriya-san's family too. I felt like a useless failure, so weak and so alone… Thanks for not letting me go that way."</p><p>"Yeah well… From what I've read about you when I was given your files after being sent after you – you do a whole lot of going out of your way to save people yourself. It's only a matter of time before you pull my ass out of a fire so… I'm looking at it like a future investment." Yushijin played it off like it was no big deal at all. Mana smiled while biting her own cheek inside in irritation. She hated when boys did that. Played something so important to Mana off like it was no big deal just to look cool.</p><p>"Sometimes I wish we could help other people like this. Itemi-san is really injured and it will take him days if not weeks to get back on his feet if he is treated as he is being treated now. It would be really great if everyone could just down a pill and be up on their feet." Mana sighed. She knew better than to foster such foolish dreams, people without a fully trained ability to manipulate and control chakra could not really utilize the medical food pills as they only enhanced one's own supernatural metabolism, which civilians did not have in the first place.</p><p>"You will need a couple of days before you'll be kicking with these feet as well." Yushijin raised a wary eyebrow. "Mana you are not healed right now. I hope you're not foolish enough to challenge whoever did this to you again after you get out of bed. Your chakra levels were hard at work this whole time you were out so whatever chakra you lost had not returned, your body is still injured even after downing two green food pills and your bodily systems are still out of whack."</p><p>"I'll be challenging the Diamond Hand again." Mana objected by shaking her head as it sunk in sadness. "I know I've been weakened severely after this beating but that only means I will need to be more careful and play this smarter than I did before. I will need to beat my enemy by being one step ahead of them instead of overpowering them. I cannot leave this alone."</p><p>Mana got out of bed, grunting and clutching at her aching joints and sore wounds, with a questioning glare she asked Yushijin to turn away as she changed from her hospital clothes into what remained of her busted up uniform. With pity Mana looked at the busted up contraptions and burnt up pockets and jarring holes in her fancy stage magician's outfit.</p><p>"Oh, you don't have to wear that busted thing. Your local pals brought you a Shukuba Security uniform." Yushijin remembered after smacking himself in the forehead, as if punishing himself for forgetting to tell Mana. Indeed the magician found a long azure colored jacket and a white blouse with Shukuba Security decorations folded in the drawer by the side of her bed. It was the same one that high-ranking female officers like Kita Okasune wore when Security was still functional, after being disbanded the inventory must have been drowning in excess…</p><p>Despite of the aforementioned excess, Mana did not feel like she was worth of or honoring the uniform, given how handily she was just beaten by the criminals that would have proceeded to eliminate the last remains of Shukuba Security and kill off the few cooperating members of their organization. Something Mana felt responsible for making it easier to do, given how she disbanded the old corrupt Security herself.</p><p>Mana froze for a brief while. She had noticed the large branching out and spiky patch of scar tissue on her abdomen where Ring Ring's surprise attack had pierced through her. It was of almost a diamond-like shape as it was launched from a higher up angle and entered just briefly missing Mana's chest while it exited right in her lower abdomen. This patch will fit in just fine alongside the other countless scars on her body but this one was different, more distinct, less chaotic and all over the place. Undoubtedly much more massive than the others.</p><p>"Are you done yet?" Yushijin sighed. He was tapping his foot impatiently.</p><p>"Sorry, I was just lost in thought." Mana apologized before quickly finishing getting dressed and doing her best to make the uniform look her size. It may have been a fruitless effort but at least whilst an effort was made at all it would have sufficed just fine. It was evidently the smallest size these uniforms came with from the Security inventory but nobody clearly intended to grant them to teenage girls, more on the frail side in term of their build especially…</p><p>"So what are you going to do?" Mana wondered, pressing her hand against Yushijin's shoulder lightly to inform she was done with a gentle gesture.</p><p>"Just hang around. Irony intended, I don't have the balls to mess with the local law enforcement and administration. This is all your business. I don't have too much time left to bring you in either so whatever you have in mind, I'd appreciate it being done before the day after tomorrow." The swordsman rubbed his nose before placing his hands inside his pockets. This was not his usual way of using body language but the two of them were genuinely quite flustered after Mana's stunt earlier so it was understandable to say the least.</p><p>"Understood. Stay safe." Mana's hands changed from resting on her hips before fixing with her own messy hair that scattered and flew all over the place. Eventually, the magician just settled on a nod and left the ward.</p><p>"Wait, you're just going to walk out?" Muriya objected. "Is this really safe?"</p><p>"I may be injured and far from the fighting condition but the safest place is still with me. Yushijin has done far more than I would have ever dared to ask of him." Mana nodded.</p><p>"If you're still sore all over, how do you plan on apprehending Index and Ring? They kind of kicked your ass even at a higher percentage of your combat preparedness." Thumb brought up.</p><p>These two were afraid for their lives and reasonably so. Before it was a big risk for Index to come after them, what with Mana – a Konohagakure ninja protecting them, now it was established quite clearly that Mana was in no condition to fight Index off. If the woman was half the hunter that the magician thought her being, she'll go for the first opening she will get. Yet another reason to hurry the hell up with whatever she intended to do.</p><p>"I lost the battle but not my resolve. We'll just need to be smarter from now on." Mana tried to hide away her embarrassment. Even if it went against her most heartfelt desires, sometimes she wished to just die and disappear underground just to not feel this embarrassed to stand in front of her colleagues after having failed so miserably. It was at those moments that she needed a reminder of what she was fighting for. How could she just stand in front of them after failing them like that? How could she look Thumb and Muriya in the eyes after failing their dream of a life without constantly feeling afraid for their lives? If she took up the responsibility to protect Muriya's family life and failed them, was she not just as much to blame as the people trying to ruin it in the most bloody and gruesome of ways?</p><p>"There is much we need to brief you on. Perhaps it will be best if we do it back at Security." Shira suggested.</p><p>"So the town budget was recovered?" Mana asked the most important question. She had assumed that the operation was a success for the longest time but she needed a sturdy confirmation.</p><p>"Affirmative." Shira nodded. "I also went behind your back and hired some of the people who were helping me temporarily. Toiya filled the paperwork and made it official, we now have an actual Security Force composed of the few each of us trusted for more menial and casual operations."</p><p>"That's good." Mana approved of the notion. The intent behind disbanding the original force was because it was very clearly corrupt and would have imploded in on itself eventually, or so she thought at the time. Mana always meant to leave it for the succeeding Security officers to rebuild based on their own trust and history of those hired. It was just fine if it happened faster rather than later.</p><p>"The Diamond Hand is now officially exposed to the public. Instead of the providers and fighters against the corrupt authority system they meant to portray themselves as, they were exposed for a criminal ring they are. Toiya-san also handled that, she's pretty good working with people." Muriya butt into the briefing.</p><p>"That's right, we have reason to believe they are now retreating further underground. In just one day we've reported more detached from one another and disorganized assassinations and assaults than the entire last year combined." Shira added.</p><p>"They separated the Fingers, most likely." Thumb shared her insight. "They can no longer use the museum as their hideout, the Middle Finger must've authorized a complete scatter operation, dividing the Diamond Hand into three separate organizations. Each one of them worked hard today to gather their own separate "budget" so to say."</p><p>"Good, if they are divided we can scoop them up one by one." Mana nodded. Her voice still sounded bitter as she felt like while she knew what needed to be done, she could not help but feel incompetent as far as actually reaching for those goals was concerned.</p><p>Thumb, Muriya and Shira all looked at each other in unease. There was something they were hiding from Mana. Something really bad and they would rather keep away from her.</p><p>"Guys…" Mana informed them that she noticed their miserable attempt at keeping secrets.</p><p>"Look, kid… You know how Diamond Hand work… They're all about hitting you in the knees, crippling you, revenge politics, you said it yourself…" Thumb sat down by Mana's side, trying to rub her shoulders into oblivion with her "friendly gesture".</p><p>"Burgoniya's involvement was integral at finding the stolen budget. Her knowledge of reading a scene of crime and working with chemicals and the hound helped us find the money, finding the right warehouse. It was as you said it would be." Shira opened his mouth, deciding to be the bearer of the secret that everyone else would have preferred to keep hidden. "It may be because of that but… We found her body in the apartment complex she lived in. Stabbed in the back on her way to work, just like Okasune-san."</p><p>"Index…" Mana mumbled out before slamming her head against the table and covering it up with her palms, as if trying to push it further down and break the whole damned thing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0403"><h2>403. Requiem</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The news of Burgoniya's murder could not have hit Mana at a worse moment. One would have thought that even for someone attached to everything that the human life stood for losing someone they were not getting along to such an extent with would have felt at least a little bit easier. It did not. In fact, remembering her final conversations with the woman made Mana only feel worse about the whole thing.</p><p>"Ma'am…" Shira acknowledged the fact that Mana's collapse was lasting an alarming length of time.</p><p>An uneasy feeling of blood pulsing in her forehead as it passed through from anguish and fury was a poor accompaniment to the blazing pain in the magician's heart. It was a good thing that she was young and while her core was being relentlessly pummeled from all sides, it persevered the siege. A heart any older or weaker would have easily burst into bloody mush.</p><p>"She did not wish to go…" Mana mumbled out. She spread out her fingers from cups to rakes as she grabbed her wild hair, all just to try and calm down the storm inside her chest.</p><p>"She was a Security officer. She knew what she signed up for. Out of all the rookies, she wanted it the most. She knew a safer service, one analyzing evidence behind a desk and yet she wanted more." Shira tried speaking in a less formal manner as he saw it being necessary. His tone softened appropriately.</p><p>"I told her to go, I told her she was needed there…" Mana cried out, her head trying to force out blood through forceful contact with the table beneath it muffled the sound somewhat.</p><p>"She was needed. The money would not have been recovered without her." Shira nodded.</p><p>"If I won she would not be dead." Mana lifted her head up, tears running down and her lips quivering. "I failed her."</p><p>Thumb looked at Shira, the woman looked confused and there was no reason for her not to be. The Diamond Hand must have been used to changing up its roster, someone got too ambitious - they were killed, someone told something they were not supposed to say to people who were not supposed to hear it – they died. Death was a daily routine not only for the leader of the thievery Finger but to anyone who called this ninja world their own.</p><p>"That's foolish, kid, you know it is." The woman squatted down so her eyes could look at Mana's from a lower level and so her hand could reach the magician's slumped and weak shoulders. "Nobody is to blame for someone dying but the person that does the deed. Index would be pretty pissed for you taking her credit like this."</p><p>"Look, this is all pretty sad and all but no one ever came back from the dead over someone crying hard enough over their dead body." Muriya stepped up and in front of Shira, trying to swerve the conversation into what he saw as a more productive direction.</p><p>Mana's eyes blanked out. Once again fate played a cruel trick on her, bringing her back from what should have been certain death only to show her she had not suffered enough and there were still ways it could bend her spine against its edge. Ways that were agonizing but precise enough not to break it.</p><p>"What my husband wanted to say is…" Muriya's wife stepped out in front of her husband, rudely silencing the man by pressing her hand against his mouth and barely restraining the desire to smack him, "You cannot bring your comrade back to life, all you can do is do your best to move on. Make sure that nobody else follows her."</p><p>"Truth be told, I'd feel much safer if Index did follow your friend right down to Hell…" Muriya fixed his tie, looking a little bit offended that he was silenced that way but not enough to make too much of a fuss of it. Even when his kids were not around, as they were lead to the cells where the Shukuba Security housed them in and let to doze off in peace, the man's glare did soften whenever he looked at his wife.</p><p>"I have to second that…" Thumb sighed after standing up. She let Mana wallow in her sadness and grief for as long as that would last. The woman clearly had enough experience to notice when someone was too stunned to be productive or function in any capacity at all. "The problem is that our hardest hitter is not enough at taking her out. Not to mention that she could snuff a roomful of us out before any of us even felt the pain of it."</p><p>Shira wanted to object, he looked at Mana who was just staring blankly at the floor, her hands trembling and hair falling all over her face. Without uttering a word of objection or questioning that conclusion, he conceded.</p><p>"Why are you here still?" Mana uttered, finally returning to her senses. "The workday is over, Toiya, Sora, the others… They're all back home."</p><p>"This is not just a job to me. I want the Diamond Hand out of my town, I believe you can do that, ma'am!" Shira straightened his back out and reported.</p><p>"Why? I got beaten, I couldn't protect anyone." Mana mumbled out.</p><p>"Truth be told, Burgoniya did not like you all that much so belief in your success had nothing to do her death." Shira proudly displayed a half-grin. "To me this is war. War has casualties, always. We cannot pick who lives or dies. We cannot select people we like less to die first. War is the only thing that picks its sacrifices but, after it has had enough, it is always followed by what comes after. War is chaotic, you cannot be everywhere and protect everyone."</p><p>A loud clapping noise killed the short silence that reigned in after Shira's words. Mana's eyes returned to life only to pick up traces of her own blood on the floor. Her head snapped back to look at Thumb who gave her a good backhand slap without holding back an ounce of her strength.</p><p>"Whether I live or die depends on if you can kill Index or not. My eyes get all sobby about that dead chick, they really do. The thing is that I stuck around because I like living too and you were my best bet at survival. Can you still guarantee me my life or do I need to claw my way out of here and look after my own behind from this point on?" the burglar raised her eyebrow, clashing her willful glare with Mana's confused and pain-ridden eyes.</p><p>"I… I've sensed her signature multiple times. I can recognize it when it is close. I've seen her fight enough to have a general idea of her style and stand a decent chance against her. The safest place for you is still the Shukuba Security." Mana uttered, strength and confidence slowly returning back into the magician's voice with every word. As crushing of a blow as Burgoniya's death was, the desire to keep Thumb with her and be able to protect her when the time comes or die trying still burned hotter in Mana's chest.</p><p>"In that case, what is the problem? Just meet her again and kick her ass! The Diamond Hand has dropped its tail and shed its skin, the Fingers are all alone now. This is the best time to press on instead of sitting here feeling sorry for yourself." Thumb pouted her lips while she looked away with disdain.</p><p>"She was faster and stronger than me, more experienced and better versed in taijutsu even when I was…" Mana stopped as if she said she was at full strength when she fought the Diamond Hand before she would have been lying, "…Less weakened. Even if I have gained knowledge of her abilities to even our difference in skill and experience out, she is still much faster than me, stronger too. As much as I do not like to admit it, her willingness to kill and intent to do so gives her another advantage as well."</p><p>"If strength and speed is the problem, just have me around, let's give her some of her own medicine and fight her two on one." Thumb turned back at Mana, the act of dismissal she was pulling before to get the magician's full attention had faded away.</p><p>"It will not be nearly enough. I was toying with you when we first fought to get the most information possible out of you. I do not wish to belittle your fighting ability but you will make no difference in the outcome. It will take her microseconds to kill you." Mana wrapped her fingers around her head again, this time not because the grief was choking all vigor out of her but because she merely was hard at work trying to think. One thing was to declare that she would be smarter this time, another one was to think her way out of being completely overshadowed by one's opponent in pretty much every attribute.</p><p>"Correct me if I am mistaken but…" Shira butted in. "Is it not chakra that grants the Rings such a tremendous advantage in skill? We have sealing tags on the cells to seal away one's ability to manipulate chakra, could you not use such a tag to take away her ability to use it as well?"</p><p>"It is not that easy," Mana shook her head, "Chakra Suppression Seals are all very high ranked jutsu, they require about as much skill in the field of sealing techniques as I am skilled in illusions. Even more, the Rings are also all tremendously skilled in general and their physicality is in peak condition so they would pose quite a challenge to my current state even after their chakra mastery is sealed away."</p><p>"Are you trying to tell that these buffoons have mustered up some super-seal all by themselves? No offense, big boy…" Thumb raised a questioning eyebrow before playing it down to Shira who dismissed the offensive comment entirely.</p><p>"Not quite, the seals used in corrective or containment facilities or other law enforcing buildings are different. They are based on other seals, powerful techniques weaved inside the very fortifications of those buildings. Those seals only require a simple "Hare" glyph sealing tag to complete the circuit and seal off the wearer's chakra, they have more to do with the environment the seal is applied in as outside those walls the "Hare" seal would be completely useless all by itself." Mana explained.</p><p>"Law enforcement facilities? Like here, or the Tribunal palace?" Muriya raised a shaking finger. The very idea of such facilities appeared to make the man's balding forehead sweat and him running short of breath.</p><p>"Yes, I suppose that would do it. Although, given that we are trying to keep your children as far away from the Diamond Hand as possible, it may be better to not fight Index here, where we are hiding them." Mana nodded.</p><p>"We could lure her there, couldn't we?" Muriya swallowed a fearful gulp. "Index I mean… Then, Sorceress-san could apply the seal and take away her superhuman abilities."</p><p>Following Muriya's idea, all the separate and detached ideas suddenly fired off like thunderstorms one at another, forming a circuit that all connected together forming a rail for the train of thought to bolt forward inside Mana's head.</p><p>"That's right…" she nodded. "You two are what Index wants, we could escalate the Tribunal session for both of you. Even if Index does not show – we'll be able to safely transfer you to Konoha's imprisonment facilities where you two would be safe. I'm sure we could strike a deal for you to be placed in Eden even… You are actively assisting this investigation and struggle against the Diamond Hand after all."</p><p>"You mean…" Muriya snapped his fingers with a smile.</p><p>"That's right, you and your children would be safe and could meet daily away from the Diamond Hand's influence." Something vaguely resembling a smile crawled up Mana's cheekbones as well. Just small dots where they protruded with a hint of an upwards arc but that was enough. That was it. That was hope.</p><p>"I'm not going…" Thumb objected, wrapping her hands around her chest and looking away with an angry glare.</p><p>"What do you mean? That's the safest option, don't you want to finally be rid of the Diamond Hand?" Mana turned at the woman, standing up to place her eyes a little bit more on Thumb's level. It was not a sign of confrontation or aggression, Mana just wanted to see inside the soul of the burglar woman.</p><p>"Don't think you can escape responsibility for your crimes, Thumb." Muriya got bold all of a sudden, stepping up to his past colleague in crime. "Eden would be a pretty sweet offer for us. The likes of us, people who take the slice of the Feudal Lord's pie, usually get executed."</p><p>"I don't care. It's… It's not safe in Eden, it's not safe anywhere as long as the Diamond Hand is here. I want to see them gone with my own eyes and I won't move an inch from Mana's skirt until I see that happen." Thumb spoke back, almost flustered and losing her cool. It was obvious that she was hiding something, Mana got quite curious all of a sudden, given that she chose such embarrassing words as a substitute for the truth.</p><p>"You want to stay in Shukuba and work in the Security…" Mana finally put it together. "There's nothing special about me. The Diamond Hand has already proved they can kill me if they really put their heads to it and I play right into their hand. You don't give rat's ass about staying by my side. You just said you do because by my side usually meant in the heart of the Security action."</p><p>"That's… Ridiculous! So what even if I was thinking about that!? It's not like it is completely impossible. You ninja switch teams too sometimes, giving away information to rogues or even other villages in exchange for sanctuary and a new place of employment. Why am I suddenly so much worse?" Thumb got all flustered, usually, the woman enjoyed a certain degree of elevation in social interactions, toying and teasing everyone in the room. This may have been the first time that her heart was the one being examined and admired by everyone like an animal in some sick zoo.</p><p>"Could that happen?" Mana looked at Shira.</p><p>"Well… I mean… Probably. We'll be completely rebuilding the administrative and law-enforcement branches anyways… There may still be some kind of punishment you will have to go through for your deeds in the past, you will have to come completely clear about what you have done but… We may take your assistance in this investigation into consideration before letting you train as a recruit." The strict and strong officer pondered out loud.</p><p>"That's such a load of bullshit…" Thumb inflated her cheeks and blushed as she looked away in scorn. It was not hard to imagine what she was feeling, she had thought that she would be completely let go off the hook just because she did everything she could to help the Security apprehend the other Rings of the Diamond Hand. More so, she felt like she was worth more than just be put as another recruit, going through years of training before being made an officer just like everyone else.</p><p>"No. It's the way things go when you're walking the right path. The path is full of hills, ups, and downs, it's a bumpy and cold road and sometimes it does not even lead right to your dream. It is almost always unfair but it is right path and it is the path you dream of walking. I know two girls my age who are just as skilled and even more experienced than me and yet I outrank them. With your skills, you will breeze through all the tests and exams. Just stay strong and determined and let your frustration give you the strength that will guide you through the path you've chosen." Mana tried to return the favor to the woman who was one of the few who slapped her back to reason. Quite literally.</p><p>"It's too early to talk about that stuff anyway. All of us may yet get horribly slaughtered in that Tribunal session." Thumb sighed. Behind her, Muriya gulped down in fear.</p><p>"Tomorrow." Mana declared.</p><p>"What?!" Muriya turned back and yelled.</p><p>"It has to be tomorrow, your Tribunal session that is. Time is against me as well. Index may be scary and formidable but we do not have the time to play around with her. There are two more Rings to subdue after her and they may just require plans and means just as complex to capture them." Mana explained her stance.</p><p>"Well, at least we won't have to grill too long, thinking about the unknown…" Thumb sighed with a happy in an ironic smile kind of way shrug.</p><p>"Very well. It will be difficult but… I will gather the Security Force tomorrow early morning and brief them in. We will get you some "Hare" seals from the containment facilities and do our best to arrange a session with the Tribunal. It will be immensely difficult to put together but we should be done with it by afternoon, the procession may begin early in the evening." Shira reported his future actions, which Mana then affirmed with a nod.</p><p>"And where are you going?" Thumb raised an eyebrow, seeing Mana put on her busted up winter jacket and gloves. "Finally decided to find a roof over your head to sleep a bit?"</p><p>"No. I have done plenty of sleeping while I was half-dead. I told you that time is not on my side. There is something of great personal value that I have lost in the museum. Something I must recover at any cost." Mana voiced her intentions knowing that it will not go that well with the rest.</p><p>"I would advise against it strongly, ma'am." Shira objected.</p><p>"What if you bump into someone from the Diamond Hand there? That building used to be their hideout after all!" Muriya shouted out.</p><p>"Would it not be wiser to wait at least until this whole thing boils over?" Muriya's wife wondered, with a much more reasonable and warmer tone notably.</p><p>"The thing that I have lost is too dear to me. I would risk running into the Diamond Hand just to get it back any day of the week. Besides, it is a very useful combat asset as well. My chances of subduing Index even after her chakra mastery is sealed will increase drastically with the Audra wand in my hands." Mana shook her head to all of the objections.</p><p>"Cool, a burglary. I'm in!" Thumb finally returned to her spunky, teasing ways.</p><p>"Thumb has a point, it is more than likely that your weapon has been taken by the Diamond Hand and once they lost the control of the museum it was simply ignored by the museum staff. Before you can clear things out with the staff and prove it belongs to you, it will technically be theft." Shira noted.</p><p>"Good thing that murder is the only place I draw the line then." Mana firmly declared, the newfound determination in her face to get back the memento that was left after Shimo's death proved etched into her mind too deep for Shira or anyone else to object.</p><p>"There may be consequences to your actions after this…" Shira ominously informed Mana, it was not a threat, did not sound like one. It was more of a friendly way of letting her know that telling a Shukuba Security officer she would not abide by Shukuba town rules would not go unnoticed.</p>
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<a name="section0404"><h2>404. A Night In The Museum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Thumb and Mana walked alongside one another at a casual pace in total silence. One in occasion took the time to look at the other with curiosity and intent to examine what was going through the mind of the other. Thumb was by far the worse offender of the two as far as this expression of curiosity was concerned.</p><p>"Okay, what is this weapon of yours all about?" Thumb relented at last.</p><p>"It's just a wand made of Audra alloy. It is almost the same quality of weaponry as an actually imbued with chakra weapon is due to the unnatural properties of the alloy." Mana tried to both not lie and keep the personal sentimentality out of it since it would most likely result in the burglar laughing it off and these type of painful and personal memories were not something Mana was okay leaving in the laughing matter drawer.</p><p>"Fair enough, sounds pretty impressive and yet…" the woman closed one of her eyes as she left the tease hanging in the air resulting in an annoying sound most similar to the mooing of a bored cow. "It is not quite like you to go out of your way and switch to the bad girls' team to get your hands back on it. No offense, but you're the last person I'd reckon be switching teams for a whole lot of power if you know what I mean…"</p><p>"It was once a sword. A sword that belonged to my teammate who was killed in action. It's a long story but it is the type of story that I cannot completely shake my input out of so I will never stop feeling at least partially responsible. My best friend took that sword after I gave it to her and made a wand out of it. It is extremely chakra conductive and perfect for casting techniques without needing hand seals due to Audra's natural properties." Mana explained, closing her eyes as if knowing she'd be laughed at in a handful of seconds.</p><p>"If it is so dear to you, why did you give it away to your best friend?" Thumb ran in front of Mana, turned around and began hopping backward instead of walking beside the magician.</p><p>"I felt much more guilt then than I do now. Seeing it by my side every day would have been unbearable, leave alone the fact that Meiko is a pretty good swordswoman. I would have brought shame to my friend by wielding his sword too…" Mana shrugged, feeling a little easier talking about it now. Somehow not even knowing or being able to find out Thumb's real name and knowing that the two would not be knowing each other for too long made it a lot easier to just spill the contents of her soul out clean.</p><p>"It's never just one reason, is it?" Thumb grinned before returning back to Mana's left side as the two made their way through the empty and dark Shukuba streets.</p><p>"You are more right than you believe. It is not just that it once belonged to my lifelong friend whom I feel like I've failed in life. It's that it was remade by someone I treasure and given back to me. Meiko is a crazy enthusiast of a blacksmith, the fact that she did that with me in mind… I think it's quite beautiful. Not only does the wand symbolize the path to peace that I will build wielding that wand in my friend's name, it also means the entirety of Meiko's friendship to me as well. I cannot let all of that get lost." Mana stated firmly.</p><p>"Ouch! Sounds like a pretty hassling way to live…" Thumb relaxed and stretched out before placing her chilled hands inside her pockets.</p><p>"What about you? You wanted to become a Shukuba Security and yet you ended up on a completely different side." Mana turned to her friend.</p><p>"It was not my lifelong dream or anything. It's just that I am looking ahead. Back then, acquiring these skills was the only way I could survive. After all this is over, the Shukuba Security is the only place they can be useful. Even if I wanted it as a kid, Security would have had little use of a hungry, dirt-poor, runaway girl with no standout skills." Thumb shrugged the topic off. It did look kind of obvious to Mana that the burglar was just trying it to seem like less of an interesting topic to talk about for the sake of it being left alone.</p><p>"I think it is quite wonderful. You will have all the tools to pick up the scraps after the Diamond Hand is done and do your own thing as its successor and yet you chose to make your town a better place utilizing skills you gathered along the way. It's great." Mana smiled gently.</p><p>"Well, that makes one enthusiastic supporter out of everyone…" Thumb sighed as the sight of the museum yard came into the view.</p><p>The two young women leaped over the gate, running up its surface before hopping over the pointy tiled top and landing on the inside. It did not appear like the museum had any security at all on the outside, Mana could vaguely pick up a pair of weakling signatures scattered from the other sides, likely patrolling guards without any cred or significant skill to speak of. Just unemployed townsfolk choosing a seemingly easy profession with no devotion to the deed they were about to do or too much qualification.</p><p>"Yeah, seems about right…" Thumb whispered after noticing Mana's attention being drawn away to the solitary wandering guards who could not even make out the figures of the girls from that distance in complete darkness in the middle of falling snow.</p><p>"The Diamond Hand has withdrawn from the place. It is under the town's control now, just like you predicted." Mana noted as the two disappeared from the yard and made their way into the actual building.</p><p>Meiko truly would have loved seeing this place from the inside. It had everything, historic architectural accessories like tiles used in ancient construction, paintings, pieces of old armor, both rusty and restored, weapons too.</p><p>"No way." Thumb almost broke out into a fully voiced yell before snuffing out her own noise and pointing her finger at a solitary figure standing by a strong, square-shaped wooden pillar that supported the building frame on the fifth floor.</p><p>Holding her aching sides and occasionally twisting her face in pain as they acted up, Mana followed her burglar pal up the floors as the woman bounced from one side of the exposed floor platforms to another using the square space in the middle as a tunnel for her ascent.</p><p>The magician had an ill feeling. This was not any Ring she had seen before and yet Thumb definitely was about as surprised to see this man, whoever he was, in here as she would be seeing a Ring. Did that mean that this aged, curly-haired and frail man with a flashy, silver-colored and shimmering, even in the dimly lit museum, disco jacket and pants was truly the Middle Ring? Even if he was, how come he was here when he no longer was in control of the place? How come Mana could not sense anything from him but the chakra she'd sense from a normal man? Was this Yokotomo Donyoku completely unimpressive in terms of his combat prowess?</p><p>Thumb almost lunged at the man's throat, aiming to grab it from behind and split it open with grievous, blood showering cuts that would have murdered him in moments. The amount of rage and desperation in the woman's face and movements was alarming.</p><p>The man cleared his throat. "How come I had a feeling I would meet the two of you here?" his voice was cold, no emotion or meaning behind his tone. Could he have just been so indifferent towards everything around him to speak this way? Certainly an odd fellow…</p><p>"So you're Yokotomo Donyoku?" Mana raised an eyebrow. "I wondered how come I could feel nothing special inside the museum when I fought your lackeys."</p><p>Thumb wanted to say something but her mouth froze in mid-speech, worried that her speech would trigger the taboo seals she had placed.</p><p>"We are going to take this guy in, right?" Thumb hissed instead.</p><p>"Hold on, this is too good to be true…" Mana looked around. She gestured for the young lady to stay here as she quickly disappeared and scanned the place on her own two feet just before reappearing where she was facing the Middle Ring only to find that neither of the two people she had left was presently there.</p><p>The brief flashes of light informed Mana of the reason why the two criminals had hidden away, one of the patrolling guards just walking about each floor with a large flashlight in hand had almost located them forcing both Donyoku and Thumb to hide.</p><p>"The wand isn't here," Mana mumbled with a bitter taste in her mouth. Donyoku clearly knew of the treasure his criminal lackeys had brought him. Now her heart was pounding hard whenever her thoughts settled on the wand possibly having been sold on the black market while she was out.</p><p>"I am a man of many skills, as you have noted, combat ability not being one of them. That being said, knowledge of history and geography is one of my skills. My knowledge of the politics, history, and geography was what helped me assemble the Diamond Hand and build it up to the highs it is currently reigning in." Donyoku once again spilled the text almost like he could not care what he was talking about any less.</p><p>"Bullshit, you've scattered your forces. You have nothing on nobody anymore and we are going to pick your lackeys off one by one before gripping tightly by your balls. Preferably using these very same hooks…" Thumb smiled almost like she was flirting with the man as she set off her hooked nails as she reached for the man's crotch.</p><p>"Too loud," Mana warned her companion about how much noise her temptation would cause. While not finding the wand was a worst-case scenario, especially with it being used as a bargaining chip by this curly haired idiot, it would at the very least spare her the notable trouble with the Shukuba Security. "Okay, I'll play along for now. What do you want for that wand?"</p><p>"Nothing at all." Donyoku shrugged. "I just had to be here to let you know I have it. Using my reasoning I suspected you had certain sentimental value to that tool, other than the great monetary value it was worth being pawned off."</p><p>"So you surrendered just to pull Sorceress' braid a little bit? What a great criminal genius this guy…" Thumb closed her hooked paw to slam the man against the wall and into some expensive looking painting.</p><p>"Surrendered?" the man wondered with that same a little scary degree of indifference even. "Who said anything about that…"</p><p>With a loud poof of smoke, the man that previously appeared to be Yokotomo Donyoku turned out to be some sly weasel-type lowlife with the ability to use ninjutsu to the same extent a little kid in the Ninja Academy could, utilizing the Transformation Technique to take the shape and face that his superior demanded him to take.</p><p>"What's going on here?" the elderly and a little bit on the plump side security guard ran up to the ruckus and the noise of the Transformation Jutsu getting dispelled. "Oh… Shukuba Security…" he muttered half to himself yet half out loud.</p><p>For a moment there Mana felt a little confused as to how the man jumped to that conclusion before she looked inside her busted up coat and noticed the Shukuba Security uniform she still wore. She was lucky to not only have that but also that the institution had a hand at the massive payday after returning the stolen town money back, which in terms gave a massive boost to its credibility in the eyes of the most of the public.</p><p>"Right… We had a suspicion something like this would happen. If you don't mind we'll book this guy." Mana pointed at the unknown factor her companion was busy suffocating softly with her wrist.</p><p>"Thanks, I seemed to have missed him there… Strange, I passed this spot just a couple of seconds ago." The troubled elderly security guard worried.</p><p>"Oh, it's alright, they're skilled those Diamond Hand guys. They have some ninjutsu training from the black market and rogues they pay, check the ceiling and the walls next time. They can stick to and crawl to those places too, like lizards or bugs almost…" Mana smiled for the elderly man as she encouraged with a gesture for Thumb to stop roughhousing the sacrificial lamb that the Diamond Hand offered them and bring him back to the HQ.</p><p>"Really? They don't pay me enough for wall-crawlers, really…" the man scratched his troubled head before waving farewells for the two young women and the third one they just picked up.</p><p>"You're telling us…" Mana shared a laugh with the man as they quickly made their way out from the museum grounds and into the yard before bringing their discovery back to the station.</p><p>"We were lucky to bolt out of there before the old-timer noticed you may be a little bit too young to be wearing the uniform of a high-ranking Security officer." Thumb chuckled to herself, holding the unknown rogue who was impersonating Yokotomo Donyoku firmly by his elbow.</p><p>"If he did not see the two of you sticking to the walls and the ceiling on his way forward while scanning the floor, his eyesight was shoddy enough… Plus, I think that I've matured enough to fool people like this…" Mana puffed her cheeks letting the slight blush give them a bit more color and make her face feel warmer in the cold winter snowfall outside.</p><p>"Don't lie to yourself, hun…" Thumb chuckled again.</p><hr/><p>After a brief interrogation session, Mana left the white and boring interrogation room scratching the back of her head and contemplating on the information she had acquired. Compared to the tough time she had playing chess with the poacher in the interrogation room, this session was a breeze. The information flowed as freely as a cut artery burst with blood.</p><p>"So?" Thumb raised an eyebrow. She was relatively interested in how the interrogation went, likely for her own self-preservation instinct as the sooner Middle Ring went down the sooner she could have breathed easy. Even Shira considered this session a pointless endeavor and only cared to sigh easier when Mana informed the man that they committed no burglary that night in the museum.</p><p>"He told me what I suspected he'd say. The Middle Ring found him by calling some old shots and using his contacts in the rogue ninja ranks. He himself is a small timer. He says he doesn't know anything about anything and was just paid to say and do what Donyoku-san told him to do." Mana relayed the info she had gathered with no difficulty as the man proved quite talkative.</p><p>"That's bullshit, I bet he's just saying that!" Thumb got flustered and rushed to push Mana aside and get to the more meaty and painful part of interrogating herself. With an easy pinch on a sensitive spot of nerve knots and chakra nodes located in her elbow Mana disabled the forceful approach of her companion and made Thumb back off with her unharmed hand rubbing against the numbed limb to ease the feeling of weightlessness and numbness.</p><p>"He has no reason to lie. If he was someone useful, Donyoku-san would have never just cut him loose like this. Even if he is anyone dangerous we'd only let him sabotage us by keeping him around." Mana tried to reason with her rather obsessive companion.</p><p>"Wait, you're letting him go!?" Thumb flipped out. She moved her hands in a swiping motion that made Mana worried she'd activate her hooks but she did only the motion and did not arm herself. At least she still had enough reason not to pick fights where they were entirely unnecessary.</p><p>"Yeah, we are already short-handed. We have no time to bother with the likes of him." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Why would a random nobody just know the Transformation Jutsu?" Thumb growled, having let go some steam and calmed down as she locked her arms firmly on her chest and fired off blazes at Mana from her eyes.</p><p>"Why would he not? The Academy Jutsu are easy enough to pick up that we teach them to literal children. If someone looking to make profits on the shady side of business learns something like that they are considerably more employable. He's just a small-time loser thinking he can make a small buck. If there's someone to be blamed, it's me for not noticing his bad acting and indifferent attitude." Mana sighed as she massaged her own sore neck before grunting in pain after she bent her waist the wrong way and made her battle wounds ache again.</p><p>"You didn't know what kind of person Middle Finger was… Of course you'd be fooled by bad acting." Thumb eased a little bit on the pressure she applied to Mana's decision to stop bothering with this guy.</p><p>"The question remains – why did Donyoku-san bother in the first place? Why did he not just leave the matter be and let us wander aimlessly all around the museum looking for the wand? Is he the type to flaunt his intelligence and brag?" Mana kept troubling herself over it, seeing her expression it would have been made clear to anyone that she's been thinking about this and working herself over it for quite a while now.</p><p>"Actually… Yeah. He is not the type to needlessly confess or show his face around to the people he hurts but he is kind of a braggart. He enjoys the history and ancient treasure enthusiast persona he has created in the public and he probably would like to flaunt your wand as his newest toy right in front of your nose." Thumb admitted even as the admittance came with a lot of hidden frustration. Frustration not because of what she was saying but because she realized that Yokotomo Donyoku just acted like a carrot tied to a stick just for the sake of having some fun.</p><p>"Well, his true face has been exposed to the public now so… I guess games like this is all he has left. We would be wise to rest now. Tomorrow will be quite an important day." Mana smiled as her eyes looked both worried and a little bit sad at the same time as the corners of her lips curled upwards.</p><p>"Right… Shit. We're taking on Index tomorrow…" Thumb looked up at the white ceiling of the corridor the two were standing around in with disbelief. "I may be just playing a part in the Tribunal session tomorrow but… If things go sour, I promise I'll help."</p><p>"That's very uncharacteristic of you, I'd have taken you more for the material-girl, the type to slip away when things go wrong." Mana winked at the burglar as she opened the interrogation room and let the small-timer go.</p><p>"Good luck, ladies, I hope you catch that guy. Hopefully, we will never see each other again…" the man who just a couple of hours ago wore the face of one of Shukuba's most wanted people bowed his head with respect and waved farewells to the two young women. He was just about as detached from this as he was when he was badly impersonating Donyoku…</p><p>"Wow… I guess there is no honor amongst crooks." Thumb squinted her eyes feeling the irony of the man playing it nice with Shukuba Security while taking money from the Middle Ring and impersonating him, most likely, spreading just the same professional politeness.</p><p>Just as Mana showed the man the way out, feeling relatively good about the decision to let this man go as the manpower that Shukuba Security had at the moment was better spent focusing on the Diamond Hand instead of a measly breaking into a museum without the intent of looting anything, Thumb stopped her with a loud yell.</p><p>"When I was your age, I didn't take up being a burglar because I like shiny things or stealing stuff or the challenge of it. It just was the only crime where I felt as detached from what I was doing as possible. When you're nabbing things and everyone's asleep, it feels like nobody's getting hurt." Thumb spoke up. "I guess at some point I got lost. At some point, killing started to sound not too bad after all the stealing and fighting I've done when the first one did not work out."</p><p>"It's fine, I don't blame you. If you had killed me back then, I'm sure you'd have ended the troubles the Diamond Hand had with me quickly." Mana tried to smile but knowing she was talking about herself going through a murder attempt it did not go through nearly as easy.</p><p>"No, I wanted to stop for a long time before you came. I had heard about you when you and your pals plowed through the Syndicate. If I went out of my way to kill you because I misjudged how obsessed you were with slaying criminals. I'd have always been screwed so it seemed like a very comfortable chance to escape this life without paying back what I owe to the Diamond Hand: all the training, the surgeries…" Thumb looked at the floor with longing and sadness.</p><p>It was only then that Mana fully understood Thumb's actions with the gem. As a teen Thumb needed skills to survive and becoming a burglar for various criminal organizations would have been an easy way to acquire them. By the time she realized she was becoming someone else it was too late and difficult to leave, she owed too much to too many people. If she killed Mana, someone who may have tracked her long after destroying the Diamond Hand, and fled with the gem she'd have the chance to leave her life behind and the money to start fresh with the skills and modifications she gathered along the perilous and painful life of crime. Just like she had always wanted…</p><p>"As I've said…" Mana smiled, knowing full well that Thumb regretted taking Mana as a manslayer obsessed with eradicating criminals in her way initially, "I think your plan of starting over is wonderful."</p><p>Ever since meeting the burglar, something always did not add up to her story. Something always did not make sense, something always stayed hidden behind a mask of teasing and jokes with Thumb. Maybe that was why Mana kept on waiting to be betrayed by the burglar. Now that her feelings and motivation finally made sense to the magician she felt like she could completely trust her back to someone who earlier this week tried to kill her and made her fortune as a burglar…</p><p>Life was truly a living sheet of irony, full of oddities.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0405"><h2>405. Law And Disorder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It's all been prepared. We're good to go." Shira reported by standing tall right past the doorframe to Mana's office. The magician nodded and jumped off her chair. After a quick check of her tools and weapons, she headed out.</p><p>Just like it was planned, there would be multiple carriages taking Muriya and his family as well as Thumb to the Tribunal building. Mana would travel with Thumb if only to keep the normally overly nervous woman a bit more talkative meanwhile Shira and Sora would be watching Muriya's carriage while Toiya and some of Shira's hired hands would be watching Muriya's family.</p><p>There were also multiple duds into the mix containing nothing but a handful of Security officers. Initially, Mana felt a bit nervous trusting one of the more sensitive targets – Muriya's family to a bunch of people she barely knew. After sensing their chakra and realizing that most of them were extensively physically trained individuals on the same level if not surpassing Shira and the other recruits she herself took in, the magician's heart calmed down a little.</p><p>"You ready?" Thumb grinned after Mana sat into the carriage even though it was painfully clear she was nervous behind that smile.</p><p>"We will soon find out." The magician replied.</p><p>Even if on paper it all seemed just great, get the procession on and going and then take Muriya and his family as far away from Shukuba as possible, if they get lucky, also subdue Index, Mana was still on the most edge she's been in a while. Everything was supposed to be planned erratically and spontaneously but solid enough, her sensory would let her see any incoming threats coming from a mile away but… Something still did not feel right.</p><p>"You don't look too well, slept alright?" Thumb addressed Mana, trying to bring up some small talk as the Shukuba sights shifted away through the windows beside them.</p><p>"I barely had any sleep. Too nervous I guess… Too many lives depend on this, too soon after I failed so miserably." The magician admitted.</p><p>"Isn't that half of the reason why you failed to begin with?" the burglar wondered.</p><p>"It cannot be helped. It's a circle of nightmares that come one after another. You know that you need to rest and that anxiety of knowing you cannot get any rest when you should only adds to the reasons why you cannot get any rest." Mana admitted with a slight smile. Sometimes when she was feeling underprepared, when the odds could not have weighed any more against her, a smile that defied all the odds came the easiest. It was like a bangle to emphasize and decorate the hopelessness in front of you.</p><p>Mana was impressed by how quickly Shira and the other officers put the procession together. She had not met any councilmen who partook in Tribunal sessions before but she did not expect them to be too happy about this and it could not have been an easy conversation to initiate. Judging by the looks of the people bustling around the Tribunal palace, the Security lightly underestimated and looked down on by the other law enforcement staff.</p><p>The looks following Mana, Thumb and the other processions of the officers were similar to those that inexperienced genin gave to teammates who were different. Be it genin that focused on power-based attacks looking down on their more supportive and intelligence-driven comrades or the other way around. It was only through long and oftentimes bloody experience that this attitude was beaten out of them. When those underestimating people finally understood that only through the cooperation of different kinds of people can anything get done right.</p><p>"Can you feel her?" Thumb turned at Mana as these sentimental thoughts and underestimating glares missed the burglar woman completely.</p><p>"No. It troubles me a little. I thought she would not miss an opportunity to kill her intended and hated targets all at once." Mana shook her head with unease. The longer she could pick up no traces of Index or any suspicious signatures in general, the more her anxiety snowballed.</p><p>"Maybe we rushed to fast? Maybe they don't know we're here?" Thumb wondered, stretching out almost as if she was not about to be trialed and told to leave the town she was born and grew up in.</p><p>"No. The intelligence of the Diamond Hand is formidable. I think it is only reasonable to assume that even this degree of spontaneity did not evade their attention." Mana debunked Thumb's thoughts.</p><p>"But is this not good anyways? I mean if they snooze they'll lose the chance to off us." Thumb shrugged.</p><p>"I guess… I'll only feel easy after all of this is over." Mana sighed as her already sore and damaged heart kept on pounding as if trying to claw its way outside her chest.</p><p>"Maybe, after this, I will know what it is like… Making a completely magnanimous gesture without anything for me to gain out of it. It will be a new experience." Thumb teased Mana again, trying to lighten up the magician's mood a little, which was, ironically, a little bit selfless all by itself.</p><p>"In case you don't get to. It's the best feeling in the world. Feels like every cell of your body acting upon your very nature. Your body moves all by itself and leaves nothing to any negative sides of you that can sway it aside." Mana smiled. She could see Toiya and a pair of other Security officers in the passing by procession smiling alongside her and nodding their heads wishing them and each other good luck in the tremendous trial to come.</p><p>Finally, the bunch reached the hall where the council allowed the Tribunal session a chance to be held just early this morning. There was a pair of low-ranking Tribunal workers, likely secretaries or other office-based kinds. They did not look happy, likely that frustration would have been translated on the faces of the much more intelligent and self-important Tribunal council members as well…</p><p>Mana scanned the large hall for any painfully familiar faces but she could find none. It was as if the Diamond Hand was about to ignore this session completely. A pair of officers separated Thumb from Mana and lead her to the front and sat her right beside Muriya. Mana located Muriya's family and sat right by their side. She would protect this bunch with her life.</p><p>"May all present stand up while the council members assemble." One of the secretaries raised her voice with indifference. Mana was jealous of that woman. If only she could sit with that amount of serenity in her heart things would be remarkably easier. Even death would have been preferable to this kind of infernal abyss of the unknown.</p><p>The slightly irritated Tribunal members gathered in the hall and without wasting much time started the procession. As the procession continued and the head of the Tribunal council continued to read off the number of the case, confirm the present and missing members of the case and other formalities Mana once more reached out through the hall trying to pick up traces of familiar chakra.</p><p>What if Index was here but she managed to evade Mana's sensory somehow? Something here did not make any sense… Way back when Index entered the Shukuba Security posing as a lawyer of some sort… Mana did not notice any unusual signs of her chakra being massive or in any kind unusual compared to the signatures of the Security officers. And yet… When Mana faced off against Ring Ring and Index their signatures flared up like beacons of flame and light, distinctive and present.</p><p>What if one could project their chakra signature somehow onto another frequency? After all, Yushijin managed to learn that suppression technique that made his signature impossible for Mana to tell from an average civilian. It removed not only the size and intensity difference but any distinctive features of his signature by which one would normally separate them from others as well. If his signature had a different color to it, the possessor would mask those traits as well. What if Index was just the same, what if she could mask her signature by projecting it onto another frequency by focusing on it hard so that sensors could not pick it up, it would have been as impossible to perceive as seeing the third dimension on a two-dimensional plain.</p><p>Mana turned around and started scanning the hall for familiar faces. If Index could fool her sensory, she could not fool Mana's eyes and ears and other senses the same way. After all, if Index herself was masking her appearance, she would have been actively using her chakra which would have made modulating the frequency of its projection impossible. If Index could have hidden her signature in active combat, she would have when she faced Mana…</p><p>Mana's eyes could not pick up on anything unusual. A relatively small crowd of civilians was beginning to gather in the Tribunal hall, a negative side of publicity that the Diamond Hand had acquired and yet if the ordinary civilians could find out that members of the infamous Diamond Hand were being put on trial here, the Diamond Hand definitely could have. Index or someone of her employ had to be here, even if they were, they were doing a very remarkable job at hiding from Mana's eyes and chakra sensory.</p><p>One of the Tribunal council members instructed a bunch of people to leave the hall. Some of them were troublemakers who thought that yelling obscenities at the Rings of the Diamond Hand was a good idea. Others were witnesses that were supposed to stay neutral and therefore had to leave the hall until the appropriate time. For a brief moment, the consequences forced Mana to admire the fact that the Shukuba Security managed to present the case of the Rings in such a brief time. Toiya may have had a talent at this whole speaking to the Tribunal council thing… Even so, she chose a much less rewarding and much more hated career as a Security officer instead, despite the money she could be making and supporting her family, the safety of her town was still a priority on the woman's mind.</p><p>There… Mana's eyes fell on a dark haired and tanned woman wearing shades and formal attire, moving opposite to the crowd of people leaving the hall. She was using the witnesses and other civilians to blend in visually, her attire and movements were so subtle that the visual aspect of her presence was difficult to pick up and tell apart as a suspicious detail even for someone as trained as Mana… Index may have been a massive pain in the Security's bottom and an overall nasty person but Mana had to give her credit for just the same reason – she was spectacularly efficient at being troublesome to her enemies, which made Index an amazing soldier for her cause.</p><p>It dawned on Mana that it may have been wise to initiate an illusion of some sort to subdue her enemy. For the time being, she was still unnoticed. It was quite a rare and luxurious advantage. One that could have won her this encounter but… Yushijin's warnings did not stop ringing in Mana's ears when her hands moved for hand seals. A single Sweet Lullaby genjutsu could have subdued not just Index but the entire hall at the same time. At the very least it would have quickly de-escalated the conflict efficiently if a little on the extreme side.</p><p>However just how much would such effort weigh on Mana? How much effort would be left for tomorrow or the day after, when Mana had to face Ring Ring and Yokotomo and his other schemes? No. She would need to hold back a little bit and keep something for tomorrow and the fights to come.</p><p>The magician's hands formed a single hand seal, her training in the Rabbit Caves during the Chuunin Exams helped her minimize the chakra strain and hand seals required to use most of her old techniques, even without the wand in her hands.</p><p>"Scary Trick Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, targeting Index and a pair of people surrounding her with an illusion of insects or other crawlies from the deepest parts of their subconscious and otherwise fears to come to life in excessive quantities. Seeing Index's skin pale and her lips dye blue and quiver in fear, same for a pair of civilians who fell on the ground and began scratching at their faces and hair and writhing on the floor, Mana moved in to place the "Hare" tag on the Ring.</p><p>It was then that she noticed Index's hand wrapping tightly around that of an already scared young woman. Even when completely buried in hordes upon hordes of her nightmares coming to life and covering her, Index retained enough willpower to catch a hostage. Mana did not like that one bit, the affected civilian was writhing about and the situation was just moments away from Index's blades, wherever they were, penetrating the woman from behind or slitting her throat by accident. Panic fear was a bad state for someone holding hostages to be in…</p><p>While with reluctance, Index's play forced Mana to release the illusion. It was not like the magician did not have a much more costly backup plan. Just as the traces of illusion started fading away with the faces of the affected civilians becoming overcome with glee and relief as their fears became just powder of ash before scattering away, Mana's lips began whistling a gentle tune, locking every living soul around her in another illusion.</p><p>Where before Mana had an ability to control how many people she would cast one of her earliest illusions on, due to time spent mastering the jutsu, the Sweet Lullaby technique was much more chaotic, affecting people hearing the tune was the only option. At least the effects of the illusion were somewhat tolerable if not pleasant – being overcome by pleasant sensory overloads of every sense the target had, so intense was the sensation that the affected targets were completely subdued for a good minute or so. Only then did becoming accustomed to the feeling would have helped Index recover.</p><p>Mana's hands moved down to her hip, removing the "Hare" tag from her pouch and moving in. Gently, the magician navigated around the crawling and grunting civilians and homed in on the woman who had caused this town and Mana personally so much pain. Mana's hand extended forward, reaching in, it was like all time had stopped as the paper tag moved in closer to the subdued assassin.</p><p>The magician's eyes opened wide and her hand trembled. It stopped moving for just a fraction of a moment as her eyes caught a bright glimmer of Audra alloy orb present on a wand all too familiar to Mana. Sadly, a fraction of a moment was way too much for her opponent not to simply dispel the illusion by forcing her own chakra flow to blast the affected brain centers with chakra, enough of it to completely overwhelm Mana's illusion.</p><p>Mana saw the short blade coming her way. Seeing was not the same as being quick or lively enough to dodge it. Her movements were slow and clunky, every single twitch of her muscles was accompanied with cramps and pain from her grueling battle the last day. Seeing the glimmer of light at the blade's end, Mana realized that the assassin had once again outplayed her – she utilized every advantage, played every card just right and… The most infuriating part was… Despite all of what happened, despite Yushijin giving her a second chance, Mana still failed and would end up dead.</p><p>A strong push shoved Mana out of the way. The magician rolled and recovered relatively quickly, the adrenaline-fueled by her own fear of dying helped her push through the pain but the sight she was met with upon facing the threat again was so painful that for a brief moment the magician's consciousness just phased out.</p><p>Index had completed her thrust, her movements were sluggish and the weight of the body impaled on her blade had strangely dragged the assassin underneath. It was like all of Index's strength has been sapped without even requiring the "Hare" seal but the temporary success did not matter. As the injured Security officer rolled on her back with a kodachi sticking out from her heart, Mana rushed in.</p><p>Her mind was not where it was supposed to be. Complete, unbridled rage took over as her eyes whited out. The sight was all blurred, Mana could only vaguely perceive what was going on around her but she could perfectly lock on the key figures who were colorful and distinctive as never before. It was as if her rage made anything but the enemy fade out of view. Mana's usually reserved and gentle palm strikes were transformed into curled scratches and smacks that left wide gashes and nearly severed limbs as it raked through muscle and flesh alike. With a strong kick right at Index's face, the assassin got sent flying into a supporting pillar like a ragdoll before falling down and refusing to move.</p><p>"Toiya… Why?" Mana screamed out, kneeling by the injured officer who just blankly stared at the ceiling of the Tribunal hall depicting dignified artistic depictions of staunch war heroes and samurai standing tall in the face of tremendous adversity. Sights that were supposed to inspire courage before those facing the Tribunal faced justice, reminding of the strength of the human spirit of the past.</p><p>It was not that rage somehow empowered Mana, it was just that by dispelling a B-Rank genjutsu Index had drained herself of almost all of her chakra. The woman was almost at a complete physical peak, experienced and trained enough to be able to dispel illusions but by trying her luck against an advanced illusion, she overstretched and folded like an aspen facing a hurricane.</p><p>"The… Tag…" Toiya whimpered as even those two words came through extreme difficulty.</p><p>"Why? You had a family back home. Why did you do that? You had so much more to live for!" Mana growled almost feeling angry at the Security officer for pulling what she did. Bit by bit, her mind was whiting out again before moments of clarity returned. The magician's will and sanity had never been pushed to such an extreme, she had never lost so many people she intended to protect.</p><p>"I… Acted on my nature… Had no time to… Think… Like you... Said..." Toiya worked up a smile with her bloodied cheeks. Shortly after, clarity in her eyes faded away.</p><p>Without uttering a word or lifting her chin up, Mana walked up to the defeated assassin and placed the "Hare" tag on the center of her back before wrapping her arms in steel wire. After that, she recovered the wand that was used to a great psychological effect and partly cost the life of a young Shukuba mother. Mana was a mess long before coming here and facing Index, the moment she saw Shimo's memento flashing before her eyes, she just froze...</p><p>"You won't need to try that hard to prove her guilt…" Mana mumbled out before dragging the unconscious and beaten to a pulp assassin before the Tribunal council. The magician was unsure if it was her conscious mind or if her sanity had already fleeted away. She left the hall and shuffled to the staircase outside for a breath of fresh air. The girl's hand froze by the large door leading to the outside, she could hear the rustling of the townsfolk outside and she could remember what happened the last time she revealed herself in a busy street at the day's peak of activity.</p><p>The magician slammed her back against the corridor wall before collapsing into tears. The people running about, the medical personnel and the curious bystanders floated through her senses and memory like bad dreams of even worse days.</p><p>Index was captured at last. But by the time the Diamond Hand is done, will there be anyone left to enjoy the fresh air of freedom?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0406"><h2>406. Always, The Rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A person just died. Not just any officer determined to lay their life down for the sense of duty they felt in their heart. For the meaning of purpose that made their life feel fulfilled. What bullshit. As if life even needed justification… The person who laid their life down was a mother of a young family who probably had no reason to be in the Security Force while this conflict was going on at all.</p><p>And what did Mana know really? The magician stood back up as she wiped her tears and looked out through the window at the weak winter sunlight doing its best to melt through the lockdown of snow and ice. She never even thought that there would be a need to put the rookies on the front lines like this…</p><p>"Why? Why did you do that, Toiya-san?" Mana whispered to herself seeing the glass in front of her react to the warmth of her breath by steaming up.</p><p>Craving for the winter frost to refresh her thoughts again, the magician pressed her forehead against the window and closed her eyes. She used to be so confident and cheerful about everything. Whenever her fellow students in the Academy or her elders heard about Mana's dreams of changing the world, they always thought it was just a phase, just her immaturity, and childish nature. Was this the moment when it became clear to Mana too? Was this the moment when it was best for her to give up and change at last?</p><p>It was easy to think of changing the world when washing the dishes at Ichiraku or picking herbs was all that Team Oak had to do. When the worst that her failure would have brought was a smaller pay and a very irritated shop owner. Now it felt like it was always supposed to feel, this was the plain, which Mana had always dreamed to stand on. Hold her own against the cruel world she lived in, thinking that the act of standing in front of it would impress it enough to steer aside in the direction she chose for it.</p><p>Mana let her eyes briefly lift and narrow rays of light flood her senses that were becoming quite fond of the dark of her closed eyes. The sun was hiding behind the rainclouds and, little by little, it was becoming apparent that it would soon begin to rain.</p><p>It was so comforting returning back to the days where she could see the smiles of Shimo and Sugemi stretching out like the reverse arcs of a rainbow. When all three of them were about as young physically but much less experienced. There were times when it felt like things were much better when that experience was absent, even though the lack of experience felt like the problem at the moment. The more experienced Mana grew, the more mistakes she made and learned from, the more the gap between she was and where she wanted to go looked.</p><p>More people were flocking to the Tribunal building, a handful of Security officers rushed outside to keep them out as they were becoming braver the closer the rain got to them. Some of them gave in and decided that this Tribunal session was not important enough to get wet for, it did deserve a slow and attentive read on tomorrow's paper at best. Others only became bolder as Shukuba Security increased in presence.</p><p>This would have been a great moment for a hero to stand up and face the crowd. Talk to them and calm their fears, give them something to satisfy their curiosity and ensure them that justice will be served to those they feared. Plenty of those people craved violent penance for the Diamond Hand, even those who aided Security in uncovering their ploys and unraveling the organization, a hero would have reasoned with them as well. A hero that Mana wanted to become but could not muster up the strength to measure up to. Mana's arms and legs slipped down the windowsill, she lacked the strength to do her duty as a hero.</p><p>Would they even want to see a spoiled crybaby who couldn't even protect those closest to her? Who dropped all of her cleverly put up defenses and halted all of her strategies after just being shown a little tease of her friend's memory. She was so hopeless, a little slip of Shimo's legacy and she froze up completely.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes again, her mind began to close in and implode on itself as the magician focused on the chaotic soup of her own feelings. Meditation once brought back her will to live when her body was just about gone and ready to move on. Maybe it could help her now as well?</p><p>Nothing but emptiness followed by a singular source of drops greeted Mana. After going through so much in such a short period, Mana's heart appeared to be completely empty with nothing but a raindrop looping its primitive journey from forming to falling to its death or joining something greater than it was, depended on one's point of view. She went from feeling determined to scared, confused to grieving, absolutely furious to blank…</p><p>A wannabe hero of an empty heart. Was that all she was? The session must have resumed in the Tribunal. A pair of officers walked past Mana, carrying Index's unconscious and bloodied body, still tied up and with the sealing tag present, treating her like a sensitive weapon of mass destruction, probably for the better.</p><p>The Tribunal session must have continued if the hall was back to working, back to reason, this woman did not belong in a Tribunal session, she belonged in the hospital before being placed in a containment facility until her case could be readied to be brought in front of the Tribunal proper. The war against the Diamond Hand continued, Toiya's lifeless body was also carried away.</p><p>What should Mana do now? For the first time in a while, her mind was as empty as her heart which decided to reboot itself after being filled and spilling over the overflowing feelings that spawned inside it. Before she took action, she made mistakes sometimes, she was too weak certainly, inexperienced most likely, but she always had a plan. She was Nakotsumi Mana. Everyone she worked with always looked at her for a plan or a skeleton of one that anyone with ideas could give flesh and breathe life into.</p><p>Not anymore. It should have been Mana who was laying on that stretcher all covered up with bloody blankets. Toiya should have come back to her family tonight, she had so much more to live for. Then again, such was the cruelty of the world Mana wanted to change. Even though no one deserved death, it was often those that needed to live the most that ended up dying. At least the part of the world Mana felt disdain for stayed consistent with its rules…</p><p>The Security was clever about it, they did not move the two through the main entrance, instead choosing to carry them through the back. At least the multiple carriages that the Security came in will come in handy.</p><p>What now? Ring Ring was still at large. He was someone responsible for the violent crime that was not purely assassination or economical in nature, even though Index did describe him as a serial murderer of some kind. A local celebrity of the criminal world. That made Ring Ring not a person to be taken lightly and one that needed to be captured before Shukuba Reformation truly could be called successful.</p><p>Normally Mana's head would be swarming with ideas. She knew all about Raitoncide's abilities, she faced him once. He was truly formidable with his Lightning Release stored seals, at any given moment he could have been charging them even more so time was a concern, not to mention the time limit that Yushijin imposed on her.</p><p>Mana felt tired, both emotionally and physically. Her sores and busted bones lit up with phantom pain with even the faintest thought of facing off against Raitoncide again. She had no right to be careless again, not after Burgoniya and Toiya both lost their lives. The magician could not foolishly rush to her death like she did before, she now felt the weight of all the lives lost on her shoulders. The thought of those lives materializing as objects with finite weight and purpose to them disgusted Mana and made her nauseous.</p><p>Even if a single thought of facing against the Diamond Hand felt like an impenetrable wall, a trial of fire to a girl made of ice, Mana felt duty-bound to see this matter to the end now. Would she not even if Toiya and Burgoniya were alive? Given the impressive blows she has taken from the enemy side, probably she would have entrusted this matter to the newly reformed Security Force. Then again, this was just senseless what-ifs.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes again, listening in to the sounds of madness around her, both the boisterous quarrels of the civilians with the Security Force outside and the procession of the Tribunal session in the nearby hall. There was no doubt about it, if she faced against Raitoncide by herself he would be prepared for her. He would kill her and while the idea of dying offered an easy yet morbid way out, the duty Mana felt to do right by her fallen comrades prevailed over the highly disturbing lows that her mind wandered to when the girl ended up failing the people dear to her or falling short in any manner of speech.</p><p>If she brought the Shukuba Security with her, someone would die again. Just another dead person on Mana's already beaten and dragged through the dirt mental state. The magician felt bad before when Burgoniya's death was the only one weighing her down, now she had to actively combat the surging emotions that demanded something rash but ultimately stupid of her. Hence the magician not moving for a while off of the windowsill providing her sanctuary in a rather extreme moment of gloom.</p><p>Looking at her empty heart as the drops of rain behind the cold window Mana was pressing her back to made raindrops materialize inside her mind as well. Mana loved the rain, this state of her Ego meditational state felt so soothing and comforting in a moment when even death sounded like a welcome relief. The magician laid down and stretched her hands out, trying to absorb all of the raindrops, trying to soak in with whatever was pouring down inside her own heart. She wanted to hear every single raindrop as it hit the edge of whatever she was floating on inside her hollow mind.</p><p>Screw Raitoncide, screw Donyoku, she could have just remained like this for hours. Just laying on her back, relaxed inside her own mind and letting in only those elements of the outside world that helped her stay afloat. Just the rain. Always the rain.</p><p>Mana always liked the rain. She pushed her black locks away from her face as it almost made her nose itch for real. A ray of light in the shape of an upside arc burst from below, blinded by the light Mana sat up and realized she was in her room. Just like after one of her shows, after a good shower when she sat on her beds watching the rain pour down her home window… Sometimes she felt hopeless, sometimes her hands sank down and sadness wrapped its ugly, wrinkly and long fingers all around caging Mana like a canary.</p><p>"Move," Mana mumbled. Her eyes opened up as she took a hop off the windowsill. If she forgot how amazing the rain was if she forgot how soft the home bed she sat on felt if she forgot how much fun it was watching Kiyomi tease Meiko or Sugemi ramble about his manga was all that would be left was all the people she had failed. If this conflict with the Diamond Hand was a war, Mana was a soldier. There was more to her than the people she let down, she was not the sum of her failures, not just that anyways.</p><p>If she let these failures consume her if she sank into the sea of tears that was filling her empty heart without finding a smile to light her way she'd lose that war. She started that war so that the people of Shukuba could live freely so that the children of this town could watch the grace of raindrops running down their windows in safety. Mana was so determined to give up her own life for this freedom that she almost felt disappointed it did not come to that.</p><p>She was a soldier, she still had her experience, her unique way of viewing the world and what the Diamond Hand fired back at her would not keep her down. Soldiers covered up their wounds and kept going. Heroes were nothing else but soldiers who were really good at hiding their wounds. Step by step, Mana walked back to the hall where she had lost another friend in.</p><p>A good twenty minutes later, the door opened with Shira and another officer leading Muriya and Thumb out of the hall. The party stopped temporarily after seeing Mana, they were clearly noting how distraught she looked and Shira did not have to look back far to recall how deeply affected the magician was of losing people.</p><p>"Muriya is being sent to Eden Containment Facility for seven years," Shira spoke up as he continued his duty to lead the Pinky Ring back to the local containment facility inside the Shukuba Security HQ until he is ready to be relocated.</p><p>"What about his family?" Mana asked, looking back at Muriya's wife and kids who were scurrying behind the party. Judging from their expressions what had transpired inside that hall had left quite an effect on them but the kids were looking up at Mana with a strangely happy expression. The magician knew those eyes, she herself used to adopt them when reading greatly exaggerated stories about heroes in history books.</p><p>"Heroes are just soldiers who are really good at hiding their wounds." Mana thought to herself as she forced a smile for the pair. These two just saw a woman attempting to murder their father, someone dying while attempting to stop her and Mana losing control after multiple failures at besting the murderer and yet they were looking at her like a hero and the only thing in their mind appeared to be relief and admiration.</p><p>These two may have been the greatest heroes of them all…</p><p>"They aren't really facing any charges. It's up to them, ultimately." Shira explained.</p><p>"And I get to finish what you started." Thumb smacked Mana's shoulder in a manner that reminded greatly of how Meiko used to do it, except this time Mana did not have to worry about her shoulder being dislocated after the gesture.</p><p>"We convinced the council that the woman is essential to the investigation. She will continue to cooperate with the Security Force and the council allowed to remain in the town as long as she does so." Shira nodded with a face that suggested discontent about further cooperation with a Ring of the Diamond Hand. It was only because she was so useful this far that the man even allowed her so close to him and potentially working together with him.</p><p>"They did not specify it had to be related to the Diamond Hand too so… I'm holding my fingers!" Thumb joked, poking Shira's elbows with one of her own.</p><p>"What about you three?" Mana turned with concern at Muriya's family. Falling behind slightly so she could speak to Muriya's wife.</p><p>"We want to be there with Muriya." The woman answered without skipping a beat. It was quite evident that if the matter required it, she'd start committing crimes if that meant being placed alongside her husband.</p><p>"I've been in Eden once. I know someone working there so I can help you get accommodations there. Eden is not only a containment facility but also a sanctuary for important people that require protection. I am sure that someone related to someone who cooperated with the bringing down of the Diamond Hand will find a place there with a friendly letter explaining things." Mana assured the woman feeling quite glad that she actually did know someone on the inside. Aburame Yanagi could have helped the family getting a place there while Sugemi could have made sure that no harm came to them.</p><p>By the time that the session was over and the Security Force left the building to the relocated carriages, the crowd outside had caught wind of the relocation and followed the vehicles. Mana took a pair of deep breaths before tapping Shira's shoulder as a passing of the baton sign of trust.</p><p>"I'm going to give these people something, should give you guys enough space to roll out." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Are you sure about it?" Shira raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"The public must never stop seeing the Shukuba Security as heroes. Never." Mana nodded before seeing the carriage slowly take off and following it to the nearest turn with her eyes and facing the crowd.</p><hr/><p>The way back to Shukuba Security HQ could have been more comfortable. The cold and the slowly dying out rain did not make it simple for the magician to return to her comrades. The talk with the village officials may have gone better. They could not have missed out on how crappy Mana looked but she managed to push it off to be just a side result of the big scuffle that occurred during the Tribunal session.</p><p>"So how did it go?" Thumb raised an eyebrow, preparing her mouth for an upcoming cringe-fest as if knowing that Mana would reveal the talk has been a tremendous failure.</p><p>"Your "no comment" advice was pretty useful. Talking about the Tribunal session, the role of the few Diamond Hand Rings that aided the investigation and all that was easy. Informing them about what happened with the stolen town budget was alright, even though I did not have all the details but… Talking about the losses during the session was…" Mana stopped to swallow the massive gulp of painful feelings that crawled up her throat from somewhere deep below as she spoke up about Toiya's sacrifice.</p><p>"A no-comment type of topic…" Thumb finished Mana's sentence with calm eyes, managing to step over her indecent desire to laugh at the magician in the face of a loss. Maybe the fact that Toiya gave up her life to protect Mana's and ensure Index's capture was exactly what helped Thumb to step over her usual self and her usual instincts.</p><p>"Yeah." Mana nodded. "So… Where's everybody?"</p><p>Sora stepped up. "Muriya and his family are safely contained in their cells. They will be transferred to Eden tomorrow. Index is still tied up, tagged and knocked out. She was looked at by a medical professional who said she should make it through this night and tomorrow or in the nearest future we should transfer her to the Shukuba arrest house until she can go through proper Tribunal procedure and be moved to wherever she is sent to."</p><p>His stance may have been a bit lax and rebellious but he did pretty much nail all the details Mana hoped to hear. It appeared that this stage of the conflict was already over and things were clear to look on ahead.</p><p>"Alright, we can then move on to Ring Ring." Mana noted, making Shira, Sora, and Thumb all direct their attention to Mana. Multiple officers the magician could not recognize who were brought into the force through common experience and recommendations of one or more of the rookies also lifted their heads looking up to Mana.</p><p>"I wish I could help you guys… Even if I know for sure I can't mention his name, there's not too much I can tell about him. Apparently, he was some bigshot serial killer before he was hired to replace the last Ring Ring. There were huge feuds about taking him in, Middle Finger did not want him in charge of the roughhousing Ring Finger. Serial killers may not necessarily make fine arsonists, racketeers and the like if you catch my cold." Thumb sat down and relaxed in one of the free chairs by her side.</p><p>"And yet it appears that something convinced him otherwise…" Sora mentioned the obvious when he looked at Mana's reaction to Thumb's vague hints.</p><p>"Ring Ring was an odd guy. He acted kind of girly, his hairdo was very pompous and he was not the guy who could hide in plain view that well. He also did not like Index at all. When she picked me up to finish me off, he blasted at her back attempting to kill us both. One of the reasons his attack was so effective was because I expected the attack much later and could not react to it when it came." Mana recalled, looking down in embarrassment. Recalling the royal beating she received in the hands of both Rings was not an easy experience, especially when her self-confidence was already at an all-time low.</p><p>"Someone who targets his own companions? That certainly affirms the theory that he was the killer hired not too long before Thumb's defection." Shira nodded, scratching his chin. While the young man looked like a competent officer he did not appear to be enjoying this more thought based part of the job.</p><p>"Do the Diamond Hand make it a habit of hating their own kind?" Sora raised an eyebrow looking at Thumb. Mana could not help but notice how casually the youth accepted the criminal into his fold, he certainly took less convincing than Shira.</p><p>"It depends. Most of us are just people united under one flag. None of us were friends although for a while there was a sense of balance and cold, emotionless work-based environment. This new Ring Ring did shake things up a bit, even though not even before we would have taken a blade to the heart for one of our own…" Thumb shrugged.</p><p>Shira burnt the woman with an absolutely infuriated stare to which she responded with an apologetic gesture and a shrug. While Mana did not enjoy this comparison coming only hours after the event actually took place, she did want to hear all that the burglar had to say.</p><p>"They did not seem to wait too long before branding you and Pinky as traitors…" Sora noticed.</p><p>"Yeah. I knew almost instantly when I came to the HQ that I would not be waltzing back even with the jewels in hand. Middle Finger does not mind failure all that much but he is not overly fond of someone not following his orders." Thumb nodded without a care on her face.</p><p>"When I laid knocked out, I thought I was dying… I heard a name of sorts… Maybe I was just delirious but it could not have been, I have never heard that name before. It was… Raitoncide." Mana mentioned a very distinctive memory alongside the tons upon tons of painful and suppressed fearful and painful nightmares present whenever the magician trodden back to that period of time in her mind.</p><p>"Raitoncide, are you sure?" Shira freaked out.</p><p>"That's a name we haven't heard in a while." Sora smiled with a hint of irony on his face.</p><p>"I can neither confirm or deny that name, for I am still under the taboo seal…" Thumb shrugged with some mocking tones in her statement.</p><p>"If you can add nothing useful to the conversation you would be wise to stay quiet!" Shira growled before turning at Mana to explain. "Raitoncide was indeed a rather infamous local figure. He was a killer who operated with a perfect rate of success and did not leave anything behind to trace him with. He is a complete mystery to us and multiple people got killed when the public started a witch hunt of their own."</p><p>"When the killings matching his profile ceased, it was reported that the official version of the Security force was that the public must have accidentally executed the real Raitoncide. A bit of dark humor does not seem to evade our little pleasure town." Sora scratched his stubble.</p><p>"Knowing how corrupt the Security Force was at the time, if Raitoncide got introduced into the Diamond Hand they would have stopped the investigation and covered up any additional killings even if they were present." Mana grabbed the bull by the horns almost immediately.</p><p>"Middle Finger would not have tolerated a Ring of his off doing something messy and grim like that. The order of him stopping his streak of murders must have been a condition of him being allowed to join and his trail being covered up." Thumb spun around on the chair while looking at her finger she raised up like a little child.</p><p>"I have fought him. His style is quite flawed as he can run out of juice easily if the battle lasts a bit longer. How exactly did he evade capture so successfully?" Mana felt surprised that Raitoncide was as successful as he was given his childlike and carefree attitude as far as she remembered.</p><p>"He required two skills that are basically witchcraft: arson table and forensics to work perfectly. He charred the wounds of his victims or burnt the surrounding area up. All that arson specialists could tell the Security back then, was basically what they could have seen already – that an arson happened." Sora sighed with frustration. Mana had already experienced the distrust that the Security had for their forensics specialists – shoving all of their nosy recruits there to make them lose hope.</p><p>If only Burgoniya was still alive…</p><p>"If I faced off against him, I am sure that I could beat him. Not in my current state though. I need myself at my peak reflexes and physical condition if I am to dodge natural lightning bolts that he forms… He will be weaker now than he was when I fought him the first time." Mana scratched her own chin while she pouted her lips hard – telltales signs of her sinking deep into her thoughts.</p><p>"How so?" Thumb wondered.</p><p>"He charges his seals up himself. He did not strike me as a powerful ninjutsu user or someone with tremendous chakra resources. It is quite likely that it would take him actual years to charge his seals to where they were then, more likely than not he is using natural electricity and lightning from storms to charge up his seals." Mana snapped her fingers, it appeared that Shira had figured out Mana's point at about the same time.</p><p>"Amazing, so if we can locate a place that gets hit by lightning the most often we are likely to close up to him. From there on you can find him using your chakra sensory." He completed voicing Mana's plan before the magician did, sadly he was a little bit off.</p><p>"No. That's what I would have normally done but too many people got hurt by me doing things how I usually do them. I need to make sure that not a single officer gets hurt or has a hole blasted through them by a supercharged lightning bolt beam." Mana shook her head. "I need you guys to buy me something, do you think you can get enough of this to surround a large building?"</p><p>The Security officers observed Mana scribbling a name of a material onto a piece of paper before Shira picked it up after being offered it. The eyes of the Security officer quickly ran down the paper. Then they moved up to meet Mana's gaze.</p><p>"What is this?" he wondered.</p><p>"Lubber, a special type of rubber used on training dummies that ninja train with. They are built especially resistant to heat and lightning and are very difficult to damage by Fire or Lightning Release jutsu. They are also meant to help develop new techniques by attracting electricity and heat to them. I need an actual ton of the material." Mana explained.</p><p>Sora ran out of the room, heading into the archive room before Shira and Thumb kept looking at each other with confusion, trying to figure out where they could buy something like this.</p><p>"Black market dealers usually deal excess, stolen or defective ninja tools and materials. I may shake some old trees and see what falls out." Thumb shrugged but, from her expression, it was clear that she was not that confident in her own success.</p><p>"Take Sora and some men with you, it will be dangerous for you to approach your old contacts now," Mana advised.</p><p>"You kidding? They'll see those guys from a mile away. They don't really give a shit about criminal politics. As long as I can pay the price, they won't give a shit if I'm still aligned with the Diamond Hand or not." Thumb snickered at the very thought of it.</p><p>"I will take some men and we'll run a check across the town stores, maybe someone will deal it. It is likely that we will find some of it, or scrape it off actual training dummies, what is less likely is the quantity you are asking for." Shira nodded with a troubled face.</p><p>After voicing their honest thoughts of Mana's plan, the duo split and got to work before the night came. Then again, it was not like Shira and Thumb let something like the end of their workday interrupt their work…</p><p>Sora finally appeared from the archives with a file in his hand. He flipped through it before placing the file on the table and pointing to a line in it.</p><p>"I've checked some of the old investigation files that had things to do with Raitoncide. Most of the reports were filed by Itemi." Sora informed the magician, looking quite happy with himself that he managed to gather this information this quickly.</p><p>"Good, in that case, I'm off to the hospital. It's been entire days since Itemi-san was skewered. He may not be ready to return to action but he will definitely be awake by now. Maybe he can give me something that will help us find the location we'll need to insulate…" Mana reported to the officer despite having no obligation to do so.</p><p>"Sounds… Sound." Sora nodded before the two parted ways.</p><p>The blood on Toiya's sheet may not have dried out yet and the Shukuba Security was hard at work after the enigmatic Raitoncide.</p>
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<a name="section0407"><h2>407. Black 'N White Intermission</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All sorts of doubts plagued Mana on her short carriage ride through the muddy winter streets of Shukuba. Would the Lubber work like it was supposed to and nullify Raitoncide's ninjutsu? Did Mana understand his abilities correctly? Would the Security even manage to obtain everything they had to find? Just how exactly would she go about finding the once famous serial killer.</p><p>"I will take you to the hospital but after that, my workday's over. You will need to either catch a ride yourself or go back on foot." The coachman cleared his throat before letting Mana know.</p><p>"That's just fine." The magician smiled, trying to not telegraph just how hard the doubts eroding her from the inside were affecting her. She had hoped to hear something troubling from the man based on his worried face as he leaned back to inform Mana about that through a narrow sliding opening between the inside of the carriage and the driver's seat. Turned out his worries were not that troubling to Mana.</p><p>The driver undoubtedly had expected it to trouble the magician. There may have been a considerable distance between the hospital and the Security Force HQ. Knowing the doubts and the stakes on Mana's mind, going back on foot was the least of her worries.</p><p>"It may have been wise to go there tomorrow. I'm doing the best I can but the visiting hours are over at five." The man warned the magician that even if the first bit of information did not bother her, it may not have been all of her problems. Still, Mana could not have cared less about this bureaucracy thing. She would get inside Itemi's ward one way or another. People's lives were at stake.</p><p>"You're quite the worrier, sir." Mana grinned as her doubts and fears got pushed away by the spontaneous conversation with this coachman. She almost blurted out "mother hen" instead of that other thing she called him, thankfully she had enough experience of knowing just how much the man may have felt antagonized and flustered by her calling him that.</p><p>It was interesting how the language worked. Two separate words meaning almost the exact same thing would have had a fundamentally different effect, just because Mana was a teenage girl calling a grown man those words. The one she used was okay but the one she almost ended up using before getting stuck momentarily and changing the word she was about to say would have ended up saying the same thing but with offensive undertones. Knowing her situation Mana needed to make an enemy out of a coachman the least right now.</p><p>"I just get a lot of flack for something like this from the Security. I couldn't help but notice you're high-ranking from your uniform. Those guys let their rank get a bit over their head, no offense." The man started talking quite extensively for a coachman. Mana couldn't say anything precise about it, she hadn't met enough coachmen to tell if this man's behavior was off or not.</p><p>What did immediately tip the magician off was how the surroundings dimmed around her, she was not using her windows due to them being unclean and the constantly splattering rain and mud making it tough to perceive anything clearly, but the difference in the light coming through became apparent almost in an instant.</p><p>Mana laid down on her seat before double kicking the window into smallest bits and pushing her aching body off of the seat. The magician grabbed the edge of the carriage's roof with her fingers, using the momentum to rotate her body around and make her land on top of the carriage roof. A pillar of lightning burst through the carriage, the sheer blunt force of the explosion tossed Mana aside sliding through the mud and snow on her knees, opening some old wounds.</p><p>While the alleyway that the carriage was in was sunken in darkness and shadows of the surrounding tall buildings, the resulting flame from the explosion and the superheated debris of the carriage blazing up revealed the magician a large number of men surrounding her from most pathways leading in and out of the alleyway.</p><p>"You may be late for your hospital appointment after all. Don't feel sad, we may just end up sending you to the hospital basement the quicker way!" the coachman yelled out, somehow managing to escape the blazing carriage. It must have happened during Mana's quick escape from the vehicle upon the first spark of suspicion heating up in her chest.</p><p>Within moments, the magician's sensory wrapped around the massive crowd of men and women present, even feeling an eerily familiar signature atop one of the building balconies. It would have been foolish to attempt to kill a ninja through sheer manpower alone. At some point, ninja reached the level where no number of normal people could have overpowered them, stronger yet became so awesome that not even numbers of ninja could have matched them. Those higher classes required a ninja of matching skill to face them in order for them to be stopped.</p><p>"You're wasting your storage, Raitoncide-san!" Mana yelled out. She wanted the man to know fear before he fled. To know that she was both aware of his skills and his true identity.</p><p>The whole army of the Diamond Hand members, possibly a pair of hundreds of them, charged at the magician with only the alleyway restricting their flow. Her wand flashed in the magician's hand as she began whistling, making the surrounding assailants collapse on the ground overcome by pleasurable sensations. Mana began dispatching of her disabled attackers one by one, each one taking not more than one or two palm strikes that evenly spread Mana's superhuman strength over their bodies.</p><p>The massive force flowing through their bodies tore fractured bones and internal organs incapacitating the unlucky assailants for good. The alleyway was dark enough for sight alone to not be enough to avoid all of their attacks but Mana did not rely on sight alone. By closing her eyes she allowed all of the sensory input focus on her hearing, touch and chakra sensory alone. Hearing the attackers step up to her, hearing their peers scream in pain as the pleasure of Mana's illusion was changed by the pain of their own allies stepping over them like charging cattle.</p><p>The training in the Sun Disc had served Mana well. Back then, even depowered she managed to fight off about three hundred of martial artists of lesser skill. While these Diamond Hand assassins and rough-housers from both the Index and Ring Fingers of the Diamond Hand were more skilled, stronger and faster than those poor people, Mana was much stronger now as well.</p><p>Those few that the magician could not get to in time, were stomped over by their own kind. An odd pain began rising up from inside of her lower abdomen, her joints began feeling sore and Mana noticed the speed of her movements plummeting. Her chakra resources did not have any time to recover since she wasted quite a lot fighting Index and Raitoncide the first time, then the encounter back in the Tribunal building…</p><p>"Shit…" Mana realized that killing her was not Raitoncide's intention. Where the Middle Ring viewed his lesser-ranked thugs as colleagues and protected them from needless fights, now that the organization was split, Raitoncide was more than willing ruthlessly sending them to their demises just for the sake of weakening Mana for their upcoming encounter.</p><p>The pain of billions of little needles penetrating her body and shaking her to her very core crouched Mana to the ground. Ring Ring had launched an attack of some sort towards her, incapacitating a good handful of his own men in the process but he did not care. As long as Mana suffered, as long as she struggled and broke a sweat…</p><p>"Magician's Touch Jutsu!" Mana yelled out as the body piling assassins and their continuous reckless attempts at stabbing Mana through the bodies of their own allies was becoming dangerous. She quite enjoyed being closed in a box and the box being skewered with swords on the stage but not in such a chaotic scuffle.</p><p>The assailants all scattered across the alleyway, blasting through the walls and breaking balconies that stopped their flights back from the Lightning Release shock Mana let out. It was odd that her technique was not stopped by Raitoncide. He must not have had it in him to muster up a higher than B-Rank Lightning Release jutsu to neutralize and absorb Mana's like before, either that or he kept those resources for future use. That was useful to know…</p><p>Feeling the taste of blood in her mouth and sweat running down her forehead and dripping off her dark hair, Mana rose back off of her busted knees and started working on neutralizing the attacking force. With each passing moment, she took down a good ten to twenty men and women, not just the muscle-headed rough-housers from Raitoncide's Finger but also the trained assassins from Index's as well.</p><p>This was just about enough of that… Mana kicked off of the face of one of the men charging for her with a short sword to leap up and stick to the wall where she could scale up and reach Raitoncide. He would not stay neutral in this and just lob his thunderbolts at her again. Within the time that would have been unperceivable to the normal people or lesser skilled ninja, Mana leaped off the wall and activated her Mystical Wings jutsu, propelling herself at her opponent. Even if he chose to interrupt her technique, he could not just neutralize it like he used to do before, Mystical Wings was a Wind Release technique which did not possess the same neutralizing properties of the Lightning Release.</p><p>Waving to Mana like he was mocking her, Raitoncide disappeared in sparks of lightning that then crackled through the steel railings and disappeared somewhere alongside his horde of Diamond Hand goons. Mana would not get to catch a breather as a strong force pushed her through the nearby window of the balcony she was resting on and inside the abandoned building that was in the alleyway.</p><p>Shadowy blurs danced across the dim room, they were stealthy and capable of hiding well. Had they not entered the narrow streaks of light that were coming off from the other building right opposite to the one where Mana was forced into, they'd have remained traceable only through their minuscule chakra signatures. Holding her sore ribs and occasionally stretching out her numb limbs, Mana prepared to push back against the Finger of assassins who felt vengeful for what the magician did to their Ring.</p><p>It did not take a genius to notice that more than half of the force that Ring Ring had brought along dispersed. If Mana were to guess judging by the chakra signatures, stances and movements of the shadowy figures sticking to the darker corners of the abandoned building she was in, these were purely the men and women of Index's assassination Finger.</p><p>Mana moved her body aside to avoid a divekick from a chakra signature rushing in from above. A quick movement swatting her hand aside dispatched of the assailant by smashing Mana's wand straight into their surprised face. These assassins may have been trained to fight weaker ninja but they could not have encountered a sensor before, even if they did, they would not have been someone who skipped multiple stages of their growth like Mana did to achieve heights years beyond their reach.</p><p>A flurry of Mana's kicks continued to thin the advancing herd. The magician's legs moved fast enough to completely evade the assassins' perception making their knockouts a total surprise for them as they advanced attempting to surround her for cheap shallow cuts and bruises. These assailants did not fight fostering hopes of victory, they fought to bleed Mana dry so that she was in no condition to fight Ring Ring, that much became evident long ago.</p><p>The remaining fifty continued to swarm the building, not only that but now their herds have thinned enough for them to reveal their ranged weaponry, firing buzzing series of kunai fire at Mana from the darkest corners of the room. These kunai were factory bunch, almost no chakra presence weaved into their steel at all. That made them not too damaging and dangerous to stronger ninja but very difficult to read properly if one fought through sensory alone.</p><p>Mana waved her wand. Spinning around as she did so, the magician created a weak vortex of Wind Release chakra that deflected the series of kunai coming at her from multiple directions before they could cause her more cuts. Even if she may have been good enough to avoid being hit by any stray blades before, in her current state she could not rely on her experience of what her skill was once. She was still recovering and the battle she went through before was beginning to wear on her on top of that.</p><p>Grabbing one of the deflected kunai as it rotated in mid-air, Mana rushed ahead, she needed to leave outside. This place was too tricky to fight in, too many shadowy corners, too many exposed construction details, steel rods and potential hiding spots for her trained opponents. Even if the assassins rushed in by the handfuls in attempts to stop her, Mana's wand dislocated their joints and incapacitated them by smashing them aside while her kunai swipes cut them down with more grace than the blunt chakra channeling tool in her other hand.</p><p>Keeping all of them alive was enough pain as it was in her current condition.</p><p>The Audra wand was longer, that helped Mana deflect the projectiles that the assassins choosing to stay at long range and try to snipe her from vantage points used or defend herself while her kunai did the dirty deed. A good five assassins fell as Mana closed the length of the lower floor, looking desperately for the way out as the lower floors lacked the brief rays of light that the upper floor offered. Descending there may have been a mistake but Mana needed to keep moving. If she stood still those guys would surround her and leave even more painful memories to recover from that would trouble her, even more, when she came for Raitoncide eventually.</p><p>The Audra wand crackled with lightning, Mana swiped it at the sides firing off barrages of small spheres of Lightning Release chakra at her opponents. The brief periods of illumination that the lightning provided her helped the visual aspect of her senses and helped her dispatch of the more elusive and well-hidden long-range assassins. By the time Mana noticed that the assassins finally managed to surround her as they originally intended – there was just a dozen of them left and they were not quite surrounding Mana at that point.</p><p>Mana was letting them surround her to keep them all in a single, visible circle around her.</p><p>One of the local townsfolk yelled out loud at the vagabonds that must have gathered in the nearby abandoned building. He saw some faint flashes of light and took it for the homeless starting evening fires to warm them up before sleep. Homeless did not have a habit of busting down walls though. After a masked man flew out through a busted wall and a young girl covered in dirt and blood leaped out from the hole, carefully maneuvering around the busted up railings before landing on the ground and running away incredibly fast, the complainant realized that this was no ordinary case of the homeless disturbing his evening.</p><p>This was unfortunate… Mana checked some of her newly opened wounds, the grazes on her knees that she should have augmented and protected against in hindsight, if only it was not for her paranoid dislike for augmenting her endurance, and several other cuts and bruises that the luckier assailants managed to land.</p><p>Her wounds were minuscule, she did well with avoiding anything grievous, let alone something that would have convinced her not to start trouble with Raitoncide tomorrow. Problem was that she spent plenty of chakra to fend off the assailants. She foolishly believed that everyone Raitoncide had brought with him would attempt to kill her as some desperate attempt to end her life. Raitoncide was cleverer than Mana gave him credit for, he retreated half of his force after fleeing himself, leaving only those whom Shukuba Security would have captured anyway, after probing Index's mind.</p><p>By tomorrow, some of her chakra should return but she would still be weakened compared even to the state she was in when she fought Raitoncide just now. Regardless of that, he must have counted on Mana facing him fair and square, fight him to protect her pride as a Konoha ninja, endangering the lives of her fellow officers foolishly. He had another thing coming tomorrow. His attempt at being clever will backfire if Shira and Thumb manage to get their hands on enough Lubber.</p><p>The last thing Mana could do was not to rush to the hospital and strain her body even more. Traveling at a casual pace she had reached the place well after the visiting hours had ended. Regardless of that, she decided to test her luck some.</p><p>"Ma'am, I need to see the Shukuba Security officer that's been injured during the robbery of the town's budget funds." She asked the nurse sitting on the first floor nicely.</p><p>"I'm sorry, the visiting hours are over. Please try tomorrow morning, nine to five." The woman responded just as nicely. It did not look like even Mana's Shukuba Security uniform would have made the difference. This was just not her day…</p><p>Moving into the alleyway where she and Thumb were once attacked by Bakku and his hired crew, Mana rushed up the hospital wall using the Academy Art of Tree Climbing technique, using the natural darkness of the evening shadows as her cover. At least she lucked out there. After managing to slip by a pair of floors of windows undetected, Mana slipped through into Itemi's ward, finding the man where he was back when the magician was first visiting him.</p><p>"When my eyes tried catching glimpses of the shrouds of the night's black evening gown flashing outside my window, hoping that the drugs that numbed by pain would make the old bitch appear as presentable as eight cups of sake would have, I did not expect to see Konoha's Sorceress. Prancing around, like a vengeful banshee looking to scream my ears blood-red for the prank I pulled on her that put me here. It looked like tonight's drug trip would be just like your ordinary workday – not remembering if it was the empty bottle or the woman in your room who knocked you out last night." Itemi's voice informed Mana that her trip here might not have been as fruitless as her deepest doubts kept scolding her it would have been.</p>
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<a name="section0408"><h2>408. Greased Lightning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I'd appreciate if you toned your voice down a bit, Itemi-san. People who are allowed to visit usually do not enter through the window." Mana noted to her surprised and hazed person of interest.</p><p>"Seeing people who should not present in places they are very much present in makes a man question if he is insane. It just so happened just I may have been insane when I decided to shoot series of blades at a bunch of people robbing this town all by my lonesome. Given my impressive track of insane thoughts on sane mind, it was especially difficult to understand if I was sane or not…" Itemi lamented, toning his voice ever so slightly but still husking it out far too loud for Mana's liking.</p><p>The magician approached him and sat down by his side, calming down the pair of awakened patients present in Itemi's ward at the same time who were woken up by the disturbance. Another pair was still resting despite it, they may have been knocked out too good for awakening. Had Mana's sense of smell been intact, the smell of medication would have told her that information, for now, just glimpses of their baby-like sleep would have sufficed.</p><p>"This is not about that. I did feel a bit betrayed about you running off on your own like that as I would not have expected the best paperwork guy on the Force being the loosest cannon as well, that being said, I am here because of the paperwork you used to file while Okasune-san did the dirty work…" Mana clarified it.</p><p>"I was a tough bastard. It may not have looked like it but… I was sitting on drugs and alcohol, my rope of life all throughout the cold winter road. It would have been tough numbing the pain for a guy to whom painkilling food pills were nothing else but candy with the goop that Shukuba Security called coffee." Itemi grumbled, scratching his floaty and tired looking eyes.</p><p>Mana caught on what the officer meant to say with that. Itemi was certainly an oddball given that he communicated in this odd manner but he was not outright insane. His body had built up such a tremendous tolerance for painkillers during his career of self-prescribed cures of all ills in the shape of elixirs and food pills that only an elephant-sized dosage would have done the deed of numbing his pain in the hospital. That meant that Itemi would be in the constant floaty and drugged state throughout their conversation.</p><p>"We're chasing after Raitoncide. You filed plenty of crime scenes, you recorded and booked all of testimonies and evidence, such as it was. We're flying on instinct but I am leaving after tomorrow and I have until then to end this. If I don't catch a guy that Shukuba Security failed to find for months, possibly years." Mana tried to keep it short but given how much Itemi had sat out due to his hospitalization it was quite difficult.</p><p>"It was foolish of her to come here. She could have easily just scanned all of the reports, all of the documentation, she saw enough of it to notice that I was involved in doing most of it. Not that there was much to find. When a guy fires off superheated lightning bolts and fries everything he touches, only so much evidence is left behind…" Itemi growled in pain. Sitting up escalated the conflict between the overdose of painkillers and the sharp pain.</p><p>"So all the bodies were incinerated?" Mana scratched her chin deep in thought. She found it hard to believe that someone could have left not a single trace being as careless and pompous of his own power as Raitoncide was. The killer had made a fatal mistake in assuming he was the only side of the conflict making plays and moving their figures across the board. A person who always stays one-step behind could not have fooled the Security for this long unless he was merely lucky.</p><p>"It was the stuff nightmares of drug trips were made of. Talking about this while high on painkillers may not be the best thing in hindsight. It's like yelling about the goods on sale before the person asking you to keep them safe hasn't even crossed the street yet. Bodies were either completely charred up or left with gapping holes, the edges completely singed, killing them of shock or simply by blasting a vital organ out." Itemi said in his own unique manner.</p><p>"His lightning bolts were too fast and focused to incinerate the victim sometimes. I guess it depends on the force he channels, how he wants it to come out." Mana summarized the conclusions she drew from Itemi's ramblings. "His abilities are still baffling to me. He fired off lightning bolts far surpassing any Lightning Release jutsu I have seen, bordering on the speed of natural super-lightning. Something of that intensity and heat should have changed shape into plasma long ago… Obviously if they were some sort of jutsu he could control their shape artificially but then I have to go in loops and explain their speed again. I can't figure out if his abilities are using natural electricity or Lightning Release charges."</p><p>"If the brat thought those were her only problems, she had another thing coming. Despite Raitoncide never having been caught, not all of his crime scenes even made that much sense. Some had completely unrelated piles of ash and lightning marks branching over the place, several of them had burnt down completely despite arson usually not being his specific kink." Itemi sighed, sometimes it was a good thing he could not keep anything inside even when he wanted to.</p><p>A guy beside him growled out loud in irritation. Mana's presence in the ward must have been disturbing his rest.</p><p>"Random lightning marks and expulsions of heat? That could be similar to that attack on my way here… He just disappeared dissolving into lightning as if he became electricity itself running away to safety." Mana snapped her fingers.</p><p>"Attack? I guess it was a bit selfish of me to assume that the town would stop having fun without me. People dissolving into lightning, firing supercharged heat blasts with extreme electric charge and manipulating the forces of nature at will was never this town's thing. Maybe that's why Raitoncide was never found. I wanted to be surprised hearing that name but deep down every corrupt bastard in that HQ knew they were lucky to get to use that witch hunt as an excuse of being rid of him while all the honest ones never stopped fearing when the arrogance of the corrupt ones would come out into plain view and the nightmares marked with lightning continued." Itemi grumbled.</p><p>"Perhaps it is better that you stayed down. I was betrayed by the coachman, the Security Force may just be corrupt again or maybe it was another Transformation Jutsu, at this point it's all too tangled to know for real. All that is important is that you found a safe place to sit this through. We may not see one another after today, at least I will know that no one else will die. Get better soon, Itemi-san." Mana bowed her head low before moving in to leap out the same window she scaled up through.</p><p>"I sure hope I never see you again…" one of the patients who slept near Itemi and was forced to listen into the conversation exclaimed in sarcasm and irritation due to his health sleep having been interrupted.</p><p>Mana could have stayed there longer, tried working out more information maybe. None of it would have been worth the risk though. The grumpy patient was quite right to be outraged, she was doing more harm than good and the flashes of light coming from the nurses patrolling the floor were becoming more frequent signaling that the husky disturbance in noise was noticed. Staying just to exchange thoughts further would have been more risky than the potential reward to come of it would have been useful.</p><p>What she found out after receiving general, somewhat altered by his drugged state, ramblings from Itemi gave Mana plenty to think about before she confronted Raitoncide tomorrow. Hopefully with the appropriate amount of Lubber as the magician began to think that her remaining chakra and the battle-worn body was not fit enough to carry her through such a battle otherwise.</p><p>Her attempt at understanding and rationalizing everything only lead Mana to drawing the conclusion that Raitoncide's abilities were both natural and ninjutsu related. How else could have his attacks possess all the incredible speed of natural lightning while at the same time granting it the breath-taking power of a ninjutsu technique and controlling its shape and consistency just like one perfectly.</p><p>Ninjutsu. Mana simply could not accept the idea that her opponent dissolved into sparks of lightning and travelled away like his own body was comprised of electricity. This was something no ninja she knew could do. Even if a ninja could have pulled something like this off, they would have to be either an exceptional illusionist, which meant that the escape was entirely illusionary, or far larger and more epic in rank than Raitoncide could have ever become. It was a ninjutsu, naturally. But what kind of ninjutsu could have allowed a man to escape like that after changing their shape? There was a reason why Mana could only pull off her Flower Petal Sanctuary as an advanced genjutsu technique.</p><p>There was simply no way for someone's body to dissolve into electricity and not die. The fact that Mana could not wrap her head around this magic disappearance trick ticked her off to no end. There was no way to do so for a human, anyway.</p><p>But what else than a human could Raitoncide have been? Mana was absolutely sure that she was not dealing with some supernatural chakra entity all of a sudden. Someone like Synth or the Nine Tails may have been able to pull off a vanishing trick like that since they were more entities of pure chakra than anything else but not an ordinary man.</p><p>"Could the Nine Tails have even pulled something like this? We were too involved in escaping with our lives to ask it." Mana thought to herself before her mind began wrapping around another concept.</p><p>There was another purely chakra-based construct that was not as powerful as a Lesser Demon or a Tailed Beast, that was to say so powerful it broke any attempts at bringing it up, but very much capable of such a dissolving trick. It was clones. If the clone would have been loaded with Lightning Release chakra and was given birth by a technique that placed corporeal clones into existence instead of illusionary ones, it was possible for it to dissolve releasing all of that stored chakra in such a manner.</p><p>The more Mana thought of it, the more sense it would have made. Back when they first fought, the magician had caught Raitoncide unprepared with an attack and almost took him out, forcing him to rely on a jutsu he would have rather kept stored to survive. He clearly knew she was dangerous for someone of his skill to engage and yet he was desperate to wear her down, not knowing that well of her state when he engaged her. A jutsu that created corporeal clones stored with elemental affinity chakra would be high ranking, if Mana's reading memory served, approaching A-Rank even, but certainly more plausible than Raitoncide being a chakra entity.</p><p>It was not even that tough for someone far below Jounin level to use A-Rank jutsu anyway. The Diamond Hand had access to the black market which meant he could have got his hands on a scroll with the jutsu stored inside it, then absorbed it using his Lightning Release storage seals. His chakra signature is very distinctive in color and feeling but not large enough to muster up the resources for an A-Rank jutsu by himself. That meant he had spent that resource just to wear Mana down…</p><p>Raitoncide was afraid…</p><hr/><p>"I'm back…" Mana declared after walking all the way to the Security HQ. She expected to see few people present, if anyone, given that the workday had officially ended about an hour ago. Strangely enough, multiple officers the names of whom she did not know, Shira and Thumb were still present and nodded or bowed in acknowledgment of her statement.</p><p>"I thought you were going to kick the old geezer's ass for running loose cannon on you, what did he have on you to come at you?" Thumb teased Mana acknowledging that the battle signs on her were still visible.</p><p>"I think we may be compromised. The coachman took me into an ambush. There were too many people there for us to handle so I did not bother booking them in." Mana scratched her sore sides. The magician stretched out her freezing cheeks and rushed to the end of the office to heat the kettle for some tea.</p><p>"The coachman? We took the coachman, we were driving across the town after all searching for Lubber. I apologize, I figured you'd use your superhuman speed to travel." Shira bowed in genuine apology.</p><p>While she should have been pissed that some Diamond Hand jerk managed to park his carriage in the Shukuba Security grounds while the entire force was busy transporting Muriya and keeping Index contained and her abilities sealed away at all times, Mana was rather much more happy about the fact that Shukuba Security was not compromised.</p><p>"So was the loony paper guy worth the venture?" Thumb looked at Mana.</p><p>"You could say that. It was not exactly in what he said, he was quite high on drugs, but the meeting was a little stimulating. I have a general understanding of Raitoncide's abilities and I am inside his mindset, as much as I will get, anyways." Mana confirmed after turning the kettle off and filling her cup with hot water. She settled down nearby Thumb and Shira and started sipping from her cup a tad too fast given that the water inside was boiling so recently.</p><p>"We did not manage to acquire as much Lubber as you said you needed, Sorceress-san." Shira reported, the sudden nature of his strict and by the book report made Mana jump up and spill a bit of tea over the table. Luckily enough there were no papers there to damage and she was lucky enough not to burn herself with it either.</p><p>"As much?" Mana lisped as her burnt by the hot tea tongue was difficult to handle so she had to ventilate it outside its intended location.</p><p>"Affirmative, we managed to find two-thirds of the intended quantity and its has proven to be quite elastic and very molding friendly. With a little love we can make it circle around a small building." Shira confirmed. "Do you know where we can find Raitoncide yet? It would be easier to manage the material if we knew what length it needs to be, that is to say, the specifications of his hideout."</p><p>"I can track him. As a serial killer his chakra signature reeks of malice and I have caught whiffs of it multiple times. When he attacked me in the ambush I sensed the direction in which the lightning scurried away in as well. Knowing that he will be needing a lot of electricity to store his seals up we can use both the natural properties of electricity and town plans to trace him. We do not need to make it that specific either, as long as we are within two hundred meters of his location, I'll sense him quite clearly." Mana sighed, finally feeling like her tongue was good enough to continue hastily gulping down her tea.</p><p>"Shit, I'm thankful you're not on my tail." Thumb winked at the magician's direction.</p><p>"That is impressive, ma'am, but what do you mean by "natural properties of electricity"? Was Raitoncide not using ninjutsu to kill?" Shira wondered.</p><p>"He was using both at the same time. It's an interesting and very high-skill combat style but as long as it is the only thing he was honing his entire life, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he has mastered it. The electrical fields of his storage activity will produce powerful electromagnetic activity which we can track with a simple compass, hopefully." Mana snapped her fingers.</p><p>"The power of his abilities must be scary for those electric fields to overpower the natural magnetic forces." Shira's stare became stern all of a sudden.</p><p>"Oh, it is. That Lubber should do wonders though. Natural electricity will hardly count towards what it can insulate so in the end it should all even out." Mana emptied her cup before jumping on her feet and rushing towards the door.</p><p>"Excuse me, you have places to be?" Thumb raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"It would be wise to conduct several experiments if the Lubber will be able to serve its purpose…" Shira advised. "Unlike you ninja, our men will not be able to even see what's going on when all those lightning flashes will start buzzing about."</p><p>"You won't need to. All of you are staying outside. I'll confront Raitoncide alone. No one else will die on my watch." Mana declared with determined and stern enough eyes to match those of Shira's.</p><p>"I would like to argue with you about that when you return, ma'am." Shira bowed his head, knowing full well that Mana would be gone behind the doors not too long after he finished that sentence.</p><p>There was one more place Mana had to visit before tomorrow started. The day when she would settle this matter with the Diamond Hand once and for all. If she was to end up dying while doing her best to grant peace to this pleasure town, she may as well have crumbled the by far largest stone on her chest before doing so. Being on the verge of death with regrets in her heart gave Mana some perspective. It was an experience she would rather not go through again.</p><p>Mana knocked her knuckles against the door of a small family home in the housing district of Shukuba a good forty minutes later. The light that lit up in the corridor leading up to the door could have been seen through the white linen covering small areas of the door. Mana's breath stopped instinctively when the young man opened the door, looking a bit confused to see a girl he had only seen on posters before in his life. He may have not even recognized her at first as while Mana was famous, her face was not easy to pinpoint without her signature stage attire.</p><p>"I'm here about your wife, Maizoku-san." Mana rubbed her numb elbow in hesitation to proceed with the talk that she had to get off her chest. It would not be pleasant but it had to happen, for her own sake.</p><p>"Is the Security so disorganized now? They already let me know…" the face of Toiya's husband shook despite his honest attempts to maintain a strong image.</p><p>"Yeah, I am aware but… I figured that maybe you'd want to talk about that. There are things I need to say as well. If you don't want to hear them, that is fine." Mana looked away. She began feeling like coming here was a mistake. What did she think he would say? Why would Toiya's husband just welcome the brat whom his wife died saving inside his own home? Or maybe it was just the self-preservation instinct kicking in, demanding on a sub-conscious level that Mana left this demeaning and painful situation behind and stopped diving back into the depths she was sinking in not too long ago.</p><p>"Please, come in…" the man stepped aside letting Mana enter, the cold was getting inside the house and the magician heard a little baby crying from further inside the house. A sound that usually would have invited feelings of joy and pride of the family's achievement and dedication, the most amazing bond that can tie people together now only made breath get stuck inside Mana's throat like one of those explosive balls stuck with kunai on the sides to work as shrapnel.</p><p>The sizzling of the burning fuse kept going inside her mind, who knew which direction it was going, who knew when it would go off…</p>
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<a name="section0409"><h2>409. Shocking Assurances</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Toiya's husband pointed Mana to an armchair for her to rest on while he hurried into the dark room where the noises of a crying baby came from. He returned not a pair of moments later with a somewhat relieved expression.</p><p>"Is everything OK?" Mana wondered before realizing how stupid that question was. If she had an option to, she would have sunken underground in embarrassment for even opening her mouth to ask something like this of a man who had just lost his wife.</p><p>"The baby's fine. He does that… Just start crying out of the blue as if checking if someone is there. Right when you pop your face into his room he goes dead silent and just watches you with a mischievous smile." The man rubbed his tired eyes before settling down to a cup of tea. He offered to make Mana one as well but the magician politely refused, stating that she was not going to trouble him for too long.</p><p>"He just wants attention. He wants to know he's not alone, probably." Mana smiled before what she wanted to say next got stuck deep in her throat bringing up nothing but tears. Even after losing someone due to her inability to let go and deal with loss, she still remained the same… It was just a cursed circle of people Mana let down. People she lost.</p><p>"She died subduing some criminal, right? Toiya, I mean." The man inquired, changing the topic to where he had thought Mana wanted to take it. He was no detective but even someone like him must have been able to see how painful it was for Mana to as much as sit here. The home of someone she had failed to protect.</p><p>"Yeah… I… I was supposed to subdue this assassin woman. I saw her before she could accomplish what she came to the Tribunal to do and jumped in to intercept her but… She played me, knew right where to hit me to make it hurt. I hesitated just for a moment and…" Mana recounted. Going back to that place was almost like working out with weights twice heavier than they were supposed to be. It hurt but the pain was supposed to be a good one, one that would lead her to something better, improving herself. Supposed to…</p><p>"There was a whole room of officers. Seems like a lot of responsibility for a teenager to protect all of them and fight someone alone…" the man wondered with a softened voice.</p><p>"The assassin was trained with mercenaries. I think she said something about that when we first fought. It doesn't matter how many weaker opponents you stack against someone like her, she'll slaughter them all. It takes an opponent of matching skill to fight someone like that. I was the strongest, the fastest out of that entire room. It was my responsibility to protect everyone." Mana lamented.</p><p>"It does not look like you've dealt with that pain right…" the voice of Toiya's husband whimpered just for a moment. A single second seemed like an hour when the subject matter was especially touching or when it was a moment when two ninja were clashing. Sometimes it was preferable to be weak, to not be able to perceive that little twitch and hear the weakness of a man that was given birth by something you had the hand in happening.</p><p>"I did not have the luxury of coming here when I have dealt with it. My weakness that was exploited was something that happened almost six months ago and yet I still have not dealt with that. If I did not come here now, I don't think I would have ever done it." Mana shook her head firmly, accepting this weight on her chest that kept drowning her under and forcing her to draw in more pain in her lungs. Each breath made her panic and choke on more and more of it.</p><p>"Why did you come here?" the man wondered. Mana had expected to hear spite in his voice, she expected to be hated, asked out even. She may have even been relieved by that hatred, by the fact that she somehow suffered for her mistake. That dismissal, that hatred should have been her punishment. The fact that Maizoku, Toiya's husband, was more curious than spiteful made her almost desperate in her quest of finding a suitable punishment.</p><p>"I just wanted to face what I've done. I wanted you to see me and know that I failed to protect your wife when I made it my responsibility to do so. If you hated me, if you wanted retribution, I wanted to be here and face it." Mana told the man the truth.</p><p>"Maybe it is for the better that you have come." Maizoku sighed. The man finished his tea and set the cup aside. "It is you who must know that no one else is to blame for what happened to Toiya but the woman who did the deed. It appears that your own past was exploited in some way to make it happen which must have been agonizing. You don't deserve to hate yourself like this, if you're looking for some sort of punishment, I don't think I can give you anything worse than you have already resigned yourself to."</p><p>The man jumped to his feet to rush to the baby's room to check on another fit of cries. He returned shortly, the cries have clearly been just another case of the baby looking for attention and confirmation that someone was still around it. That it still had a family. One could only wonder if it noticed that it was just one of the two familiar faces calming it down and could even comprehend the loss of the other.</p><p>"Truth be told, I did not approve of Toiya sacrificing herself. As a mother, she had so much more to live for. Had I any control, I would not have justified that action. I don't really know how to justify that sort of sacrifice anymore. I don't know if I will ever live up to the expectations that set me up for…" Mana covered her eyes. She hated herself for breaking up like that but it had to be done. This had to be an edge she crossed because one thing she has learned in Shukuba was just how fragile opportunities to do things like this were.</p><p>Despite her greatest predictions, best-laid plans and the absolute certainty that she had the only hidden ace in the entire deck in her sleeve against Raitoncide. She may not have had the chance to come here and tell Maizoku this.</p><p>"I don't think I entirely understand your pain but the only thing I can tell is that if you're planning to keep punishing yourself to make it all better – you should stop immediately. Don't even think about getting yourself killed recklessly or some nonsense like that, it won't change anything. You can only honor Toiya's memory by becoming the woman worth the sacrifice, someone that my wife saw you be when she made that choice." Maizoku's tone was husky.</p><p>It was surprising how strong this man was. He was not nearly as fast as Mana, he would never be able to hold the actual weight of the world over his shoulders by drawing from the source of the entire universe around him but he was immeasurably stronger than Mana in the only way that counted.</p><p>"I don't think I can ever become a person worth that sacrifice. Life is priceless and so I don't think anything can truly make up for something like this. When Toiya answered my call days ago, she said that she wanted the people responsible for her death answer for their crimes, she wanted this town to be safe for families just like hers. The least I can do is make that dream come true." Mana said.</p><p>"Safety is relative. No one is truly guaranteed or owed the rest of their life. It would be nice if Toiya's work was completed, it would be great to see the people responsible pay the price. I think I can see why Toiya liked you." Maizoku smiled with the edges of his lips, making his cheekbones just barely point out at the sides of his face. Those little bony tips made all the difference in the world.</p><p>Thanking the man for seeing her this late time of the evening, Mana bowed and left the home just as she found it - with Maizoku rushing to check on his child. Before she could leave, the man stopped her one final time.</p><p>"If you think you owe us anything. If you try to take up more responsibility for this family because you feel guilty for what happened – don't. Just do what Toiya would have wanted you to do and keep moving forward. Become the woman worth of her sacrifice and don't just look back trying to make empty gestures that will make you feel better about this." He asked of the magician before the two parted ways.</p><p>Now that this was done, Mana had the perspective and closure needed to finalize what was to come next. Even if this talk did not go anywhere near to where the magician wanted it to go, it gave her perspective and was something completely different. It was comforting in an entirely different way than just providing her with a punishment to beat herself over with and a more defined reason to hate herself.</p><hr/><p>Bright flashes emanated from a distant warehouse that was about as overgrown with vegetation and neglected for someone to refer to it as a bunker if they felt particularly witty. The gathered squads of the Shukuba Security prepared the elongated sheet of Lubber, which was about as tall as a mattress placed on its side while its length appeared sufficient to wrap the entire small building with it.</p><p>"I really hope you've rested well last night, ma'am, it does not appear he will be leaving peacefully," Shira stated the obvious. Mana knew he was merely trying to joke where he felt uneasy and confronting something out of his league.</p><p>"Actually, I was meditating on a new jutsu last night. I was too nervous to get any sleep." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Anything useful? Anything that can help out here?" Thumb wondered.</p><p>Mana shook her head. She could have gone on to explain to these officers how she was only working on the theoretical and the spiritual part of what was required to create and learn a new technique but they would likely not understand it at all. She was not actually training the technique, just figuring out the uses of the jutsu and how she would go on to achieve the required effects. It was a technique that combined experiences after all the mistakes and failures Mana suffered in Shukuba, a disarming ninjutsu capable of quickly subduing an opponent by applying a powerful surge of Lightning Release chakra. She needed it to be a powerful Lightning Release jutsu after being shown how refusing to upgrade her Lightning Release jutsu can corner her. In a twisted way of thinking, it combined all that Mana learned from Index and Ring Ring.</p><p>"I'm going in alone. I don't want no casualties so just follow the plan." Mana warned Shira to ensure that everything on his end went as planned. After they had located the warehouse without a hitch, the Shukuba Security needed pointless deaths the least of all things.</p><p>"It is going to take a moment to wrap the thing around. It may be wise to wait." Thumb hummed with a soothing tone.</p><p>"If someone trips over something or makes an unnecessary noise that stands out – he'll be tipped off. We cannot afford more delays. I'm going in." Mana whispered before splitting off of the squad and rushing in.</p><p>"The buzzing sound is killing me, how is a trip-up going to stand out?" Sora joked, noting the quite remarkable amount of electrical buzzing in the air. The auditory pollution complemented the lightning flashes coming from inside the warehouse.</p><p>The inside of the warehouse looked much like an abandoned school gym with wooden broken boards covering the floor, random junk scattered all over and endless jungle of wires and electrical appliances that must have cost a fortune distributed across the entire warehouse. Expensive and sophisticated fashion statements were hanging on chairs, lamps and sports equipment as well.</p><p>"The electromagnetic field of this place should have kept any normal person away. You were wise to come here alone, would have been anyways…" Mana heard the disgusting teasing emanating from the side where Raitoncide was crouched over and absorbing charge from a bunch of paper tags and electrical appliances alike. She could sense his chakra signature rising in size at a constant yet unimpressive rate, if given sufficient time he may have once again posed a threat, however.</p><p>"So you've noticed me." Mana decided to play the defeated child who had hoped to catch her opponent unprepared.</p><p>"I can sense when my electromagnetic field is broken by living or dead things. It's a powerful defensive mechanism when I am charging up." Raitoncide sighed before tossing his activity aside and standing up, playing with sparks jolting out from one palm before being absorbed through the other. A flashy play of intimidation. "I guess I was less successful in draining your juices last time than I had hoped."</p><p>He was referring to the power of the electromagnetic field present inside this warehouse alone. Even those officers outside were not entirely safe but it would take time for someone of their physical training to succumb to it completely. They will have contained the fields with Lubber before any significant damage befell them. As much as Mana disliked threatening them with migraines or brain damage, she had no other choice – she needed that Lubber stretched out and ready.</p><p>"Before we do this, tell me where the Middle Ring is located. I'm heading after him next." Mana boldly declared. She knew she sounded a bit naïve but she preferred to be underestimated and laughed at in battle, it was the status quo she was used to and the lack of which, frankly, after being promoted was troubling her a little.</p><p>"Next? There is no next for you. You're gonna fry." Raitoncide looked down as his eyes flashed with sparks. "I'm pretty certain you're empty after yesterday, the best case is you prolong your death again but this time your lackeys won't be able to come in here to help you."</p><p>Mana wanted that intel, she needed it before Raitoncide realized he was being played and before pride and defensive denial kicked in. She wanted him to talk out of foolish vanity, he needed to think Mana was not going to survive this encounter and that there was nothing to lose in telling her anything. Time was once again not on her side… Ironically enough, while the Lubber will contain Raitoncide's abilities and his vast electromagnetic fields, it was highly detrimental to Mana to question the man after it was set.</p><p>"Even so, even if I am just to die, who will hear about it from me? If my heart feels the closure of knowing where my enemy was this whole time before I die, I'll be less inclined to cling to life so hard." This time it was Mana who teased her opponent. "Come on, being forbidden to kill must have built up your appetite, hasn't it? I think you really want to get back at that man despite working for him."</p><p>"Fucking bitch…" Raitoncide grunted in irritation. Mana had pinched a pretty distinct and painful nerve for him and she knew it. "Fine. Not like you'll tell anyone or that it will matter. After your smart ass is dead, I'll fry everyone out there too. I'll probably enjoy it too, none of them are fast enough to outrun lightning but they will try…"</p><p>The maniac played with his hands and moaned in pleasure imagining murdering all those officers outside. It was just like Mana had predicted – he hungered for his old craft and Middle Ring's restrictions made him despise the man a little. As long as he knows his own hide is not in danger, he is more than willing to get back at the crime lord.</p><p>"He's in a mansion to the north-west from here, one that monks of the Fire Temple use for meditation and one of their spiritual retreats to these parts. Not sure if he killed the monks or just kicked them out, knowing how he is, the guy probably paid them and left them alive…" Raitoncide showed his tongue in disgust at the thought of his superior not murdering a bunch of monks.</p><p>"Now…" he lifted his arms up. "Since I've helped you, you could be a dear and use whatever juice you have left to attack me with your Lightning Style. Your jutsu would charge me up more than years of this pathetic bone scraping would. I need jolts billions to trillions of times more powerful than these pathetic storage seals and electrical junk."</p><p>The man looked at his pose with curiosity as he clearly intended to show off his flashy lightning tricks. Maybe fire off a jolt he would absorb with his other side or maybe flash his eyes a little. Nothing came out. The man tried pointing his extended palm at Mana, lifting his arms up to release the same wide-range area of effect lightning field attack that was so successful at repelling the magician earlier but only through sheer force did he manage to muster off a jolt, one that quickly turned to the side and disappeared into the building's walls.</p><p>"What the…" he mustered up before looking at Mana with intimidation. Given how oddly feminine his normal standing pose was, the magician had trouble reading if he was preparing to turn his back and vault towards the back exit or if he was just furious.</p><p>"Lubber. The walls are wrapped with it on the outside. It's a material we ninja use to train Lightning Release techniques. It is not only highly resistant to it but it appears to have a powerful push back against low in chakra content electrical currents such as natural lightning or electricity." Mana started to close in on the criminal with confidence and serenity in her eyes.</p><p>"W-Wait… That…" the man started shrieking out before lunging at the magician with a punch, one that Mana took on purpose. Raitoncide shoved his knee forward, trying to drive oxygen from Mana's chest. Someone clearly showed him a few of the Strong Fist style taijutsu moves but none of them would be that effective.</p><p>"Yes. That is why I brought those officers here. Also yes, that means we are left to our hand-to-hand skills, well… You are anyways. I can also use illusions and Wind Release techniques I know but I will not need to." Mana pulled out her wand from the back and slammed it right in the center of Raitoncide's face. She enjoyed the thought of learning some wand-based weaponry moves given how often the tool was in her hand but she was no weaponry user and her skills in weaponry styles and techniques were lackluster.</p><p>It was a good thing she had this serial killer confined inside this warehouse to try some moves on and work some things out…</p><hr/><p>A couple of minutes later Mana walked out of the warehouse with the subdued killer on her hands, all wrapped in steel wire and beaten almost to the point of unconsciousness. It took remarkable restraint to hold back this much of her strength so to not significantly injure the man, just leave him with some broken ribs and a concussion. Anything less than death was acceptable within the magician's code.</p><p>"Do you think it's a good idea to drag him outside the wraps?" Thumb questioned the magician after some officers lifted the Lubber layer letting Mana leave the building with Raitoncide subdued.</p><p>"Sure. I scrubbed off the sealing glyphs from his palms. As long as he's tied up and unable to remake them, his abilities are as good as sealed." Mana shoved the tied in steel wire killer to the Shukuba Security who took him off her hands and prepared to carry out his arrest through proper procedure.</p><p>If only the rest of the day went as smoothly and without a hitch as it began, Mana would be going back to Konoha with Yushijin peacefully just as she intended with the Diamond Hand dealt with and behind bars…</p>
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<a name="section0410"><h2>410. The Raid</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So what now? Isn't this kind of a dead end?" Thumb wondered. She was fostering some sort of passionate emotions deep inside and appeared to be itching to get her hands on Raitoncide. "Did he at least tell you anything before you let your fists fly?"</p><p>"I rarely, if ever throw fists. My hands are important in my other job." Mana pouted her lips having found an opportune moment to tease her companion before looking back at Thumb with a grin. "He did tell me everything we need to know though. I know where Yokotomo-san is holed up in and I am heading to end this right now."</p><p>"We can't really put anything resembling an operation in such a short time." Shira objected. He observed his colleagues placing the injured and tied up Ring into the carriage and rolling away.</p><p>"There is no need. Process and keep Raitoncide and Index detained. Let them go through the system, I'll be sending them company soon." Mana objected. She had no time to wait or for complex operations to be put together.</p><p>"With all due respect, you're repeating your mistakes, ma'am." Shira tried to oppose. "You may need us there. Middle Ring is likely to have all of his remaining men protecting him."</p><p>"That would be very convenient. All of the remaining Diamond Hand in one place…" Mana smiled before clutching her bruised ribs and dashing onto a roof of a nearby warehouse with a single leap. She was nowhere near her maximum and the encounter last evening certainly had sapped plenty of chakra all by itself, regardless, she had to have had enough to deal with a bunch of lowlife thugs.</p><p>Mana sensed a spike in a nearby chakra signature, Thumb dashed to her side.</p><p>"I'm not your ordinary Security officer. Let me assist." The burglar grinned.</p><p>"That would be preferable to nothing at all…" Shira relented at last.</p><p>With the Shukuba Security's approval, Mana and Thumb disappeared in a swift dash towards the mansion where Ring Ring said Middle Ring would be. Even if her wounds sustained in the lost battle against Index and Ring Ring still prevented Mana to travel the fastest she could or even let her move at all without any sharp backlash from her body, as aggravated by Mana's low remaining chakra, she had the willpower to go on.</p><hr/><p>"Do you think Raitoncide told you the truth?" Thumb wondered as she stayed by the magician's side, managing to keep up with Mana's building-to-building dashing she had not used in a while. Such speed of movement was sure to consume even more chakra but Mana was very careful not to augment her body in any way, just emit weak pulses of chakra from her feet with each landing that would throw her body onward.</p><p>"He had no reason not to. Judging from what I've gathered of Donyoku-san, it fits his profile too. The Middle Ring is someone of sophisticated artistic tastes. He spent his entire life dealing and studying art, scamming the town with lost and found treasure and buying useless property he soon turned into historic sites after treasure was found there. That was before he acquired a specific taste for high-rolling as a criminal." Mana voiced her own thoughts on what Raitoncide had told her and why she took his word seriously.</p><p>"That's odd… You usually refer to people with more respect than they're worth, you don't seem to refer to the Rings that way though, not always…" Thumb noted.</p><p>"It does not feel right adding honorifics to made-up names. But sometimes I think these might be the only names of the Rings I will ever get. That is why I feel glad I found out Donyoku-san's name. I know exactly how to refer to him…" Mana smiled through discomfort in her injuries and slight fatigue. Letting her remaining chakra approach such drastic lows as she did last evening made Mana's sleepless nights and streaks of hunger and thirst slowly catch up to her and remind her of just how fragilely human she was.</p><p>It was certainly an odd thing to be reminded of when traveling at breakneck speeds over rooftops and electric poles of the pleasure town, heading to the exact other side of the town and covering these distances within minutes or even seconds.</p><p>"You know, Thumb-san. You would really be better off heading to Konoha or one of the Fire Country law enforcement facilities to have your taboo seals looked at. I have some personal friends skilled at sealing techniques but I am afraid none of them are quite at the sufficient level to dabble in taboo seals yet…" Mana scratched the back of her head. Now that she was reminded of it, referring to Thumb with an honorific did feel really weird.</p><p>"If being unable to tell anyone my real name for the rest of my life due to a fear of a supernatural force strangling me as I do so is the worst I have to remember being a part of the Diamond Hand by, I'd be lucky…" Thumb noted as the two darted off with the mansion fully in sight.</p><hr/><p>Just a single glance at the luxurious dwelling house warranted the realization that Raitoncide was very unlikely to have lied about the place. The building was outright massive, a good four, spacious floors in size or classical architectural style. The building fit its function as a classy, spiritual retreat for the well-respected and admired Fire Temple priests very well.</p><p>"This is hilarious, what do priests that spit on material possessions have to do with this luxury? While Middle Finger is an A-Class prick, I am almost convinced not to consider taking it off their hands a crime…" Thumb joked as the two settled on a strong branch of an ancient and tall oak. Before they infiltrated the place, proper observation of it was in order.</p><p>"There are plenty of signatures in the front yard. Not only are they not priests, they are most likely waiting for an attack." Mana confirmed after opening her eyes back and breaking the intense concentration required to wrap her mind around all of the signatures present inside the place.</p><p>"So now you can tell how spiritual someone is with that handy third-eye of yours?" Thumb elbowed Mana's side just strong enough to send uneasy nerve pain sensations up and down the magician's body.</p><p>"Chakra signatures have a certain feeling, more profound ones have even a certain color to them, depending on how much a person lets a trait of their character define them. The chakra of a priest should not feel completely normal or be this small. Fire Temple priests' bodies and minds are temples all by themselves." Mana explained.</p><p>"Makes one wonder how they took this place off of them in the first place…" Thumb observed.</p><p>"Fire Temple priests may be formidable but they do not concern themselves with petty criminals, nor should they care much of the luxury of this place. There should not have been too many priests present this time of year at a place such as this. I reserve my predictions as to how it happened exactly but… There may not have been much of a struggle at all." Mana answered.</p><p>It was true that Raitoncide suggested that Donyoku may have paid the monks to let him use their building as a headquarters but Fire Temple monks would have cared little for ryo. A much more likely case would have been if the two parties struck a deal over a very spiritually important piece of art which Donyoku had in his possession. While both Index and Raitoncide were decent threats when together, they would not have fared too well against multiple monks…</p><p>Reluctant to begin the final siege, Thumb darted off like a sky-splitting arrow fired off from the heavens. Her nimble foot knocked down a guard present on the top of the wall surrounding the mansion yard with grace and subtlety. So much so that the rest of the crew did not notice the burglar before she leaned below the stone rail and concealed her presence.</p><p>Letting the wand in her hand lit up with sparks of lightning as chakra channeled through it, Mana joined her companion onto the wall. Opting to first deal with the guards with the advantage of the stone railings and the higher ground before advancing to the mansion through the yard. For now, Thumb's skillful touch allowed the two to evade detection and with some luck, such would be the case until at least their feet touched the floor yard.</p><p>With a wave of her shimmering with Lightning Release chakra Audra alloy wand, Mana fired off flurries of sparks that spread out across the entire wall, hitting the targets and encasing them with powerful shocks of lightning. The magician was lucky to be in such a dire shortage of chakra, that made the power of her techniques much weaker, sufficient enough to down these men without them losing their lives. Giving them a chance to answer for their crimes and reform in the future.</p><p>While Mana was at a shortage of chakra approaching critical, having less than one-tenth of her normal resources at hand, using her low ranking "Magical Spark Jutsu" was the only way to quickly dispatch of over a dozen thugs manning the wall around the yard. The bad news was that Mana's approach was really flashy – as was her nature as a stage magician – making her shows of ninjutsu incredibly noticeable to both the guards up on the wall and down below.</p><p>While the wall was a bit outside the reach of the rushing outside guards, the yard quickly was filled with formations of thugs unleashing flurries of blades from their kunai dispensers. Feeling them whizzing past her ears or bouncing off the stone rails while leaving ugly chips and dents in them did not feel that great at all, especially when Mana felt so sore all over and short on chakra that a direct blade contact would likely no longer just bounce off her body barely breaking her skin.</p><p>Strangely enough, Mana noticed a similar flurry of blades coming in from another side and as she noticed that particular detail, a quick glance back made her jaw drop from a sight of a familiar berserker giving hell to the remaining atop of the wall guards.</p><p>"I was high on painkilling goodness, cashed out all of my favors in the hospital and using illegal dispensers I picked off of a crime scene of a nearby alleyway, firing hell upon the assholes who nearly put me in the coffin and caused this drugged up rampage of an addict's sick version of justice, to begin with. Atop was a stage magician who may or may not have used actual witchcraft to magic the shit out of those bastards, accompanied by one of the lowlifes I was so busy putting down. To some, this may prove weird but there was no place I'd rather be in right now, for a good pair of minutes anyway, until the painkillers wear off and I realize what I'm doing proper…" Itemi's voice thundered from down below fueled by both pride in his abilities and the pain that firing from two kunai dispensers at once put on his ribs and all the stitches it opened up.</p><p>After a few silver-colored flashes and the unpleasant sight and sound of the Diamond Hand thugs screaming bloody murder, they fell down adamant about their "do not get up" policy. Mana realized that the wall was conquered. The gate to the yard opened up as the thugs guarding the yard meant to put Itemi down for good. Before they could do that, Mana and Thumb leaped down to confront them on their level while Itemi found himself a nice stone shrine to hide behind.</p><p>Then started a hellfire of around forty people opening fire of whizzing high-velocity blades at all three assailants. It was a reckless formation with an even more reckless strategy, they were not sweeping or lined up, it did not matter who would have gotten skewered with kunai as long as someone's blood was shed and it was done in the name of protecting the Middle Ring.</p><p>"This is good." Mana thought to herself as she danced and hopped around the blades that filled the garden like the raindrops filled the sky during a storm. Painful cutting sensations interrupted her train of thought, she felt the warm trickling feeling of blood raining down her skin and soaking her clothes but these were cuts, not direct hits.</p><p>Thumb, on the other hand, was a beast. Whatever skill she had when she first met Mana in the Shukuba Security office, she retained. With the added benefit of the untold and uncontrolled passion of a woman who wanted out, a woman who craved freedom like a wild animal unleashed and clawing at their keepers because if the cost of freedom was returning to their wild untamed roots, it was a cost worth paying.</p><p>The burglar not only managed to avoid being tagged by any of the blade flurries as she advanced at the rushing men, she managed to fling her claws around, bounce and flip kicking and clawing a good dozen of men in a blink of an eye. The only thing that was lacking for Mana to think of the burglar as a master swordsman was a sword in Thumb's hand. The magician made sure to note just how much of an influence sheer desire for victory and passion had in a battle because it was something she could have very easily underestimated in the future.</p><p>While the stone of the shrine that Itemi used for cover began crumbling slowly, bits and pieces of the structure being blown away by the force of impact of the incoming blade projectiles, the man found the opportune moments and, frankly, sheer madness within him to peek out and fire back. Landing a good plug into the chest of an unfortunate Diamond Hand grunt that fell on the ground almost immediately without signs of life.</p><p>Mana did not like it that the man was so determined and mad about killing everyone he set his sights on or that he was this efficient at doing it but she lacked the opportunity or the time to stop him. She just had to count on her own skill of chasing down her enemy and taking them down non-lethally before they fell from Itemi's streams of blades.</p><p>"I was beginning to realize that my supply of kunai to fire at my demons, the literal sort, mostly, as booze and pills made poor target practice, was not as infinite as I counted on. I had a good five more belts worth of steely, flesh-shredding goodness in me. At that moment, I realized how the kid felt when she couldn't gift enough hugs or save enough lives… Who said polar opposites did not understand one another? Those who say that just lack the imagination…" Itemi rambled to himself as he removed and straightened out a belt of kunai blades. The officer attached it to a modified dispenser he held so that it did not require as much loading as it usually did and instead continued to fire.</p><p>Mana wanted to talk to the man, tell him to stop tempting luck and return to the hospital before he caught a stray blade or tore too many stitches in his mad rampage. Something told her that those pleads would have only fallen on deaf ears as, to a certain extent, Itemi always craved death. Maybe not death exactly but release. Maybe he fostered false ideas about meeting his partner and lifelong friend in whatever plain he took for an afterlife, Mana lacked the time to make sure.</p><p>After Thumb's vanguard proved so effective at distracting the marching on thugs, Mana joined her companion at attacking the thugs, swift kicks that were nightmares to her own ribs dispatched of a pair of armed Diamond Hand criminals before the magician used her wand to break through the two kunai dispensers that were within her reach. Whatever steel was used in manufacturing these made a poor match for Audra alloy and Meiko's craftsmanship.</p><p>While Mana felt a bit nauseated by her own swift movements as her body provided less superhuman immunity to the speed and power of her own actions, she persevered somehow in taking out four more opponents before reaching the position to which Thumb had advanced to. Bringing her along may have been a good call. Shira was right, this was exactly like the time Mana was unrelenting about confronting both Rings herself in order to protect the officers and almost ended up dead. Had she come here alone she would have been likely to either end up dead or so wounded that she would be in a poor state to travel home.</p><p>Diamond Hand adapted. These were no street thugs, these were the remains of Raitoncide's Finger joined up with whatever forces the Middle Ring protected for himself when the organization split up. The men retreated a few steps, joined up and regrouped before taking a more careful aim at their invaders. A significant amount of fire targeted Itemi, the frailest member of the invading force and the one whose cover was the most compromised as while Thumb and Mana required none, they demonstrated the ability to evade fire near point blank.</p><p>Mana and Thumb moved in to intercept the barrage of blades and gave their unwanted companion time to relocate to a better place. As a sign of gratitude, the Security officer provided the two young women with a murderous barrage of suppressing fire upon the force that attempted to adapt to their actions and switch their target on them instead of the Shukuba Security officer.</p><p>"You should have brought the whole force…" Thumb breathed heavily. While she was showing the best feats in this battle, those surpassing even what Mana had seen from the burglar up to now, she was being worn out by those feats which troubled Mana. The soil was ready for one of them to get sloppy and skip a blade or two and injuries like that were not something Mana wanted or needed.</p><p>Thumb disarmed a man that attempted to press a dispenser to the back of her head in close range and make her head pop by the sheer air pressure as well as the high-velocity blade bursting through it. As a reward for the sheer ambition, she threw a rapid back-hand elbow strike that must have caved the poor guy's skull in despite shedding almost no blood. The crunchy bone-popping sound his head made was not sitting too comfortably on Mana's consciousness. She'd have much rather avoided all of this but it was far too late for that.</p><p>All she could do now was ensure a swift end to this conflict with as few casualties as possible. With this newly invited vigor to her kicks and the reckless abandon for observing her own health, Mana's approach bolded up and became more vicious and more direct. To the poor eight that she threw flying all over the garden her legs must have disappeared from their vision completely. Just sheer and mighty concussive force shattering their ribs and sending them flying was left.</p><p>After Itemi had successfully relocated, his long range, almost berserk blade fire sent a handful of the Diamond Hand who were in process of changing up formations before Thumb's acrobatic people-scaling skills utilizing her elastic body and surgical augmentations to her joints and bone structure allowed her to finish cleaning up the yard.</p><p>Only the den of the greedy one remained…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0411"><h2>411. Mother Of The Mind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The inside of the monks' mansion was decorated with statues of divine figures, donning plentiful limbs, even faces, and eyes. Given how the welcoming party was all concealed, fostering false dreams of evading Mana's chakra sensory as they hugged the nearest statue in an attempt to hide, the magician had the chance to marvel at the spiritual respite and its artistic treasures.</p><p>While Mana did find herself often talking or relying on a greater power, whether it was completely faceless, or just hidden behind the vague term "Magic", she had always found these deities to be ridiculous. They just appeared so overblown and needlessly excessive that they reminded of something that a little kid designed, justifying their lack of creativity with the number of faces and arms that their deity sported. Their origin stories also seemed quite ridiculous. Even so, they provided plentiful entertainment value so the magician had to hand those vaguely historic and more religious in nature text that much.</p><p>With a raised pair of fingers, Mana signaled to her party of companions all of whom shared her passionate dislike of the Diamond Hand to keep their guard up and prepare. Out of nowhere, or so the assailants thought, a good pair of dozens of people flooded the vestibule from around various statues and paintings where they had kept themselves hidden previously. Their weaponry appeared different from the quick firing dispensers used by the men outside…</p><p>Mana stayed back, feeling wary of these new weapons and she decided to scope them and their mode of fire out a bit better. They looked a lot like the close range weaponry used by the Syndicate in the Katabami gold mine but longer and overall larger. Thumb rushed ahead, Mana did not need to feel worried about the burglar, she was nimble enough to avoid the kunai outside and acrobatic enough to dispose of these men in very distinctly impossible seeming manners.</p><p>Itemi once again rolled for cover. Kicking an unfortunate thug who was a pair of moments too slow and was concealed behind the statue that the Shukuba Security officer intended to use for cover. Before the unlucky man hit the ground, his body was shredded by following the burst of fire from Itemi's dispenser to finish him off.</p><p>Thumb's claws left their silver and crimson red streaks in the air, blood splattered across the red curtains, which, in retrospect, were aptly colored. The blood left a very distinct kind of red from a cheap emulation that the architects and decorators intended so it was still easy to tell which curtains had tasted the juices of someone's downfall.</p><p>The fire that came out of these peculiar looking dispensers was one of a very short range. The weapons did not fire kunai in series, one after the other, instead, they fired out packages that erupted on impact releasing kunai shrapnel all around them. It would have been troublesome to evade at close range as the air friction alone appeared to discomfort the spheres fired out enough, at a certain distance traveled after being fired, that the projectile set off even after missing its mark.</p><p>Luckily enough, Mana had kept her distance and found herself more than capable at tracking the projectiles, evading the shrapnel was profoundly simple when she kept her range with just a tad of unease on her aching ribs being placed for good measure. Getting in might have posed a problem but as long as Thumb, who had successfully infiltrated the enemy lines due to her amazing speed and sheer willpower to eradicate her employers, does her thing – Mana and Itemi may not need to.</p><p>Itemi did not appear willing to let the women do all the work as he, quickly and as cleverly as only he could have, dispatched of all the remaining thugs with just a couple of quick bursts of fire as he moved from one statue to another to prevent being pinned down and have his cover be compromised and destroyed.</p><p>"There are two sets of stairs…" Thumb stated the obvious, looking at Mana and asking her chakra sensory to help the girl make some highly educated guesses without voicing those requests.</p><p>"Looking at this mansion it seemed to me that the best course of action would have been to split up. My mind settled on trying to kick into the bad guys' shoes and try to prepare for the attacking party to come at them. There would have been no way that they would know which direction we'd be taking. With some luck, they also split their reception party apart." Itemi grumbled. His painkillers may have been doing a poorer job at keeping his pain down and his skin was starting to look pale from the trickling blood loss from all the stitches he had torn up. It may have been wise to stop giving this man so much to do and relying on him quite on this many tasks.</p><p>"No way, we're not here to kill everyone. We're here to subdue Middle Ring." Mana objected. The barely rustling fires inside the dispatched thugs behind her distracted the magician. Most of them were still alive but just for how long?</p><p>"Maybe the brat wasn't here to kill people but I sure as hell was. Without people up there to arrest, old fox Okasune would have gotten bored over time. And here I thought I had made my thoughts perfectly clear." Itemi growled while checking his remaining kunai resources.</p><p>"I tend to agree with the crazy hospital gown guy if you're here to patch people up and worry over criminals, take care of these guys while we sweep the place and do your job for you." Thumb voiced her displeasure over this slowdown and how much attention Mana was giving to the downed assailants.</p><p>"Fine, let's just go up and subdue Donyoku-san. Hopefully, these injured men won't bleed out by the time we're done…" Mana made a call at last.</p><p>"Now that the women were done arguing, I was finally set in my direction. Seemed like the right side was the right way to go, all things considered." Itemi concluded looking up at the massive circle formation of the floors, present in the center of the mansion building. This mansion appeared to be built like a gallery of some sort.</p><p>"No way, I'm not letting you go all by yourself in your current state." Mana objected. "I'm coming with you!"</p><p>"There could have been absolutely no way for the kid to come with me. The last thing I needed was a little self-righteous angel sitting on my lap and conspiring with my consciousness to derail my righteous crusade of sending as many assholes that killed my friend to my said friend so she could exact some righteous crusading of her own." Itemi argued in his own special way.</p><p>"Fine, I'll go with him. We're both pretty settled on how we want to handle this." Thumb tsked with her tongue before running off to the right. While Mana did not feel confident about letting two very murderous comrades of her off the leash, she simply had no choice. She'd be standing here arguing and letting these men in the yard and the entryway bleed to death whole day at this rate.</p><hr/><p>Mana finally completed another circle and looked at an empty top floor. She had ended up circling over multiple arcing floors and running past the gallery part of the mansion before she noticed another staircase to the top floor, which was not shaped like a donut and was located right above the gallery layer of the mansion. She sensed Thumb and Itemi rushing in from behind her, just a few steps behind her. Mana decided to wait and regroup with her companions before entering the top floor where Donyoku must have been.</p><p>"I guess you lucked out." Thumb chuckled, looking quite entertained by how mad Itemi was right beside her. "We did not run into a single guy on our way here."</p><p>"Neither did I. I ran into some monks though on one of the floors. I don't like it. I sense all of them up there, some more monks too." Mana looked up the staircase, after just one more turn she'd see the top floor but the magician wanted to make sure she knew the place she was entering before she stepped in. She could sense the signatures of any living people there, including the massive signatures of the monks. If there were any tripwires or similar traps placed there – her chakra sensory would do little to help out there…</p><p>"These two were unbelievable. Here we were right in front of the place we all were seeking for this whole week and they just stopped in their tracks. I kept on making bold steps forward, I was not about to stop after leaving more of my blood all over these fucking stairs than I probably have left." Itemi grumbled before rushing off. It appeared that the time limit that the man's stamina imposed on him was pressing on the shoulders of the entire party, Mana and Thumb followed him shortly.</p><p>The top floor was an impressive rotund area surrounded with dark, flowing curtains that stretched all the way from ceiling to bottom with yet another one of the religious figures seated at the most northern part of the room. The statue was that of an old woman with an omega symbol shaped headdress stretching from her forehead outwards in a shape that reminded of horns. The figure was almost naked with just a single tunic covering its right side and its sensitive crotch area while star carvings covered the extremities of its exposed side. Eyes littered the entire structure with the stars scattered across, some of them carved inside of the eyes. It made the statue appear more complex and impressive than it already was with Yokotomo Donyoku sitting on the round belly of the deity that the statue depicted.</p><p>"There the bastard was. Sitting atop of some jerkoff, fancy art piece that he thought was too pricey to smash and for that reason, it was to be his perfect protection. He had a lot of nerve. It was just pure irony that the magician girl considered life being a sacred thing while this guy, a desecrator of countless lives, sat sprawled out on the divine jelly belly." Itemi growled taking aim at Donyoku but before he could fire Mana appeared in his way, obstructing the view of Donyoku with her back. That did not appear to stop the enraged Security officer from firing.</p><p>Mana's hands moved quickly, gathering the flying kunai by their rings but her remaining chakra and her aching ribs proved the task troublesome. The pain made Mana close her eyes and bite her lip as the kunai she failed to catch in time had to be stopped by swiping them off of mid-air or blocking them with her own limbs.</p><p>"Well, that is an interesting development. Any chance you two can just kill each other?" Yokotomo Donyoku raised an eyebrow, the man had squirmed in unease seeing Itemi take aim at him and was relatively surprised, if a little relieved, that Mana would protect him with her own body.</p><p>"He's going to answer for what he did. No one else will die." Mana firmly stated observing the injuries she had accumulated. The sides of her hands were filled with shallow cuts that dripped with blood while several kunai had dug under her and through her thighs and arms. At the very least she avoided getting tagged in her core areas.</p><p>"The kid thought she was playing a hero but all she was doing was standing in between a man with one more belt of kunai wrapped around his hospital robe and inserted into his dispenser and the man he wanted dead for the death of his lifelong friend. That was the last place anyone with working brain cells would have wanted to be at and I didn't want to send her to Okasune together with that bastard but I won't hesitate to do that if I have to." Itemi growled raising his dispenser to take aim again.</p><p>"One more belt? That's good." Mana worked out a smile. "That much of hatred I can shield from."</p><p>Staying true to his word Itemi fired again. Mana covered her vitals preparing for the shower of blades to hit her. She decided to will herself to wall Donyoku from Itemi's outrage before taking him in, just survive the rage meant for someone else before taking the man in. She should have had it in her to do that much…</p><p>A loud grunt coming from Itemi's side made Mana lift her eyes up and look in surprise to see that Thumb had kicked the dispenser in an awkward looking manner. She raised her foot sideways before shoving it at the weapon to change its aim to where just a pair of blades left some cuts on Mana's left arm, the back-left side of her neck and her left side.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress lead this investigation this whole week. You may have lost someone dear to you but that doesn't give you the right that belongs to her – to call how this thing goes." Thumb explained her actions. Mana had to hand it to the burglar, she had not expected the woman to make such an active action in this, she had counted on Thumb to only care about Donyoku and her own safety. Perhaps Thumb had realized that she still could have been safe with Donyoku alive but answering for his crimes.</p><p>"I'm afraid none of you will have a say in how this plays out." Yokotomo Donyoku looked at the cut crimson curtains that were hanging down in an awkward manner by its own weight dragging it down. "This room is meant for deeply spiritual meditation. The deity I am resting on is the Muginshen, the mother of one's mind, the mental connection between one's lowly self and the universe. Always pregnant with the Sixyang, the peace-bringer who never actually is born in the known religious texts."</p><p>Mana wanted to buy some time by keeping Yokotomo talking but her religious text study was far too lacking to keep up a dialogue with this man. A treasure hunter such as himself would have known all about the religious and historical alike and, in that totality of his knowledge, he surpassed Mana's own studies of history, which were more than adequate under any other circumstances.</p><p>Men started moving out from behind the curtains. The seventeen whose presence the magician was aware of this entire time. The men that Yokotomo had placed around himself instead of having them guard the useless lower floors, filled with nothing but lesser art pieces and peaceful monks admiring the view.</p><p>Mana sensed a different presence behind those curtains as well. That of the four monks who were of higher standing within the Fire Temple compared to the group she had met on her dash here. Their chakra was so strange, Mana was able to sense its presence but she was unable to otherwise grasp it. Almost like the chakra inside their systems was different somehow, it was so different that Mana had no trouble pinning it to the Fire Temple monks but she was unable to tell its size because of its unusual properties.</p><p>"You are not as intelligent and careful as you think you are, Donyoku-san. Tell your men to lower their dispensers and stand down." Mana was not pleading the man. Her face displayed no hesitation or wavering in what seemed like overwhelming odds. The answer to her request did not come verbally, Donyoku merely waved his hand signaling his men to kill the three who have come to take him in.</p><p>The projectiles that came out from the dispensers, which the seventeen held were similar to the previous short-range shrapnel spheres. Instead of kunai, however, small explosive marbles were scattered that detonated almost immediately after the explosion of the main projectile. It was a two-part destructive combination, which would have left nothing but devastation and threatened to topple this entire mansion.</p><p>As the smoke cleared out, the view that greeted Donyoku's curious stare was not of a wet, bloody stain and gruesome, disembodied remains but instead of Mana spinning around slowly, slower and slower with the few passing seconds after the destruction had settled. The magician collapsed on her knees, having used her Rebellious Twist Jutsu, a weak Wind Release technique she had created as a child.</p><p>Had it not been for Mana's training of her basics in the Rabbit Caves the puny twister of wind would not have been sufficient to cushion the blow of those inside or large enough to cover all three of the people she meant to protect. The magician raised her sweaty forehead up to reveal the fatigue present in her expression. This was when the pleading was introduced to her speech but not for the reasons Donyoku had expected.</p><p>"Tell your men to stand down. You will topple this entire mansion like this. It is not worth it." Mana pleaded. The men were working like busy bees reloaded their impressive new models of dispensers.</p><p>"Don't waste your breath." Thumb stepped in front of the magician preparing to take the thugs out before they finished preparing their weapons for a second go.</p><p>"Please don't. Just stand back and let this play out." Mana whispered to her companion. The burglar glanced back at the magician with confusion in her eyes.</p><p>It was true that the magician's chakra resources had approached a point where she would not even attempt any of her weaker jutsu due to the fear of going too far and collapsing. The second wave of the explosive barrage from the Diamond Hand would have outright killed both Mana in her current state and Itemi and gravely injured Thumb but… The second wave would not come. The ball was in Donyoku's court now but he had less choice than he thought.</p><p>"It was a fruitless struggle, postponing the inevitable, Konoha's Sorceress. You were quite a thorn but do not outstay your welcome." Donyoku waved his hand with indifference. Acting like the presence of the trio was something entertaining to him rather than intimidating due to how close the three had gotten.</p><p>"I am afraid we cannot allow your men to act with such carelessness, Donyoku-san." The monks who were sitting peacefully behind the curtains finally stepped out into the clear. The additional yellow cloth layer around their robe surveyed their higher stature compared to the white and black-robed ones whom Mana had met earlier.</p><p>"You have promised us the icon of Eryang which is of immense value to our Temple. Our deal allowed you to remain within these premises and even enjoy greater tolerance to how you've been acting from our part. The meditational room of Muginshen is a sacred place for meditation, connecting with the universe." The second one added.</p><p>"This young lady or her companions are not welcome here but she has done her best to minimize the damage to this room. Even offering her own body as a shield whereas you were ready to destroy this entire mansion to kill these people." The third one said.</p><p>"Gather your men and leave this mansion now. Our deal is no longer in place. No icon is worth such transgression in such a spiritual place." The first one demanded.</p><p>"Don't be ridiculous, kill these three now," Donyoku ordered before the fourth monk leaped into action.</p><p>The monk shaped his body in a particular stance, his left hand took the shape of a half-ram hand seal while he extended his right arm parallel to the ground he was moving on. A massive spirit, shining with a golden light materialized behind the monk, a spirit whose exact shape was tough to tell due to how fast it all happened but Mana could swear it must have had a thousand arms all around its body before it turned red. Seventeen men against the spirit fists overflowing with the silent rage of the monk was a poor match.</p><p>"Welcoming Approach: Thousand-Armed Murder", the monk mumbled out to himself as a prayer, similarly to how Buhakim, the boy from the Chuunin Exams, used to pronounce his attacks.</p><p>"Your men are down. Remove yourself from this mansion now!" the first monk ordered with a much more demanding and authoritative tone this time.</p><p>Mana sighed easier, she knew what Donyoku was bringing onto himself due to her brief exchange of words when asking for directions from the monks on the lower floors. They had warned her that she was not to enter the top floor or behave violently up there.</p><p>"I'm afraid this applies to you as well, Shukuba Security." The monk turned at Mana who just nodded and followed the crushed Yokotomo Donyoku to the lower floors while Itemi and Thumb worked on restraining him.</p><p>The conflict with the Diamond Hand was now finally over… It was time to go home.</p>
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<a name="section0412"><h2>412. No Rest For The Weary</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana bit her lip and cried out in pain. A stitch that Yushijin applied happened to touch another bruise by accident. One that she had acquired during the week. Due to her ongoing exhaustion, lack of time to eat properly or do anything but fight crime and meditate on how to better fight crime once that time of the weekly routine came, Mana found her wounds rather hesitant to heal by themselves as they normally would have.</p><p>"Sorry. Kouta usually did this stuff. I did not think you'd get as reckless as to body-shield the guy you're after." The young chuunin sighed. Regardless of his lack of experience in such matters, he was quite determined to patch Mana up by stitching the deeper cuts and applying the bandage. She was his responsibility to bring back to the village after all.</p><p>"Can't you do that time-freezing thing? If you time it right you can trick her mind, can't you?" Thumb exclaimed like a lazy cat, she was just hanging around the Security office without a clearly defined reason or destination at this point.</p><p>"Stitching is troublesome enough as it is. I don't think I have the focus to spare, also it would exhaust my resources quite extensively to use a technique this complex again and again just to make her skip the painful bits." Yushijin replied with patience.</p><p>"I could do this myself, you know." Mana pouted her lips.</p><p>"No. Your time is up. We're heading home after I'm done. I cannot stand any more delays or distractions." Yushijin cut it down.</p><p>"You guys did get pretty lucky that the monks happened to help out when they did." Sora finally approached the two Konoha ninja and a party of as of yet unclear allegiances. The officer was holding a bunch of documents, the present officers were working hard to protocol all the arrests and write up cases for the Diamond Hand Rings who were arrested.</p><p>"It was not just a matter of luck. It was something I figured out would inevitably happen after I heard the warnings from the monks who were relaxing in the gallery. Donyoku-san certainly overplayed his hand and overestimated his welcome." Mana shook her head. While she should have reasonably admitted that luck did play a part in how the higher-ranking monks reacted to the escalating situation in the top floor, she still wanted the credit she deserved for guiding the situation where it went.</p><p>"So that was why you got cut so many times on purpose? To make the monks more friendly towards you three?" Yushijin raised a curious eyebrow.</p><p>"Not quite. I genuinely did not want to just stand and let Donyoku die if I could have done anything about it. It was just that both factors played into each other," Mana shrugged, making the chuunin tending to her wounds prick her with the needle again. By now Yushijin had apologized to Mana enough times to this time just shrug it off and continue with the task he himself was so firm to complete.</p><p>"Things ended up quite well, all things considered. Apart from the small tension between the Shukuba Security and the Fire Temple over this scandal… I mean you three still were fighting inside their mansion after all. They're still not peachy about that." Sora insisted before walking off with his documents and getting back to work. All this hustling and paperwork would be something Mana would see for the final time as her need to stay in this village was now gone with the Diamond Hand finally being behind bars.</p><p>"Yeah, Itemi-san being brought to the hospital, the monks a bit mad but less so at us than they are at Donyoku-san for reneging on their deal and Donyoku-san resting in the cells and Raitoncide and Index in the Shukuba arrest house, ready for Tribunal…" Mana recounted.</p><p>"So the monks had some sort of a deal with the administration of Shukuba to have property here? Sounds a bit too shady for them to complain about it and raise too much noise." Yushijin sighed after tying the last knots of bandages around Mana's wounds and stretching his tired body out. He had plenty more wounds to take care of than he had initially thought when he demanded to let Mana check her wounds for a safer trip home.</p><p>"Whatever relations the Fire Temple has with Shukuba is no longer of interest to me," Mana admitted even if she knew it may have sounded a bit rude coming from her – someone who played a part in causing the tension between the Shukuba Security and the Fire Temple. There were bound to be some quarrels in the coming days of Shukuba reformation but those would not be quarrels where human lives were in danger, it would have been political quarrels behind religious figures and bureaucratic administrators – two kinds of people Mana could not have cared of any less, as long as neither group was in any danger.</p><p>"What about you?" Mana wondered looking at Thumb who was just kicking back and awkwardly staring at the ceiling, playing with her hair or clothes as she did so.</p><p>"Maybe I'll go to Eden to have my seals removed. After that…" Thumb could not finish the sentence.</p><p>"You will undergo grueling training to obtain what it takes to serve in the Shukuba Security proper." Shira rumbled out. "Your punishment is only delayed for as long as you are of use to the Security and in order for me or my men to fully trust you, you'll have to undergo proper training."</p><p>"You know how to make a lady all excited!" Thumb teased her possible future comrade, poking his strict dislike for criminals and obvious mistrust in Thumb's reformation which was evident every time the two interacted.</p><p>"You're no lady." Shira waved a handful of documents in the air. He was walking back when he did so but wanted to salvage his conversational standing by pointing it out.</p><p>"You two will get together well. The fact that he brought it up, to begin with, means he is looking forward to working with you." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Can't wait for seeing his mug running about and not being able to escape his watchful gaze every day until I retire or am permanently retired…" Thumb rolled her eyes with a grin of her own.</p><hr/><p>Due to Mana's still healing injuries after her unfortunate scuffle with Index and Raitoncide as well as the newly acquired ones in the mansion, the pace at which the two ninja were traveling home was somewhat diminished. What would normally be a twenty to thirty-minute dash in a hurry or a four-hour trip on foot at a casual, civilian pace may just end up taking longer than either of those.</p><p>"I can carry you on my back, you know. We would move faster this way." Yushijin suggested, looking at his side and seeing Mana struggling to keep even his reduced pace up.</p><p>"Wouldn't that be really weird though?" Mana wondered. The embarrassment of thinking about it made the slight ache in her ribs and her joints ease up somewhat as she diverted her thoughts from it.</p><p>"I am a Konoha shinobi carrying a fellow Konoha ninja who has difficulties traveling at an optimal pace due to injuries, who just happens to be of opposite gender. A gender difference, that, under normal circumstances, would prove rather embarrassing for both parties involved but under current ones would be rather reasonable in my subjective point of view." Yushijin stumbled with his words trying to sound as distanced from the topic as possible.</p><p>"Now that you put it that way…" Mana grinned while she let the topic just dangle awkwardly without her addressing it again.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess it would be pretty weird still…" Yushijin looked down before focusing his view back on the road ahead.</p><p>"So you've got another sword? Would it not be better to finally get a more definitive weapon that's made of harder stuff instead?" Mana teased her companion.</p><p>"Run all over me, why won't you? Just remember that our rivalry is still unsettled and I will be looking to settle things when you get better." Yushijin sighed clearly tasting the playfulness sauce that Mana meant her teasing to be taken with.</p><p>"Or we could meet sometime and train together. I'd be really interested to learn from someone who has managed to master an aspect of illusions I have failed to understand fully." Mana suggested. "I really care too little about rivalries or fights. It's all Stea and her silly titles."</p><p>"I might teach you the basics behind temporal illusions if you show me those brain illusions you do," Yushijin suggested. His voice did sound a bit bitter over Mana dismissing the rivalry that was of such great importance to him but he did sound relatively friendly with that suggestion.</p><p>"You mean the ancient way of casting illusions by attacking the opponent's brain directly instead of manipulating their chakra flow? Sure. It's a deal!" Mana nodded. She was happy to find common ground with Yushijin about something. It was evident that the young man extended some sort of offer of friendship to the magician as fellow chuunin. The kind of kinship that was very useful to two young chuunin whom the village promoted so recently and who dove into the crazy and stressful world of advanced ninja life all alone.</p><p>"You're missing your hat," Yushijin noted. "Your hair looks strangely chaotic without it."</p><p>"Yeah, I've noticed." Mana sighed, brushing her hair from her face for the whoever knew which time. "It was getting quite busted anyways so it will be an opportunity to replace it."</p><p>"So what's the story behind that shiny stick?" Yushijin looked at Mana with curiosity. "It busted through my sword without much resistance and it did not look like you coated it with chakra?"</p><p>"How much time do we have?" Mana asked, letting her companion know that it was a lengthy story.</p><p>"I mean… At this pace?" Yushijin shrugged.</p><p>"A fair point." Mana took a deep breath in to prepare better telling the tale of how she came into the possession of the wand and in a way that would have best conveyed its meaning.</p><hr/><p>"That's some story. Now it kind of makes sense why you're so obsessed with saving lives, no offense. I couldn't even begin to imagine what losing your mentor and then losing your teammate just years later feels like. An experience like that would change me…" Yushijin stayed respectful and reserved after Mana finished recounting the story of when she, Shimo, Kouta, and Meiko were looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss.</p><p>"Don't misunderstand, please. I did not develop my nindo after losing half of my team to the cruel way this world is. I treasured life over everything else long before that. This is merely the origin of the wand Meiko made out of Shimo's sword." Mana clarified the confusion.</p><p>"I guess that is why I have not obtained this kind of strength. You had to go through a tough experience to obtain your Audra wand, if I am to gain some kind of strength that my peers do not possess, I would need to lose something as well." Yushijin pondered while looking ahead with a serious expression.</p><p>"That sounded pretty ominous. I do not believe that suffering inherently makes one strong all by itself. Most of the times I was broken down, I almost stayed that way and nothing positive came out of it unless I suffered to save a life, in which case it was worth it every time." Mana shook her head. She could not really understand how Yushijin could have listened to the same words that inspired one kind of feelings in her and then came out with completely different impressions.</p><p>That was just the kind of way that different life experiences changed a person. The interesting observation that everyone was so different that made life so valuable. Everyone was different, everyone was necessary.</p><p>"I guess I really did get hotheaded during the Chuunin Exams. We flipped out on you for doing what you did without wondering what experiences may have lead you to make that choice. I should have known that nobody makes stupid decisions for its own sake." Yushijin said.</p><p>"I did make a stupid decision, no doubts about it. I make mistakes all the time if you look at them from the side. That decision cost me the respect of my fellow Konoha ninja, the trust of the young man I love and plenty of pain. Just to prove to a point. It was a bad decision, all things considered, but it was one that I would repeat today, just like I would stay behind to fight crime even if it meant having a hole blasted through me." Mana managed to muster up a smile even though recalling the pain she went through, which these decisions caused, made smiling troublesome.</p><p>"I wonder if I can ever defeat you with you obtaining so much strength so rapidly through suffering." Yushijin let out a lingering doubt. One that visibly caused him a great deal of pain to admit.</p><p>"You can just wait a couple of years. The medical ninja treating me keep telling me that one of these days I'll end up killing myself…" Mana tried to make it into a joke but the angry glare of her comrade made her expression change into an apologetic one and turn her eyes away.</p><p>"This is no joking matter to me." Yushijin made it painfully clear.</p><p>Mana took a hitching and uneasy breath in before forcing it out before she resorted to asking.</p><p>"Why isn't it? Why do you need to make sure that you are the best at everything you do, why does it matter so much to you?" she wondered.</p><p>"Because I'm not like you. I don't see everyone as having validated their existence just because they were born. I want to prove that my existence is valuable. The only way to know for sure that it is so is to be really good at what you do." Yushijin growled out like a cornered animal. He did not really raise his voice but it was easy to see that he did feel cornered and a bit pissed for having to admit it this openly. It was clearly only because Mana exposed her own past pains that he even opened up this way.</p><p>"What better way to know you've validated your existence than being the best at something?" Mana left a rhetorical question lingering that nailed perfectly the sentiments that Yushijin carried pinned to his heart. "If it is that important, if it is a matter of validating your existence, I can give you that genjutsu competition you want."</p><p>"It would be of no use now. You want to make me see that all life is worth existing, you would never win that even if you could. Our dreams are simply incompatible with that kind of rivalry." Yushijin sighed before grinning once after a long while, "It pisses me off a little."</p><p>"I guess you're right," Mana answered his smile. He may have had a point. At some point when the battle got heated up and Mana saw the edge she had to reach out for to pull herself onto the victory plateau, she'd hesitate. How could she, knowing all she believes, destine someone who thinks like Yushijin for considering his existence worthless just because someone loudly praised for the same things he wants to be acknowledged for defeated him?</p><p>"One thing still does not quite make sense…" Yushijin wondered. "You said that you believe that everyone has already validated their existence just by being born. How come you try so hard to prove something to someone, why do you try so hard to prove yours if it is already proven?"</p><p>"Because I have to. It is the kind of people that try hard and prove all sorts of things to other people that gather inspiration. Those kinds of people are lauded as heroes and heroes inspire change. I don't want to yell loud and tell others to change, I want them to treat life as more sacred all by their own will." Mana answered. Over the massive amount of times she has had similar talks with Kiyomi, she had plenty of time during training to think her position through.</p><p>It was of profound importance that she did strengthen her will to stand by her nindo. After all, in a conflict, if one stops believing in their convictions, their spiritual strength and willpower wavers, which weakens their position in that conflict as well. One's emotional strength matters just as much if not more than physical in the type of battlefield that ninja fight in every day. Had Mana wanted to achieve her dream any less in any of the fights back in Shukuba, she would have worked and pushed herself just a little bit less and that could have been the difference between tearing the Diamond Hand apart and failing.</p><p>Finally, the Konohagakure gate was in sight. The two ninja slowed down before making a complete stop at the entrance to take in the sight of the epic gate structure openly welcoming passers-by inside and to breathe in that Konohagakure air.</p><p>"I really want to wash, eat something and get some sleep…" Mana rubbed her tired eyes giving her paled-out skin a little bit blood red as her knuckles rubbed against it before it returned to its usual shade.</p><p>"Sorry, I would really like to let you go but I can't. I need to bring you with me to report to Lord Sixth." Yushijin rubbed the back of his head. The tone of his voice was different from how he and Mana usually interacted with one another. It was almost friendly, like exposing a little bit of themselves on their way home strengthened their friendship and bond as two young, recently promoted chuunin. One they would both need and treasure.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess you're right…" Mana let her weakened hands dangle. She hunched in the complete powerlessness of realizing she still had to go through facing the Sixth before getting any rest at all. The jutsu she had worked out and was itching to start actually training would also not come to her all by itself. She promised Usuzoku to help the Ninja Rabbits with their conflicts as well as owed some magic shows before her audience completely forgot who she was.</p><p>"Don't worry, what you told me about my mission being just a façade made a lot of sense and I don't think that Lord Sixth will be in much of a spoiled mood to give you too much flak." Yushijin smiled before leading the way north.</p><p>"Yeah, hope you're right…" Mana groaned while dragging her feet like a captured prisoner behind her jailer, who was the only person keeping her from a shower, a meal and a long nap.</p>
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<a name="section0413"><h2>413. Lessons Learnt The Hard Way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On their way to the Konoha Administration building the pair of ninja could not fail to notice the number of wanted posters for disappeared people on the board near the gate. It was not in any way a spike for the phenomena but what troubled Mana was that the mystery of these disappearances was not yet resolved.</p><p>When it all began it seemed to Mana that it was something ground shaking and better left for the village officials and high ranking ninja to deal with but the longer the mystery remained unsolved and the more weird clues surfaced, the more Mana wanted a piece of it. She was not sure if anyone of the disappeared people had died, some of them were found perfectly fine, in the case of Tanko Shigin – even improved.</p><p>And yet… It was possibly the greatest mystery Konoha has faced in a while, possibly even one of its darkest and strangest historic moments since the Second Great Ninja War. Thoughts of taking a crack at it seemed almost like moments of foolish, youthful vanity to the magician. Who was she that she thought she would succeed with what the village was failing to figure out for a couple of years now.</p><p>The Administration building was about as busy as Mana had remembered it being at this time of day. Given how an order to bring Mana back was issued and handed to a chuunin, a relatively intermediate rank of ninja, the magician expected some odd remarks of weird glances coming her way but none were issued. The civil servants buzzing in the Administration just kept on stirring whatever the building was cooking.</p><p>The pair even had to wait by the closed doors to the Hokage office before Lord Sixth would even see them. While waiting Mana could not help but imagine a great hero bringing back a heinous S-Rank villain alive with them and having to wait by the closed door before the Hokage could give a mission to children where they would have to clean dishes in Ichiraku Ramen. For obvious reasons the thought made Mana crack a grin even through her tired state.</p><p>Once the two had made their way into Lord Sixth's office, the man wasted no time before asking Yushijin to report.</p><p>"As you ordered, I've brought Nakotsumi Mana back with me. She offered no resistance but due to her engagements in Shukuba she was injured at the moment of my approach and we had to wait until she was fully recovered." Yushijin bowed on one knee while reporting, after being addressed.</p><p>Lord Sixth barely even wasted a glance to look at Mana, it did not appear that he cared all that much if Mana was home or not. The magician was beginning to feel like her hunch on the man's issued mission being just a precaution in the case of her failure was just confirmed.</p><p>"Could you please tell me about those "engagements", Mana?" Lord Sixth wondered, still working on documentation while he addressed the magician. Despite being sore all over, Mana kneeled on one knee to report on her work in Shukuba.</p><p>"I've completed the mission objective given to me. After I exposed the ones responsible for the money laundering scheme, I found out that there were bigger forces at play that threatened the lives of the Shukuba people and I decided to stay there and help." Mana recounted everything she already told Sixth in her messages that she sent the man. Given the whole fiasco with people in Shukuba Security being replaced with plants of the Diamond Hand and the hawks being intercepted at one time, she thought that starting from the basics would be best.</p><p>"That does not seem like your job or your jurisdiction, don't you think? You could have easily spoiled our favors with the Shukuba Security…" Lord Sixth remarked with a sour tone.</p><p>"During my investigation, I found out that Shukuba Security was mostly corrupt and working with the criminal syndicate. They were even somewhat involved with the movie-making scheme too and the conflicts between the Security and the Diamond Hand threatened to spill over as both innocents and both sides were taking casualties." Mana tried standing her ground. She had clear reasons and felt justified in everything she did but, as always, her reasons were not always taken the same way by everyone else.</p><p>"So how did that whole "investigation" go?" Lord Sixth asked, making a waving gesture with his hand as if asking Mana to hurry on a bit and include only the essential details.</p><p>"It has been busted and all members have been arrested and soon be transferred to the appropriate containment institutions," Mana reported.</p><p>"The Shukuba administration must have been so proud. I suppose that this will make further cooperation between Konohagakure and Shukuba Security easier." The man said in an almost sarcastic manner as if he knew something that Mana would have to inform him off and just wanted to play ignorant.</p><p>"Lord Sixth… The Shukuba administration was involved and was encouraging and profiting from the corruption ring. The administ… Governor of Shukuba was a treasured asset for the criminal syndicate. Due to widespread corruption within the organization, I had members I could vouch for assist me in disbanding the Shukuba Security with it being reformed currently and while the investigation progressed." Mana relayed the information that Lord Sixth undoubtedly had already been aware of. Someone who would have disliked hearing it as much as the Sixth did and did not know it would have shown a much more outraged reaction upon hearing it.</p><p>"So, I assume, you've learned your lesson?" the man raised an eyebrow, finally looking at Mana and not the papers he was filling.</p><p>"Lesson, Lord Sixth?" Mana raised her eyes to meet those of her superior.</p><p>The man sighed. "You've disbanded both the Shukuba Administration and the Shukuba Security. How long do you think it will be until both rot while they are powerless to get the chaos within the pleasure town under control? You may have very well doomed more people to die long-term than you've saved. Sometimes controlled corruption is better than unruly chaos, as an ex-Black Ops, I would know, sometimes the Black Ops seeded similar chaos in towns they wished to de-stabilize."</p><p>"So you did send Yushijin just to distance yourself from the affair?" Mana asked.</p><p>"I did. However, I suspected you'd fail just this way and I thought it would be a valuable experience for you – seeing everything around you burn down in chaos due to your actions. You are a talented ninja and, if you decide against an early retirement, you may just go far, I needed an opportunity to seed that lesson inside you and let it sprout by the time you're a jounin and I can fully trust you." Sixth finally returned to his documents, contemplating his next words and what else he would still require of the two ninja in his office.</p><p>"Lord Hokage, there is another thing. The Fire Temple…" Mana spoke up before the raised hand, still holding the pen that the man was working with silenced her.</p><p>"I know of the Fire Temple. I'd imagine so does the Feudal Lord. It is a minor issue and something the Feudal Lord won't care to even read about as well as something I can easily fix. Konohagakure and the Fire Temple have a long history of cooperation and something like the presence of a Konoha ninja during a scandalous raid will not do much in ruining it." Sixth dismissed Mana's worries over how that information would go through with the man.</p><p>"You two are now dismissed. I will let you know if I have a mission for any of you." Lord Sixth noted.</p><p>Mana gritted her teeth and her eyes sank with emotional dampness right after leaving the office. What little strength still remained in her rustled with such intensity that her little, clenched fists were shaking.</p><p>"Don't worry, Lord Sixth has not been in Shukuba. He just spoke out of his own experience. Experience acquired over years of destabilizing countries and towns, all that he knows of such matters comes from missions where destabilization was the prime objective. His view of the matter may be skewed a little." Yushijin tried calming Mana down by gently placing his hand on her shoulder. The girl collapsed on the armchair where a pair of chuunin were waiting before them and entered the office after Mana and Yushijin had left.</p><p>"What if I did ruin everything? What if everything in Shukuba will get worse or something worse than the Diamond Hand will surface and because of what I've done the town won't be strong enough to stop it?" Mana wrapped her quivering fingers around her sweaty and bandaged forehead. Slight tips of her vessels still pulsed, awkwardly jerking with pressure against her skin making the magician pull her hands away from them. She needed rest… Sleep, food…</p><p>"At any given moment everything past it can go infinitely worse. A rogue planet can hit us and blast us all into space dust. Someone, somewhere can go crazy and destroy our planet by just stomping on it pretty hard leaving us all wheezing on the vast and choking nothingness. To worry about something that is still a what-if and a speculation at best is to waste your time." The youth noted before advising that Mana finally did return home and got her long needed rest.</p><p>"Maybe you'll feel much better about it after. You sure as hell will see things more clearly after a good day of sleep." The swordsman let it be known before walking off on his own and leaving Mana by herself.</p><p>Everything after the report to the Sixth felt hazy. Like a white, thick shroud covering and distorting Mana's vision and the noises of the bustling evening town coming in muzzled like there was a sheet shoved into the magician's ears at all times. The more she approached the limit of her remaining chakra, the more the exhaustion made itself known.</p><p>Just as she expected, both of her parents were currently home. Mother was back from work. Father was resting in the guestroom by the television with the occasional break of sneaking into the kitchen by the medicine cabinet and rubbing his burnt arms with the herb ointments and downing those black market elixirs he was purchasing to numb the pain.</p><p>"Welcome home!" Father yelled out first. The man grunted during his attempts to get up from his comfortable seat through the burning sensations in his arms that were not yet calmed down by the settling in medicine.</p><p>"Mana! Welcome back!" Mother ran out from the kitchen, still wielding her greasy with some fish knife in hand. The woman leaped on top of Mana making the magician's hazy mind jump into a state of hyper-alertness.</p><p>"Knife, knife, knife… And there she goes…" Mana tried alerting her mother of the object she held in her hand while trying to wrap her arms around her daughter but the woman appeared to ignore it all and embrace the returning child. Be it a matter of great skill in knife-wielding, blind luck or experience, a bloody domestic accident was avoided.</p><p>"You were away for so long! We were beginning to get worried," the mother said before hurrying back to the kitchen.</p><p>"They don't tell much in the Administration. Some of my old service pals happened to slip some details about the mission being successful but there were some complications a couple of days ago," father patted on the magician's shoulder before leading her into the guest room and gesturing for her to settle down.</p><p>Mana just lifted her clothes up to show the large wrap of bandages around her waist and a whole assortment of scars and bruises all over her body. She had it all – kunai cuts, bumps, bruises, electric burns and some things she could barely even recount what they were.</p><p>"Should take some pages out of your old man's book. Stay back, let your plans and traps do the work." The father rubbed his stubble with unclear emotions. He did feel a sense of pride in his daughter, that much was evident but he was also quite a bit worried about the number of injuries on her. Given how he was a chuunin himself in his prime, Mana felt very humbled knowing that he had never seen or gathered injuries like these.</p><p>"Not always an option." Mana shrugged. "Most of them should be fine after some rest. Once my chakra returns to normal they'll return to a cute and pink scar tissue."</p><p>"Good thing the healthcare covers scar removal," Father grumbled before mother hurried back, having controlled the situation in the kitchen with the fish and the boiling rice.</p><p>"What was that about scars? That being said, you do look pretty roughed up, are you sure you're OK?" Mother began worrying. Given how even in her happy state she was running around the house with knives, it may have been the best for Mana's health to play it off.</p><p>"I'm really tired. I'll have my wounds licked tomorrow, first thing after a good night's sleep, I promise." Mana quickly jumped to her feet and dove under mother's arms. The woman attempted to grab hold of her only child and examine her injuries with a worrying mother's eye before the magician foiled her plans with her uncanny agility.</p><p>"Oh… If you're going to the hospital tomorrow, you may want to see your friends. Heard they've had a rough time and are recovering." Father noted. It was something that must have drizzled with the same batch of news when he asked his old friends to check into what they can find about Mana's mission. It was barely related so they were unlikely to know much more.</p><p>"Oh, right. Meiko's mother bought a whole bunch of tea from our café. What a sweet woman!" mother shook her head with regret and sorry that the two ran into a whole streak of bad luck.</p><p>"Meiko and Kiyomi are in the hospital? Why? What happened? How could they have gotten themselves injured if Hokage-sensei was with them? Then again…" Mana pondered to herself while she slowly ascended the stairs to the bathroom so she could rip those bloody clothes off and throw them out, change the bandages and maybe make some tea out of her father's painkilling herbs and hit the hay.</p><p>There was nothing to be salvaged from Mana's clothes, even her bandages were soaked with clotted blood and sweat and would have been most efficiently utilized by just being burnt in the garbage bin. None of her wounds seemed to be bleeding at the moment, Mana has been spending her time rather peacefully ever since she returned to the village so her body must have been slowly picking up the pace of regeneration. Once she actually gets some sleep and gets some of her chakra back those wounds will likely be too small to even waste the time of medical ninja…</p><p>Still, there went Mana's peaceful dreams. The whole time while bathing, changing her clothes, making tea, having some sushi rolls and heading back upstairs to finally get some sleep, Mana could not stop thinking about what could have happened to result in Meiko and Kiyomi being hospitalized. Weren't those two supposed to go back to simple missions? Those two were Mana's equals if not superiors in some ways, they would not have been taken out by just about any threat, especially with Chestnut Hanasaku watching over them.</p><p>In the late morning, when Mana woke up, she could not remember a thing she dreamt about. Despite the troublesome state of mind she was in when the magician went to sleep, she just passed out like knocked out, only to wake almost at midday the next morning.</p><p>Almost since the first moments, her bare feet slipped from the bed and onto the rugged mat under it, letting her toes wrap around the soft wool before placing all of her weight on the solid ground and getting back up, Mana felt herself stronger. Just over a single night of good, knockout sleep and a good evening meal her chakra had more than halfway recovered to its peak.</p><p>It went without saying that Mana would have rushed to the hospital. A brief visual inspection of the bruises and battlefield-patched cuts she had let her realize that the only thing troubling her would be the removal of the hasty threads from her sutured lacerations. It was quite unlikely that a medical ninja would have bothered wasting their time using medical ninjutsu on wounds this well healed and just an inch behind being completely closed up with scar tissue. Not unless Mana specifically asks them to, nicely.</p><p>After just a single night of rest and a good pair of hours in the shower and looking after herself, even the villagers were recognizing Mana on the streets again. Asking her when the next show would be, what was the deal with the cuts and bruises and all those exposed wounds on her or just nicely greeting on her way past them.</p><p>Just as expected, the medical ninja did graciously offer to finish up patching the wounds and a single dark blue medical food pill which should have helped her chakra levels return quicker than having to wait for another whole day, just in case she wanted to go back to training today. Mana did not argue much, letting the medical ninja do their thing and completely eliminating any signs of smaller wounds on Mana's body while the bigger ones required a prescription of yellow medical food pills to be taken this evening.</p><p>"This evening, Mana-san. Please remember it, from what you've told me, your body is already recovering from the stress of taking too many food pills too soon!" this was the only issue that made the medical ninja treating Mana's wounds all flustered and worried. It felt so good to finally be back home where being beaten half to death was halfway to death away from being a serious cause for worry…</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko must have been hospitalized a good pair of days ago, as when Mana slowly stumbled into their room, the two were up to their usual tomfoolery with Kiyomi running around with Meiko's bag of snacks, yelling at the teammate that she'd have to give her a peck to the cheek before Kiyomi gives them back.</p><p>"And here to think I was worried…" Mana smiled, her voice was quite familiar to the duo, even after over a week of not seeing each other. The two turned around almost instantly before rushing to hug it out with the magician.</p><p>"What did you bring me!?" Meiko yelled out like a spoiled child during a yearly celebration making Mana rub the back of her messy hair in apology.</p><p>"Sorry, I was too worried about you two to get you anything today. Maybe I'll get something tomorrow." She tried making amends but, after this, she may have been a blood enemy to Meiko.</p><p>"So what happened?" Mana wondered out loud, finally making everything in the room get serious.</p><p>"Well…" Meiko let her voice linger while she recalled the best moment to begin her recollection of the crazy story.</p>
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<a name="section0414"><h2>414. Unfocused Storytelling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko's father entered her little shack. The massive man bypassed the junk that was littering every nook and cranny and placed a sword of his design on Meiko's table. It was a short, two-edged blade with a triangular tip and parallel cutting edges. A custom modification that immediately caught the observing eye was a small shield attached to the side by two parallel bars that kept the shield far enough for a potential wielder to fit their hand inside.</p><p>"There, I made my daughter sword." The man stated as Meiko's hazy eyes may have missed out on the opportunity to fully comprehend what was happening right in front of her.</p><p>The redhead slipped her hand in and gripped the sword's hilt, lifting it up and trying to swing it around in a manner that kept the shield always facing outside, she'd have had to turn her hand in a very awkward manner to make it face inside.</p><p>"It limits my movements a bit." Meiko sighed. "My design goes something like this."</p><p>The girl leaned under the junk she had scattered over her table, all bits and pieces of massive projects she was excited enough with to have her hype propel her to the heavens if it was given a shape of a propelling gaseous stream, however soon abandoned.</p><p>After a short while, the blacksmith pulled out a glove that had a sharp sword sticking out of it. The glove that Meiko shoved her hand into the grip and control the sword looked a massive, decorated thimble that fit around her entire hand.</p><p>"This doesn't?" Meiko's father lifted an eyebrow, observing Meiko's curious thrusting movements and predictable slashing arcs.</p><p>"It does but… If I adapt my style to it this might do." Meiko shrugged. The blacksmith put both weapons by her shoulder greaves and weaved a pair of hand seals. In a spiraling eclipse of blue light, both weapons disappeared inside her greaves while the light formed a shiny glyph symbol on the armor pieces then faded away shortly.</p><p>"What's the problem? You look tired." The man wondered while Meiko armored up as quickly as she could. Since graduation from the Academy, she had perfected the models for her armors and could now slip into and out of them quite easily. The way which Mana used her uniform in battle was a minor inspiration to the modifications but, then again, it was Meiko who taught Mana her redirection-and-counter fighting style so the redhead liked to think that everyone was inspiring one another.</p><p>"I just… It's not easy, placing a chakra coat over your weapon. Imbuement is the strongest possible armor for a weapon, it will never wear or break while it is imbued with chakra during battle and it will cut through anything that's not imbued with chakra too. Even Audra can withstand just a few strikes of an imbued weapon." Meiko sighed.</p><p>"So that's why you asked me to make you a weapon? Easier to imbue?" Meiko's father stroke his stubble. Meiko was stretching out in her limited armor that shielded only her most vital areas.</p><p>"Yeah. If it's made by your bloodline I can probably manage it for a short while. I have the power of what it takes to imbue but not the control. I tried doing what Mana told me – focus. I did keep on tampering with tools this past couple of days hoping that would be enough focusing…" Meiko finally prepared for her departure. She had to meet up with Chestnut Hanasaku and Kiyomi by the Administration.</p><hr/><p>"You're derailing the story!" Kiyomi complained. "This isn't even about the mission we were in! At this pace, we'll never hear about what happened to Mana today!"</p><p>"Okay, you take over then." Meiko crossed her hands over her chest as if challenging her friend to do better.</p><hr/><p>The silence behind the breakfast table was getting eerie. It could have had something to do with the fact that Kiyomi was having quarrels with her parents about her performance in the exams. While they were impressed with Kiyomi's skill, they were not overly fond of the overall performance and how the Yamanaka clan looked after their potential heiress failed to acquire a promotion.</p><p>"Will you be home tonight? Your father is arranging a meeting between you and this Inuzuka young man. He might be a good match for you, plus the partnership between the clans would be beneficial." Mother inquired. Kiyomi rolled her eyes, it was just about right that the only thing that her mother wanted to talk about was something about clan business and Kiyomi's role in its future.</p><p>"No, I may have a mission. I do not think I will be home by tonight." Kiyomi was happy to be able to wiggle out of her engagement and not have to lie at the same time.</p><p>"Ah… That is so cruel of Lord Sixth, to give such difficult missions to mere genin." The Yamanaka lady remarked. Kiyomi jerked her head, similarly to how one moved their head when they heard something loud and unexpected behind them. Except, in this case, the sound was more pretentious and sharp than loud and it was delivered right to Kiyomi's face.</p><p>"What is that supposed to mean? I may still be a genin but Meiko and I are still some of the most experienced and skilled genin in the village!" Kiyomi raised her voice. Mother put her teacup together and shook her palms as an apology. She made that weird, ignorant face, trying to either act ignorant, act as if the verbal stab did not go right under Kiyomi's ribs or genuinely be just that ditzy.</p><p>"Oh, I'm sorry, Kiyomi, I did not mean to offend. Anyway, just be careful. I'll let father know that the meeting is postponed. You should not shake off that meeting though, that Inuzuka is a real charmer, I hear." Mother smiled to herself while Kiyomi just gulped her tea down.</p><p>"What if I find someone myself?" Kiyomi let out all of a sudden.</p><p>"That's just fine. I'm sure you know the rules of succession if it is a young man from the Yamanaka clan they become the head of the clan if they are not – you do but a strong tie between the clans is established by your union." The woman noted.</p><p>"Yeah but what… What if it isn't a man?" Kiyomi blabbed out with slightly blushed cheeks.</p><p>"Oh, my… Well… In that case, I suppose it's the same as marrying a not affiliated with a clan partner. Do you have anyone in mind already?" Kiyomi's mother was beginning to get flustered over the unusual turn that the conversation was taking.</p><p>"No, obviously not. I'm just… Just messing around. I need to run!" Kiyomi yelled out, jumping off her seat and just bolting out of the room, just barely remembering to pick up her ninja pouch and her other supplies.</p><hr/><p>"Who's derailing the story now?!" Meiko made an inappropriate gesture at Kiyomi's direction. The two were like children as at that moment they started wrestling one another playfully and yet that immaturity felt so serene and made Mana as calm and cozy as very few things could have made her feel.</p><p>"I don't think that the story has even been "railed" yet for it to be derailed…" Mana chuckled</p><p>"Fair enough…" Meiko cleared her throat, lifting Kiyomi off her bed like a puppy and just placing her on the chair beside it. When the blonde felt her feet leaving Meiko's bed and saw her being lifted up so casually and put down, she stopped clawing and biting and just admired Meiko's strength even in while recovering from an injury.</p><hr/><p>Hanasaku was waiting for the two by the Administration. By the time that the two kunoichi even saw their sensei patiently waiting for them, they were brawling again over things neither of them could remember. Despite having been the Fifth Hokage at some point and being possibly the most powerful ninja alive, Chestnut Hanasaku just did not have the gravitas to her person to stop the play fighting.</p><p>"I hope you two haven't been slacking off your training?" the woman warned the two.</p><p>"What? The do you know something about the mission?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"No." Hanasaku laughed it off. "Just trying the worried mentor role out. Figured I'm gonna change. Too many of my students got booted out from the team."</p><p>"But Mana got promoted." Meiko raised a finger.</p><p>"Yeah, but we did not really get along that well until the end of our professional relationship. Maybe that is why she got promoted." Hanasaku sighed.</p><p>"Hokage-sensei really said that about me? That's a bit sad. I treasure every input of her in my training greatly!" Mana interrupted the story.</p><p>"Don't worry, my clan could not get off my butt about the Chuunin Exams. They wanted me to be a lady in a fancy flowery kimono, fainting over the legendary deeds of my serving clansmen. Me failing the Exams just made them come to me with that stuff more, like I was just playing ninja and it was time to be done. Couldn't stand that so I spent all my time training instead of socializing." Kiyomi admitted while leaning back and stretching out.</p><p>"I don't think Mana ever finished training me in chakra control…" Meiko left it dangling. "I kind of need that training to advance on the path that I've chosen but… I think that finding ways to move forward on my own and working on creative solutions is kind of more exciting!" the blacksmith grinned.</p><p>"That's good. You two are really amazing but just because you powered through one of the hardest Chuunin Exams in history doesn't mean you can sleep on your laurels. Keep working hard, you guys." Hanasaku encouraged the two before they entered the Administration building.</p><p>"Did Hanasaku-sensei just encourage us? That does not feel right…" Meiko whispered into Kiyomi's ear.</p><p>"That's some really shady stuff, sensei, it's really ominous when you give these kinds of speeches like you're gonna leave us or something…" Kiyomi confronted their mentor straight out.</p><p>"What? Leave you two? That's nonsense…" the woman laughed out. "At this point, you're basically a family member to me, Kiyomi, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where you take the investment I put into training you, Meiko. You two are my most precious students."</p><p>"She's… Really acting weird!" Meiko's eye twitched as the blacksmith couldn't shake off the feeling. "Normally I'd feel pumped up by my mentor telling me all that but… It's just so weird when Hanasaku-sensei does it."</p><p>"Huh? Am I doing something wrong?" Hanasaku made a long face before dragging out a blue book. Neither Kiyomi nor Meiko could make out the name of the enigmatic work of literature before their mentor threw it away over her shoulder. "What a load of garbage this thing is…"</p><p>"Wait!" Kiyomi rushed down to pick the book up. "What we meant was… It's cool if you want to learn to be a better mentor just… Don't start doing it all at once out of the blue, it comes off as kind of creepy. Inform us ahead of time about these things, sensei…"</p><p>The two girls shared a laugh while the bemused woman placed the book back in the pouch she drew it from. While it was rather lovely that Chestnut Hanasaku went above and beyond in her quest to improve as a person and a mentor, the fact that she just dumped the book over her shoulder in the middle of a busy Konoha Administration building showed that she had just begun her journey there.</p><hr/><p>The team did not have to wait too long until entering the Hokage's office and facing Lord Sixth about why they were summoned. Seeing how missions were by far the most common reason for such summons of the entire team, neither of the three was wrong to be prepared for one. Physically or mentally.</p><p>The two had stumbled onto the scene of a young girl, not possibly a day older than six or seven, casually humming a tune and standing in front of the Lord Sixth with defiance, refusing to take the more accustomed and strict, more militaristic stance. The appearance of the young girl, ignoring her less than ripe age, was odd in of itself. She was of dark-skinned, of darker shades even than that of Mana's which was already considered unnatural in these areas of the Ninja World, neon blue hair and had a tattoo of a rainbow on her right cheek. One of the girl's eyes had a purple iris while another one was sunflower-yellow.</p><p>"A remarkable performance on that S-Rank mission, Ai Yuri-chan-san-sama-sensei. I see that your Sharingan and Rinnegan combination is serving you well, we were wise to transplant them to you at your birth!" Lord Sixth commended the little child. "And you manage to not kill anyone in this mission involving killing forty S-Rank criminals, which I, obviously, respect! Truly you are too kind for this world!"</p><p>"Thanks, desu 3", the child spoke up in a voice that made Kiyomi imagine hearts with cartoonish eyes riding rainbows coming out from her mouth. The heiress was ready to instantly profuse love to this young kid on the spot unless her feelings would be revoked, in which case she'd accept that and respect it very much. "Can I sit in your chair, desu?"</p><p>"Oh, it appears the Team Hokage is here already. Could you three maybe wait?" the Hokage's assistant asked of the trio, "Ai Yuri-chan-san-sama-sensei requires being handed the reigns of the village for a while…"</p><p>"That's perfectly fine with me." Hanasaku nodded in respect.</p><p>"Eh, if you are busy, I guess I can do this some other time. I'll be back after the next mission then. You know how to contact me." Ai Yuri-chan-san-sama-sensei nodded at Lord Sixth.</p><p>"Of course, farewell, Ai Yuri-chan-san-sama-sensei!" Lord Sixth bowed his head respectfully for the barely older than a toddler young lady who just skipped out of the office, shimmering her red Sharingan to Kiyomi as a tease.</p><p>"Bye, Ai Yuri-chan-san-sama-sensei!" Meiko and Kiyomi waved farewell to the child as she disappeared in the long corridors of the Konoha Administration. The Team Hokage then prepared to face the reason of why they were called now that the Hokage's schedule was cleared.</p><p>All three kneeled before Lord Sixth on one knee. As most reasonable leaders did, the Sixth asked Team Hokage to stand up and receive their orders. The fact that Hanasaku kneeled as per the honorable tradition, following the chain of subordination properly appeared to surprise the Sixth himself. The man even hesitated for a moment to admire the odd sight before beginning to speak.</p><p>Besides the usual people present in the Hokage's office: the Hokage himself and his assistant, there was a third young man with a Konoha High uniform. The young man must have been in his early twenties, not the type of person to look like much of a threat. His messy hair and glasses made him not look all too much different from someone who would have become the Hokage's assistant in time.</p><p>While, initially, his presence did seem odd, given his simple and unimpressive looks, Kiyomi and Meiko merely assumed that he was just another office clerk or an assistant-in-training. Someone interning in the Konoha Administration from Konoha High, perhaps.</p><p>"I have a mission for you, Team Hokage. It is not a mission I would entrust genin, seeing how it is a B-Rank mission, however… Given the circumstances that you have a human weapon of galactic scale destruction managing the team and neither one of you two are no ordinary genin, you will do well, I am sure." Sixth noted.</p><p>Kiyomi was clenching her fingers. Initially, she did not like the sight of Lord Sixth's face but by giving their team a serious mission like this he made her scorn for the man's judgment ease up a bit. B-Rank missions were mostly entrusted to chuunin or jounin who were not quite the wheat amongst the chaff or just looking for simple work. They carried a heavy risk of engagement with an enemy force. Just the type of work that a ninja would have received after their promotion.</p><p>Just a brief glance at Meiko's expression suggested that the blacksmith was also quite excited for this opportunity. Completing a B-Rank mission may have been a serious statement to their record, completing it would have meant bouncing off of the bottom Kiyomi's been floating close to and having something to slap at the faces of all those snobby clansmen suggesting that she started living a lady's life.</p><p>"A squad of our ninja has been taken out within the borders of the Fire Country, eighteen kilometers north-west to the Fire Temple. It is unclear who unlikely has taken them out but it is more than likely that these were nukenin. The leader of the squad was a chuunin and a member of the Uchiha clan. While the mission objective of the squad was already destroyed, we do not wish the nukenin to get their hands on the Sharingan eyes for it would be a fuel in the fire for our local black market and lure all sorts of shady figures inside our borders." Lord Sixth started briefing the team.</p><p>Kiyomi did her best to restrain her distaste for the finer details of the mission objective. Of course, an Uchiha would have gotten themselves and their squad killed, recklessly surrendering their corpse and their valuable eyes to the enemy. If someone without the vanity of an Uchiha was to transplant their eyes it would have been a recipe for a disaster. Someone with that kind of power, depending on the figure, obviously, could have waged wars against entire countries and united lowly criminals under their wing just by possessing those eyes.</p><p>"Given how the matter involves a dead body and nukenin, you will require someone skilled enough to remove the Sharingan under battlefield conditions. Obviously, you can't just pop an eye out of the socket using your bare fingers…" Lord Sixth smiled.</p><p>The trio of the Team Hokage cringed before following the encouraging example of the Hokage's assistant and erupting into a contained and respectful laugh.</p><p>"This young man here is a young Sin Eater. He will make sure that the body of the Uchiha contains no hidden seals or traps and will safely remove the Sharingan. It is his duty to make sure that the eyes are in useable condition and fit for a transplant. Your duty in this team-up is to protect the young Waiso from getting killed while he is fulfilling his duty." Lord Sixth took a moment to catch his breath.</p><p>"Do not feel shy to make friends with young Waiso, if successful in this mission he shall become a part of the Team Hokage." The Hokage's assistant nodded his head respectfully, encouraging the young man to join his newly formed team in this assignment. The young man appeared to be completely oblivious to the social cues, just nodding his head, smiling with a slight drool for a short while before realizing what the assistant meant to signal and rush to the line-up of his new team. Not before tripping over and scattering some papers along the way.</p><p>"Greetings, I am Waiso Iamen, a Sin Eater-in-training and I look forward to joining your team and working with you!" the man bowed his body halfway in the overly respectful manner that reminded Kiyomi of when she first saw Mana. While being reminded of a teammate who has moved past this stage was not the best first impression, the blonde acknowledged that perhaps it was a bit unfair to expect this newbie fit her overblown pink nostalgia goggle expectations about her next teammate.</p><p>After all, both Mana and Meiko were new people to her at some point and things did not exactly fire off that well with Mana from the get-go as well. At the very least, this assignment proved to be an interesting and challenging experience and that was exciting all by itself.</p>
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<a name="section0415"><h2>415. All Roads Lead To The Black Market</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Lord Sixth excused the newly assembled Team Hokage, Hanasaku remained still where she previously stood, observing her superior with an awkward glare. The Sixth took a couple of moments to notice this, the three genin who were on their way to leaving the office also turned back and froze in observation of how this will play out.</p><p>It was no secret that Chestnut Hanasaku and Lord Sixth – Ogame Okoto did not get along. Some thought it was because Ogame occupied the seat, which Hanasaku previously held. After all, while Chestnut Hanasaku was not quite the textbook definition of a leader figure or even of a responsible adult, she was clearly displaying signs of growth and improving at both areas during her time as the head of the village.</p><p>Those that knew Hanasaku at all from a closer distance were aware that it was not the case at all – the woman disliked the politics and micromanaging every aspect of the village. Leadership suited her ill and she was just temporarily holding the seat as per the original arrangement with the Council. Showing no ambitions of desire to prolong her stay in it.</p><p>Hanasaku's differences with Lord Sixth hailed from the woman's tremendous love that could have been compared to an actual family that she showed to her students and Sixth's strict, by the book decisions in terms of their growth as well as the very confrontational manner in which the two settled their disagreements in the past. Tensions were burning up as if the glares represented even a single percent of their owners' strength, they'd have long since made the world that held them collapse in on itself.</p><p>"Will there be something else?" The Sixth finally spoke up, murdering the living hell out of the awkward and creepy silence that could have been compared to the cold war while anyone around these two would have felt like citizens of bickering world leaders. Almost accepting the fact that these differences might cause their own utter annihilation and the sick sense of cosmic irony.</p><p>"Drats, I forgot again…" Hanasaku snorted before pulling out her little book and flipping through several pages, her eyes slowly shifted through the paper. The woman's fingers ran through the lines at the pace of someone who has recently mastered the rocket science of reading but was not quite confident in their mastery yet.</p><p>"It was very mindful of you to attribute us a specialist required for this assignment," Hanasaku exclaimed in a polite yet forced manner before bowing half of her body in a submissive manner. "As expected from a leader such as Lord Sixth!" she added, while secretly glancing at the still open book in her left hand.</p><p>Lord Sixth blinked a couple of times. Over his time serving as Black Ops he had seen more than his fair share of all kinds of things this world had to offer but this genuinely confused him. He was a master of reading the environment and tracking any sort of killing intent in a fellow person but this woman displayed none.</p><p>"I apologize, Lord Sixth, sensei is just reading a book about improving her skills as a mentor. She's just learning…" Kiyomi grabbed her mentor by the collar and dragged her out of the office with a blush on her cheeks.</p><p>"I… I see…" Lord Sixth babbled before clearing his throat and returning to his work.</p><hr/><p>"Ugh… I hate the goddamned Uchiha. Those snobby brats thinking they're so much better than everyone!" Kiyomi grunted while Team Hokage worked on leaving the Administration building.</p><p>"I dunno, their faces are usually so bland. I don't think they're thinking about that much at all. Maybe they're just kinda <em>returded</em> or something?" Meiko pondered, twisting her lower jaw as her head was working overtime.</p><p>"Do you mean "retarded"?" Waiso tried to fix Meiko's flaws in thinking, walking into what he did not yet know was an impossible task.</p><p>"Too late, newbie! I refuse to call them anything other than "<em>returded</em>" from now on, those little turds!" Kiyomi laughed out.</p><p>"Speaking this way of the dead is not nice, you guys…" Waiso whined out before fixing his glasses that were slipping off his already quite oversized, in proportion to his body, head.</p><p>"That's right… I was wondering what you two were doing wrong… Nice call, newbie!" Hanasaku lifted her finger up in her own personal eureka moment.</p><p>"What is… With this team?" Waiso breathed out moaning to himself silently, but not quietly enough for it to not be vocal.</p><p>"But Ai Yuri-chan-san-sama-sensei is an Uchiha, and a Jinchuuriki, and a Rinnegan user. She's okay though, right?" Meiko shouted out in surprise that remembering these crucial details brought her.</p><p>"Obviously! Ai Yuri-san-sama-sensei is obviously awesome!" Kiyomi pouted while crossing her hands over her chest at the mere implication of her friend that the Yamanaka meant ill about the sacred child who was too kind for this world.</p><hr/><p>"How long do you think it will be until we clash with the enemy?" Kiyomi wondered, stretching out longing for a good training session already. The team had not yet even left the village but by that time it could have been too late. It may have been wise to devise a plan long before clashing with the enemy and Chestnut Hanasaku was not the kind of leader to worry about these sort of things.</p><p>"If they are where Lord Sixth claimed them to be… Quite some time. It might take us a day if we travel at this pace before we even reach a roadside inn on Typhoo road, another six hours of the trip before we reach the Fire Temple, shouldn't be too far away from there." Waiso informed the team, feeling proud of his ability to be of assistance.</p><p>"Wow, you're pretty smart!" Meiko smacked the new member of the team on their back, knocking their glasses on the ground. Something that appeared to trouble the little fellow but he just hunched over and picked them up instead of making a bigger fuss. The young man cleaned them on his Konoha High uniform before putting them back on with the small crack intact. Despite looking a little peeved by the careless action of his teammate, the little guy did not voice his dislike for Meiko's actions in any way except the social cues, which, obviously flew over the heads of everyone but Kiyomi.</p><p>"We can pick up the pace then…" Kiyomi looked at the team leader who was beginning to feel excited about the opportunity to dash to the next end of the planet in an instant and show off her speed but then pulled out her book and started rapidly browsing through the pages.</p><p>"As the team leader, I should show initiative and be assertive, but willing to listen to the team's opinions! What do you guys think?" Hanasaku wondered.</p><p>"I think that's how team leader should be, yeah, your book is kind of on point. Those books sometimes have pretty smart stuff in them, don't you think, Kiyomi?" Meiko nodded with confidence.</p><p>"She meant about picking up the pace, I believe…" Waiso mumbled while butting two of his fingers shyly, knowing that he had to fix his teammate but afraid of being punched or otherwise roughed up by the redhead's shows of affection after.</p><p>"Oh… Yeah, full speed ahead!" Meiko pointed her fist onward.</p><p>"The team means all of us. What do you think, Waiso?" Kiyomi smiled at the new team member. She kind of felt bad about how the little fellow had not yet properly eased into the team and its dynamics and did not have the day of just socializing and getting to know them better. His mind must have been blown already and here Meiko was roughing him up while the tremendous expectations were still weighing his shoulders down… If Kiyomi could give the little guy some say in something, or at least create the illusion that such was the case, maybe he'd feel a little bit better.</p><p>"Ummm… I think it's a very bad idea. The enemy was skilled enough to take down an intermediate Uchiha ninja with a team of genin, they are either plentiful in numbers or highly skilled individuals. The main danger right now is that they will leave the Fire Country borders, after which point we will not be able to pursue them further. That being said, they will not be foolish enough to move fast either. They have a dead body on their hands and they are missing ninja with the entire world being after them, they cannot possibly afford to raise the noise that traveling at high velocity would create. They will also want to pawn the Uchiha off in a black market hotspot somewhere so they are also tied to schedules and unidentified third parties. That leaves the only credible threat – being unable to best the enemy and take over the body – our mission objective. Given how we do not know the abilities of our opponents, it would be wise to exercise caution and not waste chakra needlessly speeding. We should maintain our current pace. We have a good two days before the body is pawned off, three before they leave the country by my calculations based on experience and teachings in the operations of black market bounty facilities."</p><p>The trio just kept on staring in surprise at the face of the young man who appeared to be growing bolder and bolder with each passing sentence, going into great detail about his reasoning behind every statement and voicing multiple possibilities of possible action plans before settling on one favorite and explaining his reasoning behind that.</p><p>"You may just be smarter than Mana! That was awesome!" Meiko grinned before roughing the little nerd kid by messing up his thick and greasy hair some more. While the newbie did not appreciate the gesture, looking terrified for his well-being all the way through, his petrified smile afterward betrayed that he did perceive it as Meiko's way of showing appreciation.</p><p>"Okay, as the team leader who is showing initiative, I have decided to do what Waiso said we should do!" Hanasaku nodded with confidence as if it was her plan all along.</p><hr/><p>Given that the team was moving at a casual, for a team of ninja, pace, they reached an inn before it got dark. Roadside inns were quite a common business practice for small-time civilians living outside of the bigger settlements of the ninja villages. Whether the inn owner provided service to nukenin and other shady figures that needed a safe roof to hide their head under, or a legitimate establishment, it was a way for a civilian to both be useful and make a living out there.</p><p>Some countries, Konoha included, even had deals with the innkeepers that a ninja village or some other country-related institution would compensate for any troublesome ninja related activity that would end up demolishing their inn.</p><p>"Shall we move through the night or stay here?" Hanasaku yawned. It was clear that she had no preference and that she could have probably solved this entire matter in mere moments but the woman preferred to work on her social and mentor skills and still had to train the next generation instead of solving all of its problems herself.</p><p>"I would advise staying here." Waiso cleared his throat. "Given that we do not know the enemy or their abilities and have ample time, it would be wiser to rest well and give it time to coordinate our strategies."</p><p>"If we run into a tough situation Hanasaku-sensei will solve it for us anyway…" Kiyomi shook her hand with indifference. "I would very much like to train a little bit so stopping would be nice."</p><p>"I also have abilities I want to brush up on." Meiko nodded. "Given how Hanasaku-sensei is with us in this mission, I can't help it but look at it as a training assignment rather than a life-or-death situation where rushing would give us anything. May as well use that extra time we have."</p><p>"That was an intelligent and well put together argument, Meiko, I am thoroughly impressed." Waiso looked at the blacksmith with surprise.</p><p>"Meiko's not some kind of an idiot jock. She's just intelligent at a very select and narrow array of things." Kiyomi smiled.</p><p>The Konoha quartet entered the inn only to be greeted by a rough and rowdy view of a band of mercenaries having chosen it as their pit stop for the evening. Likely overnight. While the noise and potential trouble were certainly unpleasant, it did not appear judging from everyone's faces that anyone had particular trouble with it.</p><p>A sound of glass smashing into someone's face, with the unlucky mercenary falling down with their chair due to the surprise of the impact more than its force or the damage it did, alarm the group. The fallen mercenary picked themselves off of the floor, soaked in beer before laughing out and making his friends cheer over the fact that their unlucky pal was not knocked out cold by having a large mug smashed in their face.</p><p>"What an uncivilized bunch…" Waiso shook his head, mumbling to himself.</p><p>"Mercenaries. Every day might be their last so they make it their duty to act like it." Kiyomi shrugged her shoulders. Her own experience with the bunch was almost entirely unpleasant as whenever she approached these people she had to fight one or a bunch of them. Even when the mission demanded to hire a mercenary, somehow it all blew up in her face.</p><p>"Do you have rooms?" Hanasaku asked the man behind the bar. The man nodded. He then pulled out a thick and messy book and scribbled something in it.</p><p>"Will all of you need your own separate rooms?" the man behind the bar raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Nah, we'll make do with one." Hanasaku shook her head. "Shit, I forgot to consult my team…" she then smacked herself across the forehead.</p><p>"It's fine. We'll raise less noise that way. With a little luck, these guys won't even notice we're here." Kiyomi shook her head voicing her own thoughts.</p><p>"Actually… Maybe it would not be decent for all of us to… Stick to one room…" Waiso blushed, dragging his feet across the floor.</p><p>"Relax, no need to be shy!" Meiko smacked her teammate across the back again, due to the little one being all flustered during the moment of impact, the geeky youth tumbled over himself with surprisingly elastic movement before smacking into the wooden wall and sticking off of it from the top down like a chunk of goop. This appeared to make the mercenaries laugh.</p><p>"Did you see how the guy stuck off from the wall, like a maple leaf covered with shit…" whichever one of the muscle-heads could not help but smack his thigh in laughter.</p><p>Waiso picked himself off the floor and dusted his uniform off, fixed his glasses and wiped the trickling blood from his nose. Oddly enough, the blood running from his nose did not appear to behave like normal human blood, dripping and running without control. It was slimy and almost runny-nose-like.</p><p>"Don't laugh at my teammate or I'll kick your ass." Meiko casually threw it out at the mercenary band.</p><p>"So much for not being noticed by a bunch of mercenaries…" Kiyomi shook her head, covering her eyes in embarrassment.</p><p>"Kick our ass, you say?" a towering strongman took up from his chair. While he was sitting, surrounded by his men the man appeared to look like he was standing and therefore standing out of the group. The revelation that he was actually sitting made Meiko's eyes widen in excitement and amazement to how well-built this mercenary was. He was so massive that he did not appear to wear any flak jackets or usual mercenary body armor for there was none that would fit him and he may not have afforded to have some custom made.</p><p>The rest of his runt from the litter flock just booed in encouragement like rabid bulls, sensing blood and seeing stars in the air. The scent of alcohol filled the room even more than it was already reeking of as they opened their rotten mouths.</p><p>"How about I kick your ass and then strip that fancy armor off of you? I'm sure that the black market would fetch a fine price for some custom ninja-quality shit." The man rumbled. His sticky, long beard shook like a sheathed sword all in unison when his mouth moved.</p><p>"Do we really have time for this?" Kiyomi raised her eyebrows while looking at Hanasaku, trying to appeal to the woman's newly discovered sense of mentor mentality.</p><p>"No, this is fine. What was that you were saying about a black market deal? Is one of the big shot dealers within our borders? Where will they open shop?" Waiso ran up to the massive man, grabbing him by the belt in an attempt to extract some information. A lazy backhanded smack sent the young man slamming at another wall, this time the one by the door to the outside making the poor geek repeat his oddball sticking and landing routine and an odd way of bleeding from his busted nose.</p><p>"Come on, Waiso. Defend yourself!" Meiko pouted crossing her arms over her chest. "You can't just let them bully you around and make fun of you like that. How strong exactly are you? What are your abilities? We're your team, this will be a good opportunity to show us what you can do."</p><p>"Well…" Waiso slurred his speech as he was still seeing stars while he wiped the crimson goo that was oddly drooping but not dripping from his strangely still intact nose. "I can identify and defuse odd traps and seals on and typically placed around a dead body…"</p><p>"Oh no…" Meiko gasped. "You mean to say you're mighty weak!?"</p><p>"Well… That's quite emasculating when you put it that way but… I like to think of myself as useful in very niche areas," Waiso raised his index finger as if making a very valid point.</p><p>"Oh well… At least you can take a hit pretty well." Meiko shook her head as if disappointed by the reveal of the mystery about her friend's abilities before raising an angry glare at the giant of the mercenary band. "Initially I wanted to kick your ass just because you made fun of my friend Waiso. If you know something Waiso wants to know, now I'll have to force you to tell him that too!" she growled.</p><p>"No, Meiko, he knows about the black market dealer. The one that might buy the Uchiha body close to the border. These men are also heading there with a business of their own. You want to know what they know as well – it's our mission objective!" Waiso corrected the blacksmith.</p><p>"Oh… Well then, you'll tell all of us about that dealer." Meiko exclaimed in a self-doubting manner, checking her tough-speech with Waiso every pair of words while the puny Sin Eater kept on confirming Meiko's words. "Is it fine with you, old man?" The blacksmith turned to the man behind the bar who booked their rooms.</p><p>"Just take it outside…" he shrugged. The man looked used to these sorts of engagements happening around these parts.</p>
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<a name="section0416"><h2>416. The Obsidian Training Sword</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a loud, endless tirade of thudding, passionate feet picking up dirt and dust, the empty road filled with mercenaries. Kiyomi and Waiso followed the rushing crowd outside, they simply mixed into the crowd which appeared quite willing to let them join their ranks. Hanasaku settled down by the bar, choosing to get something to eat and drink instead. She did not need to say the word, as large as the mercenary ruffian was Meiko had it covered in the mind of the Sannin.</p><p>The crowd cleared out an opening, standing around it in a ring formation, creating a living fighting stage made of dirt and patches of grass and fenced off by the living barrier of passionate and positively drunk individuals. Some of them yelled obscenities, some of them encouraged their pal while others were too drunk for their yells to make any sense at all.</p><p>The towering mercenary removed a long, weapon shaped pack that he wore behind him. Due to the massive size of the man, it was not easily visible and the massive frame made the rather unimpressive weapon drown in the muscular back of its owner. With a rub of his hand, carefully undoing the bind and then unwrapping the weapon from its black cloth cover, the colossal mercenary was finally armed.</p><p>"That's one impressive weapon!" Meiko noticed. Stars shimmered in her eyes as they ran down the obsidian black color of the material the weapon was made of.</p><p>It was no blade. More like a bar that was shaped like a training sword but it did not appear to be sharp or capable of cutting anything. It could have been a non-lethal weapon. Carrying something like that out in the open or giving such a bar of blackness for inspection, the man did not risk attracting too much attention. Or so he had thought as the non-lethal bokken of whatever it was made of was more visually impressive than most blades Meiko had seen in her life.</p><p>"Right? Gonna make a fortune selling it on the black market. All sorts of figures are gonna show up, looking to pay any amount of money for a bit more of the only currency that matters – power!" the mercenary smiled in pride. His eyes ran down the blackness of his own bokken. It was then that Kiyomi's eyes picked up on a particularly peculiar detail.</p><p>"What's wrong with that sword?" she asked out loud, trying to make Meiko give the sword a closer look. It would not have been completely impossible for the blacksmith to have missed out on a major detail after she was drooling all over the weapon. Just like someone admiring the finer aspects of the feminine forms often forgot to remember the color of the woman's eyes.</p><p>"You mean what's awesome about it?" Meiko grinned. She reached for her own forearm, dragging her hand across her wrist guard and leaving a glowing source of bluish light on the armor piece. The blacksmith pulled out the sword that her father gave her before she left.</p><p>"Now that you mention it…" Waiso scratched his chin, feeling stumped. "The surface does look very odd… Almost like the bokken is searing hot and messing up the air around it."</p><p>"Tsk. Those mercenaries… Always getting their hands on pricy equipment without learning to use it." Kiyomi grumbled. This encounter made her recall her own experience when she and Mana faced a leader of the mercenary gang who also, not unlike this gent here, got his hands on some heavy Konoha military cargo.</p><p>"What? You mean all of you aren't going to come at me at once?" Meiko raised an eyebrow when the tower of a man took an offensive stance with his peculiar bokken.</p><p>Without answering with anything but a wild and deafening battle roar, the man charged at Meiko, swinging his usual sized bokken at her. Meiko placed her buckler up for an easy block. It seemed like a very reckless way of attack, the man was clearly forcing his massive frame to work overtime but his sword was relatively small for his size. It was evident that he used his overwhelming strength to swing his weird blade as hard as he could instead of relying on the weight of his sword.</p><p>A simple buckler block should have done it. The moment the black bokken touched Meiko's buckler, the blacksmith flew aside, as if her own blade was trying to run away at breakneck speed, carrying its owner with it. The redhead broke through a bunch of mercenaries who were too slow to move aside and crashed into the woods, creating a trail of devastation where she was thrown. If the attack came from a different direction, the blacksmith would have demolished the entire inn.</p><p>"Heh, heh… Hundreds of thousands of tons compressed into the size of a simple bokken. So immensely dense is this sword, that it bends the space around it slightly. I'm the only one in my band strong enough to wield it," The man grinned, feeling so happy with himself that he was beginning to wrap his sword back up.</p><p>"Well?" he raised an eyebrow looking at Meiko and Waiso, who was pulling his hair from his scalp. "Any of you looking for more trouble or are we done here?" the man grinned.</p><p>"Oh? Talking mighty already?" Kiyomi snickered with a mocking tone. "I thought you were going to take some of us to the black market deal? I'm sure ninja would be worth something…"</p><p>"Pfff…" the man sprayed like a horse. "Weaklings like you can't be worth the hassle it'd make to carry your heads around. This is where I and my men are celebrating tonight, scram!"</p><p>A loud rumble of a tree being throw against a bunch of other trees and knocking them over interrupted the merc's shit-talk. Within mere moments, Meiko's ecstatic face busted through the wooden rubble, filled with splinters and wood chips that barely penetrated her skin – the weakest part of the defensive augmentations but got stuck without drawing blood.</p><p>"That sword looks fun but it's not what I'm looking for, sadly." Meiko pouted her lips before swiping aside the dust and wreckage that got stuck in between her armor pieces and under.</p><p>"Is that so?" the mercenary grinned. He must have taken Meiko for some sort of a loony. A weakling who got tossed around by the mere swings of his bokken could not have possibly shown her teeth contesting for his precious possession. This treasure that would bring him a fortune.</p><p>"Yeah. It packs a mean punch due to its density, the space warping effect pulls you in a little when it gets close making it tough to block but… I no longer am looking to walk the path of brute strength." Meiko confirmed. "I'm trying to master something different entirely."</p><p>"What would that be?" the mercenary wondered to make fun of the delirious, as far as he was concerned, girl.</p><p>"This…" Meiko placed her sword in an offensive stance as she prepared for an attack. The blacksmith's eyes became concentrated on a single point. She kept on staring at the blade of her sword as if trying to peek a hole through it. A brief sparkle of blue light lit up by the side of the blade's edge but went out as quickly as it appeared.</p><p>The band sunk away in the thundering roars of laughter. Several members of the band fell over overcome by joy, a joy that was made even more severe by the amount of alcohol they have ingested previously.</p><p>"Well… Not that your new path was not absolutely hilarious…" the mercenary wiped the teary of laughter eyes, too slow to properly react and prepare for Meiko's upcoming attack.</p><p>It was like Meiko suddenly became a raging animal, like her failure made her switch from the happy-go-lucky personality into one that used violence as a way to quench down the frustration of failing once again to imbue her sword with chakra, even after it was made from special material which was supposed to make it easier to do so.</p><p>The towering man leaned back, lifted his sword up in generalized positions. The man was throwing it about in wide positions, doing his best to deflect any attacks that Meiko threw his way. The man was lucky that the density of his sword and the space-bending effect appeared to also attract the incoming attacks towards his blade, or else he'd have been completely shredded by the flurry of attacks.</p><p>The mercenary staggered back with his eyes gaping wide in fear. He fell on his butt before quickly using his free hand to push himself back up to his feet. Sweat ran down the man's forehead and he gulped heavily. In the passing moments, he wondered extensively if he was just drunk and that was why he could barely perceive the furious flurry of strikes, usually the easiest kind to perceive and predict, or if his opponent was truly just that fast.</p><p>"Sorry, it's a work in progress and when it fails I get a little rowdy…" Meiko switched back to her previous personality just as quick as it was unleashed.</p><p>"I may have underestimated you before." The mercenary admitted. Kiyomi was surprised to hear those words watching from aside. Then again, what else did she expect to hear after seeing Meiko flip out like that? Had it not been for the weird ability of this bokken to warp the space around it, Meiko would have killed the poor mercenary just now.</p><p>The mercenary with the black bokken attacked once more. This time it was not a mad charge. He knew who he was dealing with and therefore he employed proper footwork, restraint and calculated strikes that betrayed his origin to be somewhere closer to the Land of Iron. The strikes of this man, using both hands and very graceful swings, reminded an informed observer of the style of swordsmanship of the more north-western styles.</p><p>Meiko's sword danced with similar grace and restraint. The previous outburst of anger was no longer present or even traceable. Oddly enough, not only did the blacksmith manage to match her opponent's swordsmanship beat for beat but exploit sloppy openings by smacking him with the blunt part of the sword.</p><p>The elegance of the blacksmith was remarkable. Her speed changed in a blink of an eye depending on what she needed. She applied forceful, slow blocks and pokes to defend herself against the dense bokken, this time fully knowing of the bokken's special effects and applying ample strength to defend against them. Then, switching to lightning-fast smacks just to show her opponent the difference between their speed… No… Their skill.</p><p>With the final strike, one that was a clear result of Meiko's opponent being thrown off balance, coming from above at a vertical, smashing down motion, the blacksmith vaulted over it like water. The motion of her legs, the complete elasticity and speed were to be admired but the common mercenaries were very unlikely to have even perceived that motion.</p><p>All that they saw was the buckler part of Meiko's sword smashing into the face of their head honcho and sending him swaying and tumbling back. Grabbing air behind him because his head was so disoriented that the towering man was no longer sure if he was falling or standing upright. The busted up nose and the blood rushing from it only added to the man's troubles and confusion.</p><p>"W-What happened?" the man growled. He grabbed his bleeding nose and held it like a precious, smashed doll with his palm. Hoping that if he grumbled and complained loud enough, his doll would grow back together.</p><p>"Before we were comparing blades," Meiko noted casually. "I had hoped that with this different material I'd be more successful at imbuing my sword with a chakra cloak. That would have helped me split your sword in half without any effort."</p><p>"Say what?" the man huffed, trying to stumble forward for another series of strikes but tripping over his own uneasy footing and falling on his knees in the process.</p><p>"That's right. Your sword is of fine quality. Usually, a newbie blacksmith, when he makes a blade like this overcompensates for its qualities. They focus on rough and powerful materials being smashed together, molten into a tough, solid shape. What results of such work lacking love and emotion is a material without spirit. Just like a person needs both spiritual and physical unity, a fine blade requires it to be strong as well. In those cases, be it a blade of billion, trillion tons compressed into a single bokken, an ounce of chakra imbued into the opposing force will break it without a problem."</p><p>Meiko was really admirable and composed when she spoke of craftsmanship. Unlike plenty of other things that she encountered, being a blacksmith was a part of the girl's identity, for that reason she looked strong and confident when discussing it. On top of the world, some would say, even.</p><p>"What I showed you now was a comparison of skill instead of blades. This is where your flaws start showing. I am a fine swordfighter, the training and the willpower of generations of Konoha's swordsmen and the lessons they learned are all flowing in my veins. Each mistake they made, is a lesson I can learn when looking back at them. Because of that which this side of the Will of Fire teaches, you can never beat me in a swordfight."</p><p>"Is that so?" the mercenary wiped the blood off his nose, seeing that the flow of life essence from inside was beginning to seem much more manageable. This speech, while impressive and well-delivered, was giving him time to manage his injuries somewhat.</p><p>"That's right. You have three major flaws in your style. It's nothing to be ashamed of, eliminating all flaws from one's style is impossible. However, usually, a swordsman builds their sword to help them cover for those flaws. In your case – you steal and use swords other swordsmen made for themselves and they are a poor fit for you."</p><p>Meiko's body blurred in, her movements were by no means subtle as the grass and the trees around her rustled, betraying the direction she took. Rushing in ahead, blindly, as if overcome by the same rage she was before. The blacksmith's image flashed right up close to her opponent, at the optimal distance where he would have cut her down. The swipe of the obsidian bokken only stroke thin air.</p><p>A crunchy sounding noise made the eyes of the mercenary widen so far that they almost popped out. The man screamed out and collapsed on one knee, clutching his other foot that was crushed by Meiko's foot, after she ducked under the sword strike she could see a mile away. That was the case with the basic sword fighting styles – they were predictable, even if it was impressive that this mercenary muscle-head had the discipline to master some basic steps.</p><p>"Your footwork is shoddy. You have very large, exposed feet and your style does nothing about protecting your lower body." Meiko educated the whining in pain man. "Your bokken only attracts and bends strikes that are coming close to it while you wield it at relatively high altitudes because of your size, that means if someone was to target your feet – your space-bending trick would do nothing to help you."</p><p>Meiko rushed in again. The man raised his sword in the air like a scared and injured hunter, pointing his spear to protect him from the wild animal that was about to feast on his flesh. The blacksmith grabbed the sword with her free hand and shoved it aside, her eyes twitched in slight physical difficulty at coping with the bent and crushed space around the blade but the redhead managed somehow.</p><p>Another buckler strike sent the massive man down on his back. Extending flat, with his hands wide. Only the angry, ridden with pain eyes, twitching muscles and the swiftly, irregularly lifting up and down chest betrayed that the man was still very much conscious.</p><p>"Your sword is a bokken. While its density and space-bending ability are impressive, it still is a non-edged weapon, meaning someone of enough physical strength to withstand the space-bending effect can grab its surface easily." Meiko pointed out. It did not appear like the man was willing to be punished for the third mistake he had in his style. It made the blacksmith have to speak without demonstration.</p><p>"To finish it off…" Meiko started the finishing touches of her mentoring the mercenary when the man came alive and wrapped his massive arm around her foot. The mercenary rolled onto his feet and lifted the blacksmith up, spun her around his head and intended to smash her into the ground beneath her feet where he could finish her off while he had his hands on her.</p><p>Before the bloody and brutal plan could be realized, Meiko smacked the two sides of the man's wrists with both of hers, bending her body in mid-air, before gracefully landing on the ground by the weakened mercenary, clutching at his numbed wrist. The blacksmith proceeded to sweep the feet of the giant from behind and down him again.</p><p>"Your sword-fighting style is only valid when facing your opponent up front. If any of your opponents managed to move in from behind you, your entire strategy crumbles in of itself." The blacksmith shrugged while checking on her opponent's willingness to keep playing with her. Much to her disappointment, the man kept on wheezing on the ground, possibly due to him having busted some ribs on his uneasy way down.</p><p>The other mercenaries moved out of Meiko's way in respectful fear as the redhead passed them by. Only now did they notice how tall and bulky the girl herself was, having underestimated the fact that a late teenager could match grown men in size and bulk before.</p><p>"I must say, I underestimated you, Meiko." Waiso lifted his large glasses up and rubbed his eyes before licking his palm and dragging it across his messy, greasy hair. "When you bullied me around I thought of you as an ill-mannered ruffian and your buffoonery was very much not to my sanction but I see now that you are a professional deserving my respect!"</p><p>"You may be smarter than Mana but you also speak really weird!" Meiko pointed her finger at the nerdy companion of hers and laughed out loud in his mockery.</p><p>"That's why I love you, Meiko", Kiyomi smiled to herself. The head of the Yamanaka held nodded down with her eyes closed and covered up by the front locks of her hair. "You and your chubby cheeks!"</p><p>The blonde came alive after that last remark, jumping at her teammate and starting to bully the bully back with some friendly yet painful ninja cheek-pinches. Meiko had to elbow Kiyomi in the gut and lift her in the air by the wrist playfully to make her friend stop teasing her.</p><p>"Didn't you see that? I'm Cool Meiko now!" Meiko showed her half-subdued teammate the tongue much to Kiyomi's chuckling amusement.</p><p>Meiko may have played it off for laughs, but her spiritual training in her quest to learn how to sit still and concentrate went a long way towards improving her as a person and as a combatant. Even if she may not have seen it at that moment, her teammates saw through it immediately.</p><p>There was something profoundly poetic in the growth of people you have known for a long time. Or people you thought you knew only for them to reveal their true, wonderful selves.</p>
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<a name="section0417"><h2>417. The Explosive Desserts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The mercenaries have calmed down." Waiso sighed easier after a moment of silence spent listening in to the noises below.</p><p>"They are a primal bunch. Meiko kicking the ass of their biggest and meanest must have spoiled their mood. I'd be surprised if they still stayed at the inn to party after that." Kiyomi began her speech with a bitter expression, transitioning into a reserved and gleeful snickering as she went on to recall the separate, specific details of the fight.</p><p>"Was it really all that impressive?" Hanasaku expressed her curiosity in a tone that resembled a toddler inquiring about what the particular type of food being sold in a vendor was.</p><p>"I have to say it was. I never thought Meiko could be this strategic and impressive." Waiso vouched for it. The youth took off his glasses and placed them in a nearby cabinet. After stretching out on the bed he closed his eyes trying to cushion himself in the newly won tranquility of the inn.</p><p>"Well… In that case… Good job?" Hanasaku congratulated her student on a well-done job, with a hint of doubt in her voice. The woman felt confident about the fact she needed to congratulate the girl but still checked the pages of her book for a clarification. "Also… Don't get cocky and let this victory lull you." She added after reading from a page.</p><p>"Thanks. I know." Meiko nodded a pair of times before sitting up and crossing her legs. Trying to imitate the meditative position that Mana used to sit in when training her concentration. Her memory did not recall all of the specific details of the girl's position but she figured that some clarity was better than nothing was.</p><p>"Hey, wanna train tonight, Meiko? I need a partner…" Kiyomi inquired with a restrained and a tad bit embarrassed tone. "Maybe we can help each other out. I'm no concentration expert but I also dabble in genjutsu that require a decent amount of it."</p><p>"Yeah!" Meiko shot her eyes open and jumped off the bed. She did not achieve any progress in soothing her psyche and calming her thoughts, which kept on feeding the circle of desperation and mental anguish. "Maybe that's what I need…"</p><p>The pathway that lead further to the outskirts of the Fire Country besides the inn was all muddy and filled with large tracks. Shortly after being humiliated, the mercenaries must have all left at once. The girls moved to the little natural garden located behind the inn to the side of the forest, leaving the messed up road behind for the natural progression of time and more reserved travelers to fix.</p><p>The girls started out on some lazy exchanges of blows, just to get their blood pumping and bodies in an active condition.</p><p>"You're pretty good. I forgot how good." Meiko grinned after noticing just how many blows she had to block instead of avoiding. Kiyomi, on the other hand, parried almost every blow following each avoided strike with a slowed down and muzzled response of her own.</p><p>The wind howled as it picked up after each one of Meiko's immensely powerful but whiffed strikes while Kiyomi's weakened and slowed down responses resonated with a husky thud. After a short session of trading blows, the girls took a moment to calm their breathing a bit.</p><p>"So what are you working on these days?" Meiko smiled.</p><p>"I've learned while preparing for the Chuunin Exams that I know all of the clan hidden techniques already. What separates the good Yamanaka from the exceptional is inventing new, signature jutsu that defy the user. That's what I'm trying to achieve." Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"You could show me the progress you've made so far. It'll be fun, I love hypnotizing tricks." Meiko grinned with confidence.</p><p>"First you should practice your chakra imbuement, my jutsu may be painful to the receiving party." Kiyomi scratched her head with a hesitance to even attempt this type of training, even though sparring was by far the most efficient way of learning and mastering new techniques also noticing and fixing their inherent flaws and weaknesses before it was too late.</p><p>Meiko unsealed her father's sword again. She placed it in front of her in a balanced and basic sword-fighting stance. The blacksmith closed her eyes, doing her best to concentrate on every cell, every piece of the sword and trying to make her body and mind truly one with it. This was no fight like before. This was just training. That allowed Meiko a greater amount of time more freedom to take her mind and eyes away.</p><p>Separate little flames of dim blue sparked up in separate sections of the blade but could not connect with one another. The chakra cloak could not extend and cover the entire blade.</p><p>"Even after all the training with Mana, after my father crafted me a special training sword to help me channel chakra and weeks of training…" Meiko sighed. "I tried focusing on my work. On the tinkering just to condition my mind of focusing on things… None of it works. I just wish Mana was around to finish my training, you know. I'm not ready without finishing those lessons we did."</p><p>"Maybe you are strong enough. Maybe it's just your mind holding you back?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>Meiko looked at the cloudy night sky. The only sign that the world was not ending at that very moment, sinking into oblivion that kept on creeping and wrapping its tendrils around the Earth was the shining of the moon covered up by the illuminated clouds.</p><p>"I remember back when I traveled with Mana, Kouta, and Shimo to the Wind Country, Kouta said something interesting. He told us about how painful it must feel knowing that the only reason you can't do something is your own mind. That maybe you just don't want it hard enough, that you're not trying hard enough. I think I may now understand what he meant by that." Meiko's face turned sour and filled with melancholy. "Can we try your thing now?"</p><p>"I don't know, it might be kind of painful, even if I do tone it down." Kiyomi started to have doubts.</p><p>"Now you got me interested." Meiko clenched her fists and shook them like a capricious child. "What's this new jutsu you're working on!?"</p><p>"It's something I've never seen anyone in my clan do even though it seems kind of obvious. You know how the Yamanaka transfer their mental projections onto other people? The mental projection usually stays inside someone's mind without wandering anywhere so I'm trying to turn it into something more solid, something like a mind mine that travels through the opponent's body." Kiyomi explained feeling really dumb about asking her teammate to train taking a hit like that.</p><p>"That's pretty cool! Sounds dangerous but if you focused your mind on… Say, my little finger, you could just break that, right?" Meiko lifted up and clenched her little finger, making it wriggle like a worm before making a bunch of awkward noises that the blacksmith thought worms made while burrowing.</p><p>"That's… I guess it could work." Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"See? No danger at all! Plus, Hanasaku-sensei is a medical ninja, isn't she? She'll heal us up if something goes wrong!" Meiko laughed out. Kiyomi noticed something flickering through her friend's face just for a moment, the way Meiko's eyes were while her mouth smiled. The blacksmith still felt sad about her failure and the lack of progress she made. Maybe… Maybe if she felt like she helped someone that would pass, then again, was it right to exploit her friend's suicidal desire to help someone and feel useful?</p><p>"Alright, prepare yourself then." Kiyomi decided. She raised her hands up in the typical hand position. "Mind Switch: Art of Catastrophe!" she shouted out, sending her mental projection out with a ghastly howl. Using the jutsu felt just like using her Art of War technique, hence the similar name, Kiyomi thought it would be like that ever since the early conception stages of the technique.</p><p>Meiko closed her eyes, waiting for her finger to break or otherwise burst with blood by having a mental image overcharged with chakra burst inside it. Kiyomi may have had a killer technique there, even Meiko who was usually rather absent-minded about these things felt it. If the jutsu was detonated right in her mind where it originated, it could have left brain damage, make blood burst through her eyes and nose and otherwise inflict heavy damage if not kill by crushing one's mind outright.</p><p>And yet nothing happened. Meiko felt an alien influence busting around her mind as if she was about to have it taken over, the two had experienced each other's techniques during training many times. It felt similar to when Kiyomi was able to read Meiko's mind when Meiko failed to hide them during telepathic link. Kiyomi was just inside Meiko's head but she hesitated to do anything. In a moment, Meiko just opened her eyes and looked at her embarrassed friend.</p><p>"Whatever. I think it failed. Let's just train a little longer then go back inside." Kiyomi pouted her lips and looked away.</p><p>No one could have known just how difficult entering the new stage would be. How much mastery over one's body and mind standing on that stage required. They may not have admitted it outright, but both girls were starting to feel a little bit grateful that they still had time to mess about in the genin missions instead of being thrown into the adult work that chuunin did.</p><p>Their bodies and mind may not have been as one as they thought them to be.</p><hr/><p>Tomorrow morning was bright and sunny, it seemed like the spring would come early as the thin layers of snow started dripping and melting away in the late stages of winter. It was quite a normal occurrence around these parts, spring differed so little from the way autumn was in the Fire Country that it seemed that it was always either spring or a very hot spring, apart from the few months of winter that chilled the bones of the unused to the cold locals.</p><p>"Say, Chestnut Hanasaku is a very famous figure in the Ninja World. What exactly are her abilities in combat? I did not get to see her fight last night." Waiso wondered, his thick eyebrows curled in a manner that suggested regret. Kiyomi found it odd that the geeky kid showed interest in the aspects of violence when he found roughhousing repulsive last evening.</p><p>"Why don't you ask her?" Meiko bent her tall body around doing early stretches. She did not want to get into the drawn-out topic of what exactly Hanasaku's abilities were even if briefing their teammate on them, especially one so smart on his feet and capable of devising strategies on the fly, would have been a wise choice.</p><p>"Lady Fifth did not strike me as the kind of person to explain them to me in the required detail." Waiso's eyebrows shifted into the diagonal, apologetic expression. With the Sun blasting right at his glasses, Kiyomi found it difficult to perceive much of the boy's face but his dark, bushy eyebrows sometimes.</p><p>"That is true. I just do things as I see them in need to be done. I let the others worry about what I can and cannot do." Chestnut Hanasaku grinned, blushing her aged cheeks slightly.</p><p>"And you've never failed to do what you want to?" Waiso expressed great surprise, opening his mouth and letting out a deep impression of shock.</p><p>"Never." Hanasaku gave the young man a thumb up. "If I had gotten involved last night, the results would have been the same. In all honesty, this mission is a piece of cake. It is as much to me about training my students along the way as it is about completing it."</p><p>"My God, you were in charge of our village for… A year?" Waiso smacked his cheeks in an almost cartoonish manner. Kiyomi liked the expressiveness of this boy, it made him easier to read.</p><p>It was not like it was creepy – trying to read into one's teammate…</p><hr/><p>"Yes, it is," Mana objected.</p><hr/><p>It was not like it was anything creepy at all – reading into one's teammate. Being involved in a team had a great number of various social and professional implications and understanding what one's teammate was like as a person was essential for the successful operation on the field.</p><p>"Well… I guess Hanasaku-sensei can… Hey, look, a dango vendor!" Meiko yelled out. Her speech was interrupted by the new roster of Team Hokage walking out into a clearing of the forest. The place was just a ring of emerald grass patches rustling peacefully in the spring wind, almost untouched by winter's grasp, almost magical that way. For its special appearance, a small sweets vendor has chosen it as the place of selling their goods there.</p><p>There was nothing unusual about a dango vendor offering their goods on the roadside. Even though the crew was heading toward the Fire Temple on smaller, rougher forest paths than the large official roads, the path taken was known well enough for the vendor's location to not appear the least bit suspicious.</p><p>"I'll buy a handful! How many dango can I get for this money!?" Meiko shoved her handful of ryo at the faces of the confused vendors, a short woman of short, dark green hair and a tall and bulky man with features similar to the northerners from the Snow Country. The two just looked at each other and handed Meiko a bunch of sticks with sweets on them, after the woman had taken her sweet time counting the money offered by her client.</p><p>After being handed the treats, Meiko attempted to gorge it all down. The fewer gulps it all went down in, the better. Right before crushing and grinding the first bite of the sweets, the blacksmith's glare turned sharpened, like she was in a middle of a raging battlefield. She turned and swiped her hand up, slinging the treats upward like projectile weapons.</p><p>Upon reaching a certain altitude, the dango detonated and erupted in a mighty blast wave that ruffled and pulled out some grass patches with dirt intact and toppled the shoddy dango vendor. Kiyomi and Waiso, being unprepared for that which came up, bent their bodies to stay on their feet and protect from the blast wave tossing them down.</p><p>"These dango did not smell like any dango I've eaten. They smelled of cheap factory paper, soaked with perfume." Meiko pouted her lips and let her expression betray just how serious and angry she was about being tricked with food like that.</p><p>The vendor owners took a quick dash back, the vendor girl moved her hands inside her uniform opening to remove a bunch of talisman tags and hold them up in her hands like weapons. These two must have wrapped those dango in some of these explosive talismans to make that trap.</p><p>"You've got a sharp nose, girl." The northern man nodded his head before tearing off his silly uniform and revealing leather armor underneath. He placed a helmet that was placed inside the vendor and which the man dragged out from the rubble before moving back atop of his head, securing it to protect his face, then placed on two gauntlets with blades from his back.</p><p>The blades on the gauntlets that the assailant wielded lit up with a base chakra colored glow. The man was capable of imbuing his weapons with a cloak of chakra, it seemed.</p><p>"Meiko, please do not fight these opponents. It would be the smartest to let Kiyomi and Hanasaku fight them." Waiso suggested.</p><p>"Why both of us? I could take them out myself, they probably did not know I was here, to begin with." Hanasaku scratched her head.</p><p>"It's too dangerous, as powerful as you are, we cannot take risks. You do not know their abilities yet." Waiso insisted.</p><p>"It's fine!" Meiko grunted out. "I'll fight. One of you can join me if you want but this fight is something I have to take care of!"</p><p>"B-But…" Waiso was growing frustrated.</p><p>"Are you trying to say that I can't!?" Meiko growled with rage after turning back. Waiso took a pair of frightened steps back. He was not expecting such a violent and almost personal reaction.</p><p>"It is better that Meiko does this, trust me." Kiyomi patted the shoulder of her scared teammate. The blonde turned her bright blue eyes at her mentor as if asking for permission to step up. With Chestnut Hanasaku nodding, she got it.</p><p>Kiyomi did not rush to take her place beside her friend. She wanted to give Meiko some time to think up about how she would attack, as she would undoubtedly want to go on the offensive here. It was not as bland as just a matter of wasted food. That much was obvious, that man, whoever he was, was a wall, which Meiko wanted and needed to overcome. It was not like she did not need to observe her opponents carefully and make her own plan either…</p><p>"Don't get reckless now. I'm here to help you out so don't make my job too hard." Kiyomi muttered only for her partner to hear.</p><p>"Right. I'm glad it was you. We've trained together before, we work together just fine." Meiko nodded, never for a moment dropping the seriousness of her expression.</p><p>By dragging her arm over the seals and weaving a hand seal over them, Meiko unsealed a wooden buckler. After letting the tool slip from her hand and grabbing it by the edge, the blacksmith flung it like a frisbee at her opponent. The female assailant swung her talisman wielding arms around, letting a pair of them slip from her grip and light up in mid-air. A ground-splitting jet of rock pillars walled her partner from the incoming shield before turning at Meiko. A disgusting and metallic noise of reeling string informed Kiyomi that her partner was fine when Meiko recalled her buckler using the steel wire attached to it, almost invisible unless one knew what to look for.</p><p>Using the buckler, Meiko protected herself against the blunt blow of rocks coming from underground in the odd shape. Seeing the chakra-imbued gauntlet opponent charging at Meiko from behind, Kiyomi weaved a pair of hand seals of her own.</p><p>"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar!" she yelled out letting out a formation of rock of her own wall Meiko off from the rushing attacker. By the time that the attacking man split the rock into bits and sent Kiyomi's wall crumbling down, Meiko had escaped the compromised situation to safety.</p><p>These two were formidable. But, then again, Meiko knew this when she challenged the man who was capable of something she wanted so very much but was unable to pull off.</p>
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<a name="section0418"><h2>418. A Pinch Of Salt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just a mere blink of an eye after the initial exchange of attacks concluded the erected pillar rows collapsed into piles of dirt. The male assailant changed his battle stance. He then put his gauntlets together so that the triple set of blades on each gauntlet connected with the other. It was like an improvised hand seal for the man's style.</p><p>Both the primal and bestial headset and the lower sections of the man's armor lit up with the same chakra glow that his blades had. This was one kind of technique where Meiko did not need to be told what it did or what did this enhancement meant. Unless the two girls found a more focused and more intense in its chakra content manner of attack – they would have difficulty breaking through the intense aura that the male assailant irradiated.</p><p>The man charged at Meiko once again. He was moving fast, so fast that Kiyomi did not feel very confident about attempting to interrupt his attack with a Yamanaka hijutsu. She still needed to keep her eyes on the second one, after all.</p><p>Meiko did her best to avoid the attacks but that proved difficult. The man showed great skill in wielding these bladed gauntlets and he was relatively fast, fast enough to put pressure on Meiko and eventually corner her into having to put up her buckler between herself and her assailant.</p><p>Chakra cloaked blades were a devastating match for well-crafted wood and steel, as many modifications and chakra weavings Meiko may have put into that buckler to harden the natural material. The shield split in half without offering much resistance and very clean. The blacksmith reached up for her upper shoulder. Red trickling between her fingers suggested that despite her most honest attempts to block the attack by sacrificing the shield, the attack still got to her. The redhead kept on dragging her hand lower down the arm to check on the flow of other, smaller wounds that were opening up as well.</p><p>The talisman user wasted no time for small talk or taunting. She rushed in to close the distance between her and Kiyomi somewhat, before waving her talisman wielding hand like the sheets of paper adorning those strange sealing glyphs were a fan. Kiyomi felt gusts of winds picking up, forcing her on the defensive. She noticed blades of grass rising up and twisting in a perfect vortex shape suggesting a Wind Release technique that utilized the transparency of its element. As such, someone would only see it coming from the things it picked up and thrashed along the way.</p><p>"She used multiple talismans to create this technique, there have to be multiple projectiles," Kiyomi thought to herself while she moved back to give herself more space and time to avoid the incoming attacks, letting the invisible vortexes of wind absorb more dirt and grass and become easier to track.</p><p>It was just like the Yamanaka thought, within mere moments the five wind vortexes revealed themselves by absorbing dirt particles that colored them mud brown. After that point, dancing around the projectiles was not that difficult, even though Kiyomi could not build up speed due to the limited area of movement.</p><p>That was this woman's game, without a doubt. As a talisman using ninja, she relished keeping her opponents away with techniques like that Earth Release rushing pillars of rocks jutsu or this one. While she kept her enemy at bay, she could stack up continuous attacks one on top of another and eventually her opponent would tire or get sloppy…</p><p>Kiyomi reached for her pouch, she leaned halfway and moved in sync with the vortexes so that any projectiles her opponent used attempting to intercept her would bounce off of the gusts of wind. While the vortexes did block off her own view and aim as well, it was just what Kiyomi needed.</p><p>The wind vortexes erupted into a chain of explosions, triggered by Kiyomi's explosive kunai hitting one of the vortexes. The suppressed air tunnels inside the gusts of wind fueled the heating element of the explosion enhancing it just enough to cause the distraction that Kiyomi needed.</p><p>Meiko unsealed the thimble sword she made and inserted her hand into it. Fully aware that she needed to be careful because any hits from the opponent's gauntlets aimed at the hilt might injure her actual hands, Meiko moved in just to see how much damage she could cause to her opponent the way she was now.</p><p>Meiko thrust her perfect for quick strikes and nimbleness blade a good dozen of times. It seemed to simply bounce off of her opponent's armor, unable to even penetrate through the intense chakra aura covering it. Even the holes between the armor plates were sufficiently cloaked with the aura that covered the armor to not let Meiko's blade pass. Her opponent delivered an upper swipe leaving Meiko's blade divided into pieces and opening a new wound on her armor.</p><p>It was shallow enough. The gauntlet blades were short, the most of the space that the opponent's strike was given got eaten up by the sword Meiko offered. Days of work left in pieces… There did not seem a thing that Meiko could do. No way for her to penetrate her opponent's defenses with normal weaponry and no way to block his strikes properly either.</p><p>"Earth Style: Submarine Voyage!" Kiyomi yelled out, appearing from underground with an uppercut as she rose from the depths. While her talisman-wielding opponent had plenty of options on keeping the enemy way, none of her keep-away measures seemed to work underground.</p><p>The woman flipped in the air, thrown back by the tremendous force of impact but she was made of sterner stuff than a single uppercut could break. After recovering, the talisman user simply dashed back, waving her hands and firing small fireballs from each of her talismans. After forming, the fireballs all merged into one, solid size, projectile.</p><p>They were not made to hurt, Kiyomi could stay away from being hit by them, despite their impressive numbers and size. They were there just to prevent the Yamanaka from staying on top of her opponent now that she had managed to move up close to her.</p><p>"Using those explosions as a diversion. That was impressive." The woman noted. Speaking her first set of words after revealing herself not to be a simple dango seller. The woman stroked her hand through her dark green hair and fixed the little hat on her head before changing the sets of talismans in her hands.</p><p>This was the first time Kiyomi even noticed the woman doing that. It did appear like each talisman had their specific function however the woman was so quick in changing their rotation somehow and Kiyomi had seen so very few that reading them would be near impossible. Back in the Academy, the Yamanaka had heard bits of advice from the teacher to try and memorize patterns and details in her opponent's actions, such as notes they use in their music or the glyphs on their talisman, in this case.</p><p>"As if I could even do such a thing," Kiyomi thought to herself before cracking a grin. Her strategy was a complete success and her opponent failed to notice a thing.</p><p>Meiko resorted to sticking on the defensive. She unsealed her father's blade, feeling terrible about throwing it to the wolves like the other weapons she lost combating this man. Regardless, even if she did nothing but move back and to the sides avoiding the blows by controlling the space between her and her opponent, she needed something just in case she needed to place something in front and minimize the damage.</p><p>She could win like this. Just jump around and let her opponent drain himself completely dry. It must have cost him a great deal of chakra to enhance every little plate of his armor in addition to his weaponry. Meiko could not even dream on covering anything other than her weapon with the chakra cloak. This man was so impressive.</p><p>But that was what was so infuriating about him. He was impressive merely because of his skill in imbuing his weapon with chakra. Meiko could avoid his blows, she could probably kick his ass otherwise. Their skill and chakra levels must have been relatively similar… This ability that he had mastered and which Meiko wanted so badly was the only thing placing him above her… The only thing…</p><p>Meiko pressed her teeth together and tightened her facial muscles. Her arms and her thighs twitched in pure rage and she could feel the blood flow under her skin intensifying and her entire body warming up. She threw a good straight at her opponent's direction, confusing the man with her boldness and throwing his head back. The man's armor did not dent or slip off, but the momentum of the impact was skipped through and his body did move after Meiko's strikes.</p><p>She let it all out. Throwing crosses and elbow shots without looking back or worry about over how close she was to the enemy. She embraced the deadly threat to her life, she moved in closer. So close, in fact, that a normal sword user would have failed to utilize their weapon properly in such a close range and the blacksmith just kept on throwing awesome yet awfully dull in the damage they inflicted punches her opponent's way.</p><p>After pushing away an awkward movement of her opponent's arm aiming to impale her on his chakra-imbued gauntlets, Meiko pushed her knee to block his kick and then used her own elbow as an answer to the procession of the man's combination attack. Gauntlet thrust into an elbow strike, using the resulting shockwave and momentum to push herself further from the opponent who was beginning to regain his composure and fight back for every inch of space Meiko had gained in this last assault.</p><p>"That was a pretty strong punch. I felt that take a chip out of my chakra…" the man exclaimed in his husky and authoritative voice.</p><p>"I don't want to win this way," Meiko replied, her hands shook in the hopelessness of her situation. She engaged this man to learn on the battlefield what she was missing in her training but the more she fought him, the more she realized that it was not something she could find. This battle was to be so close that she would require all of her concentration on him and not wandering on looking for something she had no idea what it even was, to begin with.</p><p>"You are misreading this battle. Usually those who can choose the way they will win are those who are greatly ahead of their opponent. Me and my partner are just about ready to wrap this battle up." The man grunted. His breath was a bit uneasy, whatever strain his extensive chakra cloaking placed on his body was beginning to show itself. Invincibility, as always, came with a price.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance: Art of Valentine!" Kiyomi chanted while she raised her hands up in the hand seal position used in the Yamanaka clan hijutsu.</p><p>A hollow bubble of white mental image floated out from Kiyomi's body, wearing the vague shape of the girl's facial features on its front. The talisman woman instinctively attempted to leap aside before her body froze up. She acted as if a figurative lightning bolt paralyzed her muscles, in truth, a mental signal coming off from a foreign invader – a blond strand of Kiyomi's hair conveniently placed on the woman's body.</p><p>"What the…" was all that the rogue ninja had time to utter before the mental projection entered her body. Ordering her body to perform a single motion before leaving it.</p><p>It was not a powerful technique. It had ample start-up time, it was easy to predict, it only ordered a single motion to be performed by the target and then it left the target's body, leaving a microsecond after the mental image had left the target's body but after the action was ordered to stop oneself from performing it. As long as the sufficient mental fortitude and reaction speed was intact.</p><p>The talisman woman stood there frozen, hunched over and relaxed like her body was turned off, save from her feet on which she stood still. Without warning, the woman straightened up and made a hand seal. Kiyomi only had time to feel warmth in her side before the explosion set off. The kunoichi raced to remove the talisman stuck on her body but only managed to throw it right in front of it, a short distance after the explosion had been set off but before it enveloped her and threw her away.</p><p>"It was quite tricky of you to use that underground jutsu to place that hair on me." The rogue ninja patted her uniform, dusting off the rubble that the explosion picked up.</p><p>"You've met Yamanaka before?" Kiyomi guessed, grunting in pain while she picked her body off the ground. She had wide but shallow bruises on her chest and some blunt force traumas on her face. The explosion was no joke, its range was pitiful but the sheer power it held inside would have been enough to injure a chuunin or someone even stronger than that.</p><p>"I've replicated some of their techniques in my talismans even. I can't impart my will onto someone quite like the Yamanaka but I can record a singular order which I command the target to do. I have to say, I've been inspired by your clansmen." The woman admitted. "I suppose I was lucky to have placed that talisman on you while you were placing that hair on me."</p><p>"I was feeling so proud of myself placing it on you that I didn't notice what you were doing…" Kiyomi admitted with a smile through the pain of her injuries.</p><p>"Likewise…" the rogue ninja shared her opponent's smile before both transitioned into a composed fit of laughter. "That being said, you would not have landed that blow on me, if I did not intend to let you in close to let me place a talisman on you."</p><p>Kiyomi pouted and grunted something angry and unintelligible. Had someone been close enough to hear they would have noticed it was quite profane as well. Here she thought she landed a legitimate blow on her opponent while it was all just a part of the woman's plan to trace the Yamanaka with her talisman. Getting socked once was worth of being given the freebie to pin any lousy piece of chakra soaked paper on one's opponent, ordering them something dumb.</p><p>When the talisman extended its influence onto the girl's mind, she could feel it. Hear the voice of the woman telling her to "Stop attacking", see her body floating in front of her in her mind, like a mirage. It was quite the overpowering trip, not something that could be just fought through with sheer willpower. Kiyomi better would not let the woman tag her again.</p><hr/><p>"It does not appear that Kiyomi and Meiko are going to win. The levels of them and their enemies are mismatched, the only reason why they have not lost yet is because their enemies are holding back. Possibly because they do not wish to show their hand to you – Chestnut Hanasaku of the Konoha Sannin." Waiso tried to reason with Hanasaku to step into the fight.</p><p>"Maybe. If they weren't inconvenienced and pushed to their limits, it would be a poor training." Hanasaku insisted on her own stance. "Did you not tell us that it would not be wise to reveal our abilities to the enemy until it is necessary? It's vital information in battle, you know?"</p><p>"I know that," Waiso turned at his superior. "But it's gone a bit beyond just "inconvenienced", both of them are injured slightly more than fundamental battlefield patching can fix completely. If we let this continue – their wounds might drag us down for the duration of our mission."</p><p>Hanasaku observed the battlefield with seriousness. She was considering what her possible future student had to say but she saw the value in letting Kiyomi and Meiko keep pushing on. For her to just butt in now would have meant that she did not have faith in her students, even if it would mean a swift end for her opponents.</p><hr/><p>Meiko and the male rogue clashed once more, Meiko cleverly avoided the first couple of claw thrusts but this time she was expected. The blacksmith's heart froze up when she saw the dark blue flash right up her face. The claws froze up right by the center of in between her eyes with the other two blades very nearly carving out her eyes, even counting the small extensions to the blade's length that the chakra cloak provided.</p><p>The talisman user and the bestial-armor using rogue retreated from their respective scuffles, standing beside one another back-to-back. Kiyomi and Meiko took the chance to regroup and unite with one another again, having been separated slightly by the hectic battles they partook in.</p><p>"Willing to switch, maybe? I think you may be a bit more effective against this woman than me. Your abilities to close range are more brutal and effective, your ability to fight at long range may be less effective than mine but it is faster. My mental techniques will never reach her before she can intercept, as a long-range ninja I am outmatched here." Kiyomi muttered.</p><p>"No way! I haven't pushed myself enough. Maybe if I really, really want to win and I'm in danger… Just maybe my abilities to imbue my father's sword will awaken." Meiko objected. "It's how I learned to swim, after all!"</p><p>"These are two very different things. Anyways, did you try transforming your weapon into something like you did against Sugemi in the Chuunin Exams?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"I didn't see the use. I can't hit him no matter what shape my weapon takes, I'd just be wasting chakra." Meiko replied.</p><p>"If you transform your weapon into something of very wide surface, you can maximize the area of impact of your weapon which will maximize how much you wear out his chakra coat with each strike." Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"Isn't it odd how they just stopped fighting? You think it's something one of us did?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"No, it's a little embarrassing but we're completely outmatched here." Kiyomi clenched her fists hard.</p><p>Both girls froze in place while the speedy after-image of their sensei charging at the enemy with fists flaring up with blue chakra flames stayed recorded deep in their consciousness. The woman tried clotheslining both of the rogue ninja but her arms simply cut through something gooey and very disgusting while the bodies she hit collapsed into a puddle of bio-material.</p><p>Waiso ran up to the puddles with a goofy run, tripping over himself once and taking his sweet time. The boy poked the goo before making his hypothesis.</p><p>"These are dead bodies." He nodded, confident with his diagnosis. "The enemy has escaped during the break."</p>
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<a name="section0419"><h2>419. Gifts Of Hermits And Sages</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"They got away?" Meiko clapped her eyelids a pair of times. Her confusion at that moment was greater than her hotheadedness and the foolish desire to bang her head against an impenetrable wall.</p><p>"Why, they were winning?" Kiyomi stroke her chin, she was similarly confused as to why their opponents would withdraw shortly before establishing their advantage so clearly. It was especially odd given that the pair of rogues were the ones to attack them, to begin with.</p><p>"This bio-material, I've seen it before," Waiso explained. He walked up to the grey puddle and plunged two of his fingers into the goop. "This is what happens when you expose a very decomposed corpse to impressive amounts of chakra."</p><p>"I could have done it. I was being pushed like never before, I was right on the edge. Just one moment later I could have ignited my sword." Meiko pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. Anger and obsession of this nature was not really something that would normally be attributed to her. Kiyomi turned her attention from talk of bio-material of decomposed corpses back on her treasured teammate.</p><p>"You mean they used the Dead Soul Technique." Hanasaku pondered. It would be very unlike Chestnut Hanasaku to identify techniques and skills like this had they not been so closely related to the medical ninjutsu specter of techniques, something that the woman knew quite well in theory but not execution.</p><p>"Probably, we've seen that talisman-user give a simple command to living bodies on Kiyomi, it is highly probable that such a jutsu is more commonly used on corpses reanimated through Dead Soul Technique." Waiso pondered as he kept rubbing one of his goop-covered fingers against the others.</p><p>"This location does seem suspicious," Kiyomi admitted. "The only reason it would be so open is if there was once a massive battlefield here and everything was simply demolished."</p><p>"That means they used the Dead Soul Technique to create corpses out of the remains found in the soil, using tremendous amounts of chakra to both make them work and transform them into their own likeness. Then, when Hanasaku-sensei attacked, the enemy replaced themselves with the corpses and let the corpses get destroyed while they made their escape." Waiso finally put things together out of the details all around him.</p><p>"That still leaves the question why." Kiyomi raised an eyebrow and stroke through her hair that was falling over her face to move them away. Her tidy hairdo was all messed up by the explosion she took head-on. "They were winning. Such a setup and a complicated method of escape would have cost chakra and time. Why invest in such a complicated escape method just to make sure you had an out of a winning battle?"</p><p>"They must have overheard me and Hanasaku-sensei talking." Waiso guessed.</p><p>"I heard you talking. What of it?" Meiko crouched to the putrid pile of grey biologic waste on the grass.</p><p>"I said sensei's name out loud. If I had to guess – they did not know she would be here and after they did hear – they got the hell out of here. They even went as far as to leave Meiko and Kiyomi alive if they had the option to kill them because it would have made an escape from a furious Sannin impossible. With Chestnut Hanasaku confused and taking sweet time to figure things out like we are doing now – there's little hope of catching up to them." Waiso theorized.</p><p>"So then they were just some lowly rogues, looking to behead some ninja for the black market meeting? Make something more of what they already had for it?" Meiko gruffed. It was hard for her to believe that the person who not only mastered what she could not but also beat her clean was some lousy rogue ninja looking for a cheap head to sell.</p><p>"Maybe, maybe not. You two are just genin. Your heads can't be worth more than the explosives they spent trying to claim them." Waiso remained unconvinced.</p><p>"Either way, if we are to find out and if Meiko and Kiyomi are to get some payback for this clash, we need to keep moving towards the Fire Temple." Hanasaku decided. "You can patch yourselves up a little on the way. We'll have the monks take a look at your wounds there, given how we're staying there for the night, you'll even have some time to train there. Don't waste it."</p><p>"Yes, ma'am," both girls yelled out almost simultaneously. This new mentor-mode of the woman they both knew that was beginning to break out resembled Hanasaku as she was during her time as Lady Fifth more and more. For a short while after losing the big hat and the fancy chair, Hanasaku returned to her carefree and immature ways but now she was slowly beginning to return to her former gravitas.</p><p>Whether that was a good thing or bad, given how the woman's most lethal ability depended on the woman being ignorant towards her own abilities remained yet to be seen.</p><hr/><p>The area surrounding the Fire Temple was walled off with ancient trees. Oaks and maples mostly, but also some rows of birches here and there. The rings of different kinds of trees flashed and blurred past the rushing ninja. Waiso may not have been the mightiest of combatants but he appeared to be able to keep up with Team Hokage's pace without a problem. Once Kiyomi and Meiko patched up their most troublesome wounds with some basic medical supplies they carried in their ninja pouches, their pace was quick to pick up.</p><p>Travelling at their pace, scaling and racing across the treetops, it was difficult to notice that the team was traveling uphill. The Fire Temple was located on the northern side of a massive hill that was very shallow in its elevation, surrounded by mountains from all sides but one – where its entrance was. One was very unlikely to notice just how much higher they have elevated above the sea level upon reaching the place, compared to where they were before beginning to scale the shallow hills of the Fire Country.</p><p>The entire country had five of these shallow but tall hills with the Konoha being founded on where their bottoms met on an even plain, right beside a pointy and mountainous peak of one of the sacred five hills. It was atop of that mountainous peak of the sacred hill that the Hokage Monument, the faces of all the Hokage who have taken reigns of the village, was carved onto.</p><p>A good pair of hours after they have left their short scuffle with rogue ninja behind, Team Hokage landed in front of a wide and tall staircase. It lead up to an impressive gate that was guarded by two statues of mythical beings that were undoubtedly a part of the belief system fostered by the monks who stayed and trained here.</p><p>"Will these guys let us in?" Meiko wondered, appearing quite skeptical and laid back about approaching the Fire Temple.</p><p>"They will. They are guarded by Konoha, built and maintained by the Feudal Lord." Hanasaku nodded firmly. Her eyes showed an odd amount of warmth and longing for these walls. She looked around at the trees that reached across the stairs, the carefully washed snow off the steps and even the mythological statues with an odd feeling of nostalgia glaring off from her eyes.</p><p>"Did you not know that they are the closest thing to our colleagues?" Waiso raised an eyebrow, looking almost appalled by Meiko's lack of trust towards the ninja monks.</p><p>"Oh yeah? Do they leave on missions too?" Meiko wondered, there were no ill feelings or intentions in her voice, just innocent desire to know.</p><p>"Well… No. But they do often help the Konoha ninja when they get the chance. Their only duty is to abide by their own internal laws and rules and serve to further their spiritual quest for knowledge, devotion, and servitude." Waiso explained.</p><p>"He's right. Don't offend these people, Meiko. Act respectfully." Hanasaku instructed with a very unlike her amount of maturity and strictness.</p><p>"What's her deal?" Meiko wondered, turning to Kiyomi but the blonde just shrugged. She was not aware of any history that her mentor may have had with the ninja temple and that in itself was intriguing, given how long she was working with the woman.</p><p>Shortly after approaching the gate, it opened and a trio of monks stepped out. Two of the monks wore the simple white robe, with a dark tanned top covering the right side of their bodies whereas the third one wore an orange one that covered the left side as well, making an impressive outfit comprised of three robes covering his shoulders. All of the men were bald, although the two behind the central monk did have quite profound and fabulous facial hair.</p><p>"They knew we were here," Meiko whispered to Kiyomi's ear. "We did not even need to knock, they just left out here to welcome us in. That's so cool."</p><p>"We would not want Chestnut Hanasaku knocking on the sacred Sealed Iron Walls. She is one of the very few beings in this world who can actually destroy them if she wanted to." The monk in the center smiled with a strange amount of fondness in his look whenever he turned at Hanasaku. "Please, come inside. You are welcome to take sanctuary here, train and rest with our monks."</p><p>Meiko looked around in total awe. It would have been a bit foolish to focus on the fact that she had never been inside a ninja temple. The sheer harmony of awesome and ancient architecture, the overwhelming campaign of natural oils and sap taking her by surprise and highly disciplined training regiments of the ninja monks did the deed of taking the breath from her lungs all by itself.</p><p>The hallways were long and dark, illuminated only by torches placed conveniently in the necessary distance to illuminate the dark purple walls and give out the basic information about what was present in each room but far enough to have the rooms be sunken in gloom and darkness necessary for spiritual concentration and self-reflective experiences. The only bright and eye-catching detail that distracted Meiko from the classic-spiritual gloom of the place was the bright red columns or the occasional statue of a mythological figure.</p><p>"I assume you are hungry and weary. These two girls appear to be battle-worn as well. Allow the trainees to check their injuries." The monk in the center who appeared to be the head of the group suggested. Despite the fact that his voice had strength and authority in its tone, he was speaking in a more suggestive manner than giving out orders.</p><p>"Only if it is not too much trouble." Hanasaku nodded her head, looking at her students with a relaxed and strangely cozy look. The woman let the trio know that they were free to wander around and find themselves an activity, eat where they find people eating and train where they see people training.</p><p>"Quite the contrary." The monk to the left of the head monk spoke up. "The trainees are looking forward to improving their standing through tending to someone's wounds or training with ninja."</p><p>"If you three do not object, your sensei and I have some catching up to do. Perhaps Hidaru and Mige can show you around?" the head monk suggested, looking at both of his companions, then back at Hanasaku and her students.</p><p>Given their synchronized agreement to the proposal, Hanasaku walked off the with head monk, disappearing into the wide and numerous ninja temple corridors. While they wandered around the place and the two companion monks showed the place around to the genin and the Sin Eater, the trio noticed Hanasaku talking to the head monk in a very relaxed and even slightly alluring pose in one of the fancy porches suggesting some sort of warm platonic relationship between the two.</p><p>After the basic tour was finished, Hidaru and Mige nodded in acknowledgment of that fact and wondered what the team of ninja would like to do next.</p><p>"Man, I have so much on my mind… Probably literally everything. My wounds need some attention from someone who knows what they are doing, I am starving and I can't wait to train with some of you guys!" Meiko crouched up in excitement just to jump off the ground unable to contain it with a simple gesture.</p><p>"Wow, you certainly have a lot of energy. Most people would tire only trying to look ahead to all of that activity." Waiso sighed.</p><p>"I do agree though. I do not absolutely need to eat though…" Kiyomi shrugged. "I'd rather skip the meal and go right to training. I'd imagine the Fire Temple monks have plenty of valuable experience to share."</p><p>"I see, well, you know exactly where you can satisfy those needs. Please allow us to take you to the trainees. They should be just about done with their evening prayers and looking for some action, they will be overjoyed to assist you with your wounds." Mige smiled.</p><p>Despite Kiyomi's genuine doubt about the devotion of the younger monks to this lifestyle and the claim that they would be overjoyed to treat the wounds of some Konoha ninja, this very much appeared to be the case. It looked like there was some strange spirituality system between the trainees where they "ranked up" based on certain pre-approved spiritual activities that they performed on their spare time, in addition to their usual routine, which consisted of tending to the temple's needs, praying and meditating in solitude in the empty and spacious rooms of the temple.</p><p>Kiyomi expected some of the monks to be skilled in medical ninjutsu but that did not appear to be the case. They gave her some ointments, teas and other medication, bandaged Meiko's cuts and left them to heal naturally.</p><p>"Do you have no medical ninja here?" she voiced her ponderings.</p><p>"Oh, we do not use ninjutsu as you know it here." One of the trainee ninja monks shook his head politely, never dropping the gentle smile. "We here acquire a very different type of chakra called "Gift of the Hermits" to perform Hermit Arts, a similar but slightly different concept to your own Ninja Arts, or ninjutsu."</p><p>"Gift of the Hermits?" Meiko asked for some clarification on the concept. She, of all people, had all the time in the world. That was to say before her multiple cuts were examined, re-sutured and bandaged.</p><p>"Indeed. I don't think you've heard the story of how Gift of the Hermits chakra came to be. It's a transformation of one's chakra, of sorts. It is called that way because those mythological creatures the statues of whom you've seen all around, those we call Hermits, taught it to people." One of the monks explained. He could see it from Meiko's face that the blacksmith wished to be spared from an overly detailed and prolonged story.</p><p>"But I thought the First People gave people chakra… Were these Hermits some of the First People too?" Kiyomi wondered, given her choice of friends she managed to absorb one or two facts about the history of the ninja world and she was quite a distinguished student in the Academy as well.</p><p>"Indeed the First People created us and eventually came to pass down to us the gift of manipulating chakra, albeit not to the absolute mastery of creation and destruction they could have used it for. However, the specific branch of chakra transformation into the Gift of Hermits and Sage Techniques were taught by the Hermits who were chakra entities wandering the world back in the days of the First People, similar to the Lesser Demons or the Tailed Beasts." Another trainee explained where the first one required some time to recall the full story.</p><p>"Just as their name implies, the Hermits were very secluded from any society or chakra constructs. It is impossible to tell if they are even alive to this day, given their lonely nature. Even if they are, they reside in some of the world's most out of reach locations with the most inhospitable for life conditions so even if they would not kill or elude any seeking soul on meeting them, finding them would be quite troublesome." Another trainee laughed out after answering Kiyomi's question before she even came to speak it. That question must have been just that common along the ninja who resided within these walls for any time and engaged the ninja monks in a conversation.</p><p>"So basically, you transform your chakra into a different kind of chakra to use your different kind of techniques?" Meiko squinted her eyes. "Sounds like kind of a hassle… Aren't there any Hermit Art healing techniques?"</p><p>"There may very well be. However, the Hermit Arts are very limited. Any scripture speaking of a new Hermit Art is a valued piece of literary and religious text. There is just a single Hermit Art scripture in our entire temple. They are just that rare," a trainee looking after Meiko's injuries said.</p><p>"How would you even train such a thing?" Kiyomi wondered out loud.</p><p>"Just like Seishiri-san taught Chestnut Hanasaku about the Sage Techniques – through years of practice and discipline." The monk looking after her blunt force trauma and handing her different ointments for Kiyomi to rub over her wounds smiled.</p><p>"Huh, you mean that head monk guy taught Hanasaku-sensei about some of those weird jutsu?" Meiko yelled out in shock.</p><p>"Well… Not quite about the Gift of the Hermits or Hermit Arts but about the Sage Arts and Natural Chakra. Chestnut Hanasaku has a long history with this temple but I feel like it would be better suited if she told you about it herself." One of the monks replied.</p><p>"If you are still interested in the Gift of the Hermits and Hermit Arts, we could show you some basic principles and how to mold it during training," one of the trainees suggested.</p><p>"That would be very interesting!" Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>"But not before food!" Meiko objected.</p><p>"Certainly. We train after the evening meal." The trainee monk tending to Meiko's cuts smiled in acknowledgment of the passion of the young woman and admiration of its intensity.</p>
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<a name="section0420"><h2>420. That Pesky, New Generation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even though Kiyomi by no means shared the passion for food or gave it any importance in her daily routine, leave alone a more erratic mission routine, she did join Meiko and the monks for their evening meal. She did so merely because she knew that Chestnut Hanasaku would be there and that would be a chance for the woman to tell them her story with this place.</p><p>Kiyomi did not really know all too much about Hanasaku. Not for the lack of common activities or time spent together but because the woman rarely, if ever, spoke of herself. Not even because she considered it a secret or anything. She just did not consider it a topic of great interest and easily grew disinterested with it. Something suggested that, given her previous interest in Seishiri the head monk and this temple, would not be the case.</p><p>The table was long and rich and all of the monks feasted together on it. There was ample space for Meiko, Kiyomi, Waiso and plenty other visitors if the occasion called for it. The table gleamed with modesty, showing off its nice-smelling and very filling-looking bowls of noodles, rice, wheat and starch, only the blandest stuff. Bread both black rice kind and yellow wheat rested in a vertical position by each bowl of noodles.</p><p>Meiko's stares attempted to swallow up this travesty towards her own dietary routines with glares that shined like dying stars. If Meiko's will was given material shape, the girl would have collapsed into a singularity and swallowed up this entire building as well as the world around it and would have felt content because that would have meant that nobody would have had to eat that ode to blandness.</p><p>"Suddenly I don't feel all that hungry." Meiko shrugged shortly after sitting down. The blacksmith leaned it towards Kiyomi, "I hope training isn't a massive disappointment as well. I bet those guys are really puny and won't make much of a training too."</p><p>Seishiri grinned, watching Meiko's disdain towards the dishes that the trainee monks respectfully dined on. It appeared that there were supposed to be separate sessions of meals with the trainees finishing their modest servings first before leaving the actual monks to feast on their dinner. After the trainees had finished eating, the other trainees working in the kitchen finally brought in the poultry, fish, shellfish and beef servings of noodles. The ones served to the guests even had some eggs in it.</p><p>"This is still pretty bland…" Meiko growled after her initial rage was carefully pinched off to a more acceptable simmering flame. "But at least it serves the purpose."</p><p>"The trainees are working on spiritual growth and improvement. Their strict vows demand of them to withhold the more intense emotions and stimuli to which category, I am afraid, tasty foods fall into. The ninja monks are expected to defend this temple with their lives against intruders, therefore, those same vows demand of them to eat strong and plenty." Seishiri explained with an accepting and defusing smile on his face.</p><p>"So… Did you ever plan on becoming a ninja monk yourself, Hanasaku-sensei?" Kiyomi asked while acting like she was interested at all in the moderate servings of noodles in her bowl and skinless duck.</p><p>"If only…" Hanasaku replied, looking at Seishiri. "I came here looking for a home, for a family because a kind man I once met told me that the ninja monks are vowed to be what the universe requires them to be to whoever is seeking for it."</p><p>"We gave young Hanasaku a home, for a while. Training and wisdom. She could not have been any farther from ever being considered into the ranks of a trainee, however." Seishiri strictly denied Kiyomi's guess.</p><p>"Was she that weak or are you guys just that strong!?" Meiko yelled out, spilling some of the soup in her noodles all over her tracksuit. Whenever surprise overcame the girl, she just acted on it, completely suppressing and forgetting anything else she was doing.</p><p>"It is not a matter of strength. Although it was here, training with Seishiro when he was just a trainee that I discovered that I was a bit… Weirder than everyone else." Hanasaku smiled with a blush, the woman did not cease glancing at her old time friend once in a while.</p><p>"Indeed, even at that age, Hanasaku could have toppled our Sealed Iron Walls which was… Alarming to say the least. It was more because of the natural and mental properties that she was just not monk-material." Seishiro cleared his throat, feeling a little uneasy about the affectionate looks from his right.</p><p>"Was it because she was a girl?" Meiko asked without any subtlety or manners, ignoring the fact that her mouth was full and her cheeks were covered in grease.</p><p>"Well… Yes. We do not accept women to become ninja monks. That being said, it was more because she was completely unreceptive to our training and showed absolutely no promise towards acquiring the Gift of the Hermits in a million years. This woman has no spiritual maturity or strength whatsoever, at least not the kind that is required." Seishiri replied.</p><p>"How not unlike someone else she keeps around…" Kiyomi made a cheap nod at Waiso before nodding with his attention on her at Meiko and her disgusting eating manners.</p><p>"She also had a nasty tendency to treat us all as her family. The other monks were brothers, some were even her sisters and she kept dressing them in her own clothes as a prank, one elderly monk was even supposed to be her father… Such emotional attachments are a hindrance to the training of the trainees, not to mention the endless reminders of celibacy that I received from my elders when Hanasaku kept jumping me and smooching me, calling me "husband"." Seishiro recalled with a smile on his face.</p><p>"So you kicked her out?" Meiko made a punching gesture as if showing off the manner in which an enraged and frustrated monk would punch a child through dozens of walls to the cold winter wind.</p><p>"The Fire Temple does not kick people looking for sanctuary out." Another monk sitting by Meiko's side butted in.</p><p>"Seishiro told me about another kind of strength I could acquire when I needed it the most. I was so frustrated with my lack of Advanced Bloodline ability that I would have taken anything. After I found out about how unreceptive I was towards training for the Gift of the Hermits, I was beginning to feel useless. Finding out about Sage Arts and Sage chakra was a new hope, a return of joy of life in my lungs…" Hanasaku revealed with a sad a longing tone that changed to a more nostalgic and melancholic one at the end.</p><p>"At that point, Hanasaku no longer needed the Fire Temple so we did kick her out," Seishiro added as a joke at the end, lightening up the mood all around the table.</p><hr/><p>Meiko and Kiyomi joined the trainees for training after the amusing to Kiyomi and disappointing to Meiko evening meal. These monks were quite odd, they agreed to all center their training around Kiyomi, almost as if they weren't training to surpass some goal, some barrier, but for the sake of training itself. If what the other monks told them before was true – they just tried to accumulate some strange spirituality scale by abiding by the routine not to beat through some predetermined wall of strength and skill.</p><p>"Yamato-san, I believe that the other trainees promised to show me some basics of the Gift of the Hermits before. Would that still be possible?" Kiyomi asked after some basic stretching out sparring sessions and warm-up.</p><p>"Certainly!" the trainees all got interested and surrounded Kiyomi and the monk she called up by name, given to her earlier this evening, to witness and aid in their training.</p><p>Kiyomi stood up straight, breaking her combat stance just to observe what her training partner would do. The monk stood in a very ordinary praying position and closed his eyes, even if she could not see or sense anything different about the man, the Yamanaka had to at the very least admire his remarkable focus at that moment.</p><p>"Well? Do you see it now?" Yamato grinned after the rest of the crew stepped away a bit, blown back by some invisible force, seemingly emanating from the trainee monk.</p><p>"Huh? Am I supposed to? I'm not a sensor, you know. Not all Yamanaka are natural sensors!" Kiyomi pulled her eyebrows.</p><p>"The Gift of the Hermits is a specific type of chakra. It requires spiritual attunement and you can see it just perfectly." Yamato informed his training partner.</p><p>Kiyomi tried calming her mind, purging all negative thought and just outright purifying her mental and bodily state with nothing but purity. A common misconception was that such concentration required a complete purging of one's mind – an impossible task. It merely required to repeat certain phrases, shuffle through certain thoughts or visualize something very specific again and again, so-called mantras.</p><p>Almost immediately after taking the training and spiritual concentration seriously, Kiyomi could perceive a golden aura shining around the monk and stretching out like some mystical, evaporating force with golden tendrils. The golden shine gleamed through the monk's eyes, nostrils and mouth as well when those orifices opened up and the monk irradiated with immense strength and concentration. Even when he took a completely neutral and safe-looking, completely open pose, Kiyomi felt hesitation about attacking this man.</p><p>He looked completely covered up and perfectly guarded in his normal stance, without even adopting any pose. Then, in a blink, it all went away. Yamato did not move an inch, not even a twitch of his fingers or his eyelids but the glimmering golden shine disappeared completely and even the spiritual pressure he was erupting with before faded away into thin air. His stance appeared just normal and very open to Kiyomi again, her instincts returned to normal.</p><p>"While it did look impressive, I can't help but wonder just how useful that is. I mean, isn't there only one Hermit Art technique known to this temple?" Kiyomi pressed her lips together before twisting their angle downward in consideration of if this spiritual light show was worth the hassle.</p><p>"There is just one that has been passed down to us by the Hermits, yes. Through the years we have added and interpreted the teachings of the Hermits to create derivative techniques of our own." Yamato nodded.</p><p>"In addition, it works just like your usual chakra augmentation as well." The monk smiled, lifting his hand up. Inside his closed clutch was Kiyomi's pouch. The blonde snickered in both awe and surprise while Yamato threw the pouch back to her so that the Yamanaka could reattach it. Kiyomi could not even see the man move, not only that, she hadn't registered the very fact that he had moved at all. No normal ninja would risk augmenting their abilities this far.</p><p>"Unlike common chakra augmentation, you do not risk breaking your entire network so you do not need to restrain yourself that much. All that you risk of losing is your connection to the Gift of the Hermits which can be regained with meditation and spiritual training." Another trainee monk amongst those that watched Yamato and Kiyomi train from afar spoke up.</p><p>"Alright. I think I'm ready to have a crack at it." Kiyomi smiled, taking a fighting stance.</p><p>"You will not achieve anything in this short amount of time. All you can do is just faint glimmers and sparks of the Gift that show you are receptive to the training. It might take years for some to even become receptive and, I imagine, you do not have that much time." Yamato explained. "Now focus, close your eyes and relax. Try to extend your consciousness and purify your spiritual side. Once your spirit is pure, your physical chakra will follow."</p><p>Kiyomi closed her eyes. She attempted to focus on a single thing but it was just too hard. There were so many stimuli on her mind, her brother, her Aku-Soku-Zan, her dislike of the Uchiha and kinship with Hanasaku, her clan matters, and complicated romantic life. She was a bundle of so many things that in the beginning it felt almost overwhelming but after reaching out and holding one, the most important constant in her grip, singling out that scorching hot emotion and filtering it from all the other confusions Kiyomi could feel it.</p><p>It felt cold, like a waterfall washing her away making her skin tingle, like millions of needles made of ice had penetrated her skin and melted exposed to the warmth of her blood. The cold was refreshing, almost soothing and a sense of calm overcame the Yamanaka heiress.</p><p>"Impressive. I'm not sure if it is your genetics or if you are just genuinely immensely talented but you are certainly receptive." Yamato nodded in acknowledgment of Kiyomi's spiritual strength. "I'd say that you could learn to tap into the Gift of the Hermits within five or so years."</p><p>"I don't have five years. Plus, I'm a girl anyway, why would you waste time teaching me your ways if you would not accept me into your ranks? I don't even think I want to be accepted here either, I have too much to accomplish on the outside." Kiyomi sighed, feeling a little glad that she did not completely mess things up like the complicated start would have suggested but she could not help but feel underwhelmed by how receptive she was.</p><p>"Ah, this generation is so quick to jump to conclusions. Everything here and now, isn't it?" Yamato smiled.</p><p>"Do not focus on trivialities like the membership to our ranks. It is merely a name. Your teacher has studied under the guidance of our elders for years, just like you could if you gave it a shot. If the Gift of the Hermits does not interest you, I can assure you that you would achieve many other heights training here so just think about it." Another trainee monk tried giving some advice to Kiyomi.</p><p>"Nicely said, Arazuchi." Yamato nodded, moving away from the circle of monks and letting Arazuchi take his place.</p><p>"That thing. About the young generation and its headlong rushing nature, I did not mean it as a demeaning thing. I admire the ability to see clearly what you need and reach out for it right now. I think there is space in this world for both approaches and that they can strengthen each other and the results they wield together. For that reason, I'd say, your training here would be especially productive." Yamato smiled.</p><p>"Shall we just spar and keep stretching out then, Kiyomi?" Arazuchi suggested.</p><p>"If you don't mind, there is a technique I just cannot work out. I have the concept and chakra manipulation all planned out, I know how it's supposed to work and, on paper, it makes sense but…" Kiyomi lingered.</p><p>"It does not come out." Arazuchi finished the sentence.</p><p>The girl did not nod or confirm it but she did not have to. It was clear that from her insecure and slightly embarrassed facial expression the monks understood what was going on with her.</p><p>"Well then, let us see this technique." Arazuchi took a praying stance.</p><p>Hesitant to try the jutsu on this monk who was every little bit as nice and understanding as he could have been, the Yamanaka prepared regardless. She placed her hands up and focused a much more intense pulse of chakra to fire off than usual. This technique was, after all, more intense and powerful than the usual Yamanaka hijutsu she used.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Art of Catastrophe!" Kiyomi shouted out through effort as the technique was decently demanding of her. With a ghastly howl, much more vociferous than ever before, Kiyomi's mental presence left her body to enter that of the opponent's. A few moments later, Kiyomi's hands weighed down, overcome with the strain of the technique while it had accomplished nothing.</p><p>"Is that it?" Arazuchi raised an eyebrow. His tone was not mocking, he merely wished to make sure that this was the entire technique as envisioned by Kiyomi's mind.</p><p>"Yeah." Kiyomi wiped her sweaty forehead. This was by far the most weariness that doing nothing has brought her.</p><p>"I am very lucky that your consciousness entered my own. It is remarkably easy to tell what went wrong when our consciousness interacted the way it did." Arazuchi smiled.</p><p>"It is?" Kiyomi wondered. Relief overcame her after realizing that in this cradle of wisdom and spirituality she could find the answer to what was tripping her over.</p><p>"Indeed. You are hesitant to set the technique off yourself. It brings up some very intense hatred from deep inside you, which makes you hesitate and despise your own technique. I could feel it seeping into my own mind. Tell me, what caused you to create this technique? Why did you think up of it and why exactly did you wish it to work this way exactly?" the monk wondered.</p><p>"Hatred? I… All the Yamanaka are supposed to invent their own hidden ace techniques. All the younglings are taught the basics but it is up to them to find out what to do with that legacy, how to write their own lines and pages into the grand book." Kiyomi fell on her bottom to get some rest and partly because she felt like sinking into the ground. "I'm the heiress to the clan. There is no longer any "buts" or "ifs" about it."</p><p>"Your lines must be the finest written and the best illustrated." Arazuchi guessed. "Hmmm, I cannot say that I really know how to aid you best. I do not know how you are feeling for your struggle is not what I have ever gone through."</p><p>"That's it?" Kiyomi raised her head up in shock.</p><p>"Sometimes, the most difficult and spiritually stimulating experience is admitting that you do not know the answer." Arazuchi nodded with a heavy pressure on his chest.</p><p>"I'd say that you despise your own creation because it seems lame to you. Unworth the time and effort it took for you to create it and maybe even your title." A different monk stepped out from the circle of monks. "Another trait of this generation is its pointless obsession with deifying its idols of the past. The fear of admitting when you have bested it and seeing your own accomplishments instead of letting them drown out in the genius of men of the past."</p><p>"So you can help me work it out? I know it is my own feelings and that I am the one who must overcome myself but, are you saying you can help me?" Kiyomi stood up, letting feeble rays of hope peek through the grim horizon just to feed the thirsty, sky-reaching leaves of her own mind.</p><p>"Not me alone. Yamato is the wisest alongside us trainees, Arazuchi has connected with you once quite deeply. I merely share some of your history, being a member of a respected clan who had left it all behind for their quest for spirituality. I believe that together we can crack the case of the Art of Catastrophe." The third monk nodded. "My name is Mikusata, let us help you overcome your pointless shame and your naive fears."</p><p>With her eyes wetting slightly in happiness and surprise of the kindness of these trainee monks, Kiyomi answered the offer with a spirited nod.</p>
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<a name="section0421"><h2>421. Progress Through Meanness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I see..." a trainee monk nodded his head with an affirming conviction.</p><p>"So am I going to become an awesome ninja monk?" Meiko wondered. She opened her eyes, got out of her slouched and tense stance, and bent her arms up in excitement as she awaited the answer of the helpful trainee monk whom she was having a blast training with so far.</p><p>"At this rate, you will merely move all your effort through your bowels and right into your underwear. In my entire life, I have not met a single person with as little reception to the Gift of the Hermits as you, Meiko." The trainee admitted with a shake of his head, about as confident as his previous nod.</p><p>Meiko's hands weighed down and she slouched her entire body in disappointment.</p><p>"Do not fret, young lady. While Kirume's words are harsh, they are truthful. They do not wish you harm, they merely wish to tell you that this path is not for you." Another trainee monk stepped in, trying to brighten Meiko's mood.</p><p>"Asaruda is right. It is sometimes a good thing to know which things are not worth wasting one's time on. One thing is sure, spend a hundred or a thousand years on this and that time will be wasted." Kirume corrected his own words by elaborating on their context as well.</p><p>"Oh, yes. In fact, your connection to the Gift of the Hermit is so loose that it may be proper to inform elder Seishiri of this." Asaruda raised a point and his index finger to gesticulate his suggestion.</p><p>"A fair idea. Perhaps this revelation means that the connection of humans to the Gift of the Hermits is slipping in general with each passing generation. It is a matter worth looking into on someone's pilgrimage." Kirume scratched his chin.</p><p>"Pilegremage? What is that exactly? I think I've heard that word but…" Meiko scratched her own head in confusion. She was not glad hearing that the Gift of the Hermits was forever outside her reach but the sentiments of the monks did make sense as well. At least it told her right where to focus her efforts.</p><p>"Oh, it has plenty of different meanings. That may be why you are confused thusly. Our trainees leave on a pilgrimage to investigate certain matters, such as this one, or on a mission they must complete. It is the final task one has to accomplish before becoming a real ninja monk." Asaruda explained.</p><p>"Oh well, either way, I guess I can train in solitude now." Meiko shrugged finally putting the matter of this Gift of the Hermits to rest.</p><p>"Oh? Perhaps we have been somewhat harsh on you with our words. Forgive our rudeness and allow us to aid you with your own training, Meiko." Kirume nodded his head submissively while Asaruda rushed off to speak to the elder monks.</p><p>"Do you know anything about imbuing weapons with chakra?" Meiko squinted one eye in suspicion. Given their diet and weird training, the blacksmith felt quite skeptical about their odd approach to everything. The two simply appeared too different for them to be able to help each other at all.</p><p>"Why certainly!" Kirume smiled, extending his hand aside as if asking his fellow trainees to toss him a weapon. Within moments, a battle-worn and bloodied staff was tossed at him and at the very instance of it touching the monk's fingertips it ignited with blue, neutral chakra-colored glow.</p><p>"I… I would like to learn that. I was practicing for too long and I just cannot do it." Meiko admitted. She dragged her arm over an armor piece and pulled out the aid weapon of her father that was supposed to help make mastering the technique easier.</p><p>"Hmmm… It is a moderate difficulty technique. If you have so much trouble with it, perhaps you simply do not belong on this step and must tread backward to learn the lessons you have skipped?" Kirume closed his eyes.</p><p>The monk charged at Meiko with exceptional speed. The blacksmith did not take her eyes off of her opponent for a moment and was in the midst of raising her sword to defend against her opponent. That was when she recalled that non-imbued weapons have no chance to survive even the weakest clashes with imbued weapons. The blacksmith leaned aside, gently and swiftly she danced around, to the sides, over and under the staff, no matter how fast or skillfully she was attacked.</p><p>"Oh, in terms of armed combat you have me completely beat!" Kirume admitted. The man stopped in mid thrusting motion when he realized that any kind of assault on Meiko would be fruitless in his current level. "Your speed is also remarkable. You certainly cannot lack the strength of your chakra to imbue your weapon. It must be a spiritual element that trips you over."</p><p>"That was the least mean thing you told me today." Meiko grinned like a little monkey.</p><p>"Sometimes being angry and wishing to prove oneself above the mean things said about them is what drives a person beyond their self-imposed limits. It is a fruitful approach to training, I found in my experience." Kirume nodded before stepping out of his staff-wielding stance and tossing the weapon off his hands and into a steel ring that held all the staves in the room. Right after leaving his touch, the blue flame coating the staff diminished and faded away like all oxygen was taken from an ordinary flame.</p><p>"I thought it might be a spiritual thing… It usually is with me." Meiko grunted, feeling a bit hateful towards how sloppy she was. "I always had trouble with ninjutsu, even the basic ones. Took weeks for me to learn what others mastered in days."</p><p>"It takes remarkable willpower not to kill oneself when one fails so much at such simple things." Kirume nodded as if what he had just said was in any way similar in terms of wisdom as the things he said to encourage Meiko in a more psychologically healthy manner before.</p><p>"When I met Mana she felt bad for me. She wouldn't admit but I saw it, she felt bad seeing me change whenever I failed at all those things so she took me in and trained me but… She never finished that training. She said that I could pick up the pieces and complete the training by myself at that point but… What does that mean? I'm not like her. I did not get promoted like she did." Meiko sighed and fell on her bottom in despair.</p><hr/><p>"Meiko…" Mana muttered softly.</p><p>"Let me finish my story, maybe?" Meiko shouted out, just barely managing to muster up the restraint to not smack her friend.</p><hr/><p>"Do you think this Mana person is smart, do you respect her?" Kirume bent his head to the side, almost like a puppy wondering just what he was looking at. He never bothered to open his eyes. He must have been meditating while he mentored Meiko. That was how little effort she must have been worth.</p><p>"Sure. I know she considers me her best friend and I really do respect her. She accepted me as a friend so simply. Crossed halfway across the world just to make me happy, saved my life a whole bunch of times… She was the only one of our team to get promoted too." Meiko smiled, looking like a shy schoolgirl telling her friend about her first love.</p><p>"Then what right have you to doubt her word?" Kirume scolded the redhead. "She said she was done with you, pick yourself up and do the rest by yourself."</p><p>"I tried." Meiko stood back up and picked her father's sword back to her hands. "On our way here we got attacked by a bunch of bandits. I tried believing every bit of Mana's words. That I was ready, that I could do it by myself and I really did believe it but… The sword just did not ignite. Not even an aid sword, I can't even ride with the training saddle on."</p><p>"Riding when one knows how to ride is overrated. It is just fun and games at that point, almost no challenge. True character is built by one who sits on an animal despite not knowing how to ride, with the will to learn it." Kirume cut Meiko down again.</p><p>"Can you maybe talk more about that cliché wisdom kind of thing and not about how I should kill myself? It kind of helps more…" Meiko grinned with blushed cheeks.</p><p>"When trying to look for faults, it is wisest to start from the beginning. Why do you want to learn this exact technique? You look strong and fast, you may achieve greater heights studying taijutsu, you know." The trainee monk wondered.</p><p>"It's just… During the Chuunin Exams, I've met this young man who was much like me. He wore a sick suit of armor and when we talked a little he told me of an interesting technique he had in his head that he just couldn't pull off. He said it may be right up my alley, both of our alleys really." Meiko recalled.</p><p>"How so?"</p><p>"Well, because we have similar backgrounds. Both of us were looked down on and both of us developed similar quirks and fighting styles. Except he has a really cool armor and I took the assignment a bit different direction… Still, the concept was so dreamy that no sane ninja with an assortment of rational techniques available to them would even attempt to pick them up." Meiko explained.</p><p>"I don't believe that chakra imbuement was the technique but… I do not feel like that is the point." Kirume shook his head.</p><p>"True. It's just that at that moment we connected a bit. He nailed right how I felt." Meiko sighed.</p><p>"Your feelings. What were they at that moment, this may be the key!" Kirume opened his eyes. The monk looked truly invested in Meiko's success. His own spiritual training success depended on his ability to help her. Or so it appeared.</p><p>"Well… My whole time training and working with Mana and everyone she gathered around her everyone looked at me as this weird monster. I guess I was not too different from Hanasaku-sensei in her own youth. I always took on the craziest opponents and I always survived the impossible odds but I was not the smartest person around, I let the others call the faces I needed to punch."</p><p>Meiko took a brief pause to catch her breath. The excitement that quickly turned to bitterness from when she spoke to Masen-Z in the caves returned.</p><p>"Then, at some point, I saw the people who were admiring me from down below step up and pass me by. It probably no longer matters how tough or fast I am, Kiyomi is pretty good at martial arts herself to make my strength work against me and Mana has so much chakra that she could most likely match me through using it all on augmenting herself… I felt so… Useless and…"</p><p>"Jealous," Kirume finished Meiko's sentence. "It would be wise to reflect on your feelings and realize if you were jealous. Lying to yourself and struggling with your own psyche may just have created the schism that causes you to become unable to ignite your sword."</p><p>"B-But that would be selfish…" Meiko looked down, at that moment she probably despised herself more than she ever did, even in her lowest moments.</p><p>"It would be what it would be. Selfish honesty sometimes makes you more spiritually at peace with yourself than trying to deny your own flaws. Accept that a part of your motivation is a selfish rivalry with your peers, do not take pride in it but accept it. Then, you shall succeed at finally being at peace with yourself." Kirume advised.</p><p>Meiko could, at long last, lift her eyes up, she no longer felt embarrassed because, somehow, Kirume made that which she felt embarrassed about feeling less worth being embarrassed over.</p><hr/><p>"Did Seishiro-san perhaps know who those people who attacked us were?" Waiso wondered while Team Hokage prepared to set off on their way the next morning.</p><p>"Seishiro does not keep a Bingo Book. Mine is a different edition and it does not have any of their faces recorded in it. I would not really know about them unless they were someone really world-threatening." Hanasaku shook her head.</p><p>"I suppose we can just stalk the paths leading up to the western black market point and capture a team of rogues heading there, assume their likenesses and hit it," Waiso suggested after finding out that they had no information about their attackers still.</p><p>"No way. We'll attack the place head-on and kill every criminal there." Kiyomi disagreed. "We've already given the criminals with the Uchiha body enough time."</p><p>"It's a very arrogant plan, Kiyomi, you do realize that you and Meiko struggled against two rogue ninja of unclear ranking in their group. If it is a large black market sale being hosted, as all clues would incline to make us believe, there may be dozens upon dozens of rogues gathering there." Waiso tried to reason with his teammate.</p><p>"Hanasaku-sensei is with us. She's a weapon of mass destruction and her reputation will scare away any weaklings." Meiko shrugged. "I also feel like just rushing ahead and hitting the point hard."</p><p>"Will you even fight this time?" Waiso turned at the Sannin annoyed.</p><p>"Sure. There is a reason why I was included in this squad. Sixth intended me to see some action at one point or another…" Hanasaku shrugged.</p><p>"Alright." Waiso agreed, perhaps a bit more suddenly than Kiyomi had expected him to. "If Hanasaku-sensei will fight with us, we can go ahead and rush it."</p><p>The snow-covered leaves blitzed past the view of the four ninja that traveled across the treetops to the west. The Team Hokage rushed straight to the black market point to interrupt the seemingly quite large meeting that was about to take place there. They would not do it to interrupt any shady dealings that usually transpired in such meetings, their mission was just a single Uchiha body, ideally, just their Sharingan eyes. The ninja traveled like lightning bolts yet they were quiet enough to not topple the snow on the branches. Had anyone walked underneath the treetops, they'd have not even noticed anyone having been up above them, to begin with…</p><p>"Hey, do you think those eyes will still be useful to Konoha? I mean the Uchiha is dead already…" Meiko raised a point.</p><p>"If we were sent out after them, that means they will be. There must be a time frame where transplanting those eyes is still possible." Kiyomi wondered about that herself.</p><p>"Not necessarily. If these rogues know what they are doing, they can preserve certain organs or body areas with a preservation seal. If any of them ever had Shinigami or Sin Eater training, they'd be able to place such a thing." Waiso answered.</p><p>"I see, so that is why there was no time limit imposed on us…" Hanasaku muttered.</p><p>"Isn't it kind of odd how we know exactly where the black market deal is going to take place? You'd think that if a village knew of such a location where dead bodies can be bought and sold on the black market, it would shut such a place down…" Meiko looked ahead with grim eyes.</p><p>"And risk losing the valuable information of where the criminals are trading their stuff? Once in a while, the knowledge of the black market points helps capture someone really important, that makes it worth letting all the small-time dealings slide." Waiso was of a different point of view. "You seem like you would agree, Kiyomi?"</p><p>"If it was up to me, I'd just keep on toppling every black market point as they rise up. Kill every criminal using it as well as the dealer." The Yamanaka replied.</p><p>"She's not very fond of criminals." Meiko grimaced with a massive smile.</p><p>"I noticed," Waiso noted.</p><hr/><p>The black market point looked just like your usual abandoned building. Located in a clearing of the massive forests that covered almost the entire Fire Country, it was perhaps a bit better preserved than most abandoned buildings but overall it reminded of a small educational building, maybe one of those schools in Konoha that taught various very specific skills for a little bit of money. Education was as much of a business opportunity for civilians than anything else.</p><p>A curious group with some familiar faces was standing about. A little dark skinned girl with a flowery headband and an overly colored coat that reminded of a bad trip. The two that had attacked Kiyomi and Meiko were present, albeit in much different and more combat-ready gear and outfits, a very skeletal and pale looking man with baggy clothing and bags for eyes as well as a very goofy puffed out haircut. One that attracted the most attention was a fatso standing behind the group because he'd have not fit with the others if standing in the line.</p><p>"Something's wrong. There are no other criminals. Just this group." Waiso noticed.</p><p>"Perhaps after finding out what these guys brought him, the dealer made this a private party." Kiyomi guessed.</p><p>"That's where the body of the Uchiha must be." Meiko pointed at a man with a poncho who stood in the center of the group with a large scroll on his back.</p><p>"You guys think you can handle those two you took on previously?" Hanasaku wondered.</p><p>"Sure," Meiko nodded.</p><p>"I think my training in the Fire Temple was quite productive. I'm not quite like I was before." Kiyomi replied.</p><p>Despite their confidence, both girls were quite serious. Waiso did not even attempt at bringing up how they could have just gotten overly confident given their performance last time. Looking at their eyes it would have been clear that both knew it would still be a tough fight but both felt like they had something they lacked previously. Even a simple look at the two could have told that these two weren't quite the same girls that left the village, it was like they were in control over their bodies and emotions much more.</p><p>"Waiso?" Hanasaku looked at the Sin Eater.</p><p>"I'm going to hide here." The boy replied. "I prefer working with dead bodies, not ones that are fighting back, thank you very much."</p><p>"Alright. Let's go!" Hanasaku issued an order, all three kunoichi disappeared from their last known positions, choosing to attack the enemy head-on as their style of approach was.</p>
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<a name="section0422"><h2>422. Rejects VS Nobodies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While the strength of the breaching sunlight through the ending winter clouds was nothing to note, even if for a fraction of a moment in time, the rogues noticed Hanasaku's figure dimming it out. The heaven piercing slam of Hanasaku's fist aimed at the weakest looking member – the creepy and pale, crazy hairdo rogue while the others scattered.</p><p>Coming from above, there was little to nothing Hanasaku could have done about her speed. She was as fast as gravity permitted her to be, in this case, too slow to crush her opponent from the get-go. That would have been a very good start to this assault but the woman merely flattened the ground where she aimed her strike, making it quake for miles around but generally managing to contain her strength without causing cosmic consequences. Something that was frequently a worry when Hanasaku was involved in a scuffle of any kind.</p><p>The creepy rogue, who was the target of Hanasaku's attack grinned at the miscalculated attack of his opponent. That was an amateurish mistake of someone who has never met Chestnut Hanasaku, a woman whose power was defined by her own poor understanding of the laws of the world in which she lived.</p><p>Two more copies of Hanasaku materialized from thin air in front and behind the rogue throwing a forceful cross his way. The body of the pale rogue shifted around like jelly. A rather gruesome sight, knowing that a living body was moving in such a manner. The shifting and twitching corpse then erupted into a bloody puddle, as if his body threw up its insides on the outside in a strangely implosive manner. The remains of the corpse liquefied in flames as every smallest drop turned to water before soaking the ground beneath it in an instant.</p><p>"I thought we told Hanasaku-sens…" Meiko spoke up surprised that her mentor could still use that ability when she accidentally had lost it during a training session when the team explained to Hanasaku that it was impossible to be at multiple places at once.</p><p>"Shhh…" Kiyomi hissed. "I think she forgot that. I can't believe there's a loophole like this in her abilities…"</p><p>"You did not need to cover for me with your clone, Hihei. You're the leader of our group." The man who was the original target of Hanasaku's before his body was substituted with an Elemental clone of his comrade spoke up.</p><p>"What are you talking about, man? If you die the Uchiha loses its worth to us so chill out." The man referred to as Hihei, a poncho-wearing man of western, Land of the Wind, descent spoke up. His tone was mellow and slow while his movements and techniques were anything but. Given that Hanasaku was pretty much as fast as she wanted to be out of ignorance, outracing her with cloning and substitution techniques was a notable sign of the man's strength.</p><p>"Oh well, those two got us into a real pickle!" the little dark skinned girl with the flowery headband placed her hands on her hips while leaning in an imposing manner towards the two rogues that attacked Meiko previously.</p><p>A pair of kunai flew in from the forest side, coming at the tall brawler who was among the pair that attacked Team Hokage previously. The man took a wild leap backward, avoiding the kunai entirely while keeping his eyes on the dark cover of the woods. Meiko appeared from the upper layer of the trees, leaping out with a flurry of shuriken covering her movements and forcing the man to move aside to avoid the cloud of shuriken flying his way.</p><p>By the time that the rogue heard the steel wire snapping sound it was too late. The dispensers Meiko placed in the cover of the woods unleashed a storm of senbon needles rushing at the man. The first kunai were merely meant to extend a line of wire attached to them to the other side, whereas the covering shuriken severed it on purpose to activate the dispensers. The brawler lit up his armor in blueish chakra flares cloaking it and protecting himself from harm. All senbon bounced off of him like sewing needles hitting a brick wall.</p><p>"It was foolish of you to chase us. Our first attack was to serve as a warning to prevent just this." The man addressed Meiko who landed out in the open and proceeded to unseal her father's sword immediately.</p><p>A bit further east, the talisman-using woman finally settled down after the mad initiation of the attack by Hanasaku but was immediately distracted by an all too familiar howling sound. The woman showed off her acrobatic skills by vaulting further back even though she could not fully see the conscious of her opponent floating at her.</p><p>A loud shriek alerted the woman once more but after diverting her attention for just a moment she realized that it was merely a hawk diving out from the forest and into the clearing. Here in the Land of Fire hawks preyed on both other large birds soaring above the treetops when in a forest and on small rodents and other similarly sized animals in clearings so the bird must have merely noticed a rodent rushing out from the forest into a crevice of the building behind the rogue.</p><p>Letting the hawk move behind her and outside her field of vision was a mistake. The bird lunged with its claws straight at the exposed back of the talisman user without alert or its signature shriek. In her state of heightened alertness and expecting an enemy of a whole other manner, the talisman-using rogue allowed herself to get scratched in the back before crushing the avian with a simple elbow strike.</p><p>"What a dangerous idea, transferring your conscious into something so brittle and slow. Then again, what other choices do you have after I showed you the gap between us last time?" the talisman woman taunted her opponent but her voice quickly went silent to investigate another odd sound – sizzling that came in from behind her.</p><p>A loud explosion temporarily interrupted all the separate battles in the territory around the black market point as all the criminals looked in shock at their comrade being swallowed by the blast of a bunch of explosive tags that the bird had previously placed on her.</p><p>"Omase!" the chakra cloak-using rogue yelled out. He must have known that a couple of explosive tags would only have killed his partner if the woman purposefully instructed her body not to augment itself through mental self-control. The uttering of the woman's name merely suggested that the man took over both battles and let his partner recover from whatever injuries she had sustained.</p><p>"What is your name, girl?" Omase coughed out while the dust and rubble raised by the blast cleared out, revealing her combat vest to be halfway torn up on the back and several busted areas on her head and nasty burns on her back. She was injured but hers were by no means the battle deciding injuries someone looked for in such a surprise attack.</p><p>"It doesn't matter. The bounty on my head won't pay for as much as a drink." Kiyomi replied while revealing herself, stepping out of the forest and into the clearing where she had more space to move around in, in case her opponent decided to respond with one of her talismans.</p><p>"I see… Not even a chuunin. We expected that much when we heard from a mercenary gang that a group of ninja are interested in this black market meeting." Omase smiled through the pain that still resonated in her body. Once she started actually fighting and moving around, that was likely to dull out when the adrenaline of the combat situation takes over.</p><p>"I have nothing to talk to you about. I'd rather just kill you." Kiyomi stated, taking an evasive fighting stance of hers, preparing to evade her opponent's attacks and look for her opening.</p><p>"I guess you really are an immature child if you still foster such hopes after the last time." Omase's expression soured and talismans slipped out from under her long black sleeves, filling her hands like wind fans.</p><p>"I have nothing to fear from small-timers that run away after they realize they bit more than they can chew." Kiyomi tried to piss the woman off. Even if she did not want to further talk to the rogue and would have rather just settled things with her, the Yamanaka needed her opponent to make the first move and, for that move to provide her with an opening, it needed to be one she invested a lot of momentum into.</p><hr/><p>"So I guess you're here to spoil our meeting, huh? That's a bummer…" Hihei, the poncho-wearing leader of the group with long dark hair scattering about addressed Hanasaku in a very mellow manner. It was more the tone children used when addressing their mothers when they told them to stop their playing and come back inside than a criminal talking to a Sannin.</p><p>"I don't really care about you guys, to be honest. I just need the body you're carrying back. A pair of Sharingan eyes is not something Konoha will let go of easily." Hanasaku replied while weighing the situation with her eyes. The face of this Hihei did seem familiar so he probably was in her custom edition of the Bingo Book however even the woman herself did not expect the mental clarity to recall much about him.</p><p>Breaking up the stare down, Hanasaku reached for her pouch and removed her Bingo Book to browse through it and look Hihei up.</p><p>"Huh? What is she doing?" the rogue Sin Eater pointed at Hanasaku in bemusement while looking at his group leader.</p><p>"I think she's… Like… Looking me up or something." Hihei laughed out in a gleeful, simian-like manner, not unlike that in which Meiko used to laugh in. "Are you sure you want to leave yourself open like this to all of us?" the man asked her while scanning through all of his comrades that surrounded Hanasaku.</p><p>"Oh? Yeah sure, go ahead. Don't talk though, reading good is difficult enough as it is…" Hanasaku waved her hand with indifference.</p><p>Hihei reached for his belt under his poncho, when he pulled out his hand, holding not a weapon but a bottle of water, his team launched their assault. The fat rogue with a standing ponytail rushed in first, he thrust his palm in a wild smack. The rogue probably expected this attack to be stopped so that he could continue his planned combination of strikes but Hanasaku just bounced off of his palm and flew right into the black market building, greatly damaging it in the process.</p><p>"Eh? She got hit? Is she dead?" the little flowery girl wondered looking gleeful but a bit confused about how easy it was to take down their opponent who was pretty much legendary for her skill and untamed power.</p><p>"I wouldn't count on it, little Yutsubu, Chitabo is pretty strong but not that strong." Hihei laughed after downing a good third of his water bottle and putting it back to where he pulled it from.</p><p>"I thought reading while you guys were talking was tough, but reading in that dark place while I'm being thrown around is even tougher." Hanasaku's voice echoed from inside the giant hole in the building. The woman walked out with her Bingo Book in hand, completely unfazed by the attack and having no visible injuries on her.</p><p>"Chitabo is out of your range now, you can attack too." Hihei looked at little Yutsubu who just nodded with enthusiasm and smacked her palms together. The little girl then extended them forward.</p><p>"Degeneration Art: Decay Bullet!" the little girl gruffed out through physical effort as black spheres with glowing and rotating particles inside of it, comprising a very enlarged and darkened model of an atom fired at Hanasaku in a rush.</p><p>The woman shut her book with a snap and then smacked the bullets aside, using it like a paddle to deflect the numerous projectiles. Oddly enough, it did not appear to do any damage whatsoever on her book or the environment where the spheres bounced off and detonated to.</p><p>"That's a lot of fancy words for such a weak technique," Hanasaku noted with a bland expression while focusing her stare on Hihei. "You're in my Bingo Book, Senju Hihei."</p><p>"There's no need to use that name." Hihei smiled while shyly trying to shake off the gravitas of his clan heritage being revealed. "I am kind of a black sheep in our clan, just like you. Just like little Yutsubu here."</p><p>"Stop calling me little, I'm fifty-four years old." Yutsubu puffed her cheeks. "It's demeaning."</p><p>"Huh? This little shrimp is older than me? I guess all of us age similarly…" Hanasaku sighed. "Still, you're pretty bad news if I, at some point, did not rip out your page trying to minimize the size of my Bingo Book for easier reading."</p><p>"Oh, I wouldn't say that…" Hihei blushed while shyly rubbing his foot against the ground. "It is more the company that I kept around. You've heard of them, haven't you? The rejects… I'm surprised they haven't reached out to you. In terms of being rejected by one's clan and someone's strength being entirely misunderstood by this broken, traditionalist clan system, you're the person to recruit."</p><p>"I've heard a whisper here and there. The Root was very secretive about them, even to their Hokage." Hanasaku admitted. It appeared that the heated fighting was only transpiring between her students and the two rogues they were engaged with whereas the situation had cooled off into a state of heated staredowns in the main battlefield.</p><p>"That is odd…" Hihei pouted. "I guess even the rejects are afraid of you. Guess it would be a hassle for Tenma to keep controlling your mind all the time if you refused to join them."</p><p>"So you're still with them? Whoever these rejects are?" Hanasaku wondered.</p><p>"Oh, no. They would never allow me to do something like this, kill an Uchiha just to pawn off their body out in the open. They use their own channels, much more secretive. Isn't it hilarious how both nukenin and village ninja know of the black market points yet have their own secrets from one another? The black market is a charade, like a bridge that connects us…" Hihei looked at the sky with a longing glare.</p><p>"So why do you need the body? Just to pawn it off?" Hanasaku wondered.</p><p>"Oh, no. I guess you wouldn't know. Nobody in the village would dare to tell you about it, they'd be too scared of what someone with your power would do after they found out. The key to the Rinnegan is through the combination of both the Senju cells and the Sharingan." Hihei appeared to be more passionate when talking about the exalted eye technique than talking about anything else.</p><p>"That old thing?" Hanasaku twisted the corner of her lips up as she struggled to recall where she had heard the name. "I don't think it is worth the hassle of transplantation."</p><p>Hihei laughed with a warm and genuine laughter. "Ah, yes. I forgot you have actually killed someone with those very same eyes. I must say, the power of a God is a bit too much to resist to anyone lacking your particular mutation of the Senju gene."</p><p>"Stop chatting with this woman and kill her! We'll be lucky if this stupid bitch didn't already scare away the people in this building." Yutsubu flipped out on her leader. Hihei appeared to be slightly thrown aback by the sudden nature of his comrade's anger and even leaned back in intimidation a bit. After taking a moment to regain his composure he then grinned.</p><p>"Come on, Yutsubu, she's a fellow Senju. Not even the stiffly stifferson tree using person but a genetic freak like us. Isn't that kind of fun?" he tried to reason with the elder woman in a little girl's body.</p><p>"You're too much of a goof, Hihei." Yutsubu crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"Oh, come on, even if the black market folks in this building run away in fear, Nejin can perform the transplant himself using their equipment and the facilities in this building. You just need to chill." Hihei laughed.</p><p>The giant rogue, named Chitabo, separated from his peers, encouraged by his earlier success at slapping the Konoha Sannin, the silent giant attacked. He swung his hand from high up downward in the squishing motion. The size of his palm was definitely sufficient to crush Chestnut Hanasaku where she stood if she was someone of such feeble strength.</p><p>The man's palm completely swallowed up Chestnut Hanasaku, smashing her up to the ground and creating a powerful, ground shifting pulse of earthquakes that got stronger the further it traveled along.</p><p>The massive palm jerked a little, then flew back violently, throwing Chitabo's entire body off balance as Chestnut Hanasaku appeared from under it, completely unscathed if one ignored the dirt on her from being shuffled to the ground.</p><p>"Wind Style: Ozone BB!" the woman chanted out, throwing a strong roundhouse kick and fired off a strong, slicing wind projectile. The Wind Release projectile dug in deep into Chitabo's body, making the man grunt in pain and pressure that the concentrated wind blade applied to his body. The blade forced the man backward as it pressed on and failed to cut into Chitabo's skin but the man did not move either.</p><p>The struggle of the two forces working against each other started to have the oddest chain reactions with Chitabo's body blurring and appearing distorted. Light began to bend all around his clash with Hanasaku's technique and the silhouette of the man extended into black spaghetti like contours that extended a great distance in the dimming and bending light making him look like a man drawn by an experimenting abstract artist.</p><p>In the oddest case imaginable, Hanasaku's projectile simply passed right through Chitabo without leaving a cut or a visible injury. It merely stopped cutting into the man's body and phased right through it.</p><p>"Chitabo takes pride in his inability to be accelerated. I was a little worried there when the light started bending it all started to grow dim for a second." Hihei laughed out.</p><p>What an odd troupe of misfits this rogue had assembled. It may have been a while since Hanasaku had an opportunity to stretch out like this.</p>
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<a name="section0423"><h2>423. Problem-Stridin'</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The talisman user Omase raised her hands up and pointed them forward, aiming them at Kiyomi. Her long black sleeves with dark green, shiny stones sewn into gold-colored embroideries on them attracted Kiyomi's attention. These long sleeves would have served as a much finer hiding spot for the woman's talismans.</p><p>A powerful wave of wind raised dirt, small stones, and other similar rubble, mixing them inside of its tight, rotating embrace and escalating them at an intense speed that not even the largest tornado could have dreamed about. The tight compression of the wall of air gave it its greatest power as any blade of grass could have easily opened large wounds and pebbles could have passed right through flesh and bone inside that wall of raging wind.</p><p>The weightlessness inside the pocket of gusts raised Kiyomi's body in the air as dancing grass cut her open in multiple areas and smaller rubble riddled her body passing in and through her body clean. Omase was wiser than to trust her opponent's demise with such a simple frontal assault. Had the kid really been enveloped by this wave of air, she'd have augmented her endurance out of fear of death and made her flesh tough as nails, to the point where the leaves and grass blades would have only cut her skin and the pebbles would have left minor bruises instead of punching entire holes in the girl.</p><p>A simple poof revealed this gruesome image of Kiyomi slowly being tortured inside the wall of wind being nothing more than the dead corpse of the bird she used to transfer her consciousness into previously, sadly crushed by her opponent before it could make its escape after planting the explosives on the talisman user. Omase's clever eyes instantly looked down, following the noise of the shifting ground beneath her feet, the woman let her enhanced perception do the tracking.</p><p>A loud burst of ground preceded Kiyomi's surfacing from underground. The Yamanaka leaped at her opponent with her kunai in hand, just like in their previous encounter, using her Earth Release techniques to close distance safer to this long-ranged opponent.</p><p>Omase swung her arms aside, at the direction of the rushing opponent. The air where the tips of her sleeves traveled caught flames and started popping like miniature explosions were released into the air where those sleeves swung. There was a pungent odor of gunpowder moments before the barrage of explosions reached that area.</p><p>Differently than before, the explosions appeared to merely phase through Kiyomi's image and the explosions did not bear much fruit. From inside the tunnel burrowed by Kiyomi's illusory image an explosive pouch flew out, aiming to hit her opponent right in the face before detonating with all of its explosive tag containing might.</p><p>Omase took wild and acrobatic vaults back to minimize the damage but the power of the explosion caught her and tossed her backward with a violent jerk. The woman smacked into the wall and bounced off of it like a ragdoll. Had it not been for the power of her own explosion, Kiyomi may have considered following her opponent and attempting to finish her while she was down. By the time the destructive force calmed it was too late.</p><p>"Did you really think I'd rush at you the same way as before and risk being tagged by your stupid talismans?" Kiyomi grunted. The thought that Omase really got fooled by that idea offended her a little. The fact that her opponent thought so little of her and the time she had to think that fight through. She may have been just a genin but she was one of the, if not the, strongest genin in the village, if not the world. This lowly criminal was pissing Kiyomi off more than criminals usually did.</p><p>"You used a simple Clone Jutsu to attack me but you actually burrowed the hole to disguise the fact that clones made by the Clone Jutsu leave no imprint to the environment. Then, you used that same hole for safety from your own blast." Omase wiped the blood from her mouth, feeling intense pain in her chest where her armored vest was covering her silky robe before. Now only her bare, bandaged chest remained as her clothes that covered it tattered in the wind, bits, and pieces of it still slowly singed with glowing blaze-orange.</p><p>"It's your fault that you did not take someone stating they were going to kill you seriously," Kiyomi replied with a confident and annoyed smirk.</p><p>"It cost you a lot of chakra to attack me this way. You used a combination of at least three techniques just to land this one hit on me. Just to piss me off enough to where I can take you seriously." Omase gruffed, still busy wiping the blood off her mouth from the internal injuries that troubled her.</p><p>The blood red on her face and fists. The slouched and vulnerable pose… This nukenin was good. She knew Kiyomi was out to kill her so she lured the girl in with that façade of vulnerability. If Kiyomi was a good year less experienced, she'd have fallen for it and charged right at a long-range ninja who trained their entire lives to keep their opponents away. She'd be rushing at her doom.</p><p>It troubled Kiyomi a little that Omase still tried a psychological trick like this. That meant she was still fostering some sort of hope, she had not yet lost her confidence, she took some injuries but they did not wear her down as much as Kiyomi had counted on. It was perhaps now that Omase was at her most dangerous and she now showed that she was confident to match that dangerousness. Kiyomi needed to tighten the loop a little lest she missed another psychological cue and got outplayed, she needed to unnerve her opponent and do it quick.</p><p>"I know your trick. That whole sealed Fire Release and Wind Release jutsu play is just for show. I know your real fighting style." Kiyomi informed her opponent. "I know that you have no access to it here, you're weaker here than you were before, even if your outfit now is more suitable for your fighting style. Because of that, I will kill you."</p><p>"Oh? So you've figured out the secret of that place we attacked you in?" Omase raised an eyebrow, dropping her vulnerable play instantly after the Yamanaka informed her it would not work.</p><p>"Yeah. Got to admit, it took me a while. If Mana, my past teammate was still with our team, she'd have told us about it, she's a history buff. That last area was a battlefield in the Second Great Ninja War. A minor one but still…" Kiyomi admitted.</p><p>"That's right? Doesn't the thought of letting that same ground that claimed your village's heroes swallow you up sound exciting?" Omase taunted her opponent. It only seemed fair for a village ninja that despised criminals to hear similar disdain from nukenin towards village ninja. From their sick and twisted point of view, village ninja would have been just lapdogs.</p><p>"Don't derail the topic, scum. I wondered why would those command talismans you used on me earlier be used? Sure a simple command to disrupt a motion sounded kind of cool but not to a ninja of your rank. Someone like you should have used it to more avail than that." Kiyomi pondered out loud. "That was when it hit me – you were using it on the dead bodies to animate them and fight for you. The problem with living targets is that they can override your commands after a momentary lag, even remove your talisman eventually. Not dead targets though."</p><p>Omase looked at Kiyomi with a cold glare. Maybe the woman tried shielding from the fact that Kiyomi just figured her out after a night of meditation and intense training, maybe she truly was unfazed. Who could have known for sure? Criminals hid their true selves, their weaknesses for so long that they became different beings entirely, lesser than human. Still, discarding humanity was their choice alone. Choices had consequences.</p><p>"Here you have no dead bodies to manipulate. This place is no battlefield and any bodies from older times would have already been decomposed to the point of uselessness to you. The soil here is unlike that of our previous clash location. There are no underground layers of peat to conserve them like that." Kiyomi grinned.</p><p>She had Omase now. Just now, she felt it – she could win.</p><hr/><p>The armored nukenin charged at Meiko, the blacksmith evaded his strikes looking for openings to strike. She appeared to have no qualms about letting the man up close. He was faster now, much more focused and careless than before, killing Meiko must have been his prime goal now. That was just fine. Meiko was not of the people that liked freebies.</p><p>With an eye-catching crimson streak of a cut on her cheek, Meiko swung her sword back at the man, aiming to hit him in the chest – the very core of where all of his armor pieces connected. While this did appear to confuse her opponent, he crossed his claw gauntlets to block the strike and see what he could have done to trap Meiko's weapon. If it was trapped in between chakra imbued blades, a simple twist and any amount of pressure could have snapped it like a twig.</p><p>A thunderous clang. Meiko's blade was trapped. Her opponent tried snapping it in two but it did not budge. Meiko leaped forward, attempting to drive her knee into the face of her opponent and busting up his nose to the point where fighting onward would be torturous to him. The armored rogue turned his head to the side, letting the blacksmith hit only cloaked armor pieces on the side of his head that held his long hair from interfering with his fighting.</p><p>The blacksmith dashed back clenching her knee with tears squirting from her eyes. It felt like hitting something absolutely invincible.</p><p>"So you did achieve some heights in cloaking your blade? Imbuing your sword with chakra would have been the only thing to save it…" the rogue swung Meiko's sword in his hands for a while, admiring the craftsmanship. That of Meiko's father was pretty much next to none in these parts.</p><p>"I'd appreciate if you gave this back. You have no use for it anyway." Meiko pressed her lips in a serious expression despite her most genuine wish to smirk.</p><p>"That is true. But I think it would be better if I did this…" the rogue pressed had at both ends of Meiko's blade and busted it to bits, now that the blacksmith's hands were no longer on it. Her father's gift was now just a pile of shards of steel. "Perhaps then you will stop fostering useless hopes about fighting us and flee."</p><p>Something snapped in Meiko's chest. Sometimes she forgot that she fought criminals at times, people who were just mean. Hell, she could get it, sometimes life just made one end up on the wrong side of it. But no one had an excuse for being an utter asshole and doing something like this. Meiko ground her teeth before reaching for the back plate of her armor and pulling out another short sword.</p><p>Slowly, from the tip to the bottom of the hilt, crackling sparks began forming the silhouette of a cloak around the blade's edge and hilt before a single forceful press of concentration and anger ignited the sword with spirited flames that did not merely cloak the sword with chakra. They simmered and rotated around it like a belt of a chainsaw. Shimmering with the faint blue of base chakra used at imbuing the weapon.</p><p>"Oh. I guess you did learn to imbue your blade. You merely waited for the right opportunity to reveal that to me. I apologize if that sword meant something to you but…"</p><p>A windmill shuriken, glowing with chakra flames smashed one of its blades right into the center of the rogue's frontal helmet plate and silenced the man. Throwing the man's head back like a ball after someone had kicked it with all their might. A thin steel wire that transferred Meiko's chakra held the shuriken all the way from the end that held it on to the one attached to the shuriken's ring. The cloak may not have been focused enough to pierce the plate and cut into the rogue's skull but it at the very least knocked him down and made him dizzy.</p><p>With a yank of the steel wire, Meiko recalled her windmill shuriken and hid the blades behind the one that whacked her opponent in the forehead and sealed it back into her left chest plate, where it came from in a fraction of a moment.</p><hr/><p>Hihei downed another pair of gulps from his water bottle before reluctantly stepping up. He waved his arms aside, splitting his poncho and letting it float in the air, like a ghostly apparition, while his arm sent the fabric floating aside to land on the ground. A strange gurgling sound accompanied a grotesque sight of bloating flesh on the upper part of the rogue's flesh.</p><p>Blades of water burst in jets through his flesh, similarly as they started flooding from his feet. It was a simplistic jutsu, creating blades shaped constructs of water and using water streams from one's feet, controlling their flow as necessary to control one's speed of movement made for a B-Rank jutsu to be generous. That being said, the rogue had sufficient mastery of it to do it freely, without hand seals or even referring to the technique. His concentration and experience was a weapon to be feared.</p><p>"Before we begin, can we clear one thing up?" Hanasaku closed one of her eyes and bent her head to the side as she pondered on an idea. "You said that Sin-Eater guy of yours is what is keeping the Sharingan in working condition, right?"</p><p>"Yeah. If Nejin dies, the Uchiha's eyes and the rest of his body would begin to rot away." Hihei smiled. "He is sealed inside a scroll now but if you killed Nejin you would just trap the body in a loop of pointlessness. It would be doomed to stay sealed or else it would be rendered useless and begin decaying the moment it was unsealed."</p><p>"And don't even try being smart about it. Even if your finest seal masters tried sealing someone inside the scroll to try and remove the eyes without unsealing the body, it would take you millennia to find the correct sealing dimension and then you'd still have to find the body floating in its infinite vastness." Yutsubu showed her teeth to Hanasaku as if taunting her.</p><p>"Sheesh, I get it, don't kill the creepy guy…" Hanasaku moaned in pain of the overly elaborate explanation she was given yet could not completely wrap her mind around.</p><p>Hihei charged forward, followed by his oversized comrade. Hanasaku thrust her own arms to intercept those of Hihei without letting the blades touch her. She cleverly manipulated and entrapped her opponent's wrist-focused weaponry by controlling the arms of her opponent and the space between them. Hihei was fast and it did not look like his fighting style left that much of a strain on him.</p><p>The fatso was deceitfully quick as well. In just a blink Hihei's feint faded from Hanasaku's visual register and was replaced by Chitabo's massive frame aiming to smack her again. The Sannin vanished before reappearing right in front of the giant's face and throwing her leg vertically upward. The powerful impact should have sent the man blasting off into the depths of space, crashing through and demolishing any objects he came through on his journey to the oblivion's edge but he remained firmly on the ground. The robust shockwave emanating from Hanasaku's kick only phased through the colossus, flying off into space to wreak havoc on a cosmic scale somewhere lightyears away.</p><p>Chitabo leaped back to wipe slobber and blood off his face. Troubled by the success that the woman's counter-offense wielded, Hihei ceased his attack and let the jets of water just let him float in the air slightly, instead of using them for aided, skating-like movement.</p><p>"My pupil once told me that a man cannot phase through attacks. Since that day I cannot seem to access that ability. I am glad to have been informed that she was wrong." Hanasaku grinned looking at the fumbling and still dazed giant who only took a very insignificant fraction of that kick's intended force, letting the rest phase through his impossible to forcefully accelerate frame somehow.</p><p>"Oh, my elders told me that a Senju who does not possess the Earth Release elemental affinity is a disgrace and shall never amount to much. They told me that, just with the Water Release nature, mine is a disgraceful existence and if I had any shame left in me after daring to be born this way I should snuff it out." Hihei smiled, "You should care a bit less about what people tell you, really…"</p><p>"I see." Hanasaku closed her eyes.</p><p>Surprised by this sudden opening that they were provided, Hihei and Chotabo unleashed their synchronized assault together. Chotabo rushed in first, smacking both of his tremendous palms from two sides like two crushing boulders in a vain attempt to crush Hanasaku. A split moment after his crushing palms opened up, Hihei with a rotating slash from up above attempted to cut Hanasaku in half with his Water Release blades as well. Despite the fact that the duo was confused by their lack of success, they parted ways to the opposite sides allowing little Yutsubu to finish off their combination attack.</p><p>"Degeneration Art: Decay Cannonball!" she yelled out, firing a much larger black sphere from her palm, the size of at least a larger rag ball like the ones kids were kicking about in the streets. The ball simply went right through Hanasaku and almost hit Meiko and her opponent who were clashing behind the Sannin.</p><p>"Sorry, Inaka!" the old woman in the little girl's body yelled when an angry glare of her comrade scolded her for almost hitting him and his opponent with that mysterious technique.</p><p>"That's amazing!" Hihei laughed out, he canceled his jets of water that formed the wrist blades on his arms and the skate blades on his feet. "You completely copied Chitabo's technique? What an act!" the man smacked his knee in complete amusement.</p><p>"Stop goofing off!" Yutsubu ground her teeth in anger. "Can't you see how much trouble we are in!? I've fired my Degeneration Art at her twice already and missed both times. How much more are you willing to make me mess up my cells for that? Do you want me to become an infant?" Yutsubu let her scorn be known by her leader.</p><p>Chitabo just foolishly rubbed his temple in confusion. He appeared to be baffled not only by the fact that Hanasaku completely phased through his attempts to crush her but also through Hihei's and Yutsubu's attacks as well. His eyes were this way ever since he himself first saved himself by letting Hanasaku's Ozone BB jutsu phase through him so his own ability must have seemed just as confusing to him.</p><p>"Maybe then you wouldn't yell at me so much," Hihei rubbed the back of his head with a stupid grin on his face. "Don't worry your meaty head too much, big guy. We'll just keep hitting her like we always do and eventually things will turn out just fine for us, I'm sure of it."</p><p>"Hmmm, I guess Meiko was mistaken, humans can phase through attacks coming at them," Hanasaku noted after opening her eyes and finding herself surprised by the fact that she was completely untouched by the combination attack of the enemy.</p><p>The very laws of reality were continuously being pushed to the brink of breaking the further the scuffle by the black market point went on.</p>
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<a name="section0424"><h2>424. The Weight Of Eternity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Without offering much speech, Omase raised her arm up. Her long sleeves scattered and fluttered in the wind. Kiyomi's sharp eye could pick up on a blur of white under her sleeve. Another talisman she tried to conceal. All too familiar vortexes of invisible wind gusts began picking up rubble and dirt off the ground.</p><p>If Kiyomi's memory served, these particular vortexes lacked the killing potential of the wall of wind that Omase used previously. They were quite easily avoided by simply giving them space to absorb enough, grow in size and change in appearance. Once the vortexes became fully visible by absorbing enough rubble from the environment – Kiyomi could freely move in.</p><p>Something stuck the Yamanaka as being off. Why would Omase attack her like this? The blonde took a pair of dashes back to give the whirlwinds some space to do their thing. Did she not figure out how this technique worked and how to beat it the first time she saw it? Unless… Kiyomi backing up, thinking she's safe was the point and the goal of using this technique.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress moved her eyes away from the twisters to focus on her opponent, who took more and more gentle steps to the side, closer to the dent she left in the building behind her. Then, with a strong thrust of her palm, the woman opened up the cracked wall by having it crumble in a circular hole. Using weak chakra augmentations instead of any of her talismans to preserve chakra.</p><p>This was bad. Just what kind of goal could have been served by moving into the black market point? Were long-range ninja not stronger outside where they could move with more freedom? Unless… Perhaps some reinforcements lurked indoors, or maybe Omase wanted to exploit the tight underground corridors to use her long-range attacks without risking Kiyomi dodging?</p><p>Completely clueless about the true intent of her opponent, with simmering unease in her chest, Kiyomi waited the technique out before moving through the opening in between the twisters to chase her opponent into the black market building. She had this rogue cornered. She would not let them escape. Even if some reinforcements lurked inside, they would be puny quacks or black market dealers. Even if the corridors were tight and long, Kiyomi would be in just the same advantage as her opponent in terms of her own long-range jutsu.</p><p>With a strong dash, Kiyomi made it through the hole and looked around. The hallways reminded her of the Ninja Academy back home. Long, sunk in total darkness and appearing almost completely abandoned. Only cracked and dirty rectangle windows hanging by the edge of where the walls merged with the ceiling providing extremely limited lighting.</p><p>The blonde waited for her eyes to get accustomed to the dark better. She gave her opponent ample time to execute her plan and that did not please Kiyomi but the thing was that if she rushed ahead and ran into a cleverly laid trap – she'd be even less pleased and possibly play into her opponent's hand even more. A rushing hunter whose eyes were focused solely on the prey missed too many things, too many for Kiyomi to afford to miss. She needed to play this slow and steady, work for her reward.</p><p>With a careful step, keeping her eyes and ears open, Kiyomi began to tread toward the corridor to the left. She was not sure if she'd run into Omase that way but she saw her opponent move in a diagonal leftward direction when she leaped in and got swallowed up in the darkness. Then, if she knew the architecture of these types of buildings well-enough, that is to say, it was the same style of a building as the Konoha Hospital and the Ninja Academy, the corridors would loop in circles giving her a chance to meet her opponent even if she turned the other way.</p><p>A white-wearing man jumped out from the corner. A dark, silver blitz nearly blinded Kiyomi as the man swung what appeared like a scalpel in complete darkness. The Konoha kunoichi locked her arm around the man's wrist, careful not to crush it, she flipped the man over with a single motion while she swept her leg to aid that throw. Once the man was down on his front, still trying to take swings at the girl holding him like a hypnotized loony, the Yamanaka removed a talisman on the man's shoulder.</p><p>"Where did she run off to?" Kiyomi gruffed. At that moment her opponent only took in a limited sight of her, that gave her some hopes that he did not see the fact that he was handled by a teenage girl and that he'd give her an honest answer.</p><p>"Further down the corridor." The man grunted in pain. Kiyomi did not let go of the lock she had on his arm, a single yank would have completely dislocated his shoulder, applied force on the middle would break his arm by the elbow in an open fracture.</p><p>"You're awfully willing to coordinate with someone you're seeing for the first time." Kiyomi hesitated to trust the man. While his attempts to carve out her eyes settled down after the talisman was removed, the man still did not seem very trustworthy from the first sight.</p><p>"Look. I'm regretting staying here. All the other dealers bolted after you guys attacked and shook the building the first time. They left all their bodies and equipment behind, someone claimed that some big shot was involved in the operation, like a Sannin or the Hokage himself… I dunno. I just wanted to… I'm pretty down on money and rep already, I risked staying behind," The man appeared honest in his confession.</p><p>Kiyomi should have killed him. He was a black market dealer. He did shady quack dealings on the side and dabbled in evisceration and sales of organs of worthy corpses. He paid criminals bounties for dead bodies of ninja they brought them. Coins for genin, just children that got unlucky, then proceeding to more worthy paydays as their rank and fame went up. He was a quack… Kiyomi should have killed him, a criminal just like the sort that killed her brother.</p><p>"Get out of my sight. If I see you again, I'll take it you've been caught and that you're a threat again and I'll kill you immediately." Kiyomi instructed, keeping her voice down as she did so. Maybe it was her past fling with Eiju, another quack and a criminal, that softened her attitude a little towards this scumbag but… It just felt more right letting this weakling scurry off to whatever hole he normally hid in before shouts of paydays and headhunting echoed his way.</p><p>The man did not say anything, he must have seen the determination in Kiyomi's eyes that the reflected limited lighting which broke through the slimy, small windows of the place provided. He knew it was better if he ran off before the girl changed her mind.</p><p>The man said "left their bodies behind". What previously Kiyomi took for determination to take Omase down and confusion due to her strange actions, now was replaced by fear. This was a black market point, she had ample of dead bodies to play with, dead bodies of unfortunate ninja sold off to these dealers. In many ways, this place was even better than that rotten battlefield cemetery.</p><p>Kiyomi hurried along, running into the downward staircase that the black market dealer pointed at when he told her of the direction where Omase rushed off, before applying her talisman on the man she happened to come across with hopes he'd stall Kiyomi off for a short while.</p><hr/><p>"You caught me off-guard there, young lady," Inaka grunted in pain. While Meiko's successful attack did take him down and ring his knocker plenty, not a drop of blood trickled down his forehead. His cloak defenses were pretty notable, or Meiko's skill in imbuing her own tools wasn't strong enough. "Not every tool can be imbued with chakra. I expected you only to have one or two weapons you could light up."</p><p>With her short sword still blazing, Meiko charged forward with an angered roar. At this point, it was no longer about strategy, about looking for openings and exploiting them or otherwise trying to wear her opponent's chakra out. She just wanted a piece of him for busting a treasured weapon of hers. She couldn't have cared less about his peaceful intentions, his ass was just begging to be kicked for what he did.</p><p>He was scary-good. Evading Meiko's strikes and punishing her openings. Even while feelings of warm, trickling blood kept irritating Meiko more and more, she continued to rage on without changing her strategy. Her augmentations and armor offered poor protection against her opponent's attacks, had his weapon been longer it would have possibly killed her after exploiting a single opening instead of just leaving long and deep gashes on her sides, back and face.</p><p>Inaka's footwork was amazing. Meiko couldn't even notice the foot that tripped her and shortly after, his leather gloves wrapped around her face, driving it up close for a knee strike. Disorientation. Was she falling or already down? Another forceful impact on her gut drove all air and semblance out of the blacksmith's body. Her opponent kicked her away by delivering a running kick to her stomach. She felt the taste of iron and blood in her mouth. One of the two she loved tasting but the other one meant that her augmentations were failing…</p><p>Meiko was almost accepting towards her impending doom. She felt the inevitability of her near-invincible opponent rushing in and she could not for the life of her figure out a way she could stop him. By the time she regained her senses of up and down and stopped feeling nauseous, feeling the bitter attraction of mother Earth down into its depths that prevented her from getting up, Meiko dreaded to be already dead. Truth be told, she was not.</p><p>With tremendous effort, the blacksmith peeled her body off the ground that attracted her, in cahoots with her own dizziness to keep Meiko down. Her opponent's armor was no longer blazing. For that reason he did not advance for a finishing blow on Meiko, if the blacksmith had an ace up her sleeve, she could have finished the bout then and there.</p><p>"Yeah." Meiko wiped the blood from her cracked lip. "Not many weapons can be imbued. Lucky for me, I'm a blacksmith and I don't buy generic weaponry. I build my own out of scraps and leftover materials from what my dad builds on custom orders. Almost every weapon in my arsenal can be imbued with chakra."</p><p>She needed some time to stop the world from spinning but every passing moment let her opponent get the wind back in his lungs. He was weary. Imbuing so many armor pieces all at once, in addition to one's gauntlet blades was insanely taxing on one's chakra. His supply was not yet fully recovered after their last battle as well, now he put even more strain on it again. Not all was lost, as long as Meiko stopped letting her emotions control her…</p><p>A clanging noise made Meiko's perception sharpen and focus on the source of the sound. Inaka's gauntlets let go of their blades. As they did so, the blades plummeted almost completely to the ground and revealed chains holding them attached to the gauntlet. The man improvised a medium range weapon out of a close range one.</p><p>The blades moved in a deceitful manner and were swift in a combination of the two that Meiko was not used to facing. The blades flew straight like projectiles to start off the combination but in a blink Inaka could change their direction, using them as a swinging, slash type weapon. The fact that chakra ran down the chains and covered the blades only made them that much deadlier. Even as she attempted to block the incoming attacks, the blades wrapped around her own sword and cut into Meiko's muscles and hands making it tough for her to hold her weapon properly.</p><p>Normally the blacksmith would have simply cut these chains, severing the link between the gauntlet and the weapon and leaving her opponent unarmed. These chains, however, were near invulnerable and just as invincible as the man's armor before. Without much trouble, Inaka wrapped the chain around Meiko's blade and pulled hard on it, making it leave the blacksmith's already injured hands while yet another chained claw left a gash on her cheek just in case she tried to rush after her weapon after her disarmament.</p><p>There were so many blitzing and buzzing blades to keep track of too… Three for each hand, making it six chained, invincible, medium-range weapons to follow, Meiko's senses got overwhelmed. It was at that moment when she felt a hard pressure around her throat, noticing one of the blades she thought to have dodged having wrapped around her throat. With a strong yank, Inaka threw Meiko over his shoulder and slammed her into the ground behind him. The length of his chain grew and rolled back according to his will.</p><p>If the blacksmith did not do something and soon, Inaka would smash out all the air from her lungs with this brutal swing and slam maneuver…</p><hr/><p>Hanasaku exchanged a combination of blows with her much more massive opponent. Despite lacking a good bunch of tons on her opponent, she found her strength more than sufficient to give Chitabo a good run for his money and plentiful enough to protect her from all of his blows without having to rely on her newly rediscovered phasing ability.</p><p>"Get outta the way, you dumb fatso, I can't hit her when you stay on her!" Yutsubu complained verbally and quite vocally.</p><p>"So what's his deal, besides being pretty strong?" Hanasaku wondered, wiping some slobber she got knocked out of her after a nice blow she had skipped while exchanging blows with the gigantic goofball.</p><p>"Oh, he doesn't talk which makes it difficult for Chitabo to use jutsu. The society has rejected him, I just couldn't help but take him in." Hihei laughed while rubbing the back of his head as if he felt a little embarrassed about his sentimentality. It would have been quite true that other criminals would have found his empathy for the giant pathetic. They were a ruthless folk, after all.</p><p>"I've never seen him phase through things before, do you think you could do it with my Degeneration Art?" Yutsubu wondered, this time with a bit more respect to the flabby man. The giant just blundered about, looking intimidated and unsure about that question. For some reason the girl's technique did really inspire fear into this childish man, Hanasaku took note of that.</p><p>"So what you're saying is, that he has never phased through jutsu before?" Hanasaku wondered, noting something interesting she heard.</p><p>"Yeah, then again, Chitabo doesn't talk and he's quite stupid so we may have simply missed that ability in him." Hihei shrugged.</p><p>Hanasaku's chestnut-brown hair colored her flashy movements their own shade while she moved in on the blundering giant in a blur, throwing a strong and properly winded up straight right into his core.</p><p>"Yottaton Punch!" the woman roared, she actually put in a bit of effort into this simplistic taijutsu technique. Mid-way through, she lifted her punch up, transforming it into an uppercut while retaining some of its force and momentum. Whereas before Chitabo just shouted out in pain and whited out, with the completed movement he got thrown rolling aside after the ground left his feet. Hihei and Yutsubu appeared shocked by the speed and power of the Sannin's movements.</p><p>Hihei thrust his hand forward, allowing Water Release chakra to burst from his wrists again, this time combining into an entire arm instead of just forming blades and rushing at Hanasaku to capture the woman in his grip. Syncing up with the moves of her leader, Yutsubu launched her "Decay Bullet" again, aiming at the arm construct made of water.</p><p>The tight colossal grip of the water arm exploded with force as while Hanasaku got caught in it initially, her power was sufficient enough to burst the construct, overwhelming whatever integrity and durability the water arm had. What she did not see coming, however, was Yutsubu's technique that pummeled her relentlessly as she burst out from the pan and right into the fire. Hanasaku put up her hands to block but Yutsubu's jutsu looked pretty powerful regardless, throwing the Sannin back and displaying a great deal of pain and damage being taken.</p><p>"It was a mistake to challenge us, Sannin!" little Yutsubu yelled out, it appeared that her voice had become even brattier after she used her technique a pair of times. If one was particularly sharp with their perceptive abilities, they may have even been able to tell that she had become frailer and shorter as well, as if each successive use of her unique ability drained age from her body more and more.</p><p>"It is true, you are pretty tough but we saw through your trick. You did not really move Chitabo. You stomped your foot on the ground, shifting the ground beneath his feet and leaving him airborne because of that before you delivered the second part of your punch." Hihei wiped his nose in a bratty manner, feeling pretty good about the fact that three dangerous nukenin managed to apply pressure on a Konoha Sannin. "You OK there, big guy?" he asked while glancing back at Chitabo.</p><p>The giant stood up, stumbling and tripping over. Hanasaku's blow appeared to have left some damage on the man. Then again, neither of the fellow nukenin were surprised, the enemy was one of the most powerful ninja alive.</p><p>"I was testing a theory." Hanasaku's voice came from farther away. Her Konoha flak jacket was burnt off and her black undershirt had what appeared like chemical burns on it while her skin and flesh appeared completely unharmed. "I figured that if I shifted the ground beneath his feet he would be very much movable."</p><p>"I-Impossible!" Yutsubu yelled out, feeling completely awestruck and baffled that the Sannin just stood up after her Degeneration Art technique hit her head-on. The girly even started wetting her eye like any good little girl would have been when a mean and loud dog stood in her way while she was going home from school.</p><p>"Huh? I've never seen anyone stand up from Yutsubu's Degeneration Art. She's a Senju who is able to channel the decay of her own cells into ninjutsu and completely age the other people she hits into nothingness with them. It's like being hit by the equivalent of millions of years of aging packed into a little sphere!" Hihei smacked his own cheeks in an overblown expression of surprise. He was clearly having a blast even while his opponent was breaking all sort of rules of common sense.</p><p>"I… I can't believe it… Every jutsu I use takes age out of my own cells, I can mold and expand that aging like a Fire Release user can blow an inferno out of the smallest spark. I can turn a year of my own age into an eternity of aging… You should be dead!" Yutsubu flipped out. The little girl fell on her butt and started crawling back in fear.</p><p>"Oh… It seems that little Yutsubu is having a panic attack. That happens when she ages herself back too much, the mind of kids is so sensitive." Hihei snickered to himself.</p><p>"N-Now that you say it…" Hanasaku coughed out, "It doesn't really feel that great inside…" she noticed. The Sannin fell on one knee, clutching her stomach area and her sides. Her vision began to blur and her mouth started to feel all dry and brittle, like munching on actual dry hay.</p><p>Something bad was happening to Hanasaku after all. Up in the hiding spot of the trees, Waiso kept a very careful look at the Konoha Sannin's reaction and the battle she was having with the three dangerous rogues. Somehow, despite being on opposite sides, both young Waiso and Hihei appeared to have noticed the same clues at the same time and taken a great interest in them. Clues that would define the future of the Ninja World and change the course of it forever from that point on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0425"><h2>425. Shattered Dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Heh, I guess some time was needed for the effects of Yutsubu's jutsu to catch up. Things sure work weird with you involved." Hihei laughed out. The rogue found this exceptionally hilarious. He even bent over from the strain of laughter.</p><p>"This… Doesn't feel too good." Hanasaku noted to herself. Her entire body shook in shock but she managed to get herself back on her feet, despite the highly lethal aftereffects of Yutsubu's techniques. The burden of eternity resting on her shoulders itself appeared to merely discomfort the Sannin and make her serious.</p><p>"T-That's impossible, she can't possibly be standing! She took it all head on, almost the entire barrage!" Yutsubu shook in her boots, quivering the girl took a pair of steps back as tears and slobber ran down her face.</p><p>"I hope you guys don't mind that I take you out quick. I'm feeling kind of sick after that…" Hanasaku grunted while she slapped her palms together and began quickly working on an order of hand seals. Her body was sweating profusely as if she would have been suffering from a fever of some sort and her face was much more serious than before, there were very few times in the Sannin's life where battles forced the indifference and boredom out of her face.</p><p>"Earth Style: Staircase to Heaven!" Hanasaku ruffed out before driving her palms to the ground. Almost like the touch of the woman's limbs caused the ground itself to shift, a tremendous pulse resonated through the field and the foundation of the building beside them. Chitabo looked down with a goofy and clueless expression, shortly followed by his comrades that did the same thing. Their feet were slowly being covered up by the shifting ground and swallowed up.</p><p>Before the crew could sink to their knees, in case of little Yutsubu - her neck, sky-piercing pillars made of stone and soil rocketed upward, slamming into Chitabo's face and body but most importantly, lifting the immovable man up in the sky before the pillar collapsed after reaching its maximum altitude.</p><p>Hanasaku breathed out, working her body through the tension of the nasty sickness she was going through and leaped up in the sky so fast that her movements appeared to fade in and out of existence even the to the dangerous nukenin following them.</p><p>"Trillion Yottaton Punch!" Hanasaku roared out, driving her fist into the core of Chitabo's body, using all of her strength to drive it in as deep as it went before letting the force of impact do what it did best. Like an arrow from the world's most unbelievably fast crossbow, Chitabo got launched diagonally up beyond where the eyes of anyone trying to catch sight of the fumbling giant could do so.</p><p>Hanasaku slammed on the ground on her knees, hyperventilating. Her vision was blurry and her chestnut colored hair got in the way of her trying to see this fight through.</p><p>"Wow! I can't even see Chitabo anymore… How high did he go?" Hihei exclaimed in excitement and surprise, feeling little to no remorse or grief about the fate of his comrade.</p><p>"As far as things go. To the very edge…" Hanasaku replied, straightening her back out and preparing to move on to finishing up the fight. She felt the backlash of that punch in her own body, the pulsing intense pain in her bones. That was nothing new to her, she was used to straining and tearing her own muscles by abusing her own immense power and breaking her own bones from punching people harder than any ninja possibly could.</p><p>What troubled Hanasaku was that the pain no longer went away. Her hands trembled from it, the blood covering her shaking fists did not dry up but instead got reinforced by more blood coming from those same injuries. What did this rogue's jutsu do to her really? Hanasaku rarely felt fear for her own life, usually, that feeling was reserved to when people she held dear were in danger but… This realization of the fact she was now vulnerable, that her own actions had consequences now almost deserved that same angst in of itself.</p><p>Something was wrong. The butterflies in Hanasaku's stomach begged her to use her healing techniques and help herself but some deeper part of her suggested that she didn't. This feeling of vulnerability, weakness in her body… Whenever she used her medical techniques on weak and vulnerable people she messed something up. In her current state, something suggested that Hanasaku would not survive shifting her organs about or growing sets of teeth all over her bones. She'd need to fight like this… See this to the end.</p><p>Hihei's hands extended forward, attempting to utilize the distraction in Hanasaku's reflections. The colossal watery arm came out from the smallest drops of humidity in the air around him. Once again rushing at the Sannin in an attempt to entrap her or crush her outright in her new, vulnerable state.</p><p>"Yottaton Punch!" Hanasaku cried out, feeling the pain that would come as a backlash of this reckless action before it even came. No. She had to move on. No matter how much it hurt. Her students, everyone that looked up to her and once called her "Lady Hokage" lived that same kind of life. A life of pain and consequence, a life where things made sense, a life of limits.</p><p>Maybe such a life was not so bad. Maybe such a life was worth pressing on for…</p><p>The water construct shattered like a flare, spreading tiniest ripples, jets, and streams in every direction as Hanasaku's punch busted through the construct and demolished it from the hand end to the shoulder. It hurt so much initially. After some point the coldness of the water, the intensity of the pain made it all go numb just like it used to before and in that moment Hanasaku felt hopeful that her hand returned to its previous healthy state all by itself without having to actively use Medical Ninjutsu on it.</p><p>Once the woman saw her bloodied hand with lacerations and torn flesh from her knuckles to the upper arm, such naïve hopes were shattered.</p><p>"Heh, guess you'll have to heal your arm up the old-fashioned way? That's just fine. I could use a drink myself…" Hihei grinned with his monkey-like smirk. The rogue forced his legs out of the dirty tomb and moved his hand reaching for the water bottle hanging from his belt.</p><p>"That's just fine," Hanasaku replied. "It does not matter how many punching arms I have when I can punch you any number of times I want."</p><p>The woman moved in the fastest she has ever moved in a battle for quite a long time. Time itself had stopped around Hanasaku like she would have stopped it. It was not so, she had done nothing to it. This was one aspect of combat where the woman had done the appropriate research given the possible consequences. The world around her looked so tunneled, like a poster wrapped on the walls of an actual tunnel she was passing through, all distorted but beautiful in its own way.</p><p>It was something that the Raikage had taught her once in a discussion the two women had. The leader of Kumogakure was modest to an aspirational degree, she denied being able to beat Hanasaku in combat despite her companions suggesting her speed giving her a tremendous advantage. Raikage Imasu argued that the speed of light was the absolute limit that anyone could move in and she knew that Hanasaku could match that speed.</p><p>On top of that, she even mentioned something interesting, something that stuck with Hanasaku for a long time to come. To Hanasaku's encouragement to admit that their fight would be long and epic, the woman merely replied that while fighting at lightspeed, time all around stopped. That meant their fight would only take an actual instant. Now that she moved at those exact speeds Hanasaku saw what Imasu meant…</p><p>Yutsubu looked around, the little girl thought herself losing it completely. One moment Hanasaku was moving right at her, the other she had disappeared from view entirely. Almost like she never existed, to begin with. That was the same woman who got hit by a technique that decayed any living person it hit to dust, crushing them with the weight of eternity. A crunchy splattering noise alerted the girl post factum and made her turn her head right at the same time as her leader splattered into a bloody stain from his waist up.</p><p>Yutsubu screamed out and fell on her bottom. She should have been braver than this… She had seen comrades and family killed before but… She may have abused her jutsu a bit much and lost it again. Every time she used that series of techniques she made herself younger and perhaps this time she renewed herself more than it was reasonable. All she wanted to do was to run away, just like the age she looked being.</p><p>"W-What did you do to him?" Yutsubu whined out. She felt disdain for the little brat she made herself in her final moments. She should have died with more dignity than to soil her pants and cry in front of her opponent like a pathetic child…</p><p>"Did you not know? When one moves at the absolute limit of possible speed, time around them stops. It does not matter if I have just one working arm if I can punch someone any number of times I want while they just stand around unable to defend themselves as strong as I want." Hanasaku looked at the crying child. Something about this particular rogue made her slow down again. She should've just lifted her boot up and squished this criminal, a traitor to some village somewhere who took the teachings of the village that raised her and decided to run away and do as she willed it with it.</p><p>Nevertheless, that face, those clothes, and whiny face… It softened Hanasaku's heart, despite this same brat being the one who hit the Sannin with this odd infliction, which plagued her currently. Pain in her bones, heaviness breathing and the crushed right arm… All of it was the fault of this deceitful old hag in the body of a little girl.</p><p>"Get out of my sight," Hanasaku ordered. Little Yutsubu needed nothing more than a stroke-inducing furious glare to get the clue. She would run as far as her little girly legs could take her from this terrifying woman.</p><p>Why did they ever think they could defeat such a person in the first place!?</p><hr/><p>Inaka had unwillingly provided Meiko with a short pause to think of a better way to escape his lethal chain-hold. Being swung around and slammed about was not the best thinking environment, especially for someone usually as straightforward as the redheaded blacksmith.</p><p>This was a smart maneuver too. With the chain holding her tightly, she couldn't substitute out of it, it wasn't like there were plenty of tools for her to do so with, to begin with. Maybe some of the rubble from the black market point may have done the trick but… It was foolish to think about something Meiko couldn't even do.</p><p>Inaka swung the chains around, flinging Meiko into the wall of the building before slamming her back into the ground on his other side. He looked a bit surprised that the girl's neck did not snap immediately. He was a bit higher-ranking nukenin, compared to what genin could have reasonably taken on. It would not be that difficult to see his shock seeing a mere child resist his best attempts to break her neck.</p><p>The man groaned in frustration, forcing the chain to drag Meiko's body closer to where he could drive his own foot right in her face and pull on the chain with the added leverage of his own foot. The blacksmith bent her knees and pressed her fingers against her boots, unsealing a burst of chakra sealed inside them that functioned as a jet.</p><p>She had hoped to smash into her opponent's knees and topple him. Once her opponent was down and the chains around her throat weakened, she could have removed them or eased the pressure somewhat. Maybe get a breath of fresh air, even if it would not become a deadly sort of a trouble as long as Meiko's chakra resources were there to sustain her.</p><p>Inaka leaped over Meiko's improvised shoulder tackle and flipped his chain-claws over him like a jump rope, driving the blacksmith into the dirt head-first. Or at least, such was his original intention, as the redhead regained her will to fight and switched positions, thrusting her still blazing boots first to propel her off the ground and smashing her head right into her opponent's gut.</p><p>It was a risky move. The man managed to sustain his chakra imbuement that he applied to his chain-blades and dragged Meiko with him. Had Meiko somehow mustered up the strength needed to knock him out of it, the chains would have snapped from the immense force of the pull and that would have freed the girl.</p><p>Regardless, the pull on her chains had loosened and Meiko bounced on her feet faster than her opponent. She may have been forced to close in at close-range but that was preferable in this situation – his main weapon was dismantled into this chain-deathtrap anyway. He had little to no other options for combat. Meiko's last gamble was to hit him hard enough and plenty enough times to where he could not return to applying his advantage of having her in a chain-hold.</p><p>"C-Rank Seal: Release!" Meiko cried out, more so because of her own valiance and bravery gambling her life this way than necessity. She had used these seals on her armor for years and seals as simple as C-Rank no longer even required words from her to work.</p><p>The blacksmith's hand shot out into a cloud of smoke, eager to wrap itself around the weapon she had unsealed. The blacksmith grabbed her windmill shuriken, making its surprise return and charged into battle, using it in melee range in its collapsed form. It was easier to imbue it with chakra that way than to waste precious microseconds and apply the steel wire on it.</p><p>Inaka yelled out in pain, his eyes widened and the ends of his roar mixed in with the definition of wet gurgling. He was not used to being hit right up in his face but he had little choice – his chakra supplies were waning already so supplying only his chain-blades with chakra imbuement was difficult enough at this point.</p><p>"Weapon Transformation Jutsu!" Meiko yelled out, a poof followed by a cloud of smoke enveloping her windmill shuriken signaled the success of her technique, transforming it into a scythe while keeping its chakra imbuement at the same time.</p><p>That was too much time wasted, Inaka's push kick sent Meiko rolling back on her back in pain while her weapon reverted to its original windmill shuriken shape and clanged unceremoniously beside her opponent.</p><p>"This… This is too far. This shouldn't be happening. In our group, only Omase is considered a B-Rank rogue in most Bingo Books but she is useful because of her unique skill. How could a mere genin possibly push me this far?" Inaka growled, clutching at the wound on his chest and shedding the armor pieces that bent in an awkward manner and dug into his wounds making it deeper. As he did so, the rogue exposed a well-trained and scarred bare chest, ripping both his undershirt and his armor off.</p><p>"Heh, you wasted too much time last time. There's a reason why you're the only person you meet applying chakra imbuement to your entire armor – it costs way too much chakra to sustain. Fighting me last time you probably halved your stamina and now you're having trouble keeping up even this long-range style." Meiko grinned. It was true, had her opponent not worn himself out last time in a show of force aiming to shake the child ninja off their tail, she'd stand no chance against this man.</p><p>The gap was simply too wide. With or without chakra imbuement.</p><p>Inaka's muscles tensed up. Veins shot out from his forehead and around his biceps and his eyes swelled out in black bags, turning them bloodshot in a snap.</p><p>"It is true that my fighting style is straining but… I think I have just enough in me to finish what I've started." Inaka declared. He yanked on his chains, grabbing them with his fingers and wrapping the chains around them to ease his pull. Meiko dug her feet into the ground and strengthened her augmentations. Her opponent was exerting his last kicks of stamina, he was at a fraction of his usual strength, this was where she pushed back.</p><p>Meiko grabbed the chains and yanked on them herself, overpowering her opponent and, for once, feeling glad that he kept up his endless imbuement of chakra into these chains so that they did not snap from the tremendous opposite forces pulling on them. A shock of pain emanated from the girl's body making her feel the taste of blood in her mouth – that struggle did not really respond well to her worn out neck or injured body either.</p><p>"Blockbuster!" Meiko yelled out while leaning her body forward. The flares of chakra fired out from her boots, sending the blacksmith flying at her opponent at great speed and ramming into her opponent with enough force to knock all semblance of consciousness out of him for a mere moment.</p><p>Meiko was not done just yet, she pointed her flaring boots down at the areas around her downed opponent's waist and shot herself upward, as high up as her boots and chain wrapped around her neck allowed her. Once she reached the desired height, the redhead straightened out her body and slammed her palms together, lighting up all seals on her armor simultaneously.</p><p>"Sealing Technique: Mandala Arrows!" she yelled out unleashing a raining hell from up above as her Coup de Grace.</p><p>Meiko noticed the flares of blue around the chains dying out. This may have meant that her opponent was out cold or dead, or it could have meant he simply chose to end channeling his chakra and keep it all where it belonged. With shaking and bloody fingers, still coughing up blood from time to time, Meiko unwrapped the chains around her throat that have tied up and wrangled in a complicated manner from all the tossing around she received.</p><p>A loud cough made Meiko enter her fighting stance again but then Hanasaku's boot forcefully snuffed out all fighting spirit out of the man by simply stomping on his chest. Just a mere glance at the woman's serious eyes betrayed her intent on killing the man if he proved himself to be too much trouble.</p><p>"Are you OK, sensei?" Meiko asked, glaring Hanasaku down and seeing a different, vulnerable side to a woman she had admired for so long.</p>
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<a name="section0426"><h2>426. The Mind Explosion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Just how deep underground am I?" Kiyomi asked herself. She did her best not to make too much noise and telegraph her location too clearly but she needed some auditory stimuli in this almost screeching, dead silence. The constant tension and worry over the possible impending attackers were beginning to wear on the kunoichi's mind.</p><p>The blonde noticed a squirming white-coat inside of a small room with busted windows and no light. Had it not been for Kiyomi's exceptional, superhuman perception in the dark, the likes of which all chakra-users had to some extent, and the very odd, seemingly purposeless actions of the slouched man as well as his well-maintained, white coat, he'd have gone completely unnoticed.</p><p>Kiyomi didn't think it to be a wrong idea to enter the room and check on the man. His presence here seemed odd, given how the man she met previously felt confident and truthful in his statement that everyone had bolted after the ruckus started to rise up above. Not to mention the fact that her opponent would have had limited use in a living target.</p><p>"Hey, you, did you see a woman run past here?" Kiyomi asked. She didn't feel like going into more detail than this, it was not like the man would have had the chance to see any unusual women running about with the whole black market facility evacuated.</p><p>"Huh? Oh, yeah, I hid under the table." The man jumped and turned at Kiyomi, his jerking reaction made him push down a bunch of metallic tools that scattered all over the floor and push the cold corpse on the very same table halfway off of it.</p><p>It appeared that some of the scared black market dealers left some of their tools and even bodies they were working on intact when they ran away. At least those dirtbags knew the trouble they were in when Kiyomi's own village came gunning after them. The girl felt a little proud of the reputation of her village and the fear it instilled in these scumbags.</p><p>"Chances are, she had no use for you. The distance between us must have increased if she's no longer placing talismans on the living… Where is the largest concentration of dead bodies here? Tell me and maybe I'll let you loot these tools." Kiyomi ordered the criminal.</p><p>She was no idiot. This guy was no big fish, judging from the scribbling, almost like the type of sound a scurrying rat would make, noises coming from this room, this man was not working on this corpse. He was looting the tools left behind. He's smaller than small-time and completely unworthy Kiyomi's time, let alone her wrath, at least at the moment.</p><p>"Oh, two floors down, there's an entire basement where a bunch of useless bodies are dumped. They're used as emergency blood or organ supply but by themselves, unless a professional emergency strikes, they're quite worthless." The white-coat pointed at the floor.</p><p>Kiyomi's hand moved too fast for the man to perceive it even if the room was well-lit. Her backhand smack right to the side of the man's face knocked him out cold. Maybe he'd wake up with enough of his brain unscrambled to get his butt out of here before clean-up takes place, maybe not, this shitstain was no longer Kiyomi's concern.</p><p>"Worthless?" Mana uttered feeling breath leave her chest.</p><p>"Yeah, he was kind of a scumbag. That is why I knocked him out." Kiyomi assured the magician with defensive hand gestures.</p><p>"Say, you're not softening the story, by any chance? Like kill that guy because of your Aku-Soku-Zan and then just lie to me while telling the story back, just to make me feel better?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No, he wasn't much "Aku" for me to "Soku-Zan" at that moment." Kiyomi shook the implication off without looking too offended or caught. As far as Mana could tell, her part of the story seemed to sound legit.</p><p>"Yeah, if anything, Hanasaku-sensei did most of the killing in that brawl." Meiko nodded.</p><p>Kiyomi finally found a long and steep stairway that was just stuffy enough to trigger some never-before-felt sensations of claustrophobia in her belly. Even if Kiyomi was not overly flustered over these kinds of places, she did feel a bit uneasy descending into somewhere completely devoid of any reflections of light, even the faintest emergency light bulbs or any white whatsoever, in such a tight and steep staircase.</p><p>It was not like a long fall down a steep flight of steps has ever killed a ninja…</p><p>Omase would be quite a different opponent if she did find any dead bodies down here to use. When used on living people, her talismans were only half-assed in terms of efficiency. There was always that feeling like Kiyomi was impacting it with her own will, like her own sensory and nervous input was severely slowing down Omase's commands. With a dead body, there would be no such input, just complete control…</p><p>A decrepit and rotten face of hollowed out, black eyes appeared right up in Kiyomi's face. The kunoichi lifted her leg up for a vertical kick but the corpse moved like a whole different beast to what it could have possibly been capable of when he was alive. It was almost like Omase transferred a great deal of her own skill into each corpse she enacted her influence on.</p><p>The crooked and broken fingernails of the rotten carcass dug into Kiyomi's flesh as the controlled deadman pressed on its physical attempt to claw and press Kiyomi's guts and eyes out of her body like some tube of paste. These things were strong, not only that, they had little trouble navigating or seeing past their own nose in this absolute darkness.</p><p>The rotten one leaned in for a bite, emanating his stench of death all over Kiyomi's face. A whole bunch of others started body-piling over the one of them that had the most success, the Yamanaka could not see them but she could certainly feel the weight of the group adding up on top of her. The kunoichi pushed her assailant further with little sharpness or forceful movement, just slow and methodical force, applied through maximum possible surface so that the corpse did not fall apart. The girl pushed her bent knees under the body on which the rest were beginning to pile on and pushed with decent might.</p><p>The pile scattered across the surprisingly spacious room. Kiyomi knew that the talisman user herself had to be in this very same room as well. It was more than likely that increasing the distance between her and so many subjects she'd drastically multiply the amount of chakra the technique cost her with to keep going.</p><p>Despite the room being completely sunken in oblivion, describing which the word "shadows" would be to imply it had any light to cast that shadow, to begin with, Kiyomi could only see a good hand's reach in front of her, with her perception working its superhuman-finest. She would be looking for a needle in a haystack like this…</p><p>Still hoping to stumble onto her desired target, the Yamanaka pressed onward, punching and kicking her way across the rotten corpses abandoned even by the black market dealers as useless "organ safes", just in case a better alternative did not present itself… As grim as this reality was, as absolutely nauseating the essence of the room was, as bloody disgusting shoveling through these corpses with nothing but fists and feet, sunken and covered in bio-goop was, the Yamanaka pressed on. A criminal needed punishment. Her brother would not have stopped in her shoes!</p><p>Nothing. The bodies appeared to go limp and dead once more after they wore down in the dragged down process of combat, hands and legs offed, heads offed or their core completely splattered across the room floor. After a good pair of combinations, the floor of the room began getting a bit slippery. Just another thing to worry about in this odd position Kiyomi found herself in. At least Omase would not risk wasting chakra on more of her talisman-sealed ninjutsu inside – not without risking destroying most of her own bodies and bringing this entire building on her.</p><p>While at the world-breaking scale such outcomes would not kill the criminal scum all by itself, even in the worn out state, it would at the very least hurt and that was solace enough for Kiyomi to keep her spirits up while she was burrowing through the dead trying to recruit her into their ranks.</p><p>"Enough!" Kiyomi screamed out loud, grabbing her own hair by a handful and slashing at them with a kunai out of her pouch. She lobbed a good chunk of her hair in the air before weaving a bunch of seals, encouraged by her lack of punching and kicking them to smithereens, the dead immediately began clawing and gnawing at her but the Yamanaka willed herself to take a little nasty for the sake of the better outcome.</p><p>"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi chanted out, restraining the output of chakra as far as she could so that she did not inflict too much damage to the room or the building she was in. She seemed to recall seeing Mana use a similarly weakened Wind Release jutsu to carry explosive tags across, strands of hair were even lighter than that which meant it would only cost her coins to execute.</p><p>The hair scattered across the room, it had to. Kiyomi centered the severely weakened wind-blast right at the center of the handful. After the hair was successfully delivered across the room, she used her knees and elbows to fight off the dead that were beginning to crawl all over her in vain attempts at strangling the life out of her, punching, clawing and otherwise inconveniencing her.</p><p>They were surprisingly successful at that task as well – Kiyomi could feel some loose teeth in her mouth, warm torrents of blood coming from her busted nose and forehead and every passing moment yet another handful of nails tore into her, wherever their owner found spare space through funneling and borrowing through their own colleagues in attempted murder.</p><p>"Yamanaka Hair Trap!" Kiyomi declared while raising her hand in a hand seal position.</p><p>"W-What the…" finally, Omase's voice ringed in the ears of the beginning to starve, self-proclaimed criminal hunter.</p><p>Finally, the hot, repugnant breathing up in her face, the rotten fingernails and falling apart bodies no longer tried to crawl all over her and smother the life out of Kiyomi. The fight appeared almost over.</p><p>"What's a little trimming of one's hair, compared to capturing one such as yourself?" Kiyomi spoke almost to herself as she could barely make out a vague direction of the woman's voice. From the safety of her ninja pouch, the girl removed a yellow marble and cracked it in her fingers, throwing it at the ground shortly after.</p><p>A flash of light emanated from the orb, giving some more faint details to Kiyomi about the exact location of her target. Using something like that with almost a dozen of dozens of super-powered corpses crawling all over her would have been troublesome, she may have lost an eye, let alone the nose she got broken in just the mere moments it took to entrap the woman.</p><p>"While I hold my hand up in this sealing position, you will remain trapped. That would normally make me unable to use other techniques or two-handed attacks but… Luckily for me, the Yamanaka hand seal used for the hijutsu is just a two-handed version of the same seal." Kiyomi explained to her opponent. She raised her hands up and pointed at the position where she last saw her opponent.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Art of Catastrophe!" Kiyomi chanted out. Her voice was shortly followed by a ghostly howl of her consciousness leaving her hand seals and entering the body of her opponent, moving up to the very center of her mind and then, through awesome injection of more and more chakra… Expanding. Expanding some more and more, as far as it went.</p><p>A hollowed and horrified scream reached even the curious ears of Meiko and Hanasaku outside with the two instantly turning at the nearest hole in the black market building.</p><p>"Kiyomi…" the blacksmith mumbled out with the sentiment of friendly concern seeping its roots deeper and deeper into the girl's chest.</p><p>"Come on, let's check on her," Hanasaku grunted with a hint of something Meiko had not yet seen in her mentor – pain combined with a hint of desperation.</p><p>It was not something that would be unexpected to be seen in the tone of a member of a military unit that fights for their life for little to no recognition daily. Every fight, every twist and turn in any given mission could have cost one or their treasured ones their lives and such hesitation before taking needed steps was very much welcome in the voices of anyone who called themselves human, amongst other things.</p><p>And yet, it was never a part of Hanasaku's voice, never before…</p><p>"Are you sure, sensei? You don't look too good, maybe you should sit tight and heal a bit. Watch over that enemy Sin Eater, maybe?" Meiko suggested. "The enemy Kiyomi ran off to fight was the weakest of their group, I am sure that both of us could handle her."</p><p>"It's fine." A reaffirming voice of Waiso ringed in Meiko's ears when the young man landed by her side. Moving at a remarkably fast dash from where he was observing the battlefield right up to the two kunoichi and their prisoner. "Move in to assist Kiyomi. I shall watch over the Sin Eater, it would be troublesome to drag him around and into battle in total darkness down there, would it not?"</p><p>Meiko shifted and rolled her eyes, her tongue kept moving in her mouth as tells of her intent to find a reason to shut her teammate down. The pale skin of her mentor, the constant grunts of pain and the darkened grey color of her lips really scared Meiko, perhaps more than having a chakra-cloaked chain crushing her throat did just a while ago.</p><p>"Thanks, you sure you can handle him if he misbehaves?" Hanasaku worked up a smile and a nod. To the Sannin the Sin Eater looked trustworthy, she judged herself capable to stretch even more and finish this clash even after all she did already. Meiko wondered if that was reason enough for her to swallow her bad gut feeling and just trust her mentor's leadership.</p><p>"Who in the world would misbehave with the prospect of Chestnut Hanasaku chasing them down to the ends of the Earth for it?" Waiso smiled with a kind and completely trustworthy grin. "Plus, I'm still fresh and, if anything, I can take a punch myself."</p><p>"We'll leave it to you then." Hanasaku nodded while she rushed off and into where Kiyomi chased Omase in. Meiko followed. The Sannin was moving a bit slower than usual and clutching her gut. The position of her torment shifted every short while to the sides or her chest with the woman's hand moving accordingly. It appeared odd to Meiko that her mentor was not using Mystical Palm or her other medical ninjutsu techniques to improve her situation at all.</p><p>Luckily enough, there were supposed to be no further combat tests. The sight that greeted Hanasaku and Meiko in the middle of a dim hallway was Kiyomi sitting by the wall with a bunch of blunt force trauma and scratches covering her body as if she had just fought off a pack of super-powered wild animals. The Yamanaka was still holding the ends of darkened emerald locks in her grip.</p><p>Somewhere down the line, the blonde must have grown weary of dragging around her deceased opponent by her hair and therefore she pressed her back and bottom to the cold and currently abandoned lab corridors until her vigor returned. Omase looked quite grim. Trails of bloody tears were staining her face. The gothic sight of crimson lines dragged down from her nose, her eyes and her lips.</p><p>It was as if the entire inside of her head almost exploded but her skull just barely managed to contain it. Like a bloated can of rotten, conserved goods. Whatever technique Kiyomi used to dispose of her opponent, it was mighty and quite lethal.</p><p>"Should have left her." Hanasaku huffed out. An uncomfortable sense of dread crawled up Meiko's chest once more, hearing the exhaustion in her mentor's words. A bit of exhaustion was completely usual to anyone having just bested multiple wanted criminals of average to high ranks but not to her specifically.</p><p>"Maybe. What about the rest?" Kiyomi stood up, finally letting Omase's hair slip out from her tight grasp.</p><p>"Beaten or… Left the battlefield and the edges of known space." Meiko dragged her hand across her hair, trying to awe herself with her mentor's feats so that this mission returned its sense of normalcy for once.</p><p>"The Sin Eater?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow while the three moved back towards the hole in the black market point.</p><p>"Waiso is watching over him," Hanasaku informed her student.</p><p>"Huh? Can he really handle it? He's kind of a wimp and these guys really made us have our hands full." Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"The enemy looked really shaken up and unwilling to try and run away. Plus, I'm sure Hanasaku-sensei would catch up to him and capture him in no-time." Meiko smiled. "So… You had no choice but to kill your opponent?"</p><p>"No. I chose to kill her. Unlike the Sin Eater, she is useless to us." Kiyomi shook her head with a sense of resolution and determination. While the Yamanaka heiress often spoke of her dream to eradicate the criminal element, she rarely acted on them quite like this. "I assume the asshole has a pretty good excuse for surviving? Like only him being able to open the seal in the scroll or something?"</p><p>"Something like that…" Hanasaku confirmed Kiyomi's fears.</p><p>While all three women had their own personal worries, which on a rare occasion peaked at a degree where one could have categorized them as legitimate anxiety, it was nothing compared to the shock of the revelation, which became evident once they left the black market point and into the clearing.</p><p>Where the kunoichi left Waiso watching over the enemy Sin Eater only laid a corpse. Not one of Waiso, one of Nejin, the enemy Sin Eater. The man had his head twisted in a misshapen manner like a tendril of something cosmic and almighty had snapped his neck applying enough pressure on it to make the criminal's eyes pop out right before his untimely and highly gruesome demise.</p><p>"I appear to have been caught red-handed, huh?" Waiso sighed. The Sin Eater removed his glasses and tossed them aside.</p>
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<a name="section0427"><h2>427. No Betrayal Without Trust</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Waiso, why did you kill the enemy Sin Eater!?" Meiko flipped out. The realization that this young man she was willing to accept into the Team Hokage fold may not have been whom he was presented as did not hit the more thick-skulled blacksmith all of a sudden.</p><p>"Sin Eaters may not be the most powerful of ninja specializations in terms of their combat proficiency but they do know some crafty tricks and are dangerous overall. Hanasaku was a fool to not kill this man immediately, especially when she has a Yamanaka on her squad who could extract the information before she disposes of him." Waiso spoke in a tone wildly different to the usual lispy and spraying manner in which he spoke. His tongue appeared to no longer get stuck in between the rows of his teeth.</p><p>"I'm not that good at intelligence extraction just yet…" Kiyomi admitted. "I've been mostly just dabbling in that jutsu up to now, the situations I ended up in demanded more combat oriented focus."</p><p>"Dangerous or not, you did not have to kill him." Hanasaku's feet shifted the dirt beneath them, the woman was subconsciously preparing for an engagement as even someone as simple as she was capable of seeing what was coming. Especially now when her injured and distressed state granted her greater awareness and self-preservation instincts that were long absent from her arsenal.</p><p>"I obtained the information from him, keeping him alive when he is the person who can mess with the seal on that scroll would be at the very least irresponsible." Waiso reached into his back pouch. The hands of Kiyomi and Hanasaku twitched out of sheer instinct like the two were gunmen preparing to unload on sunset. The entire standoffish manner of this situation just ticked the two kunoichi all the wrong ways.</p><p>The young man pulled out a small greenish scroll decorated with curly tendrils of darker emerald color. A storage seal as the eyes of anyone who spent even the bare minimum amount of time on the field could identify easily.</p><p>Kiyomi and Hanasaku allowed the geeky Sin Eater act, attacking him right now without finding out his true motivations and their relation to their mission objective would have been just as irresponsible as killing one's prisoner on such paranoid reasons and then antagonizing one's own team as if they were one's enemy.</p><p>Waiso unsealed a large holding jar. A container of verily scientific appearances with its top and bottom appearing to be made of stern and sterile steel alloys that were used in medical procedures. The middle part of the jar was just glass of unclear content with the goopy green liquid shaking inside being an even greater mystery.</p><p>"An organ storage jar?" Meiko mumbled. She had seen devices such as these for her father has worked on some of its parts. Namely, the switches that secure the objects inserted within while medical professionals worked on the cocktail of goop that preserved what was inserted within.</p><p>Waiso's mouth opened wide, to say that much would have been an understatement for the boy's mouth opened so wide that the constrictor snakes that swallowed their prey whole would have dyed their cheeks crimson in jealousy. It was as if the Sin Eater had no jawbones to restrict such motion at all. All this freak show just to insert the storage jar in between his teeth how a hardened fighter held their knives by their grip.</p><p>The freaky Sin Eater then proceeded to open up the seal where the Uchiha's body was stored with one of his, now freed, arms while the other one weaved a single hand seal just to unseal the body within.</p><p>"Don't!" Kiyomi grunted. She was worried that exposure of the dead body that was already dead for quite a while would ruin the chances of successfully removing its Sharingan eye once the body is returned to the village.</p><p>"Do not worry, preserving the eye is just as important to me." Waiso threw back at her with little care. It was almost like the three kunoichi were just a bother to the Sin Eater now who would have ideally just disappeared.</p><p>After a loud popping sound and a blast of smoke from the scroll, a normal occurrence with sealing procedures, a body of an unfortunate Uchiha slammed on the ground like a ragdoll. Waiso let go of the sealing scroll for it was now useless to him and raised his right arm. A certain look of contemplation ran through his face since he was no trained medical ninja capable of the complex transplant procedures who knew ideal ways of extracting the Sharingan eye while keeping its properties and ability to be transplanted intact.</p><p>After a moment's hesitation, Waiso extended his arm forward, elongating to where it reached into the Uchiha's throat, cracking something that opposed his highly elastic arm slipping down inside it. The three kunoichi observed speechless as the fingers of the teammate they thought they knew penetrated the Uchiha's neck from inside before buzzing quickly and twisting around like a buzzsaw, beheading the dead body.</p><p>Within mere microseconds after the deed was completed, a feat of speed none of the kunoichi were even aware their teammate being capable of, the Sin Eater inserted the head of the Uchiha within the storage jar to float in the gooey liquid. After the whole affair was finished, Waiso just sighed at ease before turning at his teammates with an ecstatic glare.</p><p>"You've been quite agreeable up to now. Maybe we can work something out still?" He wondered leaving an ominous hanging at the end there.</p><p>"We've only let you act upon your motives up to now because they went along with our mission objective. You are the Sin Eater. You've confirmed that there were no traps on the dead body, you've extracted it from the seal and even made carrying it back easier – you've done your job." Hanasaku huffed out through physical pain and weary.</p><p>"I see…" Waiso closed his eyes. The man sighed in disappointment. "I may have difficulty settling things between us in this shape. Allow me to slip back into my original form."</p><p>Upon finishing that sentence, Waiso threw his hands to the side, letting the clothes covering the upper section of his body to take a greyish color and the texture of wrinkly skin before unwrapping from the lower layers, same with the boy's glasses. The geek's entire body structure morphed with bones shooting out from under his skin and forcing his skin and inner flesh to stretch out, increasing Waiso's size to at least that of a taller adult male. His hair changed color to the elderly grey and then extended past its normal length and down his back, reaching all the way to the man's bottom. The large nose of the geeky kid separated into a more pointy construct of flesh with two flappy wings of what initially appeared to be cotton but then upon returning to their silver coloring and dangling down to where it covered the man's upper lip made itself out to be his rich mustache line.</p><p>"W-What kind of transformation technique is that? That's no usual Academy Transformation Jutsu!" Kiyomi lost her cool for a moment. Seeing the strange behavior of the man's flesh, bones and skin reminded her for just a moment of the odd way in which the body of her opponent in the finals of the Chuunin Exams – Tanko Shigin moved.</p><p>"Indeed, if I used something as primitive as that, you may have seen through it. Instead, I chose the easier option of merely molding my flesh about to take the shape of the young Waiso. It is a natural ability I have come to discover upon being discovered and returned to the village." The elderly man who was Waiso before spoke in a much more mature and husky voice.</p><p>His entire skin looked unnaturally grey and very smooth, no ridges or bodily hair anywhere except on his face that retained its hair and wrinkly appearance.</p><p>"Discovered? You mean you were one of the people who have disappeared and one of the few who were found and returned to the village?" Meiko scratched her head in confusion. All that transpired in front of her took way more processing power and deductive reasoning to put together. She had to slow things down and ask a thing or two before the confusion and lack of information cost her team the upcoming conflict.</p><p>"That's right. From what I've seen in the Chuunin Exams I am not the only one with these odd abilities." The elderly enigma stretched out his hands, flexing his impressively, for his age, athletic lower body as if feeling the newly found freedom and removal of limitations that wearing Waiso's face caused him.</p><p>"I bet you ain't even named Waiso…" Meiko growled through her teeth, she felt a little relieved knowing that the man she was looking at was just someone wearing another's face and just playing them instead of being her actual teammate with questionable character qualities. Shapeshifters and two-faced bastards possessed much softer faces that were much more punchable, as Meiko has learned over the years.</p><p>The elder smiled. It was not a mocking or show-offish grin but instead just an instinctual thing he had little control over.</p><p>"No. Waiso is a poor soul who has disappeared just as I did but, unlike me, he has not yet truly been found. It was a simple switcheroo trick to fool the village that Waiso was also rediscovered. My real name is Togure Kuchirubi," The man shook his head. He looked truly pitiful of whatever fate has befallen the real Waiso and as if he had worn the boy's face merely because of the convenience of the opportunity.</p><p>"Why bother with this shit? Why not help the village by providing information about what's been making these people disappear?" Kiyomi wondered with a hint of annoyance in her voice and her face. This old-timer appeared to make stupid faces as if he was actually kind and had ulterior motives that superseded any mission objective he took up as fake Waiso and yet he cared little to end the disappearances…</p><p>"I don't know how it is with the others but I only remember vague details of what happened while I was gone. Nothing helpful to the village, those that deal with the paperwork and investigation no longer even bother questioning those that reappear because the few bits they provide are completely useless. I'd like to help the village with that, I truly would…" the man nodded trying to appear genuine.</p><p>Meiko looked convinced but the others were less so. Kiyomi felt simply too bitter about the betrayal to give a crap if the geezer was secretly a good guy or not. The only reason she was not punching him in the face right now and making his brain splatter out through his ears was that she was still unclear about the caliber of this man's abilities. Hanasaku's mind appeared to be occupied by different things than the morality of the man that currently possessed the head of the Uchiha they needed to return to the village.</p><p>"Why do you need this head? You went through an awful lot of trouble for it: gathering intelligence about this mission and working things out to have the village pin you on us. Why? Do you just want the eyes for yourself?" Hanasaku voiced the truly important question.</p><p>"No. You probably did not know what I was doing when I disappeared. It's fine, you ninja always talk mighty but very few actually bother to check on the backgrounds of the little guys that go missing…" the man shook his head before beginning his explanation. He must have felt pretty hopeful that he could still work some kind of a deal out with the three kunoichi that did not result in all of them coming to blows.</p><p>"Oh shut up! Stop making yourself out like a victim! You're interfering with the mission objective of your mission and you impersonated someone else as well as lied to the Konoha Administration. You're no better than those nukenin we killed." Kiyomi snapped back at the man who for a moment contemplated the girl's words. While they were confrontational, he actually appeared to have been somewhat damaged by their sharpness. Perhaps he really did feel some sort of inner guilt after all.</p><p>"I was looking for a band to join. Mercenaries, criminals, I did not care at that moment… I was not sure they would not just kill me outright, just an ordinary civilian man, just a family man with nothing to lose but nothing to offer them either. I was useless and useless things do not have long lifespans in this world of ours. I remember very little else but the desperation and despair I felt while I roamed the woods outside Konohagakure, maybe that was what attracted whatever demons are making these people disappear? My despair." The man pondered.</p><p>"Despair?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"I had received the news that my son was dying a week ago. The only thing to save him was proteins that a very specific group of people produce. Fifty years trying to conceive a child and then the one little miracle is only there dangling for a mere moment before the cruel hand that holds it by the string pulls it away from us again…" the man lamented.</p><p>"I'm guessing that protein has something to do with the Sharingan?" Kiyomi blinked. Her own hatred for the Uchiha helped her supply of tolerance for the bullshit sob story of this criminal scumbag.</p><p>"That's right. How many of these as elite as they are entitled individuals do you think were willing to check into a hospital every other day to endure painful eye injections for a useless old geezer civilian and his son? Honestly, when I returned I began to think like the miracle that granted my family the child in the first place was not done with me yet. All these opportunities: my son had survived up until my return, past expectations, albeit his time was running dangerously short with each day defying expectations, these mysterious abilities I returned with, the fact that an Uchiha got himself killed so soon after my return… I could not screw all these lined up opportunities up. Not with my son's life on the line." The elder shook his head with stone-hard determination in his eyes.</p><p>One thing was obvious – he'd not surrender the eyes easily. He had a reason he wanted them and he was willing to fight for that reason.</p><p>"I see, so you're willing to go into hiding with these eyes. Let your son live the life of a runaway, rather than die as a sickly child." Hanasaku looked down. The pain and exhaustion in her voice were overshadowed by some odd sense of empathy and warmth. "We cannot let you have those eyes."</p><p>"Even if the village would transplant them onto another ninja, making them a killing machine instead of saving a life?" the geezer was slightly taken aback by Hanasaku's call after her apparent ability to relate with the man's motives somewhat.</p><p>"That is the mission we were given." Hanasaku nodded firmly. She did not look proud or happy about that decision but she did not waver for a moment before making it.</p><p>"Good reasons or bad, you're a criminal. Love or hate these eyes, they're something the village wants." Kiyomi joined in on her mentor's decision.</p><p>Meiko lifted her hand up, holding a solitary kunai knife in it before mumbling a feeble "Weapon Transformation Jutsu!" before her weapon transformed into a hammer that became enveloped with a cloak of chakra. While she offered no words to the man trying to save his son, her fortitude was strong enough to coat even a weapon that was not made of her father's easier to coat with chakra alloy.</p><hr/><p>The story and the topics contained within it became heavy to talk about, growing increasingly so with each word let loose. The two yarn-spinners began taking pauses of varying degrees of awkwardness and lengths. Mana sighed as an acknowledgment that the situation that her friends ended up in was quite a convoluted and morally grey in some aspects.</p><p>"So… Do you think we made the right choice?" Meiko wondered. It was evident that while she described herself as possessing ample resolution to resolve the conflict back then, currently she was reflecting on her stance and the events that followed on an increasing rate and for tormenting periods of time.</p><p>"Of course we made the right choice." Kiyomi did not let Mana answer and the magician was quite thankful her friend for it. After all, she herself went through in Shukuba, she was beginning to doubt more and more of the things and morals she took for granted before. Truthfully, she was not sure if she could confirm and satisfy the hopeful glares of her two best friends so she was truly glad that she did not need to answer that question, at least not immediately.</p><p>"That bastard was a criminal." Kiyomi clutched her fists, grabbing her own hospital bed cover by the handful as she sank in the falling strands of her untidy, golden hair.</p><p>With a longing glare out the window into the creeping gloom of the dying winter evening, Mana wondered if her honest answer to that question might have cost her the friendship with her two past teammates. In addition, she wondered if this was the extent of the tension, which was enough to break lifelong bonds such as those she shared with these two girls.</p><hr/><p>"So what now?" Hanasaku stepped forward, raising her fist, which she used to clutch at her rotting wound from where an entire eternity of aging hit her previously. Thusly, she showed that, at least partially, she has recovered from after that unfortunate battle with the rogues from before. "Are you going to take all three of us on now?"</p><p>"That is why I unveiled my true face, and yet I foolishly hoped that I'd be able to make you see reason…" the old man lowered his head letting his protruded eye ridges cover the orbal mirrors to his soul. "Nevertheless, these old bones were intelligent enough to observe all three of you fight from afar. I have observed your abilities, your strengths and weaknesses and I shall not allow your interference destroy my miracle!"</p><p>Despite his thunderous declaration, the old man remained stationary in a wide open stance. He did have a point, the man who wore Waiso's visage did indeed stay back most of the time and studied the fighting styles of all three of his companions extensively whereas his own remained a mystery to all three of the girls. What the old geezer made out to be a weakness in combat was actually just a clever ploy all along…</p><p>Regardless, the clash that would decide the fate of the copy wheel pair of eyes was inevitable and drawing nearer.</p>
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<a name="section0428"><h2>428. The Grey Man's Miracle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hanasaku's body disappeared from Meiko and Kiyomi's field of vision. Despite her injuries, the Sannin could still race with the fastest of them. Through the sheer speed of her moves, Hanasaku clearly translated her decision to ask Kiyomi and Meiko to stay behind her and let the woman deal with this for now.</p><p>After all, there could have been no way that Kiyomi and Meiko could have kept up with that sort of speed, something that was necessary when ninja fought together. Even if one of the two partners was faster, they purposefully toned down their speed to allow a perfect synchronization of movements. Cooperation was preferred over raw speed.</p><p>"It is useless," Togure yelled out. His body leaned back in fear, fueled by pure instinct. He was able to perceive Hanasaku's movements as he blurred his yell out in between the first telegraph of her intent to attack and between her fist met his palm.</p><p>A powerful shockwave resonated through the surrounding area, bending trees as old as the world that raised them, tearing leaves as plentiful as the stars in the universe and making Meiko and Kiyomi spread their feet apart wider to maintain balance. Togure's body shifted like the surface of water when a pebble hit it, resonating the forces within Hanasaku's punch and nullifying the blow completely.</p><p>Surprised by the profound success of his defense, Togure smiled. He could almost taste the triumph. The entire body language changed at that moment. His elongated pale grey back straightened, the protruded spine spikes returned inside making the man look less alien in appearance. His previously wide and shaking glare was now sharp and confident.</p><p>"Your strength cannot hurt me!" Togure breathed easier after pushing Hanasaku back with the palm that stopped her blow, forcing the woman to flip backward and land on one knee and one foot, crouching on the ground.</p><p>"He figured it out! Hanasaku-sensei's weakness, just like we did during our survival training…" Kiyomi grunted, feeling the cloud in the sky gloom, muddying the future of their mission. Whereas before the girl felt confident about managing to overcome the traitorous criminal, now their destiny was like a hazy crystal ball.</p><p>"B-But why didn't Hanasaku-sensei phase through the sound waves like she did when we tried that?" Meiko looked at her companion sharing the Yamanaka's worry.</p><p>"It probably has something to do with her injuries. She probably can't do that anymore…" Kiyomi closed her eyes just to feel the warm sweat running down her face, making her hair sticky and unruly.</p><p>Chestnut Hanasaku was one of the most powerful ninja alive. She was by far the physically strongest person, her abilities matched well with her intellect, namely, the lack of it. The woman could accomplish anything she believed and knew she could – her mind was the literal limit to her power but… That was a double-edged sword. It worked both ways.</p><p>"That bastard just sat back this whole time. Watching us fight, letting our enemies figure out our weaknesses for him to absorb. He must have been watching Hanasaku-sensei especially closely. He kept babbling this whole time, asking about her abilities…" Kiyomi grunted seeing Togure attempt to land blows on her sensei, using a similarly flappy and elastic fighting style that her own opponent in the Chuunin Exams, a fellow victim of these mysterious disappearances, used.</p><p>"I thought he was just being curious. I was just as interested in Hanasaku-sensei's abilities when I first met her…" Meiko clutched her fists tightly, blaming herself inside. That much her tone and the pitiful facial expression she wore betrayed.</p><p>"We all did…" Kiyomi grumbled. Restraining herself somehow from yelling it out with all of the anger that she felt rustling inside her.</p><p>Hanasaku managed to recuperate after the initial shock of being figured out. She may have been tricked and had her abilities being toyed with but she was still the superior combatant. Chestnut Hanasaku was always a very transparent person. Her feelings were printed out in smoldering letters right there for anyone to read from the surface of her face.</p><p>Right now she felt angry, also self-conflicted. It was evident that the woman tried her best to speak to her own body, try and have it ignore what her opponent just told her – that her strength and speed were useless but… It did not matter. It was more than just words that made her ability work. It was as much her conscious as it was her subconscious will that gave Hanasaku her might.</p><p>She may have been whispering to herself how strong she was, pleading that she needed to summon her awesome strength to defend the people she cared for – her precious students but it was all for naught. Deep inside she doubted herself, that her face did not betray, that was merely self-evident from the fact that she could not summon all of her limitless power anymore.</p><p>"What gave it away? My ability?" Hanasaku tried talking to her opponent. It was a smart strategy. She needed time to convince herself, to impose her burning willpower to protect her precious students onto her quivering and shameful body. Her enemy was willing to talk as long as they saw it as a chance to avoid bloodshed. It was worth a shot…</p><p>"I saw you shrug off the enemy technique when you were first hit by it. It was only after you saw the complete shock of the enemy and had the jutsu be explained to you that the effects caught up with you. Your subconscious, as thick as it is, realized that eternity may just be too much to just shrug off, even for you." Togure elaborated how he, in Waiso's shoes, figured Hanasaku out.</p><p>"Hmph, I have grown too intelligent over my time as Lady Fifth…" the chestnut-haired woman grinned with cheer in her face. Carelessly, like a child. That carelessness alerted the opponent who once again, subconsciously, leaned back in worry that Hanasaku may be inches away from figuring out a way around her mental blocks.</p><p>"Enough, your speed cannot possibly be enough to escape. You are tired, you're too weak to move!" Togure declared before throwing a punch. Hanasaku grunted in pain as the blow dug deep into her core and sent her down. "I am more powerful than you can manage to keep up with in your current state, another punch you take from me will kill you!"</p><p>"It cannot possibly!" Meiko pleaded Kiyomi to confirm that it was not so but the Yamanaka just shook her head.</p><p>"It does not matter. Truth or lies do not matter, as long as Hanasaku-sensei hears it being so – that's the way it will be." Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>The two genin charged forward before Togure could even consider throwing the next punch. They may not have been nearly as fast as Hanasaku before them, but they had the element of surprise on their enemy as well as the fact that he had no leverage over their abilities by simply speaking to them.</p><p>"Blockbuster!" Meiko yelled out. She rushed in a wild tackle aiming to throw her opponent off-balance and send him flying back so that Kiyomi, who had kicked off and leaped into the air, could finish the combination attack.</p><p>Togure's body expanded like a piece of gum, enveloping Meiko and making her disappear inside. From up above, Kiyomi slammed at the opponent with a double foot-stomp that was supposed to drive the old man into the dirt once Meiko's charge threw him off-balance. Given the current circumstances, the Yamanaka would have been satisfied by simply forcing him to spit Meiko out from the rubbery elastic hell he enveloped her in.</p><p>Togure coiled around Kiyomi's feet, enveloping around Meiko like a scroll of paper while at the same time coiling so that Kiyomi only stomped on the empty ground, forcing it to shatter beneath her feet and causing powerful earthquakes as a show of force meant for Togure.</p><p>The man's body opened up a gap through which his elongated arm pulled Meiko out, holding the blacksmith by her leg. The old timer smashed the redhead into the ground before smacking Kiyomi away with her own friend and throwing Meiko after the Yamanaka.</p><p>Kiyomi fixed her flight path, landing her feet firmly on the ground by flipping over her back and then catching Meiko. It was a feat that demanded a slight augmentation of her body to accomplish but time was precious when the last Konoha Sannin could have been killed with a single blow of this traitor.</p><p>"Did you grab the head?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Nah, he was rubbing all over me. It was disgusting!" Meiko stuck her tongue out. "It wasn't like he was elongating his body or something…"</p><p>"Yeah, I know. I fought one of those guys in the Chuunin Exams, remember?" Kiyomi observed as a windmill shuriken stuck through Togure's body making the surprised traitor look back at Chestnut Hanasaku who was the owner of that weapon.</p><p>"Y-You? But I'm going to kill you if you don't stop this!" Togure yelled out, scolding the woman's persistence.</p><p>"Yeah, maybe. But I'm ready to throw my life away for this. Both of my brothers threw their lives away for their mission. I'd follow their example any day of the week and I'd throw my life away a thousand times for my students!" Hanasaku snapped back at the man.</p><p>With all the fury of a man fighting for the life of his son, Togure threw a mighty backhand smack with his elongated hand at the Sannin. He was willing and going to kill her. Whether he remembered the fact that he lied to Hanasaku that her speed was pointless and that she could no longer dodge his attacks was a mystery.</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi tried leaping after Togure, they tried rushing up to him before his blow landed but even when they kicked off the shattered and ruined ground beneath their feet they knew they'd be too late. Hanasaku's neck stretched out in a gruesome manner after the impact hit her cheek and threw her head sideways. All remnants of life left her body but the horror of dealing with another death on the battlefield was postponed by a popping sound and a cloud of smoke into which Hanasaku's dead body disappeared.</p><p>The Sannin substituted with the windmill shuriken she just threw, her right hand was stuck right through her opponent's elastic body, just like the blade of the weapon she substituted with was before.</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko leaped up, using the force of acceleration they have gathered in their failed charge to intercept Togure's attack to deliver a double dropkick in the back of the old timer's head. It was an attack that, surprisingly enough, connected. Togure's eyes whited out and almost popped out from his face, his teeth and tongue stuck out following his eyes. In a shout of pain, the dropkick threw the man flying back and through the black market point building.</p><p>"Come on, we don't have much time!" Hanasaku encouraged the two girls as she tried numbing the pain in her wrists that almost got busted after Togure's body flew off fast enough to force her hands out of it. "Let's grab the head and move back."</p><p>"And leave him be? Forget it!" Kiyomi swiped her hand in anger.</p><hr/><p>"Wait, what?" Mana questioned what she heard in the story. From the point where it got conflicting to hear out it was getting uncomfortable and who could have blamed her – she was listening about a man being denied a chance to save his son because the village wanted to recycle a powerful set of eyes to create a weapon in the shape of a person.</p><p>"Yeah. She just rooted herself into the soil and decided not to move an inch." Meiko pouted her lips and crossed her hands over her chest. The blacksmith glared at Kiyomi with a stare that was a little bit scolding but not quite on the scale of where it may have been taken as scornful.</p><p>"I don't know what got over me." Kiyomi shrugged. Her face did not suggest any melancholy or an apology, she was still defensive about her decision to stay there and fight up to now. "It's just that the man we fought was a criminal. I couldn't just grab hold of the head and run…"</p><p>"It couldn't have been the first time?" Mana raised a questioning eyebrow.</p><p>"Maybe, but… People change, so have I. You would never reconsider your ideals and take a life just because the alternative is too tough." Kiyomi was reflecting. It was not that she tried to counter Mana's honest inquiry in a highly defensive manner that troubled the magician but the fact that she may have been right.</p><p>What if Mana's persistence really did influence the people she worked with to stand by their own ideals? Nindo were just fine, they motivated ninja to work hard but this time it directly conflicted with the mission objective and even endangered lives. As much as Mana wanted to bring that point up, would she truly have behaved differently, not in terms of the specific events at play but if she had to choose between a mission objective and living by her own code?</p><hr/><p>"He's a criminal and a danger to our village. He won't stop pursuing us or trying to get his hands on the Sharingan even if we retreat now. We managed to hurt him, he's not as powerful as Shigin. We need to eliminate him here and now!" the Yamanaka stood her ground before she heard a creepy sound of shifting flesh and muscle.</p><p>Grey, fleshy substance was wrangling over the containment jar where the head of the recovered Uchiha was secured. This man did not bleed, he lacked the complexity of his anatomy for it, just like the previous specimen of these peculiar experiments that Kiyomi has faced but he spread his remains in entirely different ways. The grey goop formed an eight-fingered hand that wrapped all around the head before flying back at the black market point.</p><p>"Grab the head and flee? Are you kidding?" an angered voice came from the depths of the pitch blackness of the dim and quickly abandoned laboratory complex.</p><p>"As if I would ever allow you to retreat with the miracle that brought me here." Togure walked out from the hole in the building completely unscathed, at least visually so. Who could have known in what state his true vitality and chakra was? The goopy hand connected to the fleshy stump of his left hand, resulting in the man now holding the jar in his hand.</p><p>It was an odd feat of creepy, given the fact that he had all of his limbs when "entering" the building.</p><p>"Well… It's too late to run now." Hanasaku sighed, raising her hand to smack her student in the head playfully but then her hand froze in mid-air. Something about Kiyomi's mood and the vibes she resonated made the woman reconsider any attempts at lightening the mood. Somehow, the Yamanaka was not the same ever since that fight in the Chuunin Exams…</p><p>Could it have been the tremendous weight of the expectations that troubled her so much? Being expected to excel as the student of the Fifth Hokage and the heiress of the Yamanaka clan? Maybe it was the fact of her failure to achieve promotion and the slack that her family and her clan were giving her? Real or entirely imaginary and in her own head, either kind of emotional and social pressure weighed the same.</p><p>"I did not wish to shed your blood. You are not like these rogues, you're just kids serving your village, just doing your jobs." Togure closed his eyes as the reattached arm spun around its axis to reset to the proper side, instead of hanging upside down. "But if you get in my way, I will be forced to show you the power of the miracle that brought me here. The miracle that aligned so many opportunities and events to cause that which shall save the life of my son!"</p><p>Togure moved forward, followed by Kiyomi and Meiko who kicked off in a dash at their opponent at the same time. Meiko lacked the killing intent in her eyes, Kiyomi noticed that, but she was worth every ounce of the trust that the Yamanaka put on her. She wished to protect her mentor with all of her essence, she may have flirted with the idea of embracing Mana's ideals but when push will come to shove, Kiyomi knew Meiko would do the right thing.</p><p>Togure's free hand shot forward, it was insanely fast now that the element of surprise was gone and the man was full-on "miracle-mode" in terms of his mindset. Made-up miracles were a scary thing. The blow of his extended rubbery arm threw Kiyomi's head back, almost snapping the blonde's head immediately. Togure may not have been as invulnerable and "perfected" version of the experimental human that returned from disappearing but he was certainly faster and stronger.</p><p>Meiko wrapped her arms around the extended arm of Togure's before it could return to the man's body. The blacksmith felt for any bones or any structural oddities she may have detected, then, upon failing to find any, she simply tried pulling in an attempt to dislocate or pull off the man's arm right out.</p><p>With a fleshy splattering noise and a strong explosion of goop flying left and right where blood would have flowed normally, Togure's punching arm separated from the body but the expression on the man's body only suggested shock at the sheer visual disgust of the sight. There was no blood inside this man, whatever erupted from the sheer, built up force of Meiko's world-shattering pull were brighter and softer chunks of the same goop that Togure's entire body was made of.</p><p>Meiko squished the arm still dangling in her arm, compressing it into a ball before kicking it far far away. Unlike the morning cartoons that children watched on the television sets before leaving outside to kick balls of rags and play ninja, there was no bling or shimmering sound when the arm left orbit.</p><p>"You attempt to stand in the way of a miracle?" Togure grinned with the face of shock still very much alive in his expression. The man gripped the containment jar tighter before slamming the whole thing right into his face. The entire center of the old timer's face caved in as the man pushed the containment jar right inside his gummy belfry.</p><p>With shifting and fleshy rumbles, the face soon returned to the way it was before and, without a doubt, re-enabled the hardiness it usually took to break the man's body normally. One that was willfully toned down for the containment jar to be able to be shoved right into the man's head without breaking it. While this was normally nothing but a visually disgusting show of the man's abilities, it also taught Kiyomi who had by then recovered from the powerful blow she took that her opponent did have significant control over his abilities.</p><p>"Be careful. He can soften and harden his goopy body at will, it seems. That means that he can completely manipulate himself and make something like spikes that are hard enough to penetrate our own skins…" Kiyomi wiped the blood off her face.</p><p>"We should have fled." Meiko glared back at her friend with anger in her eyes, then back at their injured and endangered sensei who was forced to stay in the back now due to recent developments.</p><p>"Yeah, well… We didn't." Kiyomi took a fighting stance, preparing to walk the distance her tongue announced for her.</p>
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<a name="section0429"><h2>429. A Final Bounce Through The Heavens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meiko took a quick step forward, moving her body in front of Kiyomi while she reached behind her back. These two have fought together and trained alongside one another for so long that they knew perfectly how to act in any given situation. Right now, Meiko realized that the two lacked a proper battle plan and gave Kiyomi time to establish a mental link between the two.</p><p>While the Yamanaka spent precious moments doing so, Meiko worked on a distraction as her guess that the old man would once again attempt to use his elongated limbs to strike at them was justified.</p><p>The one removed arm on Togure's body began bubbling before a slightly more pale and slimmer stump appeared in its place. Meiko had foolishly expected that by throwing the man's removed limb into space she'd prevent him from growing it back.</p><p>Somewhere deep in her mind a thought was sparking up, a memory, a fading spark that lit up before dying out again that reminded her of the ability of these disappearing people that have reappeared to shape and mold their bodies. So far, Togure was the only one who could flat out create new substances on his body whereas the other one Meiko had seen appeared to be only able to shift their body around without creating new cells.</p><p>Before Togure could attack, Meiko flung a windmill shuriken his way, attached to a steel wire through which she could channel chakra to imbue the weapon with. While she still kept hold of the tool, it would act like a yo-yo or an improvised ranged projectile and its chakra coating would prove useful against defenses lacking matching chakra values.</p><p>Togure's hand extended with a raised palm, the shuriken sliced through it without any resistance at all. It was a like a buzzsaw working through plasticine. Togure's arm split open in the middle while the windmill shuriken and its wicked blade dance continued its destructive path.</p><p>Then, right when it would have buzzed right through Togure's neck, removing his head, the shuriken changed directions and missed the man. Instead just narrowly leaving a cut in the gummy part that held his head on his shoulders. It was a loss of balance that made Meiko miss her mark, the grip she could not notice before, holding her leg by its lower parts, strengthened making the blacksmith finally notice it.</p><p>Through brute strength, Togure dragged the blacksmith underground using his other elongated limb that he managed to slip underground during Meiko's attack and tunneled right under her.</p><p>The old geezer dragged his opponent through the dirt and pulled her in closer. Meiko tried to respond but the physical injuries she sustained during the clash with nukenin before took their toll on her making her too weak to resist the man's pull or kick out from his grip. To top it off, her augmentations were slipping too. An occasional rock bashed her in the face underground as, it seemed, Togure smashed her through the harder minerals he felt intentionally before unearthing her and pulling Meiko up close. He did so only to deliver a pair of mocking smacks and a strong finishing punch to send the blacksmith flying.</p><p>"You done yet?" Meiko thought to herself, focusing her thoughts in a way that would make Kiyomi hear them if she was finished with setting up a line.</p><p>"Yeah, remember when fights were so sluggish it seemed this jutsu was instantaneous?" A somewhat bittersweet signal pulsed inside Meiko's brain.</p><p>"Set-up something to substitute with, this guy hits like a truck, even when he doesn't mean to," Meiko advised while she charged back into the battlefield just so her opponent did not get the bright idea to try and attack Kiyomi or, even worse – Hanasaku. Truth be told, she was better off following her own advice, her sides were burning and the taste of blood just could not leave Meiko's mouth.</p><p>The blacksmith's boots lit up with chakra flares sending the girl rocketing towards her enemy and slamming right into the back of his body with a shoulder tackle. It was like hitting an iron wall! All of a sudden, the man's body felt hard as a figurative brick whereas before he seemed all elastic and gummy.</p><p>"You kidding? With all the downed trees and debris in here? We're good…" Kiyomi reminded her more battle-focused and forgetful friend before she finished her hand seals and sent a large boulder rolling at her opponent.</p><p>"Earth Style: Boulder Rush!" Kiyomi chanted out right before the boulder slammed into Togure, splattering him all over the battlefield only to recollect into his previous shape.</p><p>"Thanks, I don't think I can take that much more of this, what's our plan?" Meiko rolled and dashed back to her teammate like a little monkey with a fruit in hand fleeing from a stalking predator.</p><p>"The plan's always been to catch him with one of my jutsu. You think you can set me up with something?" Kiyomi thought while the two girls took a momentary breather while their shapeless opponent reformed back around a small ball of grey bio-material through which an edge of the containment jar peeked until the man who shoved it into where his brain was supposed to be reformed.</p><p>"Sure. You think one of your jutsu can stop him? Didn't you have a problem controlling Shigin before?" Meiko thought while she worked through hand seals and slammed both of her palms on the ground.</p><p>"Yeah, it's gonna be tough and it will hurt. These guys are tricky, it's like their entire bodies are comprised of solitary cells that are their own separate organisms that form a singular hive in the shape of a person. It's billions, if not more simplistic minds to wrap my head around and all of them reek of something wicked. It sucks but… That's our only way to win." Kiyomi replied with a thought.</p><p>If only Meiko could have felt Kiyomi's recollection of what it felt like to try and affect one of these people with her techniques. A very thought of such a feat still made phantom migraines light up in Kiyomi's mind. Had those micro-organisms not been so simplistic and so synchronized in their instincts and thoughts, it would be an impossible feat.</p><p>Meiko's boots lit up once more, throwing the blacksmith spiraling forward. The redhead felt her chakra resources draining. She was not like Mana, she did not rely on powerful techniques that drained titanic chakra resources to use but when she used her more primitive jutsu and augmentations in such rapid succession, and in combinations, it would have proven to achieve just the same effect.</p><p>Togure's fist grew at least a dozen times in size and covered in fingers all over. Almost like it was a dandelion with the fingers surrounding it like its fluffs. Within an instant, these fingers turned to sharp spikes and Meiko did not doubt that as they did so, Togure's body became solid and hard, just like it was when she tackled him. Fortunately, attacking the man head-on was not her intention.</p><p>Meiko stopped right in front of the man and, instead of trying to hit him while his massive "mace" construct of flesh and goop was falling on top of her, the redhead merely drove her palms on the ground before the massive improvised assault of Togure's crushed Meiko. The resulting impact sent ripples of force waves across the surrounding ground and pulling trees out from underground with their roots severed and shredded with sheer force.</p><p>After Togure lifted his hands just to see the extent of damage that his smash left the weakened opponent with, only a piece of debris from the damaged black market point building remained, smashed into stone dust.</p><p>"Displacement Seal!" Meiko huffed through great effort, standing right behind her opponent, having taken Kiyomi's clue about possible substitution targets and used it to avoid getting smashed to bits while at the same time placing the entrance seal.</p><p>"W-What sort of…?" Togure shouted out, feeling the entrance seal suck him up in a vortex of rubble, flesh, and goop before spitting him out at the exit seal that Meiko placed right in front of Kiyomi. There was no way that the man could avoid getting hit with the Yamanaka's hijutsu from point-blank while still shaken up from the journey.</p><p>"Mind Switch: Art of Catastrophe!" Kiyomi declared while the uncanny howling sound telegraphed the immediate activation of her technique. The shape of Togure's head began shifting as if there was a large parasite wrangling inside it. Unlike the head of a normal human, this man's head had the potential to expand and change its consistency forcing Kiyomi to apply an even greater push of chakra.</p><p>This would truly be the test of her having mastered this technique!</p><p>Togure yelled out in pain while his head exploded off of his body. The remaining parts of the man just twitched with the shock of the unbelievable that has just happened. Shards of broken reinforced glass and a beginning to decompose human head with raven black hair laid in a puddle of containment fluid beside the twitching remains of a father who overly relied on a miracle.</p><p>Kiyomi shuffled back and fell on her behind. She could feel her own body doing some twitching of its own and more and more breaths managed to escape her body making her ventilation erratic. All signs of her chakra being pushed to its limits, her own body signaling that it may have been time to end this fight but the fight was already over…</p><p>The head of the deceased Uchiha was damaged beyond repair together with its containment jar. Even if enough of his eyes remained connected to the sum of its strands, it would have merely been fitting as an organ transplant with the Sharingan remaining closed forever.</p><p>"What have you done?" Meiko sent a powerful signal that momentarily overwhelmed Kiyomi's already strained mind.</p><p>Togure roared in rage at the first sight of the pathetic sight of the head rolling around in busted dirt and grass. Seeing the precious proteins inside the Uchiha's eyes leak out with whatever else leaked from the damaged and now useless part of the corpse. The man's rage soon transformed into despair as he crumbled on his knees and cried out, dragging his elastic arms and fingers across the dirt as if trying to tear flesh from his bones. Forgetting that such self-penance was now impossible.</p><p>"Why?" Meiko mumbled out loud, realizing that Kiyomi had closed the link after her previous show to both save chakra and give herself some chance to recover. Both genin were quite worn out by the endless mess that had transpired over this accursed set of eyes. A human life reduced to something as pitiful as a sum of its part, a pair of meaty spheres…</p><p>"That was the only way to beat him," Kiyomi explained herself staring with a blank expression at the father who was switching between weeping over the destroyed Uchiha head and screaming into the sky as if someone was listening to his despair and considering if it was worthy of their pity.</p><p>"This means we failed our mission," Meiko spoke up, it was a bland statement of the fact but some part of the girl hoped that there was more she did not take into account. Kiyomi was smarter than her, some part of Meiko wondered that maybe she knew something that Meiko did not and that secretly this move of hers was smarter than Meiko initially took it for.</p><p>"We can't stop him, not without killing him. We cannot kill him without destroying the reason for him to live." Kiyomi stated. She extended her hands forward in the Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal position. "Feel free to try and dodge this, criminal. If you have any willpower left to do so, that is."</p><hr/><p>Please stop… I think I get the general idea." Mana stopped Meiko's energetic storytelling just to give herself a break.</p><p>By this point, she had been glad that she was not present in this mission for longer than she than she was not. She would have caused so many conflicts with her teammates and mentor that this entire mission would have gone haywire much earlier than it normally did.</p><p>"You know, you never used to go out of your way to kill criminals before." Mana tried to speak with a softer and less accusatory tone, try and sound like she was not blaming Kiyomi for the failure of the mission but she knew immediately that she failed. Lying was not Mana's strong suit.</p><p>"Are you serious? I don't regret for a moment forcing that asshole shoot himself into space and choke on it. He was a criminal. Rogues get executed on sight, that's the way things work. Sixth agreed with me. He understood." Kiyomi crossed her hands over her chest, turning away from Mana to look at the gloomy final kicks of the winter outside.</p><p>"You fired him into space?" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Yeah, she took over his mind and just made his body coil like a spring and whoosh he went." Meiko turned her lips to the side, like a kid telling on her little sister eating all the cookies. "I thought we were totally screwed. The mission was a total shitshow but the Sixth took it a bit easy on us. He told us that stuff like this happens, that the mission kind of went off the rails…"</p><p>"He had his bio-goop planted on the jar. We couldn't have just picked it up and fled – he'd have followed us anywhere we went. We had to fight him and we had to stop him for good." Kiyomi objected, still refusing to look back at Mana. Frankly, the magician felt a little surprised that Kiyomi did not see Mana's reaction coming, with the two having worked together on multiple occasions she should have known better.</p><p>Something about the Yamanaka just really did not feel right. Like there was something unnatural about her and the way she's been thinking. Her thoughts were still her own, this was undoubtedly Kiyomi making these odd calls but the way that she herself interpreted those thoughts and acted on her emotions was completely different.</p><p>"Yeah I… I wasn't there. I'm in no position to judge or anything." Mana tried defusing the tension that took over the ward and it did appear to work somewhat. After a sigh, the blonde turned back to her friends. "I'm not surprised that Lord Sixth had few problems with the way things went. Given his background and all."</p><p>"Oh, Kiyomi did get some shit." Meiko grinned, once again reminding more of a child who was gleeful that their parents weren't yelling at them for once.</p><p>"It's just because the Uchiha are breathing on the Sixth's back. They'll be giving him a hard time for losing a perfectly fine set of eyes and letting me off the hook without getting a Tribunal hearing. Recovering in the hospital is the least of my worries." Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Why would the Uchiha need those eyes that much? Would they not care more that one of their own got killed and want an honorable burial and all that? I thought their main problem would be that the body was desecrated, not that the Sharingan was lost." Mana wondered.</p><p>"I don't know why they're being assholes over things they're being assholes about. It's a whole thing, they want developed sets of eyes of their own back. Some inner clan matters, most likely." Kiyomi clutched her bed cover in her hands in anger. Even talking about the Uchiha appeared to make the girl uneasy now, her emotional instability was very clearly escalating as her tough feelings towards the clan were at the worst they've ever been.</p><p>"Hmmm… It only now occurred to me that you never told us about what you've been doing. We've spent all this time just talking about our thing… As a chuunin, you probably had a way more insane adventure!" Meiko blew her hands out like trying to wrap them around a balloon.</p><p>"Oh, I just went to Shukuba to uncover where the Fire Lord's money was disappearing, fought a bunch of criminals and assassins and came back. There were some complications so the whole thing lasted over a week." Mana smiled while quickly recounting the story. She did not really feel like going into more detail with the emotional struggles that the mission brought up. She's already been treading pretty thin ice with her friends and the last thing the magician needed was losing the few real friends she had.</p><p>Meiko laughed out gleefully like a little peach.</p><p>"You suck at telling stories." She noted.</p><p>"Yeah, nowhere near your level." Mana nodded feeling glad that her vagueness went over well with her friends. Something kept pinching Mana's side telling her that if she went into detail and started explaining her doubts about reforming the Shukuba Security and all the destabilizing motions that came with it and how much time she spent thinking she made everything worse by being involved she'd just stay on the topic of morality and politics.</p><p>Those two topics had to go when friendships were involved. It was something very new to Mana, something that made her feel a little bit lonely inside because she realized that she may never be able to share those things with anyone without causing schisms to open up or deepen. Even now, when Mana just vaguely dismissed the topic, Kiyomi was still looking pretty down.</p><p>"Is Hanasaku-sensei in the hospital too? She sounded pretty hurt in your story." Mana wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, I think she's on the floor above." Meiko nodded.</p><p>"Great, I'll go pay her a visit and maybe redeem myself for not bringing you anything. Flowers and some food, I guess…" the magician stood up just to stretch her limbs a bit. She's been sitting in that chair for quite a while and there was probably not too much time left before the visiting hours would have ended.</p><p>"Aw, cool, there are these awesome chicken sandwiches they're selling from the vending machine on the fourth floor. Do you think you can get some of that? Oh, and chips too!" Meiko looked quite excited, that was the way Mana preferred to keep her.</p><p>"I hate flowers…" Kiyomi mumbled to herself before looking back up at Mana with a much brighter look, "Chicken sandwiches and chips do sound nice though. The hospital food could use some work."</p><p>"Right, be back soon." Mana bowed before stepping out at a quick pace to find Hanasaku's ward and those food vendors Meiko mentioned. "It's not like Hanasaku-sensei will be too overjoyed to see me, I guess." She mumbled to herself while ascending the stairs one more floor and following the queue of people to where she guessed Hanasaku's ward would be.</p><p>The woman was the Fifth Hokage for a time and while those with any political sense in their bones may not have been overly fond of her rather bumbling policies and decisions, she was quite a beloved and popular leader regardless. Her charm and carefree attitude just made her that much more charismatic and sometimes charisma was just enough for a leader to make their mark.</p><p>Waiting to see the woman may have taken more time than Mana counted on it taking.</p>
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<a name="section0430"><h2>430. A Brand New Line In The Sand</h2></a>
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    <p>Looking at the group of people gathering by Hanasaku's ward with flowers and gifts made Mana squelch herself inside. Why would the charismatic Lady Fifth actually have time for Mana to see her? The very idea now made less and less sense and Mana wondered why it ever seemed sound, besides the fact that the magician genuinely wanted to see her mentor.</p><p>She's already lost one mentor figure in her life without getting to properly say goodbye. Even if she was to wait beside Hanasaku's ward until the end of the visiting hours, even if she had to pull every favors she had in the building, Mana was not about to look past moments of weakness like this without checking on the woman.</p><p>"It's Konoha's Sorceress!" somebody noticed making Mana blush and smack her forehead. She wanted to play it cool but it went about as well as it usually went in one's blooming years when they tried to look cool. In the eyes of some of her fans and people that just knew of her in general, she just revealed herself as a bumbling child. It was not like the day could have gone that much worse…</p><p>"Hey, guys. You think you can gift me a moment with my mentor?" the magician put her hands together with a smiling plead.</p><p>Strangely enough, it went through better than the magician hoped. Maybe she was losing popularity in the village due to not performing for a while now and that was why the people were less persistent and all over her but the bustling ward was quick to clean out leaving Mana alone with her sensei.</p><p>"Sensei. I did not know you were in the hospital." Mana bowed to the woman.</p><p>Hanasaku looked seriously worn out, her eyes were bagged and her face had plenty more wrinkles than it usually did. Her hair looked messy and some of the blood vessels over her arms and her face looked darker. Despite that, the woman looked quite happy which strangely made the worry over her condition greatly dim down.</p><p>"It's not like I can blame you, it's not like I made a habit of falling this ill." Hanasaku scratched the back of her head as if she was sort of blaming herself for getting injured.</p><p>"True, I'm sure you'll be back on your feet and swinging in no-time though." Mana tried comforting her mentor. Seeing the number of flowers and gift boxes stacked beside her bed made the magician feel a little better about not bringing the woman anything. It did not appear like she needed or wanted anything really.</p><p>"Actually… I think I'm going to call it quits." Hanasaku declared with a smile that usually was more comfortably resting on Meiko's face.</p><p>"W-What?" Mana's jaw dropped. She tried to keep her composure in front of the woman and speak with the proper etiquette that was in order when talking to one's superior but this declaration made the Sannin bust through yet another block wall.</p><p>"Yeah. Someone finding out my weakness, that's bound to spread. Also, I don't think I'm going to ever be the same after that technique. The medical folk think that my inhuman stamina and healing are gone for good, I'm just like everybody else now. I'll get old, I'll die if someone hits me too hard, I'll age and all that package." Hanasaku smiled. She looked like she was comfortable living that way and even more down with her decision.</p><p>"Oh, I see…" Mana looked down and to the side in discomfort.</p><p>"Oh! I'm sorry, it's not like there's anything wrong with being normal it's just… I spoke with Sixth and… That's it. You know. There are no more friends I have to talk with. Howoku and Tanshu got themselves killed, Misu was the one who helped my other bros get killed… Everyone I grew up with has passed on and this may be the last warning call I will ever get. It's a rare chance that one even gets one, usually, their warning call is getting themselves killed on the spot…" Hanasaku's soft tone and her gentle gestures almost made Mana's eyes water.</p><p>Just like that, Konoha had no more Sannin to gleam brightly to all there to see. There would be no more lighthouses spreading beams of light into the shadows beyond the walls, scaring off the imps and beasts that honed their claws and grinned their teeth at the village walls. For the first time in a while, Konoha was vulnerable.</p><p>"If I can ask for something, Mana." Hanasaku rubbed her elbow in discomfort. For just this once, it was the retired Sannin who felt shy to bring something up with her graduate student. "Don't retire."</p><p>Mana's eyes widened. The girl raised her stare at the woman as if pleading and trying to probe out the reasons for her words at the same time.</p><p>"I realize I may be out of line asking you this. It is most definitely cruel, at the very least, to ask you to keep going after you've paid your dues. I don't expect you to honor my request…" Hanasaku raised her hands up in defense and started shaking her palms, an attempt to alleviate the pressure she placed on the magician's shoulders.</p><p>"I'll do it. I'll keep going." Mana bowed her upper body.</p><p>"Huh?" Hanasaku raised her eyebrows in surprise. The magician wasn't really sure where the Sannin found out about Mana's retirement but she was ready to oblige her mentor.</p><p>"I decided to retire halfway through the Chuunin Exams. I know, not the best time and place but… It felt like the right thing to do. Like my ninja career didn't really matter from that point on. It felt like I was doing more damage as a ninja. I became a ninja to save lives, to use my gifts to help those without them but… It went so wrong. Even my last mission, I think I may have done more harm than good in the long run. I saw my career as a stage magician, as a symbol of fun and cheer helping people so I thought betting everything on that." Mana explained herself. Her mentor may have known that Mana was retiring but she may not have known the reasons why.</p><p>"But even when I think I'm screwing things up, hurting people by being a ninja, I see the eyes and minds of people much wiser and stronger than me looking impressed. If you ask me to keep going, well… I respect you too much to ignore that. I'll keep going, not just that – I'll become a Sannin." Mana pressed her fist on her chest as she made the declaration.</p><p>Hanasaku smiled and dragged her index finger under her eyes like she tried to get an annoying piece of glass out of her eyes. "Did I just hear a change in your nindo?" Hanasaku grinned through tears.</p><p>"No. Helping people and inspiring them was always the idea. Right now Konoha will need a strong figure to place in front of the strong northern winds to feel safe. Sannins are necessary. The presence of one protects the village better and makes those who wish to oppress and destroy lives more hopeless than a thousand defeats." Mana closed her eyes and sighed.</p><p>She just declared that she would achieve the highest rank imaginable. Maybe second to being a Hokage but a Hokage was more of a political head, not necessarily the most powerful. A Sannin was a higher than life figure, a true legend amongst their peers that transcended their profession and any ranks. The weight of that declaration did not waste any time before pressing against her shoulders, the clawing tendrils of inner demons trying to wrap against her neck and drag her down did not wait at all.</p><p>Still, even when all inner voices whispered that they would fail in their ears, a true Sannin would shine through.</p><p>"I was never the brainy type, you know. I'm not that great with words so I don't think I can put it any better than I will – I'm more proud of you than I have words for. I just wish that I did not turn my back to you and hold you farther from the rest like a black sheep when you needed me the most…" Hanasaku cried out in joy. "Do you hear it, Little Bro, our girl's all grown up!" she said as she looked up at the ceiling, no, somewhere beyond it.</p><p>"You were the best teacher anyone could have asked for. The only time I felt the most alone and down – you took me in under your wing even though I was an oddity to you. Regardless of what you say, sensei, we are not that much different. Whenever duty calls, no matter how many pounds of your flesh it demands – you choke it with one pound more." Mana wiped her own tears with her sleeve before bowing to her mentor.</p><p>Before she could properly say her farewells to her mentor, people started bursting into the room feeling really itchy to bring their own gifts and see their heroine without realizing just how final this moment of her blazing glory was. And yet, looking at Hanasaku she did not seem intimidated by fading away or new figures rising up to her heights. In fact, she looked like she welcomed the thought and hoped that these new legends rose up to the occasion and kicked her old can down the stairs.</p><p>"Seeing forward to reading about you, Mana!" Hanasaku winked at the magician with a thumb up.</p><p>"I probably need to bring Kiyomi and Meiko those sandwiches I promised them anyway." Mana shrugged letting the rushing mob push and wash her away and out of the ward.</p><p>"A sandwich? Mind getting me one? Most gifts I get are trinkets and flowers, eating any of those would give me a stomach-ache, I bet…" Hanasaku grinned.</p><p>Meiko was tearing the chicken sandwich apart at a very predictable pace. Luckily enough, Mana was not born yesterday and she stacked up plenty of those right by the blacksmith's side. It was hard to say which one was more satisfying – seeing a hungry soul eat poultry voraciously or seeing Meiko smack herself in the face with the chicken every time.</p><p>"Jeez, Meiko, you need to tear it, not pull it…" Kiyomi placed her own finished sandwich down before sighing. "So what's up with you?" she asked before turning her sight at Mana.</p><p>"Huh? Me?" Mana blushed and lost her composure again. Luckily, her good old friends – hair and the tip of her hat were there to hide her racing eyes. "Nothing really, probably will just keep working, keep training, keep performing. Nothing really changed."</p><p>A loud plastic clank made Mana turn her eyes at Meiko in surprise. The blacksmith placed a little bite of bread left of her current sandwich on the plastic plate but she was rushing the motion and let it all crumble down on the floor.</p><p>"You're hiding something from us, Mana," Meiko stated. "Were you serious about that or are you serious about retirement?"</p><p>Mana's head sunk down. Was there anyone in this village who did not know that Mana was planning to retire at some point? Perhaps, if the magician was lucky, the people who still failed to realize she was a ninja in the first place would not have known that. Then again, given how popular the finals of the Chuunin Exams were and how her fight was the main event, even those people were very few in numbers.</p><p>"Not anymore. I just kinda flirted with the idea. I really helped one person out with my magic shows so for some time I thought to go all in with the idea." Mana shrugged. At least she did not have to fluster and bumble when she was genuine and truthful.</p><p>"Hmmm, I see… Maybe you should though?" Meiko looked at Mana with a serious glare – one that did not visit the blacksmith often but that made one pay even more attention to the blacksmith's words when it did.</p><p>"I mean we got our butts beat, that's not something new. I failed one thing or another my whole life. I'll just get back on my feet and try again, work harder and next time I encounter the same wall I won't let it stop me. But seeing you hurt yourself like how you did before the finals, now seeing something plaguing you inside, something you're too afraid to share with us… It hurts. It hurts worse than what put me here in the first place." The blacksmith spread her hands out gesturing at the whole hospital room.</p><p>"Yeah, I haven't been entirely honest with you this whole time. Just… Hearing us fight over how we would have all handled that situation and how heated it got, I didn't want to lose what we've built. You guys are my best friends and I wanted to protect that." Mana admitted.</p><p>"We all know you'd have gone to hell and back to help that man out, even if you failed that mission. I mean, it's not high-concept science." Kiyomi squinted at the magician.</p><p>"Really? I'm that predictable?" Mana wondered. "Anyway. I didn't hold that much back about what happened. It's just that I had to do some really odd things to save the people I wanted to save and even then, I couldn't save everybody. Lord Sixth said that some of my methods reminded him of what Black Ops use to destabilize villages and that I may have hurt more people in the long run than I've saved…"</p><p>"Oh…" Meiko puffed her cheeks and looked down. "I don't know much about no destabilizing countries tactics. Not sure if I can help you with that."</p><p>"You don't really need to tell me anything. Just seeing you guys pick yourselves up and keep going after a failure like this is inspiring enough." Mana smiled. "Plus I don't have the luxury to retire and stay down. I just promised Hokage-sensei that I would one day become a Sannin."</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko jumped up and cried out in surprise. "T-That's insane!" Meiko exclaimed with a joyous expression.</p><p>"Yeah, after all three of us nearly got ourselves killed just to reach the stage of chuunin, I have a lot of work to do." Mana felt a little uncomfortable seeing her friends this psyched out, it felt like she had declared something outside of anyone's reach as her objective, which was odd. Her previous nindo was a thousand times less reachable than her current one, even if the first one never went anywhere and was very much still the driving force behind Mana's new goal.</p><p>"To be entirely honest, you may have more luck aiming to reach the chair of the Hokage. Becoming Hokage has a lot more to do with political image and one's popularity among both ninja and the civilians. As a starlet, you'd have a much easier time." Kiyomi noted after calming down from the initial burst of shock that had overcome her.</p><p>"Maybe. I was never too intelligent with my goals though." Mana's eyes irradiated a melancholic sense of calm while her lips softly smiled. "Sometimes a fairytale was all I needed to bet all my chips on that hand."</p><p>"Okay, that's settled. We're all gonna declare our goals. Draw our lines in the sand and make it so that until we reach those goals – we'll never be able to look each other in the eyes in peace!" Meiko cheered on. Once her childish glee calmed, the redhead took a deep breath in and out.</p><p>"I wanna be in charge of the Konoha Police Force." Meiko declared.</p><p>"That's random." Kiyomi snickered.</p><p>"I have to admit, it does not really suit your previous passion for legendary artifacts and weapons." Mana looked at Meiko with a slightly defusing glare.</p><p>"Oh, I'm still all over that. But it's not like becoming a Sannin will stop Mana from helping people either. Seeing old geezer Togure all worked up while being too weak and blunt to help him… It felt wrong." Meiko explained her piece of mind.</p><p>"You do know what the Police Force does, right? It deals with small-time lowlifes too small for bounty hunters and Hunter Nin to execute. That's the opposite of what old man Togure needed." Kiyomi pointed out.</p><p>"Yeah, but by dealing with criminals without killing them, the Police Force understands them. A Police Force officer may have better known how to help Togure without killing him and compromising the mission and a Police Force officer also is the first line of protecting the village." Meiko clenched her fists passionately defending her decision.</p><p>"They certainly do good work." Mana nodded. "It is an admirable and much more reasonable goal to reach."</p><p>"Fine…" Kiyomi pouted. "Maybe I went overboard in that mission. Too many too powerful and experienced ninja told me that to just brush it off. I also want to protect the village from criminals and Missing Nin but I don't know how I can do that with all of my emotions bubbling up inside me. The only way to do that would be to beat them without engaging them and working myself up."</p><p>"So I guess you've decided then?" Mana smiled.</p><p>"Yeah. The Yamanaka are the golden eggs for intelligence gathering. I'm going to keep working on becoming a chuunin before joining the Konohagakure Intelligence Division." Kiyomi declared with a respectable amount of restraint and composure.</p><p>"Aww, so you're not gonna be a little princess and lead your clan?" Meiko tried poking fun at her friend before receiving a mock punch on her left cheek that sent the blacksmith flipping on the other side, giggling to herself.</p><p>"These two do not conflict with the other. The current leader of the Torture and Interrogation Force of the Intelligence Division is a Yamanaka, after all." Kiyomi pouted her lips, annoyed at Meiko poking fun at her. She tried to hide that pleasant friendly grin at the right tip of her lips with her best effort but unsuccessfully so.</p><p>"I did some interrogating in Shukuba. If you ever want to share experiences, I'm more than willing to do so." Mana brought it up.</p><p>"No offense but… I'd rather ask someone like Hisako." Kiyomi shook her head while keeping up her grin.</p><p>"Oh, so that's how it is…" Mana smiled back. "Anyway, with the Team Hokage dissolving, you may stand a better chance at becoming an Intelligence Officer by enrolling to the Konoha High."</p><p>"Wait, what?" Kiyomi raised a curious eyebrow.</p><p>"Oh, you didn't know? Hokage-sensei said she was retiring after this mission. She sees her injuries as a waking call of sorts. With half of Team Hokage gone, it will surely be completely rebuilt." Mana dragged the tip of her right foot across the hospital floor, knowing quite well about what difficulties this revelation would bring up, especially with Kiyomi who already got burnt this way before.</p><p>"I can't believe it!" Kiyomi yelled out. "She's doing this shit again! She's breaking up the team again!"</p><p>Before Kiyomi's rampage could really escalate, however, Meiko's arm reached from across her bed and pressed against the Yamanaka's shoulder. "You're wrong, Mana." Meiko shook her head with heart and determination behind the motion.</p><p>"Team Hokage won't break. Sure, we may start working by ourselves or get sent to different teams but Team Hokage is no longer just a name. It's the bond between us that can't just be broken that easily." Meiko declared.</p><p>Kiyomi's feet appeared from under the cover and slipped into her cute bear slippers before shuffling a short distance so that the Yamanaka could wrap her arms around Meiko's neck. Mana couldn't help but laugh out. Sometimes Meiko said the weirdest things but, at times, she ended up being the smartest person in the room.</p><p>"The visiting hours are over." A nurse peeked in from outside to let Mana know. Meiko and Kiyomi extended their arms for the magician to join in on the group hug but Mana just stood up, saluted her friends and left with a smile on her face.</p><p>"Look at her acting all cool…" Kiyomi grinned taking her sweet time to finish the hug. Finally, Meiko had to be the one to show initiative by pulling Kiyomi off. The sheer effort it must have taken must have been comparable to that of pulling a tentacle-filled eldritch abomination off of the planetoid it was feeding on.</p><p>"You won't be a little princess after all, you're gonna be a little schoolgirl!" Meiko laughed at her friend before receiving another mock punch to the cheek.</p>
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<a name="section0431"><h2>431. Eyes Crystal Clear</h2></a>
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    <p>A fusillade of explosions littered the Third Training Ground in Konohagakure. The outburst of destructive collisions between the duo who were training together caused multiple shockwaves that sent the water of the river rippling and washing at the forest to the other side. Given how the clashes were not so contained as to erupt only above a singular landmass, the violent training session soon turned the battlefield all submerged.</p><p>After one more, the most powerful collision, both combatants jumped back to their own respective sides landing atop of the barely sticking above the surface logs that the unruly or disqualified from the training genin often got tied to.</p><p>Mana checked on a nasty bruise on her cheek where her training partner managed to tag her with a smack of the back of her weapon. That was remarkable restraint given the rather bitter history between the two. The wound will do fine alongside the collection of other scars that Mana had gathered in this training session.</p><p>"You didn't even try this time. I thought you were trying to master some jutsu today?" The nagging voice of Budoki Erumo reached Mana's ears through the cover of her messy hair with some broken sticks still sticking out from within of their unruly embrace.</p><p>"Things got too messy. You definitely brought it to me this time…" Mana grinned with apologetic eyes. Usually, one would have perceived such a notion when someone tried to learn a particular technique but failed to even attempt to use it as wasting their time.</p><p>Without wasting any more of it than it already was wasted, the two girls rushed at one another. Mana gripped her treasured wand in her right hand as her sole defense against the kunai and other weapons that her opponent pulled on her at close distance.</p><p>Fighting this way was not Mana's forte. Clearly, neither was it Erumo's strong suit as a supporting ninja, maybe that was why she was a perfect training partner for Mana. Both of them weren't the greatest close-range combatants with Mana's close-range prowess being solely focused on deflecting or avoiding blows and tagging the enemy with counters whereas now she tried to add a particularly straining ninjutsu technique on top. On the other hand, Erumo was just plain sluggish, persistent and hearty but slow and lacking weight behind her blows.</p><p>Granted, that assessment only fared well when applied to a decent hand-to-hand combatant standard. Erumo's physical strength served as sufficient to make Mana lose breath and flinch upon being hit, often even dragging some augmentations out of the magician despite her dislike of using them in battle in general.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment!" Mana yelled out overcome by the strain of controlling and channeling her chakra just perfectly so close up to her opponent with such spontaneity. The terrifying sound of crackling lightning forced Erumo to attempt and withdraw, the last time she failed to do so against Mana during training she got shocked by Mana's Magician's Touch.</p><p>Strands of lightning chakra reached and branched out, wrapping and connecting with one another like a complicated web of solid lightning as it wrapped around Erumo's kunai and stopped just there. After Mana clenched her extended palm into a fist, the erupting lightning crackled and stormed in a mighty show of crushing force that was enough to chew the kunai in Erumo's hand into a pathetic chunk of steel. The resulting junk would have reminded a neutral observer more of a steel memorial to a chewed up piece of bubble gum than its former bladed shape.</p><p>Erumo gripped her burnt crispy red and broken palm with her other hand and fell on one knee. Even before she signaled for the end of the sparring session, Mana knew that it was over. Her genin training partner almost got humbled by failing to land properly on top of the water surface, leave alone thoughts of continuing the training any further.</p><p>Mana looked with a worried glare at Erumo's injury but the girl just placed some compresses on it to numb the burns and wrapped it in bandages from the basic supplies she had in her ninja pouch. After noting how wise her partner was for carrying similar supplies in what most genin used just to stuff it with shuriken, kunai, and explosives, the magician looked up at the location of the Sun hidden behind the clouds.</p><p>"Just in time, huh?" Erumo grinned through some moderate pain that her fractures and burns gave her.</p><p>"Yeah…" Mana agreed. She then turned at the gate to the training grounds to see the service ninja who took it up as their mission to repair the damage caused to the training grounds by training ninja. That was one way to build up one's reputation…</p><p>"Can we just sit here for a while? I need to catch my breath before I head to have the wound looked at." Erumo asked while she took a graceful leap atop one of the logs that still were not completely submerged.</p><p>"I'd love that." Mana nodded before following. The two still had some time before the Earth and Water Release using ninja would fix the battlefield they trained in. Then, maybe, if they felt charitable, the Senju would send some of their young to fix and grow back some more trees that got damaged or completely toppled throughout the day.</p><p>"Wow, what a technique!" Erumo commended Mana looking equal part humbled and glad for her peer. "I have never seen Lightning Release acting this way but are you sure you don't want to work on the name a little bit?"</p><p>"No way! It fits my theme." Mana shook her head with an amount of cheer she hadn't felt for a while. This past week training in peace awaiting her next mission or something interesting to happen really washed away the difficult to shake off fears for Shukuba's future. It was true that the magician intended to work on figuring out the mystery behind the mysterious disappearances but, before she did that, she wanted to cover the weaknesses she discovered while working in Shukuba.</p><p>"I call every one of my Lightning Release jutsu after something "Magical" while I reserve the theme of "Mystical" for my Wind Release techniques." Mana snickered as if acknowledging the childish silliness of it.</p><p>"Hey, whatever works for you. Naming my techniques wouldn't really work, no enemy would fall into my traps if I yelled out the name of the trap before they step into it…" Erumo shrugged still watching her aching injury. "How does a lightning break someone's hand and crush their weapon, exactly?"</p><p>"Lightning, just like everything else, has its own weight. I just channel enough of it, and then compress it so much, that the density and mass becomes quite amazing. Enough to break even the hardest materials and even through chakra augmentations that are less focused than my own technique." Mana explained. Maybe if she ever considered Erumo an enemy or even a rival she would think twice before revealing the finer details of the first jutsu she learned after becoming a chuunin but not in this case.</p><p>"That's crazy." Erumo shook her head in composed disbelief.</p><p>"Difficult, for sure…" Mana sighed feeling the hunger she worked up as well as the aching muscles and her diminished chakra level rearing their collective peaks and making her feel quite weaker. Even facing an unskilled hand-to-hand combatant could have severely cost Mana if she fought such a person the wrong way…</p><p>"I have to admit, I never expected you to come to me with such a request. I figured you'd be mad at me for being mean to you or just that you'd have more reliable friends to train with." Erumo noted.</p><p>"I don't think I've expressed my gratitude enough for honoring that request." Mana bowed her head in front of the girl who looked a bit bemused by the fact that a chuunin was expressing their gratitude this way to their inferior by rank. "I figured training with Meiko but she was on a mission and I didn't really know who else to turn to. Tohi also turned me down…"</p><p>"You approached Tohi Jomya from Team Pine before me?" Erumo squinted her eyes. "For someone who was in the same class as her in the Academy, you really underestimate the role greed plays in the things she does."</p><p>Mana shrugged, thusly she acknowledged that maybe she didn't know her old acquaintance and just what motivated her after leaving the Academy after all.</p><p>"I guess I was being a bit full of myself assuming I was your first choice anyway. Still, I figured you'd want to catch up with Kouta or train some more with Yushijin. If you asked me, you two have some chemistry…"</p><p>"That's exactly why I couldn't bring myself to approach Yushijin!" Mana blushed. "Training with him would have been too awkward and then there's the fact he keeps making everything so competitive after the two of us got promoted. He keeps trying to see which one of us is stronger so training with him for any reason other than that one would be like whipping the head of your own horse."</p><p>"I see…" Erumo smiled. Mana had seen Kiyomi make a similar face when she was smiling too, usually when something naughty was working its way through the mind of the smiling party. "Well, it looks like those guys are about done. Best I go have this wound looked at."</p><p>"Please do, I'd feel terrible if you got sidelined because of me. Once again, thanks for the help!" Mana nodded. Both girls stood up on their respective logs and then dashed away, disappearing from the range of vision of anyone who did not put too much effort into tracking their movements.</p><hr/><p>Sunshine was slowly returning to the newly reborn village, freed from the grips of winter that everyone have become so accustomed to. People were bustling in the streets for goals more diverse than just getting from point A to point B. Artists without the luck of being acknowledged performed in the more remote areas of the village, young ninja walked about perfectly mixing into the casual mix of the blooming village.</p><p>It was surprising to know that Meiko and Kiyomi were now working separately. After Hanasaku called it quits, the two were left in the same rank, obviously, but were separated and written off to reserve. Written off was a matter of coming off too strong, the two were still some of the most experienced and mighty genin available. They were now working as reinforcements for squads with missing or injured members or when the mission required a special squad of members from multiple different teams.</p><p>Just how many such assignments could genin have seen really? Maybe that was why Mana was so surprised that Meiko was working and could not help her with her training? Asking Kiyomi for help felt a bit wrong. There were too much discomfort and tension between them for some reason, also her skillset did not lend very well to what Mana needed from the training anyway.</p><p>There was no need to be in rush, her home village offered the comfortable luxury of letting her guard down and letting the rushing and dashing ninja on the rooftop level just blitz her completely. When one was not trying to see them, they completely disappeared from one's perception. Not a sound from their feet. Not even a blur of their movements. Yet the upper layer was a commuting highway!</p><p>Father was home, a paper bag filled to the top with bottles of pills and those odd clay jars filled with herb ointments informed Mana that her old man was done for the day. At least until she occupied his mind with a request for a new device for her shows. Could she though? With her new attitude toward her ninja part, could she spare time for some casual stage magic?</p><p>"Are the food pills prescribed to you that inefficient that you need that dark alleyway junk?" Mana confronted her father after a heavy sigh.</p><p>"If I don't cash in the prescription the Hospital folk will find it odd. They numb the pain a little for a short while but those ointments from the jam bottles really hit the spot." Father replied. He was surprisingly mellow for a man who spent his everyday life in constant pain. At least he used to. When he still relied on the official treatment that Konoha provided him.</p><p>"Spoken like a true addict." Mana decided to stand her ground a bit more than none at all. That was what she'd have to do now. She hoped to become a Sannin, nothing less than exemplary and limit-breaking performance was what she needed to strive for. It was also especially easy, given her father's rather cheerful mood this morning.</p><p>"You don't have time to argue about this. You've been summoned." Father raised his arm up from behind the armchair and waved it with the letter still pressed with his fingers.</p><p>"A mission?" Mana wondered out loud.</p><p>"Shouldn't be anything too tough. It's been just a week since your last B-Rank so it is either a minor matter or one of those easier missions."</p><p>"Thank you for sharing your invaluable experience, father." Mana kissed the man on the top of his head while snagging the letter out of his hands and disappearing behind the front door. If it was a mission, she could have prepared for it after being briefed.</p><p>Mana couldn't help but wonder just what was the overall state of the village. The last Chuunin Exams resulted in only two promotions, which may not have been that dreadful but B-Rank missions were the second most common ones. Right behind the C-Ranks and required a decent number of chuunin to have them taken care of.</p><p>It did not take too long before the Hokage let her in. Just a pair of teams of genin being briefed, then a female jounin unfamiliar to Mana receiving something more weighty for her future. That much could have been taken from the fact that she was working alone, without her team of genin.</p><p>It felt a bit wrong not knowing which team of her peers this woman was leading. That much Mana could vaguely recall, however – it was someone from her Academy class that ended up on this woman's team. Things after graduation got a little bit busy for Mana, maybe she was to be forgiven for not memorizing who exactly ended up under whose supervision.</p><p>"Lord Sixth!" Mana reported to the Sixth Hokage by falling on one knee until she was encouraged to stand, after which she bowed and awaited the briefing.</p><p>"I've got a very specific assignment I can't make stick. It's a C-Rank mission but it requires a chuunin to deal with it." The Sixth lamented.</p><p>"How can such a low ranking mission require someone of adept rank specifically?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Well, I'm not sure if you know Tori Gomato, do you?"</p><p>"Well… Yeah, in a manner of speaking, she's the Academy teacher, right? I graduated right before she started teaching though."</p><p>"She is a very uptight woman, for her age. She's been avoiding taking leave of absences and now she can't help it – she must attend the Ringo-Bodo conference in the Land of Tea. It is her mandatory yearly leave to improve her qualification." The man elaborated.</p><p>Mana could not help but point her eyes at the ceiling. From what Lord Sixth described, the mission of bodyguarding Tori Gomato would have been a B-Rank, at least. Left alone the fact that the woman was a chuunin herself and just as capable of protecting herself as any help Mana could have provided her with.</p><p>"I see." Was all that Mana replied with, just to show her superior she was listening, trying to keep away the fact that despite that, she was still lost.</p><p>"Well, I need someone to replace her and teach the Academy classes she is responsible for. Being an Academy teacher is not a very popular profession for the sole fact that, as you may suspect, it is a dead-end of one's ninja career. For that reason, there are no working teachers that could replace her for tomorrow."</p><p>Mana took a time to think this through. She had heard some rumors here and there about the strictness of Tori Gomato, the Academy teacher and what Lord Sixth spoke of did make sense but the magician was not sure if she could take up the task. Especially given how Tori Gomato herself was the client. Could Mana live up to the woman's uptight, gold standards?</p><p>She could! She was someone aiming for the peaks of becoming a Sannin, taking up missions that nobody else wanted and missions that granted no glory for being completed was a way to surpassing her peers. Something that was the only path to becoming a Sannin at last.</p><p>"I know, it is not exactly the job that will help you become a jounin but…" Lord Sixth sighed.</p><p>"I'll take it!" Mana bowed her upper body submissively with a bold declaration.</p><p>"Oh…" The Sixth lit up with glee that this assignment was finally off his shoulders. "I'll fill in the preliminary papers now. You'll start tomorrow morning and end tomorrow's evening. I assume the schedule is well familiar to you?" the man joked.</p><p>"Yes, Sir!" Mana smiled. "With all due respect, though… You seem quite alleviated having gotten rid of the assignment. I was not under the impression that a ninja usually has the option to refuse a mission given to them?"</p><p>"There are few exceptions…" the Sixth's assistant fixed his glasses. "Especially with sensitive missions like this. They're seemingly pointless and simple but the requirements for them are very precise due to some old laws, written by Lord Sixth's predecessors. Being an Academy teacher may not be a very popular profession and the aspiration of many, but it is a very demanding and respected profession legally and socially. A ninja who does not want this mission, such as the six that came here for the briefing before you, may plead lacking competence for the job and they can get off the hook that way from what is seen as menial labor."</p><p>"The education of the Academy students is no menial labor!" Mana declared with the same, unfading smile.</p><p>"It is to people who have gone far enough to become chuunin." Lord Sixth noted before handing Mana the file with the mission objective and details. "It's all about assassinations, body-guarding and spying with those guys."</p>
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<a name="section0432"><h2>432. The Day Before The Apple Board</h2></a>
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    <p>The influx of fresh chills in her nostrils as Mana breathed in after leaving the Administration made her chest quiver before her whole body closed in to subdue the odd sensations. She was working again. With a dream as mighty and titanic as becoming a Sannin looming ahead, there was no time for doubts or philosophical self-reflections about the utilitarian qualities of her work.</p><p>This mission was all responsibility and almost no recognition but it was the kind of mission Mana had to do to get ahead. This was her chance to do something no one else will and this was only a warm-up before the magician would tackle the true mystery that many have tackled but none have resolved.</p><p>Overcome by the worry and responsibility of the work ahead of her, work that Mana was quite unfamiliar with and felt unprepared for, despite the best of her intentions and wishes for the future, the magician went to the Academy. Maybe Tori was still present and willing to offer some insights. Mana would only step into her shoes for one day but the last thing she could afford was to underestimate this mission.</p><p>Having in mind how seriously Team Oak used to take washing the dishes, the education of the young was of gold value compared to that.</p><p>The yard of the Academy was quite hectic at this time of day. It must have been the break in-between lessons, as a student who has roamed these halls herself, Mana should have known the schedule better. Before she approached the yard any closer than she already had, the magician took some time to look around and take in the schoolyard sights, as they felt strangely nostalgic.</p><p>If she concentrated and let herself get absorbed by these memories she could see her own five-year-old image trying to stand tall and look respectable like a hero from the book covers and play posters with a sniffling nose and wet eyes. Even as a five-year-old, the girl was plagued by her self-placed responsibility and the role she wanted to play.</p><p>The moment Mana did leave the shade and approached the yard closer she was surrounded by the students. Unless ninja were scheduled to meet the students for whatever reason their teachers would have planned such a meeting, an actual ninja showing up in the Academy was rare. There was, therefore, nothing unusual with kids that idolized ninja to be drawn to even the most ordinary and average ranked ninja. Hell, if she was still the little snotty nosed brat she once was, Mana would herself be all over such a visitor, even if they were just a lowly genin with just menial labor task missions under their belt.</p><p>Amongst the hectic harmony of yells and cheers, Mana could hear her stage name being thrown around, also something about the finals of the Chuunin Exams. The fact that the Konoha's Sorceress was not only a stage magician but a ninja too used to be a difficult to believe in secret, even if revealed, now it was an inescapable part of her image. Just another side of her to be scrutinized by the most scrutinizing eyes of children.</p><p>It was time to let go of her fear, it was time to hide the difficulty that the inner sense of responsibility placed on her and the blue color of her face when it dragged her underwater.</p><p>"Fine, just a couple of tricks but I really need to see Tori-san," Mana promised the kids.</p><p>Mana had to have known better. She should have been able to predict something like the eventuality of what happened… Of course, her tricks would have taken too much time. Of course, there would be no end to the "one mores" that came her way and to Mana's complete disability in denying a request. Luckily enough, what the scared teen with a performer's façade lacked in better judgment was soon fixed by an authoritative figure appearing in front of the front entrance to the Academy.</p><p>"What is the meaning of this?" a woman of amaranth hair appeared with hands crossed over her chest. The flames in her eyes, magnified by the lenses of her glasses, fired blazing beams of pure fury wherever the woman's vision turned. It did not take a degree in vision-related sciences to deduce that her vision almost immediately turned at Mana and tend to focus at around her general area. "Why aren't you guys in my class right now?"</p><hr/><p>Mana sat in the vacant seat of a student for well over an hour, watching Tori Gomato, a woman as famous for her skill in teaching kids as she was sometimes infamous for her strictness, excel in her field.</p><p>She was about as mechanical in her approach as she looked. A tall woman of well-defined build, if Mana crossed path with her on the field, she would have guessed her to be a weaponry user. Strictly tied hair that was so well tended to that they dragged her upper scalp back to an extent, enough so to even out any remnants of the woman's age if she had any.</p><p>One oddity that the magician did notice was that the woman lacked any militaristic approach to her person. Besides her athletic figure, she lacked any traces of signs that told on her being a ninja. She did not wear the green flak jacket that most chuunin wore as a sign of pride nor did she adorn the ceremonial short blade or carry even the most elementary ninja pouch by her side. Dressed like a civilian with only the most insignificant detail of anything related to her ninja status that Mana had noticed, apart from the "Leaf" headband she wore tied to her arm, being a small scroll stuck to the top of her skirt.</p><p>It was not as if combat was a taboo subject. Tori extensively implemented combat scenarios in the problems she gave to the students she called up, she also spoke of a battlefield about as much and about as often as a ninja teacher would be.</p><p>The way Mana interpreted this was that the woman did not wish her students to see her as a military unit. To them, she was their mentor first. A trusted figure and a guide and while Mana was scared enough to sit in the same classroom as the woman teaching a class to anyone but her, that much, at the very least, she could respect. So much of her own Academy days were made much fonder to return to by an understanding teacher figure.</p><p>"Now then, may all but Nakotsumi Mana-san be excused." The woman declared. An odd detail – her eyes softened for a mere moment after the lesson ended before returning to their previous state, albeit slightly less scary and intense. She watched the kids bail her classroom like an aftermath of a bloody battlefield with an odd sense of pride and fondness for the children and the magician noticed that.</p><p>"I've spent the entire day raising my voice so it could reach people all the way there, dear. Could you please give it a rest for at least the after-hours?" Tori referred to Mana directly. Overcome by shame and awkwardness of having almost been lulled by the thousands of things and details she was focusing on about the woman she would replace tomorrow, Mana walked up to Tori's desk as if she was a student up for a scolding about an assignment they failed at.</p><p>"I'm sorry about earlier, I… I guess I couldn't handle the kids. I'll do my best tomorrow!" Mana tried softening her standing with the teacher but after the middle-aged lady turned at her with a simple but effectively quiet look, Mana could not help but look away in shame.</p><p>"Well, I suppose that much is all one can ask of a person." Tori sighed. "Then again, if your performance in the Exams is any point of reference, I suppose you trying is enough of a push for satisfying results."</p><p>Mana wondered for a moment if the woman even knew of the fact that Mana would be substituting her while she was away so she reached inside her jacket to pull out the file inside. Just a small show of its cover was enough to tip the Academy teacher off. The woman did not even look at it, almost like the shuffling of the file's pages and sheets was enough for her to get the clue.</p><p>"Ah, well… I am glad that you, at the very least, are taking your assignment seriously enough to come see me before trying to fit my shoes, if only for a day." Tori actually smiled. Even when such a small victory peeked through a corner, the woman's smile was controlled. Genuine, yet without the option to shake off the feeling as if it was made to be by a machine operator pulling switches and pressing buttons inside the control room of this automaton.</p><p>"I do realize that even if just for a day, the lessons heard in these rooms have the potential to stay with these young spirits for their entire life." Mana nodded her head in acknowledgment of her compliment.</p><p>A short pause of grave silence followed before Tori relaxed in her chair and turned at Mana fully, granting the magician her full attention.</p><p>"I want you to understand one thing, Mana-san. This Ringo-Bodo conference I am leaving to is a gathering of Academy teachers from around the world to share their experiences and improve each other qualifications through pooling what these kids have come to teach us. It shows great promise to help me guide these young minds anywhere else but an early grave. Under no other circumstances would I have ever left otherwise."</p><p>"-san…" Mana let it slip out loud under her own nose. A babble that made her blush, once she realized that the sparrow had left its nest and made her feel like she had thusly undone any progress of appearing capable of handling the task that she was beginning to make with Tori.</p><p>"Yes, is there a problem with me treating you as you are – my equal and a colleague in rank?" Tori raised an eyebrow. She looked at Mana just now like she did at one of the students – Kanra Haguki, a troublemaker and less than a bright future star if one was to place a bet.</p><p>"No, none at all, ma'am. Just haven't gotten used to it yet…" Mana tried mending her standing.</p><p>"Slow learner? Would not have guessed."</p><p>Tori appeared to change her position, choosing to stand up before Mana could even begin to wonder if she was being praised or belittled for her awkwardness and her odd choice of words because of the innate desire to say all the right things.</p><p>"In any case, tomorrow you will have to deal with this schedule." The woman opened up a drawer, pulling out a sheet from it and handing it to Mana. "A lesson of mathematics for second years, two lessons of science for third years, a genjutsu class for second years, a ninjutsu class for fourth years and a special course in tactics and strategy."</p><p>Mana was impressed by the fact that the woman knew her schedule for any given day by heart, then again, back when she was a student herself, she easily memorized all of her schedules after a couple of weeks without much effort. Given how the woman had been teaching this way for this whole past year, it was likely that she did not have to exert too much effort into it.</p><p>"A special course? Are you sure you want to leave me in charge of it?" Mana wondered.</p><p>As far as her memory served, those were an hour and a half long sessions of preparatory classes before larger and more important tests. Tactics and strategy was also a bit of an advanced course that only came in during the third year, that meant that she would not be quite teaching a bunch of children but children who were getting close to graduating.</p><p>"I have no choice. It sort of fell into play this way. The subject of the course will be interrogation. If you wish you can freely invite someone from the Intelligence Division." Tori suggested. "Given how you are on a special assignment issued by Lord Sixth himself and not just a lowly substitute teacher, they'd be more inclined to actually put in some work."</p><p>It was just a wild guess but the woman may not have been overly fond of the Intelligence Division… That being said, it was too far off the topic and the woman herself far too intimidating for Mana to check.</p><p>"I have some experience interrogating people. I am sure I could provide some insights…" Mana's eyes wandered off while she shyly dragged her foot across the platform on which the teacher's desk was located. Something about the way this woman carried herself made the usually bold stage performer behave like a schoolgirl being scolded.</p><p>"Excellent. What exactly are your qualifications?" Tori inquired.</p><p>"Well… I interrogated someone on a recent mission."</p><p>"I would hardly count having interrogated someone at some point as valid interrogation qualification. Was it at the very least successful?"</p><p>"Yes, it was. If it does not fit your standards, I have also worked with a Yoruma and I know someone from the Yamanaka clan with inspirations of joining the Intelligence Division", Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Well… I suppose that should suffice. The Yamanaka are disciplined and efficient interrogators and the Yoruma are… Less disciplined but similarly efficient." Tori sighed. "Oh, for the special course I have acquired a very special guest. I was hoping to see if some of the common interrogation methods would help clear up the sky with something but…"</p><p>The woman certainly sold being disappointed by having to leave on the conference on a day she had plenty planned for.</p><p>"What would that guest be?" Mana wondered. The way she saw it, as someone who would have to pick up from what Tori planted, she at the very least had to know.</p><p>"It is one of the few gentlemen that have managed to return from those mysterious disappearances." Tori scratched her chin, it was evident that she regretted not being able to interrogate the man herself with some of her textbook techniques and see where it would have gotten her.</p><p>At the very least, this teacher appeared interested in combining helping the village with this dead-end investigation that was going nowhere for the longest time with her everyday teaching. It was not too different from Mana's own aspirations.</p><p>"There have been a lot of those that came up into my everyday conversations, honestly," Mana noted.</p><p>"That is because the rate of those who re-appear has increased, dear. I'm not quite sure of just what it means, however, neither is anyone. Mostly because our Intelligence Division is quite bad at gathering intelligence."</p><p>"In any case…" Mana tried changing the subject away from a clearly spiteful bashing of the Intelligence Division and the overall political state of the village, "I suppose trying to get my Yoruma friend for help would be unjust for the poor guest who agreed to come and be interrogated."</p><p>"That is a rational conclusion." Tori nodded. "I believe you will do well as my replacement."</p><p>Mana did not reply. Somehow she did not share Tori's optimism. This entire mission did come up rather erratically and Mana was unsure if she would be able to replace someone like Tori.</p><p>"If you still feel discouraged, you should have this." Tori pulled out another file from the same drawer she pulled the schedule from. "It is a preliminary plan of what exactly I planned to teach tomorrow. It is obviously just a plan, topic by topic, but I am sure that someone who has already graduated the Academy and chose to take up such a mission and has enough common sense to coordinate with me beforehand should be able to read up according to it."</p><p>"I will, thank you." Mana bowed her head in gratitude. This kind of aid was exactly what she came here for.</p><p>"Oh, and don't get discouraged by Hagaki's behavior. He is a troublemaker and an attention seeker and plenty of other teachers would have disregarded him as a lost cause by now. It is only because I do not take up tasks I do not intend on finishing that I still tolerate that boy in my classroom and I will shape him into a ninja, eventually. He will stand out, he will disrespect you but he is not malicious and an easy task shall easily occupy his attention." Tori brought up.</p><p>"A task? Would a troublemaker like young Kanra take any task I give him?" Mana was not too quick to believe such a thing.</p><p>"Your edge is that he truly wants to become a ninja, despite his behavior. He will perform whatever physical or mental task you give him because he sees it as necessary to become a ninja. He is merely… Unusual. I'd be worried about the rest of the second years in his class."</p><p>"How so?"</p><p>"You see, they will be quick to catch on to the fact that you let Hagaki get to you. His buffoonery will be your undoing if you sanction it enough to shake the entire class out of balance. They will run you over if you let them and it will compromise the entire class. Deal with him. Decisively." Tori looked at Mana with the same warm and caring eyes she had when she saw the class out today.</p><p>"It sounds like you are suggesting me to murder him." Mana tried alleviating the mood.</p><p>"Maybe it would, for a ruffian." Tori punished and shut that thought down immediately. "In any case, I wish the best of luck tomorrow. Not only because what you do will plant the seeds which I will have to then tend to, but also because you seem like an honest person. Under no other circumstances would I let you anywhere near my classes, make no mistake about that, dear."</p><p>Mana helped the woman tend to the classroom and to make sure that it was left in a presentable condition. She then bowed before the two parted ways in the corridor with the teacher heading for another classroom while Mana head back home.</p><p>Somehow it felt like dodging a chopping block to the point where Mana felt some sharp tension around her neck and a pressure around her chest the whole rest of the day.</p>
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<a name="section0433"><h2>433. Late For The Bell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When the day of the mission finally dawned, after a night of worry and grueling reading so not to come short to the standards placed on her, Mana felt strangely calm. It may have been a gift of hers. When the truly important handful of golden feathers hit the fan Mana usually was rather calm and accepting whatever outcome came.</p><p>The only thing that Mana had trouble working out and kept jumping from one boat to another on was whether to employ any help from any of her acquaintances. She made it halfway to the Academy before realizing that maybe it would not have hurt to pay Kiyomi a visit.</p><p>The two parted under less than ideal circumstances and while they made up in the end on the things that mattered, they could have worked it out more peacefully. At least in a manner of acceptance and honesty more befitting to true friends. Given how Mana now knew of the Yamanaka's vision of her future, she had an option to offer something that could have been of use to her. Maybe that would have helped illuminate whatever shade fell on their garden of friendship.</p><p>It was a rather early morning when Mana came. The Academy tried to instill a sense of discipline and iron will into the youngsters it tutored so the lessons started quite early. Fortunately, in this case, Mana only had to show up on the second lesson as Tori did not have a lesson in the timeslot occupying the very first hour of daily studies.</p><p>Regardless of the time, Mana expected a rather decent chance of finding Kiyomi home. If she was not, an even greater chance suggested that after a quick rooftop dash to the Training Grounds she may have found her lost friend and troubled her with the suggestion. In this time of early morning, servants tended to the gardens of what Mana may have classified as a genuine mansion – the home where Kiyomi and her family lived.</p><p>Her face was rather well-known around the village in general and that helped associate that face with Kiyomi as her friend's face to the service staff and the girl's family. For that simple reason, none of the servants troubled Mana. And yet, the magician noticed a presence of uneasy chuunin-vest wearing ninja in the premises which tipped the magician off just as much as the flash of her raven hair did the bodyguards before they settled down after a moment of examining this quick-footed visitor.</p><p>"Hey, what's up with you?" Kiyomi grinned, opening the door. Mana was relieved to see her friend herself and not another servant. She was a little tight on time and dashing around the village would have taken much less time, considering her speed, than it would have taken to explain the plentiful baggage of the reason why she was here to civilians.</p><p>"Are you busy this afternoon? I've got a thing about interrogation and… Well… You mentioned you wanted to enroll in the Intelligence Division, did you not?" Mana spoke up without departing on a lengthy quest to find her words.</p><p>"Oh…" Kiyomi's eyes lit up before the girl's gleaming oceanic blues settled on the ninja roaming the premises. At that moment, the spark in her eyes faded out. "I don't think leaving my home would be a good idea right now. I hope you didn't count on me too much."</p><p>"Oh, no… It's just, I'm teaching a course in the Academy about interrogation to kids and I figured you'd like to be there." Mana shrugged. Her own eyes happened to creep back at the ninja that did not appear that troubled by the conversation but that relentlessly patrolled the premises of the Yamanaka garden.</p><p>"Yeah, sorry. There is this whole thing happening with the Uchiha and Yamanaka over what I did with the eyes they lost and… It may not be the wisest idea for me to leave." Kiyomi rubbed her elbow in unease. Hints of anger and frustration of the more submissive variety appeared in her body language and the reflection of her soul in the girl's eyes.</p><p>Whatever was happening demanded more time from Mana than she may have had. The magician wondered how she could write herself out of this conversation she herself started and utilize the time she still had without seeming too rude. Whatever this situation with the Uchiha was, it appeared to greatly weigh on Kiyomi's chest and it was not something a friend would just dismiss with a "K, bye".</p><p>"I would really like to hear more," Mana said slowly, each word wrapping around the other like some complicated spell weaved by a master magician comprised of dozens of different languages and using a multitude of different artifacts and seals. This was not what Mana meant to do at all!</p><p>"You are the worst person that ever existed!" the girl scolded herself internally.</p><p>"Oh, there's not much to hear. The Uchiha got pretty heated up by the fact that a Sannin could not retrieve their precious eyes for whatever use they had of them and they sort of chose me as their scapegoat so the Yamanaka and the Uchiha are grabbing each other by the collars. Diplomacy has already failed at this point…"</p><p>Mana looked back at the ninja again, so that was it. The situation really must have been pretty heated if the village offered its own ninja to guard the Yamanaka premises. The magician could only wonder if the same courtesy was offered to the Uchiha who did sound as the aggressor from Kiyomi's explanation, then again, Kiyomi may have been the least objective person to portray the Uchiha in a just light.</p><p>"It's just that there's a chance to interrogate someone from the disappearance incidents and… You're someone who has probed their minds before. I've been studying a little bit about interrogation using genjutsu for a while now but I've never tried using it practically." Mana shrugged. The girl took a wary step back, feeling like she was overstepping her boundaries and asking her friend way too much.</p><p>"Though I can see that you really have your plate full here. The last thing I'd like you to do is hurt yourself trying to probe into one of those minds again. It looked quite painful and complex in the Chuunin Exams…" Mana excused herself but before she could run off, Kiyomi's tight grip on her wrist held the girl in place.</p><p>"Just what's that supposed to mean? Are you implying I'd have to work up a sweat about probing one of those again?" Kiyomi appeared to genuinely get a bit worked up and growly about the subject. Mana could not have counted on how upset and defensive it would make her. That was the last thing she intended.</p><p>This was supposed to be a friendly visit to mend their relationship, which was once a bit wobbly, now it turned out to be slowly returning to its wobbly foundations.</p><p>"That's not what I…" Mana opened her mouth to object before she was dragged into the mansion with the door shut behind her. "What are you…" she tried to ask but Kiyomi was acting at the beat of her own drums.</p><p>The Yamanaka removed a blank paper tag from her ninja pouch before weaving a hand seal, then another. A hieroglyph of "Illusion" appeared on the paper tag and the girl ran upstairs for an unknown purpose. Mana stood where she was left standing in complete confusion, only when Kiyomi's mother trekked her way downstairs and into the kitchen, greeting the girl did the magician wake up.</p><p>"Oh, hello, ma'am!" Mana bowed her head in return for the woman's greeting.</p><p>Kiyomi ran down in a bit of a hurry and grabbed the magician by her wrist again, dragging her out the door. The girl then weaved another hand seal and began just dragging Mana down the main road to the exit from the Yamanaka garden.</p><p>"What are…" Mana tried speaking up before a hand slammed against her mouth silencing the magician. Only when the two stood a comfortable distance away from the estate did the blonde breathe easier and took her hand away.</p><p>"Sorry, I couldn't both maintain the False Surroundings Jutsu and initiate a mental link between us. I'm still rather fresh with that jutsu." Kiyomi grinned with confidence.</p><p>"False Surroundings Jutsu? That's quite basic. Just for how long do you think it will fool anyone?" Mana wondered. The technique was most efficiently used to create small illusions about one's environment whereas Kiyomi sealed it into a paper tag to create her own image and insert it into her room as well as fool the guards around her premises.</p><p>"Probably not too long. Those guards probably saw through it, to an extent but they chose not to engage me because keeping me indoors is not their job, still, dealing with them trying to talk me over would have cost us time." Kiyomi shrugged before finally letting go of Mana's arm and letting the magician stop tailing her mad dash toward the Academy and begin moving by herself.</p><p>"It was not that big of a deal, honestly. If it is a matter of your safety you really did not have to come. But… I'm glad you did." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Eh, saying it's a matter of safety is a bit paranoid." Kiyomi weaved a hand seal. The girl disappeared in a cloud of smoke before her changed image appeared from it – that of Kiyomi with a different set of clothes, blazing red head of long hair and emerald eyes.</p><p>"She says as she transforms so that she is not identified…" Mana smacked her forehead following it up with a sigh.</p><hr/><p>Calling Kiyomi up this early may have been premature. Then again, while the idea to come ask her for some assistance was something that plagued her overnight, the actual decision was made on a whim and was therefore executed thusly. Then, on top of that, with the normal stops and distractions of people continuously stopping and recognizing Mana on the streets, she managed to be a little bit late to the lesson she was supposed to teach.</p><p>"It'll be fine." Kiyomi calmed Mana down as she herself chose to settle down in the yard and encouraged the girl to go on ahead with a gesture. She had little interest or need to be present in the first lesson and therefore she decided to rest a bit on the swings outside.</p><p>"Are you sure you're just gonna stay here?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Trust me, being outside right now is fun enough as it is. I can only handle this much excitement in my life. If I hear you talking about math for forty minutes – my heart may just burst," Kiyomi dismissed her friend's worry.</p><p>Mana rushed into the school bowing at least a good twelve hundred times before the groundskeeper about being late and taking the keys to the classroom off of his hands. She should have seen what happened next coming, really. Moving too fast indoors would have raised too much noise so Mana had to control her speed really well. Despite doing her best, she noticed that the number of kids sticking around the classroom was somewhat smaller than the amount she remembered from yesterday.</p><p>"Where are the rest?" Mana cried out, grabbing her temples in horror. Kiyomi may have been just joking, but Mana's own heart was not gonna take this much of rollicking good at the start of her day.</p><p>"You were late for four or so minutes so they scattered. I think I saw Kanra leaving. He's probably in Yakiniku Q…" a taller than the most of her company girl pressing a bunch of books to her chest explained. She may have had the best of intentions but her voice was remarkably smug for her age and social standing, then again, Mana pretty much felt like dirt for messing up this bad.</p><p>"This can't be helped…" the magician closed her eyes. She felt the flow of her chakra and forced it to move faster. A sensor would have seen the bluish aura around her intensify and burst out from her body as her speed became infinitely greater than whatever she was playing with before.</p><p>Mana took a dash forward before an aged man in a chuunin vest and dark spiky hair appeared before her. He was tall and past his physical prime and his face suggested that he was less than content.</p><p>"Did you just dash around the school grounds?" he mumbled.</p><p>"I know, I'm sorry. I was a bit late because of the special course pretty much half my class scattered because I was late for four minutes. I really don't want to disappoint Tori-san!" Mana bowed yet another twelve hundred times erratically. At this point, she was just like a hopeless student in a library with books of further stacking troubles being dropped on top of them and stacking up in a tower of knowledge beyond the student's ability to comprehend it all.</p><p>"I see… Either tone your speed down indoors or I will be forced to let Tori-san know." The man crossed his arms in objection.</p><p>Mana's head sunk down. If she had the time to pity and hate herself, she'd bash her head against the wall and purposefully hold herself back to the point where it would actually hurt. The magician just shuffled to the staircase at a casual pace, doing her best to stay quiet over everything else.</p><hr/><p>"I spent three more minutes…" Mana groaned as her disappointment in herself in what felt like a nightmare scenario was only beaten by the fury of her internal clock mercilessly counting down seconds she was wasting by searching for students in a casual, human pace. She managed to locate the rest of the class just scattered across the school, buying snacks from vendors or training in the gym. Now there was only Kanra left.</p><p>Of course, he'd drag his troublemaking behind all the way to Yakiniku after his teacher was late for four whole minutes!</p><p>Kiyomi jumped up and off her swings to follow Mana. She must have felt pretty interested in why the magician just suddenly left the Academy darting off towards the commercial districts of the village.</p><p>"What happened, weren't you late already?" She asked.</p><p>"My students scattered because I was late for four minutes." Mana rubbed her temples, desperately trying to control her racing thoughts and try to make some sense out of this mission, which was sifting through her fingers already.</p><p>"Seriously? This new generation…" the Yamanaka made a sarcastic expression realizing how silly it was for her to say that in the first place.</p><p>"I found the rest without much problem using my chakra sensory but this one guy left all the way to Yakiniku." Mana let her friend in on it.</p><p>Things could have been much worse, now, outside the Academy premises, the two could have moved much faster, albeit still much slower than they were fully capable of. Also, Kanra was just where the girls told Mana he'd be – Yakiniku Q.</p><p>The boy jumped up after feeling the two girls just appear behind him. For the first couple of moments he felt lost as to why they would even be here but after glaring at Mana for a short while he spoke up.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress?"</p><p>"That's right, I'm replacing Tori-san for today. Please return to the Academy with us." Mana tried to stay calm and collected and not just flip out on the kid. Granted, she was just psyched out enough for it to have gone very wrong but somehow she managed to keep her composure.</p><p>"Fine." The young man sighed in front of his half-finished patty before Mana and Kiyomi disappeared with him in Mana's grip. The other customers of Yakiniku barely even raised an eyebrow at this. If anything, the young man being present in the restaurant in this hour of the morning would have made them much more baffled.</p><hr/><p>Finally, Mana with Kanra still firmly in her grip appeared from the staircase leading up to the classroom she was supposed to teach in. The kids all jumped up to their feet in acknowledgment meanwhile Kanra tried to wrestle out of Mana's hold.</p><p>"Let go of me, you don't need to keep hold of me now that you can't move really fast…" he tried throwing elbow strikes but given how he was just a moderately irritated youngster, his strikes were all too slow and predictable for any relevant success.</p><p>"Sorry for being late, kids. I'm Nakotsumi Mana and I'll be replacing Tori-san for today." Mana took a moment to catch her breath and introduce herself to the kids, even though she was well-aware it was not necessary. If anything, kids their age were the target demographic of her shows.</p><p>"We know, we unlocked the class for you, sensei!" One of the kids spoke up. He pressed on the door handle letting the class and Mana in.</p><p>It took a fair handful of moments before the classroom was all filled up and the kids settled down. With almost a quarter of the lesson being wasted trying to cover for her own initial mistake and looking for the impatient kids, Mana was finally ready to get on with it.</p><p>"Alright, I hope you guys won't mind if we skip your introductions, given how I already messed up and came in late. I was preparing for the special course later today and that's why I was late." Mana explained herself and apologized for the nth time.</p><p>"So… Mathematics, from what I know about it, you guys were getting a fat slice of trajectories and projectile mechanics. It's one of the most important subjects really, one of the most practical as well. It also ties into the practical science lessons you'll have during your third year. Knowing the density and properties of your projectile will be necessary knowledge when you try to calculate the exact force and trajectory of your projectile in nanoseconds on the field." Mana made a valiant effort to finally begin her mission.</p><p>"Hey, we already passed all that! So if we're done with trajectories already, can you show us a trick? If you do we won't tell Tori-sensei you were late." Kanra stood up from his seat. For someone so bold and in-your-face, the boy sure lacked in the heights department making him appear barely taller than his peers even after standing up.</p><p>"Nice try, Kanra, I know the lesson plans and I am well aware what you did and did not study. Tori-san described you as someone who genuinely wants to become a fine ninja, despite your problems with discipline and authority, don't ruin that fine impression by trying to wiggle your way out from one of the most important things the subject of mathematics will teach you on the field." Mana disciplined the young man.</p><p>Kanra hesitated to take his seat back but did so hesitantly. He and the rest of the class clearly had a bit of a problem listening and staying quiet when someone just a handful of years older than them was trying to teach them something. Had it not been for Mana's acquired respect as a beloved in the village stage performer and her amazing show in the Chuunin Exams establishing her skill as a ninja to these kids, they'd have been rampaging all over this class.</p><p>"You captured an entire criminal syndicate just a couple of weeks ago, you can handle a bunch of kids…" Mana tried pleading to the butterflies that were beginning to flutter in her stomach.</p><p>"Although, if magic is your fancy, I'm sure I can show you a trick or two that ties into the subject of projectile mechanics and trajectories." Mana smiled as a desperate attempt to earn some cred with the kids.</p><p>At least for a little while, this appeared to have worked and the lesson could have finally begun. Of all things she managed to accomplish in her life, Mana would not kneel and admit defeat to a bunch of hyperactive kids.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0434"><h2>434. Cheating For A Better Tomorrow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After a while of thinking up scenarios and problems for the kids to solve, Mana noticed that a particular girl was answering all of her questions. It was the same book-wielder from before, the one that aided her by informing that the students had scattered and mentioned where exactly Kanra was.</p><p>For a good fifteen minutes, Mana enjoyed that. It let her catch up to what amount of the lesson plan she had squandered by being a bit late and then embarking on the quest to gather the children together again. That being said, she could only allow this to continue for so long.</p><p>"What's your name?" Mana asked the knowledgeable kid when her hand once more shot up.</p><p>"Kinami, Maiya," the girl replied without getting flustered that the teacher had disrupted the rhythm of the lesson which it was getting comfortable in for a while.</p><p>"Could you please stop answering for fifteen minutes?" Mana smiled.</p><p>"Sure…" the girl sighed.</p><p>After checking on a suspicion she had, during the following five minutes the magician continued to make-up easier and easier problems, some of them even on the level of what first-years should have been able to solve. And yet, whenever she stopped describing the situation, the classroom went completely silent.</p><p>Mana looked at Maiya with the same polite smile she wore when asking the girl to stay quiet. In a way, it was a probing glare. It was evident that no one else in this class was studying anything for a while because they knew quite well that Maiya would be answering all the questions. They only needed to read up before the special courses and tests, only to stand on a barely passable level. These kids were feeling comfortable. It was the kind of thing that got people killed.</p><p>Maiya's cheeks did blush a little, she was a bright kid, she saw the problem just as well as Mana did but her fluster was not quite like that of a purposeful offender. It was more likely that she simply did not know what her peers were thinking about this. Tori was a smart woman, she'd have caught on to this eventually, meaning it was going on for a short enough while for the damage to be manageable.</p><p>"Alright, I'm going to write down some of the things you needed to know by today but, evidently, do not. The moment you do not know the data on a single dimension, be it the height of your perch point, the distance between you and your target or the length between you and the static point of your target's location, let alone the environmental factors, you get lost…"</p><p>"This is stupid!" Kanra yelled out. "Stupid and boring!"</p><p>"Shut up, Kanra!" Maiya spoke up, Mana knew the emotions that fueled the girl's snap back, it was shame. Shame in her class. This girl was so much how Mana would have been if she was a portion as bright as Maiya during these early years. She had so much potential inside her and she must have realized that by now. Better yet, she was trying her best to live up to that potential. Younglings did not get any better than this.</p><p>"No! What do I care how far away my target is. If I throw the projectile with all my might, I'll get it anyway! If I don't, I'll just kick their ass up-close," the boy objected trying to think outside the box of the provided problem description. In a way, these weren't bad traits, although looked down on by the more conservative and matured ninja.</p><p>"Just give him an assignment, huh?" Mana thought to herself, going back on what Tori told her before leaving. The girl walked up to a drawer in the corner. She remembered something very childish and very odd being in one of the compartments, the one that she opened up to check. At this point, the entire classroom was silent and looking on at what Mana was about to do about Kanra's challenge to her authority.</p><p>No doubt, they expected Mana to flip out and play into his hand. No. This was just the kind of thing Kanra wanted. Troublemakers thrived in trouble, in the attention it brought. What Mana was about to do was not very nice or how she would like to solve problems like these but it was the only thing that came into her mind at the moment.</p><p>To be entirely truthful, the magician could not really figure out just what kind of assignment she could give to the young man this whole time. Tori claimed that Kanra was genuine about his desire to become a fine ninja, that meant that whatever Mana gave him was supposed to be useful to his goal of becoming better without clashing with him too much. And yet, as evidenced by the grave silence whenever Mana tried to challenge the class with something they should have been able to solve, it could not have been advanced in any meaning of the word.</p><p>The magician approached the desk in the row where Kanra was seated and dropped a small pile of books. It only took a brief glance for the students that had the books dropped by them to realize they had to move those books further to the side so that they situated themselves on Kanra's table.</p><p>"Are these… Coloring books?" the young man squinted in disbelief as the taste of bitterness flooded his mouth, a feeling he let be known to the world outside with an almost cartoonish expression of discontent.</p><p>"They are. Please get to them at once." Mana nodded with a grin.</p><p>The entire classroom echoed with laughter. They saw it as a very immature but welcome snapback at their resident troublemaker. The likes of which their usual teacher did not even attempt. Then again, Tori was scary enough to shake off similar challenges by brats much worse and with much more malicious wills than Kanra, she also had plenty of executive actions as an actual teacher she could employ.</p><p>"This is…" Kanra pushed the books away from him.</p><p>"Stupid? Come now, don't be repetitious. You can do better than that." Mana kept on pressuring the young man. "Demeaning? Let me remind you'll be washing dishes and gardening for the first month of your life as a ninja before you'll even be allowed to look at a C-Rank mission. Then, when you do take up said mission, thinking you're making a difference, what you'll get is children telling you that what you're doing is stupid."</p><p>Kanra looked down. Finally, the same shame that previously peeked through from behind Maiya found its way to Kanra as well. If the young man knew shame, he was not beyond mending. He was unruly, he was a troublemaker and all too fast to drop whatever he was doing and run off to a restaurant using even the smallest things as an excuse for running away. But, then again, he had his whole life ahead of him.</p><p>"I don't think you guys should laugh at young Kanra." Mana sighed before returning to the front of the class. "Coloring that coloring book teaches plenty of skills that will be more useful than you'd admit. It will teach his hand restraint and finer control. The likes of which using projectiles demands. It will make his wrists stronger making his grip stronger as well, wrist strength has plenty to do with the speed of hand seals as well. Not to mention it will teach him the most important skill of all out there – perception."</p><p>"Perception?" a kid from the front rows scratched his head muddled.</p><p>"That's right. The books in that drawer contain inks of Konoha monuments and buildings. Coloring it correctly requires committing them all to memory in fine detail, every single tile of every single roof, every single sign on every single shop and building. Being observant in a battle is often what helps you walk away from it. That coloring book is the surface which you must scratch to become ninja."</p><p>"Can we all get coloring books?" a chubby girl beside Maiya raised her hand. She had facial markings on her cheeks similar to those of the Akimichi clan. Then again, the Akimichi members varied their markings so this was just an educated guess using something that could have been just a fancy fashion statement as a clue.</p><p>"I wish… It would definitely make this classroom quieter and free me up a little." The magician beamed. "That being said, you guys need to be a bit sharper and advanced beyond the level of coloring books, no offense to those of us still coloring."</p><p>A pair of kids in the front and middle rows snorted through their snickering. Without transitioning in any way, Mana returned to what she first intended to do and began writing down some basic formulas and the mnemonic techniques that would have aided the kids to learn them better. The latter came from Mana's own experience having to learn them.</p><hr/><p>After the class, also the two classes of science for third years ended, the time for the lunch break came. Mana waited by the main exit from the Academy, looking for the all too familiar, childish image. The moody youngling stopped after Mana moved in his direction. Judging from his expression, the magician likely lost a fan that day. Regardless of the ill feelings and regret this would have normally invited, Mana raised a hand with four hundred and fifty ryo.</p><p>"I believe I distracted you from your lunch before." She smiled.</p><p>Kanra looked a bit confused by the magician going so far to repay him for something he had no right to be doing in the first place. The boy rudely yanked the money off of her hands and adopted an even grumpier face.</p><p>"All I had was disliking you before. For being late and then expecting me to respect you, for making a fool out of me in front of the others… Now you've made me feel like an asshole for even that." He replied after stuffing his pockets with his little hands and walking off.</p><p>The youth almost bumped into Kiyomi as the two crossed paths. He only narrowly avoided the Yamanaka after noticing the experience and strength in her eyes but also the much harder attitude when compared to the cushiony compassion and warmth in Mana's.</p><p>"So, how's your day?" the blonde teased the magician, knowing full well what her friend would have answered.</p><p>"I don't know why but I expected the kids to be less of a cast of colorful characters. I guess I forgot my own time in the Academy just a handful of years later…" Mana sighed. She still could not wipe away the smile from her face. Even if she knew that Kanra would despise her for the longest time, all she could do was hope that she gave him something to consider and taught him something at the very least and that his lunch was just fine.</p><p>"Kids are the most colorful, I don't know what dimension you attended school in…" Kiyomi remarked after taking a good look at the rowdy batch of kids in full youth that were being taught how to wield and manage the supernatural source of power all around them. "Maybe it's for the better that these little assholes never learn to augment themselves until after puberty…"</p><p>"That was cruel…" Mana tried scolding her friend. "I thought you'd have been quite popular in the Academy. You're strong, beautiful and an important member of a highly respected clan."</p><p>"Yeah, I was "popular"." Kiyomi snickered with great disdain for the context of the last word that left her mouth. "I was the second best thing after every Uchiha everyone's laid eyes on and then the moment the classes ended and the doors shut behind us, that was the last we've heard of each other. You may think I hated the Chuunin Exams but I actually treasured the opportunity to punch some of my old acquaintances in the face."</p><p>"Wow, I didn't know Academy friendships were like that…" Mana completely lost all trains of thought after hearing Kiyomi's impressions of the nostalgia that flooded her mind after walking these halls.</p><p>"What, you didn't have friends?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Well, as a little girl, before the Academy, I was the weird kid that talked to herself so… Every acquaintance I got during those years I crawled through busted glass to get." Mana looked back at the depths of the building that at the time of her attendance here invited all too many mixed feelings. Feelings of loneliness but also admiration, feelings of being misunderstood but also the great joy when the few people that did understand her did so.</p><p>"Eh, screw them. The ninja life forges the real friendships. These are all artificial anyway…" Kiyomi patted Mana on the back.</p><p>"You're mistaken if you think it was all because I was a poor misunderstood but pure soul. Even if I was singled out as "the weird kid" and nobody cared or believed in me because I did not have a famous background, I didn't exactly pursue the friendship from others either. I was too afraid, most of the time and if I lived in the same fear now – I'd have perished long ago. I have a lot of discontent for the fearful little kid I was and my hesitation to confront those fears."</p><p>"Anyway, I was hanging around town but I didn't really eat yet. What do you wanna do?" Kiyomi changed the subject after seeing gloom corrupt Mana's eyes.</p><hr/><p>An explosion contained within the classroom halls from a weakened explosive tag stuck to the teacher's chair rumbled in the classroom where Mana was supposed to teach the students about genjutsu. The magician stood up from the busted up chair with her most genuine attempts to restrain her composure after this cruel prank.</p><p>"You know, a lot of ninja work really hard at restricting and controlling their augmentation. Just one day you may meet a teacher who does not augment their abilities and seriously injure them…" Mana did her best attempt at a mentoring scolding.</p><p>Evidently, due to her age, it all fell on deaf ears as the classroom was barely controlling itself. Whereas the classes Mana was teaching before were divided with some being more into pranks and some being more devoted to studies, this classroom appeared to be completely united.</p><p>"What can we say, you barely showed any tricks to anyone the whole day and none to us. We figured we'd lure one of your escapist illusions at least this way." One of the boys farther in the back managed to contain his snickering to reply.</p><p>"Yeah, it's all for the sake of our studies." Another joined the other's side.</p><p>This was of no use. These guys appeared to have little care for genjutsu class, notably much less so than kids of similar age cared about math. Mana was not aware that her preferred subject was held in such major discontent. Then again, it was a high difficulty for a very subtle reward type of subject. Study as hard as they may have, these kids would not have most likely barely been able to weave an illusion together, except the more textbook kind, the likes that Mana used to focus on as a kid.</p><p>"I'm getting a lot of hate for genjutsu here…" the magician smiled as she decided to try another approach. "You guys just really don't want to study genjutsu today, do you?"</p><p>"Nope! It's a lame-ass subject for losers!" Someone in the increasingly unruly crowd of second-years pointed out.</p><p>"How so?" Mana pressured the kid to stick to his position and base it.</p><p>"Well… It's useless. What are you going to do with it against a seasoned ninja? Show them some horror show? Get real! Real ninja aren't afraid of anything, no way some image or creepy sounds are gonna distract their rock-hard focus. In that time a strong ninjutsu user can hit someone with a fireball or a hurricane. A goddamn hurricane!" the kid did his best representing the most popular position on the matter.</p><p>"That's even if someone does not dispel the illusion." Another much more contained voice came from a girl in gothic clothes who received a piledriver right into the make-up box that morning, judging from the looks of the young soul.</p><p>"Alright then. Maybe you guys do have a case, care to bet it on a game?" Mana grinned. The magician moved her hands in a heart-shaped motion as decks of cards appeared sprawled out in her hands. Using both of her hands to shuffle both decks simultaneously through inhumanly fast motions and nimbleness of her wrists and her fingers, Mana slammed the decks on the desk.</p><p>"Pffft, fine!" Some tall, for his age, pale and slim kid who did not speak before this moment in that class decided. He stepped up to Mana's desk.</p><p>"The rules are simple. We'll play a hand. If you win – you guys are free to go and Tori-san will hang my skin to dry on her wall. If I win – you study this subject to the best of your abilities, at least as long as I'm substituting Tori-san." Mana suggested.</p><p>"Whatever, I can dispel illusions, you know. Something elementary like card tricks can't be too tough to break." The kid grinned before cutting the decks a bunch of times and dealing the hands to both him and Mana.</p><p>"We'll see…" Mana left it ominous with a soothing ring of her voice.</p><p>"Pffft, check this out, I've got three kings!" the kid yelled out before slamming his hands on the table. Mana raised her hand a little, preparing to reveal hers but the kid stopped her. "I know how this thing goes. You did some lousy trick that will disguise your cards as four kings or something. Because we're playing with two decks – that's fully possible."</p><p>"Oh?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, let me do a little check then…" the kid weaved a hand seal and focused his chakra into a solitary burst. As a sensor, Mana was impressed to an extent. The kid was gifted with naturally strong enough chakra resources to break from the lowest ranking illusions even at his age.</p><p>"Well then, have you dispelled my trick?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, show me the cards!" the kid threw his fist forward only to have his mouth shoot agape upon gazing his eyes at five aces in Mana's hands.</p><p>"B-But I…" the kid muttered with a weak tone.</p><p>"Dispelled an illusion? Sure, if I cast any. You just wasted chakra breaking an illusion I never cast. That shows you're incapable of seeing through deception and telling it from an illusion. Your breathing and almost critical remaining chakra betray you to be beaten before a fight even starts. You've done yourself in." Mana grinned after tossing her hand on a table and then spontaneously tossing another hand of five more aces that appeared to pop into her clutch from thin air, as far as these kids were concerned.</p><p>"Never play card games with a stage magician," Mana advised the kid.</p><p>"T-That's cheating!" the kid tried his best to recover from having lost his classmates' souls to having to study their hardest.</p><p>"It is. And you walked into it knowing that it was but not listening to the voice in the back of your head that told you that. You kept silencing that little voice, thinking you will win because, surely, I'll use illusions to trick you and surely you'll just break them. It's a good thing this isn't tactics and strategy class or I'll have failed you and left you after class." Mana grinned. "Now, how about you open your textbooks and cash my win in?"</p><p>Tricking kids into studying through their inability to resist gambling was beyond dirty, but as long as it wasn't murder and ended up serving the kids, in the end, Mana only felt bad for a second.</p>
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<a name="section0435"><h2>435. The Mind Hawkers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the genjutsu class finished without any further hitches, followed by a rather nice and simple ninjutsu class for fourth-years, Mana was getting ready for the most complex part of the day. Her being late and all the small obstacles along the way suddenly started looking so small and irrelevant in the face of the tactics and strategy interrogation special course.</p><p>Kiyomi approached Mana who seated herself on a small chair by the windows, toughening herself up. The blonde did not look all that worked up about something she'd be helping Mana do at all, ironic, considering that Mana was the one with more stage experience as a magician.</p><p>Then again, this was not just her passion, how it must have been for Tori. This was a mission. Not just that, it was a mission in which Mana told herself she had to excel. Just satisfactory performance was not enough. Satisfactory people did not become Sannin and it was all too easy to start making excuses and promise oneself that just this one mission will be allowed to slide but the real effort started on the next one…</p><p>"You were just hanging around?" Mana wondered, pulling her attention from the depths of her own mind, checking it twice on what she had committed there yesterday.</p><p>"Sure, had my fill of sightseeing around the village." The Yamanaka shrugged.</p><p>"I see."</p><p>"You seem terribly nervous. I'd have thought you to be less of the worrying type and more of the natural entertainer type…" Kiyomi noted.</p><p>"Yeah, truth be told it's a bad omen to still be grilling before the big curtain call. Usually, I'd spend the last couple of hours just getting myself in a cheerful mood. This is not a magic show, I'm not here to entertain people." Mana explained her state of mind about the comparison of her shows and the special course.</p><p>"I guess. I've been taught a bunch of intelligence gathering already so I'm kind of numb already. Ditch the theory, just tell them what you found to work in your own personal experience." Kiyomi suggested. Mana recalled Kiyomi mentioning that she completed a specialized class in intelligence gathering right after Academy before getting to the gritty.</p><p>"That's the thing." Mana removed herself from the worrying attempts at gathering her mind. "How can I be sure if it's right? I don't know if I really helped Shukuba or just made things worse. The Sixth told me that, if anything, I just de-stabilized the place…"</p><p>"Even so, did the dirtbag you grilled told you anything?"</p><p>"Sure."</p><p>"Then that's all that matters, in the context of what these guys need to know. You're the goddamn Konoha's Sorceress, they'll eat everything you tell them up." The blonde shrugged. "Check that guy out, doesn't look like a student or a teacher…"</p><p>The man to which Kiyomi was referring was a middle-aged individual with a red bandana tied around his head and a rather casual, if a little poor attire. If Mana had to guess she'd have placed this guy as originating from the parts of the village where once the junkyard district stood tall. While the place was no longer the criminal empire of those draining blood from its poor inhabitants, it was still just catching up to the rest of the village.</p><p>"You must be the person Tori-san invited." Mana stood up and approached the nervous man who kept looking around and over his shoulder before acting really interested in every poster and award stuck to the various information boards on the wall. The magician was no psychologist but he did look confused and halfway informed.</p><p>"Yeah, name's Ikiro. It's great that you showed up. I…" the man spoke up before freezing and glaring Mana over as if inspecting her or having trouble believing what he was seeing. "Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to be…"</p><p>"And there he goes…" Kiyomi threw her hands up in the air.</p><p>"Yes." Mana nodded with a warm smile. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure if you knew this, Tori-san could not be here today so she entrusted me and my friend here to carry on with the course. If that's okay with you?"</p><p>"Uhmmm… Sure, I just… Wow, Konoha's Sorceress!" the man replied with a full grin and a bunch of energetic gestures.</p><p>"So, I've been planning to just give them a general rundown of the theoretical part that will be in their future tests before giving them some of my personal, more practical takes. After that, I will question you using those same observations before Kiyomi tries her approach. She's a Yamanaka, you see." Mana tried getting the nervous man into the mix of things just to soothe his worries somewhat.</p><p>"I see…" he nodded. "I'm not into this whole ninja thing, really… As far as I'm concerned the magic you show on-stage and what those ninja use is all the same kind of hogwash."</p><p>"It's not bullshit nor is it a joke, I will actually read your mind and dig deeper into what you may not be able to actively remember. It might not be always too comfortable, you know." Kiyomi warned the man. "If you don't want that, you can always just wuss out and call it quits."</p><p>"Oh, there will be no need of that. There has been plenty of questioning and "probing", as you might call it, after I "re-appeared". Plus, it's all for the sake of these kids anyway. If my misfortune may help someone, I'm all for sharing it." The man laughed out, still a bit nervous and defensive in his body language.</p><p>"Just for the record. Whatever happens to those people out there, their minds get fractures into zillions of little pieces. It's like their entire bodies are comprised of an infinite swarm of co-existing swarm minds. If you're bullshitting us about those disappearances and it's all just a fancy party story, I'll know." Kiyomi looked pretty forewarning and rather aggressive towards the man.</p><p>"Kiyomi, where did that come from? Ease up a bit, will you." Mana tried softening the situation but the two looked rather uncomfortable after Kiyomi's way of expressing her suspicions about the way in which the man ticked her off. The guest kept tagging at his collar and fixing his clothes and his headwear while Kiyomi kept trying to decide if she wanted to accuse the man of something or hide her eyes in shame.</p><p>There was a suspicious amount of duality in Kiyomi's character today…</p><p>"The kids are gathering, perhaps it is time?" the guest pointed at the classroom. Who could have known that after she spent so much time working up and over this class, by the time it actually came, Mana would feel relieved about it starting because the tension before it was getting a bit too much.</p><hr/><p>The Academy students gathered in this special course were fourth-years after all. Likely, the classes who would be taking the graduation exam in the nearest future further tightening the grip of the responsibility wrapping around Mana's neck. Had the kunoichi not been used to stage fright under intense conditions and beginning to revel in it by now, she'd have gone completely silent.</p><p>These students were behaving much more respectfully even compared to the class of fourth-years that Mana taught before, some of whom were present in this special course as well. Not every fourth-year would have been eligible for a graduation exam but some of the faces amongst the endless sea of children ringed a bell.</p><p>Teaching these people the mandatory interrogation theory course went like a butter. Mana disapproved and personally found most of the points in the course a little bit aged but those were the things these kids would be forced to answer in the graduation paper test. It would have been cruel to teach them something different and make their grades depend solely on their other answers and their practical test just because Mana disagreed with some points.</p><p>Then again, it may have aided them in practice so the true usefulness of each approach was still lost in translation…</p><p>"Any ninja who is not a member of the Yamanaka or Yoruma clan will have great difficulty successfully interrogating the subject, having to resort to torture, which in terms will tire the subject and bleed them out greatly. Obviously, a subject in such condition will be of reduced use to the skilled interrogator once they are available so weigh one's approach and the necessity of doing preliminary interrogations appropriately." Mana spoke.</p><p>"Anyone could interrogate. If I could pull it off, without torture, just common sense, anyone could do it. There are more ways to get into a person's mind, most people are surprisingly reasonable to where probing their minds may not be necessary." The magician thought to herself. As if assuring herself that she was not buying her own words.</p><p>"If there are no possibilities of summoning a skilled interrogator of the aforementioned clans, the secondary priority comes to the genjutsu users who may find great success in using illusions to penetrate their targets' minds. Interrogation-based genjutsu are easy to learn and can be picked up even in the middle of a mission. If the need arises." Mana kept on speaking, wondering if anything she was saying sounded genuine to these young people.</p><p>Her own disbelief in this interrogation theory seemed to make her undersell a little bit of the importance of her words even though the students could not stop scribbling and memorizing them. If anything, she prepared well and represented that preparation appropriately, if a little dryly.</p><p>After going into the dry and gritty but necessary detail for well over what would have filled an average lesson in the Academy Mana could finally sigh and look at Kiyomi and Ikiro at the side of the class. The first one was standing in a strict and tense stance as if in a constant mode of vigilance whereas the second was seated in a chair and kept on trembling and getting squeamish during some parts of the lesson.</p><p>"I'm not sure what your guys' stance is on practical experience but my own experience in interrogation was one of the factors that sold Tori-san on entrusting this course to me, so…" Mana appealed to the consciousness of the class. One of the fourth-years stood up in a strict, militaristic stance.</p><p>"Ma'am, please tell us all about it," He spilled it out like beans.</p><p>Before she could even begin to start shaking the foundations of the theory she just laid out for these young people, Mana gave them a little bit of the backstory without mentioning any specifics and keeping it vague while the general picture remained intact.</p><p>"As I questioned this member of the criminal syndicate, I noticed that they have been trained and prepared for the usual ninja interrogation approach. I began doubting just how useful intimidation and torture are on the field and started to look for alternative methods of interrogation. I am not implying these are the real deal or in any way superior to the theory of interrogation, I am merely suggesting they can be applied as an alternative in a dire and usually hopeless case."</p><p>The kids appeared unusually interested in what Mana had to say which was genuinely surprising to the magician. She was used to her reflections and experiences being ridiculed and looked down on as foolish musings of a naïve brat who had not yet been sufficiently broken. Now, these young minds sat here and listened to every word she had to say with completely open minds even though it often directly came into conflict with what Mana laid out for them before.</p><p>"The problem with the intimidation approach, especially early on in your careers will be that you may be able to shoot lightning bolts and play ball with planetoid sized fireballs but on the outside – you're basically children. You won't look very intimidating even to non-chakra manipulating individuals. Let alone the utter uselessness of torture in extracting the truth."</p><p>"Uselessness?" It did not take too long for one of the students to call Mana's bluff. "But it is one of the main methods of interrogation, are you suggesting that one of the core pillars of interrogation theory is useless, Sorceress-san?" Someone from the crowd inquired.</p><p>"Well, I do… I cannot for the life of me see the point and only see where torture comes short. The way I see it, if it succeeds, you will extract a pile of intel that is very shaky and unverifiable at best – it was obtained from a target under extreme pain or psychological torment. How can you be sure that the target did not merely hand the intel out to stop the pain and it is, in fact, wrong? Then again, if it fails – you will be bleeding and gravely wearing your target out, rendering him almost…" Mana stopped in an attempt to look for a better word than the first thing that came to mind.</p><p>"Useless?" someone in the audience suggested.</p><p>"No one's life is useless." Mana objected.</p><p>"Even the target's? The lives of the enemy?" A bunch of renegade voices echoed in from the audience.</p><p>"Especially the target's and the enemy's, if they were truly useless, the village would not ask you to take them. Those lives may belong to the enemy but they are distinguished enough to demand the village's and your attention and respect." The magician held herself together. The life of being questioned and ridiculed in terms of her political and social ideas has hardened her tremendously.</p><p>"But then… If torture may be as outdated and pointless as you suggest, let alone the matter of morality, how are we to extract information if we decide to delve into your practical experience, ma'am?" A familiar voice from the audience inquired.</p><p>"By either getting the target to your side or making them believe you are on theirs. I obtained all the information I needed, be it subtle nudges and hints, by offering deals and appearing to be someone who was being played by them." Mana suggested.</p><p>"I see… Getting underneath the underneath…" The voice repeated a famous quote about the ninja life from one of the more distinguished ninja novelists. A name that must have been much fresher in these young minds than it was in Mana's.</p><p>"That sounds pretty cruel, huh? And here to think I use ninjutsu to get into people's heads…" Kiyomi tried lightening the mood a bit and try to remind these kids that these were just musings on the side by someone with experience. Mana quickly caught on to her friend's thought. She may have been exposed these kids to too much of her practical experience too late in the lesson.</p><p>The memories that usually had the habit of staying for the night were the fresher ones, after all.</p><p>"True. You will not be giving back your tests for me to grade so don't expect any of what you heard from me to grant you a good score. I'd suggest you stick to the theories of the people who grade your tests, just for now." Mana winked to the audience followed by a powerful and synced laughter. The magician sighed realizing that her charisma as an entertainer pulled her out from the accusations of trying to brainwash Academy students.</p><p>"So… Let's put your experience and my own mad skills to the test then?" Kiyomi suggested after giving Ikiro an encouraging glare. The bit worried man lifted up his chair and awkwardly dragged it for a handful of meters until he positioned himself in the center of the class.</p><p>It took a brief moment for the class to die out in silence. Mana took the teacher's chair and seated herself in front of the man in a relaxed and calm, also polite position. She offered the man plenty of personal space so that he did not think about how close and imposing she was over the questions she would ask him.</p><p>"So, then… Ikiro-san, could you please tell us about the incident of your disappearance. I'm sure it would be of great use to the entire village to finally unmask the perpetrators behind this grand disappearance trick that has plagued us for years now." Mana started slow and steady.</p><p>"Ummm… I told the much scarier guys interrogating me after I resurfaced – I don't remember much. I was just doing some gardening in my small patch of land outside the village walls and then my memory just blanks out." The man shrugged.</p><p>"I see," Mana reacted with glee and gratitude. As if the man had handed her most important information. Something that appeared to interest the few observant eyes of the audience Mana caught glimpse of but also unnerve Ikiro a tad bit.</p><p>"So you don't remember anything at all then? That is rather unfortunate. I feel for what you've been through, Ikiro-san. I know you would like to help the village with all you can but, hey, you would have likely not reappeared if the people responsible didn't wipe your mind clean of their prints, right?" Mana remarked with warmth and support.</p><p>"Well… My can's not entirely empty. When I close my eyes and relax… Can I?"</p><p>"By all means,"</p><p>"When I close my eyes and relax, I can vaguely get the smell of almonds mixed with decaying flesh. The aroma of daffodils and western incense combined with the smell of human remains and animal feces. Such conflicting smells, they're probably just in my mind though…"</p><p>Mana's eyes widened. She wondered if these details ever came out to the more cynical and hardened interrogators that may not have allowed their target to relax, as per their centuries-old interrogation training.</p><p>"Hmmm, that actually sounds rather important. A trained Inuzuka with his canine partner might be able to pick up on similar scents and trace such a location." Mana crossed her arms over her chest. At that moment, she began wondering if she actually just achieved more in having the poor, scared man relax and look into what seemed as his dreams than a bunch of scarred and badass men doubting their own success over the awesome mind wipes that have been hindering them for the last months.</p><p>"What do you guys, think?" Mana looked at the audience.</p><p>A young man stood up, now that the audience was no longer in direct contradiction with Mana, they were more eager to show their faces.</p><p>"Well, he could have been lying. Without forceful physical or psychological pressure, it is tough to tell." The young man wondered.</p><p>"His body is calm, his skin is not perspiring more than it is usual, in fact, he appears to be a little chilly in this stage of early spring and he did not play with his nose, his hair or his clothes. Nor was he breathing erratically. Ikiro-san was completely relaxed. Remember, your own enhanced perceptions are sharper than any pressure you may apply in relaying if you are being told the truth or not."</p><p>"His feet are closed in and his hands are facing inwards. It is evident that he is itching to close himself up by crossing his arms over his chest as well." A young girl expressed her doubts about Mana's assessment. For someone in the middle row of the class, her observations were impressive, if a bit shallow.</p><p>"You forgot to include his usual personality into your observations. As someone who observed Ikiro-san in his neutral state, before I started talking of torture and interrogation, you may have noticed and memorized how he behaves normally. If you did – you'd have found out that he is naturally slightly introverted and tends to close his body off from the surrounding environment. Closed off body speech or other signs of duress do not always mean deceit, that is why pressure and purposeful duress on the target makes telling truth from lies even more difficult." Mana replied.</p><p>"A sign of emotional trauma from the incident, perhaps?" Another young man from the audience observed relaying his agreement with Mana's assessment over that of his colleague in studies.</p><p>"Either way, the emotional wipes are quite powerful and with my non-intrusive approach, this is likely the deepest I can get. Want to give it a try?" Mana winked at Kiyomi.</p><p>"I thought you'd never ask. You better buckle up, mister, I won't be as softcore on you as my friend." Kiyomi grinned as a playful tease that may have had the wrong and needlessly stressing effect. Given how Mana surrendered the interrogation, she expressed no doubts about her friend's approach.</p><p>It was time to see just what the Yamanaka could uncover with her mind switching abilities and her specialized intelligence training.</p>
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<a name="section0436"><h2>436. Unforeseen Consequences</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After at last being given the permission to try her approach, Kiyomi stood up and approached Ikiro. The Yamanaka took a moment to gather up her focus and achieve the required state of concentration. She was sort of a prodigy in using the Mind Transmission jutsu to the point where she did not require to say the name of the technique, just weave the handseals but this technique felt completely different.</p><p>It was something newer in Kiyomi's arsenal or, at the very least, rarely used, even if learned a long time before.</p><p>Kiyomi placed her hand on Ikiro's head, the curious eyes of her target moved into a cross-eyed position to observe the hand placed on his head as if it inspired great curiosity in the man. Kiyomi weaved a hand seal while maintaining her stance of great concentration.</p><p>"Psycho Mind Transmission." She uttered. Immediately after the name of the technique was called out, Ikiro's eyes whited out and rolled back. Mana felt a little startled by the reaction but observing the concentration on Kiyomi's face and how it remained completely undisturbed by the result, she assumed that the technique went smoothly and that it was supposed to look like that.</p><p>It was an interesting technique. From the first sight, it seemed insanely useful as one could just probe into the minds of anyone they pleased and force the intel out of them. It was an improvement over Kiyomi's usual mind switching techniques in that there was little struggle between her consciousness and that of her target's. When inside another body, usually Kiyomi would have to converse and exert tremendous influence over their consciousness to extract the information but now the process seemed more focused and streamlined.</p><p>The more Mana observed the technique in action, the more the reasons why Kiyomi was in no hurry to get her hands on this Yamanaka hijutsu became clearer. It had little to no combat use at all, the target needed to be already subdued or not a threat to the user in any way for the jutsu to be used. Also, despite the more mastered approach to intelligence extraction, it was a still a combat of wills, even if it did seem like more of a matter of time and not a clash of minds as to if the information was drawn out.</p><p>The silence and the monotony of the process were beginning to become apparent even to Mana. The magician was usually a tremendously patient individual seeing how she easily got herself lost in meditation all the time. Had it not been for the hundreds of eyes of kids from the classroom Mana would not have minded the calm and static image of Kiyomi standing over Ikiro's seated body without any motion at all.</p><p>Just the same concentration. Just the same static and strained face… No. Sweat began running down Kiyomi's forehead. The magician reached out into the duo by sending out the impulses of her sensory ability that felt by now more like her natural sense than a technique, just an extension of her body and mind.</p><p>Usually, Mana liked keeping her sensory restrained, unless it was needed. When inside a village there were scary and overwhelming chakra signatures everywhere. Every time Mana felt up a signature of a jounin or Hanasaku or Lord Sixth it would have felt like floating in the vacuum of space in front of a spiraling center of a galaxy. The blinding flashes of light, the overwhelming pressure would have overwhelmed Mana's mind completely and instantly knocked her out.</p><p>For that reason the magician felt a little worried when reaching out but almost instantly, as she did so, she felt a problem. Kiyomi's chakra was blazing up. Like the girl was engaged in some sort of a limit-breaking battle when she was just standing in place. Ikiro's chakra, usually just a grain of sand that barely even registered in Mana's sensory range remained minuscule and almost undetectable until Mana narrowed down the frequency she picked up on.</p><p>The magician's eyes opened up and she gasped. Before she could act, however, Ikiro's body lit up with a purple emanating aura that blasted a shockwave in all directions. The force of impact locked Mana in place and forced her to fight for every inch of movement and the very act of remaining on her feet felt like a grand victory. The kids all reacted in an instant, using the tables and chairs to cover up from the shockwave and using the structure of the Academy itself as cover.</p><p>Their eyes, whenever the curious heads of the students peeked out through the cover, were fixed on Ikiro. Something that alarmed Mana.</p><p>"They're seeing the chakra he's emanating…" She realized, gasping in horror as she did so. Usually, chakra was visible and sensed only by sensors. It would have taken an immensely dense and powerful show or a physical manifestation of it binding with the natural elements for it to become visible like this.</p><p>Sometimes an emotional disturbance of great importance caused one's chakra to leak out on a grand scale but it was more evident from the side effects it caused on the environment than the manifestation of chakra itself. This was getting out of control!</p><p>A powerful explosion sent Mana flying and out through the wall of the Academy building. Any normal ninja her rank would have grunted in pain, writhed around just to let the beatings all over their body circulate with the blood in their veins and then keep going. The sheer explosive might of the blast was too quick for Mana to remove her blocks from abusing chakra augmentation, the girl realized something was off from her fading consciousness.</p><p>Everything went black…</p><hr/><p>Mana felt the cold and freshening sensation that was all too familiar to her from during her mission to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss – the Mystical Palm jutsu healing the damage caused to her body. It felt so blissful all of itself, so nostalgic and peaceful. Mana could have stayed down like this and just slept forever it seemed…</p><p>"Kouta…" she heard her own voice whimper. Something feminine and loud but unintelligible returned, ringing inside her mind like the ripples of disturbed water and snapping the magician back to reality and forcing her wide awake.</p><p>"Thank God, I thought you were delirious or something…" a middle-aged woman in a chuunin vest and a white cloak sighed in relief. The sight of the woman's long and fluffy dark red curls reminded the magician immediately of this woman being the Academy nurse. All around her were injured children and chuunin in military gear were evacuating people from the building.</p><p>"Kiyomi…" Mana grunted, sitting up. To stop the ringing pain and the bloody screams screeching in her ears as she did so, the magician placed her hand, covered in dried blood, against her forehead.</p><p>"Something's wrong…" the nurse uttered, looking up in what could only be described as despair. "The Yamanaka girl is still in there with that devilish man. Why did we let him back in…" the woman lamented.</p><p>Mana wanted to calm her down, to try and plead that she was merely speaking out of the emotional shock but this was a time beyond such preachy moral speeches. While Mana genuinely believed that every person who reappeared after the disappearance incident deserved a place back in the village, this was not a time when one was to share and exchange opinions.</p><p>"Casualties?" Mana inquired.</p><p>"Y-Yeah, these kids don't know chakra augmentation, they're just students. It would have been a bloodbath in there if the unlucky ones did not just evaporate. I couldn't even approach the place in twelve meters…" the nurse replied with bitterness in her voice. "Ten years. Ten years working here, ten years seeing kids learn the art of murder and this is the first time I've actually had casualties…"</p><p>"It's not your fault. It's…" Mana clenched her fists. The wounds and the cuts from the debris as well as the fractured bones and the concussion she had may have been treated but the emotional wreckage was something no medical ninjutsu could treat. "You did not know. I…"</p><p>"It sure as hell isn't yours. Who was supposed to know something like this would happen?" the nurse looked up at the malicious and corrupting dark and cocoa brown chakra visually leaking out from the classroom wreckage above.</p><p>Three ninja blurred in and behind Mana. These were all powerful enough ninja to use the Body Flicker Technique. They looked pretty worn out and a bit physically injured themselves. All three of them were jounin, from what Mana knew of them.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress, I'm not sure if you remember me…" the man that Mana had met under multiple occasions, starting from the time in her first big brawl as a ninja, the whole affair in the junkyard district and the Chuunin Exams named Dorimi inquired.</p><p>"Yeah, you saved my life twice. Tough to forget, Dorimi-san." Mana bowed to the man and his two female partners feeling a bit nauseous as she did so.</p><p>"Ah, I see, well, this is Shibari and Musha. They are my fellow Konoha jounin and we're trying to deal with this situation." Dorimi explained in a rather odd sense of calm and a slow-paced tempo not quite befitting the dire situation at hand. "It would appear that the source of the incident is still inside the classroom and… Well… We cannot penetrate the force that's pushing us out from there. The leaking chakra is too strong."</p><p>"Kiyomi…" Mana whimpered to herself, wondering if her friend was even alive at this point. She was right in the epicenter of the blast and the magician was hit way too hard to recall the precious moments right after the first blast wave of the chakra and if it affected the Yamanaka at all.</p><p>"We kind of got the general clue about what happened from the kids. We are not here to blame you or your friend, you're the victims here, as far as we're aware…" Shibari added to Dorimi's words.</p><p>"From what we understand, you are a friend of Kiyomi's, you were on a team together before and during the Chuunin Exams, correct?" Dorimi tried to verify if he recalled things as they were.</p><p>"Yeah. God, all those kids…" Mana felt completely crushed and hopeless and yet it somehow felt like she was still keeping the true weight of this incident behind her. Like when things are resolved, she would see the true weight of what just happened hit her and things would never be like they were again.</p><p>"We're sorry about that. We are certain that there were some casualties but most of the classroom managed to avoid lethal injuries by covering behind their tables. They are made from the Senju trees, after all, they're some tough stuff, very chakra resistant." The third jounin, a woman Mana remembered seeing earlier in the Administration building by the Hokage's office, placed her hand on Mana's shoulder trying to calm her down.</p><p>"I want to help you guys, is there anything I can do?" Mana raised her tearful eyes at the three jounin who awkwardly looked at each other. What could she possibly help them with? These three were far beyond Mana's range of abilities and their experience and knowledge were second to none. Mana was just a kid, a bumped up and bruised one at that… For all her disdain for the word and the concept, the girl truly felt usele…</p><p>"Actually… That is why we wanted to talk to you. I've dealt with trap seals and mental blocks before. I have a theory that it may be possible for you to help us enter the classroom because of how close you are with Kiyomi." Musha suggested.</p><p>"We know it's difficult for you and that you're still recovering from your injuries and that that's your friend in there but…" Dorimi tried softening the suggestion as if there was any need for it.</p><p>"If there's any way I can help and free Kiyomi, I'll do it." Mana interrupted the jounin. The three looked at each other before nodding and leading the magician away from the yard where the injured received first aid and back into the nightmare scenario inside the Academy.</p><p>The long halls were now completely empty with dreamish mist floating all over them. The strange emanating gloom, combined with the malicious and alarmingly visible chakra that covered the area made the entire Academy sink in a hue of dark purple with breaks of light brown whereas light managed to enter through the windows to outside.</p><p>Combined with the shattered windows, complete, grave silence and the eerie feelings of grim and solitude whenever one went, no matter how much company they had with them added up a dreadful harmony of lethargic death seeping all over in the air.</p><p>It took remarkable strength to proceed even on the lower floors, where the whatever odd phenomena that affected the Yamanaka and Ikiro did not reach. The place felt covered with an oddly terrifying sheer pressure of air. The pure chakra that emanated through the halls seeped right into one's bones and forced feelings onto them that were unfamiliar to even the most hardened ninja.</p><p>Mana wanted to wonder if this was always the case whenever jounin were needed, seeing how it was to be her next goal on her road to becoming a Sannin, but the severity of the situation, as well as the sense of dread lingering around her, prevented her from doing so. Whatever effects drifted about the Academy halls increased exponentially with each step closer to the doomed classroom.</p><p>Mana's eyes widened as the shapes of chakra that appeared to float in gaseous, the mist-like state began taking more corporeal forms. Appearing like mangled and crushed child bodies that reached out for her from all around her, eyes whited out, faces that looked clawed off by savage beasts and shrieks to make one drive senbon into each of their ears so that they would never have to listen to the ghastly noises anymore.</p><p>The magician was experienced with illusions enough to close her eyes and form a sensory bubble around her. She tried to let the sensory bubble filter out the horrific sights and noises around her. Maybe these actually were the dead children crawling out from their premature, shallow graves reaching out, the better odds were that the odd reaction caused appalling illusions to appear.</p><p>"T-This… W-What is this!?" Mana heard a scream right beside her. It broke her concentration, the magician opened her mind only to see Shibari running off all by herself. The woman was so fast, right after Mana's eyes reached her back to see her moving away she was gone the very next instant.</p><p>"Stop, goddamn it, stick together!" Dorimi commanded. He was holding himself tremendously well. Mana was surprised to see someone with seemingly no skill in genjutsu being able to concentrate and maintain their composure so well.</p><p>"Nooooo!" another petrifying scream reached the two from the right, signaling Musha's own inner problems overcoming and breaking her will. Whatever these two women were seeing broke even their hardened and experienced wills.</p><p>"Goddamn it, these two must have some nasty skeletons in their closets…" Dorimi grit his teeth in desperation and anger. He realized that it was up to him to make the shots now and that he had to decide if the two were to continue on their way or if they would have been better off splitting apart and finding the two women before something horrible happened to them too.</p><p>"Can you subdue them?" Mana wondered. "Physically if needed?"</p><p>"They've been out on more field missions than me, I cannot imagine what nightmares have been brought back for them to freak out this way but… Yes, I think so. As long as their worst fears are there to distract them, I think I can use that to my advantage." Dorimi nodded.</p><p>"You need to find them and stop them from hurting themselves or each other. We've no idea what they'll appear to themselves as if they run into one another and they have been completely broken. Hold nothing back, take them out as quickly and efficiently as possible, then rejoin me." Mana asked the man.</p><p>"What will you do?" Dorimi wondered.</p><p>"What you brought me here to do – get into that classroom." Mana declared. "My friend is in there."</p><p>"These… Visions… They'll become worse the closer you get, you do know that, right?" Dorimi looked worried.</p><p>"Sure. But the worst nightmare for me would be to leave Kiyomi in there scared and blaming herself over those children. We don't know what else this incident will do. No one else must get hurt. That is the only way for these nightmares to stop." Mana replied after a moment of hesitation where she herself questioned her ability to tread forward.</p><p>It was likely because of that moment, filled not with foolish arrogance and desire to prove oneself capable to one's superiors but genuine self-reflection and deep thought that Dorimi picked up on that the jounin nodded and ran off after his broken colleagues.</p><p>Mana just hoped that the women would be in any condition to assist her afterward. There was no possible way for her to go through this alone. Looking on ahead at the screaming children digging and breaking their way through the tiles on the walls, the lockers, the vents on the ceiling and the wooden floorboards, Mana closed her eyes and ventured forth.</p><p>She did her best to form the sensory bubble again, just wide enough to let her perceive her surroundings but not wide enough to touch into whatever the source of the incident was. It was to no avail, the magician's eyes shot wide open and trembled as if she was seizing. Her mouth gaped open with cold vapor coming out from her when Mana hyperventilated in shock and panic.</p><p>Just the air around the hallway leading up to the accursed classroom was too dense with chakra not to make her heart try to break its way out of the girl's ribcage just from catching a whiff of it. Not to mention the constant air pressure that would have popped titanium like a sheet of paper crushed in a hand.</p><p>"Come on, Kiyomi… Let me in…" Mana whispered letting another cloud of vapor out of her mouth as she pressed her hand against a dark, swirling barrier that surrounded the classroom and threatened to topple the entire Academy building.</p><p>Mana was skilled in concentration and illusions enough to resist these illusions and bloodcurdling horrors all around her but she was not yet experienced enough to where the beasts under her bed would have been too macabre and ghoulish to stomach. She was just perfect for the job, just in the golden middle.</p><p>That only meant that she had the responsibility to set things right. So that the true souls of the poor children could rest… Just that, if nothing else…</p>
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<a name="section0437"><h2>437. The Fleshy Stakes-Raiser</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Standing in front of the only spiraling orb of pure chakra, emanating the same dark shroud that covered the entire building, Mana recalled Musha's words when the team of jounin decided to take Mana with them.</p><p>If Kiyomi truly had some hand in causing this, Mana and her past relationship with the Yamanaka may have been crucial in ceasing this. Maybe Kiyomi was corrupted by whatever remnants of the darkness that caused these disappearances still lingered in Ikiro's mind, maybe Ikiro took over Kiyomi's mind after the Yamanaka opened a link between their minds or maybe it was some combination of the two.</p><p>Whether there was a hint of a malicious plot at hand, or if it was just a mournful calamity that befell the village upon the sections of a dark and tortured mind getting unlocked, Mana could have been the only way to stop this.</p><p>"Meiko…" Mana's lips whimpered. Sure, Kiyomi liked Meiko in a much different way than the friendship between the magician and the Yamanaka heiress worked but the blacksmith was far away and unavailable at the moment. It would have been selfish to try and shift the responsibility for stopping all of this on someone else's shoulders just because technically they would be better suited for the job, even though waiting for them would cause Kiyomi and Ikiro much more pain.</p><p>Yes, Kiyomi needs to know that this Mana reaching out to her. The magician pressed her hand against the barrier without any force or an attempt to break it and enter. She just concentrated the flow of chakra to her palm, like she would have if she tried to set off a seal she had placed. Sure, the magician had nothing to do with this barrier and only a little to do with this entire event but that was beside the point.</p><p>What was important was that if Kiyomi had any hints of control over this and her own mind, like a spider on an extensive web spreading out wide, she'd have felt the dragging on the strings somewhere and turned her attention. That was the theory, anyway…</p><p>Mana just stood by the barrier channeling chakra into it in small quantities for a short while to no end. The spiraling orb of malice did not become less dense, it did not just cease its destruction and the fleshy and nightmarish corruption covering the entire Academy building did not just magically go back to its source and free the sanctuary of education it had tainted.</p><p>Nobody answered.</p><p>"Let me in, Kiyomi!" Mana called out with a plead. "Just let me in and give me a sign if I can help. At least let me know if you can hear me. Just that… Just tell me I'm not standing here preaching to myself."</p><p>Nothing. For people that were exceedingly fast, those jounin took a frightening while to get their minds together. Then again, even if Dorimi did manage to subdue and calm his colleagues down, what possible success could they hail approaching even closer to the heart of their dread? With each step, with each point of space one's glare extended to the direction of the evil's heart, the abyss looked back with more petrifying nightmares to swing back with.</p><p>"Missy, why did you not save us?!" The melted abominations that resembled their innocent childish selves less and less with each passing moment began their relentless assault on Mana's psyche again.</p><p>Their hands reached out from the fleshy walls and their skeletal and sharp images began forming from the bony protrusions. The constructs, resembling the digestive tract or organs that pulsed with unknown liquid flowing inside them, full of unholy stenches, which luckily Mana could not pick up, burst. In that way revealing some more unfortunate bodies flowing outside them with the pus they were drowning in running down the floor.</p><p>Mana screamed out as the feelings boiling inside her combined with the hideous sights and sounds these images sent her way began slowly taking over her own mind. It was so easy to think that nobody could ever corrupt you. Be as naïve as those children sitting safely in their classrooms and thinking no scary sight ever could bring fear into one's heart.</p><p>The magician threw elbow strikes back to shake off the corpses of the faceless kids she thought to have failed off of her. Her attacks became less focused on not letting their nails dig into her eyes or their rotten mouths reaching right up her ears to have their blood freezing screams echo more effectively in the magician's head. These were selfish and greedy strikes, their core motivator was just the self-centered desire to stop all those nightmares. To snuff all these abominations out and get just a moment of silence.</p><p>No more begging, no more accusations! Please, no more. Then, in just a single point in time, it all just stopped and Mana found herself staring at her own shaking hands from the undignified position, kneeling and almost succumbed to the horrors around her, sent straight from the heart of hell with love.</p><p>"Three goddamn jounin and a chuunin can't handle this?" Kusagoro spat aside in disdain. The man must have just recently come back from a mission from somewhere far abroad or just a stealth mission for he wore the black coat over his flak jacket that was used for stealth or warmth-providing purposes.</p><p>"This is… Be careful…" Mana huffed, she felt a pulsing sensation in her temples and upon touching her own face she saw blood all over her hands. It felt and looked pretty real, she must have started clawing her own face off at some point.</p><p>"You're telling me this? If it was not for me dispelling the illusion for you, my boy would've never allowed himself to get distracted by you ever again." The jounin growled before walking up to the orb of malice that the events inside were producing and spinning like a cocoon of the world's creepiest crawly.</p><p>"This shit's expanding. It's reaching out above the fastest but soon it might infect the other buildings too…" Kusagoro let Mana in on what's been going on outside. Just for how long has she been really fighting off these nightmares?</p><p>"You're really amazing to be able to resist these visions, Kusagoro-san." Mana commended the man who just gave the orb of malice that kept everyone out a good and honest punch. His chakra control was a whole different matter entirely. He was perfectly capable of restraining his most honest attempt at using his serious strength to a punch that barely even shook the ground beneath his feet.</p><p>"I guess it will take a bit more than a good beatin'." The man lamented with a self-reflection. "It's pretty easy to do something like this when you can expel a whole lot of chakra through your skin and reset your flow. It's not something my boy would be able to pull off just yet but the real Jugo aren't to be underestimated."</p><p>"I think it is getting easier to fight the nightmares off now," Mana noted. Using her sensory she felt a greatly reduced pressure in the air around her as well as the greatly empowered ability to keep the nightmares off from manifesting whenever they peeked at her from a dark corner.</p><p>"You're goddamn right, that's cause whatever bastard's causin' this is scared shitless now that I'm here to kick their ass!" Kusagoro growled through his teeth, trying to throw a couple more blows at the barrier before Mana noticed that the heart of malice really was expanding. It had grown a good cubical meter wider since she had come here. Whatever this event was, it threatened to cover the entire village and there was no reason to think it would just stop there…</p><p>"No, I think it is because there are more minds here to resist it. It appears to be fighting all of us at once, trying to corrupt all of us by itself. That means it has a solitary mind." Mana pointed out.</p><p>"You mean we should have those scaredy-cat chuunin from outside doing evacuation and damage control rushing in?" Kouta's father growled back at her.</p><p>"No, they would be corrupted almost instantly. I thought that my perfect balance of experience, concentration and innocence was enough to fight the illusions off but… I was wrong. It barely took the event a minute to corrupt two skilled jounin. Panicking and rampaging chuunin all over the village are the least of what we need right now." Mana sighed.</p><p>"So how the hell do we get in!?"</p><p>"Musha-san thought that my past friendship with Kiyomi, one of the two people inside that room would help pass through the barrier of the heart. It did not appear to have any effect, applying chakra to the barrier did nothing and talking to it just made it… Angry." Mana scratched her chin. It was difficult to think with all the nightmares continuously testing her mental fortitude and their ability to break through Mana's mental defenses and manifest again.</p><p>Kusagoro pointed his palm at the round barrier as it shifted into a cannon shape. "Have you tried a good blastin'?" He asked before the chakra concentrated in his cannon fired off, making Mana jump back and cover up so that the blast wave and the kickback did not actually injure her.</p><p>"Shit…" the man cursed when the smoke cleared out only to reveal the barrier and its malicious chakra still rotating around like it was before with the fleshy bits he had blasted off regenerating at an alarming rate and beginning to cover up the barrier.</p><p>"It's a defensive reaction, you pissed it off." Mana noticed.</p><p>"Could you women get off my back and stop blaming me for everything!?" Kusagoro snapped back at her.</p><p>"Could you stop blasting and punching everything then?" Mana objected.</p><p>"I have one job and one thing I'm good at. That's the thing I'm gonna do, that's the thing I'm paid to do. You're paid to think and do your silly tricks and shit, you're the one doing a lousy job at solving this problem, making me resort to my thing." Kusagoro turned his attention and his ire at Mana, changing it away from the barrier.</p><p>Was he serious!? Mana was the VIP in this event, she was supposed to interact with the barrier if the team of jounin supposed to protect her… What was she doing? Why was she getting this angry and being this counterproductive? Unless... The corruption was beginning to grow stronger again as its size increased. Soon Kusagoro's presence will no longer be a soothing factor and the nightmares will become to pick up again. Whatever time limit this had, it just got tighter.</p><p>A sound and sense of air blowing by alerted the two ninja of the arriving party. Finally, Dorimi managed to catch up to and calm the freaked out colleagues of his. Something that was much easier to do once Kusagoro joined the fray. The women also looked to be in a mostly uninjured state, neither Dorimi nor they themselves have inflicted too much damage on themselves. They did appear a tad bit winded though.</p><p>"About time this wussy got a handle on a bunch of women…" Kusagoro mocked his colleague, giving Dorimi a derisive scowl.</p><p>"Aww, why do you have to be so mean to me all the time, Kusagoro?" Dorimi sighed with regret in his voice. While the man's presence in the building helped him deal with the illusions and subdue the other jounin, something told Mana that Dorimi would rather have dealt with the situation without his ex-ANBU colleague.</p><p>"Kusagoro?" Kouta's father raised an eyebrow, turning halfway at the smaller and more frailer colleague of his.</p><p>"Kusagoro-san." Dorimi quickly fixed himself.</p><p>"I'll never get why you let him bully you around…" Shibari smacked her forehead looking embarrassed by her friend's behavior.</p><p>"It's okay, Kusagoro-san deserves our respect. He has been a high-ranking Black Ops member, after all." Dorimi tried to play it off.</p><p>"Yeah, I wonder whatever happened to that?" Shibari sassed the bullying jounin by raising an eyebrow and leaning his way. It was the sass that got completely ignored by Kusagoro as he stone-walled the lean on him by just standing still and not flinching whatsoever.</p><p>"Guys, please calm down. I think that the chakra that's coming off from this heart is corrupting our minds on a more subtle level as well as causing these illusions. Kusagoro-san also informed us that it is expanding. That means that it will get stronger and eventually his presence here will not be as useful as it is right now." Mana relayed the information she had put together. It looked to have gotten the jounin in line.</p><p>"I am impressed, Mana. You have managed to fend off these illusions rather well for someone your rank. You also have been gathering useful intel as well while we were compromised. You will make a fine jounin one day…" Musha praised the magician's performance.</p><p>"As grateful as I am, I could not have overcome these illusions without Kusagoro-san. Him splitting the corruption's influence into more pieces assisted me greatly." Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Ugh, don't encourage him…" Shibari shook hers but in a much less dignified way.</p><p>"Yeah, that's right. After saving all of you losers, I tried gave this wall here a fine beating!" Kusagoro pointed his thumb at himself with a boastful grin.</p><p>"Any success?" Musha looked at him.</p><p>"None…" the man's boastful balloon of a chest turned saggy and quickly deflated.</p><p>"Awww, you don't say…" Shibari cheeked the man again.</p><p>"Shut up, you witch! Didn't you hear that we're on a time limit here? If you have nothing useful to add, better keep your trap shut!" Kusagoro raised his fist up and stepped up to tower in front of the woman.</p><p>This was not good. It appeared that the natural differences between these four were only being made worse by the corrupting essence of the evil chakra projected from the heart of malice.</p><p>"I have an idea. I can't believe I only thought of it right now!" Mana raised her index finger as her serious grimace turned bright. "Kusagoro-san, could you make some clones of yourself and split yourself into more minds for the malice to fight?"</p><p>"Easy!" Kusagoro backed down from his stare-down with Shibari and placed his hands into hand seal position.</p><p>"Please have in mind, Kusagoro-san, you need to make corporeal clones and to make a number large enough to greatly weaken the spreading corruption in its current state." Mana tried helping the man but he just disrupted his concentration to brush her off with the back of his hand.</p><p>"Get off my back…" he quietly grumbled. "I know what I'm doing…"</p><p>"That'd be a first…" Shibari crossed her hands over her chest.</p><p>"What was that!?" Kusagoro lost his cool again. It was becoming painfully evident that whatever strain his presence used to place on the corruption shortly before was currently greatly reduced. Soon the nightmares would resurface and reduce their ranks again. With how powerful the corruption was getting with each passing moment, there was no telling how powerful these new nightmares would become.</p><p>"Please, Kusagoro-san, focus." Mana pleaded.</p><p>"Maybe we should all make clones? I can create Earth Style corporeal clones too, Shibari can make Water Style clones and Musha can definitely use Shadow Clones." Dorimi wondered.</p><p>"No, remember that splitting your chakra resources and your consciousness will weaken you. By now we've been here long enough to have a significant strain on our wills, plus, Kusagoro-san is the most powerful of us." Mana tried shutting the initiative of her superior down. Seeing how this was her idea, to begin with, also how unwilling Dorimi was to argue, the jounin backed down.</p><p>"Heard that?" Kusagoro grinned before having copies of him split-off from his body. This looked to be more of a Jugo clan technique that shaped his body that the Shadow Clones Jutsu that Mana asked him to use but it did split him into three more copies.</p><p>"I'm sure Mana was just too polite to tell you that you are also the least useful to us if you are to be taken out…" Musha added. "Your absolute strength focused fighting style does not aid us in any way in this predicament. I have a feeling that the mind will be our battlefield and that the battle shall be resolved not with fists but through inner strength."</p><p>Feeling a greatly alleviated pressure sieging the depths of her mind, Mana stepped up to the wall of the heart and pressed her hand against it again. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough to channel a greater amount of chakra than she did before while reaching out for Kiyomi's mental links that may have been out there with her mind.</p><p>With a ghastly shriek, followed by an almost liberating shattering, the spiraling orb of chakra seeping with pure darkness and corruption toppled down. Having found a brief moment to enter the doomed classroom, Mana, and the jounin quickly charged in.</p><p>The grisly sight they found inside was just about what any of them expected to find having entered the place. It was a den of all the corruption that spread from it to the outside and by now turned the Ninja Academy into a sky-reaching tower of innards, eyes, bones, and teeth, tentacles and other organic oddities while shooting out the drab and pernicious essence of it at the intensity of a quasar.</p><p>Kiyomi stood atop of the kneeling Ikiro, similarly to how Mana last saw her. That being said, that was where the similarities ended. Ikiro's body was beginning to break-down as he appeared to have been covered by some odd cells all over. It was as if some sick artist had broken down the man's body to its most elementary and fundamental pieces and depicting him of what he was made of on a molecular level.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress, on the other hand, was standing tall and covered in dark, rising and emanating chakra that was cloaking her entire body. The aura cloaking her was so intense that her silhouette appeared to be nothing more but a bunch of dark shades of colors cutting into the eye of the beholder with the sharpness of its glow. Only the Yamanaka's eyes were completely white and glowing like two white holes – the only feature that still remained of the girl's face. Her hair floated in the air like tendrils of a cosmic deity that was looking to gorge on anything they touched.</p><p>With a mere sight of the dark entity Kiyomi had become, Mana froze in place, the loud and painful grunts from behind and beside her suggested that so did the jounin with her. The weight of Kiyomi's glare became too heavy. Mana could feel her consciousness closing down, she was slipping, falling into a black void filled with white beacons of light that were lightyears away and looked like but stars in the distance.</p><p>This felt just like the time she once nearly died.</p>
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<a name="section0438"><h2>438. The Great Mental Jailbreak</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This entire horror show was reaching new depths with each passing second. To someone who tried operating with a sharp and rational mind, like Mana, every moment provided new challenges and stacked new barriers on top of that noble venture.</p><p>The company of jounin Mana came with were nowhere to be seen, whatever Kiyomi had become after this long of dwelling in the very center of this otherworldly corruption was staring right at her in all of her panic-inducing abstract glory and the magician could not stop questioning her mind about every choice and thought flashing through it. Which ones were rational and which ones were influenced by the malice around her seeping inside her every cell and soaking them from within.</p><p>"Kiyomi, we need to leave. A bunch of kids had died because of what happened and you staying inside Ikiro-san's mind is…"</p><p>Before Mana could finish the realization hit her that the entity she was speaking to was no longer in front of her. Lead through mere instinct alone, Mana rolled forward as her body was electrified by the fear that, instead of locking her down in absolute panic, fueled her movements.</p><p>Why did Kiyomi attack her? Mana glared at the levitating unearthly entity of chakra that used to be her friend and the abyssal whites that illuminated the darkness' face stared right back at Mana. Within instants, the being moved up right behind Mana. Had the magician not foreseen this attack, she would have been hit.</p><p>These movements… It did not appear like whatever Kiyomi had become was moving through whatever distant, cosmic field that they have moved to. She was phasing in and out, almost like moving instantaneously. Despite her movements from one location to another happening in a literal instant, the time before she reappeared and delivered a hit had some sort of a delay. That brief span, however small, was the only hope Mana had to survive if the intentions of this entity were violent.</p><p>"Why did you attack me? I'm your friend, don't you remember?" Mana tried pleading with Kiyomi again. The girl was smarter than to try and measure the exact signature of chakra of this entity. It would have been helpful in determining where exactly she warped, sure, but it carried a disadvantageous promise of being too much for any inexperienced sensor to handle.</p><p>The feminine cosmic shape extended her hand forward, the long tendrils on her head that resembled human hair in shape only began flowing backward, as if affected by an intense pushing force from the direction of Kiyomi's hand. Mana moved again, not because she saw what she was being attacked by but because she saw the signs around the attack itself – the bending space, the effects it had on the almost ethereal and made of chakra itself cloak of Kiyomi's.</p><p>"Stop attacking me, I'm trying to help you!" Mana yelled out. She decided to keep her mouth shut instead of speaking anything more than that. Her voice must have betrayed it that the magician was working really hard to avoid what seemed to summon almost no effort from Kiyomi's malicious new form.</p><p>Kiyomi cocked her fist back and drove it down. Her body kneeled like she was trying to punch an invisible ground with her fist. It was only at that moment that Mana noticed that she was not quite floating anymore. There was some invisible force holding her, like a transparent platform that kept her from sinking into the infinite void in all directions.</p><p>An invisible pressure wave lifted Mana up in the air and tore her body to shreds through sheer pressure of it alone. Instead of the rain of blood and flesh that the girl's body was torn into, a rain of flower petals scattered on the invisible platform before beginning to spiral in a shape of a pillar and reforming Mana's body again.</p><p>Mana had no choice. Not only did she have to fight back if she was to avoid death, or whatever the fate of whoever died wherever the two were was, but she also had to open her sensory up and just hope that she could control it properly. Kiyomi was attacking her with pure, invisible and perfectly controlled chakra. One required chakra sensory or some manner of chakra tracking technique to be able to perceive it and they were too powerful, too widespread and too fast for Mana to attempt and avoid without it.</p><p>The magician closed her eyes, opening her reach out and spreading her own chakra out in a manner that would touch any extending chakra signatures on the outside. It felt like walking up to the chopping block, Mana knew she was taking an almost guaranteed to kill her risk but she had no other option but to take it.</p><p>Kiyomi's chakra was massive. There was no other way to describe it but… Strangely enough, while it was comparable to that of a powerful individual far outside Mana's own chakra signature size, it was nowhere close to where it would have caused Mana significant trouble to track.</p><p>"You're not really here, are you?" Mana realized. "You've split your consciousness amongst all of our minds and attacked all of us at the same time. This image of you here is just a representation of your will invading my mind. Whatever measly amount of your strength that you spared to try and wipe me out."</p><p>The overflowing burst of light, as bright as a blazing star in the blinding abyss of the cosmos, moved again. It moved in an instant but Mana noticed something else this time around. Not only was there a brief delay after her instantaneous movement and when her body mounted an attack, but also she left trails of her awesomely powerful chakra to the direction she jumped to.</p><p>Mana leaned her body to the side to avoid a high kick from this malicious side of Kiyomi's will without wasting time to turn around and face her opponent. She did not need for that kind of a waste but it would have also significantly slowed her down to do so. Most starting out martial artists in the ninja world believed that avoiding attacks without looking behind you was a sign of superiority over your opponent when in most cases it was merely a desperate measure to try and not die.</p><p>Kiyomi's body continued to blitz and warp around, throwing slow but packing considerable force kicks at her. Just somehow, Mana had enough memories in her mind of this entity's movements, also of Kiyomi's own movements in general, to know exactly how to deal with each continued attack. Something about this icon of malice was wrong, it was holding back on top of being just a split part of Kiyomi's darkest parts.</p><p>The moves that the entity used that were its own were alien to Kiyomi, whereas the ones it extracted from Kiyomi's memory were alien to it. Therefore, no matter how it chose to show off its considerable strength and cosmos-shaking chakra, it came just a snippet too slow.</p><p>Almost like something inside it forced the entity to hold back by restricting its access to the full control of Kiyomi's body. The entity was immensely powerful but it was using its own strength and moves in a body that was untrained to perform them and alien to it.</p><p>Dodging a push kick that would have undoubtedly shoved the entity's foot right through Mana's body, the magician managed to slip in a counter-offensive of her own by slinging a handful of cards that emitted a bright blue colored cloud. Like childish candy ground into dust and tossed in the air, the substance should have slowed down anyone who breathed it in.</p><p>This thing in charge of Kiyomi's body and mind was holding back, without its wish to do so, sure, but was Mana also not doing the same? She knew that no childish, low-ranking chemistry experiment that slowed down the speed at which neurons sent signals to the brain would have worked at this moment. It did not appear that Kiyomi was controlled by someone with a nervous system and a brain, even though, the girl herself had one.</p><p>Mana attempted to reach out with her sensory to the girl, try and feel about anything specific of the chakra that gave this new malicious form shape. It was in this moment of distraction that Kiyomi disappeared again and reappeared right behind Mana. Her suffering friend let out the most crippling and loud scream from her inside after raising her hands up and blasted out a pillar-shaped expulsion of chakra from her body. One that pierced the endless vastness on both the heaven side and the lower one.</p><p>With the most fearful dash for her life, Mana just narrowly avoided the expanding pillar blast of chakra with the range of it coming dangerously close to the magician and singing some of her long hair that struggled to keep up with the girl's movement. Just before the chakra dissipated, Mana was almost sure that the attack would reach her and incinerate her completely.</p><p>As the necessity to fight back to save her mind from being emptied and Mana being left as a hollow husk grew direr, the magician began putting a plan of action together. She could not just sling techniques at this corrupted Kiyomi. Every time she stood still or concentrated on something else but reading exactly what her opponent was doing she risked certain death.</p><p>Then again, the only thing so far that proved useful in fighting this corruption was to weaken it with simultaneous relentless attacks and then apply chakra from someone intimately familiar with the source of corruption. That meant that… Kiyomi really did have some hand, willful or otherwise, to play with this crisis.</p><p>As the corrupted Kiyomi continued her restrained and jerky instantaneous warping combination attack again, Mana concentrated on fighting back once more. By now these movements of her friend were so drenched in the girl's memory that Mana could fight back on pure instinct while her mind was occupied elsewhere. For example - fighting back the chilly sensations of fear emanating from the darkness of Kiyomi's chakra.</p><p>Given how Mana's sensory was in full action now, there was no avoiding dealing with the grotesque and repugnant feeling of being subjected and surrounded by chakra that represented darkness itself. This went beyond just sensing the presence of a hardened emotional murderer. This malice was much different, more primal and while Mana was so far capable of fighting its influence off, it was just another front of the battle she had to fight in. Time was certainly not on her side.</p><p>The projectiles and manifestations of Kiyomi's chakra became sensible with Mana's sensory working as it was supposed to and no longer restrained. It manifested in masses of dark purple energy, surrounded by the crackling lightning of buff brown. Seeing what was flung her way assisted greatly in not letting her body get torn to shreds by the massive forces inside one of those attacks or spending more chakra trying to escape them with an illusion again.</p><p>Mana had to stop just mindlessly moving around and trying to avoid Kiyomi forever. This was going nowhere and if her hunch about defeating the corrupted version of her friend was right, the other jounin had no chance of breaking out by themselves. They could have weakened the split manifestations of corrupted Kiyomi's will but they would not have been able to put her down and kick her out of their mind for good.</p><p>The magician swung her hand, letting the Audra alloy wand slip out from her sleeve while she transferred a great deal of Lightning Release chakra through it. She swung the wand around, firing spheres of concentrated lightning chakra at her corrupted friend, beginning to work on weakening Kiyomi's influence on her mind so that one good push could finally get rid of Kiyomi's mental assault.</p><p>Then… The fear of thinking of what she could possibly do next was too great for Mana to occupy her thoughts with that problem.</p><p>The form of corrupted Kiyomi jerked in acknowledgment of the impact of Mana's technique, it moved back but it did not display any other shows of pain or injury. It was as if it only reacted to the mere force of the magician's push back but it had no effect other than slightly pushing her back and inconveniencing her.</p><p>Kiyomi spread her hands out wide, the cold and heinous chakra ran down all around her body, streams of it intensified until she formed an entire aura around her body before the chakra created a ball larger than her body and pushed it at Mana with a powerful shockwave created by a mere shove of her palm.</p><p>Mana raised her hand up, channeling chakra through her Audra wand as she had no time to weave any hand seals given the speed of Kiyomi's projectile. A current of wind picked up under her feet propelling the magician aside and aided her in avoiding Kiyomi's absolutely obliterating attack. The ball swooped past where the magician was covering lightyears in mere seconds and detonating somewhere far away.</p><p>The reaction of its explosion covered the entire mental dimension that the two friends were occupying in a bright purple light that forced Mana to close her eyes and cover up. While pain emanating from the bright flash of light and the searing heat from the resulting explosion troubled the magician, what the magician was more worried about was what corrupted Kiyomi would do now.</p><p>An overwhelming force hit Mana covering her entire body. This was no punch or another of Kiyomi's corrupted chakra constructs, it was something much simpler and weaker, but covering much wider space. It was a smart tactic to attack her while the entire mental dimension was sunken in the remnant chakra from the explosion, it served as a flashbang for Mana's sensory seeing how it was tough to tell Kiyomi's actions when the entire dimension was sunken in pure chakra coming off from the all-covering explosion.</p><p>A much more direct, much more powerful blow sent Mana flying in the exact opposite direction than the one where the primary shockwave sent her spiraling toward. Kiyomi used her instantaneous movement to warp right where she sent Mana flying to just so she could deliver another attack.</p><p>Mana used her free hand to drive her palm into the invisible platform holding her suspended in air to repurpose the energy of her flight into a flip that would result in landing on her feet. Once she opened her eyes, the magician could not help but be distracted by the dramatic change in the surroundings – the entire dimension was now covered in pure white with the transparent platform that held both combatants suspended now letting off a darker grey hue.</p><p>"Those attacks… They completely changed the confines of my own psyche without my input. She destroyed everything inside my own mind with a single attack. I may be the only relic of what I am left… Just a little snip of willpower and concentration." Mana thought to herself while she looked around the infinite white, lamenting the mental universe inside her own mind that was just obliterated in its entirety.</p><p>The corrupted entity began jerking as if it was seizing. Its normally cold and gloomy with ire eyes were now gaping wide as if genuinely afraid of something. It did not take Mana too long to realize what it was afraid of and what troubled Kiyomi – the other jounin were pushing back much more efficiently than Mana was. They must have been putting a considerable strain on even the mighty and seemingly infinite darkness of Kiyomi's corruption.</p><p>Now was Mana's chance!</p><p>Gripping the Audra wand in her hand, Mana lunged forward, adamant about exploiting the chance that may never come again and save her mind from complete deletion. The corrupted entity extended its hand at Mana, firing off another small sphere of chakra her way but the magician, having seen it in action once before ducked for the ground and slid under it while keeping up most of her momentum.</p><p>Mana needed one touch. Lightning began channeling through her body, a preparation for the technique she would use. There may not have been a strong enough jutsu in Mana's arsenal to break corrupted Kiyomi's will, that meant that Mana just had to fire off the strongest she had and hope for the best.</p><p>The magician stopped in her tracks and dashed back, seeing the entity raise her hands in the air and summon the same explosive chakra blast that she used before. Bolts of the dark lightning split off from the towering pillar of pure chakra, aiming to prematurely destroy Mana's resistance and delete the last remnants of the girl that remained. Moving around the bolts or leaping over them, Mana moved around and into the dissipating chakra pillar's range.</p><p>She would not risk just launching her Magical Punishment Jutsu like this. Kiyomi taught her that much, as someone who fought with fight-ending, high-risk, high-reward techniques. Every time the Yamanaka aimed to use her hijutsu she set them up, trapped her opponent and completely removed the possibility of missing. That was why Magician's Touch was in order to temporarily overwhelm and flinch the enemy before the main effort.</p><p>The recovering entity tried using some of the borrowed Kiyomi's taijutsu moves against Mana as a last-ditch effort to stop the magician's mad rush. A vault over corrupted Kiyomi with a backhand slam from her wand to avoid the nerve-striking chop. The lightning chakra for Magician's Touch started surging in Mana's body, building up with each moment but she needed more time, a second felt like an eternity with so much at stake.</p><p>A lean under corrupted Kiyomi's high kick. A roll to the side to avoid her jumping kick after a warp away, trying to catch Mana in her ducking position. Mana wrapped her legs around the entity's chopping arm to swing back like a monkey from a branch. The moment her feet landed on the grey floor, Mana repurposed her momentum into another forward dash. The entity tried forcing its extended hand through Mana's gut but the magician saw it through. She had trained with Kiyomi too much in the Yamanaka resort not to recognize the gut-pinching nerve strike.</p><p>Using the extended hand as a vault, Mana twisted her lower boy into an improvised swinging kick to the entity's jaw before leaping atop its shoulders and rushing at its head with her palm strikes just to disorient the entity for as long as she'd be able to. Before corrupted Kiyomi could recover, Mana slipped down, using her feet to push off of the entity back and send it tumbling. At the final moment of touching the Yamanaka Mana set it off.</p><p>Magician's Touch required Mana to stay still, not to command any new movements but over time she had learned to overcome that limitation by setting the movement before setting off the technique and then stiffing up her body to use it, after which point natural laws of physics finished the sequence of events for her. After Mana completed her evasive roll she stood up to the sight of the entity frozen in its tracks and crackling with lightning that was transferred through its body and paralyzing it.</p><p>Before it could recover, Mana began channeling her finishing technique. The magician extended her hand forward, still clutching to her wand while the gathered up lightning flowed through her body and channeled through the wand into a fearsome beam that hit corrupted Kiyomi right in the chest.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment Jutsu!" the girl chanted out.</p><p>"This is what I've learned from you, Kiyomi. I will use this knowledge to stop you from hurting anyone else." Mana declared with a melancholic tone while the entity dissipated together with the white dimension of the magician's own mind. Her eyes opened only to face the nightmare she met after entering the classroom.</p><p>Dorimi was crouched over a body laying on the floor of a woman in a black dress. Her glasses were cracked and hanging awkwardly on her face, covering only one of her two whited out eyes. A small nosebleed had run down her nostril and that was as much as a sign of life that she showed.</p><p>Kusagoro was hyperventilating on his knees, veins had popped out on his forehead and his tensed up arms. Musha appeared to have recovered affected by Kiyomi's assault the least.</p><p>"It's about time you two broke out…" The woman said after turning to Mana and Kusagoro. Had the circumstances of their awakening been less grim, she would have been smiling and used a more teasing tone.</p><p>"Y-You… Saved my ass, kid." Kusagoro breathed out heavily. He must have woken up a moment later after Mana pushed Kiyomi's influence over them back enough for the corruption to back off entirely. "Could have ended up like Shibari there…" the man clenched his fists.</p><p>A brush with one's own mortality was never a pleasant experience.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0439"><h2>439. Errors In Judgment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Perhaps I should have split my mind a little bit differently." A hollow voice rang from Kiyomi's side. The entity did not speak but in a feat that came effortlessly, she transmitted her thoughts and feelings through a powerful mental resonance.</p><p>The fact that distraught Mana most of all was that the voice in which the corrupted one spoke was undoubtedly Kiyomi's. Corrupted and twisted, much more powerful and authoritative, confident as well, but Kiyomi's nonetheless. While that suggested that her treasured friend was still in there somewhere, it also implied that some part of her friend's will may have had a more active role to play in nearly killing her.</p><p>"Well…" Kusagoro looked at Mana after standing up and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. All of the ninja affected by Kiyomi's mental assault had various bleedings on them, some bled from their noses, some from their mouths or even their eyes. Given how Shibari's state was the worst, it was a fair assumption that the degree of bleeding depended on the damage sustained by one's mental self.</p><p>Mana looked back at the man. He was looking at her so differently now. He was no longer rash and rude, that much was evident even from the way he looked at not only Mana but Dorimi and Musha as well. Perhaps after being saved by the magician delivering a powerful blow to the weakened inner self of corrupted Kiyomi, the man has come to appreciate her as a teammate and a colleague.</p><p>"You knew this girl, right? Is this her? Can she still be salvaged or do we proceed with destroying her?" Kusagoro grumbled. He really wanted that Mana would shake her head and affirm the second option. That much was for sure.</p><p>"It is her. She's just… Confused." Mana pleaded the man with her eyes not to destroy her friend. Maybe killing her would end this calamity and perhaps it was the quickest and the most efficient way but the magician was almost ready to risk her career and lie if she had to, to prevent such an outcome.</p><p>"Are you sure she's even the person you once knew anymore?" Musha questioned Mana's judgment. Her eyes lingered on Dorimi who was completely out of commission lamenting the loss of his own friend. Shibari technically may not have been dead but her body was completely soulless. It was the next worst thing.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes in frustration, wondering what she was supposed to say. What was right and what was wrong. Now that Kiyomi was whole again the magician would not even dream of activating her sensory again so she was unable to check the contents of her chakra signature again, just rely on what that divided, minuscule representation of her will was like.</p><p>The corrupted version of Mana's friend darted off, she was no longer warping but she was insanely fast. Kusagoro leaped right into the fray to protect Mana from the rushing threat. He thrust his elbow for a strike that would block corrupted Kiyomi's strike and push her back through sheer force that he added behind it after the blow was blocked.</p><p>Kusagoro's feet morphed, making holes on them that fired off jets of chakra from them sending the man rushing ahead at the unbalanced and flinched opponent. The man unleashed a powerful rush of punches with what seemed like his real strength. Mana was about to plead with the man to restrain himself again but Kiyomi just bounced back like nothing happened, once again she only got thrown back by the physical force of the impact but appeared to take no damage whatsoever from the blows of one of the most powerful ninja around.</p><p>Just what had the Yamanaka girl become? Was it still morally right for Mana to protect this thing at the cost of other lives? How will she ever look in the eyes of Tori or Dorimi for all the lives this event had already cost. Maybe she would not be blamed for whatever happened here for she could have never, in her wildest nightmares, have predicted such a scenario but… Deep inside she'd know that she acted with her own selfish interests at heart.</p><p>Kiyomi's body began morphing again as the corruption had made her chakra cloak more malleable. Tendrils started splitting from various parts of her body that she used like whips to attack Kusagoro who was way too overwhelmed by the number and the strength of the attacks to properly defend himself. The man sent crashing back into the fleshy parts of the consumed classroom.</p><p>The fleshy tumors and tissues of the corruption began covering the man up, trying to swallow him up in a cocoon of sinew and muscle but with a powerful expulsion of chakra inside his body and a violent outburst of pure strength, Kusagoro powered through and out of the increasingly nightmarish turning classroom.</p><p>"B-Rank Storage Seal: Release!" Musha chanted out, placing her hand up front. A sealing glyph materialized in thin air from which the woman pulled out a portable, steam-powered, saw-like weapon and channeled her chakra through it, covering the belts filled with razor-sharp teeth with her chakra.</p><p>The woman charged forward, swinging it in an impressively controlled and skillful style of swordsmanship. The strikes appeared to hurt corrupted Kiyomi and she did not even dodge the upcoming attacks, appearing dazed and confused for some reason. As the teeth of the saw-blade continued to shred through the corrupted one, slashing through the chakra cloak and unleashing a shredding flow of fleshy bits from the wounds, Kiyomi did not yell or grunt. Once again, she just got thrown back by the force of the attack before quickly recovering.</p><p>This time though, she did not strike back immediately with even greater strength as she did against Kusagoro. The morphing tendrils all over her body subsided their wild, swinging rampage and backed into the chakra cloak covering her.</p><p>"Meiko… Musha-san is reminding Kiyomi of Meiko…" Mana realized looking at the pinkish-haired jounin attacking a weapon that looked like a sleeker and more polished version of the chainsaw-sword that Meiko fawned over during the Chuunin Exams. "She's still in there somewhere… She always was…"</p><p>Mana signaled for both jounin to back down and regroup with her. While the two were technically her superiors and did not require following her orders, they both did so with only a brief delay of consideration. As predicted, Kiyomi did not follow them up or attack now that her mind was confused by the sights that reminded her of Meiko.</p><p>"She's still in there. I know it. I think I know why she's this way. This is not just an accident, well… It's more complicated than that. It's a culmination of multiple accidents that are related to one another." Mana let the jounin know.</p><p>"There have been plenty of Yamanaka that interrogated and probed the minds of the reappeared victims." Dorimi joined in. Walking up to the group with Shibari's blood still smeared on his face and glasses. His hair was now standing free as the man had tied the grisly sight of horror and whited out eyes of Shibari with his bandana.</p><p>"Yes. But they have done so over a long interval. They've also probed a bunch of other minds as well, spreading the corruption extremely thin. Kiyomi had been in very few minds that were not corrupted recently and every time she entered one she became a little bit more angry and distressed. As her friend, I should have noticed it. I was surprised by how brutal and one-tracked she was on a recent mission but… I just…" Mana clenched her fists in despair as her eyes teared up.</p><p>The regrouping got interrupted by tendrils wrapping around Dorimi, Musha and Kusagoro that dragged them back into Kiyomi's vicinity. Another bunch of them coiled from above and below aimed to catch Mana. While they tied around the magician and squeezed tight, the girl dispersed into flower petals and reappeared at a different location.</p><p>Kusagoro just barely squirmed out of the tendril's grasp. Tattoos and glowing glyphs began running down his body as his eyes lit up with a faint yellow glow of his irises. This was the Jugo Cursed Seal that Kouta disliked so much and Kusagoro used in more engaging fights. While he had not yet allowed the seal to advance to the second grade, he was no longer planning to hold anything back.</p><p>Musha screamed out in pain as the tendril around her squeezed without letting Kusagoro's breakout distract its own efforts too much. This corruption appeared to function as a swarm mind of corrupting cells. Just like the returned victims were capable of all those unbelievable body shaping tricks and intense resistance to any form of damage. If their entire bodies were just tissue comprised of numerous smaller, swarm minded organisms with no organ systems or more complex structure to them, that would have made everything around here make more sense…</p><p>The tendril that tied itself around Dorimi's leg swung the poor jounin around, slamming it against every and any surface it found nearby until after one final slam it let go and allowed the fleshy substance of corruption to envelop the man in its fleshy cocoon in an attempt to swallow him. Just as it had happened to Kusagoro. It appeared that only specific and very progressed sections of the corruption were able to envelop living bodies that way.</p><p>Mana's Audra wand shimmered in the few sources of light present in the nightmarish classroom but Kusagoro's roar stopped her in her tracks.</p><p>"Don't interfere! You'll get crushed if you do! Leave handling her to us. Just try to figure out a way to save the brat before we murder her!" the man yelled out in a voice much wilder than even his normal battle cries. It was true that Jugo surrendered a certain bit of their emotional stability and sanity while letting their Curse Seals advance.</p><p>Despite the warning, Mana swung her Audra wand, focusing her chakra to channel through it in an attempt to aid the jounin from afar. Kusagoro was too caught in his own sadistic tendencies and attempts to punch Kiyomi out of her corrupted shell. If he even cared about that at all.</p><p>"Magic Spark Jutsu!" Mana chanted out as she swung her wand around, firing a barrage of lightning chakra projectiles at Kiyomi from her position. She spoke the name of her technique not out of necessity to do so, after the training in the Rabbit Caves she no longer needed that for her most familiar jutsu, but out of hope that any semblance of familiarity would trigger memories to resurface in her corrupted friend.</p><p>Musha felt the tendrils loosen. She did not wait too long and went through a collection of hand seals the moment her feet hit the floor. Mana's projectiles were not that powerful but they appeared just capable enough to shock the tendrils that Kiyomi created into a twitching seizure of sorts.</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" the woman yelled out. Chakra she molded inside her body was converted into flames before being spouted out as a flamethrower that shaped a large fireball at the end. The erupting firestorm from the technique colliding with corrupted Kiyomi, who at this point was spread out too widely all over the classroom to avoid the jutsu, that it threw Ikiro and slammed it into the blackboard. The impact was strong enough to break the man's seat.</p><p>"Earth Style: Volcanic Summit!" Dorimi yelled out as he slammed his hands together right after landing on the ground and powering out from the fleshy corruption enveloping him, something that the fiery distraction of Musha's technique aided him in doing. The building materials of the classroom burst from under their fleshy sarcophagi and began shaping a mountainous structure around the raging firestorm.</p><p>The combined efforts of Dorimi and Musha created a floor-to-ceiling sized pile of construction materials that shaped into a makeshift volcano that contained and compressed the raging fires of Musha's technique, greatly increasing their power and efficiency.</p><p>"Chakra Cannon!" Kusagoro roared out after pointing his morphing cannon-shaped arm at the mountainous structure and unleashing a blast of chakra that blasted it to bits causing a powerful explosion that would have easily leveled the entire Academy had it not been covered with regrowing corruption.</p><p>A deafening roar made Mana lean forward and look for cover as the sonic booms alone caused massive shockwaves across the entire corrupted structure while a powerful blast of chakra freed Kiyomi from what remained from the debris she was surrounded by. Despite putting in their best efforts, the jounin were still barely making progress.</p><p>The structure started reforming. This time free of its previous construction materials and entirely based on growths of tumors, bone, and bio-materials. Mana saw it in Musha's worn out eyes, the flames she breathed out were not as intense as they could have been. It must have been her mental state that diminished the power of her attacks. If this was allowed to continue, this would not have ended well.</p><p>"Kiyomi, why are you doing this? Just settle down and let us help you." Mana yelled out at her friend who at last glared at the magician with its wide, glowing eyes in acknowledgment.</p><p>"You'll help by dying…" Kiyomi let out a strong resonance with her mind that forced Mana to grip at her temple and distracted her almost enough to completely miss the fact that she was being attacked.</p><p>The reformed tendrils of pure chakra spreading out of Kiyomi's body rushed at the magician. Mana took a meaningless step backward to strengthen her balance, she knew that such a motion would not be enough to protect her. However, the attack did not go the way that the magician had planned it to go.</p><p>The tendrils stopped in their tracks and instead of slamming into Mana's illusionary shape and triggering her Flower Petal Sanctuary spread in a wider range, hitting as widely as possible while sacrificing some of their power that came with their collective size.</p><p>"Mystical Wings Jutsu!" Mana yelled out as she used the wind currents she generated beneath her feet to lift her off enough to dodge the wild rush of tendrils coming her way before her feet stuck firmly to the ceiling, giving Mana some space to prepare the follow up defensive measure. The tendrils were quick to change direction and corner her again.</p><p>"Magic Bubble Jutsu!" she chanted while she swung her Audra wand in a round motion creating a defensive pocket of air with Wind Release chakra around her. The tendrils wrapped around it in an attempt to break it through sheer force and they would have easily succeeded if it was not for the help from the jounin who finally dealt with their own handfuls of tendrils and proceeded to attack Kiyomi herself.</p><p>Another pulse of corrupted chakra from the Yamanaka sent the jounin tumbling back and crashing into the fleshy walls of the new structure that was forming in place of the destroyed Ninja Academy.</p><p>"This… This is going nowhere." Musha noted.</p><p>"I won't let this go. For Shibari-san's sake, I can't." Dorimi grunted and swung his tanto blade in wide arcs to fight off the fleshy strands of corruption trying to wrap him into a cocoon and smother him to death again.</p><p>Kusagoro blasted out from his own cocoon with ease once more. Despite his attempts to pass through the whipping offensive of the tendrils, he was not gaining any footing that was not soon lost once Kiyomi's ire intensified.</p><p>"That jutsu… I've never seen it before, what was it?" Kiyomi spread another resonance of her thoughts that felt like someone yelling in bloody madness right into one's ear. The overpowering sensation very nearly made Mana lose her concentration, which in terms would have made her lose footing and fall from the ceiling down to the ground.</p><p>"It's something I learned before I met you. I used it against Hisako when we fought and not in a while after that. It just… Carried bad memories with it." Mana replied, still feeling hopeful that she could connect on some level with her friend who seemed more and more lost as the hopeless battle continued.</p><p>"I see. A technique you use exclusively against your friends…" Kiyomi's reply was soon to resonate again. Now that Mana knew it was coming, it was much more tolerable.</p><p>"That's not what I said at all!" Mana snapped back at her friend. "I lost everything that day. I can't help but feel scared whenever I think back of that day. Just like when all of this happened and I was afraid to augment myself to power through the calamity…"</p><p>"That's right. Mana… So hesitant to kill people actively but possessing one of the highest passive kill-counts of anyone she knows." Kiyomi replied with an oddly antagonistic manner again. This was just like talking to her friend in the hospital but supercharged to a massive extent. Mana could not put together where all the anger and frustration in her friend came from.</p><p>"You're a criminal. All of you in this room are… Innocent people do not get freaked out by the sights that I show. Your nightmares haunt all of you, I can feel it." Kiyomi pressed on. "None of you are innocent. I'll kill you all."</p><p>The final declaration made Mana step back in disbelief. This was her friend talking for certain but she was not being herself. Her identity was what was spreading these vile thoughts. However, that identity was corrupted. She was still in there but she may have been beyond reach by now.</p><p>People were paying with their lives. The kids that died when the catastrophe started, Shibari, all those people who failed to evacuate before the spreading corruption got to them. Mana could only hope that the entire camp where the injured were being treated outside was evacuated in time before the wave of expansion hit them but to think like that was to be hopeful. She closed her eyes, filtered out the contents of this classroom and looked around the building.</p><p>The bodies of those she imagined having died began rising from the fleshy dens of the corruption once more, wrapping themselves around Mana's body and trying to bite chunks out of her and claw at her. These were all just figments of her afflicted mind but they hurt like they were happening for real. Regardless, Mana persevered to spread her sensory as wide as she could…</p><p>There was nothing. That was not to say that there were no signatures alive in the vicinity. Merely that the corruption had spread to the very edges of Mana's sensory and that anyone in those vicinities had been evacuated or consumed by now and not a trace of the village remained now in those parts.</p><p>Mana woke up in a dome of earth. Dorimi must have erected it around her to protect her from the attacks that her scornful friend may have launched at her. Before she even had time to deal with the pressure of having procrastinated for so long, the ground beneath her feet shook and Kusagoro smashed into the dome toppling it all down.</p><p>"I don't know how to reach her…" Mana cried out. Her eyes were tearing up but they were not lost. "I think… I think we need to…"</p><p>"Hit her for real. Putting her down being the main priority, her survival the secondary." Kusagoro scratched the back of his aching neck. His tattoos had drawn back into his body and he had stopped using his Curse Seal for a moment, whether because of exhaustion or because he needed a clear mind for a while.</p><p>"Y-Yeah." Mana nodded realizing she may have given up on her friend and sentenced her to death by telling one of the most powerful ninja in the village to hit her with intent to kill.</p><p>What other option was there? So many people had already lost their lives and homes. There was absolutely no sign that the rest evacuated or if they perished. The corruption had spread across the entire Ninja Academy territory and was beginning to reach deep into the central district of the village where it would have had masses more people to consume. Even if Kiyomi survived, would she ever forgive Mana for not stopping her and forcing her to become what the girl used to hate more than anything?</p><p>"Mass murderers teaming up with a lousy, self-righteous thief and a killer by circumstance. I'll kill you all!" Kiyomi's rage continued to spiral out of control as her chakra tendrils began wrapping around one another forming entire limbs and forcing her chakra cloak to grow out of control until it burned through the corruption beneath its own feet.</p><p>"Alright…" Kusagoro blew a whole bunch of air out of his lungs before leaping to confront the outraging entity of corruption. Jet-like appendages began sprouting through his body and tearing up his clothes, even though his flak jacket before spitting blasts of blue flames that spiraled the jounin onward towards the raging threat.</p><p>"Piston Fist: Style One!" Kusagoro roared out as half of his body transformed into a shape that resembled greatly his Level 2 Curse Seal transformation. More jet boosters grew from the back of his enlarged hand and fired off blasts that propelled his fist forward with more throwing power. As the two clashing forces met each other, the entire room sunk in bright blue and dark purple light.</p><p>Mana felt a gentle spring breeze caressing her cheeks. She opened her eyes only to see the entire Academy gone. Only fleshy remnants of the corruption that once was remained. Now singed into feeble charcoal lumps where the calamity once spread.</p><p>Kiyomi's unconscious body laid in the center. The dark chakra enveloping her was completely gone and some grievous looking burns covered the exposed parts of her body and her face. Kusagoro was huffing on one knee while Dorimi's impromptu raised ground platform held the survivors of the entering party on the second-floor level. The corruption that had once been steadily spreading was now actually retracting into its center. Mana noticed a rocky structure atop the earth platform that soon crumbled revealing Ikiro's unconscious body inside.</p><p>The calamity may have been over but at what price…</p>
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<a name="section0440"><h2>440. Past Reflections</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mere minutes after the nightmare ended and a friendly rustling of the nature inside and around the village took over the eerie silence the villagers began gathering to find out just what sort of tragedy befell the district of the Ninja Academy. The more the fleshy taint drew back to its source and liquefied, the bolder their approach. Preceding them was a squad of chuunin and four more jounin making it a momentous occasion – all eight of the active jounin were present in one place.</p><p>"What a horrible tragedy…" Someone in the crowd of the crying and grieving villagers cried out. There were plenty voices seconding that notion amongst the people.</p><p>"These were no weakling children. They were ninja-in-training, being taught to be ready to sacrifice their lives for their village." Kusagoro replied with a hint of coldness towards the villager but his expression was full of sadness as well. It was just one of his own signature style of sadness. Much more preserved. If this man ever shed tears, he did so in silence and in extreme moderation.</p><p>Mana glared at Kiyomi's direction. While the rest of the jounin and chuunin were managing the zone of the event, the magician slowly approached the seemingly unconscious friend of hers. She looked so tranquil. Now that the contamination that had taken her over ceased, Mana had no reservations about feeling her comrade's chakra and it was still slowly rustling in her chest.</p><p>She did not fail her friend completely. Regardless, the last words Mana said on the matter and the difficult call she made continued to boil in the magician's chest. It was at times like this that the girl felt glad that her friend was sleeping peacefully since she'd be too ashamed to look Kiyomi in the eyes if she was awake.</p><p>Back where the wall of ninja held the civilians at bay, the injured were getting treatment, and Shibari's body was being concealed and being looked at by Shinigami and Sin-Eaters to remove any unforeseen traps or complications after her unusual cause of death, Kusagoro approached Dorimi and pressed his hand against his shoulder.</p><p>"I feel bad for your loss." Kusagoro sighed. There was none of the anger and superiority or the aggression that the Jugo showed his punier colleague before or even a hint of the bully-victim relationship these two displayed earlier. Loss seemed to unite people like nothing else.</p><p>Dorimi just sighed. The platform of dirt he had created before using his unique battlefield morphing abilities and techniques crumbled to dry dirt. The man sat down on a piece of rubble, unzipped his flak jacket and rubbed the back of his neck with nervousness reeking from his movements.</p><p>"Were you two… You know?" The Jugo wondered.</p><p>"No, we were just close friends. Every achievement we have reached we have done together. We were each other's link with who we were. No challenge seemed too great because at any time we could look at each other and see someone just like the other walking with them right by their side." Dorimi replied. He smiled as his eyes closed and his memory wandered back to the times before.</p><p>"I lost my closest friends pretty recently too… Unlike your case, it was sort of my fault."</p><p>"Oh, that's not a very healthy thing to…"</p><p>"Can it. They left with me because of my wish to entertain myself. To look back before there were so many leashes and chains. They died out there while they were with me." Kusagoro interrupted his grieving colleague.</p><p>"I still think you really shouldn't blame yourself for that. That kind of thing just isn't healthy, Kusagoro." Dorimi shrugged while he rubbed his tired and beaten face with his hands. His hands were still shaking as an aftereffect of the horrors he had seen and felt inside that dreaded building.</p><p>"I've gone far past just blaming myself. I decided that all I could do was to carry on and do right by those memories. I feel bad for the loss of your friend, I really do, but one thing I won't let you do is just sit still and keep facing back while every obstacle ahead is bumping into your exposed back. You hear me?" The man spoke with a certain calm that felt both ominous and assuring at the same time.</p><p>"Yeah, Shibari probably would not have liked me dwelling on it for too long." Dorimi stood back up and stretched out before he walked off to join the cleanup effort. His ground-shaping abilities would have done wonders cleaning this place up as well as holding people away from a place that could have still been an active site of blemish, for all anyone knew.</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes moved. It looked for a moment like something was bumping from inside at a closed and locked door before busting it down. Almost at the same time, a familiar sight of a handful of ninja arriving at the scene met Mana's eye by alerting her sensory. While there appeared to be nothing of note to their chakra signatures, their bright and long hair almost insisted that it was a Yamanaka clan party that arrived at the scene.</p><p>Mana wondered if these villagers would have enough common sense not to throw themselves at the bright-haired brigade. People in the face of a horrific tragedy often gave in to their more primitive and fear-fueled selves and such people would not have needed much sense or proof to justify their flying fists and sharp objects that just got in their way.</p><p>Luckily, whether it was from the fear of the serious-looking faces and the considerable abilities and strength of the arriving Yamanaka party or their better senses triumphing for once, the villagers abstained from causing a ruckus and just let the Yamanaka through without any fight or mean-spirited comments.</p><p>Kiyomi opened her eyes, visibly weakened by the strain and drain of the experience she went through and clutching at her aching ribs. Her bright, blond hair flowed wildly across the ground where she laid, the only order they obeyed was good old gravity while it settled down somewhat once the girl sat up.</p><p>The Yamanaka extended her hand at Mana while the other still clenched at her sides. The magician had enough sense to help her hurting friend up but her entire nervous system was working through something of a short-fuse situation deep inside. Mana just could not force herself to look at her friend and, once her friend was distracted by the arriving Yamanaka party, when she finally gathered the strength to look at her friend, she saw nothing but confusion and betrayal in her face.</p><p>Once her friend was up on her feet and had the support of possibly the last support beam left standing, Mana backed up. She just wanted to disappear right now. She deserved to. If only she knew how long she hesitated before sentencing her friend to death, then she would know just exactly how crooked and rotten her soul was…</p><p>"I'm… I." Mana tried to apologize. After all, while she did not know what would happen that day, she was the one who called her friend up here for this experience. The shame was too great even for that simple notion.</p><p>"I probably said and did some mean things, huh?" Kiyomi rubbed the back of her neck looking just as ashamed as Mana was. She looked pretty glad that her friend at the very least helped her up.</p><p>"How much of what happened did you hear from inside?" Mana wondered while the Yamanaka were working out something with the other ninja and some of their representatives moved in to retrieve Kiyomi. Upon listening in to the serious conversations and reports going on back there Mana could pick up words like "moved" and "Yamanaka Resort" and something with Uchiha.</p><p>To hell with the Uchiha, even while the two clans have not been at the best of relationships right now, the entire village may not have liked Yamanaka all too much at the moment despite none of this being Kiyomi's fault.</p><p>"I… Everything. I was in charge of every word, every punch but… I felt different. Like… It all felt just so right to do… All my convictions, all that drives me… All of that felt like everything I was doing was just that." Kiyomi mumbled something out before a quartet of Yamanaka ninja approached and less than politely moved Mana out of the way.</p><p>"I'm… About what I said… I…" Mana tried to fight both her own inner destructive flames and the rather physical attempts of the Yamanaka to move her away from Kiyomi.</p><p>"It's okay, I probably would have said the same…" Kiyomi looked away. Her eyes and her face, once reminded of what happened inside that classroom, said the exact opposite. Once Kiyomi was quickly moved away by the blond blitzes of the Yamanaka ninja, Mana was left all alone in the rubble to contemplate on what possibly could have been irreparable damage to one of her most precious friendships.</p><p>"You did good kid. I may have underestimated you a bit…" Kusagoro's voice reached out for Mana's drifting mind with an attempt to drag her back. Up or down, it was too hard to tell…</p><p>"I better help with the cleanup…" Mana pocketed the entire conversation. Choosing to close it into a remote closet and work through her feelings of shame and regret.</p><hr/><p>After Mana immediately headed for the Administration to report on her mission, despite her less than ideal state of mind for such an efficient fulfillment of her duty, she was asked to go home and rest and report together with the entire group that has intercepted the tragic event and stopped it.</p><p>That was probably the first time that Mana saw what happened that way as a heroic thing in any way, shape, or form. In her mind, the event in the Ninja Academy was nothing but needless deaths of some children, her irreparably damaging the relationship between her and one of her best friends and the causation of the damage to the village that was caused as well as the injury or death of plenty of innocent civilians who did not evacuate in time.</p><p>From what Mana could gather from the reports on television and the papers, the casualties were few. A pair of handfuls of children in the Academy as well as several unfortunate civilian casualties. Father mentioned that some lower-ranking ninja also got injured with two even getting killed. Some of his old friends worked with the unfortunate shinobi during the incident and saw it happen.</p><p>As far as Mana knew, it was a tragedy. No matter how wide the intended scope of the tragedy was, how controlled the number of casualties was and how much potential damage was avoided.</p><p>Once the summon finally came in and Mana reported to the Hokage's office she was asked to join the ranks of the reporting ninja. Dorimi looked surprisingly fit. He had changed his look somewhat and Mana could feel that his chakra signature had grown a little. The increase in power was emanating from his body while the increase in skill was evident from the confidence he displayed.</p><p>Despite the growth in physical appearance and fitness, Mana wondered if the jounin was truly coping with the loss fruitfully. Such efficient gains in such short periods of time were not very healthy and tended to be reachable through very lengthy and grueling, relentless training sessions. As someone who was desperate to improve herself so she could fit her own merciless standards, Mana knew all about that kind of desperation…</p><p>During the report Mana mostly stayed silent, letting her more experienced and distinguished colleagues speak. After all, she was only present because of her closeness to Kiyomi and she somehow managed to squander even that. While the two were most likely still friends, she'd be naïve to think that their relationship would not change after what Mana had said. Even if the residual brutality and irritation from the exposure to the blemish of the kidnappers' chakra was completely removed from Kiyomi's system.</p><p>"Alright. We can take it from here. Thank you for your report and service." Lord Sixth nodded at the line of jounin and Mana, expressing his permission for the group to leave. "Could Nakotsumi Mana please stay for a short while to settle the matter of her mission?" He asked shortly afterward.</p><p>While the jounin vacated the office, Mana was left to awkwardly stare at the ground with her blank stare. She felt like after a good beating recently. The kind of beating that came after a streak of pointless vanity and the kind that humbled more than anything else.</p><p>"I don't think I need to tell you that there's no way I can pass this mission as completed?" Sixth shook his head. Truthfully, the man looked just as tired as Mana was despite not peeking his nose outside the Administration. As the head of the village, the duty of the Hokage was to ensure that the village was operational and handle the logistics of solving this incident rather than participate in it himself.</p><p>Regardless, while a blank of paper was weightless as a feather, as the boxes stacked on, they could have amassed impressive weights on one's consciousness and stamina. Especially when the papers were not just black printed word on a white canvas but reports of casualties and losses. Ones that the leader should have prevented or minimized.</p><p>"I understand." Mana bowed.</p><p>"I mean the objective of your mission was to substitute the Academy teacher but at the end of the day, there was no Academy left standing." Lord Sixth attempted to justify his train of thought to Mana as if the magician even needed a justification. She was no capricious child. She had lost that privilege long ago…</p><p>"Nobody is holding anything that happened against you." The Sixth's assistant was quick to pitch in. "It is important that you understand that this is just paperwork. We are quite content with your performance and, judging everything said in the report, we can tell that your superiors were rather impressed with your work. You held your own amongst higher-ranking ninja. That is commendable."</p><p>Mana wanted to smile and bow, try and at the very least lie about being grateful for all the words that were supposed to soften the impacts that were smashing her figurative ribs to figurative mush until nothing but bone dust remained. Even she was not that good of an actor. If an experienced entertainer couldn't smile and act through an experience like this, could she really be blamed for a lack of etiquette?</p><p>"Excuse me, Lord Sixth but… I'm just being curious, what will happen to Kiyomi?" Mana asked the only question where she did not need to lie about her emotions or fake caring. It was not even that she wanted or liked lying or putting on a mask, in fact, it made her hate herself, even more, every time she did something like that.</p><p>"The tensions with the Yamanaka are certainly high. In all honesty, they did not tell even me about their plans. It is certainly a very interesting situation…" the man replied. Mana was grateful that he, at the very least, understood the magician's need to know about the fate of her friend.</p><p>"Interesting?" Mana growled with a less than polite tone to use in front of a superior.</p><p>"Sorry… Old habits. I suppose now that I'm not the one destabilizing a country but the one who's supposed to handle the situation, I shouldn't express myself that way." Lord Sixth shrugged and rubbed his tired face. "In any case, a lot about the situation with the Yamanaka is quite confidential and I cannot entrust that information to someone who is not an A-Rank ninja."</p><p>"You mean someone who would be willing to snuff out the entire clan if need be?" Mana was not sure what got into her. The only two things that were going through her mind were the similarities between her own predecessors and the Yamanaka clan. Both were treasured before something unfortunate and out of their control made them lose favor at drastic speed.</p><p>It was no secret that the Uchiha were feuding with the Yamanaka after decades of unconfronted rivalry due to the incident of the lost Sharingan eyes. It was even less of a secret which clan Konoha would ally with if the two clans came to blows and which one would be out of the village's favor.</p><p>"The only reason I am not suspending you is because I know how hard this hit you. I will give you some time to deal with this, now get out of my office." Lord Sixth replied to Mana's less than desirable remark with a cold glare and a rather quiet tone for what the magician expected to be an actual outrage. As someone who worked in a unit of underground Black Ops, Lord Sixth really knew how to instill fear and force people to listen to him without raising his voice.</p><p>Mana removed herself as the Hokage ordered her to, finally finding inside her the decency to bow and excuse herself as per the proper reporting procedure. She did lose it in there… The magician had never really spoken to anyone about the painful history of her predecessors because she never really thought it was that much of a painful topic to her. It always sounded like just another chapter of bloody history, even if it had interesting ties to her own family.</p><p>It was not until signs of history repeating itself surfaced that Mana realized just how much of an exposed nerve this may have been with her. Maybe it was for the better that she was unofficially taken off-duty for a short while. She probably should have told Lord Sixth about the Yamanaka Resort and the history the place had with Kiyomi and the Yamanaka elite but, at the moment, she felt much closer to the Yamanaka than she did with her own home village.</p><p>That was a scary thought to foster. One that Mana quickly swallowed and buried under tons of ordinary worries.</p>
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<a name="section0441"><h2>441. Life And Times Of Nakotsumi Mana</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shibari's funeral was nothing like the funerals that Mana had attended previously. Mostly because of how personal the entire affair felt. How out of place the magician felt standing in front of the procession on a sunny day, honoring a passed colleague she never really knew that well, just heard about.</p><p>Funerals were always painful and not only because of the obvious reasons. Mana could have attended a funeral of someone she knew even less than Shibari and still felt like she had just sold her soul. Burials were always about confronting her own failure to Mana as much as they were about grieving and honoring those that have passed away.</p><p>A jounin Mana had never seen before stepped up in front of those that have gathered and began telling stories about how he once dated Shibari but found her odd, goofy outlook on life completely insufferable. It just added to the common theme that the other jounin remembered about the woman – no matter if she was facing adversity or happiness, she always sassed and joked her way through it.</p><p>A person like that sounded like someone Mana would have liked to have known better. Even if most of the people who spoke about that trait of the departed as if it was somewhat of a quirk of hers and remembered only when the surfacing of that quirk was the absolute wrong reaction, the woman still sounded like a gift to the village to Mana.</p><p>The magician came and gone feeling like a visitor at yet another monument to her failure. Usually, a confrontation with inevitable things changing which laid outside her limits would have only motivated the magician to train, now it sapped whatever motivation or will she still had for the notion.</p><p>At least this procession felt somewhat more meaningful and personal than the burials of the other victims of the incident Mana had attended throughout that week. At least Shibari was honored and remembered the way she was instead of people speaking about how terrible the incident that claimed her life was and the eternal matter of politics around it. Blaming one clan or another, others yet blamed the mysterious kidnappers behind the disappearances. There were those that blamed Lord Sixth for failing to solve the mystery too.</p><p>The memory of those that have passed managed to dive under all that talk and sink into the abyss forever.</p><hr/><p>A flock of pigeons burst through the opened doors of a person-sized box where a magician had entered just moments earlier and which was now skewered with blades. Those who felt rather skeptical about the rather generic-looking trick the concept of which Mana had abused by now got a brief glimpse of the magician's skewered body dissolving into pigeons if they looked hard enough.</p><p>Good luck explaining that with smoke, mirrors or the box being segmented…</p><p>"Nice to see you back onstage." Mr. Hiro congratulated the magician in her little preparation room after the show. "Been a while but three shows in five days… That's quite impressive. I do enjoy the new edge of your shows too…"</p><p>"Really? I don't intend on keeping it. I figure people want to see something fuzzy and warmer in these times." Mana sighed. Thinking back, she was not sure how on Earth could showing off glimpses of her deceased body as a part of an illusion ever sounded like a good idea to her.</p><p>"Oh well, wherever it takes you. People can use some of your magical escapism either way. As long as you don't forget you're not a stranger in these parts." Mr. Hiro nodded his head with a smile.</p><p>"It has been a while, hasn't it?" Mana managed to smile back at the round, little man.</p><p>"It seems to have built up some anticipation. People will think you're the class act that I whip out during special occasions. Apart from the fact that I barely have a say in when you perform, they would not be entirely wrong." Mr. Hiro waved his hand, dismissing Mana's worries that she has been out of the magic game for a long time. "That's a pretty fun trick, the pigeons one. And they were all illusionary so I didn't have to work with actual animals. I have no idea what is it with animals and babies but…"</p><p>"It is a difficult illusion to learn but once it is mastered changing the specifics of the appearance of it is not that tough." Mana shook her head before standing back up from her chair and examining the preparation room for anything she may have forgotten to do.</p><p>"I guess I should consider teaching all my artists some ninjutsu. Just imagine, people creating entire movies through illusions and transferring them directly into people's brains!" Mr. Hiro made his pitch with a very enthusiastic gesture and a dreamy face.</p><p>"Illusions are complex. Exposure of one's brain to something like that for that long could inflict brain damage. It would seem to me like the kind of hassle you'd do your best to avoid." Mana advised. "Movies and television are doing pretty good. Stick to that for a decade or so before innovating."</p><p>"A decade? A decade ago plays seemed like a pointless avant-garde, dear. Just last year nobody could have imagined something like most of the technology since the boom. Though you're right, maybe the whole brain streaming thing raises too many questions." Mr. Hiro looked full of energy when discussing potential business ventures.</p><p>He did raise an interesting point. With the tech that Shikamaru handed Mana to bring back home to her universe, people may have gotten used to vast leaps in technology created through analyzing that one handbag and all the blueprints, replicating the tech from the samples given to her. Perhaps society was not meant to experience technology in such quick leaps…</p><p>"Hey, Mana!" Meiko's voice ringed in Mana's ear as the girl was leaving the building after waving farewell to Mr. Hiro who scurried away to manage some of the actors that were about to perform onstage.</p><p>"Meiko?" The magician blinked a couple of times. The blacksmith must have gone through a bunch of trouble to figure out that performers left through the back exit most of the time and gotten entry into the service corridors.</p><p>"Hey, I needed to see how you're holding up!" The redhead grinned with a mouthful of teeth. That cheeky little monkey.</p><p>"Doing my best to return some routine back to my life. There's only that much I can screw up before taking a break from all the excitement." Meiko appeared a little worked up over Mana's reply but seeing the smile on the magician's face when she said it the redhead just let it go.</p><p>"Oh… I…" Meiko clearly wanted to tell something but could not muster up the strength to do so. Had she not teamed up with someone who barely survived her life through her mental prowess and a literal mind reader, Meiko would have had trouble communicating at times. Still, the blacksmith was someone who was rather carefree so the fact that her speech was this paralyzed made the magician prepare for even more bad news.</p><p>"Did you like the show?" Mana tried distracting her friend from what clearly was slowly choking her from inside to say.</p><p>"Oh… I didn't see it. I wanted to but I had a time planning accident…" Meiko blushed a little while she apologetically stroke the back of her head.</p><p>"A time planning accident?" Mana raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Yeah… I kind of thought I had time planned out but I got lost in it while I was tinkering and I only barely made it to here when I did." Meiko sighed. Given how impressive the speed of a ninja was, the blacksmith must have gotten absorbed in her craft for well over an hour longer than she planned to. That was some impressive devotion if anything was to be taken from this.</p><p>"Do… Do you know where Kiyomi is? I'll need to tell her this too, I guess." Meiko returned to the topic of the thing she needed to say. It must have been something of great importance to her friend if she displayed such amazing secret revelation ethics.</p><p>"I was told it was confidential information…" Mana looked down before leaning to Meiko's ear.</p><p>"Though I have more than enough reasons to believe she's in the Yamanaka District to protect her from whatever threats may come from the village or the Uchiha," Mana whispered.</p><p>"Oh… Weird, huh? That whole Uchiha thing… It always seemed like a dog barking at a tree thing with the Yamanaka and the Uchiha but now." Meiko looked up at a diner sign slipping away somewhere in her mind as she did so.</p><p>"Yeah, things got pretty tense there," Mana admitted. "I don't think it got tense enough for a full out spillover."</p><p>"That's good to hear. The last thing we need here is a civil war happening while we're gone. No Sannin to protect us and all…" Meiko looked back down and sighed again.</p><p>"Well, there's still Zairyo but that guy's never around to the point where people barely count on his protection as that of a Sannin's." Mana shrugged before something in Meiko's words dawned on her. "Wait, gone?"</p><p>"Y-Yeah, now that Hanasaku-sensei is retiring she decided to leave the village and wander around, you know, go full Ayushi-mode for a couple of years. She invited me to come with her and train. Given how I'm not on a team anymore since Team Hokage dissolved, Lord Sixth didn't even mind. It will probably be a while before I get signed to another team." Meiko finally revealed what was pressing on her chest.</p><p>"That's… That's great." Mana smiled and jumped in front of Meiko. The girl placed her hands on her friend's shoulders to make sure that she saw the happiness in the magician's face and how proud she was of Meiko. "Think of how much stronger you'll become, how much more experience you'll get."</p><p>"Y-Yeah but… We'll probably miss each other." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"You know, I bet you will most likely get so many chances to nab some legendary weapon from some unruly nukenin gunning for Hokage-sensei's life." Mana winked.</p><p>"Really, you think so!?" Meiko raised her fists up to her chest in excitement.</p><p>"Definitely, you'll probably be allowed to keep them too. Hokage-sensei is not that good with weaponry after all." Mana knew how to make her enthusiastic friend forget all about her worries. It seemed that by now they knew each other forever.</p><p>Mana knew what she was doing. She was making saying farewell easier for her friend while causing Meiko to bury the outburst of emotions deeper below. They would inevitably surface later on. It would certainly be painful and the two would definitely miss each other but… Mana just could not bear to see her best friend cry.</p><p>"Wanna go eat something while we still got tonight?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"You mean to watch you eat in fear for my own life? Yeah, I could occupy tonight with some of that." Mana nodded with a smile.</p><hr/><p>It was a common thing for Mana to have a spark of a thought grow into a full-on obsession. Not just any thought, not just at any time. It was a thought of something small and inconsequential during something important that she was doing. Something that would have taken hours to complete and, in the process of blazing on and growing out of control, the thought managed to distract the magician from that.</p><p>Mana put away the blueprint for another device for her magic shows and slipped into her sandals. If the thought of checking the mail would not let her work, she may have confronted it head-on and be done with it. After all, she was unlikely to see any mail for a while.</p><p>The mailbox was all bloated. Mana looked at it like at an unstable pustule about to explode before getting to work. Opening it without having the mail blow up all over the street was a true challenge and the subtlety that was required made Mana feel like some sort of a seal master working on disarming a trap seal.</p><p>Luckily, Mana was somewhat of an experienced savant at hand movements. She was a master of sleight of hand, after all. In just a minute and a bit, a whole box-worth of mail was lying on the magician's lap inside.</p><p>Mana did not know she received this much fan mail. She usually did not deal with the housework all that much, certainly not with managing the mail. If something addressed to her and important ever reached her, it was because her parents brought it to her and told her it was important.</p><p>The magician was not even aware that people sent mail to the performers they liked. She figured that when she stayed after the shows to interact with the audience that was pretty much the extent of her communication with the people that attended and enjoyed her shows. She wondered if she had ever offended anyone by not writing back but after reading through a couple of the letters she figured that none of them were really written in a way that expected a response.</p><p>The girl figured that just this once she could have gone above and beyond and written back to all these people. It didn't have to be anything fancy. Just seeing a letter one sent with one's feelings return in any shape would have felt great. Mana just had a reminder of that.</p><p>Despite settling on not going into too many details, Mana took multiple hours drafting replies to everyone before her tired eyes settled on one more letter she had not noticed before. The address looked somewhat familiar but the magician couldn't quite put her finger on it. Upon opening the envelope and letting her eyes run through it she quickly made a response and then set out to send all the letters away.</p><p>She lost a whole bunch of time she intended to be preparing for the show for but any time spent replying to people that enjoyed her shows or even people who didn't like it, if those people even wrote letters to her, and him could not have been considered a waste.</p><p>After the evening show, the next morning, Mana made a quick dash to the training grounds. He was already there by the time she arrived. The short boy of dark shades of hair, loose, hanging clothing and fit build stared with dreamy eyes at the reborn wonders of the Konohagakure nature in the spring.</p><p>"Didn't expect to hear from you, I'll be honest." Mana smiled at Kouta.</p><p>"Father told me what happened. Saw how many shows you were hosting recently too. Given how you're free so often these days, figured you'd miss that part of your life…" the young man turned around with a smile before raising his fist enthusiastically.</p><p>"You know me too well." Mana grinned.</p><p>"We met under same circumstances, didn't we?" Kouta replied.</p><hr/><p>The two were sitting on a rocky formation, observing the early evening sky. Training with Kouta felt refreshing. After the Chuunin Exams, she felt almost like the falling out that they had would never really stop feeling too awkward to see each other. They both behaved in baffling ways when intertwined with the ring of trust that love tied people together with…</p><p>"My father's gonna become a Sannin soon. They've made it official." Kouta smiled. The boy fell on his back and stretched his dirty, bruised and slightly burnt hands out wide while breathing with a full chest.</p><p>"You must be so proud. He really does deserve it." Mana turned back at the sky.</p><p>"He told me you saved his life." Kouta brought his body up higher on his elbows, trying to catch the magician's eyes with his own glare.</p><p>"I saved his mind, I guess. I didn't really know I was doing it, well… Maybe I guessed that I may have been…" Mana felt a bit of discomfort rising up when talking about that day again. Maybe it was just too soon since the day that she lost people and probably ruined one of the most important friendships in her life for good.</p><p>"He was pretty mean to you. He hurt you multiple times. It was really kind of you to do something like that." Kouta sat back up.</p><p>Mana did not reply. She just did not know what kind of an answer the young man expected to hear. Did he want to hear about how Mana made a friend out of his father? Which would not have been entirely true, even if she did say such a thing? After the man almost killed her twice in one month, she still felt a little uncomfortable around him and she was not a fan of how aggressive he tended to be around people.</p><p>"Anyway…" Kouta's face turned very similar to that of Meiko's when she had something she wanted to say but couldn't. Mana found that a little funny. "That technique… Completely wrecked me."</p><p>"Magician's Touch has been designed to protect me against close-range ninja. I may have been trained a little in self-defense but it does not make me a match for taijutsu using ninja in their field. I need to fight them off with my own strengths. You shouldn't feel ashamed for getting so countered by it." Mana glanced at the young man with a corner of her eye. In her experience, the ninja of the male variety who took pride in their warrior culture code did not take fondly being beaten, even in training.</p><p>"I uh… I don't think I'm gonna go to Konoha High to become an ANBU anymore. I think I did it to satisfy father most of all but it was never something I really wanted." Kouta admitted. Mana's eyes softened when she turned to him.</p><p>"I'm glad. I hope you can find a line of specialization you will enjoy and feel suitable in." Mana replied. Her voice got higher pitched in the end when she felt Kouta's hand slowly slip onto hers, pressing it softly against the rocky surface of the structure they were resting on.</p><p>Without hesitation, the magician answered Kouta's slow lean for a kiss after the boy overcame his shyness over the gentle touch. The sky was really beautiful in the spring evenings.</p>
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<a name="section0442"><h2>442. The Rustling Menace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The noises of gulls, curiously enough, reached Mana's ears. It was the first thing in a while that made the girl break her concentration and look up to observe the unlikely visitors fly majestically giving the enigmatic, dark blue, morning sky a little of their own heavenly shade. Like a little ball of cloud racing through the sky with a purpose.</p><p>The magician was in her uniform, all hidden pockets fully stored with the weaponry she used, all springs and devices in it loaded and ready. A hat with new storage seals, albeit not quite what those of her father's used to be but the best that her monetary situation could give her. Mana's wand could no longer be stored in her current hat, it was too high ranking of a tool, for that reason it was in an inside pocket.</p><p>Despite being unofficially and temporarily suspended, Mana was ready for a whole streak of weary training sessions and life-threatening combat situations. She would not be heading towards her destination looking for a fight but she was well aware that she would get it, possibly even more of it than she could take.</p><p>Perhaps that was why when Kouta ran up from the distance with a happier than half of a pancake smile, the magician felt a little relieved. She did not ask her boyfriend to come with her to back her up, or because of what he could do, namely his particular set of skills. She asked him because she wanted to be around him and with him and, just this once, things appeared to have worked out.</p><p>"I'm really grateful you came." Mana bowed her head slightly in acknowledgment of the boy's presence and his excitement to leave at this early hour of the morning. "I do hope though that you told your father you're leaving for a while, I do not think that we could handle him breaking in looking for you."</p><p>"Oh, that's just fine. I have no business with the village given how my team has dissolved. I'm free until another team gets put together which may take a while with the entire Academy blowing up right before the graduation exams…" Kouta looked back at the point where he would have seen the Ninja Academy from the distance.</p><p>He did raise an interesting point though. The village would be put through a little crisis of new ninja graduates given how those of this year would be forced to skip a year because of the cataclysm that took place right in their place of education.</p><p>"As far as my father is concerned… As long as I won't be slacking off from my training, he is more than fine with us leaving to… Where exactly are we headed?" The boy wondered. He must have been so shocked to hear this proposition when first asked that he completely burned the notes of the specific details in his mind.</p><p>"The Rabbit Caves near Kusagakure." Mana smiled as she looked ahead into the dark depths of the forest roads outside the village wall. "I have a promise I have to live up to and there's no better time than now. If you're looking for efficient training, you won't be disappointed – that's where I prepared for the finals of the Chuunin Exams."</p><p>"That sounds like a really cruel and awful place. I hope I won't drag you down!" Kouta bowed his head slightly. As per his nature, he was being way too modest. In terms of stamina and physical strength, Kouta was heads above Mana, it was just that the magician had more chakra in her reserves to keep pushing her past her limits if cornered. Mana had no worries about the medical ninja being able to take the gruesome conditions of the Rabbit Caves.</p><p>"No way, I can't stress out enough about how glad I am to have your company with me. You can send a hawk back to the village informing Lord Sixth about your exact location if you ever needed to return from one of the message stations on the road." Mana did her best to assure the young man.</p><p>The two passed the check-up before heading out the large village gate past the wall that surrounded Konoha and into the luscious forests that spanned endless kilometers in each direction. Kouta relaxed and yawned. Mana glanced at him with curiosity, it was a rare instance for a ninja, let alone someone as duty-bound, honest and strict on himself as this young man to let his guard down this much.</p><p>"If you're feeling drowsy, I'm afraid we may not get an opportunity to rest for a while. Shukuba is the exact opposite way, you know. This may not be a pleasurable trip." Mana noted.</p><p>"Oh, that's not it. I'm just breathing the air in. I've never traveled with a sensor before, always had to keep my guard up, you know." The boy shook his head with a smile of excitement.</p><p>"My sensory is not foolproof. If the signature comes at us from over two hundred meters, I may fail to pick it up in time. If it is too large or too overwhelmingly despicable in its nature it may not matter that I pick it up because it may just take me out of the occasion entirely. It may be wise to keep your guard up just in case." Mana shrugged. She did not yet feel confident enough with her sensory abilities even though it felt like forever since she had discovered them slumbering inside her.</p><p>"You know, I'd imagine a sensor medical ninja would be really amazing. Using their sensory to pick up on all sorts of illnesses and quirks in one's chakra flow without the need of a diagnostic scan." Kouta looked up still carrying around his general aloof attitude.</p><p>"Maybe if the sensor is experienced enough… To me, the signatures still feel blurry, too much interference from other senses to tell too much about each signature except that they are there and their size." Mana shrugged still feeling a bit on edge about being the only one keeping her guard up. She's been attacked outside the village walls too many times to completely rely on just her chakra sensory alone.</p><p>"Although… Remember when you told me about becoming familiar with someone's body after healing them a bunch of times?" Mana brought something familiar to both of the two up.</p><p>"Sure."</p><p>"I think that's the case with my sensory too. Even though from the first sniff it appears that most chakra don't have anything specific about them, I think I may be getting used to chakras of Meiko, Kiyomi and other people I hang around for a while. If I train it a little bit more, maybe just one feel would be enough…" Mana left the possibility hanging.</p><p>"We can start training that when we get to the caves." Kouta grinned. "What are the Ninja Rabbits like anyway? Do you think they'll let me in just like that?"</p><p>"They're pretty amazing. They're just as warm on the inside as they are cute on the outside… Well… Maybe with few exceptions…" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"You mean that rabbit you use in combat who talks like a hillbilly?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"Oh, no! Zoku-chan is probably the most honorable and kind of them all. It's just that he hides all of that behind a cover that's as sharp on its outmost layers as it is easy to bust through. I meant Usujitsa and the likes…" Mana shook her hands before her look turned serious.</p><p>"Usujitsa?" Kouta somehow managed to spell it out after hearing the name just once.</p><p>"Yeah. I think that creature is the only rabbit I have encountered that is an absolute monster with no control or decency. I have never really seen him, just heard of him from the tales of other rabbits and seen his handiwork." Mana looked down.</p><p>"But doesn't you signing the contract mean that you are technically tied to him and can use him in battle if you choose to?" Kouta wondered. "I'm sure someone as monstrous as this rabbit would love to fight anyone so you could use that aggression for your own gain. Maybe even to save people…"</p><p>"It's not that at all. It isn't that Usujitsa is a sadist or an evil rabbit at all. In fact, I believe he may be quite a jolly guy. If his mad laughter before all the devastation in the depths of the caves, far far away from where the rabbits reside is any sign of his character. From the stories I've heard, he's just mad. Like a force of nature with scary destructive potential." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"So does your promise have anything to do with stopping that guy?" Kouta asked.</p><p>"Oh, no. I don't think that even the two of us could stop Usujitsa. Luckily enough, he's too stupid to find his way to the rest of the rabbits. Most of the time he just bumbles around and scares some children that tread too far from the caves. I once promised Zoku-chan that I would help the rabbits return to their previous homes." Mana shook her head before replying.</p><p>Kouta looked a little confused by that but he did not yet ask for an explanation.</p><p>"You see, there are two species of ninja animals that live deep underground – the Ninja Rabbits and the Ninja Snakes. As you'd imagine, one mostly preys on the other. Everything in the arsenals of the Ninja Snakes is genetically designed to kill Ninja Rabbits, no matter the rank of the animals fighting. Every time that the Ninja Snakes wander into their territory, the rabbits are forced to move deeper and farther away into the scorching, breathless darkness of the underground." Mana explained before her boyfriend would ask for an explanation.</p><p>"Oh, so there's hierarchy of some sort with ninja animals? That's fascinating! And who preys on Ninja Snakes?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"From what I've heard, only the slugs of the Shikkotsu forest are designed to kill snakes as efficiently as the snakes kill frogs, toads, and rabbits." Mana shrugged. "From what I read in history books, apparently the Ninja Mongooses and Ninja Snakes used to be equally matched with each species being gifted a new evolutionary trait to counteract the respective trait of the other. That is a unique relationship between species I've never heard of before or since…"</p><p>"So then… Can we ask the Ninja Mongooses or one of their summoners for help?"</p><p>"Oh, don't mention anything like that with Ninja Rabbits. They appear to hate Ninja Mongooses a great deal. I'm not sure why or for how long they've feuded but the Ninja Rabbits seem to have been at bitter odds with the Ninja Mongooses. Even a mention of them will be pretty much a curse word amongst the rabbits." Mana warned Kouta.</p><p>"Amazing, the only species that can help them right in their neighborhood and they managed to go to war with them…" Kouta sighed, only now realizing the severity of Mana's promise to the rabbits.</p><p>Mana just shrugged with an apologetic face. She wondered if the medical ninja now began to regret involving himself with Mana's self-appointed mission.</p><p>"Hey, our kiss is as binding as the contract you signed with the rabbits. Your promise to help the Ninja Rabbits also involves me just the same way." Kouta gave Mana an encouraging gesture.</p><p>Mana nodded in gratitude. She noticed a little spark of excitement flaring up in Kouta's eyes. It must have been the Jugo part of him, which took a great interest in any prospects of war and devastation and grand-scale battles. While Mana disapproved of such an attitude, it may just have been what she and the rabbits needed here to get back their home.</p><hr/><p>The two were lucky enough to avoid any unpleasant encounters of attacks between Konoha and the outskirts of Kusagakure. One did not need to enter the actual village to find the Rabbit Caves. If they had there'd have been a lot more unpleasant bureaucracy and matters to deal with. The unnatural entry to the caves was in a large crater, still containing a bunch of coal digging tools and caravans left behind.</p><p>Right in the center, there was a slim but marvelously deep hole that lead into a wild part of the caves. From there on one only had to tread deeper and farther down to the east to find the rabbit settlement. At least it was that way the last time Mana left the place. She could recall having some trouble moving up this massive hole although now that all of her senses were intact and she was nowhere near as worn out as she was back then, the hole appeared way more claustrophobic.</p><p>Mana leaped in first. Then she waited for Kouta to follow. The long fall did feel a bit on the creepy side due to how close the edges and walls of the hole were to the falling party at each given time. In a way, the shimmer of the few falling solar rays of the clear Kusagakure sky reflecting off of the wet minerals inside made parts of the fall feel a bit hypnotic even.</p><p>"Wow! That was one mighty long fall." Kouta looked up expressing his surprise with a loud shriek that echoed all throughout the caves.</p><p>"Yeah…" Mana acknowledged the surprise of the young man who looked surprised by the reaction to his own noises. Kouta was a rather reserved young man so the magician never really considered him having to learn to keep his head down here the hard way. Then again, if one was not attacked by one of the scarier things that lived down here, was it really the hard way?</p><p>"T-The air…" he then observed, continuing to do his best to get used to the nightmare-inducing conditions the rabbits have lived on for years.</p><p>"Hot, stuffy and dark. It will get much worse from here on the deeper we go. And we will go deeper." Mana tried to let the medical ninja know as a warning but he looked pretty content with that. "You need to balance your chakra augmentations on your perception as well as the protection of your body. It must become as second nature as twitching a finger to you. The heat and the intensity won't cease even when you go to sleep."</p><p>Kouta let out an agreeing grunt as a sign that he understood Mana's advice. From there on out it was just a continuation of their trip to where the caves had some semblance of illumination with whatever the rabbits used to illuminate their caves with. While the overwhelming pressure of the cave conditions did not even come close to getting better, just seeing signs of light and civilization made Mana feel better inside.</p><p>"Mana-san!" A bunch of cutesy sounds came from the surrounding rocky platforms and natural structures while sounds of loud and powerful thuds alerted the two that someone was coming in from that way.</p><p>"Hey, you guys…" Mana smiled and crouched up to meet the resisting force of a dozen of young rabbits leaping at her with a tackle that they perceived as a loving notion.</p><p>"You came back! Will you show us tricks again before bed!?" They kept on yelling one after other. Kouta pressed against his ears to alleviate some of the augmentations he had placed on his ears to hear even the faintest drip of water on the other side of the cave system.</p><p>It was clear that regulating his augmentations on a whim was not as natural to him as it was to Mana, who kept on turning them on and off as well as regulating their intensity all the time. That would come with time. Maybe Kouta would have a much harder time given how he was not nearly as experienced in fearing his own augmentations as Mana used to be right after recovering from losing her chakra manipulation, regardless, it would come to him as well.</p><p>"Maybe. I'm here to kick out the snakes and give you guys a better home." Mana grinned.</p><p>"Will you ask the elders to turn off the lights again so you can train your sensory better?" One of the younglings wondered.</p><p>"I didn't like that. I don't want the lights to go out again. I'd be afraid…" Another rabbit youngling trembled, clutching its little ears in their hands like a cover from the outside world.</p><p>"There won't be any need for that. I can train my sensory farther from your home, if needed." Mana smiled to alleviate some of the fears that the young ones had. She did find the odd sense of dread in the younglings strange but she decided that matters like this were better brought up with someone like the elders or Usuzoku. They may have had a better idea of what actually was scaring these bunnies.</p><p>"I'm going to see Zoku-chan, you guys play carefully." Mana stood up and waved the kits some temporary farewells. Cheering and tumbling one after another, the young thumped and thudded into the eastern side of the caves but well inside the safe territory.</p><p>"Those guys are a blast…" Kouta noted, seeing them playing around.</p><p>"Something's off…" Mana mumbled. Despite her lowered tone, the Jugo was perfectly able to hear her here deep down. "They're playing way too close to home, usually bunnies are the first to explore and challenge the boundaries of the rabbit territory. They're also frightened… We need to see Zoku-chan."</p><p>Mana closed her eyes, letting her chakra sensory do the guiding. Eyes were only useful this down to a very low extent, up to the limit where one's perception with the aid of the limited illumination rabbits offered their own society could take. Chakra sensory seemed a godsend in such a place where one could have just closed their eyes, concentrated and found the person they needed in a bustling society of rabbits, all of whom were way too happy to see Mana back.</p><p>"Ey, ye little hatchlin'!" Usuzoku spoke up once Mana entered the spherical rock structure that reminded of a wasp hive in shape. One of the thousands that littered the entire caves beyond where an eye could follow and even that same distance up. The rabbits' society had grown in size since the last time Mana was there.</p><p>"I suppose it was rude of me to not let you know how it all went, wasn't it?" Mana bowed with apologetic feelings on her face. "Then again, I am still very new to the summoner-animal world I have trodden into. I sort of forgot that you went away before my fight with Stea concluded…"</p><p>"Yeah… Ya know, ya coulda asked me to summon ya here again…" the rabbit grunted before letting his eyes size Kouta up. "Dis yer mate?"</p><p>"In a manner of speaking…" Mana exclaimed while rubbing her elbow shyly. "I figured you'd be unable to summon multiple targets, especially since Kouta isn't a contracted party."</p><p>"Yeah, if yer bringin' company de rules change…" Usuzoku nodded before sighing and examining Kouta from up close, the boy looked tensed up and rather worried about the affair. Had the meeting transpired in a brighter environment, the rabbit's cute appearance would have soothed his stress. "Small but strong… A good mate…" he concluded.</p><p>"All that aside." Mana raised her voice slightly to do her best and move past that embarrassing topic. "I came here to live up to my word and bring you guys to a better home. I'm also pretty free of any engagements with the village for a while so I'll be training here for the time being as well."</p><p>"Aight." Usuzoku nodded before hopping to his sword that laid placed by a fireplace. "Ye couldn' 'a came at a better time for dat." The rabbit left it in the air ominously.</p>
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<a name="section0443"><h2>443. Cruelty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I noticed the bunnies playing close to home. When I spoke to them they seemed quite spooked out, what happened?" Mana looked at her ninja animal partner who just scratched a spot behind his ear, enjoying this action for a short while. After he alleviated that itch, the rabbit sighed and spilled the beans.</p><p>"Da snakes have us pressed to da wall. We dun have too much space ta back out to." Usuzoku grumped.</p><p>"What did they do?" Mana asked with a slow and composed tone.</p><p>"Not sure who done did it but one a dem done kidnapped a bunch a younglings. Dose dat ran back to deir mommies said da bastard straight out ate one little bunny up on da spot." Usuzoku explained. "'Ey… Where did ya go?"</p><p>Kouta looked around frantically, noticing that Mana decided to not wait around until the talk was over and the two had settled down. She had dropped her bag in Usuzoku's place and just disappeared. Even if she did not know the place, she could use her sensory while concentrating to reach out for the highest and most malevolent chakra signature she could find.</p><p>It was less than a reasonable plan of action but Mana was in a less than a reasonable state of duress. Kouta rushed out after her. He could hear loud and rushed clangs as he moved as fast as he could so that he could catch up to Mana while she was still concentrating instead of when she was moving at full speed with her target in mind.</p><hr/><p>Loud thuds to the stone spread out as wide as the sound could reach into these caves. Emanating and reverberating from any surface before it became a ghastly harmony of smacks to the stone by a hard but organic substance. Ever so often, the thuds were snuffed out by a panic-inducing, deafening hiss that expanded kilometers to each side until at the very edge of its sonic life became a sad, almost wailing-like melody.</p><p>The place was a deep, round cavern. Similar to an indenture in a chunk of clay if one drilled it with something solid and perfectly round. The half-cut sphere that went down into the hard and dense stone structure was illuminated briefly by cracks in its bottom from which a flow of molten steel spread its light and heat. The place used to be decorated with hive-like structures. Houses and the like for the rabbit population before the entire society was driven out, deeper into the caves.</p><p>Enjoying its current status quo, a curious titan hissed with self-satisfaction, raising its peculiar-looking head and enjoying the bunch of little bunnies it held inside the coiling position of its body. From here it could have just simply driven its head into the circular trap and swallowed these poor, petrified for their lives bunnies whole. They would have had to grow for a hundred years before they'd make the snake even stretch itself one inch while swallowing the bunch of them…</p><p>The colossal snake turned and twisted its strangely shaped head. As if showing off the crest on its head that was very much unlike the heads of most other snakes it had known. To the terrified younglings in its clutch, the gigantic snake with a pterodactyl's head would have appeared like something from their parents' nightmarish tales of the monsters that would come get them if they misbehaved on steroids.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment!" Mana's voice echoed through the structure while a crackling beam of lightning wrapped itself right around the skull of the titanic snake, applying all of its weight and density onto the skull of the cruel apex predator.</p><p>The snake hissed out while it fell to the front. Right before it would smash onto its own coiled up body and conceal the trapped bunnies in darkness, Mana hit its skull with a Spear Kick to make it change its direction and tumble backward while it uncoiled and let the bunnies go.</p><p>"Go home," Mana ordered the bunnies. There was no cheer or the usual showmanship in her voice. She had to sound strict and scary enough to intimidate these scared kits into motion from their panic and make them trust her. In her mind, such an approach should have worked however reality proved to be a little bit different.</p><p>The bunnies just quivered in their boots, pressing against Mana's calves and her thighs, depending on their size. The magician had counted on something that would scare the predator that scared them being scary enough to make them go home without this emotional breakdown but she may have let her personal frustrations get her too far.</p><p>The magician felt the chakra inside the titanic predator burn up again. It was preparing for battle, trying to fake the girl out by seeming dead but then springing into motion. Mana grabbed the bunnies that were not clutching to her already and leaped back to give her some distance before glaring at the panicking younglings and ordering them once again.</p><p>"Home! I'll take care of this!"</p><p>This time her elevated voice appeared to have sprung the young into motion and snapped them out. Gathering by each other and forming a row of bouncing fluffballs, the bunnies quickly ran away as it was ingrained in their genes to do. Running away was one thing that these younglings were remarkably good at, even in their young and helpless age, their lower bodies sprung them into such a blitz of motion that even Mana would have found it troublesome to keep up with them all.</p><p>"That hit wasss sssomething…" The reptile cried out after coiling up for a battle. It was at least a good dozen times Mana's size. The magician was surprised to only see minor damage being sustained on the animal's skull. The crest on the reptile's head was bent out of shape. As if it was dislocated by the tremendous force shock around the head. Drops of crimson, easily Mana's size, trickled from the beast's eyes.</p><p>"I counted on it crushing your skull," Mana replied. She was not in this to keep this thing alive. She had killed wild, primitive apex predators that had nothing to them but their basic instincts before. This one was even more repulsive than those ancient creepy crawlies in Wind Country caverns and given their unsightly appearance, that was a feat.</p><p>The beast had some basic intellect to it and it set Mana off the wrong way. It enjoyed its primitive, murderous nature and was not in it just to kill a bunch of easy prey – it decided to maliciously play with them and terrify them first. On top of that, this was just not the best time to threaten a bunch of kids on Mana's watch.</p><p>"Ssscary…" the beast sassed Mana before coiling its head back and preparing to lunge. "Ssssomeone like you should have ssssigned up with usss."</p><p>The speed at which the reptile's titanium-hard head propelled forward surprised the magician. She found herself frozen with nothing but useless thoughts of scorn in her head, instead of an actual strategy and reads on her opponent's moves and possible strategy.</p><p>White. The magician's consciousness whited out. There were voiced of the young bunnies ringing in her head, it took her a moment to remember what exactly she was doing. That was one hell of a hit… Had the snake intended to bite her or use some sort of a poison – she'd be impaled on its fangs and poisoned as a cherry on top of that. Its approach appeared to be different.</p><p>It made sense given the shape of this beast's head. It chose to stun its prey. Another heavy shock made Mana feel the hard surface of the toughened minerals of the deep that the rabbits lived in. The predator decided to not give Mana the time to recover her better senses. That was smart, it had noticed that the magician was snapping out and decided to pin it down and flatten her with its tail.</p><p>Surrounded by such hellish heat, Mana could barely feel the warmth of her own cracked head. She could definitely feel the all too familiar taste in her mouth though. This was seriousness, maybe she should have tried using her genjutsu escape… She was underestimating this beast from the very beginning. Just because of that blinding rage, because of how successfully she caught the reptile unprepared.</p><p>The next hit for sure… "God… I can't breathe…" Mana coughed as she felt overwhelmed by the burning that rushed into her lungs. Fear began wrangling around her heart. That meant her augmentations will get sloppy, she'll spend more chakra than it was necessary just to breathe properly and push through her busted ribs and the head injury.</p><p>Most importantly, she won't make it in time before…</p><p>"Chakra Shotgun!" Kouta's tired voice made Mana's eyes widen as adrenaline surged inside her. Kicking her in the butt one more time to get used to the heat in the air she so desperately needed to survive. The typical Jugo chakra cannot blast spread out wide into a spread-shot of smaller blasts that bombarded the skull of the injured reptilian titan.</p><p>Without as much as a hiss, but with a loud, crashing thud, the beast crumbled down. The cracked beneath the bottom of the round cavern through which the scorching red of molten metal flows was shining elongated but the cavern held the beast even as it tried to crush and stun Mana and while it itself was toppled down.</p><p>"Are you okay?" the boy rushed up to Mana after he finally landed with his two feet firmly on the ground. Kouta was not repeating Mana's mistake, he was too shy in his base state to let the rage of his Cursed State consume him, even though his strength and speed intensified so much. He was the pinnacle of control… There was much Mana could have learned from him.</p><p>"I… You're the expert on that." Mana wheezed, still feeling the burning pain in her ribs. Her stuck-up lungs just couldn't handle the blaze that the rabbits resided in each passing day.</p><p>"Shit… Let me take care of that…" Kouta winked at the magician, sacrificing his chance to finish the snake off just to give her ribs and her back a little patch-up, just enough to alleviate her breathing. "I guess it was tough using your illusions with those busted ribs, when you couldn't speak, huh?"</p><p>He was smiling. He was not blaming Mana for being careless, for letting her recent history get to her. He was not blaming her for rushing out all by herself or not letting him catch up to her properly before she engaged the enemy of unknown strength all by herself, even though that was exactly what she deserved. All he was doing was giving her his most friendly smile and healing her… Mana loved him so much.</p><p>The injured reptilian coiled itself together in an attacking stance again. The fact that it withstood both a close-range blast from Kouta as well as one of Mana's strongest techniques was a testament to the creature's toughness. While its skull was bent and misshapen, its crest bent out of place completely and thick, dark blood pouring from every orifice, the snake insisted on finishing what it had gotten into.</p><p>This was a matter of pride for the reptilian.</p><p>"Konoha ninja? Here?" It hissed out with a hint of mockery more than fear. The titan should have known better than mock one of the most powerful neighbors of Kusagakure. Slimy and thick goop of what was most likely blood continued to drip from the titan's mouth as it opened or whenever its tongue stuck out to whiff air particles around it.</p><p>"The Ninja Rabbits are my partners. I understand that they are your prey and that ninja animals have their own relations with each other. However, you have stepped out of line here. As a summoner of the Ninja Rabbits, I came here to uphold my end of the contract." Mana replied to the beast with a much more reserved and calmed tone. The girl was strict on the curious, evil-eyed predator but she managed to contain the previous rage that stood in the way of her properly settling this dispute.</p><p>"I am Brownback of the Ninja Snakesss. The only authority I anssswer to isss that of Yamata no Orochi." The titan hissed. "Rabbitsss are weaklingsss, I do with them asss I pleassse".</p><p>"I know people like you." Kouta stepped forward to stand beside Mana. Usually, medical ninja held themselves to the back of the ranks but something appeared to be important enough for the young man to bring himself to break that rule. "There is one more authority they respect."</p><p>Blue chakra flares lit up the ground beneath the boy's feet, the chakra flares spread without breaking through the surface he stood on, throwing Kouta like a spiraling arrow onward while his fist hardened with similar blue chakra glowing on his fist. This was no Jugo technique. He was using the herculean strength of a medical ninja instead.</p><p>"Strength!" the boy shouted while he threw his wallop aiming for the snake's head. Almost like it was mocking the young man, Brownback threw his tough as nails tail up as a blocking measure. A deafening shockwave made the entire cave tremble where Kouta's punch met the beast's tail. After the deafening sound of the clash silenced, however, it appeared that the force was absorbed by Brownback's tail completely.</p><p>"What ssstr…" the titanic snake was about to ask but Kouta's feet suddenly changed direction, a faint flare of chakra made his feet position upwards while he flared up his Chakra Enhanced Strength using fist and redirected his strength to a different direction.</p><p>The reptile was about to laugh at this vain effort but then it noticed the cracking minerals beneath its massive frame. At that moment it was too late, Kouta pushed the titan enough to sink it into the endless oceans of molten rock and minerals flowing below this deep layer. Probably the scariest thing was the husky sound that the snake made while it got covered and set ablaze by the superheated flow around him.</p><p>Using his morphed feet as jets, Kouta dashed in the air back to his initial position and observed the painful looking agony of the cruel Brownback.</p><p>"Don't lower your guard," Mana warned. "I highly doubt that someone of this snake's rank would be done in by some outer core flows…"</p><p>"Maybe if it was whole…" Kouta sighed. "With those gruesome injuries cracking its skull, all that heat will incinerate it from inside. What's the point of those amazingly hard scales if the insides did not need protection?"</p><p>A loud cracking noise followed by a bright flash of light followed, Brownback's tail, covered in flames and liquid metals burst through the rocky surface and tried its best effort of wrapping itself around the two ninja that sent it floating into the outer core to get incinerated from inside out. It was a last ditch effort just to save it some pride.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment!" Mana yelled out while pointing her Audra wand at the slithering, blazing tail. A beam of Lightning Release chakra shot out and covered the exposed area of the Brownback's tail, snapping it with a loud and gruesome crunchy sound.</p><p>After getting shocked, the tail went completely limp and lifelessly slithered under the layer of still barely intact rocks and minerals. As if accepting its own failure and giving in. Despite the fact that Mana was not in it to protect any attacking ninja animals, letting Brownback sink under felt wrong.</p><p>Unlike what Mana expected, these Ninja Snakes were not mindless predators. They were not fueled by just their basic instincts. Brownback had intelligence and ideals, granted, his intelligence was as limited as comparing strength and his ideals were entirely in the wrong, being lead completely by his own cruelty and a malicious desire to torture and kill, but these were higher functions regardless.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Kouta wondered looking at Mana's grief. "We saved those rabbits, didn't we?"</p><p>"Yeah but… I shouldn't have killed Brownback." Mana looked to the side. "I was just… So angry. It was too soon for this to happen, I wasn't thinking straight."</p><p>"Hey, don't hog this kill! I did it." Kouta interrupted her. "You just didn't let him drag us under, which, granted, we could have survived but… We'd have wasted a bunch of chakra doing it".</p><p>The two dashed their way outside the abandoned rabbit caverns and into the cave system that lead them back into the current Rabbit Caves location. They were in no hurry to return. They spent a decent amount of chakra fighting this incredibly powerful threat that would have pushed either of them to their limit had they faced it alone. It was best to let the chakra they have spent recover a little.</p><p>"When I ran here, the whole way here I thought that I'd be faced by someone who's just an apex predator. I didn't expect to fight something that's genuinely this twisted." Mana sighed. "I was too mad about what it did, by the memories that it brought up and the failures it made me confront to think of a strategy… Thanks for saving my life there."</p><p>"Hey, you didn't take me with you just to face the embarrassing pep talks from Usuzoku, did you? I'd like to still take a look at some of those injuries when we return. It was hasty battlefield treatment that I did back there." Kouta insisted. "So you've decided to not kill these snakes either?"</p><p>"I can't…" Mana sighed. "They're not like those hunters in the desert. They don't always kill just to feed themselves. They're genuinely evil but that means that there's still a part of them that can be changed".</p><p>"That's an odd way of looking at it…" Kouta observed. "I'd have taken a scumbag like Brownback as more deserving of death than the insects in the Wind Country. Higher intelligence doesn't always mean better things."</p><p>"I'm not sure what I should do." Mana sighed. "I've never really stretched or questioned these parts of my principals. Most threats I've faced up to now were human, it was a no-brainer about no-killing with them."</p><p>"Whatever you decide to do, it's up to you. I'll support your decision. But I won't let them kill you either, even if I have to kill them like Brownback. I don't like killing, similarly to you, but I will protect you to that extent if I need to." Kouta replied.</p><p>The pair made their way back to the Rabbit Caves in silence after sorting that out and finishing dealing with the unpleasant matter that scared the young bunnies so much. At the time only the short-term implications of what had happened in that cavern mattered to the two and given how much it shook them, they could not have been blamed. Regardless of that, there may have been long-term implications to come as well. The two must have realized that much even if it was in some deeper corners of their minds.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0444"><h2>444. Runaways By Circumstance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana and Kouta ran into Usuzoku somewhere on their way to the Rabbit Caves. The rabbit warrior must have been coming to their aid. He was carrying a sizeable bag alongside his too massive for his size sword. Once the two blitzed the rabbit and kept on moving the opposite direction, Usuzoku quickly changed directions and caught up with them.</p><p>"What happened out dere?" He growled out. The mammal was visibly peeved by the fact that he was left behind in this battle.</p><p>"This Brownback was the snake that attacked the bunnies earlier. He was toying with the kits he'd kidnapped in the abandoned caves. He was incredibly rude as someone close to another animals' borders." Mana recounted.</p><p>"Brownback, huh? I guess dere's no use ta da poisons I took." Usuzoku grunted to himself. "Brownback's a pretty nasty specimen. Yer mate's a pretty tough guy to slay him. You were right to select him from the rest."</p><p>Despite her irritation at the topic of romance being brought up this way and in this context, Mana somehow managed to swallow it and focus on more important topics.</p><p>"That's not the point. The snakes appear to completely defy any decency or your borders. They're right in your backyard this time. Brownback mentioned that he listens to Yamata no Orochi but something like this does not sound like something he'd order." Mana replied.</p><p>"Yer right. Seems a bit beneath de big serpent." Usuzoku nodded with an unintelligible grumble.</p><p>"Who is this Yamata no Orochi?" Kouta wondered. He looked a little surprised to see Mana mention him meaning he expected that when Brownback mentioned him the first time, it was the first time both of them had heard of the name. Then again, being completely out of the loop was a social hazard of hanging around her.</p><p>"Da big king 'a da snakes." Usuzoku's eyes turned grimly sour just after a thought of the man. "Usually a ninja animal species has one or two big guys: A-Rank or even S-Rank monsters dat make them a force ta be reckoned with. Snakes are one of the more revered species so they have a lot more dan usual, Yamata no Orochi is da worst of dem all".</p><p>"It is a serpent that is so massive it sleeps inside the planetary mantle and its outer core. Its heads span across the entire world, all eight of them. If it ever took steps on the surface it would most likely ring in the end of days." Mana shared Usuzoku's respectful awe at merely the tales of the legendary beast.</p><p>"I guess I know why you poor things give snakes this much leeway. If I was bullied by people who were friends with an eight-headed world serpent, I'd be pretty scared too…" Kouta exclaimed in surprise.</p><p>"Why didn't you contact me and tell me things were this dire?" Mana turned at Usuzoku with a stern look.</p><p>"Cause it's nothing new for us. We've been pushed deeper 'n deeper every time someone wandered further into our territory." Usuzoku stonewalled Mana's sternness with a cold dismissal.</p><p>Something about this still didn't make sense to the magician. If this was the same old tale, why didn't the rabbits pack up and move against earlier, not when one of the more established minions of Yamata no Orochi was sacking their borders and eating their young whole.</p><p>A whole pack of rabbits met the returning trio. Some of them looked happy to see Mana, Kouta and Usuzoku return. Others looked afraid, most likely by the implications what this clash with Brownback would bring. The most dominant emotion in the eyes of everyone was the irritation. These poor mammals looked like classmates scolding their troublemaking peer after the whole class got punished.</p><p>"May you explain what happened out there?" An older rabbit of bright yellow fur that was no longer as slick and fluffy as even that of middle-aged ninja rabbits in their prime was hopped out in front.</p><p>"Hatchlin' 'n her mate killed Brownback," Usuzoku replied. Almost as soon as words ceased leaving his mouth, the elder was already right in front of the rabbit with a powerful kick from one of his impressively trained feet. The impact sent Usuzoku crashing into the caves and demolished one of the domiciles that the rabbits had carved into the minerals.</p><p>Kouta stepped in front to object but Mana stopped him by raising her hand. "It's okay, this happens a lot." She tried to calm the young man down but the worry in her own voice over the situation betrayed her true feelings.</p><p>"Mana… Why?" The elder leaned at the magician, making her lean back uncomfortably. Then the rabbit backed down with disappointment before the girl could even answer and hopped back in front of the gathered rabbits. "This is a bad time to start a feud with the Ninja Snakes… The worst…"</p><p>"This has nothing to do with the Ninja Snakes." Mana cut down. "Yamata no Orochi could not have sent Brownback, this was too petty for him. It was evident that Brownback was acting on his own impulsive nature".</p><p>"What does it matter?" The yellow rabbit sighed. He kept on pulling his ears and the flesh on his saggy face in frustration. "Even if Yamata no Orochi did not intend on causing harm to us and it was business as usual, now that we killed his minion we're going extinct…"</p><p>These words hit Mana pretty heavy in the chest. Usuzoku finally hopped back to where he was standing about before being kicked aside. "Whatever, ye knew it was gonna happen one a dose days, old-timer. One a dese days da snakes were gonna come and we were gonna have nowhere else left to go and da only choice would be war."</p><p>"That's all you want… That's all that's on your mind…" The elder lamented. "When Mana-chan signed with us I thought it could have been the rebirth of our species… I was a foolish old geezer. There's no coming back for us…"</p><p>"The only foolishness in your head is the naïve belief that you could have pushed this matter away until you were no longer there to deal with it as the leader of your group!" Mana intervened.</p><p>Finally, she realized why the rabbits were so hesitant to deal with Brownback even if they may have had the force to do so. Why now, of all times, they were being this passive. They had nowhere else to go. Any inch below them was the liquid metal flows of the outer core and they had no time to create new caves further west.</p><p>"You were supposed to ensure the survival of our species, not its extinction." The elder kept talking to himself. Mana was not too angry at him, if he had at any point seen the absolute horror of the Yamata no Orochi up close, it would have been a life-changing experience one would have done repugnant things to avoid ever reliving.</p><p>"No, I'm going to ensure its survival. Everyone pack your things!" Mana declared out loud to the entire group. "We're moving away before Yamata no Orochi swallows these caverns whole with one bite or sends his other goons for a more torturous extinction."</p><p>The rabbits were quivering, objecting and scattering. Could they have really been blamed? Such was their nature all along. The way they were programmed: the rabbits were the prey, all they could have ever done was run. Their ability to flee was unparalleled in the entire ninja world. No other ninja animal had lower bodies as well trained as that of the Ninja Rabbits.</p><p>"Wait, everyone, please, at least hear Mana-chan out!" Kouta pleaded with the rabbits. None of them were listening. The boy's voice was still too harmless and lacked some of his father's authority and presence. The young man was there in terms of his heart but his confidence was simply not in the same place.</p><p>Why would a bunch of naturally designed cowards listen to an outsider telling them to listen to another outsider telling them to face their fears? Usuzoku looked at the two of his human companions looking absolutely pitiful and flipped his shit with the most blood-curdling battle cry aimed at his own people.</p><p>The only reason why the scattering rabbits stopped and all turned their heads and ears at the trio telling them to confront their fears was because of their fear. Rabbits were born programmed to freeze and listen well to anything that sounded threatening to their well-being and Usuzoku made sure to be loud and scary enough with his crazy yell to seem very much that way.</p><p>"Pack your things. Instead of sitting here and acting like you can hide away forever, follow me." Mana pleaded with the rabbits. She needed to convey her idea to the summoned animals as fast as possible. The finer details could have been worked out later on.</p><p>"Follow you where? Which way?" the petrified rabbits kept on mumbling one after the other creating a wave of fearful questions.</p><p>"To Konoha, to the Forest of Death. It was a much smaller cave system but the Ninja Snakes there will not risk pissing off the Hokage by threatening the ecosystem on Konoha's doorstep." Mana replied.</p><p>"Madness, we'd be heading the exact other way. We'd be heading towards the snakes for the most of the way. If Yamata no Orochi decided to attack us – we'd be right there for him, we'd have to pass him to reach Konoha." The yellow elder rabbit flipped his hands in the air.</p><p>"You're already right here for him. He quite literally covers the entire world, nothing stops him from opening one of his jowls and swallowing this cavern whole but his own distaste for eating a bunch of rock with you." Mana tried to reason with the frightened mind. "Out there you'd be a moving target in a small and compact cave system, full of other Ninja Snakes he'd not risk to devour in one gulp. Right now you will only last until the news of Brownhead's demise reach him because in this corner you're all packed up and wrapped for him".</p><p>"Running away by running toward the thing that's chasing you – that makes no sense!" The rabbits kept on abandoning the large flock and heading their own way before Kouta finally lost it. Black tattoos covered his entire body while his eyes blacked out and lit up with a bright, golden iris in the center. His mouth twisted into a sadistic smile as his entire stance shifted to that of a complete, frightening psychopath.</p><p>Mana took a frightful step backward, she could not believe that the malice that was leaking out and petrifying her from the bottom of her core outward was coming from her own boyfriend. The young man she loved for years now. The sheer, unadulterated evil was flowing through his system like blood flowed through a person's veins. His heart was beating pure murder and this was just the first stage of his Cursed Seal.</p><p>"If you don't listen to Mana-chan, I'll kill all of you right here!" The gentle medical ninja, turned a trigger-happy psycho, screamed out licking his own twitching fingers as if enjoying the malice that left his pores and crawled up his skin in the shape of the expanding Curse Seal marks all over his body.</p><p>Mana wanted to speak, to reason with her boyfriend or maybe try and play along with his idea to intimidate the group of rabbits but… She was too frightened to speak. Just what kind of a hero was she if she blamed these poor things for being afraid when she herself froze after just a whiff of the taint lying inside Kouta's own genes. Inside the bestial nature she would have to foster soon enough.</p><p>"Running towards one's prey is still running away when you think about it…" The skeptical rabbit from before reconsidered in the face of a more immediate threat right in front of him.</p><p>"Y-Yeah… We're pretty good at running away. That's something we can do!" Another one joined his fold.</p><p>"Plus, we'd be running away from this scary guy as well. It's like… Running away squared…" A female rabbit stepped in front of the two with her own excuse as to why changing their opinion was perfectly justified.</p><p>"Let's all run away!" The rabbits collectively chanted while Kouta struggled to restrain his Curse Seal and return to his base state.</p><hr/><p>A slithering noise preceded a fall of a pebble that echoed throughout a rocky tunnel. Two elongated heads of a reptilian animal wrapped around each other and produced an uncomfortable scratching sound as its tough scales brushed against themselves during their intimate contact.</p><p>The cave that appeared to have ended before in a rather abrupt dead-end came to life. Where the cave's end previously laid now opened an eye of sky-reaching proportions, only a small part of which was visible to the twin-headed snake that was intending to report the news to its massive superior. Only the part one could see from the cave that lead into a much more massive cavern where the entire head of the eight-headed world serpent rested.</p><p>"I'm sure that Yamata-sama heard you coming without you needing to resort to that noise…" A fellow slithering reptile besides the twin-headed one grumbled.</p><p>Both of these serpents were quite massive by themselves but even their titanic proportions paled when confronted by just a portion of an eye of the eight-headed one. The companion of the twin-headed snake was much slicker and black, dark purple sprouts of puffy feather-like growths covered its entire bodily length from place to place. Together with the golden shade of brown that the twin-headed snake had, the two looked in quite a sharp contrast to one another.</p><p>"Regardless, we bring news, Yamata-sama. Brownback has died, we're not sure who exactly killed him but he was last sighted near the Rabbit Caves." The twin-headed snake reported. Each one of the two heads spoke interrupting the other, it may have seemed that they tried to speak in perfect sync but it appeared that they have not yet perfected this feat as one often interrupted the other in mid-word.</p><p>"You woke me up for this?" A lowly whisper of the Yamata no Orochi rung out but echoed through kilometers upon kilometers of the caves surrounding the system where one of its eight heads laid dormant. "My single heartbeat makes the world unstable, my fully spoken words make volcanoes erupt and shake the ground beneath the humans' feet".</p><p>While the eight-headed world serpent offered few whispers, his subordinates understood the meaning behind them. It was a danger for their master to remain awake. Every passing moment that their master spent living large, feeding and the sort, was a moment when the humans may have found the eight-headed serpent too troublesome to keep alive. Yamata spent his entire existence learning to suppress his hunger, his heartbeat, and his whispers and permanently moved underground so that his existence did not cause his children's extinction.</p><p>"We figured you'd…" The twin-headed snake mumbled.</p><p>"Would want to know? Yes, I guess I would… Brownback's death is a tragedy. It is easy to make a child, infinitely harder it is to lead them through the ranks as they grow. The more time you buy for them to live, the larger they become, the higher their hunger, the greater their ambition." Yamata whispered again, the sound waves of his grief spread throughout cave systems that covered the entire country. It was like every time the titan spoke, he did so to his entire kind.</p><p>"So you'll do nothing? You'll just let the rabbits free for killing one of your own? Brownback had a couple more years before he'd have become an A-Rank asset to our group." The dark serpent beside the twin-headed messenger got unruly. While most of the snakes shared the common bond of being siblings and the children of the Yamata no Orochi, the dark serpent was closer to Brownback than his other siblings.</p><p>"The rabbits are meaningless. I gave Brownback no order to mess with them. He did so because he wanted to. I never fed you, you always found your own food. It is, therefore, none of my concern that someone of Brownback's age and maturity failed to outgrow the childish bite size of feeding on rabbits." Yamata replied before closing its eye once more. It appeared that the world serpent was done speaking.</p><p>"I smell weakness all over, I challenge you!" the dark snake hissed out in a much lower pitched tone before charging at the closed eye of his patriarch. A loud thud echoed through the cave when the beast's fangs met the eye of his father to no avail.</p><p>"Gorgon, no!" the twin-headed companion of the dark serpent tried to calm his sister before the foolishness could have ceased.</p><p>Unfazed by the lack of success at penetrating his father's closed eye, Gorgon slithered back and opened his eyes wide open. A yellow glow began penetrating the darkness of the cave and illuminating Yamata no Orochi's closed eye.</p><p>"If you're so stubborn at doing nothing and lying here, may as well become a stone on a molecular level!" The dark snake laughed out in a sinister manner only it was capable of. Corrosive venom dripped from its happy tongue as it slithered out and waved about while the snake enjoyed hitting his father of size too immense to avoid his certain-death technique more than any child should have.</p><p>"Foolish hatchling… Who do you think you've inherited this jutsu from?" Yamata opened his eye again. With a ghastly, blood-freezing flat out scream, Gorgon instantaneously became stone himself and within mere moments of petrification collapsed into clouds of dust, smaller than even the eyes of his twin-headed companion could see. Once the massive king of serpents spoke again, the gusts coming from its whispers scattered the turned to dust daughter of his across the labyrinths of the caves.</p><p>"I-I did not challenge you, Yamata-sama!" Both heads of the twin-headed one sunk to the rocky floor. "It was all Gorgon's idea, she never told me about it"!</p><p>"It feels bad to lose a daughter who had awakened one of my abilities already. If you wish to avenge Brownback, by all means, do whatever you want. Rabbits are the food of the young. It is just sandbox banter if you let them concern you." Whispers echoed in all directions from the point where the massive eye still stared at the two-headed messenger.</p><p>The voice of the patriarch spread far and wide, maybe such was the world serpent's intention, maybe not. Most of the slitherers hiding out in the darkness of the caves could hear what the wind blew their direction and would have soon let the more adventurous reptiles on the surface know as well. Yamata's washing of his hands soon became a call to action to anyone awakened from their deep slumber.</p>
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<a name="section0445"><h2>445. Exodus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rabbits had one final night to gather everything they could carry while maintaining a reasonable pace and leave first thing next morning. They would be heading closer to toward the Ryuuchi Cave, a sacred location for the Ninja Snakes. The home of the snakes that resided there was an equal distance away from Land of Fire to the north-east, as the Rabbit Caves were to the west.</p><p>Kouta opened his eyes in the midst of the night, awakened by a strange feeling that he could not explain. He didn't hear or see anything but the air around him felt somehow different, different enough to trigger his perception and awaken him, at least. When the young man turned to the other side than the one he was facing while he nodded asleep he noticed Mana.</p><p>The magician was sitting in a meditating position with an aura of light around her. The odd thing was that she was levitating a small distance off the ground and it was not her usual method of levitating either. Given how her chakra was visible on the outside, Kouta figured that it was the sheer output of Mana's chakra that levitated her. She was concentrating and controlling her flow thusly that when it left her bodily pores, the force of the energy flowing around her propelled her gently off the ground.</p><p>The young man closed his eyes again. He decided not to interrupt Mana with something like a question. She was probably recovering in her own unique way. Both of them spent some chakra fighting Brownback and Kouta spent even more after he had to quickly patch Mana up during the battle and complete her recovery after it.</p><p>The next morning, when Usuzoku was packing all of his weaponry and paper tags and Mana was observing the preparations both inside Usuzoku's carved home and outside where the rabbits were beginning to gather, Kouta finally got his chance to speak to Mana.</p><p>"Hey, how are you feeling?" He wondered, trying to use his professional qualifications as an excuse to strike up a conversation. Even if they had gotten close lately, he still didn't feel brave enough to just talk to her without a reason or as much as a made-up excuse.</p><p>"Fine. As fine as one might feel with what's ahead." Mana replied, sipping a little from her cup of green tea before closing her eyes to calm her heart that began racing just from the mere thought of transferring an entire society of Ninja Rabbits to another location.</p><p>"I noticed you were meditating yesterday. Did you rest well?" Kouta wondered, still keeping up his professional façade instead of revealing his actual friendly concern over his girlfriend's well-being.</p><p>"Meditation is not a substitute for sleep. It is a lesser way of resting but I had to spend one more night at it." Mana replied. After seeing the confusion on Kouta's face when she explained, the girl elaborated. "You see, I was boosting the size of my chakra signature. I was trying to increase it as much as I could through meditation last night. The challenges we will face will be unlike anything else, there is a high chance of A-Rank animals trying to kill us".</p><p>"You can increase your chakra size through meditation?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"No, meditation merely boosts your spiritual chakra, at least normal meditation. Over the years I have learned to have it substitute physical training as well by simulating it in my mind. That helps me train both aspects at the same time and achieve growths of my chakra at half the time." Mana explained.</p><p>"So I can just think about training instead of training?" The young man wondered with innocence to his bafflement that made Mana chuckle.</p><p>"It is much tougher than that. You must not just think it but truly feel it. The process you're simulating must be ingrained in your mind, you must visualize the sights, the smells, every strain to every muscle. It takes immense concentration and years of practice to learn." Mana replied with a smile, her amusement still lingering in the system.</p><p>"I think I'd rather stay with the old-fashioned method…" Kouta concluded.</p><p>"I thought you might." Mana nodded. "Then again, you were the one to ask me about it".</p><p>"Ya guys ready? I think we can head out." Usuzoku grumped out after taking a peek outside at the gathering crowd of the Ninja Rabbits.</p><p>The trio stood up without a word, packed the few things that still remained unpacked or left what was unneeded and rushed on out of Usuzoku's place and ahead of the crowd. The rabbits did not need much further encouragement to move with the group, the moment that Mana, Kouta, and Usuzoku moved on ahead, the rest followed while maintaining a defensive group formation.</p><p>It did not appear that there was any training or rehearsing involved. Even the young bunnies gripping their mothers' skirts or immensely powerful thighs as well as the animals Mana could distinctly remember being rather low-ranking and uninvolved in any fighting managed to maintain perfect traveling formation. Perhaps moving this way was also one of the things that rabbits had ingrained in them through their genes.</p><p>"Do ya think we can really pull dis off? Won't ya get in trouble fer bringin' a bunch 'a rabbits to Konoha's forest"? Usuzoku wondered with a strict look at Mana's direction.</p><p>"Not at all. The Forest of Death is a den of all sorts of creatures from various parts of the world, used as training grounds. It will not be a paradise by any means but the predators there are just that – mindless sets of poison, teeth, and claws with no affiliation. I do recall you yourself dispatching of multiple giant centipedes." Mana replied.</p><p>Usuzoku turned back ahead, looking a bit calmed by the magician's reply. It was in the prey's nature to question and doubt everything. Despite the excessively protective and untrusting nature of the rabbits, Mana was glad to have had some voice in the community after all this time spent with it. She may not have been enough to convince the whole place to pack and leave, but at the very least she managed to reach into Usuzoku's heart and pulling this off would help her find a way into the hearts of the others as well.</p><p>"As far as pulling this off is concerned… I've no idea. How many of these guys can actually fight?" Mana wondered. She had counted on Usuzoku dropping his foolish macho act and give her an honest answer.</p><p>"Every bunny has at da very least strong feet. Nuff ta behead humans deir age with a light kick fer sure." Usuzoku shrugged.</p><p>"Then there's you, Usuzoku-san, I do recall you having plenty of heart in the finals of the Chuunin Exams." Kouta attempted to flatter the brutish rabbit. Judging from the somewhat lacking of composure grin that it summoned on Usuzoku's face and the pride all over his grimace, the young man succeeded.</p><p>"I'm sure dat Hatchling managed ta pick 'erself a decent fighter fer a mate too, even if I didn't see ya fightin' in da Exams…" Usuzoku replied. He may not have meant for the reply to sound a bit offensive but Mana noticed signs of bitterness on Kouta's face. Mana sighed. She would not have liked for all the old wounds from that time to open now that she and Kouta were together again.</p><p>"It was enough for Brownback…" Kouta puffed his lips a little. Seeing the usually reserved and shy boy fire warning shots at the direction of her rabbit partner did have some entertainment value to Mana.</p><p>"Aye, Brownback was a pretty nasty piece 'a work. Surpassed other B-Ranks he did, I'm sure he'd 'a given me a fair beatin'." Usuzoku pondered to himself. Mana wondered if the rabbit perhaps lamented the fact that he never got to fight the titanic snake but her knowledge of reading body language failed in picking any signs that could have verified that theory up from the rabbit.</p><p>It hit Mana like a hammer to the chest. The large chunk of chakra right ahead. An extension of her sensory alerted the magician of two more signatures to the side, much more massive ones too. The girl herself was impressed by her ability to speak when facing such massive signatures, ones flanking the rabbits from the side caves must have been four times the size of what Usuzoku had.</p><p>"We have company." Mana declared with a raised in the air fist. Her other hand swiped down to force the Audra wand out from her sleeve while her fingers tightly wrapped around it, preparing to punish any greedy overextension with an attack of her own. "One B-Rank or so in front, two much stronger at the sides."</p><p>"Does this mean that the snakes are actually out to get us?" Kouta prepared himself as well, choosing to take a fighting stance and letting Usuzoku draw his blade and step on ahead.</p><p>"Either way, da biggest one won't attack us while we're on da move. It sure as hell won't hit us while we're on da surface." Usuzoku growled while raising his large sword up and readying himself for an upcoming attack. "Our plans weren't made fer a flankin' such as dis…"</p><p>"Move back!" Mana ordered the whole group of rabbits behind her. Fighting while protecting them would be troublesome as it is. They'd be a constant target. "The only direction they can't hit us from is the back. That much they've made sure of"!</p><p>A handful of strong looking rabbits with chakra signatures of around Usuzoku's size, ranging both to the upper side and the lower one, chose to stay behind with Mana. The magician did not object. When confronted with an A-Rank threat, the group could have used any help they could get.</p><p>The flame of uncertainty in the outcome of the coming battle blazed in Mana's chest hotter and hotter the more the massive moons of the chakra signatures closed in on them. In this relatively wide rocky pass with abyss leading to the outer core, shimmering from kilometers below, from each side, Mana was not entirely sure if all of them would survive this raid.</p><p>The snakes were more cunning than Mana gave them credit for. Right before the serpent moving in from the front burst through the wall of minerals blocking it from their vision, its chakra signature multiplied drastically. Within but a snap, Mana's sensory became overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the same signature, she could not recall ever being attacked in such a sly way.</p><p>A loud thud signaled the breach of the frontal wall of minerals, through which hundreds of thousands of glowing predatory eyes shimmered as the whirlpool of snakes rearing their fangs flushed in the shape of a wave right at the rabbits and their companions who tried to fend the assault off by taking defensive formations.</p><p>Kouta noticed Mana's lowered guard and her shaking, mad glare. He saw the sweat running down her face and must have realized the source of it. Instead of replying to the masses of snakes with something very destructive, he chose to grab Mana and take a short dash back, letting the rabbits take the front. He was not sure if the rabbit warriors had something in their arsenal to block this rushing whirlpool of snakes, he could not have known it for certain but he had trust in their abilities.</p><p>The third rabbit warrior, one with extremely fluffy ends to his long ears and the one with the most thickness to his body leaped ahead. His ears moved in a quick blitz, thrusting at the snakes in rapid succession, with a rush of palm strikes that at the very least stopped the oncoming wave of snakes in its track and began drastically lowering their ranks by crushing the extras.</p><p>It was a noble effort, but a vain one. The rabbit's ears became more and more visible as their speed significantly slowed down and he was overcome by the rush of the snakes, who appeared to care little if they washed most of them off into the abyss below. As long as the rabbits and their human friends fell with them.</p><p>"Earth Style: Rushing Rampart!" one of the other rabbit warriors chanted out as they placed their hands on the platform where the rabbits stood. A flurry of sharp mineral projectiles began firing from under his feet, severely weakening the platform but aiding his predecessor in its defense from the snakes.</p><p>The combined effort was enough to cause a violent shockwave eruption that made the snakes scatter in a wild rain. The rabbit that valiantly leaped into the fray first landed back on the platform, pulling a bunch of vastly reduced in size and length snakes out of where they let their fangs dig into the rabbit's flesh. These specific serpents appeared to lack any venomous qualities, at least from what could have been perceived at that moment.</p><p>The walls to the side burst as well, revealing the two much larger snakes behind it. One of them appeared not by displaying its massive fangs but instead its tail, displaying an impressive bone growth at its tip with a hollow ending.</p><p>"Wind Style: Eruption Breakthrough!" the snake hissed out, letting a powerful wave of air out through the end of the bony growth. It directed the stream of the powerful airwave, targeting it at its own scattered smaller comrades on the frontal end before dragging it all over the supporting platform and then trying hit the wall behind the rabbits.</p><p>Whether it was to destroy a way back for the combatants that stayed back to confront the serpent assault head-on, or if the beast knew of where the civilians and the weaker fighters were remained a mystery for now.</p><p>A rabbit beside Usuzoku revealed its own weapon – a long scythe before throwing the blade around while the weapon lit up with a faint, blue flame of chakra imbuement.</p><p>"Wind Style: Crescent Blade!" he yelled out as the chakra flame at the tip of the blade separated from the blade itself and flew at the direction of the oncoming air stream in the shape of a crescent chakra projectile. The projectile appeared to be powerful enough to split the stream of air as well as hit the snake using it as well.</p><p>The final assault came from the wall to the other side. The attack was somewhat coordinated as all three snakes attacked within mere microsecond after the last. It could have been coordinated much better, given the high rank of the threat, however, the teamwork of the rabbits was also less than stellar in return.</p><p>The final snake was a dark purple reptile, its snake covered with black markings that spread over the snake's body as a tattoo. Its eyes were sunken in total blackness except for the flaring, blaze-colored iris. The beast burst through the wall of hardened stone with its mouth already open.</p><p>"Vespa-Sparrow Acid Technique!" the snake hissed out as a dark purple liquid sprayed from its mouth in a widespread cover, the liquid spread in a drop-shaped field that was quickly descending upon the cornered rabbits, their partners and the feeble structure they stood on.</p><p>"Dis 'ere's mine cue!" Usuzoku declared, kicking off the platform and drawing his blade. Using his sword in a barrage of slashes, the rabbit blocked every droplet of the falling acid in mid-air as if protecting himself from down pouring rain with just his sword alone.</p><p>The rabbit examined his sword upon landing back on the platform and turning his eyes back at the three wrangling attackers. The multiplying snake appeared to be slowly reforming into one, much greater shape while the smaller serpents made their way back and up the rocky wall they have plummeted down from before. While the number of snakes was greatly reduced from right after the multiplying serpent split itself, it appeared to be able to fully recover himself from what few snakes remained alive.</p><p>"Dat acid was child's play. Barely even left a mark on da blade…" Usuzoku concluded while swinging his massive lump of steel around and resting it behind his head onto his back.</p><p>"It's likely very venomous as well…" Mana declared, thusly informing her companions that she was also back in the fight after being temporarily overwhelmed by the numbers of the first, multiplying snake. "Otherwise there would be no use in spreading such a weak acid around. If the acid truly was this weak and corrosion was its first purpose, the snake would have spat it at a much more intense concentration. Like a stream, instead of a shower."</p><p>"Good to know, we'll have in mind." One of the rabbits who did not have a chance to involve themselves much in the fight yet nodded his head. Mana could not put much of what the rabbit was capable of just from his appearance but he had a nasty scar on one side of his face and the eye where his face was cut looked like it was completely blind. At the very least, this mammal appeared capable of taking a hit well.</p><p>"A multiplying opponent, one that's capable of firing compressed air at us from the tip of its tail and a venom-user…" Kouta summarized while he let go of Mana and stepped ahead. "It's unfortunate but I don't think we'll manage to separate them or control where and how we'll fight them. This will inevitably turn nasty…"</p><p>"That girl is very clever." The dark purple snake with the black markings all over its body declared, silencing the inside conversations. "She also appears to be a Konoha ninja".</p><p>"That's right, the Ninja Rabbits are protected by Konoha!" Mana bluffed.</p><p>"I don't think they are…" the venom-spouting reptile almost mocked Mana by how obvious her lie was to tear apart. "I think that you're just a lost little girl who took up she has no idea what just to be one of the cool kids who has a summon…"</p><p>Compared to the rest of the snakes, who spoke with a very pronounced and evident hissing sound accompanying certain sounds they let out, this one was particularly well-spoken. It could have been someone's partner as well. A partnership with a human could have explained why it was able to speak so well. It would also be a testament to its strength. Snakes were different from rabbits, they had plenty of powerful specimens to spare their contractors meaning this one could have been chosen for its abilities.</p><p>Its chakra was absolutely massive. It was not a threat Mana could have ever taken on alone, or with one of her peers… None of the rabbits beside her were anywhere near that weight class. While Ninja Animals functioned on a slightly different classification compared to human ninja, with the A-Rank human being more powerful than an A-Rank ninja due to human spirituality being more profound and having a greater effect on their chakra size and power, this one was still comparable to a jounin level ninja.</p><p>Kouta was right, this encounter was to turn pretty nasty and the worst part was that there was nowhere to run – there was an entire society of rabbit young, old and weak behind them. The multiplying serpent was also blocking the only path that lead anywhere of use. The only path to salvation of the rabbits was through these three…</p>
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<a name="section0446"><h2>446. The Vanguard Of A Cornered Rabbit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The silver snake with the multiplying ability leaned back for another strike. Before Mana could snap out of her train of thought and register the upcoming attack, the creature was rearing its fangs and coming at the bunch. It must have noticed Mana's straying and wandering eyes and registered it as its cue to attack.</p><p>The magician started moving too late. These snakes were incredibly fast and dodging their attacks after the initial moments of their muscles tensing and air slipping from their long bodies in a petrifying hiss seemed near impossible. The girl felt a rough impact on her side, it was nothing like being chomped by a massive grey snake should have felt like. That was because that was not the source of the force.</p><p>One of the rabbits managed to push Mana away from the brunt of the attack. A dark-furred and battle-scarred thing with five knives in each hand. Given the rabbit's finger-situation, it was a remarkably skillful way to wield such weaponry. The silver-grey reptile was fast enough to adjust its approach, it turned its head at the final stretches and repurposed its lunge into a slam of its body near the head that blasted both of the two away.</p><p>The two grunted in unison and flew spiraling back. The other two picked up on the cue as the two singled out targets flew out from the tight defensive formation. The large air-streaming snake displayed the impressive bone growth on its tail and hummed in the creepy tunes of air entering the hollowed end and getting infused with the reptile's chakra.</p><p>"Wind Style: Barrage Air Bullet!" It hissed out sending a bunch of compressed air projectiles at the direction of the flying back targets.</p><p>While the air-projectile using snake was busy finishing off the stray targets that were knocked away by its ally, the poison-spitting one got busy with the remaining rabbits and Kouta, watching them so that they did not come to the aid for their displaced friends.</p><p>"Water Style: Exploding Venom Wave!" The snake hissed out while its long, dark body blobbed up into an almost spherical shape. Once it opened its mouth again, the source of its enlargement was revealed to be a massive mouthful of a purple liquid that quickly shaped itself into a large sphere after leaving the snake's mouth.</p><p>Mana could not think of anything else but the kindness of the rabbit that saved her and how it saved her from harm while damning himself with her because she let her guard down against an opponent the likes of she had not faced yet. The feelings of freefall and wind passing through her skin and ruffling her clothes were her only links with consciousness.</p><p>Even that final link was lost. A smashing blunt force that felt like being blown back off one's feet and the painful shock of slamming back into the mineral wall behind her made everything fade into black.</p><p>A rabbit of a feminine build who did not yet have a chance to show off her skills stepped in front of the rest of the formation and threw her chest out after a handful of hand seals. A powerful stream of chakra passed through her body, channeled into a sealing glyph on her forehead. The rabbit quickly swiped her arm over the area before throwing the mass of chakra at the massive bubble of venom trying to swallow their party up.</p><p>"Summoning: All-Mirage!" She chanted out as the mass of chakra finally finished summoning a golden, ancient-looking horn weapon with a long mouth that spanned in a spiral all around it where ridges of the horn would have normally been.</p><p>The bubble of venom erupted into an uncontrollable tsunami of acidic venom but the horn appeared to grow in size as well when confronted with such a manner of expansion. The wave of death stopped moving while it whirled all around the ridges of the ancient horn. The gaping mouth of the horned weapon slurped the weapon inside the infinite storage space and into oblivion.</p><p>The colliding kinetic energies of both attacks appeared to have been sufficient to nullify each other so the female rabbit just pressed her hand into a knuckle. This made her All-Mirage that was spinning back and falling into the outer core below disappear into a mass of chakra and return to her hand before running back into her forehead and scattering into a glowing aura all over her body, before even those signs of All-Mirage faded away, before the legendary weapon was called for again.</p><p>"The legendary All-Mirage… So the rabbits still do have some worthwhile relics…" The venom-spitting serpent appeared to almost chuckle in amusement, despite having failed in swallowing the party of rabbits in its bubble of venom.</p><p>"Stop messing around, Vasuki. Where are the other two rabbits!?" The dirt-colored, black-striped serpent with the bony growth that fired projectiles of compressed air hissed out loud in acknowledgment that two rabbits managed to slip off of the platform while the female rabbit was busy dealing with the venom bubble.</p><p>The disappeared rabbit finally flashed back onto the platform, holding both Mana and the rabbit who got injured assisting her. Now that the warrior rabbit stepped into the center of attention, its peculiar cat-like features became more prominent, namely its wide, floppy ears, its lack of a tail and the elongated and highly elastic limbs that helped it move much faster and with more cat-like grace.</p><p>"Mana-chan needs help…" Kouta brought up, looking at the blood running down Mana's face and dripping onto the rocky platform. The magician must have been too dazed and injured to use one of her illusions to escape the attack and the rabbit team was too pressed together and busy to assist until after the venom was dealt with.</p><p>"Not now!" Usuzoku growled out. "We can't just keep defendin' we need to bring it to 'em!"</p><p>"I'm afraid I must agree with Usuzoku." The All-Mirage wielder nodded. "As useful as young master's abilities would be ta us right now, we 'ave little time ta waste".</p><p>"We cannot just rush in either… All of those bastards are crazy powerful. We need to coordinate our attacks." The rabbit who used stone shards before to deal with the snake clones added.</p><p>Usuzoku was already gone by the time the rabbit finished his sentence. The rest just sighed in frustration before leaping off the platform and after their intended targets. They shared the three amongst each other in mid-charge.</p><p>"I shall assist Usuzoku!" The All-Mirage wielding female rabbit assigned her own role.</p><p>"Human, assist me with the air-streaming bastard!" The rabbit who previously used Earth Release asked Kouta. The medical ninja had to alter the direction of his movement in mid-air slightly to better adjust for the requested position, luckily his foot morphing chakra jets were just the ability needed for the job.</p><p>"Usuvilme, can you move?" The cat-like rabbit inquired the injured rabbit who quickly jumped to his feet. The trio comprised of him, the cat-like rabbit and the rabbit with large ears he used for striking all attacked the remaining serpent.</p><p>"Yeah, the bastard focused its Wind Style more on the girl than me." The knife-wielding rabbit nodded before pulling out another set of knives to wield from his back pouch and moving in from the front.</p><p>"Usuchabi, take the left side, I'll strike right!" The other rabbit commanded the plan of attack to the cat-like rabbit who just nodded and changed direction.</p><p>One advantage that the defending party had was their smaller size. The snakes forced themselves into tight and shut caves that were long since forgotten and used their natural abilities to slip through and sneak up on their prey. However, most of their bodies were now using those same caves for support, limiting their mobility somewhat. Until the snakes slithered out of the caves and began using chakra to stick to the walls of the cavern, they were fish in a barrel.</p><p>It was not hard to piece together why the snakes were hesitant to do just that. Their bodies were massive. That meant that they both had to use more chakra for their Academy-grade techniques, but also cover more space with them as the more of the contacting area there was to cover with the Art of Tree Climbing, the more chakra it consumed. Seeing how snakes got everywhere by slithering, they would be straining themselves just to stick to the walls of the cavern.</p><p>Kouta's hands lit up with blue chakra flares as he roared proudly while delivering his attacks. His intention was to bust the air-streaming bone growth before it could be used to do more damage to his allies or the platform that held Mana's seemingly unconscious and injured body. While the air-streaming snake attempted to bite and swallow the boy whole multiple times, it deserved a pair of good punches to the jaws to properly daze it.</p><p>That was when Kouta delivered his most important strike. Focusing a powerful jolt of chakra into his right, the boy threw a strong downward cross at the exposed bony growth after the snake appeared to be off its game and swinging its busted head about. A strong bash threw the boy away and smashed him to the mineral wall. He smacked his head pretty hard against it, realizing just how it was that Mana's head got busted open as badly as it did – that wall was harder and denser than anything Kouta felt before.</p><p>"Stop worrying about the girl, get your head in the game!" His rabbit ally scolded the boy, noticing the slip in his speed and his wandering eyes as Kouta delivered each punch. He must have had some impressive fighting experience to realize that Kouta's heart was not completely in the game.</p><p>"Earth Style: Stone Fist Jutsu!" The rabbit yelled out after throwing his arms into the hard minerals and letting them encase the limbs. Like a wild animal, the mammal then continued to throw wild and unfocused blows at the snake's general direction. It was not targeting the snake's bone-growth at all. They were too disorganized…</p><p>Despite that, the space for the snake's maneuvering was too limited, the rock-fists too massive and the snake was too dazed already to defend itself properly. The rabbit's stone-fists continued to wreak havoc on the snake's head, smashing it open and letting goopy, dark red substance drip from its eyes and mouth, similarly to how Brownback bled in his own time.</p><p>"Heh, not bad!" The snake hissed out before throwing its bone-growth up again and firing a stream of air from it. The stream appeared to intensify while it was going, the air kept coming in and it was increasing at an alarming rate.</p><p>"Wind Style: Eruption Breakthrough!" The snake bellowed, completing its jutsu that was properly set-up and masked by just a normal wind stream. The airwave intensified so that it covered the entire cave and pushed the rabbit all the way to the other side</p><p>"He was not a close-range combatant…" Kouta realized. He was a bit relieved to see that after hitting the wall on the other side so hard, the rabbit managed to recover and that he was getting ready to rejoin the fight. "He's adapting to my style… We need a strategy". He realized. His eyes once again wandered off to Mana who was lying peacefully on the platform with a small pool of blood beginning to gather beneath her head.</p><p>It did not take a medical ninja to realize that was a bad sign.</p><p>With a strong leap, assisted with his chakra jets, Kouta leaped back onto the platform and kneeled over Mana, preparing to treat her. His rabbit partner covered his fists with rocks again and leaped back at the air-streaming snake before getting blasted back again before he could make the whole leap. Luckily, it was a weaker airwave as the snake did not have the time to channel a larger one yet.</p><p>"What are you doing!? Help me out, I can't handle an A-Rank threat alone!" The rabbit yelled out at Kouta from his small crater on the other side of the cavern.</p><p>"Hold him off, please. This will not take long. Just fight him your way." Kouta insisted while his hands lit up with emerald green.</p><p>"Mystical Palm Jutsu." He whispered doing his best to treat the busted head of his girlfriend. She may not have been the strongest out of them but she would know what to do. She had to…</p><p>"Cotton Rush!" The rabbit with the fluffy airs yelled out as he bent his head forward and thrust his ears in rapid succession, using their immense size at their ends to hammer at the snake while manipulating his chakra flow to have the ears harden at the striking area.</p><p>"Many Hidden Shadow Snakes Jutsu!" The clone-using snake hissed out, leaning its head back as it displayed its bottom side. A swarm of snakes identical to their summoner appeared from the exposed area in an instant and utilized their tremendously short lifespans to rush at their opponent and attempt to bite into their ears or, at the very least, block their rush-attack.</p><p>The snakes and the rabbit's ears continued to work one another, the reptiles hissed out and tore to shreds of snakeskin and flesh upon getting hit by the rabbit's ears. Eventually, the offensive overpowered the snake's improvised defense, resulting in a landing of some very stiff looking blows on the clone-using snake.</p><p>"You broke through! Keep going, Usupari!" The rabbit's knives-using companion encouraged his ally. Fueled by this encouragement, Usupari pressed on, continuing to strike with his ears. Before the advancing striking offensive could land some key shots on the snake's head, however, the previously cloned snakes began wrapping around their master to soften the hits it took.</p><p>Frustrated by the lack of notable progress, Usupari was forced to retreat and look at how successful his comrades were, judging the situation on its full picture with the option to assist his friends remaining intact.</p><p>"Careful, Usuvilme, those snakes from before are still around!" Usupari warned his ally just in case they did not notice. Usuvilme was keeping a long distance and using his knives to try and land a good ranged shot on the snake's eyes, its nose or its mouth but none of this worked as whenever he thought he'd land it, the clone snakes scattered around the area slithered up and took the shot for their summoner.</p><p>Out of nowhere, a long, aquamarine colored tail wrapped around Usuvilme, catching it in place even in the safety of a longer range. The cloning snake soon turned its full attention to the subdued rabbit rearing its fangs and striking at it. This time the breakneck speed at which Ninja Snakes delivered their lunges was not present, however.</p><p>"Summoning: Giant Boa!" The silver-scaled serpent hissed out. Its body rippled as if it was made out of liquid of some sort as two identical in color but different in shape heads peeked out from its sides, effectively transforming the silver serpent into a three-headed wonder for the short duration of its strike.</p><p>The cat-like rabbit jumped up in front of the three-pronged attack, swiftly moving its limbs around in an impressive string of redirections as well as chops to the front of the advancing heads. Confronted by the flurry of limbs and a skilled and painful taijutsu defense, the boa heads withdrew back inside their summoner and the core head had no option but to move a bit back as well. The defending rabbit then used her impressive feet to kick off of the withdrawing snake's head to repurpose her momentum into a diving kick.</p><p>With a deafening thud, the cat-rabbit made the giant, aquamarine snake tail that had restrained its comrade loosen and become flappy before turning back into a small, white serpent and attempt to flee, only to be finished off by Usuvilme's accurately placed knife.</p><p>"Thanks, Usuchabi." The knife-wielding rabbit breathed in and out while stretching out its muscles.</p><p>"Anytime," the cat-like rabbit grinned with a cheerful smile and a playful gesture. Her composure faded in an instant, her personality completely changed the moment she or her friends were not in immediate danger.</p><p>"What a strange ability. This one morphs itself or its clones into any shape or size of a snake it likes…" Usupari cursed with tired eyes. It took three average ranked rabbits to even entertain this beast. Its might must have closely approached if not fit the skill of what ninja classified as an A-Rank summon.</p><p>On the eastern side of the cavern, Usuzoku leaped at Vasuki, he lacked the support of solid ground under his feet, something he could have used to boost his speed with his strong lower body. The rabbit raised its massive sword in the air, instead of directing it at Vasuki immediately and forced it to spin by releasing it above its head. Right before hitting the snake head-on, Usuzoku pressed its paws against the other end of the sword and pushed it forward while it was still spinning, using it as a make-shift drill.</p><p>"Murder Drill Jutsu!" The rabbit yelled out, attempting to skewer the venom-spitting snake with a direct attack.</p><p>Unexpected to the attacking rabbit, Vasuki opened its mouth, revealing another massive, purple bubble of venom building up inside it. Startled by the chance of getting completely swallowed in it, the rabbit thrust its blade up, switching its intended target with a blind thrust at the wall above it. Behind him, his ally attacked using All-Mirage to swallow up the bubble but was forced to evade the beast's jaws as well when Vasuki lunged out of its cover inside the cave.</p><p>"Don't get reckless. Vasuki is stronger than both of us. We are buyin' time 'ere." The female rabbit scolded her hot-headed friend.</p><p>"Maybe dat's yer plan, Usukari. I'm goin' ta kill dis bastard!" Usuzoku yelled out while swinging his massive blade around wildly. At this point, he relied more on the weight of the thing and the power behind his swing than any sort of strategy. There were some fearsome qualities behind this sort of berserker approach.</p><p>One after another, streaks of red began appearing on Vasuki's skin wherever Usuzoku tried to chop her to pieces. The slashes cut through the snake's skin and into its flesh but its chakra control managed to contain the strike by toughening its flesh before they inflicted too deep of a cut.</p><p>"She's bidin' her time, ye can't just swing at 'er until she dies!" Usukari tried to reason with her ally. Her words appeared to fall to deaf ears, she just sighed in frustration.</p><p>"Devil's Elixir Spray!" Vasuki hissed out. The serpent opened its mouth to expose its poison gland and spray a stream of bright purple liquid at Usuzoku. Usukari was right, the venom-spitter gave some space and withdrew, biding her time until Usuzoku overextended and entered the limited space of a cave, where her direct spray of venom would be of maximized use as the rabbit had vastly reduced space for evasion.</p><p>Grunting in pain, with a sizzling sound following wherever he moved, Usuzoku dived out of the cave covered in the acidic venom. Due to the gooey concentration, the rapid movements helped the rabbit to rid himself of some of the venom while the rest of it burnt past his skin. Usually, venom required contact with the bloodstream to spread, making it require injection or for a sprayed substance to enter through a cavity of some sorts.</p><p>The acidic nature of Vasuki's venom made it corrode its way into the bloodstream the hard and painful way. Even if the rabbit managed to shake off and use chakra to quickly neutralize the corrosive effects before they burnt him to a rag of bones using a quick burst of chakra, some venom must have made its way in.</p><p>"How does dat girl deal with ye?" Usukari scolded her brash partner.</p><p>"Get off my back, ye nagging broad!" Usuzoku grunted at the direction of his friend who took a quick and powerful leap toward his direction to examine his wounds.</p><p>"Does it hurt? Ye need ta wash these burns…" The female rabbit kept on pushing after taking a look at the rough patches of burnt off fur and the scars that were left in just the fractions of a moment that the acidic venom was allowed to work its deadly magic. "Use your chakra to channel the venom, contain its spread inside you. You can buy yourself some time that way and finish this fight."</p><p>"Dis ain't my first bite. Jeez, yer da real naggin' snake 'ere…" Usuzoku growled in both pain and frustration while angrily yanking his hand out of his companion's grasp.</p>
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<a name="section0447"><h2>447. Body-Shedding</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even when Mana slowly opened her eyes, the world around her stayed sunken in total darkness. The intense heat began sending its pulses in an attempt to incinerate her from inside but soon she got used to it again. She took control of the involuntary bodily functions that kept her alive at the same time she recalled the circumstances of her getting knocked out.</p><p>"I closed the wound on your head, fixed your ribs a bit. Welcome back." Kouta smiled.</p><p>The rough sounds of battle around them forced Mana to sit up and power through the dizziness and pressure against the insides of her skull. She gave the madness around a quick glance. The rabbits had split around with no rhyme or reason but their own personal familiarity with their partners. While not particularly the worst plan, there was ample space for improvement.</p><p>Mana struggled to get back on her feet but with Kouta's help, she somehow managed it. At that moment it was tough to believe that she was about to leap into battle, especially this kind of wild clash. All around her were scales, dripping venom, sparks of steel clashing with equal or greater opposition, deafening sounds and shockwaves strong enough to crush a normal person to a bit of flesh the size of a pill.</p><p>"The snakes haven't revealed any new abilities just yet." Kouta let Mana in while she was recovering on her feet.</p><p>"Our approach is all wrong. We need to withdraw and regroup." Mana replied with a weak voice after taking in a bunch of peeks into all the scenes of battle. "We can't press our force into beating a stronger opponent head-on."</p><p>Mana raised her voice in a manner that a young bunny whined. It was signal for the rabbits around to divert their attention and focus on the person emitting the noise. It was more powerful than Mana just pleading with the lot because it was her speaking in their social language – they'll take it as seriously as it can get. This won't speak to their rational minds, it will alert their very genes and their inner programming.</p><p>Flashes of black, brown and pink blitzed around the two ninja and in mere moments the three groups of rabbits had withdrawn. Mana noticed that Usuzoku's chakra signature had taken a significant dip and was continuously draining. Some of the rabbits had greatly reduced chakra, some because of drastic augmentations meant to preserve their fighting condition, some because they went over their limit trying to swing hard at the enemy.</p><p>Now the squad was tired as well as weaker than the enemy.</p><p>"Running away already?" The dirt-colored snake hissed as a taunt. Mana's instinct tipped her off right, the snakes were luring the rabbits in to fight them in a manner most unfavorable to them. How could she have been so blind this whole time? Just because Usuzoku always charged into battle like an idiot that did not mean that this was the manner in which rabbits fought.</p><p>"Don't be stupid, Calioph. They've got nowhere to run with their young cornered in the back…" Vasuki hissed out with malicious glee. It knew just the size of an ace this was.</p><p>"So they know…" Mana muttered to herself.</p><p>"That's right. Just like you can sense our chakra, we can see chakra signatures inherently." The silver snake fainted a lunge before backing off with a self-content look in its eyes.</p><p>"That could be how they found out I was a sensor and how they took me out in the beginning." Mana realized. "But their vision must be weaker than sensory. They only initiated their plan right before attacking. They also took their sweet time setting up these vantage points and blocking all the exits before they noticed it".</p><p>"Kouta, do you have an antidote for Zoku-chan?" Mana turned to her friend. The moment she turned her head aside, the venom-spitter released another spray of its purple liquid that quickly got collected and swallowed up in Usukari's All-Mirage. With just that simple exchange of moves, the snakes were told that the rabbits weren't just standing about – they were in a closed defensive formation and that moving them out of it would require more effort than they've been giving up to now.</p><p>"I'm not sure without examining a sample. Given how the enemy is A-Rank, I doubt I can just cure it." Kouta brushed the back of his head, looking a bit disappointed in his own shortage of skill.</p><p>"Watch Usuzoku, stay on his back and heal the damage the venom does to his body when it starts dragging him down," Mana said.</p><p>"B-But I can use my Curse Seal, I can really hit them hard!" Kouta objected. The rabbit with the stone fists who fought alongside him stepped up.</p><p>"That's right, the boy has some skill. We could use him to pretty much spearhead the attack." He joined Kouta's side.</p><p>Two massive boa snakes peeked their heads from around the platform. The two tackled at each separate corner of the ground beneath the rabbits' feet forcing the entire party of rabbits to switch to the back of the cavern and cling to the walls on the far side of the cavern – the toughest part for the serpents to reach without slithering over the walls or using a long-range attack.</p><p>"You imbecile, what have you done!?" Vasuki hissed at its own comrade. Something the corner of Mana's disgruntled eye noticed. Why were these reptiles feuding? Were they not coordinated? Were they not working together or a team at all? Why have they come here in the first place?</p><p>"I don't want you losing control. Stay back and keep Usuzoku from dying." Mana stood her ground on the issue. This feud about what approach should Kouta take was delaying their journey and this entire battle. They were lucky that the time was on their side, given how the snakes were now forced to either expend great amounts of chakra to slither through the walls or use ineffective long-range attacks that All-Mirage covered.</p><p>"Fine," Kouta threw his hands up, clearly displeased. "But I'm more than just your personal healing boy".</p><p>"I don' care what yer preachin' Hatchlin', I'm fightin' Vasuki! She and I have some unfinished business!" Usuzoku growled, clutching his burning injuries. The poison must have been working on his nervous system as his muscles were slightly twitching and they were dealing damage to his internal organs as the rabbit didn't even notice that he was bleeding from his nose and his mouth.</p><p>"That's exactly what I want you to do." Mana grinned with a bitter grimace of encouragement. "Vasuki spits her venom through her mouth – shut that down. Don't let her open her mouth".</p><p>"My sword ain't dat huge…" Usuzoku crossed his arms over his chest but his particular kind of disgruntlement appeared to be the kind that meant he was agreeing to work with what Mana gave him.</p><p>"It's still better dan just swingin' dat thing wildly, ya kno!" Usukari scolded the rabbit.</p><p>"That cloning… Keep that snake busy. Keep pushing it, it is the weakest member of its link chakra-wise and cloning are some of the most taxing techniques to use. It will wind itself out before long." Mana turned in the direction of the silver snake who looked a tad bit impatient. It had not even realized how much its own signature had dipped since the beginning of the fight. Whenever it split itself, it split its very own chakra signature as well, whenever it grew a new head, it assigned chakra from its own reserve for it. It had stamina but not nearly enough to sustain such a style for long.</p><p>"Just smash the bone-growth of that guy." Kouta interrupted Mana by pointing his hand at the dirt-colored reptile. It looked similarly amused by the break in the fighting. It almost enjoyed the sight of its prey keeping itself in the corner and trying to plot its way out. At times, it snapped its jaws or aimed its tail at the group for a mock-shot but it was not foolish enough to waste chakra for that.</p><p>"Fair enough, it should work." Mana agreed. She just needed points with Kouta after that tense argument before. She may have suggested using explosions or any sort of flames to blow the snake's tail up from inside when it channeled Wind Release chakra inside of it but the end was the same.</p><p>The rabbits all prepared to charge back into the fray of battle. Mana stopped them all again by speaking up. "Remember, they're your predator. They want you, use that. Drag them out from those caves, hit and run, force them to burn out without them even knowing they're slithering on the walls".</p><p>After a collective grunt of acknowledgment, the group scattered. Mana switched with Kouta, given how the medical ninja had a new assignment – to follow Usuzoku around and heal him up whenever the damage dealt to him by the venom made him too sick to move and fight. The final thing he said to her resonated with Mana for a while after the rabbits split.</p><p>The stone-fist using rabbit, whom Mana had met during her time training here before the finals of the Chuunin Exams charged at Calioph the wind-using serpent. This time it attacked with a more clear purpose and a target. Instead of looking to hit the snake in the face, it targeted the reptile's bone-growth, just like Kouta before him.</p><p>It may have been that same offensive of Kouta's that tipped Calioph off of the main target. Maybe some other snakes or prey targeted the point before but the serpent was quite good at avoiding damage on the sensitive end of its tail. Worst of all, it used the bone-end as a carrot on a stick, luring Usubingu further and further into the cave it was in and out of the wide space of the cavern, the exact opposite of what Mana advised him to do.</p><p>Luckily enough, Usubingu caught on to that and took some strong dashes back and outside into the caves. His large feet lit up with blue chakra flares when he used them to stick to the walls of the cavern, forcing Calioph to stretch itself in discomfort to reach it in an attempt to counterattack. Something that cost the reptile its speed. Before long, more than half of the colossal serpent was slithering on the mineral wall, wasting chakra just to get a good chomp of some stone-handed rabbit.</p><p>Mana lurked above of the cave exit ever since she noticed Usubingu returning to his better judgment. She just waited for that fateful moment when the bone-growth will flash out of the darkness of the cave and out in the open, she had a specific technique just for breaking bones and weaponry with its name on it, in a figurative sense.</p><p>On the southern side, the rabbits have run into another problem – the collapsed platform for passage forced those who fought the silver serpent to use the cavern ceiling in order to take it on. The swarms of smaller, mindless clone serpents that could transform into any other species of snake of varied sizes at their summoner's whim shook off any dreams of ever engaging the silver serpent head-on on the lower cave grounds.</p><p>Usuvilme threw a pair of handfuls of knives at the serpent, using his great accuracy and affinity for long-range combat. While the knives did stick right into the silver serpent's flesh, it only appeared to tick the cloning snake off further. Then again, this did appear to be the intention of the rabbit squad. With an angry hiss, the cloning snake commanded its mindless white drones to shift their shape in masses and float through the air at the enemy.</p><p>It was a curious display as all the white snakes burrowing around and over their summoner quickly morphed into a murky shade of blue before launching themselves through the air. They continued to slither in mid-air, it was something that appeared to grant them gliding qualities as they continued to bombard the scattered rabbits like suicide bombers.</p><p>Usuvilme growled out in pain as the quick flurry of snakes overwhelmed him and dug their fangs into its meaty limbs. For a moment, his balance on the ceiling shook for a bit but the experienced rabbit warrior managed to keep his balance and quickly unseal another pair of handfuls of knives and swipe the blades at his assailants, forcing them to disperse into clouds of smoke and bio-goop.</p><p>His fellow rabbits looked similarly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the serpents. The reptiles glided at them like a furious swarm of bees and quickly wrapped their long bodies around their limbs, paralyzing them in place and making further movement near impossible while they dug their fangs in. At the very least these serpents lacked any venomous qualities as if they did possess them, the bunch would have been plummeting to their deaths long ago.</p><p>"It looks our strategist made a pretty big blunder," Usupari grunted while he worked both with his hands and his ears to smash the snakes overwhelming him into oblivion. Eventually, he settled for just driving his entire body and the affected limbs into the mineral hardness of the cavern ceiling. "She should have taken one of us with her and traded that rabbit with Usubingu. We could have used his long-range abilities".</p><p>"She doesn't know all of our abilities. She's trained with Usubingu, she knows him a little so it makes sense she'd keep him around if they can work together." Usuchabi replied, using her own flashing cat-like fangs as well as the chompers more akin to those of rabbits to remove and destroy the cloned snakes that troubled her.</p><p>"Regardless of if she made a mistake or not, we only have one rabbit capable of attacking from this distance." Usupari cracked its neck to the sides as if hardening its body for what was to come in the continuing battle.</p><p>"No, this is fine." Usuvilme grinned while he slung his knives at the enemy again, now that the number of its slithering friends was greatly reduced, the silver-serpent lacked any way to minimize the damage it would take. "Our plan is to piss it off and wear it out. We need to drag it into the close distance but if we can force it into cloning and relentlessly attacking, that is fine too".</p><p>The silver-serpent concealed itself behind the wall it busted down to appear in the cavern to let Usuvilme's projectiles stick into the hardened mineral walls without harming it any further. After it heard the loud clanging from the missed attacks, the silver-serpent peeked its head out again with a mocking grimace aimed at its opponents.</p><p>"Many Hidden Shadow Snakes!" The silver-serpent hissed out while another swarm of reptiles appeared from its exposed belly and lunged at the targeted area around Usuvilme, the only rabbit capable of annoying the reptile with its ceaseless long-ranged knife attacks.</p><p>While the lunge of the shadow snakes was quick, the distance between the attacker and the target, as well as Usuvilme's agility, allowed the rabbit to use its lower body strength to dash aside from the rushing attack of the multitude of serpents. The crashing snake heads created a strong shockwave and blasted a hole in the cavern ceiling, forcing large rocky plates to drop into the outer core below.</p><p>"Persistent bastard, let's hope that the girl's assessment of its chakra size and the strain of its jutsu was correct." Usuvilme only grumbled in response while throwing another dozen of knives in return at the silver-serpent's direction. The serpent once more hid its face, allowing the knives to bounce off the wall. The southern front of the battle was deadlocked, it seemed.</p><p>"Poison Fang Jutsu!" Vasuki, on the eastern side of the cavern, hissed out while rearing its fangs and letting them detach from its mouth and fly at Usuzoku at great speed as a projectile. The rabbit growled out in pain after the large fangs pierced its shoulder and gut but kept on pressing forward. It was an impressive display, given how each of the fangs was larger than Usuzoku himself.</p><p>Shocked by the berserk attack of the suicidal rabbit, Vasuki tried to withdraw its exposed head to a safer height but the limited space inside the cavern did not let her. Usuzoku swung its mighty blade a bunch of times, Vasuki even closed her eyes in the disgruntled anticipation of the unavoidable pain and injury that was to follow. To think that she, one of the strongest of Yamata's daughters would be dispatched like this…</p><p>Usuzoku's sword emitted a loud clang after it hit right into Vasuki's scales and bounced off. The snake let out a sound almost similar to a purr while she blasted the rabbit aside with her tail and smashed it to the right wall of the cave she was in. The rabbit looked almost completely lifeless but the ridges above its eyes, still curved inward in the permanent face of anger, betrayed some semblance of life still simmering somewhere deep within.</p><p>That was Kouta's cue to press in and pull his ally out. While the damage he sustained was tremendous, the venom inside his system was assisting Vasuki by also burning the rabbit's innards and damaging its nerve system from inside too. Assisted by Usukari and her All-Mirage thrusts, which even Vasuki feared as she backed further into the cave just to avoid them, Kouta quickly dashed in and out with Usuzoku in his arms.</p><p>"Heh, it seems my venom has left you too weak to even cut with that lump of iron you wield…" Vasuki taunted Usuzoku. She must have counted on the rabbit being unstable enough to power out of Kouta's grip. If he was even aware enough to hear its taunts, and press on, right into her trap. Usuzoku, however, just mumbled in delirium. Kouta pressed the rabbit against the wall with its knee, using his other foot to keep himself stuck to it while using both of his arms to heal the rabbit with his Mystical Palm Jutsu.</p><p>"Time is not on our side. De All-Mirage is pretty draining ta use…" Usukari quietly spoke to Kouta while shielding her companions with her own body in a defensive position. She knew that the medical ninja would need a short while to heal at Usuzoku even a little bit and that she was the final line of defense while Usuzoku was being healed.</p><p>"It's not like Usuzoku is making it any simpler. He doesn't let Vasuki chase us, he's chasing her." Kouta grunted while sweat running down his forehead betrayed the desperation that the rabbits and their allies felt while trying to fend off the attack of a bunch of predators that outranked them. The more this battle continued, the less Kouta trusted in Mana's strategy or the willingness of the rest to execute it properly.</p><p>Even his own strength was dwindling. He was not even using any of his Juugo techniques, just focusing on the medical techniques and he was already wearing himself out sufficiently. Just how much stamina did the enemy still have? Was that how frightening an A-Rank enemy truly was?</p><p>Vasuki's deceitful head appeared from the cave exit and showed its newly regrown poison fangs as a sign of intimidation, Usukari's eyes glanced back at her injured comrade and the medical ninja still hard at work to return him into action. A giant expulsion of chakra, the pressure of which Kouta felt even without any sensory abilities whatsoever, forcing him to temporarily divert his attention from healing Usuzoku and onto the shiny, fiery chakra that emanated from Usukari in the shape of a raging fire.</p><p>"All-Mirage: Murder Drill!" Usukari yelled out, throwing the horn of All-Mirage in the air in a way that made it spin around its axis like a drill. She then moved in behind the horn in an instant and pressed her palm against the end of the horn's handle, pushing it right at the exposed head of her assailant that severely injured her comrade and was now threatening to kill all three of them.</p><p>Usukari's speed was incredible. She blitzed right up Vasuki's head in an instant and only slowed down for a microsecond to drive the spinning All-Mirage right into the beast's mouth. With a blazing fury, she kept on going, fully intending to drill through the snake's entire innards and leave it dead. An attack of such speed, such immense emanating chakra could have only been an A-Rank jutsu.</p><p>New cuts kept opening up from the imploding body of Vasuki, the serpent's eyes blanked out while bloody goop relentlessly sprayed from its wounds and its mouth. A mighty explosion forced the cave where Vasuki resided in erupt and sent massive pieces of rock plummeting down into the abyss. The mighty venom-spitter still twitched in agony while Usukari appeared, having bursted out from the snake's tail and landed back in her initial pose.</p><p>The female rabbit was quivering, her hands could barely even hold the All-Mirage at this point and she was maybe good enough for one or two more swings of the thing. This move was clearly a desperation attempt to buy more time and maybe, just maybe kill the enemy in a surprise guerilla-type counterattack. Evidently, the final gamble paid off…</p><p>The irises appeared once again in Vasuki's eyes as the snake, instead of falling into the abyss and sinking into the outer core, snapped back into action and plumped out in size. It snapped its mighty jaw wide open and revealed an identical version of itself, which it regurgitated from its old, dying body.</p><p>The newly emerged Vasuki was completely healed of any previous cuts and injuries and completely refreshed. "That was quite a strike… I would have died, had it not been for this technique…" The serpent commended its prey both as a compliment to the final desperation attack of the enemy and as a taunt that the final gamble was completely useless against it.</p>
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<a name="section0448"><h2>448. The Evolution Advantage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There the enemy was, aiming its rudder at Usubingu with the intention to blast the rabbit away. The build-up of chakra in the back side of the reptile's body was immense, somehow the serpent managed to direct most of its resources into it even if Mana felt sure it would only use a fraction of that stored potential destructive might.</p><p>This was her chance to strike, it would be pretty devastating to the serpent but should not outright kill it. It was building up a compressed mass of Wind Release and once Mana crushed it tail, all that built up tension would have nowhere left to go. With a little bit of luck, it should explode entirely on the inside of the beast's body leaving it less than likely to keep threatening the rabbits.</p><p>The azure shimmer of the light reaching in from the outer core below reflecting from the end of Mana's Audra wand flashed in an arc as the magician pointed it at the enemy. She had been channeling and circulating Lightning Release chakra inside her this whole time as she let Usubingu do the luring work, waiting, preparing for a quick chance just like this.</p><p>Mana's hungry for success, inhuman perception made the attack drag out. Lightning strands reached out to one another, tying around and connecting with electric bonds and traveling at its destination with purpose. If the final destination of the bolt was not destructive in its nature, it may have even been a little beautiful…</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment!" Mana yelled out when it was far too late to avoid the technique, even if the enemy somehow managed to put together the massive blunder it has made by poking its tail out.</p><p>Snakes were swift, inhumanly so, but most of their speed was reserved for when they hungered and lunged at their prey. When they were determined to catch and kill something and their entire bodies worked in unison with this ancient hunting instinct. Evasion and quick thinking were not skills that could have been attributed to the reptile species.</p><p>The jolt of lightning wrapped itself around Calioph's tail, passing and extending itself well past the intended target – the bone-growth at its tail's end. With a blaring, thunderous crackle, the lightning bolt collapsed in on itself, using all of its destructive potential to crush and press against anything unlucky enough to be surrounded by it.</p><p>Calioph's jaw dropped, its eyes bulged wide out and the expression of the ancient hunter became that of absolute panic while the sudden flashes of light blinded it in synchrony with the crushing destruction that targeted its tail specifically. While jutsu had the potential to destroy worlds, by far the more potent techniques were those that focused on smaller, specific areas. It was just simple physics, really…</p><p>"M-My tail…" Calioph lamented as his body weighed down, clutching desperately at the wall on the sides. Then, its body jerked around in convulsions as the snake realized, far too late for its own good that it still had to somehow deal with the stream of Wind Release it had built up inside its body. The reptile's body inflated and began twitching uncontrollably.</p><p>Mana had to hand it to the colossal predator – its scales were incredibly powerful. While the bone-growth was successfully destroyed, just a little chunk of cartilage lumped together, as if molten completely, its body was tough enough not to explode from the built-up inner pressure of its own technique or even burst with a single wound. Eventually, the predator just collapsed, without any signs of life, left dangling by a pair of determined scales that still emanated the chakra required to keep it stuck to the horizontal cavern wall.</p><p>Goopy liquid began drooping from the wounds that the reptile had sustained previously in the battle. This one shared the particularly hard scales of Brownback. It was likely that anything of C-Rank or even lower would have been completely ineffective against the reptile so Mana was quite lucky to have thrown her best, given the wild chance.</p><p>"Y-You bitch!" An unexpected, filled with unbridled agony, hiss reached Mana's ears, forcing the magician to take a defensive stance, yet slightly thrown off the usual perfection of its execution due to the surprise in which the cursing came to the girl.</p><p>"It's still kicking? What ridiculously tough skin…" Mana grunted to herself. Had her Magical Punishment carried out all of its intended effects, she was sure it would have left the serpent completely unable to move a muscle due to the accumulated injuries.</p><p>As much as it hurt her pride to admit, her attacks were almost completely inefficient and the only manner in which the serpent appeared to have been hurt was from either hitting it with great internal pressure or by hitting its exposed weaknesses. It may just have been that, while it was disabled due to the damage to its tail, the only important injuries were the ones the snake inflicted on itself from the inside.</p><p>"Retreat," Mana spoke up. "You are not in a great condition and, while you are not in a critical condition yet, you won't be able to beat us with your tail disabled."</p><p>Calioph sneered at her with eyes of crimson before he threw his frontal body at Mana in a lunge of blind fury. This time Mana was prepared for this maddening speed, her body dispersed into flower petals, letting the mad reptile smash its injured and bleeding face into the rock wall that the girl was standing on just moments prior. Following a lucky gust of wind, the petals reformed a bit further away.</p><p>Usubingu's body twitched, preparing for an attack but Mana's gesture stopped him. The animal looked surprised by the confidence in the magician and her request to leave this to her. Only after a second did the rabbit realize that Mana was exploiting her opponent's berserk state, just like in her original plan.</p><p>The magician was all that the snake could see, and even that small, slender frame was intertwined with visions of all the possible painful ways in which the serpent could end her life. There did not appear to be any more reason or collectedness behind this beast. Just the wild instinct to kill and swallow what was left.</p><p>"It hurt, didn't it? Your scales can no longer protect you after you've torn your skin from inside." Mana taunted the beast again.</p><p>What she received in return was no longer a lunge. It was as if the colossal reptile propelled itself at the girl from a catapult, using its tail as a coil to throw its body at what it perceived as prey faster, with more ferocity and more visions of sick violence in its mind.</p><p>This time Mana merely bounced aside. The day was just getting started, it was not wise to use her genjutsu escape technique too often when she had no idea of what was yet ahead. All that the tremendous snake met in its charge was a stone wall, shaking the entire cavern.</p><p>"Hey, hey! Settle down, Calioph. You'll cave all of us in!" The silver serpent hissed at its spontaneous comrade from aside.</p><p>It was of no use. It was as if the snake that the silver serpent previously knew was no longer there. Just a mad force of nature trying to overcome the obstacles in the way between itself and the death of the target of its passionate hatred.</p><p>Calioph charged again. Now it was a tad bit wiser, no longer did it throw itself at the girl needlessly suffering the consequences from its mad, 400-ton glide. Now it was slithering like its much smaller counterpart did when they were chasing a prey. Mana allowed herself the luxury of grinning. She dashed back and around, using the chakra under her feet graciously, almost like an ice-skater skating across the vertical hazards and keeping Calioph at a range.</p><p>This was the time to play her ace card. It was at that moment, that the mocking grin that was essential for the plan to succeed faded away. Just for now, Mana turned serious as she pleaded herself and anyone who would have heard her thoughts to have this plan work.</p><p>"Haven't you noticed yet? Your chakra resources are dangerously low. If you keep this up, you'll run out and plummet down there." Mana finally came out with the coup de grâce of her plan. She did not want to end up killing this reptile. She had to reveal her hand when it was not yet too late to prevent its death.</p><p>Suddenly something snapped in Calioph's mind. It began frantically looking around before glaring at the blue shimmer under its scales where the reptile was contacting the cavern wall. Its eyes followed its enticing glow all the way from its origin to its end, admiring how long it was and it then appeared to strike the snake just how much chakra it had wasted to keep this much flesh attached to the wall. In poisonous envy, the beast then glanced at the tips of Mana's feet, just barely touching to the same wall it was attached to like a snail embracing a tree that lead to its precious, sweet leaves.</p><p>With its head sunken down, its entire longitude shaking in embarrassment and animosity, Calioph quickly slithered to the sanctity of the cave it came from. Where it no longer needed to apply great amounts of chakra to keep itself attached to the wall and where the darkness of the cave hid away its shame.</p><p>Then, the crimson glare of indignation in the beast's eyes returned. Mana's gracefully positioned feet shifted to a less graceful and more balanced position. "No, no, keep slithering… No more." She begged the snake as if it was somehow capable to read her thoughts.</p><p>"You took away my pride, you beat me and humiliated me. I shall never be allowed to forget a disciple of lowly rabbits humbled the mighty Calioph." The serpent almost roared out in its husky but powerful in volume tone.</p><p>"You'll be alive," Mana replied.</p><p>"Of what worth is life as a worthless sock-puppet of others' jokes?" Calioph's head lowered to the bottom of the rocky cave as the beast reared its fangs. The frequency in which its tongue slipped in and out intensified drastically and fear that it could be about to pull something mad sparked in Mana's little heart.</p><p>"Nobody is worthless. If these rabbits were worthless, you'd not be here." The magician gestured at Usubingu and the others, fighting their hardest against A-Rank threats massively above their individual paygrades.</p><p>"We are not here to hunt you. We're here because Yamata no Orochi washed his hands off. Because his declaration of the fact spread far and wide through the caves, peaking our interest. We did not come here to feed on your furry bones, we're here to murder you just for fun. Just because it is something we can do." Calioph explained bluntly but without any passion that a mad maniac would hold in its voice under any normal occasion.</p><p>Mana clenched her fists. She was angry, infuriated even and she was by far not perfect. Thoughts became murky in her head, they almost demanded to let these snakes sink into the blazing outer core at their weakest – when their chakra could no longer shield them from its almighty blaze. No. That was exactly why she could not let these animals die, let alone kill them directly. Not when she had a choice between life and death.</p><p>"Get out." Mana quietly uttered but she knew that the monstrous snake heard her just fine.</p><p>"But, girl, now he has seen us, he will know we are moving and he'll tell the news. The snakes will come in real force after this!" Usubingu approached Mana from behind. The magician's chest inflated and deflated a couple of times rapidly while her head stayed sunken under an ocean of her own raven-dark hair.</p><p>"Let them come. If needed, I'll stay behind to buy as much time as you need. Ninja Rabbits will survive and we won't have to resort to the method of the snakes to do so." Mana replied. "Killing a snake while it is down is how mongooses behave, it isn't how a Ninja Rabbit fights."</p><p>"I can see why Usuzoku likes you, girl." Usubingu sighed. Calioph slithered into the darkness in silence. Even if this decision would come to bite Mana almost certainly in the future, just this time, her enemy fled like a humbled loser biting its tail and licking its wounds.</p><hr/><p>On the southern side of the cavern, the deadly tango of blades and cloned snakes continued. Usuvilme kept applying pressure with projectiles while the silver serpent kept trying to pin its enemies to the wall they were sticking on. The silver snake was smarter than most its peers as it appeared to avoid the walls of the cavern with burning intent.</p><p>The chain of dodges and long-range attacks broke when the silver serpent swiped its tail in a grey blur, deflecting the knives coming at it in a slightly different method while its head turned aside. The serpent had a particularly fiery glow in its eyes that was now just blazing. It was examining its environment, thinking and strategizing even.</p><p>"I see. You wanted to drag me out in the open where I would have drained my chakra resources trying to keep my body on this wall. Now that it failed, you're holding me in place so that your comrades can finish their battles and come aid you. You're stalling for time…" The serpent hissed with a devious smile, it knew that the thought of their enemy guessing their intentions would wallop the rabbits right in the chest.</p><p>"Even if you did catch on to our plan, you've got no way of attacking us from your position. Knowledge alone won't do." Usuchabi scratched her large, flappy ear.</p><p>"Maybe if I used my Snake Multiplication Jutsu again and made more small clones, then made them rain on you again I'd change that but… It would be tiresome and that's just what you want, isn't it?" The silver snake pondered, it coiled into a more comfortable position. "I guess I may have to use a different approach here."</p><p>The body of the silver serpent plumped up a bit. As if it had increased its muscular mass in its entire length but then the plumpness just disappeared again. After a brief moment of calm, the serpent's body began twitching as lumps popped out all over its body, pulsing like small bubbles under its skin, looking to burst to the outside.</p><p>"Polycephaly Jutsu!" The silver serpent hissed in intense pain as one of the lumps on its left side began protruding more than the rest. The lump turned into a full out protrusion before becoming a limb. A limb that began taking perfect shape as its frontal part began forming a head from the excess flesh in the back parts.</p><p>Rough, silver scales began spiking out from the bio-mold that formed the second head before bony ridge formed above where its eyes should have been. The second head remained in suspended animation for a short while after its form completely took shape as the extra head on the silver serpent's body.</p><p>"I-It grew another head," Usupari stated the obvious.</p><p>"Yeah but this feels different from when it cloned itself another head. This head is in no rush to attack us. I-I think it is… Final." Usuvilme made his observations.</p><p>"Wait, you can't possibly mean that he actually changed his body completely on a molecular level for good?" Usuchabi exclaimed in surprise at the enemy's frightening display of abilities.</p><p>"That's right…" The original head of the silver serpent hissed, tired and gasping for air as the technique clearly left its mark on its total chakra signature. "That is the unique trait of us, Ninja Snakes. Where pitiful creatures like the Ninja Rabbits have stronger lower bodies, no other species can manipulate and change the structure of their bodies like the Ninja Snakes."</p><p>The gleaming, ruby-colored eyes of the new head snapped open, unleashing a strong wave of immense air pressure. Given how the second limb was just given birth, it may not have been completely in control of its chakra and, for that reason, it was emanating it and leaking it out freely.</p><p>"What… What am I?" The confused head closed its eyes and shook.</p><p>"You are the sixth iteration of Nagendi, the fruit of evolution for what is required to win this battle. I have granted you the ability that will help us kill these rabbits, do you think you can awaken it?" Nagendi asked its newly born conjoined twin.</p><p>"Kill? That sounds strangely nice… I am no Nagendi though." The twin replied before coiling in preparation for an attack.</p><p>"I thought you might dislike the name as I did before you." Nagendi chuckled, curling up above its twin and preparing to resume the battle with the rabbits.</p><p>The Fifth Nagendi opened its mouth, unleashing a storm of snakes, all of whom were small by themselves but immeasurable in quantity and slithered over the cavern walls, using each other like a sick variation of a monkey bridge to curl around the cavern and attack the rabbits from the sides using sheer numbers.</p><p>The Sixth Nagendi closed its eyes, then started shaking and turning around its axis in a manner that would have snapped any normal neck. The entire cavern began to shake, forcing entire chunks of rocks and minerals to get pressed hard enough by the shifting layers of stone to break and plummet to the outer core below.</p><p>"W-What is this?" Usuvilme grunted as the risen pressure and the unnatural conditions of the cataclysmic earthquake forced it to stick to the rock it stood on while it lodged from its original position and fell right into the rushing tsunami of snakes that the Fifth Nagendi sent the rabbits' way.</p><p>"The ability to make the Earth quake by just shaking its head? Ridiculous!" Usupari yelled out in pain, throwing his ears at the rushing swarm of serpents that attempted to overwhelm the rabbits completely.</p><p>The tsunami of snakes completely wrapped itself around the rabbits, forming an entire ocean of wriggling, coiling and slithering waves of living creatures that, after they have lost their momentum after their initial rush, plummeted to the fiery pits below. The rabbits were lost in the oblivion of the serpents that swallowed them up and, for that reason, they were simply washed away with the downpouring little, black serpents.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0449"><h2>449. Mercy For Malice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The head of the Fifth Nagendi slammed on the ground. Its eyes closed as the serpent's central body began inflating and deflating rapidly. The fiery flare in its eyes, under the thin layer that covered them faded, making its eyes completely covered up by the faint blue hue of the scale that covered it up. The Sixth hissed out while it shook its head once more, the entire cavern shifted once again while the Sixth Nagendi summoned an earthquake with a quiver of its head, albeit much smaller one this time.</p><p>"Stop it, you'll kill us both!" The Fifth huffed out. "This ability of yours requires chakra. We have very low remains of that at the moment."</p><p>A soundwave woke the Fifth Nagendi up, forcing it to slither its worn out head to the edge of the cave and peek down. It was almost certain that the three rabbits had plummeted down, washed away by the flow of the rushing snakes it had sent their way. Another soundwave, then another and Usuchabi appeared from the depths of the fiery oblivion below with both of her comrades in her arms.</p><p>Every time the cat-like rabbit flapped her massive ears, they created a powerful boom, similar to that when the sound barrier brakes, propelling the cat-rabbit upward. After a handful of those, she returned to the heights where she could stick her feet to the ceiling of the cavern.</p><p>"Wow. That was dangerous!" Usuchabi growled. The façade of aloofness was gone from her face. It was clear that this was truly a close call that would have called for such a surge of seriousness. The other rabbits slowly recovered, shaking their shocked and bumped heads and sticking to the ceiling by their own effort.</p><p>"He just gave birth to a new limb that had an evolved ability just perfect for a combination with that of its own. To think that it would have kept such a technique hidden…" Usupari grumbled shortly after nodding in acknowledgment and gratitude to its friend who had saved the rabbit from disappearing into the fiery pits below.</p><p>"I think if it could have used that ability, it would have. There must be a reason why it only pulled it out now, is that right, snake?" Usuvilme inquired of the silver serpent pair directly.</p><p>"Well…" the Fifth Nagendi sighed, it was evident that the serpent struggled to breathe properly in its current state. Even the freshly born head looked to be like a snowman in the desert. All the genetic tampering combined with those high-ranking and conceptually expensive techniques were finally taking their toll.</p><p>"There's a reason why I am the Sixth Nagendi, isn't it? Why there are only two of us now…" The newly born looked at its exhausted predecessor with a surprisingly perceptive question.</p><p>"You are not wrong. I have killed my predecessor in time. We did not get along too well and it just felt like the right thing to do. Eventually, I expect you shall too devour me for your own reasons." The Fifth Nagendi breathed out with a heavy sigh.</p><p>"Incredible…" Usuvilme simply continued to stare at the worn out predator in disbelief.</p><p>"Why? Why go this far for just this one hunt? You essentially sacrificed your own life just to kill a bunch of rabbits. Someone of your power should have easily found lesser challenges to satisfy you." Usuchabi tried reaching out to Nagendi with a horrified expression. She had trouble wrapping her mind around the horrific implications of the technique the serpent had used and why it would choose to use it willingly.</p><p>"Hunt? You're no hunt. You're just something to do." The Fifth Nagendi managed to crack a grin, showing off one of its fangs as it peeked through the cracked, scaly flaps of the serpent.</p><p>"What my predecessor has done is improved Nagendi. He has granted me a new evolution, sacrificing itself for the power of the snakes." The Sixth Nagendi looked at its worn out comrade with greedy eyes. It appeared that the instinct to devour its predecessor was already on display.</p><p>"While consuming me would grant you a small boost of chakra, I would advise you to wait. Wait at the very least until I shall teach you a way to absorb me together with my combined evolutionary abilities." The Fifth Nagendi glared back at its successor with a deceitful glance, knowing full well of the temptation to instantly destroy one's weaker self when the first sign of loss shows itself.</p><p>"This is disgusting…" Usuchabi closed her eyes and looked away.</p><p>"Heh, so is that why Yamata no Orochi has come to have eight whole heads?" Usuvilme asked the serpent, somehow managing to overcome its own disgust at the dirty methods and shadow games that the two played with each other.</p><p>"I've no idea, honestly." The Fifth closed its eyes, desperately working to regain as much of its stamina as it could in case the rabbits decided to kill Nagendi now while it was weakened. "All I know is that the Orochi has every single ability possessed by every snake alive. In fact, every new snake born has one or two abilities of his… I do not think there is a person alive to know the amounts of evolutions that Yamata has undergone through the countless years it has been alive."</p><p>Usuvilme's knife dug right in between the Fifth and Sixth Nagendi, very nearly cutting the snake at the parting point of the two split heads.</p><p>"You spin a pretty fancy yarn, snake. That doesn't change the fact that we'll kill you for threatening us." The rabbit grinned. It was not a malicious smile or one enjoying the death that the rabbit was about to bring. It was more of a grimace of relief. A sign that an enemy that none of the rabbits could have overcome was somehow bested through combined effort and careful planning.</p><p>"You won't, if you dare, I'll command my successor to bring the whole cave down. Maybe you'll survive being buried under kilometers of stone in the outer core, that's a big maybe, but those weaker rabbits behind you sure won't." The Fifth Nagendi grinned, using a hidden ace it had been boiling in a cauldron for a while.</p><p>"You'll command me?" The Sixth reared its non-venomous, yet massive fangs at its predecessor who was very much on its last legs. "I do whatever I feel like doing.</p><p>"Oh, come, don't you want me to teach you to absorb our collective abilities? You'll spiral way down on the ladder with just your current ability." The Fifth Nagendi quickly defused his trigger-happy youngling of a successor.</p><p>"This excuse will only work for this long…" the Sixth closed his eyes and looked away from his predecessor who was too devious even for such as himself, a literal snake to stomach.</p><p>"It is fine. Leave now." Mana and Usubingu joined the group fighting the silver serpent after their own front was successfully freed up.</p><p>"Wait, what? We have this bastard on the ropes, let's kill it and send a message!" Usuvilme showed Mana a handful of knives it had been pulling from a storage seal for a while now, having emptied its pouches in this battle.</p><p>"This whole thing started from a killing and a message," Mana bitterly replied. "Leave." She outright ordered the snake after turning at it.</p><p>"If you think I'll be thanking you, your delusional, ninja from Konoha." The Fifth Nagendi smiled as it had finally been given the excuse to burn out the stamina it had gathered to this point to raise its head off the ground and coil away.</p><p>"In fact, soon enough, I will be back to kill you." The Sixth Nagendi joined in on the sour loser mentality of its predecessor.</p><p>"This is a mistake…" Usupari let his opinion get out there. Mana sighed and closed her eyes to soothe her mind that demanded her to flip out on the rabbits. This entire situation attempting to rescue the rabbits was just like Mana had always imagined her job to be. Being a bridge of reason between two sides and, frankly, she had never really expected to doubt her own reason this much.</p><p>Had it not been for that, some would say foolish, determination to stick to her ideals despite what her attempts at rationalizing the battlefield told her, she'd have obviously advised the rabbits who had no reservations about killing to kill their enemies. That was never her way, usually, she had no qualms about letting people with different ideals than hers carry out their own brand of "what had to be done" but this time she won't let that happen.</p><p>"We have no time to chase those guys. You won, go assist Zoku-chan and Usukari." Mana tried to repurpose the directions to which the arrows of hatred pointed. Given how her sensory relayed the battle between Vasuki and the ninja opposing her going, perhaps that front could have used some hatred and anger to motivate the protectors of Ninja Rabbits for that final push that would take them over the edge that separated loss and victory.</p><hr/><p>Vasuki took its sweet moment, enjoying the impending victory and the desperation in the eyes of the enemy. For all intents and purposes, it had won. Usukari was barely strong enough to hold the mighty All-Mirage in her hands, her strength draining with each passing moment with nothing she could have done about it, the other rabbit was struggling just so that he could not die, with the human doing his best in that front.</p><p>The serpent opened her mouth, revealing her recently regrown fangs from after she fired them like projectiles at the enemy not even minutes earlier.</p><p>"Poison Fang Jutsu!" The serpent hissed out, sending a pair of its fangs at the desperate female rabbit who did her best to shield the distracted medical ninja and her beaten friend.</p><p>Usukari swiped her All-Mirage, summoning great strength in her strained arms to deflect the oncoming projectiles. She couldn't just dodge it, not with Kouta and Usuzoku behind her. But with each passing moment holding and using the All-Mirage, her chakra was slowly being drained.</p><p>The weapon had an awesome ability to swallow up its prey or entire jutsu and store them in a sealing dimension of its own with a mere touch. Such a powerful ability had an incredibly powerful toll, a cost so powerful that Usukari held the weapon sealed away when she was not using it because just wearing it sheathed would have slowly eaten away at her chakra.</p><p>Vasuki hissed in triumph, enjoying its superior position and very much taking a fancy of the little game it was playing. Testing the rabbit's resolution, the cruel venom-spitter wondered what would give way first, the devotion to the mammal's team or her self-preservation instincts.</p><p>The serpent opened its mouth once more, the fangs it had dispatched had already regrown again. The ability to manipulate the genetic composition of their bodies on a molecular level of the Ninja Snakes had no visible limits in the heat of a battle.</p><p>"Poison Fang Chip Jutsu!" Vasuki hissed out, this time the serpent stored more chakra into its fangs before simply spitting them at the enemy at great speed. The built up chakra caused the fangs to crack and burst into a shower of hardened fang chips, soaked with dripping venom.</p><p>Usukari screamed out in pain, throwing the All-Mirage at the shower of poisonous projectiles in a spin. Due to the powerful spinning motion and its unique ability, the All-Mirage managed to seal the following bit of Vasuki's torturous fighting style away. A black, rotating hole opened up beneath the spinning horn, adorned with teeth. After its spinning momentum ran out and its intended defensive purpose was fulfilled, the horn disappeared in the void of its sealing dimension as Usukari's chakra was on the final verge of running out.</p><p>The poor rabbit was prone on the wall. Still resolute to protect her comrades but too tired to even stand on her two, ironically, because of her prone position, Usukari was spending even more chakra just to keep her stuck to the cavern wall. She could have plummeted below at any moment but Usukari was determined to protect Usuzoku and the young man healing him until that moment.</p><p>"Our little game was fun. Begone now." Vasuki hissed while keeping up an attempt to act bored. As if Usukari's resistance was entirely pointless. The serpent enjoyed seeing the disappointment and hopelessness in the eyes of those it killed. There was nothing like seeing one crushed completely and reflecting on their life as ultimately being fruitless before their untimely end.</p><p>The serpent swiped with its tail, finally slithering outside with all of its body. It clearly knew of the amounts of chakra it would be expending but it purposefully chose to do so regardless. Even after completely refreshing its body by shedding a new one from its dying one, even after nearly killing its enemy multiple times with venom running in its system, Vasuki cared little about the effort required to stick its titanic body to the cavern wall.</p><p>It was not its usual manner of attack, brutal, uncivilized but just humiliating enough to crush the confidence of the devoted and friendly doe. Usukari closed her hands, letting the force of the impact send her sliding back but doing her best so that she did not disturb Kouta and Usuzoku who were right behind her.</p><p>The hurt doe hit something rough with her back on her slide back. The balance of chakra manipulation in her feet faltered for just a moment, she lost balance but a strong grip on the back of her neck kept Usukari up. The rabbit was too weakened to look up and see who had rescued her but a pair of familiar voices emanated from above.</p><p>"I think this should do it. Be careful and don't get more of that junk in your system."</p><p>"What do ye mean? I already got it, what's it matter if I get more in me?"</p><p>"You fool, the more of it you got in you, the faster it will kill you. Eventually, I won't be able to keep you alive."</p><p>"Fine. Keep 'er from plummeting down, will ye?"</p><p>"Well, if I'm doing errands for everyone anyway…"</p><p>Sounds of steel clangs, sizzling and bubbling and liquid washing and splashing at the rocks around followed. Usuzoku rushed onward with an attempt to cut or skewer the enemy but Vasuki was too slippery. Whatever attempts the rabbit had at pinning the enemy down proved to ultimately be fruitless, her massive head evaded getting skewered with graceful and quick for her size moves.</p><p>"What are you doing? She's a snake with a long body, use that against it!" Kouta yelled at the rabbit, still holding Usukari in one hand.</p><p>"Shuddup!" Usuzoku growled at the youth, even though the rabbit warrior refused to admit it, he had adjusted its style to utilize Kouta's advice. It swung for the head but once the head disappeared from its reach, it went for the extended body. Try as hard as the serpent did, it would be unable to move its entire body.</p><p>Vasuki swiped with its tail again. It was an attempt to push the enemy away and gain some space. It has been a while since the smugness faded away from Vasuki's expression and it genuinely had to try to kill the enemy. Before it could really put its money behind that goal, however, in a blur, the rest of the rabbits rejoined their ally.</p><p>Vasuki looked around, it appeared that it had only realized how absorbed it was in this little game only now and that she failed to notice her companions running away with their lives. Judging from the disdain in the eyes of the venomous one, it was the type to choose death over humiliation, at least given these odds.</p><p>Mana's eyes turned away for a moment, then returned at Vasuki with anger and a pleasant hint of fear, at least pleasant for the snake herself.</p><p>"You've brought someone else?" The magician asked.</p><p>"Maybe, who knows how many others heard Yamata no Orochi's declaration…" Vasuki pleasantly nodded its head, raising it up and down. It was not the prospect of potential allies in this uneven fight that made the serpent excited, it was the intimidation in Mana's eyes.</p><p>"Wait, you mean…"</p><p>"There's someone else? Where?"</p><p>The rabbits began losing it all at once. Kouta remained still, just a hint of sweat running down his face and worry over the rabbit it held in its hand. It looked like fever and small burns began covering Usukari's body as with her chakra getting dangerously low, her body failed to properly protect her from the intense heat of the cavern risen a couple of hundred of meters above the outer core.</p><p>"Ji-Ji-Ji…" A goofy sounding noise rang around the cavern. All of the rabbits with any sense of consciousness jumped up and got startled by the silly, almost infantile sounding noise that echoed through the depth of the caves.</p><p>"No… No way… Not here!" Usupari yelled out in disbelief.</p><p>"Like a bad itch ye can't get away from…" Usuzoku grumbled looking more pissed than he was afraid of the infantile chuckling and goofiness resonating through the cavern.</p><p>A chain of thunderous blasts resonated far away in the depths of the caves where Nagendi slithered away. The blasts were powerful enough to widen the entire cavern by blasting away the cave in which Nagendi came there. A pair of large eyes bulged from the darkness. As Mana intensified her perception, a sight of a snow-white fur worn by a dwarfing nightmare met her sight.</p><p>After just a brief second of exposure, a rush of compatriots, completely identical to the goofy looking rabbit flooded the cavern, most of them tripped over and plummeted into the depths, detonating in a chain of deafening explosions before they could even hit the scorching end of the fall down below.</p><p>"W-What is this?" Vasuki looked at the new threat in confusion as the rabbit appeared to struggle with the concept of there being no ground under its feet and, judging from the ferocious devastation it came from, had killed its companion.</p><p>"It's… Usujitsa…" Usuchabi sighed, "Now we're all really dead…" She lamented.</p><p>"Tsk, even more allies? Fine. I'll kill this thing first, just to see the hopelessness in your eyes!" Vasuki declared as it opened its mouth, firing a massive bubble of sizzling, dark purple venom at the newly emerged threat to its fun.</p><p>The bubble enveloped the white, confused rabbit who just drooled and glared at the incoming, tremendously slow projectile and pondered what its exact nature was. The bubble would have covered the little rabbit dozens of time over and the poor fool offered completely no resistance whatsoever to it. Within an instant, the rabbit was dissolved, before the poison could even start working.</p><p>"What a weakling, I guess one of the little ones cowering in the cave behind you found a way here?" Vasuki wondered observing the last hair of fur dissolving in the bubble of acidic venom before the bubble imploded on itself and covered the area where the rabbit once was.</p><p>"Ji-Ji-Ji-Ji…" A resonating tirade of goofy banter echoed from the cave behind Vasuki forcing the snake to turn around. Before it could react, more and more angry goofballs leaped out from the cave and wrapped their fluffy limbs around the snake, some even used their blunt chompers to dig deeper into Vasuki and to keep a better hold.</p><p>"Back!" Usuvilme yelled out, forcing everyone who was not covered with imbecilic fur balls to flee for their lives.</p><p>A loud shriek preceded a show of devastation when all of the angered goofballs detonated. Despite the explosive potential being of world-ending proportions, compressed to a minuscule range to drastically improve the damage to its target, what flesh bits still remained of Vasuki, trapped inside a scaly skin sock made its way into the cave before the snake fell on its side dead.</p><p>"Shouldn'a done dat…" Usuzoku noted while another one of Usujitsa peeked its goofy eyes from the cave and waved at the rabbits.</p><p>"I can't believe it killed them, just like that…" Mana ground her teeth in disdain for the force of nature that was Usujitsa. The feared menace of the Ninja Rabbits whom everyone avoided by a thousand miles.</p><p>"It doesn't look at the world that way. When it gets angry, it blows things up." Usuchabi closed her eyes, the cat-rabbit looked intimidated by the surprise appearance of the rabbit horror story rather than the enemy they were about to face.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0450"><h2>450. Forced Reconciliation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a while, the party of warrior rabbits continued to stare at Usujitsa and his antics. The goofball gave the other rabbits and their human companions plenty of reasons to fear it. That was just if one completely ignored the warnings and the poor reputation that the mindless force of nature known as Usujitsa had gathered over the years.</p><p>"We have no time to linger here," Usupari spoke up as the gruesome sight of Usujitsa hopping on and kicking the still twitching corpse of Vasuki as well as biting at it angrily lingered in the eyes of the observers.</p><p>"Yeah, we don't know what next is on Usujitsa's hit-list. We were lucky that Vasuki pissed it off and took its undivided yet limited attention." Usuchabi sighed.</p><p>"Go, check on the others." Mana nodded at the rabbits while she took a wary step towards the frightening midget horror show that was Usujitsa.</p><p>"What are you doing?" Kouta raised his voice. The gesture was meant to remind Mana that she was moving toward a being with an unknown number of clones still lingering all over the place with the explosive potential to level everything around it.</p><p>"All those civilians, they'll need to get over this cavern." The magician's voice faltered. She knew that she was approaching the dragon's den here.</p><p>"I'm sure someone can make a decent stone platform ta walk over," Usuzoku grumbled. "Dere isn't a single rabbit without de ability ta mold chakra ta some extent."</p><p>"Yeah but Usujitsa is also a rabbit." Mana breathed out erratically. Her breathing was becoming increasingly irregular, the closer she approached the grumpy little murder-fluff that was Usujitsa. "He is also a part of this movement. Even if he is a mindless machine of destruction, he does not deserve to face the retaliation of the snakes alone."</p><p>"So yer takin' him with us? To make all 'a us face it with a bastard dat's just as likely ta blow us up as he is ta help us?" Usuzoku complained before he coughed some blood up. His stance was becoming as sloppy and slouched as his posture. Little by little the weight of gravity was dragging him down from the horizontal position of sticking to the cavern wall he was currently in and it's only been a couple of moments since the damage to his system was healed.</p><p>"Hey there." Mana smiled at Usujitsa before landing to his side and waving at the little goofball. Coming so close to the so widely revered horror of the Ninja Rabbits made the magician notice just how cute and silly the little monster was. The little critter hopped up to Mana with a pair of quick dashes and sniffed her.</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa babbled with strange cheer.</p><p>There was something odd about this creature. Mana could sense it all over the place. The entire cave system around this cavern was filled with Usujitsa. Judging from what she had seen before, this rabbit used clones to scope out its environment. Given its incredibly low intelligence, it was a very fancy way to survive this long – everything it met in its path it exposed its clones to and blew them up on. Maybe that was why this rabbit had a falling out with the rest of its peers…</p><p>"Look, I don't know if you can understand me or not but… We're leaving this place. All of the Ninja Rabbits and… Well, technically, you're one of us so you are also invited. We're going to find a new place for you to live, free of the Ninja Snakes, well… Freer." Mana smiled for the little thing, carefully and slowly reaching her hand out and letting the little Usujitsa clone get used to the girl's presence.</p><p>Mana had dealt with cats before, while the feline species tended not to explode upon making a mistake with the destructive potential to kill an A-Rank ninja, the core principles were not too different. No sudden moves, if Mana did not give this little bugger a reason to explode on her in self-defense, it should, in theory, not have done so.</p><p>After giving Mana's hand a quick handful of sniffs, the silly bunny wrapped its slobbery mouth around it, letting the magician's hand disappear halfway into its mouth. Mana stared at it for a couple of moments, wondering if the beast would detonate itself if she pulled her hand out of its slobbery expression of fondness. For the moment, she just let the rabbit try to taste the rubbery feeling of Mana's gloves.</p><p>"Ji…" Usujitsa babbled and spat Mana's hand out, dripping with slobber while it gave the magician a dumb smile.</p><p>The magician could hear the collective bunch of sighs around her as the other rabbits, as well as Kouta, observed how this entire situation would play out. She felt so nasty about disappointing them because there was still a very dangerous thought she needed to let the little goofball know.</p><p>"I want you to know this, if you understand me, things will change after we move. I'd rather you not blow the entire place up because Konoha will not be as ignorant of it as Kusagakure is about you busting up these caves with your antics. You will be on your best behavior once we move." Mana shook the slobber off her hand and warned the rabbit.</p><p>Usujitsa's eyes turned angry, it showed Mana its teeth but the magician stayed right where she was kneeling up to him. The others behind her lost their collective minds. They backed off with Usuzoku and Kouta yelling warnings at Mana but the girl maintained her eye contact with the little terrorist as she meant every word she said and if by any chance, she was understood, she wanted Usujitsa to know she wouldn't tolerate its way of living for too long if he refused to change its destructive ways.</p><p>"Ji-Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa cheered all of a sudden and jumped right up to Mana, for a moment the magician wondered if that would be how she died. Blasted to pieces and disintegrated by a suicidal weapon of mass-destruction in rabbit form before her body could even register the heat coming off from the explosion but Usujitsa just bumped its chest at Mana and bounced off of her.</p><p>The little ball of fluff fell to the ground and rolled around on the rocks, giggling to itself as it wrapped its little cuddly arms around its waist and continued to display its inability to keep its mouth content inside his mouth. After this fit of laughter, the little ball of death jumped back on its stout, little feet and saluted Mana.</p><p>The magician looked at the other rabbits from inside the cave. She sighed in probably the biggest amount of relief she had ever felt as she did so.</p><p>"It's okay." She let the others know. "I think it will follow us to Konoha."</p><p>"How is any of that okay?" Usuchabi wondered.</p><p>"If Calioph returns, if any more snakes come, we may use Usujitsa's raw power." Usuvilme brought the idea up.</p><p>"Leave alone we could use the temporary truce. Any moment we don't have to worry about that maniac blowing all of us up is a moment of bliss, as far as I am concerned." Usupari nodded.</p><hr/><p>Together the rabbits and the two ninja returned to the other rabbits that waited impatiently for how the battle would have concluded. Nobody was sure if the Usujitsa that returned with them was the real one or another clone but Mana doubted that the real one ever as much as peeked through a corner without first having its clone thoroughly blast said corner to bits with a suicidal explosion.</p><p>All she could say was that she felt the presence of dozens if not hundreds of rabbits, all possessing the chakra signature around that of a genin. If all of them belonged to a single, original Usujitsa, its original chakra signature would have been unbelievable. It would have surpassed those of most Konoha jounin and easily surpassed those of Vasuki and the other snakes that the rabbits faced in the cavern.</p><p>While Usuvilme and Usupari relayed what had happened to the elder rabbits, Mana assisted with Kouta's instructions in making something that could have helped ease up the symptoms of Usuzoku's poisoning. While she did that, Kouta did his best to slightly assist Usukari's condition. After a short while healing her wounds, the boy wiped the sweat off his forehead and approached Mana for a short talk, the magician could not help but notice the bags under his eyes.</p><p>"She should be okay. A day of sleep will help her a hundred times more than any amount of healing ninjutsu." The boy sighed. He was completely tired and he barely threw a punch in that entire fight. "Perhaps you were right, if I did go fists swinging, we'd have won sooner but I would not have been able to help anyone and we'd have had casualties."</p><p>"I understand that you wanted to help your way. That you wanted to beat a big, bad snake all by yourself. However, you don't need to prove anything, not to me. To me, you're the strongest one there is." Mana playfully nudged Kouta in the chest. She was glad that just this once everything turned out as well as it could have turned out, knowing the stakes and the odds.</p><p>Kouta wrapped his shaking and tired hands around the girl and pressed her closer to himself. Glad that the little feud between them was past now, Mana mirrored the gesture. Helping the rabbits find a new home would have been infinitely more difficult with the young man she loved hating her guts. She needed him just as much as he needed her.</p><p>Without Kouta by her side, Mana's mind was drawing blanks. Without his support, the craving for it was all she could think and any good thought had to plow through an ocean of self-loathing for having lost that support in the first place. Without Mana to hold him back at times, Kouta would have succumbed to that anger he carried inside and lost his cool. He would have never lived up to his full potential.</p><p>Usuzoku grunted in pain and fell back first to the wall. He was pretty much clawing at his gut and his chest. Yelling in pain and sweating profusely making his sweat all wet and greasy. In the areas where the poison had affected him previously, but that were healed by Kouta's ninjutsu later, the poor rabbit was losing his fur, leaving only swollen black lumps of burnt flesh that looked like they'd burst with darkened blood if they were pressed for just a little bit.</p><p>The moment of temporary calm was abruptly ended. Both ninja jumped up at the same time and rushed to the ailing rabbit. Kouta because he felt responsible for examining the rabbit's wounds and any judgments he may have made on the battlefield, Mana merely because she was worried. She felt so powerless and useless, just standing around while the medical ninja scanned through Usuzoku's injuries.</p><p>"This isn't great. I can help him stay alive for a while but we need to find him some anti-venom." The Jugo shook his head after he was done looking at the rabbit's condition.</p><p>"Why did we ever think this was a good idea?" Someone from the crowd gathering around the severely poisoned rabbit started rustling, giving the uneasy bunch the spark it needed to create a fire of panic.</p><p>"All of our strongest fighters injured and worn out right out of the gate, just barely one-tenth of the way through. All of the snakes now after us because of what we did to their kind, now this… We're all doomed!" Someone else joined in just before the complaints and doomsday prophecies for the entire Ninja Rabbit species got out of hand. Just a bland murk of animals scared for their lives not knowing how to express that anxiety in a meaningful manner or channel it.</p><p>They had all the reasons to act this way. Usuzoku may have been one of their strongest warriors, maybe Usukari was more acknowledged due to her wielding the All-Mirage but Usuzoku was the one who was trusted with the recovery of the contract scroll way back when. To see all of their trusted warriors exhausted and barely able to fight after just the first obstacle in the path must have been disheartening.</p><p>"We're not doomed. Usuzoku is injured and needs treatment, that is an obstacle but it is one we can deal with. We need to stand together and deal with these obstacles as they come, figure out which direction we'll be running from now on together. Not bicker and split ourselves further apart because that is how the rabbits will die out for sure." Mana replied. She found her hand rising up on Kouta's shoulder as if soothing him and advising him to hold down his Curse Seal for now.</p><p>It was her duty to calm him down when his anger was not needed, misplaced or counterproductive. It was her duty to help him grow into the best possible version of himself as it was his to support Mana in his own unique ways.</p><p>The rabbits did calm down, surprisingly enough, after just this one call for reason. Usuvilme, Usupari, and Usuchabi all looked at Mana with respect and smiles on their faces. If a little bit twisted from the aching sides and exhaustion that drew them closer to the resting ground.</p><p>"To think I bathed in all dat mongoose blood…" Usuzoku sighed. "Only ta die like dis…"</p><p>He must have been really bad to be this delirious. Then, something snapped in Mana's mind. She sat down to his eye level and gently lifted his weighed down head to meet her own gaze.</p><p>"What was that you said about mongoose blood? What does that have to do with anything?" Mana asked calmly.</p><p>"I dunno, dose bastards are immune ta most snake venoms. I figured deir blood might be magical or sumthin'." The rabbit shrugged with frightening indifference and haze in his eyes.</p><p>"As a medical ninja, I can tell you – don't get your hopes up," Kouta interjected. "I do not think there is anything unusual about mongoose blood. Their immunity must come from some other part of their anatomy, more likely from the sum of many parts."</p><p>"Oh, I did not expect a vial of some wonder blood to heal him." Mana closed her eyes and stood back up. She pondered hard one an idea, walked around and mumbled to herself for a short while, creeping the rabbits carefully observing the scene out while some younger bunnies joined in on Mana's intense thinking ritual by mirroring her moves as a fun game.</p><p>"Although, if anyone would have a way to cure this, it would be the mongooses." Mana sighed.</p><p>"We can't go to the mongooses." Someone from the crowd of rabbits spoke up.</p><p>"They are closer than Konoha." Someone else objected.</p><p>"They'd kill us. We were at war for a long time." A third voice joined the conversation.</p><p>"I agree that we cannot afford to all go to the mongooses." Mana sighed. "Maybe in two groups…"</p><p>"I could bring Usuzoku to the mongooses. You could keep leading the rabbits to Konoha." Kouta shrugged his shoulders.</p><p>"That would be madness." Usupari stood up and walked up to the scene of the conversation slowly. His sides still hurt and he was decently winded from the fight still. "The snakes can literally see your signature through the walls, hear you moving. The moment you part from all of us you'd make yourself a target."</p><p>"Plus, the mongooses won't care ta negotiate with a single dying rabbit an' an unaffiliated human dat just wanders in'ta deir home. They'll kill ya an' be done with it." Usukari sighed, having finally woken up and gotten back on her feet after the scuffle. "One thing is fer sure, dey won't hear anythin' we try ta tell dem so talkin' will be on you."</p><p>"I cannot ask all of you to gamble with your lives. The moment we come knocking to the mongooses, they'll take you hostage. They'll see your weakness and need. It will be tough to negotiate with them. Maybe I can pull it off, maybe not." Mana looked at her quivering hands and realized how tired and stressed out she was. The rabbits could neither return nor stay where they were and she now had to make the hard choice between saving Usuzoku and gambling on all of their lives or let a cherished friend die and have it hang on her consciousness forever.</p><p>"Whatever… It was just a stupid thought anyway, just leave me be…" Usuzoku's husky voice tried to silence the talk and move it away from the dangerous territory it was going in. He knew Mana best out of all of the rabbits and he must have known which choice she would choose. The magician always was an all or nothing kind of girl.</p><p>"No. That is not an option." Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Wait, if the snakes are a predator of the rabbits..." Kouta spoke up.</p><p>"Amongst other species…" someone in the crowd of rabbits discussing the matter fixed him.</p><p>"…Then who is the predator of the Ninja Snakes? Surely there must be some, right?" The medical ninja wondered. "If they hunt snakes and don't just rival them, like the mongooses, surely they also have some ways to cure the venom."</p><p>"I think that'd be a bunch of the Ninja Birds species. Those tend to live far to the north." Usukari closed her eyes in sadness. "If we're willing to go that far, we may as well try and rush it to Konoha. We'd have to cross the Snow Country and the entire wasteland of the Land of Lightning before we'd reach the hawks."</p><p>"Mongooses it is." Mana declared.</p><p>The other rabbits rustled in unease for a short while before looking up at Mana, then at their tired warriors and, after picking up on the respect in their eyes, back at the magician. They probably won't like it but they will follow her for now.</p><p>"Just for da record, yer a human in deir secret land. If de negotiations don't work out, dey'll kill ya too…" Usuzoku grinned with a fate-defying grimace through his pain.</p><p>"If I end up dooming an entire species to death, I will take my own life in shame before that." Mana gave her old friend a similar defiant smile before looking at Usujitsa. That white snowball was a massive problem in the upcoming negotiations. Just moments after she had somehow managed to form a temporary truce between the rabbits and this walking disaster waiting to happen, she had to speak to him again.</p><p>If things insist on following the same vein tradition for much longer, the magician's heart will burst through her chest and kill her before countless other factors manage to get their best shot.</p><p>"Jitsa-chan." Mana sat down by the curious-looking clone, a handful of others surrounded her and started poking her with their little, round and fluffy fists. Some as an attempt to nudge, some were just checking her.</p><p>"Ji." The little rabbit looked up at Mana with the same goofy eyes and stuck out its tongue to the side, never failing to leave ample puddles of slobber wherever it went.</p><p>"We are planning to go to the Ninja Mongooses for help. I'm not sure if you plan on just sticking with us from afar or if you… God help us… Plan on coming with but we could use some… Not anything blowing up at all." The magician tried reasoning with the little thing, against her better knowledge.</p><p>"Ji-Ji-Ji!" the little clones started frantically running around and hugging each other after running into one another. A handful of them jumped at Mana, wrapping their hands around her as if she was one of them. It was completely unclear whether the rabbits understood a word she said but at the very least they were happy and looked strangely content about being called with the endearing honorific.</p><p>The Ninja Rabbits and their human allies had a moment to rest before things would get a whole lot more interesting and more stressful.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0451"><h2>451. Towards The Surface</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite Mana's most honest attempts of relaying the idea to Usujitsa, the tiny disaster refused to use its clones to help his kind pass to the other side of the cavern. That passage was essential for any of the destinations that the rabbits were to take, whether it was for the sacred home for the Ninja Mongooses or if they suddenly reconsidered on this suicidal side quest – Konoha.</p><p>Given how pouty and stubborn Usujitsa was getting, how erratic his babbling voice was and how frantically the little fluffball shook its head in refusal, Mana was forced to back off its case lest she risked running out of whatever favor she had with the little terrorist, killing the Ninja Rabbits far before they even reached the mongooses.</p><p>Luckily enough, just as previously thought, there were ample rabbits with the Earth Release affinity. In fact, it may have just been the most common elemental affinity along the entire species so building a bridge in the less than stable cavern was quite simple. Given the sheer number of Earth Release users, Mana wondered if they couldn't have just made a tunnel of their own using all of their abilities together.</p><p>Granted, it would be a tough task, the minerals this deep below are immensely hard. Pretty much as dense as anything ever got. That meant that the rabbits would have needed techniques of incredibly elaborate sophistication to carve through this level. They may have passed that obstacle by simply using a variety of lesser ranked jutsu instead.</p><p>What they could not have ignored was the distance that such a tunnel would have needed to go as well as the stability it required to have. Not only would the distance drain the builders of most, if not all, of their stamina after completely irrelevant percentages of the tunnel being built, but the builders would require maintaining a level of finely tuned control all throughout.</p><p>Given all those factors, it may have just been a safer option to build bridges instead of tunnels and fight anyone using the paths more commonly taken. There was none of that at play with a bunch of rabbits simply summoning a handful of thick, and elongated stone plates from underground and arcing them over the abyss leading to a scorching end.</p><p>There was a lingering sense of dread all around while the rabbits took their sweet time getting across. It was an entire population of ninja mammals moving over a narrow plate of Earth Release summoned platforms, after all. Mana kept her sensory open, forced it to scan the surroundings, again and again, almost hoping to justify that awful feeling of certain doom but… Everyone got across without as much as a hitch.</p><p>Kouta was carrying Usuzoku on his back. Both the young man and Mana hoped that Kouta's overall chakra resources would last until the fateful journey to the Ninja Mongooses would last in assisting Usuzoku in his valiant battle against certain and most painful death of having his innards liquefied from inside.</p><p>After a short while, the whole party of rabbits disappeared into the cold and unwelcome darkness of the caves through which the elusive Nagendi once slithered and attempted its clever ploy to surprise and overwhelm the gathered defenders of the rabbit species. Some of the young appeared interested in seeing the beast's corpse but they were left disappointed – only ash and dusty, burning-smelling remains were all that was left. Usujitsa took good care of that in one of its more capricious moments.</p><p>After the rabbits were gone, the entire cavern once again returned to its deadly state of grave silence, breathtaking heat and immense air pressure. There were no living creatures to experience the cavern in a state of illumination provided from the enhancement of their sensory input or to suffer through the blistering heat. Only once in a while, a shaken platform of stone collapsed from one of the walls or the ceiling of the cavern. Eventually, the entire place would collapse, destroying all evidence of any activity ever having taken place here.</p><hr/><p>The grotesque deadly visage of Vasuki twitched a handful of times before its blacked out eyes rolled even further back and its crushed and battered jaw opened wide. The entire torn to chunks corpse appeared to stretch and tear as a new version of the serpent appeared from where the old appeared to have met a grisly end.</p><p>"To think that I would be pushed this far, to use my Snake-Style Body Shedding twice in battle… Scared for my life enough to hide in my dying shell of a body, too afraid to shed it a moment too soon or else I very well may just… Die." Vasuki hissed to herself.</p><p>She had never taken itself as the kind of a serpent to do something like this, to talk to oneself but this was a special and a very shameful occasion. The reptile had the chakra maybe for one weak jutsu left after it was sapped completely dry by all the body shedding did in that insane battle.</p><p>Who knew that rabbits could have provided such ample challenge? Certainly not Vasuki. Not any of the other higher ranked serpents that have decided to play a little bit and show just a bit of their awesome might. Just taunt the rabbits with the evolutionary advantage that Mother Nature gave the snakes over them as they drove an entire species to extinction.</p><p>Many snakes have killed mighty opponents. Some of those who were worth the most honor amongst their peers were ones that killed enemies much mightier than themselves by applying some clever venom injection or a similar type of trick. Someone who would have driven an entire species to extinction… That would have been a different category of bragging rights altogether.</p><p>"Shit…" Vasuki hissed. This was what she would get for being greedy. Reduced to the pitiful state of weakness it reveled mocking its opponents for. A bit of cruel but fair cosmic justice… Not true, if justice ever existed, the snakes would have been the ones to take the full might of its ire. Even as a proud member of its species, Vasuki could have admitted that to herself, no, she took pride in that fact.</p><p>"Reverse Summoning!" the serpent hissed out, her jaw opened wide once more, this time a little less than before. Instead of a new titanic rebirth of its own self, this time Vasuki spat out an average build man with dark and messy shoulder-length hair covered in green goop from its inner body.</p><p>"This must be some kind of a joke." The figure sighed in frustration after stroking its face with one of his hands and swiping the remaining mucus aside. It looked absolutely livid for being summoned in such a gruesome way. Maybe someone of lesser importance, a young and useless contractor to be shown its place but not this man. This man was one of the more important ones, more proven to his contractors.</p><p>"I apologize. I do not have the strength to be fancy." Vasuki took no pleasure or enjoyment from setting the fact of her weakness straight.</p><p>"As curious as the case of you having your ass kicked is, I have no interest or care in your silly conflicts. I signed the contract to obtain the power of your world-renowned species and enlist their partnership, not the other way around." The person shrugged. The rather odious manner of his summoning proved to be ample reason for its refusal to aid the serpent.</p><p>"Hmph. I guess we keep enlisting people not too much different from ourselves. People of talent who crave more power than they already have. Too bad they're just as rotten inside as the animals they use as tools." Vasuki spoke almost in a self-reflective manner as she glanced for a moment at the spot where the humans aided the rabbits in their battle for survival. The sentiment in its agonizing self-reflection, as one as the one behind its own species in its entirety, was too obvious to call by its true name.</p><p>"I don't care how but you will return me back. And I am certainly not crawling inside your distasteful stomach…" the summoned summoner appeared to ignore Vasuki's feelings and her reflections in their entirety and only care to be returned to the matters he was attending to before being summoned in such a gruesome manner.</p><p>"If power is the thing you seek, there is a power you not only do not have but one you, or any other human, do not even know of," Vasuki spoke up. "If the ninja that have bested me frighten you so much, perhaps knowing of that power will tip the scales enough for you to face them as they faced us."</p><p>"Power? You mean there is more to gain from this contract than just occasionally enlisting your overrated aid?" the summoner wondered.</p><p>"That's right, the rarely spoken of Sage Mode! The power to make you the master of your own genetic make-up. Given your limited human intelligence, I can assist that immortality which you seek may be in your hands." Vasuki tempted the man.</p><p>"This Sage Mode intrigues me. You will teach me about it if I kill those that humiliated you, won't you?" the summoner switched his tune.</p><p>"Of course…" Vasuki hissed, its grimace overflowing with deceit but the promise of immortality and mastery over one's own self was too blinding to see anything else.</p><hr/><p>The mongooses did not live underground like the rabbits and some of the Ninja Snakes did. Those sneaky mammals lived in the vast grasslands surrounding Kusagakure as the massive forests did Konoha. From what Mana gathered from the old tales of wars back during the training in the Rabbit Caves, the mongooses were both the hunters and the prey.</p><p>Together with this natural role, came a very mixed mentality between that of the Ninja Rabbits and that of the Ninja Snakes. The mongooses utilized the great plains to see everything on all sides, both a potential threat and a prey. Maybe it was because the snakes lived far too deep to be seen in the rustling grassland that the two formed their bitter rivalry all those ages ago.</p><p>The trip to the surface was lengthy but also liberating. One did not come to properly appreciate the warmth of the sunlight, the glee-inviting shimmer of the sunlight dancing in the wet grass and the fresh spring breeze until they've walked a mile right above the world's outer core for a good couple of days. In a way, dealing with the absence of the inhumane conditions of the great below was just as shocking to the bodily systems as the initial exposure.</p><p>Kouta was sporting a nasty type of sunburn and was sweating excessively. Constantly out of breath but adamant about continuing to carry the rabbit so dear to Mana on his back. Leave alone the selfless care that the young man put into healing the rabbit once the accumulated pain and symptoms of the excessive amounts of venom coursing through his system were too much to take.</p><p>"It's good that we left the underground. You're showing the symptoms of chakra shortage, your augmentations were beginning to fail you down there." Mana observed in a worried tone when Kouta took another stop to scan through and heal the rabbit if just a little bit. Even the smallest fixes could have ended up saving his life.</p><p>"Ye should stick yer nose ta yer own business. I'd be a frickin' loser ta die to some snake juice anyway." Usuzoku taunted the young man who saved his life multiple times over the last day.</p><p>"It is kind that you're trying to conserve my chakra because I'm dear to Mana-chan but you should stop. Even if there are no unforeseen distractions, given the distance to cover, you will need every ounce I'm investing to stay alive until you receive your treatment." Kouta replied with a grin. It was rather perceptive of him to spot Usuzoku's tough act and call it out. Then again, the two have been forming a sort of a soft rivalry and maybe the Jugo simply saw such a display of perception being a superior leverage over the usual strength-based one.</p><p>"See, Zoku-chan, even Kouta can see through your tough mask." Mana grinned.</p><p>"Ugh. Just let me die with a little bit 'a dignity…" the rabbit sighed before Kouta could finish his treatment and the journey resumed.</p><p>It did not take too long to run into the first mongoose. Those little buggers were quick. All it took to spoil the surprise was a quick peek of a furry, triangular head through the grass and the overgrown critter was gone to gather his allies. Regardless of the act that their movement was scouted out, Mana encouraged the other rabbits to keep moving. Usuzoku may not have survived any delays.</p><p>Soon enough a handful of dozens of mongooses burst from the grass. The first time when an animal peeked its head out on a scouting mission, Mana only seemed a bit surprised that her chakra sensory failed to pick it up. When an entire battalion snuck up on the rabbits without her sensory alerting her of the enemy from kilometers away, it was something to completely baffle the magician to the point where she could not attribute her sensory flaw to her troubled and overstressed emotional state.</p><p>The curious part was that the moment the mongooses revealed themselves with their best war-grimaces and their fangs and claws ready for a nasty battle, their chakra signatures immediately flared back up. It did not just appear into existence, it appeared the rise up from nothingness, almost like it was suppressed somehow.</p><p>"I don't think you've come here to fight. Not with these numbers. Someone among you must be in charge." Mana spoke up while her mind still tried to wrap around the uncanny ability by all the mongooses she had met to mask their existence while inside the wild grasslands.</p><p>"Can't blame us for being wary, human." A fiery colored mongoose stood in front of the others. It had very wide flappy patches of skin under its arms connecting to its feet that looked like a cape when its arms were relaxed but would have almost looked like fearsome wings once they were extended to the sides. It did not look like a fashion statement but an ability to glide may have been odd for an animal born in plain grasslands.</p><p>"After all, the whole population of a species we've been long at war with passes through our borders." Another one appeared, possessing an identical set of gliders but much darker in the color of its fur.</p><p>"Headed right for our sacred land, no less." The third one showed up. A very bright shade of brown with the same gliders that appeared to connect the more important mongooses. It was something Mana could perhaps remember as she could have used any sort of social sense and advantage in her understanding of the mongooses she could have gotten.</p><p>"We don't come here as an enemy. We come asking for your aid, I would rather you did not hold us up here and accompany us to the nearest settlement." Mana asked.</p><p>The three important mongooses looked at one another in confusion, shining their mono-colored eyes at one another as if trying to verify that the words they have heard were correct and that the rest heard them as well. The three then proceeded to erupt into a mocking fit of laughter. The amusement in their lungs was such that it brought them to the ground, completely concealing them in the grass once more before they surfaced.</p><p>Once they disappeared in the grasslands this time, their chakra signatures did not fade out. Whatever the nature of the uncanny chakra suppression ability was, it had nothing to do with the close relationship between the species of ninja mongooses and the grasslands surrounding Kusagakure.</p><p>"I hope you're a better talker than this, kid, that was pathetic," Usupari grunted into Mana's side after hopping up closer to her.</p><p>"Tsk. Talking to the mongooses is pointless, no matter how good the girl is. We should have never entertained this idea…" Usuvilme sighed in the back of the line. It appeared that some of the mongooses in the fighting squad had heard those remarks and it appeared to snuff out the amusement in the crowd.</p><p>"Get lost before we help your heads get lost from your bodies." The fiery-furred mongoose warned before turning its back to Mana and commanding its part of the battalion to retreat.</p><p>"We're not done here." Mana stepped forward, knowing full well that she was escalating the conflict she only took half a step and then stopped so that she kept the conflict in a boiling state instead of letting the boiling pot tip over and spill into a bloody stain on the floor.</p><p>"We have a dying friend who has been bitten by a Ninja Snake and we know that you are the best at killing Ninja Snakes so you must have an anti-venom," Mana asked. "I promised said friend that I would help him beat up more mongooses and that I would save my life and right now I'd rather keep both promises or at least one rather than none."</p><p>"Atta girl!" Usuzoku raised his thumb in acknowledgment of Mana's overly aggressive approach to the matter.</p><p>"This is really not how you negotiate…" Usuchabi smacked her head in frustration. She was right, Mana could feel that she was really bad at this. So bad in fact that she should have known of this earlier.</p><p>The mongooses drew their swords and hid in the grass again. Mana could sense all of them still, quite unlike when they snuck up on the rabbits. That meant that they could not use their hiding abilities when in mid-combat. This revelation unmasked the nature of their suppression almost instantaneously – they evaded the chakra sensory ability by simply suppressing their chakra signatures to a smaller scale, weaker even than that of an ordinary, untrained civilian.</p><p>In that state, no sensory would pick them up but they'd also restrict themselves from using those concealed resources of chakra making any amounts of augmentation or unnatural fighting prowess impossible.</p><p>"Mongoose Style: Candle in the Wind." two voices pronounced simultaneously as the mongooses had already dashed through Mana's body and landed on the other side, their sickle-shaped swords in hand. The magician's body shook before the head separated from the body.</p><p>"Quick Shredding Dance!" the third mongoose, the fiery one chanted out while in mid-air. The speed at which these animals moved in the grass or switched between the grass and above it was almost miraculous. Slicing blades of wind projectiles shredded the beheaded body of the magician to fleshy chunks without damaging the grass beneath her feet.</p><p>Both the cut-off head and the shredded body of Mana turned to petals and scattered away. The magician had ample signs to set up the illusion even before the situation turned from sour to almost unsalvageable. The petals greatly confused all the mongooses as a great percentage of them revealed their positions by standing up from the grass and looking at the petals scatter in the spring breeze.</p><p>"Genjutsu?" the fiery mongoose correctly assumed before it was all too late.</p><p>A pleasant whistle of a melodious tune made all the mongooses widen their eyes and fall prone as their bodily senses were overwhelmed with pleasurable sensations. Almost all of their mediums of perception received an influx of pleasant stuffing that all combined in an absolutely disarming combination.</p><p>"The… Best… At fighting… Snakes…" the fiery-furred mongoose exclaimed through a great physical effort to speak even if the odd pitch of the animal's voice made it sound quite silly.</p><p>"That… We are…" the darker colored mongoose added.</p><p>"We have… A lot of… Anti-venoms…" the third of the mongoose generals concluded.</p><p>With an unsteady pace of her chest inflating and deflating and her mouth gaping open, desperate to take in more air than she usually did, Mana managed to muster up a smile after canceling her illusion, finally revealing her true location to the rest of the baffled mongooses.</p><p>"Then maybe we can strike some sort of a deal?" she suggested.</p>
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<a name="section0452"><h2>452. Bestial Politics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The mongooses quickly traversed through the grass followed by Mana and the rabbit party. Once in a while, one of the mongooses showed its head in the grass just so the party following them did not get lost. At least the first impressions were made and, just somehow, the rabbits managed to stay alive. That was all that someone with the mentality of a rabbit could truly ask for.</p><p>In a way, Mana was a perfect ally to the rabbits. Where one side did everything in their power and considered their core motivation to stay alive and unharmed, the other declared it her life's mission to keep everyone she can that way too.</p><p>"Yer negotiation tactics were… Interestin'." Usukari quickened her pace to catch up to Mana so that the rabbit could talk to her shortly and in silence.</p><p>Mana did not reply. Usukari was considered one of the greatest warriors that the Ninja Rabbits could offer, alongside Usuzoku. Yet Usukari was held as a hero whereas Usuzoku was just tolerated, likely because of their tremendous difference in character. Mana had great interest and respect in what the rabbit hero had to say but the magician really wondered if she was not the one who should have done the talking before.</p><p>"You suspected that the mongooses would not listen to a word you said so you intentionally sparked a conflict and quickly defused it by playing it out in your mind again and again. Your execution was too perfect in timing for it to be any other way. In that way, you bought some time. You made them listen by making them respect your strength." Usukari explained the way she came to understand Mana's plan.</p><p>"Our strength." Mana corrected the rabbit. "I did not intend to trigger a fight, not really. My first plan was to get mongooses on our side by just mentioning the Ninja Snakes but it appeared to not have worked."</p><p>"Well, we are not out of the woods just yet. Our strongest fighters are still not in fighting condition and we are being led to the den of the enemy where power will not be the swaying factor because we simply will lack the amount of power for it to be that way. I look forward to seeing what you have in store there…" Usukari smiled while patting the magician on the back.</p><p>It was not as easy as the rabbit assumed it to be. Mana did not plan this meeting to go this way, this was merely a precaution she intended to take in case things went wrong. She completely misunderstood the personalities of the Ninja Mongooses. It just so happened that the countless war stories Usuzoku told her depicted the enemy all wrong. As an amateur historian, Mana should have seen that coming.</p><p>At a certain point, the grasslands just stopped. After a good couple of hours of slightly faster than a civilian traveling pace stroll, the mongooses took the rabbits to a two-meter tall structure that did not appear too different from a large pile of dirt. The magician raised an eyebrow, momentarily a hint of respectful fear starting simmering in her heart as she wondered if they were just being played.</p><p>No. It did not make too much sense. If the mongooses wanted the rabbits dead and had the means to achieve that, they would have undoubtedly gone for it all the way back there. Given the current circumstances, they have decided that fighting Mana and whoever else offered a fight was either too much for their numbers or too much of a hassle compared to just hearing them out.</p><p>"There. The Burrow Ziggurat of the Ninja Mongooses." The fiery furred animal pointed at the towered dirt. While on one hand, the place looked like a literal dump, looking at with a more analyzing glare it made sense. The Ninja Mongooses may not have wanted to be found out by anyone they did not approve and allow entry into their sacred grounds.</p><p>"So you live underground as well?" Mana wondered, just trying to establish a dialogue between her and the mongooses that would maybe keep the two talking long enough to form some sort of mutual understanding of each other's circumstances.</p><p>"Yeah, not as deep as you guys though. We need the grass but we also need to conceal our home from Kusagakure." One of the mongoose generals nodded while showing the rabbits and the accompanying humans an entry point into the burrow.</p><p>The entire descent into the inverted, underground ziggurat was tricky. There were no stone platforms or steps to descend, just a burrow of actual sand, which was beyond slippery. Nothing a small application of the walking on water techniques ninja used as well as some good, old body control and balance could not have solved though.</p><p>The mongooses were not kidding, the descent was not really that deep underground. The actual ziggurat carved into the natural stones and minerals still present in the upper layers where the mongooses lived was much larger than the mock burrow. It could have gone as far down as fifty meters and resembled an underground hive in the shape of a pyramid. The exact shape of the structure was tough to say, somewhere the mongooses had built the ziggurat into the dirt and soil, in other places, they built it in empty spaces of natural caverns formed after natural erosion and shifting glaciers.</p><p>To say that the party of the entire Ninja Rabbit society accompanied by a much smaller bunch of mongoose soldiers received its own fair share of curious glares would have been a massive understatement. The rabbits would definitely not have been welcome guests down there had a mighty looking military force of well-armed and trained mongooses not accompanied them.</p><p>"The Council of Mongoose Elders…" the generals spoke up to Mana before leading some of the more important looking rabbit figures inside while they left the rest with the remaining mongoose armed forces outside the room where the council was in. Curiously enough, the rabbit elders were also kept out of the room, perhaps this was for a good reason as the two generations had spent a life of war and hatred that would not simply be brushed aside like this.</p><p>The Council may have listened to Mana and some younglings but not those that carried the burden of thousands of their own dead ones on their consciousness.</p><p>"The Vigilant Council, we have encountered this massive party of rabbits just passing by our scouts who called up this emergency seizure. The rabbits were treading here with a purpose, all together. They claim they were not doing so with force and cruel intentions though." The fiery-furred general reported on all fours in front of the council. One of the council members raised their paw as a sign for their general to stop speaking.</p><p>"Thank you, Mongohi. We shall hear the rest of the concerned party." The elder mongoose nodded its snout. The poor mammal looked so old that it looked dead even in the middle of its speech. Its age forced its eyes closed, its whiskers had grown grey and so long they almost reached the ground from its sizeable stone throne.</p><p>"With your permission, we shall stay in the procession of the hearing to better serve your needs. One cannot lower their eyes when rabbits are concerned." The mongoose general stood on two hind legs and quickly moved by Mana's side. It was a social cue for the magician to step forward and talk.</p><p>"What's that supposed 'ta mean!?" Usuzoku flipped out after the remark that all the other rabbits somehow managed to let slip. Mana should have seen this coming too, then again, the afflicted needed to be present so that she had him as proof of their goals here. This was an unavoidable blunder it seemed, but a blunder nonetheless.</p><p>"Please, can we just for a moment forget the animosity to one another?" Mana stepped in.</p><p>"One does not then forget wars older than you are, human child." One of the mongoose council members glared at Mana with an incinerating glare. In this case, she may have been more disliked than the rabbits in the room and the way she was referred to truly was meant as an insult and a way to surface Mana's inexperience.</p><p>She was just glad that Usuzoku somehow managed to shut his mouth, whether due to his better judgment behind all that tough-guy act or the sickness that was slowly pushing him into an early grave. The rabbit just grunted in pain and coughed out a handful of blood on the stone floor.</p><p>Mana had managed to keep her own composure too. She had nothing to get offended for. She was criminally inexperienced for such negotiations and the role she took up to serve. Then again, no ninja who had ever become Sannin waited until the circumstances were appropriate for the great deeds they have performed. They went past their own limits, broke through the barriers of their own flaws and excelled. That was what Mana needed to do as well. And if that failed, nothing else would matter.</p><p>"We did not come here to keep fighting. A Ninja Snake named Vasuki has bitten one of us, and we need the anti-venom. That is all." At that point, Mana fostered no false hopes of the Ninja Mongooses doing anything more than just tossing them a vial of anti-venom in the best of cases. There would be no temporary truces; there would be no alliances against the snakes.</p><p>For whatever reason, staying divided seemed a more attractive option even to these mammals that have only known war amongst their kinds for all of their lives.</p><p>A pair of the four mongoose elders started laughing, just like the generals laughed before. This only made Mana feel more stupid inside as she stood here risking her own hide and the lives of the entire Ninja Rabbit population just to save one very treasured friend.</p><p>"And why should we help him then? Usuzoku, of all rabbits, one who had slain plenty of our own kind." The same distrustful council member managed to stand up and was just about to raise its paw in the air as a sign to order the eradication of all the rabbits within their sacred grounds.</p><p>"Because if you do, you won't have to see us anymore. The Ninja Rabbits are leaving to Konoha's Forest of Death, moving their home." Mana suggested a reason that in her mind would have been enough to extend just this much courtesy. Just to deny a single, dying and suffering soul its death.</p><p>"You will disappear if we slay you all here and now then…" the mongoose sat back down but did not make any hasty judgments. "It seems then that there is really no use for us to waste even a drop of our own anti-venom on a lowly rabbit."</p><p>"He will need more than a drop. Vasuki had injected her venom into him multiple times." Kouta interjected.</p><p>"Even more so then…" the feisty mongoose council member was about to erupt into another tirade of insults and slurs before he was interrupted by the oldest mongoose in the room.</p><p>"Regardless of your feelings then on the matter, Mongokoto, a decision as grave as killing a bunch of refugees fleeing to our sacred grounds for help would require a unanimous decision from all of us."</p><p>"Hardly a sacrilege then, spilling rabbit blood in our sacred grounds. It has been done before and will be in the future…" the first mongoose crossed his front legs over its chest in disdain of having its grand speech interrupted by a simple reminder like that.</p><p>"Please, we do not care about continuing the conflict of our kinds right now. We can war all we want in the future. This is about the Ninja Snakes. They are a natural predator of our kind and a rival to yours, seems to me we've got common grounds here." Mana interrupted both of the council members seeing how it appeared to her that they were merely discussing two options, both of which were just as negative to the rabbits.</p><p>She had no interest in either getting slain with the Ninja Rabbits nor getting thrown out with a dying friend in her arms and a medical ninja too exhausted to help any longer. It appeared that her proposition was of interest even to the more stubborn and war-supporting mongooses.</p><p>"We do hate those filthy snakes more than anything else then, even rabbits, I suppose…" the council member called Mongokoto who was Mana's most passionate opponent up to now scratched a spot under its ear with its sizeable claws.</p><p>"Screw that then, even the thought of those snakes, even the damned word itself makes me fucking angry!" one of the mongooses who had remained calm up to now jumped on its hind legs and began passionately clawing at thin air with whited-out eyes, filled with fury.</p><p>All of the mongooses looked uneasy as if the talk of the Ninja Snakes was calling forth the surfacing of some deeper instincts that took an actual physical effort to restrain. Mana found that insanely curious. This meant that the roles that the animals played in the overall system had an actual physical effect on them.</p><p>That also meant that the Ninja Snakes may not have been innately cruel and overall the foulest thing Mana had ever encountered. They may have similarly been driven and instilled the sense of cruelty and the feeling of hatred by their more basic instincts. Granted, the serpents Mana had faced and seen did not look like they were being led by instinct but it was a nice dream to ponder on.</p><p>"We don't want your help nor do we intend on actively fighting the Ninja Snakes. All we need is the anti-venom." Mana replied.</p><p>This may have been a wrong thing to say, given how the prospect of fighting the Ninja Snakes, even if it was alongside the Ninja Rabbits, was the only thing keeping the mongooses entertaining the idea of settling on her side.</p><p>"Very well then, how about we put it to a vote?" the elder mongoose suggested, looking clearly disappointed that he would not be fighting any snakes either way. Given his advanced age and a rather poor fighting condition, it was a surprise to see him feeling that way.</p><p>"I then say we should help the rabbits. If the snakes hate the rabbits, by helping the rabbits we will piss off more snakes." The elder then elaborated on his own condition making Mana nod at his general direction in acknowledgment and gratitude of his decision.</p><p>"I too then think we should help the rabbits. If one vial of anti-venom is the price we pay for never seeing them again, that's a price we should not wait on paying." A chubby mongoose in a kimono wearing paint on its face, heavily suggesting that it was a female, replied. Strangely, the female mongoose had remained completely silent yet Mana won her over with an argument she'd have thought she'd win the more negative mongooses over with. "I am also rather fond of this human. While she is not on our side, the manner in which she attributes herself to the contract species of her signing is inspiring."</p><p>It was just due to blind luck that she brought that point up. She was so immature and unprepared for something like this… She should have never gambled the lives of the entire rabbits' species on something she had no experience with like this.</p><p>"I then also support helping the rabbits. Elder Mongolong raised a very interesting point. I too am in favor of spiting the snakes even though the enemy of our enemy is still an asshole." The more negative towards Mana's position council mongoose also joined in. It appeared that it was not Mana that won Mongokoto over but the point raised by his superior in age and experience.</p><p>"It then does not matter what I shall say then, we shall help the rabbits regardless. Hurray for democracy…" the fourth member bitterly let it slide. While the fourth mongoose looked a bit peeved by the fact that his decision, which undoubtedly would have been not in Mana's favor, did not matter he was not hateful enough to put the entire meeting into question and he decided to simply throw the vial the rabbits' way and move it along.</p><p>"Well then, it appears we have reached our decision. Because the rabbits and the mongooses have been at war for so long, the military party that subdued them shall be accompanying them for the entirety of their stay in the Ziggurat." The elder mongoose then looked at the present general to oversee that the council's will was given form.</p><p>"Alright then, please follow me to the rest of your kind. A small party will accompany Usuzoku and one of you humans to where you can get the vial." The fiery furred mongoose general ruled without any clear emotion about what he thought about the decision. He could not have been very fond of the rabbits but he at the very least must have respected Mana after their exchange somewhat. Maybe that counterbalance was why he managed to keep his calm and neutral face.</p><p>After the party, present at the meeting, was led out and into the spiraling staircase of the Ziggurat, Mana sighed freely. While she was very disappointed in her ability to talk for her contract animals, this meeting could have gone much worse and ended up with a lot more bloodshed.</p><p>"I was actually getting my blood pumping to let my Curse Seal loose. I think in a trouble such as this I'd have reached the Second Level…" Kouta also sighed easier after a short while.</p><p>While that would have undoubtedly been a tragic outcome, Mana did stop to wonder if the Second Level of a Jugo Curse Seal would have done something as amazing as fending off the entirety of the Ninja Mongooses. Regardless of that, Kouta would have lost all of his senses and would have become a bloodthirsty maniac while the state was active so whether he won or lost that battle, there'd have been no victory for the rabbits.</p>
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<a name="section0453"><h2>453. Hostile Tourism</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana and Kouta, who was still carrying Usuzoku around on his back, followed Mongohi to the room where, apparently, the rabbit could have gotten some help. The four kept descending lower and lower to the center of the Ziggurat, the deeper down they tread, the less they had to walk to complete circling the floor.</p><p>"How are you feeling?" Mana looked at Kouta with worried eyes. The young man had been treating Usuzoku this whole time from the site of their fight with Vasuki and the other snakes to the Ziggurat. Every thirty minutes to an hour, the rabbit required a small check and, even while this luxury was offered, he was still getting worse.</p><p>"I think I'm approaching the wall. I have some chakra reserved for emergencies but I'd rather it recovered unimpeded now." The young man admitted. Kouta was not the macho type to brag about having an infinite supply of stamina or strength. Mana liked that about him even though she had to admit the bragging, which Usuzoku very much tended to do, was beginning to seem sort of cute to her.</p><p>"It is a good thing then that you did not get to fight." The magician sighed easier.</p><p>"How is that?"</p><p>"I seem to recall that natural chakra requires replacing a certain percentage of your own chakra for a Jugo to transform into their Curse Seal." Mana brought up.</p><p>"True." Kouta nodded.</p><p>"That means that, if you even began taking in natural chakra, you'd have gone over the edge and lost control immediately."</p><p>"I don't think I follow…" Kouta scratched his head through a whole handful of messy hair.</p><p>"Think about it, if a Jugo requires a value of 200% to transform, it is much easier to cross that value when your own chakra is low. While it is much easier to tap into that power when worn out, it is also much easier to lose control without needing or wanting to." Mana expressed her worries.</p><p>"Huh… I guess that's why they call it a "Curse Seal"." Kouta smiled with some cheer in his tired face.</p><p>"Say, Mongo-whatevertwas," Usuzoku grumbled from the position of Kouta's piggyback. "Ye don' talk like dose other mongooses. What with dat whole "then" thing an' all…"</p><p>"I have spent so much time outside of the Ziggurat, fighting and interacting with other species and humans that I have come to abandon the speech quirks of my species. Some of you rabbits could also use that, I see…" Mongohi closed his eyes with a cocky smirk. While he felt glad to have found an opportunity to sting to a rabbit whom his kind has had a murky past with, he clearly did find some sense of enjoyment from just talking to one as well.</p><p>"I dunno what yer talkin' about…" Usuzoku grumbled. It was tough to say if his slurry speech and strangely blown cheeks were from embarrassment or if it was a symptom of the poisoning he was suffering from.</p><p>"Here. I'll help you get things done right, else you'll get nowhere…" Mongohi led Mana and Kouta into a much smaller room before leading them further to a small counter where a brown-furred mongoose with black stripes was located and doing her quite well maintained and blade-sharp claws.</p><p>"How then can I help ya?" the mongoose asked, her eyes did note the oddity of two humans and a rabbit being present in the room but she was not surprised enough to break the everyday monotony of her job.</p><p>"These humans need anti-venom. I think they've encountered Vasuki." Mongohi sighed. He clearly viewed interacting with this specimen of his own species as being more troublesome than talking to humans or barely conscious rabbits.</p><p>"You'll need to fill out this form then." The female mongoose gently showed a piece of paper to Mongohi who just cleared his throat in frustration.</p><p>"This appears to be a form for seeing a venom specialist. We do not need that, we know that the rabbit has been bitten by Vasuki. We are on a short time-schedule, I believe the rabbit was injected twice, which halves his survival time." Mongohi complained.</p><p>"Let's see then, anti-venom is provided by Mongolepius in that room. Mongolepius won't see you then without a request from a venom specialist. You won't see the venom specialist then without filling this form… Is the rabbit dead yet because I can keep going…"</p><p>"I'd better get started then…" Mongohi grunted, he took the assignment of enacting the council's will very seriously.</p><p>"He said it…" Usuzoku coughed on Kouta's back, shaking hard enough to inconvenience the young man.</p><p>"It was not an impediment, I just used the word in its context." Mongohi grumped out while his hand turned to a blur filling out the form. He was quite fast and very devoted to the deed, sometimes he turned back to get some questions answered by Usuzoku and looked genuinely displeased by how long it took the poisoned rabbit to answer.</p><p>"Very well, bestial one. Here is your form." Mongohi slammed the sheet of paper on the table before locking the claws on his paw around Kouta's hand and pulling the young man desperately towards the room where the anti-venom specialist was.</p><p>"There seems to be a lot of procedure for just one vial of anti-venom…" Kouta noted.</p><p>"Most of the mongooses are immune to the weaker snake venoms. We fight snakes without being able to help it since childhood and venom is introduced into our veins before mother's milk. The pups are even less able to control the rivalry urges than the stronger adults. The stronger venoms require anti-venom so it is both rare and rarely needed, that is why the procedure is making things difficult. It is an unusual request." Mongohi explained.</p><p>"So then only the younger mongooses require anti-venom and only on very rare occasions?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"He said it…" Usuzoku chuckled. His state appeared to be somewhere between conscious and otherwise.</p><p>"No, Zoku-chan, it was Kouta who said it." Mana addressed the rabbit just so his brain felt involved in the conversation and did not let him fade away. The rabbit slipping into unconsciousness would not have been a good sign at all.</p><p>"Not quite. Snakes are mean bastards. They constantly grow and evolve, in many different ways than any other kind…" Mongohi's eyes began bulging out and getting bloodshot while his teeth started to peek from his snout and his claws let go of Kouta's hand just so they would not dig into the young man's flesh. Speaking of snakes was not simple for the mongoose.</p><p>"For that reason, even if the young grow older, whenever they face a species that has grown old enough to make its venom something special, they need anti-venom to assist their bodies a bit." Mongohi did his best to keep his focus and cool.</p><p>"But if snakes evolve, sometimes in the middle of the battle…" Mana asked something that popped into her head, recalling the odd evolution of a being like Nagendi, "How do you make anti-venom for something that appears and evolves so spontaneously?"</p><p>"How do you think?" Mongohi turned at Mana with a growl. He did not look angry at the girl, rather at the entire affair of speaking of snakes and the mighty task of rivaling them in nature. "We take the samples from the dead."</p><p>"That's so… Sad." Mana looked at the stone floor that the party was trekking on.</p><p>"They probably don't think so. Soldiers that patrol outside the Ziggurat keep injecting with different, newly discovered venoms to strengthen them without betting their life on the line all the time. Knowing that, any mongoose would be proud to die this way." Mongohi replied. It certainly seemed like he believed in what he preached and would have sacrificed himself if needed the same way as the weaker mongooses did.</p><p>"Dat's if ye even make it home… If de sneks don' gobble ye up…" Usuzoku's speech began slurring even more than it was usual to him. The mess in his intestines must have been making his fever rise up…</p><p>"Snakes do not usually eat us. Our rivalry goes beyond the natural selection." Mongohi proudly explained.</p><p>Mana tried to look at the upper layers of the Ziggurat then the ones they were walking on but, because of its reverse-pyramid shape, it didn't quite work. All she could see was more dark stone above her head extending to the sides. Since it was tough to see the uppermost layers of the Ziggurat, the whole place created an odd illusion that was quite disorienting as it was pretty difficult to say where exactly in the structure one was without the knowledge Mongohi had.</p><p>So then there were other reasons for why the Ninja Snakes and the Ninja Mongooses killed each other… More than just killing each other food, something that anyone could have understood. And yet, their instincts for rivalry and murder seemed so basic and primal. Mana very much wished to understand the source for that rivalry but she'd not find it out from someone from this generation or even many of the past ones.</p><p>She'd have to trace the very origin of the species, most likely, to see where the natural rivalries came from.</p><p>"Hmph. I wonder… The snakes prey on the rabbits, they have an intense rivalry with the mongooses and are hunted by hawks themselves, right? Then what do rabbits have a rivalry with?" Kouta turned at Usuzoku but only received unintelligible grumbles.</p><p>"Cabbages or some shit, probably…" Mongohi smirked as a mockery of the unconscious rabbit.</p><p>It was too bad that the female mongoose did not tell the party they would have to wait in line to get to the anti-venom specialist. Coming all the way from the room and halfway up to the higher floor was a line of ecstatic, nauseous or injured mongooses looking to supply the sample of venom in their blood to the specialist.</p><p>"I thought it was a rare occurrence for a mongoose to request anti-venom." Mana pouted, looking at Usuzoku with worry.</p><p>"I guess it is less rare for younger ones…" Mongohi cleared his throat.</p><p>The wait was immensely boring, after a short while Mongohi managed to make it less boring and more annoying by dragging his curved claws over the floor by moving his fingers. It was an interesting talent but the sound that the claws made was quite grungy and only made the boring wait excruciating for whole other reasons.</p><p>Before anyone could get driven to the point of insanity and about to the point where they'd complain about the constant claw-scratching sound, a loud boom and the sound of falling rocks interrupted the monotonous cacophony. A sudden burst of sunlight made the ninja and the mongooses who had gotten used to the moderate darkness of the underground cover their eyes.</p><p>"Is that Vasuki?" Kouta wondered looking up at the slithering invader. "Why would it just attack like this?"</p><p>The dark purple serpent coiled and hissed erratically, spitting death-bringing venom wherever its head turned in an uncontrollable spray. The venom began melting the stone on which it fell but it was too mindlessly aimed and delivered to cause any significant damage to the overall structure.</p><p>"It is going to bring down the Ziggurat…" Mongohi growled, his instincts began kicking in but the mongoose controlled himself through active chakra control that managed to suppress his more physical instincts.</p><p>"Not if it's shooting so blindly." Mana shook her head before noticing a couple of odd details. "Look at its eyes. I think it went berserk. What's that on its back?"</p><p>Kouta looked with more focus, trying to take into the unnatural blackness and the empty void inside Vasuki's stare. This could not have been the same proud and cocky hunter from earlier. It was just raging and flailing about completely in silence. Mongooses from all around the Ziggurat jumped up to engage the snake. It was then that Mana felt the flare of chakra coming from Vasuki, not the one emanating from the snake itself, it was something else, something very… Green.</p><p>"The thing on Vasuki's back is a ninja. Not quite as strong as Vasuki used to be but formidable. Its chakra feels so odd." Mana relayed her sensation to Kouta. Mongohi was about to join the fray of the mongooses' wild, defensive charge but Mana stopped him by grabbing him by the elbow.</p><p>"Please, finish your assignment, get Usuzoku some anti-venom. I'm sure the specialist won't listen to us." Mana asked.</p><p>"Hmph," Mongohi smirked. "I guess the council was right. Just associating with you has already brought a snake to our doorstep."</p><p>"What about me?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"You're tired, rest up. You'll do more harm than good if you lose control." The magician reasoned.</p><p>"Yeah, see to it that this bastard doesn't throw up on me, or something." Mongohi showed his teeth to Usuzoku before changing his grimace into a more thrilled one for the medical ninja.</p><p>A chubby fur-ball rolled out from inside the room. The anti-venom specialist had noticed the invasion and lost control as well. He did not feel like a particularly powerful fighter but he was rushing in headlong nevertheless. What an overpowering instinct these animals had!</p><p>Mana grabbed the mongoose by the belt tied around his waist. Despite her not being a particularly brawny type, her strength was easily enough to restrain the absolutely rabid anti-venom specialist. Mongohi assisted Mana with her attempt but not before the belt began slowly getting damaged and appeared to be on the verge of snapping.</p><p>"We'll get this guy all chipper." Mongohi nodded his head at Mana.</p><p>The magician sighed before rushing on ahead to join the madness of mongooses rushing at the enraged, titanic predator and getting swatted or sprayed aside. The rate at which the mongooses got blasted to the bottom of the mongoose grounds after getting hit by Vasuki or how many stayed down covered in its acidic venom looked quite gruesome.</p><p>It was not like the mongooses did not earn any good shots. Once in a while, the sides of Vasuki got covered with stripes of blood-red. Whoever this ninja on its back was, it was fighting the mongooses that got closer off with some taijutsu prowess. This guy may just have been Mana's target.</p><p>The magician was also tired. Not quite anywhere close to how tired Kouta was or how worn out the other rabbit warriors were but she was still involved in the massive fight before. She may have had about a half of her chakra resources still useable due to getting knocked out early on and skipping a whole stage of the fight early on as well as having trained a higher overall chakra level but her stamina was still not infinite.</p><p>Before revealing herself and committing to this battle, the magician looked around, trying to find the other rabbits. If all of the weaker mongooses lost their collective minds and the stronger ones were planning a response, there may not have been enough mongooses to guard the other rabbits. The magician tried to extend her chakra sensory to the upper levels. It was just on the edge…</p><p>All the familiar rabbit signatures were clumped together. All the strongest rabbit warriors were worn out, perhaps too much so for Mana to expect any help from them. They also may not have wanted to fight their struggling mongoose guards so to keep the relationship as stable as it somehow managed to get.</p><p>Vasuki was worn out too. It had managed to regain all of its bodily integrity and had completely recovered from all the damage it had taken during the battle with the rabbits but it was tired. Why did it attack then? Unless…</p><p>Mana leaped a couple of floors higher up, using the walls the Ziggurat was touching as support for a back dash onto the floor platform she may not have been able to reach as easily otherwise. Vasuki was still in a blind berserk state but the ninja noticed her, Mana was quite tough to miss, she made a career out of that.</p><p>The magician weaved a pair of hand seals before whistling a soft tune. She did her best to make it as audible as she could and expanded the genjutsu all the way to the ninja resting on Vasuki's back, just as a test of how well it could deal with it. The mongooses plummeted down, unable to deal with the sudden influx of pleasure. They were tough bastards, they may break some bones but they'd survive. The illusion would also temporarily alleviate the pain of the injured ones in a close range around Mana.</p><p>"Damn it…" the ninja grunted. It weaved a hand seal using a massive build-up of chakra to dispel the illusion from where he was standing. He was at the very edge of Mana's range, it would have most likely have been weakest there but still… That was remarkable self-control to be able to resist so many sensations so early in the illusion, usually dispelling Mana's Sweet Lullaby Jutsu required at least a bit of time to get used to the illusion's effects.</p><p>The girl leaned to the side, sensing an attack from the side. Just in time for the attacker's image appeared almost unwarned. His leg just narrowly missed the side of Mana's head. The insane flare of chakra inside the man's body suggested that he meant this kick as a kill-shot. It looked like it may have snapped Mana's neck or, at the very least, made mush out of her brain as it bumped inside her skull.</p><p>"That's some impressive genjutsu resistance." Mana commended Vasuki's unexpected ally. She needed to get him talking, slow down a bit. If he wanted to connect with a hit like that he'd likely give her another sign by building up too much chakra for her to miss an impending attack in his body but it was the less focused and powerful blows that worried the magician.</p><p>"I am familiar with the illusionary arts." The attacker smirked. It would have made sense that someone with an acquaintance with illusions would identify and dispel a genjutsu faster. Still, the range also must have played a role and Mana may have used that to her favor – he thought her illusion weaker than it actually was.</p><p>"That's some reflexes," he added.</p><p>"I'm pretty tough to hit." The magician tried to sound less tired than she actually was.</p><p>This was to be a very uncomfortable meeting, surrounded by a mindless, raging serpent, which may have returned to its better senses anytime soon as it had few enemies left to fight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0454"><h2>454. The Titanic Typhoon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana flicked her fingers. A pair of cards slipped from her sleeve. The magician flung the cards in an attempt to keep her opponent at a farther distance as well as make him reveal more of his arsenal. Of course, he will evade a simple barrage of projectiles but he will also be forced into action and reveal the unique way he acts on Mana's terms when she's ready for him.</p><p>Vasuki's ally flowed like a jet of water, he was agile, he had perfect move economy and was beyond flexible. Had Mana not known any better, she'd have taken him for being the snake if judging by how easily he bypassed her attacks. The man dashed in the close distance, throwing his palm up.</p><p>Mana was ready for him, she knew exactly when he'd come at her and as such, she managed to lean and dash back from his attack. What she did not expect however was a pair of arm-sized snakes coiling around one another slipping from the assailant's sleeve.</p><p>"So you're a summoner then? I guess it makes sense that the snakes would call you up." Mana spoke almost like she speaking to herself more than the man she was fighting.</p><p>"Man, killing you is gonna be a real shitshow. I didn't sign up for this…" the man scratched the back of his cloak. A suspicion sparked in Mana's head, a suspicion of what the man's attempts to remain mysterious were all about. She had to tear that cloak off, she had to expose this guy. Mana leaned forward, with a flick of her hand she let two more steel-tipped cards to slip into both of her hands for some close distance fighting.</p><p>Before she could make even one half of the distance she meant to, the magician dashed back. Her sensory alerted Mana of something coming at her from above and lo and behold, Vasuki's tail slammed on the floor of the Ziggurat she was fighting on, damaging it and causing a good chunk of it to collapse down onto the mongooses below. Mana couldn't let them get crushed.</p><p>The magician charged forward, trying to race the falling rock. It should have been simple, it should have been just her racing with the natural velocity of falling debris, it should have been child's play. A rough kick to her chin made Mana's body arc back and fly a good distance back, going as far as to tumble over the edge of the Ziggurat floor she was on.</p><p>"You can pull yourself back up, I'm not falling for that one." The man taunted her when Mana tried lurking on the edge, keeping her palms and feet stuck to the side of the structure and trying to lure her opponent into letting down his guard. After her intentions were exposed, Mana vaulted back to face the still mindless Vasuki and her summoner.</p><p>"You're a Konoha ninja, aren't you?" Mana tried to taunt the man back and make him talk. The more time she was not getting kicked around and slammed with Vasuki's titanic tail, the more time she bought for someone to finally come and aid her with this.</p><p>"No." the man replied.</p><p>Vasuki hissed like a wild, untamed beast and just slammed its head at Mana as if attempting to tackle her. Mongooses were still rushing at the serpent with much smaller and more spread out numbers. Mana sensed something in the mindless animal, she kicked off the ground and charged at the serpent with a kick of her own.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" she yelled out as her foot met Vasuki's tackle and the two impending forces crashed.</p><p>Mana was not that physically powerful, Vasuki was absolutely massive and barely needed chakra augmentations to push around anyone smaller than it. That being said, Vasuki may have only had the bare minimum of its chakra reserves left. Its chakra signature was barely enough to register its existence. Shedding another body as well as reverse-summoning this man must have absolutely exhausted her.</p><p>The two clashing forces came at an impasse. Mana could feel the flesh and bone under Vasuki's scales giving way and crunching. She couldn't tell much about the state of the serpent but it definitely should have felt that impact. She was winning the force struggle.</p><p>"Shit!" she cursed while the magician had to repurpose her nearly victorious push into a backflip that moved her farther away from the mindless serpent and its summoner. The cloaked summoner attempted to drive his knee into Mana's back while it was open and extended in mid-air kicking position. Had she not given up on trying to damage Vasuki with her kick, she'd have had her own back broken.</p><p>Having landed on solid ground, Mana could feel her opponent's frustration by looking straight at his wandering eyes that turned back at its partner who failed to sync up with him. The man must have expected a combination attack that they have coordinated with Vasuki but he did not get it due to the mindless state of the serpent. Soon, mongooses overwhelmed the serpent once more.</p><p>"Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!" the man exclaimed, making snakes appear from under his cloak in a group charge. The snakes, while small, rushed at an impressive speed and distance at Mana extending well over fifty meters in their rush for her. Luckily, at that distance, and with the attack being so impromptu put together, Mana managed to avoid the snakes by just dancing around them as her opponent has danced around her own attacks.</p><p>"You are a Konoha ninja," Mana concluded out loud, watching as the mongooses cover Vasuki up and begin clawing at it or slashing it with weapons, drawing a great amount of blood from it. "I have to say, for someone of your rank, someone who is able to fight me off while they're afraid to use their true fighting style, you're not too bright."</p><p>"So you've noticed…" the man cleared his throat before removing the hood and revealing a rich, shoulder-length hairdo of dark hair. The Konoha headband was not hanging on his forehead but it was tied somewhere inside that cloak.</p><p>"You're pretty strong for someone using just snake techniques. Someone of this strength should be able to beat me if they went all-out." Mana had to admit.</p><p>"Hmph, it was not my idea to just rush in here like this. It was all Vasuki, the useless reptile just lost all control and started burrowing here once we got closer…" the man grunted. He did not have to reveal this to Mana, he was defending his pride even though that was entirely unnecessary. He was prideful, maybe she could have used that?</p><p>"I thought killing kids and rabbits was sort of beneath someone like you." Mana taunted the man.</p><p>"Hmph. All too true. That being said, the damned snake promised me to teach something interesting if I helped it get its revenge. I'll kill anyone I have to, even the Konoha's Sorceress herself to get that secret." The man raised his fist up.</p><p>"Secret?" Mana wondered to herself.</p><p>"Listen up, you stupid snake! If you can't think straight, I'm taking control!" the enemy turned his back to Mana but the magician knew better than to charge at the man now. If someone of his experience showed their back, that meant they were expected to be attacked. Just like predicted, the man turned his head back with a taunting smirk before taking off and landing on Vasuki's head. The man then began fighting off the mongooses that attacked Vasuki as mindlessly as it chose to invade their home.</p><p>The magician took this moment to sense the chakra of the mongooses she failed to protect from the falling debris before by dropping her guard. She couldn't pick anything up. Nothing at all… She failed them. This emptiness where once life simmered should have inspired dread and great sadness in Mana's heart but the magician was now old enough to learn to use those feelings and convert them into anger.</p><p>"I'll provide the chakra, you half-dead, good for nothing sock. Just give me a body to mesh with and the sheer size, will you." The mysterious summoner weaved a handful of hand seals before slamming his hands together and building up an alarming amount of chakra. Something big was coming!</p><p>"Combination Transformation!" the man declared as clouds of white filled the entire cavern, leaving it through the open hole where Vasuki blasted through.</p><p>"His chakra doesn't appear to have increased but…" Mana thought to herself while doing her best to track the enemy inside the white smoke. A loud, roar made the air pressure push intensify and drove a large gulp of smoke down to Mana's nostrils and her throat. Whatever the enemy transformed into, it was big and a perfect combination of Vasuki superhuman size and mass and the summoner's relatively intact mental state and above average chakra.</p><p>Coiling tentacles slammed into multiple floors of the Ziggurat before wrapping all around the structure and pulling on it. Mana felt a tight pressure. She had to force all of her chakra to augment her body to keep her innards from getting pressed out of her like toothpaste from a tube. She could barely see anything inside this damned smoke. As more and more smoke cleared, the frightening visage of what Vasuki and her summoner became clear.</p><p>It was a round colossus, fat enough to press its frame in between the Ziggurat and the very bottom of the cavern it rested in. Whatever ground stood in its way, it demolished with sheer size and expanding mass. It had no legs, there was no use for something like this when its sole intention was to stand its ground and kill everything in sight. Where there should have been legs were a couple of dozens of snake-shaped tentacles with no eyes or openings for mouths.</p><p>A whole bunch of those snakes extended up and down and kept yanking on the Ziggurat in an attempt to topple it. One of these tentacles managed to pin Mana down and press hard on her. The magician wondered which would give way first, her body or the floor of the structure beneath it.</p><p>"M-Magician's Touch!" Mana yelled out, transferring surges of Lightning Release chakra through her body and up the faceless snake tendrils all the way up to the titanic monster that combined both human and reptile features.</p><p>The combination titan roared in pain. The snake-like tendrils that threatened to destroy everything the mongooses had and held dear must have felt intensely numb as Mana managed to push the one that pressed against her away with relative ease. Even while numb, it was easily ten times her size and a hundred times her length. Even if the technique she used did not temporarily paralyze the opponent, it would have had little option to move freely in this compact space. Compact only for someone of its size.</p><p>After the monstrous transformation pulled down its numbed and horrific tentacles off of the home of the mongooses, a much more unified and controlled multitude of mongoose forces flooded out from the Ziggurat, charging right at the colossal and lumbering giant. More and more of the white transformation cloud cleaned out revealing a frightening detail.</p><p>The unattractive looking face that Mana took for the creature's head was only a growth at the center of its chest while its true head was missing, replaced only by hundreds of much smaller but just as long snake heads with spiked bone protrusions where their eye ridges should have been and covered with bright colored spiky patterns of bone.</p><p>The magician wanted to help the mongooses, they clearly did not anticipate this influx of new stunned targets just waving about to shake off the feeling of numbness from Mana's technique. One of the bright orange heads swiped wildly in a horizontal direction, spraying flames from its mouth. The dizziness and disorientation that persisted in the beast made its aim wobbly so none of the opposing animals got incinerated by this attack.</p><p>If only the mongooses stopped doing what they wanted to do the most – just charge at the snake monster blindly and stopped for a moment so that Mana could work out a plan of attack, things could have been better. Then again, perhaps she did not need a plan?</p><p>Combination Transformation was a pretty pricey technique to use. It usually required pretty nifty contributions from both sides which, in this case, was not what happened. The human summoner was the one that supplied the crazed Vasuki with chakra. Such a transformation should have had some flaws…</p><p>Usually, the animalistic side should have been the sturdy and invulnerable one, because that was where all the chakra used for the Combination Transformation was. This time, it was the exact opposite. Vasuki was the weaker contributor that barely contributed a thing because it barely had anything to contribute. That could have only meant one thing… The snake bits were the weakest links.</p><p>Mana took a leap of faith down. Lightning Release chakra crackled all over her body while she flashed her hands in a blur weaving some hand seals and pulling out her trusty Audra wand which she pointed at one of the numbed lower body tentacles.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment Jutsu!" she yelled out while a bolt of lightning shot out from the tip of her electrified Audra wand, channeling all the way from her body and through it. The jolt did not attempt to send the shock and spread it alongside the entire limb, let alone the entire titan of a monster Mana and the mongooses were facing, it merely covered a small area and imploded with all of its intensity and density.</p><p>The lightning blast dispersed leaving little to no signs of damage. Mana's surprise was so strong that she just barely managed to wave her Audra wand in time and form the gusts of wind. The gusts that prevented her from hitting the bottom of the cavern where the snake tentacles slithered creating a deadly den of faceless serpent-limbs.</p><p>"Mystical Wings Jutsu!" Mana chanted out as she controlled the channel of wind gusts to raise her up and swoop into the level where the mongooses were engaging the monster. She felt a moderate amount of burn in her legs and arms and a small shortness of breath made her slow down for a moment while she observed the combination titan recover its better control and the ability of full movement.</p><p>Mana pointed her wand at the neck of one of the plentiful heads that were occupied in an attempt to devour the mongooses. This may have been a much more sensitive target – the bottom snakes were a combination of the serpent and its summoner, the face that laid grown into the flesh in the beast's chest was the most human part while these snake heads just blindly chased for the mongooses – it must have been the most Vasuki part of the titan.</p><p>The jutsu that Mana used was not one that required words or much hand seals anymore, just like most of her early childhood techniques, not after training in the Rabbit Caves. Before Mana lost the need to call out its name, it used to be called the "Finger of Death Jutsu". A rather weak and useless technique, less of a jutsu and more an experiment on how Wind Release techniques worked.</p><p>Wind Release was at its most potent when it was used for its cutting ability so the first jutsu Mana ever invented by dabbling in it was a simple, elongated stream of wind that worked more like a scalpel than anything else. It left small and shallow cuts into whatever it hit but it was not all that fast or strong. If the monster got injured by this, it would get injured by anything. This jutsu would show Mana if the heads were the weak spot.</p><p>A spray of blood drooped from the sides of where the cutting stream of wind sliced into the flesh of the thick serpent head. Within an instant, the injured head turned at Mana's direction and opened its mouth.</p><p>"Shit, it hurt, didn't it?" Mana bit her own lip as a pleasant tingle of respectful fear for the size and power of her opponent ran down her nervous body. The magician flicked her wrist and sent a steel-tipped card to the side and made it lodge into the Ziggurat while the steel wire attached to the card helped the magician to spontaneously move her in mid-air.</p><p>Initially, the magician had no idea what the nature of her enemy's attack would be. She had a nasty feeling it would be faster than any of her gusts could carry her away from. Her hunch was proven right when the injured head breathed out a stream of hot, glowing salad green air. The magician had no idea what that was, but it seemed too fast for her limited Wind Release technique to race with.</p><p>Mana felt the bones in the heel tingle with pain once her feet hit the wall. Her augmentations faltered there for a moment. It was not something too troubling just yet but she'd be wise to stop wasting chakra on countless weak sauce techniques and finally pull something that worked out of that fancy hat of hers.</p><p>As the serpent head continued to breathe its bizarre air attack in a chasing attempt to murder the magician, it was soon beheaded by a mongoose that was swinging by on a similar improvised grappling hook that had a three-point kunai on one end and steel wire attached to it that connected to the device on its arm.</p><p>Mana may not have been someone whom the mongooses would have listened about the titan's weakness but they would listen to one of their own. By unintentionally showing one of them how to fight this thing, she may have inspired a more effective offense by the mongooses. The magician's eyes faltered just for a moment, having picked up on Usuzoku's slightly replenished and more lively chakra signature, followed by those of Mongohi and Kouta rushing to the upper levels.</p><p>"They've got the anti-venom specialist's request for anti-venom. They must be rushing back to the small complex cave where they filled all the forms to see Mongolepius about the anti-venom." Mana thought to herself. Only the sound of crumbling stone and grungy dirt, snuffed out in the harmony of hissing from the snake heads at the top of the titan's body drew her attention back to the monster at hand or, rather, the colossal buttocks flashing right in front of her face as the titan was climbing out of the cave.</p>
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<a name="section0455"><h2>455. Kick It 'Till You Make It</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Now that was just rude…" Mana pushed the falling strands of hair off her face before taking a mighty leap and sticking to the wall where the enormous snake-human hybrid once stood. Now the giant just lumbered up and over, it had clearly not predicted ever needing to withdraw as its lower body, comprised solely of faceless reptilian tentacles was ill-suited for climbing.</p><p>"Hurry after it, human. If it aims its heads from up there, we'll be fish in a barrel!" One of the mongooses growled.</p><p>The magician focused a precise and controlled amount of chakra to the bottom of her feet. While her feet were attracted to the surface of the cavern as if drawn by magnets, the magician dashed upward in an attempt to chase the monster. If the titan had not slain so many mongooses that day, maybe she'd have given it the chance to withdraw. Although the mongoose must have been right, it was not withdrawal that the titan was seeking but a superior position to kill.</p><p>Following the rushing onslaught of mongooses running up the wall in a berserk chase of the giant that could have easily threatened their entire population, Mana heard loud thundering from up above. While the mongooses were too self-indulging in their rivalry with the human-serpentine titan, Mana got absolutely baffled by the insane reaction to the giant's uncontrolled strength.</p><p>Thunderstorms raged all around the plains, causing large fires all around. The walls of flames tall enough to reach the sky, the turbulent and suffocating smoke that rose from the flames covered the sky in a dark gloom while the leaking from the giant chakra dyed the layers of gaseous clouds violet.</p><p>"Because the giant is not balanced, its chakra is leaking out. It can't control it. It seems that Earth itself is crying in pain of supporting such an abominable monstrosity." Mana figured to herself as she looked around and truly listened to the Earth's cries. Yes, that was how the thundering and crumbling ground truly sounded like. Moans of pain. The gurgling, fiery magma from below that burst from underground whenever the giant attempted to stomp out dozens of mongooses at once and missed sounded like spilled blood.</p><p>"This battle cannot drag out. If it truly cannot control its fearsome might, it will destroy more than the human mind can stretch if such fearsome chakra leaks." Mana looked around, desperately trying to find the blazing orb of the Sun in the sky but failing for the Earth's gloom was too thick. They were lucky not to have the battle take place near an ocean, being as far from the far-reaching watery embraces as one could be at each side.</p><p>If the giant had approached the edge of a continent, he would have broken it. If it stepped into the waters, it would have drowned the world in them.</p><p>Regardless of how fearsome the situation was, there was only one thing left to do. There was no use coordinating the mongooses. Those that had any semblances of their mind left to lose would have known to cut for the upper heads, those that had lost it in the heart of battle would be too far gone to reach and only the defeat of their enemy could have brought them clarity.</p><p>While the natural, seemingly cosmic thunderstorms raged around Mana across the entire land that the battle was raging in, the magician had some lightning of her own left in her system. The girl's chakra turned to lightning, arced and sparked around her before the Audra wand in her hands lit up. It was time to thunder how she had never thundered before.</p><p>Mana moved on, she did not waste chakra on a flight, even though it may have helped her aim a little. It would have made her too slow, her maneuverability would have been limited. The magician ran forward, carefully feeling her massive opponent. It was an odd feeling, reaching out for its chakra.</p><p>As the young kunoichi evaded the giant's stomps and massive fists and dispersed into rose petals before compressed streams of water and flames tried to leave not a single trace of her, Mana realized something profoundly curious about the way she's been sensing this giant's chakra.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, pointing her wand at an elongated and exposed neck, seeing mongooses buzzing past and over her with their own attempts at beheading the top half of the titan. What normally would have been just a shock now pierced through the weakened flesh of the titan sending more and more heads crumbling down and foaming into black, tar-like goop.</p><p>Mana dashed back with all of the fortitude and speed her powerful thighs could muster up, evading another crushing blow that summoned jets of hot water as well as magma from down under. Mongooses buzzed and cut with their weaponry all over the giant's arm but left absolutely no scratches on them.</p><p>Yes, her initial hunch was right, she sensed more than just the giant's chakra. She could almost see it, it was not a growth of her sensory abilities but a deeper look into what they were. She could see the flow of the energy surging inside and leaking out of the gigantic transformation, it helped her a great deal anticipating the upcoming attacks and not getting trapped under them.</p><p>It was because of the beast's size that Mana could sense this clearly. Under no other circumstances would she have been able to do so otherwise. Maybe, if her abilities continued to improve in the future, she'd be able to see this flow in everyone, not just someone tall enough to brush the stars.</p><p>The heads opened up again, spitting showers of poison that could have drowned entire mountains while another serpent fired a bolt of lightning of its own that traversed through the dark purple torrent of liquid death. The faceless serpents on the lower half of the giant raced across the ground as well. For a being weakened by its imperfections, someone who was halfway incomplete of its chakra network, the gargantuan projection of sick, human imagination was incredibly dangerous and mighty.</p><p>This was the time, Mana leaped off the ground letting the currents of wind carry her while she prepared another Lightning Release jutsu right after lifting off to launch at the open mouths of the draconic-heads. She could have done it, dispatched of those quite potent heads, judging from the power of the jutsu they used, it must have housed a significantly sensitive chakra pressure point inside them… Yet…</p><p>"Magical Twist Jutsu!" Mana yelled out. This was one of her earliest jutsu, after the training in the Rabbit Caves where she aimed to perfect her weakest jutsu she invented as a complete child, she may have been able to cast them without uttering a word or using a hand seal but… Not at this scale.</p><p>An awesome propulsion of Wind Release chakra blasted from below Mana's feet, creating a cylindrical shield from the overflowing torrents of venom and lightning to protect the mongooses below. It had to hold, it must have held! When the stakes were this high, Mana could not have failed, no matter how much of her faltering chakra resources she had to expend to protect the mongooses below.</p><p>For a brief moment, the mongooses seemed to snap out of their berserk states and glare at a human floating above their heads because of the cylinder of air she had used to protect them from an ocean of deadly poison with a current reaching trillions of bolts in might surging through it.</p><p>Two coiling dragon heads attempted to crush Mana in between them. They must have noticed what she was trying to do and, for that reason, they did not open their abyssal jaws, instead choosing to use their massive size and scales to crush the magician in between one another. What the combination transformation failed to take into consideration was that Mana was running short of chakra and that she'd no longer be floating by the time the two heads buzzed past her in an attempt to crush her like an insect. The magician was plummeting.</p><p>Mana screamed out in pain, the weakness she felt emanating from inside her body made her mind get hazy. Almost like a creeping sickness of sleepiness after a long and tedious day. Then a massive, all overpowering pain in her lower body. Mana opened her eyes only to see her legs caught in between the heads that tried to crush her.</p><p>Something was wrong. Her legs did not respond to her commands. She could have used Magical Twist Jutsu again to propel herself into the air and prevent slamming into the ground at freefall. Maybe try and summon another gust for her Mystical Wings Jutsu and stay afloat at the cost of even more chakra but… What was the point? She had lost so much stamina and the magician began feeling like she may not have had much more left to offer.</p><p>A tight grip yanked Mana from mid-fall. Wind surged past Mana's cheeks bringing her back from the miserable delusion of a world of nothing but the pain in her lower body into reality. The magician wanted to speak in acknowledgment of one of the mongoose generals from before using its odd gliding ability to swoop in and save her from the dangerous sky fall. Only a pitiful moan escaped her throat as the pain in her legs was too overpowering.</p><p>The other mongooses moved in using their synchronized and well-planned moves to attack. Using their sickles and short blades, the mammals moved in for the heads once the foaming and sizzling oceans of poison got absorbed into the fissures that the giant himself formed with its mighty strength and mass or simply evaporated from the intense air pressure and heat of the battlefield.</p><p>The titan leaped up with a spinning motion, extending the faceless snake heads on its sides out wide while it slammed entire battalions of mongooses away with its mighty spin. Like falling meteors, one by one, the poor animals crashed into the ground. The magician felt dozens of signatures fade out again. Some of them died on impact, some of them survived it. Some of the mongooses died from getting bashed into the gazers of magma while others were merely severely inconvenienced by it, having enough chakra to augment themselves through such a dive.</p><p>"Keep gliding." Mana grit her teeth while her shaking hands pressed her Audra wand tighter. Her legs felt like thousands of shards of hot glass were trapped inside her flesh and were being shifted around, cutting and shredding her from deep within, slicing through muscle and further fracturing bones.</p><p>"Aye, aye." The mongoose general nodded its dark grey-furred head while it tried to position itself in a superior position for Mana to bomb the heads from above with her Lightning Release jutsu.</p><p>The pain, the weariness… It was so distracting, so demanding of Mana's attention but, truth be told, they were not the important thing. Yes, everything hurt, yes, she wanted so desperately to rest that death sounded like the most alluring outcome right now but she had to keep going. Things would have to get more painful, more hellish before things could get better.</p><p>A mere thought of what was at stake: the Ninja Mongooses, the Ninja Rabbits… Kouta…</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Bullet Barrage!" Mana yelled out as a bombarding flurry of balls of Lightning Release chakra constructs whizzed out from the tip of her Audra wand aimed right at the necks of the fearsome abomination below. There was no air to breathe up above but the pain was too shocking to Mana's system for her to stop quivering and whimpering to draw breath properly anyway.</p><p>All of the heads simultaneously moved aside, exposing a wide growth at the top of the titan's body where Mana's attacks harmlessly detonated, causing absolutely no harm to the monster. Not even something as mighty as B-Rank ninjutsu managed to scratch the titan otherwise. Things were beginning to look bleaker and bleaker.</p><p>"You need something stronger. You need to aim better too." The mongoose scolded Mana. It was nervous, being so far away from the active battlefield, of course, it'd regain some sense it previously had.</p><p>No air… Mana couldn't breathe, not only because there was little air up above the clouds where the two had to rise up to properly hit the beast from above but because the exhaustion that was beginning to take over. The magician felt pressure around her eyes, the drowsiness that was threatening to take the girl away at any moment now.</p><p>The grey mongoose could hold Mana in its arms and glide upward no longer, it had to take a good swoop down to catch another current before changing direction and swooping upward again. That was when they'd be in danger. The combination beast shifted its attention from the countless injured or knocked down mongooses at Mana. Even if her previous attack had failed to leave any damage, somewhere deep in its consciousness the monster had taken her for a threat. That had to be a good sign…</p><p>The monstrous serpentine humanoid roared out loud, the throats of its upper, draconic heads swelled up and bloated out. Once it opened their mouths once more, exposing them to some pretty nasty counterattack, it sent a downpour of scorched, flaming rocks from its hundreds of mouths.</p><p>Avoiding them was a valiant attempt. A blood-curdling grunt made Mana's blood freeze while she felt the familiar feeling of wind fondling her hair wildly and air screeching as it rushed past her ears. One of the rocks managed to hit the mongoose and send it crashing down together with Mana.</p><p>Blackness. Stars blowing up all around while loud, unfamiliar voices spoke of things Mana couldn't quite make out. Some of them were screaming, some of them were joyful, some of them were of children laughing. Mana's eyes managed to open up, they felt so heavy. She failed. The mongooses that were still alive could not have been in a much better state than she was.</p><p>Maybe she had it in her for one more Flower Petal Sanctuary before her resources run dry but what was there to gain from it? Her legs were crushed, her ribs were burning up even as the air was now much more plentiful around her. Even if she could evade the incoming crushing stomp, she'd only be pushing her impending death only a few seconds away.</p><p>As her body would reform, the pain in her legs would burn up, unable to support the weight of her body, Mana would collapse and would be left waiting patiently for when the titan notices the changed position of her incapacitated body and finishes her off. Damn… She was so close too… There was barely any chakra left in the star-reaching serpent beast as well. It was burning chakra just by maintaining its mighty transformation, it was burning through chakra with each jutsu it used from each one of its heads… If only Mana had been strong enough to buy one more second…</p><p>That's right!</p><p>The titan's foot landed in a triumphant stomp on where the magician once stood. It only managed to pick up a cloud of whirling and dancing petals as they burnt up in the intense heat of the cataclysmic battlefield while the magician's shape reformed a good hundred meters away from where she almost died.</p><p>Blood burst from the wounds on her crushed legs and Mana's screams were just loud enough to alert the world-breaker that threatened two entire populations of Ninja Animals in its incomplete and imperfectly executed and rushed form. The beast roared in frustration before leaping up and aiming its massive feet at the nearest fifty meters area around the magician.</p><p>This was it… For real this time. Mana couldn't even keep her eyes open. She only had enough chakra to stay mostly conscious and experience her final, agonizing moments. She bought herself all the time she could, she struggled…</p><p>A mighty poof sound overwhelmed even the crackling thunderstorms all around. Instead of the airborne titan of shapes combining both snake and man, a man in a Konohagakure flak jacket and dark, spiky, shoulder-length hair was falling at Mana with both of his feet aimed at her chest for a foot-stomp. Up above its head, Vasuki was falling in an unconscious state. Whatever remained of the snake's chakra after its initial battle with the rabbits was now gone and it had passed out.</p><p>Knives skewered the Konoha jounin in mid-air, forcing the ninja to puke out blood and his eyes to shoot out wide in shock. The knives were glowing with the faint blue of the base, lacking of elemental affinity chakra cloaking color. The force of impact coming from the knives forced the skewered ninja to change the course of its fall and change into a powerless plummeting position.</p><p>"Grass Hot Wind!" a feminine voice echoed throughout the battlefield during a brief moment of silence between two thunderbolts as a cat-like rabbit form blitzed up in front of the freefalling Konoha jounin completely covered in an inferno of flames. With a soaring and burning spinning kick, Usuchabi sent the Jounin crashing down to the ground below.</p><p>The feline rabbit glanced up at the freefalling, gigantic, unconscious serpent above its head. Hundreds of rabbits blitzed in from the cavern nearby the battlefield where the colossal battle started and claimed its first, unfortunate victims. They may not have all been mighty warriors, as strong as Usuzoku or Usukari, but they all possessed the fighting instinct and the training to help out just a little bit.</p><p>"Dynamic Entry!" hundreds of rabbits screamed out from the depths of their lungs as their combined effort managed to send Vasuki flying the complete opposite direction from where Usuchabi was looking to land and where Mana was laying sprawled out and on the verge of passing out.</p><p>"They finally let you guys fight…" Mana smiled as she breathed out her final breaths before her eyes closed, not permanently but just for a brief moment of well-deserved rest. Finally, the snakes were defeated. Not by Mana, not by the rabbits or the mongooses but the two warring and feuding species fighting side by side.</p><p>Mana did not know a finer sight than that to pass out after seeing.</p>
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<a name="section0456"><h2>456. In Between The Forgotten Chapters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Something didn't feel right. It was not that the cloud-like softness under her head felt painful or bad in any way. It was just that Mana was simply so used to sleeping on actual hardened minerals and rocks or getting roughed around by the battles she ended up in that feeling soft, warm and cozy made her snap out from whatever clouded her mind and open her eyes.</p><p>The magician laid inside a warm room with the early spring Sun beaming down through the windows and feeding the nice orchids on the nearby window. Something about this made no sense. Mana looked around and once the people sharing the room noticed the magician's eyes they smiled in return with warmth in their eyes, unlike anything Mana could remember for a while. Recently her life's been about reptilians, venom and saving herself and others from not getting eaten or killed just for someone's fun.</p><p>"You've woken up. That's great." The middle-aged lady near Mana's bed smiled at the magician. "Usually medical ninja don't feed people pills like that, I was worried that you may have been in a dire condition. I mean, if you're like that and I'm in the same room as you, how bad were my kidney stones actually, huh?"</p><p>The woman chuckled to herself, she just tried to lighten up the mood but the confusion Mana felt made her feel a little past the laughing point. She didn't feel bad about just looking around with those weird eyes instead of smiling for the kind woman who spoke up to her but… It was just the genuine way she felt. The need to find out where she was and how things ended was just too great.</p><p>"Medical ninja? You mean I am in a hospital? This does not look like Konoha…" Mana mumbled before trying to stand up. Almost instantaneously a gruesome collection of sights flashed through her mind. Her own legs crushed and broken, the bone ground and splintered inside and blood that fed her own well-trained muscles with oxygen spraying all over the hardened magma before instantly evaporating from the heat.</p><p>She had no more legs, did she? This was one of those nasty awakenings when she realized that while she was alive, life would no longer be what it used to be… Just like back then, when she lost her chakra control and she thought she had no more chance of being a ninja. Mana feared of looking under her covers and seeing her legs completely busted up and mangled or completely gone but she felt the soft and warm touch of bandages against them – at the very least they were still there.</p><p>Slowly and with a very hesitant glance, Mana peeked under the covers and noticed that while her legs were bandaged, they were not something she'd see in one of those horror pictures on the television or in a play. The girl sighed with relief. She was not sure just how well her legs still worked, just how much functionality she retained but at the very least they were still there and somewhat intact.</p><p>"Konoha?" the woman to Mana's left grinned, "Oh, no! This is Kusagakure. I'm not sure why they'd bring you here if Konoha is all you know. Seems to me like it would be counterproductive, Konoha is a pretty big place with a whole bunch of fancy medical ninja. Guru Ayushi is from Konoha, isn't he?"</p><p>"I… Yeah…" Mana rubbed her eyes with her knuckles before dragging her hand over her face. She wondered if she should stand up and look through the window to outside. She tried making the subtle motions of standing up and her legs, while a little bit aching, barely acted up. She could, at the very least, move them.</p><p>"Oh, maybe you shouldn't do that just yet. I'll call the medical ninja for you." The woman to Mana's left smiled before blowing into a wooden pipe of sorts that carried the airborne tune to an, as of yet, an undetermined location outside the ward. Shortly after a male medical ninja entered the ward at a moderate pace.</p><p>"Did someone need help?" he asked. Mana tried memorizing the man's unremarkable features like his well-stricken, light brown hair, his stubble or his glasses but the eyes of Kouta, shyly staring through the narrow gap between the almost shut door behind the man was all she could focus on. Once their eyes met, the Konoha ninja rushed into the ward and ran up to Mana, embracing the magician in a hug.</p><p>"Oh…" the medical ninja smiled subtly looking at the scene of affection. "The rabbits are still not allowed inside, by the way." The man reminded Kouta before he left the ward for a short while to give the two time to catch up.</p><p>"Kusagakure?" Mana asked her boyfriend.</p><p>"Yeah. The ninja rushed in not too long after we took that thing down." The boy scratched his neck shyly. "It was pretty impossible to miss the whole damned world going to hell like that, I guess. They said that oceans were heating up and just the presence of that thing was causing massive crashing waves and typhoons on the other side of the planet. If Kusagakure did not deal with this situation, they'd have been seen as weak by the other countries."</p><p>"How many died?" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Maybe that's not…" Kouta tried comforting the magician by keeping his arm gently positioned on her shoulder but Mana shook her head.</p><p>"I need to know. I did everything I could but… How many?" she asked.</p><p>"I think Mongohi mentioned around fifty-four mongooses having died. Around a hundred got pretty banged up too. I wanted to help but I was too tired…" Kouta tried breaking it to the magician as well as he could but it was not like news like this could have been told too well.</p><p>Mana bent her legs and pressed her forehead against her own knees. Her eyes blanked out for a moment just to process the number of mongooses that she couldn't save in that maddening turn of events. When her focus returned to her eyes, Mana felt them feeling a bit damp with the cover that warmed up her bandaged legs feeling warmly wet from her own tears.</p><p>"Fifty-four… That's one-sixth of the whole population, probably." Mana repeated struggling to believe what she was hearing. Then again, what was she expecting? She failed to save about half that many berserk mongooses in the starting moments of the fight.</p><p>"Yeah, pretty much…" Kouta shrugged. "But Kusagakure was pretty worried about the event too. They said they'd make the mongooses a preserved species under the protection of the village. You helped a great deal, please don't work up too much over this. Sometimes we can't save everyone. I would know…"</p><p>"Yeah. But that can't happen to me. I must save everyone, I have to. I have to be better…" Mana whimpered out. "How are the rabbits?"</p><p>"They were protected by the squad of mongooses for the most of the fight. I guess the mongooses were worried that the rabbits would start killing them from behind when they hit the field and saw the opportunity. In the end, Usukari managed to convince the squad to fight that thing together." Kouta replied.</p><p>"And Usuzoku?" Mana looked up at the medical ninja with wet eyes.</p><p>"You can meet him after they let you out of here. Getting him the anti-venom was all I thought about. I wanted to run after you, to curse-out and punch that thing a whole lot with all I had but… I figured you'd want me to see Usuzoku's recovery to the end." Kouta looked away, he was scratching the back of his elbow. He did not look entirely content with how he played that battle. He clearly wanted to fight on the front lines, watching over Mana and helping her take the beast down instead of just coming up right after and picking up the pieces.</p><p>Mana reached out to wrap her arms around her boyfriend. Kouta looked at her for a couple of seconds with eyes that looked pretty rejecting and a little scorned, making Mana worry that maybe the two of them were splitting apart again. As world-ending as that possibility seemed, it itself was shattered when the young man took a pair of steps forward and hugged Mana back as well as let the girl wrap her arms around him.</p><p>"It felt terrible. Just standing by the side and finding you like that. Your legs were… If you did not have a whole bunch of chakra, if you did not augment them so much when they were crushed, you may have damaged them permanently." Kouta sighed. He actually sounded terrified by the possibility of Mana getting hurt like that.</p><p>"You mean?" the magician looked up at him with hopeful eyes.</p><p>"Yeah, they'll recover. May hurt and feel numb for a while, they forced a blue food pill into you to give your chakra a quick, short boost just to jumpstart your metabolism. After a couple of hours, your legs started regenerating slowly and with a little guidance from medical ninjutsu – they'll be in prime shape in a pair of days, maybe a week." The medical ninja recounted what looked to be a petrifying experience to him.</p><p>Mana sighed a bit easier. The woman beside her bed smiled kindly to her once the magician's eyes wandered onto her neighbor's face before she congratulated Mana on her quick recovery.</p><p>"Amazing things those ninja bodies. I wish I was trained in ninjutsu, recovery after a surgery is such a bother normally. Why can't they just shine some of that green light on me too, I'll never understand…" Mana's neighbor joked.</p><p>"If you're a civilian, using too much medical ninjutsu is dangerous. There is a limit to how many times the human cells can multiply and regenerate. If that limit is passed, the risk of cancerous regenerative tissues increases. The ninja metabolism has a much greater resistance to those dangers but even it is not entirely immune to it." Kouta looked at Mana with a stern look. The magician was not used to her normally subdued and relatively shy boyfriend looking at her so sternly.</p><p>He was trying to tell her something with this, no doubt. She was tempting fate getting beaten up to the verge of getting hospitalized again and again. How many times has she gotten the shit beaten out of her in the past couple of months? She's taken her body to the limit and then tackled it through that limit in the Rabbit Caves, she got pummeled by Stea in the Chuunin Exams, then the Diamond Hand, now this…</p><p>Maybe Kouta had a point? If there was a limited amount of times the human body could just renew itself like this, how many years has Mana shaved off of her life by just surviving this one fight? The magician's eyes turned determined and just as stern as they looked right back at Kouta.</p><p>No, she was in the right here. Sure, she should have been stronger, faster, she should have trained her chakra resources to even greater heights so she could fight longer and better. That was her fault, not the act of fighting itself. There was nothing wrong with fighting for what one believes in, for standing up and refusing to give way when the stakes could not have been greater. Mana lost too much blood, too many things all too dear to her just to learn that lesson just so she could backtrack on it now.</p><p>Five whole days passed before Mana was let out from the Kusagakure hospital, the entire remaining species of Ninja Rabbits cheered on her loud enough to overpower the thunderstorms that ravaged the country and, from what people spoke of, the entire world not too long ago. Mana was not too used to such a welcome, her chest started beating and shifting inside all warm-like and the magician felt herself getting all emotional.</p><p>The rabbits used to take her as one of their own, perhaps on the rank of one of the younglings that played in the caves and did foolish things. They had no trouble letting her train and play around with them but she was never viewed with this much respect and adoration by not only the rabbits but anyone ever. Not even Konoha cheered on her like this, not after the Chuunin Exams or one of her shows.</p><p>These feelings were filled to the brim with respect, with honest feelings of gratitude for what was done and even the Kusagakure ninja that accompanied the rabbits and were relatively neutral about the entire affair applauded in moderation and looked amused by the welcome of the furry mammals meant for their precious summoner.</p><p>Usuzoku stepped out of the crowd and turned his snout to the other direction. His eyes were severe, his grimace was grumpy but he looked well. Mana would not have had him any other way. The rabbit warrior approached the magician as if meaning to say something but then he just crossed his arms over his chest and turned his back to Mana.</p><p>"Yer legs are busted. Yer a shitty rabbit cause ye can't run no more. Get lost, we dun need you no more." The rabbit grumped out. Deadly silence reigned over the rabbits who all looked crushed and absolutely dumb-founded by what the rabbit just said. A thunderous pound picked up winds that tore leaves off of the natural scenery that intermixed nature and man-built wonders in Kusagakure. Usuchabi's eyes were flaring up.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and looked down. Her body quivered before a loud laughter erupted from her chest. Usuzoku looked back at the magician with a dumb smirk before walking up to her and giving her a one-handed hug in an almost paternal way. He showed gratitude for risking everything just for his own life the only way he knew how. That was so male of him to do…</p><p>If he ever tried to wrap his head around the thing that Mana and the other rabbits were willing to sacrifice for him, he would probably erupt into tears himself and, as a strong rabbit warrior, he could not allow this to happen.</p><p>"That was horrible, Usuzoku-san…" Kouta tried to relay the idea to Usuzoku that joking like that was pretty mean.</p><p>"Tsk, whatever, what da hell do ye understand of da humor of da mighty rabbit warriors, pipsqueak?" Usuzoku grumbled back at him.</p><p>"I'll have you know, my mother always laughs at my jokes!" Kouta crossed his arms over his chest as the two looked at each other with the eyes of a friendly rivalry. It was evident that while the two bickered at times, both of them respected the other a great deal for what they were doing for both people important to each other and one another.</p><p>Usuzoku protected Mana every time she called out to him or any other rabbit. Ever since she obtained the contract, no other rabbit answered her call, despite having every chance to do so. Usuzoku was always there, he may have been grumpy and acted like he hated working with Mana but, truth be told, he'd have not consistently pulled her out of every trouble she got herself into if he did not care.</p><p>Kouta, on the other hand, meant nothing to Usuzoku but the fact that he was pleasing for Mana to look at and be around. After these past couple of days, however, the way that Usuzoku looked at Kouta changed from just being a practical toy to the magician, who was like an orphan girl that the rabbit watched over to him, to an actual friend who risked his own life and was not too stingy to expend every maximum effort he could to save the rabbit's life, if need be.</p><p>"Well, we were ready to extend the same helping hand we did to the mongooses to the Ninja Rabbits too." One of the Kusagakure ninja spoke up, momentarily interrupting the moment that the medical ninja and Mana's trusted rabbit shared with each other.</p><p>"Despite the troubles, the Ninja Rabbits and Ninja Mongooses had in the past…" the other Kusagakure ninja joined in.</p><p>"There will be no need for that. There is no more scorn alongside the mongooses and the rabbits after fighting side by side against a common foe. Mana-san said she'd find us a better home than our old one, we trust her." Usukari spoke up after approaching the handful of ninja leading the rabbits around the natural wonder of a village. To a herbivore, like the rabbits, this harmony of stone, marble, trees, and vegetation must have looked like actual paradise so it meant a great deal that the rabbits were willing to leave and follow Mana to the end of their journey.</p><p>"Usukari-san, maybe the honorific is not necessary?" the magician rubbed the back of her head shyly. Even though she was beginning to hear it more and more commonly after ranking up to chuunin, she was still nowhere close getting used to people referring to her that way.</p><p>"Well, if you need any more time to recover, Mana-san, or if the Ninja Rabbits need anything else, we're willing to pitch in." another one of the Kusagakure ninja offered. These ninja looked so oddly non-militaristic. They wore no body armor or military gear other than their headband protectors and their pouches, their bodies were adorned with only fine silk and fishnet shirts.</p><p>"Indeed, let it be known that Kusagakure is allied to Konoha in more than writing and fancy words." One of the Kusagakure ninja nodded.</p><p>"Yes, I am aware of the admirable diplomatic achievements of your village. I actually greatly respect the neutrality and positivity that your administration fosters in the face of conflict." Mana bowed in acknowledgment. "That being said, it would not be very comfortable for me to ask for anything more from your village after you have already done so much."</p><p>"As you wish." A Kusagakure ninja nodded before he bowed to the magician, followed by the respectful bow of those that accompanied the ninja. "We wish you a safe journey home, in that case. It is not a long trip so, with a little bit of luck, it should be a pleasant and relaxing one."</p><p>Mana gave her still a little bit weakened legs a short glance, she'd likely be forced to travel at a slightly slower pace for at least a day or two more if she was to let her legs heal properly. Maybe Kouta could have accelerated that recovery process but asking him for something as trivial as that was the last thing Mana felt like doing.</p><p>The rabbits, accompanied by the two human ninja that led them forward, took off from Kusagakure on their way home – Konoha, at last.</p>
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<a name="section0457"><h2>457. Sunning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Traveling with the whole pack of rabbits was not the same as traveling alone or together with just Kouta. There were not even hopes that the younglings could keep up with the demanding and breakneck speed of a ninja, which, surprisingly, even the less mighty rabbits were capable of. The lower bodies of the rabbits, even those that have experienced less combat or trained much less, were awesome and even the relatively civilian rabbits, as well as the elders, could have, in theory, kept up the pace.</p><p>Strangely, despite the young ones being usually quite spry, this time they sort of held the whole group back. Not that it was too much of a problem. Something told Mana that the Ninja Rabbits would not see that much of the Ninja Snakes until they meet up with the less civilized and less intelligent versions that resided inside the Forest of Death as well.</p><p>Usujitsa's absence was the only worrying thing. The little assassin had listened to better reason and avoided conflict with the mongooses but he appeared to have disappeared entirely. From what Mana could gather, he was not in Kusagakure nor did he fight the combination transformation. Then again, she assumed too much if she thought that the two of them shared even a moment of understanding. That little cuddle-ball truly was a force of nature of its own will and nobody could have been sure where it would appear next or what its mood would be…</p><p>"So what happened with Vasuki and that ninja?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Not sure," Kouta shrugged. "The mongooses kind of lost interest in the serpent once it laid all dead-like. Obviously, it was not dead and since the mongooses didn't care to eat it, the next day it had managed to give us a slip with only a shed skin layer remaining."</p><p>"The ninja got caught by da Kusagakure shinobi dat rushed in ta see what was going on by deir doorstep." Usuzoku butted in.</p><p>"I wonder if they'll kill him." Mana looked at the rustling grass beneath her feet. Moving as slowly as the group did, compared to her usual speed, the girl had all the time to let her attention wander she could want.</p><p>"I don't think it's quite the Kusagakure way." Kouta shrugged. "I'm not that much of a foreign policy expert but, from what we've seen in the village, I'd have to say they'll strike a deal with Konoha for the guy. Just the type of diplomatic move that'd score them some points…"</p><p>"Yeah, I guess you're right." Mana looked on ahead. The pill of Kusagakure, a foreign village going above and beyond to preserve the life of a criminal while Konoha may be looking to end it was a bitter one to swallow. Leaking chakra so much and showing off such lousy control, he put more than just the world at risk. His twisted essence spread wider than light could reach. At the very least, the man would be imprisoned for the rest of his life…</p><p>"Can you believe he was a Konoha ninja? What would have made him go as far as he did?" Kouta exclaimed in disbelief. While the young man did not really see much of what the combination transformation performed, he had seen enough to realize that it was the very bottom of a bag of options that the ninja they faced off against was forced the scrape at.</p><p>"He said it was for some secret that Vasuki promised him to teach," Mana recalled the words of the man she heard after a brief opportunity to clash with him. "I don't know, he did not look very pleased about any of what he was doing so it must have been insanely alluring. Maybe it was some technique, like the one Vasuki used to cheat death?"</p><p>"It was Sage Mode." Usuzoku closed his eyes. Even while completely locking off the sense of sight for a brief moment the rabbit managed to keep moving at a stable pace and alongside his companions.</p><p>"Sage Mode? I think I've heard or read about it somewhere but…" Mana's face got as wrinkly as a raisin in an attempt to recall something more about the concept than just the name. "Oh well, I guess it's a secret for a reason." She sighed with relenting relief.</p><p>"It's not quite a secret. It's just dat most Ninja Animals refuse ta speak about it, they don' want da humans ta keep askin' an' beggin' them to teach it an' all dat. It's supposed ta be more sacred dan dat." Usuzoku explained adopting a very serious tone. Sage Mode was, evidently, a subject that the rabbits took very seriously.</p><p>"Yeah, but what exactly is it?" Kouta blinked a couple of times, Mana looked at the young man wondering if his curiosity did not step over some boundaries there. Usuzoku clearly was not sharing the knowledge out of the levity at which information just spilled out of him. The rabbit must have thought that the two needed to know about it.</p><p>"It's an ultimate sign a unity between da summoner an' da summoned," Usuzoku replied with the same tone. "It's supposed ta be somethin' really important but humans keep lookin' fer more power, thinkin' they got this whole trust thing down every couple 'a minutes."</p><p>"Yeah, I think I get why you'd want to keep it secret." Mana gently smiled. Just like that, she purposefully chose to shut down the topic, Usuzoku glared at the girl with a raised eyebrow.</p><p>The closer that the party of rabbits, followed by a pair of Konoha ninja approached Konohagakure, the larger and thicker the Land of Fire forests got. It started from a young and frail tree here and there and slowly grew into a pretty mighty forest esthetic. All the mighty Ninja Snake titans from underground would have run away from an area like this as if plague afflicted them.</p><p>The snakes in the Forest of Death already looked awkward in the thickness of the trees, even massively smaller than their underground, more noble and elite counterparts. The emerging massive forest was a sign of safety, of some natural protection and the rabbits appeared very well-suited to move in one. They dashed and danced around the trees and used them as platforms near effortlessly.</p><p>There must have been some kind of natural history of living in a forest environment recorded in their genes, movements like that did not come entirely naturally in such a short period of time. Then again, from what she could recall from when she met Usuzoku for the first time, the rabbit warrior also excelled in the Forest of Death.</p><p>The size of their group and their relative strength granted them even more safety. By now Mana's, Kouta's and everybody else's chakra would have mostly recovered. All of the strongest rabbit warriors were in a pretty adequate condition for a fight and no lowly bandit would have bothered flinging themselves against a well-prepared group like this comprised of multiple B-Rank threats. The economy of life and death simply ruled it pointless.</p><p>A lonely flare of unimaginable revulsion made Mana stop all of a sudden. Kouta, Usuzoku and the rest of the rabbits just curiously looked at the magician as they passed her, letting their confusion about the girl's sudden halt take over and cost them some more moments before they noticed the man of white hair, dark skin, and eyes of flaring red.</p><p>"A Sharingan? No… There aren't any markings on his eyes. They're just… Beaming." Mana felt her body shaking for absolutely no reason. Whatever cosmic horrors the man's initial appearance just casually standing in front of the rabbit crew summoned, they were gone now. His chakra signature, if he even had one of note, had completely faded away.</p><p>Usuzoku looked pretty pissed that this man no one had ever seen or met before was standing in front of their path. Nobody looked like they had any strength left in their bodies to move around him either. This man appeared to have a chakra signature of a civilian but emanated an odd sense of dread that was simply more ancient and primal than some rational sense. Something about him just seemed… Evil.</p><p>"I'm not sure which one of us should feel more honored, I rarely leave the underground and yet I am glad to have found a good reason to." The man smiled looking straight at Mana. His glare… It was so precise, racing, soaring around everyone in between the magician and him and simply freezing Mana in place with nothing but a look.</p><p>The mysterious white-haired man sighed and finally closed his eyes, letting everyone breathe easier for a moment just as he has. "You know, I did count on suppressing my chakra and taunting you being pretty stupid. I thought you'd all just attack me at once and utilize the moment. I guess what those that survived told me was right… You really don't kill, do you?"</p><p>Mana's bemused face was slowly beginning to get drained of hope, her eyes intensely scurried across all the rabbits involved in the situation. None of them appeared to be the focus of this man and yet all of them looked completely tame and subdued by his powerful gaze.</p><p>"You're him, aren't you?" Mana exclaimed. Her voice was trembling more than she'd have liked to let the man on but it could not have been helped. Honestly, when confronted by someone as terrifying and ancient as this man, nobody would have been blamed for being scared and stooping to all sorts of lows just to walk out alive.</p><p>"You're perceptive. I did not let my chakra alert you to it by keeping it mostly back and yet you unmasked me immediately. So amusing…" the man smiled with reservation. His emotions were not overblown, they did not appear malicious or twisted like the other snakes. This one has seen enough life to face it with composure and rationality.</p><p>"Do you know this man, Mana?" Kouta looked back at the magician. The eyes of the young man were still very much sunken in a haze of mystery about the identity of this mysterious figure. The awesome air pressure emanating from even the most suppressed form taken by this man was still alerting the young man that this person was something special.</p><p>"It's Yamata no Orochi. The one that can wrap two of its heads around the world and look himself in the eyes. The progenitor of all Ninja Snakes." Mana's voice turned husky. Shortage of breath made it difficult to pronounce these intimidating words but she had no choice – the rabbits and Kouta needed to know that from now on they played by Yamata's rules.</p><p>"In the flesh. I seldom take the form of a human to traverse the world and leave my entrapment. As you imagine it is terribly stuffy and uncomfortable, spending decades wrapping oneself around any crevice you can find, warming one's feet on the very core of our collective home." Yamata looked up into the sky. The transformed serpent admired the warm rays of the Sun breaking through the leafage and caressing his dark cheeks. The light irritated his crimson irises forcing the serpent to squint a little, not out of pain, but out of discomfort.</p><p>"The sky is a sight I always take time to admire. It is unfortunate that we must meet so far in the Land of Fire…" the serpent spoke to himself, looking genuinely displeased that he did not manage to intercept the rabbit party before they reached Land of Fire.</p><p>"Then let us pass and move on that way. You'll pass into a clearing in no time." Mana suggested, her voice was sounding a bit too irritated and defensive, she honestly wanted to avoid this encounter by all means. Just throw it all away, just run the other direction, run any direction… Just not to be here anymore, not in front of him.</p><p>Yamata chuckled. The smirk stayed like a nasty imp pinching one's lip and refusing to let go. Tails of white wrapped around Yamata creating a cocoon of scales that spun rapidly around its creator with enough force to slice through the trees and blow a good couple of hundred of meters of forest down. The spinning tails were nothing if not diligent. Not a single chip of wood or stray leaf remained of what once was a nice patch of dark and moisty forest ground.</p><p>"I was put into this world to inhabit it. It is my home and I feel like shaping it as I wish." Yamata spoke up once the tails unwrapped and disappeared somewhere in the back of his neck and under his star-bright hair.</p><p>Mana looked around seeing a pair of incapacitated rabbits blown back by the force of impact. It did not appear like the Eight-Headed Dragon cared all that much about who or what got in the way of him admiring some sky. The magician's fingers clenched against her hand so hard it hurt.</p><p>She wanted to hit this man, to hurt him really bad but she could not. He deserved to be moved aside and stopped from hurting anyone else but… Her body would not move. Some voice of Mana's better reason, having nothing to do with her actual reasoning mind, kept screaming in her head to stay where she was and not make this situation worse.</p><p>"He killed someone…" Mana felt the count of chakra signatures drop by a few individuals. Nobody that got hit with the brunt of the spinning motion, by the tails of Yamata survived. Chakra augmentations, ninjutsu training or not, they died instantly without making much of a mess. The evidence of Yamata's efficiency as a killer was clear.</p><p>"You're not the only one living here!" Mana yelled out. Even she was a little surprised by how loud and antagonizing her tone came out. It took a significant amount of force just to bust down the barrier of commanding one's body to move so it was difficult to stop the inertia from that point on. "All of us share this world together and nothing gives you the right to kill others."</p><p>"I killed someone?" Yamata looked around, his eyes instantly fixed on a pair of rabbits with snapped necks and eyes that looked more confused as to why they were looking the wrong direction and facing backward than dealing with the end of their lives. "That is just unfortunate."</p><p>"Unfortunate? Is that all you have to say?" Mana managed to bust down Yamata's paralyzing barrier once more. Give or take a few more seconds and she would be able to do it consistently, maybe then she could make this bastard pay.</p><p>"Trust me, Konoha's Sorceress, if I wanted to kill any of you, or all of you, I'd have done so while you're learning to move under my gaze." Yamata's face turned serious, all hints of pleasure in standing under the spring sky faded together with the souls of those he had killed. "As it is with most lives I claim, it was an accident. My soul was shaking with the need to be free, to feel the sky and the Sun brushing against my skin more… More. I have spent decades underground, it was not until I've seen humans disguise their age and natural flaws with switching shapes that I even learned to walk the surface of this world, something I had not done since childhood before then."</p><p>Mana's hand twitched. Her elbow bent ever so slightly. He was right, not only was he right but he was also very much aware of the fact that nobody else could move all too much in his suppressed presence. These snakes… She wanted none of the conflict they brought, all she wanted was to move the rabbits away from it all, to safety. Give them freedom. Some security.</p><p>"Let the rabbits go," Mana demanded with more control and gentleness in her voice than ever before when speaking under Yamata's gaze. The serpent wearing a human shape looked pleasantly amused by the magician's control. "Ever since you showed your face to us, it was me that your eyes could not leave alone."</p><p>"Who told you they are not free to leave?" Yamata raised his eyebrows. "If they can move, by all means, do so."</p><p>"You…" Mana growled.</p><p>"Stop dis! We knew what we got into." Usuzoku's voice broke Mana out of doing something stupid. "What, ye really take us fer some idiots dat thought we'd just waltz out a' our homes an' go to some nicer place without losing someone along da way? Dat was always da argument, dat was always the unfortunate plan."</p><p>"I have too little time to waste it on getting offended." Yamata shrugged with a grin. "But this is no power-play, Sorceress, you misunderstand my intent entirely. I do not follow some "the strong survive, the weak perish" type nindo… Well… Maybe I do just in this case, just not with the rabbits. I never cared too much about the rabbits deciding to move."</p><p>He could not have been lying. Mana did recall something of the sort being said by one of the three serpentine titans that attacked them underground.</p><p>"The loss of my sons and daughters was painful, nobody likes losing their children. I'm sure you can relate to the pain of loss. I've just gone through what enrages you so much that it stopped giving me power and aggression, now it just makes me feel hopeless and sad inside." Yamata pressed his hand against his chest. "But my intentions here were not to act upon that which I stopped having the capacity to feel long ago, it was the same feeling that led me out of my self-appointed imprisonment to begin with – curiosity."</p><p>Mana was beginning to wrap her mind around what this shapeshifting progenitor was talking about.</p><p>"My heads stretch out far away and are many. I can see and hear all sorts of things. I certainly did not expect a handful of rabbits following a pair of ninja defeat some of my strongest but also the most unruly children. I do not blame you for their deaths. I got to know of your inability to take a life by someone who slipped away. Someone who was told of the fame you've garnered back home by a contractor and in term let me know of it too. I was pleasantly surprised to hear about that. Then I heard about a child speaking of their contract like they were their own species, I heard of that same child fighting alongside their own as well as the sworn enemy of their own, uniting those two. I am no longer surprised, I am intrigued enough to spend on you a bit of my time on the surface." Yamata grinned.</p><p>Just like that, the almighty serpent validated Mana's formless inner worries.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0458"><h2>458. The Way To Live</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You guys move on right ahead." Mana's clenched together hands trembled while the grass rustled beneath her feet just like it would if no one was there to see it do so. "I'm the only one Yamata no Orochi wants."</p><p>"It's not that I want you, it's that I'm a little curious to see what you can do." Yamata shrugged. "If I was you guys, though, I'd probably move. I'm not sure just how many more might get swept aside if I get too excited."</p><p>The shapeshifter showed some of its sharp teeth as he could not keep the grin back. He was directly under the warmth of the Sun, right beneath the blue spring sky and taking his sweet time to face a human who incited his curiosity. This was to be beyond just his usual trek on the surface. This may have been one he'd remember for ages.</p><p>"He's gonna kill ya, ya know…" Usuzoku grumbled. He was such an idiot sometimes. It wasn't like Mana did not know that much. Sure, if they were to actually start a fight, Yamata would be fighting while massively suppressing himself to avoid much-unwanted attention and while constantly maintaining his transformation. The circumstances would be in her favor but the odds could not have been less so.</p><p>Even with all those things going for her, Mana would lose. There was no strategizing out of this. The best she could have done was stall for time, try and avoid the cruel and painful grasp of death until the rabbits were far enough away to avoid the unpredictability of Yamata's curiosity and need for self-amusement. The magician sighed.</p><p>"It's alright. Go." She did not address Usuzoku, she addressed a scared pair of rabbits holding an even more terrified little bunny in their arms. "That is in your nature, isn't it. Run."</p><p>Usuzoku's shape appeared right behind Yamata with a sword tightly clenched in his hands. Mana couldn't even reach out of gasp in the tremendous fright that the disobedience to her request brought up in her chest.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Amduat." Yamata chanted out. Usuzoku froze in mid-air while a shroud of black aura surrounded his body. The eyes of the rabbit warrior whited out while his mouth gaped as if his body was left like a lifeless husk in a state of complete emptiness.</p><p>Usuvilme, Usukari, Usuchabi, Usupari and a whole bunch of other rabbit warriors also charged at their unbeatable enemy with the intent to kill him. Usukari's All-Mirage shined brightly in her grasp, ready to seal her enemy away, as far away from where it could threaten the Ninja Rabbits as possible. Every rabbit prepared their own fighting styles for a battle, unlike anything they've had before, with this many combatants, just maybe there could have been hope for a strong enough push back.</p><p>The space around Yamata warped in a black rift, a disgusting fabric tearing sound followed by a sonic boom followed the dark flash and the sparkling, violent chain reaction afterward. The rabbits that attacked the progenitor of the snakes at a close distance all disappeared without any trace. Yamata's eyes switched on the long-range attackers as the rift quickly swallowed them up as well. Only Usukari managed to avoid disappearance by thrusting her All-Mirage at the front of the oncoming calamity.</p><p>"Interesting. This is a Sealing Ninjutsu of Ouroboros, a son of mine. The ability to seal something away into an infinite nothingness. A sealing dimension so vast that another one just as large could not contain it, it appears your All-Mirage functions on a similar vein…" Yamata noted with a hint of excitement. He did not expect to see one rabbit withstand their defiant act.</p><p>"Too bad the sealing dimension of Ouroboros surpasses the measure of infinity…" Yamata's smiled bent evermore with his grin beginning to look cruel. He never doubted the capacity of his ability to overcome the legendary All-Mirage. Inch by inch, after a grueling struggle, Usukari caved in. Her entire right side disappeared inside Ouroboros' rift before it swallowed the rabbit whole and disappeared just as suddenly as it appeared.</p><p>She should have stopped them. Maybe, if she reacted quickly enough. If the act of defiance and lashing out wasn't so unexpected to her and if she could move as fast as she usually could, unhindered by Yamata's gaze, maybe Mana could have cast an illusion that trapped the rabbits before they all were taken away from her. Before her life's work, the one thing she thought she pulled off so well that she could have looked back on and felt proud of was shattered right in front of her.</p><p>Mana saw Kouta's foot twitch. He was still struggling with the Yamata's gaze, much more than the rabbits that got taken out before him. Half of them probably outranked the two of them in strength and they got taken out in a snap of fingers. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was better reason keeping her boyfriend still and keeping him from attacking but Mana was grateful that he was standing still.</p><p>"I can't leave you here, I won't." He yelled out. It was an act of defiance alright but not one as narrow-minded as the one that the other rabbits displayed.</p><p>"Lead the rabbits home." Mana smiled fondly looking right at his face. Just for that one moment, she forgot that she was about to die, of all the mongooses that she failed to save, of all the rabbits that died foolishly attacking the progenitor of all Ninja Snakes and one of the scariest creatures to roam the Earth with the might comparable to that of the Tailed Beasts. For that one moment in time, there was just Kouta and her.</p><p>He would not have listened. His body moved without a care of what Mana wanted or how she'd have felt like after seeing him meet the same fate that the other rabbits that defied her pleads to leave her to die met.</p><p>"Sweet Lullaby!" Mana hummed out in a song, Kouta's body jerked and collapsed in a pathetic pile of quivering and writhing reduction of a man to his lesser instincts.</p><p>The magician caught Yamata's gaze lingering on Kouta's body. She wondered just how much chakra did the legendary creature spend on that previous technique. She wanted to properly classify it, put a letter and a possible mental measure behind its rank but her mind simply could not think as clear as it normally would have.</p><p>It overpowered the All-Mirage, it was really strong, that was all that Mana could say about it. Vasuki and her summoner could only maintain their transformation for a handful of minutes while the source of chakra was fully prepared for a fight and fresh. Maybe the same would be the case with Yamata, except in an opposite case where instead of maintaining the transformed, massive size the snake would have to exhaust himself shrinking itself this much.</p><p>One thing even Mana's buzzing hive of thoughts was capable of putting together was that the less she let her chakra sensory instincts roam around the better – if Yamata ever let go even a fraction of his chakra more she may have blacked out from the sheer size of it alone. Let alone the fact that she was standing in front of a mythical creature of such rank, she was winging it completely blind in terms of sensory…</p><p>"You did not have to bother." Yamata pressed his lips together. The man in glittering white hair breathed air out in disappointment. "You should preserve your strength for entertaining me. I would not enjoy you getting winded."</p><p>"Yeah, well… We don't always get what we want." Mana replied with scorn flaring in her tone. "I wanted for rabbits to live in peace. For the bunnies to play without having to worry about a pair of evil eyes staring at them from the shadows, looking to snag them from their kind and end their childhoods prematurely. It was what I promised Usuzoku, what I have lived my life to do. Now most of them are gone."</p><p>"Hmph, maybe I should have killed them… Seems like an awfully inconvenient way to live. Promises, responsibilities. You can and deserve to get whatever you have the drive and whatever is within your capacity to take. Everything in between what you want and you is just a test for your mettle." Yamata shrugged.</p><p>Mana did not even waste time thinking about a reply to that or analyzing what he had said and if she agreed. Usually, she would have thought about something a creature as ancient as Yamata no Orochi told her hard and long but now all she could think of was the carelessly let slip pair of words that suggested that the rabbits were not yet dead.</p><p>"Fine. I'll fight you, I'll fight you with all I've got and do my best to entertain you. That is, after all, a half of my identity!" Mana grinned, her Audra wand glittered as it spun and danced in her hand and in the air once she playfully switched the hand that held it. "Unseal the rabbits though. I cannot fight with my mind worrying about them all the time, I won't be able to fight you with my full potential that way."</p><p>"You are intelligent, kid. But I have matched wits with far more intelligent. Do not presume to be able to play me." Yamata replied with seriousness in his voice. "You are wasting my time here. That is the opposite of entertaining. Whether the rabbits scatter, whether you live or die, ultimately it is all the same to me."</p><p>"Summoning: Nirag!" Yamata chanted. He extended his hand forward allowing a black and green serpent large enough to smother a large animal appear from his sleeve and extend at Mana's general direction.</p><p>The girl placed the Audra wand in front of her as an instinctive attempt at softening the blow as much as she could. A painful shock similar to the sensation of multiple shards of broken glass skewering her arms made Mana's eyes widen in pain. The moment of agony was too brief for her to have the time to open her mouth for a scream. The force sent her flying back.</p><p>So fast. Everything the rabbits possessed in terms of sheer speed in their lower bodies the snakes had during their terrifying charges. Whenever any serpent was lunging at her, all Mana could have done was used Flower Petal Sanctuary to survive the attack by replacing herself with an illusionary self but there was only a handful of times she could use that in quick succession. It was also not very entertaining for her opponent.</p><p>This Nirag reptile kept on slithering past Mana's knocked down body before coiling around and opening its jaw. There was another attack incoming.</p><p>"Snake Style Taijutsu: Ishtarrat!" Nirag hissed out while its body wrapped around Mana's in what seemed like an instant. The speed of the reptile was absolutely blinding, whatever trained reaction time and skill in evasion Mana possessed, the shock from the previous knockdown combined with the nearly instant judgment of those this serpent wished dead was a deadly combination even for her.</p><p>After tying the magician up with its body, the upper ring of the snake's body together with the lower one began pressing at the girl's slowly being crushed body in an attempt to dislocate and tear her in apart by applying inhuman amounts of strength to the upper and lower parts of her body in opposite directions. It was quite an effective combat hold technique that, just as its name suggested, only someone who was of a serpentine body build or possessed otherwise elongated and elastic limbs could pull off.</p><p>The magician's body churned, split and ruptured into two pieces but instead of spilling out blood and everything in the same category, it only showered the bemused snake with flower petals while Nirag slowly withdrew back into the sleeve of its predecessor.</p><p>"An interesting technique. You fight like a true snake, girl. Still, to get hit by something as trivial as this…" Yamata spoke as if he was about to yawn at any moment. His crimson irises raced across the terrain trying to see past the scared for their lives and frozen rabbits all around him. Desperate to locate Mana's true, invisible to him shape without dispelling the illusion to see her.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" Mana yelled out just a moment after her air-splitting kick came crashing down from above like a sharpened and precise arrow meant to shock Yamata just strong enough for him to temporarily close his eyes and weaken his paralyzing effect on the other rabbits and her for just a bit more. Maybe that little bit was all it would have taken for the rabbits to escape?</p><p>"Predictable…" Yamata replied as his mid-body stretched out and wrapped itself around Mana as if there was no spine or internal organs inside this human shape of the serpent. Usually, a Transformation Jutsu would have duplicated the physical features like weight and the anatomy of the target but it also may not have, it was entirely up to the user's will and skill with the technique.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch!" Mana yelled out in succession with the declaration of her previous attack. Built up currents of Lightning Release chakra crackled down her body and passed down Yamata's body temporarily stunning him on contact.</p><p>The elastic arms of the white-haired avatar of Yamata no Orochi weighed down while the still standing body hunched up. The flowing white hair of the serpent dragged down to the grass beneath his feet and stroke it gently. Not a second later, the predecessor of the Ninja Snakes straightened out with an amused smile. He clearly liked seeing the magician play him like that.</p><p>This was no fight. They were not playing any game of chess here. The serpent wanted to be entertained, he wanted for Mana to shock him and show him what beat his treasured children and impressed the Ninja Mongooses enough to have them work together with the Ninja Rabbits.</p><p>"You allowed yourself to get hit, played with my expectations making me expect less than I should have before revealing your hand. A fine early play…" Yamata grinned with a face of genuine pleasure. While the faces this man-made genuinely looked creepy at times, this must have felt much more liberating and pleasing to him than being confined to the nooks and crannies of the planet's underbelly and core…</p><p>Mana's eyes looked at the orb at the end of her wand. It had cracked. Her Audra wand had not sustained any damage throughout all of the battles she had gone through after it was made and now just a single tackle from a serpent summoned by Yamata managed to threaten to destroy it. The magician performed a quick movement with her hands after which the wand was gone, safely hidden away inside her magician's uniform.</p><p>"You fight like a true snake. Defiant in the face of death, cold-hearted to pain. I shall release your friends if you promise to stay here and entertain me to the end. That's how you are, isn't it? Promises and responsibilities bind and dictate your destiny just like mother Earth imprisons my body." Yamata dusted off his clothes and stretched the numbness out of his body. The white-haired man swiped his hand aside.</p><p>The magician had expected something flashy and amazing. However, aside from a picking up gust of wind rustling the spring grass in the field there was no sign that the man had lived up to his promise.</p><p>"Oh, you do not know, do you? Ouroboros can only unseal that which it has sealed on the exact opposite side of the world it has sealed it away in. I assume that your treasured ones are somewhere in the mountains of Land of Earth…" Yamata explained the lack of visible effect. Even if there was nothing to suggest that Yamata was not lying and Mana was too worried over her ability to handle the massive size of his chakra to check the signature of dips, the magician did believe his word.</p><p>Mana pulled out a blank playing card from her sleeve before nodding her head to the side, just hard enough to let her hat tumble down her head before stopping in her other hand. She had seen this done before. Just this once she would be unoriginal for the sake of a magic trick that would assist the rabbits.</p><p>The girl bit the tip of her thumb before weaving a pair of hand seals and placing her hand on the card. A loud popping sound came out, followed by a cloud of smoke but that was not it. A collection of jets of chakra rotated around the blank card before the signs of the sealing settled down. After the combination of techniques was complete, only a hieroglyph of "Seal" remained on the previously blank card.</p><p>Mana picked the card up and threw it at Kouta who was just about regaining his composure and body control after the combination of both Mana's illusion and whatever this frightening gaze of Yamata's put him through. The boy easily caught the card with a pair of his fingers snapping together.</p><p>"Please. Finish what we started, lead everyone home and then unseal this card. You must understand, nothing you or I can do will faze Yamata. Even if you unleashed all of your Curse Seal chakra at once, even if all of us went at him together, we'd all be done with. I'm leaving the future of the Ninja Rabbits with you." Mana tried smiling at the boy once more, with more heart and less fear for her own life so that maybe this time he would do the right thing.</p><p>Deep inside, Kouta knew Mana was right. And yet… He was ready to resist before a wave of fleeing rabbits washed him back. With all of the rabbits doing as their instinct demanded of them and running with their lives, with Mana begging him to stop resisting and leaving her to whatever was to come, with him being completely powerless to change anything, Kouta surrendered to the mob and let the rabbits drag him away by force instead of fighting them back and potentially hurting them any more.</p>
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<a name="section0459"><h2>459. Children And Motivations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While Mana may have only told Yamata that she required the rabbits to move on to Konoha to save them, she had to admit that their absence and the ease at which Yamata let them go truly felt liberating. Combined with the knowledge that all the rabbits that got sealed away into the infinite nothingness of Ouroboros were now wandering somewhere in the Land of Earth, it made for as powerful motivator as any.</p><p>The magician was no longer fighting to keep afloat, to keep herself from drowning in the negativity of having lost everything she had worked for and that she'd die knowing that everything she did amounted to nothing. This time it felt quite the opposite, while Mana did not want to die, she'd have accepted it knowing that what she sacrificed it all for was worth it every step of the way.</p><p>That being said, the fight at hand was extremely complicated because Mana had much fewer options than she has had in quite a long time. Her Audra wand was busted and was a good blow away from breaking, which locked away a lot of prowess she achieved in control and chakra channeling during her training with the rabbits. She was now a good couple of steps weaker than she was at her best.</p><p>"I take it you are not the offensive type?" Yamata grinned looking at the magician.</p><p>Mana let it off to silence. She needed to entertain this person. Ironically enough, just for once her life as a ninja and her life as a magician intertwined. Like never before Mana needed to be the least ninja she's ever been while using ninjutsu. She needed to be flashy, inventive and cheerful. While the first two were taxing, the third one was significantly easier now that the rabbits were safe.</p><p>The magician placed her hands forward, she took a brief moment longer than she'd usually take channeling her chakra without her wand or without weaving any hand seals but such was her current situation.</p><p>"Magic Spark Jutsu!" she chanted out. A flock of sparks fired out from her extended hands, flashing and bursting with warmth all over the battlefield while they raced towards their intended target with varied accuracy results.</p><p>The crimson eyes of Yamata no Orochi lit up with a bright, red flash. It was like he concentrated his chakra to augment whatever effects his gaze put out. With this tremendously clever use of his chakra, the man effectively locked Mana down in place, overcome with the tremendous pressure of the weight of Yamata's gaze, and dispelled all of the sparks at once.</p><p>"A pointless distraction," Yamata muttered. "A distraction that fails to draw your opponent away from your main attack is a useless one."</p><p>A creep of overwhelming fear crawled up Mana's spine like a large spider that meant to put its eggs in the lower back of the girl. The magician could almost feel its hairy legs rubbing against her body, she could almost see and feel the ghosts of her past failures clinging to her body, forming an effective prison of her own inadequacy that locked her down from movement.</p><p>"Move!" Mana yelled at herself from within her prison of oblivion but the bars of anxiety did not budge one bit. The girl had completely lost the control over her own body and that fact just made her fear expand into a massive blob of corruption even more.</p><p>"If I don't move, I'll die! Move!" Mana ordered herself again but she could not as much as even twitch. Shortage of air was threatening the magician with a blackout, the frightening feathers of blackness began wrapping around the edges of her vision, making the effective field that her eyes could see in clearly extremely tunneled.</p><p>She had to run. She had to use all of her chakra in one big burst just to escape this tremendous gaze pressure and then just bolt. Maybe, just maybe, in a decade or two she could forgive herself for running away, maybe she'd gather enough inner strength to find out if the Yamata ever exploited her escape and got back to her by snuffing out all the rabbits, by killing Kouta…</p><p>No. She could not do that. Even if all that awaited for her here was to wait patiently for death, she'd have to take it. The price of scorning the serpentine one was too great. It would only cost everything Mana has ever achieved, everything she ever wanted to be and the magician would have rather died knowing her loved ones were safe because of her sacrifice than prove herself a hypocrite and make her own life the first and only, truly, useless one.</p><p>"You're all paled out. It couldn't be…" Yamata muttered almost as if to himself. The serpent augmented his gaze once more by focusing his chakra into whatever technique he used with his eyes. It felt like billions upon billions of needles sieging her body at once, like swarms of angered hornets all diving at Mana and unleashing their mighty stings in a mad barrage of pain and death.</p><p>At least the incredible force of Yamata's gaze broke through his own paralysis effect which he applied on Mana before. The girl could once more feel her body moving and while her bones felt as brittle as they've ever been and she felt like a porcelain doll who was just body-slammed by an Akimichi, she managed to peel her face off the ground somehow.</p><p>There were no external injuries in her body. But it hurt far worse than if there were actual blades piercing her body at that point. It was like Yamata forced his own overwhelming and dominating chakra inside her with just his gaze while when he focused it on her entirely he could somehow force it all out at once. With a technique like that, he could probably kill weaker threats by just staring them to death.</p><p>"It is the real you this time…" Yamata noted. "How surprising."</p><p>It was the time to try something else. If she could not even distract the legendary snake with her barrage ninjutsu techniques, she'd have to try the more powerful version. Maybe that one could not have been dispelled as easily…</p><p>Another pointless fraction of a second wasted channeling chakra where it could have been done quicker by just channeling it through her Audra wand. Pain resonating all over her body, Mana felt so sluggish…</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Bullet Barrage!" she chanted out firing a more intense and powerful version of the jutsu she just used. The barrage of Lightning Release chakra spheres was faster, it packed more of a blow and had a much more powerful shocking effect. The magician felt rather confident that her opponent, as awesome as he was, could not simply stare away a B-Rank jutsu like that.</p><p>Yamata just stood there. The Lightning Release spheres whizzed past him while those that did reach him simply imploded with a powerful shock that appeared to very briefly inconvenience the shape of the Eight-Headed Dragon. By the time that the oncoming inconvenience ended, the snake-man looked on ahead. Deep inside he wanted to be fooled.</p><p>Mana was no longer there, just like had wanted her to not be. A buzzing sound greeted his ears before the man's chakra-seeing eyes could pick up on the girl. The amount at which the senses of the snakes "saw" chakra was limited, nothing compared to chakra sensory, the Sharingan or other similar abilities but it was still something Mana had to keep in mind. She did not use cards that had anything special in them, just plain old steel-tipped cards.</p><p>Because of that reason, Yamata could not clearly track the flurries of cards coming at him, they were just a flat flash of metallic colors that were irritating to sit through them passing by or etching slightly into his skin. Once again, the serpent barely even bothered to try and avoid it. He wanted to see Mana's trick.</p><p>"I had hoped that these cards had some amazing jutsu sealed inside them like the one you gave that boy back then," Yamata exclaimed in disappointment after Mana's flurry of long-range projectiles ceased leaving him with nothing but a couple of shallow cuts.</p><p>"Don't interrupt a performer while she's not done." Mana scolded her opponent while she lifted one card up and showed its back to the shapeshifting snake. The girl pulled hard on the card, revealing a metallic shimmer on the sides of the cards to be not just blades, like most of Mana's other cards, but blades pressing on steel wire beneath it while the last card "hooked" on an important link in the web of wire she had just weaved.</p><p>The pressure of the steel wire against his taken shape lifted Yamata slightly off the ground while he curiously kept observing Mana's trick. The girl flicked the card spinning before spinning herself and catching the card near the ground with her other hand and then throwing it aside, leaving her an end of the link of steel wire to reach her opponent with. Gently, Mana touched that link with her hand while building up chakra inside her.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch!" she muttered while her body lit up with lightning crackles that passed down through the link of steel wire, forming an intricate web of passing Lightning Release chakra with the same resonating, numbing effects like those of Magician's Touch but without the weakness of Mana having to touch her opponent to initiate it.</p><p>After the technique settled down, Mana stood still in an observation of her opponent's reaction. Yamata twitched a pair of times, whether it was from the numbness coursing through his body, completely disabling…</p><p>"That was disappointing. This time this jutsu was much weaker than when you touched me before." Yamata lifted up his head, sending another paralyzing glare Mana's way with the same frightening alarm of crimson light that preceded it.</p><p>Mana could no longer allow herself to remain paralyzed. She focused on intensifying her chakra flow, similarly to how one would do when dispelling an illusion just to avoid the paralyzing effects of Yamata and withdraw a couple of dashes back. If the opponent ever decided to truly come at her, she'd need all the range advantage she'd get.</p><p>The pressure of shockwaves emanating in close-range to Yamata loosened up the wire trap allowing the mighty snake to tear it all up with little effort. He most likely had what it took even without the added advantage… This was bad. Mana had completely squandered a good third of her total chakra without achieving much in terms of entertaining the man. Maybe she wasn't as great as she'd thought…</p><p>"Maybe it was my mistake though." Yamata sighed. "I did wait around in a state of deep anticipation when I should have been killing you. Just like before, perhaps you are at your best when things are at stake… Maybe I let the rabbits free to early?"</p><p>Mana prepared for the inevitable attack, tightening her defensive stance and preparing for an attack of an opponent of an unidentified style. Those were the toughest to dodge but it should not have taken Mana too long to draw up a profile on how Yamata fought with a human body that was alien to him up close.</p><p>Yamata extended his hand, his palm facing upward, while the same glyphs that appeared on the ground when the Summoning Jutsu was cast appeared on his exposed palm.</p><p>"Summoning: Eobshin!" the progenitor of serpents chanted while a clay pot appeared in his exposed hand, it looked about as old as the snake king himself. Wondrously, the pot then unwrapped itself appearing to be by far the smallest of the snakes Mana had ever seen summoned. Yamata gripped tighter on one end of the serpent while the Eobshin changed its shape once more.</p><p>Yamata swiped his hand aside, taking an offensive sword fighting stance and in the one motion it took for him to do so, Eobshin had taken the shape of a curved-blade sword that appeared green and shimmering as if made of gold and emerald. This was the method of Yamata's attack, or so it seemed.</p><p>Oddly enough, the progenitor of the Ninja Snakes telegraphed his attacks rather clearly, using a very notable lean back before he dashed onward at Mana with a thrust of his serpentine sword. His body was also missing its notable snake traits, namely the completely blinding and unbelievable speed of lunging onward.</p><p>Because of that, Mana's acquired over her lifetime evasion skills were just barely enough to have her survive the initial flurry of blade strikes. Slashes and thrusts just kept on passing through nothing but air while Mana leaned and danced around the blade. It could not have been helped, she was forced to ignore her opponent and focus all of her attention solely on the blade for that much focus was needed just to stay alive.</p><p>A devastating pulse of pain emanated in Mana's right thigh. The magician looked down only to see the edge of the blade having moved while she had thought it to have remained static, as a normal blade would have. Due to that, the bent up blade was now stuck through her thigh stopping her in her tracks. Yamata drew the blade out, making Mana feel a burst of blood running down her right leg, the snake-man then followed the attack up with a swipe at where he had predicted the magician's throat to be.</p><p>Mana quickly shifted her weight onto her left leg in a mad dive on her back. After having her back hit the ground pretty rough, the girl used the sliding momentum to help her hands push her back up to her feet, using her left leg as the dominant one now. She did not see that curious manner of movement coming from the blade and now her speed was completely shattered to bits. She needed some time. She needed to cope with the initial burst of pain that resonated not just in the leg where the wound was but all over, slowing down Mana's movements even more.</p><p>"You're toying around." She taunted her opponent. Yamata was clever but he also may have been just as arrogant as his children. A taunt may have been the only way to slow the pace of the battle down a little while she thought up of a way to not get murdered with the next attack. "You're using summoning techniques, not your own. Maybe that's why you're not feeling entertained?"</p><p>"Foolish human, these techniques are not those of my children that I summon to use them. They are all my own, they merely inherited them from me." Yamata replied staring at the blood trickling and dripping down his emerald blade. While it felt really bad, Mana may have used her chakra augmentations to handle the wound for a short while. It did not yet sign a death sentence, just made it more likely and made the battle more desperate.</p><p>"That's right," Yamata grinned, seeing the pain and confusion on Mana's face. "I know every jutsu and ability that my children do, the only Ninja Snake whose ability I cannot replicate or have not learned before she did is that of their mother – the ability to force inheritance of ninja techniques. To have little snakes be born with the ability to use a jutsu at a fraction of the original's power."</p><p>"Then you are a lousy parent." The magician closed her eyes, almost expecting her opponent to attack after being taunted this way but, much to her surprise, Yamata listened quite attentively.</p><p>"What do you mean by that?" he wondered.</p><p>"Being more than your children. Keeping them down and distancing oneself from them is nothing to be admired of. That is how a species becomes stagnant. The next generation must always improve on the one that came before. You must let go of the fear of one of your children overcoming you and let them grow." Mana spoke her mind.</p><p>"That is a hopeless sentiment. Especially foolish coming from a human." Yamata spoke up. His body blurred in a mad rush, lunging straight at Mana. The magician staggered to the side with her shifted weight. She may have favored the left leg more but if she only used it for powerful space generation she may just have outpaced her opponent that was focused not on outracing her but at poking holes in her.</p><p>As she staggered and very nearly slammed her naïve face into the dirt, Mana found out a new salvation to buy her more time – her hands. Instead of avoiding her opponent's attacks on one dominant leg and another one injured and continuously plaguing her with painful resonances, one that required continuous chakra augmentations to stop from spouting too much blood out, Mana used her arms and one leg to move like a monkey, squirm and shift her body about on the ground making her more difficult to stab successfully.</p><p>"It is not. You are so preoccupied with your own survival that you haven't noticed it yet – you will never truly be free. Not of your fear of Konoha or some other ninja country becoming sick of you and disposing of you at last, not of your paranoia of one of your children growing too strong for your comfort. That is why the Sun will not make you feel free for long, that is why you seek more and more stimulation with every surfacing." Mana kept on her verbal pressure. She needed to keep Yamata doubting himself, to keep him flailing and buying her time. Who knew, maybe she could time the Eight-Headed Snake out just yet…</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment Jutsu!" Mana grunted while she forced her palm forward and channeled a powerful bolt of lightning through it. One that fired off in a direct path to the emerald blade and enveloped it completely. Before the lightning bolt could destroy the blade, however, defeating the snake that took its shape, the shapeshifting Eobshin slithered back into its progenitor's sleeve and disappeared.</p><p>"Eobshin!" Yamata yelled out, the forearm of his right hand morphed into the same sword that its child previously took the shape of while he lunged at Mana while she was kneeling and still focusing on her ninjutsu technique.</p><p>Even before the blade reached her, the kneeling magician knew that this strike would come close. Maybe a bit too close!</p>
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<a name="section0460"><h2>460. A Snake By Any Other Name</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time seemed to freeze while Yamata's blade kept on sliding through the air, closer to Mana inch by inch. This was no longer just the father of snakes using one of his children as a tool, he was actually using the jutsu himself, it was his own hand changing shape into the emerald sword. There may not have been time, momentum and stamina left in Mana to move away…</p><p>There may have been time for a jutsu though, something really old and carrying a bad omen to it but something that fell under a very comfortable category of being old enough for Mana to have gotten used to the technique and not carrying any of the baggage of blunders that was associated with any new jutsu.</p><p>"Magic Bubble Jutsu!" Mana yelled out after she used an ability of hers that was long since used, not for a while after she had trained in the Rabbit Caves – the sleight of her hands in weaving hand seals.</p><p>"Naïve…" Yamata scolded the magician, by that point, he had realized that Mana's skill in hand seal weaving surpassed whatever half-assed and spontaneously initiated dash with his blade he had mustered up but it did not matter. Due to his legendary power, he would simply power through…</p><p>A boisterous howl echoed through the field bending the grass to the lowest point it could go as the emerald shape that Yamata's hand had taken met Mana's blown up bubble of Wind Release chakra. A realization ran through the old snake's face with the very beginning of the impact followed by a sly smile. He realized he was being tricked while he forced the blade all the way through and drove it through the magician's chest before slamming her impaled body into the ground.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment!" Mana yelled out from up above, a strong jolt of Lightning Release chakra surged in a sky-splitting downward shot and hit the predisposed and distracted serpent right in the back. Yamata straightened his body out, his blade hand morphed back into its normal shape while the body of Mana he had impaled turned into illusionary petals that scattered in the wind.</p><p>"While amusing, that must have been costly." The father of Ninja Snakes muttered.</p><p>Mana thrust her hands downward, letting gusts of wind carry her a bit further back from being right above her opponent. On top of using Flower Petal Sanctuary in sync with the Magic Bubble technique, she also now was forced to let the Mystical Wings carry her away.</p><p>"You've seen my Flower Petal Sanctuary before. Couldn't risk you reading it." Mana admitted shortly after graciously landing a handful of meters away from her opponent. "Even now you saw through it before even setting the illusion off."</p><p>"Couldn't have been helped," Yamata smirked. "Once I felt the feeble resistance your wind bubble provided, I knew it was not your defensive measure. Not the real one anyway…"</p><p>Yamata was a pretty smart fellow, then again, he was in this murdering thing for a long time. Maybe Mana played it wrong by using her Magic Bubble on a much weaker level than its full potential, it did not really matter right now, she did save a pinch of chakra she could have used. That was not even the most troubling thing. Given how she had used Flower Petal Sanctuary multiple times in succession, the strain it would put on her body to use will eventually skyrocket. Even now, the next use may tire Mana more than any two of her other B-Rank techniques put together.</p><p>"Well, this has been pretty amusing… I'll have in mind the things you said about my children." Yamata could not keep his smirk off his face. Mana did not even notice the lower part of the snake-man's body morph into that of a white serpent while it launched the upper half of Yamata's body at Mana just like the other snakes lunged at their prey with their exposed fangs.</p><p>It was a clever way of attacking, had the roles been reversed, Mana would have been thoroughly amused by such an improvised assault, then again, knowing the age of the legendary creature, it had most likely used this method of attack for decades if not centuries. A thud followed by a shattering sound snapped Mana out of the lethargic dream of standing completely hypnotized by the astonishing speed of her opponent.</p><p>The magician looked down, seeing only shatters of blue scattering on the ground beneath her feet. Her body used it without her command… It pulled the wand out just to try and block the attack of her opponent, given how Shimo's legacy had already been cracked previously, now the wand had crumbled into smallest chips and pieces.</p><p>Mana barely even had the attention to spare on the peculiar method of Yamata's attack. The arms of the progenitor of the Ninja Snakes had morphed into serpentine bodies with the lower ends of those bodies having a very human head with fangs dripping with dark purple venom.</p><p>"Hmmm… You seemed to have saved your life. The venom of my Twin Naga Fang jutsu is incredibly powerful. It would have stopped your heart in mere seconds and paralyzed your breathing system instantly. Then again…" Yamata shrugged with that cocky smile of his. Mana felt her body tensing up with her throat appearing to fill itself with… Itself, as it seemed.</p><p>"A mere touch of the venom is enough for some of its effects to carry through… You may not have gotten any of it into your bloodstream but it won't matter." Yamata slowly walked up to the magician while she crumbled to her knees desperate for a breath. No, it was more than just a breath, she could have fought without taking one for twenty minutes, then used chakra augmentation to keep on extending that deadline but this was different… All of her body seemed to be stressed halfway to the point of shutting down.</p><p>Then the crimson eyes of Yamata no Orochi shimmered with their deadly, weakening light and everything around Mana turned blood-red. She did not feel the crimson bursts of chakra erupting from all over her own pores forming violent and bloody lacerations all over her body. She only realized of them when her control returned to her and she felt her blood gathering in a pool beneath where she was lying.</p><p>"Perhaps it is for the better that you have earned your life." Yamata pondered out loud while he turned away and looked at the disc of the Sun still hanging on strong in the sky. "I look forward to seeing what someone like you will do with the power of freedom of controlling their own life. Do not squander that for the waste of responsibilities and vows, that's my advice for you, kid."</p><p>Mana wanted to cry out for Shimo, the memory of whom felt like it had just been incinerated into ashes and cast with the wind from atop of a mountain. Scattering into the foaming oceans deep down below, so far away that one could not see the oceans from the mountains that the ashes were cast from.</p><p>"The reason why you lost is because you fought in the first place. You fought because of responsibilities and all that chaff. Leave that alone or the next time you will have nothing to sacrifice to the Naga." Yamata finished speaking with a heavy sigh. With his hands in the pockets of his barely dirtied fancy clothes, the shapeshifter walked away and disappeared into the depths of the Land of Fire forests.</p><p>If he truly wanted Mana to survive he'd have done something more than nothing at all. Then again, perhaps that was what he had meant, just do whatever one had the power of freedom to do. To bother with saving Mana's life was to place that responsibility on her shoulders whereas Yamata believed in none of it. The quivering and bloodied hand of the magician reached to wipe her tears and press to her aching forehead.</p><p>She believed responsibility to be power this whole time. It drove Mana to fight battles that reason would have told her to run away from and she has overcome odds that she had no right overcoming for the sole reason of not backing down when her responsibility told her to stay rooted and stand her ground.</p><p>All of that cut down and burnt down by someone that believed that the only power that was worth anything was the power of control over one's own life. Do with it whatever one wanted. The only justice was that which one's freedom allowed one to reach for. And this serpent had plenty of power, plenty more than Mana could have ever hoped to acquire by merely following the path of responsibility, had Yamata wanted it, she'd been dead in a blink of an eye or sealed away like those rabbits.</p><p>Now all she had was lying here wounded and slowly bleeding out. A feeling of chakra signatures flaring up nearby distracted Mana from her self-loathing and doubts. A pair of ninja in Konoha flak jackets blitzed up nearby the magician. One of them drew the large, cleaving sword he carried on his back.</p><p>"What the hell? No, we need to take her back alive." His friend quickly defused the situation.</p><p>Mana wanted the ease of blacking out. She was not granted that luxury. She felt every nasty bump of the sword-swinging ninja picking her up and placing her on her back in a style of carrying injured comrades home.</p><p>"I thought she left, I thought we kill those that leave?" the curly haired ninja carrying Mana on his back while his sheathed sword kept making the trip as uncomfortable for the still conscious passenger as possible.</p><p>"Sure, the missing ninja, maybe. Konoha's Sorceress didn't run away looking to sell our secrets or anything, she's just to be questioned, that's all." His comrade replied.</p><p>"Oh, I'm really bad at this guarding the gates thing…" the first one lamented.</p><p>"It's okay, you're still learning. You were out in the field before guarding the gate, right? Probably didn't have too many opportunities to ask questions."</p><p>"Weren't we supposed to at least kill that shady, white-haired guy? He was giving my back the creeps, just looking at him felt scary…" the first one scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"That's exactly why we didn't pick a fight with him. He was not moving toward the village so he poses no immediate threat. We'll just include him in our report together with whatever we obtain from questioning the Sorceress." His mentoring colleague smiled.</p><p>"We're kind of cowardly shits, aren't we?"</p><p>"Well… I guess that's one way of looking at it but we really do need that report. Plus, if we got killed, Oshin and Emica would have to substitute for us until they replace us. That's a whole lot of trouble too."</p><p>A curious sight of syrup colored eyes was the first sight that Mana saw in the dark blue gloom around her. Shortly after the two stars of bright brown lit up, the blond hair of the woman that owned that set of eyes came into full view. With all of the heavy equipment hanging on Mana it was tough to see and hear too much.</p><hr/><p>The magician was hanging in mid-air inside a steel sarcophagus tied to the walls by chains, each separate piece of the heavy equipment was covered by a chakra suppression seal. Mana's chakra resources were quite vast for her rank but this equipment was not meant for someone like her. It would have been enough for pretty much anyone, even a Jinchuuriki would have failed to do pretty much of anything inside such a contraption.</p><p>"I hope you don't hold this against us, Konoha's Sorceress, this is just the procedure of interrogation. Under no other circumstances would we do something like this." The woman explained herself. She did not sound too apologetic but there was no malice in her voice either. She appeared almost bored by seeing Mana locked down in mid-air like this.</p><p>The Sixth Hokage followed shortly after. This was unexpected. Even if Mana was in for standard questioning procedures, they'd have been conducted by someone inside the Intelligence Division and not the Hokage himself. If Mana's memory did not fail her, this particular woman was quite important in the Intelligence Division herself, important enough to conduct this interrogation properly for sure.</p><p>"This may be a first time for you but it is the procedure. You've left the village while you and the Administration weren't on the best of terms. Tensions were high. You were sighted inside Kusagakure by some of our spies. You are not being blamed for anything but we just want to know the nature of your visit there and what exactly did you tell Kusagakure." Lord Sixth spoke up himself. It was rare to see the head of the Intelligence Division play second fiddle in an interrogation and the woman was evidently not too happy about it herself. Then again, Sixth's career inside the Black Ops of all Black Ops did grant him certain experience in these things as well.</p><p>Mana wanted to cooperate. Say something simple and truthful just to calm this insane man down. Not only was he beginning to take drastic measures like these but he also was apparently spying on his allies. Kusagakure was a den of diplomacy and neutrality. It would have taken a special kind of snake to place spies inside there.</p><p>"You spy on Kusagakure? They're our allies, they're everyone's allies." Mana replied.</p><p>"That's exactly why it is valuable to spy on them. Do not make this difficult, Mana, you're a B-Rank ninja now. You're no longer a child fooling around. Your actions have real weight." Sixth was beginning to get himself quite worked up before managing to control himself over Mana's non-answer.</p><p>"Do you want me to push her a little?" the head of the Intelligence Division looked at the head of the entire village.</p><p>"No. I'm sure she'll cooperate after the initial shock of the world around her not being as romantic as she'd imagined settles down, won't you?" The Sixth Hokage looked at Mana. Even in the shadows with her chakra suppressed and some weird buzzing and yelling ringing in her head due to the seals placed on her the man's eyes were quite intimidating. They would have been enough to freeze his subordinate in place without much effort or any pent-up anger from the man's part.</p><p>"I told them as much as an unconscious ninja with crushed legs and nearly depleted chakra can," Mana replied.</p><p>Inside a completely silenced room, the taps of the woman's sandals became quite thundering, unnerving to an extent even. She did not believe there to be any use in this interrogation, it did not take an interrogator or a mind reader to realize that. The eyes of Lord Sixth kept glued onto Mana for an uncomfortable while. It was not until the voice of the woman by his side interrupted him again that the discomfort got snuffed out.</p><p>"Do you need the medical ninja that checked up on her wounds to confirm her leg injuries? I am quite sure that there was a note of that." She asked her superior.</p><p>"I am aware of the renewed tissue on her leg muscle." Lord Sixth muttered just barely loud enough for Mana to hear over the unsettling ringing and yelling in her head from the effects put on her. "Very well, I hope you will understand our caution. I also hope you will be pleased to know that we have accommodated the Ninja Rabbits inside the Forest of Death. They are all a notable boost to our village's military power so I am thankful for you bringing this asset back."</p><p>"I second that, I hope you understand that this is merely a standard procedure. You know how tense things are with all the talk of a civil war brewing…" the blonde beside Lord Sixth who turned around and appeared to have lost interest repeated it all to Mana to draw her attention away from the Hokage who was leaving.</p><p>"It's no secret that there would be no civil war, even if these tensions were real. The Uchiha are a special case, always have been. There's no way Konoha would part with their strongest asset." Mana couldn't resist biting back.</p><p>"Is that scorn in your voice? You're hardly the beacon of objectivity in this case as well…" Lord Sixth grinned referencing Mana having grown up in a team pretty much lead by a Yamanaka whose clan was also very much a side in this conflict. Without making much more of a case of it, the man simply left the room allowing other officers from the Intelligence Division to rush in and unchain Mana from the contraption she was trapped in.</p><p>It was dangerous pulling on the Hokage's whiskers like this. Especially after the man already showed Mana his executive claws quite efficiently after their last tense situation. The magician could kind of understand her rashness though. This whole conflict just caught her at the wrong time, she was tired, beaten, provided just the surface rank medical aid after her encounter with Yamata who questioned the very core of her beliefs.</p><p>The magician was a mess this whole time and it wasn't hard to see why she'd show her own standing up hair to the head of the village. With hands inside her torn up pockets, Mana sulked to the brighter and available to the curious public parts of the Intelligence Division offices before the woman who was there when she was being questioned approached the girl from behind.</p><p>"This entire situation has been a bit of a shitshow. Let me tell you something, you've got ample time to train, how about you come over here some time for a tour of the place and maybe a couple of lessons. I've heard you're pretty strong with illusions, I'm sure you'd pick some of our tools of the trade quite easily." The woman suggested. Her voice was just as bored as it was before.</p><p>She must have been playing Mana. Did the Sixth put her up to this? These last couple of dealings with the village really killed Mana's team player spirit so the Sixth may have, being the very experienced and devoted leader that he was, put the woman up to some of the rekindling of Mana's patriotic feelings through work and training. Even back home she couldn't shake off the snake problem…</p><p>"Sure," Mana smirked. Some of the techniques that the Intelligence Division taught its employees were quite interesting and Mana could always use some connections so that she could help Kiyomi's dream come true in the nearest future. When this whole Yamanaka-Uchiha pot cools off a bit and the Yamanaka heiress can safely return home. At the end of the day, Mana may have learned a little bit of tongue-sticking herself…</p>
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<a name="section0461"><h2>461. The Things We Do For A Good Punch</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With the bit of heart-stopping excitement that was the last handful of days in the magician's life, Mana's mornings lately were pretty much the same. Get up, slog through the usual morning routines, head for the headquarters of the Intelligence Division for some genjutsu training. Then again, perhaps this was what was needed. Facing Yamata no Orochi gave Mana plenty to think about.</p><p>It was not even the fact that she lost that didn't give the magician the peaceful night's sleep. It was how she lost and the implications Yamata provided for his unimaginable amount of strength. He was not too different from most powerful ninja Mana knew. Tanshu, Hanasaku, Lord Sixth, all of them were in a lot of ways similar to the Eight-Headed Snake. All of them had a certain distaste for responsibility and needless restrictions and the power of control over their own lives, something Mana could not for the life of her even find, let alone grasp.</p><p>There was no control. Mana thought that she was in full control but was she really? She thought she chose to find the Ninja Rabbits and lead them out of their infernal caves and into a living quarter more akin to what they were used to. But would it not be true to claim that she only "chose" that option because of the promise she had made, because she was bound to it and decided that this was the right time to do that.</p><p>Did she even decide that much? That it was the right time? Maybe it was only because of the bonds of friendship with Kiyomi that Mana began getting emotionally involved into the brewing conflict between the Uchiha and the Yamanaka and ruined her working relationship with the village, forcing it to vacate her schedule, making it the right time. The more Mana delved into the wicked webs of choices she has made, the more horrifying the discoveries were.</p><p>Her bond to her responsibilities was beaten soundly by Yamata's freedom to control his own life. The only hits she landed, each inch by which she shook Yamata's freedom was the inch she was humored by her opponent to shake him by. She did all that she was allowed to do, she only survived because Yamata decided that she has earned that survival. And at what cost…</p><p>Mana wiped the predecessor to tears forming in her eyes, every time her thoughts lingered back on that moment and the shards of Audra alloy scattering in the air she could not help but barely keep herself from tearing up. Now all that remained of her lifelong friend was just memories. She could not even fulfill the responsibility of honoring his memento and putting his name out there by making him proud of what she did with what the Yuki had left behind.</p><p>"Is something distracting you?" the head of the Intelligence Division lifted her eyebrow. Even the Intelligence Division officer Mana was training on looked back at her with a curiosity about what was taking the magician so long to probe into his mind.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Seiga-sensei. It's just… I don't know if this is the right thing for me." Mana lied. "I am an entertainer at heart, I try not to use techniques I did not invent myself."</p><p>It was a stupid excuse but it was one Mana would much rather shield with than let the woman see the truth of the turmoil that was inside her chest actually. Mana's very foundation was being questioned, the very pillars that held it up high and going strong for the entirety of the girl's life were being busted down by a hammer just large enough to topple the entire thing down.</p><p>"Well, this is not exactly a technique." Seiga sighed with a strict glare at Mana. While it was clear that the woman wondered if she was wasting time with Mana, it was not like she had anything much better to do. The head of the Intelligence Division lead very few actual interrogations and, for the most part, just saw that everything was running smoothly. "More of a concept."</p><p>"Oh, I see…" Mana replied without feeling. She did know the difference between these. It was the difference between the redirection style Meiko taught her, between the evasive style Kouta tutored her in and the fighting style she devised with the old man's help by molding those two together. This was just something she'd devise something stronger from.</p><p>Probing inside someone's mind was not as complex as one may have taken it to be. It was especially simple for a genjutsu user who was already quite familiar with the concept of projecting some of their own chakra inside the opponent's bodies, using its flow to influence their own chakra flow and disrupt the ordinary rhythm of the flow, disrupting the fluidity of how they battled. Mana pretty much pulled the general concept off at her first few tries.</p><p>It was doing something notable with it that was much more complex. Projecting specific thoughts and images, Mana pretty much had to learn how to walk all over again once inside someone else's mind. Seiga was a whole different story entirely. Inside her own, or anyone else's, mind, she was the mistress of reality itself. Whereas Mana struggled to look at the right directions to find the right shelves containing the right thoughts, Seiga could project whatever she wanted, change the dimensions and content of someone's mind and cause pretty much whatever effects she wanted, given time.</p><p>The training Mana did required to find a marked scroll that each officer that assisted with her training each day had hidden. She had to look into the officer's mind without them trying to hide it all too much and extract the information about it. The attempts of the officer to hide anything were fruitless, ultimately, even if they did not try too hard to conceal that information, pretty much any attempts to do so could have been busted down, given time.</p><p>It was a scary truth to learn, especially in such a compromised and terrifying time for the girl. No matter how willful and devoted the individual, no matter the difference in skill between the interrogator and the one being interrogated, with genjutsu interrogation, eventually, the information always came out.</p><p>Seiga's sigh made Mana retreat from the shadier corners of the officer's mind. The man had constructed an elaborate labyrinth of dark alleyways with bars and inns all over. One of those must have contained the information Mana was looking for. Hiding information as well as finding it was similar to the memory palace practice.</p><p>"You're being too soft." The woman scolded Mana. "You're just walking around the field of their own making."</p><p>As she gave the girl advice, the woman placed her own hand on the forehead of the officer, closed her eyes and concentrated. Mana wished to see what exactly the woman was doing but it would have likely taken the mental link of a Yamanaka to link three people together like this. Whatever Mana acquired through training, Kiyomi probably had gifted by birth on a whole different level.</p><p>"You need to change the rules of the game, even if you're playing under their house rules." Seiga scolded Mana after leaving the officer's mind.</p><p>"That was impressive, ma'am!" the officer wheezed out looking exhausted by a mental struggle that may have taken just a handful of moments. It could have taken whatever amount of time the illusionist wanted it to feel it like it'd have taken on the mental plain though.</p><p>"For an entertainer, your creative flair seems to be intact but your talent for the craft is shaky… You're afraid to press harder." Seiga explained without dropping the strict tone of her voice. She was just like Tanshu was back in the day except without Mana offending deeply personal connection to his own convictions.</p><p>"Perhaps her talents lie in the defensive techniques of mind probing?" the officer suggested. Seiga looked mildly interested in this suggestion so she asked Mana to switch places with the officer. The woman placed her hand on Mana's forehead and closed her eyes. Mana felt her consciousness slipping as if fading away into a state of deep slumber. Falling, drowning in a whirlpool that did not appear all too interested in filling Mana's lungs and choking her out as much as it was in dragging her somewhere deep down.</p><p>Mana was quite familiar with the basics of mental probing through genjutsu even before Seiga's training course. The magician instantly began building up an impressive fortification to protect all of her secrets. A stormy ocean flooded the magician's mind, the foaming waters pushed upward a solitary island surrounded by thousands of sea miles of nothing but raging, merciless storms and crashing waves all around.</p><p>A steep as much as it was rock-hard surface rose up on which Mana would build her fortress. Steel, rock and building blocks molded together to form impressive and detailed fortifications, burning with blue flames, rabbits shaped mental constructs armed with swords protected every nook and cranny from any attempt to probe inside or even take as much as one step into Mana's mental realm.</p><p>A massive fortress of innumerable towers burst from somewhere deep underground it all and soared into the sky. Each separate secret and thought locked itself inside chests and treasure rooms of worthless, mental gold to distract any wandering soul that has managed to come this far. It should have taken entire hours, if not days to work one's way through defenses as elaborate as these.</p><p>"Interesting." Mana heard Seiga's voice ring in her ears. "You've got flair, you are skilled. This is no mere, unfocused talent, this is hard-trained skill, plain and simple."</p><p>The stormy clouds over Mana's mental fortress began twisting into a whirlpool that matched and then dwarfed the intensity of the whirlpools of stormy oceans surrounding Mana's fort. A tremendous pressure overwhelmed the magician who had to slip out of focus and cancel the projection of her own inner self inside her own mind just to survive Seiga's assault. The woman was not attacking or sieging Mana's fort, she was changing the very rules of how Mana's mental reality worked.</p><p>The stormy seas began boiling, turning blood-red before evaporating, leaving nothing but oceans of sea-salt behind as far as the eye could reach. The erosion of water endlessly bashing against the shores of the island where Mana built her mental fort began changing and molding the location, the rock upon which Mana's fortress rose up began narrowing, soon turning about as narrow as a singular support pillar. Mana had to work her best magic just to balance the massive fort atop of it.</p><p>Not that it did any good, with a simple glare Seiga accelerated the flow of time billions of times. Forcing the steel to bend and turn to ruined strings as soft and malleable as that of copper wire, the rocks and building blocks to crumble and the pressure of passing accelerated time and the crushing gravity of Seiga's stare to completely decimate Mana's army of blue-flame rabbits.</p><p>Mana shook awake from the horrific experience as if from a nightmare, sweaty and exhausted. Her head was pounding with intense pains as the concentration needed to put up defenses as focused and detailed as the ones she mustered up would have flat-out unreachable to any lesser ninja.</p><p>"Don't worry, kid, I've trained most of the high-ranking ninja in this Division. I know a lot worse secrets than that… Now, I would not want to keep you away from your date, would I?" Seiga pat Mana's shoulder while she placed her own hands inside the pockets of her coat and walked out of the dark room where the training was taking place.</p><p>The officer beside Mana overseeing her training and assisting the head of the Intelligence Division with all he could just cracked a grin before leading Mana to the office wing and to the door to the outside.</p><p>"Just massage your temples, your forehead and all over your eyes, usually helps with the pain…" the man advised with a friendly smile.</p><p>Somehow with her self-esteem being about as low as it has ever been, it did not feel so bad having all of her secrets and deepest thoughts exposed to the head of the Konoha's Intelligence Division. It only sounded scary when one did not think about it that much. In her job, Seiga probably exposed to all sorts of weird information and she'd see deeper and darker secrets until the end of the next hour, most likely, what were Mana's childish worries compared to that? It most likely won't take half an hour before they are forgotten.</p><p>Thinking this way while she was massaging her head just as instructed by the Intelligence Division ninja, Mana actually started feeling a little bit better about this whole affair. Not only was she learning more about interrogation through genjutsu but she was also mastering the skill of focus and perception. Those were priceless skills for a genjutsu user. Control, focus, slow and steady mind… Pretty much everything boring that someone could have thought of were invaluable to an illusionist.</p><p>"Your eyes look a bit baggy, are you alright?" Kouta wondered looking quite troubles.</p><p>"My body was very nearly torn to bits and pieces from inside just a week ago, a little bit of intense training is nothing compared to that." Mana tried calming him down.</p><p>"Did you go to visit the rabbits yet? You should have seen them when I summoned them from your card, they looked pretty happy, all reunited and all…" Kouta smiled kindly before wrapping his hands around Mana and pressing her hard against his body.</p><p>"That was the idea…" Mana sighed. A bubbling sensation of joy burst like shaken champagne from a recently opened bottle. "I am glad that we worked this out with the village. They deserve a little bit of peace…"</p><p>"You're avoiding the question…" Kouta pressed his lips tightly.</p><p>"I'm sorry… It's just… I dunno… I feel ashamed of showing my face there." Mana lamented.</p><p>"Ashamed?" Kouta raised an eyebrow, this was probably the most curious Mana had ever heard him be.</p><p>"Yeah, you know. I was supposed to help them out, I was supposed to be their human ninja summoner who brought their species from the verge of oblivion back into the main stage… And I got my ass kicked by Yamata no Orochi." Mana sighed. "I feel like I've proved that rabbits are better off running away from snakes. I was supposed to be their hero of hope but I turned out to be the proof of their failure."</p><p>"That is singlehandedly the stupidest thing ever said by anyone!" Kouta snickered out loud. "I'm not sure I could even name someone who could have beaten Yamata no Orochi. That guy looked like he was on par with Tailed Beasts and Kage level ninja. That's a whole different stage for us. You should be proud and flaunt it in everyone's face that you survived it."</p><p>"Maybe." Mana shrugged before she felt Kouta's right arm wrap around her body from the left and press her tighter to his right side.</p><p>"Anyway, this does not sound like a problem that seeing a bunch of noblemen getting stabbed while they deliver cringy monologues in their final moments could not fix." The medical ninja grinned with a full mouth as the two headed for the hall where Mana performed her magic shows to see some theatre.</p><p>"I thought people go to the movies these for dates these days." Mana looked up at Kouta, giving a genuine effort to forget all about anything that did not concern this moment in time right now. Just hide all of her shadows deep below the ocean around her mind fortress, put all that mental focus training to something useful for once.</p><p>"Yeah, it's tough to imagine that a year ago people used to just look into the sky for romance and eat ice-cream, talk about alien life…" Kouta grinned while his eyes turned softer and warmer for just a handful of moments while he recollected.</p><p>"I think… I think aliens may actually exist." Mana leaned her head against Kouta's shoulder, the young man was not too tall so she ended up slightly bumping it against the side of his head.</p><p>"That's a significant change in perspective."</p><p>"Yeah well… I think when I was in the other universe someone spoke of some people living on the Moon." Mana shrugged. "They seemed to have been living in peace with the Moon people though, or maybe it was just this one guy?"</p><p>"You wanna go there sometime?" Kouta looked up in the sky, where he imagined the Moon to be later in the evening when the sky turned dark.</p><p>"The Moon?" Mana temporarily lifted her head off her boyfriend's shoulder.</p><p>"I mean… I don't see why not. Doesn't seem like that much trouble, honestly. Shouldn't even take us that long, I'm not sure why people don't just do it all the time." Kouta shrugged.</p><p>"There must be a reason." Mana settled back down after the suddenly booming excitement of someday visiting the Moon with the young man she loved.</p><p>"Maybe it's forbidden or something?" Kouta wondered. "It can't be the distance, father leaves orbit all the time when he wants to wind up for a good punch…"</p><p>"It would be nice, huh? Finding a whole new place with another species of people just like us, establishing peace between us, just like in Naruto-san's universe…" Mana dreamed on. "The Earth Clan and the Sky Clan together. We'd make history…"</p><p>"Okay, that settles it, one day we're definitely going to the Moon!" Kouta declared playfully.</p><p>"Maybe when the cheesy plays stop being so damned entertaining and the craft of moving pictures gets boring…" Mana chuckled.</p><p>"I mean… It's already kind of samey, a bunch of noblemen talk mean stuff, one of them gets stabbed by all the others and just monologues for thirty minutes." Kouta shrugged.</p><p>"I mean, you'd think they'd speak their hearts out in that much time but no, then they become ghosts and have to haunt someone for half an hour while still talking." Mana sighed.</p><p>"You're just saying it because you're scared of ghosts and keep looking away whenever anyone comes out in that shiny white make-up. I mean they're wearing literal sheets in there, you know?" Kouta playfully teased the magician by bumping his shoulder on which Mana was cuddling with him.</p><p>Some usual monotony was definitely for the better after the shocks of keeping up her promises. Mana could get used to all of this, maybe, in time, she'd even start to heal…</p>
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<a name="section0462"><h2>462. Something Old, Something New</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The white of Mana's bedroom ceiling was beginning to blur and take shapes and appear in patterns in the middle of the night from the focus of the girl's eyes resting on it for an extended period of time. The air at this time of spring was still relatively chilly, especially so late at night so Mana enjoyed the artificial comfort of wrapping herself up in her bed cover.</p><p>There may have been a cause for sadness that night. The date with Kouta went relatively great and she didn't mess it up completely. While she was hanging out with the boy, Mana only had to half-ass her attempts at hiding away the way she really felt to manage that. That was one of the reasons why the magician loved that young man so much.</p><p>He had no business working himself over something completely trivial like this. Kouta was pretty sensitive and he had a nasty habit of often going out of his way to do something stupid for Mana. Then again, perhaps it was a bit hypocritical of the magician to think this way when she herself did the same thing constantly and viewed it as another one of her responsibilities to do so.</p><p>All sides of Mana agreed with the notion that Kouta was best seeing Mana happy and having completely moved past the insane battle with the Yamata no Orochi. As far as he was concerned, Mana forgot having lost a battle she bet her ideology on and it did not matter to her that the last material memento of her teammate was scattered all over Fire Country.</p><p>The magician sighed, she switched sides on which she laid hoping that there'd be more success in finally drifting away into nocturnal slumber, if not, then eventually, at the very least.</p><hr/><p>"This is pointless…" Seiga grumbled while a fist of a black, armored gauntlet blew past the walls protecting Mana's secrets inside her mind.</p><p>The economy behind that woman's mental assaults was impeccable. She knew at all times how much focus and effort was needed to blow past any defenses, she wasted no chakra, even now she did not generate an entire giant demon to decimate Mana's fortifications, she merely created its gauntlet – the only required part to efficiently humiliate Mana.</p><p>"I've seen babies with better skills at protecting their mind. That is the point of our training, isn't it?" Seiga worked herself up. "This was so pathetic I am beginning to wonder if I understood the point of this training right, to begin with."</p><p>Mana stood back up, massaging the pulsing veins on her temples and the torturous pressure on her forehead. This was just what she needed in her life, getting verbally belittled while the entirety of her mind was getting probed and sacked dry and leaving her with a mother of all migraines.</p><p>"Ma'am, it does not look like this training session is all that productive." The ninja overseeing the training and assisting in any way he was needed butt in. "Perhaps it would be for the best to call it quits for today."</p><p>"No." Seiga locked her arms tightly over her chest while her incinerating glare appeared to peel away everything Mana built around herself to try and protect her inner self without requiring any genjutsu or hijutsu to do so. "Not just today. It is pointless for you to come here until you sort out whatever's wrong with you."</p><p>Mana stood up with her eyes closed so that her tears did not show. Maybe Seiga knew that the magician was about to break out into them, maybe the blackness around them concealed the painful crystals in Mana's eyes well enough that without unnatural measures it was impossible to tell. Regardless, tears meant suffering and someone who was suffering was weak, Mana did not have the luxury to be seen as weak right now.</p><p>The magician bowed to the head of the Intelligence Division and the officer overseeing the training and head for the door. By now she's come to this dark room many enough times to memorize this place and not require help to find the door, even if the better senses would have still had a ninja of the Intelligence Division lead the magician to the door, by now they trusted her enough not to bother, it seemed.</p><p>Seiga's words were pretty cruel but… They were also resonating. Seiga was not a woman who would have just needlessly belittled Mana. There had to be something in her words, the magician had noticed a trend in the way she was being trained. Because Mana's entire soul was exposed to Seiga when her defenses crumbled, the woman spoke to Mana about those instances as if it was a state-kept secret, confidential information almost.</p><p>Then again, perhaps whatever laid at Mana's core was so ravaged and twisted that it turned the woman off from training the magician ever again since that would have entailed having to see that hidden away rot once more? Maybe the conclusion of the battle with Yamata just finalized the heist of whatever once laid in the treasure chambers of Mana's mental fortress?</p><p>No. Seiga was a woman who had been in charge of the Intelligence Division of a handful of years now, she had dealt with all sorts of criminals and madmen. The mental interrogation was mandatory to criminals that were being sent to Jigoku through the ordinary procedure which meant that there was more than just a possibility that Seiga had been exposed to the worst her village had to offer.</p><p>While some part of Mana would have been content on a very selfish and childish way if her own problems were proven to be so bad that they turned off a hardened woman like Seiga, on a deeper and more truthful level the magician knew that to not be the case. The key must have been inside what Seiga told the magician, while still keeping up her signature subtlety. Mana may have struggled to believe it but the verbal beatdown she got, in the end, was Seiga being subtle…</p><p>A pair of chakra signatures broke the magician out of her self-examining thoughts. The girl looked up and away, the signatures flared up in a suspicious way that very few signatures behaved in while inside a village. By now she was used to walking around a ninja village and feeling chuunin and even jounin walk around in their lax states, the warmth of their suns was beginning to feel almost tolerable.</p><p>It was not the size of these two signatures but rather the peculiar manner in which they flared up and then disappeared again that tipped the magician off. Mana held her newly made sealing hat tighter so that it did not slip from her head while she dashed up the building and onto a wire for a better vantage point. Chakra signatures were a lot like radio signals, all sorts of things may have interrupted a clear reading ranging from thick and dense objects to other chakra signatures.</p><p>The signatures happened to slip away. Given how they started out in a completely suppressed state, that was not too weird to believe. They flared back up and then just gone away. For some reason that really annoyed Mana, like a fly that kept one awake in early summer mornings. She had to check the place out at the very least, just to find absolutely nothing so she could return to her self-nagging.</p><p>"I'd be an ideal wife, really." Mana cracked a grin after that last thought. "I spend way too much time nagging myself not to satisfy my nagging quota…"</p><p>The magician's sandals firmly landed on the ground while a weak pulse of Wind Release chakra softened her fall. It was a much cheaper alternative to using chakra augmentation to weaken the impact of this aerial dive to the location Mana thought she last sensed the flare of chakra. What she found there was not what she expected to find nor was it nothing.</p><p>"Kidenshi-senpai," Mana spoke up with a hint of worry in her voice. A young man she knew from the Ninja Academy who was a year or two older than her and graduated during one of her more difficult early years was lying on the ground in the trash which was busted and scattered all over the young man, his little Pomeranian, and the alleyway.</p><p>He was completely out, his little fluffball was not though. It was barking at Mana quite passionately but it did not look aggressive, it looked frightened. Given the magician's own relative experience to getting one's ass handed to them in battle, she did not believe that Kidenshi's injuries were lethal. The girl tried her best at picking the young man up but doing so just with her physical strength would have been a fool's errand.</p><p>The elderly Pomeranian gripped the collar of the unconscious Inuzuka and took into the air. Mana was shocked to see the might and vigor in the little furball's movements. It lifted its vastly larger summoner clean off the ground and leaped all the way to the roof from the alleyway while in a semi-injured state.</p><p>Mana worked through her hand seals in less than a fraction of a moment and used the currents of wind of her Mystical Wings to elevate her to the roof after the canine.</p><p>"You'll work yourself to your grave if you drag Kidenshi-senpai around like this. Please let me carry you both." The magician pleaded the dog with a head bow. The dog just turned its head looking at Mana as if she was some sort of an idiot, then again, she was trying to talk to a dog…</p><p>This required an extra set of hands, whatever did this to Kidenshi Inuzuka of Team Walnut may have become the village's problem quite soon and Mana needed all of her rather massive chakra signature as much in fighting shape as it could have been. Augmentations were dangerous, of all people, Mana should have known it the best. The girl cocked her head aside, letting her new and shiny hat tumble down her shoulder and arm before she flipped it in the air again and placed her hand inside it.</p><p>A bright, azure glow burst from the end of the hat while Mana tried her best to pull Usuzoku or one of her new rabbit partners who have come to trust her after all the magician has done for the species out of the top hat. Instead, pistachio-brown fluff appeared from the sealing dimension while a very slick shape of a female rabbit burst from the hat.</p><p>"Ummm… Okay…" Mana blinked a pair of times in confusion. "This has really never happened before but…"</p><p>The female rabbit leaped at Mana and wrapped her arms around the magician's neck with a surprising amount of force. For all the irrational paranoia Mana had about chakra augmentation, she was forced to do all she could to survive getting her neck snapped and her back broken by this passionate display of affection.</p><p>"Oh my god! It's Nakotsumi Mana-san! I have been your biggest fan for like WEEKS!" the rabbit yelled out. "I even signed up with Usuzoku-sensei to train with him so that I could one day meet you because he's kinda like… I dunno… It seems you two have like a thing going on, like a working relationship…"</p><p>The rabbit then pulled out a letter from the behind pocket of her jean-shorts and handed it to Mana. Hearing the nervous barking of the little Pomeranian that still clutched its Inuzuka partner in its fangs making the barking end up coming out in an oddly tuned combo of both growling and howling, the magician opened the letter for a quick skim.</p><p>"She's your problem now. Usuzoku…" Mana mumbled to herself while she skimmed over the much briefer than she thought letter.</p><p>"Name's Usubane, ma'am! Not gonna let ya down!" the rabbit went as far as to playfully salute Mana before returning to her silly but very energetic grin.</p><p>"Okay… So… This may have been unexpected to literally everyone but, to let it slip, I am going to need you to carry that young man to the Konohagakure Hospital." Mana tried taking it slow with the overly energetic rabbit. There was this odd thing that Usubane did where she banged her ears against one another making this oddly powerful thud come out, it must have been an alternative to tapping one's feet on the ground of nervousness.</p><p>"No problem! Will be done!" the rabbit saluted Mana again before dashing to the unconscious Inuzuka and outright peeling it away from the jaws of the properly pissed off Pomeranian before flipping it on her shoulders.</p><p>Given how Kidenshi's dog was not quite in a playful mood, it leaped at Usubane with a defensive bite. Must not have wanted this rabbit it just saw for the first time ever handling its partner but Usubane's feet moved lightning-fast. Mana's jaw dropped from both the insanity of the ongoing situation and the awesome physical prowess of Usubane's lower body.</p><p>The magician leaped after the rabbit, she was impressed. Mana had to intensify her Mystical Wings and not only use the full hand seal version of the jutsu but also the proper name-calling of the technique to perform it in a perfected enough state to catch up to the heaven-piercing arrow of the Pomeranian ball of fluff. She descended back on the rooftop shortly, only to see that both Kidenshi and Usubane were nowhere to be seen.</p><p>After a heavy sigh, Mana examined the canine fur-ball only to see that while it was certainly shaken by the sky-reaching experience, it was mostly devoid of any injuries except those it had already sustained in the battle that ended up incapacitating its partner.</p><p>"Mana-san! I am tremendously sorry!" Usubane bowed almost a full ninety degrees, dropping Kidenshi off her shoulder in the process which forced the rabbit to take a sick nosedive down and pick the falling Inuzuka back up before kicking her feet off the ground and leaping back to the roof Mana was on. "I just now realized I have never been in this Konohagakure Hospital and therefore do not know the directions, ma'am!"</p><p>"It's… Fine. I meant I will show you where it was." Mana rubbed her tired and still tremendously hurting temples. "I am well aware it is your first time inside Konoha."</p><p>"Oh, that is very fortunate, because otherwise, I'd have been unable to finish my task and ended up disappointing Mana-san and… Oh boy… I would not like that! Nope, not at all! I'd probably throw myself off a mountain if I ever disappointed Mana-san!" Usubane bowed probably a hundred more times in a flurry of bows while doing her best to keep the shaking and unconscious Inuzuka tightly on her shoulder.</p><p>It was fortunate that the young man remained unconscious after all that free-falling and shaking because explaining this entire shitshow to him would have cost a lot of time. Without bothering to do anything that would further postpone Kidenshi's treatment, Mana took off with the Inuzuka's Pomeranian still tightly in her clutch. She could feel Usubane following Mana and staying relatively close.</p><p>This teen rabbit was quite energetic and physically impressively built. Her previously displayed speed and strength as well as precision, which was unlike anything fighters of her age would have been capable of, were also quite impressive. It was not too difficult to see why Usuzoku would have taken up training this teen but also it was not entirely impossible to see why he got rid of her this way.</p><p>"You did not correct me," Mana yelled out so that Usubane who was staying neatly in line behind her would hear.</p><p>The two landed nearby the Konohagakure Hospital in mere moments and rushed into the building, giving the Pomeranian as well as the Inuzuka to whoever took them off their hands before the teen rabbit could even deal with the magician's question.</p><p>"Correct you on what, Mana-san?" she inquired.</p><p>"On this being your first time in Konoha. It is not." Mana turned at the rabbit while locking her own hands over her chest, mirroring the intensity of drilling that Seiga showed her this morning. The magician had the experience first-hand of how scary that was when performed by someone whom you were even remotely admiring.</p><p>"Oh… Well… I may have… Been here before… But how would you know, Mana-san!?" Usubane started getting all flustered.</p><p>"These clothes have been bought in our second-hand shops. I shop for clothes quite often and have a deal with one of the clothes stores for production of my uniforms that keep getting busted up onstage or completely torn in battle all the time." Mana put together.</p><p>"Well… I may have… Watched over you from afar a time or two…" Usubane dragged her foot across the floor.</p><p>"Impossible, I would have sensed you." Mana raised an eyebrow. The possibility of her being tracked from behind was not entirely out of the question as even sensors could get tracked by ninja that suppressed their chakra or otherwise utilized some of the weaknesses that the unpolished chakra sensory possessed but it would have been quite difficult and very unlikely.</p><p>"Maybe, but I was pretty far away. A couple of times I almost stepped into your range, just to flirt with the idea of Mana-san noticing me but… I stepped back at the last second! It was so intense, my heart was pounding so hard!" the rabbit kept rubbing her flustered cheeks that, had she not been softly furred, would have been blushing, without a ghost of a doubt.</p><p>"Ummm…" Mana tried coming up with a way to properly respond to that.</p><p>"Plus, I'm not sure if you would have even noticed me even if I stepped into your range. I mean I would have felt like just your average ninja inside a ninja village, nothing wrong with that, right? Nothing suspicious about little old me at all!" Usubane grinned from one ear to another. The intensity of her reactions appeared to match those of a baby.</p><p>"Not to mention how you were swooning all over Kouta-san in those moments, I don't think you'd have noticed an ivory-whale crashing from the stratosphere right behind you." The rabbit waved her hand while laughing to herself. "You make such an amazing couple though! I want you to know, Mana-san, if anyone ever looks at Kouta-san the wrong way, I'm always ready to rough them up!" the teen rabbit declared with flames erupting from her focused and passionate gaze, nearly covering her rock-hard fist which she raised up as a display of her devotion to this noble cause.</p><p>This was inevitably going to be one of those affairs…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0463"><h2>463. Pom-Poms and Chom-Choms</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So not that I wanna be that type 'a wanker but… What exactly is your business with this lad and why is there a rabbit in this ward?" Eiju wondered scratching his stubble. The time Mana had not seen the reformed Quack was quite kind on him, shaping the medical ninja into quite a handsome man devoid of any traces of the past vices that used to haunt him.</p><p>"Oh, it's because I'm a rabbit, isn't it?" Usubane locked her arms around her chest with a protesting glare and puffed cheeks. She looked almost offended by the fact that most medical ninja questioned her presence in the recovery room.</p><p>"No, it's because you're covered in fur which gathers all sorts of infectious filth…" Eiju snapped back before Usubane turned away and pointed vibrantly at the little furball racing from one side of the recovery room to the other and just barking out in the air.</p><p>"What's that then?" she asked.</p><p>"It's no secret that Inuzuka and their canines share a unique connection. If one of the pair is injured we usually allow the other one to be close because it aids the recovery process." Eiju replied without losing his cool. "Judging from the starry eyes, I have a feeling she's yours." The medical ninja turned to Mana.</p><p>"Does the presence of Bane-chan threaten somebody's well-being?" Mana asked with a tired tone of voice just to set things straight.</p><p>"Well, no. There are no procedures done in the recovery room that may cause an infection and we can filter out something as simple as natural infections, it's more of an ethics thing, really." Eiju massaged his own neck in submission. Almost like it took the reformed Quack up to now to realize he did not care all too much about trivial ethics and allowed something he brought up just in case to escalate because of the response of the teen rabbit.</p><p>"Bane-chan?! Mana-san shortened my name and gave me an honorific!" Usubane shrieked out. If her presence did not inconvenience the recovering people inside the recovery room, the noise coming from her sure would have.</p><p>The magician gave Usubane an angry glare and the rabbit did act meeker for a second or two but the excitement of working alongside Mana and getting her own personalized manner of referral from her idol was too much excitement to restrain just due to a simple glare of discomfort.</p><p>Eiju leaned in onto Mana's ear. "Can't you just de-summon her if the critter's givin' you problems?" he asked with his most genuine attempt to keep it hidden from the fluffy rabbit of titanic sized ears.</p><p>Usubane did glare at the two, she registered people speaking about something concerning her but she was not quite able to make out exact words, which robbed her of the chance to get outraged at it.</p><p>"Sorry, she was kicked through the seal in my new hat and I'm not sure I can send her back unless she herself decides to go back or gets injured badly." Mana shrugged. "We're not hitting that rabbit." She added after seeing a golden shimmer in her old friend's eyes.</p><p>"Well… Not that she's doin' much harm here. This place's is basically for people that just need to lie down a bit or a nice green glow for a moment to get back into it. Your friend here should be coming back to his senses any moment now." Eiju relented.</p><p>"Kidenshi-senpai is hardly my friend. I doubt he even knows my name." Mana replied without much emotion, just staring at the sleeping and dirtied face of her older colleague. "Although I am glad that he is well." She sighed in relief.</p><p>"So what's next, Mana-san!? We're waiting for the dog-guy to recover so he can tell us who kicked his ass and then we can save the world again, right!?" Usubane got energetic again. Her bunny hops caused loud thuds that while leaving no permanent damage to the rabbit's surroundings were quite irritating.</p><p>"Again?" Mana took a break from trying to stare a hole in the brain of Inuzuka Kidenshi, almost as if trying to hex him into waking up, to look at her rabbit friend in confusion.</p><p>"Well… You know… You did save the rabbits and lead us to a new home. May as well have saved my world and that of most other rabbits too!" Usubane replied with an amount of admiration in her eyes that seemed almost delusional.</p><p>The magician decided to not even argue about that. She would have fired off defenses against that unfounded praise for days and it would have gone nowhere with the amount of esteem that Mana had garnered in this young rabbit's eyes.</p><p>"When I saw you talking to Usujitsa like he was just your pal and actually talking him down, when I saw you walking in front of the entire herd, when I saw everything you did for Usuzoku-sensei… That was beyond amazing. I knew from the beginning I wanted to work with you, Mana-san." Usubane kept on cheering.</p><p>"You're lucky most 'a those blokes are out. They'd be laughin' pretty hard at this." Eiju sighed after resigning to a corner. He also appeared to have taken an interest in Kidenshi's case. Mana could not leave it alone.</p><p>"What exactly is your interest with Kidenshi-senpai?" Mana asked him directly. "Has this something to do with orders from above or…"</p><p>"Just hidin' from other, even more menial work, dear." Eiju shrugged his shoulders before placing his hands inside the pockets of his coat. "Funny things, these coats. Shouldn't have any pockets if ya asked me, all too easy to slip drugs and food pills in and out… Not that I'd do such a horrendous thing…" Eiju shook his hands with an apologetic smile.</p><p>"Now…" he added after a moment of silent self-reflection.</p><p>The group of bystanders inside the half-crowded recovery room all turned at the source of a cringing noise – a young Inuzuka boy who then ended up covering up his head due to the tremendous headache that followed shortly an awakening right after getting walloped out. Within moments of his awakening, the worried Pomeranian leaped right at the boy's face, while the intention of the noble canine was undoubtedly to emulate the human gesture of a hug, the result and how it appeared looked like something much cruder that dogs sometimes did.</p><p>Kidenshi's grunts got muzzled by the fur of his companion and his speech only became intelligible once the Inuzuka finally managed to tear the dog off his face. Shortly after being parted from Kidenshi's face, the canine leaped back onto the boy's shoulder and began scurrying all over the young man's body. It was an odd sight to see but the dog was remarkably skilled at moving around Kidenshi's body to the point where it appeared too fast and too skillful not to be related to how these two fought.</p><p>"Hello, Kidenshi-senpai. I'd like to know what happened to you." Mana said.</p><p>"Oh… Konoha's Sorceress? I guess you carried me here, huh? It may have been a bit of an overkill to bring me to the hospital for something trivial like an outcome of a brawl but I am grateful." Kidenshi grinned at Mana with a full mouth of sharp teeth, especially the fangs.</p><p>The Pomeranian on Kidenshi's shoulder growled at Usubane and then silently scowled at Mana. "Oh… I guess Pompomaru isn't too excited about you two. Was he a problem? He's an older dog so he has problems warming up to new people."</p><p>Kidenshi looked more cheerful than Mana recalled him being in the Academy. He smiled with a sense of genuine joy and warmth. While a young man like this looked capable of just as identically genuine rage in battle, Mana was pleasantly surprised by the warmth displayed by her older colleague. Maybe it was just a rank thing… Mana often forgot she was a chuunin already.</p><p>"To answer your question, we were working on our mission record. It was supposed to be a simple C-Rank mission but it got complicated, as it usually does…" Kidenshi sighed as his face was quick to change from excitement and warm joy into disappointment. Mana was a bit entertained to hear that her bad luck in the field was to a point shared alongside more ninja and that she was not alone in the experience of things escalating out of control.</p><p>"Is the mission confidential information?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"It's a C-Rank mission, obviously not. We were out to dispose of those weird pumpkin lanterns that began popping up each morning. Apparently, the villagers were getting freaked out by those things, namely by how they're normal lanterns that smell of pumpkins." Kidenshi was getting a bit off-track there.</p><p>"So you ran into whoever was placing those lanterns?" Mana tried to fix that.</p><p>"Well… Yeah. In case you're not aware, my smell is kinda awesome so I figured that I and Pompomaru could do something more than just destroy the lanterns that were placed. We could find whoever's messing around with them and kick their ass!" Kidenshi snickered as if having realized that his idea was a bit naïve but very well-intentioned. It was not unlike younger or lesser-ranked ninja to attempt and go above and beyond their objective to impress someone.</p><p>"Why weren't your mates with you?" Eiju asked, he barely looked into the conversation but since his current mood was avoiding as much work as he could reasonably get away with, adding on to the dialogue surely beat working.</p><p>"Well… I'm not sure if you know but… Our team does not quite get along…" Kidenshi snickered again. His ability to break into restrained but genuine fits of laughter reminded Mana of a certain red-headed blacksmith. "I'm sure Kiyomi could testify if she was here."</p><p>"Kiyomi? Why would she testify such a thing?" Mana raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I mean… We had a fight in the Forest of Death once. You weren't there, I think, but we only lost it cause Chominu rushed in all by himself and didn't wait for us." Kidenshi shrugged making a slightly apologetic face.</p><p>"I see…" Mana pouted her lips and looked away in a bit of embarrassment. There was an awkward episode where she was knocked out by one of the competitors encasing her in chakra crystal. It must have been at some point in between that and the magician's awakening and reconnection with the team. It was not that pleasant of a thing to remember. Nobody liked times they were beaten and rendered a burden on their team because of it.</p><p>"Well… If you're on a mission, I should probably let your mates know about you getting decked in the face pretty badly. What are their names?" Eiju wondered.</p><p>"Akimichi Chominu and Lithia Uchiha." Kidenshi sighed. "Lithia's bitching will be a pain to sit through…" the young Inuzuka thought out loud before snickering again and displaying his unique Inuzuka trait of quite prominent fangs alongside his set of teeth.</p><p>"Hmph. Some lanterns and hooligans placing them are beneath Mana-san!" Usubane wrapped her hands around her chest in dismissal.</p><p>"It wasn't like I asked you guys for help, or anything." Kidenshi shrugged, giving the duo of a rabbit and her summoner and indifferent glare. "You're not really a part of this mission so you may as well do whatever the hell you want, you do have my thanks though."</p><p>"Lanterns… So odd…" Mana couldn't resist cracking a grin to herself. "The fact that they have a specific smell as well…"</p><p>"Yep. My smell, as well as that of Pompomaru, is pretty sharp and it really reeked badly of pumpkins. A pungent and very prominent aroma to say the least." Kidenshi sighed. "Distracted me a fair bit too, not that one against two were fair odds…"</p><p>"There were two of these hooligans?" Mana raised an eyebrow. "Were they ninja?"</p><p>"Tough to say…" Kidenshi sighed. "Everybody fights like one these days: samurai, rogues, pirates, martial artists, monks… You'd think having a dog running around your body and tackle things would be the peak of weirdness in the specter but it ain't even close. The green-haired chick did use leaves to attack me though."</p><p>"Leaves? That's a technique of a Konoha ninja for sure. One that plenty of specialized ninja use, from the Barrier Corps to the Intelligence Division." Mana realized that there may have been an interesting case in this story for her. Something so distinctively odd that it intrigued her to no end, it was a new sensation, never before has Mana been gripped by a mystery like this that it overrode all her other instincts.</p><p>Even working alongside an Uchiha comrade of her slightly older colleague, something that felt like an extremely awkward possibility in the horizon if she was to take up this chance to delve deeper, no longer felt like a deal breaker. Truth be told, after this whole nasty story with the Uchiha and the Yamanaka, the magician wanted to have as little as possible with either side, especially after taking a side made her own relationship with the village deteriorate.</p><p>Not a couple of minutes after Eiju left to send the hawks messaging Kidenshi's team about what had happened to him, the Inuzuka sat up and looked like he was about to go. Before Mana could object, Usubane stepped in between the two and spread her hands out wide. The corners of Mana's lips turned upward while her glare given to the rabbit softened.</p><p>"You should really wait for your own team before leaving. You have an excuse to do nothing so I have no idea why you'd be doing something." Usubane objected. Mana smacked her head with a smile before meeting Kidenshi's questioning gaze.</p><p>"I must admit I agree with Bane-chan. You have lost to the enemy already, be it that you were caught unaware by their strength or not. It is for the best if we regroup with Chominu-senpai and Lithia-senpai." Mana closed her eyes. Her head shook softly to emphasize her objection to Kidenshi just running off right after returning to his senses.</p><p>"You just say that because you've not met them…" Kidenshi smiled with a full showcase of his dentures once more. "But whatever, you're a chuunin so I'm pretty sure you outrank me anyway."</p><p>Pompomaru barked a pair of times. This was one of those few cases where the noises that left the throat of the canine were not filled with growls and threats. Perhaps it was a sign of approval from the dog's part too.</p><p>"This would be especially wise if the enemy actually is a rogue village specialist ninja. Even with me assisting you, I am not sure we'd be able to defeat someone like that," Mana said.</p><p>"I never took you for the type that runs away from a tough fight." Kidenshi joked. He may not have realized it now but this teasing observation stung the magician deeper than it was his intention to drive this dagger. "I mean you took on one of those Team Phobos freaks in the Chuunin Exams. This rabbit also is not the one you used before. Even after the exams, you seem to be soaring above us at an unbelievable pace."</p><p>Mana turned away to hide her blush at being complimented. It has been a while since she's been praised without a weakness or shortcoming of hers being pointed out right after. She wanted to mention something about being taught a lesson in just how weighty power was in an argument before Usubane butt in with a cheery observation of her own.</p><p>"Usuzoku-sensei outranks me actually. He sent me to Mana-san after she's called out to us as a test of my abilities. I will not disappoint Mana-san!" Burning hearts seemed to shape from the irises of the teen rabbit while she raised her fist as well as her fluffy ears in the air swinging them about in a combination of thrusts.</p><hr/><p>A good fifteen minutes later a pair walked into the recovery room – an Akimichi with the signature massive frame that the ninja of that clan all had and used in battle and a much more petite, dark-haired Uchiha girl dressed in Lolita clothes.</p><p>"Look alive, peasants. We're burning daylight with how badly you've been screwing this mission up so far," The girl was quick to speak up.</p><p>"Wow, she just went out and said it there…" Chominu scratched his chubby cheek, his fingernails moved through the boy's face like through a marshmallow. "Called us literal peasants."</p><p>"Hey, Lithia, I kinda got myself beaten up but I got us a little helper." Kidenshi snickered in his own signature manner to which Mana was just about used to by now, as well as the nostalgic reminders of the parallels his gestures mimicked.</p><p>"Yes, well… I do thank you for your trouble picking up after these losers but now that I have decided to involve myself in this matter, we will be quite fine." Lithia objected looking at Mana with a rather dismissive albeit not hateful glare. It may have just been that this curious soul was too indifferent to the magician's presence to dislike her and if there was one emotion Mana hated being directed her way, as an entertainer, it was indifference.</p><p>"I'll have you know this is Mana-san you're talking to!" Usubane stepped in to defend Mana's position where it was entirely unnecessary to do so. The rabbit even went as far as to charge at the dainty Uchiha girl. Chominu stepped in with his hands raised up in a very sturdy looking block to protect his teammate. Usubane's attack was mighty enough to make Chominu flinch and for his face to get serious for a moment but it was still playful and therefore stopped in its entirety.</p><p>"Out of my way, you lumbering idiot, you're obstructing my view." Lithia yawned to which Chominu just stepped aside. He did not look all too pleased about being bossed around but he was not the type to have the words to talk back at the girl and put her to her place.</p><p>Still, as troublesome as the prospect of working alongside this little she-devil was, the intrigue of the mystery of the pumpkin lanterns and rogue specialist ninja was too spicy to overlook.</p><p>"Very well then," Lithia appeared to relent to an argument that never existed. It appeared like a peek of an obsession to always have the last word in every conversation, even those where she decided over nothing. "I shall pay for your services, Konoha's Sorceress, if you show these incompetent chowder heads how to complete a mission like this."</p><p>"Pay me?" Mana blinked rapidly a pair of times.</p><p>"Of course, you are an entertainer, after all. More than even the common folk your services can be bought and sold, to be entirely honest, I've been sitting on a thought to one day bargain for your services." The little angel on the inside, fostering a goblin on the inside, smiled with a dismissive hand gesture.</p><p>Mana left the recovery room with her fists clenched tightly and her teeth grinding, thoughts of pumpkin lanterns floating around her head as a pleasant distraction from the violent thoughts she was fostering at the moment.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0464"><h2>464. Hail To The Pumpkin Song</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was stunning to see Kidenshi on his feet and back to the mission after such a brief recovery. Naturally, some of it could have been attributed to the superhuman ninja metabolism but some of it had to be more of an individual trait of the young Inuzuka shinobi. Some were quicker to get back on their feet and brush off injuries than others and Kidenshi certainly was like a bar of iron.</p><p>"So do we just follow the scent of pumpkins again?" Kidenshi wondered, giving Mana an off-handed look. Given how the magician was the highest ranking ninja amongst the quartet, the Inuzuka expected her to make the calls.</p><p>"That did not work all that well last time." Chominu's eyes turned sad. The Akimichi's face was a curious baggage. His eyes seemed forever closed or just squinted that intensely and the only way to understand what he was thinking was to observe his facial cues or to follow the Akimichi's tone.</p><p>"It's because somebody can't pull their own weight." Kidenshi crossed his arms over his chest, looking at Lithia with a sarcastic glare that was meant to skewer his cocky teammate with ridicule.</p><p>"Ugh… It's not my fault I'm not a darned glutton that can smell a pumpkin from a mile away or some mutt-person." Lithia snapped back. Given her highly confrontational and bragging personality, it may not have been a good idea to instigate a conflict with her like Kidenshi did.</p><p>"The funny thing is pumpkins aren't even that yummy…" Chominu smacked his belly, letting his tongue flop out from his mouth. It was tough to say if he was imagining gorging on a large squash or reacting in distaste for the particular member of the fruit species.</p><p>"I must admit I would be inclined to agree with Lithia-senpai." Mana closed her eyes. The admittance did not come easy. "I myself cannot smell and we absolutely cannot afford to split to chase of scents. None of us is strong enough to defeat the enemy if we run into them."</p><p>"I dunno, splitting apart and putting work in seemed to work out so far…" Kidenshi leaned back on his arms with his lips pouting. He did not agree with Mana, clearly, but he was willing to listen to her suggestion, provided she gave him one.</p><p>"I believe a much more productive way to approach this mission would be to find your team leader and ask for their help. If the enemy truly is a rogue specialist ninja with an unclear objective, we will need a help of a jounin to take them down." Mana voiced the reason for her worst worries.</p><p>"Heh, too bad, Yumari-sensei is away on a mission with the other jounin." Kidenshi snickered. This time, however, it was more of a laugh that acknowledged a problem and the hopelessness of his situation rather than one of amusement.</p><p>"If more than one jounin are involved, I take it the mission is important." Mana sighed.</p><p>"Yeah, they're escorting a party of Allied Ninja into our village." Chominu nodded.</p><p>This was troublesome. There would be no way that any number of ninja in charge of escorting a member of a supranational organization of ninja that did not acknowledge village walls or country borders in their missions. While the fact that a party of Allied Ninja was heading to Konoha for a mission deserved a conversation all by itself, it was not a worry for the current moment.</p><p>"What about Lady Fifth?" Chominu wondered. "She's a sturdy and strong lady, she could handle a rogue specialist without a doubt!" the gentle giant declared uppercutting the air in excitement as he spoke.</p><p>"She's retired, you blunderbuss. At her age, can you blame the woman?" Lithia shrugged in a very smug and mocking manner that irritated Mana but, somehow, the magician managed to swallow it down.</p><p>"She is also away from the village by now." The magician added.</p><p>"Whatever, I don't like the idea of looking to someone else for help anyway." Kidenshi let out a half-tamed growl. "We somehow got through everything we've encountered split apart so that we don't get in each other's way, now we're together, that should be all the muscle we need."</p><p>What naivety from someone older than Mana! The magician sighed recalling moments in her own life when similar thoughts had visited her own mind and the bitterness of regret when it all got toppled and blown away by the wind. The foolish thought that maybe all of the Ninja Rabbits could take on Yamata no Orochi, that all of the party looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss could together finish off Akimichi Francho…</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana-san. I will be supporting you all the way!" Usubane cheered on Mana from behind.</p><p>"Oh, you're still here… I had thought you'd puff away when you're not needed like good minions do." Lithia threw an off-handed remark pissing the rabbit off even more than she had already managed to. This time, however, just barely, a warning look at the rabbit from Mana managed to keep her at bay from lashing out.</p><p>"In any case, I would suggest thoroughly inspecting the district you found the lantern in before you got attacked." Mana quickly changed the subject. "Perhaps we can find more clues about the nature of these lanterns and why would a rogue specialist ninja engage in a measly act of olfactory hooliganism."</p><p>"To assume it is a specialist ninja that placed those abhorrent lanterns is a leap at best." Lithia objected. "It must be a silly Academy Student that got a lucky jump on my simple-minded teammate."</p><p>"An Academy Student, you say!?" Kidenshi began rolling his sleeves back and was in mid-charge at his teammate before Usubane's ears wrapped around his body and pressed him closer to the rabbit. Mana observed in curiosity how the teen rabbit used her strong ears as an extra pair of arms, wide and powerful enough to restrain a C-Rank ninja all by themselves through nothing else but physical effort.</p><p>"Kidenshi-senpai described a jutsu that defeated him. It sounded suspiciously similar to Ninja Art: Leaf Blade – a jutsu that plenty of ninja employed by the village in specialist positions would know." Mana explained with the bitterness of having to argue with the extremely toxic member of the team persisting in her tone.</p><p>"Yeah, I thought that jutsu was sort of lame, at first. Then it hit me as bad as a bunch of sharpened blades stabbing at me would and completely made me lose focus, then, I thought it was pretty cool." Kidenshi explained in more detail with a massive grin on his face all throughout.</p><p>"Oh, I was not aware we have come to this conclusion, I tend to ignore everything these two say." Lithia shrugged with not only a surprising amount of self-awareness to the problematic teamwork of this team but also an even more shocking admittance of her own flaw. This came so shocking to the magician that the girl looked at the Uchiha with surprise for a good couple of seconds but due to the utter indifference of the little Lolita girl, it did not look like she had noticed.</p><p>"Well then, to the north-eastern Administration district!" Kidenshi raised his fist in the sky before letting his finger point at the direction of the district he was found knocked out in. The way he emoted seemed so overblown but he did manage to make Mana smirk for a bit with his silliness, which did not come often these days.</p><p>All four of the Konoha ninja and a ninja rabbit following them around blurred in an instant, moving to the higher levels so that they could move at high speeds without disrupting the harmony of day-to-day life below. That was usually what the rooftops and wires connecting them were used for anyway.</p><p>Mana arrived first to a nearby rooftop to the alleyway where Kidenshi was found knocked out in. It was not exactly that her speed was the greatest between all of the Konoha ninja in this mission, it was merely that her control was precise enough to approach the speed limit no ninja crossed inside the village closest to the edge, which let her beat her temporary companions to the location.</p><p>The rest arrived just seconds later: Usubane first and not far behind Mana, then Kidenshi and Chominu. Behind them, looking almost completely uninterested in any of the proceedings or giving any effort on her part – Lithia Uchiha. The girl was moving so slowly, in fact, that Pompomaru started barking at her right after she appeared a good twenty seconds later than Mana did. It was an entire eternity in the timing of ninja speed.</p><p>"Calm down, Pompomaru, we weren't in a rush." Kidenshi tried to calm his partner down.</p><p>"I was merely saving myself the effort by moving in the slipstream of Chominu's massive frame," Lithia replied to the dog. It was unclear if the canine could understand her as it just barked back at her once before moving on to sniffing the air.</p><p>"Mmmm…" Chominu hummed into the air letting his teammate's words slip right over his head. "I can smell the pumpkins already…"</p><p>"Yeah…" Kidenshi nodded with a serious face. "They're all over the place. I can't even pinpoint them like this. It's just a ring of pumpkin scent all over the area."</p><p>Mana could not smell the faintest whiff of it but it was to no surprise after she parted with the sense of smell to improve and focus her chakra sensory abilities in a pinch. The magician closed her eyes and focused on her chakra sensory, trying to see if there was perhaps more to these lanterns than just an olfactory prank and light pollution. If they had a trace of chakra to them, perhaps she would have more luck pinpointing the lanterns.</p><p>There was nothing. Either the lanterns were not emitting any sort of chakra signals, weren't at all chakra-based in nature and origin or their signals were merely too faint for Mana's abilities to pick up.</p><p>"Let's see…" Lithia smugly yawned. Once her eyes opened, they were flaring red, it was the legendary Sharingan of the Uchiha. The accursed eyes that gave them their honored status among other ninja and upon which their reputation as the elite ninja clan was built on.</p><p>"There. There and there… Quite a lot of them, in fact…" the girl pointed at some of the lanterns as her eyes appeared to pick up on the sensory output that each individual lantern put out. "If these lanterns are troubling the peasant civilians, I wonder why they do nothing about removing them themselves…"</p><p>"Showoff…" Usubane showed her tongue to the Uchiha.</p><p>"This is impressive," Mana admitted. "How exactly are you picking them up? Can your eyes pick up on their chakra signatures?"</p><p>"In plenty of ways, Konoha's Sorceress, I would see their chakra, given they put out a strong enough signature. In this case, I merely precisely read the illumination they put out, read the patterns of their light." Lithia explained, feeling honored that she finally was justified in her self-praising efforts as she was actually complimented and inquired about her abilities.</p><p>This was amazing! Mana felt completely overshadowed by the immense precision of focus of the Sharingan. Here she thought that she was quite adept at perception and following patterns when, in fact, she was rendered completely helpless in the greater shade of even a single, inexperienced user of the Copy Wheel Eye.</p><p>For someone to merely glance at an evening gloom and tell where exactly the small needles of light are coming from, let alone filter them from a wide array of other light sources… It was mind-boggling, to say the least, and Lithia performed it with such ease as if mocking the task in its face.</p><p>"Alright, let's get to it, then." Kidenshi smacked his fist into his palm before preparing to attack the lanterns as if they were a clueless enemy while he was a wolf prowling from a good vantage point, looking to sink its fangs into the neck of his prey.</p><p>"Not so fast." Mana stopped the young man. "Lithia-senpai did raise an interesting point."</p><p>"Of course, I did." Lithia shrugged, utterly full of herself.</p><p>"Of course she did…" Kidenshi dragged his lower lip down while he squinted at Mana as if trying to teach the magician to stop encouraging the self-righteous and arrogant ways of his insufferable teammate.</p><p>"Why did the civilians not merely discard those lanterns by themselves?" Mana wondered. The lantern that her eyes were resting on was placed in a very accessible location and very much within reach even to a child's arms. "That means they must have some sort of defense mechanism that prevents such an outcome, one that is not powerful enough to raise too much noise and injure the target too badly but one more potent than their, apparently, stinging odor."</p><p>"Come on," Kidenshi complained, followed by Pompomaru's angry bark. "They're just stupid prank-lanterns. They would be flaring up with chakra if something like that was sealed inside them. You're a sensor and you weren't even able to pick up on them, neither was Lithia's all-so-impressive Sharingan."</p><p>Mana bit her finger. Kidenshi had a point. She was just completely dazzled by the amazing power of the Sharingan and to imply that whatever these lanterns were doing was strong enough to fool it was perhaps a bit of an unbelievable leap.</p><p>"I say we let the brawnheads try. What's the worst that can happen?" Lithia suggested with a sly look aimed at Mana.</p><p>"They could encounter a frightening barrier that dissolves their limbs on a molecular level or trigger an explosion that kills them?" Mana suggested some of the more commonly known trap seals.</p><p>"Exactly, nothing bothering us…" Lithia showed Kidenshi her mocking grin. "Please, go ahead, peasant, taste our food."</p><p>Kidenshi just flipped Lithia a very bad finger before taking off. He looked a bit warier after Mana's warning but he was moving with purpose. With enough awareness and wind in his steps, a notable ninja may have been able to outrace an explosion after it was triggered but before it hurt them. Still, they needed to, at the very least, know it was coming to do so.</p><p>The moment Kidenshi approached the lantern and quickly swiped his arm to remove it from its current location atop of a white fence, the ground rumbled for a moment forcing Mana's entire body to stiffen and burn up with adrenaline. She was wary of just such an eventuality and here it was, justifying her fears. It was much worse to have been fearing in vain than for one's fears to be justified.</p><p>Vines as thick as roots of a large tree erupted from underground, reaching out to attack Kidenshi and lock him down. Mana sensed a notable dip in Kidenshi's chakra. So that was why she could not sense any signature from the lanterns themselves – they were made to use the chakra of those that touched them to create their deathtrap.</p><p>Without a doubt, the chakra required for such a function to be embedded into the pumpkin lanterns was hidden away, based on a different frequency perhaps, one that neither Mana nor Lithia could pick up on without being aware of another frequency of chakra signals being in play. The magician knew that if she stopped worrying over Kidenshi and Pompomaru and just attempted to check various different specters of frequencies for chakra signature signals – she would find it.</p><p>The vines wrapped around Kidenshi's body and began trying to break it in numerous ways. Some of the vines pulled on the boy's limbs, trying to pull them apart violently, some of them wrapped around Kidenshi's throat to silence him as well as completely crush his airway potentially strangling him while others just pressed really hard at random locations of his body with the attempt to squeeze his innards out.</p><p>Pompomaru barked like mad while he turned to a buzzing sphere of fur – a quite literal furball. The canine then blitzed about, severing the vines using flashes of his teeth as well as the chakra channeled into each one of the hairs on his fur to shred through the vines. It was a valiant effort but the number of vines that Pompomaru destroyed was nowhere near enough to overcome the reactive trap that kept on draining Kidenshi's chakra and killing him.</p><p>Mana leaped into the boy's aid. A couple of handful of steel-tipped cards in well-placed locations managed to loosen and sever enough vines for Kidenshi to escape himself and begin putting in some distance between the lantern and himself.</p><p>"Damn… These weren't doing this the last time…" He huffed. The Inuzuka was struggling to breathe as well as had a sizeable chunk of his chakra just taken from him.</p><p>"They must have been remotely activated since they were placed. If these are seals that function as traps, it makes sense that they would not be active the whole time." Mana replied. These were still just speculations about how these lanterns worked. It was only now that the magician could see the object of her interest from close enough distance to see its finer details but from a safe one as well.</p><p>It was a mahogany colored, gothic-looking shape of an actual lantern with a lone candle slowly rustling inside that turned into a contained firestorm the moment that Kidenshi triggered its defensive mechanisms. While Mana could not tell it herself, she could reasonably put it together that they must have also reeked of pumpkins. Kidenshi's face was quite twisted by the smell, although, in his case, it was tough to say if it was the damage he had suffered after triggering the trap or the resonant smell in the air that bothered the Inuzuka.</p><p>"We need to destroy it from afar, without entering its range." Usubane looked at the two genin still perched on the rooftop and breathing easier now that their teammate was safe.</p><p>Chominu took a wild leap down and placed his hands on the ground the moment that he landed.</p><p>"Earth Style: Practice Brick Jutsu!" the genin yelled out erecting a sturdy wall of dirt right in front of him. With an awesome roar of power that followed a mighty smack, the Akimichi sent the erected wall flying at the lantern. Upon impact, the wall crumbled into smaller chunks of rock and dirt they managed to either miss the nearby houses or just harmlessly smack into their walls and roofs in the shape of lifeless mud with no trace of chakra left inside them.</p><p>The lantern was destroyed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0465"><h2>465. The Talent Of Perception</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Well, that did not take much at all…" Lithia smiled with self-righteous satisfaction looking at the petty remains of the mahogany lantern.</p><p>"Except for the fact we have like a bajillion of these left to smash." Kidenshi massaged his hurting throat. Pompomaru hopped around the Inuzuka before crawling up the boy's body and scurrying all over it in worry. Wherever he deemed it necessary, the little furball settled for licking a couple of nasty looking bruises.</p><p>"That is not a real number," Mana replied with an attempt to snuff out any unnecessary and counter-productive arguments while she was trying to figure out a more efficient way to deal with the task.</p><p>In a way, Kidenshi was right. There were far too many of these lanterns left for Chominu to commit his own casual hooliganism in throwing walls of dirt about and disgracing the neighborhood. While the chakra signature of the chubby giant was sizeable, it was not quite "smash a bajillion lanterns the same way" large.</p><p>"That was quite frightening." Usubane quivered. The rabbit had her long and thick ears wrapped around her short body like she was trying to give herself a hug. "It was like the forest came alive in the middle of a human village."</p><p>"You think that was bad?" Kidenshi looked at Bane, he tried to find the willpower to grin or snicker but could not find any. "It felt like I was causing all that. My own strength was getting taken while these vines and roots formed…"</p><p>Mana knew that feeling all too well. The feeling of self-blame and pity. The feeling of being all to blame for everything bad happening to oneself and everyone around you. It was not a feeling she expected to find in one so cheerful as Kidenshi but… Perhaps it was an inevitable outcome of doing this job right.</p><p>"If you need to blame someone, blame me. I was the one who showed you how to do this job right, which led you to this outcome and feeling the way you feel." Mana replied with a soft tone. She approached Kidenshi with a slow and genuine attempt to pat his shoulder. Judging from the enlarged eyes of Kidenshi and the tamed, hanging ears of Pompomaru, the two shared some appreciation for the gesture.</p><p>Lithia glared at the scene of affection with enough decency to not speak up anything infuriating about it. Her stare was not in any way different from the way she usually looked at the things she mocked but this time she kept the mockery to herself and that was perhaps the most anyone could have asked of her.</p><p>"So… How do we smash all the other lanterns?" Chominu scratched his head with a confused expression.</p><p>"They did not appear to be very durable." Mana sighed. "Most of my ninjutsu arsenal should just barely be enough to destroy them in mid to long range, outside the effective range of where they can activate."</p><p>"I shall lend you a hand." Lithia smiled. "May as well show you, peasants, how to do something right."</p><p>"That is a great idea. With Lithia's Sharingan being able to track each individual lantern from long distance, we should be able to take a large number of them out in no time at all." The magician nodded.</p><p>"I wanna help too!" Usubane complained, dragging her ears down with her arms.</p><p>"Do you have any mid to long range techniques?" Mana asked. This was a fine way to know the rabbit's abilities a bit better as well as settle on a plan of action.</p><p>"Well… No… But…" Usubane objected before getting all flustered and turning away.</p><p>"In that case, you will be of most help if you do not fall for the trap seals and allow us to pick the lanterns off one by one," Mana answered. This answer clearly irritated the teen rabbit as she took a moment to walk further away from the group while rubbing her fluffy ears over her cheeks in frustration. For a moment there, Mana felt bad about shutting a genuinely kind-hearted intention to help this way but, before she could attempt to rectify the situation, Team Walnut started moving.</p><p>With a heavy sigh and her best attempts at convincing herself, that she would make it up for the rabbit after this whole thing is over with, Mana followed the team to the rooftops. She could feel Usubane slowly moving after them as well, while the rabbit's spirit was crushed by being useless in the current situation, she did not get lost and at the very least did not lose the hope of becoming useful in the nearest future.</p><p>"There you are!" Lithia yelled out, she charged up in the air with an acrobatic vault while her hands worked on the hand seals. The girl's chest inflated signaling that she breathed in a large amount of air before blowing it all out in the shape of a fractured barrage of flame projectiles that homed in on the general direction of the lanterns she saw.</p><p>"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" the girl shouted out.</p><p>The projectiles of flames rained down upon the neighborhood. Where they could have very easily turned it into a raging inferno of flames, they merely destroyed their intended targets burning them up to a crisp. It appeared that with the lanterns functioning at a different chakra signaling frequency, they lost a significant amount of protection and durability that being imbued with chakra would have provided against attacks of the normal chakra frequency.</p><p>Mana worked through her own set of hand seals while sparks of lightning crackled up and down her body. For the first time since long ago, she found herself without an Audra wand to help channel her techniques quicker and cast them with just a point of it. The feeling both made Mana's heart feel squeezed by nostalgic memories but also made it feel a bit empty inside.</p><p>Perhaps it was that same feeling that impacted Mana's ability to aim, as the Magic Spark Barrage technique that she used missed most of the lanterns she intended to hit with the attack and harmlessly dissolved into little shocks of lightning upon hitting their mark. At least the lower ranking techniques were relatively weak and harmless when they were not intended to leave wide-reaching destruction.</p><p>Lithia stopped to laugh at Mana's display. Only this girl would have stopped in the middle of a remarkably successful show of precision and skill to mock someone helping her. Well… It was not like Mana did not feel like she did not deserve being poked fun at after hitting maybe just three or four lanterns out of the dozens she intended to wreck. Her barrage of attacks was numerous but not very accurate.</p><p>"Watch your chakra," Mana warned the Uchiha who was having a time of her life. "I sense a significant dip in your stamina after that last display."</p><p>Perhaps it was due to the girl keeping up her Sharingan open at full potency for a prolonged period of time that her chakra had taken such a notable dip? If Mana ever got absolutely sick of this girl, it was useful to note that she was quick to run out of juice. Even if thoughts like this were merely for the sake of entertainment and mending the bleeding wounds of the social image and not an actual plan for the magician.</p><p>"Watch your aim." Lithia snapped back at the magician. While her fit of laughter eased up and faded away, her mocking smirk did not.</p><p>"Watch your back." A thundering voice mocked the Uchiha while a lumbering shadow flashed from behind her. A strong blow aimed somewhere at the center of the girl's back flew right at the Uchiha who bent and twisted her body around in a way Mana had not seen before, wrapping her legs around the extended arm of the assailant in an attempt to shift the situation from a surprise attack into an arm hold.</p><p>With a strong yank and lack of resistance to the brute force of the attacker, the Uchiha girl was shaken off of the hold. Finally, the image of their attacker came to light. It was a tall and well-built man with a rough stubble and long, wild brown hair and rougher facial features. Unlike what Mana had feared, he did not appear to don the signature flak jacket of Konoha or even the body armor of the ANBU. He wore what appeared to be weaved together from tree bark, leaves, and other natural material.</p><p>"That was an amazing reaction time." Mana commended her temporary teammate.</p><p>"My Sharingan reacted before my better judgment did." The girl replied with great pride in her set of eyes that may have saved her from an even greater loss of chakra trying to soften the impact with surprise chakra augmentation or a permanent paralysis of having her spine smashed into bits with a single blow.</p><p>Mana's eyes wandered away for a moment, a sign of some unknown but remarkable chakra signature flaring up in between them and the rest of the team that was following not too far back. The magician did not notice how far they've split apart from one another, could have been a handful of blocks, she was, at some point, getting desperate with her lack of success hitting the target.</p><p>"I agree, we need to join in with those losers. Useless as they are, they are my assets and they do a whole lot of dirty work for me. I shall not allow that secondary attacker to take them away." Lithia noticed Mana's reaction to another chakra signature rearing its head. "You or me?"</p><p>Mana's hands moved before she would reply. Of course, it would be Mana, she may not have had those godly eyes residing in her or had the genetic excellence for this spanning dozens of generations like most Uchiha did, but she at the very least had, at some point in the past, polished her hand seal speed to near perfection.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Skewer!" Mana yelled out as the crackles of lightning expelled into the outside in the shape of joined streams that then formed five rod shapes that all flew right at their sizeable opponent. The man just swatted the lightning rods aside as if they were annoying insects. By the time the distraction concluded, in just a fraction of a second that he let his eyes blink from the light of lightning rods coming at him and the discomfort and smacking them aside, Mana and Lithia were already gone from the rooftop they were just on.</p><p>With Mana's distraction having successfully done its job, both girls timed their leaps of faith down to the ground alleyway level and then separated into blurry flashes that used the shadows of the more hidden away corridors of the village to hide away from their attacker more efficiently. If the lumbering assailant was to give chase, he'd only manage to chase one of them meaning one of them would be forced to improvise their short trek back while the other would regroup without a hitch.</p><p>Lithia had her Sharingan still shimmering its blood-red glow. She could have reacted and avoided any incoming attacks even if they come from a blindingly fast opponent with the speed and grace that appeared as if the Lolita girl was seeing the future. Mana, on the other hand, had her own ways of avoiding being hit so no matter which one that giant gave chase to, he would more likely than not fail to kill either.</p><p>Mana's feet landed firmly on the corner of the alleyway where Chominu and Kidenshi were struggling against the enemy, or rather, should have been struggling. Chominu, Kidenshi and Pompomaru and Usubane just stood there in front of a curious looking woman who was smiling to all of those that gathered there to regroup.</p><p>Lithia appeared beside Mana and the rest of the group not too long after, both girls shared a stare that tried to size each other up and see which one of them was given chase to but it appeared that neither one of them was. With a blinding flash, just like before, the towering man appeared atop of a water tower. He was quite proud of himself as a half-smirk did not leave his face.</p><p>Mana chose to instead focus on the woman that she had not seen before, a short thing of blond, shoulder-long hair, a fishnet top and a camouflage cloak with a hood on top that reminded of a ghillie suit more than a piece of clothing. The woman laughed out and slapped her hands together. A shroud of blackness enveloped Mana forcing her to cover herself up and prepare to use her illusions to escape whatever lethal plan this woman intended to enact.</p><p>Apart from complete darkness all around, save from the quite prominent shapes of Team Walnut and her other companions as well as the enemy, Mana did not feel anything at all. Just what kind of a jutsu was this?</p><p>Regardless of the answer, this seal of total darkness was the plan of these two all along, the attack of the man was a ploy. That was why he did not work too hard on giving chase – he wanted to lead the two girls back to the rest so that this woman could enclose them in whatever this black shroud was. This was pretty horrible, these two were not only likely stronger and faster than all of them combined, they were also in complete strategic and battlefield control of the situation. Mana needed to get them talking, bargain for time to think this through.</p><p>"I see… So this closed flower you have created was your plan all along?" Lithia replied shortly before closing her eyes. When they opened back up, Mana noticed the absence of the red shine in her eyes. The Uchiha had closed her Sharingan to give her eyes a brief rest before the battle when they would be needed again.</p><p>"Indeed, how else would we avoid unpleasant distractions? We are acting in a middle of a village after all…" the woman smiled. There were some warmth and kindness in her smile. Looking at her almost motherly face it was tough to say that someone like her could have been wicked.</p><p>"Your plan has one stupid flaw, lady, nobody will miss a giant flower rising up in the middle of the village. Konoha will be all over this!" Kidenshi took a bold step forward. It was a rebellious and desperate gesture at best.</p><p>"All over what?" the woman leaned her head to the side in bemusement.</p><p>"Look, kid. Don't use the word "Konoha", it's really confusing given the context…" the lumbering man spoke up at last.</p><p>"What context?" Kidenshi squinted his eyes. He had clearly expected a better answer than the enemies who have had their team in their hands this entire time getting flustered over a simple observation.</p><p>"It does not matter, just don't say that word." The large man yelled back at the Inuzuka in frustration. The word appeared to have some sort of meaning that flew entirely over Mana's head.</p><p>"In any case, nobody will notice it because this space is in a whole another dimension. The flower we are residing in stores its pollen in a different dimension and transfers it all by itself through interdimensional tunneling. I have managed to close us into that very same dimension. While back in the alleyway we were in the flower appears barely the size of a human, in here the space appears as large as an inside of a mansion." The woman explained. "Nobody will interrupt us here."</p><p>Mana had to hand it to these two. They were much more intelligent than lowly criminals that acted all loud in the middle of a ninja village. They knew exactly how to work whatever magic they were doing. Whatever their ulterior motives were, they planted those lanterns quietly and only made as much fuss as was absolutely necessary while keeping an option like this open – to dispatch anyone in their way without alerting the authorities or any fish too numerous or too large for their pay grade.</p><p>Whatever those lanterns were, they were just an inconvenience to the ordinary civilians and they would not have caused too much noise before ninja came into close proximity to them and attempted to disrupt their purpose. These truly were the actions of a trained village ninja specialist, one that had gone rogue, without a doubt.</p><p>"So I take it that all those lanterns we destroyed inconvenienced you?" Lithia flaunted her success at destroying the precious objects of this pair that they worked and plan so hard to place all over this district.</p><p>"Very much so." The woman nodded. "We had hoped that enough of them remained all over the town until our plan proceeded to its later stages. You proved yourself to be too troublesome to leave alive. Our interference and a slight revelation of our hand are necessary."</p><p>"Preferably soon enough," the woman's partner grumbled. "We still have hundreds of lanterns to place all over the village."</p><p>"Yes, that is true…" the woman nodded her head, allowing her hood to slip over her usually quite bright and warm face. By that point, only her plum colored lips and white teeth could be made out in the odd lighting of this sealing dimension where pollen was stored.</p><p>A thundering sneeze made all of the ninja present turn at the direction of Chominu who fumbled over on his knees and wheezed intensely, clawing at his own throat as if struggling to breathe.</p><p>"What is wrong with you, you slob?" Lithia dragged her hand over her hair looking more irritated by the health problems of her teammate than worried.</p><p>"What do you mean what's wrong with him?!" Kidenshi growled, "He's allergic to flower pollen!"</p><p>A whistling wheeze informed the others that the gentle giant finally managed to draw some breath but the slurping noises coming out from his nose and the constant thunderous sneezing coming from his direction suggested that it was for the best if they did not overstay their welcome inside this dimension.</p><p>It appeared that the plan of action for the new and improved Team Walnut was made promptly for them – escape at all costs.</p>
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<a name="section0466"><h2>466. Empty Fang</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Pinpointing the fact that one needed to escape was completely different from actually pulling it off. Even finding out how to do that was troublesome enough. The only thought in the process of being refined and polished like a pearl inside of a mollusk was the attempt to weaken the user.</p><p>Mana launched herself at the blonde at a speedy dash, unlike her usual approach. Continuously blows skipped the defenses of the overwhelmed specialist ninja, greatly confusing the female opponent in the process.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress, I did not know you were so skilled hand to hand… It is not quite my own specialty but to even go this far…" the woman commended Mana's skill while she was wiping the blood off her face. A particularly sharp frontal assault made the rogue lean back quickly enough that her hood slipped off of her head and the woman's body rolled back.</p><p>"What are you waiting for?" Chominu wheezed out while still overcome by his allergic reaction. "Help Mana!"</p><p>"You are just as numb-skulled as always," Lithia noted. "Don't you see that other guy standing perfectly still? He is waiting for us to foolishly charge ahead and open up so he can take us out from the side. The only reason he does not attack Mana himself is that he is afraid we would do the same to him."</p><p>A katana blade slipped out from the sleeve of the rogue woman. Strands of chakra reached out like roots of growing trees before completely enveloping the exposed blade in a coat of emerald green. It was a chakra coat of quite a high skill level, not only was it not base chakra cloaking but it was not even one of the basic chakra elemental natures coating the sword.</p><p>The woman leaned forward with a mad dash. Mana instinctively prepared for the upcoming attack. She was ready for her incredible speed, even if the woman was too fast for Mana to face head-on without the element of surprise, the magician could still avoid her attacks by dodging her line of charge. Each time that her opponent would correct her angle and direction, she'd lose speed until her speed was just right for Mana to deal with.</p><p>It was a noble attempt but just when Mana exposed her back, a blade pierced her from behind stopping the magician in her path of retreat. The woman had faked her speed, charging slower with the initial charge and then using the remaining reserves of force stored in her muscles on the secondary leap. Not only was she strong, she was pretty crafty too.</p><p>Mana's body twitched before dissolving into flower petals. Within mere seconds of the magician's body dispersing, the blonde rotated her blade around and began madly thrusting right behind her, forcing the apparently real Mana on the defensive. Surprisingly enough, the magician managed to weave and lean around the dancing emerald-colored blade and avoid a repeat of the fate that her illusionary body met.</p><p>"Your chakra reserves are remarkable. Already you may possess as much chakra as a jounin-level ninja." The green-dressed rogue ninja complimented Mana while the green glow around her blade faded and she made her sword disappear in a hidden sheath inside her sleeve once more.</p><p>"Are you a sensor ninja too?" Kidenshi growled.</p><p>"Oh no, I merely follow the tide of battle. Did you even see the complicated string of moves your teammate performed?" the woman wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, she's pretty fast, I guess…" Kidenshi puffed out his cheeks. He did not like admitting that someone who was trying to rank up in the same Chuunin Exams as him and his team was so far ahead of them.</p><p>"Not just fast. She began the fight by replacing herself with her rabbit, they both then, in a split moment, used Transformation Jutsu to mimic each other's appearance. That was how she fooled my taijutsu skills and had her kickass bunny land a bunch of cheap shots of me. I take it that this rabbit is a taijutsu user?" The rogue ninja assumed while giving Usubane a questioning look.</p><p>Neither Mana nor Usubane, whichever each one was, humored the enemy with an answer. Usubane stood in front of Chominu with her arms extended wide. Almost like the rabbit was in a position to shield the suffering Akimichi with her own body.</p><p>"Substituting with one another like that… You two must share quite the amount of trust for each other to be able to do it. Live substitution only works with a consensual participant." The woman smiled.</p><p>"Your name…" Chominu's raspy voice echoed, interrupting the rogue's moment and making the ever-vigilant partner of hers turn at the chubby Konoha genin with shock. Nobody expected the Akimichi to be able to speak in a dimension filled with pollen that was so dense it made everything appear like it was covered in mist. "You got flustered before when we mentioned the word Konoha, it's because it's your name too, isn't it?"</p><p>Usubane turned at Chominu, her worried face got lighter once the clever observation of the usually quite thick Akimichi made its way past her system.</p><p>"I can't believe it." Konoha's male partner clenched a fist before nervously launching himself at the entire group. Lithia and Kidenshi prepared to attack the enemy in his exposed sides while he dashed towards Usubane, possibly Mana in the rabbit's shape, body-shielding the recovering Akimichi.</p><p>Kidenshi leaped right at the charging enemy from the left side, Pompomaru was building up momentum running all over the Inuzuka's body before letting all of the built up momentum out with a strong uppercut aimed at the lower jaw of his opponent. Lithia's eyes flared up red. She went through a pair of handseals and a silver-glow of the limited lighting of the pollen dimension reflecting off of the shuriken in her hands, revealing the girl's plan.</p><p>The man powered through Kidenshi's attack, turning his head a bit so that the hit just grazed him and gone by while he kept up his momentum. The Inuzuka got thrown a little off balance by how easily his blow was avoided himself which made following the much faster opponent near impossible.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" Lithia chanted out, using her Sharingan for pitch-perfect accuracy with her multiplied flurry of shuriken aimed both at the speeding behemoth that was Konoha's male partner and where he would soon be, given his immense speed of movement. Impossible calculations of trajectory, insane angles all got processed by the Sharingan and a perfect aim was achieved with very little rationality from Lithia's own part – it was all just pure instinct.</p><p>No thought meant no lag between what the Sharingan relayed and Lithia's actions. Despite that, the shuriken just bounced off of the enemy's skin. All the multiplied ninja tools dispelled into thick smoke the moment that the opposing force forced them to break and bend on impact.</p><p>Within just a pair of dashes, the man was winding up a strong blow aimed right at Usubane. Despite the rabbit's eyes following her opponent most of the way through, she refused to move or lower her extended and raised hands. Mana's voice could have been heard screaming out in pain, shortly following a loud shattering sound with hints of howling winds.</p><p>"I knew it…" Konoha's partner checked his aching wrist with a smug grin. "The little brat had raised a Wind Release barrier of some sort to help her fatso pal recover, that was why he was getting to his feet."</p><p>The knocked down figure, that not too long ago wore Usubane's shape, grunted in pain, now appearing like a short, raven-haired girl with a stage magician's uniform with a cracked forehead that kept on sending trickling blood down her forehead.</p><p>"Mana-san!" the shape that previously wore Mana's skin revealed itself to be Usubane using Transformation Jutsu to imitate the appearance of her summoner, just like Konoha had assumed earlier. The rogue ninja was quite intelligent to have realized that something was off with her opponent's taijutsu prowess.</p><p>"E-Even when you were about to get hit…" Chominu wheezed as his body began to swell again once exposed to the pollen inside the sealing dimension. "Y-you didn't move…"</p><p>"I must agree with him, you are a much more potentially useful asset." Lithia played with her hair, despite her attempts to play this off, the Uchiha was clearly a bit ticked off by how little their combined attack did to the enemy.</p><p>It couldn't have been helped. Team Walnut was not used to working together. Even if the enemy exposes themselves and opens themselves up like this, the difference between their power and skill more than makes up for the disadvantages they place themselves in.</p><p>"That's right, it was a mistake to worry about that fat slob instead of your own survival." Konoha sighed easier. She was almost taunting the magician with the revelation of what the woman perceived as a mistake from Mana's part. "Just think how much waste this human tank produces, how much produce goes to waste every day to feed him…"</p><p>"Is that what this is all about? Waste?" Mana riposted with a sharp digging question. The magician showed admirable effort in getting off the ground but it did not look like the large partner of Konoha's was going to just let the downed kunoichi get back up.</p><p>"Empty Fang!" Kidenshi yelled out while a blast of wind threw the enemy off his guard, finally allowing Mana to roll out of harm's way. The attack was weak, just barely strong enough to make the man stumble but it slowed him down just long enough for the magician to get back up and get back into the fight.</p><p>"For the last time, you idiot, you're supposed to let that jutsu build up." Lithia mocked her teammate.</p><p>"I had no time for that…" Kidenshi started waving his hands frantically while Pompomaru leaped off of the boy's body and started barking at the girl as well. As if it was a part of the argument. It was the thought and notion that counted.</p><p>"To answer your question…" Konoha looked down, letting the front cut of her blond hair slip on top of her eyes and hide them away. "That is quite right, Konoha has toppled and corrupted quite enough of the Land of Fire forests."</p><p>"Huh? We are quite literally surrounded by a wall…" Lithia smacked her forehead. "Are you an idiot of some kind? Konoha is not expanding any farther, you literally just committed an act of terrorism for nothing…"</p><p>"Just because Konoha is not expanding, does not mean that the landscape is not slowly being changed. Konoha is just a jewel in the Fire Lord's crown, one that will be painful enough to lose to listen to our demands." Konoha smiled. Mana did not see a hint of reason in the woman's eyes. There was just blind emotion and instinct that fueled her quest to destroy the entire village just so it could be replaced by whatever sprouts these lanterns produced on its ruin.</p><p>"So you really did go rogue then." Mana pressed her lips tightly in disappointment. "Forfeited your status as a village specialist ninja for whatever this bunch of eco-terrorists threw your way?"</p><p>"Save it, missy." Konoha's partner stretched his shoulders before taking an offensive, grappling-focused stance, alerting everyone around him that he no longer felt worried about exposing himself and decided to fight. "Whatever foolish bonds Konoha once had to… Damn it… Didn't I tell you that was so damn confusing!?" the man flipped out in mid-sentence.</p><p>"Why do you think I started working for the Intelligence Division?" Konoha spread her hands out, clearly shifting her focus toward her partner.</p><p>"You started serving the village as an intelligence ninja because you wanted your name classified?" Mana's jaw dropped.</p><p>The magician had always believed ninja serving the village being noble, skilled and just about as devoted to the ninja creed as one could get. She would have never imagined that one could have joined in due to reasons as foolish as liking the uniform or the place of work or something as stupid as getting your name classified.</p><p>"Well… A turncoat is always a turncoat. I'm sure if you drop this foolish ecological crusade the village may take you back in. You can get a fancy nickname or whatever…" Lithia suggested.</p><p>"Forget it. I never joined the Intelligence Division because I loved the job. Because it was meant for me. This though… Saving the world is as noble of a goal as any. One by one, our organization will return Earth to its primal state and the surviving ninja will live in perfect harmony with nature instead of corrupting it." Konoha chanted while she took an offensive sword-fighting stance.</p><p>"Mana-san…" Usubane spoke up, the little rabbit has been quivering this whole time, it couldn't have been helped. This whole experience must have been frightening to her, being kidnapped and sealed away into some different dimension by enemies mightier than her own idol. One that had no right being accepted or admired anyway. "Do you really feel how that woman said you do way back?"</p><p>When the teen rabbit turned her head at the magician, Mana saw it shaking with excitement. The little flames that usually were present in the vibrant eyes of the rabbit brawler have now grown into full-on firestorms and did not show any signs of stopping. The magician could only answer with a genuine smile.</p><p>"I trust everybody."</p><p>"Very well then," Lithia crossed her arms over her chest while flippantly raising her right hand at the meatier of the two opponents and turning her dark eyes at Kidenshi. "Fight that man, Konoha's Sorceress and her rabbit minion can take on the Intelligence Ninja."</p><p>"Aren't you going to fight with me!?" Kidenshi flipped out. Pompomaru barked alongside his partner with quite the vitriol towards the little Uchiha.</p><p>"Mana-san?" Usubane turned back at the enemy, acknowledging at least a part of Lithia's plan. Mana had to hand it to the Uchiha, while her decision to leave Kidenshi and Pompomaru to fight Konoha's partner all by themselves, likely because of the danger that the man posed, she did enjoy the idea of fighting alongside Usubane.</p><p>"Do not focus too much effort on this," Mana instructed the rabbit. "I need you to do something."</p><p>"B-But…" Usubane worried without losing concentration on the enemy.</p><p>"I need you to hit the very edge of this dimension with all you got during an opening," Mana said firmly. "I have noticed that Konoha's chakra did not decrease at all by just spending time in this dimension which means she is not tethering in between and keeping us here. Just defeating her will not bring us back home. We need to break the dimensional wall and break out."</p><p>Usubane glared at Mana for a short while. The magician regrouped with her newly gained partner and took a fighting stance alongside her, finishing up placing all the pieces back on the board. Mana wanted to keep using her Magic Bubble jutsu to protect Chominu from all the airborne pollen but breaking out of this dimension was the only surefire way of stopping his misery.</p><p>Kidenshi made the first move, raising his hand up and instructing Pompomaru to charge forward. In a blitzing dash, the ninja Pomeranian whirled around the body of his partner, building up momentum in a previously unseen rate of acceleration before quickly leaping off of the Inuzuka's shoulder. Air, sound, and light appeared to bend and break around the ninja pooch, the canine blasted at the massive enemy in a powerful tackle.</p><p>The giant placed his hands together and in front to block Pompomaru's attack. He grunted loudly as the dog's skull made contact with his block and the force of impact forced the man to slide back a little, surprisingly, other than the discomfort of the attack, the enemy withstood it without taking any damage.</p><p>"Watch out!" Kidenshi warned his airborne partner who was in a completely open position for a counterattack. The dog just barked in a manner resembling a regretful and sad whine but he was not attacked whatsoever, instead, the lumbering rogue pushed the dog aside gently while he charged at Kidenshi.</p><p>Kidenshi's eyes whited out, completely baffled by the speed of his large opponent who, having his size in mind, should not have been this much of a speedster. However, before the feared attack could connect, the giant just fumbled and tripped over on his butt, looking confused as to the reason why he had fallen.</p><p>"String Reeling…" Lithia smiled to reveal a bit of steel wire pressed in between her teeth. In the gloom of the dimension's lighting condition and the constant mist of pollen, the steel wire was difficult to track.</p><p>"You…" the giant ground his teeth in anger. In his mind, he played the last few events back and pinpointed the moment when he was tagged with perfect precision. It was when Pompomaru tackled him and, for a moment, even the higher-ranking rogue wondered if he could withstand this noble effort unscathed.</p><p>"What big softies, you eco-types, can't be troubled to harm animals, huh?" Lithia mocked her opponent. "I bet that was the only thing on your mind, to keep the poor little puppy from getting hurt…"</p><p>"Didn't even feel your shuriken…" the giant grumbled while he stood up and removed the little chunk of steel that was dangling by a piece of wire around his shin.</p><p>"That's because I hit you in your protected spot." Lithia bragged and appeared to revel in her own strategic genius.</p><p>"N-No way, you can't possibly see it!?" Her opponent lost his composure. His only reply was a crimson shine of the revered Sharingan of the Uchiha as if taunting the man to continue his fool's errand of underestimating the Sharingan's degree of perception.</p><p>"Maybe a lowly sensor such as Konoha's Sorceress could not see your seals but I can. Seeing how they are chakra in nature, they are as standout to me as tattoos." Lithia replied.</p><p>"Huh? What are you on about?" Kidenshi scratched the top of his head in confusion. "What tattoos?"</p><p>"Exactly…" Lithia smiled with her larger than life pride in her own abilities settling down to a more subtle smirk. "Just keep wailing at the brick wall and entertaining me while I do all the work for you."</p><p>"Aww, you hear that, Pompomaru?" Kidenshi grinned with a full-teeth smile while his partner jumped atop of his shoulder, preparing for another run at the enemy. "She does care…"</p><p>"An aristocrat is nothing without lowly chaff to plow their fields. You're just an asset I'd rather have around, that is all." Lithia's face turned more focused and serious.</p><p>It appeared that even the dysfunctional Team Walnut has managed to somehow work together for a common goal of escaping the pollen dimension.</p>
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<a name="section0467"><h2>467. The Will Of The Lingering Leaf</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana knew that she could not allow Konoha to dictate the terms of their battle. Even with Usubane by her side, someone who may have covered the close-range reasonably well, there was too much at risk to not keep the woman on her heels before she understands just what it is that the rabbit and her summoner are trying to do.</p><p>The magician moved her head forward, letting her hat roll off of her head, Mana could not allow it to move as slowly as it would have taken for gravity to demand its toll so she picked the hat up with her own quick swipe of the hand. It was a distraction, however, there was nothing inside the hat but inside the sleeves of Mana, a flurry of explosive tags.</p><p>Konoha took a step back. She noticed the range that the explosive tags scattered by Mana covered. The rather small size of the dimension that the mysterious flower stored its pollen in now worked against the rogue ninja, caging her to where she'd need to dive and power through explosive tags to land a hit. One of Mana's free hands quickly went through a bundle of hand seals.</p><p>"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" Mana chanted out while the air in her lungs quickly molded with chakra flowing through her system and turned into a strong gust of Wind Release chakra on its way out, driving the cloud of explosive tags toward the enemy.</p><p>A chain of explosions littered the sealing dimension. The pollen in the air lit on flames and quickly burnt up, the entire dimension should have turned a bit brighter but it stayed as black and hazy as it always has been, even when the explosive reaction greatly reduced the amount of pollen remaining in it.</p><p>Konoha looked from her spontaneous blocking position, her stealthy attire was beginning to slowly singe off with her cape slipping off and smoldering into bits just like the bits of pollen had not too long ago. The fact that her clothes took some damage suggested that either Konoha messed up with her augmentations, which suggested a lot of things all of itself, or that she was just preserving chakra on purpose, that may have been terrifying.</p><p>Anything that Konoha felt was worth getting a bit banged and burnt up for frightened the magician if even a little.</p><p>Usubane had already disappeared, rushing toward the edge of the sealing dimension, ready to give the wall her best shot. Usually, it may have been dangerous to bust through dimensions like this, only the stronger ninja could have even managed it, but what laid beside those walls was tough to tell. One could have ended up on another dimension entirely or they could have gotten themselves stuck in between, the containment medium that holds every one of the infinite sealing dimensions within its endless vastness.</p><p>"Ninja Art: Formidable Will!" words rang out from Konoha's direction, the majority of her body still covered in smoke and slightly trembling from stiffness. Yet another puff of smoke concealed her even more, one emanating from her own ninjutsu this time. Mana could not make out what came from the loud pop of Konoha's technique nor had she heard of such a jutsu. She tried vocally warning Usubane but events went on before she could.</p><p>"Ninja Art: Leaf Blade!" the woman grunted out following her previous technique. Usubane's pain-ridden voice echoed through the smoke. Mana did not feel the rabbit's chakra take too much of a dip, what was wrong? Did she purposefully not augment her abilities against an opponent such as this?</p><p>This was dangerous, Usubane may have been cornered in between the dimensional wall and the enemy and wounded. Wounded because of a strategic call that Mana had made… She needed to do something, yes but… Konoha's bloodshot eyes glared back at Mana from a brief narrowing in the smoke. The magician's movements froze, she was supposed to be in an advantage – the enemy was sandwiched between her and Usubane but…</p><p>"Ninja Art:…" Mana heard Konoha's voice ringing from the cloud of smoke before getting sunken out in a loud rumble of rising walls of dirt and rock. The magician looked behind her in disbelief.</p><p>"Human Bullet Grinder!" Chominu's voice roared out loud while a human size ball of flesh slammed from high above into the closed-in cage of dirt walls, grinding anyone unfortunate enough to have remained inside just as the name of the technique suggested.</p><p>Using the aftermath of the tremendous momentum he had gathered with this slam of his hidden Akimichi clan technique, Chominu leaped out from the crumbling prison of earth walls and ran up to Mana. There was still shortness in his breath but his condition appeared to be much better.</p><p>"Thanks for the assist." Mana nodded, feeling Usubane once again gathering all of her strength for a decisive blow. Now all that was required was to provide the required time and keep Konoha's attention all to herself.</p><p>"Are you kidding? I should be thanking you…" the young Akimichi coughed and wheezed while still wiping the snot bursting from his nostrils although appearing in much finer condition for movement and battle than before. "Burning up all that pollen like that."</p><p>"No. I have done no such thing. Soon the pollen from the other side will flow to this side as well and the amount of pollen on each side will balance out. We're working on a better solution." Mana replied while keeping her eyes and sensory peeled open.</p><p>Finally, the smoke was beginning to clear a little. Konoha was sprawled out and ground into the bottom of the sealing dimension, white, shining with bright light cracks were separating like a web from the epicenter of Chominu's slam. Even while half-shocked by his allergies the Akimichi was still a physical marvel… He may have delivered a slight shock to the dimensional walls himself.</p><p>"Let's go!" Usubane roared out, forcing the pain that burnt up from deep within her body out and using that flame as fuel for her fiery taijutsu combination. The rabbit quickly delivered a combination of kicks and punches before finishing with a powerful double-handed slam at the wall. Flames burst from the ends of her limbs venom came from the fangs of a snake when it bit resulting in quite a blazing spectacle.</p><p>"Hot Rabbit Combo!" she yelled out while finishing her relentless assault on the dimensional wall with a high-reaching blazing kick. The walls lit up with more and more cracks and webs of blinding white light but they did not shatter.</p><p>"You…" Konoha's raspy and irritated tone echoed through the haze of the pollen dimension forcing Usubane to swiftly recover from her on the knees huffing and face the enemy. The poor thing was covered with deep cuts all over her body, it must have come from the leaves that Konoha attacked Usubane with before.</p><p>It was an impressive manner of attack. It appeared that the Ninja Art: Leaf Blade required the leaves to already be present in the environment, maybe that was why this technique was invented and almost entirely used by Konoha specialist ninja who worked inside of the village surrounded by endless stretches of thick forest wilderness on every side. The woman used her previous technique to summon those leaves from another sealing dimension, wherever she was, rendering this weakness obsolete, as long as Konoha had the chakra required to use both of these jutsu in tandem.</p><p>Leaf Blade was also a different thing entirely. Mana realized just what made this jutsu so dangerous, something she could not do by examining Kidenshi's injuries before. The boy had cuts when Mana found him but the reasonable assumption was to be made he was simply cut by an actual blade, not ninjutsu. By the time she realized what she was looking at, Kidenshi's cuts were all healed.</p><p>The jutsu was so precise and small-scale, so sharp that it appeared to cut through most chakra augmentations. By using a smaller object in high quantities it managed to bypass the most common ninja defensive mechanism. A man who could withstand a thousand planets exploding in his face could still be killed by a little leaf slicing his throat while he was not aware just how dangerous such a leaf was. It only made sense that specialist ninja: barrier corps, black ops and intelligence ninja would have used such a dangerous technique.</p><p>"There is no escape. No busting out for you or Konoha… Not me, the village!" the woman broke her threatening in the middle for the clarification she felt needed to provide. "The world will be as green as it once used to be and it will be beautiful!"</p><p>The woman pulled out a hand-sized scroll from under her singing and damaged cloak and unveiled it, tossing it at Mana's direction. The magician had only a second to react to this odd way of attack. Was this a feint or did the scroll contain something truly dangerous? It could have had a great number of things, ranging from one of Konoha's own more pricey jutsu sealed for a more convenient use or one of her teammates to be used when they were not around.</p><p>Mana called Konoha's bluff, she swatted the scroll aside letting it unimpressively roll aside all folded up and messy. A loud popping sound and a cloud of smoke not too long after informed the magician that the scroll was far from being empty. A brief glance at what had surfaced from yet another sealing dimension inside the scroll revealed that it was one of those pumpkin lanterns from before.</p><p>Even before the magician's memory could tip her off to how dangerous this situation was, the pumpkin lantern erupted with vines and wooden roots that only grew longer and thicker in size with time. Mana could not allow this, she'd have to sweat for it as much as possible. She did her best dance around the growing threat and with the first chakra-draining vine to wrap around her throat, the magician's entire body dissolved into petals and away from the immediate threat she could not have dealt with alone.</p><p>Using genjutsu as a heat flare for the chakra-hungry vines and the observant eyes of the enemy was a clever way to survive, but it was a very short-term one. Even before Mana became visible to Konoha and the rest affected by the illusion who have seen the magician disperse, she felt a surge of chakra moving up right to her. Her moves felt awkward but the enemy did not see that. Mana just narrowly evaded a thrust of Konoha's blade she pulled out once more.</p><p>"Can't you show some new tricks?" the rogue grinned, met with Mana's distressed and slightly terrified look when the magician reappeared a bit farther away from where she avoided getting skewered and did her best to gain some distance. "Your old routine is getting stale."</p><p>Konoha was impressive with that sword. She knew exactly where Mana would be going while disguised by the illusion just through sheer experience alone. Mana may have made a slight mistake of hiding in an illusion a bit too quickly before the anticipated impact, leaving her little time to move her real body away, but that alone was not enough for an opponent to trace her this accurately. It had to be a sign of skill from Konoha's part.</p><hr/><p>A bit farther away, Pompomaru continued to blitz around Kidenshi's body, building up momentum for when the Inuzuka actually decided to use that canine partner of his. To knock an impressive giant like this one off his boots would have called for an impressive blow so time was needed.</p><p>There was a problem with that part, however, Kidenshi was quite nimble himself but he could not adequately hold his opponent off all by himself and Lithia was… Well… Lithia. She had those impressive eyes of her but also a very nasty personality to boot and she outright refused to place herself in even the slightest amount of danger for the good of her team, leaving Kidenshi to fend himself all by his lonesome.</p><p>Just when he could have used a good distraction to give Pompomaru time to build his speed up even a little…</p><p>Konoha's partner charged forward, placing his shoulder up front in an attempt to blast Kidenshi away and knock him on his back. He was hitting the boy a bit easier, knowing that, at any time, he could have harmed his dog as well and the man appeared to be serious about his intention not to harm the Pomeranian seriously.</p><p>The boy grunted in pain as a powerful force blew him off his boots, he may have been nimble but he was not agile enough to avoid even the more force-focused fighting style of this man. Again and again, he ended up on the ground and getting back up was getting more and more difficult each time. The cuts over his body from before were now healed up but they still pulsed with odd needle-like sensations whenever he got knocked down.</p><p>Knowing full well about what his partner was all about, the Inuzuka did not even growl or scoff at her. He would not give her the satisfaction and would rather spare himself of the petty and immensely arrogant excuses of why she just let him get smacked around while she avoided any attacks using those amazing eyes of hers.</p><p>Again and again, Pompomaru hopped right back onto Kidenshi's body and started his run all over. If anything, in these desperate moments, Kidenshi could only feel grateful to the deepest bottoms of his heart to his lifelong partner for being this persistent. Konoha's partner appeared to be getting a bit bored by his successful charges, he cracked his knuckle a couple of time while he approached Kidenshi with a different manner of attack in mind.</p><p>If he decided to attack more precisely, grapple Kidenshi or get rid of Pompomaru before attacking the Inuzuka, the boy may have been as good as dead and that realization shook him to the bottom of his boots. Regardless, undaunted by his opponent's bold and slow advance filled with gestures meant to intimidate him, the boy took a defensive stance and felt Pompomaru's signals, he'd have to use it, all the force build up by his partner to save his life…</p><p>Before that could happen, Lithia stepped up in front of the man, just as slowly and boldly as the man's own advance and just slapped him with an open hand.</p><p>"Defend yourself, peasant!" she demanded.</p><p>"What the fuck, Lithia!? Now you decide to interfere!?" Kidenshi growled.</p><p>"Do not distract me, I was resting my esteemed eyes for they become sore and I get tired after a while. You have bought me time well, asset." Lithia explained nonchalantly.</p><p>"I was fighting for my life!" Kidenshi yelled out.</p><p>"Did not look like it, you just got smacked around so I thought you were in on my excellent plan." Lithia shrugged.</p><p>Before the two could settle their dispute, Konoha's large partner drove his hands downward in a smashing motion. Before it concluded with the much-awaited destruction of his opponent by the complete shattering of her spine into dusty bits, Lithia was no longer where she was expected to be. From the right side, the girl vaulted in the air and threw a lazy kick aimed at a precise area of the opponent's neck and giving him another kick while she was spinning after the first one.</p><p>The precision of these impacts that looked quite weak appeared to have left their mark. The lumbering rogue stumbled back dazed and grunting in pain. Whatever protective fortitude these "tattoos" of this man provided, it appeared that Lithia's eyes managed to completely bypass it by just seeing through them and attacking the man precisely where there were none to soften the impact.</p><p>A bright flash following a wall of heat rushing their way interrupted all but Pompomaru who was far too invested in his dashing and circles to notice the heated up atmosphere around him. Lithia's eyes wandered away to see the flaming devastation of Mana's attack burning up a large amount of pollen. Her eyes snapped open wider in shock, she quickly turned back at the enemy biting her lip in frustration that she got distracted but noticed that the giant was similarly bedazzled by the light show.</p><p>"Hmph… Those eyes of yours are pretty impressive." The enemy praised Lithia, praising her ability to see through his ability which allowed her to land some damage on him. "I indeed have covered my body with sealing glyphs that use the chakra stored within to soften hits of all kinds in specific areas."</p><p>"It is quite a work of art. If the requirement for what is needed to make it happen was not absolutely disgusting, and if everybody else could see it, I'd hang it in my father's gallery." Lithia commended the artistic craftsmanship of the man's work.</p><p>"It's not just art." He grumbled. "It is perfectly measured to cover large enough areas of my skin to not require a complete coating, most forces emanate and spread their impact, the way these tattoos are drawn, they soften most impacts even bypassing them by luck."</p><p>"Yes, I'd assume a complete coating would not be that efficient, given the amount of chakra it would take, to apply repeatedly and all that…" Lithia nodded.</p><p>"It also reminds me of my favorite natural structure – the reef…" the man looked somewhere at a blank space, looking back at some past memories, no doubt. "Wearing this protection reminds me of what I am fighting for, if ever the sacrifice seemed not worth it, this art would remind me otherwise."</p><p>"Are you quite done? Because my teammate there is storing a lot of momentum and I should not be telling you this but your rambling and the time it is buying is making this affair quite sad." Lithia pointed at Kidenshi.</p><p>"What the fuck, Lithia!?" Kidenshi growled again. "He was giving you time!"</p><p>"It does not matter. Whatever you two have to bring my way, I shall take it, like an ancient oak that has withstood thousands of windstorms in its time. I am simply stronger than the two of you, in the nature, strength makes law…" the man replied. "In fact, I trust my victory so much that I am willing to tell you my name, something we usually do not do – name's Dill."</p><p>Without replying anything, Lithia rushed forward with an attempt to attack her opponent while her Sharingan did not tire her too much in its constantly activated state. A slow but wide-reaching cross prevented her from entering but her trusty crimson eyes warned her of the dangers if she was to try and bypass the massive arm of her opponent and still try to get in close, because of that, she quickly dashed back.</p><p>It was not stupidity that led Lithia to try and drive her opponent mad and desperate by pointing out a key element of Team Walnut's plan. It was her own self-preservation instinct. She relied immensely on her Sharingan to fight at close-range and she could not allow the man to just hang back and talk to her while her Sharingan was active. In its current state, it'd take too long to switch it on and off on a whim, meaning she needed to manage it more cleverly.</p><p>For once, Lithia may have realized that there may have been things she still needed improvement on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0468"><h2>468. Tales Of A Ninja Magician Annual No. 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A powerful explosion shook the Junkyard District of Konohagakure, bubbles of blaze erupting outward lit up the night's sky and swatted away the small raindrops that ceaselessly fell from the gloomy skies above. A young girl, couldn't have been much older than twelve years of age grunted in pain.</p><p>The shockwave ragged her around pretty badly, her quite fancy uniform got burnt up and torn, chips of wood were sticking from all over her body, dirt and fallen rainwater covered the girl head to toe making her hair look and feel sticky and get in her way. One thing was for certain, the magician girl was a fighter. Grunting in pain and yelling, she managed to stand back up.</p><p>Along with the agent of Kirigakure that caused this explosion, the cold rain and her own failing body she was also fighting her sticky, long hair getting in her way, continuously having to be swept aside. The black blazer that she wore atop of her soaked shirt hung awkwardly in a half-torn state forcing the girl to rip it off and shake involuntarily from the cold.</p><p>A demonic-looking shape walked out from the burning wreckage, a well-trained and athletic young man wearing a dark gi atop of the fishnet shirt. Rusty and bloody chains covered up the assassin's strong arms while an intimidating, horny mask covered his face. The lower part of the man's mask looked like a bloodthirsty mouth of a fiend but was actually just a fancy-looking voicebox that made the man sound like a cybernetic, lifeless doll whenever he spoke.</p><p>And the assassin did plenty of speaking. Perhaps it was his arrogance at seeing his opponent trembling in cold, bleeding out and twisted in pain with her entire body, maybe he was still hesitating to finish the job. Either way, the Kirigakure Demon was making sure that absolutely no part of his clever plan escaped the girl's understanding. Knowing that she would soon be dead, clarity of such a high order seemed like an odd virtue to bother with…</p><p>A loud roar completely overwhelmed the assassin's calm and robotic voice. The magician launched herself at the enemy in a fit of rage that looked completely unlike her. It was a fair assumption to make looking at how unnatural these aggressive movements looked on the girl's pose.</p><p>A speedy blur of kicks followed the initial one, one that threw the assassin's head to the side from its sheer force. It was tough to say just how effective they were for the Kirigakure Black Ops trainee did not appear to be trying all that hard to avoid them or to counterattack the cornered and desperate opponent. Oddly, neither did he use any of his weapons to exploit thousands of openings that his opponent provided him by wildly flinging her limbs about.</p><p>The arms and legs of the magician weighed down. Whether it was the exhaustion from her own relentless barrage of attacks or the blood-loss and the collective effort of her injuries kicking in, she was just about done. That was when the assassin finally attacked. He used his arms as well, instead of finishing the magician off, he just displayed his own superiority over her by repeating the manner of attack she had shown him except at a level that dwarfed hers completely.</p><p>The fists of the assassin ran rampant across the magician's body, like a machine-gun almost. The girl did not fall, she stumbled and hunched over, blood trickled down her busted face and her injuries made what remained of her soaking clothes die crimson. A clanging sound suggested that the Demon of Kirigakure may have grown sick of this little domination game. The young assassin vaulted over his helpless prey, leaving only chains that wrapped around her neck while he pulled on them from behind the girl, dragging the girl's tired body over and flipping her over his back while she slowly asphyxiated.</p><p>At least the Kirigakure rogue had the decency to snap her neck when her remaining chakra failed to sufficiently sustain her struggle to stay conscious and alive. The assassin was quite ruthless, once the girl's body went limp, he flipped her over and slammed it into the ground head-first just to check that her neck was truly broken and that there was no life rustling in her. In his line of work, with these type of opponents, one could have never been sure…</p><p>A dark shroud of a figure with a ghastly, white face that looked like it was painted on the dark mist that the creature looked to be made of began twisting around in the clockwise direction creating a dark, crackling sphere of energy. One that appeared to escape the attention of the dramatic scene of a teammate grieving the loss of his friend below after he was too late to join the field of battle to save her.</p><p>The Karamtan has seen everything it needed to see here and then.</p><hr/><p>Screams silenced by gurgling noises of lives leaving the bodies of their previous owners, shortly followed by a gut-wrenching splattering noise forced a flock of birds to take off in fear for their own lives. The signals of danger were considerable enough to force the birds to fly taller than even the upmost layer of leafage of the thick Land of Fire forests. Ironically enough, while the birds fled the lower level of the forests, they fled from a clearing into the more forested areas while choosing the higher layers of the sky to flee in.</p><p>A grotesque shape of a man whose face looked like it was sewn together from pieces before being given a few good brick shots just for good measure so that the rags of skin and flesh stuck to the sticky, goopy bits they were gathered together on stood up from a gruesome site of slaughter he had caused. A tight and long block of wood laid in his right hand. One of the eyes of the malformed, bloodthirsty murderer gapped open wide and scurried across the horrific sight he had caused.</p><p>"I've always been quite inspired by your devotion to the cause of massacre, my brother." Another man, one wearing a long, purple coat with a necklace made out of peculiar signs, depicting four hands of vastly different colors of the specter, wielding swords and clashing them in the middle spoke up. His eyes were just as mad as those of his companion but the less fancy features of his face were covered up by the thick beard of the monk-like man.</p><p>"That was like… Totally radical, my dude, but it seemed like… Such a hassle, you know?" a bandana-wearing man who once found himself amongst the ranks of the Shaphac in the Land of Wind observed. "Didn't my man told us anyone was free to leave?"</p><p>"Fuck that, nobody leaves!" the disfigured man gurgled out with a quite passionate reply. "The lucky ones will die of heartbreak when that fuck…"</p><p>Before the man could finish that thought, however, a titanic animal descended atop of his head leaving nothing but a bloody stain of all those men. It was a rabbit that could have only been called such because of the nature of his kind and not the sum of his properties for he was a mountain of fur and hardened bone-colored armor tissue covering various body parts. After disposing of the criminals killing the fleeing civilians the rabbit just closed his eyes.</p><p>"I hope you know what you are doing, Mana…" he rumbled with his mighty voice before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.</p><p>Farther to the north-west, in a little settlement surrounded by no walls but those that were provided by the massive forest around it, another group entered from the forest into the clearing. Met only by an adult woman standing alone in the center of the settlement and firing bolts of figurative lightning from her gaze at those that threatened the peace she had fostered from a little spark, into the flame it had grown until that day.</p><p>"No more rabbits from the Rabbit Goddess? I am almost disappointed…" a very casual looking man in a long coat and a black hat spoke up. The woman in the center of the settlement could sense a notable disruption of his chakra network suggesting that his chakra was less than what he came here with – a sign of a worthy fight but the presence of only one side tipped off on how that fight had ended.</p><p>"Bane-chan…" the woman mumbled to herself.</p><p>"I wonder, Konoha's Sorceress if right now you would consider killing us? After all we did, all of your people we have killed completely randomly, after we have invaded your little settlement you have managed, after we've killed your trusted, legendary even, partners…" a man in grey hair spoke up as he walked out in front of the group of criminals he led.</p><p>"The Fire Lord gave me this patch of land to create a settlement in once I retired." The woman magician spoke up. Her voice was completely calm. She knew this was the endgame so there was no use losing her voice over it. She had protected everyone she could, nobody died but those that chose to sacrifice themselves for her or the cause of protecting the fleeing citizens. As a little girl, Mana used to worry and blame herself much more for much lesser losses.</p><p>"I did warn Ranzon this was a bad strategic move. No rogue ever has entered this settlement with ill-will and left unbroken." An absolutely ancient man wearing a Konohagakure flak jacket littered with dozens of headbands of gold and silver sewn into it. A ninja received an honorary headband like that once they retired meaning that this man either killed a lot of old people or had served a ninja village for enough centuries to warrant this many honorary headband plates.</p><p>"In my adult years, I am less kind than I was in my teens," Mana admitted after raising her hand. Crackling lightning ran down her hand. "I tend to use my Magician's Touch to wipe people's minds much more often than I'd like to but my responsibility is much greater than ever before."</p><p>Vortexes of lightning, tornadoes and blazing infernos later, a field of bodies were scattered across the field of battle. The elderly man from before, the leader of the band had come with a couple of handful of the most notable S-Rank rogue ninja all of whom laid knocked out or just writhed on their knees while drooling in their disabled and mindless state.</p><p>A pouring rain washed down all the blood and took out a couple of fires but it would never wash out the misery and misfortune of this day. Mana was breathing heavily, as someone who had taken out dozens of the world's most feared men and women all by herself in the drabbest last stand ever to be forgotten by history, she had suffered remarkably few injuries apart from her great state of exhaustion.</p><p>"Heh…" the elder man smiled, finally removing his torn cape of red and silver and letting it fall and sink into some puddle of mud and blood nearby. "As expected from the Rabbit Goddess, the chakra to match that of the Tailed Beasts and the skill to discipline one if its attitude ever required adjusting."</p><p>"To answer your question from before…" Mana spoke. "No, I shall not kill you all. However, most of my colleagues I've worked with over the years thought death to be a superior counterpart to my kind of justice."</p><p>A powerful surge of lightning burst from the magician's feet, rising up her body in a storm of blue firebolts. The bolts compressed and focused into the shape of blades that were sustained and fed discharges from the source of Mana's own chakra through narrow nets of lightning.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Supreme Magic Pierce!" Mana declared as if it was a judgment upon her opponent as the blades all skewered the man in what appeared to be an instant. The battle was long and tedious, ninja to whom a second seemed like a millennium fought long enough to last the day. There was no way that the man could have had the chakra and stamina in his age to dodge this jutsu.</p><p>"Heh…" the man smiled. From the smoke and the resulting pulses of lightning discharges it was tough to see his skin turning black and markings of a human skeleton appearing on the blackness of his body. The shock of pain ran through Mana's face as the woman fumbled on her knees. Streams of her own blood, bursting from too numerous self-caused wounds to care for were washed away by the rain.</p><p>"I bet you knew somewhere deep down you would die here today. Your plan was always to minimize the casualties, wasn't it? So noble…" the man smiled as he tore off what remained of his upper clothes to reveal holes all over where vital organs were supposed to be on his body. At this point, this criminal was just a shell for his real soul, which laid somewhere else entirely. A deadly skill in combination with his Jashinist beliefs.</p><p>"And yet I believe even you were not able to predict just how badly you'd fail." The man weaved a pair of hand seals as red coffins burst from the ground. "Every single man you have disabled here agreed to give their lives up for immortality just like you will serve as my tool and slay every single escaped ninja and civilian you protected."</p><p>"W-Why? You don't need to go that far. J-Just take your victory." The dying woman almost begged the man, her words were just as messy as her fleeting mind. Usually, the kunoichi was so bright and quick on her feet to devise just the right strategies needed for a victory, in her dying moments she could think of nothing else but the beehive of pointless thoughts that ran through her head.</p><p>"Victory? Look at this place, we did not expect to take it. What use do we have of this bag of broken sticks and stones? The only victory Lord Jashin accepts is total destruction and until one of the people you saved lives, that is not achieved. For the crime of raising the dead he has claimed, I must assure total victory in all my ventures." The view of her triumphant opponent blurred in the eyes of the dying woman.</p><p>Not too far away, a figure of stone blocks comprising its core and its limbs, littered with words of unknown meaning, age or origin disappeared in a black singularity. The enigma moved completely unseen and unfelt by any of the participants of the gruesome scene that the Karamtan had witnessed for a better verdict once it rejoined its kind in a space beyond space and dimensions.</p><hr/><p>A handful of blurry, juniper colored flashes separated the dense leafage that the ninja moved through. In the initial stages of their trip, none of the five spoke all that much. It remained unclear whether it was because of the impromptu assembly of the team and the lack of acquaintance between most of these individuals or if they withheld the honors of interaction until they reached the general area of their destination – the Forest of Death.</p><p>"I am impressed." A short and budding young girl bowed her upper body for the arriving bunch, beginning to speak before the five even landed all lined up right in front of her. "That was some impressive speed."</p><p>"It was traveling speed, not fighting speed. Don't forget that…" a brawny middle-aged man with blond, spiky hair crossed his large arms over his chest. Despite the strict tension of his lips as the stretched over the lower area of his face, the man's tone implied no ill will or mockery towards the girl who was dressed like a stage magician.</p><p>"It was rather impressive that you managed to track our speed, can your sensory even do that?" A girl of short, laguna colored hair stroke a beautiful grin, clearly more interested in humoring the new member of the Konohagakure impressive assortment of chuunin.</p><p>"No, I merely judged the speed at which your signatures moved from one point of my sensory range to the other." Mana let her head down humbly and shook her head.</p><p>"I must admit, chakra sensory is something else entirely in the hands of a skilled user…" A rather bland looking chuunin of wild brown hair scratched his chin. Unlike his colleagues, he had little to no distinguishing features to the way he wore his standard, village-issued chuunin attire.</p><p>"Indeed, I've been looking forward to working with you since the finals of the Chuunin Exams." A man that looked he may have been in his later fifties grinned with pride and excitement. This one did not wear the flak jacket at all, just like Mana did not. This made the magician feel a little bolder about her own refusal to don the iconic village accessory.</p><p>"That means a lot coming from you, Soba-san." Mana bowed her upper body in respect to the great expectations placed on her shoulders.</p><p>"I do not mean to be the sour plum here but…" another of the chuunin interjected into the friendly introductions. "Why exactly did you not meet us by the gate and instead joined us here? As far as first impressions go, joining with the team from the get-go inside an area where it is difficult to sneak in with a transformation technique or other switcheroo goes a long way…"</p><p>The skeptical one was a middle-aged man of slick, dark hair with slight hints of grey in them. A rather average build and a flair for a passion of combining dressing elegantly as well as practically as some of the clothes he hid under the flak jacket looked rather formal for the destination the squad was heading for.</p><p>"I apologize for this, it was not my call. I was merely training with the ninja rabbits inside the Forest of Death and for that reason, I received specific instructions from Lord Sixth to join with you here and assist you in any way I can." Mana bowed her head. "As far as I know, I am not a part of your squad, strictly speaking, nor am I on an official mission, I do not think…"</p><p>"I see…" The eldest of all chuunin – Soba nodded in acknowledgment. "In any case, you seem to possess a great deal of knowledge of the ninja rabbits. Your assistance will prove of great use in subduing this criminal."</p><p>"Forgive me if I seem overprotective or pretentious but… Jitsa is not technically a criminal or of deviant nature at all. He is more of an idiot and a force of nature." Mana tried correcting her superior in age and experience. Seeing someone so well-known amongst the average ranked ninja and respected for their experience and maturity react and take one's ideas seriously was a new reality for the magician and not one getting used to which seemed easy.</p><p>"A chump, huh?" The brawny chuunin in the middle smacked his fist into his own extended palm.</p><p>"I did not say that Sir, I merely meant that Jitsa is not very bright but it serves both as our advantage and a disadvantage." Mana was quick to correct her superior. "At the end of the day, Usujitsa is still an A-Rank ninja animal and is not to be looked down on."</p><p>"I see… So our opponent is not too bright and will not resort to intricate trickery, traps or strategy. That is great for us, on the other hand, their midst of battle decisions will completely baffle us and we have little to no hope of predicting them…" the bland-looking chuunin with brown hair spoke to himself as an observation he meant to share with the group.</p><p>"That is very insightful, Gansho-san." Mana nodded with a smile.</p><p>"Wait, I'm the only one you have not yet addressed by my name, please tell me you know who I am!" The sturdy, spiky-haired chuunin growled.</p><p>"I apologize if this offends you, but I do not really know every chuunin in the village, just those I have come to hear of or work with." Mana bowed her head in apology.</p><p>"Goddamn it! I worked with your father once! Name's Onaji Harou." The man yelled out in a tone that was loud but oddly lacking any actual rage or malice that is usually present in such a manner of speaking.</p><p>Most of the present chuunin laughed out or, at the very least, cracked a grin in amusement at how obnoxious their companion got over something this simple. Mana had to admit, she had only heard of two of these chuunin before even becoming a chuunin herself and finally getting to work with them. Unlike these five, who got briefed on their assisting hand beforehand, she did not receive any files or intel from the village except for the briefing of the fact that a mission to subdue Usujitsa will take place.</p><p>Once the squad entered the premises of the Forest of Death and the shade that the massive trees inside provided, their speed significantly dropped from their usual traveling style. Such was the case not just because navigating inside a cluster of wood, predators and natural obstacles like the Forest of Death may have been difficult when speeding at one's max abilities, but also because they were looking for something in particular and speeding would have been counterintuitive having their need of care in mind.</p><p>"So, Mana, what exactly are the capabilities of this Usujitsa? Any tips we could use when attempting to subdue it?" Soba, the elderly chuunin asked. He must have thought Mana to have some sort of practical experience taming the little disaster but truthfully, she was merely lucky that it decided to play along most of the time.</p><p>"I must say I do not." Mana shook her head, looking a bit disappointed in the lack of helpful tips she could give. "I have not really fought Jitsa myself. I've only seen him do his thing for a very short time and heard plenty of ninja rabbit legends."</p><p>"Huh, it's not like Lord Sixth to send a bunch of chuunin who usually take up C and B-Rank missions into a mission to capture an A-Rank ninja animal non-lethally." The blond female chuunin sighed, her body appeared to shake for a moment in hesitation to confront the troublesome odds ahead but her speed did not falter because of it. She appeared more like a qualified worker that saw a daunting pile of paperwork on their table but was quite capable of handling it, despite the trouble such an undertaking would have provided.</p><p>"Five of us and Konoha's Sorceress who's got previous experience with the animal. I think the odds are fairly balanced, Hitsumi." Gansho, the plain chuunin grinned.</p><p>"From what I have come to understand, Mana-san has managed to make it work with her somehow in the past. Perhaps there is still hope we can convince it to relocate without violence even now." Soba scratched his bare chin.</p><p>"Wait, what? You mean we won't even take it on? If we knock it out and just toss it out of the Forest of Death, it'd be so much simpler!" Harou raised a ruckus.</p><p>"Our mission is not to take it on or defeat it. It is to remove it from the Forest of Death so that it stops blowing things up and scaring the villagers, not to mention eradicate the entire sensitive ecosystem that Konoha had created here." Soba reacted at the proposal of this particular strategy with disdain.</p><p>"If we do come to blows with Usujitsa, do not overextend," Mana warned the group. "It uses clones to experience its environment. The real Jitsa, if there even is a real one, is always hidden while the clones interact with the dangers that'd usually kill it, having its limited intelligence in mind, the clones are also highly prone to explosions."</p><p>"That is plenty to work with." Harou while making this observation out loud even though it seemed mostly be meant for himself.</p><p>"Do you have a sense of its chakra? Given its reliance on cloning techniques, perhaps its signatures spread wider than that of a singular target?" Hitsumi wondered while looking at Mana.</p><p>"I can, yes. Although not because of the reason you've stated. Despite it cloning itself, the overall chakra it possesses remains the same and the clones do tend to stick to a pack. The reason why I can sense Jitsa is that I've sensed him before and it is much easier for me to pick him up again, even at the edge of my sensory range." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Hah, having that sensory must be pretty handy," Gansho observed.</p><p>"Not nearly as much as you'd think." Mana closed her eyes while thinking of the trouble she went through just to get that skill to the level it was on at that moment. "Most of the time, if I am trying to find something, I still have to rely on good old tracking. Either the target is outside of my range or I cannot tell it apart from the general details my sensory provides me."</p><p>"Do not worry, I have worked with sensors before. With years of training, the skill can reach incredible heights. It is quite like having another sense, some manage to sense at immense ranges while others can tell all sorts of intricate details about a particular signature up close." Soba joined in on the topic.</p><p>Perhaps the elderly chuunin was right, Mana had sacrificed one of her other senses just to accelerate the growth of her chakra sensory and now she was beginning to lose the track of what that sacrifice was for. She needed to work her bottom off sharpening and polishing it so that the loss of her scent was not in vain.</p><p>Mana grunted in irritation while her feet dug deep into a thick wooden branch, because of the awkward position she took to instantly stop herself in mid-motion, her knees and feet instantly got hit with an immense tonnage of force but through grit, she managed to persevere it. The alternative was much more dangerous and deadly - right in front of where Mana would have been if she kept moving, a white, stupid looking rabbit leaped up from underground with its limbs extended for a hug.</p><p>The five chuunin threw themselves out of the formation they were moving in and positioned themselves better for impending combat. Given their lack of chakra sensory, apart from the very fundamental and instinctual, more like the intuitive kind that every ninja possessed to a point, it would be difficult for them to see the attacks coming, especially in this environment.</p><p>"Ji-ji!" Usujitsa babbled, slobbering all over itself while it cheerfully greeted Mana. Without any warning, the clone then burst into flames and destruction, all wrapped up in one thunderous bubble of compressed, world-ending disaster.</p><p>Mana could not remember or make out what had happened. For what seemed like the longest time, it was like she was in a state of slumber and a deep dream. White as far as her eye could see, no memory or trace of what was happening before the current moment but the endless white plain. Only when the earthly sensation of intense pain and loud shrieking in her banged up head called for Mana did the magician snap back to her senses.</p><p>The fight was not going favorably, Usujitsa had justified its unpredictable nature by attacking them without giving the ninja a chance to interact with it. Gansho was slinging man-sized boulders at the rabbit but they proved to be a poor match for the high-intensity explosive power of the rabbit disaster artist and soon the backlash of his own stones blowing up in his face sent Gansho flying.</p><p>A handful of clones scurried down after the incapacitated chuunin but Hitsumi's projectiles that looked like kunai and shuriken but were made out of Water Release chakra entirely sniped the clones out of mid-air, detonating them in the process and slightly injuring Gansho still but nowhere near the certain-death he'd have received at Usujitsa's hands otherwise.</p><p>A clone wrapped its limbs around Hitsumi's back, covering the young woman in a hold that she struggled desperately to escape before the clone detonated. Mana called out in horror of seeing a comrade being taken away so nonchalantly but then she noticed water dripping and pouring from the branch where Hitsumi allegedly had "died". It appeared that Usujitsa was not the only one capable of cloning techniques and deception.</p><p>The silent, slick-haired chuunin was wielding a claw-weapon in both of his hands enhanced with a chakra that emanated an odd, emerald-colored shimmer. He must have been a close-range fighter, an incredibly bad match-up against Usujitsa. Mana stumbled forward while her cracked forehead sent streaks of red over her eyes and mouth, inconveniencing her attempts at warning the ninja to back off just enough to where the magician was too late and had to see the close-range claw-fighter getting sent plummeting down with rather shallow injuries.</p><p>Whatever that emerald glow on his claws was, most likely just a chakra coating of pure Earth Release nature affinity, it must have provided an impressive blunt force protection field for the man to suffer this much injury from such a catastrophic explosion detonating right up in his face, where he tried to take the fight to.</p><p>"Koitoi!" Soba called out to his injured teammate while his image blurred all around the handful of confused Usujitsa clones he was dealing with. It was like his true movements left after-images that then left slightly weaker after-images of their own that continued the chain until the clones had their already limited minds completely blown by the hives of transparent opponents dancing around them.</p><p>Sadly, this may have been a bit too predictable of a move for the man to make. Then again, it was not the intelligence of the cataclysmic goofball rabbit that made it see through Soba's attempt to catch his squad mate from mid-air. It was the number of attacking clones combined with the great success it had in taking out the Konoha ninja. A handful of leaping clones that burst from bushes and tree-lines all around just jump and dive-bombed the old man.</p><p>Mana could still sense a faint signature rustling in the man's core but it was not the kind that people stood back up and continued fighting with. The man lucked out that he was skilled with chakra augmentation and that Usujitsa was cloning himself in such intense numbers, greatly lowering the chakra of each successive clone as clones that already had a split portion of the original's chakra split it even more.</p><p>Mana could sense as much as twenty signatures all around her, all so frightfully familiar and capable of chilling her to the girl's very core. The magician rushed in at the handful of clones that goofed about on the treetop where they were fighting Soba beforehand. She sensed Hitsumi moving in from the other side as well. They could have really used some Yamanaka mental links right now…</p><p>With a careless wave of her arm, Mana let her illusionary self just right at the handful of clones goofing about while her true form moved in on Hitsumi, whom Mana was careful not to affect with her genjutsu. It was a save on chakra she spent using it but it took a bit more time to cast the illusion as excluding targets instead of just slapping it across a general range was much more demanding preparation-wise, even if it was cheaper in terms of chakra it took out of the user.</p><p>"What gives?" Hitsumi grunted when Mana stopped her by standing in front of her and grabbing hold of the kunoichi's shoulders firmly.</p><p>"Don't just run at them. We have no time to brawl, not with Jitsa. We need a plan." Mana tried calming the shock of seeing her squad picked off one by one that both young woman clearly still suffered with. It was a cold shower in the most superlative of figurative meanings.</p><p>"Fine… What do you propose?" Hitsumi stopped for a moment.</p><p>"I… I…" Mana looked away, seeing Gansho writhing on the ground, covering his bloodied up and burnt face and at his dirty flak jacket that had almost molten onto the man's skin. She looked at Soba who was sprawled out, face-down on the dirt and, apart from the chakra signature he still gave out, he gave no signs of being alive. Then at the silent Koitoi who was struggling with getting back on his feet and into the meaningless fight.</p><p>She genuinely did not know. This was just like that time… Just like with Yamata no Orochi, the difference in power was just too great for any strategy in Mana's mind to compensate for. It was in moments like this that Mana felt the weakest, not when she was getting beaten. History showed that even greater odds were overturned with clever strategies and excellent moves, and yet… There were none in her mind, she was just too slow-witted to be one of those legendary ninja in history books.</p><p>At the moment, it had appeared more like she'd be the one making the casualty statistic alongside this team of bright and experienced chuunin. Would the Hokage blame her for this failure, would she be remembered as someone who played a hand in the complete elimination of an entire chuunin squad against a singular enemy?</p><p>"I'd suggest killing a great number of clones at the same time. It would help you distinguish the original. It has worked for some of you…" a high-pitched yet masculine voice that Mana completely did not expect to hear or even registered the signature of threw their own ryo coin into the fountain.</p><p>"What the…" Hitsumi's jaw dropped in a surprise of seeing a red-haired, casually dressed, frail individual just tapping his foot impatiently atop the same tree branch where the two kunoichi were trying to come up with a superior strategy to survive this encounter.</p><p>Mana was initially shocked, but the complete despair in her chest managed to help her squash the complete irrationality of the man's presence there at that time and forced her to think his suggestion through.</p><p>"Whenever a clone is dispatched, its knowledge returns to its original owner, as well as some of its chakra that was split when the clone was created. If enough clones were destroyed, we could find the original Jitsa by following the source of the signature that grows after their demise. It's quite amazing!" Mana mumbled to herself.</p><p>It had appeared that their play for distraction had only bought them this much time, Usujitsa was a complete idiot and any attempts to distract him worked with supercharged efficiency compared to what success they should have yielded but even with that in mind, they had to time out at some point. A handful of clones dived out from the bushes while yet another bunch leaped out from above, targeting both kunoichi as well as their mysterious companion.</p><p>"Oh well, there's no time for this," the ginger-headed man shook his head, "Let's just assume you did it and pulled it off…"</p><p>The mystery man lifted his hand up, detonating the clones in mid-air before they could come even a fraction of the distance they should have. This was utterly impossible, the man only appeared to have the chakra signature of a normal civilian and yet he reacted thousands of times faster than two B-Rank kunoichi. That was to stay silent about the show of force detonating every Usujitsa clone at a perfect distance where it caused discomfort but not injury.</p><p>"W-Who are you?" Mana muttered while the mysterious person spread his hands out wide, the movement caused some odd ripples across time and space itself. Mana could feel herself rippling as if she was but a reflection across the surface of the water and she saw the surroundings moving the same way all around her.</p><p>She could not believe that facing off against Usujitsa would not be the weirdest part of that day…</p><hr/><p>"This will do. We only need a temporary sanctuary…" Mana's mysterious new companion said in a tone that appeared to strongly believe that the magician had a hint of an idea of what was going right now.</p><p>Mana was quick to attempt and correct that assumption but the absolutely bizarre appearances of the place that the man willed them into overwhelmed her and forced the air required for speaking out of her lungs in a wondrous gasp.</p><p>There was an outlandish plain waving a good couple of hundreds of meters beneath where the two were standing on a floating chunk of rocky debris. It appeared like space itself was folding and waving like an ocean in the state of relative calm but the visible part of that fabric of space appeared tessellated as if it was one of those abstract art pieces. Islands of rock floated in various altitudes above the folding and waving space fabric, all the way until the intense vortexes of clouds with raging thunderstorms up above.</p><p>"Yes, I know, it does look dreadful but we will not need this timeline, nor will anyone." The mysterious man gently touched Mana's cheek with his fingers to direct her eyes back at him and as far away from the mind-boggling expanse of the odd dimension they happened to be in.</p><p>"Dimension? So this is a sealing dimension?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Not quite… Although perhaps it might help you to imagine it as one." Her companion by accident smirked. "I know what you will be thinking immediately after the mandatory awe, I assure you, I have not left those ninja to die."</p><p>"What did you do to them?" Mana asked.</p><p>"If you must know, and trust me, you may not, because it always follows a very unpleasant chain of questions and we are not entirely loaded with time, if you catch my…" the man started going off but Mana politely stopped him with a gesture. Without needing to be told he was going off topic, the man just nodded and corrected himself.</p><p>"Well, to put things bluntly, I rewind their bodies into states before their injury." The man explained as if it was a simple and common thing for people to say.</p><p>"Rewind their bodies? All the talk of timelines, those odd powers… What are you exactly?" Mana pressed the conversation on, she did recall time being somewhat of an issue but, due to her blazing curiosity, she did not quite care. Whatever calamity or trouble were ahead, Mana's little heart would hurt much more after if she did not know what this man was and how he did the things he did.</p><p>"Well… Yes, I rewind their bodies and created this new, empty timeline just to find us a safe place to talk. There's something pretty outside the realm of your comprehension coming and the fact it is outside of your feeble understanding is not your fault, nobody should be dealing with those kinds of things so I decided I'd… Interfere." The man appeared to go off on a tangent again but some quite interesting details slipped into the seemingly off-topic things that came out of his mouth so the magician let him finish.</p><p>"This… Is a whole new timeline?" Mana gasped. "You can create entire timelines as simply as that?"</p><p>"I am glad you did not need explaining what timelines are. This really saved me some time and crayons." The mystery man sighed in relief, wiping the imaginary sweat off his forehead. "In any case, this call may have been counterintuitive as you need not concern yourself with this timeline and rather who will come to yours looking for you."</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times rapidly. She wanted to ask something or say something clever but she just had nothing.</p><p>"Well… Now that I say that… To explain exactly what those guys are is… Complicated without explaining what I am, which, also tends to be amongst the top questions you ask." The man sighed in irritation. His ire appeared to be more self-directed than a frustration with Mana's lack of being on his mental plain.</p><p>"Wait, before you do, I've already once encountered this type of crazy, godlike power and it seemed to threaten the entire existence, all of the universes that exist. Is it really OK to just create new timelines like this, knowing the cost of using such power?" Mana dragged her foot across the newly forged rock of this timeline of the void.</p><p>"Oh, this is nothing like that time." The mystery man shook his head immediately after the magician was done talking. His eyes seemed so… Bright and ahead of things, almost like he knew exactly what Mana was talking about. Almost like he was an active observer or a participant of these bizarre events in Naruto's universe. "Usually, when I get involved, it is not just the entire existence of universes that is at stake, it is the existence of all universes that have ever or will ever exist."</p><p>"Things are that serious!?" Mana's jaw dropped.</p><p>"Well… Not quite. Right now, stakes are much more personal. It is only your life that is at stake. Not that of any other versions of you, just yours, in this timeline I snagged you from. Although depending on how this goes, things may escalate. In a manner of speech, I depend on them escalating." The man replied.</p><p>"Okay, I have the feeling you may have brought me this far away from my own home for a reason. Please say what you have to say." Mana sighed, none of the things this man was talking about made any sense to her but the least she could do was hear it all and then judge them from the entire context.</p><p>"To understand what you are about to encounter, you need to understand the scale of our existence. We are beings beyond any dimensional tier, we are beyond length, width, time and space with power over all of those simple things. Just like you can fold a piece of paper or walk a step, we can traverse across in time or entire timelines and universes and experience the entirety of history in just a blink of an eye."</p><p>"We?" Mana focused on the more interesting part of the man's tale.</p><p>"Yes, I am not the only being like this. In fact, I am more like a freak accident than an entity of such a scale. Who I am or my life's story are questions too long for even the infinity we could spend in the suspended flow of time of this timeline. Just know that those that will come for you are naturally born this way, they are those that reside outside time and space and every other dimension you can imagine." The man replied.</p><p>"Why would any of them care about me, just this version of me, anyway." Mana looked down. As unfair as her odds seemed from the man's story, the fact that such beings were bothered by the existence of such a simple and unimpressive being like her seemed the most unbelievable thing in the entire story.</p><p>"Because those that want you dead, the Karamtan, they are not like others of their kind. They are zealots. To most such as them, things that transpire on a dimensional level do not concern them, to the Karamtan, it is the peak of their interest." The eyes of the mystery man widened, he looked back in surprise just to see black lightning crackling behind him in a blood-curdling, screeching sound that followed the beacon of light instead of the usual thunder.</p><p>Black masses of energy began gushing from the wound inside the newly created timeline while a white mask surrounded by grey hair and plates of what seemed like protective protein hanging on the entity like a necklace. The grey one slithered and whirled through the bleeding wound in the timeline until its entirety flopped on the ground and began floating up, as weightless as a balloon.</p><p>"The Phantom Traveler." The entity appeared to speak as well. Mana was not sure about what it was exactly that the entity had said. It appeared to be addressing her newly met companion. It must have been a title he was known by or something…</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana, meet a Karamtan." The Traveler smirked at the magician.</p><p>"You've removed this girl from her timeline. You've interfered with the natural flow of time, needless to even mention this abomination of the void you have created, foolishly believing that we could not enter your cage of suspended time at the edge of this infinity of timelines." The Karamtan was listing its grievances like a judge recounting crimes before a punishment.</p><p>"So do something about it." The Phantom one spread its hands out and bowed, mocking the entity in front of him.</p><p>"There is nothing else we can do. We have contained your abnormality upon your creation, severed you from your infinity of timelines and universes and deleted them all." The Karamtan appeared disinterested in fighting or punishing the Phantom Traveler at all.</p><p>"You made me forget my own name!" the Phantom Traveler flipped out, the sudden nature of his emotional pain from whatever it was that the Karamtan did to him scared Mana for a moment on a very basic level. The presence of this Karamtan scared her on a much deeper and longer lasting, existential level.</p><p>"The only reason we did not delete you is that we could not. Just as the times you've tried lashing out at us, oblivion is but another dimension we are above of. This conflict is foolish, we can only fight the shapes we take to exist at this fundamental level, Traveler, leave the Karamtan to our own proceedings." The entity demanded.</p><p>"Your proceedings are a joke. The reason why there is a literal infinity of infinities of timelines and universes is that each one is free to define their own fate, make their own choices. Time has no determined flow because timelines change all the time and branch out, to try and correct their course is to try and ask a bolt of lightning or a snowflake to form differently. Their beauty is in their unpredictability and freedom." The Phantom Traveler stepped up in front of Mana, placing his hand in front of the girl.</p><p>"So that is why you bother with this lowly individual element?" the Karamtan wondered.</p><p>"That's right. If the death of this girl was to come naturally, because of her own mistakes or choices, I'd never even look her way to see it. An infinite number of hers have existed and died up to now and will a moment later, most of them will perish in vastly different circumstances having made different choices. You're not the ones creating order, you're the one toppling it down." The Traveler looked down after meeting Mana's gaze for just one moment.</p><p>"We have examined her fate in every timeline. The vast majority of them end in a violent death, she only lives to see retirement in thirty-two timelines of four universes. That is a rate of mortality that is an abnormality all of itself, it is like fate itself has declared this judgment for us." The Karamtan's movements became more erratic and the being appeared to slither and swim through the air with more effort to stay afloat than before when it appeared to exist in a state of perfect tranquility.</p><p>"Even so, this Mana and every other you will see killed is free to make their own choices, they're free to die their own deaths if that is the path their choices leads to." Traveler did not look anywhere close as convinced by the Karamtan's arguments as the entity thought it to be.</p><p>"Very well… It appears we are at an impasse. However, you would be wise to realize the futility of your efforts." The Karamtan covered itself in similar dark mists while the energy flowing outside the reopened bleeding wound on the space and time of this newly born timeline sucked the grey one inside it like a handful of noodles going down the drain.</p><p>"Sorry, I had counted on this trick to have worked. I guess they are just as persistent and powerful as I am…" the Phantom Traveler sighed, the man stroke his orange hair in frustration. "So… These are the Karamtan I spoke of. Most of the time they just look at a bunch of timelines in different universes, determining the most common traits in each of them before they subtly direct the others to follow in the wake of events they define as "destiny". It's like a democracy of timelines, the events and decisions in the majority gets to decide how the other ones will go."</p><p>"And you believe that every timeline is free to forge its own path?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Yeah, something like that…" the Phantom Traveler scratched his neck. "I became like this because of an event not too much different from the one that sent you into Naruto's universe. It was a freak accident, just like the ones happening all over the place, I will not accept anyone telling me that I was born to become like this, that the oblivion and severance from my origin were predetermined or that there was anything of order about it."</p><p>What surprised the magician greatly about hearing the Phantom Traveler speak about this was the pain in his voice. Here was someone who appeared to possess a godlike power to someone like Mana and yet whatever had made him this way appeared to not influence his humanity in any way, shape or form. He still very much felt pain, at least psychological, he still had convictions that helped him shape his path and direct his immense power.</p><p>"I mean all timelines have common points. It's why computers are called computers in most timelines, tell me, what exactly is a "bullet"?" the man asked Mana rather bluntly.</p><p>"Well, in the Ninja Academy, we were taught that spherical projectile ninjutsu are often called "bullets". If I recall correctly, it has much to do with the genetic memory of the word that helps us prepare and mold our bodies for the tremendous task of using ninjutsu until it becomes as second nature to us that we can use them without calling out their names." Mana shrugged.</p><p>Just a moment after she explained this to the Phantom Traveler did she recall that this was someone who could experience the entirety of someone's history in just a blink by just willing it, which was how those Karamtan must have studied infinite timelines of an infinity of universes in a frame of time acceptable to them. Then again, what did time matter to someone beyond it, just like Phantom Traveler has done here, they could have suspended time altogether if they needed it.</p><p>"Well, in a lot of other places, a bullet is this." The Phantom Traveler lifted his hand up revealing a little, metallic-looking chunk in his hand. "It is used in a type of weapon, one that, for the most part, has evaded most of the timelines in your infinity of universes. And yet, all of you share the word, it is what is called a "ley line" between universes or timelines. These ley lines are in no way significant, from my great experience, they are completely random and I discover new ones every once in a while. There is no destiny or order in deciding these, just like there can't be anything determining the fate of another."</p><p>"You would go so far as to fight the Karamtan just to save my life?" Mana still could not believe it.</p><p>"Oh, I will not be fighting the Karamtan, that would be entirely pointless. I can destroy them or they can destroy me but the concept of destruction is something that does not really bother us because we only influence the lesser universes through shapes we take in them. We are beyond destruction itself nor can someone like us be created." The Phantom Traveler shrugged. "I guess my anomalous upbringing is what pisses them off about me."</p><p>"So if the Karamtan know you won't be resisting them, why did they not just delete me from history by just blinking me out or aging me a billion years the moment that Karamtan entered this timeline?" Mana looked at the Traveler with confusion. The odd and procedural ways in which these godlike entities used their power proved odd for the magician.</p><p>"Because they do not want you deleted from the existence, you are not an anomaly, you merely have a fate – to die. That being said, they cannot just kill you because that would add another element to the equation – themselves. They need you to die without their direct intervention because they are beyond fate and them killing you themselves would leave an error in their imaginary paperwork of fates." The Traveler did not look to be very pleased when talking about the way the Karamtan thought.</p><p>"They did interfere with you though…" Mana observed, even though it was not quite a question, the Traveler felt obliged to answer it.</p><p>"Because I was seen as an anomaly, massive enough to delete and shift things about to where my origins no longer exist. Universes and timelines I resided in deleted, universes close to mine but different enough moved to the farthest reaches of dimensional void and sealed off so that I can never put the entire picture together…" There did appear to be more that the Traveler wanted to say but the pain inside did not let him. Perhaps it was his own cruel fate of endless and pointless wandering that made him so scornful to the very concept of fate itself.</p><p>In any case, Mana may just have been quite lucky that the Traveler despised fate, else she may have already joined the countless Manas that died, as described by the Karamtan before. The inevitable common trait between Manas of dying a violent death fighting for their ideals was something Mana pushed down as deep under as she could reach. It was a weight too massive to deal with under these circumstances. This particular breakdown had to be postponed until entities beyond any dimensional understanding and concepts were no longer looking to kill off all Manas in all points of their development.</p><hr/><p>A disruption in time and space made itself apparent with the outfit of white cracks across its surface. In the center of the light it put through, a single, tall piece of an old, wooden door appeared. It did not pop into existence nor did it take form chip by wooden chip, it was not there once the distortion started but once one delved deep enough at the center of the brightness it put through, it was there.</p><p>A short magician girl opened the door and nonchalantly walked out through it. For a brief moment, she observed the door with an almost childish bewilderment before occupying her gaze with the simpler things that were more familiar to her while her odd companion walked through the door and stuffed the pockets of his jacket with his own two hands.</p><p>"A door?" Mana asked.</p><p>"I'm a sucker for theatrics, I was human, after all." The Phantom Traveler shrugged. "I don't always choose doors though, sometimes a nice elevator up or down scratches the itch."</p><p>"That makes me wonder." Mana crossed her hands over her chest while she pondered hard on the problem on her mind. "If the Karamtan won't kill me directly, just how exactly will they do their thing?"</p><p>"Just like they sent Usuzoku into a frenzy to kill you." The Phantom Traveler shrugged. "They won't kill you themselves but their effort does not necessarily have to make sense history-wise. As far as they are concerned, they are bringing your very fate to life but accelerating it a little bit."</p><p>The two calmly walked toward the large cave system that appeared to be spontaneously dug up through the use of immensely powerful pairs of feet grinding stone to dust and burrowing through the dirt like few other animals could have.</p><p>"Ah, the Rabbit Caves." The Phantom Traveler admired the inner workings of the settlement the ninja rabbits have made of the place allotted to them. They were free to settle down in the Forest of Death as they pleased, a favor handed down to them by the Hokage for the sole reason of the rabbits being sole contractors of Nakotsumi Mana – an asset of his village.</p><p>"Have you ever been here? Like actually been here, not experienced it through your ability to know things you need to know instantly?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No. I merely wanted to make it a discussion." The Phantom Traveler admitted.</p><p>"Don't do it again though, it is creepy. Just ask things you need to know that I may know of. That is how discussions are done, in case you forgot." The magician placed her hands on her hips. She was a little bit jealous of the uncanny ability of the Traveler to satisfy any curiosity he wanted to through just looking into the infinite web of universes and every single possibility of every event that could have happened inside any one of them in a blink.</p><p>"Seems counterintuitive… But I suppose it is a logical choice for any kind that is bound by dimensions and concepts." The Traveler scratched his chin as if making a mental observation.</p><p>A handful of bunnies hopped around Mana, some of them bumped into her lower body by softly tackling her. Something that used to bring her down and cause nasty injuries and bruises the first time she had encountered this playful habit of the species, now the magician's legs were hardened enough to where they bent or turned a little after being tested but did not break or bruise nearly as easily.</p><p>"Let's race, Mana-san!" Some of the little ones pretty much demanded of the magician by placing their soft, furry hands upward and jumping up and down, as if begging the magician to lift them or, at the very least, agree to race them. Even if they were just bunnies, they packed considerable speed through the instinctual use of their awesomely powered lower bodies. Even in her current state of training, Mana could not match these younglings and had to resort to different methods to win her races.</p><p>"I see some of my trickiness has rubbed off on you lot, first you try and break my legs, then you demand a race." Mana jested with the bunch before her eyes settled on a shy little bunny holding up a bag filled with carrots.</p><p>"Pwease?" The little thing muttered out with shyness and its own youth fighting against it.</p><p>Mana's hand reached out for the bag before she noticed that it had gone numb and limply fell to the side as if that half of her body had died all of a sudden. While in the beginning of this curious sensation she got bewildered, in a relatively short blink of a moment she turned to her recently befriended companion who glared at the little rabbit with ire.</p><p>"You are not the brightest of Manas I have encountered. Just after being warned too…" the Phantom Traveler's gaze intensified while the little rabbit screamed out in a voice of an adult man and took one's shape after a loud popping sound and a cloud of smoke surrounded it. Shocked by this event, the other bunnies scattered.</p><p>"This is not the first time you mention other versions of me. I am beginning to have a feeling I am not the first Mana you are trying to save…" Mana looked at Phantom Traveler with both confusion and a bit of disappointment. With a thunderous sound ringing through the Rabbit Caves, the assassin dispersed into a flurry of floating shapes comprised of some manner of glowing energy as if it had never existed in the first place.</p><p>"Perhaps you still are not entirely hopeless…" the Traveler sighed.</p><p>"So… If the others you tried to help died, can't you just bring them back? I mean you're supposed to be almighty, aren't you? Can't you just point your finger at them and resurrect them?" Mana wondered something she had been wondering for a while now.</p><p>"No, the best I can do is move onto another universe or to another timeline." The Phantom Traveler shook his head letting the weight of his words linger. "Even if I would say go to the past and save you from meeting the same fate, I would not be bringing the you in your own timeline back, I'd merely be saving that other you in the past timeline."</p><p>Mana turned away. The fact that even someone like the Phantom Traveler could not bring back the dead really weighed heavily on her. It was not some surprising self-reflection or observation really, knowing what she knew about her own character, the magician knew quite well it would affect her this way, should have known anyway.</p><p>"I mean, in theory, I probably could breathe life into a body but… It would become like me – an abomination and a cosmic accident. The Karamtan would then have a just cause for deletion of that version from the timeline so even if I could do it, it would not matter." The Phantom Traveler looked around the caves in discomfort.</p><p>"It was a stupid idea, forget I asked." Mana sighed. "I guess I'll just have to be more careful in avoiding unexpected assassins posing as rabbits with poisoned carrots."</p><p>"I'd watch out if I was you." The Phantom Traveler nonchalantly warned Mana, speaking so fast and so suddenly that the magician struggled to follow it in the beginning. Ninja could speak and otherwise communicate pretty fast in the middle of a battle but given how the Phantom Traveler was an oddly empowered human with cosmic-scale power and not someone trained in ninjutsu, the magician had forgotten that such speech was even an option for him.</p><p>Acting upon the clue provided for her, Mana leaped aside, avoiding a bunch of blades attached to chains with perfect timing. It was as if the Phantom Traveler knew not only that an attack was coming but also when and how fast he needed to warn Mana that she would avoid that attack with no time to spare or any of her blood being shed.</p><p>"You killed my brother, prepare to die!" a frantic and utterly twisted voice rung through the voicebox of a familiar form covered with chains and intimidating body armor that made Mana's assailant look like a demon from any of the historic or religious art pieces. The signature look of the Kirigakure Black Ops.</p><p>"I know you mentioned these assassins are under no obligation to make any semblance of sense but… It is almost distracting." Mana observed while she contemplated her chances of taking on an old nightmare of hers. It was true that she has improved significantly since the days she first took this youth on in but she also had no idea about the actual power difference between them back then, let alone the version across the stormy oceans of space and time that was facing her.</p><p>For all Mana knew, this could not have been dementia speaking through the Demon's lips and the magician in its timeline or universe could have actually killed this youth's brother. Unlikely as it sounded…</p><p>Judging from the experience of fighting this opponent once, the kunoichi stayed on the defensive. This indeed was the Demon of Kirigakure she remembered, even the way he fought was very similar as the young Black Ops assassin displayed none of the insanity present in his mental state in the way he fought. Mana's opponent kept his distance, used his chained blades from a long distance in an attempt to both kill his opponent and not overextend and provide Mana with an opportunity to punish him.</p><p>What was the oddest that the magician could barely sense any trace of this youth's chakra but it was beginning to rise slowly and very consistently. Almost as if the Black Ops agent had intentionally suppressed his chakra signature before attacking Mana the first time and now that he was channeling it again to fight the opponent decently it was shooting right up.</p><p>"I'd appreciate if you did not interfere." Mana spared no time to look back at the Phantom Traveler, knowing that it was a luxury she did not have. Even diverting enough attention to address him was dangerous.</p><p>"Somehow I knew you would say that…" the ginger dandy jested.</p><p>The movements of the Demon were impressive in term of skill and technique but they were lacking speed. Mana's training in the Sun Disc arena and the acquired skill to profile and read into fighting styles worked wonders on the Demon's long-range chain-fighting style while the magician eventually turned bold enough to use the weaponry of her own opponent as her own platforms and tools to zip around the battlefield in almost a perfect evasion rate.</p><p>Within moments she had an almost matching understanding of how the chain-fighting style of the Kirigakure Black Ops worked to that of her opponent's. She may not have had the skill of execution required to fight using it but she had the theoretical grasp of it and that was all she needed to apply her evasive and counter-attacking knowledge. It was like Kouta and Meiko were fighting alongside Mana this whole time, calming her down and whispering tips into her ear.</p><p>A pair of spiky chains clanged as Mana's tight grip locked around them while her other, free hand flashed through a collection of hand seals. "Magician's Touch!" Mana yelled out and, through effort, she managed to execute her defensive Lightning Release technique in a very quick manner. Using only a quarter of the hand seals she may have usually needed to execute it with one hand as well as calling a shorter version of its name out.</p><p>Lightning surged upward the net of chains and seeped through the chained image of a Demonic figure covered with spikes and horns, a grotesque image that the armor which the Demon of Kirigakure wore provided him. The young man grunted out. It was a dirty and blood-curdling noise that transitioned into a full-on roar but one that got snuffed out by a poof, leaving only a busted bag of carrots behind where Mana's Magician's Touch traveled.</p><p>Chains behind and in front of her rung like ropes comprised of little bells. Mana blitzed upward with all the swiftness she could muster up, sometimes she thought she could outrace her own lightning, when her life or that of someone else was at stake when her heart pounded harder than it normally did and her entire body felt on edge…</p><p>The magician observed a complicated system of loops form below, her opponent undoubtedly had attempted to catch her in one of those loops of his wild chains and then hang her or just strangle her from behind. It was a well-timed substitution too… Even after all this time, she still found this young man remarkably impressive. Mana could not figure out if she should be ashamed by her own lack of rapid improvement or merely awed by how an opponent from her younger days could adapt and keep up with her current self.</p><p>Something was off, Mana sensed an influx of amazing chakra signatures popping in from all over the caves. Really amazing and truly frightening individuals. Could have been well over a dozen of particularly scary ones and an entire horde of much weaker albeit just as wicked ones following. This was not an attempt at the magician's life, this was an entire invasion!</p><p>A flurry of kunai came at Mana's direction from the darkness of the caves, these wicked souls needed no entry points or obeyed no actual laws of nature. They were all strays of time and space, runts from other universes or timelines all sent here with the same goal that the Demon of Kirigakure was programmed with. Mana was lucky to have encountered souls and cataclysms with this particular degree of wickedness, had she been an ounce less experienced with chakra sensory, the wickedness in the hearts of these men that defined their entire chakra signatures would have sent her down all by themselves.</p><p>Just the sense of the fearful illness sensing their innate twisted natures would have caused made Mana shiver as she observed a chain of explosions ravaging the landscape of the caves while a grey-haired man in a fancy robe walked out with his hands stretched out. A truly crooked-looking fellow, bloodshot and maniacal eyes, fit but not bulky in any sense of the word build.</p><p>Mana felt a crushing grip by her neck. She shouldn't have let her guard down. A real powerful yank came from below, one that made the infernal taste of blood make itself known in the girl's mouth as it very nearly crushed her throat and snapped her spine if not pulled her whole head off. The Demon playing with his chains, utilizing the moment that the magician was looking away.</p><p>"What a dirty trick…" Phantom Traveler observed as he nonchalantly entered the center of the fold, as dark and twisted all of these figurative demons from all over time and space were, they all backed up just from the unspoken of, more basic and instinctual fear of the most powerful being in this or any other room.</p><p>"What can I say?" the grey-haired rogue grinned, showing his murky yellow and lightly decayed mouth of teeth while he opened his robe and showed a myriad of empty holes where his vital organs would have been. "I have no heart!"</p><p>A wave of laughter coming from all kinds of villains gathered in these caves rang around. Another giant form, that of a dandily dressed, long dark-haired man of glowing with chakra bursts eyes and a very hungry expression stepped out in front of the other villains that parted ways. The chakra of this particular figure felt so… Scary and different. It was not necessarily powerful or massive but… It was a lot like that of another sensor, it was reaching out, grabbing and looking to take hold. Although something told Mana that once the chakra of this one would touch hers, it would never let go and tear it up to bits.</p><p>This predator just had that kind of face and feel to him. Although he, as well as the others, were taking their sweet time. For a moment there the magician wondered if they were just admiring her moment of weakness or if they were looking to postpone their desired moment of her violent end for as long as they could to maximize the ecstasy of finally making it come to life.</p><p>"You need not speak, Mana." The Phantom Traveler closed his eyes while he looked down in displeasure. "I have stopped the time to all but us already, the instance these bastards from another time came in here I moved all of the rabbits away. We have only one chance to make this timeline right, we shall not ruin this."</p><p>Mana struggled to free from the chains and felt them especially brittle. Normally they would have been overflowing with chakra channeled through them but perhaps the movement of chakra itself was frozen somewhere within them and therefore they were not quite what they should have been. The moment that the magician got back on her feet and looked around at the violent end the Karamtan had planned for her she realized that she'd never survive this way.</p><p>"I can't do this…" Mana scratched her throat, the Traveler must have been doing something because there'd have been no way she'd be able to talk after a nasty trap like that. "They'll just keep coming, won't they? Until I can no longer fight back…"</p><p>"Indeed…" the Traveler nodded with a bitter expression as he opened his eyes fixated on the Kirigakure Demon boy. "You have both your past…" His eyes moved onto the tall man of glowing, star-like, hungry eyes, "Your future", he moved his glare onto the grey-haired zealot and his goons of rogue ninja, "And your end all in one place."</p><p>"All of this…" Mana sighed, still gently massaging her aching throat, almost ignoring the bleeding injuries where she had grabbed the Demon's chain and where its spiky surface had tied around her body to restrain her, "You can do some of this too? What you said before, infinite universes and infinite timelines you can pull things from, right?"</p><p>"As long as that is your decision, how you would like to fight these fiends back." The Traveler nodded.</p><p>"Can you not pull some more versions of yourself, from the entirety of the universes and all of the timelines, an infinity of Phantom Travelers?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Sadly, there's only one of me. Also of each Kamartan." The Traveler shook his head.</p><p>"Oh well, worth a shot. Can you find me a place in that case?" Mana smiled.</p><hr/><p>"Are you sure this is the right place?" Mana wondered with a sour face.</p><p>"Oh yes. The precise timeline of the precise universe in the entirety of the infinity of possibilities. Just what you requested." The Phantom Traveler grinned.</p><p>Mana looked a little surprised as well as a bit hesitant to believe that this volcanic and hellish landscape could belong to the universe she expected. It was then that the kunoichi looked up to check on the light source beaming down below from the night's sky that was overpowering even the blazing glow that the ruined Earth bled from its carcass.</p><p>"Holy…" the magician's speech got taken away in the middle of a sentence as the sight of a mechanic and aeronautic wonder demanded the entirety of Mana's attention.</p><p>"It would seem that your friend was busy." The Phantom Traveler pulled on his coat and fixed his hat. He appeared to in no way be amazed by seeing a mechanical, man-made planetoid floating around the ruined planet Earth about as close as the Moon used to be except the proper satellite was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>"Knowing her, she must have been in ecstasy screwing in every bolt of that giant thing." Mana's excitement settled down. She placed her hands down and prepared to fire off a strong jet of Wind Release chakra that may have carried her to the planetoid. It would have been a challenge but not because Mana was not sure she could do it, she merely had never done it, therefore, there was naturally a sense of butterflied making a mess in her tummy.</p><p>"You are aware I could just take you there, right? I took you this far…" the Phantom Traveler joked at Mana's expense.</p><p>"No. I need to know. I planned this trip with Kouta in the future and I need to know I can join him there." Mana was smiling even though her eyes were respectfully intimidated and her forehead was sweating slightly. Although if called out on it the magician was sure she could play it off as being the result of the superheated and ruined planet she was standing on.</p><p>"It would be a real pity if you lost focus and just choked in space after this whole ordeal we went through." The Traveler objected but ultimately he was an advocate for total freedom.</p><p>"Mystical Wings!" Mana yelled out, one of her hands went through a long string of hand seals that was completed in an instant before both of her palms expelled a powerful concussive blast of wind that blew the magician upward like a little rocket. The conditions of space were nothing, the worst part was the absence of air but even that Mana could survive for at least twenty minutes or so… She needed to soar, go as far as she could.</p><p>It was not like diving underwater at all, it was something that Mana lied to herself this entire trip being like just so that the fear in her lower body would settle down. She kept blasting out air but she needed more and more powerful jets to compensate for how high up she was. The rarer the air, the fewer surfaces there were to propel her, the more effort Mana needed to put out for all that Wind Release burst to not simply circulate into the vastness of space.</p><p>The air was leaving her lungs. It was actively trying to blow the magician up from inside by bursting through her every pore but the girl's body persevered. It was cold, Mana felt like a jellyfish fired from a cannon into the air, desperately trying to will itself to remain in one piece. Her sight tunneled narrower and narrower, blood vessels burst in the magician's eyes from the speed at which she was moving.</p><p>There was the sensation of swimming she so desperately craved before – the feeling in the final stretches was the same as when one dived as deep as one could and once they started feeling like they were running out of air, they looked back up onto the surface and raced to reach it before they could hold it no longer. The final swings, the last stretches were always the hardest. It always seemed like one would finally emerge after every swim up but every kick was one kick too few and one had to keep their breath in for one kick longer…</p><p>A strong thud broke Mana out of her almost trance-like state, tremendous tension traveled all through her bones and the magician quivered from the sudden shock of returning to almost perfect conditions for life. Whatever it was that Meiko had built here, it was both wonderful and capable of artificially simulating the perfect conditions for human life.</p><p>"Well, I suppose you have your answer then?" the Phantom Traveler sighed.</p><p>"I lucked out. I can't believe how reckless this was…" Mana hyperventilated almost over on her knees and grasping at her burning chest and massaging her aching knees. "I mean this damn thing is spinning, what if I missed it completely and darted off into cold, dead space!?"</p><p>"I'd have beamed you back here." A familiar red-haired shape appeared wearing a hideous, striped blue and black sweater right under a Konoha flak jacket. The blacksmith's shapes were verily expanded, this Meiko was much shorter than even the girl Mana had known in her own place and time but she was also much rounder.</p><p>Then again, given the blacksmith's appetite, it was more of a wonder that the Meiko that Mana knew was nowhere close as round as this middle-aged version of her. The lower lip of the woman was trembling the whole time she looked at Mana and wetness was beginning to gather in the woman's eyes.</p><p>"I did not expect to be such a miserable sight to see for Meiko, of all people." Mana looked at the Phantom Traveler in confusion.</p><p>"You idiot!" Meiko screamed out as her tears finally let loose and the woman charged at the magician, wrapping her hands around Mana and pressing her hard, although nowhere near as hard as the Meiko from Mana's own time and space who trained much more vigorously was able to do. "We've lost you… We've lost so many…"</p><p>"I'm dead here…" Mana whimpered to herself, even though both the round groundskeeper Meiko and the Phantom Traveler heard her cruel realization.</p><p>"For reference, I shall remind you that you are dead most of everywhere, in such a high rate that it has been ruled as your destiny to die." The Traveler cautioned the magician.</p><p>"You must get in. Follow me." Meiko's hands sunk down after she let go of Mana and lead the magician to an emerging cabin from below. It was almost like a combination between a cybernetic bunker of finest, shiniest and hardest metals and a casual office. It was something only Meiko would find incredible, lo and behold, a slim and puny version of Meiko with glasses and clothes that would be more akin to what Mana would wear emerged. This version of Meiko also appeared to tend to her hair and was, as of yet, the Meiko with the longest hair, letting them flow a bit beyond her shoulders.</p><p>"Please come through. Glad to see you here, however you've made this possible." The receptionist Meiko winked at the magician and pressed a collection of buttons that made an elevator emerge from the giant, mechanical planetoid. Acknowledging the receptionist Meiko's sentiments with a nod, the magician stepped in, shortly followed by the Phantom Traveler and let the long trip down in a dark tunnel take her for a ride of her life.</p><p>"I must admit, coming here was an odd request." The Phantom Traveler grinned. "Odd enough to entertain even my soul which has seen pretty much everything."</p><p>"I live to amuse." Mana offered a full smile back but her eyes were a tad too ashamed to try and look for the gaze of her companion.</p><p>"What has inspired you to ask to come here of all places?" the Traveler wondered. Due to Mana's request to try and not abuse his ability to simply and experience everything everywhere in space and time he looked genuinely confused and rather happy by this new state of mind.</p><p>"Well… A very mature old tome of historical knowledge, a codex of strategic knowledge of ancient generals." Mana smacked her chest with a cough that cleared her throat.</p><p>"It would be a pity if the Karamtan find us here and damage this world too much. Then again, it seems like it has long since been ruined, perhaps a permanent slumber would be to this timeline's benefit." The companion of the magician sighed in a moment of somber reflection.</p><p>"I shall not allow that. Every time and place deserves a chance to start anew, even if it is more difficult in some places compared to others…" Mana looked around the faintly lit tunnels of cold, solid steel and complicated machinery around her. For a short moment once the door of the elevator opened up revealing the duo inside to all the different Meiko nobody seemed to bat an eye. That was until the drab eyes of all the different versions of the blacksmith turned at Mana all at once, noticing something outside the grey routine they were used to.</p><p>"Been a long time." Mana raised her palm in a nonchalant greeting. "I'm afraid I've no time to catch up though…"</p><p>The resulting mayhem was asphyxiating. Meikos old and new expressing joy and shock in the way only they knew how. And yet, Mana noticed a familiar lack of questions about how all of this was possible. The magician was just about to ask that but the overwhelming typhoon of Meiko voices all around her gave her no chance to speak. Before the moment was done, the two curious intertemporal and interuniversal travelers found themselves in a large, round, hi-tech room.</p><p>"Mana…" one of the Meikos seated atop of a humming and shaking piece of heavy machinery that was tall enough to raise her bottom all the way to the top of the chamber spoke up. "There is a face we did not expect to see here, of all places."</p><p>"Meiko…" Mana nodded in acknowledgment as well as greeting to the middle-aged version of Meiko that looked perhaps the most normal and the most of what the future version of her own best friend would look like.</p><p>"It is Queen Meiko to you." Another Meiko seated atop of a piece of heavy machinery, one with tidy and well-kept hair and tidy, almost geeky clothes and braces that looked like planetary rings of space dust but significantly more hi-tech spoke up.</p><p>"Quick to resort to conflict, as usual, Councilwoman Meiko." A surprisingly young version of Meiko in a black T-shirt and shockingly plastic set of glasses replied with serenity in her voice that was very unlikely to make itself known to someone taking up Meiko's name.</p><p>"I will let you know that we did not become the Council of Meikoworld to be treated like lowly blacksmiths." Councilwoman Meiko replied.</p><p>"I will remind the Council of Meikoworld that the only system to refer to yourselves you have invented is to call each other by what sets you apart," Mana spoke up. A fit of vibrant laughter thundered throughout the Council of Meiko sitting high and low. "I am a bit confused about what this place is exactly and how it came to be but… I'm afraid we are in a bit of a rush. Whatever calamity befell this time and space, it will get much worse just by me staying here too long so I have no time to explain anything."</p><p>"As someone who has taken the idea for the universe she's looking from a volume of My Battle Bikini Goddess, you are in a poor position to judge." A geeky looking Meiko with short hair and some unidentified manga-style character depicted on her white shirt sprayed as she spoke out a playful reply to Mana's own teasing.</p><p>"A codex of strategic knowledge?" Phantom Traveler glanced at Mana.</p><p>"That is a surprising amount of insight from Meiko…" Mana scratched the back of her neck in embarrassment and a desperate attempt to switch the topic.</p><p>"We are well aware of interdimensional travels, Mana." Queen Meiko spoke up again, silencing the others that were snickering or telling each other jokes. "This world is a dead end in more ways than one and all of us found our sanctuary here. A dead end of space and time, a tribute to humanity's ultimate failure and a reminder of the cost of that of our own. It is here that our creativity is fondled the most."</p><p>"That was a very poor choice of words." Traveler snickered. "I am beginning to see why you asked for a whole world of this particular woman."</p><p>"The reason why I asked for Meikoworld is that if I am to die out and if the ultimate destiny of Mana is to die out across the timelines, I may as well do that surrounded by and wearing an armor made by my best friend," Mana spoke both to the Traveler and the Council of Meikoworld at the same time.</p><p>"What is it exactly you need an armor to protect you from?" Queen Meiko wondered as her inner creativity was very much being fondled at that moment by the very idea that a Mana would come at this edge of space-time seeking for aid.</p><p>"A being beyond dimensions, beyond space-time and any concepts we know of. A whole religion of them that think that the destiny of Manas across all time and space is to die." Mana answered quickly and as precisely as she could, given that the fate of this entire little nest of time-space was being threatened just by her staying here for too long.</p><p>"Hmph… We shall see about that." Queen Meiko looked challenged, not by the request to build an adequate set of armor to protect Mana from her apparent destiny but by the offense that the Karamtan inspired within the set of her own beliefs.</p><p>"Death of a Mana of this Meiko is unacceptable. Let alone the influx of new mouths to feed and employ if all Manas go extinct. Just imagine how quickly an infinity of Meikos would discover us under grief of having lost their Manas." Councilwoman Meiko got flustered over the very thought of a surge in new recruits in Meikoworld.</p><p>"I agree, the current rate of new Meiko coming here looking for solace and a creative challenge is sufficient to maintain perfect equilibrium." Professor Meiko noted. Mana was not yet been introduced to that particular Meiko but it did not take a bright mind to figure out her name amongst the Meikos of the Council.</p><p>"The bloodshed of so many Manas is like really not cool…" the Meiko with glasses, T-shirt with a quote of equal amounts of cringe and inspiration to be found in it and jeans observed. "It hurt like hell when I lost mine. Meat never tasted the same but a change in diet was still not the most painful thing in that exchange."</p><p>"Most of us lost our Manas, Hipster Meiko, the feeling of needing an outlet for our emotions and creativity that would not result in a creative end to our own lives is still fresh in our minds." A Meiko in a leather jacket, an odd-looking hat with straps and goggles replied to her fellow Council peer.</p><p>"Building things is a better outlet to cutting myself. I'd like to help." A faint voice of a gothic-looking Meiko which looked so erupting with a contrast of black and white that it may as well have escaped from the first experimental movie aired in Konoha. Her voice was equally as bored as it was predicting an outburst into tears, despite its low volume it was powerful nonetheless.</p><p>"Yes… I'd very much prefer an armor over that Meiko hurting herself." Mana voiced her notion with a fearful point of her finger at the scary Meiko.</p><p>"You were always so kind, Mana." Queen Meiko smiled softly, her eyes closed as she recalled the Mana of her own time and space. "No matter the Meiko, you always looked to make us happy."</p><p>"I must disagree." An elder Meiko with a Konoha flak jacket and a clean-shaven hair observed. "Not with the happiness part, it would be much more efficient to make a sword that could kill one of dem Karamtans."</p><p>"It very well may but I do not wish to kill the Karamtans. I want to survive them until I can find a way to settle our quarrel." Mana politely refused. "I'd rather face their ire with my own bare hands rather than point a tip of a sword that can kill them at them."</p><p>Even the scary Goth Meiko from before was smiling. The bald, military-style Meiko that voiced her killing intent dragged an unexpected bent finger under her eye to wipe a tear from her slowly swelling with red, emotional face.</p><p>"That's just like mah Maney…" she said.</p><p>"That's enough, General Meiko. Do not ruin your cool vibe." Queen Meiko smiled before standing up and bowing her head to Mana. "We will make you your armor but, if time is of the essence, I'm not sure how successful we'll be."</p><p>"Just let me take care of that. Time is like flowing water and I have all sorts of lids and switches and sponges and valves and I'm all around good at messing with pipes… I'm running out of plumbing analogies." The Phantom Traveler sighed at the end.</p><p>"The Karamtan have found us before." Mana still looked worried.</p><p>"That was when I created a new timeline and made time stop to anyone but us two. Now I'll be much more proactive at meddling, a baby with paint-covered fingers could use some lessons from me at how much time-shenanigans I'll bring them." The Traveler pointed his thumb at himself as if bragging. "I have a really good feeling about this time."</p><hr/><p>A flight of stairs broke through the dead and rocky platform of a collapsed fortress and extended all the way into the endless gloom and the stormy clouds above that tainted the pocket of space and time where the Karamtan chose to take residence. A place that used to have no concepts of space or time but one that had those concepts brought there by the Karamtan, concepts that could have been purged just as simply as they were brought in.</p><p>"See? I told you that they'd be an easy bunch to find." The Phantom Traveler cheeked at a curiously misshapen, short and feminine form. There was so much junk all over her that it was tough to say exactly who this young woman was but the Karamtan realized it immediately, without the armored magician needing to speak a word.</p><p>"Nobody is looking for us. Usually, one's first idea is to run from us, that is why we do not bother hiding." One of the Karamtan spoke up, a hideous and greasy looking lump of rotten flesh that had no neck, head or face, instead a similar white and plain mask was seemingly molded to the upper parts of its chest area. When the entity spoke, black shroud burst from the mouth-gap of its mask. It was frightening to even imagine what sorts of matter that thing was or what horrendous effects it may have had on a normal human.</p><p>"Let's just hope this junk holds…" Mana sighed, clumsily and struggling to even walk straight, she lumbered on. Her right foot was completely exposed and bare, her left one was armored with an oddly rocky feeling boot of obsidian material while shimmering, star-like plate armor protected her thighs and waist. Her chest appeared to be rather unprotected for the purpose that she had chosen as it was merely protected by a black turtleneck. A curious coil of living energy was wrapped around Mana's left hand, despite it looking quite heated and intense, it appeared to not damage the long sleeve of the turtleneck it laid on the slightest.</p><p>Her right hand was puffy in its entirety. Almost like something had torn off the arm of a giant behemoth and simply forced Mana's inside it, the magician even felt the gooey feeling of someone else's limb rubbing off against her from inside, not to mention the itch of the hair of the beast's fur getting inside the darned casual turtleneck that she wore under the plate. Her helmet was shaped like a bucket and completely covered up the magician's head, save for the part on her face where the bucket seemed peeled open. Despite this really lousy design flaw, the magician's face was concealed behind a dark aura of shadow generated by the sealing glyph on an upper part of the bucket-helm.</p><p>Whatever beast the Meikos had slain to build the right-hand armor part, its horns rested proudly atop the lousy tin bucket protecting the magician's head. Also, a forked, golden rod the purpose of which the magician was very unsure of even at the moment of the fateful showdown with fate.</p><p>"Having second thoughts about your choice of a blacksmith?" Traveler raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"No, it's just… As much as I trust the Council of Meikoworld, this is just… Too odd… If only I could know it works…" Mana struggled to speak while she still stumbled over. The hardest parts to move around with were the curious rings of an unknown dust-like material that spun around Mana as if she was a planet maintaining its own ring system. "Will it?" she looked at the Phantom Traveler almost begging him to check what the future held for her.</p><p>"Who knows…" the Traveler shrugged. "Whatever I see ahead in your fate is just a stupid prediction. Go and make your own fate defined by your own choices."</p><p>"I'm so dead…" Mana lamented while she kept on stumbling forward and into the greatly confused fray of the entire order of the Karamtan. They were many, they were all large and chose powerful and very bizarre for the eyes of an earthly beholder looks but their defining characteristic that bound them all together was the white mask with black paint on it that gave all of them an emotionless and plain facial features.</p><p>The Karamtan closest to Mana twitched. Within an instant a black ray materialized from its mouth, the magician recognized that beam of darkness and intense, near-infinite gravitational pressure. It was what killed Shimo, the mass manipulation ability of Akimichi Francho drawn from a point of time and materialized to haunt her once more.</p><p>The magician grunted in pain as her entire body got violently tossed backward. Her bare foot tapped against the shifting rocks and gravel beneath her feet and her body stabilized as if she was surrounded by a weightless bubble. That must have been the function of whatever seals were placed on her bare foot…</p><p>The Karamtan emitted an odd, bemused sound when Mana simply bounced back from the intense attack that should have easily finished her off. All of them concentrated the same beam attack, all of them drawing from different timelines of different universes, wherever Akimichi Francho existed and had used this technique.</p><p>Mana covered herself up in a clumsy blocking pose, a strong push covered her all over but it did not feel that much stronger than a powerful gale in the spring. With a shocked expression that completely did not translate to a neutral observer due to the shadows obstructing the clear view of her face, Mana straightened out.</p><p>"It works…" she muttered to herself. Even when her guard was completely down last time, a beam of near infinite gravity only inconvenienced her and left a mean bump meanwhile every version of that beam ever fired in the history of time-space left absolutely no mark on her when she offered effort to protect herself. She was pretty much invincible unless the Kamartan stopped fooling around.</p><p>"This armor…" a Kamartan that was just a giant, skeletal, humanoid shape wearing the black and white mask at the center of a giant shield-like shape that hung awkwardly on the bones that were supposed to form its neck observed.</p><p>"The Destiny Buster!" Mana yelled out, the Council of Meiko were very specific about letting these entities know the name of their work.</p><p>"A mockery of the timeline, a cheap cheat!" Many of the Kamartan lost their composure, choosing instead to flip out. "A direct intervention is necessary, this armor is an anomaly!"</p><p>"None shall cheat fate!" A Kamartan that was just a ball of purple flames flowed like a mass of flames that its core was with an aggressive show of its own power. An immense blast of energy that transcended such description, its purpose was tough to impossible to define as if may have meant to delete Mana from all of the traces of history or it may have simply meant to age her a billion years or two.</p><p>One thing was clear, while the armor rumbled when covered by the intense attack of the Karamtan, it remained whole and Mana felt completely unharmed inside. It was time to step onto the offensive. The magician roared out as she placed her armor boot forward, thrusting her exposed arm that was surrounded by the coil of energy and letting the coil unwrap in a curious, drilling-like motion aimed to attack the flaming Karamtan.</p><p>The Karamtan emitted a mighty roar as the coil pierced a wide hole through it. The mass of blaze that surrounded the mask that defined its core began rotting while its flames were slowly dying out. After a handful of moments, only the mask remained and it weightlessly dropped into the endless abyss of gloomy clouds beneath the floating debris of a ruined fortress.</p><p>"Did it?" Mana turned at the Phantom Traveler in fear that she may have destroyed the Kamartan but the Traveler just shook his head.</p><p>"They cannot die. Death is a concept that they are beyond of, you merely punched it back into its primal shape." The anomalous entity explained.</p><p>Mana screamed out in pain, her entire body was feeling the searing heat that made her begin to wish that she passed out or died. The magician worked her way outside the mass of flames that reformed all around her just in time to witness the mask of the Kamartan fly back to its upper part and attach to the reformed entity creating a Kamartan reborn.</p><p>"That's right. These are just avatars they use to act upon the dimensions beneath their existence. When I destroy it they can just reshape by willing it…" Mana realized it all to herself. The magician glared down only to see her turtleneck completely incinerated and bare, dirtied and slightly burnt skin resting where it once was. Even the protective seals the Council of Meikoworld could not protect Mana completely from the process of the Kamartan's rebirth.</p><p>A blast of the dark, crackling with intense lightning shroud hit Mana from behind forcing the magician to cough up with blood even inside her armor. The Kamartan were sieging her armor from all sides, overwhelming even the surprisingly effective protections that the Council had granted her. The star-like plate on Mana's lower body became bent up, torn up like a peeled off piece of a tin can and covered with black rust-like signs of damage and wear.</p><p>A dark hand construct comprised of the same shroud of fate tried squishing Mana in its mighty palm but the magician screamed out in defiance and formed a protective bubble as both the energy on her coil as well as the ring rotating around her pitched in to protect their wearer from certain oblivion in the face of her own destiny.</p><p>The immense cost of this battle was beginning to take its toll on Mana as the magician felt the alluring embrace of collapse call to her with a sweeter and lovelier voice every time. In the face of this kind of pressure, this kind of fear and opposition dying, putting the end to it all quickly was slowly beginning to feel like a very tempting alternative.</p><p>"Do you despise him? The anomalous one? The Traveler?" one of the Karamtan asked, seeping the black mist from every crevice of its mask, like taint that was meant to lure Mana even further into the abyss of her own fear and despair.</p><p>"Yes. He has brought you here just to fail. Why does he not fight? Why does he not help? Why did he not help you keep running instead of serving you to us like that?" another Karamtan joined in on the tainting attempt to influence the magician into surrendering. Tears started to form in Mana's eyes. She knew those demons were wrong, they were just looking to make their jobs much easier but… They had a way with words, a way of influencing and expanding her own negative emotions a thousandfold.</p><p>Just as Mana opened her mouth to object the Phantom Traveler, a voice rang in her ears. It was unclear, it was pretty rough and surrounded by interference but it was oddly familiar. It was almost soothing…</p><p>"Don't give up. Do what you always do and keep on fighting. Help is on the way."</p><p>It was Meiko. Mana was not sure which one or where she was speaking from, she was not sure if it was the golden rod placed upon her bucket for a helmet transmitting Meiko's messages or if it was just Mana's banged up head imagining things but the magician yelled out and leaped forward. The rings around her armor began shaping up upon her commands, creating swords and crescent constructs to slice the Karamtan up, fists to pound them and push them aside, shields and bubbles to protect Mana from their wrath.</p><p>The magician had no idea for how long she's been fighting. It could have been just a minute, it could have been a millennium but she was only sure of one thing. By the time the last tin piece of her armor folded and gave way and the magician got yanked out of the fray of battle covered in blood and all of her muscles too burnt up to even move, she was content. She had done everything she could have done, she had swung and swum her way through every ounce of that corruption, every smallest crevice of that meaningless battle and even if every destroyed Karamtan returned with a dozen times the zealotry in their tainted shrouds than before, she kept on swimming until she could do it no longer…</p><p>"You've become quite a bane for us, Nakotsumi Mana. We almost regret that it is not us that will delete your anomalous presence from existence but your own destiny. We merely direct its power to you. There will be no more attempts, no more anomalies, the name of your end is our judgment. Disappear from the face of space-time." The Karamtan recounted their judgment all at once. That was when a powerful wave of shifting space-time stopped all of them in their tracks.</p><p>"The Traveler!? This is foolish!" the Karamtan all grunted out at once. "You know that our battle is pointless. We are one and the same, it will never end and neither one of us can best the other. Would you lock yourself with us in this eternal battle just to spare this one, third dimensional human?"</p><p>"There is no need for sentimental nonsense like that. We may be equals in power but I am the one that the truth has chosen." The Phantom Traveler grinned.</p><p>"The truth?" the Karamtan wondered.</p><p>"All of you lot keep talking about fate and destiny. It is the defining factor of all of your actions, none of you are truly free and beyond all coils, until it tells you what to do. But that is not even the cruelest of ironies, it is that you cannot see the busted destiny right in front of you. Yes, I understand it now. The reason why those blacksmiths called their armor that… The Destiny Buster."</p><p>Mana just barely managed to gather her strength enough to get back on one knee. Her head was buzzing and spinning but she saw the Traveler's point now. It did not look like the rest of the Karamtan were ready to see it though, all that was on their minds was to sentence Mana for deletion. With the struggle she put up, Mana was almost glad it was all over…</p><p>A violent clash interrupted the dark shroud that would have deleted all traces of Mana from every timeline in every universe. A poor alternative for her initial fate of death. The bright glow of the energy that smashed itself into the Karamtan was oddly familiar to the injured Mana – it was the coil of the Destiny Buster. The familiar feeling of the thick fur wrapping around her busted ribs and causing burning pain to erupt from her chest distracted the magician from the Karamtan and made her notice the help that Meiko spoke of.</p><p>"It was selfish of you to think that the fight for our right to exist is yours alone." Mana's own soft voice rang in her hazy head. Behind the Traveler, standing all over the floating debris of the home to the Karamtan stood an entire collection of Manas, all clad in Destiny Busters of their own. The Karamtan rustled in discomfort where the Mana that saved their injured alternate version left them to gawk at the emerging reinforcements.</p><p>"It took us millions of years to collect all these Manas from across time and space. Every Mana that survived long enough for us to snag them, every one of them with an ambition of her own to bust through the barrier of her unfortunate destiny." A voice of Meiko that differed from the one that spoke to her before and announced the incoming help. A project of reinforcement that was passed down through the generations of Meiko realized in the blink of an eye in a dimension of a vastly different flow of time.</p><p>"The hardest part was finding a way to send them to you…" the cheerful voice of Meiko announced before the bucket over Mana's head collapsed into a handful of tin junk from the damage it had suffered over the drawn-out struggle against the Karamtan. In between the army of Manas that were all ready to fight for their own right for survival stood one Meiko with an armor covered with gears and steam-pumps and a scarred face.</p><p>"Behold, you losers, the Horde of Manas! All thirty-two thousand of the survivors." the Meiko yelled out shaking her fist up into the sky.</p><p>"I'd appreciate if you did not call us a horde." The Mana holding the injured Mana looked at her friend with a bitter tone in her voice.</p><p>"I agree, it sounds like we've come here to pillage and rape and not to defy destiny." Another one behind them nodded in agreement.</p><p>"Tsk… It will take hundreds of millennia if not thousands of them to defeat all of them!" One of the Karamtan reflected with a similar tone of despair in its tone.</p><p>"All the destinies that will remain unobserved and uncontrolled." Another one lamented.</p><p>"That is what you idiots failed to notice." The Phantom Traveler declared waving at the thirty-two thousand defiant souls ready to struggle pointlessly against their fate, even if at the end of the day, they'd most likely fail. "The destiny of this human was to die, to be killed in her vain quest for peace in a world that is inherently violent and revels in it. A world that does not want to change how she wishes to change it. With her "pointless" struggle this human has defied fate already, she's made it worse, in fact, from a girl destined to die she became an anomaly destined for deletion."</p><p>The Karamtan looked at each other. They pondered just completely frozen for quite some time before snapping out of their static states.</p><p>"It appears so…" the Karamtan all expressed their consensus in unison. "If destiny can change for the worse, perhaps it also can change for the better. We'll let you off hook just for now. Just because your deletion would cause more trouble rampant across the timelines and universes left unobserved than it is worth."</p><p>That was how the young magician girl from Konohagakure defied her own fate – by making everything worse and making the masters of her own fate declare that they were happy to find an excuse not to delete her.</p><hr/><p>A ladder descended all the way from the clouds and into the gloomy and chilly Forest of Death. A man with a stubble and a ginger hairdo slid down the sides of the ladder while his coat waved about in the wind. A ninja magician slowly floated down by his side riding the gusts of her own wind.</p><p>"Well, I guess this is where we say farewell…" the Traveler scratched the back of his neck. "I bet after this one you'll want to never see my face ever again."</p><p>"No, I am very thankful for your help and for the help you've provided my teammates before calling me up." Mana bowed her head.</p><p>"Eh, you're forgetting you'd not need my help if it was not for the bastards after you messing with that rabbit's mind." The Phantom Traveler shrugged before jumping up the ladder as it formed into a long rope. One that slowly ascended into the clouds, dragging the man hanging on it away.</p><p>"You're right… This is a little bit too strange for me…" Mana nodded with an uncomfortable smile. Her politeness always came off that way when she felt bad about her own lack of knowledge of complete understanding of what was going on. A status quo not very common for her.</p><p>"Oh well, either way… I trust you to figure things out with your village and the explosive rabbit. It's not your destiny or anything, it's just a hunch I have. Don't forget what happened today, never forget the greatest part about being alive – the freedom to craft your own destiny. To me, that's sweeter than any of that destiny crap."</p><p>The Traveler appeared to have timed his exit just right as the rope disappeared into the clouds just in time for him to finish saying his farewells and acknowledge Mana waving at him in return with a nod.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0469"><h2>469. Bloom</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's head was buzzing with thoughts that hindered the situation at hand more than they helped. It made her movements heavier, generated that short and insufferable delay between her body ordering a movement and the movement coming out. Even more so than usual really.</p><p>Konoha was using her sword imbued with chakra coating and made to shine nature's green. Luckily whatever damage she had sustained from the previous combination attacks that landed on her had affected her speed somewhat, at least enough to where Mana could keep her opponent at bay.</p><p>Now was not the time to think things through, time was literally fighting on the opponent's side against them. Mana may have bought Chominu some time before the allergies set in and start swelling up his airway again but that was a temporary solution. They needed a way out and Usubane – their strongest physical hitter had already failed to bust out.</p><p>"Magic Spark Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, placing her palms up front and expelling a strong flock of puny sparks of Lightning Release chakra that was an annoyance more than anything else. Konoha covered her face up, the bright flashes and the stings of the bursting sparks had done their job once more.</p><p>The woman coughed out and grunted in pain while a powerful impact hit her in the back – Usubane had recovered placing a mighty dropkick while she was being ignored. There were a few things more spectacular than the lower body strength of a ninja rabbit, a direct hit like that must have driven all air out of the body of the rogue ninja giving Mana the most she could ask for – a chance.</p><p>The kunoichi leaped forward placing a stiff jumping front kick in the face of the opponent who was flying right at her after Usubane's kick sent her Mana's way. Konoha's body bent backward in a very gruesome angle making ground for a little hope to rise up within the magician's heart that maybe this struggle was finally over. The green glow of her chakra-imbued blade had faded away as well once the woman crumbled to the ground, hitting the floor with the back of her head first.</p><p>"Holy shit! That was an awesome combo, Mana-san and I play together so well!" Usubane shrieked out, overpowering the pain and the fatigue in her body.</p><p>"Bane-chan, please do not get distracted!" Mana pleaded the rabbit who just glared at the magician with a dumb face for a moment before recalling her role in this assignment.</p><p>"O-oh, sorry!" the female rabbit bowed half of her body in regret of getting sidetracked and leaped back to hammer at the slightly cracked dimensional walls. "Hot Feet!" she yelled out while her calves set ablaze with Fire Release chakra and the rabbit delivered a swift and thunderous combination of blows to the dimensional wall. Once again, the cracks widened and spread like webs of a spider all across the dark void but to no avail.</p><p>With each passing attempt to chip at the dimension, it seemed that the next hit would finally do it and set them free but every hit only repeated the same promise instead of delivering on it. It appeared that the Konoha ninja were out of luck that day.</p><p>"What a pathetic plan…" Konoha's voice grunted. "You idiot, you'll kill us all if you destroy this dimension. We'll be stuck forever in a space between pocket dimensions, that's if we can even survive the conditions of absolute nothingness and the dark flow tearing us apart at the tiniest of levels."</p><p>Mana turned at the rogue ninja, she was a bit surprised that Konoha could still stand let alone possess the will needed to fight. Her forehead was covered with streaks of red while bits and pieces of her cloak tore off with each mighty jutsu that hit her and bit by bit broke through her augmentations or every mean fall. The woman's hair was messy and scattered all over her face, slightly concealing the battle-worn condition the woman was in until the blood soaked into her sunny hair making them resemble the color of a cherry tree petal.</p><p>"Ninja Art: Formidable Will!" Konoha chanted out after slapping her palms together. A collection of popping sounds and a cloud of smoke emerging followed, the cloud that soon got blown away by a gust of wind carrying a massive collection of leaves, looking straightened like a strict, no-bullshit soldier and sharp like a deceitful blade.</p><p>"Ninja Art: Autumn Shower!" the woman grunted out through pain and wear while she spread her arms apart, sending the leaves scattering like knives flung in every direction. They were so many, that the leaves covered an immense array of angles and the blowback force was awesome enough to make the sharp leaves cover pretty much the entire dimension.</p><p>Mana fell on one knee from a slightly suspended in mid-air position while she was using her Magic Bubble technique to protect her from the barrage of leaves. She was not sure if the jutsu had what it took but it seemed to. The magician wanted to do more, she wanted to cover for her teammates too but that was too much for her current state. All she could do right now was to just survive somehow and hope that everyone else did the same.</p><p>Usubane's flaming feet appeared to have what it took to incinerate the leaves before they reached her too and the rest of the group was fighting much farther away, where the leaves had scattered in a much wider angle and left more blind spots to miss its target in. From the single glance Mana offered the rest of the squad, they appeared to have noticed the shower of blade-sharp leaves coming their way and from that distance managed to avoid it.</p><p>"No, you're wrong." Mana shook her head. She too, similarly to her battle-worn opponent beginning to feel the uncomfortable heaviness of her own body. She did not expect the struggle inside this dimension to take this long. "The purpose of this dimension is to store the pollen of the plant you have summoned, that means it must have a mean to expel it back into the outside world of our dimension. That path lies outside the walls of this dimension."</p><p>"Getting smart with me…" Konoha grunted while she slammed her palms again and let the vortex of rotating leaves lift her in the air. She was cleverly avoiding a close distance fight in her current state, she had too much raw power and experience, everything within Mana's body begged the magician to stop postponing the inevitable outcome and free everyone from this dimension already. Her mind was running out of tricks to irritate her superior opponent with and it never had too many options for breaking out, to begin with…</p><p>"Ninja Art: Formidable Will!" Konoha yelled out as she summoned more and more leaves to flock around her and weaved another collection of hand seals. The woman had not even approached the halfway point of her chakra resources yet whereas Mana, someone with vastly more chakra than her peers, was well past it… Was this the battlefield of a jounin-rank ninja? The odds Mana would have to best if she was to ever even be considered for the rank of Sannin?</p><p>"Wind Style: Twin Wind Scythe Jutsu!" Konoha yelled out, she was clearly exerting some serious effort in her attempt to deal with Mana. The air currents flowing from under the woman's clothes intensified and collided, creating massive vortexes of wind around the pockets of vacuum, the edges of those miniature tornado-like forms had gathered the sharpened leaves and adopted them as a lethal weapon to its arsenal.</p><p>Mana made a handful of her own hand seals, hopping onto an air current to ride away from the rushing air currents and, just barely, her Mystical Wings managed to carry her away from them whereas she'd have been completely overwhelmed and torn apart normally. A fierce howling sound met the magician's senses, inciting great terror in her, the magician feared to look back to witness the cruel play that she's been subjected to but, at this point, it was more of a triviality.</p><p>The wind mass surrounded with sharpened with chakra leaves expanded in mass it surrounded Mana and lifted her off the ground. The magician did not wish to grant her opponent the satisfaction of hearing her pain but the assault of countless invisible blades tearing her body up and the sheer agony of attempting to augment her body through that so that some of it remained afterward made her scream out uncontrollably.</p><p>Everything around her was dark… Just for how long has that hell lasted? Days, weeks? Maybe just seconds but it felt like much longer… Overwhelmed by the worst pain she had ever felt in her life, Mana could simply not tell for how long she's been ravaged by the wind blades inside the merging vacuum pockets. All she could feel was the hard surface of the ground beneath her pressing against her and the warm feeling of blood accumulating under. She needed to open her eyes, even if she tried, her vision was blurry and focusing to try and see clearly only resulted in a kaleidoscope-like mirage of gloom enlightened once in a while with bright lights.</p><p>Before Mana could even dream about getting up, a sharp boot dug into her gut, flipping the magician on her back. The girl's mind begged her to move, that was the only, the commanding thought in her mind but her body could let nothing out but heavy breaths and meaningless twitches of her blood-covered fingers.</p><p>"Your resolve to stand your ground was like that of a rock, but the resolve of nature to survive, the sprout of a lonely plant sometimes bursts even through the rock." Konoha's blade lit up with the woman's signature emerald shine as she lifted it up in preparation to plunge it into Mana's chest.</p><p>"Y-You're wrong!" a pitiful wheeze squealed out from a slight distance away alerted Konoha's attention. It was not the sentiment in the voice that drew her attention from the victory there, ripe for the taking, it was the hilariously bizarre voice of the speaker that forced her to delay playing the triumphant hand.</p><p>"Mana did her b-best to help me…" Chominu wheezed, with every attempt to speak he was using out what little air he still had preserved in his lungs in the dimension quickly refilling with pollen that was once more settling down causing agony to the young Akimichi. "She bet her hopes on me being useful when we escape, she bet on protecting me against all odds… And betting on people, fighting for them and their place can never be a wrong reason!"</p><p>"You? You're useless… Just roll over and die already, what can you possibly do but sneeze?" Dill, Konoha's companion allowed himself to get distracted to mock the stumbling and swollen Akimichi.</p><p>"Even if I can… Only sneeze… I will sneeze… For the sake of the… Future!" Chominu released all the pent-up bodily ticks to sneeze that had accumulated over the vain effort to stand and talk. Emitting all of it in a mighty show of force and employing his strong thighs and feet to propel his body in a tackling motion.</p><p>"Human Bullet Torpedo!" Chominu cried out as the swell on his body only added to the massive mass he already possessed while his last resort attack sent the chubby ninja head-first rocketing towards where Konoha was about to finish Mana off. The speed and the acceleration of the rushing headbutt were immense, Konoha acknowledged that much as she turned her body to deal with the oncoming delirious Akimichi before she finished the magician off.</p><p>"I won't let you!" Dill yelled out attempting to charge at the Akimichi with his shoulder and send the sick ninja crashing aside harmlessly. Before he could, Pompomaru dug his tackle deep into the giant's jaw, releasing all the pent-up momentum at the same time and sending the rogue ninja flying aside and out of the way of Chominu's rush for victory. It was almost like Dill had canceled out all of his protective tattoos just so Pompomaru did not snap its little neck from hitting a brick wall of its protective measures.</p><p>"You cocky, useless… Ninja Art:…" Konoha grumbled out before a tight grip locked around her, forcing her upper body to bend forward while Usubane's arms encircled the woman's arms under the armpits.</p><p>"Full Nelson!" Usubane yelled out after a successfully applied hold on her opponent, forcing Konoha to remain helpless while she observed the Akimichi passing her by like a rushing locomotive with a crashing headbutt right at the center of the glowing spider-web of dimensional crack.</p><p>Mana heard a loud shattering noise, it sounded like a house of glass had shattered after getting hit by a hammer, an intense feeling of attraction lifted her off her helpless position writhing on the ground and sent her spinning through a massive warp hole in the dimensional crack.</p><hr/><p>"People! People came out from the creepy flower!" a voice of a frightened villager ringed in the magician's ear. A familiar warmth fondly caressed her cheek while the girl lifted her head up to try and pick up any surefire signs that they have finally escaped from the storage dimension and were now back home.</p><p>"Outta my way, murderers! Are those leather sandals on your feet you bastard!?" Dill was making trouble with the locals, he held one unfortunate soul up in the air with his fist cocked back and ready to strike. Even if they had successfully emerged, it may still take a little while before the stronger Konoha ninja arrive. Some low-ranking ninja Mana had never seen tried subduing the animal-loving giant in his attempt to escape with his partner on his shoulder.</p><p>Nearby, the rest of those escaped from the storage dimension were slowly getting back on their feet and preparing to finish the job. No. This could not go this way, Dill could not escape! Mana smacked her palms together, generating a powerful wind current that sent her sliding forward where it would have taken her an hour to stand back up. She screamed out in pain and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood when her body dragged across the ground with little to no chakra left to augment herself and sustain her consciousness but a handful of Dill's pants ended up in Mana's grip.</p><p>"You!" Dill grumbled out, lifting the helpless girl up and winding up his punch to bash Mana's face in while she glared him in the eyes, her bloodied hand placed firmly on his forehead in a meaningless gesture of defiance. This man was so loving to animals and plants that he failed to realize the threat of Pompomaru until the dog did him in and cost him the entire plan but he would have stomped Mana's face in without a moment of hesitation. That was if the magician was not so determined to find out where Dill would be fleeing to and sieging the giant's mind.</p><hr/><p>"Ewww, look at that! It's a toad! Squish it!" the noise of childish banter ringed in the darkness while Mana found herself floating inside the yard of the Ninja Academy. A handful of kids were surrounding a chubby child that was twice each of their sizes but was merely weeping in front of them.</p><p>A pudgy sound, like the sound that wet mud made when one mushed it in a heavy rain, getting it all over one's shoes.</p><p>"What a disgusting thing, it's all over me!" one of the kids yelled out before kicking the crying chubby in the side of his body with the same mucked up boot as if it was compensation for messing up one's boot with something one just killed.</p><p>"What a loser, only a dweeb like Dill can make friends with toads…" a girly voice of a faceless crowd of children rang in Mana's ears as she could not stop glaring at the poor weeping giant with pity. She could feel tears forming in her own eyes.</p><p>"In his defense, toads are the only things a loser like him can be friends with." Another girl replied to which the entire brigade of Academy students laughed out.</p><p>"Geroppi, no!" Dill wept on his knees in front of his barely twitching pet.</p><p>The weightlessness of her fall pushed Mana out of Dill's mind. She had still a long way to go in reading people's minds and interrogating them using mental attacks but in this moment of desperation, she managed to slip inside the giant's mind and scold him enough to let go of her. Sadly, her still apparent lack of skill with the jutsu made her snap out of it during a fall.</p><hr/><p>One of the ninja gathered in the alleyway where the interdimensional flower once budded grabbed Mana and stopped her from hurting herself any more from the fall. She must have already looked like she'd gone through hell. Dill was shaking and roaring into the air, his eyes were closed and he looked pretty determined to keep them that way. It was still difficult for strong men to show tears…</p><p>"They were wrong! The village is wrong!" Dill roared as he tried flexing his muscles and throwing the ninja detaining him around but he was too shaken, too worn and the ninja holding him were too considerable to simply be thrown around. Konoha's partner must have viewed Konoha, a figure of authority and significant power that sometimes didn't think what got sacrificed as a cost for its own growth in power similar to those bullies…</p><p>"They were wrong…" Mana muttered to herself. "They were stronger but they were still wrong."</p><p>Usubane kept pestering the ninja helping Mana up and trying to move her to the hospital. The magician's mind was hazy, it slipped in and out of consciousness like when her father laid on his armchair watching movies back home during late hours at night, spending more time cold asleep than he was watching anything really. Once in a while, a sip of conflict between Usubane and Kidenshi about who was obligated to carry Mana to the hospital more sifted through the limited intake that the magician had of the environment around her before she nodded off asleep.</p><p>"Seems like an awfully inconvenient way to live. Promises, responsibilities. You can and deserve to get whatever you have the drive and whatever is within your capacity to take. Everything in between what you want and you is just a test for your mettle." Yamata's voice ringed from deep inside Mana's consciousness.</p><p>The Yamata no Orochi was powerful, insanely so, but what if he was also wrong?</p>
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<a name="section0470"><h2>470. Allied Anxiety</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana usually hated the hospitals. Nobody cared that the food merely provided what was required for an organism to survive and rebuild, one had to deal with the inevitable influx of needles or medical ninjutsu treatments that, honestly, varied in quality. Sometimes, depending on what was being treated, the Mystical Palm treatment felt like a refreshing shower of ice-cold water in a hot summer day, sometimes it felt like some supernatural force assembling your bones together inside your body like a ship in a bottle.</p><p>Not only that, then there was the newly found solitude. Kiyomi and Meiko were out of the village for nobody knew how long, Kiyomi was gone until the whole Yamanaka and Uchiha tension settles, Meiko – until Hokage-sensei deems that there has been just about enough traveling. Eiju tried his best to remedy that, even through the signs of sickness he tried to hide, through intense headaches and nausea he still came to visit. Still, he had a full-time job to micromanage so Mana didn't blame him for anything.</p><p>For a village-famous entertainer, Mana sure felt a heck of lonely. Sometimes she'd have preferred being lonely, luckily enough, Team Walnut assumed the responsibilities of giving the village just about enough information to where Mana needn't worry about those things. She was questioned once and very off-handedly, just a meaningless procedure to close off a nasty page in the village history.</p><p>What could have been the end of Konoha and the birth of a new massive forest became just a page in the village news for a couple of days. Why would it not have? People and things tried to destroy Konoha or take it over almost every week, most of such stories slipped under the radar of the public for years and, frankly, even if they did come out, the public would get too bored by them all too soon.</p><p>Despite these feelings towards hospitals, Mana did enjoy her brief stay in Konoha's own just this once. Even the solitude that bugged her now more than it ever used to felt like not that big of a deal with what the magician had on her mind. More exactly, what she had managed to roll off her chest after the incident with the lanterns and the eco-terrorists intending to raise some natural scenery and not letting the village built in its place stand in their way.</p><p>By the time Mana could bravely, if somewhat slowly, walk out from the hospital and look around, she felt somewhat somber about what had plagued her consciousness for the last few days. And yet, for whatever reason, the magician felt like there was no need to yell about what has been simmering inside her from the top of a mountain. She hugged her parents, she had seen father more than once but she was surprised to see mother taking a break from work.</p><hr/><p>"We have to stop this." Kouta dug into his manju. His voice was calm and a little snappy even.</p><p>"I agree, I guess my magic shows are a bad time for a date." Mana giggled. Usually, she'd be in a rush home to get out of her uniform, into something stuffy and cozy like a blanket and watching the drops of rain running down her window. With Kouta, however, she didn't mind sitting around the hall and watching people walk in and leave the place, sometimes stopping for a brief chat.</p><p>"I mean, it's like you're dating the audience. I'd really like for us to do something that doesn't include you working." Kouta somehow managed to place an entire bun into his mouth at once. Sometimes Mana forgot what a food hog her boyfriend was. After the bun went down about as well as a full mouth of sticky bread with sweet, kiwi filling would go through the limited capacity of the human esophagus, the boy suddenly became a bit embarrassed and looked away.</p><p>"Sorry I didn't come to pick you up today or visit you in the hospital." He apologized.</p><p>"It's fine, you have an actual job that sometimes takes you outside the village, I get that," Mana replied. She did her best "it's not a big deal" voice and, honestly, in the rational part of her mind she really wanted to feel that way. Irrationally, however, she really wanted to see Kouta at least once during those days, even if it was impossible. "I wouldn't have come to pick you up from the hospital if that'd mean waiting for hours around your parents too…" she tried lightening the mood.</p><p>"I don't think you ever even met my mom…" Kouta pressed his lips together. "She's cared for you multiple times though, can't keep a straight face after coming back home after that."</p><p>"If I was conscious, she'd likely not be working on my case, would she…" Mana threw a rice cracker in her own mouth. "Damn… Missed a whole week of training."</p><p>"Father's been training me plenty. I could help you if I managed to slip out into the Training Grounds without him on my back." Kouta suggested. He looked elevated by Mana's change of topic. "He may be strict but he trained me a whole lot these last couple of weeks."</p><p>"Now that you're not training to become an efficient killer, you need lots of training to catch up to my expectations." Mana did her best Kusagoro impression.</p><p>"That was pretty good! If this magic gig doesn't work out or goes under, you may still have a chance at acting." Kouta laughed out. He was a lot like Meiko in the sense that he could not really hide his emotions that well even if he tried it all the time. Shyness, embarrassment as well as happiness or anger were all over his face. He was a poor Juugo, then again, he was being trained by pretty much the worst one ever.</p><hr/><p>A flashing image of blood red flashed through Mana's brain. Shortly, it seemed like her entire body froze up. The magician could no longer focus on the massive hill of the natural stone wall erected over the Training Grounds on the other end of the small creek that ran down it.</p><p>"I'm lucky to have the Seventh Training Ground all to myself at the moment. I need to make the best of it." Mana scolded herself for the anxiety she went through. The girl glared at her shaking hand before turning her attention back at the tall ridge of stone. Like a barrier for her to overcome, a wall to bust through that tempted the magician to lose control and give in to her more violent instincts.</p><p>It was tough to meditate and work on self-control with these dark thoughts and the anxiety working their magic on Mana. The girl pressed her palms together and closed her eyes, intending to slip into a meditational state and work on her chakra flow. That last scuffle with the eco-terrorist group revealed to Mana just how far away she was even judging by her strong suits from actual A-Rank ninja. She'd never make it to jounin at this pace…</p><p>There was no simple exam to take, no questions to answer correctly or one fistfight to win to make it there. At this stage, Mana was waiting for her chance. Just one chance to prove to the village that she deserved it. Maybe, just like her father before her, she would wait her entire career for just such a chance…</p><p>It was Lord Sixth. He didn't let her even try, after the last mission any communication between the village and Mana just severed. Even Seiga no longer bothered to train Mana and after being shut down once the magician didn't bother to show up at the Intelligence Division again. The girl's eyes shot wide open, tension pulsed through her entire body as it burnt up with all of the pent-up feelings while she worked through a collection of hand seals and breathed deep in.</p><p>Black, creeping rings surrounded the edges of Mana's vision, the girl had drawn in so much air that it almost made her pass out. Transforming this much air into Wind Release chakra would be difficult, this may have been a miscast… Something that rarely, if ever happened to Mana. All that the magician wanted to do was use her Friendly Gust jutsu, a technique she had created while still working through the last year of Ninja Academy and had completely mastered until the finals Chuunin Exams.</p><p>Just how disturbed did her mental state have to be to mess up this basic jutsu?</p><p>What came out from the magician's chest as she blew all the pent-up air out was completely different. Twisted and intertwined without any grounds for denying the connection with the jutsu Konoha had used against Mana. Just a simple peek at the howling pillar of twisting air made the flashes of red and white that Mana experienced inside the twister while being cut up resurface.</p><p>With a round blast, the technique dissolved leaving indentations in the rock, thousands of them all over. It was like the mountain was covered with stripes. Friendly Gust was created when Mana was just a child and she had never wondered for a moment if the technique was just an entry step into a much more complicated world of Wind Release ninjutsu. Mana placed her palms against one another, working on soothing and building up her chakra some more.</p><hr/><p>The magician stood in front of the information board that still had wanted posters old and new of all the missing people that started disappearing even before Mana, Meiko, Kouta and Shimo left to look for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. By now, it had seemed like such a normal part of Konoha's political life that the people barely even looked at the board anymore…</p><p>"Could it be? Our perpetrator?" A loud gasp coming from a tough, masculine voice right behind Mana. The magician reached out for the chakra signature of the man behind her with her sensory, choosing to react with the sense she was working on honing the most at that moment, one that was quite vital in the middle of the battle and that anyone gifted with this gift of chakra sensory had the responsibility to not waste.</p><p>The chakra behind Mana was outright massive! Also, it was not alone, Mana couldn't hold it. She stumbled forward onto the information board, pressing against it with her hand that still quivered while her forehead sprayed sweat all over. Even the gently warm spring breeze made Mana feel chilly when her bodily temperature rose as drastically as it just did. There may have been as much as four chakra signatures behind her of similar size, all of them overwhelming and making the chakra of Konoha and Dill feel like amateurs.</p><p>"Dammit, S-Crew, you're scaring the little girl." A more feminine in tone albeit no less masculine in its strength and confidence joined in.</p><p>"Not just any little girl, this is Konoha's Sorceress, did you forget her face from the posters so soon?" the voice of another man said. By then Mana finally had gathered the courage to look back at the sources of the intense chakra as the woman from before of a quite bulky build helped Mana maintain her balance and helped her find a bench to catch some air back into her lungs.</p><p>"What a disgrace, and he comes here on an investigation mission…" the one that the woman named S-Crew before joked about his comrade while the entire remaining crew laughed together.</p><p>"Are you okay?" the woman asked Mana, oblivious to the teasing of her colleagues. It was par for the course, it seemed. Otherwise, someone of her build and size would not have taken such teasing without any playful physical violence being offered in return.</p><p>"It's fine, I must have over-trained, that's it." Mana tried dismissing the woman's worries. Not only would telling her the truth that Mana had no idea what was wrong with her force the magician to actually confront a newly erected, very frightening demon in her closet, but it would also probably be pretty rude to blame something like that on a bunch of people that had nothing to do with Mana's condition.</p><p>It was not their fault they were this crazy powerful in terms of their immense chakra signatures. Mana may have flipped out even if she did not suffer a new batch of problems ever since leaving the hospital. It made so little sense, just when Mana finally got over the beating she took from Yamata no Orochi and found a confident answer to the questions he posed in her own life's experiences and memories of a very unexpected source, she was the least stable she's ever been…</p><p>"Oh, you're a ninja?" the woman grinned with a full-mouthed smile. She had a rather blunt way of speaking and a very odd manner of speech that sounded like something south-western. Something hailing from the more mountainous regions of the world.</p><p>Mana lifted her shirt that was hanging over her headband protector tied around her waist to reveal a little metallic shimmer when the Sun's shine danced on its surface.</p><p>"Damn, Rushira's pretty bad at this." Another one of her colleagues cringed into his fist. The bulky woman turned back with a clenched fist, grinding her teeth while trying to calm herself down and keep herself from lashing out. It was quite embarrassing to admit but over the whole ordeal with Mana's own mental problems and the loss of focus over the immense chakra of these four the magician only noticed the curious metallic braces on the woman's teeth at that moment.</p><p>The company that the iron-lady surrounded herself with was just as odd to see in these part as someone like her. One of her companions was a rather slim, very dark-skinned ninja with two headbands tied around each of his upper arms. One of them had the Kumogakure symbol etched on it but the other symbol the magician had not encountered before. It simply read "Shinobi".</p><p>The other two looked a little more to the ordinary side but they were not without their quirks. There was a rather dull looking man wearing a similar undershirt that the Konoha ninja wore as their standard uniform except his was white and he wore an Iwagakure style flak jacket on top. His hair, while quite stylish, would have been considered too girly for a Konoha ninja to try. It extended past his shoulders, curved to the sides, bent at the end, something that would have required a lot of care from his part to make it happen.</p><p>The final one was a giant, Mana would have only measured up to his waist and the large man looked to be the quiet one. He was smirking and laughing alongside his friends and he wore a standard Konoha uniform. Now that the magician looked at this man, she was beginning to recall more details about him. He was a local, she may have met him once or twice when meeting her father returning from missions at the village gate. He must have known who Mana was which meant he was just looking where this would take his colleagues and letting them have their fun.</p><p>"Now why would a local celebrity be into these missing people?" the one with the stylish haired posed with his fingers extended under the end of his chin.</p><p>"Lay off, Cailar, does she look like someone tough enough to drag a bunch of people underground and make them disappear?" the tall Konoha ninja crossed his arms over his chest while walking out in front of his slim Kumogakure friend.</p><p>"Well, she is a ninja…" the Kumogakure native spoke up from behind Mana. Just how did he get there? The last that Mana registered him he was behind the tall one and now he was speaking from right behind her? "Although she does not appear to be the physical type…"</p><p>The entire last sentence came in synchrony from various directions all around Mana. It felt like the man was all over the place and did not settle for a single location to have his body occupy it. He must have moved around Mana a good dozen of times before she could even register him having moved at all. With his incredible speed, not even the civilians that were casually walking by noticed anything incredible to gawk at.</p><p>"You guys are the Allied Ninja sent here to investigate these disappearances, aren't you?" Mana asked with a flair of certainty that more or less implied that she did not require an answer to that question.</p><p>"That's not bad, kid." The ninja with the stylish hair smiled with a pearly-white smile. "You may be sharper than Rushira."</p><p>"It's just about the only explanation why ninja from Konoha, Kumogakure, somewhere south-west and somewhere pretty cloudy, likely an island from the Archipelago or Kirigakure would all work together without tearing into one another." Mana sighed.</p><p>"In any case, you're not being blamed for anything, Sorceress, it's our first day looking into the matter after arriving in Konoha last evening so we're kind of looking for the end of the line to pull on." The Konoha giant patted the magician's shoulder. He did appear to have remembered having met the girl but he could not have remembered her name just yet. "We're better off leaving and not bothering this kid anymore."</p><p>The man gave his peers an unnerving glare as he uttered these words. This was the resolve in the eyes of a man who respected Mana's father enough to not want his daughter to have anything to do with the important and challenging work of the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Take me with you," Mana asked with all of the inner grievances at the village for keeping her away from this task she placed the responsibility on herself to accomplish when she declared she'd one day become a Sannin surfacing in the shape of conviction in her voice. The girl moved her trembling hand behind her back and gently wrapped her free, less trembling hand around it to make herself appear more stable to these Allied Ninja that may have helped her get closer to a job she wanted ever since she became a chuunin.</p>
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<a name="section0471"><h2>471. A Solitary Cry Far Out In The Universe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Absolutely not," the Konoha member of the Allied Ninja objected. He turned away and began acting as if he was nonchalantly walking away from the conversation before noticing that he was the only one doing so.</p><p>"She is a local." The ninja from Kumogakure with the uncanny speed scratched his chin. "She also displays a very unhealthy interest in this case which means she's willing to go some lengths to solve it."</p><p>"I'm a local and how is that a good thing?" the tall man crossed his arms.</p><p>"I am a sensor. I can be of some help," Mana tried building up her case.</p><p>"She has a point," the woman in the Allied Ninja, Rushira, pointed at Mana's direction. "Sensors are pretty useful and wanted in most teams. It wouldn't be smart of us to decline help from one."</p><p>"Interesting, how experienced are you?" Cailar, the Allied Ninja with the stylish hair, appeared intrigued by Mana's proposition as well. "If you're barely training your gift and can merely confirm or deny the presence of chakra that will not be of that much use to us."</p><p>"I can sense chakra from at least kilometers away. I can accurately gauge the number of signatures, tell signatures I've felt before apart from others, sense irregularities in signatures I've felt before such as genjutsu or other disruptions. I am not wasting my sensory." Mana explained. She may have undersold her complete range but she wanted to rather undersell it and be confident than to try and theorize about her exact limits.</p><p>"That does sound impressive but I am against it. The mission at hand will get too dangerous for a standard village ninja. The Allied Ninja already have their opponents in every country offering ninja to the organization, our actions are under a very close scrutiny and we do not need deaths of young ninja, especially ones that dabble in being superstars on their spare time." The tall Konoha ninja shook his head in bitter disagreement.</p><p>Mana was not entirely sure what his problem was. She clearly established that her participation would have some perks to offer and she wanted this more than she wanted most things recently. She would go above and beyond her limits and what was expected to work on this plaguing mystery. Perhaps it was his slight familiarity with the magician's family that led the ninja to be such an active opponent of the idea?</p><p>"Well, if Junichi is against it, I cannot agree with this either. I'm sorry, Konoha's Sorceress. I have come to trust Junichi's judgment over time working together." Rushira sighed. She looked genuinely fired up about the idea initially but seeing her more experienced colleague disagree almost as passionately and with some hidden determination fueling his decision made the woman follow his gut as well.</p><p>"All of you are crazy, if this will get as dangerous as Junichi thinks it might, we will need everyone pitching in we can get. It would be especially helpful if a sensor can tip us off beforehand that we are all about to go to sleep and get our heads cut off because of some fricking illusion," the Kumogakure Allied Ninja sneered at Junichi with irritation.</p><p>"Well?" Rushira looked at Cailar. "It seems that S-Crew has made his decision and put Sorceress' participation back on the table".</p><p>"Heh, if Junichi is all against it, I am most definitely all for it." Cailar smiled with a shrug. His motives for taking the magician up for her request may have been a bit more elaborate than just the need to oppose everything the Konoha ninja did or every decision he made but the Allied Ninja played it off for laughs.</p><p>"Fine, we don't have time for tie-breakers. You are free to work with us on this but if you have official village business getting in the way or if this gets too dangerous for you, you back out immediately." Junichi warned Mana.</p><p>"Okay," Mana nodded. The budding excitement in her heart made the tremble in her hands cease. Finally, she would be delving into the mystery of the disappearances that have been plaguing the village for a couple of years now. This pretty much was her dream mission ever since she became chuunin and the ambition inside her spread its horizons much wider than ever before. As a genin, she could not have ever had hoped to participate in something like this but as a chuunin, she just may have…</p><p>"I've been away from the village for a long time," Junichi spoke up, he did not look at Mana as he spoke making it difficult to tell if he was addressing her or the entire group. "Could you perhaps fill me in on everything the locals know of these disappearances? Rumors may not be official information but given how the official intelligence is extremely slim, we're willing to get started on anything."</p><p>"In all honesty, the case deserves its reputation," Mana replied. "People of all layers of society disappear from time to time. Some of them are never heard of again, some of them return and some of those people that do awaken strange abilities. Closer inspection reveals their entire anatomies being altered to a freaky degree."</p><p>"Freaky? Is that some kind of Konoha term?" S-Crew joked.</p><p>"One of the genin that has reappeared has discovered an ability to become completely invincible to physical harm. When a Yamanaka teammate of mine peered into his mind she spoke of it as if his entire body was a swarm of a kind. Like every cell in his body was an organism of its own and they all worked together perfectly."</p><p>"Freaky. Got it…" S-Crew gulped. Mana could not help but wonder if this jester truly was a part of the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"It is a possibility that we're dealing with a Quack of an extremely high rank." Rushira raised a theory.</p><p>"That would be impossible." Junichi shut her down. "Konoha is well aware of every Quack in its territory and none of them go beyond scavenging organs and elementary black market patch-ups."</p><p>"Who knows, you've been away for a long time, weren't you?" Cailar shrugged with a certain flair of smug in his smirk. "Maybe one of those lowlifes ranked up a bit."</p><p>"I'd have to agree with Junichi-san with this." Mana voiced her own thoughts even if she wondered just how seriously they would be taken in this group of Allied Ninja. She was not in any way familiar with her role in this team at all and was just dipping her toes at this point. "For a Quack to be able to reform someone's anatomy like this… They'd have to be beyond what we know even S-Rank medical ninja capable of."</p><p>"There aren't that many S+ Rank medical ninja going about, is there?" Junichi nodded with his eyes closed. While he was a very strong opponent of this theory, the very thought it was being entertained and that it had even the slimmest chance of being proven right appeared to intimidate the giant to his very core.</p><p>"Oh, man… We've barely even started and we don't know what to examine first." S-Crew dragged his hand over his face.</p><p>"Of course, there is a reason why this mystery is labeled as such and why Konoha has not solved it yet," Rushira cheeked her colleague.</p><p>"We need to question everyone we know to have reappeared. Examine every known place of disappearance, even if the tracks have long since gone cold." Junichi raised a valid point for a beginning of the investigation.</p><p>"Yes, I am sure Konoha has not yet had that bright idea…" Cailar raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Of course they questioned and even probed every reappearing villager mentally. Regardless, it is the standard procedure. We need to close off every conventional method before we delve elsewhere." Junichi grumbled.</p><p>"You cannot be thinking about closing all exits and then shutting the investigation down?" Rushira shook her head at her more experienced colleague.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Mana inquired.</p><p>"It's how dead or hopeless investigations go, the ninja closes off any potential "exits" that may lead to a new discovery in the case before shutting it down. That's cold." Cailar replied.</p><p>"I do not dismiss the possibility of the mystery being hopeless and impossible to solve given the standard investigative measures, that being said, we better get the procedural chaff out of the way. Let's give our young tag-along some experience into the real Allied Ninja work…" Junichi smiled with just the very tips of his lips.</p><hr/><p>The procedural parts of the ninja work were just as pointless as initially thought. The Allied Ninja proceeded to knock on every door, question as many people as they could who may have known anything about anything related to these disappearances before examining the places where people have disappeared from as well as trekking outside the village to do the same with places of interest outside the village.</p><p>"Well, that sure was pointless…" S-Crew lowered his hands down.</p><p>"Perhaps. But now we can begin the real investigation, the procedural chaff is out the way, it is time to show what separates the Allied Ninja from just any village ninja." Junichi closed his eyes, he may have appeared to have nodded off but Mana sensed the giant to be quite focused. He was merely sifting through his vast mind, looking for valid points of interest to start from. The magician was not a stranger to such a strategy herself, shutting down a sense to streamline the focus onto what was truly important.</p><p>"It will be much simpler to look for those that wish to remain hidden at night anyway." Mana sighed with a weary smile, attempting to make the situation a little bit lighter after seeing everyone a bit on edge from all the interrogating and examining random places for something that so obviously was not there anymore.</p><p>"Negative. Straining ourselves and wasting chakra optimizing our awareness after a sleepless night would be counterproductive. Especially when we know we may be walking into a nasty fight." Junichi calmly disagreed.</p><p>"You're just saying that because you're itching to see your wife and kids after four years." Cailar leaned in on the giant with a playful tease.</p><p>"So what if I am, your time would be better spent looking for a place to sleep." The man calmly played off the teasing as a serious case.</p><p>"Actually, if it is okay, I'd like to maybe spend the night with you guys. There might be much I could learn from you and there is a lot to discuss about this mystery." Mana suggested.</p><p>"Forget it, kid. Our job hours are over. Go and catch some Z's" S-Crew shrugged it off.</p><p>"S-Crew raises a fine point. We'll be paying more for a larger room and we are accountable to the Allied Ninja for our spending, seeing how they are covering it." Rushira nodded at her comrade's direction after giving Mana a soft and apologetic glare.</p><p>"Plus, having a celebrity around would really disturb our rest," Cailar said.</p><p>"Look at that, Cailar actually on the same page with something. Must be a first." Junichi thundered out in a serious tone and a stoic face even if the content of his words suggested teasing. "In any case, the job's over for today. Scatter."</p><p>Taking his own advice, the tall and bulky man turned around and, hands in his pockets, walked off to the north-eastern districts of the village. Mana could not believe it. This was single-handedly the most important mystery in the recent history of her village. An enigma that has made hundreds of villagers disappear with only around a quarter of them either reappearing or being accounted for, a riddle that has indirectly caused multiple other curious cases all over the village like the incident in the Ninja Academy.</p><p>The Allied Ninja just stopped working after six hours of useless, procedural fluff to walk off their own ways and lay low. If Mana cared this little about her job, she'd have never achieved anything in Shukuba, she'd have never done half of what she managed not to screw up throughout her entire career.</p><p>Rushira looked at the magician with concern and was about to speak up. Perhaps Mana failed to be as subtle with her inner feelings as she wanted to be, a ninja should not have allowed something like that to surface. Not over something like this. The girl closed her eyes. In any case, she was still on the case, she was working with an international organization that knew no bounds in terms of authority except that of their own. They would never let the Hokage's word or personal history get in the way of the job.</p><p>Even if this day was done, there was nothing to be mad about… Mana desperately tried injecting this train of thought into her mind but it came off with varied results.</p><p>This may have been just an assignment for these four but to Mana, it was so much more. It was her chance to work on something that would make a difference, something important. There was so much thick, unexplored mist spreading behind these disappearances that the intrigue could never let Mana fall asleep.</p><p>The girl followed the example set by her superiors from abroad and turned to the direction of her home. She wouldn't admit it even to herself, but the few fans that did stop her for a short chat or just to say hello may have encountered a much more obsessed and rushing idol than they were used to seeing. Home could not have laid further on the horizon, tomorrow could not have come sooner…</p><hr/><p>Father was oddly content. Mother looked a little bit worn out but she also had a subtle grin on her face. Something was off… For a man in constant, crippling pain, there had to be something going on to make father this happy. Sure, since discovering under the counter herb concoctions sold in the village stands he was happier more often than before when all the treatment he got was what he got from the hospital but…</p><p>"We fixed the automated spikes for you," father explained, looking proud of himself and his wife.</p><p>"We is putting it strongly. I just followed instructions and had working hands…" mother shrugged. All the technical mumbo-jumbo of Mana's death traps she used on-stage could not have appealed to her any less but she did look somewhat delighted that this little tinkering brought her family closer together, made them smile for once.</p><p>"That's actually… Pretty convenient. I was going to postpone doing that for a short while. Something important came up…" Mana dragged her trembling hand over her messy, dark hair.</p><p>It did not take long for father to express curiosity and use some of his trademark ingenuity to press on Mana's reasons for doing something she would never have done otherwise.</p><p>"You did not get a letter, because we're the first line for that. Can't be official village business. I do recall you looking pretty grumpy and coming back early one morning, can't be the whole Intelligence Division thing…" father started listing things. Lists and blueprints were where he excelled. Diagrams, data and the sort were the only things that made sense to him. It was only rational that he would approach his own daughter through some sort of a spreadsheet or a chart.</p><p>"I'm doing a little assistance gig on the whole disappearance thing." Mana could not contain her obsessions inside. Both of her hands began trembling at the same time when the lid came off and the contents of her soul came spilling. Father's eyes were quick to notice, he was someone with a great deal of experience with nerves and the wrong ways they could trigger.</p><p>"I see, heard the Allied Ninja are putting in some effort. It's not every day that we get that kind of attention." The man did not speak of what truly plagued his mind. What made his eyes go sour while the rest of his face remained the same. It was just how men were…</p><p>"It's not every day that the village accepts it. Fourth may have been one of the core supporters for the idea but most villages still believe the safest hands to handle their files to still be their own." Mana's eyes shimmered as she looked up with dumpling-holding chopsticks still tightly gripped in her arm.</p><p>"Yeah, I suppose the whole shroud of international superhero would appeal to you…" father grinned. He made a very conscious decision to hide his eyes by closing them though. He did not want to seem fake or to show his hand that was full of concern. "That's not really how reality is though. Don't get your hopes up too much or overextend."</p><p>"How can't I?" Mana exclaimed like a girl asked out by a boy she liked. "It's the disappearances case, working alongside the Allied Ninja!"</p><p>Father sighed. He looked concerned about something but all Mana could see and the only conclusion she could draw was one coming from the words he actually let out. "I see… That's nice…"</p><hr/><p>A dark, cold void. It was a breathless feeling that Mana was not used to currently. Given the whole rebirth of nature that was going on around her and some of the warmest spring that Konoha had gone through, it was nothing remarkable. The asphyxiating sense of dread and emptiness was slowly dimming out. Warmth began seeping into the magician's nostrils, caressing her cheeks, rays of light began reaching her vision from the limitless vastness of the universe around her.</p><p>It was a star, far, far away in the distance. Twinkling and spreading its warmth out wide into the cosmos. That was what had warmed her all along in this curious journey… It was getting warm… The star's flames appeared to do little of the breathless helplessness Mana felt and soon her entire body started twitching. She was accelerating right at the core of the star at speeds beyond her comprehension or imagination…</p><p>No. The star was not coming closer, neither was Mana, the magician was standing still along! Just floating, it was the star that was expanding as if fueled by something amazing, booming into every reaches of space. The intense pressure and heat of its contents raised Mana up from the bed, just soon enough to hear a cry far out in the distance. It was like a roar, one from something in a whole lot of pain.</p><p>It must have been just a dream… Mana's sensory was going nuts, she felt something scary far out in the distance, a signature as wide as the star she had felt before but it was not the feeling that burning up in her gut. It was just an after-sense of sorts. This sound she heard… This immeasurable chakra… None of it truly remained now, just echoes of them, just faint enough to make Mana wonder if they were ever there, to begin with.</p>
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<a name="section0472"><h2>472. A Crossroad Of Monsters And Painkillers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Wow, the little starlet didn't check out." S-Crew grinned while gesturing at Mana, who showed up at the nearest hotel to where she and the Allied Ninja parted ways last night.</p><p>"Why would she? It was her idea to tag along…" Rushira squinted at her comrade.</p><p>"Just making conversation, sheesh." The Kumogakure native shrugged.</p><p>"You have a good reason to be surprised. Not every young ninja would come for more of what we did yesterday." Cailar looked at his colleague.</p><p>"I am more surprised to see Junichi here." Rushira grinned while butting her tall friend with her elbow. "One would think that after years of serving abroad you'd spend a bit more time with your family."</p><p>"We've got work to do." Junichi cleared his throat.</p><p>"You're all closed in like your missus cheated on you or something." S-Crew joked.</p><p>"She did," Junichi replied without a hint of emotion.</p><p>"H-Holy shit!" S-Crew flipped out, the rest of the team gasped. Mana was not overly invested into this small-talk, she was just itching to get to work but this little revelation did somewhat touch her.</p><p>"Are you serious!?" Rushira lost it, she leaned in on the giant's side and began patting his shoulder and his back excessively in a friendly manner. Taps like that would have broken the ribcage or dislocated any punier shoulder. "I'm so sorry."</p><p>"It's no big deal. I came back home, saw my wife with another man. Lost it. She said that I should have expected no different after four years. I thought it was fair enough, a rather valid point so I conceded." Junichi shrugged. "So are we looking for those missing villagers or what?"</p><p>"He's joking." Mana nonchalantly called the man out while his colleagues were losing it. They began fumbling over individual elements of what was said, each thing more ridiculous than the other, together with the cold and bland tone of the speaker they created a very inviting for conflict scenery. Mana was about as much of a people person as anyone else but she knew a bit about entertainment and she could see fluff being pulled from a mile away.</p><p>"Indeed. It is a joke. I found it hilarious when I thought of it this morning." Junichi pouted his lips while he nodded his head repeatedly. "Then I thought it was stupid and out of nowhere but you walked into it so you left me no choice."</p><p>"Damn, that was pretty mean though. Leave the joking to me next time…" S-Crew rubbed his nose with his thumb erratically.</p><p>"Very well, in any case, we do not have strong clues about where to look yet. I suggest we examine the records from yesterday, look for any reason to look into things further, no matter how slim. If someone found a ryo in the place where someone disappeared earlier, we look into it." Junichi declared the no less grueling schedule.</p><p>"Actually…" Mana rubbed the back of her neck in discomfort. She felt a little bad bringing something like this up but the Konoha native Allied Ninja did say that they were looking for anything, no matter how slim. "I heard and felt something yesterday. I'm sure it was nothing but… It was like this huge presence just appearing out of nowhere. Like something big with an immense chakra signature had been sleeping and woke up yesterday. It can't be anything important, right?"</p><p>"Hard to say, what are the odds of two similar calamities befalling Konoha at the same time and in no way clashing against one another?" Junichi rubbed his chin in worry.</p><p>"Come on though, we're looking into night terrors now? I mean yesterday kind of dragged but we did it all for the noble goal of closing the case down. If something huge would have woken up yesterday, it'd likely have gobbled the village down by now." S-Crew objected in his own way.</p><p>"Perhaps, but these cannot be mere night terrors," Rushira suggested. "Sometimes dreams can be influenced by outside factors. Like when you start dreaming about scary things when you're cold or hungry or when smells in your vicinity influence your dreams. Mana is a sensor, perhaps her subconscious alerted her of her sensory picking something up while she was asleep this way?"</p><p>Cailar sighed. "This cannot be related to the disappearances. I am much more interested in something more direct – the surprising presence of black market drugs in the village."</p><p>Mana was initially about to object to the Allied Ninja's flat-out dismissal of her thoughts. After Rushira's suggestion, the magician was just about willing to take her nocturnal sensations seriously but Cailar did spare himself of a clash with the magician.</p><p>"You mean the over the counter pain medication?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"That is correct." Cailar nodded. "Listening to all those stories about people disappearing and reappearing, incapable of feeling pain or awakening these odd abilities. Has an overqualified Quack not made into our list of suspicion yesterday? It is simply all too convenient, just like S-Crew poked fun at it before, I do not believe these two factors to not be related."</p><p>"Hmmm… Indeed, for two outside factors to operate in a village like this on such a scale and not butt heads would be impossible. It is more than likely these two are related." Junichi pondered.</p><p>"Could we maybe look into the scary roar last night?" Mana suggested. Her left hand started trembling, making the magician stuff it inside the inner pocket of her blazer.</p><p>"You cannot be serious…" Cailar looked at Junichi.</p><p>"I'm afraid the girl has become our tie-breaker." The giant sighed. "Monsters roaring in the night, possessing chakra signature that would wake up a sensor in the middle of her beauty sleep sound unlikely but… Won't hurt to ask around."</p><p>"It quite literally might hurt…" S-Crew rubbed his thighs</p><p>"Oh, come now. Don't be such a sissy." Rushira teased her constantly goofy comrade. "If we find no clue of any monsters, we can go back to investigating the black market painkillers at any time. This is a mystery that spans for years, what's a little side-quest in the face of that?"</p><p>Much to Mana's surprise, it appeared that she was not the only one with terrible nightmares last night. Plenty of people around the vicinity of her home heard an overpowering noise and some of the homes even reported broken windows to the Konoha Administration that very same morning. The Allied Ninja found some genin fixing the busted windows and cleaning the glass for their simply chore missions while talking to the villagers willing to tell of their experiences.</p><p>"Huh… It appears there is another mystery on our list of things to consider." Junichi coldly affirmed that Mana's experiences last night were no mere dream in his mind.</p><p>"Okay, two things happening side by side was pretty casual for us but three? You mean some drug kingpin is pushing painkillers on the black market, kidnapping people on the side and they're a giant monster? Get out of here…" S-Crew was the only one who found that observation funny, as much as he tried poking Cailar with an elbow, the Allied Ninja with the stylish hair found little amusement in S-Crew's suggestion.</p><p>"We need to look into this at least until we can establish that there is no connection between this and the disappearances. Monsters are known for a lot of things but making people disappear just may be in their modus operandi." Mana voiced her thoughts. Her thoughts were impure and she could feel that. There was a hidden nerve that was quite painful and one that the magician, despite her best intentions, very much wanted to keep hidden.</p><p>"I could go for a good monster fight. Even if the beast is unrelated to these disappearances, it would make for a good brawl." Rushira shrugged. "If it is related, not only we get to kick its ass but we save a lot of people along the way and do our job here."</p><p>Mana was glad to have someone among the Allied Ninja on her side. In her glee she let her eyes wander around the group, surveying their mood and they accidentally fell on something that made her blush and look away. It was possibly the strictest glare that the magician had ever seen directed at her from Junichi. Why was he looking at her this way? Was he mad at Mana for something? She would have been able to understand someone like S-Crew looking at her this way for making more work for him but Junichi…</p><p>"We may as well look into this monster thing." Junichi dropped his attempts to kill Mana with his chilling glares about as quickly as he picked them up. Not only that, confusing the magician with his behavior even more, the Allied Ninja appeared to support the side that made him get so furious just a handful of moments prior.</p><p>"I agree." Cailar was just another shocker to add to the list. The rest of the Allied Ninja and Mana stared down the stylish ninja who was beginning to carve the image of being quite the dissident in most cases. Perhaps dissidence was becoming the norm to him, by joining in on the popular opinion the man intended to achieve the same shocking effect he feasted on before when he disagreed and derailed any discussion or job.</p><p>"Wait, what?" S-Crew turned at the stylish ninja.</p><p>"If anyone read our report from afar, they'd come to the conclusion that this was a clue after an entire day of pointless examinations and questionings. It's a poor and, as of yet, an unfocused lead that may not even be a lead at all but it is all we have." Cailar explained his reasoning.</p><p>"Holy shit, if we don't look into this monster shit, we won't be able to shut this case down because we'll have open leads." S-Crew rubbed the back of his bald head.</p><p>"That is correct. Even if we return with a closed case, someone outranking us will reopen it and send us back to look into this monster business as a possible lead. It won't be pretty when they do it either." Cailar sighed.</p><p>There was an increasing amount of filth gathering in the motives of everyone involved. S-Crew appeared to care little about anything else but goofing off and getting this mystery that is possibly the most important case Konoha has seen in ages shut down, Cailar was just looking to choose a position that would incite the maximum amount of chaos, Rushira was looking for a little bit of entertainment and who even knew what Junichi's deal was… Then there was Mana…</p><p>Deep inside, the girl knew that the painkillers all over Konoha markets and vendors that just appeared out of nowhere a handful of years ago were the stronger lead. The disappearances may have predated the painkiller boom but they were still too close to dismiss the connection. Now they were just chasing monsters around in alleyways.</p><p>"Mana claimed that her sensory could work in kilometers of range. That does somewhat limit our range of possible locations to look for this monster but…" Cailar only complained before exhaling with a depressing wail.</p><p>"In any case, the reports of strange sounds and the amount of more notable damage and phenomena is around this district." Junichi looked up at the dull and seemingly dead entertainment district filled with gambling homes and just about any establishment that could afford the colorful nocturnal advertisement. It was the modern jungle in more ways than one, it seemed. Not only did it possess the qualities of an urban jungle but it also had the nasty property of housing a beast.</p><p>Districts like this one were far from abandoned or forgotten. In fact, it would buzz with activity and shower the village and its clear spring sky with a whole specter of lights just a couple of hours later. This particular district was merely going through a refreshing phase, having been active to the very brim of how much vitality it can support through the night and the early morning, now it was but a corpse to be reborn in the dark hours once more.</p><p>"Those neon lights sure are ugly when they're not in use…" Cailar noted after inspecting the entire place with his curious glare.</p><p>"Yeah, but these streets must be on fire when those babies are on." S-Crew whistled into the air after doing the same.</p><p>"Can you pick something up, Mana?" Rushira looked at the magician who, after being encouraged to do so, closed her eyes and concentrated on her sensory.</p><p>Chakra sensory had a definitive range, one that could have been increased through training but it also had an uncanny ability to expand that range as long as one was concentrating on this one sense alone. Closing one's eyes, shutting oneself off from any other sounds and concentrating could have expanded the range a good two to four times. At this pace, Mana might become able to cover the entire village with her sensory in a year or so.</p><p>"Yes!" Mana snapped her eyes open. "These are weak signatures. Likely those from civilians but they are highly unnatural."</p><p>"No monster then?" Cailar turned and twisted his lips to show off his disappointment. It appeared that the Allied Ninja have found yet another track to begin looking in but they could never for the life of them finish a track they started while on this investigation.</p><p>"Perhaps not but… If Mana finds those signatures odd, it won't hurt to check their location out." Junichi nodded with the approval of how useful the girl's sensory turned out to be.</p><p>"They are at a most unorthodox location, their chakra are also unlike that of normal civilians, although of similar size. It has influences of something else entirely in their networks." Mana described the odd sensation she felt when inspecting this anomaly amongst everything she picked up on before. It took her some training before she could just single out oddities like this from the entire picture. It was like looking for a hippo in a picture overstuffed with cartoon elephants unless one knew exactly what they were looking for and where that thing was supposed to be, it may have taken some time to find it.</p><p>Mana and the Allied Ninja hurried along the abandoned pathways and quickly cut the street onto an arching bridge that had a steep fall underneath, covering over another street down below that crossed it. Misshapen and nearly rotten figures of coal-black skin and lips that were so damaged they barely concealed their ghastly grins all looked at the gathering Allied Ninja with surprise that their meeting was interrupted.</p><p>The sole normal figure of a Konoha ninja wearing a black overcoat over his flak jacket and standard uniform of an average or higher ranked ninja stepped out in front of the pitiful figures.</p><p>"I'll take care of this." He mumbled.</p><p>"Mana." Someone in the crowd of the black deadmen uttered and extended their long, corrupted finger at the magician's general direction. In a hurry, the rest of the revolting figures joined in on the excitement that took over the pitiful ones upon laying their eyes on the magician.</p><p>"I know, not now." The ninja turned his head halfway to the side of the overly excited men and women that, in their condition, should have been dead but were not.</p><p>"I guess we ran into the drug dealers first… Told you those drugs had more to do with the disappearances than the monster." Cailar turned at the rest of the squad with a smug face, as if taunting them and bragging of his superior instincts.</p><p>"This visual does seem to be more related to the rampant painkiller black market than the monster indeed." Junichi joined the side of his teammate. "That does not necessarily invalidate the existence of the monster."</p><p>"Allied Ninja, this is troublesome." The mysterious ninja who seemed to be barking orders at the coal-black ones exclaimed while the feeble subordinates hobbled like penguins to a nearby manhole and disappeared into the blackness it led to. This ninja stood like a wall between the Allied ninja and those poor people, if they were still fitting to be categorized as such in their current condition, that is.</p><p>"That's right, scumbag, we're here now to investigate the shit out of this shit!" S-Crew threw his fist out as a declaration of his upcoming victory against this man who had decided to serve as a roadblock in this situation.</p><p>"You were the one trying to shut this investigation down this whole time…" Mana squinted her eyes at the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Yes… Well… You see…" S-Crew began making up excuses, squirming and rubbing the back of his head as he sweat profusely. "It was a ploy, all just a ploy. I didn't want to reveal too much information about this to random villagers so I tried to get you disinterested, you see… Now I can remove my mask of aloofness at last!"</p><p>"Good, so you can then beat this guy for us." Rushira grinned before smacking the Kumogakure native in the back. The man got thrown forward and nearly lost balance after this roughhousing but managed to stay on his feet somehow.</p><p>"Wait, all of us will not be fighting him?" Mana got surprised. "Surely if we all attacked him at once…"</p><p>"We'd all waste chakra and constantly get in each other's way." Junichi shut Mana's appeal down. "This is a pretty narrow street, maybe too narrow for S-Crew to fight alone. We are more than likely to meet more able fighters ahead. If this man was someone important he would not be throwing himself at us to protect a bunch of walking corpses."</p><p>"It appears you've got me…" the mystery Konoha ninja smiled, throwing coat off to the side and revealing a serpentine, scaly face with glowing eyes and snake heads butting out from the man's shoulder blades and kidney area. "I am just a meaningless life in a greater purpose. Sadly, I lack the numbers that those poor people possess and their knowledge and therefore I am of limited use to my guru."</p><p>"Guru?" Mana mumbled to herself.</p><p>"Enough, S-Crew, take this guy down, and Mana…" Junichi turned a strict glare at the magician, "Don't think you're off the hook here too. Those people seemed to know you even in their current state. It does not look like you are completely unconnected to whatever this is, just like I thought."</p><p>"Man, you're so weird looking… How did you ever pass as a normal ninja?" S-Crew kept on complaining while he stepped out in front of the party of Allied Ninja and Mana and prepared to face this strange, serpentine man.</p><p>"I did not even need to try too hard. Ours is a strange world, full of even stranger people. Nobody cared if I looked a bit scaly as long as I got the job done." The man replied as he took an offensive, wrestling-like stance and the snake-limbs extended onwards as well, creating a perfect circle of area-coverage and a very powerful fighting stance to beat or find openings in.</p><p>Then again, if someone could have found an opening in a situation like this, it would be one of the Allied Ninja…</p>
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<a name="section0473"><h2>473. Heat Inertia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>S-Crew just carelessly waved his hand about in a manner not unlike that in which he'd do it if he had grabbed something too hot to keep hold of. A raucous thud came from the direction of his opponent while the face of the serpentine ninja folded inward like a smashed dumpling. The golden-shaded, reptilian eyes blew out like balloons around the center of impact.</p><p>The opposing figure just hunched forward as if it had died instantly but somehow managed to stay on two feet from adamant will alone. In just mere moments, the man lifted the upper half of his body back up and glared at the Allied Ninja that had attacked him faster than any eye could register it.</p><p>"That's some amazing speed but you shouldn't have shown your hand this early." The mysterious ninja said nonchalantly as if the overwhelming threat of his opponent's rank was completely beyond his care.</p><p>"Oh? You think you got my jam? Then how about you try stopping it?" S-Crew grinned with a cocky smile as his body proceeded to display no sign of movement but invisible strikes just as potent as the first one but overwhelmingly numerous littered the opponent's body with nasty looking bumps.</p><p>This time, the serpentine man fell on the ground like a sack of potatoes. Just a moment later, however, just like before, it rose up in a skyward spiral, the integrity of his body completely reshaped.</p><p>"Damn… No damage, huh?" S-Crew pouted to himself.</p><p>"You should have suspected that snakes are capable of sensing heat. I know the secret of your trick, you fool." The ninja dragged his fist across his scaly face and took the same fighting stance from before.</p><p>Without any further warning or telegraphing, the ninja launched himself at his Allied Ninja opponent. The man carried within him all the lethality and speed of a snake's lunge in a human body. Every single strike, every movement delivered with the same blinding speed that a Ninja Snake would use to lunge its head. It was a nasty trait of whatever odd technique caused this man to adopt snake-like properties.</p><p>Regardless of how fast the Konoha ninja was, it did not matter that he had numerous snake appendages increasing the number of his limbs, not even his impressive speed could match the blitzing evasiveness of the Kumogakure ninja who appeared to be moving almost instantaneously. Mana had not seen this kind of speed since she witnessed Chestnut Hanasaku in a fight. She would have had problems following this battle if it was not transpiring in such a limited space, perhaps it was for the better if she did not involve herself in it.</p><p>S-Crew snapped back on the offensive, moving in but a blur before just fading away and leaving a grinning afterimage right up in his opponent's face. The reptilian man kept looking around him. This mysterious disappearance confused Mana initially but upon stronger augmentations being placed on her perception, straining it to its very limit, she could see it – a blur of literal circles that S-Crew was running around his opponent.</p><p>"This is stupid, he's just showing off…" Mana observed.</p><p>"No, he's actually powering up this way. He is showing his opponent respect." Junichi shook his head.</p><p>"How is feinting a hit and then running circles around your opponent respectful?" Mana wondered. To her, it seemed like S-Crew's aloof personality translated perfectly on the battlefield and she just refused to believe that this was part of proper and honorable ninja fight.</p><p>"Your perception is not strong enough yet to comprehend S-Crew's ability, that is why his actions make no sense to you." Rushira grinned, looking at Mana as if the magician was just some kind of naïve child.</p><p>Out of seemingly nowhere, a shockwave that even Mana could see because of its mirage-like appearance overwhelmed the reptilian man and sent him stumbling back. His tongue was sticking out and the ninja kept on exhaling air through his nose like trying to get rid of a pretty nasty invader or some feeling he did not particularly like.</p><p>"This was just like before but… Stronger." Mana put it together. "It is not just speed that S-Crew-san is using. It's heat…"</p><p>"That's quite impressive, I wonder just how much of S-Crew's style she can decipher before this fight is over." Cailar looked at Mana with moderate pride as well as surprise that the magician could read so well into a battle she could so barely perceive.</p><p>"The heat of his strikes intensified when S-Crew ran around in circles. His chakra network is strained… He is not just fist fighting, he is expelling actual heat his body is building up from his pores with those waves." Mana realized.</p><p>"Exactly, the heat that builds up in his muscles when he's moving at the speed he is moving in. S-Crew has trained his body not only in raw speed but also in a way to stop that very same speed in an instant, where his body halts, the heat inside his muscles does not. Because of inertia, the energy from his pores creates these waves that you've seen." Rushira explained with excitement in her voice. Part of it must have been because she was impressed with her teammate's ability but some of it was because of how quickly Mana put it together as well.</p><p>"Hmph… This fighting style used to be a big deal, now it seems like literal children can piece it together, let alone trash like this opponent in our way." Junichi looked a tad grumpy. Likely due to the fact that despite an increase in S-Crew's effort and the heat he put out, the enemy appeared to be fazed just as little as he was before any change took place.</p><p>The snake-man picked himself back up and showed a smile full of sharp teeth as well as a pointy and elongated tongue.</p><p>"What are ya, immune to heat or something? Also, what's with all those snakes, are ya some kind of a snake dude?" S-Crew grumbled in frustration about how his attacks appeared to be leaving little to no damage despite him overpowering his enemy at every turn and in almost every category.</p><p>The creepy reptilian did not reply, merely wrap two of his snake limbs into a single braid and try to slam the Kumogakure ninja with it. S-Crew dashed around the attack, despite the fact that Mana could not pick up when he was striking, she saw a handful of blush-colored heatwaves blasting the way of their enemy.</p><p>"Finally, some results…" the Kumogakure native smirked confidently upon seeing small burns over the places where his heatwaves blasted the opponent, throwing him about like a ragdoll. His counterattack was successful, it seemed.</p><p>"The fighting style of S-Crew-san is quite taxing," Mana observed, "He had lost more than a quarter of his chakra already and the size of his signature initially took me by surprise."</p><p>"You can't fire the literal heat of your muscles without working them up some," Junichi replied.</p><p>"Well, if this much heat only works half the time then…" S-Crew grinned to himself before leaving countless afterimages after his further movements while the Allied Ninja built up more and more speed.</p><p>"It's quite pathetic that a little barrier in the road is inconveniencing us this much," Cailar noted.</p><p>"This man is no mere barrier. He is a perfect barrier," Mana replied. "Have you not noticed it yet?"</p><p>"Indeed, he does not appear to be using any remarkable offensive techniques. His style appears to be completely based on surviving enemy attacks and being all-around to leave a dent on. Most of his attacks revolve around just foolishly waving around, even a goofy idiot like S-Crew can dodge those kinds of attacks." Cailar nodded after a brief pause.</p><p>"Then… This man has been trained for this exact purpose, as a sacrificial lamb to hold the enemy off for as long as it is possible? What a terrible fate, who would create such a follower?" Rushira's face turned sour as she observed the continuing battle.</p><p>S-Crew's body appeared right in between the Allied Ninja and their serpentine enemy, the overwhelming heatwave that came out of his body was completely coral in its shade and intensity. Just a couple of jogs like this one and there may have been full-out flames bursting from S-Crew's body, even if this was just vaguely defined heat, Mana could sense the immense but controlled in its spread temperature, it never began any less intense than the hottest a powerful blaze could get, to begin with.</p><p>The body of the snake-man bent backward, the upper half of his body turned and twisted and fell to the floor while his clothes tore off to shreds. His snake-like eyes completely whited out but the lower body of the ninja somehow managed to keep the reptilian on his own two feet. Just as fast as he was brought down, the man bounced back to life and threw his limbs around, trying to wrap them around his opponent's human limbs to hoist him up in the air and leave him powerless and open for a brutal beating from the reptilian's human limbs.</p><p>Despite how deceitful the attack of the serpentine man was and how agile he was to even provide this much challenge to the Kumogakure speedster, S-Crew was simply nowhere near the location of the attack when it took place. The snake-limbs merely phased through the image of the Allied Ninja while the true S-Crew appeared behind the snake-man, then all over the place, launching yet another barrage of heatwaves, this time ones streaming just from his fists and coming from afar, not his entire body.</p><p>The attack completely devastated the poor man and sent him crashing into and through a nearby building. By the time the heatwaves stopped, the snake-man was just a crushed and beaten pulp of scales and wine-colored blood. Mana noticed how thick and gooey the blood was in consistency, not unlike that of the actual Ninja Snakes she had met and fought briefly.</p><p>"At last…" S-Crew huffed. He looked quite winded. Mana sensed the speedster to have just about hit his halfway line of how much chakra he still could use. Who knew just how much stamina he had left to keep fighting this way. In this state of weariness, his signature was almost tolerable to properly size up and analyze.</p><p>"I don't think he is a partner of the Ninja Snakes. The only jutsu that would grant a man this kind of unity with their summon are Combination Transformation and Sage Mode." Mana noted.</p><p>"If he was using Combination Transformation, injuries like these would have caused him to poof back." Rushira turned her lips to the side of her face before slightly biting the lower one.</p><p>"And I do not think any summoner has ever managed to befriend the Ninja Snakes enough to be taught the Sage Mode." Mana sighed. She was a little relieved that she did not have to go into too much detail about just what Sage Mode was with these people, truth be told, she barely knew what that technique was herself.</p><p>"If he was using Sage Mode, we'd have all been dead." Cailar stuffed his hands into his pockets.</p><p>"In any case, it would be for the best if we moved on. We still have to catch up to those weird, rotten people." Junichi grumbled.</p><p>"Guys, wait up, I need a moment here…" S-Crew huffed heavily a pair of times before looking back at his unconscious opponent and blitzing after his colleagues to follow their advance.</p><p>"Now would be the time to tell us why the enemy knew you so well," Junichi spoke up with a firm and strict tone. His was not the tone of a man that would have accepted jokes or levity in this case. This was the tone of someone, who was this close to lashing out and breaking bones but asked to be convinced to reconsider first.</p><p>"I… I don't know. I've never seen any of them before, even if I did, how could I recognize them after what has happened to them." Mana replied. She genuinely felt like she was about to become the enemy in the eyes of the Allied Ninja herself. Could she have simply been framed this way?</p><p>Then again, way back during the search for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, about when the entire mess of the disappearances started, Shimo's sensei did blabber a whole lot about someone dangerous being very interested in Mana. Someone who very much wanted her alive, if Mana's memory served. This revelation was part of what was so alluring about this mystery.</p><p>"You did then confirm that you've met Ninja Snakes before, we just fought a snake-man of sorts," Cailar spoke up. His tone was not accusatory in any way, unlike that of Junichi. The Allied Ninja merely attempted to make Mana understand why they are so on edge after the enemy addressed Mana with such familiarity and what could only seem like admiration.</p><p>"She is an entertainment star in this village. It would make sense that everybody around these parts would at the very least have heard of Konoha's Sorceress. Her fame has spread even beyond the walls of her home village, after all." Rushira shrugged. The woman looked simply unsure about what to believe in. She did not look at Mana as if the magician was some sort of a villain but the kunoichi did look quite confused.</p><p>"Perhaps that is how they know of me." Mana closed her eyes, using her sensory to track the enemy in the darkness of the sewers while the sounds of running water helped her navigate while moving at high speeds in total darkness. The magician was almost impressed with her own skill at moving so fast in such limited space in complete darkness by just listening to the movement of the water and the rodents present in the sewer system.</p><p>The girl left the sentence lingering even though she desperately needed and wanted to find the words to help ease the distrust that was beginning to root in the group.</p><p>"Well, if that is the case, there is only one way we can find out." Rushira smiled at Mana's direction as a gesture to let the girl know that the woman was not mad or distrustful of the magician at all and decided to keep an open mind.</p><p>"Maybe, but that could be just what the enemy wants." Cailar stroke his chin.</p><p>"Yes. Lull us into a false sense of security and strike at our backs when we think we have the enemy cornered." Junichi wondered out loud even though his distressed and accusatory glares have stopped and his mimics have softened in general.</p><p>"Finally…" S-Crew wheezed out, finally having caught up with his squad in the complete darkness. The fact that the man managed to do so without any sensory abilities whatsoever was an impressive feat all by itself, then again, a ninja of his rank and stature would be able to track people and with his amazing speed, catching up would have been child's play.</p><p>The squad stopped shortly after regrouping to observe a ring of falling sewer water surrounded by endless pathways of rusty metal and mossy stone all around. Even before Mana reached out for the signatures of the black and rotten ones into the darkness to determine the best path to take, she could feel the red eyes of rats staring the curious visitors down the whole time from every single path.</p><p>"Impressive." Rushira grinned to herself like a child who was at the funfair for the first time.</p><p>"Yeah, this place is pretty lit." S-Crew wiped his running nose and finally got to catch his breath somewhat.</p><p>"The sewer is impressive to you?" Cailar gave his colleagues a disgusted and mocking glare. "Also, I believe this literal shithole is the exact opposite of being lit. It is one of the main problems I have with this place."</p><p>"Any luck finding us a right path, Mana?" Junichi looked at the magician.</p><p>"I-I'm sorry…" Mana shook her head. "Their signatures are too small. If they banded together I may be able to pick them up but they must have scattered all over the place."</p><p>"For someone their size and condition those bastards were quite quick to run away," Cailar noted.</p><p>"It's because we took this long with the snake dude. If you guys just ran off without me, maybe you'd have caught up." S-Crew crossed his arms and pouted his lips at the Allied Ninja with the stylish hair.</p><p>"Heh, you mean you wanted for us to run away and leave you?" Cailar boldly looked right back at the judgmental glare of his colleague who appeared to have flustered over the response.</p><p>"No. It is for the better that we waited. This way we can all travel together in one group. The fighting stance of the opponent was too wide, his reach too long and the space too limited for any of us to give him the slip. Whoever taught them this strategy of reacting to pursuers must have been quite experienced. There is a mastermind behind all of this." Mana admitted.</p><p>"So what now? Do we just split up and look everywhere? Mana did mention that there was a possibility…" Rushira began talking.</p><p>"A certainty." Mana interrupted her.</p><p>"Fine, a certainty that the black ones split up. If we scan the whole sewer we can scoop at least one of them up and then interrogate them about all their hideouts." Rushira suggested.</p><p>"No." Junichi cut the idea down. "If Mana truly is a traitor planted among us, that would be just what she'd want us to do. The enemy was surprisingly challenging for someone like us. It would no longer be wise to look down on this mission or treat it like any other investigation. This might demand our full strength and wits to complete."</p><p>"Awww man…" S-Crew's arms dangled helplessly below his hunched over in powerlessness body.</p><p>"Seconded, this is the type of mission S-Crew likes the least." Cailar bit at his comrade, as was his nature, it seemed.</p><p>There was something quite discouraging to Mana herself about being distrusted this way by a man who worked with her father once. Junichi was a greatly skilled and extremely experienced and battle-hardened ninja but that may have been what scolded her the most about the man. It always stung pretty deep when someone as skilled and experienced and close spoke this way about you.</p><p>"Well, I suppose we've hit a dead end of sorts with the drugs, maybe let us try to seek for the monster now?" Rushira suggested.</p><p>"No. Mana said she can pick up signatures she's sensed before. Is that true or was that a lie?" Junichi's glare made the magician almost freeze over. Luckily, this time she did not need to brace for the incoming judgment and distrust.</p><p>"It's true. I'm fairly certain I could pick up on those signatures if we get close enough to one of them or, better yet, multiple in one group." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Then what's with the weak and crestfallen tone!? Chin up!" Rushira smiled at the magician while playfully tapping her elbow with a friendly smack. "We can still find out the black ones and the people responsible."</p><p>"But what if the girl wields explosives under her large hat? If we stick together the traitor could blow us all up in one blast!" Cailar teased his larger and more experienced colleague for his doubtful and strict ways.</p><p>"You seem pretty energetic to joke around. You can have the next fight all to yourself." Junichi replied while the man turned around and head for the exit the way that the group came in. There was nothing the rest of the Allied Ninja could do but follow.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0474"><h2>474. Follow The Deer-Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's eyes raced across the countless alleyways, paths and possible turns. It seemed like the grotesque, barely living people that the Allied Ninja sought answers from could have been in any single pocket of shadows, hiding in any building that was not overly lively at this time of day. Her eyes working overtime and brimming with focus was only a triviality, her sensory was the real ace that the team of Allied Ninja bet on.</p><p>"T-There!" the girl's eyes opened wide in shock of picking up a distinct, all too familiar signature. "They're over there." She looked back at the Allied Ninja who were following her. Most of them looked about as surprised as the magician was that Mana managed to find them this easily. It was like the black ones were barely even hiding after eluding their pursuers in the sewers.</p><p>"Why would they regroup again after losing us?" Junichi mumbled to himself.</p><p>"It must be a trap of some kind. Perhaps they have another ninja with them to fight us again?" Rushira raised a valid point.</p><p>"Is there a stronger signature with them?" Junichi asked the magician without offering her the pleasure of a look when she was being addressed.</p><p>"There is not. However…" Mana looked back, to the east, the west and the south as similar signatures popped up all over the range of her sensory. "I'm picking up more and more groups just like this all over the village."</p><p>"Maybe they're all gonna surrender after seeing how kickass I was?" S-Crew joked while rubbing his nose that got itchy from his boastful type of humor.</p><p>"Or they are trying to split us up." Junichi closed his eyes before looking back at Mana with one of his strict glares. "They seem to be pretty desperate about splitting us up recently, aren't they?"</p><p>"Don't we just need any single one of them?" Rushira wondered. "It does not really matter if they're grouping up all over the village, does it? We can just attack any group, snag any one of them and leave them. They won't offer much resistance in their state."</p><p>"From the size of their chakra, I'd say they are just as strong as normal civilians." Mana provided her ally with additional information. She just wanted to supply her group with as much support as she could to shake off the unwelcome reputation of a possible traitor. "Although, we do not know just who those people are. They seemed to be bossed around by that ninja back there, maybe they aren't really in control of their actions? In that case, we should try and rescue as many of them as we can."</p><p>"So, basically, what you're saying is – let's split up, to confront all of the groups, right?" Junichi looked at Mana with a mean glare.</p><p>The girl swallowed a tough gulp. Her hands began trembling but, with a tap of her foot, she managed to play it off as anger and desperation. She desperately wanted these Allied Ninja to trust her but when the choice was between saving some poor people who may have been experimented on and kidnapped for some unclear purpose or looking good in front of international ninja superheroes, as far as Mana was concerned, it was not a choice at all.</p><p>"Yes. Those people were unrecognizable. Given how they were being treated like cattle or slaves, there is a reason to assume they may just be the missing people. If that is the case, we should recover them as well as uncover their abusers." Mana spoke up while pressing her quivering left to her chest with her right palm. Her voice was trembling so her feeble attempts to look strong may not have gone as successfully as she wanted but, as the threat to human lives began to slither more and more of itself on the table, the way she appeared to others began mattering significantly less to the magician with each passing moment.</p><p>"In that case, let's split up. One person per group, capture the walking corpses and move on to the other group. There are chuunin patrolling the village, they should take care of the captured ones once they're in your control while you move on." Junichi, much to everyone's shock, agreed to Mana's plead.</p><p>Everything this man thought and did made less and less sense the more this investigation went on. He appeared distrustful and iron-strict to Mana yet when she played right into the frame the circumstances forced her into he spoke and chose favorably for the magician and completely opposite to what he previously revealed himself thinking.</p><p>"Hey, are you sure?" S-Crew looked at his colleague.</p><p>"Can you handle yourself if you encounter another ninja in your way, Mana?" Rushira looked more concerned with Mana's chances of defeating an undercover opponent such as the one encountered before.</p><p>"It was true, the previous opponent was outside the realm of opponents I can defeat, however, my priority is not to defeat the enemy, it is to save those poor things." Mana sighed while anxiety continued to blaze on in her chest, the feeling was similar to falling straight into cold water. Any semblance of air driven out from one's body, breathing forced to proceed irregularly, making it increasingly difficult to draw new, steady breaths in.</p><p>"If you get in trouble, use your fancy light show ninjutsu to alert us, even if we are nowhere close to you, someone will notice it in the middle of a ninja village. These opponents will not fight you at their full strength in fear of alerting more attention than they are comfortable with. You should be just fine." Junichi affirmed Mana and, strangely enough, the encouraging words from someone who used to be so strict and distrustful soothed the magician a little. Air once again found its way through Mana's messy and congested airways and into her chest.</p><p>"How exactly will we find them without Mana though?" S-Crew scratched his head.</p><p>"Give us as many locations as you can." Junichi looked at the magician before every one of the Allied Ninja but the cold giant handed the magician their pocket maps. Given how they were all foreigners, things turned out quite favorably that they had points of reference for Mana to mark on.</p><p>In a handful of moments, the magician marked as many of the exact spots as she could, before wrangling a bunch of arrows to the approximate direction where she was unsure where exactly the signatures came from. The farther the signature, the less sure she was, sometimes being able to tell only the general direction and an approximate distance. Regardless of this bump in the road, these poor people wanted the Allied Ninja to find them, whether as a plea for help, or for springing their trap.</p><p>"Very well, scatter!" Junichi ordered the squad as the Allied Ninja as well as Mana blurred out from the vision of normal civilians during their quick leap to the upper levels of the village where ninja that needed to move quicker than usual moved. Every single one of them had a personal emergency, possibly not that much less immediate than that of the Allied Ninja and Mana's…</p><hr/><p>The hunched bodies of humanoid figures laid crouched in a circle as if gathering around a singular point of interest, their own personal fire in the middle of a blizzard. Not even Mana's sandals tapping right behind them during her landing, something that was extremely clumsy of her, alerted these curious and poor things. The magician's body was not in her complete control with the amount of anxiety running through her veins, it felt like having magma running in her veins, burning her up from inside. Given that overwhelming feeling, it was not that hard to understand her lacking success in the stealth department.</p><p>Looking at these poor, walking corpses from behind made one truly question if they were human, to begin with. As black as the shadows they hung on to, bones protruding from every surface it found the chance to, even if they were once human, now they resembled but ghosts of the men these things once were.</p><p>"How do you know me?" Mana spoke up. She pondered for a brief moment if she should attack and try taking these things out before they got their chance to escape again or speak to them, what exactly she should say in the latter case. This was not the brightest thing that came to mind, however in her terrified state thinking clearly and acting upon those reasonable thoughts would have been equal to a miracle.</p><p>"Mana-sama…" a bunch of husky voices replied to the magician as the poor humanoids all fell to the ground as if bowing to a royalty of some kind. This was not just respect, not what Mana felt for her superiors, this was no admiration either. This was worship.</p><p>"W-What's the meaning of this?" the girl cried out, even while in the face of her own worship, she took a fearful step back and found herself pressing her hands against her chest again so that they stopped trembling. Her sensory was beaming in all directions, waiting for the hidden shepherd to these poor creatures to attempt and attack her as this could not have been anything but a measly attempt to confuse her into lowering her guard.</p><p>"You're alone. Good." A voice came from behind Mana. The magician jumped up and looked back. She would have yelled out after the fear in her lungs tipped the lid but she was so overwhelmed by the emotion that it robbed her of speech and voice completely at that moment.</p><p>A moment later the magician felt the chakra of this curious new player on the board rising up. He was also familiar with the chakra signature suppression technique that the magician was beginning to encounter more and more recently. She should have been smarter, this enigmatic person was no threat with his signature suppressed, it was now that he finally unchained it that he was truly dangerous.</p><p>It was a man, one dressed identically to the reptilian shinobi before but the face and every open surface of this one was covered with strange, bony threads that expanded in intricate net-like vessels of bone all over the man's skin. It may have been an outer layer of some intricate armor, for all Mana could have put together in her cornered and trembling state.</p><p>"It will make talking to you much less troublesome." The mysterious ninja sighed in relief. By that point, Mana was ready for a certain battle to break out so this social objective surprised her a bit. The surprise was no counterbalance to fear, however, it was yet another stone on the terror's side of the scale.</p><p>"Talk?" Mana muttered.</p><p>"Correct. This may be a little early to include you but the attention to his plans has escalated beyond his predictions as well." The oddball continued to speak in riddles. For someone who was about to include Mana into whatever was going on here, the man really had a knack about leaving a whole lot of information out. He was being careful, sizing the magician and her mental state up, predicting a possible reaction. He disagreed with whosever idea it was to tell Mana whatever this man intended to tell her.</p><p>"Before you tell me anything, just tell me this one thing. Are these people actually the people that disappeared?" Mana gestured at the poor, rotten souls grouping up behind her and continuously bowing and mumbling admirations at the girl.</p><p>"If I answer, you will be preset to oppose whatever his ideas are. You are putting me in a tough spot, Mana-san." The enigmatic, bone-web-covered ninja scratched the back of his head, as his spiky fingers rubbed against the bone on his neck, it let out a gut-wrenching, crunchy sound.</p><p>"You're in a tough spot? I'm confronted by you in a dark alleyway, surrounded by these poor things. As we speak right now, Allied Ninja are putting their lives at risk against Konoha ninja who may or may not have been involved in Konoha's own people disappearing. I'm not sure if I'm confronted with a village-wide conspiracy and am about to be taken out because of how much I've put together or if the village is still oblivious to what's happening." Mana snapped back at the ninja, she was different from before. A lot more mad. The respect that this enigmatic ninja showed her gave her some space to step forward and establish her own position before she slips off the bridge completely.</p><p>"You are reading this entirely wrong, Mana-san, I swear. This is all for your sake, this is all because of your ideals, all inspired by them." The man stepped up forward himself. Mana faltered, fear got the better of her and she took a step back. Whatever leverage she may have had over the man because of the respect he had for her, for whatever reason, she may have just squandered it.</p><p>"Yes or no. Answer the question." Mana cried out. Even if she was defeated in the imaginary plane on which the battle for the dictatorship of the terms of the conversation was fought, she still showed some fangs.</p><p>"Very well… Yes. All of these souls are actually the people that have disappeared. As you can see, they did not disappear at all, nor did they ever reappear. They've never truly been gone." The ninja dropped a bomb on the magician. Mana looked deep into his eyes and his gestures. His appearance was bombastic and extravagant making his true character tough to tell for sure but… As far as the magician could tell – he was honest. Even if this all was a big lie, this one believed in it.</p><p>"Don't even start walking this path. Look at these people, look at what's been done to them! How can you dare tell me this is somehow my fault?" Mana gestured in the direction of the poor worshipping souls.</p><p>"It was not Guru's command that they deny their own wellbeing this way. Their states are a result of fanatical devotion to your and Guru's ideals." The ninja replied. He did look a bit irked by Mana's choice of words, there could have been no doubt, had it been anyone else but the magician that had spoken them, there'd have been a fight, regardless, he managed to hold himself in order and behave.</p><p>"This is the second time I've heard about this Guru. Is he behind it all? This plan of yours?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Obviously. Who else do you think could take up such an epic undertaking? Look, this location is not entirely safe for me or these poor people. Can we please relocate? I assure you that no harm will come to you there." The man requested a change of location. This time it was much easier to tell, even through the face of her own fear staring Mana right in the eyes, that the man was being completely genuine and had no intention of hurting Mana.</p><p>"You'll do one better, if I go with you, you release these poor people." The magician pointed at the group.</p><p>"This is a bit unreasonable, Mana-san. They are here by their own choice, you're asking me to use force against them and keep them away from their life's work? Needless to say, their resolve and faith in the mission is also Guru's strength, the blood in his veins, without their help his mission and yours as well cannot be fulfilled."</p><p>"You misunderstood." Mana shook her head. "I meant these people. You ask me something I would normally not do, as a guarantee, I ask something from you in return, something small and reasonable, just to establish a connection and show good faith. As absolutely revolting everything about this situation is, I am willing to listen, for now."</p><p>The magician could barely believe her own words but she did need to hear this thing out. Even if everything about this was just as revolting to her sense of morals as the sight of the degradation of these poor people was to her sense of sight, this man was spilling precious information and offering to take Mana to whatever lair these conspirators had, one of possibly many, but one more she'd otherwise get to see. No matter how she felt about this whole affair, she needed to entertain this offer, if anything, to extract information and see what could be done about freeing every single one of these poor souls.</p><p>"I see…" the enigmatic shinobi looked relieved. "That is indeed very intelligent of you, this must be a result of the training you did with the Intelligence Division recently…"</p><p>"Were you spying on me?" Mana bit back while her body subconsciously surrendered to the rhythm of slow movement of the fellow Konoha ninja leading her to whichever location he deemed fitting to spill Mana everything she wanted to know.</p><p>"We had to. You are a precious figure in our work. The muse behind everything we hope to bring about. The one young maiden that inspired Guru, a man that had long since lost his hope and inspiration. We could accept no more fiascos like that bout of yours against Yamata no Orochi. It must have been painful to see Nishiki and his snake-like features." The mysterious ninja was beginning to reveal just how much Mana was unwillingly involved in these disappearances and just how important of a role she played in the dogma that fueled this conspiracy, the means that this importance led these people to take up because of that importance.</p><p>"I've acquired a new set of nightmares since then…" Mana looked away, pressing her trembling hand to her skirt with her other free hand.</p><p>"I see… I assure you, Nishiki has nothing to do with the Ninja Snakes, in fact, ever since his DNA was altered and spliced with that of an unwilling participant, we are sort of at a conflict with the snakes." The man sighed, the very idea of Mana's trouble appeared to have a visual effect on the ninja's mood. One would have been foolish to underestimate the depth of fanaticism.</p><p>"Is that what that was?" Mana asked. "I wasn't sure what could make a man grow four snake heads from their back and get a scaly skin…"</p><p>"Yes. You see, Guru is actively working on gene splicing, I myself am a result of a fusion between a man and a deer. This net tissue over my skin, this armor of sorts, is like the hardened horns of a Ninja Deer from the Nara clan forest. It will all make sense when I explain the mission to you, for now just know that this is all just exploration of the uncanny regenerative abilities of the animal world."</p><p>"Deer isn't the first animal that comes to mind in that department," Mana observed.</p><p>"True, Guru's experimentation is vast and varies in success but his work is noble and intentions pure. I must thank you for giving me this chance. If I screwed something of such profound importance up, I'm sure that not even this regenerating armor of horn-tissue would save me from my own despair and Guru's disappointment." The man smiled. From under the web of horns that covered this man's skin, his smile looked creepy, like the smirk of a maniac from behind the bars. Except, in this case, the bars hung on the man's skin.</p><p>Strangely enough, as Mana approached the highest point of danger in this investigation she was ever in, her fear was beginning to settle down. Perhaps it merely reached the highest point and failed to uphold it, overloaded and died out. Maybe Mana's fear for her own life turned to indifference with the ever-growing escalation of the stakes against her survival.</p><p>Either way, the true intentions and the true revelation of this mystery still laid ahead and Mana, without questioning herself for a moment, kept on walking to it like a moth to a flame.</p>
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<a name="section0475"><h2>475. The Missing Piece</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The scurrying black ones led the bone-covered ninja and Mana through a net of alleyways and passageways that made it look like the shadiest way to get to wherever one wanted to go. Regardless of the first impressions, just what option did these poor people have, looking how they look. It was true what was noted before, a certain degree of weirdness was tolerated in ninja, which was why these odd-looking spliced ninja managed to stay hidden in plain sight, however, for civilians the conditions were a completely different thing entirely.</p><p>"Your name," Mana asked. "You know who I am, clearly, given how much leeway I'm giving you, I'll need some more leverage on you."</p><p>"Buberuri." The man replied.</p><p>"This name is made up." Mana shook her head gently.</p><p>"Not any more than the name I put on my documents officially. It is how the people I work with, people I affiliate with and with whom we bond over a common goal call me. It is in a lot of ways a more real name to me than the one my parents gave me." Buberuri said.</p><p>"Fair enough." The magician sighed.</p><p>The black ones began looking around themselves frantically as if looking for something they've lost or… Simply checking if they weren't being paid significant attention to as they required to bolt quickly from out of a corner and into a shop that laid out in the open. From where she was at that time, Mana could not see the nature of that shop. Even if she tried to somehow guess through the clues present around her, try to recall the village streets she had memorized and tell exactly which shop it was from the sights of the street that laid ahead and out of the shadows, the black ones attracted the most of her attention anyway.</p><p>These poor shapes did not run. They merely stepped out in a brisk pace. They did not let their eyes wander over the villagers walking about with their business for curious eyes attracted curiosity in return. Like a humble herd that they truly were, the poor souls walked out and staggered all hunched up like a line of little chicks following their mother.</p><p>Mana and Buberuri stepped out after them in a short while. From what the magician could notice, a small group of rotten, blackened people attracted less attention than she did. It was remarkable really but also not outside of what one could have deduced to be the case. After all, was it truly that extraordinary to see someone this messed up in a world where children learned to breathe fire before becoming old enough to drink?</p><p>"A fruit-shop?" Mana wondered looking at the faintly glowing neon sign that did not turn off its enticing glow even in the earlier hours when it reasonably should have.</p><p>"As handy as the painkiller formula we sell across the Land of Fire is, it is technically black market goods. We cannot just sell them from a wooden counter like we used to but the village does not go out of its way to shut these points down either." Buberuri shrugged before stepping up and leaving the door open for Mana to enter. Had he not been leading Mana into a den of horrible human experiments and genetic splicing on barely sound-minded enough individuals for it to be called "consensual", Buberuri would have seemed like a gentleman.</p><p>"Makes sense," Mana mumbled almost is to herself while she stepped through the open door and let her follower close it down. "As long as the painkiller works and doesn't actively cause harm, the village has no reason to expend real effort in shutting you guys down. It's the same as someone selling candy on the street and calling it cold-medicine."</p><p>"Indeed, Placebo does not deserve the full kick-the-door-down treatment." Buberuri nodded while he led Mana through what seemed like a normal fruit shop and past the counter, into the room behind it, where normally additional supplies would have been laid down for when the shop required to be resupplied.</p><p>The fake salesman bowed before Mana after seeing Buberuri with her, likely he would not have done had the man not been with the magician as to not tip her off, in case she ever came here to legitimately buy some fruit. The magician blushed a little and looked away, she was still not used to people addressing her with the same amount of respect she used to address adults with before, she would have never gotten used to this whole "religious figure" treatment.</p><p>"The first thing that people complain about here is the smell…" Buberuri shrugged. "It's not that it smells bad particularly, it's about the combination of the rotting and chemicals and the pleasant smells we use in abundance to compensate for it."</p><p>"Your homework is incomplete then," Mana shut her eyes in a sip of embarrassment. "I have gotten rid of my sense of smell to better focus on my other senses."</p><p>"Ah, yes… About that… You may want to lessen the range of your sensory a tad bit. Some of the signatures here may not be… Pleasant for inexperienced sensors." Buberuri warned the magician.</p><p>"Are you worried about what I might find?" Mana tried to play it off as a jest while she did consciously lessen the range as advised. She began to realize what this ninja had in mind – perhaps the option of these drug-related black market activities and the monster people reported were not entirely unrelated.</p><p>"You will be free to see whatever you want to see. You are just about as welcome here as Guru himself." Buberuri nodded his head. He looked just about how a man who asked for somebody's full trust and cooperation but warned them not to snoop around and then realized how backward it all sounded would have looked.</p><p>"By "Guru" you cannot possibly mean…" Mana mumbled out a very remote possibility that was teasing her nerve endings ever since the word was first uttered. As much as the magician hated and refused to believe in something as ridiculous as this, it was a link that had to be shut down, just like Junichi and the Allied Ninja showed her yesterday.</p><p>"Indeed, Guru Ayushi." Buberuri once again rubbed the back of his neck overcome by awkwardness about how he came to reveal this information. Once more he let out that dreadful scratching sound as he did so but in the shock of the moment, Mana almost managed to let it pass unnoticed. It was as if an abyss had opened up under her feet but, for some reason, she had not yet begun to plummet, only saw its gaping jaws and certain, absolute death beneath her feet.</p><p>"Ayushi-san didn't seem like the kind to kidnap people and experiment on them. Forcefully or through manipulation." Mana replied as her eyes shifted from shock to hopelessness. If Guru Ayushi truly has turned rogue, could there truly have been a way to stop his plot, whatever all of this was working towards?</p><p>"Not before meeting you, no. He was very much a careless non-interventionist. I've been to multiple seminars of his, he was always the believer that life was to go its own way. Wars were to be left alone to devour its own children and choke on the vacuum it left behind. You changed all that…" Buberuri nodded his head almost similarly to how he'd have moved it in a respectful bow. Perhaps the armor covering his body did not permit movements precise enough to properly covey the amount of respect he wanted to.</p><p>While Mana was left to her own thoughts, to ponder on the ramifications of having incited this kind of change in Guru Ayushi, Buberuri moved on and into the next room. One filled with messy tables, some of them still had blood and gore all over them with insects buzzing about while others were cleaner than the wards in Konohagakure hospital.</p><p>The enigmatic ninja stopped by a curious looking clock. It did not appear much different from other old clocks except this one was not made of wood and gears clocking inside, it was completely made of minerals Mana could not identify held together by some uncanny force.</p><p>"It is because of meeting you that Guru decided to become more active. You taught him about responsibility and that he, as the one with the most power, was the most responsible for the mishaps of the world. I guess you could say he became obsessed with fixing it but you cannot fix that which you do not know the problem of." Buberuri started rambling as his hands moved in to caress the clock almost like he was feeling nostalgic about it but always wary to keep a good bunch of distance between his skin and the clock. Always attracted but never submitting to the mysterious allure that the artifact had to the man.</p><p>"It was him, the mysterious criminal element all around the world," Mana muttered half to herself, half as an implication that she did not require Buberuri's confirmation to affirm. It was Ayushi all along, subtly affecting Mana's journey looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. He was the strange presence that caused disappearances and the detour that the squad took on their quest, he was the mysterious figure that wanted Mana alive that intimidated Hachiro Uchiha.</p><p>Just like the rhetorical nature of the magician's inquiry asked for, Buberuri did not butt into Mana finally inserting the final piece into the drawn-out puzzle that put the entire picture together. Of course, Guru Ayushi had disappeared after leaving Konoha under mysterious circumstances, he abandoned his path as a wise vagabond and took up another mantle. That of a rogue ninja and a self-appointed savior of the world.</p><p>"Even a man of Guru's stature, influence and power could not just fix the world. The first years of his pilgrimage were filled with quests for various artifacts and sources of power and knowledge that could assist him in his life's work. To create a world without pain or death, just like you dream it. He never told me that himself but… It may just be that such a world would be his gift to you for waking him up and showing him the higher purpose for his power." Buberuri shrugged as he slowly drew away from the stone-clock and onto the messier displays of experiments with flesh.</p><p>Wherever Buberuri moved on to, the black ones drew away from him like bats from a beam of light. The armored ninja drew his hand over the cut up and eviscerated creature that laid hung by hooks above the altar-like table.</p><p>"Guru is not holy, he's no saint. He has kidnapped people and experimented on them. Bad people, criminals and the like but still… You would not approve of it and for good reason." The ninja revealed in a half-deafened voice. It was something that he had to let Mana in on but carried no pride inside of him while speaking of it. "It took a while for the Congregation to gather. For others to open their eyes just like you've opened those of Guru-sama."</p><p>Judging from Buberuri's body speech, he was referring to the rotten subordinates and the members of this odd sect devoted to world peace through nothing but the most abhorrent methods imaginable.</p><p>"That's nothing like what I dreamed about. I told Ayushi-san nothing of this sort…" Mana covered her mouth while her eyes ran over the frozen chunk of flesh in suspended animation. An experiment halted in mid procession just so Buberuri could admire it and Mana could add another nightmare into her already impressive file.</p><p>A rowdy roar made the magician clutch to the ground. It was like someone had just opened a door leading up to the strongest typhoon imaginable as if an almighty pushing force had just decided to expel everyone inside the building to the outside. Something of this force should have crushed and ground up these poor people but apart from being thrown about, they appeared to be bothered very little by their broken bodies and the physical pain.</p><p>"With the Congregation, Guru could finally start his work. Begin shaping a man without pain, without the option of death and then convert the entire world from its image. Little Honda was the first one, in fact…" Buberuri remarked after getting up from the kneeling position that the mighty concussive force forced him into and helping Mana regain her senses.</p><p>The ninja led Mana into yet another room in the vast and grimly lit corridor, one where a massive abomination of science of nature laid subdued with sealing glyphs that a completely transparent man continuously reapplied. Mana was not sure who this man was or how strong he was since she would not dare let her sensory out for a whiff with this massive thing beating about.</p><p>"This is Little Honda?" Mana's mouth could not close, no matter how much she tried to force it shut. "What did Ayushi-san do to this poor boy?" she recalled one of the earliest known victims of the disappearances, his mother was found outside the Konoha gate in a completely vegetative state with not a single sign or clue to the boy's whereabouts.</p><p>"Little Honda isn't one of us Spliced…" the jelly-man keeping the rowdy Honda asleep with his sealing techniques replied. "He is much more special than us, however. He is the one, the one that's supposed to not feel pain, to be immortal and the one to guide the rest to become like him."</p><p>"So Ayushi-san plans on making everyone like this?" Mana gasped pointing at a slumbering abomination of flesh sewn together and tearing apart with every passing second. Some of Honda's body was literally molded together by pouring molten minerals and metals over it and letting it harden. This creature looked like anything but the little boy it once was. Had it not been so hopelessly asleep, he'd have likely devoured every being in the room, living, Spliced or one of the Congregation with a single gulp.</p><p>"Well… Once we perfect Little Honda, maybe. The Congregation may have much of Ayushi-sama's devotion but they lack his skilled medical touch. They wish to put the poor boy together and numb his pain just as much but they don't care how many holes they need to drill before they pin the right center or how they reattach limbs back…" Buberuri shrugged. "It takes about five of them to even lift one when it falls off. Just one limb must weight well over forty tons with how much he's had put inside him over the years."</p><p>Mana let her hand the luxury to run back her hair in frustration. She looked back at the ground beneath her feet and covered her eyes. She didn't want to reveal the fact that she was weeping but someone who bothered to even look at it could have put it together.</p><p>"What's wrong with Mana-sama?" the transparent jelly man turned his blobby-shaped head with drooling tendrils running down where it ended like streams of a bugger. "Must be pretty overcome with joy with how this dream is coming together."</p><p>"No," Buberuri shook his head and reached out to pat Mana's shoulder. "I think she's distraught. You must understand, Mana-sama, that you were spared these details early on because they were hard to stomach because Guru knew you were too young and innocent to take them. Now we're almost done, we'd have no pain medication we're selling without Little Honda or the endless devotion of the Congregation. All those people we've made invulnerable and then let back into the village, none of that would be possible without the darker aspects of our work."</p><p>"Please… I can't drill them anymore… Just do it already." Mana cried out.</p><p>"Drill them?" the jelly-man turned at the magician's side before the gut-wrenching steel wire reeling sound filled the air and both Spliced got trapped in it.</p><p>"Y-You brought the Allied Ninja with you!?" Buberuri yelled out. Just this once the Spliced were the ones being shocked by the darker aspects of the other side's work. Mana had sensed the Allied Ninja following her for a while, initially it distressed her greatly, she knew that there could have been no way that they both saved the Congregation groups and followed her – they deliberately chose to follow her and take on the enemy as well as investigate Mana instead of helping the Congregation.</p><p>There were no more heroes. Guru Ayushi was no wise man that the magician thought him to be, the Allied Ninja could not have given fewer shits about helping the civilians. All they cared about was their mission, the investigation. Hell, Junichi probably hoped that Mana would be revealed as some hidden ringmaster so he could justify subduing or killing her on the spot.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Karakuri Thunderball!" Cailar's voice proudly announced as a combination of dodecahedron-shaped projectiles, reeling across the net of steel wires overflowing with chakra and spikes of silver-shining steel on each wall of its surface. The projectiles blitzed about at speeds beyond Mana's comprehension, all that the magician could see were the streaks of blood bursting from Buberuri's body and the spots were his impressive armor broke down. The jelly-man was the only one seemingly unaffected by the assault.</p><p>"Detonate!" Cailar yelled out after moving all of his spiked dodecahedrons in close proximity to the enemy duo. The projectiles lit up with an illustrious glow before the luminosity forced Mana to cover herself up. Not that it would do her much good, something of this might had to be able to kill her from this distance.</p><p>Once the dust and the rubble settled, Mana moved her hands from her upper body only to witness a golden-colored barrier sphere around the enemy containing the explosion, not only that, the sphere appeared to have reduced the size of anything it covered proportionately to its own size. Judging from Junichi's hand seal position and the strain on his face – this barrier was his doing.</p><p>Once the golden sphere faded away, the lifeless body of Buberuri fell to the ground, bits and pieces of his bone-armor scattered across the room like wooden chips of a shredded rod. Only a jelly puddle remained from the other Spliced.</p><p>"Little Honda!" Mana jumped forward to the massive lump but Rushira's arms wrapped around the magician in restraint.</p><p>"Even if his seals run out, he is still asleep. What he did before was just him getting rowdy in his slumber." The female Allied Ninja muttered close to Mana's ear.</p><p>Despite Rushira's best attempts to restrain her voice, Mana was not going to be this composed in voicing her outrage of the Allied Ninja actions.</p>
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<a name="section0476"><h2>476. The Allied VS The Spliced</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You left all the other Congregation groups all by themselves. You could have captured them, saved them all." Mana complained vocally while Rushira let the magician slip from her hold.</p><p>"Maybe, we needed to confirm your connection and get right to the point of our investigation. These guys showed interest in you before and rescue missions would have only been a distraction." Cailar replied.</p><p>"To be fair, we expected to get some more info, since the horn-armor dude was so generous with the beans if you catch my cold." S-Crew scratched his neck showing a little embarrassment but only for getting caught and not for what was questionable about the call the Allied Ninja made.</p><p>"It's fine, it was always a risky plan trying to follow a sensor. Suppressing chakra while using Hiding Mole Jutsu was troublesome enough." Junichi tried shutting this subject down with a firm tone. Mana was about to have none of it. She's long passed the point where the endless bounds of respect for these Allied Ninja made her get modest and nervous when talking to them.</p><p>Still, she had to hand it to the Allied Ninja, they played their stealth cards just fine. Managing to use a lower-ranking Earth Release technique to hide them underground while suppressing their chakra to an average rank while in the middle of a ninja village. Even if Mana had caught a whiff of their signatures before, they'd mix right into the endless crowd of ninja whose chakra Mana also had sensed before, without focusing and trying to single them out, it'd have been near impossible to notice them.</p><p>But she did, eventually. Even with their impressive attempts to hide from Mana's sensory, even while she purposefully restrained its range inside this shop, she still picked them out. Mana was growing strong. She'd have lied if she had ever belittled her ability to find out she's being followed.</p><p>"You really have little reason to be mad at us, Mana. You sensed us for a while, didn't you? You could have exposed us much longer and not played along and have the enemy Spliced give us everything. Still, you did the right thing. You played the expectations of these lunatics and helped us with our investigation." Rushira tried getting Mana back on her side, or, if that did not work, point out that the magician was on no moral high-ground here with how she justified the plan of the Allied Ninja with her actions after she found them out.</p><p>"Not to mention, you've cleared your own name," Junichi affirmed with a confident nod. "Now we know why these people knew you and you're under no fire from us."</p><p>"Well, they're coming." Mana turned at Junichi with angered eyes. "The Congregation you ignored are returning with a company."</p><p>"B-But how?" S-Crew flipped out, "They were supposed to wait, we were supposed to have more time!"</p><p>A cackle of laughter silenced the Kumogakure native while life returned to the eyes of Buberuri and his awfully mangled body lifted off the ground as if yanked by some twisted puppet-master that refused to let his toy die. Dislocated and broken limbs put themselves back into place letting out gruesome snapping and churning sounds while cream-colored dust formed complicated webs over Buberuri's skin and hardened again.</p><p>The jelly-man nearby Buberuri was also slowly putting himself together, chunks of jelly slid back into a singular mass that was just rustling restlessly and beginning to take the shape it once had. The one before it was blown to bits by Cailar's jutsu.</p><p>"Thank you for not betraying the Congregation's movements, Mana-sama. They may look pitiful but they are very easy to ignore and miss but you sensed them, right? Your heart is still lingering between our side and that of your village, right?" Buberuri spoke his first words after his rebirth.</p><p>"Village? These ninja aren't village ninja… A lot of village ninja hate them, distrust them just as they would a foreigner ninja. Ninja that know no boundaries know no loyalties either and very few Kage trust unconditionally, without expecting loyalty in return." Mana replied. "Take me to Guru now."</p><p>"I'm afraid we may have our hands full, Mana-sama. It is doubtful that we can protect you." The jelly-man blurbed out from his newly reformed blob of a head.</p><p>The Allied Ninja continued to stare at Mana with betrayal, anger or disbelief. Even when one member of the international ninja organization settled on an emotion, their thoughts of the magician's words and actions changed drastically the at the moment to come.</p><p>A handful of ninja, all looking just as odd as Buberuri and his jelly-comrade blitzed into the experimentation and operating room, surrounding the Allied Ninja and cutting them off from the exit. Amongst them was a golden-skinned shinobi with black, round eyes and pronounced lips, almost like those of an amphibian, a female ninja with spiky, falling strands of orange hair resting on a very coral-shaded skin and a berserk looking ninja with a protruding lower face and razor-sharp teeth that briefly exposed themselves as their owner breathed in an out.</p><p>"Sorry that we're late, Colceli." The one of golden and greasy-wet looking skin spoke up, flapping his massive lips awkwardly as he did so.</p><p>"These assholes kinda tricked us…" the coral-colored kunoichi cursed with irritation in her voice.</p><p>"Hey, who's watching Little Honda if you're fighting?" the feral one with sharp teeth finally revealed the inner workings of his bestial jaws. "He's pretty important, you know! We are disposable, he is not."</p><p>"This should be the least of your worries." Junichi strictly exclaimed. "Once we start raising a little hell inside a ninja village, this place will be swarming with ninja."</p><p>"And who do you think they'll be after first? Known and established hard-workers for our own village or some international randos?" the jelly-man who was previously referred to as Colceli asked a question that shut Junichi up for a short while.</p><p>"The numbers are decent enough, we can spare someone to lead Mana-sama and the Congregation away." Buberuri declared. "Axolkin, you're the newest of us and the most successful, Guru will have the most use from your samples. Survive by moving Mana-sama away from here and bring her to Guru."</p><p>"You think I'll just let ya!?" S-Crew winded up his arm for a strong blow of an invisible heatwave before his arm was stopped in mid-air by Junichi.</p><p>"Don't expose an opening. We don't need to give our enemy any advantages, these Spliced are more troublesome than we thought they might be." Junichi said while not moving his eyes away from Buberuri and Colceli. These two recovering from Cailar's Karakuri Thunderball technique visibly impressed the Konoha veteran.</p><p>"Needless to remind you, you're all tuckered out too." Cailar teased his teammate to which S-Crew just started throwing air fists.</p><p>Mana turned around and started walking off further into the depths of the laboratories and operating rooms installed in this underground tunnel. These tunnels must have connected with the Konoha sewers. That would explain how the Congregation managed to slip away and scatter all over the village, alerting the other Spliced so quickly and efficiently to return to their headquarters.</p><p>"Mana!" Rushira yelled out. "If you're walking away now, you're just confirming to us that you're with them, that you're an enemy of the Allied Ninja!"</p><p>"You turned your backs at innocent people, misguided and lost. I want people like you as my enemies." Mana replied while giving the Allied Ninja a cold and spiteful glare and walking off with a group of the Congregation mumbling unintelligibly and muttering her name over and over again. The boldest ones tried touching the girl or rubbing their long fingers or hands against her hair or her clothes gently, just for the future knowledge that they got as close to the person who inspired Guru Ayushi to change the world as possible.</p><p>The one with the flappy and sizable lips and golden, wet skin blitzed forward in a sideways, swimming motion. As if he worked his way through air how and underwater amphibian would have pedaled through water except infinitely faster than their counterparts.</p><p>"Let's go, Mana-sama…" he uttered.</p><hr/><p>The feral one with scaly skin, long claws, and sharp teeth made the first move. Throwing his jaw back and forth in a wild charge at the Allied Ninja and an attempt to chomp a chunk of their flesh out. Given the durability that the Spliced were known to have, it was quite expected of him to throw all caution into the wind like this.</p><p>Blood and strips of cloth scattered over the underground laboratory as the lightning-swift and deadly Spliced ninja worked his magic. His movements were too animalistic to predict or properly read, any attempts to counterattack were answered with an almost instantaneous recovery and a bounce-back into the fight, that meant yet another wild bite and another grievous wound…</p><p>Junichi was the first one to break the ranks and leave a nasty opening in the formations of the Allied Ninja. The Konoha veteran rushed forward, sliding on horizontally placed blades that formed around his feet after a puff of smoke, as the Allied Ninja moved forward with his fist raised and tensed up, only a metallic blur could have been made out in the limited underground lighting and due to his impressive speed.</p><p>The lizard-like ninja stumbled back, shocked by the sudden outburst of brutality and lethal intent from his opponent. He could not help but open his numb jaw, blood spurted from his gaping mouth before the ninja realized he was completely beheaded in an instant. The headless body of the lizard-ninja slumped like a bag, showing why normally it would have been a bad idea to just charge randomly at a squad of opponents of superior skill.</p><p>The lifeless, scale-covered husk twitched a bunch like a sack containing a bunch of enraged cats within. Not too long after, with a burst of washed up and watered down with some sort of secretion blood, a faceless husk burst out from within the body where the lizard man's head once was. Such was the nature and purpose of all Spliced, created from Guru Ayushi's intense desire to use the clues given to him by the animal kingdom to eliminate the pain and death of the unfortunate man.</p><p>The rest of the Spliced quickly followed their teammate's unexpected resurrection, utilizing the moment of opening and shock to launch an effective assault on the Allied Ninja. Buberuri launched himself in a mighty tackle, air and light broke around the lightning-swift and rock-hard movements of the attacking ninja. Luckily enough, Cailar managed to pitch in and weave a handful of hand seals before Buberuri could crash into the group with enough power to cave the entire world in on itself confined in a single tackle.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Lightning Net!" the wire-using and endlessly stylish Allied Ninja grunted out, using steel wire and his own chakra cloaking to create a horizontally placed net of pure Lightning Release chakra that absorbed, reflected as well as used its own shocking properties and mighty cutting potential to bash back at the attacking Spliced ninja.</p><p>Buberuri cried out in pain while his body flew back from the rebound force of the net responding to his mighty charge in less than kind. The impressive armor net on his skin shattered into pieces yet again while his exposed skin filled with new stripes of crimson and black from where the effective enemy counterattack landed.</p><p>The rest of the Spliced were working their own magic in order to attack the Allied Ninja and not give their enemies a chance to breathe and plot a counterattack strategy. It was a clever use of their apparent immortality, they may have been weaker collectively as well as individually but given their apparent immortality they had much more space to make mistakes and suffer the consequences before bouncing back at the enemy much to the enemy's frustration.</p><p>The Allied Ninja had no such luxury and that was the factor that evened the odds. Every move they made had to be carefully plotted out and compared to the whole picture, every step out of the ranks had to be measured against the drawback of exposing weak-spots and blind-spots where the entire team could have been snuffed out by a well-placed attack. Even punishing the enemy's overextension became a cruel game as the Allied Ninja could not know that the expenditures of such a punishment would not result in their own loss when the enemy simply bounces back into the battle.</p><p>Rushira slammed her hands together. She had waited long enough before using this move, it was dangerous to her own allies for it would have covered this entire dungeon with water.</p><p>"Water Prison: Dance of Rue!" Rushira chanted out. A powerful burst of water erupted from her mouth, from inside of her body that appeared to be completely endless and unrestrained by the limited capacity of Rushira's body storage. It was as if every breath of air the woman took completely replenished the supply of water allowing her to keep spitting it out in a violent surge that quickly flooded the entire place. It would not have been too long before water started bursting and leaking from the fruit shop used as a front for this entire operation.</p><p>The Spliced appeared to be as slow and powerless as slugs underwater, just like most ninja were. A ninja was able to use their chakra augmentations to fight underwater without taking in breaths for well over twenty minutes if they were around the rank of an average ninja, that did not mean that their moves were not massively slowed down and made sluggish at the same time. Rushira was different, she was skilled and used at working underwater.</p><p>Cailar once more moved his hands in a synchronized and mindful set of motions, laying an underwater trap of steel wire, limiting the space left to move for the enemy even more. Rushira was dancing like an arrow in the flooded dungeon of operating rooms and laboratories. Whizzing past and by the Spliced ninja, knocking them around with her superhuman strength, tackles, and clotheslines as she did so. They must have been considerable too as any single blow to any given Spliced ninja took them down in one hit, crushing their bodies entirely and leaving them a bloody pulp.</p><p>No matter how often Buberuri was hit, only minor blunt trauma remained while his armor net of whatever tissue it was that covered him reformed soon enough to protect the knocked out ninja, revitalizing the Spliced for a new fight once more. Whenever the feral lizard man got hit, his body split into pieces, his limbs fell off and it looked as if Rushira's blows were a cannon blast eviscerating him but the limbs soon grew back in smaller and weaker stumps that gained strength and aged a thousand times faster than they should have.</p><p>The rest were not that much more fruitful to attack. The pink-skinned female Spliced crumbled like chalk upon being hit but the dusty material she collapsed into quickly reassembled itself into the strangely crusty substance that the female Spliced was made of. Colceli did not appear to be affected by the attacks at all, if anything he thrived underwater, he flowed and adapted like a jellyfish, avoiding Rushira's blows with grace.</p><p>The lack of hesitation and subtlety behind Rushira's fighting style forced the rest of the Allied Ninja to fight underwater now. Rushira may have been a superstar of underwater combat, moving like a high-velocity arrow splitting the oceans in a split-second and having little to no trouble sustaining herself underwater, having mastered the necessary chakra augmentations to such an extent that they barely cost Rushira a dime to sustain. Her teammates were not as skilled, however…</p><p>Colceli's jelly limbs extended forward, they appeared to be endlessly malleable and extendable without a defined limit, underwater they also were immensely difficult to tell apart from water. It was a clever way to make the best out of the bad situation for the Spliced ninja as Colceli's limbs rushed at the Allied Ninja.</p><p>Even when the thrusts of the jelly-man's limbs missed, the electric currents present within and transferred through his transparent chakra system lit the underground, flooded dungeon up and shocked the Allied Ninja, making connecting with his blows completely irrelevant for the immortal jelly ninja. Rushira quickly realized just how potent her opponent was underwater, just how much power to shape and manipulate his body she granted him by flooding the place with water and canceled her technique that usually granted her uncanny advantage in combat.</p><p>The moment that the water level lowered, finding smaller crevices to flow into and open spaces to leak out from, S-Crew responded with a quick heatwave of his own aimed at Buberuri. The armored Spliced grunted in pain but the heatwave left little to no damage on his body, just cracked the armored area it hit, something that the regeneration of Buberuri's armor tissue quickly fixed.</p><p>"Very nicely done!" Cailar mocked his ally in his signature, teasing manner but Junichi shook his head, water dripping from the veteran's body and his aged lungs struggling to keep up with the shift in the fighting environment while also granting him proper ability to breathe and keep up with the pace of battle.</p><p>"No, it's clever. The rest appear to be quite skilled at regeneration but not this one." Junichi grumped out, still struggling to catch his breath. "His previous wounds remain, only his armor layer regenerates. His abilities must have been gained from the ability of deer to regrow their horns quickly. That is the nature of his armor layer."</p><p>"It is decided then." Rushira nodded with youthful vigor and raised her powerful fist up. "We focus our team effort on that guy!"</p><p>"Not just that. We stop fighting randomly and continue to shift targets with purpose. With enough luck, we can overwhelm their regeneration factors by just relentlessly taxing them. Every jutsu, every bloodline must have a drawback, a cost, most of the times it is the strain on one's chakra." Junichi declared, it did not matter if the enemy listened in, as long as they lacked the power needed to change something that is.</p>
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<a name="section0477"><h2>477. Surface</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>S-Crew's body turned into a blurry mess before multiple images of the Allied Ninja popped in and out of existence all over the limited space of the laboratory. Even in his slightly worn out state from the previous triumphant battle with one of the Spliced, S-Crew's speed remained just as ceaselessly impressive as before, not dropping one inch from his limit.</p><p>Junichi's hands worked through a collection of hand seals in sync with his teammate's movements. The blurry and highly unpredictable blitzing manner of S-Crew's fighting method granted the rest of the Allied Ninja some semblance of cover to set up their moves and use their hand seals. The Spliced looked a tad bit overwhelmed trying to read into S-Crew's moves, worried that this man that successfully defeated one of them already could use those same techniques on one of them if they were not careful.</p><p>Regardless of the slight intimidation factor that S-Crew's speed had granted, the Spliced ninja with the scaly skin charged out on yet another ruthless assault, his white teeth flashed around the cramped space as the lizard-man tried to use his teeth to slash, maul or bite into the speedy opponent. Loud thuds emanated through the room, several walls collapsed with S-Crew's after-images appearing nearby the centers of the impact that toppled them.</p><p>All signs of the Spliced very nearly missing the speedy Allied Ninja, S-Crew managed to maintain his balance and build up the inertia of heat inside his body for a potential release some more. The forced detours he had to take in his blitz resulted in him ramming into walls with his feet, something that toppled the walls from the built up force of speed in S-Crew's motion.</p><p>The feral Spliced twitched, his hands extended to the sides as his eyes opened up wider in shock. His body twitched again as if attempting to move but he failed to notice Junichi's extended palm and the sphere of flames comprised of pure Fire Release chakra whirling and raging around him. With the closing of Junichi's hand, the flames closed in as well on the reptile-man.</p><p>"Fire Style: Blazing Eleven!" Junichi yelled out.</p><p>A rowdy glass-shattering sound made the Allied Ninja jump up, the trapped Spliced ninja managed to bust out from his intended fiery doom and launch himself in a crocodile-like dive right at the seal-user Konoha veteran that attempted to subdue him. A picking up gust of wind alerted the Allied Ninja to the fellow Spliced, a coral-skinned young woman joining in on the offensive of the scaly-skinned Spliced ninja.</p><p>Junichi yelled out in discomfort but not because of the successful and well-timed combined offensive of the enemy, it was due to the rough push from behind of his own teammate, Rushira. The female Allied Ninja managed to shove her teammate that was still too invested and frozen in place after using his technique to defend himself properly, his chakra still returning to the proper default stage and still in aftereffects from the molding he did before.</p><p>Rushira covered herself up, blocking the continuous attacks with her impressive bulk, her entire body tensed up with an impressive tonus that helped her better withstand the relentless and savage attacks of her enemy. Shallow stripes of crimson covered the woman's athletic body and with a mighty jumping kick from her outer leg, the Spliced ninja managed to knock Rushira down on her back.</p><p>Despite the effective combined attack from the enemy, Rushira's valiant defensive wall provided Cailar more than enough time to prepare his own jutsu. Traps, loops, and strings of steel wire erected all over the room, just waiting for one of the Spliced to get overexcited and fall for the trap, Cailar was not about to wait, however. A very gleefully shimmering string of steel wire wrapped around his finger and attached to a specific loop of wire, noticeable only to the keenest of combatants, activated the trap in the exact way that Cailar intended it to work.</p><p>A vociferous roar emanated in the air, the lizard-ninja leaped up in the air, swiping his teeth, his claws on both his fingers and his toes to sever the steel wire and even break the chakra imbuement that Cailar had placed on the wires. The speed and the ferocity of this particular Spliced ninja was remarkable, there appeared to be absolutely no openings for the Allied Ninja to focus properly on attacking the desired target together.</p><p>Buberuri dove right under his rampaging, reptilian comrade and then managed to arc his mighty tackle by pushing his body off the floor with thrusts of his arms, changing the trajectory of his torpedo-precision, armored tackle. Before the headlong-charge could connect, however, a powerful airwave comprised of pure heat blasted the rushing enemy to the side and past a couple of walls, rumbling the entire foundation of the underground facility in the process.</p><p>S-Crew and Cailar may have teased each other to no end as friends but while in the middle of a battle they appeared to have each other's backs covered.</p><p>Colceli's shocking, elongated limbs slurped back into his gelatinous body before appearing from under his head and moving in a swift flurry to cover for his derailed teammate, forcing Rushira, who was rushing in to properly stomp and pound the downed Buberuri while his armor layer was cracked and down on the defensive. Despite her impressive skill in close range combat, the sum of her injuries and scratches accumulated and prevented the female Allied Ninja from moving as fast as she normally would have, resulting in a nasty bunch of crackling, electric jabs connecting and knocking the Allied Ninja down.</p><p>"They may be weaker than us but their lack of fatigue or injuries is annoying," Cailar noted with a muzzled mutter meant only for his squad.</p><p>"Rushira, stay in the back lines. Your injuries are troubling." Junichi followed with a similarly silenced manner of speech meant only for his most injured teammate. The physically impressive kunoichi struggled to stand back up and could barely resist the alluring draw of stumbling back down once she did.</p><p>"Damn… That lizard-guy got me pretty badly before…" Rushira clutched at a nasty-looking bite wound on her side that previously she had little to no trouble ignoring and augmenting her body through but at her current state was beginning to pour blood more and more at an alarming rate.</p><p>"Don't let up!" Junichi ordered the team while he began weaving hand seals again. When he started he appeared to have no cover or defenses from interrupting the use of his jutsu, it was about as obvious of a trap as traps got but one of the Spliced appeared to be too drawn into the excitement of the battle to care. The reptilian Spliced ninja charged in with a headlong, twisting charge and his mighty jaws wide open, looking to snap and lock a good chunk of somebody's meat just like he did before with Rushira in his initial attack.</p><p>The irises in the eyes of the reptilian shinobi disappeared from the shock of the painful and speedy attack of S-Crew hitting him right in the throat with an elbow strike that was so blindingly fast it looked like it came out of nowhere.</p><p>"There're more ways than just running around to build up speed, dirtbag!" S-Crew grunted as his hands worked like an automaton, dishing out rapid blows that while really hit their mark, appeared to have little to no effect on the dazed and confused reptilian. A combination of lacking force present in the strikes due to their immense speed and the thick, scaly skin of the receiver.</p><p>"Fire Style: Blazing Eleven!" Junichi yelled out once more. The Konoha veteran almost felt the questioning glares of his squad resting on him. The jutsu appeared to have little effect before and yet he chose to use it again. This time, however, instead of using the technique on the reptilian Spliced that may have enjoyed a moderate amount of short-term blaze on him due to his partly reptilian cells, Junichi used his technique instead of Buberuri as jets of flames darted off on the ground before reconnecting in a massive, sphere-shaped blaze around the armored ninja.</p><p>One did not require extensive training in one's auditory senses or perception to notice the loud popping and crumbling noises that followed. The superheated layer of reinforced bone-like tissue on the Spliced ninja crumbled in black, dust-like texture leaving the slightly burnt up and injured owner very much exposed to follow up attacks as he fell to his knees after Junichi's blaze had dissipated.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Cailar yelled out, pulling on a piece of string with his teeth, the string connected to a loop that tripped the injured and now armor-less Spliced ninja by the back of his shins and forced him to fumble on a steel table still covered with operating tools while pieces of string wire looped around him, tying him down. The steel wires lit up with a sky-blue shimmer of chakra coating the moment they locked down properly and subdued the temporarily exposed enemy.</p><p>"Now!" Cailar warned the rest of his squad to use this precious opening and give the subdued Buberuri all they had before his armor layer grew back. It was a now or never moment and a tremendously daunting task, given the rest of the Spliced being in quite a fighting condition, ready to jump in and cover for their subdued teammate and brimming with devotion to Guru Ayushi's work.</p><p>Despite her injuries, Rushira stepped into the front lines. A great sense of responsibility and determination in her pain-ridden and bloodied face signaled of her dedication to fulfilling her role as a strong taijutsu user and do her best to bring down the enemy once her more perceptive and quick-witted teammates were done with investigations and figuring out just whom she was supposed to punch.</p><p>"Living Shuriken!" a feminine voice yelled out.</p><p>A strong blow sent Rushira flying aside and crashing into the side wall, shaking the foundations of the underground facility even more. The coral-colored skinned Spliced kunoichi had buzzed at the rushing taijutsu user with an odd method of attack – a ceaseless barrage of cartwheels performed in rapid succession, the Spliced kunoichi moved just like a shuriken, using her chakra augmentations to harden her spliced skin and make it rock-hard.</p><p>It was not that hard of a hit but it successfully protected the subdued Buberuri and knocked Rushira off her feet. The persisting dizziness in her head and the accumulating injuries made the Allied Ninja stay down for a short while, at least while she regained her sense of balance and the world stopped spinning. Clutching her aching ribs the woman coughed up a couple of large drops of blood, her lungs burned when the woman took a breath.</p><p>It has been a while since Rushira has been pushed this far in a battle. Usually, the business of an Allied Ninja concluded with the end of the investigation, very few conspirators and criminal overlords carried the fighting chance to challenge the Allied Ninja.</p><p>While Rushira's offensive was unsuccessful, yet bold, Junichi went through a sprinkling of hand seals. The Konoha native extended his palm out, revealing a sealing glyph lighting up with sky-blue flames on his hand. The air in front of the Allied Ninja crackled with innate electrical shocks before compressing and becoming infinitely thick. The Spliced Ninja twitched overcome by an intense shock of the air pressure around them as if the gravity they were affected by intensified hundredfold.</p><p>"Sealing Technique: Two-Minute Gold!" Junichi chanted out.</p><p>Golden spheres similar to transparent barriers of light formed around the greatly reduced in size Spliced Ninja, all of them except the subdued Buberuri. Junichi's clever use of his teammate's sacrifice managed to allow him to catch every single one of the Spliced in a sealing barrier and reduce them to the size of a brilliant basketball.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Karakuri Thunderball!" Cailar chanted out, spreading his hands out wide. His foot stomped onto the steel wire that held the grip around Buberuri tightly while the hands of the steel wire and explosive weaponry user sent a flurry of exploding, rotating balls decorated with bladed spikes at the enemy.</p><p>The explosion devastated the entire complex of laboratories and mock shops, leaving nothing but the wooden rubble of the shop and shocking the villagers calmly walking outside. For a good minute, the villagers' minds became crystal clear of any other sentiments or plans but the absolute confusion of this overwhelming blast right in the middle of the village and the falling, burning debris and the slightly caved in ground around the area.</p><p>A rowdy and thunderous roar sent the villagers down on the ground, covering their bleeding ears and fleeing for their lives. Normally any average ranking ninja would have remained in secret to the processions going underground in the hidden lab of Guru Ayushi's little cult. Only the elite village ninja with the skill to stop such a battle were being assembled and dispatched now in the Hokage's office. However, given this new, outing development, even the average ranked chuunin began flocking to the area like a swarm.</p><p>The flock of green blurs destroyed the raining debris, quickly dug out the sinking underground civilians and assisted those fleeing the scene with the venture, providing their amazing speed. It took a great amount of moments before the first remnant of the battle raging underground surfaced, with a gentle tap of his foot, S-Crew landed on the soft and devastated Konoha dirt, holding his injured female teammate.</p><p>"Damn, Cailar really let himself off the leash…" the Kumogakure native muttered to himself while he handed the barely conscious ally of his to a greatly confused village ninja, who, if it was not for the Allied Ninja headband present on one of S-Crew's arms, would have considered the Allied Ninja an aggressor and the cause for this calamity.</p><p>A tip of a blade split the ground in a quick, round motion before the dislodged dirt was forcefully blasted out with a single, powerful pulse of chakra and dirtied and injured Junichi surfaced as well. The blade skis folded and returned to a hidden compartment somewhere on Junichi's shoes.</p><p>"You're… Junichi Seimei-san." One of the chuunin ninja uttered in confusion. While the ninja was apparently slightly familiar with the face of the Konoha veteran, the presence of said Konoha native appeared to be baffling to most of the village ninja that knew who Junichi was.</p><p>"Calm down, son, this is official Allied Ninja business," Junichi grumbled, panting and dusting off his tattered attire, desperately searching for any signs of the fleeing enemy or anything of note. "Shit, those bastards must have used the blast to escape…" he whispered under his own nose only to confirm his own worst fears.</p><p>A whirling twister of steel wire threw a massive cloud of dirt and rubble up in the air, using his steel wire to zip himself out from the newly dug up underground tunnel, Cailar landed nearby his resurfaced colleagues and with a good yank pulled out the subdued Spliced ninja. Buberuri spun around the piece of string attached to him like a yo-yo before landing right by Cailar's feet.</p><p>"Is this the one you've come here for?" a chuunin amongst the first responders to the catastrophe inquired.</p><p>"He's not someone we can just knock out," Junichi grunted while weaving a bunch of hand seals and extending his palm again. "Sealing Technique: Two-Minute Gold!"</p><p>A shiny barrier sphere formed around the recovering Spliced ninja, reducing the size of the ninja greatly while surrounding him with a powerful, golden barrier as well. Junichi smacked the golden sphere that bounced off the floor and into his hands.</p><p>"Shit… What now?" S-Crew cursed, giving his Allied Ninja teammates a bemused look.</p><p>Junichi closed his eyes and sighed. "We can neither pursue Mana nor try and mount a search for the escaped Spliced. We'll need to report the intel we got to Konoha and call it a completed investigation."</p><p>"Congratulations." Cailar gave his friend from Kumogakure a bitter glare. "You happened to get just what you wanted." Referring to the burning desire from S-Crew's part to be done with this investigation, no matter how formal the means.</p><p>"W-Wait, you said… Pursue Mana? You mean Konoha's Sorceress? Is she involved?" one of the village ninja heard something that made sense to him in the entire speech that most of them were excluded out of. The Konoha veteran turned back at the confused chuunin with a strict glare that used to chill Mana so much earlier.</p><p>"Correct. It is entirely possible that she has betrayed us… I'd say the chance is forty-five percent. You should report to the gate guard and the Hokage's office as fast as possible, I will personally assist you with the debriefing and share all the intel that the Allied Ninja have gathered." Junichi replied.</p><p>"Wait, what is this forty-five percent shit all about? She ditched us and ran off to play holy maiden…" S-Crew ground his teeth, his raised fist shook in anger and intense heat emanated from it still in the form of smoke that he did not manage to release during the previous battle.</p><p>"That would be a very foolish assumption. I will not act like I understand women, let alone those old enough to be my daughter as my own children are the greatest mystery to me. However, I remain sure that becoming an accomplice to Guru Ayushi is against Mana's beliefs." Junichi boldly declared while looking up at the gloomy spring sky.</p><p>"So your version is that she just ditched us and ran off solo? I'm not sure which choice is stupider from her part, to betray her village and the side of justice or to challenge this cult all by herself…" Cailar sneered at the confused Konoha chuunin that half-assedly assisted the villagers that still required help and tried to make sense of how best they could assist their village in this situation.</p><p>"She felt betrayed by us just the same…" Junichi looked at the reflection of his cold eyes from the shimmering golden sealing sphere in his hands before placing it under his armpit and looking on at the Hokage Monument. "In any case, we've wasted one of our two minutes babbling here. My sealing jutsu will soon become ineffective, let's deal with subduing this guy before we debrief Lord Sixth."</p><p>Cailar and Junichi disappeared, leaving just a strong gust that picked up a handful of leaves off the surrounding trees and tossed them about. S-Crew just shook his head and sighed before picking Rushira up from the baffled chuunin that held her and disappearing herself in the direction of the Konohagakure Hospital.</p>
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<a name="section0478"><h2>478. Who Will Save The Saviors?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana slowly followed the procession of the Congregation, stumbling and turning back to admire the magician's presence as if they saw her for the first time every time did not do the pace of the process any favors. Axolkin, one of the Spliced that followed the magician not, staying not too far behind and looking back to confirm that none of the Allied Ninja succeeded in giving the other Spliced the slip and rushed in to take them out.</p><p>Looking at the intense, dark and endlessly deep glare of the Spliced ninja Mana was sure – this man was willing to sacrifice his life for the magician. There could not have been any mistake about it, Mana herself has had that very same look in her eyes. Every time the Congregation stopped, the back of the flock bumped into the front while the front turned back and the back thought to mumble and shake their fists at the front before deciding that looking back at the magician was not such a bad idea, Axolkin looked a bit irritated but his eyes turned softer when the movement continued.</p><p>All of a sudden, the procession bumped into a closed steel door with the Spliced ninja slowly demanding to be given way through the crowd. He pressed his hand to a panel, a screen similar to those most villagers mindlessly stared at during free time, after emitting a pleasant beep the steel rumbled open. Slowly, picking up the pace like an old train brought back into action for one last ride but with a degree of certainty and inevitability to it.</p><p>"Only I can operate this door. Had one of the others decided on following you, I'd have had to hand them out a piece of my own body to open it." Axolkin spoke up. It was just a mean to strike up a conversation but, given the peculiar topic, it was certainly a poor one.</p><p>"How so?" Mana did her best to smile, just like she used to smile onstage. At this point in time, she was an entertainer. Better than that, she was an actor. A lone star who will never be acknowledged for any accolades, a girl stricken with disgust and drowning in the bitterness of betrayal but one so determined that she moved past it and turned that scorn into strength required to move on.</p><p>"My cells are unlike those of the others. My regeneration works a little differently." Axolkin explained while the two made their way through the most sophisticated looking of all labs present in the underground facility. This one still had flora being cultivated in tubes, strange and misshapen organisms, some more humanoid than others, being produced in tubes. Mana could only imagine what the smell of this place would have been like…</p><p>Axolkin quickly pulled out a kunai blade and spun it about in his hand, somehow Mana managed to resist the better judgment to jump up and react in self-defensive instinct. That would have seemed odd to the Spliced ninja, it'd have tipped him off, which was the last thing that the magician wanted. The ninja pressed his hand against the wall before slashing at his pinky, removing it with a less than gracious swipe. A kunai lacked some of the grace of the finer blades…</p><p>The severed finger began growing back almost instantaneously. Let alone that, the severed finger began rumbling and writhing on the ground before beginning to elongate itself. Axolkin just looked at the elongated and inflating mass of flesh while he had the free time to admire his creation after glaring at his newly regenerated finger.</p><p>"My severed cells actually carry the potential to give birth to a new organism." Axolkin grinned with pride while the pinky turned to a sleeker copy of the original, laying on the floor with its eyes and mouth shut by a wet membrane of skin. "That's because my cells can become whatever kind of cells they want to be. Blood cells, skin cells, stem cells… It was my rebirth that brought Ayushi-sama the most use."</p><p>"It's true, your abilities seem to be on the whole different level compared to your counterparts and the reappeared ninja. Now that I mention it, are they our agents as well? Infiltrators of some sort?" Mana inquired, playing up the curiosity angle of the act.</p><p>"No. They've been given their abilities, they've served their use as Guru's experiments and they all refused to participate in our mission any further. For that reason they've been protected against mental probing and interrogation, their memories of their time with us have been mucked as much as it is humanly possible and they've been let go." Axolkin appeared to have a moderate amount of disdain towards the people Mana spoke of. People like the old man that gave Kiyomi and Meiko so much trouble, also Tanko Shigin, the invulnerable genin.</p><p>"I see…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Is this all? I would rather we moved on…" Axolkin glared at the Congregation group that was almost body-piling by the next door. After clawing and bumping their surprisingly vigorous, rotten bodies against the steel barrier, the rotten ones turned back at the figures of their religious admiration once in a while, stopping the clacking and thudding coming from their side.</p><p>"I will be moving on." Mana casually muttered. "I'll be taking the Congregation and heading right for the hospital."</p><p>"For what purpose? Make no mistake, the battle behind us is a sacrificial one. The other Spliced are merely providing us with an opportunity to escape. The village will find out what we've been up to this whole time. Guru had prepared for this eventuality, for the inevitable clarity of his goals and the attempts to discredit him because of his rogue status. We shall bounce back from this." Axolkin still did not catch on to what Mana has been insinuating.</p><p>"I am sure you shall. Ayushi-san is too intelligent for any other eventuality. However, I shall bring these people back to their families, to the way they've been before. As much as I can." Mana declared.</p><p>"I see, so you've been playing around. Does not make sense why you would just betray your comrades like this but… It does not matter. There is no time. I apologize for what I am about to do but you will be brought before Guru, conscious or not." Axolkin took a threatening step forward, forcing Mana on the defensive taijutsu stance. Maybe she should have played this with more deceit, tried taking the Spliced ninja out while he still was not aware of Mana's ploy but…</p><p>What possible use could it have been? Against an enemy that could not be dismembered, probably not even killed properly for his life transcended the knowledge and understanding of the modern conception for the term. Axolkin was not an opponent Mana could just hit hard, hit them fast, and put them to sleep… In that case, could she beat him?</p><p>Axolkin attacked without warning, his movements were fluid and highly unpredictable. Had Mana never experienced the Sun Disc arena or trained to evade and protect herself with a medical ninja and a profoundly experienced martial artist, she'd possibly have succumbed to the enemy then and there. Axolkin's movements were quick and stiff but they had a hint of reservation to them.</p><p>Whenever the Spliced ninja attacked, he extended himself and lagged out. His hits looked heavy and strong in execution but they were too slow and one of Guru Ayushi's finest did not invest too much into his offense, always keeping three-fourths of his body that was not attacking on the defensive. On one hand, Axolkin's style was executed with an efficient strategy that prevented Mana from attempting to exploit any openings she found in fear of an even stiffer and faster counter-counterattack, on the other hand, the Spliced ninja spared himself on some sweet opportunities to go all out and overwhelm the magician.</p><p>"Wind Style: Salamander Puff!" Axolkin chanted out, ramming at Mana with his shoulder. Had Mana not just heard the call of the jutsu's name, she'd have probably gotten fooled by the physical attack that preceded the ninjutsu that Axolkin used.</p><p>In the current case of events, Mana cleverly stepped to the side before reacting to the intense streams of Wind Release chakra propelled through the sides of Axolkin's mouth, like a fish blowing streams of water through its gills. The magician took great interest in the fact that the streams appeared to cause very little damage to the ceiling they slammed into once Mana evaded the attack with a lean back. This must have been an extremely close-range type technique, given this knowledge, its power must have been easily worth the trade.</p><p>Evading while leaning was careless and very arrogant. Mana sacrificed balance and opened herself up when doing so but she had little to fear, her opponent had overextended themselves far before she used this very frowned upon method of evasion. Still, she reacted more out of instinct, almost like her body whispered the ideal way to evade and she only heard the imaginary scolding she'd have gotten from one of her plenty taijutsu teachers afterward.</p><p>"You did not attack." Axolkin noted, his eyes followed Mana while the girl dashed back to give herself some distance and "reset" the clash, so to say. Both ninja were showing very few cards from their hand and were very eager to shuffle their hands back into the deck, leaving the opponent wondering if the opponent had a bad hand or if they are merely playing mind games.</p><p>"I don't wish this battle. I only seek to rescue these poor people." Mana spoke referring to the Congregation without giving her opponent the free opening and glancing at the pathetic bunch pressing themselves against the door, wondering why two of their religious figures were infighting.</p><p>"Or maybe you acknowledge the pointlessness of attacking me? You are clever to study from the mistakes of others instead of those you make yourself." Axolkin grinned. It was a very respectful mimic, it was not tough to read that respect from her opponent's face. There were some brief realizations just why someone like Mana may have interested even a legend of the ninja world like Guru Ayushi. It was not her combative abilities that interested the Guru though, Axolkin would have been wrong to assume that much.</p><p>Mana was similarly respecting the ability of her opponent to read the tide of battle without the battle revealing too much of itself and more of its intricacies wrapping out underground. Like a truly experienced shinobi, Axolkin presumed that Mana had seen one of the Allied Ninja fight the Spliced and note their strategy – to utilize their invulnerability for a quick recovery and brush off clean hits, then use that moment of surprise, of wasted effort to attack their opponent while they were open. By refusing to waste her effort on pointless attacks that would be easily regenerated, Mana spared herself those cheap openings and her opponent the counterattack opportunities.</p><p>Fighting this way was dangerous, however, usually when the opponent had some sort of a passive ability they had little care of working consciously into the whirlwind of a battle, it was one of their main weaknesses. Take the Uchiha, for example, their Sharingan was an ace in any battle, however, if its strain and chakra cost was ignored for too long, it could have handed one's opponent the battle just as much as it could have won it. By refusing to attack Axolkin Mana was freezing the battle, not exploiting her opponent's weaknesses or making any progress toward victory.</p><p>Victory was a faraway dream, in this case, the size of Mana's chakra signature was perhaps her greatest combative advantage and Axolkin's chakra signature was even larger than hers was.</p><p>"Water Style: Fish Walk!" Axolkin yelled out, slamming his palms together while his large and puffy lips waved about and elongated to the point where they covered the greatly enlarged head of the Spliced ninja ear-to-ear. Concentrated streams of water fired out from the very tips of his lips, blasting at the ends of the laboratory and propelling the ninja onward in a water-propelled dash at his opponent.</p><p>Her opponent thrust his feet forward, working his massive acceleration by repurposing it into a strong stomping attack. Even with all the observation, analysis and profile drawing that Mana was in the process of doing mentally, the magician knew that her best hope was to brace for impact and hope for the best. The young kunoichi slammed her own palms together before spreading them out wide.</p><p>"Magic Bubble Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, naming her vain attempt at fortifying her defenses and protecting herself from brute force possibly too mighty to just power through with chakra augmentation alone.</p><p>The boisterous shattering sound alerted the kunoichi to the puny and absurdly ineffective resistance that her Wind Release protective technique posed to the enemy. The girl could not help but huff and grunt in pain while her body was stamped into the ground like a measly insect that annoyed the owner of the house too much to be permitted to live.</p><p>"That's odd. I counted on you using chakra augmentation to withstand the blow." Axolkin wondered. He had ceased his attack without trying to exploit the opportunity of kicking Mana to the ground. "A hit like this would have decimated your augmentations and forced your body into stress if not completely busted your chakra system."</p><p>"You count on something as devious as this on purpose?" Mana stood back on her feet, something deep inside her was blazing out of the mere thought of someone causing the pain and loss of identity that she gone through after her chakra network was broken and her body and mind were completely out of sync.</p><p>"You will be brought in front of Guru-sama, the greatest medical ninja to have ever lived. I have tremendous respect for you and that respect limits my options." Axolkin admitted.</p><p>One thought continuously smoldered in Mana's mind, one that recalled the more perfected and later inventions of Guru's mission, all the seemingly immortal and invulnerable ninja. These Spliced weren't like Tanko Shigin. Their regenerative properties worked entirely differently. Some of them, like Buberuri, could not regenerate at all, just the layer of armor on the deer-man could do that.</p><p>These Spliced were different from the perfected versions of Guru's experiments. They were merely ninja with animal cells spliced in. The serpentine man before had the cells of a snake, Buberuri had those of a deer, his gooey friend was spliced with the cells of an immortal jellyfish, most likely. The enhanced healing factors of these ninja were not exactly like their animal counterparts, the human chakra network supercharged and altered them greatly, but they may have carried some of the more general principles.</p><p>The magician girl raised her hands up for hand seals. She was nimble with those and her jutsu using speed was one of the greatest among her peers, especially when using the jutsu that Mana had perfected in the Rabbit Caves before the finals of the Chuunin Exams. Regardless, given her opponent's awesome speed, it will be a gamble either way.</p><p>Axolkin slid across the cracked steel tiles on the floor as if he was a water strider riding on a lake. Mana could hear and see her opponent breathing in, this would be dangerous, regardless of how close he'd get before she was finished, regardless of how this gamble would all play out, Mana would not cease her chain of hand seals.</p><p>"Wind Style: Salamander Puff!" Axolkin spoke, his voice was calm. He saw through Mana's intentions and called her play. He was willing to measure the speed of his own devastating, close-range jutsu against Mana's unseen to him technique.</p><p>Axolkin was massively faster than Mana, however, he underestimated the importance of a couple of factors: Mana started her hand seals first, the lag of his reaction time helped diminish the speed difference some, the jutsu that the magician intended to use was also well-trained and had no little to no range limitations. Most battles took place at mid-range, the most comfortable range for Mana's jutsu, that meant she would not need to charge forward to maximize the efficiency of her jutsu and diminish the advantage that the difference in speed provided even more.</p><p>Now, all that mattered was if all these factors were enough. The magician's hair rustled the effects of the upcoming blast of wind, without a doubt. The jutsu was coming, it would hit her any microsecond now… It seemed like time had stopped for the final moments before the resolution.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment Jutsu!" Mana's voice cut the curtain of darkness like a lightning bolt. Just like the one that came out of her extended palms and slammed right in Axolkin's chest, making the amphibian croak out in pain, spitting out blood as all of his ribs broke simultaneously and skewered the man from inside. The resonating shock force of Mana's technique sent the bleeding and stumbling opponent of hers sliding back and fumbling on one knee.</p><p>"Well played…" he grumbled spitting up blood. Despite the tragic look and the normally quite lethal outcome of such an impact, Mana knew that Axolkin would quickly bounce back even from such an injury. He could quite literally force his blood cells to become new organ cells and simply ditch the ones that were busted. Axolkin was absolutely a frightening opponent and if Mana let him use the full extent of his abilities, she'd end up unconscious and forcefully brought in front of Guru Ayushi.</p><p>The refusal to allow such an outcome was all on Mana's mind as she leaned forward and dashed toward her opponent. Her hands flashed through hand seals and her lips moved so fast that any bystander wouldn't have even noticed them move at all.</p><p>"Magician's Touch!" Mana declared while her entire body lit up with discharges of Lightning Release chakra. With quick jabs aimed at the joints of her opponent, turning the technique on and off at will, Mana intended to give her the necessary time to enact her strategy of possibly making out of this encounter alive and with the Congregation following her.</p><p>A tight grip locked Mana in place, just an inch shy from reaching her opponent. Her extended fingers and the resonating lightning discharges just almost inconvenienced the injured Axolkin enough to make him wink from the intense light show. An arm was sticking out from the puddle of blood that Axolkin had left after being hit, the arm that grabbed Mana and refused to let go while small jets of air blew out from its pores as propulsion to gather the necessary force to counteract Mana's movements and keep the magician locked in place.</p><p>"Dangerous!" Axolkin stood back up and patted his fully healed chest. "But perhaps a bit too greedy. We were dancing so carefully before, you opened up too quick."</p><p>A stiff, vertical jump kick hit Mana right in the nose and sent her flying back at the other side of the laboratory. The inevitable taste of blood and the constant cheeping in her whited out mind reminded the magician of the consequences for rushing too far ahead. This may have been it, this may have been what Mana wanted to prevent, the outcome of comparing skill and strength with a superior and much scarier opponent. Axolkin's strike back.</p>
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<a name="section0479"><h2>479. The Master Of Regeneration</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I thought I'd knock you out with that last attack, I take no pleasure in hurting you like this. Not while you still feel pain…" Axolkin scratched the side of his head. For what it was worth, at least he seemed truthful. That did not make him any less dangerous.</p><p>This fight was pointless. After this last exchange, Mana has finally come to realize it. She has fought opponents that initially seemed unbeatable and out of her league but this was one of the times where no matter how naïve she was walking in – she couldn't overcome these crazy odds. Not taking this guy head-on.</p><p>If she were to simply attack this man with force and play the ramming game, she'd get pushed back and swatted aside. It was unlikely that Axolkin would mess the next attempt to knock her out. If Mana were to try and stall this man out, she'd run out of chakra trying to survive his endless attacks far faster than her opponent would run out of his trying to knock her out. There was no attack in her arsenal strong enough to somehow pull her out.</p><p>"I can see from your face, Mana-sama, you're still considering continuing this fight. That is very unfortunate, do not do this. Don't make me hurt you any more. I may just need to remove your arms and legs before bringing you to Ayushi-sama, for your own good." Axolkin began picking up the pace.</p><p>Mana's mind raced through her options. Axolkin flipped in mid-air, throwing his extended foot forward like a guillotine blade aimed right at Mana's shoulder. The magician's eyes opened up wide while showers of red scattered across the laboratory. Rose petals spun around in a wild vortex greatly confusing the Spliced ninja, soon enough, both the magician and the arm that Axolkin thought he had severed dispersed into petals.</p><p>That kick was mighty. It split open the steel floor and covered the entire laboratory with cracks and the force was all perfectly contained. This went far beyond even the world-ending power of a ninja, this man was truly a monster. It was a serious statement from Ayushi's part to produce someone like this, an army of Spliced ninja like Axolkin could have truly challenged the might of ninja villages.</p><p>"You are wasting time, Mana-sama. You cannot hurt me, I am part man, part axolotl. My spliced relatives are masters of regeneration, my immortality far transcends even that of the other Spliced." Axolkin expressed his annoyance while his attention wandered across the dark and devastated laboratory. Mana managed to slip away from his sight with that last illusion, it was a new approach, one that the Spliced ninja was not used to facing. Who would have known that ninja would wield more success by hiding in the shadows?</p><p>Mana sat perfectly content in her hiding spot, hugging the shadows behind a busted test tube. The broken glass pressed uncomfortably against her feet, Mana had ditched her sandals so that she did not alert the Spliced ninja. Her mind returned back to the Academy, back to the stealth lessons and reminded her of the miles she walked stepping on her own palms to muzzle sound coming from her steps and learning to step heel-first, in a perfectly controlled manner.</p><p>Mana was never too great at stealth but this time her life and that of these poor Congregation people depended on it.</p><p>Lucky. Axolkin walked off to the other side of the laboratory. Strange… For a man so fast and familiar with the place he could probably scout this entire area in just a second, moving so fast he filled the entire laboratory in a moment in time. Mana may have managed to escaped any attacks he would have used following up such an innovative attack but she would not have eluded his sight.</p><p>A mighty rumble shook the entire laboratory. What was that!? Mana fumbled all over the broken glass, just barely managing to toughen her body up so that she did not open herself up everywhere and bled out on the busted steel floor, killed by some strange earthquake…</p><p>"So they've totaled the whole shop, huh?" Axolkin nonchalantly looked at the dirt falling through the cracks of the reinforced walls of the laboratory they were in. "Luckily for us, it would take a cosmic level calamity to bury us underground. The work done here was simply too import…"</p><p>Before that sentence could be finished, a lump of flesh tore his way through the reinforced walls like sheets of paper, leaping in with a mighty roar and blood-red eyes. Slobbering all over the dirty floor and burying through ground, minerals, reinforced steel and anyone unfortunate enough to stand in his way alike. A rotten, almost green monstrosity with the voice of a baby and a lack of restraint to match…</p><p>"L-Little Honda!" Axolkin yelled out but by the time he got his balance back it was too late, Honda simply buried right through the salamander-man, tearing him apart and stomping right through him as if the chakra augmented flesh of this Spliced ninja offered as little resistance as water or air he was drawing into his lungs. Mana had never seen anything like this, Honda simply buried through the unfortunate jailer of his only to disappear in a man-sized pipe he was clearly too large for.</p><p>While the battle quarrel between Mana and Axolkin, followed by the explosive resolution of the conflict between the Spliced ninja and the Allied Ninja, followed and surpassed by Honda's awakening and escape from the underground complex he was being kept at had significantly tore up the underground facility, it was actually the leaking sewer fluids that truly provided Mana with a sense of urgency. She now had a ticking time bomb that most likely smelled of feces hanging over her head…</p><p>"H-Honda has escaped…" Axolkin grumbled through pain, his speech was slurry and filled with wet, slurping noises. It was evident that he did not wait until his body grew fully back together before speaking up. "You know not what you're doing and yet… You've caused this much trouble…"</p><p>He was actually getting angry. It was inevitable really; all of the radically religious types had a brick wall somewhere deep inside, one that they considered the bottom of the well but one that hid a nasty layer of sludge right under the cross-painted brick barrier. It was only once that bottom wall shattered that the true man surfaced, the parts that one wished to hide and in the process only made reek with more revulsion to it.</p><p>"It's all my fault, Mana-sama, ALL MY FAULT!" Axolkin howled out with his face varnished with crazy. The magician's mind raced through her available set of techniques. There was no way she'd have enough time to summon one of the rabbits, even if she did, she'd only doom them for death or a grave beating. After all, Axolkin would have had no reservations about killing them immediately…</p><p>Any jutsu Mana could throw right now, it would either be too weak or she'd not make it in time to use it before Axolkin rushes in… The worst thing about adrenaline rushing through one's system while a ninja enhanced their perception to its very peak was seeing one's impending doom dragged out across what seemed like eternity… Thinking and evaluating the fact that one had no more options left and experiencing the desperation and fear for far longer than it was necessary.</p><p>Mana was so invested in what she could do that she did not notice the fumbling busybodies stepping right in front of her from right by her side. It was only when the tunnel vision cleared out and Axolkin froze in shock that the Congregation stepped in to protect Mana that the kunoichi saw her trembling hand reaching out for the poor, rotting lab-rats.</p><p>Even as she herself glared at her own trembling and bloodied hand it looked gruesome and shocking. The sight of a teen with bloodshot, horrified eyes, trembling and begging the universe around them for life was not something that was easily ignored. Morality required in these situations was a universal law that transcended sides and ideals. It took priority over everything else.</p><p>"Mana…" a rotting body of the Congregation group mumbled out.</p><p>"Mana…" another one spoke up.</p><p>"Mana…" an entire handful joined into the chanting in-sync.</p><p>"I know but…" Axolkin stepped forward, he clearly intended for the Congregation to move aside after he stepped forward but the rotting bodies did not move an inch. Several of them exposed their teeth hiding behind feeble and decomposed gums that barely held the chompers together. "Ayushi-sama needs Mana by his side, I need to hurt her just a little to take her in."</p><p>Mana was so enthralled by the utter glee that the sight of these people stepping up to protect an injured and afraid person in need, without focusing too much on the fact that this person in need was her, that she almost forgot how convenient of a distraction this event proved to be. Axolkin was confused, he could have easily swatted all of the Congregation aside but both Ayushi's need for these laborers and his own religious ties to the group held him from lashing out at them and forced him into the path of reason.</p><p>Fumbling and letting her wounds drip clean, Mana stood up and raised her hands up front. The jutsu she thought of using was one she was accustomed to using. So much so that it no longer demanded the use of hand seals from her to use, as long as she properly focused on molding and channeling her chakra. The use of Audra wand used to help with that some but now Mana would have to make do.</p><p>"Magic Spark Barrage!" the magician yelled out, not because she needed it to properly use the technique but because she wanted it. Just as she thought it might, the noise of Mana using a ninjutsu technique bemused Axolkin and made him lean back, back off slightly from the living wall of the Congregation stepping up and over one another to protect Mana.</p><p>"You'd attack over these people you wanted to save to defeat me!?" Axolkin grumbled in bitter shock. That was before the fist-sized blasts of Lightning Release chakra spread out their barrage streams all over the laboratory, blasting at the ceiling and dislodging the cracked tiles, leaving small craters of cinders from the steel tiles on the floor and smashing the many massive test tubes leaving whatever was rotting within them to flop on the ground.</p><p>The wave of liquids bursting from the smashed test tubes and chemicals carefully placed on stands formed a singular, swamp-colored wave that washed away at the entire laboratory, covering Mana, the Congregation and Axolkin in toxic waste head to toe, it mixed horribly with the already flooding the facility cocktail of sewer sludge.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes, to stay in the laboratory and inside this burning and slimy mess that she has created was lunacy. She threw her hands frantically at the direction where she recalled the entrance to the sewer to be. There had to be some time to pull out two cards from her sleeves and press them against the wall that separated the sewer pipeline from the laboratory. If she removed her hand from the wall and let go of the cards, they'd get washed away so Mana had to use her own body as a tunnel for the explosive power of her card.</p><p>When the explosive wave hit the magician right in the chest, the girl coughed up, still submerged. The grueling taste of burning waste and her own blood did not let Mana forget that she was in one of her less desirable situations and places to die in. Despite that, the young kunoichi just let go and let the rapid stream of toxic waste and sewer water wash her through the pipeline, bashing against the metallic walls before plummeting a good bunch and hitting a grate.</p><p>It was a while before the girl felt bold enough to breathe. Initially, telling if she was still submerged in waste or not was quite impossible but once she began feeling the burning waste drying out and realized that she could wipe it off somewhat and greatly reduce the nasty itching and corrosiveness of the material that she was just swimming in and taking into her lungs a whole mouthful, Mana was careful to cough it all out and wipe it from her nostrils.</p><p>Once she managed to open her eyes, the girl felt glad, for the first time in her life, to be in a large sewer area where multiple tunnels interconnected and several pipelines dumped their content to a central dump below, content that was then superheated and filtered to be cleansed. Despite there only being sewer water and heavy machinery around her, given the situation she just escaped from Mana felt like bathing in pre-cleansed sewer water was quite alluring.</p><p>The Congregation were raining from the sky, some of them bashed right where Mana fell and hit the large, central grate, some of them fell down into the sewer water and surfaced while flapping about in an improvised self-preserving manner of swimming. The magician extended her sensory as far as she could to check if any of the poor rotten folk had fallen and drowned under deep enough to get caught into the large rotator that performed the initial water filtering but only a handful seemed stuck down there.</p><p>Pushing her sticky body with her burning from fatigue arms, Mana slid over the edge and dived underwater. It felt sticky and this was certainly one of the rare instances where Mana felt glad she had lost her sense of smell. The Congregation were strong, underwater they did not seem to feel or appreciate the fact that it was indeed Mana who was rescuing them and started clawing and kicking at the magician wildly.</p><p>There was no time to reason, no opportunity to fool around. All of her remaining willpower had to form a ramp through which all of her desire to save these people had to launch. No one would die, no matter how badly they were fighting to go in that direction. Painful cuts resonated all over, tearing sounds suggested that Mana's clothes tore instead of letting her get dragged under.</p><p>If she had opened her eyes they'd have burnt up with irritation from the dirt in the water. Chakra sensory was the only sense that Mana could rely on, she had to swallow any remaining bits of her dignity and pride and just keep on fighting. Spare herself of the mental breakdown of letting the dark taint of the Congregation's chakra signatures sicken her. There was only this much farther that one could have been sickened when they were washing off toxic waste with sewer water.</p><p>The sinking Congregation floated up like living rockets. Mana was quick to grab and thrust the lodged or stuck rotting bodies up, she even managed to evade the filtering rotator herself and surface. Chakra flowed through Mana's feet and her palms helping her climb the surface of the hollow steel platform covered with the grate she and most of those washed out from the laboratory by Mana's explosive escape fell onto.</p><p>Axolkin was wheezing with the fear for his life in his eyes. No matter how much sludge he coughed out from his insides he always had a handful more, ignoring the toxic waste he was utterly drenched in. It may have been safer to just walk up to him and knock him out with a good barefoot kick in the face but… Mana flipped on her back and stretched her limbs out just to soothe the burning fatigue in her. Axolkin won't be going anywhere now…</p><p>"H-How…" the Spliced ninja muttered, the color of his skin was turning slightly to the taffy side while the consistency of his wet skin surface became covered with nasty, white boils. Bit by bit, the majestic Spliced ninja began turning to the same kind of abomination that this cult made Little Honda into. "You missed every single shot, on purpose!"</p><p>"Lightning wouldn't have done a single thing." Mana huffed out. Her face twisted by the heaviness on her chest and her trembling muscles, just this once it was not because of overwhelming fear but because she had very little left to offer. "You played yourself by revealing the animal your cells have been spliced with."</p><p>"The axolotl?" Axolkin turned at Mana, falling on his size while toxic waste continued to leak from his flappy, open mouth. The painful shock of being covered in the blasted thing must have led the Spliced ninja to chug down a great deal of the vile substances he marinated subjects in. "It's the king of regeneration…"</p><p>"It's also extremely rare and on the verge of extinction. It only lives in one batch of islands in the Archipelago, pollution has made its population dwindle and now it can only make it in the least touched by man corners of the world. Its extreme vulnerability to pollution was what did you in." Mana grinned through her pain-ridden face before gathering enough strength to get back on all fours and stop lying on the soaked in sewer water grate.</p><p>"You were truly incredible. You deserve this victory over me." Axolkin admitted after a short while of just laying powerless in the pool of toxic waste that was accumulating under him. Toxic waste was beginning to leak from the pores of his body as his skin was extremely wet and likely used to breathe and spread mucus filled with various kinds of cells beforehand. Now it became a dumping system for the poison all throughout his body.</p><p>"It always has to be "the king" with you guys…" Mana grumbled while she looked at the Congregation who were gathering in a circle around the two ninja and quivering in a cowardly fashion. "If it was not the most infamously rare species of salamander alive, I may not have been aware of just what it was and what made it so special."</p><p>"I had no choice of the animal I would be spliced with…" Axolkin exclaimed almost as an excuse while Mana grabbed him by his hair and prepared to drag him behind her.</p><p>"My point exactly…" the magician calmly replied while she prepared for a mad leap to the nearest pipeline she could use to find the closest ladder to the surface. After Mana began moving with Axolkin in his diminishing condition in her hands, the Congregation silently followed her every step. Leaving them all in the hospital to get help without her being present will be a pain…</p>
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<a name="section0480"><h2>480. Reconciliation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana had no idea why she was so surprised to see the Konoha streets bustling with activity. Ninja buzzing about performing basic rescue jobs and fixing what was broken. There did not appear to be any Senju working their magic just yet, the ninja working on the rescue still were not sure if everyone was pulled out from under the wreckage before the unsteady ground could be fixed and buried for good. There was probably still evidence that the Konohagakure Police Force could find useful.</p><p>A quick scan of her surroundings with her chakra sensory suggested to Mana that the Allied Ninja were not around. That was quite odd. The magician certainly expected a whole lot of trouble after surfacing and was beginning to practice what she would tell those international investigators after showing her face to them not too long after leaving them to face the Spliced ninja.</p><p>Mana remained on the dirt, letting Axolkin just lie helplessly nearby while the Congregation gathered one by one to the surface. At least the wait until all of the people she intended to rescue gather provided the magician with an excuse why she could sit down and regain her breath for a short while. Once more than a handful of the Congregation started emerging from the sewers, the Konoha ninja finally got interested in Mana surfacing with the people she intended to rescue.</p><p>They looked quite grumpy and hostile. Perhaps the Allied Ninja tipped them off about what Mana did underground? That would have certainly explained it. Regardless of their overall negative attitude toward the magician, the chuunin were as of yet unsure just what they were supposed to do with the magician. Some of them grabbed her by the girl's wrists and intended to capture her and bring her to the Police Force HQ, some of them thought she was to be taken right to the Intelligence Division for interrogation while others thought that before hasty judgment of Mana's betrayal was to be drawn she should debrief the Hokage.</p><p>There was a man Mana wanted to see the least, however she kind of would have had to. The intelligence she found out was simply too massive and over not only her but pretty much any head in the entire world. Guru Ayushi had gone mad and traveled the world with the intent of recovering his old and dulled fighting senses as well as gathering new power, created a cult and now intended on flipping the world table before placing his much fancier one in its place.</p><p>"They don't seem to trust you very much. You betrayed Guru, you turned your back at being a key religious figure in establishing the new order, you've abandoned the creation of your own world without pain or misery…" Axolkin kept on babbling. He must have shed quite a lot of the toxic waste in his system to be able to talk this intelligibly. Still, his skin color did not look good and his body pores still sweated and leaked waste so the ninja and the village were in no danger from him.</p><p>"This is one of the Spliced ninja. These poor people are what's left of those that disappeared around the village." Mana tried to let the ninja know before they settled on a fate for her where she would be unable to tend to the people she worked so hard to rescue.</p><p>"These guys need medical attention." A chuunin noted giving the Congregation a sorry glare full of disgust and pity for the people they once were.</p><p>Perhaps after months if not years of slow and steady medical treatment the Congregation could be returned to their initial shapes. The physical wear and tear would be much easier to heal, a little bit of mending, a little bit of proper sustenance and no menial labor as well as limits for the religious rituals they could undergo. The mental changes would be much harder to work with, an entire tirade of brainwashing programming was to be cleansed, almost their entire brains needed resetting. Could a person still come out intact after such intense work and a complete do-over, even if curing the Congregation's mental state could be done?</p><p>It did not matter that much if she would be brought to the Intelligence Division, spend some nights at the Police Force HQ treated like a potential traitor or face the Hokage, as long as the Congregation was properly taken care of. Then again, perhaps she should have cared? Did she not want to take part in fixing these disappearances to become a Sannin? To become a figure, not unlike that which Guru Ayushi used to be, someone strong and wise enough to perform the legendary role which Sannin have been playing for years – serve as a weapon that never needed to be fired in Konoha's arsenal.</p><p>Mana glanced at her hands. For the first time in a while, they weren't shaking. It was so odd to see them calm, they have only ever been calm lately when the magician was blinded with anger like the time she found out that the Allied Ninja never intended on finding and rescuing their part of the Congregation and now, when she's resigned to whatever fate would be chosen for her with complete apathy. Were apathy and indifference really the best cures for fear?</p><p>Maybe what provided Mana with temporary tranquility from the anxiety that usually governed her actions and emotions and rotted her from inside, not unlike the Congregation were rotten by their devotion to Ayushi's mission, was not apathy and indifference to her own fate but instead the face of her own survival. Survival of odds much lesser and nightmares much more horrifying than ones that petrified her before. What was nearly dying inside a pollen dimension compared to what Mana has just been through?</p><p>In either case, Mana was just relieved and a little glad she had a moment of clear and consistent breathing without her chest locking up and her hands beginning to tremble. She would appreciate it for however long it would last.</p><p>"Very well, you may leave. You're temporarily suspended from all mission-related activity for however long it will take for you to recover from your injuries fully." Lord Sixth closed his eyes deep in thought of what just came out of Mana's lips. He should have been more horrified, he should have gone pale if not blue in terror after hearing something like the fact that Guru Ayushi had gone mad and actually had the power to back his insanity up.</p><p>"I thought I was suspended already?" Mana wondered out loud. "Does the term of my secondary suspension stack on top of the first?"</p><p>"You said such a thing, I did not." Lord Sixth found the fortitude in him to smirk with half of his lips before turning his chair around and looking at the village resting behind him as if this contemplating look was the final time he would see it like this. Calm and just a pair of streaks of smoke rustling far in the distance. The Hokage Monument in its full glory and the entire village brimming with something leaf-green and cheer-loud.</p><p>That meant that Mana was officially off of her termless suspension from before. She would be once more going on missions right after she recovers. Why would Lord Sixth make such a decision, moreover, why now? Was she not just found out as a possible traitor or a capricious child stuck between two allegiances? Just what was it that the reporting chuunin told him?</p><p>Or maybe… It was not the chuunin making their reports that supplied the man's information but the Allied Ninja. But these folk had no reason to tell the Hokage anything but condemning things about the magician. Did she not walk off recklessly with one of the leading figures of the Spliced ninja and the Congregation all on her own leaving them to fight by themselves? From the way it must have looked to them, Mana must have betrayed them and her village.</p><p>Unless they were sharper than that and saw right through her… Mana was so used being right amongst her genin peers her entire career that she forgot about the fact that she was no longer around them. Her best-laid plans may have just been featherweight ponderings for experienced investigators like the Allied Ninja. Were they truly ever fooled by her play like the Spliced ninja were?</p><p>"Is there something else?" Lord Sixth asked without opening his troubled eyes. His voice sounded raspy and tired. This was, after all, the middle of a pretty nasty work day. It was only after being asked this that Mana realized she has been still standing tensed up in the man's office all this time after being relieved and excused.</p><p>"Oh… No, I apologize, Lord Sixth!" Mana blushed and fell on one knee before intending to bolt from the man's office. The Hokage's voice stopped her in the middle of that ambitious motion.</p><p>"In that case, I am grateful for your work today. You found out about a whole handful of traitors working within the core of the village ninja roster as well as valuable intelligence about the disappearances. I am glad to have had my own person in that group while they conducted their investigation, even if I did not will it." Lord Sixth spoke up.</p><p>"Excellent work, but it could not have been too tough, those folks were quite odd-looking, one of them looked like an actual snake, to be honest…" the Hokage's assistant sighed.</p><p>"Who are we to judge what looks weird? What's trustworthy and what's not…" Lord Sixth joined in on his assistant's worrisome mood. "If I investigated everyone that looks weird amongst the ninja under my employ I'd have to imprison at least two-thirds of them. Even Mana's dressing habits make her a little bit weird… Have I ever told you about this one guy I worked with that wore the hollow head of an actual dog?"</p><p>The beginning of that discussion was the final thing Mana heard before leaving Lord Sixth's office. The man did have a point, it would not have been too difficult for a band of odd-looking spliced with animal cells individuals to join the Konoha's ranks, especially if they've been working for the village before they were experimented on.</p><p>This world was full of all sorts of oddities, some people were born different than others, some of them became different, gaining power through ancient and highly unorthodox ways. Even something as exalted and respected as the Aburame clan hosted swarms of chakra-leeching insects inside their children. Someone with a dark past like the one Lord Sixth had, someone who had seen the underbelly of such a world for the most of his ninja career would have much weirder tastes even compared to these things one considered normal in this crazy world.</p><p>Mana took great care in observing her body and attempting to execute all of her training moves perfectly. She did not have nearly enough left in her for an extensive or a productive training but she needed some light and straining session of movement to soothe her mind and if that was to be impossible – focus it somewhere else, at the very least.</p><p>A muzzled signature lit up in Mana's mental registry, one familiar to her but it seemed far too calm and controlled for the magician to worry too much about the uncomfortable conversation that was about to come. Instead of acting on her sensory input in any way, the girl just continued training while keeping a bit of her attention on the incoming Allied Ninja.</p><p>"I waited for you at the hospital, figured you'd be in a pretty bad condition and itching for some medical attention," Junichi said right after his feet lightly touched the ground. The control in his movements was so awesome that his body did not continue moving and lean forward from the inertia of his previous speed but instead came to a full and complete stop.</p><p>"Just a shower…" Mana replied while delivering a few graceful and slow kicks. At this point, she was stretching out and dancing more than sharpening her bodily condition but it was doing wonders for her concentration, or rather keeping it where it belonged. She did not have a tremble for hours now.</p><p>"I see. Rushira's been pretty banged up so I couldn't pick you up right after you were done. They did not tell me if you rescued the Congregation or not. Seeing how you're here and in a fighting condition, I'd say at the very least you've managed to survive." Junichi spoke in a different tone than the ones he used to refer to Mana with before. Softer, more fatherly. When Mana looked at him with concern after the revelation of Rushira's injuries, he calmly nodded his head and raised his palm to reaffirm the girl that things will be fine.</p><p>"No, I did it. The bunch you ignored most likely got tipped off that something's wrong and scattered though. Saved the ones I could." A strong jerk in Mana's middle arm made her arm twitch. It was both muscle pain and some strange nervous reaction to the emotional and physical disarray inside her body, either way, it made her move look awry and the magician felt ashamed of it, quickly halting her training and turning at the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"I won't presume to be in any authority to tell you to go and rest up but that would be what I would do in your shoes." Junichi rubbed the back of his head while turning his eyes aside. He was not very good at talking about anything that was not related to professional activity or scolding people for what they were doing wrong. That made this conversation profoundly awkward.</p><p>"I will." Mana nodded.</p><p>"We were all pretty impressed with your performance. We held you back and yet you performed just like a part of our squad. If you ever considered attempting to become an Allied Ninja – you'd have our recommendations." Junichi even managed to squeeze out a compliment for Mana and nodded his head a little. He was not treating the magician as a child anymore. She was no longer a young starlet or a daughter of his old friend in his eyes.</p><p>"That would have meant a great deal to me some time ago." Mana turned her back and sat down on the grass. It felt chilly as the spring evening winds caressed it and blew away any built up warmth the blades may have accumulated over time. "When I read about a squad of ninja who knew no borders, I was looking up to you guys. I thought that gathering a group of the most exceptional individuals from each village who would work on matters too grand for any single village to tackle alone was an amazing idea, you were beyond just heroes in my eyes."</p><p>"That's not exactly the case, I suppose." Junichi sighed. The tall man folded himself nearby where Mana sat down to rest a little. "The villages still distrust the Allied Ninja. The organization is more of a dumping ground for ninja they don't want around their own village. Regardless, most of the time they are ninja of considerable skill since none of the villages want the headache of bothering assigning the Allied Ninja a new member too often, once the old one dies."</p><p>"I am the last person to garner meaningless bonds for a formless shape that is one's village. A pointless ideal that is meant to just keep people in line and predictably stupefied. Still, today I've seen the Allied Ninja turn away from people it could have saved while the village ninja did their best to rescue as many of them as they could, even if that meant letting the people responsible go sometimes. I may lack the Will of Fire but I have to say that working alongside the village protection ninja, maybe the Barrier Corps sounds much more alluring right now." Mana admitted.</p><p>Speaking her mind this way did not come easy. Confronting the idea that one's heroes may have been overly idolized and that it was entirely the fault of one's own and one's naivete was properly bitter. Regardless, it was something that needed to be spoken.</p><p>"I'm sorry." Mana's face turned sad while she looked down, pushing the falling hair off of her face and the few rings of bandage that covered her busted forehead. "Earlier today, I should have been truthful. I should not have led you guys to chase monsters and confront the black market drug dealers at once. I keep thinking that maybe… If we did that… Maybe we'd have saved more people this way."</p><p>"I must admit, hearing you dismiss the threat of black market painkiller drugs rampant across the village did sound suspicious. Added to the whole Ayushi's cult affair… I wish I could apologize for suspecting foul play from your part but… It was the only logical conclusion, then again, perhaps when things are too obvious as in this case, someone is being framed." Junichi grumbled more akin to his usual tone.</p><p>"It's my father. Ever since he's been sidelined after his injury he really needs every little bit of help he can get dealing with the pain from his burns. I know that ignoring the black market painkillers was wrong but… Plenty of people use them to great effect. By now it has become an inseparable part of their lives. I suppose it was selfish of me to wish for my father to remain lulled by the lack of pain and the need to confront his state." Mana wrapped her head with her own hands, attempting to relieve the pressure from inside with external pressure. Her forehead was pulsing and her chest was choking up with various different emotions swelling up inside.</p><p>"Selfish? How?" Junichi wondered. "In my experience selfishness comes when one is thinking about themselves, not the pain of others."</p><p>"I'm my father's daughter. It's my responsibility to do what's best for him and help him in his time of need. It is selfish of me to trust my responsibility for a jar of pills." Mana replied finally gathering the strength and stability to look up at the cloudy sky.</p><p>"I am not entirely in the clear myself. I knew that you were dismissing the painkillers as a viable lead the whole time and yet I did not call you out, even more, I supported your push to investigate the monster more immediately." Junichi replied. "Truth is, I knew all along just how ridiculous of a lead the monster thing was. I am still amazed that it led us to Little Honda but… I knew that if we tackled the black market immediately we'd shut the case down immediately and it'd be it of this. We'd be going back to HQ and leaving Konoha. Just when I returned and saw my family again…"</p><p>"You should be with them now," Mana suggested.</p><p>"I still have a couple of days before Rushira recovers. She was pretty reckless, I'm beginning to think she knew all along I wanted to stay for a little bit longer and got herself injured on purpose…" the man smirked in an action that the magician thought completely impossible for the Konoha veteran.</p><p>"She's eager to impress you. I know all too well how that feels." Mana's eyes softened as her memories drifted back to the first time she met Uzumaki Tanshu and her inner conflict with Chestnut Hanasaku that may have mirrored the chemistry between Rushira and Junichi perfectly.</p><p>"Regardless, even my family could not keep me away from the responsibility of talking to you now. You're an amazing ninja, take care and don't try to shoulder too much at once. Advising you this is the best I can do, even if I know you won't listen anyway…" Junichi smiled again, knocking it out of the park completely before putting his hands into his pockets and dashing off.</p><p>A chilly spring breeze attempted to tear the leaves off of the rich treeline surrounding the training ground Mana was in but the bond between the trees and the leaves was strong and the leaves persevered, despite their shakes and quivers. Mana looked down at the holes and tears in her uniform and sighed. The evening was getting chilly and her eyelids were beginning to gravitate towards one another quite strongly.</p><p>Mana was getting drowsy after this long and rough day.</p>
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<a name="section0481"><h2>481. To Protect And Work In A Mountain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Something shattered downstairs. Mana closed her eyes, breathed in and out. It should have stopped her chest from quivering which often led to mild shortness of breath. Few things could stress her out to this degree so lightning-fast. Father did not join her in the tinkering session yesterday. Being the brain behind Mana's crafty hands was a part of his coping process.</p><p>It would have taken a fool to misidentify the rumbling thunder raging downstairs, only someone to be called that would have misidentified the voice of their own father. Mana jumped off of the bed and slowly moved to the door, pressing against it. She was fighting the worse parts of herself, the fear behind opening the door and walking downstairs, talking to father and helping him.</p><p>She's been running from him again, just like she was initially. Hell, she's been running away from home for a while now. Not purposefully but home tended to lately be just that place she seldom crashed at when she was not busy fending off people and things trying to murder her for one reason or another. Such was the job, that was not as big of a problem as one may have thought but did Mana really have to be as devoted to it?</p><p>Moreover, how could she truly confront her father when she was the one who helped shut down the source for his relief. The painkillers and experimental herb mixtures that Ayushi's cult has been selling for years now were no snake oil, they actually did help people and Mana's father was the shiniest gold nugget amongst the examples. Guru Ayushi was one of the most powerful and certainly the most experienced ninja alive, there may have been very few things he could not do or did not know. If he wanted to cure pain – pain had a reason to sweat.</p><p>Things would be so much different, so much easier if she had nothing to do with shutting down that part of the black market. Mana forced herself to peel the door open, she was struggling against her own body so much that controlling her strength from ripping the door out so hard that the resonating shockwave tore the entire house down was a genuine challenge. Ninja were taught control over everything else, power was not worth using if one could not control its flow and direction and Mana was still struggling.</p><p>Mana had pushed back opening the door to meet the storm cloud of responsibility that she had skipped the entire conflict between her parents and father was just haunting the second floor and heading to the master bedroom like a phantom.</p><p>"Are you OK?" it was a bad question. Mana regretted it almost instantly. It would have been the worst thing to ask father normally and this was not the father she knew and loved, this was one of her most loved ones struggling with pain problems.</p><p>"I was, then some asshole burnt my hands," Father grumbled.</p><p>Mana turned her attention downstairs, trying to reach out to her mother's signature with her sensory. Try to see if it had any subtle or changes to it that may have implied great sadness or raging ones that may have implied fury. Both were equally as likely with that woman. Maybe if mother was jounin with a chakra signature the size of a Sun, Mana may have noticed the flow of her chakra working differently but not that of a civilian…</p><p>She was not quite at that level yet. It was an all too painful reminder that Mana was getting all too often recently.</p><p>"Is there something I can do to help? Maybe some other herb mixture that can ease it up somewhat?" Mana wondered. She would have helped her case if she did not sound so guilty when clearly was not. Either way, it was not like the girl could have helped the way she felt. Once again, she was not at that level of self-deception.</p><p>"Don't bother. Next thing you know I'll get hooked on it and you'll leave and I'll have to live without it again…" Father snapped back at Mana with a restrained but quite spiky tone. If the magician didn't know any better, she'd have thought that father was blaming her for leaving on missions or other ventures so often, amongst other things.</p><p>"I'm not leaving. I really want to help…" Mana stepped up closer to the pain-ridden man but then mother walked up with an envelope with the village's seal.</p><p>"Don't make promises you can't keep. That's why you're having such a hard time keeping up with all the responsibilities…" the man replied before shutting himself inside the bedroom.</p><p>"Great… Now who knows for how long I can't go in there… It's the master bedroom…" mother complained, wiping the sweat off her face.</p><p>"At least it's just the late morning." Mana tried lightening up the mood but one could have only lit up so many candles inside a dark guest room. She pressed two extended fingers while holding her free hand in a hand seal position while she unsealed the village seal and let the sheet of paper lazily unfold in her hand.</p><p>"You've got a job?" mother wondered. "Will you be gone for long?"</p><p>"I don't think so." Mana closed her eyes and sighed before folding the sheet of paper neatly. "But without seeing the mission I can't be sure."</p><p>The walk to the Administration building was just about as confusing and stressful as staying at home and trying to comfort her father, whose pain was growing every day he spent without the substances he was taking. Mana knew the risks, rather knew the certainties when she was busting Guru Ayushi's cult, at least for the most of the time. Even if things sort of escalated all by themselves, she did the right thing. Still, seeing her father angry and miserable made it feel so wrong…</p><p>"She says "Get away from me, you knaves!". her face says it, doesn't it?" a dark-skinned guest from Kumogakure pointed at Mana's expression and smiled at his girlfriend.</p><p>"It's okay if it's a bad time, Sorceress-san, we didn't mean to trouble you." The girlfriend bowed her head in apology before Mana snapped out of the trance she was under and remembered that she was in the middle of talking to a pair of fans that saw her more recent show. People were coming to see her from abroad, as far away as Kumogakure. Had the surrounding circumstances been not so gloomy, it would have been a cause for great celebration. Mana's act has been getting pretty big.</p><p>She didn't make it… Damn it! Mana could move faster than even superhuman ninja could perceive, she could probably dash to the other side of the world in mere moments if she had to move in a straight tunnel and felt certain nobody was attempting to intercept her and yet she couldn't reply to a pair of bumbling and goofy tourists.</p><p>Just as Mana was about to apologize and try and smile more, try to be more like the image of an idol she wanted to portray, the duo was gone, admiring some building. What would they think of her? That's she's some spoiled Konoha brat that made it pretty big? It wasn't even the self-image that Mana wanted to preserve, it was the fact that she let these people down and made them feel uncomfortable that plagued her. She should totally walk up to them and apologize, that's the right thing to do…</p><p>Mana tapped her foot impatiently by the Administration building wall, right in front of the Hokage's office. The group of ninja waiting just like the magician was quite sizeable, perhaps having the Hokage deliver every mission personally or through his assistant in his office or by entrusting it to another Administration public officer was not the best strategy to hand out missions.</p><p>There should have totally been a handout station with a bunch of rooms with a bunch of boxes. When they've been alerted, or even without alerts, just daily, ninja would check those boxes and, if they had a mission, they'd simply take the file out of the box. Would save so much time and if they stopped using the local Aviary for mail delivery and alerting ninja – manpower and village resources… She should not have been thinking about this, this was the Hokage's job and his job was the last one Mana wanted.</p><p>Then again, while waiting in a line, without any chance for her amazing chakra manipulation prowess to speed this bureaucracy up, what exactly was she supposed to think about? Perhaps her feeling too embarrassed to approach the duo of Kumogakure tourists earlier and chat with them smiling like she's at her own wedding was a neat start? Mana sighed, giving the rest of the ninja a glare. Everyone was giving everyone glares so it did not even feel all that embarrassing.</p><p>"Do you sometimes wish to commit mass-genocide when waiting in line?" a blond chuunin leaned in to Mana's side with a gentle smile. "It's okay if you do. When waiting around in-line is the only acceptable time to have those kinds of thoughts…"</p><hr/><p>"Hello, Mana, I trust it you're well rested? What have you been up to during all the free time?" Lord Sixth wondered with the file laying neatly prepped up right in between the two. Neither the Hokage nor Mana reached out for it. It was like a mystical object that separated both of them but, in a way, it also had power over the two of them.</p><p>He was wondering, in his own way, if Mana kept up with her training, perhaps not only maintained her pre-injury condition but picked up some new tricks along the way. As a true Black Ops veteran, Lord Sixth approached problems and questions with complicated detours in an attempt to sneak up from behind them.</p><p>"I'm ready," Mana answered. She did not wish to brag or speculate about how productive her training was. She did not want to get into her arising family issues or her mental state. She was stable enough to take up work. Something new may as well have distracted the magician from the nightmares of everything she saw in the tunnels under the fruit shop of Ayushi's cult or when she almost died at the hands of some rogue eco-terrorists.</p><p>Lord Sixth and his assistant just glared one at another awkwardly. "Well, I suppose that's all that matters, isn't it?" the latter fixed his glasses before walking up in front of the Hokage's desk and picking up the mission file, officially handing it down to Mana.</p><p>"A C-Rank mission?" Mana raised an eyebrow. This was not entirely unusual for a chuunin to see but she had expected something a bit more dangerous. The type of missions that challenged her as a genin may not have served as sufficient distraction for her current plagues.</p><p>"Yes well… Given how the entire Academy just up and exploded, we have a massive lack of genin who can take care of the small-fry missions. Given the more stable condition of the world until recently, we've been handing down upper ranked ninja some more menial and easier missions once in a while. Plus, I figured that it would be just symbolic for you to pick up work starting small." The Hokage found it necessary to explain himself despite the fact he did not truly need to. He could have, at any given point, just called subordination and demanded Mana to start the mission at once.</p><p>"VP?" Mana asked after skimming through the small paragraph in the mission description. "I am not familiar with this acronym."</p><p>"That's because it is a new one. We used to have the Protective Service serve as both our Barrier Corps and ninja operating inside the village walls and protecting the village from invading threats. As one of my more recent decrees I've separated the two, now we have our own Barrier Corps, similar to that of Kirigakure, as well as the remaining branch of Protective Service called Village Protection – the VP." Lord Sixth explained with a lingering smirk.</p><p>"I see. I will get to work then." Mana nodded, closed the file and bowed the upper half of her body displaying great respect. Most ninja received their objectives while bowing to the ground until they've been put at ease, after which point they sort of stopped upholding the etiquette whatsoever. Mana was so worried about it after the mess-up with the Kumogakure tourists that she would have been literally unable to just up, turn and leave as most would have done in her place.</p><p>The mission was nothing special, just as its rank suggested. One of the more often assigned missions for slightly more experienced genin was assisting the village's institutions, sort of a mandatory internship. Some assisted with small-work in the Konoha Hospital, the Police Force constantly needed dirt-cheap labor force both in the office spaces handling paperwork and on the streets assisting the actual Police Force ninja. This mission was perhaps more meant to a genin right on the verge of taking their first chuunin exam – experienced enough for these internship gigs and a bit more distinguished than to shred and rewrite paperwork whole day at the Police Force.</p><p>Mana knew little of what to expect assisting the VP for the period of three days until the end of the week. At least mother won't get worked up – Mana would remain within the village walls. It's been a while since her last official local mission. It's been a while since Mana was on a mission in general… One for which she would receive credit and get paid for anyway. She was assisting other ninja with their missions for so long that she completely forgot that her assistance meant nothing to her own cred.</p><p>Without wasting too much time, being completely prepared to move out right after receiving her objective, Mana walked up to the VP headquarters. The entire branch of the organization was located inside of the same mountain where the Hokage Monument was. Mana was only vaguely aware that the mountain had hollow parts where an organization could fit into. Then again, it would be simply so symbolic for the watchful eyes of the VP oversee the village through the eyes of one of the Hokage faces…</p><p>Mana showed the mission file to the first person meeting her, a young ninja wearing the Konoha flak jacket but not the black undergarment under it. It was quite usual for ninja that saw little to no field action. Some folk in the Administration wore casual clothing under their flak jackets, similarly to this woman.</p><p>"Y-You're…" she uttered, covering her mouth in surprise. She must have thought that letting it gap in surprise was not too lady-like.</p><p>"Yes. I am also a ninja." Mana nodded with a smile. She did not have to remind someone of that for the longest time after the finals of the Chuunin Exams when she truly showed her own villagers what she was capable of and that she was not just playing ninja and was the real deal.</p><p>"Oh, yes, we are aware. We've heard you were also a sensor. That is incredibly useful to us." The woman sounded pretty excited but she was muzzling her voice, likely so that she did not disturb the other ninja working quite diligently hunched over their tables, flipping through reports, files and examining items. "When we requested someone for assistance, we did not expect someone of your usefulness. We sort of thought we'd get some kids you can entrust to copy documents and browse the archives."</p><p>"I can do all those things as well." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Oh no, heads would roll if my superiors found out we had a capable sensor on our hands with a head to boot and wasted that opportunity." The woman laughed gently before shaking her head. She must have found Mana's joking suggestion quite ridiculous in the more comedic way.</p><p>The magician had to hand it, she was quite impressed by the steel and rock structure etched right into the mountain. Judging purely by her own sense of direction, the elevator that was raising them was already passing through one of the Hokage's faces. Her eyes widened and bulged out even more when the extremely resilient-looking door of the elevator snapped open revealing a massive orb of liquid just floating in mid-air.</p><p>"This is the Liquid Village Sensory System. It is a combination of Barrier Ninjutsu and sensory. I'm not sure just how familiar you are with it, but there's a massive, ethereal barrier around the village people can just pass through. By tuning our sensors in this machine we can have them operate their amazing talents at efficiency they've never been able to tap into before, being able to read into countless signatures as far as the barrier goes." The woman explained while leading Mana to the ninja sitting with slightly overwhelming-looking headgear on their faces and tight, black bodysuits all over. As they sat there mumbling to one another, symbols and numbers popped up and floated all around the gigantic liquid sphere above their heads which all of the sensors were plugged into.</p><p>"How potent exactly is your sensory?" the woman inquired.</p><p>"It depends. Concentration and the size of the signature matters. I guess I could squeeze out a good kilometer worth of range if I really focused on it." Mana shrugged. She was beginning to feel like the lack of sensory-type ninja in the village which was entirely out of everybody's hands to control was being placed just on her pockets.</p><p>"Well, holy hell! Spoken like a true sensor, our guys keep beating around the bush too, don't you?" the Village Protection kunoichi grinned at the two sensors nearest.</p><p>"If she offers you a job, don't take it, your legs do get a bit sore sitting here like this all day." One of the guys plugged in jested. It was impressive that he had the levity in him to joke around while being plugged into something outright epic like this and focusing on sensory.</p><p>"So you want me to do this then?" Mana pointed at the sensory machinery while the one-woman-welcoming-committee smiled and shook her head.</p><p>"A little bit of everything, perhaps. Who knows, maybe at the end of the week we will offer you to join us. I get a real "Village Protection" type of vibe from you for some reason!" the enthusiastic kunoichi pointed her elbow at Mana a pair of times.</p><p>For a bunch of dead-serious people doing humorless and vital work, these folk were pretty lightheaded with the way they behaved at work.</p>
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<a name="section0482"><h2>482. With The Magics And The Smuggles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Alright, so this just about does it with the tour of the place. My name's Kuribira Mikapen, I'm one of several assistants here. It's been my assignment to show you around a bit. If you have any questions, I'd appreciate them because I'm sort of running out of things to say…" the cheerful VP officer got a little embarrassed at the end.</p><p>"So I'm assuming you will want me to be plugged into that thing?" Mana wondered, pointing at the Liquid Village Sensory System.</p><p>"Ummm… Well… Not really, you see, you will need to read through and sign a bunch of manuals before you can do that. There's just too much that can go wrong. We also need to test your instincts and sensory before plugging you in." Kuribira replied. She was reacting with a sip of vibrancy to her gestures, which was both refreshing and a little bit nostalgic to see as it reminded the magician of an old friend somewhat.</p><p>"Truth be told, we had no idea just how familiar you'll be with what we do here and how skilled you will be. Obviously, someone of your experience and skill shouldn't be used for the menial labor we normally use the genin that come to work here. I should probably show you to the boss. He'll know what to do with you." The woman smiled ecstatically before firing off at the direction of an office far to the east and higher up, making her way through a couple of floors of stone stairs in cases lit entirely by torches.</p><p>"Boss, we have our recruit. Just one but what a recruit it is! Mana, this is Uzumaki Midoben" The woman grinned before turning and gesturing at Mana with an open hand as if showcasing the magician girl to her superior.</p><p>A man with a massive and spiky hairdo extending slightly past his shoulders turned at Mana, having been staring at a blinking colorless screen positioned on a space etched into stone. It appeared like a much cruder and more primitive version of the computers Mana saw around in Naruto's universe from way back.</p><p>"Hmph, indeed." The man closed his eyes. "It is troubling. The Golden Child and the star of the Chuunin Exams is an unexpected aide."</p><p>While the man turned around and let the long coat tied around his neck by its sleeves flip about, Mana noticed his formal wear and the peculiar striped vest that covered it instead of the usual flak jacket. Despite the fact that it may have just been a stylish fashion statement, the magician had an odd feeling about the piece of clothing. She also noticed a teacup-sized contraption hanging around the man's ear extending a small rod with a microphone grill at the end extending almost to the middle of the man's mouth.</p><p>While the boss of VP crossed his arms and lowered his head, allowing his slightly longer brown hair to cover his closed eyes as he pondered in thought Mana noticed the man's build. The chief village protector was a tall individual, a good head and a bit taller than the magician, even though the general fact was not much of a feat but the amount by which this fact was proven true was indeed notable in this case. His musculature also suggested at least adequate knowledge of physical combat or body training.</p><p>"Well… It cannot be helped. Give her the base briefing and let her out with some of the field operatives to work the streets just for today. Then we'll see where we can use you from there…" the man shrugged in a very undignified and un-leader-like manner. It seemed that even the usually goofy Kuribira looked a bit bemused and embarrassed by the odd gesture of her boss.</p><p>"With all due respect, Sir." Mana stepped out. This was pretty unorthodox from a lowly aide of an institution to do so boldly but all the cues told Mana she may have had a bit more bargaining space than usual. "I'd like to work on something pretty important to both of us. It is a possible threat to the village security and it is very important to me that it is dealt with."</p><p>"Oh?" the boss of VP called Mana's move letting Kuribira breathe a little bit easier after the scare that Mana gave her initially with her boldness. "I don't believe that you would have intel that the VP does not possess but humor me. In the case that you do, it may just prove to be interesting."</p><p>"A good week ago there was an incident within the village walls. A cult that functioned inside the village was exposed and brought into the light and the source behind all of the mysterious disappearances was unearthed." Mana spoke up. Judging from the look on the chief's face he was not amused by this, then again, this was hardly news even for a common villager at this point. It was hard to maintain something as literally ground-shaking as that hidden for this long even in a ninja village.</p><p>"I am most interested in finding and bringing the poor people that were being used in the plots of this cult. Cooperating with the Allied Ninja I already managed to help a handful of the disappeared villagers and maybe the rest are still not gone from the village." Mana explained. "This Liquid Village Sensory System seems very impressive, I am sure that it could be of great use."</p><p>"That's your problem." The Village Protection boss turned around, wrapping his arms around one another in a static position behind his back while he glared back at the static on his monitor that had recently changed the colorless and low-definition view. "You rush things too much. You've not yet read the manual of how the Liquid Village Sensory System works. if you did you'd have known that it has a certain set of limitations even while it is modeled after the most modern and amazing barrier-based village protection system ever made – the Kumogakure's"</p><p>"Kumogakure's?" Mana wondered out loud. "I'd have thought that Kirigakure would have the most amazing barriers given their long history with the craft and their prodigious Barrier Corps."</p><p>"Kirigakure ninja are still the best at barrier ninjutsu, however, Kirigakure can no longer properly pay their specialists after their fiasco at the most recent Kage Summit. The talent is leaking and it is leaking to Kumogakure. It is the type of political and military processes that Lady Fifth could not read into and because of it our positions weakened significantly." The man lowered his head again, staring at one of the somberly rustling candle flames on the wall.</p><p>"Well, if it is of any use to you, Sir, I have sensed the Congregation before. I am very confident that I can identify their signatures if I am within at least a good fifty meters on the ground. With the Liquid Village Sensory System, who knows how efficiently I could pin them down if they're inside our walls." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Hmmm… Interesting. Regardless of this fact, my call does not change. Accompany some actual Village Protection ninja and help them however you can. I'll let their evaluation of your performance tip the scales." The man nodded.</p><hr/><p>The very first thing that Mana ended up getting involved in was accompanying a large and bulky ninja dressed in formal, Village Protection-type mesh of the Konoha uniform to the village gate. She did not get to find out too much about her companion shortly after they were introduced to each other given how much Kuribira was talking and how enthusiastic she was describing the fun they were having.</p><p>"So 'yer some real magician type, huh?" the giant asked giving Mana a limited glance with the very ends of his eyes. His voice was pretty goofy for his size and bulk, he probably sounded a little puny and screechy if Mana was to evaluate it while being pressed to a wall with a sword to her throat. The man also played with his tongue in his mouth a lot, almost like it made it difficult for him to breathe while lying still, which seemed unlikely given the size of the man's noodle.</p><p>"Ehm… Not really…" Mana squinted a little. She did not want to seem too harsh on the man but her shows were mostly appealing to literal children and, at some point, one should have figured out that she was all smoke and mirrors. Then again, that was not something she bragged about or something too innately obvious so perhaps this man was just a bit dense or just a devout believer in the mystical despite life being pretty damned mystical all by itself.</p><p>"Oh, shoot. That's weird. So yer just doin' ninjutsu then in front of people? And they pay you for it? That's pretty cool. I wish I thought of that…" the giant smiled, Mana was quite pleasantly surprised to see some genuine feeling behind that mimic. Too many ninja may have dismissed or mocked Mana for using ninjutsu on the stage and showing it off to common folk during her off-hours to great public appeal but this man seemed almost as dazzled by it as one would have been by actual magic being performed in front of them.</p><p>"I'm Chogen, Chogen Akimichi!" the man extended his massive hand. Mana was surprised to see while feeling the man's immensely powerful shake and seeing his mighty hand in the clear that this Akimichi ninja was pure muscle but not in the body-ailing way that most physical ninja achieved it. Chogen had a more strongman type of build. His facial hair was simply too much of an artistic statement to make out the usual Akimichi face-paint, which was the main reason why Mana took this long to identify the heritage of this man.</p><p>"I don't think I need to introduce myself, huh?" Mana blushed squeezing the man's hand. She's pressed Meiko's hand far too often to fall for the usual strongman presses the hand hard and almost crushes it routine. Even if it was not intentional, the magician was prepared for the show of the strength coming from her partner with subtle augmentations that prevented the agony while still being harmless enough to let a vague stream of pain through.</p><p>"Why?" Chogen opened his eyes wide. He genuinely looked confused. It appeared that there would be no end to social misunderstandings that day although Mana was not quite sure what it was exactly that she did wrong in this case.</p><p>"Ummm… You just spoke about my magic shows. "I figured you'd know enough about me, most of the people do, plus, didn't Kuribira-san introduce me to you the moment we were paired?" Mana replied looking a bit embarrassed by the fact she may have shown herself to be a bit arrogant by simply assuming everyone knew everything about her because of the relative fame she's garnered at this point.</p><p>"Ha! That's right!" Chogen rubbed the back of his head while he swung his other, free arm in a wild smack right at Mana's general direction. This was just another trait of people that behaved just like Meiko that the magician should have caught on to but, much to her great shame, she did not. The smack sent the magician flying forward and Mana had just about busted her face, nose-first into the dirt before her partner caught her by her waist. "Heh, sorry." He chuckled.</p><p>"I'm sure it happens a lot and you did not mean anything by it." Mana smiled, swallowing down the tremendous hurt on her own just barely registerable as existent pride. "So what is exactly that we're about to do? How can I help?"</p><p>"Oh? Nothin' too serious. Just take the statements from the gate guards about an incident, see what we can dig up today about that incident." Chogen grinned. He looked quite excited about what appeared to be a simple morning routine in his profession.</p><p>"Incident?" Mana blinked rapidly.</p><p>"Yeah, the Police Force let us know about some foreign goods found at the hands of local criminal small-fry. We've gots to catch the bad guys." Chogen stretched his massive hands out as if practicing said catching that he'd be doing.</p><p>Chogen was not the best source for information, it seemed, although from what she has been told Mana managed to piece together exactly what he was supposed to tell her. There must have been a smuggling element at play, some rogues have been bringing in foreign goods without dealing with the appropriate procedures involved with such a business venture. They felt like no custom check or taxes were necessary.</p><p>If these smugglers managed to slip their goods in without being felt up and registered on the Liquid Village Sensory System, they were a potential threat to village security and therefore a very important VP priority case. There was a hole in the protection system of the village wall, one that could be sold to potential enemies like the rogue ninja who could use it to freely slip in and out of the village.</p><p>Just like the boss of the VP implied, Mana had not read the manuals describing all the intricacies of the Liquid Village Sensory system but it was a combination of sensory and barrier ninjutsu. That implied that there was a barrier placed somewhere, Mana could only assume it was at the edge of the village territory, whenever that invisible and ethereal barrier was passed, the signature must have registered somewhere in the receivers of the system. That was the point of all those symbols that were lighting up when Mana first saw the massive liquid sphere before.</p><p>"Hey, it's the Village Protection, Chogen Akimichi. Tell us about anythin' suspicious ye may 'ave seen last week." The gentle giant spoke to the gate guard while Mana examined the village walls and the gate right in the center.</p><p>It looked just like another mass of concrete dyed snow-white with some classical-styled roof tiles on top. Truthfully, the fortifications of the village wall were far beyond that. They had to be if they meant to withstand even a mean glare at its direction from an average ranked ninja.</p><p>Mana was not yet too skilled with sensing the chakra present in inanimate objects too clearly but even she could perceive the immense force flowing through this fortification. At any given moment the wall was imbued with the chakra of worth a hundred strong ninja and the chakra was continuously resealed every time the wall was damaged even the tiniest bit.</p><p>To say that was it was to ignore the hundreds of intricate supplementary seals placed on the bunch of blocks. Some of them alerted the target facility every time the wall was as much as scratched, some of them emitted a weak sensory field all of themselves and some supplemented and observed the level of chakra still left imbued into the Konohagakure walls. And these were just the defenses Mana knew about. Even someone like Guru Ayushi chose not to invade the village and scheme from the shadows even while at his strongest and most confident.</p><p>"Listen, I can't tell you anything too special. The reports clearly don't indicate anything extraordinary having transpired at any point the last week." The gate guards squirmed a little. Technically the VP ninja were their superiors, not in any official manner but in more of an unwritten hierarchy that had to be maintained. Still, even these guys perceived that Chogen was not the brightest and most pleasant people to have bureaucratic sort of business with.</p><p>"Oh yeah? Well then, how did the bad guys have the things that the other guys gave them the things they had?" Chogen pieced together the type of sentence that'd give scholars nightmares while he pressed his hefty hands to his hips.</p><p>Mana approached the stand. With a slow and questioning gesture, she questioned the gate guards if she could flip through the records they kept of the entirety of last week's activities by the gate.</p><p>"Hey, come on, we can't just let anyone browse through confidential village information…" one of the gate guards objected, "Just because you make fun of our profession on the stage by playing ninjutsu off to shits and giggles doesn't mean you can ignore village rules."</p><p>"Maybe it's fine if she checks it out?" the other guard shrugged. "She is working with the VP, aren't you, Sorceress-san?"</p><p>"Yeah, let Mana check the book out. She's with the Protections of them Villages and the like." Chogen appeared to be getting irritated even if his behavior barely betrayed it. His tone turned a tad bit more irritated and his large eyebrows curled atop of his deeply squinted eyes to indicate great scorn in his system.</p><p>"Alright…" the gate guard relented. "As long as it makes you guys get off our backs. Every second we spend on this interview we're not watching the gate."</p><p>"Maybe that's how the smugglers got in?" Mana nonchalantly threw out while scanning the entirety of the gate guard records with her eyes. She had no time to take the information in the traditional way so she had to cheat a little bit and use some of her superhuman concentration and perception to scan through the pages at amazing speed. Such was a skill that the magician picked up due to the need to read a great amount of historical and mythical material while on a very limiting schedule.</p><p>"Impossible." The grumpy gate guard shook his head in objection. His reaction was not in the least offended which kind of suggested to Mana that he must have trusted his record-keeping skills a decent bit. That made the prospect of some smugglers fooling these two, or whoever watched the gate during the shift when the goods were smuggled in, a bit unlikely.</p><p>"Just as I suspected…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"A-ha!" Chogen threw his sausage-sized finger right at the gate guard's face. "Tell 'dem all abouts how they messed up what with yer smarts and the like!"</p><p>"They did not." Mana shook her head with calm. She felt a bit surprised by how immersing herself in these records, this mystery calmed her down. Her acting up and suffering father, her mother's hardships, her own unachievable dreams and all the endless responsibilities she had to live up to all just floated away. For the first time in a while, Mana's finger ran down the lines perfectly calm, without as much as a tremble. "These records are pitch-perfect. I'm not sure about the quality of the paperwork but what they've recorded is air-tight."</p><p>"See? I assure you the paperwork is solid." The first gate guard nodded with pride of his paper-keeping ability.</p><p>"That suggests one of two alternatives: cooked documents or the smugglers simply slipping past the gate guards and the village protection systems." Mana glanced at the two guards who gulped, more so while looking at the bemused image of Chogen clenching his enlarged fists than the accusations of the stage magician.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0483"><h2>483. The Will Of Fire Dismissal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What's this with the what Mana says?" Chogen's look soured. He looked just about ready to jump in at the gate guards, fists swinging. "Did you guys cook them books?"</p><p>"No way! We've served the village for years without ever as much as looking the other direction, to even suggest this is outrageous!" one of the two gate guards passionately objected inspiring similar passion in the second one who looked a tad bit more confused initially.</p><p>"What kind of items have been found to be smuggled, Chogen-san?" Mana turned at the giant before the situation could turn from awkward and tense into something violent and truly bitter. Some more information was in order before anyone could accuse these two, a proud part of the core that protected the village gate with anything.</p><p>"A bunch of supplementary tools. Punching bags, training tools and the like. Bags upon bags of them Chakra Induction Paper sheets." Chogen grumped out, crossing his arms over his mountainous chest. Even when the Akimichi stood in a defused from any hints of impending violence stance he still petrified the two poor gate guards that could not stop glancing at the giant every couple of seconds.</p><p>"In that case, I do not think the smugglers were working with the gate guards." Mana sighed.</p><p>"Why nots?" Chogen raised an eyebrow while his eyes remained intensely squinted and turned at the direction of the two gate guards that breathed easier now that the conversation turned this direction.</p><p>"Konoha does not have the strongest military and is not the richest country in natural resources but one area this village can take great pride in is the size of its population and the sense of the Will of Fire in their hearts. It would take the need for transfer of items of much greater significance for a smuggler to even attempt to bribe or recruit a Konoha villager, let alone a gate guard." Mana shrugged her shoulders.</p><p>"Alright, you're off them hooks fer now." Chogen pressed and twisted his lips, suggesting some intense concentration and thought transpiring in his noggin.</p><p>"That does, however, make the job much more difficult…" Mana admitted. If she had no shred of decency seeped into her bones perhaps there would have been some merit in considering just accusing these gate guards and wrapping the investigation up. That seemed probable of what the likes of the Allied Ninja would do…</p><p>The scariest prospect was that nobody would likely find out anything. Even with the extensive probabilities of mind scanning and torture, one would not simply dismiss all charges of treason just because no shred of it can be found in one's mind. Minds and memories could have been altered just as simply as they could have been read. One's life could have been ruined just like that… Then one had to deal with the society that was way too trigger happy to call people traitors and criminals for the smallest of excuses.</p><p>It could not have been any different when each village lived in isolation, surrounded by broad and chakra radiating walls and shaking in worry that one of these days whatever complex protection strategies they have put together may not have been enough to protect the village from becoming a smoldering wasteland surrounded by the untouched natural landscape.</p><p>"You're right. If them gate guards didn't do nothing who did and why?" Chogen scratched his chin while making the same exaggerated thinking face again.</p><p>"Are the people with the smuggled supplies still in custody? I've done a little bit of training in the Intelligence Division so we may find something out from them, it's a really long shot but…" Mana moved her little shoulders in a self-doubting and awkward manner. Chogen stood there completely static for a moment as if her suggestion had broken him before making a firm face and nodding.</p><p>Telling the emotions of this Akimichi was immensely difficult because his eyes were so narrow that they may as well have been closed. One could not have gotten a single hint of emotion out of him had the man not been so expressive otherwise with the other muscles of his face and thick cheeks.</p><p>The Police Force Headquarters were inside the Uchiha District. Long before the Village Protection ninja and his assisting companion entered the large housing area filled with sophisticated and beyond expensive homes entirely comprised of classical oriental architecture the concentration of Uchiha in the crowd was beginning to multiply exponentially.</p><p>"This place is all with the mansions and the fancy things…" Chogen sighed in exasperation. "Them Uchihas must make a whole lot of them moneys with their eyes and their strength and status."</p><p>"I must say, when I was a little girl I had to once in a while pass this place or enter it to buy something..." Mana noted before being interrupted halfway by her companion.</p><p>"Hattori's Shuriken Shop is still the best in town, isn't it?" Chogen grinned, correctly pinpointing one of few reasons someone would normally venture into the district. "Nothing special about it, no special properties, doesn't explode with them acids in the enemy's face and the like but… It's just damn well made. The man knows his shuriken."</p><p>"Indeed." Mana smiled. "In any case, whenever I walked into this place I felt out of place almost immediately. The Uchiha staring with their cool and pitch black eyes just felt… Intimidating. In a lot of different ways than it would feel scary to enter a dark alleyway, mind you, it just felt like a parent with extremely high expectations of you staring at you with disappointment."</p><p>"Yeah, I can see them stares with them eyes skewering me right now what with them vitriols and the like," Chogen noted, nodding his massive lump of a head with a serious face. It did not appear like the man was at all intimidated by the occasional, judgmental stare-down by an Uchiha, why would he be, truly? He himself was quite a physical marvel that appeared more than capable enough to cause trouble for any of these Uchiha. Still, moderate discomfort in the face of such a man made the infamous judgment of the Uchiha only that much more impressive.</p><p>"They do not seem to stare at me all that much though… This must be one of those things that I misremember or exaggerate because of how intense it felt to me as a child." The ends of Mana's lips peaked a little bit dyeing her face in what resembled the subtlest of smiles.</p><p>"Why would they stare at ya? You look enough like an Uchiha to fool anyone for a little while what with yer black hair and the like…" Chogen teased the magician.</p><p>The unpleasant history between the Uchiha and the Yamanaka, although a bit of yesterday's news, appeared to make both Mana and Chogen a bit uncomfortable. One of them was very good friends with an important figurehead of the clan whereas the other belonged to a clan forever bound to the Yamanaka with alliances as old as the clans themselves. Both of them looked determined to spend as little time in the district as possible.</p><p>"I don't think we're gettin' anything from the perps, what with their fear and devotion and scorn to the servants of the law and the like but…" Chogen breathed in deep, gesturing for the magician to enter the Police Force building first.</p><p>"Can't hurt to try," Mana replied.</p><p>"'Xactly…" Chogen mumbled as if munching on a mouthful of seaweed while speaking.</p><p>"Village Protection, this is my hired aide. We'd like to talk with the small-fry you caught, what the ones with the smuggled supplies and the like." Chogen spoke to the first Uchiha pushing pencils by a table who promptly stood up, bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment and respect to the Village Protection ninja and lead the duo to a nearby cubicle.</p><p>"Hoju-san, these two are from Village Protection, they want to speak with the criminals with the smuggled supplies." The office worker bowed his head in the direction of the busy-looking Uchiha with a buzz cut and turned back to Chogen and Mana. "This is Hoju-san, he is the Police Force ninja responsible for that case, although, it appears that he will only be handling the part of the case that falls under our care. We're leaving the allegedly smuggled goods to you."</p><p>With that brief introduction and respectful fulfillment of Chogen's request, the Police Force ninja withdrew himself from the matter, returning to his table. Hoju, on the other hand, jumped up in enthusiasm and completely surrendered all of his attention to the Village Protection ninja.</p><p>"Hey, it's pretty exciting to meet you Village Protection guys!" the Police Force ninja made Mana question her imagined stereotypes of how an Uchiha behaved for he defied every single image she had built up from her own personal experiences of Uchiha being as cool and removed from everything around them as it was imaginable and then some. "Hey, I know you, you're Village Protection too?"</p><p>"No, I am just assisting the Village Protection with some cases as my mission objective." Mana shook her head politely.</p><p>"Cool. We've questioned the perps but they didn't budge, well, not any more than they usually do at this point." Hoju shrugged. Mana felt a little baffled by this simple and frail-looking Police Force officer so she extended her sensory a little bit, letting it flow in a merely singular direction like a river and wrap around the Police Force officer to feel him out. His chakra signature seemed quite normal and just about what one would imagine a ninja of average rank would have, it was entirely possible that Mana had a larger signature and greater resources than this man but he was not weak nor could he have been hiding a greater peak under this much of the signature being exposed.</p><p>"No surprise, smugglers are a notoriously nasty lot to deal with what with their laws and their mean-streaks and violence and the like." Chogen nodded affirming the limited success of the Police Force interrogation to himself.</p><p>"They're not really the important kind we'd drag to the Intelligence Division to question properly, you know. This smuggling angle sounds interesting, maybe it'll get us somewhere. If this peeps out the right way, they may just make it to the Intelligence Division, you know?" Hoju tapped his loosened fist at Chogen's chest playfully but the giant looked hesitant to share the enthusiasm of his Police Force colleague.</p><p>By the time that Hoju stopped postponing the main attraction by showing Chogen all the records of the cases he had handled, Mana had assumed that one of the criminals captured would be brought into the interrogation room. Seeing the metallic colored walls and the general dullness of the place that was meant to wear on one's senses made rather stressful memories from Shukuba flash past Mana's eyes.</p><p>"If you don't mind, I would kindly take the first turn to interrogate the perp, what with my size and experience and the like," Chogen asked. Mana tried questioning Chogen's idea with a confused glare but her eyes could not meet anything but the squinted eyelids of her cold partner.</p><p>"Do we mind!? Please, Sir, show us your ways." Hoju bowed his upper body a pair of time while waving his hands as if they were cloth dangling to dry in the wind. While Chogen confidently walked into the interrogation room, Hoju gestured for Mana to enter a nearby observation room.</p><p>"This is just like in your shows, you've got a stage you can watch people do magic from." Hoju laughed out hard enough to force his face to prune up like he had just eaten a lemon whole. "Although I guess you don't share your stage with scumbags like these."</p><p>"I'd rather not speak of the criminals this way." Mana closed her eyes out of discomfort. She was well aware of how unpopular her position of not engaging in any scapegoating of the criminal element was amongst both ninja and civilians alike. "I do not know the story of this man, I do not know if he did whatever he did…"</p><p>"Illegal trade of smuggled goods." Hoju was quick to fill in the magician's blanks.</p><p>"Out of need or if he did it for the kicks. In the first case he himself is a victim of circumstance almost as much as the village from which he stole the spotlight, in the second, he merely needs an attitude adjustment and a change of perspective." Mana replied.</p><p>"Right… Well… I'm more of a subscribed to the good old good guys, bad guys approach…" Hoju nodded awkwardly filling the observational room with silence since none of the people in the room wanted to argue too much. Perhaps Mana would have been foolish enough to try and argue her case but what was transpiring inside the interrogation room was of much greater importance to her.</p><p>Chogen started slow and steady, walking around and asking simple questions. He asked the man his name before checking the file supplied to him, just to establish if the man was lying or not. Even though Mana could not see the file from her position, she thought the beginning of the interrogation was too genius for someone as simple-minded as she initially perceived Chogen to be.</p><p>The Akimichi proceeded to press on, he applied longer pauses after each question, he used those brief intermissions to compare the behavior of the simpler criminal element to the profile he was drawing in his head of his behavior. The Village Protection ninja was dancing like a master in that room.</p><p>"Perhaps you were more right than you thought." Mana grinned, pleasantly surprised by the fact she was deceived by Chogen's intelligence merely because of the odd way he spoke in and his buff build. "Chogen-san is truly amazing."</p><p>"What are you talking about? He hadn't pounded the guy once…" Hoju sighed. "That's the most engaging part of an interrogation."</p><p>"If beating people up worked so well, the Police Force would not be the bottom tier of our justice system." Mana managed to both retort to the Police Force ninja and do it quickly enough to give her some more time to examine the ongoing interrogation.</p><p>It only now dawned on the girl what exactly it was Chogen was doing. Mana was baffled that this strongman had danced around her strategically and outpaced her by a good handful of minutes.</p><p>"There he goes…" Hoju moved closer to the glowing sealing barrier separating the observational room from the interrogation room. The barrier lit up and reduced its hazy transparency once the Police Force ninja moved in closer. "How long do you think it'll take for the fists to start swinging?"</p><p>"Not at all. If Chogen punched this poor man in there, he'd make him cover the walls and the interrogated would be such a poor recipient of taking in all of the impact force that the entire Police Force building would topple down." Mana shook her head.</p><p>Hoju just sighed in disappointment once he saw Chogen's growing passion and desperation in the interrogation room fade away into submission while the hunched over Akimichi giant dragged his enormous feet out of the interrogation room and joined the two in the observational room.</p><p>"Man, you really didn't do too well…" Hoju scratched the back of his head. "Did you try smacking his head into the table? Usually helps…"</p><p>"Thanks for the chance, Chogen-san." Mana ignored Hoju's remark almost entirely.</p><p>"Huh?" Hoju blinked a pair of times in confusion as to what the magician was talking about.</p><p>"I figured our chances of getting anything at all were slim enough, you could use any advantage you could get so I went in there first." Chogen rubbed the back of his head before nodding the noggin a pair of times in defeat.</p><p>"You mean Chogen-san knew he wouldn't get anything? Why did he bother then?" Hoju pointed at the giant in complete bafflement.</p><p>"You are right to treat an interrogation as you would a battle," Mana affirmed before practicing her hand seals and checking her chakra flow, accelerating it and halting it on her call a pair of times. "But you are wrong on how you do it. Just because the two are ideally similar does not mean you bring the tools of one onto another. It means you think similarly."</p><p>"Yeah well… You're like… Twelve or something so…" Hoju crossed his arms on his chest before quickly bouncing up to Chogen and butting his elbow into the big man as an attempt to get some encouragement to his jest.</p><p>"You are a great Police Force ninja, Hoju-san, I know that. But you will never become anything more if you dismiss new experiences with jests and try to be a Police Force ninja in everything that's not Police Force matters." Chogen replied with an emotionless glare right down at Hoju, which made the man sweat a little.</p><p>"Chogen-san entered the fight knowing he'd lose but by doing that he gave me a look at the enemy. How he tells, how he hides, during moments of stress the true size of his chakra signature would have peeked out for just a moment if he was suppressing it, even through the suppression seals placed on him. We may have had just a symbolic chance before but Chogen-san may have very well doubled that chance." Mana nodded in gratitude for her Village Protection superior and, after finally preparing herself and calming down, went off to succeed him in the interrogation room.</p><p>"Did they finally get some on-call entertainment here while we wait? What service!" The criminal was quick to mock Mana. He wanted her riled up just like Chogen was at the end of his line. Angry people are scary, especially ones like Chogen, ones that can snap one's neck by blinking harder but, if one accepts they have nothing to threaten you with, it becomes a shield no amount of anger can overcome. Quite the opposite, seeing the enemy tap into these blazing resources and burning themselves up invites jolly which only sustains you while the enemy burns themselves up.</p><p>No, Mana would not get angry, that was because internally she had accepted failure as not only a possibility but as quite a probable outcome. Once one did not fear failure, it became easier to not get angry over the lack of success. Chogen paved the way for this, it was about time Mana walked that path.</p>
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<a name="section0484"><h2>484. Lies Of Ignorance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The perp was sitting in a self-assured position. His breathing was steady. His lackluster, barely standing out from the usual civilian sample size chakra signature was too minuscule for Mana to get a solid read on and look into. Even with Chogen's sacrifice of his dignity in front of this man, things would not be easy for Mana.</p><p>"You've been caught with supplies that did not come from this village. We could not care less about whatever you were doing with them, we only want to know how they got in and find the people responsible. We're Village Protection, ensuring the safety of the gate and all that lies within it is all we care about." Mana started boldly. Perhaps a bit too bold and imposing but words were not how she intended on getting answers. This was just a meaningless precursor before Mana got to the meatier part of the interrogation she had to rule out all other means.</p><p>"So you'd just let me go if I tell you about the smugglers? That sounds pretty engaging." The perp's eyes widened. For a moment there Mana wasn't sure if she was being played or not. Could it really have been this easy to get this man on her side?</p><p>"I'm not sure how that would work but we could work it out. Your financial crime shenanigans are nowhere near important enough to cover a potential security hole. If you talk, it's going to happen." Mana sensed it. Doubt in her own voice. She had not considered this opportunity, she had not scoped it out with Hoju and the Police Force and there was a distinct possibility that the perp would sense it.</p><p>"Yeah… Thought it sounded too good to be true…" the man slumped in his chair, his eyes began wandering, shooting wildly in all directions. This was such an alluring opportunity to get this man to talk without trying anything too bothersome and invasive. Mana would have very much preferred it. "As if a showgirl like you could even offer something like that. What're you doing with the Village Protection anyway?"</p><p>"I'm a ninja. Haven't you seen the Chuunin Exams this year?" Mana sat down. This may not have been as bad as it initially seemed. The man was still talking. Talking rubbish, changing the subject but talking nonetheless. If Mana was working for the Police Force she would have entire hours, an entire night to get him to say what needed to be said. Most Police Force ninja would spend that time on torture and beating, some would only resort to it once all other means failed.</p><p>Mana neither was a Police Force ninja nor intended to resort to such measures.</p><p>"Nah, I was working. Not everyone has the ryo to see it." The man scratched his chin. He probably thought that by having Mana talk about herself he was beating her at this, truthfully, he was getting used to Mana without knowing it. He was getting to know about her and associating thoughts and emotions with her. That could have been useful later on.</p><p>"Doesn't happen all that often, not in Konoha. Could have saved up if you planned ahead." Mana scolded the man probably twice her size about responsible management of his finances.</p><p>"Pfff, whatever. Wasn't on vacation anyway. Wouldn't have had the time even if I had the dough." The man squirmed. He wanted to hide the grin. It was not a grin of fondness, Mana was not gullible enough to believe it was but the absurdity of this interrogation did invite a smile to his face.</p><p>"I don't really get why you wouldn't want to tell on whoever gave you those supplies. When we find the hole, we're gonna plug it. Smuggling by abusing a security hole like this is much more serious than whatever you're into, they won't be able to retaliate in any way. Not inside the village and you don't strike me as a guy that makes enough to travel abroad." Mana tried poking the man with a hot rod a little bit just to test how much of a connection she had formed so far.</p><p>"I don't have to talk to you, you know? If you guys beat me up for two days straight and I stay silent – I get to walk. Even I know that much." The man closed back in again, surrounding himself with a thorn wall of crossed arms and a turn to the wall.</p><p>Would the callbacks to Shukuba ever cease?</p><p>"That's true, for the Police Force maybe…" Mana shrugged. "The village has a hole in it and one way or another it is going to plug it. There's still the Intelligence Division, the Black Ops if need be."</p><p>"Is this the part where you threaten me with ANBU torture? I'm sure one of you guys has already hit me with that line, along with some other, blunter things." The man grumbled.</p><p>"I just don't see the point of you going down to prison, full of hardened rogues and actually dangerous people for intending to sell some black market goods." Mana leaned back in the chair.</p><p>"What do you know about prison?"</p><p>"Enough to know that gambling years of your life on how badly it will suck isn't worth the hassle of just telling us who sold you the goods and how they got in." Mana began dragging her finger across the table, trying to emulate boredom. Here she was baiting the pike with a smaller fish, just above the surface, one that the predator has had a tiny nibble on before diving down to the bottom, its heart pounding of the tremendous risk it had just taken.</p><p>Eventually, the hunger, the curiosity, the craving will draw it back out. But only if the bait keeps on dangling, clapping its tiny tail on the surface.</p><p>"I don't really know their names. I just know where they get in and sell the items." The man leaned forward, crossing his hands together.</p><hr/><p>"Holy crap, you didn't even have to punch him once!" Hoju almost tore the hair out from his head.</p><p>"Got lucky, honestly. I came in here fully intending on having to probe his mind for something." Mana breathed heavily, still failing to believe in how much she got out of the man by just sitting in front of him and talking. Especially after her superior just failed at that very same thing, threatening the man and pushing the pike further down by having a hunting dog aboard the boat, barking at full voice.</p><p>"It could still be a dud but… Very well done what with the answers and the talking and the like." Chogen nodded a pair of times. His face was serious and thinking through what he had just seen and heard the man say, trying to call if his revelation was a trap of some sort or not.</p><p>"It did feel a bit easy, doesn't it?" Mana's cheer quickly turned to disorientation. What if the man did lie or intentionally give the Village Protection something to get them off his tail.</p><p>"No, it doesn't make too much sense. As you've established before, the village will get to him even if he does time us out before we can confidently put him in front of the Tribunal. As far as he knows – playing for time is pointless. Plus, he knows that no amount of smugglers and hired hands can challenge Village Protection, not inside the village walls." Hoju pondered.</p><p>"Very well observed, what with the thinking and the reasoning and the like." Chogen smiled, the sourness on his face quickly faded away.</p><p>"Too bad we can't just up and let him go." Hoju stuffed his hands into the pockets of his uniform before moving his lips around as if he was flipping a twig in between his teeth.</p><p>"Wait, what?" Mana turned to the Police Force ninja. "But I told him that would happen. That's how we got intel on the smugglers."</p><p>"Yeah… I've no idea why you did that. Anyway, you got the intel so it's fine. Did some fine Police Force work here. The perp will go to prison and you managed to find out what he knows by pulling on his teeth. Well done!" Hoju commended the magician. Despite Mana's horrified face, he appeared very proud of her and extremely glad to have let the two interrogate the man.</p><p>"Don't worry, we'll pull on some strings and see what can be done, what with the authority of the Village Protection and the like." Chogen pat Mana on the shoulder, looking a bit hesitant to do so but growing increasingly confident in it the longer he did it.</p><p>"My god, I just lied to a man about his freedom…" Mana smacked her forehead.</p><p>"Eh, I mean you did just lie to gather intelligence. Given that it's perfectly legal, I'd say our laws are pretty flexible. I think it's a waste to let a perfectly crooked perp go but… We'll see…" Hoju scratched his head finally catching on to Mana's discomfort and changing his gears.</p><p>"You've got bigger things to worry about. The whole warehouse district and smugglers we need to detain thing and all…" Chogen mumbled in a calmed and low-pitched voice.</p><p>"Alright! Let's go catch some smugglers!" Hoju shot his fist up into the air, making plenty of Uchiha Police Force officers glare at him with cold, death-wishing glares for disturbing their work from over their tables.</p><p>"A very nice try but you have an actual job, don't you?" Chogen turned at the Police Force officer who just shook in the lower parts of his body and made a long face. He may have liked his job but he would have liked taking part in something like official Village Protection business much more.</p><p>"I thought you guys wouldn't realize it…" Hoju whined out.</p><hr/><p>"This is the place, what with the described location and the description and the like." Chogen concluded once the two ninja pressed to a wall inside an alleyway and observed a warehouse district that lacked a single living soul to inhabit it. These were simply not its working hours. Currently, the objects to be stored within were still being manufactured or old ones that called this district their own before - being sold.</p><p>"Quiet so far." The giant spoke as if entirely to himself.</p><p>"Can't sense a thing…" Mana gave him some additional information, even if what she had to add was useful in only the smallest ways. "I suspect they would use some Earth Release technique to travel underground, in a ninja village it has proven to be difficult to detect before."</p><p>As fate would have it, Mana's theory would be proven wrong almost instantly after she had shared it, as if ordered by a higher power to make her seem like a dork. A large glyph lit up like a beacon on the side of a warehouse building. Before it sparked with a purple light it was merely a black paint stain, one entirely identical to the numbering present on the other warehouses. The smugglers were using a sealing technique!</p><p>The men that emerged from the light started out quite normal but grew increasingly curious. The first one was just a grey-haired and full-beard having man in casual clothes. Just the inconspicuous type that one would suspect a smuggler to look like. The second one adorned himself with some fine silks and even shoulder-armor and had long, dark hair tied in a ponytail.</p><p>The final one looked nothing like a smuggler at all. He was a tall and slick, bald type wearing a long weapon on his back. A staff or a spear possibly. Mana's sensory reached out to him almost instinctively to sense the man's threat level, oddly enough she could not pick up a hint of it. Either he had his chakra completely suppressed or his chakra signature was the size of that of an ordinary civilian. Even if chakra size did not decide battles all by itself, one could not augment their abilities that long with smaller resources and at all with those of that shortage.</p><p>"You detain these smugglers. I'll deal with the third one. Looks like a mercenary they could have hired to protect them, what with his weaponry and cold glare and the like." Chogen squirmed in the hiding spot causing a rubbing noise that nobody of their possibilities of chakra augmentation could have noticed at that distance.</p><p>"Please, no. The smugglers are too important and too slippery. Keep hold of them. I'll deal with the mercenary, his chakra signature is almost non-existent." Mana suggested.</p><p>Without answering directly, Chogen soared up in the air with the strength of his lower body alone. The man spread his massive limbs out wide like a sea-star before smacking his palms together.</p><p>"Multi-Size Jutsu!" Chogen yelled out as his body grew several times its already considerable size. "Fire Style Akimichi Secret Technique: Ring of Fire!"</p><p>Immense heat began pouring out from the man's pores, heat that lit up in scorching flames that formed a rotating ring of blazes and descended upon the handful of smugglers who did not have nearly enough time to react to anything that their ninja opponent did. As expected, either the three underestimated the ninja village by suppressing their signatures so much that they could not power back up in the instant they needed it back up on or they simply had no strength to spare, to begin with.</p><p>The smugglers grunted and took rapid steps back to keep them away from roasting in the incalculably heated ring that kept them contained. Finishing his impressive aerial show of acrobatics, Chogen landed on the other side of the ring and turned back at his surrounded and detained targets.</p><p>"You're coming with us, for the questioning and the possible detainment and the like." Chogen declared quite confident in his own words.</p><p>The mercenary amongst the smugglers did not speak, he merely moved his hand to his back with remarkable speed for someone of his lack of noticeable might. The instant he moved Mana realized that his weakness was deceptive – he was not trying at all to reach for his back this fast and yet he surpassed any limits of human swiftness.</p><p>With his weapon in hand, the mercenary swiped and spun his clothed package, tearing the ring of flames apart for mere milliseconds before the blazing inferno closed back up but just that meaningless moment was enough for the mercenary to calmly step out of his blazing prison. The package around his weapon set aflame, reducing the leather on it to red cinders and revealing an obsidian spear underneath.</p><p>Chogen did not waver, neither did Mana. She revealed herself by leaving the hiding place and calmly walking in front of the mercenary.</p><p>"I see it now. It appears Shukuba is not the only ghost that haunts me today." She stated while walking up to the man. The eyes of his opponent looked thrown a little bit off-track by the boldness of his newly revealed enemy. "The reason why you don't put out that impressive of a chakra signature is because you're a martial artist using Budojutsu."</p><p>"Budojutsu?" Chogen wondered. Of course, he was unfamiliar with the term. It was an old style of fighting but it was not one that was named or recorded, everyone called it however they wanted.</p><p>"You augment your body just like you would using chakra but using only the physical aspects of your chakra. Just as I have once done when I had my chakra network broken." Hundreds of lightning-fast thrusts from the man's spear all at once managed to silence Mana once she got within his range. The jabs all worked their magic like high-caliber bullets, tearing the girl's body to shreds and leaving fist-sized holes wherever they hit.</p><p>The mercenary took a couple of steps backward in respectful intimidation of his opponent's ability. He was hearing Mana's voice ringing in his ears but he could not see the girl he could have just sworn to have killed before her riddled body dispersed into a shower of flower petals.</p><p>"You fool, she's right in front of you, kill her!" one of the smugglers barked out from within the ring of flames. Despite the absolute heat present inside the flames, the temperature of the ring was almost entirely contained within the flames. Irradiating only a meaningless portion of its built up heat, just enough to make the smugglers sweat when they got too close but nowhere near enough to incinerate them as being so close to a source of similar temperature normally would.</p><p>The mercenary protecting the smugglers took a defensive spear-fighting stance. Mana was slightly less familiar with the particular weapon and its stances but she could identify the basic signs of balance over ferocity in the man's stance – he was preparing to defend from the magician once she resurfaces within his field of vision instead of swinging wildly and opening himself up. He was well versed in the more technical skills of martial arts after all…</p><p>"I can see why they'd choose you to protect them now." Mana's voice continued to taunt the man as he closed his eyes, no longer feeling confident in his ability to trust his sight. "They did not hire you for your skills or some bond. That's not the kind of people smugglers are. Even amongst criminals, they have a nasty reputation."</p><p>Mana was astounded by the reaction of her opponent. He did not struggle against her illusion at all but allowed it to flow its course without any resistance. He did not try to break it or even react to it but merely let go and saw where it would take him. Had he tried to break out, with his chakra signature he'd have busted his network and rendered himself catatonic. Genjutsu was immensely effective against such an opponent.</p><p>A black blur broke Mana out from her trance of wonderful display of battlefield experience from someone who shouldn't have been at all familiar with the ninja world. Bright blazes followed wherever the mercenary's spear moved, sending a slicing crescent of blazes all around him that was nowhere near being focused or matching the heat of stars like the flames of ninjutsu but they were enough to send Mana tumbling back and get her all flustered all just to avoid this one simplistic budojutsu technique.</p><p>"You're a ninja…" Mana realized to herself. "Used to be, anyway. Broken permanently, just like I used to be."</p><p>That was how this man knew so well of how exactly to fight off Chogen's Fire Release ninjutsu with the Fire Release affinity of his own as well as remarkable spear-work and how to properly deal with illusions. Mana picked herself back up from one knee and placed her top hat back on as she had lost it in the very impromptu manner of evasion.</p><p>"That's right, Aruseki is going to crush you!" one of the smugglers taunted the magician. "Better get your partner into the game, girl!"</p><p>He wanted that, he wanted Chogen to stop concentrating on the smugglers so that they could attempt a comfortable sealing technique express getaway. If Mana was to convince the Village Protection she was worth letting in on the Congregation tracking mission, she needed to win this all by herself and bring these smugglers in.</p>
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<a name="section0485"><h2>485. Fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Just try something, I can cook you in an instant, what with the ring and the flames closing in and all…" Chogen warned the smugglers with a serious and determined face to not even attempt their transportation seals while trapped. It was true that the Akimichi was vastly faster and had the faster reaction time, letting him to enclose the ring of flames freely around the smugglers if need be.</p><p>There was nothing to gain in Mana standing around and letting this deadlock continue. Chogen had to strain his body to keep up his ring of flames continuously as without his chakra it would turn into a simple natural blaze, which would not be at all threatening to someone like these trapped smugglers.</p><p>Mana's hands flashed through a combination of hand seals after she drew blood from her thumb. She flicked her head forward. The top hat rolled freely and gracefully down the magician's hand only to be caught in Mana's hand while the kunoichi kept up the built up chakra for usage in opening the seal in her hat. The enemy was not about to stand around, however.</p><p>The bald mercenary moved in as if sliding across the ground, his body bent up and his right arm raised over his head while his left side leaned closer to the ground, twisting his body sideways and placing the spear diagonally. It was an odd stance but Mana was bound to encounter these while she was analyzing a new fighting style. Before Mana's arm could move into the bottom of her hat and open the seal to let the summoned rabbit out, a painful thud made her realize that her hand's been blocked by the other end of the opponent's spear.</p><p>The mercenary was quick to move in and even quicker to twist his spear around, aiming the sharper end straight at the magician's throat. Mana used the pushing force from the momentum still stored inside her body from when her opponent blocked her arm to drop back flat and shoot her legs upwards. It was just as unorthodox of a fighting style to a martial artist.</p><p>Because of the offensive slash of the spear, it was in no position to block the low-blow from Mana's part. However, despite the supposedly immensely painful weak spot that Mana managed to exploit, the enemy barely flinched. The man threw his lower body back in pain, as well as an instinctual attempt to avoid the blow but he was too late to not take the brunt of it. The pain did twist the muscles of the man's face but he did not relent.</p><p>Lit up with flames, the tip of the spear moved in on Mana's general direction once more, giving the magician very little time to get back on her feet. Once again, the kunoichi found her attempts to use the Summoning Jutsu interrupted by the rapid, twisting motion of the enemy's spear. From what little Mana had known about the weapon, she had assumed that thrusts would be her worst problem but this Aruseki fellow, as the smugglers referred to him before, used it in much more versatile ways than that.</p><p>This time the martial artist twisted the sharp end of his spear trying to get Mana. There was only one way for the girl to avoid this versatile and mid-range attack but a thought sparked in her slightly experienced mind that this was exactly what her opponent might have wanted – usually attacks with a simple dodging pattern were merely a setup for something more lethal to follow. Instead of dashing back to stay out of the range of the spinning spear entirely, Mana jumped forward with a dropkick as stiff as it was bold, thrusting both her feet right in the open center.</p><p>Aruseki grunted in pain, it would have hurt immensely to take shots from an actual ninja. He was lucky that Mana was both aware of his condition and did not hit him with enough chakra augmentations to outright splatter the man and that she held back in general. Not because of some specific reason, merely because it was inevitable when one fought without the readiness to end one's opponent. This was just a natural disadvantage of Mana's style that the magician has come to accept by this point.</p><p>Mana kicked back up from the floor. The eyes of Aruseki widened. He must have been familiar with this particular kick-up. It was almost textbook from a martial artist's school and he did not expect a random kunoichi in the middle of a ninja village to use budojutsu and moves more natural for the martial artists.</p><p>"You know martial arts. Not just taijutsu, real martial arts." Aruseki spoke in a husky but calm tone. The unclear grumble in the man's throat suggested that he did not use his voice that often and that the thing was not cleared for days if not entire weeks.</p><p>"Not just martial arts." Mana stretched out before taking a fighting stance from the book of the old man from the Sun Disc arena. Her stance was basic but her superior speed and strength will naturally neutralize the difference between sheer skill in the art. "I know of the pride and honor of a martial artist as well."</p><p>It was about enough that Mana tried to use her Summoning Jutsu. Unless she could force his opponent into a hard knockdown, she would not have the time to execute it properly even if she managed to perform all the hand seals before her opponent even charged at her. Mana's hands moved slowly but with purpose, halting in mid-motion only to allow the inertia of movement to force a red card out from her sleeve, which the magician flung right at her opponent.</p><p>Aruseki covered up, spinning his spear wildly to block the force of the explosion before feeling a sharp dig right in his back. Mana had used the distraction to move right behind her opponent using nothing but basic chakra augmentation far outside the range of what a martial artist was capable of. For all her talk of martial artist's honor, she was fighting like a ninja and not cutting her enemy any slack.</p><p>The man fumbled forward, spitting up blood and clutching at his burning side. Breathing must have felt like a pain so the man did it very sparingly. The pain and irritation in his eyes betrayed that he saw the inevitability of his defeat if he continued the fight. Unless he managed to surprise the magician with a move of some sorts or caught her off-guard, tipping the balance more to his favor, the girl had managed to tell him she would be beating him if this persisted.</p><p>"What do you know of honor and pride!?" the man flipped out, dashing right at Mana with another direct, sliding charge attack. Before Mana could respond, however, he slipped past her by moving outside her reach and continued accelerating towards Chogen.</p><p>"He's not planning on hurting Chogen-san. He doesn't need to…" Mana bit her lip in frustration while she charged after the spear-wielder in an attempt to intercept his wild attack. If Aruseki inconvenienced Chogen enough to make the Akimichi cancel out his ring of flames, the smugglers would have free reign to escape using their transportation seal.</p><p>A thud, Aruseki's body bent and turned around so suddenly and to such a brutal and graceless degree that the man roared out in the pain that moving his body this way caused to himself. The thudding noise came from the mercenary's foot that shot out in front and stopped his acceleration, used as a counterforce to turn his entire body around while Mana was chasing after him while he thrust his spear right at her.</p><p>The magician had reaction time and speed on her side, she did not see Aruseki's highly uncomfortable and unpredictable switch of targets coming but she once she did witness it, she could adapt. The girl jumped up in the air with a roll, she had to move from where she was when the attack started. That was where the attack was planned, that was where Aruseki planned to end her life in one hit because if he did not – he would not get a chance like this again.</p><p>A painful sensation at her side, as a child Mana had once stepped on broken glass and feeling that sudden shock and overflowing sensation of pain that made one want to scream out as it resonated throughout reminded her of that instance.</p><p>"Sojutsu Shokyaku!" Aruseki chanted out as his spear lit up with flames, the flames escalated and intensified the further from his grip they went before erupting in a rotating, horizontal vortex of an all-devouring firestorm. Mana felt her chakra draining from her system, the sudden shock to her body didn't give the magician any time to extend her chakra augmentations to protect her clothes making the sudden eruption of violent flames rip half of her uniform off.</p><p>The good news was – the heat also appeared to cauterize the nasty cut she got while avoiding a kill shot to her heart, that instead grazed her at the side, the ugly news was that it made Mana grunt in pain even with her most noble intentions to not let her opponent see her pain in mind.</p><p>"Hey…" Chogen moved his foot forward, expressing worry over Mana's condition. It was not usually to get banged up like this on a normal workday, at least not to this giant powerhouse.</p><p>"I know enough to know that these guys are just using you. They don't care about your skill, they don't care to provide you with a challenge to your skills, they're not your friends or even your clients. Smugglers are the type to get rid of you once you're no longer useful to them." Mana grit through her teeth. Her side was no longer bleeding but her left side was slightly burnt, causing great shock to her system making the future chakra augmentations to that side slower and weaker for the most immediate future, at least a pair of minutes while it recovers from the sudden shock.</p><p>"You're wrong. They do care about my skill. They care that I keep them alive against the likes of you." Aruseki replied, placing the other end of his spear firmly on the ground while he opened himself up. This could have been a bait, given Mana's short-term weakness in her left side and her diminished physical advantage – it likely was. "They took me in when everyone else had dismissed me. A ninja without a functioning chakra network is useless to any village, these men did not care how I did it, they merely cared that I would keep them alive. They do not care about the method behind my power, they care merely about my strength."</p><p>"Budojutsu is wildly dangerous. As someone who has broken your body once before, you should know that…" Mana warned the man while she stood up straight and took a different martial arts pose.</p><p>"If it makes me useful for something, what does it matter if I live or die?" Aruseki replied. His face and his convictions were unwavering. He did not speak all that much except of the things he cared the most about meaning there was little use in trying to reason with him. One could only reason with martial artists through fists. One could only reach them by being the one chosen by fate as the victor of the clash between the two. As someone who has reached a plenty of martial artist hearts once Mana knew that quite well.</p><p>Noticing that the magician was not falling for his feint, Aruseki charged at her himself. His movements were different now. They were more aggressive, more ruthless and less balanced. He placed no care in his own defense or preserving his own life or defending himself in any way. His style was now an absolute investment on pressing any advantage he had gained on Mana with quick thrusts, swipes, and spins of his mid-range weapon.</p><p>"Something's different." Mana thought to herself as she weaved the upper side of her body to avoid her opponent's attack, wincing in pain every time she stressed her recently cauterized in an extremely brutal way wound but even her greatly diminished speed and agility after taking a small bit of Sojutsu Shokyaku was enough to dance around her opponent. The magician even found a chance to slip in a pair of bold taps of her own two feet aimed at the sides of Aruseki's knees.</p><p>The man grunted out in pain and collapsed on his knees inward, even through the protections he wore on his vulnerable mid-leg section the resonating force from Mana's hit brought him down. Before the mercenary could evaluate his own position and properly realize the fact that the spear in his hand was his only remaining shield until his mobility returned, Mana unleashed a storm of mighty kicks at the opponent before leaping up front with a knee to his face.</p><p>"Stop fucking around! Unless you kill the girl we can't escape!" the grey-haired man of the two smugglers yelled out.</p><p>"What do we pay you all that money for? Is this what a martial artist provides as a service for our payment when in dire need? Shameful!" the second one scolded his ally with a much calmer yet nonetheless shaming remark.</p><p>Aruseki tried moving around, pick his broken body off the ground but the painful and jerky movements and the wheezing shortness of breath following the flowing shower of red from his broken nose made it extremely clear that there would be no comeback. At this point, even clever strategizing and deceit would not be enough to eliminate the vast difference in stamina and fighting condition that was between Mana and the lethal mercenary.</p><p>"Are you threatening him with not paying him when his life is on the line?" Mana looked at the two smugglers with a glare of aggression and the desire to disavow her declaration of never taking a life when faced with such demeaning behavior to the sum of the human condition.</p><p>Obviously, Aruseki's life was in no danger, Mana had trained and fought her entire life with the sole goal of protecting her opponent's life no matter the cost. Oftentimes, there were other lives that she vowed to protect but the general principle always remained the same – nobody dies. These smugglers did not know of Mana's no-killing policy, for all they knew – Mana was out to kill. This mercenary was not someone that the Village Protection needed all that much, compared to his much more important company.</p><p>"It seems you've been right all along." The mercenary admitted, sinking his bald head in submission while the tip of his spear sunk downward with his pride. "I've been drained of strength at the same time as I have injured you… Perhaps even more so."</p><p>"Sojutsu Shokyaku." Mana said. "It's an interesting budojutsu but just as dangerous as all others. It manifests the sheer physicality and brutality of your physical chakra into blazing flames that devour as much as your ambition to win and live up to your goal. I don't think another man would be able to use this technique as effectively as you, because of the way you are."</p><p>"I've never noticed it before, not until I faced you… Just how much expressing all of my physical chakra drains my stamina. All of a sudden if felt like… I was getting choked up by my own movements, my muscles burning up… I don't think I have more than one more move in me," The warrior examined his quivering in fatigue and breaking down body in surprise.</p><p>"It would be quite useless." Mana let her opponent know in advance. She thought that it was obvious but she did not want to make the mistake of not letting her opponent know it in case it was not. "Any move except giving up, that is."</p><p>"If I had just one movement to live up to my purpose in this life, I'd be a foul man if I did not take it!" Aruseki started in a serene manner of speaking before erupting in all of his pent up emotion. This time the flames erupting from his body turned dark and tainted purple. It was no longer the spirit of competition of a martial artist or the sense of honor that drove the man but the fear of not living up to his expectations, of dying a pointless death and becoming forgotten. The fear that turned men the most dire.</p><p>With all of his remaining might, Aruseki intended to deliver the spear from long-range. The incredible pressure that he was placing on his body was breaking him apart further, tearing muscle tendons, dislocating limbs he was using right after letting of his spear. The man showered with blood and broken teeth from his mouth and sprayed red from his broken nose.</p><p>Mana tensed up for a millisecond before her slowed down to a crawl reaction time let her realize that this spear was not meant for her. It travelled in much too diagonal of a trajectory to come even close to touching as low as the magician's feet. It merely smacked into the ground with enough force to make the spear shake from inertia like a bent palm tree after it was let go.</p><p>"What the… Chogen-san!" Mana seemed lost for the first few moments after the spear hit the ground but then yelled out to alert her superior to shut down the smugglers. They were just about to make their escape. Their chakra signatures were minuscule but Mana would have given her head up for decapitation on a guess that they had just enough for that one technique.</p><p>Both smugglers made a singular hand seal, their bodies were not yet accustomed to using that jutsu without hand seals like those of most ninja were. All of their skill, all of their training was devoted in mastering the one transportation sealing jutsu that they used to get in and out of the village. Now they intended to both substitute with the spear in order to escape the ring so that they could then initiate their escape in safety.</p><p>"Are ye fucking stupid!?" Chogen grunted out in anger as he smacked his hands together. The ring enclosed and covered both smugglers in flames even faster than the extremely quick setup for the Substitution Jutsu. The jutsu must have meant to be used this way so it was of no surprise that it was so quick to interrupt an opponent. Within mere moments the smugglers got devoured by the flames that then died out as suddenly as they rampaged just a moment earlier.</p><p>Mana could still sense a vague chakra signature from the two smugglers but they were pretty badly burnt and would be in absolutely no condition to be interrogated. Before she could fully consider just how much more bitter it had made the success of this investigation, a powerful explosion made her cover up before the magician powered through its aftermath in fear that the smugglers had somehow tricked them again.</p><p>Chakra inductive paper began falling gently from the sky, scattered by the unknown and highly explosive different material that the smugglers were transporting. Likely simple explosive seals as whatever container they were placed in, while not completely heat and fire proof managed to contain a great deal of explosive force and merely scatter all of the smugglers' goods instead of outright tearing the men to shreds.</p><p>The two were injured furthermore and their situation demanded immediate medical attention but Mana still felt a flame rustling inside of them.</p><p>"They have to be dead, what with the blast and the fire and all…" Chogen grumped, scratching his chest. He must have felt a bit guilty as the superior officer that he could not capture the smugglers alive.</p><p>"No, they live, but they do need to get to the hospital immediately." Mana looked at Chogen with troubled eyes. She may have lacked the speed in her current state to carry all three of the injured and passed out enemies to the hospital.</p><p>"The foulest always survive…" Chogen grumbled to himself as he placed the burnt up bodies of the smugglers and picked up an unidentifiable limb that one of them was missing. The man then shoved his foot under Aruseki's body and flipped it like a soccer ball onto his shoulder as well. "Report to the boss for me while I'm doing this thing." He asked Mana.</p><p>The magician extended her hand, letting a piece of paper fall gently onto her hand and fold in on itself. The paper ignited within moments of touching Mana's hand and turned to ash. The magician breathed in and out easier to settle down her fighting state and preserve chakra. This may have been a pretty long evening.</p>
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<a name="section0486"><h2>486. Mistaken Development</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Uzumaki Midoben stood at the end of his office in a strict and militaristic stance. He took a moment to prepare himself mentally to receive the report and Mana provided him with that moment, given the man's importance in the organization and the heavily unfortunate turn of events on the field.</p><p>"We've managed to locate the smugglers responsible for moving in the supplies into the village. However, we've been unable to subdue them without heavily injuring them." Mana started her report on the most important part. The man did not look happy. However, he appeared more curious than angry as well. "The smugglers were breaking into the village territory by using a transportation seal. They weren't too powerful however their mastery and training using the seal allowed them to use it with relative ease even at their low rank."</p><p>"In that case, subduing them must have been complicated." Midoben closed his eyes in calmness. "We were fortunate to have Chogen working on the mission, his skill set has a couple of techniques meant to detain a fleeing opponent."</p><p>"Given his size, I assume he has to deal with that problem often." Mana nodded in agreement with the boss' assessment. "During the brief scuffle with the hired muscle of the smuggler duo, most of the smuggled goods were destroyed. We have recovered enough for a sample and a case, however."</p><p>"It does not matter all that much. I assume the Police Force will take over from here. They can have them." Midoben breathed out before looming over a handful of documents and files on his table and marking some things and writing some of them down.</p><p>"The Police Force?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Yes. The part of the job that concerned us was to find out how people were slipping in and out of the village. After we analyze this information you've gathered, we will help to improve the village gate and the entire protection system. That's a pretty mean hook with a witty declaration on top for a first day…" Midoben commended Mana.</p><p>Mana looked at a blank point, a rustling point of light shimmering on a wall carved into the wall. This turn made the magician appreciate Midoben's turns and his obsession with staring at the candlelight cast onto the walls of his office. She sort of expected the Village Protection to care more about a pair of smugglers that have just been caught rather than fortifying their walls but she could not deny that boss' reasoning made sense.</p><p>"Sir… There's something else. We only managed to locate the smugglers and find the location where they've been slipping through the gate because of an interrogation. Is there any way to work out a pardon for the man we've interrogated? He was surprisingly cooperative." Mana wondered.</p><p>"You've made a pretty big leap, don't ruin it." Midoben almost growled. This may have been a slightly excessive reaction to something that would have barely concerned the man so the girl just let it go. She used to lack the knowledge of when to press on and bargain but over time she was beginning to learn that. Given her limited experience and knowledge, this situation did not appear to match the criteria for a potentially successful push.</p><p>"I see, can I still be helpful today?" Mana sighed.</p><p>"You can start reading up on the Liquid Village Sensory System. I think it might be useful for plugging you in tomorrow for a test run." The boss replied with a tame tone. "Other than that, you're excused."</p><p>After politely excusing herself and bowing to the head of the Village Protection Mana left the office and returned to Mikapen, the overly excited assistant in the Village Protection. The woman started stacking up piles on top of piles of reading that may have been useful for a potential user of the Liquid Village Sensory System. The size and content of the reading may have intimidated some but as a self-appointed history buff, Mana was used to it.</p><p>To some extent, she was almost excited about it, she may get to find out some new things she was not aware of about chakra sensory in general by researching official manuals and guides written by professional and experienced chakra sensors that were skilled enough for a village to rely on their abilities to observe over the entire village.</p><p>Despite Mana's attitude, she found the material terribly drab. This was not the first time that reading failed to keep Mana engaged by a long shot but it may have been one of the first dozen times when it had actually let her down and turned out to be the opposite of what she had expected. The authors wrote up the material from an entirely rational point of view and completely dismissed the emotional spectrum of the chakra sensory. It seemed like an awfully imprecise and subjective scale to evaluate something that was entirely based on sensory input.</p><p>Ever since the magician had found out about her hidden chakra sensory abilities, she had relied on them exclusively by examining how the input made her feel. If a chakra signature made her anxious, if it made her freeze up or desperately want to flee – that meant it was massive or that it was twisted. Once the magician grew stronger with the ability she managed to associate the sensory input with a representation of different sensory inputs, creating intense visuals of the chakra signatures she read. The official material demanded that a sensor determined their input through evaluation scales that seemed rather arbitrary and subjective.</p><p>The scales were drawn based on the chakra signatures one experienced in their lives on a scale of one to nine. Civilians did not even register on said scale and chakra signatures of their size appeared to remain mostly ignored. This arbitrary necessity to create scales and numbers and classifications for something so intimate and sense-based disgusted Mana but she did her best to absorb the knowledge and at least give it a chance tomorrow.</p><hr/><p>The next morning Mana spent filling in some paperwork and doing some more down-to-earth work. That was until Mikapen approached her all gleaming with excitement and showed the girl a dark jumpsuit with some cool patterns running down it and circles of what appeared to be teeth-like shapes riddling it.</p><p>"Change!" she screeched out. The assistant's excitement kind of made Mana a little excited as well. She gently took the jumpsuit of her hands and rushed off into the changing room. The uniform felt a bit tight and thin but it fit Mana like a glove and pressed to her body like a second skin. Just to follow the example of the other sensors plugged into the Liquid Village Protection System, Mana put on a flak jacket on top and rushed back to the liquid sphere that kept on rattling with disturbances like a surface of a lake continuously disturbed by the tiniest pebbles dropping down.</p><p>Mana rested her back into the soft, warm and cozy chair that was designed with enough foresight to maintain relative comfort for someone who would be sitting there the whole day. Although, the magician did recall that being a very short-term observation and, if the testimony of other plugged-in sensors was to be trusted, it would very soon make her muscles numb and bit stiff.</p><p>"Put this on." Mikapen smiled while handing Mana a massive helmet with a glowing, red vizor that completely sunk her eyes into darkness as it had a soft, cushion-like muff inside. "I'm not sure what's the point of it but… It's necessary."</p><p>"It helps you concentrate." Mana heard a faraway voice of one of the sensors plugged into the system as well. She wondered just how comfortable would communicating in this distance be. Depending on the number of signatures she would have to deal with, there may be a whole lot of yelling and reporting going on…</p><p>Did Mana truly need the vizor though? She sort of already gave up on one of her senses to grant her a quick boost in her sensory abilities before. One she desperately needed and had little to no time to acquire otherwise. An odd sensation ran over the girl's body, like currents of water running under her skin and forcefully contracting her muscles. Mana had been shocked before and this sensation felt similar although not identical to that.</p><p>"A pair of caravans rolling in through the main gate. Code 3246, a total of eleven chakra signatures, all of a blank rank." Someone's thoughts ran through the magician's mind. It felt eerily similar to when Kiyomi established a mental link between the team as it just seemed like someone's thoughts would just appear in Mana's head. Like a line of words for her to read before a vibrating representation of the person's voice read those lines aloud with the volume similar to that of that person standing right next to Mana when doing so.</p><p>The trial plug could have gone better, honestly. Mana was so busy disagreeing with the methods of the official doctrine of how professional sensors handled business yesterday that she kept on forgetting things and had to check and recheck codes and linger pointlessly to infinity before describing chakra ranks based on the silly scale system. She was beginning to catch the sense that everybody kind of phoned that part in as she caught on multiple occasions chakra signatures that felt similar being reported as two different ranks of the scale.</p><p>That did not necessarily mean that the whole system was a sham. The magician had no doubt that had a significant threat presented itself, the bunch would report it appropriately. It was merely the fluff and bureaucracy of the matter that evaded the full and conscious fairness of the sensors' assessment.</p><p>Because of the slower and more lacking in the official doctrine skillset of the magician, the other sensors had to cover up for her at times by reporting things that were technically in territories assigned to her. They seemed happy to pitch in and it should not have been as big of a deal as Mana made it out to be but the experience did leave her a bit bitter.</p><p>While the magician was training after every workday just to relax and stay in shape while adding a little bit on top every day, a single lingering image could not leave her mind. It was the chakra conductive paper burning up in her hand. The piece of paper was used to test one's natural elemental affinity. Why did Mana's burn up?</p><p>The magician stared at her hand, which had so effectively turned the piece of wondrous paper to cinders. She had never really tested her true elemental affinity, Lightning Release jutsu were the first Mana had added to her arsenal however the path to those she had learned had taken her a couple of years and resulted in a harmless batch of techniques that barely would have irritated a civilian, let alone a ninja.</p><p>The following pair of days operating the Liquid Village Sensory System went more naturally. The experience of her own previous lacking performance was an adequate teacher. While Mana still disliked the way that she was squeezed into operating the system, she at the very least felt content with helping the village and doing her part. It was a sense of relief and self-fulfillment she had not felt since becoming a ninja.</p><p>For the first time in what seemed like an eternity Mana was actually protecting people, she was not fighting anyone and protecting innocent lives came without the necessity for violence. All she had to do was close her eyes, concentrate and work hard, trust the system and become a part of it. Maybe it was not the experience of where she came in short before but the realization of how convenient this chair and this job felt. Almost like it was natural, like Mana belonged here.</p><hr/><p>Mana had never visited the Jounin Standby Station before for the most obvious reason – she had no business to do it. She was no Jounin and she was very rarely both off-duty and waiting for Hokage's orders without engaging in some of her own business. It was a tall and well-furnished building beside Ninja Academy, currently, it was being slightly renovated from the outside as the calamity that had devastated the Ninja Academy had also damaged the Standby Station as well.</p><p>While the Ninja Academy was reborn almost completely, the necessity to rebuild the Standby Station remained in the shadow of the more immediate business. It was only when the new Ninja Academy rose up that the urgency to repair and improve the exterior and the interior of the Academy became clear.</p><p>The place looked probably better equipped and furnished than the Administration building. Its solitary purpose was to provide a shelter and comfortable place for off-duty or on the standby Jounin ninja so it was mostly equipped with smaller training facilities, libraries and research facilities as well as resting rooms.</p><p>Had it not been for Mana's chakra sensory, she would have wandered the place with an embarrassing blush on her cheeks for hours. She did not belong in that building, it was not expressly forbidden for her to be there but most looks coming her way were of the confused variety. Jounin were in very thin supply, Special Jounin were the only other rank of ninja present here at the time and had it not been for the existence of this special ranking, the building would be almost completely irrelevant.</p><p>"Musha-san!" Mana bowed in front of a rouge haired woman who appeared to have greatly trimmed the sides of her hair after the last time the magician had seen her. Given the woman's fighting style, favoring the close-to-mid range fighting styles, it only made sense but it made the kunoichi wonder just how much was her change in appearance due to the loss they all suffered during the catastrophe in the Ninja Academy.</p><p>"Hmmm? Mana?" Musha blinked a pair of times in confusion. "What are you doing here? Did I forget I'm in charge of a squad again?"</p><p>"No, it's just… I've recently found a reason to think that I may be most attuned with the Fire Release elemental affinity. It may be the most common elemental affinity in the village and the country but I could not think of another person to ask of a little guidance from." The magician bowed, remaining in that position while she explained herself.</p><p>"Yeah, my chakra affinity is also Fire Release." Musha nodded. The woman placed one of her hands into her pocket while stroking her parted hair. "I guess it can't be helped. I'll feel pretty lousy if I turn you down, kid."</p><p>Mana straightened her back with a smile of pleasant surprise before bowing once more in gratitude. She barely even knew this woman, Musha had no obligation or even use in helping Mana. Yet she did nevertheless. Sure, if the woman was truthful as to her reasons for doing so, she may not have been entirely selfless but it did not matter.</p><p>"Alright, I've got a reservation in the Third Training Ground this evening. I'm off-duty anyway so if you're free we can head there right now." Musha suggested.</p><p>"Mhm!" the magician nodded with enthusiasm. It was not quite the concept of exploring her relationship with the Fire Release elemental affinity that made the magician this energetic. It was more this new, temporary apprenticeship with the Jounin.</p><p>"So you've only tested yourself now? Seems a little bit late, if you ask me. It should be sort of the first thing after a genin learns the basics and warms their feet up in the water." Musha wondered. "How did you even train without knowing your elemental affinity?"</p><p>"Well, the circumstances weren't too fitting for Team Oak to learn the intermediates of chakra manipulation and elemental affinity when it was time. Tanshu-sensei was no longer there to teach us that." Mana's face turned somber for a moment. "After Team Hokage formed, I do not think that there was even use in establishing rules or complaining about Hokage-sensei defying them. She was her own type of teacher."</p><p>"I see… Not the happiest and most comfortable of rides, huh?" the Jounin woman observed.</p><p>"You could say that, I suppose, however, I knew about the elemental affinity for a while. I've been pretty book savvy my entire career, even as a student. It was just that I picked up Lightning Release and never really looked into it." Mana shrugged. It all seemed so obvious way back when she first learned her very first techniques but now that the magician looked back on it she thought herself a fool for not fully exploring her own affinity just because she picked up a technique of a specific elemental nature.</p><p>"You can have multiple elemental natures, you know. Elemental affinity merely tells you what jutsu you're naturally attuned with, every other nature is simply much more difficult to learn. Even the savviest ninja rarely learn jutsu of more than three elemental natures." Musha explained. "Still, to pick up jutsu of an elemental nature you're not attuned to seems… Incredible! And at such a young age…"</p><p>"They were not that powerful or useful at all. When I first managed to come up with those techniques, I just thought they were this weak because I was weak." Mana blushed while she desperately tried to conceal her embarrassment with faked interest with a poster for a movie that hung on a nearby wall.</p><p>"That's an extremely flawed way of looking at things. Weak and strong are simple terms for simpletons." Musha spoke with a strong and encouraging tone. "There is a right and a wrong way of doing things and if you fall short – it's because you're doing something wrong and therefore you fail, not because you're a failure."</p><p>"That is… Actually quite close to my heart." Mana admitted, turning back at Musha with a smile. "Belief that nobody in this world is useless is, in fact, my nindo."</p><p>"That's a fine reason to fight." Musha lifted her fist up.</p><p>"You would not have gotten along with Tanshu-sensei." The magician cracked into a melancholic chuckle.</p><p>"Yeah, well… Red Dog's the world's youngest dinosaur…" Musha grumbled.</p>
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<a name="section0487"><h2>487. Reflections Inside Of A Dark Cave</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Given how you've mastered a bunch of techniques of different natures than your affinity, I'd say grasping the basics should be a piece of cake." Musha grinned with a full-teeth smile. "From what I've heard, you're plenty resourceful, you can pick up from there on out."</p><p>"Works just fine with me." Mana stretched out with her eyes closed and her breathing steady. This was just her own way to warm up both her physical body and her mental and spiritual state as both needed to be in perfect harmony to master new concepts or begin learning new techniques.</p><p>"I think you're more experienced than me with the theory, given how you've been using low-ranking jutsu of different natures whereas I've been focusing on stronger techniques of a single nature but each nature has a way it is manifested," Musha explained as her hands danced through hand seals in a controlled pace, the woman purposefully weaved them in a way that the magician could see and pick up on. Given how the woman is a respected Jounin, in an actual fight, the magician would have had little luck in picking anything up at all.</p><p>"Yeah. Lightning Release is ignited through muscle tension. Once it sparks from a signal in-between neurons, chakra assists it to manifest into actual lightning." Mana added. "Wind Release is more of a breathing style of an element. Instead of controlling the nerve signals and muscle tension, you're making gusts of wind and controlling it to the finest extent through controlling the air inside your lungs."</p><p>"That's it!" Musha pointed at the magician bursting with energy. "That's a lot how Fire Release works too!"</p><p>"Really?" Mana wondered, repeating the hand seals that Musha had made. The magician breathed in and tried to mold some chakra into her breath just to see if this theory held water. What came out from Mana's mouth was a shower of winds strong enough to bend the blades of grass and rustle the creek behind Musha but not much else. It was not even that warm…</p><p>"No, no, no… You don't breathe through your lungs, you build up the air inside your stomach. It's more of a diaphragm motion than blowing." Musha explained as she weaved those same hand seals and breathed in deep. Mana noticed the woman's belly inflate abnormally while her cheeks puffed out and she blew out a stream of flames that quickly gathered in a large ball of blazes. It was not rolling towards Mana or moving at all, it was just a giant blaze doing what it did best and covering a wide enough area to make Mana quickstep behind.</p><p>"Huh? Did that accidentally burn you?" Musha wondered, looking at Mana clutching her hand and wincing every time she tried to caress the red swelling on her hand. "Sorry, sorry…" the woman laughed out in apology while acting out her guilt in overly expressive manner, just to show her spontaneously appointed student that there was no mean intention. "You'd think that I'd learn to control my one elemental nature but… Sometimes I overdo it a bit."</p><p>"It's nothing. Just a little burn." Mana played the irritating burning sensation off while she pressed her burnt hand to her skirt. "That was the Great Fireball Jutsu, right?"</p><p>"That's right, you've seen it before?" Musha wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, I've seen you do it before, in fact," Mana recalled the painful memories from the scuffle inside the Ninja Academy when the calamity threatened to swallow the entire village whole.</p><p>"You should try it, really. From your stomach." Musha instructed, showing the magician every tiniest bit of how the technique was performed. "Breathe in… Hold it in your stomach, feel it and give it hell. Charge it up until you cannot hold anymore. Then let the hell you gave it out."</p><p>The magician went through the batch of hand seals, it was extremely difficult and tedious given her aching hand but it was not a matter of being able to do it, it was more a matter of how long it took her. In addition, how much pain and irritation she was willing to sit through for this impromptu training session that may not have wielded much success at all.</p><p>"Great Fireball Jutsu!" Mana yelled out as she felt the hot tingling building up inside her. It felt like the fires just formed like little bubbles before erupting and infecting the rest of the breath in her system. The heat became a mass that was so uncomfortable to hold within that the magician spat it out more out of surprise and discomfort than the fact it was properly built up.</p><p>A grand fireball did not come out from the magician's mouth. What did come out was more like a vomited mass of fire that covered the close-range distance right in front of the magician and evaporated into thin air completely. The girl coughed a pair of times, feeling that very same irritation she felt from her hand getting burnt resonating inside her. Burning sensations tingling from her belly to her throat…</p><p>"Wow! That's amazing!" Musha chucked out with astounding glee like a child in their first firework show. It was a little surprising seeing an adult woman act this way really. "You've picked up this much from just one failed try? It takes children weeks to get this far! Try practicing some more, maybe you'll get it until the end of the evening?"</p><p>All the praising Musha did made Mana feel like some natural genius. While on one side Mana's resounding success compared to children just out of the Academy had a perfectly rational explanation, on the other, it did set Mana up for failure and made the bed she would land on while tumbling down very uncomfortable.</p><p>"Hmmm… That's too bad. You picked up the first stage pretty easily but it doesn't look like you've moved that much farther this evening." Musha sighed after a good couple of hours of the magician almost killing herself by throwing up the fire and spending a good five to ten minutes coughing and wheezing as her throat felt like burning up. It was a terrible feeling, almost felt like drowning in the fire, after a pair of uses, it felt like the type of thing that made people claw their own throats out.</p><p>"Will it always be this bad?" Mana wondered. Her lips worked very oddly, she had her mouth completely stuffed with painkillers once in the Konohagakure Hospital when the medical ninja were regrowing a handful of missing teeth and the numbness felt similar. The girl felt up her lower jaw and her hand tensed up in shock, realizing it was covered in scars.</p><p>"Nah, you're just picking it up. Late, I might add. You're stronger and more durable than your average kid who would be practicing their first fireballs. You can breathe hotter flames and for much longer. I don't see many ten-year-olds breathing fires for four hours straight." Musha pat Mana's back. "Don't worry, they have ointments for that sort of thing in the Hospital. Kids go there with these kinds of injuries all the time. Eventually, they all learn to adapt to their own heat and their bodies protect themselves, you'll get there too."</p><p>"I probably won't." Mana closed her eyes before standing up.</p><p>"What? Learning a new elemental nature too much of a hassle for ya?" the Jounin woman wondered.</p><p>"Not quite, I meant that I won't bother learning that technique. I think I've got the handle on basics so I'll apply them on making a jutsu of my own." Mana tried to grin but her scarred and swollen lip area made her whine out in pain when she tried to stress it too bad.</p><p>"Hmm, that so? It takes ninja months to invent new jutsu and it usually ain't kids that even attempt it." Musha warned the magician. "You need to really understand the basics to invent even the most basic and harmless techniques."</p><p>"Maybe, but I've done it before and with elements I did not have a natural affinity for. Even if my flames will need a couple of years to really feel hot, like my lightning did, I'll make a blazing path on my own. As an entertainer, I really don't like plagiarizing some else's show." The magician made herself look confident despite Musha's warnings.</p><p>"Well, I guess my job here is done. Unless all this tough-talk made you feel like giving it another go? Maybe you can do that special technique of your own right now? Won't know until you try?" Musha taunted the magician but Mana just coughed up some more air and hunched with her hands dragged down almost to the ground.</p><p>"It's no use." The girl admitted. She still felt like there was plenty of chakra in her system, she had, after all, never fully performed the jutsu she was practicing once, however, the state her body was in was troubling and physically beyond the point where the magician could have kept on practicing. "I do humbly thank you for your help, Musha-san!" the girl repurposed her slump into a bow.</p><p>"Awww, shucks…" Musha made a half-assed grin while the woman waved her hand off at the magician.</p><hr/><p>It was surprising, to say the least, to feel the gentle tap of a hand on her shoulder signaling the magician of an outside stimulus that distracted her from the laborious task of working the Liquid Village Sensory System. Mana felt the connection to her temporary colleagues severing, her entire body slumped forward after another ninja that followed the short and plump Village Protection ninja unplugged the magician.</p><p>A feeling of longing overcame the magician for a pair of moments, one that followed every sudden disconnect from the system. One cannot be connected to so many people and get so invested in work without feeling as if a piece of themselves was lost after they've been unplugged.</p><p>"Did I do something wrong?" Mana wondered. There was always an unpleasant burn in her belly when a Village Protection ninja interrupted her work. Big enough of a mistake may have cost her the success of this mission and she was pretty much set for success at the moment. A hitch could have displaced her entire road based on dreams of becoming a Sannin.</p><p>"No. Not that I know, anyway…" the plumpy croaked out while stroking his chin before waving for the magician to stand up and follow him. In mid-turn, he turned around and realized that Mana was in full bodysuit get-up so he nodded his chin toward the changing room.</p><p>While the girl was changing she couldn't help but boil in the soup of unease about this strange ninja and this uncharacteristic cancellation of a profoundly useful job she did for the Village Protection and the entire village. Mana was so anxious to find out what exactly this man's business was so that the unknown could finally choke on itself and disperse that she pretty much dashed the entire way from the changing room back to the man.</p><p>"I've heard you've got a large chakra reserve." The man grumbled. He did not look irritated but the certain croaking quality of his tone and voice made him seem constantly angered even though his entire body looked neutral and sometimes quite content.</p><p>"Compared to a ninja of my rank, yes," Mana confirmed. She may have in fact been underselling it. Ever since starting on working on meditation and careful training of her chakra network through mental stimulation, the magician's chakra may have increased not too far away from the level of an average Jounin. This aspect may have been the only area in which Mana truthfully excelled compared to her peers.</p><p>"Excellent. I've heard from Inoshi and Shikoiko that you're quite talented at picking up new things as well. Perhaps you might help me with the barrier duty." The man raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I am not sure, I am completely unfamiliar with barrier ninjutsu." Mana brushed the back of her head with embarrassment. Even if she was under no obligation to help the Village Protection with this specific area and request, the kunoichi still felt bad that something she was asked to do was outside her reach.</p><p>"Oh, we've got other people, heavy machinery and sealing jutsu for that. All you will need to do is unseal the barriers and use simple barrier repairing busywork. Just pouring chakra into holes, the actual techniques have already been set-up for you, I am sure you will catch on. Name's Yudachi, by the way." The little man gestured with his short but thick hands.</p><p>After being encouraged that the only thing she would require in this venture is a tremendous chakra reserve and stamina to share with the diminished barriers in order to repair them, Mana felt a bit braver about her chances of completing this job. She nodded with greatly diminished hesitation and followed the gleeful shorty to his office where a tall and almost skeletal-looking man with a black ponytail was glaring at the two entrants with black bags all around his eyes.</p><p>"Shikoiko-san!" Mana bowed her head in front of the Village Protection ninja she barely got to know during her time aiding the Village Protection. The Nara waved his hands but he appeared too drained of any energy to even do that much.</p><p>"Here, I got us an aide, since you're so drained all the time." Yudachi grinned while tapping at Mana's back a pair of times. Had the magician been, in any manner of speech, decently tall, the plump man would not have been able to reach even that far.</p><p>"Oh, that's pretty good. You know barrier ninjutsu, Mana?" Shikoiko calmly wondered, which in itself was the most excited Mana had seen the man. All she's been seeing the man react with before was yawning or picking his nose or just haunting the premises like a wicked but lazy spirit.</p><p>"I was told I would not need that. I think the deal was that I would only need my chakra resources." Mana squirmed in discomfort. She felt a little betrayed by this perfectly trustworthy toad-like man.</p><p>"That's just fine, Shikoiko will place a custom reparation seal on every barrier you can fix so that chakra insertion will be all that you need." Yudachi waved it off with both of his hands. "You can do that, don't slack off of this, Shikoiko!" the little man pointed angrily at his colleague.</p><p>"I see… That's a lot of work… But I'm pretty behind so… Whatever…" Shikoiko picked a booger out of his nose before rolling it and flicking it at the direction of the shorty but greatly above his head. This entire time he was looking with simultaneously the most indifferent as well as the most sleepy eyes Mana had experienced. "Then you're buying me dinner after work. I'll need to replenish my strength if I am to catch up on… All the work I'm behind…"</p><p>The Nara appeared to doze off in the middle of some sentences, he did not snooze or fall asleep but he simply froze before breathing in slowly, yawning or sighing that the trouble of speech weighed so heavily upon his frail, malnourished shoulders.</p><p>"If you ate half the stuff I bought you, you'd have my stature, you lazy bastard." Yudachi waved the two off. Shikoiko was about to reply something in return but he just sighed instead and began to slowly crawl towards the door. Turning at Mana with his baggy and bloodshot eyes as if signaling her to come with. The last thing the magician wanted to do was piss this man off by proving it necessary for him to expend the effort needed to speak a word.</p><hr/><p>"You know, you may just learn a lot about barriers by repairing them. They're… Not really that difficult…" Shikoiko engaged in small talk while Mana placed her hands on the glowing sealing glyph the man had just placed that allowed anyone to insert chakra willingly into the seal from which fed the entire area of the village barrier.</p><p>"I don't think you are correct with that. Barrier ninjutsu required precise talent and control…" Mana broke a sweat as it sometimes felt like gallons of her actual life force was extracted every time she placed her hands on the cracks of the barrier. She was just about becoming accustomed to sensing the barriers and various seals around her to tell just by her sensory sensations alone if an unconcealed barrier of a certain rank was present and if it was broken.</p><p>"Maybe the programming you place on barriers… With sealing techniques is pretty tough… But the basic concept is pretty easy to pick up…" Shikoiko sighed.</p><p>Over the next couple of hours of prolonged and filled with needless pauses talks, while Mana poured her chakra into cracks, filling them up, she found out a few interesting tidbits about barrier ninjutsu. Learning about it from someone that was quite talented in it and had to learn it by themselves, with the added bonus of being immensely lazy and needing to do it quick and easy, was just as potentially quick and easy.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Barrier!" Shikoiko placed his hands in front after leaning back to a wall and molding up chakra for a pair of seconds. Upon him extending his limbs forward a floating blue rectangle made of solid chakra appeared. The rectangular barrier had reflective properties and looked ideally healthy that way. "You try… Just imagine wanting… Someone really far away…"</p><p>Mana thought the idea was truly stupid but she had experience with protective ninjutsu having learned the Magical Bubble technique already. This could not have been that much different, right? Just to get the lazy Village Protection ninja off her back, Mana weaved a bunch of hand seals and moved her hands to her hips to build up chakra just like Shikoiko had done before. Once she felt confident with the amount of chakra, the lingering and imagined desire for the drowsy Nara to keep away from her and the compression of all those things into a singular shape, Mana extended her hands to the front.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Barrier!" she yelled out. She could feel it. Some invisible and unfocused but very real force. Judging from the barely traceable chakra signature, it most likely would have toppled if a nasty wind blew her direction and would not have prevented a curious passer-by from passing by it and dispersing it, completely oblivious of the pitiful shape's existence, but it was there nevertheless.</p><p>"Heh… I got you to waste your… Energy some more… You'll be begging for food… Later…" Shikoiko yawned.</p><p>Mana's final days of assisting the Village Protection for her mission were coming to an end with the setting of the burning solar disc in the horizon.</p>
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<a name="section0488"><h2>488. A Single Gun And A Badge On The Table</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Thank you for your time and effort. You've done a remarkable work, far beyond what we've expected to get when we ordered that mission." Boss Midoben spoke in a tough and official tone. Mana felt like a miserable soldier who lost everything they had and stood in front of a spokesperson who just told them how grateful the village was for their sacrifice.</p><p>"Little Honda. There is no investigation on him, is there?" Mana spoke with bitterness in her voice. The last days working for Village Protection were spent patching up barriers and getting bled dry of her chakra to the point of exhaustion where she barely even wanted to chase after Honda at the end of the day.</p><p>"If you ever decide to work for us in the future, and, obviously, we'd like to see that, you could use some attitude adjustment," Midoben observed. "You were at the front of the line this whole time, working on the field, observing the chakra signatures on the system, watching the barriers. You were the investigation all along. I thought that after checking every nook and cranny you would have gotten the clue already. Age is an ugly thing. Holding back such potential."</p><p>Mana looked up to meet the eyes of the boss of the Village Protection. She was not sure if she should feel pissed, used or surprised by the way she's been used and how exactly the Village Protection was searching for Honda.</p><p>"Honda is a monster, was that not what you reported to Lord Sixth? An abomination of experimentation with the size of a house and the mind of a toddler, does that strike you as the type to evade our detection? The reason why we're not all over Little Honda is that he is not a threat to the village, because he's no longer inside the village." Midoben stated, pouring with boldness and bluntness.</p><p>"Did you pick up on him leaving?" Mana wondered.</p><p>Midoben turned around, he refused to entertain this topic any further. The man showed as much after he picked up Mana's documentation and handed it to her. A report of everything she's done for the Village Protection, a glowing recommendation for a future application and a little something that Mana noticed carrying a sealed envelope stuffed in the middle. It most likely would not have submitted to attempts of being opened without the handiwork of the Hokage's Assistant.</p><p>"I look forward to employing your services in the future." Midoben turned his head halfway back to let Mana know she could leave anytime she chose to.</p><p>"That's only if I choose to work with the Village Protection in the future." Mana almost growled out. This was not quite her way of talking to people or handling things but if there was one type of people that pissed her off more than people that enjoyed taking lives it was people who looked the other way while declaring themselves stout defenders of life.</p><p>"You will have no other choice. Your dream is to go high, is it not? Jounin, Sannin, Kage… Whatever it is, you are not from a clan influential and powerful enough to get you there without a proper specialization. There is more to being a Kage or a Sannin than just leaving on field missions. Sometimes, to gather trust and influence, you need to sit down and grind a little." Midoben turned his head back at his candles, he may have been smiling or gritting his teeth, from where Mana stood, she could have never told.</p><p>"Nothing builds more trust than the cooking ninja. You can't eat empty promises of protection." Mana was getting sick of the office and the man running it. Midoben was not a bad man, likely he was not even a bad ninja but Mana wanted to confront Honda and bring him back home so much that, the way this man has been holding her back from it, he embodied every obstacle in her way.</p><p>The head of the Village Protection did not reply, he barely twitched a muscle but Mana could have sworn he was grinning even if she could not see it. It was a social feeling of understanding that went a bit beyond just seeing or sensing something like one's chakra signature. It was much more ethereal.</p><hr/><p>"Well… Mission completed." Lord Sixth casually remarked after flipping the folders Mana submitted. "You know, I did sign you up for this mission for a reason. I normally would not just hand out C-Rank missions to some of my better chuunin."</p><p>The assistant opened the hibiscus-colored envelope by pressing two of his fingers at the glowing seal glyph and releasing the seal. The man's eyes ran down the contents before handing the letter down to Lord Sixth. While Lord Sixth was far too experienced in the art of lying, given his career in the Black Ops, the assistant was not. Mana could read him like a historical volume. Something in that letter was quite displeasing.</p><p>"It was a recruitment drive then?" Mana wondered. She needed a distraction, the last thing that needed to happen now was the trio inside the Administration office looking at each other and wondering who saw what off of whose face. "I think I'll hold back for now."</p><p>"I see…" Lord Sixth folded the letter before reconsidering and pressing it in his fist. "Do you have any plans for the future then? You seem to be training fairly intensely lately so I was wondering if you were leaving to train abroad. Your ex-teammates are without a doubt getting the training of their lives right now and you may want something more than the casual intensity of the training grounds."</p><p>"I do intend on leaving on a training trip, with your permission, Lord Sixth." Mana bowed her upper body before returning to her previous state. "But before I leave, there is a matter I must settle. This Little Honda debacle weighs to heavily to let me clear my mind."</p><p>"We do not have any missions planned on pursuing him at the moment so whatever you do – you'll do without the backup of the village." The Hokage's assistant announced.</p><p>"No missions? But Little Honda is the face of the entire disappearance catastrophe. It became so infamous because of Little Honda and the villagers will only once again feel safe if Little Honda is returned and healed." Mana was careful not to worsen her relationship with Lord Sixth any more than she already had done before. The last thing she needed now was a suspension.</p><p>"Perhaps. But in my opinion, time without a single disappearance will have just the same effect without the wasted manpower chasing a genetically altered monstrosity." Lord Sixth observed. His face was really serious. Serious in a way that clever people would not have attempted to probe deeper. Mana was anything but smart but in this case, she had to play smarter than she's been doing up until now. Both her chance of confronting Honda as well as ever as much as dreaming of becoming a Sannin was on the line.</p><p>"Also, a child." Mana let it out in an almost pleading tone.</p><p>"The situation with Little Honda is quite unfortunate. Even if he is alive and out there, somewhere, we simply do not have the manpower to afford the ridiculous quest of catching him. Need I remind the person who helped settle the matter of the fact we won't have a batch of new genin for a couple of years now while the field tests our current roster of ninja and thins their ranks every day?" Sixth's assistant replied.</p><p>"I understand…" Mana sighed while bowing her head submissively again.</p><p>Lord Sixth looked almost relieved to hear the magician's submission. He crumbled the previously sealed envelope and the letter within with his fist before tossing it over his shoulder and right into the half-full bin.</p><p>"If you do not plan on leaving immediately, given our limited manpower situation in mind, you would be wise to expect to hear from us again in the nearest future." Lord Sixth advised the magician before releasing her. Mana bowed to one knee before departing the Hokage's office and disappeared into the busy fray of the bustling Konohagakure Administration.</p><hr/><p>"Fire Style: Hitsuke!" Mana chanted while blowing out a stream of superheated air from her mouth. She aimed the stream around and aside of the little creek, around a damaged tree stump before letting the point of the target envelop a small bush not twelve meters away from her.</p><p>Slowly but assuredly, the bush caught flames. Almost at the same rate as if the magician had popped a handful of sparks on it with flint. The trick to set something ablaze without the use of a highly concentrated ray of sunlight, a lighter or a flint was nice for a magic trick, which incidentally was Mana's area of expertise, but it was by far Mana's least powerful ninjutsu techniques.</p><p>Even if the girl knew she was being silly to get disappointed in the lack of success of developing a jutsu in just a handful of days, something that may have normally taken anywhere from months up to a lifetime, she had expected more of her elemental affinity nature. It seemed like Mana's entire body and mind was not in complete sync and pushing her from the back like they used to. There had to be reasons for that. Maybe she was still holding back because she did not feel like repeating the whole burning off half of her face experience from a week back?</p><p>"What's wrong, kid?" Hiro hummed with confusion and almost petrifying panic. "You never just stopped a show early."</p><p>"I'm sorry, I know it's bad for the finances but… I need to run just this once!" Mana slammed her palms together in a pleading gesture and bowed.</p><p>The sensation she felt on the stage was immense! It was no usual excitement of a little bit of magic in her life or stage fright either. It was the abyssal fear of drowning, chest locking up, lungs desperately pounding at the ribs trying to tear themselves apart just so some more air could vent into the airway through the holes. Even if that was not entirely how breathing worked… It felt like sifting into an infinite desert of quicksand, like floating in front of a blazing, giant star in the middle of space, eyes rolled back and whited out from its magnificence and the absolute death that laid in being around it.</p><p>Mana had to fight every inch of the way so that she did not faint outright. She could not have been the only sensor to pick that up. Still, she would have been a fool to expect assistance or reinforcements, she worked alongside some of the most accomplished sensors in the village and knew none of them saw chakra the way she did. They'd have analyzed its size, its intensity and not the taint reeking from it. To them, chakra was just a number on a table and truly high numbers could have belonged to any of the insanely powerful ninja in the village.</p><p>The magician dashed out, quickly bouncing in between the walls of two buildings and swinging atop cables to reach the rooftop level. Using acrobatics and natural grace and swiftness instead of chakra augmentation, she will be needing every bit of her strength soon, if tips were to pay off.</p><p>Mana dashed across the village, right toward the chakra signature that nearly knocked her out of her boots and failed her magic trick. That would not have been the first time that Mana messed up on stage but it would have certainly been the first where she did not have a clever quip to play it off or a ploy to act like that was all a part of her plan, like good entertainers should. The illusion of hiding mistakes was just as important as the illusion that was meant to impress.</p><p>That was Little Honda. It had to be. Nothing else was this rotten, this abominable and this much against the natural laws of nature and the way chakra worked. Nothing else invited as much pity. It was not Little Honda's fault that it was the way the boy was, inside the mind of a horrifying abomination of flesh and whatever unnatural means held it together, was a boy who may not have been aware of what had happened to him. Honda invited as many tears in Mana's eyes as he invited tongue-sticking in disgust.</p><p>It was the memory that guided the magician's path. Like a beacon, one that usually was not entirely trustworthy and flawless but, due to the coloration in the beacon's light and the figurative stench emanating from it as well as the ugly shadow that it cast when Mana gazed at its light, it was just enough to lead the magician out the village gate and into the untended wilderness.</p><p>She had a handful of hours until the village gate closed and she'd be suspected of something due to her position as a ninja. She needed to make the moments count. Luckily, the late spring provided with plenty of daylight for her to explore well into the later hours.</p><p>Had Mana been a civilian, nobody would have batted an eye about her departure – she'd have been free to go wherever, since she was a kunoichi with valuable intelligence, however, she was, oddly enough, more limited with the freedom of movement, even with the ninja villages in as grand of relationships as ever.</p><p>Mana blurry image stabilized at her complete stop in front of a gaping hole. Like a jaw of a toothless demonic serpent, the sewer spilled mucky weed and goop of mysterious nature, washing it all away with foamy, dirty water. The industrial demonic python was a slobbering one… Regardless, Mana stepped into the depths of its path, planning on ending up somewhere underneath the village sewer system at some point.</p><p>She was wandering completely blind here. Honda's signature disappeared just as quickly as it rose up. All Mana had was the memory of some of the worst feeling in her gut she ever had being somewhere inside this maze that spilled into a little creek outside the gate. The girl's skin was rebelling, picking up in goosebumps, sticking the little hair up like a band of bloodthirsty bandits raised their swords at the scent of a good plunder.</p><p>"Not the best memories of this place, huh?" Mana spoke to herself, letting her voice leave her mouth in a whisper that emanated and bounced off of whatever it found and turned out much louder than the magician initially wanted it to be.</p><p>All this nausea in Mana's gut, all this violent counter-reaction to entering these dark and damp labyrinths was well-justified. The last time Mana was inside this place she bathed in some chemicals meant to conserve biomaterial and the natural depths of the sewer. The rational part of the magician understood the more instinct-driven desire to get out well.</p><p>Still, she threaded on.</p><p>Taking almost random turns, just going wherever the sense of direction and memory of the noxious chakra signature led her. Little Honda felt so detestable that even after the disappearance of his chakra there was slight "aftertaste" lingering in the area. It was by no means traceable from inside the village but now that Mana closed in on the sewer where Honda was supposed to reside in, she felt it.</p><p>Amongst other, not too surprising things. There was a handful of civilian signatures nearby. The magician once again found an excuse to use some of her superhuman speed to trek this dark and damp maze to catch up with the civilian signatures. They were moving and fast, for a normal person. As if frightened by someone or something. It was about as good of a clue as any, it may have very well been the only chance Mana had at catching Honda. If the boy could have been caught at all, that was…</p><p>"Wait!" Mana yelled out before appearing in front of three civilians, their yellow tracksuits were drenched in blood and their helmets were cracked. It looked like they were supposed to have portable flashlights in their pockets but no light came out from them, they also looked pretty wet and dirty, suggesting that they were not all too subtle and precise in their navigation and often slipped off the more stable, if a little slippery metal grates and into the flow of sewer-water below.</p><p>"Holy shit… How did you find us? You're a ninja, right?" the villager spoke quietly as if trying not to alert someone or something. "We thought we were all by ourselves here…"</p><p>The trio was gasping for air. One of the three was knee-deep in sewer water and was less running rather than simply shuffling against the flow. All of them looked pretty drenched, it was moments like these that made the magician appreciate her lack of a sense of smell.</p><p>"Keep it down, I'm not sure a single ninja, some child, can stand up to that thing." Another sewer worker slammed his dirty and wet palm against the mouth of his colleague without considering the fact of what it was he was doing and its implications. All three of the men were too frightened for their lives to care about something as trivial as common decency and cleanliness.</p><p>"No, this is good, she came in here, meaning she can take us out of here, right?" the third raised a point that made Mana's heart shatter like a panel of glass that was hit with a hammer by an overacting, capricious teenager.</p><p>"Y-Yeah… Let's go…" Mana's head sunk deeper while she grit her teeth. It was not the fact that she had an obligation to rescue these three that made her feel so crushed, it was the fact that she was letting Honda go on her own free will. After all, was it not the obsession with the result instead of the steps along the way that separated Mana from the creator of this monster?</p><p>"I thought we were goners. What was that thing? It tore through people like it was tearing paper…" one of the workers sighed with relative ease for the moment.</p><p>"I think it flat out ate Rurise…" another added. "What if it intended to eat us next?"</p><p>"It didn't… I saw Rurise drip from the beast's mouth, it did not seem to like his own actions too much either…" the third reflected. "That's it, I'm moving to décor industry…"</p><p>Mana wanted to object to the three talking so leniently and copiously but she would not be tracking Little Honda through sound anyway. These men just saw that which gave Mana nightmares, the least they could do was speak about what was on their mind…</p><p>The more immediate thought on the magician's mind was – could she protect them if Little Honda really was still after them?</p>
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<a name="section0489"><h2>489. A Dangerous Caprice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Could you please describe me the place you were attacked at? I need to find that thing and keep it from hurting anyone else." Mana asked the three men once light made her eyes burn up with irritation.</p><p>"You're going back? You're crazy! That thing will eat you up like it did Rurise!" one of the sewer workers objected.</p><p>"That creature is a child trapped in a monster's body. It is confused. It rests inside a dark and smelly sewer so it is scared. It likely cannot control its own strength." Mana was justifying her own stupidity to herself as much as she did it to the sewer workers she had led outside. "I'm going to lead you to the gate but I need to go back and find it."</p><p>"Confused things don't eat living people up. It is dangerous more than anything else." Another worker objected to Mana's idea.</p><p>"It's near Filter 72-B, a crossing between Iguana, Skink and Komodo channels." One of the three let it out. His voice was not happy but after seeing the determination blazing in the magician's body the man apparently had decided that pointing her in the right direction was the correct thing to do.</p><p>"The sewer channels have names?" Mana expressed her curiosity that merely tried to mask the rising sense of dread in her chest.</p><p>"Of course they do, do you know how massive a sewer system is?" the worker replied. "You just take this pipeline and go straight until the fourth fork in the road, then turn right, then turn right, left and take the utmost right in the final fork, should take you to the right corner, you cannot miss it."</p><p>"Yeah," Mana sighed. "It's only all dark, stuffy with dirt and filled with turns and forks… How could I possibly get lost?"</p><p>"Hey, it's your choice to go back in, not ours. We're not going back to work 'till we see the pictures of that thing dead on the info board." The first worker took a deep breath of the freshened up air of the great outdoors. Speeding a little, but not too much so that the workers would lose track of her, Mana led the workers back to the village gate.</p><p>"Whoa! What's wrong with them?" one of the gate guards rushed up to the party of bloodied and scared workers. The gruesome sight was beginning to slowly terrify the surrounding civilians as the gate was usually a point of interest for their curious glares, the time was not exactly fitting for people and caravans to come in and out freely like during the trading rush hours.</p><p>"They've been attacked. There were multiple casualties. Whatever attacked these men is lurking in the Konohagakure sewer system. I'm going back after it." Mana quickly gave the gate guards the gist of it.</p><p>"Wait, no! You need a proper response squad, weigh in the threat, let the Administration decide on how many ninja are needed. You may be completely outside your league!" the gate guard objected.</p><p>"There's no time. We need a quick first response before Little Honda gets away." Mana refused the notion with a sense of calm in her face. Honda only peeked his head out for a brief moment, letting his latent, rotten chakra out for a split-second before disappearing. Who knew when he'd appear again and when he would – casualties would follow. That was something Mana would not allow, even if the cost for this approach would be her own life.</p><p>"We're not letting you go off after that thing alone, Konoha's Sorceress." The second gate guard blitzed to Mana from behind. By the time Mana's body realized that she had to prepare for a brawl, she was already cornered and all she could do with this information was to follow it happen with her sharpened senses.</p><p>What was she supposed to do? Engaging these two would once again get the magician in trouble, in the best-case scenario she would get suspended again and deepen the mutual distrust between her and Lord Sixth even more. In the worst-case scenario, she was looking at Ninja Tribunal, probably indefinite suspension or prison time. Given that this was not even Mana's first time acting up in front of the Hokage's authority and decisions, she'd not be in any position to expect softer blows coming her way.</p><p>"I'm sorry." Mana closed her eyes. One of the guards charged in with a wide-stance guard, ready to apply a subduing hold on the magician. These two must have known that in her current state Mana was a challenge to any one of them, she matched them in rank and possibly surpassed them in actual battlefield experience. Taking both of them at once, everyone fighting all-out would mean Mana's definitive loss, definitely, but ninja rarely slugged this way.</p><p>All that the gate guard caught in his grasp was a shower of flower petals that the as strong as it was warm spring breeze washed away and bashed mercilessly against the face of the gate guard that stood behind the magician, trying to prevent her departure.</p><p>"We need to start a search and get a capture party ready." The gate guard lit up a smoke, frustrated by the way that two ninja who each matched the opponent in strength and speed were played by a minor.</p><p>"Search and capture? For whom? Mana or that thing?" the second gate guard joked, stroking his thick, brown hair by the handful. The second man harbored similar distaste in the way that someone who looked like a child had eluded them with a simple illusion. "You! Where were you three attacked?"</p><p>"Filter 72-B." a different worker from the one that was addressed, replied. The man saw the intent of lying in his colleague's eyes. That would not have been very wise.</p><p>"Holy shit, that place actually has structure and a plan?" the first gate guard fixed his sliding atop of his eyebrows headband protector.</p><p>"Of course it has a goddamn plan, do you know how massive the sewer system is?!"</p><hr/><p>Mana may have done it now. She would be underneath the village, still inside the village walls. It was a fact that the Village Protection ninja working on the Liquid Village Sensory System could confirm if needed. That meant she could not by definition be treated as rogue, she may have defied orders of a pair of ninja who were not technically her superiors nor did she defect to another village with intent of selling it her secrets or joining their ninja force, regardless, what she did was eminently reckless and even more stupid.</p><p>She could still feel it, the rising aftertaste of Little Honda's chakra. Like a smell that a hurt animal let out that lead the great cat right to it, except, in this case, the prey was a hundredfold more dangerous one than the pursuer. Mana barely needed to recall the directions she were given before, something was different, Honda was heating up, he was emanating his suppressed rot all over the place. It was heavily toned down from the real thing Mana had sensed a handful of times before, it could not even distract the magician from bustling signatures in the village above.</p><p>"Honda…" Mana uttered at a hunched over, fleshy giant, crouching over and staring at something in the water. By now the little kid was even in a more pitiful state than before. Its skin was pale white and beginning to shred off his flesh in some parts, his eyes were completely whited out and drowning in black bags. It was near-impossible to believe that this creature was once just an unfortunate toddler. "Let's go home."</p><p>The colossus extended his quivering and toned with muscles hand into the light, a small beacon falling from the opening high up above. When the monstrous limb lit up with sunlight, Mana could see the artificially cultivated, massive muscles sewn up on the boy's reworked body. The anatomy of Little Honda made absolutely no sense, but Guru Ayushi managed to make the monster work, somehow.</p><p>"Missy…" a horrendous voice, both pitiful and frightening in its tone and volume echoed through the sewer area that the two were in. "There's a monster in the water."</p><p>Mana's eyes wandered at the peaceful reflection of Honda's own shape that petrified the child. As the abomination continued to stare at its own reflection in the filtered out water, illuminated with the artificial lighting that the workers stuck to the walls when they worked as well as the sunlight that fell in through the cracks, Honda's chakra continued to skyrocket. The monster was shedding itself of its humanity with each passing moment of fear it was in.</p><p>That was why Mana could not find it. It was being peaceful, it was being awfully quiet and Little Honda was managing to hide without his own conscious intent or effort.</p><p>"H-Honda-chan…" Mana tried to distract the hulking science experiment from what terrified his childish mind, if Honda was not going to be afraid, maybe he could have still retained its childlike innocence and be peacefully brought back.</p><p>That was as grand of a thought as it was naïve. When the monstrous figure jumped up on its feet, its eyes dyeing red of blood that burst on the inside from the immense tonus of his hand-crafted muscular anatomy and the sophisticated, experimental weave of his blood vessels, Mana realized that between the two, she was the one being too childish.</p><p>"Don't talk down to me!" Honda roared out, his chakra hit the peak that Mana remembered, luckily enough, by now Mana had sensed it just about enough times to adjust her sensory. She extended the scope as far as she could. A two-tower-tall cake was only impressive to someone who had their mouths open a few inches, after witnessing her own fair share of towering cakes, Mana had learned to unhinge her jaw and open up as wide as her mouth needed to be.</p><p>The monster charged at the magician with a silly push. Thrusting his palms forward, the childish manner of attack and lack of any substance or style behind Little Honda's actions was not to be looked down on, however. In her entire life, Mana had not faced anything more dangerous, anything more defiant to the rules of nature and the conventional scales of might. To say only this much was to ignore the fact that Mana was enclosed with the bestial toddler inside a sewer, severely limiting her moving space.</p><p>Moving space that the monstrous, put together from muscle and tissue as if it was a curious and grotesque puzzle of sorts, hands covered up almost entirely when Little Honda's palms extended to the front.</p><p>Evading would have been foolish. All that Mana could hope for was a miracle, that the sleight of hand which she had honed for her entire life would pull her out once again. A bite in her thumb. The hands were moving in closer. The monster's size limited its speed somewhat but the slowdown was deceitfully pathetic. The madness and rage, let alone the unconventional physiology that knew no limits of how its limbs and muscle could be twisted and turned, made Honda faster than he had any right to be.</p><p>The sewer lit up with a sapphire-colored glow. Once that blinded Honda for just a moment and managed to derail the charge a little, slow it down, have the confused monster turn his palm sideways at just the right angle to greatly reduce the amount of force that would meet Usuzoku's blade once he popped out of the hat.</p><p>A loud clang. A mighty popping sound followed by a chain of shattering rain of steel that was still sharp enough to dig ever so slightly into the surfaces it hit. Some chunks littered Honda's fleshy and massive body as well but the monster appeared to barely even register it.</p><p>"I'm a big boy! I'm already this old! Don't talk down to me!" Honda roared out, shaking the foundations of the very sewer he stood in. Mana was not entirely sure of her position. She could feel the taste of blood in her mouth, multiple of her teeth were dislodged and bleeding heavily, she was not entirely sure why she could only see white and why someone was shrieking into both her ears.</p><p>Where even was Usuzoku? Mana could only feel the irritation in her throat that was also stinging at her nostrils, the usual sign of smoke but not the smell. Could he have been beaten and dispelled just mere milliseconds after he was appeared to attempt and block the beast's charge? His slowed down, weakened charge?</p><p>Cold air brushed against Mana's cheeks, making the magician wonder just where exactly she was. Once sight returned to her eyes, in a blurry state, she stared at the night breeze up above and the completely totaled sewer system. The flow of the sewer water was blocked off by the collapsed ceiling of the tunnel and layers upon layers of dirt, rock and whatever buildings sunk into the sinkhole that a childish push of Honda's hand had created.</p><p>Mana wanted to let her head just slip back, just relax it and fall asleep because damn if she wanted to just pass out. Never has the force of gravity felt more powerful and more alluring but the girl pushed her upper body off the wet floor, feeling and hearing her own blood dripping from somewhere. Her head was cracked open pretty badly, light nausea was working its way into Mana's system but her chakra network was playing its part for now.</p><p>Because the magician demanded her body to stay in fighting shape, it worked overtime to make sure that she was as presentable in combat as possible right after being beaten near-senseless by a mere distracted push. Ninja were buzzing about. Some of them were worried about Mana's state, the magician felt the light alleviation of the pain and the sense of weightlessness that the blood loss was giving her. Whichever medical ninja of the bunch was treating her, they forced the magician to stay down while they patched her.</p><p>"What happened here? Was it that thing that escaped that cult's lab again?" A flak jacket wearing ninja Mana knew only by sight asked. The magician could barely muster up the strength to speak now that she was forced down and kept this way so that she could be given elementary battlefield treatment.</p><p>The two gate guards were amongst the ninja that flooded into the massive hole that Honda had made. They pointed at Mana and tried to explain it to the other ninja that she ran off to confront the monster all by herself.</p><p>"We've got neither the time nor the manpower to keep hold of one of the trickiest ninja in our village. If she wants to help, we would be wise to use that help." The chuunin that appeared to be in the front of the fold of ninja pondered while stroking his chin. "How is her condition?"</p><p>"She's taken a mean hit, she should be up in a bit but I wouldn't advise her to fight in this state. Multiple fractures, pretty mean bruises that would require more extensive treatment than the quick patch-up I'm doing and an unparalleled stress to her chakra network. From where I am at, it looks like a ram meant to take down buildings slammed against a chain-link fence and, somehow, the fence held it together." The medical ninja explained, looking at both the ninja leading the emergency reaction squad and back at Mana.</p><p>"We don't have the luxury to call on jounin right now. Some of them are out on a mission, some of them are preparing to join us. The best we can do is track the monster and see to it that once the jounin do join in on the fun they can confront it right away. Stay on its tracks but stay out of its way!" the leading ninja ordered.</p><p>The rest of the ninja scattered, they did not even bother to ask Mana which way did Little Honda go. To be honest, with the nasty hit she took, she was not entirely sure she could tell. It may have dived in underwater and moved to one of the larger areas of the sewer where it had more space to breathe and move in, it may have leaped right out through the sinkhole it had made and begun wandering around the village, like a time bomb waiting to go off.</p><p>If a villager notices Little Honda and as much as points a finger at the poor boy, he'll go off again. This time, when he does flip out, there will not be just a handful of civilians working in the sewers within his reach, there will be an entire ninja village to take out. Gripping her burning and spinning head in between her arms, glaring at the hazy image of her own grazed and blood-covered fingers and hands, Mana sat up.</p><p>"Leave it to us now." The medical ninja smiled. "I can help you get home if you need it. How are you feeling?"</p><p>"Fine. I'll get back myself." Mana smiled back at the kind man who stayed behind to make sure she got the treatment and that she was strong enough to make her own way home. Encouraged by this bold smile, the man disappeared in a speed-made blur while it ran off to follow his colleagues who thought they were hot on the monster's track.</p><p>Except Mana did not intend on going home. These ninja were just a tiny bit more experienced than her, less than a third of that group was more powerful and skilled and experienced than Mana. All of them were just first responders and none of them would have faired any better in the arduous task of halting Honda's rampage if the need for such a task rose. She could not allow those people to confront Honda. They would not be fighting that thing to stop it, they would not even attempt to reason with it. All they'd be gunning for was to kill it.</p><p>If this was how mad Honda got just because he thought Mana was talking down to him, just how livid would he become once someone as much as touches him more rudely than the boy is used to in his past life?</p>
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<a name="section0490"><h2>490. Involvement</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The limited battlefield patching that the medical ninja did on Mana did wonders, considering the brief time that the man spent on it. Mana was usually not the toughest person in the room but her chakra size was considerable, given her specialized training. Larger chakra meant higher thresholds to which chakra augmentation could have stretched. Still, if her augmentations were ever broken and she was caught unprepared like this again, she could have died instantly.</p><p>The very first thing on Mana's mind, after scolding herself for letting Honda escape was done with, was worry over Usuzoku's condition. This way of dealing with Honda's attack was proven by fate to be ultimately the correct one. Had Mana used her illusions to attempt to escape, there was limited space for her to maneuver in so her illusionary distraction body would not have done her much good. Had she tried a protective measure, like mustering up a barrier or using her Magical Bubble technique, it would have burst even quicker than Usuzoku folded to the immense force of the monster.</p><p>She should have summoned someone, asked them how Usuzoku was… No. That would use precious chakra as well as make the rabbits involve themselves in the fight with Little Honda. At this point, Mana saw all too clearly that it was too dangerous for anyone else to get involved. The girl's bloodied hand gripped at her aching chest while tears ran down her cheeks. Trembling, the magician removed her hat and tensed up her grazed hand to let some of her wounds bleed a little.</p><p>Mana placed her palm into the hat, letting some of her blood cover the sealing glyph. After that point, she removed the hand from the hat and just observed as a slender yet fit shape jumped out in a purple blur. Usubane looked at Mana with scared eyes, they were nothing like the energetic and cheerful orbs that the young rabbit usually looked at the world around her with.</p><p>"M-Mana-san…" Usubane cried out.</p><p>"How is he? Is he alive?" Mana grumbled. Her voice sounded a little raspy and sleepy, it was the pain and the exhaustion that made her sound that way.</p><p>"Yeah. I've never seen anyone kick Usuzoku-san's ass this hard. What did we get into here? What kind of battle did that?" the rabbit wondered looking petrified in fear and the responsibility that now rested on Usubane's shoulders – to assist Mana in dealing with the undertaking she took up.</p><p>"He was pushed." Mana sighed.</p><p>"Pushed?" Usubane looked up in the sky, her eyes looked almost pleading.</p><p>"Look, I just wanted to know if Zoku was alright. I… I should not have summoned him. It was the first thing that came to mind and…" Mana dragged her trembling hands over her messy hair.</p><p>"If he was not there, you would have been the one to get pushed!" Usubane snapped back at the magician. "Whatever you got yourself into, I'm gonna kick them and punch them as hard as I can and sort the odds later."</p><p>This was what Mana feared of. Without the rabbit's own will, she was unable to force them to go back into the hat and to return to the new Rabbit Caves. Perhaps summoning Usubane was the wrong choice, Mana's mind was too hazy and she did not always have a choice of who it was that she summoned.</p><p>The magician and her rabbit made their way into the main and the more populated streets. Almost instantly the sights of everyone around turned to Mana and the rabbit beside her, luckily the signs of battle on the magician sort of freaked the people out and convinced them not to approach her. Mana loved fans of her show and she appreciated common human kindness but right now, she already had way too much on her plate.</p><p>"So where is that bastard?" Usubane asked. Her eyes still gaped wide, she was itching to fight but she was nowhere near confident and feared the very same fight she wanted. This certain feeling of being overburdened by the responsibility one took up was not entirely alien to Mana as well, the magician was a little charmed seeing this particular trait in the young rabbit she worked with.</p><p>"Don't know. He got away. The other ninja ran off out the village gate, they think he may have run off out of Konoha. That would be the logical thing to do if you make some noise inside the ninja village – you get the hell out of there while you still can, no matter who you are." Mana replied. Her head hurt, the magician pressed her quivering hand to her forehead as if it could have helped from the pain at all. She was not the one with the healing touch.</p><p>"Is there anyone we can call for help?" Usubane wondered. "Those genin really came in for the clutch save last time."</p><p>"Not a chance." Mana sighed. "Someone already got hurt. If some ninja will notice the fight and rush in to assist, there will be nothing we can do but I will not ask someone to put themselves in front of Honda. I'm partially responsible for him being created in the first place…"</p><p>"That's suicidal though…" Usubane replied, her tone did not sound like that of scolding but rather one of a complaint. She tried to reason with Mana but a single glare into the magician's eyes revealed that Mana was ready to go at it alone until the end rather than ask someone for help again. "Oh well, it's not like that guy can hide inside a village. Someone will come in for an assist, I'm sure of it."</p><p>"When those workers were attacked… When Honda showed up again, they said he tried eating someone." Mana mumbled out, she sounded more like a delirious hospital patient rather than a ninja on a job.</p><p>"Tried eating?" Usubane stuck out her tongue and squinted one of her eyes in disgust. "As if in a human?"</p><p>"Yeah. For whatever reason, he tried eating someone but he did not like it so he threw them up. He is a toddler in a monster's body, he must be hungry. He's been held in sleep for so long, who knows when was the last time he was actually fed." Mana guessed. "Those ninja believe they're dealing with someone clever, they're not. Honda won't run, he will go deeper inside the village."</p><p>Both the kunoichi and the rabbit by her side turned toward the colorful vendors and shops illuminating the evening sky in the distance. There was a white, purple and indigo colored gloom from all the light that beamed right up into the sky from the neon signs and street lights. All tremendous attractions for a hungry child in a monster's body.</p><p>"I would really like it if you went back home," Mana uttered without looking at the rabbit beside her. "The last thing I need weighing on my consciousness is me calling you onto your last battlefield."</p><p>"Right back at ya." Usubane crossed her arms over her chest and pouted her lips. She did not want this fight but she sure as hell was going to swing her meanest blows in it. "You should just leave this to the big guns. If the monster is gonna raise some noise – he will get shut down."</p><p>"They will try to kill him." Mana shook her head with newly accepted serenity. She feared this upcoming scuffle, at the same time - she accepted it. "I cannot allow that to happen either. I had a role in him becoming this way, it was because of my words that all of this mess started swirling."</p><p>Usubane looked at Mana without uttering a word. When she accepted to train with Usuzoku with the hopes of one day working alongside the savior of the Ninja Rabbits and the person that put the rabbits back on the honor map, she did not count on there being so many terms and conditions in her role.</p><p>"This whole district's one big beacon, where to?" Usubane asked. Determined to see this battle through, however it went. Not a minute later a loud yell echoed in the distance followed by a crashing sound. Mana landed atop of an electricity pole to observe the scene of destruction – a totaled sweets vendor and smashed dorayaki scattered all over the ground. A cowering man hidden behind garbage bins, still too shaken to peek from behind them.</p><p>In a single dash, Mana covered the distance between her and the man, even without using her chakra sensory she felt Usubane following not too far behind. The twisted after-sense of Honda's chakra was all over the village like a choking fog of tear gas.</p><p>"Which way did he go?" Mana asked. Due to the recent injuries, she felt a little dizzy and light on her feet but, in practice, she appeared quite capable of staying on her feet. Perhaps she had it in her to hold Honda off from hurting anyone else? She was lucky that this man managed to escape without irritating Honda too much and that the giant had already learned that he was not overly fond of the taste of human flesh.</p><p>"He took my sweet vendor and just tore it in two…" the man still babbled in disbelief of what had happened.</p><p>"Not too useful, huh?" Usubane sighed, her breathing was irregular, she was just about as afraid as this man was but her way of dealing with the fear was entirely different.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and concentrated her sensory. Even if Honda's overwhelming signature emitted a smokescreen of chakra sensations wherever he went, making pinpointing an exact location quite impossible, until the monster's chakra skyrocketed again when he got mad, there was a difference in concentration of the nasty aftereffect of Honda's presence.</p><p>"There…" Mana turned more to the direction of the village center. Just as initially feared, the monster was moving deeper into the village.</p><hr/><p>"Hey! What do you think you're doing?!" An irksome, feminine voice proclaimed of both her existence as well as her irritation at the carefree attitude of a towering lump of flesh, black threads, and bone. "You're just gonna waltz off after busting that vendor back there?"</p><p>A furious stare of a misshapen head turned back to face the blond female chuunin that stopped lumbering Little Honda in his tracks. Wherever the monster treaded, civilians cowered and moved out of its way, their terrified expressions were slightly below Honda's usual eye-level, therefore, they were completely ignored by the curious monster who kept on absorbing the light show of Konoha past his usual bedtime.</p><p>The left side of the child's head was protruded, like the entire upper left side of the boy's skull was conjoined from someone else's skull, that of someone vastly larger than even the enlarged belfry of Little Honda. The boy's silver hair ran down his face, covered with sewer goop, blood, and dust. The messy collection of teeth ground so hard that chunks of Honda's teeth flew out from the pressure.</p><p>"It may have been a foolish strategy to attract the enemy's attention before engaging them." The fellow chuunin accompanying his comrade on this off-duty assignment due to a date that the two were on previously. For that reason, both Hitsumi and her ally were wearing casual civilian clothes.</p><p>"Don't tell me what to do!" Honda roared out with enough force in the center of his yelling zone to rip flesh from bone. Neither one of the two chuunin expected this unorthodox manner of attack, however they both managed to evade it, Hitsumi's body erupted into a blast of water that showered the fleeing civilians in cold water after the woman managed to replace herself with a Water Clone she had created whereas her partner replaced himself with a baby carriage.</p><p>The young man pressed the crying baby closer to his chest to try and calm him down, as he observed the carriage placed right at the location he was just in disperse into almost powder-size wooden remains from the intense pressure of the monster's shout. The chuunin dashed off to try and find the woman he took the carriage from to give her the baby back, while Hitsumi dashed onto the rooftops, having decided to stay at a long-range and attack her enemy from where it would not have been able to get her.</p><p>"Water Style: Multi-Water Shuriken!" Hitsumi chanted out the name of her B-Rank ninjutsu after a collection of hand seals. Water split off from a demolished nearby fountain and took shuriken shapes. This was less than ideal, the woman would have appreciated a chance to use a stronger water source than this for optimum strength of her jutsu.</p><p>With a single swipe of his arm, Honda swatted the shuriken aside like a swarm of pesky flies. Hitsumi noticed little lacerations over the monster's arm but also saw them close up almost as instantly as they popped into her view. Had she not been as confident in her own ability to cause harm to this thing she was holding off, she'd have believed those cuts to be an optical illusion of some sort due to how shortly they persisted before closing up.</p><p>"I just want to look at the lights!" Honda's voice reached Hitsumi from high above. The woman turned up and above in shock that the monster had managed to blindside her while her body moved on its own – leaping aside to avoid the meteor-like crash of the massive lump of flesh that took a building with him as if it was just a deck of cards under his boot.</p><p>Vines wrapped around Honda's limbs, those that attempted to subdue him the monster shred with barely any effort at all. Wherever one or a couple chakra-infused vines snapped from the sudden application of immense force from the other side before the whole monster was completely burrowed under countless layers of vines, looking like a natural monument rather than its abominable self.</p><p>"I'll give you some lights to gaze at!" Hitsumi's partner grunted, producing this many vines cost him some effort and chakra, following this technique up with another jutsu was even more taxing.</p><p>"Wood Style: Board Cannon!" the chuunin yelled out as a thick board of wood burst from underground and flew right at the subdued monster. Honda was beginning to emerge from under all the endless green surrounding him but the moment he showed his pissed and ugly mug, the humongous board smashed right into his face at full speed and force.</p><p>It barely did anything to faze the freak. Honda just ran through destroying the large board with his own face and just walked through the awesome Senju clan wood, reducing the board to nothing but chips as both the force of its user and the opposing force collided in the object's center and proved to be too much even for the legendary Senju wood to handle.</p><p>"N-No way! Those were chakra-sapping Senju vines!" Hitsumi's friend lost his focus and his composure after seeing what supposed to be a rendered powerless opponent burst right through his flawless combination that took him years of training to both come up with and perfectly execute.</p><p>"Water Style: Windmill Water Shuriken!" Hitsumi grunted after vaulting up above Honda and throwing a windmill shuriken comprised entirely out of Water Release she could muster up from around her. She was rendering the busted down fountains and surrounding sewers dry with this attack, it was never meant to be used on such a quick notice and without proper setup or a massive water source nearby.</p><p>The blue buzzsaw sliced through the monster clean into two parts. Honda's face twisted in pain and shock as his vision doubled and one side of his field of sight began furthering from the other. A half of a chartreuse colored, dried out brain began slowly tumble out of the severed skull of the devilish monstrosity before the two separate sides of the same organ clamped together. Within an instant, the fleshy bits of Little Honda began tying up around one another and bonding quickly forming a wholesome shape of the horror show.</p><p>Mana's feet landed on the ground that felt very brittle and damaged. The area around was messy, stuck out pipes and a few downed buildings, the place was completely empty. Honda somehow managed to cause enough ruckus to leave a very real path to his ugly mug but not quite hectic enough for the emergency interference of any A-Rank or above ninja that were in the village. Those few that were still present in Konoha must have been working on a plan, analyzing information and the sort. It would take many more casualties and a little bit more time before strategy came completely out the window and fists started swinging.</p><p>"These two did not flee in time…" Usubane's gasp reached Mana's ears and made the magician snap out from the fever dream of fear she was in after just taking a moment to absorb the remnants of Honda's path of destruction.</p><p>"They're not civilians, that's for sure." Mana closed her eyes to focus her sensory. "Hitsumi-san is still alive."</p><p>Mana could not even look at the broken man that lied just a bit farther, his arms and legs looked crushed and then twisted around, his neck and his head received the mercy of just the second part of the gruesome fate, Honda must have been getting bored by that point.</p><p>"He's like a mean kid torturing flies by ripping off their wings…" Usubane rubbed her face with a sleeve.</p><p>"He is a child." Mana opened her eyes, looking at the Honda-sized hole left in a nearby, still stationary building. There were plenty of rotten and dried out trees nearby, that certainly did not belong here. These must have belonged to the poor Senju chuunin.</p><p>"Don't hold back. Don't fool around with this thing just because it's got a child's mind. I'm warning or you, Mana-san!" Usubane jumped up closer to Mana, hopping off of an erupting chunk of broken ground.</p><p>"Warning me?" Mana muttered bluntly and without emotion.</p><p>"Yeah, it's been my lifelong dream to work alongside you, even I haven't seen all that much life yet. If I see you holding back or being a danger to yourself, I'm knocking you out and running." Usubane declared.</p><p>"Little Honda has taken lives. I cannot run away from such a behemoth." Mana refused such a plan. As if she would have even had a choice in it, to begin with. "I can sense more ninja rushing in. Multiple squads. We'd best join them."</p><p>"To see to it that they bring down that freak or to see to it that they don't kill it and babysit it?" Usubane turned to Mana again after looking up and into the distance in multiple directions in a vain attempt to sight any ninja moving towards Honda's current location.</p><p>"Both." Mana sighed.</p>
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<a name="section0491"><h2>491. Can't Fall Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A stunned behemoth stood in front of a bustling gambling house, strangely enough, on a completely different village district to the one he rampaged on not five minutes earlier. The child in a freak's body wore a dark and torn up improvised rag over his head and shoulders, made from somebody's coat. Slobber with a hint of blood red occasionally dripped from the chilling smile of the monster as he stared on at the glittering tower of his dreams.</p><p>"Lights…" he wheezed out deep from the bottom of his immense chest. A cavity massive enough to store multiple people that could have spoken for him and yet the partially disguised monstrous appearance of Little Honda was not quite out of the ordinary enough for the ninja village.</p><p>A slightly slurring and moving very unstably on his feet customer left the gambling house. Honda's hungry for life eyes caught just a glimmer of the wonders contained inside the gambling house but he liked what he saw. Slowly, moving a muscle of each of his tremendous limbs one inch at a time, the towering abomination inched his way toward the inside of the luxurious gambling house.</p><p>"Hey, I'm afraid you will have to stay back." One of the black bodysuit wearing men in shades that watched all that attempted to enter the highly spoken of Hanada Katsuo's gambling house but appeared to care very little for who had left it, whether drunk through the front door or mangled through the back door, stepped up.</p><p>A frightening churning sound followed by a dull splatter came not too shortly after the image of Honda's massive fist landing atop of the guard's head. The man may have been an established mercenary making enough dough from the infamous Hanada Katsuo to drown his warrior's pride, but he did not expect the type of brute force and unchained ferocity that this particular visitor brought to the table.</p><p>The colleague of the recently deceased mercenary only took a few dashes back to put some distance between himself and the giant. He tried not to look at the grotesque sight of a man snapped in two where his spine failed to support the massive force of the landing hammer-punch above his head nor at the completely ground to bloody dust parts of his recent colleague's body.</p><p>"I'm coming in to see more lights!" Honda roared out. The mercenary may have tried to prepare himself both mentally and physically for an upcoming charge or an attempt for this lumbering freak to attempt to utilize the dominant physique of his in an attempt to crush him just like his recently departed friend. What he could not have thought to prepare himself for was a wall of sound that tore the very flesh off his bones before leaving him as just a lifeless, bloody skeleton with what used to be his flesh scattering across the floor in the shape of a bloody stain.</p><hr/><p>"What is that?" a fancy-looking man in long, golden hair pointed at a monitor far inside and above the vast Hanada Gambling House.</p><p>"Don't know, Sir, some sort of freakazoid, I think." The mercenary working on the monitoring duty informed his superior.</p><p>"A large one at that. Blocks out almost the entire sector… Why would the face-control let in a raggedy, troublesome thing like this in? Have we learned nothing from the time that orca Hoshigaki-type tried to rob us?" Hanada Katsuo spread his hands out wide before stroking his temples in frustration. "Now I'll have to disturb this perfectly fine evening, just when I thought the trouble in the other districts would flood my gambling house with people trying to run away from the fact they live on borrowed time."</p><p>A muscle-headed mercenary-type in a black tank top pressed a button that turned all the lights off, before switching them to red and started spraying water from the sprinklers above. Hanada Katsuo was an efficient man who has found out in life that half-measures rarely drove his customers out when he actually wanted them out. Going all-in with the emergency telegraphing was the way to make all the fancy Konoha ladies step out of their heels for once and really make an effort in booking it…</p><p>"Shall we take care of this man?" the mercenary asked Hanada Katsuo for confirmation.</p><p>"Of course, make it slow and as uncomfortable as possible. Try to force him to repay the earnings of tonight, blood or ryo, either will do." Hanada sighed. After declaring an apparent death sentence for the curious case that walked into his gambling house, the tycoon turned back at the monitors and walked up closer. "What a blurry image… Is this really the best we can do?"</p><p>"The technology is experimental, Sir. We have prototypes that are not even made public. You are aware that this is no movie and we're recording this as it is happening right now, right?" the confused mercenary turned back at his employer while standing up and beginning to gear up. Everyone and everything with any possible potential to kill was preparing to murder and beat every little coin of ryo out of this pathetic-looking freeloader.</p><p>"I personally found those Hoshigaki remarks a little hurtful…" a tall and slender mercenary in an armored vest and a squid-like face blurbed out to his colleague while the mercenaries rushed to meet the curious raggedy invader.</p><p>"Hanada-san didn't mean you, he meant big guys that obstruct the cameras or have very torn up pants that can't possibly hold any money…" a fellow female mercenary by his side tapped the squid-face's shoulder gently.</p><hr/><p>A group of six genin blasted through every side-window of the gambling house's first floor. Zephra Tsufuki of Team Hickory was the one to launch the first attack as she was preparing her jutsu for a short time before breaking in. The whole village was on-edge tonight, it felt like it was being invaded but nobody could find any invaders. It was like accidents, fires and calamities just popped in randomly and, after a handful of seconds, all that was left there was unconscious of horrifically mangled bodies of ninja that confronted the man, or rather the thing, behind it.</p><p>"Wind Style: Performance of the Cloth!" the genin used her improved since the Chuunin Exams technique to launch a built-up sphere of Wind Release chakra, all compressed into a round sphere, now packed with more chakra and larger size than before with improved control at the same time.</p><p>The sphere hit Little Honda right in the ribs, expanding massively in size and letting out a roaring thud upon impact followed by a crunchy sound that would have suggested a decent amount of stopping power behind the properly set up and executed technique. The collision also derailed Honda's vicious charge that left him wide open for such an attack, one that was supposed to leave nothing but a collection of bloody stains dripping from every wall and ceiling of the gambling house and comprised entirely of the remains of its paid protectors.</p><p>While the rest of the genin appeared taken aback by the lack of complete stop from the enemy's side, another young lady pointed a massive tube-shaped weapon that she carried on her. This one looked much less gracious compared to Zephra, donning a t-shirt and a cap into battle with the plate of the headband protector having been sewn onto the headwear.</p><p>A handful of small orbs that looked not much different from marbles wrapped around in little pieces of paper as large as a chewing gum wrapper spread widely across the gambling house after being launched from the girl's impressively put together weapon. The scattered orbs exploded in a resonating chain not too long after landing on the ground, a desperate attempt to make the monstrous assailant fall or at least kneel.</p><p>Nothing of that nature happened. From the rising cloud of smoke and debris, a pair of gambling machines flew right at the direction of the appearing genin. The resulting scuffle between the gathered and hastily put together team of genin and Little Honda got in between the upcoming clash between Hanada Katsuo's mercenaries and the invading monster, given the tremendous difference in the scale of power between the two sides, perhaps this was for the better.</p><p>All of the genin evaded the storm of oncoming debris that, from the looks of it, appeared to be about as troublesome to lob at them for the freak, as it would have been for a child to throw a ball of rags to a friend when playing outside. All of the ninja noted how quickly the monster got distracted from the fight that he was about to engage in previously.</p><p>With a slick, metallic sound a handful of syringes slipped their way into the monster's muscles, a pair even hit him in the cheek and his forehead. A genin sticking to the ceiling of the gambling house floor that the brawl was taking place in just smirked with certain smugness to his reaction.</p><p>"You guys can evacuate, you're a waste of space anyway." He licked his lips while looking at the confused mercenaries who were not sure as to which side they should engage. Usually, so many ninja all at once would not be too welcome in the Hanada gambling house either. After being given the suggestion to leave, however, the mercenaries quickly scurried to the nearest door. Some attempted to leave through the same entrance Honda entered through, some fled to other parts of the building seeking to use other escape paths.</p><p>"That was very mean of you to say, Pagu. Here I thought losing in the Chuunin Exams would have taught you humility…" Jomiya Tohi, the girl with the large weapon and a taste for excessively casual clothing remarked after letting the point of her cannon weigh down to rest her hands a little.</p><p>"Oh, I'm plenty modest. It's just that words won't matter. I filled him with the strongest sedative in my arsenal, thirty-two thousand times stronger than the strongest opioid in the world." Pagu Aphonei of Team Hickory looked at Honda with a confident smile. His eyes appeared overcome by extreme ecstasy as he awaited the serenity to overcome his opponent. It would have been enough to stop the heart of any weaker ninja outright, someone big and mighty like this, however, was unlikely to be killed by the tranquilizers immediately.</p><p>Honda stumbled about. Almost fell down right on his face, pushing out his oversized fist in front to support his lumbering mass just in time to stop his fall. The dark, torn up rag over Honda's face slipped forward to cover up the misshapen face of its wearer and provide some more competent cover for its gigantic shoulders.</p><p>"That's your cue." Pagu bowed in overplayed elegance to his dark-haired female teammate.</p><p>"I know." Kuren Hyuga let out in return before taking a strong leap off of the wall she was sticking with her feet onto. Her baggy, pantone kimono flapped around in the air, together with her baggy, birch-colored and checkered pants. Without wasting any time, the kunoichi unleashed a combo of fierce, two-finger thrusts aimed at various locations on Little Honda's body.</p><p>After just a few sharp and precise jabs, the kunoichi's eyes gaped in shock and she slid back in a fearful dash. Her opponent did not move but none of the genin observing the battle from farther away questioned the judgment of a Hyuga in close-distance. The girl must have seen something quite impressive to be frightened in such a manner.</p><p>"What's wrong?" a husky voice of Tanko Shigin, the invincible genin with his own history with the cult that created Little Honda, asked. He was the only one of the handful to lack the foresight to realize the superiority of awareness of a close-range battle of a Byakugan user – a ninja with the ability to see the chakra pathways and the nodes of the network. The Hyuga saw what nobody else could have.</p><p>"I attempted to shut down his liver, damage his heart and strike every vital I could find but… I counted on his ribs being busted by Zephra's technique from before, that was not the case – he is completely fresh and unharmed on the inside."</p><p>"I see… In that case, that makes your presence here quite pointless, doesn't it Kuren?" Pagu mocked the effort and the resulting shock and frustration of his teammate without mercy or any affection toward the young woman he worked alongside with for years.</p><p>"Huh? Don't get discouraged just yet. Give it another mean go!" Shigin threw his fist up in the air with encouragement to Pagu's teammate instead. After taking a pair of more dashes backward, intending to put even more space between Kuren and Little Honda, the female genin glanced back at the numb-skulled, invincible genin with disdain.</p><p>"Pagu is right. My specialty is shutting down the enemy's chakra network using my own improvised version of the Hyuga Gentle Fist style – the Merciless Fist. With this monster, I can neither make a solid dent in his chakra network nor shut down his vitals, because he simply regenerates too fast." Kuren admitted with bitterness in her expression.</p><p>Aburame Juhi of Team Pine, the teammate of Shigin and Tohi, became covered with black streaks, darkened patches that ran all over the body. Small, wingless insects scurried across the girl's body, a similar grotesque display must have been transpiring under her long jacket that was far too thick for the late spring. Not too long after the girl's body appeared to inflate like a balloon from the vast masses of insects moving under her jacket, the kunoichi split into two copies of herself.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect Jutsu: Grip," the left one declared. The insects that filled the entire room, using the debris and signs of destruction from the resulting break-in and attempts to take Little Honda down as cover for their vast spread, formed the shape of two hands that snapped shut around the lumbering giant monstrosity and formed an effective hold, doubling the restraints placed on Honda together with Pagu's tranquilizers.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect Jutsu: Smash," the second one muttered while another formation of parasitic insects formed a pair of hands straight above Honda's head that collided together in a double-hand slam formation. Without hesitating, the massive formation drove downward like a sledgehammer in an attempt to either knock the monster out or smash his head outright.</p><p>Tanko Shigin bounced off of the wall he was stuck to, moving in sync with his teammate's movements and forcing both of his feet to extend from mid-air and drive at the exposed back-neck area of the monster with a foot-stomp. The moves of the genin looked so plastic and elastic that it may have looked to an untrained eye that he was made of jelly or fluid of sorts but Shigin's limbs were quite solid and packed a powerful wallop.</p><p>"I don't remember Shigin being this stretchy. What a freak…" Pagu winced with a smile similar to that which someone who found a picture they were looking at to be extremely gross but admired it regardless just for the thrills of it and amusement that its freaky nature provided them.</p><p>"Shigin does not stretch his limbs. He creates new tissue and cells to make his limbs longer." Tohi Jomiya explained the fighting style of her own teammate a bit better.</p><p>"I'd imagine that poses problems afterward?" Pagu chuckled staring at Shigin's pathetic attempt to handle his elongated legs after he had landed on his feet. Given how he did not exactly stretch his limbs, he initially appeared to be stuck with the modified size of his limbs.</p><p>"Just give me a minute, guys… I'll burn the calories off of the new clusters and they'll all die out in no time!" Shigin gave the five standing clear of the subdued monster an enthusiastic thumb up.</p><p>Because of his carelessness, Shigin did not notice Honda's infuriated and completely unfazed body rising back up on his feet. The genetic horror show was shaking in rage. His bloodshot eyes were somewhere in between erupting into tears and being properly angry while the teeth of Little Honda were long past being ground to chips that scattered from the monster's mouth shortly before new ones took their place, resulting in untidy rows of teeth where teeth were not properly removed before new ones took their place.</p><p>"Move, you fool!" Kuren tried to warn the silly genin who just managed to turn back with frightened eyes at the monster that smashed Shigin in between his hulking palms with a clap as if he was disposing of a slow and pesky fruit fly. After Honda's hands parted again, Shigin's state looked extremely pathetic with the young man being misshapen and molded by the two counteracting forces smashing against one another with him in between. Then, with a battle cry that synced up with a straight push kick, Honda sent Shigin flying through the wall on which most genin were stuck on.</p><p>Shigin's flight was so blinding in its swiftness that the human arrow took Kuren Hyuga with him and sent both genin crashing through and outside the gambling house. The foundation of the entire structure of the building shook from the sheer, unmeasurable force that Shigin burst outside through the wall with, sending ripples and cracks all over the building reaching up all the way to the top floor. Even though a ninja would have been careful to absorb as much of the upcoming force as possible so that the village around them was not devastated by the immense strength of the blows being exchanged.</p><p>"He brushed off my tranquilizers… Even though they appeared to work on him initially." Pagu grit with his teeth in irritation. This no longer provided him with entertainment. Seeing the genin that the entire village had considered invincible before being manhandled like this drove fear into even the most fringe minds like that of the sadistic Pagu.</p><p>"Can't be hurt!" Shigin declared triumphantly after bursting from the rubble of another restaurant outside and leaping outside of the devastation and back into the fray. In his ignorance and itch to join in on the battle he was removed from, the boy did not even notice the unconscious body of the Hyuga girl he bumped into and accidentally took out.</p><p>Just like his reputation implied, Shigin did not have any more marks of injury on him after the shape of his body formed back into what it was like before. It appeared that even if Shigin was merely a precursor to what Honda was supposed to become, just another testing tube with a number, he lived up to the purpose of the experimentation on him quite nicely.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0492"><h2>492. Occupational Hazards</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What's your deal, anyway?" Shigin yelled out as he leaped back through the hole he had made in the damaged gambling house building and started swinging his fists wildly. This reckless approach would have seen as suicidal if used by anyone else but the invincible genin.</p><p>"Human Bat!" Shigin shouted while he jumped up over Little Honda's head and stiffened his body up in a straight position. His legs grew in length again, landing firmly on the ground and using the balancing point of the ground beneath to swing the stiffened body about like an actual bat.</p><p>A deafening and horrid punch silenced the genin. It was incredibly fast and packed enough force to send Shigin flying upward and through the corner of the gambling house's ceiling. Damaging the building even further. The other genin had to clutch tighter to the surfaces they clung on to so that the shock to the building did not have them lose their balance.</p><p>"The idiot makes a point." Pagu smiled with a sly expression as he threw his backpack up in the air and charged at Little Honda into close-distance as well. The monster lacked the maturity and the baptism of battle to evaluate the fact that Pagu Aphonei of Team Hickory previously fought like a mid-to-long range fighter and had little to no reason to approach a superior physically opponent up close.</p><p>Honda just threw his hands up in the air and jumped forward in a maddened dash, throwing his hammer arms down at the charging genin, greatly surpassing the slightly sadistic youth in speed. However, once Pagu's body appeared to be crushed and mangled under Honda's arms, after a poof of smoke cleared out, a spray of green and dark purple gases spread around the monster's upper body with the object of Honda's destruction being revealed to be Pagu's backpack, which the genin had substituted himself with.</p><p>"Tranquilizers again?" Zephra looked at her teammate who, after succeeding with his switcheroo trick, rushed back into the safety of the most faraway walls in the long distance.</p><p>"It worked before. Maybe temporarily but it did slow him down. This time I put most of my stored poison gas into the mix as well." Pagu smiled, his lips twisted long and stretched all across the lower parts of his face.</p><p>Honda's body bloated out. Before the abomination looked like a monster sewn together from multiple body parts like a jigsaw puzzle, now the manmade horror inflated to the point of appearing almost like a balloon and greatly stressing out the stitches of obsidian black threads that held it together. With a mighty blow, the monster sent the collection of tranquilizing gas and poison gas that he had breathed in back in a concentrated stream.</p><p>Pagu tried to avoid the rushing flow of gas but the spread was too wide, it was aimed solely at his direction and dodging such an attack whilst in a corner was less than ideal given that movement aside at any direction only brought him a bit closer to the object he was ultimately trying to avoid. The genin grabbed his throat as his face twisted in a pain-ridden grimace while it dyed blood-red.</p><p>Even with all the filtering and tampering to the highly precise and lethal formula, which Pagu had concocted inside Honda's lungs, even with the unearthly concentration of carbon dioxide coming out from the monster's innards and flushing the formula up somewhat, Pagu fell without a sign of life on the floor.</p><p>"P-Pagu…" Zephra shrieked out, without thinking, the girl placed herself hallway into rushing to her possibly dead teammate just to check on his condition but a resolute scolding of Juhi Aburame stopped her.</p><p>"Don't move your eyes away from the enemy!" the Aburame yelled out. By now, most of the genin had realized that this was not an enemy they could defeat, not even all six of them together. The best they could hope for was to bargain for time, play this out until reinforcements arrive, hopefully, someone of distinguished rank and willing to put themselves into this mad meat grinder.</p><p>Honda moved toward the lifeless genin, his face looked overflowing with vengeful thoughts. It was not tough to read into the monster's intentions – to make sure that this annoying little man that attacked him was truly dead utilizing the most excessive assurance possible.</p><p>"No! No!" Zephra cried, out, she swung her cloth pieces around, channeling and building up Wind Release chakra inside of them until they were almost glowing with chakra and the energy had a very visible manifestation on the accessory most commonly used for dancing. "Wind Style: Performance of the Slingshot!"</p><p>A Wind Release chakra sphere of moderate size rolled across the distance to which the cloth accessory it traveled using and was channeled through extended. The sphere snowballed and grew across every inch of the distance it rolled across the cloth before smashing right into the chest cavity of the unstoppable monster at the end of the road. Little Honda huffed from the shock to the chest that hit him head-on, twitched and squirmed but then his hand regained limited movement before the awesomely powered ninjutsu technique launched from desperation had even concluded.</p><p>The monster grabbed onto the cloth from Zephra's accessories and pulled the girl in with a single, unbelievable in its might and focus movement. At the same time, the beast's hand extended to grab the genin by her throat, sadly, Honda may have miscalculated the size of his new body and where he only meant to grab the girl by her throat initially, his hand wrapped around her entire body and prepared to squeeze.</p><p>Zephra screamed out in pain before crunchy sounds filled the air and drowned out her voice. Honda's face looked absolutely livid with the group of genin and he undoubtedly did not plan to stop with just that much punishment. He fully intended on squeezing on the body until there was nothing left to squeeze on. However, his grand in its sadism plan got interrupted by a strong blast from the back.</p><p>During the distraction that Zephra's attack had provided, Tohi Jomya from Shigin's Team Pine had slipped behind Little Honda and closer to the devastated bag of Pagu's which she used to load up her own supplies. She was not entirely sure if Pagu, Kuren, and Zephra were still alive but the best she could do now was utilize the time that they had bought her. Pagu was right, tranquilizers and other means that did not directly attack and cause harm to Honda's body was the closest thing to a weakness that they have stumbled upon and only one of their six used tranquilizers and poisons.</p><p>Zephra's lifeless body slipped out from the opened hand of Little Honda now that the monster no longer squeezed on it and instead tried to process the boiling, childish rage that being endlessly pestered by these teens awakened inside of him. The monster roared out in the air, shaking the entire building and the ground beneath his own feet, sinking the building deeper into a crater of smashed and ground into dust dirt as the expensive building materials and intricate alloys of the most sophisticated steel of the gambling house managed to contain the monster's rage for now.</p><p>Tohi aimed her cannon at Honda, pulled on the trigger and held it pulled until her finger got sore. Her other hand would have gotten tired long before that, loading up her cannon with everything she could find on her. The weapon was built with scrolls in mind, using scrolls with techniques or materials sealed inside of them, however, it was a versatile and flexible tool. Pouches, explosive, light or oil bombs, conventional kunai or shuriken… Anything she would have placed inside would have come out in one way or another at high velocity and impressive explosive power.</p><p>The explosive spheres that Tohi launched barely even fazed the monster. Pagu's poison gas bombs and knock-out gas bombs barely did anything at all as well, the incendiary bombs, light bombs, and oil bombs all used together could only hold Honda in place for a while as while the genetically engineered horror show could not proceed onward and kill his attacker, he just stood in place and weathered the storm.</p><p>Shigin's elongated feet burst from the ceiling above, stamping right across Honda's face and planting the confused and pissed monster firmly down onto the ground. Aburame Juhi extended her hands, allowing her squirming black insects to move across the walls and the room as well as build bridges by structuring themselves and attaching to each other using their powerful mandibles.</p><p>"Parasitic Insect Jutsu: Sarcophagus!" Juhi grunted out, this technique was one that she had learned after the Chuunin Exams and given by the chakra she had invested into it and the strain that it placed on the girl's body, it was one of notable rank. The ant-like species of the Parasitic Insects that Juhi specifically used had swarmed and gathered themselves around the monster in a sphere. Enclosing him as they pointed their heads inward and prepared to bite in on anyone trying to escape the entrapment while the unique properties of their bites sapped the chakra away from the trapped opponent weakening them continuously with each attempt to escape.</p><p>"Shock bombs, light bombs, poison and tranquilizer gas. Nothing puts him down and it barely slows him down." Tohi grunted. The kunoichi lowered her weapon. As her chakra was slowly beginning to take a significant dip down due to her onslaught of ceaseless use of her weapon and the augmentations of perception, accuracy, speed, and strength required to wield it efficiently, it was becoming harder and harder to keep the weapon aimed straight.</p><p>"Let's hope that he can be drained of chakra," Juhi replied while still holding her hands upright and controlling the buzzing, living sarcophagus covering up the monstrous opponent.</p><p>"What a weird guy, he's not invulnerable like me, he just heals up really fast. You'd think that'd make him the failure, not me…" Shigin pressed his lips together and glared at the bustling whirlwind of swarming blackness that was around Honda.</p><p>"Ugh!" Juhi's eyes widened and the girl stumbled forward, losing concentration for a bit. Having a very close relationship with the Parasitic Insects, like all Aburame, she felt the shock of massive losses and the devastation of the initial formation amongst the ranks of the insects. "He's fighting. I think he's getting mad again."</p><p>"Isn't that how your jutsu works? Relying on unsuccessful attempts by the opponent to escape so that the insects can devour their chakra?" Tohi wondered.</p><p>"That's only if he's unsuccessful in breaking out. A sufficient enough force will break right out and if anyone can put out that kind of pressure – it's this guy." Juhi looked up, her shades had halfway slipped off her face but the girl had no freedom of using her arms while they were engaged in controlling the technique.</p><p>Juhi screamed out in pain again. More and more lights faded dimmer, she had plenty more insects to offer, perhaps enough to sustain a prolonged scuffle just like this but even while the enemy was seemingly subdued, it appeared like Team Pine was actually the one in disadvantage.</p><p>"Unbelievable! He's still bashing his head against the wall, even though it did not work the first time?" Tohi observed, looking at the massive lump that had formed in the sarcophagus of Parasitic Insects that slowly formed back into its original shape. Little Honda's fortitude was sufficient was to bend and almost break the sarcophagus even while having his chakra drained and eaten by all those insects.</p><p>"It's not just that. He should be growing weaker as his chakra drains. He was attacked by Kuren before, surely she shut down several of his nodes while she was busy attacking his vitals as well. Now he is being surrounded by Parasitic Insects and yet still he draws strength from somewhere and grows stronger. Even though such a thing does not exist, his strength may very well be limitless from our point of view." Juhi observed, sweat was running down her forehead and her hair were falling all over her twisted in agony face.</p><p>Lumps began forming all over the sarcophagus, on each side, by the dozens. Honda was launching a rage-fueled barrage of punches each of which carried less individual crushing strength that his usual output but together they stacked up to an overwhelming combination. Juhi twitched and squirmed, grunted and groaned but she persevered and held her sarcophagus intact, supplying it with new insects as the old ones could no longer sustain it.</p><p>Then, as the young woman maintaining the hold and the sarcophagus itself was at its weakest, a single, focused blow blew it right up. The insects scattered all across the gambling house in a mad shower from the explosive force of impact that the enraged monster generated. Even after failing to bust the sarcophagus so many times and coming into contact with the Parasitic Insects with each unsuccessful blow of his combination attack, Honda still stood in the center of the room, breathing heavily.</p><p>"He took damage! He's tired!" Shigin yelled out while charging at the monster. He was not entirely wrong in his assessment, even someone who took battle strategy for granted due to his invulnerability and preferred a bolder, more hands-on approach to his fighting saw the signs of weary on Honda in his hunched position and heavy breathing. Also, the way his stitched together from multiple separate bodies and body parts muscles twitched and almost radiated chakra from within, letting it all outward.</p><p>Shigin swung his fists around, he did not aim too much or think about his attacks, there was no time for that. The invulnerable genin merely rushed in, jumped up to the monster's hanging head and started swinging his fists and feet in his highly elastic and quick striking style of taijutsu. Honda did not put up any attempt at resistance either. Regardless, while the blows certainly landed on their mark and were registered, they barely did anything else but apply some pressure as Honda did not as much as stumble back.</p><p>"Out of my way!" Honda roared as he threw his hands out and attempted to bear-hug the slippery genin. This turtle-paced attempt was just met with Shigin's leap in the air and a firm plant of his feet in Honda's face as the quick striker continued to stamp with his feet onto the monster's face.</p><p>Before he could land onto the ground, Shigin used his still elongated from previous attacks legs to wrap comfortably around Honda's throat as he spun his entire body to the side, in a way that would have snapped the monster's neck had he been human. A painful crunching sound filled the room as Honda's head ended up staring blankly backward, where Shigin slipped off and stretched his tired body out on the floor. He had some more useless clusters of cells to burn out to return his body to its normal state again.</p><p>A crushing grip squeezed tightly the calves of the worn out Shigin, using the boy's entire body as an improvised weapon. Like a rope or a chain that he swung around causing devastation all over the building. Multiple support beams, walls, and ceilings crumbled while the monster swung his elaborate and long-range, living weapon around. Tohi and Juhi were too slow and tired to keep up with the relentless rampage of their teammate being used as an improvised weapon this way.</p><p>Ultimately, both girls got smacked aside and thrown out of the building, flying off to wherever the laws of physics commanded them to land. After both of the kunoichi were knocked out of the building, Honda swung his living weapon around like a sling before launching him as high up as he could. Shigin burst through every single floor, it was something that greatly reduced the force at which he was thrown but regardless of that, a landing was not a likely part of his near future agenda.</p><p>"I just want to play with the machines!" Honda roared out to the unseen and unheard ears that were listening. The capricious declaration of his childlike desire was more like a trademarked battle cry for the lab-made horror. Yelling in pain, Hanada Katsuo fell out from the safety he was hiding under, clutching at his bleeding ears. Even as his own body was crumbling apart, feeling the tingling of the intense soundwaves of Honda's voice penetrating him, Hanada Katsuo took careful time to examine the totaled gambling house that this monstrosity now owed him for.</p><p>"You're a bad man… Mommy used to say so." Honda spoke with a much more contained tone as he approached the writhing boss of the Konoha's underbelly.</p><p>Hanada could only hear unintelligible screeching in his ears shortly after the initial damage to his ears. He only heard the fact that Honda spoke but not the exact content of his words. It was after a minute or two that the words told to him in composure of the monster began somewhat intelligible and possible to piece together in the cacophony of screeches in the man's ears.</p><p>"What is it that you want?" Hanada squirmed, he did not attempt to crawl away or hide where he fumbled out from not too long ago. There would have been little use of that. Those genin that probably had all lost their lives proved that much, force wielded little merit with this thing.</p><p>"I keep telling but nobody listens… I want to look at the pretty lights." Honda grumbled, the intense sound waves leaving the monster's mouth caused Hanada's golden hair to rustle.</p><p>"Look around. You're here." Hanada stretched his hands out wide to gesture for the monster to feast his eyes to his heart's content, if that would make this abomination leave his gambling house – that would be a miraculous save.</p><p>"I want to play with the machines. The ones with fruits and birds and funny yellow mice and bombs on them." Honda changed his mind, lifting Hanada Katsuo in the air and closer to his eyes so that the two could stare each other in the eyes. When the monster was not yelling and rampaging, his voice sounded almost… Child-like.</p><p>"You broke all of them. You will pay for them, in fact." Hanada made a strict stare right into Little Honda's eyes as if attempting to scold an actual child.</p><p>"I… I don't have any money…" Little Honda let go of Hanada, having the man fall and fumble on his behind while the monster backed off in an almost embarrassed set of gestures coming from his muscular frame. The horror project butted his index fingers together in embarrassment with most traces of its horrific fit of rage from before evaporating as it was replaced by shame.</p><p>"It's okay, you'll work this debt off for me." Hanada dusted off his fancy silks before glaring back at the monster's eyes. Honda, on the other hand, desperately avoided the man's glare.</p><p>"I… I don't know how…" Honda backed up. "I… I don't wanna!" he was getting riled up again.</p><p>"Well then, someone you know will pay for this, in that case." Hanada fixed his clothes. While the man was getting confident due to his discovery of the monster's childlike state, he could not see how vastly he was overplaying his hand.</p><p>"No!" Honda roared out, his childlike voice was once more replaced by the monster lurking inside him while the genetically engineered horror threw his foot in a heavy push kick aimed at crushing this unpleasant man of authority in front of him. All that the monster's foot landed on was a hot stream of air as a blazing flare blitzed right past Little Honda.</p><p>Hanada looked at the teenage rabbit that held him firmly in her hands and the fiery aura she was emanating that quickly died out. Then his eyes turned at the girl in a stage magician uniform standing on a horizontal steel beam that connected two support pillars, two of very few remaining to hold Hanada's precious gambling house intact.</p><p>For better or worse, Mana had arrived to confront the monster that haunted her peaceful nights once more.</p>
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<a name="section0493"><h2>493. Counting The Losses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Usubane took a brief moment to glance back. She was not the one in the duo that possessed the gift of chakra sensory but there were other ways of telling that the magician was not keeping up with the rabbit. This proved especially odd given how motivated the girl seemed just a moment ago to reach the epicenter of the corrupted chakra which, as she did with many more things, Mana blamed herself for.</p><p>"What's going on?" Usubane yelled out, doing her best to yell over the sounds of confused and busy streets below.</p><p>"Give me a hand here," Mana asked with a soft tone as she used her Mystical Wings Jutsu to lift herself up so that she could reach a trapped villager, waving in a balcony that had its steel bones exposed while its concrete flesh crumbled to the streets below chunk by measly chunk. The man barely even registered getting lifted off and placed on the ground but he must have been used to ninja as he waved to Mana while she rushed on to the next person in need.</p><p>"You're not going to try to rush me?" Mana closed her eyes just to prepare herself mentally for the discomfort that would inevitably come from getting scolded or belittled for wasting time on rescuing villagers instead of confronting the cause that kept generating new cases of civilians in need faster than Mana could aid them.</p><p>"Why would I?" Usubane huffed before she lifted off a massive part of the fallen building that trapped a family of four in their basement since the fallen chunk of the building covered their escape up and left them buried. "I don't want you getting yourself killed. Rescue as many people as it seems necessary. I'd much rather help you with saving humans than getting yourself maimed or slaughtered."</p><p>"Thanks." Mana did not confront Usubane about her dislike of the magician's idea of confronting Honda herself instead of doing what most lower to average ranking ninja were doing – dealing with the aftermath of those few instances where the monstrosity reared its head and did some damage.</p><p>It took a while to reach the end of Honda's clear-cut path of destruction and mayhem. Mana stubbornly helped every single villager in her awareness on her way to the Hanada gambling house. The sentiment of what may have been her resting place belonging to the man associated with the earliest bits of her ninja career did not completely elude Mana's mind.</p><p>"I smell something…" Usubane sniffed the air.</p><p>"There are people fighting inside. Honda's one of them. This is strange, there were supposed to be more signatures than this…" Mana looked to the nearby totaled buildings with worry in her voice. A smoldering fire of corrupting panic took its place in Mana's chest, arresting her breathing for a moment as she rushed to the destroyed building directly to the east of the Hanada's gambling house.</p><p>"Is she?" Usubane gasped looking at the grotesque sight of a lifeless body with greyed out eyes. The awkward position of the girl's neck suggested that it was snapped.</p><p>"I sense nothing from her… I knew her a little from the Academy." Mana closed her eyes and pressed her trembling fists tighter. The fear in her chest changed to a different emotion that just for a moment made the magician's fists still and clear with purpose. Given how dangerous this emotion was to Mana's chosen way of life, the magician quickly quashed it.</p><p>"It's not your fault, Mana-san." Usubane tried catching Mana's eyes. "You weren't dilly-dallying exactly, you were saving villagers. You didn't know that it was this Hyuga girl or those villagers."</p><p>"Come on. Let's see fates of whom else will haunt me." Mana replied with the clear hint of swallowed grief in her reply. It was self-evident from the way that the magician was avoiding Usubane's eyes that the girl was struggling to keep her eyes dry.</p><p>Before the duo of a girl and her trusty rabbit could move into the Hanada gambling house with purpose and planning, Tanko Shigin burst through the roof of the tall building. He did so before spiraling off so high above that the very detail of his spontaneous and highly unorthodox exit from the building as well as the altitudes he was soaring in were visible only to those with advanced ninja-like perception.</p><p>Usubane knew that now there was no longer any time for planning. Her summoner would be rushing in head-first into a battle she clearly knew she could not win, fostering false hopes of talking Little Honda down into being the silly brat that the boy once was. Compared to those odds, the chances of Mana flat out stopping Honda seemed quite likely.</p><p>"Magic girl!" Honda appeared to chuckle while he clapped his hands together. It appeared that Hanada has escaped his ire, that generated as spontaneously as it faded away. Maybe this was because of Little Honda's mental age and lack of maturity, perhaps it was because of the experiments he was a subject to or perhaps the experiments had drawn out and supercharged his childish instability. Whatever the case, Mana no longer looked as soft on the boy as she may have been before.</p><p>Her look turned even sharper and colder once she noticed Pagu Aphonei's choked up body as well as the lifeless state of Zephra Tsufuki who laid in a similarly awkward sprawl to her deceased teammate outside suggesting that she had suffered plenty of fractures all over her body before she was given the mercy of death.</p><p>"I'm taking you in, Honda," Mana stated without the previous attempts to charm the boy or sound like Honda's big sister or a motherly figure. "You're a danger to yourself and the people around you. I should have seen this sooner."</p><p>"Not before I play with the machines. Wanna see the ball roll around the shiny lights." Honda shook his head and tapped his foot in capricious disagreement.</p><p>It needed no clarification that Mana had no hopes of taking this horror-show down. The place was littered with bodies of her past classmates, her peers and colleagues that were just responding to their duty and doing their jobs. Sometimes the magic and glamor of being a ninja and the illusion of making a difference and helping one's homeland made one forget the harsh reality of the job.</p><p>"Is it not bizarre how this is the second time you're saving me?" Hanada Katsuo slithered out with his nasty tongue. It was extremely unwise to speak so close to the monster with the fire of anger in Honda's box meant for the oligarch was still rustling and the possibility of it growing into an outright wildfire was still very much out there.</p><p>"Bane-chan, clean the building." Mana fixed her sleeves and felt up the devices and decks of cards that were present there. If she was to accomplish anything of any remnant of worth in here, the very fullest extents of her abilities and skillset were to be tested.</p><p>"B-But…" Usubane was about to object. Mana gave the rabbit a nasty glare feeling lucky that Honda appeared more interested in the novelty of a talking rabbit than furious at the magician or the rabbit for stopping it from killing Hanada who was pretty mean and authoritative with him.</p><p>"You're a close-range combatant. There is no way that you will get in close-range without Honda tearing you apart." Mana replied with strictness in her voice that the rabbit did not question. Usubane was glad to be working alongside her idol in the first place, she clearly felt like questioning the magician any further may have reduced the number of times that she got to do that so the rabbit relented her grip on common sense and delved fully into the madness that Mana was up to.</p><p>She kept on glaring at Mana with every brown blur to every injured or dead ninja. This was both a warning and a plead that the magician summoned some more aid from the new Rabbit Caves or stalled until some more help arrived but the iron determination in Mana's eyes made it crystal clear that nothing of the sort was on the agenda.</p><p>It barely took a moment before the rabbit was gone. Mana wasted no time before beginning to go through hand seals. Honda allowed her the luxury of the first move, expecting a magic trick and the magician aimed never to disappoint an audience.</p><p>The girl extended her hands forward, flipping a bunch of switches on her cufflinks that launched entire handfuls of explosive cards at the monster. This was basically the gist of her plan – stay away, chip at Honda slowly until a weakness was revealed. A bad feeling of ease in which this strategy came to her could not leave Mana's mind as she observed the cards float in mid-air like slow-motion. As if they waited for the magician to perform the next batch of hand seals but, truth be told, she was just that fast.</p><p>"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" Mana yelled out with both grief and determination in her voice. This was not to be just a normal use of her long-time favored technique, she was working on it a little bit. Not to the point where its power, speed or any other attribute had improved or where it would have become a whole new jutsu but just enough to grant it a slight advantage of control. Instead of being just a wind wall, blasting objects quickly in one direction, the gust curved in an almost crescent-like trajectory and very nearly completed a full 180 turn before dissolving.</p><p>Honda looked at the flurry of cards dancing for him and catching the stride of the wind, floating in a majestic fashion with a crescent-like curve to their flow. To a childish mind, this sight was truly to be awed at. A chain of powerful explosions rippled around the monster, throwing him forward, backward, aside at every direction just from the shockwave of the explosive projectiles detonating right in front of him.</p><p>Something was different about Honda this time around, it was not that he was less pissed, weaker or slower. It was not that his regeneration factor did not kick in and instantly patch up even those few chunks of flesh that Mana had ripped out or the burns she caused. The way in which Honda differed was in the way his chakra felt. It was still rotten to the core and vomit-inducing to any sensor focusing too hard on its bottomless vile nature but it was greatly smaller than before.</p><p>Hell, if it continued to drop at these rates, Mana may no longer be able to track him from just the figurative stench of vile chakra he leaves in the air where Honda passes through. In that case, she would be left gunning for the monster blindly.</p><p>Honda barely halted for a second. The monster emitted a powerful roar signaling to his opponent that he had shed his immature humanity and surrendered to the depths of abominable rot that lurked deep inside him. Honda moved like he was fueled by a bolt of lightning, for a monster his size, he was ridiculously quick.</p><p>The monster swiped at the support beam where Mana stood, simply brushing off her improvised method of attack and smashing the upper beam as if it offered no resistance. To Honda's careless, violent swipe, toughened by finest ninja blacksmiths Hanada's money could buy steel tore like wet paper. Mana felt air rushing through her hair and her cheeks, she completed the flip during her dive back and landed on her feet. Her read was perfect in this case, she had not predicted Honda to brush her attack off quite this fast or to move like greased lightning but just this time her dodge worked out.</p><p>Honda repurposed his charge into a mighty stomp. Thrusting his feet downward and diving down like an arrow. The slam caused the fancy floor tiles and boards ripple like waves before they snapped in half or got torn to chips from the force that passed them. Mana felt like she was surfing on a tall wave for a moment there while nasty and a bit frightening sounds rung all around her signaling the final agonizing bellows of the Hanada gambling house.</p><p>Knowing Hanada Katsuo, he must have built this place to withstand the rest of the world blowing up, leaving only this large middle finger, a symbol of greed and addiction floating in deep space amongst humanity's rubble. There could have been no way for the building to fall from just this, or at least Mana kept telling herself this.</p><p>The rumbling ground and shift of balance that felt like going weightless for some time did not abduct Mana's ability to weave hand seals. The magician pieced together a lesser used combination of a handful of them in a fraction of a moment, while Honda was adjusting to the weight shift and preparing for his next reckless attack.</p><p>He had to be slowed down, Mana had enough experience and skill to evade the unbelievably fast monstrosity for a while through the skills acquired on focusing on evasion alone but she would be unable to land any counterattacks because the enemy would either brush them off or regenerate them again. That made only half of Mana's close-range fighting style viable and it appeared that Honda was capable of closing ranges in exceptionally fast once he got bloodthirsty.</p><p>"Polymorphy Jutsu!" Mana chanted out the name of an old technique she used to rely more on when she was newer at this job. It was a game of chance as it was a peculiar illusion Mana had very little control over. It relied more on what exactly was on the opponent's mind to determine the exact nature of the effects they suffered while under it but it had multiple advantages that Mana needed right now: it was quick, efficient and non-straining and it may have disturbed the growing ferocity and monstrous nature within Honda.</p><p>Honda bellowed before falling to his knees and placing his hands in front and beginning to sniff the air around him while he hopped around using his hind legs. Of course, he would have been thinking of rabbits more than any other animal in the corner of his mind, that was the last animal he saw and it was an impressive specimen at that. This rendered the giant immobile and powerless for a few moments as he felt trapped in what he believed to be a transformation of his body into a rabbit.</p><p>Mana clutched her fists strong enough for them to shake. She still lacked a solid battle plan. For all of her tough talk, grief, and anger she was not going to kill Honda but she had little to no way of actually subduing him either. Any attack in her arsenal was too weak to affect the lab-bred horror in any meaningful way, any wounds she caused the monster patched up in a blink.</p><p>"What irony… You're my perfect antithesis. The only way to stop you is to kill you instantly, with one shot. Crush the vital brain center completely." Mana felt the cruel irony inviting a smile on her face but she was too crushed to give into the reflex. The circumstances were too restricting, the loop was wrapping too fast around her neck and too much had already been lost.</p><p>"This was scary, but fun… Again…" Honda huffed while his body still behaved in a manner his simple mind imagined rabbits to behave.</p><p>"Dynamic Entry!" an all too familiar young and feminine voice announced while a brown blur dashed in from outside the building.</p><p>Honda's neck stretched out aside in a grotesque manner while his head squished into a misshapen lump. In just the time it would have taken for one to snap their fingers the rest of the monster's oversized body followed the massive forces affecting his body and flew aside and out through the gambling house's wall. While doing so, Little Honda busted right through yet another support beam and making the gambling house building emit immensely scary rumbling noises that resonated all the way to the top before returning in a deadly and epic in its scale echo down below.</p><p>"Usubane…" Mana mumbled while her eyes looked down. She declared so boldly to the rabbit that she had all the answers needed, that she'd take care of Honda all by herself but when she bought herself an opening she just stood there and boiled in the pot of her own disability of changing anything.</p><p>"I saved everyone I could… Preserved the bodies too. No reason not to help you now, right, Mana-san?!" the young rabbit tried emulating the very human gesture of a thumbs-up in her own very awkward way. Out of all the rabbits Mana met, Usubane was the only one so blindly imitating humans, likely due to her obsession with Mana.</p><p>"Be careful. Don't overextend, stay on your toes and always have an escape route." Mana advised the rabbit while giving her permission to join her side at the same time.</p><p>"I kicked the bastard aside like a ragdoll, don't think we need to worry too much. We can kick him about at least until the big guns show up." Usubane grinned while rubbing her nose with her paws in pride. It was an odd display of her inner world, she felt proud of her own display while at the same time feeling ashamed of her pride in front of Mana because she had heard enough stories of the magician to know that pride was not one of the traits Mana valued all that much.</p><p>"It is because he did not augment himself and was severely weakened by my illusion," Mana warned the rabbit. "Normally, he'll shrug off even your power blows. Try to keep looking for openings."</p><p>That was all that Mana could offer the rabbit now. No game plan, nothing that could have helped her be the hero she always wanted to be and stop this monster. It appeared that at this moment in time it was impossible to both be the hero that stopped Little Honda and not take a life. A choice was necessary between the two rendering Mana's life's goal impossible to achieve that horrific night.</p>
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<a name="section0494"><h2>494. Gambling House Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a gust of wind that picked up rubble and dust, scattering them all around in a highly organized whirlwind, Usubane vanished completely. Mana's chakra sensory registered the rabbit high above, perhaps even at the very top of the Hanada gambling house. It was a taijutsu technique that Mana was familiar with and one that was in the handbook of any Konoha ninja as much as beginning to study taijutsu.</p><p>"Leaf Shadow Dance?" Mana wondered to herself. She rushed onward at a half-assed pace just to control her movements and stay close to the rabbit in case Usubane would need to be pulled out after extending too far. "I guess living so close to Konohagakure has rubbed off on her." The magician thought to herself.</p><p>"Hot Feet!" Usubane yelled out as she took a leap of faith and extended her feet downward in a sky-splitting foot-dive, aiming to drive them right into Honda's bulky chest. The rabbit's lower legs set ablaze halfway down, it was too difficult to tell if it was a natural occurrence or one caused by ninjutsu. The attack was not just successful but frighteningly so – Usubane's feet dug inside Honda's chest cavity, making blood of a very washed out and darkened color burst from the monster's chest together with unidentifiable, bright, purplish fluid.</p><p>Honda appeared to regain consciousness out of the sheer pain of his chest cavity opening up so suddenly. This was highly unlike any reaction Mana had witnessed before. The monster appeared an unstoppable juggernaut the entire time and simple taijutsu attacks should not have harmed him this much, not those ranked as low as Usubane's.</p><p>The frightening part was that the pain from the previous kick to the jaw had already forced Mana's novice illusion to be canceled. There was absolutely no effect on Honda's chakra network or his mental state and yet a simple stomp managed to do this much damage.</p><p>The force of the impact caused the giant's body to bounce off the ground and float weightlessly for just a moment but that moment was enough. Usubane's hands and her ears delivered a blinding combination of blows all over the monster's body, leaving nasty looking bumps in Honda's flesh similar to those that cookie dough had when someone punched them. The bumps also took a longer while to fill up and fix.</p><p>This time Usubane's body did not light up with flames but Mana did sense chakra at play. It was a very specific kind of sense where one's body lit up with pulses and signals of various sorts, chakra signatures always appeared like lights, flames or entire stars, depending on their size and when chakra was in play the burning or shining processes were drastically escalated. It was not something a novice sensor would pick up but Mana had advanced to the point where she could, most of the time.</p><p>The chakra augmentations Usubane used made her body tough, similarly to how chakra augmentations protected a body from taking too much damage every time one was hit by those unnaturally strong blows. Except Usubane appeared to use these endurance augmentations offensively, to stiffen up her blows and harden her body while she was on the offensive and not being hit, which additionally stressed out her system. It was relatively smart as this way of using these types of augmentations reduced the risk of ruining one's chakra network as it was nowhere near as stressful as coating oneself while one was being hit.</p><p>Usubane managed to send Honda shooting skyward, the rabbit, using her amazingly powerful lower body, followed up on her airborne opponent. Mana would not have risked it with this kind of pursuit, she made sure to use her Mystical Wings Jutsu to follow her rabbit partner in case she needed to be pulled out as the kunoichi expected Honda to just spontaneously pop back into his senses any time now.</p><p>This was especially likely now, when both combatants were airborne and dodging in close distance was near-impossible without some sort of ninjutsu technique to aid one with propelling themselves aside, like Mana's Mystical Wings may have, however this particular jutsu may have been too slow to help Mana evade Honda in time if such a need ever arose.</p><p>"Rabbit F.U. Combo!" Usubane yelled out while still in the middle of delivering her combination of strikes from her hands, her feet, and her stiffened ears as she was buzzing by and around the dazed monster, the force of impact and the wide coverage of Usubane's combination attack caused Honda to smash into the Hanada's gambling house.</p><p>Mana cursed to herself as she had lost visual of her partner and she quickened her own ascension to catch up to the hole those two had made. Her technique could not yet race even with the lower body strength of the B-Rank ninja rabbits so far. Then again, Mana would not have chosen this particular manner of assault so this weakness in aerial combat was not much of a hassle to her.</p><p>"Lion Barrage!" Mana heard Usubane almost scream out while loud rumble, smoke, and debris shot out from the building as the rabbit continuously kicked the monster through every floor until he slammed into the ground of the bottom floor with a thunderous thud. Mana swooped down. She canceled her technique to start her fall and then initiated it again to pick up the pace once she reached the state of terminal velocity to save any bystanders still dumb enough to approach anywhere near the Hanada gambling house.</p><p>Usubane appeared to have complete control over the battle, at least looking at it from the purely physical aspect but Mana sensed the disturbance in her spiritual and chakra network aspects. The rabbit had thrown everything she had, strained her body even past her previously known limits as she continued to exert more and more on it and deliver blow after blow. Just like a blazing flame attempting to reach the sky to join the scorching stars above, Usubane found herself out of fuel and therefore her state dwindled down to a fraction of her usual capabilities.</p><p>Still, the rabbit was clever. She took great care in increasing her distance from the downed monster once her onslaught was completed. Had Honda just spontaneously hopped into action or brushed off Bane's blows without flinching, the rabbit would have been too invested into her offense to survive the counterattack or respond to it in any meaningful way. Mana took a mad dive through a busted window and canceled her Mystical Wings only to complete the flip in mid-air and land beside Usubane.</p><p>"I know… You told me to wait for an opening but…" Usubane huffed before grinning like a child that ate all the cookies giving their parents their most dirtied with chocolate stains smile and not regretting a single thing in the world.</p><p>"It was a great combination. I would not have advised attacking Honda this way but it showed me something interesting." Mana brushed it off.</p><p>"A weakness?" Usubane wondered with childish glee in her voice. She must have truly loved seeing Mana strategize and overcome opponents that were completely outside her pay grade just like Little Honda.</p><p>"Perhaps, it is too early to be certain so just stay focused for now," Mana warned Usubane as Honda's hand just swiped left and right grabbing at air. Without a doubt, the monster had intended Usubane to be somewhere nearby when he recovered, so that he could counterattack but his reflexes and return to form took quadruple the time Mana recalled it taking from the cheap shots she took at the monster before.</p><p>Honda snarled and growled like an animal. His eyes screamed for bloody murder while unidentifiable goop dripped in unremarkable yet consistent amounts from his open mouth. Mana, as someone with a little martial arts training, could identify the movements of someone with busted bones, someone with internal injuries clutching and protecting the injured sides ever so slightly.</p><p>When Honda charged forward after roaring out just to expel the nastiness present within his chest given birth from his burning, monstrous rage, there was none of that. The lab-made horror did not protect himself in any way, he completely threw defenses out the window and just tried to kill. Mana cried out for Usubane to be careful as she read the incoming attack before it even happened – that was the only way for efficient evasive action but it was too late.</p><p>Honda's foot blasted Usubane aside. The lifeless sack of the rabbit's body shot through the building and busted through countless more in a straight line before it stopped carrying nearly as much weight and simply collapsed into dust. The curious bystanders that would have observed the rabbit's lifeless body at the end of her trip would not have found a rabbit to have demolished dozens of buildings in a straight line but instead just a piece of a steel beam.</p><p>Mana's feet landed firmly on a wall, as the Mystical Wings Jutsu dissolved it emitted a weak pulse of Wind Release chakra. Usubane blinked a pair of times before looking up and at Mana who panted moderately. This may have been one of the more stressful dodges that the girl had initiated, not to mention the fact that she had to close so much distance at speeds far surpassing her own.</p><p>"Y-You used Substitution Jutsu… For me." Usubane muttered while sticking to the same wall. She was so taken aback by Mana breaking her own imposed rule on the way she fought that the bunny could not be bothered to check on the confused Honda who just kept looking around, desperately trying to find the magician girl and the irksome rabbit that had delivered a beatdown on him before. Evidently, the rabbit was aware of Mana's original jutsu policy and was taken aback by the magician's non-hesitation to break it to pull her out of harm's way.</p><p>"I need you to hit him with your strongest shot, right now. Look for an opening and then give him everything you have. I know you're tired, I know your chakra is extremely low but you should be able to pull off one more best shot. Can you do it for me?" Mana said bluntly.</p><p>"Is this about the weakness you thought you found?" Usubane got hyped up. Her hands moved slower, her voice sounded huskier due to the difficulty breathing that the rabbit had as she had expended most of her stamina already. Mana was not doing all too hot herself but she would have to manage… Somehow.</p><p>"Yeah. If you hit him your hardest, you can break him." Mana nodded. She made sure to look into Usubane's remaining chakra resources so that the summoned animal was not too taxed and did not end up dying because of her request – it should have worked like Mana had planned.</p><p>"Alright, I'll look for the chance and then go, just like you asked me, Mana-san!" Usubane declared loudly enough for Honda to catch a glimpse of the two withdrawn combatants and launch his body like a cannonball at them.</p><p>Mana pushed Usubane away from harm while Honda's bodyslam splattered her in a shower of blood-red all over the gambling house, however, before the spray of red could even touch the floor it turned into flower petals and dissolved away in a gentle, scattering dance. Honda slammed his body against the wall so hard that he busted through and out.</p><p>The deluge of flower petals gathered into a humanoid shape that revealed itself to be Mana's true body, right in front of Honda's sneering scowl. The magician dashed back into the building, the last thing she wanted was to take the battle elsewhere, somewhere where innocent people could have gotten hurt. While the Hanada gambling house had taken plenty of punishment, it also was one of the sturdiest buildings in the village as well as being relatively empty and self-contained.</p><p>Honda did not wait for the encouragement to rush after Mana. The magician cried out in pain as the monster drove his feet in a mad foot dive in her back, stomping her to the ground. Something of such colossal force would have killed her instantly, no matter how much the magician tried augmenting her body, however, Mana's body once more dissolved into flower petals and reformed just a little bit further from Honda's rampage-led landing.</p><p>The monster howled into the air wildly, emitting a powerful air pressure shock from his chest that paralyzed all within the distance but it was not a manner of attack, it was merely an expulsion of the ceaseless bitterness building up in his heart. Not the cool kind of outburst-type rage but more of a pitiful, resenting kind. One that made Mana's heart burn in regret of having to go all-out against this monster like this, even having all that he had done that day in mind.</p><p>This was Usubane's opening, the monster was slightly winded after rampaging about and a bit out of breath from all the temper tantrums he threw. Mana did not have to request Usubane to attack, the rabbit's fighting instincts were just fine.</p><p>Like a fiery javelin, Usubane dug her elbow into the insides of the enemy, distorting and misshaping the fleshy lump that was Honda's body and forcing bursts of bio-organic goop to push its way through every crevice or every patched up cut on Honda's body. The teen rabbit truly was putting all of her remaining chakra into this one attack, just like Mana asked.</p><p>It was a relatively new feeling – to have one's judgment trusted and unquestioned in its entirety but it also felt bitter, knowing that Mana was tricking the rabbit for her own selfish ends.</p><p>The force generated by Usubane's elbow strike was sufficient to cause even Honda's giant body lift off the ground. A motion that was enforced by a barrage of Usubane's taijutsu strikes and kicks at various areas of the opponent's body within her reach. With every strike and kick the rabbit forced out a flare of Fire Release chakra through her pores creating a very visually appealing and immensely hot visual of Usubane's beatdown appearing as flaming as it was crushing.</p><p>"Hot Rabbit Combo!" Usubane roared out, just to keep her fighting spirit alive and burning in mid-air. It was evident from the slower and weightier movements of the rabbit's strikes that her limbs felt numb as if filled with lead and yet she delivered this combination through willpower and devotion to Mana. Once again, the blaze of regret over her words to the rabbit consumed taller and taller heights in Mana's chest, threatening to spill out into the open vocally.</p><p>An impressive overhead kick sent Honda crashing back down into the crater of his own creation, deepening it almost twice since the time that the monster first crashed there a pair of moments earlier. Usubane landed on her knees, she could not stand up anymore, hyperventilating on all fours with sweat dripping from her furry body. The following sight would hunt Mana for a long time to come and the magician knew it.</p><p>The rabbit raised her head horrified and looked at the magician with betrayal screaming from the bunny's eyes whereas her mouth remained open yet silent. She must have realized that trick that Mana pulled on her but could not wrap her head around the reason why Mana would lie to the rabbit about the exact amount of chakra she had left.</p><p>"W-Why?" was all she uttered before she poofed away into smoke back to the safety of the Rabbit Caves.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes so that tears did not run down her face. "We both know there's nothing we can do at this point. No one else will get hurt because of me," she uttered before turning back to Honda, who was rising from the crater again, his chakra slightly dipped from the point it was previously but his body had completely recovered from all damage delivered to him that day.</p><p>"Magic girl, where did the rabbit go!?" Honda yelled out. "I will eat the rabbit for this before I play with the machines."</p><p>"She used too much chakra and was forced back to the Rabbit Caves. We're all alone now." Mana replied to the monster, wondering just how much of this did Honda understand and to what extent was he truly just going along the circumstances around him. "It's time you go to sleep."</p><p>"No!" Honda yelled out before charging at Mana. His speed was as unbelievable as the magician expected it to be, he moved near instantaneously and his fingers cut through even augmented human flesh like hot knives through butter, tearing Mana's body apart with a mere swipe of his hand. Blood and gore turned to flower petals of the same color and in a swirling vortex of flora revealed Mana's true position compared to the illusionary body that was just destroyed.</p><p>Mana's own chakra was running dangerously low, mostly because of the insane amount of times she had used Flower Petal Sanctuary in quick succession. It was almost the only technique that the magician managed to squeeze into this fight – all she could do was bargain for more time and do her best to hide and not die. What other options did she have? Honda was just as fast, if not getting faster, than he was when he started whereas Mana was beginning to grow weary, get a bit drowsy and felt the pressure of blood building up in bags under her eyes. The trademark symptoms of chakra approaching critical levels.</p><p>Honda threw his body in a mad flip, there was no point or grace to his movement, he merely wished to be where Mana was so he could smash her with a hammer-arm strike and so he simply chugged his meaty body at her like a ragdoll. The magician's body splattered like a tomato under Honda's fist while flower petals once more revealed Mana to have hidden even farther aside during the delay between the two attacks.</p><p>"Stand still!" Honda roared out. "This isn't fair!"</p><p>"Can't get the ticket, if you can't whack the mole." Mana taunted the monster even more. She wasn't sure if it was wise but she did not particularly care. She had maybe one more yank out of danger left in her before she hits the dry land and has to accept her own mortality and the absolute difference in power between her and Honda. Even now, the magician was being drawn to the floor like a guard after multiple all-nighter shifts. She'd likely pass out immediately after the next illusion so she most likely won't even feel anything when the time comes…</p><p>Honda's body disappeared again. He had made a mistake – he jumped up instead of coming right at Mana, perhaps the illusionary route was not necessary to dodge this attack? With an impressive effort, likely learned from watching television, Honda repurposed the force of his landing into a charging lariat that carried Mana off and through another support column and threw her illusionary body out of the building, this time in slightly better condition before it dissolved once more.</p><p>This time, however, Honda had smashed one pillar too many. The thunderous rumble from above approached the ground floor in escalating speed, the entire floor sunk in a grey cloud of dust while sharp and heavy rubble bashed against anyone foolish enough to have remained in one of the toughest and likely safest buildings in the entire world. The mighty and shiny Hanada gambling house was now just a two-floor tall size of steel beams and a concrete pyramid of rubble.</p><p>Concrete rubble the size of a caravan rolled aside and were thrown up by an immense force as Honda emerged unscathed from under the rubble. His eyes racing across the empty village looking for the next bloody murder or thing to do, scanning the environment for that pesky raven-haired fairy to re-emerge so that Honda could finally squish her but as more and more time passed he saw nothing but dust getting scattered in the wind and deadly silence.</p><p>Humanity returned back to Honda's eyes as the monster pulled out a torn rag from underneath the rubble, rolling himself up in it like a child tucking himself in and wandered off for the next thing to catch his attention.</p>
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<a name="section0495"><h2>495. Nowhere To Go But Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A burning soreness forced Mana's consciousness to snap back to the cruel reality. A reality of which she could not see all too much of. A reality in which a great number of something sharp and rough pressed against the magician's body to the extent where she almost felt her insides being forced out.</p><p>The miserable mistake of movement made Mana grunt in pain and feel the taste of blood in her mouth. A taste which she had somehow manage to forget since the last hour she's very nearly been killed by the very same creature. Even as the magician's temples twinged with blood pressure and her mind felt hazy and unresponsive, to say the least, she could recall the fact that a building decided to use Mana as its pillow.</p><p>Normally it'd have been of little issue. With enough augmentation, Mana could have shifted some debris around and freed herself, with enough stamina she could have augmented herself to survive a hundred buildings just like this one falling on top of her and with a mere feat of chakra control, Mana could have blasted all of this rubble aside with a simple ninjutsu technique. Problem was that chakra was a luxury Mana ran out of when the building so conveniently crumbled.</p><p>Just how much time has passed since Mana got taken out? This sarcophagus of concrete and exotic as they are durable steel alloys may just have saved Mana's life. Had Honda found Mana's unconscious body somewhere within his infuriated reach, he would have popped her head like a pimple. Especially without any endurance augmentations to resist his unfathomable strength. Just how many people has Honda killed by now? Just how many more specters will haunt Mana's dreams and just how many more failures will she have to face before fate finally lets her die?</p><p>It was a dark thought but Mana had just been bested twice by a monster she declared her own responsibility to stop and she had run out of any ounces of strength, leaving her effectively useless in any future attempts of stopping Honda as well. It would take hours if not an entire night for Mana to regain any scraps, anything resembling what was necessary to get out from this mausoleum of destruction she was trapped under.</p><p>It was a dark thought but everything around the magician was pitch black as well, she was trapped under what could have been dozens of floors of rubble during nighttime when the last thing on anyone's mind would have been to look for people under the rubble. The priority right now was stopping Honda, evacuating people and salvaging those that could still be saved, not turn over rocks.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and tried taking as deep of a breath in as she could. She felt the wetness of her clothes, the cold brush of some semblances of the late spring breeze brushing against her cheeks that felt chilly. Chilly in a way that suggested that her entire face was covered in something wet – she was bleeding pretty badly. That meant that time was not a luxury Mana had either, she could not afford just rest here for weeks or months, she could most likely not afford to sit tight and wait for her chakra to return. She had to get out from this deathtrap and do it within minutes.</p><p>The kunoichi was not entirely sure where exactly she's been bleeding from. She was properly compressed and felt her muscles burn up and get proper bruised whenever she moved them by the rough debris around her. At the very least, the building on top of her had the decency to provide pressure on some of her wounds as the magician doubted if she had it in her to move any of her limbs at that moment. Any sudden or reckless moves could have caused a shift in the fickle balance that the concrete and steel rubble had settled on in their negotiation with gravity. The best choice was not to panic.</p><p>Mana breathed in and out. The air was stuffy, something was running and dripping farther off to the right but Mana was not sure if it was water. It ran from slightly above her so it could not have been her own blood – at least she was certain she was not bleeding that hard just yet. Either way, while Mana's familiarity with composure and self-mastery in both physical and mental states was sufficient to grant her serenity in this painful and humbling moment, it did not raise the rubble from above her and draw her out in the clear.</p><p>Checking for the exact nature of her injuries would have been nice. Then again, it was not like Mana had much liberty of movement to know where she's been hurt. For all she knew, her legs may have been ground into bloody mush. The eyes… They were growing accustomed to the darkness but… One side remained oblivious to vision regardless. Mana tried blinking with the right side but couldn't feel it. She decided to better leave that alone for now. She felt no rush of blood there, just the presence of it and that was enough for now.</p><p>She was not growing dizzy, there was only a mild case of shortness of breath and only because any remnants of oxygen had to work through layers on top of layers of debris before they reached Mana. She was choking up slowly due to the pressure against her back and chest limiting her intake of air, due to the limited supply of anything breathable that was not just chalk or dust but if she settled on dying this way it would be a drawn out and torturous end. She'd much more likely die of bleeding out – the more immediate worry right now.</p><p>Wriggle, wriggle. Mana moved her toes and fingers just to feel how much she could do so. She brushed handfuls of dust and small pebbles aside and found that with each stroke she managed to push more and more, move more and more. Whatever that wonder of a building was made of was completely reduced to an almost shattered to dust state by all the fighting inside of it and the crashing that the combatants were doing.</p><p>Wriggle, wriggle. Mana could move her arms up and down. Instead of worrying over not being able to see and barely feeling anything with the right side of her face and continuously feeling the chill of blood soaking her having wind gently caress it from the outside, Mana chose the simple joy of the fact she was not paralyzed completely. That would have been a miserable way to go – to awaken only to become aware of the way one would die but to be able to change nothing about it.</p><p>Eyes were growing heavy, sometimes it began to seem like time was skipping by in boundless leaps. The worst part was that there was no reliable method of telling it for sure. All Mana could do so that she did not nod off was to focus on things that kept her awake even when she wanted to embrace the slumber – responsibility.</p><p>She failed again… She knew the whole time that taking on Honda after the first time getting busted open and taken down was near-impossible. She knew little of the monsters abilities, his nature and all that she did know was absolutely terrifying. She was operating at half-efficiency even after she was healed up somewhat. She could never have done it in a hundred years and yet…</p><p>She deserved this, honestly, to die buried under a rubble that used to contain inside human greed and vanity, two things she could never have related with. Like a demon sealed inside a purified silver coffin… She failed to contain Honda initially, failed to track him down effectively and failed to get to him in time. Worst of all, she pushed away any potential help, any possible advantages that she so desperately needed.</p><p>What good was a sense of responsibility without the proper means of accomplishing them? Mana was like a devoted mother who could not be bothered to learn that an oven was a poor place to dry your baby in after his bath. Loving with all of her heart and determined to live up to her fate but ultimately a dangerous idiot.</p><p>Was this truly to be her fate? Her legacy? To be the kunoichi that placed all of her chips of foolish hopes that had little to no merit, someone who actively ruined her own odds relying on a miracle just because she had the guts to work hard at it and nothing else of substance, even more, work hard but not smart…</p><p>Mana coughed up some blood, she felt it sticking to her lips. It was tough to not wriggle around with her greatly compressed chest and aggravate her injuries further when the air was this stuffy and the irritation of blood gathering inside was this vexing. The combination was simply unbearable. Mana looked around, straining her neck until it made the bruised back of the magician burn up and the industrial materials mingling with her wounds made it feel like having one's skin peeled off with sandpaper.</p><p>"A pipe…" she spoke to herself, longing for some sort of stimulus to keep her brain active and her body awake. The girl started wriggling and struggling about like a caterpillar, digging into her own cocoon of busted concrete, dirt, and steel and creating a makeshift bubble of rubble around her, also exasperating her bruises and traumas even worse.</p><p>The countdown clock that Mana had had just skipped some beats and turned even direr but as long as the girl could reach the pipe and have just a sip of water, even dirty water at that… The pain and agony would all be worth it. Even if the magician barely ever moved from her place of entombment, it felt like she had completed a quest of a thousand miles when her lips wrapped around the sharp but dry pipe.</p><p>All that Mana's chest filled with when she drew hard on the pipe was air. With Mana dazed mind, it took her a great handful of seconds to realize that this was basically a lifetime worth of treasure. The fresh air felt just about as revitalizing in her current condition as a spring of fresh underground water would have felt during a hot summer midday. Just a pair of breaths of fresh air made Mana feel renewed to fight for her survival once more.</p><p>If this pipe had access to fresh air it could not have been too far from the surface, that meant that if Mana was to use it her voice would connect to freedom. Still, it was not like the injured kunoichi had infinite access to stamina, her life was quite literally draining from her in slow and methodical but reckless and determined droplets. It was just the sharp tip of the blade of cruel irony – to survive Mana needed to do what she was so reluctant to do up 'till now.</p><p>"Help!" Mana yelled out when she thought she heard something scribbling and scratching through the elongated pipe. Who knew how long it took for the noise to come in and out and how much strength was still left in the magician's box. The first call for help was unsuccessful. It must have been just a surviving critter wandering about or the unstable rubble shifting about.</p><p>Steps. "Mana-chan must be somewhere under this rubble!" Kouta's voice rung in the magician's ears, she couldn't believe the luck. He must have been close, almost like there was only a cardboard wall separating the two. If only Mana gathered all of her remaining strength and called out. Anything less than that would leave her buried and something told her that counting for another chance of a rescue would be exceedingly slimmer than those of the first one.</p><p>"What makes you so sure?" a familiar authoritative and masculine voice followed. Kouta's father, a de facto Sannin was here too? If Kusagoro took Little Honda on, Konoha may as well have been as good as saved. Was he not on a mission or training somewhere abroad? Mana could vaguely recall hearing about that on one of her more recent times seeing Kouta… Was Kouta not supposed to be away too, training on identifying different herbs and mushrooms to be used in improvised ointments, a part of his medical ninja training?</p><p>"She's just the kind of person to rush right into the eye of the biggest storm around," Kouta replied.</p><p>Who cared where he was earlier today? He was here right now and so was his father that meant that she was given a chance to make it all right. The only chance of moving the world-sized rock of responsibility crushing her shoulders was to have more helping hands and shoulders split its weight. Mana opened her mouth wide and stretched it over the pipe, she had to give it her best shot, now or never…</p><p>The girl's head snapped back so quickly that she hit a rough chunk above her so hard that sounds ringing echoed in her head. She had passed out at some point. Just how much had she dreamed? Just how much time had passed and how much more blood had Mana lost? She had never felt so drained and tired right after waking up. Much to her enthusiasm, the pipe was not a figment of her imagination, her boyfriend and his powerhouse of a father looking for her, however, were.</p><p>The grunt that Mana let out after hitting her head in the rubble pressing against her from above sounded so pathetic and weak. She could not have had too much time left. The magician listened in on the pipe, hearing movement and speech on the other side. It was nowhere near as clear as in her dream, she could not tell exactly what was being spoken about but she could hear a great number of voices. Mana reached out for the pipe and prepared to call for help again.</p><p>No. If she called out a few more times she would waste energy with limited success, just like before. Who knew how thick the layer of debris above her was, who knew if the pipe even went all the way out to the surface or if simply passed around echoes. Mana shoved her ankle down and deeper into the narrowing area in between two pieces of collapsing rubble. She shoved it in through as much force as she could muster until the foot could move neither forward nor back through normal means, without hurting the ankle that had sharp edges digging into it almost hard enough to draw blood without it even moving.</p><p>Then came the crude yank. Where Mana could not move or pull the leg anymore after forcing it stuck, she could certainly yank it causing the kind of pain that was absolutely paralyzing, robbing the magician of any other instinct but one that commanded her scream her lungs out in volumes beyond her normal human limits available to her normally. The very first that came to Mana's mind after she managed to take control over her instincts was fear over her own frightful voice that came out resonating through the pipe and out the other end.</p><p>The magician coughed out blood feeling the burning irritation in her throat from the strain that her dominating instinct to scream in pain uncontrollably placed. It did not take long for noises of rumbling and brief breaches of artificial light to break through, temporarily blinding Mana.</p><p>"Yeah, someone's here!"</p><p>"Move aside."</p><p>"Go to hell, I don't need muscle here, I can move the rubble around just fine. I need someone subtle to pull a broken body out."</p><p>Mana's head just slammed against the rubble beneath like she used to just collapse lifeless after a rough day in her bed. At this point, she cared very little that the rough landing cracked open the wounds covering her forehead. She was found. Just like predicted, she could barely even speak or move.</p><p>"For fuck's sake, don't tell me you went right back in after last time…" a familiar voice of the medical ninja that healed her before registered in Mana's consciousness.</p><p>Mana lacked the strength to respond, she felt like an athlete just managing to shrug her shoulders.</p><p>"Wait, this is Konoha's Sorceress? Shit, maybe the jounin made the right call ordering us to stay back and be on rescue duty…" one of the ninja in the rescue party cursed.</p><p>"Yeah, she's pretty banged up, her condition can't wait. I need multiple medical ninja on our position, Shura and Bora, go sit on watch and let us know if that bastard creeps back here." The medical ninja ordered the rest around. From before Mana could recall that the other chuunin outranked the medical ninja but right now the need for a competent medical ninja elevated the call of the medical ninja above those of his peers.</p><p>Shura and Bora nodded, looking a bit pale and in over their head but they dashed off without questioning their duty. This was no longer just a measly act of crime or even an act of terrorism within village walls. With destruction this far-spread and the victim count this high up and of this importance, the village was basically fighting for survival, this was almost a war.</p><p>"Hang on, this is not going to be pretty…" the medical ninja sighed.</p><p>"Wait." A Hyuuga with long, dark hair and an ordinary chuunin flak jacket and Konoha uniform approached the rocky platform Mana was placed on to be treated. "Your rabbit recovered the body of Kuren Hyuuga, did it not?"</p><p>Mana stared blankly, lacking the energy to even nod her head, let alone reply. The Hyuuga man handed down a wooden jar to the medical ninja before bowing half of his body to Mana.</p><p>"We Hyuuga do not harvest ocular techniques like the Uchiha but that does not mean that the Byakugan isn't worth a fortune in the black market. In many cases, it is even more desired by rogues and mercenaries alike. Kuren may have been an outcast in the clan but I am grateful that you made sure her body was not disgraced by a lowly marauder in the middle of this mess, looking to make a buck. Please soak Sorceress-san's bandages in these, Onimaru-san. It will aid her recovery." The man reported.</p><p>"This is the secret Hyuuga ointment… It is not whipped out often, even when members of the clan are injured." Onimaru, the medical ninja looked shocked to see the gooey, green substance inside the old, wooden jar.</p><p>"It is the gift of gratitude, most often. I would say that the current case fits the description well." The Hyuuga man nodded with his featureless, white eyes smiling while the man's face was stoic.</p>
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<a name="section0496"><h2>496. Licking The Wounds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the medical ninja concluded the valiant task of patching Mana up, the magician felt like wearing a new, freshly ironed shirt. Except that shirt stretched out over her entire body and covered some extremely sensitive skin. Bandages soaked with something sticky but refreshing covered most of the girl's body. Maybe she could still salvage her shows by rebranding herself as the Amazing Mummy Girl.</p><p>Her parents were still home, the Nakotsumi house was further away from where the destruction took place, some villagers from the further districts chose to evacuate into the retreat under the Hokage Mountain as well but Mana's parents were not like them. Father's life was too downed by the pain and mother was simply too badass to get frightened by some immortal, genetic monstrosity rampaging across the village streets and pretty much doing whatever it wanted.</p><p>A middle-aged woman desperately clutched at her scattering hair. The hectic battle transpiring in the background did not let the woman a moment to settle down and do her job. She was dressed in the Konoha military uniform, full flak jacket and all but if the monster closed up to where the journalists were reporting from – it'd have been of no help. It was just for the casual audience that could have used the realization that things were going ballistic in their own village. A place they considered sacred and safe before and took for granted.</p><p>Father was too absorbed by the television screen to hear Mana enter the room through the hallway after dropping her boots aside. She was too tired for etiquette or house rules at this point, given her ghastly looks, it was understandable. Mother was cutting something that was once a living being in the kitchen frantically and efficiently. That was her way of calming down and given that she had the need for it, it was forgivable that she would miss Mana entering as well.</p><p>"The monster seems to be quite contained within the south-eastern district. The jounin who were so absorbed with managing the evacuation and making a proper battle plan have now engaged the beast and are attempting to move it away from the village." The woman outright yelled as the noises and shockwaves coming from nearby were difficult to talk over. Once in a while, both the reporter and the crew filming her got tossed around by the resonating battle they were observing.</p><p>"Where the hell were you!? What is this!?" mother's voice made Mana flinch. It appeared that the magician got so absorbed by the report that she missed when mother's knife stopped thumping against the cutting board. "Are you OK!?"</p><p>The woman launched herself at Mana, she extended her hands for a hug but before the woman collided with the magician at the speed that would have been enough to qualify it as tackling her daughter outright, Nakotsumi Kei stopped and examined the magician's pitiful state.</p><p>"I need… A bath." Mana sighed. Her voice was weary. She sounded about as lively and she felt, given that her skin was paler than all the bandages she was wrapped in, that was not very lively.</p><p>"Oh, God! You're all bloodied up…" mother cried out, she still struggled to believe the state that Mana left home in. Naturally, if this was just another day, just another mission, she would have never been allowed to leave home in this condition but this was no ordinary day. The medical ninja from before needed to treat more people until the whole Honda affair was over and through.</p><p>"It's not as bad as it looks. When they pulled me out I was bleeding all over so the blood needed to be stopped immediately before all the wounds could be treated." Mana showed her mother a handful of new bandages she had to change into. "I need to wash before applying these. Onimaru-san said that I needed to change out of these old ones as soon as I get home."</p><p>"The bastard probably could have helped you out more but he was worried you'd run right back at that thing." Father sighed before standing up and approaching the magician too. "This was beyond reckless. I hope we don't need to tell you how disappointed we are that you ran off and nearly got yourself killed."</p><p>Mana scratched an itchy sore at the side of her neck. She may have opened a shallow bruise that was halfway patched up because of how minor it was since she felt the area get wet almost immediately after messing with it.</p><p>The girl looked down and to the side. Her one uncovered eye looked about as guilty as humanly possible. Taking this was sort of a part of the responsibility as well. Stopping Honda was something Mana felt responsible to do and therefore taking the consequences of failing was a grand part of that package.</p><p>"Honestly, if you weren't a ninja on active duty, I'd have grounded you and trapped your room. If I could still tinker that is," father continued before floating off into his past. He clearly looked like he had expected to still be able to tinker before the cruel reality that was a part of his day-to-day life hit him all over again like the very first time. Living without the wonder drugs of Ayushi's cult did not look like all too attractive fate to struggle with.</p><p>"Can I go? Onimaru-san was really insistent I washed myself up when I get home." Mana spoke in a husky and submissive tone.</p><p>"What's that?" mother picked up the Hyuuga ointment that Mana was still clutching in her hand. Part of the jar was emptied the first time Onimaru applied the bandages on Mana but a bit less than half of it still remained.</p><p>"A gift, I need to rub it into the bandages, I think…" Mana yawned and then sighed in succession.</p><p>"Right… I imagine there's not much reprimand you with that you haven't put yourself through already. I know how hard you deal with losing…" father scratched the back of his head while his eyes wandered off onto the screen again, observing the hectic and fruitless attempt to relocate Honda. From the looks of it, the monster was more persistent to stay where he was and do whatever the hell he wanted than it was to protect himself from getting wailed on. Honda defended himself harder from attempts to move him than he did from attempts to take him down.</p><p>The water burned Mana's irritated and littered with wounds skin like acid. Not on the outside though, while it hurt like hell to just have it running anywhere near, as much as splattering a couple of drops onto it, visually Mana's dirtied, dust-covered and bloodied skin paled back out, making her look almost like a human being.</p><p>Despite her most genuine attempts to move her thoughts away from Honda, Mana could not stop having the cloud of her mind linger above the subject pretty much all the time. Whenever the girl did not work consciously on moving her thoughts to something else – the rampaging, loudmouthed, bumbling monstrosity had occupied her thoughts in its oversized entirety.</p><p>Mana sighed with sadness reflected figuratively at her breath that gathered on the glass from the inside of her shower cabin. In this state there was no way that she would ever get a shot at Honda again, perhaps that was for the better. Just mentally traveling back to that accursed gambling house and visualizing that fearsome abomination in front of her giving it his utmost best shot at killing Mana in the most gruesome way possible was frightening, even to someone as quirky as the ninja magician.</p><p>Still, what a curious monster Honda was together with its fearsome nature. Completely oblivious to pain, no movements wasted on flinching, wincing or reacting in any way to being attacked. All the boy-turned-monster knew was absolute, all-out attack. Even to someone who was supposed to be technically impressive at a defensive hand-to-hand fighting style, evasion and counterattacks like Mana, such a style of combat was panic-inducing.</p><p>Usually attacking successfully opened the opponent up, it gave one time and opportunity to follow-up, the presence of pain in their system, the very fact of them taking damage prevented the enemy from attacking back. Even if the enemy counterattacked, pain always provided a split-instant of an opening, whether a telegraph to read an upcoming attack or a window to avoid it. Such was not the case with Honda.</p><p>All Honda knew was attacking. If one punched him and did not blow him off his feet with one blow, they risked getting an immediate response. Offense wasted movement. It opened the attacker up as well. It made them invest into awkward attacking motions that made them stiff with inertia. Attacking Honda was as dangerous for this unflinching, ruthless revenge-response as it was to just stand still in front of him and wait for death.</p><p>Even if one succeeded at attacking Honda, to what use was it really? The risk of opening oneself up for an immediate counterattack was simply not worth it when the reward of damaging one's opponent was taken away by Honda's regeneration. What a curious ability that was… Completely random with its speed and efficiency. Or perhaps not…</p><p>Mana turned the water off and pressed her hand against the glass. That way perhaps it would not tremble this much, fear lit up in the magician's heart, she felt entrapped within this simple comfort item. The magician had to resist with her utmost ability the instinct to crawl and wrap up in the corner in a fetal position as her body demanded her to do. She wanted to bust out, kick out, escape, to scream for help… Anything but not to remain inside…</p><p>The girl closed her eyes. She halted her accelerated breathing by simply shutting her breath down entirely before slowly resetting it with conscious commands over its proceedings. As instructed, Mana's body continued to breathe in and out in a controlled pace while the girl's mind slipped away into the star-filled space of her inner self. It looked so vast, so endless and filled to the brim with mystery. Unlike when Mana visited it before, her inner space was not dark. It was almost dark sapphire in color with azure nebulae spreading across like candy cotton.</p><p>Then the magician rebuilt the entire ground floor of the Hanada gambling house where she faced Honda. She observed her first shots blow the monster's flesh open and watched those very same wounds stitch up immediately. The visions and sounds fast-forwarded in a breakneck pace until they stopped at when Usubane was hammering at the beast, holding him down for an entire minute.</p><p>Mana's hand reached out. Even while she saw nothing in the inner space of her own mind, she could physically feel her limb touch something cold once more. A glass prison meant for hygiene. The magician leaned her head forward, feeling the cold resistance of that very same surface that remained out of sight for her mental self. With a swipe of her hand to the side, Mana opened her shower door and walked out, wrapping herself in a towel and being extra careful not to look at herself in the mirror. At least not before she reapplied the bandages.</p><p>She could feel a nasty lump in her right eye. It must have been the same injury from before aggravated to the nth degree. As much as the magician did not wish to dwell on it, she may have lost an entire eye or just vision with it. It may have been too grievous of a wound for the medical ninja to look at properly with Onimaru focusing solely on things that threatened Mana's life immediately via blood loss. The girl pressed a rag against her right side and tightened the bandages to hold it in place.</p><p>If she could not see with her right eye, it would not hurt to close it down and wrap it up. Everything hurt. Just like washing her irritated and bruised body hurt before, reapplying the bandages made Mana wince, whine, and quiver in pain. While she was bandaging her middle section, the wound on her back, where a bunch of debris bruised her and almost crushed her spine before, made the magician bite her lip in pain hard enough to draw blood.</p><p>After the bandaging part was over, wrapping herself in the bathrobe was much softer and felt much cozier. Even if the extent of her injuries, and the means she had to go through to hide them and recover from them, robbed the magician of the warm and soothing feeling of the robe rubbing against her skin, Mana felt like she should have been grateful that there was a numbing layer of bandages in between the robe and her bruised and broken body.</p><p>Mana's one working and uncovered eye shot open. What if… When the magician first saw Honda in the sewers, he was at his strongest. He had faced multiple B-Rank ninja along the way to the gambling house and suffered no injuries. He moved at lightning-pace meaning he wasted no time recovering whatsoever and yet when he did reach the gambling house he may not have been stopped per se, but he was inconvenienced by the strictest definition of the word. The only thing that changed in between those two periods was Honda's chakra signature.</p><p>Honda was not strictly immortal and invincible, not like Shigin was at all. In some ways, Honda was a superior specimen compared to what Guru Ayushi tried to achieve but in some ways, he was a massive step back, likely because Honda was started way before some of the in-between experiments. He was the magnum opus Ayushi was working through this entire time, he embodied both the man's early work when he was unfamiliar with what he was doing and merely getting acquaintanced with the work he would do in the future and the man's peak.</p><p>Honda's regenerative abilities very clearly deteriorated. That was not to say that the longer Honda fought, the weaker he got, merely that his regenerative abilities depended greatly on his chakra signature which was drastically unstable. Unlike normal people, Honda did not have a singular chakra signature that he used. That was why at times Honda's chakra sky-rocketed whereas in others he was impossible to sense at all. Whatever other bodies were involved in Honda's making were alternative sources for chakra and Honda drew from them whenever he needed, most likely unwillingly, based on his emotional state.</p><p>This was important. Mana needed to let somebody know of this. It could have led to the secret of stopping the monster. If one pressed on and drove the chakra signature to the very edge of Honda's limit without making Honda lose his humanity to the point where he tapped into the other chakra signatures, they would have timed Honda out and made him vulnerable. Injuries would actually stick. One did not necessarily have to kill Honda immediately to stop him!</p><p>The magician walked up to her room, limping on her right leg as her knees felt worse than that time she fell off of the stack of boxes and busted them open pretty badly as a kid. Mana's lips curved to the upside when she realized how foolish she even was for comparing those two injuries. Right now, she was inches away from passing out, a good punch away from dying outright.</p><p>While in her room, slowly, the magician sat in a meditative position and straightened her back out. Something that made her aching ribs and spine crack about but Mana pushed through the pain. Who needed experimentation and drugs when she had some good old meditation and willpower, that tool that served her so well early-on in her life…</p><p>If Mana was to do this, to leave back and into the fray of battle, if only to warn and brief the ninja actually doing the fighting, she would need all the advantages she could get. Some augmentation would not hurt… Sadly, it has only been a couple of hours since the collapse of the building and she could not have been even at one-tenth of her total limit. It took all Mana had to survive a single, meaningless shove from Honda, with just around eight percent she may as well have not even tried defending herself if push came to shove.</p><p>The magician started meditating again. Visualizing her own network, feeling the movement of her own spiritual and physical energies. It was like looking at a creek with massive ridges during the draft, only a trickle instead of a mighty, flushing stream that was supposed to wash the dryness away and satisfy the figurative thirst of the magician's entire inner world.</p><p>She had not trained this way since the time in the Rabbit Caves, and yet whenever she did, it helped her increase her chakra signature at all times. Looking at the chakra nodes and watching for meaningless lumps of chakra improperly controlled and left to burn away inside her system. Every time Mana used a jutsu, her body mustered up the chakra needed to perform it but the control of no single person was exactly perfect. There were always leftovers, rejected runt from the litter that just stayed around meaninglessly inside one's system, building up like pus and waiting to be shoved back into the system.</p><p>This stimulation of her network would not be much. It may have increased her remaining chakra from eight percent of Mana's total to twelve, increasing her overall chakra limits by a good four percent overall, not that it mattered if she got killed in action… Either way, if she knew a way for Honda to make it out alive, a way to stop him before he could kill any more people, it would have been irresponsible of her to just sit at home and lick her wounds. She needed to press on, she needed to move, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much she wanted to just tune out and go to sleep while the sky above her was red and sounds of battle echoed in the distance.</p><p>Mana dropped on her feet, feeling an inch of her strength flooding back into her body and numbing the pain of her busted and bruised knees having to cushion the fancy leap off her bed that broke the girl's static meditation. The magician quietly snuck downstairs, looking at the still working TV screen and her father stretched out on the sofa. His chest lifted up and down slowly, in a rhythmic fashion. Mana may not have been exactly the epitome of stealth, oftentimes she loved being flashy and loud but the slumbering patriarch of the Nakotsumi family had no hopes of noticing Mana leave.</p><p>"Once again, I must ask you, where is the Hokage during this crisis? Is his role not to spearhead the attack on the monster? Should he not have immediately sprung into action and disposed of Honda the moment he entered the village and it became public knowledge to his office?"</p><p>The news has passed the reporting from the scene of the battle stage and had reached the fruitless debate and finger-pointing stage. The television crew was desperate for actual news but not as desperate as they were at milking this attack for every inch of the time its succulent, figurative tit.</p><p>"That's nonsense, Junsei-san, you know as well as I do that the Hokage's role is not to swing fists like some brute on the battlefield. His role is to inspire the villagers as well as those on the front, to manage the logistics of the defense. If we look back at history, the most efficient defenses were managed by men of smarts and inspiration, strategic geniuses, not self-appointed heroes."</p><p>"You say that but we do not see Lord Sixth anywhere near a camera, addressing his village either. How is a common villager supposed to know that the head embodiment of his security, the avatar of strength and everything a ninja is supposed to be isn't hiding in the mountain of his superior predecessors."</p><p>"Now, Junsei-san, that's a loaded question and you know it! If we should blame something, it's the Sannin, just where is Juugo Kusagoro right now?"</p><p>"I disagree…"</p><p>"Mana?" This crying voice was unlike those babble-spreading others from the screen. It was mother's. "Where are you going?"</p><p>Mother was talking quietly, she did not intend on waking father up because that would have only caused more ruckus and quarrel but it was self-evident, it did not take a master people-reader to tell – she was pleading Mana to turn around and stay. To lie that she was just going out for some fresh air or something like that… Anything to keep her worried heart from bursting out her chest as if it had brutally swung a sledgehammer to do so.</p><p>"I… I know how to stop him. Without killing him, without letting Honda kill anyone else. I can do it. If anyone else dies with me knowing that I could have stopped it all. If those ninja kill Honda when I know I could have stopped it before it went to that… What's the point of living with that kind of disgrace?" Mana replied, mirroring her mother's whisper.</p><p>There were so many emotions, so many things running through mother's face and her head at that moment. The woman could not decide if she should have just flipped out on the magician, just scream all of the pent-up worry, all of the deceitful serenity from after Mana came back home and the woman knew that her child was now safe again, if injured badly or to just smack some sense into her daughter outright.</p><p>"It's not like I can stop you…" mother looked down. "There's nothing to gain in just standing in your way."</p><p>"I'm not going out there to be a hero. I'm out there to deliver a message, mother. I know I can't beat Honda the way I am now and I do not intend to try. I don't care about bragging rights or the honor of winning against something like that, what I am after is the same thing I was always after – to make sure that everyone survives." Mana's figure disappeared from the hallway with the door silently closing not a full moment afterward.</p><p>"Even if I have already failed at that…" Mana finished that thought while she was by herself, moving across the emptied streets of Konohagakure that varied from looking just like they always looked except for the hustle and bustle to reminding of a literal war zone in the narrow areas where Honda had made his way through, plowing through any measly resistance he met along the way like it was nothing.</p><p>"He was fighting, straining his regeneration this whole day non-stop. It must be at the boiling point just about now. It must be…" Mana tried calming herself down both to qualm her rampant fears raging like wildfire somewhere inside her ribcage and to move her thoughts away from her sore and broken body and her burning from exhaustion muscles. Even getting to the battle would be a torturous trip…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0497"><h2>497. The Grotesque Stage-Setter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Darn… How could all of us lose to this behemoth?" a pink haired young woman clutched her injured sides as she had already accepted her own demise, similar to that that has approached her squad mates unexpectedly. For all it was worth, at least she faced hers head-on and had the time to properly greet it. Quit it with her head up high…</p><p>"Wind Style: Dragon's Tail!" a masculine voice broke the expected chain of events. A moderately-sized tornado slammed against the front of Honda, sending the monster crashing through a pair of empty and banged up buildings behind him. While the injured special jounin was glad to have survived for a while longer, she knew that the monster would just reemerge and kill everyone. It always did.</p><p>"On your feet, Kanami." A spiky, dark haired young man with an athletic build and oriental styled clothes descended nearby the kneeling and broken woman and helped her up. "You should retreat. You've done your part. Did he kill Kinin and Daitari?"</p><p>"No. I was sent as a part of another team because they needed a mid-range, speed-based offensive ninja." Kanami shook her head. "This looked like such an easy mission. This monster looked so weak in the beginning, a moderate challenge for one special jounin maybe but in the end…"</p><p>"I see…" the young man with a clear previous history with Kanami stood up, closed his eyes and breathed a pair of times to calm himself and prepare himself for the upcoming battle while his squad mates joined him by his side.</p><p>"How are Kinin and Daitari?" the ponytail, dark-haired ninja who had used the Wind Release ninjutsu that blew Honda off his feet temporarily before asked.</p><p>"They were not here. Kanami was a part of a spontaneously formed squad. Those two are still alive." The spiky haired ninja replied before giving the reemerging and angered Honda a death-inducing glare. Encouraged by the boldness of their colleague, the ponytail ninja as well as another pair of ninja that joined by their sides prepared for a difficult battle ahead.</p><p>"Hmph. This beast looks like a chump. Shouldn't take us too long to do what other incompetent fools couldn't." a man with jets of black and white hair swirling around one another making a very twisted looking hairdo noted with a disdainful scowl, it was unclear if it was meant to demean the monster in front of them or those that gave up their lives fighting it.</p><p>"Come on, Santei, that's disrespectful to all the genin and chuunin who lost their lives fending the monster off while the administration put the plan together. Nobody expected this freakazoid today…" the ponytail ninja tried objecting to his squad mate but, having his high and mighty personality in mind, even the valiant ponytail ninja knew that it was a vain task to attempt to persuade his friend to think differently.</p><p>"Do not underestimate this monster. It has killed genin, chuunin and special jounin alike. It should not have been something that called for the involvement of special jounin at all and yet…" the dark-haired ninja with white, oriental clothes growled his teeth at the monster.</p><p>"Why do you people keep attacking me when all I want is some dango!?" Honda yelled out before launching himself at the gathered squad of special jounin, his hands were extended to the sides out wide, it was a foolish charge – the monster was wide open and thusly he greatly confused the four reinforcement ninja who have come to their village's aid.</p><p>"Earth Style: Core Chainmail!" the special jounin with curly blond hair and an orange bodysuit underneath his flak jacket drove his arms together at impressive speed. A storm of mineral dust burst from underground and gathered in a rotating ring that then grew into an entire sphere covering his entire squad. The defensive ninjutsu was rotating at such an awesome speed that it blew Honda aside upon first contact.</p><p>"Just how did this weakling kill any chuunin at all? He was incapable of breaking even the Core Chainmail technique." Santei, the smug special jounin, sneered with disdain before launching his body at an impressive and technically sound rush at the monster. The movements of all four special jounin were attuned perfectly and each one of them appeared to have been properly trained in technical taijutsu and were excellent martial artists.</p><p>Santei threw a couple of power strikes aimed at the monster's liver, center of his chest, aiming to stop the monster's heart, before flipping gracefully and transitioning into a spinning kick at the exposed weak spot on Honda's neck. The first one was a debilitating shot that would have only killed in the long run, the rest of Santei's attacks were immediate murderers and yet… Honda's arms locked around Santei's feet and smacked the assailant around, shaking the ground so hard that it raised large waves all the way in the Archipelago in the Water Country.</p><p>The body of the special jounin flared up with intense flames, he had taken some battle damage that would have rendered a further physical confrontation pointless. In a quick and brutal blitz of more lethal kicks to the behemoth's exposed neck, Santei attempted to free himself from the monster's grasp.</p><p>Kanami flashed right in on the exposed and scarred chest of Little Honda. Her forearms blurred as constructs of Wind Release chakra created compressed whirlwinds around her fingernails that carried all of the intensity of a massive hurricane compressed into the size of a needle.</p><p>"Wind Style: Pink Tiger Tsuppari!" Kanami grunted out through physical strain as she delivered an assemblage of mean-looking strikes with her hurricane claws leaving wide gashes that burst with unidentifiable, thick goop and looked like they were tearing Honda's body apart from the inside with each contact made. In this moment of the monster getting surprised and mangled, the pink-haired kunoichi pulled Santei out of the monster's grasp and spared him the unfortunate fate she had seen happen that day all too often.</p><p>The rest of the Santei's squad looked pleasantly surprised by Kanami's display. The young woman just gave her best-faked courageous grin with a thumb up while she put Santei down and helped him back up. "I will fight too," she declared.</p><p>"That was foolish…" Santei grunted through pain and tear. "You should have transitioned into Pink Tiger Howl, the monster was stunned, he would not have avoided it."</p><p>"There is no use for that. I've already used all of my techniques on this monster and none of them matter. That is why he is so lethal. Yes, it is true that he should be no match for any single one of us but he has been fighting genin and chuunin and now even special jounin this whole day and… Nothing. He enters each battle fresh and new and just wears you out." Kanami looked at the monster with bitterness in her eyes, observing the monster's shape reforming as new tissue was molding with the exposed flesh and bone and even twitching and pulsing organs in a grotesque manner.</p><p>"We should retreat. This is valuable intel and it could serve those that succeed us in fighting this monster." The curly-haired blonde suggested.</p><p>"That's your excuse for everything, Idaru. This bastard is nothing! We need to combine our attacks, hit him with our best shots and destroy him!" Santei grunted out, looking about as pissed as Honda was before after being humbled and blown aback by the monster's unflinching and incapable of feeling pain nature.</p><p>Kunshei, the dark-haired shinobi in white, oriental clothes turned at the ponytail ninja with a calm glare. "What is your opinion on this, Hibaru? I need to know everyone's thoughts before making a decision."</p><p>The ponytail ninja rubbed his nose, looking embarrassed by his call but he decided to voice it nevertheless. "I say we give kicking this guy's ass a shot. Ain't like we haven't faced and beaten stronger guys before, even if those guys actually went down when we hit them…"</p><p>"Wait, you can't…" Kanami appealed to her old friend's better senses but Kunshei was unfaltering. After composing his emotions and preparing for the combination attack he looked at the young woman with a softer face than the one he gave the monster this whole time.</p><p>"I think it would be better if you fled. You're injured, you've given this beast everything you have already and you are slower because of your injuries." He gently said.</p><p>"B-But…" Kanami tried objecting.</p><p>"Don't you get what he is saying? If we actually do need to retreat, if nothing else works, you're going to slow us down unless you start fleeing first." Santei explained in a much less standoffish and much calmer manner than it could have been expected of him.</p><p>"I understand." Kanami looked down and to the side with watering eyes. She did not wish to be a burden or cause anyone to die saving her or holding Honda off while he was adamant about not letting the ninja flee with their lives. Without offering any more words, Kanami fled.</p><p>"While he is recovering." The leader of the squad of special jounin ordered, as if his close friend was not slowly fleeing to have her injuries looked at. The eyes of the oriental-looking ninja penetrated all they pointed to. They had a particular emerald luster that, despite its exotic color, could only be identified as those of a killer.</p><p>"Wind Style: Typhoon Claw!" the ponytail special jounin chanted out after a rather sluggish combination of hand seals. Had the opponent of the squad not been busy recovering, while its flesh shifted and formed about in a hectic manner forming not quite the way it was supposed to or how it previously was, the start of the combination attack could have been qualified as rather sloppy for the high rank of the ninja performing it.</p><p>A wall of wind blasted diagonally from above, like a hammer intending to crush all in the targeted area to the dirt. The strength of the ninjutsu technique was deceitful, the initial blast was not the actually relevant part of the jounin's technique. The atmospheric pressure around the area started shifting about, compressing to bloating Honda's body in a grotesque manner, threatening to make it burst if things continued.</p><p>Dark clouds covered the sky in an instant, boisterous winds signaled the descent of three twisters from the heavens that did not behave in a manner in which actual tornadoes moved or acted, they slammed at the area of varying air pressure like crumbling towers or whips intending to lash out at the recovering enemy.</p><p>"How's tha…" before the enthusiastic ninja could finish his gloating, an extended hand appeared right in front of his face with its pissed owner right behind it, as was usually the case. This may have been one of these rarer instances where matters relating to Honda were how they were rationally supposed to be.</p><p>Before Honda's crushing fist could enclose around Hibaru and scrunch the poor man's head, a rocky platform erupted from underground, smacking right at the softer part of the monster's wrist and displacing his arm. Despite colliding with the limb's softest tissues with enough force to make a moon crumble into nothingness, Honda appeared completely unaffected by any pain. Only anger blazed in the eyes of the innocent monster.</p><p>"Earth Style: Core Flak Jacket!" the blond special jounin yelled out post-factum, his voice brimming with excitement.</p><p>Like a black blur, even to the eyes of initiated fighters, Kunshei, the leader of the squad, blitzed in. His arms crackled with lightning so perfectly attuned and manifested that it lacked the usual blue shade of the Lightning Release most ninja used and was pure energy incarnated, as bright as the flash of light got.</p><p>"Lightning Style: White Tiger Tsuparri!" Kunshei grunted out before delivering a blinding combination of palm strikes that ended with his constructs of chakra lightning clawing at the exposed ribs, chest, face and belly of the monster. In this mighty blow the possibly flawed start to the combination was revealed, the displacing effect of Core Flak Jacket redirected the opponent while they exploited a possible weak chain in the armor and that was when the combo of Core Flak Jacket and White Tiger Tsuparri hit them.</p><p>Despite the seemingly genius composition of the combination, Kunshei did not cease attacking Honda with just a few precise and lethal shots. He kept on driving his palms into the monster before yanking his hooked lightning claws out of his body with violence matching that of a majestic apex predator.</p><p>"Fire Style: Fenghuang Landing!" Santei grunted in pain as he spearheaded a mighty pillar of flames with his skydiving combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu. His was a technique not too different from the ninjutsu-enhanced-taijutsu that Usubane used except much more refined and graceful. His flames expanded much wider and burned notably hotter. With a cross-arm diving chop Santai smashed right into the overwhelmed Honda.</p><p>The flames that formed the ferocious fire pillar which defined Santai's technique kept on moving long after the ninja had stopped by driving his crossed arms into the opponent's neck. Something of this intensity, combined with the previous chains of the combination that comprised the awesome merger of techniques should by all means have beheaded the monster outright and yet…</p><p>Honda looked baffled and whited out by the powerful impact and the overall assortment of injuries over his body but otherwise upright. Even the godly flames erupting from Santei's nin-taijutsu combination technique did little in bringing the ungodly abomination of nature down.</p><p>Peanut-colored goop burst from the still twitching lacerations over Honda's body. The monster temporarily stumbled backward before the second wave of secretion showered on, forcing the assault of the special ninja to cease abruptly as with Honda one could have never known just what sort of bizarre happenings would ruin one's day.</p><p>A featureless face burst from one of the open wounds, forcing a slim, greasy with peanut-goop hand out as it struggled to emerge through Honda's enclosing wound. The monster's eyes were whited out completely and it spread odd gurgling noises the nature of which remained an enigma given its general indifference to pain.</p><p>"What on Earth?" Santai leaned down, reaching behind his back for the tanto blade resting in a maroon, wooden case on his back. It was unlikely that a measly short blade would have helped, however, the basic human instinct when backed to a wall was rarely rational or perceptive.</p><p>"How curious!" Idaru, the curly haired blonde, exclaimed. While Honda's predicament and "evolution" did not bring a smile to the young man's face, it did appear to interest him somewhat.</p><p>"You have any idea what is going on?" Kunshei wondered, turning at his usually quite on-point and intelligent squad mate.</p><p>"No idea, sorry…" Idaru shrugged with a foolish grin before placing his index finger by his chin while his eyes moved up as if to aim to stimulate his brain that way. "Although, if I had to take a shot in the dark… It looks like this monster is comprised of multiple body parts and fleshy bits, like a human jigsaw puzzle. The regeneration factor must be what helps him survive and thrive in such a curious state. Perhaps we overloaded that factor somehow or we just happened to be here when it happened because of ceaseless fighting and rampaging it's been doing."</p><p>Honda roared out again, this time his voice was not filled with rage but with pitiful declaration of melancholy. It was not pain. It lacked the intensity or the fiery reaction that pain caused within the human body. Whatever Honda was going through was much more pitiful and unique only to a being such as himself.</p><p>The monster's body blurted with more peanut-goop, this time, instead of spreading in jets and showers it merely spilled on the ground like guts from an eviscerated animal. Weightless, featureless shapes resembling the upper halves of a human but lacking anything resembling anything to identify a human by: mouth, nose, eyes. It was nothing but inner paste filling a humanoid-shaped skin bag.</p><p>As if revitalized with a snap of fingers, the featureless halflings began clawing, waving and trying to scream at the heavens that had nothing to do with sparking their existence, begging for merciful and quick end instead. These brothers of Honda's born from his wounds had no openings or any sort of holes to breathe or scream through leaving them as a ghastly impression of what a screaming husk looked like.</p><p>Despite all of that, neither one of the special jounin doubted for a second that these pitiful newborns were screaming with their movements.</p><p>"You think they're in pain?" Hibaru wondered. The young man looked outraged by the emergence of these forms from Honda's body. Maybe even more than Honda himself who appeared more sluggish and off-balance now that he had a bunch of stragglers littering his lumbering, fleshy meat shop.</p><p>"I don't think it is pain they are feeling. They just know this is wrong, it goes a bit beyond pain and joy, even newborns like these know they do not belong in this world." Kunshei grunted. His right foot turned to the side and ground through the dirt. For a moment, it became unclear if the ninja wanted to flee or to attack as the movement of his foot could have been identified as both the tremble of a petrified coward or a manipulation of one's balance in preparation for a leap onward.</p><p>"Even our combination attack failed. Continuing this fight further is pointless. We need to back out and relay to the administration of what we've learned. It may be the only bit of valuable intel we got on the creature." Idaru objected as he appeared to have absolutely no doubts as to what his leader had chosen.</p><p>"This goes beyond my duty to the village as Konoha special jounin. This is my duty as a human to end the misery of these misshapen tumors the monster had created." Kunshei replied. "I will do so the only way I know how as a shinobi."</p><p>"Why did I knew you'd say that?" Hibaru punched his own palm before entering his offensive fighting stance from that motion. His forehead looked sweaty, his hair scattered across the young man's face.</p><p>Honda had finally settled from the changes it had gone through and began slowly moving his blinded with blood and fury eyes up, looking for things to expel all of its pent up rage and misery on. The slightly misbehaving and unruly child was gone, in his current state, Honda may have truly become just a monster.</p><p>"I can't believe I'm saying this but… I agree with Idaru." Santei grumbled through his injuries and weariness.</p><p>"Thank you!" Idaru dragged his hands over his face in frustration.</p><p>"I didn't say I'm okay with just turning our tails and running." The special jounin shook his head. "I'm just stating the fact, we're not the favorites to win here any longer."</p><p>The monster's body stiffened, his muscles tensed up, every single one of them, no matter how unnatural their location given any consideration to the normal human anatomy or minding the fact that most of them were implanted and grown in tubes. Just when it appeared that the monster was about to pounce and tear through the ranks of the Konoha ninja with his newly acquired freak-strength, it lifted its eyes up and met a familiar sight that made the Honda surface for just a single drop in the rain before rippling away. Fascinated by what had demanded the monster's attention thusly, the men turned behind them as well.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress?" Kunshei uttered in about as much confusion and frustration as much he was shocked by the surprise appearance of the young magician girl.</p><p>"Who?" Santei looked at his old friend in bafflement as he was not entirely aware of the girl's public image around the village. It was no surprise given his lack of interest in news, public affairs and yellow-colored news.</p><p>"You mean this… Is Konoha's Sorceress? Should you even be awake right now?" Hibaru objected noting the girl's battered condition.</p><p>"I'm not too late… Just this once…" Mana's one-eyed face let out a faint smile before the girl slid off of the laying piece of rubble still clutching at her ribs.</p>
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<a name="section0498"><h2>498. What Monsters Fear</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I've figured out how to stop Honda." Mana declared to the surprised special jounin. "His healing…"</p><p>Honda did not let Mana finish. He let out an uproar and lobbed his entire body at the group of ninja. After the entire day fighting off ninja, killing some of them, bringing down reinforced buildings with his own bare hands and regenerating from all the countless ways that Konoha ninja have learned to kill a person, Honda was still as fast as he was completely fresh. Apart perhaps from a small difference in speed that the flailing growths all over his body caused by making Honda less aerodynamic and shifting his balance about.</p><p>"Fire Style: Fenghuang Tail!" Santei grumbled as he leaped forward to halt Honda's acceleration as much as possible. He knew that in his current state, he stood no chance at properly matching the rushing force of his opponent but if he could only slow him down enough, that would have been just fine.</p><p>Flames erupted from Santei's airborne body, concentrating around the leg he used for his jumping spin kick. The shinobi aimed his kick at the monster's face. It was not an attempt to hurt Honda but instead of add onto the imbalance of the flailing voiceless growths and derail the monster. Honda just soldiered on, through the imbalance of his own healing factor acting out in curious ways, through Santei's kick hard and fast enough to tackle the already injured ninja fast and hard enough to send him spinning and falling aside.</p><p>"Earth Style: Core Polymer!" Idaru shouted while he slammed his palms together. The storm of black minerals burst from underground, bonding together into a thick cloud almost instantly. Honda felt his feet leaving the ground as the immense density of the swarming mineral dust bent the very space around him momentarily and drew him into the heart of the storm he had no hopes of busting through. After a couple of nasty yanks and spins, Idaru's technique simply spat Honda aside like a piece of gum that had lost its taste.</p><p>"Nice instinct, Idaru." Kunshei commended his teammate. "The monster does not appear overly fond of this girl. Nasty history, I assume?"</p><p>"Something like that…" Mana gulped, realizing just how close to dying they all were just now. She had no hopes of reacting to an attack like that, let alone defending from it. She was long past the point where she could dodge and weave around the monster and toy with him, try and worry over the monster's life instead of her own.</p><p>And yet the magician's convictions did not waver. She felt just as determined to have Honda survive this and be captured alive as before, no, perhaps she felt even more determined now. It was in testing moments such as this one that one's true devotion to their principles revealed if it was something meaningful or just fluff to fill pointless stories with.</p><p>"I can't take all the credit, had Santei not… Damn… Who would have thought that he'd leap into someone's aid like that?" Idaru grinned like a monkey while he mocked his bruised and stumbling teammate who slowly made his way back into the formation having risen from a bunch of rubble and stray trash bins he had crashed through before crashing into yet another building.</p><p>"You fool… You think I did this for you? If this girl has answers that can help us stop Honda, we need to hear them now! I won't let us die to a pathetic freak like this without at least taking it with us." The ninja grumbled looking at Honda's flat, lumbering body with disdain.</p><p>"I had hoped that I would relay this intelligence to ninja capable of exploiting it but I don't think you guys are. You need to withdraw and bring this intel back to the village so that the reinforcements can properly use it." Mana advised the bunch, noting that their condition was not much better than hers when she dove right back into her second clash with Honda. That type of recklessness had cost her dearly and Mana was not quite done paying the price for it just yet.</p><p>"That's what I was trying to tell them…" Idaru squinted at his teammates.</p><p>"Let us hear your intelligence first, then we'll decide if it is worth paying with our pride for." Hibaru declared. It was rare of the ponytail ninja to look so serious and to consider fleeing from the field of battle. That seriousness alone made Santei and Kunshei to also realize the gravity of the situation they were in.</p><p>Honda's body rose from lifelessness into an almost dreamy, ghost-like state. There were no irises, no mood or signs of humanity in the monster's face or body. If things continued this way, at the end of the rope Honda would have less humanity than his tumor-brothers. A pair of the featureless, skinny growths looked bloody purple from the weight of Honda crashing on top of them and hung lifelessly over Honda's body. Just dead weight.</p><p>"I'll buy you as much time as you can. Tell them what they need to know and then we flee." Kunshei made the call.</p><p>"Are you kidding? You can't!" Hibaru objected. "That thing will tear you…"</p><p>He couldn't finish what he was about to say as Kunshei, crackling with lightning and shooting off stray bolts all around dashed off to launch the longest and most intense barrage of Lightning Tsuppari at his opponent that Honda has ever seen. Sadly, Honda lacked the intellectual capacity or any sign of consciousness that could have been afraid. The monster, voiceless as his fleshy brothers, met Kunshei's assault head-on. Like a rabid cat crashing against an immovable object.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Tsuppari!" was Kunshei's swan song, or at least the leader of the squad of special jounin was ready for it to be.</p><p>"Shut up and listen for once, Hibari!" Santei yelled out. The gruff in his voice, directed at a man he once considered his unlikely friend, made Hibari freeze in his place and take the advice meant for him. "Kunshei is behaving like a leader should. Now, mummy-girl, tell us your thing. If I am to have an evacuation on my mission record, it won't be an evacuation on a failed mission that cost the entire village."</p><p>"Right…" Mana nodded. Her one functioning eye changed its look from a quivering jewel into a sharpened tip with enough killing intent to be put on the tip of a spear. "Honda's healing factor is almost perfect. It does not seem to weaken him in any way, it does not consume his chakra like any of our techniques would. Still, he is a genetic experiment, he lacks thousands of years of evolution and fine-tuning that we have. Cells can act the way Honda's do for only so long before they start functioning abnormally."</p><p>"I see… So that transformation is no evolution or technique, it is a sign of sickness." Idaru nodded a pair of times in acknowledgment.</p><p>"That's right. In time, Honda's healing factor will go wrong. It will begin healing limbs he does not have, it will create cancerous tissue or break down tissue he needs. It will be perpetual but it will not always work the way it is intended to." Mana replied. "Even now, Honda's body did not heal his wounds, the transplants his body was made of regenerated bodies they were taken from instead."</p><p>"Wait!" Hibaru widened his eyes as a thought that had just popped in his mind surprised him greatly. "Why are you telling us this? You mean you're not coming with us to the Administration?"</p><p>Mana looked down. To the ninja around her, it would have been next to impossible to read her thoughts and emotions as the only mirrors into Mana's soul were her one shimmering emerald and the few mangled and bloodied patches of flesh that stuck out from the bandages.</p><p>"No. Someone needs to stay here and hold Honda off from doing any more damage. I'll hold him here until the reinforcements come with all the intel they need to take Honda down." The magician stated. She had not planned of following Kunshei's example when she left home but seeing the failure of the special jounin up close she began realizing that it was either her or someone else and this was not a choice Mana ever lingered on nor did she plan to start lingering on.</p><p>"This is insane…" Idaru muttered before he noticed Santei turning his back to Mana and preparing for a powerful dash that would have brought him up to the rooftop level, just high up enough to scale the upper levels all the way to whichever point in the village the ninja chose to move to.</p><p>"Don't screw up," Santei said after turning his face halfway back at Mana and disappearing as far as Mana could see him. The magician was used to the more human limits of the more basic senses. She had spent plenty of time without her chakra manipulation not too long ago.</p><p>The rest of the duo lingered on Mana, even as the girl walked out in between them and Kunshei's last gamble against Honda, the two watched at the girl wondering if this was the moment in everyone's life when one disobeyed their orders, acted against the rules because of their own better judgment. That time when one realized that rules and laws were not written for every situation ever conceived and, sometimes, the more vague spirit of the law or the basic principles of morality and justice had to be followed instead of the letter.</p><p>Kunshei's blood-curdling yell made the duo snap out from their trance at about the same time. Streaks and stripes of red wherever one turned, the arm that Kunshei had lost in the scuffle was still emitting brief jolts of lightning and twitching a few meters farther.</p><p>"Kunshei!" Hibaru called out to his lifelong friend, someone he had met in the Ninja Academy and knew as a rival for the entirety of his early years before circumstance forced him to work alongside the boy he thought he hated. The unwilling partner in the trenches from whom, for better or worse, his own life depended greatly – a twist of fate that mended all petty quarrels.</p><p>"Flee, you idiots!" the dark-haired martial artist yelled out, with the turn of his head so close up in Honda's face he pretty much surrendered his life then and there. Not that it changed much, it was not a mistake made out of ignorance but a submission to one's fate for one last look at the people one had the honor of calling friends after knowing them as rivals.</p><p>Not that Kunshei would have lasted long with just one arm anyway…</p><p>Mana turned away to encourage the duo to flee. Before her head could make the full trip, she noticed that the signatures of the two were fleeing with haste. The magician chose to focus on the gruesome cloud of splattered blood and remains through which Honda walked now that his temporary obstacle was disposed of. Like a cloud of crimson smoke, Mana had wished she had a smokescreen to hide this death she could not prevent so it was no coincidence she chose this analogy.</p><p>Honda's eyes were still white. However many rows of teeth the monster had all ground against one another, breaking teeth and growing them back before each successive step could be completed.</p><p>Mana gripped the hat she held in her hand tighter. She was lying to herself. She could have saved Kunshei, maybe bought him more time. Twelve percent of her chakra that now rustled within her were sufficient for an illusion that could have slowed the monster down… Kunshei would have most likely hated that, they'd both have died that way but…</p><p>Honda growled with rage, he did not roar like before, some of his rage was beginning to settle down with the successful defeat of his enemy and the significant decrease in the need for ferocity.</p><p>"B-Rank Seal: Release!" Mana's lips moved as one of her hands weaved a hand seal. She would not get any more moments of somberness from her opponent so she needed to use her chakra for the purpose it was meant to be used. She'd deal with the weight of making the difficult choice when it resurfaced in the form of self-demeaning nightmares as it always does…</p><p>Mana sunk in an enormous space-shaded cloud that burst from her hat. Honda roared out in the air, maybe as his more childish self he'd have been more cautious but this reckless monster leaped right into the depths of the cloud that Mana's last resort had left. It leaped only to meet the end of a long, golden horn held by a white female rabbit.</p><p>It was not that getting impaled by the horn hurt Honda in any way or that the horn dealt any meaningful injuries. The monster was fighting the collapse of space-time and shifting dimensions around it, desperately struggling with remaining where he was, where food, bright lights, and game machines were. While the monster was not aware of the primal drives of his childish self, Honda who was slumbering deep within somewhere, dictated those very same desires. It was not for Mana's benefit. Honda's desperate craving for bread and entertainment now made Honda powerful enough to hold the rift between dimensions and resist the All-Mirage's sealing power.</p><p>"Dat's… Impossible…" Usukari, the All-Mirage wielding rabbit, muttered as she had fought opponents that seemed much more dangerous as far as rank was concerned and saw them getting sealed away by All-Mirage's blind yet just power.</p><p>"Cotton Rush!" Usupari, a rabbit with long, fluffy ears who used their unnatural properties for combat yelled out as he threw a succession of quick and stiff shots at the monster's exposed body and face.</p><p>Honda moved further and further into the depths of the dimension where All-Mirage took its targets but then as if in a mad rush of second wind, the monster straightened its body out and broke all of its previous limits. With one mighty roar, Honda broke the dimensional walls he was grasping to and powered out of the devouring tunnel by leaving a massive, crackling hole where the sealing effect previously took place.</p><p>The feat did break Honda, at least temporarily. All of his featureless, torsos sticking out from his wounds exploded into a combination of bio-organic goop and blood from the sheer pressure of the blood being circulated through them, the incalculable force that the monster was exerting at that moment of desperation. Honda stood there with his head weighed down, his entire body hunched up and the entirety of his build greatly collapsed from the effort he had just mustered.</p><p>"So you called out…" a female rabbit with feline features turned at Mana with an almost cartoonish, cat-like smile. Even faced with this monstrous horror show, Usuchabi's enthusiasm persisted.</p><p>"I tried doing this alone. I failed and then I failed again. I can't hog all the responsibility when the weight of it crushing me under it is human lives. I need help…" Mana uttered with a tone full of shame, not shame meant for herself for calling out to the rabbits, shame that it took all these sacrifices before she realized her mistake.</p><p>"That's all you had to say," Usuvilme grumbled before brandishing handfuls of knives in his paws.</p><p>The rabbits all charged at the dazed monster at the same time. Usuvilme took a more height-oriented dash, choosing to unleash a rain of knives upon the monster instead of moving in and up close. It was a clever move, if the monster had the stamina to suddenly pop back into action and was conserving that strength for a close-range brawl, it would have been beneficial to first rain long-range attacks on him. The rest of the ninja rabbits danced around the monster, staying just a hair's length outside the downpour of knives.</p><p>Usubingu went smacked his paws together before forcing them into the dirt, removing large chunks of hardened rock in the shape of giant fists as he leaped in to deliver the first punch. Honda's knee came out of nowhere. The sound of it shooting through the air was so high-pitched that Mana's went deaf for a couple of seconds. The poor rabbit shot into the sky like a recording of a shooting star played in reverse. He even dissolved into heated smoke cloud midway through the trip and disappeared with a loud pop to strengthen the metaphor.</p><p>Usukari thrust her All-Mirage at the monster. It had successfully strained the monster to the limits of its strength and beyond so if only she could hit him with it again… Honda's head cocked back, his spine bent in abnormal angles and ways but as the gigantic freak felt no pain it was of no consequence to him. The monster's head shot forward just as swiftly as it moved forward, knocking Usukari into the ground and shaking the Konoha soil up enough to topple buildings and knock Mana over.</p><p>The vision in one remaining eye turned crimson. The blood that came from her reopened wounds and ran over Mana's eyebrow forced it closed. By the time Mana opened it again, using the desperation of the noises of fighting that transpired nearby as fuel for her quickness in recovering, the rabbits were all gone. Honda's body was patching up another batch of injuries as the monster stared at the kneeling girl.</p><p>This was it… If Honda wanted her dead, if he even had the conscious capacity to want anything anymore, Mana would have no way to react to his movement. Not in her current condition. The monster's arms were hanging like they were wilted flowers, his knees bent over, struggling to keep the hefty mass of flesh upright. As the monster lifted his head, Mana noticed what caused Honda to snap back into life so quickly before – his brown irises and rapid blinking showed the pouty child inside Honda awakening again as the monster was overworked.</p><p>Honda's belly croaked. Even something as natural as a rumbling stomach sounded grotesque with this abomination, it reminded of industrial sounds, of barely functioning engines that were leaking oil and spitting out parts that were vital for their functioning as they kept working on. What Mana did not expect, however, was seeing the boy's eyes change into wide moons, for that one moment, that betrayal of the dominant emotion made him more human than ever before and Mana felt damned for it but she felt a hint of regret sparking in her heart again for the poor little boy Honda once was.</p><p>"Whaaaaa!" Little Honda yelled out making Mana the one who was shocked in exchange. "Don't eat me, scary ghoul!"</p><p>The monster turned around and took a wild leap, the magician heard the ground beneath the monster's feet collapsing farther away and felt his signature moving beneath the village. He ran away back into the dark moisture of the sewers. The magician, in her worst judgment, consumed by the responsibility to end this and the instinctual obligation of making all the sacrifices worth it extended her weary and burning with fatigue arm as if begging the monster not to run. Only then did she realize that she was begging the reaper to stay and finish her off. Or… Maybe not…</p><p>The magician's horrified eyes halted upon her own reflection in the bloody mess that was left of Kunshei's remains after Honda was done with him in one of his more monstrous moments. She truly did look like a flesh-devouring ghoul, bruised, covered in bandages, hair covered in sticky and coagulated blood, one-eyed, so worn out and dragged under by her injuries that even her movements gave her a very ghastly and undead-like image. The charade was so convincing that just momentarily the magician wondered if she truly was dead and had not realized it yet.</p><p>"He's afraid of me…" Mana's cracked and dried out lips uttered in realization.</p>
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<a name="section0499"><h2>499. All Fall Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana moved around the cracked or totaled buildings with as much grace as someone broken and bruised could have packed. She moved slow, at a slug's pace even but that was only if compared to Mana's standard speed. The magician could feel it, Honda had stopped not too far away in the sewers. He could not have been in an ideal condition himself if he stopped moving so close to the hole he had busted through.</p><p>The fact that Honda could have deteriorated in terms of his regenerative condition was a shock to Mana who previously thought to have had the general grasp of Honda's capabilities. At least as much as someone like the genetic monstrosity could have had capabilities that were clearly defined and measurable. Mana's plan was to drive Honda's regenerative factor to a dysfunction, not a halt.</p><p>This was the worst idea ever. Mana knew it. Somehow she had managed to drive a monster hunting her in the woods away and instead of taking the second chance at life and fleeing she pursued it. She lacked the drive, the rage in her chest that would have diminished the pulsing pain all over and made Mana into a force of any fighting value. Now she was just moving to her own impending death, like begging the monster to take her life and not run away.</p><p>Mana's sandals slammed into the moist and crunchy sewer stone with a loud thud. A shock emanated through the girl's feet, all the way up to her knees making Mana wince just a tiny bit. Her shortage of chakra rendered every attempt at superhuman speed result in aftershocks, Mana was not as used as she thought she was at landing from great heights and actually suffering some consequences for it.</p><p>The pale moon moved from the cover of the clouds, providing a singular, focused beam of light that shined through Honda's hole, providing barely existing lighting on the hunched and huffing monster. Mana's feet trembled as the girl took a few steps back and covered her mouth in scare.</p><p>Honda's feet were covered with branching out lacerations that all conjoined on his back, right at the center of the spine where his flesh had split. It appeared like yet another featureless shape attempted to break out from under Honda's ribs. It had burrowed all the way through the ribs before tearing the membrane of the monster's flesh with just its bare, life-craving fingers. The featureless growth pulsed intensely as unidentified liquid flowed through it due to the fact it shared the same circulation system with Honda. The growth did not display any conscious behavior, no signs that it was suffering, it just pulsed there, its massive, misshaped head bobbled as if it was gasping for air but had no cavity or breathing system to speak of.</p><p>Honda's regeneration factor was in shambles. Mana could not understand what could have escalated such a violent reaction, one moment it had only begun displaying signs of a biological short-fuse, the next it was completely shutting down and breaking the monster's body.</p><p>"Come with me, I can help you. I know people that can try to heal you, give you as much of a normal life as it is possible." Mana pleaded with the boy in a monster's body, unaware of just how much of the boy remained in the consciousness but the boy backed up.</p><p>"I'm not a monster," Mana tried to force a smile, perhaps mimics could help her where her appearance only terrified the boy. "It's me, magic girl, remember? With the rabbits?"</p><p>It would have been naïve to expect that Honda would just stand up and surrender, go with Mana and fully subject himself to a bunch of nightmarish healing sessions, even more surgeries, experiments, and tests. But heroism and miracle both were given birth by a little naivety.</p><p>"Magic girl!?" Honda yelled out. Fear was no longer a part of his voice, it faded away as sounds came out of his mouth, in a single sentence the monster went from a terrified little boy to… Well… A monster. Mana did not have the luxury to wait until her head got popped like a grape. She sprung a device on her sleeve with two fingers and yanked on a piece of steel wire, firing a barrage of steel-tipped cards.</p><p>She was right to do so. Had she not fired pre-emptively, basing her aggressive response solely on the tone of the monster, she'd have been dead before she even knew it. Honda froze in mid-charge as something appeared to freeze him in place. The horror show leaned over and clutched over his ribs, the bloody murder in his eyes that Mana only saw a glimpse of right after her attack faded away. Honda was back on the reigns again but once again his body was failing him.</p><p>Liquid lumps started building up from one center of the body to another. All on the areas where massive chakra nodes were in one's network. Honda's network could not have been a normal one, it must have been patched from scratch, perhaps even innovated and weaved like a complicated web, completely defying the rules of how ninja anatomy worked. A non-conventional being such as Little Honda demanded a non-conventional fueling system, after all.</p><p>The massive, tumorous torso flailing and wheezing atop of Honda's spine and slowing the monster down tremendously, possibly one of several reasons why Mana's body did not mimic a fruit fly squished in-between two spiteful fingers whenever Honda desired it to do so, burst into a flood of hot and sludgy goop that covered Honda whole. None of Honda's reaction appeared to be caused by pain but the monster began twitching violently as if it was seizing before it crumbled into the sewer water.</p><p>It was tough to say if Honda was dead for sure. The monster's chakra system had so many different nodes, nooks, and crannies that even if the monster was dead, perhaps some of the complex circulations would still run for a while. On the other hand, sometimes the monster's chakra just disappeared from the sensory range while it was still alive. Mana felt justified in keeping her respectful distance between the monster and her shortly after the monster's collapse and her short-term choice to maintain said distance.</p><p>A tight and heated squeeze made all air in Mana's body just leave abruptly. Like a million chains wrapping around her all at once, the speed was so unbelievable that for Mana's diminished perception it may as well have been instant. In just one blink, the surroundings went from a creepy, damp sewer and the monster that haunted it lying unconscious right in front of the magician to it springing back on its knees and wrapping its hands around Mana.</p><p>In all honesty, she should have been dead already. There should have been no way that Honda would not have forced her innards out whichever end they came out through first. Just somehow, what minuscule portion of Mana's chakra remained managed to augment her spontaneously just enough to survive Honda's attack but as the monster's rage grew it was questionable for just how long Mana's feeble efforts to delay the inevitable would last.</p><p>She needed to push back. It would require every ounce of her remaining strength, every last bit of chakra, she'd be dry, maybe, if she was not careful, she'd even pass out. Still, if she had a chance of escaping this crushing grip for just one second before dying anyway, that was a chance worth taking. The only absolute here was that if she did not leap at that opportunity blindly – she'd die for certain.</p><p>The taste of blood returned to Mana's mouth, the magician had not missed it at all since last feeling it a couple of hours ago. Her stomach and innards shifted and churned, she could feel them moving, it felt like the most awkward bowel movement except it was followed by a pulsing, overwhelming sensation of pain that resonated throughout the entire nervous system.</p><p>The kunoichi was so tired of the pain. It felt like with every passing second the pain sapped her of her strength. The worst part about being in torment sufficient enough to dull your screaming throat became not the actual suffering but how it wore on Mana's very core. The magician could feel a weak voice wondering from a remote corner of her mind that perhaps letting go and stopping her resistance was not such a bad outcome if it came with a release from all the torment she went through that day.</p><p>The village has the information, they'd trace Honda with more powerful sensors than Mana through it and smoke him out of the sewers eventually. They would most definitely not take any chances and just hit him in the vitals though, kill him as fast as they could, destroy the vital brain center, wherever Honda's altered anatomy has it, ending the boy's life in a blink and making all regeneration post-factum pointless.</p><p>"No!" Mana powered out a yell through her own lulling screams and grunts, the first intelligible thing she's let out this whole time. Her arms felt so warm and comfortable, traveling through something pudgy and very weak. Honda's eyes widened in shock, he could not understand why his hands had outright exploded into a mess of bio-organic materials and clotted, thick blood, a pair of shades too dark for the color it should have been in.</p><p>To be entirely honest, Mana did not understand it either. She was not this strong, her chakra was almost entirely gone. She had just barely controlled her expenditures enough so that she did not pass out after breaking out, but she did not augment herself nearly enough to warrant such a reaction.</p><p>For a handful of seconds, both Mana and Honda hyperventilated in front of each other, just staring at the collapsing state of Honda's body. The hands that were blown off did not regenerate back to where they were, instead, they regrew new upper arms and shoulders and blood vessels and muscle tissue extended from the shoulder, browsing desperately for something to connect to. All that came out from Honda's wounds was some bloody growth that looked more like a stump flipped inwards and turned inside out than a regenerated hand.</p><p>Whatever this was, Mana was not going to let it go to waste. She relaxed her back, letting the gravity and falling drive her body forward, while her legs desperately moved forward to keep her upright. In this awkward manner of movement, she charged toward Honda, ready to dance the devil's swing until she either completely broke Honda or the monster finished her off.</p><p>In her current state, whichever outcome would have been a relief…</p><p>A strong swipe sent Mana flying back. The girl spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth and felt cold breeze caressing her back. Also, the irritating itch of infection that looked to corrupt and conquer her vitality through the bruises on her back acquired when Mana's weightless body slid through the rough sewer floor. The torn bandages on her back flapped about in the wind.</p><p>The kunoichi had no idea where the strength to roll and tumble back on her feet came from. She felt the wet remains of Honda's goop, his oddly thick blood, and sewer water soak her hair as she screamed out like a cornered animal and tumbled at the monster again. Honda took a wild step back before freezing his fleeting foot and moving forward. The boy behind the monster was beginning to disappear again, it seemed. Soon, the fear that the boy had inside his heart for Mana's gruesome appearance would no longer be a beneficial factor for her.</p><p>White. It did not seem to bother Mana at all, given that she was previously in completely blacked out sewer in the middle of the night, barely illuminated by the rarely emerging moon, this was profoundly odd.</p><p>A ragged but fit middle age man with shoulder-length red hair. He wore a hooded cape that was worn before a long journey. The man looked ready to leave but he turned his head sideways just to acknowledge Mana a little. That was when Mana noticed his strict eyes and apple-colored stubble.</p><p>"I was harsh on you, I know… I could not help it, I saw too much of her in you. It's been so long that I can't even remember her name now. The sweetest and kindest people are always the ones paying the highest price. That was why I wanted you to become as hateful and indifferent as I was. I'm sorry about that… Mana…" the man uttered before walking away. The magician could not move, she wanted to run after Tanshu and try to talk to him some more but it felt like the white around her was thick enough to have some supernatural force chain Mana to it. Like floating in some ethereal, afterlife jelly…</p><p>With the sound of masculine laughter and mutters, she could not make sense of, Mana's consciousness returned back to the present. She was on her knees and elbows, her face was dripping with blood and now most of her bandages were in complete tatters. The magician forced her head up. Honda was dragging his body over to her. The force of his push-kick that hit her before was strong enough to throw her back a bit too far for the monster's immediate reach.</p><p>Honda's foot lingered above Mana's head. The magician wanted to go back to that quiet and nice place she was in before. One more hit and she'd probably have a few seconds more, two or three and she may just get a place there for hours. A good finishing blow and she'd become a permanent resident…</p><p>Mana's feet drove her body without her consent, through sheer instinct. Her shoulder drove up in an attempt to strike Honda right at the soft spot behind his knee. The way that the old man from the Sun Disc arena taught her to counter this kind of attack. She did not hit anything that provided any semblance of resistance. Only soft mush, attacking Honda felt like a mixture of punching clay or a barrel of rotten and beaten apples.</p><p>Mana did not stop Honda's kick, she tore his leg clean off at the back of the knee, making the monster wave his hands around awkwardly before he succumbed on his bottom and yelled out in pain. Once again, the severed foot regenerated its missing upper part and started creating a shapeless, fleshy tumor above without soul or thought except the wish for its cruel and unnatural existence to be put to an end whereas Honda's own stubble barely mustered a fleshy bit of ham on its outer end.</p><p>If Mana gave the monster space, time to get back on even his one functional and full-length leg, she'd have risked getting socked again. She was too tired, too fired out and it began feeling like she could literally feel her own vitality fading bit by bit with each wasted movement. Mana dove at the monster's middle section with an attempted tackle.</p><p>Normally it would have been useless, she'd have slammed into the monster like a brick wall but now he was more like a house-sized cake. The slightest application of force just tore Honda's entire body apart and forced his regeneration to work overtime. It must have been the stress, the monster was petrified by Mana's state which further aggravated his already pushed to the edge state from before. His regeneration was still doing its best but Honda's body was collapsing.</p><p>A tight grip locked around the back of Mana's collar. Warm air with the feeling of blood and taint lingering in the darkness of the faintly lit sewer passed by the magician's hair and caressed her cheeks. The ground was closing in. Even without her advanced, superhuman perception, time slowed down. This was no chakra. This was adrenalin and fear for her own life. If she hit the floor swinging at this speed, her ribs would have flown all over her body like bullets, tearing through flesh and organs.</p><p>Mana's feet wrapped around Honda's last arm, pressing against the upper area of the limb tightly enough to tear the weakened muscle and skin off. Like a nimble monkey, Mana shifted her body's position around to avoid hitting the ground and saw Honda smash his own arm into the moist and mossy stone. The sequence was followed by a burst of blood and bone, not unlike that which Mana would have undergone through had she allowed Honda's desired outcome come to pass.</p><p>Honda stumbled backward, his busted, massive hand hung by a few narrow strings of tissue. Mana charged at the monster like a feral cat, ignoring the tremendous size difference, the strength difference and the fact that she was the prey in this scenario. Honda fumbled back awkwardly, he was not used to fighting without both his hands.</p><p>The metal-shade blur, too unremarkable to be witnessed in the limited lighting of the sewer telegraphed Mana's steel-tipped cards slashing and working their way all over the monster's body, further giving credence to the previous analogy of the magician's manner of feral assault. Something hard locked around Mana's knee, despite her greatest warnings to herself not to look at it and commands to continue attacking, Mana's eyes lingered downward.</p><p>More faceless forms burst from Honda's wounds and began wrapping their soft, newborn limbs around Mana. While their strength was even lesser than that of the magician girl, the sheer number of them and their erratic grasp for life or desire to have it be ended caused significant trouble for the magician. Honda roared with all of his monstrous might, lacking the hands to resist, he relied on his numerous tumorous growths to lock the magician in place while his punctured and filled with rot lungs delivered their shockwave that tore the magician apart.</p><p>It was useless. Too much sickness, fluid and growths inside the monster's lungs for a decent shockwave to come out. A strong wind blasted against Mana's face and cheeks, with the last of her willpower and strength, the magician turned and twisted her hand to dislocate and pull apart the weakling growths wrapping around her battered body and attempted to press her hand against Honda's head. Before she could do that much, more arms from growths bursting through Honda's shoulders stopped the magician's hand in mid-air.</p><p>String reeling sound temporarily lit up the darkness of the Konoha sewer system in a more figurative sense. Something large, heavy and round hit the wall and stuck to it. Mana felt stickiness overwhelming her and washing her back. Fighting something like this should not have been that hard but to her current body, it was like swimming up a waterfall.</p><p>"At least I can't smell this…" was the last positive thought on Mana's mind before she hit the cold and refreshing flow of water that the blowback of bio-organic goop washed her down into. The very thought of swimming up sounded like a pink dream.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0500"><h2>500. A Look Forward To Bigger Things</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We are just two weeks past the as horrific as it was random rampage of an unknown monster in the village. And what absolutely kooky pair of weeks this was… When one looks at the aimless toppled buildings or hears the occasional sob in the streets of a mother that had lost her child in the tragedy, oh so close to the calamity in the Ninja Academy, let's not forget, I'm sorry, but one can't make a different conclusion from the fact that the Administration's handling of the subject has been appalling..."</p><p>
  <em>Click.</em>
</p><p>"It is really rare for such a high-ranking member of the Administration to step out from the ivory tower and grace us with your presence. As angry as many people may be with you, please let it be known that here at Azuma Lotus station appreciate communication between the ninja and the civilians, who are so often kept in the dark about the more… Confidential aspects of the village, which are as many as they are vital, don't you think?"</p><p>"Oh, absolutely. It's really relieving to be here."</p><p>"Relieving?"</p><p>"Well, I believe to say that it is a pleasure to be here, given the circumstances, would be very insensitive. What this chance to communicate with the civilian population of the village, the importance of which is generally dismissed by the ninja, I admit, is a relief. There has been so much animosity between the two sides of the village, and neither one can function without the other."</p><p>"I see. So how about we get right to the most important questions that nibble at each of our cores – where was the Hokage during the rampage, where were the A-Rank ninja. Our sources of completely normal, powerless, compared to your like, civilian reporters, that actually did not falter stepping into the proximity to the monster where all it would have taken to obliterate them would have been a blink, confirmed that it took at least a good pair of hours before even a single A-Rank ninja showed up."</p><p>"That is an exaggeration. It took a while for the high-ranking ninja to confront the monster, yes, but that is not to say they were sitting calm and doing nothing. People who say that forget so many other factors that go into problems like this: you cannot expect the Hokage to confront every enemy himself. That is not his role, he is a leader and a figurehead, not a bruiser. He is, oftentimes, the strongest ninja in the village but that also makes him the most important person and the largest target. Let's not even get into the number of higher-ranking ninja that were away on missions."</p><p>"Like both of the Sannin…"</p><p>"True, both Zairyo-san and Kusagoro-san are well-known for rarely being present in the village."</p><p>"Infamous, some would say…"</p><p>"Now, we both know that's a loaded statement. It is just so ignorant to close one's eyes and ears and shout obscenities at people that have sacrificed so much for this village and, really, deserve admiration for the secretive and highly dangerous work they do."</p><p>"Is that what the ninja think civilians are doing?"</p><p>"Obviously, as the individual in a head wrapped in cooking paper and a dozen of dead cats on their improvised headwear to protect them from the Yamanaka mind signals does not represent the opinions and intelligence of a civilian, I do not presume to speak for all…"</p><p>
  <em>Click.</em>
</p><p>"Ninja are goddamn heroes! I don't see what these civwits don't understand about that. Please tell me about how scared and oppressed you are by your ninja overlords when you just sit down in front of your televisions brought to you, of course, by a ninja girl who was thirteen at the time from an alternate universe, try wrapping your head around that, and stuff your faces after what? Selling flowers and fruit… Shit, don't change the…"</p><p>
  <em>Click.</em>
</p><p>"Once more, I cannot emphasize enough how healing and reducing the social schism it is to have the assistant, the right-hand man of the Hokage himself here. However, I believe you still failed to address the main fear and issue at play here – every single civilian in the village has been shown that a monster can rampage untouched for hours before he would be stopped. That was some mindless animal, no offense to the relatives of the poor boy, what if it was a devious agent from an enemy village? Or a criminal organization? Just how many A-Rank missing ninja are active right now?"</p><p>"That's confidential information. Even ninja must reach at least B-Rank before they get access to Bingo Books with that sort of information."</p><p>"Isn't that the popular answer these days?"</p><p>"I don't understand what exactly it is that you want me to say. Ninja who reach B-Rank could end the entire planet if they misdirected an ounce of their power. With willing intent, they'd probably decimate the entire known section of space just because a fraction of all the vital force that holds our universe together is within them. Because they learned to tap into that."</p><p>"Is that a threat or a gloat? At this point, it would be tough to say which is more disappointing to hear from someone of your esteem."</p><p>"Goddamn it!..."</p><p>"…"</p><p>"Look… I apologize for losing it for a second there but… You have to agree – if a ninja is entrusted the fate of the entire world in their hands, all that the light of the Sun touches even, they deserve to be entrusted with some confidential information that not every average Minato Yamamoto sweeping the streets should know. If anything, this public outcry we've been observing for weeks is the best argument in favor of some things being confidential."</p><p>"Around two years ago Guru Ayushi disappeared after a visit in Konoha. He just never showed up in any successive planned visits, there was a large outcry about that, real war-waging stuff. Did Konoha ninja know anything about the fate of this esteemed, wise man?"</p><p>"…"</p><p>"What about the gigantic man that covered the sky barely a year ago? It seemed like the end of the world for a moment. The man's single finger seemed massive enough to cover an entire continent and he looked pretty content with crushing the entire world in-between his hands. We know for a fact that ninja know all about that event but choose to withhold certain details."</p><p>"You know very well that we disclosed all about the outburst of Akimichi Francho. He is a pirate roaming the oceans that wash the Water Country's shores, hardly anything that Konoha should worry about, Kirigakure fully has that covered. In fact, Lord Fourth has even drafted and signed the treaty for the international pursuit of pirates himself."</p><p>"Was that why Konoha ninja were there? Assisting Kirigakure pursuing pirates? Because we were told WHO tried to squash the world like a plum in between their hands but we were never told WHY… What would make a Pirate Lord just step up and go crazy like that?"</p><p>"This interview is…"</p><p>
  <em>Click.</em>
</p><p>"The official reports state that they have not only managed to recover the head of that bastard but that it was also alive and is still alive at the moment. For <strong>*beep*</strong> sake we'll probably get an exclusive from that freakazoid sometime in the nearest future. Oh, it seems we've got a call, a call on the tel-ee-phone that none other than ninja brought back from a different universe… Yes, we're listening."</p><p>"I bet, Bengo-san, that you would get an interview from that… That monster. With the praise that you're singing for the village. You've sold our village, our country for the ninja."</p><p>"Now you listen to me here, you <strong>*beep*</strong>!"</p><p>"Real classy interviewing there… Real professional."</p><p>"You think this is an interview, you <strong>*beep*</strong>ing <strong>*beep*</strong>? This is a <strong>*beep*</strong>ing <strong>*beep*</strong>, you <strong>*beep*</strong>."</p><p>"You do know that the Daimyo is not a ninja, ninja are our servants, tools for the civilians and not the other way around. We pay them to do our laundry, and, quite frankly, the way they've been treating us makes me sick."</p><p>"I'll <strong>*beep*</strong>ing <strong>*beep*</strong> you in the <strong>*beep*</strong>! <strong>*Beep*</strong>, I think he <strong>*beep*</strong>ing left… <strong>*Beep*</strong>!"</p><p>
  <em>Click.</em>
</p><p>The television box went black after its brightest flash yet. It would yet take a good while before the electronic appliance would settle down and chill out. It was heated like a miniature oven right now, like one of those boxes in Shikamaru's blueprints that Mana brought back that cooked food with the help of electromagnetic radiation.</p><p>"Bet ye'd much more likely go a few more rounds with the big an' ugly, ey?" Eiju cheeked Mana stopping by her ward. The magician sighed, letting her chest deflate to a dangerously flat degree as only her fingers could have been moved without a chain reaction of painful impulses resonating through her body.</p><p>"I can't believe how quickly television has gone to the crapper…" Mana sighed again. "Even when the fighting's over, even when nobody is trying to squish, punch, crush or eat them alive limb by limb it's just about people fighting with each other."</p><p>"I dunno, I think that Bengo Yugana fellow has the right idea… At the very least, the fucker's entertainin'."</p><p>"As a court jester, maybe…" Mana turned to the window to see the gentle sunlight gleaming outside.</p><p>"So… Out of commission again, ey? Just when you got back… Maybe you ought to start thinkin' about retirement?" Eiju poked fun of Mana's record-short return to active duty.</p><p>"That's just fine. I've been planning a big training trip for a while…" Mana closed her eye and sighed.</p><p>"Not for a good couple of months you're not. If you're even out of this bed by the end of the week you'll be lucky." Eiju hissed almost like a scorned cat. It was unusual to see the medical ninja get so defensive about something. "It's probably for the better, there's all sort of mayhem out there with the civilians and the ninja, the last thing they need if you, the girl who beheaded the bloody bastard walkin' around their midst. It would be the worst thing for your recovery."</p><p>"Oh…" was all that Mana let out. She flipped onto her right shoulder to turn to the wall and the window and away from the legitimized Quack.</p><hr/><p>The magician's step was slow but it was stubborn. Her body still hurt and she had months of recovery still ahead of her, even the thought of training made her whole body drain of blood and her head woozy. It's been calmer around the streets somewhat, while Mana was in the hospital the medical ninja managed to keep her away from the curious eyes and off the awfully productive tongues. Now it felt like open season and arrows were coming off of every direction, Mana could feel it.</p><p>Feel it, not sense it. She's had her chakra sensory suppressed and closed off for a while, if the magician had it opened for even a moment since she almost died fighting Honda it would have been subconsciously, maybe during her sleep, during the nightmares when her entire body appeared to be fighting off the gloom that took it over at nights. Nerve impulses of all sorts firing off like fireworks during the Summer Festival.</p><p>Mana scratched her right eye. Her touch was light, it was a trade exchanging a little bit of itching from the bandages for a whole lot of pain. Pain that behaved like an old and cranky grandpa but was pain nonetheless. It was none of that smashing stuff that fired off from all cylinders when she fought Honda. None of that quick, firing sensation that made one jump back. It was slow, senile but it still had some kick and it wasn't going anywhere nor could Mana escape it.</p><p>That was just fine, however, it was what she had chosen. The price she had to pay to live up to the responsibilities she had placed on herself, penance she had to endure for messing Ayushi's brain up enough to make all of this happen. She was reckless to pursue Honda with this much obsession and selfish need to stop him herself, especially so when Ayushi was still out there.</p><p>No matter how badly she has to get beaten, how much pain she needs to sit through, Guru Ayushi was next. Mana refused to die until she saw the banshee's cry that she had let out wreck more havoc, have more people suffer for it.</p><p>She wasn't a complete idiot though. If she was to even stand up to Guru Ayushi she would need time, training, a full recovery for one… Just becoming strong was nowhere near enough. If Mana was short-sighted she'd fret over the months lost while her friends were out and training with some of the most perspective people in their lives, undoubtedly becoming mighty beyond the wildest imagination. Just mere training and strength was irrelevant. If Meiko and Kiyomi surpassed her, that was fine, as long as she could still stop Guru Ayushi. Even if by that point her body does break and become useless, even if by then she really does need to retire.</p><p>Just mere strength will not do. Ayushi has had centuries to gather that and now he's utilizing his ancient wisdom to wander the world and acquire even more, not unlike her own friends. No amount of moxie or silly shouts with fists raised into the sky would change that kind of difference in strength. If Mana was to stop Ayushi and capture him, she'd need to do it her way, intelligently, just like she's always done it.</p><p>The kind of fist-swinging, reckless bouts like this one only served as pain in her ass and as another nail in her coffin. Not to mention it actually cost her loads of sleep after invading her consciousness and holding tightly. The memories of Honda won't leave Mana's dreams anytime soon and never once has she come out on top even in her own dreams.</p><p>"You can come in now."</p><p>The voice that Mana had not heard for a while, maybe a month after she had heard the Hokage's assistant talking on the television broke the magician's concentration. The girl lifted her eyes up and noticed Lord Sixth and his assistant just staring at her through open doors on the top floor of the Administration building. Slightly flustered, Mana picked her aching body off the chair and somehow managed to carry the busted bag of bones into the office.</p><p>"How are you feeling?" Sixth asked without beating around the bush, he tried saying something about Mana when the magician just collapsed on her knees awkwardly but figured that if the girl was willing to fall this badly she was adamant about kneeling.</p><p>"Kneeling has never been easier… I just stop trying to fight gravity." Mana tried alleviating the mood, she even smiled genuinely. It was a somewhat melancholic smile but a smile nonetheless. Nobody could have expected more from her at this point.</p><p>"I figured that you needed to know this for sure, I won't be giving you out any missions for a while." Lord Sixth said.</p><p>"That's it? I pretty much knew I was not going anywhere after getting the three months of extensive Mystic Palm session treatment." Mana looked relieved as she said it.</p><p>"No, you don't get it, there may not be any missions for a good couple of months at all. The rate of missions has dropped extensively, people appear to have realized that they were supporting us through their inability to do their own dirty work and have actually started picking up their own slack for once. Ninja aren't most popular these days…" the Hokage scratched his neck, he looked ticked off but it was the social situation he spoke of that pissed him off and not something Mana said or did which was a welcome change.</p><p>"Needless to say, this caused a rise in crime as people are committed to doing their own assassinations or… Even worse… Paying criminals to do it while helping them infiltrate the village." The assistant added.</p><p>"All this because they're afraid criminals will infiltrate the village and nobody will notice or protect them from it… Years of working in Black Ops and reading people haven't prepared me for this kind of bullshit…" the man rubbed his tired eyes. "In any case, if you have any healing or training locations to visit, the village would be glad to compensate that. Not only did you capture the monster but you captured him alive. That's insane…"</p><p>"The Golden Child justifies her reputation." Lord Sixth's assistant nodded his head.</p><p>"I think we've first met during similar circumstances. Back when you returned with the capsule full of blueprints and future technology from a different universe. If matters were not this dire with pretty much every ninja clan, I'd arrange a doujutsu to be transplanted into that missing eye of yours."</p><p>"Oh… It's not missing." Mana blushed. It may have been tough to tell over her scars and bandages.</p><p>"Excuse me?"</p><p>"It's not missing. It's just damaged. I should most likely regain some degree of vision in it and make a recovery. I was warned against straining it or moving it too much though. Lest it heals back looking at an odd angle or of a weird color…" Mana admitted. "I do appreciate the purely theoretical gesture though."</p><p>"We wish we could do more, sadly, there are currently very few strings we can pull. If you wish, we may arrange a trip to a country of your choosing, keep you comfortable there for a full recovery and the ability to train with the most skilled ninja of that country. You'll be sure to surprise your old teammates when they get back thinking they've garnered progress…" the Sixth's assistant fixed his glasses. He looked quite confident and smug about his offer, it must take a significant amount of pull to put something like this together.</p><p>"Somebody pulled me out from the water when I was out. Saved my life. Also recovered the head of Honda and managed to contain it somewhere, sorry if I'm fuzzy on the details, my only source of information this whole time was television. I sort of begin to understand why the civilians are so outraged." Mana looked down and away for a moment. "That's enough gratitude and a bit on top."</p><p>"It's true, you were fortunate to be pulled out of the sewers when you were. By the time you were found you already had to be saved from drowning. It was a good thing you were out, the panic would have made you draw in more water." Sixth's assistant nodded.</p><p>"The ninja that recovered you also kept chipping at the poor Honda's head to keep it from growing something back as it was very much trying to do that. They kept cutting things off and burning it until we could find a way to detain it safely in the appropriate conditions to prevent further regeneration." Sixth leaned back in his chair.</p><p>"That's great. Studying Honda's condition might help a whole lot of other people affected by Guru's experiments. It might be key to helping people in the following catastrophes." Mana breathed in and out with a smile that looked tired but genuine.</p><p>"Yeah… That's our hope too." Sixth closed his eyes and placed his hands out in front of him as he leaned forward on his desk. "So I take it you won't take us up on our offer then?"</p><p>"I have already been thinking about that. If it's all the same, I'd like to train with the Ninja Rabbits in the Rabbit Caves. If you ever need me, I'll be one hawk swoop away." Mana scratched her elbow.</p><p>"Really? The Rabbit Caves? Seems a bit plain and casual but it's something Chestnut Hanasaku used to do quite often, train with her wolves for an extended period of time… Can't be wrong looking up to someone like that." Lord Sixth nodded a pair of times. He obviously was disappointed that he was unable to pull on his strings and arrange something for Mana, maybe get the magician under his wing and debt, if not literal then a bit more subconscious one. One was sure to not forget favors like this.</p><p>"Yeah, I've had a lot of success training there before the Chuunin Exams and I'd rather recover amongst friends." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Alright, feel free to depart whenever you feel like it, if you need accompaniment don't feel shy to direct that to us, we'll arrange something. It may be for the better that you don't wander about all by yourself while still recovering." Lord Sixth relaxed in his chair and moved a larger pile of paperwork from the uppermost left corner of his table to the center.</p><p>Given how their professional relationship started and how it developed, this meeting went significantly more successfully than Mana had hoped.</p><hr/><p>Mana stared at the oddly shaped house for a while before knocking on the door. The structure was shaped almost like a vegetable, a radish, with sprouts of seemingly useless additives sticking out. Those sprouts could have been corridors that lead to dead ends or small apartments for young people who have lost their parents in the wars or missions.</p><p>Konoha did provide those. It did since Fourth's days when the guarantees were first introduced. While the law demanded that the village provided say a student studying in the Ninja Academy whose parents lost their lives in service to the village a home to call their own free of charge or taxation, it did not specify if the property had to be a house or an apartment or the exact sophistication or condition that the house had to be in.</p><p>It took courage and acceptance of the chaos and the fact that one was including a vegetable-shaped house in their life to knock on the thing. A cheerful, brown-haired woman opened the door, a fragile thing in a pink, flowery dress about Mana's height and build. She must have been one of the students who got a part of this house for free from the village…</p><p>"Hey, I'm…"</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress, oh, sorry, it seems so odd to call you by your stage name when your name flies around the house so much! You must be Mana! Come in, please, Kouta is working out." The woman erupted in a dance of cheer and pure speed of moving from one point in space as well as the conversation to another.</p><p>"No way…" Mana uttered under her own nose.</p><p>This woman could not have possibly been Kouta's mother. Just how old was she? To have given birth to Kouta she must have been at least around Kusagoro's age, maybe in her middle thirties but certainly not someone who could be confused as a student of Konoha High. Not to mention the fact she had to not only have finished Ninja Academy but also the exhausting medical ninja courses in the Konoha High as well, done all the practical studying as well as made a name for herself in the hospital.</p><p>"Oh… Where're my manners!? I'm Shori Hirano." The woman bowed her head as she introduced herself.</p><p>"I thought Hirano was a name Kouta made up," Mana mumbled to herself through half of her lips. This unexpected meeting served as all sorts of eye-opening experience.</p><p>"What was that!?" the frail ball of joy turned back at Mana with possibly the warmest smile she's seen in a while. Ignoring the tremendous amount of time she's spent on missions and life-threatening times, real nightmare inducing stuff, the past weeks she's spent in the hospital introduced her to a whole roster of faked and real smiles of a whole bunch of healthcare specialists so this actually was decently impressive.</p><p>"Nothing it's just… You're not really how I imagined you in my head." Mana admitted deciding that she was too bad at lying to try and make something meaningless up so instead she just told a speck of the truth she was ashamed of to share.</p><p>"Heh, it must be my looks. Would you believe if I told you it has nothing to do with the Transformation Jutsu and that it's all natural?" the woman began to chat while leaning closer to Mana. As if entrusting a highly confidential fact or something.</p><p>"Transformation…" Mana uttered. She had never thought about the Transformation Jutsu and how it could have allowed her to temporarily bypass her battle-scarred appearance until her scars are treated properly. It would be extremely straining to keep it up for long initially, it would take training and focus to learn to upkeep the technique to the point where it becomes natural.</p><p>No, she had responsibilities that demanded her full attention. She had no time or effort to waste on something as vain as appearance, even though the girl would eventually need to get as much treatment as possible if she was to ever appear on stage again.</p><p>"Yep, people keep thinking it's my secret, when I tell them it's not they keep nagging me about what it is and, truth be told, it's just my love for my job! I love treating people which is why I never have to truly work a single day of my life!" the woman shrugged before turning at a wooden staircase and calling for Kouta pretty loudly for someone of her frail build.</p><p>She was an exact opposite of what Mana would have expected to have attracted Kusagoro. Short, frail and weak in terms of combat potential, a skilled medical ninja surely but always a lover and a softie rather than a fighter.</p><p>"That's right, of course, it would be a shock for you to finally see me, you haven't really seen me because when I've treated you in the hospital a pair of times you've always been pretty banged up. You should be more careful out there, you know, honestly, you're all just like Kusagoro…" the woman waved her finger at Mana, making the magician's lips curl up from the awkwardness of the situation as her entire body leaned backward. To the opposite direction of the mean pointed finger or else the woman's arm would have disappeared entirely in Mana's mouth through her lips.</p><p>"Sometimes I really don't get a choice…" Mana shrugged looking quite guilty. She had never been scolded quite like this about the way she has been fighting up to now and her reasons for fighting and the way she picked her fights. Given how she could not even begin to muster about responsibilities and people she was saving at the time, it may have been a highly efficient way of moralizing her…</p><p>"Mana is really devoted to her job, she fights with all of her strength and heart out there when she's protecting people. She's a lot like you like that, mom…" Kouta smiled with a gentle smirk while quickly running down the stairs. The boy was awfully shy about the affair as she stopped right in front of Mana and began looking away and browsing for words to say.</p><p>"So… Can I…" he sputtered.</p><p>Mana almost jumped at the boy, she did the closest equivalent to the motion she could, given her physical condition and wrapped her arms around him. At least she could do that much. Hoping that notion would answer Kouta's question. The boy looked confused by Mana's affection but after the first few moments of fear over Mana's condition worsening if she came in contact with him as roughly as she did, he gently placed his own hands around her.</p><p>Shori sniffled from somewhere nearby, ruining the moment. Although she realized that she did so and after an apologetic nod disappeared somewhere. She did remind that it was a pleasure to finally meet the magician after peeking out one final time though. It certainly has been a pleasure. A very outlandish kind of pleasure but pleasure nonetheless, meeting Shori Hirano was a delicacy of meetings.</p><p>"Thanks for visiting me in the hospital. It was pretty rough in there. Would have been a lot rougher without your visits." Mana pressed her head against Kouta's, her skin burnt up with disdain for the contact with the boy's clothes and his skin, even something as casual as a show of affection became a struggle with discomfort and pain.</p><p>"I wish I could have been there more, those few times they did let me visit were more of an exception of the rule. Hell, I wish I was there to help…" Kouta rubbed his temples while his upper body blushed. He was not that much different from Mana, blaming himself for all sorts of things he had no need to do so about, seeing it in another person made Mana reflect about how annoying it must have been to people around her when she ceaselessly did so.</p><p>"If you were, you'd likely have been dead… Most of those in Honda's way died." Mana sighed. While she had learned to accept that fact and somewhat keep pushing herself past the fires of self-blame, power through the nightmares of the dead coming back to haunt and blame her through grit, teeth, and nails, it was never easy.</p><p>"I was away… Training with…" Kouta repeated those same words he kept on telling Mana as well as himself but judging from his regret and sadness it rarely, if ever, worked.</p><p>"I won't lie and say that I didn't need you or expect you or your father pop out of nowhere and save everyone. But you did help, you were on my mind when things got really hard. You helped me stand back up so many times, do what was hard but necessary when no one would have blamed me for staying down." Mana tried assuring her loved one.</p><p>Kouta's blank stare and unease in his eyes, him hiding his eyes from the magician made the girl realize that it would take some time for the boy to forgive himself for this thing that needed no forgiveness.</p><p>"Whatever your path is, your father is clearly an important part of it. He was someone you aspired to see more, impress and be acknowledged by. He happens to love seeking challenges and training elsewhere so as someone who is the way you are you would be happiest away and with him." Mana tried again.</p><p>"I'm not leaving, too many times I've left to come back and hear about you going through trouble while I was away," Kouta replied. His eyes were sad and he suffered for his stoic and strict decision. Mana would not have that.</p><p>"It would be very lonely to stay in the village in that case." She smiled with the tips of her lips.</p><p>"Wait, you're… Leaving?" Kouta's eyes shot open wide.</p><p>"Yeah, to train in the Rabbit Caves." Mana nodded. "I may end up spending a couple of years there, the first part of my stay will be purely to recover fully. You've seen the rabbits, you know how fun they are to be around."</p><p>"Yeah, I suppose…" Kouta looked away. "Did you tell your parents yet? If not, this may not yet be final. Can't imagine them letting you off the leash after nearly losing you twice in a row."</p><p>"They were to be the most difficult to convince, I told them first during one of their visits in the hospital. As my parents, they were granted many more compared to other civilians." Mana nodded. "Convincing them was the toughest part of leaving, the actual trip will be nothing."</p><p>"I see… Good old Mana. Always planning ahead." Kouta mirrored Mana's somber smirk.</p><p>"You could probably come with but… I really want you to train with your father and be happy. We'll have all the time in the world when I return. There is a lot of work that is to be done before the fun." Mana rubbed her elbow awkwardly. She did not like telling Kouta that she did not want to take him with her, anyone else would have gotten offended and questioned their relationship but Kouta should have understood. He was not anyone else.</p><p>"No, you should definitely go alone. That way the rabbits can reverse summon you, right?" Kouta raised a point. "You're wounded and tired and I can see pain emanating from your every movement. The moment you wander further from the village – you'll be like catnip for bandits and missing ninja."</p><p>"Yeah… That's probably a good idea." Mana nodded with discomfort.</p><p>"This is just fine, just like you said, we'll always be somewhere around here, right? Just a little bit outside immediate reach." Kouta reached out for a hug but Mana raced past that and nosedived forward for a surprise kiss.</p><p>It felt good. Just for that one second, that one good moment surrounded by calamities and uncertainty all pain, all responsibilities and everything unpleasant went away. For as long as their lips stayed connected, Mana felt like she was brand new, full of vigor, life, and purpose to move on and move mountains. They could not have stayed that way forever, as much as the magician wanted it to be so.</p><p>That was why her face lingered up close to Kouta. Why she kept her forehead firmly pressed against his to the point where the warmth of his breathing began causing a moderate need for fresher air and the magician's busted and patched up forehead lit up with more fresh and youthful pulse of pain that had a much sharper kick to it.</p><p>"I could heal you right now. As much as I can, like old times…" Kouta suggested with a whisper.</p><p>"No, you'd just drain yourself of all your chakra for such limited use." Mana refused. It felt almost like rejecting Kouta himself that way, after all, while they may have met first during the boy's time assisting Mana on her shows, they truly connected when the Juugo served as the medical ninja for their squad and had to heal Mana over and over.</p><p>"Yeah… It doesn't look like you have that many actual wounds. These are just scars and small-time cuts that will pass by themselves. They wouldn't spend valuable manpower treating something like this." Kouta pulled out of the close proximity to Mana's face.</p><p>Feeling the boy run through her with his eyes made Mana feel a bit uncomfortable and embarrassed. It may have been quite some time that she's spent in the hospital but there'd be much more until her wounds would truly heal. She was a long cry from the frightful wraith wrapped in bandages she was when she confronted Honda but…</p><p>"I must be hideous." Mana sighed.</p><p>"I've seen you, the real you. I've scanned your chakra network, remember. I don't need to look at what's outside. All I need is to remember the side of you I fell in love with." Kouta replied with an affectionate smile.</p><p>The magician jumped up on her feet and off the couch before running off and stopping in the middle of the doorframe. Her clenched fists trembled while she desperately tried to not look back and reveal her stupid, whiny face. What an idiot she was, she was the one who decided to leave, to put a break in everything, recover and train and give Kouta time to do the same with his father as he's always wanted to since he was a toddler.</p><p>And here she was… Crying and having trouble saying goodbye.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>*POOF*</strong>
</p><p>A bunch of rabbits coughed up, blowing a cloud of smoke off and assisting it in dissipating all over the cave under one of the endless massive trees of the Forest of Death. It has been a while since they have reverse summoned anyone into the caves and the previous system was slightly larger, mainly because it was built up over a much greater length of time. That was why it was less of an issue before.</p><p>A bunch of bunnies blindly rushed on ahead and into the smoke, grabbing firmly to the powerful and rather muscular for the girl's build thighs. Trained by none other than the ninja rabbits themselves when they gave the magician the very basics of their fighting style way back.</p><p>"Hey, you guys…" Mana's smile appeared from the dissipating smoke. There were no longer tears irritating her skin and old scars anymore. Those traitors appeared to have trouble dying out before, resurfacing shortly after goodbyes with Kouta and his mother and during the time for farewells with her family. Still, Mana was an entertainer at heart so it would have been a cardinal sin to show her audience her tears.</p><p>"Who wants to see a magic trick?" she grinned even as sorrow choked at her throat.</p>
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<a name="section0501"><h2>501. The Prodigal Daughters</h2></a>
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    <p>An elegant blonde turned back to look at the upper layers of trees. A flock of sparrows and titmouses scurried across the smaller branches, browsing the thick leafage for insects. The sharp glance of the young woman focused tighter on the birds that appeared to be completely unaffected by the noise she supposedly heard.</p><p>"Is something wrong, Kiyomi-sama?" a nearby ninja with a Konoha military uniform and the signature, flowing bright hair of the Yamanaka clan held tightly in a ponytail so that they did not disturb the man in the cases of close-range combat as much as such hair should have and kind eyes inquired.</p><p>"If you can't sense anything, I guess not…" the Yamanaka heiress closed her eyes for a prolonged moment and turned right back around.</p><p>"She's just postponing returning back to the village. The little heiress has spent so much time in the Yamanaka resort that she doesn't want to leave…" a middle-aged woman with spiky, short hair and same typical Yamanaka features noted. Her tone was rude for someone talking of an esteemed and highly regarded clan figure and her smirk was nothing if not crude but by now Kiyomi had learned to stomach the woman's personality and she knew that Inozawa did not mean anything truly crude with her rough social skills.</p><p>Something long and thin, yet sharp as a recently maintained blade of the finest steel alloys pierced the air. Kiyomi stepped aside, without even turning at the whipping piece of a steel string, avoiding the killing strike that easily split the ground beneath her feet into a fissure. The Yamanaka took ample time to turn back at the assailant that hid in the same foliage she so recently glared at and concluded that there was no one there.</p><p>"Hmph… I guess it is my bad… This person appears to have suppressed their chakra signature." Kiyomi's male Yamanaka bodyguard lamented before bowing his head in Kiyomi's direction with apologetic intentions.</p><p>"You think just 'cause three years had passed you can show your face around the village!?" a hate-filled voice emanated from the same location where the assailant had tried slicing Kiyomi in half with one quick swoop. For all the failure of his stealthy takedown, his plan and execution were impressive someone who managed to suppress their chakra to elude an intermediate sensor who passed right below them and then unleash all of their suppressed signature all at once must have had remarkable chakra control.</p><p>Red eyes flared up from the shade inside the leaves, they moved in a blur, leaving faint traces of crimson as the pitch black haired ninja with tall, spiky hair swung from atop of the branch he hid on and landed firmly on the ground, using the same steel wire device he clutched in his hands. The device sliced right through the branch that the ninja swung on but also picked something else up.</p><p>A wire trap. One piece of string pulling on another, that in terms yanked on yet another loop and so on ad infinitum. The steel wire pressed tightly against Kiyomi's body, as well as those of her bodyguards, effectively trapping them in suspended animation that would have required grievous wounds and lacerations to escape.</p><p>"Look into these eyes and lament the fact that your death comes from an Uchiha." The man pointed at the two three-tomoe possessing Sharingan orbs in his eyes that were lustering with all of their enigmatic beauty.</p><p>"You're not a real Uchiha." Kiyomi sighed. "As much as it pains me to admit, you're not representing the actual clan. You're just one of those splinter group assholes, what was it again?"</p><p>"Kiyomi-sama, that manner of speaking is not very ladylike!" the male bodyguard yelled out, he struggled in vain to attempt and yank himself out of the trap but it was to no use. Judging from the simple way he attempted to escape, the Yamanaka was not really even trying.</p><p>"The Red Hawks," Inozawa grunted out. The woman looked troubled by the predicament but, for her own reasons, she chose to completely not show any signs of a struggle and just curse at the entrapment.</p><p>"The only reason why we exist is because the main branch is too weak to do what is needed. They just let a death of one of our own and the loss of their eyes go unpunished. Maybe it was not entirely your fault, perhaps you were trying to recover the eyes but all of that does not matter. You've made our clan weaker through your failure and that's something deserving Heavenly Justice." The Uchiha from the Red Hawks played with his string device that reminded of a stopwatch of sorts from which strings of steel wire that must have been chakra conductive wrangled out.</p><p>"Ugh… I can't believe I'll be giving the Uchiha this freebie by disposing of you…" Kiyomi complained.</p><p>"Dispose of me? Your own executioner? How will you do that when you cannot even move or connect your hands to use hand seals?" the Uchiha looked confused.</p><p>The fingers on one of Kiyomi's tied hands formed a one-handed hand seal while the ground beneath the feet of the confused Uchiha shifted. A massive rock platform sky-rocketed through the trees and up into the sky as if launched there by a bursting geyser stream when in fact it was chakra transferred through Kiyomi's feet and the girl's increased skill in Earth Release ninjutsu that achieved it.</p><p>Due to the immense speed of the soaring rocky platform, the Uchiha felt the colossal weight of gravity press him down onto the ground and greatly reduce his mobility. The air up where he was became rare so even if he wanted to curse and complain, he would only have been wasting the few gulps of it that he had.</p><p>With a white flash, Kiyomi blitzed past the Uchiha, delivering a diving kick to his jaw from aside. She was not just about to let the Uchiha assailant escape after declaring that she'd eliminate him for the main branch of the Uchiha as an accidental favor. A temporary alignment of interests.</p><p>The eyes of the Red Hawk assailant traced the falling blood that appeared to be rising. By the time he had realized the trajectory of the falling platform, it was too late as Kiyomi oppressed the Uchiha with a relentless offensive of taijutsu combinations that kept him grounded to the platform.</p><p>"You bitch, you'll die too unless you leave this platform!" the Uchiha declared. He moved his hands in together for Substitution Hand seals but Kiyomi's well-placed palm strike aimed at his right elbow misplaced the man's hand and failed his string of hand seals.</p><p>The Red Hawk assassin waited until the very final second for the opportunity when Kiyomi would attempt to leave the falling platform that became almost meteor-like in its velocity and size. With a mighty smash back into the ground that reduced the surrounding trees to measly chips of wood and destroyed the support for the wire entrapments, the rogue Uchiha laid with a snapped neck and a multitude of broken bones.</p><p>Kiyomi's body was nowhere to be seen, just a puff of bright grey smoke that surrounded the area and mixed into the general confusion of the dust and debris raised by Kiyomi's destructive technique.</p><p>"I guess even with the Sharingan this man did not realize you never left the trap he had set for you. Your Shadow Clone did." The Yamanaka bodyguard noted with a tone that complimented Kiyomi for her strategy.</p><p>"I can't believe you guys forced me to split my chakra in half just for this bastard." Kiyomi squinted at her bodyguards. "You could have escaped this trap and killed this guy in a second."</p><p>"Attacks like this will become more often, you would be wise to expect them every time you leave the village until the Red Hawk are captured or exterminated." The male bodyguard noted, he spoke in a very scolding manner that ticked Kiyomi off even more.</p><p>"You were also pretty lucky he was so focused on you and blinded by the ecstasy of his inevitable revenge. Had he noticed your strategy, given that you were tied up, he may just have killed you. You should not have fallen for his trap in the first place." Inozawa joined in on her colleague's moralizing.</p><p>Kiyomi pouted and twisted her lips. As if rebelling against the sudden outburst of morals directed at her, the girl escalated her step to where she ran off significantly ahead to the party ensuring her safe return to the village. When the black, silk dress of the Yamanaka heiress caught on to some branches she was about to yank it out before freezing in place, taking a few deep breaths in and carefully removing the piece of cloth from the obstacle in her path.</p><p>"I must say, Kiyomi-sama's maturity is impressing me greatly. Even though she had every reason to despise the Uchiha and blame them for all of her latest misfortunes: spending three years away from her friends and her mentors, her entire village even, this attempt at her life, she can see clearly enough to see the distinction between the rebellious Red Hawks and the Uchiha." The ponytailed Yamanaka bodyguard smiled, observing the heiress rush on ahead.</p><p>"Yeah. Her fighting skill is off the roof as well. In her current state, she's a rival to any one of us and she's not even tapped into half of her potential." Inozawa nodded with a smirk that was a rare guest on the woman's rather brutish face. "Not to mention she makes much better tea than even you, Inosashi…"</p><p>"She's only made tea for us once. I was not prepared for the potential competition. I am sure that in a proper ceremony…"</p><p>"Humble in defeat, as usual…" the woman laughed out.</p><hr/><p>"Whoah! What happened to this place!?" an enthusiastic and slightly to the masculine side in its brunt nature voice echoed through the Konoha streets in the southern district of the village. "Just leave it for a handful of years and it all completely transforms!"</p><p>"Konoha isn't the only place that's transformed." A middle-aged woman of an athletic build and long, flowing chestnut-colored hair smiled softly while looking at her student and companion. The melancholic look in her eyes suggested that she was almost sad to part ways with the redhead that has become such an integral part of the tough and sweet times they've been through.</p><p>"Huh?" Meiko turned back, she was not used to her locks growing quite as long and unruly as they have so a handful smacked her on the face out of the suddenness of the girl's turn. "What else? What did I miss!? I swear I could just run around the place experiencing everything that's changed, it's been so long!"</p><p>The blacksmith had completely blown the lid off of her and was rampaging all around the entry area, causing general social mayhem by engaging the passing caravans, villagers and even the gate guards in a casual conversation. Most often the words that left her mouth were questions about just what has changed recently about the village.</p><p>"Ah, I see what you meant, sensei!" Meiko pointed her finger at the Hokage Monument, displaying a new face just past the fair look of Chestnut Hanasaku, the temporary Lady Fifth and the long-haired features of Lord Sixth – a man with a spiky hairdo moving past his shoulders and extending past his face even on the carved image of the statue.</p><p>"The Seventh Hokage…" Hanasaku mumbled to herself, wondering what may have happened to the Sixth. It was quite rare for a Hokage to pass up their post unless they ended up dying, growing too old or them only having taken up the big chair temporarily, just like Lady Fifth herself had done. "His face looks familiar…"</p><p>"I dunno… Those statue faces always seemed kinda iffy to me. Can't tell a thing, after all, it's just a mug plastered on a stone. Metal face plating – now that's art…" Meiko leaned back on her arms while squinting at the giant mountain structure in the distance.</p><p>"Do not call slamming a raw plate of steel alloy at someone's face hard enough to leave their augmented face's image on the plate art." Hanasaku sighed.</p><p>"If swordsmanship and martial arts are arts, hitting someone really hard with a plate of steel is also art!" Meiko took her artistic identity rather seriously and was ready to argue and fight to defend it.</p><p>"Well… In any case… I guess this is it for now. I bet you're sick of seeing my face so I'll let you go realize all those wild "When I return" list dreams you have." Hanasaku smiled fondly at her student and companion. "Thanks for being by my side while I traveled around the world, it's been my lifelong dream and while, initially, it was not working out but… There was no one else I'd rather have had by my side. Well… Maybe except Kiyomi."</p><p>"Yeah… Sounds about right." Meiko smiled. She closed her eyes and her nose began sniffling. "Damn… Now I know why Mana keeps her hair this long…" the blacksmith muttered as she looked down to have the front of her hair cover up her emotional face.</p><p>"Oh, come on… It's not like I'm dying or we're never gonna see each other again. Stop embarrassing yourself…" Hanasaku smiled and moved up closer to place her hand on her student's shoulder before wrapping the whole limb around her neck and gently comforting her silly companion.</p><p>"Y-Yeah but… We've been together for so long. Just you and me traveling around the place through good and bad… I've gotten so used to that… Training, fighting for our lives, nearly dying, moving forward… It's all like one big running wheel and… Then, all of a sudden… It just stops…" Meiko mumbled out through emotional sniffles.</p><p>"Stop living in the past. Go and forge new moments that will become the routine of your new life. When I said Konoha's not the only thing that's transformed, I meant you. You've completely rebuilt yourself, you've become stronger and smarter, more than that, you're no longer just a bud with infinite potential. You've started to bloom. A bloomer like you deserves a new, better life than that which the bud lived in, it needs more sunlight and more water."</p><p>Meiko's stomach rumbled and roared. The blacksmith pressed her gauntlet against the ruined by countless battles chainmail emitting a clang under the rough rag that she wore as a cover atop of her worn out armor. Some parts of it were well-maintained and repaired every day, for some, more intricate repairs, the lifestyle of a traveler did not afford the needed time, some repairs have been interrupted by a life-threatening crisis and needed to be postponed indefinitely.</p><p>"Go! Show Konoha that its heroes have come back." Hanasaku smiled, gently pushing Meiko forward. The blacksmith did not need to be asked twice, she turned a full one-eighty and shot off like a speeding arrow. "I'll report our return to Lord Seventh."</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi walked up to the outskirts of the village. For someone that has spent so long away from the village, it was ironic that one of the first things she did after returning was to roam the outskirts. Her trek was not aimless however and Kiyomi's heart drained of energy the closer she got to the goal of her search.</p><p>The blonde almost raced past the red statue symbolizing the Will of Fire, bearing the "Hokage" kanji symbol and entered the field filled with small, stone slabs with names carved onto them. The testament to many deaths and a growing problem of the village's outskirts no longer serving the intended purpose of housing the dead became almost monotonous as one stone slab switched the other, even the flowers placed by the graves started to look all the same the more Kiyomi treaded into the mad bunch of memorial slabs.</p><p>Like a field of swords after a battle…</p><p>In all of that monotony, a sight of a familiar shape peaked Kiyomi's interest. One of a slender young woman with a top hat that made her appear taller than she actually was standing by the very same grave that Kiyomi had come to see. The raven hair of the young woman scattered and moved elegantly in sync with the winds of an early spring.</p><p>Kiyomi did not speak up or distract her old friend from glaring at the gravestone of another old friend. No… The man lying there was more than a friend. The gravestone read "Eiju Fuuhen". It had plenty of flowers covering the recently weeded out and maintained soil and the gravestone had a few symbolic additions to it that suggested greater, more honorable importance to the grave compared to the others around it. The gemstones with silver and gold linings were like medals that the deceased could carry into the Pure Land. In a symbolic way, at least.</p><p>"We all knew that this was going to happen. He walked right into it, he chose this instead of the sort of life he was living. And yet… It caught us all by surprise." Mana spoke up somberly. She had sensed for a short while that a familiar signature was closing in, especially when it did not even attempt to disguise itself, then again, why would it?</p><p>"That's why I was fooled into thinking I loved this asshole." Kiyomi smiled, she clearly did not mean offense with her words, she of all people knew the type of crudeness that Eiju preferred in all things in life. "The absolute freedom to do whatever the hell one wanted… Even if it meant dying in a year or two, living your life to the fullest. He may have passed on but… I can't help but think he flipped us all off, death included… Did you see it happen?"</p><p>"No. I was training away for the last three years. Working through recovery. It's odd, he helped me so much with that and the last time I saw him I was… Not the kind of person I want to be remembered as. Broken, confused… He must have felt some signs even back then and yet…"</p><p>"Look at this fancy grave. He must have laughed his ass off knowing that after spending his whole life as a Quack he'd be remembered as and honored as a hero almost. He did work hard for it though… Tried changing his act a bit, cleaning himself up but…" Kiyomi's words started lingering. It became evident that both young women struggled with words sticking in their throats like fur-balls moving up and down.</p><p>"It did not suit him." Both said at the same time.</p><p>"Still, he played his part. This memory must have been important to him, it was what he wanted." Kiyomi sniffed a pair of times.</p><p>"Sure it was. No one could have made him do it if it wasn't." Mana's lips almost turned upside down.</p>
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<a name="section0502"><h2>502. From Messenger Hawks To Just Messengers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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      <p>"I'm really glad to see you. Isn't it crazy how we just happened to butt into one another?" Kiyomi smiled while looking at the barely cloudy sky with dreamy eyes.</p>
      <p>"Not really." Mana shook her head with an aura of serenity around her. "I figured you would be coming back today, there was really just one place you could have come to. It must have been difficult not to be able to attend the funeral because of clan grievances."</p>
      <p>"Oh, you have no idea!" Kiyomi grumped out. "Still, I'm glad to put it all aside now. I'm glad that things didn't escalate and break out into a full-on conflict."</p>
      <p>"It seems naïve and foolish how sure we were back then it would…" Mana closed her eyes, feeling a bit embarrassed about the childish worries that people in charge would not be able to keep their egos in check and would risk so much for another war. It was especially foolish to think this way while being a member of the generation that never experienced war, thinking thusly about the generation that had. Then again, certain professions and certain people reveled in war so perhaps the idea was not all that insane…</p>
      <p>"You speak as if there's no conflict in the world right now." Kiyomi's eyes got serious as she looked on ahead.</p>
      <p>"True, I've heard about Iwa and Kumo. Seemed like such random countries to ram horns against each other." Mana sighed.</p>
      <p>"So do you feel responsible for that one too?" Kiyomi teased the magician, figuring that she would receive a foolish joke or a somewhat unnerved, negative reaction but Mana's face turned genuinely sour.</p>
      <p>"I'm not sure, honestly. It was me who brought back all the blueprints and samples of the technology that partially escalated the feud. Had it not been for the dire need of coltan, maybe the conflict could have been avoided." Mana gave a vague shape to her inner worries.</p>
      <p>"Who could have known how crazy everyone would go over the technology… It's like our entire worlds changed in a just a handful of years." Kiyomi sighed. "Though I must say, I think I kind of see the way you feel about fighting right now. People of mountainous regions, the only places in the world where coltan can be mined from fighting on those very same lands, destroying that very same mineral they are trying to provide in the process…"</p>
      <p>"Coltan is not the most painful victim of this conflict," Mana noted. "Your return wasn't a surprise to me, Meiko's however was." She changed the topic in a heartbeat.</p>
      <p>"Wait… Meiko's back too!?" Kiyomi flipped out, her face covered with a smile while her cheeks blushed ever so lightly. A somewhat predictable reaction given how close the two girls were.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, we're heading her direction right now." Mana nodded calmly.</p>
      <p>"Wow, your sensory must have gotten crazy!" Kiyomi complimented her friend. Not only was the magician able to trace Meiko returning from outside the village but also pinpoint the blacksmith in the middle of a busy ninja village in one of the busiest times. The old Mana would have covered up her head and complained of being unable to focus while surrounded by so many massive signatures but this new Mana looked completely unfazed by it, almost like it was a no-factor.</p>
      <p>"I've trained it quite extensively. I did not pick up many new techniques but I have sharpened some of the tools I already had." Mana winked slowly in confirmation. "Using sensory in tracking is just the first step of the sense. It can be so much more."</p>
      <p>"What do you mean?" Kiyomi wondered.</p>
      <p>"Well… I can see it, but I can't quite yet grasp it. All I can say is that just like you can sense signatures, you can sense parts of them as well. It's something I still am working on, sadly." The magician sighed before loud noises of the feminine sort reached their ears. After moving the curtains before the entrance to Yakiniku Q, the sight of a red-haired wanderer that could not have seen a shower or a comfortable bed in months almost standing atop of the table she was eating off of.</p>
      <p>"Stuffing your stupid face in, huh? Honestly!" Kiyomi tipped her eyebrow as she went off to greet her old friend.</p>
      <p>Whatever buttery dumpling Meiko stuffed her face in before exclaiming in ecstasy occupied the girl's full attention until Kiyomi walked right up to the blacksmith. It was as if until the blonde was not near enough to threaten the redhead's food she did not even exist. Meiko gulped the dumpling down whole before yelling out in excitement.</p>
      <p>"Hey, you guys!"</p>
      <p>"Don't you "Hey" me! How could you think about stuffing your face first of all after returning?" Kiyomi leaned in on the blacksmith who appeared completely unaffected and unimpressed by the imposed stature of the Yamanaka heiress and just stared back at her blankly.</p>
      <p>"I had no idea where you guys were so I just decided to do what my heart told me to do and just hope that everything kind of works out in the end…" Meiko explained before stuffing one more dumpling, gooey with grease and slipping it down. The fatty nature of the meal must have been more than just a meaningless indulgence as it appeared to make the food easier to devour, even though it affected the taste greatly to the side of the scale Mana disliked her food in.</p>
      <p>Meiko lifted her eyes up and moved them at Mana, looking slightly baffled by the fact that the magician kept her distance and did not engage in the act of playful wrestling that Kiyomi allowed herself with the drastically physically superior teammate. The magician smiled with a composed grimace before softening her eyes to let the blacksmith know that she was not angry nor did she have a reason to be this way. She just said hello this way, it just felt more right.</p>
      <p>"Huh? What's wrong with you? Are you dying or something?" Meiko mumbled, her eyes looked completely baffled while the blacksmith let go of Kiyomi's neck and let the blonde slip out of her clutch and almost fumble down. Had the Yamanaka lacked the grace and balance to elegantly twirl back into a stable position, she'd have slammed her face against the ground and embarrassed herself.</p>
      <p>"You idiot, she's just not into this physical greeting stuff. How dense can you be?" Kiyomi complained before giving Meiko a puny bump on her arm. "Huh? What's wrong with you? Your arms became puny after all these years, where's all the muscle?"</p>
      <p>"That stuff was useless. There are more efficient ways to be strong, I simply did not have enough food to sustain that kind of strength so I had to delve into the spiritual mumbo-jumbo Mana taught me about to increase my chakra and become stronger differently." Meiko spun her arms around as if warming up. She very nearly totaled the plates and the table she stood nearby to.</p>
      <p>"So you're stronger this way than just blindly putting on muscle and lifting heavy things?" Kiyomi squinted with suspicion at her teammate.</p>
      <p>"Sure. Loads stronger! Had the darned war not postponed the Chuunin Exams, I'd have shown you just how much…" Meiko teased the Yamanaka heiress with a challenging smile on her face.</p>
      <p>A vibrating twitch passed through Mana's wrist, all the way to the upper arm forcing the magician to flick her arm down and observe the petit, red gadget that emerged from her sleeve. Meiko noticed her friend's focus shifting but was too invested in the gadget that Mana had on her. The gearhead in Meiko simply could not resist almost tackling the girl to the ground and twisting her arm in awkward angles just to get a better look at the gadget.</p>
      <p>"What the hell is that!?" Meiko finally managed to squeeze in a semi-intelligible sentence along all that gibberish.</p>
      <p>"It's a messenger." Kiyomi squinted her eyes. "Haven't you heard that the village switched out messenger hawks for messenger gadgets?"</p>
      <p>"True, true… The hawks do eat and poop a lot, they also have a limited speed whereas the speed of radio waves would be near-instantaneous compared to that… The design seems simple enough, I bet it has plenty of unused space for modifications!" Meiko started speaking to the entire three-hundred-kilometer vicinity, judging from the degree of her excitement and the volume of her voice. "Can I undress this bad boy and look at what it has underneath?" The blacksmith turned her head up to glare at Mana with puppy eyes.</p>
      <p>The most curious thing happened when she did, in between the moment when Meiko's eyes still stared at the magician's messenger and lifted her head up to look at Mana's emerald eyes, the magician was nowhere to be seen. Only the red gadget remained hanging in Meiko's hands, leaving the blacksmith completely baffled. With a swift motion of her arm, Mana snagged her gadget back, revealing herself to stand beside her friend almost close enough to rub shoulders.</p>
      <p>"Please do not disassemble my messenger, Meiko. It is my work tool. Get your own if you have the need, they supply a free one to any active ninja submitting the application." Mana calmly explained before slipping the gadget back onto her wrist and concealing it under her sleeve as she used to play with cards in front of the audience with a wave of an arm.</p>
      <p>"I'm surprised you didn't know about the messengers." Kiyomi turned her face away from Meiko in disbelief.</p>
      <p>"I'm surprised you did. Weren't you also away training?" Meiko replied.</p>
      <p>"Sure, but I've seen loads of Yamanaka check into the resort with their messengers intact. The first couple of weeks they were the talk of the whole pack." Kiyomi shrugged.</p>
      <p>"You kids play nice," Mana waved at her friends. "I have work to do."</p>
      <p>"Hey, did you know there's a new Hokage, Lord Seventh?" Meiko turned at Kiyomi with a foolishly naïve glare only to be met with a snappy pair of Kiyomi's own orbs.</p>
      <p>"Never change your oblivious, childish ways…" Kiyomi sighed, it may have been the last thing that Mana heard before leaving the restaurant and letting the cacophony of crowd noises drown everything out. The magician extended her sensory to the outside, sacrificing some of her more physical, down to earth awareness for the sake of the more spiritual understanding that in no way hindered Mana at this point.</p>
      <p>It was a curious thing that Meiko said. Even if Kiyomi already knew about it, Mana did not. She sure dodged a socially uncomfortable bullet by slipping out from the conversation without revealing that she knew little about the change of the leading village authority beside the obvious sight of another face donning the Hokage Monument.</p>
      <p>When Mana left the village for the Rabbit Caves the social situation was at an all-time hot, the civilians and ninja were at each other's throats so it was not tough to see why the Council would much rather choose to elect a new figurehead and muzzle the uproar a little. New faces usually had the benefit of not being blamed for things that their predecessors did, or, at the very least, had that excuse in their pocket for future use.</p>
      <p>Still, when the figurative tendrils of the magician's sensory range reached into the Hokage's office and felt up the figure sitting at the chair, her eyes widened a few inches. Yes. It made a lot of sense. Mana must not have been too far off about the reasoning of why the Hokage changed if they put that person in the seat. Someone with experience of protecting the village, someone whose credentials at serving the village needed no further elaboration or explanation and were beyond debate. Just by reading their dossier one would be convinced that this man had the protection of the village entirely in their mind.</p>
      <p>Mana's entry into the Administration's office complex on the first floor raised a few more heads than the magician would have asked for, many more than most other ninja raise on similar circumstances. Then again, despite her average rank, Mana had done quite much for the village on far too many occasions, when one also puts on top her public image of being a stage entertainer and her starring performance in the finals of one of the craziest Chuunin Exams in recorded history… The interest sort of made a bit more sense.</p>
      <p>Or maybe she's just been gone for far too long?</p>
      <p>Mana entered the office without knocking or waiting, without listening in. Her steps were loud enough to hear coming from far below as the training with the Ninja Rabbits had exponentially strengthened her lower body. Lord Seventh had chosen himself a different assistant, this time it was an all too familiar face…</p>
      <p>"Mana! What a surprise! You didn't even knock!" Kuribira, the young woman who oversaw Mana's introduction into the VP during her time assisting the institution gasped before exclaiming. Whether it was because of a face this woman put on or because she was just that damned obvious, she was as easy to read as an advertising sign placed right next to the kitchen window.</p>
      <p>"I felt welcome," Mana said, oozing with serenity.</p>
      <p>"Well… More or less…" Lord Seventh tipped his large, red, cone hat with the kanji symbol for "Fire" beaming out to the outside world as a declaration of Uzumaki Midoben's tremendous accomplishment and power acknowledged by the Fire Daimyo, the Konoha Council as well as the jounin. More than that, a Hokage that was not approved by the ANBU would have been just a figurehead joke. A leader who was not served faithfully by their Black Ops would have been the greatest failure in the village's history and given how intricately tied in with the Black Ops the Sixth was… Midoben must have really been something to be granted the ANBU's trust.</p>
      <p>Mana kneeled in front of Lord Seventh, the past leader of the Village Protection, but she did not stay kneeling until called up. It did not appear that either Kuribira or Lord Seventh cared all too much.</p>
      <p>"I'm glad you came, I was not really sure if you were back or not. I no longer have the Village Protection sensory corps on my call these days. Wasn't sure if you picked up your messenger already and if you have recovered after the incident." The Seventh Hokage started naming the things that could have gone wrong.</p>
      <p>"Well, you do have the Village Protection on your call, it's just that it takes longer for them to come to your office." Kuribira teased her superior who grinned with modest satisfaction with the joke but without dropping his composure too much.</p>
      <p>"You called out, I answer. I can just hope that this has nothing to do with the conflict between Iwagakure and Kumogakure." Mana spoke up.</p>
      <p>"Oh, no. That would be entirely counterproductive. Knowing your record, your nindo, it would be really silly to ask of you to participate in the conflict. For now, Konoha is adamant about its neutrality in that regard." Seventh dismissed Mana's fears.</p>
      <p>The truth why was self-evident. With Iwagakure and Kumogakure tearing each other apart, with each successive military operation growing bolder in gall and larger in scale every Ninja Country had to essentially choose a side to escalate the conflict to its final stages as fast as possible before it got things entirely spiraling out of control. Thing was that it was incredibly tough to choose between these two. On one hand, Iwagakure was producing computers and impressive calculators with their immense supply of coltan for years before Mana brought the capsule of technology back. On the other, Kumogakure was the country with the strongest military so it was not all too wise to bet against it.</p>
      <p>"So how did your recovery go? Are you really ready for action? I know it's been three years but…" Kuribira asked Mana with profound worry on her face.</p>
      <p>"I've made a full recovery of the injuries I've sustained against Honda in the first two weeks of my training with the Ninja Rabbits. It would have been impossible to train as hard as I did without recovering as soon as possible." Mana nodded.</p>
      <p>"Two weeks? That sounds next to impossible! Are the Ninja Rabbits sitting on some asset unknown to us?" Seventh went all interested all of a sudden.</p>
      <p>"Usuzoku, my Ninja Rabbit partner, and I had a little help from a little rabbit urban legend. If extracting that titan out of its hole was possible, if there was any way that I could use it to assist the injured and dying in the village in any way, given the kind of ninja I am, do you think I would just sit out on it?" Mana made her point.</p>
      <p>"Heh, I guess not." The Seventh Hokage looked down with a smirk on his face. "In any case, this mission should serve as a nice warm-up for you. It is a solo assignment that will require next to no fighting from you so you should have been golden in any case. The stakes are nothing less but the shinobi system itself."</p>
      <p>Mana's focus sharpened. This was something that she did not see coming, even with all of her sensory, all of her strategic and sensory perception. Something of this magnitude seemed daunting, even with all the training and all the skills she had gathered in the Rabbit Caves. The magician had to actively resist the instinct to ask if maybe this was too much for her and Lord Seventh should have reconsidered.</p>
      <p>"I know what you think, Mana-san, "This is all too much for me", right? Thing is we don't really have a choice with this, it comes from a bit above us." Kuribira tried to soften up the blow. She had a weird motherly look on her face.</p>
      <p>"Way above seems like an understatement. This comes all the way from the Feudal Lords themselves. It does not get any higher than that…" Seventh got serious and gloomy all of a sudden as he leaned in on his enclosed hands and hid his lower face and the short stubble it fostered behind them.</p>
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<a name="section0503"><h2>503. Down With The System</h2></a>
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    <p>"The entire shinobi system?" Mana asked. "With stakes this high, it is not something I'd like to read from a file about. I will need as many details as possible."</p><p>"That is understandable. There is to be a summit between the Feudal Lords and the representatives of the Ninja Councils of every village as well as the select representatives from the civilians of the more notable establishments around the world. It will take place in the Orome resort on the farther end of Camellia road. The main question of the summit is – are the ninja still necessary in this day and age and perhaps it is time to tear down the shinobi system." Seventh said with a grim and serious expression.</p><p>Usually, from what Mana remembered of Uzumaki Midoben, he was a man who either had a smirk on his face or implied with other social cues that he had something up his sleeve that would give him an advantage in any unfavorable situation related to the conversation at hand. In the present case, he was completely serious.</p><p>"Why me specifically?" Mana wondered. "There are loads of more competent ninja around. From what I can feel, even Kusagoro Juugo is back in the village." The magician spoke with her eyes closed and her sensory expanding with perceptive tendrils that matched if not surpassed the degree of mastery over the ability that Gasco Patura had during the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>"True, however, skill is not the defining characteristic that the Feudal Lords are looking for. The instructions were very specific not to send an exceptional ninja nor a newbie incapable of putting their case into words or one that hasn't seen much of what they are talking about. The villages were instructed to send average ninja, as close to the definition of average as possible." Seventh sighed while leaning back in his chair.</p><p>Mana swallowed a bitter figurative pill. Being called average stabbed at her chest worse than being called miserable or terrible would have. It was quite likely the most efficient blow possible to deliver to the magician. It was tough to say why it irked her that much, perhaps it was just her nature of preferring flashiness and entertaining an audience during her free time that made being called average feel worse than being belittled or criticized. Lord Seventh's face was clear – he did not mean it as an offense, then why did it never stop feeling like one?</p><p>"Very well. If the entire ninja system is at stake, I have no right to refuse." Mana bowed her head before approaching the desk and taking the mission file.</p><p>It will be a pain filling it up and then submitting it back to the desk once the mission was over, thinking the whole time about the fact that she's been singled out as the definition of average. After everything she's seen and everything she's done, in this crazy world, she was only as good as the definition of average… Almost as if any other given ninja was notable for successes and failures quite as notable as those of Mana's. Then again, perhaps it was the balance of successes and failures that helped her find her place in this uncomfortable category?</p><p>"Wow, they did not waste any time," father grumped out. He turned his eyes away looking irritated, the physicality and self-evidence of his grumpy state did scare the magician.</p><p>This was a man who had lost his ninja career to a crushing injury, then learned to manage the pain with the help of black market herbs and elixirs concocted by a freakish cult of rogue ninja and just flat out criminals, before learning to deal with his pain in other ways – by helping the magician with her shows, only to have his daughter constantly brush that off as well. It felt guilty dismissing father's pain like this, always thinking that it was a problem for another time, that after this current thing Mana was occupied with was done, she'd be all into her shows and her father would once more have a place beside her…</p><p>And yet that was never the case, there was always another thing after that one thing, ad infinitum.</p><p>"I've been away for three years. That's a lot of time to have someone employed but not working for. Especially in the ninja line of work, where people often barely see their adult years." Mana sighed. There was no other way to do this, she could simply not sacrifice the integrity of the entire ninja system and then also bring shame to her village by not showing up. Her name and data would be immediately sent to the responsible parties hosting the summit so they would know if she simply sat this one out.</p><p>Mana did not walk the Camellia road that often. Roiyaru and Rooibos were quite common, but the north-western Camellia, which was filled with classy resorts, mansions of the villagers rich or influential enough to reside outside the village walls but still enjoy the relative proximity and security of the Fire Country, with the added protection of hiring their own private security force comprised of mercenaries or rogue ninja looking for an easy, understandable and legitimate stack of ryo, evaded Mana's interests for the longest time.</p><p>Seeing these whited out, sophisticated, modern and classic mansions and expensive resorts, the magician could not help but wonder why someone like Hanada Katsuo, someone who fit the profile of someone whom a Camellia property would have fit like a glove eluded the alluring chance of living here. The thief in law must have loved the village more than people gave him credit for. For all the people who have crossed him that have disappeared, for all the aggressive negotiation that he engaged in while doing his daily dealings, Hanada did build plenty of expensive property that paid lots of taxes and he almost exclusively invested into Konoha.</p><p>It was an odd thing to think about while on a slow trek to the location of the mission. Maybe Mana could have picked up the pace, with her speed she could have moved to the location in almost an instant but she wasn't sure if a rogue party would not attempt to interrupt her, even more, the force hired to maintain security at the summit could have set traps all over the place and gotten riled up by someone approaching them at speeds as rocketing as Mana's.</p><p>No, every "average" representative would travel good and steady, the magician would not be surprised if the representatives from Kirigakure would travel by ships and the representatives from Kumogakure would use a carriage ride across the Snow Country. Only then did it pop into Mana's mind that representatives of both Iwagakure and Kumogakure would be present in the event…</p><p>As frightening as imagining all the different possibilities of how it would have all gone wrong in all the horrific ways was, Mana counted on these ninja realizing that sabotaging this event for the sake of petty coltan market grievances would have been profoundly stupid. Still, it would be less than a fun time at the breakfast table…</p><p>It seemed that it was simply not in the cards for that day that her imagination would run wild and make-up epic confrontations and conflicts worthy of their epics or awesome clashes of wit that deserved to be recorded and preserved through the centuries as the magician noticed a peculiar change in scenery down below. A chain of caravans moving forward in speed that caravans may have considered impressive but which was the main reason why Mana caught up to the queue of transportations.</p><p>Had Mana not sensed some impressive chakra signatures, as well as a vast multitude of suppressed ones, she may have just passed by, writing the chain of transportations off as just someone's bold and expansive business venture but something about this particular encounter piqued Mana's interest. The chakra signatures that were suppressed were lower than the magician thought natural, it was almost as if someone tried to pass these people as dead men if a sloppy sensor ever caught a whiff of them.</p><p>The young woman swooped down and repurposed the force of her landing into a forward dash that put her alongside one of the frontal caravans. The driver of said caravan got startled, slightly throwing the transportation out of the strict, line formation. After noticing the "Leaf" symbol on Mana's headband plate placed firmly on the front of the young woman's top hat, the man settled down.</p><p>"Hey, you're… That girl, aren't you? Boy, you've grown!" the man grinned with a full smile, realizing that the unexpected startle that very nearly made one's heart crawl out of one's chest was just some past celebrity showing their face around must have inspired that sort of happiness in this man.</p><p>"Yes. Although I haven't performed in three years, planning on fixing that in the near future. What are you transporting here?" Mana inquired, she was not sure if these men were criminals or not, some of their faces looked vaguely familiar but their chakra signatures did not, either they were masking themselves using a Transformation Jutsu, some offshoot of the technique, or Mana met these people before she discovered her sensory which was why she could not precisely remember their identities.</p><p>"Oh, haven't you heard? The Eden Prison Complex got completely destroyed, the entire place crushed like a juice box in a squeezing hand." The man replied, his face began sweating upon speaking those words. Her experience in the Intel Division allowed Mana to tell fear apart from lying this time, this man was afraid of what he had just said but it was so because the source of his words genuinely inspired fear in him, not because he was trying to weasel out of some revelation to a Konoha ninja.</p><p>"How many casualties?" Mana asked. A figurative buzzing spread all over her abdomen, making her a little bit nauseous. The last thing she needed was to lose someone dear to her like Sugemi in a freak accident like this. Come to think of it, his chakra signature was nowhere near this row of caravans…</p><p>"Loads…" the man's face turned sour. "The loss of prisoners we could probably live with but we lost plenty of staff members. The ones here are pretty much the only ones left. The situation with the staff was so dire we're transferring these prisoners to be counted and identified to another location. Unless you're on a mission related to this incident, however, I am not allowed to disclose that information just yet, however."</p><p>"I understand." Mana's look turned sour. She would probably be unable to sleep for multiple nights in a row without proper meditation. Just what could have happened to Sugemi? Did he just die alongside the plentiful casualties or was he maybe not in the prison, to begin with? That young man checked out and back into that place at his leisure but he genuinely enjoyed the company of the two Jinchuuriki that were kept inside there: Nanaba and Daidao. Those two became an almost serviceable replacement for Mana and Shimo for the young man. "Was it a break-out or something like that?"</p><p>"Highly unlikely." The driver shook his head. "Breakouts would be much more silent and nowhere near as deadly. Something large scale like this, if it ever hit the village… Man… You keep hearing about stuff like this but you never think you could be affected by it. Life as we know it could be snuffed away at any moment, just like that… How does someone live with stuff like that?" The man shook his head. He did not appear to be in a life crisis but he was merely making conversation.</p><p>"You make a good point. Eden's prisoners are often there for their own protection or by their own desire. It is more of a correctional facility than one of strict detainment. It is unlikely that such drastic measures were necessary if someone just wanted to escape." Mana stroke her chin, even without looking at the path ahead, one less traveled, no less, the young woman maintained a steady course and evaded any unruly obstacle even at the pace required to keep up with the caravans.</p><p>"Right? Nothing to be gained from just crushing the whole building with the people inside, huh? It couldn't have been any of the people on the inside, their chakras are all suppressed, at least those of the dangerous ones…" the man kept shaking his head. He still struggled to believe he was doing what he was doing because of what had just happened.</p><p>"You should have seen the remains… The dead bodies were all skewered like with large rods, split to pieces, dismembered, some of them had their whole skins peeled off in their entirety and it only took a second." The man sighed.</p><p>"Initially I suspected one of the Tailed Beasts awakening but… Does not sound like any Tailed Beast I've read about." Mana massaged the back of her neck. "Have any escaped?"</p><p>"No, those two are some of the survivors, injured, unconscious but… Maybe we'll get some information out of them once they wake up? Here's to hoping." The caravan driver sighed again.</p><p>Mana had to take a different path as the turn that the caravans took, the transportations looked well-protected for their situation, whatever the attacker of the facility wanted out of it, they had already gotten it as there was not much resistance that the officials could have put up. While the threat of bandits still persisted, the transportations should have fended off by themselves, they had considerable strength and moderate numbers. More so, Mana had no luxury of ignoring her own mission and traveling at the pace of the caravans', letting down the entire shinobi system in the process.</p><p>For that reason, she ventured onward in the direction of her own objective, waving farewell to the informative Eden staff.</p><p>The sky-reaching pillar of chakra signatures drew Mana's attention long before she reached the location. She had assumed that the security at such an event would be insane. However, given how none of the elite ninja were invited, the magician was slightly curious who exactly could it have been to protect the Feudal Lords, the village ninja representatives as well as those representing the civilian public interest.</p><p>The answer came almost immediately after the magician's feet firmly touched the ground before the estate. A pair of samurai in full, purple, red and silver armor and tengu-shaped masks approached the magician. Their movements were slow, they bowed their heads in respect, showing no signs of wary or aggression so they clearly knew who Mana was.</p><p>"Please, go on ahead. Find yourself an unoccupied room. The service staff will walk you through the basic rules. We trust you to follow them." One of the samurai turned the pointy chin of their mask toward the fancy mansion behind the polished, metallic fence that curled in intricate shapes to create a structure that appeared almost serpentine in its appearance but would have served the general use that fences were expected to serve.</p><p>Mana bowed to the samurai before walking right on ahead through the uncurling gate, the long metallic rods started wrangling like actual snakes, taking an almost elastic shape. The moving metallic rods left more than a comfortable opening for Mana to walk through. The young woman was in no rush to make it to her room and just shut herself inside it, she took time to admire the fascinating garden shaped like a labyrinth that despite its shape left a wide, zig-zagging road from the entry into it all the way to the home. As far as labyrinths went, it was a very poor one, purely judging how well it would have confused someone lost inside it. Likely it was more of a decorative thing.</p><p>Growls from behind startled Mana. She had completely missed whatever spread that horrendous noise coming, the magician turned around only to see drooling jaws of shut-together fangs that belonged to a massive, fleshy and hairless dog. The canine had no eyes but was covered in bright, salad shade blisters all over its body. The animal's skin looked like the animal had been incinerated completely but refused to die, even though these glowing blisters covering it weren't exactly the type that appeared after intensive burns.</p><p>Another booming growl made Mana gasp and turn to the side, a completely black shape on all fours burst from the labyrinth. It looked similar to a dog but only in its stance and general shape alone. The creature took the appearance of a nightmare brought to life, pitch black and ethereal in appearance as the dark energy that covered it and gave it shaped expanded and flowed in the air, rippling like gas that was kept together by a supernatural force. This one also lacked any distinctive face, possessing only a pair of crimson, glowing butterfly symbols where a dog would have had their eyes.</p><p>How could Mana have completely missed out on these two? Even now she could completely not sense a thing, as if they were just her own nightmares, horrific visions or predictions of a gloomy future standing before her. And they looked both hungry and bemused… Without her sensory Mana had absolutely no idea if she could take on both these dogs, making the first move may have been reckless: she was in someone else's territory, expected to behave and obey the place's rules despite not having been briefed on them just yet, she had no idea who these nightmarish hounds were, or whose, for that matter, if she made the first hand seal and misjudged their rank and speed, her throat would have ended up in between those tightly shut and slobbering jaws in an instant…</p><p>A whirlwind of metallic and azure flashes derailed Mana's terrified train of thought, a short and raggedy man past his middle years but not yet an old geezer stood up and placed one of his two katana on his shoulder, letting it drip the salad ooze from the fleshy, crispy dog as well as emit the black smoke from the substance that the other nightmarish mongrel was made of. The man's face was completely miffed, combined with his unkempt facial hair and the general vibe of an angry, drunk that came off of this unarmored samurai made for both petrifying and immensely cool combination.</p><p>The dogs dispersed in a loud pop and a cloud of dark, grey smoke, not unlike Mana's own summons did when they sustained alarming amounts of damage over a single instant.</p><p>"You alright, kiddo? These belong 'ta that snow-woman from Shimogakure. She said this place was good for her slobbering mutts to roam around and she sang our ears full about how they were no danger 'ta anybody. I'll give 'er a proper mouthful fer this." The man breathed out a long breath of relief after seeing Mana recover quite easily from the scare that the dogs gave her. After sheathing both of his katana, the samurai stroke his stubble and patted the large man-bun atop of his scalp just to see that whatever little effort he put into his appearance did not get completely ruined by him losing his cool just now.</p><p>"It's just that I was used to sensing chakra for the longest time as my default way of perceiving the world. These dogs did not appear to have any in them… Made me lose my cool." Mana admitted, feeling a bit embarrassed to admit that she may have needed this assistance.</p><p>"No problem, ma'am, they were a special breed, their kenki resided in another dimension, likely the one that they came from. I noticed it almost immediately upon seeing the cursed snow-woman let them loose but I have years of military experience so such tactics do not elude me. I am Saruromu Isuki, the captain of squad fourteen of the Divine Retribution Squad." The man bowed his head as he introduced himself.</p><p>Mana opened her mouth to do the same but the Isuki's raised hand stopped her.</p><p>"I was under the impression that ninja wished to remain anonymous at all times. I would not like to place unjust pressure on a young lady to introduce herself, despite her profession and allegiances, solely because of this assistance and I do not have time for fake names." The man dismissed Mana's introduction before turning around and giving the young woman one last look back. "Let's just both play our parts here, there is no need to anything other than that."</p><p>Just once Mana would have liked a calm walk in the garden to the door and an easy way in…</p>
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<a name="section0504"><h2>504. Voices Of Mist And Cloud</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The interior of the mansion was so much like one would imagine it to be after seeing it from outside that it was actually kind of boring, despite its "as high in price as it is in style" vibe. White marble columns, frescos, and mosaics, gold and gem accessories for that one last oomph when one had its mouth full of the luxury. It was not that nobody except the Feudal Lords could have afforded property like this, it was that they chose not to because there was a limit to their excess and self-importance.</p><p>The Feudal Lords often gathered in mansions just like this one, not necessarily identical in style or look but just about the same in terms of sophistication and affluence. Each one of the Feudal Lords was happy to host their peers in a place just like this, hoping to top the domicile of the last host, like a sick game overflowing with wealth and abundance from every corner.</p><p>"You must be the Konoha's Sorceress? Please, let me take you to your room, Mango-san." a wine-colored haired young lady with a forest green kimono covered with white lotuses that scattered their sewn petals across the outfit, like bleeding almost.</p><p>"Mango?" Mana squinted one of her eyes, feeling a tad confused.</p><p>"Natsumi Mango, isn't that your na… Oh! I'm so sorry, ma'am!" the servant bowed repeatedly with enough intensity and number of the motions to mimic a knife chopping vegetables. She checked the name on a sheet of paper that she carried around just in such a case. "I'm so sorry, ma'am, your stage name lulled me into a fake sense of security, I am afraid, I tried memorizing your name the least of all the representatives."</p><p>"It's fine. So are we under lockdown or something?" Mana wondered, seeing no samurai indoors made her question the security of the event. Just how long would it take for samurai to flood these rooms, just how would they sense impending danger and how quick would they be in response to one if it came to test itself against their mettle?</p><p>"Absolutely not, it's just that the Voices are each shown their rooms before being let to roam free. Some of the Voices traveled a very long distance, some of them prefer solitude and they actually self-impose a lockdown. Either way, it is up to us to provide them with this choice before anything else." The kimono girl bowed a pair more times before elegantly scurrying atop the stairs.</p><p>Even while her movements weren't followed by anyone else, nor were they observed by the kimono servant herself, Mana tried emulating the gentle yet almost flight-like strut of the kimono girl. It was so odd… The servant woman moved as if floating, making no noise or leaving little to no impact on the floor beneath her feet and yet retained the elegance of a blossoming young woman. Almost like an undead apparition of sorts… One that some would call "a ghost"…</p><p>Mana tripped over her own foot and stumbled on the steps. The servant lady turned around alarmed by the noise of the magician's knees bumping into the steps and the oddity of the young woman's breath when she fell. The magician very nearly gasped right before hitting the stairs elbow and knees first.</p><p>"Are you okay, ma'am?" the kimono servant rushed down the few stairs she had on Mana, kneeling up to the magician and extending her hand to help the young woman up.</p><p>"It's fine." Mana grinned, restricting a laugh came only with moderate effort put into it. "It's just… Forget it."</p><p>It would have been far too tedious to explain her fears, likes and dreams to a person this polite and devoted to making sure that the magician has everything she needed for the duration of the stay.</p><p>"What did you call me that time, "a Voice"?" Mana wondered in order to distract herself and the polite servant from her own fumble as well as satisfy her budding curiosity about the odd way of putting words together that the woman previously used.</p><p>"Yes. That is what you are, weren't you aware? This is a hearing of Voices. Voices of civilians, Voices of the military, Voices of the ninja… Voices." The servant smiled.</p><p>It felt odd to see nobody roam these redwood halls decorated with ancient carpets that must have once been some kind of massive animal that has since gone extinct and fur of which costs as much as a small settlement, black market people price included. The small and unimpressive plants like the ones that would usually be found in an office of a bored Administration public servant resting atop of a shoddy, wooden tripod was a nice touch though…</p><p>Regardless of the emptiness of the building, Mana could sense chakra all around her. Nothing of note, very few signatures even came close to Mana's, most centered somewhere around half of hers, then again, very few ninja ever did specialized training in that area so it was a lousy judge of someone's combat potential. Someone with one-tenth of Mana's chakra signature could have just as easily slit her throat if the magician kept her massive chakra at bay on purpose, preserving strength and evading damage to her network, just like stairs and phasmophobia – the greatest of Mana's rivals.</p><p>"There you go, ma'am!" the servant cheerfully declared after opening an unimpressive, compared to its surroundings mahogany door and lead the magician into a spacious and opulent room which matched the extravagance of the outer interior around it.</p><p>"I'm alone?" Mana wondered, depositing an unimpressive collection of the bare necessities. Usually she was the type to obsess and take care of her appearance, it was a trait of a good entertainer, however, she was just thinking about a whole other myriad of things to take too much of what she needed with her and prepared for a survival drill more than a hearing in front of actual people with the highly subjective skill of building first impressions.</p><p>"Yes, this mansion has more than enough rooms for everyone! Even the Feudal Lords, who were adamant about staying in separate rooms. They did get the masters' bedrooms, all five of them." The woman informed Mana.</p><p>Mana had not heard that the Feudal Lords were on such short terms. From what she knew about them, they were supposed to be quite chummy and willing to throw away all matters of politics and economics and gather for a weekend at someone's estate to play shogi and entertain themselves with movies at a moment's notice. Could the most powerful, most desired to both kill and kidnap targets in the world have gotten more mature as ages went on and generation substituted another?</p><p>The magician was barely given any time at all to settle in. Mana had planned on some meditation, maybe an hour or two spent on getting back into the magic game, plan some new ninjutsu she could train during the downtime in between missions or when recovering from an inevitable injury.</p><p>"Come in, please." Mana raised her voice because she was not sure if the duo stalking behind her door were civilians or ninja, in the case of the latter they'd not have needed a raised voice. She sensed these two from a mile away, however, they have never given her a suspicion that they were at all interested in Mana.</p><p>A slim and tall fellow slumped into the room, dragging his sandals across the floor. The young man had long, pecan colored hair that fell over his face and shoulders. His teeth were large and overly pronounced, despite his best attempts at disguising this feature, every time the young man drew breath in, he unwillingly displayed his frontal chompers that looked almost like a pair of shields pressed together to maintain a defensive line. The violet headband protector slid off of the young man's waist, almost letting his baggy pants slip free.</p><p>The second one was far more curious and a much more likely one to be called an unexpected guest – a Kumogakure native, judging by the sangria headband around his sizeable right bicep, a dark skin to match his country of origin, apricot colored eyebrows and goatee, a color that most likely would have matched his hair color if the young man had any. His eyes scurried and shot all over the place, he evidently was displeased and embarrassed to be inside this room. After taking a few good looks at Mana, however, the shooting-eye-syndrome died down a bit.</p><p>"Hey, you're Konoha's Sorceress, right? When I heard you were coming, I thought that there's no one else I'd rather play some cards with! You must be pretty good, every high-roller in Mist would want you to perform there, they'd line the street stones with gold veins just to have you walk on them," the slim Kirigakure rat raised a worn deck of cards. It had been used enough to have some cards be stapled together as they were torn up. Hardly a respectable gambling tool, however, nothing about this man was respectable.</p><p>"I'm Mana. You will have much more success with finding people to con at cards if you give them at least a fake name." the magician gave the sloppy street rat an almost motherly scolding look. With a lack of skills like his, it was a miracle that this boy did not get killed by now. Given his style of clothes, how none of them fit his build, they were likely all stolen or bought second-hand, that meant he was from the poorer districts of Kirigakure and less one spoke of those places the better.</p><p>"Sorry, sorry… A useful habit, never giving out any names… Fewer people will scour the place I'm staying for debts that way." The young man caressed the back of his head, he spoke in a very similar way of speech that Eiju used to speak in but he pronounced letters much rougher, prolonging stronger vowels like "u" and "o" greatly, sometimes even roughing up the way he spoke them as well, using different intonations and all. He was not using the same manner of speaking, not even close, but it may have had some common roots. "Name's Jagaimo, I'm the Voice of Kirigakure, if you didn't put it together already."</p><p>At least the long one was jolly. A foolish, gullible smile shined on his face the entire time he spoke to anyone that was not a debt collector or after his head. Mana had some trouble taking Jagaimo as a legitimate ninja, he looked sloppy, acted like a goofball and his chakra signature was nothing to write home about. Not only was it not of respectable size, but it also felt very bland. As if the young man had completely neglected it, he felt about as bland a person without defining features or emotions. The blandness of him was almost bitter in itself, perhaps that was the sense that Mana should have taken about him?</p><p>"I apologize if we are intruding, Nakotsumi Mana." The tall, buff and significantly more silent one bowed slightly in respect to the magician, it was incredibly rare to see such displays of adoration from a Kumogakure native. "However my wish to leave you with your own thoughts and problems is dwarfed by the interest in one who has beaten a member of the Imarizu all by herself."</p><p>"Hmmm? Nakotsumi Mana? Imarizu? What's that all about?" Jagaimo squinted, turning at his accidental acquaintance with lips that extended into a thin line as if the Kirigakure ninja had eaten something sour.</p><p>"I would not expect a paleskin lowlife like you to know, were you only interested in how good this woman is at playing cards? Pathetic…" the Kumogakure ninja growled, looking at Jagaimo with disdain. "She happens to be an impressive ninja, someone who should not be measured by the meager standard of being average."</p><p>"So you take after the Imarizu?" Mana closed her eyes. She just very narrowly resisted the temptation to smile, she was tempting the physical ninja to see if he was after her life as some sort of mindless act of revenge or if he was after something more like a sick sense of respect, maybe some other goal that only a mind of someone who had grown up in that specific melting pot of xenophobia as well as reformation soaked with the more modern ideals of unity could have come up with.</p><p>"Not entirely." The Kumogakure ninja admitted with a hearty sigh. "I merely acknowledge their strength and believe that some of the values they fight to protect are worth protecting. If I was offered a position in the defunct organization, I'd likely refuse. That does not mean, however, that I would not choose the side of the Imarizu between them and those disgraceful knaves with their "styles" and fancy, one-letter nicknames…"</p><p>"So what's your name then?" Jagaimo hunched over and extended his long finger at the physically impressive accidental companion of his.</p><p>"Tokui Kyuri." The Kumogakure ninja replied with a cold face, without offering the foreigner too many words. He did not as much as look at the elongated youth, choosing instead to keep up a challenging eye-contact with Mana.</p><p>"I'mma call ya Kay, kay?" Jagaimo taunted his physical superior, something Mana found profoundly short-sighted and foolish beyond words. Something that the young man was replied with a quick thrust of Tokui's fist that blasted Jagaimo aside. The Voice of Kirigakure flew like a dead eel smacking against the wall completely lifeless.</p><p>"Don't worry, I did not use my fighting strength with him. We are not allowed to get serious even for a moment here. However, I found him really despicable." Tokui grit his teeth while he still held his fist up and ready for another strike had the Kirigakure ninja risen faster than the Voice of Kumogakure allowed him to.</p><p>"He stabbed too sharp at you for it to not be purposeful," Mana admitted. She had seen enough of the Kumogakure's rebellious youth in the Chuunin Exam to know the way they spoke, puns and rhymes were all the rage and it would have resulted in a more literal rage with the no-nonsense locals who still preferred the classic ways and values. "I think it was his way of asking for attention."</p><p>"I'm okay!" Jagaimo yelled out as he slithered on his feet, like a balloon-man that had wind being blown at it from beneath, raising him up and making him flail about as foolishly as Jagaimo was. "I just bounce off of blunt things, really…"</p><p>"I don't care." Tokui grit his teeth again.</p><p>"I do admit, if he did care, he would not have hit you." Mana nodded. While she disliked meaningless violence, especially one that took source from the way someone was or the fact they existed at all, she was not overly fond of Jagaimo's irksome behavior either. It was evident that the young man sought this sort of attention with his challenging personality.</p><p>"Whatever, you got what you came here for, you saw the person who beat that whoever she beat. Now you can scram!" Jagaimo squinted and leaned toward his physically superior accidental companion as if taunting him to hit him again.</p><p>"Did you not come here to play cards? At least my reason for being here is somewhat decent…" Tokui crossed his robust arms over his chest.</p><p>"You can actually both stay. I would not mind getting to know other ninja from other parts of the world." Mana noted.</p><p>"I can see why you've come into conflict with the Imarizu with that sort of attitude… You may be a Konoha ninja and be completely oblivious to our values but don't you feel any sort of pride in your upcoming? Surely spending time with miscreant such as this paleskin would irk you?" Tokui wondered.</p><p>"Just how many synonyms for "lowlife" do you know? Are you sure you're not secretly into that whole novelty "freestyling" thing that's all the rage in Kumogakure?" Jagaimo taunted the ninja who has already shown he had no problem hurting him. There were many ways of sewing foolishness and bravery together in a sentence that was as much an accusatory one of someone's short-term-focused intellect as it was a compliment for refusing to submit to the primal feeding chain mentality, at that moment, any single one of them was due.</p><p>"What exactly did you have in mind with playing cards? Why me specifically? It seemed like you were aware of my career as a stage magician, are you sure you want to play cards against someone like that?" Mana was quick to change the subject away from something Tokui clearly found very annoying.</p><p>"That's exactly why I want to play against you. Nobody cheats better than a stage magician. If I can survive you for a pair of rounds, I can survive the toughest joints in Kirigakure. Plus, if someone with your… Professional eye… Can't scope my own cheating out, that'll be a compliment as well as a green light for me to gamble with some serious people." Jagaimo's eyes turned to little, glittering, white stars.</p><p>"I see, so you admit that you plan to cheat?" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Of course, if not, then what's the point? That's the only way people like us can have fun playing cards." Jagaimo pulled out a handful of decks and tried doing some fancy shuffling and passing card tricks. He was not half bad but Mana's eyes could have followed his every movement even if she had not perfected her own hand to trick the eye. Now all Jagaimo was doing trying to stuff cards into his long sleeves was embarrass himself. The Kirigakure street rat just shrugged and smiled with guilty and apologetic eyes of a puppy that had peed all over the carpet after the magician gave him a no-bullshit glare.</p><p>"Sorry, I just thought if you've got your own sleeves loaded, maybe it's only fair that I do the same." He tried playing it off like it was not a big deal.</p><p>"Disgraceful…" Tokui grumped. The young ninja settled down on an armchair and crossed his arms and legs, suggesting he was going to watch the whole thing and not move an inch from Mana's room. "I shall enjoy seeing Nakotsumi Mana make a fool of you, not that you aren't doing a fine job of it yourself."</p><p>"Finally we can agree on something." Jagaimo grinned like a baby that was handed a lollipop twice his size. "I've gambled against cutthroats, street rats and professional gamblers alike and none of it scratches my itch. How can it for people like us, right? We risk our lives every day so how can a little dismemberment-poker ever scare us? Gambling against you, your cheating against my own, that's the real deal!"</p><p>"I do not intend to cheat." Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Spoken like a true cheater. I shall not be disappointed as I can see…" Jagaimo smiled as he quickly split the deck still in his hands. The magician's eyes were quick to pick out the fact that with a simple movement of his hand the gambling aficionado had removed every card lower than 9 from the deck and held those low cards all in his left hand. It was an impressive and demanding trick but it carried too unimpressive of a payoff for Mana to steal it and implement on her return tour.</p><p>"So do you suggest that an honest player would claim they will cheat?" Mana squinted.</p><p>"Idiots…" Tokui grumbled.</p>
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<a name="section0505"><h2>505. The Practice Weiner</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So what did you have in mind exactly as the game of choice?" Mana raised an eyebrow. "Surely you didn't come here for "dismemberment poker"?"</p><p>"No, we'll be playing "the Weiner"." Jagaimo declared. "Are you familiar with the rules?"</p><p>"I am not," Mana admitted. "What kind of game is it?"</p><p>"It's the bread and butter of the Kirigakure slums, really. The slums used to have its streets, nooks and crannies flood crimson all the time. It may not have been a good or a bad time, but it was a bloody time. After other Countries started their intervention, it soon became too dangerous and too much of a hassle to settle differences by stabbing people, at least it began requiring an actual artist to do it right, do it unseen. The Weiner was adopted as the card game that settled differences instead." Jagaimo appeared pretty excited, his voice had that certain melodic tune to it, a pinch of tension when he spoke, his eyes and large frontal teeth shined with pearl white as he spoke.</p><p>"Hmph. Surely you would not belittle yourself by playing a game of his choosing, the rules of which you do not even know, with this hoodlum." The watchful Kumogakure ninja exclaimed.</p><p>"No, let's do it. I like this game already, even if I do not know much about it. Anything that substitutes violence is a treasured thing in my handbook." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Excellent, the rules of the game are pretty simple, I'm sure you'll catch on immediately, let's just play a game for warm-up, after it is done, you'll be asking for more." Jagaimo grinned while he worked the split cards.</p><p>He was transparent like wet paper. The Kirigakure ninja was luring Mana in, he would intentionally lose this game to make her believe she was good, he would refrain from cheating and even hold back, then he'd introduce the desired stakes. Granted, Mana was not entirely sure as of yet what these stakes were but just as she would have drawn a profile of a fighter by just exchanging a few blows, she had learned to draw profiles of people she met and she did not like the way Jagaimo's sketch was shaping out to be.</p><p>"I assume that the game only uses high cards? That is why you split the deck into two stacks of high and low cards?" Mana showed the surprised Kirigakure street rat that she was aware of his every move and that he would be unable to hide anything shady from her. It was meant as a little shine of light at a dark corner, no dark business may have transpired there now, but if the wicked knew better, they would not attempt to bring their business to that as of now enlightened alley.</p><p>"Y-Yeah…" Jagaimo fumbled as he dealt the entirety of the high deck out, splitting the cards between the two. "It would be a bit better if K played with us, the game is more fun with more people…"</p><p>Mana's face covered with a smile. She knew instantly what the Voice of Kirigakure was doing. It was so clear that the magician felt almost a bit scared to focus on that thought, out of fear that it was exactly what she was being led to believe. As if it was a feint of some sort. Jagaimo did not want to play the Weiner one-on-one because he knew Mana would be able to count the cards. That meant that any unexpected appearances of aces would be instantly recognized, the magician deserved that respectful fear from the street rat's side.</p><p>"Not a chance…" Tokui objected. "I am not sitting by the same table as a delinquent such as yourself."</p><p>"You're gonna repeatedly use a synonym one of these days and I'll be there to point it out." Jagaimo raised his thumb up. It was a rather lovely way to downplay the hard to like attitude that Tokui had taken toward the Kirigakure native.</p><p>"Could we return to the rules now?" the magician yawned. It was a fake yawn but it was better if Jagaimo genuinely thought her tired and believed that she was in no mood for plenty Weiner sets.</p><p>"Oh… Sure… First of all, you got nine-o-hearts?" Jagaimo wondered.</p><p>Mana had slipped the card out from the rest of her plentiful hand before Jagaimo's sentence was even finished. The Voice of Kirigakure reached out of the card, removed it and played it on the table.</p><p>"Great, that means you start. The nine-o-hearts is the lowest card that is always dumped first, no matter what other cards anyone has. Any other nines you have you can instantly dump, as many of them as you have." Jagaimo said.</p><p>"I see, so am I to assume that the purpose of this game is to "dump" all of your hand onto the table?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Yep, like a drunkard dumps all of their content onto the pavement after a good drink." Jagaimo grinned. His frontal teeth were a bit too large for the young man to form a full-teeth, arcing, upside crescent-shaped smile but Mana acknowledged the effort.</p><p>"I can see why this game would be so popular with your like." Tokui looked away in disdain.</p><p>"Very well, I have one more nine." Mana dropped the nine of spades from her hand, letting it gently flutter and descend on top of the nine of hearts. "What now?"</p><p>"It's my move. Each of us gets one move, you can either dump something or take everything except the nine-o-hearts back to your hand." Jagaimo grinned as he slammed two more nines onto the pile haphazardly.</p><p>"Why would you do that?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Because you may be unable to "beat" his card," Tokui mumbled with a cold tone.</p><p>"That's right, you can't dump a card that's lower than what I'm dumping and you can only dump one card at a time, except when you have a full chug." Jagaimo directed a "bingo" gesture at the direction of his highly irritated yet peacefully spectating fellow voice.</p><p>"That being?" Mana scratched her head.</p><p>"A full set of cards: three niners, four tenners, so on…" Jagaimo pointed out. "If you have multiple chugs, you can vomit all of them onto the table in one move."</p><p>"That is a fairly interesting game…" Mana closed her eyes, letting eggplant-colored shrouds cloud it entirely as she did her best to memorize and analyze all of the rules in an instant. If Jagaimo was to introduce new stakes in the middle of a set, she would not like to have missed a beat of this free game.</p><p>"It is, isn't it?" Jagaimo nodded passionately.</p><p>"However, can I trust you to have told me all the rules?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"More or less… Can you truly ever trust anybody?" Jagaimo grinned.</p><p>"Hmph… I did not believe that Nakotsumi Mana would be afraid of a stake-less game, especially as a person that has bet her life on the line on more than one occasion…" Tokui taunted the magician for spending a while before playing the next card.</p><p>"Unless this is not stake-less at all..." Mana glared at Jagaimo, doing her best to penetrate the shabby defenses of the young man.</p><p>Jagaimo played it cool, the magician's suspicions flowed off of him like water off of a duck. The Kirigakure ninja slowly deposited a pair of his own nines onto the pile. Mana tried to advance with the game's basics like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. She made sure to note that receiving the most nines right in the beginning could have tremendously tipped the scales as it allowed to quickly get rid of more cards because of how special nines were. It didn't take long for the magician to realize something even more daunting in its simplicity – the game was one of skill, planning, a clash of wits and mind games in every way but it was also stacked like all hell.</p><p>Weiner was never fair. The cards were never divided evenly, it's what one did with the massive influx of tens – the most useless card as it was the lowest card that lacked the special status of the nine or a lack of aces. Aces were aces in a quite literal sense, especially in a game between two players. It was not unlike the world outside the game, some ninja were just born better but that did not make them better. A good player could have always played their early ace early, sacrificing it to fill up the hand of the luckier player with tens, saving aces for the end was hopeless if one had none or just one ace, just like clashing with a talented taijutsu fighter in taijutsu was pointless, one had to plan out the entire game to avoid such a confrontation.</p><p>Little by little, it came to Mana why exactly this game was so beloved in the slums of Kirigakure. It was because it mimicked the world out there, you could have literally relived the injustices of your own life but come out on top by playing your cards right or one could have gotten all the lucky breaks in the world, forming an effective escape from one's own shitty luck and believing just for a moment that life wasn't out to get them.</p><p>"Hmmm? I don't think it's that complex of a situation…" Jagaimo sunk his head, hunching his neck. Mana realized she's been observing her own cards as well as those under the table for a bit too long. It was a new experience, one the magician tried to excel at from the get-go as she suspected there being more reasons why she was tempted into playing cards with this young man.</p><p>Mana had two tens. That meant that Jagaimo's situation mirrored hers. Sadly, she had three jacks, that was not great as jack was a very so-so card to have one's hand full of. Jacks only beat the most special and easily gotten rid of card or literally the least wanted card to get. It was not a good break of luck, just like in real life… The magician dropped a ten of clubs on the stack with a melancholic smile, the situation of getting the influx of average cards ranging on the lower end did not elude the young woman's ironic specter. Jagaimo answered with a ten of diamonds almost instantly.</p><p>For someone who looked so passionate about this game, the way in which the Voice of Kirigakure played it: lacking any hints of emotion, any semblance of deeper thought and entirely mechanized like he was a card dumping machine tipped Mana off. He was not investing his heart, his passion into this game and the pain of that fact was evident on Jagaimo's face. By now Mana was almost completely certain in an ulterior motive.</p><p>"Well, I guess tens are gone." Mana blinked a pair of times and stated the obvious after depositing a ten of hearts onto the stack. She noted that her hand lacked any queens in it at all, what at unfortunate shuffling disaster… She got three jacks and none of the queens, meaning that Jagaimo could dump all of his at once, filling Mana's hand up with a bunch of useless leftover dumps. It literally stank of eating from a bowl of vomit.</p><p>"Now the real game can begin, don't you think?" Jagaimo finally grinned after depositing the final ten. Whatever passion he held for this game broke through the discomfort that the pestering thoughts of his enigmatic ulterior motive brought up. Mana knew what he meant perfectly – with all of the self-evident moves made, it was now all in the decisions, all in the mind games, all in the clash of cards and wits.</p><p>Mana's only advantage was her three aces. That was the only thing her hand had going for it, would it be enough? She could have pressured Jagaimo into scooping the dump stack at any moment with superior firepower but she would have to make sure to finish the game quickly as she'll be surrendering that firepower at the same time. The damned pendulum principle, it appeared this game had it all – the harder Mana tried to make Jagaimo scoop, the more options, the more strength she gave to her hand and the riskier her own game turned.</p><p>Even a training game without any of Jagaimo's intended stakes made Mana tense up. She needed to learn this game well, to think up of a style, strategy and learn what optimal plays are, what works in this game and what doesn't… She would need it in the real game with the real stakes.</p><p>Mana unceremoniously placed a jack atop the pile, answered by Jagaimo's own and only jack of hearts. This was when Mana would snap the metal teeth of her trap, or at least, what she thought would be a trap…</p><p>The silent shuffle of plastic that the cards were wrapped in spread out, the only link to reality to anyone who was taken aback by the ace that Mana dropped atop the pile of cards. There was no smile or invitation for Jagaimo to ponder why the magician just dropped the highest card in the game atop of the pile, skipping a whole bunch of low cards she had to get rid of first or else she'd end up with a dead hand without a way to objectively do anything but scoop.</p><p>"Alright…" Jagaimo grinned, the tone of his voice changed, it was huffier and lower pitched but he also slightly slurred his words. He was confused by Mana offering him so kindly to correct the injustice of his own shuffle by giving him an ace. "I hope you are aware that one can drop any amount of full sets they want?"</p><p>"I suspected as much, yes." Mana nodded without betraying her intentions with a smile or any other similar emotion. She may have rushed it by dropping the ace just yet. Still, in this learning set Mana had to make all the necessary mistakes, throw everything against the wall and see what stuck. If this would not work out, she would see just how playing this way felt, just how often it came out successful and what exactly the timeframe of the pendulum swinging back to bite her was.</p><p>Now that Jagaimo scoops, Mana will have an opening to place her two remaining jacks, obviously her opponent would do the sa… Another ace dropped on top of the deck – Jagaimo called Mana's play. That bastard! He had fewer aces, he knew he was not going to win a power struggle and yet he still dropped an ace. He knew what Mana was thinking and doing with this play but he decided to bleed the magician out of yet another ace if she was to stick to the plan. This was the equivalent of a well-aimed shot to the ribs. Mana would be limping after this move the entirety of the remaining game…</p><p>She could not give him another ace, that would be signing a death sentence. He already had an entire set of queens and the same pair of kings that Mana had. If she did drop an ace, he'd scoop for sure because he had nothing to beat it with but this scoop would be tremendously beneficial to him. No… Mana had to scoop…</p><p>With a submissive look on her face, the magician collected a formidable stack of cards from the table and felt their collective weight in her hand. This was fine, she had all the aces now but also a whole bunch of other junk, still, if she managed her aces, she'd drop it before long and even out the hands. This would be a fine experience in how to properly manage aces when the real stakes hit.</p><p>"Well then, don't mind if I drop this down here…" Jagaimo smirked as he slammed a king down onto the nine of hearts with a smile of someone who had already won. He did not, not yet. Mana's king encouraged the young man to drop his second one as well, making it three kings resting on the board. That way there would be three whole cards, one short of a full set that Jagaimo would clutch in his hand and while kings were powerful, it would take a whole while for the young man to dump all of them. Such a large number of moves required for Jagaimo to close shop left Mana plenty of openings to block him completely with an ace.</p><p>Which she did.</p><p>"Not a bad play, most newbies would have rushed the ace and forced only one king back… Nice." Jagaimo complimented Mana's previous play with a grin. It may not have deserved a compliment as it may not have been an obviously correct move. What the magician was beginning to realize here that Weiner may not have had right and wrong moves in most even situations. It was nothing else but the fate of how the game turned out that defined moves as good or bad and not some objective factors.</p><p>A massive slam dunk of nines, tens and jacks followed, Mana's hand was effectively reduced to just four cards in a single drop. She wondered about this rule before Jagaimo informed her of it, she'd have gone for it and planned around it even if he did not inform her of it as her suspicion of its presence was rather strong. Considering the sum of other rules, it just made sense that this rule would exist.</p><p>Jagaimo struggled with an ace. Mana answered with one of her own, forcing the young man to scoop everything again. Now he had an even number of aces with Mana but it was too late. Thusly Mana got rid of her last non-ace card – the king of clubs. Jagaimo sighed. He knew it was over because counting cards was a piece of cake with just two players onboard but he let them finish the game without raising noise or conceding defeat. After a brief clash of aces from both sides, Mana's hand was empty.</p><p>"See? Wasn't this awesome?" Jagaimo smiled, he actually did look a little peeved about the loss, either he was a profound actor or he genuinely did try to win this game. Why would he do that if he meant for some other stakes to be introduced later on? "Now, how about we do actually raise those stakes?" the fateful words came just as Mana spoke the devil's name with her door open and unwillingly invited it in.</p><p>"Hmph…" Tokui mockingly closed his eyes and lowered his head.</p><p>"Yeah… I figured this would be a factor soon enough." Mana sighed. "What exactly are we wagering here?"</p><p>"Your testimony tomorrow." Jagaimo declared without gravity or volume to his voice and yet, because of the content of his words, Mana heard him just perfectly.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0506"><h2>506. A Suit Of Hacks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"My testimony?" Mana muttered. She did feel a bit stumped about these stakes. Maybe she should have felt bad about not having foreseen it sooner. This was, after all, what this entire event was about, why all these ninja of different backgrounds came together. Of course, Jagaimo would not just be in it for the money or to satisfy some sick, sadistic gambling fantasy. The testimony was always what this was all about.</p><p>"Yeah. If I win, you will have to tell the council what I tell you to say." Jagaimo nodded. Mana's glare sharpened, she noticed something interesting. It did not appear that the young man was too enthusiastic about what he was saying. Here he was, letting his net out, looking to catch a pretty important fish to him, based on what he was doing, where and how big the stakes were if he got caught doing what he did. He basically put the entire trust that Kirigakure had managed to gather over the years since the bloody Kage Summit on top of a very wobbly card tower. Jagaimo evidently did not want to play this game himself.</p><p>"This is… Disgraceful, even for such as yourself." Tokui grumbled out, it was notable that he did not run off to tell on Jagaimo either. He just sat there still and watched.</p><p>"If you're trying to offend me, you can do much better than this." Jagaimo finally fired back. This, however, sounded much more defensive. Whereas the Kirigakure street rat barely registered the previous social jabs thrown his way, this one he took very seriously. It hit him right in the ribs.</p><p>Something was forcing Jagaimo to play this game. That much was self-evident, of this Mana needed no confirmation, no questions asked. The figure behind the Voice of Kirigakure intrigued her, however. Was it the new Mizukage? Did it really only take the following successor of Mizukage Shirona to already set Kirigakure to a plot to destroy and kill? Back on its Bloody Mist way?</p><p>No. Something here did not feel like something the Mizukage would want. The Bloody Mist supporters always treasured strength. That was one thing they respected above all, not just combat potential but also the ability to deceit and trick one's stronger opponent, making the deceitful one stronger in the end. It was a cutthroat way of life but it would not have craved the end of the ninja system as they knew it. The current system was perfect and well-liked by the Bloody Mist supporters. This would not make much sense, too much risk for too confusing of a reward, everything could be lost for something detrimental gained.</p><p>"Well… What will you say, Nakotsumi Mana?" Tokui was the one who turned his look at the magician.</p><p>"I am under the impression that I cannot refuse this game, is that true? It would take a mad person or a complete idiot to gamble with these odds, the success of my mission objective, the fate of the entire ninja system and the world as we know it placed on the way cards fall into our hands." Mana asked.</p><p>"Oh, you can absolutely refuse to play." Jagaimo sighed. Once again the feeling of self-loathing soaked his very essence. It was true that sometimes the tall and slim human-moray hybrid looked pathetic in the way he sneered and grumped his laughter and passionately uttered words like a pig, with a marginally neighing manner, but that the street rat owned. His current words, his behavior, he utterly despised and the wish for an honorable way out was simply leaking out from the young man. "However… You must know that I have already won seven games just like this one. I'm sure you can do the math…"</p><p>"Seven?" Mana thought to herself as her eyes rolled up, she slipped into the void of her own thoughts, quickly analyzing the importance of this number, before it all returned to her in a split instant. An entire universe-worth of calculations and weighing transpiring in her mind in a blink of an eye. "I must say, you've planned this remarkably."</p><p>"It is rare of you to compliment people you find foul, Konoha's Sorceress. Your shows, judging from what I've heard, are always so cheerful, full of upbeat crap." Jagaimo looked down, letting his greasy hair cover up his ashamed of his own actions face. "I made a gamble, I bet on you being the same way as a ninja and I see that I have hit the bullseye. You can simply refuse this, let me go to another room and play this game with another ninja, but you have figured out what this means, right? I've gambled literally half of these people in this mansion, tricked them into telling exactly what that man… No, what I want them to say tomorrow. You can stop that, if you play the game, or you can refuse and send me my way. That would be the equivalent of you looking the other way but that's not you, is it?"</p><p>"Fine, it seems you've cornered me…" Mana submitted. "However, it is only a gamble if there is a risk on both sides. There are conditions I wish to name as well."</p><p>"Only fair." Jagaimo nodded. "Name them."</p><p>"If I win, you cannot offer this game to anyone else. You will stop at where you are now, you will also free those you have gathered into your debt at the moment. On top of that, you will tell me who put you up to this plan." Mana spoke without hesitation. She had been formulating these conditions ever since Jagaimo's own were named as she knew that the young man likely had something on her to force her to play this game. Maybe he had someone dear to Mana captured and held hostage, maybe he knew more about Mana than he let in on and would have threatened innocent lives, either way, the young woman counted on there being something this whole time.</p><p>"That's a lot of baggage. Too much. Let's leave it at just stopping the game at you. There's no need for the other stuff." Jagaimo shook his head. A different smell spread out of the young man, that of blinding fear, the type of panic that forced one to stick their butts to the chair and not move an inch.</p><p>It was impossible not to notice that the only conditions that Jagaimo refused were those associated with "that man", whoever put the young man up to this game, whoever's anarchic desires concocted this twisted plot to end the entire ninja system with a handful of games of cards. Mana sighed, this was the part that intrigued her the most. The reason why the magician accepted gambling her own honor, the entire ninja system as well, on a game of cards was that she wanted to free Jagaimo of the weighty vows he had sworn to "that man". The secondary motivation was the sheer intrigue and curiosity of the figure and the greater plot behind. If she was to uncover something like this, perhaps she was not so average after all?</p><p>"If I win and you cannot gamble anyone else into this plot, there is no use with not letting go of those captured in your web of lies. The entire plot becomes pointless because you will only have seven Voices against eight, you will lose either way. Why would you be so adamant about maintaining your grip around those ninja? Don't you see that you have captured them in something that will make them hate their own selves about as much as you loathe what you're doing here right now?" Mana made a very precise and sharp cut, she had made Jagaimo ponder for a moment, she really did puncture something under his armor but the fishy skin was thicker than the magician thought it to be.</p><p>"No. I stand by my word." Jagaimo shut her down. "If I win – you say what I tell you to say to the Council. If you win, I stop this plot with the seven people I've already entangled in it. That is all. If you keep on haggling here, all you will win is me leaving to bring these terms to someone else."</p><p>"Wait, you have not yet approached me with this. Did you ever plan on doing that?" Tokui glared at the Voice of Kirigakure, the disdain in his eyes had loosened ever so slightly.</p><p>"Yes, at some point…" Jagaimo nodded. "Konoha's Sorceress was a mighty card player, she was also very tricky to convince into something like this, that is why I approached her in the middle, where I could play into her hero complex and pressure her into playing. You would have been next to last, Kumogakure, especially those of more conservative views, tend not to go into much talk with foreigners, that is why I counted on you outright not opening the door of your room for me when I came to you with this. That would have been fine, by then I would have convinced everyone else and your voice would hardly have been relevant."</p><p>"You cocky bastard!" Tokui growled, he pressed his fists so tightly that they shook, the very air around them seemed to bend around the intensity of the accelerated chakra flow and sheer power being driven through his body system. "If I played this game with you, would you accept Mana's terms? As they were originally worded? You releasing those you've caught in your web if you lose and giving the man that tied you up to this to us as well?"</p><p>"Very well…" Tokui nodded. "I do not know much information about this man, I'll tell you up front, but I will tell you everything I do know. If you manage to win, that is. Now… It is time we play some cards, don't you think?"</p><p>"Hmph… The fate of the entire ninja system put behind a game of cards named after male genitalia… Despicable!" Tokui closed his eyes in shame as he moved his chair up closer to the table where Jagaimo was shuffling to deal the cards.</p><p>"Although…" Jagaimo pressed and twisted his lips as if he had just eaten a sour plum. "I am technically going to fulfill three conditions for you if I lose and you guys are only going to fulfill one, granted, it will be two of you but… You're still short…"</p><p>"What are you suggesting?" Tokui leaned in on the taller yet significantly punier and slimmer Voice.</p><p>"Can't we just… I dunno, spice the game up a little?" Jagaimo shrugged, trying to make an innocent face. "One trick, each one of us can impose one condition, that is all I ask. I shall be the one to impose mine last."</p><p>"Hmph, it's not like I need one but… Fine. Instead of a trick, I want a change of rules as far as they apply to me." Tokui suggested. "Whenever I scoop, I only have to scoop three cards on the top, I can scoop anything more than that but no less than three."</p><p>"That's… Massive…" Jagaimo shifted and wrangled like an eel under sharp sea stone.</p><p>"I like it." Mana smiled. "Represents Tokui-san's iron body quite nicely, he cannot sustain too much damage… Weiner was supposed to emulate combat, be a more peaceful and legal substitute, right?"</p><p>"Tsk… Fine. What is your condition, Konoha's Sorceress?" Jagaimo smacked his face with his palm and shook his head, evidently, the Voice of Kirigakure struggled to believe the fact that he agreed with these conditions.</p><p>"I'll keep mine in reserve. It will not affect the rules at all, I trust that I am allowed this luxury?" Mana wondered. Tokui glared at the magician as if about to object, as someone worried and working his hardest to defend the ninja system, the Kumogakure ninja wanted to know everything on the table and this mystery made it difficult for him to play the game for the purpose beneficial to both him and Mana. Regardless, whether it was because of better, calmer judgment that came with the short pause or out of flat out respect for the girl that beat an Imarizu member all by herself, Tokui submitted with a shrug.</p><p>"No way! You have to tell me what it is! At the very least, you have to give me a guarantee or something, like that the trick you are keeping in secret will only affect no more than one card…" Jagaimo objected quite vocally.</p><p>"One card? Yeah… I can work with that." Mana smiled, feeling content with the deal she worked out.</p><p>"Heh, fine!" Jagaimo grinned like a sly devil who had just forced a duo into a Faustian bargain. He weaved a hand seal before becoming enveloped in a thin membrane of water that soon split into two more liquid shapes. Before long, the watery humanoids became mirror copies of Jagaimo. "Water Clone Jutsu!" the young man chanted out after the jutsu's completion.</p><p>"Tsk… To think you were such a haggling spinster with our conditions and here you are doing something like this…" Tokui grumbled. He disliked Jagaimo's play and wanted to resist it quite actively but he noticed Mana's contained and quite lively chuckle.</p><p>"Are you sure you want to do this?" Mana addressed the Kirigakure street rat with a friendly smile.</p><p>"What do you mean? If any of these clones win – I win, that's my condition!" Jagaimo bragged, with each one of the two water clones pointing their own thumbs at themselves, just like the original did.</p><p>"Very well…" Mana closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Shuffle the cards in that case…"</p><p>"W-Wait… Are you sure you want him shuffling again? In a game of these stakes?" Tokui leaned in on Mana's side.</p><p>"If any one of us shuffles – it will be a game of chance, total randomness. I refuse to entrust my fate into the hands of chance. I would much rather work with a deck stacked against me than a random bunch of cards…" Mana looked cheerful, Jagaimo glared at Mana with a speck of intimidation. To him, without a doubt, it seemed as if this game was as good as done, everything he wanted from this game he got, even more, he shuffled the deck, he got his clone trick as well as an extra condition after he wins. The loss conditions may as well have not even been there for they will never happen, not with all he had going for it…</p><p>Then why was the magician smiling? This was what Jagaimo was thinking and it was all over his intimidated and pale face. Whereas "paleskin" was usually a racist slang used by conservative Land of Lightning denizens, if used this time, Mana may have considered it an accurate description.</p><p>"Oh… I understand now!" Tokui hammered his palm with his fist in a revelation that undoubtedly seemed genius to him. "By creating clones as his condition, this scoundrel has sealed his fate!"</p><p>"Huh? How so?" One of Jagaimo's clones raised an eyebrow. Sensing the clones from the real deal while sitting at the opposite ends of the same table was elementary to the magician as the duplicated barely even had a tenth of the original's chakra even if that tenth got violently ripped out from the original's strength. Telling such a thing felt so simply and primitive that Mana had almost forgotten how it felt not having the ability to tell between the clones and the real deal in the middle of a battle.</p><p>"Because this is not a game you necessarily win, it is a game one loses!" Tokui crossed his arms over his chest while making a proud in his own intelligence face. "You cannot win per se, you can only lose by being the last person with cards in your hands. That means that by duplicating you didn't help your chances but reduce them, you've increased the probability that you will lose, you imbecile!"</p><p>"Huh? That never was the deal. Only the one who gets rid of their hand first gets their condition fulfilled. If either I or any of my images empty their hand – we win." Jagaimo almost mocked the Kumogakure ninja's declaration.</p><p>"That's bullshit!" Tokui yelled out, thrusting his clutched fist out and almost shoving it down the face of the clone he was arguing against.</p><p>"Calm down," Mana advised the Voice of Kumogakure. "I always counted on Jagaimo-san not to have just tripled his chances of losing. It's okay."</p><p>"You mean… You still…"</p><p>"Yeah, deal already." Mana nodded before giving the original Jagaimo that was shuffling in between every card he dealt, no doubt working his own unique brand of magic on the deck he was working with as he did so, a stern look.</p><p>"If you're in such a hurry to stuff your head into the guillotine…" the Kirigakure street rat smirked, completing the shuffling and the dealing card. To most, this was where the game would have been decided. If Mana played something trivial like poker, perhaps she would have decided that winning and losing was decided merely by the cold fact of how the cards went, how the hands were dealt. With Weiner however… This was just the first half of the total package.</p><p>The magician tipped the five cards she was dealt, the same number as everyone else was. All she needed was a peek at the measly symbols that truthfully had little to no meaning but that which the players imbued them with. A nine of clubs, a queen of each hearts and spades, an ace of spades and the important card. The one that Mana's magic trick involved.</p><p>Jagaimo cheated slightly when he put in place the rule that defined Mana's as of yet unrevealed ability to tip the game's scales. In a game of cards, it was impossible to affect just one card with any switcheroo trick. A switcheroo had to involve at the very least two cards either way, the one being changed and the one it was changed with, then again, if one of the cards being affected by Mana's chosen condition was that of her own, who was exactly going to complain about Mana's own card being upped or downed in scale? Certainly not the magician herself.</p><p>"Alright!" Jagaimo pumped his fist while his two clone lackeys joined in on the hype. "Let the game of Weiner for the fate of the shinobi system begin!"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0507"><h2>507. Two Capped Knees And One For The Future</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A single golden bling telegraphed the profound joy that overcame Tokui once he glared at his cards. Mana had not noticed the few golden teeth that the young man had before despite his affinity for growling. The source for the joy of the Kumogakure shinobi was revealed when he dropped a pair of nines onto the table – a nine of hearts that started each game and a nine of spades. Mana closed her eyes, breathed in and out. Tokui, in his mad combination of gleeful glares that he gifted each player around the table, looked baffled by the magician's bitterness.</p><p>"What's wrong, isn't me ridding my hand of two whole cards right out of the gate a good thing?" the Voice of the Cloud shrugged his shoulders.</p><p>"Yeah, I'll call a niner…" one of Jagaimo's clones responded, dropping a nine of diamonds atop of the pair of nines and bittering Tokui's face once more as he realized why Mana was so displeased by the relatively lucky start for the Kumogakure ninja.</p><p>It was not the fact that Tokui got a bunch of strong cards he could drop right from the start that frustrated the magician, it was the position of the Kumogakure power-man in relation to her – with Tokui starting, she was the last one to get a move.</p><p>"Ooh, that must sting…" the middle and the real version of Jagaimo grinned his teeth in a mocking, upside crescent-shaped smile while he gently and as derisively as possible placed his ten of hearts atop the pile, shutting off all the options for Mana to get rid of her nine of clubs.</p><p>"It's fine, I can give you one more to scoop up…" the second clone mocked Mana again by placing a ten of diamonds atop of the pile.</p><p>"Remember, the longer you ignore the pile, the more of it you'll have to scoop when push comes to shove…" the original Jagaimo winked at Mana while the rest of the duo chuckled in a staged fit of laughter.</p><p>It was fine… Mana just needed to breathe and think clearly, don't let her frustration or desperation to rid her decent hand of the nine cause her to make matters worse. There were still only two tens placed on the table, that meant that two of the worst card to get were still in the players' hands. Mana looked at Tokui wondering if he fostered any tens. If she asked him outright, he'd tell her… Along with everyone around the table.</p><p>"You laugh at me and yet…" Mana closed her eyes and placed her hand onto the table face-down. "You've made a bunch of water clones, no doubt to plan the game ahead, see what your clones have in their hands but you forgot that the knowledge of your clones will not return to you until after the clones are dispelled."</p><p>Jagaimo brushed it off. He may have gotten flustered by Mana's taunt before but now he was in too strong of a position to lose too much of his cool. Psyching the Voice of Kirigakure out was completely out of the question at this point, Mana needed to strengthen her stance on the board before all of that. With a somber face, Mana slipped out a queen of spades onto the board. Tokui's glare widened and both of Jagaimo's clones whistled out.</p><p>"Still using the same strategy? A shock raise to make someone scoop? I only let you win with that last time to get your hopes up!" Jagaimo's left clone taunted the magician. He saw the negativity and respectful fear that the beginning of the game invited in the previously peaceful face of Mana. With just a pair of moves, the magician went from an experienced gambling shark to a desperate lowlife that has bet their liver on a single roll of a die inside. The heat from her breath, the flicker of her eyes and the occasional tremble of Mana's hands betrayed her…</p><p>"Sadly… There are no useless cards in my hand!" Tokui almost hummed out while slamming down a queen onboard.</p><p>"W-What? Don't tell me!" Jagaimo's left clone looked properly shaken by the sudden switch in Tokui's reaction. There was no mistaking it – Tokui was happy like a waffle with a streak of snow-white ice cream on top. The type of easygoing happiness that only came from the assurance of victory, but was it proper? Was Tokui not overlooking something? As much as Mana wanted to trust her ally's good luck… What if the matter was still not settled?</p><p>"Damn it…" the left clone sighed, dropping a king of spades and frustrating the original Jagaimo in the middle of his two mirror images.</p><p>"The hell!" the original growled, dropping a king of clubs onto the pile. "Feed her the ace!"</p><p>"How the hell am I supposed to play after losing my only ace on a noob move like that!?" the second clone objected.</p><p>"It doesn't matter how YOU play. What matters is that one of us wins!" the original tapped the clone's forehead.</p><p>"Careful, if you kill the bastard, you inherit their hand…" Tokui laughed out. It was easy to laugh when one had either the type of hand that made one so happy or the kind of bluffing ability that was as foolproof as that of the Voice of Kumogakure.</p><p>While the original Jagaimo grumbled with the noises reminding of something akin to a popcorn getting stuck deep in his throat, the clone to the right submissively placed the ace onto the table.</p><p>"It's fine, Mana… Just let me drop my last king." Tokui smiled, extending his hand toward the magician as a friendly gesture.</p><p>Should she do that? It was true that if Mana scooped right now, she'd leave the board open for a king, which would leave only an ace in Tokui's hand, that meant that come next turn, Tokui was empty-handed and golden, the fate of the ninja world was secured and the shinobi system would have lasted hundreds of years more…</p><p>Mana's hair slipped over her face while her boysenberry lips smiled. The trio of clones in front of Mana kept putting on quite a show there…</p><p>"This is how you tricked the rest, isn't it? I must say, even as a stage magician, I'm impressed." Mana placed her hand face-down on her lap while she finally looked back up and turned at Tokui. "Had I been a year or two earlier in my sensory training, I'd have never noticed the slight dip in chakra every couple of seconds. I'd have never thought the generally unremarkable chakra signature initially as anything of note…"</p><p>"Shit… Leave it to Konoha's Sorceress…" the central Jagaimo, the original one, grit his teeth.</p><p>"And the act you put on, it was spectacular! Acting like the Kumogakure ninja was into Mana the ninja while you were into Mana the Konoha's Sorceress… Great stuff." Mana smiled even though she only had a reason to smile because she would not lose this turn but, perhaps, the next.</p><p>"Shut up!" Tokui poofed, sinking in a cloud of smoke, revealing another image of Jagaimo sitting right beside Mana. "You may have noticed the Transformation Jutsu, but you still have to deal with the fact that what I have in my hand are a king and an ace! You still have a nine stuck in your hand! Even if you struggled and kicked around more than the rest, it doesn't mean you stand a chance!"</p><p>"I'm afraid I can't do that." Even if her opponent was correct to assume that she was in a very jittery situation in terms of options, she had the advantage of having known Jagaimo's play for quite some time now. "A good entertainer deserves their applause, you've planned this out quite nicely. If it was you who planned this and not the puppeteer you're so protective of."</p><p>"I'm not sure what you're trying to do: stall, make me slip some details out… Whatever it is you're trying to do – it won't work, now play your hand and let's settle this!" Jagaimo grumped.</p><p>He had made a few mistakes in his game – the Voice of Kirigakure had been so obsessed with this move of defeating Mana using fake Tokui that he had left the rest of his copies with intentionally bad hands, just to set the stage for the move he wanted. He was being too sentimental, he should have played this cold and calculated, just play the game normally and expect the overwhelming odds of four against one newbie grant him his prize.</p><p>Without hesitating, Mana dropped her ace of spades onto the table, sneering at the clone of Jagaimo sitting next to her and holding what was previously Tokui's cards.</p><p>"Fine, I'll grab my three cards then…" the clone that had dispelled his transformation and dropped the well-played act of Tokui Kyuri from Kumogakure reached out for the stack of cards at the center of the table.</p><p>"You'll take them all – you're not Tokui, you don't have the luxury of using the one bending of the rules afforded to each player." Mana disagreed. "Given how you've already stepped over the line with your rule-bending, you're lucky I am not withdrawing from the game altogether. A transgression like this one would surely justify a breach of our deal."</p><p>"Heh, it was worth a shot…" the clone shrugged with the entirety of subtle innocence of a cheater present in his face. Despite being caught red-handed, the clone did the smart but also dangerous to Mana's already slim chances of victory play of placing down his ace.</p><p>In his excellent act, the clone, while still taking Tokui's shape, revealed to Mana that what he had were a king and an ace, that meant that Mana needed to play something bigger than a king next turn, or else the game was over. All of the clones skewered the magician with sharp and teasing glares. They knew what she was thinking. They felt about as confident in their chances for victory as fake Tokui before did.</p><p>"You don't have any more cards higher than an ace, do you?" the clone playing after scooped the entire table, leaving only the nine of hearts down. "What's the highest card you have? You'd be lucky if it was a king, that's too bad! Nothing short of an ace will do!"</p><p>"Now you're the one babbling instead of playing. If your victory is as certain as you're making it out to be, why not play your cards and seize it?" Mana taunted the central Jagaimo. Unlike his clones, the young man did display some amount of wary towards the magician. Be it because of her reputation or the fact that someone who was the first to catch his play now looked so calm again, despite being all but cornered to lose.</p><p>"Tsk… Before we corner you, tell me, what your chosen rule-bending was? I need to know. If I am to win, I must know it was a clean win and that none of the plays were tampered with," The original asked Mana directly. The magician's lips turned upwards on the right side. "It did not just affect one card, did it? It had to affect at least two, so what was it?"</p><p>"If you stop stalling, you will see it," Mana replied keeping her tone and face as ominous as a magician guarding the secret behind their finest tricks. "It came at too despicable of a cost to my own code to reveal it this early."</p><p>"Tsk…" Jagaimo grumbled like a capricious child before dropping down a jack. The original then smiled at the magician before revealing his hand to the entire table. A hand of two cards, containing just a king and an ace – Tokui's hand from before. "Even if you hustle and protect yourself from losing this turn, you're gonna get done in soon enough."</p><p>"Feeling this confident that you're showing your hand, huh? That shows a remarkable amount of confidence in what you're seeing." Mana elegantly pressed the corners of the cards in her hand to her lips before turning her attention to the last clone that was yet to make a play. The clone also dropped a jack, one of clubs, relaying the turn order back to Mana. It was time for the magician to show her hand, to do something about that neighbor of hers to the left that was about to hand themselves out.</p><p>"W-What I'm seeing? W-Wait! You wouldn't have!" Jagaimo's face paled as he weaved a hand seal and muttered: "Release".</p><p>The vision in the eyes of the young man blurred and waved like the heated air showing mirages of miraculous, foamy oceans of water ahead of the weary traveler. The original Voice of Kirigakure never regained the color of his cheeks, his hand trembled as he stared into his hand.</p><p>"You don't really need to tell anyone anything, do you?" Mana leaned her head to the side, letting her slick, dark hair slip over her shoulder and onto the table, like shadowy tendrils. "The stapled together card in my hand reveals the truth well enough, doesn't it? I'd be disappointed if you were not aware of every defect of every card in your washed-up deck."</p><p>"You…" the Jagaimo clone to the left stuttered.</p><p>"Cheated? Please have the nerve to accuse me of cheating." Mana smiled, knowing that the inner torment of the self-devouring consciousness deep inside the young man was far greater right now than the security of canceling the game outright when the transformation play was unveiled.</p><p>Seeing that none of the clones bothered to object any further, Mana dropped the ace of hearts onto the board, the very same one the illusion of which Jagaimo had revealed before resting in his hand. What the young man truly had in his hand this entire time was a jack of hearts, concealed to look like the ace of hearts.</p><p>"Is cheating this despicable to you?" Jagaimo wondered. After Mana looked at him with a baffled pair of eyes, the street rat elaborated a tad bit. "Before, you said that this play forced you to tear up some inner code you have… What's that all about?"</p><p>"The jutsu I used is one that I saw my friend use once. It is a fairly simplistic genjutsu technique, especially so when all you're changing in one's environment is the appearance of one card. That being said, I have once made it a rule of mine to do my best and only use original tricks, I highly dislike using jutsu invented by other people and this illusion is basic enough to have been a leftover in the first pages of every textbook on the matter in existence." Mana explained.</p><p>The Tokui clone then scooped up the small stack of cards. Worry sprouted its seeds from inside Mana's chest. Before she had made her play she was so intrigued by the possible faces of her combined opponents when she revealed her hand, now that she laid bare and without any tricks, she truly felt afraid of the odds in front of her.</p><p>She could likely weave another illusion, displace some other cards or make her remaining nine that was still resting safe and warm in her hand look like an ace. But to what end? Jagaimo was good enough to follow the flow of the game just fine and a trick like that would have only worked in the very beginning. Back when nobody was entirely aware of the cards in everyone else's hands. The clone with the largest stack of cards dropped a pair of nines and passed silently. That one had little of value, three cards of pretty much anything – Mana may have had lousy odds but nothing like this guy. This guy's chances may very well have truly been dead.</p><p>"Hmph… Fine, here I go, getting rid of my jack… I'm gonna win next turn, you know." Jagaimo grumbled. He looked immensely displeased by something. Despite his incoming victory that Mana had pretty much no way of stopping, it was not like she could hand out before this coming next turn, something made the Voice of Kirigakure just grit his teeth and grind them against each other in rage.</p><p>"Dude, are you okay?" the clone to the right wondered before scooping the pile of cards back into his hand. It was a taunt, even if Mana did her best to get rid of her nine right now, she'd still have the queen of hearts back in her hand and that meant that… Unless the clone of Jagaimo sitting right next to him sets the pile up with an ace – the original Jagaimo was pretty much set for a free early exit from the game.</p><p>Jagaimo looked at Mana with a pissed glance that showed none of the previously shown or acted, as it was tough to say it for certain at this point, easygoing and goofy nature.</p><p>"This game's all messed up now, isn't it? Because you switched up the appearance of the cards, someone, at some point, made a bad move, didn't they? Like place a jack on top of a king or something?" he asked the magician who, as the only person to have seen every card and every play for what they truly were closed her eyes and shrugged.</p><p>"Who knows." She sighed before placing the nine of clubs onto the pile which left her with only the last card remaining – the queen of hearts. For such a high and pretty useful card to be the only chain that dragged her down to the bottom. "I only changed the appearance of one card, just like the deal was."</p><p>"No!" Jagaimo shook his head. "This game's all messed up now. This fucking sucks, how do I know that someone didn't make a bad play somewhere and didn't mess the game up somehow? I should have felt the absence of staples, the absence of tape or any tears on the cards I thought I knew but I didn't. Who knows how many faulty plays have been made and I won't dishonor the game of Weiner by finishing this charade! Weiner is life and death, not some worthless thing to be made fun of!"</p><p>"Dude… What are you doing?" the Tokui-impersonating clone placed a jack onto the pile of cards, proceeding with the winning sequence that would hand the Kirigakure street rat the fate of the ninja system and give him the right to tell Mana what to tell the Council tomorrow.</p><p>"No… He's right. This game's all messed up now." The clone by Jagaimo's side sighed. "We all should not have bent the rules, it ain't no fun now, knowing that we may have played a king on top of an ace at some point and messed the stacks up."</p><p>"This game is void." Jagaimo hammered his fist down onto the table, scattering the cards resting on it and making all of his water clones dispel at once, leaving their cards floating in droopy puddles. "One day, when you happen to be in the slums of Kirigakure, we'll settle this game, I'm not letting you have one game over me…" the Kirigakure ninja forced out a grin before giving Mana a thumb up and stuffing his hands into the pockets before turning to leave.</p><p>"Wait." Mana stopped the leaving ninja half-way. When the irritated young man turned back at the magician, expecting some piss-poor expression of gratitude from her or some plead to properly settle their beef, maybe even a beg to tell her what she wanted to know before, all the street rat saw was a little, black and white colored, rectangular box in her hand. "You'll need a new deck, honestly, that last one was a pathetic mess."</p>
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<a name="section0508"><h2>508. Heroes Unsung And Punished</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even though their parting could have been much more severe, had Jagaimo taken his game much less seriously, less as an extension of his own life, a revelation of one's own inner morality system, and more like a means to an end kind of thing, Mana still had little peaceful sleep the night before the big meeting. It was not the closeness to being forced to betray the system she wanted and was tasked by the village to protect, it was more that the magician was worried about just how many others would Jagaimo trick successfully after leaving her room.</p><p>With his skill at Weiner, shown by him easily capturing seven souls under his belt before even coming to Mana's chamber early in the evening, it would have been a simple deal to capture at least one more in Mana's stead. That was perhaps why Jagaimo was so quick to void the game he did not like or approve of. It was one thing to void a game which one could still repeat seven more times against seven more opponents, it was another when one's own life hung on the balance.</p><p>Something told Mana that Jagaimo's life very much hung on the balance with this matter. He was not working with Kirigakure on this, that much the magician had pretty much figured out. The exact nature of the forces that the young man was being pushed into this by still eluded the magician's grasp and because of that it also intrigued her to no end. She was almost tempted to gamble her consciousness, mission objective and the very content of her soul for that forbidden knowledge. It breathed enough passion into the magician to keep her staring at the ceiling for hours on the night before one of the more important days of her life.</p><p>A handful of minutes before midday, the magician descended downstairs and stood by the small crowd of ninja waiting for the meeting to begin. It was an easy matter to find Jagaimo, having in mind that the magician had showered in his signature yesterday with multiple smaller copies of it surrounding her and forcing the young woman to center the entirety of her attention on the quartet. A curious straying glance even captured a familiar look of a dark-skinned individual in a militaristic, juniper colored vest and bright, spiky cut hair and a pair of shades with red numbers running all over it. Must have been one of those cutting-edge scanning devices from Iwagakure…</p><p>With how violent the two villages have been with each other, it only made sense for each other's technology to bleed over into the hands of their competitors, although, perhaps, it was a bit less the case in Kumogakure's case as it was the country with the strongest military and therefore the place was almost shoved into the frame of the aggressor and the forward pushing factor of the little scuffle for resources and economic supremacy.</p><p>The magician did her best to locate the Iwagakure representative as well, it may have been useful to survey the attitude of that person and accurately decide if they were going to be a problem or not. Mana was looking for any signs of unhealthy obsession with the real Tokui or stares that attempted the good old "looks can kill" method of disposing of someone.</p><p>The Voice of Iwagakure was a short girl of brown hair and a red jumpsuit. She was slightly hunched over, her posture left plenty to be desired but the magician may have noticed the source of it. Large bags laid tied around her forearms and her calves, ones with fancy colors and visual enhancements that made the boring, cherry-colored jumpsuit slightly stand out.</p><p>It did not take a genius to decipher that the bags were filled with something profoundly heavy, it appeared that rays of light itself bent around the hanging bags as they looked as if they either emitted great amounts of heat or were heavy enough to cause mirages by bending the light passing around them. Several of the ninja standing around the petite girl noticed that detail as well and occasionally turned their sights toward the weighty bags of the Iwagakure representative.</p><p>"Sleep well?" Jagaimo smirked at Mana. Noticing the magician and speaking up to her before the magician could, what with all the distractions present in the room.</p><p>"Not exactly, how many more Voices did you gamble into speaking for your anarchistic objective yesterday after leaving my room?" Mana went straight to the point.</p><p>"Actually, just one. I needed to fulfill my mission, after all. The crooked-vampire bastard is not a guy to take lightly. Even if I could spare someone of your moral standing the torment of being forced into a testimony like that, I couldn't really afford to piss that scary guy off." Jagaimo continued to wear his polite and a little smug grin, giving the passing kunoichi with a white kimono and grape-colored hair an arrogant, finger-pointing gesture, as if reminding her of the deal.</p><p>"The snow-woman from Shimogakure?" Mana wondered, uttering it to herself after noticing the violet ribbon carrying the Shimogakure forehead protector on the woman's head. There was nothing submissive about this ninja, she closed her eyes in acknowledgment of her yesterday's defeat but then, when she opened them back up, there was a flare of sorts behind them. Something very shady… Something that Mana, if she was in Jagaimo's boots would have gotten very scared of.</p><p>"Vampire-bastard?" Mana wondered out loud. "This man would not by any chance happen to be Guru Ayushi? It is a certain someone I am looking for…"</p><p>A curious pair of eyes turned back at Mana after the mention of the name. The magician regretted almost immediately uttering the name of a missing authority figure of the ninja world. One that went missing right after leaving Konoha inviting plenty of dirty rumors that the highly esteemed political figure may have been assassinated by Konoha but no village had the balls, the army and the solid evidence to bring it up in any serious conversation, given how the village with the second largest military potential in the world as well as the second largest population was involved.</p><p>It used to be the first largest in population until very recently…</p><p>With a squeaky moan, the doors creaked open, slowly and stuttering every inch of the way as every unruly splinter in their wooden frame chipped and locked against the elegant floor tiles, scratching them a little bit and providing more dull lines on the area right around the massive door.</p><p>"No… I won't tell you about that man anything else than what I've already blabbered, but it is certainly not the man you're looking for so you can go obsess over something else now. Your obsession nearly cost you your honor yesterday." Jagaimo warned Mana. The only reason why he'd clear it up like that was that he must have liked the magician to an extent, at least enough to advise her to not make the same mistakes he had made. It was undoubtedly obsession with something that led him to this "crooked vampire-bastard" and got him into the Faustian bargain he could not refuse to begin with.</p><p>"Now it almost makes me even more curious." Mana smiled. "The man I am after, as I have thought before yesterday, was the most tangible and dangerous threat to the shinobi system and the entire world order as a whole. Now I've been very clearly shown that there are more people or organizations working with similar nefarious goals in mind… It almost makes me want to drop everything and go after them."</p><p>"Unless you see it in your mission objective, it would be stupid to bother yourself with these sort of things." Jagaimo turned back at Mana before slowly picking up the pace of walking forward, along with the cattle of ninja who were lead into the testifying room.</p><p>"You know, you're kind of an idiot…" Mana uttered.</p><p>Jagaimo turned at the magician with a shocked pair of eyes that could not believe the suddenness and the boldness of the magician's verbal offensive.</p><p>"You do know that in a tribunal session all testifying parties are removed from the hall, right? Unless you have placed seals compelling your losers to tell what you want them to tell, you will have no way of knowing what they told the Council. The world-crippling plot of this "crooked vampire-bastard" may just collapse into little crumbs by a little bit of some good old lying." Mana explained herself. "And you do not strike me as a sealing master powerful enough to conjure up those kinds of seals. Plus, seals of that nature, I'd be able to sense being in place."</p><p>"Heh, they won't lie. They've been brainwashed their entire lives to operate with their own sick sense of honor. You've got your own code, you can't stand being a rip-off, I can't stand my favorite card game being made a mockery of, amongst plenty other things… They won't lie, that I am willing to gamble on." Jagaimo rubbed his messy hair, leaving them even more of a chaotic pile of grease than they initially were. "Which outcome are you rooting for, Konoha's Sorceress?"</p><p>The face of the street rat was almost teasing to a point when he asked that. As if he tried to confirm that Mana carried some degree of fondness within her own heart for the lovable Kirigakure gambler.</p><p>"I must admit I am a bit torn. I do not wish for you to get murdered but I am under strict orders to preserve the ninja system as well." Mana admitted.</p><p>"Oh? Konoha's that rotten, huh? You know, a lot of countries did not give their Voices those kinds of orders, all they said was "fulfill the duty of the Voice", or something like that… Nice to know Konoha's willing to force you to go the extra mile, huh?" Jagaimo laughed it off.</p><p>Before Mana could reply, a handful of sophisticated-looking geezers entered the room, had it not been for the Lightning Lord, a tall and rather chubby, dark-skinned old-timer, the bunch would have looked almost like the most uniform handful of little old men in existence, all wearing almost identical ceremonial robes with different colors. Some of the Feudal Lords had their future successors behind them, whereas the geezers were quick to settle down in their roof-reaching wooden chairs with cushions to soften the rest of their royal buttocks, the future successors just stood behind their mentors calmly with stoic faces.</p><p>"May the secretary of the proceedings announce who is present?" the Fire Lord addressed an old lady with a grey, long-sleeved, high-collared dress shirt. The addressed granny fixed her pair of tight hair buns and her massive glasses before glaring at the audience of various political and military figures and the Voices. In a flash the piece of paper that she had positioned in front of her set ablaze, the woman, quick as one of the ninja, waved the paper in front of her and put the fire out with a coordinated and skilled set of precise movements before handing the Feudal Lords a piece of paper.</p><p>"These are the gathered witnesses and secondary voices. The Voices of Amegakure, Hoshigakure, Iwagakure, Kirigakure, Konohagakure, Kusagakure, Shimogakure, Sunagakure, Takigakure, Tanigakure, Yugakure, Yukigakure, Uzushiogakure are present. The villages of Take no Mura, Chori, Hacho, Rokoko, Inaho, Jomae, Ishigakure, Kagero, Kisaragi, Nadeshiko, Shangri-la, Sugi, Takumi, Tonika, Yumigakure have failed or refused to send their Voices. I also cannot help but notice that the representative of Ishigakure, who has been sighted and reported as arrived at the location yesterday is missing." The secretary noted.</p><p>"Did you see her writing all those officials down? All I saw was a flash of light when the paper lit aflame." Jagaimo leaned in on Mana's side, looking seriously impressed with the woman's skill of perception and handwriting speed. There was ample cause for that, the old lady must have recorded well over a hundred of military officials faster than a solitary moment, even with all of her perception and sensory training, Mana could only see blurs of her hand movements. She was not even a skilled ninja, her chakra signature was completely laughable and yet… At this one, very specific skill, she excelled remarkably.</p><p>Even when mere words were being written down on a piece of paper the world gave lessons for Mana to absorb for the future. Lessons of weaklings that may have trained their entire lives to do one specific thing and that could have surprised even a ninja with a lifetime of training with their spectacular skill at doing said thing.</p><p>The servant girl from yesterday ran out from the crowd of military officials, samurai, and politicians and bowed almost driving her face into the ground out of respect before the Tribunal of the Council.</p><p>"Esteemed Tribunal, I must inform you that the representatives of Ishigakure have indeed arrived yesterday, however, this morning they have been attacked by wild animals and found severely injured with grievous mauling wounds." The servant reported.</p><p>Jagaimo's face paled out on the spot. Quivering, the boy turned back at where he knew the snow-woman from Shimogakure to stand and gave the woman one fearful glare. The heart-stopping outrage of the Feudal Lords and their successors, the great quarreling between the politicians and the outcry from the samurai had faded away once the young man realized that one of his trump cards was now hospitalized and that the entire thing was now a gamble again. He needed the majority to topple the ninja system, now he may have no longer had it, his life was being drained away but not by the man he feared, it was fading away because of the fear itself.</p><p>"Wild animals!?" Isuki, the captain of squad fourteen of the Divine Retribution Squad of samurai, stepped out into the front. "This is bullshit! If the Esteemed Tribunal will forgive my rude, warrior's tongue. We have had troubles caused by this woman, the Voice of Shimogakure and her demonic hounds. It is obvious that she is behind it all. The Voice of Konohagakure can testify to that. This calls for immediate Divine Retribution. Evil must be Slain Now."</p><p>"We cannot act on just these claims alone. Let the men of the Iron Shogun arrest the Voice of Shimogakure and may she be banned from speaking at the Tribunal but we cannot just execute her based on this speculation. She will have a Tribunal of her own. If proven guilty, her actions will reflect negatively upon Shimogakure as well…" the Fire Lord delivered swift and rather level-headed judgment. Mana was almost impressed but not nearly as much by the Fire Lord as she was admiring the ninja-like actions of the Shimogakure woman. "The guilt is therefore relayed back to you and your squad, Captain. The only reason you are here in the first place is to prevent something such as this from happening - squabbles between the Voices or attempts at our lives by an outside threat."</p><p>She acted like a true ninja would have, she identified the threat to the ninja system, even after falling victim to it herself, she disabled it quietly and as subtly as someone being mauled by demon dogs can be considered subtle. She now removed two of the tainted Voices from the collection, effectively rendering Jagaimo's entire role in this Tribunal completely null. Well… Maybe not completely, six voices speaking out lies against the ninja system were still considerable, even if the rest did not lie, they may still have given disadvantageous testimony regardless. All that the mysterious snow-woman who was being gently led out of the hall now did was remove the absolute certainty of the demise of the old ninja system. Now it was a fair game, somewhat.</p><p>"Tsk… Done in by my own stupid consciousness… Couldn't fucking stand it… Making fun of the game I love so much… Wanted to fuck around as little as possible, disgrace my own code as little as possible and here are the results…" Jagaimo almost broke into a pathetic fit of chuckling as he wrapped his hands around his hair and sat down to curl into an upright fetal pose. The other ninja around him completely ignored it, assumedly, even those that were affected by the bargain made with the street rat. "Killed for not being rotten and cold enough… What a joke…"</p><p>Mana placed her hand softly onto the young man's shoulder. "I think it's a fine thing that you did, you loved the game you played and you could not see it being disgraced by someone else's chaotic ambitions. That's remarkable, I think. It shows that you're human and not a cold, blunt tool that people perceive ninja to be."</p><p>Jagaimo picked himself up and off the ground. He straightened out and fixed his rags somewhat. "I couldn't hear half of that over all the whispering and all the yelling of those self-important pricks but… I assume those were words of encouragement so… Thanks."</p><p>"Well then, before we can settle the matter of discussing the competence of the samurai to protect the integrity of this Tribunal," the Fire Lord, who appeared to be in the position of the head of this Council and the leading foot of the entire procession spoke up with an elderly voice of authority. "Do any of the Voices have any requests they wish to bring up before the Council before we begin the Tribunal? They can do that now, or, during the Tribunal, before the testimony and the questioning parts are over, unless those requests should have been brought up now.</p><p>The bunch of Voices looked silent. Plenty of them looked relieved that the apocalyptic nightmares of the entire ninja system crumbling down because of a role they themselves played will not come to pass due to the actions of one, bold woman. Someone who could have never been defined as just "average", she was a hero of significant note and yet very few will realize what it was that the snow-woman of Shimogakure did. The ninja gathered were just shown a living example of the values they gathered to protect, in their faces, Mana saw the newly inspired hope to live up to the ideals of what ninja stood for. Humans, specialists with specific sets of skills and ideals and by no means cold, mindless tools.</p><p>They were no longer Voices of Kirigakure, Konoha, Iwagakure or Kumogakure, any of the other villages, as of now, as of the inspiration provided to them, they were all now just ninja, standing against a common threat of elimination by bureaucracy and determined to do everything in their power to prevent that outcome. It was almost admirable, to a point, to witness.</p>
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<a name="section0509"><h2>509. Suicides Of The Honorable And Social Kind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Seeing how no requests came aimed at the Tribunal, Mana expected the procession to move on but, oddly enough, it appeared to go the entirely different direction.</p><p>"Well, in that case, we shall settle the matter of the samurai and their ability to provide us and the Voices the necessary security." The Fire Lord leaned back into the massive, carmine cushion of the throne-like chair that each Feudal Lord or another manner of a member of the Council sat on. The Council made a much bigger deal of this incident than Mana had predicted initially. If it went a particular direction, the entire event may have been postponed or canceled.</p><p>"It was one minor mistake, surely it does not cast a shadow too wide upon the entirety of the samurai order that has provided more than adequate protection when asked for it every time." The Water Lord stroke his long beard. "No disrespect to the Voices of ninja, but they are dangerous people, it is next to impossible to avoid accidents like these when putting so many of them together under one roof."</p><p>"That is beside the point." The young man behind the Fire Lord in regal attire closed his eyes. "While I do agree that conflict between ninja of various countries, villages, and backgrounds is unavoidable, we have promised to provide them total security. It does not matter how possible that is, it is a matter of our promise to the Kage who have entrusted the security of their people to us. The importance of this accident will not be downplayed, I will not allow my father to be made into a liar."</p><p>"Indeed, we have promised the Kage the security of their assets. If you borrowed a shogi board from your fellow Feudal Lord and then had it accidentally burnt in a fire, you'd feel responsible for the loss of the item, would you not?" a small, dark-skinned old-timer in orange and white colored, majestic silks and an afro-like, round nest of curly hair noted with a joking smirk.</p><p>"Assets? We have come here to judge how much more reliable ninja are than assets. If the Lightning Lord has already made his decision, perhaps our presence here isn't necessary. I'm sure with only the Land of Lightning party present, the samurai could avoid even the few accidents they could not prevent." A bald and feeble old man wrapped in similar royal-looking clothes to his colleagues but also littered with countless accessories to compensate for the lack of height or stature of the man. Still, even with the towering hat counted into the equation, the man looked merely as tall as his peers.</p><p>"That will be enough, Esteemed Tribunal!" Isuki, the samurai leading squad fourteen who was the figurehead behind the discussed matter which managed to postpone the main topic on the agenda by demanding all of the Tribunal's time already. "I am a man of honor and as such I shall be imposing my own punishment. I do not yet know how the accursed snow-woman managed to slip her dogs through our security, nor do I care, my knowledge of the exact reason for the mistakes I've made does not matter nor does it prevent me from my penance."</p><p>The past-his-prime sword-master moved his black and white haori to reveal a short scabbard tied to the belt holstering his main two weapons. The man unsheathed the blade and made it twinkle in the gleaming light of the Tribunal room, the lightning-fast arm of the battle-hardened warrior stopped raised in mid-air.</p><p>"Don't tell me..." Mana objected, her objections were wobbly at first but they rose in intensity directly proportionate to the worry of what the man was about to do. There were too many people around, too stoic and static, like planted into the ground, like little stone army protecting the repenting man from Mana's attempts to change the drastic nature of his atonement.</p><p>The swordsman plunged the gleaming tanto into his gut, the burst of blood that scattered onto the mat was tame at first but with a forceful push, the warrior drew his blade from left to right, slicing his entire abdomen open. That was when the contents of the man's physical essence spilled to the outside for real, just like the captain intended, no doubt.</p><p>"Well then... I suppose this settles that..." Fire Lord sighed. His son who stood behind the man just looked at his father with slight disapproval.</p><p>"The only thing is signs on is the report of our drastically weakened protection. Letting the captain of our guard kill himself was pointless." The young man shook his head.</p><p>"Your successor does not approve of our ancient ways then?" the baldy Earth Lord smiled kindly at the young man. "Do you share his sentiments, Hoshiku?" the man addressed his own companion standing behind him. An elderly woman in a brown kimono and a sophisticated, violet belt that was sizeable enough to cover her entire waist with the ribbon in the front being comparable in size to the woman's chest.</p><p>"Samurai care greatly about their honor. It would be unkind, to say the least, to rob them of this ritual and relieve them of the only way they know to clean blemishes from their scrolls." The elderly woman replied with a kind smile, she did not respond with a look either toward the dismissive of the ancient traditions young man nor her own husband sitting in front of her.</p><p>"My wife speaks great truth, as always. You remind my old and tired head why I invite you as my counsel to all these sessions and summits..." the Earth Lord nodded at his wife patiently standing behind him to his right.</p><p>"Well then..." Isuki, the disemboweled samurai captain grunted in pain, spitting out blood from his mouth whenever it opened. "This is a bit awkward..."</p><p>The Lightning Lord laughed out with great vigor in the thunderous rumble that came from deep within his chest. "Well, well... It seems our honorable captain is made of sturdier stuff than he himself thought."</p><p>"This is most disgusting, plus his bleeding is messing up the hall we're supposed to host this session in." the Water Lord complained, resting his head against his hand while the hand used the table for support. He looked like a schoolboy complaining about how boring his classes were in that pose. Had it not been for the dire circumstances, Mana may have found this event and the Feudal Lord's behavior somewhat amusing.</p><p>"I apologize. Can one of my seconds quickly finish me off!?" Isuki turned at his stone-faced squad of swordsmen, then to the samurai in silver armor and hi-tech masks equipped with gas-masks and glowing, red visors.</p><p>A vigorous and mighty-looking samurai with the chonmage typical to the samurai stepped out in front and raised his fist up. "I cannot, captain, I respect you too much to raise my blade against you!"</p><p>"You fool!" Isuki coughed up more blood. "That is exactly why you should..."</p><p>"None of us would be able to cut you, Sir, no matter how hard we focus our chakra and how weakened you are." One of the silver-armored samurai reported as numbers and diagrams glowing in yellow ran down his visor.</p><p>Mana's vast interest in the history of the world and various stories, including those of historical as well as legendary nature, allowed the magician to identify these silver-clad men as the Iron Shogun's men. The sturdy, cold-hardened men from the Land of Iron. They were close enough to the Land of Snow and Kumogakure to mingle with the villagers and settlers from both locations but their differing values and political neutrality should not have allowed any significant pacts to be made between the village with the strongest military or the land breeding some of the toughest civilians known to this day.</p><p>And yet... These masks... They looked oddly hi-tech, hardly something that the legendary samurai blacksmiths capable of crafting heaven-splitting blades or nigh invincible armor would have made. They lacked the technical knowledge as they were craftsmen of the old, masters at their craft but lacking any skill whatsoever with chips or even gears for that matter. Something about the gear used by the Iron Shogun's men seemed off to Mana, it was troublesome to see the neutral samurai wearing tech that only Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Konoha had the ability to make and only Kumogakure had the military funding to actually produce.</p><p>"Very well... I shall remove myself from this room an ashamed man and await my penance somewhere where it shall not disturb the Esteemed Tribunal or the honorable Voices." Isuki bowed to the Tribunal, as the man bent over, his gut sprayed more and more blood onto the floor making the Fire Lord cover up his face in frustration.</p><p>"Well then, if this matter is settled, now that we have covered the attending Voices and participants, all Voices, please leave the hall for now. You shall be called up once your turn to answer questions in front of the Tribunal comes. Do not worry, these walls and gates shall ensure the integrity of your village secrets, if questions of such nature need to be asked." The Fire Lord gestured at the obsidian walls encrusted in accessories of golden glow and a traditional-style gate wearing the face of a demon for its walls and crimson-red tiles that were modeled after drops and squirts of blood.</p><p>Jagaimo whistled to Mana's left. Clearly, the Voice of Kirigakure was impressed by the design. The magician had every reason to share the boy's first impressions, this gate was every bit as fascinating as the Rashomon gate Mana had witnessed in the Land of Wind but it was sending out signals of even more powerful chakra from every cell that made it. It was like a massive beacon of chakra, contained into a single combo of a door and a pair of walls around it, powerful enough to interfere even with a ninja's enhanced perception. If one tried to listen in on something behind this gate, they'd likely have only heard the intense buzzing of the chakra's circulation, which was actually audible even to a naked, more casual ear.</p><p>Not too long after the limping and bleeding out captain of squad fourteen of the Divine Retribution Squad, the rest of the voices slowly hobbled, careful so not to step into the bloody mess he left behind. Had the subject behind this bloody display not been so grim, it would have likely seemed quite humorous. It still was to some, Mana couldn't help but notice a few cringes here and there and hunched over bodies stuffing fists in their mouths.</p><p>A handful of samurai stopped Jagaimo and gently held him in place. The face of the young man looked petrified for a brief moment but then the stoic swordsmen pointed at the stand as a sign that he was the first Voice to speak and therefore should not leave the hall with the other Voices in the interest of time. The black, demon-faced gate slammed shut behind Mana's back, even while the magician was turned away from the large structure that led into a whole different room compared to the squeaky door the bunch entered through, she could visualize the entire process. It felt so remarkably similar to seeing, sometimes Mana got confused about what she visualized or the chakra signatures she sensed, thinking of them as something she saw. The sharper and more numerous one's senses got, the more one found their body on a peculiar fritz about it.</p><p>"So we are removed from the premises..." Tokui grumbled. Mana turned at the large Kumogakure ninja, after yesterday she had written the man off as someone she was not actually familiar with but she forgot that Jagaimo did his fair amount of research before taking the shinobi's face. Likely a precaution in case of the Voice being conned having already met the person being impersonated...</p><p>"I'd have liked to hear Jagaimo-san's story. Everyone's really..." Mana looked up at the decorated roof of the deluxe structure. Ninja from all over the world likely had a bunch of interesting stories to tell, motivations, things they've experienced and blows that tempered their steel into the battle-hardened resolutions they now carried within their hearts. Even if everyone around were just average ninja by definition and the judgment of their superiors, one still had to harden themselves like a bar of iron to become average at this profession.</p><p>"I would not. I am glad we got removed..." Tokui wrapped his arms around his chest. "I am surprised to see someone like you here... Nakotsumi Mana, someone who has beaten an Imarizu member all by herself in hand to hand combat."</p><p>"It was hardly a fair fight." Mana shook her head overcome by modesty. "The man I was fighting had suffered through an intense battlefield before facing me. I am considered quite an unimpressive martial artist back home..."</p><p>"Really? The Champion of Sun Disc is unimpressive?" Tokui raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"The only way you'd know that is if you..."</p><p>"Participated in the fun myself? I sure did. It is a wonderful place for someone to throw their fists around, improve their skills and be shown their place under the heavens compared to real professionals." Tokui grinned. It was not difficult to see that the man was living somewhere else right now. More than likely in his time spent beating the face off of someone less lucky than him and getting his own punched off by someone much stronger and more experienced. "Ever planning to come back for one more reign as the champion?"</p><p>"I have little interest in fighting just for fun. The time in Sun Disc was revitalizing and educational for sure, it taught me plenty about the artistic value of martial arts but... Sadly, fighting people to blow off some steam just isn't my ideal pastime." Mana politely refused the idea.</p><p>"That's too bad, I would have loved to spar with the Gauntlet Champion and someone who has fought the Imarizu and survived." Tokui sighed. "I figured to ask you this yesterday but I thought it might have been... Too forward of me."</p><p>"Twice."</p><p>"Sorry?"</p><p>"Fought the Imarizu twice. Once when they all tried to kill us the night before the wedding we were trying to stop." Mana admitted.</p><p>"Goddamn, you survived a legitimate assassination attempt?" Tokui leaned back. "Now I refuse to believe you've got no Kumogakure blood in you. Because... You know..."</p><p>"Yeah, I look weird, right?"</p><p>"Maybe to a paleskin... I was kind of wondering about that, you know... A champion of the Sun Disc, survived the Imarizu... Must be a Kumogakure heritage, you may consider it bragging or not, we still have the mightiest military on Earth so..."</p><p>"Who knows... I've got a pretty varied and mixed heritage. I might have someone from the place somewhere far up the tree." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Oh... I see..." Tokui looked away, the awkwardness of his response was only aggravated by his attempts to play his extremely dismissively looking reaction as something normal and completely proper in a social encounter. He was disappointed with Mana not admitting or feeling proud of possible Kumogakure roots, not only that, there was a whole different other smell in the air... The Voice of Kumogakure was perhaps even taken aback by Mana's nonchalant acceptance of her status as a human-mutt. Perhaps admitting that in front of someone who took pride in and greatly loved their own race, perhaps a tad bit more than it was deemed admirable and traditional, was a mistake.</p><p>"In any case, I did not expect to see you here, of all people, is all I am saying. You are one of few Konoha ninja I am familiar with, despite the attempts of each village to veil their rosters with a shroud." Tokui nodded, it was his attempt at excusing himself and his own dignified attempt at leaving the conversation with a shred of honor. His own version of what captain Isuki did in front of the Tribunal.</p><p>"Voice of Kumogakure, can you please come to the gate now?" one of the servants entered through the gate through a small gap in between the demon's twisted fangs that moved just an inch to each side, providing the petit figure just enough space to squeeze through. Had the young woman not been so tiny and nimble, she'd have gotten stuck or not have fit a single limb, to begin with.</p><p>"Hmph... It appears they are questioning the Great ones first..." someone farther away let out a whisper to the ear of their friend that had the unfortunate property of being let loose during a moment of quiet, making it stand out and reach everyone it was not intended for except those the farthest in the back. Without replying or acknowledging the pale, young servant, Tokui walked up to the gate and placed his hands firmly around the fangs that she slipped through initially. Through sheer physical prowess, the Kumogakure ninja pushed them aside, even more than he reasonably needed to pass.</p><p>It was a particularly interesting party trick considering the fact that this gate was made as a chakra blocking beacon by emitting its own bland and overpowering signal. It stuffed every orifice where chakra was to be molded with its own signals, to try and augment oneself to move such a structure would have been the equivalent of making a clay jug while drowning under ten thousand meters of clay.</p><p>"How was it?" Mana asked the leaving Kirigakure street rat.</p><p>"Eh, kinda boring really, they just asked me a bunch of stuff..." Jagaimo shrugged.</p><p>"Well... What did you expect? That was quite literally the mission description..." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Yeah but... They just kinda extracted all the sob stories outta me, like sticking a big pump and giving a nice, broad-shouldered yank, you know?" Jagaimo squirmed again.</p><p>"Like the stories about crooked vampire-men compelling you to destroy the ninja system?" Mana raised a teasing eyebrow.</p><p>"Cheeky..." Jagaimo rolled his eyes.</p>
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<a name="section0510"><h2>510. An Interlude During A Drizzle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What were the questions about, really?" Mana persisted. Usually, it would not have been her interest to dig too deep into something that was in the beginning fenced off from her, not this business. The enigmatic element present in Jagaimo's story made Mana power through her usual locks that prevented her from digging until the golden shimmer of the precious intel she needed or the blazing heatwave of having dug her way into trouble.</p><p>"You're not gonna let this go, are you?" Jagaimo whined. "Even if I wanted to tell them anything about that thing of mine that I'm doing here, they would not have given me the chance. No need to nag me over it… Yeah, I tried toppling the ninja system, big whoop… What's in it that's so interesting for you?"</p><p>"I have a theory…" Mana admitted with a hearty sigh while Tokui was being questioned inside. "There are way too many villages and lands missing. It could be because they are small and rather insignificant but I have a different idea. I believe that the villages that have sent Voices here all have something in common."</p><p>Jagaimo looked away like it was the dumbest thing he has ever heard, at first, then his eyes turned back at Mana without giving the magician the satisfaction to see the entire face of the young man. A moment later, after a pair more blinks and a deep sigh and an eye-roll, Jagaimo finally asked, "Okay, pretend I'm interested too now, what's this theory of yours?"</p><p>"It's a bloody incident. Konoha has been attacked three years ago by a creature that came from inside the village and has never really disappeared since its release. Despite the monster roaming freely in the village's streets, the authorities pretty much did nothing about it. The response of the Hokage after the monster started rampaging was correct by the books but not by the eyes and ears of his villagers." Mana explained. "I have a suspicion that the rest of the villages may have had incidents, not unlike the one with the monster Honda."</p><p>"I don't think there's been something unusual in Kirigakure, not something that stands out of the ordinary. In the mist-covered slums there it's bloody murders most foul every hour of the day. People disappear, people get murdered… Less so now than back when I was a sprouting little lad but… Still happens." Jagaimo shrugged. "They do make a bigger deal out of it these days. A year back there was this one loon who just went to work, got sick of everyone's shit and just started wasting people with a box knife and a pair of scissors to cut flowers. Even though twenty blokes probably got stabbed while the authorities and the media chatted about this event, it was all over the tellies and the papers."</p><p>Mana and Jagaimo looked at each other with blank stares for a pair of moments before Jagaimo looked away and scratched his neck, looking a bit guilty.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess I see where you're coming from now. Though they didn't pry too much into that. They were all into my early life and the like, like what's my childhood and my current home like and the sort of questions like that." The street rat squirmed, resting his buttocks atop a windowsill and almost pressing falling locks against the cold window.</p><p>"What was your childhood like?" Mana sat in front of the young man, her own eyes wandered outside as well as she was enjoying the gloomy melancholy of the heavenly spray from the clouds above.</p><p>"That another one of your theories?" Jagaimo smirked while turning back at the magician. Mana acknowledged the gesture by mirroring the Voice's smile herself.</p><p>"No, just genuinely curious. I guess if you did not have the brightest of times early on, it would make sense why you'd want to change everything about… Well… Everything." Mana replied seriously to the rhetorical question while turning her eyes to the drizzle outside. "I know a bit about feeling lost and scorned and wanting to lash out, feeling unsure whom to lash out at so you start lashing out at pretty much everything, hoping that if you turn this one random stone, your situation will maybe miraculously change."</p><p>"You do? If memory serves you're a big celebrity back in your village, not that that's not its own can of beans but… How could you know that? What about my slender body full of ribs that were broken more times than I can count on my hands and have had knives slipped into them more times than their collective sum is so relatable to a famous stage magician the aristocrats are willing to throw money at to hire to perform?"</p><p>"There are more ways than living a spiteful life to know a specific kind of spite. My father was forcefully retired by Kirigakure ninja… Well… Probably Kirigakure ninja… It's a long story… Either way, the pain from his injuries has caused him a similar kind of agony. He's started distancing himself from one person after another, wondering which relationship, which social distraction might have been causing his torment."</p><p>"Sounds stupid." Jagaimo blurted out after Mana looked at him, the young man shrugged, "Sorry… But it does. Not that I'm blaming or anything just… I mean, you can't wait for rational reasoning from an injured person, sure but… Just because stupidity is excusable, doesn't make it rational, you know?"</p><p>"No, you're right. It was absolutely stupid." Mana's glare softened.</p><p>"Was? So I get it your big, relatable story has a happy ending?" Jagaimo raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I've trained a whole lot the past three years, it was not training focused on strength but at a particular set of skills that was supposed to settle the matters that keep dragging me underwater when I'm trying to keep swimming. A plan to stop a certain person, learning to use a newly surfaced ability of mine that I've long since neglected but that's always been a part of who I am, the final part was learning to treat my father's pain." Mana explained while looking at the white gloves sheathing her calm and steady hands. For the first time in many years, the magician knew the direction she was going in, not that the stops on that path did not utterly frighten her but the knowledge of said stops and the ability to prepare ahead made those adversities almost liberating.</p><p>"You've learned to heal something like that?" Jagaimo leaned his body back, he was reacting in disbelief and for good reason.</p><p>"Magicians do not heal, they trick," Mana replied with a regretful but also accepting smile. She regretted lacking any sort of skill in medical ninjutsu needed to help her father but she also accepted that it was a weakness she possessed and that acceptance helped her build a new path onward.</p><p>"That's cruel… But, I guess, if it works…" Jagaimo shrugged. "I can tell you what I've told those geezers in there, my own childhood was as much a blast as it was terrifying. Been on the streets of the Spume for as long as I can remember, no parents, authorities of any other kind to answer to. Only the fear of pissing off the wrong bloke and getting stabbed in the back fifty-six times over it to keep my budding street-rat mentality in check. I won money and lost money through gambling, either way, the people I've won from or lost to went after me for their money."</p><p>"So you've had no home, no family to relate to or to assist your growth? That sounds lonely, most of all…" Mana closed her eyes. It was true that she was often left all by herself, sometimes she pushed people away because she was afraid to pull them as deep into things as she herself was but it was frightening to imagine how it would have felt to have no one to turn one's thoughts to for strength. No parents back home, no one to love and no friends to look up to and look forward to meeting again. Momentary slips of the consciousness stream in these directions helped it return to its rightful path more focused and intense than ever.</p><p>"There have been homes, had to abandon them. There were people, they've either betrayed me when the conditions were too tempting or carried their devotion into the grave." Jagaimo looked down and scratched the back of his neck. It seemed like the young man had not properly looked back at the troubles he'd been through and evaluated them fairly himself. All of this time he had taken pride in the things he's survived, it did not look like he'd analyzed them and drawn conclusions from anything that's happened to him though.</p><p>To analyze something, one must have opened the wound up and poked around inside. Even when the pride in the scar was great, some just disliked that sort of pain altogether until the dislike grew into fear.</p><p>"So did you become a ninja to escape this life? Ninja make enough for you to not have to live in the districts that built you up and they are quite often away for a prolonged amount of time, seems perfect for someone trying to escape." Mana asked.</p><p>"Heh, not really. I became a ninja for the source of income. By the age that kids graduated I was already hardened and ran for my life countless times. To get paid all I had to do was survive and I was really good at that. Sometimes I even got paid for failing the mission, it was a concept I was completely entranced by – being rewarded for failure… Back then, in my experience, failing meant you didn't make it through the day. In this world, things were tough, sure, but failing only meant death if you actually died in the field. It's crazy when you think about it."</p><p>"From a gambler's perspective, I suppose…" Mana shrugged.</p><p>Jagaimo laughed out, from the heart, genuinely and deeply. Mana's eyes turned back at the young man and away from the rain as if questioning him about the gesture. He showed no desire to restrain or hide his fit of laughter from the magician which suggested to her that he wanted for this outburst to be seen.</p><p>"Heh, when the village sent me here, I thought they were pulling my leg at first. That was how sharpened my survival instincts were. I thought they were setting me up to dispose of me. Almost pissed my pants, I'm pretty good but probably not good enough to face off against actual village-hired killers. This was one time I had thought that just being aware of the set-up would not have done it. Who could have known that this all was actually for real?" Jagaimo laughed out again. Speaking through his laughter in a struggle. It was such a macabre thing to be laughing about.</p><p>"Why would your own village want to kill you?" Mana raised an eyebrow but then looked down. She was not on her own best terms with the village not too long ago, right before the entire Honda matter, the Wandering Ninja people she came from were all slaughtered by her own village too. It was such an insane revelation when she and Guru Ayushi had uncovered it that Mana still could not process it and deal with it face to face. The notion stopped seeming so insane all of a sudden…</p><p>"Because I'm sort of a loose cannon, at heart I'm still a gambler… You know what I mean?" Jagaimo made a begging-puppy face.</p><p>"You gambled with village money? You used village funds to fuel your addiction?"</p><p>"Not fuel, satisfy. When you put it like that, I almost feel like a criminal or something… Back in the day the thought of my own folks sending a hunter-nin after me seemed almost absurd, now… Geez…"</p><p>"It is a crime, actually… Not one you should be killed for, mind you, but I cannot believe it that you've never faced Ninja Tribunal." Mana shook her head. "How else could you have ever possibly interpreted village giving you money for free before sending you on a mission? Whom did you consider yourself in their eyes else if not a criminal after you had gambled it all away?"</p><p>"A smooth operator of village finances?" Jagaimo's face changed to one of almost cartoonish and faked guilt. "Plus… I would not say that I've NEVER been cornered about this."</p><p>Mana blinked a pair of times while staring at the young man.</p><p>"I mean… The big cheese yelled at me, a bunch of other fancy-dressed folks wondered if they should imprison me or kick me out of the village altogether. The watch of the… "International benefactors"… was a bit too tight for them to just off me on the streets like the good old Bloody Mist days at the time, I would have been of no use to them in prison because I'd have been funneling more public funds away from them. At the end of the day, I was someone who was a bit of a drunkard and a gambler but I got things done most of the time because of the failure-fearing instinct that has kept me alive all these years. That's why they kept me around. Once in a while, I might gamble something away, piss some people off and get slack for it but most of the time I fulfill the objective because that's what I get paid the most for…"</p><p>"So do you still live in the slum districts?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"You can take a man out of the Spume but you can't take the Spume out of a man…" Jagaimo shrugged with eyes that Mana tried to see guilt in but failed to do so. For the sake of the young street-wise ninja, Mana hoped that it was because of her own shortcomings in reading people and not the fact that such feelings were absent altogether.</p><p>With a stomach-churning noise, strong enough to overpower all the present conversations lingering in the air while the Voices were engaged in small-talk waiting for their turn, Tokui appeared from behind the gate, once again moving the impressive fangs of the demon with his own strength. The short servant lady leaned under the moving fangs while the much more massive ninja entered the waiting room with a face that looked about the same as the one he carried into the Tribunal hall.</p><p>Even if some question posed to him by the Council did rile the Kumogakure ninja up, he was skilled enough in deception to hide it from most. Most but not Mana, with the combination of her chakra sensory and natural observation abilities, the magician did notice a slight discrepancy with Tokui's chakra flow. It felt slow and calm but artificially so. Almost the same as the breathing of someone who was just frightened by a scurrying cat diving out from a corner was still – it was still but its serenity was faked and the flow of the motion was vibrating with the lingering aftertastes of the previous emotion.</p><p>"He's your type or something?" Jagaimo wondered, noticing Mana staring at the emerging Kumogakure ninja who traded uneasy stares with the Voice of Iwagakure as he passed her.</p><p>"No, he was shaken up by something in there but he managed to play it cool…" Mana relayed the fact that her curiosity stemmed from her wanting to verify or quash her theory.</p><p>"Big deal…" Jagaimo sighed.</p><p>"It is a big deal. Tokui-san is a big and pretty iron-faced individual. There are not many things that can frighten him or drive him off-balance. Some sensitive matters were discussed in that Tribunal for certain." Mana affirmed her previous worries.</p><p>"You can tell it that well?" Jagaimo leaned forward in curiosity, placing his elbows on his long, puny thighs as he rested his heads atop of his palms that he placed in a sprouting position. "I guess chakra reflects more than just one's strength…"</p><p>"Not quite. My perception is a result of a combination of all of my senses, included but not limited to chakra sensory." Mana replied.</p><p>"Could the Voice of Konohagakure please make her way to the gate?" the servant lady bowed her upper body, inviting Mana to the chewer of the figurative demon. Her Kage gave her greater responsibility than those of the other Voices, obviously, that responsibility was fake, if Mana failed at her mission, there will be no Hokage to impose punishment on her and she will not have to answer to any rules for all those ancient codes shall be abolished. Despite that, responsibility was something Mana took as something more than this or that kind of deal, hers was a mentality different from that of a gambler.</p><p>She cared not for the potential outcomes of the responsibility as much as the ultimate meaning of it. The only parts of the failure to live up to the responsibility on her shoulders that bothered her were the parts that motivated her to stand back up when her body failed to raise her back up and when her spirits told her to stay down and die. The only important material parts of the responsibility were the things that one still had to lose that motivated but did not strike the fear of failure into Mana. Failure was sometimes inevitable but without accepting its inevitability one won't properly deal with the responsibilities that originated said failure. It will become not only highly possible, but failure to accept the inevitability of failure will also materialize that failure all by itself.</p><p>It was not all too different from the Bushido followed by the samurai. Mana could not recall it by heart as she made her way into the well-lit and closed off Tribunal hall through the mouth of a figurative, artistically gorgeous demonic entity, but the general idea of the only way to survive an upcoming battle being to walk into it accepting you may not survive it strike a chord of acceptance with the young woman. As did the follow-up part of making death certain if one feared death and tried to avoid it by any means…</p><p>After three years it was time once more, time to go to work…</p>
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<a name="section0511"><h2>511. All The Answers Needed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The gate leading up to the Tribunal hall was relatively puny while looking from one side through the gapping fangs of the demon inviting one to step inside. Once one did, however, the end appeared to be nowhere in sight. It made almost no sense, it took Mana couple of minutes to cross the corridor utterly sunken in darkness which she could see both ends of from the outside being so close that she could reach out from one end and have it appear on the other end.</p><p>The Council sat at the father end of the hall. Right up front a V-shaped row of heavily armored and physically impressive samurai armed with long and thick weaponry wrapped in rags and resting on their backs was protecting the entire fold. It was tough to say exactly what their choice of weaponry was, especially when Mana was not quite the expert on the matter, all she could tell from the general appearances was that the gear was heavy, the sort that a tube-shaped boulder would remind one of.</p><p>Behind the V-shaped vanguard stood the unarmed samurai with only the chest-armor and flags decorated with various symbols of the villages found on each of the respective countries. The samurai holding each banner had differently styled armor, Mana's hobby in reading about history and legends allowed to identify the fact that these were different armors that the samurai wore during different seasons or different battlefield conditions. It was a nice touch changing the gear up like that to accentuate the differences but also the supposed unity between the countries, just like these samurai, the Voices may have adopted different gear, representing different skills and allegiances, but ultimately they were all just people with common a common starting ground.</p><p>The main squad of samurai surrounded the stand where the Council sat in a diamond shape. It would have allowed them to perfectly repel an attack from any side, even if a ninja managed to give them the slip. Why one would be as foolish as to take on this many samurai, when a single ninja would not have lasted too long against a single samurai in a fair fight was beyond the magician but these men had their jobs and they took them seriously. Their speed, their battlefield awareness would have allowed them to repel even the trickier attacks and the hi-tech gear "borrowed" from Kumogakure would make them much more difficult to fool with illusions. Technology had no chakra nor brains to pinch, after all.</p><p>Mana bowed with the greatest respects in front of the Council, moving up a good eight meters away from the first row of the heavy-geared samurai that comprised the vanguard of the protective formation. Like that she both showed respect and displayed to the samurai that she was going to stay right there during her testimony which made some of the more tensed up man-containing-shells relax somewhat. The range in which Mana was in would have been classified as "long-range" in combat theory, most attacks, ninjutsu and genjutsu included would have had decreased efficiency and killing potential from that range unless a ninja specifically modelled their skillset to work in long-range. Needless to say, from the long-range, the samurai had optimal reaction time to intercept anything foolish that might come to the magician's mind as well.</p><p>"Welcome, Voice of Konoha. We are glad to have you testifying in front of this Tribunal." The Fire Lord greeted Mana. Perhaps such was the protocol, each Lord mainly questioned the ninja falling under their employ, with the rest only butting in if they had some spontaneous questions plaguing their minds.</p><p>"It is a greater honor to stand here, representing my profession as a whole." Mana bowed with the greatest of possible respects being shown again.</p><p>The h-word made the captain of squad fourteen of the Divine Retribution squad squint in pain with a pale face. The only present signs of life in this zombified man were the bloodstains on his patched gut that was so recently let out on the floor and the dark spots over his eyes. Somehow, this man was still in the process of bleeding out after his seppuku with no literal deadline in sight.</p><p>"We are exploring the profession of a ninja, what being a ninja means as well as discussing their necessity at this point in time. Before we can make an accurate judgment, we are attempting to understand who the average ninja are as people. It might allow us to better realize the kind of people we place so close to us under our employ and expose our own backs to. Would you mind telling us about your upbringing?" the Fire Lord asked.</p><p>"My family is fairly unusual, both of my parents are alive and I have a loving home I can return to after work." Mana admitted without her heart skipping a beat. It was only after she finished answering the question that doubt and gloom clouded her face, for someone who described her family and home that way, she's certainly been avoiding that "loving family" and "safe home", choosing to trade it away for absolute death and danger every time the choice was posed. Perhaps the people that made the ninja profession were to be properly studied…</p><p>"Are both of your parents ninja?" the Fire Lord's successor narrowed the question, as if attempting to catch Mana on a hook that the magician was oddly unaware of. The question was fairly simple and yet the tone of voice it was asked in was almost leading into danger. The way that ninja commonly cornered people they questioned…</p><p>"No, Esteemed Tribunal, my father was a ninja before he was forced to retire, my mother manages a small but popular café in Konohagakure, the Nakotsumi Café." Mana replied, just to see if the bait would snap with iron teeth around the jaws reaching out for it. Feeling almost curious about the direction she was being led to.</p><p>"Did your parents influence your choice of profession?" the Fire Lord asked.</p><p>"Directly or indirectly. As we've seen today, vanity in honor can be just as powerful of a motivator." His son elaborated before turning his eyes at the bleeding-out samurai captain standing outside the formation in the corner.</p><p>"I cannot say they did. If anything, in the beginning they tried gently leading me outside of the path but it was not their resistance that spurred me onward either. The way I saw the world did." Mana shook her head. It did not appear to be an entrapping question in any way. At least not yet. She could not see just yet how exactly was she to "save" ninja per se.</p><p>"Could you elaborate?" the wife of the Earth Lord asked.</p><p>"Well… It has come as a point of much mockery at my expense but… As a child I viewed chakra as something magical in nature. A gift to do magical things given to select people, back then I could not tell between the ability to manipulate chakra and chakra itself, I did not understand that everyone possessed chakra but it could have been learned to be manipulated. In that way, I viewed ninja as knights of responsibility, given the magical power and burdened to protect those without it. I found that beautiful, I wanted to become such a knight myself at all costs."</p><p>"I can see why you were mocked, this is a childish way to view ninja and what they do." The Fire Lord's successor closed his eyes while striking a smirk.</p><p>"The mind of an eight-year old usually is…" Mana replied with a little bit of shade, doing her best not to imply that ninja were guided into the path too early but also feeling obliged to parry the verbal thrust at the basis to her nindo.</p><p>Whereas the Lords of Lightning, Fire and Earth all smiled collectively, the Fire Lord's successor looked less than amused by Mana's reply, mainly because it exposed how ridiculous his approach to trying and besmirch Mana's ninja way were. After all, like it or not, Mana was one of the more famous and well-known ninja, mostly because of what she did on the side, while not wearing her headband protector. If the young man could have exposed Mana's very essence, the core idea that got her out of the bed and carried her through the cruelest battlefields, he could have attacked ninja themselves.</p><p>A nindo was, after all, the ribbon that a killer used to wipe the remaining blood of their victim off from their face. To some it was the shroud that allowed to avoid bloodying their pale faces altogether…</p><p>"If we're done talking about loving homes over here, I'd like to ask about something interesting I've noticed in this Voice. Is it true that you have not killed a single person throughout your entire ninja career?" the Lord of Lightning asked, his eyes flared then squinted and turned as if he was transitioning from a sharp insight into a hilarious joke.</p><p>"I have not. It is my ninja way that no life in this world is unnecessary, therefore, as a human I am incapable of deciding when a life's purpose has been served to its entirety. I don't think any human is. For that reason, it is not up to me to decide who lives and who dies." Mana admitted. Her words didn't rush, she was in no hurry to be cornered by men and women that valued efficiency and saw ninja as tools. A dagger that refused to pierce someone's heart may have been found useless to those that only thought it needed for such a goal.</p><p>"Really? If humans cannot decide such a thing, who or what could? Are you in any case religious?" Water Lord leaned forward, letting his long facial hair mold out from his beard and fall onto the table like wet noodles.</p><p>"How did you come across this information, Lord of Lightning?" Earth Lord turned at the direction of the afro-rocking royalty that sprawled in his throne-like chair as if had just been promised to be fed grapes and be crowned. "For the sake of objectivity we were not given much intelligence from the villages. Questioning the Voices is part of the procedure, that is far too keen of an observation about an average ninja. One operating outside the land you govern, no less."</p><p>"You're just pissy about that little coltan squabble of ours…" Lord of Lightning waved his hand in the air in a dismissive gesture before leaning forward and turning at the respected old man. "If you must know, I checked a bingo book. Kills of each ninja greatly boost their bounty and this girl's bounty is far too low for someone of her rank. Especially when you also count out her value as an acknowledged stage magician and what it adds to her fame and her bounty."</p><p>"Can we stop this childish quarreling. If I might inquire this of the Voice, how does this creed of yours work with your profession? Hasn't it ever forced you into a conflict with the authorities? Have you failed any assassination missions because of it?" the Fire Lord tried to jump past the inevitable fighting between Lords of Earth and Lightning and back to the questioning.</p><p>"Leave that alone, of what use is a ninja that picks and chooses what kind of mission they will and won't do?" the Wind Lord grumbled.</p><p>"It is true, if we see ninja as tools in the Feudal Lord's disposal, with that tool harboring these "nindo" that get in the way of them living up to their purpose, it makes ninja sort of irrelevant…" a politician lacking the drapes of a Feudal Lord nodded and observed, sitting on an identical chair to that of the Feudal Lords but far off to the left to the Water Lord.</p><p>"We can bark out questions here all day but it will all be for naught if we don't at some point shut up and let the girl answer them…" the wife of the Earth Lord spoke up, raising her voice just enough for her to be heard but not to a volume that would have made it sound rude.</p><p>Truth be told, Mana loved this disarray. It let her think these questions through, gave her a few moments to try and evaluate things, try and look for a way that would have let her both be truthful and save the ninja order that already had a handful of sold souls speaking against it and an entire stand of undecided or opposing self-important people with fancy hats discussing the fate of.</p><p>Religion… Where was the Council going with this? Was it an attempt to tie her down with lunatics like the Jashin cult? Some way to question her objectivity and morality? Well… It barely mattered each way, with this Mana would not have to bend the truth too hard.</p><p>"I don't really consider myself too religious. Maybe as a child I was, often attributing greater things that defied my understanding to being magical, handed down to us by Magic. I guess if you stretched that out hard enough, you might consider that some sort of a God but I've never presumed to speak to it, understand it or expect anything from it." Mana shrugged and shook her head at the same time. It may have been best if she was as truthful as she could be while also trying to answer direct questions as vaguely as possible.</p><p>"As far as a clash between my loyalties as a ninja and my ninja way go. I've never been given an assassination mission and I've always been capable of solving every conflict without killing anyone." Mana tried to shut that obvious trap hole down as obviously as it was dug up in front of her.</p><p>"But what if you were given one? What if the Hokage insisted sending you on one?" a representative of the civilians, a face Mana had seen on television while running around the house half-naked, scurrying for various small things while her father was watching it.</p><p>"If you were the Hokage and needed someone dead, would you send someone who hasn't managed to kill anyone in five years of service? Someone who has entered conflicts between Black Ops units that resembled literal war zones and somehow managed to not claim one life during that experience? Someone who was incapable of killing a weakened monster that has eaten, flattened or otherwise murdered people from her own village? Someone who pulled every punch she has ever thrown, being all too careful to calculate every eventuality because with each thrown punch she was dealing with forces capable of events on a cosmic scale?"</p><p>"I suppose not…" the civilian activist submitted before clearing his throat. "But they could, in theory…"</p><p>Not even the most adamant members of the Council organizing the Tribunal session joined in on the pitiful attempt at continuing this string of the argument. Some of them pointed their eyes down, the Water Lord dragged his stiffened fingers over his face before returning to observing the testimony given.</p><p>"You are a known stage magician in Konoha. A famous one at that." Fire Lord initiated the next question.</p><p>"Yes, the Mizukage has suggested inviting you to perform in Kirigakure as a fund raising venture." The Water Lord joined in all of a sudden.</p><p>"Despite having ceased your performances in recent years, how can you truly function as a ninja while performing as a stage magician? Aren't being a celebrity and a ninja a bit mutually exclusive? How can you go underneath the underneath when you are constantly in the limelight every time you work in Land of Fire, even beyond the Land of Fire borders…" the Fire Lord concluded his thought, a social and verbal vanguard on the transgressions possibly deemed acceptable by an average ninja, ones that he was joined in by the Fire Lord on.</p><p>"You are right, Esteemed Tribunal. My status as a stage magician has made me ridiculed amongst certain criminal circles and looked down on in combat to those who are aware of it. That does not mean however that I cannot function as a ninja, it merely forces me to adapt my approach. I don't hide in the shadows, I hide in the limelight. I am exposed so often that nobody in their right mind would think I have something to hide, not only that, my status as a stage magician opens new doors for me, ones closed to other ninja."</p><p>"Really? Like what?" the Fire Lord's successor tried pressing Mana to make sure he was not being bullshitted by empty words. Even in his tender age, when the young man looked very malleable indeed, this one appeared strict enough as a true Feudal Lord should have been. As a ruler of an entire country, a Feudal Lord had the ultimate responsibility matched only by that of the other Feudal Lords. It was not the mere rules of being forced to devote oneself and respect the lordship that made Mana respect their authority but the presence of the ultimate responsibility on their shoulders, whether they liked it and fulfilled it or not.</p><p>"For example, I could enter Kirigakure at any point using my stage magician persona as an excuse, using the "fund raising venture" as my ticket in. How many ninja could infiltrate one of the five greatest ninja villages by sneaking in? As someone with some experience in sensory barriers protecting these villages, I can attest that none of them could do that." Mana shut down that topic ruthlessly by tying it up to a previously brought up point. She had three years to sharpen not only her skills, Guru Ayushi would not be attacking her as a kunoichi, he will be questioning her, comparing what he was doing to Mana's voiced ideals and accusing her of being a hypocrite. When that time of confrontation came, Mana must have made herself sure to never stutter and have no answers as she sometimes did when discussing her nindo and her choices with Kiyomi.</p><p>There was a brief rustle among the council. Mana feel a bit worried that she may have shown herself too arrogant by speaking that way to the Tribunal but those councilmen that weren't impressed by Mana's answer were amused by the wit of it.</p><p>"It appears that every backdoor leading to your nindo has been properly enforced." Earth Lord observed. "Some of the fellow Feudal Lords, certainly the civilian representatives, see ninja as mere tools of the Feudal Lords' government. What do you think about that? Is hiring a ninja the same as swinging a sword? Do you see yourself as a tool at our employ?"</p><p>This question was trickier than Mana saw it when the old man stopped speaking initially. What was she supposed to say? That she was no tool of the Feudal Lords? That was one vain and controversial thing to say to the Council that included literally all of them in it. It would have made a decent case for the unruliness of the ninja and untie the mouths of all the civilian politicians who wanted ninja gone from their lives and that strived to be the link between the village administration and the Feudal Lord instead to make idiotic claims of a ninja rebellion seeking to overthrow the Feudal Lords being inevitable.</p><p>Then again, if Mana admitted the ninja to be nothing more than tools, she'd be dooming them as well. It certainly cost much more to maintain a village of ninja, to micromanage plenty ninja villages on each Great Country and it most definitely caused more misfires, nasty and often bloody side-effects than maintaining an arsenal of swords.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0512"><h2>512. Postal, Limelight And A Rampage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I don't think the Feudal Lords to be fools," Mana replied before she could appear too baffled by the question posed to her. One advantage of the superhuman perception was having what seemed like an eternity before the time that normal people could perceive caught up to you. Time could have transitioned to what seemed like hours, days, years even before anyone but the samurai would have noticed Mana losing her way and her cool. Luckily for the magician, those were some of the warrior souls in an iron shell that refused to speak up or accuse her until the security of the Council was actually threatened.</p><p>"I think that if ninja were just mere tools, they'd have long since been replaced. I haven't ever thought of this that way but… I guess my nindo covers this question as well, just like no life is truly useless, no man can be reduced to just a tool. Ninja wield tools, their tough lives make some of them chill and distant but that does not make them the same as a chunk of steel." Mana explained herself, seeing that the Feudal Lords, while pleased by what seemed like a compliment to their intelligence out of nowhere, were generally baffled by what it was exactly that the girl meant.</p><p>"What exactly do you think makes ninja different? If the difference between the two is as clear as you make it seem, what is the core difference people who think differently are missing?" the Fire Lord's successor wondered aloud.</p><p>"Ninja wield tools, they themselves are not tools. To reduce a ninja just to the tools they use is to reduce them to a piece of what they are. If you need someone dead, which is quite the famous need as of late, you could pick up a dagger and run at them, hoping for the best, or you could give it to someone who knows how to do it right. For that reason, ninja will never be replaced by mere tools. Their knowledge, their experience, and skill make them invaluable. When you apply pressure to a nicely crafted blade – it cracks before breaking entirely. Ninja adapt, they mold and slip into the cracks of whatever is trying to break them. They know that they cannot break before their job is finished, they fear failure similarly to how the samurai fear dishonor and that respectful fear is something mere tools will never know." Mana had to stop and take a breath. Using chakra augmentation to not have to breathe so that she could speak was less than a smart way of using that ability, sometimes it was better to succumb to the more human weaknesses.</p><p>"Before we let you go… There is something I need you to tell this Council. Please, if you could do so, tell the Council about the attack three years ago. Over the three years, we have heard plenty of the civilians' side, we have heard everyone but those who were the close enough to the monster to feel its breath picking up their hair talk." The Fire Lord requested. His tone changed from before, this topic, this attack was something that personally bothered him. How could it not? So many people he was responsible for, so much property destroyed, his precious ninja bickering with the very people they worked for… The first time ever that a Hokage was forced to resign behind closed doors because of rampant distrust in the village administration. Shit-show would have been a tame name for it to use in kids' books.</p><p>"There's not much I can say, those that did talk about it said so much that there is little space for me to squeeze anything in. I think it is best to focus on the fact that it's over, it has been for three years now." Mana bowed and excused herself, the Fire Lord's tone and the content of his words suggested heavily that this was the last topic Mana was to be asked about.</p><p>"This is exactly why the Council had to advise the Sixth to resign." A disgruntled voice came from the side of the civilian representatives. Mana did not know these men and women but they seemed like nothing more than vain people that tried to hide their lack of strength, internal and physical, with fancy hats and a public position that ultimately meant nothing. Then again, she was far too disinterested in politics to be able to tell the difference between a Feudal Lord, a Hokage and one of those politician types…</p><p>"Yes, all the secrecy, this arrogant thought that there are things that everyone else needs to be protected from. Everyone can see that nothing is being protected but the ninja themselves." Another voice, that of an aged woman reached Mana. The Tribunal started their bickering before Mana could even leave. She should have left. She made a pretty good impression with all of the questions she answered, the magician knew it, she could sniff it with every sensory chakra tendril contained inside the temple of her body…</p><p>Her body moved by its own. Mana tried fighting it but she had to appear cool, heck, she had to stay cool while turning back and spilling what was spilling over. She had to grit her teeth and keep the pot firmly in her hands while the boiling water was spilling over, while the noodles that were simmering inside were spilling all over…</p><p>"You want to know all about it? Fine. I have encountered the monster before, it managed to escape while the ninja fought their hardest to contain the cult that gave birth to it, it got lost somewhere in the village and everybody had hoped that it did its best to escape. Nobody had enough guts to think for a second what would happen if Honda resurfaced but it did. There were mistakes made before the attack and during it…" Mana could feel her body tensing up, her temperature rising as she was beginning to boil. Her voice was rising bit by bit with every slipping word.</p><p>"So you admit that ninja may even be worse than tools, that they can make mistakes?" someone from the left side, not even affiliated with the civilians spoke up.</p><p>"The only mistakes made during the Honda incident were all the lives lost trying to contain or remove Honda. Too many ninja lost their lives holding back, doing their best to move the monster instead of engaging it." Mana felt her voice trembling, for the first time since she could remember, she felt almost glad that she was getting sensitive instead of angry. All the lives lost three years ago, the things experienced that day, the immeasurable weight on her shoulders to put the stop to all of it, the unbearable thought of what her failure might bring…</p><p>All of them were welcome, all of would have made Mana's eyes tear up a little, anything that would make her too sad to turn angry enough to make Ayushi's name slip. To speak up about Ayushi would be scandalous. The man was an icon, a damned hero, people were blaming and casting their flames at Konoha ever since he left the village. Honda gave them something else to talk about for once, to bring him up here in the context Mana would have inevitably brought him up in would have been disastrous.</p><p>"Perhaps it was wrong to ask to clarify about it of a person who was responsible for ending that incident. That was all that I wanted to hear about it, a clarification from your lips that ninja were capable of amazing things – like stopping that incident. I am sorry for how off the rails it went." The Fire Lord sighed.</p><p>"What's there to apologize for? We asked the Kirigakure Voice about the episode of the postal incident, we also spoke to the Voice of Kumogakure about the Limelight incident." The Water Lord stroke his mustache.</p><p>"Yeah, but none of those guys were associated with those events." Lightning Lord leaned out of his chair to give the man a scolding look.</p><p>With synchronized gestures from the Tribunal Council, Mana was excused. None of the men and women seated in all those important chairs could restrain their babbling while the magician walked up the demonic gate and left back to the other side. Their voices drowned each other out. They turned more and more muzzled with each passing step like they were no longer there like Mana was drowning and leaving them up on the surface…</p><p>At least this part was now done…</p><hr/><p>"Saved the world yet?" Jagaimo inquired with an indifferent face, turning his attention to Mana. Seeing the Voices of Kirigakure and Kumogakure talking to one another made Mana raise an eyebrow. From what she knew, Tokui hated Jagaimo's guts but the two barely exchanged a couple of words last night, just enough for Jagaimo to acquire the basic knowledge about the man so he could impersonate him in front of Mana.</p><p>"Someone had to clean up after you," Mana replied with an equal amount of cheek to match the wit she was greeted with. "Hey, what's Limelight?" she asked turning at Tokui.</p><p>"It is a village-destroying technique," Tokui replied in the as few words as possible manner signature to him.</p><p>"It does not take that much effort to destroy a village." Mana crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"Yeah, any pipsqueak with a grasp of basic chakra manipulation could do it. When I was a wee bit edgelord I commonly thought of doing something like that…" Jagaimo was just happy to get to drill and bite at the Kumogakure ninja.</p><p>"Limelight is no childish caprice. It is a jutsu that is capable of obliterating an area within set boundaries. If a child tried letting lose, any ninja above that child's level would simply take in all of that technique and protect their surroundings by withstanding all that power themselves. Limelight annihilated all. Ninja included… It may not take much effort to destroy an empty, massive patch of land but killing a hundred, a thousand of even average ninja requires unmatched power that few techniques can offer. Limelight can." Tokui explained. He looked quite open to talk about this, especially for someone usually so grumpy. That was something Mana found great interest in.</p><p>"If this jutsu was this powerful, more ninja would have mastered it. I would have heard about it before." Mana pondered, dismissing the potential underlying reasons why Tokui may have been this open about talking of this Limelight technique.</p><p>"Limelight is no weapon. It is more of a… Tool of retribution." The large ninja turned serious, there it was – the usual cold and brutal face. "It requires multiple people setting up the appropriate seals, initiating the technique and maintaining it while it charges for some time. Only then can its power be unleashed."</p><p>"So it's a mean of an act of terror then…" Mana scratched her chin. "And Kumogakure has experienced its grip then?"</p><p>Tokui did not reply. This irritated Mana, she hated being teased with bits of information and then being denied it when it mattered the most when she was ready to climb mountains and cross any distance to find the answer.</p><p>"Do tell, let the record show that I told you everything!" Jagaimo raised his hand.</p><p>"That is because you are a sham and a swine," Tokui replied without needless rage, just pure, sharpened mockery, directed at the Kirigakure ninja.</p><p>"Wow, two for the price of one, I'll let this slide, just for now…" the Voice of Kirigakure made an elbow-nudging gesture, stopping his arm just an inch shy from actually touching his much more physically imposing conversant. His head would have likely gotten ripped off of his body if he did touch Tokui with as much as a hair on his arm.</p><p>"You would because you are spineless." Tokui glared at the Kirigakure ninja with disdain. How these two managed to sustain a conversation and what it went about, Mana could not tell.</p><p>"It is true that you have told me all about the "postal" incident." Mana nodded. "I would have had to play you at cards to find out about it otherwise…" she sighed.</p><p>"Cards are a tool of alcoholics and degenerates. I could teach you a thing or two about swords one day." Tokui mocked Jagaimo again.</p><p>"I would miss that training session because I am a spineless sham…" Jagaimo winked at the direction of the highly physical temporary companion of his.</p><p>"You wouldn't have spoken to Jagaimo-san for this long without needing something, Tokui-san. We can give you what you need as a trade for the information you have." Mana suggested.</p><p>"Wait… You're trading my information for something you need?" the Voice of Kirigakure squinted, his hands slabbed and hung down as his body hunched up in the disappointment of his own lacking social standing. It was hard to take this goofball as the threat to the entire ninja system that he was.</p><p>"I have it so…" Mana shrugged. "Yeah, I guess… What is it that you need?"</p><p>"Multiple things, really." Tokui tightened the lock of his arms over his chest, despite all of his physical strength, he was looking quite uncomfortable with the position he was in. "I need to know about this Honda monster that Konoha has encountered three years ago, what it was and how it was beaten…"</p><p>"Hmmm… Collecting intel if Kumogakure ever had to fight something like that again?" Jagaimo stepped up on his toes and leaned up on the giant, moving his face dangerously close to touching with that of the much taller shinobi he was pissing off continuously.</p><p>"No, Kumogakure has the world's strongest military, it would decimate any force alive within mere minutes, at best. It merely sounds like a glorious war story that I, as an initiate martial artist, am eager to hear." Tokui pounded his chest with his fist in a symbolic notion of demonstrating his toughness. It was so macho of him that Mana could not hide away her grin, almost spraying out her laughter as it cracked her negotiating façade right up.</p><p>"Oh, the world's strongest military is hilarious to you?" Tokui got offended again. This time, at Mana, the magician had only experienced that side of the man once before.</p><p>"For how long exactly are you squabbling with Iwagakure for those coltan supplies?" Jagaimo mocked the tall man again. This time he had crossed the line, he did something he should not have done – brought up Iwagakure in front of a Kumogakure patriot, as devoted as they came, no less.</p><p>Tokui's movements were fast enough to honor the name of his homeland. Had Mana not seen the violent reaction coming before it happened, had she did not have the opportunity to talk to the young man and realize just what could have tipped him over the edge, she'd have never kept up with that speed or responded with that marvelous strength. No hold Mana could have put up could have restrained this brawler when he wanted to move freely, no ninjutsu she could muster up in this split-second of time she had to prevent an international scandal and the intervention of samurai could have done anything else but get brushed off by this human-tank.</p><p>Fortunately, Mana's troubled response to the upcoming outbreak of violence was one of entirely different nature. Before Tokui would even raise his lump of an arm and swing it in a backhand slam, a flash of light erupted from Mana's direction. Tokui's pupils dilated and his entire body froze over, when the man recovered from the overwhelming flash of light, he found himself sunken in total darkness except for the rough shape of his own body – the only sign he had not gone completely blind.</p><p>Something that only the brash and trigger-happy Kumogakure ninja saw, rusted chains erupted from the darkness under his feet, one he previously thought to be floating weightlessly in. The chains wrapped around Tokui's limbs, applying pressure that would have been absolutely nothing to this strongman normally, but, for whatever reason, appeared to completely paralyze him in the prison of his own mind now.</p><p>Four, obsidian-black walls of a wooden coffin slammed shut from all four sides, locking together and molding into a black coffin with golden accessories and a gothic, golden cross on the front and a large enough hole in the center of the said cross to fit the face of the unfortunate victim through it. The chains continued to burst from underground, wrap and lock around the coffin. Then, in a split-second, about as suddenly as the nightmare started, it all ended, the chains crumbled and clanged down, the coffin collapsed into the separate four walls and rot into nothing within seconds.</p><p>The darkness faded from Tokui's eyes, the Voice of Kumogakure found himself hyperventilating and slightly hunched over in front of the Kirigakure ninja he had just intended to hurt for doubting the might of his beloved homeland. For doubting and mocking him for something that Tokui took so much pride in, for making fun of the heroes and ideals that shaped his entire life.</p><p>"I do have that kind of effect on people…" Jagaimo leaned back, resting his head on his arms in a carefree fashion, "Though, usually, it's on the ladies… But, hey, I'm fine if you swing that way…"</p><p>"I would rather not ruin our impressions in front of the samurai and the Council, not after all the hard work that went into preserving it." Mana glared at Tokui. Looking back into the magician's eyes, Mana knew, that the Voice of Kumogakure realized she had purposefully canceled the technique before its climax. It was just a tease of the mental battlefield she could have put him through, a battlefield entirely unfamiliar to the Kumogakure ninja, judging from how effective just a lick of this new illusion of Mana's was on him.</p><p>"Fine…" Tokui huffed. "As well as the ordeal Konoha has gone through with the monster attack three years ago, I need intelligence on the happenings in this very venue. Of the plot to topple the ninja order."</p><p>"Okay, I will give you all the information about that. Now just relax and do not resist my technique." Mana slowly raised her hand and placed it on Tokui's forehead.</p><p>"What are you doing!?" Tokui resisted. Before Mana could even begin her illusionary interrogation, she could feel the difficult time she would have penetrating through unless the Voice of Kumogakure slowed down. If he resisted like this, she would have been unlikely to have ever gotten any results from him, not unless she had hours to spare and a completely impractical amount of chakra to waste on the siege of his sanity.</p><p>"I'm extracting the secrets you wanted to keep safe from surrounding ears while relaying what you need to know." Mana looked at a couple of steps slow shinobi with a scolding glare. "From your reaction before, it appeared like you weren't ready to share this information with anyone at a whim, this way you will not need to say anything, nor will the two of us."</p><p>Mana dove right in. A shroud of gloomy rain clouds, occasionally lit up by crackles of lightning all wherever she could see. The magician closed her eyes and focused, an iron rod materialized from dust beneath her feet assisting her fall and helping her maneuver around the endless storm of Tokui's mind. That oaf, he was still resisting, even after he looked so unwilling to fight back before. Most likely he was not in control of his mind, not completely. He was so similar to Meiko deep inside, without proper focus training, he was just pure emotion and instinct. It was self-evident how such an individual would make an amazing martial artist as instinct and emotion were the two greatest assets to one of those but right now Mana would have preferred Tokui to be more in control.</p><p>The clouds split open, this was a shock, it was not natural. Something dark, heavy and very hard came Mana's way. Using the assistance of her flying rod, Mana spiraled around the swinging object. What size! It must have been a tentacle or a flail of some other manner but it would have dwarfed any buildings Mana had seen. Tokui, that wild bastard…</p><p>"Just calm down…" Mana whispered to herself while she rode the stream of air down the out the endless layer of storm clouds. A bright flash, searing pain all over… White… Unintelligible static mixed in with children laughing. Vaguely familiar voices saying words that Mana knew not the meaning of that seemed more like a collection of random letters into words.</p><p>The magician tightened her little fists and extended her arms and legs, her blazer and skirt extended into a makeshift, almost ethereal black shroud given birth by her own trained mind working against Tokui's natural and wild mental defenses. Her focus returned back to the world at hand, witnessing a colossal island shaped like a giant tortoise with a forest of spikes on its shell, each one at least two hundred meters tall. The tortoise was like a giant continent, bolts of lightning, not unlike the one that nicked Mana moments earlier were rampaging all over the island, electrifying the pitch black tortoise.</p><p>That information was somewhere inside this living, breathing, and heavily armored continent… If only Mana managed to find it before losing too much along the way.</p>
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<a name="section0513"><h2>513. How Mana Got Her Eye Back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana weaved her hands together in the shape of a hand seal. She was not casting ninjutsu, not exactly, not that she would be bothered by measly requirements like hand seals and chakra while operating inside someone's mind – in the mental realms the only fundamental truth that mattered was concentration. If Mana was concentrated enough she had no limits about how she could siege the fortifications of the opposing mind, she could materialize other people, objects and entities, she could use jutsu she did not know or ones she did know but on a scale that greatly exceeded her chakra resources. Concentration was all the mattered.</p><p>And concentration was something Mana was really good at. Still, she used hand seals often to assist her meditation. Concentrating her thoughts on a single focal point like that did wonders.</p><p>The magician did her best to blur her image, make herself transparent and completely untraceable. If Tokui's mind did not notice her invading presence, perhaps it could cease all those crazy lightning storms and colossal turtle monsters with skyscraper-like spikes on their shells. An eye the size of a volcanic crater opened up and glared at Mana with its blazing, tiger-shade eyes with golden flames erupting around its pitch-black, pointy irises. Rumbling and thundering with the sound most reminding of a falling building, the turtle-monster opened its mouth right in front of Mana.</p><p>The magician tried becoming ethereal or invisible again, to no use. This mind was a chaotic mess, an overwhelming pressure of air blasted out from the turtle's mouth like a fusillade of cannon shots fired at every direction, aiming to obliterate every enemy and every crevice of the battlefield. When all hope of phasing through the majestic roar of Tokui's mental fort failed, Mana just clutched her hands together and braced for the impact.</p><p>Pain. Cuts and lacerations all over that transitioned into flesh and skin peeling off of her bones, what pathetic skeletal remains were left soon turned into dust and got scattered by the emanating roar of the obsidian turtle monster. Mana's eyes shot wide open as a petrified with fear breath escaped her chest, one that she had been holding there for far too long, one filled with pain and fear that all left her body upon her rude awakening. Pulses of an emanating headache quickly reminded the magician of the unfortunate side of a failed attempt at mental interrogation.</p><p>"I thought you wouldn't resist…" Mana grumped out, rubbing her tired eyes and hurting temples. A light massage of the pulsing pressure points alleviated the pain as it always did when the magician practiced the technique, then again, she hadn't done so in a while. Interrogation through illusions and mental attacks weren't exactly high on her list of priorities during the training in the Rabbit Caves.</p><p>"I… I was not…" Tokui got worked up. "This was the first time I experienced something like this, it was just… Too weird."</p><p>Even when he royally messed up and forced himself into the corner of having to actually trade the information through good old speech, the Kumogakure ninja lacked the decency to apologize.</p><p>"Huh? What just happened?" Jagaimo squinted at the two. "Did you two "connect"? Shared feelings, something more intimate, perhaps?"</p><p>Tokui turned at the Kirigakure ninja with a death-wishing glare. "Can't you try again? I'm sure that I could hold myself back a little bit more this time."</p><p>"No use, the harder you focus on not resisting, the stronger you resist. It's tough to explain, it's just like telling someone to not think about anything doesn't exactly work out because they keep thinking about how they have to not think about anything…" Mana sighed. "Plus, you did a number on me there, even if I did re-enter your mind, my concentration and stamina would be much weaker than they were now. It would be even harder to relay anything."</p><p>"Oh, man… So I guess you really will just have to talk… Tough break, guys. A real downer, I was on your side the entire time!" Jagaimo shook his head with sarcasm so obvious it was pretty much pressing its thumbs against one's eyes and squeezing hard.</p><p>"Very well, tell me about what you know of the street rat's role in this event, about his plot to destroy the ninja system. Then, when I know you are serious and you give me some valuable information, I will tell you what you want to know, then, you can tell me about the monster attack on Konoha." Tokui suggested. It was tough to say if the man was ashamed at all over messing up the exchange of information because of how messy and worked up his mind was, however, at least it made him willing of compromise.</p><p>"Hey, wait… Why me first?" Jagaimo waved his hands up in the air erratically.</p><p>"Because you are an insufferable tit." Tokui closed his eyes and nodded in self-confirmation. "Every thought of causing you any amount of discomfort or displeasing and inconveniencing you while ruining your intentions in any way brings me unparalleled joy."</p><p>"You know, for a brute with such a chaotic mind, you're really well-spoken…" Jagaimo hunched up in humiliation.</p><p>This anger, even when everything in Tokui's words screamed of distaste for the Kirigakure native pestering him, barely any of it could have been seen on the man's face. Maybe that was why his mind was so passionate and anarchic. His repressed emotions in an attempt to maintain the stoic image of a hardened, experienced and always cool representative of the mightiest military force on Earth was what gave birth to that continental turtle and its unmatched power. It had no focus or finesse but so much emotion boiled inside its shell that once it all got unleashed, it completely quashed any attempts to infiltrate the man's mind.</p><p>Completely by accident, Tokui may have created a powerful defense against mental and illusionary interrogation. Genjutsu was another thing entirely as it did not require as intimate and probing of a contact between the two minds but attempting to extract or deposit anything but general streams of chakra inside the man's system would have resulted in nothing short of a disaster.</p><p>"Jagaimo has been sworn into service to an unknown party to testify and force or persuade the others to testify in a way that would destroy the ninja system," Mana spoke quietly enough to not cause an unneeded ruckus but loud enough to be heard in the cacophony of a crowded waiting room. It was dangerous sharing secrets out loud, pretty much anyone interested in hearing anything Mana had to say could have listened in. Obviously, they had to consider or know that Mana had something worth listening to firstly…</p><p>"Mysterious party? I may need more intel than this…" Tokui grumbled. "Whom is this party loyal to? A village? A criminal organization?"</p><p>"Unlikely. It would not make sense for any of the villages to hit their own crotch while styling with their own nunchaku. Most criminal organizations are also obsessed with power and have no problem with the ninja system, the most radical ones would like the system to be even more hardcore than it is now." Mana shrugged. "The only clue I have is the slip-up Jagaimo made with the "crooked vampire-man"."</p><p>"Crooked… Vampire-man…" Tokui mumbled while scratching his chin. "My next suggestion would have been the samurai or the pirates. None of them like ninja all too much but… Crooked vampire-man sounds like neither of those things when I imagine one…"</p><p>Mana blinked a pair of times in rapid succession while observing Tokui slipping in and out of his imagination, imagining tall and crooked, pale, hairy and classic clothing adoring old men that probably owned their own castles. The imagination squared effect of Tokui scratching his head trying to create a profile from just about the vaguest amount of information while Mana working her magic on imagining just the kind of things this hardened martial artist with uncontrollable and shut-in passions would have imagined was worth the price of admission alone.</p><p>"I have not heard of such a man either…" Mana nodded. "Regardless, despite his ambition, he is not the first threat on my mind. If Kumogakure wants to take him to themselves, they are free to chase him to the ends of the Earth."</p><p>"Hmmm? I would have imagined the bright and cheery Konoha's Sorceress to be more heroic…" Jagaimo made a silly face that to him associated with girls and pop-idols on television, no doubt. Calling it a "cute" face would have been to stretch the word to its very limit dangerously close to snapping the poor bastard.</p><p>"His ambition is not associated with human lives. They are purely political in nature. Money, politics… These things may matter to the men in the Council and the village administration but not to me." Mana closed her eyes in irritation. This was the first time that she learned how Tokui felt around the goofy Kirigakure ninja all the time as his aloofness was beginning to get on her nerves. "The only part around this "vampire-man" that interests me is the pure curiosity, the puzzle."</p><p>"I'm afraid Kumogakure has other things in mind right now…" Tokui closed his eyes as if already admitting defeat to this as of yet unexplored case. "Until the matter with the coltan market is settled…"</p><p>"Here it comes…" Jagaimo poked Mana with his elbow.</p><p>"What?" Tokui squinted at the shorty beside him.</p><p>"You're about to ask Konoha and Kirigakure for an alliance, just like I'm looking for the destruction of the ninja system, you've come here for an alliance to crush Iwagakure decidedly with." Jagaimo leaned back, the laid back and completely unprotected stance of the young man shocked Mana, it was not too long that his life was threatened.</p><p>"I will do no such thing! As if the strongest military power in the world would bring itself down to the level where they would ask other, weaker militaries for help!" Tokui raised his fist up and shoved it all the way into Jagaimo's face, threatening the Voice of Kirigakure with it but not doing more than try and intimidate and irritate the young man.</p><p>Something in the blatant denial of the notion and the amount of offense taken by the martial arts fanatic made a thought pop into Mana's mind.</p><p>"But you were asked for it by the village? Maybe not ordered but instructed to do so." Mana pointed out.</p><p>"I have been, yes…" Tokui deflated like a stabbed balloon.</p><p>Jagaimo broke into a rude and overpowering wave of laughter that washed away the entire hall. Almost immediately after, the street rat got all serious all of a sudden and extended his index finger right up to Tokui's face, just an inch shy from touching the giant's nose.</p><p>"Now, it is my time to repay Konoha's Sorceress the favor!" Jagaimo let out an elegant laugh of a children cartoon villain, at that moment the magician was sure, if he had a mustache to twirl, he'd have undoubtedly twirled it. "The Honda attack happened three years ago in Konoha… It was about a monster and… People died and… It was pretty horrible… But ninja were there… And they had adventures and… I guess they killed it… Or something…"</p><p>It began seeming like the more Jagaimo spoke, the more it became evident to him that he knew pretty much nothing about the Honda attack. He heard bits and pieces from Mana but the absence of the more specific details made those few details he had pointless. It was now, being cornered to the wall by this practice of informational warfare that the Kirigakure ninja learned the crude lesson about how information trading worked that Team Hokage learned during the Chuunin Exams a handful of years ago.</p><p>"I'll stop now…" Jagaimo followed Tokui's pathetic gesture of his entire body deflating into a pathetic sag.</p><p>"No, please, you're doing great…" Mana crossed her arms over her chest while teasing the Kirigakure ninja. It was then that she realized that she herself did not fancy all that much talking about the Honda attack too much. For three whole years she stayed right behind the corner of the attack, training and looking ahead, telling herself that looking back was nothing really, when, in fact, behind her lurked darkness that'd have enveloped her whole the moment she stopped scurrying across the dark alleyway and shaking for her well-being like a lonely girl walking home at night.</p><p>"It's your turn now." Mana pointed her chin at Tokui, encouraging the ninja to share his part of the trade.</p><p>"Why do you care about this Limelight incident at all? What makes it different from Tsuki no Kuni Inferno or other matters discussed in that procession?" Tokui squirmed. It was very unlike this young man to slither this way. From what Mana had seen and heard of him, she took him for a more adamant, both feet on the ground type of guy.</p><p>"It's a jutsu that has the capacity to pull the table from underneath, take away everything I hold dear and everything I live to protect. Why would I not want to hear about it?" Mana pocketed her hands. It felt a tad demeaning needing to justify her interest like that. She needed an ace, an encouragement of sorts, something that no aspiring martial artist with the warrior's code in their hearts could resist – a woman's tease. "If it's too painful for you to talk, I'll understand. Incidents that claim many lives make me tear up too."</p><p>"W-Wh… It's not that at all!" Tokui yelled out, greatly surpassing the volume that the trio was sharing information in normally. "From what is known, Limelight was initiated by a group of missing ninja, selling their skills to the appropriate payer. It was a handful of reformationists that hired the group of ninja, hoping they could take power but feeling too weak to take power directly."</p><p>"Reformationists?" Jagaimo lingered on the word as if doubting what he was hearing.</p><p>"Yeah…" the Kumogakure ninja nodded. "Ones advocating open borders, more active cooperation between all the ninja villages, paleskin lovers…"</p><p>After noticing Jagaimo's raised eyebrows and Mana's rather disappointed glares, the Kumogakure ninja shook his head and palms erratically. "I mean, not that there's anything wrong with paleskins, or anything but… I'm not the crazy one for thinking they don't belong Kumogakure administration, right?"</p><p>"You're going off-topic." Mana closed her eyes and sighed. "At this pace, you'll manage to offend most people in this room."</p><p>"Anyways, it was a pretty smart plan when I think about it. Reformationists have always been good at that crying with their hands holding together type stuff, they'd have picked the village right back up from ruin with that. Took over after a catastrophe. We were lucky that FADE still knows how to do their jobs, they're not like your Konoha's ANBU, they don't need different units for the under-the-table shit." Tokui began going off-topic again, then again, praising his own village and its ninja was pretty much so typical of him at this point that Mana would have thought somebody was impersonating the man again if he skipped a chance to do that.</p><p>"Hmmm… If they stopped those missing ninja, how come it's called "the Limelight Incident"?" Jagaimo wrinkled his face, making it look like a dried out prune but he asked the right question.</p><p>"They didn't kill off everyone in time. Limelight is initiated by drawing the line of four barriers that interconnect and form the target. One of them managed to set the jutsu off, it was no Limelight, not really, but it was still a solid bolt of lightning that permanently blinded as many as it has killed." Tokui explained.</p><p>"So what's your involvement in this thing anyway? Why did the Tribunal ask you about it?" the Kirigakure ninja wondered.</p><p>"I-It doesn't matter…" Tokui grumbled. Something about this topic was still forcing the young man to experience great shame, he wasn't putting all the cards on the table but dragging all of them out at this point, from a guy like this, would have been impractical.</p><p>"You wanna probe him again?" Jagaimo turned at the magician, poking her with his elbow.</p><p>"No need. He's told me everything I need to know. As long as Konoha has no schism between its relevant political figures it will be safe. There is a fat chance of four missing ninja slipping into the village at the same time, the only way they'd get in would have been if they were let in. If that happened, Kumogakure's experience pointed out the way to minimize the damage. Limelight is of no threat to Konoha." Mana affirmed.</p><p>"Do not be so sure. Hasn't your Hokage resigned, the first and, as of yet, the only public official that's lost their post due to plummeting public confidence? The Red Hawks are also a fearsome group, a rogue Uchiha splinter group is not to be underestimated." Tokui grinned with the face of a man that knew the fragility of his existence and chose to smile in front of it. More so, he encouraged his peers to do the same. "Now, how about you shed some light on the monster that singlehandedly bested the second strongest military in the world?"</p><p>"Come on, it must have used both hands, at least…" Jagaimo joked.</p><p>"Three, actually… Maybe even more. I was really badly pummeled for the most part so my memory is still as hazy as the nightmares I've gone through since that day." Mana massaged the back of her neck. It didn't feel comfortable, talking about Honda, not at all. Mostly because she had to stop moving forward and look back at the darkness she's experienced. She had to face all the deaths and failure she's thought to have left behind and she's experienced. It should have been easy, Mana told herself it would have been…</p><p>"You don't seem scarred, want to see my burns from the Tsuki no Kuni Inferno?" Tokui was about to open up his armored top and lift up his black shirt. As tempting the chance to see a buff chest with a pinch of small, lingering battle scars that medical ninja refused to waste their time on, Mana had to interrupt.</p><p>"I was swollen like a pufferfish and one of my eyes was pretty much crushed and left inside for days after the event." The magician sighed.</p><p>"You have both of your eyes now… Are the conspiracy theories true then? Has Konoha been cultivating organs from Guru Ayushi cells in secret? Keeping the poor man locked up in a basement somewhere?" Jagaimo spoke too much again. Where before the street rat had managed to elude Mana's irritation, now he was firmly in her crosshairs. It was a stupid joke, all he did was share some empty conspiracy theories that people outside Konoha spread about the politically influential and decently powerful in terms of its military establishment.</p><p>"No. A Rabbit God healed my wounds and those of my rabbit friend." Mana shook her head slowly, trying to dig her irritation and the emotional trigger that uttering Ayushi's name aloud brought up under layers upon layers of mental dirt.</p><p>"I've changed my mind. I want to hear about the Rabbit God now." Tokui declared. "You mentioned a rabbit friend of yours, it doesn't seem like it would be a pet of yours, it is most likely your animal contract. Does that mean that you're partnered with an S-Rank rabbit, one to fit the category of a "God" that the ninja animals use or was it just an artistic interpretation?"</p><p>Mana sighed, feeling a bit relieved that she had the chance to move away from Honda, especially when she could share such a non-story like her encounter Usushika.</p><p>"No. Sadly, I failed to free Shika-chan from his entrapment. It was a part of my training, I could not have been bothered to wait for my wounds to heal before I started training and I felt obligated to heal all the rabbits I brought into the Honda conflict. That was when I heard about Shika-chan and decided to bring myself and the wounded to Shika-chan." Mana shrugged. For an encounter with a Rabbit God, her immediate recovery that allowed her to skip no time and start her grueling training immediately was rather uneventful.</p><p>"Wait, you mean you brought all the wounded to him? The Rabbit God doesn't live with the other rabbits?" Jagaimo scratched his head.</p><p>"No, Shika-chan has been trapped centuries ago under a Great Deity Gate. Even after it had healed all of our injuries, I was unable to leave as much as a scratch on that thing." Mana pocketed her hands and leaned against a wall behind her. Admitting a failure to save someone was not something that she could smile through, not even with a fake smile.</p><p>It was of no surprise that Mana could not do anything to a Great Deity Gate, it was an ancient jutsu that was forgotten in time. All of the eleven Great Deity Gates in the world were a testament of the jutsu's previous uses centuries ago, none of them showed as much as a hint of decay… Something of such legendary status would take one of the First People to break one apart, anything less than that would be disrespecting the fearsome might of the ninja history. One of the millions of the great secrets that littered the ninja world still…</p><hr/><p>"Hmph… I look forward to meeting you again, Nakotsumi Mana. Hopefully in the Sun Disc arena, where I can have the honor of testing my mettle against an arena champion." Tokui grinned, extending his fist forward. Mana felt a bit baffled. For all of her study in ninja history, she had not encountered such a gesture. Then again, common sense suggested that she merely mirrored what the other person was doing when saying farewells, she extended her own fist and pressed it against that of Tokui's.</p><p>That seemed to please the Kumogakure ninja so Mana acted like she knew what she doing all along. Before she could see the muscular back of the Kumogakure ninja disappear behind one of the old yet well-maintained trees surrounding the location of the Summit for the fate of the entire ninja system, Jagaimo stepped out in front of the magician's face, intruding her seeing this polarizing figure off.</p><p>"Don't forget you still owe me a game. When you perform in Kirigakure, don't just stay in those fancy, elite districts. Visit us, little people, too sometime…" Jagaimo grinned, putting together an oddly well put together farewell for someone as aloof as him.</p><p>"Who knows… May have loads of time if one of my two jobs miraculously disappears the next morning and I stop getting the summons." Mana joked. Even if the Tribunal had not yet voiced their decision, given how the plan of the "crooked vampire-man" was foiled, she had a pretty good feeling that the ninja system was there to stay twice as long as it has persevered up to now.</p><p>After all, ninja were those that persevered. An embodiment of the persevering system. There may have loads of surprises in this Tribunal session that was supposed to just be a talk in front of a bunch of boring old people, but Mana somehow managed to leave the mansion with its fancy garden behind wearing a satisfied smile.</p><p>Who knew, if the entire ninja system could have been saved by just some people talking to one another, perhaps, one day, the wars and the killing truly would end… Maybe, one day, fighting would seem as odd and mysterious to the people in the future as the proud and tall Great Deity Gates of the past…</p>
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<a name="section0514"><h2>514. The Unobtainable Crosswords</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Weak lights flickered in a dark room of a castle located somewhere deep in the eastern Land of Fire. An old pile of bricks and pretty much nothing else. Every other piece of material was located on the inside and could have been considered a luxury. The stony collection of repulsive walls and brutish teeth of cinderblocks was located in a pocket surrounded by forested mountains. The natural contrast of highs and lows allowed the castle the small luxury of camouflage to an overseeing eye that knew not exactly what it was looking for and where.</p><p>Just about the only parts of the castle with any soul to them were the bird statues decorating just about any crevice or corner that the lazy architect managed to stuff them into. Griffons on the frontal towers, magpies littering the ramparts, and a six-winged vulture proudly displayed its preying nature while the claws of its four frontal legs served as a portcullis protecting the entrance.</p><p>The castle interior was a little more welcoming. A carpet of red and gold rested on most pathways and corridors, even those in the lower, endless dungeon labyrinths. Even the rooms each had a square cut-out of the red and gold carpet placed in the center whereas in every pathway the covering bled freely. A young man ventured through the corridors, meeting no servants or guards beside the inhospitable exterior of the structure and the slightly creepy landscape, devoid of any fauna usually inhibiting the areas of southern Land of Fire.</p><p>Jagaimo stepped under a doorway leading into faintly lit bedroom even by the standards of the stony fort that lacked any lighting save for the few torches and candles and the natural sunlight that at times found a crack to bleed through inside the fortifications. The young man wanted to wait for the owner of the castle to show themselves, his heart was thumping the whole time, damn… He couldn't help it, if he was to die in the most horrific way possible, he may as well have gotten it over with.</p><p>"I failed. We didn't get the confirmation but a whole week after the Summit and… Nothing. The ninja system is still kicking." Jagaimo spoke up.</p><p>A pair of red stars lit up in the farther corners of the room, breaking through not only the shadows that the owner of said lights rested in but also the shroud that covered the bed that he was sitting on. Jagaimo could hear long and bony legs slipping out from under silken covers, a suede coat moving up the long and drained, skeletal body while a pale finger bent out from the shade and into the beam of sunlight coming through one of the openings to the outside. Nothing but a murder hole to fire arrows through.</p><p>A tiny magpie landed onto the edge of the murder hole, the little cutest thing bent its head about in infinite curiosity of the two, crimson twinkles in the shadowy contrast of the sunny day that the bird was enjoying beforehand. It was like two bloody rubies, the bird's favorite and as of yet unclaimed treasure. The little thing hopped forward, flapping its little wings just a couple of times as the distance between the murder hole and the elongated, bony finger was covered in a single bound.</p><p>"Oh well…" an eerie, cadaverous face turned right at Jagaimo, as the gleaming, ruby eyes penetrated him with but their gaze, the young man froze in fear. "Our takeover was never to be a peaceful one…"</p><p>A chill ran down Jagaimo's back while he saw the magpie blast through the murder hole with all its tiny might. The absolute horror emanating from the awakened Bird of Death, the owner of this castle, was mightier than any instincts or desires that the magpie may have fostered. Until the day of its end, it would never crave for anything else ever again because it had faced true horror and swooped away from its clutch with its life.</p><p>The Kirigakure street rat had counted on dying, dying quickly after having failed this man would have almost been preferable to living in his servitude and debt for years on end. Dying… Dying just so that this crappy feeling of standing in this man's presence could end… No. Sadly, unless Jagaimo managed to obtain the guts needed to let his own slip out all over the fancy carpet and the cold, stone floor, he'd be doomed to live as long as the Bird of Death has some use of him.</p><hr/><p>A kunai knife bounced off of a wooden target, only managing to move the darned, floppy thing back from the kinetic energy it packed without sticking into the board. Maybe the angle was off, maybe the strength was too great or too weak to plant the blade into the target. Sometimes this still happened… Not every time, Mana had hit the last three targets just fine but sometimes, seemingly completely at random, she'd flunk it.</p><p>"Wow, that must be shameful…" Kouta teased the magician before taking a huge gulp from his shake. "Cheer up, it's not like you're a ninja or anything…"</p><p>"None of us would be ninja if I didn't…" Mana grumbled, because of her tone and her mumbling over her words one after another in a barely intelligible manner she couldn't get through half of the sentence before Kouta interrupted her for clarification.</p><p>"What was that?"</p><p>"Nothing… Your turn." The magician sighed. Kouta pecked the top of Mana's head while the two changed spots. He never used to be so daring and physical while showing his affections, his father's character must have been rubbing off on the Jugo, the two have been spending loads of time training together these last couple of years. While it was something unexpected that the young woman had noticed in her boyfriend, she kind of liked it about him…</p><p>Kouta spun the kunai, sticking his index finger into the ring at the end and spinning the knife like a little buzzsaw before launching it at a blinding velocity right at the target. One moment the knife was buzzing in his hand, the other it was firmly planted into the wooden board, outracing, it seemed, even the thud it made upon impact.</p><p>"Can you… Teach me that a little, maybe?" Mana rubbed the back of her elbow, rolling up the sleeve of her blazer and her shirt while doing so. She didn't like asking for something like this, not of Kouta, not during the time as intimate as this.</p><p>"Like… Now?" Kouta rubbed the back of his messy and dark hair, making an even greater chaos of the hectic hairdo he usually atop of his head. "After all this time?"</p><p>"I… I really need it," Mana mumbled it out. "It's a part of a plan I'm making, a pretty important plan. That's why I was so glad you asked to take me to knife throwing for our date. You know I'd kill at Kingyo Sukui."</p><p>Kouta sighed. "I don't think I'm that good at it, really. It's kind of a practice thing, if you need a more technical advice, you should ask a ninja specializing in weaponry. I mean… It's not like you'll die if you can't throw a knife for a perfect score, right?"</p><p>"I… I think it is." Mana looked down, then away. "Let's go to the Training Grounds. I'll show you…"</p><p>Konoha had changed a little over these three years. The technical advancements and the booming modernization had changed the village's architecture to where it was effortless to notice. Before every building in the village used to be built of wood, frames and all. That way, if they were toppled down and destroyed, rebuilding it would be easy. Quite literally, the entire village could have crumbled down like a house of cards hit by a brick and rebuilt over a handful of weeks.</p><p>Now the buildings had steel bars and support beams and all the fancy advancements in architecture. It was like a breathing testament, a promise from the Hokage that the village would not fall, that the Honda incident would not repeat ever again.</p><p>And yet, despite all the changes, the training grounds barely changed one bit. Some more grounds were added to the massive field of training grounds: a barren, sandy wasteland with rocky structures filled with holes from the Inuzuka clansmen that loved to drill holes in all the rocky mountains using their signature clan techniques. A more urban training ground with a handful of simple residential buildings surrounding it, for the more purposeful and better-defined training sessions, some more refined and better protected full-out modern village environments that one could have found in any of the massive ninja villages, a great handful of emulated natural landscapes to train in.</p><p>Despite that, nothing beat the classic that never seemed to change – Training Grounds No. 3.</p><p>Despite the fact that the Jugo showed little interest in coming here, during a date of all things, once he entered the Third Training Ground he was taken aback by the memories that the place and how little it had changed filled him with. Memories of rather painful survival training drills, memories of sparring and training until utter exhaustion, past the point of logic. Maybe it was a form of Stockholm syndrome but… Painful memories like these invited a certain flare of warmth in their remembrance. Almost like one longed for them, despite hating every moment of them at the time.</p><p>Without wasting too much time on nostalgia herself, Mana stepped out and performed a rather sizeable array of hand seals. Whereas usually, the unnatural speed at which ninja weaved them seemed like a blur, when someone as skilled at making hand seals as Mana did it, the molding time was almost non-existent, whereas now a noticeable lag and a blurry mess of hand seals still busted through. The magician thrust her hand forward, almost like intending to show off a seal on her palm.</p><p>Kouta blinked once, expecting to see something cool but looking slightly surprised when nothing appeared to happen for a blink. Massive surges of Lightning Release chakra erupted from Mana, splitting off into thunderbolts and lightning aura sparking off from her. Had Mana thrown a punch with this much lightning chakra compressed and surrounding her, she'd bust and melt any material, no matter how dense or thick. The energy surging from her at that moment was something that shocked even Kouta and made the young man step back a pair of times and cover up his face as the intense light emanating from the magician threatened to blind him if he stayed exposed to it for too long.</p><p>"Supreme…" Mana uttered through great effort. Despite having honed this jutsu ever since recovering from the injuries that the monster Honda left her with, she still struggled with it and it was not a technique she could use with great practical use in a heated battle. It was more of a benchmark of her abilities. All the lightning chakra channeled into a singular sphere right around her extended palm, with a gut-wrenching, thunderous sound the sphere expanded as more chakra flowed through and through it, expanding the sphere multiple times.</p><p>"Magic…" Mana uttered once again, the sphere burst, finally unable to maintain its shape and stable state with so much chakra flowing through it. The thundering sounds emanating through the training grounds and beyond to seemingly no endpoint, the rumbling ground beneath her feet, all testaments of the magician's lack of total control and mastery over the technique. The darting off beams of lightning formed into a dozen sword-shaped constructs.</p><p>"Pierce!" the magician exhaled, with a final burst of chakra, the shape of the lightning swords became more refined and controlled. The chakra she put into the technique finally stopped ripping the world around her apart and Mana managed to contain the leaking out fundamental forces that held the entire universe together inside the swords that floated around her, leashed by thunderbolts that connected to the slight aura of Lightning Release chakra that still emanated around the magician.</p><p>In a blink, just as suddenly as the technique spiraled out of control, it was all gone.</p><p>"That's… Shape and Nature Manipulation all at once… It's an A-Rank technique." Kouta shook in disbelief, talking to himself while he witnessed the current point of the magician's journey.</p><p>"Maybe, but it does not matter if I can't use it. Supreme Magic Pierce isn't like your techniques, I can't just fling them at the general direction and expect results. I need precision, some real brain surgery type of thing." Mana explained.</p><p>"Hmmm… It didn't seem like you need to be that precise. It seemed to me like you can just fling them at the enemy and they'd get skewered, honestly. With how much chakra you've managed to compress into those swords, they'd like murder just about everything I've ever met on discharge…" Kouta pouted. He had a point, the amount of chakra that Mana packed into this technique was insane, hitting even an advanced ninja with something like this would have threatened them with the endgame. Regardless, Kouta did not know the exact use to which Mana created this technique. It was a very important part of her plan, the final fight she was planning out for three whole years and a precision strike was an integral part of that sequence of planned moves.</p><p>"Please?" Mana made the puppy eyes. Kouta was known for dropping all of his weaponry upon hitting a wall of puppy eyes.</p><p>"Fine… I guess we could train for a while, but… I'm not standing at the other end of that." The Jugo exclaimed.</p><p>It hurt asking Kouta this instead of something more normal for their first date in a while. It wasn't like he was the only person capable of helping Mana with precision training but… What other options did Mana have? Asking someone else for this and alienate the young man she loved even further?</p><p>Kouta ended up enjoying this more than the magician had initially thought. He did have the blood of Jugo coursing through his veins after all so perhaps it was not something to be surprised of. He really took the training seriously and the two managed to combine their expressions of fondness to each other with training by staying in close contact, whether when Mana placed her chin atop of Kouta's shoulder as an attempt to psyche him out or when Kouta physically positioned Mana's body into a perfect throwing stance.</p><hr/><p>A tall and strapping man approached a small vendor selling newspapers and magazines. Despite choosing to inform the surrounding folks about his ninja status, the three-meter, majestic specimen of sinew and physical human perfection did not wear the typical Konoha ninja uniform. He stood in a remarkably short line consisting of an old lady in front of him and himself. The eyes of the majestic one graced the feeble and aged plague of society in front of him, just short enough to fit under his foot.</p><p>"Oh… Jeez…" the old lady croaked, browsing her things for the spare change that it cost to pay up for her crossword magazine. "Young man, could you help me count? I can't tell the 200 ryo coin from the 500…"</p><p>The superhuman display of victory in the genetic dice roll leaned up to the old lady with his eyebrow raised, the man's curly, shoulder-length dark hair slipped all over his face and his flaring, violet colored eyes. The old lady leaned back and uttered a feeble "Oh my," noting the dismissive facial gestures of the man behind her in the line, his was the face that failed to believe in the fact that he was just asked for help of someone who was of no use and just slowed down other people trying to make something of their lives.</p><p>A decisive thud preceded the visual of the godly individual raising his foot and slamming it against the old lady's face. The poor, decrepit thing was so short and hunched over that the man had to raise his foot up vertically, then bend it downwards just so his foot could properly position itself in the desired, sweet jackpot and push the old lady away in the most demeaning way possible. Despite the highly improper behavior and the brutish manner of reply to the desperate plead of help by the gray woman, after the mischievous response she received she did not fall or fly backward but instead gently rolled back, flipping and rolling about like a barrel set to roll on a line of mattresses before hitting the wall.</p><p>"Help? Why would I, Hanshin, help you?" the improper physical demigod stroke a pose that, in his mind, best showed off the natural gifts that he was given but also perfected through grueling and meaningful training. He then hit a perfect 180 turn and scattered a handful of ryo on the stand of the magazine vendor, winking at the confused salesman. "Give Hanshin this month's "Icha-Icha-Boy", a thinking and strapping man's publication!"</p><p>A myriad of flashing colors alerted all of the participants in this most bizarre scene, the exemplary specimen of all the best that manhood had to offer turned a full 180 again, only to reach into the pocket he could have reached into anyway and remove a pager from it. One that called for the man to report to the Konohagakure Administration as fast as possible.</p><p>"Never mind that…" the Adonis lamented, making a pose comparable to that of a fainting maiden who was just told that her beloved childhood friend had died in the war. "It appears that Hanshin shall not be able to enjoy the hills and ridges of another man's sweat-work…"</p><p>"Are you sure? The magazine's right here, you already gave me the money. All you need is just take it…" the short and pudgy magazine salesman scratched the back of his greasy, balding head.</p><p>"Hmmm… You strike a tempting bargain, you devil, you…" Hanshin smirked with a wink on top, turning almost completely around his axis on his higher body and pointing at the shorty with both of his index fingers. Without uttering another word but breaking his extremely photogenic pose, the example of male excellence swiped the erotic magazine and strut his way towards the northern districts of the village.</p>
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<a name="section0515"><h2>515. The Land Of Fire In Land Of Fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana hated running off on Kouta, especially so when she hadn't quite been the ideal dating partner and when they had to substitute the more casual dating activities for training. Even if Kouta ended up enjoying it more than initially expected, in the end, it still felt really scummy of her to pull that and just disappear. Still, the summon from the Konoha Administration sounded rather urgent. It's been a while since Mana received a term of appearing as soon as possible to receive her objectives along with the summon. Not to mention one so tight…</p><p>A combo of familiar chakra signatures hit her field of sensory, as much as Mana would have liked to say her hellos to Kiyomi and Meiko, she should have probably just hurried on ahead and seen what Lord Seventh had to say so urgently. Why were those two hanging out together anyway? Usually, when they hung out they at the very least invited Mana out as well.</p><p>Talk about bad timing. Just on the day when Mana scheduled her comeback magic show… If the mission was this urgent to be taken off the village's hands, it likely had a very tight deadline. Those had the nasty habit of not leaving any time for side activities like magic shows and entertaining the village.</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko were moving in a rather odd trajectory… Mana stopped on top of a transmission tower and looked at the direction far behind her. Where her friends were, had the magician chosen to take a huge, diagonal nosedive in that direction. The two were not hurrying but they almost certainly were headed towards the Administration as well. Could it be? No. If they were issued the same mission, they'd surely have picked up the pace…</p><p>Mana blitzed away, appearing by the Administration's doorstep almost instantly now that no buildings or peaceful civilians laid in her way. When the whole journey was just to dash forward and she did not have to mind what's in her way. Inside the village, she could let loose a little, while the distances that required traveling weren't all that impressive, there were no ninja that could have picked up on a high-velocity target and gotten curious or traps laid out all over the place. The sensory units in the Hokage Mountain may have picked up a spike in Mana's chakra activity but they would not pay it any heed, just a ninja on a rush to get somewhere fast, that was all it was…</p><p>Usually, the magician would not have registered a presence of an unfamiliar chakra signature as anything of note, the Administration was buzzing with people whom Mana did not know nor had a chance to be around their chakra signatures to get fond of them and familiarize with their feel. This one… This one burned and blazed, it was massive and it was… Rotten. No. That wasn't it. It was black but it was not evil. This was such an odd sensation, such a peculiar combination of mixed feelings that the chakra put out that Mana stopped in her tracks and blanked out for a second.</p><p>"Hey! Mana's here!" Meiko's voice broke the magician out of her trance. "Don't tell me Team Hokage's back together!"</p><p>"Maybe she'll be leading our squad, now that she's a big and fancy chuunin and all…" Kiyomi teased the magician.</p><p>Meiko wrapped her elbow around Mana and handled her around as if the blacksmith was wrestling an alligator before removing the magician's hat, placing it on top of her own long, red locks and rubbing the top of magician's head enough to cause irritation and a little pain but nowhere close to hurting the young woman seriously.</p><p>"I have no problem with Mana leading us, she's pretty brainy after all!" the blacksmith smiled with her trademark, carefree and almost monkey-like grin.</p><p>"You guys are here on a mission too? That doesn't necessarily mean we're on the same mission. Mine has a tight deadline which I'm… Missing…" Mana just realized before turning to the direction of the Hokage office.</p><p>"Yeah, ours has one too, that's why we figured you'd be leading us. The big man wouldn't just let us out on something important like that without a higher ranking leader to watch over us and, face it, we just work together like a charm…" Kiyomi shrugged. As much as Mana's instincts yelled at her to hurry up and ask the two to let her talk to Lord Seventh first, given the tight term she was issued, the magician just relented and followed the short trek upstairs with her friends. Closer to that dark but oddly neutral-feeling blaze…</p><p>What a peculiar chakra signature. It was dark and all-reaching, it spread and attempted to cover up everything around it but it did not incinerate or devour that which it reached. It merely desired to encompass it, as if to own it by imprinting on it and then protecting it with its superheated, pitch-black might.</p><p>"You feel kind of odd, all spaced out and stuff…" Meiko noticed, leaning back on her hands as if attempting to stretch out and rest on an air-bed.</p><p>"You goof, Mana's had to deal with that creepy Honda thing three years ago! Messed up stuff like that changes people… Especially those that think that everything that's wrong around them is their fault." Kiyomi looked at Mana with empathy in her softened eyes. "I should have been here, loads of Yamanaka paid for their devotion to the village and its people with their lives. Some clan heiress I turned out to be…"</p><p>"I would have liked to punch that asshole too." Meiko got at least half-serious. "Someone who's all monstrous and then has the gall to whine and punish other people for it just grinds my gears. Got pretty pissy when I first heard about it. Kept nagging Hokage-sensei to turn back and head to Konoha as fast as we could to check it out when we first heard about it but… By that point, the whole thing was over anyway."</p><p>"Please, come in!" Kuribira Mikapen, the Lord Seventh's assistant, invited the three young women inside. She had heard their voices outside the office, no doubt. The door to the Seventh's office was oddly open already as if the man was waiting for someone and quite welcoming to the arrival of the said group. The impression that the Team Hokage was back together strengthened almost immediately within Mana's gut.</p><p>"It's good that you all came here as soon as you did." Lord Seventh nodded to himself while following the trio of kunoichi entering his open office with a hint of polite hesitation. The man was almost as polite as someone who hadn't summoned the three with a term of appearance, suggesting a necessity for haste. With those words, the man confirmed the fact that Kiyomi and Meiko were also summoned.</p><p>"If you two were summoned, you'd think you two would have hurried here at least a little…" Mana squinted at her two friends. Kiyomi completely ignored the remark whereas Meiko grinned and snickered, choosing to laugh the implication of irresponsibility on her part off.</p><p>"We got here just barely later than you did. What were you, on a date or something?" Kiyomi whispered back.</p><p>Mana looked down and then aside shyly. From how flustered the magician got all of a sudden, Kiyomi smiled as if she'd just discovered a motherlode of all treasures to draw jokes and teasing from. Even if her reaction was in no way up to her control, Mana felt like she'd regret betraying her dating status to her best friends like that.</p><p>"Hmph… These three, huh…" a tall and picturesque man noted, turning back at the three kneeling young women before the trio were excused and told to stand up at ease with an effortless hand gesture of Lord Seventh.</p><p>"I know this guy's like… Twice our age but… He's so HOT!" Kiyomi's signals beamed through Mana's mind. Mental communication appeared to be almost effortless for the Yamanaka heiress this time, no hand seals, not even a twitch in her eye while initiating. Complete mastery and control over it, as long as the target was unaware of the incoming communication or welcoming it… These two must have improved by leaps and bounds over these years, perhaps even more than Mana did.</p><p>Mana had to admit, she hadn't felt warm bubbling quite like this since that time she had met Justicars during the search for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. That time it was supernatural, their Intents were what caused such a violently passionate effect, this time, it was all just the natural gifts of this man. He was tall, not quite a juggernaut in terms of physical build but above decently athletic and fit, the curly, dark hair running down his face, with only his almost royal-looking, violet eyes that were beaming with emotion as if a miniature star was positioned inside them, they penetrated the gloom and the shadow, as well as the black cover of the man's hair and appeared to penetrate to the very soul.</p><p>"This mission is one of great importance. I had hoped that you would agree to work with these three. They are ninja of great esteem and the village has invested a lot into their training, they show even more promise than the already remarkable results they've yielded." Seventh praised the three, making Mana pout her lips a bit. She never could just shrug off praise like that. It always made her feel awkward to just stand and take it. She had taken a thousand beatings in the over five years she's been an active ninja and she'd always choose one over a handful of minutes of compliments.</p><p>"I thought I'd already told you…" the well-endowed one pointed his finger at the Hokage, turning his body sideways and bending his lower back in while he formed a small but almost artistic curve on his upper back, all just to accentuate his remarkable hips and bottom cheeks. This specimen was so tall that even while he slightly bent his knees for a better-looking pose, he was easily the tallest one in the room.</p><p>"Hanshin could do this mission all by himself. If Lord Seventh wishes to send these three with me, that's just a sweet cherry on top, but it won't change a thing. These three will suffice, Hanshin has noted their skill and he will work with them." The demigod declared, pointing his thumb at his face while he struck a confident yet cool smirk for his boss.</p><p>"I don't get it, who's Hanshin? Is this guy his manager or something?" Meiko wondered on the mental link. Perhaps it was preferable that she did not share these thoughts aloud, it was a lucky wonder that she was as used to communicating online as she was. This Hanshin fellow appeared like someone with massive ego issues and may have easily taken this the wrong way, if they were to all work together on an important and dangerous mission, it was for the better if they weren't at each other's throats for the duration of it all.</p><p>"No, he's referring to himself in the third person," Mana replied.</p><p>"Oh, so it has a name, this thing he does… I guess it's normal…" Meiko hummed, letting the final part of her thought linger on.</p><p>"It is most definitely not normal… But I'm strangely okay with that…" Kiyomi's thoughts pulsed and gleamed with warm sensations. It was not uncommon for one's thoughts to reflect one's feelings like that, almost like one's tone would when talking vocally, although for them to be this easy to pick up for visitors of a mental link, it would have had to be quite a powerful rush.</p><p>"Very well…" Lord Seventh nodded with a polite smile, enjoying Hanshin's confidence and energy even while his "shtick" may have irritated him somewhat, as evidenced by a slight twitch in his eye, only noticeable for a brief second. "Then you three should get yourselves familiar with the mission objective. I am well aware that two of you girls are still genin and this mission is something that a squad of jounin and chuunin would work on, normally, but… We all know you two are well beyond what a genin is capable of. I shall entrust for the two higher ranking ninja in the squad to cover the lapses in judgment and experience that may differentiate you two from actual genin and leave it up to you."</p><p>Mikapen picked up three mission files and handed them out to the three kunoichi. The entire file was sealed with a protection seal that had to be undone by a signature sealing technique that would have been immensely complicated had it not required to draw one's blood. It would have taken an A-Rank sealing master ninja to crack into such a protection seal but a genin with blood identified as that of a Konoha ninja could have merely pressed their bleeding thumb to the seal and unlocked it.</p><p>The more difficult part of accessing the well-guarded file were the endless protective seals placed upon a bunch of pages of the file, each one of them shrouded certain words with blood-colored, smoky shroud that only covered a small area around each confidential word or sentence. Every page with these seals had to be unlocked, however, these seals were much simpler to work with, compared to the first protective seal and could have been bypassed by any C-Rank ninja without much effort or chakra spent in removing these seals.</p><p>For a moment, Mana thought she may have been reading a conspiracy theory or a fictional political novel. Not because of the way that the mission objective was worded within the file in particular, but because she had neither seen nor heard about the small settlement spoken of within the file. Not having heard about a name of a whole settlement was troubling to Mana as a lore and history buff. Then again, anything was possible with settlements being built and disappearing into nothing every couple of years. Anything outside a village wall was as chaotic as the imagination could take one when the word was spoken.</p><p>Yordalar was a small settlement of people that have left the Wind Country and obtained some semblance of freedom and political sanctuary inside Fire Country's walls. Something like this immediately raised Mana's suspicions as there did not appear to be any particular reason as to why the Fire Lord may have gone out of his way to potentially piss off the Sheikh or Kage or even the Feudal Lord that these people previously answered to. They may not have been overly involved with the greater politics but they were still lost manpower.</p><p>"Can someone explain this to me afterward? All of this is way too confusing…" Meiko's thoughts echoed inside Mana's mind.</p><p>"Good old Meiko…" Kiyomi's reply was not too far behind.</p><p>"I mean… I've learned to concentrate better, I swear I have, it's just… There are so many words and so many blocks of sentences… All of them related to one another." Meiko groaned internally.</p><p>"I know, confusing, right?" Kiyomi teased her friend. "I'm sure Mana can tell us the short version from her notes, right?"</p><p>"I'm afraid this is the first time that I hear of this Yordalar." The magician cut it short but honest. "It's kind of scary, really."</p><p>"I'm surprised that guy is studying it so accurately." Meiko lifted her eyes up, focusing them at the specimen of masculine perfection that allowed his eyes skim through the contents of the file. Meiko was right, for the arrogant prick that Haishin made out of himself while studying the material for the mission ahead he was serious and composed.</p><p>"Hmph… Very well then…" the special jounin declared. It didn't look like his gaze had changed in any way. He was neither excited for the prospect of upcoming violence nor was he annoyed or afraid of it. He looked at the task ahead in a similar manner that a gardener looked at weed with – just a chore to occupy one's afternoon.</p><p>"Excuse me, I'm not sure I understand the objective completely." Meiko stepped up in front of the squad leader with a grin. "It has a whole bunch of confusing elements to it and I'm worried I'm going to knock out the wrong person or something."</p><p>Hanshin looked down at the relatively tall blacksmith from his impressive height, his eyes appeared to spill boiling water at the young woman. For a split-second, the spark of violence ignited in his eyes and Mana felt almost certain he'd strike the blacksmith but after giving Lord Seventh behind him a second glance, Hanshin settled down and merely brushed the redhead aside. It was not easy to move Meiko when she did not want to be moved so it must have taken considerable effort.</p><p>"You're in Hanshin's way. Hanshin's staircase leads straight to heaven and heaven is not a place people like to be delayed getting to." The man pointed his finger up to the ceiling, due to his height, the handsome shinobi easily touched the ceiling just by extending his limb in its direction.</p><p>"Wow, what an asshole!" Kiyomi's mind emitted these thoughts like a transmitter signal.</p><p>"You three are excused, I hope you can work your problems out by tomorrow morning when you depart." Lord Seventh excused the young women. Kiyomi darted off after Hanshin almost immediately after being excused.</p><p>"Hey, hey you!" she yelled in rudeness that was not commonly seen in her. "Don't tell me you won't train with us even once! What kind of a team leader are you?!"</p><p>"What are you doing?" Mana sent a warning thought Kiyomi's way. Messing with someone as experienced, high-ranking and volatile as Hanshin may not have been the best idea.</p><p>"He offended Meiko, I'm pretty sure, if you looked at it really the wrong way, he kind of groped her, I'm not letting this slide, this is our chance to kick his ass and make him more tolerable for a change." The Yamanaka heiress replied. She must have had a lot of trust in her strength to challenge a special jounin like that.</p><p>"Very well, but this is your fight that you are picking. I will have none of it." Mana sighed out loud, even if she was transmitting her speech through Kiyomi's mental link instead of talking.</p>
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<a name="section0516"><h2>516. What Those With Eyes Cannot See</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Yeah, I know… Wait, what do you mean you'll have nothing to do with it!?" Kiyomi flipped out mentally, some of her anger may have slipped out on the physical plane as well. "Don't you want to get back into sync?"</p><p>"Don't you wanna train with us?" Meiko asked. Her tone sounded as the auditory equivalent of puppy eyes. Whether she was trying to guilt trip the magician or was genuinely frustrated to not get to play around back to back with her best friend was still up in the air.</p><p>"I do. I am not going to fight though. There are few things more stupid than challenging someone like Hanshin-san on the eve of a responsible and dangerous mission, what if you get hurt?" the magician brushed it off.</p><p>"We won't. And even if we will, we'll handle it. Come on, it will be fun!" Meiko tried playing the devil on Mana's left shoulder. "We'll be kicking ass and taking names like old times and we can definitely use you out there."</p><p>"I have spent three years of training preparing for a certain battle with a certain someone. I see no use in fighting anyone else but that man." Mana spoke out loud, closing her mind off from Kiyomi's communication. All the mental training in the Intel Division allowed the magician to ward off her mind from Kiyomi's attempts to reestablish her telepathic communication.</p><p>It was easy to see from Kiyomi's face that the kunoichi was pleasantly surprised by Mana's efficiency in this specific area. It was clearly not something that the Yamanaka heiress expected the magician train at, it was something so specific that it invited a conclusion that Mana trained with the Intel Division to learn how to fight Kiyomi. The thought that Mana was taking time to prepare for such a fight, even if it was never said out loud and was just a conclusion to which Kiyomi had come all by herself, was viewed as a compliment by the blond kunoichi.</p><p>Hanshin did not wait around and look at the three momentarily frozen young women, he had gone off ahead to the training grounds. He had no quarrels to fight or matters to attend to. Mana was graciously gifted this one last night before tomorrow's departure, she felt adamant not spending it licking wounds after a pointless fight in which she had nothing to prove. There was only one clash that mattered and Mana felt increasingly less and less invested in taking part in anything other than her fated clash with Ayushi.</p><hr/><p>"Do you think we can do it?" Meiko's lips managed to turn to a smile even while her upper face showed nothing less than total seriousness. "Without Mana, I mean."</p><p>"Screw her." Kiyomi punched her own fist before taking a fighting stance. "She's always been hesitant to spar and fight but… Never to this extent. I swear, if she pulls this bullshit on the actual mission, I'll slap some sense into her."</p><p>Hanshin either did not have a fighting pose or he merely not offer the luxury of showing his sparring partners one. Nor did he bow or take part in any other honorary ninja kumite rituals. That was just fine though as Kiyomi was too pissed at how badly her squad leader treated Meiko whereas the blacksmith was too thick-headed to know and follow any kumite etiquette. Hanshin bent his knees while twisting his pressed together legs, he was showing off thousands of openings, as if taunting the two kunoichi.</p><p>Kiyomi was the first one to make a move. Her hand seals were significantly faster than ever before and the simplicity of the jutsu she has chosen meant there would not be too many of them required. After just a split-second delay of weaving a handful of hand seals, the kunoichi's chest greatly inflated as her head moved back before all of the built-in air pressure erupted through her mouth.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" she chanted out after the built-up gust of wind left her body and covered the frontal area of the training grounds, heading straight for Hanshin.</p><p>"What is this?" the special jounin covered his face, at the mid-range he was in, Kiyomi's technique offered little to no danger and merely brazing for the tremendous physical force was enough for the experienced ninja to withstand the destructive power of the technique.</p><p>Little did Hanshin know, that Great Breakthrough was no attempt to hurt him, it was a distraction. Even after three years, Kiyomi and Meiko worked just as well together as if they had never parted, to begin with. Just as the uncertainty about his opponents' manner of attack began clawing its way out the chest of the handsome shinobi, he noticed a small scroll rolling and flapping about right by his feet.</p><p>Just as Hanshin managed to regain his footing and lift his head, he noticed another, similar scroll resting in Meiko's hands.</p><p>"C-Rank Storage Seal: Release!" Meiko yelled out while the scroll on the ground unveiled itself. Hanshin was in the middle of dashing back from being close enough to the scroll that the surprise which came out of it would catch him inside of its range. Still, he was not fast enough, no, it did not appear like he tried to be. Hanshin was moving with fluid motions but he seemed almost… Lazy. He was half-assing it the whole way.</p><p>A rising storm of weaponry furled and raged, rotating upward with enough mass and intensity to rip flesh from the bone and grind mountains to dust. Something was wrong. A myriad of bright flashes followed by thunderous clangs signaled that Meiko's storm of rising blades met an invisible barrier right up before tearing into Hanshin. Something strong and fast enough to deflect every single blade in the combo and have them uselessly scatter about on the ground. Meiko bit her lip in frustration.</p><p>"Weapon Transformation!" she chanted out, the scattered steel all transformed into a field of explosive tags on the ground. One on which Hanshin was just about to land while still in mid-air after an attempt to put some distance in between himself and the rushing weaponry.</p><p>This time there was nothing that could have stood in between Hanshin and the minefield. All of the set explosive tags detonated in synchrony, a brilliant chain reaction of certain destruction. As the smoke cleared, only Hanshin in a cocky, invisible-hat-tipping pose remained while the field of the natural, emerald green turned to soggy dirt.</p><p>"Not bad." Hanshin grinned with half of his mouth. "Hanshin had to actually try to withstand this one."</p><p>Even when the quirky special jounin complimented the two kunoichi he sounded like a full of himself prick. His compliments in this instance were nothing but an acknowledgment of minimal effort from his part being required to avoid the moderate amount of injuries that Meiko's lethal battlefield altering combo would have left on someone of his rank.</p><p>"Tsk…" Kiyomi expressed her frustration vocally. "No intel at all… What his fighting style is, how much chakra did he spend to withstand my Great Breakthrough or how exactly he survived your minefield… Mana would have been able to tell us all of those things, she would have sensed if we left a dent in his overall signature or not." She let the source for her frustration be known to her teammate on the mental link.</p><p>"You should be very careful, diverting your attention like that." Hanshin taunted with a threatening and purposefully creepy-sounding tone. In a single, bountiful and very extravagantly performed leap, the special jounin had closed the gap between the two kunoichi and had completely winded up a pretty powerful-looking punch.</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi both leaned back and to their respective sides as an attempt to avoid their opponent's attack. Meiko appeared to be fast enough to have completely moved out of the way, with the extremely lazy manner in which Hanshin has been moving around the blacksmith may just have outpaced the special jounin in a close-range brawl if these speeds were compared. Kiyomi received a light brush at her cheek but avoided most of the strike that was directed primarily in her direction.</p><p>It was such an odd manner of attack, it was like Hanshin intended to hit both young women with a single, direct shot right in between them, curving his punch ever so slightly at Kiyomi's direction as his hand moved back into a defensive position, preparing to defend himself from close-range counterattacks. For a brief moment, the entire training ground got covered in an eye of a storm as overwhelming silence took dominion of it. Then, a loud cracking noise followed, sending both young women down on the ground and sliding through the mushed dirt that Meiko had created.</p><p>"You OK?" Meiko's voice run inside Kiyomi's head, alongside hundreds of thoughts and speculations about what had just happened. The blacksmith was quick to get back on her feet and run after the special jounin, all in an attempt to divert his attention from exploiting the opening he had created.</p><p>"Yeah… I'm not sure what that invisible strike to both directions was but I blocked most of it." Kiyomi let the blacksmith know as she herself got back on her knees to catch a brief breath and wait until her forearms that had absorbed most of the blow stopped feeling numb from the tremendous blow they've just taken.</p><p>Meiko was dancing out there. Pulling out tools from her pockets and unsealing them from her armor at breakneck speeds before effortlessly transforming them into other tools. Offensive weaponry turned to utility tools and then back at offensive gear before turning into shields and armor pieces to protect the blacksmith at the same time. As amazing as it was, the redhead completely managed to keep up with Hanshin one on one in a taijutsu engagement, maybe it was because of her heavily armed approach which forced the special jounin more on the defensive and made him very careful with potentially overextending his limbs.</p><p>And yet, even while Meiko managed to stand her ground, blitzing and clashing in the air, exchanging hundreds of thousands of strikes with each passing clash, she failed to land a single blow. There were some nice openings, openings that the blacksmith exploited but… It was like the strikes had slipped off something solid, something that simply wasn't there.</p><p>"Dimension Sealing!" Meiko chanted out, pulling on a string of steel wire with her teeth, one she unveiled from under her armor somewhere, finally using the scroll she was clutching in her other hand and holding this entire time, the one she intended to use in the first attack on Hanshin but appeared to reconsider. A pair of metallic-colored flashed fired off into a violet blur of light that emanated from the scroll Meiko had just unveiled. The kunai then appeared from the scroll that the blacksmith had previously used to attack Hanshin with her rising stream of blades, hammers, and projectiles.</p><p>The pair of kunai were launched at an astonishing amount of accuracy, even when Meiko had to literally transport her projectile through a pair of dimensional rift connected between two sealing scrolls, she managed to aim them just right to potentially hit her airborne and moving at superhuman speeds opponent.</p><p>"He's going to block that again…" Kiyomi realized. She placed her Yamanaka hand seal at the area where she had read her opponent to land. It did not seem like any amount of physical harm could break through whatever uncanny jutsu Hanshin was using, if the physical approach was pointless, maybe a mental attack was the breakthrough that would help Kiyomi wipe the floor with this smug bastard.</p><p>Strangely enough, the kunai did not bounce off of the kooky, invisible defenses of their opponent, Hanshin merely struck a ridiculous pose in mid-air, bending his body and contorting it like a classical sculptural masterpiece, just enough for the kunai to completely whiff their target and fly off further before detonating after they hit the first piece of rocky debris in their path of destruction. The horrifying string reeling sound suggested the use of the "String Reeling Jutsu" to position Hanshin to a different location and surely enough, the special jounin zipped away from Kiyomi's intended to hit location.</p><p>This placed a frustrating complication, whether to risk using her ace at a much greater distance than initially intended, more so, on an aware and perplexingly nimble opponent or to try and regroup with Meiko, make another plan for attack. It did not matter… Whatever plans for attack Meiko and Kiyomi would make, they would be made fools of until they could have figured out exactly what they were fighting. What was the invisible force that Hanshin used to not only deflect impressive and numerous physical attacks with but also offensively?</p><p>Maybe the Kiyomi prior to the experience and training with the Yamanaka clan would have rushed on ahead, launched her Mind Body Switch haphazardly. Then stood still after whiffing her ace technique, waiting for her wandering consciousness to return to her body, open for a counterattack while threatening Meiko's safety as well. There was no doubt that the blacksmith would have once more engaged an opponent that was an enigma to both of them hand to hand just to protect Kiyomi while her consciousness returned back to her body after whiffing.</p><p>Not this time. Kiyomi had a better idea, just because they didn't have Mana here with her stupid book-smarts to tell them all about this hot yet smug bastard's ability, she could have begun figuring Hanshin out. There was one way to affirm what exactly this technique was and whether it was a technique at all and not a streak of bad luck.</p><p>"Beast Tearing Palm!" Kiyomi grunted out while swiping her arm to the side, massive amounts of Wind Release chakra passed through her entire body, leaving through Kiyomi's sleeves while taking in the natural passage of air built up inside her long sleeves before applying the enhancements that Kiyomi's chakra made to the Wind Release chakra. A slicing projectile of azure Wind Release chakra burst through, heading straight at Hanshin where he was standing.</p><p>The handsome shinobi did not fall for Kiyomi's temptation, instead of using his ability, he merely leaped backward in an impressive flip. His movements started out graceful and quick but ended up exchanging all of the speed for more elegance while the special jounin twirled, flipped and danced in mid-air, almost mocking the two kunoichi. Sadly, it was him that underestimated the two…</p><p>Kiyomi smiled, swiping her hand left and right again at least a handful of times, sending repeating projectiles of slicing Wind Release chakra. In mid-air, twirling like that, it was beyond easy to read Hanshin's movements. There was no way for him to dodge these attacks now, he'd be forced to use his ability again, giving Kiyomi and Meiko another glimpse at what exactly they were fighting against.</p><p>With a hollow, devastating note, Kiyomi's mid to long-range Wind Release ninjutsu shattered into pieces, scattering downward like floaty pieces of a glass chalice which was deflected with a mace with a downward strike. Another projectile burst into sparks violently, as if it had hit an immensely focused and hard resisting force it could not overcome, one that mere eyes could not perceive, however, it then flew aside at massively dropped velocity, suggesting it was deflected.</p><p>"It's chakra…" Kiyomi's thoughts signaled to Meiko. "Only chakra of greater intensity can protect against or deflect chakra. It's a ninjutsu technique that he's using."</p><p>"So that's why you attacked him…" Meiko replied. "Still, if it is chakra, we should be able to see it."</p><p>"Not quite, not if it is sufficiently toned down. Believe it or not, it takes a technique of astounding intensity for chakra to manifest on the outside of one's body. If the variation of his technique entered the upper ranks of ninjutsu ranking, we'd be able to see it, I think he's keeping it down low so that we cannot." Kiyomi explained her conclusions.</p><p>"It is an armor then… An armor of chakra, weak enough not to show up for us. At this point, only a sensor would be able to follow the armor's movements." Meiko put together.</p><p>"The armor only very quickly manifests when it contacts something strong. I saw a modest flash of blue where the armor hit my jutsu for a brief period. How do you know its shape though?" Kiyomi wondered. She wanted to make no false assumptions, for one, because she did not want to be wrong and have those assumptions cost her the entire sparring session, more importantly, she did not wish to fail and have Meiko fail as well in front of someone as vain and rotten on the inside as this incredibly handsome man was.</p><p>"Because he's using it as an armor. It is clearly blunt, deflecting attacks through sheer force, it is clearly not sharp as it has hit us before. He's not wielding it like a sword nor like a shield, he's fighting with it more like a puppeteer, someone with an invisible armor on the outside of their body." Meiko explained. Even if the redhead could sometimes seem dense, when push came to shove on certain subjects, she did excel and had valuable insights to share even around Mana and Kiyomi.</p><p>"Not just outside, he's coated his body with it to protect him from the minefield explosion too. It's because of how weak and low-ranking his technique is that it is so versatile, he doesn't require hand seals to use it, he doesn't need to speak the name of the technique or build up chakra before using it at all. He can coat himself or extend the armor to a greater range. If we can show him we can break his armor, we can force him to use his jutsu on a higher rank, making his armor visible to us and something we can deal with easier." Kiyomi suggested a course of action.</p><p>"Only you would consider a stronger version of the armor as something to "deal with easier"!" Meiko chuckled on the physical plane even while she exuded her cheer mentally as well.</p><p>"I'd rather deal with a technique that can kill me if it hits me dead-on but is visible and has limiters and weaknesses than something like the version he is using now." Kiyomi couldn't keep herself from grinning as well. Fighting alongside Meiko just had that kind of effect on her.</p><p>"Alright then, let's put on some pressure!" Meiko punched her own palm, preparing to take off. Even if a direct attack against someone with Hanshin's ability seemed suicidal, Meiko was the perfect suicidal idiot to force her blunt head through and place the much-needed pressure. She was the hammer of the team and sometimes a hammer was needed to bend and break the steel plating and break the ribs under them so that the scalpel could operate…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0517"><h2>517. The Armor Of A Truly Handsome Person</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Before attacking Hanshin head-on, in a move so obvious and confusing that it would have made a mindful opponent question their read on the tide of battle, Meiko crossed her arm and smacked it by the middle with her elbow, raising the upper part with her fist up high. It looked pretty stylish and Meiko's burst of confidence added flare to it but it only delayed the incoming attack, giving her opponent even more time to properly analyze the attack and decide on a move of their own. Given how Hanshin was already much more experienced and likely faster than the two, as he was fighting on a perpetual lazy mode the whole time, it was not tough to see how Meiko's styling in the middle of a sparring session was a bad idea.</p><p>Regardless, the blacksmith launched herself head first. The control in her movements would have blown the clouds in the sky away in its awesomeness. Despite launching her body at speeds that could have allowed Meiko to apply pressure even on higher than average ranking ninja, the blacksmith did not even break the branch of the tree she vaulted from and generated no destructive air phenomena around her. Years after graduating, it appeared that Wakizashi Meiko may have finally learned proper chakra control.</p><p>Meiko's attack seemed almost foolish, in mid-dash she dragged her right arm across her left one, unsealing a short two-sided blade that she attempted to thrust through her opponent's face. Hanshin did not even move or twitch his eye. That same invisible force that plagued the young women this whole session blasted Meiko right in the jaw, making the redhead's face deform and her body freeze in motion before shooting off in a whole other direction.</p><p>However, instead of the body creating a trail of destruction in its blazing path, it poofed and created a cloud of tar-black smoke.</p><p>"A smoke bomb?" Hanshin mumbled to himself, grinning ever so slightly with the tip of his lips. He was almost disappointed that he was attacked so openly and in such a boring fashion. He was glad to see at least a minimal amount of afterthought being put behind such a useless rush forward.</p><p>"That was a risky move, throwing your smoke bomb out in the air like that during your posing. What if he had noticed it? He'd have read your substitution from a mile away…" Kiyomi contacted her partner, still looking out for her opening.</p><p>"He was admiring my posing. I knew he'd look into my movements and my flexibility instead of what I may or may not throw out. Thanks for that tip though, I'd have never calculated the right moment to substitute with such a small object." Meiko's reply emanated through Kiyomi's link.</p><p>As if blown away by a massive fan, the dark smoke from Meiko's smoke bomb all cleared out immediately. There was little doubt that the special jounin could use his invisible chakra armor to remove the lingering smoke but by that time it'd have been all too late. Just like that, when Hanshin noticed Meiko's actual attack coming, the young woman was already high up in the air, aiming to hit him with a hammer almost her own size.</p><p>"Useless!" Hanshin taunted the girl as she spun, flipped and proceeded to add more and more momentum before her upcoming strike. "Just like your posing!" the shinobi added. As a testament to his words and superior posing skills, the handsome ninja turned around and tightened his buttocks, bent his back in and raised one shoulder while letting the other sink down so that the risen shoulder perfectly obscured the vision to most of his turned around face except for his gleaming eyes.</p><p>"Weapon Transformation!" Meiko grunted after beating half of the falling distance. Her large hammer sunk in smoke sprouted colossally in size, becoming large enough to cover the entire training grounds field that spanned as wide as smaller settlements outside the village borders.</p><p>"Interesting…" Hanshin winked. What previously was invisible now lit up with bright, blue flame and, finally, he pushed his armor to a rank high enough for it to become visible.</p><p>The entire battlefield sunk in total silence at the moment when the two forces clashed against one another in a test of pent-up force. Meiko had the towering size of her transformed weapon, the accumulated momentum and the force of gravity on her side, Hanshin had all the force his armor could muster up at the rank when it finally turned visible.</p><p>It was barely even a contest… Meiko's hammer lit up with blue cracks and fractures spanning hundreds of meters that branched out and multiplied in a split-second and the whole thing exploded in a flashy show of light that dropped a cascade of falling stars across the entire tremendous radius the explosion covered. Meiko herself grunted out in pain, the strain on her hands at that moment must have been incalculable, Kiyomi got shivers just thinking about the times she hit a wall with an iron rod and her forearms got hit with the reverb from that hit, something on this scale…</p><p>"You should have canceled the transformation." Kiyomi contacted Meiko, choosing to dash after her friend and to catch her falling body right from the sky from as high up as she could instead of trying and attacking Hanshin during the brief opening she saw when the special jounin turned his armor visible.</p><p>"I really thought I could get him…" Meiko smiled even though her entire face was wincing with pain. "I guess it really was kind of useless, huh?"</p><p>"Not quite… You showed me a lot about his armor. The range for example." Kiyomi shook her head. "I've had enough of relying on you to give me an opening, that's how we always used to fight. Let's advance together now."</p><p>"But you're weak, he'll kick your ass…" Meiko got confused right after leaving Kiyomi's arms and standing back up on her own.</p><p>Kiyomi's eyebrow twitched and she barely resisted the overflowing instinct of socking her friend right in the face after that remark. Meiko was always someone who let actions speak and teach her, of course, she'd have thought something as foolish and shallow as that…</p><p>"Just go. I'll be right behind you." Kiyomi grumbled out.</p><p>"Alright…" Meiko tipped her shoulders. Her hands moved behind her back. This did intrigue Kiyomi, usually the blacksmith did not rely on her ninja pouch, it was sort of a supply for the blackest day when the redhead emptied her sealed away supply of ninja tools and weaponry. This choice of attack was odd, to say the least, then again, Kiyomi rarely used to try her luck attacking a stronger opponent directly. The last three years changed a lot of things…</p><p>"How about this?" Meiko yelled out while unleashing a storm of kunai and shuriken. There were no tricks or any techniques hidden behind these attacks. It was all just Meiko's natural lobbing strength and an impressive quickdraw speed. Launching deadly blades faster than a downpour threw raindrops.</p><p>"Hanshin remains unimpressed. Hanshin will remember that." Hanshin lowered his hands and hunched his back. His head sunk down in disappointment, obviously overplayed and acted one, a mockery of Meiko's hearty attempt of an attack. Truth be told, any normal day Kiyomi would be on his side, attacking someone of this rank with mere ninja tools was beyond pointless, size, the material used, the number of them… Nothing like that mattered, it was all just useless. Maybe if they all were imbued with chakra coating but… It didn't look like they were from where Kiyomi was.</p><p>The barrage of ninja tools bounced off of Hanshin, not even a sign of any movement from his side, the man remained in his mocking pose that he believed best embodied his disappointment. By now there was no enigma that his invisible armor did the dirty deed of protecting Hanshin. There was a modicum of something to be impressed by with how the special jounin managed to deflect the incoming attacks by barely even looking at them. The armor did not have a mind of its own – it was, after all, just a technique he used which meant he had to control and command every motion. At this point, the handsome devil really may have been just making fun of the two…</p><p>Meiko's strict glare right into Kiyomi's Caribbean-blue orbs scolded the Yamanaka like a shower of boiling water running down her head and shoulders. The young woman threw together a handful of her own hand seals, letting Meiko do her thing while Kiyomi did what she claimed to be able to do and sync up with the redhead. At this point her skillset was versatile enough for the Yamanaka to concoct something suitable for anything Meiko had and even some things she could surprise with.</p><p>"Weapon Transformation: Dimension Sealing!" Meiko grunted out, smacking her hands together. In a chain reaction of poofs and clouds of sand-colored smoke, the ninja tools Meiko had thrown, some of those that were easily deflected by Hanshin all transformed into dimensional sealing scrolls, identical to those that the blacksmith had used before.</p><p>The kunoichi dragged her palm across her other hand as if attempting to strike a spark and ignite something with a piece of flint. Instead of sparks and flames, however, an azure beam of light burst forth from Meiko's gauntlet of the free hand. After the young woman had completed her motion, an exceptionally long bow stayed in her hand, one of bamboo and leather, of completely asymmetric shape, that, from the first glance, made the bow look impractical and difficult to work with.</p><p>Just like a little shooting star, the arrow which the blacksmith fired from her unsealed bow was completely surrounded by whirls of Fire Release chakra. A coating of size and intensity that surpassed any previous shows of chakra imbuement. It appeared that during the three years of training Meiko not only had discovered her affinity for Fire Release but also enhanced her chakra imbuement skill to use her elemental affinity instead of just basic chakra coating, lacking any elemental properties.</p><p>The rushing arrow blitzed into the first dimensional sealing scroll it was fired at, appearing from another and then another, transitioning from multiple dimensional seals without losing any swiftness in the process. The fiery dance of the arrow threatened to penetrate or cut Hanshin by passing really close to him and the sheer size of dimensional seals all around him made it near-impossible to track the arrow's path without a supernatural pattern reading ability like the Sharingan of the Uchiha.</p><p>Two arm-shaped constructs of pure chakra formed around Hanshin, the special jounin used his higher rank of the armor ability he used to slightly nudge the blazing arrow out of the harm's way. Hanshin himself barely moved an inch from his position, the movement of his arms appeared almost effortless from his part which came without much shock from Kiyomi and Meiko's part. If it was the only ability that defined Hanshin's fighting style, used at average or lower ranks, it would have been this versatile and effortless to use for certain.</p><p>The distance that Meiko's blazing arrow had traveled, the dimensional pathways it crossed and the contacts with the enemy it had made appeared to completely leave its path unaltered. On the contrary, the arrow's flames appeared to feed off of the air around them and correct the arrow's trajectory. Increase its velocity by small amounts even, picking up speed step by step as it moved along. Soon, the blazing arrow had created a sphere of fiery afterimages of its complex path that erupted in a pillar-shaped firestorm, dissolving Meiko's arrow into ashes as its fiery chakra coating used the lingering heat of its own flaming tail to shape the firestorm and absorb Hanshin in it entirely.</p><p>When the blazes cleared up, a complete shape of Hanshin's armor was covering the man like a suit of actual armor but greater in size. As tall as the shinobi Adonis himself was, the armor easily added a meter or two in height and bulk as such intensity of the armor was required for the special jounin to remain completely stationary and withstand Meiko's crazy attack.</p><p>The armor was shaped like a mechanical woman, a living armor of the feminine proportions. Its head was reminding of a helmet of exquisite craftsmanship with the back and side of the helmet flowing like ghostly hair where a helmet's neck guard would have normally been. The eggplant-colored hair shimmered with violet aura, suggesting that the hair of the feminine armor was not to be taken lightly and may have just served the function of a normal neck guard if needed.</p><p>Hanshin's eyes still beamed through the open wine-shaded lips of the chakra armor, despite the remarkable light show of the set of armor coating the special jounin, Hanshin's eyes managed to overpower all of the beacons of light emanating from his own technique. The chest area of the armor manifested in the shape of a vest that looked like an open rib cage. The exact shape of the armor's limbs was too difficult to tell over the dozens of detached hands covering the chakra armor as if attempting to tear the armor apart piece by piece.</p><p>"Earth Release: Hidden Mole!" Kiyomi's voice interrupted the ghastly shrieks and crackles of Hanshin's armor that demanded total silence of all witnessing its appearance. With a loud and dirty boom, Kiyomi's dirty body burst from underground, splashing chunks of dirt all over the place as an attempt to utilize the devastated and mixed with the creek that normally used to run around these parts battlefield. Had his gaunt set of armor not covered Hanshin, the clever use of the swampy mush around would have worked.</p><p>Kiyomi burst from underground with a rising kick, a highly unorthodox manner of attacking after resurfacing above the ground level. The arm of the chakra construct armor extended to catch Kiyomi's leg by her ankle. The kunoichi drove her hands down and repurposed the force of her kick into a spinning kick, she managed to contort her body just enough to deliver a spinning kick with her free leg to the area between the neck and ribcage-style vest of the Hanshin's chakra armor.</p><p>"Your kicks lack the sting that your confidence makes Hanshin expect them to have!" Hanshin grunted out before shooting out the extended palm of his chakra armor aimed right at Kiyomi's chest. Given that the Yamanaka heiress was awkwardly dangling with her ankle firmly in his grasp and her other leg failing at the fruitless venture of chipping at the armor further but lacking the strength to deal any damage to it, avoiding this attack seemed next to impossible.</p><p>Kiyomi's free leg wrapped around the middle section of the armor like a vine, applying pressure on the elbow with enough force and skill applied to the one-legged hold that would have broken any of the punier arms that found themselves trapped within such a unique offense. Unfortunately, Hanshin's armored arm lacked any semblance of normal human anatomy to break in the desired way Hanshin's own arm was firmly locked around his chest, in the thicker, better-protected areas of the armor.</p><p>Kiyomi shot repeatedly with precise palm strikes at the elbow-area of the armor in repeated attempts to crack or break it in a spot that would have been incredibly sensitive in not only a living being but also one of any sort of mechanical origins like a puppet or a physical armor. Sadly, it appeared that due to the armor's completely immaterial and even spiritual upbringing, it did not bend its knee to the normal laws of anatomy, physics, and mechanics applied to physical humanoid shapes.</p><p>With a blink, the armor disappeared and then reappeared again, just a split-second later. This clever maneuver left Kiyomi free-falling as her ankle was no longer held by anything and her free limbs were no longer entrapping anything. A thunderous blast sent Kiyomi flying and sliding across the dirt to the edge of the training grounds signaled by a shaking line of ages-old trees that all erupted into the air from the immense force of Kiyomi's sliding impact into the forest line.</p><p>"You've drawn out Hanshin's Black Vicious, the strongest form of Hanshin's chakra armor. That will do for a sparring session. It appears that just like Hanshin had predicted, you will not just stand in the way of his trial to glory." the special jounin posed with the certain satisfaction and a hint of cool behind his primitive hands over his chest pose. His chakra armor became ever so slightly more transparent, no doubt because of the user's attempt to preserve some chakra. Manifesting something this intensive in shape manipulation must have greatly strained a user, even if the user worked their entire career to perfect their control and mastery over the technique.</p><p>Then, completely uncharacteristically for the man who took great pride and effort in his poses. Hanshin's movements stiffened, his Black Vicious blinked and lingered. The wine-colored lips of his gothic construct opened wider, revealing the entire face of the armor's wearer while the hands that littered the armor proceeded to rip the armor to shreds bit by bit and burn away like little, blazing pieces of paper.</p><p>Kiyomi stumbled out of the forest, wiping the blood off her face with a knuckle. Her body was rising up from a position where her palm was touching the mushy ground, eventually, it managed to straighten out, if a little shaky on her legs.</p><p>"I asked for this fight to get a good sock at your face. I'm not yet done with that…" Kiyomi grinned through pain and wear.</p><p>"You've placed your hair on me… Back then…" Hanshin recalled Kiyomi's desperate barrage of palm strikes aimed at the elbow of his Black Vicious. The strikes were relatively strong, strong enough for the special jounin to dismiss them as a talented genin's attempt to bust her way through his shell, weak enough to not even bother him about its chances of success.</p><p>"Took a couple of good shots to force it in. I don't think it touched you at all but… It doesn't have to, has it? When your entire armor is just a giant extension of your own chakra. My hair connected not just with your body but both your spirit and mind manifested. Meiko, would you do me the honors?" Kiyomi looked at her less banged up and worn out friend.</p><p>Meiko cracked her knuckle. She only had one good shot before Kiyomi's Yamanaka Hair Trap would have been broken. She'd better make it a good and stiff one.</p><hr/><p>A flow of emerald-colored light moved away from Kiyomi's face, having just finished treating her chest and the countless insignificant bruises all over her body. She needed to be fresh tomorrow morning, had the Yamanaka not needed to depart first thing tomorrow, the medical ninja on duty would not have bothered with the smaller cuts and bruises.</p><p>"I took a pretty mean blow. My chakra feels a bit wobbly, almost strained my network too much with the augmentation. Not sure it will be up to top shape by tomorrow." The Yamanaka explained to the medical ninja who just sighed and moved to a cabinet. The man took a little, blue food pill from a jar and handed it to Kiyomi for chewing.</p><p>Even with the walk of shame and the extremely blush-inducing licking of the wounds, punching Hanshin in the face, if just once, was incredibly satisfying. The two had advanced so far over these last three years. Before they'd have never landed a blow on an actual A-Rank ninja, they'd have been looked down on and barely even worth using the good stuff on. Now they hung around the same battlefield and were one step away from being peers… If only the Chuunin Exams hadn't gotten postponed…</p>
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<a name="section0518"><h2>518. The Crimson Birds Of Prey</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana tapped her foot on the settled dirt near the village gate. It wasn't like the magician was ever an impatient person or that she could reasonably complain of being bored. Once in a while, she had the luxury of watching the gate guards pat down a cargo that was being moved into a village or talk to a suspicious-looking fellow attempting entry. Most of these cases were just people who've been on their feet for too long and looked like banshees at this hour of the early morning.</p><p>No. Mana was in some of her better moods. Yesterday's show could have gone better, she's gotten a tad rusty on the pizazz factor after missing out on three whole years of shows but after this mission's done it shouldn't have taken too long to get back into the swing of things. Unlike many other things, Mana's magic shows did not directly clash with the reason for her intense and focused on a solitary goal training.</p><p>"Hey! Figured you'd be first to come, you're always early, even when you have the most to do out of all of us…" Meiko chuckled with a lazy yawn. Her chakra seemed calm and a lot more lively than Mana ever remembered Meiko's signature being. Even after sparring in what inevitably would have gone out of control, the blacksmith had a signature that surpassed her norm by far, at least one that Mana remembered.</p><p>Mana couldn't think of anything clever to say, she just smiled and nodded as a polite acknowledgment of Meiko's arrival. The redhead was never the one to hold a grudge so the magician could leave it up to her to not get too mad at Mana for missing out on sparring alongside the team.</p><p>"Hmmm? Not like you to be nervous before a mission… Even when things get crazy, you usually out-crazy them by how calm you are. Something's wrong, did you drop something at the show yesterday?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>Mana could never understand why her friends so often missed out on her shows. It was not like they hated stage magic or anything, it used to be a fairly popular piece of entertainment locally, more so than even the movies that were by far the flashier novelty. Maybe not yet the awesome sight that they were once perfected like they were in the universe Mana brought them back from but still…</p><p>"Yeah actually… But that's fine. Not too many people showed up yesterday so it won't make the papers or anything." Mana arced a melancholic smile.</p><p>"Yeah… I haven't built anything in a while. I'd probably mess it up if I tried making something fancy right now." Meiko admitted with a hearty shrug. "Anyway, can you finally explain to me what the mission is all about, I'm not sure if I should be excited or not and nobody had the time to tell me yesterday."</p><p>The mission objective may just have been part of the reason why Mana's show could have been better last night. The magician spent too much time reading out compared to practicing her magic tricks. The fact that she missed out on a whole settlement and a rich piece of history to explore that now made itself an important part of her life both irritated, challenged and made Mana a little bit fired up.</p><p>"It's sort of a long story. To make it shorter, we need to make sure spies from other ninja countries don't mess with a small settlement that willingly made itself ours." Mana tried simplifying as much as it could have been simplified.</p><p>"That's wrong, actually… It is far more likely that we'll be the ones needing protection from both the Yordalar settlers and foreign ninja spies. Though, let Hanshin tell you something, for the sake of brevity, it just about sums it up…" Hanshin spoke revealing himself having stood by the tall village wall out of nowhere. It would have seemed remarkably amazing had the man not had a ridiculously swollen right cheek and spoken in a slight lisp.</p><p>"Well… I guess it won't be boring, at the very least." Meiko grinned with a full-teeth smile, holding none of her cheer back. "I wanna show off how much your training we did back while looking for the Box helped me out."</p><p>"You really don't have to. I taught you a bit or two because you asked me to…" Mana tried to politely deafen Meiko's obligation to prove something to Mana.</p><p>"Nonsense, you've shown off how much our training meant to you by becoming so nimble and fast, it's the most honorable thing a tutor can feel, seeing how far their student can take their lessons. I want you to experience it too." Meiko chuckled.</p><p>Almost immediately the blacksmith turned behind her, it was tough to miss out on the cue, Kiyomi had signaled her on the mental link. And yet Mana heard nothing as if she was left out. Examining the Yamanaka's condition as well as the state of her chakra signature Mana could not pick out any exact reasons for the blonde to be mad at her – Kiyomi was pretty much as healthy as she could get and her chakra was, similarly to Meiko, vastly larger than the state Kiyomi departed to train with three years before and just about what Mana recalled from reconnecting with the two after her own training expedition.</p><p>"Well, now that everyone's here, Hanshin-Gumi can set out," Hanshin mumbled to himself.</p><p>"Hanshin-Gumi?" Kiyomi squinted, firing arrows at the self-appointed team leader. Though she did not appear to be willing to make a whole thing about it, settling down and reducing herself to a fit of silent scorn instead of arguing with someone who clearly seemed crazier by a whole margin compared to her.</p><p>Hanshin disappeared with just a flicker. His physical shape must have been considerable to completely disappear any sensory input Mana could rely on except for her sensory. The movement and location of Hanshin's unique signature told the magician all she needed to know about which direction the special jounin was going and how fast.</p><hr/><p>"You still didn't tell me what was bothering you before." Meiko turned to Mana while the trio was traversing through the boundless forests of the Fire Country. The expanse was known to all four ninja as if they had the map to it scribbled on their hands, at least to some more traveled to directions.</p><p>"It's… My father, actually." Mana sighed.</p><p>"Is something wrong with him!?" Meiko got startled, it was tough to say whether the reason for her reaction was the fact that the man was somewhat of Meiko's personal idol while he was still an active ninja and the blacksmith did not have the courage to look up at the likes of Chestnut Hanasaku let alone dream of ever training with them or the fact that he was Mana's father.</p><p>"It's tough to explain. The whole time after his injury, I thought he was learning to deal with the pain of his injuries but he was just drowning it in the experimental medication that the Ayushi cult produced and sold on the black market." Mana started. Her face made no attempt at hiding the fact this was a painful subject to talk about.</p><p>"The Ayushi cult are the guys that were behind that monster attack on the village, right?" Meiko scratched the side of her head. Usually, the redhead was pretty carefree about being wrong about things or not knowing something but when she was not aware of something related to personal matters of her friends – things were clearly different. Meiko did not look comfortable confirming this at all.</p><p>"Yeah." Mana nodded. "After we shut them down, I was worried that things would get really bad with father and they did. He got angry at everything all the time. I can't even begin to imagine what it was like for him while I was training away, or for mother at that… No helping me with magic shows to occupy his attention, no way to deal with his pain, most definitely no tinkering."</p><p>Meiko looked down and gulped heavily. The prospect of absolutely no tinkering showed it to the redhead more clearly how dire things were better than any fancy wordplay may have.</p><p>"These past three years I've trained myself with a sole purpose, a certain man I must stop at any price, one that stands so high above the clouds that nothing else but every thought since then to now focused on beating him will do. I made only one exception to that focus. My father." Mana explained.</p><p>"You made that illusion that can ease his pain, right? Numbing pain doesn't seem like such a complicated thing when you say it out loud but recalling our lessons about beating genjutsu… I'd have no idea where to start with an illusion even this simple." Meiko smiled in politeness. Doing her best to make the mood lighter for her friend as she's done so often before, back during Mana's darkest days and deepest lows.</p><p>"Sure, just numbing pain with a genjutsu is simple, fooling the body that one isn't feeling pain at all, I mean. But to actually stop it… The Ayushi cult wasn't fooling around for years with that mission for naught." Mana shook her head with a slight arc to the tips of her lips. Just seeing Meiko trying to lighten up the mood always made Mana's day a little bit brighter, no matter how feeble the blacksmith's efforts were, they were often successful.</p><p>"It seems to Hanshin you haven't really made an exception to your rule at all then…" Hanshin's strong and cocky voice ringed in Mana's ears, the magician turned to her right only to see Hanshin carelessly dashing about with his hands locked firmly around his buff chest as if he needed to keep no balance while dashing at these speeds. "The way it looks to Hanshin is… You know you can't beat the man, so you decided to beat him at where it would hurt more – accomplish his goal for him."</p><p>"Did you know Konoha's Great Trapster too?" Meiko looked at the special jounin with a cheerful smile. Hanshin covered his face with a flappy palm, making a goofy-looking pose.</p><p>"Hanshin knows or cares about no man but Hanshin." The special jounin replied.</p><p>"Go figure…" Kiyomi replied with what seemed like a grumpy hiccup.</p><p>"Maybe. It's been pretty dark and hopeless sometimes, maybe I did start working on the technique just to spite that man at some point. At this point, I honestly could not tell." Mana sighed. "Still, I've managed to work out a prototype for the technique. I can make the pain disappear for real, not just with a mind trick. Though just for one target and just if I stay around them."</p><p>"So now that you're leaving home, you're feeling bad about leaving your father alone again," Kiyomi stated the fact.</p><p>"So you're talking to me again then?" Mana grinned at her. "Going to maybe include me in the mental link in the nearest future?"</p><p>Hanshin turned his curious eyes at the trio of girls, slightly amused by the fact that there was a mental link but then swiftly turned his eyes back at the road ahead, even if he only needed minimal attention to avoid the trees and other obstacles at his pace.</p><p>"I never stopped talking to you…" Kiyomi pouted. "And I only left you out of the mental link because it didn't seem important, we haven't picked a fight just yet."</p><p>"I see," Mana noted.</p><p>"All the more reason for you to complete the mission nice and fast and come back home then." Kiyomi smiled. It didn't look from where Mana was moving around that the Yamanaka was angry at the magician for bailing out of yesterday's spar but, then again, it was tough to say for certain, ironic when Kiyomi's own mind was usually the forum for the trio's conversations.</p><p>Because of the unique state of the settlement, with it entering the Fire Country through its own will after leaving the Wind Country, Yordalar laid at the very edge of the Fire Country, right in between Kusagakure and Amegakure, in that way, in between all three: Fire Country, Earth Country and Wind Country. Even though neither Amegakure nor Kusagakure belonged to any of the countries, Yordalar proudly and adamantly declared themselves a part of the Fire Country.</p><p>That was where the things got complicated. Yordalar was such a problematic location with so many different interests brewing in it that it was next to impossible to know which country may have had their representatives misbehaving there. The mission objective stated that there were reports of foreign spies inciting a violent coup amongst the Yordalar authorities, one that would fuel a transmission of the rights to the settlement. With so many elements in play, so many foreign politics factors to consider, it was no wonder it flew right over Meiko's head. Mana herself was not overly confident in her ability to ace the test about Yordalar external and internal politics, now of all times, when her grasp of those things should have been the sharpest.</p><p>"Mana, you strike Hanshin as an intelligent young lady," Hanshin spoke up out of the blue, breaking the magician out of her nervous trance. "What is your prediction of what we'll find there? Who do you think could send their spies to Yordalar?"</p><p>"I'd have less success telling you who would not benefit from splitting the territory off from the Fire Country than telling you who it was that did it. Just about any player involved has things to gain, although my first guess would be Iwagakure." Mana replied, trying to be honest and give her best assessment.</p><p>"Interesting. How so? Hanshin feels sure it would be either Kusagakure or Amegakure. A small territory on the border in between the two would significantly bolster their overall forces, boost the village's economy and grant the village notable presence at the border." The special jounin smirked.</p><p>"I believe that Iwagakure is in dire need of allies. From what I've seen and heard at the Summit where I was chosen as a Voice of Ninja, the coltan conflict with Kumogakure is not going their way. Had it not been for the mountainous battlefields and their affinity for those types of terrains, the three of us may not have seen this conflict continue by the time of our return to Konoha." Mana voiced the most obvious reason. It just seemed to her like all the other reasons, the things other countries and villages had to gain were goals of ambition. This one was the only goal of survival, therefore much more likely to be the relevant case.</p><p>"What about the Wind Country?" Kiyomi wondered. "They can't be too happy about losing a settlement like that. It would be within their interest to pull something shady like this."</p><p>"I don't know much about foreign politics, but wasn't the Kazekage kind of a nice guy back when we met him?" Meiko closed one of her eyes while trying to recall the encounter. It had happened so briefly during the group's quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss that it was just a grain of sand in the vast desert.</p><p>A reeling snap woke the team of ninja up from their peaceful, traveling mood. That gut-wrenching sound that telegraphed steel wire being at play. Within a blink of an eye, all four ninja found themselves trapped in a vast net of steel wire, weaved not too unlike the manner in which a spider would weave their trap. Mana had once read of a ninja clan the members of which all possessed spider-like attributes like six arms and the ability to weave silk and infuse their chakra to it. Such a clan may have adopted this trap pattern but not the material used.</p><p>"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Ju…" a figure in a dark green coat that landed alongside his partner to a thick branch nearby the trap of steel that the group had laid chanted out, before the man could finish, however, his friend pulled him out of the way by yanking his comrade by the shoulder while using an improvised grappling hook comprised of a hooked kunai attached to a steel wire controlled through a reeling device on the ninja's wrist to escape.</p><p>"What the hell? We can get them! We need to strike now! They've got that Yamanaka girl with them." The ninja that was yanked away from a prize that was his to incinerate was not too happy about the "save". The fellow had short, curly hair to him and a moderately flat and boring face. He was a tad bit shorter than his partner too.</p><p>"You've been born with the world's most sophisticated pair of eyes and yet you keep them closed when it counts." The red flare of a Sharingan beamed from the ocular orbs of the second ninja, one with shoulder-long hair and a midnight-blue coat of his own.</p><p>"I did use them, how do you think I spotted the Yamanaka heiress all the way from Kanabi bridge?" the first Uchiha reacted with all the subtlety and composure of a capricious child.</p><p>"And what do your eyes tell you now?" his partner asked. Upon being encouraged, the first Uchiha turned at the captured group and activated his Sharingan only to see a trio of chakra signatures neatly tied up and desperately looking for an efficient way to get out from their bindings without hurting themselves too much. They did have a mission to complete still…</p><p>"Apart from the fact that our prey is about to escape? Wait…" the first Uchiha was just about to try and get snappy with his partner but then he also noticed the unusual signature in the chakra of the short magician girl that he had captured.</p><p>"That's right." The man's partner closed his eyes as the girl's body burst into cherry petals and scattered across the battlefield revealing that they had only caught an illusionary body, the real thing had managed to catch her chance and escape the trap.</p><p>"We need to give chase. She was in the back of the line, she reacted out of pure instinct during the split-second her superior was caught. She's nothing special, we can still kill her." The first Uchiha looked at his partner who just shook his head.</p><p>"Let's retreat to the bridge for now. We've wasted too much time already if we were to kill them, it should have been done immediately. Just a moment later we're risking falling for their own trap, for all we know, they may be luring us out of the hiding and into their counterattack at the very moment." The second Uchiha replied. The two nodded in sync before flickering away, using the cover of the trees to mask their movements all the way to the tall, wooden bridge where they were adamant of standing their ground out in the open.</p><p>The steel wire around Hanshin snapped easily upon the man's activation of the invisible chakra armor. Meiko wrestled around with the strings, carefully feeling them for any possible application of chakra imbuement before snapping them easier than she'd have snapped silk threads. Kiyomi followed Meiko's example. Snapping the threads immediately may have been dangerous, if their captors knew what they were doing they'd have waited for a while before applying a light coat of chakra to the threads, making them near indestructible and causing any attempts at snapping them to leave grievous wounds. That'd have ended their mission before it even began.</p><p>Mana's body reassembled from flower petals beside Kiyomi. Truthfully, she had stood there all along, merely wearing the dissipation of her body as an illusion.</p><p>"They were talking about you, both of them were Uchiha. Do you know who they are?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Red Hawks, probably." Kiyomi grumped out. Any irritation that the Yamanaka felt for the magician before was now refocused into a blaze meant solely for the rogue Uchiha splinter group.</p><p>"Red Hawks or not, they're standing in Hanshin's way." Hanshin played with his hair, stroking and flaunting them about before striking a menacing and bizarrely open fighting pose. "The wheel of fate crushes those in its way."</p><p>Mana, Hanshin, and Kiyomi rushed on ahead towards the Kannabi Bridge, Meiko pondered of something for a handful of seconds while scratching her head before shrugging.</p><p>"He's always so dramatic about everything…" she settled the matter of her focused thoughts for herself before taking off after the Red Hawks as well.</p>
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<a name="section0519"><h2>519. The Heresies We Commit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"They're both waiting for us on the bridge." Mana established through the use of her chakra sensory. "Their chakra sizes are moderate, about the size of any one of us if you exclude Hanshin-san."</p><p>Good, that means we can kick their ass easily, we have the numbers on them!" Meiko exclaimed. She raised her fist in the excitement of a favorable brawl.</p><p>"Chakra size is rarely an accurate measurement for skill." Mana tried cooling Meiko down. "They seem to be under the impression that we will be passing the Kannabi Bridge, we don't really have to though. We can easily bypass them by dashing around the place."</p><p>"That's if we don't fall for another trap," Kiyomi noted. "I'd say it would be safer to just kill them and be done with it, that way even if we do fall for a trap, we can just get out of it and continue on our way. What if the reason they're waiting at the bridge is that every other passageway across is trapped?"</p><p>"Can you sense any of the traps?" Hanshin wondered, turning at Mana.</p><p>"I can sense plenty of small signatures all around but they may not be traps. I can't sense anything that's not purely chakra-based so if they set an explosive note or something similar, I'll only sense it when it activates, seconds before it's off." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Hmph, for someone who played them and forced them to back off, you're awfully hesitant to engage them." Kiyomi grinned at Mana. "If they're pestering travelers, I thought you'd want to stop them."</p><p>"We don't absolutely have to fight them, that means we shouldn't." Mana voiced her position. "If we're careful enough, we can avoid the traps they've set around the bridge, given they're even there."</p><p>"Awww, come on, they clearly wanted to kill us, aren't you a little bit curious as to why?" Meiko leaned back, for someone who was willing to engage a pair of rogue Uchiha ninja, she was awfully relaxed.</p><p>"There's been a price on my head ever since I became a chuunin, there's a great one on Hanshin-san's. They did appear interested in Kiyomi though…" Mana tried playing Meiko's appeal to Mana's curiosity, a powerful stimulus for certain, but then she herself appeared to contradict her own feeble effort to downplay the allure of curiosity.</p><p>"It does not matter if Mana's curious or not, we're going." Hanshin declared. "We don't know if these losers are in cahoots with the foreign spies trying to rile up Yordalar. They may know something and I have two skilled interrogators on my team. Plus, they're Red Hawk scumbags and killing them for the Uchiha would be just a show of good faith."</p><p>Kiyomi extended her tongue, making a gagging mimic at her two teammates while Hanshin played being oblivious to the goofy reaction of the Yamanaka heiress. Mana sighed and placed her hands in the pockets of her blazer, raising her shoulders up in objection to what her team was about to do as if she was outside and underdressed in mid-winter. The four figures of the newly assembled squad heading to Yordalar disappeared after their targets, covering the entire distance in a nearly instantaneous dash forward.</p><p>"Oh… You're really cocky to engage us in an open field." The first Uchiha teased the emerging Konoha party.</p><p>"We both know the Kannabi Bridge cannot be covered from any of the treelines. The only way through is across." Hanshin stroke his hair, breathing in the fresh edge of the Fire Country air while his chest lifted up and expanded vastly, the man tensed up his entire body as if showing it off in an effective showy pose.</p><p>"That's not the only reason why we chose to stop you here." The second Uchiha hit a smirk and glanced at his partner.</p><p>The first Uchiha swung his hands around in a circular motion as if channeling his chakra but as Mana's sensory tipped her off – that was not it. He was not molding anything inside his body, there was something else to be afraid of but given how nobody appeared to have a solid clue about what it was, Mana decided to stay on her toes. She would not want to use Flower Petal Sanctuary again, using that illusion twice before she even arrived at the mission destination would be a lousy start for something as important and dangerous as the road ahead.</p><p>Something popped on the first Uchiha's wrist. Something that sounded familiar to Mana, in fact, she wore something very similar on her forearms right above the wrists – springing mechanisms. Mana's expelled cards, ones she could have flung at the enemy as if shooting them from a cannon like one of the weapon dispensers she saw the Syndicate use before. It appeared that the ones this Uchiha nukenin used expelled steel wire, that must have been how he made that impressive wire trap before.</p><p>This one was no mere trap, at least not one of the passive kind – he was firing off a web formation as if attempting to scoop the opposing party up in his net. That did not seem good at all. The steel wire bent and twisted around Hanshin's body, Mana's glance sharpened when she noticed it – even if the man kept his ability invisible, her sensory tipped the magician off immediately. At this point, Mana was skilled enough to use it as a second set of eyes – she saw the armor clear as day even when she could not actually see it.</p><p>Meiko dashed backward, she tried outracing the steel wire but she underestimated the lack of space that the Kannabi Bridge offered for maneuvering. Just when Mana thought about how novice Meiko's mistake was, the blacksmith's shoes lit up with actual blazes of Fire Release chakra, launching the young woman like a rocket at a diagonal backward direction. It appeared that Meiko would have the raw speed to escape the snapping trap. Or, at least, she would have… But the strings connected with something barely visible. Something attached to Meiko's shin. A piece of wire that was left there since the first trap she fell for, with a scooping motion of the falling wire trap, the blacksmith found herself engulfed in the imbued with chakra steel wire net.</p><p>Just when the magician thought it was about time she herself worked on a strategy to avoid capture, She felt dozens of individual strings pulling her towards the net. While Mana's Flower Petal Sanctuary fooled the two before, she didn't quite avoid having leftovers stick to her body, ones that she did not notice or thought being relevant before they lit up with chakra signals like little beams and extended to connect with the larger net being cast. Before she knew it, Mana was completely encased in the net.</p><p>"What the shit? Not this again!" Kiyomi grumped, wrestling with the net again. In this terrain, surrounded by a canyon from every direction and a narrow, dying vein of water deep below, with her skillset in mind, the Yamanaka had few options to avoid the chakra net herself.</p><p>While the strings still lingered and brimmed with chakra, extending from the long sleeves of the first Red Hawk member, the Uchiha weaved a collection of hand seals. Mana felt an amount of chakra rising from within the depths of the enemy's network, unlike anything she's felt before. It was like clusters of stars all exploded in synchrony, a combination of explosive pillars all about to erupt into a singular jutsu. It was clear that the Uchiha did not mean to devastate and leave the entire quadrant of existence just as an empty void so the technique's destructive power had to be massively compressed and channeled. The amount of control necessary for such a feat was almost too much to believe achievable. Then again, if someone was capable of such a feat, it would have been the Uchiha…</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Dragon Howitzer!" the Uchiha roared out, flares of flames burst from inside his mouth when he spoke even before he expunged the colossal ocean of flames. Instead of spreading over the canyon and the country beyond, leaving the surrounding battlefield as nothing but a field of raining ash in its rampaging path, the chakra imbued steel wire appeared to absorb and guide the technique into a singular, direct path.</p><p>And thus the reason why these two chose to fight on a bridge – a straight and narrow passageway became evident. The mother technique of this jutsu was capable of untold, cosmic scale devastation, it required unmatched, almost legendary skill to contain but together with the skilled use of steel wire, it formed a mighty combination of a guided, all-incinerating pathway, almost like a cannon blast that seemed impossible to survive.</p><p>"Black Vicious: Into the Fire!" Hanshin smacked his palms together, forming his Black Vicious armor while the flames had managed to spread barely an inch after being unleashed from their master's mouth. The disembodied hands covering and attempting to peel bits of Black Vicious' flesh off pulled and tore the armor open, revealing glowing openings in the armor that fired off streams of blazing-red flames at the focused Fire Release attack.</p><p>The attacks clashed together, pushing the other back before switching the roles and giving way. For a brief moment it had appeared like a deadlock but just as it had appeared that Hanshin's Black Vicious would lose the struggle, the armor clapped its hands together and more hands peeled more pieces of the armor away, letting showering streams of water free from within the armor, just like the flames had come before. With the pumping jets of water weakening the opposing technique, Hanshin's Black Vicious had managed to overcome the enemy and push the directed yet greatly weakened river of flames back.</p><p>"Black Vicious: The Rain Technique!" Hanshin roughed out through great effort.</p><p>Mana had noticed a red flare in the eyes of the second Uchiha, the partner Red Hawk grabbed his worn out by the power struggle friend by his waist and swung out of the way using a piece of steel wire that he had improvised a zip-line out of. While the second Uchiha was unlikely to possess the skill in steel wire use matching that of his peer, he had the infernal Sharingan eye that allowed him to nab simple techniques such as these and use them when needed after they were borrowed.</p><p>"Get out of these bindings. Do not drag Hanshin down or I shall dispose of you next." The special jounin gave the trio a mean glare. Mana couldn't stomach the fact that her hesitance to go all-out on a battle she wasn't preparing for almost cost her and her friends her life, she couldn't truly meet her superior's gaze for a couple of moments after the blazes had cleared out in the air. Meiko appeared to be amused if nothing else, just laughing it off as a form of a friendly apology.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress looked irritated but nowhere near as much as Mana had thought she'd be irked by this capture. The old Kiyomi would have been sent into a fury that'd have left her chakra control unorganized and sent the blonde into a fit of a mighty yet unfocused rampage. There was no way that the Kiyomi Mana used to know would have taken being outwitted and played by an Uchiha as kindly as this new and improved young woman did. She was almost behaving like a mature and conserved kunoichi.</p><p>"You've got some nerve, you bastard! Coming at us, the only true inheritors of the Uchiha name with a technique like that!" the wire-using Uchiha took a step forward that looked more like an enraged stomp. "You dare mock our ancient and revered legends of the Tempestuous God of Valor – the Susanoo with this cheap copycat technique!?"</p><p>"Calm yourself, Nashi. This is not an opponent we can just lash out at lightly. You could not overcome him with your best shot when he was alone and we were fortunate enough to restrain his team, now, with their aid, we need to play this perfectly." His partner tried to step in before Nashi Uchiha did something that would get both of the two Uchiha killed.</p><p>"The Rain Technique?" Mana heard a mocking sentiment resonate within the mental link, the thoughts rang with Kiyomi's voice.</p><p>"Silence. While Hanshin was learning this technique, Hanshin needed a placeholder name. Sadly, by the time Hanshin had come up with a better name, his body was too used to the mantra of the placeholder name which would have made learning to use the technique while chanting the correct name take a whole more year. Hanshin has no such time to waste on trivialities such as these…" the team leader replied on the mental link, for a second Mana felt surprised to hear the team leader's thoughts on the mental link. It used to be something that Kiyomi would only extend to the three of the Team Hokage but it had seemed like the Yamanaka had drawn similar conclusions to Mana – rationality and an all-out approach was what was needed here.</p><p>Sentiments and quirks would only get them all killed and none of them had the luxury of dying here.</p><p>"As for you! Let Hanshin tell you something, Red Hawk scumbag…" Hanshin pointed his finger at Nashi while stroking his hair with the other hand and bending his knees to the side to show off the behind parts of his body better. "Hanshin doesn't need to mock anything, you two losers do that fine all by yourselves. Don't think I haven't noticed you innovating on an old bitch of a jutsu there… What would your Red Hawk pals say if they found out you doing something like that?"</p><p>"What does he mean?" Meiko's thoughts resonated through the mental link.</p><p>"The jutsu that Nashi used was Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation. It is a sacred Uchiha technique because it was invented by Uchiha Hakari – the Second Hokage. It seems like Nashi had used it together with his strings, just like the Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu, combining the two is a surprisingly powerful yet a very unorthodox combination for the Uchiha." Mana replied.</p><p>"Yeah, Uchiha tend to think everything they do is perfect the way it is. They jutsu need no innovation, their eyes can overcome any obstacle and their attitudes are just fine the way it is. Since these Red Hawks broke off because they weren't liking the way their clan was handling matters, they're likely to be even more conservative. A combo like that coming from a Red Hawk really caught me by surprise myself." Kiyomi joined in.</p><p>Mana's hands lit up with lightning crackles around the palms while she took a fighting stance and prepared to truly fight for the first time in a long while. It would have been foolish to say that she had gotten rusty, these past three years it was nothing but ceaseless training, strategies, and preparation for the only fight that mattered but it would all be for naught if she did not live to see it. Meiko dragged her arm across the plates of armor covering her arm so swiftly and hard that her gauntlets dragging across her arm formed small sparks which only strengthened the popping effect from when the blacksmith unsealed her short sword and ignited it with blazing flames so intense and sizeable that they easily doubled the sword's length.</p><p>"I'm off," Kiyomi announced all of a sudden before flickering away in a blitz. Mana and Meiko followed their retreating comrade with calm eyes.</p><p>"W-Wait…" the second Uchiha extended his large hand forward as if attempting to stop the long overdue departure of the Yamanaka heiress.</p><p>"Now you're the one breaking formation, Gubezuri," Nashi warned his larger comrade.</p><p>"B-But if we can't kill the Yamanaka heiress that symbolizes our clan's weakness, what has all this been for?" Gubezuri finally showed a fanatic chink in his armor of calm and reservation.</p><p>"It's fine if she runs away. The only reason why these four would come here in the first place is that they need passage. If she tucks her tail and runs away – they'll fail their mission. That means the village will have to punish her, they won't, our weakling peers will do nothing and further showcase how weak they've gotten. More people will see that we're right. She'll probably do more good by living through and failing than if we just kill her here, come to think of it."</p><p>Meiko and Mana simultaneously charged ahead. It was a foolish move, to charge at two protectors of this narrow space that negated the numbers advantage as well as granted them the advantage of terrain as they were undoubtedly bolstering their skillset to fight exactly in this terrain. The only sensible way to fight here would have been to wait for the enemy to open up, to run at them first and show their hand. As long as the enemy did not choose a method for an attack, they had an infinite possibility of cards they could put on the table, the moment they played their cards, they only had those they played. Things were no different in combat.</p><p>Meiko shot her right foot out forward, stopping her quick advance and swiping her blazing sword in a horizontal slash well out of the range of even her chakra coated gladius. Regardless, the chakra coat ignited the air that the blade cut through, creating explosive pockets of air brimming with firestorms. Regardless, both of the Uchiha took a leap off of the bridge, using the string reeling devices on their wrists to swing under the bridge and avoid the exploding and flaming air pockets that Meiko sent their way.</p><p>The two Uchiha used the momentum of their swing to attempt and launch them onto the bridge again, this time with swords in their hand that laid under their cloaks this entire time, aiming to impale both kunoichi simultaneously. Just as they showed their faces over the bridge, a pair of large feet dug in deep into their jawlines simultaneously instead, sending both Uchiha rocketing back and down into the bottom of the canyon below.</p><p>"How're ye assholes doin'?" Usuzoku taunted the Uchiha that quite obviously could no longer hear him.</p><p>"I bet they're thinking, "I only took my eyes off of the enemy for a second", huh?" Usubane hopped, overflowing with energy on her feet.</p><p>"Don't repeat the enemy's mistake, you two, their Sharingan were off, they did not wish to strain them due to previous use," Mana warned the two rabbits she had summoned during the brief second she was gifted while the enemy tried to swing under the bridge and therefore did not see the magician pull out her rabbits. "It won't be nearly as easy to keep landing blows on them."</p>
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<a name="section0520"><h2>520. Ten Seconds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A resonating signal of chakra beamed in the distance. Mana's chakra sensory had become acute enough as of late that she could no longer just verify the existence of a chakra signature but sense some details of that signature. Given the input from the other senses, oftentimes it lea to some very useful insights. Things were no different now, given how the magician saw no visual changes from this distance nor did she sense a change in her allies' chakra systems, which would have suggested an illusionary attack – it became evident that Nashi and Gubezuri had activated their Sharingan.</p><p>"Be careful, their eyes are active, time them out. It appears that Sharingan wears on the user's system more and more the longer it is used." Mana warned Meiko and the rest on the mental link.</p><p>Just as Nashi and Gubezuri twitched for a movement forward, they froze as if in total panic, then turned at the side of the canyon to their right, letting their eyes gaze up in fear. The type of fear that one experienced when they knew exactly what they would see up there but begged all the omnipotent forces in the universe that dictated fate itself that one would not see what they felt like they would see once they looked.</p><p>Kiyomi was stuck to the side of the canyon, pressing both her palms to the surface with a grin that betrayed exactly how much the Yamanaka enjoyed what she was about to do.</p><p>"Earth Style: Rock Collapse!" she yelled out while sending a pulse of chakra through the canyon wall that resonated with ripples through the stone, lodging out massive chunks out of the canyon and sending them crashing down below to where Nashi and Gubezuri were standing atop the creek that ran at the bottom. The loosened integrity of the canyon forced even the Kannabi Bridge, which had held for years upon years and served as a passageway between Konoha and Kusagakure, to collapse. The damage and pressure caused by the previous clash of flames between Nashi and Hanshin appeared to have caused significant damage to the structure even when all of the destructive potential was perfectly contained. It was only the solidity of the canyon structure that held the bridge together, without it – the whole thing tumbled down in pieces.</p><p>Gubezuri and Nashi leaped up, landing atop one of the falling pillars. It would have taken ten whole seconds for the bridge and the falling debris to crumble into the river. That was plenty of time to settle a fight between ninja of their collective ranks. Mana, Meiko, and Hanshin leaped atop falling platforms of their own and moved down until they could meet the Uchiha on their level, the rabbits drove the vanguard given the strength of their feet and the unmatched velocity of their dashes.</p><p>The string reeling devices screeched with the infernal sound of steel wire being reeled in. The piece of steel wire attached to the swords that the Uchiha duo had lost when they were blasted away by the unexpected appearance of the ninja rabbits reeled the weapons back to their owners' hands. An Uchiha with an active Sharingan and a sword was a dangerous opponent. Nothing could match the pattern reading, the perceptive and almost precognitive abilities of the Sharingan. Leave alone the fact that ten seconds was nowhere near enough to cause that much strain on the user's chakra system…</p><p>Still, the team was adamant about settling this matter before the Kannabi Bridge and the tall canyon had crumbled into a rocky, devastated mess. It was most likely a matter of pride, an arrogant claim about the extent of their abilities. Ten seconds was plenty to reinitiate and conclude the engagement.</p><p>Nashi yanked his sleeve back, the shimmer of light reflecting off the piece of silk-thin steel wire caught Mana's eye but her eyes were nowhere near as perceptive as the Sharingan that her opponents used. She could not identify the layers of looping thread before they shut tightly around her, pressing against her limbs and muscles with a credible threat to slice her to pieces if she ever lost the chakra augmentation struggle against the chakra used to coat the strings.</p><p>Her opponent was skilled – he had managed to realize that Mana was a sensor and therefore did not coat his strings until they were already pressing against Mana and tying her up. The Sharingan allowed him to perfectly nab the timing of that, to someone in the magician's shoes it was beginning to seem like there was nothing that the copy wheel eye could not do. With a bloodthirsty and triumphant grin, Nashi yanked on the piece of wire, instead of blood, guts and a sick display of human-sliced-sausage, a shower of flower petals smacked against the Uchiha's face.</p><p>"You fool!" Nashi turned exactly where the real Mana stood behind him, swiping his steel wire aside, still overflowing with chakra. At their present state and velocity, these wires could have cut no worse than the sharpest blade crafted from the finest materials. Her illusion was useless against the Sharingan, it seemed, an Uchiha with the active Sharingan would always see through that sort of attack…</p><p>It was probably the first time in Mana's memory that the magician felt like she was being countered and did not belong on this battlefield at all. Not since she faced Sasuke Uchiha in the foreign universe did she feel this uncertain about the outcome of a battle… Nashi lacked the calm and certainty from Sasuke's eyes back then, but somewhere inside those abyssal eyes, there was this smug knowledge about one's own superiority and constant, perfect awareness of the situation at hand. It was something all Uchiha appeared to share… This was not good, Mana was too invested into evasive movements after executing Flower Petal Sanctuary that she could not possibly hope to evade the swipe of these threads that threatened to cut her throat open.</p><p>A thunderous clang made the magician snap out of her attempting to figure out a way out of this lethal predicament. Usuzoku managed to block the strings with a chakra coated blade of his own, the intensity of the coating almost matched that of the enemy, nevertheless, the strings wrapped around the sword as they were blocked and locked it firmly in place, allowing Nashi to pull on the blade and yank the rabbit up closer for a good punishment for interrupting his kill.</p><p>The infernal red ocular orb wandered sideways. Instead of pulling on his strings and disarming Usuzoku while pulling him in for a good beating, maybe even an execution, Nashi leaned backward, avoiding a diving kick from Usubane meant to blast him away again. What insane perception of one's surroundings! He saw that attack coming from a completely unnatural corner, for all intents and purposes, he was meant to get hit by that!</p><p>The chakra coating of Meiko's blade changed completely. Instead of the simple, reddish blaze, sparkles and jolts of blue lightning surrounded it, cracking up and down the blade's surface. The grip and the cross guard were all sunken in a shade of a white cloud that lingered shortly wherever the blade moved giving it an almost heavenly look. The blacksmith swung her lightning coated blade around shooting off bolts of lightning from it at seemingly random directions while its swings unleashed a barrage of lightning projectiles that flew for miles and sliced through the ruined canyon and the falling platforms like a hot knife through butter.</p><p>It was a clever way to attempt and outplay the Sharingan's advanced perception. If anything could fool the eye that was so good at seeing, it seemed like it saw into the face of the future, a seemingly random thunderstorm at one's fingertips would have been it. Gubezuri danced around Meiko's heavenly, crackling sword but had to block and stone-wall a lightning bolt that threatened to hit him square in the chest. The blast sent the larger Uchiha flying back and busting through multiple falling rock platforms.</p><p>Before Gubezuri could hit another, Hanshin's image flashed in from behind him, hands crossed over his chest while his knees appeared to manage all of the intense blowback from the superhuman speed of his movement. Black Vicious appeared for just a single, blink and you'll miss it moment, to deliver a cross chop from behind Gubezuri aimed somewhere at the center of the Uchiha's back. Instead of Black Vicious smacking the Uchiha down with a gruesome finishing move, its ethereal arms cut through a black mass that burst into a shower of obsidian, bubbly goop. Like a massive blob of tar that fuzzed and swallowed anything it covered.</p><p>"The Eye of Hypnotism, huh?" Hanshin grumped with a blank, lifeless stare. A friendly tap on his back with a pulse of Kiyomi's chakra busting her superior out from the illusion created through the Sharingan's Eye of Hypnotism woke the man up. Almost instantly the eyes of the physically dominant one focused on the enemy that landed atop of a higher falling platform.</p><p>It was a demonstration of tremendous growth and understanding of the art for Kiyomi to be able to snap the special jounin out from an Eye of Hypnotism illusion. The Sharingan, being the gift that just kept on giving that it was, was capable of weaving illusions freely without any latent skill or training for illusions from the user being necessary, although, if one was present, it multiplied the power and effectiveness of those illusions as well as the abyss in which they sunk the victim exponentially. Even if Gubezuri was no master illusionist when his Sharingan was closed, the sight of the Yamanaka managing to triumph the illusion with such ease was one that locked one's gaze onto it with admiration making its way from one's core.</p><p>Mana, together with Usuzoku and Usubane charged onward. Her movements appeared to completely match those of her two summon animals, she bent her legs, tensed her thighs and charged around focusing on her lower body and accumulating speed just like the rabbits. The results were nowhere near as effective, but for a human mimicking a ninja animal, it was beyond just being a good tribute to the rabbit martial arts.</p><p>Try as hard as he could, even with the Sharingan aiding his perception, Nashi simply could not keep up with the rabbits. His eyes foresaw the movements but his body failed to provide an adequate response that would help him beat all three incoming attackers consistently. Often he dodged, seldom he managed to slip in a counter, which in itself provided the three with an opening which they showered with counter-counterattacks, more and more, the Uchiha skipped strikes or simply chose to block them and take a decent brunt of the force coming at him because the alternative would have been too costly or dangerous to his future.</p><p>Still, even if Mana, Usubane, and Usuzoku landed blows, those attacks hit Nashi on his terms. Most of the time he chose where and when he would get hit and he chose to least dangerous and potent angles, attacks and attackers possible. Even if he did get tagged, even if the Sharingan's defense proved too godly for the human body of the man behind the eyes, it would have taken far more stamina than the three had to offer to defeat the Uchiha at this rate.</p><p>Nashi unleashed his own flurry of attacks, wielding a sword in his hand. Usuzoku rushed in to take on the armed attacker all by himself, shouldering the responsibility of defending the two unarmed ninja he was supporting by clashing his blade against that of the opponent's. Sparks clanged and blades thundered as they hit opposition of equal force that equally did not budge or give an inch back, at this point Usuzoku and Nashi appeared like mere blitzes and flickers even to the superhuman beholders observing this clash, looking for an opening to pitch in.</p><p>Mana did not need to tell Usubane anything, a mere pleading look from the magician explained everything she saw. Usuzoku's chakra was taking massive dips every microsecond and he did not have much left in him. He was simply outmatched in this clash all by himself. The wicked cleaver of his enemy found gruesome openings that shed blood but most brutal of all were the unarmed strikes that Nashi landed when Usuzoku was too busy protecting himself from a lethal blow. He was being ragdolled at times, it always started out okay, Usuzoku seemed to have his grip about him, then the enemy bashed and cut him about a pair of times before the rabbit intensified his augmentations and stepped over his limit to fight on this level for just a split-moment longer… This mercy of fate would not have lasted long.</p><p>The spunky female rabbit leaped to her master's aid. The sensation of chakra forcefully channeled through Usubane's ears as a unique form of chakra augmentation that made the ears stiffen up and emit a prominent yale blue shine.</p><p>"Rabbit F.U. Combo!" Usubane yelled out while she nodded her head down and allowed her stiffened ears run rampant, using both her arms, her feet, and her chakra-enhanced ears to form an unbelievable combination of blows that was so intense that even a Sharingan would have had trouble keeping up with it. Or at least so Mana thought, having seen the limits of what Sharingan could perceive and how much of that perception mattered compared to the ability of the user to execute the necessary motions.</p><p>The degree of evasion that Nashi put to work was supernatural even for him, Usuzoku, having come to terms with the fact that he was outmatched and getting beaten down, also the fact that his pupil had come to his aid, swung his longsword around as a test of just how much mobility his body still retained. The rabbit found a platform to set his long feet on, his limbs bent and tensed up telegraphing the immense force that the ninja animal put into it. The pulse of chakra leaving Usuzoku's feet when he kicked off the platform with a rush towards the enemy shattered the platform into tiny pebbles.</p><p>"Block Breaker!" Usuzoku shouted out like a madman, throwing his sword back and over his shoulder before almost flipping over his front to drive it at a diagonal angle with a sword strike mighty enough to shatter any blocking tools, paralyze any limbs unfortunate enough to be holding said tools or cut whatever was in his path and was unfortunate enough to not be blocking in two.</p><p>There it was… That completely unbelievable movement… It was like Nashi was flowing, his movements left traces of afterimages all around him that further confused a potential attacker the way this man was now, Mana had no idea about how to land a single blow on him. The three managed to put a slight stranglehold on the Uchiha's defenses before but… Usuzoku was beaten up now, also Nashi tapped into new and untrodden grounds of Sharingan perception that would likely be enough to even avoid a similar coordinated attack.</p><p>Of course… The enemy was using their chakra augmentation to have his body perfectly keep up with the perception of the Sharingan and surpass the limit he had noticed before. It was a dangerous game, a very temporary one but one that faded in the face of these ten measly seconds. In a life or death engagement, maybe Mana would have tried timing the enemy out, wear their evasion and chakra supply until they were forced to rest their Sharingan and that would be when she'd focus all her attacks.</p><p>Mana extended her hands, Lightning Release chakra sparkled down her body before a barrage of orbs fired off from her palms like from an automated kunai dispenser. It was for naught. With Usubane throwing her mad flurry of strikes, Usuzoku dashing in and out with momentum-based sword slashing techniques and Mana attacking from long range, the enemy seemed completely invincible. Nashi raised his arm up, reeling a piece of steel wire.</p><p>The magician saw what he was trying to do from a mile away, she could hardly believe it that Nashi would have set up a bunch of steel wire traps all over the platforms he had bounced on and off of while exchanging blows and dodging their attacks but such was the cruel reality she'd have to deal with. A single reeling piece of wire clogged up and compressed a whole bunch of independent, previously set up strings, creating an elaborate trap that constricted around Usuzoku and Usubane instantly.</p><p>By letting her own fancy evasion skills out, sensing the chakra running through the strings around them like they were miniature heartbeats, Mana danced and weaved around the strings and managed to avoid them as they compressed and leave the range of the wire trap. The enemy may have been invincible with those eyes open but he was not perfect, he coated his strings a millisecond too soon allowing Mana the precious time needed to avoid them, combined with her own battlefield perception skills that let her read Nashi's following move.</p><p>This was far from over though, Mana raised her hands back up and unleashed another barrage of Lightning Release orbs from her hand. If a single one of her Magic Bullet Barrage Jutsu orbs managed to land, it would have meant busted bones, nasty injuries and a certainty that her enemy would be too injured to keep up the divine execution of the moves his Sharingan demanded of him to avoid all of the upcoming attacks.</p><p>It was no use. Nashi blitzed and danced around the Lightning Release bullets, quickly appearing in front of Mana's face and driving his sword through her chest. He did not close his Sharingan for a moment, even after the fight seemed like it was over. Mana's impaled body dissolved into flower petals, the crimson iris of Nashi's eye raced around the battlefield trying to locate the real magician just to make the inevitable conclusion she postponed with this cheap trick a reality.</p><p>"Petal Shuriken Jutsu!" Mana's voice rung through Nashi's ears, making his eyes spread wide in shock as the countless petals that the magician's body dissolved into turned to shuriken and flung at him. Nashi grunted and shouted out in pain and twitched, feeling the stiffness of his body as while he had no actual injuries, his body inflicted the pain and shock of being skewered by hundreds of shuriken.</p><p>"A genjutsu that is activated using another genjutsu as a trigger… You've outsmarted the Sharingan itself…" Nashi's feeble voice grumbled through tremendous pain.</p><p>"I didn't outsmart the Sharingan, I've outsmarted the Sharingan user. Had you not felt stingy about dispelling the illusion you thought you saw through perfectly – the follow-up would have never activated in the first place."</p><p>Nashi's face twitched a pair of times before a small grin decorated it. "I tried crushing it…"</p><p>"One of my illusions targeted your chakra flow, the other pinched your brain directly. They were two different types of illusions. Not even your Sharingan could break both of them, not at the same time." Mana spoke her final words before flickering away to the edge of the collapsed canyon. Usubane and Usuzoku followed.</p><p>"Did'ya left 'im ta die?" Usuzoku wondered while the stone debris finally collapsed and hit the ground, neither sooner nor later than they were intended to.</p><p>"My illusion didn't actually hurt him, someone like him will definitely survive a two-kilometer drop on his head." Mana breathed in and out to catch her breath while her sensory calmly affirmed her guess.</p><p>"It appears you've dealt with yours as well…" Hanshin observed after the remaining three human members of the group flickered onto the edge of the collapsed canyon and looked back at the destruction of the Kannabi Bridge they've caused. "Commendable. You used these stylish beasts, without a doubt."</p><p>Usuzoku and Usubane popped away leaving just a cloud of smoke where they were previously, choosing to return to the Rabbit Caves they were summoned from. Somewhere, where the wild winds of destruction brought the dust of the debris, a tall Uchiha laid seemingly lifeless, covered with burns and sprawled in a highly unnatural position suggesting countless fractures. Without the danger of the Eye of Hypnotism affecting him, Hanshin truly could let loose.</p><p>It was a straight path to Yordalar alongside the border from this point on…</p>
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<a name="section0521"><h2>521. The Big Yordalaran Bingo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yordalar looked… Underwhelming more than anything else. Just a bunch of scattered homes and necessities, a featureless mass of straw, wood, fur and anything else that could have just been taken, placed under one's armpit and carried off to another place. Knowing her own upbringing, Mana felt like it should have seemed fascinating and familiar on a deeper level than she could comprehend. Her very genetics were supposed to call out to this place but… There was nothing.</p><p>"You are no locals." A man of thick proportions and black, downside crescent mustache declared with a bland face. At the moment of him uttering these words, it was unclear if he wanted to hug the group or try to kill them. "Got some food cooking, please, come over and rest."</p><p>"That's surprising curiosity for total strangers." Kiyomi signaled through the mental link.</p><p>"We are wearing Konoha headbands, they may want to get on our good side what with our village being Fire Lord's pride, tool, and blade," Mana replied.</p><p>"I could use some food…" Meiko stated something that surprised absolutely no one.</p><p>"We could all use a little stop." Hanshin breathed in and out with some depth to the degree to which his chest moved.</p><p>The entire family attended this early lunch. Yordalar men appeared to dress not too differently from the women, fancy, long coats that looked more like sophisticated bathrobes than what you'd dress up with for a momentous occasion which these people very much treated this as.</p><p>"Aww, tight! They're cooking meat and shrooms underground!" Meiko yelled out loudly, instead of using the mental link, even though the thought was worded to be more of a general observation than something meant to address the family with.</p><p>"It's an ancient way of cooking, one that even our own ancestors used before the time of villages and more sizeable establishments. It was said to make food extremely succulent although I have not had the chance to compare the two methods." Mana explained, she was not quite sure which side of her knew this – the historian or the self-declared cooking aficionado.</p><p>"Look at you acting like you know the first thing about cooking." Kiyomi squinted at the magician.</p><p>"Nah, Mana used to be really bad at it but she's gotten better." Meiko smiled.</p><p>"I've had some training shortly before ruining Kiyomi's wedding…" Mana chuckled.</p><p>"Those Uchiha… They didn't know anything about the foreign spies in Yordalar. It appears they were just looking to be a pain in Konoha's ass." Hanshin interrupted the banter. Even if the magician could see as well as feel the dismay and disappointment from Kiyomi and Meiko's side, she could sort of understand it. The three of them were friends that shared tons of common history. Hanshin was familiar with or cared about just about none of it.</p><p>"It's not like we had plenty of chances interrogating them." Mana shrugged, supporting her superior's decision to talk business while politely participating the early noon festivities of the family of Yordalar locals. Judging from pillars of smoke in the distance it was not an alien concept in Yordalar, in fact, it may just have been a tradition to eat this way at this hour.</p><p>"Not like they gave us any. Someone like those guys would have been too much hassle to interrogate." Kiyomi pointed out.</p><p>"So what do we do now? Our only questionable lead got busted up and turned out to be pointless…" Meiko dug into a piece of poultry pulled out from underground by the family patriarch and handed down to his family as well as the quartet of ninja, as if they were his own family.</p><p>Mana turned at the family with a hint of worry in her eyes. These six didn't strike the magician as the overly interested type in the confidential information that they were discussing while completely ignoring the mental link just for the sake of not looking weird and impolite. The family was engaged in their own conversations, in fact, there was not a single topic being discussed but it appeared like every single member ranging from the six-year-old boy had something to share with the family.</p><p>Just when Mana thought she was enjoying the idyllic view, even had a chance to smile while the fostering need to protect this little spark of domestic magic rose in her chest, the little one approached Hanshin and casually started telling the man about his problems. Mana did not need to know too much about the special jounin to know this was a bad idea from the kid's part, his somber chakra signature flared up. Whatever emotion the man was feeling, it was powerful.</p><p>Without much care of the social implications and the need for a quiet place to stay low and discuss a further plan of action, Hanshin reached out for a piece of white cloth that was right under the boy's feet and was used to cover up the fiery hole in which the meat was being prepared. With a swift yank, Hanshin pulled on the cloth and tossed it at the other side, making the child fall over while the white cloth floated to the other side and landed with a puff which raised a considerable mouthful of dust all over the yard.</p><p>"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you four to leave." The chubby man who still had the polite and warm eyes he had when he invited the four in and the robust facial hair that would have appeared almost hilarious had the context not been as antonymous to the feeling as it got declared after a lingering moment of silence and discomforting stares.</p><p>"We do need to stay on the good side of these people, just for the record…" Mana expressed her frustration after the four found themselves outside the domicile they've been invited to so graciously before and glared over plain dirt as far as the eyes could see.</p><p>"The child was inconveniencing Hanshin." The special jounin closed his eyes, placed his hands into his pockets and shrugged as if the situation was a completely blameless one in his eyes.</p><p>"That was some really good chicken…" Meiko lamented.</p><p>"That's it, he's officially banned from the mental link again! I wonder how much of thinking to himself it will take before he'll notice nobody's listening…" Kiyomi grumped before her irritation turned to chuckle into her own fist.</p><p>"Immediately!" Hanshin unexpectedly declared, pointing a finger at Kiyomi's direction. The blonde did get a little flustered over the fact that the special jounin managed to directly answer her thoughts despite being excluded from the mental link. "That's right. Hanshin can read your thoughts even while outside your mind, that's because they're that obvious!" the man uttered looking extremely proud of himself.</p><hr/><p>"Hmmm… I wonder where we could find some foreign spies…" Meiko hummed out while looking at the clear, blue sky. "Can't you just sense them out?" the redhead turned at Mana.</p><p>"Sure, if I knew what the foreign spy's chakra signature was, that is to say, if I had met them before…" the magician sighed. "In any case, we could find the spies by mimicking their train of thought. We know what they're trying to do, we don't exactly know which country or village they are benefiting but we know they are here and they're looking to spite Konoha."</p><p>"For all we knew, that family could have been all spies and fed us poisoned meat…" Kiyomi pointed out.</p><p>"I don't think so, they should look somewhat different from the locals and… Well…" Mana did not want to finish that thought but her eyes lingered on a chubby woman with an unusual amount of budding facial hair on her top lip.</p><p>"Hanshin doubts that the spies are lurking in the shadows. For their goals to succeed they need to sway the local big cheese." Hanshin voiced his thoughts, turning to the team with half of his body while energetically gesticulating with his right arm as he spoke.</p><p>"I actually agree." Mana nodded. "They're likely to be more easy to find than we think if they're rubbing around the important Yordalar figures."</p><p>"Salty beans, get your salted beans here! All for free!" a suspiciously similar man of thick and powerful stature promoted his odd business model of granting his wares free of charge to whoever took it from his hands.</p><p>Little by little, Mana was beginning to understand why there would be merit in getting these people under one's wing. Whatever treasures they had, whatever services they offered, these people were just so damned nice and generous that they were willing to give their livelihood away to the first stranger they met. Just about anyone crossing one's path on the street was the next guest in the family dinner and it did not look like these people lived poorly at all.</p><p>"So you've noticed?" Hanshin mumbled.</p><p>"Yeah. For a bunch of wanderers, hunters, and soldiers, these guys have it pretty well here. Enough lavish meats and spices to just give away, fruits of all sides of the world plentiful enough to give away…" Mana replied.</p><p>"Hmmm… Dese awen't hawf bad…" Meiko observed with a mouthful of salted beans. "I expected something countryside and raw but… These seem like a pretty sophisticated and well-seasoned snack."</p><p>"I can't believe you took it like that…" Kiyomi squinted at the blacksmith. "You do know you don't have to eat for months before your body actually needs some food, right? Hell, with chakra augmentation you could probably last years… "</p><p>"Maybe, but I got a little bit of that meat and got all fired up and tempted, now I've got to stuff myself up, it's too bad to bear," Meiko complained.</p><p>"Get out of here, you goat-fucker!" a grey-haired giant hooted out before swinging his massive ax at Hanshin out of nowhere, just as the group was passing the main square of the settlement.</p><p>The ax slammed into the ground like a meteor. The tremendous force of impact sent ruptures and quakes at the surrounding area, shaking the feeble structures of Yordalar to their core. The attack was too sudden and definitely too powerful to be that of a civilian. That was why neither one of the ninja managed to react in time, as well as the fact that nobody was expecting a random Yordalaran giant just passing by with a massive log on their shoulder just throw their wood in the air and try to split the Earth into two with their ax like that.</p><p>The giant trembled. Even while his boulder-sized muscles tensed as hard as they could, what was under his ax would simply not budge and Hanshin soon emerged from under the blade with his palm blocking the strike and absorbing the force. Even without any of his chakra armor abilities, through simple strength and endurance physical augmentations alone, Hanshin managed to stop that world-splitting strike from just an average Yordalaran strongman.</p><p>"Kiyomi, please include Hanshin-san on the link now!" Mana instantly asked of her friend but it was too late even when she thought of it.</p><p>"You'd think Mr. Readyourthoughts would know what we're thinking because he's just that cool but…" Kiyomi remarked flippantly before including the special jounin on the link.</p><p>Mana raced to warn the man not to engage this local. "Please, Hanshin-san, you must not hurt this local, we desperately need to not stand out and be in good terms with Yordalarans."</p><p>It fell on deaf ears, however, Hanshin leaped forward and threw a combination of strikes at the strongman. Even if the special jounin was not even trying, purposefully holding back his chakra armor technique so that he did not utterly murder this superpowered civilian, the fact that he was pushed this hard in his rank by a civilian showed remarkable military potential from Yordalarans. Yet another benefit to those capable of getting these generous wanderers on their side.</p><p>Hanshin and the mighty Yordalaran traded blows like equals. Punching each other without bothering to block or dodge, just two men trying to down the other but doing nothing but gathering bruises in the end. The fact that the special jounin did not choose to kill this civilian on the spot showed remarkable restraint but just that was not enough… Things were already out of control.</p><p>A wild stone flew at Mana's side, hitting her in the back of the head, the magician just looked back nonchalantly at the angry mob that was responsible. A handful of apples and tomatoes were thrown at Meiko's direction but the crafty young lady caught most of them by the handfuls and started chowing down on them on the spot. Looking almost thankful to the murderous, enraged mob.</p><p>"Is this… A mob?" Kiyomi couldn't believe how fast things were escalating. "A Yordalaran mob!? The people that invite passers-by for family brunch?"</p><p>"We need to get out of here, regroup and think this through!" Mana grumbled, turning around and facing the rushing mob that looked just about ready to beat the crap out of the Konoha party of ninja. The magician's body flickered while she danced and weaved around the crowd faster than they could perceive, Kiyomi and Meiko kept up with the magician with ease. Once the trio regrouped on a nearby straw roof, they noticed a single member of their group missing.</p><p>"None may call Hanshin goat-fucker!" the high-ranking ninja was still pounding at his colossal brute of an opponent while simultaneously using his chakra armor to deflect incoming fruits, vegetables, rocks, and forks.</p><p>"Goat-fucker!" the ax-wielding giant persisted, having dropped his man-sized chopping tool aside for the sake of good old fisticuffing.</p><p>"You'll pay for that!" Hanshin threw a barrage more of blows at his opponent's direction.</p><p>"Goat-fucker, goat-fucker, goat-fucker, how could you break a kid's heart like that and trip him over!?" the man yelled out in utter disdain.</p><p>"That's right, you Konoha folk disrespect our generosity!" random people from the mob started outraging.</p><p>"That's not true!" Meiko showed herself. "I took all of the free, salted beans that the man was giving away!"</p><p>"You mean you STOLE them!" a voice from the crowd yelled before lobbing a cleaver at Meiko's direction, one that the blacksmith easily deflected with a forearm smack. "You took them from the stand, not what he was giving away…"</p><p>"Isn't that the same thing?" Meiko's face soured while she squinted at the raging mob.</p><p>"Where are you hiding the little rascal that destroyed the Kannabi Bridge, show her to us!" voices from the crowd were growing unruly.</p><p>"That's right, we want to pay her back for ruining our chances to ever crossing into the Land of Fire forests." More and more voices joined in.</p><p>"How do they know about that?" Kiyomi turned to Mana.</p><p>"Never mind that, I wonder what they have on Mana…" Meiko pondered while leaning out of the way of the thick storm of weaponry, cutlery, and food flying at her. By now the Yordalarans have grown out of control enough to rush the building that the young women were hiding out on by simply leaping at the rooftops with a single bound.</p><p>"It doesn't matter. It's the spies." Mana concluded. "They must have known we were coming. They set us up."</p><p>The crowd was beginning to grow unruly. Mana had to separate from the rest of her team to properly avoid every single one of the well-fed and pissed Yordalaran civilian with a fork or a torch. It appeared that the generosity and politeness of these people went the other way around at just the same amount of extreme when the scales were tipped.</p><p>"Lose them, I'll track you down afterward, someone please get Hanshin-sensei out of here!" Mana was beginning to lose her cool. A pair of times she found her hands out of her pockets, clutched and ready to swing back.</p><p>The Yordalaran mob was at that uncomfortable danger level where they were too strong to underestimate and hold back too much around, but they could have died from the first serious punch thrown as well. Dealing with them was a pain, luckily for Mana, she had a particular skill at evading people she didn't want touching her.</p><p>Using her palms to push those that missed their attacks off-balance, or into the way of other rushing members of the raging mob, Mana managed to trip and trap the whole bunch in a human cluster of tripping and fallen Yordalarans which gave her a brief second to get away. Luckily enough, that was just what she did, pressing her back against a straw roof, Mana listened in on the mob's further actions, just in case one of the spies was present and revealed themselves.</p><p>Mana's gaze sharpened, she sensed something amongst the crowd. A large chakra signature unlike those of the surrounding people. Yordalarans were naturally immensely strong, that was to say, they had a remarkable physical aspect of chakra, however, their spiritual chakra element was not quite up to par. That separated the way their chakra felt compared to an actual ninja – to a sensor of any skill, these people would have felt just the same as a normal civilian. Not this one signature…</p><p>It was smaller than Mana's still, even after her brief scuffle with the Red Hawks and the moderate workout of avoiding getting her butt thrown out of Yordalar by force. Regardless, the magician managed to resist the temptation to peek through at the owner of the signature, she'd have instantly revealed herself and risked to be forced to hurt someone. It did not matter if she lost this person now, now that she's sensed this signature, she'd be able to identify it the second time it comes within her range.</p><p>This was no normal ninja either. One's personal features often defined one's chakra, the signature of a killer that enjoyed their handiwork would have been black as tar, the chakra of an exalted wise man or just an all-around warm person would have glowed golden, this man's was blood red. Someone with such a repugnant stench to their chakra would not have been the brains of the operation which suggested to Mana that this was no mere spying operation. The spies had some muscle behind them as well. The muscle that mixed into the crowd and tried to do a little bit more than the Yordalarans who just tried to force the Konoha ninja out of their home. These ninja were looking to cause a little "accident".</p><p>Things were getting pretty rowdy in Yordalar…</p>
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<a name="section0522"><h2>522. The Democratic Process</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With everything she had come to learn in mind, Mana traversed around the fur tents and wooden houses. The primitive manner of architecture and design of the settlement made sneaking around Yordalar much more difficult than it had been to move around a ninja village. There were no alleyways to speak, every movement had to be carefully weighed in and judged in the context of hundreds of pairs of eyes looking around in every direction.</p><p>Just a good hour later after the turned violent attempt to get rid of the Konoha ninja from their settlement, the Yordalarans were just about beginning to return to the routine. There appeared to be little to no ill will in their eyes and none of the unified hatred they had when the bunch tried to chase the team of Konoha ninja out.</p><p>Mana had almost no doubt that Meiko and Kiyomi managed to successfully evade attention long enough to hide. She could sense their chakra a pair of kilometers away from her position, sadly, just far enough for Mana to be easily able to confirm the presence of the chakra signal but too far away for her to tell too much about the specifics of said signal. She could still identify and attribute them to Kiyomi and Meiko but she couldn't tell if the kunoichi were calm or flustered, still fighting someone off or trying to elude attention.</p><p>She'd just have to trust their skills and hope they did repeat Mana's success. Hanshin always was the more troublesome one. It did not appear like the special jounin was in any mood whatsoever to hide, whether he knocked every single Yordalaran in the settlement out or got himself beaten up and captured, which was unlikely, his situation was still the one that raised the most trouble.</p><p>Now that the spies have managed to make the Konoha ninja public enemy No. 1, they were going to have an extreme time trying to complete their mission. Given how well the spies knew these people, how they managed to turn the entire settlement against the Konoha ninja in just a handful of hours and how much they knew about the team from Konoha implied that the spies were no rookies and that they may have been operating in this settlement for a while. Certainly long enough to have absorbed the local attitudes and long enough to know how the locals would react, say, to an unstable, egotistical fool tripping over a child during a polite, all-family lunch.</p><p>It may have been better if Mana did not rush to reconnect with her team. She knew she told Meiko and Kiyomi she'd find them but… What of it if she did, exactly? Three people, let alone four, were immensely difficult to conceal and moving in such a group would pretty much guarantee another discovery and yet another settlement-wide manhunt. The second time, these settlers would be much less likely to let the Konoha ninja go this easy and go back to their ordinary day-to-day lives…</p><p>Mana's body blurred and flickered to the shade of another wooden house while she concealed herself in an empty chest from which a large Yordalaran had withdrawn a bunch of meat for sale just seconds earlier. Despite the magician blitzing right up to his back, opening the chest the man had just withdrawn meat from and shutting herself inside it not even four feet away from the man, the Yordalaran failed to notice Mana at all.</p><p>This was a lucky break she could use. Her stealth skills were just barely enough to qualify as average for her rank so to be able to successfully conceal herself was a godsend at the moment. At least until the magician could put together a decent plan for further action.</p><p>"Mana!" a thought calling out her name resonated in the magician's mind. It was Kiyomi contacting her on the link.</p><p>"How did you find me?" Mana wondered while allowing the thought to be relayed to the Yamanaka.</p><p>"I didn't. I just kept the link going and noticed you were in range…" Kiyomi replied. Mana forgot just how much the range of this technique increased each time the Yamanaka heiress trained it with her clan peers. "Did you get into trouble or something? I thought you were supposed to contact us."</p><p>"I know, I just… I made that plan while under duress and only now realized how difficult it would be to move in a group while being wanted for a beating and expulsion from the settlement." Mana replied. "I'm working on a plan of action right now. It isn't easy while having to hide all the time."</p><p>"Never mind that, I've picked up something interesting from a mind I just took over. They're electing a leader today, these Yordalarans. That's why they're so on-edge about foreigners. They're worried that, given our attitudes, we're up to trouble that could mess up their election or that we're here to assassinate their newly elected leader." Kiyomi relayed.</p><p>"The spies must have their own man participating. Even if we didn't intend to crash that election, we pretty much have to now…" Mana just barely resisted the temptation to curse, realizing how dire the situation was and how late they were to the party. "If an unfavorable candidate wins, they'll have Yordalar just give their autonomy over to the country that sent the spies bit by bit. These people will be too gullible to notice, the spies likely have already gotten to them by now so the place is ripe for a friendly, democratic surrender."</p><p>"Where are you right now?" Kiyomi asked.</p><p>"Don't know, a meat chest near some wooden house," Mana replied, knowing full well she would need to be a bit more specific as that pretty much described at least half of the households in the settlement.</p><p>A resonating, repeating pulse of cheerful thoughts resonated through the mental link. Mana had been participating in mental communication long enough to identify the mental signal of laughter. She didn't even say anything.</p><p>"Sorry, sorry, I just… Imagined you posturing about spies and conspiracies in a chest stinking of meat, all crouched over and stuff…" Kiyomi signaled.</p><p>"Yeah… Very mature…" Mana let it out of the link by thinking these thoughts more at the back of her mind, letting them flow ethereally instead of reading these thoughts in her own inner voice out loud. It used to not be that easy in the beginning but by now even Meiko managed to choose which thoughts stayed out of the link quite consistently.</p><p>"Alright, alright, find Meiko and Hanshin, I'll find the location where they'll be electing their leader." Kiyomi laid it out in a tone that attempted to mend the peace between the two. "Maybe you had a point about operating separately being easier."</p><p>"Okay, if I sense you standing around in one place for a long time, I'll just take it as a sign that you've found the place." Mana agreed to the Yamanaka's plan and peeked out from the meat chest.</p><p>The magician's shape flickered and disappeared to anyone not perceptive enough to track her uncanny speed. The top of the box shook and slammed with a dull thud as it was all of sudden held by absolutely no one. A little Yordalaran girl took interest in the peculiar way in which the box was behaving but after a brief moment of returned normalcy, she figured it must have been a raccoon rummaging through the trash or trying to get into the prized safe of treasured, meaty goodness but failed.</p><p>Such events were far more casual and happened much more often in the child's day to day life than a foreign ninja having used the chest as a hiding spot and then disappeared to seek her best friend faster than the eye can trace.</p><p>Meiko got sent sliding through the ground backward with a chakra-coated buckler in hand. Despite the coating pretty much ensuring the blacksmith's safety, the purely physical pushback from the tremendous force of the Yordalaran guard she was fighting was still formidable. Even if none of these people appeared to be trained in the ninja arts whatsoever, they were still not someone to hold back against.</p><p>"I like your weapon…" the blacksmith cheered, observing the long, pole weapon with a heavy blade and a spike at the end. The size of the glaive, as well as the adamant material it was made of, would have made only a physically mighty person a viable user for the legendary weapon of greatly imposing strength.</p><p>Meiko's hand reached to her back as if she planned to draw a sword that she was wearing on her back when, in fact, there was none. With a loud poof and a cloud of smoke, a wooden staff of strung together spirals of natural wood appeared in the blacksmith's grip. The wood lit up with intense, red flames that covered it in its entirety before the flames turned to a blood-red chakra coating which took the very shape of the pole weapon used by her opponent.</p><p>More and more guards started rushing to their comrade's aid. It did not require a genius to know that soon enough civilians would pick up their weaponry again and try to scare Meiko away from their home. This time they would not give up their search that easily.</p><p>Meiko grinned, more opponents was just what she wanted, despite hiding being her primary goal. Even when stealth was her objective, she desperately wanted to test out how her Fire Release coating fighting style she used with her short-sword and arrows translated to such a heavy and unique weapon. She felt like she not only had the required physical strength to wield it but some in reserve. Maybe a more thrust oriented, longer range weapon was just what she needed to complement her style…</p><p>"Blood Dragon Crescent Bla…" Meiko yelled out the cool name she had just thought up of while she launched her body at the group of Yordalaran soldiers. Just as her arms tensed up for the pressure required to maintain and execute her rapid barrage of thrusts, all of the opponents froze up and started swinging their weapons around blindly, as if taken over by a fit of madness.</p><p>Meiko halted her attack, observing the odd behavior of the group of enemies and their odd state of glee and righteous vengeance that gleamed through the windows to their souls. While initially Meiko looked confused by the change in the behavior enough to drop her newly innovated attack, it only took a handful of moments before the blacksmith realized what had happened.</p><p>"I was going to hide, I promise. I just figured it'd be better if I knocked out anyone that saw me!" Meiko called out into the void around her, knowing full-well that Mana was hiding somewhere. Because the blacksmith lacked the magician's chakra sensory gift, she could only speculate and try to read the signs as to where exactly the young woman was.</p><p>"Of course you were…" Mana replied while she rushed out of hiding, slowed down the speed of her dash in front of Meiko just enough for the blacksmith to potentially pick up the direction to which the magician was moving and then disappeared again. "How did you get seen anyway? I always thought you were better than me at stealth…"</p><p>"That weapon these soldiers wield was so cool I kinda shrieked out a bit…" Meiko chuckled with a blush in her cheeks. "Things were going pretty well before that… In my defense, I didn't expect to see full-on soldiers, why would Yordalar mobilize like that?"</p><p>"They're having an election today. Before seeing you, they had no reason to suspect we'd stay around, now, they'll have a very good reason for the entire military of the settlement to be prepared." Mana sighed, realizing how much direr the situation had gotten.</p><p>"That's a good thing, means nobody is going to crash that election, right?" Meiko smiled.</p><p>"Actually… We're going to interrupt that election." Mana looked at her friend, quickly getting Meiko up to speed to what she knew.</p><p>"Damn… Sorry I kind of made things more difficult here." Meiko rubbed the back of her head. Mana knew that look and she needed the self-loathing Meiko the least right now. "And to think I thought I might need to look out for you."</p><p>"Why did you think that?" Mana turned at her friend, confused. The two hid behind a wooden home while Mana did her best to try and locate Hanshin's chakra. Given how massive and unique in its feeling it was, it should not have been that difficult.</p><p>"Because… I figured you'd still have that principle thing where you'd refuse to use other people's jutsu, so I thought you'd refuse to use Body Flicker and you'd be slowing us down." Meiko rubbed her elbow. Her gauntlet rubbing against the elbow guard made a disgusting metallic sound.</p><p>"I still have that principle. I do my best to uphold it." Mana looked back at Meiko.</p><p>"But… You've been keeping up with us and Hanshin and we're all using Body Flicker." Meiko raised a confused eyebrow.</p><p>"I've learned to utilize my lower body strength to dash around about as fast as someone using Body Flicker. It kind of chips at my physical stamina instead of my chakra, which, granted, I do not have as massive of a supply of, which is why I use it solely for movement, when I need it the most, and not in combat." Mana explained.</p><p>"So you've learned martial arts from rabbits to dash around like them?" Meiko's jaw shot open wide.</p><p>"Pretty much…" Mana grinned. "You have a way of putting it pretty simple and to the point."</p><p>The pair darted around the settlement, moving fast and quiet enough from one safe point to another in a blink of an eye to where even if they were picked up by a curious observer, they'd have only seen black and red blurs instead of the foreigners that were undesired at the moment. Mana's eyes shifted about, observing a busy street of Yordalarans scurrying about, heading for the central square of the settlement a good fifteen minutes on foot from where the two kunoichi were.</p><p>"What's the matter?" Meiko whispered. Kiyomi's link was off, whether the Yamanaka had canceled it because she had gotten out of range, because she was saving chakra for what was ahead or because she was in trouble and needed all of her concentration to get through it was still up in the air.</p><p>"Hanshin-san… I sensed his chakra around these parts not too long ago." Mana replied. "I can still sense it right now."</p><p>"Hmmm… Doesn't seem like he's here. If he was, this place would not be this quiet." Meiko stated the obvious that was already stumping Mana for a handful of seconds. "Maybe he's transformed?"</p><p>Of course! Hanshin was arrogant, he was vain and reckless but he was not an idiot, he would not have chosen to slaughter the entire settlement or fall to them and get disgraced by his public removal from the area. The man's pride was his most important thing, that was what made his chakra so unique, how he valued his self-image. He always planned on transforming and giving the gathered, raging mob the slip. Mana would have liked to have seen the switcheroo take place, there was likely much she could have learned from this man even if she did not like him all that much.</p><p>"So you can tell which one Hanshin is, right?" Meiko looked at the magician. "I mean, you can tell which one of these civilians has his chakra."</p><p>"Yeah, it's that one…" Mana pointed with her finger at a three-meter tall physical amazement with a cheap, fur-mustache imitation and stolen Yordalaran clothes. So he did not transform, he just stole somebody's clothes and… Tried shuffling into the fold. Mana was not sure which was dumber, the fact that this was his idea of disguising himself or that it actually managed to keep him somewhat in the clear.</p><p>"Huh… It's so obvious, how did I not spot that guy earlier?" Meiko barely resisted the urge to chuckle again at the obviously hilarious display. "Maybe he can't transform like I was unable to for the longest time? No… He did master that chakra armor technique…"</p><p>That was not the case, while Meiko was right to make that conclusion based on her voiced signs, she was wrong to consider Hanshin's chakra armor as some sort of end-all-be-all spectacle of chakra control. It was an amazing feat sure, but not for a lifetime of training…</p><p>"Sorry, had to leave the range for a short while." Kiyomi's thoughts resonated on the mental link. "Although I've discovered what they have on you, Mana. The spies slipped the idea out about your accomplishments in the Wind Country."</p><p>"Which the Yordalarans left from so they likely don't have the best of working relationships…" Mana mumbled to herself.</p><p>"Heh, I bet being a champion of their fighting pits would show you off in the wrong light…" Meiko laughed out.</p><p>"Oh, I see you've found Meiko. Welcome back." Kiyomi's thoughts softly splashed around the link.</p><p>"We've found Hanshin too. Can you include him from where you are now? His chakra shouldn't be all that different, he barely made an effort to hide." Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Took you three long enough…" Hanshin's authoritative voice rung around in each of the heads of the three kunoichi. "Hanshin has managed to infiltrate the enemy ranks as a foreign diplomat."</p><p>"If you call putting a bowler hat and a chunk of roadkill on your mouth that…" the mental link pulsed and quaked with Meiko's golden, filled with childish glee thoughts.</p><p>"Of course Hanshin would not do something as distasteful as actually transforming into these fat, brutish slobs…" Hanshin shook his head, placing the upper part of his hand onto his head as he regretfully lamented how lowly the three young women thought of him. "Disguising as a diplomat absorbing the local traditions was the only chance for Hanshin to make these savages settle down."</p><p>"Are you aware of the election?" Kiyomi asked.</p><p>"Indeed, Hanshin is…" the Konoha special jounin tipped his bowler hat to absolutely no one. While the odd, posing antics appeared to draw some attention, his feeble disguise adequately delayed the inevitable recognition of the Konoha ninja, at least for now. "I assume you three will be lurking around the place?"</p><p>"Something like that. I have an idea…" Mana smiled.</p>
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<a name="section0523"><h2>523. Things That Yet May Be Done</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So is there still a way for us to not fail the mission?" Kiyomi wondered mentally while the group of kunoichi hid around the central square. A momentous location of Yordalar comprised of an empty space on which a four-way staircase was built. Something that looked to be nothing more but a fancy stand for a self-important politician to talk to those they considered their cattle on the outside.</p><p>"Kiyomi has a point. The whole settlement hates us. Even if we do crash the election and confront the spies, we'll just end up alienating the place… Even if we beat the crap out of those spies – things'll be as if we actually failed." Meiko realized to herself, allowing this realization moment to leak onto the mental link.</p><p>"There is a way. We need to expose the spies while we confront them. Have them tell these people what they did." Mana suggested. It was true that simply beating an enemy was no longer a way for a mission to be successful. Those simple missions were long since behind the young women now as they've entered into the true life of a ninja. Perhaps, just like that Voice kunoichi that ruined Jagaimo's plans in the summit, one day the Team Hokage would have to make difficult sacrifices to complete a mission the way it was meant to be completed…</p><p>"Is there really such a way? I can poke around their minds but I can't force them to tell the truth. I can see it, but I can't make anyone else believe it." Kiyomi pouted. Her thoughts started getting murky and the typhoons of clouds that symbolized her mind turned swamp-green in color.</p><p>"We can wear their minds out. Drive them as close to a genjutsu coma as possible." Mana suggested. "In that state, they will feel too hazy to fully comprehend the benefits behind truth and lies nor will they have the imagination capacity to make things up."</p><p>"Hmmm…" Hanshin hummed out. "What you're suggesting is basically torture, in front of this crowd of people… Let Hanshin tell you one thing, this is the true way of a ninja – not letting anything get in your way. Hanshin approves of this plan. In fact, Hanshin regrets not having thought of it himself."</p><p>"Genjutsu coma… That's… As good as death…" Meiko lingered.</p><p>"Worse than death, I'd say. It's a state of mental disarray that only a handful of immensely skilled medical ninja can treat, yet they consider it too much of a hassle to do so, leaving you asleep in the nightmares that put you there for the rest of your days." Kiyomi explained. As a genjutsu user herself, the Yamanaka heiress must have at least once considered this effect as a possible outcome of her illusion. Most of the time it was a willful, conscious choice, like learning a ninjutsu that's specifically designed to kill. There were limits that no mind could have matched, just like there were techniques too powerful even for the most amazing ninja to survive.</p><p>"Hanshin has been put to sleep by an illusion once. Let Hanshin tell you this, it does not feel like days when you're put to sleep like that. Happy moments feel like seconds, a split-instant cut forever lost in time, suffering feels eternal…" Hanshin's thoughts held no enjoyment over their content, recalling how gleeful this part of the plan had made the ninja before, it was a testament to how much of a life-changing experience this vastly inferior illusion to what would amount to a genjutsu coma was.</p><p>"Maybe we should discuss this a bit more than none at all?" Meiko's voice lingered on this doubt before the entire team of ninja looked up at the top of the stand where a handful of politicians stood up in a ring formation so that all of them fit atop of the top step and none of them stood below any of the other four.</p><p>"Any of them not who they act like?" Kiyomi asked. Mana shook her head, portraying a mass of grim thoughts seeing how a head shake did not translate well in telepathic communication. By now the three had been used to each other's quirks so much that the magician didn't need to translate herself any further.</p><p>Then, Mana looked to the eastern side of the square, where another figure was making its way onto the platform. One of a bald top of their head while the sides were covered by luscious and curly, brown locks. The man looked like the most self-evident tyrant dictator that died a gruesome, karma-induced death from any history book ever written and his chakra signature was of note.</p><p>"He's not one of the spies that were in the crowd that attacked us but… He does not belong on this platform." The magician let the others know.</p><p>"It's not just a mere platform." Hanshin interrupted the magician.</p><p>"Please, it's quite hideous. Just an uneven collection of stone slabs stacked atop of one another…" Mana replied.</p><p>"For an entertainer, you misunderstand the higher meanings of art. This is a wonderful monument to the essence of ruling itself. It is a political statement. It is the stone on which all are equal as they stand on the same step." Hanshin appeared to revel in explaining the artistic point of the monument in the center of the square to the three young women. He had the same kind of passion that Meiko had when she explained music or crafting.</p><p>The odd-looking foreigner extended his hands over the crowd, given how the crowd was in no way unruly, the diplomat must have meant it as more of a symbolic, affectionate gesture. A figurative embrace of the people that have included him into their fold and granted him the chance to oversee an event of such high importance.</p><p>"Yordalarans, I have been given the privilege to oversee this election. Needless to say, an election is an important occasion, no matter the day they take place in but this election… The leader you will elect today will guide you through some of the most difficult hurdles ahead – it is a shame that Baligi, your past leader did not have the time to finish the work he had started of guiding you to your new home. Thusly, this critical responsibility shall fall on the shoulders of one of these men, or a woman…" the diplomat glanced over the gathered politicians standing on the highest step and a single woman amongst them.</p><p>"So are we just going to sit here and wait for something to happen? Seems counterintuitive if Mana can track the people we need to get." Meiko wondered.</p><p>"It might be smarter to see their game. If we can obtain proof they're trying something with this election, it will help get these settlers of our back during the fight." Kiyomi replied.</p><p>"It's not that. They're about to tell Hanshin exactly who they are." Hanshin's thoughts rippled through the link.</p><p>"Why would they do that?" Meiko pouted.</p><p>"You don't understand – they'll support a specific candidate, the allegiance of that candidate will help us put together the country they're from. If we send Konoha this information with some solid case behind it – they can work with it even if we fail here." Mana explained. It was very much her intention to listen and understand which of the candidates the spies were behind as well.</p><p>A very unusual Yordalaran for the typical build of his peers stepped forth, it was a short man with limbs so tiny they may have very well been classified as stubby. He cleared his throat and addressed the gathered people.</p><p>"Yordalarans, if I was to be elected leader, I would make sure that we strengthen our position. Yes, right now we are rich and prosperous and we have no jackals like the Fennec gunning after us. Sure, Fennec is no longer a threat at the moment but… His kind will raise their heads, they always do and that is why we have left. Only on a peaceful and stable Yordalar can we build what we all dream of, we have obtained that by moving here. That is why we needn't move any further, instead - build and grow what we already have." The man started modestly but his passion soon took over.</p><p>It was tough to say what exactly the spies' reaction was to the man or his vision. Mana certainly was way too far out of the range to sense the specific intricacies of the chakra network that would allow her to tell these sort of sensitive matters about someone. The stubby guy did, however, garner a rather powerful response from the locals. The Yordalarans were certainly not against sitting tight and seeing what they can do with what they have, instead of weaving webs of diplomacy, waging wars or taking favors from someone else in order to get to stay on their lands.</p><p>Another possible candidate stepped forward while his colleague peacefully stepped back and allowed the much taller and thicker man passage. Even in politics, these people were delicate and polite. Mana did not like politics nearly enough to stomach sitting through a single debate such as this one but so far this was the most tolerable one she's seen.</p><p>"If you asked me, it is evident what we must do – we have mighty soldiers, certainly strong enough to match even the ninja, martial artists, monks or pirates. The whole world is just one giant vendor for us. All we need to do is to point at a place on the map and we can call it our own in a couple of months. We used to always make things difficult for Fennec, no reason to let our soldiers sit on their asses and their gear turn to a rust bucket." The tall and girthy candidate elaborated on his stance. He shared the half-bald head with the foreign diplomat spy but the few hairs that did remain on the Yordalaran candidate's head were much less curly and lush.</p><p>"Maybe this one? He seems like an unstable enough guy to support if you're an aspiring spy looking to cause chaos before "inviting" a budding settlement of wanderers under your wing?" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"No. As far as military enthusiasts go, this one's pretty tame and reasonable." Hanshin shut Kiyomi's ponderings down. "He has a point, Yordalar has invested far too much and has far too fascinated with the art of war culture to let their newly acquired patch of land neuter their soldiers. They're formidable, enough so for the spies to possibly show interest in Yordalar for the military alone."</p><p>The crowd of Yordalarans did not appear to second Hanshin's thoughts as they showed much more modest support for the second candidate. It was highly unlikely that this person would win, it was tough to be certain but the spies did not show any particular interest in this candidate either. The foreign diplomat only glanced at the guy on occasion, just enough to validate the fact that he was not avoiding looking at the candidate but not enough to suggest any interest whatsoever.</p><p>A third candidate stepped forward, an unremarkable elder man with nothing notable but the fact that he was possibly the first Yordalaran to wage combat with his facial hair. Besides a luscious nest of grey hair atop his head, he had nothing else that would let him be identified as a Yordalaran.</p><p>"I know what I will say shall seem ludicrous but… Kirigakure is our future." The elder exclaimed.</p><p>All four of the Konoha ninja jumped up. That seemed so random and completely unrelated to any issues that Yordalar may have had. It also tied in a quite dirty fashion to the bloody and backstabbing history of the Bloody Mist. Then again, perhaps the Bloody Mist supporters would have been too nationalistic to extend their spies this far east for what amounted as a large settlement of great warriors and prosperous people?</p><p>Yordalar did not react nearly as violently to the idea as the man himself expected. Could they have been subtly prepared and guided this way throughout their recent past? Were they simply ripe for being taken now?</p><p>"We need to hit them now, Kirigakure must be behind it." Mana rose up. The eyes of the half-bald spy gazed at her and noticed the magician but he did not react with shock or even ire. Nor did the diplomat direct the attention of the Yordalarans toward the magician. He seemed almost amused to see her. Meiko pulled Mana down.</p><p>"No. This doesn't make any sense." Kiyomi grunted. "Kirigakure is too much of a stretch, they were far too calm to your appearance… They were waiting for you to attempt to expose them and fool yourself."</p><p>"The Yamanaka girl is right, do not let your personal feelings get in the way. Just because Kirigakure ninja hurt your father and killed your team leader it doesn't mean they are behind everything wrong with the world." Hanshin scolded Mana with quite vibrant pulses of mental scorn. "Now you've betrayed your position. Obviously, this joker will not be able to share his knowledge with his pals without unmasking himself but… This no longer will be an ambush."</p><p>As much as it hurt to admit it, Hanshin must have been right. Mana tipped the man shuffling cards into his sleeve that the magician was watching, making him shuffle cards more carefully from this point on.</p><p>"The Archipelago of the Water Country hosts many islands, many of them are uninhabited, some host people we might just want to live and work with. Some of them function as natural reserves. Getting to Archipelago will be a problem, it will require traversing throughout the entire continent and then sailing our entire settlement there but… If we can get along with Kirigakure, if we can share with them our military might, our prosperity and natural resources that we've carried with, our skills… They could use it, they won't deny our requests!" the man looked passionate in his suggestion if nothing else. The support behind Yordalarans was also surprisingly present as this candidate was perhaps the second most positively received out of the flock.</p><p>The only woman amongst the candidates took the center stage. She was short in stature but permitted to stand as equal because of the round, arcing well over her head braid. Due to the fact that a small child could have gone through the space between the braid and the woman's head, the hairdo seemed kind of eccentric Mana reminded herself she was quite a long way from home.</p><p>"Wake up, Yordalarans! We've only gotten this far because we've worked alongside other ninja villages, representatives of the Feudal Lords. Land of Fire, Konoha, Kusagakure and Amegakure have all done well by us, we'd be wise to keep working with them. Not under them, not issue commands at them but together. We have military might, that is true, but we won't scare any of these countries and ninja villages, only confuse them. The dream of our own island might be sweet but it is clouded by the certain torment of the journey there, let alone the voyage we'd have to undertake…"</p><p>The foreign diplomat gently stepped one foot up on the scene, looking at the candidate with a joyful glare. For a moment, the three kunoichi also looked at the event in confusion, this woman did not appear at all useful to foreign spies as a leader of the settlement. Why show her any significant attention?</p><p>"It's just like a woman to spend too much time telling everyone what other men did wrong rather than speak her own mind…" Hanshin's sharp remark shed some light on what exactly was happening. This was just a polite way of telling the lady that she's spoken enough and at this point was hogging time. Perhaps it served her right, given she spoke in a very calling-out and addressing tone, making sure every word resonated and was heard whereas her peers just bashed their bags of peas against the brick wall.</p><p>The final candidate stepped onto the stage. At this point, the Konoha ninja felt almost sure about the fact that this man must have been it – the one that the spies placed their bets behind. After all, if not this man, who else exactly? The quartet listened carefully, the words of this man may have explained who the spies are and what their allegiances were. Mana was so entranced, fearing that this man would say nothing of note that she missed a nasty gut feeling until it was already too late.</p><p>A polearm flew like an arrow, aimed right at the center of the candidate's chest. A strong yank of the man behind him – the half-bald foreigner hosting the election and seeing them through saved the candidate by allowing the spear to blitz past its target and crash through the roof of a faraway house. Despite the overwhelming force with which the spear was tossed, it went through the roof without sharing any of that crushing force with the house, resulting in a clean hole and continued flight past it. Without a doubt, this spear would've left a similar hole in the chest of its target as well.</p><p>"Assassins!" someone in the crowd yelled but the guilty assassin was not yanked and shoved into the forefront of the crowd and dealt with. Instead, the entire crowd erupted in a massive brawl. It was like every member of the mob simultaneously accused a random person of trying to kill the targeted candidate and then, without hesitation, just went all-in, fists swinging.</p><p>"Wow, these Yordalarans sure erupt into a fisting frenzy out of nowhere…" Meiko noted out loud as there was no longer any threat to alert anyone in the complete chaos.</p><p>"No… That man did something…" Kiyomi with a foggy tone. "Mana, did you sense something?"</p><p>"No, but… He was quite far away… If his jutsu was weak enough or has some sort of cloaking property… It is possible I could have missed it from here." The magician felt bad about not noticing exactly what the man did. It felt like chakra sensory granted her the responsibility to always use it efficiently.</p><p>"Damn… It was some sort of mind controlling jutsu. I can definitely tell…" Kiyomi growled, she looked proper pissed that these spies were threatening the integrity of her gimmick.</p>
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<a name="section0524"><h2>524. Kryptonite Of The Polite People</h2></a>
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    <p>"Mana!" Hanshin called out to the magician. It was not common of him to request back-up so one would have been smart and felt honored when they were called forth.</p><p>"On it." The Mana replied. It took Hanshin a good few dashes forward before he realized that the magician was not backing him up but instead working with the crowd. Had the special jounin bothered to learn more about his team, perhaps he'd have known Mana's priorities in each given situation.</p><p>"Heh, typical… Don't worry, I got you!" Meiko cheered while looking at Mana avoiding and tipping over multiple opponents. The Yordalarans were insanely strong for civilians, to begin with, then there was the crazy strength stacked on top of them when none of the usual morals or physical limiters that a body placed on itself when a strenuous action was performed applied.</p><p>"Be careful, don't engage that psycho-haired guy, there's something about him I don't like!" Kiyomi warned her team on the link, doing her best to stay on the behind lines and attempting to snipe the odd-factor out from afar. It was an old method of fighting, one she thought she'd abandoned after getting stronger and becoming more than a match for her peers in close distance, regardless, the respect that lingered in her chest for that grinning diplomat forced Kiyomi to stay back.</p><p>A mindless, unintelligible scream echoed from behind Hanshin. A man with a miner's helmet and a cloth that covered his face all the way from the nose down. Hanshin's eyes moved before his body, almost fast enough to face a braid of bony rods wrapped around each other with a peculiar aura of chakra coating it. Instead of just serving as a coat, the chakra aura split into small branches that grabbed large chunks of dirt and stone and instantly hardened and sharpened them into rocky teeth that rotated all around the two-handed bony contraption.</p><p>A flock of sparks shot out from a point in the air where Hanshin's chakra armor greeted his opponent's attack. Finally, one of the foreign spies revealed themselves. The gaunt figure stumbled back, holding his weapon in a deceitful manner that made it look like it was struggling to hold it but the ease in his hands could not fool an observer as skilled in the art of swordsmanship as Meiko and as experienced as Hanshin.</p><p>"Finally, the spiders reveal themselves. Let Hanshin tell you something, enough of these pesky webs!" Hanshin covered his face with the tips of his fingers as if lamenting the loss of a dear one before peeking from the very edge of his hand to reveal a gleeful stare.</p><p>"I'll keep the Yordalarans off of you, deal with this guy," Meiko suggested before unsealing a buckler from one of her chest armor pieces and coating it with chakra. Whenever a Yordalaran attempted to interrupt the fight or bring their crazy moshpit of violence to the brawling ninja, Meiko would swat or shove them aside. Given how she was taking on a significant chunk of an entire country, gathered to elect a new leader and gone absolutely wild, the very feat of her managing to give Hanshin and his opponent some peace of mind was astounding.</p><p>The man in a miner's helmet looked up at his comrade as if calling out to him. The diplomat only nodded before widening his grin.</p><p>"But of course, fight to your heart's extent…" he declared as if he could somehow understand the muffled and unintelligible babble coming out from his friend's mouth.</p><p>The permission to let loose appeared to make the muffled one exceptionally happy as the man swung his odd weapon in the air like a madman, turning his neutral chakra coating to one colored a watery red where the strands of chakra that formed the rocky teeth before now turned to blazes that jet off freely in every direction.</p><p>It was a while since Mana has had a flexing workout quite like this. Usually, when fighting a singular opponent her dance was split into two parts – avoid and counterattack, usually both at the same time as splitting the two often proved to be simply too slow. It required two independent thoughts and such lethargy was not tolerated on a high-caliber battlefield. This time, there was no break in between the movement. Movement was all there was.</p><p>Avoid, identify, avoid… There was barely even time to think about how Mana should avoid, had it not been for the strenuous training the Rabbit Caves, she'd have never had the experience of dodging attacks this fast with this little time to see them. At this point, the magician had learned to avoid faster attacks in total darkness, albeit in much fewer numbers so, ultimately, it all evened out. Avoid, identify, avoid…</p><p>The diplomat leaned to the back, effortlessly avoiding the incoming kunai blade coming from Kiyomi's side, his eyes lingered upon the Yamanaka still wary about coming closer. A handful of hand seals flashed through from Kiyomi's side, after the hands of the young woman settled on the final hand seal position of the Tiger hand seal, they lingered on that seal allowing the kunoichi to disperse like mist.</p><p>"Demonic Illusion: Tree Binding Death!" Kiyomi's deceptive voice came from behind the diplomat while a tree sprouted behind him, wrapping around the man and freezing his momentum completely while Kiyomi's upper half appeared from the bark from the tree as if it was a surface of the water. The Yamanaka pressed a kunai to the diplomat's throat.</p><p>"Talk, what are you doing to these settlers?" she taunted the man who, from the looks of it, quite enjoyed his immobility.</p><p>"The same thing I am going to do to you four, now that you so graciously offered yourself by entering the range…" the diplomat grinned.</p><p>"Kiyomi, get away from him!" Mana called out to the Yamanaka, "There's something in his coat!"</p><p>Kiyomi's illusionary image rippled together with the tree binding the foreign spy while Kiyomi vaulted backward with some impressive display of acrobatic skills. She did not know what exactly she was evading, forcing the Yamanaka to withdraw much farther than she'd have normally deemed necessary, just for the sake of avoiding whatever mind-attacking technique this creepy man used.</p><p>"What was that trick?" Kiyomi raised her fist up, frustrated that she could not properly capture and disable the target that seemed the most threatening to her out of the few spies that have revealed themselves.</p><p>"I am thoroughly disappointed, Yamanaka girl, as a member from a clan specializing in intelligence gathering and communication, I'd assumed you'd have better interrogation techniques than simply asking. Does it ever work?" The spy made a conscious effort to close up his coat and hide away whatever he held inside.</p><p>"You'd be surprised…" Kiyomi replied with the volume of her voice set low enough only for her to hear. Of all people, she liked being mocked by this joker the least. Even getting belittled by an Uchiha made the blonde feel less creeped out because that was simply the type of attitude those jerks had about themselves and the world around them.</p><p>The foreign diplomat turned aside, glaring over the crazed mob of Yordalarans being fought off by Meiko and Mana and Hanshin clashing with his ally. Things have gotten so crazy so fast that Kiyomi did not have the proper time to analyze the situation yet, it was only at this moment of temporary cool that she realized how odd it was that they were only being confronted by two spies. Surely a country looking to manipulate another settlement through subtle political manipulation would send more than two people there…</p><p>"It seems that I haven't picked the right frequency… It is a delicate process, after all, affecting this many minds and then capturing someone else…" the diplomat sighed in disappointment while he observed the changes in the battlefield of which, from the first glance, there appeared to be none.</p><p>A cascade of brutal grunts and roars followed by a bone-crunching sound echoed through the square, reaching the ears of both the Konoha ninja and the foreign spies. The Yordalarans were piling atop of something and creating a massive mass of bloodthirsty puppets of the foreign diplomats will. Given how Hanshin was still clashing with the strange, fired up ninja with the rock-shard chainsaw rod and Meiko was still busy blocking the offensive of the Yordalarans and keeping the moshpit off of the two, it did not take long for Kiyomi to realize what had happened.</p><p>"Mana…" she uttered.</p><p>"Interesting… I think… I think it worked…" the foreign diplomat stroke his stubble overcome by curiosity. "It appears that your friend's brain is functioning on a similar frequency to that of these people. Perhaps she is a kindred soul to these wandering settlers? Oh well, it doesn't matter…"</p><p>"What did you do to Mana, what did you do!?" Kiyomi yelled out. At that moment the respect and fear of the enemy's ability stopped mattering, the mission objective faded away. All that remained was the wish to aid her friend, to, if possible still, save her from getting stomped and hacked to pieces by a bunch of supernaturally strong settler civilians.</p><p>However, instead of rushing to Mana's aid, the blonde charged right at the mind-capturing spy. Kiyomi's movements flowed freely as she stopped herself in mid-rush to attempt to deliver a palm strike uppercut. A tiger-shade glow erupted from under the coat of the foreign spy that froze Kiyomi in her tracks. Her rising for a palm strike hand trembled as if it struggled to maintain its own weight before it flapped down and started swinging, dragging Kiyomi's right half down even. The Yamanaka collapsed to her knees as her body started to feel so heavy, although not as heavy as her eyelids…</p><p>The Yordalarans stopped fighting all at once, however, not a moment after the confusion had already set in and the generous and welcoming people could question why they were in the process of beating somebody into a pulp, with an enticing sapphire glow they had lost control once again. Kiyomi felt her strength returning to her body, more than just her natural strength to maintain her own weight and stay upright but her fighting ability too. Too late so, however, as a stiff kick to the face sent her down the ramp and into the fray of rampaging Yordalarans that started to pile on top of the Yamanaka as they had done atop of the ninja magician a few moments earlier.</p><p>A few of strikes from Hanshin's armor that his opponent could not see found their way around the formidable weapon that his enemy wielded and shook the mumbling giant up. Even if this rock-chainsaw wielding spy could have been considered a giant under normal, neutral judgment, Hanshin's size almost matched that of his opponent making the two appear almost equal, had it not been for the bloody murder in the spy's eyes compared to the smugness and enjoyment in those of Hanshin.</p><p>Whereas before the curious weapon of the spy gathered sharp shards of stone and coated them in chakra, rotating them in an ellipse formation like teeth of a chainsaw, now it spat out jets of flame similarly to its mode of operation from previously. Using a skilled manner of bobbing and weaving around the attacks, Hanshin danced around the flames to deliver another combination of strikes. The power behind his blows intensified as his fists became more and more visible to the naked eye and after a hit numbered in the thousands turned completely reminiscent of its usual Black Vicious gauntlet shape.</p><p>Being occupied with letting the battle flow uninterrupted while in the middle of a riot, Meiko noticed everything that Hanshin did. She knew from before how much chakra it cost to maintain something like Black Vicious for a prolonged period of time, Hanshin was lucky to be strong enough to finish his battles quickly. It was not that his technique was impossible to learn or that it took a lifetime to learn it, just like Hanshin only fought with this single style, it was that Hanshin had spent a lifetime mastering it, learning to handle every weakness, perfecting every aspect, leaving nothing for potential successors to improve upon.</p><p>Just like now when he only materialized Black Vicious' gauntlets to strike with all the strength of Black Vicious but using the absolute minimum effort while doing so. He would not require to deal with the strain of forming Black Vicious nor would he need to uphold it continuously, the gauntlets appeared, struck the enemy and popped into shards of black chakra upon impact. The man's skill in violence was absolutely captivating…</p><p>Hanshin's body hit a striking pose, perfectly tensed and stiffened at the moment before impact. The entire arm of Black Vicious materialized to the right of the shinobi before he delivered the coup-de-grace he was setting up for with his quick, as precise as they were stiff, wearing down blows. A cold breeze shot out from under the ethereal chakra plating that covered the arm with a hint of drizzle inside of it. A cold shower intense and shocking enough to force most of the Yordalarans rioting around the foreigners to dash back and attempt to get back to their graces.</p><p>"Black Vicious: Snowblind!" Hanshin yelled out while aiming his crushing, right-hand cross at the center of his opponent's chest. Instead of crushing the ribcage of the spy, the punch met a hard resistance in the form of his weapon. The block was rather sloppily planned but it was something, it was all that the man could put together at that moment.</p><p>Meiko's eye caught a shimmering glow below the waste of the enemy. A metallic bling that could have belonged to a secondary weapon but Meiko's mind put it together in an instant. It was no weapon…</p><p>The foreign spy murmured unintelligible banter, muzzled by the cloth that covered his lower mouth, perhaps even more than something a simple cover. Almost like he had something else in his mouth that filled it completely and prevented the man from speaking. The chakra irradiating from him and forming the aura around his weapon returned to the spy's body before rumbling and breaking the ground beneath his feet.</p><p>A resonating pulse of force betrayed the fact that Hanshin used his as of that moment invisible chakra armor to send him a few meters in the air with a simple palm strike. Meiko's body lifted off with a blast from the jets of chakra flares in her boots to avoid the quake. The rioting mob of Yordalarans appeared to calm down somewhat while they struggled to stay on their feet and fumbled around or found themselves struggling from falling inside the newly formed fissures.</p><p>Kiyomi and the second spy leaped off of their elevated platform, augmenting their leaps with chakra as much as they could to maximize the time they stayed in the air and minimize the chance of getting hit by the quake themselves. It appeared as if the quake was not all of what the half-masked spy intended to do with his jutsu. While the quake ruptured and split the ground around most of Yordalar, a large number of rocky platforms shot out into the air, covered and shining with blood-red blazes of chakra around them and erupting into flames while at their highest point.</p><p>"He's going to crash this back into the ground like a meteor shower…" Meiko said while glaring at the floating and flaming rocky formations up in the sky. "It's gonna do a number of Yordalar if we don't destroy them…"</p><p>"These settlers knew what they were signing up for when they built their houses so flimsy. If the whole damn place burns up, it's because it was too weak to stand." Hanshin flippantly dismissed Meiko's worries while staying occupied with his opponent. "Although Hanshin permits you to save the place if you feel like it, as long as you don't get in Hanshin's way. Hanshin is no master of yours."</p><p>Meiko chuckled to herself. This was no laughter of joy or cheer, this was a giggle of desperation. Just when she thought she saw something interesting around her opponent's waist, something that could have helped them score some major points in the mission and here it all went… She had to ignore that shot, that potential opening to exploit that opportunity to try and protect a bunch of rioting settlers and their flimsy wood and fur buildings from complete annihilation. Now Meiko kind of felt for Mana…</p><p>"Mana…" the blacksmith suddenly realized before looking down at where she last saw the magician.</p><p>The black and white flashes of the magician dancing around the enemy and trying to come up with a way to peacefully solve the conflict were absent. A massive burst of chakra defined by crackling lightning vortexes and thunderstorms shooting upward blasted the body pile of violent enemies off of the magician. Mana burst from down under with her uniform slightly torn and her hat lost somewhere in the shuffle, a bunch of shallow cuts that sent weak, crimson trickles down and bruises covered the body of the young woman.</p><p>Why was Mana struggling this much with these people and why did she break out with such ferocity and violence right now? What was going on? Meiko looked into the magician's eyes noticing the complete absence of her friend, the eyes were like that of a machine, racing across the battlefield, falling onto the key points of the battlefield and surveying the information so that her body could act as strong and as violently as it could.</p><p>Mana was not holding back at all… Yordalarans flew left and right, skyrocketed and slammed firmly into the ground – scattered in all directions and did not stand up despite their most heartfelt attempts to do so. A pair of them looked completely lifeless and scared the blacksmith before coughing up with blood or grunting and soothing her soul. Meiko knew how difficult it would be on Mana if her losing herself and getting violent right now ended up killing someone.</p><p>Something was wrong with Mana. She was no longer fighting to stall, come up with a plan or disable the crowd. She was fighting just for the sake of fighting, looking for the next nearest target to hit and hit them as hard and as violently as she could. She wasted no time breaking bones, smashing bodies into the ground with a ferocity that Meiko had never seen before… Had Mana's style not been designed from the ground up to result in zero fatalities, had her techniques not been defined by the magician's creed of never taking a life – she'd have murdered everybody in a wide radius around her.</p><p>Both her friend and the settlement needed help. Meiko turned at the rain of falling meteors and dashed at it, letting the chakra from her boots fire as intensely as possible. Hitting the first rock felt excruciating, the returning force from her impact that shattered the first meteor resonated throughout Meiko's body but the blacksmith did not stop, she changed directions and towards the next handful of meteors. She had no time to flinch, just keep flying, just keep hitting.</p><p>A barrage of explosions lit the sky as Meiko punched her way through a number of meteors that made her lose count already. Her head bounced about and her body shook in painful resonances of shock after each strike but she could not stop to flinch or catch her breath. The blacksmith shot at the next dozen of meteors again. Even if a single one of those hit the ground – the entire settlement will be in ruins, some of her friends might get injured too!</p><p>A deafening boom sent cracks and ripples of sheer force throughout the massive meteor, which one of the dozens that Meiko tried to stop, the redhead could not tell. The same force was returned to her and resonated through her own bones. The young woman screamed out and grunted in pain, her vision faded and her arm folded. Her body started feeling weightless… The only thing that Meiko could still see clearly was the light from the two flaming meteors she failed to stop… The wind was howling through the blacksmith's ears as she plummeted down, hair was getting in her way. Maybe letting it grow so unruly during her training was a bad idea…</p>
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<a name="section0525"><h2>525. A Ray Of Sunshine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi gave the falling meteors a passing glare. Almost instantly after letting her eyes move away from her opponent, a handful of Yordalarans leaped at her from behind. Without Meiko to hold all of them at bay, the violently confused mob rushed right at Kiyomi. Tight arms wrapped around the young woman, placing her in a full nelson lock. The Yamanaka crossed her hands as fast as she could and moved to the side of the assailant. A handful of painful blows and kicks counted down the time that it took for her to escape.</p><p>From the side of the Yordalaran that applied the hold on her, Kiyomi leaned down and lifted the man up, slamming him into the ground with a side slam. It was so often that her mother told the Yamanaka that she was better off tending to family garden than reading wrestling magazines and, more recently, watching wrestling television. Right now it kind of saved her from a nasty beating, then again, she did fall to the ground together with the man that grabbed her from behind, leaving her down with a whole bunch of furious and confused Yordalarans around her.</p><p>They were too many and too numerous. Even if Kiyomi wasted almost no time getting out from the lock, she couldn't power out from the mob of hundreds of Yordalarans stomping, kicking and punching the life out of her. One rather thick man-cube decided to jump on top of the kunoichi and start smacking and clawing at her upper body. The blonde felt a warm trickle of blood running down her cracked forehead, her daffodil hair was temporarily stained with some red, giving it a pinkish hue.</p><p>"Dammit, Meiko… The meteors…" Kiyomi grunted to herself, running through the back of her mind the two things that made staying down here and getting pummeled absolutely not an option. More so, who knew what that nasty mind-controlling spy was doing this very moment while Kiyomi was not keeping him on his toes?</p><p>A thunderous crash temporarily raised Kiyomi's back off the ground from the resonating force, it could not have been the meteors, that would have left nothing but destruction in its wake, these people, as sturdy, fast and strong as they were, may not even survive both of the meteors hitting the ground this close to them. It would be fiery mayhem, certainly not a dull and spine-chilling thud like this one.</p><p>"Meiko…" Kiyomi realized. Strength flowed through her body once more. She had to get to her, she had to see how Meiko was. If she needed help or if she was even alive… The grim prospect of that last thought made Kiyomi let loose. Her feet wrapped around the nearest neck and drove that person over her head, right into the ground while she used the momentum to roll on top. After getting on top of the man she had flipped over, the Yamanaka delivered a pair of palm smacks at their neck before slipping off and charging at the crowd in front of her, at the direction where she heard Meiko crash into the ground.</p><p>"The meteors…" Kiyomi thought to herself shortly before she closed her wet eyes, kicked and elbowed a bunch of Yordalarans that attempted to surround her and get her back into a similar disadvantageous position like before. Did these people not know some of them might soon die? What did that spy do to them?</p><p>Meiko was conscious, the blacksmith was pulling herself back up, by the time that Kiyomi got to the redhead, she was already on her bottom and trying to make her head stop spinning. From the way she landed, she was lucky that her neck didn't snap instantly…</p><p>"Snuggle later…" Meiko mumbled, she sounded dizzy, judging from how hard she hit the ground she must have felt that way too. "We need to… Stop…"</p><p>"Trust me," Kiyomi whispered before placing her hands in a signature Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal position.</p><p>"Wait, no, you'll transfer your…" Meiko tried to object before Kiyomi switched her mind into the blacksmith's body. She did not use the more advanced Mind Body Disturbance. That'd have left Meiko paralyzed inside her own body, feeling every little detail of the pain and dizziness that she was about to experience. By using Mind Body Switch Kiyomi made sure to shoulder all of those pains onto herself.</p><p>"What are you doing? You'll leave your body unprotected, they'll kill you! You can't augment your body while your mind is in mine!" Meiko was almost screaming inside her own mind. A little voice that the Yamanaka could do nothing about. The blacksmith's mind was tempered by constant training with Kiyomi, too powerful to try and shut down, moreover, there wasn't even time to try.</p><p>"I'm the team leader, remember? It is the leader's responsibility to take up these things on their shoulders." Kiyomi tried expressing her thoughts in a joyful manner, a mental equivalent of a little sunshine. It did little to break through Meiko's gloom though. "This was the only way, my mind can still work your body while you're dizzy. Don't worry, I'm not a complete idiot…"</p><p>While these thoughts echoed inside Meiko's mental space, the blacksmith's body darted about the battlefield smacking and kicking Yordalarans about. She had a couple of milliseconds before the sky turned dark and before the heat from the meteors would make breathing tough. At that moment she'd have to move out and do what had to be done, hope these confused bastards were still into the whole self-preservation thing more than they were into killing and maiming…</p><p>After doing her best to jet around in a ring, kick and bash the rushing mob about as best as she could for the moment, Kiyomi directed Meiko at a crash course towards the two meteors.</p><p>"You do know it'll hurt like hell, right?" Meiko warned her teammate realizing she had little say at this point in the Yamanaka's plan.</p><p>"That's why there are the two of us in one body, to hold each other's hand through it." Kiyomi tried playing the severity of the oncoming supersized danger pair off. "Your hands are pretty busted. You've smashed too many already using just your fists, that must be why they gave in."</p><p>Kiyomi darted off Meiko's body with her shoulder raised and aimed at the meteor. "Blockbuster!" Kiyomi and Meiko yelled out in unison inside the blacksmith's mind as the pair crashed into the first massive rock, stopping it in mid-air but it failed to blow up into small, dusty chunks like those before it did. The meteor merely split into two and then, due to the air pressure into more, no less dangerous parts.</p><p>"Your move failed to bust this block…" Kiyomi grunted in pain and tear. Now all of the wounds Meiko had before as well as the newly acquired ones all settled on her shoulders for as long as she chose to operate the body.</p><p>"You didn't pass out after the hit, that meant you were holding something back. You need to stop being afraid and questioning how it'll go, just ram it!" Meiko yelled out. At this point she worried less about her good friend being inside her own body, taking away the pain, exhaustion, and dizziness that were hers to bear.</p><p>"Fair enough…" Kiyomi sighed. She reached for Meiko's thigh to unseal a quiver of arrows and then behind her to the back plates of the armor to unseal the bow. "Giving my all would have made it difficult to do this though!"</p><p>With Fire Release chakra flowing through Meiko's body, fueled by the pain, the desperation and an almost aggressive need to destroy these shattered, falling rocks before they killed someone, the Yamanaka, still in charge of Meiko's body, launched a flurry of chakra-coated arrows that precisely hit each and every splintered rock and blew it up in mid-air. The fiery resonance burnt set some solitary patches of dry grass aflame, shook some of the flimsy buildings that the refuging settlers had built here but both the settlement and its inhabitants were saved!</p><p>"Now it's just the spies…" Kiyomi uttered, somewhat hesitant to come back to her body, which she wasn't sure the precise condition of as of yet.</p><p>"And Mana…" Meiko's gloomy thoughts continued to cloud her usually cheerful mental space.</p><p>"And Mana…" Kiyomi sighed as well. Shortly after these final thoughts resonated, Meiko felt all alone again in the only place she was supposed to normally feel alone and yet… She was so used to Kiyomi's mental link that no tampering with her mind felt almost… Lonely.</p><p>A pair of gauntlets caught the skeletal rod. More and more gauntlets appeared out of thin air to wrap their obsidian fingers with golden rings around the shards of rock that rotated at great speed around the rod, looking to shred anything that came within its range. Hanshin posed a pair of times, letting his invisible chakra armor deliver the strikes for him.</p><p>The murmuring spy turned around a pair of times waving his curious weapon about. Trying to let the crazy compensate for skill. Hanshin broke his pose, a pair of times his armor clashing with the enemy sent ripples of chakra that cut into his chest. This was the first time his blood was drawn in a while. Just about notable enough to get serious. The foreign spy flipped over a bunch of time, swinging his shredding tool of murder about as he did so. There was less and less crazy behind these movements. It was impossible for someone as experienced as Hanshin to miss the fact that the ground was approaching immensely fast and add two on top of two to realize that the enemy was trying to drive him into it before shredding him to stringy bits.</p><p>Hanshin's image blurred past the enemy. Even if his mouth was covered, the widened in surprise eyes betrayed his emotions just fine. The fancy and exotic weapon fell out of the spy's hands while he fumbled and fell over. Blood burst from under the cover of cloth that covered the man's face. Hanshin had delivered a pair of pretty nasty blows while using his impressive speed to pass around his opponent and avoid trouble.</p><p>The man looked around, noticing Kiyomi and Meiko helping each other stand up with moderate difficulty. Another turn of his head revealed Mana's violent struggle against the Yordalarans. Little by little, the magician's movements dulled and slowed down. Humanity returned to her eyes as the young woman started blinking again. Her eye movements stopped seeming cold and calculated and she allowed her curiosity the luxury of engaging itself in meaningless and disadvantageous glares. After a couple of seconds more of fighting out of pure instinct, merely because she was fighting when she woke up, Mana snapped out and dashed back, deflecting a handful of chasers to where they fell over due to magician's skilled use of playing their own weight against them.</p><p>"No time to fool around anymore. You can't tell Hanshin anything useful, it seems, maybe your partner will be more talkative…" Hanshin sighed before turning back at his opponent. The man was no longer where the Konoha special jounin had left him, the spy charged at Hanshin with his rod in hand, aiming to drive it right through Hanshin's chest, without turning off whatever techniques made his weapon behave the way it did before.</p><p>Hanshin gracefully hopped aside, measuring the opponent and winding up his fist. The Konoha ninja dug it deep into the enemy's back, hard enough to crush a kidney whole. The spy fell to the ground on his front as if was running on electricity and had just been turned off. Despite the tremendous pain and the better instinct of his body to shut down and adamantly refuse to get up, the spy wriggled back to his feet. He grabbed the piece of cloth that covered the bottom of his face and tore it off to let the blood from his insides flow freely.</p><p>"How disgraceful…" Hanshin pressed his relaxed palm to his temples and his forehead after witnessing the reason why the enemy wore that mask to begin with – the fact that he was missing a lower jaw and his tongue just hung around unless the cloth bag was tied under it and held it in place. "You three, hurry up and catch that diplomat!"</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko looked around the battlefield still having a participating and conscious mob of Yordalarans looking to get them. In perfect sync, the two took fighting positions and jumped to answer their calls for a riot.</p><p>"Can't believe it this is how we're settling this!" Kiyomi grumbled, her body still felt fatigued and stiff from all the free shots, stomps and punches she took while she was out in Meiko's body. While the millisecond she spared to clean up a bit and the chaotic explosion of the meteors above forced some instinct of self-preservation into the minds of the Yordalarans, minimizing the time they spent kicking the shit out of Kiyomi's mindless and collapsed body, she still took more punishment than she was used to taking.</p><p>"No, this is fine." Mana joined in with the three, throwing wide air slaps about that sent a handful of Lightning Release spheres after each flap of her arm. She used to use the Audra wand for this sort of channeling motion but unfortunate circumstances had forced her to learn to work with what she had, or rather without what she did not have. "This only means that the mind-controlling spy is still in range. He's using something inside of his coat to control people, that means he has to be close somewhere."</p><p>"Well… You're our sensor…" Meiko murmured to herself while a dozen of Yordalarans charged at her with a tackle and ground the blacksmith in a power struggle with each side attempting to push the other over.</p><p>If the conscious remains of the Yordalaran mob were any stronger, faster, more ruthless, it may have been difficult to track using her sensory while fighting at the same time. However, Mana managed to move around a pair of rushing brawlers and step onto the end of a fork while stomping her foot down to get the tool stuck firmly into the dirt. The speed and invested force from the fork thrust was so considerable that the poor Yordalaran flipping right over and slid face-first a decent distance through their home soil.</p><p>"I can't sense him. He didn't run, he hid. He must be suppressing his chakra." The magician concluded from what she felt.</p><p>"How is that possible?" Kiyomi grunted, powering through the crowd of enemies and smacking at them with mean chops. The Yamanaka held back so that her chops did not cut through the enemy like a sword, leaving them in pieces, but she aimed at the joints, effectively disabling those she hit until they got medical attention.</p><p>"One might suppress their chakra with a ninjutsu technique, that will make them effectively useless in battle because they can no longer use their chakra for augmentation or ninjutsu but it will help one hide." Mana relayed the information back.</p><p>Due to the Yordalarans kept piling atop of one another, they managed to push Meiko back and within an instant got on top of her, stomping and kicking the blacksmith as they did for Kiyomi, hoping that the sum of their relentless attacks together with the blacksmith's injuries shall finally take the Konoha kunoichi down.</p><p>"Earth Style: Boulder Rush!" Kiyomi yelled out while slamming her palms into the ground and channeling her chakra through the soil. The molding chakra mingled with the minerals and dirt present in the Yordalaran soil and formed a large boulder that clever manipulation of the dirt under it allowed the kunoichi to extract to the surface. With the arm of the Yamanaka heiress glowing faint blue from the chakra she focused into her fist, the blonde decked the boulder with her honest effort which sent the mass tumbling at the group of Yordalarans on top of Meiko, blasting them aside like pins.</p><p>"If you can't sense him, you should be able to sense the object inside his body, the one that he's using to control people's minds," Kiyomi advised while helping Meiko get back up. The two were decently worn out by the scuffle in which they constantly had to watch over the well-being of their endless opponents as well as that of their own and thus they decided to stick together for a while. This would have meant that the horde of enemies around them would pool as well but they would gain more as a skilled team than lose by uniting a bunch of mind-controlled settlers that barely know each other.</p><p>Mana's emerald eyes shot open, she could sense it! The man had suppressed his chakra to a level matching that of the average Yordalaran but he was still using his technique to some extent. It was not enough to maintain his hold on Mana but it was enough to keep the Yordalarans he had captured in his hold. The magician's lips blew out a melody of whistles while her arms formed a hand seal in an instant.</p><p>"Sweet Lullaby." Mana chanted out while the Yordalarans around Kiyomi, Meiko and her jerked a bit and collapsed onto the mixture of dirt and blood that they have ground together by stomping the ground beneath their feet this much. The magician ceased her melody barely seconds in. Her teammates turned at her, they were questioning her with a glare as they could have certainly used some more time to catch their breaths. Especially when Mana now knew how to exclude targets she did not want from her illusion, whereas some time before she cast it on everybody hearing the sound of her tunes.</p><p>"Just watch." Mana murmured, observing in content while the Yordalarans slowly got back to their feet and looked at each other with surprise.</p><p>Barely fifty meters to the west, the invisible arm of Hanshin's armor tripped over his powerless opponent while a large, gold and obsidian gauntlet formed right above of the jawless man. With a blood-freezing thud, the gauntlet crushed the man to the ground beneath him, not unlike how the spy planned to defeat Hanshin not too long ago himself. After glaring at his unconscious opponent for a while, Hanshin turned back to his team.</p><p>"Using genjutsu as a chakra signal jammer. That's clever, Hanshin must admit." The special jounin grinned while looking at Mana. "Hey, you, get out from wherever you're hiding. Now that we know how to break your tricks, you won't control anyone ever again!"</p><p>Hanshin's words got scattered by the howling wind of the Yordalaran plains but to no reply.</p>
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<a name="section0526"><h2>526. Collective Mentality</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"He appears to have run away…" Meiko observed with nonchalant innocence that was almost admirable and whimsical.</p><p>"No, really? Hanshin couldn't tell over the deafening silence to his call." The special jounin wrapped his hands over his chest and looked away, pouting his lips and souring his eyebrows as if posing for a photo of a momentous occasion.</p><p>Meiko grinned, stretching her face out to the sides like a simian. She was pretty amused by how irritated her superior got over something this trivial.</p><p>"Well? Can you tell where he's gone?" Hanshin turned to Mana.</p><p>"Not quite, his chakra remained suppressed the whole time and he doesn't appear to be using the mind controlling weapon anymore. It's almost as if he's realized what was giving him away." Mana shook her head. She had to hand it to the spy, his use of the Chakra Suppression Jutsu was impressive. The magician had no trouble picking up chakra of civilians yet it was troublesome to tell the chakra of this man from a rock.</p><p>"Figures…" Hanshin sighed. The man placed his palm to his forehead and rubbed his temples. A sign of frustration of having lost the enemy after managing to disrupt their plan somewhat, now it was back to square one. "Look out for surprise attacks. He might not even be gone, if Mana cannot sense him either way, we won't be able to tell."</p><p>"Huh? Wouldn't just revealing himself be really stupid right now?" Kiyomi pondered, questioning Hanshin's judgment.</p><p>"Maybe, then again, Hanshin knows nothing about that eel. When you do not know the enemy's plan, any course of action might seem crazy, because you don't know what they're doing." Hanshin replied.</p><p>Mana was too embarrassed by the fact that after all the chakra sensory sharpening and specialized training she still managed to lose a target, even one with quite refined skill at the Chakra Suppression Jutsu, Kiyomi and Hanshin were too busy with pity banter, trying to bite each other in the behind to notice Meiko casually walking up to the unconscious, jawless spy and reaching down behind his belt. Only when the blacksmith pulled out a shimmering, metallic plate attached to a piece of damaged and damp with blood red cloth did the Konoha party notice the genius in its simplicity discovery of the blacksmith.</p><p>"It's a headband protector…" Kiyomi yelled out in disbelief. "I can't believe how stupid those guys were!"</p><p>"It's not like the headband was in plain view. The spy was trying to conceal it under his clothes. He likely trusted his comrades to dispose of his body if he ever got taken out." Mana tipped the front of her top hat so that her eyes could better examine the shiny accessory. She had hidden most of her upper face to hide the embarrassment she felt over the failure to track the spy and prevent his escape.</p><p>"I wanted to nab this earlier, it would have given Hanshin an opening. Imagine how flustered those two would have gotten…" Meiko laughed out with wickedness in her expression. Without a shadow of a doubt, the scenario she had described was flashing through her eyes. Given the concentration training that the young woman went through with Mana, her imagination was vivid.</p><p>Just about everything associated with this fight gone wrong. Mana got her mind all tangled into some strange method of mind control she couldn't immediately shake off despite all of her devoted illusionary training tempering her mind to where she could do complex problem solving while affected by brain-melting fever. Then she hurt a whole bunch of these poor Yordalarans who were also, not unlike her, puppeteered by the foreign spies…</p><p>"Ummm… Excuse me but… What the hell is going on? What about the election?" one of the still conscious Yordalarans approached the team of Konoha ninja with the question that undoubtedly singed in all of their minds.</p><p>"You've got your answer right here." Hanshin pointed his finger at the Iwagakure headband dangling in Meiko's grip like a hypnotic pendulum. Due to a rather weighty revelation of the fact of Iwagakure's involvement, it had a very similar effect to that of its comparative counterpart…</p><p>"I don't think I understand…" the Yordalaran looked baffled by the headband and the further implications.</p><p>"Tsk… What a simpleton… The Iwagakure has sent spies to disorganize your settlement. They made your election into a charade, granted, we will find out why or how." Hanshin grumped out. From the stern face of the special jounin, it appeared as if he was about to strike the man down as was his usual temperamental nature but he satisfied himself by just sneering at the poor chubby with a mocking pair of eyes.</p><p>"It's clear why they did what they did – the conflict with the Kumogakure over the coltan market has been making Iwagakure desperate for some time now…" Mana closed her eyes. Once she opened them, she had turned her face to look directly at the unconscious Iwagakure spy. "All may not be lost yet. We can still interrogate this man."</p><p>"I cannot interrogate him while he's unconscious. The Yamanaka clan style interrogation is a communication between two minds." Kiyomi shut the magician's suggestion down.</p><p>"No, I know you're a superior interrogator than me but… I want to give it a shot." Mana shook her head and looked at Kiyomi with a plead. "My interrogation technique is more generic, while less potent, it does not necessarily require a conscious and intact mind."</p><p>"This is kind of pointless, we will be wasting time on this trash. Wouldn't you rather try to find the runaway spy and try to find out what the Iwagakure spies are up to here?" Kiyomi didn't appear to understand the nature of Mana's plead at all. It was not that Mana was confident in her ability to obtain any useful knowledge from the unconscious spy, more often than not her interrogation attempts ended in her getting kicked out from the guest mind rather violently, that being said, she needed some hint of control back in her life.</p><p>Messing up so often on a battlefield this important and coming the closest she's ever come to accidentally taking a life had rendered Mana hopeless. It brought back that nagging doubt that kept on whispering that nothing will ever be right again. No matter what she'd do, it would end in failure, just like she'd failed here. Perhaps with just this small victory here some semblance of sense could have been established…</p><p>"It can't hurt to give Mana a shot." Meiko stepped up and placed her hand onto Kiyomi's shoulder. There she was… Of all people around, Meiko would have known exactly what Mana was going through. It was odd that despite being very little alike, the two friends often found themselves relating to each other with a surprising degree of accuracy.</p><p>"This is wasting Hanshin's time!" the special jounin swiped his arm aside utilizing his flair for the dramatic and astounding posing abilities. "Come, Yamanaka-girl, we will find that creepy overcoat bastard and kill him ourselves. You two can do whatever."</p><p>"W-Wait, you can't mean that…" Mana jumped up. The last thing she wanted with her suggestion to properly attempt and interrogate the unconscious ally was to split the team apart. While they did not yet know all of the details of the exact degree of infiltration within the Yordalaran society of the Iwagakure spies, splitting up was still the worst idea.</p><p>"Sorry, Mana…" Kiyomi shook her head. "It's not like we're saying goodbye or anything…"</p><p>Mana closed her eyes before calming herself and looking back at her friend. Seemingly without the magician's control, her hand rose up and touched the Yamanaka's shoulder. "I know. Killing rogues is your dream, isn't it? Spies may not be rogue ninja, they are quite useful to their own country but… From Konoha's point of view, what's the difference, right?"</p><p>Kiyomi nodded, she did not look overly excited about splitting but her professional side agreed with Hanshin wholeheartedly and the blonde was not about to ignore that. After sharing friendly stare downs with Mana, the Yamanaka turned to Meiko and nudged the blacksmith on the shoulder.</p><p>"You watch that oaf. If she gets a nosebleed or something, kick her shin or bite her cheek as hard as you can. You'll like it, they're sweet like a cucumber…" Kiyomi said before rushing after Hanshin. It was not like the special jounin was waiting around for the young woman, as usual, he was just doing his thing.</p><p>"That Hanshin… Crazy strong but with a temper to boot…" Meiko stretched out feeling the after-battle laziness setting in.</p><p>"That must be why he's just a special jounin. His skill in his unique chakra armor technique, general power and speed are bordering those of an A-Rank ninja, if not higher." Mana nodded. "However a jounin is more than just a powerhouse. Someone of such elite rank must be a great team player, capable of managing a team of genin or lead a team of chuunin into a mission of great importance, one deserving the involvement of just such a team. I have a feeling that Hanshin-san may have had an ulterior motive by agreeing to work with us…"</p><p>"Like what? Ranking up to jounin?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>Mana nodded. "Hanshin-san's confidence in his own abilities struck me as those of a person who would aim to climb as high up as possible. He does wish power and fame that comes with the higher ranks but to get there he must stomach working with a team or even managing one. This mission is as much of a test to him as it is to us but his test is not if he can handle a mission of such grave importance, it is a much more personal one."</p><p>Meiko chuckled. The blacksmith stretched out her body, alleviating some of the post-battle fatigue and aches that she felt all over her body by letting the cramped bloody circulate all through her bumps and bruises. "We were sufficient for Hanshin to step over himself. He felt he could work with us… That's pretty cool."</p><p>It seemed like wasting any more time would have been unwise. The more time Hanshin and Kiyomi spent by themselves without knowing the full picture of what was going on in Yordalar, the higher their risk of getting into trouble. Even someone as amazing as Hanshin risked losing their head if caught unprepared, especially against someone with an unpredictable and dangerous ability like that of the enemy spy.</p><p>Mana approached the unconscious Iwagakure ninja, while the Konoha ninja were talking their plans over, the Yordalarans were getting their military together. Men with massive polearms approached the spy and while a handful of them held their weapons to the spy's throat, carefully poking at the exposed tongue and roof of the mouth of the man out of curiosity, a pair of them raised their weapons to execute the man.</p><p>"Stop! We must interrogate this man first!" Mana yelled out, rushing in between the moving blades of the polearms. Like clockwork, the weapons stopped right up and around the magician's body. It looked pretty suspenseful and exciting, just like one of her magic tricks…</p><p>"Move away. You have no voice in the matter, a woman who is a champion of the Sun Disc and an entertainer of the Sheikhs… We need no mind control to stay clear from that sort of people." One of the Yordalarans freaked out.</p><p>"That's right, you may have helped us out a little bit here but that doesn't change the fact you are foreigners that destroyed the Kannabi Bridge, ruined a family's sacred meal, stole food off of a stall that was completely free and traumatized many of our men with unseen cruelty!" another one added, he moved his blade up closer to the magician as an attempt to psyche Mana out but the magician did not budge one inch from her location making the man himself freeze up and psyche out. His body got thrown out of balance as he did not mean to cut the young woman at all but very nearly did so.</p><p>"Cut her some slack, you guys…" Meiko approached the scene. "She was mind controlled, just like all of you guys."</p><p>"They remember all of those things…" Mana mumbled to herself, her mind became temporarily distracted from the quarrel of attempting to save the life of this Iwagakure spy and became focused on what this implication meant. "The Yordalarans remember the compromising material that the spies used against us, they also feel it is compromising while broken out of the mind control. That means that they were not mind controlled the entire time. The Iwagakure spies had been planting other kinds of seeds as well, their plan extends farther than just this election…"</p><p>"Huh… Do we go back, alert Kiyomi and Hanshin? That Kiyomi, turned off her mental link, catching up to her will be such a hassle…" Meiko lamented more as a general annoyance than a genuine gripe.</p><p>"No, if we leave this man to the Yordalarans, they will kill him for sure. I'm sure that they will discover it all by themselves, Kiyomi is a much more skilled interrogator than me." Mana shook her head before turning back to the Yordalarans.</p><p>"We will kill this spy either way." One of the Yordalaran soldiers stepped up. The more time passed, the more polearms became pointed at Mana instead of the unconscious spy.</p><p>"Yeah," another Yordalaran soldier raised his weapon, preparing himself to go through Mana just so he could cut this jawless man's head off for what he saw as justice. "This man tried to…"</p><p>"You don't know what he tried to do. Nobody knows yet. You don't know how many allies he has in this village or what they're doing right now." Mana stepped up closer to the blades, just inches away from where they could have hurt her if the Yordalarans decided to do that. The whole time she kept tabs on the Yordalarans behind her who were dangerously close to the unconscious spy as well. "I understand that you need to behead this man for some fake sense of security and justice but if you ignore the chance to learn more, to know for sure that the danger is over – none of it will matter."</p><p>"What do you know of justice!?" a Yordalaran from behind Mana got furious, he stepped forward, thrusting his polearm at her. It did not appear like the man was bloodthirsty or wanted to kill the young woman but he did perceive her as paper-thin, he figured that she'd step out of their way the moment the threat got real. She did not.</p><p>A flesh piercing sound made the Yordalarans quiver in shock, with the mind control that had its grip on them gone, one of theirs had just impaled the Konoha kunoichi atop of his polearm. Even the soldier himself looked visibly shaken. Meiko just stared at the scene with an emotionless gaze, she had seen Mana in action far too many times to be fooled by that trick again. The uncertainty of when the magician was being an idiot while risking her life and when she had slipped away from certain death was what made fighting Mana this difficult.</p><p>"We came here to start new, to figure out what Yordalar should be from this point on. We wanted none of your politics and wars… Just to move on while preserving what united us as people." The soldier wept, almost like he pleaded forgiveness to the lifeless body hanging on his polearm. The body blurred and faded away like a mirage. The soldiers all took a wary step back.</p><p>"L-Look at the body, it's gone!" one of the Yordalarans pointed their finger at the ground where only a bloody puddle laid mixed into the dirt but the jawless body of the Iwagakure spy was no longer present. The circle of conscious Yordalarans tightened while they struggled to process what had just transpired, then the men turned their ire at Meiko – the only remaining foreign invader and a thief of free snacks.</p><p>"Oh… I think I missed my cue to leave…" Meiko grinned, she waved for the crowd of Yordalarans before her body flickered away in an instant. The escape that the blacksmith thought would be so simple was hindered by the fact that her body felt numb and powerless. A Yordalaran soldier dashed up in front of her, outracing her Body Flicker of flawed execution and swinging his polearm to smack Meiko down.</p><p>The blacksmith ducked under the swing and focused all of what little remained of her bodily integrity for another dash. She needed more time to regain some strength, at the moment bashing blazing with chakra flames meteors and fighting off a whole settlement of super-powered civilians was a bit too much on her system. Meiko leaped forward, air flowed freely through her cheeks and fondled her hair but the alleviating feeling of getting free was hindered by something rough hitting her feet – another Yordalaran tripped her up.</p><p>"Your comrade stole a criminal that warrants the death penalty and we have information that she is an ally for the Sheikhs of the Wind Country. For the sake of the new Yordalar, you Konoha ninja must leave our settlement and surrender the jawless spy to us." The Yordalaran soldier that tripped Meiko up declared while pointing the weapon at the blacksmith.</p><p>The blacksmith gritted her teeth. A small orb that she clutched in between her two fingers popped from the meager pressure applied to it creating a cloud of smoke. A tar-black cloud that swallowed up both the gritting blacksmith as well as the Yordalaran crew and the battlefield around them in smoke to be used for cover.</p><p>"Split out, cover the edges of the cloud and stop the Konoha ninja from escaping!" the Yordalarans presumed to be in a position to bark orders at each other. The soldiers scattered across the battlefield, watching the exists just as they had planned but time went on, the cover of the smoke grew more and more transparent before fading away entirely and the blacksmith was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>"How could we have lost her?" one of the soldiers grunted.</p><p>"These people are ninja, intelligence gathering, stealth and escape are their forte, just find them and kick them out of this village. We cannot rebuild until we know for certain all the foreigners are gone and we are left to our own." Another one replied.</p><p>After the soldiers had left, scattering across the village in tight, three-person formations to filter the place for foreigners, no matter if they were from Konoha or Iwagakure, a loud pop resonated through the battlefield and with a much smaller cloud of dust and dirt dissolving, Meiko rose from the ground and looked at a poor, unconscious soul beside her that she used her Transformation Jutsu to mimic.</p><p>"Mana's probably waiting…" she grunted to herself while working through her aching sides and fatigue. It was a bit embarrassing to be too worn out to outrace a bunch of settlers too quick and strong for their own good but at least she avoided getting captured…</p>
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<a name="section0527"><h2>527. Of Men Humbled By Hawks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A flock of hawks took off from the ground where they've been feasting on a pair of chickens. The birds of prey ate unhindered by the owners of the farm birds now that they were otherwise predisposed. It did not take long for Kiyomi to catch up to Hanshin. If the special jounin had attempted to get away from her, to get anywhere he badly wanted to be, she'd have been left in the dust. Clutching at straws and tracking footprints, moving fifty meters in the right direction every minute or so. May as well have been standing still at that pace. No. Hanshin was purposefully moving slow. The Yamanaka knew better than to assume it was to give her a chance to catch up, he could not have given fewer singed hairs of a rat's behind.</p><p>"Ease up." Hanshin finally acknowledged her existence, of course, it would have been with a command. While the words may have been those of an advice, the tone implied the former. It was unlikely that the bastard had enough empathy in him to advise anything. All he knew was how to make sure that nothing around him got in his way or slowed him down, except himself, when he wanted to, apparently.</p><p>"Aren't we in a rush?" Kiyomi wondered. Giving in to the command of this man made her naturally feel a bit rebellious, if he was to get what he wanted, he'd have to work for it and convince her. It was an illusion of power that she had a choice in the matter but it was sweet enough to give it a little lick.</p><p>"We're tracking a predator that's been hurt. He'll be wary now, warier than he's ever been. We need to make him believe that he's the predator and not a lump of meat and fur again. Predators only pounce when they firmly believe in their status, hunting needs effort and effort is the currency of the natural economy." Hanshin explained. He was not irritated, in fact, he looked a tad amused and proud in his own image. Come to think of it, Kiyomi didn't remember a time that the latter had ever left his duffel bag of emotion.</p><p>"You've lowered your armor, haven't you?" Kiyomi turned at the team's leader.</p><p>"Goes without saying, otherwise, what's the point? Hanshin did not realize this before but Hanshin is glad you came. You're worn and wounded, the smell of blood will draw the slug out." The avatar of masculine perfection bent and twist his lower back in a way that exposed both his neck and all of the blind spots on his back. Not even the Hyuuga, the clan with perfect vision and awareness of their surroundings could track all around them, with someone like Hanshin, his blind spots were even greater, however, this time this worked to his advantage.</p><p>"What's the point if he's not a sensor?" Kiyomi sighed, feeling more and more breaths soothe her lungs. Like a freezing waterfall that took out the fire inside her chest. She took some mean blows while she was unconscious, the mental trauma she suffered while inside Meiko's body was not something to be dismissed, it might take a while to shrug the creeping dread off completely.</p><p>"Oh, he'll be able to tell." Hanshin grinned while using his hands to cover up his eyes, a bold taunt for his opponent. A call for the childish instinct that told one that the one seeking was still counting and therefore oblivious, vulnerable… "People like him, they can always tell weakness, vulnerability. They smell it."</p><p>A silver glow streaked from the corner of a nearby tent, shining just enough to pierce the hole in the fur that covered it and reach the curious eyes of the Konoha ninja who were looking at all directions and scanning for their target. Even though the light remained consistent in its brightness, after the initial spark, it became blinding, irritating and overpowering, both Kiyomi and Hanshin stumbled back and covered up their eyes in response to the vexing reaction.</p><p>A shape of an athletic young woman weaved and stranded into being, the rays of light that gave it color and appearance spun and tied around one another like a spider's web. The long, red hair of the female blacksmith flowed with vigor behind the blacksmith's back.</p><p>"M-Meiko?" Kiyomi slurred, her balance felt wobbly, strength was leaving her muscle fiber as if it was being drained by a vacuum. Soon enough, a second shape began forming beside the blacksmith, rippling like a mirage as it revealed its deceitful appearance and wrapped its limbs around Kiyomi's affection. A young woman dressed in Lolita-style clothes, pale in skin and spreading the tendrils of shadow that was her hair and the endless black void of her eyes across.</p><p>"Meiko-chan… She's such a bother… Let's kill her." The Uchiha snake whispered into Meiko's ear, scaling the blacksmith's body just like a snake slithered a tree.</p><p>"Yeah, a bother… Let's kill her." Meiko nodded.</p><p>Kiyomi raised her hands up in the Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal position. Her vision blurred, nausea threatened to flip the contents of the Yamanaka's innards inside out. Less than perfect conditions for aiming. Meiko charged forward, shooting her foot down right at where Kiyomi was standing. Her whimpering balance and the desperate need to use her technique before all of her remaining strength fades. Before her nightmares claim her forced the blonde to stay put and accept the punishment of nightmare version of Meiko.</p><p>"Mind Body Switch!" Kiyomi managed to chant before Meiko's foot smashed her own with a stomp weighty enough to match the severity of sky itself falling down. Kiyomi screamed out but her pain was heard by no one as her consciousness had already been sent away in the shape of a spiritual chakra construct. Lithia Uchiha and Meiko both bent their heads to the side, one to the left, other – to the right, leaving a gap just wide enough to let Kiyomi's consciousness miss the two and fly off into the skies above.</p><p>The Uchiha girl vaulted off of Meiko's body, digging her knee deep into Kiyomi's gut as she landed atop the Yamanaka's body. The young woman leaned up to Kiyomi's face and licked her cheek while her hands wrapped around the blonde's throat.</p><p>"Let me snuff her out for you so we can be together, Meiko-chan…" Lithia whispered to Kiyomi's ear. These nightmarish mirages did not care if the floating consciousness could hear their words, truth be told, the Yamanaka felt and heard every tiniest bit. Away from her body that was slowly being choked out by its own inner demons, trapped in a bubble of spiritual energy that was as sluggish as a thought and the only option being to just observe her own pitiful demise.</p><p>It would have been a pathetic way to die…</p><p>A majestic hawk swooped down from above, smashing its face and its beak right into the back of the head of a balding spy disguising himself as a foreign diplomat. Blood sprayed from Kiyomi's busted nose as the face of the hawk was nowhere nearly as durable as Kiyomi's own head would have been but it did not matter, the dizzied and surprised spy fumbled over on the ground, an entire specter of stones scattered on the ground beneath him, falling out from inner pockets of his coat.</p><p>The hawk wrapped its claws around the silver stone and took flight. The gift of oxygen that everyone took for granted returned to Kiyomi's chest while her consciousness returned back to her body from the temporary sanctuary of the hawk. The Yamanaka rolled on her side and coughed out the blood that very nearly choked her up while she was away after she had broken her nose and covered her face with her palm.</p><p>"Stones? So that is how you control people's minds…" Hanshin's cocky voice sounded like mana from the sky for once. "Hanshin understands now… You scum must be from Iwagakure, these must be chakra-conductive stones through which you channel your techniques… In that case…"</p><p>The pitiful shape of the tripped over spy attempted to scurry up and scoop his stones up, try and wrap his slimy fingers around at least one so that he could use one of his techniques but all of them simultaneously shattered into dust and lost their hue after a myriad of black flashes with golden trail crushed them into powder, making these miraculous, almost gem-like stones into nothing more than simple, grey, lifeless hunks of gravel. Yet another testament of the awesome speed and might of Hanshin's fully shaped Black Vicious that once again was given use now that the fooled predator was lured out.</p><p>"Damn it… Silver, purple, blue, green… All of my stones…" the groveling spy lamented over the destruction of his stones. No ninja with any hint of pride would have sniveled like this unless their only method of fighting was tarnished.</p><p>Kiyomi turned to the special jounin, then back at the stones that the strong western breezes coming in from the Wind Country deserts farther to the west were carrying like ashes. Hanshin used his fully formed Black Vicious to destroy these stones, they must have been brimming with chakra if he deemed such drastic measures necessary to destroy them. What a peculiar method for fighting…</p><p>"Mind control, illusions… Who knew what other types of rays your stones could emit if channeled with enough chakra. What a dangerous worm. We should just kill him right here…" Hanshin grinned with eyes psychotic enough to make even Kiyomi believe that the Konoha ninja was about to punish the beaten spy.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress knew better than that. The rational part of her kept calming her down that Hanshin would not just waste this man without first acquiring every tiniest bit of useful information from him. Information… That was what Hanshin was after.</p><p>The Iwagakure spy shook and squirmed on his knees, the prospect of his own mortality being reminded to him was not a pleasant one on him. The man closed his eyes and ground his teeth for a while, as the muscles on his face tensed and shifted around, sweat began dripping from his forehead and running down his cheeks and chin. Then, in a matter of his resolve having been gathered in its entirety, the spy opened his eyes.</p><p>"Do it then! You Konoha ninja will not enjoy this for long…" the man gritted his teeth and prepared for death.</p><p>"Oh? You're just a distraction then? Your devotion is admirable, yet useless." Kiyomi was surprised to see how easily Hanshin extracted information just through things that the spy said or, more exactly, what he implied. This spy had pride in him, more than anyone initially may have thought, but that very same pride now served as a hindrance that very nearly made him betray his village on accident.</p><p>"I can interrogate him, see what he knows." Kiyomi stepped forward, still clutching her busted nose that was beginning to bleed less and less while the chakra circulation treated these conditions as those of an active battlefield and her body did its best to keep the blonde in as much of a fighting shape as humanly possible. "I'm not in a great shape at the moment, but it will only take one mind switch to see what he knows."</p><p>"Very well…" Hanshin stepped back, letting Kiyomi step up in his place and form the Yamanaka hijutsu seal right up in the spy's face. A ghastly howling noise spread across the Yordalaran field that the three were in while Kiyomi's body fumbled lifeless with Hanshin only scowling and sneering at the powerlessness of the Yamanaka while she left her body instead of catching her. Even moving out his hand in front of the body of the falling girl would have gotten into Hanshin's way. Admittedly, while he hesitated to do so, the avatar of masculine perfection did kick Kiyomi's body onto the side so that she did not drown in the puddle of her own nosebleed.</p><p>Entering someone else's mind felt weird. Especially when one did not attempt to control the body from within, in which case it was simply the case of having to deal of seeing yourself as someone else when you looked at yourself and being able to do different things when you tried doing them. No, Kiyomi kept her consciousness deep inside the mental realm, her grip onto the enemy's mind was much stronger that way and she could focus on extracting information instead of managing both the physical and mental aspects of a foreign body.</p><p>"Stop hiding. I've given your consciousness more than enough leeway to form, I need it able to speak." Kiyomi's thoughts resonated through the mind of the enemy spy. She wanted him to know that it was no coincidence that his consciousness was not feeling any pressure or locked down by difficult to overcome mental barriers.</p><p>"I've already told you that I won't tell you anything. What makes you think I'll tell you more when you're inside my mind?" the consciousness of the foreign spy manifested itself in an ethereal image of the man's face formed by glowing, phantasmal substance and covering most of his mind. With a blink of Kiyomi's eyes, the man's consciousness collapsed into an unrecognizable fraction of what it appeared as initially while that of the Yamanaka heiress bloated and grew far surpassing even the initial girth of the consciousness of the mind's owner.</p><p>"Well… Because I'm inside your mind." Kiyomi replied with almost childish glee. "You may not understand this, to be fair, I think only Mana, my magician friend does, she's a genjutsu user, you see, but people tend to think that it is easy to beat illusions and consciousness tampering. All you have to do is understand that something is an illusion and you won't be afraid, right? All you have to do is not say anything and you'll beat it, right?"</p><p>The spy grunted in discomfort and emitted a weak wail while the pressure on his consciousness built up. He did not say anything but his silence was enough for the Yamanaka to understand that he merely did not want to admit that she literally read off his mind without even trying, ironically enough, while being inside of his mind.</p><p>"Truth be told, anyone thinking that way always folds. They lose for one simple reason – they're arrogant. They think that when the nightmares come they will have the same level of awareness, the same calm and level mind they have when acting cocky. You feel it, don't you? The pressure to your consciousness, the innate desire to tell me something, tell me the truth or tell me lies, but in your current state, can you even tell which is which?" Kiyomi's thoughts resonated like an almighty declaration of divine law inside the poor man's mind. The more the Yamanaka showed off her point, the more the man's consciousness folded in on itself and more pathetic it continued to become.</p><p>"We've lost too much, too much is at stake… Do your worst, I won't tell you anything…" slurry, weakened and disorganized thoughts spread through the realm of the spy's own mind.</p><p>"See? You're already talking to yourself right now… How sane can you possibly be?" Kiyomi's thoughts thundered in return. "Or maybe you're talking to me still, who can really tell? Not you, not until I make this pressure stop."</p><p>"W-What is this jutsu? This…" the spy continued his pitiful resistance against the inevitable.</p><p>"It's not what you're used to, not the method of interrogation you've been taught to defend against, right? I assume you've expected something as elementary as the Psychic Transmission technique? Only I knew that a spy like you would be well trained in resisting interrogation, I didn't really have chakra to spare on half-measures. Skipped right to the big stuff… Now, tell me about what you've lost, what the stakes are?"</p><p>"You wish… You're just sweet talking me, waiting for something useful to slip out. You're trying to get me talking about meaningless things, then you'll slowly move closer to the topic before I don't notice the fact I'm spilling the beans." The spy revealed just how well versed in interrogation methods he was. Truthfully, he was already giving Kiyomi plenty, without even realizing. The more Kiyomi pressed against the spy's mind, the more of his thoughts, his feelings and memories she could access at will by fooling the man's mind that her consciousness was no longer that of an invader but that of its owner. The more the man resists, the weaker resistance he will provide, the more battered the defenses around his mind, memories, and feelings will be.</p><p>"Oh, so now the sacrifices you've suffered, the stakes you stand to lose are all meaningless? Either you've already started losing it or you've revealed who you really are under pressure. Nothing like a little grind to reveal an ugly black diamond amongst the coal…"</p><p>"That's not… You'd have done the same thing in my shoes. If your people were at war, slowly losing a war on their own turf, only being able to postpone the inevitable slaughter of your people, the upcoming destruction of your home against the most powerful military on Earth that thinks just because it's so strong it can push people around and take away people's livelihoods..."</p><p>"I see…" Kiyomi loosened her grip a bit. "So you're here for military strength, it is possible that Yordalarans might provide cheap military force, their resources might feed your own military for a while…"</p><p>"Not just that. Don't take us for complete fools, we don't just intend to postpone the outcome of the war, we're looking to create it." The spy cracked. "Yordalarans will do the fighting while their resources will help our own military recover. Once their resources have served us and their own manpower has run dry, then we can push Kumogakure back, finally beat the strongest military in the world and reclaim our livelihood."</p><p>"So you're willing to sacrifice this entire settlement of people just to get ahead in trading stones? And to think you've tried getting the moral high ground on me a while back…" Kiyomi pressed the man's consciousness some, released the pressure entirely before applying a greater grip. It was similar to how boa strangled their prey.</p><p>"I can't believe you still don't get it! Coltan isn't just some stupid market, some simple business for Iwagakure. It is and always has been its export, its pride, and joy! Imagine if one day Konoha wouldn't be able to trade because some stronger village decided that it will now be the sole supplier of… Wood… The Will of Fire? Whatever you people trade…" the spy grumbled. He'd have likely snapped even while of sound mind, something that one held extremely elementary yet of almost essential value was always a good pressure point to target.</p><p>"Then help me understand… Explain it to me… You told Hanshin that you're willing to stall us – stall, keep talking." Kiyomi said with certain dullness, she did not order it or demand it, merely stated that the man should be communicating with her.</p>
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<a name="section0528"><h2>528. Mindminers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A pair of small dips in Meiko's chakra made Mana glance back a pair of times. By now the magician's experience hinted that if Meiko was really in trouble, she'd be much more desperate and would use chakra in much greater extents. Nothing burns through the remaining supply like use tainted by fear for one's own safety. A careful application becomes a slap of as much chakra as possible to maximize the chance of withstanding an attack with as little damage as possible and it wasn't like Meiko was the most skilled ninja with chakra control, to begin with.</p><p>The magician landed by a small Yordalaran home and hid behind it. Most of the Yordalarans were either hidden inside their homes, intimidated by the all the ruckus or laid knocked out in the middle of the settlement's square. It was not a nice statistic or one that Mana could have been proud of but it was the one she'd have to live with. It was not any easier to deal with it knowing that she was responsible for likely the most incapacitations out of her entire team… Just what on Earth got over her?</p><p>Meiko's chakra signature began moving at Mana's direction. Not like before, not where Mana required effort to track its movement but much more slowly. Was the blacksmith that safe that she could move at the pace in which her wounded body demanded to be moved in? That meant that the redhead had managed to give the slip to the Yordalarans around her, that was impressive. Perhaps it was foolish of Mana to trust the condition of Meiko's body and just assume that she was good to use the Body Flicker or that her Body Flicker technique would succeed in getting the blacksmith away.</p><p>Mana's eyes moved down at the unconscious body by her side. This man was a spy, spies were some of the best-taught opponents to resist interrogation. That included mental interrogation and Mana's track record of successful interrogations ever since she picked up the skill has been rather unimpressive. Every time someone worth their mettle forced her to pull out the stops – she failed to get what she needed. Even if she skipped the mental questioning part and tried her own, better-proven method of getting what she wanted, there was a minor hitch – the spy was jawless and physically could not speak.</p><p>"You know, I'm kind of beginning to think you're enjoying getting killed in front of people…" Meiko sighed shortly after landing beside Mana. Despite all of her gear and bulk, the redhead was significantly more quiet than Mana in her movement. Part of it may have been because she did not have a body that she needed to haul around, part of it was because Meiko was just better with stealth.</p><p>"I can't choose what I show people in my illusions. The illusion is what it is. I made the Fancy Trick Jutsu when I was ten years old, the illusion seemed like a good idea back then…" Mana sighed in relief when her friend met up with her.</p><p>"Well, are you going to do this?" Meiko looked at the unconscious, jawless ninja. "We don't have a whole day. If this guy wakes up with even a hint of his chakra recovered we'll have our hands full, plus the whole place is buzzing to kick us out of Yordalar."</p><p>"I guess I was waiting for someone to watch my back." Mana made a gentle smile before placing her hand atop the jawless man's forehead. She closed her eyes and channeled her chakra, building it up and accelerating its flow throughout her entire body, refusing to focus it into just a singular place.</p><p>"Roger…" Meiko sighed, realizing the difficult task ahead. She'll have to protect Mana while she'll leave herself exposed and work on the interrogation without disrupting the magician which would hinder her interrogation.</p><p>Everything around Mana was sunken in total darkness. It was a similar feeling to that which she experienced when entering her own mental realm during meditation. Except for the cold and damp sensations running up and down her body, drilling through every loop in the fabric of her clothes and pinching her skin like lying down atop of millions of needles. She should have figured that the mind of this man would be a raw and drab place…</p><p>A metallic banging noise reached the magician's ears, alerting her adjusting and budding senses to something to navigate by. As seconds passed, Mana heard a cascade of these same noises coming from all around her. Not a moment after the magician's eyes became more accustomed to the darkness around her that not even the somber lanterns beside each miner could illuminate, she realized that she was in a tunnel system.</p><p>The magician treaded forward without losing the tempo in her step. She could pretty much polka around there narrow turns and sharp ridges, she could do flips without smacking her head against the tunnel of shifting height and width after all the training she did with the Ninja Rabbits. If this was the way that the spy's mind protected itself against foreign invaders, Mana was the worst match-up for him to encounter. Even if none of one's outside strength mattered here, only the fortitude of one's mind, the magician retained enough confidence in her navigation abilities in this environment to feed some of her physical realm skills in navigating in darkness to her mental self.</p><p>A crowd of pitiful, underfed and pale figures appeared from the countless twists and turns of the tunnel system, peeked their faces from little tunnels etched into the ceiling and the floor of the carved corridors of the endless mine before squirming out of these pocket holes. Maybe it was for the better that the magician could not see them in full detail or smell them as she had almost forgotten what it felt like to smell anymore, which made it difficult for olfactory mental or illusionary factors to affect her…</p><p>All of the rushing miners smashed against an invisible barrier around Mana that shimmered with an azure glow, the miners hid from illumination like cockroaches from a turned on kitchen light. So far, the joyless spy did not appear to put up much resistance, the answers to what Mana wanted to know laid somewhere deep within these mines. The imaginary safe zone of the man she was interrogating, his own mental fortress. His sanctuary and home.</p><p>A mistake the magician kept on making while learning to interrogate in the Intelligence Division was treating the mental realm like the physical. The only rules here were the ones created by a player that was strong enough to enforce them. Mana extended her hands and dragged the left hand closer to her right as if attempting to flip the entire three-dimensional mine around her like a page. The fabric of mental reality shook and flapped but did not budge. The resistance was formidable, without a doubt the spy was aware on some level that Mana was here, despite his physical body being unconscious.</p><p>A tall and malformed, humanoid shape possessing two heads charged right through Mana. The magician could not sense it but she managed to make her body intangible to the figment of imagination by sensing the inner quakes inside the spy's own mind. When one prepared to throw a punch, they performed the wind-up, there were plenty of signs inside the mental realm that one was winding up a mental blow of their own.</p><p>Mana glared at the grotesque shape attempting to make it disperse. Unlike in the real world where thinking that if one refused to acknowledge and believe that which terrified them would end up getting one killed, here, in someone else's mind, it may just have worked.</p><p>"He's too solid… Could this not be a sign of imagination but… A memory?" Mana wondered while the two-headed miner swung his pickaxe over his head. Instead of attacking the monstrous miner, the magician used her concentration to lower the mine's ceiling and have the pickaxe get stuck inside it. The malformed man roared, grumbled and threw slobber up in attempt to pull the stuck tool out but it was to no avail. Hardening the stone in the mine was as simple as lowering the ceiling to an entire tunnel.</p><p>"In that case… I'll need a little physical therapy…" Mana thought to herself while her body crackled with lightning. If she focused hard enough on the thought of a certain ninjutsu technique, not just focused, really felt every feeling that followed it, truly simulated the experience of using it with her entire being, her physical body may have used that technique while Mana's mind was still stuck inside. It was difficult with a technique of rank as high as the Magician's Touch Jutsu but, luckily, the magician's concentration was never her weakness.</p><p>After a crackle of lightning passed through Mana's body and resonated through the entire mine, creating glowing cracks that appeared almost like the bolts of actual lightning in the darkest covers of the night, the malformed miner was no longer in Mana's way, as if he had never been there, to begin with…</p><p>The magician began taking simple steps forward. Shifting right through the mine appeared to be not an option since it did not work the last time but maybe she could still fool the host mind that the way she was going was actually the right one through subtle mental manipulation. It would not be easy to traverse a mind and alter it at the same time, especially on such a level… The mine around Mana began rushing forward, it appeared as if the magician was plummeting down when, in fact, she was standing quite still, and yet, the mine around her kept on moving at tremendous speed. Twists and turns all turned and curled without Mana's input, it was almost like the young woman was being taken somewhere…</p><p>"I am a bit confused," Mana spoke up, seeing the jawless spy hacking with his pickaxe right in front of her at the ceiling above him with a curious tool she had never seen before – a twin-sided long staff, on one end hung the typical end of a pickaxe, on another – the end of a rake. An oddly practical tool that meant to shatter hardened minerals and then use the other side to quickly filter through the shatters to reveal the shimmering details within the ruined stone.</p><p>"You made me forget…" the spy spoke back at her. It was something that felt surprising, sure, anyone who couldn't normally speak could imagine themselves speaking inside their own mind, however, it required concentration being focused on speech instead of protecting one from the mental invader. "You did something and I don't remember Lutno anymore. I'll tell you anything you need to know if you make me forget more things."</p><p>"Hm? Not very devoted to your goal, I see…" Mana taunted the man who now took a much younger, slimmer and still jawed form. He wore a white filtering mask that covered his lower face so even when he clearly had a lower jaw it was still hidden under that facial accessory.</p><p>"It's not that I don't want us to succeed or that I don't believe in it. It's that you're already too late to stop us." The Iwagakure spy declared right before dropping a massive payload of minerals all over the ground. For whatever reason, it reminded Mana of the seppuku that she saw in the Summit with the life of Mother Mountain spilling all over the ground. It was a much richer drop compared to most of the ones Mana saw the other miners get. Needless to say, the younger version of the spy she attempted to interrogate continued to brush the stones with the rake.</p><p>The young man was excited, overly so, he had none of the careful brushing that the other miners or even he himself used before. His movements were filled with haste to collect the day's quota of coltan, gold, silver, copper and whatever else he managed to get his hands on and get paid. With the teeth of the rake brushing against the stone so quickly and with such childish brashness, it was of no surprise that it got stuck in a harder vein of a mineral. The rest was all inertia, the other side of the stick flying like a battleax and picking the young man's lower jaw off. It was not a clean wound at all…</p><p>"You want to forget this?" Mana asked something that required no clarification. She wanted to know the reason why the young man wanted to forget this so much that he'd bargain with a foreign ninja more than she needed the confirmation that this memory required wiping.</p><p>"This changed my life. I could no longer work in the mines after this, mining is the pride and joy of any Iwagakure civilian. Plenty, even the Tsuchikage himself have risen from the ranks of lowly miners, climbing their way up the mountain to more light, ironically enough, more and cleaner air… I do not hate the mines, in fact, I love the shot every man is given to earn their bread and medals. This is the only memory that bitters the entire experience. My spoon of tar in a barrel of honey…" the spy's voice still spread across the mine's despite his previous body being frozen in time, writhing on the ground while the other miners that had enough mercy to save his life gathered around him. It surprised the magician to see just how many continued to work, whether refusing to look at the boy in an attempt to avoid seeing the gruesome nature of his injury or because it distracted them from their own quota and the surplus they needed to earn in order to ascend.</p><p>"It's not as easy as that…" Mana raised her hand up, demonstrating the lightning crackles of the magician's touch passing through her body. "Even if I left your mind and focused on the jutsu, I can't be certain of what I am making you forget. In the strictest manner of speaking, I'll merely direct the power of an octillion volts right through your brain. Even if the contact lasts for a split-moment, who knows what you will be forgetting…"</p><p>"I see." The jawless spy dragged his hand across the gruesome wound on his lower jaw. With just a simple wave the man's jaw reassembled and stitched itself back together on flesh and skin strands that all wrapped around one another like separate strings weaving together. "I trust you. Zap me as many times as you need to so that I forget it, it doesn't matter what gets lost in the way. If only one memory remains while this is gone forever, it will be a fair trade."</p><p>"I must admit, I did not expect this to go this way…" Mana muttered before finally signing the resolution inside her to do what needed to be done.</p><p>"I could struggle but… My body is unconscious, it would just be unnecessary. The battle would cost me my precious memories and by now we've already bought more than enough time… It's a compromise, as some would call it. You said you needed to leave my mind to fry my brain?" the spy raised the issue. Mana felt cold sweat run down her back whenever the spy mentioned stalling and having won enough time already.</p><p>"P-Please don't call it that. It doesn't make it any easier to do." Mana scratched the back of her neck before nodding with unease. "Yes, I would rather focus on the technique than use it half-subconsciously. Using it like this will feel like solving advanced math problems while memorizing a poem and singing along with your favorite song."</p><p>"I see, I'd rather you stay. That will help us clear up what I've forgotten and it will help to only sacrifice the necessary and not one memory more." The spy insisted.</p><p>"You're… That's insane." Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Please… Coltan, home, and other miners… They're all that means anything in my life anymore. Every day I wake up just to protect those memories and experience them some more. I'd rather die than lose a treasured memory I could have protected."</p><p>There was that word… People joked when referring to it as the "magic word" but when Mana was concerned and other people spoke it… It very well may have actually possessed mystical properties. Magician's Touch was not a jutsu that Mana did too much training on during the time in the Rabbit Caves, she had only narrowly sharpened her skills with the technique compared to how they were before. This was a gamble yet the worst thing that could happen was Mana leaving the man a drooling vegetable. If she focused just enough, she'd be able to notice and restrict the power output and save the man from death even if the worst came to pass…</p><p>This was reckless, this was immensely dangerous for this man but…</p><p>Lives were at stake, the innocent, generous and naïve lives of the Yordalaran people, the lives of Kumogakure ninja and the allies that chose to walk alongside the path of the stronger side of the war. Whatever plan Iwagakure had, it must have been important enough to win the coltan conflict without question as nothing less than that justified intervention like this. An intervention that justified the complete reduction of a ninja village to rubble by the other Great Countries…</p><p>There was only one line Mana would never cross and this had no danger approaching it, even if this suggestion was dangerous.</p><p>The magician sighed, feeling a little shocked by how okay she felt about what she was about to do. There may have been easier ways to make the man forget, maybe Kiyomi possessed Yamanaka hijutsu that applied pressure on one's mind strong enough to cut access to some memories, maybe Meiko could have punched the man hard enough to shake his noggin up a little bit. Either one of those was an outlandish suggestion but they were both more likely than successfully pulling this feat off…</p><p>"Very well, I will do my best…" Mana sighed while rolling back her sleeves and extending her hands in a wide-guard stance. "I will need you to tell me the information beforehand, however, in the case of me screwing up you will be in no condition at all to give me anything and that case is extremely likely."</p><p>"I suppose that's fair enough… The location you need to go to is the Eternal Fire. A complex of black, metallic structures in the northern side of Yordalar, next to Mound Tate. It is a sort of a parliament building where the council of Yordalarans that decide over the faith of their people reside while the meetings are in session, it is far too hot to stay there any other time. It is a clever joke, whoever thought of it, incentivizes the council to hurry up with their political bantering. There you will find the others."</p><p>"The others?" Mana asked, surprised by the shock in her own voice. Somewhere in the corner of her mind, she had always suspected that the spies had more allies than those that revealed themselves during the election.</p><p>"Correct. The election was just a charade, while we occupied the Yordalaran people and played with you, the rest have already drafted a contract for Yordalar's current leader to sign that will grant the power over the land to Iwagakure. It may not sound entirely fair and legal and I won't presume to understand the specifics but… The transmission is a complicated, multi-part process that, once completed, will leave the other countries no other choice but to acknowledge it."</p><p>Azure bolts of lightning ran down Mana's body, arcing and forming small rings around her body before dispersing into nets of smaller jolts. The magician was eager to start this crazy procedure now that it became clear what was at stake.</p>
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<a name="section0529"><h2>529. Into The Eternal Fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A shadowy flash, faster than most eyes could track, telegraphed the hasty movement of a pair through the worn out settlement. Yordalar was smoking, full of empty houses with what few of its people remained conscious patrolling the streets and looking for a potential scapegoat that this tragedy could have been pinned on. To people that have lost so much in just one evening, it would not have mattered if the foreigners they found were from Iwagakure or Konoha…</p><p>"It is likely that we will get into a fight here. Given how those last guys were just a distraction, it would be reasonable to assume that these spies will be more powerful than the pair we fought as a distraction." Mana looked at Meiko with worry. While Mana was engaged in the interrogation a group of Yordalarans had found them and the blacksmith was forced to fight them off. A couple of nasty bumps and bruises covered the blacksmith's face and sides but even in her worn out state she managed to knock the search party out.</p><p>"What I'm more worried about is that spy waking up and attacking us from behind. You looked really happy, for whatever reason, I don't think him giving you the kind of news he gave you would make you smile…" Meiko shook her head, attempting to shake off Mana's concern the same way.</p><p>"What happened there was nothing short of a miracle. Things just went really well for once… Because of it, I believe that we can do this." Mana looked at the chaotic cushion of pillars skewering a smaller mound of dirt and dried out grass whereas a much more massive one laid right behind it. The metallic pillars that comprised the Eternal Fire were covered with staircases and other accessories from the outside that appeared to go nowhere and just go on for meters on end before simply ending.</p><p>"We'd stand a better chance at "doing it" if we found Kiyomi and Hanshin. I know you said we're on a very tight schedule but…" Meiko brought the more pressing issue up, only for Mana to express her hopeful state with another confident smile.</p><p>"That's why we're standing about talking right now – they'll catch up to us in a moment. I don't know how but they must have learned of the same information just a little bit later." Mana declared only for Kiyomi and Hanshin flicker in around the two. Kiyomi's chakra signature felt notably smaller than what it was before and had barely even begun to recover, Hanshin was in the best state out of the lot.</p><p>"Meiko, are you okay? I can't believe Mana didn't watch over your back!" Kiyomi examined the black bruises over Meiko's face before glaring at Mana in a way that allowed the magician to understand that this was just a joke and she did not truly blame her teammate for the beating Meiko took.</p><p>"Actually, I watched hers." Meiko grinned with pride, one of her eyes looked a little bit swollen which made only one half of the intended grin to properly translate whereas the entire right side of the blacksmith's face appeared completely lifeless.</p><p>"Yeah, that's about right…" Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Let Hanshin tell you something, this is enough chit-chat, we're sensitive on time. We need to prevent all the documents from being signed. In the worst case scenario, we will require to destroy those documents and kill all the witnesses that knew of them being signed." Hanshin took the time to explain the team their new field objective. For the first time in a while, he was behaving like a leader…</p><p>"That's not an option," Mana stated bluntly. She expected the special jounin in charge of their squad to make fun of her for this resolution but he merely placed his palm onto his face and stroke it gently, as if massaging it.</p><p>"In that case, I suggest you hurry the hell up." He taunted the team. The quartet charged on ahead only for a mighty blast of air pressure to scatter them apart before a rushing whirlpool washed them all away even further. Mana sensed it, but she sensed it too late. Whoever did this, they were fast and quite skilled, nobody to take lightly, as most gatekeepers would have been.</p><p>After rising above the surface, Mana channeled the chakra through her feet to stick to the water surface and not have to fight this first enemy while swimming about. Walking on water may have been an elementary chakra mastery technique, one that Mana did not herself invent, but it was primitive enough to where the magician considered it more of a concept than an actual jutsu and found it in her to use whereas normally she'd have had doubts about plagiarizing someone else's hard work.</p><p>The enemy that kept the Konoha team was a lone woman of long, flowing black hair and an aquamarine dress. Large ring earrings hung from her ears, not unlike those that the Yordalaran women wore making the magician a little hesitant to engage the woman as she may have been a Yordalaran. Hanshin shared no such hesitations, he leaped at the woman, bursting from underwater and soaring at the staircase on which she resided like a sky-splitting arrow tip.</p><p>"Water Style: Crystal Lake Drill!" the woman chanted out in a rather low-pitched tone for a woman, although still feminine enough to not be mistaken for that of a man's. Hanshin threw his fist forward, the entire arm of Black Vicious materialized from behind him while the legs appeared as well and stretched out downward, throwing intense jets of Fire Release chakra to keep driving the special jounin forward.</p><p>Hanshin must have known he had superior sheer strength and therefore intended to utilize these advantages to close in on the Water Style ninjutsu user. She made quite a costly effort to keep this battle at a long range from the get-go, that was a strong enough hint that if the Konoha ninja were to beat her and advance to the Eternal Flame, they needed to close the range right up to the face of the enemy kunoichi.</p><p>A vivid and concentrated stream of water burst from the woman's mouth, a shower that would have easily sliced through just about any material that could have existed. However, Black Vicious proved to be slightly superior, the fist continued to clench in pressure and keep driving on, piercing right through the stream and close the distance up. It was not an effortless venture, however, as Black Vicious' arm hung busted up and emitted troubling flares of base chakra release through the cracks.</p><p>"This woman… I don't think she's a Yordalaran collaborator at all." Mana shook her head. She spoke verbally as Kiyomi was saving the chakra for the time when she would need to fight. Seeing a ninja like this guarding the entryway made all three young ladies worried. Neither of the three was in any state to fight at their very best and there was certainly nothing average about this enemy.</p><p>"She does look like a Yordalaran." Kiyomi sighed. "I figured that was why you didn't jump into Hanshin's aid. You're in the best condition to fight out of the three of us and it's not like you to not throw yourself like a sacrificial lamb out first."</p><p>"This jutsu she used… It looks like something ideal for cutting through stone, minerals and various other hardened substances that a miner of Iwagakure would be required to precisely remove without damaging the mountain it came from too much. She is from Iwagakure, most likely." Mana voiced her theory while continuing to observe the clash between Hanshin and the woman.</p><p>While Kiyomi's remark was not in any way a demeaning one and just intended to cheek Mana's usual behavior in similar situations, at least the way in which the Yamanaka girl saw it, the magician actually found it quite to the point. Looking at Hanshin throwing fists and kicks and having them perfectly matched and then returned back to him by the woman he was fighting, revealing that this kunoichi was surprisingly adept at close-range as well, Mana leaped forward, using the blind spot of the woman being engaged with Hanshin to approach the fighting range.</p><p>"Hanshin-sensei! Leave this woman to me, you're the strongest out of the four of us and easily a match to the three of us combined. You need to save your strength on their strongest ninja. I am the least worn out of the ninja we have to spare, it is only fair that I take this woman on!" Mana shouted out. "Don't waste chakra on repairing your armor, just retreat and go on ahead!"</p><p>"Go on ahead?" Meiko questioned Mana's plan. "That's the most reckless strategy I've ever heard. We should just all take this woman on and keep moving on the same way as we go ahead!"</p><p>"No, she's right, if you're out for moving as fast as you can, that is," Hanshin spoke up, having jumped back and retreated to the other two kunoichi and left the Water Style ninjutsu user all for Mana to deal with. "This girl… She may just be a more reckless leader than Hanshin would ever be. Ready to sacrifice herself and the entire team, risk the success of the mission just so she doesn't have to kill anyone."</p><p>"One occupies the enemy while the rest move on? That's a risky way to fight, but it's just like Mana." Kiyomi grinned while looking for an opening so that the four could slip through and move on ahead.</p><p>It was immensely risky. It would have been even riskier if Mana could not sense the flaring up chakra signatures from inside the Eternal Flame. If the team rushing on ahead suddenly encountered a resistance vastly outnumbering their own numbers and got wiped out. In this case, the spies weren't all that numerous and had stretched out thin, one in each room, all leading to the meeting hall at the top floor, where there were multiple smaller chakra signatures – likely the collaborator politicians who were submitting the autonomy rights of Yordalar to Iwagakure at this very moment.</p><p>Mana threw a palm out in front, channeling Lightning Release chakra through it and forming it into the shape of rods that floated vertically above the two clashing kunoichi. Upon Mana's signal, the rods of Lightning Release chakra drove down into the wall and the staircase around the pair, electrifying the steel structure while still maintaining their form and discharging lightning bolts.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Magic Skewer Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, it was not that she was not skilled enough to use this jutsu without uttering its name. The call was made to alert her team – this was their cue to move.</p><p>"Hmph…" the enemy kunoichi lowered her chin and looked down. "You must think you're so smart, walling me off from attacking your team with those lightning rods of yours…"</p><p>Mana did not respond. Any attempt to power through the magician's jutsu would have shocked the Iwagakure kunoichi. While a C-Rank jutsu was a long shot from a significant blow to someone of her weight class but it was still augmentation of one's own endurance and pain one could avoid. If the woman used one of her long-range Water Style ninjutsu, she'd only aggravate the situation by giving the lightning rods something else to channel to her through.</p><p>For now, the Iwagakure kunoichi stood still, her eyes kept focused on the magician and not her team that flickered out and into the building in an instant. The moment the opening that Mana had provided her team was not needed – it dissolved into lightning sparks.</p><p>Facing this woman alone was a rushed decision. The Iwagakure ninja was in better physical condition, while normally Mana would have likely had a greater chakra reserve than her opponent, now even her chakra was drained out by a noticeable margin. Mana was at a disadvantage in pretty much every way it mattered. It would take an outright miracle to win this fight and remain in a suitable condition to assist her team any further.</p><p>A miracle on a lesser scale, however, than the one that Mana managed to pull off. A miracle of shocking a man just the right way to delete a specific pinch of memories while keeping the rest intact, while inside that man's own mind and lacking the necessary focus to properly utilize the jutsu in the first place.</p><p>Even if that one fortune's smile used out the entirety of Mana's luck reserve she had for the rest of her life, it was a miracle that made the magician believe in miracles. It was something that made Mana look forward more favorably toward a battle still ahead. A meeting that made dying here, fighting this woman absolutely not an option.</p><p>The two kunoichi stood and stared at each other. Technically, only Mana was at a disadvantage by merely standing and observing her opponent, the Iwagakure spy could have done this whole day. She was hardly a necessary participant in the signing of the documents in the meeting room of the Eternal Flame. Regardless of the disadvantage, making a move now would betray her fighting style, her stance and her moves to the opponent whereas without showing off too much she still could have surprised the woman and pulled off a quick and decisive victory if the surprise factor was utilized correctly.</p><p>The two were like two samurai locked in a standoff and waiting for the Sun to disappear under the horizon and signal the unavoidable resolution. Unlike how it was in the analogy, the Sun was hidden behind a shroud of gloom, it was only when the Iwagakure spy made the first move that the clash started out for real. Instead of engaging the woman, Mana flipped back and started plummeting down the staircase that led to nowhere, using the attraction of gravity itself to her advantage in order to gain some more range.</p><p>Perhaps she could have raced with the Iwagakure woman, tried and squeezed in a jutsu of her own in between the time when she noticed the twitch in her opponent's muscles and when the final hand seal was formed. Still, she did not know just what kind of techniques this kunoichi used, how many hand seals they required and what was the case with the woman's chakra control. Could she cast jutsu one-handed or by overcoming the need for hand seals completely through experience and training. All of those factors could have ended the battle prematurely. It would have been stupid to clash with this woman directly when Mana was losing in both the physical and stamina departments at the moment.</p><p>"Water Style: Great Waterfall Jutsu!" the woman declared with an authoritative tone unfit for a lowly spy. Mana's eyes twitched in surprise. This was a well-known to most Water Style users, therefore ninja from most of the ninja villages, ninjutsu technique. Why would the woman pick this technique? It was cumbersome to use, cost a load of chakra and was better suited for attacking a large number of weakened enemies and washing them away, not trying to pin down a single opponent.</p><p>Water surged from the woman's mouth, expanding exponentially in size, violence, and mass. Where it only came out as a single spray, about as sizeable as a spit-up mouthful, just meters away from its caster, the technique turned into a ferocious whirlpool that threatened to submerge the entire battlefield underwater. Wind currents formed around under Mana's feet, pushing the magician further away from the Eternal Flame walls and allowing the magician to evade the rushing waterfall in a crescent-shaped soaring flight using her Mystical Wings Jutsu.</p><p>The hungry whirlpools consumed the entire area underneath, forming a small lake, a couple of meters deep own below and washing away an entire district of the settlement with effortless grace to its destructive might. A shocking realization hit Mana, it was not a direct hit that the woman required with this technique, it was to create a viable water source for the battle ahead. The few techniques she had used did not require a water source – they both could have been spit up from the mouth, using the natural hydration resources of the user and vastly augmenting them with chakra. Now, by creating this lake, the woman removed a very nasty weakness that most Water Style users shared – the need for a water source while using their ninjutsu.</p><p>Mana scolded herself for not realizing this sooner. Had she called this instantly, right when the battle started, she'd have been able to not worry about being hit with the jutsu and simply used her own techniques in response. Knowing that the enemy was planning such a cumbersome technique for a setup would have allowed her to win the battle outright, then again, if she made such a call and was wrong, she'd have lost it and died just as easily…</p><p>No. She should have known. There was no way that this woman was a skilled enough Water Style user to be able to form perfect Water Style ninjutsu just out of the humidity in the air or to simply create them out of nothing. It demanded an elite rank of ninja and this spy in the middle of a Yordalar takeover operation who served as a sacrificial gatekeeper could not have been it.</p><p>"It was a good call to have your teammates make it inside. A moment longer and I would have washed them all away…" the Iwagakure woman taunted Mana. At least she was oblivious to the mind games and planning that the magician was going through.</p><p>"By spreading out the range of your flood, you drastically lost most of its destructive power. If you focused this jutsu into a vortex, you may have threatened one of us. The way this jutsu is now, it would have done nothing but refresh my friends and washed their wounds." Mana shot back while working through a further plan of action. With the enemy having formed their water source, she needed to gain an advantage of her own of equal or greater value if she was to not get wrecked by the drastically empowered potential of the woman's Water Style ninjutsu.</p>
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<a name="section0530"><h2>530. The Pacing Game</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So far Mana has been careful. Perhaps that very same caution has prevented her from exploiting some chances that she should have looked at. It made sense, rationalizing fighting at only the level in which she was used to fighting before the crazy training in the Rabbit Caves and completely ignoring the costlier show of the growth she has accomplished. After all, she was weakened by the scuffle with the Red Hawks and the struggle against the Yordalarians, it only made sense to conserve strength.</p><hr/><p>A blow sent the magician crashing through something tall, sharp and hard as a rock, then tumbling through the stony caves, hitting just about every rough obstacle in her way. It was hard to say what was worse, the hit itself or the landing and the proceeding to stand back up. Even when Mana knew that Usuzoku's slash was coming, his sword still hurt like hell even at the highest level of the applied defensive augmentations. By now the magician was long past being afraid of chakra augmentation as she was some time after breaking her chakra network – fearing such a fundamental part of battle meant certain death in here.</p><p>„Yer holdin' back!" Usuzoku declared, a distinctive metallic clang suggested that the showoff rabbit swordsman has once again stabbed his sword right through the stone, avoiding damage to the blade by coating it in chakra, while using the massive weapon for support.</p><p>"I'm not holding back," Mana argued, her voice was devoid of any irritation that the voice of a kunoichi that's been kicked around and battered for well over a hundred hours by that point would've had.</p><p>"Yer dodgin' just as fast as ye did from da get-go, and yer punchin' just as strong. Means yer holdin' back, always have been." Usuzoku spat to the side, in the purposefully dimmed area of the Rabbit Caves that aimed to better emulate the inhospitable conditions of the old home of the rabbits, now used solely for training, Mana could hear every part of the journey for the little drop of spit or any of its fractions. She had no other senses to rely on except touch, hearing and her chakra sensory.</p><p>"Or maybe I'm just fighting intelligently." The magician breathed out a pair of heavy sighs as she struggled to push herself back into fighting shape. "I knew I was in it for a long brawl so I'm pacing myself, doesn't mean I'm holding back."</p><p>"Yeh, it does. Ye've been trainin' for hours since before I came 'ere askin' fer trouble. Ye've been tired since da very start, ye've known dat." Usuzoku cracked his knuckles, then drew his sword out from the stony floor it put it into for a short rest.</p><p>"All the more reason to…" Usuzoku disappeared before Mana could finish. Mana's body flared up with accelerated chakra flow, almost pouring from her every pore. She did not know where exactly she'd be hit at and she could not afford getting cut down or impaled again, that simply demanded too much time to recover from, too much time she could have spent training. Guru Ayushi had nearly infinite amounts of stamina and has fought battles for twice the amount of days to how many hours Mana has been sparring for…</p><p>Another painful flash lit up the magician's vision. It was not created by a source of light, instead, it was a different way for the body of the young woman to express the pain and the damage she took while her body toughened up to take it. Even in the airless oven of the training caves, Mana felt the cold brush of air against the bleeding wounds. It was the prime way of identifying what was bleeding and what was just bumped really badly. While Mana's chakra augmentation withstood the sword slash by having only the blunt swinging force spread throughout the kunoichi's body instead of cutting her open, the slide and the slam from the aftereffects of the impact weren't as easily protected against in this stage of the battle.</p><p>"Ye know I'm fresh, ye know I've got more chakra den you. What's dere to fight intelligently about? Just let loose, take a gamble, win or lose, at least ye won't have to take a beating to come to da same resolution…" Usuzoku taunted the magician.</p><hr/><p>It appeared that old habits did not die easy. The moment that Mana stopped training with Usuzoku and resumed solo-training, started catching up on her other passions that she's missed out on during the time she's been away, she's come back to the old way she used to fight. What Usuzoku said was true, if Mana was to fight the old way, by trying and control the pace of the battle, manage her stamina and her chakra resourcefully, she'd lose. She'd lose after a drawn-out game of chess because her opponent simply had twice the amount of figures Mana had…</p><p>The Konoha kunoichi slammed her hands together, parting them in the shape of a hand seal, then proceeded to form a handful more of them. The hands of the Iwagakure spy woman moved in to intercept Mana's attempt at an attack but they froze mid-way. Mana's opponent was experienced and skilled enough to realize that she'd never win a hand seal race against the magician so she refused to even try, now the Water Style user was playing the game Mana played before – the pacing game.</p><p>A bright flash emanated from the magician's hands. "Black Magic Box Jutsu!" Mana chanted out the name of her illusion, one that she had not yet had the chance or the necessity to use since the training days, except the little sneak peek during the Summit with the Ninja Voices.</p><p>The Iwagakure woman froze in her tracks, her arm twitched in a jerky motion before her eyes blanked out. Almost as if she had just died on the spot and her soul had completely departed from her body. While the first part was most certainly not the case, it was merely a case of debate about the second. The mind of the woman was in another place completely while staying where it was at the very same time.</p><p>The Iwagakure kunoichi tried letting out a gasp while the total darkness that surrounded her was interrupted by rusty chains shooting out from the barely intelligible liquid that she stood on in the illusionary realm. She would try dodging those chains but she was not the woman she thought herself to be, her movements while affected by the illusion were sluggish and imprecise, it was not that the woman herself perceived the world in delirium, it was that the illusionary world Mana created and placed her in was delirious by its very nature. Nothing was like it supposed to be, save for the illusion that the magician had to show.</p><p>The rusted clinkers wrapped around the limbs of the Iwagakure spy, compressing around the body parts it restrained so hard that the very thought of resisting them, combined with the complete feeling of powerlessness that the very atmosphere of the Black Magic Box illusion created, made one shiver like the chills of a winter morning against one's bare skin.</p><p>A bulbous burst of chakra flared up from the woman, obliterating away the rusted chains that Mana's illusions formed in a second. The magician knew what it meant – she's been read like a note. Admittedly, the illusionary nature of the Black Magic Box technique was about as subtle as an old hag screaming bloody murder in one's face while waving an ax about. Realizing that it was an illusion and therefore dispelling it was not that difficult, although due to its above average rank, the deed demanded quite the resources from the woman.</p><p>Now the two were almost even – in fact, Mana's chakra signature, even after using a B-Rank illusion, was now ahead of the remaining chakra of her opponent's, just because of how straining dispelling such an illusion was.</p><p>"You can stop it now." Mana closed her eyes, shortly after breaking her flight technique to use her illusion, she had reset the Mystical Wings jutsu and floating at the upper levels where her opponent was standing on a meaningless staircase platform.</p><p>"Frustrated that I've shattered your technique? Frightened maybe? Even if you tried running away if you begged me to spare you, I wouldn't." the Iwagakure woman smiled, her emerald-colored lips arced like an upside crescent moon although because of the generally repulsive nature of the woman that owned it, despite her gorgeous appearance, it took a malevolent visage.</p><p>"That's not what I meant. I meant you can shatter the illusion of your own creation." Mana stared back at the face of a woman she was beginning to utterly dislike more and more with each word she said.</p><p>"Huh? W-What? W-Wait… Don't tell me!" Mana felt a little satisfied to see the anguish in the face of her opponent overcome the innate sadism. It almost made it worth it revealing the secret that the magician was onto the spy's illusion for some time now. Not from the very beginning, the control over the woman's chakra was commendable, she was able to remain in her transformation for quite a long time before Mana noticed a slight dip in her chakra resources. "You're a sensor!? On top of a Lightning Style user… Talk about a pain in my ass to fight…"</p><p>"That's right." Mana nodded, her eyes still closed, almost challenging the woman to try her luck. "The other spies I've met went through a great deal of issue to protect their names. They never slipped up, you could never encounter them even in the most personal depths of their minds, not even almost mentally lobotomizing one of you brought it any closer to the surface. Spies through and through… You… You've gone the farthest out of them all, disguising even your appearance."</p><p>The Iwagakure kunoichi ground her teeth in enmity. What she said previously was true, Mana was the perfect counter to this woman's abilities – capable of sensing her chakra and therefore reading her Transformation Jutsu ploy, relying mainly on Lightning Style ninjutsu therefore able to shock the spy by confronting her Water Style jutsu with Mana's own focused offense and coming out on top due to natural elemental reactions between the pair. Still, the fact that this woman was able to fight while transformed and to such an extent… It may just have been that it was not too wise to invite the spy to remove this disguise and fight without the constant strain of maintaining a false face.</p><p>"T-That's right… You got me, that's what I've been doing this whole time!" the spy placed her hands on her hips and turned them around a pair of time while grinning into the air, like posing for an election poster.</p><p>"That's not the reason at all, is it? It's some sort of a wish to look younger thing?" Mana's upper body sagged after the depressing realization. The idea of some of the Iwagakure spies going the extra line while protecting their identity just sounded so cool that the young woman may have given them too much credit there.</p><p>"N-Not at all!" the Iwagakure woman looked offended enough for Mana to at least barely subscribe herself to the belief that her opponent was not just a vain, aging woman trying to look at her prime while eating the cake of experience and skill acquired through the years as well. "I've had enough of your mockery, it's about time I make you beg for death!"</p><p>After a cold declaration like that, the Iwagakure woman placed her hands together and weaved a collection of hand seals. The number of hand seals was not that impressive. Perhaps Mana was wise to not initiate a counter attack as she may not have made it in time and would have left open for the impending attack. The strain on her opponent's chakra was also rather lacking, the ninjutsu she was using must have been a low-ranking one.</p><p>"Water Style: Water Assault Jutsu!" the Iwagakure woman chanted as jets of water spread out of the large lake below, like watery tendrils of an abyssal beast reaching out for an airborne prey. Mana pressed her palms against each other before extending them to the side.</p><p>"Magic Bubble Jutsu!" the magician chanted out while a bubble of Wind Release chakra formed around her, one of B-Rank in intensity and therefore strong enough to completely nullify her opponent's C-Rank technique. The tendrils of water slapped about at the bubble, sending it flying to the other tentacle that tried its best to burst the bubble and get to the soft and vulnerable ninja inside. It was a whole world apart from the strength required to break Mana's bubble. The protections only faded away once the water tendrils of the Iwagakure kunoichi turned flabby and collapsed into a downpour back down to its source.</p><p>After just a single exchange, Mana could no longer tell the difference between her remaining chakra and that of her opponent's. The jutsu that the Iwagakure kunoichi used was lower ranking than Mana's protections, which in itself compensated for the luxurious decision of the spy to dispel Mana's illusion immediately.</p><p>"Your thirst for blood from before. It surpasses that of somebody that's fighting to protect their home. I've been inside the mind of your less fortunate comrade, I know why this mission is so important to you." Mana stated while calmly resuming her neutral fighting stance. She had planned on luring out more moves from her opponent, throw her off-balance, make her use out more chakra and once again regain the advantage. Even if Mana gambled on her victory by going all out now, she'd only win this battle, not the plenty of remaining battles ahead in this war.</p><p>A sick smile twisted the face of the Iwagakure woman. "Home? Why would I fight for that dirty speck of rock on the world map? A place that doesn't care for anyone that doesn't foster the rock-hard attitude they try so hard to instill", judging from the scorn present in the woman's tone, there was some very painful personal history present in these cruel sentiments.</p><p>"I refuse to believe that." Mana shook her head. "Nobody who sees an assignment as just an objective they need to fulfill fight as hard as you do, with as much heart behind every attack."</p><p>Mana's words were laughed off with some of the most vigorous mockery that Mana has faced in her life and she grew up as a ninja that refused to take a life. It was in that reaction that the magician saw it for real – there was none of the devotion to the sacred memories of Iwagakure that the other spies had, none of the burning passion to save the lives of its villagers and fill the bellies of its children and the poor. Just something else entirely…</p><p>"I do this because it pays really well to get to kill people." The Iwagakure woman declared.</p><p>Mana clenched her fists. The more rational part of her mind begged the magician to not use any jutsu now, when her chakra was bursting and brimming on the inside, water leaked through any hole the fastest when it was being splashed and thrown around. Just like chakra was wasted the fastest when emotion disrupted one's control.</p><p>"Magic Entrance Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, pointing her hands at the opponent while expelling a wild flock of Lightning Release chakra sparks at her. Nothing but a minor hindrance, something to turn one's head away from at best, maybe stumble back if one was standing too close and the Iwagakure woman appeared to have picked up on that weakness of the magician's jutsu. She just covered up her face to protect it from being burnt and turned away from the bright flashes of the sparks.</p><p>"Fire Style:…" Mana's voice slashed through the crackling sound of lightning sparks and forced her opponent to throw her covering hands off of her face and power through the final kicks of the previous technique just to see what madness the magician has settled on throwing at her this time. At the same time, the Iwagakure kunoichi rushed through her own set of hand seals. It was dangerous to stand in place and race to the end but… If the woman succeeded…</p><p>"Flamethrower Jutsu!" the magician yelled out right before inhaling a massive amount of air into her lungs, enough to inflate her upper body like a balloon to where it threatened to have the magician burst like one as well, however, because it was merely for a moment, the grimmest did not come to pass. By blowing all the pent-up air out from her lungs, Mana compressed the air into a stream of air while converting it into Fire Release chakra as well. The immolating result was a supercharged beam of flames directed right at wherever Mana blew the blazing air at.</p><p>"Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!" her opponent yelled out, the woman's heart was burning with excitement. Just from the passion at which she declared the name of her triumphant Water Style ninjutsu that she managed to squeeze into the space between Mana's hand seals and the time when her jutsu came out telegraphed just how excited the woman was with this gamble. With the intensity of a moment in between being overcome by a stream of flames so intense that it tore flesh from one's bones before the heat even set in and using one's own technique that was superior to that of the opponent's in terms of the elemental reaction it caused between the chakra natures.</p><p>A blast of water, shaped like a dragon raced from down below and wrapped around its user, protecting the woman from the rushing flames while completely nullifying their harmful effects on its master. It did so before smashing right into Mana's flamethrower stream with its head and continuing to push onward, extinguishing the magician's flames almost as if they were nothing more but measly air resistance for the B-Rank Water Release jutsu.</p><p>"You fool! Using a Fire Release jutsu against me…" the Iwagakure ninja mocked Mana until the final moments, right up until the dragon-shaped rush of water swallowed Mana whole. Without warning, a thunderclap signaled the passage of mighty electrical currents through the water dragon still surrounding its master, coming from Mana's direction. The Iwagakure woman screamed out in pain, jerked and twitched in shock as the torment left no strength or time to beg for the violent and unexpected reaction to the clash between Mana's Flamethrower Jutsu and the Water Dragon Jutsu of her own to stop.</p><p>"A Fire Release Jutsu? I did not use a Fire Release Jutsu, my Lightning Clone did. One you so generously destroyed, being so eager to demonstrate how dominant and deadly you are. Hope it teaches you something for the future…" Mana spoke, standing with her back turned to where she used the opening provided to her by the Magic Entrance technique's sparks to create a Lightning Clone, a form of Shadow Clone that, upon being dispelled emitted a powerful lightning shock.</p><p>It was a costly play, one fueled by anger at the cruel words of her opponent, but one without which Mana would not have had the woman collapse on her knees and almost fumble off the platform and down into the lake of her own creation below. A cotton-white mist began forming around Mana and her downed opponent, still gasping for air while the violent electric currents passed through her body, eyes still rolled back and chakra signature lingering on the edge of complete still. A consequence of all the water having been created around the boiling, black walls of the Eternal Fire, hot enough to make the lake boil and evaporate into thick mist.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0531"><h2>531. Crawl Through Fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It used to be quite complicated at the start to tell just how injured a ninja was based only on their chakra signature. After all, chakra was not directly linked with one's well-being, injury to one's physical or spiritual self merely obscured one's chakra control, not one's signature directly. One's life force and one's chakra were essentially two different things and they only crossed paths in one, very specific case – death. Only death affected the size of one's chakra signature, that is to say – snuffed it out completely. Death removed all traces of what is both physical and spiritual without return.</p><p>With time Mana had learned to tell the approximate amount of injury that a ninja's body has suffered, however, while only needing to peek at their chakra signature. It had less to do with how large or small the signature was, but rather how intense it was. The chakra circulation of a healthy person was vivid, like neon paint flowing through a series of transparent tubes, flushed out and then pushed back in at great speed, quenching the bodily need for spiritual and physical energy.</p><p>The chakra circulation of an injured person was just like the one of Mana's mysterious Iwagakure opponent – slowed down, it was as if the bodily and mental bile was tired of its one job and therefore flowed at the pace of snail that was not even particularly hungry. The chakra resources available to the ninja remained somewhat the same, however, their control may have greatly faltered because of the thirst for efficient circulation.</p><p>It was because of that relative familiarity with how the chakra of someone hurt beyond the fighting point would have felt that the magician stayed floating where she was. The use of her Mystical Wings Jutsu was beginning to slowly chip at her remaining chakra but the interest in her opponent's state and the vigilance of a possible attempt to counterattack forced Mana to remain afloat in mid-air and just stare at her opponent. Something changed fundamentally in her chakra…</p><p>A bang derailed Mana's thoughts and forced them to center on the woman once more, a task made vastly more difficult by the clouds of dusty smoke spreading from the woman's location. The change that Mana detected in her opponent's chakra was not that of increase or decrease, it was the complete halt of that which was slowly consuming it. The end for the spy's Transformation Jutsu. Finally, with her doubts and worries ended, the magician pressed her feet against the wall of the Eternal Fire and began scaling the tall, boiling hot, metallic surface of the structure, looking for an entrance that would have allowed her to catch up to her comrades.</p><p>A violent shake followed by a cascade of deafening, tolling clangs made Mana bend her knees in a struggle to maintain her balance while standing in an unnaturally static angle on the surface of the structure. The semi-conscious opponent of hers slipped off of the platform and plummeted from above. After having seen what emerged from the cloud of smoke Mana got confused for a moment, wondering if she was perhaps attacked by another enemy. The magician was so worked up, in fact, that she missed the timing of when the falling shape whizzed right past her and plummeted to the lake below.</p><p>Mana kicked off of the platform and dove down, having to use the Mystical Wings once more to break through the limits of terminal velocity and catch up to the slim, masculine shape of the plummeting true form of the Iwagakure spy she had just fought. With a firm grip of the spy's belt, the magician changed her direction and lifted the man back up onto the platform. With a confused glare, she looked over the real shape of the bloodthirsty spy who managed to rile Mana up so much.</p><p>A pale and slim body, decorated with sloppily maintained, greasy, shoulder-length hair that may have given someone an illusion of the man being somewhat feminine or androgynous in body build from a significant distance or if one lacked the necessary eyesight to really tell. Mana sensed the rumbling inside, the chakra of Kiyomi, Meiko, and Hanshin were all fluctuating, slowly but surely depleting. It was not a reason for great alarm, such was natural if they were involved in a fight.</p><p>Mana herself struggled to maintain a steady breath, having pushed herself farther now than she's ever done in a while. Usually, the special training that boosted her chakra size to unnatural size for such an unremarkable, clanless kunoichi such as herself allowed the magician the luxury of never spending too much effort, this time, it was different. Just that last, ace in a hole trick required her to split her chakra into two by cloning herself while imbuing the clone with Lightning Release chakra too, then having the clone use the Fire Style ninjutsu too...</p><p>While Mana became capable of amazing things, those amazing things took amazing tolls on her as well…</p><p>The young woman leaned back, wrapping her fingers around the knife-wielding wrist of her opponent who leaped at the first opportunity of a lowered guard. Not having a knife stuck in the side of her neck was as easy as following the recovery of the semi-conscious spy with her sensory the entire time, expecting the attack while the magician was still in mid-air, in fact, then, responding when the enemy attacked with greatly diminished vitality.</p><p>Mana thrust her palm at the elbow of her opponent, aiming to break the knife-wielding hand but he dropped the knife and swiped with the other hand, catching the weapon using the free hand. The magician felt a sharp, lightning-like impulse of pain washing over her abdomen, spreading just like shiver-inducing electricity right down to her spine, then – warm blood rushing down where it felt like freezing just a moment earlier.</p><p>She was so slow… She forgot how sluggish using out too much of one's chakra made a person after so long of not having approached her limits. There was no strength left in neutering the blade either, any attempt to augment Mana's body to let the blade just slide across the skin like it was made of stone would have resulted in either complete waste of chakra and a failure of identical results of not having tried at all, or a complete fracture of Mana's chakra network.</p><p>With this searing pain in her gut, Mana resolved to settle things up close with the spy. It was for similar reasons that she did not neglect her taijutsu training, she just was not exceptional at it…</p><p>Her opponent thrust the knife aiming at Mana's neck right after the first successful slash completed, the magician leaped aside, attempting to at the same time move behind her opponent and put him in a hold. She needed time to get used to the injuries she's gotten, she needed to slow down the pace of this bloody brawl. Another excruciating impulse of pain seared at the side of Mana's neck, forcing the magician to instinctively cover the bleeding cut with one of her hands.</p><p>Regardless of the successful explosion of the rage present in the heart of this man, Mana had managed to slip behind him while he invested all of his movement, all of the chances he had to just blindly attack the magician. The Konohagakure kunoichi felt strength building up in her thigh. Using all of the tricks she's learned from the ninja rabbits in utilizing lower body strength, the magician's knee shot out aimed at the lower back of her opponent.</p><p>Mana had intended to break it or at the very least cause enough injury to paralyze her opponent waist-down. That was her only choice, the man was close to the verge of death and any continuous punishment she would inflict would tempt fate further. It was self-evident that the magician needed to find a way to disable her opponent from fighting further, close to the point where any body would have collapsed in on itself and refused to move.</p><p>Luck was simply not on the kunoichi's side, however, the back of the Iwagakure ninja bent in an awkward angle while the man spat blood of darkened hue out from his mouth. The man's eyes shot open wide and he failed to find the strength to land gracefully. Due to his continued moving forward, the Iwagakure ninja would have plummeted down again. Mana grunted in pain as her gut lit up with thousands of little, heated needles that all dug into her skin while she reached out to grab her opponent and stop him from falling.</p><p>As she laid on her front, holding her weakened opponent, Mana felt something sticking to her torn clothes. It did not take a genius to realize that she twisted the cut on her gut in a bad way and found herself aggravating the bleeding even further. The forceful rub of her wound and the tension on her bleeding neck did not help Mana either. The white glove that she wore on the hand that covered the wound on her neck was totally soaked in red.</p><p>A feeling as curious as it was frightening crept up the magician's back in the form of shivers. Her ears picked up a rustling noise below while her chakra sensory screamed for the magician to let go of her opponent since they were attempting to use a ninjutsu. Why would he not? He still had plenty of chakra, it was just that control over what resources the man still had would have been greatly lessened.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes, shutting down any thoughts of what she had to do, any rational analyses of her condition and what she could and could not accomplish. Any ideas of what was best and what would have kept her as comfortable and safe as possible in her current condition flew out the window. With a battle cry, Mana swung her opponent all the way over onto the staircase and slammed him into the boiling-hot, metallic wall of the Eternal Fire.</p><p>The eyes of the man whited out, the hyperventilation of an intense and brutal close-range brawl turned to a wheeze as multiple of the spy's ribs shattered into smallest chips from the force of impact and the entire building of the Eternal Fire tolled like a skyscraper-tall bell. Mana collapsed right nearby her opponent, looking at the gloomy sky above and wondering when the spy would muster up the strength to climb on top of her and plunge his kunai into her heart. As moments passed on and on, it appeared like nothing of the sort was possible.</p><p>At last, the body of even her most willfully driven opponent had thrown in the towel. Mana turned her head to the side, feeling the cut on her neck burn up again. The face of her opponent was blanked out, his mouth was agape. Without rush, so that her injuries did not cause too much agony on every movement, the young woman sat up and tore some rags of her magician's uniform to wrap around her abdomen and her neck. What little remained of her chakra struggled but somehow managed to fend off the mortal danger of losing too much blood.</p><p>A soft laughter, full of inner pain, with the frustration, that it intended to mask beaming through with relative ease, echoed at the heights of the Eternal Fire. Mana turned at the downed Iwagakure spy with a moderate surprise of how vigorous her opponent still was. While the input from her chakra sensory calmed the magician's worst fears of having to keep on fighting through the man's intense willpower, given how he was well past any bodily limits of movement and his chakra circulation testified of that, the fact that the spy was still so lively was nothing to scoff at.</p><p>"Heh… I figured… If I'd keep pushing on… Eventually, you'd stop fighting back… Thought you were squeamish…" the spy cheeked his own unsuccessful attempt at ending the life of the stage magician.</p><p>"Almost worked," Mana admitted, sitting down on the staircase just to get back a few breaths. Even if she wanted to support her friends right now, it would have been for the best if she did not overdo things and ended up dragging them down by getting captured easily in her weakened state and exploited for the victory of the opposing side. As much as Mana wanted to hurry and prevent the potential bloody outcome, stop the documents from being signed at the top floor, she had to get oxygen back in her lungs to be of any use.</p><p>"I guess… My body failed me again… Then you lack the guts to finish me off, just my kind of luck…" the spy cursed his own fortune. Mana closed her eyes and let her head nod down, her cold and sticky hair fumbled awkwardly all over her face. If she dismissed all the aches and the sticky feeling of blood all over her body, she'd almost feel as cozy as if she was in her bed back at home. The draw of the stony platform to just collapse and sleep up was so strong and so tempting…</p><p>"Do you… Hate your own life?" Mana raised her sunken face and pointed her gaze back at the downed spy. If this were true, even if she could just rush on ahead, Mana would likely stay just so she could understand what it was that this man was feeling.</p><p>"What do you think?" the Iwagakure ninja covered up his face with his palm, his fingers bent so that their tips dug into the flesh of his face and the joints in the middle pointed sharply at the beholders from the outside.</p><p>"I see… So that is the source for your animosity towards others." Mana sighed. "I was not aware that you were ashamed of your real face."</p><p>"Is this when you teach me that I should be who I really am, accept the way I was born and learn to love it? If so, spare me the morals and just run on ahead. Your allies could really use your aid, as much of it as you can provide in your current state." The spy growled at the magician showing that same animosity from before. The man evidently regretted not having been able to kill Mana and fix the mistake of revealing his true face to someone on the outside world.</p><p>"Who cares?" Mana shrugged. "Ninjutsu gave you an option to become someone else, someone you always wanted to be. I won't lie that I understand what you're going through but the way I see it, may as well use it the way you want it and live the life you wanted to live. All I know is that nobody wants to live the life of spite. Whether you live as a man or a woman, what's important is that you and the people around you are happy."</p><p>The spy looked shocked by Mana's words. Due to the naturally twisty facial structure of the muscles on the man's face that made him always look grumpy, whenever his face could be seen from under the tendrils of his long, dark hair, it was impossible to tell if the shock sent pleasant shivers or just drove the unfortunate man deeper down into the cauldron of hatred.</p><p>"You live in one dreamy world… One where people around you accept the person you are, as weird as you are." The spy stretched his hands out, his hands dangled without any strength left in them above the abyss leading into the whirling and foaming showers below. The artificial lake had been evaporating into thin air, getting absorbed into the soil it washed as well as found some crevices to leak into. Soon the area where the lake stood shortly would turn into a mushy mess before the dirt bath dried out and, in a day or two, returned to how it once was.</p><p>"If people mock you for the way you are, if they hate you for who you want to be and how you reach out for that life, just as they've mocked and laughed at me for the way I am, these are not people you should stay around or worry yourself with. These are hateful people who would most likely hate you as a man just as much. Unless you find someone that accepts you, you won't be much different from those people that made you grow thorns." Mana breathed a heavy breath before standing back up on her feet and stretching out. She sensed the nearest chakra signature around the place and then scanned the structure for potential points of entry.</p><p>It was difficult to find the right one, the entire structure of the Eternal Fire was littered with black, hollow pipes that may have led to separate parts of the building just as much as they could have led to absolutely nowhere. Just like the staircases decorating the innovative and artsy structure, some of them may have just ended on a dead-end and in that case, Mana would have wasted even more effort as well as chakra having to power through the heat. It was impossible to see too much through the mist of the evaporating lake from below…</p><p>In this current predicament, the only way to find a passage that led anywhere was to manually search for a passage that led to somewhere, one pipe at a time. If the less fortunate and confused man lying beside her could read into Mana's situation and her thoughts, maybe he could apply that same idea more in his own life. With a powerful leap Mana soared upward into the thick mist, she saw a pipe that spread ghastly howls as air passed in and out of it and grabbed hold to its ledge. The pain in her gut very nearly made her lose grip and plummet below. It took all of the magician's strength to not let go and power through the pain in her hand from the heat spreading through the holes in her white gloves and burning her skin.</p><p>With only thoughts of moving forward and not stopping for second thoughts, Mana pushed herself into the pipe and finished her less than gracious ascension with a roll before stumbling forward and onward ahead, to wherever the pipe led.</p>
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<a name="section0532"><h2>532. Revenge Against The Mighty Cerebrator</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What a dry dump…" Hanshin remarked, his eyes carefully fenced around the interior of the Eternal Fire, poking with a glance at every single nook and cranny while remaining mostly unimpressed by the bright, sandy interior.</p><p>"Yeah, but why is it like a desert though?" Meiko nodded her head to the side as if changing the degree from which she perceived the room would have changed the way that the room looked or the general amount of sense that the decorations made.</p><p>Meiko's generalization was not too far off, the inner great hall of the Eternal Fire was covered in sand with an occasional sandstone rock erected where tables and stands should have been. What may have served as a distraction of the dry and dusty air inside of the structure, now only served as an unpleasant reminder of it.</p><p>"The sand is really hot. What genius decided that pouring a bunch of sand into a bunch of heated, metal tubes was a good idea?" Kiyomi whined while she kicked her sandals about like a wayward mare. With each kick, each gesture of struggle she shook out handfuls of sand from inside her sandals only for the torrid hindrance seep back into her shoe once the young woman set her foot back down.</p><p>"That is not what Hanshin meant. The interior is a fascinating artistic statement, it is the parched air that will inevitably ruin Hanshin's hair and skin…" the special jounin lamented. "The sand is supposed to boil one's feet so that the politicians and councilmen did not tap around and made up their damn minds for once."</p><p>"I see…" Meiko nodded with childish enthusiasm a pair of times.</p><p>"Whatever you say… I need to find a place to insulate my feet in. I refuse to keep them augmented the whole time." Kiyomi grumbled. She turned around only to meet a three-meter tall man with a hairdo that suggested that the man had literally torn most of his excess hair out before deciding it hurt too much and abandoning the venture half-way.</p><p>Without making the stupid mistake of talking before the kill, the giant swung a pickaxe about his size and twice his width in an attempt to impale the Konoha kunoichi on it. It was easy to figure out that the man intended to murder Kiyomi silently from behind and the only reason why the Yamanaka had noticed him in the first place was that she had decided to turn around at the most inopportune moment for the massive miner.</p><p>Kiyomi did not appear to be that easily done in, even with her injuries she vaulted backward and followed the blade of the oversized picking tool nearly scratch her eye out while she did so. The Yamanaka stumbled on her feet, feeling a bit woozy from all the blood she's lost and the pressure around the bags on her eyes and her nose suggested that if she strained herself some more, another vessel may have burst and reset her nasty nosebleed.</p><p>"How awesome is that pickaxe!?" Meiko screamed out like a schoolgirl upon the sight of a family of wild, newborn kittens being tended to by their mother. "I bet it can pick as well as a diamond drill can, except with the added benefit of using your muscles more and putting your back to it!"</p><p>"Indeed, the prospect of unnecessary workout routines does sound alluring. We shall deal with who loots this pickaxe later." Hanshin agreed with the blacksmith on one of the few rare occasions.</p><p>"Drats, it appears that I have been unsuccessful at nabbing these scoundrels." The pickaxe-wielding redneck cursed in an oddly intelligible manner uttered in an almost childish-tone. It served as a grotesque contrast to the man's naturally ugly façade and disastrous hair situation. Just as Meiko suggested previously, however, both the central body and the man's arms were very well trained, as evidenced by the amazing speed at which the attacked swung his mighty tool. "Nevertheless, the trap my comrade has laid shall obliterate you, cretins…"</p><p>Kiyomi's eyebrow rose almost out of instinct. Her back foot quivered just by an inch before an explosion resonated through one of the larger halls of the Eternal Fire where the confrontation between Konoha's and Iwagakure's parties was taking place. An effect of a compact mine of white clay, carefully detonated when the Yamanaka was as close to it as possible after she dodged the initial strike and positioned herself by the mine.</p><p>"It appears to be a coincidence, although, with superior intellect, such as my own, coincidence is an animadversion of imprudence!" the pickaxe-wielding giant declared with his squeaky voice, managing to hold his comprehensive tool in just one hand while the other made a raised fist gesture to congratulate him and his comrades with their great success.</p><p>Meiko took one step forward before hitting an invisible wall that made her face misshape as if she had hit a glass door by mistake while entering the shop. It was much harder than a glass door, Meiko would have walked right through something as elementary as that…</p><p>"Don't rush things ahead," Hanshin warned the redhead. "That explosive comrade is just waiting for an opening to exploit. If you open up just for a moment, you'll meet the fate of your friend."</p><p>Aggravated by Hanshin's confirmation of something bad having happened to Kiyomi, Meiko just got more pissed off but her expression of rage, sufficient to bash the redneck's head in with her bare hands eased up somewhat after it was revealed that Kiyomi was no longer where the mine detonated but instead stood atop of the sandstone platform with a sharp corner of the platform missing, or rather, lying utterly blown up in Kiyomi's place after a successful Substitution Technique.</p><p>"Don't walk around the sand too much," Kiyomi warned the team through her thoughts, having decided to initiate the mental link rather than risk the absence of effective inner communication between the team hindering their chances. It was a hard trade to make given that the relatively tired young woman would have to constantly strain herself to keep the mental link up but it was a necessary one, given the intensity of the enemy actions inside this structure.</p><p>"We should have let Mana tell us how many assailants there were before we got inside…" Meiko grinned with her usual, simian smile.</p><p>"Your teammate is smart. She would not have hurried us up unless the odds were fair. It is safe to say we're looking at two or three ninja, not more. Given the ninja still working at the top with the Yordalarian politicians as well as the pair working on the distraction and the one outside, any more spies would have been too cumbersome of a group." Hanshin let his thoughts be known in a collected manner.</p><p>"Well then…" Meiko grinned while sliding her hand through the upper areas of her back she could reach. It was an odd gesture that left plenty of openings in the stance of the young woman but it was temporary and necessary so that the blacksmith could unseal a nimble bow she had sealed inside her armor pieces. "It's a good thing I have a method to attack these guys without opening myself up for an attack or setting off any more mines."</p><p>Lightning passed through the wood of Meiko's bow as well as the string, for something sparking so violently and looking so supercharged with energy, the coating in no way damaged the graceful materials of the bow or its simple yet elegant and masterful craftsmanship. The redhead appeared to have moved on since the time she still required arrows, the lightning coating simply molded into an arrow-shaped construct that was easily a dozen times the size of an arrow.</p><p>Without waiting around, Meiko fired the arrow before quickly generating another, then firing it again, repeating the quick succession of long-range attacks and arrow creation. The brutish Iwagakure spy deflected the arrows with a moderate effort from his part by smacking at them with his pickaxe. He did not coat the weapon in chakra nor did it appear that he needed to as there was no damage from the weapon hitting a construct of solid Lightning Release chakra. A testament for the fine materials used in making such a simplistic weapon.</p><p>"I thought you supported the magician's side on not killing more people than needed…" Hanshin taunted Meiko, referencing how inefficient her method of attack was and for how long she would require to attack this way to achieve the necessary degree of success.</p><p>"I'm not working with infinite chakra here…" the ends of Meiko's lips tipped slightly.</p><p>"Can you fire them in a wider spread? Your arrows appear to do a decent job at keeping this creep in place." Kiyomi's thoughts resonated through Meiko's mind. "Also, nice work mixing in telepathic communication with verbal, you two. It will help us mask the fact we're exchanging ideas mentally from the enemy."</p><p>"Of course," Hanshin's thoughts spread like wildfire. The physically impressive individual simply had the sort of gravitas to his tone and voice, a certain conviction in his own righteousness that made his thoughts absolutely dominating. "It only seemed elementary, given the technique's abilities."</p><p>Kiyomi bit her tongue in bitterness, she was glad that Hanshin could not see her regretful thoughts of only having realized how useful such a mixed method of communication was for confusing the enemy now. This should have been something that her more experienced clan members taught her, instead of the dreadful thought of learning it from this man…</p><p>"I'll try…" Meiko replied mentally while coating her bow again. Before arrows could form at the center of her bow, however, a rumbling sound distracted the Konoha ninja. A shocking sensation of ground shifting beneath their very feet, sending shockwaves through the metallic walls that made them ring like bells and paralyzing anyone that was unfortunate enough to stay on the ground once the attack hit to stay grounded.</p><p>Before the blacksmith could react in any meaningful way, a shockwave splitting the floor hit her right in the dead-center and blasted the young woman off her feet. The poor kunoichi let out a gruesome grunt that suggested greater damage than it could have expected from such a low-scale attack, the semi-conscious blacksmith just dragged across the sandy surface of the Eternal Fire where the force of the quake sent her, setting off multiple of the hidden mines in her path.</p><p>"Meiko!" Kiyomi screamed out in desperation. This was no joking matter! The blacksmith was seriously banged up from multiple fights before, her chakra levels must have been well below the comfortable levels meaning that there was little that the redhead could have done in this situation in terms of toughening herself up for the upcoming blows.</p><p>"Hmph… A third ally…" Hanshin muttered. The gruesome fate of his fellow Konohagakure ninja appeared to bother the special jounin very little.</p><p>"You should have helped her, you were closer to her, you should have grabbed her or blocked the shockwave!" Kiyomi sent thoughts of escalating amounts of animosity toward the way of the special jounin's mind but they only hit the brick wall of his indifference.</p><p>"And risked setting off the mines myself? Hanshin would rather not. Don't even think about checking up on her. Your beloved looked tougher than to let something like this do her in, don't count on her staying in the fight though…" Hanshin replied.</p><p>"Did you legitimately cerebrate that my collaborators would tolerate such a primitive stratagem? To ground me while the Yamanaka entered my mind… I envisage not!" the pickaxe-wielding, squeaking redneck swung his lumbering weapon about before positioning it on his shoulder, as if showing off his bulk and physical strength to the Konoha ninja who were now on the back foot after having one of them taken out of commission.</p><p>"Well… At least he didn't hog the spotlight to himself again." A voice came from the northern part of the floor, signaling the location of another Iwagakure ninja – a decently overweight man in a red, sleeveless bodysuit that appeared to be a custom tailor based on the Iwagakure ninja uniform, modified for the size and mass of the wearer as well as his particular tastes.</p><p>And this spy was a man of exquisite tastes, as demonstrated by his garish hairdo of a mohawk on the front and center that grew into a ponytail at the back end.</p><p>"Still, for someone saved from humiliation he's quite chipper." The third voice, one of the ninja that used the ground shockwave ninjutsu which threw Meiko off balance and sent her sliding and crashing through the mines earlier, became clear from the darker corners of the northern side of the room.</p><p>Without uttering any more words, Kiyomi continued to stare at Meiko's body, still and lifeless with branches of blood accumulating and running down the sand. It wasn't like the blacksmith to stay down for so long, Meiko never simulated death to lower the guards of the enemy, that was more Mana's forte. She could not have learned that from Hanasaku either…</p><p>"You wish to hurt them for hurting your beloved, don't you?" Hanshin asked Kiyomi out loud with a voice toned almost like a taunt. "What are you waiting for? Show them what you're capable of. Use the rage to numb the pain and fatigue, explode!"</p><p>Kiyomi expected the special jounin to try and reason with her, attempt to keep her back so that no more mines were set-off and nobody got any more injuries than they should have. Being called out like that and almost challenged to let loose made the blonde feel ashamed that she did not from the get-go. The Yamanaka heiress flashed through a pair of hand seals and punched the ground beneath her feet, busting through solid sandstone as effortlessly as she'd have dug through sand if the rocks weren't there at all.</p><p>A dust-filled storm rose up, caused entirely by the Yamanaka's movements and intensity picking up sand and small specks as far as it reached. Once the spiraling twister of dirt settled down, the Yamanaka was nowhere in sight.</p><p>"Where'd she go?" the overweight spy with the oddest hairdo began glancing up, waiting for an attack from above. It would have been the most reasonable thing to do, however, it would be a slower as well as a risky method of attack as well. Arguably less risky than just dashing through the field, hoping not to set-off any hidden traps.</p><p>Kiyomi's body burst from underground right up in the face of the giant, pickaxe-using Iwagakure ninja with an uppercut to blow the man's jaw off, not unlike the manner which has created another one of their comrades from the earlier back. The first crashed into the man's jaw with a sound only to be compared with the crashing of a meteor and violently jerked the man's head back, a reaction so fast that it would not have been unreasonable to fear for the snapping of the man's neck just from the movement back. Fortunately for the Yamanaka, nobody expected her to sneak up underneath the active minefield instead of above it, otherwise she'd have been stopped in her tracks.</p><p>"Earth Style: Hidden Mole Jutsu!" Kiyomi yelled out, her body frozen in mid-air, still stuck in the position of a completed uppercut motion while her hand reached out for her weapon pouch. The pickaxe-wielding spy attempted a comeback at the Yamanaka heiress by swinging his mighty weapon but his effort was halted by Kiyomi's foot landing on top of the middle of the joint of his swinging arm while her hand tossed a yellow marble-sized orb into the air.</p><p>As fast as it took for the emphatic popping sound of the orb's explosion to spread, a flash of light covered the entire room of the Eternal Fire, sinking it all in blinding light that forced every ninja present to grunt in pain and cover their eyes. As a sign of rebell,ion Kiyomi didn't bother to even warn Hanshin about the move she was about to pull though she did not let it bother her now. It was all or back to square one now…</p><p>First thing upon landing on her feet, Kiyomi kneeled on one knee and threw her hands out in the Yamanaka hijutsu seal position. Now that all three of the opponents were temporarily blinded by the light bomb she used, she had a decent chance at hitting her hijutsu.</p><p>"Mind Body Switch!" Kiyomi chanted, followed by a ghastly howl of her consciousness leaving her body and hurrying to the large target of the explosive-using Iwagakure ninja. A nasty smile covered the face of her opponent who then just turned sideways and allowed the avatar of Kiyomi's consciousness slip by. He chose to dodge without actually seeing the jutsu and managed to pull it off, his call was the right one – it didn't matter where or in which angle he moved in, all that mattered was that he moved away drastically enough to avoid getting hit.</p><p>"Curse you!" the giant pickaxe-using Iwagakure spy threw a push kick forward, he did not see his opponent either but, given the short span of time between she punched him in the face and stopped his dominant hand from swinging the weapon and used her clan hijutsu, it was more than just a fair call that she was right in front of him. The man was far too dazed still to hit his kick, the move slipped just an inch above Kiyomi's shoulder and just barely nixed her cheek and bruised her trapezius.</p><p>The first thing that Kiyomi witnessed upon her consciousness returning to her body after a short lag was the Black Vicious completely formed around Hanshin's body, posing together with its master, or rather, the master posing together with the gruesome scene that his armor depicted, his body bent and turned in awkward angles that almost made Kiyomi's own joints hurt when gazing at the perfectly defined muscles of her superior.</p><p>"That was fun, Hanshin would have loved to have seen some of it…" the special jounin cracked a grin before all of the multiple hands covering Black Vicious and attempting to peel the armor away, while, ironically, comprising the chains of the armor at the same time, pointed their palms at the ground. "Black Vicious: Freeze Frame!"</p><p>Focused streams of wind started blowing from exposed palms of Black Vicious, the winds were decorated with visible, almost ethereal white lines that, despite their soul-like appearance, appeared to snuff out all that was living by freezing the object in its own humidity. In a little more than a blink of an eye, the entire sandy battlefield got frozen solid except for a small region around incapacitated Meiko that bundled with soft snow and hid the blacksmith under its embrace.</p><p>The terrifying trap of the minefield was issued a temporary moratorium of an icy nature.</p>
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<a name="section0533"><h2>533. The Will Of Stone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You've given Hanshin the opening to really get going, stay out of Hanshin's way now." The special jounin grinned while addressing Kiyomi. Obviously, he would not extend the same level of courtesy toward the other Iwagakure ninja. Although it was hard to say what exactly was their most heinous crime: the fact they injured Meiko severely or just that they were in Hanshin's way.</p><p>"Black Vicious: Spirit Frequency!" Hanshin extended his palm forward. The hands covering Black Vicious tore the feminine shape of the armor apart once more, scattering the shatters all across the frozen desert of the inner Eternal Flame arena. Just like that, it appeared as if Black Vicious was never there, to begin with, however, upon further, more acute inspection one would have noticed outlines of varied colors of the specter where the general shape of Black Vicious used to be.</p><p>"Amazing, the permafrost that this misbegotten nincompoop has produced is entirely unaffected by the incalescence of this fortification." The pickaxe-user took a fumbling pair of steps back, granting his fearsome enemy some respectful distance.</p><p>"What idiot…" the third Iwagakure ninja with the ability to use Earth Release elemental ninjutsu remarked. "He removed his only protection, the time to strike is no…"</p><p>Before the ninja could finish his sentence, however, his body froze in shock of pain, twisted and cramped in every joint. Most of his muscles tensed up and his face twisted in agony. A careful inspection would have revealed the abdomen of the Iwagakure spy being bent up as if something sizeable had dug into it.</p><p>"W-What was that?" the hurt Iwagakure ninja kneeled while wiping the blood and slobber rushing from inside his body and attempting an escape through his mouth. The man's vision doubled and tripled once in a while, a testament to the great amount of damage that he had taken.</p><p>"Combat is a game of power. The strength of your chakra, of your physical chakra or spiritual chakra. Hanshin has grown sick of these rules. Hanshin has ascended his Black Vicious to a whole other realm – the realm of mysticism and spirits. Attempting to fight off Black Vicious while it is operating in Spirit Frequency is the same as attempting to combat your inevitable impending death. No amount of chakra will protect your heart from stopping, from natural death." Hanshin turned his body a full 180 before striking a cocky pose, placing his hand with fingers spread out gracefully so that only his eyes would gleam through his moderately long hair and posed finger.</p><p>"You're speaking of the afterlife, aren't you? You theological imbecile, there is no such thing!" the pickaxe-wielding Iwagakure ninja flipped out and charged straight at Hanshin. Kiyomi had every chance to butt in and stop the man with a kick to his completely open face but her body stood still. Half of her did not burn with particular passion to aid the man that has neglected to help Meiko despite being so near her when she was hurt, another half was outright curious to see what would happen next.</p><p>The large man from Iwagakure grunted in pain, his face leaned back as if he had just hit an impenetrable, invisible barrier but only on the upper side, his lower body still moved out of instinct causing this uncomfortable looking bend of his back. This harrowing position could only be sustained for so long, so the man collapsed in a handful of moments, emitting a pitiful sound that reminded a squeak of a dying rat more than a sound of pain a human would have made.</p><p>"What you don't know can still hurt you, it seems… Why would things you don't believe in be any different?" Hanshin taunted his downed opponent. The Iwagakure miner redneck sat up and screamed out in pain as if something had hit his abdomen with enough sheer force to bend both sides of his body. The miner squirmed in pain, showing off his chipped and less than well-looked-after teeth before collapsing in apparent complete lifelessness.</p><p>Something about Hanshin's technique still baffled Kiyomi. She was no sensor but she felt absolutely nothing coming off of these hits. It was like the special jounin was attacking his enemies on an entirely different plane, just like he claimed to be. If his attack would have merely been stronger than any defense his enemies could have mustered – the force of such an impact would have raised some noise. Now, the entirety of the force of impact was absent, like a complete enigma, one that may just have existed on the same realm as a man's spirit or the afterlife – the spiritual realm.</p><p>"T-This is… Ridiculous! Release!" the Iwagakure explosive specialist bumbled while weaving a hand seal. With a deadly howl, a shriek of impending calamity, the Eternal Fire became covered in flames as every single one of the frozen mines detonated by having the chakra kneaded inside them from within detonating the bomb, instead of the target stepping on them and setting the explosive off through sheer pressure.</p><p>The explosive force expanded to cover the entirety of the Eternal Fire, slipping in and out every crack and hole, doing its best to not absolutely decimate the structure but causing the place to bloat from inside ever so slightly as what remained of the expansive force was considerable enough to cause such anomalies of building formation. Blazes of heatwaves howled through the pipes that lead to outside like escaping heated vapor from a boiling kettle.</p><p>Hanshin removed his arm which he used to cover up his beautiful face. His arm was covered with ash and dirt, shaking in flashing pain of the overwhelming light show. The clothes on his upper body were completely torn apart and singed to nothingness, tips of his hair where he had not managed to spread his chakra fast enough were still on fire that only faded away after shortening Hanshin's mane by a meaningful margin.</p><p>Kiyomi shook in a similar fashion, having thrown her body on top of Meiko's and spread her limbs out to absorb as much of the rampaging devastation as she could. Her back was completely exposed and covered with unpleasant burns. Despite the injuries that the self-sacrificial action brought, the iron resolution in the Yamanaka's eyes burned with the same passion to protect her comrade and do what had to be done that it burned like before.</p><p>The Iwagakure redneck picked himself up, the explosion had ragdolled and thrown him to the whole other side of the room, it also caused some damage to the already decently banged up spy, forcing him to rely on his massive weapon to peel his burnt and battered body off the ground.</p><p>"Y-You intellectual lightweight! You've obliterated all of these frigid munitions and yet you still have not permanently eradicated a single enemy!" he grunted in dissatisfaction over how the desperation move turned out.</p><p>"If you shut up for a second and minded somebody else's business but your own, you'd have noticed something very interesting – the leader of their group is injured." The third Iwagakure spy declared while pointing at Hanshin's battle-damaged stance.</p><p>"I did not expect that this chakra armor would fail to protect you while functioning in spiritual frequency, killing the two women would have been just fine with me but… I'll take what I can…" the Iwagakure explosive specialist grinned with pride in his abilities while pointing his thumb right at his own round and plump chin.</p><p>"That armor seemed invincible. So many things it could do: channel elemental chakra, attack from different dimensions, act as a chakra armor. This may be the first flaw in the entirety of our intelligence on the ability." The Earth-Release user said while slowly leaning to the ground and placing his hands on it. "So it does have weaknesses, let's explore that…"</p><p>The ground floor began shifting and quaking, changing the very foundation behind everyone's feet and forcing anyone still grounded when the technique hit to become burdened by the immense imbalance of the shaking ground. The shake was just imbalanced enough to force anyone to lose balance and struggle to not reach for the ground and try to lower their center of balance by leaning down but not powerful enough to cause actual damage by itself.</p><p>The ice that covered the ground of the Eternal Fire started pulling apart, cracking and forming massive fractures that became glacial fissures in mere moments. Kiyomi leaped to the side to avoid a fissure from swallowing her whole, landing further away from the fractures exposed the young woman to more quakes that sent her fumbling around now that she did not have a solid stance beforehand.</p><p>Hanshin did not even attempt to avoid the opening crack, whether it was because of his injuries or because he failed to react to the shift in the field of ice he himself created remained unclear. Only the single, bruised hand holding tightly to the edge of the ice crack would have told one the truth of the fate of the special jounin.</p><p>There may have been a slight miscalculation from the part of the Earth Release user as his much larger companion also appeared to struggle with the quake all the same as the enemy. Only the explosive-user appeared completely immune to the effects of the technique of his comrade. The man removed two handfuls of metallic sticks and rolled them around in his hand, given the severe environmental effects around him, it was just an act of vanity aimed to show off his superior skill in wielding these tools of destruction.</p><p>After a short while of showing off, the explosive-user flung the two handfuls of the sticks at where Hanshin's hand was seen, the last bastion between the special jounin falling down into the fissure that was shaking from both the pain of injuries that it had blocked previously from the massive detonation of the minefield, the cold of the ice he was holding on to and the strain of struggling to hold on with just his injured hand.</p><p>It did not appear that Hanshin had intended to avoid the explosive, the metallic sticks bounced about, approaching dangerously close to the man before beginning to shine with a fiery gleam. Only for a blast of wind to scatter them farther away and throw all of them into various fissures and cracks on the battlefield.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi breathed out while sighing a breath of relief. She did not have the chakra to keep using elemental ninjutsu just to scatter some projectile weaponry of her enemy. Who knew how many more of these the Iwagakure ninja had, given that he specialized in explosives, probably more than the future uses of the same jutsu Kiyomi had.</p><p>With a hearty yank of his injured hand, Hanshin pulled himself up with just one hand, his feet moved out first and in an impressive feat of elasticity performed a flipping pull-up, performing a showy pose after completing his movement just to show off to his opponents.</p><p>"You could have pulled yourself out this whole time?" Kiyomi flipped out.</p><p>"Obviously, but Hanshin needed to gather strength for this specific maneuver!" the special jounin declared with almost a hint of disdain that the genin possessed the nerve to ask such a thing.</p><p>"What "maneuver"? You just flipped and vaulted around like a pompous asshole!?" Kiyomi mumbled out to herself with more subtlety than her previous outrage as she did not wish for that question to even be acknowledged by the special jounin.</p><p>"Still alive? A pity…" the Earth Release using Iwagakure ninja sighed in a showy, clearly faked manner. "I would have had two confirmed takedowns, at this pace, my teammates probably won't take even one person down."</p><p>"You speak as if we are not in a desperate situation." The explosive-user looked at his teammate, "Already forgot when that Konoha ninja found a gap in your guard?"</p><p>"What gap? That ridiculous jutsu would have incapacitated anyone… How was I supposed to defend against something that comes at me right from the spirit world itself?" the Iwagakure spy sneered at his comrade.</p><p>"All of this foolishness is beginning to wear down on Hanshin." The Konohagakure special jounin declared while placing himself in a peculiar defensive stance that involved him crossing his hands to the opposing sides over his chest and extending his legs to the sides. Bit by bit, preceded by a flame of bland blue shade color basic chakra that lacked an elemental affinity, Black Vicious manifested itself in its physical form over Hanshin's body, stretching out its obsidian, armored arms around the ninja as if displaying physical affection and in such a way swearing to protect its user with its life.</p><p>"All this cool aside, you're bleeding out a lot of chakra rebuilding that armor like that every time and using those crazy techniques with it," Kiyomi spoke to her mentor mentally. "Let's fight together for now. Can you do something for me and stop the solo act?"</p><p>Hanshin appeared displeased at first but after a brief flash of images in his mind he closed his eyes, sighed and smirked. Bringing Kiyomi's idea to life was simply too alluring to continue the taking everything the enemy had and then dominating them with a far superior comeback game that he enjoyed so much.</p><p>"This level of violence… You speak the language of Hanshin." The special jounin declared in a showy pose as he pointed his finger up. From the sudden and energetic movements of this man, the entirety of the enemy defense force clenched up and ducked in place, worried about the man's counterattack. "Very well…"</p><p>All of the hands covering Black Vicious converged in one line, gripping the armor in its center and peeling it apart as if attempting to open up a chest cavity by simply tearing through the ribcage from the middle. A lurid gasping sound left the armor and echoed throughout the Eternal Fire, followed shortly by an ethereal scream of torment as the hands finally ripped the armor open at the center, exposing what was inside – an emerging gust of wintry blizzards – a combination of both Wind Releases and Water Release.</p><p>"Black Vicious: Snowblind!" Hanshin yelled out while letting the armor do its thing. One that while forcing the enemy on their back feet did not appear to be nearly as potent as his other jutsu, even if it did contain a vastly superior degree of spread and range compared to the other combination techniques used together with the chakra armor construct.</p><p>The chilling nature of the gust of winds forced the enemy on their back feet but it did not appear to have much of a damaging effect, other than slightly slowing them down and covering them in excessive layers of snow that required wasted movements to get rid of. However, this slight slowdown, these few extra wasted movements and the bonus seconds were all that Kiyomi needed.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance!" Kiyomi chanted out while placing her hands in a hand seal position where her thumbs formed a rectangular shape, slightly different from the squared hand seal position of her other Yamanaka clan hijutsu.</p><p>"Arhat Fist!" the third Iwagakure spy shouted out, punching the ground beneath his feet and causing the same ripple effect that delivered a heavy deck to Meiko and sent the blacksmith into peril. This time the attack was aimed at his own teammate instead. This time it served pretty much the same effect, blowing his own teammate off his feet.</p><p>"What's wrong? Didn't you tell Hanshin you intended to force that fat slob to commit suicide?" Hanshin turned at Kiyomi. His misshapen and torn at the middle Black Vicious just barely hung over the man with its arms dangling lifelessly above the special jounin.</p><p>"I did try that…" Kiyomi wiped the blood that started to trickle from her nose. She had spent a significant amount of chakra on that last jutsu and it would appear that it would take that same amount to try again.</p><p>"What the hell!?" the explosive user turned at his teammate with ire in his eyes.</p><p>"You fool, she tried to kill you. She may look like a stupid child but this young woman isn't fooling around, she's hitting to permanently end you. She tried taking over your mind and forcing you to set off the explosives on your vest, then having you run into me for some extra damage." The third spy explained.</p><p>"I-I see… I should thank you then." The explosive user forced himself to settle down, his face was still spraying with sweat and his chest was moving heavily from the sudden build-up of stress that was now completely purposeless.</p><p>"It's not like I'm doing it for you alone. What we're doing is bigger than any one of us – we're fighting for the survival of our country. I've been in Sunagakure when a war goes wrong. When the vultures smell the stench of old meat in the wind. It happened to one home of mine, it won't happen to another." The Earth Release ninjutsu using spy declared with iron resolution in his eyes.</p><p>"The speed of Mind Body Disturbance is near instantaneous. To realize what I am planning to do, then interrupt it…" Kiyomi grunted, she was almost willing to give the enemy some credit. They were doing a far better job at keeping the Konoha ninja at bay, in any other scenario, if placed in a one on one fight, they would annihilate these guys but now… With all the wear and tear, all the little misfortunes in the way… Could this really be how their mission would end?</p><p>"That's right. I've made my own promises as well, I cannot allow this mission to fail either. That is why, and for no other reason, because you've granted me a chance to postpone the enemy for one bit longer, that I could better realize the promise I've made my friend… That is why I am thanking you." The explosive user nodded at his ally.</p><p>This was not the first time that Konoha ninja have encountered the sturdiness of the Will of Stone, but because the past was such a fickle thing, so easily forgotten and the battles of the past could so easily be taken for granted that it managed to be effective and that it came as so much of a shock to the active pair.</p>
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<a name="section0534"><h2>534. Blurred Lines</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Well participated, my collaborator, now you Konoha ninja perceive the sturdiness of our Will of Stone! With what we stand to capitulate if this undertaking flounders, there is not even the slenderized speck of a contingent that we shall abdicate!" the pickaxe-wielding ninja swung his massive, weaponized tool over his head and slammed it into the floor.</p><p>"Earth Style: Chainsaw Ridge!" the redneck yelled out with enthusiasm and admirable patriotic feelings overflowing throughout his body. Kiyomi noticed her right foot taking an involuntary step back, begging its owner to choose to gain some distance for a proper reaction to the enemy's attack.</p><p>The Iwagakure spy drove his pickaxe into the ground at a rather precise, diagonal angle, one that looked awkward upon seeing it at first but one that seemed impressive, given how rudely and violently the strike was initiated. For the man to be able to form such a precise angle after starting out the attack so suddenly and with such brutishness it would have required intimate familiarity with the technique.</p><p>Similarly to Kiyomi's own Earth Style ninjutsu, the smash of the pickaxe compressed and pushed forward a layer of rock and minerals, forming new stone blocks from the underlying buckets of dirt and pebbles and forcing them to harden and polish the stone residing even deeper underneath. The chakra transferred through the conductive tool and the additional pulses leaving the man's own circulation through his feet helped him shape a collection of sharpened, tall stone pillars that burst from the deepest layers of the underground, where the contents of the soil were the hardest. Even more, by taking in the Earth Style chakra, the separate chunks of ground stone became singular, rising pillars that rose and split the ground on their trip toward the enemy just like the teeth of a chainsaw.</p><p>"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar!" Kiyomi muttered out the name of the technique that she identified in the enemy's own attack. Hers was the technique from which this attack was derived from, Kiyomi was sure of it. Her own rising rock pillars burst from a deep layer of cracked ice and moved in to clash with the attack of the enemy.</p><p>There was no doubt in Kiyomi's mind that the jutsu of her enemy was superior to hers – it would have made little sense to derive a weaker jutsu from another Earth Style technique for a ninja of such a high rank. However, this did not necessarily spell out doom for her, her affinity and familiarity with using the better known, generic Earth Release technique may have just had some degree of compensation for the other disadvantages of the jutsu.</p><p>The two jutsu crashed against one another with a thunderous echo, just like Kiyomi feared, the technique of the enemy tore through her earth pillars like wet paper and continued its destructive path forward, by that point Kiyomi had invested all of her possible responses to the enemy's attack… The resolution was inevitable.</p><p>Another deafening crack laid siege on Kiyomi's eardrums, when sight returned to the blanked out eyes of the Yamanaka heiress she witnessed Hanshin in mid-leap, punching through the Earth Release technique with a single strike and pushing onward in the direction of the enemy. Now it was the pickaxe wielding, smart-mouthed Iwagakure ninja who was out of responses and overly invested into his attack…</p><p>A whistling sound in the air alerted the blonde, her eyes moved faster than her entire head, noticing the whizzing, heated, metal sticks that were moving in on Hanshin – the long-range, explosive weaponry of one of the Iwagakure spies. Black Vicious formed from behind Hanshin, one of its hands, the one used for the punch to overpower the Earth Release technique of the Iwagakure ninja revealed itself, while some other hands that were tearing apart the feminine-shaped chakra armor of Hanshin's let go of the armor's "flesh" and turned for the incoming explosives.</p><p>A stream of bursting flames erupted from the center of each hand bothered to intercept the supporting attack of the enemy. Upon being exposed to the highly compressed jets of fire, the explosives flew off in the whole other direction and detonated prematurely, shaking the foundations of the Eternal Fire once more.</p><p>"Earth Style: Crescent Quake!" the third Iwagakure ninja also let out a supporting attack at the last possible moment. A pair of ground-traveling shockwaves left the direction of the Iwagakure spy and flew off in a crescent trajectory at the rushing Konoha special jounin.</p><p>Hanshin did not stop. Had he done so, Kiyomi thought he could have simply waited out the pre-set trajectory of the enemy attack and allowed the pair of shockwaves to collide with each other, nullifying one another right in front of him, instead of hitting him. All that the special jounin did was let out a battle cry… "Out of Hanshin's way!"</p><p>For the third time, an overwhelming thud emanated through the frozen floor of the Eternal Fire as both projectiles collided with Hanshin. Stretching out and bending the man's body in awkward shapes and shattering Black Vicious. It did not look like much damage was inflicted on the man itself as the armor had absorbed most of the damage but… Black Vicious was destroyed completely. While it was never outright confirmed vocally, Hanshin was too vain to admit it out loud, but Kiyomi speculated that there'd have to be some brief delay before the special jounin could build his armor back up from being shattered.</p><p>The redneck let go of his pickaxe, still stuck in ice, he leaped forward at Hanshin and threw a wild kick to the man's teeth. Hanshin leaned back, then wrapped his own powerful arms around the leg of the enemy and drove his elbow down to the exposed and open knee. The Iwagakure ninja wailed in pain, his face completely changed from that of rock-hard determination to that of a man broken by pain. The smart-talking giant collapsed on the floor with his hands wrapped around his face as he bellowed in pain, his nails almost clawed off his own skin and threatened to hook out his eyes if they scratched any closer to them.</p><p>"It will be hard using that thing with a broken leg, huh?" Hanshin sighed. "Underestimating Hanshin's girth was your final mistake."</p><p>Perhaps it was not that much of a mistake, usually, when a ninja saw someone so occupied with creating, using and rebuilding a chakra armor, they assumed that whatever this integral armor was protecting was quite soft. Hanshin, however, appeared to be just as powerful without the armor in terms of physical ability as his impressively hunky appearance suggested.</p><p>Seeing an opportunity with one of the spies getting taken out of the relevant and active participation in the big picture, Kiyomi rolled a kunai knife in her hand around, dangerously close to her face, before sticking it into the ground and darting off at the two opponents like mad. Both the Earth Release ninjutsu user and the explosive specialist took on their defensive stances, looking slightly overwhelmed by the extremely daring approach of the Konoha kunoichi. Usually, headlong rushes such as these were followed by a trap and were merely meant to disguise a bigger move at play.</p><p>The explosive specialist flung a pair of his glowing red, metallic sticks at the Yamanaka but Kiyomi evaded them on her way to the enemy with some skilled acrobatics. She sat still for long enough to get a pair of good breaths of oxygen in her lungs, even if it all burnt out now, she needed to go for the opening that the enemy's mistake provided them, or else…</p><p>The Yamanaka thrust both of her palms forward, repurposing all of her built up momentum into a double palm strike aimed at the chest of the larger target – the explosive specialist spy. A mighty blast sent Kiyomi flying back as well as her target sliding further back while remaining on his feet – the enemy detonated a pair of his explosives on his chest. Previously the Yamanaka had assumed that something like this would kill him, this was a confusing but also a necessary revelation if she was to pull off a win here.</p><p>Kiyomi's image puffed away into a cloud of smoke. The explosive specialist glared at the kunai knife still in his hands, the same one that the kunoichi stuck into the ground before darting off. It was one of the thoughts that lingered in the man's mind – that the enemy kunoichi would substitute away from the attack. Another one of the winners was that she'd try and substitute herself with an explosive kunai but the absence of an explosive tag on the blade that the young woman had replaced herself with abolished that possibility.</p><p>"Yamanaka Hair Trap!" Kiyomi smirked while weaving a single hand seal. A blue aura expanded from a single point where multiple strings of Kiyomi's hair laid neatly tied up onto the handle of the kunai which she had transported into the hands of the enemy in such an original way.</p><p>"S-Stop her!" the explosive specialist turned to his ally, his eyes were just about frightened enough for Kiyomi to believe in the decent probability of her success. Almost instantaneously the expanding chakra aura enveloped the opponent and completely paralyzed him, setting up the conditions for the Yamanaka to use her signature clan techniques on this paralyzed target.</p><p>"Arhat Fist: Double Quake!" the Earth Release user yelled out, leaning both of his hands behind him, preparing to slam them into the ground and form a quake that would bust some more of the Yamanaka's ribs and punish her for believing in a chance of her victory coming to pass.</p><p>Before the ninja could execute his technique, however, he felt a tight grip of powerful arms slithering from under his armpits and locking firmly from behind his head, locking the man in an iron-tight Full Nelson. Wriggling his head through great effort, the Earth Release user witnessed the severely injured blacksmith ninja from before having snuck up from behind him and put him into the hold before he could hurt her comrade.</p><p>"Meiko!" the joy of seeing her comrade standing on her feet overpowered the necessity to rush her attack through. "Y-You shouldn't have… Stood up…" worry snuck up into Kiyomi's heart, even if Meiko managed to get back on her feet, the condition of her body, how the enemy was able to effectively rag doll the blacksmith around in her own hold betrayed the fact that the redhead was seriously injured and that any successive hits could have snuffed her life away at any moment. It was sheer willpower and the desire to help her teammates that kept the young woman standing.</p><p>"H-How did you even… Sneak up on me!?" the Earth Release user struggled once more, managing to lift Meiko off the ground and throwing her seemingly weightless body hanging behind him around like a heavy bag of potatoes. Meiko grunted and yelled out in pain as her damaged ribs, burns, and lacerations all resonated and acted up with painful impulses all over her body, combined with the fatigue building up in her muscles.</p><p>"Nobody… Ever expects the severely injured…" Meiko smirked, lacking the proper strength reserves to even shape that last sentence properly, everything she had was already put to use merely to keep her alive and to keep that hold applied. "Hurry up!" the blacksmith yelled out from the bottom of her heart, directed at the Yamanaka who was too preoccupied at having her eyes get wet with the joy of her friend managing to survive the collective sum of her injuries rather than exploiting the opening she herself created.</p><p>Right…" Kiyomi nodded before forming the modified Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal. "Mind Body Disturbance!"</p><p>The paralyzed explosive user twitched a pair of times. His body was fighting off Kiyomi's influence, her consciousness did not leave her body nor did it enter that of the enemy directly, something that greatly reduced the number of weaknesses that her hijutsu had but also made it harder to maintain proper control over more skilled minds.</p><p>Now Kiyomi doubted the chances of taking out her target. After seeing the man detonating an explosive on his own chest just to blast the rushing enemy away and barely taking any notable damage from it, whereas before the Yamanaka thought such a strategy to be fatal. Nor could she command the man to rush at his comrade from there – even if Meiko released the hold in time she was still way too close and far too injured to survive such a suicidal explosion. She needed to just detonate the man now…</p><p>Shaking and twitching, still resisting the enemy control, the Iwagakure ninja reached for his chest. With every inch that the man's hand moved in closer to the countless pouches of as of yet inactive metallic sticks, he channeled chakra through a stream of memories and thoughts rushed through Kiyomi's own mind. Those belonging to the man she was about to sentence to a gruesome end. It felt like running across the street with every caravan in town having to run down the same street – move an inch forward, wait the stream of memories out so that they don't wash you away, move again…</p><p>The blackness of one's own mind was nowhere to be seen, it was as if through the brief connection between Kiyomi and the enemy ninja the man managed to fire his memories at her like weapons. It was a unique method of resisting mind control and a surprisingly effective one, if nothing else, it annoyed the Yamanaka and gave each commanded movement a brief lag before the movement was performed.</p><p>The surroundings of the Eternal Fire were no longer there, it was as if both Kiyomi and the explosive specialist spy were placed in a strange dimension where everybody floated without weight or importance in the perpetual flow of the spy's memories. Nothing but mountain ridges and small camps… A feminine face that, for some reason, provided temperature to the entire inner universe of the spy's mind.</p><p>"Their army is massive, much better equipped…" the familiar voice of the Iwagakure spy resonated throughout the entire mental realm. It came like thunder that deafened every other sound in the realm.</p><p>"What choice is there? We can't just sit on the fence and let them do what they want…" the woman pressed her forehead against the raggedy and sweaty skin of the Iwagakure spy. Her voice thundered likewise, however it did not sound nearly as sharp and felt more like the melody of birds singing their best spring masterpieces for all to hear.</p><p>"True… I should go with you."</p><p>"You silly, you know your talents don't fit a battlefield. You'd send our entire platoon falling to our dooms with your blasts…" the woman laughed. Her laughter made the entire dimension grow brighter.</p><p>There was no time to catch up with the man's memories, Kiyomi pressed on, no matter how hard the man's arm struggled and twitched, it moved relentlessly closer to his chest. The Yamanaka felt immense chakra building up inside the man, he tried to overpower Kiyomi's mental assault like he would an illusion – a fruitless effort. If nothing else – he'd only boost the detonating power of his own explosives.</p><p>"Plus, we'll be fighting on our turf. They won't be used to fighting in mines and mountain ridges…"</p><p>"Kumogakure has mountains. Their entire village is built in a mountain range, isn't it?"</p><p>"Fine, be that way, I guess we're all screwed then…"</p><p>"I'm sorry… Just… "</p><p>The entire mental dimension became focused on the face of the woman in the spy's memories. He must have spent a significant portion of time staring into her eyes for such a clear and overwhelming focus. The mental realm became hot like an oven, vapor was escaping the woman's mouth, it was the way in which the man remembered her warm breath in the chill of the upper mountains.</p><p>"War blows. Sure, I don't want to go but… The real problem is when you do want to go to war, I guess… What option do we have? Run away? Go nuke? That's no option at all…"</p><p>"No, the dreams of starving children and ruined Iwa would haunt us forever. We're not some lowly criminals, we'd be just as jobless as our compatriots in the coltan industry."</p><p>"See? All we can do is swallow it and do what must be done. I promise you, I'll do everything I can so that none of us lose sleep dreaming of starving children and homeless families."</p><p>"…"</p><p>"Are you just gonna leave me hanging the evening before leaving for a battle? Promise me, you lug."</p><p>"Right… I… I'll do whatever I have to. I'd rather sleep an eternal slumber than a restless one too. Coltan is ours, it always has been, it's what keeps so many of us employed, what trains our ninja and the pride of our nation. To give the industry up would be to piss all over the Will of Stone…"</p><p>"See? Wasn't that hard, expressing your feelings, was it?"</p><p>A click made the entire stream of memories fade into black. The wide open eyes of the explosive specialist from Iwagakure was the last sight engrained into Kiyomi's memory before the entire wing of Eternal Fire sunk into flames and smoke. Whatever grotesque remains of the man that once was survived the initial shockwave from the tools of death strapped to the man's entire body were evaporated by the heat produced.</p><p>The downed redneck lifted his swollen and brutally beaten face off the ground, staring at the aftermath of his teammate's destruction. For a moment even Hanshin halted his merciless beating of the enemy ninja and turned to look at the end of yet another enemy. Whereas the loss of a man they barely knew yet a man with shared views and ideals shocked the Iwagakure ninja and the shock of having taken a life resonated through the hearts of both Kiyomi and Meiko, the smirk of Hanshin's face only saw another obstacle getting blown out of his way. With renewed vigor he returned to pounding the life out of the pickaxe-wielding Iwagakure ninja, seeking to leave nothing but a puddle of red on the ice.</p><p>Meiko's iron grip slipped off and let go of the third Iwagakure ninja, for a fraction of a moment it felt like she was floating in the air but the grim reality hit her again once the hard and cold surface of the ice below hit the blacksmith's exposed knees. The Iwagakure ninja did not counterattack immediately. It stumbled forward from the sudden release of the external force that held him tightly and simply stared at the remains of the drastic measure the Konoha ninja had sunk to.</p>
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<a name="section0535"><h2>535. From Intense Flames Diamonds Are Born</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The scene of Kiyomi staring at the fading smoke and shifting layers of ice, Meiko breathing heavily and struggling to stand up from her kneeling position and the third Iwagakure spy staring blankly at the scene of Hanshin beating the life out of his comrade appeared frozen in time. It was not the first time that Kiyomi had killed someone and yet… This was the first time that she's felt this guilty about it even though her rational mind couldn't quite explain why.</p><p>The hand of the Iwagakure spy reached out into thin air, like an arrow piercing the shadows and seeking another life to take. Meiko leaned her head back, avoiding the grip of the enemy ninja just barely. The blacksmith threw both of her thighs forward and wrapped her legs around the arm of the enemy before applying a powerful hold onto the arm of the spy.</p><p>The third ninja grunted out in discomfort as Meiko's remaining strength was nowhere close where it would have done significant damage on his limb. Kiyomi let her body fall forward, releasing all of the weight, all of the conscious control she had over it before the very last moment. The momentary bliss of plunging down felt so terrific… If only it had lasted a few moments more…</p><p>All of the relinquished strength returned at once, Kiyomi shot off like a rocket, propelled toward her opponent. The enemy was very thorough at using only long-range ninjutsu attacks. Relatively simple ones, nothing stronger than B-Rank, very few techniques crossing even that line. He was a fighter that wore the enemy down from afar over longer periods of time, meaning his main weakness was if the enemy exploded in his face from up close with quick and devastating attacks.</p><p>The Yamanaka concluded her dash with a frontal palm strike, aimed directly at the right side of the enemy's jaw. The neck of the spy extended far back from the transference of force behind Kiyomi's wicked strike, devastating the man's jaw to the point where speaking would have been out of the question to him. The man's arm flailed around so quickly that Meiko lost her grip and tumbled onto the floor, just barely peeling her bleeding face off of the ice to continue watching the transpiring brawl.</p><p>Kiyomi did not stop. Stopping would have meant a reset of the battle conditions, it would have provided her enemy with the time to look around for objects to substitute with or to think up of a decent defense. If this man reset the engagement, giving himself space, there may not have been a next time for Kiyomi to close in. After all, close-range explosive combat was this man's only weakness, meaning he was prepared for this eventuality the most and would not allow easy passage again.</p><p>The Yamanaka threw a pair of stiff, direct palm strikes, turning her palm to the side to hit with the side of the palm, make her hits sharper and hit into the softer parts of the man's joints. By now she had already devastated the enemy's jaw, the following pair of strikes went for the ribs as well as the softer areas of the lower gut. A hard resistance hit the wrists of the young woman, the enemy was resisting – he did have some taijutsu skill after all.</p><p>The man slapped both of Kiyomi's palm strikes away, opening up the chest of the Konoha kunoichi for a quick attack of his own. Using the weight of his entire body, the man threw a palm strike of his own, aimed right at the center of Kiyomi's ribs. The hardest and the most protected area of her body, but the most devastating one if the attack succeeded in the initial goal of busting Kiyomi's bones. Their fighting styles were rather similar, however, whereas Kiyomi relied on her twisted palm strikes getting into joints and pressure points – the man chose to simply drive them with sheer force and destroy any defenses in his way, no matter where they landed.</p><p>No, he purposefully drove them at the toughest areas with the most natural protection, he aimed to break the enemy's entire body through brute strength alone.</p><p>Kiyomi's eyes whited out. The successive palm strike sent the Yamanaka sliding back with her consciousness hiding away somewhere else so that she did not have to confront the imminent pain of multiple fractures. Her entire body may very well have broken after this strike. The enemy continued their relentless assault with a pair of backhanded fist strikes, these packed significantly less force given how the man's weight was already invested into the first strike but it would not have mattered.</p><p>Fire lit up in the Yamanaka's eyes again. She moved in for a rising palm strike aimed at the chin of the enemy ninja, the man's jaw was already busted, any successive strikes there would have caused brutal damage, forcing the fractured bones to shred the man's flesh as open fractures appeared like mushrooms after an autumn rain.</p><p>The built-up blood in Kiyomi's mouth from her busted organs made a release as a rough impact sent the young woman sliding back on the ice, completely powerless. It was a tackling motion, the man crashed his shoulder right into Kiyomi's body before her counterattack could have connected. Ordering her body to move even an inch, do anything but twitch her fingers helplessly was of no use.</p><p>Meiko fumbled in to protect Kiyomi, the blacksmith could barely stand right but she willed herself to do so just so she could place herself in between her friend and the enemy ninja. Both of the young women were closer to death than they could ever remember being, this desperation was what provided them with the strength needed to keep going, submitting to their physical limitations would have meant certain death.</p><p>"M-Meiko…" Kiyomi whimpered.</p><p>"You dummy, you were so worried to look after me that you got messed up worse than I did…" Meiko grinned in the face of the most danger she's ever been in. Only one moment in time rivaled this one in terms of how close the blacksmith was to losing everything but, unlike the time fighting Akimichi Francho for the control of the Box of Ultimate Bliss, Meiko did not feel hopeless or powerless. She would not just sit there and dwell on approaching death, she'd rather punch it in the face.</p><p>The Iwagakure ninja attempted to speak, instead, just a puddle of blood, teeth, and slobber dripped down his busted mouth. This sent the man into a fit of rage as he charged forward at Meiko.</p><p>The blacksmith's head felt weird. As if something or someone was inside it and tried to speak. It was a similar feeling to the one when one felt like they were being watched but on a much deeper, more personal, internal level. It did not help Meiko's concentration at all…</p><p>The enemy threw a pair of palm strikes. Meiko leaned aside, letting her faltering balance aid her in the evasion, whenever the draw to the ground was too strong, the young woman just let it take over from there and let go, then, right before it was too late shifted her balance around, tensed up her muscles and pulled on the driving stick of her body with all of her weight and will. It let the blacksmith avoid these simple strikes at least… A pair of haphazard counterattack jabs landed with solid wallop behind them on her opponent's body, further wearing it out.</p><p>After feeling like she's softened the man up a little more, Meiko's hands swung again. This time they were just mere fists, however, a pair of arrows popped out from the blacksmith's forearm armor pieces. One of the arrows caught flame when whizzing through the air while gripped tightly in the blacksmith's hand, the other one had a peculiar black end that was meant to penetrate with more success by giving the projectile a tip of sharper and more durable materials.</p><p>The enemy avoided the strikes by moving the upper body. The man's feet remained firmly rooted in the ground. Something that did not evade Meiko's notice. The man knew how to keep his balance – an integral feature to any formidable hand to hand combatant, also, a very notable feature for a more arm-focused taijutsu specialist. After reading her opponent thusly, the blacksmith managed to avoid the hard right cross and wrap her body around the opponent with her right hand constricting around the man's neck and her left continuously throwing elbow strikes at the top of the head of the Iwagakure ninja.</p><p>There it was… That feeling again… Something was inside her mind, just residing there and watching. Somehow the blacksmith felt like she was hearing heavy, controlled breathing in her head even though she couldn't actually hear anything of the sort. Her opponent appeared to suffer from no such disadvantages, no such quirks, perhaps his head wasn't busted enough…</p><p>A rough grip managed to grab hold of Meiko's hair and swing the blacksmith over the man's head before slamming her right into the ground in front. Oddly enough, while the impact made the young woman's body burn up with thousands of hot needles that injected hot wax everywhere they could reach, this was not as devastating as Meiko had predicted it being while her body felt weightless and flying in an arc toward the ground.</p><p>Meiko had predicted a stomp coming her way, which was why she chose to rather crawl and writhe in a highly prosaic manner and pose than risk getting her life punched out of her. Her opponent hit her with an unfavorable move back then, his style did not favor slams and wrestling moves like the one from before… That was why Meiko didn't have pieces of her ribs flying all over her innards and poking around where they didn't belong. This finishing blow… It felt real, it felt genuine…</p><p>Although, despite the determined look on the opponent's face and the clearly immense power packed away into the final strike, it was not a stomp that came Meiko's way but instead a punch. It seemed completely counterintuitive to punch the ground while the upper body was too leaned over to draw force from the ground beneath one's feet. Balance added more than half of the force behind a punch, not just blindly swinging one's arm from the shoulder like a rookie…</p><p>This man was no rookie, however, while the strike itself had missed Meiko entirely, the quake from after the punch that resonated through the ground lifted the blacksmith up into the air higher up than the entirety of the opponent's height. Had the blacksmith not utilized this high-flying opportunity to throw a stiff kick from her right leg to halt her opponent's proceeding attack, she'd have been wide open for the true finishing blow. The fighting style of this man… It was unlike anything Meiko had encountered before. It was no Strong Fist of Konoha, to say the least.</p><p>"Don't get hit!" Kiyomi's thoughts signaled through Meiko's mind, breaking through the awkward and quite freaky silence from before. "It's his fighting style… Whatever he does to the ground, he does to you if he lands a blow. Him posing as a long-range ninja is a trap…"</p><p>This last attempt by her friend to share intelligence cleared Meiko's mind a bit. She knew at least that her friend, while fading in and out of consciousness, was alive and while she was still unable to talk, she was at the very least still lucid enough to think clearly and relate those thoughts to the blacksmith. Given how the pair were tagging in and out of this battle with the out member of their tag team staying unconscious, such information sharing seemed useful.</p><p>Through pain and grit, the redhead cackled, her hand covered up and wiped blood from her busted lip and the other free arm had to clutch at the chest of the young woman to protect her busted ribs that were being scorched by the blaze of pain this sudden influx of movement invited all over the blacksmith's body. Regardless, the young woman had to persevere, refusal to do so meant a whole lot more short-term pain followed by absolutely nothing at all…</p><p>The enemy grumbled, spraying out bits of busted teeth and blood from whatever still qualified as a mouth on his face.</p><p>"I bet you're wondering what's so funny…" Meiko straightened her body out, performing a pair of quick stretches to ease up and balance the burn in her body more evenly. Cramps all over the body beat agony in just one specific area. "You see, this kind of tag team fighting is just what we went through in the Chuunin Exams, seemed kind of pointless then…"</p><p>The two ninja launched their worn out and broken bodies at one another. Both seemingly still capable of throwing their fists just as both of them could have died after any one of these earth-shattering blows they threw each other's way since they have long since passed the point of reason and bodily limits, proceeding forward while borrowing fuel to do so from their life force directly.</p><p>The enemy, who from the first glance appeared to have more at stake and therefore carried more will packed and pushing the agenda of the man's survival, threw a combination of rapid palm strikes. It would have appeared impossible to avoid this wild storm of thrown hands as the swiftness and ferocity of the combination made it look as if the Iwagakure ninja had grown thousands of extra arms all of which proceeded to rush with strikes at various angles.</p><p>The only reason Meiko survived this onslaught was blind luck, she could not read or predict this peculiar style at all, for that reason, she did not try. The redhead merely proceeded to attack the way she meant to attack her opponent before realizing she was outpaced, hoping for the best. The blacksmith leaped forward like a little monkey, throwing both of her clenched fists down in a hammer-like manner to use the enemy's shoulders for support of her leaping venture.</p><p>The Iwagakure ninja sprayed blood and teeth again in pain and stumbled on all fours from the lightest tap. This, however, was no blind luck, the bodies of all of the participants of this massive brawl were broken to such an extent that even the slightest touch sent ripples of force that disturbed broken bones elsewhere entirely in one's body. Similar was the case with the stumbling of the Iwagakure spy as well.</p><p>Adamant to finish the fight and desperate in her foresight that a mere unchaining of her best strikes would not do it, Meiko unsealed a windmill shuriken from the center of her chest and with a battle cry coming from the deepest crevices of her chest did her best to plunge the ninja tool into her enemy's exposed back. A whistling noise pierced the silence before the kill, the arm of the Iwagakure spy flew back and grabbed Meiko's throat, crushing it and snapping the young woman's neck in an instant as it offered little to no resistance in its current state.</p><p>Instead of a lifeless body, only crumbles of wood and string dropped onto the icy ground. The enemy turned back and raised an eyebrow in the surprise of the well-timed and placed substitution technique of his opponent. It was only after realizing that his opponent had substituted out of his deadly counterattack that the Iwagakure ninja realized where exactly the bow was located before being substituted with and what was the most important in this realization – the fact that he had just exposed his back to the enemy again.</p><p>The Iwagakure ninja threw his upper body to the side once more. The exposed and pushing overtime muscles on his back sprayed sweat all over him as the man just barely managed to catch Meiko's wrist clutching an arrow in it that was meant for the back of his neck. Hanging in mid-air, with the clutch of the enemy tightly controlling her plunging arm, watching out for potential counterattacks and for that reason preserving the remaining limbs for the defensive, Meiko stared at her opponent in as much misery as she did sheer rage.</p><p>So this was how far her lukewarm declarations of not killing went… At this desperate point, driven with her back to the wall and then having her body smashed through the said wall, Meiko could see no more choices but to kill the enemy. Even when she resorted to these sort of attacks – attacks meant to end and not just maim or soften, she could not defeat the enemy nor triumph his will. Mana's resolve seemed so worth admiration now… Just how often was her friend driven to just these sort of extremes and still chose to gamble her own life and the life of the enemy before resorting to foul attempts such as those that Meiko had used.</p><p>The Iwagakure ninja twisted Meiko's wrist, forcing the young woman to grunt in pain while her feet dangled in mid-air, lacking the support needed to prevent continuous twisting of the joints in her locked arm. How could she have done so much and yet still be so far from winning? She did everything she could, her body felt less and less responsive and vision was beginning to fade, for the first time in a while Meiko would have liked some sleep more than rich tables of food and yet… The willpower of the enemy beat that of hers.</p><p>Was just doing her best, never giving up and just pushing on not enough?</p><p>Was she not owed victory for risking her life this way? Or maybe… The enemy risked their life to an even higher extent, the Iwagakure ninja craved victory more than Meiko did.</p><p>It was so easy for Mana to say that if she died – she was better off dead when she never actually did lose when giving her all, when pushing her body to just these same sorts of extremes.</p><p>Meiko's feet shot forward before the enemy could crush her fist completely. The vision of the Iwagakure ninja faded away as their eyes whited out from shock while both of the blacksmith's feet dug into his chest and left crushing craters in the man's ribcage.</p><p>Overcome by adrenaline as much as she was with rage, Meiko continued to wallop with her one still responsive arm, punching, throwing elbow strikes before switching to her feet and her knees to give her arm more time for winding up and repeating the same combination. After a finishing elbow strike right to the softest chunks of the exposed flesh of the wound on the jaw of the Iwagakure ninja, the enemy rolled back like a kicked ball and slammed against the most northern wall supporting the Eternal Fire.</p><p>Meiko's eyes widened in shock, respect but also submission to the indomitable will of the Iwagakure ninja when the spy just fumbled and writhed back on his front and tried pushing his body off the ground. It seemed that the only way to make the man submit was to actually kill him on his feet, that would have been the only way for the Stone ninja to not rise after being knocked down.</p><p>Just as suddenly as it blazed alive, the Will of Stone faded once the horror of seeing his teammate reduced to fleshy, bloody stain by Hanshin reflected off of the peeper of the Iwagakure ninja. It was as if at that moment the ninja had simultaneously realized that he was left alone amongst the three that signed the iron resolution here to halt the Konoha ninja as well as the fact that there was no way that he would achieve anything through further resistance.</p><p>While almost halfway back up on his feet, the enemy collapsed and stayed down. Meiko's weary eyes turned back at the last gaze that inspired so much fear into the heart of the enemy, she felt lucky that the swelling on her face and the blood gushing from one of her busted eyebrows as well as the forehead blinded one of her eyes as she was certain that the sight of what remained of the smart-talking, pickaxe-wielding spy was not for the faint of heart.</p><p>"I can't believe you just sat here this whole time…" Meiko fumbled, words barely strung together, the pull of the frozen ground below was too strong to resist and growing stronger each passing second.</p><p>"Hanshin did consider moving on without you two, after all, you taking so long was wasting quite a lot of Hanshin's time… Then, Hanshin remembered that the longer we take, the better our odds at getting to kill every spy in the building so…" Hanshin shrugged as if what he had just said was any sort of justification and not completely devoid of any moral decency.</p>
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<a name="section0536"><h2>536. The Frequency Of Spirit And Broken Twigs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The open pipe through which Mana crawled continued to shake about together with the quakes plaguing the entire structure. Unlike a few of the other ones that the magician crawled through, this pipe did not appear to send waves of heated gas, howling as it made its escape to the outside. In her crawl, Mana had only her chakra sensory suggesting which direction she might find either Kiyomi, Meiko, and Hanshin or where the document was being signed to rely on.</p><p>It did not take long for the Konoha kunoichi to hit the end of the pipe. She flipped over on her back and gave the structure a good, hearty kick. Despite the heat from the surfaces Mana was rubbing against having cauterized the wound on her gut, together with some burns all over the magician's body where her chakra augmentations faltered, the gut of the young woman lit up with burning impulses the moment she put more strength into her kick.</p><p>Perhaps too much strength. After Mana kicked the end of the pipe, the entire end of the structure exploded from the pressure outward and sent the injured young woman plummeting a good fifty meters down to the nearest hard surface. Luckily, the chakra augmentations lazily flowing through the magician's body to keep her mostly unharmed in the ungodly temperatures of the ventilation pipes of the Eternal Fire served as enough of protection against the fall to only cause moderate discomfort in her sickly feeling bones all over and some bruises as the magician gone through a long table circling the entire hall on her way down.</p><p>It was less than a ceremonious and dignified way down. At least it served as a decent distraction. Mana tried to gather the strength to pick herself up and confront the Iwagakure ninja but, much to her horror, her arms wobbled and gave in halfway, every time she tried applying more force to her movement, such as when she needed to stand back up, her limbs began feeling numb and just collapsed.</p><p>"The Konoha ninja! They've found us here! It's all over now!" someone was in the process of freaking out despite their highly advantageous position. What sick irony, Mana managed to follow her chakra sensory right to the hall where the document was being signed but she was in absolutely no condition to stop the signature from being put nor to do anything else but to witness the failure of her mission.</p><p>"Calm yourself. She doesn't look to be in any condition to stop us." A man in long and spiky black hair observed Mana's writhing body from a safe distance after bolting over the steps to where the magician had plummeted down. "Although if she's here, the others might make their way here as well. I would advise you to stop fucking up already and sign the document properly."</p><p>"When we planned this, I did not count on the Yordalar politicians being this bad at signing documents. This is your one job, is it not?" a feminine voice referred to the handful of cowardly Yordalar representatives that must have been the collaborators who would surrender their own country to Iwagakure's management. Not too much different from the way Kirigakure had lost most of their autonomy temporarily a few years back, except Kirigakure had no say in the matter whereas Yordalar appeared to surrender willingly under the illusion of a democratic election distracting the folk.</p><p>"Well, it is not our fault your draft of the contract was faulty. If we sign the wrong form of contract, it will be treated as void by the international community and I thought the whole point was to legitimately have Yordalar move under Iwagakure's wing." The previously cowardly politician objected.</p><p>"He's right… There will be no point in all of this if we sign the wrong form of a contract. Keep drafting the thing, you…" the Iwagakure spy with long and dark hair pointed at the cowering collaborators, "Sign the contract as soon as it is done. Soon enough we will have more problems on our hands than Konoha, I hate to admit it but if the Yordalarans discover what's going on…"</p><p>"You're a bunch of foreigners. The worst they can do to you is to cast you out, it will be our bodies hung from a tree upside down!" one of the politician collaborators cried out.</p><p>"It doesn't matter if they do not kill us. Returning home without Yordalar's support is the same as dooming us to destruction, political and otherwise…" the apparent leader of the Iwagakure spy squad looked up at the devastated ventilation pipe. His eyes looked far beyond, however, somewhere to a point in space and time that could not be normally seen by the bare eye and one that existed merely in the man's own memories and imagination.</p><p>The woman assisting the Yordalar politicians with drafting the document looked up as well. Mana had managed to lift her upper body off the ground but she could only helplessly stare at the death penalty these people were signing themselves for when Hanshin and the group get here. She lucked out that the enemy made the most boring and ridiculous kind of mistake and that they brought a wrong kind of contract to the place to sign, regardless, she felt powerless to punish and exploit that mistake in her current state.</p><p>"If only Guru Ayushi did not abandon us… Why did he leave when we needed him the most?" the woman called out for fate itself to answer her as it did not appear anyone else knew the answer. The leader of the pack of spies turned at the woman and removed a cigarette and a lighter from the pocket of his leather jacket.</p><p>"Guru Ayushi?" Mana mumbled before repeating the same out loud. "Ayushi-san was in Iwagakure!?"</p><p>The leader of the spies turned to Mana after lighting up his smoke and taking a good long draw on the chemical poison that lurked inside. The man's lungs did not appear to be ruined to the point where he'd cough incessantly, he was still at the condition of relative relaxation and cool enjoyment of his intake of death in gaseous form.</p><p>"Yes, he was… We were as surprised to see him as anyone else. We thought him long gone after he visited Konoha. Everyone was whispering about you guys having assassinated him behind our backs but nobody had the balls to do anything about it and Kumogakure – the only country to have the muscle to kick your ass chose instead to not risk their position at the top of the military power ladder for a bunch of rumors." The man replied.</p><p>"Where is he now?" Mana asked. The Iwagakure spy looked so surprised by how indifferent this young woman that had quite literally fallen from the sky to them was toward her mission objective and how curious she was about something apparently so random and unrelated. Perhaps it was for the same reason that he humored her with an answer – because talk of Guru Ayushi, a faux savior angel of the ninja world was a way for him to stall the young lady until the contract is properly drafted.</p><p>"He left. Got what he needed from Iwagakure and left right before the coltan conflict really got heated. Like idiots, we all hoped that, after making such a heroic return, the legendary Guru Ayushi would stay in Iwagakure and help. Guide us through tough times and breathe some sense into the Great Countries…" the spy found himself a spot on the donut-shaped table to sit down on as he conversed with this oddly devoted and powerless Konoha kunoichi that fell from the sky at the worst moment.</p><p>"What was he looking for there?" Mana rose even higher up. The curiosity about Ayushi's actions as well as the chance to look deeper into the man's activities, maybe get some edge before their fated, unavoidable confrontation or just get to understand him better fired the magician up. Shocking pain needles no longer ran down her back when she moved, Mana's numbed limbs started feeling a little bit more lively with every mention of the man's name.</p><p>"Only he knows." The leader of the spies sighed.</p><p>"One of us saw him, you know." The woman from farther away, the Iwagakure kunoichi helping the collaborators from Yordalar draft the document spoke up. "Before he left. They said that they asked Guru Ayushi how could he leave Iwagakure right when it needed the Guru the most…"</p><p>"He replied that he was looking at the bigger picture, that lowly trade squabbles were inconsequential on the grand scale of his plan." Mana guessed the words that would have followed.</p><p>"Yes… Actually… Almost word for word." The woman turned away from drafting the contract and glared at the magician in surprise. "What exactly happened to Guru Ayushi in Konoha?" now it was the Iwagakure ninja who were curious.</p><p>"A man with too open of a mind changed, adopted childish ideals while possessing the power to actually make them come true…" Mana breathed out with a hollow chest. She attempted to rise on her feet but her body crumbled down, turning all the work, all the progress she had made over the brief time into pointless chaff.</p><p>The male Iwagakure spy stared at Mana for a short while before standing back up from the table he sat on. Mana wondered if he decided to finally kill her, perhaps it would have been for the better if he had – she could have used a little bit of motivation to move her broken body. Before the question could be answered, however, the entire supporting wall blew open with metallic shreds erupting outward and into the main hall of the Eternal Fire as a single, robust blow peeled the entire metallic barrier open.</p><p>"Tsk… I knew it, with all the distractions in Hanshin's way, you beat Hanshin to getting here." The flippant Konoha special jounin lamented in an almost fun-poking manner as he shook his head and held his hands tightly crossed over his chest, his buttocks twisted to be on full display to the people present in the room the figurative door of which he had just figuratively kicked down of.</p><p>"Who is this joker now?" the Iwagakure spy asked while looking quite worried. The man's feet kept on dragging back, closer to his ally and to where the contract was being drafted. Mana knew why – these ninja weren't nearly as powerful as the others that the Konoha party had encountered. They sent their best people to delay the enemy. The specialty of this man and his female partner must have been more stealth oriented, more trained in political discourse and manipulation. Depending on whom one would have asked – the more dangerous type of ninja and one capable of causing much more damage.</p><p>It was, after all, saboteurs such as these that decided fates of entire international conflicts, just like this contract that was being drafted had the promise to do.</p><p>"The contract hasn't been signed yet, they're drafting it right now," Mana called out to Hanshin. A worrisome flame ate away inside her chest that made the young woman almost expect to be betrayed by the man and see him murder every soul inside the Eternal Fire not holding a Konohagakure headband regardless. It was just how things usually turned out for her, nobody ever shared her crazy devotion to preventing senseless murder.</p><p>"I see…" Hanshin sighed. "Well, Hanshin may be described as difficult to work with, but Hanshin has never given anyone the chance to call him a lying snake. We'll be doing it your way then, kid."</p><p>"What are you two talking about? Why is that guy talking in the third person?" the Iwagakure spy turned to Mana, pulling out a kunai knife out of his holster. He was getting desperate, a ninja that looked old enough to outrank every other ninja around just burst into the room and he talked enough shit to be seen as quite a big deal. He was someone who emerged from a room which was protected by the strongest members of the spy party sent here to acquire Yordalar's support.</p><p>Everything pointed at the leader of the spies pulling something profoundly stupid and rash soon enough. Almost like ordered by mail, the foolish act came on a figurative cue just moments after any attempts of reading the room would have revealed the signs to it. The Iwagakure spy grabbed Mana by her throat, making the magician cry out in pain as he forced the brittle peace between the magician's wounds and her body to collapse in a river of blood. The feeling of blood in Mana's lungs and the dread that came with it followed as because of the tight grip around her neck, the bleeding had little elsewhere to go.</p><p>The other hand of the man reached down for his ninja pouch. While the remaining Iwagakure spies carried little combat potential, the leader of the group appeared to still be capable of holding the body of a young woman up with just one of his hands while the other browsed for a weapon to hold her hostage with. It all transpired in just split second but somehow it felt almost sluggish and extremely spontaneous, someone of Hanshin's level should have had what felt like years of time to intervene but the jounin remained stationary and just stared at the Iwagakure ninja escalating the situation.</p><p>For an awkward amount of time, the Konoha special jounin continued to stare right back at the eyes of the Iwagakure ninja in confusion. An entire myriad of emotions ran down the face of the enemy spy, most of the negative ones were fueled by the lack of any sort of meaningful reaction from the side of the Konoha ninja who was supposed to be at threat here. Even the young magician that squirmed in the ninja's arm did so more because of the pain of her injuries acting up and not because of fear of any harm about to come from the Iwagakure ninja.</p><p>"How much longer?" the Iwagakure spy yelled out, clearly aimed back at his ally and the Yordalarian collaborators who were hard at work at drafting the contract but because the ninja refused to pull his eyes off of the most dangerous man in the room with the most indifferent pair of eyes, this fact came more from the context than an immediate reading of the spy's social cues.</p><p>"Have you ever tried writing down an international contract? We're working as fast as we can. As fast as we can without setting the paper on fire and having to do it all over again…" the female ally grumbled in return of the leader's complaints.</p><p>"Hah! So that's what you're trying to do…" Hanshin smacked his forehead with his own palm before dragging it down. "It was so confusing when you grabbed the magician that Hanshin sort of froze there…"</p><p>"W-What do you mean? Of course I'm threatening you to stay still with this woman's life and demanding you to let my allies finish drafting and then sign the contract, what kind of an imbecile are you?" the Iwagakure spy lost even more of his cool, moving the knife closer to Mana's face to the point where it covered the distance from the magician's eye with the tip to her throat with the edge nearing the hilt.</p><p>"Pfff…" Hanshin mocked the spy. "For your information, Hanshin was attempting to make it here too late so that he could kill all of you and burn the contract, bury all the traces of it ever being made. It was this very young woman that hurried all of us along."</p><p>"Y-You mean… The life of your comrade means nothing at all to you? You're just waiting to tie up all the loose ends?" the Iwagakure spy took a stumble back in disbelief, Mana felt some solid ground beneath her feet for the first time in a while as she was no longer mostly dangling in the air. "I am glad that it was not Konoha that Iwagakure came into conflict with. This lack of honor and human decency would have made any ninja fostering the Will of Stone feel sickened to their core."</p><p>"Oh? So then your actions are honorable?" Hanshin grinned through his mocking, improvised mask formed from his own hand and crooked fingers. The almost psychotic gleam of the man's eyes broke through the shadow that his own hand cast onto his face. "Hanshin has never been accused of being dirty by a tar kettle. You're trying to send an entire settlement of people that barely escaped tyranny for genocide this very moment."</p><p>"Maybe." The Iwagakure spy let Mana's body hit the floor, despite the magician's most genuine attempts at keeping her balance and maybe even strike back, she fell on her knees and coughed up the blood that she was nearly drowning in for the nearest handful of minutes while her assailant placed his weapon to her face from a different position. "But I am doing so to protect my own people. Kumogakure is the strongest military power in the world, it can be beaten but not by any singular military and no other village dares sacrifice their own people. Someone has to take the fall and we'd rather it be these people."</p><p>"Hey, you two!" Hanshin yelled out directing his words at the pair of collaborators. "Just for the record, you two are perfectly fine with what's going on here, right?"</p><p>"Why wouldn't they be? It's their only chance at not only survival but acceptance into a greater entity – they'd have been either corpses or eternal refugees as Yordalarans but by helping Iwagakure survive they become a part of it. Have you forgotten Yordalar is choosing to surrender its sovereignty here? This contract isn't just for show, you know…" the female spy turned back at Hanshin to answer for the Yordalarans who were hard at work.</p><p>"Well, Hanshin was hoping for a most amusing betrayal but… It seems that Hanshin would have to find his entertainment elsewhere. In that case, you were mostly correct. Under most circumstances, I'd find any comrade of mine captured by the enemy a meaningless distraction just in Hanshin's way. Something Hanshin hates most of all is annoying things getting in his way, however…"</p><p>Black Vicious emerged from behind Hanshin, almost momentarily, as a response to the show of force, the Iwagakure ninja pressed Mana's face to the ground and almost drove his knife into the back of his head. A show of brutality originating from the ever increasing desperation.</p><p>"So you do care about this woman…" the spy smirked sly as a snake.</p><p>"Indeed, she is an invaluable artist Hanshin would rather preserve." The special jounin gestured with a pose aimed to show off some of his finest bodily parts.</p><p>"So how about you make that armor disappear or else your artist will have to create her art without any depth perception." The Iwagakure ninja dragged the knife up to Mana's eye while still holding her head down to the floor. What tiniest bits remained of Mana's chakra had to be devoted to not having the heated metallic floor burn her face. For the moment, her feeble efforts were just about enough but…</p><p>"In time you will learn how poorly you worded that…" Hanshin smirked without dropping the pose. Blood fell from above like a trickle of crimson rain down the drain, despite having plenty of it of her own soaking her, Mana realized it was not her blood. The magician tried pushing back at the hand that held her down and she was surprised just how easily it gave in.</p><p>The body of the Iwagakure spy was bent backward at an awkward angle as if the man had been broken in half from behind like a twig. The expression of shock and pain that surpassed the realm of agony and entered to explore a realm beyond the depths of pain which humans can even perceive colored his face. The thing with explorers of the painful kind was, they always came back home after they had seen enough bringing all that they had found with them and the man's eyes were desperately trying to prolong the inevitable return of the figurative discoverer.</p><p>It was only after a pair of moments that Mana noticed brief, almost ethereal and ghostly outlines of the Black Vicious armor behind the enemy ninja. No chakra signature, no clear shape, color or sound, not even a tap on the floor or the whistle in the wind as the armor moved – no evidence of the armor's existence whatsoever.</p><p>"Black Vicious: Spirit Frequency." Hanshin licked his lips before chanting out the name of his technique with the man's tongue flipping as sweetly as recounting the most delectable cherry he had tasted recently.</p>
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<a name="section0537"><h2>537. Grass Roots Negotiation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Well… Now that this is over with, Hanshin is going to ask you all to clench your bottoms and leave this building. Hanshin would bet that the locals are just about accustomed enough to the chaos reaching out from this place to come and check it out. Provided they're pissed enough about the mess we've made here, which they must be." Hanshin demanded with a stern look at the frozen scene of the Iwagakure kunoichi glaring at the gruesome takedown of her leader with shock and uncertainty.</p><p>The Yordalaran collaborators were just shaking in their boots, refusing to play their parts any further than they already have. It was likely the fate of the frightening Iwagakure spy that petrified them, the man they considered the most dangerous one in the room based on his fearlessness in resorting to violence.</p><p>Mana wasn't sure at first where Hanshin was going with this but once the realization hit her she couldn't help it but have her jaw drop open. He was trying to defuse the situation without killing anyone, just like they agreed. That was surprisingly mature and jounin-like of the Konoha ninja, that being said, something made Mana just feel lucky that she somehow chose a path of life that Hanshin valued enough and that all the conditions fell so neatly into places for this to play out just right.</p><p>The only way that this would not have ended in a bloodbath.</p><p>Mana weaved a single hand seal. "Fire Style: Hitsuke!" she huffed out through moderate struggle. The contract, which the party of spies from Iwagakure and the Yordalaran collaborators were so busy drafting not too long before, lit up in flames. It was something obvious and silly to point out that Mana had little chakra left, however setting a single stack of papers ablaze did not require all that much effort. With the fire swallowing up the fated contract swallowing it up, Mana fell on her front, just barely having enough strength left to stop her fall with her arms.</p><p>It was beginning to feel like the gravity around her was intensifying, sweat dyed with blood was dripping off of the face of the young woman. It took notable strength to even lift her head up and look at the main scene in the northern part of the hall.</p><p>"Nicely done. A useless technique in combat but… Will do the job." Hanshin smirked like a smartass parent would smirk after their child had finally learned to draw the cheeky Sun in the corner of their painting.</p><p>"Now… Out you lot go." The special jounin turned back at the groveling schemers with a stern, death-inducing glare. "Don't forget to pick up your broken friend here too…"</p><p>"If you think for a second that this will break our Will of Stone…" the female Iwagakure spy rebelled. She pulled out a kunai and took a defensive knife-fighting stance. She clearly intended to score no victory here but considered throwing her life away preferable over the alternative of seeing her home burn down and the mountains that gave her home and put food on everyone's table leveled by the world's largest cascade of lightning bolts.</p><p>"Oh? Amusing…" Hanshin smirked again. He looked at the shaking Yordalaran politicians. "Maybe you intend to take me on all at once as well? After all, you guys are Yordalarans, you must have some fighting spirit in you and I am fairly winded after all this fighting… Who knows, maybe you all have a shot?"</p><p>Mana knew how cruel her superior's taunt was. These people had no chance even with their now completely paralyzed comrade who probably preferred his fate to still retaining his senses as the agony he would be in at the moment would have made him beg for death, no matter how stern and sturdy the Will of Stone was.</p><p>"You do know that it is more than likely the other settlers will kill you, right?" The special jounin taunted the groveling men some more as if taking some sick kicks out of it. "May as well go out swinging right now…"</p><p>"Even if it means death!" the Iwagakure kunoichi declared, charging at the opponent who now had his hands pocketed and just smirked with confidence. His eyes looked gleeful enough for a neutral observer to realize that, given his level of advanced perception, he was following every twitch and every smallest movement of the Iwagakure woman.</p><p>"Stop!" Mana cried out but her voice did not reach anyone who would have really benefit from it.</p><p>The Iwagakure spy leaped forward with a thrust of the kunai blade, Hanshin appeared completely disinterested in avoiding the attack and merely stood in place with his hands completely removed from taking any fighting stance. With an unearthly clang, the knife bent while it got stuck in between the ribs of Black Vicious that manifested itself in physical form around the special jounin. A hidden ace he held in his sleeve this entire time despite most of the players knowing of it but refusing to call the cheat out because of the influence and strength of the man holding it.</p><p>The Iwagakure woman dashed back. A sizzling sound alerted everyone of the reason why she dashed back in such a rush – the knife she had plunged into Black Vicious was one rigged with an explosive tag. A deafening blast spread through the hall, Hanshin slid out from the blast zone with his hands raised up in a blocking position. His clothes slightly singed and some minor burns covering his body.</p><p>He was taking amusement from further fooling the struggling Iwagakure woman into thinking she had a chance. This felt much crueler than if the man had just killed her outright. The Iwagakure spy placed her hands up in a closed position, one meant for a more ninjutsu-focused combatant and aimed at maximizing the speed of weaving hand seals in the midst of battle.</p><p>"You mock my Will of Stone but now, with your armor gone, you will have no way of defending yourself against this!" the woman declared while her hands worked with hand seals. It was like Hanshin had teleported himself right up to the woman, even though the lack of any significant dip in chakra level made Mana realize it was no instantaneous movement – the man was just that damn fast. The man's arm locked up over the woman's wrist in an iron grip. With a single yank, he dislocated the wrist as if it would have been as easy as snapping a twig.</p><p>There was no precision whatsoever with the motion, the man may as well have broken the hand at the same time as he had dislocated the wrist as he was operating like a sledgehammer and not a scalpel. The Iwagakure ninja cried out in pain but did not crumble or relent. She tried throwing a pair of elbow strikes and kicks. Because her movements were so sluggish while in so much pain, none of the hits landed anywhere but crashed into the blocks that Hanshin put up.</p><p>With the last kick, the special jounin locked up his grip around the woman's ankle and flipped her body over with a simple throwing motion. Just like that, the Konoha ninja had achieved one of the most advantageous positions in battle but he chose to merely dangle his raised foot above the downed and dazed opponent instead of slamming it down and finishing it.</p><p>Hanshin's goal was clearly to see if he could make the Will of Stone crumble and not to just defeat this woman.</p><p>"What happened to Kiyomi and Meiko? There're a bunch of chakra signatures closing in." Mana distracted Hanshin. Even with the man's eyes off of the enemy, it didn't appear like his guard was completely down, at least Mana would not have tried her luck if she was in the place of the Iwagakure kunoichi but, then again, if she was, she'd have never gotten this far, to begin with.</p><p>"The Yamanaka's laid out, Meiko is too injured to carry on but conscious. They're both alive, Hanshin doesn't care much about anything more than that." The special jounin declared with the amount of flippancy that wasn't to be expected of someone who's about to be put in charge of his own squad of genin ninja.</p><p>"This must be the mob. If we stay here and get caught, we'll be dead for sure. The only way we have a chance, to begin with, is if we run out and surrender!" one of the collaborators declared after showing an uncharacteristic amount of courage in his behavior for a moment, even if it was just to save his own hide.</p><p>"Sure, you guys run along now. Unless you do something entertaining, you're of no interest to Hanshin." The special jounin waved his hand before moving his airborne foot around as if it was beginning to feel numb.</p><p>The Iwagakure kunoichi answered the taunt by striking at the man's supporting leg. By doing that she managed to knock the opponent down temporarily. A howling laugh revealed that the Konoha ninja was most of all amused by the willingness of the kunoichi to keep going. After getting back on her feet, the kunoichi took a pair of vaults back to gain some distance and then froze up to evaluate the odds and her options.</p><p>"Just give up already, you've got no chance of fulfilling your objective anymore nor can you make a strong escape – there are too many people to kill that have seen you and know of your involvement." Mana pleaded with the kunoichi.</p><p>"Not that many…" the Iwagakure ninja replied while flinging a handful of kunai at the fleeing Yordalaran collaborators and reentering her long-range ninjutsu fighting stance to start working on hand seals again. "Just all of you!"</p><p>The kunai bounced off of an invisible force in the air while Hanshin returned to his feet as if pulled up by strings. While the enemy couldn't sense it, Mana could and sensing Black Vicious while it was unfocused and invisible was just as potent as seeing it formed. The sensations it burnt out on a sensor were such that it felt almost like seeing the thing for the first time every time.</p><p>"If Hanshin didn't have to take you down without killing you, as per what was promised, Hanshin would really like you…" the special jounin smirked. "Black Vicious: Spirit Frequency!"</p><p>A howl echoed through the room but instead of the gruesome effects of the attack coming from an entirely another dimension only masculine panting and the image of Hanshin slouched over appeared as the result of the technique.</p><p>"I can't believe it, you ran out of chakra?" Mana turned at the special jounin. "You should have had enough, this isn't how much of it the jutsu demanded last time…"</p><p>Despite the fact that Hanshin was skilled enough to realize he no longer had the chakra necessary to perform his technique and managed to salvage some of what remains he had to not pass out on the spot was impressive and just another testament to the man's impressive experience and skill, his timing, and management of the core resource, however, irritated the magician.</p><p>"The demands of chakra must not be constant but accumulative every time the jutsu is used. Figures such a crazy technique would have an equally crazy drawback…" the Iwagakure kunoichi grinned. While she had skipped the chance to subdue the fleeing collaborators she now faced a new opportunity of killing both of the Konoha ninja that have cost her village its survival. While the chance of saving her home was fading, the opportunity to avenge it had never tasted sweeter.</p><p>"Was it so hard to just close your eyes? If you failed your mission, it would only mean a small stain on your record…" the woman cried out while going through hand seals. "Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!"</p><p>A handful of shuriken that the woman threw out covered in a shroud of smoke that spread as suddenly as the popping sound that walked back to back with it. The handful then turned into copious dozens while they swarmed the room leaving little space to maneuver in. At this rate, the swarm would have swallowed and overwhelmed both ninja at the same time. However Mana still felt something hidden at play, she recognized the number and type of hand seals made by the Iwagakure spy and it did not match the jutsu she tried pulling off previously.</p><p>As deadly and overwhelming this attack was, it was still just a setup for the technique from that time…</p><p>Hanshin's Black Vicious fended off most of the projectiles coming the man's way. Nothing but the resonance of clangs came from his direction while the man worked. In his current state, he may no longer have had the chakra to use Spirit Frequency but he could still form Black Vicious in its physical form, even if the early warning from before hastened the special jounin to finish the fight.</p><p>Mana knew she was left to fend off by herself. If she got hurt or died – that was her business and hers alone as the only thing that Hanshin taught her as a mentor and a superior was that Hanshin did not like things getting in his way and dragging him down. The magician moved and navigated away from the first wave of projectiles before disappearing behind the crumbled tables and rolling around while the ceaseless assault further trashed the dignified home for politics.</p><p>As expected of him, Hanshin didn't waste time making sure that Mana was okay. Mana, on the other hand, felt worried over the man's multiple cuts and his rapidly depleting chakra level. It was his bravado and as inefficient as it was dominant fighting style of always doing whatever Hanshin thought would be the most fun thing to do that drove him to this point. Now the magician just begged her superior to stop fooling around and trying to break his opponent's spirit and instead just break her body.</p><p>"You know, your friend's spine is still intact. You could still pick him up and run for it…" Hanshin taunted his opponent having learned nothing from before. Even while wounds of battle and sweat covered his half-bare, overworked body, the man looked just as dismissing towards his opponent as he always was. Mana was beginning to wonder if Hanshin carried this personality over from his early days when he lacked the strength that apparently justified his foolishness. What if it wasn't Hanshin's strength that made him arrogant and so nasty but it was just who the man was, mighty or not.</p><p>The Iwagakure spy extended her hand forward, she clearly thought that Hanshin was fooling around with her but Mana knew better. It was well within Hanshin's character to fool around but he would have never resorted to lying just for the sake of buying some time. This was no vain attempt at avoiding certain death from the opponent's follow-up attack but instead an attempt to test her character and further implicate her.</p><p>"Magnet Style: Gravity Convergence!" the woman yelled out while extending one of her hands forward. Mana felt immense amounts of chakra just burning away from within the Iwagakure kunoichi, a testament that she was not mad or bluffing and that she truly possessed a Kekkei Genkai ability.</p><p>What the enemy ninja gave up in moral standing, she attempted to compensate in raw, destructive and shredding power as all of the ninja tools she had just used resurrected for a second life and began helplessly floating about before rushing in a coordinated manner at the Konoha special jounin. While the woman was fierce, she was no senseless, she did not unleash all of her weaponry at once, choosing to use it in a cleverer, wave-formation. Just in case she needed some for defensive purposes or to redirect them at the last moment…</p><p>Black Vicious wrapped its hands around Hanshin as the barrage of weaponry flowed and crashed into his armor again and again like the unruly waves of a stormy ocean. The shuriken were as plentiful as raindrops in the sea just to further strengthen the analogy, however, they wielded little success. Only where the weaponry managed to bypass the Black Vicious' defenses and not in any way bust through did the Iwagakure ninja land her blows on the Konoha ninja.</p><p>Hanshin emerged from under his shaky armor, observing its pitiful state and allowing it to crumble. There was no more use in letting this thing carry on. Not with its hands, that comprised the chain links of its armored shell, bent up and busted. Nor was it worth going through the strain of keeping Black Vicious up in its pathetic state where it barely sufficed in fulfilling its purpose. Hanshin allowed his armor the precious time to rebuild while not in use and for his technique to properly reset, however, Black Vicious may not have made its return at all, given the strain that the Konoha ninja has gone through.</p><p>"Heh, it appears your Will of Stone truly is worthless, after all…" Hanshin sighed. Even while his body was covered with streaks of red and his muscles in full-overtime to keep the man upright, the physical specimen of masculine perfection appeared dismissing with the stares he offered his opponent. "Hanshin's Spirit Frequency does not inflict physical damage. It attacks a body on a whole different plane. You've just sacrificed the life of your ally for the sake of petty bloodthirst… Such a disappointment."</p><p>"I've sacrificed nothing!" the Iwagakure kunoichi declared while raising her hand back up. "There is still more than enough time to kill the two of you and make my escape. If the four of you managed to stay hidden in Yordalar, the two of us could pull it off as well."</p><p>"Such a waste… A Kekkei Genkai ninja too…" Hanshin shrugged his shoulders while shaking his head as if lamenting something.</p><p>"Bluffing until the end, I see. How very ninja of you…" the arm of the Iwagakure woman lit up with blue, base chakra flames that then turned to intense waves. Ones that flowed in resonance all over the room and transferred the energy within into the ninja tools it passed through.</p><p>As a feat of final rebellion against fate, Hanshin stroke a fancy pose, yanking his crotch while twisting and bending his body to turn the cheeks of his bottom towards the hardy woman. It was no mere act of dismissal or mockery, however. A flash of silver buzzed right through Hanshin's body, missing his abdomen due to the nature of his pose. A spear the size of a person that impaled the woman facing Hanshin and pinned her to the wall of the main hall.</p><p>The face of the Iwagakure spy was twisted in surprise as she examined the position where she ended up shortly before her life faded away and let her body dangle pinned to the front wall of the Eternal Fire depicting the Yordalaran insignia of a red flame symbol with a yellow sky and green dirt backgrounds. The heraldry which was soon stained by blood as well, albeit nowhere near enough to cover the entire coat of arms.</p><p>The Yordalarans have come to reclaim their parliament at last.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0538"><h2>538. Things Expected In Return</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana stared at the slowly spreading crowd of Yordalarans in the main hall of Eternal Fire. Besides the crowd stumbled the beaten-to-a-pulp collaborators that were also tied up and looked all-around pathetic. Regardless, it was the fate they've chosen and it appeared as if though their gamble to surrender has paid dividends comprised of their own lives. Even if dignity and trust had to be sacrificed in the process…</p><p>The magician lacked the strength left in her to be as shocked as the situation demanded her to be or nearly as scared. These people have just effortlessly killed a ninja already, granted, it was more because they've managed to catch the woman off-guard during one of her one-track-minded rampages. Still, Yordalarans were fine warriors, otherwise, Iwagakure spies would not have bothered with this plot.</p><p>"You killed her…" Mana stated the obvious, leaving her cover while still standing close enough to it so that she could use the wreckage for support whenever her numbing body failed to keep itself upright.</p><p>"Oh, please. You, of all people, have no right to complain. You should have sensed them coming from a mile away… You're just as hypocritical as this waste of talent right there, albeit a much more intelligent one." Hanshin put his index finger under his nose like a fleshy strip of mustache and chuckled to himself.</p><p>He was right, it crushed Mana to admit it but he was right – she did sense the Yordalarans coming. Not for as long as she should have been sensing them but she sensed them ever since they made it to the vicinity of the structure. Their chakra signatures were nowhere near as distinguished as those of ninja, making them incredibly difficult to sense, impossible to detect in a crowd of civilians of other nationalities even, however, they were still present.</p><p>A part of the young woman had hoped that the Yordalarans would break in and break up this engagement. Control what she could not, crush with force what reason could not bend. She did not expect such a fatal entry, had she known that the Yordalarans would go for the kill immediately, she'd have likely done something stupid. Something that would have been more likely to get her killed…</p><p>"Kiyomi and Meiko, what did you do to them?" Mana stumbled forward, holding onto the parts of the wrecked tables and chairs to move in closer to the crowd of Yordalarans. If these people were as ruthless to the pair as they were with this spy…</p><p>"These two have grown a consciousness, even if it was far too late, they've explained what was going on thoroughly, which is why you and both of your friends are still breathing." The Yordalaran who was now without a spear spoke. Oddly enough, his voice lacked any threatening undertones or roughness and was just as kind as when the Yordalarans displayed their signature generosity.</p><p>Mana looked at the busted up collaborators who looked beaten far past the point of where they should have been able to comprehend what was transpiring around them. They were moving when forced to move. They reacted to pain when someone kicked them or shame when someone stared at them from above but they looked so… Distant from it all.</p><p>So these people actually told the Yordalarans the truth, despite having every opportunity to make up a lie about Konoha being the invading force? In a way, they had saved the lives of both Team Hokage and Hanshin. Maybe even squirming worms such as these could have been redeemed?</p><p>"Don't get any grandiose thoughts now…" Hanshin smirked while continuing to pose even when he had no need to trick anyone or dodge anything. "The only reason these worms submitted and barked what their masters told them to was that they were so desperate to save their own hides. Not lying was just the most elementary way for them to do so."</p><p>"We'll treat your injuries, as we would even to an enemy. After that, you must leave and never interfere with Yordalar's affairs ever again." The spear-less Yordalaran warrior declared looking at Mana, as if he perceived the magician to be someone with higher maturity and authority to deal with, compared to her flamboyant mentor.</p><p>"Thank you!" Mana nodded and tried to bow but the pain and exhaustion in her body made her crash her face into the rubble below, opening up some of the wounds on her front again. While some Yordalarans rushed in to aid the magician, the young woman kept shaking her head and repeating like a mantra that she was not the one that needed help and that she was merely exhausted.</p><p>She was worried about Kiyomi and Meiko the most, after all, those two must have been in an especially bad condition to not even continue past the room Hanshin came from. Mana just pleaded to whatever unnamed, supernatural forces were listening that the two were okay and that they'd make a quick recovery.</p><p>"Don't even dream of it…" Hanshin scolded the approaching Yordalaran warriors with his eyes. The man was in the complete condition of being able to walk all by himself and needed no help with that venture. Not that he would have allowed any if anything different was the case. Mana had learned this much from witnessing this last fight and, in a way, she had grown to respect the man more because of it.</p><p>Or, at least, rather feel less disgusted by him compared to when she took him for someone that was purely the way he was because of how strong he was.</p><p>A Yordalaran woman, as thick and sizeable as any of her male counterparts, approached Hanshin having placed her mace on the ground and switched it out for a jar of open herb ointment that she held on a pouch in her belt. The woman dipped two of her fingers into the goop and removed it, letting its repulsive odors and appearance become the source of nightmares to anyone that saw it. She slowly and carefully moved her pair of fingers closer to some of the cuts covering Hanshin's body, staring into the eyes of the Konoha ninja as if asking for his permission to treat him.</p><p>"Very well, you may touch Hanshin…" the special jounin relented with a sigh.</p><p>The pressure building up and erupting from her body made Mana yell out. As if the shout she let out could have somehow alleviated the tension and strain. Even if it made no actual sense, just letting it out there and feeling the pressure and the building up force convert into something and leave was almost alleviating and the switch between more wear compared to the overflowing chakra empowering her to flip over mountains and kick planets around like rag balls with nowhere to let this energy out was a welcome one.</p><p>A corporeal avatar of chakra manifested around Mana's body. It was just like an outer layer of her body, even shaped generally like another, chakra-based version of the magician. It was just about the simplest outline of what a chakra armor was supposed to be. Just like Mana had speculated, the basics of the chakra armor weren't all too complicated, it was getting it to advanced levels that required great skill.</p><p>Controlling the armor to take certain shapes was immensely difficult. It was the highest level of chakra shape manipulation embodied in a single feat. That was not something outside of Mana's reach. Her control of chakra was quite remarkable given her specialization in illusionary techniques that also demanded exceptional chakra control to grasp and improve them. Manipulating the size of the armor as well as its power and the power of the derivative techniques the armor could use was the complete opposite – it simply required entire mountains-worth of chakra.</p><p>A special branch of ninja techniques requiring both a monstrous chakra capacity as well as unforgivingly strict chakra control. So easy to grasp and so demanding to master…</p><p>"Heh, it appears you have gotten the hang of it. Hanshin isn't surprised. You did seem the second most receptive member in your team for this sort of training." Hanshin smirked looking at Mana with his own unique version of pride in his passion project.</p><p>"Second?" Mana wondered as her armor burnt out into blue tongues of chakra flares and faded away. It would not have been too wise to push the jutsu just after picking it up.</p><p>"Yes, the numbskull did have an incredible latent potential in chakra coating, figures she'd form the mightiest chakra armor as well." Hanshin waved his hand in dismissal, a gesture asking that Mana did not linger on the matter and that it was merely to be considered a triviality.</p><p>Mana had never considered Meiko a hidden talent in chakra coating. Not given how tough it came for the blacksmith to learn the technique and how much effort she had spent just learning to sit still and concentrate. With abysmal chakra control like that, Mana wondered if Meiko would ever live up to the beastly talent for chakra armor that Hanshin perceived in her. As someone who had spent an entire lifetime perfecting just a single jutsu and deriving secondary techniques to further bolster it – Hanshin was an authority on chakra armors and his word of hidden talents for the technique was not to be questioned.</p><p>"Maybe you should have trained her. I've noticed incredible potential inside of her as well when I was teaching her. I could not draw it out, however. She was the first person I have ever taught anything to so… Maybe that is why." Mana admitted. Now that the matter was brought up, even if Hanshin did not want to linger on it, she was beginning to feel bad about taking the time of the special jounin when Meiko may have been the much worthier recipient for the man's training. "She's going to be an amazing ninja one day…"</p><p>"Hmm?" Hanshin turned his head. For the first time in quite a while, all signs of goofiness and mockery faded from his look. "Have you given up on your own future? You speak like an old hag and you haven't even broken through twenty yet…"</p><p>The tutor's words did shatter a glass wall deep inside Mana's chest, forcing the magician to look down and think about it further. She truly did not imagine her future too much further past the upcoming, inevitable reunion with Guru Ayushi. Even if she had been preparing for years, honing her skillset not for improving herself and growing as a ninja but solely in taking that man out and protecting the ninja world from his madness she herself gave birth to. Living up to her responsibilities… That was always what was most important.</p><p>It would have been naïve to expect a future past that meeting. As naïve as expecting a candy after a stern talk with one's parents… Perhaps Mana has given up on her own future and has been looking out for her village in a different way, making sure that the heroes she had noticed within other people would eventually surface and be there where Mana has already surrendered to her fate.</p><p>"Well… It's very bushido of you not to fear death. Death is very artistic indeed, it cannot be said that Hanshin blames you for exploring that nook…" the Konoha ninja shrugged. He was one of the first few people to not scold Mana or attack her for sinking to such dark depths in her mind. When the first and only person agreeing to one's deepest thoughts was Hanshin – maybe it was the right time to reevaluate things…</p><p>"Bushido…" Mana mumbled silently. The code of honor that the samurai followed like law, requiring no further legislation or authority besides words written by whomever, whoever knew how long ago. The magician had never thought of herself of being honorable. Life was always the thing she strived to protect, remaining honorable was an optional cherry on top…</p><p>"There is a reason why Hanshin chose to train you and not the brawler one. Believe it or not, that reason is not just that the dimwit has been sleeping for days on end and recovering from her beatings, it has more to do with what Hanshin expects in return…" the special jounin lingered on something he was rather hesitant to tell. That in itself intrigued Mana as her temporary mentor was not the kind of person to be ashamed of absolutely anything, even to the point of where she felt ashamed for the both of them at times, such as his passion for kicking people he found bothersome in the face...</p><p>"In return?" Mana mumbled, the curiosity of what it could have been that she could have helped her superior with reared its head.</p><p>"That's right, Spirit Frequency is one of Hanshin's strongest techniques. It is so otherworldly in concept as well… It was not something that Hanshin came up with, however." The special jounin kept up his reserved face that was completely unusual for him. He did not enjoy something that related to the topic he was talking about.</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times while remaining silent, just to socially nudge the other ninja to the right direction. If the magician was to help the man with anything, she would need more clarity than that.</p><p>"Well… You see… You are someone who is quite remarkable. You're not the strongest out of the three of your group, the margin by which you are the smartest is nowhere near important enough but… You treat the ninja arts as art, show them off to other people and they love you for it. Hanshin will require some of that trust and love that you get out of it." Hanshin tried putting his agenda into words and while he did make it a bit clearer, Mana still felt a bit out of the loop.</p><p>"Oh, you mean you shall need my commendation so that you get promoted to jounin?" Mana wondered. "I don't think my word will outweigh those of Meiko and Kiyomi, however…" the magician's face turned troubled. There was no way that Kiyomi would remark of her time working with Hanshin as anything but lousy.</p><p>"Oh, that is not it. Hanshin will acquire his promotion soon enough… What Hanshin meant to say was… Hanshin learned Spirit Frequency by researching ancient texts that Hanshin found in the hidden temple of a cult Hanshin was sent to eliminate. There may be other useful hidden techniques that will escalate Hanshin even faster along Hanshin's way, however…"</p><p>"People don't trust or like Hanshin." Mana finally put two on top of two. "So you need the aid of someone people actually like to have them let you into their hidden archives…"</p><p>"It seemed so complicated to say but… When you put it like that… It seems just about right." Hanshin nodded in affirmation with enthusiasm.</p><p>"Normally it would truly feel wrong entering sacred grounds purely for acquiring power but… You're lucky I enjoy history and legends and would find such a quest fascinating." Mana grinned, duplicating the energetic nod of her temporary squad leader.</p><p>"Quest? You misunderstand… Hanshin requires as much of this hidden knowledge as possible, preferably all of it there is." Hanshin made a tamer pose. Something told Mana that it was purely to disguise his glee and pride after the magician's agreement to play the planned part of his company.</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko made a quick recovery after the first few days. Letting the spent chakra return, after which point their supernatural ninja metabolisms did their part and greatly assisted the recovery was the difficult part but the Yordalaran generosity by helping treat the wounds of the young women greatly aided with that.</p><p>Even if the unvoiced sentiment of the Yordalarans wanting and meaning to have the Konoha ninja gone from their village, just like they expunged the surviving Iwagakure ninja with only the necessary supplies so that they could treat their wounds themselves, remained in everyone's minds, the Yordalarans were surprisingly generous and kind. It was no wonder that the two kunoichi made such a successful recovery in a relatively short amount of time.</p><p>"Wow, what a wild trip…" Meiko smirked while looking on ahead the road they were about to make. Hopefully, there would be none of the previous hitches, even if the Red Hawks showed up again, the Konoha squad would be ready for them now.</p><p>"You should get used to it. Every mission is going to be this crazy from this point on." Kiyomi turned at her friend with a heartwarming smile. One that increased in size and warmth after a short pair of moments that the young woman spent looking at her recovered friend.</p><p>"We're still genin so… Not for a while, probably, what do you think, Mana? You've been a chuunin for years now, is every mission this wild on that step of the ladder?" Meiko turned at the magician.</p><p>"Every single one…" Mana couldn't help but crack a grin of her own. Even if the memories of the stressful and life-threatening times ever since she's become a chuunin were not too bright, something about them surfacing now, with the current context in mind, that made them much more enjoyable.</p><p>"What's the matter? Planning to retire?" Kiyomi teased her friend by poking Meiko with her elbow a handful of times. Something that triggered the inner instinct within the blacksmith to brawl with her friend. A notion that was seconded and responded to from the side of the Yamanaka heiress.</p><p>"You wish!" Meiko grunted while rubbing her armored knuckle onto the top of Kiyomi's head.</p><p>"Are you three done fooling around and keeping Hanshin back? We do have a return to make and these settlers will get anxious if we overstay our welcome." Hanshin looked back at the three kunoichi who were still lingering about the edges of Yordalar.</p><p>"We better get moving, the sooner we come back, the sooner we will never have to see that asshole again." Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>Mana could not help it but cackle. The recent events and deals she has made predicted a lot more Hanshin in her future.</p>
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<a name="section0539"><h2>539. Frozen Dinner</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The crowd went dead-silent when Mana retreated to a small stand where a glass of water stood. There were some boredom and order to her step, before that moment the magician had been performing for well over half an hour making a short break almost necessary. They lowered their guards, they couldn't help it. It wasn't just the need for a break, a faint return to reality in the shape of their winged boots touching solid ground, it was also that their minds wanted to be fooled and by that point they've seen so much magic that things beyond their belief started losing their very special charm.</p><p>Mana flipped the glass over, almost gorging on the water that she, in all fairness, truly did need after so much time in the spotlight. She had spent so much time training her ninja art that the frivolous warmth of the stage and the dryness of one's throat following strenuous talking sessions became a problem for her once more, for the first time since her childhood.</p><p>A lonely card peeked its edge from the magician's pocket. Mana had made sure to seal some Lightning Release sparks inside of it to make it catch the attention of even the furthermost spectators. Playfully, the magician lowered her glass and looked down at the card. At the same time, the card disappeared in Mana's inner pocket. A mere matter of string-play inside and outside the magician's uniform. When she started out Mana felt pretty worried about using steel wire out in the open. She almost felt naked by performing the switch out in the open, the instinct of any novice magician was to conceal the trickery.</p><p>It took multiple times of getting fooled in the battlefield for Mana to realize just how tough steel wire was to spot out in the open, even in such illustrious lighting, especially for someone with untrained perception. These days Mana hated the idea of using steel wire from inside her uniform, contrasting the sentiment of the past, hiding string always left the risk of an awkward folding of her clothes to reveal the trickery and that would have just been sloppy.</p><p>Continuing the act, Mana reached in for her pocket where the curious card had appeared from and tried pulling it out from the pocket it has supposedly hidden inside of. What appeared for the audience as the young woman browsing the front pocket of her blazer concealed a snap of the magician's fingers from the inside, which unsealed something sealed previously. A burst of indigo light erupted from Mana's pocket with a brigade of young rabbits leaping out of her pocket and scattering across the stage, running off just far enough for their return home and the resulting smoke and the popping sound to not be visible to those that desired entertainment and trickery.</p><p>The stage shook, cracking multiple of the wooden boards under Mana's feet. Breaking her act for just a moment, the young woman glanced at the devastation she had brought upon Hiro, the manager of the hall, and realized she'd be compensating that. She should have practiced more, on more surfaces… Before Mana could even figure out what she did wrong here and ways she could have avoided this blunder and the resulting faltering and stumbling, a massive rabbit, a fur-ball just like the young that had appeared before, stormed the stage.</p><p>This particular youngster had a very odd, natural look to him, his fur took grass-like dark green hue that made him appear almost like a living forest monster in his current form. The young one roared just like Mana had taught him while workshopping the trick and charged at the magician, further shaking the stage to the point where Mana began seriously doubting if the structure would hold.</p><p>A loud crack and the feeling of weightlessness answered the question. At least Usukai canceled his technique, massively reducing in size and leaving a lovely image of a fallen magician halfway buried in rubble with a lovely, critter-sized bunny resting on top of her head. Mana couldn't stop grinning, for a bunny his age, Usukai had a knack for showmanship. Maybe she'd ask him to help perform in her shows more often…</p><p>Mana's eyes browsed the audience for a specific smile that would have been the perfect shining star to dye the entire night's sky with genuine, more human kind of magic. She couldn't find him, maybe she had fallen too low down from the stage, the young man was a short one, if he was in the back she'd have easily missed him…</p><p>"My whole damn stage!" Hiro's voice echoed through the halls. He was browsing for Mana because the man wanted to vent his feelings and have the magician an earful. The first handful of shows after her years-long leave of absence and she managed to destroy his entire stage whereas previously she barely broke a leg of a chair.</p><p>"Sorry…" Mana sighed when the manager burst into her office.</p><p>After seeing the gloom in Mana's face and the genuine regret over what happened the man just sighed and wiped the rage-induced sweat off of his balding forehead. He would have tried to teach Mana the lesson of summoning size-altering rabbits on a delicate wooden stage but he saw it crystal clear in the eyes of the magician that she had learned that lesson by herself… As well as some other things that bothered her at that moment.</p><p>"The audience wasn't as big as it usually is but… You'll get the primetime draw back if you perform consistently. Soon you'll be able to pay up for your antics and then some. For now… I'll send your mother the bill, just like I do your pay on a good day." Hiro nodded after placing his hands on his hips. The man examined Mana's cleaning room shack she used to prepare before turning around and leaving.</p><p>Some newbies may have expected the man to be the spirit of inspiration for his employees, someone who would support and build his talent up in tough times, ones like it was obvious that Mana was going through. Momentary as her grievances were…</p><p>It seemed like the magician had been sitting in her dark shack for hours. After a good half an hour she had turned off the lights because she both genuinely enjoyed sitting in the dark as well as would have regretted getting an actual earful from Hiro over wasting his hall's money even more. She got off pretty tame, all things considered. It was better to make it stay that way.</p><p>Mana sighed again, stood up and picked up the little handbag she had left over of stuff she intended to bring back home, whether for repairs or for safekeeping. While the shack was intended for storing the spares of the cleaner's uniform and the cleaner's tools, Mana did not use it for storage herself. It didn't feel like she had deserved that, even if she's been performing in this place and bringing in money for years by now.</p><p>Somehow it felt like she was building it all up back from scratch…</p><p>She had intended to wait here until the young man she searched so desperately earlier came up and waited for her to get ready after the show. It was a bit naïve to expect that she somehow just missed his eyes earlier when she browsed through the crowd for him. His signature was impossible to miss, even in a crowd, even if the entire crowd were ninja with distinct and overpowering feeling to their signatures… Kouta, of all people, Mana could tell apart.</p><p>He wasn't even in the building… Desperate to know the location of her boyfriend, the magician expanded the range of her sensory farther and farther. She could have kept going on up until expending it any further would have been pointless – she knew quite well Kouta was inside the village so even if she found out where exactly, it would be of little use. He was closing in… At least nothing bad happened to him, he was just late.</p><p>With a sluggish pace, Mana left the cleaner's room and went through the backstage corridors toward the main hall. If she took a turn and walked down some stairs she would make it out through the main hall, unnoticed through the side. Kouta was so late that he most likely forgot that Mana used the service corridors and would have most often left through the back door, he was rushing right in through the front.</p><p>"Hey…" Mana waved her hand with a blank expression on her face. She wanted to smile, to show the young man she wasn't mad at him for being late or anything. Somehow the lips just didn't move that way… She had to speak louder to overpower the blasting vibrations of noise coming in through the walls.</p><p>"Heh, sorry I missed your show. We can still do… Whatever's going on right now, right?" Kouta made some guilty eyes. A cheap technique, one he never had to resort before as long as the magician had known him.</p><p>"Brass Lupus is playing, as you may well hear..." Mana sighed. She hated their kind of music - grungy, angsty and aggressive. It could not have been the clashing ideologies that led the magician to perform onstage compared to those that inspired the musicians to do the same, must have merely been a coincidence, still, it was a fact nonetheless.</p><p>„Damn... I forgot my wallet..." Kouta felt up his pockets. His clothes were dirty and ragged, holed in multiple spots where he seemed to have been dragged through a mountain from the bottom down all the way to the top. „Don't keep keys and wallets with me when I spar. And I was too late already to change..."</p><p>„That's not a problem, I know most of them quite well if you want to get in, that can be arranged." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Sure! I mean, I have to make up for missing the show." Kouta smiled. He was so oblivious that it was almost a bit lovely. Probably not lovely enough to compensate sitting through forty remaining minutes of blaring cacophony of noise.</p><hr/><p>"Can't believe guys from Brass Lupus remember you. Wasn't it like… Three years since you two worked in the same hall?" Kouta looked up into the sky with those dreamy and completely absent eyes that Mana fell in love with.</p><p>"Actually, most performers move on from Hiro-san's hall. They started out while I was away training. My absence probably helped them get noticed more. As the only entertainer to not move on to bigger halls or nicer managers, I'm almost the face of the place." Mana shrugged. She really expected her boyfriend to make a bigger deal out of her knowing a shooting-for-the-sky hard rock band. "We only met after I came back, I've had several shows already before today. They waited hours after their shows just to meet me."</p><p>"Really? You had multiple shows already? I don't think I've seen one in a while… Odd…" Kouta complained to himself, finally moving his eyes away from the sky and making a troubled face.</p><p>"Yeah… It's almost like it's my hobby, or something…" Mana grumped out with a squint directed at the young man.</p><p>"Damn… I didn't notice what a huge part of my life training with father became. It's only now that I have to balance my old schedule with my current one that I noticed it." Kouta laughed out. After having her boyfriend miss her show, come late on her date and then sitting through almost an hour more of music she loathed, Mana couldn't muster up anything resembling a positive reaction.</p><p>"You don't have to do anything. If you were busy you just could have blown me off…" Mana complained for the first time that evening. It was not something she liked to do. Being a famous entertainer has taught her to reserve her negative outbursts for the time she spent alone. It was a useful skill for all sorts of facets of life, not just performances.</p><p>"Yeah but… I feel like I've been doing it way too often. I mean we barely hang out since you returned. The few times we do meet – all we do is train." Kouta shrugged. The oblivion in his eyes was changed with something more particular, something resembling regret. That was just great, now Mana will never get over ruining the date for the only person truly enjoying it, just when it was beginning to show promise for improvement.</p><p>"Are you… Going on a mission anytime soon, by any chance?" Mana inquired after softening her voice and taking a pair of deep breaths, an attempt at achieving inner serenity disguised as plain exploitation of the chance to get some fresh air.</p><p>"Yeah… Leaving for Land of Snow on Thursday." Kouta nodded. "Why are you interested?"</p><p>"Wonder if I could tag along…" Mana shrugged. "If business is the only time we can relax, why not work together again, even if just once?"</p><p>"That's… An idea…" Kouta turned his lips around, shifting them from left to right as if chewing something rubbery in his mouth. "Yushijin was supposed to lead our squad, he's a chuunin and all… Maybe he would agree to take a break this once?"</p><p>"Doubt it…" Mana sighed. "We have a complicated relationship. He'd probably want to participate even more with me involved, just so he could constantly try and one-up me."</p><p>"This is pretty good, right? I mean, no fighting, just talking." Kouta turned at the magician with a dumb grin, his eyes still carried the guilt from before. One that originated from a place that the young man didn't know but one he felt regardless. It made for a pretty weird smile all in all, but it was one Mana loved.</p><p>"Yeah…" the magician pressed her head against Kouta's shoulder. "Pretty good."</p><hr/><p>"I'm leaving!" Mana yelled out, nearly bursting through the door with her ninja pouch still slippery on her thigh, requiring some fastening. She received the letter that morning, it was just a summon to the Administration, it could have been nothing. She could've been told that her request to be signed up on the squad sent out to Land of Snow was denied and that'd be all of her business in the Administration. Still, something whispered in Mana's ear that in the latter case she'd not have been contacted at all.</p><p>"Which kind of "leaving" are we talking about here? Leaving for a bite with Kouta or leaving to train away for three more years?" mother squinted at the magician, making Mana freeze up while the woman appeared from the kitchen. It was not usual that the woman would be home this late in the morning. Things in the Nakotsumi Café must have been solid and slow enough for the staff to handle it without the manager. Mother was clearly ready to leave as she was dressed for work.</p><p>"Don't know yet. If I'm sent off to Snow Country, I'll be back for the package I've prepared so I won't just disappear, don't worry." Mana shrugged, bending her legs by the knees a pair of times in subconscious compulsion to leave already.</p><p>"Just when you were beginning to do pretty good with your shows. Bringing in serious profit again." Mother sighed. It was just like her to disguise motherly concern under layers upon layers of financial talk. The woman knew how little Mana cared for it and how easily bored she got with money talk. That was the main reason why it was Mana's mother that managed her finances.</p><p>"I am paid for my missions as well…" Mana objected. "I haven't prepared an exact table for comparison, no charts drawn yet but… The stack of money is bigger than it used to be and that's all I can say about that."</p><p>"My God, when we're gone you're going to bankrupt everything into the ground…" Mother sighed.</p><p>"Don't go anywhere then…" Mana smiled before disappearing behind the door that just dangled about before slamming shut by their own weight.</p><p>Mother was right though. Bit by bit, her magic shows were picking back up again. She started out pretty much the same way she was when she first stepped on stage as a kid, with a little bit extra familiarity. Messed up a few tricks even, broke some hall inventory… It didn't take long for Mana to get back into the swing of things. The unpredictability of her shows only upped the thrill. An audience member never knew when the stage under Mana's feet would fail to support the giant rabbits rampaging on top of it or when the glass box Mana trapped herself in would crack and start leaking water…</p><p>Even if Mana had enough practice with her bag of tricks that she was always in control, the illusion of unpredictability was seriously upping the magician's fame again. A few more successful shows and Mana would be back where she once was, maybe even fill the halls again… People got too used to moving pictures at some point, there was something thrilling about live performance and they knew it, even if they didn't – they could feel it in their very bones.</p><p>Mana flashed the summon to the Administration clerk who just nodded with a smile and let the magician rush on along. Given how much time she usually wasted on route to anywhere inside the village walls with the villagers stopping her for greetings, questions or odd requests of all kinds, she was most likely late or almost so. It was a bad sign, given how she was the one who requested to be signed up for the mission.</p><p>The door to the Hokage's office was halfway open by the time Mana made it there. She peeked in to see all of Team Fir already gathered before fitting through the gap in the door. It was only when the magician saw the look on Erumo's eyes and whatever it was that Yushijin was protecting with his stern yet open face that she remembered how awkward her relationship actually was with Kouta's friends.</p><p>She did, after all, pretty much betray them once…</p>
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<a name="section0540"><h2>540. Earthquakes Of The Emotional And Actual Kind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Sorry if I'm late," Mana bowed her head in apology. She may have had some hitches in the road with Kouta's friends but she hoped that, given how they were stated to be mostly forgotten, they could have been moved past and overlooked and their ashes would pave the road for new relationships in the future.</p><p>"Well… It's not like you didn't show up at all, or anything…" Erumo struggled her way through not outright offending the magician. The young woman wasn't entirely on board with having Mana around on this mission – that was just fine. It would have been foolish to expect her to just fully accept the magician into the fold from the get-go. Just the two mending their relationship in a sparring session did not appear to have made them quite into best friends.</p><p>"Now, now. We may really use Mana's skills. I have not lead that many missions as a chuunin so some assistance will be appreciated." Yushijin nodded in acknowledgment. He did not wish to appear overly welcoming for some reason but his body language betrayed the chuunin to be somewhat pleased to see Mana. Just like the magician had expected… His fondness of her presence likely stemmed from his inner sense of rivalry that Mana just couldn't stop.</p><p>"That is why I approved Mana's request for joining this squad for the duration of this mission." Lord Seventh nodded. "Neither one of you two is skilled in leading a squad with only minimal experience of the job chuunin usually do, such have been the unfortunate circumstances of the village lacking new genin for a couple of years after the destruction of the Ninja Academy. Despite that, with both of you working together, I am sure that your squad will show some nice results."</p><p>The Seventh Hokage leaned back in his seat, gesturing the quartet to check on the mission files placed on the table. Mana looked around with confusion.</p><p>"Wasn't there supposed to be a jounin in charge of this team as well?" she wondered out loud while reaching out for the file.</p><p>"Oh, we haven't worked with sensei since the Chuunin Exams." Kouta shook his head. "After Yushijin was promoted our squad got disbanded instead of us being given a new member."</p><p>"Disbanded?" Mana wondered how exactly that was supposed to work. Kouta and Erumo may have been experienced and well past the skill level common among genin but they weren't strong enough to work alone, especially outside the village or to operate within the walls of another village.</p><p>"Yes, it is a new program I've tried to implement. With the lack of competent genin around, I tried entrusting some C-Rank missions to ninja working alone, even if they were genin. Where I could not spare a squad of genin, I sent a single, experienced ninja. This must sound so odd to you, given your absence…" Seventh smiled. Mana knew better than to take the man's smile seriously but this did shake the ground under her feet a little.</p><p>"The ninja system is ancient and its traditions deep-rooted. I've read of its core principles and rules forming in history books and scrolls and they haven't changed one bit until this day, for the most part. It is just surprising to hear about something like this being even attempted…" Mana spoke from her heart. After the time that Uzumaki Midoben spent in charge of Village Protection, he'd see right through Mana's dishonesty. The magician was notorious for being a lousy liar…</p><p>"That's exactly why some things need to change. Most villages have changed plenty of things about the way their ninja operate without tradition holding them back. Konoha remained rooted like an oak. We've given too much leeway to advancements of other villages that way. Even the leap in technology that your capsule provided failed to push us all the way in front." Seventh appeared somewhat pleased with discussing his stance on village politics, that was very much unlike Sixth, who expected complete submission and rarely if ever discussed anything. Such was his own experience as a lifelong Black Ops operative.</p><p>"I see…" Mana relented. It was not that she necessarily thought her superior wrong, it was just that matters of politics and money bored her and, so far, that day she was stuck discussing both of those matters.</p><p>"I suggest taking some winter gear with you. Ninja may be resistant to any weather imaginable but none of that will matter if a battle drains your stamina and your body can no longer support those resistances." Yushijin advised. He had naughty all over his eyes… He had hoped that Mana would object being given advice in a tone that almost reached the range of being an order.</p><p>While the magician lacked the composure necessary to completely stone-wall Yushijin's game, she managed to stay quiet and not encourage any more sets of it, at the very least.</p><p>It was a good thing that Mana had a mission file to act absorbed in, otherwise, she'd have allowed the awkwardness of her reaction and awareness of Yushijin's antagonizing risk ruining this entire first meeting. At the very least, Mana had already won over the heart of one fan amongst the three, one of them disliked her while the third one constantly wanted to compare himself against her. It was no longer as forced and toxic as it seemed during the meeting between the two in Shukuba, but it was still very much alive.</p><p>A heartbeat a second for that cursed rivalry was too alive for Mana's liking. It was one of the only things that the magician did not mind seeing dead.</p><p>The mission involved a tribe of people residing somewhere in the vast eastern forests of the Snow Country. The bunch was causing significant trouble, slaying cattle, occasionally injuring and killing residents of the Snow Country. Normally this seemed like something Kumogakure, as Snow Country's neighbor would take care of but with the military giant engaged in one of its glorious crusades for the supremacy in the precious mineral market, Konoha was exploring the opportunity of dipping its fingers and suggesting their services where Kumogakure would have taken years to respond.</p><p>It was both clever and profoundly stupid at the same time: on one hand, if Konoha only dipped their toes in these kinds of missions – small ranked stuff that squads of genin could accomplish, assignments that would take a warring country years to even acknowledge, it may be beneficial and even profitable. Diplomatically sound as well… On the other hand, was it really that clever to dip one's toes into the market of a ninja village currently trouncing another village in their home territory?</p><p>"A tribe of raiders… I wonder how strong those guys are." Kouta slipped into daydreaming territory after his eyes ran over just the first line promising combat. The tone, the gleaming stance and blazing chakra flow of the young man, it all suggested that he was beyond excited to try himself out. Mana did not recall Kouta being this excited to get into a fight…</p><p>"The danger is likely to not be these raiders, it will be the dangers we encounter along the way," Mana noted, closing her eyes and recalling the last mission she took part in and how the team spent precious chakra and stamina before even reaching the mission location after running into the Red Hawks.</p><p>"I see that Mana's participation is already promising to be useful for your team. You three can leave for the Snow Country whenever you're ready." Lord Seventh nodded.</p><p>Kouta rushed out of the Hokage's office with fire in his eyes, he was less impatient to run off and get himself killed compared to when the opportunity for a potential battle revealed itself earlier but he still looked extremely satisfied. Erumo sighed and checked her ninja pouch, shuffling through a bunch of rolls of steel wire and fastening scissors and other tools sheathed in the belt pouches around her thighs.</p><p>"I will need to make a stop home. At least four hours will be necessary for the preparations." She surmised after a hefty sigh.</p><p>"Is she always that way?" Mana wondered with a glance directed at Yushijin.</p><p>"Most of the time, yes. The traps she prepares prove invaluable, however. I would assume you have preparations to make as well? Even if they will not require four hours…" the chuunin got into justifying his teammate's behavior.</p><p>"That's fine. I'll have plenty of time for some meditation. Nothing like a rested and fresh mind to start out a mission." Mana smiled with a nod.</p><hr/><p>"Your conception of "four hours" needs some work…" Erumo objected after seeing Mana finally make her way to the trio gathered by the village gate.</p><p>"I must say it is a shame you were so late, this way we will only have a good half an hour of sunlight." Yushijin joined in on the objection despite looking hesitant and unhappy about having to voice his thoughts this way. He was acting like the leader of the squad after testing his will to lead against Mana's earlier, however, despite his effortless victory due to lack of the magician's resistance, he did not appear all too happy to actually lead the team.</p><p>"Sorry." Mana apologized with a bow.</p><p>"Fans held you up again?" Kouta whispered into the magician's ear after leaning in and covering his mouth with his other hand as if this was a secret not to be discussed in the open.</p><p>"Y-Yeah…" Mana felt a little ashamed to admit it. She always left everywhere she needed to go earlier and yet this time she completely misjudged the amount of time that her slowly restoring fame will demand. With her shows faltering in frequency before, she used to be nowhere near as famous.</p><p>Almost instantly Mana felt the awkwardness of talking to a single member of the squad. The absence of the mental link amongst the team that Kiyomi used to provide or the solace of her own mind that the magician enjoyed while working solo made things require a short period of getting used to them.</p><p>"Well… I suppose we will have a night to practice our teamwork. Mana is not a usual member of our squad and we need to find ways to incorporate her into our team strategies." Yushijin nodded to himself even if his words of wisdom were uttered out loud. "For now, let's just make as far as we can without straining ourselves. The mission is relatively simple and has no time limit. This gives us time to prepare better."</p><p>"One cannot be too ready for what's ahead, I suppose." Erumo agreed with the self-appointed team leader without any objections or negative twitches of her face. Preparation seemed to be her language, Mana decided to remember that as she did want to become better friends with this young woman after mending their differences three years ago.</p><p>A substantial shock made Mana bite into her tongue. The deafening thunder of the splitting earth beneath her feet made the magician cry out but her voice drowned in the ocean of its fuel. The quake beneath her feet was so immense that all thought and instinct left her body within an instant. All she could feel was plummeting… Freedom. Something solid reached around her and then, after a rough stop of her fall, helped her rise back up to where the magician disappeared into the oblivion of swallowing ground from.</p><p>"An earthquake? Are we being attacked already?" Kouta wondered with his cheeks a bit puffed out and his eyes looking desperately for the possible perpetrator of his shame to smash. One did not need to see how the young man dealt with the threat of the earthquake to realize that he had to be assisted as well. A glimmer of steel wire wrapped around an oak where Erumo and Kouta were located suggested that it was the constantly prepared trapster that helped her teammate.</p><p>"Unlikely." Yushijin shook his head. His voice came from so close to Mana's ear… It was only then that the magician realized she was saved by the fellow chuunin. Somehow he managed to shake off the stunning influence of the quaking ground that had taken all senses away from the magician and swoop down to her rescue. "We haven't moved that far away from the village yet, it is unlikely that rogues would stick around this close. Ones that would do so would not be this strong."</p><p>"I did not feel any chakra from this phenomenon… Almost like… It was… Natural." Mana whimpered in surprise while standing back on her own two feet from the resting position. She looked around both with her eyes and scanned the environment around her for chakra signatures. There was nothing unusual around.</p><p>Kouta started laughing as suddenly as the expression of his joy was powerful. "Heh, I guess someone is having a crazy battle far, far away!"</p><p>Yushijin's smirk was much tamer but he did also express relative enjoyment over the idea, imagining the kind of battle that would send ripples so far away to where the battle could not be seen, only felt, yet felt so vibrantly.</p><p>"I wonder if we will ever learn what this was… If it's all the way in the Land of Wind, it might be years until the intelligence reaches us…" Erumo sighed.</p><p>The modified roster of Team Fir did their best to cover as much distance without straining themselves after the quake. They did not stop or waste too much time talking about how they could have gotten hurt and ended the mission prematurely for some of them just like that. Just because of a calamity that none of them could sense. Once in a while, Mana caught her eyes glimpsing back at the direction of her home village she was leaving behind.</p><p>"Don't worry, if the village required our assistance they'd have sent a hawk to call us back. Lord Seventh has this handled." Erumo tried to provide some solace to Mana. If it was to direct the magician's attention ahead, have the best possible version of the magician as the available asset for the team or if the trapster truly cared about Mana's lingering thoughts and wanted to help ease them somewhat remained unclear for now.</p><p>A shared connection between the two kunoichi when their eyes connected relayed a lot of what the two were thinking. Erumo's eyes softened when looking at Mana, for once the kunoichi had a reason to see the magician worried over the villagers of her own village, for once she saw Mana as something more than just a traitor seeking retribution. When the two met before for a spar, that must have been the way that Erumo saw Mana, while their relationship mended a great deal back then, compared to the stage of the Chuunin Exams, it was only now that Erumo completely left the impression of a traitor outside of Mana's character and did not include it as a flaw that the young woman was trying to overcome.</p><p>"There's no use traveling any further." Yushijin's step slowed down and then halted completely. After stopping the squad leader started scanning the ground beneath them for good spots to set a camp up while they rested.</p><p>"I agree, seeing wire traps is hard enough as it is in broad daylight. I won't be able to sense them either if the traps are not coated with chakra beforehand. Something that only a complete amateur would do." Mana nodded.</p><p>"I'm glad to see you respect the art of entrapment so much." Erumo smiled with warmth on her face the likes of which Mana had only seen directed at her teammates.</p><p>"What did you expect? Mana-chan's father is Tsukumo Nakotsumi, after all." Kouta grinned with his arms crossed over his chest. The expressions and the way that the young man held himself have changed so much since Mana left him three years ago and it took up until now for the magician to even recognize it.</p><p>This Kouta was much more outspoken, exuding confidence and outright just more cheerful. Everything he said and did just seemed grander. He rarely, if ever, fumbled over words or looked for them inside his pockets, he no longer offered long pauses or struggled to voice how he felt inside like he used to. Reconnecting with his father has done wonders for him but… While Kouta looked happiest he's ever been, something made him also feel more distant.</p><p>"It isn't just that. My team got trapped recently and we'd have likely gotten killed if things went their way, whereas they could not hang with us in an actual fight. A good trap has the power to decide the outcome and that is a dangerous factor in a battle." Mana managed to disagree with the assessment brought up by her boyfriend while simultaneously debunking it.</p><p>"You can tell us all about that after we set camp." Yushijin pointed at the direction where he intended it to be the best to set a camp at. It seemed decent enough, equally distanced from most forest passages and official routes to where Mana could sense an incoming threat at about the same amount of time, no matter where it was coming from. Yushijin was already incorporating Mana's skills into his plans, maybe he truly was well-suited to be the leader? It's not like Mana ever felt passionate about leading.</p><p>The magician helped the team set the camp up. She even went as far as to prepare her favorite en-route-meal – smoked salmon sandwiches with Schenke cheese. Given how tough it was to extract and how it was just a rip-off compared to the cheese fermented in the acidic slimes of the slugs of the Shikkotsu forest, Mana only had a handful of it, a single hand-sized block every time she left the village but it was a welcome addition to any meal.</p><p>"Wow, I must admit, Mana's cooking really blows me out of the water…" Erumo declared submissively.</p><p>"Heh, I know, right? You should have tasted something she prepared before the Chuunin Exams – it was probably worse than rat poison…" Kouta smiled as he slurped the gooey molten cheese and wiped the grease and herbs that his almost animalistic eating manners made rub all over his face.</p><p>"That's not a nice way to say about someone." Erumo jabbed at her teammate with a squint. "I would dump you for an actually nice guy in Mana's spot!"</p><p>"I thought it sounded like a compliment…" Kouta shrugged with a sorry look on his face. The pair then glanced at Mana who was just staring on at the route ahead, the path they'd be treading tomorrow – farther north. The path leading to Land of Hot Water.</p><p>"Thanks for the meal, Mana. Are you up for some training?" Yushijin inquired. He must have wanted to work out some team maneuvers with Mana and incorporate the magician into his strategies as soon as possible.</p><p>"I am, however, I would like to train alone," Mana said. The kunoichi stood up and without any particular rush to her step removed herself from the campsite. The bafflement in Team Fir's faces prevented them from stopping their newest, temporary member in a timely fashion. Not too long after the magician had left, azure streams of light began gleaming from a forest clearing further ahead followed by crackling sounds.</p><p>"I… I'll try to get some sense into her. Finish your food and prepare for training." Yushijin signaled with his raised palm at his team while following the path trodden onward by the magician.</p>
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<a name="section0541"><h2>541. Team Training</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A chakra signature that Mana was slowly beginning to get used to appeared nearby. It came as so much of a surprise to the practicing kunoichi that she became startled and her focus faded completely, making the crackling jolts of lightning that fed Lightning Release chakra to the lightning swords floating around Mana sever and the constructs themselves to dissolve rather violently, as if the capricious technique was offended to be mishandled this way.</p><p>"Do you feel this kind of training is really the priority right now?" Yushijin asked after walking out into the small clearing Mana was working her magic in. "Given how we will be working together for the nearest future, it might be useful for us four to train together."</p><p>"I'm sorry but… Mastering this jutsu is something I must do. It is more important than I am willing to let in on." Mana shook her head. It was frustrating that the three did not just leave her alone to work with the technique that was supposed to resolve matters with Guru Ayushi when the moment of the inevitable meeting came.</p><p>"Really? Is it more important than the objective of our mission? Are you willing to fail the mission, your team, the clients and the people that have been killed or hurt by the Snow Country tribe we're after just so you can spend more time getting more personal power? That doesn't sound like the Mana I know…" Yushijin stepped in closer. He looked as baffled as he was imposing. The fellow chuunin of Konoha wanted Mana training with the team and he was not bothered applying a little psychological pressure to get that.</p><p>Mana looked down. She had to hand it to the illusionary swordsman, his words did make her doubt herself for a moment. When only what he said and not what Mana was focusing for three entire years, what she was researching and preparing for, was in mind, his words seemed like iron truth. Problem was, he did not know the full picture. He thought that the only reason why Mana was working on this jutsu was to become stronger on her own. While it was about as controversial to her personal ideals, the purpose of this technique was completely different.</p><p>"It is more important. It's more important than any mission objective to me. You could say that, at the moment, for three whole years, it is the only thing that matters on such a scale to me." Mana replied while resuming her preparation pose for channeling the technique. It still took too long to set up. Even if she flawlessly executed the entire sequence of techniques in the plan to defeat Guru Ayushi, the immortal, the legendary ninja who lived to multiple retirements worth of age in a world where most died all too young, Supreme Magic Pierce, the key technique still took too long to prepare.</p><p>An irritating as it was painful blunt impact sent the magician stumbling forward with needles piercing her entire back from the upper neck to the lower back, almost paralyzing the magician completely for a couple of moments and stopping her breathing momentarily. It was only when Mana took the time to recover from the painful shock of the attack from behind and focused on resuming her normal breathing that air started to once again circulate through her body.</p><p>"I will not forgive you these words. I am the one on whose shoulders lies the responsibility to complete this mission, to bring all of you three back home and continue forging the reputation of my home village that my ancestors started ironing centuries ago. It is my responsibility as a leader to discipline you." Yushijin shouted out from a much more personal abyss inside his chest than Mana expected.</p><p>This was no matter of pride, no childish rivalry. This sentiment came from a place quite familiar to the magician – responsibility. It was perhaps of that same familiarity that this conflict hit so close to home and resonated this deeply within Mana. Normally it would have been next to impossible to shake the building being built upon the foundation most of the magician's career as a ninja in the making.</p><p>"I do not have the luxury to waste time fighting you, have you not understood yet that after I chose to focus on my own training instead of team training?" Mana replied, still rubbing the back of her neck where she was struck with the handle of Yushijin's sword, despite the rather impressive size of the blade, the young man drew and sheathed it back behind his back in seemingly an instant.</p><p>However, he attacked Mana from behind, while she was directing all of her focus and effort into activating and maintaining her jutsu. If he thought he could just bully her around like that and force the magician to train with the team, the leader of Team Fir had another thing coming.</p><p>He was fast, lightning-fast, Mana had to hand the young man that. When he leaped forward with a straight push kick, meant to send the magician down and keep chipping away at her pride until she caved in to his demands, "discipline" as he called it, he momentarily disappeared from Mana's eyes completely. But the lump of steel hanging from his back unbalanced him, it slowed him down whether Yushijin wanted to admit it or not. It was an easy matter for the magician to take a simple hop back and remove herself from the range of Yushijin's extended foot.</p><p>Mana did not reply nor did she counterattack despite the openings left by her opponent. With a strict and disappointed glare, she merely observed the further actions of the squad leader trying to discipline someone he may not have had the ability to lay hands on. A noble soul crushed under the weight of responsibility he placed on his own shoulders because of the way he saw the world, why was that sad image so familiar and, more importantly, so painful for Mana to see?</p><p>It was because the magician observed her opponent so carefully, knowing better than to underestimate someone like Yushijin in any capacity, that she found her follow-up move so surprising. The Konohagakure swordsman simply took to the air, swinging his sword down at Mana in an attempt to get mother gravity in on his attack as well. The obvious problems of this approach being the lack in speed because of the awkward trajectory and the complete removal of any chance to avoid a counterattack in mid-air and mid-swing.</p><p>Yushijin was no fool. Even when Mana did her best to not underestimate him, he still managed to surprise her. He knew exactly what the magician was doing by observing his moves and he, therefore, proceeded with a highly unpredictable and an impractical attack, one that would not assist the teammate he intended to discipline whatsoever in drawing a profile of Yushijin's fighting style.</p><p>Even so, dodging this attack was as easy as taking a leap aside. With a flow of soft movements, Mana hopped aside using nothing but the very ends of her feet to move her entire body. The perfect economy of movement as not a single unnecessary muscle was flexed in her entire body. Something was wrong… This felt wrong even before Mana felt the powerful influence of a foreign, chilling chakra flowing through her.</p><p>So… Yushijin managed to learn to use his Last Resort illusion without speaking now? He was not unlike Hanshin in the way that he devoted his entire time in polishing and perfecting a single technique that defined his entire fighting style, choosing to bring it to unimaginable heights instead of moving ahead and learning new tricks. While Mana admired such devotion, as an artist she could never have been that way.</p><p>With an outburst of chakra, Mana overpowered the illusion of her opponent and just in time – Yushijin was right in her face and his sheathed claymore was already looking to smash Mana's jaw and force her to submit to the orders she was given. Without stepping aside or even moving away, the magician avoided the sword strikes by simply bobbing and weaving her body around it. It was Yushijin who dashed back with a widely arced swing that was meant to prevent Mana from chasing him back, obviously, given how the magician lacked the aggression necessary for such pursuit, the swing only hit thin air.</p><p>"Don't tell me… You're training in the middle of my discipline session?" Yushijin asked. From his cold face, it was impossible to tell if he was excited or mad at the magician for just continuing her training while she was being attacked.</p><p>"I told you already, my training is more important than even this mission," Mana replied while taking charge for the first time. Her body blurred in motion, she was not overly skilled in close-range offensive combat but she had observed Yushijin's fighting style enough to where she could land a pair of quick palm strikes or maneuver her foot around his block to hook him with a pair of stiff kicks.</p><p>The damage she inflicted was nothing, but her leader, overburdened by the responsibility he himself was so eager to claim, failed to provide with the response that Mana needed. Overcome by frustration that her opponent did not quite play into her hands, the magician moved her free hands in to weave a bunch of hand seals while her legs browsed for openings in her opponent's block. Maybe she would not be this brave if her opponent's blade was unsheathed, as things were now, she was safe to extend and work-out her legs as much as needed.</p><p>"Fire Style: Dragon Claw!" Mana chanted out while her chest filled with hot air that set ablaze the moment she let it out to speak the name of her jutsu. While Yushijin's eyes betrayed his terror the moment he realized he found himself in front of a Fire Release ninjutsu up close, once he realized that the fire leaving Mana's respiratory tract was no wave or an explosive fireball but a weightless and motionless mass of blazes, he calmed somewhat.</p><p>It was false calm, however, as with a smack of her hand, fingers hooked like the claws of a tiger, Mana shaped the weightless mass of flames into three spikes of Fire Release chakra, concentrated enough to slash at them and hot enough to cauterize any wounds instantly and leave some nasty burns on anyone unfortunate enough to earn the ire of the user of the technique.</p><p>Somewhat halfway the claw-swiping motion, Mana realized that her attack would not hit – Yushijin set off his illusion again, freezing her in time, as far as the magician could perceive it. To her time seemed frozen, when in fact it was passing normally outside the effect of Yushijin's crushing illusion. The sword of the Konoha chuunin bounced around, smashing around the body of the young magician before mercilessly moving on. It was like Yushijin intended to break every bone in Mana's body for the act of minor, capricious disobedience she had shown.</p><p>Mana wasn't sure if Yushijin realized that he was hitting Mana's own illusionary clone. One that dispersed into a shower of flower petals upon being struck multiple times, enough to reveal the Flower Petal Sanctuary jutsu in play. Perhaps he did know it and the frustration of it all had gotten to the swordsman or perhaps he knew it and merely wanted to show off a bit… Either way, Yushijin left himself wide open by devoting so much of his violent intent towards the illusion.</p><p>Mana's true shape revealed itself as the petals whirled into a vortex, dancing around the emerging shape of the stage magician and revealing her in the fateful pose of a completed hand seal. Every flower petal still lingering in the air, even if they were illusionary, froze in time and place around Yushijin, covering almost the entire battlefield.</p><p>"Flower Petal Shuriken!" Mana chanted out as every single petal transformed into steel stars the size of a normal shuriken through a show of visual flicker of lights reflected off of them. Just as effortlessly the flower petals rushed at Yushijin all at the same time, intending to stress out his mind by having the young man experience the pain of tens of thousands of shuriken shredding him to chunks.</p><p>The shuriken faded away just as easily as they have manifested and as they have changed appearance before. It was as if there was a dome that was invisible yet very much perceivable to any chakra sensor that the shuriken could not pass. Yushijin was panting ever so slightly, dispelling a B-Rank illusion was not that easy, especially not right after casting multiple of your own in rapid succession. The sizes of their chakra signatures were beyond comparison. Mana could have continued this clash of illusions for hours the same way whereas Yushijin would most likely not desire the discipline session to continue on the illusionary battlefield for much longer.</p><p>"I'm still so far…" Mana sighed in disappointment. This was the beginning of the string she had planned to put away Guru Ayushi with. The very first link in the chain and it had already snapped, rusting with the fecal scent of failure. "In that case, may as well submit… It's not like I will become that much better overnight when it took me three years to fail this spectacularly."</p><p>"This… Isn't just about power, is it?" Yushijin looked surprised as he sheathed his longsword behind him.</p><p>"It's about the grim reality that if my dreaded as it is anticipated moment comes tomorrow, I will undoubtedly die." Mana sighed.</p><p>Yushijin looked baffled and unsure of what he should have offered in return after such a response. The chuunin looked down in what appeared to be shame before glancing back in the direction he came from, then back at the magician. Mana saw it – he was clearly hesitating in claiming what he had just won and starting the team training. He stood there crushed for a good handful of minutes before letting out a sigh and turning around.</p><p>"Let's go. We're wasting time standing around here." He ordered. Given how Mana herself stopped her rebellious behavior, Yushijin must have expected no further quarrels from her part. He found none, without answering in any meaningful way but that of her willing actions, Mana followed the chuunin back to the squad.</p><p>"What were you guys doing there? We were getting bored…" Kouta complained while eating the leftovers that nobody first hoped to finish. Everyone knew their food capacities and took food accordingly, and yet it seemed that Kouta continued to make food disappear through hunger fueled and aggravated by doing absolutely nothing. It was a unique paradox of nature.</p><p>"Since when are you so anxious to get into a fake fight?" Mana pacified her boyfriend with a simple question. Or, rather, one that appeared simple…</p><p>The changes that training with his father for years made the Juugo go through took Mana by surprise. She had met and hung out with the young man multiple times after returning from the Rabbit Caves and yet this was perhaps the first time that she noticed just how much he had changed from who she fell in love with.</p><p>And yet… Pacifying a Juugo seemed even easier than soothing the rather shy and polite young man that Kouta used to be when all he was looking for was some time with his father and a clear cut answer to the duality of his nature. All Mana had to do was mock his interest in fake-fighting. It still remained unclear if the changes in the nature of the young man were to Mana's liking or not.</p><p>Kouta grinned with a full mouth, looking a little embarrassed by being spoken to that way but excited nonetheless for what was ahead. Yushijin switched his focus from Mana to Kouta before sighing again and taking his sheathed sword off his back and placing it in front of him.</p><p>"Alright. First, we will need to see the synergy between each of us. I think the best way to start out would be to go with simple two-people combinations. Team Hokage seemed pretty tight to me, how deep is the teamwork in your squad, Mana?" Yushijin inquired.</p><p>Mana really had to ponder on that one. There were just so many factors in play and so many novelties and things to consider throughout the history of the Team Hokage. At some point two of its trio were not even included in the team, for the most part, Mana had a silent disagreement with its leader that prevented the team from blossoming to its full potential. All that the magician could do was shrug.</p><p>"Not all that impressive, honestly. We have multiple two-people combinations but we didn't invest time into anything more complex. We're usually on the same page though, we have roles that we serve in a fight and things work out best that way…" Mana did her best to reply with what information she could recall and what she had while at the same time being respectful to the team she used to be a part of and its honorable history.</p><p>"I see… Mastering the simplicity of two-people combinations instead of moving into the complex and uncomfortable for most territory of full-team combinations. It must be an effective strategy, given how time is against us as well, I'd say we're in luck. In one session we should figure out one or two good combinations." Yushijin nodded a pair of times, looking respectfully impressed. Mana found it odd how respectful the chuunin was to what vague intel she offered. Not unlike Kouta, it seemed that the concept of planning out and managing teamwork strategies excited Yushijin.</p><p>That was odd, from his appearance and the way that he carried himself, Mana would have always taken the swordsman for a lone wolf type.</p><p>"Instead of just talking about it, how about we fight it out?" Kouta suggested with flares in his eyes. "We'll get to see each other's skills that way much more naturally and easily, modesty and politeness will have no place in a sparring session!"</p><p>"Nobody will ever make the mistake of accusing you of being modest…" Yushijin stroke a smirk, although from his body language he appeared to agree with the proposition.</p><p>"Kouta has no reason to be modest – he is a member of a feared for their destructive power clan and he is smart and resourceful enough, not to skip out on how talented he is as well, to become a medical ninja." Mana tried standing up for the young man she felt affection for. It was much easier and felt better on her consciousness when she truly agreed with her own words.</p><p>"I think that serves as Mana volunteering to show off how incredibly she works together with Kouta." Erumo winked at the two while making a few quick and stealthy steps toward Yushijin's back.</p><p>"You two have worked together in a squad multiple times, not to mention your deep, personal connection. Truly it must serve as a motivator to develop incredible teamwork skills." Yushijin smirked.</p><p>"W-Wait just a second…" Mana tried rubbing herself out of the tight corner she placed herself in but Kouta yanked her by the hand and stepped forth with blazing enthusiasm and his fist firmly raised up to display his determination.</p><p>"You better believe it!" he declared. While staring at the back of her boyfriend's head with slight worry, Mana wondered if Kouta truly believed them to be excellent in working together or if he was just that itching to get into a brawl that he was willing to team up with just about anybody.</p>
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<a name="section0542"><h2>542. Do Combo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The escalation of the talking stage to when the team sparring session broke out came without any bells ringing or clear cut lines. Before Mana would even properly enter her fighting stance and properly evaluate the scuffle she got herself into she felt that familiar feeling of disruption in her own chakra pathways, not only that – she sensed it also in Kouta's system. Yushijin had activated his Last Resort genjutsu again, this time, without warning.</p><p>Even if they proved to be completely ineffective fighting together, just having Kouta beside her helped Mana a great deal as it gave her another target to identify potential genjutsu on. Even as a sensor, Mana could not sense her own chakra per se unless she controlled it in a very specific way to where so much of it leaked out that she could pick up on the leaking signature. By having Kouta there beside her, she would have a blank slate to go by.</p><p>Busting through Yushijin's illusion came more and more naturally, Mana had almost expected to catch her opponent unprepared by managing to shatter it for both her and Kouta with a disrupting influx of mental and physical energy flowing through her body, in just the right amounts to derail Yushijin's influence on her and Kouta's system too.</p><p>Something was wrong. Yushijin had not advanced one step forward, surely he had a short opening while he activated his illusion and before Mana had dispelled it. While it may not have been enough to exploit properly, even with Yushijin's speed, he should not have known that… Unless… Just blindly swiping his still sheathed sword to bust some bones was not his intention.</p><p>"Thanks for that!" Kouta declared and shifted his stance into a more offensive one, preparing to commit the greatest mistake in the last couple of hours. Mana threw her hand back to press it against his chest and stop him.</p><p>"Stop." She uttered.</p><p>"What's wrong? Let's go at it. If you don't want to fight you can just stay behind me and break Yushijin's illusions, that will be profoundly useful all in itself." Kouta objected. Since when did they question each other's judgments?</p><p>"Where is Erumo right now?" Mana tried to make her eager to rampage boyfriend think.</p><p>"Hmmm… Good call…" Kouta finally realized after looking around with a frantic look, wishing nothing more than to verify Erumo's location so his charge would be justified but after failing to find them and realizing the danger of not knowing for certain where his teammate was, calmed down somewhat.</p><p>"It appears we've entered a stalemate… Neither of us will advance…" Yushijin grinned.</p><p>He wished it was so. Sure, he was smarter than to attack one against two when his ability to handle Mana alone was still in question, obviously neither Mana nor Kouta will attack while the second incarnation of Konoha's Great Trapster in the making was still lost, regardless, every second wasted standing around was time given for Erumo to set up for her favored type of battle.</p><p>"Can you do something for me?" Mana asked Kouta without turning her eyes away from the direction of the enemy. Her sensory could vaguely track Erumo's location despite her greatly improved skill at concealing her presence visually, minimizing the sounds she made and neutralizing her smell completely in just the brief split-second it took for Yushijin to distract the two opponents of his.</p><p>"So… Are you going to tell me what?" Kouta raised an eyebrow. "I can't read your mind, you know…" he uttered after an awkward pause in between anyone speaking up.</p><p>"Sorry about that, to think that I'd get used to the mental link after just one mission…" Mana cracked a grin to compliment her genuine apology. "I'd like you to distract him".</p><p>"B-But I thought I wasn't to…"</p><p>"Long-range…" Mana whispered, Kouta may have been a goof at times but he appeared to read her lips just fine and nod in excitement. The Juugo halfling aimed his extended hand at the enemy allowing its shape to shift into that of a large cannon from the elbow down, dyeing almost wooden in texture but Mana knew from experience that the material that the Juugo skin morphed into was incalculably sturdier than mere wood.</p><p>"Chakra Accelerator Beam!" Kouta chanted out while his body continued to gather the dust of chakra that burst from his pores and concentrate them into a single mass somewhere deep inside that cannon of his. The technique did not feel all too powerful so how exactly would he distract anyone with it? Also… Mana felt a bit confused about her boyfriend standing with his cannon firmly aimed at her as if intending to blast through her to get to the opponent despite such a motion being fruitless.</p><p>A deluge of light made the magician cover up, too sudden to dodge, too unexpected to even comprehend to try doing so, so warm and bright and yet… Despite the warmth all around her, Mana didn't really feel all too hurt by the beam that was undoubtedly blasting right at her. Like a burst of light, it split around Mana and converged behind her to travel at the enemy once more.</p><p>Yushijin appeared much more used to this technique. He just examined it with smugness, closing his eyes while lowering his chin and resting his body easier. The swordsman must have expected a much more solid attack to come but the name of Kouta's jutsu calmed the squad leader down.</p><p>"You do know I've seen you use this jutsu, right?" he taunted Kouta. Yushijin's familiarity with the jutsu was remarkable as he managed to exactly pinpoint the moment when the light stopped bothering his eyes and when it was comfortable to open them back up.</p><p>While the Konohagakure chuunin appeared confident and faked some smugness about his teammate's technique, in part he was rushing to open his eyes because of the irksome lightning crackling sound. It was after Yushijin gazed at the direction in which the beam flowed through before that he saw his fears verified – Mana standing in a low stance with intense lightning jolts branching out from the overpowering aura of Lightning Release chakra emitted from around her body.</p><p>Most of the jolts connected together and formed one solid, sword-shaped Lightning Release projectile after another. By the time Yushijin opened his eyes, the fifth sword had formed and floated around Mana, held suspended only by the connected stream of lightning that fed chakra from the aura exuded from Mana right into the sword.</p><p>"H-Hey now…" Yushijin expressed his respectful fear of the magician's technique. It did not require a genius to identify an absolutely ridiculous jutsu to be hit by and this definitely looked like it. Yushijin surely was experienced enough to realize that the jutsu was a clear A-Rank.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Supreme Magic Pierce!" Mana chanted out while directing her palm in a chopping motion at the area where Yushijin was standing. Her mastery over this jutsu was questionable but the danger behind it was precision – the ability to focus the entirety of absolute power of A-Rank ninjutsu into sword-shaped projectiles capable of delivering them with pinpoint accuracy.</p><p>The swords thundered on ahead, losing their shape a little to gain a small lightning tail at their tip while they spiraled onward at the intended target, skewering the area around Yushijin. The eyes of the Konoha swordsman lagged behind the projectiles, noticing them only once the swords were embedded into the soil halfway and were about to dissolve into jolts of lightning.</p><p>Had Mana aimed her swords at Yushijin, she might have killed him outright, depending on the areas hit. Even if everything that she was taught by Chestnut Hanasaku screamed in her ear to not look down at her opponent this way and trust their strength in being able to survive this technique, this was one chance she did not take. There was another that this technique was meant for.</p><p>The discharge from the dissolving swords shocked Yushijin as it was near-impossible to avoid even after the projectiles completely missed. The charges weren't powerful ones but they were extending widely and acted violently, branching out into multiple intertwined nets of lightning that had the nasty tendency to track for other electric signatures. Such as the impulses of neurons in one's body.</p><p>Yushijin grunted in pain, his body came dangerously close to collapsing but the ninja did not surrender himself to the allure of gravity. Stumbling as his stance was, he was upright after taking something like that and that in itself was impressive.</p><p>"Combo for a combo, guess none of us is completely hoping at working together…" Kouta grinned, his effective distraction was part of why Mana managed to channel the Supreme Magic Pierce. And to think that she very nearly missed the chance by getting all worked up over her boyfriend's technique, she actually needed to trust him more. It was an odd thing to say about someone so close to Mana's heart as this young man was.</p><p>"Oh, but you haven't still seen ours…" Yushijin closed his eyes, Mana noted how the swordsman was still slouched over. Surely he couldn't have been hit that hard…</p><p>"Move, now!" Mana yelled out, turning to Kouta. The Juugo was already busy blasting away from his current location, his heels morphed into jets that fired out wild chakra flares from somewhere within Kouta's body to accelerate the young man away.</p><p>Mana moved, just narrowly slipping out of a loop of steel wire that rose up after Yushijin had yanked on another one on his end. Erumo was smart. She knew that Mana was a sensor and would have been able to sense the complicated patterns of her steel wire as long as any chakra was channeled through it so she left it cold on purpose. When exactly did she poke out an end for Yushijin to pull on? How were those two communicating? Was the connection between them really this strong?</p><p>"Chakra Colt!" Kouta growled out while extending one of his hand forward, still in-motion from avoiding the attempt to entangle him with strings, the extended arm morphed into a cannon that, unlike other Juugo techniques Mana had seen did not expand the size of Kouta's arm but merely changed it into a tube-like shape. A handful of chakra spheres fired from the morphed chakra cannon flying right at Yushijin.</p><p>The ninja swordsman danced around his teammate's attack, blurring in and out of vision as he moved. While Kouta's attack seemed pointless and something he fired dragged on his tongue by his reckless desire to lose control in battle, it did show Mana something interesting – Yushijin's speed was much more than what she initially perceived it to be. It could have led to a nasty surprise. Yushijin only attacked her with wide dashes, mid to long range, but when his body needed to move while standing around or moving in incredibly short distances it excelled.</p><p>"You're wasting chakra, I was unable to follow up on that…" Mana let her teammate know.</p><p>"You could have attacked alone then." Kouta pouted his lips. His expression suggested that the young man knew he was wrong yet chose to object regardless just out of the displeasure of admitting it.</p><p>"I'd have wasted my chakra too then." The magician replied.</p><p>There it was again. That irksome sensation of Yushijin's chakra entering their systems. He was doing it again! It was even more blunt and fruitless than Kouta's attack was… What was he trying to achieve here? Mana dispelled the illusion near-effortlessly. It cost more effort to dispel an illusion that it did to cast it, even more, if the illusion was of higher rank but Mana had much more chakra than Yushijin, to begin with so she could spare it. It was safe to say that no victory would be achieved by Yushijin relying on his Last Resort so…</p><p>"He's buying Erumo more time to set up her traps! We need to take 'em out quick!" Kouta growled out again. Black marks started crawling up his skin from under his clothes where Mana assumed they were festering and his skin was completely black. The immense chakra beaming out from the young man as he lost a little bit more of his control made the black marks light up with a flame-like blazing glow. Kouta's widened eyes and his petrifying pupils raced across the entire battlefield like those of a madman that had an itch he wanted to scratch but he could not find it.</p><p>The Juugo extended his morphed hands down as more and more tubes formed all over his changing limbs. The wooden texture of his shifting skin ascended all the way up to his shoulders with a couple of streaks stretching out to his chin. Tiny chakra dust started flowing into the exposed tubes while a robust glow beamed from the hollow depths of Kouta's morphed limbs.</p><p>"No more hiding, I'll blast it all away!" Kouta pretty much screamed out maniacally as he directed his transformed arms right at the ground beneath his feet. Normally, Mana would have considered such a mad and destructive strategy a bluff but, given the drastic transformation that the Juugo had gone through, at the moment she didn't even doubt that Kouta truly intended to destroy all of the ground beneath their feet to where every tool and trap hidden would be completely obliterated.</p><p>A gentle melody filled the air. Kouta's eyes widened even more from the maniacal high they were stuck in to the point where the blood vessels around his eyes became dangerously apparent as they stretched out in eggplant-colored branching patterns all across the face of the young man. Similarly, Yushijin froze in place while his body became paralyzed with the shock of immense pleasure surging up and down his system, overtaxing every neuron in his body as both pleasing sights, heavenly smells and soothing melodies drove the bodily systems of everyone hearing Mana's whistled melody into a nearly trance-like state.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Sweet Lullaby." Mana sang out, still keeping her illusion up. After seeing Kouta's eyes squint and close in fatigue as the body of the transformed Juugo became too worn out to contain the combat between his raging murderous instincts that the transformation brought out in him and the serenity that Mana's illusion originated within him, she finally decided that it was enough.</p><p>Kouta peeled his face off the ground and laughed out with an ignorant smile and apologetic eyes. He knew that he lost control there but he felt too bad about it to even apologize. Mana sighed, she was not a hundred percent sure that her illusion would have that sort of effect on the Juugo. The wild transformation that the Juugo went through was a total mystery to the magician and illusions were fickle things. If the voices in Kouta's head screaming bloody murder snapped him out too early – both Mana and everyone else around the reckless Kouta would have been in trouble.</p><p>Yushijin flipped over on his back. Mana noticed that the squad leader did not even attempt to sleep, choosing instead to just stare at the sky for a while. After noticing that something around the camp was odd, Yushijin flipped back onto the other side and then lifted his head only to meet Mana's look with his own baffled eyes.</p><p>"Nightmares…" Mana uttered, doing her best not to wake up Kouta who slept like a baby by her side, thinking that it was her body that his hands were wrapping over when in fact he was about to start snuggling with a log. Erumo kind of botched her substitution during the training. She had a clever idea that Mana had not yet figured, she sealed a bunch of useless objects into sealing tags to be used for substitution if she did not have anything proper in mind when she needed it.</p><p>Granted, only someone with a very setup oriented fighting style like Erumo could have utilized that sort of trick. Nobody else had the time to plant and unseal all the logs, bags and frying pans that the trapster had stored in her pouch in the form of sealing tags. Not that it served much use even when it was used – Erumo didn't know that you couldn't just substitute out of most illusions, still, she found out that day and that was what training was for, ultimately.</p><p>At least now the log served as companionship for Kouta and a source for smiling to Mana. Yushijin stood up and quietly walked up to the tree that Mana was sitting by. Erumo lifted her head up, observing Yushijin walk past her but after a gesture from the squad leader to go back to resting she hesitantly did just that. They didn't decide on who was on duty, there probably wasn't supposed to be anyone on duty, or Mana should have been automatically since she was the only sensor in the team.</p><p>"She must have thought you were watching the camp…" Yushijin whispered after pointing at Erumo's direction with his chin. "Does it get tiring? I bet you have to stay and guard the camp all the time as a sensor…"</p><p>"Not really. Most of the time I work alone and to truly be effective at sensing far enough a sensor has to concentrate and expand their sensory further… It's pretty soothing, closes out your other senses so it drives you to sleep instantly." Mana admitted.</p><p>"Speaking from experience?" Yushijin wondered.</p><p>"No, I mostly worked alone. The few times I did not, things just worked out…" Mana admitted.</p><p>"It's great having you with us. I've never seen anyone calm Kouta just like that." Yushijin said.</p><p>"Truth be told, I feel like we could have done way better… Makes me realize how little we've actually worked together with him." Mana sighed. "Most of the time we were stumbling over one another, our teamwork was a mess. His fighting style changed completely after these three years."</p><p>"He's been missing out on team training just to train or work with his father, that's probably why." Yushijin looked at his teammate with sympathetic eyes.</p><p>"It means a lot to Kouta that his father acknowledges him. Him being back in the village used to be such a big deal to him." Mana smiled while looking at the careless slumber of the young man beside her. Not even two people whispering right beside him couldn't as much as disturb him.</p><p>"Don't be so hard on yourself, you did well. A couple of reliable combinations is enough. At least after today, you're no longer a stranger to Team Fir, I guess you could say you're an honorary member." The right side of Yushijin's face lifted up slightly in a reserved half-smile.</p><p>There were no signatures anywhere around the camp. Just crickets chirping somewhere within an arm's reach.</p>
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<a name="section0543"><h2>543. Into The Valley Of Hell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We're making a lot of swerves. Wouldn't it be faster to travel in a straight dash for once?" Kouta asked in a disgruntled tone.</p><p>"It would not. We would get dragged into pointless fights and arguments if any of the local settlements or ninja from Yugakure notice us nearby. It is safer and faster to travel around every settlement and especially as far around Yugakure as possible." Yushijin explained in a dry tone.</p><p>"Is he making sense?" Kouta asked by checking the reply with Mana. The magician felt a little flustered to be forced in between the two like that and suddenly be made into the deciding figure who ruled on what was right or not. It always felt like she was just along for the ride, not in a leading position to make any sort of relevant judgments.</p><p>"Sort of." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Can't you take a position a little bit harder?" Kouta raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Well, the Land of Hot Water is covered with especially tourist-friendly settlements that actually profit from passing by parties of ninja and merchants so we are unlikely to be unwelcomed around any of them but… Technically, Yugakure is still a ninja village – a militaristic establishment to which the presence of ninja from other villages might turn out as more work so some tension between us would be inevitable." Mana shrugged again. The more any of the two would have pressed her to take a stance on one camp or the other, the more rebelliously Mana would have wanted to maintain neutral ground.</p><p>"You guys and your camps." Erumo snickered. "You should know better than to think there are just two ways to every problem, Kouta, there are just about as many paths as there are people walking them…"</p><p>"Hmph…" Yushijin's glare sharpened and his eyes turned to the side. Mana looked at the squad leader wondering what could have troubled him. The young swordsman stopped and looked around, sniffing at the air. Kouta and Erumo did the same.</p><p>"Can you sense something in that direction?" Yushijin asked the magician.</p><p>"Too tough to tell…" Mana's face soured from a repugnant sensation emanating from the direction in which Yushijin was pointing at. "There's something overpowering, something that stops my perception from going farther, like a jammer of sorts…"</p><p>"Jammer? How does that work?" Erumo appeared especially interested in the mechanics of how to trick chakra sensory. Given how her interest seemed more on the professional side, judging from the young woman's tone, as well as how she was on Mana's squad and giving her as much intel as possible may have just saved Mana's life at some point in the nearest future, the magician tried her best to explain.</p><p>"A lot like placing a massive statue in front of someone trying to look for someone. A large, distracting object might conceal a much smaller one hiding right behind it. The chakra emanating from that direction is so massive and has such… Distinctive properties that… I can't seem to go far past it."</p><p>"If this chakra is this massive, you must have sensed it for a while now. There may not have been a need to delay until we could smell this thing." Yushijin scolded the magician.</p><p>"Well… My sensory is not always taking the stage. Not unless I'm using it. Yes, I've sensed it for a while now but I sense signatures of all kinds and sizes all the time." Mana replied. Chakra sensory was such an exotic talent that she always had to explain to other people just how exactly did it work.</p><p>"In other words, despite its repugnant taste, you still ruled it as not a threat to us?" Yushijin asked for an important clarification.</p><p>"Yes." Mana nodded.</p><p>"I see… Still, I'd like to be informed about any out of the ordinary chakra signatures around the area." Yushijin sighed and looked on ahead. His body was just about tensing up for another leap to continue the dash through the Land of Hot Water heading towards the Land of Snow before he was interrupted.</p><p>"You mean we won't even check it out?" Kouta wondered. "What if it's some bad guy doing something really terrible. Doesn't the wicked feel of that chakra suggest that it's a really bad guy over there?"</p><p>"When you let your Curse Seal take you over, your chakra feels about as dark and twisted," Mana replied. "Also, you misunderstand. It is not a chakra of a singular individual. There is likely a conflict going on there between multiple people with disturbing chakra signatures. It is a mass of chakra not in a signature form but more like a cloud of chakra lingering in the air."</p><p>"In that case, it must be a clash between nukenin committing crimes around this area," Yushijin called it.</p><p>"Most likely. I would come to that conclusion too, hence why I did not rule it as that unusual." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Not unusual?" Kouta waved his hands in front of him in frustration. "It's a bunch of really bad people fighting it out – what if somebody got hurt? Don't we have a responsibility to stop them as Konoha ninja? Just casually walking passed a fight like that isn't like you, Mana!"</p><p>"I'm beginning to feel like you just want to get involved to fight something, Kouta…" Erumo squinted.</p><p>"Erumo is right, the job of stopping nukenin is the job of hunter-nin or bounty hunters. Our job right now is the mission, nothing more." Yushijin declared with a strict tone and a cold face. Mana had to hand it to him, he had the attitude and the bravery to make tough decisions needed in a leader. It made her wonder if she possessed the same qualities, they were, after all, necessary to a chuunin.</p><p>"I mean… Hunter-nin are pretty messed up guys too. Bounty hunters are essentially criminals killing other criminals for profit, hardly beacons of angelic chakra, right Mana?" Erumo turned to the magician. After Mana nodded hesitantly, the trapster continued her train of thought. "The fact that groups of wicked feeling chakra are duking it out doesn't seem that out of the ordinary outside the walls of a ninja village."</p><p>"You've changed, Mana… Back in the day, you'd have attacked all of us just to get the chance to see if there are any wounded in there and to save their lives, no matter how bad those people were. I can't believe you'd just give up on them like this." Kouta sighed in disappointment. "These days it seems like… You're saving your effort for something but… If you're acting like that and giving up on opportunities, what if that moment you're saving yourself for never comes? Then you'll have wasted your life waiting for nothing."</p><p>Yushijin was about to step in and stop his teammate, he looked at Mana with an empathic look. The magician looked away and then stared at the rustling leafage on the lower levels of the trees and the ground level of the forest below. Anything to draw her attention away from the here and now and how uncomfortable it felt. Ironically enough, it was Yushijin – one of Kouta's best friends who knew what Mana was going through, as much as the magician let him in on yesterday, and not her own boyfriend.</p><p>Then again, he knew it because it was his responsibility as the team leader to know what may have compromised the successful execution of his orders and not some special bond between him and the magician...</p><p>"I changed?" Mana mumbled. "You're the one to speak…" the tone of her voice rose up to where it began feeling really uncomfortable and the young woman began consciously devote every available stretch of effort to contain her bubbling emotions inside. Somehow postpone her breakdown that has been building up for some time now.</p><p>A deep breath and a sigh signaled that she was successful. Freaking out at Kouta right now would have seriously compromised the overall cohesion of the team as a unit, that would have disappointed Yushijin and Yushijin's trouble would have also turned Erumo against her. Mana did not yet know how dangerous the foe in this mission was but Team Fir had the best chances of success if they were together. The last thing she had the right to do as a tag-along was to shatter the team like she almost did with her breakdown.</p><p>"Very well. We will observe the location of the battle for the injured. If there is anyone we can save without compromising our own mission, we will do what we can. You will not, however, engage anyone unless necessary." Yushijin made the call after seeing that half of his team was ready to jump at each other's throats as long as this was not resolved. Perhaps he did see that part of Mana felt bad about what Kouta said to her. That made one conscious member of the four wish to involve themselves and one subconscious one.</p><p>"Sure thing." Kouta nodded.</p><p>Team Fir turned toward the remotely jarring canyon of dry, grey-colored rocks and a nasty mist rising from somewhere deep in the ravines found within. Judging from the faces of her teammates, Mana called that the mist crawling out from the canyon was especially putrid as it looked like any of the three was about to throw up on the spot. The grisly scenery reminded the magician of the Mountain's Graveyard and other abandoned battlefields found around the Fire Country she read about and saw pictures of in the history books and scrolls.</p><p>The air around felt oddly bitter, every moment spent inside only strengthened the repulsive feeling of iron inside one's mouth being present at all times. It was like drawing every breath just added more iron dust that ground and etched into one's mouth cavity and refused to leave. The inability to breathe properly and the constant, unshakeable, metallic taste caused certain feelings of anxiety that only got aggravated the more mind one paid to it.</p><p>Kouta's mind appeared just as one-tracked as it was before entering the place, finding the source of the signature was all he cared for, without noticing Erumo's pale face and fastened breathing. It took a while for Mana to notice too but once she saw Yushijin constantly glancing back at his teammate, the magician turned back at her as well and began questioning the decision to come here.</p><p>After a couple of more kilometers, covered in a pair of leaps, Erumo excused herself and stopped, only to find herself a hiding spot. The magician felt disgruntling vomiting sounds and, judging from the voice of the young woman, the hyperventilating from the anxiety felt within did not help the proper reaction to the disgusting feeling in one's mouth. Just one's presence in this location was a challenge enough on its own, had Mana not experienced the full brunt of the gorefest that transpired during the calamity in the Konoha Ninja Academy she may have needed a spot to throw up right beside Erumo.</p><p>"Feel better?" Yushijin checked in on his teammate. Judging from his face, he knew just the kind of dangerous mistake he had made by compromising with Kouta's wish to punch something in the face disguised as genuine care over somebody's life and Mana's subconscious guilt that her boyfriend tripped her into.</p><p>"Y-Yeah… Experiencing the worst possible feeling in this place helped a great deal." Erumo appeared to even have the fortitude to joke around now. The somewhat energetic reply of the paled out kunoichi calmed the rest of the three down. Mana noticed the regret in Kouta's eyes but he was unwilling to speak his mind, given how it was mostly due to the argument he started that Team Fir was traveling through this place, to begin with.</p><p>Mana moved in closer to the young man during the resumed dash toward the location of the wicked chakra mass, even if her boyfriend wouldn't apologize to her for guilt tripping her like that and playing on her weaknesses to get something he wanted, something that Mana would have appreciated at the moment, did not mean that he deserved treatment as cruel as the one he exuded at his worst moments.</p><p>"Don't feel bad about this. You didn't know how disgusting this place would be, how we'd react to it. You just wanted to help someone, wanted to step in where you saw trouble. It's not what good ninja would have done but it's what a good person would have done." Mana tried comforting her worked up boyfriend.</p><p>"I think… What you said before… I think it's right. I've changed too, sticking around father all the time for three years, working with him and training with him… It changed me. I didn't even notice how much so." Kouta replied with a contained voice.</p><p>"Changes in oneself are the hardest kind to notice." Mana nodded. She felt similarly shaken by Kouta's earlier words as well. She knew that they were most likely spoken out of momentary spite at the magician refusing to honor his request for engaging the bunch of nukenin likely causing trouble in these canyons but her own judgment kept bringing something bad bubbling inside her, associated with these words, up.</p><p>Regardless of the motivation that drove those cruel words, the truth was that they rung close to Mana's heart…</p><p>After realizing that they were dangerously close to the battlefield, Mana landed on the nearest plateau she could find. The rest of the Team Fir followed shortly, scattering a little so that they did not all bunker up in a single location making them too easy to notice while they were observing the battlefield all at once.</p><p>A cascade of blurs and clashes sent shockwaves all the way to the observing Konoha ninja. Four ninja seemed to be clashing in a high-speed, mid-air battle while one, dominating battlefield presence occupied the attention of a handful of other individuals. With how intense the battle was, Mana was not surprised at all by how close to one another and how intertwined the signatures were. The bond was more than the result from the closeness of the engagement, it seemed much more personal. Whoever these people were, whatever they were fighting for, they were quite similar in the essence of who they were.</p><p>"Maybe these guys sent us the earthquake after we left the village?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>"While fast and deadly, these people do not appear to be nearly as strong. They are capable of world-changing calamities but they control their power and pace themselves right. These are scalpels, not sledgehammers." Erumo replied after observing the battle for just a while longer.</p><p>"Well, it appears to be a clash between two criminal factions. Do their chakra still feel similar?" Yushijin affirmed to himself before asking Mana.</p><p>"Yes. At this point, the conclusion that they are all nukenin with clashing interests to be the most likely." Mana agreed while her eyes and her sensory remained firmly fixed onto the battle. They were too close. These ninja were clashing hundreds of times in a fraction of a second, exchanging dozens of blows, reading and evaluating the moves of their enemy and responding efficiently to them, formulating complex strategies and plans of attack. Kilometers away would have been too close, these people were all over the place, one wrong turn in this clash and…</p><p>A whirlwind of blades and frantic, swiping and striking limbs passed through the curious observers, freezing momentarily. It appeared that both sides simultaneously believed the odd party of ninja to be reinforcements for the opposing side but because nobody made any conclusive actions, not wishing to upset the balanced deadlock and inevitably tip the scales of the stalemate everybody stood still.</p><p>"I would have never taken Konoha to be protectors of abominations like the Blood Lagoon." A kunoichi with short, dark hair and black eyes that suggested her to be from around the Land of Fire spoke up. She was a ninja who favored light armor and short blades, it seemed. Her face was covered with incomplete tattoos of serpentine dragons and tengu. The impressive artworks extended far under her clothes, implying that the tattoos were finished but covered her entire body, even parts concealed by her battlefield attire.</p><p>"Don't be foolish, as if we would ever align ourselves with another village. Our allegiance firmly laid with Kirigakure. Up until the point we were betrayed and driven away!" a massive man in full armor that would, undoubtedly, send Meiko into ecstasy if she had ever witnessed his sheer size and the craftsmanship of his equipment rumbled like thunder descended from the sky. His armor was so heavy and lumbering that all signs of a man being inside it consisted of a pair of red, gleaming eyes that pierced the cover of steel around him.</p><p>"How about we ask these odd interlopers and find out, instead of bickering and postponing one of our total annihilation?" another heavily geared shinobi, however, one with a much squeakier and less-imposing voice that broke out from under the shell that was his helmet. It was a mechanical man, of sorts, comprised of armor pieces but whereas the crimson-eyed tank from before was evidently a man in a crafty suit of armor, this man appeared to be a feeble puppeteer in a sizeable dome, judging from the general appearance of the shell. There was no head or eyes or other lifelike features to this mechanical man, only a dome on top of where the head would have been making him appear faceless and therefore quite confusing to look at.</p><p>"Well, leader? Make a call, which ones of them are we going to support?" Kouta turned at Yushijin. Despite the general excitement of the prospect of the battle that usually donned the face of Mana's boyfriend, this time his expression was much direr, perhaps he perceived the danger that his team was in and how much this battle would tax the squad before they even entered some of the coldest and least welcome corners of the world.</p><p>"We will not take sides here." Mana stepped out in front of Kouta and to where the dome-head would have seen her, if he possessed the capacity to see anything from inside where he was. "We were passing through and could not miss these clear signs of battle. We are just here to take care of the injured, nothing more."</p><p>"That will not be necessary." Another pale and frail young woman with short, black hair but donning a crimson gleam in her eyes that was unlike any doujutsu Mana had ever seen before. The only infamously red eye technique was the Sharingan and yet none of these red-eyed ninja had it. Yet their eyes inspired great fear, greater even than the terror of not being able to breathe without feeling like one's mouth and lungs filled with iron dust. "We will obliterate the traitors completely, there will be nothing left of them to take care of." The kunoichi declared before entering a sword-fighting stance and raising her katana from the left side in a guarding stance.</p><p>Something told Mana that leaving this hellish valley would not be as easy as it was to enter it.</p>
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<a name="section0544"><h2>544. Blind And Breathless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the reality of the upcoming conflict dawned and appeared more and more inevitable with each word exchanged between the three participating parties, time seemed to freeze as if it was actually Mana who was capable of manipulating the perception of time with her illusionary abilities and not the leader of the squad.</p><p>The four, previously airborne ninja from before: the mechanical man and the tattooed, shoulder-length, black-haired kunoichi on one side, the short, dark-haired swordswoman and the lumbering human-tank on the other, for now, were the only two aware of the Konoha party but that was subject to change. And yet… While their chakra were collectively impressive, it was not any of these four that bothered Mana, it was the pair fighting at the bottom of the valley.</p><p>Down at the bottom stood a single shinobi who was holding off an entire group of other ninja, one of which was also worrisome as ruled by Mana's gut and assisted by her chakra signature. The man deserving Mana's fear was almost as tall as the armored man on the Blood Lagoon side and sized up to about half of what the dome-head stood at. He wore a black, metallic plate on his chest, his arms and feet remained unprotected except the vital spots: the armpits strapped with leather, the shoulders and the wrists covered with guards that had multiple swords attached to them.</p><p>For the second time that day, Mana wished to show something to Meiko, not just the impressive, sword-switching device on the wrists of the mighty ninja, but his fighting style too. At any given time one of the six swords, three at each hand, was switched to where the man's hand could grip it while the others remained stuck vertically to the man's wrist, forming oversized wrist-blades that could at any time be switched out. The swords differed in shape, style, and even steel alloys, from what Mana could tell.</p><p>The most curious attribute of this fearsome man was the helmet that he adored on top of his head. It looked like a furnace: two massive, round plates at the top and the bottom interconnected by steel bars, forming a lantern-like shape on the man's head, as if the shinobi chose to wear a personalized prison cell on top of his attic.</p><p>The man was singlehandedly fighting off the other troublesome kunoichi – a woman of jet-black, flowing, long hair who was swinging at her enemy with her bare hands, swiping with crooked yet steel-hard finger swipes that threatened to tear entire chunks of flesh out. Mana felt glad for a moment that the adrenaline rushing through her body allowed a few curious sights of the woman's style as if she ever lunged at the magician that way with no first-hand experience from the magician's side, the sheer unpredictability of the curious martial art would mean Mana's downfall at close distance.</p><p>It was not that the three ninja fighting alongside the taijutsu-using woman were weak combatants. The fact that the lantern-helm was holding off all of these ninja by himself did not speak ill of the skill of the four, it spoke credit to the immense lethality of the man on the defensive. By his lonesome he'd be able to carve through any single ninja around, but confronted by these four, he was held permanently on the defensive.</p><p>"The four down there, they are Blood Lagoon as well, they have the red eyes as well." Erumo noticed, speaking out loud and breaking Mana out of the trance of fear and rising tension. "We would most likely have the greatest chance at survival aiding them."</p><p>"No. We won't just survive. We've come this far, may as well do the right thing. What's going on here? Depending on your answer, we will determine which side we will help." Mana declared. She could almost feel the piercing gawk of Yushijin from behind her but it did not matter. They would use all the power they had to ensure that nobody died, but they'd make sure to find out just what was going on here as well.</p><p>"To hell with this!" the tattooed assassin cursed before sheathing her two wakizashi and pulling out a pair of sai. In an unexpected move, she rushed at the Konoha team all by herself, intending to kill them in a single attack and then proceed to fight the Blood Lagoon group.</p><p>The woman was a lethal combatant and an experienced sword-fighter, that was to say nothing of her hand-to-hand skill. By using sai she would put the environment around her to best use – the hazy mist of the dreadful iron feeling and the smell reminding of sumptuous rivers of blood would conceal her speedy movements and the flowing motion of her blade. Needless to say, even without the cover of unidentified minerals present in the air around the area, the sai was a deadly and unpredictable weapon.</p><p>Mana leaned back just far enough to where the extended sai from after the assassin thrust it at her very nearly reached the tip of her nose. The magician then ducked under the follow-up swing and prepared to read the incoming movements and browse them for a chance of a counterattack, one that would not expose her for attacks to any of the endless enemies around them as well. Oddly enough, the assassin moved on ahead, thrusting a bunch of times at Yushijin who blocked and deflected each strike coming his way on a careful yet sustained dance of his feet that carried him back while his blade moved left and right.</p><p>And yet… The sai were a quick and weightless weapon. Even after deflected by a lump of iron like Yushijin's claymore, they did not expose any openings for too long. Having failed on two fronts already, the sai-wielding assassin moved on with a blinding spin of feet and steel but using a string reeling device on her wrist Erumo moved away, she vaulted over the edge of the rock formation where Team Fir were caught in the erupting battle due to the fact that she hooked the steel wire onto it to move away from the attack.</p><p>Before the enemy would move on to him, Kouta's feet morphed, cracking the rock and creating a pair of craters under them from the weight and intensity of his transformation. The sheer pressure of his transformation and the chakra that leaked out of him ground the rising rubble to stone. Using the jets on his feet, Kouta spiraled like an arrow into the air and then whizzed right down to where Erumo disappeared into. Whether it was to see that his comrade did not get overwhelmed by the ninja down below or because he wanted them all for himself in his current, murderous state remained to be seen.</p><p>The Blood Lagoon ninja looked hesitant to involve themselves in the battle. The swordswoman with short dark hair continued to observe the dancing assassin in preparation to be her next target, the massive, armored man crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying the show. Prompted to fight back by the assassin pressing her offensive, Yushijin drew his sword.</p><p>With the final moment of his weapon leaving the scabbard, Yushijin's Last Resort initiated. Mana observed carefully how her nimble opponent would deal with the subtle illusion. The woman froze in mid-motion, the illusion undoubtedly hit her hard, the leader of Team Fir blinked in right up to his opponent, swinging his sword from down low. A slash like that may have split the enemy kunoichi in two, even if she augmented her body as hard as she could, the might from such a strike may have disemboweled even the toughest of ninja.</p><p>Yushijin's blade slashed, then again and again, the longer the string of attacks continued, the more momentum the claymore gained, the more devastating the blow and the faster it connected before transitioning into the follow-up attack. Even if Last Resort was not canceled, it only granted mere moments of time which the opponent considered halted, judging from the speed and ruthless nature of Yushijin's combination, the Konoha chuunin had trained himself to perform the maximum possible amount of attacks in that short span of time.</p><p>Blood burst from the woman's body, just after Yushijin's final attack connected. So fast was the Konoha swordsman that he managed to carve his opponent up as if heated bars were pressed against a block of butter in the span of time it took for blood to appear from the first wound the young man had opened. It slightly sickened Mana to see such brutality but she sensed a speck of life still burning from inside her opponent, it was her own fault to open up so recklessly and underestimate the Konoha ninja.</p><p>"You… You could have helped your comrade, yet you just stood there unfazed by it." Mana spoke through the nausea of what she just saw, directing her sickness at the mechanical man still left standing.</p><p>"I would love nothing more than for it to be the end of Burbotta…" the mechanical man shrugged. Alarmed by his words, Mana turned at the bloody mess that was left of the young woman only to see her body collapse into a puddle of water. It was no blood that streamed out of her – it was water, dyed slightly red by the iron in the mist around this valley.</p><p>"A water clone, huh?" Yushijin closed his eyes, still leaving his back turned at the assassin he thought he had just put down. While it did look profoundly cool of him to do, the motion had more reason than one would initially admit as Yushijin was covering the most likely direction he would be targeted after being tricked with the old clone-switcheroo trick.</p><p>"No, watch out!" Mana yelled out to warn her ally while the carved up shape on the floor reformed into the woman it once belonged to and the assassin charged forward once more. The thing that Yushijin had beaten was not a mere water clone… And yet… For the most part, it behaved like one – after being struck down it collapsed into a puddle of water, except it reformed afterward…</p><p>The woman froze up once more, her sai just an inch away from the sensitive vital point at the back of his neck while Yushijin performed a back-dashing swipe from his massive blade, cleaving his enemy clean into two. The upper part lifted off into the air, rotating around from the sheer force of the swing that sent it flying before collapsing into a shower of reddish water.</p><p>The woman's chakra took a large dip every time she was cut down but… There was no doubt about it, as similar as all of these killers and scumbag felt, the more unique aspects of her signature remained consistent and they all belonged to the puddle of water that momentarily reformed from certain death once more.</p><p>"It's no water clone, it's like she becomes water every time you hurt her. It's definitely her, however, it…" Mana tried to explain it to the squad leader but the mechanical man moved without tripping too many of the magician's warnings. The large, metallic fist slammed into the ground, crushing the area where Mana stood and attempted to recklessly warn her ally of the weakness to his opponent's technique. The smash of the humongous, steel fist was impressive enough to threaten with the collapse of the entire rocky plateau that the short scuffle took place on.</p><p>The details remained hazy, the head was spinning, everything around her was sinking into hazy dusk but that must have been because Mana's eyes were closed. It was not too long after that the pain from the nasty, crushing blow she just took set in. Even the limited light that seeped into Mana's eyes burned. A pair of flashes that Mana did manage to take in while her eyes fluttered were those of the mechanical man standing in front of her with his arms raised and ready to drive them back down again.</p><p>All-covering agony set in followed by a not at the least less abominable rumble of the collapsing plateau around Mana. The magician felt Yushijin's signature disappear, followed by that of his opponent that never tread too far away from the Konoha swordsman, which more than likely prevented him from coming to Mana's aid. This time the pain felt… Cold… Soon, little by little the sounds of thunderous rubble was tagged out by the howling of the wind… Mana was falling.</p><p>The magician's eyes snapped back open, she spread her hands and legs out wide before driving her hands together to weave a hand seal and initiate her Mystical Wings technique that allowed her to stay in mid-air. Her back hurt… Breathing felt like torment. The attack from the back must have busted more than just a few of Mana's ribs. Warmth trickled down Mana's forehead. The magician knew that feeling all too well…</p><p>That attack from before… It felt like her mechanical opponent did not have any chakra that the magician could trace, not much of his personal signature. Obviously, whatever the man inside the puppet-suit was had chakra, every living being had chakra and even non-living objects had aspects of physical chakra to them. However, the signature from whoever was inside this mechanical man was almost non-existent and the surrounding mists of iron-red completely covered the movements up like a smokescreen.</p><p>The free-falling mechanical man lifted its right leg up, throwing its left back. A flare of flames erupted from the bottom of the armor's feet and rose all the way from its back. The force from the jets was sufficient to throw the entire mechanical structure in Mana's direction with this improvised manner of a divekick. Clutching at her aching chest, failing to see with the left side of her face or properly perceive depth due to the blood running all over her left eye forcing it closed, Mana managed to dive away from the massive kick and followed the armored structure all the way to the ground.</p><p>The valley below split into separate plates with boiling water rising, bursting and pouring over the shattered ground of the valley floor. The lakes, colored blood-red from whatever substance was in the mist, spilled over into the cracks between the separated plates and threatened to drown the entire valley floor eventually. Even the mechanical man, having stomped the ground with his missed divekick and having caused most of the damage to the surface of the valley's bottom, struggled to regain its balance and chose to stay on its knee.</p><p>Mana did not sense the armor's previous attack either. Chakra sensory had become such a fundamental and basic aide in her fighting style that having it rendered completely inefficient stumped the magician momentarily and demanded her rely on different senses, fight the way she fought before discovering sensory. Something was different about this man. The mechanical man was no puppet shell. The Puppetry Jutsu employed by puppeteers required chakra and Mana would have sensed it very clearly, she'd have never been hit like that. Any attack surpassing the human barrier, employing the augmentation of one's physical or spiritual limits, would have been read as a book…</p><p>Then why?</p><p>Mana's attention faltered once more. It appeared that she had not sensed all of the combatants yet. On a front a bit farther to the west there was another battlefield consisting of a three-on-three engagement, although the chakra present there were nowhere near the level of the lantern-helmet man or the Blood Lagoon woman in the fancy dress with a liking for taijutsu.</p><p>The upper part of the puppet reached out for the plates of stone floating in the flooding waters. Its fingers locked down into stone and managed to get a solid grip as if tightened by some sort of device. The upper body of the mechanical man spun around its axis a handful of times in rapid succession, launching the entire platforms of the shattered valley ground all around the place. The city-sized boulders continued to ravage the setting of the Valley of Hell while one of them flew off into the distance, far away from the valley altogether.</p><p>Mana dived to the side, planting her feet firmly atop of the titanic plate of solid stone hurled at her, using her Mystical Wings she softened the landing. Using a combination of natural balance and her flying Wind Release ninjutsu to manipulate the wind currents under her, Mana worked her way over the surface of the platform by simply running across it and then leaping off of it. Those unnatural movements… This dome-helm was no puppeteer, his spine surely would have been snapped if his outer puppet armor behaved this way. The armor truly was mechanical in nature…</p><p>"Mechs… I hate mechs…" Mana mumbled to herself with the limited volume that her busted lungs could afford her. It was a new discovery as she had barely ever encountered anything of this like. The closest she's experienced to this was reading about and seeing puppeteers using their puppets not as mere tools or dolls under their control but as an outer, protective shell. She did not fancy it all that much back then either… This… This felt like nothing of the art of ninjutsu was sacred anymore.</p><p>The problem was that with her current condition, floating helplessly in the air was the best she could do as the busted ribs demanded too much from her. The only jutsu she could use were those that she could use without speaking and her hand seal speed was greatly reduced at the moment. The only thing keeping Mana opposing this heresy as valiantly as she did was the distaste of being killed by a mech, of all things.</p><p>"You are nimble, I'll give you that. Maybe you will serve as fine practice for when Burbotta jerks my switches too hard and I will decide to finally give her what she's owed!" the mechanical man managed to taunt the magician while simultaneously commending her talent of staying alive against its highly unorthodox method of combat.</p><p>Breaths were a luxury resource, what few Mana did manage to draw were all tainted by the taste of iron that only furthered sending the magician into a sense of dread. She couldn't breathe… She couldn't breathe… Luckily, self-control and meditation was something that the young woman excelled at since childhood. If she lost control now she risked plummeting the rest of the fall down and breaking something more. There would be no more of that… No more mistakes.</p><p>Kouta was right, Mana has been so focused on overcoming the hurdle of Guru Ayushi that she forgot the point it all was done for.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0545"><h2>545. Do Water-Men Dream Of Star-Reactors?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a spreading, circular gust, Mana's feet touched the ground. Despite the controlled and kept back terror plaguing the magician, one that came out from the subconscious desire of a body to draw breath, the magician's landing was soft and silent. The panic was difficult to contend with, it only added to an endless list of disadvantages that Mana's body currently had going against it. Her speed, her combat prowess all were now just a meaningless fraction of what they should have been if this battle was set on a more favorable battlefield, under better conditions.</p><p>"Your suit is..." Mana uttered.</p><p>"Amazing, isn't it? After all, a genius like me designed it. I felt disappointed by the body that was given to me by fate, I found it feeble and living inside that shell – a joke. For that reason, I have made my own body, one that was able to fix any injustice committed against me, even that of fate…" the mechanical man replied.</p><p>"A despicable tin can." The magician finished her thought. "One that spits not only at the art of ninjutsu but one that rots your own strength and instincts as well."</p><p>The mechanical ninja opened up its stance and straightened its body, lowering its hands and extending its legs by the joints, allowing thick, steel plates to shut over its knees – protecting the weak points where all the weight of the armor accumulated, no doubt. A compartment that reminded the magician of a safe from the inside opened up, revealing a lab tube with a bunch of water connected to a system of vessel-like tubes. It was not entirely clear what the system of tubes fed into the water or what it extracted from it, the magician turned her head in confusion.</p><p>"Tell me all about my strength, my instincts… Tell me again how my existence offends your principles!" a voice spread from inside the robotic armor and, despite the magician being utterly unable to see anyone or anything talking – it came directly from somewhere inside or behind the water container.</p><p>It took a while for Mana to realize what the man was talking about. The puppeteer was not lurking somewhere deeper within the suit of armor nor was he behind the container of water – he was the water. This abominable, mechanical eyesore was the only way for the mutant to talk, walk and interact with the environment in any meaningful way.</p><p>"Or… Better yet… Just die!" the water-man growled in a great amount of offense as the top-center compartment slammed shut while one lower than it opened up. Mana had to turn her eyes away from the intense light emanating from inside the mechanical suit of armor almost immediately. It was like the man was holding a compressed star inside his costume and using it to fuel the suit's every twitch.</p><p>The core of the suit fired off a cascade of flares, the emanating energy merged into a single, focused beam of artificial star energy. The beam simply deleted every bit of stone in its way from existence, carving out a deep ridge on its devastating path to the magician. Where before the water, mixed with the iron dust ever-present in the air around the Valley of Hell was washing the valley, now it evaporated in a far-reaching distance from the beam itself.</p><p>The magician hunched over, from the outside perspective it did not look like she had the time to accomplish much before the death ray swallowed her up completely. The highly destructive and infernal attack of the mechanical man began at a slightly off angle but the living tube of water quickly diverted his beam higher up, having it cross as far out as light could cross in the mere moments of its existence before dissipating away.</p><p>The heat present in the air made the iron dust in the air turn to sparks, creating a rain of flickering flares in the nearest vicinity. The first few moments after the beam's end, only a curious howling noise could have been made out. Something unnatural that made the dust and smoke surrounding the area dissipate much faster than it normally would have. After the smoke cloud shrunk considerably, it revealed a transparent orb of rotating wind chakra – a protective bubble around Mana with the magician still standing in her crouched over position with her hands placed at her sides.</p><p>She could only use her Magic Bubble jutsu at its weakest, prototype version without speaking, she still had to clap her hands before extending the protective bubble of Wind Release chakra and if the solar beam sent at her had any traces of Fire Release chakra her entire plan would have quite literally blown up in her face together with a part of the large chunk of the solar system if the beam wasn't controlled with the finesse most ninja put into controlling their attacks.</p><p>Being pushed so close to death, having to roll so many dices all at once just so she could buy a handful of moments to be relentlessly attacked over and over again… It irked Mana and the annoyance was becoming visible on her usually tame and soft expression once the magician resumed her fighting stance, her palms placed against one another in a triangular shape – a stance that optimized the speed for hand seals that required weaving but sacrificed the potential use of one's hands in the process.</p><p>"What's the matter? Not even a single attack in return? Are you that short of breath or are you still fostering hopes of a peac…" the mechanical man was offering more words of belittlement before Mana silenced him by speaking over him.</p><p>"Shut up. Your sad life has made you bitter, that is often the case and I am sorry for the difficulties you had to go through. But that does not give you the right to treat the lives of other people like something that's easily severed and thrown away." Mana spoke up. Augmenting her body, deafening herself to her own personal phobias of abusing the gimmick and breaking her body again, to push herself through her injuries was not the wisest thing at the moment but this was what needed to be said and done.</p><p>"Stop! Don't talk to me like you know anything about the life I've lived or how I chose to live it!" the mechanical man swiped his hand in defiance before sitting into a fetus position. His fingers hooked into the vents present on his armored shins while the suit's feet shut into the suit of armor to aid in creating its spherical shape.</p><p>"I do know everything. You've shown me enough to understand all that you folk are doing here." Mana declared with an equally defiant look. The mechanical sphere covered itself in the aura of flames emanating from its core, forming something akin to a mechanical star. With a quick, shooting motion, the feet platforms shot out and launched the blazing, mechanical sphere into the sky to crash back down.</p><p>Finally, Mana had witnessed the moment when her opponent has made a mistake, overextended and withdrawn from the battlefield far enough to give her the most precious of resources – time. This would have been a battle that lasted just a few exchanges had she not had to work with busted ribs and limited air in her lungs, have to augment her body or power through pain just to breathe and speak. The words that she offered to send her opponent into a frenzy before came at a costly price, after all.</p><p>The magician tilted her face up, having initiated her response already and stared at the crashing sphere that intended to devastate the entire valley and shake the entire world so soon after the last time it had shaken. The sky-crashing sphere landed atop of the little magician, crushing her into the ground and then continuing to splinter the entire valley, creating a cone of shockwaves and burning air that could have been seen all the way from the orbit, beyond even the higher levels of the atmosphere where the sky-diving, mechanical sphere had initially reached to gather velocity and generate force for its impact.</p><p>The lightly shaken mechanical man looked around. The movements of the armor were a little unnatural and twitchy, the joints at the middle of each artificial limb struggled to extend all the way creating a weary image of the robotic crutch body. What confused the automated devastator was the fact that a shower of flower petals was getting washed away and scurried along by the wind. Surely the world-shaking destruction that his attack has wrought should have burnt up mere flower petals.</p><p>The more the puddle-man worked to wrap his genius mind around the shower of petals around him, the more he pulled the string, the more of it rolled out without any sight of the end. How did these petals come to be if this entire valley was a total dead zone unfit for life? Living in an inhospitable and dreadful place like the Valley of Hell would have been similar to getting used to living on another planet.</p><p>The smoke and the iron mist of the valley masked the transformation of the petals. Each one of them blurred and flickered like a dissolving mirage, revealing each petal to be a shuriken that attacked the robotic opponent of Mana's. The dome-head covered himself up, making his stance more defense-oriented and sturdy but it was so not because the armored ninja possessed any skill in martial arts whatsoever. He hunkered himself down out of sheer instinct, like a beaten man covering his head to protect himself from the onslaught.</p><p>"Shuriken? You think you can as much as scratch my shell with mere shuriken!?" a squeaky voice emanated from deep inside the armor, augmented by whatever machinery even allowed for a conscious puddle of water to speak out loud in the first place.</p><p>"It's not about what I am thinking at all…" Mana's voice echoed from somewhere inside the thick fog of iron dust. The shuriken all moved in unison, directed at the hunched over mechanical man. The shuriken rained down upon the hunkered enemy in a vicious and coordinated assault, bypassing its sturdy defenses by phasing through them. The puddle-man's own, genius mind, capable of making entire stars work for him to realize his wild dream of becoming a ninja, but for all the wrong reasons, had betrayed him, causing intolerable strain of his most treasured asset.</p><p>"That's what you fear most, isn't it?" Mana grumbled through pain, clutching at her chest and sides just to alleviate the pressure that made her core ache with every drawn breath or uttered word. Yet the magician was so adamant about giving her opponent something to think about, something to reevaluate his life for and put his genius mind to a better use than building an armor that allowed him to realize his ambition for vengeance and taking the position of the people that bullied and belittled him, so he could be on top of the bullying chain instead on the bottom.</p><p>"Shut up!" a defiant response came from the collapsed suit of armor. The machinery tried to pick itself back up but folded repeatedly and continued to writhe on the ground. Had the armor not vaporized most of the waters present underneath the valley, he'd have surely been submerged right now and in risk of drowning. All that the damaged mind inside the suit could do was to pound the ground like a capricious toddler, grunt and yell in fury.</p><p>"Your precious mind exposed to the cruel world around you. Kicked back down to where you started from." Mana completed her string of thoughts despite the objections of her enemy. Despite the pain that speaking caused to herself.</p><p>"Just stop posturing over me and finish me off! You may have the honor of killing the smartest man you will ever meet – Hozuki Masu, but know that your sweet victory shall be a short one. Amongst our clansmen that have been sent here to eliminate the Blood Lagoon, we have one of the newly formed Seven Swordsmen of the Mist – Mizoma, the Tengu of the Phantom Lantern!" the defeated mech and the puny lab tube inside it found reasons for gloating where they could.</p><p>"I don't care about that." Mana shook her head. "I will warn you to stay down, however."</p><p>"Just what is it that you're trying to achieve here? Are you here to kill one of the Seven Swordsmen? To kill a bunch of Kirigakure ninja, perhaps? Or are you here on the same mission as we are – to slay the genetic abomination that is the Blood Lagoon?" Masu, the self-introduced, living water asked in the most passive-aggressive tone imaginable.</p><p>"That is your mistake, you ask questions after being defeated. You're a man of science, aren't you? I know little about that subject but I know that the greatest punishment for one such as yourself is not having all the answers you want to have. Let it be your lesson for the next time." Mana managed to work up a little smirk before the magician turned around to walk away from the battle in search for the next one. The hopelessness of accomplishing the impossible gauntlet and becoming the hero she always wanted to be had returned to her, these were the odds she always faced and even if she failed… At least she failed to face the odds she herself chose.</p><p>"Do you truly intend to fight both the Blood Lagoon and the Hozuki? Because that is what it will take to stop this fighting! Neither side will relent! I may as well finish you off before you get started!" in a final act of defiance, the suit of armor flew up in a desperate attempt to body slam on top of the injured magician. What the stubborn man of science did not expect was to face Mana face-to-face and see the disappointment on her face firsthand. He had clearly intended to land a free blow just like he did before but by now Mana knew what to expect from this mechanical man. By the time the dome-head was in the highest point and beginning to move downward, Mana's hand was already raised with a card in between two of her fingers, pointed right at the airborne attacker.</p><p>A gleam of Lightning Release chakra passed through the card with chakra conductive tips sharpening its edges to channel Mana's Magical Shock Jutsu – one of the few jutsu from the earliest point of the magician's ninja career which she had mastered to the extent where she no longer needed to speak words or weave hand seals to use before the finals of the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>The lightning appeared to easily circulate all through the suit of armor and, judging from the inhuman screams of the living water-tube inside, sufficient enough to short circuit and break the speech devices, rendering the suit completely silent, was an incredibly effective manner of attack against both the mechanical and the aquatic components of Hozuki Masu.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and felt the environment around her. Kouta's chakra was rampant and growing even more with every passing moment. He must have let out his Curse Seal and the tainted chakra pulsing inside was leaking into his system. He would likely lose control if this continued and then he'd only add another factor on the disadvantages that Team Fir had to overcome here side. Erumo was nearby, the two must have been working together. The trapster's chakra was so calm and felt like much less than it should have felt like. It must have been her own unique way of staying concealed around sensors – not a complete suppression but a half-baked one with a little pinch of chakra camouflage.</p><p>Changing the way one's chakra felt required great control over one's own self. Even the brightest soul could have felt like a pool of molasses if they got furious and allowed their bloodlust to flow through their body unimpeded, however, it required more than just a rampant emotion. It required for that emotion to define and take control of who that person was, the ninja wishing to change how their chakra felt needed to dim down everything else in them and then fuel the emotion they wanted to bring out further. That sort of feat was immensely difficult given how most of the time such a change took place one was overcome by emotion. A vengeful soul could not have cared less about pushing sliders of the emotions inside them and meditating…</p><p>Yushijin was involving himself in a brawl between the Kirigakure ninja that Team Fir still had not met and the assassin that Hozuki Masu called Burbotta. Before breathing could properly resume with the magician preparing herself for more moving around in her current state, she sensed a handful of alarming chakra flares closing in on her.</p><p>The swordswoman with short, dark hair landed nearby the magician and looked straight into Mana's eyes. There was something sharp and very piercing to the woman's glare but the magician managed to withstand it. Despite her worries over the irrational, once the magician realized that there was little that the swordswoman could threaten her with, that she was aware with, it was much easier to withstand her penetrating gaze. Even if her eyes possessed similar qualities to the Sharingan, that the crimson orbs of the Blood Lagoon reminded so much of, it was not like Mana had a particular skill at fighting on the illusionary battlefield.</p><p>Even if the Uchiha were one step ahead of everybody else. Mana felt confident in her own illusionary abilities to not get completely dwarfed in such an encounter and these ninja, while similarly smug and wicked to how your usual Uchiha felt, were anything but.</p><p>"Had a nice view?" the magician figured that it was still best to be at least a bit welcoming and open towards the Blood Lagoon, given how none of them actually engaged in combat or tried to kill the Konoha ninja.</p><p>"Didn't look like you needed it that much…" the fully-armored warrior crossed his arms over his chest. Judging from his tone, he was complimenting Mana but surely he must have seen and known how costly this battle was for the magician and how close she was to losing her life?</p><p>"We were under no obligation to help you people, we didn't know why you were here, to begin with. It is true that you seem to be at odds with the Hozuki clan assassins sent by Kirigakure to exterminate us but… It's not like Konoha isn't known for extermination or two." The young swordswoman answered while sheathing her sword and placing it by her side as a peaceful notion, at least temporarily so.</p><p>"You don't need to tell me that, my mother is the last of the Wandering Ninja group," Mana replied with all the emotional baggage that came with bringing that old thing up.</p><p>"I… Am not sure what that is…" the swordswoman admitted, although the soft rubbing of her neck under the very tip of her dark hair suggested that she felt a little bit guilty about not knowing what was being spoken of.</p><p>"Neither do I, I guess Konoha masks their exterminations a little bit better." The armored companion of the young swordswoman sounded quite chipper, considering he was speaking of what basically amounted to genocide.</p><p>"I understand that you wish to hear an explanation of what is happening here so that you do not lose your friends for reasons that are a mystery to you. I can explain things a little for you but it will take some time. Perhaps it would be better to defeat the Kirigakure assassins first, although I will understand if you find it deceitful of us to ask you to defeat our enemies before offering you anything akin to an explanation…" the swordswoman appeared to be very softspoken, much more so than any Uchiha Mana had met, perhaps the difference was only skin-deep?</p><p>"I would very much like you to explain a few things, however, I am not the leader of Team Fir, I will not presume to make the decisions for the entire team." Mana huffed through her natural difficulties breathing combined with those caused by the battle she just went through. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather free up our leader and then have you explain things to him."</p><p>Without answering anything, the frail, crimson-eyed swordswoman nodded.</p>
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<a name="section0546"><h2>546. Her Lady, June Drench</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The large rock that Team Fir chose to observe the raging battle from was collapsing from the powerful blow that the mechanical man dished out. Yushijin's feet remained firmly planted to one of the many collapsing pieces of rock. Discontent soured the chuunin's face as he was just about to deliver another decisive blow to his overextending and entirely too greedy opponent.</p><p>A man-sized mass of water arced all the way from a platform lower down. It was what the tricky assassin assumed to be a stealthy attack, truth be told, it was not half bad. Had it been anyone but Yushijin or someone with uncanny chakra sensory abilities – it would have worked. The leader of Team Fir had to hand it to the young woman – she moved with skill, silence, and swiftness.</p><p>To the perception of the enemy, Yushijin would have frozen in time again. Just like the plummeting rocks did or every single one of the tiny droplets separated from the splashing arc created by the living mass of water rushing toward the Konoha ninja. By the time the assassin would have become aware of Yushijin's feet tapping against the floor of yet another rock, reinitiating the Art of Tree Climbing technique to maintain the steady footing on top of a plummeting and not always upright chunk of rock, it would have all been too late.</p><p>In a refreshing shower, the mysterious and bloodthirsty female assassin exploded into a lifeless rain of water pouring down to the floor at the same time as the plummeting rocky platforms. Yushijin's feet once again left the surface of the falling rocks for no other reason but to allow them to crash down onto the floor of the Valley of Hell.</p><p>Liquid busted through the nooks and crannies of the debris, gathering into a single pool that erected a feminine shape that soon changed from the texture and appearance of an aquatic humanoid and into the angry and deadly, sai-wielding assassin from before. With a submissive and disgruntled face, the young woman sheathed her weapons and drew another pair in their stead – a pair of blades that were longer than the usual swords that would have been wielded in a pair yet a tiny bit short of what would have qualified as a decent sword, let alone a titan such as Yushijin's weapon.</p><p>The leader of Team Fir noted that the woman changed her weapons a bit too late. She was skilled, rather, remarkably well-trained but not very versed in battlefield experience. She clearly knew that her sai-combinations would get her nowhere due to the massive difference in the length of weaponry and the fact that Yushijin's main jutsu that comprised his fighting style completely nullified any speed advantages she may have had if any. However, she doubted her instinct up to now. It was clear to Yushijin that his opponent acted not out of instinct and experience but out of theoretical knowledge of the battle, a complex myriad of processes like experimentation and the drawing of conclusions based on their results.</p><p>"You've made a mistake picking this fight." Yushijin declared bluntly. There was no enjoyment in the inevitable outcome of his clash but neither was there any rage or brashness that could have cost him a won battle. Despite his wish to join and support his squad as soon as possible, the Konoha chuunin had enough experience on a battlefield to let the battle play out and just trust in the abilities of his teammates.</p><p>"It is not me who has made a deadly mistake!" the assassin declared while boldly charging ahead. Her blades moved in a rush of up and down motions, completely neglecting the wide swings or any attempts to move around the wide yet slower blocks of her opponent.</p><p>This strategy baffled Yushijin a bit. As would have any action performed by his opponent that he did not fully understand. At this point in his career, the young man had learned not to make the mistake of assuming foolishness and lack of skill or training from his opponent's part as usually that was not the case behind confusing attacks – it was some other deceptive plot being masked by novice mistakes or things Yushijin simply failed to understand.</p><p>And yet… He had no other choice but to fall for his opponent's attacks. He did what anyone in his shoes would have done – placed simple blocks that completely disabled not only the current attacks but locked out his opponent from proceeding with her fixation on up and down motions. That was just what his opponent would have expected, however, the Konoha chuunin expended some more effort than it would have been expected of him – he activated his Last Resort illusion once more.</p><p>The eyes of the young man shot open when he realized that once his perception focused back onto the battle he could not locate his enemy anymore, as if it was his perception of time that had just stopped and his opponent who had escaped his tracing. The issue at hand was that Yushijin had mere seconds of time and he still did not have eyes on his opponent. In a move of desperation but also battlefield improvisation, something only decent battlefield experience could have taught, the Konoha ninja leaned down and swept with his leg in a wide-reaching low-kick.</p><p>His sweep encountered hard resistance, proving a successful mean of counterattack to his opponent's clever attack. The painful bump against his shin alerted him that he had successfully tripped his opponent even before the young man noticed his opponent spinning in for a backstabbing attack. It was an interesting manner of attack – lull the enemy into a false sense of security, make them believe that they had a clear block on your swings and then unleash everything still pent up in a single explosion of speed to deliver a finishing touch.</p><p>Had Yushijin not set off his Last Resort at the right time out of sheer instinct, he'd have had two blades stabbing through his back and probably disabling him for the kill. And yet… The Konoha swordsman refused to call the prevention of this outcome anything resembling a synonym of luck, he'd have filed this success on the battlefield to grueling training and right opponents that humbled him early on and taught all the right lessons at the right time.</p><p>And yet it appeared as if the female assassin still did not have enough, with an admittedly impressive roll back, she got back on her feet and prepared for a lunge from a low, seated position, holding her blades in front of her like a great cat showing off her fangs and claws to another predator drooling over its kill. Perhaps, it dawned to Yushijin, a similar worry was on this woman's mind at the moment and she still incorrectly assumed that the Konoha party was here to kill these Blood Lagoon ninja for them?</p><p>"If you stand in our way, it is you who is making the last mistake of your life," the tattooed assassin declared before lunging like a mad dog at Yushijin's feet. It was an interesting attack – the female assassin noticed that her opponent was taller than her and that he carried a massive weapon to boot and attacked him at what should have been his most vulnerable spot – his lower shins and his feet.</p><p>Regardless of the clever tactic, the flaw was in execution, once more the young woman lacked experience and relied on what seemed like a dogma that she was taught – "if your opponent is tall, if they carry a heavy weapon or gear – go for the feet". A truly skilled combatant would have first engaged the enemy in a barrage of mock attacks and checked the swiftness of the opponent's footwork before devoting themselves fully to a strategy such as this.</p><p>Yushijin's feet blurred in a graceful backward dance. He hopped on the very tips of his toes, his feet moved so fast and so silently that they barely even disturbed the floor underneath before shifting positions with one another. Irritated with the constant pressure of his opponent that amounted to nothing and only proceeded to further postpone getting some answers, Yushijin finally shot his weapon out in front of him, placing the tip of his claymore at the bottom of his opponent's chin. With a taunting motion, the Konoha swordsman tilted it slightly just to have it sting the young woman a little and force her head up so that her eyes faced his own.</p><p>"You're… Good. Who is your master?" the assassin asked, at first her eyes blazed with blood-boiling fury but after a pair of awkward moments of staring right at Yushijin's eyes, that reflected his no-bullshit mentality the best at the moment of their stares clashing, she became somewhat tamer. For the first time since meeting her, the assassin did not viciously attempt to kill Hanshin for entire seconds.</p><p>"Does it matter? Would you betray your current alignment just to train with my master?" Yushijin asked.</p><p>The young woman looked away, her submissiveness may have been just a ploy as she let go of her swords and dashed backward and outside the range of her opponent's sword. She was still slightly flustered over the direct question, however.</p><p>"No. I guess not…" she admitted. "Master Mizoma may be one of the Seven Swords of the Mist, that I strive to eliminate, but I have more honor than to abandon him for power blindly."</p><p>"Ah, I see… That explains it." Yushijin smirked. When confronted by a confused look of his opponent, he explained. "I wondered why you possessed such excellent knowledge but could not execute all of it right. You'd have been more than a challenge for me if you'd have been properly trained. Does your master knows you intend to kill him at some point?"</p><p>"Of course," Burbotta admitted looking down. "That's why he took me up under his wing - because he found my ambition amusing."</p><p>"Your master sabotaging your training by withholding battlefield experience from you is the best compliment you will ever get," Yushijin smirked before sheathing his sword and turning around, the young man looked around and appeared to be sniffing the air as if one could smell much more than just the abominable feeling of iron dust in the air. "Means he's really worried you might kill him one day."</p><p>"How dare you!?" Burbotta flipped out again, she weaved a handful of hand seals and leaped forward. The mid-section of her body turned into a liquid while shuriken-shaped projectiles rained down upon Yushijin. The arms of the female Hozuki assassin turned into scythe-like liquid limbs as well while the kunoichi prepared to slash at her detested opponent like a mantis.</p><p>Yushijin's heel moved up, kicking the bottom end of his sheath, which in terms unsheathed a decent chunk of his sword. The exposed steel lit up with a faint, blue shine as the chuunin's chakra coated it entirely. The Konohagakure swordsman leaned to the side, like a dog catching raindrops with its tongue, the young man managed to move the blade of his still halfway sheathed sword in the way of every Water Release shuriken coming at him.</p><p>"The penalty for insulting master Mizoma in front of me is death!" the Hozuki youth declared right before her follow-up attack.</p><p>With a triumphant smile on her face, Burbotta slashed with her morphed arms in an X-shaped pattern. The scythe-limbs cleaved through the young man, leaving him in four pieces that floated in a nightmarish, lifeless haze before popping away into a cloud of smoke. A thumping sound and four falling chunks of rocky debris alerted the offended Hozuki assassin that her attack only caught a substitution and not the real Yushijin.</p><p>"It seems to be a pattern with you…" Yushijin sighed from farther away, where the crumbling rocky structure had gathered the largest piles of debris. "In any case, it seems like you won't back down easily and I really need to gather my team back together."</p><p>"Coward, stay here and fight!" Burbotta yelled out, completely unthreatened by the concept of fighting an opponent who was constantly looking for a way out of the fight for the most part of the engagement.</p><p>"Staying here and fighting is exactly what I would feel a coward would do…" Yushijin closed his eyes and let the detestable feel of iron fill his lungs and mouth. "A coward would allow himself to become engaged in a meaningless battle while it is his responsibility as a leader to guide his squad away from this hopeless battle. The burden of a leader is something I do not think you will ever understand while clinging to your master's shadow…"</p><p>Just like that, the Konoha ninja poofed away into a cloud of smoke and a momentary whirl of wind that carried the aftereffects of the Body Flicker Jutsu away. With a scorned look on her face, Burbotta followed the object of her bloody obsession. Not even for a single moment did the sight of her enemy leave her tracks, the air around the Valley of Hell boomed and thundered with a myriad of steel clangs and thuds before it all disappeared as suddenly as it all started and both of the ninja landed firmly on a tall rock nearby, finally allowing the light around them to fully cover them and make them visible to the naked eye.</p><p>"Persistent…" Yushijin grumbled to himself. "I must warn you, if you stand in the way of me rescuing my squad, I will not hesitate to kill you."</p><p>"Finally tasted your own medicine?" Burbotta taunted her opponent in return.</p><p>Hanshin charged forward, he drew his sword the moment that his feet left the rocky solace of the large rock and flew forward like an arrow propelled by the strength of his own lower body. Burbotta put her hands up, revealing an obsidian handle within her grasp and a dull, metallic stick as long as half her arm reaching all the way to her elbow and a bit past that.</p><p>It was an efficient way to counter larger and therefore slower sharp weapons. The texture of the pair of tonfa in Burbotta's arms looked coarse like sandpaper, they were more likely than not designed to chip away at the sharpness of any blade and their entire point was to provide the user with an efficient way to block sword swings with their martial arts skill without cutting their actual limbs by putting something in between their forearms and the edge of the sword.</p><p>Burbotta crossed her hands, forming a black X in front of her that was meant to take the force of Yushijin's front swing. The Hozuki assassin stood and waited for the impact, milliseconds felt like the entire eternity but the blunt force of the blocked sword swing simply did not task the young woman's shoulders or push her back in any way.</p><p>Just when something began seeming suspicious for the Kirigakure assassin, Yushijin's blade split her head into two by digging into the top and severing it sideways. Burbotta's split crown dripped in the shape of water and littered the floor under her feet, her body bloated and moved unnaturally while the lost water reabsorbed into the young woman's body and then reformed her damaged head. This time it was Yushijin who did not let up, every muscle in his body overflowing with the need to overcome his incredibly incessant opponent.</p><p>The anguish behind his decision to bring his squad here drove his swings, anxiety that his wrong call to pick a fight in this unfavorable battlefield gave birth to fueled the illusions that Hanshin weaved and irritation by his own failure in fulfilling his responsibilities as a leader by picking a fight for his squad that was defined by pretty much every circumstance surrounding it being some sort of disadvantage, starting from the number game, ending with their lack of intelligence about the entire affair.</p><p>Burbotta failed to keep up with Yushijin's movements. His unnatural rhythm once again threw her off completely, she placed her blocks responding to what she perceived the Konoha ninja's speed to be but she did not realize that by messing with her perception of time, Yushijin effectively robbed her of the knowledge of what his true speed was. Every added instance of Last Resort giving or taking the Kirigakure assassin a feint misdirection about time having stopped and then tricking her by having Yushijin appear in front of her made her believe that her opponent was vastly too fast and capable of dictating the dance of swords. Truthfully, their speeds were about the same but Yushijin allowed himself the luxury of greatly dropping his true speed just so he could further confuse his opponent.</p><p>Here this remarkably talented young woman thought that her opponent moved in almost an instant, placing her blocks perfectly, the moment she had the chance to respond to her own reads of Yushijin's movements but when she blocked or attempted to dodge she was always too early. The true strike always came a moment after and that always cost the Hozuki precious limbs or made her lose her head repeatedly in the more literal sense even if the figurative one still applied.</p><p>One of the myriads of agonizing exchanges concluded with Yushijin raising his sword at the decisive moment, just a few inches shy from Burbotta's frightened eyes before swinging his claymore around over his head and then sheathing it back. The young woman shook in her boots, staring right at the blank stare of her opponent who stared into a blank point somewhere in the distance before flickering away out of existence, having been revealed to be just another remnant of time frozen inside her own mind. A light shuffling of sandals alerted Burbotta that her opponent was nonchalantly walking away again, leaving her to ferment in her own despair and defeat. Just when the tattooed one turned around to express her newly gathered disdain, demand for their clash to continue, Yushijin interjected having perfectly read even this response in advance.</p><p>"Stop this. Haven't you noticed it yet? You're not producing any sweat despite taking me on for quite some time now in this hellish place. Even I'm drenched. All that dissolving and reforming you've been doing – you're dehydrated, aren't you? I was wondering what the weakness of your clan technique was and it appears to be hydration – every drop of water you dissolve into comes out of your own body. I'd advise not taking another step, you might not make it all the way up to me if you do…"</p><p>"Don't think this is over…" Burbotta grit her teeth.</p><p>"Over? Our countries are constantly at each other's throats. We're bound to meet sooner or later…" Yushijin turned his head back halfway just to send shivers down the back of his dried out, tormented opponent. A reminder of what refreshing showers outside this valley felt like.</p>
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<a name="section0547"><h2>547. One Of The Seven Draws Their Sword</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta looked around, scanning the area from a bird's point of view in an attempt to find his teammate. It was difficult finding a kunoichi who fought by concealing herself through camouflage or ninjutsu and laid traps for her unsuspecting opponents. If Erumo could just be found like that, she'd be quite bad at what she did. A good support ninja never showed themselves off enough to be chosen as a prime target as they were usually easier to take out as a result of being weaker than their more combat focused teammates.</p><p>The floating Juugo clansman observed a small, slate grey skinned man with a head easily half the size of his entire body charged at the central figure of the assassin organization – the dreadful, lantern-helmed specter of the battlefield in the middle. The toddler-shaped man was one of the four ninja doing their best to bring their enemy down, so far their combined efforts appeared to result in a stalemate.</p><p>Kouta's eyes ran across the nearest battlefield like through lines of a book he was interested in. The Juugo changed the position of his body, directing his head down and then blasting downward like an arrow, towards the location of the clash. The fight was even. His involvement could have changed that. Erumo likely thought the same…</p><p>A moment of doubt smoldered in the young man's mind, was this truly his assessment of his friend's process of thinking or did he merely make it up on the spot to justify involving himself in this brawl? The young man bit his tongue hard enough to squint in pain and then moved his jet-feet closer together to make his descent more streamlined. Like a rocket, he shot right at the ghastly man.</p><p>Pain reverberated throughout Kouta's entire body. It felt like multiple daggers had pierced his every limb, stringy, tearing sounds echoed through the young man's body overwhelmed by a deafening pop that then transitioned into weaker cracks somewhere within his inner ear. Even while his body became completely battered by the massive opposing force stopping his reckless rush at the very last moment, out of sheer instinct, Kouta dashed back before even noticing the devastation rampant all over his morphed body parts. All of them were covered with severe cracks, exposing bleak, fleshy bits under them.</p><p>"You're not one of the Blood Lagoon and yet you've come here to die regardless?" the lantern-helmed, spectral ninja wondered out loud even though, judging from his tone, the remark was meant more to be kept to himself.</p><p>"Well, well… You've dodged Mizoma's kill shot in there. Nice moves, kid." The Blood Lagoon kunoichi in the long, elegant dress, favoring offensive taijutsu style licked her lips.</p><p>Kouta did not quite understand what the woman was talking about. He did not see any follow-up attacks… Then again, maybe that was the point? He didn't see them because someone of his level of skill should not have seen it and died rushing at the vastly superior opponent? In that case, Kouta only dodged the enemy's attack due to relying on sheer instinct. It was the way his father fought and tried teaching Kouta to fight – no thought, just the movements one fighter's gut commanded them to make. It may have just saved his life…</p><p>"Who's this now?" a feminine-looking man in a frilly undershirt, a leather vest and a crimson, silken cloth that remained firmly held upon the man's back due to a pair of massive, metallic crosses, both of which were connected by their longer, lower parts like crossed blades. "More importantly, why are you helping us?"</p><p>The toddler-shaped man giggled just like one. His childish mannerisms creeped Kouta out having in mind the facial features of a seasoned man stuck on the grand cranium of the miniature ninja. "Who in their right minds would help us? He's a Konoha ninja, can't you see? It would make sense for a Konoha ninja to just want to off Mizoma. It's dangerous for one of the Seven Swords to roam the Fire Country…"</p><p>"Any threat to the integrity of my head on my shoulders is worth the reward of removing your cancerous existence from this world!" the spectral titan whom the Blood Lagoon ninja referred to as "Mizoma" growled while stepping forward. Kouta took note of the loud and heavy clinging noises coming from the busted up black cape covering Mizoma. Undoubtedly, this man did not share the affinity for strange, gothic or Lolita-styled clothing that bound these Blood Lagoon ninja, although the hatred in the man's voice sounded almost… Personal.</p><p>Brown and almost wooden-like growths covered Kouta's lower body. The fist of the young man morphed into a gargantuan club that felt almost too massive to swing around for the Juugo and could only remain fixed in an upright or vertical position. The jets of chakra erupted from the lower part of the Juugo's body sending the newly transformed medical ninja spiraling through the distance between him and his enemy in mere split-seconds.</p><p>Mizoma put up his hand, he was arrogant to think that such a feeble defense would protect him against Kouta's rage. The endless rage of a Juugo that spanned for generations, had no reason, no definitive beginning or end in sight, not until the very last of the murderous, unstable warriors were put down like rabid dogs. With a thunderous clang, Kouta's misshapen fist hit the gauntlet of the one of the Seven Swords. Something was wrong… Kouta was not moving – the vain and almost effortless defense of his opponent proved insanely effective but… How?</p><p>Kouta's fist greatly diminished in size, as a medical ninja, the young Juugo possessed a remarkable talent in controlling himself in the early stages of his transformation that not even his father – a prodigious Juugo in his own right, did not possess. The sight that Kouta saw made him both fascinated, excited, and about to barf at the same time – Mizoma's left arm was bloated and buffed up, it was like the muscular structure of the Kirigakure ninja had multiplied greatly but the change was not purely cosmetic – he had the unquantifiable physical might to back it up too.</p><p>The limited rays of light that managed to bust through the constant gloom of blood red that lingered in the Valley of Hell reflected off of the three blades on the side of Mizoma's gauntlet. It was a grim prophecy of the swift end that Kouta would soon meet at this man's hand, however, Kouta was a firm believer in changes in history that well-timed and read prophecies could originate.</p><p>The Juugo's hand morphed once more, creating cannon-like tubes at the back ends of his elbow. Streams of chakra jets flared out from them, not only matching but greatly surpassing the intensity present in Kouta's foot-jets when his body undergone this transformation to gain the ability of flight. With this newly gained acceleration and might, the Juugo roared out as he moved all of his strength through his halted fist, managing to lift his opponent off the ground and after a few signs of Mizoma giving in – send the ninja swordsman flying and crashing through mountains of stone that comprised the valley.</p><p>Kouta's right arm hung limp and waved like a lifeless pendulum. It felt like it weighed like it was made of lead. The Juugo let his eyes run down his twitching limb. The medical ninja inside him saw the cries of desperation and calls for reason that his own body let out, the son of a crazed warrior and a man he wanted to be more like chose to ignore all of those things. None of them were helpful to him at the moment.</p><p>"Wow, you pack a pretty mean wallop!" another Lolita-styled young lady with streaks of azure hair sticking out from under a dark hood, crossed over by belts all over it and few patches of snow-pale skin beaming through the shades hiding her. It was tough to say if this scythe-wielder possessed the creepy, red eyes of her peers as she wore a leather face mask that only let limited chunks of skin see the grace of sunlight. For someone appearing this edgy and grim, the woman's voice sure sounded annoying and whiny, even while she was complimenting Kouta.</p><p>"My girlfriend really dislikes people who want other people dead just because. She hates people who want other people dead in general so this one's particularly scornful to her eye and what pisses Mana off pisses me off." Kouta replied with a confident smile while raising and slowly stretching out his punching arm a little just to see if he regained all of the lost movement and feeling in it.</p><p>Even as he spoke that, Kouta doubted if the verbal sparrows he set free vocally truly reflected his feelings. Was he truly adamant to fight Mizoma because of the type of man he was and how strong he conflicted with Mana's ideals which the young man swore to himself to defend and protect or did he just punch one of the Seven Swords of the Mist through a handful of mountains because he really wanted to fight him and for that reason alone?</p><p>A roaring upward shower washed away the devastated debris from the mountains that one of the Seven Swords has busted on his impressive flight. Like mouths of a dragon, the aquatic calamity coiled and yet still powered through, finding the inner strength within it to rise even higher in the end. It became impossible to spot where exactly the liquid streams had disappeared to, for all one could have known – they may have left the orbit.</p><p>It took a blast this intense to free the pissed Kirigakure swordsman. The raging waters, after having released their more unstable cyclones had settled down and focused into a humanoid shape that then became riddled with sharp shapes. More and more resembling the deadly swordsman from before. In an almost miraculous looking act, the walking avatar of the unruly water turned to flesh, cloth, and steel that looked as sharp as the teeth of a shark and as cold as the abyssal depths. Flares, completely white and ethereal gleamed from under the helmet from within the few spaces of the man's face where the blackness tied over his head did not obscure them.</p><p>The feminine-looking man with the crosses connected behind his back reached back with his hand, gently pressing his finger against the sumptuous tips of the metallic accessory hanging on his back. Kouta noticed a striking drool of blood-red hanging from his finger where the man had purposefully pricked it on his own back. A familiar set of hand seals followed, sealing glyphs appeared on the palms of the Blood Lagoon ninja as he extended them in front of him after completing the set of hand seals.</p><p>"Multi-Summoning Jutsu!" he declared. Somber tendrils of shadowy smoke coiled out from under the man's leather gloves but no matter how much of it came out, the smoke could not overpower the shine of the glyphs present on the man's palms. It was tough to say if the glyphs formed over the man's gloves or if their gleam was intense enough to burn a hole through them.</p><p>From within the climbing and creeping smoke, a colony of onyx, eyeless bats appeared, flapping their wings in a coordinated manner like all of them surrendered to some sort of hypnosis or were controlled by a singular, hive mind. Due to the fact that the little critters had no eyes, the most of their furry heads were covered by a macabre grin and their wings appeared to be comprised of long, crooked, fingers of pitch-black skin, interconnected by an almost silky looking, half-transparent membrane.</p><p>As the bats swarmed the slowly but relentlessly walking forward swordsman, Kouta noticed strings of red, as thin as a needle but liquid in consistency, extending from the whirling swarm and forming a single, liquid sphere in the extended hand of the master of these uncanny and grotesque flying rodents. The sphere continued to expand in size before it erupted into crimson flames and burnt out right before everybody's eyes while the bats disappeared in the shroud of dark smoke that gave them birth in the first place.</p><p>Mizoma walked on, his helmet was slightly bent and opened wider, just in the place where a bat must have squirmed and just barely squeezed into to dig into the man's face, the man's clothes and cape were torn in places where the dreadful vermin got too wild in biting into their target. Even the pieces of Mizoma's armor comprised of nothing but steel and blades were bent up even if it did not look like the bats managed to dig their way through them.</p><p>"Enjoyed your drink, Lagoon scum?" Mizoma growled. The man's tone and fearless stance were completely different from before. Kouta noticed his thighs shaking and his feet slowly attempting to force him to take a step backward as the swordsman was coming closer to the group of four.</p><p>"You know all too well that us Hozuki aren't too delightful to squeeze dry." The bat-summoner replied, looking far braver than Kouta, whether it was because he could not sense the absolute death behind Mizoma of the Seven Swords of the Mist or because he could, yet remained unimpressed for whatever reason was yet unclear. "Nothing but water and no substance."</p><p>"You'll pay dearly for every tiny drop you've taken. And for comparing yourselves to us…" Mizoma raised his gauntlet up, letting his three short wrist blades shift places a pair of times before a sword appeared in the extended hand. Kouta still had enough control and thought in his noggin to realize that this ninja used a method of hand seals that were not made with his hands, but instead through different configurations of movements from his wrist blades.</p><p>It was an easy conclusion to make after seeing a blade of such size and caliber be unsealed through no other action than his wrist blades trading places a pair of times. Yet the simplicity through which the method of combat was deduced in no way reduced how impressive it was and how much dedication and training it would have required to master.</p><p>"Wait… Drop? You mean that thing those bats were streaming out was actually his blood? What are you guys exactly?" Kouta turned at his temporary allies for the duration of this brawl after putting a few things together.</p><p>"This really is not the time for that…" the macabre baby-man shook his head. Due to the massively unbalanced sized of the man's head, the sweat that ran down his forehead was similarly out of proportion.</p><p>"What they are is an unholy abomination that needs to be eradicated." Mizoma swung his newly unsealed sword around in his right hand before taking it up in both of his hands. It was an impressive weapon of an onyx handle, encrusted with gold-colored accessories and a hieroglyph that said "Three" right in the middle of the guard from both sides of the sword and in the middle of the blade where the golden enhancements crawled up the blade's backside and extended forward with a handful of golden spikes to add some shredding and hooking properties to the frightening lethality of the weapon.</p><p>"Also, a part of your own clan…" the elegant taijutsu-using kunoichi winked at the advancing threat. "Or maybe that's the reason why you want us dead so badly because we're a reflection of the Hozuki's own backyard."</p><p>"Don't you even dare sully that name with your mongrel mouths!" Mizoma completely lost it, charging at all four ninja with all of his aggression and swiftness. Kouta's feet finally got what they asked for – as the young man failed to identify any openings in his opponent's stance, lingering on this fruitless quest until it was all but too late to even attempt to avoid his attack, his body finally overcame the willpower that kept it adamant and began trembling back.</p><p>Mizoma's blade blurred and moved in a unique manner where it either moved so fast or used some other trick to achieve this effect, that it appeared to be in multiple places at once. It was simultaneously at the beginning of its swinging trajectory, halfway through it and had completed it all at the same time, judging from the multiple available locations of the blade. This visual confusion, added to the uncanny speed and skill in wielding a sword that Mizoma possessed, was quick to shed blood and stain the cerulean dress and its white ribbons that the woman wore to battle with vernal red.</p><p>The armored gauntlet of the member of the Seven Swords of the Mist reached out through the atmosphere of unmatched horror he had created with his ferocious attack to grab the belfry of the confused by the swiftness of her own demise Blood Lagoon kunoichi. Before it could drive his entire sword through her, the toddler-shinobi rammed his massive head into the side of the towering, armored ninja and sent him stumbling to the side a little, while the shock was nowhere near substantial to throw Mizoma off his feet, it certainly forced the lantern-helm to release his target from his deadly grasp.</p><p>"I won't let you hurt Utaretta-san!" the tiny man with a grand head declared while weaving his hand seals dangerously close to his opponent. Even to someone who often got lost in the excitement of battle like Kouta, this seemed reckless. Then again, perhaps this risky attack was the point, the Konoha ninja noticed that while Mizoma's unbridled fury was focused on the baby-man of the Blood Lagoon, the scythe-wielder had moved his injured ally away from the reach of Mizoma's terrifying blade.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Blood Moon!" the toddler chanted out, Kouta found it rather pointless to create a genjutsu that required its classification to be in the actual chant of the technique's name, from what he had noticed, Mana tended not to use such illusions until she had polished them to only require the lesser and more obscure parts of their name to be chanted upon use.</p><p>Mizoma grit his teeth and began stumbling back as if he had seen something especially panic-inspiring in the baby-man's display. The curious part that particularly stroke Kouta's fancy was how the white gleam in Mizoma's eyes turned blood-red while the illusion surrounded the swordsman of the mist and held it tightly within its clutches. It was tough to say what horrifying effects the man underwent inside the illusion, from what Kouta could tell, the man was scratching his own body as if attempting to tear his own helmet off, shaking and stumbling around like drunk or… Craving for a drink in the most severe and life-threatening of ways.</p><p>In a flash, Mizoma swung his arm to the side, his blade still clutched firmly within the man's arm. As seconds passed, the white matching the brightness of the stars in the night's sky, had anyone been able to see them to compare in the eternal, rusted gloom of the Valley of Hell, returned to Mizoma's eyes, the frozen trio of the Blood Lagoon wondered if the enemy had hurt their baby-man companion with that desperate swing.</p><p>Their worst fears were answered when with a fleshy, tearing sound, the titanic, compared to the proportions of the shinobi's body, attic lifted up, torn by the neck, and gently slid off of the short but thick neck that once supported it. The face of the beheaded ninja stayed permanently frozen in the expression of shock and agony as the pain of his demise only managed to hit his brain at the very final moments.</p><p>It was at that moment that Kouta realized that it was entirely possible that even united together, all they could have done against one of the Seven Swords of the Mist was color his sword with their own blood.</p>
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<a name="section0548"><h2>548. The Bigger Picture</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta looked around, scanning the area from a bird's point of view in an attempt to find his teammate. It was difficult finding a kunoichi who fought by concealing herself through camouflage or ninjutsu and laid traps for her unsuspecting opponents. If Erumo could just be found like that, she'd be quite bad at what she did. A good support ninja never showed themselves off enough to be chosen as a prime target as they were usually easier to take out as a result of being weaker than their more combat focused teammates.</p><p>The floating Juugo clansman observed a small, slate grey skinned man with a head easily half the size of his entire body charged at the central figure of the assassin organization – the dreadful, lantern-helmed specter of the battlefield in the middle. The toddler-shaped man was one of the four ninja doing their best to bring their enemy down, so far their combined efforts appeared to result in a stalemate.</p><p>Kouta's eyes ran across the nearest battlefield like through lines of a book he was interested in. The Juugo changed the position of his body, directing his head down and then blasting downward like an arrow, towards the location of the clash. The fight was even. His involvement could have changed that. Erumo likely thought the same…</p><p>A moment of doubt smoldered in the young man's mind, was this truly his assessment of his friend's process of thinking or did he merely make it up on the spot to justify involving himself in this brawl? The young man bit his tongue hard enough to squint in pain and then moved his jet-feet closer together to make his descent more streamlined. Like a rocket, he shot right at the ghastly man.</p><p>Pain reverberated throughout Kouta's entire body. It felt like multiple daggers had pierced his every limb, stringy, tearing sounds echoed through the young man's body overwhelmed by a deafening pop that then transitioned into weaker cracks somewhere within his inner ear. Even while his body became completely battered by the massive opposing force stopping his reckless rush at the very last moment, out of sheer instinct, Kouta dashed back before even noticing the devastation rampant all over his morphed body parts. All of them were covered with severe cracks, exposing bleak, fleshy bits under them.</p><p>"You're not one of the Blood Lagoon and yet you've come here to die regardless?" the lantern-helmed, spectral ninja wondered out loud even though, judging from his tone, the remark was meant more to be kept to himself.</p><p>"Well, well… You've dodged Mizoma's kill shot in there. Nice moves, kid." The Blood Lagoon kunoichi in the long, elegant dress, favoring offensive taijutsu style licked her lips.</p><p>Kouta did not quite understand what the woman was talking about. He did not see any follow-up attacks… Then again, maybe that was the point? He didn't see them because someone of his level of skill should not have seen it and died rushing at the vastly superior opponent? In that case, Kouta only dodged the enemy's attack due to relying on sheer instinct. It was the way his father fought and tried teaching Kouta to fight – no thought, just the movements one fighter's gut commanded them to make. It may have just saved his life…</p><p>"Who's this now?" a feminine-looking man in a frilly undershirt, a leather vest and a crimson, silken cloth that remained firmly held upon the man's back due to a pair of massive, metallic crosses, both of which were connected by their longer, lower parts like crossed blades. "More importantly, why are you helping us?"</p><p>The toddler-shaped man giggled just like one. His childish mannerisms creeped Kouta out having in mind the facial features of a seasoned man stuck on the grand cranium of the miniature ninja. "Who in their right minds would help us? He's a Konoha ninja, can't you see? It would make sense for a Konoha ninja to just want to off Mizoma. It's dangerous for one of the Seven Swords to roam the Fire Country…"</p><p>"Any threat to the integrity of my head on my shoulders is worth the reward of removing your cancerous existence from this world!" the spectral titan whom the Blood Lagoon ninja referred to as "Mizoma" growled while stepping forward. Kouta took note of the loud and heavy clinging noises coming from the busted up black cape covering Mizoma. Undoubtedly, this man did not share the affinity for strange, gothic or Lolita-styled clothing that bound these Blood Lagoon ninja, although the hatred in the man's voice sounded almost… Personal.</p><p>Brown and almost wooden-like growths covered Kouta's lower body. The fist of the young man morphed into a gargantuan club that felt almost too massive to swing around for the Juugo and could only remain fixed in an upright or vertical position. The jets of chakra erupted from the lower part of the Juugo's body sending the newly transformed medical ninja spiraling through the distance between him and his enemy in mere split-seconds.</p><p>Mizoma put up his hand, he was arrogant to think that such a feeble defense would protect him against Kouta's rage. The endless rage of a Juugo that spanned for generations, had no reason, no definitive beginning or end in sight, not until the very last of the murderous, unstable warriors were put down like rabid dogs. With a thunderous clang, Kouta's misshapen fist hit the gauntlet of the one of the Seven Swords. Something was wrong… Kouta was not moving – the vain and almost effortless defense of his opponent proved insanely effective but… How?</p><p>Kouta's fist greatly diminished in size, as a medical ninja, the young Juugo possessed a remarkable talent in controlling himself in the early stages of his transformation that not even his father – a prodigious Juugo in his own right, did not possess. The sight that Kouta saw made him both fascinated, excited, and about to barf at the same time – Mizoma's left arm was bloated and buffed up, it was like the muscular structure of the Kirigakure ninja had multiplied greatly but the change was not purely cosmetic – he had the unquantifiable physical might to back it up too.</p><p>The limited rays of light that managed to bust through the constant gloom of blood red that lingered in the Valley of Hell reflected off of the three blades on the side of Mizoma's gauntlet. It was a grim prophecy of the swift end that Kouta would soon meet at this man's hand, however, Kouta was a firm believer in changes in history that well-timed and read prophecies could originate.</p><p>The Juugo's hand morphed once more, creating cannon-like tubes at the back ends of his elbow. Streams of chakra jets flared out from them, not only matching but greatly surpassing the intensity present in Kouta's foot-jets when his body undergone this transformation to gain the ability of flight. With this newly gained acceleration and might, the Juugo roared out as he moved all of his strength through his halted fist, managing to lift his opponent off the ground and after a few signs of Mizoma giving in – send the ninja swordsman flying and crashing through mountains of stone that comprised the valley.</p><p>Kouta's right arm hung limp and waved like a lifeless pendulum. It felt like it weighed like it was made of lead. The Juugo let his eyes run down his twitching limb. The medical ninja inside him saw the cries of desperation and calls for reason that his own body let out, the son of a crazed warrior and a man he wanted to be more like chose to ignore all of those things. None of them were helpful to him at the moment.</p><p>"Wow, you pack a pretty mean wallop!" another Lolita-styled young lady with streaks of azure hair sticking out from under a dark hood, crossed over by belts all over it and few patches of snow-pale skin beaming through the shades hiding her. It was tough to say if this scythe-wielder possessed the creepy, red eyes of her peers as she wore a leather face mask that only let limited chunks of skin see the grace of sunlight. For someone appearing this edgy and grim, the woman's voice sure sounded annoying and whiny, even while she was complimenting Kouta.</p><p>"My girlfriend really dislikes people who want other people dead just because. She hates people who want other people dead in general so this one's particularly scornful to her eye and what pisses Mana off pisses me off." Kouta replied with a confident smile while raising and slowly stretching out his punching arm a little just to see if he regained all of the lost movement and feeling in it.</p><p>Even as he spoke that, Kouta doubted if the verbal sparrows he set free vocally truly reflected his feelings. Was he truly adamant to fight Mizoma because of the type of man he was and how strong he conflicted with Mana's ideals which the young man swore to himself to defend and protect or did he just punch one of the Seven Swords of the Mist through a handful of mountains because he really wanted to fight him and for that reason alone?</p><p>A roaring upward shower washed away the devastated debris from the mountains that one of the Seven Swords has busted on his impressive flight. Like mouths of a dragon, the aquatic calamity coiled and yet still powered through, finding the inner strength within it to rise even higher in the end. It became impossible to spot where exactly the liquid streams had disappeared to, for all one could have known – they may have left the orbit.</p><p>It took a blast this intense to free the pissed Kirigakure swordsman. The raging waters, after having released their more unstable cyclones had settled down and focused into a humanoid shape that then became riddled with sharp shapes. More and more resembling the deadly swordsman from before. In an almost miraculous looking act, the walking avatar of the unruly water turned to flesh, cloth, and steel that looked as sharp as the teeth of a shark and as cold as the abyssal depths. Flares, completely white and ethereal gleamed from under the helmet from within the few spaces of the man's face where the blackness tied over his head did not obscure them.</p><p>The feminine-looking man with the crosses connected behind his back reached back with his hand, gently pressing his finger against the sumptuous tips of the metallic accessory hanging on his back. Kouta noticed a striking drool of blood-red hanging from his finger where the man had purposefully pricked it on his own back. A familiar set of hand seals followed, sealing glyphs appeared on the palms of the Blood Lagoon ninja as he extended them in front of him after completing the set of hand seals.</p><p>"Multi-Summoning Jutsu!" he declared. Somber tendrils of shadowy smoke coiled out from under the man's leather gloves but no matter how much of it came out, the smoke could not overpower the shine of the glyphs present on the man's palms. It was tough to say if the glyphs formed over the man's gloves or if their gleam was intense enough to burn a hole through them.</p><p>From within the climbing and creeping smoke, a colony of onyx, eyeless bats appeared, flapping their wings in a coordinated manner like all of them surrendered to some sort of hypnosis or were controlled by a singular, hive mind. Due to the fact that the little critters had no eyes, the most of their furry heads were covered by a macabre grin and their wings appeared to be comprised of long, crooked, fingers of pitch-black skin, interconnected by an almost silky looking, half-transparent membrane.</p><p>As the bats swarmed the slowly but relentlessly walking forward swordsman, Kouta noticed strings of red, as thin as a needle but liquid in consistency, extending from the whirling swarm and forming a single, liquid sphere in the extended hand of the master of these uncanny and grotesque flying rodents. The sphere continued to expand in size before it erupted into crimson flames and burnt out right before everybody's eyes while the bats disappeared in the shroud of dark smoke that gave them birth in the first place.</p><p>Mizoma walked on, his helmet was slightly bent and opened wider, just in the place where a bat must have squirmed and just barely squeezed into to dig into the man's face, the man's clothes and cape were torn in places where the dreadful vermin got too wild in biting into their target. Even the pieces of Mizoma's armor comprised of nothing but steel and blades were bent up even if it did not look like the bats managed to dig their way through them.</p><p>"Enjoyed your drink, Lagoon scum?" Mizoma growled. The man's tone and fearless stance were completely different from before. Kouta noticed his thighs shaking and his feet slowly attempting to force him to take a step backward as the swordsman was coming closer to the group of four.</p><p>"You know all too well that us Hozuki aren't too delightful to squeeze dry." The bat-summoner replied, looking far braver than Kouta, whether it was because he could not sense the absolute death behind Mizoma of the Seven Swords of the Mist or because he could, yet remained unimpressed for whatever reason was yet unclear. "Nothing but water and no substance."</p><p>"You'll pay dearly for every tiny drop you've taken. And for comparing yourselves to us…" Mizoma raised his gauntlet up, letting his three short wrist blades shift places a pair of times before a sword appeared in the extended hand. Kouta still had enough control and thought in his noggin to realize that this ninja used a method of hand seals that were not made with his hands, but instead through different configurations of movements from his wrist blades.</p><p>It was an easy conclusion to make after seeing a blade of such size and caliber be unsealed through no other action than his wrist blades trading places a pair of times. Yet the simplicity through which the method of combat was deduced in no way reduced how impressive it was and how much dedication and training it would have required to master.</p><p>"Wait… Drop? You mean that thing those bats were streaming out was actually his blood? What are you guys exactly?" Kouta turned at his temporary allies for the duration of this brawl after putting a few things together.</p><p>"This really is not the time for that…" the macabre baby-man shook his head. Due to the massively unbalanced sized of the man's head, the sweat that ran down his forehead was similarly out of proportion.</p><p>"What they are is an unholy abomination that needs to be eradicated." Mizoma swung his newly unsealed sword around in his right hand before taking it up in both of his hands. It was an impressive weapon of an onyx handle, encrusted with gold-colored accessories and a hieroglyph that said "Three" right in the middle of the guard from both sides of the sword and in the middle of the blade where the golden enhancements crawled up the blade's backside and extended forward with a handful of golden spikes to add some shredding and hooking properties to the frightening lethality of the weapon.</p><p>"Also, a part of your own clan…" the elegant taijutsu-using kunoichi winked at the advancing threat. "Or maybe that's the reason why you want us dead so badly because we're a reflection of the Hozuki's own backyard."</p><p>"Don't you even dare sully that name with your mongrel mouths!" Mizoma completely lost it, charging at all four ninja with all of his aggression and swiftness. Kouta's feet finally got what they asked for – as the young man failed to identify any openings in his opponent's stance, lingering on this fruitless quest until it was all but too late to even attempt to avoid his attack, his body finally overcame the willpower that kept it adamant and began trembling back.</p><p>Mizoma's blade blurred and moved in a unique manner where it either moved so fast or used some other trick to achieve this effect, that it appeared to be in multiple places at once. It was simultaneously at the beginning of its swinging trajectory, halfway through it and had completed it all at the same time, judging from the multiple available locations of the blade. This visual confusion, added to the uncanny speed and skill in wielding a sword that Mizoma possessed, was quick to shed blood and stain the cerulean dress and its white ribbons that the woman wore to battle with vernal red.</p><p>The armored gauntlet of the member of the Seven Swords of the Mist reached out through the atmosphere of unmatched horror he had created with his ferocious attack to grab the belfry of the confused by the swiftness of her own demise Blood Lagoon kunoichi. Before it could drive his entire sword through her, the toddler-shinobi rammed his massive head into the side of the towering, armored ninja and sent him stumbling to the side a little, while the shock was nowhere near substantial to throw Mizoma off his feet, it certainly forced the lantern-helm to release his target from his deadly grasp.</p><p>"I won't let you hurt Utaretta-san!" the tiny man with a grand head declared while weaving his hand seals dangerously close to his opponent. Even to someone who often got lost in the excitement of battle like Kouta, this seemed reckless. Then again, perhaps this risky attack was the point, the Konoha ninja noticed that while Mizoma's unbridled fury was focused on the baby-man of the Blood Lagoon, the scythe-wielder had moved his injured ally away from the reach of Mizoma's terrifying blade.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Blood Moon!" the toddler chanted out, Kouta found it rather pointless to create a genjutsu that required its classification to be in the actual chant of the technique's name, from what he had noticed, Mana tended not to use such illusions until she had polished them to only require the lesser and more obscure parts of their name to be chanted upon use.</p><p>Mizoma grit his teeth and began stumbling back as if he had seen something especially panic-inspiring in the baby-man's display. The curious part that particularly stroke Kouta's fancy was how the white gleam in Mizoma's eyes turned blood-red while the illusion surrounded the swordsman of the mist and held it tightly within its clutches. It was tough to say what horrifying effects the man underwent inside the illusion, from what Kouta could tell, the man was scratching his own body as if attempting to tear his own helmet off, shaking and stumbling around like drunk or… Craving for a drink in the most severe and life-threatening of ways.</p><p>In a flash, Mizoma swung his arm to the side, his blade still clutched firmly within the man's arm. As seconds passed, the white matching the brightness of the stars in the night's sky, had anyone been able to see them to compare in the eternal, rusted gloom of the Valley of Hell, returned to Mizoma's eyes, the frozen trio of the Blood Lagoon wondered if the enemy had hurt their baby-man companion with that desperate swing.</p><p>Their worst fears were answered when with a fleshy, tearing sound, the titanic, compared to the proportions of the shinobi's body, attic lifted up, torn by the neck, and gently slid off of the short but thick neck that once supported it. The face of the beheaded ninja stayed permanently frozen in the expression of shock and agony as the pain of his demise only managed to hit his brain at the very final moments.</p><p>It was at that moment that Kouta realized that it was entirely possible that even united together, all they could have done against one of the Seven Swords of the Mist was color his sword with their own blood.</p>
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<a name="section0549"><h2>549. A Drop Of Plague</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chitsu in his new, hellish coat of armor, unleashed a storm of punches. Hammer-shaped pieces sticking out from the elbows of the blood-iron coat as well as from the back of the knees and reaching to the valley floor worked as pistons, driving through thin air and unleashing compressed streams of hot air or pounding into the ground and pushing the armored body off with even greater ferocity or intensity but instead of inflicting lasting damage upon the enemy, Chitsu only pummeled an oversized water balloon that imploded after the few blows only to wash away and reform back in formation.</p><p>"Be smarter than that, Bogetsu." The fox-masked Hozuki kunoichi advised her temporary squad mate. "Just wait it out, there's no way that a drastic jutsu such as this one can be maintained for long without the strain on the bane's chakra escalates out of control."</p><p>"You're the one that's not being smart!" Chitsu declared while using the pistons at the lower feet to drive them into the ground and propel the oversized and abundant armor at the enemy formation all by its lonesome. "I don't have all that many other jutsu to rely on so I can afford to spend my entire chakra on just sustaining this transformation!"</p><p>"Don't be foolish, Chitsu, stay in formation!" the winged swordsman of the Blood Lagoon who was now hiding his abominable appendages in the same crevices they came from yelled out at his teammate.</p><p>It was like the words of warning that the tall gentleman offered his blood brother bounced off of one of these armored plates or the less hardy coating that covered even the patches of the ninja's skin under the armor pieces. Chitsu continued to throw threatening yet awkwardly angled blows and hammering with his hands in a drastic attempt to land one blow on the nimble Hozuki kunoichi. The Kirigakure woman danced around the awkwardly angled strikes and even found ample time to respond with her water claws, which unfortunately left little resembling a chink in the armor of crystallized blood iron or the shinier yet thinner cloak under it.</p><p>"The one who's foolish is you! With this form, I can beat all of them by myself! These ninja would have all of us killed just because we've been born in a different kind of union!" the armored ninja raged on, continuing his mad barrage of piston-fueled punches.</p><p>"Un unholy one, an impure one!" the ponytail-titan Hozuki ninja stepped in with a wicked body blow aimed at the cloaked yet unarmored abdomen area. The crystalized armor did not break or crack but Chitsu halted his attack immediately and grunted out in pain. The red gleam that emanated through the shadowy holes in between the armor pieces faded away, leaving a grim, dead look to the set of frozen in place armor. The Hozuki taijutsu user proceeded to wrap his arms around the enemy armor before lifting them up into the air and slamming the armor back-first into the ground with a fierce powerbomb whip.</p><p>It was as if Earth itself cried out in pain. The grunge of the ground gravel, compressed air and force pockets traveling far and wide, rupturing the natural planetary floor in its path sounded almost like a feminine, crying voice reaching out to anyone who'd listen. An ethereal pillar of pure force shockwave stretched out into the heavens desperately looking for escape, revealing an even more hellish scenery back down from where it hailed from of molten blood of mother Earth booming from deep underground and making the iron dust in the air explode into flickering sparks like the working area of a steel mill during its peak working hours.</p><p>The ponytail Hozuki proceeded to stomp his lifeless opponent a pair of times. It was nothing but a heelish attempt to belittle his fallen enemy but also a chance for the enemy to telegraph their refusal to die, which was the desired outcome of this and all following attacks for the Hozuki squad.</p><p>"What's the matter? Where's all that bravado or your fancy eyes? On the other hand, nothing too fancy 'bout them, huh? That's the problem with you half-breeds, you've got neither the Sharingan nor the proper use of the Hydrification Jutsu! Why so silent? Don't tell me you've already di…" before the Hozuki powerhouse could finish his sentence, admiring the revelation of the complete devastation he caused and the flattened bodies of the enemy, forced to splatter into blood puddles and then reform again, wasting more of their body liquids in the process, he lost balance and fell through into what appeared to be a trap hole.</p><p>As if he was woken up by the despicable sound of reeling, steel string, Chitsu awoke, lighting up the red gleams in the shadows in the left and right sides of the head armor piece. The Blood Lagoon ninja looked around in confusion, he could make out a large hole in the center of the crater he was just in and, after reaching about in the settling smoke, Chitsu gripped a string reeling device in his hand and very nearly smashed it to pieces in his baffled grip.</p><p>"That's why you were told to stay in the formation, damn it! If one of us dies too early, it's the end for all of us!" the cloaked specter of the Blood Lagoon lashed out at his arrogant teammate after reforming. "If it was not for this surprise hole…"</p><p>"This is no surprise hole, this is a trap hole." The winged swordsman of the Blood Lagoon concluded after giving the hole another look.</p><p>"Huh? What happened? It went all cool and shit and then Gungetsu disappeared…" the chubby Bogetsu scratched the bald side of his head before stroking his mohawk and ruining it by having his greasy hair scatter all over his oversized belfry like grass that's been trampled on. "Should I attack again?" he turned at the female Hozuki as if she was some sort of maternal figure, a result of the woman presuming she had authority over him previously.</p><p>"No. You'd be wise to stay put. This was so sinkhole that swallowed Gungetsu, it appears that the half-blood scum have some reinforcements we weren't aware of. A support-type ninja working underground, without a doubt. That's odd, I thought that all Iwagakure ninja were called back to defend their home." The fox-masked Hozuki lady wrapped her long, pale fingers with cerulean-colored nails over her decorated mask as if attempting to take it off but after a few lifts and twists she merely fixed the position of the fancy accessory on her face.</p><p>"Whoever dug this hole…" Chitsu extended his hand and opened it just to show the device he had found his salvation in to his allies. "They used this to save me as well. A string reeling device. Strong, could drag a whole mountain, attaches itself to hard surfaces too."</p><p>"They are on our side then." The cloaked Blood Lagoon member took what seemed the most useful from his comrade's words. "Hiding and setting traps. What a peculiar fighting style…"</p><p>"We do our hidden friend a disservice by standing about and letting the enemy look out for them. Our time is spent best pressuring our opponent and giving our ally an opportunity to set off more of their traps." The winged swordsman added.</p><p>A sizeable hand shot out from the jarring hole, lit up by blobs of molten rock and minerals still drooping all over its owner, with grunts of effort that overpowered the gruesome sizzling noise of the magma attempting to cook the man it covered alive, Gungetsu Hozuki revealed himself to be very much alive as he pulled himself out of the hole and wiped some of what mother Earth bled over him.</p><p>"Watch out! Kasano says that the Blood Lagoon has friends underground!" the chubby Hozuki brawler yelled out to his ally without bothering to restrain his voice so that it became less audible to the enemy.</p><p>"A rat… I hate rats…" Gungetsu punched his own hand before letting his eyes wander to his left and right, looking out for potential signs of the ninja that fancied to fight like a rodent. He did not have much time though as Chitsu blitzed right up from behind the lump of flesh that managed to powerbomb the armored ninja previously, wishing nothing more than to return the favor.</p><p>Gungetsu threw a back elbow strike without taking too much time to even spot his opponent. Despite the fact that Chitsu was absolutely silent, his enemy simply read that the Blood Lagoon ninja would attempt something of this sort. Cracks began forming around the head-pieces of Chitsu's armor, chunks and splinters flew out from the impressive formation of crystallized, mahogany-colored iron. Without waiting for the armored ninja to recover, Gungetsu wrapped his hands around the head of his enemy and dropped down with his full body-weight, dragging the upper body of Chitsu down with his own full body weight and causing immense strain on the neck of the Blood Lagoon ninja.</p><p>Chitsu staggered about from the damage accumulated by the swift response of the enemy and the even faster follow-up to the opportunity that Gungetsu created for himself. Noises not too different from those that a cracked coconut made that sounded both as sounds of tearing muscle and sinew and those of shattering and cracking stone signaled the collapse of Chitsu's armor into pieces and the revelation of the soft man inside, still surrounded and covered by a fleshy membrane in between the crystallized iron of his armor technique and the user's skin.</p><p>With a proud and smug grin on his face, Gungetsu slid his right arm between the wobbly legs of his opponent and then coiled his left over Chitsu's shoulder, scooping his stunned opponent as he spun around and over onto his back while slamming the down on his luck opponent while falling on top of him at the same time. The physical titan of the Hozuki clan was all too quick to get off the ground and admire his own work from above.</p><p>The other Blood Lagoon ninja were not planning on just standing there and watching their ally being manhandled, they charged out onward after the first sign of trouble but were both intercepted halfway. The elongated and supersized, impressive claws-donning blood-arm of the cloaked Blood Lagoon member met the overweight Hozuki somewhere down in the middle of the distance between where Chitsu required some aid and where his allies were.</p><p>Similarly, the curiously impractical sword met the watery opposition of the Hozuki kunoichi in around similar distance from where aid was required. There was no doubt that the woman was the supplier of the idea for the interception as the chubby Hozuki did not seem nearly bright enough to come up with this perfect timing to block the Blood Lagoon off from one another.</p><p>The cloaked Blood Lagoon member lunged his transformed limb onward, letting it extend far and wide, reach as far as it could. He was surprised to see the seemingly blade-sharp claws of the limb slipping off of the rotating body of the Hozuki fatso who was halfway transformed into his liquid state and spinning around in his semi-liquid state, creating a slippery and brittle obstacle to any incoming attacks. Bogetsu ended his rotation defensive technique far quicker than he started it, wrapping his own arms around the extended limb of the enemy before spinning the trapped opponent about and crashing them through the valley's mountains and rocks.</p><p>The female Hozuki threw a mad barrage of swipes and thrusts of her aquatic claws at her opponent, the efforts of the winged swordsman were valiant and commendable however with a spurt of blood squirting from the wounds previously acquired clashing against this young woman he was unable to properly defend himself in all of the awkward angles that the ferocious and unorthodox fighting style of the fox-masked Hozuki kunoichi demanded him to block from.</p><p>The Blood Lagoon swordsman grit his teeth as the pain from multiple shallow cuts he had received was beginning to tax his willpower and his stamina alike. With an airborne split kick, the Hozuki fox-lady attempted to send her injured opponent flying and eating the dirt but her kicks only landed at the wide-guard of the slightly hairy, black and wet defenses of the emerging wings of the Blood Lagoon ninja.</p><p>"You see that? You little rat? You better fuck off. These abominations wish to die themselves, that's why they're not using their twisted version of the Hydrification Jutsu." Gungetsu yelled out through a self-righteous, full-mouthed grin.</p><p>"That is not why they're not liquefying themselves at all." The fox-masked Hozuki woman shook her head.</p><p>"Huh? Why's that?" the Hozuki powerhouse turned away with a stupefied face. While he was not quite as thick as his more round ally, Gungetsu was still no grand strategist or a genius.</p><p>Before the woman could reply to the physically imposing Hozuki, exploiting the moment of when the enemy turned his eyes away from him, Chitsu grabbed the giant's thighs, pulled and yanked on them so that his enemy lost his balance completely. Blood squirted out from small cuts and bruises on Chitsu's forehead to the point where it covered the entire body of the Blood Lagoon ninja, it was not mere blood, however, shortly after appearing from the wounds out on the surface the liquid turned to thick, mahogany goop, a mixture of something in between a liquid and gelatin.</p><p>At the same time as his emerging armor completed, less out of base chakra and more out of his own blood, Chitsu shot himself high-up into the air, soaring through the intensifying layers of clouds, transitioning from blood-red to rust-brown, from rust-brown to pink, Chitsu turned around and continued to dive down like a heaven-splitting meteor with both of his armored limbs aimed down and looking to crush his opponent under him.</p><p>Instead of crushing Gungetsu, however, the armored devil simply blew up a bloated balloon of water in Gungetsu's shape, water that was quick to cover the Blood Lagoon ninja though Chitsu could not feel its refreshing chill because of all the layers of armor he was hiding under. The iron-covered hellion looked around with his dead-eyes, looking where the object of his hatred was to reform himself so that Chitsu could continue his onslaught.</p><p>"These Blood Lagoon ninja are well aware of the weakness of the Hydrification Jutsu – the fact that it spends the water present in our bodies to manifest its powerful effects which might quickly leave the user completely dehydrated. I'd assume because they are not turning to water but to that macabre, gore-goop instead, they're wasting more than just their body's water so they are even more desperate to stay hydrated and preserve their minerals." The kimono-donning Hozuki lady explained to her ally who ran downstream in the shape of a water puddle that managed to remain liquid and unaffected by the inhuman heat surrounding the battlefield and reformed nearby her.</p><p>"Yeah, I see… That must be it!" Gungetsu thundered out with an excited tone. "Hear that, you crummy halflings? It's 'cause of your Uchiha blood that you can't use Hydrification as well as we do and have to use your own, lamer version."</p><p>"I don't know about that…" the winged swordsman of the Blood Lagoon replied, swiping his sword aside. Careful observation would have revealed the fact that the blood from his hand that he held his massive sword in bled all over the ridges of his sword, turning it a nasty combination of turquoise elegance and patterns of a grotesque shade of crimson. "I'd say it's much more hardcore!"</p><p>With this bold declaration, the winged swordsman charged forward, his wings open and spread out wide to carry the tall and slender man in his wicked lunge. The long hair of the enigmatic Blood Lagoon ninja scattered all over the man's face and behind his back but soon became too tough to tell from the man's changing appearance. The entire body of the winged swordsman took the shape of the black, abominable creature to which his wings belonged to.</p><p>It was a creature of long, bald fingers of skin that appeared sickly enough to be pale and rotten enough to be dark at the same time. A crushed snout, full of small yet sharp teeth that could have shred through fruit and flesh alike, a triple pair of blood-red, gleaming eyes possessing the signature blood moon in a black, night's sky appearance that the ocular orbs of all the Blood Lagoon ninja had. Lastly, a massive pair of black, hairy ears that extended far out and reached even wider back followed by two pairs more that appeared significantly less formed. The entire body of the pitiful creature was riddled with short yet brushy hair that tangled with rare companion each string found to form more complex patterns and attempt to cover the plagued skin underneath.</p><p>"Ooh, ooh, I want to play with you!" Bogetsu chanted out of sheer, childish glee as he ran towards the enemy. Gungetsu wanted to jump right after him and second his ally but noticed his knees shaking in the middle. Before the face of the physical titan sighed in relief, it twisted in fury that he was reduced to such pitiful display of emotion. It was not until the man realized the more inner, instinct-driven nature of his primal fear that he gave in to the instinct that kept him back from this mysterious transformation of his enemy.</p><p>The Blood Lagoon swordsman swirled and swooped right around the enemy aiming to intercept him. Bogetsu attempted multiple times to smack his enemy out of air or try and get his hands on the slippery bastard but found it all to be in vain. A bright gleam of blood-red outshined the gloomy atmosphere of the Valley of Hell on Bogetsu's cheek, nothing but an insignificant, little cut on the cheek, nothing but mockery and just a showing-off notion of the swordsman uncanny speed and ability.</p><p>"I…" Bogetsu's face changed all of a sudden, it turned sad and displeased, almost like the face that Bogetsu used to make all the time when he overate and found himself profoundly nauseous although the same effect of primal, instinctive fear of the unknown finally got the belfry of the oversized Hozuki as well. A second too late, sadly.</p><p>"Don't… Feel too good…" the chubby finished his sentence. Blood burst from around Bogetsu's eyes, his mouth and his nose as the stream of bloody vomit was too powerful to be directed solely through the Hozuki's mouth alone. The skin of the suffering ninja turned red as if it was boiling from the inside before the red turned much more intense but only in spotty patterns all over Bogetsu's skin whereas the leftover patches of his skin paled out of blood loss. Without much more to his life than its grisly end, Bogetsu collapsed on the ground in the pool of his own leaking blood, that, ironically enough, his body would have needed desperately at these final moments if they were to be prolonged in the least.</p><p>The winged and malformed swordsman landed firmly with his transformed, three-toed and bird-like feet onto the floor before giving the two remaining Hozuki a morbid stare with all six of his blood-moon eyes. The swordsman that tended to speak as little as possible at all times now found that his stare conveyed the message more effectively at that moment than any amount of words would have, no matter how meaningful and tactful.</p>
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<a name="section0550"><h2>550. A Clan Born Of Blood And Qualms</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What did you do? What was that, why didn't he liquefy!?" Gungetsu began losing it over the grisly end of his ally he had just witnessed. Despite the fact that the Blood Lagoon's numbers advantage grew one step up the ladder further, none of the Blood Lagoon looked too amused by the disturbing end that their would-be executioner had met.</p><p>"He must not have been able to…" the female Hozuki growled. She did not appear too worked up over the death of Bogetsu although the terrifying technique that was shown off to them did bother her a fair amount, judging from her tone and unsure stance. "Until we understand what that technique is, we need to stay on our toes and not let that… Thing get close to us."</p><p>"Trouble is that we're both close-distance fighters," Gungetsu noted the obvious.</p><p>"Enough. This fight is already over." The gruesome, winged monstrosity morphed somewhere halfway to the ninja it once was and the malformed winged mammalian that it had become after undergoing the transformation. It was more than likely just so the winged swordsman could speak properly and not spray slobber through his shredder of teeth of a mouth. "I could not tell what exactly you are facing here and just kill you all."</p><p>"Yes… You could, in fact, why don't you do just that, right now?" the Chitsu thundered out, his voice boomed and echoed as it passed through the iron plates, tubes and channels.</p><p>"Because we need to be better than them. If we just kill them all, the number of fatalities here today will be the same as if they had just eradicated us but those deaths will be on our hands instead. That, not my stained sword is the real blood curse." The winged swordsman replied. He did not make the same mistake that Gungetsu had made earlier and did not move his eyes away from the enemy for a single moment.</p><p>"Blood curse…" the fox-masked kunoichi mumbled to herself. The woman's sight focused on the blood still dripping from the hand of the Blood Lagoon ninja who had cut it with the edgy handle of his own outlandish sword right before attacking. The ridges that comprised the complicated patterns all across the turquoise-colored wonder were now all sinking in blood and dripping the excess onto the ground.</p><p>"That's right, you're an inch short of figuring me out." The winged swordsman turned back at the kunoichi. "My blood is terribly deadly to anyone but me. It carries some strange, unidentified bacteria that infects the blood of anyone it enters and kills them in a matter of hours. Its intensity is aggravated by my transformation, it turns even more aggressive and deadly, in that form it claims victims in mere seconds. Well… I suppose, in my case, it is more of a blood infection rather than a curse."</p><p>"Tsk. How are we supposed to fight something like that? Even if we liquefy, the bacteria will remain inside us." Gungetsu grumbled.</p><p>"That's right. That is why you must withdraw and end this pointless chase." The swordsman pleaded with his enemy.</p><p>The masked kunoichi looked down and continued to sulk that way for quite a handful of moments. Her ornate accessory moved upward, following the rising look of the woman's eyes. "No. There is a way to beat it. For now, just don't get hit. Liquefy before the infection can be passed instead of trying to do it after."</p><p>"But… It might still enter our system through our liquid forms. This is madness!" Gungetsu tried to reason with his ally, just about ready to accept the offer for peace that his enemy extended toward him.</p><p>"In that case, you better figure out a way to get it out of there. Your enemy has revealed his ability to you, if you cannot figure out a way to adapt and defeat it after this blunder, you deserve the death that comes your way." The masked Hozuki scolded her squadmate and charged at the winged swordsman. Whirling, watery vortexes appeared from the long sleeves of her kimono in the shape of drilling with water pressure claws but that was not the entirety of the woman's attack.</p><p>While the body of the transforming Blood Lagoon swordsman undergone the same transformation it did earlier, completing it just before his sword strike and once again drowning his sword in his own blood, as his muscles twitched and tensed up all throughout the jerky and violent transformation process, the body of the fox-masked kunoichi undergone a similar morph. The colors that comprised the Hozuki woman drowned out in an instant before the entire body of the woman turned blobby and weightless, becoming water itself but also taking a certain shape to the chaotic liquid mass.</p><p>Whereas the Blood Lagoon ninja rose as a winged, infernal abomination of six eyes and unstable and highly bushy hair patches, the woman rose as a canine of a sharp and protruded watery snout and similar, horn-like ear-protrusions that extended all the way back her side. The watery claws that the woman used before, morphing solely her arms and nothing else, now grew even longer and more ferocious in their size and effectiveness to better match her opponent. The two clashed yet again that day. The winged swordsman was now capable of matching the speed of his greatly enlarged opponent and whereas the transformation of the Hozuki woman turned her clumsier yet stronger, the transformation of the Blood Lagoon ninja made him only more agile although solely in aerial attacks.</p><p>The canine shape opened up in a few places where the infected sword of the blood plague carrier managed to tag the majestic looking, aquatic animal, however, shortly after landing these few opening shots, the body of the transformed swordsman began acting up. Blood shot out from various lacerations on his chest, his shoulders and his side. The speed of the winged Blood Lagoon fighter dropped greatly and with one of these moments of dazing and confusion being exploited by his enemy, the plague carrier found himself smacked aside by the full brunt of the aquatic fox's swipe.</p><p>The shredded into four distinctive chunks of flesh by the drilling qualities of the woman's claws ninja turned to a pool of goopy blood before the puddle of red carefully navigated farther away from the location of their clash and reformed. The sickly abomination of hair and diseased skin was still clutching at his wounds although they were too numerous for the transformed horror show to cover even with his hairy and massive hands.</p><p>"I guess his dreadful infection is nothing impressive if he can't even land a single cut," Gungetsu smirked, somewhat eased up over the initial dread of witnessing the terrifying ability of the Blood Lagoon swordsman.</p><p>"You're the architect of your own end. You should have used that infection from the get-go instead of hunkering down in your formation." The masked Hozuki kunoichi taunted her opponent.</p><p>"I bet he never intended to kill us in the first place!" Gungetsu's satisfied smirk turned into a full-on smug mockery of the weakened swordsman who now found himself struggling to move as efficiently as he could have at the beginning of the fight. "Tagging yourself in to save your comrades when they're in trouble, putting your body in harm's way instead of theirs… That's what nonsense like that will get you."</p><p>"This infection is as much a curse as it is my power." The winged swordsman straightened his back out, his wounds pulsed with red, gory goop that expanded and reached out to cover entire lacerations and cuts. Like a gorier version of the natural body clotting process. It did not appear to completely stop the man's bleeding but it at the very least slowed it down to a pitiful crawl. The masses of bloody gel turned soaked in the leaking sanguine fluid but only let some out after it was exposed to pressure.</p><p>"Knowing the grisly end that it can bring makes you reevaluate the necessity to resort to such measures. Ending lives this way brings me no pleasure, seeing every worthy protector of their own life die this gruesome way makes every fight into a session of torture."</p><p>"What utter nonsense…" the fox-masked lady spoke from inside her watery, canine shape.</p><p>"I wonder where this bullshit hails from, both the Uchiha and Hozuki are ruthless killers, unmatched in their skill." Gungetsu spat to his right side.</p><p>"It's just proof that two good things do not necessarily make a better thing when put together." The female Hozuki agreed with her ally before turning to the other Hozuki. "Now do you see why you folk are just a failed experiment that needs to be terminated? How about you show a hint of your Hozuki pride and just let go of your miserable lives."</p><p>"Your quest seeking submission in those two is a vain one." The winged swordsman interjected before his allies could even open up their mouths. While his malformed, bat-like shape had faltered after the sum of his injuries began weighing heavy upon his body, the man then resumed it just in time to finish his train of thought in a more animalistic and unnatural, howling and thundering at the same time voice that spat blood and something foul and different entirely, filtered through the myriad of shredding chompers and shredders lined up in rows and littered all throughout the lower part of the misshapen head of the daunt figure he had become.</p><p>"Of all of us, I would have been the most likely to willingly allow myself to be murdered just so I never have to fight this way again."</p><p>Chitsu leaped forward, propelled by the naturally-formed pistons at the heels of his reformed armor, charging in to the head of the watery canine creature that the Hozuki kunoichi had formed with a wind-up right hook that had its own propelling piston all ready to shake the planet with the shockwave from this crushing blow.</p><p>The aquatic construct exploded from the pent up force of impact that hit it straight in the jaw, creating a supernova of chilling water that showered the pleading for a mercy kill valley with a drizzle before drowning it in a downpour. Chitsu roared out in pain as a flicker of the Hozuki woman's form crossed his location a pair of times, cutting and stabbing with her transformed limbs at the exposed, softer crimson coating areas that laid under the massive, more infernal blood-armor pieces.</p><p>Chitsu crashed in a weightless and lifeless plummet before slowly and painfully picking himself back up and trying to determine where the blood that was streaming from under his armor and spraying through its irony obstructions like a fountain was coming from. After a few moments of clutching it and covering it up, the gelatinous clots covered up Chitsu's wounds as well.</p><p>"Don't think that you can just shit-talk my clan without having your pretty teeth shoved down your throat!" Chitsu growled in scorn that hailed both from the infuriating words said in regards to his bloodline as well as the fact that for the limited win he had achieved by obliterating the aquatic animal transformation was paid in streams of his own blood and the damaged pride of having to pick himself back up again after eating so much dirt. His armor crumbled in pieces and fell off of the fleshy tissue that was supposed to hold it intact due to the sum of his injuries and required a complete regrowth of the entire set.</p><p>"Do you actually believe that you were the one to destroy my advanced Hydrification Jutsu form?" the Hozuki woman taunted her boisterous opponent. "I blew it up on purpose to blind you and make you pay much more dearly than the oversized water fox could have ever made you do."</p><p>"Wait… Did you say "your clan"? What bullshit is that? What clan would that be? After seeing Hozuki send us to cut you out like a tumorous growth that you are, do you still consider yourselves part of our clan?" Gungetsu had to physically hold his own abdomen to keep himself from collapsing after the tons of laugh that this sentiment invited within the chest of the physical titan.</p><p>The right arm of the cloaked Blood Lagoon ninja twitched and rustled in the howling valley winds. The man punched the air without much more warning than those early signs allowing his supersized, liquid arm with claws of crystallized blood iron infused with chakra appear and lunge at the bothersome brute. The liquid limb coiled and rocketed like a lunging snake but it did a very poor job of showing off the crystallized thorn that formed in the center of the arm and was meant for Gungetsu's heart.</p><p>"As if we'd ever return to you after your betrayal!" the cloaked ninja cried out into the gloom of the rusty, iron mist. With previously unseen ferocity, the arm and the exposed spike drove right into Gungetsu's chest, temporarily stunning the massive man and forcing him to spit out blood. It did not appear to stop the giant for long, however, as he then ripped the spike right out from his chest and grinned with whited out from pain eyes, realizing he held an elongated limb of his enemy in his clutch.</p><p>"You fool! Liquefy right no…" the fox kunoichi of the Hozuki clan yelled out. It was in vain, however, as her dazed in bloodlust and battle stupor ally was completely absorbed by the idea of crushing his defiant opponent, too much so to prevent the following outcome of a star of crystalized blood-iron spikes bursting through from his body, leaving the giant skewered in iron spikes, twitching and gasping for air. He did not have to gurgle in his own blood for long, however, as the giant's body soon collapsed into water and reformed farther away, leaving just a roughly star-shaped, man-sized accessory of hardened and infused with chakra blood-iron that erupted from inside his body.</p><p>The man was sweating profusely and had to wipe the overflowing sweat with his wrist. Still, the excitement of a heated battle did not leave his face. Even if this time it did manifest itself in the shape of bemused disgruntlement rather than a satisfied smirk.</p><p>"We are no longer Hozuki nor are we Uchiha. Nor shall we let ourselves be defined by the name our two fathering branches gave us, we are our own clan. We are the Chinoike." The cloaked Chinoike member declared while his bloody limb retracted back into the shredded sleeve and took the form of a moderately fit, exposed male arm.</p><p>Continuous streams of pent up heated gas erupted from multiple holes and craters underground, sinking the battlefield in an even more intense atmosphere and kicking it up to the melting point. Nobody on the battlefield could avoid the skyrocketing temperatures driving them to the point of profusely sweating, while it may have been nothing new to Gungetsu as his immense musculature was already heating him up plenty, this intensified heat made him huff and pant and drew him ever closer to collapsing on the ground.</p><p>"This... Vapor… Where is it coming from?" Gungetsu looked around as the escalating temperatures. "It's scorching the place!"</p><p>"Haven't you noticed yet? The hidden rat has been awfully quiet, I would not be surprised at all if this was the rat's doing." The Hozuki female replied to her clanmate.</p><p>"Heh, if this is the best that grave worm managed to come up with, we've got nothing to worry about!" Gungetsu declared. Despite his false bravado, the panting giant charged at all of his enemies at noticeably dropped speed compared to before. His skin was barely any paler than as if his own flesh and blood were exposed. And yet… A cornered animal was not at all less dangerous – Gungetsu's physical bulk appeared to grow further past his limits to the point where the strain and exhaustion of his body had pushed it to. His unfiltered fury and bloodlust directed entirely at the newly self-declared Chinoike were also unlike anything the giant could put out normally, even in a good day.</p><p>Not about to allow Gungetsu make any foolish mistakes, the fox-masked kunoichi blitzed in and out of perception with her uncanny speed not too far behind her teammate, while her own agility dwarfed that of her much larger opponent, she purposefully stayed behind him, using it instead to make herself tougher to spot, not to mention - tag.</p><p>The Chinoike winged swordsman closed his eyes. He did so not out of acceptance of his impending doom but instead because of a stone-cold realization he had come to. The hidden asset to the Chinoike has been helping them for a while now and he or she has spoken to the Blood Lagoon in their own unique way. While the swordsman could not see the ninja that built the foundation for their victory with this final strategy, he understood them about as well as if the ninja was standing behind him and whispering in his ear, holding their hand on his shoulder and encouraging him to move forward, do what had to be done.</p><p>The Chinoike swordsman disappeared. He did not leave the plane of existence he was in, however, the speed at which the transformed monstrosity moved forward to meet his enemy was remarkable enough to fool one into thinking that the swordsman was indeed no more. History knew of ninja that had moved fast enough to delete themselves, disappear out of the governance of laws of the current reality and make history by transcending the universe they were a part of. The Chinoike was not yet such a speedster, however, to the uninitiated to the world of absolute speed, he may have seemed quite close.</p><p>Gungetsu exploded into a mighty roar of washing waters, the rushing waves spread equally in every direction, however not even a single drop of them soaked the leather boots of the Blood Lagoon swordsman. The light tap of the Chinoike swordsman's feet touching the valley floor finally caught up with the vision of the tall and pale man landing behind both Gungetsu and his female ally. The transformation that changed the tall and somber gentleman into something much more chaotic and devilish had faded away, leaving nothing but a worn out and bleeding man after it.</p><p>The female Hozuki, who appeared to have avoided the horizontal crescent slash of the Chinoike's sword now blitzed to wreak havoc upon the exposed back of the worn out enemy. The fox-masked enigma slid through the valley rocks as if she was a strider riding the surface of the water, however, just when she reached her intended purpose, the woman used her own speedy movement to fade away from everyone's vision, evading a strike aimed at her back out of sheer fighting instinct. It was just that the woman had been in enough fights to know when the enemy would have done anything in their power to attack her from behind, she knew the chances and the openings she provided to the enemy with each movement she made because many times they've been exploited before and about as many times she was punished for them.</p><p>Coiling, bloody limb extended, intended to clutch the fox-masked Hozuki in its crystalized clutches or inject its own tainted blood into her stream so that she could be skewered like Gungetsu very nearly was before. It was only barely that the cloaked Chinoike managed to repurpose the movement of his limb into something meant to push his squadmate away from harm's way, even if he very nearly caused that same harm himself.</p><p>Up in the air, Chitsu clashed a pair of times with the female Hozuki, the watery drills appearing not only from under the woman's sleeves but from under her kimono as well, tearing the elegant lower bits of the sophisticated clock as well and exposing the Hozuki kunoichi from the knees down, even if the only thing to expose were her morphed into fluid, aquatic shapes lower legs.</p><p>Dripping and streaming with leaks of blood left in between his armor pieces, in soft spots where the more fleshy tissue protected him from outside harm and not the hardened by chakra crystalized blood armor. Due to the fact that a little bit of his own blood was used every time that the armor had to take shape, Chitsu found it difficult to stay on his feet and was forced by the unfavorable circumstances to collapse to his knees.</p><p>With a slightly slowed down coup de grace, the kunoichi charged forward, observing an exposed weak point that she managed to slightly widen by giving up a pair of stronger, more direct shots. An investment into a potential kill shot was so beautiful that it almost taunted her, however, the fox-lady took her sweet time. Finishing moves had to be graceful but they also had to be careful, most of all, it was, after all, during the finishing touches that one's guard was at its lowest and the tide of the entire battle could have turned on itself.</p><p>"I'll kill him!" a louder than usual for the cloaked Chinoike tone rumbled through the wastelands around. Due to its volume, it did catch the Hozuki kunoichi's glance as well – the cloaked phantom held his gurgling, gooey limb with its spike right up on Gungetsu's eye, while the foolish giant laid seemingly unconscious and sprawled out on the floor.</p><p>The damned fool just had to go and collapse from dehydration right now… When the odds were about to turn even!</p>
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<a name="section0551"><h2>551. Corruption</h2></a>
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    <p>The fox-masked Hozuki kunoichi sent somewhat mixed signals. On one hand, she deactivated her signature version of the Hydrification Jutsu making her limbs return to normal and got out of her fighting stance. On the other, her body language did not appear all too crushed and ready to submit. Now more than any time in recent memory the Chinoike would have liked to see the woman's face.</p><p>"When exactly did I strike you as the type to get all worked up over some miserable loser who couldn't track his own hydration and got flunked by a trick as simple as raising the heat and applying pressure?" the kunoichi asked with an almost demeaning tone, however, the fact that she did not simply resume her task of killing the injured and kneeling Chinoike nearby told more than her bluff. Although, her hesitation to resume her murderous actions may have been due to the fact that she's realized her triumphant moment was now squandered. It certainly did appear from first glance that the Hozuki scolded herself a bit about that on the inside, judging from how erratic her twitches and small muscle ticks got.</p><p>"You're right, you're not the type to give up just to save your comrade's life." The winged swordsman of the Chinoike agreed. "However, consider your chances if this battle continues. What odds of survival do you have fighting four to one, in a patch of the valley sunken in heated gas that makes every use of Hydrification even more dangerous than it already is? You may be ruthless enough to sacrifice teammates as pawns but you are no fool, not in the sense you understand foolishness, anyway."</p><p>"Mizoma is going to kill you all. Even if all of you attack him at once, he will find a way to eliminate you all. He's the type of guy to do something like that." The Hozuki kunoichi warned the Chinoike.</p><p>"I doubt it." The cloaked Chinoike replied, his arm turned to a bloody appendage once more and the large spike in the center of his palm protruded out. It was a mean of threatening the woman to not try anything foolish. "He is not here right now, is he? That means either that he's found more of a challenge in the three of us he has engaged, which means he will in no way slay all of the Chinoike, or that one of the mysterious helpers has also joined the fight against him. In that case, the miraculous genocide you're speaking of is even less likely as even more ninja have joined the fray and they're not on your murderous side."</p><p>"It is clear that we will not reach common ground here. Go, join your superior and hope that your hatred gives you remotely enough will to carry this through. In my experience, however, the will to survive is always stronger." The Chinoike swordsman placed his blade back into its odd zip-up sheath and threw it over his shoulder, appearing almost as if he was carrying an entire contrabass around on his rear.</p><p>"Oh, I am going nowhere near that man. He will kill me the moment he hears that we failed to beat you." The fox-mask lady spoke in a tone suggesting that the mocking noises coming from under her mask were cackles.</p><p>"And your clan? Won't you find yourself in a similar situation as us if you return them and admit your own failure?" the cloaked Chinoike wondered. At this point, the feeling of imminent threat to his life has left the man's worry. It was now just mere curiosity that guided his tongue and thoughts.</p><p>"The Hozuki are more… Adaptable. Although nowhere near enough to stop wishing you death. You're like a stain of death on their fancy, silken dress. Eventually, they'll find bleach good enough to wipe you clean." Letting her words linger for a while in the stuffy and scorching air, the Hozuki kunoichi flowed away as a stream of water, splitting apart into multiple ridges and underground crevices. Somehow managing to maintain her liquid shape of water even in the face-melting temperatures that reminded the locals of a holiday on the Sun.</p><p>Chitsu jumped on his feet, stumbling forward and utilizing the hate in his chest to carry his massive, still armored frame forward. Bit by bit, the armored plates of the Chinoike collapsed, letting go of even the strongest strands of flesh tissue keeping them together and stuck on their owner's body. The gelatinous blobs of white and red clots revealed themselves once the Chinoike brawler lost his infernal armor look.</p><p>"Don't bother chasing after her. It's miraculous she even let you off with your life." The cloaked Chinoike taunted his less-composed comrade which may have not been the right choice for an approach.</p><p>"I could have taken her, we could have killed her! Now they'll just someone else!" Chitsu grumbled, although due to his worn eyes threatening to shut on him and his skin paling evermore with each splat of blood he forced out through the filters of the spontaneous clots he donned, the shinobi submitted to the natural draw that the ground exhibited for the weary.</p><p>"They'll send someone else regardless of she survives or not." Erumo's voice echoed through the wastes shortly before the young woman leaped out from underground. The Chinoike stared at her for a while, figuring what to do with her, given the cautious stance of the young kunoichi. It was not that she was looking for a fight with her body language, however, she did not leave herself too open either. The careful response was the most likely when someone one did not know chose to be cautious around you.</p><p>"Our assistance is right." The Chinoike swordsman closed his eyes in submissive agreement. "There are far too many reasons why letting that woman go and choosing to regroup elsewhere is a good idea. Thanks for helping us, this would have turned far more bloody and cost us much more lives had it not been for your trick with the natural gas."</p><p>Erumo dangled a small sack in front of her face before removing a handful of swamp-green powder from it. "Nothing natural about it…" she added. She chose to leave out the part where letting the Chinoike get bullied around and possibly having one or two of them get killed was a part of her initial plan. It was just that she doubted her chances to salvage the fight given the skill and experience of her opponents, she took the opportunity when it presented itself, initial plans be damned…</p><p>"Yochi…" the covered up Blood Lagoon member with the massive scythe uttered as the only acknowledgment of her comrade that had just been forcefully passed away in front of the group and expression of her grief.</p><p>"It will be difficult without his illusions. Maybe we should regroup and meet up with Chiya and Chison?" the feminine-looking man in a frilly undershirt wondered out loud, appearing to be more worked up over the optimal way of moving with the fight rather than the passing of his comrade.</p><p>"It's okay though, right? You guys can turn to water just like the Hozuki so he'll just reform, right?" Kouta turned his attention away from the advancing and unstoppable threat in front and at the Blood Lagoon ninja. The nervousness in his voice and the twitching facial muscles betrayed it that the young man did not believe himself what he was looking to buy.</p><p>"If he had activated his Sanguination Jutsu, he'd have already dispersed into blood." The woman previously referred to as Utaretta, who appeared to be of the highest standing amongst the Blood Lagoon ninja who were fighting Mizoma replied. "Given how nothing of the sort has happened… I think that Yochi is gone for good."</p><p>Kouta tried to rationalize why the toddler-man would not have used the unique version of the Hydrification Jutsu that all of the Blood Lagoon shared together. Maybe Yochi's chakra network was still engaged in his genjutsu, too much so to activate another signature clan technique in a split-instant it took Mizoma to separate his massive head from the dwarf's shoulders, perhaps he was just distracted by his own technique and lacked the concentration needed to use it, maybe he did not manage to activate the technique in time… Whatever the reason, it did not matter.</p><p>Only the metallic clangs and thuds that signaled the approaching, absolute death behind Mizoma of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist mattered.</p><p>"Hey, don't get any bright ideas, kid!" the Lolita-styled teen with a flair for leather straps yelled out at Kouta who must have allowed his body language to betray the desperation he felt inside. "He'll kill you in an instant if you split off of the formation and attack all by yourself! Omochi, hold him off while Utaretta-san recovers!"</p><p>"Tendrils of Blood!" Omochi, the androgynous man of the Blood Lagoon, extended his hands forward, streams of water burst from underground that soon turned to a crimson liquid of white foams and lunged at the enemy like whips.</p><p>The crack of the Blood Tendril smacked Mizoma straight in the chest, the Swordsman of the Mist barked out in pain but his voice only further served to drive fear into the hearts of those that stood to oppose the spectral one for his was not the voice that betrayed his pain but his fury instead. With a side of his gauntlet, leaving only one hand to tend to his clearly meant for two hands sword, the Swordsman of the Mist smacked aside the other tendril aiming to cave more of his armor in while he swung his sword again and split the third tendril almost with ease.</p><p>"Blood Rush!" the Blood Lagoon member who appeared to specialize in a more long-range ninjutsu use of the signature Blood Lagoon abilities yelled out as he jumped forward allowing his body to turn to a wave of blood in mid-air, almost like the normal use of the Sanguination Jutsu, except needing to take no damage for his blood-body to dissolve into a pool.</p><p>Mizoma charged forward, his shoulder put up in a tackling motion and thusly he met his opponent's charge and all the force of the rushing tide. Except for getting soaked in the liquid that the Blood Lagoon utilized in battle, the Swordsman of the Mist took no damage from the technique that left marks on his body of any sort. That was two ninjutsu techniques that the threatening lantern-head shrugged off already. And yet he continued to walk forward.</p><p>Bubbles of white foam rose from the accumulated pools of blood and upon their eruption set free a voice imprisoned inside. It was a way for Omochi to speak while in his sanguinated state. The escaping wails testified the name of the technique that the Blood Lagoon used though, because of the distance and the chaos of battle, Kouta could not quite hear it. The pool of blood gathered from the wave-like charge used previously by the Blood Lagoon member came alive with multiple waves, jets, and tendrils of blood rushing out of its surface, whipping, attempting to restrain, cut or seep inside Mizoma's body and choke the walking man out.</p><p>With an outraged roar, Mizoma's body turned to a towering whirlpool that utterly washed away the crimson corruption attempting to, if not kill him, or hurt him at all for that matter, to waste his time. Once it reached the optimal altitude, the whirlpool then turned back to its normal shape, that of the rotating Swordsman of the Mist, his sword in one hand and raging waters showering out from inside his lantern-shaped helmet and getting formed and split about by the dance of his blade.</p><p>A blood-curdling scream followed by the similarly affecting sight of Omochi blasting out of the chaos of blood and water storming at each other met the terrified eyes of the observing Blood Lagoon members.</p><p>"How did you guys hold this monster off for so long!?" Kouta turned back at Utaretta in frustration at how fruitless any techniques thrown at the Swordsman of the Mist have proven themselves so far.</p><p>"We were lucky to avoid having him use his sword." The dark-haired woman closed her penetrating gazing orbs and sighed. She was ashamed to admit that was the only reason, but it may have been the genuine truth. "A swordsman with a blade as legendary as that of Mizoma's tends to not use his sword all that much out of fear that the enemy might lay their hands on it and turn its might against him."</p><p>"You mean…" Kouta uttered.</p><p>"That's right. If I had to gamble the lives of my precious brothers and sisters, I'd say that Mizoma's sword has an ability that just about anybody can use, as long as that sword is in their hands. Good luck taking it away from him, though." The woman laughed in the face of the desperately approaching end to her and the eradication of her entire family and her supporters.</p><p>Mizoma looked away at the downed Blood Lagoon member with disdain. Even if it was impossible to tell from the obscured depths of inside the specter's helmet, the furious beacons gleaming out from where Mizoma's eyes should have been suggested that the red-seeing Swordsman of the Mist was considering walking up to the downed Blood Lagoon and finishing him off.</p><p>"I can stand by myself, it's fine, go." Utaretta encouraged the overdressed Blood Lagoon lady and Kouta while they looked at each other as if questioning if the other was prepared to bring the fight to the approaching threat. Neither one of them felt too excited about standing around and waiting for the swordsman to just walk up to them again and lob their heads off as he had done to Yochi.</p><p>Kouta's feet blasted out chakra streams that helped him propel his body faster, he even matched the swiftness of his Blood Lagoon partner-in-assault. The leathery Blood Lagoon kunoichi threw her feet downward, her feet appeared to kick off of a peculiar pocket of compressed air, allowing the scythe-wielding ninja to jump again without having to touch anything solid with her feet. The airborne scythe-user flipped forward, performing an airborne roll while the blade of her scythe buzzed in a vertical angle – a valiant effort to shred one's opponent up.</p><p>Mizoma coughed up in a low-pitched grumble while the scythe of the Blood Lagoon woman flared up with sparks while it bounced off of the man's armor. A small squirt of blood coming out from Mizoma's shoulder and dyeing the front of his chest in red, to contrast its natural blackness, signaled that a moderate amount of success was achieved by the pair exploiting the moment of their opponent's distraction.</p><p>"You mongrel!" Mizoma roared out as he swung his two-handed sword at the young woman shortly after her heels had landed on the floor. It was not difficult to see that her long boots that easily stretched from her heel to her knee provided ample discomfort for the Blood Lagoon kunoichi as well as slowed her down while fighting.</p><p>A thunderous crack followed by a fearsome shockwave interrupted the lethal intentions of the Swordsman of the Mist. Kouta's face was twisted with rage as he packed his strongest flying right hook at the man's helmet, fully intending to either bust it or dig and scoop inside it until he reached the ringer inside. Kouta's reckless attack was rewarded as his hook threw his opponent's head aside as well as turned it the other way, the momentum of his sword swing was almost non-existent.</p><p>A blood-curdling scream kicked the fighting fury right out of Kouta's chest the very moment it was about to take over from the panic. Shocked, the young man landed on his feet and turned at his comrade to check on her condition instead of continuing his combination as he had intended. Not only did Mizoma absolutely dominate all of their combined efforts but Kouta just couldn't summon his game-fire out no matter what. It was just like his father said… He had too many distractions…</p><p>The clad in leather young woman laid sprawled out on her front with a diagonal carving right on her back. She couldn't have expected that strike which was likely why she didn't sanguinate out of it. Kouta would have made the same mistake in her shoes but… Why did she get hit? Mizoma's sword was thrown off-course, he saw it, he made it happen! How could they ever hope to take the sword away from this immovable monster if the damned steak-cutter continued to surprise them at every turn?</p><p>Kouta turned back to try and swing his fists at the enemy. It was mad, it made no logical sense for him to remain at that range, so close to what amounted as his doom and continue to stand his ground but it was that same recklessness that summoned the greatest strength in his father. It was what created the worst raging monster known in the Ninja World. It was that same behavior that allowed a Juugo to dance with partners they otherwise would have had no business dancing with.</p><p>Kouta's fists were like automatons, striking and winding back up like bolts of lightning but moving much faster than that. He did damage, he could see his opponent stumbling, he could see Mizoma fall to one knee even, leaving Kouta almost the man's equal in size. The Juugo did not stop, he hopped on top of the man and planted his feet firmly as if he was scaling a mountain, one of his hands gripped the steel wire tying the armor plates on Mizoma's chest together and held the man tightly while his left went to work. Up and down, up and down.</p><p>Everything around went black. Kouta couldn't feel, hear or see anything else but his own fists and the warm dampness that they entered and left. He continued to swing and would have continued to do so until he either died of his own heart giving in on him or the airways of his enemy were crushed to the point where breathing became impossible. The Juugo felt warm corruption crawl over his face, like miniature tongues of flame but he enjoyed the pain they caused. His chakra began feeling different, colder, much colder and too dark for even him to see a damn thing from inside its embrace and yet…</p><p>It was like layers of eternal snow – cold when one tasted it, yet when one was buried under loads and loads of it, it felt right, it felt warm, it felt… Strong!</p>
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<a name="section0552"><h2>552. A Slice Of Past, Present And The Future</h2></a>
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      <p>"Can I ask you something?" the Blood Lagoon kunoichi in a leather jacket and long-untended, shoulder-length hair asked Mana while the trio was moving toward Yushijin's chakra. Perhaps the duo may have gotten to the leader of Team Fir sooner but they had no sensory abilities to trace Yushijin with. Even if they did know his previous location, Mana felt Yushijin's location shift several times. And so the Blood Lagoon duo was hampered by the magician's greatly reduced speed, a result of the injuries sustained against Masu, the mechanical Hozuki.</p>
      <p>It did not appear that the young female was all that bothered by it, or anything at all, as she maintained the same, old face at all times. The massive lump of armor and muscle, however, did not look all too happy, judging from his tense movements grinding teeth.</p>
      <p>"You look injured, I'm sure if you took a little time to treat your wounds we could pick up the pace a bit." The hulking Blood Lagoon spoke up even though the trio have only been moving for about a handful of moments, compared to the speed that the brute was normally used to, it must have seemed like an eternity to him.</p>
      <p>"Our medic is currently losing his mind. He is too violent and unruly to heal anyone in his current state. Calming him down will be another chore down the long line of them." The magician sighed.</p>
      <p>"Your ability to read a battlefield and make decisions based on your input is impressive." The giant complimented the magician. He had not expected Mana having already put Kouta's potential role into perspective.</p>
      <p>"How did you know they had a medical ninja among them in the first place?" the stoic, sword-wielding kunoichi of the Blood Lagoon wondered.</p>
      <p>"They must. Foreigners would never leave their village walls without either a medical ninja or someone with great survival and first aid skills in general." The brutish Blood Lagoon ninja explained.</p>
      <p>Yushijin's image blurred in before solidifying in between Mana and the two Blood Lagoon ninja, the Team Fir leader threw a horizontal slash of his claymore, wide and strong enough to handle both of the two ninja. Mana sensed an extension of Yushijin's chakra flowing out of his total pool and entering the networks of his opponents. He was using his Last Resort genjutsu on them, having needed to find ways of beating it so recently, Mana knew how to tell Last Resort's telltale signs well enough.</p>
      <p>"Stop. They're here to explain things to us." Mana wheezed out, Yushijin's claymore stopped just inches short of the young woman's throat and the middle section of her better-geared companion.</p>
      <p>"Oh, I thought they were chasing you, my bad…" Yushijin sheathed his sword. "It's just that lately everybody here seemed like an enemy, it is hard to leave the perpetual survival mode."</p>
      <p>"I like this guy." Mana saw the barely visible lower side of the giant's face twist in a wide grin. Had she not been proven wrong on the spot, she'd have figured the lump of steel and accessories to only be capable of disdain and disappointment. Just like his apathetic female companion.</p>
      <p>"I assume this is your team leader then?" the female Blood Lagoon ninja eased up, removed her hand from the handle of her blade, which she'd have been too late to draw regardless, and straightened out her back.</p>
      <p>"That's right, you can tell him everything," Mana grumbled out before the irritating iron dust made her almost cough her lungs out through her mouth inside out.</p>
      <p>"You okay? You seem pretty banged up. We should see Kouta first." Yushijin suggested.</p>
      <p>"I need… Air… But breathing burns. But I'll be fine, plus, Kouta can't help me now anyway. He is currently in his Cursed Seal state. He won't sit still for the two seconds it would take to tend to my ribs." Mana noted, feeling the rising chakra of her boyfriend further away in the valley. Ever since she first sensed the change and corruption seeping into his network, his chakra simply did not stop growing in size but also in its taint. Even with all the training of her sensory abilities that Mana has done, if she ended up closer to Kouta, she may have been forced to shut her sensory down or face the risk of having an anxiety attack or getting knocked out on the spot by the fearsome wickedness of his signature.</p>
      <p>"You keep mentioning this… Cursed Seal as if it will be troublesome. Will it cause trouble for my friends?" the young Blood Lagoon woman asked the Konoha duo.</p>
      <p>"Level One or Level Two?" Yushijin wondered.</p>
      <p>"One. For something that releases all of his violent urges, Kouta's control over it is respectable. I think he may have been practicing using it a whole lot during the three years we've been apart." Mana sighed in disappointment. She knew how much acknowledging his Juugo heritage meant for Kouta and for how long he's been forced to suppress it, how long he lied to himself about hating it before finally learning to accept it and embrace it but to put this much trust and training into an ability that releases all of one's violent tendencies and urges into a massive burst of chakra just seemed… Wrong.</p>
      <p>"He won't cause any trouble, not to your friends," Yushijin answered the Blood Lagoon swordswoman with a reestablished sense of cool. "It is a pity that he didn't consider how much more useful he would be as a medical ninja right now though."</p>
      <p>"I see. I want to get this over with as soon as possible so… Just let me tell you that we mean no threat to you, we don't know nor do we care what your business here is but we do appreciate the hand. All you need to know now is that these people belong to the Hozuki clan from Kirigakure. They want us dead which is likely why they've dispatched all of us here in the first place and then sent their wild dogs after us. That is all there is to know. Whether you agree to help us defend ourselves or not, that is up to you, if you stick to your own business, I won't blame you but if you stand in my way, I'll cut you down." The Blood Lagoon swordswoman explained before looking around with a sense of cool and then turning to Mana.</p>
      <p>"You seem to know who people are and where they are exactly. Could you direct me to the battlefield that needs my help the most, whatever you decide to do?" the Blood Lagoon asked the magician for a favor.</p>
      <p>"Wait a second… While I don't doubt that these Hozuki want you dead, there must be a reason why. The clan would not go through so much trouble and deceit just to snuff you out otherwise. You've been sent to the middle of pretty much nowhere, it is evident that the Hozuki wish to make sure you are not only dead but also forgotten and outright deleted from having ever existed in the first place." Yushijin's face turned serious. The leader of Team Fir clearly disliked having the sharpest point of the truth being held back from him, especially now, when it may have turned out that he had made the call to send his squad into where they got gravely injured.</p>
      <p>The young Blood Lagoon swordsman sneered at Yushijin with pouted lips and eyes that stabbed bloody murder at the Konoha ninja. For a pair of seconds, the two just stared at each other, a thin young lady, half Yushijin's size sneering at him from below and a Konoha ninja who answered the scorn in the young lady's eyes with the same apathetic cool that radiated from the young swordsman's eyes not too long before, all the way to the point she squandered it away.</p>
      <p>"I don't care if you chose to help us, or not. I've told you all you need to know because I felt like I owed you that much for the amount of trouble you got into. That is all." The Blood Lagoon kunoichi turned her back at the Konoha ninja.</p>
      <p>"It's too bad Chiya-san doesn't like you as much as I do." The armored giant grinned, the only bright beacon from the shadow cast by his lumbering helmet being his pearly whites. "You look like you could raise some hell…" the Blood Lagoon ninja addressed Yushijin who just ignored the remark without any meaningful reaction. The oddball duo directed their eyes toward prominent chaos of dark chakra splitting the iron mists and beaconing its malice in all directions. No one needed a sensor to tell where exactly all of the battlefields would be converging in.</p>
      <p>The duo then disappeared, leaving behind only a spreading ring of dust, carried by a wave of air pressure raised by their hi-speed movement. The two chose to move faster than it must have taken them to remain completely concealed.</p>
      <p>Yushijin took a slow and steady step, preparing to do the same mad dash towards the beacon of taint. Mana pressed her hand against his back, it was the only way she could ask for a bit of his attention before he left fast enough. The leader of Team Fir turned his head back at her with questioning eyes. Emotion returned to his face as he was now around people he tolerated showing it to.</p>
      <p>"I can sense that your flow is irregular. If you fight now, every movement, every technique will require additional chakra from you and your control will be in shambles. You need to calm whatever's troubling you first." Mana explained with a raspy and pausing voice while she struggled for breath.</p>
      <p>"I see… I think I'll handle it." Yushijin dismissed her worries and disappeared after the less than willing to cooperate duo of the Blood Lagoon. Mana covered up her hat to keep it from flying away from the intense pressure that Yushijin's dash generated. Nobody seemed to be bothered by moving stealthily, it was now all about just making it to the center of the pit and letting fate filter out those that would survive and those that would not.</p>
      <p>"Boys…" Mana sighed, air certainly left her chest easier than it went in. With a dozen of the speed that her peers used to rush toward Kouta's battlefield, the magician chased after her boyfriend's safety as well. Her step faltered even further halfway there.</p>
      <p>Maybe Kouta didn't want to see her there? Right now he was the only chakra signature notable enough to confront the greatly reduced although still a notable tower of the leader of the Hozuki group. The signatures of most of the other Blood Lagoon members present at the place had dipped somewhat proportionately to the tremendous plummet of the Hozuki's chakra so besides the massive influx of violence given ethereal expression into Kouta's system that entire battlefield remained dreadfully stale.</p>
      <p>What if Mana's appearance calms Kouta's heart? What if they lost the only ace they had, the only hope, as painful it was to admit, in defeating the Hozuki titan? What if another scenario like that time by the Box of Ultimate Bliss repeated itself and without this violence and taint there would be nothing to prevent losses? This was nothing like things Mana used to think about. It used to be all so simple, act her most honest, do as her childish ideals demanded of her and expect things to turn out alright. To hell, if they didn't…</p>
      <p>It was only after repeated to hells that Mana felt forced to begin thinking differently. Only when a figure obscuring the setting Sun in the distance was so threatening and so immovable that expecting things to turn out alright was outright ridiculous that Mana began thinking this way, maybe this feeling that violence was necessary to prevent greater violence was because of that very same shadow in the horizons?</p>
      <p>Mana dragged her hand across her hair, pushing a handful of strings away from obscuring her eyes and charged onward. Even if her presence distracted and soothed Kouta's fury, she needed to be there. To do whatever she thought possible to prevent deaths on either side. Else she'd end up hating herself on the inside.</p>
      <p>Kouta was not sure how much longer it was decent of him to continue hammering his opponent. The red in his eyes, the tensed veins around his body and that inhuman heat he felt all over his skin, heat that could only be tamed by employing his entire body, tensing his muscles through acts of violence nobody considered humane to the point where they lost all sense in them and in that way stopped that infernal scorching that enveloped them.</p>
      <p>Something iron-tight locked around him just when Kouta had wondered if there was something still left of his opponent's face for him to pummel. The iron grip then enacted an irresistible force of attraction that coated the young man's body with a blanket of weightlessness. Weightlessness followed by a crushing shock. White all around, an irritable screech made it impossible to tell exactly what it was that Kouta could not see. The Juugo almost welcomed the returning, overwhelming pain. It was a sign that he was returning to his own, cold and welcome home plane.</p>
      <p>Hot dampness rubbed off against Kouta's face and into his hair. The head-splitting sear in his head was powerful. Had he been the little runt he once was, perhaps Kouta would have considered crying out or acknowledging his bashed open head that bled in two whole lines of red all over his face, converging at the point of his nose and drooping persistently on the iron mush floor. It was the doing of Mizoma and his wicked headbutt, no doubt.</p>
      <p>The swordsman would not get the satisfaction of Kouta crying now. Instead the welp of a boy, a battle cry of a Juugo embracing his murderous urges shook the ground beneath the combatants' feet, sending shining fractures and branching out patterns where Kouta's overflowing chakra incinerated the fallen iron dust layers and shattered the stone beneath. The Valley of Hell displayed a fiery and dominant with the brimstone side of itself that made the name seem that much more fitting. It was a localized little corner of hell indeed.</p>
      <p>With a backhand swing, Kouta split the sky-reaching flames in front of him, his fists irradiating a flare of malevolent chakra that coated and protected him from the skyrocketing temperatures but left marks on his body and spirit of their own. The boy's body began undergoing the signature changes of the Juugo clansmen but this time it was no technique, there was nothing unnatural being summoned. The malformations appeared naturally, without any of Kouta's input, it appeared much more like subconscious, spontaneous evolution rather than an effort to reach new heights through the transcendence of one's own humanity.</p>
      <p>"Do you know why I didn't liquefy out of your attacks, boy?" Mizoma growled in ferocity matching that of the Juugo who was slowly but certainly beginning to lose his grips over his sanity and control. His question was rendered to be of the rhetorical kind, at least for the nearest moments, as Kouta's fist slammed into the man's helmet, bending and twisting the steel alloy like it was made of malleable clay, Kouta's forceful shove tore the steel apart like paper and reached the fleshy bits that the helm was hiding.</p>
      <p>While Kouta's fist turned into a hammer-sized mace inside the man's helmet before firing a ground-shaking wave of chakra from both sides of its hollow ends, Mizoma's headless body twitched and jerked, controlled like a puppet by the shockwaves emanating from the chakra cannon wave like a puppet. The grotesque horror show turned to a puddle soon enough while the one of the Seven Swords reformed further away and leaped back into the fray of battle with a roar. A roar that had blood gurgling through the depths of the man's lungs making it that much more gruesome as it betrayed the fact that not even drowning in one's own blood appeared to intimidate the spectral titan of the battlefield.</p>
      <p>"It's because I could take it!" Mizoma roared out, smashing his own elbow into the side of Kouta's face. The right side of the Juugo's belfry was beginning to shift further, wooden brown began crawling up and expanding from the black markings that etched themselves in the initial stages of the Cursed Seal's release. One half of Kouta's face was almost completely changed, the whites of his eyes turned black while his irises took a murky, golden hue. The gold that disappeared once Mizoma's elbow and a bunch of the blade tips present on his bent up and busted armor dug deep into the young man's cheeks, only blackness remained of Kouta's dazed right side of the face but the wooden texture, overflowing with chakra saved the flesh underneath from getting peeled off and shredded to meaty chunks by the same blow.</p>
      <p>Kouta snapped back. There appeared to be no one, or rather nothing, home. He got hit, he jumped back, that was as simple as that. Mizoma knew that the hits he threw his opponent's way were supposed to hurt, he saw the blood they drew, he saw the flinching and involuntary confusion that the sheer, brute power of his attacks caused but he saw no pain flaring in the boy's eyes, no… No pain. Plenty of excitement, however! It was at that moment that Hozuki Mizoma, one of the Seven Swords of the Mist understood the horror that was the Juugo clan. It was at that moment that the decision of Iwagakure to attempt and exterminate the folk that resonated through history as a heinous act of attempted genocide, not unlike that which Mizoma was attempting here under orders from his clan, became self-evident and justified.</p>
      <p>The demons of warfare that were Juugo knew no pain, no weary, when the humans went to sleep and the curse that laid dormant inside them woke up, there was no stopping it for the violence that this world knew as the only answer to any question and solution to any problem appeared to only fuel and excite these beasts.</p>
      <p>A deafening shockwave resonated through the battlefield, throwing anyone attempting to approach it off their feet, flattening or throwing off-balance anyone nearby and forcing the Blood Lagoon ninja present in the field to sanguinate to avoid having the aftereffect of Kouta's bestial return-punch to Mizoma shatter their every bone. Oceans of molten red burst and flowed all over, matching the crimson running down Mizoma's exposed face, torn open by the shrapnel of his own helmet, blown up from the sheer pressure and power that hit it straight.</p>
      <p>The escalating in the growth of his power, as well as his willingness and desire to kill and maim, youth chased after his opponent. Falling just mere inches short of where Mizoma's long and greasy with blood, black hair extended before his slam through multiple rocks of the valley and final smash into one of the thicker rocky formations. Before the finishing blow connected, a shine of silver dyed the gloomy red atmosphere with a challenging stroke of the artist's brush.</p>
      <p>Throwing up as much blood as it showered from the wounds on his face and the teeth shoved down his throat, Mizoma stumbled out of the rocky embrace of the structure he just smashed into. Just mere milliseconds later, Kouta's weightless body, shedding his unnatural, cursed skin and devoid of any of the bloody murder pouring out of his pores just moments earlier hit the floor. A momentary pause, just long enough for a few breaths to enter and leave one's lungs set in stone the triumph of Mizoma's mysterious sword over even the Juugo Cursed Seal.</p>
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<a name="section0553"><h2>553. The Moon Of The Blood Dragon Born At Last</h2></a>
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    <p>Searing grains of crushed gravel ran through Kouta's fingers. The heat only woke him up and snapped him out sooner. Almost instantly after regaining some semblance of control over his body, the Juugo grumbled and coughed, throwing up clamps of iron dust that were stuck together by the remnants of his own blood freed by his multiple injuries.</p><p>What happened? Somewhere down the line, he must have lost control. He needed too much power, called out for it with too much passion and let it come far too easily. He placed no floodgates, didn't try to understand his own condition and try to make accurate judgments over how much power was enough. Like a young man, desperate to show everyone how much he could drink, eager to display his youthful vigor in a most meaningless contest that only served to make a fool of everybody involved, he got pass-out drunk. Power was his poison, in this case…</p><p>There was no time to wallow in self-loathing, even while his hands didn't listen to him, Kouta wriggled like a worm and managed to flip on his side and throw the gunk of iron and clotted blood accumulating in his airways. The young man then directed his attention at the enemy, doing his best to work through his mangled state. At least losing all semblance of control and nearly slipping into Level Two paid its dividends – Kouta could vaguely remember punching Mizoma's face a whole lot and at the moment the blood spraying from the busted up, swollen and then shredded by the remains of his own helmet attic was the main thing keeping Mizoma from resuming his rampage.</p><p>Kouta rammed his head against the ground, hearing the sizzling noise of his own skin pressing against a surface that was hot enough to charcoal him in an instant and arced his body sideways high enough for him to shove his right hand down and support his weight long enough for a shift of balance on his knees. Just like that, the Juugo changed from an honorable position of having fallen in battle to a far less dignified one of kneeling in front of one's advancing doom.</p><p>Doom it must have been. Kouta had no doubts about that. The Juugo was the closest to the swordsman of the Mist, in fact, some of the Blood Lagoon members were no longer there at all. The androgynous shinobi had disappeared completely from view and judging by the sight of bursting streams of magma all around where Kouta last recalled the man being, Omochi may have taken a fatal dip.</p><p>One thing that Kouta could not quite understand was… How was it that he lost. It was the most important thing. His father treasured the knowledge of such experiences and if nothing of value was gained from a loss, the loss itself was useless on top of its natural bitterness. Mizoma charged onward, he had just gathered enough strength for a lunge. There was still strength in Kouta's body, which was why he was so confused about the nature of his loss. The young man summoned that strength and attempted to charge aside. He committed the cardinal sin of combat – turned his back to his opponent and lost any ability to track the specter with his eyes or protect himself in any meaningful way. That was the only way to get away fast enough…</p><p>A deafening clang sent Kouta tumbling forward, a loss of balance that required a roll to be settled. The youth turned at his back to see Mizoma much closer than he had thought the man would be in his current condition. The eyes of the swordsman were moonlight-white and contrasted the sinking in his own blood face of the man quite morbidly.</p><p>The reason why Kouta was still alive and not chopped up by the two-handed terror in Mizoma's hands was the pair of Blood Lagoon kunoichi crossing up in front of Mizoma. The raven-haired taijutsu user – Utaretta with her palms placed in a crooked finger position reminding most of a lion's paw, chakra flowing freely through the young lady's arms and cloaking her forearms which must have allowed her limbs to remain intact after contacting the dreaded weapon of a legendary swordsman. Her companion, the greatly covered up in leather young lady with a giant scythe aided Utaretta in the campaign to block Mizoma's strike.</p><p>Just as the rush of a successful defense began flooding Kouta's lungs and a smile was halfway done forming on his face, blood sprayed from both of the young women and they collapsed into puddles of blood. They reformed around the Juugo with signs of hyperventilation. If Utaretta was the fair judge of the covered-up kunoichi's condition as well, they appeared to suffer from some sort of condition similar to blood loss in combination with the symptoms of dehydration present in them: the choking up with the struggle of breathing through dried out airways, the dried out lips and hyperventilation, the profuse sweating from a paled-out skin as well. Such drastic array of symptoms was unnatural even in ninja.</p><p>"What happened? How did you get hit?" Kouta flipped out, seeing no other option but to observe the still lingering enemy gather his strength for another charge.</p><p>"I… I don't know…" the leather-clad Blood Lagoon kunoichi grumbled on one knee, grasping at her back but failing to reach anything but the edges of the grisly looking cut that split her cape as well as her leather bodysuit. For whatever reason, the young woman felt desperate to cover up the irrelevant patch of skin that was left exposed by the damaged piece of clothing. "We clearly block his strikes but… It's like it doesn't matter. What about you? What happened? Why didn't you grab the sword?"</p><p>"I…" Kouta froze up. "I couldn't think of it. I lost too much control. I couldn't think straight, everything I saw was red and I wanted to see more of it."</p><p>"That thing you did was pretty cool. I almost started feeling a bit hopeful we'd make it out. Any chance of pulling it off again?" Utaretta smiled as if her final moments were not being counted down by Mizoma's easing breaths and the vigor rushing back into his shutting down body.</p><p>"None… I'm not sure how I lost it in the first place. It is a form sustained through battle. The more fight you get, the hotter it burns…" something odd poked the eye of the medical ninja. With how much Mizoma was losing blood, he should have been dead just moments after his gruesome disfigurement. And yet… Something about his blood seemed really odd, it was spraying and flooding like… Water. That was the titan's secret – even in his current state, he still had enough awareness to mix up the blood leaving his body with water to lose both hydration and blood at a more balanced rate. That may have bought Mizoma a handful of extra minutes, time that none of them really had to spare!</p><p>"Your seal… It vanished when you got hit with the sword, right?" the scythe-wielding kunoichi of the Blood Lagoon asked. After Kouta's confirmation, she just processed something internally for a brief while. It was tough to say if she refused to voice her theories because she was not sure enough to gamble on them or because she physically would have had trouble speaking in her state of weary.</p><p>Mizoma rushed onward like a madman. Kouta pointed his arm forward, letting it undergo partial transformation into a cannon-like shape. Minuscule, bright dust scurried inside the cannon from which an enticing glow gleamed.</p><p>"Chakra Pistol!" Kouta growled out while unleashing whatever chakra he managed to channel in the brief time he had to respond to his enemy's lightning-fast attack. Mizoma attacked in bursts but when he finally gathered the strength needed for another attack, even in his current, half-dead state, the Swordsman of the Mist managed to race laps around the level of anyone around.</p><p>Mizoma yelled out after the beam hit him in the upper chest head-on and proceeded to riot-on in an effort to blast the legendary swordsman away but with his face shifted into that of a cornered animal and his eyes completely whited out, Mizoma walked through the momentary discomfort of Kouta's blast and continued his attack.</p><p>Utaretta locked her iron-grip hands around Mizoma's wrists and turned them in a way that would apply pressure to them. With a bestial roar, the swordsman let go of his treasured tool but instead of continuing to fight for it, he dived the other way – charging right at the scythe-wielding kunoichi who was finished swinging her large weapon in order to place it into a proper scythe-fighting stance.</p><p>The leathery kunoichi became surrounded in crimson blitzes, flashes and blurs while her blade danced in crescent-shaped swings as well as wide-reaching, circular swipes. It was a terrifyingly efficient style against a large group of opponents but its efficiency against a single, remarkably skilled opponent was put into question when Mizoma raised his arm up, allowing the scythe to penetrate through his iron gauntlet and even stick through his hand.</p><p>Happening in perfect synchrony, Mizoma's arm shot out and clutched the young woman's neck while his right eye exploded into a shower of water with hints of his blood in it to balance the loss of both fluids somewhat. Forcing his way through the pain of having just lost an eye to an invisible slash, not unlike ones he himself employed, Mizoma raised the young woman up and swatted Utaretta aside with her own comrade's body used as a meat sack.</p><p>Kouta charged onward, too afraid to use his signature Juugo ninjutsu against the opponent, the young man spiraled onward like a rushing arrow in an attempt at a taijutsu attack, now that the suffocating young kunoichi of the Blood Lagoon had managed to grievously injure the arm of her opponent and blind him in his right side. Pain and darkness… The bitterness and taste of iron made Kouta force his face off the dirt only to receive a direct kick to the face that sent him flying back and made the young man's heart shake from the panic of blood from his broken nose gushing upward and back into his own airway.</p><p>The Juugo rolled back and got on his feet almost instantly, taking a preparation stance for another charge. He noticed Mizoma's sword in Utaretta's hands. If it was truly some mysterious quality of this blade that prevented Kouta from sustaining his transformation, he may have finished this fight then and there by going all out again… But… What if he lost control again?</p><p>Mizoma manhandled the struggling Blood Lagoon kunoichi by headbutting her with his pin-cushion-like head as well as delivering some up-close and personal knee strikes and some punches from his free arm. He was still struggling with keeping control over her. Now was the time for decisions, does Kouta let his Cursed Seal loose again or does he try again the way he is?</p><p>The hood of the leathery kunoichi slipped off from the kickback after one of those nasty headbutts. The strips of leather covering up her eyes and her face tore open a bit. The young woman began screaming bloody murder the moment most of her face became exposed. One of her eyes remained concealed under a half-torn strap but the left one turned to pitch white and began wrinkling as if it was being boiled.</p><p>"Chisilla can't get exposed to sunlight! Stop him!" Utaretta's usually somewhat laid back and indifferent face turned worried as she charged onward in her bloodied and torn up dress. Swiping her lion-paw style attacks but being forced to stop every time because, being one of the world's most skilled swordsmen, Mizoma employed the method of human-shield swordsmanship quite exquisitely and offered young Chisilla's slowly boiling body as a defensive barrier that the de facto leader of the Blood Lagoon group was unwilling to attack.</p><p>With a sadistic grin, totally unlike the professional and greatly pissed off style that Mizoma employed before, the spectral titan of the battlefield played around with Chisilla's body as if it was mere nunchaku in his hand. All that Utaretta got back for her effort to rescue her comrade and the mercy she showed the young woman was a vicious head-to-head smash that sent her flying back. At this point, the weakened and disarmed scythe-user had no more strength to oppose and she merely grunted mildly from the pain that the smack summoned from within. Compared to the pain of her boiling, exposed to the sunlight and swelling face, the ache of being used as a human-nunchaku was almost a relief.</p><p>With a bloodshot eye, completely drowning in blood and swollen, purple face, teeth that were sharp and equal parts of dried blood and yellow rot, Mizoma lifted the powerless young woman up and displayed her in his hand at Kouta. He must have relished this, having broken any hints of resistance not only in those two that he wanted to kill but also in the good Samaritan that just tried to help out.</p><p>Mizoma's free, injured hand slipped down, grabbing Chisilla's clothes by the collar. A mixture of blood and seawater burst from the Mist Swordsman's wound when he closed his clutch. Whatever wounds Chisilla's peculiar scythe-fighting style left in the man, whatever pain it caused was not enough to reach slumbering true Mizoma who was sheltering deep inside his own consciousness, letting only the bloodthirsty, adrenaline-fueled rage monster out who was mischievous enough to torture the light-sensitive woman and see for how long her sensitivity to sunlight would take to kill the leather-clad young lady.</p><p>"Why are you just standing here? Didn't you come here to help!?" Utaretta pleaded looking at Kouta who felt about as pitiful as he must have looked. At that moment he did not feel a single violent urge in his entire being. It was not even the petrifying fear that took over the heat of battle, fear called for a certain fight or flight response that was violent in its very nature. The bemused nature that plagued the Juugo and drained his entire body of any semblance of feeling except absolute apathy that was left in its place made reaching his Cursed Seal power absolutely impossible.</p><p>Thousands of Juugo would have killed for this feeling – freedom from the darkness inside them. The total purge of any violence or killing intent…</p><p>"Worse…" Kouta mumbled. "I came here for a fight…"</p><p>The apathetic Juugo could see Mizoma's arm muscles tense, he could see it from the water and blood being forced out through his wounds while his limb began slowly moving down in an attempt to tear every single leathery string and piece of black cloth concealing the vulnerable skin of Chisilla from a gruesome demise. Made even more gruesome in this Valley of Hell – a place of limited sunlight passing through the ever-present iron dust. It would be half as agonizing as being exposed to true sunlight but take ten times as long for the nightmare to end.</p><p>A sound of snapping, similar to a dozen whips working their bloody magic at the same time. Chisilla's scream filled the air as the gruesome effects that befell the face and eye of the Blood Lagoon ninja spread all over her exposed body, save for the few wraps of leather that remained dangling on the sides of the young woman, torn but not yet removed completely.</p><p>"It's your own fault…" Mizoma's voice grumbled. His iris and a pupil looked down from the heights it had been rolled up to, returning together with the man's own consciousness, woken up by the scream of his agonized enemy as that of any supporter of the Bloody Mist would be. "It's because of your impure blood that you've come to be afflicted by this disease. All of you are diseased, even if your brothers and sisters don't share your affliction."</p><p>Mizoma was about to toss the young woman aside. Then, the most curious thing happened. He froze. Every muscle in his body remained as tensed as they were at the peak of his lobbing motion, his eyes, even his breathing remained completely halted. A blitz comprised of streaks of dark violet, blue and green together closed in, turned more intense before finishing the formation into the complete shape of Aozora Yushijin. The young man let his sword work, swiftly and ruthlessly, just like the blade of an enemy would have worked on him. Completing the combination of heavy sword strikes with a backflip, using the weight of his claymore to the advantage of the complicated acrobatics he was performing, the young man sheathed his sword and began working on hand seals at the same time.</p><p>"Fire Style: Flame Bomb!" Yushijin yelled out, breathing out a fiery shape of a perfect orb that blasted against the still frozen in time enemy and exploded with enough force to throw even the user himself sliding back and with enough force to almost make him topple over himself. It was self-evident that even a perfectionist like Yushijin just used a combo he had not completely worked out and polished yet.</p><p>The blaze of glory that Yushijin's ninjutsu technique created was quickly put out by the water and blood that it blew up. A barely visible smirk appeared at the side of the young chuunin's face as he recognized the fact that his enemy could no longer properly control the relationship of his own blood and the water he created whenever he liquefied his body to escape harm. Now even his pure generated water had the man's own blood leaking into it which was a bad sign altogether for the Swordsman of the Mist.</p><p>"It was bloody impressive of you to get here faster than us…" Chison grumbled, dragging his hand across his chin in evident amazement at Yushijin's abilities.</p><p>Chiya who landed not too far away from her hulking companion quickly removed her own leather jacket and used it to cover up the whimpering and writhing in pain sister of hers. The young woman then glared at the reshaping form of one of the Seven Swords with a look that completely threw any hints of pity out the window and only was looking on to cause as much pain to this vile man as possible.</p><p>"Cut the heroic act, if I couldn't beat him, you sure won't." Utaretta cheeked at her sister with a relieved and almost cheerful face. The intervention of the other part of the Konoha party as well as the other Blood Lagoon members that managed to win their battles was just the factor that they needed to survive.</p><p>Chiya's eyes glared with blood-red and her pupil grew into an orb reminiscing of an obsidian moon in the bloody sky. A single streak of dark, purple shine gleamed throughout the visual technique that had manifested in the eyes of the Blood Lagoon swordswoman momentarily.</p><p>"You've done everything you can. Rest now. I'll take it over from here…" she replied to Utaretta without letting her gruesome and dread-inducing glare to ever turn to her blood kin. These eyes were meant solely for the man that Chiya wished to destroy.</p>
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<a name="section0554"><h2>554. A Triple Threat Match In Hell</h2></a>
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    <p>Not a single noise alerted to the incoming attack of the Blood Lagoon kunoichi. Chiya moved forward far slower than most of her Blood Lagoon peers as well as the Konoha ninja that have seen her fight or traverse knew her to be able to move. With a quick feint, however, the sluggish pace of movement was revealed to be trickery. Mizoma raised his blade to defend himself but a burst of blood erupted from his right side. Mizoma's only functional eye widened in shock but quickly realized Chiya's deceit.</p><p>The young woman attacked him from the right side because his right eye was cut up. His depth perception and vision, in general, was severely weakened in that side making it highly probable that he'd miss the proper angle to block her speedy blitz right. When one was dealing with the speed of blade-dancing like that in which these two tangoed, the margin for failure was narrower than ever.</p><p>"You cocky twit, you forgot to apply your own blood to the sword. You cannot use your ability without that…" Chison, the massive armored tank of the Blood Lagoon thundered out in laughter.</p><p>"Ability?" Yushijin raised an eyebrow, noting this for the future if the rather flammable personality of the young woman caused Team Fir and the Blood Lagoon bunch to ever clash.</p><p>"Just watch and see… These Hozuki assholes won't admit it but we're a clan of our own. When our blood enters someone else's bloodstream, interesting things happen." Chison spoke with excitement and vigor even if the shade from inside his oversized helmet made it difficult to see his enthusiastic grin.</p><p>"I won't kill you just yet. You wanted to kill us because the Hozuki ordered you to. I can understand that. But being as cruel as you were to Chisilla was over the line. To those threatening my blood, I show cruelty surpassing their own which is why you will bleed out like the pig you are." Chiya spoke with underlying scorn. She tried to sound apathetic and cold but flames of hatred showed their tongues through the cracks of her facade with every word she spoke.</p><p>"Underestimate me and fool around at your own peril. One way or the other, you will meet it." Mizoma growled and powered through the pain. This time his abundant armor pieces and plates served as a hindrance as because of it hanging all over his body the man was unable to tend to his wounds and apply the proper pressure. Even worse, it became evident from the first glance that some of the busted armor only served to dig deeper into his wounds. Unless the swordsman withdrew, he was a walking dead man with these injuries and yet something suggested any casual observer that this was of no worry to the specter of the battlefield.</p><p>Mana's feet landed on the uneasy and ruined ground of the part of the Valley where the clash between the Chinoike and the Hozuki representatives was taking place. The magician's movements lacked any subtlety or control as she very nearly tripped and fell over on her face, having to plant her knees deep into the mushy layers of iron dust and scorching, damp gravel to keep her face from eating dirt.</p><p>"Mana…" Kouta uttered, quickly moving up to the magician.</p><p>"You're back? How is that possible?" Mana wondered, running her eyes across the body of her boyfriend while the Juugo did the same to her. His gaze was much more worried and horrified by the state of the magician's being, however. Almost instantly, without asking for permission or if it was a good idea or a priority right now, the medical ninja placed his hands over Mana's body and scanned it with the navy light of the Diagnosis Jutsu.</p><p>"Heh, yeah… That guy has some crazy sword, I think it's because of that…" Kouta managed to power through a smile but Mana could perceive that there was something gloomier hidden under it. She wondered what exactly that could have been, her boyfriend was usually not the type to manage to keep his emotions hidden, his nature was completely wrong for that sort of thing. Yet asking now hardly seemed like the priority…</p><p>Mana gazed at the weapon that Mizoma clung with one of his functional hands with as much ferocity and persistence as the lantern-head clung to the remnants of his own life. Even with her notable background in history and lore of the world she lived in, mythologies and tales of all kinds, stories of legendary heroes both based in reality and completely made up, she couldn't put her finger on that sword.</p><p>All that the magician could see were traces of its origin, put together out of smaller details. It was no slick and lean weapon, suggesting that it was made by Iwagakure swordsmiths, a place as wealthy with the natural minerals of all kinds hiding underneath those mountain ranges of theirs as it was with stout men capable of wielding such swords. However, it also had notable Kumogakure signatures to it – the fine craftsmanship could not have been achieved by anyone else but the molecular-level smiths of the Kirikuzu and the gold strings crawling up the blade looked more like feather clouds and not vines as the initial impression suggested.</p><p>Could this sword have been a joint venture between the factions currently aiming at each other's throats? Aside from the emergency at hand, the irony that this two-handed blade testified of was almost admirable.</p><p>Mana got so lost gazing into the obsidian blacks and the golden accessories donning the deathbringer in Mizoma's hands that she failed to properly absorb where exactly the sword was moving. Even with one functional hand, the titan wielded his sword with finesse and mastery that Mana would have felt jealous of had she cared at all about the craft of swordsmanship. Despite her speed and acrobatics, Chiya would have been tagged multiple times had she not sanguinated out of the harm's way. There was something profoundly odd about the sword, it was not just Kouta's testimony nor was it the case of rumors of superstition – Mana could feel it.</p><p>Chakra was moving through spaces where the sword simply was not. It was like it existed in multiple places at once. What terrified the magician the most, in this case, was that she could feel the crumbs across the road – the remnants of signatures she could not sense yet, as if she was gazing at a dark path ahead. The path itself was visible yet not the destination it led to. The sword was present in many more spaces and planes than Mana was capable of picking up. It truly befit the status of the tool that one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist would have wielded.</p><p>A mighty clang echoed through the entire valley while Mizoma's ornate blade stopped in mid-swing after having met the equal-forced resistance of Yushijin's longsword. A cruel grin covered the right side of Mizoma's face. Mana tried to warn the leader of Team Fir about the sword's gimmick but due to having to physically move away Kouta and interrupt his healing it took more time than the Konoha swordsman had.</p><p>A flash of red crossed Yushijin's chest, shoulder to lower waist. The pain and shock of the sudden outburst of pain forced the Konoha ninja to lose focus and stumble on his feet, wave forward and backward while the focus returned to his eyes. By that time Chiya had pounced on top of the ruthless Kirigakure swordsman like a mad cat, slashing at him with newfound rage on her face.</p><p>"Out of my way! He's mine!" she said back to Yushijin.</p><p>A pair of shallow cuts opened up Mizoma's swollen face. The young Blood Lagoon lady had aimed her attacks higher to the right just to add some more insult to the injury by slashing at Mizoma's face while still abusing his weakness of no vision in one eye. A crushing disadvantage to any swordsman who had not had the time in their lives to adapt to this weakness and learn to fight without advanced depth perception.</p><p>Mizoma's own sword danced in return. Chiya used nimble and precise movements to completely lean out of the way of the man's blade. It was evident that she had faced the threat of an invisible extension of a blade before, most likely in her kin – Chisilla whom the swordsman was quite protective of. The white shirt of the Blood Lagoon swordswoman dyed in a manner, not unlike that in which spilling a pair of glasses of wine would have colored it.</p><p>The Swordsman of the Mist noticed the weakness and the shock of the pain and wounds that still managed to haunt the swordswoman, despite having completely moved out of the sword's way to where not even an invisible extension of the blade would have reached her. The spectral titan shot his left foot forward in an attempt to push-kick the young woman's teeth in with his armored boots and the rows of spikes present all over his soles and heels.</p><p>A deafening thud echoed as the boot met adamant resistance from a steel barrier – Yushijin's claymore. The young man had thrust the tip of his blade into the gravel and raised its edge up to form a vertical wall, tough enough to take the ground-shaking punishment meant for the feisty Blood Lagoon swordswoman. Moved by sheer instinct, as if sensing his impending demise, Yushijin leaped aside, just narrowly avoiding the rising sword strike of the very same youth he had tried to protect just now.</p><p>"I said… He's mine!" Chiya shouted. With the awakened visual technique of the obsidian moon reflected in a blood-red sky flaring from her eyes.</p><p>"It is my responsibility as a leader to protect my teammates. To bring them out of the trouble I've brought them into. I'm afraid I cannot allow you to shoulder my burden alone." Yushijin replied shortly before the eyes of both passionate swordsmen turned to the rising figure that obstructed whatever limited sunlight broke through the gloomy iron clouds.</p><p>A cascade of vision-robbing sparks exploded around the circle within the reach of each swordsman as the three locked down into a perpetual circle of slashing and blocking. Mizoma slashed at both Yushijin and Chiya, about as devoted to his assignment as it was possible to a man that rose above just being a professional get. Chiya moved away from Mizoma's blade while simultaneously attacking him in return while swinging a few cuts Yushijin's way whenever she found that the Konoha ninja was getting too close to attacking an enemy she deemed hers to defeat. Yushijin was busy just protecting himself from both fronts, lacking the agility to move around as Chiya did, he mostly relied on his Last Resort illusion to do the heavy lifting of keeping his blood on the inside.</p><p>"Heh, I didn't expect this bout to go three-way! This is glorious!" Chison exclaimed while spreading his hands out wide, embracing the insanity in the whirlwind of blades that displayed its best performance in front of him.</p><p>"Aren't you going to help? You could shift the balance for good." Mana addressed the armored giant who just waved his hand at the hurting magician.</p><p>"And risk having Chiya gunning for me too? She's got enough on her plate as it is… She wants this and when Chiya wants something this hard, it's better to just let her have it." The careless, living golem replied.</p><p>"I must…" Mana stood back on her feet but Kouta's hand pressed against her chest. With a light push, he tried to comfort the magician as well as soothe her rising fighting spirit back down.</p><p>"Just watch this for now. If I heal you up, you may still be the deciding factor of this in the aftermath among broken soldiers." Kouta said.</p><p>Mana did not resist. Already she was having a much easier time breathing. It would only take a few moments for her busted ribs and the specks of blood leaking into her lungs to all get better. A more reserved expansion of her senses suggested that another wave of reinforcements was not too far away, slightly worn and busted but Erumo was among them in a relatively fresh state. In fact, her chakra appeared the closest to the battlefield, as if she was spearheading the charge.</p><p>Mizoma's body froze in a statuesque pose, it jerked a pair of times, suggesting that its master attempted to force through the paralysis but the cause of all time having apparently frozen around him was not something that mere brute force could solve. Having dealt with one side of the equation, Yushijin put all of his effort into subduing the Blood Lagoon woman, hacking at Chiya from both sides and hammering at her guard from both sides. Chiya was a monster of movement. Her sword still clutched in one hand, she danced around Yushijin's sword without committing the fatal mistake of blocking once and becoming locked into the string that could have only ended in shatters of her trusty blade.</p><p>Even with the injures on her body, the Blood Lagoon woman had what it took to move circles around Yushijin's attacks and while the face of the Konoha ninja did not tell much, it did betray a modicum of irritation and worry over how agile the unstable youth was. Needless to say, the blush of apparent humiliation did not leave his eyes either, dodging with such grace and flawlessness was seen as a sign of dominance over one's opponent and anyone who had their entire desperation combination avoided would have born the mark of embarrassment.</p><p>"My blood is not meant for you, but please do disappear." Chiya mumbled while turning her black-moon eyes at the Konoha ninja and letting them work some enigmatic magic on the man. Mana could sense raw and untrained bursts of chakra leaving Chiya's body and pulsing all throughout Yushijin's system – it appeared that whatever this freak ability of the Blood Lagoon members was, it possessed an uncanny ability to weave illusions through sight alone when awakened.</p><p>A circular orb of shockwave pushing the crimson strands of corruption away fired off from Yushijin with the eyes of the Konoha swordsman regaining a sense of clarity and control after a lingering second of confusion and horror.</p><p>"W-What?" Chiya's body tensed up in a sense of dread and confusion over the skill of her opponent to triumph over her powerful illusions. Powerful they were, Mana could tell, their power did not hail from skillful mastery or polish, not the truly dangerous stuff, it came from raw, dominating talent and the demonic strength of the illusion and how much effort it should have taken to break out of them. Whatever Faustian bargain Yushijin had made to dispel this illusion with such a brute method, it would cost him in the long run…</p><p>With a standing body-splash, Yushijin slammed against the body of his opponent in an instant, utilizing the moment when the young woman was too tensed up and lacked the relaxation and peace of mind needed to pull off her talented evasive maneuvers. Chiya stumbled and landed on her bottom.</p><p>"Fire Style: Prideful Roar!" Yushijin exclaimed, shouting the last part of the name of his technique out like a king of the jungle let his roar roam wild and free. It was not just a mere shout, the airwaves coming out from Yushijin's lungs were superheated to the point of where even standing in a respectful distance, surrounded by hell itself, Mana could perfectly sense the radiating heat from the leader of Team Fir.</p><p>Skin began peeling off from Chiya's flesh, in mere moments, the chunks and strands of her flesh followed, peeling off from her bones but instead of turning to dust, her bones and fleeting flesh and skin dissolved into droplets of blood and evaporated into a mist that utterly reeked of iron, the stench was overwhelming even in a hellscape drowning in lingering iron dust that filled one's lungs with metallic powder with every breath and summoned irritating and cutting coughs. As each particle came up and down, it tend to slice at the gentle airway membranes, like hundreds of thousands of microscopic daggers moving up and down one's innards. Even in such a nightmare, Chiya's blood managed to reek of iron.</p><p>The blood reformed in a pillar-shaped whirl that reached the sky and split the iron clouds for just a moment of their brief existence. Chiya separated the vortex of blood with a swipe of her hand and emerged from the crimson whirlpool, charging at Yushijin with bloody murder in her eyes. Metallic fingers wrapped up around the young woman's head somewhere midway through, only her crimson-sky irises and pitch-black moon pupils shined through from within the iron cage of Mizoma's closed clutch. The titanic man swung his opponent around in mid-air like a wet blanket and smacked her around him, the wounds all over the man forced the barely living revenant to release his hold and tend to his own aches, however.</p><p>Yushijin's illusion had ended the moment that the Konoha swordsman had decided to use another technique. There was no way that the leader of Team Fir, one of the pair of genin proven skilled enough to ascend during the Chuunin Exams unparalleled in their scale and difficulty, would not have known such a simple fact – he used the recovery of his enemy and the mutual hatred of this three-way as an improvised defensive measure.</p><p>Even if the magician had no interest in meaningless fighting, just for a blink of an eye she wondered who truly would have won between the two of them. Her strategic and analytical abilities that Mana had always counted on in a fight she could not avoid turned bleak and pale in front of Yushijin's. It may not have served as much of an advantage as the magician thought it would have been in such an unfortunate clash.</p><p>A sound of string reeling distracted Mana from the complete mayhem of the Blood Lagoon, Team Fir and the Hozuki group attempting to utterly murder one another. With a wooden slam, a large box shut around Mizoma with strings reeling around it, littered with explosive tags that one by one detonated, creating a chain explosion that obliterated the entire box and threw both Yushijin and Chiya aside from the might and intensity of it. It was a trapping technique, one that required enough preparation to force the user to seal it within a scroll first. No wonder Mana sensed Erumo's chakra so consistently and nearby – it must have been her scroll that caused this.</p><p>"It's over, Mizoma, the Chinoike will live on." A pale, tall and slim young man with a cross-sword held in his left hand that bled all over its blade ridges coloring it copper declared to a seemingly lifeless and voiceless cloud of iron dust and debris left over from Erumo's performance.</p><p>Erumo and the other Blood Lagoons have finally regrouped with their allies and were now willing to commit to the final push with their forces clamped together.</p>
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<a name="section0555"><h2>555. A Legendary Trinket That Nobody Wanted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even in the excitement of the growing battlefield, the noise of sorry whimpering and pain reached Mana's ears. The magician turned her attention away from the debris, wooden chunks and clouds of dust that remained after Erumo's and the remaining Chinoike clan members' entrance. It was the downed and crying, photosensitive Chinoike girl, conscious enough to realize that she was living her worst nightmare and do her best to attempt and cover up with the limited leather jacket laid on top of her but semi-entranced to the point where her movements looked limp and lazy.</p><p>Kouta moved away from Mana, trying to catch her eyes with his, what little corners of her boyfriend's glaze the magician did notice, she saw being full of regret, worry, and doubt of some sort. Mana's mind was set, she suffered from no such plagues. The healed magician disappeared from the initial location, something that Kouta pretty much expected, even if he didn't want it, the direction in which the young kunoichi dashed to, however, did surprise her beloved young man.</p><p>"There…" Mana muttered while placing her own, a bit dirty and in places torn blazer onto the still exposed and slightly burnt areas of Chisilla's skin. "I guess we need to find something more permanent to cover you, huh?"</p><p>Farther away, in the heat of battle, Erumo joined the side of her teammate in battle. Standing in the open was not a position she enjoyed but it was crystal clear from her determined expression that there was no one else she'd rather stand alongside and trust her safety to than Aozora Yushijin.</p><p>"How does this creep even have the hydration in his body to liquefy?" the trapster wondered.</p><p>"He'd have died, without a doubt had he used the Hydrification Jutsu," Yushijin said.</p><p>"Then… How?" Erumo remained baffled.</p><p>"Do you see any water amongst the ruins you've blasted out? Even in these immense temperatures, the Hozuki hydration does not evaporate. He must have used a simple Substitution Jutsu to replace himself with a busted piece of debris or something." Yushijin replied.</p><p>"That bastard really doesn't want to go down." Erumo cursed. The kunoichi continued to scan the battlefield for lingering clues of Mizoma's continued existence.</p><p>"It doesn't matter. He can only use such a cheap clutch once. His body is already at the limit, there's no way that he'll rest up to the point he can substitute again in this battle. Hydrification is also sealed off for him – he's cornered." Yushijin remained cool and reserved even when his opponent continued to spit in the face of overwhelming odds.</p><p>Despite Mizoma's valiant effort to commit genocide and the admirable devotion to his malicious goals, the absolute refusal to fold as well, there was no respect in the eyes of any of the opposing ninja. Normally, no matter how wrong a combatant's goals were, no matter how far they were off the beaten track, such might and sacrifice would have invited some. After all, ninja were not the lot that were known for remaining morally consistent for long in their line of work. Their morality depended entirely on that of their mission objective.</p><p>What kept the respect away from the eyes of everyone was the simple, primal sense of dread. The fear for Mizoma of the Seven Swords and it was panic well-earned.</p><p>Metallic clangs, slow and irregular in their repetition signaled Mizoma's appearance from the debris and whirlwinds of rotating grains of gravel and pebbles that spun in speeds that would have easily torn through the flesh of any living man as if they were tiny bullets. The goop dripping from Mizoma's wounds was much thicker as the proportion of water and blood in his release shifted much farther to the favor of the latter. The titan no longer had the hydration to spare despite wasting almost none. With death knocking at his door, the Swordsman of the Mist no longer could dance around the battlefield like he once could and did what he still had the strength to do – lingered and stumbled.</p><p>Refusing to give up until the end.</p><p>"He is mine!" Chiya growled, showing off her teeth to Erumo and Yushijin as if expecting the two to oppose her.</p><p>"That is still to be…" Yushijin attempted to argue, as their feud over whose responsibility it was to draw the concluding strokes on this painting of a tragic scene of warfare remained unresolved but his body froze up.</p><p>Mana turned back at her subdued teammates, the chakra coursing through their systems distracted her from her effort to ease Chisilla's torment as much as possible. It did not look like the young woman was in any danger of dying and although the burns over her body were quite severe, with her condition she most likely lived completely covered up regardless of how healthy her skin was, to begin with.</p><p>Chiya dragged her hand across the blade of her sword as her infernal eyes gleamed with their signature crimson sky shine as if the fire in her gaze was only fueled by her life force that she smeared across the silver-edge of her blade and let run down its ridges. Instead of turning her blade at the entranced Yushijin and Erumo, the Chinoike instead rushed to settle things with Mizoma. By now Chiya was well aware of how quickly Yushijin could bust out of even her mighty illusion, even though, judging how difficult it was before, it was unlikely that the prison break would be quite as sudden as last time.</p><p>Mana flickered onward toward the battlefield. She did not stand in Chiya's way as it was unlikely she could have possibly covered the distance and then gotten in between the raging spirit of vengeance and her target, however, the magician did flash up to her teammates and placed her hands on their backs. The Konoha kunoichi closed her eyes and focused her own chakra if she was to aid Yushijin and Erumo in breaking out, she needed to emit her own chakra into their system, not unlike genjutsu did normally. It was like creating a new, completely blank illusion that did nothing except override the previous, the dangerous one.</p><p>Mana poured massive pulses of chakra that would have been enough to compose sky-spanning fireballs all by themselves, however, the eyes of her teammates remained blanked out and their systems remained leaking massive amounts of chakra by simply letting it escalate at an irregular pace throughout the normal circulation cycles. Whereas normally chakra was like water running through a well-maintained plumbing system, theirs was like a pack of rats attempting to flee a flooded sewer in agonizing desperation that threatened to stop their little hearts long before the flood drowned them.</p><p>The magician's eyes widened in shock after realizing that she, of all people, could have broken the illusion that Yushijin and Erumo were in. Perhaps it was because she was working on somebody else and not busting the walls of illusion down itself but after pouring such a massive flow of chakra down the drain, Mana quickly stopped and glared at the Blood Lagoon swordswoman in disbelief.</p><p>Just who were these people?</p><p>Mizoma raised his sword up, tumbling back from the weight of it as he continued to wield the sword, that may have weighed many times over the weight of a girthy man, The cool face of Chiya with her peculiar ocular mutation, followed by her entire, subtle frame exploded into a nova of blood as if someone had wrapped their arms around the young woman and squeezed her hard on multiple points until the body just burst.</p><p>In horn-like, whirling twisters, the blood jetted streamed upward right over Mizoma's head where Chiya reformed. The blood of the young woman, which she turned into upon sanguinating did not behave in the normal way in which water moved. It was like the uncanny ability to manipulate iron-rich fluids, like blood, that the Blood Lagoon possessed manifested itself in this spectacular ability to even manipulate the movement of the blood they themselves sanguinated into far beyond the extent to which a Hozuki could have controlled their hydration during Hydrification Jutsu.</p><p>After completely reforming, Chiya allowed mother gravity to do its job. Like a teetotum, Chiya whizzed past her opponent's defenses, leaving a massive gash on the man's back. The immense tension that this move demanded sprayed blood all over her wounds from her body, reopening them in an instant. Had Chiya not possessed the odd ability to coagulate her own blood into a sponge-like, gelatinous substance that glued one's wounds like nothing one has ever seen, she'd have likely collapsed not too long after her beaten opponent.</p><p>Chiya straightened her back and turned her head behind her to look at the collapsed enemy with pity. With a single, swinging motion, the baneful youth splattered the remains of her blood over her sword across the rocky floor. Within an instant of being separated and no longer cared for, the fluid started to evaporate and boil from the fiendish temperatures of the valley.</p><p>"Close your eyes now." Mana demanded with a sense of distaste rising from within her gut. "It's the only thing that locks them in your genjutsu."</p><p>"I will." Chiya nodded. "Right after I settle things with this man."</p><p>"The only reason why I allowed you to attack him was because the well-being of my friends felt more important than trying and failing to get in your way. Now that I know that trying to rescue them in an effort just as vain, I will not let you just kill this man." Mana moved past Yushijin and Erumo and stepped in to where her position could have been interpreted as a ballsy statement.</p><p>"I see…" Chiya replied with a face completely static despite Mana's declaration, as if what the magician had just said completely flew over her head. "It is fortunate that I have already killed this man then…"</p><p>Mana was about to ask what the Chinoike was talking about but the twitching ascension of the fallen swordsman did that for her. Mizoma roared out like a wounded animal, no longer having the required amount of sanity and consciousness to form cohesive sentences or even complete words that weren't some sort of onomatopoeic interjections.</p><p>"About by the time that a Blood Lagoon member awakens their unique set of eyes, besides from being able to cast illusions through look alone, their blood acquires peculiar abilities. Abilities that awaken after contact with unrelated to the Blood Lagoon blood." Chiya looked down, completely ignoring the alarming signs that Mizoma will soon attack. Her hair hung down to where they obstructed most of her face, sinking all of it except for the terrifying eyes that she had awakened in shadow.</p><p>"My ability is explosion," she uttered softly as a whimper.</p><p>With a thunderous bang, that soon afterward gained gutsier, coming from the underbelly and slurping type of effect, the entire upper side of Mizoma's body just above the pelvis became just wet splatters that rained over Chiya instead of the fury-driven execution that the mindless titan previously promised. Like a balloon bomb that detonated above ground, a wet splash followed the collapse of Mizoma's liquids over the nearest area.</p><p>It was then that Chiya closed her eyes and breathed out a heavy sigh. The young woman raised her sword up as if demonstrating its shiny and well-maintained blade before sheathing it in front of the magician. Once Chiya's eyes opened again, there was no more of the bloody sky or an obsidian moon in her eyes nor the radiating, malicious violet gleaming from her ocular orbs. Her eyes were violet and irradiating only in the more figurative sense. Gleaming only in the sense that they appeared like a pair of developed amethysts.</p><p>The illusion that had locked down Yushijin and Erumo disappeared instantly like snapped away by a capricious deity. Mana glanced over her allies with worry, trying to discern if there were any underlying effects as most illusion of more powerful ranks would have had. Judging from what her experienced yet natural skill in the art of illusion could have suggested from a mere visual examination alone, the pair looked alright, if a little down from the experience. They were surely shaken, as someone captured inside an illusion should have been but there did not appear to be any lingering, permanent effects.</p><p>Perhaps Chiya's illusion was so complicated to bust through not because of it intricately weaved nature and sky-high ranking but because of the raw power of it.</p><p>"So she's killed him." Yushijin breathed out. Breath rolled off of his chest like a boulder.</p><p>"Thanks for bailing us out of the genjutsu, oh Mistress of Illusions…" Erumo sneered at the magician with a sharpness to her glare that Mana thought unfitting the situation. Then again, it was unclear what it was exactly that the two had seen while under the illusion or what other feelings Chiya's unnatural mutation placed the duo under. Had Mana spent what seemed like eternity locked in an illusionary world of her worst nightmares, maybe she'd also be cranky after waking up.</p><p>"I did my best." Mana admitted. "Her illusions weren't like those I'm working with. It felt like trying to move a mountain after having learned to plow a patch of land. At some point I've hit a wall that I chose not to try and climb over."</p><p>"Maybe that's for the better. Breaking one of her illusions cost me an arm and a leg." Yushijin said in a raspy and tired voice. The swordsman removed his claymore and tossed it aside. Having removed the weight from his back, the Konoha ninja stretched out and sat down on the ground to take a couple of breathers. While he failed the responsibility he had placed on himself as a leader, that failure somewhat freed him. At least freed him to rest a bit.</p><p>It was also a failure that Mana knew all too well and therefore could feel for her friend a bit.</p><p>"Your skill was impressive. I had to swallow my pride and actually use my ability because I'd have never pulled it off without my little opening." Chiya's voice rose in tone and volume enough to reach the Konoha group. After Mizoma's demise, Kouta approached his group and tried checking on them. While Yushijin dismissed his friend's requests for a scan and possible treatment, Erumo had accepted it and therefore the medical ninja occupied himself with what he could.</p><p>"Yeah well… I guess you wanted to repay the pain caused to your kin more than I wanted to lead my team right." Yushijin replied, still seated.</p><p>"His sword… It fits your style." Chiya looked at the blood-covered tool of murder laying beside its master's lower body that from time to time still emitted a little twitch once blood attempted to find its way back to Mizoma's stone heart that had long since been obliterated.</p><p>"Forget it." Yushijin waved his arm at the legendary blade. "This Valley will forever remind me of my failure as a leader. Leading my team right into a clash they did not belong in and failing to protect them. It could have cost us the integrity of our mission. Taking this sword would be a reward and I do not believe in rewarding failure."</p><p>Chiya ducked down to pick the massive weapon up. When held in her frail hands, the sword easily matched the size of the young woman. With her paled-out face and violet eyes, the swordswoman examined the fine craftsmanship of the sword and recalled its unbeatable, still mysterious qualities. Mizoma, if he even truly knew what the sword was actually capable of, carried the exact nature of the weapon to whichever wet stain it was appropriate to call his grave.</p><p>With peaceful dismissal in her eyes, the swordswoman tossed the chunk of steel away. The tool using which the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist claimed countless human lives clanged with a heavy and dull noise that rose to a higher pitch once the sword dragged across the Valley floor.</p><p>"As if I'd ever consider fighting with the weapon that was meant to be used to slay everyone I love." Chiya smiled in a way that made Mana wonder if perhaps the swordswoman actually honored the idea of granting Mizoma's sword a different purpose.</p><p>"Are you guys sure you don't want to just pick it up and carry it home to Konoha? Sounds like madness to encounter a treasure like this and just leave it on the floor in some valley." Chison somehow managed to complete the sentence through his endless fits of chuckling. For whatever reason, he found both surviving sides of the battle dismissing the only material trinkets out of sheer principle of it hilarious.</p><p>"No, if I brought it home, I'd be rewarded for bringing back a sword that belongs to the line of Seven Swordsmen. I will report about it but I won't bring it back. Maybe the punishment I'll get for leaving it here will help me sleep better at night." Yushijin sighed, finally gathering enough strength to get back on his feet. With slowly returning vigor, the young ninja stretched his muscles out.</p><p>"You guys shouldn't linger here." Mana brought up. "After realizing their attempt at killing you failed, the Hozuki will come here again. Not to mention the Seven Swordsmen that will come to reclaim their sword. Even if you got rid of it now, they'll still come for where it was last supposed to be."</p><p>"The Blood Lagoon ran. The Chinoike stand and fight. They put down roots." The tall and melancholic swordsman of the Chinoike that came with Erumo's group replied.</p><p>"What's this Chinoike business?" Utaretta turned at her peer. "Have you guys actually agree with Chiya about this clan stuff?"</p><p>"Sorry, Utaretta, we know how you feel about starting a clan but we can't live the way we've been living. We can't just live as rejects until our dying day. I'd rather see our descendants get rid of the disgusting stigma we live with long after we are dead over living as a group of runaways." The cloaked Chinoike phantom stepped out in front of Chitsu and his tall swordsman friend.</p><p>"I doubt that Land of Hot Water will take it kindly to us residing here but… Oh well… Living like badass vagabonds was beginning to get old anyway." Utaretta grumbled like a pouty child who just got outvoted about the next game that the pack would be playing together.</p><p>"Don't think they'll fight all that hard. Who would risk breaking their leg for this dump?" Erumo sighed.</p><p>With Chiya's friendly chuckle, the Konoha party turned back to face the way they came and the road that led past the Land of Hot Water and into the frigid white of the Land of Snow.</p><p>"Do you think the Chinoike will be alright?" Kouta wondered. After his less stable warrior side had failed him and gave him reason for a personal crisis to overcome in the nearest future, the side of a caring medical ninja that was long forgotten had awakened, even if only temporarily, within the young Juugo.</p><p>"Tough to say. Though if they all possess those same mutated eyes that allow them to control iron-rich fluids, there are worse places to settle in than the Valley of Hell. If this home field does not give them the advantage to survive any challenges ahead, it is tough to imagine what might." Mana shrugged.</p><p>Perhaps it was for the better that they left the Chinoike alone. They were a bunch tied together by bonds that made them extremely dangerous to even the vaguest threats to those bonds. With two principle-driven groups like Team Fir and the Chinoike, a clash would have been inevitable somewhere down the line and neither of the sides truly needed that.</p>
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<a name="section0556"><h2>556. I'll Give You Blizzard Romance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Land of Snow managed to catch Team Fir unprepared. The irony of an entire country, rather everything it represented and was best known for, managing to sneak up on a team of ninja was not lost on Mana. The magician could not stop wearing a ludicrous grin the entire time. Once in a while she would just start smiling or chuckling to herself for no apparent reason and had Erumo not been oddly mad at the magician and Yushijin too tired to care, she'd have surely been drilled about her mental condition.</p><p>Obviously the whole country did not approach the trio from behind, blades to their throats and threats of drowning them in their own blood if they did not surrender a scroll or intelligence they were protecting or told the password that allowed ninja passage through protected survey points inside Fire Country or to enter certain remote facilities and archive buildings.</p><p>What snuck up on the trio were the frigid chills and snowflakes clamped together to make them about the size of a small apple. Snow could not have been snowing, it was falling from the sky as if dropped with a spoon from a bucket of the thing. At the edges of the Land of Snow, the air was still a chilly mixture of the two clashing sides – the damp heat of the close south from the equator and the masses of snow falling down by the fluffy snowballs and melting almost instantly – constant snowfall, no snow on the ground.</p><p>"You okay?" Kouta reminded of himself, irony once more showed herself off as the type of bitch it was by having the magician forget to include her own boyfriend in most social equations passing through her mind.</p><p>"Yeah… Just… Remembered a joke that's all." Mana dismissed it. She did not like lying, she was bad at it, but explaining why she was chuckling from time to time to Kouta would have been so frivolous and to such little use that she chose to rather leave him out of it.</p><p>It was not that difficult to understand why Mana had forgotten all about things Kouta cared about. After training and working alongside his father the youth became so entranced and excited with battles that he stopped caring about things he used to care about. He was constantly late, never asked or insisted about anything that did not include a battle he may have deemed satisfying. The only reason they got into the Valley of Hell mess in the first place was that he just felt like having a blast.</p><p>"Well… Could you tell it to me?" Kouta blinked rapidly a pair of times, staring with a blank expression that Mana would have used had she still been interrogating people in Shukuba. People she still had no reason to suspect yet wanted to dig stuff up about regardless just to see what comes up. His tone implied almost that Mana owed him that much.</p><p>"Do you want it to also come with a 2000-word essay of what I think a joke is?" Mana raised her eyebrow. She was probably mostly at fault for lying. This was such a no-quarrel and it was laughable in of itself how avoidable this entire fight was. It was because of how unimportant this disagreement was and how much Mana was at fault for it that she got this defensive and made a deal out of it.</p><p>"I mean… We've seen some pretty messed up stuff out there. People have been known to lose their minds let alone morale in better conditions than these." Kouta shrugged.</p><p>"You meant well. We could all probably use a joke…" Erumo grumbled on. Her passive-aggressive tone implied a similar amount of wrath boiling inside of her yet it was sort of broader in the scope that it wanted to cover.</p><p>"And check if I'm not insane…" Mana brought up the point of Kouta's that she chose to focus on rather than the more reasonable alternative.</p><p>"We're stopping. There." Yushijin interrupted the quarrel of the three. He pointed his extended arm at a small settlement in the distance. It was so measly and underdeveloped that the floor-high brick wall around it should have cost more than most of the houses consisting it.</p><p>"Now? If we picked up the pace, we can get to a stronger settlement than this one." Kouta looked baffled by the leader's call.</p><p>"This place might have a carriage and a coachman to rent. We could get closer to our mission objective that way and rest along the way." Ignoring the fact that Erumo's conclusions were more or less reasonable, nobody counted on the trapster disagreeing with Yushijin on anything.</p><p>"We need to stop and gather our strength. We can't spend the time on a carriage either. We need to keep up on light training." Yushijin shut his team down. While he did not claim it outright, his fear of making another bad decision as a leader was weighing down on him. Still, he could have dealt with that weight much worse than choosing the safest path in all things.</p><p>"Maybe we do need to stretch our legs, get on the same page." Mana sighed while looking around the snowstorm that offered no mercy and was sure to grow even more merciless the farther they went on ahead.</p><p>If the Land of Snow settlers truly were being terrorized by some group that lived near or inside mountains or caves, it was tough to imagine how a group such as that one could have survived in such inhospitable environment. Just staying healthy and in fighting shape would have required constant chakra input to augment one's body or else sickness or frostbite would have crept right under one's coat.</p><p>The quartet faded out of vision in a single bound and moved with haste toward the location that Yushijin pointed out. There was always a risk that the place did not even have an inn to hang their coats in but in a place like this an inn would have been just about a killer business idea and the only way to keep such a settlement afloat financially. It was not like money could have been made selling snow. Even if they were, this snow would not have been any good outside the polar range of the Land of Snow anyway.</p><p>Yushijin was adamant about finding the inn and getting the rooms. While the weariness and the sense of loss in his eyes was a massive red flag, nobody argued with him. It was something he needed. A simple chore to help him establish a hint of control back over the happenings around him and the team he led. After Valley of Hell, he needed something simple, not just a simple errand, a simple call that he could have made in his sleep and that may have counted as right even if he did get something wrong – who cared where the four would be sleeping? They were all big boys and girls. They could have handled it.</p><p>Regardless of how cool the trio was with giving Yushijin his macho space in handling the accommodations, it left them with plenty of time on their hands and only wandering a humdrum settlement of wood, hay, and stone. One found that when one could process the remarkable conditions of a hi-speed ninja battle, waiting around for even fifteen minutes was a life-shaver.</p><p>"Man, even the bricks of this place don't have any color!" Erumo groaned. The trapster then turned at Mana and Kouta, surprised that she did not receive a reply. Judging by the kunoichi's questioning glare, she would have been fine with either a dull agreement or a heated argument.</p><p>It took Erumo a handful of moments and visual ticks to realize that both Mana and Kouta were too ashamed to show off their heated argument spirits. The trapster grinned with a round-cheeks smile as if she had just stuffed her mouth full of ice cream and only had her expression to translate the feeling to the outside world.</p><p>"Fine, I'm off to get some materials and see if I can get some new tools. You guys have fun with your date." Erumo waved her hand almost like flipping the pair off. Or at least it felt that way since it didn't look like either Kouta or Mana were that much in the dating spirits.</p><p>"Look I'm…" Mana started the moment Erumo disappeared after the first corner.</p><p>"No, I totally get it. I came off too strong. Your reaction was justified." Kouta fumbled some of his own words out, both of their apologies and excuses made not for themselves but for the other party instead tripped and mingled into some sort of pitying cacophony. A cocktail of pity.</p><p>"Are you okay? You must have taken a pretty nasty beating in there, took on the worst guy of them all on and, as per your family tradition, took him fists-swinging." Mana expressed some of her own worries. She always felt somehow silly for worrying over the health of Kouta when he was usually the authority on medical matters of any squad he was in. The magician was not sure how it felt marrying a chef but she was certain that the feeling of inadequacy in what was traditionally accepted as a more feminine role felt alike.</p><p>"The only thing's broken is my pride…" Kouta smiled. "You sure you don't need another scan and some more patching up? There are always some edges to polish with medical ninjutsu, you know."</p><p>"Pride…" Mana beheaded Kouta's attempt at changing the topic. The magician walked up to the nearby stone fence and placed her back against it. The numbing frost of snow soaked through her magician's uniform that was not in the greatest of conditions, to begin with, the time to change into something more fitting for the weather could not have come soon enough but even that necessity would have had to wait. "It's not something you used to have enough of for some of it to be broken."</p><p>"Yeah, I guess a lot has changed. I don't think you're justified in criticizing me though. You just up and disappeared for years on me. On everyone. Your reasons were either too ethereal or poorly explained too. Yeah, I started spending more and more time with my father. Yeah, a thing or two of the way he handles things rubbed off on me. It's not like you don't have your own quirks. Working out at nights all by yourself, meditating on who knows what issues but they hurt you. I may be thick but not even I am that thick."</p><p>"I'm not criticizing you." Mana sighed. "I'm trying to learn. I know I've missed out on a lot, I made a bunch of friends and then I left all of them hanging multiple times. I can't even imagine what hurtful message it sends every time when I choose to disappear on everyone to train by myself as if it's you guys that hold me back."</p><p>"See? You and father have more in common than you thought. He has a way of rubbing off on people, he used to tell me all the time that you were a bad influence, although, I'd say it's because of his own subjective judgment of how mother affected his own training. Now he's come to see you as a valuable ally and a great training partner. He doesn't even mind our…" Kouta stopped talking. He was at a loss for words.</p><p>With good reason. How was it that they were supposed to call their relationship at its current, snapping point? It used to be so dreamy, like an endless, fluffy and pink cloud of cotton candy that the two soared through. They both knew that the candy cloud obstructed the pavement of rock-solid ground a billion miles beneath that they'd both eventually end up hitting but the sweets were just too damn savory.</p><p>"I've noticed you've changed after the Valley of Hell. You've held yourself back in the fight, resorted to just healing. The entire trip here you've been doing nothing but asking to scan and heal people. Check their emotional and physical health." Mana brought up. It was a personal and painful topic, enough so that it would have moved Kouta's thoughts away from the awkwardness of the topic while preventing Mana having to deal with its intricacies as well.</p><p>"Maybe I have… It's just… I thought I knew who I was, what kind of role I played on this team and… One swing of a sword and I got yanked out of it. I don't feel it anymore, no more anger, no more violence trying to crawl out." Kouta sighed. "I can't be who I was before that without those impulses which means I have to be something else. May as well be the version of me you like."</p><p>Mana shook her head. It was something that quickly made Kouta's smile fade away but then she smiled with softness in her eyes that brought that same smile back. Out of both cold and a soft spot in her heart for the constantly messing up idiot beside her, Mana wrapped her hands around Kouta's short but thick arm and pressed herself against him up to his shoulder. In times like this, he felt like a tree. Granted, a decorative and short tree but a girthy one at that. Most importantly – a warm one. One that soothed and felt welcoming every time one ventured to lay under its shade.</p><p>"I like you. Whatever version of you, I'll always support you. Even if you never abandoned that obsession with becoming an ANBU, I'd have somehow tried to make it work. The only thing I'd hate would be if you were living in a suit of someone else's skin." Mana said while looking on at the elegant snowfall and the completely unbothered passers-by. They all wore the same completely casual and used to it expressions even if some of them stopped to shake their fists up at the sky on a rare occasion. A sentiment to which a few select passers-by joined in on. Even the stoics of the Land of Snow knew some fun…</p><p>"That's a gross analogy." Kouta quivered. Befitting the machismo that Mana found adorkable, he tried to hide the fact that he was freezing bit by bit under the guise of disgust. While on a rational level the young man she loved trying to hide the fact he was cold felt stupid, on an emotional level it just felt noble.</p><p>"So you've always felt that? The Cursed Seal?" Mana raised her head up and looked Kouta straight in the eyes. She wondered if perhaps spending more time around his father and using it with increasing frequency made the Cursed Seal stronger, made it harder to resist.</p><p>"Always. Even way back. It's actually much better to know what it is exactly and how to deal with it. I don't know what would have happened if I never faced it and learned to tap into it. One day it may have broken out and…" Kouta sighed. "I don't know. Maybe it's still there. I… I haven't tried it yet, calling out for it."</p><p>"Because you're scared to call out for it?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Because I'm afraid it won't answer. What if that sword was some sort of sealing sword. What if it sealed my Cursed Seal away forever? It was a wicked power, I know that but… It was a part of me regardless. You can't rip it out without reducing the sum of what I am." What Mana initially took for a pushing motion and got all confused for was revealed to only be a little shrug from Kouta's side. With boldness that the magician had not experienced before from the young man, he pressed her back to his side.</p><p>"Of all people, I know what you're going through…" Mana looked on ahead.</p><p>"Yeah… It's kind of stupid of me to whine about it in front of you. What you've gone through was so much worse…" Kouta said.</p><p>"It was not all too different, however. Knowing what I had to pay for my fears of confronting those losses, what I paid for my hesitation with… You have to call out to it." Mana advised. It was not easy for her to speak those words: it was not easy recalling the losses that followed her own identity issues nor was it light to advise her beloved to call out for a part of him that the magician still felt unsure about. While she did have to gulp down the usefulness of the Cursed Seal's power, being the black cat that she was to everyone around her, the hair on her back would never stop standing up whenever that surge of wickedness was spoken of or whenever it manifested.</p><p>Kouta breathed in deep, turned to Mana as if he was about to say something but then caved in. It did not take a genius nor did it require the reading of his mind to realize what tiny sparrow the Juugo managed to identify and swallow down before it flew off never to be taken back.</p><p>"Look, it's not like the exact abilities of the swords of the Seven Swordsmen are a mystery. There are rumors about them. Each successive roster and generation wields the same swords. I say we walk into the nearest library or an archive building and see what you've been cut by. Then, when you know that your worse side was not sealed off, you will have a safety net, right?" Mana pushed her back off of the stone fence and insisted while leaning on Kouta.</p><p>"You should find a place to hide your bare legs in. You'll freeze to death…" Kouta breathed out a long and somewhat reserved breath that he had been warming up somewhere deep in the chest. "A library is a good place as any for that sort of thing, I suppose."</p><p>Again Mana chuckled. This time both she and Kouta knew the reason for her cackling and that made it all much better. With vigor in her motion unlike anything she's experienced lately, the magician began lightly dragging the young man with her to the nearest building where their quest for a library could have begun.</p>
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<a name="section0557"><h2>557. A Trinity Of Threes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Searching the small settlement for an archive building or a library was not as tough as it initially seemed. The Land of Snow carried a reputation of raising a no-bullshit, a rather stoic population and one would assume that, given the lacking size of the settlement, it would not necessarily trouble itself with building an archive. Instead, one would think, they'd build another warehouse to store food and supplies. This was not a settlement that enjoyed a genuine Land of Snow weather experience of perpetual winter, however, judging from the endless frost of the ground under the Konoha ninja feet, it did not see true spring or summer either.</p><p>The very first passer-by that the two young ninja asked pointed them the right direction. It left Mana wondering if Yushijin and Erumo enjoyed similarly easy times locating the inn for Yushijin and a place to buy weaponry and tools for Erumo.</p><p>The library was just as minimalistic as the settlement itself. Just a bland, oak table placed to stand guard atop a stone floor and concrete walls with the only hint of color in the place being the few dying plants, that must have only sustained this long through absorbing the junk food of lamplight, and the occasional more interesting cover of a book.</p><p>Kouta chose to hesitate and linger on behind Mana, something that the magician found a little irritating since it was his quest to gather the needed courage to realize if he was truly broken within or not. She should not have led him by his hand on such a quest, however, sometimes, that was the role that the emotional support needed to serve. Despite her wary, Mana chose to be patient and not scold or question the young man.</p><p>"You're more experienced with libraries…" Kouta mumbled after an occasional checking glare from Mana. The magician meant nothing by it, just to see if her boyfriend kept up the pace and did not get lost. Losing each other, even in a settlement as small as this would have made things even more complicated for the team, even if Mana could track them down in a couple of heartbeats eventually.</p><p>"Right…" Mana sighed. The young woman walked up to the rather approachable and granny-like old woman with a swampy-green turtleneck and thick, plastic glasses. "May we use the library for a moment?"</p><p>"No." the old lady cut down with strict and business-like frost, befitting and executioner, not a plump and short granny.</p><p>Mana and the librarian stared at one another for a couple of blinks before the granny returned to her book.</p><p>"Well… Why not?" the magician asked for the explanation that she expected to get from the get-go yet didn't. Had she not encountered similar, minimalistic speech patterns from just about every local she spoke to, she may have gotten a bit peeved by it.</p><p>"Don't have card." The old lady replied without pulling her eyes off of the book.</p><p>"Can we get one?" Mana asked.</p><p>"No." the old lady replied.</p><p>Even if the vagueness and the pointlessness of the conversation were beginning to force Mana to grit and grind her teeth, the magician continued, wondering the whole time that perhaps there was some verbal or social trick to have these folk tell all of the information necessary without having to drag it from them.</p><p>"Why not?" Mana asked, her tone was visibly more peeved than the last time she asked the question.</p><p>"Not local." The woman replied.</p><p>Mana pouted her lips. Shifting and moving their weight around, struggling over yelling something obscene out while trying to rationalize this entire ruleset of the library to only hand out readership cards to locals.</p><p>"Look, ma'am, we just need to check one thing. It would really help this young man." Mana tried a more humanizing approach, she gestured at Kouta who inspired pity in anyone with a beating heart without even trying. Just out of the sheer melancholy of his current emotional state and situation of loss that he was working through.</p><p>While the librarian did lift her eyes to examine Kouta, she did nothing more than that nor did she reply. Within mere moments of looking at the young man, she returned back to her book.</p><p>"Don't you want to help him at all?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No.," the granny said.</p><p>"Don't you have kids just like him? Grandkids even?" Mana was preparing a plan B in her mind but she needed some time to work it out, continuing to aggravate this woman was not a clever plan but, at this point, the magician wondered if the woman even had it in her to become aggravated.</p><p>"I do." The woman replied.</p><p>"Are they at all like Kouta?" Mana asked, desperately craving to browse for a personal connection with this stoic. At this point, it was more a matter of principle than a rational attempt at gathering information. It was action fueled by the belief that everyone in this world was human and Mana would force humanity out from this woman even if she had to physically fight somebody to do it.</p><p>"This boy a little like my grandson." The woman shrugged after checking the validity of her statement beforehand by staring back at Kouta for a short while.</p><p>"Then wouldn't you want to help your grandson if he came here looking for information?" Mana raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I would." The woman nodded.</p><p>"Then will you let us use the library for just a minute?" the magician wondered.</p><p>"No." the woman replied, not even offering a shake of her head with her refusal.</p><p>"Why not? You would let your grandson use the library if he needed it but not Kouta? They are both in dire need of information, so why? Why is it such a big deal to you?"</p><p>"Grandson has card. Kouta doesn't." the old lady replied.</p><p>Dragging her nervous fingers across her curly black hair almost hard enough to pull them out with her bare hands, Mana returned to Kouta who was about close enough to have heard just how the conversation went.</p><p>"Well, could you then tell us what we want to know?" Kouta looked at the old woman. The granny kept reading her book for a solid sixteen seconds before placing it down with her eyes closed and letting out a deep breath. Her old lips curled into a polite smile about as slowly as a sloth flipped through the pages of the national history of the country its home jungle was located in.</p><p>"Yes." The old lady replied.</p><p>Mana's jaw dropped. "Unbelievable…" she whispered to herself while the old lady placed her hands together and waited for the following questions with politeness and patience.</p><p>"We're looking for the information on the sword that one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist – a man named Mizoma uses. We need any sort of information, rumors, even legends will do." Kouta looked at the old lady with eyes that almost pleaded her for any sort of bits of information.</p><p>The librarian stared at Kouta for a short while before picking her book back up and starting her slow-paced reading all over again. The confused Juugo looked back at Mana then turned back at the reading granny and cleared his throat. It took a good pair of minutes before the woman stopped looking up and down as if wondering what it was that the young Juugo wanted and finally mustered up an answer.</p><p>"Don't know a Mizoma…" the granny shrugged.</p><p>Mana rubbed her eyes with irked fingers. Something electric passed through her brain, like a shocking snap that jumpstarted a figurative lightbulb and the young woman stepped up beside her friend and tried talking to the accidentally unhelpful librarian.</p><p>"Perhaps the name of Tengu of the Phantom Lantern says anything?" the magician recalled what her mechanical opponent told her when describing the leader of his death squad.</p><p>"It does." The elderly woman nodded while flipping a page and shifting her eyes to the upper left corner. It took a total of thirty-two seconds before Mana realized that she will not tell the magician what exact references it was tied to in the librarian's mind unless specifically inquired about that.</p><p>"What exactly does it say? Do you know anything about his sword?" Mana asked more specifically, shortly before finishing that question, she realized that she will once more only receive a yes or no return so she decided to clarify in just that sort of case. "If you do know something about the sword he is rumored to use, we would like to hear about it."</p><p>"The Tengu uses the Trinity Buster. A sword that cuts in three planes, three dimensions and three layers of space-time." The librarian replied. It was of no shock that she knew this information truthfully. While usually military secrets such as these would have been better protected to the point where any well-read person could point them out, the swords of the Seven Swordsmen have gone through so many masters and transcended so many generations that they were almost common knowledge to anyone looking for a more militaristic side of history.</p><p>Truthfully, Mana felt disappointed back on the field that she was not able to pinpoint the sword's lore herself. If only she paid closer attention to the boring, almost pornographic in a way, descriptions of warfare specifications in the history and mythology books she devoured on her spare time… Used to devour, anyway…</p><p>"Three planes…" Kouta mumbled, alongside the rest of the "threes" that the old woman muttered.</p><p>"It refers to the planes of matter: physical, mental and spiritual. In order to cut at all three planes, a sword must be able to slash like any other sword – cut through the physical plane, ravage one's emotional state – cut through the mental plane, sever one's chakra network and spirituality itself, connection to one's ideals and greater things – cut through the spiritual plane." Mana explained. She had all of the planes down long ago as this sort of knowledge benefited a ninja in training greatly. After all, chakra utilized two of the three planes and the mental plane was equally important for the more social aspects of ninja work, not to mention the extensive research into the subject she gone through while training with the Village Protection.</p><p>"Three dimensions and three layers of space-time…" Kouta wondered. His tone suggested that the Juugo did not consider these nearly as important as the previous ability of Mizoma's blade. "I suppose that the sword can reach dimensional travelers, slice into the past as well as the future, which is why it seemed like there was no avoiding the blade's edge."</p><p>Perhaps it was for the better that nobody knew the blade's exact abilities at the time. Had they known what sort of power the Trinity Buster was capable of, they'd have undoubtedly let their spirits cave in to its legendary abilities. Not to mention, Yushijin may have gotten tempted to take the sword with him, or the Chinoike folk would have felt the same way, which in term would have caused further conflict between the two groups, on top of the initial tension present.</p><p>Just who was Mana trying to fool, the magician knew full well that Yushijin would not have cared for the blade's abilities even if their full scope was available to him. Letting one of the two groups carry the blade, however, would have surely invited a challenge from the other Seven Swordsmen. No self-respecting group of military excellence would have allowed such a tool of conquest over the spiritual, mental and physical, not to mention space-time and dimensions themselves, slip through their fingers.</p><p>"Well, you've got your answer…" Mana smiled. Her eyes opened back up after a handful of moments of putting rings atop of their respective pillars and dotting the i's.</p><p>"Yeah…" Kouta nodded with reborn energy. "The Cursed Seal is highly dependent on emotion. If Mizoma cut at mine, he'd have severed my violence, my anger… He'd have tamed my spirit and ended the Cursed Seal state prematurely. That's why I transformed back, not because he sealed that part of me away."</p><p>The young man stepped up in front of Mana and wrapped his hands around her, pressing the magician against him tight. Mana's eyes opened wide, their white contrasted the blood-red blush in her cheeks.</p><p>"Thanks… This… This was really important to me. You hate that side of me and yet you still helped me, regardless." Kouta almost hummed out into the magician's ear with a soft tone. His tight grip and soft voice made Mana feel warm and funny inside, she wanted to escape his grip, to run away from this unexpected warmth but she couldn't. She'd have to fight him to escape and that was one thing she really disliked doing, for that reason she could only let that feeling melt her from the inside in Kouta's arms while her cold breath fled through the emergency escape of her open mouth.</p><p>"Outside, please." The librarian spoke up for the first time without being asked or spoken to beforehand. Unlike before, this time her speech just made Mana chuckle. Kouta followed her lead, the grip of his hands loosened before parting entirely. The interruption sort of spoiled the mood but it was fine.</p><p>"I guess I sort of needed it too. Lately, I've been working so hard towards beating someone that I thought I had forgotten why I got into the gig, to begin with. Feels great to help someone for once instead of beating somebody up." Mana replied while the two Konoha ninja headed toward the exit, having not even entered into the library itself. Just the first steps of a journey were fine, as long as one's goals with which they've embarked on the said journey were satisfied…</p><p>Mana felt like she would have been wise to remember that lesson for the future.</p><p>"You do know we can't track you if you wander off, right?" Yushijin raised an eyebrow at the returning pair. It did not take much mental capacity to muster up the thought that once the leader found them a place to stay, he'd return to the initial location where he left his team to pick them up. Nor did it take much to realize that Erumo, probably the most resourceful member of Team Fir, would figure the same conclusion out by herself and return to the same place.</p><p>Regardless, having the ability to sense chakra signatures and read into the truly familiar ones, ones that Mana spent entire days around, truly did serve its use.</p><p>"It was my idea, sorry. We had to check the library for something." Kouta grinned while rubbing the back of his head, messing up his already hectic hairdo and gleaming childish innocence through his smile and apologetic expression as he did so.</p><p>"Didn't take you for the reading type." Erumo cheeked her teammate, her eyes, lacking any edge or malice to them suggested that it was not a mean-spirited chomp from her behalf.</p><p>"Do not worry, not a single book was read, Kouta's perfect record of avoiding reading remains intact." Mana dismissed the joke while playing along with it at the same time. The young Juugo raised his eyebrows while turning to Mana before sighing and just laughing along with his team instead of taking offense. It was a useless and pointless habit after all and pointless things had little use to serve in their line of the work and the world they lived in.</p><p>"So you've heard then? About Iwagakure?" Yushijin's face turned sour right in front of Mana's eyes. It was as if the casual and friendly jokes helped the leader forget his troubles and the grim news that he had to deliver for just a mere moment but then those troubles surfaced back right after.</p><p>"Iwagakure? What about it?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Seriously? In a library? The place riddled with older newspapers?" Erumo looked at the pair with something resembling a dull disappointment.</p><p>"It's decimated," Yushijin reported with a bitter expression. "Kumogakure attacked them. For real this time. They even used their Chakra Diffusion Wave Cannon for the first time. It was a statement rather than anything else… Thirteen thousand dead and counting."</p><p>"No…" was all that Mana could mutter. Knees began feeling wobbly, her body felt like an entire mountain and human knees were not designed to support the weight of mountains. The magician just caved in, she bent her knees and wrapped her quivering fingers around her head, filtering through handfuls of curly dark hair to do it.</p><p>"I mean… It's a tragedy for sure but…" Erumo sat down and tried to comfort the magician by placing her hand on the young woman's shaking shoulder. "They were warring with the most powerful military in the world. Nobody expected Kumogakure to scorch the entire ground but… It's the type of thing that happens in war. In some ways, I can understand it. One blast and the war's over…"</p><p>"It's over alright." Yushijin nodded. "What remained of Iwagakure surrendered in exchange for protection from outside forces. Villages have walls and seals for a reason. The blast leveled all of that. Seeing how Kumogakure has their forces inside the territory, for now, they're the first of the Great Villages to watch over Iwagakure."</p><p>"That blast… Something as powerful as the Chakra Diffusion Wave Cannon should have impacted the entire planet. I bet it's the blast we felt on our way to Land of Hot Water!" Kouta exclaimed, recalling the earthquake that nearly subdued the entire Team Fir all by itself.</p><p>It was all her fault, in a way. Mana and the repackaged Team Hokage meddled with Iwagakure's plans to win the war, as some of those involved would have claimed – just to survive. How was one supposed to not feel responsible for having destroyed a nation's secret plan for survival, something that resulted in a tragedy like this just a handful of days later?</p><p>Mana's knees straightened out. Sometimes willpower let human shoulders to be burdened by mountains. It did not mean that there was no weight crushing the ribcage of the young woman but she would have to live with the choices she's made and the roles she's played. That was within the job description.</p><p>"Mana?" Kouta looked at the magician.</p><p>"It's fine. I'm tired. Can you show the way to the inn?" Mana looked at Yushijin.</p><p>"We could all use some rest, I'm sure. I'll lead the way." The leader nodded without a hint of objection.</p>
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<a name="section0558"><h2>558. A Flannel Hallway</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana sipped on some cold cocoa. It felt gooey and bitter in its current temperature but somehow it felt fitting. It was just as difficult to swallow and just as punishing as the news that kept the young woman awake and sitting in the reception room of the inn, sipping on the hot cocoa that the kind yet rather silent receptionist of the inn had made for her.</p><p>Judging by how reserved and minding their own business these people were, it felt unlikely that the old man would have made Mana cocoa had it not been the part of the deal and, based on the fact that the old man sheltered a pair of locals fleeing from the blizzard outside, he was likely only active at this time of night because he was working overnight that day.</p><p>The magician heard a door open on the second floor. The tired and used up wood that served as a barrier between the two floors bellowed in pain that the boots treading them caused through the sheer pressure of the total mass they were carrying. Mana missed the days when she could not immediately tell just who had just turned active and decided to walk downstairs in the middle of the night. There was no longer any mystery, no more detective work or reading the way that the footsteps sounded.</p><p>Then again, judging by how mellow the steps were, how eager the man walking must have felt to seem like a big and sure of himself man but felt like anything but deep inside, making his steps as soft as that of a kitten before the master of those steps squashed the instinct and created an act in each individual step, forcing their foot down to yet another bellowing, yet another creak.</p><p>"Can't sleep?" Yushijin mumbled out with a strong tone. The tone of his voice implied more a sense of confusion rather than a genuine need to know, ultimately creating the impression that the question was rhetorical.</p><p>"It is tough to sleep…" just like the soft and a bit moldy buns from before, the magician bit the last end of the sentence she had first visualized off. It just seemed less of a hassle that way as it denied the team leader the information that may have caused said hassle.</p><p>"I assumed that you would take the news badly. When one can make these sorts of predictions about one's character, it means that they know that person." Yushijin somehow mustered up a tired smile. From the way it looked, the leader of Team Fir was not losing sleep because he wasn't tired. That confused the magician a little.</p><p>It was a little bit strange seeing Yushijin with just a sleeveless shirt. Without his massive sword weighing in from behind the young man, he almost looked bare. Sometimes when Mana left or lost her sealing hat she felt bare too, which was why she had drawn that comparison. The swordsman must have left his lumbering blade back in the room – he hadn't left for good nor did he leave for long.</p><p>"So… What's making you lose your beauty sleep?" Yushijin sat near Mana, the receptionist glared at the young man, questioning him with just a look if he wanted anything that the employee could have provided him with. Yushijin remained oblivious to that question. He still looked as if he had not gotten used to the way that people around these parts communicate with each other.</p><p>"You just hit it head-on. Just leave it at that, no need to delve further." Mana sighed, placing the cold cocoa with just a handful of sips left in the cup back on the table. The bleak clouds of lingering sadness had not yet vacated Mana's sky.</p><p>"Any chance you're willing to tag me out as the leader?" Yushijin cut it short and straight, it was a habit with this one.</p><p>"I didn't sit out of the opportunity to lead the team because I felt pity. You were at the time, and still are, the best option to lead the team. I have neither the skill nor the passion to lead. Things always get too personal with me, it's not a good quality for a leader." Mana replied with a dull and longing tone.</p><p>"That's a strange attitude for a chuunin…" the Konoha swordsman grinned, as Mana noticed with the edge of her glance, her companion shared her tendency to hide behind the cover of her long hair when she wanted to barricade away inside herself. In a similar notion, Yushijin's hair sank away the upper parts of his face, most importantly, the window to his soul, up until the point they got rarer and split apart the farther down they fell.</p><p>"I didn't become a chuunin because I always wanted to lead. Truthfully, I find these parts of the job, let alone managing my own team of genin as a jounin, terrifying. I don't think anyone likes the entirety of their job. You know when you've hit the nail on the head when the good parts outweigh the bad, that is all." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"I see. I don't understand what you see to gain in the career of a ninja – a chuunin must be able to lead a team, a jounin manages a team of Academy graduates, the Hokage leads the entire village. The rest of the rise is all about leadership. Then again, if it is better to be adequate while you dislike leadership or to accept it and fail at it, remains to be seen." Yushijin admitted. The magician noticed similar notes of disappointment and somberness in Yushijin's voice.</p><p>"I don't care about becoming Hokage. Even if I ever became a person worthy of that seat, I'd refuse a thousand times out of the thousand I would be asked to take the position… You, on the other hand, I feel are selling yourself short." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"I led my team into a fight they had no right to be in. I gambled with your lives for a quarrel completely unrelated to the mission objective. Then I lost all of my teammates in an instant and had to gather you guys one by one, hoping that nothing bad happened to you because if it had, I'd have never forgiven myself." Yushijin was getting worked up. Despite hating the noise of it, Mana thought that cutting loose a little was good for him. As if conjured up, a yawn from Yushijin validated the magician's thoughts.</p><p>"I don't know. I think you compromised, Kouta wanted a fight, I was starting uneasy about just passing through myself. Two out of four teammates not being onboard is just a bad board. Even if you had to take detours, your choice to get everybody onboard was justified. Whether it was correct or not, I think the judgment is too subjective to call, as are most things, as I'm noticing lately." Mana said. In her current state she'd have thought to be the least willing and able to comfort her team leader, or anyone at all for that matter, and yet, it was at her own most forlorn that Mana found comforting the easiest.</p><p>All she needed to say was what she herself wanted to hear from anyone but herself.</p><p>Yushijin let the words linger with a drawn-out pause. Staring at a blank point in the room, then switching to the fire crackling fire. Its blazing light was quite attractive and hypnotic, perfect for deep and meaningful considerations at such a point of the night.</p><p>"I'm… I'm trying to make what I'm about to ask sound less selfish but… I don't think I can. Maybe it's possible but… Never was one to bullshit with the double meanings of words. Do you think you could tell me what's troubling you, I mean what's really troubling you right now?" Yushijin asked out of the blue.</p><p>"How is that selfish?" Mana turned at the fellow shinobi. In her confused state, her expression had managed to let some surprise gleam through the dim and dreary that she's been working with the whole night.</p><p>"A good leader needs to help his teammates. Make sure they're "onboard" as you worded it." Yushijin closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. The way in which the Konoha swordsman saw the world around him always provided with some curious insights into how the light of life could be bent and broken after passing through the right prism.</p><p>"In my experience, I've only found one way to make whatever plagues I'm under go away." Mana picked up her detestably cold cup of cocoa and downed it. The expression on her face right after would have made one believe she'd downed a similarly sized cup of sake. What she was about to suggest was dumb enough that Mana wanted she'd have been drinking sake instead…</p><p>"I'm not sure I like where I think this is going but… Please continue." Yushijin said in a state of agitation.</p><p>"The only thought that makes me move away from the dread of my past failures is the necessity to not cause new ones." Mana extended her hands, reaching them over Yushijin's hair and gently letting them move it to open up a clear path to the forehead of the young man, at which point, the magician placed her right palm onto Yushijin's face.</p><p>A sense of dread and loss of balance, the maddening sensation of aimless falling and the natural terror of vanished sensory input. All of these were natural to Mana but they could not have been for Yushijin. Perhaps she should have explained her point, her actions better but just as much as the young woman could have used her friend not resisting her mental interrogation attempt, she needed the practice at this skill she failed more than she succeeded in.</p><p>A violent jerk threw Mana at the edge of her sensory deprived tunnel. Her face bashed through what seemed a falling wall of liquid and into an endless void of starlight outside. Through immense mental force, the magician forced her mind to streamline and use the tunnel of transference to finish the trip inside Yushijin's mental fort. She expected instinctual opposition but what she did not expect was for Yushijin's fight to be so strong and violent.</p><p>He must have not only realized what Mana was up to, but he was also actively trying to oppose it and doing so with all of his heart put into the effort. That was why the magician so nearly got thrown out the mental railway and into a week-long migraine following an unsuccessful and shameful end to the interrogation session.</p><p>Mana's feet landed soft, ripples of sapphire highlights made the space-reflecting lake that the magician and the other party of the interrogation stood on stand out a bit more in between the two sides of the coin. The entirety of what appeared like deep space was just a mental realm that rested in between the totality of the bosom of a cosmic, feminine figure, textured as space itself and floating in the shapeless black void and her cupped palms.</p><p>"We're not in my mind…" Yushijin stated the obvious, inspecting the curious sights that Mana was showing him.</p><p>"No. We're in mine," Mana explained. "This is the heart of my mental universe, the core of my mind. The first time I started exploring it, this weird cosmic brat was just a single star, now she's a whole… Cluster, I guess."</p><p>"What does it mean?" Yushijin wondered.</p><p>"I don't know," Mana admitted.</p><p>"What do you mean you don't know? It's your mind, isn't it?" Yushijin spoke with a much brighter tone, now that he realized that his mind was not the one being probed.</p><p>"One thing you learn about the human mind when studying intelligence is that not everything about people is rational. Things don't always make sense. A lot of things do but sometimes the most fundamental things are emotion based or they just plain do not dovetail." Mana grinned while looking up and ahead, up until the very edges of her mental fort which was beginning to become larger than one's entire scope. Soon enough, all visitors of her mind would see would be a universe, unaware that there's a shape to the space madness.</p><p>"It's a nice trick, almost distracted me from the fact you've tried to probe my mind," Yushijin admitted.</p><p>"Magic is the art of distraction, then again, distraction wasn't my intention," Mana said. "You see, that whole ordeal with you making what you consider questionable choices just doesn't click with me. You've fought through that, faced opponents stronger than any broken man could survive, let alone excel against. It was not until you've seen Chiya-san's illusion that you've become shut-in by your alleged failures as a leader."</p><p>Yushijin stayed silent throughout. He chose to stonewall Mana's words which only suggested heavily to the magician that they may have hit close to home.</p><p>"As I've said, the only way to distract me, do some leader magic of your own, so to say, is to make me focus on helping someone else. I'm offering you a trade, you experience my nightmares exploring my mental fort, in return, I get to see the illusion that's caused you so much pain." Mana extended her hand.</p><p>"It won't scare you. It will only confuse you…" Yushijin dismissed it by softly pushing it aside with the back of his own hand.</p><p>"That's why you will be there with me. Help me understand." Mana said, raising her hand back up. She met Yushijin's stare, filled to the brim with consideration and heavy pondering if he should take the magician up on her offer.</p><p>Yushijin grabbed her hand, it was sudden and unexpected. The journey was shaky and full of ethereal and disturbing noises. Sounds of a broken, woodwind instrument. It was no clean and driven melody – it was a slur. A trippy and monstrous tune that served no purpose nor had any artistic meaning. From rising shrouds and smoke, formed walls of green, woolen texture covered with checkered burgundy. It was no room, it was a corridor.</p><p>The corridor extended onward like a snake, coiling upward in a steep, wooden staircase. Mana felt an innate urge to run onward. Just when she realized that urge, she noticed an inhumanly slim and long leg disappearing behind the wall of the rising staircase. The magician turned back, something felt wrong. She was being watched, something was chasing after her, just like she wanted to run after the slender giant that ran up the stairs.</p><p>It was not the abysmal tune that made the magician feel uneasy, it was the slowly surfacing figure behind her of a woman with a shadowy face and almost cartoonish, round, black and white eyes and a mouth that molded with flesh, the only freedom that oxygen found to enter this figure's airways came through the tears in the skin membrane that covered her face. Just before the magician could see the wrinkled visage of her pursuer up close in the flannel corridor, the whole thing tore to bits, just like a wallpaper that was torn apart in a scornful action.</p><p>"That's how you remember your family?" Mana exclaimed through all the trouble that witnessing that confusing chaos caused for her breathing.</p><p>"You said it best. Not everything about people is rational." Yushijin shrugged. "That's my mental fort, I guess… For better or worse. My package, my nightmare…"</p><p>This simple notion of shrugging shoulders showed acceptance and inner strength of the kind of a person that may have been able to help Mana deal with her inner demons. Or, perhaps, none of their demons could have been helped with, but living with them could have been made easier by simply sharing them with souls self-loathing and choked by their self-placed responsibilities hard enough to go through them together with somebody else.</p><p>"I guess I owe you my end of the bargain…" Mana stated as a fact. No smiling, no excitement about what she was about to share. Yushijin was strong in ways that she had not realized, the least she could have done was to satisfy the need for a rivalry that the Konoha swordsman weaved and tangled her into. She needed to be strong with him, strong enough to live through her worst fears and accept them, even if overcoming them at that single moment was impossible.</p><hr/><p>"There's no need to pack your things just yet. I've booked a couple of nights for us here." Yushijin surprised Team Fir the next morning.</p><p>"I know we don't have a time limit or anything but… Aren't we sort of in a hurry? Isn't the tribe plaguing the Land of Snow settlements hurting the locals? Every day we spend sitting tight is a day we aren't hunting the tribe that can hurt a bunch of people tomorrow." Kouta shrugged shortly after looking at Mana who was sulking nearby. While the Juugo was not the most observant person around, even he noticed the fact that the magician barely did anything of note and just kept on staring at her toes the whole morning.</p><p>"Maybe. Or the same tribe can attack this very settlement and save us the work. Either way, we can gamble and try to hit the right settlement, predicting their attack or we can scope the places out. Hear out some rumors, what the locals know, hit our enemy in a location we know they could be in with all the possible information already at our disposal." Yushijin voiced the reasons for his decision.</p><p>"It would be great to know a thing or two about the enemy for once." Erumo shrugged and nodded in agreement. Then again, whenever Yushijin brought something up, the trapster tended to agree with him on most problems.</p><p>"Exactly. Which is why I need you two to gather that intelligence." Yushijin crossed his arms over his chest after referring to Kouta and Erumo, closed his eyes and turned his expression to stone. He did so as if knowing full well the eyebrows that this would raise.</p><p>"Wait… Us? That seems so… Random." Kouta cocked his head sideways in confusion like a puppy.</p><p>"Just because you can't understand my reasons, it does not make them random," Yushijin replied with the strictness of a true leader in his voice. "Judging from what I heard yesterday, you had moderate success making these oddly mannered people talk. That's a moderate amount more than any success any of us had. Booking this room and finding this inn was a nightmare. Erumo is also the best out of us four at gathering intelligence, granted, I'm not too familiar with the extent of Mana's skill but…"</p><p>The three looked at the magician, waiting for the young woman to object or to question Yushijin's assumptions but the young woman continued to mope about for a brief second. She did notice how silent the room had gotten all of a sudden and her sulking face changed to a more surprised one. Quickly, the magician tumbled over the social hurdles and found some words in the pockets of her coat.</p><p>"Sure. Isn't Erumo sort of a specialist in that field? That makes her leagues above what I'm capable of." Mana replied with a bland and raspy version of her own voice.</p><p>"And, I assume, the two of you have tasks of your own that will help us fulfill our mission objective and serve to our mutual benefit as a team?" Kouta pouted his lips at his team leader while raising his eyebrow comically high up.</p><p>"Well… In a way. We will be training." Yushijin shrugged.</p><p>"Training?" it was now Erumo that questioned Yushijin's plan. She did not sound opposed to his plan for the day but she was curious and when people as intelligent and crafty as Erumo were curious, they asked questions.</p><p>"That's right. You see, from what little we know of our enemy, they are very primitive in their skillset. They are most likely to be using a physical fighting style, meaning they would be Kouta's equals in terms of a match-up. Erumo might be able to trip them up, to look at it vaguely, but she is not a combat-type ninja and prefers a more supportive role. I would like to have a ready ace that we could rely on and that would maximize our chances for success. Against an opponent such as this tribe, I'd wager on genjutsu being that sort of an ace." Yushijin said.</p><p>Neither Erumo nor Kouta liked what they heard. Kouta's mouth opened and closed in rapid succession, gobbling something up like a fish looking for some water to breathe in the fisherman's boat but he couldn't find any flaws in the team leader's plans that he could expose. Just fifteen minutes later the room turned much more silent and Mana found herself standing in front of her training partner.</p><p>"I don't remember if I ever promised to teach you the fundamentals of temporal illusions, or not, but I might need what someone as skilled as you can do with that class of jutsu…" Yushijin stated, moving his massive sword off of his back and letting its tip slam into the frozen lawn, digging up a foot-long crater from its sheer weight alone. "Even if you won't have the time to create a new technique or to learn time-perception manipulation right now, you might catch on to some helpful principles to polish your current illusions."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0559"><h2>559. Bum Piñata</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Is there going to be any groundwork?" Mana wondered as she entered a default defensive stance. She had seen Yushijin fight before, she knew exactly how to stand for the best chance of evading each and every blow from his massive sword or any surprise tackles, feints and kicks he might use to try and spice his style up. There's only so much "spicing up" one can come up with when they're holding a claymore that occupies both of their arms most of the time.</p><p>"None yet. I will purposefully slow my pace down for you, try to feel and understand what I'm doing. I'm sure that a prodigy of illusions should get the basic idea in a blink. Execution and mastery are wholly different things altogether…" Yushijin replied. He raised two of his fingers up, Mana felt the intrusion of his chakra within her system but she did not resist. Truth be told, there was little she could have done to resist genjutsu in the first stages of it being used. One could not lay some sort of chakra barrier or shield themselves from illusions completely. Even if they busted an illusion up with their own flow manipulation, the initial stages of the genjutsu technique would have gone on unimpeded.</p><p>One could not wall off a rushing river without getting at least a little bit wet.</p><p>The next thing Mana felt was a light tap on her shoulder. Perhaps she let up too much. Delayed shattering Yushijin's illusion. She wanted the most time possible to read into it. It was like staring at an ancient scroll, filled with priceless information that was written down in a language Mana could just barely understand while being submerged underwater. Even if she was beginning to choke up and the threat of a watery grave loomed closer and closer, the magician lingered and stared at the tablet, trying to win just a few more seconds to read it, up until it was too late…</p><p>It was not a mistake she should make in a battle. Then again, in a battle, she was quite unlikely to study her opponent this way. She would try to understand them but not learn their craft.</p><p>"Took your sweet time. Well, learned anything useful?" Yushijin wondered. He was teasing, he must have seen it from Mana's eyes. The magician would not have allowed herself to be completely drowned out in a genjutsu technique unless she intended to read it in its entirety and had a pretty good chance of doing it.</p><p>"Your flow is weak at the entry point. Subtle as a tick, if you hadn't used a hand seal, I'd have never felt it enter, just felt that it's already entered my network. From then on you subtly drive the chakra up all the way to the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum, from there you pinch it in all the right ways to play with how the target perceives time." Mana reported.</p><p>"W-Wow… Just like that, you've learned the fundamentals of temporal illusions. I'm shocked, you're not just a natural, you're a genius. It took my entire early career to learn just this one illusion and you've captured seven years of training in just seeing the completed illusion once." Yushijin commended Mana with his arms locked over his chest. He let down his guard from the surprise of his student's skill.</p><p>"Not quite. Just this much is pretty much useless." Mana shook her head. Yushijin needed to give her more credit than the condescension he gave her in return to her fundamental analysis. "Just knowing which areas of the brain to pinch and how to better do so does not help me. I still need countless hours of practice to work out how different touches make a target's brain react. How and where exactly I need to pinch to accelerate or rewind one's perception of time."</p><p>"You forgot stopping it." Yushijin grinned.</p><p>"I did not. Stopping it must be the simplest thing to do of all – you've done it as a child. If I had a knife to my throat and was forced to guess, I'd say it's as simple and squeezing the whole thing hard by accelerating and forcing the flow as hard as possible." Mana smiled in return.</p><p>"W-Wow… I know we're talking about a jutsu I've been working with as a child and it should not take too much for a skilled ninja to repeat my results but… Do you think you could replicate it right now? Your theoretical knowledge seems more than enough to pull "Genjutsu: Last Resort" off." Yushijin stepped up and began pushing his student in the psychological sense.</p><p>"If I fail, I just risk damaging your brain, what's the worst that can happen?" Mana threw a strand of her hair back.</p><p>Yushijin was about to reply something, judging from his face he must have realized that he's been pressuring his student a bit too early, a result from getting overly excited but, much to his surprise, Mana weaved an untraditional hand seal of two fingers of each hand crossed up.</p><p>"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" the magician chanted out, manifesting a single shadow clone. Mana felt a cruel cut at her chakra resources. As a child the dreadful feeling of half of one's spiritual and physical essence getting ripped out petrified and made Mana pass out, now she knew that halving her chakra was only temporary, just as long as her clone remained active.</p><p>"You can do Shadow Clones?" Yushijin asked in a more rhetorical sense. Even if he was much less impressed by this than he was with Mana's aptitude for illusions from before, it was still a notable technique, although probably more so due to its status than actual power.</p><p>"It's more than just showing off, although I don't like using other people's techniques so I only use it for training. I'd appreciate you didn't tell anyone I've done this, I have a reputation to keep after all. In any case, even if I damage my clone's brain, after I practice illusions on it, I will know exactly what I'm doing wrong." Mana pointed out.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Yushijin asked. The prospect of learning to use Shadow Clones for training himself began tempting the Konoha chuunin as well. It was so just due to how little he knew of the jutsu's risks and the strain it posed.</p><p>"I'm not sure how to explain it but… When I kill my clone, I sort of come to learn what it knew. As if it passes down its experience to me after it's gone." Mana explained herself.</p><p>"I see, and because you're naturally sharp at reading illusions, your own clone is a perfect partner to survey what you're doing wrong…" Yushijin nodded.</p><p>"True. Although it is taxing enough to create the clone, let alone use various jutsu I'm not even good at controlling yet. I can usually do this course correction only a handful of times throughout a single day." Mana shrugged before raising her hand up in the mirrored hand seal position to that which she saw Yushijin use before.</p><p>The eyes of the clone changed from its usual emerald green to dulled out grey, clone Mana's irises faded out into the whites as the poor thing stumbled back. Mana released the clone in an instant to see what it had learned. It was not all too useful to keep it going any longer – not too long after succumbing to the illusion it would only see the time that it considered having stopped.</p><p>"Well?" Yushijin got his hopes up.</p><p>"I was a bit too rough, probably. I got the right area but the wrong kind of pinch. May have sent the poor thing comatose if I squeezed any harder. A useful trick for the future…" Mana sighed with her hands weighing down. She could feel them getting heavier as if filling with grains of lead each passing moment of blood passing through them.</p><p>"Well… Don't get winded just yet. We've got a long day ahead of us. We'll probably be training a bit on the road too." Yushijin warned the magician. He did not need chakra sensory to see Mana skipping breaths.</p><p>"While we're at it, we can improve your illusions too. There's a handy trick I've learned in the caverns of Land of Wind, you are sort of already using it without knowing it but if you have some control and knowledge over it, you might improve your one-trick style." Mana warmed her arms up by rotating them around and entering a default defensive stance.</p><p>"Ouch…" Yushijin smirked before repeating the same. His stance was modified from what stances the magician had seen from the youth before. His right reached for the sword but his body was not leaned in to best utilize the weight of his own momentum for the swing – he was preparing a defensive draw, likely something to keep his opponent at a distance. The stance was interesting if appearing a little conceived on the fly, but it was too easy to read just what the Konoha chuunin had on his mind.</p><hr/><p>"Are you quite done yet?" Erumo groaned, finishing her rather well-brewed cup of coffee. Right in front of her, Kouta was eating bacon and steaks like it was his job. Before visiting the Land of Snow, the trapster hadn't even known that people wrapped steaks around with bacon. While it made sense for someone living in such frigid conditions to eat this plentiful and this rich in fat and content, it made much less sense for someone who could have effortlessly survived without food for weeks on end just due to his metabolism alone to abandon their immediate objective to chow down on something.</p><p>Erumo regretted asking almost instantly as Kouta managed to get a string of bacon of an alarming size get stuck in his throat and began bashing his own chest with strength only available on-hand to a Juugo to try and get it unstuck. For someone who was so polite and reserved most of the time, Kouta sure ate like a barbarian.</p><p>"Where are you rushing? We've got enough intel, we could return right now and we'd all be done." The medical ninja shrugged before resuming his devouring activities.</p><p>"We know that the raider tribe comes from far north, somewhere from the mountain range. That's almost eighty kilometers of possible locations. I'm pretty sure Yushijin would like us to narrow it down a little bit more than that, genius." Erumo placed her cheek on her enclosed fist so that she did not drive it into Kouta's face in a fit of rage instead.</p><p>Somehow the medical ninja managed to swallow a chunk of meat the size of his own fist without even chewing it. As it became clear, it was because he was in a rush to share something.</p><p>"They don't live on a mountain, they live inside or under it. Mana is a sensor, she can sniff them out if we get close enough. With proper focus and meditation, her sensory range stretches out quite a lot." Kouta pointed out.</p><p>"I can't believe it how half-assedly you're taking this assignment." Erumo sighed, surrendering to the fact that she'd be spending most of the midday in this joint that looked like somebody's poor home kitchen and smelled of smoke, grease and garlic that was hung up over pretty much the entire place as the joint was too small to have its own warehouse meaning that most of the spices were drying right up above everybody's heads and all the food was pretty much being prepared right in front of the client.</p><p>"You just hate it that we're coming to the enemy and not the other way around. Meaning you won't get to lay any traps for anyone, heck, we'll probably fall for some of their traps…" Kouta shrugged. He wiped his face with an old but washed hanky and placed it back near the salt and pepper, likely to be rewashed and used again.</p><p>Erumo expressed her irritation with a tsk while crossing her arms and trying to find a more soothing sight to direct her stare at rather than look at her teammate. From the look of a neutral observer, it may have appeared like the two were related. One often got vexed by the other but both shared a certain bond of kinship that, at the end of the day, let one walk past minor grievances and quarrels and stand as one. While the core observation would have been wrong, the cause for such a rushed conclusion was actually correct – it was exactly because Erumo felt certain bonds towards her team that she chose to cease this bickering.</p><p>The sooner Kouta was done with this minor distraction – the sooner they'd be back on track.</p><p>After what seemed like an eternity to anyone who was not eating, the pair left the unimpressive food joint and decided to get back to questioning. Deep inside Erumo could understand Kouta's hesitation, talking to these shut-in and one-word-answering folks were painful. Every single detail had to be dragged out, sometimes they just flat out ignored questions for the sole reason of not wanting to be bothered. Some of the Land of Snow locals just kept on walking despite Erumo and Kouta asking them for a few words, acting as if they hadn't heard anything or anyone calling them out.</p><p>After some point of this pointless crusade for leftover bits of intelligence, the duo decided to take turns. One questioned as many people as they could for a handful of minutes while the other refreshed themselves and got back into the groove for questioning, brushed the frustration and got their aggravation back in check. Having noticed that Kouta had a natural talent of talking to stoic people, Erumo began giving him double and triple shifts. Surely the Juugo must have noticed that but given how he did not complain, the trapster just kept giving him more and more time to work his own particular brand of magic.</p><p>Evening came early in around these parts. A couple of times Kouta had returned with snacks, maybe Erumo should have gotten the hint that time was passing by when the term of an assignment loomed in the nearby horizons. Puny streetlights and fires lit up the small settlement before too long. Erumo's sights began wandering around, admiring the evening lights instead of the monotony of Kouta's hard work of filling himself. Her eye settled on a seated body that did not display any signs of life. The back of the lifeless body was placed to a trash can that seemed half full yet the can did not get toppled by the weight of the cadaver which Erumo found a little odd. For a corpse, the body appeared to be seated remarkably gracefully and laid enveloped in darkness, just in a dark embrace of the shade where the fields of two streetlights failed to touch each other.</p><p>With a sigh that was supposed to even out her breathing and calm her escalating sense of dread, Erumo stepped into the alleyway to examine the body. At that moment she wished that she had the unnatural chakra-sensing abilities that Mana had. It was at moments like this that one came to appreciate such abilities. At any point, something could blow up or a sealing tag could open up a gate to another sealing dimension full of acid that would strip the flesh off of one's bones, a bear trap coated with chakra could bust one's leg or well-placed kunai dispensers could have riddled one's careless body with blades. Sensing the minuscule traces of chakra in such devices would have been a godsend in Erumo's line of work.</p><p>All she had to rely on were her natural senses. Little good did those do in the natural darkness of the early and long evenings plaguing these parts of the world whole year long. Erumo's best attempts at an inspection did not reveal anything unusual, she went as far as to augment her perception as best as she could without risking severing her network to try and take in as much as she could. This was one of those times that the kunoichi had all the time in the world yet required maximum vigilance as well.</p><p>As far as the trapster's senses tipped her off to, there did not appear to be any natural threats around the body, yet the Sin Eater's service would have been the best shot at being absolutely sure. Regardless, given how Erumo craved for more intelligence than the pair had at the time, the young woman decided to risk it. With a wary step, she approached the corpse.</p><p>From the look of it, it looked as good as any corpse of a middle aged woman but something about it seemed… Off. Even if Erumo couldn't see any telltale signs of something more akin to her line of work and specialty, something about the corpse kept forcing the trapster to re-examine it from a respectable distance over and over again. After the n'teenth scan, the young woman got bolder, fear and shock turned to custom, the body in an alleyway was beginning to lose its flair.</p><p>"Holy…!" Kouta's expression of agitation made Erumo jump and then freeze on her toes. With an infuriated expression, she turned at her overly excitable teammate with clenched fists but then tossed aside any dreams of pummeling her friend for giving her such a scare.</p><p>"Yeah…" Erumo breathed out the influx of air in her chest that the scare made burrow even deeper down instead.</p><p>"That's a body…" Kouta whispered, if someone noticed the pair whispering over this gruesome sight, they'd probably assume that the two had something to do with it. Luckily enough, they were in a location that wanted the least possible thing to do with other people's business. Something made Erumo dread that even if this scene was transpiring in the middle of the settlement's central square, the interest from the locals would be just about the same.</p><p>"So do you want your Sin Eater license now or would you be pleased with a ceremony back in the village?" Erumo raised her eyebrow at her slow to catch on and move ahead teammate.</p><p>"Is it trapped?" Kouta looked at his teammate. Erumo closed her eyes and tried breathing calmer for a handful of moments.</p><p>"That's what I was trying to find out before you startled me…" she explained.</p><p>"Well, is it?" Kouta wondered.</p><p>Emboldened by her teammate's aggressive approach and almost infuriating desire to find out what Erumo was so careful to sneak around, the trapster leaned in to the body for a more careful inspection. The emerald orbs of the young woman shot open as she jumped back on her feet and began looking around, as if expecting an ambush to follow any second now.</p><p>"W-What's wrong?" Kouta tried calming his teammate down by gently touching her shoulder.</p><p>"This corpse… It's not just any corpse it's… Sewn up, or something. Something really fishy is going down here. Not sure if the tribe we're looking for is involved but… We might need to examine this body more than not at all if we're to find out." Erumo's expression turned grim and serious all of a sudden once the initial shock of noticing the stitches all over the deceased woman's body calmed.</p><p>"Alrighty then…" Kouta sighed. He reached out to lift the body and flip it over his shoulders. Before Erumo could scold her teammate about how reckless his decision was, the body twitched, instantly grabbing the attention of both ninja, before something shifty transpiring inside the body. It appeared as if whatever innards the body still possessed were moving around inside the cadaver. The stitches covering the body began stressing out before tearing up and in a bloody display of erupting blood and guts, a bestial figure the size of a small child burst from inside the body.</p><p>Kouta and Erumo took wide dashes back, leaning their bodies aside to avoid the bronze-colored blurs of rusty artificial claws trying to slash their eyes out. Almost instantly after appearing from inside the body where it had resided previously, the blood-covered furry took a charge further down the alleyway, jumping and dashing across the walls in an attempt to evade the fields of light projected by the streetlights.</p><p>"Well… That… Just happened…" Kouta tumbled over words.</p><p>"What are you waiting for? After it!" Erumo scolded the young man who was equally shocked as the Konoha trapster was.</p>
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<a name="section0560"><h2>560. A Cold Region Horror Show</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While the brief pause that was almost a necessity to process what had just transpired before their eyes did not do Kouta and Erumo any favors, the pair managed to snap out of it in a timely fashion and dash at the same direction where the furry nightmare had gone to. The monstrous invader of bodily cavities appeared humanoid but moved like anything but.</p><p>The bestial humanoid with the affinity for invading foreign bodies had a head-start, the alleyways were long and confusing, made more so because of the same way that every building was designed and built, not to forget the natural darkness. At that point both of the pursuers missed the light pollution of Konoha at night, nobody could have lost a person there. Rushing through this settlement at night felt like running with poked out eyes. Cold, scary and occasionally you bumped into something and yet duty forced you to keep on moving forward instead of anywhere but.</p><p>"Did what we just saw happen happened?" Kouta mumbled, still struggling with believing it. "This escalated way off the scale in no time at all."</p><p>"Don't lose it." Erumo tried to keep her ally on track. "He might be a link to the tribe we're looking for or it might just be a random freakazoid. Either way, we're definitely finding out what it knows and what exactly is this thing it's doing."</p><p>"It's blocks ahead of us already. For the record though, that was a furry midget bursting from somebody's body, right?" Kouta desperately looked around for any telltale signs of the little beast's presence like a snippet of its tail slipping through a corner. As he had assessed, the body-invader was far too off ahead for something as clear-cut as that.</p><p>"I don't think it was a midget. It was a child." Erumo declared. She dragged her finger across the dirt and examined the leftover splatters of wet dirt, snow, and blood. Far too fresh to be anything but something splattered from what had just ran down that way, it helped the pair gain a little bit on the fleeing beast, while its movements were inhuman and creepy, its speed was actually quite lacking compared to the two Konoha ninja and both felt confident they could have caught up if they only came at it in a straight line instead of having to play hide, seek and chase with it.</p><p>"Nice catch." Kouta complimented his teammate.</p><p>"Partly thanks to you bringing it up how it just burst from somebody's body after spending who knows how long inside of it. Still want to figure out what that's all about." Erumo said in return.</p><p>"Really think it's a child? Seems like a pretty messed up thing for a child to do… For anyone to do, honestly, but for a child - especially so." Kouta expressed his doubts in amazement at the bizarre and macabre scene they just witnessed.</p><p>"Not only it is a child but it is also human." Erumo expressed with about as much worry as before, even though internally she was beginning to piece the puzzle together. "Anyone that spends so much time inside a human corpse would have no problem dressing in other animals' dead bodies too."</p><p>The freaky figure dashed, jumped and vaulted about on all fours, using the hooked, bronze claws at the end of its impressive yet primal costume to cling to walls and vault about easier, swinging off of pieces of architecture with natural grace only available to small monkeys that spent their entire lives moving this way. A bright blast of pure chakra missed the fleeing kid by just a narrow margin, the resulting explosion sent the child rolling and tumbling but because of its affinity of moving on all fours, it continued on its hectic path.</p><p>Several more times Kouta tried tagging the child attempting to dress as a legion of dead critters that it wore on its body, all of those times the young man missed, sending the fleeing target tumbling the other direction. The young man maintained a steady pace, he may have tried picking up his speed and catching up to the little one but he might have had more under his sleeves, everything needed to go smooth rather than the way Kouta was beginning to get used to while working with his father. This experience was a worthy reminder…</p><p>The boy maintained a steady pace, even with pursuers after it, even when projectiles of chakra that may have easily killed him exploded all around him, the freaky kid continued to run with the same unnatural motions to his style, his gender and age only made available to an onlooker through the subhuman grunts and growls that the child let out. Grunts and growls that turned to squeaking the moment that steel wire loops closed on to his neck and every single one of his limbs right at the joint. With a masterful flick of her wrist, the intermediate trap weaver sent some more strings looping around more and more areas of the boy's body, completely disabling him.</p><p>It was only then that the boy was completely subdued and at the complete mercy of the two Konoha ninja that they had a better look at what they were chasing around. A mixture of the impressive way that humans could have gotten one with the nature that birthed them and dismissed both the benefits and the drawbacks of modern civilization of the ninja world and the brutality of the primal conditioning. A combination of unprocessed skinned furs that still had snippets of flesh while they were being worn and smelled of rotten carcasses of the critters they once belonged to, bones and body parts, all integrated into the boy's style. Topped off by the bronze claws – the only sub-civilized aspect of the boy's appearance.</p><p>"Rat tails for hair? That's… Disgusting." Kouta picked up on a detail of accessorizing that he found particularly revolting – a line of rat tails that was ringed around in a straight line and hanging down like wet noodles, simulating what would have been the protective layer of mane or hair around one's head.</p><p>"Yes, perhaps it would be better to work with something less attention-hogging." Erumo nodded, approaching the young man with a kunai in hand.</p><p>A splat of blood blinded Erumo temporarily, the top side of the trapped body fell head-first onto the dirt, now a hand short while his second hung only to a narrow strip of flesh. Somehow the unnatural appearance of the imitated beast distracted both ninja to where they did not notice that the mask of the impressive costume was hanging hollow and that the little human inside was working some macabre magic with its sharp teeth through its trapped limbs.</p><p>"Don't let him free the legs!" Erumo yelled out in despair but Kouta was already engaged with pulling his blinded friend out of harm's way as if he had moved a millisecond later – her throat would have had a rich bunch of sharpened chompers digging into it to worry about. In her scared and blinded state, the trapster may not have worried excessively about chakra augmentation of her body, which, in actuality, was the main thing she should have worried about when caught by surprise like that.</p><p>Despite missing out on catching the little, resourceful boy, Kouta pinned its fur outfit with a kunai, forcing the young one to abandon it regardless of his preference, revealing nothing more but a half-naked, bald little boy with dried out chunks of gore and black blood all over, now sinking in surges of his own blood that he's been quickly losing.</p><p>Erumo tried casting a loop of steel wire to catch onto something but missed the young boy entirely. Without its impressive coat, he was even smaller and harder to catch than before. Kouta dashed after him but found the use of force unnecessary as the little one collapsed from blood loss, fading away not ten meters from where he had chewed his own arm off. A behavior he may have learned from observing the rodents he had skinned for his identity.</p><p>"He chewed his fucking arm off?" Erumo still wheezed from the stress and disbelief how much trouble someone so much slower and weaker than either of them caused to the two of them just because of how morbid their tactics were and the necessity to catch the fleeing boy alive.</p><p>Kouta leaned down and moved the boy's weak and pale lips only to reveal blood-soaked lines of sharpened teeth, with his impressive line of sharpened teeth, the young one reminded of a little shark from an outside look, without his not any less impressive costume of vermin corpses worn over his frail shoulders and hunched back that had sharp protrusions of spine pressing against the skin, likely a result from how much time the young boy spent on all-fours, hunched over.</p><p>"Can you fix up something to tie him up with? Something foolproof this time." Kouta suggested. The young man bent to his knees and started working on the wound that would have ended up killing his captive in mere upcoming moments.</p><p>Sweat burst forth from the forehead of the medical ninja, the emerald glow from his hands intensified, he moved one of his hands away from the pale and dying boy to scan his pouch for any Sanguine food pills but he could not find any. There were plenty of blades though, burning with frustration, Kouta pulled out a wristband meant for wiping the sweat off his face after a tough training session. The emerald light died out, with a furious smack, the medical ninja slammed the wristband to the dirt. The wet slapping sound made Erumo get startled and turn around with worry in her eyes.</p><p>"Don't bother…" Kouta mumbled out.</p><hr/><p>"And?" Yushijin asked for the inappropriately frustrated teammate of his to finish his report. So far it sounded like something from a trashy horror picture or one of the creepier sections from a biology textbook.</p><p>"Seeing how we don't have an armless ten-year-old with us, I failed to save him, didn't I?" Kouta flipped his hands up in the air.</p><p>"How strong was the kid, how fast?" Yushijin wondered after a brief moment of silence.</p><p>"Stronger and faster than an adult man, for sure, probably physical chakra augmentations…" Kouta shrugged.</p><p>"He seemed pretty mindless, no forethought, only sheer instinct. No fear of pain or self-preservation though. Don't think any of the physical augmentations were conscious." Erumo added.</p><p>"There you go…" Yushijin sighed. "It's not your fault, the kid had lost an arm by chewing it off himself, hardly the optimal way to go around with that. Despite the massive blood loss, he kept on moving around and fighting, there was nothing you could have done."</p><p>"Maybe if I paid more attention to my kit and bothered taking some more food pills…" Kouta grumbled.</p><p>"All in all, it might be for the better that the kid died." Erumo declared with boldness in her voice that made Mana turn at the trapster with a brew of emotions in her eyes, unlike anything she's felt in a while. Had the magician not been beaten off her feet, she'd have lashed out and tried some self-righteous lecture, even when she knew that such vain effort would have been self-righteous, she'd have still been unable to resist herself.</p><p>After the rest of Team Fir turned at the young lady with a similarly focused distaste for the trapster's timing, the young woman shook her head. "I can't believe none of you get it yet. The kid was dressed as a legion of rats. He chewed his own arm off to escape a trap, just like a rodent would have."</p><p>The rest of Team Fir continued to stare at the trap specialist with blank and confused faces, at least after being informed that there was a sensible reason for Erumo's declaration they lost the flames of judgment in Mana's case and vapid confusion in the case of the boys.</p><p>"The boy was a scout. Vermin send scouts that are supposed to scour the area for potential loot, find out how secure it is. I'm not sure what exactly the boy was doing inside a dead body but… I'm sure that was his ultimate goal. The fact that the boy won't be returning will tip the enemy off, they'll turn elsewhere for an easy raid." Erumo explained. "I guess in the end this guy really was related to the tribe we're looking for…"</p><p>"How is the enemy going away from the settlement we're waiting around in a good thing?" Yushijin asked.</p><p>"No more civilians will get hurt. If the tribe did try and raid this settlement, they'd have left only bodies, even if we were here to defend it. The only way to avoid civilian casualties would be to engage them on their own turf." Mana finally put Erumo's point together.</p><p>"Too bad we don't know where their turf is because someone lost the only living target for interrogation." Kouta let his pessimistic turn linger in the room's atmosphere and soak the entire area with its gloom.</p><hr/><p>Team Fir ended up spending the rest of the day in the little settlement, all four of them slept with one of their eyes open. Each one hoped that their better judgment and hopes for peace would be proven wrong and that the enemy would attack. While Mana was too absorbed by the decimation of Iwagakure to stay too long and process the issue of the tribesman scout, she saw her teammates bitterly switching the positions of their tongues inside their mouths, counting something imaginary but something they found threatening regardless.</p><p>None of the four ended up having much quality sleep that night. After Mana rose to get a cup of cocoa like last night, she had to walk past Kouta who was just staring at a patch of wall with his table light on. The magician kept stepping on the foot of hers that stayed on the ground at the time, hesitating if she should try to talk to her boyfriend.</p><p>"Hey, you need something? I'm going down for something warm to drink." Mana asked the young man with a whisper, as if Yushijin was asleep, which, obviously, he wasn't. Erumo was not even in the room. Still, at this time of early morning, whispering just felt kind of right.</p><p>Kouta stonewalled the question. He didn't give Mana any angry glares, so he did not outright reject her but neither did he do anything welcoming. The young man squirmed in his plaid, moving a little bit farther from where Mana whispered from. The magician got the clue. Her own head twitched a little, surprised by the noise that, if heard at any other time, should not have startled her nearly as much.</p><p>Even the squeaks of the wooden stairs got Mana on edge. A gentle sound that she may not have even heard or told apart from the general harmony of noises normally now irritated her. The young woman moved slowly, in a way she felt like one of those characters from the movies, played by one of those fancy actresses who got up in the middle of the night to check if the sound of her dog's throat being slit was anything to be suspicious about.</p><p>Hell, given her current sense of self-worth, she felt about as ditzy and shallow…</p><p>"Could you stop that girl?" the receptionist spoke up at Mana as if she was an angel guardian descending to answer his prayer. Even if it came with the display of general paleness of skin and wide open, shifty eyes, something that would have been dismissed by anyone without a penchant for paranoia, when seen on a Land of Snow settler, it looked about as out of place as seeing someone from anywhere else suffering a heart attack.</p><p>"I'll see what I can do." Mana nodded. "Can you make some cocoa in the meantime?"</p><p>"Quid pro quo…" the receptionist replied.</p><p>"You eloquent hillbilly…" Mana grinned before entering the doorway that led to the warehouse, apparently. The magician had never gone there before but it did not take an expert of warehouses to identify this one. The purpose and the direction of the staircase could have been pieced together from cobwebs as thick as dreadlocks hanging from every surface leading down.</p><p>Using the walls for support, after carefully measuring the length of the first few steps with her foot, Mana descended down and tried heading for the singular beam of light in the room. The magician's arm shot to her side, her clutch locked around a wrist trying to grab her from behind. There was no fear or worry in Mana's voice, her clutch neither trembled nor pressed hard on the misinformed soul that tried to press her hand against Mana's mouth. Yet, given that the magician put together that it was exactly what Erumo tried to do, she stayed silent.</p><p>A single, cat-sized rat wandered around the beam of light, flashing through it once in a while. The vermin was startled by Mana's appearance but quickly became emboldened again. It did not come to grow this large for its kind because it was afraid, it grew this large because it took chances and nabbed the food that others feared to even try reaching out for. A gentle ticking sound reached the magician's excellent senses from one of the darker corners. A strong gust of wind, following a mechanical voice of active rotator blades, made both young women lean forward and do their best to maintain balance.</p><p>The light came on, it was only when it did that the rat trapped in what appeared like a massive glass jar began trying to escape its entrapment but the sizzling noise of a burning explosive tag signaled the demise for both the prey and its short-term prison. The magician covered her face so that none of the shrapnel of glass hit her face. The last thing she needed right now was to spend needless chakra on augmentation so that she did not get cut by rogue glass.</p><p>"Now I see why the receptionist asked me to get you out of here…" Mana sighed like a tired mother who returned after a double shift to find her children having drawn obscenities with a coloring pen all over the apartment walls.</p><p>"Can you not? I need this… It's how I… Relax." Erumo rubbed her elbow. "I still can't get used to the fact you can just sense people's chakra like that…" her mood picked up after she recalled her failure of sneaking up on Mana.</p><p>"You're scaring the owner, who is also the receptionist, who is also the room service, probably also the janitor. At least give me a shot at it." Mana moved a nearby wooden stand with her foot. It took a gentle flick of her lower leg to push one to Erumo as well, just hard enough to barely touch her shins and make a complete stop. After training with the ninja rabbits, nobody could have accused Mana at being sloppy with working her legs.</p>
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<a name="section0561"><h2>561. From A Cage Of Emotion Into The White</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You're scaring the rats away." Erumo lamented after taking a seat on the bench that Mana pushed for her.</p><p>"I didn't try and force you out from the get-go, how about you give me the benefit of the doubt?" Mana shrugged. For some reason she imagined herself popping a cigarette at that moment but given how she neither had any cigarettes on her nor was a smoker her hands left dangling with the awkwardness that the magician tried to conceal by placing them neatly on her laps.</p><p>"Sure, just saying – no point to a trap that doesn't catch anything." Erumo rolled her eyes. Her appearance may have been a bit standoffish but her tone was friendly. The two girls had mended their differences a few years ago, differences that hailed from the time of the Chuunin Exams and, frankly, were well deserved from Mana's part, however, it seemed that whether it was for the general circumstances surrounding the meeting or the long period of time in which the friendship was not affirmed, things have chilled by a considerable leap between the two again.</p><p>"So you've failed to catch a boy who dressed in a rat suit so now you're catching every rat in the region? Hardly seems healthy." Mana observed. This was once again one of those observations that the magician imagined herself lighting up a smoke while delivering in her mind yet because the reality did not fit her imagination, probably came off significantly lamer than initially thought.</p><p>"You're hardly the one to lecture people about healthy ways of dealing with trauma. If I reply too rudely will you disappear for three years on one of your pilgrimage trips again?" Erumo looked away. Rats around these parts were hardly shy and to an aspiring vermin hunter, the very sight of their curious snouts must have invited thoughts of wasted time.</p><p>Mana sighed. It did not take a master psychologist to realize that she was wasting time with this approach.</p><p>"You know, my father was a pretty good trap specialist himself," Mana observed.</p><p>"You must have been gone for longer than I thought, forgot all about the part where he was one of the inspirations that drove me to choose this path." Erumo finally looked at Mana straight. Her eyes weren't sharp but her tongue still thrust for the available openings.</p><p>"What you may not have known is that he helps me design the death traps and gadgets I use on stage. He comes up with the ideas for them, I build them under his guidance and careful observation." Mana said.</p><p>"Okay, you've made me jealous, to what end though?" Erumo raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"We don't have to just sit and talk. This isn't an interrogation. I'm just worried about you and Kouta and if building traps helps you relax, I can try it out, maybe it will help me too." Mana shrugged. Deep down she knew she was playing dirty – the first way to successfully interrogate someone was to convince them that they weren't being interrogated.</p><p>"You're worried about both of us and yet it's me you've come to talk to?" Erumo said in surprise. The young woman stood on her feet and moved back to the lumbering and dusty oak table where she had a handful of contraptions and metal parts that were yet to make something coherent and of purpose.</p><p>"Kouta doesn't quite talk to me. I don't think I have the strength to try and get to him regardless. Who knows, maybe your method of dealing with baggage will help me better than mine." Mana shrugged, approaching the crafting table herself.</p><p>"No offense but moping is not a method of dealing with baggage. It's a sign of drowning in baggage." Erumo grinned, whether it was because she found something to smile about in this reply of hers or because of the rotating buzzsaw mechanism that she's completed and prepared to install onto a tiny box was unclear.</p><p>Mana failed to humor that with a response. With skillful movements of her arm, she collected small cylinders and screwed them onto a metal stand. The magician flipped and rolled the half-done piece about in her hands, she didn't care to look up and face the respectful surprise in Erumo's face. Mana sighed before placing her project back on the table and moving to a nearby rack filled with jars and little barrels. The young woman looked at one she opened and liked the color of before walking up to Erumo and moving the open jar to her friend's face.</p><p>"Sniff it," Mana asked.</p><p>"What for?" Erumo wondered.</p><p>"I need to know if it smells sweet," Mana said.</p><p>"Can't you smell it yourself?" Erumo turned the front tips of her eyebrows downward, pressing the front of her eyes to make them look more irritated.</p><p>"If I could…" Mana almost answered the temptation to be as flippant with her friend as she was with her but somehow she managed to restrain herself. "No, I can't."</p><p>"Damn. Somebody whacked you that hard?" Erumo asked with relative shock in both her tone and her expression.</p><p>"No, I gave up on it willingly to strengthen my chakra sensory. It was a shortcut, an only option to win in the Chuunin Exams." Mana replied. The honesty and carelessness for her impairment made Erumo nod her head a pair of times before sniffing on the jar.</p><p>"It's a jam of some sort, probably, smells a bit molded though," Erumo replied to the best of her judgment. "You can be pretty hardcore when you're motivated, I always knew that."</p><p>"Mold is good, it's a little of some exotic smell on top of the jam." Mana smiled before dragging her fingers across the walls of the jar and applying the yellow goop onto her pet project.</p><p>"What's that supposed to be?" Erumo wondered.</p><p>"I won't kill an animal just because I want to stretch my creative muscles a bit. I'm not sure if you knew this but my father took pride in capturing his enemies alive." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Yeah, but his traps didn't look like an Academy student made them…" Erumo laughed at Mana's chunk of cylinders and scrap.</p><p>"That's because they weren't judged before they were finished," Mana replied with calm in her voice. The magician removed a paper tag and scribbled a kanji symbol, then placed it into the side of the second cylinder that did not have any jam slathered onto it.</p><p>With a flick of her wrist, the magician rolled the completed trap sliding across the floor until it hit a corner of a rack on the other side of the room. While most of the rats looked interested in the sliding chunk of scrap that smelled of mold and sweetness at the same time, they were not bold enough to dash after it just yet. Until they would feel that way, Mana decided to patiently wait at her corner.</p><p>"I've been to your shows. Your usual designs are much deadlier than this. Don't you find it hilarious that you use deathtraps on yourself yet can't be bothered to kill a rat?" Erumo smirked, her glance slipped at Mana's trap from time to time. Within her own hands laid an interesting design that likely took inspiration from Mana's own magic shows – a layered scrap box with openings on all of the compartments and buzzsaws that were supposed to insert their teeth into the ridges.</p><p>It was no deathtrap but it was needlessly brutal and torturous. Not something Mana would have expected to see from Kouta's teammate. Erumo may not have bothered herself with creeds of never taking a life but she was not bloodthirsty either. This must have been a current development.</p><p>"What you've told me about that boy. It sounded pretty gruesome, I can't blame you for feeling down about the whole thing. If you truly need space, I'll leave you alone." Mana suggested. If the magician took her promise to the receptionist to make Erumo stop killing rats in his warehouse and cause a general ruckus with her deathtraps, she'd have been taking a gamble. After all, once promised, even if Mana did not leave when prompted to, she'd never earn the lost trust back in that case.</p><p>"It's not about that. I've seen people die or get injured. I've injured some myself, I've killed myself… Through traps, I guess, as distanced from it as possible but… I wasn't fooling anyone, myself included – death's a death." Erumo sighed. She threw her little trinket over her shoulder and let it roll around wherever it landed, having decided to not use it, maybe out of respect to Mana's decision to not cause needless torment to the rats, maybe because she simply did not fancy her own design.</p><p>"It's just that… When I saw that corpse, the one which the kid was hiding in… It reminded me of…" Erumo struggled to find the words. It was because she wasn't whining or approaching that territory but more miffed than anything about the entire affair that the magician even kept listening instead of trying to change the subject.</p><p>"Something painful from your past?" Mana wondered, leaving it as a possibility for Erumo to take an easy dive out of the arduous talk. At any point, the trapster could have just nodded and left it at that, as someone who had some of her own painful memories, Mana would have understood and taken the failure of removing her pissed and looking for relaxation squadmate out of the warehouse. She's taken so many losses recently that losing again did not sound all that scary.</p><p>"And it's the same thing that Chinoike woman showed me. Couldn't move past it since she brought it back up, just when I thought I was starting to get over it, there it comes again." Erumo let her head sink down and her shoulder-long hair fall over her face. Something wet was spilled all over the table, something resembling pickle water but it did not appear like the tips of her hair sinking into that muck or it touching her elbows bothered the trapster all that much.</p><p>"I struggle to fathom what a stitched together body might remind you of." Mana shook her own head. As a response to the silence being broken, Erumo sat back and finally removed her arms and hair off of the pickle water.</p><p>"A stapled one. My mother was killed a solid bunch of years ago. Some cabal of black market organ dealers took what they needed and then stapled her body together, they were supposed to pass something to some local crooks that way. If she was just moving around the Land of Fire unprotected, it'd have been one thing, those bastards were bold enough to kill off the team of genin accompanying her too." Erumo clenched her well-maintained and gentle hands into two little fists that did not look like they were meant or capable for that matter of causing too much harm.</p><p>"Rogues that brutal operating near the village would get eradicated almost instantly. Konoha has a reputation to upkeep." Mana shook her head disbelief. Not disbelief in her friend's story but out of the sheer randomness of the chaos that once descended into her life. Something so brutal and so mindless, it did not appear beneficial to anyone involved.</p><p>"Yeah, those guys got too brave, thought that they were invincible then ran into a stronger team of ninja. Konoha doesn't take their potential manpower being wasted that way lightly." Erumo sighed. "A lot of people would think that knowing that somebody who did something this lurid to ones you love the most received a mirroring punishment would resolve anything. It doesn't. People laughed at you when you said that you will become a ninja without killing anyone but I was one of the few that didn't. Mostly because I understood that. I understood why someone would be this way. Killing really is pointless, it doesn't make you feel better and resolves nothing. It might kill a rat but it won't change the fact that your warehouse is infested, only moving all the food to a more secure location will do that."</p><p>Erumo sat and marinated the feelings for a short while before looking away and sighing.</p><p>"I thought that maybe dealing with the mission at hand would somehow distract me. That's how I've always dealt with things, distractions. Plans and blueprints, plans and such… Even now the craziest thoughts pass through my mind. I keep wondering if we could have asked Kouta to keep the kid alive before you could have interrogated him, then we could have used that information to transform into him and talk to his people into showing themselves on a battlefield of our choosing. Ludicrous plans like this one, each crazier than the other keep plaguing me, it's what keeps me awake. It's because of what my role is, I always try to think things through," she said</p><p>"You know, when I found out about what had happened to Iwagakure, I felt responsible for it, somehow. A squad of which I was a part of foiled an Iwagakure plot to get an upper hand in the conflict and for that reason, I felt responsible for all the lives claimed, I still do. This whole time I've been thinking of ways in which I could have changed things, maybe I could have spoken with more conviction, gotten to them and made everything work out. Who knows… Even now I don't know the answer. The only thing that gives me solace is knowing that I did the best thing I knew that needed to be done at the time, that I did not miss any opportunities or waste any time. Even if whatever outcome was meant to come comes to pass, it feels somehow liberating knowing that you wouldn't do anything differently, even if the regret over the tragedy won't stop eating at you."</p><p>A few steps behind Mana's back her scrap box with cylinders lit up with a dull blue flare. A rat that had been lured inside disappeared into a different sealing dimension.</p><p>"Holy shit. That actually worked. If you feel so down about being a lousy ninja, you can always leave it behind and market this idea." Erumo smiled through eyes brimming with melancholy.</p><p>"No, who has the time and effort to reapply the chakra to the seals all the time. I guess I could employ something who can place a higher ranked seal but then I'd have to share the cut… Who knows how successful that sort of business would be." Mana shook her head with a smile. She enjoyed being able to distract Erumo from the unpleasant stream of memories that the recent events brought up and the nightmares they invited.</p><p>"You really don't know a thing about business, do you?" Erumo laughed out. "That's how business work, you supply an idea and gather people capable of bringing it together, while you take everybody's credit. For someone with such an awesome father, you're an average trap specialist but as someone with a respected café owner as a mother, you're an abysmal entrepreneur."</p><p>"What's true is true." Mana shrugged. "The owner said he'd make me cocoa if I got you out of here. I'll ask him to make you some too if you do."</p><p>"Yeah, after seeing you spend fifteen minutes on something that caught one rat, I'm done for the night." Erumo stood up and pocketed some of the remaining pieces while sealing the larger ones into a scroll that she placed on her belt.</p><hr/><p>"You okay? I mean besides the lack of sleep." Mana wondered after seeing Yushijin staring at the cloudy, shade of cobblestone sky that was very generous with the gift of wet snowflakes, drooping from above by the fistfuls.</p><p>"When the village finds out that we've had the chance to get the enemy come to us… It will be yet another thing I'll have to answer for." Yushijin replied.</p><p>"It's not like you've had a choice to make." Kouta crossed his arms over his chest. "By the time we even came to you with the information, the kid was already dead. No need to blame yourself over milk spilled by someone else long ago."</p><p>"I guess so." Yushijin closed his eyes and took a deep breath in.</p><p>"Do you regret that we didn't let the scout return to his people and have all of them come here?" Erumo wondered.</p><p>"Not at all." The Konoha swordsman admitted. "I may not understand or like these people all that much but I wish no harm to come to them. That's just human nature."</p><p>"So what now? We just wander around the mountains, looking for chakra signatures? Some of these mountains are four to twelve kilometers tall, at their peak, I won't be able to sense anything at the bottom. Plus, if that scout was any indication of the strength of the tribesmen, their chakra systems won't be that developed which means their signatures won't stand out too much." Mana voiced her doubts about the most basic approach.</p><p>"No." Yushijin shook his head. "We wander the routes connecting the settlements, look for trading caravans and people traveling across the Land of Snow, question them for information. If we know which settlements have been attacked, better yet, which settlements have had remnants of grisly murders in them not too long ago, we'll know our mark. Hopefully, we'll be able to intercept the raiding party before it hits the settlement. We'll do our best to keep the fight in the snowfields and out of the settlements."</p><p>"And you were worked up about being a bad leader." Mana smiled.</p><p>"Every two hours we'll be taking a thirty-minute break." Yushijin decided.</p><p>"Wait, what? That seems counterintuitive. We'll get nothing done if we waste time just sitting on our butts." Kouta got grumpy about it.</p><p>"Plus, the cold and the winds won't give us any mercy, it would be pretty ruthless of you to ask us to just sit in the middle of an open field while blizzards unlike anywhere else in the world will be pelting at us. Thirty minutes will hardly be enough time to set up a proper camp." Erumo disagreed with her leader's decision, it was a rare occasion but her tone was softer than when she objected someone else. It was clear that the young woman spoke up out of what she deemed to be a necessity.</p><p>"Mana and I need to cement what we've picked up from one another in our training. We've taught each other the theory and the basics of what I wanted both of us to learn but if we are to use that advantage effectively, we still need to polish those skills." Yushijin shook his head, it appeared that the leader of Team Fir was adamant about these stops.</p><p>With hesitation and with their vigor replaced with wary, Team Fir nodded in sync and followed their leader into the picking up veil of white out in the open. There was nothing but frozen ground covered with layers upon layers of snow that never truly melted before the successive layer covered it up. To the west and the far north laid the mountain ranges, the tall and proud barriers in their quest. To the east laid the most active settlement clusters while these open fields were reserved to hills tall and short, covered with trading and journey roads.</p>
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<a name="section0562"><h2>562. A Whirl Of Wearying White</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A storm of white capable of piercing its chills to one's bones as well as feeling like it was strong enough to expose them due to the sheer whirling dance of the unruly snow gave a lonely coachman all too much trouble by itself. The man was a professional, he was used to fighting the environment as much as he was fighting his own willpower. The animals he managed trusted his judgment enough to resist their own natural instincts to flee south, at least as far back south as to the bordering fields of the Land of Snow, where the ground was frozen solid yet snow was not knees deep even on maintained and used roads.</p><p>It was because of the natural awareness and the on edge state that ruling in such conditions demanded that the man noticed a lonely figure in a black coat. Shoulder length dark violet hair fell over the shoulders of the young man, mixing into the thick and rich fur from the hood hanging on his back, a part of the man's winter attire.</p><p>With trouble in his mind and worry over the potential success of his job in mind, the coachman halted the caravan. In his youth, he may have tried something as hot-headed as turning his caravan and trying to run around the obstacle, given how he could not see what was under all that snow, however, his horses could have twisted and broken their joints instantly by galloping into a ditch or even the smallest of tripping hazards. Plus, who knew for how long this man was standing here, what preparations he had laid or who was hiding around these parts waiting for a chance of a potential ambush.</p><p>"If you look for money, look elsewhere. I take solicitor to a castle in the mountains. All money is in the castle, not on my client." The coachman spoke up first, something that was very unlike the locals. Then again, he did speak similarly to the other Land of Snow giants, omitting plenty of words found pointless and adding nothing that lacked necessity.</p><p>"I'm sorry to interrupt your work, we are looking for information ranging from something concrete to mere rumors on strange happenings in nearby settlements. Coachmen and merchants tend to travel around, we'd like to know if you, by any chance, have come upon something of the sort," Yushijin inquired.</p><p>The coachmen glanced the young shinobi over. He did not look like he enjoyed what he was seeing nor the trouble that this lonely obstacle in the road offered him.</p><p>"Can't say. Strange is vague term. No time to compare notes." The coachman prepared to encourage his horses to move along. It was a power play that was meant to see if Yushijin was going to be trouble or not. If the young ninja blocking the path was weak-willed or truly did not mean to cause the coachman any trouble, he'd have moved aside. If trouble was truly brewing, he'd have remained rooted and even tried something that would have only aggravated the situation.</p><p>"Please, anything that fuels the imagination. Grisly murders, mysterious disappearances of people or items." Yushijin did not directly block the coachman's path but he did turn his body aside, thusly, while not directly blocking the passage, he did not move out of the carriage's way either.</p><p>A head of a blond and well-dressed man appeared from the space between the open door and the carriage. The man inside the carriage was not dressed in particularly heat-insulating clothes so he may have peeked out only to see what the reason for stopping was. The mountains were still a decent distance away and the carriage may not have made it there until late at night, even later if stoppages like this persisted. The man may have been rightfully irked.</p><p>"What's happening, why have we stopped?" he inquired.</p><p>"This foreign ninja asking around." The coachman pointed at Yushijin.</p><p>"Foreign ninja? What is it that you want, ninja?" the solicitor wondered out loud, his speech suggested that this man was not a local himself. He spoke at least remotely like a human being.</p><p>"I am looking for rumors of mysterious happenings that may be plaguing the local settlements. Something like that might be a sign of something more dangerous and bloody to come in the future and I seek to prevent it." The Konoha swordsman explained himself.</p><p>"For someone who dislikes needless talking and time wasting, you certainly are bleeding time with this young man." The solicitor turned at the coachman. "If it helps you at all, the settlement we took off from, around four hours traveling by carriage to the south-east from here, has experienced a persisting problem of losing produce. Someone or something breaks into the warehouses and simply trashes it, they do not take it, they do not eat it, they just chop it up and make it rot from the inside or ruin it differently. It was an object of many conversations by some very drunk men in the inn the evening before I left."</p><p>"Thank you, Sir. That helps me a great deal." Yushijin bowed his head in gratitude. "Have a good day and good luck with your business."</p><p>As if the young man had never been there, to begin with, the figure of the lone swordsman faded away in a whirlwind of picked up snow that circled around momentarily before settling down where Yushijin's Body Flicker Jutsu disturbed it.</p><p>"It's only been a few hours of attempts, but we've got something." Yushijin reported to his team, hiding in nearby ditches.</p><p>"See? I told you that if we hid and you spoke alone we'd have more success. Nobody wants to speak to a handful of suspicious figures in a snowstorm like this, that's why they steered clear of us." Erumo grinned.</p><p>"I'm surprised that this worked. Yushijin's the scariest out of all of us by his lonesome…" Kouta sighed in relief before turning to Mana who appeared unusually gloomy for something that turned out to be a success. "Something wrong?"</p><p>"Don't know. You should have at least tried blending in, talked like the locals do. Now we risk leaking the information that Konoha ninja are working in the Land of Snow. You did not speak like any local and your skin tone is nowhere near like that of the Kumogakure ninja." Mana explained the source of her worries.</p><p>"Yeah, maybe Mana should have been the one to do the talking. She may not be quite the face of a Kumogakure ninja but her skin is at least different enough to be confused for one in these conditions. Or you could have just used the Transformation Jutsu." Erumo shrugged. While she did lean to the side of agreeing with Mana and disagreeing with Yushijin, something that was more on the world-shaking, one of a kind event side, the relative carelessness in the tone of the young woman suggested that she did not deem this all too important of a problem.</p><p>"It will be fine. It was just a lonely coachman and a foreign solicitor. We'll be long gone after they tell this tale to anyone and it's not like we're causing any harm here. Nobody will have any reason to complain and a little good publicity together with Konoha's name might be a good thing. Kumogakure is fresh off of a draining conflict with Iwagakure, they won't risk waving any flags in front of the now second most powerful military in the world."</p><p>"Plus, it's not like it's any better of an idea for Mana, a widely known entertainment superstar, to parade with her face out in the open, trying to pass off as a local." Kouta nudged the magician with his elbow. While a smile was absent from the Juugo's face, some of his trademark vitality and fondness for the magician was slowly beginning to return to him after the failure that pulled the carpet from under his feet yesterday.</p><p>"Either way, we have a destination." Yushijin tried getting his team back on track.</p><p>"Sure. If the locals have noticed the activity of the scouts, it's more than likely that we're too late to stop them from returning to the tribe, however. A raid will be inevitable." Erumo summed up.</p><p>Snow picked up in a whirl and passed the entire field from one side to another, riding just the coattails of the picked up pressure and shockwaves from the team of ninja departing in the direction of the small settlement in the south-east of the Land of Snow.</p><p>"We shouldn't stray from the plan. Stick to the trenches and caves, lay an ambush in an open field." Mana brought up. What Erumo said earlier worried her a fair share as the possibility always remained to arrive at the place and only find brutalized bodies and the entire settlement looted and sacked.</p><p>"It might be troublesome to engage the entire tribe in an open field. It's not the way ninja usually operate." Yushijin observed. From his tone alone he did not sound objecting to the idea of following the primary plan but he was almost begging for the team to discuss it properly again.</p><p>"We can take them." Kouta summarized. "That kid surprised us, that's all. Unexpected tactics like that will always make a weakling land a hit or two on a stronger opponent."</p><p>While Mana appreciated hearing her boyfriend agreeing with her, both out of support for her and because it appeared to be his genuine opinion, it felt a bit discomforting about how much like his father the young man sounded.</p><p>"That was just a kid, not even a warrior but a scout." Yushijin shook his head. "While I don't think anyone out of the bunch of self-trained tribe of savages would be able to beat us, it isn't wise to label all of them based on the showings of one boy who was never even meant to fight anyway."</p><p>"We should arrive at the settlement, scope out the location, talk to the locals. Rest up and fight on our own ground." Erumo declared.</p><p>"On our own ground fifteen thousand kilometers from home, pelted by weather completely alien to us, in a location where we don't know anyone nor does anyone trust us?" Mana riposted.</p><p>"Those tribesmen are raiders, they probably never had a fair fight in their entire life. That being said, they've raised themselves up in the mountains and out in the endless vastness of Land of Snow. There could be a reason why they hit and run the settlements. Buildings, roads, and civilization might be as alien to them as this cold is to us. We stand the best chances standing our ground in the settlement." Erumo persisted.</p><p>"It's up to you." Mana turned to Yushijin. While she did feel bitter inside, it was far too cold for a boiling blush and she had far too much composure to growl or yell about.</p><p>Yushijin appeared dead silent for a while. Staring out in the open before the vague shapes of the snow-sunken settlement appeared in the distance. Hastened by the circumstances, Yushijin closed his eyes and made his call.</p><p>"If we stay in the settlement, we can use the local defenses, even more, Erumo can help the locals with traps and she can set her own without worrying about the battle conditions. It's an ideal way to utilize her skill set. I am not going to overlook that." The leader of Team Fir declared.</p><p>Mana got his point. It hurt to admit it but she saw his way of reasoning, as a support ninja, Erumo excelled at setting her techniques up and planning ahead rather than thinking and fighting on her feet and adapting to the conditions of the battle. While both Mana and Yushijin were preparing for active engagement, it did not change the fact that if they did fight that way, Erumo's advantages would barely be utilized and they'd basically be down a perfectly capable member in such a brawl.</p><p>"Alright…" Mana gave in. She had to keep her own spirits up, trying to tell herself that she'd keep half an eye open for the locals but she knew better than most the kind of impossible burden she was placing upon herself. In her entire career as a ninja, she probably pulled out a hero act like the one she was planning once or twice and lost far too many times to try it again without getting wobbly legs.</p><p>Kouta sighed. Mana turned back at him and wondered if Yushijin was not making the same mistake he just tried to avoid. Now it may have been Kouta who would be unable to unleash all of his potential as he'd be shackled by the settlement around him, surrounded by fragile towers of cardboard boxes. He had virtually no supportive capabilities besides his medical ninja game and that game, to be honest, was slipping up recently due to his long-lasting investment into what he saw as the better half of his identity.</p><p>The south-eastern settlement that the solicitor was talking about was a completely different beast to its basic predecessor. In a lot of ways, however, it looked a lot colder and even less welcoming too. The quirky wooden homes were replaced by brick blocks of multiple floors. The pathways of frozen dirt were instead replaced with grey pavement that fit so nicely with the equally grey walls around it.</p><p>It did not appear that this settlement was all that invested into its defense either. It had just a man-sized wall surrounding it from most sides with a clear clearing for entrance and then the wall resumed. If this settlement followed the usual rules of architecture, it was more than likely to have entrances from all four sides. Judging by how serious Erumo's eyes looked and how they raced across the various sights that she was gorging on, the trapster had already thought of that.</p><p>"We better get the settlement administration onboard. It won't be easy but it will go smoother in the long run instead of us just waltzing about and setting traps all over the place." Mana brought up.</p><p>"That's a good idea." Yushijin appeared soothed to get to agree with the magician. Clearly, he expected more of a falling out to come from the argument from before. If he could give up on a few things that mattered far less in the long run while keeping his team mostly on the same page, Yushijin looked ready to make those small sacrifices.</p><p>"That was always my intention…" Erumo lied. Given how it was a crystal clear and demonstrative lie, it kind of slid under everyone's radar and just ended up more on the charming scale.</p><p>It was not difficult to notice how few stray stares the Konoha crew gathered. It was of no surprise – Mana may have appeared almost like a Kumogakure native from the first sight, nobody seemed to care enough to let their eyes wander all over the differing locations at which each member of Team Fir wore their headbands. All that the locals saw from the get-go was a bunch of cold travelers looking for a place to sit down and stretch their legs. This settlement saw plenty of those. It was likely a transitional pit stop between the outside world and the merciless wilderness, the blizzard-plagued plains of the Land of Snow.</p><p>It was not until the group entered the administration building to see the settlement chief that the four received their own sets of stray eyes wandering their way. Even then, most of them were directed at Yushijin's sword and not on the actual young adults wandering into the building. In fact, it may have been because of the sword that the receptionists even cared to scan the four hard enough to notice their forehead protectors.</p><p>"We would like to see the chief, please." Yushijin declared. He did not limit his vocabulary though he did speak with the relative coldness to his tone that could have been picked up whenever the locals opened their mouths.</p><p>"Konoha ninja? Need to ask more questions." The old lady sitting behind the reception table gave Mana dreadful flashbacks to the experience in the archive building.</p><p>"Shoot." Yushijin closed his eyes and prepared himself for what he deemed to be unpleasant.</p><p>"Mission?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"Yours?"</p><p>"No, yours."</p><p>"Not ours."</p><p>"Land of Snow."</p><p>"You're here…"</p><p>"No use visiting the client. Our mission's here."</p><p>"Immediate?"</p><p>"Quite."</p><p>"Proceed to third floor."</p><p>"Thank you."</p><p>The old lady stonewalled Yushijin's gratitude, possibly finding a reply unnecessary. Kouta raised an eyebrow while looking Yushijin's way.</p><p>"We should have taken you to the library…" the medical ninja declared with a respectful tone.</p><p>"Found a common trait, that's all." Yushijin shrugged while leading his team on to the third floor.</p><p>The settlement chief was a thick yet tall man. It was tough to say if his size was a result of intensive training or a lavish lifestyle, given the food options found around these parts, the first was a more likely option. He was a man well past his physical prime but his terrific physique didn't let old age set in on too many areas, save for the greying hair and mustache as thick as the man's considerable arms.</p><p>"Konoha ninja? Your business must have been immediate to be let through. Please, sit down." The chief spoke in a soft voice but something suggested the magician that it was not the only voice that this man was capable of.</p><p>"More than five words in a sentence… What eloquence." Kouta with a ridiculing grin while leaning to Mana's ear.</p><p>"Oh, I am not from around these parts. My family fled here from Iwagakure thirty years ago." The chief, who looked not too much different from a kind uncle when he was smiling and sizing up his vast belly with his hands. Had it not been for a strict, almost militaristic dress code that this elder subscribed to, he'd have truly set the impression in stone.</p><p>"Impressive hearing." Mana commended the village chief. Even a ninja would have needed to use enhanced perception to hear something of this volume and here this aged man pulled it off like it was nothing.</p><p>"I may have been a teenager when I arrived at these parts but I still worked for a pair of years in the quartz mines. While working in the mines it is best to hear either the hiss of a natural gas leak or the resulting explosion to begin fleeing as fast as possible before you are incinerated in your entirety. In any case, I must be boring you talking about myself. You said your business here was immediate?" the man dismissed talks of deadly dismemberment and total incineration as something boring.</p><p>"We want to build traps inside and around your settlement to fend off a tribe of raiders that's about to raid it dry." Erumo summed it up in a manner of no words being wasted that would have made any Land of Snow local proud, leaving the ball in the old timer's court.</p>
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<a name="section0563"><h2>563. The Preparation Phase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Hmmm…" the man disappeared deep within his thoughts while stroking his rodent-sized mustache incessantly. Who could have blamed him, it occurred to Mana that if she had such a rich hairline over her lip, she'd probably be stroking it all the time too, just like when she stroke her plentiful hair. "I am not like my constituents, I am afraid. I will need more information than this to let you place traps that would endanger my own people in my settlement."</p><p>"That is understandable, what would you like to know?" Yushijin took over the initiative of speaking for his team as a leader.</p><p>"First of all, you people are clearly Konoha ninja. You're not hiding the plates of your forehead protectors but Land of Snow is not used to working with other villages. We've worked with Kumogakure as far as I can remember so this development is extremely suspicious to me." The chief wondered. The man settled down into a chair, wrapped his arms over his chest and placed one leg onto the other, shutting himself off from the team of guests this way.</p><p>"We've been hired by a settlement inside the Land of Snow. It is not your settlement but it is local nevertheless. It seems that Kumogakure is too busy with its military engagements to watch their own allies' back." Yushijin replied. It did not seem all too wise to Mana to try and throw shade at Kumogakure in front of a settler who must have been working with Kumogakure ninja his entire career.</p><p>"Heh, I suppose that's right…" the chief smiled while opening his uppermost drawer and pulling out a kiseru pipe. "It doesn't seem like you've reported to your client though. Why would that be?"</p><p>"There's no use, we've been hired to eliminate this tribe. That is all that we will do. There's no use in moving two thousand kilometers further north just to show our faces to someone. As long as we do our job and pull out, that will be fine." Yushijin replied, for a youth who was shrugging shoulders, he looked quite confident in his reply.</p><p>"This tribe, what is it exactly?" the chief wondered while long strands of tar-black smoke extended from the end of his pipe. Something revolting was bubbling at the very end of the smoking tool as if a spoonful of boiling oil. Every expanding bubble was colored with every color of the spectrum while also releasing puffs of smoke with every detonation.</p><p>"A nasty piece of work. Raiders who see violence and animalistic brutality as their way of life. They send their young to cause a general ruckus and test the place they will be raiding, then they come full force and decimate the place." Yushijin explained.</p><p>"So you've seen it happen?" the chief wondered.</p><p>"No. My knowledge of what comes after comes from the mission objective file." Yushijin shook his head. The young man took a brief moment to wipe his hair off of his face afterward.</p><p>"It just so happens that I've heard of this tribe, also we've noticed the early signs you speak of and we've called for Kumogakure ninja to intervene on our behalf already." The village chief sighed. While he explained with the proper edge that would have been necessary if one was explaining how they caught a hardened criminal in their act, this time the context did not match the intensity of the man's tone. "So you can see why I am in a bit of an impasse here."</p><p>"With all due respect, if the Kumogakure ninja planned on helping you out, they'd have been here already. We were worried to find nothing but bloodstains and ruin while we were coming here, there's no time to sit idly and wait for your saviors to come. You need to prepare." Erumo stepped up. The young kunoichi was always prepared to fight for a possible opportunity to place traps for someone.</p><p>"That is the only reason why I did not ask you four out of here yet." The village chief puffed his smoke while leaning back in his chair. "Your effort might be useful to my settlement."</p><p>"Then why…" Mana was about to ask the man who appeared to be quite strict and hardy from the first glance what was the reason for his soft-boiled behavior but Yushijin interjected halfway.</p><p>"You're worried that the Kumogakure ninja will arrive at any point of our preparations or during the battle…" the leader of Team Fir stated.</p><p>"That's right. The only reason I know of this tribe is because of constant radio contact between the officials in charge of maintaining the radio bases scattered all over the Land of Snow. Contact from the military stations built and kept by Kumogakure. For all I may know, they're sitting outside and waiting for a chance to ambush the invading raiders." The chief lamented his situation.</p><p>"In that case, you're already screwed, aren't you?" Kouta replied rather rudely. "You've already let in Konoha ninja inside your settlement and spoke to them. May as well let us do our thing."</p><p>"Well… As a kid who grew up in quartz mines, I am a sucker for good old manual labor. Trap away…" the chief sighed after slowly placing his pipe on the table, letting some of the disgusting goop that simmered in it to leak out on the cedar table. "However, do involve the locals too. This is the first and the last time that I bargain with foreigners I didn't call here so I need to make sure that it's useful. Let my folk absorb some of your knowledge so that they know how to protect themselves in the future when Kumogakure decides to sit these things out again."</p><p>The village chief rumbled in his chair with his heavy frame, pressing two of his large fingers against a button on a wooden tile with a red lamp on it. Moments later, a plump administration official who intended to mirror his superior's sense of militaristic style almost rolled into the man's room.</p><p>"This is Voshchia, he is in charge of managing how local freeloaders spend their time. He'll help you gather a group. I'm sure the concept of building something that will kill invaders will be exciting enough for the lot to keep them on your side." The village chief declared.</p><p>Yushijin glanced at Erumo. "Not what I signed up for but it'll do…" the Konoha kunoichi shrugged with an irked look on her face. Mana could fathom the source for her irritation. It was troublesome enough to try and prepare the settlement borders from an attack by a foreign threat that should have happened already at the very moment of the conversation, it would be a whole different matter entirely to also babysit and tutor a group of unemployment-loving civilians.</p><hr/><p>"I didn't expect you to be this complicit and helpful, I'll be honest." Erumo looked at Mana who remained seated atop of a small bench as she oversaw Usuzoku digging a hole. At the same time, she could spare a pair of eyes to look over the men and women assigned by the settlement chief to help, even if Erumo was doing a fine enough job engaging them as it is.</p><p>"I didn' expect ya ta make me dig a hole! Swords ain't meant fer diggin'!" Usuzoku grumbled from down below.</p><p>"Why not? If these traps can protect these people and help them protect from foreign threats all by themselves, I'll do whatever I can do to help." Mana smiled. "Obviously, I'm not strong enough to dig through the frozen solid ground but there are other ways I can be helpful."</p><p>"Not strong 'nuff my ass…" Usuzoku grumbled. "Bullshit an' she knows it…"</p><p>"Don't get grumpy. You can still use that sword for its intended purpose when you're making spikes for the bottom of the hole from the trees. There aren't that many trees here, that's why I've asked Bane-chan train in the forest and drag some back." Mana tried mending her standing with her rabbits a little bit. Truthfully, there was another reason why Mana sent Usubane to train in the forest than just ask her to down and drag some trees. While she's out there she'll not only serve as a loud detergent to anyone within their right mind but also as a scout.</p><p>"If you're in a giving mood, could you help me teaching some locals a thing or two? I don't mean the practical part, they're pretty handy with that. I'm a little surprised even. I mean maybe relay to them some of your signature thought processes? The type of stuff that helps you think up deathtraps for your shows?" Erumo put her hands in a praying position while closing one of her eyes to make a begging expression. Something suggested to the magician that Erumo wasn't really asking out of the emptiness for ideas of her own mind, she was asking because she wanted to nab a proper handful of them.</p><p>"You know me, all about that giving…" Mana grinned.</p><p>Unlike Usuzoku, who was working on a more complicated, if a little dragged through the dirt, hole with spikes trap, the small group of locals that Erumo led Mana to were working on simple trap holes. Erumo started blushing and stuttering with even her breathing when the two approached the hole-diggers, obviously ashamed to be seen by Nakotsumi Tsukumo's daughter having instructed these people to just dig trap holes.</p><p>"I… I figured that maybe we could use some of these. You know… 'Cause of the whole no-killing policy you have, I figured maybe a couple of traps could try that." Erumo shrugged.</p><p>"I think it's really nice of you." Mana nodded. She didn't need to fake her cheer. She was used by now that nobody she worked with, save for Meiko, bothered with Mana's no-killing policy. The best she could have hoped for was nobody mocking it out in the open. For Erumo to go out of her way and do something like this…</p><p>The Konoha magician cocked her head, letting her hat roll down the front of her head and onto her shoulder, then down her arm until a firm clutch left it pinched between Mana's index and her thumb. With a playful spin of the cylinder-shaped artifact of sealing, she showed Erumo the glowing tag at the top of the hat from the inside.</p><p>"I figured, for efficiency's sake, that these holes could use some of these seals. It's a seal my father gifted to me long ago. Granted, that hat was destroyed… I don't even remember when. Nevertheless, it's the first and probably the only proper sealing technique I've learned because I didn't feel comfortable asking him over and over again to put it on a new hat every time I lost the old one or it got shredded in supernova heat somewhere..." Mana weaved the required hand seals for the setup of the sealing technique that her hat used to store objects and, more commonly, rabbits that Mana called upon because she still felt a bit stingy about using unoriginal ninjutsu.</p><p>"Are you sure you want to do that? Spend so much of your chakra on my trap holes? I just don't think I'm worth it…" Erumo shook her head with an energetic refusal.</p><p>"If you won't accept that, you can always just copy my jutsu. It's not that tough to master, you are a seal-user, right? I'm sure somebody at least partly specializing in sealing jutsu should be able to get the hang of it. The jutsu's been perfected and polished long ago, optimized for easy pick-up and usage. If even I, a non-sealing user could pick it up…" Mana let the thought linger as there was no necessity to finish it.</p><p>Invigorated, Erumo reached for her back pouch and removed a pair of blank sealing tags, then jumped down one of the holes and pressed it against the ground. The trapster placed her palm onto the sealing tag and focused her chakra at the hand to where it visibly formed a bland blue glow around it visible even to a naked eye. It seemed to Mana that her ally was using far too much chakra for the jutsu but she kept that observation to herself.</p><p>With a mighty shredding noise, the paper erupted into tiny pieces like torn to bits by a mighty shockwave in front. Erumo stumbled and flipped over on her butt and back before jumping back on her feet. Nobody expected to master a jutsu from the first try but she did far better than most may have done.</p><p>"Too much chakra. It's a far simpler technique than you'd think." Mana explained with a never-fading grin, trying not to make it too apparent that the grin was assisted in its curving angle by the hilarity of seeing her friend being thrown around by her own mistakes.</p><p>"It's Nakotsumi Tsukumo's technique…" Erumo mumbled something that was meant solely to herself but it was something that everybody ended up hearing. "It's gotta be special…"</p><p>This time, the red gleam spreading from Erumo's hands suggested that she had performed the sealing technique correctly, having contained her excitement if still a little overtaxed on the chakra strain. It was not a matter of lacking chakra control or lack of polish with the technique. Erumo purposefully forced too much chakra through her system, still considering the jutsu to be far more powerful and impressive than it actually was.</p><p>"You're still overcompensating but you've nailed it!" Mana commended her peer. Something that took her years to learn only took a kunoichi specializing in sealing techniques two tries.</p><p>"No. I'm trying to seal people, not tools. The amount of chakra needed to seal away an entire person is much larger than it would be sealing away a handful of steel-tipped cards." Erumo breathed out while dusting off her hands.</p><p>Mana raised her eyebrows and restrained the first instinct to let her jaw drop. She had completely forgotten to incorporate that sort of detail into the mix. Not only did Erumo pick up on Mana's technique, but she also improved and modified it to fit a purpose that the original was not suitable for. The initial try must have merely been something to get used to the technique, see how it worked and felt. The second try was the real deal.</p><p>"People are also unlike small rodents…" Erumo grinned. "C'mon, you'll help me place some barriers on the cardboard walls in the east. Those savages will shit bricks when they'll smack their faces into a reflection barrier seal."</p><p>Seeing Erumo working on traps gave Mana flashes of Meiko's excitement over fancy gear or food. The magician turned to the east and stared at the gloomy grey sky for a moment. The cold drizzle that substituted the pelting snowfall brushed against Mana's face, for something that seemed much colder and more intense, its touch was much softer.</p><p>"C'mon. We've no time already." Erumo encouraged Mana to hurry up.</p><p>A gripping feeling in her chest made Mana clutch at it instinctively, hard enough to tear a string of her coat. Something was wrong. It was not the revolting feeling of nausea that feeling a particularly despicable chakra invited to one's gut, it was a feeling of loss.</p><p>"They're here already. Usubane has been taken out. Go set up what can still be set up, I'll warn Usuzoku." Mana's cheerfulness faded in that singular instant. She needed to do everything right or else this encounter would only end up another thing she'll regret about on stormy and cold nights.</p><p>"Huh? How'd you know?" Erumo whined out but the firmness in Mana's voice made the trapster cease her dillydallying and do what she's been encouraged to do. Mana was soft in nature and voice but when her tone became this serious, no matter what one's relation was to the magician, as long as they could identify the meaningful change in attitude, they did what they were told to do.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and reached out up to the small forested hills surrounding the settlement. If she settled down, entered a meditational trance, maybe she'd be able to reach out far wider but in her sense of dread, this was the best she could have done.</p><p>Beacons of blood-red sparked in from blank void. It was impossible to miss, this did not seem like a raiding group, this had to have been an entire army. Nobody moved this much people just to loot a bunch of houses, these people were ready to kick every little stone off of where it rested on. They may have turned the entire settlement upside down and nothing about the way the sheer physicality of their chakra felt suggested they'd do it nice and slow.</p><p>A cascade of explosions rung through the plains. The army of tribesmen set off the sealing mines that Erumo and the borrowed settlers left all over the plains surrounding the settlement. These warriors weren't like any Mana had encountered, not in terms of strength, but in terms of character. Even when reacting to this awful resistance, seeing at least thirty-five souls snuffed out at once and many more having their signatures dip to the danger zone after one chain of explosions the crimson fury of their blazing signatures did not fade in the slightest, on the contrary, the heat was rising up, the intensity was accelerating.</p><p>"Dispensers!" Mana heard Erumo's voice from farther away, it reminded the magician that she had a rabbit swordsman to warn but Usuzoku was already standing by Mana's side and watching on ahead in the direction that the magician was staring off to.</p><p>"Can the girly defend dis lousy joint?" Usuzoku wondered with a dull grumble.</p><p>"The traps should work on all but two members of the tribe. Their physical chakra would be a danger to even an experienced genin. That's not the kind of training and brute force mere traps can overcome." Mana expressed her worries. Truthfully to her statement, she sensed a pair of masked signatures that was surrounded in weak sparks of red. It was like hundreds of thousands of these tribesmen all collided into a pair of monstrous beings on a whole different scale.</p><p>The siege on the Land of Snow settlement had begun. After days of detours and attempts to locate the target, the macabre tribe of Land of Snow mountains and the Konohagakure ninja have finally collided with one another.</p>
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<a name="section0564"><h2>564. Trouble Is Dead, Long Live Trouble</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A wave of chakra signatures moved back from the wall. This felt suspicious. So far Erumo's traps have been fairly effective and while the kunoichi had to restrain her imagination to what she could achieve with the resources she had, the people that the settlement gave her and the number of traps required, she still excelled. Retreat from the wall suggested that the dispensers either did not work or were ineffective.</p><p>A good couple of dozens of invaders wearing animal pelts that could have used a more skillful removal method alongside their bones and other bodily accessories, donning and stitching their impressive array of adornments all over their makeshift attires rushed into the settlement. The employed trap-makers all fled for their lives, the brutish all-out offensive without a moment for flinching or mourning for the fallen comrades of the tribesmen forced even Erumo to retreat.</p><p>A young man with shoddy clothes and petrified eyes that looked as if they had attempted to crawl out of the young man's skull in order to get ahead of his terrified fleeing body made a run for his life. A meaty giant wearing a multitude of stitched together bear furs rushed at him from behind with a mace made of somebody's hefty bones.</p><p>The skull-crushing swing that was meant to finish off the fleeing worker met stiff yet reliable resistance of Usuzoku's sword while Mana rushed on ahead with a dash, taking a second to hook the bear-man's neck with her thigh and push it down into the dirt with enough force to break his face but not kill him. Knowing exactly how powerful each one of her opponents was helped a great deal to know exactly how much force was needed to dispose of any of them.</p><p>"T-Thanks!" the man yelled out.</p><p>"Go. Don't worry about helping others, I'll take care of that." Mana hurried the lucky worker. Immediately after she evaded a pair of rounded, bony hooks that a handful of tribesmen attempted to use to tear muscle and flesh off her bones. These were crude and brutal weapons, left grisly injuries. From the looks of it, they were not efficient weapons in the slightest and would have left one with a torturous yet certain end.</p><p>While simultaneously evading the shoddy attempts at placing the magician into an hours-lasting agony with their primitive tools for murder, the Konoha kunoichi drew blood from her thumb and weaved a good dozen of hand seals in the time that it took one of these men to swing one of their hooks. A self-preservation instinct made the magician freeze before placing her palm onto the ground. Luckily for her, the instinct proved correct.</p><p>A sharpened and modified skull of some massive herbivore smashed into the area where Mana had intended to place her palm and summon another partner. The skull was the end of an impressive if somber mid-to-long range weapon that was made out of connected vertebrae with the smashing skull at the end. The horns and tusks present at the sides would have served the same flesh-tearing and penetrative function while the thickness of the bone would have smashed one's head like a melon if given the chance.</p><p>In a flash of silver, Usuzoku disposed of all of the surrounding tribesmen allowing Mana to complete her summoning technique unimpeded. A goofy-looking white rabbit with a tongue so long and slobbery that he appeared like out of a cartoon that provided a grim contrast to the attempted scene of macabre slaughter all around the settlement.</p><p>"Little blasts only, protect the people, cripple the enemy," Mana instructed Usujitsa with a strict tone. In her years of training in the new Rabbit Caves, she had found out that the terrorist was mostly a braindead idiot and whenever one spoke at a decently authoritative tone to him and the rabbit kind of respected the person speaking – he was obedient like a toddler. Granted, a toddler was possibly Usujitsa's superior in the intelligence department yet possessed none of Usujitsa's potential for untold calamity which was why Mana rarely, if ever relied on the rabbit terrorist's services.</p><p>It was just that, in this case, his ability to multiply without a known limit and detonate with unmatched intensity would prove beneficial in ending this threat while protecting as many people as possible.</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa flapped his lips, slobbering all over the ground below. While for a brief moment Mana felt worried that the walking catastrophe was too hungry to respond to commands, in a blink of an eye, he did.</p><p>A round wall of white lit up the sky, the voiceless bodies of the tribesmen separated from their makeshift outfits of fleshy accessories and pelts littered the sky, thrown around like pins after an impressive strike from a rolling ball. Erumo's reflective barriers appeared to be more effective in the east compared to her spear and arrow riddling dispensers as well as the mid-range spike walls that came out from underground and left anyone rushing without a thinking head on their shoulders impaled and unable to move.</p><p>"Ye idiot!" Usuzoku grumbled. A strong shock shoved Mana aside, forcing the magician to tumble backward while a prolonged and sharpened beam of metal that was once looted from a settlement and reworked the best these savages could to serve as a long-range weapon pierced Usuzoku and immediately dispersed the rabbit.</p><p>With infuriated and watery eyes, Mana turned at the direction of the arrows. Due to the massive loss of life from the invading side and the powerful flares of Erumo's seals the magician had managed to miss one of the supposed generals of the invading force approaching her. It would not have taken a chakra sensor to identify the infinitely greater importance to the proud warrior approaching her to the mindless drones that once crippled or impaled on a trap continued to squirm and fight it until an end about as painful as the one they wished to inflict upon the defenseless settlers.</p><p>Mana did not linger or try to speak to the tribesman. She knew better than that. All throughout the battle, even as they were subjected to the worst kind of pain imaginable, these men and women did not grunt, moan or, let alone, shout or scream. The best one could expect from them was a grunt or some other primitive growl in the midst of an especially intense battle. The magician did not expect this man's life story, all she could see in him was that he was trouble.</p><p>The general bringing his tribesmen from the north dwarfed his peers in the decorative desire to make the most impressive type of fleshy armor imaginable as much as he did in sheer strength and speed. This was a man who had killed hundreds of horses to pull off their limbs and attach them to his own sides and create a centaur-shaped movement mechanism that he controlled with his own thighs, moving both pairs of the amputated limbs with just his own legs, which let him enjoy greater elevation in battle and made him generally dwarf average and even some tall-sized opponents.</p><p>All throughout the man's impressive skin and fursuit were undoubtedly looted accessories of metal, bronze, and fine steel. The horse's head that was missing its body and had been for a good handful of years was held together to the suit, pinned with shards of steel that were long enough to extend into a crown over the makeshift helmet of a dead mammal. Both the massive buster knuckles that the man wielded and his back appeared the same, like a half-sunken sun in the horizon except instead of rays of light there were sharp and blood-dripping spikes of steel. One of these spikes found their way through Usuzoku, forcing the rabbit to return to the caves from where he was summoned.</p><p>It was something Mana intended to make this man pay for, general or not.</p><p>The magician fired off at the walking fleshy armor showcase like an arrow. The lumbering general could not react to her at all, this threw Mana off for a moment. Her illusionary self that the magician was prepared to fake the opponent out with faded away like a mirage while the real magician leaped in from the general's right with a Spear Kick to his core body. Despite the additional leverage that the man possessed with all of the removed horse limbs that he attached to his skin-costume, the man collapsed into the dirt. The entire animalistic façade of his armor crumbled away into the broken pieces and strips of thick and stringy skin that the entire costume collapsed into.</p><p>A successful retreat of the men working on the trap holes in the south distracted Mana but the magician knew better by now than to look away from her opponent. It was just like Kouta suggested. These men and women were not stronger or faster physically nor did they possess any uncanny skills that would have made them a threat. This man was one of the strongest within their ranks and he failed to even fall for Mana's Flower Petal Sanctuary properly, the illusionary clone dwarfed the opponent's reaction time.</p><p>It was their way of thinking, their unstoppable aggression and complete lack of fear or self-preservation that made these people scary. Even now, when the magician could sense chakra signatures previously unfamiliar to her in massive enough piles to make their presence known to her, despite being solely physical and therefore tougher to pick up on, it did not look like the tribe was preparing to flee at all. They were going to go at it until the end, it seemed.</p><p>A dark flash made Mana jump backward, she felt a searing pain in her center and her cheek. She had managed to bend her neck and protrude her head in the way that made the strike miss her neck but scrape her chest and her cheek a bit. Digging through the ruin of his animal persona, the tribesman emerged from the tatters and the collapsed carcass he walked inside of with much greater speed but diminished power.</p><p>With relentless pressure, the general attempted to repeat the successful tag that he managed to place on the magician but his large, bow-shaped and riddled with blades, knuckle duster could not as much as rustle the magician's coat.</p><p>With a cock of her head forward, the magician let her hat roll from her head onto her shoulder while she moved forward, evading her opponent's thrust and moving behind him as a result. It was true that her opponent's speed multiplied several times once the colossal horse carcass was ditched and it was because of that massive boost in speed that Mana got surprised but even with the boost, the man was not at the level where Mana's evasive training could not allow her to slip from trouble.</p><p>One thing that the magician noticed as she rolled her entire body forward, throwing both of her knees and legs, adding to her rolling, aerial kick the gravity of her own weight as an additional additive to its punch, was the absence of intervention in this brief encounter. There were too few of the enemy left, what few there were left perfectly occupied her allies. Nobody's signatures appeared overly strained.</p><p>Something gave way in the skull of the general that fashioned himself as some centaur-bowman even though he lacked the know-how of how to build a proper bow. With whited out eyes that greatly contrasted the gore and dried out blood covering the man's true skin, with a particularly ugly cave in on the front of the man's skull and a completely relaxed body, the general of the raiding party collapsed. His chakra signature was so weak that it took a brief moment of concentration to even pick it up but such was the nature of warriors that were essentially civilians if it was not for their particular affinity for the physicality that boosted their abilities to the superhuman step.</p><p>The magician turned away, preparing to look for the next optimal thing to do in this invasion. Perhaps there was still a larger party of the invaders that could have been led to the unused cluster of traps? A crunchy popping sound followed by a warm sensation of a goopy liquid splashing all over Mana's lower body, luckily protected by her winter coat, made the magician turn around at the enemy she had just thought to have defeated.</p><p>The general's head was nothing more but a wet stain, erupting outwards as if its brain had wanted to get out but used a stick of dynamite to get the great prison break started.</p><p>"Don't look so shocked, don't you have a Yamanaka member on your team, Nakotsumi Mana from Konoha's Team Hokage?" A young lady with tanned skin and a contrasting ocean of curly, blond hair grinned at the magician from atop the roof of a small local house. The magician would have been much more confused by the appearance of this kunoichi had it not been for the Kumogakure headband tied around the right arm and over her coat.</p><p>"You know my name and a great deal of other things about me, you know my skills and how to bypass them, given how you've used suppression of your chakra signature to approach me, yet you don't know how fussy I am about people killing other people?" Mana granted the cocky Kumogakure kunoichi the entirety of her attention. With the general of the tribesmen suddenly removed from the equation and the signatures of physical chakra of the other generals fading drastically, there was nobody else that could have snuck up on Mana with fruitful results.</p><p>"Oh, I knew, I just didn't care. You've graduated to the rank of chuunin during the last exams yet you've failed to grow up enough to realize that the world isn't all about what you think? Tsk, tsk…" the Yamanaka girl from Kumogakure teased Mana. She had much more information on the Konoha kunoichi than the magician had on this curious young lady and the Kumogakure ninja appeared to revel in that superiority of her situation.</p><p>"Do you plan on causing me trouble?" Mana raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Shorter fuse than Inaba and Junipu reported…" the Kumogakure kunoichi wondered. "R went out of her way to emphasize how nice and willing to compromise you were. Then again, she did get eliminated by you, right?"</p><p>"If you are so proud of possessing intelligence that's more than three years old, I guess you won't cause me trouble after all." Mana replied while turning towards where she sensed Kouta and a cluster of civilians large enough to be picked up by her from a considerable distance were all ganged up.</p><p>This Yamanaka was not the only foreign element on the field. There was yet another notable signature to the north, most likely placed there to contain the enemy and to block off their escape. That suggested that these Kumogakure ninja were here to eliminate the tribesmen and not the Konoha ninja. Also, it suggested that they did not do their homework as these tribesmen were clearly not the thinking, fleeing kind. Even now, the last remnants of the invaders engaged the Konoha ninja and two more signatures that were balanced and large enough to belong to two more Kumogakure ninja – four in total…</p><p>A sharp feeling in her gut made Mana turn towards her side. Flashes of light and dead, dismembered bodies flying about, their pelt and skin suits burning up in thin air from the heat of the Lightning Release whips that the Kumogakure ninja wielded. There was no other way to Kouta but around this interloper. The troubling thing was that this one was incredibly agile and fast, matching if not surpassing Mana in evasive skill. At least the magician drew those conclusions from how the enemy surpassed her in speed, whether the speed he was needlessly flaunting to the inferior enemy was his full speed or not.</p><p>The magician soon lamented that fact for the lightning crackles flew more to her direction and wrapped around trees and various details of the architecture without dealing any damage to them. The heat of the whips appeared to vary based on the user's intent to cause harm.</p><p>"We're here to help, don't worry!" the bald Kumogakure ninja with extensive and colorful facial tattoos and energy whips he could use to move around as well as bloody slaughter declared.</p><p>"Is that why your squad has been assembled to counter us, not the enemy? Is that why you've engaged the enemy while being clearly unfamiliar with their behavior and fighting style? If a teammate of mine decided to throw a punch your way, I'd hesitate to stop their fist." Mana replied. She was somewhat flexible with the decision of other people to take lives, it was just the benefit of the doubt she herself always wanted to be shown extended to different-minded people. What she disliked was people that took lives without even giving the deed a second thought, willful, considered and even a hint regretful decision to take the enemy's life felt much more deserving of respect than careless flaunting of one's strength that resulted in merciless overkill.</p><p>"Oh… I guess you're one of the fussy ones… Tried it, didn't like it when it turned out that I was wrong and recalled myself being a dick to everyone around me!" the dark-skinned baldy tried to downplay Mana's suspicions to being just something humorous.</p><p>"Four Kumogakure ninja snagging the half-completed mission objective from the nose of four Konoha ninja, a team assembled not of ninja capable of best complete the objective but possessing intelligence on the Konoha ninja in question as well as the ability to counter their skillset. Sorry if I left my sense of humor at home." Mana replied while looking the zipping by Kumogakure ninja straight in the eyes.</p><p>"Damn… That's so cool, are you sure you're not from Kumogakure, haven't met any paleskin as smooth as you, just saying…" the tattooed baldy shrugged while following Mana around like a leaf stuck to a wet turd hanging from the bottom of a sheep.</p>
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<a name="section0565"><h2>565. A Mouthful Of Bitter Snow Pills</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kouta's head turned to the right to follow after the light sound coming from that direction. Unlike Mana, the young man still reacted to things a fraction of a moment after it happened and while for the magician it was no trouble at all to see these types of reactions, it happened to be a whole different matter when flipped the other way around.</p><p>"How many died?" Mana asked. It may have seemed cold to most that she would not try to reaffirm if her own boyfriend was okay after an invasion of some of the craziest and most brutish tribes of killers and raiders out there but the simple truth was that she did not have to. She had not a hint of doubt that something of this level would not threaten the Jugo in the slightest.</p><p>"None." Kouta grinned. "Yushijin and I joined forces. His illusion was crazy effective on those guys and whatever minor injuries I did see are treated. I wanted to help Yushijin fight those guys off but he insisted that I served my purpose a different way."</p><p>"You fought them off all by yourself?" Mana's eyebrows tilted in respect for the leader of Team Fir.</p><p>"I didn't do anything you haven't done." Yushijin shrugged before pointing at the magician's bald companion with his chin. "Friend of yours?"</p><p>"More like an itch I can't scratch. He's far faster than I am meaning I couldn't lose him," Mana lamented. She probably could have given this Kumogakure ninja the slip by using genjutsu on him but she chose to save her chakra for the upcoming encounters with the tribe or if these Kumogakure ninja actually decided to stir trouble.</p><p>"You're so mean!" the freaky baldy leaned back while placing his hands on his cheeks as he shrieked it out like some classic cartoon character. Mana may have chuckled if she hadn't seen this man disembowel dozens of people with a single swing of one of his lightning whips.</p><p>"She is right though, we are under no obligation to make friends here." A more disgruntled declaration echoed from the left. Mana turned her eyes to face the Kumogakure ninja she had not sensed before. A tall and moderately athletic in build youth with tall and spiky blond hair and a handful of feathers sticking out from his headband that did its best to streamline his hair. "We just share a common objective, that is all."</p><p>Mana had to hand it to this person. While the blood dripping from his tekkokagi claws disgusted the magician, the fact that he managed to not only survive but thrive during the invasion while suppressing his chakra completely was impressive. Suppressing one's chakra meant not only becoming impossible to tell from a civilian to a sensor – it literally meant becoming as strong as a civilian for the duration of the use of the suppression technique. The genius of battle and skill required to overcome hundreds of super-human level opponents while suppressed to such an extent was remarkable, even if it was a talent for murder.</p><p>Mana's eyes turned to above. Where the one with the clawed gauntlets did his best to sneak up on the magician, this incoming one tried nothing of the sort. It almost seemed as if though he just decided to drop by. This was the sizable signature that the magician had sensed blocking off the escape before. The fact that these four offered one of them with the largest chakra signature for such a meaningless task almost proved amusing had Mana's mood not been soiled by all the blood that's been shed.</p><p>The ground under the kunoichi's feet tried to spit her up as if refusing to hold her any longer. This rejection felt a little more forgivable given how a heavyweight brawler who appeared to not be interested in wearing a shirt smashed right into the middle of the square and demolished a handful of damaged buildings that were doing their best to survive the attack. Mana had never thought it for a second that these four cared about the wellbeing of this settlement but this sort of recklessness pushed her irritation scale further still.</p><p>"What the hell, guys? What the actual hell!? I waited and waited but nobody ran my way." The nearly three-meter tall and yet somehow still block-jawed physical specimen cursed at his two present teammates.</p><p>"Yeah… I underestimated these dirtbags. They have more guts in them than I gave them credit for, not the fleeing kind. Fought to the last…" the clawed-shinobi clanged his close-range blades one against the other with a smirk that suggested enjoyment from not only the countless acts of slaughter he had committed but also in the great handicap he put on himself and the challenge it provided.</p><p>"Do not enjoy torment like that. What happened here was a tragedy!" a grievous feminine voice came Mana's way as the final of the Kumogakure ninja showed up – one that looked remarkably similar to the Yamanaka woman from before but a handful of years older. The magician could already sense the Yamanaka about to join the group. Soon they'd figure out what's what with these folks.</p><p>"Maybe if you guys knew who you were hunting, you'd have planned this better." Yushijin showed a similar distaste to the foreigners who, granted, had a much better claim to being in this settlement than the Konoha folk. He even appeared to have come to the same conclusions once seeing the towering Kumogakure native with a wrestler's physique complaining about seeing no action in the entire encounter.</p><p>"Like you? You guys knew the enemy so well that you decided to fight them in the middle of a settlement…" the clawed Kumogakure ninja grinned, thinking he was mocking the Konoha ninja when in fact he was just displaying how oblivious the Kumogakure ninja were.</p><p>"We fought here because we have a support ninja amongst us. One that specializes in laying traps. Working here allowed us to both save as many people as possible and utilize all of our members effectively." Yushijin replied, showing that while he may have downplayed his abilities as a leader, he was a shooting star as far as these five were concerned.</p><p>"I see… Well played. Pale-skins tend to run and hide when their skill fails them but as long as it worked…" the clawed ninja complimented Yushijin's leadership in his own special way.</p><p>"Okay, so… Who are these guys?" Erumo announced of her arrival with a loud inquiry that left the chance open for both her friends to fill her in as well for the Kumogakure ninja to introduce themselves.</p><p>"That's quite the nerve on you." The voice of the Yamanaka kunoichi that Mana was already semi-familiar with provided the Konoha trapster with a backlash of matching intensity. "You are aware that any settlement in the Land of Snow is under Kumogakure protection?"</p><p>"So you five are the ninja from the nearby military encampment that the settlement leader told us he had contacted?" Mana finally put it together. Given how much time and attention she devoted to analyzing the situation, she felt a bit dumb for not having realized this a bit sooner, instead of taking these five as the village-sent ninja.</p><p>"Yeah. A lot of the local military bases have heard of this tribe to some capacity… It's hard to compile intelligence when everything you hear about them refers to them as "the tribe" or "savages" but we make do." The feather-donning Kumogakure ninja replied while scratching the tip of his nose with his thumb.</p><p>"They are not eloquent enough to declare how they are calling themselves." The oldest of the Kumogakure ninja – the kunoichi that previously lamented the great loss of life that had occurred in this settlement declared.</p><p>"In any case, we are tasked on official Konoha mission to stop these attacks. We will be dealing with the tribesmen problem and I am sure that you can see that we will have no trouble accomplishing this task. We'd appreciate being left working alone, four is a squad, nine is a mob." Yushijin suggested, judging from his tone, he did not believe that the other group would just leave the task up to them like this.</p><p>"Sorry, pale-skin, we've got orders of our own." The clawed ninja declared while stepping out in front of his group.</p><p>"You'd think that we'd enjoy having work taken off our hands but we're kooky like that." The bald Kumogakure ninja joked.</p><p>"Perhaps we should not look at this situation as if it was an impasse and choose to work together?" the mature Kumogakure kunoichi raised the possibility.</p><p>"Is this woman your leader?" Yushijin ran his eyes across the Kumogakure group.</p><p>Mana did not feel too excited about how willing Yushijin and the others looked to team up with the Kumogakure ninja. While if she had only met the kunoichi that suggested teaming up before, she'd be all onboard as well, with the material she had on the bunch now, she'd have rather left the matter unresolved than worked with this lot.</p><p>"We don't have a leader. Maybe you've skipped it through your narrow pale-skin brain about how we're all working in a military base and aren't an official squad but that's the way it is. We're all just local officers, nobody's a subordinate here." The tower of muscle from Kumogakure spoke up in a rumbling tone and an equally aggressive-sounding tone.</p><p>"Wait. Why are we the ones answering to you? You bunch are the ones operating in Land of Snow. I don't doubt it that if Konoha ninja caught Kumogakure ninja operating in Land of Fire, they'd put our own behind bars without blinking twice." The Yamanaka expressed her outrage at where the conversation was going.</p><p>"Calm down, Kari. These ninja are not our enemy, they are wearing their headbands, it's not like they are hiding, is it?" The more mature of the two Kumogakure kunoichi tried to pacify the situation. So far, she looked like the only one Mana was willing to work alongside with but after hearing "Kari" out, the magician had to admit that there was some reason to the Kumogakure ninja refusing to roll out their finest welcoming carpets for the foreign guests.</p><p>It was not like Kumogakure was famed for legendary hospitality, in fact, it was just about the exact opposite of that idea. A country that's lived in isolation until comparatively recently and still harbored distrust and moderate distaste for those that looked like foreigners to them. Given how international affairs commonly meant trouble, the recent history only enforced this sentiment of foreigners being a bad omen amongst all but the generation born in a shared yet greatly expanded world.</p><p>"You've got some low tolerance standard. It's international law for ninja to wear their headbands out in the open unless they are infiltrating or something whether they're operating on foreign land or back home." The clawed ninja declared.</p><p>"And I didn't start out from introductions for a reason!" Kari from Kumogakure leaned on her older comrade looking a tad betrayed by the decision of her fellow ninja to call her by her name in front of the Konoha ninja.</p><p>"It is just extension of good will. And you know how little those rulings are respected, Uru." The Kumogakure kunoichi had spent so much time arguing with her own team by that point that Mana wondered where exactly her allegiances laid and what exactly her game was. She may have been just playing up her fondness and willingness to cooperate on purpose. If the Kumogakure ninja had a Yamanaka alongside them, one could not be sure that all of them were not communicating mentally the same way that Kiyomi has had Team Hokage communicate all throughout their run in the team.</p><p>Mana glared at Yushijin. She would have liked nothing more than to just declare that she wanted nothing to do with this lot and then just do her own thing. Given the track record, Team Fir would find and neutralize the tribe far faster than the Kumogakure ninja who only cared about how fun fighting the tribesmen would be and how many of them they would kill. Regardless of what Mana wanted, she was not the one to make these kinds of calls, not for the entire team.</p><p>Yushijin shrugged. Judging from his eyes, Mana could see that he knew that Mana would hate working with these folk but she could also pick up that he would rather like that. As a team leader, obviously, he wanted to maximize the odds of the mission's success whereas Mana was looking solely from her own skewed prism that prioritized her principles over the job at hand. Realizing that did not make Mana feel any different, however.</p><p>"We can make it a competition. Both of our squads are clearly on the same objective and it doesn't look like most of us are on the same page. We can always just see who can get to their objective first." Kouta shrugged. Mana liked his suggestion, mostly for the same reason that she could see on the Juugo's face – he was certain that Team Fir could get to the tribe first. The problem was that based on the looks on the Kumogakure ninja faces – they kind of thought the same way too.</p><p>"We are soldiers. Soldiers do not gamble. They work things out or they fight them out." The clawed ninja taunted Kouta by stepping up to the young man while raising the blades of his claws to the point where they were a good hand's length away from the throat of the medical ninja. Kouta was a nice sport, didn't flinch once or show a sign of fear.</p><p>Mana just loved it when Kouta switched from being goofy to being cool and neither one would have worked without the other.</p><p>"Whoa there…. That's the last thing we want. However, what Uru-V said is true – separating is not even an option." Kari, the Kumogakure Yamanaka, declared while stepping in between the two youths and gently pressing her hands against Uru-V's chest to gesture for him to back off.</p><p>"Yeah, you can't just dump us. Not after all the effort we went through to get connected! It's just not the kind of relationship we have!" the tattooed baldy jumped up and exclaimed.</p><p>"Be reasonable." The older Kumogakure kunoichi pleaded with the Konoha four. "You will not have an easy time after having crossed us while surrounded by Kumogakure military stations all over the Land of Snow. We outnumber you as well, meaning that even if you can defeat us, it will demand a toll of pyrrhic proportions. How about our squads work together and have an all-around easier time?"</p><p>"Easier time doing what exactly? Slaughtering those tribesmen that's not how we intend to handle things and that is not how the things will be handled." Mana couldn't keep herself back any longer.</p><p>"See? You guys ain't all order and discipline either…" Uru-V taunted Yushijin right in his face when Mana, a member of the team he supposedly managed spoke up against what the general direction of the course was beginning to take shape into.</p><p>It did not demand a genius to realize that Mana walked all over Yushijin, even more, it didn't take mastery over the social skills to see that the Konoha swordsman hated that. The way he viewed Mana internally changed from that point on, such was evident from the way in which he was looking at her. Whereas before every word and every notion the magician put forth was viewed like a refreshment handed by a respected and loved friend, now Yushijin carried no subtlety or nuance in his glare – he was just flat out irritated.</p><p>"Some of us are gentler than others, however, surely you agree that it is not for gentle souls to try and explain how the hardy should behave…" the Kumogakure kunoichi who was the strongest advocate of joining forces stepped up closer to Mana with an open, supposedly inviting and open stance.</p><p>"How about the hardy at the very least try to not resemble the enemy they're fighting?" Mana grumbled, knowing full well that with every word she spoke, Yushijin was getting more and more frustrated with her as his apparent handle over his team's affairs was being compromised by a single person who was not even supposed to be on the said team, to begin with.</p><p>"Look, missy, you guys aren't under any conditions to even argue about these things – you're in Land of Snow, Land of Snow is protected by Kumogakure. I'm not much of a grammar buff but even I know a period, full stop when I see one." Uru-V objected. Just a single thumb's worth of moving forward and everyone would be all up in each other's faces.</p><p>"Maybe if you weren't too busy waging war on foreign soil, you'd stand a better chance at protecting your own alleged allies, at least to the point where they don't have to ask other countries for the protection you're supposed to provide." Mana snapped back at one of the handful that was a legitimate threat to the integrity of her docile and peaceful beliefs.</p><p>Ground slipped from under Mana's feet. The magician would not have been caught unprepared by the Kumogakure handful, she's been expecting something befitting the lousy first impression they've built for themselves this whole time. It was because the surprise attack came from behind her that she'd gotten flustered over it and tripped up. By the time that the magician sensed the refueled and erupting flow of chakra in Yushijin's network and was considering turning back to see what that was all about – she was already face-down in the snow with Yushijin's firm grip locking her arm in place after having just swept the solid ground off of her feet.</p><p>"She's my teammate, I'll discipline her. The tensions are too high right now to discuss this with fruitful results. We can report in your military base, register our activity, see where it goes from that point on. This is your jurisdiction and we intend to respect that the best that our mission objective permits." Yushijin did his best to mend the bridges that Mana's loss of composure burnt down.</p><p>"Yeah… Before we do that, can we interrogate the guy I've captured in one of the dimensional trap holes?" Erumo raised the issue together with her curious hand.</p><p>The entire Kumogakure bunch raised their eyebrows at once, moving their eyes in rapid succession from the downed magician who was cooling her face down in a bunch of snow and to the least notable of the Konoha bunch who had said the most meaningful thing in the entire exchange of sentiments and threats.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0566"><h2>566. Games Best Played Dirty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The tight lock around Mana's wrists loosened and then disappeared. The magician pulled her head out of the snow and coughed some of the freezing, watery fluff out. Instead of flipping out on Yushijin for pulling this, she turned to Erumo, matching the confusion that the other ninja were expressing at the moment.</p><p>"You had a tribesman captured this whole time and you said nothing?" Yushijin questioned his teammate.</p><p>"I mean, I was waiting to see how this whole situation plays out. If we decided to not work with Kumogakure it would have only made things worse if I opened with that, don't you think?" Erumo shrugged. With a shimmering in a way fine jewelry gleams smile, the trapster grinned at Mana who at the moment was glad that she'd been dunked into the snow – something cold enough to temporarily hide away the blush from being humbled this way. "I bet you want you would have been nicer to our best interrogator now…"</p><p>"Interrogation's a piece of cake. If you pale-skins don't have the gut for it, just let me at 'em." The Uru-V jumped at the opportunity to commit explicit torture – just about the least effective method of interrogation out there, especially so given the nature of the subject being interrogated.</p><p>Yushijin turned to Mana. He could have personally attested to the magician's interrogation and mental scanning skills as the two have trained and exchanged thoughts extensively using the very skill that may have surfaced the much-needed knowledge.</p><p>"Go for it." Mana sighed. At some point one stopped being impressed by how utterly wrong an incompetent fool was at everything they did and just let them ram the wall with their heads pointed forward, running at it in a wild dash, hoping to get on the other side. Some degrees of idiocy were so deep-rooted and so incomprehensible that simply leaving the idiot be was the only option, lest one became submerged in the filth themselves.</p><p>Mana didn't make a handful of steps from the scene, trying to cool her head, ironic, given her recent tumble, before Yushijin's hand stopped her in her tracks.</p><p>"Going to stab me from behind again? Why the hesitation?" Mana's eyes flared at the leader of Team Fir. The merely imagined simplicity of the mission and the number of complications that rose in the middle baffled the magician to where she could no longer feel confident about how reasonable her own judgment was. At this point, she just dunked into whatever flow of emotions burst through and let it rock her boat.</p><p>"You know those guys won't do anything but kill our only lead. That guy won't speak, I've never heard them speak once. The only thing we can get from him is his memories and there's nobody better than you in bringing it out." Yushijin spoke with a calm voice, there was no hint of apology for the stunt he pulled back there. He felt being in the right back there which only further aggravated Mana's desire to wash her hands and go rogue on the entire operation. That would be the end of her license, and that's only if she completed the mission by herself. Rogue failure may have meant actual incarceration time.</p><p>"They have a Yamanaka amongst their ranks. I'm sure they'll manage." Mana spread toxic fumes from her eyes, granted, of imaginary variety. A weakness of her furor that she regretted at that moment.</p><p>"Come on, they're from Kumogakure. They won't use a scalpel where you can use a chainsaw, force is all they understand and they'll try to force their way through. I doubt that Yamanaka even knows proper mental techniques, migraines are the best I see a Kumogakure Yamanaka capable of." Yushijin was an inch short of outright pleading with the magician.</p><p>"Even if I would want to help, they won't let us anywhere close that guy. It's the type of machismo attributed to the whole damn country." Mana growled, transitioning to being mad with Yushijin instead of at him.</p><p>"Look, I know the whole situation is frustrating. They're basically spitting in your face every passing second but… You want to save the lives of those tribesmen, don't you? Watching their backs the whole time is the best way to make that happen. You know we can't take them out but we can make sure they don't kill everyone. By feuding with the entire country that has military bases all over the location, you won't be doing yourself or those tribesmen any favors. If you want to save those men and women, as unworthy of your mercy as they seem, you still have to do be the one doing it." Yushijin said.</p><p>A deep sigh left Mana's chest, her eyes calmed down to almost a radical extent as she stared with a sense of longing and sadness far ahead into the dug up and messy layers of snow that the new and fresh snowfall was being in the process of slowly drowning out. Yushijin was right. If Mana just left those assholes be, they'll just start blowing up mountain after mountain, flooding cave after cave in a show of force. They'll start scanning and ransacking settlements themselves, they'll grow less and less tolerant to the peaceful way of life these settlers have made here.</p><p>"I'll give it a go." Mana turned around while pocketing her hands. It felt like surrendering to being chained up and walking back to the square from which she could feel the chakra signatures of both the Kumogakure ninja and the rest of Team Fir flaring up felt like abandoning everything she stood for but that was the only chance at another go to saving somebody instead of leaving a whole bunch of people to be slaughtered. At this point, it stopped being about finding and stopping the tribe and became a lot more about the same thing it always boiled down to – trying Mana's best to save a bunch of people.</p><p>It was regrettable that her track record of that final stretch was not the greatest. No matter how much strength she acquired, how much she prepared. The head just kept bashing against the brick wall with the magician plummeting on her figurative buttocks, her body being no closer to getting on the other side than before each successive meaningless charge.</p><p>The tribesman stood on his knees all chained up with sealing tags placed on the chains. His face and most of his body were littered with bruises and swellings. The buster must have given the combined forces of Konoha and Kumogakure some trouble again after being freed from the dimension that the trap hole sealed him into. Beating him would not have been the tough part, subduing him was.</p><p>"Oh? It seems that you're somewhat in charge of your team after all…" Uru-V taunted Yushijin with a hiss full of irony and mockery. It was not sarcastic in any way but the fact that the leader of Team Fir brought the disagreeable member back was significantly less impressive to the Kumogakure ninja than the fact that she disobeyed her team leader so out in the open.</p><p>"I have trained with the Konohagakure Village Protection as well as the Intelligence Division. I can interrogate this man if you give me the chance." Mana suggested to the Kumogakure ninja.</p><p>"Wow, much more agreeable now, aren't you?" Uru-V switched to taunting Mana. The more mature kunoichi of his squad calmed her teammate down with a soft touch and interrupted him.</p><p>"Come on, play nice. This will not be necessary. We have a Yamanaka of our own. She should be more than capable of extracting intelligence out of this man." The woman smiled to Mana before leaving the blonde to her business and approaching the leader of Team Fir and the magician.</p><p>"We've already introduced ourselves. My name is Ara-K, I believe I've already introduced Uru-V and Kari-E. The big guy is Sore-T and the class clown is Hagi-S." Ara-K counted her team members out while the Yamanaka prepared to interrogate the struggling subject.</p><p>"Are there many Yamanaka in Kumogakure?" Mana wondered. So far this woman seemed somewhat reserved and more agreeable. Perhaps she could have answered some of the questions that plagued the magician and, at the very least, she could have been the solitary solace to Mana's distaste of working with the Kumogakure ninja.</p><p>"Not at all. I understand that seeing one seems confusing to you. Yamanaka are native to Konohagakure, for the most part. Only small branches have split off to other villages once their progenitors have, for one reason or another, fled to that village. Unlike Kirigakure, Kumogakure did not provide a hospitable soil to foster the clan's growth. There are no local, well-established branches, just a handful of families that barely relate or get together with one another." Ara-K shook her head. She appeared somewhat content that Mana's tone had calmed down and that the magician was willing to ask questions now and, at least to a limited extent, cooperate.</p><p>"Psycho Mind Transmission!" Kari-E chanted while both her eyes and the eyes of the interrogated subject rolled back in perfect synchrony. Mana had to hand it to the Kumogakure Yamanaka, as far as mental interrogation abilities came, Kari-E's mind transmission was, at the very least, easier and less violent than Kiyomi's.</p><p>It was tough to compare the two given how Mana had barely seen Kari-E fight. Neither could magician reliably tell about how skillful Kari-E's mind transmission was, just how effortlessly the Kumogakure ninja slipped into a mind that put up a valiant effort to fend off any invasions. Then again, perhaps the simpleton was just unprepared to be sieged on the mental front. It did not appear that he possessed the mental training background needed to resist interrogation.</p><p>A stream of blood ran down Kari-E's nose. Same damage befell the subject making the magician turn to Ara-K with questioning eyes and try to get her on her side without saying a word.</p><p>"True, this is unusual…" Ara-K nodded. The woman stepped up to her team and gestured at the bleeding pair. "Perhaps we should let the Konoha ninja give it a go?"</p><p>"And hog the intelligence to themselves? The pale-skins and the half-blood have no business being here, to begin with, they've proven to be unwilling to work with us as well. They're lucky we don't share their repulsion to cooperation and let them stick around." Uru-V growled at the woman.</p><p>This feather-donning young man certainly seemed like the trouble-maker of his group, however, for whatever reason, given his penchant for violence and absolute murder as the only acceptable outcome for a battle, Mana could not sense any vile and repulsive properties to his chakra signature. These disgusting and brutal things that he did were not what defined this young man. His chakra did not flare with tar-black or the deceitful violet, his chakra in fact beamed with crimson showers. Large, powerful… Just about describing everything that mattered to this youth much better than the first impressions Mana had garnered about this ninja.</p><p>"The Konoha ninja were not all too forthcoming. This girl most of all. Maybe if somebody other than her were to do the interrogating…" The massive Sore-T shook his head while keeping up his cool. The giant did not appear to talk all that often, despite the first time he opened his mouth to express his displeasure in how little action he saw during the battle.</p><p>"My auntie always said that a little blood from the nose strengthens character." The baldy with extensive tattoos stretched out and flexed his small yet well-defined muscles. This one possessed the perfect build for an agile combatant – hardened like a bar of iron, about as long and thin as one too.</p><p>"Look at her, even right now she's sizing us up in case she ever had to take us out." Sore-T let out a rare for him smirk. It was perhaps a bit lucky that the giant found magician's personality quirks amusing rather than alarming for this may have very easily have been the cause for more conflict.</p><p>"So not only are they objecting to us going forward with our mission objective, now they're actively standing in our way. At which point will we engage them?" Kouta grumbled while leaning at his leader. He was lucky that none of the Kumogakure ninja have heard what he had uttered nor did they seem overly interested in it.</p><p>The Kumogakure bunch appeared mostly engaged in the lack of success of their interrogator. Seeing a Yamanaka struggle made Mana reevaluate her own chances for success. She was just an initiate in the arts and got overwhelmed by the opposing mind as often as she managed to bust through. Whatever measly chances she had, to begin with were being drained each moment that Kari-E was wearing out the tribesman's mind.</p><p>Interrogation was not an art of dominating the mind fort of the target. It had everything to do with proper balance, a mere crushing of the target's mind would have left him in a comatose state and would have been useful to no one. Then again, it would have been favorable to whatever grim judgment these Kumogakure ninja meted out their opponents.</p><p>"We can't do that. No matter how tough odds get, we need to try and detour around their business, best of all we accompany them in seeing this through." Yushijin denied Kouta's request. "They've got an advantage in numbers."</p><p>"Not for long, if this chick continued on the same note…" Erumo cracked a grin. The trapster did not appear worried that she was going to be heard. As a result – she was. Regardless, by now the Kumogakure ninja appeared to be somewhat used to not being on the best of terms with the Konoha ninja and did not make this declaration to be worth the trouble either.</p><p>"Sometimes it's not about numbers, it's about skill, just like this battle, right?" Kouta brought it up. "Mana, how strong are they?"</p><p>"You know I can't tell for certain. Their chakra signatures are around the range of an average to skilled chuunin. It's no testament of their strength though. Sore-T has easily the smallest chakra signature but… Look at him, does he look like the weakest of the bunch to you?" Mana couldn't believe she still had to explain that. To her own boyfriend, no less.</p><p>"Nah, he probably just doesn't work on improving his chakra all that much. I bet he's a monster of physical stamina…" Kouta finally got to the point of the problem with relying on Mana's predictions to estimate strength.</p><p>"And yet sometimes, Kouta, fighting is all about numbers." Yushijin pressed his back to the cold and moist wall of a nearby column while he observed the interrogation process in silence. "Just like all of us taking down Mizoma."</p><p>Kari-E's body fell backward together with the wooden chair she sat on while interrogating the target. By that point, her teammates had bent the legs and arms of the static interrogator and positioned her on a little chair to avoid muscle pains after she recovered. Two hours later, the revelation that everything amounted to nothing must have really breathed in some excitement into these untrusting ninja.</p><p>Kouta approached the downed Yamanaka and scanned through her body. Mana looked at the young man with a speck of worry that she would ultimately be responsible for another loss of life or consciousness just because she did not oppose as actively as she should have. A few seconds after beginning the scan, Kouta finished it and shrugged.</p><p>"She should be fine. She's just out cold. A civilian would be threatened with brain damage and permanent memory loss. Your friend will be okay though." He said.</p><p>"Thank you. We were fortunate to have you with us." Ara-K pressed her hand to her chest and bowed her head at Kouta with gratitude for his effort.</p><p>"Brain damage and memory loss, talk about a soothing reassurance!" the tattooed baldy wiped figurative sweat off of his face.</p><p>"At least E has something to lose, we have a reason to feel vexed. If that sword was hanging over your head, we would be absolutely certain that nothing of value would be lost…" Sore-T tried to psyche out his squadmate with some banter.</p><p>"Can I give a shot at it?" Mana raised her hand.</p><p>"Oh yeah, I was looking to expand our selection of vegetables this season!" Hagi-S gestured with more vigor than he knew what to do with.</p><p>"We will wait until E recovers so she can give it another go," Uru-V grumbled. "Until then, we will stay put and nobody will approach the captive."</p><p>"Seriously? Mana has been trained by the Konohagakure Intelligence Division, you could have your answers in a couple of seconds if you just stopped acting like a bunch of brats." Erumo growled back at the clawed, feather-donning ninja crashing her own visual, figurative sparks that flew out from her eyes against Uru-V's.</p><p>Mana grabbed her hat. Just a few milliseconds later, a blast shook the ground beneath the feet of the ninja, a bubbly mass of fiery, white light expanded all the way from the farthest reaches of the settlement to the square.</p><p>"See? We don't need no pussy interrogatin' we've got our tribesmen all gathered right here!" Uru-V smirked at the Konoha ninja while all four of the capable of fighting Kumogakure ninja departed. Not too soon after they set off, a cascade of smaller explosions shook different districts of the settlements, all on completely different sides of the establishment forcing the ninja to part ways or risk missing a squad.</p><p>"You're unbelievable…" Erumo glanced at the magician who just shrugged.</p><p>"Usujitsa won't blow up a home with people in it. Potty-training avoids his simple brain but not this, never this…" the magician sighed while approaching the chained and still unconscious tribesman. Mana squatted by her target and placed her hand out. For a brief moment, she avoided contact with the tribesman's dirty skin, still covered in dried out clots. It was not the repulsion to what gunk covered the man that bothered the magician but she touched his forehead regardless.</p><p>Before she could engage in the interrogation, a flash of chakra swooped down to a nearby electric pole. Mana turned at it nonchalantly. By that time, she had gotten used to and could identify this signature from most others.</p><p>"I figured you had something to do with this…" Ara-K said almost as if speaking to herself. "That was low of you to do."</p><p>"Don't worry, Mana doesn't kill anyone. She wouldn't have had Usujitsa do anything if she wasn't completely sure that nobody died in the process." Kouta crossed his arms over his chest while glaring at the magician and her unwavering eye-contact with the Kumogakure woman.</p><p>"I did not say I did not understand or approve…" Ara-K appeared somewhat reassured by Kouta's words, even if she did not act overly eager to appear that way.</p><p>Mana turned back down at her unconscious and restrained target and focused on what she had learned three years ago and rarely had the chance to force out onto the surface.</p>
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<a name="section0567"><h2>567. The Great Cave Bash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A gentle and elegant snowstorm helped Mana realize that she was slowly acclimatizing to the mental fort of the tribesman. It was not quite the transitional phase that she'd have imagined but such was a common occurrence when one dealt with the deepest and most personal parts. An effort to focus her sight made the magician make out something tall and thick in the distance, a brief couple of steps made it apparent that it was a mountain surrounded by trees. The gentle snowfall made sure to cover the trees thoroughly yet their unusually bent position suggested that this place knew more violent turbulence as well.</p><p>Mana looked down after feeling a chilling breeze. With a blush, she looked up and then around her only to recall that she was inside a mental fort and that nobody accompanying her on the outside could see her. The magician bent her arm and clutched it into a fist while she made sure to concentrate on the idea of her magician's uniform.</p><p>The tribesman's realm did not oppose the idea of Mana conjuring up herself some clothes too strong. Maybe Kari-E had already worn it down to where it could not put up nearly as competent of resistance, maybe the magician was just that good or maybe just that lucky. The bottom line was – she was now at least officially winter-fresh breeze-proof.</p><p>"Hiding yourself, they always hide…" Mana sighed. The young woman raised her hand up and pulled on it as if she had attempted to pull off a piece of cloth covering the very fabric of reality around her or just tried yanking on a rope in a pulling competition.</p><p>The rush of air was sudden and powerful – the tribesman was a decent distance away from where Mana had entered his mental realm in. It was the most elementary mental defense, literally, the first thing every single person, even those unfamiliar with mental interrogation pulled.</p><p>The dirty and bald boy turned to Mana almost the same instant that she materialized in a cave he was in. A handful of other tribesmen surrounded him. It was intriguing that the tribesman would have chosen the form of a frail boy in his mental image. Still, what Mana saw pained her a bit – these men and women lamented loss and desired company too. The surrounding men and women were caressing the little boy, trying to get in between him and Mana due to the subconscious commands that the host consciousness was giving them.</p><p>Mana extended her palm, sending a powerful pulse that appeared to ripple the very reality as if a fist-sized stone had just been thrown into the pond. The dressed in a bodysuit of pig skin and that of black and white feathers pair, together with shapeless and weak thoughts of a bunch of faceless others, dissipated into thin air.</p><p>If the magician had time to mess around she'd have possibly wiped a tear for the fact that despite treasuring whoever these people were, the tribesman could not make out their exact faces, making them not even have one and instead don round patches of skin where features would have been. Nor could the man-turned-boy make out the exact nature of the bodysuits that these men and women wore, making them cloaked in mists of the black, shapeless shroud which occasionally changed shapes into a more tangible appearance but then before it could turn into something solid, it disappeared again.</p><p>"Enough, tell me where they are," Mana demanded, sending more ripples that were meant to apply pressure on the little boy and make him back into his original shape. That was how she planned on winning – slowly unravel the fort that her subject has taken little effort of building in front of him to demonstrate that he was playing a game entirely of Mana's knowledge and one he was oblivious to the nature of.</p><p>The ripples spread out wide but completely bypassed the boy. The fortitude that the tribesman demonstrated and the immense link he felt to this form made it difficult for Mana to will him back to his actual form and ruin the figments of his own resistance he still maintained. This was the true nature of mind battles, people devoted the most insane amounts of willpower to seemingly stupid things just because they felt attached to a specific image they created.</p><p>"In that case…" Mana clutched her extended fist. She had attempted to move both of the pair above to the very peak of the mountain in which the tribesman hid. A painful shock made her lose concentration, it felt like her entire body was tearing apart into chunks, like paper being pulled apart. She was not facing a complete novice, this man had studied his previous encounter well. He had come out of it an all-around better man. Kari-E's failure may just have made the matters infinitely more difficult.</p><p>It appeared that these tribesmen were not entirely weak in terms of skill. While they were simpletons in their methods and creeps in terms of the lifestyle they led, their talent for studying and overcoming obstacles through observation and remarkable physical memory was profound.</p><p>"We'll have none of that, thank you," Mana spoke to herself while her body patched and melded together as if she was not very nearly turned to flat shreds. It took a little bit of effort to do so but ultimately she had taken the steps to study centuries worth of experiences of the craft from textbooks and recounts written and retold by some of the greatest craftsmen in her village. This one learned it by playing push and drag with a descendant of a runaway Yamanaka.</p><p>The matter of the fact was, Mana spoke to herself because she needed every little bit of help keeping herself in the game. The solace of her own voice pulled her through near-shredding. It guided her and helped the magician focus her mind and body for one, final push. Her next assault would be difficult… She would attempt to disassemble the entire mental world around the tribesman but the things he wanted to protect the most – hopefully, his boyish appearance and the place he wanted to protect.</p><p>Rough pressure squeezed around Mana's throat, forcing all air out of her chest and lifting the magician off her feet. A black and long tendril comprised of smaller sub-sections had wrapped around the magician's throat and did its best to strangle the very head off of the young woman's neck, or so it seemed. The tip of the tail, hooked like that of a scorpion would have, coiled and played around in front of Mana's eyes and caressed her cheek. The magician could feel something wet and corrosive leaving burns across her cheek, something suggested that Mana better would not allow whatever this mysterious thing inside this man's mind put that tail anywhere near her bloodstream.</p><p>The figure pulled Mana in. The magician tried resisting but she could not even lift or move her arms. They were not even tied, they were just dangling without a speck of sense in them. The tail pulled Mana into a dark crevice high up where a pair of gleaming lights stared at the magician from. Mana could feel the smell of honey and chopped liver emanating from the corner and she had not smelled anything in years – it only served as a warning how deep her subject had gotten into her own mind with whatever he held this important to him. A bit more and Mana would be too close to resist any further… These eyes in the shadows, they almost had a hypnotic power over the magician.</p><p>An arc of light matching the illumination of the creature's eyes lit up its face that remained fully concealed for the moment. Mana's figure disappeared halfway into the darkness where the amalgam of man and beast lurked, her feet kicked around for a minute longer after the tail plunged into her gut and made its way upward to her chest. Right as there appeared to be no life left in the magician's body, a feminine shape of a black shroud and little lights brimming for eyes and a smile collapsed instead, donning the same uniform that Mana had manifested herself and tipping the tribesman to the mental trick of switcheroo that the magician had pulled.</p><p>Whatever that thing was, it provided calm and solace, mental strength to this man like nothing else. Mana required to draw strength from her own inner sources to counteract the wall of determination this man had put up. The young woman extended her hand and placed it onto the boy's shoulder. She felt him wasting energy, doing his best to manifest more tricks, he was good, had he some to spare, he might have pulled it off.</p><p>There it was… For the last resort, the man had surrendered his boyish shape, rather tried to. He had figured that having ditched it and returned to his normal, adult self, he'd have stood a better chance at fighting Mana off. After all this time he had still not fully committed it to memory that in this realm physical strength did not matter. A paralyzed toddler could have overcome a superhuman powerhouse by just possessing stronger will better utilizing their mind.</p><p>"No. I think I've grown used to it…" Mana smiled. She wondered if the tribesman felt himself shrinking down and turning younger by the second until he looked like just a powerless little baby. By abandoning his final pillar of mental fortitude, he basically handed Mana the keys to his fort already. "Now, let's see…" she concluded.</p><p>"They're in a cave system in the Snie mountain range," Mana stated right after recovering and getting back to her knees. She was not entirely sure for how long she's been gone. Sessions that felt like they've lasted for fifteen minutes may have lasted anywhere from five minutes to five hours, it all depended on how stable and surefire the interrogation was and, frankly, there was some space for improvement on that regard, in this specific case.</p><p>"That's a good forty minutes of journey north." Ara-K nodded in acknowledgment of Mana's skill.</p><p>Mana pressed her knuckle to her nose, feeling wet drops running down, had she not been hunched over and struggling for balance and breath, she would have surely stained her coat. While she had pulled this off by a confident margin, there was not a hint of pride in Mana's mind about how hard this man had made her work for it.</p><p>"Admit it." Yushijin stood behind her with his arms crossed.</p><p>"Yeah… We… Need them." Mana sighed while straightening out her back and removing her woolen gloves to lick her knuckle and wipe the dried out blood off of under her nose. "Kari-E may have taught this man a thing or two about mental probing and made things harder but things would not have been this clear-cut if she did not somewhat wear him out as well."</p><p>Yushijin nodded in acknowledgment and prepared to launch himself off in wild leaps to catch up to Ara-K and aid her in gathering her squadmates. Before he could, Mana's hand on his shoulder stopped him.</p><p>"That doesn't mean that I won't take all of them on if needed. If I see them needlessly taking lives again. I've been inside this man's mind. I've seen him treasure the days of his youth when he was living in the cave with his parents when things were peaceful. They may be wildcards but they don't relish in the brutality they leave behind. Some of them still want peace and company of their peers." She said.</p><p>"I dread that time…" Yushijin felt obliged to grin after a brief sigh. "But, in that case, you won't be fighting alone."</p><p>The two Konohagakure ninja took off at the same time, shoulder to shoulder with Kouta and Erumo catching up soon. The trio let Mana take the small lead so that she could lead them to where the Kumogakure ninja were gathering.</p><hr/><p>"So this is the place, huh?" Sore-T did his best to make out the contours of the mountain range from the raging blizzard. Despite the fact he did not raise his voice to overpower the fury of the elements, the ninja around him heard the strongman's voice just fine.</p><p>"If you think we will let you four anywhere near this matter after the stunt you pulled…" Uru-V growled while leaning on to Yushijin who just stonewalled the microaggression of the Kumogakure peer.</p><p>"Had it not been for this stunt, you guys would not have known which way to start looking for your mission objective," Erumo replied, looking vexed by the fact that Uru-V was trying to push Yushijin.</p><p>"Remember the terms of our cooperation, we walk in, break some bones and leave them homeless. I've been inside the mind of one of them, they treasure home and family more than some civilized people I've met." Mana looked at Ara-K, someone who, the magician assumed, was the only trustworthy soul amongst the murderous pit of snakes.</p><p>"I will admit, you've picked up some impressive new tricks since your state we've been briefed about but don't let it get to your head and make you assume you are in control of this operation," Kari-E said. The young woman had made an impressive recovery on Sore-T's back during the journey. Her abilities might still prove useful if she won't let loose and start popping heads right out the gate.</p><p>"Remember, their generals are dead." Ara-K turned to her peers.</p><p>"Good, that will make it an easy killing!" Hagi-S shrugged with an innocent expression. Even if Mana caught the traces of humor in his voice, she still wanted to choke this dirtbag for a solid minute for thinking this was a fair joking subject at that moment.</p><p>"Hagi-S, I swear to God!" Ara-K groaned while massaging her face.</p><p>"I'm kidding, just kidding…" the baldy shrugged his frail shoulders while throwing up his cartoonish, noodle-like arms out and twisting his lips into a wicked grin.</p><p>"Fine, if everyone's aware of their role, let's do this," Uru-V growled while putting his clawed gauntlets back on and</p><p>Sore-T smacked his palms together before slamming them against the ground. Mana felt a considerable influx of chakra passing through his system and even pulsing outside his body and spreading in resonance through the ground.</p><p>"Earth Style: Earth Shore Return!" Sore-T yelled out with a heavy and masculine tone while a layer of dirt burst forth from the snow and stood erect in a position of a rectangular wall. The ninjutsu appeared quite capable of withstanding some novice ninjutsu techniques and possibly even some of the more intermediate ones, given the amount of chakra still traveling inside the dirt wall and failing to find a valid point to dissipate into.</p><p>With a powerful push kick, Sore-T sent his own wall flying forth while he charged it once more with a ramming motion of his shoulders. Having just displaced the barrier of dirt and made a mobile shield out of it, Sore-T charged onward, pushing it like a buckler, reminding Mana greatly of how Meiko used her buckler back home in aggressive power-charges.</p><p>Sore-T did not even flinch while his dirt wall hit the boulder blocking the way to the entrance and busted through it, reducing the measly resistance of the boulder to mere pebbles while Sore-T continued his charge, widening the narrow corridors leading to each cave system with his reckless charge. It was not long before the first bumps met the charging berserker but even as their numbers grew and the thuds grew fiercer, even managing to penetrate the rushing wall with some of their improvised and macabre weaponry, Sore-T rushed on.</p><p>It was only once the strongman felt his wall weakening and beginning to fall apart that he demolished it with a mighty haymaker, sending a crushing shockwave alongside the dirty rubble that toppled everyone on the other side like pins. Having just made the corridor much wider, wide enough for his teammates to fight side-by-side, Sore-T just stared at his downed and slowly rising opponents. Their problem was not the lack of the will to fight on, it was that their bodies were beginning to break down.</p><p>A blitz of solid lightning flashed past the Kumogakure strongman, the jolt materialized in a more feminine shape nearby the dazed enemy and threw a handful of speedy strike combinations of her own. Mana could identify the sloppy taijutsu that only a Yamanaka could put out, it was only that Mana recognized the joint-targeting signature style of the mind-bender shinobi that the general shape of the living lightning bolt began making more sense.</p><p>It was a Lightning Style armor ninjutsu of sorts, unlike Hanshin's, however, Kari-E's did not form a bystander set of armor that worked alongside the user but, instead, it coated her perfectly, just like standard armor would have. It seemed like a less sophisticated jutsu but easier to use. It did not look like Kari-E obtained greater strength, except the natural boost to the wallop granted by the massive surge of speed she had gained, however, the Yamanaka did obtain appear to be stunning and shocking her targets a great deal with each point of contact.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Thunder Dragon Jutsu!" Ara-K extended her hand forward, Mana sensed something massive fluctuate through the kunoichi's system yet she failed to notice any lightning crackles. Her confusion and hesitation would soon be a source of great regret as a vibrant beam of intense sound waves erupted in perfectly compressed, donut-like shape to make the still conscious enemies white out and faint with blood bursting from their eyes, their ears and noses in significant enough portions to blow out even through their skin and fursuits.</p><p>The sound waves even canceled out Kari-E's Lightning Armor by dispersing it into a handful of sparks like shatter from a busted glass. After this initial combo was complete, Uru-V and Hagi-S charged in to confront the reinforcements in close-distance. While Hagi-S kept up his promise and attacked the enemy's vital points that would have only incapacitated them quickly, Uru-V slashed to kill willingly or through ignorance of the consequences of his attacks.</p><p>Mana could not stand it anymore. Her hands moved into a hand seal position the same moment she saw the first few open throats and dismemberments that would soon result in fatal blood loss. Before she could initiate her illusion, however, something rough grabbed the magician's arm and slammed her against the wall of the cave system corridor. The vision faded out there for a second, this may have been the strongest blunt-force blow she had ever been forced to soften up through chakra augmentation to prevent her neck from snapping and her skull from shattering to tiny chunks.</p><p>"You were right, Kari-E. She did plan on trying something the moment we tried killing someone." Sore-T turned to his comrade while still keeping Mana's dangling and lifeless hand in his clutch.</p><p>"She planned to take out Uru-V quickly with a single illusion to even out our numbers. I wonder for how long she's planned on stabbing us in our back in our own backyard…" Kari-E sighed, looking far too proud of herself for someone who's just been, supposedly, stabbed in the back.</p><p>A single, metallic chink alerted the Kumogakure ninja to an emergence of a new challenger in the shape of the Team Fir leader who pointed his long sword at the enemy, despite not having too much space to swing that thing around in.</p><p>"I had really hoped it would not come to this…" Yushijin exclaimed with regret.</p>
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<a name="section0568"><h2>568. A Bet On The Black Scorpion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's eyes fluttered. Vision still felt blurry and something burning irritated her chest, encouraging the magician to cough her lungs out freely. Had Sore-T not maintained a tight grip around Mana's wrist, she may have tried escaping and gaining some space. She could not use Flower Petal Sanctuary and disperse to safety while the enemy had a grip on the real her. Well… Technically she could have… It just would have been all sorts of pointless.</p><p>"Keep holding on to her. We'll take care of her teammates." Uru-V grinned as if he held all of the aces in his hands.</p><p>"Guys. Stop this now, there's no point to feuding with Konoha when we can be working together." Ara-K tried getting up in between Uru-V and the Konoha ninja.</p><p>"So… You're not faking." Mana's weak voice uttered through the small cave, soon to be drowned out by the overwhelming rumble of feet, the brushing of thick fur and the bumping of bones touching against the surfaces of the cave walls while the rushing hordes of tribesmen struggled to choose which ones of them would make their way to the invaders the first.</p><p>"W-What?" Ara-K looked at Mana with confusion.</p><p>A burst of lightning passed through Mana's body. She would have been an idiot to devise a jutsu that worked to deter the enemy from attacking at close distance and then failed to cast that jutsu when put in a hold. The flicker of Magician's Touch caught Sore-T unprepared. The giant roared out in pain, the irises of his eyes greyed out and turned blank while his voice weakened. Even after Mana had ceased her jutsu, smoke still lingered from the powerhouse's hunched and weakened body.</p><p>A disturbing humming noise moved toward Mana. One as if a giant bee possessing millions of pairs of wings decided to move them all at once. It was surrounded by this noise that Hagi-S' victims met their grisly fates.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Perun's Judgment!" Hagi-S yelled out, intensifying the stream of Lightning Release chakra, adding an additional layer of ninjutsu atop of the chakra coating that he applied to his conductive whips.</p><p>Mana had first considered attempting to avoid the lash of the storming whips but as if prompted by fighting instinct about the limited space and the skill of her opponent, in addition, the complications of dodging a flexible, long-range weapon such as the whip in such close distance, she chose a different method to deal with the enemy.</p><p>The Konoha kunoichi raised her hand up, letting her Magician's Touch pass through not her entire body but just her arm, from the elbow to the nail, by applying a Lightning Release ninjutsu of similar strength, the magician effectively cancelled out the Lightning Release coatings of the whip and allowed the weapon to wrap around her hand harmlessly.</p><p>"You were testing me?" Ara-K wondered.</p><p>"Not really. I was caught unprepared right then, that's true, I just felt a bit curious to see if your kind nature was all an act. I am very glad to know that it was not." Mana smiled with a taste of her own warmth at the Kumogakure ninja.</p><p>"One of us did not think this through the whole way!" Hagi-S taunted Mana while he stepped atop of his neutralized whip and pulled the magician, manipulating the pair of lashers to subdue the magician in bindings. Mana couldn't help but grunt in pain as the pressure built up and forced her into rather uncomfortable positions. She was too inexperienced in combating this sort of weapon to reposition herself with total efficiency, all she could do was do her best to not open herself up too much.</p><p>"About time somebody shuts you…" Uru-V grumbled. His entire body froze in mid-charge.</p><p>"V?" Kari-E called out to her teammate who did not as much as blink for the momentary pause in his movements. In a mighty dash, Yushijin passed through and behind the wide open competitor. Yushijin's sword remained in its horizontal position, even in limited space to use his weapon, the Konoha swordsman knew the perfect way to utilize his weapon, instead of messing himself up with wide-reaching swings he used his claymore more like a spear.</p><p>"Lightning Shimmer!" Kari-E cried out while a more intense aura of lightning surrounded her and then ate her up, creating an intense armor coating of Lightning Release chakra that dwarfed out even her previous display. It was self-evident that the Yamanaka was holding back earlier to better keep the deal she struck. Now all the gloves appeared off. The Yamanaka turned her attention to her teammate beside her, apparently, the blonde missed the long-range support that her teammate used to provide on the battlefield, one that has proven to be super effective in the limited space of a corridor in-between two caves.</p><p>Ara-K weaved hand seals, Mana noted that while the power of Ara-K's ninjutsu techniques was considerable, her hand seal speed left plenty to be desired. Despite her building up a mighty technique, the magician did not feel any immediate necessity to intercept and take out the glass cannon just yet. Had Ara-K wished to attack Mana or any of her teammates, she would not have built her techniques up this way and molded her chakra so slowly. She was preparing for something different entirely…</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Dragon Jutsu!" Ara-K turned behind to launch a blinding flash of dragon head-shaped light. The jolt filled the entire cave corridor and exploded into a mighty thunderstorm at the end on the other side, firing off expansive lightning bolts the opposite direction that lightning bolts were meant to come down in.</p><p>"I held back, Mana," Ara-K stated while looking right at the struggling for freedom of movement magician.</p><p>"I know…" Mana sighed. As if her reply was meant to signal something, Kouta and Erumo both lunged at the creepy baldy with the mission of freeing their subdued teammate in mind.</p><p>"This has to be some bad jo…" Hagi-S prepared to taunt his Konoha opponents by slipping the looped whips off of Mana's arms and then reigniting them to rip the Konoha pair to a pile of limbs and slices. Before he could, however, he felt the gentle yet cold touch of Mana's arm placed to his forehead and the magician's cold eyes staring right back at him.</p><p>In a desperate attempt to push Mana away and keep her from using her Magician's Touch to seriously fry Hagi-S' brain, Kari-E lunged at Mana with her full might. Using her best evasive effort, Mana managed to avoid her opponent. She could not counterattack, given how Kari-E was coated with billions upon billions of volts and because of that her martial arts style felt somewhat incomplete, it almost threw off Mana's rhythm but if having her rhythm thrown off would have meant Mana's ultimate failure all by itself, she'd have never become the champion of the Sun Disc arena.</p><p>At last an opening presented itself to Mana, having found her opponent open, after Kari-E performed a jumping kick far too ambitious, the magician extended her arm forward, clutched in a lion's paw position and applied the Magician's Touch to her entire body, neutralizing both techniques as they were about equal in rank and power.</p><p>With Kari-E wide open, Mana prepared a stiff and decisive strike. Before she could perform the same mistake as her opponent and get ambitious, however, the magician stopped. A trident attached to what seemed like somebody's throat cords strung together into a sort of improvised, bungee rope. Had Mana attacked her opponent blindly, she'd have been tagged with enough intensity to rip off the whole arm of a lesser ninja. With a powerful yank, the trident came rotating back to its owner's hand as some sick yo-yo.</p><p>"You can't both fight both us and the tribesmen while protecting the tribesmen." Kari-E grinned. Mana saw it in her eyes – it was not the fact that she would get to kill a whole lot of somebodies that made Kari-E excited. To the Yamanaka – murder was just part of a job, cold and impersonal. What did seem personal was the enjoyment of Mana's failure, not the murder itself.</p><p>Kouta, Erumo and Yushijin and looked at Mana, worried that at the moment when failure presented itself with such insolence, the magician would freeze or cave in and endanger her safety while surrounded with enemies. In a blink, Kouta and Erumo resumed their battle, Hagi-S and Sore-T began pressing a powerful offensive on the pair, too powerful to be disrespected by distractions.</p><p>Yushijin thrust his sword forward, pinning Uru-V to the cold and moist stone on its tip and making the feather-donning Kumogakure shinobi grunt in pain and swear bloody murder at the Konoha's illusionary swordsman. Despite Uru-V swearing vengeance through a blood oath, Yushijin appeared mighty disinterested in Uru-V's vendetta.</p><p>Kari-E did not even attack anymore. She was just shown how pointless it was to match up against Mana as the magician had an effective out to Kari-E's most powerful, weakness-neutralizing technique. While her Yamanaka hijutsu might have still been somewhat effective, Kari-E must have known from the intel she received from the genin who took part in the Chuunin Exams where Mana was promoted that the magician was working with a very well-known Yamanaka so she must have known an out for most Yamanaka hijutsu because of that common training the pair did.</p><p>She was not entirely wrong either.</p><p>Instead, Kari-E chose to turn away from Mana and lunge at the tribesmen. A handful of fur-wearing strongmen launched themselves off of the higher layers of the caves and slammed Kari-E to the ground, attempting to ravage the Yamanaka with the gauntlets made hollowed bear arms, claws ripped out and replaced with gruesome-looking chunks of bent steel. The tribesmen were nothing if not environmentally friendly with their recycle everything looted lifestyle…</p><p>There came that repulsive humming and buzzing sound, the tribesmen collapsed into chunks of superheated meat without as much as a grunt, let alone a scream. Mana's eyes began getting wet and her vision blurred from it realizing that what Kari-E said was right. Her entire life Mana declared herself capable of protecting everything and defeating anyone who was appalling enough to threaten other lives, she extended herself to try and rescue everyone and only suffered in return, in an attempt to save everybody like a hero from all those stories she read as a child, she ended up saving nobody while getting crippled in the process.</p><p>With a chilling turn, Mana looked at Yushijin. "She's right…" the magician uttered before charging out and disappearing somewhere into the shadows of the caves where the tribesmen were flooding from in droves.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Vortex!" Ara-K yelled out with great triumph in her voice, a trust in her own strength and that trust was not ill-founded. Jolts of lightning erupted from within the body of the Kumogakure kunoichi that all converged into a singular lightning storm that fired off separate, supercharged bolts of lightning in every direction. The mass was like the body of a twelve-headed dragon and the bolts it unleashed that fried anyone it came into contact with was the dragon's punishment.</p><p>"She was right, what the hell does that mean!?" Kouta grumbled while both the Kumogakure and Konoha parties started shifting their focus onto the flooding tribesmen. Kari-E recovered from the body pile of strongmen leaping on top of her, covered in scratches and bruises but the small injuries appeared to have only managed to piss the Yamanaka off.</p><p>"Mind-Switch: Rebus." The young woman grunted while pointing her arms, hands placed together in the position of the Yamanaka hijutsu while she allowed a powerful pulse of chakra leave her body with the sound of a ghastly whistle and blast one of the more ferocious tribesmen who wore somebody's detached tail as a type of mohawk atop of his head.</p><p>Emphasized by a mighty and heart-churning pop, the tribesman's head popped like a crushed grape. His peers were not turned off in the slightest by the grisly end of their powerful and respected friend, they only roared and growled louder, it appeared that the concept of loss only served to embolden and reduce whatever integral parts of humanity these tribesmen had managed to preserve after their upbringing. Not too much unlike the Konoha and Kumogakure ninja fighting against them.</p><p>With grit teeth, cursed with the requirement to feel every loss on the battlefield she was powerless to prevent, Mana charged onward, something pudgy and colored like pus landed in front of her, it was hard to make out in the shadows that the cave system was sunken in but with brief flashes of lightning from behind the magician lighting up a decent chunk of the corridor to come, the magician could make out its off-putting shapes.</p><p>The pus ball exploded, throwing goop that sizzled and burnt through solid rock. Mana screamed out in pain while the pus-covered her entire body, the magician just jerked a pair of times as the pus simply burnt into her flesh too fast and too strong to be removed, even water would have only served to make the acidic goop softer but would have served off little use in washing it away. The macabre scene of Mana's disfigurement turned to a magic show of fluttering flower petals while the magician's true shape reformed a bit further up front, having snuck past the hairless elderly woman with rotten teeth throwing these pus balls.</p><p>This tribeswoman seemed troublesome. She may have caught one of her friends unprepared but every distraction cost Mana so many lives. With an absolutely petrifying scream, the woman turned to Mana and threw her hands up into the air, holding two handfuls of her annoying biological weapons. With a graceful dash, the magician avoided yet another one of the old hag's puss balls, having half-turned back, Mana removed a steel-tipped card from her sleeve and flung it at the lower parts of the old woman's body. In her age, in this lighting, there could not have been a way for the stick in the wheel to avoid the injury.</p><p>A stringy tear in the woman's flesh suggested that the magician had hit her mark. Mana straightened her back out and got off of the awkward, one-knee bending position that she landed to. The old hag pulled a knife made of bloodied and sharpened stone, having possibly run out of her acidic goop projectiles to fling, she attempted to charge at Mana, only for blood to squirt from her heel and, exclaiming in shock of the unexpected pain signal and inability to use her supporting leg, the woman collapsed.</p><p>Mana was just about prepared to dash away. She had wasted enough time dealing with this old tribeswoman and her dealings have cost these tribesmen their lives. They would not stop coming, they would not surrender even when their very survival was in question. If this imminent slaughter was to be stopped, Mana needed to commit herself to some drastic measures and do what she knew would plague her for the rest of her life – leave the tribesmen charging at the Konoha and Kumogakure ninja be.</p><p>She needed to defeat the black scorpion woman. The one from the tribesman's mind. It was evident that she took an incredibly important part in this society for her presence dominated all else. It was after the demise of the black scorpion that the tribesman's will caved in. If only that woman could have been beaten and stripped of her war-suit… Maybe the remaining tribesmen would listen to reason, maybe the resulting destruction of their willpower would prove devastating enough for the whole bunch to flee whether deeper into the mountains or into the freezing tundra of the deep Land of Snow.</p><p>A chilling cackle forced Mana to turn back. The collapsed old lady was almost screaming out her laughter like bloody murder. The magician had not yet heard these people laugh, the only emotion they showed to her was pure instinct. Laughing felt personal, too emotional to be shown to outsiders and yet… The woman snapped her fingers, lighting up a spark between some metallic hooks in her nails. The spark lit something up, something natural and something that Mana did not sense whatsoever, making the entire corridor erupt in a wild, compressed blast that spread equally in every direction.</p><p>Rumbling and this dark mist covered the cave. Mana's vision was blurry enough as it was from the unexpected blast force. She was uninjured from what she could feel but the blast did knock her on her back and shake her senses a fair bit, even if not a scratch was left on her augmented body. The magician looked up, realized that she was laying flat and picked herself back up as fast as she could. The cave corridor was shifting, puddles of blood spread from where the old hag was left laying before with the mountain itself having crushed the old timer in the embrace of its top and its bottom.</p><p>The longer Mana stayed, the more the mountain threatened to embrace her as well.</p><p>This was madness. It felt like being subjected to hell itself. Any attempt to save anybody, any struggle to injure, to disable, every application of Mana's usual combat method only resulted in an escalation of the conflict with the people the magician wanted to save dying while Mana's actions indirectly fueled a situation where more people got put in danger. It truly was Mana's own personal City of Dis.</p><p>There was no time to burn in the flames of self-pity. At least the process of self-immolation may have gone on while the magician was moving ahead. More and more tribesmen decided to dig in the approaching kunoichi, charging at her without a care for their own lives, unafraid of the opponent of superior strength, speed, and skill or the collapsing mountain. It was not like these tribesmen were marvelous prodigies of architecture and never have they suffered a battle in their own backyard. Maybe if they had, they'd have known that a single powerful blast was enough to resonate through the whole mountain, to shake the already shaken foundations and cause the downfall of anyone foolish enough to reside within.</p><p>That was why the Ninja Rabbits preferred caves instead of mountains.</p><p>With swift palm strikes and precise kicks, Mana dispatched of the oncoming assailants and observed in great despair as many more have been taken out by the collapsing mountain. The magician could recall a situation as dire as this one back in the day, one where she felt obliged to save a collection of scorned and plagued individuals but failed to do so because her teammates have decided to keep her back from even trying.</p><p>The newly set ablaze vigor within Mana's core fueled her charge towards the source of where the tribesmen were rushing at her from. The fights against the protectors of the hive became almost driven by instinct. Mana's palms smashed the opposition to walls, her knees broke backs and joints of her opponents leaving them crippled or merely unable to follow and keep up with Mana's mad dash. Those that she could reasonably avoid, she did so.</p><p>Every life left hanging and crippled in the corridors of a collapsing mountain cave system thudded against the soul scale of the magician, weighing the scale strictly in one direction and the knives attached to its lower end dug deep into the heart the scale was standing on. Not unlike these men and women during times of battle, Mana forced through the inner pain and despair and willed herself on.</p><p>The magician felt that perhaps she had lost her mind, that she was just moving onward in one direction, not because of a particular reason but because she did so before her mind had shattered. Whichever the case, the mindlessness and instinct-driven struggle for the hive of the tribesmen was nearly complete and with the complete collapse of deeper thought assisted Mana to keep pressing on and into the brief opening.</p><p>She was there.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0569"><h2>569. Cut</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The hive was a cradle-like environment. Cozy and greatly compressed by the massive amounts of threads and furs hanging all over the place. Judging from the looks of it, this was the place where the intricate outfits, accessories, and items devised out of the cadavers of both human and animal bodies alike were made. A handful of bare-skinned women donning only layers of paint across their extremities and their face, crooked and starved were still working, ignoring the end of their world transpiring around them.</p><p>Their hen-skins were pale and beginning to rot in places, the magician figured that these women would die the moment they stopped continuing the strenuous physical activity, allowing the cold to put them to sleep and then claim them shortly thereafter.</p><p>There was no missing the beady pair of eyes staring at the magician from above. A woman wearing shells of turtles and skin of other reptiles across her body hung over the top of the hive, using the webs of threads and hanging bone accessories to place her feet into and maintain her upwards, bat-like hanging position. Just like in the tribesman's mental image, a long tail of strewn together insect shells covering a piece of hemp rope and a frightful, still bloodied hook attached on the end and weighing the artificial limb down.</p><p>"Your people won't give up until you're down," Mana stated staring right back at the woman, unfazed by her ocular, death meaning sparks.</p><p>The black scorpion woman gave her assembly of workers a cruel hiss, obeying the scorpion's authority to the end, the bunch dropped their work in the middle of production and scattered. The scorpion woman then placed and rubbed her hands over her upper arms, as if she was cold, even though that could not have been the case. The black scorpion pinched and lifted both of the shells protecting her elbows and then let go of them, letting them snap back into place. The scorpion woman then pointed at the section of hooks behind shrouds of wool, dyed crimson by the skinned bodies mostly concealed behind the mists of wool puffs.</p><p>"Your people have no more home. If you're a drop of a mother figure your folk make you out to be, instead of threatening me you'd…" Mana grumbled as an answer to the revelation of what the scorpion woman planned on doing with the magician's dead body. Her answer was cut short by the scorpion's smack, with a single twitch of her abdomen and her chest, the woman sent her artificial tail whipping at the magician's direction.</p><p>It only took a lean of her head a bit to the side for the hooks to miss their mark and smack into the wool and the stone behind Mana. The magician was not nearly as stupid as to let down her guard and allow the hooks to hit her on the way back. She grabbed the artificial tail and sent a shock of Magician's Touch Jutsu through it. She could only perform a lower ranked version of that jutsu so suddenly and without the use of hand seals at that moment but even a B-Rank version would have sufficed.</p><p>True to the ideals she instilled within the hearts of her people, the black scorpion did not scream or grunt, she jerked and twitched as the charge of the Lightning Release jutsu passed through her body. The still smoking body of the tribeswoman smacked onto the ground. Mana would not give it time nor the space to recover, she dashed up to the black scorpion, delivering a crushing kick to her abdomen and sending the woman smashing into the wall with enough force to send even more cracks throughout the entire mountain range. A pair of dislodged chunks threatened to crush the two women still duking it out inside.</p><p>Mana thrust her hands up, she may have survived getting crushed by one of these boulders but not her opponent. Through grit and determination, the young woman pushed the boulder back the direction it came from but then something shifted so very high up. The weight intensified thousands of times. A back-breaking sensation similar only to having a saw dragged across one's exposed spine made Mana's perception of the environment around her fade out momentarily. For just one second, the entire mountain top was resting in her hands.</p><p>By the time the magician became aware of what was going on again, everything was pitch-black. The candles in the hive were all snuffed out, not even the tiniest scribble suggested a hint of life inside. No. The black scorpion could not have been dead! That was not why Mana came all the way here and let those tribesmen fend and fight for themselves. All that weight that pressed her to the floor was still on top, preventing the magician from breathing. If she just closed her eyes, cried like a pathetic child until she ran out of strength for good, it would take agonizing twenty to thirty minutes until her end.</p><p>One of the less thought about the advantages of the ninja metabolism…</p><p>"No… Not again!" Mana roared out as she forced her fingers into the pillar of stone and minerals that attempted to crush her to the ground and sapped her chakra each passing second while her body worked with augmentations to prevent being crushed. Her gloves were busted, her exposed nails dug into Mana's own skin and flesh underneath to try and get even the tiniest grips onto the mountain resting on top of her. That felt nice, the blood felt warm, soothing to her frozen body.</p><p>With a cry of both agony and pride in her ninja way that she intended to upkeep until the end, Mana forced the mountain platform off of her, pressing it up and then shoving it to the side. Thusly she formed a narrow corridor to slither closer to the collapsed black scorpion woman. The once proud and deadly black scorpion was now just a reminder of the less glorious, human part of each tribesman: the woman was badly burnt by Mana's Magician's Touch, one of her eyes was whited out completely and looked almost like a marble of molten cheese in terms of its texture, her ruined outfit had melded with the woman's flesh and skin in places where it touched her body when the scorpion received her burns.</p><p>Blood kept on erupting from the woman's open orifices, signaling a poor condition of her inner organs. Both Mana's kick, the scorpion's slam into the wall resulting from the kick as well as the collapsing mountain bashing and crushing bits and pieces of its own added on top of that condition, demanding their own pound of flesh. The black scorpion only had this many pounds she was able of giving and she was running out of them already.</p><p>The broken and battered leader of the community jerked a pair of times, showing off to her opponent that she was in no condition to keep on fighting. The right arm of the black scorpion was crushed up to her shoulder, so was the left leg. A handful of smaller chunks of rock opened the woman up where her collapsed armor failed to protect her but, judging from the scarred skin all over, she probably did not feel all too much of those bruises at this point.</p><p>"I'm not going to kill you." Mana shook her head "Although I don't think you're in my ability to save…"</p><p>It only occurred to the magician that her enemy may not have understood a single word she said. Maybe that was why the woman was so eager to interrupt Mana's speech before. To someone as down to earth and primal in terms of her objectives, someone speaking non-stop must have seemed like utter heresy. Especially if one could not understand a single word they were saying.</p><p>The woman shook the parts of her body that remained uncrushed. What the magician took as yet another persistence that Mana granted the black scorpion the death she wanted very nearly took the life of the Konoha kunoichi. Somewhere halfway through the woman's motion, Mana figured that insistence such as that which she had imagined was not entirely up to the behavior of this woman. It was then that the magician moved her upper body aside.</p><p>A metallic clang followed shortly by a sharp feeling on Mana's cheek and nothing suggesting impalement or steel hooks tearing chunks of her flesh off tipped the magician off to the fact that she had successfully avoided the enemy's sucker punch. Just in case, the magician caught the withdrawing tail and tore it off with a popping, rubbery snap.</p><p>Having just effectively disarmed her opponent, Mana approached the black scorpion and sighed. There was probably no way of removing the woman from under the rocks without sentencing her to death but she was dead either way. Mana needed something to show the surviving tribesmen… If she as much as moved the stones, the woman would die from the injuries. A lesser, more brutal ninja would have removed her head and been done with it.</p><p>The only functional shoulder of the black scorpion woman twitched. Mana granted her moving opponent her full attention but it was not another attempt at an attack. With a pain-ridden shake to the movement, the black scorpion pointed at a section of the room that was entirely covered up by a boulder.</p><p>"I…" Mana was about to try and ask the woman about some clarification but then, once the rumbling of the mountain settled down a tad bit, having recently found a new sense of shaky balance to keep itself erect and mighty on, a faint noise of scribbling came from the direction. The magician closed her eyes and tried reaching out for any possible parts that the boulder may have split off from the rest of the hive.</p><p>With a steady step, Mana approached the boulder and touched it gently. There was an actual treasure hidden behind this rocky structure but… There was the conundrum… If Mana blasted the stone to bits, she risked causing more of a downfall, perhaps the entire rest of the mountain landing atop of her shoulders. While Mana could have held it up for a limited amount of time and therefore hoped to survive for a handful of minutes, the treasure split off from the hive behind this boulder could not. In fact, the treasure would have been rendered pointless by merely letting it stay there, in a deep, dark cavern where no light or oxygen came in or out.</p><p>The magician bit her thumb and placed her hand inside her hat. A beaming nova of violet light erupted from somewhere deep down while a handful of fuzzy furballs leaped out with a grumble. Usujitsa was not too happy about something, then again, it had the mental capacity of a child so it may have not been overly excited about just about anything, as soon as the time to be frowny tolled for him.</p><p>"I need something soft and small," Mana commanded the rabbit with the usual strict tone that used to work on him. Deep down, the magician kept telling herself that Usujitsa would do whatever he's told to do as long as Mana sounded authoritative enough to fool him that she had actual control over him. "Also, some clones to hold the ceiling would be nice."</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa grumbled and turned away like a capricious toddler. This was not the time… Not with this much at stake. Usujitsa was the key to making out of this situation with the ideal outcome in hand, his absence was the way that led to a two-faced surrender of everything she considered her ninja way or a painful failure.</p><p>"I know I summoned you already and told you to do all sorts of weird stuff. I summoned you again right now before you even had a chance to return home. But behind this boulder, there are a bunch of friends that want to play with you. If you misbehave, they'll get crushed and die. Then we'll be alone." Mana tried to sound genuine for once. She's demanded so much of Usujitsa during her training as well as the time after that a little bit of honesty, even if it ultimately pointed to a path of failure, was welcome.</p><p>"Ji…" the rabbit looked down. It looked honestly down about what Mana told him. The more Mana came to spend time around the innocent calamity, the more she doubted the malicious nature that the rabbits attributed to the demon of destruction. Usujitsa seemed more like a bumbling idiot who destroyed everything around it because of silly antics and its frightening power rather than a desire to cause harm.</p><p>"Yeah… Alone. You don't like that, do you? That's why you're always surrounded by clones. It's not just a survival mechanism, is it?" Mana sighed, feeling a bit bad about the little critter.</p><p>The white fur ball breathed in deep before blowing the air out in its entirety. Emboldened by the sense of passion to protect the as of yet immaterial friends, Usujitsa formed another clone of itself. In a manner far different from how the original clone was given its origin, the clone continued to split apart to handfuls of versions of itself while continuing to drastically dip in size and weight as its numbers grew out of control. Not too shortly after, with a cascade of tiny pops and a signal of great rumbling, the boulder collapsed to small pebbles.</p><p>As if there had not yet been enough trouble, it appeared as if the boulder was far more important to the structure of the mountain than Mana originally thought. After its quick collapse, as subtle as it was, the entire mountain decided to crumble down. Mana cupped her hands together and breathed in. She needed to cast the fastest ninjutsu she's ever cast. Luckily for her, the treasure she meant to protect was as tiny as treasures got so she had every microsecond she needed…</p><p>"Wind Style: Faith's Judgment!" Mana chanted while blowing out all of the air she had accumulated within her chest. The stream of air became a vortex of Wind Release chakra that not only maintained the crumbling mountain afloat but pushed it up a tiny bit as well. Fully aware of the nature of this twister, the magician dashed into it.</p><p>The jutsu was supposed to be a torture technique of sorts. The insides of the storm were where the enemy was supposed to remain trapped in while the raging winds opened up numerous cuts all over their body. The longer the twister continued, the more and deeper cuts it inflicted. With her best shoulder charge, Mana tried to force her way through. Almost immediately the resistance of the turbulent yet contained winds pushed her out of the torturous twister while the smaller parts of her body that made it through became covered with cuts as if an entire army was determined to find out Mana's secrets and decided that interrogation of a thousand cuts was the best option.</p><p>"Ji!" the tiny rabbit encouraged Mana to try again. Or maybe he told her to get smarter and stop trying to kill herself. After all, childish exploration and withdrawal upon the first injury was the way it experienced the world.</p><p>"Yeah, I know… Just… Let me get myself together…" Mana replied even though she was more doing so to herself rather than the nincompoop of tragedy.</p><p>The next push was far more successful. After a certain amount of spitting at her own well-being coursed through the magician's entire body, she found herself deep within the twister that kept elevating her up and tearing her bit by bit. It felt like every smallest string of flesh and skin was being pulled apart while miniature slicers the size of a needle, comprised entirely of Wind Release chakra, kept working at what remained.</p><p>What started with a whimper, ended up in a scream by the point Mana appeared behind her own whirlwind of torture. The only jutsu that seemed powerful enough at the time while also suitable for the task…</p><p>"Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed something. Possibly something of congratulatory nature.</p><p>Mana glared over the twister behind her, feeling the pull back into the turbulent shredder and feeling the warm trickles of blood running down from her wounds while she glared at a handful of peaceful sleepers by her foot, weaved into the woolen entrapments. The magician tried not to think if these were all of the babies that the busy-bees at the hive were taking care of and how many of them may have already been crushed after the initial shake. The optimistic side of Mana thought that there may not have been any. There was a notable number of the world's quietest and most badass-looking babies, ones already past their baptism in blood and savagery, without a doubt, otherwise there would have been no way in hell they'd have stayed this quiet and with just a mere whimper rubbing against the woolen webs around them to suggest of their existence.</p><p>There was no way for Mana to carry all of those infants back home. It would have been impossible to even pass back through the whirlwind without having the babies reduced to flat slices in the time it took to snap her fingers. It was not a matter of weight but one of space. It could not have come easily for the black scorpion to let go of the children and grant them life at the expense of everything she believed in and what she had intended these kids to grow up believing in. The least proper way to treat one's sacrifices was to return them home in the shape of sliced salami.</p><p>Feeling the strength of her twister slowly fading away, the magician pressed her left hand to the bottom of her hat, opening up the seal before beginning to push the babies inside her sealing dimension one by one. It was impossible to say what sort of conditions were present in one's own sealing dimension. Time and space could have functioned entirely different inside it, it could have been as large as the universe or as small as a room. However this was no reckless gamble, Mana had stored her rabbits inside it for quite some time now and had not noticed any displeasure or injuries from them passing through it. It would not be a roll through the park but it was the only way for these babies to make it out of this mountain.</p><p>"Get ready to blast us out. There's nothing more left saving…" Mana sighed while her attention passed through the flayed bodies and other more gruesome remains of the tribe's lifestyle.</p><p>"Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed with a hint of glee that the magician had managed to save his aforementioned friends.</p><p>"Watch over them until I get back home, at least." The magician uttered the final order before the mountain started rumbling again. This time she did not work with anywhere near enough devotion to protect the cave systems from collapsing.</p><hr/><p>A rising shockwave erupted from the summit of the mountain located in the complicated mountain range system, where the tribesmen used to hang their furs and skins. Following a barrage of shattering sound barriers, Mana landed in front of the Konoha and Kumogakure ninja. Much to the relief of the former and to the frustration of most of the latter.</p><p>"Mana!" Kouta yelled out, just looking happy to see the magician alive and okay. "Sit down, I'll heal those wounds."</p><p>Mana looked at her shaking hands, covered with streaks of red that drop by drop sent leaks of blood down. It really must have looked terrible, as if she had gone through hell.</p><p>"Seriously? Those weaklings messed you up this bad?" Uru-V grinned with mockery in his look as he looked behind him in search of some peer approval. Something that Mana did not expect to see was that he saw none.</p><p>"You've failed, Konoha's Sorceress. We've killed every tribesman we've clashed with. Those that had enough brainpower to hide must have been crushed in the downfall." Sore-T grumbled at the magician, fully expecting a continuation of the conflict from before. Having seen Mana's strength and devotion to her ninja way, even the Kumogakure powerhouse did not enjoy the idea of clashing with the young woman at this point.</p><p>"You completed your objective. I did what I thought was right as well." Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Wait… You saved some of them!? You bitch, if you let some of them go, we'll have to scour these goddamn mountains to find them and kill them!" Kari-E flipped out at the magician.</p><p>"You better get started then. Blizzards are never too far away in these parts. They get infinitely worse higher up too." Mana looked back at the Kumogakure ninja who must have just sworn blood vengeance on her while trying to slay the magician with her stare alone.</p><p>"Why I oughta…" Uru-V slipped his fists back into his gauntlets with frightening speed and prepared to lunge at the young woman but Sore-T stopped him.</p><p>"Mana is right. We have no time to fight it out with Konoha, we have a mountain range to scan for potential survivors." The giant of physicality sighed in frustration.</p><p>"Indeed, there is no way that our superiors would leave a report such as this unquestioned. Mana's description all but guarantees that we shall be drilled on the prospect of potential survivors." Ara-K acted frustrated but she managed to slip in a nod at Mana's direction.</p><p>"Ugh… This place is hopeless. I can't get my shine on in these conditions." Kouta shivered. "It's not good for Mana either. Let's head for the settlement until I can heal Mana proper."</p><p>"You're the medical ninja here." Yushijin nodded, heeding the advice of the team's medical ninjutsu expert and signaling for Team Fir to move the opposite direction to that in which the Kumogakure ninja flickered off to.</p>
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<a name="section0570"><h2>570. Itches That Cannot Be Scratched</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You okay?" Kouta looked up at Mana's face. He stopped his Mystical Palm treatment to do so.</p><p>"Yeah…" Mana threw back the most half-assed reply she could. In her defense, having her treatment just halted out of the blue just so her boyfriend could question her emotional state kind of hurt the chances of keeping up her composure and capability to lie.</p><p>"Okay…" Kouta nodded. Emerald light lit up his extended hands again and the magician felt the comfortable warmth of the Mystical Palm running down her body. It felt like warm needles piercing her skin and warming up every stiff and hurting bit of her. Ironic recalling that, for the most part, the jutsu used to feel like a refreshing spring of water running down her entire body, like standing underneath a waterfall in midsummer.</p><p>The soothing properties of a skilled Mystical Palm Jutsu were always what the patient needed the most. Because she spent so little time inside her Faith's Judgment technique, Mana only suffered small bruises that were easily healed. Just a little shine on them and the buggers closed up like eyelids before sleep.</p><p>"So what happened in there? We assumed you had some sort of a plan but then you didn't return… We weren't sure how hard we should be fighting the Kumogakure ninja. Yushijin made the call to watch for ourselves and take the enemy out, the enemy being the tribesmen. We didn't kill anyone, I don't think the Kumo ninja double checked our targets either." Kouta shrugged. He cared so much to reassure Mana but the magician had already accepted the losses she failed to prevent.</p><p>It hurt that he thought filling her head with empty dreams would somehow remedy the situation. Just after shouldering the colossal meteor that she's partially responsible for the mass casualties in Iwagakure, Mana came to learn that after the many years of training, not that many things have changed in terms of her becoming the hero she wanted to be. No matter how much strength she acquired, no matter how many people she met and how many allies she gathered, people still died all around her and she kept on failing to try to stop that.</p><p>"That's one nasty jutsu you've been hit with." Kouta looked serious while examining the cuts over Mana's body. "Not too deep but so widespread…"</p><p>Mana rolled her eyes. If only she could have rolled away everything that's been pressing against her chest like one giant boulder like that.</p><p>"It's okay. I get it. Just… We didn't fail, or anything and… I don't want you to remember the only official mission we went out on as something depressing, you know?" Kouta shrugged. Just like the youth Mana remembered falling in love with, he failed to keep up eye contact and he looked profoundly saddened by Mana's state.</p><p>The magician centered her thoughts around the handful of babies that she had saved. She did her best to remember that in the end, even the previously considered savage and heartless leader of the tribesmen chose to let go of her last sons and daughters, have them grow up surrounded by entirely different ideals than the ones she hoped to instill as long as they got to grow up at all. There was beauty in that. There was hope in that. Enough, at least, to help Mana smile.</p><p>Pushing Kouta away now was the last thing she wanted. It would have driven her into an even deeper abyss.</p><p>"This one… On your cheek. It doesn't heal, what the hell gave you that?" Kouta gently rubbed the cut on the magician's cheek, the last resort of the black scorpion before she entrusted the legacy of the tribesmen to Mana.</p><p>"It's nothing… You must be running low or something. It doesn't even hurt, just itches." Mana shrugged, dismissing it. The last thing Kouta needed right now was to sweat over a skin-deep scratch.</p><p>"No, I know how important removing the scars is to you, you want to perform onstage, don't you. I'll give it another go." Kouta insisted.</p><p>"Fine but… I'm gonna have it removed back in Konoha either way so… Don't sprain anything." Mana sighed.</p><hr/><p>"Well... For better or worse…" Yushijin looked up at the Konoha gate with mixed feelings. "Go have a proper rest. I'll go to Hokage's office and submit the mission report because it's what a true leader would do."</p><p>"Say, Mana… I know it's a weird thing to ask you and you won't like it but…" Kouta poked the tips of his index fingers against each other, overcome by hesitation to ask her of something. For a moment there the magician had her heart sink to her heels in fear of him pulling something stupid like asking her to marry him or something. "Could you check if my father's back in the village?"</p><p>"Yeah, go break a leg, hopefully, not literally." Mana faked a smile while seeing her boyfriend off with her glance. It was not that she could not justify this sort of obsession that bothered her, it was that she could. The two needed to exchange cool field stories, compare scars and try arm wrestling one another.</p><p>"Speaking of dads… You think Tsukumo-san could show me a thing or two someday?" Erumo looked to her right to try and catch a glimpse of Mana's longing eyes. While only the edges of her glare could connect with Erumo, the magician noticed a much friendlier and more natural glare returning to her. The two shared a lot and overcome even more during their brief time working together.</p><p>"For the sake of keeping up the dream of an underappreciated hero genius in your mind, I'd advise you not ask him of that. He's lost the precision of his arms, the one thing that made him part of who he was. Now he can only relive that part while he's helping me work on props for my magic shows." Mana replied.</p><p>Magic shows… That was a touchy subject. It never used to be but… Somehow Mana felt completely drained of any desire to catch up on the quota of entertaining an audience that she's missed. Something about all of the self-hatred boiling inside didn't inspire the best of performance moods.</p><p>"Pity. Hope I can still catch you for some sparring in the Training Grounds. I used to enjoy the pair of checkmate games we used to have after the Chuunin Exams." Erumo shrugged. She gave Yushijin a warm look which the confused youth answered with a nod similar to that which he offered Kouta before the Juugo ran off. At least, unlike the medical ninja of his team, Erumo saw the visual acknowledgment, even if it wasn't the one she's been looking for.</p><p>"Mana… I'll miss our genjutsu training. I've learned a lot about the basics I've overlooked from you. Learned a lot more respect for the art I've been relying on my entire career." Yushijin raised his clenched fist in a half-bent arm, reaching it out for a bump.</p><p>"You were not the only person to learn something from it. Maybe in a year or two something cohesive will come out from the temporal perception concepts you've shown me." The magician mirrored the movement and answered the call for a comrade fist bump.</p><p>Father eyed the magician. It was rare of him these days to care about anything enough to acknowledge them on a bad day, this may have been one of the better days as the man stood up and approached Mana, nodded his chin at her as welcome and hugged her even.</p><p>Mana rubbed her tired face at her father's chest just to absorb this moment. She did not have that many of these and she knew that having her be away for so long so often was agonizing for any parent to go through. Especially when one knew of the dangers one had to go through. Even if they allowed themselves the luxury to forget, the same pain that made Mana's father's hug feel sluggish and almost as if the man felt repulsed by the magician reminded both the head and the heart of the Nakotsumi family about the stakes every day.</p><p>There was nothing repulsive about Mana to her father, the magician knew that. It was just that the control of his arms was giving and taking. At this particular moment in time, it appeared to be much more interested in the latter. The ratio of the two was also unfair, as the patriarch of the family often allowed his most treasured folk know every once in a while, that only made the few moments of serenity he did get all the more precious.</p><p>"How are they?" Mana asked. She was itching to reapply the genjutsu on her father's brain to numb the pain at least a little bit. By now she's practiced it for so long as a side-project that she could have it work almost passively but before she could do that, it was for the better to scope out how he was doing without it.</p><p>"There are days when I wish some asshole didn't burn my arms to a crisp." The man admitted.</p><p>"Humor. That's… Good." Mana stepped further and examined her father from top to bottom. He looked a bit ragged. He hadn't shaved in a while, his hair was uncut and his clothes could have used a wash. Then again, when most movements that demanded precision caused the equivalent of the pain of one's hands being burnt to a near coal-like state all over again, hesitation to engage in chores was to be expected.</p><p>"The specialists I've been seeing say humor is like a natural coping mechanism. I've heard from my work days that torture hurts less when you're in a snappy mood too. Something about chemicals in the brain… Then again, my sickness is caused by a signal reaching my brain so it all is starting to feel like a bit of the hair of the dog." Mana's father shrugged.</p><p>"Specialists? You haven't been seeing a medical ninja? Don't tell me you've been buying that over the counter stuff again?" Mana placed her hands over her hips. Right now she was too tired to hide her frustrations. Not many things could prove themselves more pressing than the mental pressure of the mass murders she failed to prevent recently but… This was father's health. Saying it's a special case would have been just it.</p><p>"What did you expect I'd do. Treat myself with humor? A witless old mutt like me? I have to read a book to know how to joke and even then most of the jokes scatter from my brain just like all those fancy taijutsu moves do the first day out of Academy." Tsukumo ground his teeth. He was pissed but he did not look too willing to truly let his demons out.</p><p>"Yeah… You're right, I shouldn't be talking. I promised I'd help you deal with it, I've picked up something to help and then I'm just gone most of the time." Mana sighed and sat down in the sofa that gave her father solace both during the sacred moments of idyllic boredom and the excruciating resurgence of his pain.</p><p>"Hey, reflecting everything in on yourself ain't healthy. And this comes from a guy that chugs that over the counter shit for pain management." Father sat down nearby and turned the television on for static while he silenced it down to an incomprehensible mutter.</p><p>"So Ayushi's lackeys are back in the village then? Don't know any other crew brave enough to smuggle under the counter medicine into one of the most powerful ninja villages." Mana sighed, rubbing her tired face while she allowed herself the less than elegant luxury of stretching out and yawning.</p><p>"Dunno, don't care. If it keeps the pain away, that's enough for me. Plus, Guru Ayushi ain't the worst person to buy drugs from. Wasn't he like the icon of peace and wisdom for the longest time, I'm sure it's just you who's obsessed with him." Father placed his own legs onto the table while tuning up the noise on the television just a little bit.</p><p>"I'm very alarmed by how casually you admit being addicted. Just gone out and said it's drugs…" Mana looked at her father. "Plus, I wasn't the one who made him look bad. His own sick cult ratted him out."</p><p>"Are you trying a new look? Have to say, scars on the cheek are more of a guy thing. Plus, I'm sure that the only people on stage donning scars are evil geniuses. Planning on changing your stage face?" Father leaned in closer to check on Mana's left cheek itch.</p><p>"Nah, Kouta said it just doesn't heal. I'll probably have it checked sooner rather than later though… Not sure I'm feeling up for a stage return just yet." Mana shrugged.</p><p>This felt nice. Just relaxing in front of something that actively rots her brains alongside one of her most beloved people alive and talking with no secrets.</p><hr/><p>"Good day, Mana. Did not expect to see you so soon, let alone on your initiative. I hoped that you'd try and get some rest after your last mission." Lord Seventh admitted. The man sat with his back straight and his body relaxed. The Seventh Hokage leaned a bit to the left with each successive swing of his chair.</p><p>"There's something that Yushijin left out of his report," Mana admitted while weaving a pair of hand seals and placing her hand on the bottom of the hat. In a bursting gleam of violet light, a handful of Usujitsa clones leaped out, each holding a dead silent baby in their hands.</p><p>It was slightly frightening summoning Usujitsa in the middle of the Hokage's office. This unpredictable bringer of calamity may have detonated at any point and while the Hokage would have surely survived the blast. It would have been of considerable strength and size to be taken either as gross incompetence from Mana's part or a genuine attempt at the Seventh's life.</p><p>"What are these babies, are they okay? I have had my fair share of babies and aren't they supposed to be far louder than this?" the Lord Seventh jumped to his feet so that he could examine the toddlers wrapped in rough sheets that the Ninja Rabbits provided to them.</p><p>"Yushijin may have reported that all of the tribesmen were eliminated. That is not the case. I have saved these babies from their hive. Their leader surrendered them willingly." Mana pointed at Usujitsa. She waited for the Hokage's move.</p><p>It was a moment of much inner tension – the Hokage may have decided to eliminate these babies then and there. That would have put Mana at odds with her own leader as well as her own home village. It was an undesirable situation. As much as the magician was preparing herself for that eventuality last night, she had only plotted out a few moves ahead, knowing full well that she'd stand no chance at either escaping the village or taking its ninja on. Her resistance, while well thought-out and valiant, would also be vain.</p><p>"Alright. We do have an Orphanage we can place these kids in." Lord Seventh nodded without any significant flare of emotion in his eyes or his expression. From the looks of it, the man was expecting something far more severe to come out of the magician's mouth. "That is, of course, if you don't have other plans for them…"</p><p>"No. Their stay inside my sealing dimension and then their relocation to the New Rabbit Caves was always just a temporary solution. I'd be more than glad to give them up. I just thought it would be more of an issue…" Mana shrugged while rubbing her elbow.</p><p>"If I had wanted the tribe of raiders eliminated, I would not have sent a ninja infamous for her refusal to take a life out on the field. I wanted the situation dealt with, which is why I sent someone who may have come up with a more… Creative way of settling things." Seventh smiled. The man gestured for his assistant to take the babies over from the magician.</p><p>"Team Olive is here waiting for their mission. Shall I assign them the mission of delivering these to the Orphanage?" the assistant inquired.</p><p>"That would be just excellent." Seventh grinned and nodded.</p><p>"Well… Sorry to disappoint you in that case." Mana bowed before the Seventh Hokage and then prepared to leave.</p><p>"Have you disappointed? I sent you out to surprise me and I definitely did not expect you to show up in my office with a bunch of babies." Lord Seventh smiled. "Take some time off, you look like you've taken some damage. If Kouta could not heal it, it may be because your body is breaking down under too much strain. Rest up."</p><p>"It's just an itch." Mana dismissed the cut on her cheek that refused to go away for the longest time. Since its inception, it had actually even grown a fair bit although its growth had stopped at about one and a half of its original size. It was turning thinner and closing down a few days after the wound was gifted but then it kept at its current length.</p><p>Usujitsa grumbled on their way down. The reason why Mana did not let the rabbit disperse back to the cave system was that she wanted to settle something. She could not just promise a known explosive horror some friends and then take them away like this. Not if she wanted to not find a country-sized crater where the Forest of Death was one day.</p><p>"This was so sudden!" a nun shook her blushed face with her palms on her cheeks. "Thank you so much, Konoha's Sorceress. These kids are in the seventh heaven right now. You haven't performed in so long and then you just came here to give them a show!"</p><p>"It was not my finest work, I may have gotten a tad rusty," Mana admitted shyly. "It's just a cocktail of a bunch of my old routines. These kids deserved more…"</p><p>"Did you mean it? The thing you said about the rabbits coming to play with the kids?" the nun wondered.</p><p>"That's actually a part of why I decided to perform here so unexpectedly to both of us. I wanted to introduce the kids to Usujitsa. He's… Capricious and a lot like a child himself…" Mana explained while Usujitsa was gently gnawing on her thigh, likely in annoyance of her speaking this way about him. "He can also be very dangerous but what he wants most of all is acceptance and friendship. As long as he can hang around these parts, he will not be a danger to anyone."</p><p>"I see." The nun smiled. "He is a lot like the usual family member of our Orphanage, in that case. He will fit right in."</p><p>"You heard that? I haven't taken your friends away from you, you can see them whenever you feel like it." Mana turned to Usujitsa who just shined his crystal eyes at the magician with a widely gapping and a tad slobbery mouth.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0571"><h2>571. The Good And Bad Way Of Letting Go</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It's quite an odd one. I think I could patch it up but, usually, a single scar does not require an entire Mystical Palm session to treat." The medical ninja at the Konohagakure hospital explained while examining the cut on Mana's cheek.</p><p>"It would be incredible if you did that. I know it might not fit the definition of necessary treatment so I'm willing to pay to get it off." Mana sighed in relief. Every day since she's returned she's received weird stares and whenever she spoke to someone or interacted with one of the many fans that stopped her on the streets to greet her or to ask when the next show was, their attention and the topic of the brief conversation would inevitably steer towards the scar on Mana's cheek.</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, I'll pen it down as required corrective measures. Wouldn't want to leave Konoha without its entertainment, would we? When's the next show?" the medical ninja winked.</p><p>"The last mission was rough, still kind of getting things together. Just… Don't feel in the right mindset for stage magic, honestly." Mana admitted. The medical ninjutsu specialist worked his magic on Mana's left cheek. His ninjutsu was powerful, Mana could almost feel strings of her flesh and her skin curling out, extending and tying to one another, then melding. Then again, perhaps this supposed skill of the jutsu merely came from the fact that the ninja was focused entirely on a single wound.</p><p>"It sounds like you may have emotional problems. I'd like to sign you up for something. Given how I just offered you a small favor with the extension of the medical insurance to cover this treatment, maybe you could do me this one?" the medical ninja wondered. "It's sort of like a support group for ninja. The people working out on the field see all sorts of scary stuff out there. You seem like you've seen your fair share and… You're not quite a prodigy the likes of which was unseen by the village before but you've ascended the ranks to where things get quite dark very fast."</p><p>"Sounds a lot like by emotional you meant psychological," Mana said. She did not feel all too opposed to the idea, honestly. Maybe if she did feel particularly thorny about the issue, she'd have carried a tad more spite in those last words.</p><p>"We tend to not use the p-word. It's gotten a nasty reputation and it's a trigger word, most of the time amongst people that could really use the p kind of help." The medical ninja shrugged. "Could you maybe do this for me? I'll sign you up, all you've got to do to get even is just to come to a single session, if you like it or if you feel it's useful for you – come and vent whenever you want."</p><p>The healer then stood up and concluded his session. Mana looked surprised by how easily he had finished treating her cut. Just like that not an inch of it remained on the magician's face. She no longer looked like an underage veteran, truthfully, that tiny cut truly had grown a bit out of control there at some point and just flat out refused to close up.</p><p>"That's impressive. My boyfriend tried it out, he's a medical ninja, he couldn't close it up." Mana examined the missing cut. She's been getting so accustomed to it that her own image in the mirror was beginning to feel like something was missing. The wound may have been a remnant of a grievous last resort attempt at Mana's life but it was beginning to feel like a corrective stroke on the total painting to give it some pizazz.</p><p>"Oh? Who's the lucky guy? I'd be glad to exchange experiences with him, treating every person is different, I'm sure the talk might be useful for both of us." The medical ninja wondered.</p><p>"Kouta Juugo, though he used to have a fake last name of Hirano, he had huge father issues…" Mana halted for a moment. "I guess he still has some of that but they're kind of reversed at the moment."</p><p>"Oh. Yeah, he's one of the kids in Konoha High I've had the chance to read an occasional lecture to." The middle-aged medical ninja recalled. "An incredibly talented kid. I feel like his attention is all over the place though. Sadly, no offense, but I believe his is the quite common case of not living up to his full potential."</p><p>"He's always been split between saving lives or taking them away." Mana nodded with a feeling of somberness taking over her.</p><p>"Perhaps that's what's been holding him back. A flawless killer or a legendary medical ninja can be neither of those things if they're trying to be both." The medical ninja said. "I can only say one thing, ever since he's graduated from Konoha High, the boy had not put in a single hour in the Hospital. I am not too sure if he is so split after all…"</p><p>"I'll try and talk to him." Mana agreed with the man who had just treated her scar. Like so many things that had come into her life by kicking down the door, it just felt like her responsibility. Kouta's medical ninjutsu had been slipping the last couple of weeks that the magician had been around him.</p><p>Perhaps it was luck, maybe Mana just knew her boyfriend's faults this well but she skipped out on checking his home. The magician headed straight for the Eighth Training Grounds. She had not made it into the very essence of the place before the feeling of the quaking ground made the magician spread her legs out and do her best to maintain balance. The rotating pair of spiraling, blue jets splitting the clouds and flying high up, together with the immense chakra pressure emanating from the signals the magician would have picked up from any range made Mana certain that this was the full view of the two Juugo sparring.</p><p>Kouta's chakra had taken a massive dip, something like that could have come from either the boy putting up chakra augmentations of astounding size to withstand one of his father's world-ending impacts, or he may have been knocked out from his Cursed Seal state as the chakra of both of those two felt about as repulsive as rotting garbage of a bunch of molten in acid corpses when the mulch was mixed in with the eroded goop of their personal belongings as well.</p><p>Mana weaved a pair of hand seals, forming the puny gust of her Rebellious Twist Jutsu that caught and kept Kouta afloat. Missing the deafening sound of his son crashing through a bunch of artificial rocky formations and leaving an epic fissure in the ground, Kusagoro descended as well.</p><p>"I'd like to talk to Kouta," Mana asked the man, fully expecting him to dismiss her and tell her to stuff it and wait until their training was over.</p><p>"Go ahead, maybe talking to you will fix his distraction problem. It's like his mind is somewhere else the whole time, honestly…" the Juugo growled while looking at his son from up high. To someone so desiring his father's approval, this scowl of disappointment and frustration must have felt more painful than the punch that blew him out of the sky.</p><p>"What's the matter?" Kouta looked at Mana with the same kind of cheerful smile that he wore. One that would not have provided the objective observer with the basis to assume that the youth has just been punched in the face with enough power to crack the world in half.</p><p>"I've come to a decision. One that will be painful for both of us but one that's got to be made." Mana started. She was surprised by how easy starting to talk was. Usually, the beginning part was the difficult chunk of any situation. Not here, in fact, from where Mana stood the whole thing seemed not quite easy but something that Mana could go through without flinching once.</p><p>"Hey, your cut is gone. Did the medical ninja manage to remove it?" Kouta noticed, interrupting the magician. He was looking out for her, thinking that doing what she's about to do would be too difficult on someone as gentle as Mana but… He may not have truly known her…</p><p>"Yes. They also told me that you were misusing your talent and that if you hadn't been, you'd have been able to treat it." Mana sighed. Accepting the diversion even though she fully intended to arrive at the same inevitable conclusion.</p><p>"I could have told you that…" Kouta pouted, he did not look proud of the fact but he still had enough emotional health to accept it without fighting it too hard. "Nobody's perfect at everything they do."</p><p>"Though you could be perfect at something. It's just that you cannot decide which thing it is. You never could." Mana said. By then the two have walked farther away to where nobody could have heard them, the rough and mountainous artificial wasteland of the Eighth Training Grounds were beginning to shift for the more forested and green, more natural sceneries.</p><p>"I'm very glad to have gone on that last mission with you. It had opened my eyes on more things than I can ignore. You're split between two things you want but for entirely different reasons: the man you want to be and the man you want people you love to see you as. When you failed at your role as a medical ninja it made you hurt worse than I've ever seen you hurting before. Though I don't think it's because you felt incompetent or incomplete, it's because you thought that I would have taken you as a failure." Mana recalled the time when Mizoma the Phantom Lantern turned off Kouta's Cursed Seal or when Kouta failed to keep the captured tribesman alive.</p><p>"You did though, didn't you?" Kouta looked down and kicked at a stone he should not have reasonably been picking fights with. He did not appear to augment his body, or did so on a very subtle level, resulting in a dull thud and neither of the two colliding surfaces giving way. "If I had kept that boy alive, we'd have found out the intelligence sooner and would have never run into the Kumogakure ninja. The same bunch that hurt you, offended all of us on multiple occasions and then killed all those people. You keep blaming yourself for this sort of thing but, truth be told, it's on everybody on some level. Still… When I look back at my failures back then, I sort of understand how you feel when you're hurting really bad and blaming yourself all the time."</p><p>"You shouldn't. Nobody should. Not unless they take that responsibility up on themselves and that's my point – you're suffering because of trying to live up to what you think I want to see, not because you yourself took up those burdens on your own. Well… I'm done seeing you suffer. During our last mission, I've seen both the bad and the right ways of letting go and…" Mana stopped. Not because it hurt too much, it hurt a decent deal but she was simply short of an adequate way of expressing herself.</p><p>"What are you saying?" Kouta stopped and stepped out in front of Mana.</p><p>"You can't live looking both ways all the time. You can't make the choice so I'm making it for you. It's going to hurt now but I'm sure you'll live up to the man you're always meant to be this way. I'm breaking up with you." Mana placed her hands inside the pockets of her blazer and looked away, it was at times like these that she enjoyed the fact that she wore an excessive top hat that, when viewed from diagonally above, obscured her emerald eyes.</p><p>Kouta looked down, still trying to comprehend what he's been told, then he looked away. It wasn't the first time that the two had broken up but somehow this felt like something more than just a pecking quarrel of two hatchling lovebirds. This felt serious. Considering that one of the times the breakup did not feel as serious as now was when Mana betrayed Kouta's trust and almost had him beaten up severely, things really rose up to their proper perspective.</p><p>"So this is the good way to let-go?" Kouta muttered.</p><p>"It's not the best. But it's not quite like the way in which the Hozuki let go of their pasts. I'll admit it's not giving up so that your children could live but… It's my way of letting go. It hurts. Just as much as it might for you but… It won't when I see you no longer having to worry about what I'm thinking about you. When you put all your apples into becoming the man you want to be. Even if that's to become a killer, even if it's to become a man like your father, I'll be fine with it either way because we're now separate people." Mana barely kept herself from breaking down.</p><p>Kouta tried replying with something coherent but he could merely grunt before he could put his following thoughts into words. Taking it as a sign of the youth's surrender and acceptance of the break-up, Mana turned around and started moving the other way. The plan for the day was to put as much distance between herself and the Eighth Training Grounds or Kouta's home as possible. Hell, she did not have any immediate need to go to the Konohagakure Hospital too so she may as well have avoided that place like the plague too until the need to confront the torn inner wound would become inevitable.</p><p>Mana had hoped to see hatred or anger aimed at her in Kouta's eyes. After all, what she's done was sudden and it just ripped out half of the Juugo's identity so nonchalantly as only one's true nemesis would have. If Kouta hated her deep down, it would help him get through it easier.</p><p>"You want me to hate you, don't you?" Kouta's voice reached Mana's ears, shocking the magician by how accurately he had read her mind. Then again, the two had been spending so much time before Mana's constant disappearances and lone training sessions and crazy missions began taking precedence over everything else dear to her.</p><p>"Do or don't…" Mana shrugged. She could not turn around or else she'd have risked exposing her tears. That would have been unacceptable. She'd have shown how much it hurt, how much this decision was already weighing on Mana and how much torment it would cause in the days, weeks and years to come.</p><p>"It would be something from your own personal handbook. Have something to point fingers to and blame everything on. Form something specific and have your pain take a shape. Hell, when I say it like that, it almost sounds therapeutic." Kouta growled. Something about his voice started feeling off, his chakra began leaking with malevolence. This was something that the magician was not expecting, for the break-up to affect him so much that he'd lose control. If the Cursed Seal was accessed through anger and great, personal stress, something that could have been called up, given sufficient experience and training, it did nothing to rule out the Cursed Seal breaking upon natural, unpredictable moments of infuriating inner pain.</p><p>Mana could not see Kouta move at all. His expanded fist stopped just inches away from the magician's face, throwing her hat flying backward and off her head from the backlash of the wild swing, stopped only at the final moments by Kusagoro's firm grip. The arms of the Juugo patriarch wrapped around the colossal punching limb from his shoulder to wrist.</p><p>"I'll take it from here." Kusagoro turned at Mana with a strict face. "I guess that now you want to be anywhere but here so take the chance and scram."</p><hr/><p>Mana flipped a glass over, letting the brown liquid cool her lightly swollen from repeated cold drinks throat and then went right down. Chest, stomach and then bubbling softly while pressing through whatever bits of food rested inside her gut. The curse of being a sensor was that there were few surprises possible, to ever be surprised by a friend entering the building, one would have had to work their best at suppressing their own abilities and that was not something Mana liked very much to do.</p><p>"Mana! There you are!" a familiar voice of a Yamanaka heiress reached the magician's ears. The young woman sighed and then turned around on her rolling chair to face Kiyomi and Meiko who have entered the building together, in full gear and ready to kick someone's ass. Given their passion for pointing out Mana's poorer life decisions – likely the magician herself.</p><p>"I suppose asking how you found me would be silly." Mana looked around, observing a circle of space that the civilians and ninja around the junk food joint she sat in provided her with. One that nobody asked for but one that persisted to follow the magician wherever she went. An entertainment star, a starlet kunoichi who not only met the expectations of the Chuunin Exams main event but surpassed them as well. Whoever wanted to approach such a person on their bad day?</p><p>"This better not be cola you're drinking!" Meiko pushed Kiyomi aside with a hint of rudeness while the blacksmith bumped at the Yamanaka with her shoulder upon passing her. The redhead walked up to Mana, sat down near the magician and tried to take and check on the glass still in Mana's hand but she failed to do so before Mana finished it, letting the glass slip out with a light brush against the blacksmith's reaching hand.</p><p>"I ain't even sorry. I'll eat every greasy burger and drink every soft drink in this place." Mana sighed.</p><p>"I'd lift you and drag you away to keep you from regretting this tomorrow but… Meiko…" Kiyomi turned to the blacksmith who just grabbed Mana by her collar and lifted her off the chair and moved the magician away to where she could have been safely deposited.</p><p>The blacksmith picked up a burger that had just been brought to the magician and sniffed on it. "As I thought… The cheese ain't even the luxurious kind, it's just ordinary, junk food cheese."</p><p>After the initial observation, the redhead checked up under the bun, what she saw there shocked the powerhouse of Team Hokage to her core. "The meat… It's just some ordinary meat! It's just a goddamn patty, Kiyomi! The food isn't even classy, it isn't even classy!"</p><p>"And she's eating a dozen times more than it's normal for her…" Kiyomi scratched her chin in confusion.</p><p>"I'm a big girl, I can make my own life decisions already…" Mana pouted just before Meiko picked the magician up and rushed to the door, intending to follow Kiyomi who was already halfway done leaving the burger joint. Meiko jumped up and rushed back to the chair to pick up the blazer and the hat that would have been left behind and then ran back after the blonde.</p><p>"When I heard those people talking about Konoha's Sorceress being "down to Earth" and "eating at Lightning Burger" I knew it would be bad but… This is worse than I thought." Kiyomi assessed the situation.</p><p>"Put me down!" Mana insisted. "Can't I just drown my break-up grief in grease with some peace?"</p><p>"Break-up? That's even worse than being worse than I thought. This calls for…" Kiyomi looked down with a grim expression.</p><p>"No way… I'm not even doing that, I'm in my armor and ready for training, I can't…" Meiko complained.</p><p>"Yes. Under no other circumstances would I say otherwise but… It is time for… An intervention!" Kiyomi looked up with her fiery, baby blue eyes drowning in determination.</p>
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<a name="section0572"><h2>572. Beach Antics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One thing that Mana had to hand it to the cruel face of fate was that she'd have never expected after waking up that day that by the end of it she'd be walking all the way to the Yamanaka Resort together with Kiyomi and Meiko. Hell, she didn't even count on being single while doing it either.</p><p>"I can't believe it that you went home to prepare and you still left in that clunky armor…" Kiyomi sent glares of straight fire in Meiko's direction.</p><p>"Well, what was I supposed to wear? A silk dress?" the blacksmith raised her eyebrow and turned at Mana with a humorous sneer to show that she thought her own response hilarious but Kiyomi stonewalled it with a straight face. "No way… A dress? Are you mad!?" Meiko threw her hands out.</p><p>"Beaches are quite humid. Armor gets rusty in humid areas, is all I'm saying…" Kiyomi shrugged. "I'd have taken a T-shirt even, sometimes you show less skin than Mana."</p><p>The two turned back at the magician who looked like she was just tagging along for the ride. It took Mana a solid handful of seconds to even realize she was being looked at and counted on to provide a witty response.</p><p>"Unbelievable… Can you believe this one saw more action than you did?" Kiyomi sighed and pointed at the magician with a thumb while trying to keep a warm face just to let the remark sound about as inoffensive to two of her best friends as possible but the best way of making it sound that way may have been to keep it from leaving the spokesperson's mouth.</p><p>"I'd argue I had some ass-kicking moments…" Meiko crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"Not even remotely the kind of action I was referring to." Kiyomi teased her friend by leaning in way too close into the blacksmith's personal space. Something that freaked the redhead out and made her lean back.</p><p>"If you don't stop trying to get me in a dress, I'm gonna show you some action right here," Meiko replied with a long face.</p><p>"Oooh, will that count as a date?" Kiyomi teased her friend again.</p><p>Mana looked up at the two play-fighting and couldn't help but smile. The knowledge somewhere deep down that because of what she and her team had done, somewhere hundreds of thousands of people became casualties of a mineral trading conflict that went all too far and that a whole bunch of wild tribesmen that, while weren't beacons of morality exactly, possibly even the farthest thing from it, still deserved more than the violent deaths they received and that she had hurt Kouta in perhaps the most personal way he's ever been hurt just to distance herself from everything and everyone dear to her had never gone anywhere. Smiling with that itching in one's core felt almost like a crime.</p><p>Yet the magician smiled regardless.</p><p>How could one not? Seeing those two, the two that symbolized probably the most stable times in Mana's life, the two that were the closest things Mana's ever had to a friend despite never ending up on her friend list during or shortly after her childhood, just goofing around like the weight of the entire world on their shoulders didn't matter felt liberating. The cruel irony of a skilled illusionist relying on a social illusion to hide from how she felt deep down was not lost on Mana as well.</p><hr/><p>"I've gone through it a bunch of times." Kiyomi woke Mana up from the deep haze she was in. Thusly the blonde liberated her friend from the cruel trap of allowing one's thoughts to engross everything around her. To let its black coils sink out the present.</p><p>"I know. You don't think about it the way I do so it's hardly relevant though…" Mana took a sip from her glass of kvass in a quiet for a public inn found on the ever popular Roiyaru road lodge.</p><p>"Really? Humor me, what's so different about the way you see break-ups?" Kiyomi acted out being offended. Her upward-aimed eyebrows betrayed the playfulness although the magician was more bothered by the misunderstanding of the subject.</p><p>"Oh… Sorry, I was talking about… Something else." Mana dismissed it. "I'm fine… Really. It's something I had to do so I'm fine with it. Wouldn't have done it if I didn't think it was fine."</p><p>"Really? Because you've said fine an alarming number of times…" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow. "Look, there's nothing wrong about letting the salt of it get to you. When Eiju died it was rough and the two of us had drifted apart somewhat near the end. I'm sure Meiko's molten a whole bunch of her lovers and she hadn't yet given the true love of her life the second look she so rightfully deserves…"</p><p>Meiko turned her head to the side like a puppy in confusion. She even stopped chewing on some homemade confections just to maximize the brainpower processing what Kiyomi had said but she still looked quite oblivious to the gist of it. Beside the crumb-filled sheets laid a handful of messy t-shirts and a handful of dresses that Kiyomi lied about buying for herself only to slip them into Meiko's bag under multiple occasions.</p><p>"What I'm getting at is… You won't deal with it unless you admit it needs dealing with and start dealing with it. We're just here to make sure that one of the foulest experiences in a maiden's life isn't too bitter for you. I've found that the beach is a perfect way of unwinding and having some antics in during a rough break. Beach antics, if you will…" Kiyomi pitched her intervention for the nth time as if Mana had not allowed herself to be lulled by it the first time, only realizing what was going on through the haze of gloom after the magician was already heading down to the Yamanaka district and its beach resort.</p><p>"I still don't get what the big deal is…" Meiko yawned, dropping a handful of half-chewed doughnuts all over the as of yet unmade bed. Then again, knowing the blacksmith, it was quite likely that she'd never make it before snoozing off, to begin with. "You're still friends with Kouta, you're just no longer looking through the cabbage fields."</p><p>"I'm surprised by how subtle and mature your understanding of the subject was." Kiyomi looked at her more physically imposing friend with shock and awe.</p><p>"Thank you." Meiko nodded.</p><p>"I don't think that way at all." Mana looked away. "When I… Did that. Kouta lost control of his Cursed Seal. He lashed out and nearly punched my head off. This was the first time I saw him flat out lose control of his Cursed Seal without any input from his own part. It's just… It hit him, it really hurt him personally and deep down where it bleeds the most. I don't think we can ever be in the same room without everything around us collapsing, literally as well as figuratively, it seems."</p><p>"Nah, forget it, girl." Kiyomi shook her head. "I broke up and mended things with Eiju over and over and over again and while it did progressively get more and more awkward to stand in the same room as him, mostly because both of us wondered if the other is just going to mend things and make it work again, at some point we really became good friends."</p><p>This assurance did help Mana a fair bit. Eiju and Kiyomi helped her a fair bit when she was figuring out if a relationship could even work while working towards becoming a great ninja at the same time. There was a reason why those two were Mana's go-to consultants in terms of romance. It was because they knew what they were talking about.</p><p>"Aren't your only romantic experiences a rogue run-in with a Quack, formed solely out of spite to your clan traditions, a bunch of attempted arranged marriages and an attempt to forcefully marry you after a kidnapping?" Meiko pointed something had not even come to Mana's attention out. While it happened seldom, the blacksmith may have gotten some enlightening insights too.</p><p>"You need to fail at something ten times to do something right, for your information." Kiyomi pouted her lips and blew out her cheeks.</p><hr/><p>A crowd of naked people ran about a remote wasteland, surrounded by mountains from every side. The summit of every mountainous wall laid somewhere beyond one's perception, concealed by clouds in their entirety. That was to say that the only way one even knew these mountains even had summits was the knowledge of how mountains worked and how they looked.</p><p>The flock was a dirty bunch, one that must have gone through a whole bunch of torment for they appeared to be both starved as well as carrying a hint of apathy towards their ultimate fates. They may have attempted to scatter and flee but they knew that there was no use of running about the bases of these endless mountain blocks. Their resistance to their doom was purely instinctual.</p><p>Mana glared up, she was not entirely sure what she was gazing at but it appeared as if the enlightened finger of stardust-clad divinity itself had decided to poke their sandbox a bit with their as mighty as it was cruel finger. Some kind of supernatural knowledge that simply existed inside the magician's head the whole time suggested that the beam was not originating itself from the sky and pumping into the core of the Earth but, in fact, the other way around. It was fired from a remote location on the other side of the world.</p><p>The kunoichi tried to walk and calm the panicking folks. As the air around the mountainous settlement turned ever stuffier and hotter, the pointless, instinctual resistance turned to utter agony of fear in these people's faces. Mana was even worse off – she was frightened not only by the supernatural calamity that threatened to cook the cornered off village to cinders but also by the base, featureless and dirty appearance of the petrified victims of the upcoming disaster.</p><p>The evening's sky had never looked so bright. The magician tried talking to even one of these poor, doomed people but, much to her disturbance, her mouth stayed shut as if melded thusly. When the young woman tried peeling her mouth open, she could do so. Only to feel the ever-present salt and dryness in the air, every single drop of water or humidity was gone. The fleeing and cowering villagers turned to dry and disturbing husks of skin atop of brittle, collapsing bones. Their skins stretched over their eyes in profound sadness as no muscle tissue remained to hold them intact and behaving like a set of human eyes.</p><p>The clouds split and the beam of pure energy hit the ground at the same time, razing everything to dust and ashes. There was not even a hint of coal, not even a pebble of rubble, just a smoking, plain wasteland. Even the mountains were completely leveled. Mana removed her cowering hand off of her face, feeling shocked that she not only survived the catastrophe but remained unscathed. Tears started forming in her eyes when she realized that none of the poor people, the ones truly struggling for their lives survived.</p><p>And here Mana was, unscathed to smell the ashes.</p><p>A blood-curdling scream made Mana turn to its direction. What made it more disturbing was not its pitch or volume but the fact that it came from deep underground and yet powered through. Even if the chest cavity of whoever emitted that scream drowned in scorching ashes and dust, they kept on screaming as a colossal arm, the size of the magician all by itself, burst from underground. The arm bent and slammed against the soft layer of burnt ashes and began pushing itself off the ground…</p><p>The monstrous Honda emerged from underground. Gleaming at the magician with its soft and childish eyes while it licked its lips. Mana entered a fighting position, she knew better than to trust what the monster's eyes told her. While it may have looked like it was just in search for a long lost toy, Honda wanted nothing more than to pull anything within its reach in two and drink their falling blood just to moist its dried out lips.</p><p>The magician's hands acted on their own, she had not truly expected to fight Honda ever again but she had prepared a pair of plans for such an eventuality, just in case. They weren't her proudest bunch of strategies but…</p><p>Arms burst from underground. Frail and rotten, not ones that seemed to have belonged to someone recently deceased in the pillar of descending hellfire but ones that were buried centuries ago. Their might and persistence proved sufficient to totally incapacitate Mana and force her hands apart, opening her up and immobilizing the magician.</p><p>It was situations like this that forced Mana to break out hidden aces. Currents of winds, turbulent enough to tear one's flesh from the bone without much issue accumulated under her feet, attempting to lift the magician off into the air and carry her away from this massive gravesite, from him!</p><p>More arms… Grabbing the magician by her heels and dragging her back down, grounding her to meet her doom just like those she had recently attempted to save. Mana looked down at the struggling corpses beneath her. She felt a surge of power inside to break their grip and fly away but she did not have to. The arms let go. They let go because they knew. They knew that the magician would no longer resist what's to come. They knew that she'd accept her end, as violent as it may have been. She'd accept it because she felt like she deserved it.</p><p>Honda's gigantic hand clutched at Mana's waist and lifted her up, moving the magician in closer to his smelly, abominable visage. The monster's free hand pinched at Mana's free arm as if it was just a matchstick and lightly pulled on it.</p><hr/><p>Mana looked around at the room covered in nightly shadows. Inside the shade, the pair of her two best friends stared at her in confusion and worry.</p><p>"I had a bad dream…" she muttered in return. She must have really been giving her best scream, the magician couldn't recall the last time she's seen Kiyomi and Meiko with jaws hanging this low.</p><p>There wasn't much that Mana could have done to downplay what had happened. Ninja saw all sort of messed up stuff, it was bound that some of it would stick with them for a long while after the nightmare fuel was introduced into their lives. Hell, most of the legendary ninja have acquired A-Rank and higher status before reaching their mid-teens. Mana's own leftovers must have been nothing compared to the baggage those guys brought home from their casual assassinations and state-sponsored genocides.</p><p>"You could have spoken to that support group but you just had to eat that garbage all by your lonesome…" Mana tried whispering under her own nose. Something that often helped out in a tough spot was making it all seem like a joke right after writing something cruel and wicked off as the universe playing jokes.</p><p>The magician knew better than to close her eyes and try to get some sleep. Ever since the last mission, this was the first time she'd gotten a true, knockout snooze and that solace ended up being a lie wrapped in a nightmare package. Mana breathed heavily under the cover, feeling the stuffiness of the air around her. The windows were perfectly shut due to the sizeable raindrop-caused pitter-patter. It took the whole of fifteen minutes until it seemed safe to peek from under the covers and examine her teammates.</p><p>Meiko was sleeping like a baby, even better, she laid sprawled out all over the bed, her left arm, as well as her left foot, rested on Kiyomi's tilting body but Mana knew Kiyomi better than to think the Yamanaka would complain or lose sleep over it. Quite the opposite, judging from the gleeful and slobbery, waving grin, the Yamanaka heiress was enjoying herself while under Sandman's spell.</p><p>The magician slipped into her shirt and then crept to the window, finding a tough but well-placed sanctuary on a wooden cupboard right by the window. With longing eyes the magician looked outside, trying to see past the running rain and the clouds. While she loved the rain, it was the effect that the gloomy weather caused on the world that Mana knew and treasured that the magician felt the most interested in at that moment.</p><p>Another sleepless night, however, staring at the rain until the early hours of the morning sure beat staring at the faces of death and failure and feeling the torment of her limbs being torn off one by one – a feeling that, for whatever reason, Mana knew intimately enough for it to recur in her dreams over and over and over again.</p><hr/><p>"Isn't it amazing!?" Kiyomi marveled at the snippets of the Yamanaka resort still visible from the fortifications that were built around it. The defenses of the place had grown infinitesimally compared to the state that the resort was in when Mana had visited it all those years ago. Then again, perhaps it was the magician's fault for not recognizing the threat of a clan feud with the Uchiha as well as the everpresent threat of the Red Hawks that refused to surrender their radical ambitions even after their clan authorities had made peace with the world.</p><p>At any point in the last five to three years the Uchiha may have raided the place, they were like a scalpel made of titanium – steel tough and surgically precise. The Red Hawks, on the other hand, were like a time bomb with a screwed up clock. Everpresent, dangerous both due to their own screwed brain and the unrestrained destructive potential they packed.</p><p>"This looks like some military establishment. Did you enroll us on some secret mission or something?" Meiko placed her hands by her hips in a loud clang as her gauntlets rubbed against the armor plates hanging by her waist.</p><p>"Beach, young lady, I've brought you to a beach!" Kiyomi scolded her itching for action comrade while grabbing her by the ear and dragging the redhead across the opening all the way to the main entrance through the gate.</p>
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<a name="section0573"><h2>573. Black Veins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I'm taking you to the beach…" Meiko mumbled while sitting in front of the massive window and finishing up what was left over from her lunch that, honestly, should have served multiple people. Judging from the blacksmith's tone, it was evident that the kunoichi was feeling like a little friendly mockery towards her friend was in order.</p><p>"I thought you weren't all too interested in the beach." Mana turned to the blacksmith, breaking her attempts at resting through a meditational trance, rather than good old sleeping. Focusing to enter any meditational stages was impossible with both of her friends talking one over another… Then again, Mana knew the true reason she couldn't focus – her mind was an utter mess.</p><p>"True, but Kiyomi was so hyped about it that it kind of began drawing me in too…" Meiko sighed with a face of disappointment and sadness.</p><p>"Don't fret, guys!" Kiyomi declared shortly after entering the room in a fabulous strut, a walk that could only have belonged to someone who thought to have brought her friends triumph and joy. "I've consulted with my cousins and they believe that the weather will be perfect for a day at the beach tomorrow!"</p><p>"Oh, joy…" Meiko let out the most half-assed declaration while pushing a meatball around her plate with chopsticks.</p><p>"Is that sarcasm I hear, young lady!?" Kiyomi approached Meiko and grabbed the blacksmith's ear. Careful so that she did not hurt her friend too much, the Yamanaka twisted the ear in a soft angle. Enough to cause discomfort but nowhere nearly enough to disfigure the object of her self-evident affections. "Who taught you this?"</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi started play-wrestling. While Meiko's physical strength was second to nobody's in her age and weight range, dealing with impressive physical strength was the very fundamental of the art of wrestling. Shifting and repurposing force laid the foundation and handling strength, positioning and weight of one's opponent was the icing on the visually delectable cake. Even if Kiyomi's background in wrestling came from CWF television shows and fan magazines, the barebones proved to be enough to tangle with someone of Meiko's caliber while the two were playing around.</p><p>"If we're not going anywhere and it's all the same… I would like to train a little bit. You trained here during the Chuunin Exams, right?" Mana stood up from the pompous and too cushy for actual comfort armchair and yawned.</p><p>"Ummm… Yeah. Uncle's sleeping in the main, ceremonial hall but the dojos to the west and to the east of the main hall are usually only occupied by my cousins. You should be fine if you train there." Kiyomi shrugged after letting Meiko go of the arm hold she had the blacksmith in. The Yamanaka's thighs slipped off of Meiko's neck where they were previously wrapped, attempting to drain resistance out of her friend while the pressure around the blacksmith's arm doubled every passing second trying to make the redhead tap out for the sheer pleasure of Meiko submitting.</p><p>Chest felt aching. For some reason, no matter how much Mana breathed in and out, oxygen didn't seem to satisfy the demand and every passing step felt like Kiyomi wrapped her thighs around Mana's own throat and not that of her best friend's. Some odd itchy feeling kept bugging the magician's eyes as pressure accumulated around them in the shape of bags. Soon enough, those would provide Mana all the make-up needed to make the outlines of her eyes more pronounced…</p><p>A loud hiss distracted the magician from her session of self-pity and an attempt to get her body acting in order. The magician looked up and let her eyes scan the place. Her chakra sensory registered nothing of note around her – just the usual mid to high ranking Yamanaka going about their day to day routines. Some spent their time in the resort relaxing, others chose this place to train. For some reason, the elongated corridor Mana found herself in began feeling lonely. There was no reason for it, however, fear burnt in the magician's heart that if she cried out right now, nobody would answer even though her sensory registered some Yamanaka clansmen as close as the next door to the right.</p><p>A black blur that Mana could not even see but felt like it was there distracted the magician, forcing her to turn back and let out a pathetic whine in fear. She did not feel that presence with her sensory, rather with some unexplained, almost supernatural feeling that came out of nowhere. With her fear changing to irritation at the time being wasted, Mana escalated her clacking at the wooden floor walk to the nearest dojo.</p><p>Something peeked at her!</p><p>Up further, from the corner. A good eighteen to twenty meters forward, a bald head peeked from the turn to the left. It was a questionable and blurry enough sight for Mana to doubt her own sanity rather than worry for her own life but something in the magician's deeper, more primal impulses kept screaming for the magician to vocalize her fears.</p><p>The magician's pace was almost equal to a well-paced, civilian run. A chilling hiss stopped the girl in her tracks. To her left was an open shower cabin. The doors were opened and the magician could not make out from her current angle if it was a male or female shower room, likely it belonged to one of the dojos but what the young woman felt absolutely certain of was a pale, humanoid shape with sharp teeth growling and hissing at her. It looked almost like…</p><p>"The… Dwellers from Takigakure…" Mana muttered as her vision turned blurry. All that the magician could feel was a burning desire to not die here. To keep on living so that she could apologize to an apparent survivor of an event she regretted so much. The last thing that Mana could recall was the mighty thud against her chest. Her heart pounded like a hammer attempting to bust out from inside. One more push and her chest cavity felt like it may have burst…</p><hr/><p>Voices spreading information that was impossible to make out woke Mana up. Her eyes felt heavy. At any point, if given leeway, her body felt like snoozing off again for whoever knew how long. Unlike the environment that the magician could last recall, the one she woke up to seemed familiar. As if she had spent an alarming number of days recovering there or a great number of hours on check-ups.</p><p>She was back in the Konohagakure Hospital. For just how long was she out? Then again, depending on her condition, Kiyomi and Meiko may have rushed and used their true movement speeds to get Mana here. It would have been risky transporting a deadweight body this way and exposing oneself to possible ambushes, traps and becoming a beeping signal on the radar of every ninja looking for speedy and careless targets but the pace may have been of utmost importance.</p><p>"Ah, Mana-san, you've recovered!" a nurse declared with the full volume of her voice that aggravated Mana's symptoms. Pressure lit up around her temples, her head felt like being popped by a pair of gigantic tweezers pressing at its sides and forcing the contents out through every available orifice. It was an awful feeling – Mana could almost feel her brain matter leaking out through her mouth, her ears, and eyes but it never actually came to pass. If it had, perhaps she'd have been freed of that detestable feeling.</p><p>"Anzu-san…" a medical ninja raised an eyebrow at the nurse, disciplining her.</p><p>"Oh, sorry. It's just that Mana-san… Or, rather, all of us were so lucky that Guru Ayushi himself showed up when he did. I don't think anyone else may have treated those symptoms and dealt with the venom." The nurse sighed in relief. The woman looked more overjoyed to see Mana conscious and alive than Mana herself was to wake up in the hospital.</p><p>"Ayushi-san!?" Ignoring her own pain and nausea, Mana sat up. Just like it was when waking up in the morning after resting one's head under the covers, the pain of light seeping through one's eyes grew weaker in its bite the more time one spent getting accustomed to it. Similarly, whether it was due to Mana's supernatural ninja metabolism or because of the medicine used to treat her through the effect of the venom that so nearly killed her, the paralyzing symptoms turned more manageable with time. While the improvement was minuscule at that moment, Mana saw them turning even more acceptable later that same day.</p><p>She needed them that way, the day of fate had crept up on her. If Ayushi truly was back in Konoha, she needed to confront him about his activities and stop him just like she trained to for the last three years.</p><p>"Yes. We'd have never even identified the nasty toxin that was killing you if it was not for Guru Ayushi's infinite knowledge. He just snapped his fingers and realized that the venom came from a wild tribe of raiders far up north, in the Land of Snow." The nurse looked to be in the ninth heaven. "I just wish your family and friends could have been here to greet you."</p><p>"My family and friends?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Yes. They were quite devoted to seeing you awake and welcoming you back. Wonder of wonders, as it usually happens, Kiyomi-san and Meiko-san got called out on a mission early this morning and your parents took their first break in several days to get something to eat…" the nurse sighed. Judging from her reaction, this was a relatively common occurrence with patients and their dear ones.</p><p>"Indeed, Ayushi's methods are insane but his skill and results are just as legendary as his reputation suggests. After ingesting just a droplet of the venom and feeling the effects on his own body, Guru Ayushi surmised as to what the antidote would be sooner than I'd have snapped my fingers. What's even more impressive, it was a long-term venom, according to Ayushi-san himself, it was not supposed to show any effects whatsoever except for minor irritation of the skin for the first couple of days." The medical ninja tried somewhat combining briefing of his patient as to what had happened with the praise to the legendary medical ninja.</p><p>"Where is he now?" Mana jumped to her feet. Her mind felt wobbly, the world around her spun and acted very woozy, however that must not have stopped her. She'd suffered under the plague of too many lives she'd failed to save. There would be no more.</p><p>"Well… If you must thank him personally… I'm not sure… It isn't the best idea for you to move around too much, Sorceress-san." The nurse tried gently directing the magician back to her bed.</p><p>"If you must leave, it is standard protocol that we brief you on what the possible complications of your injuries might conclude in…" the medical ninja blocked off the door with his own body.</p><p>"Fine. Do that, but I must see Ayushi-san as soon as possible!" Mana ground her teeth and stretched out in her bed, preparing to sit through the necessary fluff so that she could get to the object of her obsession for the last three years.</p><p>"Very well, if that is your call. The venom you've been subjected to was a slow acting one. In larger quantities, its effects may be accelerated and it may have driven your heart into overdrive and had it burst immediately after reaching the bloodstream, however, given the small quantities, it was something that takes multiple days to kill the victim. It was a natural extract from an underground dwelling species of cave spiders called pomengranushka. It works as a more volatile brother of adrenaline – it kicks everything inside your body into overdrive, driving your body to its limits slowly, over multiple days before it gives up and caves in. That would have happened to you as well… What was even worse – the injury through which the venom had entered your bloodstream was treated and we had not even considered venom until Ayushi had come." The medical ninja briefed the magician on the basics.</p><p>Despite the whirling flames that drove Mana to roll out of the hospital bed, get dressed and run off after Ayushi, wherever he may have been. The young woman took a moment to look at her pale skin and weakened body and paid proper respect to the fact that the last day she could remember very much may have been the very last one for her. That was why her body refused to patch up the cut on her cheek – that was why it expanded and swelled with the black, branching out bits of corrupted blood vessels around it. By treating that cut, unknowingly, she may have very much signed her own death warrant, then again, she'd have never known…</p><p>The Black Scorpion was a crafty bitch. Giving up her children and giving Mana just enough time to get them to safety before the magician kicked the bucket. While lethality and deceit were not traits that the magician admired in any way, Mana truly underestimated that woman.</p><p>"The clothes that you arrived in were actually Yamanaka property so they claimed that silk kimono. We can issue some of our charity clothes that we sign the homeless and poor out with. It should help you get home, at the very least." The nurse shrugged.</p><p>"That would be great, thank you, I will make sure to return them once I change." Mana nodded.</p><p>"That will not be necessary at all! That's not how charity works…" the young woman smiled, shrugging off the necessity physically by shaking her hands in front of her.</p><hr/><p>It felt surprising seeing the door to her home survive the hearty push after she had unlocked it, Mana bolted to her room in an instant and began preparing herself. Blood rushed through her entire body, for a moment there the symptoms of nausea and resonating pain began fading into the background as the itch around her temples coming from the heart-stopping worry that she might forget something important took the forefront.</p><p>Mana was not heading into a battle. She would very much like to meet Guru Ayushi and realize that he was very willing to compromise, that he realized that his crazy human-experimentation, drug-dealing cult was taking her ideals way overboard and disbanded it on the fly. She would even not hold it against him in any way, while the criminal justice system oftentimes seemed like a scapegoat for the magician's go-to solution while minding her peace-driven ninja way, it was not like she followed it by the letter or relied on any sort of written rules to govern anything. Mana wouldn't lose sleep knowing that a man who had committed wrongdoings escaped unpunished as long as she truly knew he's changed.</p><p>The thing was that she knew better than that. She's bumped into thousands of brick walls trying to run at them, hug and smooch them only to end up with her mouth and nose busted because, as it turned out, brick walls were hard and tough to slam against, no matter how hard one loved it on the inside. Guru Ayushi will take it as far as he was capable of taking it – Mana knew it because he subscribed to her own philosophy, a sick and different, much more radical version of it, though hers nonetheless. Mana would take it to the extreme to do what she thought was right, so will Ayushi…</p><p>How did one leave home while knowing they might not come back. Odds were Mana won't. She's trained for years for this one battle, read and analyzed countless historic sources and mission debriefings recounting the few snippets and details remaining of Ayushi's battles from his time as a Konoha ninja. Archives so old they were no longer even held secret. Abilities so ancient and outlandish that they hardly seemed relevant but… Mana devised a plan nonetheless. She did not have the proper time to make it a sure-thing, flawless in execution but she'd have to ace it when the time comes. Otherwise…</p><p>"You're awake?" Father's voice reached the magician.</p><p>"And you're leaving!?" Mother's was soon to follow.</p><p>"I heard Guru Ayushi saved my life. I wish to thank him." Mana lied, quite adequately, for the first time in her life. Had she did so as badly as was her usual case, she'd have had the fight of her life on her hands and nobody wanted to die against a legendary ninja knowing they've pushed away the people who were there from the beginning to the bitter and tearful end. It was this thought that granted Mana the strength and the skill to lie in a convincing manner.</p><p>While she was very glad of the outcome, it was scary and detestable at the same time. If Mana somehow survived this, she'd need a long look at the mirror and a lot of contemplating about if all of this was still worth it in any way. If she was no longer the right person to fight for her ninja way, perhaps it was best to hang that flag and call it a day. Maybe try and pass it on to the next generation, someone worthier of the banners' colors?</p><p>"Oh, I see…" Mother sighed in relief. Just this once Mana felt overjoyed by the fact that she concealed most of her gear and played sleight of hand tricks on the battlefield instead of flaunting her craftsmanship and skill like, say, Meiko did with her bombastic, full set of heavy metal, kickass armor.</p><p>"That Guru Ayushi guy sure is something." Father smiled. "Didn't you say he was behind all that pain medication from behind the counter? Then he goes on and saved my little bunny's life too…" the man wrapped his arms around Mana's head, less than graciously but Mana had long since forgiven her father lack of proper arm control, removed her top hat and pecked the young woman at the top of her head.</p><p>Father's grip tightened. Almost as if he was trying to choke the magician out but Mana knew better. Strong enough to force herself out of her out of fighting shape father's grip, yet gentle enough not to cause lasting damage to his brittle bones and too bad a pain to his burnt arms, the trickster slipped out of the man's grasp and observed in horror, together with mother, as the man's skin turned pale while his visible blood vessels blackened.</p><p>As the skin of Nakotsumi Tsukumo turned powder-blue, the man's eyes whited out and he collapsed in a state of tremors. Knowing a tad bit of first-aid but nowhere near enough to help her father, fearing that in his jerking and uncontrollable state he may have done something harmful like bitten his tongue off, the magician shoved her fist into the man's mouth when she found the opening and held it against the chomping teeth. Mother nearly gave out on the spot, in her current, engaged state, Mana would have been of no help in the long run so mother needed to get over herself and call help.</p><p>Luckily for everybody involved, Nakotsumi Kei was made of sterner stuff than just to give out on her knees and cry as her husband died in front of their eyes. The self-made manager of Nakotsumi Café dashed out for help as Mana winced in pain every time her father's teeth drilled through her hand, which she purposefully did not augment so that he did not suffer any further damage to his teeth or his gums. It seemed like she was managing her father and keeping him from choking or biting his tongue off for eternity but soon enough the medical ninja showed up.</p><p>"That's… Not really how that's done…" one of the few responding medical ninja scratched their head after seeing Mana's white glove stained with her own blood.</p><p>"I… I didn't know what else to do…" Mana exclaimed, staring at a blank point in the floor. Her attention wandered from one point to another, no focus at all. The world around her shook and spun without any sense or control as the magician herself did her best to stand perfectly still.</p><p>"Well, did the trick. We'll take a look at it in the hospital. You'll probably want to be there by your father's side…" the medical ninja sighed, knowing full well from experience how relatives were in such situations.</p><p>Mana looked up at the medical ninja and nodded without a moment's hesitation. She clasped at her pulsing with pain right hand and looked on at her kitchen window as if it showed anything more than what was behind it. Whatever she was going to do, this, her family took precedence right now. Mana's come too close to losing her father already, even if it was through no mistake of her own. This time, she will do it right and be by his side when it counts.</p>
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<a name="section0574"><h2>574. A Dimension Of Barks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Seeing a medical ninja approach the two women that barely managed to hold each other together felt strangely like the most misfortunate case of déjà vu, even if the medical ninja working on her father's sudden collapse was different. A natural detail, given the vast difference of situations in question.</p><p>The man's face suggested that he was well aware of how painful what he had to report would be for the two, his seasoned face told tales of great differences in reactions that he had seen from all sorts of people hearing that same prognosis out. No. If Mana was to guess, the medical ninja had never had to deliver this specific prognosis to anyone before.</p><p>"He's stable, the seizing stopped but… We don't think that your husband is going to wake up." The man sighed. "There's no specific reason for him to stay out but… We think we know what's caused this and… We've seen this same thing in all too many cases."</p><p>"How many of them woke up?" the first reaction from Mana's mother was predictable. The woman's love for her husband was the only thing rivaling Mana's own respect for her father.</p><p>"What did cause this?" Mana asked almost at the same time as her mother, over the last couple of hours she'd passed the begging for a miracle stage and went straight to maniacal rampage mode. All she needed was a target.</p><p>"It was the pain medication he's been taking. The under the counter stuff. There's a reason those elixirs were never approved. They're outright miraculous in quality and the skill that goes into brewing them is most often superior to any of the official medication but… Those drinks are not made for men and women, they're made for some sort of superhuman. Every sip is a gamble with one's own life and the absence of pain can be very addicting, especially in cases where the pain was an accustomed guest." The medical ninja sighed. The way he spoke implied that he had given this same thing to plenty of people, sadly, Mana's initial suspicion was shot down, although, that was hardly the most painful thing at the moment.</p><p>"How many wake up?" mother raised her voice. It was at passionate moments like this that Mana remembered that the woman did not build up her respectable café business by being a quiet little mouse.</p><p>"None. It's the only thing certain about that sophisticated junk. It helps until it no longer does, in especially unlucky cases, what happened to your husband happens. We can sustain his life without much trouble but… All of the cases I've spoken of, the reason why this condition has a perfect mortality rate is that people eventually lose hope and choose to just let go." The man scratched the back of his neck. It was no slim pickings for the specialist delivering the news either. The grim expression he took made Mana suspect that he expected at any moment to be blamed for the man's condition.</p><p>Blame… There was plenty of that brewing. Anger and blame fumed like the vapor of boiling water and began staining the windows to Mana's soul, through which her soul saw the world around her. This was not like a mere girly whine that she had from time to time. The one that wet her eyes and made it difficult to breathe in a regular manner over the internal weeping.</p><p>The rage obscured everything. Sound, sight, mind, chakra sensory. The anger corrupted and began a part of each of these feelings. Even the magician's sense of touch began boiling in fury as her skin began portraying the heat of the boiling emotions contained inside.</p><p>"Where are you going?" mother turned to Mana. The magician hated doing this. To leave her mother without her daughter right after realizing that she'd only have her husband as a lifeless husk alive only through the most liberal manners of speech.</p><p>"The opposite of the right thing to do." despite the irony inviting a smile onto Mana's face, the magician was far from the perfect condition to smile. She was not entirely wrong though. Despite the fact that she knew Guru Ayushi must have been stopped, this was not the right way to do so. It was the way that Mana wanted to do it now.</p><p>She considered talking with him before. Attempting to reach the once noble and exalted legendary ninja that has managed to retire far past not only the usual retirement age but also his advanced age that he managed to reach through his uncanny mastery over the field of medical ninjutsu. There would be no more talking. There was a new emotion, a new edge that Mana's body lingered on deep down and the magician was beginning to feel the gentle breeze that invited her to take a nosedive down from it.</p><p>"I'm going to kill him." She declared before flickering away from the woman's eyes. She left her broken mother to deal with the confused medical ninja who, without a doubt would expect an explanation of some sorts, she was wrong in every conceivable way.</p><p>There was shame in confronting a man that has sent multiple people to the hospital because he had overestimated the vitality of his potential patients, one that has created a cult of his to realize a wild goose chase of a ninja way through whatever means imaginable, a cult that has created a monster that has nearly torn down the entire village all by itself once before.</p><p>Light and air itself pressed itself at the corners of Mana's eyes. Such was the result of going through some of the worst couple of weeks shortly before losing her father and realizing that not only that was when she'd have the most fateful moment of her entire life but also that the man playing a role at that moment was responsible. The only sleep that Mana's had in the past week was the rest of the deadly venom knocking her out...</p><p>Why was it so easy to modify her plan to make it lethal? So many days spent planning around the eventuality, planning out the encounter trying to avoid the option of killing a legendary ninja she had no right to stand in front of anyway. A certain-doom situation with an even further reduced odds and yet when all of those kid wheels had to go, it was the simplest thing Mana's ever done. In fact, the plan became nearly thrice shorter as a result.</p><p>This time nobody got in the magician's way on her way to the village center. No villager stopped her to say hello, no fan of hers expressed some helpful and friendly impatience to see her next show and no children chuckled simultaneously to losing their gift of speech upon seeing Mana live, living her life just like they did and walking around the village. Mana did everything she could to look and act more like a banshee of vengeance and that was just what the world saw her as now. Either that or they just took her as some crazy person jolting down the streets like mad.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes and extended her sensory as far as she could. She had not sensed Ayushi's chakra before, meaning that she should, in theory, not be able to recognize it. Despite that common logic, the kunoichi felt that someone with the traits of Guru Ayushi should not have required previous experience of their might to be felt. The man's chakra should have been the size of a galaxy amongst sparks of normal civilians, the campfires of genin and stars of jounin.</p><p>And yet… The place felt completely empty of such a signature. Mana could feel the Hokage far out in the northern districts, the jounin in the Standby Station to the west, a handful of notable medical ninja in the Konohagakure hospital east and another dozen of strong signatures on top of that even further east. There was nobody of Ayushi's caliber anywhere. If Hanasaku was still in the seat as Hokage, Mana may have humored the idea of coming to her for help. Not help with confronting Ayushi, help to find him.</p><p>A sphere of bubbling, blue chakra wrapped around the magician, foaming from thin air as sealing glyphs formed and floated around the sphere that sealed the magician's movements. A man wearing a cloak but, completely missing the point of his choice of attire, leaving the hood down and his face exposed approached the sealed magician and tapped at the sphere with their hand.</p><p>"You may have been looking for me. I decided that I should find you instead." The pale, humanoid figure smiled as it looked up at the magician girl that was floating weightless inside their sealing sphere. A crowd of curious bystanders was beginning to form a circle around the scene. A social circle around the sealing sphere and its creator. Just what sort of technique was this, more importantly, how did this man use it without tipping off Mana's sensory?</p><p>It took about as much effort to turn at the sealing-master as it did for a person to move underwater. The general feeling of weightlessness and floating was similar to that experience as well. However, it was quite easy to breathe while inside the sphere so the magician was under no danger of drowning. There did not appear to be any other purpose to the sphere other than containment.</p><p>With his featureless, white eyes, the sealing-master turned his head around, showing off the countless, basic shaped tattoos covering the man's bald head from the sides, the top of the head as well as his chin but ceasing at the face. Despite his pale appearance, the wrinkles and general features of the man's facial muscles and quirks appeared overly pronounced.</p><p>"It is just a matter of time before some unwanted company interrupts us. If you excuse me, I'll make this reunion a bit more private. Don't be afraid, it's for their own sake. If you had lived to be my age, you would have realized that the other ninja are like children to whom fire is not something to cook or create something with but something to wave around at the end of a stick and scare the animals away. If they engage me here they would only cause damage to their own building, to their own people, trust me, Mana-san, I have both our best interests in mind…" the man smiled again.</p><p>"Ayushi-san?" Mana muttered to herself. She had not recognized the man after the drastic transformation he had undergone. The last time she met the man, he had suffered severe burns and then regenerated to a completely new and baby-soft skin as well as new muscles for his well-toned body. His current body appeared much gaunter and more inhuman. The pale skin, the dead-white eyes and the tattoos, the skeletal body structure.</p><p>"I sense resistance from your side. Don't hurt yourself, you cannot break this seal. It absorbs the chakra you use against it and uses it to enforce itself as well as punish you for trying." Ayushi smiled and patronized Mana as if she was a silly child. "There they are, like clockwork… I've been in this job for far too long, things have lost their flare. Can't get surprised by anything anymore."</p><p>"You have no idea…" Mana thought to herself as she swung her limbs about, trying to loosen up the force keeping her suspended inside the sealing sphere. Maybe Guru Ayushi was right, maybe she could not break this sphere but she will make it more difficult for this sick man to do whatever he had planned to do.</p><p>Just inches short from where the Konoha ninja rushed to the scene of a bizarre street scene, Ayushi created a cube-barrier of dark ruby gleams that tipped every approaching ninja off to its vile yet to be revered power. Even if none of these response squad ninja were sensors, they knew better than to tangle with the red barrier covered with shadowy sealing glyphs. Even if sealing glyphs were a dead giveaway all by themselves, there was something supernatural about this barrier, as if it displayed Killing Intent all by itself and petrified even B-Ranked ninja that usually were the first to respond to such events.</p><p>Inch by inch, the barrier began expanding in every direction except deeper underground. The rate of its expansion was pathetic, although it appeared to dissolve anything it touched to some sort of primal dust that was even more brittle than the real deal and powdered away into something even smaller, something that was impossible to trace and may very well have either been nothing or the next best thing to it.</p><p>Ayushi's hands blurred in front of his chest, a splatter of wine-colored blood spread in a wide yet thin arcing line. Mana didn't even notice when the legendary ninja even drew that from his thumb. Another sensation of far greater importance distracted her, however, the barrier containing her began weakening and in a severe way – as if it was about to fade away in its totality.</p><p>"Summoning: Juhiru Dimension!" Ayushi grunted while placing his hand onto the ground. Just as Mana's feet touched the ground and she prepared to exploit her newly gained freedom, she braced for the jutsu that the Guru prepared to use. If he had to concentrate hard enough to cancel the seal subduing Mana to use it, it must have been something remarkable and the magician had never seen any information in any of the stories she had researched about any Juhiru dimension in Ayushi's arsenal.</p><p>Something abhorrent was manifesting itself under Ayushi's command. Even if no physical changes occurred just yet, the magician could feel it, something different, a nightmare coming to life that just needed a few drops of time before it could understand the laws of reality it was summoned on to manifest itself in its full repulsive glory.</p><p>The ground rumbled beneath Mana's feet, a set of nine, finger-shaped protrusions burst from somewhere deep underground, displaying themselves to the surface only from their middle going up to the nail. As the entire ungodly hand surfaced, intensifying the quake to where Mana had to jump up and keep herself afloat using her Mystical Wings Jutsu to avoid the trembling and the terraforming going on, it split like a twisted kaleidoscope into rings of arms, legs and types of limbs that Mana had never even seen before as well as some good, old, octopus-type tentacles.</p><p>The entire ground level within Ayushi's dark ruby barrier turned to a forest of these pale and rotten limbs. Some of them had small damage covering them through which blood of various colors flowed like a source of water flowing through a mountain spring. The skies turned pitch black as ungodly, bloodshot eyes opened up and began gazing upon the inhabitants of the Juhiru dimension that Ayushi had brought about. Before the ancient evils that lurked inside this wicked dimension did something about the Guru and the magician that had exposed themselves to their interdimensional selves, dark, violet clouds shrouded the skies, providing some solace from the cosmic-scale horrors inside this dimension.</p><p>"Where did you transport us?" Mana's voice trembled as she was now more fear than rage. She now realized that she was right to fear Ayushi's Summoning Jutsu before allowing her rage-driven hands on him.</p><p>"Transport us? We're right where we were supposed to be – middle of Konoha. The clouds will make it difficult for anyone to see this barrier, let alone see what's inside of it so nobody will distract us, nobody will get themselves killed doing something they don't understand." Ayushi smiled like a kind old man posturing at a child.</p><p>"Then…" Mana looked around with even more horror in her eyes than before.</p><p>"Correct, I did not seal us away in Juhiru, I've brought the entire dimension here. Juhiru is not a large place, about the size of a large temple in its entirety. I needed it here, however. I've stored something there that is paramount to our dreams." Ayushi spread his hands out, leaving himself wide open.</p><p>Without thinking too hard, Mana attacked the man head-on with taijutsu. She knew that this was no way of damaging him. His passive healing prowess would kick in instantly and heal him from anything that was not instantly lethal to him. That only served to Mana's favor as she could have attacked this man however long she liked until she felt like she had made the man pay for the lives he had taken and ones he ruined.</p><p>Ayushi moved in to defend himself but he did not expect Mana's attack nor did he want to fight her. That was the reason why Mana kept all of her limbs and life. A simple counterattack would have opened her right up, in fact, she was already wide open and simple to read like an open kindergarten level book. Angry people, while the most aggressive and relentless, were the easiest to predict and dodge. Something Ayushi felt inside however made his defenses sloppy, he took a few nasty shots to the jaw.</p><p>She wanted to love it, she truly did. When her foot dug deep into the opponent's jaw and her foot just slumped into something soft and broken like a lump of unprocessed clay. When her fist penetrated her opponent's body and found something round and squishy inside his body to crush like a capricious child squished rotten apples they found on the ground, just because they felt they could and because it'd be icky in a strangely satisfying way.</p><p>And yet… With every gruesome strike like that, Mana felt more and more nauseated by her own actions. By this entire affair. The magician had trained for this for three long years and did so more gruesomely and with more focus and preparation than she'd prepared for anything to this day. Win or lose, Mana at the very least thought herself ready to face this man but…</p><p>She had to stop. As the magician stumbled back, not because she could no longer continue physically but because if she had –she'd have vomited all over the limited, fleshy and rotten grass field of limbs around her. It was only when she woke up from the haze of her own bloodlust that she gasped at the bloody pulp she left of the man in front, a jerking and swollen mess filled with steel-tipped cards sticking out of it, Mana hadn't even noticed when she started using weaponry and taking stabs at the Guru.</p><p>"I feel like we have some unsettled issues," Guru spoke while his body fixed in a blink that, as per the common saying, was entirely within the realm of possibility to miss if one was not looking out for it. "Before we begin our Game of Souls, I would like to know what those are."</p>
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<a name="section0575"><h2>575. A Merchant Is Born</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were many questions clawing to escape and become vocalized from within Mana's brain but she had to establish some sort of order to it. Before she could do that, the bitter memory of her father resurfaced and all of a sudden everything went black again.</p><p>This time Ayushi was not about to just stand and get pummeled again. The ninja who quite possibly surpassed multiple Hokage in the list blocked every kick and punch thrown his way. Once some semblance of consciousness returned to Mana, the magician just growled like a caged animal since she quite literally was like one – her fist was locked in Ayushi's grip, her hand twisted in a discomforting manner behind her back while her foot was also caught and raised up. In a masterful display of knowledge of balance and a feat of strength, Ayushi balanced the subdued magician in mid-air.</p><p>"It's because of you that my father will never wake up again!" Mana cried out. It was hardly her best-worded sentiment but she had no time for that. She could no longer kick or punch so soiled with tears bravado was the second option she resorted to.</p><p>"Oh… So he's succumbed to the side effects. That's unfortunate." Guru Ayushi lamented while he flicked the magician onward with a shove of his arms, he let Mana go as he did so, letting her complete a frontal flip and land on her feet. It was a show of mercy and that made the furious kunoichi just that much more pissed.</p><p>"Yeah well… I'm glad that you've found me. I was having trouble finding you and I wanted this." Mana declared after straightening her back and standing back up. Her hat laid somewhere atop of an erect arm but it would have to wait for a bit. If she went after it just now, she'd be even more obvious of an opponent than she already was.</p><p>"This? You mean you wanted to punish me for what you're blaming on me?" Ayushi wondered with confusion in his eyes. "That's not the girl I remember. That is violent, spiteful and illogical, that's how the world we seek to change thinks, Mana."</p><p>"I don't want to change the world!" Mana yelled out while she threw her hands out forward "Magical Punishment Jutsu!" she grunted as a wild lightning bolt erupted from her crossed palms and slammed at the area where Ayushi stood the Guru was no longer there, having moved with a quick side-dash.</p><p>"I want the world to choose to change all by itself." Mana's voice reached Ayushi from behind him. The man turned around with a shocked expression. He must have immediately realized that one of the two versions of Mana was a clone but he was not sure which one and the magician knew that. Having just witnessed how much Mana had changed since they've last seen each other, Guru Ayushi was no longer certain if the peaceful and kind kunoichi he'd met was still there.</p><p>If she was – she'd have sent the clone after Ayushi and stayed back, tried devising some sort of a sophisticated plan of how to subdue the ninja that was the next best thing to being invincible and eventually failing. This new Mana that Guru was just beginning to understand may have come after him herself, refusing to surrender the honors of clawing the Guru's eyes out over and over while they regenerated to anyone and choosing to keep it all to herself.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Shadow Clone!" the Mana that launched the Magical Punishment bolt weaved her hand seals, alerting Ayushi as to which one was real. Desperate to outrace the rage of the young woman he once idolized and changing his life to model himself after, the Guru dashed away from the fake with a speed that truly would have outraced lightning itself. Even after the jutsu was set off and the clone dissolved through user's choice, Ayushi packed enough speed in his sprint to escape the clutches of manifested lightning from point-blank range.</p><p>The man behind the legend grunted in pain as an overkill of lightning jolts passed down his body, forcing him on his knee. Only after the painful reflex of pain and the complete temporary atrophy of his muscles did Ayushi realize that Mana had faked him out and had him play right into her hand. Instead of having her clone chase after a vastly superior opponent, she had the opponent use their uncanny speed to get to her clone.</p><p>"Spear Kick!" Mana roared out as her real version dashed in and, after jumping up into the air, dived down with her right leg thrusting forward and digging deep into Ayushi's face as it pushed the man into the ground. Lightning Release was not always deadly because of the awesome temperatures of the lightning it produced, the blitzing speed of the techniques nor its destructive capabilities, oftentimes it was the stunning properties that killed. Such was the case currently, even if Mana's kick was more satisfying on a personal level than deadly.</p><p>"So you've what? Decided to kill me? That's hogwash, Mana, we both know that. You've been swinging your tiny fists around, kicking about like a whiny child, reveling in the hurt you've put on me but one thing you haven't been doing is killing me. Someone like you would have devised a way to kill me in three whole years… Unless… It hasn't been three years, has it?" Ayushi wiped the blood off of his face and before he was done wiping the first few droplets the entire bleeding stopped and the man's busted up face reset to its normal look. Normal for him, at least.</p><p>"Don't even talk about him!" Mana shouted while her hands worked through even more hand seals in the blink of an eye. She was wasting chakra, leaking it, actually and she knew that but it didn't matter. When her life was about to end when Ayushi would just about feel like he's had enough of losing, what exactly did she have to preserve herself for? "Heinous Shock Jutsu!" she yelled out as lightning crackles separated off of the electric aura surrounding Mana's entire body and reached out for Ayushi's upper body as well.</p><p>While the cloaked Guru attempted to evade the brunt of the technique, a single branch of the spreading lightning touched his chest instantly enveloping the man's upper body, chest to shoulders, to head, with lightning. Mana turned away to wipe away her tears as the imploding lightning pressure devastated Ayushi's body, popping him like a pimple from the upper bits.</p><p>Arms wrapped around Mana's body, making the magician raise her head in shock. Ayushi was done regenerating before she wiped her tears and moved in to embrace her already. He was playing, humiliating her. Fighting on a level where it seemed like the two were on an equal field when in fact he was taking everything Mana had to throw at him and just mocked it to her face.</p><p>"I know you're in pain. I've lost everyone I've ever loved as a young man and I can see that you're a thousand times the ninja I was. When faced with harm against your loved ones you fight back with everything you have. Unafraid to step over yourself to do so. I locked up, I gave up. It is now time, however, that I too resist the world that has claimed people dear to me." Ayushi spoke with softness to his tone.</p><p>Mana rumbled and struggled to escape his embrace and after the first few wriggles, the man did not resist too long. Finding herself freed from Ayushi's grip, having strained her body sufficiently with these last few attacks to where the rage inside her no longer demanded blood to be drawn, where standing in this man's presence without attacking him no longer felt like a crime to everything Mana felt deep down, the magician was finally beginning to listen to what Ayushi told her. More importantly, she began considering where she was and for what purpose.</p><p>"I was looking for you to kill you but why did you find me?" Mana growled, clutching her fist tightly by her side in an aggressive stance, pressing her upper body as close to what amounted as a floor in this dimension. The magician was too infuriated to even worry that any of this grass field of arms could have sprung to life and locked her in place. "Are you still deluded enough to think I would ever join the cult that's nearly leveled my village and then nearly killed my father?"</p><p>"No. That is sad but I did not think you would do so willingly, yet…" Ayushi left the last part lingering in the air. "I am glad that you're asking the right questions though. I was beginning to wonder when we could proceed to the important part."</p><p>"So you do need something from me…" Mana concluded. A bit of confusion sparked in her abdomen springing to life a cluster of butterflies. It felt completely baffling as to what someone like Ayushi might have needed from Mana.</p><p>"I want to help your ideals to come to life, that is all I'm planning. However, you know that you're far too young and inexperienced to help me with that. Your judgment often becomes clouded, you tangle yourself in meaningless engagements and responsibilities and lose sight of the big picture, it's no surprise, I was a lot like you when I was even twice your age." Ayushi reflected, "It just so happens that I have acquired every tiny element of my plan and I am ready to give it a whirl. In fact, I've acquired the final piece just now, shortly after saving your life in the hospital. If only I would have taken you then, maybe I would not have had to chase after you right now and maybe you would not have had to experience the loss of your father before you saw your dream realized."</p><p>Realized? Just what on Earth was this man on about? Mana's dream was never something that could have been completed. It was an endless quest that was bound to fail as the finish line was an ever-expanding amount of distance away. Even if somehow the magician began traveling at it in leaps equivalent to the speed of light, she'd still never catch up to the immense expansion and development rate of her dream. That was both a cruel irony but also something inspiring. A dream that was more of a guiding star than a material goal that could have been brandished and held in one's hands.</p><p>"What was it that you needed in Konoha?" Mana's lips moved on their own, her tongue slithered like a little traitor to the magician's better judgment of remaining in the dark.</p><p>Ayushi's hand reached behind his cloak and pulled out something that drastically reduced the apparent body size behind the cloak. What was underneath that cloak was not Ayushi's athletic build but instead his rotting shell together with this piece of abomination he had picked up.</p><p>"M-Magic girl…" a twisted version of a voice that once belonged to a child left the detached head of a creature to which death would have been a mercy. Flesh and various bits of its face appeared stitched together, each piece of the puzzle did not belong and was evidently forced to fit, whoever reanimated this monster did not take them from the same box, resulting in massive patches of rot everywhere where the foreign blood and flesh rejected the host.</p><p>"Little Honda…" Mana uttered in pity for the beheaded creature, still clinging to life.</p><p>"Little? Hardly. If I did not work at preventing his regeneration, he'd show us both just how "little" he is. He's a lot like you, you know, just a child that has much more importance than they're acting like. If I was to allow this experiment of mine to regain his body, he'd just start rampaging and eating things at random." Ayushi sighed while lifting Honda's head that was nearly the size of his entire core while looking at the monster's eyes and dropping and shutting jaw.</p><p>Once Mana got a better look at the back of the unfortunate victim of human experimentation gone wrong, the magician noticed sealing glyphs all over. From the rumors she'd heard, the village kept Honda contained in tubes of corrosive liquid that burnt excess regenerating tissue while keeping his head from dissolving as regenerating tissue was weaker while still forming whereas the completed and living, in a manner of speech, tissue was stronger.</p><p>It was just another grim reality of Ayushi's "dream" that's about come to pass. A child on whom his cult had experimented spent three whole years as a massive head drowning in an extremely corrosive acid, could he even fathom what lack of pain was now that his head was no longer doomed to sizzle away for what amounted as an eternal existence of torment and further studies on what made him tick?</p><p>A reminder, yes, but also a testament to Mana's own failure. Just another pair of eyes to look at knowing that she'd failed Honda and was too weak to give him any different kind of life.</p><p>"This poor child will be the back on which we will build the castle of our dreams. Soon, Mana-san, soon…" it was hard to say from Ayushi blank, white stare into Honda's terrified eyes but the man's tone betrayed the longing and dreamy nature of Ayushi's thoughts and feelings at that moment.</p><p>"I don't understand. If you know and care that Honda has suffered because of what your followers did to him and caused more people pain after he escaped, why take him from the village again?" Mana took a fighting stance, preparing to attack Ayushi to try and reclaim Honda but she reconsidered that before making any mistakes and committing to them.</p><p>She forgot so easily about how Ayushi let her hit him. He let her because her attacks were of no threat or no consequence and helped the magician blow off some pent up steam. Now if she attempted to claim something that Ayushi postponed taking Mana, also an element of his as of yet unknown plan, while she was in the hospital to claim first, he would hold nothing back to protect it.</p><p>"You fear for your life. Don't." Ayushi noticed the wavering in Mana's eyes. "I do not need you to kill you, I don't intend to do so either. Even if you feel determined to fight back against me, given what you've been through, how young you are, I understand that. Your part in my plan is a bit different."</p><p>After stating that, Ayushi threw Honda's head to the side and weaved a hand seal with both hands. The ground underneath Mana's feet trembled, a man-sized arm erupted from the forest of its peers and caught the head. Its cold, dead fingers wrapped tight around the remains of Honda and did not look merciful enough to either let the head go or to crush it and end the boy's torment.</p><p>"My plan is truly all about this poor young boy. I realize you are angry, Mana, but I would like for you to quell your anger just for a moment and hear me out. Perhaps in your merciful and often a tad childish heart, you will find the strength to agree with me and help. It would mean me the world." Ayushi pleaded with the magician, choosing to remove his cloak and let it float aside. The whirling winds of the Juhiru dimension picked the piece of abandoned cloth and carried it somewhere to the edge of its extents, into and beyond the dark shrouds surrounding the two living aliens to this dimension and deep into the reaches of whatever absurd cosmic horrors lurked beyond the extent of the violet shroud.</p><p>"Before I met you. Truly met you, that is. I used to think that I could do things a different way." Mana said. "Instead of beating the enemy, I thought I could compromise, instead of fighting, I thought that things could have been solved better through listening to them. You've lived your entire life by that and only abandoned that dream when you've gone mad. Oftentimes I could not uphold that, no matter how much I tried. I'll listen to what you have to say but only because I want to be more like the man you used to be and not the mad version I see right now."</p><p>Ayushi bit his finger again. Without any rush this time, the legendary shinobi went through a familiar set of hand seals to the magician. He was summoning something again. Just what exactly? Was he intending on bringing another dimension and melding the two somehow?</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu: Merchant of Souls!" Ayushi yelled out. The tattoos covering his body from the neck down lit up with azure shimmer, the intense chakra molded within his body and the shiny way it manifested in glowed through every orifice of the once esteemed and wise man. Ayushi's eyes began glowing the same color that his irradiating chakra glowed in.</p><p>The ground quaked with much more violence than ever before. Mana could not have kept her feet on the ground and hoped to not have them break or not to sprain something elsewhere as the quake shifted Juhiru's integrity to its core. Something Ayushi did right now was tearing the entire dimension asunder, ripping it into two just so it could squeeze it massive, world-ending shoulders into the crevice of its creation.</p><p>It was then that Mana realized that what Ayushi had summoned had not appeared in Juhiru just yet. The destructive chakra that was destroying the entire dimension resided inside Ayushi. As the man hunched over and grumbled in pain, blood and slobber pouring from his eyes, nose, and mouth, the world-ending nightmare he employed to create world peace began to emerge.</p><p>"You summoned it inside your own body?" Mana's foot trembled back on her own. She could not begin to imagine the amount of pain that would have caused, certainly enough for a man willing to endure it to be ready for any kind of sacrifice for their goals to become realized.</p><p>"There was no other way. Totems can only be summoned from scrolls or some other special means. In order to not rely on something so easily destroyed as a scroll… I have adopted the scroll's contents onto my skin." Ayushi roared out in pain. The man jerked and bent his entire upper body back as a massive, stone hand busted out from Ayushi's chest cavity.</p><p>Truly Guru Ayushi was the only titan capable of enduring such a procedure. Anyone lesser would have long since gone mad from the pain or died from the gruesome manner in which the totem emerged from the man's body.</p><p>With gut-wrenching noises and excessive showers of blood, a stone statue began emerging from inside Ayushi's body. While initially appearing smaller than the man giving figurative birth to it, the statue's proportions expanded exponentially after each one of its limbs left the body of its originator and master.</p><p>The Merchant of Souls – a thirty-three-meter marvel made of vegetation and moss overrun stone and marble. A wonder such as this one may have comprised an entire garden of a massive fortress, it was a marvel to build an entire city around and show to curious sightseers. From what Mana could make of the statue, obstructed and partly covered up by the shrouds that concealed the presence of humans inside Juhiru from whatever else resided in it, it was a body of some old yet well-maintained man of a thousand arms, each one of them holding a different object inside of it.</p><p>The wounds on Ayushi's body did not heal as instantly or without a trace, as they used to before, however, it still took but a moment for the man's body that had just released this marvel out into the world to recover. The Guru straightened his back and cracked his neck a pair of times employing the assistance of his thick arms.</p><p>"Well then, Mana-san, shall we play a Game of Souls?"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0576"><h2>576. Three Years Of Reloading For A Single Shot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Merchant lifted one of its arms up. The entire dimension thundered in a frightening rumble while pebbles the size of a human fist showered from above while the structure moved. Mana braced herself for an upcoming attack. She was not entirely sure how exactly she was supposed to fight something like that. It was not the size or the content of the summon that frightened the magician but rather the fact that Guru Ayushi resorted to it. Not only that, he tattooed his entire body with the contents of the scroll used to summon this totem.</p><p>Just what sort of long-forgotten, awe, and dread like inspiring techniques was this statue capable of? Mana was not about to wait and find out. Her Magical Punishment Jutsu was the best at causing structural and focused damage. Even if a divine entity descended from the heavens, one the likes of which Mana could have never hoped to challenge, she'd likely still ruffle some of its feathers by focusing on a single limb or a single finger using that jutsu.</p><p>With a wild kick down, Mana made one of the dead and rotting arms sticking out from the fleshy underpits sever from whatever's been holding it erect. While the limb was still in mid-air, Mana turned around, using the same force she focused into the kick to rotate her entire body and caught it. Jolts of lightning chakra passed through Mana's body and lit up the removed limb as if it was some sort of wand the likes of which Mana used on stage or the Audra wand that the Yamata no Orochi, unfortunately, destroyed.</p><p>The stream of the Magical Punishment jutsu beamed out. The magician did her best to make the jutsu work overtime as the location of the Merchant and his limbs was well beyond the normal range of the technique, however, just like most other jutsu, Magical Punishment could have hit with more power, more speed or a longer range if more chakra was weaved into the mix.</p><p>Not that Mana's impressive effort amounted to anything as the jutsu attempted to implode the Merchant's limbs without much effect. Something was odd. The jutsu did extend somewhat but… It was like the power suffered to a pathetic degree. Far more than it would have normally suffered if one extended a jutsu's range on the fly. This Merchant…</p><p>"It is useless to try and attack the totem, Mana." Guru Ayushi huffed and panted, his voice sounded still raspy and irritated by the aftereffects of pain he was just under lingering inside his mind. "The Merchant plays by its own rules. Have you never seen a totem before?"</p><p>"I may have read a thing or two. That's why I tried destroying it before it did its thing." Mana submitted to the grim realization that whatever the Merchant was about to "sell", she was forced to at least listen to its offer. "I am, though, confused. Why would you even use a totem against me? Totems serve no master. They just change the battle by placing their own arbitrary set of rules."</p><p>"Against you? No. As you will soon realize, I did not summon the Merchant of Souls to fight you. I summoned it to ensure the birth of world peace." Ayushi spread his arms out and basked in the rumbling glory of Merchant's rising arms. Moving in an elastic, overjoyed manner, the Guru removed a scroll from under his cloak and let it roll on the floor.</p><p>"If I were you, I would not burn this scroll, Mana-san. It contains the unconscious bodies of four hundred forty-four civilians, villagers and settlers alike from all over the world." Guru Ayushi intercepted just in time as Mana was about to attempt her unpolished skills in Fire Release to spark a blazing end to Ayushi's plans. Unless the scroll was made by Guru Ayushi himself, after the incineration of such a scroll, there would have been no way of returning the missing people back for they would have remained stuck in the scroll's sealing dimension.</p><p>All of this setup, all of this mystery. It reminded Mana of some twisted ritual and suffice to say, none of this made her feel any lighter on her feet. In fact, for a man talking of world peace, the magician was disgusted to realize that Ayushi had a number of captured people ranging up to the triple digits sealing inside his scroll.</p><p>After a popping sound and a quick spread of dusty, thick clouds, Mana found out that her opponent was telling her the truth – a mountain of bodies stacked in an orderly yet also a bit disturbing in its diligence manner. None of the bodies that the young kunoichi could make out were injured. Most likely they were put to sleep with a genjutsu of some sort and then drugged consistently to keep them in their current way.</p><p>"What are you doing? My patience for listening to your mania reached a tipping point at over four hundred unconscious people you've been pocketing." Mana yelled out. It was not her lack of patience but, in fact, her fear of how far Ayushi must have planned this ahead that made her anxious.</p><p>"I am just about done, Mana-san. Now all of the pieces of my plan are in play. The body pile, the Merchant, a dimension where nobody will interrupt us… You… All that's left is this." Ayushi declared as he removed once more Honda's head from under his cloak and finally let the cloth slip away into oblivion beyond the dark, stealth shrouds around them.</p><p>"Me? What role am I supposed to play in this?" Mana wondered. "Our deal was just that I hear you out. Then you will have to pay for what happened to my father, regardless of if I like what you have to say or not."</p><p>"The main one. I think you will love the poetry of it, Mana-san. Your role will be assigned not because of something special that you were born to be but rather because of the person you've been and the remarkable ninja you've become. Mana-san, your chakra, your very soul will connect all of these links together. Not because you're the only one that can but because I chose you for this purpose. Now you can stop using excuses and build world peace through your sacrifice, no tricks, just your call." Ayushi was advocating this supposed role that Mana was meant to play before he even explained what it was.</p><p>"I am confused. You said before that Honda's fate is unfortunate yet you appear to be heading in the direction where you will repair his previous state. I won't just let you do that. Even if I would, why would you even want that? All Honda did was rampage, that's hardly something you can use to bring world peace." Mana tried to delve into Ayushi's thought process. Mostly because she wanted to understand what it was exactly that the Guru was setting up here and what he intended to do. So far she's only been able to assume that he meant to resurrect Honda's abominable previous body somehow.</p><p>"If I wanted to resurrect Honda, I would just let him regenerate and remove the prevention seals." Ayushi shook his head. "No. I don't want to chase an old failed experiment, I mean to complete it."</p><p>Mana looked at Honda's miserable head that was equal part howling, sniffling and unintelligible babble. Despite not having a chest or that much of his neck remaining, the monster was capable of some limited vocal feats which only added to the confusing nature of its anatomy. It made a bit more sense why Konoha had been studying the monster for whole years without destroying him after they've extracted every bit of knowledge from Honda.</p><p>"Truth is, as legendary as I am, I can be stopped. Any man can. Not a single ninja in this world is unstoppable and none can become that way, no matter how much power they garner. If I was to attempt to unify all of the Countries, all of the ninja villages into something greater, the ninja would resist." Ayushi looked at Honda's miserable belfry with a sense of regret in his eyes.</p><p>"Yes, because that would be insane. Everything the ninja villages have known throughout their entire history is constantly shifting power balances, decades of peace, followed by years of war. The other countries, the other villages symbolize a potential threat, every foreigner embodies that scary danger and mending that fear will require peace and cooperation between villages that lasts at least for several generations." Mana replied.</p><p>"They're this way because they have hope. If I step up, trying to unify them, they'll resist and go to war because they can defeat me. It will not come easily but even the mightiest can be defeated. What they need is a figure that shows them how hopeless and empty of an effort war truly is – they need Honda." Ayushi was gesturing with his hands, caressing his own cheeks in distress and regret over the stupidity of the people he meant to protect in his own twisted way, pointing and waving at Honda's detached head as a sign of pride and the witnessed potential of what he might one day become.</p><p>"Honda is the ultimate proof that fighting is pointless – after I do what I must with him, modify the very nature of his anatomy, use all of my abilities as a medical ninja to shape him into the perfect being he was meant to be, the more they struggle against Honda, the more he will grow. Not only will he regenerate after each attack, as he does now, but also adapt. Because he was no longer human when I began experimenting on him, Honda will never truly die." Ayushi looked up at the unimaginable heights where the Merchant of Souls held his raised palms.</p><p>"That's why you made him of multiple people." Mana muttered to herself.</p><p>"Correct. If he was just a boy given these enhancements, he would have been flawed like me – just a mere extraordinary man. If he is many in one, even if you destroy his brain in a focused attempt to kill him, the other cells and tissues inside of him will kick in, his body will adapt to the damage, shaping vitals in a different location in his body. There will be no end to Honda, even if they try to destroy every last bit of him, he will evolve before the damage spreads that far and overcome anything, anyone. Honda will prove all violence worthless. In the face of Honda, all will surrender and work together." Ayushi explained the hazier parts of his intentions.</p><p>"Because you force them." Mana said.</p><p>"At first." Ayushi nodded. "Then, just like you said, they will no longer know any different way of life. Maybe a case can be made that I will oppress a few generations of humanity, I will make that sacrifice and be the villain, in that case. To make absolute world peace possible, I am willing to make that sacrifice!"</p><p>Mana clenched her fists. She could not raise her eyes to meet those of Guru Ayushi. The mad spiritual leader that both she and the entire world once admired. She was to blame for his change. Before he became the way he is, he chose a life of complete detachment from the horrors around him. It was after meeting Mana that Guru Ayushi began using his immense power and skill for what he deemed good.</p><p>"Will you call me mad? Will you resist this role I've offered you?" Ayushi wondered.</p><p>"Of course I will fight you. Not because I think you are mad, because I think you are wrong. When I suggested for you to make a difference using your skills, this was not what I meant. Peace is not something that is forced onto people, it is something they take up willingly, else there is no point to it. That's what I believe and always have believed. That is why I will resist!" Mana declared after looking up and meeting Ayushi's blank, white gaze.</p><p>"In that case, the name of your resistance shall be the Game of Souls." Ayushi smirked while a powerful, transparent shockwave of an electric hue passed through what appeared the entire dimension it was summoned in.</p><p>"What have you done?" Mana looked back. While she very much wanted to proceed with the whole meeting her destiny bit of the day, it was just her nature to always have to know what she was dealing with before going in fists swinging. Even when the ruined life of her entire family required some avenging.</p><p>"The creation of Ultimate Honda will require more than just lots of chakra. That's what all those ninja are here for. It will need something more, a soul that sticks all of those chakras together. That will be your role." Ayushi said.</p><p>"Soul?" Mana raised an eyebrow. Maybe Ayushi was nowhere near the threat she had always taken him to be if he was talking about souls?</p><p>"Correct. What we understand as a soul exists within each of us. It is a lot like the entirety of our chakra but also quite different. I've done some tests and people without souls can still possess and display chakra, people without chakra, however… Well… They're dead." The Guru sighed. "Certain jutsu can manipulate, extract and evaluate the nature of souls. Similarly to chakra, the content of our souls defines who we are. I don't possess the Eyes of God, the Rinnegan, however, I have managed to locate the Merchant of Souls deep in south-west in the Land of Earth."</p><p>Attacking the Merchant of Souls seemed useless. The Merchant was somehow affecting Mana's techniques, given how the totems were not a tool functioning solely for the benefit of their user, the same was likely the case with Ayushi's techniques, then why? If he was so much stronger than Mana, why equalize their grounds?</p><p>"While the Game of Souls is transpiring, none of us can attack each other in a meaningful way. I wish that this rule could encompass the entire world but… It likely does not even cover the shroud around us. While playing the Game of Souls, both of us are denied death and the only way to end the game is to declare that you have lost it. Any damage our bodies take is sold to the Merchant, it will be used to enhance the Merchant's return to the winner." Ayushi ran through the most important bits of the rules of this game he's crafted, or rather, tapped into.</p><p>"And why would I choose to play it?" Mana wondered. "Frankly, beating your weakened self into a pulp sounds much more appealing right now, even if you will never die."</p><p>"To play it, you must declare so to the Merchant. By all means, think this through but think about what you can have the Merchant do if you win. You can have him put Honda out of his misery, if you want that, you can have it bring all these people back from their sleep. Four hundred forty-four saved souls sound like a lot given your limited, heroic perspective, doesn't it?" Ayushi taunted the magician.</p><p>He appealed to reason, to her sense of right and wrong but what he failed to account for was that Mana was no longer the childish and naïve person she was even a couple of days ago. Now she was more like the other ninja, she was ready to do whatever needed to be done for the sake of the mission. She finally became the ninja that everyone wanted her to be from the Academy, no longer was she the…</p><p>"Well, what will you say?" Ayushi persisted on plaguing Mana.</p><p>"Rabbit!" Mana yelled out, much to her opponent's confusion. She did not waste any time casting her old and dragged through the dirt Polymorphy Jutsu that confused the target affected by the illusion that they have become the animal they were thinking of at the moment. Ayushi quivered, while the magician knew that she had hit the man head-on, from her battle with Honda, she could recall that people with Ayushi's signature technique had increased resistance to genjutsu.</p><p>Whereas normally she may have had a couple of minutes of "rabbit-time" with her enemy, now she may have had mere seconds. However, that was just about enough. With her enemy crouched over on all fours and forcing his front teeth out through his lip, the magician was free to lock him up under the second layer of illusion. This time she would execute her plan to perfection, the plan she prepared for three years. The timing, the aim, the execution of the highly complex jutsu all had to be perfect, or else she'd fail to kill Ayushi here and now.</p><p>"Fire Style: Flamethrower Jutsu!" the magician chanted out, covering the enemy in flames while the limited few seconds she had served in giving Mana ample time to perform the hand seals, breathe in and then breathe fire from her lungs all over the enemy. The flames left Mana's mouth in a compressed, flamethrower-like stream which was what gave the jutsu its name.</p><p>The fire would slow down Ayushi's regeneration. It was not a necessary step but Mana shoved it in just in case Ayushi's degree of regeneration surpassed Honda's and gave her even less time to perform her illusions. The next two steps were the show-stopping moment, she had no trouble spending more chakra on a B-Rank ninjutsu technique if that guaranteed the success of the final steps.</p><p>"Black Magical Box!" Mana grunted as the strain of using so many techniques of varying levels of strength and her own mastery over them troubled her. She had time and practice of using all of these techniques at once. It never stopped feeling like the most desperate and neck-breaking workout of her life.</p><p>After finishing the hand seals that her final for the setup phase genjutsu required, a gleam of bright light blinded the Guru, by witnessing this sign, the Guru fell for the illusion without much of his input on the matter. The man's body stiffened as he, in his own mind, saw himself being restrained by rusted chains that burst from underground while a black coffin enclosed him from down under and all that the opening in the coffin where his face was allowed him to see was the massive knives floating from all directions, ready to skewer the coffin.</p><p>Ayushi struggled and jerked, he must have felt every tiniest bit of the pain of what the illusion made him believe he was going through, he must have already seen the knives plunging into the box. That gave Mana even less time than she initially predicted. Had she not tasked Ayushi's regeneration for a couple of moments with that Fire Style jutsu, he'd have gone through her barrage of jutsu and evaded the final touch like nothing.</p><p>Hand seals again. Mana's wrists were beginning to feel numb from the sudden overtime they were doing but the sleight of her hand was never in question. The speed of her hands was not something that the magician ever had to work additionally on, it was always her pride and joy and it only improved naturally as she challenged weightier tasks. After completing the final set of hand seals came the tough, channeling part.</p><p>Mana lowered her wrist down and let the most intense surge of Lightning Release chakra pass down through her body, rinsing up and down before erupting outwards from her back and her hips, still connected to the immense, crackling aura of solid lightning that was bursting forth from the magician's body. The constructs appearing like swords made of solid Lightning Release chakra formed around Mana from all four sides, positioned diagonally. The jolt that connected the swords to Mana's mighty lightning aura still fed them more and more chakra.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Supreme Magic Pierce!" Mana gruffed out while the swords lunged at Ayushi. This was it, the swords headed straight for the man's vitals. Every single one that Mana knew about being capable of instantly ending the man's life and she only needed to hit one. Time appeared to freeze right before she crossed the line of no return. This was it. Nothing beyond this point but the condemnation of life knowing that she had broken every principle she ever held dear for mere revenge.</p><p>Guru did not grunt or did much of anything at all when the blades pierced him. His eyes did not white out or roll back because they were already that way, to begin with. Ayushi collapsed on the ground the moment the lightning swords stopped stimulating his muscles that have surrendered already by that point. Mana stared with a blank look at her own trembling hands. Even a wild fit of laughter coming from further ahead of her did not distract her from the fit of self-pity that engaged her for the moment.</p><p>"Executed to perfection, except for the final part." Ayushi stood back like a haunting ghoul, hands hanging without weight in front of his hunched body and smirking, bald face. "You yelled out the name of an animal to make me think of it, so that when you use the illusion I feel myself like I've transformed into that animal, you gave my regeneration something to work with while you locked me down under a secondary, much more powerful layer of illusion, then you delivered the finishing blow but… For all the talk of bloody murder and being daddy's little monster… You couldn't do it. You turned the swords away by just an inch at the last second."</p><p>"I will play the Game of Souls…" Mana uttered, finally mustering enough strength to raise her eyes and aim them at Ayushi. Damn it… She almost fooled herself. A thick thread of solid chakra extended from the Merchant. It felt its own way, it was neither warm and comforting nor revolting or twisted. Therefore, it was neither good nor evil, it was just there. The Merchant did not care who would win the game in the end. It was just there to do what it was meant to do.</p><p>"I knew you would, Mana-san. I also shall play the Game of Souls!" Ayushi declared with open arms. The same thread separated from the Merchant and entered the Guru's body through the chest. It likely did not hurt for him, as it didn't for Mana. Then again, given how the man took the Merchant's emergence from within his body, his second to none pain tolerance, maybe he merely felt a very human level of pain that failed to entertain him as much as his inhuman levels did.</p><p>The Game of Souls was finally on.</p>
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<a name="section0577"><h2>577. The Shoosting Begins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, how does this work?" Mana looked at her extended hands, trying to see if anything changed after the Game of Souls initiated but seeing no visual difference.</p><p>"From the beginning of the game until the end, neither of us can die. The game ends when one of us admits having lost." Ayushi shrugged. "In that case, it will be up to the other to distribute the newly acquired chakra and souls however they see fit."</p><p>Mana found her gaze faltering, slipping to behind her once in a while. As if someone could have helped her now… Not only was the Game of Souls protected from the influence of the outside world by a staunch barrier, but also it was being played in a whole different dimension. Given how Ayushi was somewhat hesitant to take on the Hokage and other high-level ninja by himself, it only made sense that the limits of the Guru's barrier would stretch that far, at the very least.</p><p>As far as the Juhiru dimension factor went, the jury was still out on that. Just how would this alien dimension summoned in the middle of the village affect things, if other people could enter and leave, supposed they do manage to bust through the barrier. The only thing clear as day was that Mana was by herself. Attempting to stretch the game out would have been naïve and foolish.</p><p>"So we just keep beating each other forever? Sounds like you did not quite think this through. I was not the one that created this totem but it seems to me that it was supposed to be used in harmony, people sacrificing their lives and souls for something grander than themselves, something only possible by this totem." Mana looked up at the oversized chunk of rock.</p><p>Who knew, given enough chakra, a strong enough soul, maybe this thing had no defined limits. Given how the very concept of the rules it imposed appear to break any preconceived notion of how this world worked, it certainly seemed that anything was possible as long as the person was willing to sacrifice being able of witnessing their deed coming to pass themselves.</p><p>"Have you ever died, Mana? Been close to death, at least?" Ayushi wondered.</p><p>"A couple of times." Mana shrugged. Even she could feel the defensiveness oozing from that reply.</p><p>"Right now… You're not the girl I once met in Konoha. Every time you get hurt, every time you come close to death, it changes you. Fundamentally. Dying people that seemed rotten inside become capable of extreme altruism and people that acted decent their entire lives begin crying out their most perverse desires they were yet to experience. Death is the ultimate equalizer, it sets things right, even if we wish to abolish it, we must acknowledge that. Right now, before you experience it even once, you think you will never cave but… Think about how the last time nearly dying made you feel. Until this game ends, this will be your new way of life."</p><p>Something interesting popped into Mana's mind. The magician looked up and examined the totem but then dismissed it almost immediately. She wondered if the totem's ability may have been abused as some sort of immortality machine. After all, if one began the Game of Souls without the intention of ever ending it, in opposition to another player, both players experienced the complete inability to die. Likely the totem had some sort of range limit to prevent just that sort of thing. Its purpose seemed to be much more of the educational type, rather than something to grant solitary gain.</p><p>"Your hand is shaking already," Ayushi said. Damn it. Mana had not even noticed it.</p><p>That's right. All of this felt insane. Something hot, ever-expanding bubbled and boiled like a lava lamp inside the kunoichi's chest while it crept up and down her throat, shutting off her breathing before randomly restoring it again. Mana used to not be afraid of dying, never afraid of failing. She had always resigned that if she was ever to die, to get beaten, that would have been it. As if that failure would have somehow freed her but… Now she was afraid, truly, unconditionally.</p><p>"Give up, Mana. You must have known I am stronger than you. If we were to do this, your willpower will be the first one to break." Ayushi encouraged the magician to make it easier. It came off from his voice – he did not want his vision of world peace to come out from something as primitive and violent as this immortality blood-fest.</p><p>These totems… If only Mana knew about them sooner, if only she knew how limit-breaking their abilities were. Maybe she'd have managed to find one of her own to assist her right now but… Somewhere deep down Mana realized that there was a tough chance of that ever happening. Guru Ayushi himself took entire years to uncover the Merchant of Souls and he knew exactly what he was looking for and where.</p><p>Mana took a wild leap up, currents of Wind Release chakra formed whirlwinds underneath her feet, lifting her up even higher before the current began washing at her back, forcing the magician down with speeds approaching terminal velocity but built up in a single flick of a moment. A flurry of wild kicks overwhelmed Ayushi but the man did not even attempt to block the attacks. Bones fractured into dust underneath Mana's feet but the dust reformed into solid shapes about as quickly as they busted up.</p><p>A rising uppercut, strong enough to cut the young woman in half from the bottom up left a hole inside her gut. The wind currents scattered the destroyed, illusionary shape of the magician across the battlefield. This just about confirmed it – Ayushi was done messing around and helping Mana relieve her vengeful instincts. He was in it for the world peace and when this much was at stake no man gave anything less than their best.</p><p>"My hands…" Mana uttered after her shape reformed a pair of leaps away from Ayushi, still frozen in his uppercut stance "They're not shaking out of fear, they're shaking out of excitement."</p><p>"Excitement? Never took you for a bloodthirsty type. Lying was never your strong suit Mana, stop embarrassing yourself." Ayushi smiled. His smirk was short-lived as the Guru realized the weight of what he himself had just confirmed – he knew that Mana was a poor liar and something made him believe every word she said. Had she lied even by an inch – he'd have known it immediately.</p><p>A flock of steel cards buzzed at Ayushi's direction from Mana's location. Where the first attack was borrowed from the rabbit taijutsu style, this pattern of movements was entirely stolen from Meiko's collection. A gentle step back, a handful of projectiles to keep the opponent at bay, each one carefully aimed, or were supposed to be. Unlike with the Rabbit Fu style of taijutsu, Mana was never as good at Meiko's long-range throwing style as the original user, meaning she had to compensate with the sheer number of the projectiles.</p><p>"This feels downright terrifying but at the same time… Amazing!" Mana grinned. "To think that something this remarkable still exists in this world. The world where I thought I had seen everything."</p><p>Explosive cards, cards with Lightning Release chakra sealed, cards with bursting shockwaves of compressed Wind Release chakra all let out at once. While Ayushi did not suffer any meaningful damage, he was kept at bay and even chose to keep his respectful distance until Mana ran out of tools. That was a legitimate danger – Ayushi could have quite literally taken every kunai in existence and kept walking on. He had every second of the remaining human history to spare. If Mana was to win the Game of Souls, she needed to start thinking about the long-term plan.</p><p>Ayushi stomped the ground with might only he could muster up. Shapeless, meaty blobs rose from the depths with the rotten, pale limbs attached to them still. The rising horror show took the brunt of Mana's proceeding attack while Ayushi smacked the rising blob with the back of his hand hard enough to pull it off the ground. The blob stretched out and detached from its earthly coils, spreading pus and pestilence in its flight. It was like Juhiru itself bled from its removal.</p><p>The man rose above, following the fleshy stump in its flight to the hazy skies. It was an improvised way to take it to the air while using it as improvised cover from Mana's blizzard of cards.</p><p>A crunchy soundwave spread out in a ring shape from behind the fleshy blob, Mana braced for impact for the speed in which Ayushi sent the thing crashing down surpassed anything she could have pulled from the hat given how engaged she was to keep the Guru at bay.</p><p>Pain. Everything went black but the pain did not let go of the magician. She was allowed neither death nor the luxury of passing out so with a hazy head she rose from underground. Something sizzled on her body, something that felt hot but the magician's chakra kicked in, augmenting her body to withstand the acidic effects of the Juhiru's secretion.</p><p>Ayushi's hand lit up bright blue, given how Mana was the girlfriend of a medical ninja for years, she'd have been a damned fool and deserved every inch of the beating she would have gotten if she did not recognize the Chakra Enhanced Strength technique of the medical ninja. It was similar to the chakra augmentation that focused on strength that most ninja used but, given how medical ninjutsu required flawless chakra control and concentration, the results of their signature enhancements were far greater and carried none of the drawbacks of mere chakra augmentation.</p><p>Instead of attacking Mana head-on, the Guru punched the air, sending a focused shockwave in Mana's general direction, surrounded by sonic booms and carrying enough power to cause a devastating blowback on the other side to where the legendary ninja launched his projectile.</p><p>The speed was out of this world. Mana braced for impact and it blew her back off her feet regardless. The strength would not have killed her even if she was not granted immortality by the Merchant but… Guru was right before, she felt every tiniest inch of the beating she was taking and every ounce of the pressure. If the Guru keeps toying with her, timing his attacks perfectly, attacking swiftly enough to prevent her defenses and pressuring the magician enough to prevent her from coming up with an effective plan… She may as well have called it quits.</p><p>"What's the matter?" Guru wondered. "Your illusions before made me believe it would be trickier to hit you."</p><p>Obviously, Mana would not waste successive uses of her Flower Petal Sanctuary on something she knew she could take. Sometimes it was better to get blown on her butt and smack her head against some twitching, lifeless limb that stuck out of the ground like a bush rather than lose that much chakra. Flower Petal Sanctuary demanded more and more chakra the more it was used in a brief period of time, something told Mana this encounter would not be one of the brief variety. She was best to make her petal uses count.</p><p>"Maybe I don't see any use in dodging lame attacks like that?" Mana taunted the man before doing the unexpected and using her Mystical Wings to elevate her body to full-out flight while she flipped over in mid-air for a spinning heel drop. Ayushi locked his arms around her heel before swinging her around and lobbing the kunoichi into the air.</p><p>Once again he punished the magician with a barrage of aerial shockwaves that she had no real chance of dodging in mid-air. A loud pop and a cloud of smoke alerted Ayushi that the magician chose to substitute with the arm of the blob he so recently pulled out from underground and lobbed at her rather than suffering ceaseless torture trapped in mid-air and constantly under siege by his shockwaves.</p><p>Something didn't feel right. He put on his Chakra Enhanced Strength which undoubtedly drained his chakra resources the longer he let it linger. Initially, it would not seem like much but, after a longer while, even a legendary ninja would feel some strain. On top of that, he only used that for long-range attacks, never to punch Mana with his enhanced strength directly. The magician found that odd. It was not that his shockwave attacks were not painful or effective just…</p><p>No. She knew exactly what Ayushi was doing because she wanted him to attack her physically. Her martial arts style was perfectly designed to counter exactly Ayushi's type of a fighter – slow but powerful. A slugger like him would have never landed a single blow, no matter how strong and fast he was. The only successes he may have seen would have come from when Mana switched to counterattacks on him and fell for a counter-counter attack.</p><p>All this strategizing about counters for counters… Taijutsu was craftier and trickier game than most gave it credit for. No wonder most taijutsu users were such thick logs, their specialty kept their brain power occupied to the fullest.</p><p>"I must admit, Mana-san, I had thought that you'd realize the pointlessness of dragging this out and submitted already," Ayushi said.</p><p>"What can I say, don't give me three years to prepare if you don't want me to give my best try." Mana dismissed the man's attempts at making her submit and surrender her soul.</p><p>If Ayushi would not engage her in close-range, Mana would just have to force him. She had to stick up close to him, make him block her attacks, give him no other chance but to swing those fists of his. With another aerial dash, the pinned down to the wall kunoichi soared above Ayushi and placed her hands downward. She rarely got the chance to use her Magical Twist Jutsu, a technique she had created as a child that was essentially just a strong, pressing gust of wind emitted under her from her palms.</p><p>As a child she thought she'd be involved in all sorts of aerial fights, given how she could float somewhat using the weak version of her current Mystical Wings Jutsu, given how it was one of her starting dozen of techniques she had mustered up right before graduating the Academy, Mana mastered it before the finals of the Chuunin Exams so that she could use it to its fullest extent without needing to speak its name or use any hand seals for it.</p><p>Ayushi braced for the rushing force. He did not look all too overwhelmed by it, apart from his bent knees to keep better balance and struggle against the air pressure that tried its lacking finest to press the legendary ninja to the ground and lay him flat. Utilizing the pressure she had put on her opponent, Mana landed behind Ayushi and set free a blinding barrage of kicks. Strengthening one's lower body came naturally when studying under the Ninja Rabbits. The fluffy badasses were nature's masters of kicks, leaps, dashes, and dropkicks.</p><p>Even the mighty and stout Ayushi was overwhelmed. This may have been the first time that Mana saw the man flinch in a short while and she intended to utilize that brief shine of success through the gloomy clouds. The magician switched her dominant leg and turned to the other side to blind her enemy with kicks. Even she felt impressed with the speed and might of her lower body attacks. Each kick she made drew might and balance from the ground beneath her while the attacking leg pushed at the enemy, transferring that strength as it traveled through Mana's body and mingled with her chakra that enhanced it a thousandfold.</p><p>Ayushi's defending hands lowered, both of them hung in an awkward angle suggesting them being broken, the man's jaw soon joined that pitiful state while the man's face swelled from excess blood building up in the testament to the beating he received. Mana may have overdone it a bit, she wanted for her opponent to attack her physically but at the moment he was in no condition to use those broken arms at all and even if his eyes could follow the blurry barrage of kicks coming at him before, given their busted state, he must have seen just stars and birds now.</p><p>For her coup de grâce, Mana pulled a decorated red card from her sleeve and almost shoved it into the face of her opponent. A devastating explosion covered Juhiru before sending it to a pause of grave silence. Mana slid from the blast zone, covering herself up with a block, the right sleeve of her magician's uniform rolled back and incinerated, exposing the dirty and tad burnt arm underneath, the left one was halfway detached from the blazer but functional.</p><p>Just for the sake of being sure, Mana decided not to rely on her sleeves anymore, given how her uniform had various gadgets and tools to help her flick cards out and switch between different decks, those tools may not have survived the blast intact.</p><p>Ayushi walked out from the blast unscathed. Well… He may have been scathed in the beginning but his wounds just covered back up in a blink. There was little to no dip in the man's chakra as well. Mana couldn't believe it, she had always considered Ayushi godly or demonic, depending on one's perspective, regenerative abilities to be entirely the result of some medical ninjutsu. Given how his chakra has barely taken a dip after so many consecutive regenerations – it may just have been genetic.</p><p>"You have grown into such a fine kunoichi, Mana. I am proud. If that was why you did not wish to surrender before – to show me the strength you have acquired and the growth you've gone through, rest assured, that is acknowledged." Ayushi cracked his neck and his knuckles to shake off the decades-old rust on his combat abilities that he meant to drop. "However, do not become deluded and think that you can simply beat me into submitting. I may be the one person in this world more devoted to your ninja way than you are. To think that way is to show disrespect to my own skills and growth."</p><p>The glow around his arms was now gone. Ayushi had turned off his Chakra Enhanced Strength without giving it a proper shot. The man must have considered Mana's evasive skills from up close to be more dangerous than to even give this manner of attack at least one go.</p><p>If this round one was won by Mana, by a hair's length, why did it feel like she was being pushed back and her back felt like it was being drilled into the figurative wall behind her? If Ayushi truly meant to not just start trying but get serious, Mana was going to get pinned down soon and she needed a plan of overcoming his regeneration. Even if she did, the Merchant's slower and less reliable regeneration would prevent him from taking lethal damage anyway…</p><p>Even in her wildest dreams throughout these past three years, the magician didn't consider being in such a pinch against Ayushi.</p>
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<a name="section0578"><h2>578. Death And Rebirth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I did not originally intend on causing you this much pain, Mana-san, but your resistance has forced my hand. I will now come at you with my full intent on taking you down and I apologize for the consequences up front." Ayushi declared. His face turned grim and serious as if to emphasize the weight of his declaration.</p><p>The Guru stretched his body out, flexing out his tattooed body and gaining a decent amount of bulk in the process while he strained his bodily systems to work with much vaster amounts of chakra than he usually needed to. The man placed his hands in a position one would have taken before a prayer. While streams of chakra drove out through Ayushi's pores and rotated into solid spheres just outside the man's body, floating like miniature satellites, positioned from the left shoulder to the right.</p><p>"Rasengan Riot!" Ayushi growled through his teeth while the spheres obtained an azure, polished glow and stabilized in size.</p><p>The Guru wasted no time employing his new technique, within an instant after its completion, one of the spiraling spheres drove off into the ground behind and underneath Ayushi's feet. The resulting blast sent the legendary medical ninja shooting forward. While Mana had no chance tracking the not just superhuman but super-shinobi speed of Ayushi, she could have identified the telltale signs of a devastating kick before Ayushi's forms blurred.</p><p>Mana's hands moved fast enough for her to be proud of her, she no longer had the comfort of relying on gadgets to pull out different cards and decks and she had no more luxury of precision switching but one functionality must have remained the same – violent release. Using the tossing motion with her right and whatever remained of the damaged gadget in her tattered sleeve with her left, the magician sent entire decks of random cards floating and scattering at Ayushi just when the monk signed the resolution of charging at the kunoichi but before he truly executed his movement.</p><p>"Mere child, playing with toys!" Ayushi taunted Mana as he powered through the Lightning Release crackles, the sleeping gas, the tear gas, the blinding flashes of light, fire and water alike. Ayushi's devastating kick persevered but Mana's obstacle had served its purpose. It distracted the Guru so that he did not notice his opponent leaving his sight.</p><p>It was dangerous approaching the man with eight of these Rasengan still floating around him. Mana had no doubts that he had utter control of when and how they left his "orbit", so to speak, if she tried coming at him from the back, he'd just send one after her and it would be troublesome. More likely than not, the jutsu was mighty but not immediately lethal. If Ayushi truly intended to wear on Mana's willpower, he'd bust her ribcage, break her limbs but keep her alive, so that the Merchant did not heal her and reset his progress.</p><p>For the mental trauma to be at its maximum efficiency, one needed to keep their opponent suffering for as long as possible. This was perhaps the most violent and twisted competition for world peace in existence, all of the irony acknowledged.</p><p>Mana had no precision in her cards anymore, with the sleeves of her uniform busted and the gadgets bent out of shape, releasing all of her decks was a good choice but now she was missing a useful asset in her arsenal. Somehow, she would have to keep moving forward and improvise. These Rasengan…</p><p>Mana's hands worked at hand seals, she could feel the fatigue building up, the searing sensation in her wrists that suggested that it may have been a good idea to stop relying on precise arm movements for a short while. That would have been the sound decision but no one has ever accused Mana of being that.</p><p>"Naïve!" another Rasengan slammed against the ground, sending Ayushi flying the opposite direction. What first seemed like an opening turned into doors slammed into Mana's face within an instant. Before the magician could complete the final hand seal, Ayushi slammed his body into the magician with a shoulder slam and grabbed her arm, using Mana's faltered balance, the Guru swung the magician over his shoulder, instead of driving her into the ground, however, he kicked her at the center of the exposed back, sending Mana flying.</p><p>Something was wrong… The feeling of weightlessness, shifted into a sharp, overwhelming sensation as if a knife had been put in between two of her spinal cords and twisted. Mana writhed, ignoring the taste of blood in her mouth and trying to power through the sense of vulnerability and creeping death. Her entire body felt numb… God. Could she even move after that last blow? Ignoring the blurry vision, the young woman glared at her bloody hand, smeared with red after wiping her lips felt numbness all over. At least she could still move. Full-body paralysis would have been the worst case scenario at that moment.</p><p>Ayushi roared, his remaining Rasengan bombarded the area where Mana laid knocked down flat, surrounded by the hazy shrouds as she had flown a considerable distance. His aim was less than precise but when he carried such dominating power, aim was more of a recommendation. A sledgehammer could have unlocked the door in its own ways, just as a key could have.</p><p>"That's the second time that you use your flower petal escape technique. It must feel tiring, why go through this struggle? Yours is the destiny of giving birth to a peaceful world! Why do you defy that when that's all you've ever wanted?" Ayushi spoke. Previously the kunoichi would have liked him to lash out, she wanted an excuse to hurt him for what he did to her father but… Now, after taking this many hits, she kind of preferred him to talk for at least a little while.</p><p>He counted on her running away, that was what Mana always did while slipping under the illusion of Flower Petal Sanctuary, create an illusionary replica of herself and then, utilizing the illusionary invisibility of her real body to anyone affected by her genjutsu, she ran, repositioned or planned out the next steps. That was what Ayushi thought she'd do now. He thought she was an open book, after reading that she'd use Flower Petal Sanctuary to escape his Rasengan Riot attack, he thought himself invincible.</p><p>A spinning elbow strike from Mana, manifesting right up in Ayushi's face must have proven him something else, resonating torment made the kunoichi scream out as her elbow hit what seemed like an impenetrable brick wall. Ayushi had so much chakra to waste on augmentations that his body neither moved nor flinched even the tiniest bit after a strike that carried all of Mana's inner scorn for her father's pain.</p><p>Everything went black. Overpowering and confusing Mana's perception, the white turned to silver while voices familiar to her spoke gibberish all around, running one over another in a cacophony that Mana wanted to run away from, at first. The more she stayed in this majestic and surreal surrounding, the more she wanted to stay. A deafening and petrifying howl brought her back to life.</p><p>Mana was on her knees, Ayushi stood where he was before he had knocked her back, his foot raised in the air and frozen in that position. A kick. It was a kick that sent Mana sliding back on her knees and left a trail of blood smeared across the rustling and waving field of fingers and hands. Mana's exposed legs were covered with small scratches from where the nails of those arms had scratched her up in her unfortunate slide down on her knees back. Only after the magician returned to the cruel reality she was in did Ayushi place his foot down, breathed out and began walking up to her.</p><p>The violence behind Ayushi's intent exploded out of nowhere, the Guru took a soaring leap into the air and proceeded down with a divekick. Mana tried raising her hands up to resist but her legs were trashed and her hands filled like they were comprised entirely out of lead inside a bag of skin. There was no pain, for whatever reason, when Ayushi stomped her down and then used that same leg to throw Mana up and over.</p><p>Air brushed against the magician's cheeks, she could feel a maddening presence around her, deep down she knew that she flew high enough to leave the protection of the shroud but her mind was wandering too far away for anything to come out of that realization. It took the kunoichi a good handful of seconds to realize that the second interval of wind rustling her hair and scrappy clothes was a mere application of the principle that the thing which soars must also come down.</p><p>It would not be the landing that finished the young woman off. Mana was not sure if it was the strike itself or her body busting through the Merchant of Souls, flying at it in breakneck velocity, but something killed her for sure. And just like clockwork, she rose back up to see the Merchant's busted pieces floating around, maintained in relative harmony by a supernatural force, that same force that stuck the epic-size colossus back together.</p><p>"It is easy to dismiss death when you have never once experienced it. I assure you, death is no child's play. Even the staunchest wills break after experiencing it once or twice…" Ayushi spoke with grim bitterness to his voice. He did not enjoy scratching the first line on his side of the scoreboard but he did what he had to.</p><p>"Dismiss?" Mana replied with life, newly breathed into her. She did not waste too much time before rushing off at Ayushi and using her drastically buffed up lower body to dash at speeds she had never even dreamed of being capable of before. All while her hands worked their own little sparks of magic.</p><p>"Fire Style: Smak's Claw!" she chanted out while letting out all of the air she had breathed in prior to the dash, all infused with Fire Release chakra. With a slap of her hand, the shapeless mass of flames transformed into three, sharp and elongated streaks of flames so compressed that its tongues were actually sharp enough to cut.</p><p>Ayushi coughed out blood and cried out in pain, Mana's technique was as dangerous as a triple sword drawing slash but her jutsu fit her arsenal perfectly since it also instantly cauterized every wound it created due to sheer heat of the cuts. While it would not have mattered in the long run, given how Ayushi would regenerate any, even the most irrelevant damage that the Merchant of Souls would not treat, for what he did to her father and all the other people that fell for his drug scam, or those he experimented on, or those he had kidnapped and stacked in a pile nearby, he had to suffer.</p><p>Abiding by Meiko's taijutsu lessons, she preserved the force of the momentum and turned her body around after the smack, repurposing that force into a knife-edge chop at the front of Ayushi's neck, straight into his Adam's apple. The magician had wished that Ayushi somehow preserved the color of his eyes just so she could see them blank out in pain. Kicks again, as many and as fast as she could. The Merchant paid her with new life, she would have been wise to utilize all that stamina and life force she's been sold for bargaining with her soul.</p><p>The last kick of the fold was a stiff rising kick to the chin. It went in so deep and hard that Mana actually saw Ayushi's jaw flatten at the lower end. That much pent up force sent the man flying a good fifty meters, a long shot from the flight that the Guru had granted Mana before extinguishing her life for the first time but just enough to keep him awake through her blazing new resolve in life.</p><p>Mana leaned her body back, throwing her palms back before shooting both of them out, flickering with built up Lightning Release chakra. A surge of Magician's Touch passed down her body, much shorter than she's ever used it but in its brevity, it was given enough strength to cause the entirety of its damage in a blink. The violent electric shock sent Ayushi flying backward.</p><p>Maybe the man had thought that he was given time to recover but, whatever the case of his thoughts was, the metallic sound of steel wire reeling about tipped the man to a different case entirely. With a strong yank on steel wire loops wrapped around the man during their close range encounter, even employing the magician's teeth, pulling hard enough for the wire to cut into her gums and her fingers, Mana rolled Ayushi back at her like a yo-yo and jumped into the air to meet him with a crushing chop at his temple.</p><p>The Guru's face smashed into the dirt first, leaving the rest of his body slightly lagging behind and causing immense strain of the man's neck having to maintain that awkward position. Without mercy, Mana finished whatever few breaths of vigor she had left in her with a thoughtless combination of strikes and kicks at the half-fallen opponent before finishing it with a high heel stomp at the back of Guru's head and stumbling back without an ounce of breath.</p><p>It was dangerous to invest this much into the offense. Had Ayushi used Substitution or any different defensive jutsu anywhere in the middle of that furious and vengeful combo, he'd have surely caught Mana open and killed her again. Whether it was because he did not think much of Mana's advance, or because he thought it to be longer and end in something more... Destructive… Ayushi had kept his defensive measures to himself and remained down on his face for a surprising length, for him at least.</p><p>"Is this your strategy?" there it was… His inevitable rise. "To throw as many blows at me as possible. Blows that aren't meant to finish me off outright, just to torture me. Then, when you tire, go through rebirth to refuel your vengeance?"</p><p>"You said that I dismiss the meaning of death," Mana growled back at the rising titan. "It drove me nearly past the line again, I admit. Everything I do is because I fear death every second. Not necessarily my own, but there may not be a person alive that thinks of death more than I do."</p><p>Who knew? Maybe Ayushi was right attempting to convince Mana to spare herself the torment and surrender. Everything here was going against her: she was the only one bleeding chakra with every offensive or defensive assault. Soon enough she'd be dying again and again from the lightest touch because she'll have nothing to spare on augmentations or illusions to aid her escape. Ayushi regenerated every ounce of damage he took, that was enough to prevent anything but an absolute declaration of murder from Mana's part – instant death which she was hesitant to grant.</p><p>Even now…</p><p>Ayushi laughed. Truly. Hilarity itself oozed from his eyes as if he had just looked in the face of total absurd. The man looked down at his own hands as if examining them for blood that could not have been there and then looked back at Mana.</p><p>"Even when playing the Game of Souls, you haven't killed me once. I was hesitant to draw the conclusions at first, thought maybe you could not go that far with your lacking experience and lesser skill but… That last attack made me realize – you could have killed me with ease. Angle the static high kick differently to snap my neck, position the chop further to the back of my head and crack my skull while scrambling the brain at the same time… At any point, you could have used those flashy swords of yours as well to penetrate the necessary brain centers. You know where they are, don't you?" he revealed the secret of what amused him so much.</p><p>"You must know every vital point in one's body to avoid hitting them." Mana closed her eyes. She had not faced humiliation and ridicule for what she'd believed in since the Ninja Academy, much less from a man who used to be as exalted as Guru Ayushi.</p><p>"That's remarkable. You've gone down your own path much further to where I can barely see your silhouette anymore." Ayushi wiped his face with the back of his fist, still amused. "May I ask why though? Do you, perhaps, have false hopes of capturing me alive still? Me – an S-Rank medical ninja, Senju Ayushi?"</p><p>"S-Rank medical ninja…" Mana muttered in response. "You said it, not me. The rank of your skill in medical ninjutsu indeed goes above and beyond the S-Rank. If such rank existed, you'd certainly be described as an S+ Rank medical ninja. However, you aren't an S-Rank ninja, are you? Your combat skill can't be higher than A-Rank for you to have only killed me once yet. It confused me when you refused to approach me with the Chakra Enhanced Strength, now I've figured out why."</p><p>Ayushi smirked. He nodded like a madman, what started as a gentle expression of agreement turned into an almost violent head jerk.</p><p>"You are right and wrong at the same time. My combat skill is categorized as S-Rank too, but only due to a single skill that I possess. What I have shown you up until now is my true strength, I cannot deny that or lie that I have been holding back, however, I have not used the jutsu that is my very soul." Ayushi spread his arms out.</p><p>"Your soul? Don't tell me you've…" Mana found herself at a loss for words.</p><p>"Well… No. I cannot manipulate the human soul. I've tried to learn that subject but I have not found a way of doing that besides possessing the Rinnegan or using something like the Merchant of Souls. The skill that I am talking of is something I have accomplished as an inspiration, overcome by the muse of researching about the human soul and its value. It is a Kekkei Tota technique, a mixture of elements with their most destructive tendencies brought to the forefront until the mix becomes destruction itself, I named it after the subject that inspired it, even if it has little to do with the human soul – the Soul Release." Ayushi jerked his head aside, overflowing with confidence.</p>
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<a name="section0579"><h2>579. No Soul Left</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ayushi's chakra, usually brimming with swampy greens, decorated with more emerald shade of crystal stars all over, turned to shiny amethyst on sight. What was more, the legendary ninja was manifesting the entire molding of his chakra, the entire circulation system outside his body, like an aura, to where it was visible to the naked eye. Mana was so used to sensing chakra that it took her a couple of blinks to notice that Ayushi had turned his chakra visible.</p><p>That was meant to be quite a feat. Even the deadliest, most complicated and sung of techniques could only briefly turn chakra visible or form it outside one's body. Manipulating water was one thing, manifesting Water Release chakra as it turned to water and doing so outside the body where the process was supposed to happen was just showing off.</p><p>It did not come easy to the man, Guru hunched and bent his knees, pushing them to the side as his body slumped forward. Veins littered him like a network of shadows. His muscles tensed up like he was taxing them to their limit and they were about to burst.</p><p>"You sly weasel, you…" Ayushi murmured. Despite his somewhat lacking in volume manner of speech, due to the threatening predicament she was in, Mana could hear it all just fine. "Soul Release is not something I use against opponents I respect or fear. The build-up is too slow, the techniques can still be dealt with and… Most importantly, as per its namesake, it feels like shaving my own soul every time I use it. No. Soul Release is usually reserved for fools who jump above their weight class. Not like you are right now, but arrogant idiots that need to be put in their place."</p><p>If this manner of ninjutsu was this taxing on the user, if it devastated Ayushi's body this much, the true destructive power of the technique would have been a marvel to those that marveled destruction. The hottest flames were always ones that burnt the user too, the deadliest whirlpools were those that threatened to drown the user when he unleashed them. This was not the matter of unskilled use, it was the case purely when speaking of experienced users that respected and feared the force of nature type of their own abilities.</p><p>Ayushi forced his arm up, bent his palm at the position of a lion's paw while he used his other hand to hold his own palm from shaking.</p><p>"Soul Release: Homing Skull Blast!" he grunted out while jets of his intense Soul Release aura circulated around the center of his extended palm and formed an imperfect skull that radiated Soul Release chakra of its own around it of far looser concentration than the one Ayushi built it out of.</p><p>Ayushi emitted a battle shout while his skull, covered with Soul Release flamed darted off at Mana at around the speed matching Ayushi's punches from earlier. The speed of the jutsu confused the magician as she had expected the dreaded Soul Release to be far faster. With grace and care, Mana moved aside with perfect timing, feeling like she had enough time to observe the skull coming at her and examine Soul Release's properties from a far closer range after the projectile had left its master's hands.</p><p>The skull blitzed onward, Mana stayed on her toes, figuring that the skull would behave erratic and do something troublesome like home in on her, as the name of the jutsu suggested, oddly enough, it just moved onward, splitting the shroud wherever it traveled. Ayushi grunted once more, gesturing his active hand with two fingers pointing down. As instructed by its master, the skull took a sudden dive down.</p><p>A twister of cinders and ashes rose from where the skull had hit the lifeless limbs scattered across the Juhiru dimension. Mana's eyes twitched a pair of times. That skull was light-years away from hitting her but… What Ayushi had created was effectively a one-hundred-percent lethality rate triple mixture of elements. A technique so destructive in its fundamental nature must have required mastery of Fire and Lightning Releases. Who knew what the third nature was...</p><p>Now Mana understood better what Ayushi had told her earlier. An arrogant fool would have attempted to block this jutsu or to swat it aside. Such a meager display would have inspired buckets of false confidence and the poor soul attempting to defend from the Soul Release would have found themselves disintegrated to ash upon mere contact.</p><p>"Were you perhaps disappointed by this?" Ayushi panted. The Soul Release aura still circulated around his body but nowhere near with the same intensity as before. The Guru was saving chakra and stamina in his downtime. May have been smart…</p><p>"Are you kidding? All of this… The Juhiru dimension, the Merchant of Souls totem, Soul Release… It's something I would have only read about in tales of old veterans and dismissed it as lies, just like the rest of their likely false stories. Seeing these remarkable gems of the life I thought I had figured out. It's all so exciting!" Mana clenched her frail fists and raised them to their face. "The irony doesn't escape me but your jutsu, that was meant to destroy everything it touched, made me want to live on more than ever before. Just so I could see what else might be hidden out there."</p><p>Ayushi bit his own cheek on the inside of his mouth. Was that conflict still simmering inside the man? Whatever flame lit up within the once brilliant mind of the Guru, died down just as fast. Ayushi slumped down and began charging his Soul Release again. The aura of his unique and mixed chakra nature intensified and erupted in violent outbursts.</p><p>Someone, at some point, must have tried intercepting the Soul Release. The weakness of the charge-up time was too obvious and yet… Ayushi was still alive. Mana took flight into the air, flipped over her front and dived down with a driving Spear Kick. Something was wrong, her foot went nowhere near the man and the Soul Release aura had stopped her like a layer of jelly. A force capable of stopping anything pushing through, absolute in its resistance and its destructiveness.</p><p>Mana's right leg began splintering, glowing red cracks covered her from foot to thigh, extending higher up until it went up to her neck and began decorating her face. Another shockwave emanating naturally from the Soul Release user blasted Mana into a shower of cinders. Cinders that turned to flower petals that rushed back to where the magician stood a moment ago and revealed the real Mana to have never left her position.</p><p>She could not help herself – she had to at least try exploiting a weakness when she saw one, even if it was deceptive. It turned out that the aura of Soul Release was just as devastating as the jutsu is created. That made closing in on a Soul Release user a very bad idea. Combined with Ayushi being a little tease… It was too grand an idea to have ever worked.</p><p>"Soul Release: Homing Skull Blast!" Ayushi croaked while another burning skull shape formed in his extended palm. While the limb trembled with extreme pressure, the man moved his other arm away, leaving his tired palm unsupported while the other palm moved to his side.</p><p>Mana moved aside, letting the skull whizz just past her. A disgusting tearing sound followed by a burning sensation made the magician blank out for a moment. Gasping in surprise, she stumbled aside and looked at the skull that had moved on past to the vast expanses of Juhiru, once again splitting the mysterious shrouds as if they were just common water vapor that required a stronger huff to disperse.</p><p>She dodged that. She absolutely dodged it! Then how… Even more – it touched the real her. Fear lit up in Mana heart as she wondered for the few passing moments if that was it. If she'd die again just like that.</p><p>"Heh, you dodged it… Good. I'd hate you to disintegrate just like that." Ayushi huffed while throwing his winded up palm out up front and unleashing a second skull. This time Mana kicked off the ground and leaped up as high as she could. Her tattering uniform rustled with an irritating buzz to the shuffling cloth. It distracted her thinking. Mana was too overwhelmed to even check on the wound she had just suffered. Merchant appeared to be in no rush to fix it, meaning it was not fatal but…</p><p>It felt like she was dragged over pavement naked while sixteen horses dragged her for a week straight, the feeling comprised in a blink of a moment. The pain numbed as seconds went past but… Could the destructive properties of Soul Release be so intense that they damaged an opponent even if they dodged unless they dodged the technique by a whole mile?</p><p>Ayushi's arms moved like an automaton. Shooting and winding up for more skulls. Mana had never been thankful for her naïve childish self, thinking that one day she could fly freely through the sky and inventing a floating jutsu that she eventually realized her dreams with. Wind currents gathered beneath Mana and kept her up, more importantly, they kept the magician moving around Ayushi's skulls. She managed to move around in sufficient distance to avoid any damage. It was easier to pull off in the air where she had a whole another dimension to employ.</p><p>The skulls were tricky. They were so deceitful not only because of their absolute lethality and excruciating reward of dodging them, they were nasty because of how slow they were. Fighting was always a timing, rhythm game. Two skilled martial artists could have stood in front of one another and danced at their top speeds for days on end until one of them got exhausted and skipped the fatal blow. The end to the fighting usually came much earlier than that, however, it was because the fighters were skilled enough to toy with the rhythm, with the sense of the enemy's timing.</p><p>Ayushi was not messing with Mana's timing but his techniques had that sort of effect by accident, purely because of how they were put together and what they were made of.</p><p>He was going mad with the skulls, drowning out the entire sky until it was nothing but blackness littered with violet dots. Breathing became difficult, the pace intensified with time. Almost as if the shaving of his soul reminded Ayushi of who he once was, woke him up more and more. Scratches and burns became the new routine. Mana had no time to wince or whine, she had to keep on moving because if even one of those skulls hit her, as much as actually grazed her, the result would have been complete disintegration.</p><p>A blaring roar sent resonating shockwaves, strong enough to shock Mana and knock her out of the sky. The magician fell down like a goose skewered with an arrow. She could barely remember the slam into the ground. Due to what it was made of, it felt like having the shit punched out of her even if the arms barely ever moved.</p><p>"What was that?" Mana grunted while standing up. She had to stand up, downtime lying on her face gave Ayushi more time to gather his strength and focus.</p><p>"Do you think the abominations residing in this realm are immune to my Soul Release? They've been observing us for quite some time now, like people looking at ants. Unlike the ants, I have a way of hurting them. As long as it is made of matter, Soul Release will be their antimatter." Ayushi huffed, his hands hung heavily beside him as the man looked void of any strength left. The Soul Release aura around him was gone. Mana scurried back on her feet and stumbled at the man like mad. On her way there, she grabbed a steel-tipped card stuck in one of the lifeless arms rustling like spring grass.</p><p>Ayushi's hands gleamed violet before Mana could close the distance. She was too slow! With a roar, Ayushi decked Mana straight in the face with all of his Soul Release imbued might. The next thing Mana knew, she was gasping on her knees, black again. She was on her back. Cinders of what used to be her just seconds earlier floated about in a cloud. With a decimating barrage of blows, Ayushi extinguished life after life of Mana's each with a single blow until not a single ray of violet gleamed from his body. Until his body looked heavy enough to make him collapse on top of her.</p><p>"It's over, Mana… I don't want to see you go mad after you've experienced a thousand deaths in one day. That's enough…" the Guru leaned in on the whimpering magician and wiped a tear off of her face that Mana did not even know was going down her cheeks. He was right… Her body was breaking down, she could barely even form a solid thought. Every time she tried thinking straight, a ringing sensation of shattering glass somewhere in her deeper consciousness distracted her.</p><p>Mana's hand reached out. Crackling with Lightning Release chakra it touched Ayushi's forehead, frying his mind with a jolt of Magician's Touch. The man grunted out, trying to reserve all the dignity he could but ending up in a mad roll back as he gurgled and screamed for his sanity. Mana picked herself off the ground. She thought that after dying a couple of times she'd stop being afraid of death but… Her body quivered like a frail leaf. A leaf that could have been taken off of the branch and thrown to the dirt with any upcoming gust of wind.</p><p>The only thing giving Mana solace was that Guru Ayushi was in not too much better condition. After using Soul Release his body was still worn out as it was supposed to. His regeneration healed his injuries, not so much the innate fatigue and chakra loss that hit him after shaving at his own soul to perform his flashiest trick. Even the infinite resources of Guru Ayushi had a wall they could have hit.</p><p>"Resourceful…" he uttered. "You'd like me to kill myself then? Reset my body, I suppose."</p><p>Mana did not speak. She barely had a word in her to speak but she figured that those few words she had the strength left to say were better left for the finishing moments. The vision was blurry, whenever she tried forming concrete sentences out of the fragments of her shattered mind, nothing came out. Before she blasted Ayushi off of herself, she was just about ready to beg the man so that he did not shatter her into any more pieces. The Merchant brought back her body when he healed her but something else entirely, a piece integral to Mana's essence yet so difficult to define remained lost forever.</p><p>"You think it was Soul Release that has carried me through endless wars? Please… Something so draining, so uncivilized. You've never even been to a real war, have you, Mana-san? That's where the two of us are different. That was what broke me in the beginning, what forced me to subscribe to the life of a Guru and declare using my abilities for good as pointless. In the war, the only way to survive is to let the war sustain itself, instead of feeding off of you." Ayushi looked to have dropped down on his knees. Through struggle, he managed to push his knees off the ground though and only left his palms caressing the dead hands of the Juhiru dimension's floor.</p><p>The ground beneath Mana's feet shifted, fissures began opening up but they were not too deep, the magician was more shocked by the fact that in his worn out state Guru Ayushi would attempt such a weak technique rather than troubled by anything this tiny quake had caused. It was only when streaming aurora of indigo and emerald green burst forth from the fissures that Mana noticed the matching emerald glow around Ayushi's hands. The glow that was much brighter and had hints of indigo mixed in to be the painfully familiar shade of the Mystical Palm Jutsu.</p><p>The magician turned back to where the shine ultimately head to. Her vision was just not serving Mana right, the whole world remained shaky even when the actual quakes had halted and every passing moment Mana felt like she'd throw up in just a moment. It was not the fact that Ayushi had reanimated the not even dead yet hostages he had captured and commanded his own twisted will through their subconscious bodies, using them all as puppets that pained Mana. Nor was it the rising body pile of people she could under no circumstances hurt, given how they were her reason for fighting on this long, her need for winning the Game of Souls.</p><p>It was that Ayushi's jutsu was so familiar to the Guru that he did not even need to utter its name or weave any hand seals to use it. If Ayushi's previous declaration held true, he used this jutsu only in the most maddening wars and only to push through another day of senseless fighting, sending a little bit of war right back at it.</p><p>"Do not be mistaken for a moment, Mana-san. I did not lie when I told you that these people were alive. I did not bring them back to life, the only jutsu capable of such a thing demand too high a cost that ultimately makes the goal pointless. I merely imposed some of my own will to these people. They were senseless tools under my command, able to feel pain but unable to act on it themselves." Ayushi rose from his stumble slowly.</p><p>"You would use such a jutsu, you monster?" Mana screamed out.</p><p>"Of course, normally, I would use it only on dead bodies. Bodies without a will of their own and not just unconscious ones. This breaks every moral norm I used to foster as a medical ninja but… To win the Game of Souls, to create the Ultimate Honda and ensure the world peace itself, yes, yes I would." Ayushi yelled back with matching passion to that of Mana's own halfway to insanesville mind.</p><p>"We both know that I could kill you over and over and over again using Soul Release but it would only continue to torment you to no end. You'd go insane, too far gone to where you can even surrender this game. Using a dirty ace such as this is the only way to ensure my goal!" Ayushi declared.</p>
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<a name="section0580"><h2>580. Reality No Nightmare Compares To</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The situation has turned the grimmest it's ever been in this scuffle and Ayushi was not even using what was essentially an antimatter element against her. The bodies that Ayushi had woken up were not just walking up unharmed. Whatever sick will he had imposed on them was leaving burns on them that formed open cracks, similar to the fissures that the man had created earlier. The signature mixture of the northern lights' shade glittered through the cracks in the flesh of the employed bodies.</p><p>It was not like Mana could have fought back even in the beginning. Ayushi was humoring her if anything, this entire time. Her chance to win this had passed with her refusal to kill the man she's been preparing mentally and physically to kill for over three years. These people were under Ayushi's control, but they experienced every moment of what was happening, to what extent it was impossible to tell, they were unconscious and their bodies were mere vessels to Ayushi's will. If they were lucky – everything would have felt hazy, like a bad dream.</p><p>The nightmare was all Mana's however. The magician could not stop telling herself that she could under no circumstances hurt any of these people. They were not affected by the Game of Souls, they were already brittle and slowly withering away as things were, a stronger hit could have had a similar effect to the direct hit of the Soul Release for all that the young kunoichi knew.</p><p>Mana began creeping back, one leg at a time, she kept ahead of the shuffling pile of bodies that had risen to make Ayushi's will come true. Every move felt like a tremendous feat of strength. Her own body barely listened to her and chose to rather shake and quiver. Flashes of what Mana had once seen in the labs of Ayushi's cult, mixed in with the various repulsive images she had witnessed today all kept distracting the magician from what happening here and now. Images of Ayushi standing over her with his fists brimming with Soul Release… The punches just kept landing and landing… That could not have kept going on… No more.</p><p>The controlled villagers surrounded Mana, more and more bodies began appearing from the shroud as the magician had underestimated the sheer number of the people she was fighting for. The people that would right now much rather see her dead. Not because of their own will but because Ayushi told them to keep beating and stomping her until she'd finally give in.</p><p>A sharp thud at the back of her knee sent Mana to one knee. She had forgotten that some if not most of these people were ninja. With Ayushi's chakra flowing through their suppressed and unconscious bodies they all felt the same – like beacons and extensions of Ayushi's own life essence. A firm grip pressed against Mana's neck from behind while the others hurried. A rough punch made everything go black. Ayushi standing on top of her again… Soul Release burning all over his body. The man's arms raised to smash Mana into the ground…</p><p>The magician opened her eyes, this may have been the only time in recorded human history that anyone had felt glad to have woken up surrounded by a corrupted mob doing their best job at trying to kill her. Clawing, tearing, punching, stomping… All of it felt like tickling feathers compared to Ayushi's ruthless brutality before. This fear… This pain would be the fate of anyone that resisted Ayushi and his new regime of forced world peace.</p><p>A nasty snap made Mana scream out, someone had grabbed her arm and started pulling it with an attempt to pull it apart. It had enough strength to dislocate it and very nearly remove it from the young woman's shoulder. The hits weren't what these people intended. They felt restrained. As if the hosts were struggling against what they were doing. Pulling punches and yet… If this would be Mana's fate for the upcoming eternity, did it matter? This would be all that there was to the remainder of her life if she was to keep fighting – she could not hurt these people, she did not want that and had sworn against it.</p><p>"Stop!" Ayushi demanded with an authoritative tone. The bodies all picked Mana up and lifted her over their heads. A breeze of air had quashed the repugnant stench of her own blood as well as the rotten, slowly singing flesh of the horror show Ayushi had employed to finish wrecking Mana's willpower. The magician screamed out in pain when the bodies hurled her closer to Ayushi.</p><p>"It hurts me to do this, you know it does. Then why? Why are you not giving up!?" Ayushi shouted out in Mana's face, grabbing her by the few adamant strands of her uniform that still remained intact, dirtied, burnt up and bloodied.</p><p>A coppery taste all too familiar as of late and a sensation of howling brought Mana back after a sense-robbing blow to her ribs. Holding her by her hair, Ayushi kneed Mana in the face and let her crumble down afterward. The corrupted bodies kept their watch, ready to step in and keep doing the deed if need be. Mana quivered laying down in a fetal position, she had no goals, nothing going through her shattered mind but one thing – keep surviving, somehow just keep pushing through. She'd rather face the upcoming eternity of torment clinging to a string of hair representing her fleeting next life than die and face that emptiness again, even if just for a fraction of a second before the Merchant brought her back.</p><p>"Just know that it will take some time after you lose for the totem to seal your soul. Whatever state you leave yourself in, caused solely out of your own persistence, you will linger in that state for a good handful of minutes while the last fragments of your soul leave your body." Ayushi grumbled. He was confused, unsure of what he should do. Multiple times the man had approached Mana and lifted his foot up, appearing determined to smash her head into a bloody stain but then he lowered his leg and withdrew every single time.</p><p>"I can fade away peacefully…" Mana closed her eyes, whimpering with a tone about as pathetic as her state. She did not need to see Ayushi's reaction to her words knowing that he'd be listening. "When I rushed to find you, I knew somewhere deep down that what I was feeling was wrong. Vengeance, brutality, all of those things alien to me I've clung to these last few years because I was afraid of myself in a way. After all, how could just being me be good when I was the one to make you like this. You've turned from the legendary Guru to just Ayushi after being subjected to my nindo."</p><p>"Hardly seems like a peaceful surrender." Ayushi sat down on his bottom, helping Mana sit up too just so the two could share their final moments eye to eye. At least in his madness, the man had retained the basic humanity to lead his opponent out into oblivion himself.</p><p>"That's not what pacified me. It's all of this…" Mana tried raising her battered arms to gesture at the nightmarish sights around them. Needless to say, had she had the strength needed to do that, maybe she'd have blocked some of the hits stomping the lights out of her before. "This is not something that my ideals have given birth to. There's nothing noble or good in your intentions, no matter what you tell yourself. Your nindo and mine are polar opposites so I have no qualms failing and fading away. I won't disappear knowing that my ideals are used to subjugate the world, I will fade into oblivion because a madman took my soul away."</p><p>"No!" Ayushi roared out, the man jumped to his feet and kicked Mana straight at the chin, sending her flying across the field and back into the arms of the corrupted villagers that crumbled under the force falling onto their collective heads.</p><p>"Mo-mmy!" a boisterous roar emanated throughout Juhiru, Honda's detached head summoning the strength to defy the laws of the reality he inhibited and speak despite only being a detached head without a chest cavity to help him control the air entering and leaving his remains.</p><p>Ayushi froze and looked at the detached head rolling around, brimming with the polar glow he had provided it. Likely the source behind Honda's sudden revitalization.</p><p>As the corrupted bodies crumbled all around Mana, the magician saw that the man that once was a respected and wise Guru realized the extent of his legacy. In the sight of a toddler taken from his parents in his name and experimented on. In the sight of a young woman, battered, bruised and murdered multiple times just so he could strip her body of her soul and use it the way he saw it more fit. Just as Mana had thought, Ayushi realized that there was no scenario where his actions would have led to anything positive.</p><p>In some cases, the ends may have justified the means but… There were some means that were too dark to even lead to worthy ends.</p><p>"Where's mo-mmmyyyy!?" Honda bellowed with the voice that thundered in volume but cried in tone.</p><p>"If you make Honda even more miserable by prolonging his torment, the Ninja World won't just submit to you. They will fight until the bitter end regardless and, in the end, you will be overseeing world peace alone from a mountain of corpses, accompanied by your ultimate weapon – the edge you've abandoned your humanity to step over. The Great Ninja Countries would rather lose and be reduced to charring fields than be under your, or anyone else's control, it goes beyond just the Will of Fire, it's the Will of Hope we all share as ninja." Mana spoke even though drawing breath alone made her chest burn.</p><p>Regardless of personal cost and pain, she needed to say what needed to be said. Those words may just have been her last and that had to mean something. In these final moments, Mana recalled the times when she stood in front of an insurmountable wall and just kept bashing her head against it, finally managing to make it stumble and feeling like she just needed to keep on swinging, no matter the personal cost. These final blows would not be delivered with her fists or her jutsu but rather her words. The way a true hero should have.</p><p>"I'm not a God, nor do I wish to do God's work…" Ayushi mumbled to himself the words that he once told Mana, the words that sealed the deal for his retirement back in the day. "I… I surrender…"</p><p>Ayushi's words spread to the field of lifeless, rustling limbs. The blinding light emanating from the Merchant of Souls made Mana close her eyes as in her current state she could no longer deal with intense factors like that. A dynamic burst of chakra blew Mana off the body pile she rested on. Burrowing through the madness, through the shapeless and lifeless limbs, Mana rose back on top of the body pile just to see the aftereffects of the unexpected resolution to this confrontation.</p><p>She could not feel Ayushi's chakra at all, perhaps only an insignificant speck lesser an immeasurable number of times than even the most basic and unimpressive flares of even a civilian's chakra. Only a whited out husk of Ayushi's body laid sprawled out on the ground. The body drained of all its youth, all of its strength and looking like dried out scarecrow was less than a fitting legacy for the final redeeming decision that Ayushi had made.</p><p>A majestic and divine rope of ethereal blue shot out from the totem's arm and pierced through Mana. The chakra and the essence of soul contained within expanded to the size of an entire world and the nightmares of Juhiru stayed behind her. Stream of knowledge of power flowed through Mana's entire body. She felt like she could have moved mountains, healed herself over all of her injuries and ruled over life and death itself. She could have ruled justly, made a difference… With all that infinite knowledge streaming through, adopting Mana's body as a temporary route for its travels, the ninja magician finally knew exactly what she had to do.</p><p>The essence of Ayushi's soul drew back in and dispersed in a dominant shockwave that knocked down every one of the awakening souls that Ayushi had previously kidnapped. A feeling of weightlessness took Mana over, she had no more strength left to initiate her Mystical Wings anymore and a feeling scratched deep down that the dive from the ninth heavens the Merchant had raised her to would not end in a pleasant way.</p><p>The entire dimension around the hostages and Mana began fading out like a bad dream, the crimson walls of the barrier that Ayushi had erected to keep the Konoha ninja out while restraining the spread of Juhiru began to burn and sizzle out as its user had no more chakra to spare for its expenses.</p><p>Nothing but black remained in Mana's memory from after that point.</p><hr/><p>"I don't personally see why the other kids don't hang around with you. You're alright…" Pagu Aphonei smiled at Mana. Even as a child he had the smile of a snake that was about to spit venom in one's eyes after eating one's ice cream just before and was asked to give that back.</p><p>"I don't have a lot of tokens." Mana rubbed the back of her head. "The game won't be very long."</p><p>"Oh, well… More time to practice for tomorrow's assignment. I know a pretty nice place to play." Pagu smiled. "It isn't too far away from the Academy either."</p><p>The two kids rushed to a small and recently opened clothing store. They had far too few coins of ryo on them to make it into the shop but they deposited their bottoms onto the staircase and prepared to play their tokens.</p><p>"I'll start with Black Ops Incinerator: Sin Scorcher." Pagu grinned, placing a shiny, coin-shaped accessory onto the staircase.</p><p>"That's an A-Rank. My rarest token is a B-Rank." Mana pouted.</p><p>"It doesn't matter. Let's not look at the values and just play." Pagu waved his hand without a care that he may have lost a rare token for far lesser potential returns. Back in the day, Mana was naïve enough to not suspect a thing.</p><p>"I'll bet my B-Rank Avatar of Five-Tails: Fire Dolphin-Horse." Mana placed her own token before both of the kids from the Ninja Academy pulled out their larger, specialized combat tokens with eight walls to them and flicked them at the bottom to make them shuffle in the air and then land on something. The tokens flew and flipped, displaying an elegant shine as their edges reflected the descending sunlight in a visually appealing way as they were intended to do.</p><p>"Mine's landed on Strength." Pagu pointed at the copper side that his token was showing.</p><p>"Mine's landed on Heaven…" Mana pointed. She rubbed her elbow feeling bad about lucking out like that and rolling the best possible result. Combat tokens were supposed to represent different specialties with each of them interacting with the other in a rock-paper-scissors type mechanic. "Listen… We don't have to play for reals. You can keep your Sin Scorcher."</p><p>"Nonsense." Pagu shook his head. "You don't play too much, maybe if the other kids see you with a rare token, they'll play with you. I don't get why you don't play more, Ninja Tokens are fun and it's a neat way to make friends. Someone like you could use that, you haven't spoken to a soul for the whole last year and now suddenly you're more active…"</p><p>"It's just that…" Mana looked away, wondering if Pagu would run away if she told him about her psychological issues and meditation therapy. "I talk to people. The other kids talk to me too."</p><p>"Yeah, but just because you know all the different tokens and their ranks without needing to check the guide, they're using you to evaluate their tokens and rule over games. It's not the same." Pagu shrugged.</p><p>"I can't help it if I like trading and showing off tokens more than playing with them." Mana adorned an innocent smile.</p><p>"Ouch. Don't let the inventor of Ninja Tokens hear you say that…" Pagu raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Come on, Pagu, you're not home yet? Let's go already, enough hanging around with that psycho." A much larger and older kid approached the two, having noticed Pagu and Mana from across the street.</p><p>"Don't call Mana that, she won't evaluate your tokens." His pal nudged the larger kid as a warning.</p><p>"So I won't know how much my token's worth, who cares?" the bigger kid shrugged.</p><p>"So nobody will play with you because psy… I mean Mana won't validate your rarity. You can call your token Specter Rarity as much as you want, as long as Mana won't validate that rarity, nobody will buy that." His friend replied. "Wait… You wouldn't just play with Mana to find out which kid's token she'd validated as actually Specter Rare, would you?"</p><p>"Stop messing around with my friend, we're in the middle of a game here." Pagu made a dismissive gesture with his hand. Mana felt a bit impressed as well as shocked that this seemingly short and feeble boy would act so important around two kids older and stronger than him.</p><p>"Whatever, you're still gonna come out and play after the homework training, right?" the larger kid wondered while walking away but Pagu did not humor that with a reply.</p><p>Mana pouted for a short moment. "If you really want to know, Lithia Uchiha really has a Specter Rare Five-Tails Dolphin Horse. She was the one to give me the Avatar of Five-Tails for rating her tokens."</p><p>"Nevermind that…" Pagu sighed. "One thing I'm wondering about though, what's with the weird nicknames everyone's giving you. You're not ugly or that weird even yet some kids are avoiding you like the plague. Why's that? What's with all that psycho nonsense?"</p><p>"Oh, it's… I just used to act and think weird, that's all. I guess I may have spoken too much while thinking weird things and the other kids just remember that. I've gotten better though, I medita…" before Mana could finish what she was saying, she screamed out. If felt like the ground underneath her feet had disappeared and like there was nothing holding her. Almost like someone had pushed her off the stairs, except she did not really feel the push which was why she wasn't ready for one.</p><p>Something was wrong. The girl felt nauseated and something warm was making her hair feel all sticky. Pagu looked at Mana from up above. He did not look concerned nor did he look mocking or angry. Mana could hear a disgusting, metallic sound but only for a moment, it must have been the remnants of her knocking her head against the ground.</p><p>"Oh… Wow, you've cracked it. Looks pretty bad. No other options. Gotta take a look into your brain." Pagu pulled out a kunai with dulled edges that the Academy Students used in their earlier years. Before they became skilled and responsible enough to be entrusted proper ninja tools. "Hmmm… Yes, I suppose this won't do. Don't worry, I've got my own, custom gizmos too!"</p><p>"Mana!" a familiar voice that invited warmth and coziness into the little student's heart empowered the fallen little girl to raise her upper body back up. Pagu sheathed the custom-built kunai that he was in the process of pulling out and shrugged.</p><p>"I suppose if you can get your head off the ground, a look into your brain might not be that necessary." He said.</p><p>Father lifted Mana up and hugged her. Something shifty was going on in the little student's stomach but Mana kept it contained as she'd never do something that unkind to her father. Regardless of her will, her head felt woozy and she may not have been able to contain that impulse for long.</p><p>"Did some mean kids do this to you?" mother was beginning to get grumpy. She could have been one of the nicest people Mana knew but if she lost her temper, knives would be flying in all directions. "Is this the little devil!?"</p><p>"No… Pagu is my friend, he played Ninja Tokens with me." Mana risked hurling her stomach out empty just to potentially save Pagu's life.</p><p>"Stop looking for who to blame, come on, kid, let's go back home and treat that bump. You've got a raven's nest for hair so, with a little luck, you won't notice it in the morning." Father caressed Mana's head where she had hurt herself. Even if every touch resonated with more aching, Mana rubbed her face into her father's chest just because he was there. The two people that would always be by her side, always love her, no matter how weird were the things she said or how unimpressive her grades were.</p><p>Mana loved her parents more than anything, no matter if she would ever make friends just like Pagu or even more trustworthy and nice, her parents would always be the most treasured pair of souls in her life.</p><hr/><p>The magician's eyes shot open. Yet another awakening in the Konoha Hospital, it was beginning to become the norm. The usual rush of pain and terror was absent at the moment but Mana felt drained of any strength to go on. What was that awakened her? A man in a brown overcoat and a hat was eating a dumpling at least two handfuls large in front of her bed. Something about the chakra of this man felt familiar, even if the magician had never seen this man's face before.</p><p>"I know what you're going to say. What, are you just gonna eat by my hospital bed while I'm confined to a diet of hospital food, right? Well, the thing is, neither of us expected you to be asleep for two days straight and I was meaning to talk to you the moment you woke up." The man in the overcoat spoke as if the two had known each other very well, even if the magician could not put a finger on it.</p><p>The tall stature, the athletic but not bulky build, the sharp ponytail sticking out from under the man's hat and tipping it over on the front to where it covered the man's blue eyes at all times except when he tilted his head to look the injured and worn out kunoichi back in the eye… No. Those were the wrong details to focus on.</p><p>"Lord Sixth?" Mana muttered. It took her a while to remember a chakra signature she last sensed a pair of years ago and only allowed a fraction of its massive totality to enter her field of chakra sensory perception.</p><p>"Dammit, I guess a Transformation Jutsu can't fool you…" the man sighed before taking another rapid bite of his dumpling. Lord Sixth looked in a rush to finish his lunch so that he could have whatever talk he meant to have with Mana. "Anyway, we need to have a talk about what you've done and where things are and where they could be in the future. You might like what I have to say, you may not, just don't be childish enough to think that things can ever be the same again."</p><p>Ever since the tragedy struck her father, even if it was an incredibly recent event, the magician found herself wishing that it had hit her, both to spare her father the misfortune as well as being able to just stay down and asleep and dream of better days, of better times for what was left of her life.</p><p>It was a selfish thought, one that would have brought her father about the same degree of pain but… It would have been dishonest to deny that thought the importance it deserved for being such an occasional visitor.</p>
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<a name="section0581"><h2>581. A Deal With The Shadows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Really? You wake up after sleeping for days from a battle in the middle of a village, surrounded by a barrier formidable enough to hold off the strongest ninja and one not even the best Village Protection ninja can crack through and you're dead-silent?" Lord Sixth wondered. The man took a couple of more bites off of whatever he was sustaining himself with, further accentuating his rush of finishing his lunch.</p><p>"Is my dad okay?" Mana's voice was husky, it did not require further clarification that the magician had not spoken for a couple of days and had been through a lot lately.</p><p>"Still comatose." The man shrugged after finishing his lunch, dusting off his hands and then locking them over his chest, ready to devote all of his attention to Mana.</p><p>That meant that mother did not pull anything radical and had him unplugged from life support. His further life may have been pointless but as someone who was adamant, often even to the point of obsession, to keeping things alive, Mana would have liked to have her father live on until it would be impossible for him to do so. She felt a bit of relief in the ocean of apathy that her mother felt the same way.</p><p>"That's it? You don't want to know how your fight ended? Nothing that interests you at all?" Lord Sixth in his new body and face wondered.</p><p>"No." Mana closed her eyes and put her body back onto the pillow. It felt about as hazy now as it did back in the heat of the battle and now there was no burning need for her to power through that dizziness. There was no point for her to do anything at all, may as well have spent the rest of her life in this bed.</p><p>"I feel like you're not appreciating our efforts to keep everyone wanting to see you away from your ward? The local urban myth is that you're sort of a big-time hero. We're doing what we can to quash that, it's a long story, it's why I came here to talk to you, in fact." The man pointed out after placing one of his hands over his hat and fixing it to sit tighter atop of his head.</p><p>"Lord Sixth…" Mana spoke up to try and get the man who never even really got onboard with her follow his own advice and leave her alone but his raised hand silenced her. It was not that hard to do, given how Mana had to power through her gloom to speak.</p><p>"I'd appreciate if you called me Overcoat in this disguise. I did not go through all this effort to reapply for my old job with a public face to have myself be identified by the commoners, thank you very much." The Hokage who lost his seat after a tremendous crisis of villager trust at some point during the three-year break between Mana's departure and her return explained.</p><p>"Whatever… Overcoat…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Sorry to cut in line again but… It just seems to me like you're not behaving much like a team player and for what is to follow I will very much need you to be quite the team player so I'm just going to go ahead and explain to you what the situation is, in exchange for that, we'd like to hear about what had happened inside the barrier…" Overcoat shrugged while gesticulating with his arms in a way that Mana had never seen Lord Sixth do.</p><p>It was remarkable, this transformation that the man once called the Sixth Hokage had undergone. If his words were true, he was now back on his spying ways, or whatever Black Ops handiwork he was doing before emerging to the surface as the Sixth Hokage. He not only has completely changed his face, his voice, and his build but also the way he moved, his speech mannerisms and patterns. Everything about him except his chakra signature suggested that Overcoat was a new man in his entirety to the man once known as the Sixth.</p><p>"There's nothing to tell you, the man once known as Guru Ayushi had gone insane and tried to seal the chakra of a bunch of people he had kidnapped as well as my own souls into a biological weapon known as Honda." Mana halted to see if the Sixth had any betraying reactions to the name of the monster that inadvertently caused his downfall as Hokage but there was none. It only further added to the impressive work that Overcoat had accomplished with reinventing himself.</p><p>"You have a Summoning Contract with the Ninja Rabbits, you could have had them reverse-summon you from there at any moment. Yet you fought one of the most powerful ninja in recorded history alone, why?" Overcoat wondered.</p><p>"Is this a debriefing?" Mana struggled in her bed, feeling her eyes getting wet. She was not even entirely sure why. Then again, if she ever needed an excuse – there were plenty and most of them laid in the recent memory, not a day older than one month.</p><p>"For it to be a mission debriefing, there first had to be a mission. Don't worry, I have absolutely no relation to the Hokage. Please continue…" Overcoat assured and pulled out a candy that he promptly stuffed in his mouth and let his tongue throw it about like a pitiful raft in a stormy sea.</p><p>"To answer your question, I had too many reasons to fight Ayushi-san to even consider all the options for escaping. The drugs he and his cult have made hurt my father, I wanted him to pay for that. He went mad after I was on bodyguard duty once, I felt personally responsible for everything going on inside that red cube… I've been preparing for three whole years to put a stop to him and prevent another Honda incident. None of these heroes are the reasons why heroes fight, maybe you and your men are right to quash those talks around the village." Mana explained. Talking was difficult, she had to stop and take a deep breath after every sentence because the weeping that kept interrupting her made it difficult to breathe right for talking.</p><p>"I see…" Overcoat looked down and away through Mana's ward window. "You know, back in the day everything I am doing here would have made me feel all sorts of rotten inside."</p><p>"You said you weren't associated with the Hokage, how's that possible? Are you here to assassinate me or something?" Mana said with a dull tone. To anyone hearing her speak it would have only been possible to tell that she was inquiring because of the content of the words spoken and not her tone.</p><p>"If I was, I'd have killed you while you were sleeping. This is where I cannot be entirely honest with you. I am no longer the head of my employers meaning I've got people above me to answer to. I'm still Black Ops, just not the kind of Black Ops they print out happy posters out of or the kind kids impersonate when they're playing ninja. Let's leave it at that." Overcoat advised.</p><p>What did he mean? The only Black Ops organization operating in Konohagakure was the ANBU, they were loyal to the Hokage without exception. They responded to nobody else and acknowledged no other authority, neither the village Civilian nor the Ninja Council had any sway over that organization. Could this have meant that there not only was another Black Ops organization functioning in Konoha, one so secretive that nobody except select few have even heard of it and even those have not heard it being addressed by its name, also, one that did not respond to the Hokage entirely?</p><p>Whose authority then did Overcoat's employers acknowledge? Mana sighed. All these questions made her head hurt, given the collective weight resting on her chest from the back couple of months, she just felt apathetic toward the mind explosion that Overcoat subjected her to.</p><p>"What I meant before was… Just so you know, we have made sure to secure your ward, both to fend off the people praising your involvement and those that would wish you harm for hurting Ayushi. He was, after all, once a world-known, beloved Guru of the people. We've also kept your mother at bay from your ward, probably the more pain-invoking endeavor right there." Overcoat said.</p><p>Poor mother. Just how crushed should she have been? Her own daughter, one that had a detestable tendency to run off for days, weeks, sometimes even months returned with a nasty poison that nearly killed her, then, her own husband fell into a coma because of his own demonic obsession with off the counter pain management medication, mere moments later, her daughter nearly got her soul sucked out of her and found her way back to the hospital. And mother was not even allowed to see Mana this whole time…</p><p>"Okay, so now that I know what you're not here to do, how about you tell me why you and your shadowy employers did go through all this effort?" Mana asked.</p><p>"You don't sound very interested." Overcoat raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I am, it's just that… It won't matter in the end. After Ayushi it's just…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"Yeah, I've been there. You keep on letting it burn you from the inside, the thought that something's gonna kill you to the point where you can almost feel the death wrapping its cold fingers around you despite the mission not having even started. Then, when by a miracle you do survive, everything to follow just feels kind of… Empty and pointless." Overcoat perfectly described Mana's inner state. Who knew? He may truly have been through this.</p><p>Mana did not reply, she just kept on staring back at the man with a dull pair of emerald eyes that have lost not a bit of the luster of their shine, even if everything around them seemed tired and dying.</p><p>"But Mana… What I'm about to ask you is a long-term engagement. We cannot afford you to take the deal now and then back out when you get over this. You must understand the full weight of what we're about to talk about, know that the organization I'm working for will not allow you to threaten its secrecy in any way. The only reason you know what you know, which is bare bones, is that it is absolutely necessary. So are you in or out?" Overcoat raised an eyebrow back at Mana.</p><p>"I don't care." Mana shrugged before resting her back and wrapping herself in the hospital cover. She didn't like the clean and fresh feel of her hospital gown. It felt strict enough to just be recently washed but given enough time and wear it will likely feel more pleasant for her skin to rub against.</p><p>"The very fate of Konohagakure and its political stability hangs on the balance." Overcoat cut in with an immediate declaration.</p><p>"I don't care about anything political," Mana spoke without showing her face from under her covers.</p><p>"Anything political has a nasty tendency to sprinkle down on the heads of people that neither know nor care about political things. Innocent people, like the ones that died during Honda's rampage and like those that Ayushi had kidnapped and very nearly drained of chakra." Overcoat read his moral, utilizing the full sharpness of his politician's tongue.</p><p>With a bothered and irritated wriggle, Mana rose back up and rested against her pillow. "Where is Honda?" she asked as if that was the only reason why she rose up.</p><p>"Detained in the same place he was being detained before. Being studied for everything Ayushi did to him. The Village Protection tightened the security around him but it isn't really necessary – Ayushi was the only person strong and crafty enough to get Honda to begin with." Overcoat shrugged. "So are you in or out?"</p><p>"It would be easier to say if I knew what I was in for…" Mana grumbled.</p><p>"No can do. The information is only available to those that are in. If I told you and you decided to back out, I would truly have to make you disappear." Overcoat tightened the collar of his coat around the lower areas of his new face.</p><p>Mana groaned and shrugged.</p><p>"Fine, I don't care about much of what happens from this point on. Might as well…" she mumbled.</p><p>"Very well…" Overcoat nodded before pulling out a cigarette, unwrapping its other end and then placing it in his mouth. The man pulled it out to show it to Mana as if she even cared if he messed up her lungs by smoking indoors of her ward. "It's chocolate…" he excused himself.</p><p>Mana rolled her eyes.</p><p>"What you've done is remarkable. You as well have saved the world in that barrier, nobody is protesting that. Well… We are protesting that when it's the villagers spreading talks of it but… You know. The point is that my organization has been aware of Ayushi's madness and his activities beyond the border. We've had spies and agents of foreign nations trying to do some course correction but… Some of them were in the pile of people you've breathed the life back into." Overcoat thanked Mana for her work in his own way.</p><p>What Overcoat brought up may have been interesting once. While the village barely flicked a finger beyond arresting anyone affiliated with Ayushi but not the man himself, some mysterious shadowy organization, loyal to nobody knew whom, was working against him. That must have been terrible. Without the ideological restraints that helped Mana survive the number of times that she did get in Ayushi's way, anyone the maddened Guru found bothersome would have suffered a most dreadful fate.</p><p>"For the record, everyone who knows what happened inside that barrier is happy with the outcome. Your victory against Ayushi surprised us greatly and removed a sky-reaching wall of thorns out of our way and we will not forget that. For the longest time, the few of our members that bothered to look into your personality and work thought you a danger for the village and what it stood for." Overcoat went on explaining.</p><p>"I do have a knack for favoring the right thing over the village interests," Mana admitted.</p><p>"There is one little bit though. Not that many people know about what had happened between you and Ayushi. We've shown our best effort on course correction and a little nudge of the information spreading, trying to keep it neutral until we know what to do next." Overcoat said.</p><p>"You're treading around something. I'm tired and I want to see my mom. Get on with your business." Mana grumbled while rubbing her eyes. She's been out for so long that she was not entirely sure if she was tired or had too much sleep.</p><p>"Fair enough, I'm not sure if you know but after the resolution of the conflict between Iwagakure and Kumogakure, Konoha became the top power in the world in terms of its military. It was an investment, Kumogakure chose a sparkle of economic advantage with the monopoly over the coltan industry over military supremacy." Overcoat nodded and went on.</p><p>"Probably smart. Military supremacy has too many of its advantages chained and muffled by peace treaties. What's good of the strongest military if to wage war you have to navigate around columns of bureaucracy?" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"That remains to be seen. Both the Hokage and my superiors would rather see Konoha maintain this status quo until it is no longer useful. That's where your heroic labor comes in. Guru Ayushi was the icon of this world. A peaceful sage that traveled the entire world and allied with no single country, advised countries in how to avoid war and inspired people and inspiration does a great deal for civilian morale. And then, right after visiting Konoha, he disappeared a handful of years ago. Missed out on all of his planned visits…" Overcoat let his description of the international situation linger for a moment and simmer in Mana's perception.</p><p>Mana's heard a bit about that. Every once in a while the meaningless accusations of other villages pointing fingers at Konoha for having a part to play in Ayushi's disappearance rose up. Rumors of all volumes and contents sprouted up, some claimed that Konoha had kidnapped Ayushi and brainwashed him to spread their propaganda but the job was not yet complete. Those would have mounted noble rescue efforts. Some of them went the simpler path and declared that Konoha had the man killed, having somehow found the way to do the deed that stacking piles of dozens of decades could not accomplish.</p><p>"It won't matter how many times you reason with them. Those talks will always remain. The only reason nobody did anything concrete about it was that nobody wanted to disturb the sensitive military balance while having nothing specific for proof of Konoha's involvement. We can tell the world that Ayushi had gone mad and how we saved the world but…" Overcoat once again cut his thought off early just as a test of Mana's interest and the sharpness of her perception.</p><p>"It will be about as effective as telling misguided, grieving parents their child died in an accident…" Mana surmised.</p><p>"Exactly. About as many people will buy it as many really care about what the truth is compared to what they stand to gain from lies." Overcoat finished his chocolate cigarette and licked his brown lips to wipe all the smudges off of them. "While it is fortunate you've left Ayushi alive and in a vegetative state, instead of killing him outright, a narrative where we can shift the fault away from Konoha would be more favorable. Instead of trying to push through the truth nobody will buy, my superiors wish to employ a lie that will result in the least catastrophic outcome. You must understand, we're talking about fending off a war between Konoha and every other country that would stand something to gain from Konoha burned down, that's to say everyone that has use for miles of untapped forest real estate, loads of Ryo and boundless glory."</p><p>"You want me to take the blame." Mana put the pin on the map on a place Overcoat was desperately detouring around.</p><p>"Please understand, this is the only way that Konoha avoids a black mark of being a backstabbing den of vipers it may very well be. Also, the villagers avoid becoming victims of an unjust war based on lies, serving as an excuse to bloodthirsty warlords to do what they do best." Overcoat's body language became defensive. He anticipated a huge fallout from this and tried to defuse it before it came up. "If we act that Ayushi's madness had never existed, as if you attacked him out of pure spite and caught him by surprise… You will take all the negative attention off of Konoha. Seeing how Ayushi is alive, there will be no need for severe punishment. We will fake a Ninja Tribunal to be as soft as possible for you, Ayushi will be remembered as a martyr, a great spiritual figure, a man that's sworn the oath of non-violent resistance, taken out by an overzealous youth who should have known better."</p><p>"Sure. Brats pick on old people all the time…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"You must admit, you fit the narrative of a misguided young lady perfectly. You've always been a bit… Quirky." Overcoat spoke while restraining his words, as if he had known them to be sharp but also as necessary to be told.</p><p>"Tell everyone whatever you like." Mana laid back down and stared at a remote point of the pristine white ceiling.</p><p>"I'm not sure you're evaluating all of the underlying consequences. That is important for the organization to have faith in your ability to stay devoted to the deal's conditions. You must know everything you're signing up for. Your prison sentence will be symbolic, maybe but… People will outright hate your guts. All around the world. I don't see you being able to have a career in entertainment with everyone seeing you as the person that's taken away Guru Ayushi from them. You must realize that, no matter the sentence, people will see your sentence as too short, they'll claim you deserved to serve for life or have your life taken altogether for what you've supposedly done. What if every friend you've ever had turns away from you? Can you keep your word then?"</p><p>"My father is in coma, my mother is probably angry at me for lying to her and not giving a damn about my own life, I've lied to my family and my friends that I'd stop chasing unknown responsibilities and mysteries by going off and chasing the very embodiment of what I've promised to avoid. I never planned on surviving my battle with Ayushi, the very fact that I'm alive now is a cruel twist of fate, may as well take up all the blame for it because for all I know it is my fault. I've forsaken everything I stood for by lying to my loved ones, every little ounce of hatred that people will have – I deserved all of it." Mana shouted out letting all the fumes she had to lash out. "I'll take the blame, I'll take all the hate. I don't really care about what happens now. This conversation is over."</p><p>Overcoat fixed his hat and turned toward the door, giving Mana one last staredown. "Very well. Get better soon, Mana-san. In the name of my superiors and all of Konoha, thank you, the unseen ones supporting the grand tree of Konoha from the depths of its soil will not forget this."</p><p>After Overcoat left, Mana was just the way it all started – alone.</p>
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<a name="section0582"><h2>582. Shattered Lives</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a sense of dread and irritation that accompanied the light that flooded into Mana's eyes every time she peeked her head outside. The combination of the two, rushing through the pain that substituted blood and traveled up and down, circulating throughout Mana's vessels, caused the magician's head feel like something hard was thumping from the inside.</p><p>The thumping sensation could only have been counterweighed by the opposite of a trampling sort of pain. One that flushed in from the outside and one that, oddly enough, felt familiar to the magician. Despite the fact that closing her eyes and looking back at what happened caused her to suck more and more of the terrifying mixture as if through a straw, delivered right into her system, Mana trod on, or rather back.</p><p>Segments of her clash with Ayushi remained intact, the bloodshot eyes of everyone trampling Mana into the dirt, everyone corrupted by Ayushi's jutsu. The Soul Release buzzing through and introducing itself to Mana through excruciating amounts of pain every time a skull whizzed by close enough. A pair of chakra signatures lit up, not too different from the people coursing through the corridors on a normal occasion but one of them was at least an average ninja and both of them were all too close to Mana's ward for their appearance to be a coincidence.</p><p>"What that cloaked man said was true." The nurse turned at a middle-aged medical ninja. "Konoha's Sorceress is awake."</p><p>"It seems so." The medical ninja nodded. The pair approached Mana together, the nurse began checking on the readings of the machines connected to the young woman as well as the recorded data of the past readings while the more experienced medical ninja ran his hands through Mana's body with a blue-hued scan of a Diagnosis Jutsu.</p><p>"By now we were beginning to accept the reality that you may have never woken up. The leading theory was that you went comatose like your father. We did not detect any traces of drugs in your system but you have been in plenty of missions that ended with a painful visit to the hospital so reliance on pain killers was not something we ruled out from the get-go." The medical ninja recounted while scanning Mana.</p><p>"So quiet…" the nurse expressed her worries. "Do you remember anything? Guru Ayushi was found near you when the barrier lowered, he was in a perfectly fine condition but… He's in a vegetative state. Do you know what happened to him?"</p><p>"Don't overload her memory all at once." The medical ninja scolded his colleague.</p><p>"B-But. We need to know if she's mentally okay. After something like that…" the nurse objected.</p><p>"Asking her for her name will do for starters." The medical ninja replied before concluding his scan. "Although… I must say that your injuries baffle me. You're just fine from the inside. It's a rare occasion that a ninja emerges from a battle and passes out without a scratch."</p><p>"Sir, the scars…" the nurse looked at her superior.</p><p>"Right!" the medical ninja rose his finger up with the joy of recollection fresh in his eyes. "There were injuries, bruises of sorts… We could not heal those, no matter what we did. We know you like to spare no expense on cosmetic treatment, I understand that given your public standing but… I don't think it is possible to heal those."</p><p>Mana lifted her gown to look at the irksome source of aches on her sides. It looked as if her flesh would have been entirely blown off and then promptly reattached, bruises overflowing with underlying blood masses and rings of black and purple. It was days since she donned these scars, courtesy of Ayushi's Soul Release, and yet they did not look much older than minutes old. The medical ninja was right to call it the way he did.</p><p>"We can put you on a list to see a higher ranked medical ninja, that might show some…" the medical ninja began trying to soothe Mana's mental disarray as if she was a burn victim but the magician just let her hospital gown slide back on top of the eternal scars and just sighed.</p><p>"It doesn't matter," she muttered.</p><p>"D-Don't say that, Sorceress-san, don't think that this is hopeless…" the nurse tried to cheer her up.</p><p>"No, I no longer have a stage magician career to speak of. It literally does not matter." Mana replied. "When can I leave?"</p><p>If Overcoat's proposition was to be taken at face value, she may have had a few days of freedom left. It may have taken a pair of days for the whole charade of an international Ninja Tribunal being put together which gave Mana those few days to make good of the life she still had.</p><p>As someone who had just surrendered all traces of her old life, Mana didn't feel all that distraught about it. Then again, why should she have felt bad? For three years she's been convincing herself that when the time to face Ayushi came, surely she'd die if she won't step over her ninja way just this once, now that she's survived, giving up on what she's regained just felt sort of natural. It was much easier to give up a cookie when the cookie jar was stolen for years and you'd made peace with the fact that the cookies were gone.</p><p>"Mana-san, there is another thing…" the medical ninja fixed the collar of his shirt. "Your body is currently at a frail state. Even if your body returned perfectly healthy from the… Incident… But something happened in there. Something that may have caused these eternal scars. If you ever suffer similar life-threatening injuries, your body might not recover. There will be nothing life-threatening about them, they will kill you."</p><p>It was a good thing that Mana was taking a leave of absence from active duty as a Konohagakure kunoichi, it was much worse that she was heading straight to prison during that leave.</p><p>"I'll have that in mind. When can I leave?" Mana insisted.</p><p>"Well… Given how your condition seems stable, we have no legal grounds to hold you here so… Whenever you decide it's for the best." The medical ninja shrugged and traded wary glances with the nurse.</p><p>"Not much remained of your uniform but… This sort of conundrum is a common occurrence, we'll issue you some charity clothes." The nurse nodded.</p><p>Mana got the strangest sense of déjà vu, here was to the hoping that her return wouldn't be half the shit-show that her last return home was.</p><p>An attempt to return home quietly may have been naïve in retrospect. Mother was busy in the kitchen. Poor thing. With her entire life flipped like a table where a temperamental gambler had just lost his life's savings, the woman tried to maintain as much order, have things make as much sense as possible. Even the television box was working non-stop even though nobody was there to watch it. It must have been running for some time as the screen was flickering once in a short while, not often enough to be serious but just enough for it to be an irritation.</p><p>Mana tried to be gentle with how she closed the door. She wasn't sure why she was working this hard to conceal her return, it was not like she could have avoided her mother forever and it would have been for the better to spend all the time she could with mom before the time for the Ninja Tribunal came.</p><p>The self-preservation instinct kicked in. Mana tried to sneak past her mother but that was as stupid as her better judgment kept screaming from the bottom down it to be. The manager of a popular meeting spot in the village, the Nakotsumi Café noticed Mana instantly, as a savant at attracting clients, she'd have been a lousy businesswoman to not notice a potential client and lifelong fan making their entrance.</p><p>"M-Mana?" mother muttered.</p><p>"I really thought I was being quiet…" the young woman rubbed her elbow, unable to muster up the strength to look her parent in the eyes.</p><p>"How could you?" mother shook her head. She then repeated that question that Mana had hoped to be rhetorical with an escalating rise in the volume of her voice. "After your father went into a coma, had you no more cruel things to do to me than almost dying yourself? Do you have any idea of how it all looked from the hospital window? That giant, red cube, the lightning and the sky turning dark, the spreading mist and the panic…"</p><p>Mana had never heard Ayushi's might being described from an outsider's perspective. Even when the man had built up all of these means to protect the outside world, rather than do harm to it, it was not difficult to see how it could have been taken the wrong way by an outsider.</p><p>What was the daughter to say to her mother in these sort of cases? Everything about these past few weeks was just all sorts of messed up, Mana nearly dying to an exotic strain of venom, then coming back to life thanks to a miraculous save only to see her father collapse to a deep sleep he will never wake from, then she runs off to fight one of the most powerful ninja to have ever lived in recorded history, nearly gets herself killed again, only to return to her mother for a few days until the Ninja Tribunal works its stage-play and hauls her to prison.</p><p>How was Mana to even begin to break this news down?</p><p>"I'm… Sorry," was all she could muster. It was beginning to seem like survival was just another cruel way for Ayushi to torture Mana, in moments like these it felt like the Game of Souls was still ongoing and the torture to make the magician surrender was still onboard.</p><p>Mother's hands wrapped around Mana and squeezed the young woman hard. Despite how much it hurt having the itch and the nagging torment of the wounds over her body exasperated, the magician did not dare complain, she not even as much as winced in pain. She owed her mother all the hugs in the world for the heartbreak she was about to once again put the woman through. It was for the best that mother knew nothing about Mana's dealings, there was no way the woman's bleeding heart would have kept the secret from spilling and… A hunch suggested that Overcoat's superiors were not people to toy around with.</p><p>Maybe Mana would have, but she'd die before putting her mother on their crosshairs. It was very easy making this promise, given how many times dying would have been infinitely more convenient compared to living and picking up the pieces.</p><p>"What were you even thinking!?" mother groaned. "Running off like that…"</p><p>"I was…" Mana was about to humor the less than gracious lie weaved up for her just before mother interrupted her.</p><p>"Well… It doesn't matter now. What's done is done, we still have each other and that's what counts." Mother nodded a pair of times, she looked desperate to convince herself of that childish dream. It seemed that the woman knew that it was only a matter of time before Mana ran off to another mission and barely lived through it. Mana knew of a whole another thing that would part them in the nearest future…</p><p>"I… I think I'm going to retire from ninja work. Do you think we will make it somehow without that? I mean in terms of money?" Mana wondered. Just trying to make her mother as happy as she could have been before the inevitable roll downhill.</p><p>"Re-Retire?" mother raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Yeah. That brawl shaved something off of me that I will never get back. The medical ninja said I will never be the same again and… I'm just… Tired of it all. Fought as much as I could, saved as many as I could. The only other sacrifice I have to give is my life and… In the state I'm in right now, big fat good that's going to be worth." Mana bit her cheeks on the inside of her mouth in bitterness.</p><p>"Well… I have a hunch that… We will be just fine. I approve of your decision. Your magic shows will not be the same without your… Father… Helping you but…" mother barely kept herself together.</p><p>"Actually…" Mana rubbed her foot across the floor, wondering just how she was to break the news. "I don't feel like in a very magical mood so… I don't think I'll be doing any shows soon."</p><p>"Of course, dear." Mother wrapped her arms around her again. With a smile through a waterfall of tears, the woman pushed Mana off of herself while still clutching her daughter's arms tight. "You've grown so tall over the last few years, taller than me, I haven't even had the chance to notice…"</p><p>"I'll make it up to you, mom… Somehow…" Mana sniffled a pair of times. "After everything is over, just… Promise you'll be there and give me a chance."</p><p>The two embraced each other and stood that way for what seemed the entire night through. Maybe nights only lasted a minute when each one counted down to an inevitable price that Mana signed herself up for paying.</p><hr/><p>"So what do you think the play was about?" mother spoke up after over three hours of the two sitting perfectly still.</p><p>Seeing a play performed at Mr. Hiro's hall by some of Mana's old friends was a nice mother-daughter activity, in theory, however, given how little the two have interacted with each other, Mana wondered if she was truly putting the best time in what she had left. Half of today she's barely looked at her mother at all, this was the first time they'd spoke to one another since their activity started.</p><p>"We can ask the guys that were in it." Mana shrugged while navigating the hustle and bustle of the after-show halls to approach the stage. She did it slowly enough for her mother to read her movements and follow even though she used to know this stampede well enough to navigate it like a master assassin sneaking up on their hit.</p><p>"Mana… Abusing power and relationships, as usual, I see…" Kinzo, one of the better-known actors of the troupe smiled at the magician's direction, noticing her curly, ravenous locks, the rest was pure instinct.</p><p>"I find having less and less of both these days decided to use the best of what I still have." Mana shrugged, surrendering to the play of a malicious schemer. Perhaps there was a time when these guys and multiple other troupes, as well as entertainers of other crafts, may have truly seen Mana as such a person. The magician believed their relationship has evolved since those days.</p><p>"I still can't believe you know a troupe of actors performing on prime time." Mother covered her mouth, looking proud of how Mana's life as far as it was unrelated to the ninja side of her duality had developed.</p><p>"This is my mother." Mana was not that good with introductions, her own or those of the others. In her defense, she spent most of her time getting into life-threatening situations and recovering from them.</p><p>"Oh, yeah… Aren't you in charge of that… Establishment?" a friend of Kinzo's Mana once had known the name of but had since forgotten, given how the roster of Kinzo's group tended to change and evolve over time, giving her a whole lot of names to remember.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Café, yes." Mother nodded.</p><p>"Awesome, we hang out there all the time, refining scrips and rehearsing. Maybe we can get a discount?" Kinzo joked.</p><p>"I can see that some of you folk have even worked for me once." Mother examined the happy group of entertainers gathering together and then nodded with vigor. "I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."</p><p>"Excellent!" Kinzo laughed out.</p><p>"See? You used to say I never do anything for you…" Mana teased her colleague at another kind of work a bit more.</p><p>"I was a different kind of man back then. I saw a kid hogging all the spotlight and I thought that she's had to have been greasing some hands to get there. I should have known that Hiro's Hall was no land of equal opportunity, it was a meritocracy and you had a whole lot of merits to earn you that respected time slot." Kinzo paid his dues, partly responding to Mana's quip, partly apologizing for any past mistakes both of the two may have made. He may not have known the deeper meaning behind Mana's reason for being here and spending her time with her mother but this meeting worked out just perfectly.</p><p>"In your defense, I did grease a whole lot of hands. I'm not that good with money, but I'm fairly certain I made a lot of it for a lot of people." Mana shrugged, searching for one pair of pockets with her wandering, awkward hands in her casual outfit but finding none. She was so used to wearing her uniform the whole time…</p><p>"Yeah, I always wondered why you didn't just retire in a mansion atop the Hokage Monument and smoked money until the end of your days." Kinzo laughed out together with his band of merry men and women.</p><p>"Awww, come on, I wasn't earning that much money…" Mana sighed.</p><p>Mother coughed, something must have been stuck in her throat. After a brief talk, what remained of the Nakotsumi family turned to the alleyway that Mana used to take all the time after shows rushing home, every time when she did not want to run into anybody.</p><p>"So what's all this about?" mother turned to Mana with a face both filled with bliss and serious at the same time. It was a face that would have tolerated a healthy lie the least of all things. "Sure, we both had an epiphany with Tsukumo's near-passing but… You're spending an unhealthy amount of time watching out for your old lady."</p><p>This was the time to tell her, this had to be. Postponing it any further would have only ended up in tragic heartbreak.</p><p>"I… I am in a bit of trouble. It's about my fight with Guru Ayushi. A village official came to me in the hospital, it's why they did not let you in. They're investigating into it and… They may be calling up a Ninja Tribunal." Mana really wanted to have some pockets to stuff her unruly hands into at that moment.</p><p>"Oh my god…" mother gasped. Unlike before, this one was much emptier and more hollow deep down.</p><p>"In the worst case scenario, I may be looking at the termination of my ninja license and a couple of years in Rengoku," Mana admitted. That much Overcoat did not say explicitly but Mana had managed to sew together from bits and pieces. Sure, the whole Tribunal would be staged and the needed people would be told what to say and paid up for, maybe convinced by other means by pulling some leverage but… Believing that she'd be serving in Eden which was more than a containment complex rather than an actual prison or that she would not receive a punishment amounting to at least a year would have been childish in either case.</p><p>As the two women emerged from the alleyway and mixed into the crowd of the evening-admiring Konoha villagers, they appeared together, embracing each other as if it was their final evening together. That may have been a strong overreaction but Rengoku was not a place to be underplayed either. Paying up for what she signed up for required a certain amount of mental preparation, after all.</p>
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<a name="section0583"><h2>583. Better Call Overcoat</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana opened her eyes. The appearance of two more ninja within the range of her sensory scared the butterflies resting their wings somewhere in her gut. An experience like this needed to be counted as some sort of torture. Every time a chakra signature of greater significant approached within a couple of hundreds of meters to her home she lit up, wondering if maybe this time they were here to take her away. Not yet to prison, mind you, to the mock trial but take her nevertheless.</p><p>Just how informed was the village about the mockery of the Ninja Tribunal about to take place? Hopefully, they knew enough to not bother sending ninja meant to escort someone that had beaten Guru Ayushi because Mana had neither beaten the man nor were such people in a fresh and sizeable supply.</p><p>This pair was one of two A-Ranked ninja. Back in the day, chakra signatures like this would have sent Mana into a panic attack. Sensing chakra looked similar to wandering in the dark, surrounded by candles. The warmth of some tiny flickers felt familiar, some of the lights were candles whereas the likes of jounin were like supermassive stars. All understanding and framing of size and proportions appeared to dwarf in the presence of such a ninja and one must have adapted the range of their sensory when confronting such people. Worked a lot like a microscope, Mana thought, zooming and panning out and the like…</p><p>"Mana!" mother called for the magician. Her voice was shaky but it was nothing compared to the confusion and panic that her mother would have suffered if the magician failed to muster up the guts and tell her what she needed to hear.</p><p>"Coming!" Mana yelled out, she did not take any ninja tools with her, just her uniform. Washed and tidied up by her mother who was almost obsessive with chores these last couple of days. Sometimes Mana wanted to extend her mother a helping hand, strengthen their bonds that way but she noticed that this was something that Nakotsumi Kei needed. It was something that gave her something mindless to occupy her helpless body and mind.</p><p>It would have been cruel to take even that solace away.</p><p>"The hat's not with you? Good." A beefed out jounin with spiky, blond hair spoke up. Mana had never met this man but she had seen him before. He was there during the finals of the Chuunin Exams, overseeing the event from the audience seats. He was also there in the Check-Up Station when Mana sought help in learning the Fire Release elemental nature three years ago. Apart from a few minor wrinkles and even more increased size of his musculature, the man had barely changed for three whole years.</p><p>"I am aware that bringing weapons with me to the Tribunal would be a show of disrespect." Mana nodded.</p><p>"You know why we're here?" the second jounin turned his head in confusion. He was a physical man as well but of a much more balanced build. A pair of simple glasses donned on his nose while a thick, chestnut-colored, full set of facial hair defined him better from any other average ninja joe with an A-Rank chakra signature.</p><p>Shit. He very nearly had Mana there. It would have been suspicious and very harmful to her case to act as if she knew all about the proceedings beforehand, then again, she was under no obligation to act like she was not guilty anyway. She was certain to be found guilty so she may as well have cared less about how the case she built for herself looked from outside.</p><p>"Had a hunch. This is about the Ayushi incident, right?" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Had any other world-shaking fights we should know about?" the bearded jounin fixed his glasses with a very welcoming, almost paternal stare to his warm eyes. Unlike his colleague, this man did not appear to care that he was handling a potential disgrace to the ninja name.</p><p>"The statute of limitations is already due for the last ones." The magician did not waste any time looking for a reply. It was amazing having not a single care in the world about anything she would say or do, given how everything of importance has been taken off her hands.</p><p>"Witty, now let's get going." The more physical of the two jounin encouraged the magician.</p><p>"Can I go with my daughter?" mother pleaded.</p><p>"Ma'am, please understand, sensitive village matters will be discussed. It would be calmer on your own soul to sit this one out. If you have anything to say to your daughter, may as well say those things here and now. If she will be found guilty by the Tribunal, the execution of the sentence will begin immediately after the declaration of the verdict." The friendlier jounin replied while taking a few steps back from the two women, letting them smother each other out with freedom.</p><p>The other jounin took a step back and waited it out with patience too. He was following the two with his eyes and Mana knew he was paying close attention. It must not have been his first rodeo, he was looking out for any objects being passed, seals being placed or any shenanigans that could have potentially endangered the Tribunal. If memory served, the Tribunal was to be an allied one between most if not all ninja villages. That meant that a lot of important figures may have been put at risk if these two let something slip.</p><p>Despite the massive risks involved, even the one that liked Mana much less from the get-go let her finish up her business here.</p><p>"I'll do everything I can to be gone for as little time as possible," Mana whispered to her mother. There was little she could have done, likely there would be little to no point for her in saying anything but it would not hurt to let her mother know that. Maybe her heart would be one pound per minute calmer because of it and, if that was the case, it would have been worth the spared time. "Come on, guys, take me to your leader."</p><p>"Am I allowed to know your names?" Mana wondered, looking at the two ninja whose presence was causing a certain amount of uprising and curious glares in the streets. People knew Mana, she was especially hot with all the rumors of what had happened spreading and she was burning even hotter due to how the village tried muzzling those rumors. Most of the time, such effort had the opposite effect.</p><p>"Mars." The blond and robust jounin introduced himself.</p><p>"Haikan" the four-eyed jounin did the same with a smile that should have been invisible given the thickness of the bush on his face but one that somehow managed to twist the man's entire lower face into something resembling manhandled bread dough.</p><p>"I'm Mana," Mana stated the obvious, Haikan chuckled a bit while Mars rolled his eyes. "I know you two knew that already but it felt wrong being the only one not introducing herself…" she added.</p><p>"So did you do it?" Haikan wondered.</p><p>"It doesn't really matter, does it?" Mana avoided the question. "What matters now is what the Tribunal will determine. I suppose we will soon find out if I did it or not, can't wait."</p><p>"If you really did do it and you're here cracking jokes… That sort of thing just sickens me." Mars turned to the magician with a scowl. "Sure, people kill people all the time, you just happened to half-ass it, but there needs to be common decency, respect."</p><p>"Come on, Mars…" Haikan sighed. "Don't patronize the suspect until they've been determined guilty, you're better than that."</p><p>"What the shit?" Mars froze in awe of the number of people showing themselves to the Administration building with good spirits and cheers.</p><p>"Let Mana go!" they chanted in a nonstop mantra. One that remained consistent in tone and volume but given its intensity needed no further escalation to be taken seriously.</p><p>"It has flow to it." Mana shrugged. While she sort of pitied the pair of jounin, bound by the task to carry Mana through that mass of chaos, unable to harm these bystanders in any way that was not necessary in executing their task and people like Haikan and Mars would have strived for perfection in execution, she did also enjoy the little bit of chaos. Just this once, it seemed like the world had gone mad around someone else but her.</p><p>"Don't you even…" Mars turned at Mana. Until now the magician had not given the man the reason to growl or raise his voice at her so he did neither of these things but he did show his intolerance for the sort of things that would make him do either or both.</p><p>"Don't worry, I agreed to come, remember?" Mana smiled. "Let's just go, see what they'll do."</p><p>The people escalated their demands the moment that they saw action, that was admirable of them, usually, it was the action that died people down a bit. Then again, most of these villagers lived in the comfort of having ninja do their dirty work for them, they did not know the hopelessness of being powerless. If this sort of crowd was the last thing Mana would have seen, a legacy of people oblivious to the worst in life, she'd have departed a happy person.</p><p>The crowd split by the middle, letting Mana and Haikan through but the civilians began dashing into Mars and just rubbing themselves off on the jounin until they had driven the experienced ninja farther away. It was then that they began drilling the jounin and yelling at him, the fewer people knew the more certain they were they knew everything and people that thought they knew everything had a nasty tendency to tutor others in the ways of knowing better.</p><p>"I have never seen such public adoration for a ninja." Haikan wiped the sweat off his face while the two ninja entered the Administration building. "Then again, we've never escorted a superstar before. How do you even go undercover, blend in?"</p><p>"I like to focus more on the flair part," Mana smirked. "Plus, being known for something different entirely allows me different opportunities while if I absolutely require a stealthy touch I can always just use Transformation Jutsu."</p><p>She knew it was a half-lie. Due to Mana's dislike of using other people's jutsu, she'd have only used a Transformation Jutsu to disguise herself as a last resort. Haikan kept on wiping the sweat off the back of his neck while he removed his glasses and wiped them with his shirt.</p><p>"Damn, maybe I also need an alter ego. I always thought myself a pretty good singer…" the jounin sighed like a man who had realized he was too old for the world he inhabited.</p><p>"Of course, taking life lessons from someone you're escorting to the Ninja Tribunal is an excellent way to get ahead." Mana crossed her arms over her chest with a cheeky look at her companion. She has had enough of other people mimicking her way of life and everyone being worse off for it.</p><p>"Your face has turned sour." Haikan noticed while the two approached the Tribunal hall on the first floor of the building. "That usually happens to smart-mouths when they get close to the hall, something about the looming epic of that room and the inevitability of justice, I guess… I have a feeling that's not what's happening with you."</p><p>"Not at all…" Mana shook her head. "You've just made me realize just how much I have lost. Something I had never considered before."</p><p>"Ah, don't sweat too much." Haikan waved his hand after a moment of awkward pause where the man past his prime tried to comprehend what exactly has he made Mana realize that affected her that way. "You're a young gal, even the worst case scenario will seem irrelevant in the long run of your life. Even if they terminate your license, you're a world-known stage magician, you'll get by."</p><p>"You underestimate the depth of thought the people you bring here go through." Mana smiled through eyes that were beginning to water. She let her fondness for the man past his prime she had just met forty minutes ago carry her through the floor of bloody spikes and rivers of tears.</p><p>"I don't get it…" Haikan lowered his hands in submission.</p><p>"Maybe I will tell you one day." Mana patted him on the shoulder while entering the hall and taking the time to absorb its atmosphere before the proceedings started.</p><p>After taking her first steps in the Tribunal hall, the magician took a moment to look around and absorb the mixture of traditional wood accessories donning the best marble substitute that a country in the middle of the largest land mass of the planet could offer. Everything spread the fragrance of sophistication and fancy but also this bitter taste of patriotic stoicism.</p><p>"Like what you see? Odds are your residence for the coming few years won't look anything like this." Overcoat nearly startled the magician. He would have, had Mana not sensed him close up. She picked his signature up quite close, the Administration was so brimming with ninja that even if one knew they were looking for a gold needle and knew all too well how gold looked like, they would have needed to burrow through containers of ordinary needles to notice it.</p><p>"What are you doing here? Don't you have shadows to lurk from?" Mana asked without turning to the man. Once she did, a few moments later, she noticed him wearing a much less conspicuous outfit of a white shirt and a sleeveless vest hanging awkwardly, his hair tied in the signature Nara ponytail.</p><p>"You're a lot snappier than I remember you being?" Overcoat smirked.</p><p>"Emptiness is a lot more convenient void to be flying through. Not having boulders atop of your back helps as well." Mana sighed. While she tried dismissing this entire thing and try to be about as calm about it as she was in most matters post her meeting with Ayushi, the fact that she found her hands behaving too awkward to keep out of the pockets of her blazer betrayed her true nature.</p><p>"I see. In any case, I'm here to see that everything transpires as we've agreed. My superiors assigned me to be your voice in this session. Just rest easy and let's breeze through this. My name's not Overcoat while in this mission, it's Nehra Kichiro." Overcoat said.</p><p>"Excuse me?" Mana raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"I am from the western parts of Kumogakure ups." Overcoat smirked.</p><p>"Oh… You mean Nara in the Kumo west-upper dialect, geez." Mana chuckled.</p><p>"Yah, given how your Tribunal is an international one, Mehna-sehn, you've been given a voice from Kumogakure. A pretty darn good one too." Overcoat tried breaking her again. Now that Mana knew what was coming, she remained somewhat resistant to the buffoonery of his outrageous dialect.</p><p>"So are you planning on doing this the whole way through?" Mana wondered. "That won't grow bothersome at all."</p><p>"That'd be a negateeve, I'll smooth back into talkin' like a human bein' down the lahne." Overcoat shrugged.</p><p>"So what's our plan?" Mana wondered as people started walking in and out the hall, sitting at various sides of the horseshoe-shaped hall-long table while the actual judges still simmered in the preparation rooms behind the Tribunal stand in the most northern part of the room. "Makes sense for us to be on the same page about what I would do or say."</p><p>"The village has a strict sixty-forty relationship with the fact that Ayushi was insane. The other villages… More like ninety-nine against a bunch of hearsay. If you just stand up and take the blame, the international judges will know that something's afoot. You need to play the game a little bit." Overcoat guided her.</p><p>"You mean not lie for a little bit?" Mana teased her voice a bit.</p><p>People just about filled the Tribunal hall. These weren't quite the civilians from outside the building but people with the authorization granted to them by the village to handle sensitive and confidential information. Usually, Tribunal allowed people with proper permits to be present in sessions, it was more witnesses to validate the entire procession but, given the number of people watching Mana finish off her nearly systematically dismantled life, this policy may be reconsidered in the favor of some exceptions to be made.</p><p>Then the judges started filling their seats. All seated at the same height, same platform, implying equal standing but given the shadowy games that transpired behind the curtain, none of them were truly equal.</p><p>"How many judges are in on it?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Very perceptive." Overcoat smiled.</p><p>"I mean… It doesn't take much to ensure that I get the right verdict from my part but, seeing you here guiding my hand, I am beginning to understand the organization you're working for. There's no way they did not make it absolutely certain that the judges know and will vote the way it is convenient to them." Mana explained what helped her figure it out.</p><p>"Just the Konoha ones." Overcoat nodded. "The whole point of the gig is to fool the other countries. They've all been approached by the Black Ops and told that they were absolutely certain you have done it. Very few of them even wanted to see the fabricated proof that the Black Ops had."</p><p>"You went out of your way to say that the evidence was fabricated but you did not say that the Black Ops weren't who they posed as." Mana thought out loud. It was fortunate that the hustle and the bustle helped drown out their voices to all but anyone who would have cared to listen in. Those who would have cared would have had to venture too close to avoid detection by a literal secret agent of the village and a chakra sensor.</p><p>Overcoat did not say anything. He just watched at the judges take their places and the secretary of the Tribunal declaring the beginning of the Tribunal. Whoever Overcoat was working for had access to the Black Ops. The one seemingly incorruptible, right hand of the Hokage that operated solely on his whims. Overcoat did not need to say anything to confirm that. He even looked like he wrestled the temptation to just blurt it out.</p><p>Just how tangled was the web that Konoha was built on, the one that supported it?</p>
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<a name="section0584"><h2>584. Problem Bite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A tall and broad-shouldered man of long hair and elegant glasses with a fancy for leather and wearing his Kirigakure insignia on the collar of his black shirt underneath the leather vest. A short, middle-aged woman of brown hair and a rough emerald colored dress, pressed with boxes of iron that melded into the Iwagakure sign by her waist. A plump shorty with a black cloak and a massive case of incomplete baldness to represent her own home country. A walking stick of a man in oceanic colored drapes and a white cape hanging from his back, wearing the Otogakure sign as a pendant. A bulky, dark-skinned giant of hair so blazing orange it felt aggressive towards one's eyes in a blue dogi. A lady of large bones and past her prime, followed by another black-cloaked geek in thick glasses one could block knives with surrounded the previously entered judges from both sides.</p><p>Not too long after Mana's eyes ran over the assembling judges, she leaned in on to Overcoat's side with a whisper. "We may have a problem. That last one knows me. We were both voices of ninja in a Summit not too long ago. His name is Tokui Kyuri. A real no-nonsense type."</p><p>"Let me handle it." Overcoat sighed. "It doesn't have to be a problem, it does not really matter which way he votes and if he's going be biased or not."</p><p>"If I know Tokui, he is the last person to be biased and the first one to smell that something's afoot." Mana's breathing picked up a pace or two.</p><p>"The Ninja Tribunal is now in session! Please silence yourselves and rise." A dorky-looking secretary beside the grand assembly of personalities, each looking to make their marks as an important and wise figure that served justice to the perpetrator that harmed the great Guru Ayushi. What they did not know was that Mana was on their side and would have rather seen herself sentenced guilty.</p><p>"You may now sit. I would like to record for the Tribunal who's gathered here today. This is a special Ninja Tribunal procession, comprised of members of multiple countries and villages as per article 8 of the Seiunjo agreement, drafted by the Fourth Hokage, Star of Hope Howoku and signed by representatives of every acknowledged ninja village. Presiding over today's proceedings are Osumo Fuma, the Fifth Mizukage, Nokubi Sarutobi, an Iwagakure jounin, Sheniyur Kagetsu, a member of the Konohagakure Ninja Council, Laorth Karatachi, a chuunin from Otogakure, Yurisa Akimichi, the matriarch of the Akimichi clan's main Konoha branch, Kikuzen Shimura, a member of the Konohagakure Ninja Council, Tokui Kyuri, a jounin from Kumogakure." The secretary of the Ninja Tribunal recounted before turning to the participating members of the procession.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana, the accused, present." Overcoat raised his hand and reached his other hand out to Mana. The magician put her ninja ID card in his hand and followed her Voice as he walked to the stand and showed it to the secretary who just marked a bunch of spots on his documents.</p><p>"The Ninja Tribunal is present as well to both prosecute and declare the verdict based upon the findings of this investigation." The secretary turned at the presiding members of the Tribunal who nodded in affirmation. "I assume that the person beside the accused is the accused's Voice?"</p><p>"He is… I am…" Overcoat nodded a pair of times, switching to his character with surprising swiftness. "Nara Kichiro, Esteemed Tribunal, the Voice of Nakotsumi Mana for the duration of this procession."</p><p>"Excellent. Under normal circumstances we would like to find out who everyone present is for the sake of convenient and uninterrupted proceedings but… Given the number of spectators present, which is not surprising, given the highly public nature of the case, with the Tribunal's permission, we will skip this step for the interest of time with the option of any relevant members to identify themselves during the Requests Phase." The secretary turned to the Tribunal. The Konohagakure's own judge, Sheniyur Kagetsu, nodded.</p><p>"Before the investigation phase of the Tribunal can begin, does anyone have any requests or submissions for the Tribunal to examine?" the secretary inquired. A line of people in standard uniforms of various ninja villages and a unified style of forehead protectors stood up. All of their forehead protectors read "Shinobi".</p><p>"We are the representatives of the Allied Ninja Forces. Given the international status of Guru Ayushi, the victim of the possibly committed crime, we would like to pursue the prosecution of Nakotsumi Mana with the Tribunal serving as a neutral observer and judge of the data we've gathered." A representative of the group spoke up.</p><p>"Shit…" Overcoat turned away from them, despite turning to Mana's side, the magician failed to catch his eyes. "This wasn't a part of the plan."</p><p>"Denied." Sheniyur Kagetsu crossed his hands, looking just halfway vitalized in his effort to raise them from the table, from the elbows up.</p><p>"Maybe the host judges would at the very least give the entirety of the Tribunal their word before making such major decisions?" Osumo Fuma of Kirigakure looked at Sheniyur who just soured his expression. "Although, if we are allowed to speak, I must say I agree with Sheniyur-san. The Allied Ninja Forces are not an organization loyal to any country nor are they established by a single entity. They do not have any legal documents besides the vaguely framed legal act that established the possibility of the organization's existence. I must second the notion to dismiss this request."</p><p>"I mean… If we just let these self-appointed, self-righteous posers pursue prosecution, why the hell are any of us even here in the first place?" Nokubi Sarutobi of Iwagakure agreed with the motion to dismiss the request. "I second… Or third… The dismissing notion."</p><p>"I simply don't trust the Allied Ninja Forces as an organization. I find the Red Hawks more justified as a legal entity than you folks, forgive me if this sounds rude." Laorth Karatachi leaned up front, in an almost mocking position as he spoke to the representatives of the Allied Ninja Forces with some decent shade.</p><p>"We are all one state, we are all people, a wonderful organization like the Allied Ninja Forces represent that and therefore I would not be opposed to the Allied Ninja pursuing the prosecution." The matriarch of Konoha's main branch of the Akimichi clan opposed the position of her peers.</p><p>"It doesn't truly matter what I think, either way, the position of the Ninja Tribunal is clear. We will be taking care of the prosecution and sentencing, proper evaluation of the data gathered for and against the accused, as initially planned." Kikuzen Shimura, the final judge of the Tribunal not have spoken yet, spoke his mind.</p><p>"I could not care about the Allied Ninja. I do, however, think that the Tribunal should not both pursue prosecution and sanction Sorceress-san." Tokui spoke with his eyes closed, lips blown out and arms over his chest. He knew speaking was pointless but he did it nevertheless.</p><p>"The Tribunal has no interest in sentencing Nakotsumi Mana-san." Kikuzen Shimura replied to the Kumogakure jounin. "Therefore there cannot be a conflict of interest."</p><p>"If you're done with this request, Esteemed Tribunal, I'd like you to consider my request." Overcoat stood up with his hand raised.</p><p>"Very well, Kichiro-san, you may speak." Nokubi Sarutobi waved for the Voice of the accused.</p><p>"We wanted to come out with this upfront so that it does not come out at any point later and threaten the integrity of the procession." Overcoat bent his upper body half a bit to appear more submissive as he gestured toward Tokui with his right hand, "My Voiced does know the judge of this Tribunal. She has met Tokui-san on a mission before. It poses no doubts of objectivity of the Tribunal to us, we are perfectly fine with the current roster of the Tribunal carrying their duties out, we just felt like voicing this information as a show of good faith."</p><p>"I see, it is good that you are transparent this way…" the Fifth Mizukage nodded. "I, personally, do not see the point of resigning judge Tokui-san from the proceedings. It would be impossible to find someone objectively unfamiliar with Mana-san's work. Whether it is from her marvelous performance during the finals of the Chuunin Exams, her extensive mission record, page in the standard Bingo Book of most villages or her magnificent stage performances."</p><p>"Lord Mizukage said so much. I wonder who is subjective here." Tokui grumbled. It did not look like the man cared too much if the Tribunal ruled to keep him around, or not, could solely the sense of duty have been the prime motivator of the young man in his presence in this roster of the Ninja Tribunal?</p><p>The rest of the Tribunal spoke one over another but, unlike with the matter of the Allied Ninja representing the prosecution, the Ninja Tribunal agreed unilaterally to not make a big matter out of Tokui's run-in with Mana. Overcoat accepted the decision with a nod and a bow of his upper half, at least sixty degrees deep.</p><p>"Is this good or bad?" Mana wondered with a whisper when her Voice sat down.</p><p>"Neither. This should not matter, us establishing good will we can tap into if our act goes too far later on does." Overcoat exchanged his reply.</p><p>The Tribunal hall died down in silence, waiting for more participants to voice any relevant requests but none of that rose up. Given how the Tribunal appeared to have dealt with all of the relevant requests and therefore succeeded the Requests Phase, the secretary stood up for the official declaration of the preparation part of the proceedings being over with.</p><p>"Given how no participants have any requests to make, the Tribunal will now proceed to the Investigation Phase. It is up for the prosecution to read out all of the accusations, as well as the data gathered. Based on the explanation of the accused in response to the gathered data, some of it might become evidence while some of it might be ruled out." The secretary declared. While all of the Tribunal judges had a high standing and being a frequent member of similar committees and Tribunal rosters or serving as a Voice was a valid ninja specialty, none of these folk were specialized in this subject and therefore may not have been unshakable and perfect sages of law.</p><p>Sheniyur Kagetsu, a member of the Konoha's Ninja Council stood up with a scroll in his hands. His eyes were awkwardly squinted but it was not due to inherent difficulty reading or constipation. It appeared to be more of a natural trait, the tremendous squint only went toward the middle up to a point, growing into sinking, cerulean orbs in the middle. A unique-looking old man to be certain. Also tough not to chuckle looking at.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana, the accused, also known as the Konoha's Sorceress, is accused in inflicting severe beatings to the esteemed ninja wise-man and a spiritual mentor Guru Ayushi. The deed may have been carried out on the 23rd of July, roughly around 15:38. The data that supports this accusation is thus: the accused was found with minor injuries but extremely exhausted near the spot of where Guru Ayushi was found in a comatose state. There are at least forty-four witnesses that have seen the accused and Guru Ayushi engage in a conversation in close proximity that, they state, turned heated. The other bodies found at the scene showed no sign of injury, strongly suggesting that the accused and Guru Ayushi were the only parties involved in a fight. May the Voice of the accused, or the accused herself, voice their position on the matter and give their opening speech in regard to the data gathered thus far."</p><p>The audience grew unruly somewhere down the middle of the speech. Overcoat stood up and cleared his throat, trying to get a platform to speak freely, given how he was on the audience's side and defending a sweetheart to most, a demon-brat to some, the unruly ones in the audience gave the Voice his chance to speak.</p><p>"May the Esteemed Tribunal know that the Voice of the accused, representing the position of the accused directly, confirm that the accused does not agree with the accusations. The data is circumstantial and shaky, the position of the Voice is that it should be dismissed in its entirety. The Tribunal failed to establish an exact relationship between the accused and the victim, failed to prove that it was indeed the accused and no one else laying said beatdown onto the victim. Two details that the Voice of the accused would like to bring up is that nobody was able to see the actual happenings of the place of crime because of the violent clouds erupting from within a bloody-red barrier that rose up around the area. One that prevented the reacting ninja from entering and the accused and Guru Ayushi from leaving. Both of them may as well have been victims to a third party. Guru Ayushi may have gone comatose after being beaten by the third party while protecting the accused, which is why the accused has appeared mostly unharmed from the incident. In addition, it is no secret that the accused was in a great relationship with the victim – the village records can corroborate that she was the person involved in showing Guru around the village during his last visit to Konoha. The accused simply does not have an established and believable reason to inflict bodily harm to Guru Ayushi. In addition to that, she is a B+ Rank ninja, a well-established and respected chuunin who, while mighty, has no objective way of causing said bodily harm to Guru Ayushi who was known to be remarkably difficult to kill during his time serving the village and possessed a healing factor second to none. The Voice thanks the spectators and the Esteemed Tribunal for their attention."</p><p>"I thought the idea was for me to lose this case?" Mana smirked while Overcoat sat down.</p><p>"I could have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that you were Guru Ayushi himself and the case would have still been long closed. Let me have some fun here…" the Voice winked to the magician.</p><p>"What the Voice of the accused says raises some fine points." Yurisa Akimichi nodded. "I don't believe we will get to the bottom of this without questioning at least some of the witnesses."</p><p>"Agreed. Given the subject of the specific data being evaluated here, I would advise summoning before the Tribunal someone from the ground, who was there that day and has seen the accused and Guru Ayushi." Kikuzen Shimura seconded the notion.</p><p>"The International Ninja Tribunal calls Tori Gomato, the instructor in the Ninja Academy." The secretary stood up and called out to the audience.</p><p>The fact that a respected and even at times revered instructor in the Ninja Academy had some input in the matter, the frightening revelation that whatever had happened may have involved children shook Mana's heart deep down. Her cold and indifferent act burnt down under the worry and anticipation of what the woman she once substituted in the Academy would say.</p><p>With grace and dignity, the world's most confident and perfect posture, Tori Gomato appeared before the Tribunal and sat beside on one of the lower platforms, the opposite side to the Tribunal secretary. Mana tried to catch the glimpse of the woman's eyes but Tori did not look back at her.</p><p>"You do realize that you cannot lie while seated beside the Ninja Tribunal, correct? Failure to observe this duty might lead to disciplinary measures such as suspension or termination of your own ninja license as well as having to face responsibility in front of the Tribunal yourself." The secretary briefly ran down the fact that someone called witness in front of the Tribunal, or rather beside them, could not speak lies.</p><p>"I am very well aware of this fact, thank you." Tori Gomato tipped her lips in an arc upwards while her eyes remained static and even flared a bit of shade at the secretary for questioning her knowledge of the Ninja Tribunal proceedings when she taught the subject to children and managed to make kids less than ten years old understand the intricacies of the legal procedures in the village.</p><p>"In that case, could you please tell the Tribunal about your experience with the events that have transpired and that are being discussed today?" the secretary smiled back, either oblivious to the woman's shade or just choosing to respond to it in kind.</p><p>"It was time past the studying hours of most classes." Tori began. "The consensus was to take some of the volunteers from all classes that I instructed to the Training Grounds No. 27, the classes were returning from an educational tour through the Administration building, the upper floors, the kids were, in a manner uncharacteristic for children their age overjoyed to see office clerks and even have Lord Seventh himself speak to them and invite them to his office. It was then that I picked up Nakotsumi Mana-san dashing in at high speeds, she was switching between the rooftop layers and the ground layer, she seemed to be in a rush as she was avoiding the usual ninja speed traffic up above. That's a mild violation of rules already, it was then that the kids started cheering, I noticed a cloaked figure behind her. My first instinct was that Mana-san was being attacked and I instructed the kids, those that have not already split off and gone home with my permission, to run off home through secure streets, following evacuation protocols. I told them it was a surprise exam of how well they knew the protocols. Then I pulled my rapier and attempted to assist Mana-san but by then the shroud was in full effect and the barrier was up. Given how odd symbols traced up and down the barrier and the shroud's color mimicked that of the standard poison clouds, I chose to wait and see if my hand is needed to the responders instead of charging head-on. Around twenty to forty minutes later the barrier and the shroud all dissolved as suddenly as they appeared, only the unconscious survivors remained in the area. I have nothing further to say of my own accord."</p><p>"You appear to know the accused, is that true?" Laorth Karatachi from Otogakure rested his head onto his knuckle and leaned forward to better see the witness as he addressed her.</p><p>"Yes. She has substituted me in a mission some years back. I have come to know her as a girl who, while not perfect or prodigious in any meanings of the words, tries to be that way at all times. I do respect Mana-san and the work she does." Tori Gomato nodded, as she did so, the woman did not acknowledge Mana in any way, she spoke directly to the Tribunal without looking the magician's way.</p><p>"And how did that mission go?" Judge Sheniyur wondered. It became self-evident he was in the organization's pockets – he knew.</p><p>"This appears to be unrelated to the events being investigated." Tokui Kyuri objected, speaking up after a handful of moments of appearing to have fallen asleep.</p><p>"On the contrary, it might characterize the accused for us a tad. It might help to reach the verdict." Judge Kikuzen objected, supporting his fellow Konoha Ninja Council member.</p><p>"The character of the accused does not matter. The facts and the exact nature of the events that transpired that day do. I do believe this is irrelevant." The Mizukage expressed his own doubts about the relevance of the issue.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana was there during the incident that caused the incident that destroyed the Ninja Academy and led to the death of the Konohagakure jounin Hozuki Shibari," Tori stated. Her expression suggested disdain for the forced manner in which the Tribunal made her admit this but she was blunt and to the point nevertheless.</p><p>"That's nonsense! The Yamanaka caused that incident!" the spectators started getting unruly. "It was a Yamanaka girl that set off the incident!"</p><p>"Order!" Nokubi Sarutobi pounded the table with her fist and turned to the witness. "Could you respond to the audience though? Some of us are not from Konoha and we might use you shedding some light on that incident."</p><p>"Certainly, while it was a Yamanaka girl that tampered with the mind of one of the victims of the disappearances that were occurring in the village at the time, technically, she was under Mana-san's care as it was Mana-san who was in charge in the classroom that day. Mana-san did her best to limit the spread of the incident, risked her own life to prevent casualties, nobody blames her for what had happened that day and there was not even a Tribunal session hosted for that incident involving Mana-san, however, the blunt facts of the matter are as I have stated them."</p><p>Mana raised her hand. Judge Yurisa smiled with kind and sizeable cheeks at the magician while giving her the permission to speak.</p><p>"I'd like to change my plea. I did it, I hurt Guru Ayushi." She declared.</p><p>"Talking about things not in the plan…" Overcoat sighed after whispering to her ear.</p>
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<a name="section0585"><h2>585. Purgatory Or Hell?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Overcoat hissed at Mana when she did the thing that she was not supposed to do until at least a handful more witnesses were questioned and the carefully engineered game led up to cornering Mana's contrived position into frames of guilt.</p><p>"I thought I did not care but… I can't just sit here and listen about everyone and every time I've failed someone. If I am to stay afloat, I need to keep moving and face new responsibilities as they come. Staying and staring at the depths of the ocean of tears I'm swimming it will only make me go under and never surface." Mana replied before the Ninja Tribunal demanded her full attention.</p><p>"Could you please repeat that and make yourself clear, accused? We were under the impression that you did not agree with the accusations and that our data was circumstantial and shaky at best?" Judge Laorth raised his eyebrow. Some of the judges looked relieved to have their works cut out for them, Laorth himself appeared to be walling off his ecstasy from having someone to point a finger at for Ayushi's misfortune but, ironically enough, those that Overcoat's organization had bought were those showing the most bitterness.</p><p>"Honored Tribunal, I thought I could just sit here and have my Voice lie through this. I thought it would be easy to just tie my hands up over my chest and smile through the struggle of the Tribunal to make something that sticks beyond a reasonable doubt in a space of unknowns and question marks. I may have overestimated my shrewdness because I can do neither of these things. I did it, I hurt Guru Ayushi." Mana repeated, solidifying her new position. Overcoat did not look pleased but he behaved and expressed himself better than Mana would have taken it.</p><p>"Well…" judge Sheniyur sighed, Mana was a tad alleviated to find out that the organization's lapdogs were not about to erupt and have their wrath crack down on her and her family. After all, Mana was still honoring their deal and very much intended on keeping her word to the final letter, it was just that she was a bit rushing through it. "In that case, to settle all questions there is only one more witness to question. Accused, would you please make your way to the stand?"</p><p>With a sense of wild nausea in her gut, Mana stood up, it felt like the tiniest breeze in the hall penetrated her whole, as if her skin was made of linen cloth. She probably looked about as pale as a linen shirt as well.</p><p>"You are the accused in this procession, therefore you do not have the obligation to tell the Tribunal the truth as your rights to defend against accusations comes first." The secretary explained, wasting no time after Mana had made her way to the stands.</p><p>"However… For the sake of clarity… If you will…" judge Kikuzen pleaded with the magician, possibly relaying the change of plans given the current predicament. The judges bought by the organization that employed Overcoat adapted but demanded that Mana stuck to her intentions of telling the truth now. The made-up truth but truth in the context of this procession.</p><p>"Of course." Mana nodded. "The truth is that I beat Guru Ayushi. I did it out of revenge and blind rage. It was childish, irresponsible and… I deserve whatever is to come. I welcome it even… Maybe it will make whatever time I've got left as a ninja more tolerable, maybe it will make me sleep better in the case of forced retirement. All that's certain is that I will have to live and deal with the fruit of my vengeance for what still remains."</p><p>"Your Voice raised some fine points that shook the validity of the accusation, could you perhaps address those arguments yourself just for the sake of solidifying the Tribunal's judgment?" the secretary wondered. "At the same time, please explain why and how you've managed to do the deed."</p><p>"Understood." Mana nodded. She sighed from the depths of her heart and looked down, then, lifted her eyes up and looked at as many of the eyes in the spectator seats as she could reach. Bewildered, frightened eyes, eyes of people that have just seen their hero exposed and would rip her to shreds themselves once they recovered from the shock. The jounin protecting the order in the Tribunal session tightened their stances in anticipation of the following outrage, Mana may have wanted to speak faster and explain herself before all hell broke out.</p><p>"I never meant to express this apology and speak this in public but… My father, Nakotsumi Tsukumo, a relatively known Konoha chuunin, more so than most chuunin, was injured in an incident a handful of years ago. An incident involving either Kirigakure ninja or rogue ninja wearing the headbands of Kirigakure ninja. The wounds he suffered forced him to retire, he suffered through great pain every day since then. He was one of the people to have been involved in the black market of pain killer drugs created by a cult that, apparently, mystify and deify Guru Ayushi and his beliefs. The day I did the crime my father passed out into a coma he will never wake up from… It tore a part of my soul out and as things are with voids, they're filled by the first thing that's available. In my case it was anger." Mana said, mirroring the faked apology segments in the "reality" TV shows that were becoming popular and that consumed a lot of mother's evening time as of recently.</p><p>"Anger?" Tokui finally opened his eyes and glared at Mana with a judging glare. At first glance it may have been confused as the young jounin being mad at the magician for hurting the world-famous spiritual icon, Mana saw it for what it truly was – he saw through her lies instantly. "As it was established, I have met you, Mana-san, you were never a person driven by anger or one that let anger in altogether. You've struck me as a young woman after my own soul – calculated and driven, perhaps warmer in your drive…"</p><p>"It may just be because of my unwillingness to accept anger in the past that this particular rage spilled over," Mana answered. This offensive came out of nowhere, her reply felt like wild, defensive flailing of a fencer overwhelmed by the opponent's one-track offensive. "The moment the consequences of my father's methods of dealing with pain became clear, I knew I had to hurt Ayushi-san."</p><p>"Hurt? And how exactly would you hurt Guru Ayushi?" Tokui wondered.</p><p>"Indeed, I believe your Voice also raised these doubts and they were rather effective with me. I wondered about the point of this procession from that moment on, in fact." Judge Nokubi of Iwagakure cupped her curious face in her palms, like a cute face that bloomed from a flower.</p><p>"Truth be told, I was unwillingly involved in some of the incidents related to the cult that I spoke of before. Ever since those incidents three years ago, I was readying myself to face Ayushi-san too, in the case that Guru was not as oblivious to the cult's activities as everybody believed." Mana made up an explanation on the fly, truthfully though, it was a good one as it may have been corroborated by a whole bunch of librarians and also her own summons, if need be, even though it was more of a case of a half-truth.</p><p>"And you've come up with a way to hurt Ayushi in your three-years long quest of making precautions?" Lord Mizukage appeared extremely impressed and intrigued by Mana's revelation. "A person that can hurt Guru Ayushi himself might be capable of defeating just about anyone."</p><p>"Lord Mizukage, with all due respect… We're discussing grievous injury of a respected man here." Judge Yurisa slapped both her cheeks with her hands in an exaggerated expression of offense.</p><p>"Of course, apologies." Osumo Fuma faked a serious face of a man that's caught himself something worth regretting.</p><p>"When I returned to the village from my equal part recovery and training trip, I was on the fence about how serious my intent on acting on my darker impulses was. The moment my father went comatose, all limiters went busted, every regard for the well-being of Guru Ayushi, or anyone else for that matter went straight out the window. Had Ayushi not devoted strenuous amounts of chakra to protect the village and the people around him, I may not have won the village would have lost much more." Mana added.</p><p>Just as the magician had predicted. The last factoid sent the people that weren't supposed to be sitting in this hall and listening to mild village secrets that the village may not have wanted out mad. Where Mana's confession filled them with confusion, the more details she added on top, the more she achieved the desired effect.</p><p>Mother. Mother was here too. Not in the hall, mind you, but outside it. Mana could sense it, pinpoint a chakra signature as small as a needle hole surrounded by stars and planetoids, had it not been this familiar to her, she'd have stood no chance of pulling it off. She must have heard from someone that they were letting people in. Maybe she saw it on the television. Could someone have been broadcasting this? That was unlikely, recording equipment was bulky and much heavier than in the universe Mana brought its samples back from.</p><p>Whom was she trying to fool? She should have known all along that this was the organization's plan all along – spread false narratives about people being not allowed inside the hall's premises but then have the "order" heroically "cave in" to the pressure. Demonstrate that these small folk had real power in their hands. Just like the Mizukage's previous mimic, this was a game. Had the organization or the village either wanted every civilian out of the hall – they'd have had it with a snap of their finger. What true power exactly did the civilians have against even a single ninja? Someone training since childhood to not let their cosmic power destroy their own and everybody else's homes.</p><p>"I see… You show a lot of regret, Mana-san. That is to be respected, even in a criminal. Reformation has always been the core principle behind the justice system of any ninja village or any country. Regret is the caterpillar for redemption. It will be curious for the Tribunal to see what your regret morphs into." Sheniyur Kagetsu nodded and looked at the other judges with eyes that were ready to declare the sentencing part of the procession but too faltering in the presence of greater peers to take initiative.</p><p>"The only thing I am interested in is how a handful of smart and resourceful ninja can be fooled by this nonsense," Tokui grumbled as if through his sleep. The young jounin opened his eyes and looked around, fencing with any judging stare sent his way.</p><p>"Are you suggesting that there's something deeper at play here?" judge Nokubi grinned. "How interesting. Tell me more…"</p><p>"I don't know all the details. All I can say for certain is that Mana-san did not assault that man. It is not within her character to do so." Tokui intensified his glare at the woman even though she outranked him in experience.</p><p>"I thought you've only met the accused for a single mission?" judge Laorth raised his eyebrow, ready to drill a whole other target than the one the Tribunal should have focused on.</p><p>"I've studied the more public acts of Konoha's Sorceress. She was someone of great interest to me. Someone to have survived the Imarizu, someone who became the champion of the Sun Disc arena." Tokui looked up at the ceiling with dreamy and almost a tad nostalgic eyes. "Even if I met her in person once before, that person was not someone who would have done this."</p><p>"Judges, this is childish, sandbox behavior you are showing here. One of the first public Tribunal hearings and you are squabbling with each other instead of fulfilling your duties. You have disagreements, that is fine. Those happen in just about every Tribunal case. That is what the Verdict Phase is for." Kikuzen Shimura calmed the quarreling judges down. "If all of you are ready and see no more need to examine any more data or call any further witnesses to be questioned, we can perhaps proceed?"</p><p>"There is little point in questioning any witnesses when the accused is the first person in history to so easily admit her blame." Tokui retreated inside himself and walled himself off with sarcasm again. The young man was just as skilled at alienating everyone in the room as Mana remembered him being…</p><p>"It seems the Tribunal is ready for the Verdict Phase. May the accused and her Voice know that they will have a chance for a final word afterward, that includes a plea for being excused and other requests related to the verdict." The secretary announced the beginning of the next phase.</p><p>"I vote guilty. While I was having my doubts initially, the confession of the accused drew a fine line in the sand between right and wrong. Men would be wise to take the easy wise decisions where they make themselves apparent." Osumo Fuma rested in the back of his fancy chair double his size while he scratched his rugged chin.</p><p>"I would have voted guilty is asked to vote five minutes ago but there's something in what Tokui-san said. Since I have even the tiniest speck of doubt, I'll say innocent." Nokubi Sarutobi pointed her index fingers at the audience while winking to them at the same time.</p><p>"I have no doubts that the accused is guilty. She's admitted to it herself, I have no grounds to question that solid fact or to believe in some outlandish conspiracy theories." Sheniyur Kagetsu spoke with passion behind his voice. Had certain knowledge not been there before she saw the man speak, Mana would have been certain that conviction such as this could have only come from man's own words.</p><p>"I vote guilty." Laorth Karatachi waved his hand as if signing himself off of the procession.</p><p>"Could you please motivate your decision?" the secretary butt in.</p><p>"I mean… The accused confessed, whether it's because she really did it or because she likes the prospect of imprisonment, who am I to stand in her way?" the Otogakure chuunin shrugged.</p><p>"Oh my… I wouldn't like to see such a lovely young lady in prison. She regrets what she did too… Oh my… I'll vote innocent." Yurisa Akimichi got worked up over Mana's baby-doll eyes and her acted regret that came from something very real from deep down in her heart.</p><p>"I vote guilty. I believed in the accused's guilt even before her confession. Her reasoning is one I understand and can relate to, I know the depths to which those dark thoughts can take a person and I hope that your punishment will assist your redemption in some way." Kikuzen Shimura nodded.</p><p>The rest of the judges turned to Tokui who remained in his seat, hands tied over his chest and his face still shut out from the rest of the people in the building. Chin lowered, eyes closed, face as sour as a plate of kimchi with fermented lemon. It did not take too long for the audience to settle down their restless, ground-level bickering and turn to the final judge as well.</p><p>"Uhm… Judge Tokui-san." The secretary was the first to cut the silence down without mercy. "Your vote?"</p><p>"I abstain," Tokui grumbled with all the cheerfulness of a grumpy toddler.</p><p>"You cannot abstain, judge Tokui-san…" the secretary shook his head. "It is the duty of a Tribunal judge to cast a vote. No matter if they've come to a decision or not."</p><p>"In that case, I vote to leave." Tokui stood up and walked to the door on both sides of the northern wall, leading to the judges' restroom. Some of Konoha's flak jacket greens scurried to intercept the judge fleeing at a casual if not sluggish rate but Kikuzen Shimura stopped them with a gesture.</p><p>"Young man…" Yurisa Akimichi tried to call out to the fellow judge but Tokui gifted her the most death-inducing stare he could muster up. One that was enough to freeze a woman four times his dimensions and twice his experience with goose skin.</p><p>"I do not take part in jokes. I've wasted enough of my time here." The Kumogakure jounin growled again before leaving the hall for good.</p><p>"Very well…" the Tribunal secretary blew out a chest-full of stress air before doing a quick headcount. "It appears that the votes have settled four to two, in the favor of the accused being guilty. May the head of the Tribunal, judge Sheniyur please read the sentence?" the secretary turned to the most-way bald man with the world's thickest pair of glasses to stand up and read the document he had been cradling in his hands for a while now.</p><p>"Fellow members of the honored Ninja Tribunal, accused, Voice of the accused, the head of the Tribunal proposes the punishment of three years in Rengoku prison with the accused's ninja license being suspended for the duration of the punishment. It is a steep punishment, I understand, but the injuries inflicted upon the victim are severe and his legendary stature needs no further reminder. While the actions of the accused were those of a reckless youth, the damage her recklessness inflicted left the entire world a far lesser place, even if that was not her full intention." Sheniyur declared while switching his point of attention from the fellow Tribunal judges all across the audience, to Mana and Overcoat and then back at the other judges.</p><p>One by one, the other Tribunal judges agreed with the proposed sentence, nodding and bobbing their heads about. This was not entirely the "purely symbolic" punishment that Overcoat claimed it would be but Mana understood what it needed to be – it needed to convince a bunch of people who would have likely seen the perpetrator flayed alive that justice was served. It was about as symbolic as the sentence could have been given its intended goals.</p><p>"Will the accused use her right for a final word?" the secretary inquired.</p><p>"Yes." Mana nodded.</p><p>"What are you doing?" Overcoat wondered with a wary tone.</p><p>"The accused would like to serve the punishment in a different correctional facility." Mana declared after standing up. This caused a great deal of unrest amongst the audience.</p><p>"That is a possibility and your right to request that, however, please have in mind that your sentence might be affected by the facility you serve in. Given how the Tribunal has not terminated your license, it was thought that it would be within everyone's best interest to not have you serve in Eden for decades…" the secretary warned Mana but he misunderstood her intent entirely.</p><p>"If it is all the same, I would like to serve my punishment in Jigoku," Mana replied, silencing those growing unruly after her initial declaration and causing a cascade of whispers and frightful discussions amongst the crowd.</p>
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<a name="section0586"><h2>586. Ad Lupi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It is your right to request such a thing, Mana-san. However, just for the sake of clarity, you are aware of what type of place Jigoku is?" judge Sheniyur inquired. Given how this judge had revealed himself to be in the pockets of the organization employing Overcoat, his approval of Mana's request would have heavily suggested that the organization was fine with this slight alteration of the deal as well.</p><p>"The worst prison in the world. The Fire Country has worked their hardest to make it that way." Mana nodded.</p><p>"If you stand by your decision willingly and having full information of what you are getting into here, the Tribunal will have no other choice but to take another vote on changing your sentence as it is the Tribunal's right to follow up on your request and not an obligation." Said judge Kikuzen.</p><p>"I understand." Mana bowed in front of the Tribunal and sat down. She turned to Overcoat, fully expecting to have her ears hissed out by his frustration but he displayed no such outbursts of emotion. "Is this okay with you?" Mana asked just to be sure.</p><p>"Well… As far as my employers will see it – you served your punishment anyway. Will make for a nice story too, how we sent a young lady to Jigoku. Imagine the crime prevention that this news will make…" Overcoat sighed.</p><p>"In that case, may the Tribunal vote again on the motion of changing Nakotsumi Mana's sentence." The secretary ruled giving the Fifth Mizukage a prompt to stand up and voice his opinion first.</p><p>"During the times of close cooperation with Konoha the last five years, before Kirigakure regained its autonomy, I have had a chance to visit Jigoku. It is a dreadful place deserving of its name. Just remembering that hole makes my skin peel off and I prefer that hellish feeling over the thought of ever visiting that facility again. I do not believe that it is a wise decision to send Nakotsumi Mana there, however, given how it is her decision, I will hesitantly support it. I vote for the change of punishment." The Fifth spoke his mind.</p><p>"I vote against the change. For the exact same reasons as Lord Fifth before me voted for it. Trust me, kid, I'm doing you a favor." Judge Nokubi winked at Mana with an indifferent expression.</p><p>"If that is the decision of Nakotsumi Mana herself, I will respect that decision. According to the Land of Fire's Code of Punishment Execution, article 493, the conversion rate of imprisonment in Rengoku to Jigoku is one-to-six. That would make Nakotsumi Mana serve six months in Jigoku. Believe it or not, for the punishment of mere grievous bodily harm, even a single day there is enough penance." Sheniyur nodded without bothering to stand up.</p><p>"You have not said if you vote for or against." The secretary noted.</p><p>"For, of course." Sheniyur corrected himself.</p><p>"Six months? We're letting the person that stole Guru Ayushi from this world off with a six-month punishment!?" judge Laorth jumped up from his chair. Had the throne-like seat of the man been twice its size and weight, it would have likely slid across the platform and slammed against the wall.</p><p>"Have you ever been to Jigoku, judge Laorth?" Kikuzen Shimura turned to Laorth Karatachi with the fingers of his hands intertwined together.</p><p>"So it's a really bad place to be. Who cares? People that deviate from the law need to pay their deeds. I would break if somebody who beat my own child comatose only got six months!" Laorth spread his arms out and flailed about like a capricious child.</p><p>"Made-up situations and appeals to emotion are poor legal arguments, judge Laorth." Kikuzen shook his head in disappointment. "The fact of the matter is that Jigoku has long served as a dumping ground for the entire Fire Country, the place where they dropped off people too powerful and too unhinged for the justice system to deal with. The reason why most of the people inside those walls have never stood trial when they were arrested and were not truly sentenced to Jigoku, merely dropped off there without any documentation of prospects for release, shows the type of place Mana-san resigned herself to. In any other country, just dropping a criminal to prison without a Tribunal session would be a grievous breach of justice but none of the villages residing within Fire Country have ever been reprimanded for this procedure by any international Tribunals or any leaders during international summits. That is because every person there has a specific story that makes them too dangerous to even stand trial. The only injustice towards those people is that they were not executed on the spot when they were captured. Now there is no longer such a chance."</p><p>Laorth gulped and sat down. "I vote against the change, regardless…" he muttered.</p><p>"Oh my… I understand that you are suffering inside, dear, I understand that you wish redemption but this is beyond penance, this decision is worse than suicide. As someone who still has something holy in her soul left to spare, I cannot sign you up for that sort of six months. I absolutely vote against the change." Judge Yurisa opposed to the idea with the strictness that Mana had never previously seen in the usually cheerful and a bit silly woman.</p><p>"If that is Mana-san's will, I will respect her call and her experience, as lacking as the latter may be. Jigoku is truly terrible but if Mana-san's interest is to return to active duty and serve her village as soon as possible, I cannot do anything but admire that sort of devotion to one's village. I vote for the change." judge Kikuzen played it off as just Mana being patriotic, while it did portray the magician in a more favorable light, it hardly pinned down the true motivations that fueled Mana's decision to serve her punishment in Jigoku.</p><p>She hardly could have cared less for the village that had eradicated her and her mother's people or the village that was willing to sacrifice its own children like pawns for a more favorable international opinion. A village that prioritized economic and military strength over the happiness of their own people and village ruled by shifty politicians that listened to the advice of multiple councils of other politicians, none of which had the best interest of the villagers in mind. The village, as a grand entity surpassing its parts, was worthless to Mana.</p><p>Spending these last few days with her mother and thinking about everything she's been through, Mana just wanted to be done with this deal as soon as possible and return to what little family she had left. Return to her friends and comrades, those that she had not pushed away yet, given how inspiring change in other people has caused all of this in the first place, Mana looked forward to returning to active duty and seeing what still remained of her shattered nindo.</p><p>Crippled and broken as it now was, it might have still been good enough to walk. Even if Mana was sick of all the fighting, all the intrigue and everything going the absolute worst way all the time, she had once promised to become a Sannin so that she could prevent curious eyes of predators from the dark. She still needed to become the person that scared those that would harm the innocents through her presence alone. If for that to happen she needed to go through hell on earth, so be it.</p><p>"Very well then, it appears that justice has been served. I thank the judges for attending the session and fulfilling their duties. The execution of the punishment will be entrusted to the Konohagakure Police Force. Session adjourned." The secretary breathed out easier. Delivering justice to the grievous offender that did such extensive harm to Guru Ayushi was undoubtedly the largest check on anyone's checklist for the day. The other judges looked relieved as well.</p><p>The crowd was beginning to get unruly again, while someone with the education and experience of a ninja may have been talked over by explaining what kind of a place Jigoku was and why six months in that place surmised a meaningful punishment, a common civilian did not have that much space for a paradigm shift in their minds. All they heard was six months of imprisonment for someone that has removed a fundamental shogi piece from the game they've played as children. A piece they've thought would always be there, even if they did not quite know how to play shogi or what that piece was or what it did.</p><p>Six was almost nothing. It was just barely more than five. They could count to six and that meant that it was not enough punishment!</p><p>Before the crowd escalated into a becoming a mob, Haikan stepped up to the stand in between Mana and the people. An ear-plugging pop and a cloud of smoke allowed the jounin to conceal his weapon until the last moments when the man swung both of his large pieces of a pipe in both his hands and aimed them at the hectic crowd.</p><p>"Water Style: Red Zone!" Haikan yelled out as torrents of water burst from his obsidian-colored pipes and formed thick, watery walls in between multiple groups in the crowd, preventing any of them from joining into a complete mob. None of the civilians knew what the water did, maybe it was boiling hot, maybe it was ice-cold, maybe it was acidic… Nobody tempted their luck, especially so given the insurmountable difference in power which dictated that no matter what the effects of the water were – they'd be certain to be deadly for mere civilians.</p><p>With a knife that looked more like a fancy cleaver in terms of size and shape, yet fit into a single hand of Mars, the second jounin moved in to assist his partner in mission. If he had done so earlier, perhaps the impressive weapon he clutched would not have been necessary, the mere size and perfection of the man's build appeared to work as sufficient warning against remarkable stupidity in the name of nothing meaningful in particular.</p><hr/><p>It was not the fact that nobody came to either show their support for or eat alive the stage magician they would have killed to get the chance to praise yesterday that surprised Mana. It was the much more specific element of that solitude – the specifics of people that did not reach out, whether it was to support her or condemn her.</p><p>It would not have hurt whatsoever to hear Kiyomi declare that Mana was no better than a common crook and that she'd make sure to destroy the magician just like she swore once to slay all evil immediately. It would not have torn Mana's heart to hear Meiko mumble through words for the first time in her life because she could not fully fathom the excessive betrayal she felt in her heart. If Kouta came to gloat about how glad he was that the two severed all ties and how sick it made him for the few times that they did get together, Mana would have barely shed a tear.</p><p>Okay, all of those were lies, but… The truth was that she could have justified that. She made her damn best to become the scapegoat for Guru Ayushi's downfall and any fallout of that nature would have only served to build up Mana's confidence as an actor and a non-lethal agent of as of yet unknown Black Ops organization functioning within Konoha.</p><p>What Mana did not count on what complete isolation and silence. Not even the people arrested and detained in the Police Force headquarters bothered to talk to her from the other cells, the magician was even given one of her own. Maybe they were frightened, nobody had beaten the shit out of Guru Ayushi for centuries since he retired, perhaps that was what earned her some respect from the criminal element she now became a part of?</p><p>Either way, it was that grave silence that made mother's visit so impactful.</p><p>"You could have come I guess." Mana sighed. "They didn't even try to keep everyone out, too many people. Too much bother."</p><p>"That's fine. I don't think I could have handled it anyway." Mother shrugged.</p><p>"I'm sorry." Mana looked away and shook her head.</p><p>"What for?" mother wondered.</p><p>"That's a good point. Not just one specific thing. Everything…" Mana said. "Leaving you out of everything I did, disappearing so often, never thinking about what you might think or want or not prioritizing that when I did think about it…"</p><p>"Ran out of breath?" mother tried catching Mana's eyes with her own stare.</p><p>"That but not things to name." the magician lamented. "Things to come too. People know who I am now, even those that didn't before. I've gone from famous to infamous in a snap and you'll be there to pick that up for me every day."</p><p>"I've built my café from nothing. A bit of bad press can't be worse than being forgotten or nobody even knowing you exist." Mother waved her hand as if trying to swat the worries away. "What's important is that I know deep down that everything they're saying about my daughter isn't true."</p><p>"It is though…" Mana looked up. The last thing she wanted or needed was her own mother knowing too much or spreading rumors. "I did pummel Guru Ayushi."</p><p>"I'd believe that the world-known spiritual leader and advocate of world peace turned into a bad egg over my own daughter." Nakotsumi Kei shook her head. The woman could have been damn stubborn when she wanted to. "What I am pretty mad about is how reckless you are! Jigoku, honestly!"</p><p>"I do believe I promised to make it up to you. Making my absence only last a few months is how I can begin our life anew. I need to close down this chapter, even if to do that I will need to tear it out, fondle it and throw it into the fire." Mana replied.</p><p>Mother stood up and approached the bars, Mana looked up in surprise and followed. The two touched their hands. It was a lapse of security to let captured ninja touch their visitors. All sorts of bad stuff could have happened but truly scary individuals did not get placed in the Police Force HQ nor were they granted visits. Furthermore, Mana knew all too well that she'd never last if she did pull something funny, not to mention that in her entire body, not a single bone itched with the impulse encouraging her to run for it.</p><p>"Stay strong," Mother asked.</p><p>"Even if I get broken. I'll keep moving on regardless, what other choice do I have?" Mana closed her eyes as they were getting wet and smiled. Even though it was deemed much more acceptable for women to cry, that was the last thing Mana wanted her mother to see her doing, not before she's taken away to Jigoku.</p><p>"When I give you the sign, walk onto the circle glyph and stand perfectly still. If the seal messes up, your limbs might remain outside so struggle at your own peril." The Uchiha preparing Mana for transfer warned the magician.</p><p>"Hmmm? You're not going to give me a uniform or anything?" Mana asked with a dull tone. She had heard that Jigoku was much more of a dumping ground for the bad to the bone rather than a containment facility with rules and security but she was not prepared for the amount of lawlessness and lack of any usual preparations regarding the transfer.</p><p>"Next thing you'll ask is getting transferred to a prison only for women…" the Police Force ninja smirked before weaving a pair of hand seals and giving the magician the visual cue to step onto the scroll.</p><p>Mana gulped before following the instructions. A beam of blue, base chakra colored glow covered her up and sucked her into the scroll, comprising an all too familiar experience, matching the time when Mana participated in the Tag Matches of the Chuunin Exams semi-finals.</p><p>Before long, in fact, before any amount of time having past was registered in Mana's mind, the same beam of light scooped her out of the darkness and back into the outside world. Transferring prisoners sealed into scrolls was an oddball procedure even for Jigoku but it freed the transferring parties from additional danger when watching the prisoners. Not everybody was as good-willed about being dumped in Jigoku as Mana.</p><p>To claim that Mana was scooped out into the light would have only been half-true. The room she was in was dimly lit and comprised of only one man, or so the first impressions would have made it seem. Mana's sensory abilities tipped her off to her being completely surrounded by at least a pair of dozens of guards all of whom were perfectly concealed in the dimness of the room she was in.</p><p>"Greetings, Nakotsumi Mana. My name is Kumobi Morino. I am the warden of this here facility and I was very excited to meet you." The tall and slender man stretched his gaunt fingers out and weaved them together while a morbid smile curved his face with the pearl whites standing out in the gloomy room like a sore thumb. "You were the first person in thirty years to ask to be put in this place. I hope that Jigoku does not disappoint your expectations."</p><p>A myriad of blood-red lights lit up, revealing all of the guards surrounding her. All of them wore some sort of black-tinted armor with red goggles that could have been turned off from their haunting glow. The costumes that these guards wore were perfectly designed to remove any traces of humanity. Their movements were agile but choppy like a piano staccato piece. These men and women were not meant to be seen or taken as humans.</p><p>Kumobi's fingers extended like rubber to at least four times their length as one of his hands lifted up Mana's shirt and the other one touched her exposed belly with the very tips of his fingers. Kumobi's fingers were ice-cold and reminded Mana of her father's chin when he had not shaved for an entire day – the man's skin was not quite hairy but there was something rough and unnerving covering the thing. Something Mana felt she was best not knowing the nature of.</p><p>So far Jigoku has shown a whole different kind of welcome Mana was expecting. It was much less of a cage hanging over an active volcano with greasy and sweaty men stabbing each other with handmade weaponry and much more of the creep one out to the point of committing suicide type of place.</p>
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<a name="section0587"><h2>587. Feet, Meet Bottom</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Searing pain in her abdomen made Mana wince. She did not wish to resist and she certainly had no need of touching those elongated, possibly hairy fingers of the warden of Jigoku – Kumobi Morino. A visual inspection of the scorching sensation revealed a blaze-colored glow still settling down on her belly. The seal was shaped like a kanji symbol but it did not make any sense or mean anything.</p><p>"This is the chakra suppression seal." Kumobi twisted his face once more in an eerie smile. "It is not like the more standard-issue seals. It does not prevent you from using chakra – it punishes you for doing so while shutting all of your grand ambition down."</p><p>The searing pain did not stop, in fact, it began expanding, like a mass of flames that threatened to incinerate Mana, however, actually being of fire may have been favorable to this because it made one seem mad for dealing with such an irrational sensation. Fire, while painful and devastating, made sense. This was just a meaningless, overwhelming sensation of pain that made Mana cry out and lean over, clutching at her middle section while she did her best not to collapse and bash her brains out on the wet, stone floor.</p><p>"Oh… It appears that your chakra sensory is setting off and conflicting with the seal. I suppose the only way to shut down your sensory is to shut down your chakra, which the seal does not quite do. I suppose these six months will not be just happy camping…" Kumobi locked his arms over his chest.</p><p>"P-Please…" Mana whimpered. She had thought that she would last longer. It took the sum of possibly eleven seconds for Jigoku to break her pride and make her beg for help. Before she could form a coherent sentence, begging to either kill her outright or remove the seal, edit it or place a more standard-issue seal, the young woman began screaming while the pain became too intense to take and wall-off.</p><p>Mana thought she could withstand a decent amount of pain but… The pain was brutal, blinding and dominating all senses. Shocking in its blazing nature, it was pure, likened only to being immortal and submerged into a lava flow.</p><p>"Yes. I suppose that won't do. I can't listen to that bothersome voice crying all the time. I'm running a tight prison here, can't have endless screaming in the hall…" Kumobi sighed.</p><p>One of the guards that did their best to conceal any signs of humanity in their shapes or appearance dashed in to Mana. With her abilities at her best, with her body healthy and unbent by pain the likes of which she had never experienced, Mana could have reacted in time. Now, even the thought of using chakra or enhancing her body made the young woman wish to puke her intestines out and choke on it just so she could be put out of her misery.</p><p>Air stopped. She couldn't breathe. The guard pulled out two of his fingers from somewhere in Mana's lower throat, the magician felt warm trickling running down but in a very tiny and controlled drip. She could not scream anymore! Only a muzzled huff let Mana's mouth when she tried and those attempts were more instinctual as the newest prisoner of Jigoku attempted to prioritize resetting her breathing.</p><p>"That's better." Kumobi nodded to himself. "Now, I think the official part's done. Don't worry, you're going to be put in Level 1. You'll be able to do whatever, the guards tend to not get involved all that much and they tend to get involved even less with the lower levels. Just a bit of warning, if you decide to tread all by yourself down into the deeper levels with the more… Colorful roster. Have in mind that there are absolutely no guards beyond Level 4. Not just because these watchmen cannot handle the prisoners down there, more so because the lower levels are too punishing to keep any guards down there. I doubt that any of the inhabitants of the Level 4 and below even still have their sanities intact…"</p><p>Kumobi stared at Mana for a handful of seconds before smacking his forehead.</p><p>"Oh, sorry, I suppose you're not listening to what I'm saying because of all the pain you're under. That's quite alright. I love meeting new people and showing them the ropes. I'm very helpful like that…" Kumobi stroke his chin before gesturing for the guards to take Mana to her cell.</p><p>The moment that the guards put their hands on Mana they felt the instinctual jerking of her body firsthand. They weren't going to have any of that so they bent and twisted whatever they could disable to control the newest prisoner and then lifted her off the floor. This place was many things but it did not pity anyone. Even when every moment drawing breath felt like her entire body was burning, the staff expected Mana to walk to her cell on her own.</p><p>The wall was comprised of some intense weave of silk. Layers on top of layers that when stacked together became too thick to see through while individually they would have been quite transparent. It seemed to Mana's plagued by pain and delirious mind that the whole prison was alive and conscious as when the guards approached, manhandling her and making dealing with pain infinitely worse, the wall dissolved before her very eyes revealing a fleshy corridor that reeked of the insides of somebody's stomach that was in the process of digesting something of the vegetable variety.</p><p>Coils that reminded of headless snakes and tentacles alike, adorned by a full set of a ribcage and a spine that streaked all across the vigorous wonder of life decorating the walls of Jigoku and clutching at the guards and at Mana as they walked past. Mana's jaw gaped open, a frightened and weary scream frozen in her paralyzed throat. The wonder of life had wrapped itself around her ankle and began wrapping up further.</p><p>The guards looked down and back after noticing that dragging Mana became much harder and noticed that. Justifying the merciless reputation of the place, they let go of their prisoner and let the headless, flayed body of a snake to wrap itself all around Mana's body and begin crushing her bones. It did not hurt nearly as bad as it should have, however, that was because of her own, very personal hell of pain that she'd be going through for the following six months, non-stop.</p><p>The fleshy tentacle kept moving up, wrapping over and over while it applied pressure, intending to squeeze Mana into a bloody puddle in its grasp. The very next sight that the magician saw was a flash of grey light covered with black static, a visual aftereffect similar to the visuals of a broken television set, spanning the entire miracle of life that had just wrapped around Mana and a little bit over the wall that gave birth to it.</p><p>Kumobi did not say anything. He did not need to. He just stood there with his hands behind his back and smiled at Mana's face as if he had just done something amusing by letting the tentacle nearly squeeze the life out of her before making it disappear like a bunch of bad TV static.</p><p>The guards picked Mana up without any additional requests or orders. They were tight and professional like clockwork. This was the rest of her life… For the first time in as long as she could remember, Mana had absolutely no idea how she would get through this. Most of the time she had a plan, an improbable plan, many of stupid plans or ill-founded ones. Plenty of times she did not care and just acted, considering that way to be the best way to react.</p><p>This time she struggled to imagine the six months to come and she's only now gotten through the prologue of the Jigoku tour. It will be a long six months…</p><p>A gurgling sound, a note of exposed, fleshy walls rubbing against each other picked up the attention of the guards. Mana observed as their heads twitched and turned in a jerky and predatory manner. The rubbery looking guards even moved around and reacted to unexpected stimuli from the inhospitable environment around them as if they truly were made of rubber in their entirety.</p><p>One of the guards detached from the flock and scrambled toward the wall on all fours. Arms and legs shifting like swinging hammers, twisting a full three-sixty as the haunting figure approached the uneasy wall and very nearly placed their hands to ease the suffering of what appeared to be a prison that was both alive and dead at the same time.</p><p>The fleshy wall rippled and spat out a handful of bodies. A pair of them were undamaged and, ignoring the fact they were clearly dead, did not look like they came from the insides of Jigoku itself. Some of them were absolutely trashed and made Mana feel somewhat glad that the general gloom and shade of the place made it difficult to pick specific details up.</p><p>Kumobi approached the prison wall and pet it, together with the guard, stroking it to ease its twitchy impulses.</p><p>"Prison, did you eat someone?" Kumobi inquired with a tone that would have more suitable to be used when speaking to a child one suspected of pranking someone rather than a possibly alive structure, manifesting all sorts of horrors within its innards.</p><p>A featureless protrusion with the general holes and ridges of a face appeared to the right of the man, the eyes turned outward, the slash in the meat that served as the mouth of the responding entity was waving and rippling as if implying that the thing responding to Kumobi's inquiry was nauseous.</p><p>"Oh, I see… Well, we can't have bodies laying around the place, makes new inmates form a bad first impression so… Chop chop." Kumobi stroke the wall beside the face adopting the tone of a caring mother that wanted its sole child to eat their vegetables.</p><p>Something unnatural was transpiring underneath the place where the bodies were thrown out. Fleshy strings extended and crawled up the pile like fungi, slowly pulling the entire bunch underneath the layer of flesh while an armored plate formed out of some sort of secretion that the prison let out from its very pores. When Kumobi stepped onto the plate on his way back, the plate let out a metallic clang.</p><p>"As you would imagine, deaths are a common occurrence in Jigoku. It would be regrettable if the village representative came all the way here to request a prisoner's release only to find out they're dead but… Hasn't happened yet." Kumobi chuckled into his own hand as if he was an old lady recalling the dashing adventures of her son.</p><p>The knowledge that if she ended up dead, her body would end up gobbled up and disposed of this way did not aid Mana with the pain and the prospects of her future that altogether did not make dealing with the flow of new impressions any easier. The guards returned to the main task at hand, moving Mana to the edge of the corridor where a handful of teeth opened up to reveal a hole that led only into a fall shrouded in shadows.</p><p>"I've always said that the best inmates are those you see twice: when they first show up and when they leave. That being said if your complaint does manage to reach me up here… I suppose I will be impressed enough to see what I can do." Kumobi chuckled again while the guards circled around the hole. Nobody did anything about putting Mana inside said hole but the magician sort of got the clue from their behavior and slid into it herself.</p><p>Despite the long fall and landing on her feet while finishing her plummet with a roll, it did not look like Mana had suffered any injuries, then again, in her agonizing state, a mere broken bone would be unlikely to even register. There was a way to shut the pain off but did she truly have enough peace and quiet here for meditation? If she was on Jigoku's Level One, the prison did not employ the system of cells and just let their prisoners loose to explore the horrors to their hearts' content.</p><p>It was a challenge, one that would have seemed like weakness from the prison's part by a lesser mind but even in her crippled and writhing state Mana saw it as a crushing declaration that the prison had accounted for every possibility of escape and weighed them all in as hopeless. It also challenged the prisoners to prove it wrong.</p><p>A macabre moan came from the dark. One mirroring Mana's own grunt of pain as if it was answering to it. From obscurity into vision came a faceless, gaunt figure in raggedy clothes. No eyes or nose, the head looked like a skin-colored burlap stuffed onto a mannequin with the only notable feature of the entity being an open mouth covering half of its featureless face.</p><p>The creature moaned again. Out of the darkness and closer to Mana, the moans almost sounded more like a hollow sound and the only thing that the curious entity could release. It did not attempt to breach Mana's personal space, it just stood there and let out its tired "Ah" noise over and over and over again with brief pauses.</p><p>Another call responded to the creepy visage, then another, out of the darkness more and more shapes creeped out, doing nothing but letting out their "Ahs" in a rhythmical and somewhat bored manner. With all of the additional company, the odd noises that these creatures let out sounded almost like the world's most nonchalant and bored laughter. Like someone who could only experience total apathy read the noises of laughter off of a script, having no clue to what they were reading about or how it was supposed to sound.</p><p>Mana would have been fine just lying on the ground and crying for six months with only these unnatural humanoids to keep her company. She should have known better. Jigoku cared not for what one was fine with. The magician closed her eyes. She had been tortured before, by her own volition even. Just concentrate on her own body, locate the source of pain and filter it out.</p><p>Pain made even the simplest tasks such as entering her Ego state of meditation, relaying everything about her own body, a tremendous task. It was tough calming one's mind and preparing for proper meditation when every pore felt like flames were being forcefully coursing in and out of them while every neuron in her system was lighting up with thousands of volts, all in her mind, unable of truly hurting her.</p><p>The first thing that relayed to Mana that she was in Ego was her heart crying red. With every pound, the core of the young woman released vibrant and bloody bursts all throughout the system, reaching out to the very end. Her heart was damaged by the magician suffering through so much pain for so long, a little bit more and she may have died by having her heart explode into a bloody pulp, bursting all over and leaking the bloodshake into places it was not meant to go.</p><p>Not that internal bleeding was a priority to a person whose heart just exploded…</p><p>Calm. Breathing. Rhythm. The pain came from the central Tenketsu in her central plexus. Had Mana been a medical ninja she might have known the name of the thing, other than that, recalling the names of over three hundred points she barely ever had contact with on day to day life felt so pointless. Through willpower and concentration, the magician created a mental cage of void around the cause of her pain and left it alone. The impulses no longer spread across her body and simply faded away in the mental black-zone she'd made.</p><p>It won't fix the problem but it should ease the damage to Mana's heart. It won't eliminate the threat completely, the body will still be under whatever threat the conflicting seal caused but it won't know that and it will not try to warn Mana about it by making every pain sensor in her system light up with the most intense streamers Mana had ever felt.</p><p>Something powerful was coming from the Tenketsu in her throat too. It was a precise strike that shut her voice down but not too precise. If Mana had to call it, she'd say the guard hit from memory and skill rather than Byakugan-like awareness. While it did show remarkable skill and training being present within the abilities of the Jigoku guards, it also relieved the young woman as it meant that her voice would recover sooner rather than later.</p><p>"What are you, dead?" a voice rung in the entire Universe of Ego. It was an outside stimulus. One that Mana had missed due to the intense concentration needed to work through such unfavorable conditions. "The Agors aren't dangerous, all they do is… Well… I don't really know. Judge you, I guess…"</p><p>Mana opened her eyes, her muscles still felt stiff but she felt strong enough to stand at the very least.</p><p>"Name's Anika," the prisoner in an orange jumpsuit that had remained on the woman for over a decade at the very least declared while pointing at herself with her thumb. The gesture and the rude tone implied her being the delinquent type. "I found you so you're mine."</p><p>Mana shook her head.</p><p>"They shut down your voice, I see. Means you were pretty noisy or a sharpshooter with your insults. Either way, unless you can be useful, neither of these two is worth my trouble. I don't care if you can speak or not but you better let me know if you can be useful! This place runs on people you own." Anika tried appearing imposing. By all means, she should have been. She was larger and taller than most men and her face looked like it would break a brick unscathed if the two collided hard enough.</p><p>Mana stepped aside and began her attempt at casually walking away from the woman. Her foot froze not because of Anika's attempts of punishing her but instead because she noticed what she had almost set it on – a hair-thin membrane of slimy skin that led to a plummet kilometers deep. The most peculiar detail about it was that while the darkness and the rot in the air made things immensely difficult to see, the magician could see every inch of the fall that she would have taken all the way to the flat, bone-like material at the bottom.</p><p>"Creepy, right? The air down there is really thick too, you'll fall for seven times the amount of time you'd normally fall this distance for. I've seen people die of a heart attack before they reach the ground, that's how I know!" Anika grinned with her eyes closed. It was only that the first inmate Mana met shut off her intense gaze that the magician had noticed a wide scar over the woman's throat. It was odd that she was willing to close her eyes with her very nearly being beheaded once.</p><p>Mana reached her hand out, wanting to press it against Anika's core body. The giant caught it faster than a lurking croc and flipped the magician over her shoulder, slamming her into the membrane and tearing it with a popping snap, exerting thousands of times more force than necessary to leave Mana hanging.</p><p>"If you're useless may as well die." Anika sighed. She did not let go. The woman was desperate for useful people she could own. That may have been the only reason Mana was alive. She was faster and stronger than Mana had thought, perhaps on the tier of stronger Sun Disc martial artists. For someone whose chakra system was shut down entirely, this woman was impressive.</p><p>"Whatcha got there?" a voice came from further back. Mana was in no position to see who was talking whatsoever.</p><p>"She's mine, I found her first!" Anika pulled on Mana and placed the magician down on the nearest safe surface.</p><p>"You're all alone here, none of your girls backing you up. I sense weakness." The slick noise of something sharp rubbing against cloth reminded Mana of the field again. It's been a while since she's heard that noise but the moment she did, the instincts went rushing back.</p><p>"Two for one price either way…" one of the men declared. Mana was not entirely sure what he meant by that.</p><p>"As if I'm letting you own me. Right back at you." Anika acted tough but she was not as nonchalant about the upcoming brawl as a confident person should have been. "For fuck's sake, I hope you can fight." She mumbled to Mana.</p><p>A hallow rasp came out from Mana's throat when the magician tried to speak. Anika just sighed and prepared for a brawl over the ownership of her own body. Even right at the very bottom, the fundamentals of human pride existed, death before subjugation. Mana may not have cared much about Anika's ambitions but the woman had the necessary information to survive this place and she at the very least had some respectable qualities about her.</p><p>Plus, the thought of someone owning someone else under Mana's watch just didn't rub off too well with the young woman.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0588"><h2>588. A Bug In The Rug</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One advantage of having her sensory in total fritz and going off at all times was that it was the only thing that Jigoku as of yet had not taken away from Mana. It was that uncanny genetic trait of hers, as unfocused and off as it was at the moment, that warned her of the drastic increase in numbers against her and Anika. These prisoners weren't just mad animals, they were cleverer than the stereotype would have suggested.</p><p>They hid behind these Agors for once… Given the current battlefield assessment, perhaps any metaphors involving forests one might have drawn were not as ridiculous as initially taken.</p><p>The bloodthirsty inmates moved at once. A handful of them swung their hands about attempting to beat the shit out of anything falling into their path. These men did not look nearly as skilled as they were violent but they weren't the real threat here. That dreadful sound of unsheathing… Mana could have identified it anywhere, even woken from her sleep. Not only were some of these inmates armed with whoever knew what, but some of them may also have been hiding all over the place, shuffling in between the Agors, making retreat impossible as Agors seemed to favor activity and this spectacle was turning the dropzone into quite a scene for the faceless moaners.</p><p>The enemy swung rapid and often, Anika swung wide and strong. Lariats, smacks from the front and the back of her hand as well as stiff and rounding kicks. It was like this woman lived her entire life handling large crowds of people that did not like her all too much. She was large, that meant she had the necessary range and with her perfect, wide-reaching moves could dispatch of the meaningless fodder without much struggle.</p><p>A handful of them fell through the membrane, so much could have been assumed, given the nasty tearing sound that signaled it and the endless screams. While Mana stayed mostly behind her larger and more experienced attempted owner, she had noticed that the screams had come to an abrupt stop but then resumed. The men that have plummeted down have run out of breath before finishing the fall.</p><p>Mana's glance moved to target a nearby would-be assassin. She did not cower behind Anika just to have the brutish woman protect her, she did so to focus on the armed enemies while the weaklings and the overly ambitious ones could have been left to the amateur strongwoman.</p><p>These inmates knew how to stab. They did not prance around or show any impressive trickery, they were all ruthlessness, all attempting to close their space and then jerk their armed arm around until whatever at the other end was just a messy pulp of swellings, cuts, scratches, and lacerations. That was why the handful found it surprising when Mana's limbs locked around theirs. The magician's wrist had successfully locked around and restrained one of the stabbers without even needing to look at them.</p><p>What the young woman failed to take into account was the massive loss of power in her current state. She may have had the skill and training but she was nowhere near a match for a fully grown man who ate the meat of his less fortunate compatriots daily and therefore observed the proper calorie intake for a man engaging in daily active physical activity.</p><p>While in a hallway or a dark alley this would have ended up in multiple stab wounds, the struggling killers forgot that they were not standing on the ground nearly as stable as one of an alleyway. While through a good yank and push they managed to leave some red gashes over Mana's body, the intensive physical struggling sent them plummeting down following a bone-chilling tearing sound of the membrane beneath.</p><p>This was just another thing Mana had to keep track of – the areas where the ground was not just an abyss covered up with a paper-thin layer of stuck together slime. The magician turned to Anika, just to check if the big lump of muscle and fat was not hurt, she was facing off against the few of the inmates that harassed them earlier.</p><p>The apparent leader of the fold had an interesting fighting style, one that made Mana feel unease in her gut as a martial artist in here would have both been troublesome for her and leaps and bounds ahead of what any ordinary strongman could have put out in terms of combat potential. The inmate swung his arms about as if taking a brisk walk but his feet remained firmly planted onto the ground. Then, in a lightning flash, it was all over.</p><p>Anika laid down on the ground with her nose busted and a possible concussion to boot. The zealous inmate approached his beaten opponent with an attempt to snap her neck while the lump was down but Mana interrupted him with a dash. She noticed the same knives of hardened, sharpened bone in the hands of his fellows and these guys wielded it with much more knife-fighting training.</p><p>Had she not performed them, Mana would have never thought her stiff body still capable of performing backflips and evasive rolls but she slipped out of harm's way. She did it only for the ever progressing combat to force her right back into the fray as once the magician moved out of harm's way, the bastards proceeded to loom over Anika with their sharpened bones in hand.</p><p>A pair of kicks in the backs of the neck and the head with a single fluid leap and the pair of armed inmates fell down before Mana even landed from her overly showy maneuver. When she did land, however, she landed straight into a donkey-like kick from the main inmate ringleader. Mana moved out of instinct. The taste of blood was prevalent in her mouth, blood reigned supreme all over her face, making the handy ability to breathe yet another thing that Jigoku robbed Mana of.</p><p>"Fucking bitch! In Jigoku, a man's worth is measured in who he owns. People are currency and the merchandise here and you've cost me a whole lot! I intend on making you pay me back!" the inmate grumbled while he proceeded to throw hammer strikes at Mana's direction. Mana cried out as one caught her straight in the back and pounded her to the ground. Before she could move or counter the attempt to exploit the accurate move, a crushing stomp shoved her head further into whatever bio-gunk the entire prison was made of.</p><p>Mana had no breaths left in her chest even before her mouth, her nose and her rapidly swelling eyes let themselves be filled by someone's remains littering the place. The taste and rot of somebody's carcass made Mana move past reasonable thought to push herself through this. Only someone with a blank mind could have processed this new level of low she's found herself in. All the disgusting remains filling her mouth and forcing themselves through her nostrils and into her airways made Mana's gag reflex declare it wanted nothing to have with any of that.</p><p>Before the young woman could throw up something she ate while she was still free, a crunchy sound made her thoughts scurry back into her consciousness. Soon enough no more weight pressed against the back of Mana's head which felt confusing. It was only when the magician pulled her head out of the bloody gunk and looked at her assailant that she noticed that the man was a head short and Anika's massive hands had leftover brain noodles all over them with a splatter of red that suggested a pretty inventive surprise kill from the female inmate's part.</p><p>"Oh… You're fucking useful alright. You're worth twelve thousand serial killers that have only killed defenseless women and children their whole lives. You're worth more than rogues willing to slit their own throats just to show how willing to betray just about anyone and anything they are. You're a fucking goldmine and you're all mine." Anika declared.</p><p>While Anika was ready to go back to wherever she came from, Mana turned back to look at the torn holes that lead down into the abyss from which faraway screams could have still been heard. The magician sat down and clutched her chest, feeling the warm breath rushing from her mouth acquire a bloody aftertaste. As expected, a fight for her life did not sit well with her already compromised heart. One that only was capable of getting Mana through Jigoku because it was fooled about how troubled it really was.</p><p>"Hey! Why are you sitting around? I don't plan on feeding you so that you can sit around!" Anika turned back and approached Mana but then stopped talking as the massive inmate observed the magician struggle over her physical difficulties. "You've got a weak heart, huh? I'm tempted to milk you out of all the fight you have as you're bloody good at it but… Who knows, maybe I can find a better use for you. Now come back to the cell."</p><p>Despite Jigoku being all the same, Anika could navigate the place just fine. Jigoku… All mist, rot and unstable ground that shifted from being made of what seemed like brittle cartilage wrapped in the goopy skin membrane, fleshy biological materials that Mana almost choked herself to death with earlier or just flat out nothingness of thick air that led to the first fall that induced death with the falling process rather than hitting the end of the road.</p><p>What appeared like a bunker made of living tissue soon made the magician jump back and press her hand to her own chest in an attempt to calm her racing heart down. The last thing she wanted now was to escalate her impending doom. It was a gamble just trying to last six months on the strength her beating core had at the moment, it was inevitable that she would have to seek for another solution somewhere down the line.</p><p>"Heh, scary fuckers, aren't they?" Anika took a moment to admire something she had been taking for granted ever since she got used to it – the cells that opened themselves like the mouths of a skinned canine, all the mandatory barking, howling and drooling included. The fleshy bunkers were just the snout, none of the upper forms of a dog's head, a detail that made the particular feature of this level all the more ominous. "You think they're scary now, just wait 'till it starts growling and barking in the middle of the night… Sometimes you think it's someone coming here to shank you but it's just Agors. You'd think that with both of these freakshows being a part of the prison they'd at least not get triggered by one another…"</p><p>Mana stared in surprise as Anika observed the timing between the chomping mouth of canines slamming shut every once in a blink, attempting to catch an unprepared prey in between its teeth. It must have been more instinctual given how it did not possess anything resembling a stomach that could process what it had eaten or even a brain to demand food, to begin with.</p><p>Anika grabbed the young woman by the collar and dragged her in before the chompers could bite her lower half off. Her timing was off this time. It was nothing to sneeze at even, to begin with, but could Mana really have been blamed for messing it up? Her vision was getting hazy, sweat was breaking through her skin at an alarming rate as even the touch of a fellow human felt refreshing in the coolness of the room temperature.</p><p>"Yeah… Definitely a last resort fighter…" Anika sighed after shaking her own hand off of the sweat that stayed in it after the inmate came in contact with the magician's skin.</p><p>"Is… This prison… Alive?" Mana finally managed to husk out some semblance of speech. Something that seemed to please Anika a great deal.</p><p>"Who knows. Don't think so. If you want to get to the deeper philosophical shit, you might wanna check out the lower levels. That's where all the philosophers in search of answers go. Not that I'll let my property off easy." Anika warned the magician by extending his index finger so close that an inch closer would have placed it right inside Mana's right nostril. Even then, it was so large that it was unlikely to fit inside…</p><p>Mana sighed. She was still undecided as to how long she was about to keep up the whole being owned act. It was not like she ever signed up for it, in fact, she'd been denying that suggestion ever since it first came up and yet Anika did not seem to care about no as a viable answer.</p><p>"I'm back! And I've brought someone new! She's worth more than most of you so make sure she's well taken care of." Anika placed her hand over Mana's back and shoved the magician forward as softly as she could without making the young woman tumble over but also strong enough to move her from her spot.</p><p>"Really? What's so special about her?" a ginger-headed young man of a slim build, short stature, and curly, orange hair squinted his blue eyes in suspicion.</p><p>"Well, she helped me plow through Yamajin's crew on our first meeting. She can kick all kinds of ass but her heart's not too good so don't make her fight all the time." Anika grinned and dropped on something that looked like a plastic chair covered with needles still sticking out of it. It was like a container full of syringes was molten into a single mass but somehow the scary, pointy ends did not suffer any damage.</p><p>"Seriously? As if in…" the ginger dropped his jaw.</p><p>"As if in I crushed the bastard's head myself. That leaves just four gangs on this level to worry about!" Anika seemed overjoyed for someone sitting atop of exposed syringes.</p><p>"Do you even know how lucky you are to be this valuable?" a girl in her early teens with half-dirty and half-burnt face looked up at Mana. "Why isn't she happier?"</p><p>"Yeah… She's kind of a sour face. I hope it's just difficulty adjusting but… Who knows, we'll see. With a little nugget like that, it kind of makes the butterflies wriggle in my stomach that somebody's gonna barge in here and try to nab you from me!" Anika wriggled in her needle chair. This was the point at which Mana's curiosity overcame her penchant for self-reflection and self-loathing.</p><p>"Doesn't that hurt?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"What, this?" Anika pointed at her chair. "Yeah, but it's the only furniture we have. Seriously, any attempts to build anything with just make it grow metal needles. It's weird but nowhere near the weirdest thing in this joint."</p><p>"Just wait until you realize that flying in an endless void with thunder and lightning crackling around you are the only things you can dream…" the ginger man rubbed his hands.</p><p>Mana sighed and sat down on the floor. A bald man moved to a molten plastic chest with needles sticking out of it and forced it open through pain and physical effort. The more he tried, the more he struggled, the deeper the needles went in and the more they wriggled about in his body like insect stingers. Within moments the man withdrew the object of his search and threw it across the room at Mana. It was a dusty and old jumpsuit, similar to the one Anika wore.</p><p>Anika shook her head. She stood up while wincing and then moved behind her little throne to dig around the mess lying there. The woman hurled a collar over to Mana. One made of black leather, donning silver spikes at the sides.</p><p>"I picked this off of one of the dogs of Nereigen. That's just one reason why he'd very much like us all slaughtered… If you plan to sleep on the ground, like a dog, may as well dress like one." Anika grinned with an apish smile that reminded the magician of Meiko.</p><p>As was often the case with despairing thoughts, once the gloom hit, it poured. The nostalgic callbacks to her friends and family and everything she's abandoned for this gig here inevitably turned back to a handful of moments ago and how she failed to do anything about a whole handful of people getting subjected to the most terrible fate she's failed to pull people from.</p><p>She wasn't as fast as she once was, that's a given. Nowhere near as strong and if she got hurt just one-tenth the severity of what she could take normally she'd die on the spot. If she kept on fighting for more than a handful of minutes – her heart would stop and Mana would likely not even feel it. In an instant, she'd just feel something off and then drop dead. That was not even the worst thing…</p><p>Just how many more people she will fail to save in her weakened state, minding just her own survival? How many could be dying in various levels of Jigoku right now? A sizzling sound up above broke Mana out of the peaceful concentration, the first attempt at getting the hang on her thoughts and maybe returning to her Ego state and finishing the mental patch job.</p><p>"Germs!" the ginger yelled out, jumping onto his feet with his sharpened bone still in hand, his eyes gleamed with excitement as if it was porridge dripping from the sky and he had been fasting for months.</p><p>"Move it!" Anika groaned in frustration, grabbing a couple of children hanging around her crew and instructing the rest to do the same. "Don't look back, just run. These are like actual supersized germs, they'll suck you up inside and then digest you inside their goop. Grab Kawaji while you're at it…"</p><p>Had Anika not gestured toward the overly excited ginger looking up at the sky at how supersized green germs melted their bunker into dripping, acidic goo, Mana would not have known what her task was. She did not intend on following what Anika said, it just so happened that right now the interests of the two aligned. Mana felt desperate to save somebody just this once, just a proof that she still had a modicum of control over this insane place.</p><p>"Piss off! I want to feel the germs embrace me and just melt away!" the ginger swung his hips around while he caressed his puffy cheeks with his hands. Given that Mana did not back down, the stickman swung his favored tool for murder at Mana. That was just what Mana needed – a wide crimson gash at her chest and a soiled with blood shirt to force her to wear what Anika gave her.</p><p>That was how it started – the feeling of being indebted, that was how she'd sell her freedom away for six whole months.</p><p>The ginger was handy with a shank, Mana locked up his wrist only to have the youth drop it. Mana's eyes were too busy following the drop of the tool to notice another one getting pulled on her from behind. One that she locked as well but that was not to be the end of it – the kid functioned like some sort of stabbing automaton and he only had one free hand to leave a mashed mess of Mana.</p><p>The magician yelled out in pain and pushed her body in closer, the shank got stuck deeper than the suicidal murderer could pull it out from her immediately. He did a false, pointless yank and that wasted time was enough for Mana to reach in and throw the youth over her shoulder… That would have happened too, had a warm sensation not ran through the magician's entire body, followed by a breach of cold sweat. A splitting pain in her chest that made Mana collapse on the ground, clutching at her chest.</p><p>"I killed her! I killed her!" Kawaji jumped in joy before turning his attention back at the imposing legions of green germs devouring the lair of Anika's crew.</p><p>"Don't get too excited, she's just having a heart attack again…" Anika sighed before instructing a pair of kids that likely were only useful in nabbing stuff from other gangs that she liked to grab the living asset slowly dying on the floor and drag her away from imminent death.</p><p>"Kawaji…" one of the kids turned at Anika, questioning if they were to leave the suicidal shanklord to certain death by dissolving.</p><p>"He's valuable but not that valuable." Anika shrugged. She may have had some admirable traits but as soon as people stopped being useful to her she let go of them. That was all that her crew was to her – assets. Had she known yet what exactly Mana was worth, she may have chosen to leave the magician behind too.</p><p>"No…" Mana struggled. She wasn't strong enough to even break out of the hands of a bunch of children dragging her feverish body away. Was that what Jigoku would be like? Constant lack of control?</p><p>"You're lucky that the germs are as sluggish as they are big, if they weren't we'd leave you behind too…" a girl with pigtails showed Mana her tongue, not looking too happy by how difficult the feverish magician was making their retreat.</p><p>The remaining six months in Jigoku were not to be quick and painless ones…</p>
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<a name="section0589"><h2>589. Dogs Can Go To Heaven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The realization that one felt better with a stab wound still doing its wet thing compared to just fifteen minutes earlier was a peculiar one only available in the Jigoku prison. Mana looked down at the barebones patch-job that one of Anika's crewmates did on her. It was hardly an adequate application of bandaging for the wound in question but it was serviceable enough to be an improvement over just letting it bleed.</p><p>"Dammit… Lost Kawaji. He was a pretty slick guy to send out when I wanted someone dead quietly." Anika sighed.</p><p>Calling Anika's crew her crewmates was just an odd dealing mechanism. By all means, Mana should have called them by the real names of the lot – they were slaves. They had little to no rights or say on things and the only way that Anika treated her flock better than actual tools was that her crew was too large to stuff into a wallet or satchel and carry around.</p><p>And yet Anika did try and preserve her crew to the best of her ability, Mana would not have bet her ryo on the fact she did it because of some sort of care over the people she claimed ownership over but even if she did so for her own personal gain and the potential use the people in her crew served to her, she still looked out for them somewhat. More so than the magician thought inmates of the worst kind of prison imaginable being capable of.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes. The kids dragging her in their own half-assed kind of way noticed that the young woman was getting too relaxed for how much they were willing to tolerate and they let go of her. That broke the magician out of her concentration but it was just a momentary obstacle.</p><p>"Hey!" Anika's voice thundered from her right. The vague silhouette of the woman manifested inside Mana's Ego realm. By now the magician had learned to tolerate some interruptions to her concentration without all of her progress immediately sinking to the crapper. "We've gotta move! I've lost enough people today!"</p><p>"I need to meditate. Slow down my heartbeat so that my bleeding slows down in the process. That's the only way to deal with my wound in my current, weakened state." Mana replied.</p><p>"You're going to listen to her?" someone unfamiliar to the magician asked Anika. It must have been outlandish for these people who were essentially slaves to Anika's whims. Who went where she went, stole what Anika wanted and killed whomever Anika told them to kill.</p><p>"I would backhand a bitch talking back to me in a heartbeat but if it will save her life and spare me the further waste of perfectly good currency, I'll take it, I'm a pretty big girl!" Anika finished the last part of that reply in an imposing tone, Mana did not see the conversation develop visually but she imagined the local crew boss looming over the poor crewmate daring to question her actions.</p><p>"We're about to be attacked." Mana opened her eyes.</p><p>"Wha…" Anika could not complete her confusion-driven response before a forked blade on a thick chain tore through her crowd, downing a handful of her inmates. One more came at Anika's abdomen but one of her slaves jumped into the cover of his leader and took one in the chest. The blades got stuck in the poor inmates hard enough for the entire body to be dragged about freely, as demonstrated when a handful of the victims got dragged out into the distance and the one who sacrificed his own life for Anika flew right into the grasp of a tall, bald man in a half-busted mask that was meant to prevent the man from eating something, or rather… Someone.</p><p>The one visible eye from the cover of the leather mask glowed with ecstatic flares when the man tore his hands into the injured and dying body of the inmate he just hooked like a fish and then tore the man in two. The scariest part of all was that everybody in Jigoku wore the same chakra suppression seals, this was all this man's natural strength…</p><p>"Nereigen…" Anika grumbled. Her voice sounded grim, the usually cheerful and larger than life personality was robbed of all oxygen and any joyful resonance in her neurons.</p><p>The unnatural physical strength of Nereigen likely came from his sheer size. A living tower over all living things, Nereigen was four times larger than any man Mana had seen while sitting. The man sat in a throne of bones that also had rod-sized needles sticking out from them, appearing not quite immune to the curse that befell furniture in this facility. Nereigen's body was adorned with armor built from scrap and decorated with bones of lesser men, molten onto the scrap. The man had his chain hooks wrapped in dozens around his limbs while eight tube-like protrusions stuck out from his throne, likely cannons for more chain hooks.</p><p>A childish cackle alerted the petrified remains of Anika's crew and forced them to look around frantically, pressing their backs one against another in a desperate attempt to spot the next hook on a chain. While the screams and gurgling of lives being extinguished rocked Mana to her core, the magician was left wondering as to who exactly could move so fast around the area as to drag the victims around this way and leave nothing but bloody trails and messy remains.</p><p>Soon, Mana received her answer, in the forms of dwarfs sitting atop of massive men with leather masks, carrying their size-challenged kin around on their shoulders. The arms of the giants were relatively underdeveloped but their feet were anything but. These men ran and did so frequently, that was the source of the impressive speed of the ranged attacking crew. By all means, Anika should have had more time to prepare, if only the attacking crew did not use a long range weapon.</p><p>Anika's inmates hissed at their assailants but their fighting spirit was soon extinguished by a boisterous roar of an engine. A shrieking of rubber across the Jigoku floor and the rushing attacker wiped away the gloom of the smoke. It was not long until Mana heard the unimpressed laughter of the judging Agors in the distance. This would be just like the assault of Yamajin's crew all over again.</p><p>A flash of a metallic face, an absolute giant of a man with a cage for a mask that his swollen and burnt flesh did not fit inside perfectly and bent the arm-thick metal bars bit by bit blurs of teeth sharpened with stone or flint that spread rotting, infectious slobber and the endless roar of engine wherever the massive horror-show rolled by. The inmates Anika owned screamed and waved about helpless, splattering blood all over the place when the monster of rubber, metal and very human-looking set of berserk eyes drove off with a victim of his choice impaled on one of his chainsaw arm prosthetics.</p><p>It was only when the motor-rolling man roared out, satisfied with the carnage he had wrought and wiped away the static of the gloom around him that Mana got a full picture of one of the more notable properties of Nereigen's crew: a man who really wanted to look like a dinosaur, judging from the shape of the armor and prosthetics he adorned as well as the swollen stump on his jaw and the hunched position he stood in. A warrior who was only a man from the waist up as he stood atop of a massive tire he rolled around using and had a pair of very vociferous chainsaws rumbling atop of both of his arms.</p><p>What a sad thing. A man who had lost his lower body, his arms and carried scars of skin-melting burns wherever his skin was exposed. Someone who has truly, by every sense of the word became more of a gimmick and a tool rather than a man…</p><p>"I recall you owing me a dog." Nereigen grinned. The man raised his chin, still strapped into the uncomfortable looking restraint that hung half-torn on his face, the ringleader of Nereigen's crew swept the field with his arrogance and might.</p><p>Anika just stared back at the man with fury brimming in her eyes and enough of it trickling down to make her grind her teeth hard enough to dull them and make her gums bleed. It was the type of rage that the magician could understand and recognize – the anger born of hopelessness, one that made someone hate not a specific man, not a specific circumstance but instead the entire world. It was, usually, the last flame of defiance before one's end, if a situation calling for such a reaction did not burn up the living embodiment of such rage, grief and devastation usually followed it and no man or woman walked out from this feeling the same way that the emotion took them over in.</p><p>"You know me, normally, I'd have just blown your pathetic excuse for a lair up, slaughtered everything and everyone inside and thought something interesting and public to end you with. But we both know that a raging lunatic makes for a poor leader in these parts. I'm willing to listen to how you beg for your life and adapt my plans accordingly. Given how just butchering the lot of you would just waste my resources with nothing to show for it…" Nereigen thundered.</p><p>"I killed Yamajin! I'll find a way to kill you too!" Anika growled out in defiance. She knew that she was unlikely to walk out from this meeting alive so she figured to at least go out in a way that would have honored her in the talks people would mention her around this hellhole in the future.</p><p>"Really? Interesting…" Nereigen scratched the chin part of his mask, overcome by some inhuman rage, the man pinched the mask and attempted to rip it off of his face but failed, even with all of his freak strength and the blazing fury that fueled and enhanced it. The man gave in and just slumped in his chair, his single visible eye dimmed in disappointment. "I was going to visit him next. Maybe I was going to have one of my dogs dress in your flayed skin to scare him first, then they'd have removed that skin to reveal themselves and scared him shitless, then I'd have shown up and told him I had plowed right through your crew to make him overjoyed, only to tell I was about to do the same to him and see all that joy leave his eyes…"</p><p>"Yeah well… Saved you some trouble. Fuel and danger too, you know how scary these parts are with how many holes there are around here." Anika grinned. Deep down she still hoped that one of those Nereigen's colossal war-dogs tripped up and fell into one of the holes that spelled out one of the most terrifying demise to anyone falling into it.</p><p>"Yes, I assume that is why all four of you rising superstar crews made your lairs around here, to avoid the more leveling attention of the real emperors of this prison – those holes are troublesome to navigate, Gosenri here had to remove the lower tank half of his body and replace it with a unicycle to reduce the risk of falling down one of those pits." Nereigen sighed. "Well… If that is all, maybe we should just kick all of you down one of those holes you walled yourselves off with?"</p><p>"Wait!" Mana stepped out. She did not expect the immediate response of a destructive fussilade firing off from Nereigen's throne in her general direction. Something strong pushed Mana down on the ground and the magician felt a pile of bodies cover her up. As all hell broke loose around her, the magician closed her eyes and wondered if she truly was going to make through this.</p><p>She was a fool taking her survival for granted like this and only count on the torture of the time she was cursed here for being the only obstacle in her way. Once the smoke cleared Mana rose from the ground covered in blood and gore, seeing the greatly reduced ranks of Anika's crew and even the ringleader herself missing an arm and writhing on her knees. Whatever these explosive projectiles were, they were clean – the heat erupting from within cauterized any wounds they caused or charred the victim up from inside if it hit close enough.</p><p>Nereigen rose his hand up, a hook on a chain went Mana's direction and coiled around the young woman. Instead of killing the magician this time, one of the self-proclaimed emperors of Jigoku pulled the magician in closer to himself and lifted her up to his eye level. The busted up clothes that she arrived in the prison with tore before the man's eyes but the man had restrained the magician in his palm, keeping a tight clutch on her.</p><p>"Interesting. That bombardment went through half your crew yet you guys were so adamant about protecting this one… She's valuable, isn't she?" Nereigen wondered. "You've given her the collar of one of my dogs, she must mean something to you…"</p><p>"She's worthless! Just some civilian that asked to be transferred here in hopes her punishment would be shorter. She's even got a heart condition so she's dying half the time she sees action." Anika grunted and moaned through the ungodly amounts of pain she was in.</p><p>"I'm a sensor," Mana stated up in Nereigen's face. The one visible eye of Nereigen opened wide and gleamed with a chestnut-shaded blaze of excitement.</p><p>"I see… I wondered how Anika's dogs protected her from my surprise attack, you must have warned them." Nereigen's mask shifted and turned with a leathery rubbing sound from down under. The man must have been smiling.</p><p>The towering emperor laid the magician down on the ground by his feet. He then pulled out a leather mask that covered up the entire head and left little for breathing. It just had a pathetic rip on the back for one's hair, if they were longer, which Mana's certainly were. Alongside the headpiece, he threw her a bunch of leathery strings that were held together by buttons of silver and were rather stringy but wide enough to serve as a broad definition of "clothing", one with the standards that Mana's current attire was feeling under the weather of living up to.</p><p>"Become my dog. Sniff for me. You'll live that way." Nereigen suggested.</p><p>"Let Anika and her crew go. I'll do it. Only for six months though, my punishment ends then." Mana asked. To show that she was serious, she slipped into the stringy outfit and took the mask into her hands and prepared to slip it over her face.</p><p>"I suppose she's repaid her debt by finding me another dog. I've plowed through enough of her ranks to make her no longer a threat to me. I won't crush her but I can't promise that somebody else won't do the same." Nereigen shrugged, making his armored body clang as the hanging chains smacked about all the scrap and bone on his armor.</p><p>"That's fine." Mana nodded and slipped into the mask.</p><p>There was no way that Nereigen was not an experienced ninja. He knew the value of sensors, he also knew that their abilities remained intact when conflicting with the local chakra suppression seals. He also appeared to be knowledgeable about the fact when one shut down most other senses by robbing one of their way to see and muzzling what they could hear – one's sensory abilities grew exponentially. Almost by the same time that Mana's eyes became accustomed to the long-lasting dark she'd spend the next six months in, the usual flares of candles and larger blazes lit up around her.</p><p>The chakra of the locals was suppressed a great deal, likely on their own to avoid any instinctual conflict with the seal and spare them the excruciating pain that followed such an event. That was both good and bad, the larger chakra was easier to track and sense, easier to tell more specific details about, however, being around smaller chakra won't upset Mana's heart too bad.</p><p>"Anika said you had a heart condition, don't worry, dog," Nereigen thundered with his boisterous voice as he pinched something onto Mana, something that made her move together with his chair and let the towering man yank her about. "There are plenty of others to fight for you. Anika was smart to hold on to you over the rest of her chaff. I'll be expecting the same from my own war-dogs – the value of this girl is third, only to my own and Gosenri."</p><p>The vibrant sound of hundreds of stomps drowned out in the roar of Gosenri's chainsaws and his motoric unicycle. Mana did not at all feel comfortable selling herself out this way but if that was the only way to save someone in her current state, she'd have done it in a heartbeat. Just how many times has she put her life on the line, fully expecting to die for others' sake? Why would selling her integrity out for someone else's wellbeing be that much different?</p><p>"Hate to burst your bubble, boss but your dog is bleeding limp." A feminine voice by Nereigen's side reached Mana's ear, lightly toned down by the layer of leather wrapped around her face. Breathing in what was to be her new face for the following six months was almost unbearable, just an ounce of oxygen above the level needed for fundamental survival but comfort seemed beyond the horizon.</p><p>"Hmmm. Treat her when we're back home." Nereigen nodded, his voice calmed down from the commanding authority he thundered with before.</p><p>In a twist completely unlike what would have befitted a crowd placed in the maximum security containment facility that was surrounded in total secrecy in terms of the finer details of its properties, Nereigen turned his crew around and began heading back, leaving only the ravaged remains of Anika's crew to pick up after themselves. Broken but barely alive. Sensing the mellow red vibrations in the chakra signatures behind her, Mana stopped and looked back at what she left behind. She spared a thought for what would happen to Anika and her crew but saw no way of helping them any more right now.</p><p>A strong yank on her chain made Mana fall over and drag for a short while before she regained her stature and began jogging after Nereigen's rolling throne. A mechanized grinding sound following something slurpy, squishy and snappy together with Gosenri roaring out in excitement followed, Mana was not sure what that sound was but she did not notice any disappearances of chakra signatures so whoever just got ground up by Gosenri must have already been long dead. Could this infernal machinery that this crew had been employing be run on human bio-remains? That truly was a gruesome conclusion to draw and one Mana hoped to be fake, for peace of her own mind.</p><p>"Careful. I've seen this throne snap the necks of some dogs that decided to go against its direction. It is very symbolic that way…" Nereigen spoke to Mana in her muzzled tone, meant solely for her.</p><p>"Sorry. I'm still getting used to the whole no vision situation." Mana lied. Whether because Nereigen was a poor judge of what was true or because he simply did not care about the magician's reasons, he left the matter alone.</p><p>"Which part of the Fire Country you come from?" he asked. It was highly unconventional of what was essentially an over-glorified slave owner to ask these things of his dogs, or so Mana thought.</p><p>"Konoha." She replied.</p><p>"Oh… You wouldn't have by any chance been close to the Yamanaka clan? That's where I once hailed from…" Nereigen wondered.</p><p>"I used to know the heiress of the Yamanaka clan before I did what I did, we used to be very good friends," Mana said. "She's very adamant about her position on crime so I'm afraid that will ever be the same again…"</p><p>"Really!? You would not know how my dear brother, Yamanaka Bakuchi is doing? Still sleeping his life away in his old age?" Nereigen wondered.</p><p>"I'm sorry… I… Can't believe I've met the man…" Mana shook her head, enjoying the slight breeze that moving her head allowed to slip into her mask.</p><p>"Oh well… It's been a long shot anyway, you said you've met some Yamanaka on the higher echelon so I just got my hopes up…" Nereigen sounded a little bit disappointed and deflated after hearing that. It almost made Mana feel bad for the iron-fist ruling, people-owning, psycho maniac.</p><p>Mana did not have any words to offer that would have soothed the troubled soul of the giant man so she just let the somber mood linger in the air as she did her best to keep up with her gigantic home on wheels. The young woman was not sure herself why she felt this bad, if she had met someone as giant as Nereigen amongst the Yamanaka, surely she'd have remembered the fact… Then again, so much had happened, she's met so many people along the way leading up to here and now that… What if she couldn't?</p><p>It was remarkable how a fully motorized crew could have rolled with such a monotone and restrained hum.</p><hr/><p>"Lord Seventh!" Kiyomi kneeled on her knee after walking into the Hokage's office. After she and Meiko received their summons together while working together on their last mission, the Yamanaka heiress did not expect to see the entire gathering of Konohagakure genin at the place. Some of them were relatively new and unfamiliar to Kiyomi, she's been a genin for so long that more than half of the current graduates were either too young in the Academy for her to talk to them, or haven't been yet enlisted during Kiyomi's own stint.</p><p>Meiko kneeled beside the blonde as well, however, her kneeling could have used more work. Her head was not directed down but instead glaring at the curious pair of men standing from both sides of the Lord Seventh. The one on the left being a man in rather unimpressively dressed man in a dull, tortilla coat that covered a black shirt and baggy dark pants. The hairdo and facial hair of this man seemed familiar, however, the ponytail and the goatee were quite common amongst the men of the Nara clan.</p><p>The second one was the true enigma. Even if Kiyomi was not quite as gifted as some in the art of sensory, she felt odd vibrations coming off of the man on the right, what was even more mysterious – the man wore a white coat that was eerily similar to the ceremonial Hokage garb but… This man could not have been an actual Hokage, could he? Even Kiyomi's kneeling posture got busted up by this detail.</p><p>"I've gathered you here because of something the leaders of your respective teams and I discussed a proposition these two men have come to me with. These are Shikamaru Nara and Uzumaki Naruto of the different universe that one of our ninja has come into contact with. It appears that their technological advancement has allowed them to master the inter-universal travel on a larger scale than just sending one of our own back home and they've come with a curious proposition that might benefit all of us. Given how I am not the author of their idea, while I do approve of it, I will allow the man behind the plan do the talking…" Lord Seventh turned to Naruto who just smirked and rubbed the back of his head in laid back manner.</p><p>"Sorry, I'd like to tell these fine ninja all about the plan but… All the technical mumbo jumbo is more Shikamaru's thing. I think he should be the one." Naruto successfully got rid of that responsibility.</p><p>"What a drag…" Shikamaru sighed. "Basically, we had hoped to put the inter-universal machine that the invaders of our universe helped us build and the one that helped send Nakotsumi Mana back home for a special event. The machine turned out to be a step beyond our wildest imaginations, some of the universes we've noticed were on the whole different wavelength of space-time meaning that they might mirror ours step-by-step but be at an earlier point in our timelines. We've tried to map the whole Omniverse out but… There appears to be no way of doing that, given how the number of different universes may very well be infinite…"</p><p>"You're rambling on, Shikamaru…" Naruto grinned. "Basically, we want to host the Omniverse's first, hopefully not the last… I always struggle with the word…"</p><p>"Interuniversal and Intertemporal Chuunin Exams…" Shikamaru assisted his friend.</p>
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<a name="section0590"><h2>590. Tales Of A Ninja Magician Annual No. 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A black and flaxen blur dashed across steep, rocky hills in an attempt to reach a cover before a one-way crossing to the Twelve-Headed Mountain. The Yamanaka pressed her back against the mountain cover and waited for the rest of the squad to follow. Kiyomi glanced at the corner and almost submitted to the temptation to take a peek, who knew, maybe she'd get spotted and be forced to kill every single one of those Red Hawks.</p><p>"That was amazing, Kiyomi." A jounin in a sleeveless leather top under his flak jacket commended his temporary squadmate. For someone as flashy and rebellious-looking as him, Kiyomi should not have been the one to be commended. It was one thing to conceal someone the size of a young adult and of a frail, feminine build compared to a fit, two-meter tall man in an orange-dyed mohawk. "Although landing from above would have been ideal in this situation. Nobody's expecting a sneak landing from above while residing atop of a mountain."</p><p>"Well, I took the situation in a bit different direction," Kiyomi smirked for a blink and then observed Meiko's approach. Instead of attempting to dash around in her clanging armor, the redhead took a downward plunge. The armored plates on the blacksmith's sides lit up, the trajectory of Meiko's fall began changing drastically until it resembled more of a diagonal, crescent shape. Before long, Meiko took it to the air above the cover spot.</p><p>A dull thud of a small scroll demanded the observer's attention. A muzzled poof and a lick of smoke unveiled a buzzing windmill shuriken that despite buzzing hard enough to pick up turbulent gusts of wind remained grave-quiet. In her wild dive from the skies above, Meiko trapped herself in the current and froze her fall. It took the blacksmith a few moments to land with grace and silence befitting a true ninja but she just successfully snuck up on a handful of Uchiha guards on the other side of the crossing.</p><p>The two kunoichi have gone such a long way since their origins.</p><p>"So what now? We've faced the Red Hawks before, if these are anything like the guys we faced, taking them on would make us waste too much time and stamina." Meiko wondered. While she did seem wary of the dangers of overextending, judging from her face alone, she was ready to jump into battle just fine.</p><p>"Sneak attacks. We can't let them open their Sharingan or else we'll never get a drop on them." Momoyu Fuma, the jounin assigned to oversee Kiyomi and Meiko's mission instructed.</p><p>"Have you fought any Uchiha before, Momoyu-san?" Kiyomi wondered. She'd feel a lot braver around a jounin leader who actually had stood in front of the kaleidoscope eye and lived to learn from the experience. It was equal part frustrating as it was awe-inspiring that even a lowlife mook like these guys could have awakened genetically acquired power within them to make even stronger foes struggle against them.</p><p>"Sparred with my fair share. Never was a fan of the arrogant bastards. Always looked for an opportunity to punch a crowd of 'em in the face." Momoyu grumbled into the mental link. One thing was for certain, Momoyu was a natural when conversing on the mental link. Either that, or he was just that experienced.</p><p>"Am I the only one here looking forward to doing our job – gather intelligence?" Meiko wondered. There was no grand surprise in the blacksmith's eyes when she asked it. The redhead knew just fine the kind of situation she'd be walking into and the people walking the same path alongside her.</p><p>"Intelligence, right… Still, can't spare those guys, the last thing we need is more Uchiha flocking back to their swarm with their Sharingan active." Kiyomi brandished a polished and custom-made kunai. One incrusted with lapis dust which was entirely counterintuitive knowing that the knife would soon be stained with blood.</p><p>"I have a better idea…" Meiko shook her head.</p><p>Momoyu took a wild leap upward, this time he did not restrain the chakra augmentations whatsoever, causing an intense rumble all over the mountainous platform. The Uchiha guards could not have possibly missed the sight of a boisterous jounin performing extravagant aerial spins, flips, and vaults before he prepared his palm for a strike.</p><p>"Earth Style: Ironheart Beat!" Momoyu chanted out, further adding to the loud and rash image that he was creating. It was not one that his appearance did not accentuate either…</p><p>The Uchiha leaned down and grabbed hold of the shaking, mountainous surface underneath their feet. Momoyu's combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu was amazing enough to shake both the minor mountain that the Konoha squad was hiding out on as well as the Twelve-Headed Mountain. The resonating shock from the impact of Momoyu's palm to the ground splintered the mountainous platform while Meiko slung a pair of scrolls onward.</p><p>One poof and cloud of smoke later, the very same Windmill Shuriken appeared, spreading wind currents strong enough to pick up the collapsing pieces of the shattered mountain as well as the plentiful dust and drive it all at the Uchiha bunch.</p><p>"We're under attack!" one of the guards grunted loud enough for the supernatural perception of the Konoha ninja to pick it up from their position.</p><p>"By whom? Iwagakure or Konoha?" another yelled back.</p><p>"Does it matter? Go warn the others!" the third Uchiha amongst the bunch instructed while the Sharingan of all four flared crimson. With flawless precision, the average ninja were elevated to the near god of taijutsu class as the Red Hawk guards avoided the horizontal shower of rock-shard shrapnel as if time had completely stopped for them or they had some unnatural ability to perceive future itself.</p><p>That was when Kiyomi's trump card hit them – an overwhelming nova of light from a flash bomb. The Uchiha covered up their eyes and grunted in pain and irritation as their flawless perception of the awakened Sharingan forced them to absorb every minor detail of the battlefield, leaving them open to details they'd have rather missed out on.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Meiko mumbled to herself as she yoinked herself over the edge using steel wire. Kiyomi's custom-made kunai, this one made of obsidian, stuck into the rock and allowed the Yamanaka heiress to use it as a grappling hook on her quick ascent upward. Momoyu covered his body up with an intense burst of chakra that shaped itself almost like a swallow in-flight and dashed forward to the other mountain not too far in front while the collapse they were meant to cover, together with the mountain giving them solace earlier collapsed.</p><p>"You didn't leave any of them for me…" Kiyomi sighed in frustration, seeing all of the Uchiha knocked out and subdued by the time she ascended.</p><p>"Heh, heh…" Meiko chuckled. "You'd have killed them. Then again, I guess you can still kill them now."</p><p>"Forget it…" Kiyomi sighed. "They're beaten. I may operate on an Aku-Soku-Zan principle but I've no interest in killing unconscious people."</p><p>"Such emphasis on the Windmill Shuriken, I'm almost tempted to think you're trying to leave an impression," Momoyu smirked while looking at Meiko. While his face looked cheerful, the baggy eyes of the man and the permanent stubble he adopted to his signature, rough and macho style made him always look a little bit pissed and apathetic. He was also not the most expressive person.</p><p>"Such unexpected penchant for planning ahead and not killing anyone. I wonder if you're trying to leave an impression on someone else…" Kiyomi crossed her arms over her chest while she raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her friend. "Should I feel jealous?"</p><p>"Awww, come on, I'm just trying to grow as a ninja. The Chuunin Exams aren't too far away and all that strategy and not-even-trying, non-lethal style does wonders with the crowd." Meiko shrugged while rubbing her nose and blushing hard enough for the color of her cheeks to match that of her hair.</p><p>"Heh, I must say, I like you guys. What an oddball, talented bunch, I'd have loved to have trained you." Momoyu nodded with approval before turning towards the narrow pathway that spiraled all the way around the mountain, likely leading up to the very top. "Who has the honor of taking credit for all this fine work you guys do?"</p><p>"Chestnut Hanasaku…" Kiyomi looked almost too proud of herself to so casually namedrop Lady Fifth herself. While the woman may have been one of the more controversial Hokage, the full extent of whose political inadequacy was still being understood by the current Hokage, she was still one to have remained a Sannin for the longest time and she had still reached the most prestigious title of the Fire Shadow and being one of the less competent Hokage was still a legendary and life-defining achievement.</p><p>"Damn… Here I thought those were shoes I could have filled…" Momoyu brushed the question off while the trio took a leap and stuck to the side of the mountain. Most greener ninja would have been tempted to walk the rocky pathway in a line one by one all the way to the top just because it was there. It took some experience and an uncanny awareness of every skill in one's arsenal to instantly identify a perfect opportunity for a basic chakra control technique.</p><p>It was tough to know for certain how aware the rest of the Red Hawks were they were being raided. A lot more of the rogue Uchiha splinter group must have heard the rumbling and possibly even seen something. They may have been alert to something being off but they may not have necessarily known that Konoha had received intel about a Red Hawk base around Iwagakure.</p><p>When one thought of it, things were almost too perfect to work. Both Kiyomi and Momoyu carried that uncertainty around with them. It filled their movements, made them careful. The Uchiha handed village out this intel as a show of good faith. The mainstream branch was always invested in the demise of the Red Hawks, it was not difficult to see why. The Uchiha have had a tough history with the village. Always thinking themselves the superior breed of ninja, they've always been on the higher echelon of the village elite as well. Lady Second was an Uchiha.</p><p>These Red Hawks threatened to ruin all of that good faith for some petty grievance and ramblings of strength that may have sounded fulfilling but given the context could not have been more meaningless.</p><p>Still, it was their own that were being betrayed to the village. That seemed a bit too ruthless even to the apathetic and always logical Uchiha. Not to mention that the discovered base was located inside the territory of Iwagakure – a country that just so happened to be on a verge of crisis after the recently resolved Coltan conflict meaning that now was the best time to operate inside their borders without fearing too much retribution. Everything just lined up too perfectly…</p><p>An old and crumbling face peeked from the edge above, skin greyed out and saggy, long and greasy dark hair stretched out like shadowy tendrils. The only thing certain about this man was the crimson gleam in his eyes. One that turned everything around Kiyomi black in a blink and made the world around her feel weightless and empty. Had she not been completely paralyzed by a mere glare, Kiyomi would have been very afraid of being in total mercy of an Uchiha that wanted her dead most of all people alive.</p><p>Kiyomi embodied everything the Red Hawks preached. The supposed loss of Uchiha strength, their drive, and dominance in politics.</p><p>The face of the sinking Yamanaka heiress turned to her side only to see a red face of the moon flaring in the distance, one pulsing with corrupting red radiation and drawing ever closer to her, like a meteor. Donning a black symbol of crossed blades with space for one's pupil.</p><p>"Don't worry. I don't plan to kill you just yet." A voice woke Kiyomi up. The frightened eyes of the Yamanaka trembled, how could she of all people, someone specializing in genjutsu, working alongside one of the most prodigious experts of the craft in the village, a rising superstar even, someone studying Sharingan for any ways to better overcome her personal rivalries and grievances be paralyzed to such a complete and through extent?</p><p>She only broke out of the illusion when the shriveled old scrotum-face let her. Kiyomi always knew Uchiha to be powerful, she may have weaved a whole different yarn to the people around her, she may have dismissed the Sharingan knights and dissed them vocally but they were worthy rivals and a wall just an insurmountable as Mana's own more ideological fight against the brutal nature of the world. But this… This was different, it was not a show of power Kiyomi respected, it was one that she genuinely had reason to fear.</p><p>The elderly Uchiha stood surrounded by dozens of others. So many things were wrong with this picture: there were too many people in this base, they were far too prepared for the coming of the Konoha team, what was with this old man? For someone wielding such a mighty Sharingan, the elderly de facto leader of the Red Hawks stood with his eyes closed shut. He was not dressed in combat clothes either, he looked like a noble who had worn the same robe for a few months and not like an Uchiha ready for combat and prove his strength, as Red Hawks were supposed to.</p><p>"Only three? Konoha underestimated the intelligence we provided our weakling kin… Did they think they'd be raiding just another settlement of the order?" the elderly Uchiha wondered out loud while his subordinates grinned to one another, looking all too excited to hold Kiyomi, the princess of the Yamanaka, in their hands.</p><p>"You provided the intelligence?" Meiko dropped her jaw. It was about time that the blacksmith caught on to what was going on and why she was just incapacitated by a single glare of this man and now laid on her knees, tied down and her chakra sealed off to a certain level.</p><p>"But of course, I had hoped to lure the Uchiha and Konoha into my trap. I had been preparing a mighty illusion, one that would have incapacitated some serious show of Konoha's military force." The elderly man turned toward a crystal orb surrounded by ruby wings. While the orb spread no light of its own, looking at it stung at one's eyes because it had an unnatural quality of absorbing whatever light it had managed to catch and amplify it on its way out.</p><p>"That illusion you used on us. It was meant to be reflected off of the orb. I bet this orb amplifies the Sharingan genjutsu you Uchiha use." Momoyu spoke with a certain shade of moderate distaste that made the two genin almost feel safer about their situation just by seeing the jounin in their team, one who was stuck in the same predicament, look smooth and calm.</p><p>"I have not heard your name." the elderly man turned to Momoyu, his shut eyelids straightened their wrinkles as a show of strain being put on them, as if the Uchiha felt so surprised by how he was figured out by a relative nobody that he began to believe that this man was no nobody after all and that he merely had lacking information of the key players in the Konoha's roster of ninja.</p><p>"I have a rule not to give my name before I hear one," Momoyu replied with a tone of voice usually used by someone not forced down on their knees with a handful of armed opponents threatening to behead them at any moment.</p><p>"Only seems fair…" the elderly Uchiha smirked. "My name's Ahimari Uchiha. I am what you would call the leader of the Red Hawks."</p><p>"The leader!?" Kiyomi jumped up in surprise. Before she could even understand she was on her feet, the Uchiha safeguarding her brought the Yamanaka down to her knees with precise kicks to the sides of her knees and then shoved her face into the plateau.</p><p>"Correct. I bet none of you expected to walk into the true main headquarters of the Red Hawks and face the true leader of the group." Ahimari smirked. "It was bold to sprinkle that information to the Uchiha. We had to make it seem natural too. Even some of my own men did not believe in my vision. The only death of this affair that I regret is the man we had to purposefully allow the Uchiha to capture for the sake of extracting the intelligence out of him."</p><p>The leader of the Red Hawks turned his face to a blank point in the sky, his eyes remained shut yet he acted as if he could see everything around him just fine. Ahimari stood there in that state for a good while, long enough for the pause to become awkward.</p><p>"His… His hands are free!" the Uchiha exclaimed watching the Konoha ninja from behind. This proclamation was a surprise to Kiyomi as well, she looked to Momoyu, trying to understand how the squad leader managed to free his hands but also she tried to pinpoint the exact plan. Given how they've regained an inch of this meeting, that their chances of success in the mission objective was now an inch above zero percent and this would be a fight rather than an execution, she needed to be on the same page with the jounin from the get-go.</p><p>Scythes, swords, and fans hurried to attempt and end Momoyu but for someone so calm and gentle most of the time, the Konoha jounin was on fire when push came to shove. His movements were unnatural but fluid, he did not appear to care more for balance or safe options but favored risky and fluid motions. Because of that total faith in his own luck, one that would not favor him once and that would be enough to spell out his end, Momoyu weaved and ducked under every scythe, moved aside from every sword thrust and rolled under or vaulted over every war fan attempting to crack his skull.</p><p>Chakra flared up from inside the as nimble as he was a lucky ninja and in mere moments a glowing hieroglyph on the man's chest shattered like the glass of a busted window and the paper carrying the tag burnt up in thin air. Meiko was much better at abusing the chaos of the battlefield. The moment she saw a chance for a brawl, she took it, attacking wildly in all directions, nabbing a handful of Uchiha that attempted to hit Momoyu first.</p><p>It was either genius or just plain lucky for the blacksmith to attack that way – there was no way she'd have landed anything on an Uchiha with an active Sharingan while they were on the defensive. While they were invested in trying to halt the second wind of the Konoha ninja.</p><p>The initial explosion of violence and will to fight back for their survival had done wonders for the Konoha ninja but it could not have gone over anyone's head that it would be of limited success overall. It was easy to deliver a couple of surprise blows once or twice, even on someone wielding the Sharingan, if one played their moves and advantages right. In the end it would not matter, the enemy was too numerous, each individual enemy was no mere thug to be bullied but a worthy opponent on their own right and eventually the push from the Konoha ninja would halt, then the push back would begin and that would not end until the Uchiha swarm the Konoha ninja and leave just a handful of skewered bodies piled one on top of the other.</p><p>That was why neither of the three ninja was fighting to win or for any particular purpose other than escape the immediate danger, get into the clear, regroup and either flee or proceed with the mission. It was still possible to assassinate the Red Hawk leader, it was still possible to destroy the headquarters. Both of these options had to be evaluated. As soft as the current ninja system was, nobody wanted to return home from a mission empty-handed. Sure, the intel was wrong but an average ninja complained about wrong intel and a great one made something out of it anyway. It was just the kind of spirit of productivity that Konoha was flying high with…</p><p>"Almost cute…" Ahimari opened his eyes once more. Flaring out with the colossal, bloody moons that overwhelmed the totality of the dark, illusionary void and disabled everyone in the nearest vicinity in an instant.</p><p>Kiyomi had expected this. It was reckless for someone this powerful to use their illusion that affected everyone one's eye could see when the enemy was surrounded by one's own men but it was so very Uchiha to sacrifice one's comrades for success and greater power. Plus, it was not like the illusion was lethal anyway, while Ahimari did show some speck of regret over seeing his devoted followers meet their ends, this time he would not need to shed even those few tears.</p><p>"Don't worry, I got you." Momoyu's voice rung in Kiyomi's head on the mental link. The Yamanaka shook her head, she was almost certain that Ahimari's eyes had caught her in his stare but it appeared that Momoyu was faster even the eye.</p><p>"That was amazing!" Meiko's cheer translated as a migraine-inducing clamor on the mental link, as always. "How did you do that?"</p><p>"We've seen this man's ability already. If he lays his eyes on us – it's over, whether we look back at him or not. Getting some distance on him was the first thing I did." Momoyu explained as the cloned version of the jounin erupted into a spread of barbed wire, instead of the usual popping that dissolving Shadow Clones did.</p><p>Ahimari was both faster and more resourceful than to get caught by the expanding tendrils of wire. Even with his eyes currently closed, the old man bobbed and weaved around every strand of wire as if they were blows of an inexperienced opponent. The leader of Red Hawk jumped over the loops and ducked under the coiling attempts to strangle him with the barbed wire. He then turned right for the plateau of the Twelve-Headed Mountain where Momoyu and the Konoha ninja stood as if possessing some unnatural awareness of where the enemy was at all times.</p><p>"Very clever of you to exploit the area of effect of my own technique against my men." Ahimari declared. Kiyomi's feet rubbed against the stone in unease.</p><p>"Something's wrong. He's let us go off the jutsu before, didn't he? Could he be luring us into a trap? If we close in, he might release the other Red Hawks and then we'll be back where we started." She warned Momoyu. It was awfully presumptuous of her to assume that she had something of interest to say to a ninja far stronger and more experienced than her but this was no time for etiquette. A simple wrong assumption may have very well led to everybody's deaths.</p><p>"Maybe. If we can take out the organization's leader and end the Red Hawks, that's a chance I'm willing to take though…" Momoyu said. The man stood up from the cover and prepared to lunge forward. Mana would not have liked this man at all, beside Chestnut Hanasaku, Kiyomi had never seen a jounin act so recklessly and to engage an enemy of unknown ability with such ease of mind.</p><p>Momoyu spread his hands out wide, popping sounds with the ever-present company of smoke clouds revealed the unsealing of a pair of windmill shuriken. The Konoha jounin fired away with the buzzing, propeller-like trip of the infernal long-range projectile, a signature tool of his Fuma Clan. Two, four, six and then more, the windmill shuriken buzzed in an endless, murderous loop of a sharp-edged merry-go-round.</p><p>Even without using his gift of sight, Ahimari continued to dance around the projectiles, not only that, his face appeared to follow their trip with unmatched precision and skill while his body offered the minimal necessary movements to avoid having his limbs removed. That would have been the lucky outcome, a windmill shuriken was quite capable of deadly impalements on its wide blades, dismemberment if the tool hit its target in the limb at a right angle, disabling of the enemy if it managed to impale the limb or even a complete cut of a person into two if it hit them right in the middle.</p><p>And yet, due to his immense skill and agility that seemed far beyond his age, Ahimari suffered neither of these grisly fates.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Momoyu barked out while fingers flexed out in the position of his hands stretched out, one he usually used to reload both his hands with new windmill shuriken from his seals. The mountain sunlight danced across the steel wire attached the ends of each shuriken that Momoyu had used. The Uchiha jerked and twitched but froze into place. His twitching head pulled to the side and in an uncomfortable degree to witness the collection of windmill shuriken stuck into the solid rock behind him.</p><p>If only Kiyomi could have seen this man's eyes, perhaps she could have known if he had felt duped then. If there was one thing that she did like about the Uchiha, it was when their self-importance crumbled before them and they realized how foolish they were to underestimate their opponent as they have. Now there was only a pair of closed eyes and the shriveled, puny eyelids that covered them.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Electric Swallow!" Momoyu yelled out as Lightning Release chakra erupted from his body and formed a construct of a bird-shaped avatar of lightning. Something about birds was very fitting for a lightning technique, the natural crackling and chirping of high-intensity jolt sounded just like a bird. The proud and majestic artificial fowl fluttered its wings and moved forward, breaking its avian forms to become just a lightning-swift bolt of lightning.</p><p>The residual jolts from the mass transferred through the steel wire, the jolt of lightning threw Ahimari back with almost frightening violence. The leader of the Red Hawks did not scream or grunt in pain, he just flew back from the sheer force of impact and the raw power of the bolt. Even when the electrified steel wire dug into his body where he was tied together and drew droops of blood, the Uchiha did not as much as bite his lip in discomfort. He looked dead before the bird even hit him.</p><p>"Checkmate…" Momoyu declared before reaching out with his hand and pulling on one of his steel wires hard enough to disrupt the entire chain and rip the Uchiha to shreds. Kiyomi and Meiko observed in unease, wondering when Ahimari would reveal it all to just be a grotesque illusion like Mana loved to fake out her friends and opponents alike but as more and more seconds passed, nothing of the sort happened.</p><p>"I don't think he's maintaining the illusion anymore. That would just be impractical…" Meiko was the first one to speak.</p><p>"If even Meiko, with all of her limited knowledge of the illusionary arts, thinks it's impractical to hold the illusion for this long, maybe she's got a point?" Kiyomi wondered using her voice to speak.</p><p>"Not so fast, look… The Uchiha he put to sleep are still out." Momoyu stated with a grim voice of his own.</p><p>"That's exactly it," Kiyomi argued. "If these men wake up while we're still here – we'll be in trouble. We lucked out to escape them once but to hope to outwit a handful of Uchiha is lunacy. This time they'll pay extra mind to every minor detail."</p><p>"Maybe you're right but… Something doesn't feel right." Momoyu shrugged, lowering his hands and letting the bloodied steel wire linger around the area, hanging from the tall mountain plateaus like spider webs now that no integrity of a human body kept them structured.</p><p>"Yeah, that was way too easy… Then again, all it takes in our line of work is one mistake…" Meiko shrugged, appearing to be the most eager to forget and forgive anything unusual had ever happened.</p><p>"Will you need to examine the body before sealing it?" Momoyu turned to Meiko.</p><p>"No need. Had there been any Curse Seals placed on this body, they'd have kicked off when he died, immediately after. Some Curse Seals have been known to even be enough to sustain life until they perform their function." Meiko replied with a surprising amount of brightness for her. The blacksmith, when told she was not the brightest person around, often said that there were a few very specific things she excelled at and she tended to not bother about anything else. Kiyomi was always impressed whenever her friend demonstrated that niche knowledge of hers.</p><p>"How so?" Kiyomi wondered, turning to the more experienced jounin for information.</p><p>"Meiko is a better seal user than I ask her. I buy and order my seals, my mastery over the subject is merely in using them." Momoyu shrugged.</p><p>"Seals are tied to execution triggers. Most are triggered when chakra is applied to them directly, some of them react to specific natures of chakra, like when Fire Release sets off most explosive tags. If a seal is set to execute after the holder's death, it does so without waiting for a more convenient time, immediately after the death." Meiko explained. "We have not seen any of the Red Hawks placing any traps on their leader's body, it's safe to say we do not need a Sin Eater at this time. I am confident I can seal him into a B-Rank or higher scroll."</p><p>Momoyu reached his hand behind his vest and set off a seal, with an awkward positioning of his arm, the man pulled out a thick and limb-sized green roll with kanji sticker right in the middle. The man handed the scroll to Meiko and gestured for the adept seal user to get to work while the two volunteered to stay in the back and watch the sleeping Red Hawks and their deceased leader.</p><p>"Maybe we should kill all of them?" Kiyomi raised the question that must have been dawning in Momoyu's mind as well. "What we have here is the chance to end the threat of the Red Hawks altogether. Doing it with such minimal losses would strengthen Konoha's position once the intel leaks out."</p><p>"True…" Momoyu nodded. "It would. But at what cost? How would the Uchiha clan, arguably our most respected and strongest asset react to the news that we've slain their kin in their sleep when they were unable to resist? We don't have the scrolls to capture all of them nor do we have the advantage over them to safely transport them to the village."</p><p>"If we leave them here, they'll just elect a new leader and continue their work," Kiyomi said with a tone as grim as it was tired. She was already annoyed by being the face of the conflict between the Uchiha and the Yamanaka that only at the moment existed in the minds of these lunatics.</p><p>"If we kill them we risk creating new splinter groups. If the Uchiha weaken, so does Konoha. The worst case scenario – the ideals of the Red Hawks go mainstream with the Uchiha and then we'll have a massive problem on our hands. We were lucky to avoid a civil war just a couple of years ago, there's no need to rush back into it." Momoyu appeared to be getting his mind more and more set on a decision the more he discussed the matter with Kiyomi.</p><p>Meiko stood up with the scroll fastened on her back and smirked at the pair. She turned around and examined the bodies of the Red Hawks for possible clues that they've been waiting for a sweet time to attack but if they were, that time would have passed long ago. Meiko had her guard lowered and the back of her neck exposed for a kill-shot for a short while and none of them exploited that chance. A chance they'd not get again.</p><p>"Alright, let's move." Momoyu waved for Meiko.</p><p>"With a bit of luck, that shriveled bastard sent all of his loonies into a coma." Kiyomi sighed. Lately, she's been doing the Zan to a lot fewer Aku ones. The blonde dashed to the large crystal ball and looked at it for a short while. With a lightning-fast reflex, the Yamanaka delivered a push kick at its core that cracked the orb on contact before sending it tumbling down the Twelve-Headed Mountain for certain destruction.</p><p>"Roger, Roger!" Meiko grinned with the smile that restrained a fit of cheerful laughter from the bottom of her chest and took off.</p><p>While their mission was not over just yet, the matter of transporting the scroll back to the village being just as sensitive and important, a rational examination of circumstances suggested that it would not raise anywhere near the number of difficulties raised by actually capturing the leader of Red Hawks and surviving his trap.</p><hr/><p>"You should have prioritized retreat." Lord Seventh sat back in genuine surprise and blew air out from his lungs upon hearing how the party of Konoha ninja was lured into a trap by the false intel leaked out on purpose by the Red Hawks. "Still, I am taken aback by your devotion and remarkable work."</p><p>The Lord's assistant approached the ninja and focused his attention on the storage scroll hanging from Momoyu's back. "This is the scroll that the body of the Red Hawks' leader is stored in, correct?" he asked.</p><p>"It is." Momoyu nodded. With an almost lazy-looking motion, the man let the scroll slip off of his shoulder and caught the thin string that tied it together in his hand. Looking glad to be rid of the literally dead-weight, the jounin handed the scroll away.</p><p>"What you've accomplished today is a monumental task." Lord Seventh repeated. Had the two of you been chuunin, I'd have considered you two for promotion to jounin for something like this.</p><p>"Awww, it's the thought that counts…" Meiko smiled and leaned back on her hands, by now Lord Seventh must have been at least somewhat used to the lacking professional etiquette of the blacksmith.</p><p>"Momoyu-san did most of the work. He was the one taking Ahimari one on one and he delivered the finishing blow. We were only there to support him." Kiyomi bowed.</p><p>"That was your role in this mission – to support Momoyu and I'd say your performance is to be admired." Lord Seventh nodded, holding up to his words. "I won't hold you three here for too much longer."</p><p>"That's a fair point, you two go take a breather, we came very close to getting killed today, closer than I've been in a while. I've forgotten how heavy that weighs on a young mind. Go and kick back, enjoy the lives you've fought to keep today." Momoyu turned to Kiyomi and Meiko. "It's been an honor working with you two, I look forward to working with you in the future as equals, with your skill and devotion to your work, that is inevitable. I will take up the paperwork duty and fill up the reports."</p><p>"Paperwork? How very unlike you, Momoyu-san." Lord Seventh's assistant noted. "Could the professional behavior of Yamanaka Kiyomi have rubbed off on your free-spirit?"</p><p>"Who knows?" Momoyu rubbed the back of his mohawk with a tired shrug. "Maybe I'm just growing soft in my old age."</p><p>"Come on," Meiko winked at Kiyomi, "Let's get out of here before he changes his mind."</p><p>"Maybe you two could stay here for a bit, there's something that happened in the village that you might want to hear about and it might be for the better that you hear about it from me." Lord Seventh sighed, gesturing for Momoyu to wait outside the office. The jounin shifted his eyes about, trying to deduce what this might have been about but the man then just sighed and left the office to mentally prepare himself for the grueling couple of hours of paperwork ahead of him.</p><p>"I guess we have been on an endless streak of missions lately…" Meiko leaned to Kiyomi and nudged the Yamanaka with her elbow. "I would not have been surprised if we returned to a version of Konoha from those science fiction movies…"</p><p>"Your friend and past teammate Nakotsumi Mana is in Jigoku." Lord Seventh did not waste any time to inform the pair just after the jounin left the office.</p><p>"What?! What happened?" Meiko took a pair of steps forward.</p><p>"What did she do?" Kiyomi almost synchronized with her teammate's words, missing the timing by just a beat.</p><p>"She beat Guru Ayushi half to death. He's left in a coma which he will not come back from. There is a bit more to the story than that but, judging from her words, it was out of revenge for what happened to her father." Seventh's solemn face persisted.</p><p>"What did happen to her father?" Meiko asked with the same desperate tone, appearing smaller and smaller every second in her own mind. The two were de facto best friends but the blacksmith just saw how unaware she was of what was going on with Mana's life.</p><p>"The details that reached me are a bit vague but he fell ill to some under the counter medication he's been buying from the black market for years now." Lord Seventh replied.</p><p>"Something this reckless does sound like Mana." Kiyomi sighed. "Then again, knowing her, she likely went into the fight to get herself killed like she does half the time…"</p><p>"Come on, Kiyomi, that's uncalled for…" Meiko objected. "Why is she in Jigoku if she hasn't even killed anyone? Isn't that place reserved for the worst of the worst?"</p><p>"Not quite, the law does permit an inmate to request a transfer to another facility. The requests to be transferred to a lower security facility are minded with much more attention than the other way around, most requests to be transferred to a higher security facility are therefore granted. Most of the inmates in Jigoku are the worst of the worst, some of them just wanted more lenient prison sentences." The Hokage sat back in his chair, weaving his hands together.</p><p>"Never would have taken Mana as someone petty enough to approach the edge of her beliefs out of revenge." Kiyomi looked down, her eyes quivered as she tried to put together where she and her magician friend stood from now on.</p><p>"She's disappointed all of us." The Hokage nodded.</p><p>"It's not that. If I think this way, Mana must be going through the same but a hundred times worse. She's always been very self-corrosive about these sorts of things. It's hard to even begin to imagine the world of pain and darkness she's sunken to, what she'll do when surrounded by the worst kind of people too…" Kiyomi appeared to be struggling over the control of her own body, an impression further emphasized by her shaking hands and feet.</p><p>"Can we somehow visit Mana?" Meiko pleaded with the Hokage using just her puppy eyes.</p><p>"I'm afraid that is impossible. Even I do not fully know the exact location of Jigoku. From the snippets I do know, it might not even be located in this dimension. Nobody but very select few individuals in the village working in the penitentiary system know the full picture of Jigoku. Not even the deepest, the most underground layers of Black Ops units do not know that information, if they did, there would always be a danger they'd lay siege to the facility in an attempt to free some of their own rogue colleagues." Uzumaki Midoben explained.</p><p>"So our friend's in the darkest place she's ever been in and we've got no way of reaching out to her…" Meiko stated things as she saw them.</p><p>"I only informed you two about this out of solidarity. I will be expecting the two of you to do absolutely nothing about this situation and let the criminal justice system run its course, am I understood? This information is a show of trust from my side, even if it is a quite public bunch of news, you hear of it from me because I trust you two to treat this situation like adults, like ninja." Lord Seventh replied.</p><p>"Yes, Sir!" Kiyomi stiffened her body up and barked out a confirmation. It was not a bland or an apathetic one. It was a confirmation filled to the brink with something much worse – forced emotions that the young woman imposed on herself to feel. Faked pride and trust in her own village over what truly rustled in her heart, faked severance of any bonds to a dear friend. Something much more toxic than mere indifference.</p><p>"Understood." Meiko jumbled it out, chewing the words like a child working cold and repulsive porridge in their mouth and throwing it all out in the open with just the same kind of resentment to the world that resigned them to the cruel fate of chewing something they wanted to have nothing in common with.</p><p>"Good. Nakotsumi Mana is strong and resourceful. If anyone can survive Jigoku and figure things out, it would be her. Have faith in your village and your friend, that's all I'm asking of you. Dismissed." The Seventh released the pair from his administrative clutches, at least until their services would be needed next or some unexpected, electrifying event was in the works.</p><p>"Damn, can you believe that?" Meiko still was in a state of a nightmare, experienced while daydreaming.</p><p>"It's easier to believe than I'd have thought it to be," Kiyomi admitted.</p><p>"All that mess with that Honda monster and the Ayushi cult… She must have really taken it all to heart." Meiko shook her head. "You're being really mean about it though. She's our friend, even if we can't support her face to face, we have to at the very least support her here. People knew who she was, Kiyomi, they'll never let her forget any of this."</p><p>"She's a big girl, Meiko." Kiyomi cut it short. "She can deal with the consequences of her own actions, there's no need for us to hold her hand through it."</p><p>Kiyomi wanted to believe that she was able to just sever all ties with the magician who was now an actual criminal. Not like all that fake stuff in the Chuunin Exams when she stole some supplies to save Meiko's hide, an actual criminal. Meiko may have thought it cruel for Kiyomi to speak her troubled mind about the matter but what would have been truly cruel was the heartbreak that Kiyomi would have experienced when meeting the magician again, having the Yamanaka's ideological principles in mind.</p><p>For all intents and purposes, Mana was a criminal. She needed to be eliminated but… Kiyomi did not even delude herself on that, she'd never even draw a blade to begin doing the deed. She'd likely just erupt into a bundle of tears and conflicted pain and collapse on the spot. She was a disgrace to her nindo… She has been for a while.</p><p>"Were you even listening to everything I say saying?" Meiko interrupted Kiyomi's core-deep thought process, forcing the Yamanaka to snap out of it all.</p><p>"Yeah… Sorry… It's just… Too much to deal with right now. I need to blow off some steam, wanna go to the Yamanaka Resort? What we need now is a training regiment, put together by people that know what they're doing and a resort environment to kick back and get the hold on our thoughts." Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"That was where it all went wrong… Where we went to relax and then Mana collapsed and we got called up and…" Meiko spoke with a somber and sulking tone.</p><p>"That sort of gloom is exactly what Mana wouldn't like us to engage in. You heard the Hokage, there's nothing we can do to help." Kiyomi tried to reason with her friend.</p><p>"I guess…" Meiko shrugged. "I could use a good gauntlet spar to wear me off my feet and an all-I-can-eat right after."</p><p>"Alright! That's a date then!" Kiyomi shot her fist out into the sky.</p><hr/><p>The Yamanaka clansmen in the Yamanaka Resort appeared to be in a chipper mood. The news about the demise of the Red Hawks' leader must have reached them and while they had the mental fortitude to realize that by no means meant the end of the organization in question, they took their little victories where they could find them.</p><p>"Why the long face, Kiyomi-sama, have you not heard the news?" a Yamanaka guard patrolling the resort inquired when seeing the heiress walking around and wallowing in self-conflict. What the man took for sadness was just confusion and an attempt to put things together in the right shelves.</p><p>"I have now, you big spoiler, you…" Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Huh? What was that?" Meiko wondered, pointing at the guard with her finger as the pair passed and left the handful of patrolling guards behind.</p><p>"We need to visit my uncle before doing anything else." Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"What? Why?" Meiko scratched her head.</p><p>"My uncle has finally settled on not passing down the clan to anyone else. I'm now officially the future head of the Yamanaka." Kiyomi explained. "Figured since the guards were so damn polite…"</p><p>Kiyomi waited for Meiko to explode in joy, to congratulate or show any sort of overblown reaction but the blacksmith just pondered hard on something before finally gathering the necessary guts to ask what's been plaguing her.</p><p>"Wasn't that always the case?" She said.</p><p>"I guess it was, now it's been made official though. Guess uncle has settled on having no more offspring." Kiyomi breathed out a heavy gulp of breath.</p><p>"You don't look like someone who's just inherited a clan…" Meiko noticed.</p><p>"That's because a whole myriad of ritualistic and traditional shenanigans are about to befall on my head and I can't even imagine how much of a hassle it's all going to be. I'll have to get married, for one. Given how it is integral that I do before I inherit the clan, they likely won't be wasting any time…" Kiyomi whined out with a chest caved under the impending responsibility and a heavy crown of tradition.</p><p>"I thought you wanted to get married." Meiko pointed out. "You're always every other guy you like…"</p><p>"You're the only "guy" I need…" Kiyomi nudged her friend in the arm with her knuckles and a warm smile.</p><p>Within her own mind, Kiyomi cringed herself at how horrible that sounded and felt so gracious to the universe governing every aspect of her life that it had made Meiko as oblivious as she was. Then again, maybe that very same carelessness and vacancy were why she had not yet picked up on the obvious nudges...</p><p>"Niece, excellent!" uncle's voice boomed through the massive temple he sat in like the mighty Thunderer in his throne. "It was unfortunate that the news was made public while you were away. You've skipped so much of what you could have been taught already."</p><p>"Oh, so you were going to finally get off your chair and train me then?" Kiyomi joked. She knew too well that was not what her uncle meant by training.</p><p>"Th-That's your uncle?!" the edges of Meiko's mouth dragged down like melting ice-cream. The blacksmith, who was known as a sizeable and fit youth in her own right, found herself dwarfed by the colossal man seated in his chair of marble and emeralds. "You look nothing like him…"</p><p>"Who's the outsider?" one of the assistants that safeguarded the exalted lump of flesh and, on occasion, scratched his back with one of her chain-hooks to wake the man up, inquired. The protective woman looked a bit antsier than her traditional and classy garb would have suggested and encouraged.</p><p>"Oh, that's Meiko. She's my friend." Kiyomi threw a pointing thumb the blacksmith's way.</p><p>"Another one? The magician is in prison and you've already found yourself a new best friend?" the second assistant raised an eyebrow. Her violet make-up glittered over her eyelids when the woman tried looking flippant towards her future heiress. That was just how these two were, as bold as a good joker entertaining a fat and bald king.</p><p>"Yes, believe it or not, the clan heiress of the Yamanaka clan has made more than one friend in her entire life…" Kiyomi replied, looking almost too proud of her own composure. She's spent far too much time before the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams falling for the sharp taunts of these two women and having herself humiliated by the pair in front of her uncle.</p><p>"You know very well that was not what I meant," Uncle replied, interrupting the game he had seen all too many times, even when it was developing towards a direction previously unseen to him. "I've sent out messages to every clan announcing the news, you'll soon be unable to shake-off potential suitors."</p><p>"Hey, everybody, our little girl's all grown up and ready to be taken, first come, first serve through!" the green-haired assistant in an orange dress made some expressive remarks while moving and hopping around like a teenage idol, trying to distract her audience from the fact her music will have no ballads made about it by moving like a pint-sized mammal.</p><p>"That's not what the letters said… Although… Well, that's how they'll take it, for certain." Uncle very nearly stood up, leaning forward so that he could turn his head toward his provocative right-hand woman.</p><p>"Hey, Big Sir, we kind of came here to train and relax for a while after a big mission so if Kiyomi could not get married for a little while yet, that'd be great," Meiko spoke up. The eyes of the two assistants wished painful death upon the outsider with distaste that was uncommon to pretty much anyone around. The Yamanaka Resort was a protected district to be certain but it was a resort to anyone who was a friend of the blond masters of intelligence gathering and management.</p><p>"Well, there's one more business to attend to so… I suppose you can take a short time-out. We will get right to it afterward though…" Kiyomi's uncle scratched his stubble before shaking his index finger as if trying to get the Yamanaka heiress to swear to him she'd take her looming responsibilities more seriously in the nearest future.</p><p>"Sure, cute guys from all over the country trying to buy my hand with a cocktail of influence-bartering, winks, and wolf whistling… I can hardly contain the excitement." Kiyomi shrugged. "What's the business, as the heiress of the clan, I have a personal interest in something that would make you delay something you've already delayed so."</p><p>"The Yamanaka have been handed out the body of Ahimari Uchiha, the leader of the Red Hawks." Kiyomi's uncle declared. "While it is a great honor and an excellent show of affection from Konoha's behalf, it is also a pain in the ass to decide what to actually do with it."</p><p>"Huh? Why would the Yamanaka be given the body of the leader of Red Hawks?" Meiko turned to Kiyomi.</p><p>"More importantly, why would they take it?" Kiyomi squinted at her uncle. "Don't you remember all of this started from a conflict with the Uchiha, do you want to start another one by denying them the body?"</p><p>"Little Princess Kiyomi, not even a butt-cheek on the emerald throne and she's already making the big calls…" the orange-haired assistant in a red dress tried to cheek her future superior.</p><p>"Well, that's the odd part, they kind of agreed to it, suggested it, almost to the point of insisting." Yamanaka Bakuchi scratched his bald head, flicking his man-sized hair-bun when it got in the way. Judging from the man's irritation, there were certainly days when big-man Bakuchi wished he had not settled on the traditional chonmage hairstyle.</p><p>"And that didn't strike you as odd whatsoever?" Kiyomi objected. It was like the whole world had gone mad overnight, the Uchiha never shared their toys with anyone, even toys they had long since grown out the need for. They were not about to start unless there was something they could gain from it and anything that the Uchiha wanted hard enough to give something in return should have struck fear into the hearts of anyone hearing of it.</p><p>"Oh, come on… What's the worst they could do?" Bakuchi shrugged his shoulders.</p><p>"We've just crushed an ancient artifact that Ahimari would have used to reflect his Sharingan genjutsu and enslave entire armies!" Kiyomi lost the very composure she previously gleamed with and felt proud of. Not that it could have been helped… With this kind of rule, her uncle, as legendary and wise as he was up 'till now, would squander the whole faction into the ground before Kiyomi even got her hands on it, and given how much trouble she signed up for by being born to her parents, she damn well deserved a shot at calling all the shots.</p><p>"Is the Princess tired? Should we show her to her bed?" the green assistant leaned forward in a suggestive manner.</p><p>"Or is she just delusional? Should we show her to the infirmary?" the red assistant mirrored the movements of her sister in crime beat for beat.</p><p>"Point taken, Ahimari's dead anyway and it's not like the main branch of the Uchiha were too fond of their rebellious comrades. Do you really think I've never once interacted with the Uchiha and tried to mend things when the conflict was at the boiling point?" Bakuchi raised his eyebrow. Due to the fact that the man always held his mouth open and his teeth shut together, it was oftentimes tough to say if he was grinning or just doing his usual grimacing.</p><p>"You may have, provided they ever told you a lick of truth." Kiyomi threw her hands out in the air. "I see I'll have to change a whole lot of things when I'm in charge. And to think people thought you to be a strict and demanding leader…"</p><p>"You mean your husband is in charge, Princess?" one of the two assistants poked out her tongue.</p><p>The unwieldy, hardwood gate rumbled as a lone man managed to open them and enter through it. Given how that gate was designed with the immense size of Yamanaka Bakuchi in mind and usually took a gear mechanism to operate, it was an impressive feat of strength. The man held a Yamanaka clansman in his right hand, senseless and dragging across the floor but the entrant held the poor clansman by his throat.</p><p>"Where I can find Yamanaka Bakuchi?" Ahimari Uchiha inquired.</p><p>A blur of red and black flashed simultaneously, blitzing at the man at once in speed too much for even an average ninja to track yet subtle enough in their movement to not raise a hair on Kiyomi's head. The two assistants of Yamanaka Bakuchi moved in from the sides, one of them swiping her naginata while the other slashed with her chained hook in her left hand. The two blades crossed paths somewhere amidst Ahimari's flesh and the resulting clang signaled that the man should have been beheaded in an instant.</p><p>None of that happened, however. Ahimari stood there in the same position he had taken before, his head separated from his body yet not moving from its original position. The two assistants dashed back the moment that their instant-death tag team combo had failed. Once the blades left Ahimari's body, the man's flesh just stuck back where it was while the elderly Uchiha stretched his neck out as if it had just merely inconvenienced him.</p><p>"That explains why Momoyu couldn't kill him…" Meiko commented on the sight as if it was not the weirdest thing she had ever seen.</p><p>"I really must be getting old. Back in my day, people used to die when they were killed." Bakuchi slumped in his chair, appearing for a moment as if he had died there in his place. Then, in a violent outburst, an eruption of golden chakra leaked out from the Yamanaka patriarch leaving even the fleshy colossus dwarfed in comparison. What appeared as fat around the blobby biceps, forearms, thighs, and calves of the current leader of the Yamanaka soon turned to solid, rocky muscle. Each muscle the size of the tower bell.</p><p>"Oh…" Ahimari let go of the poor Yamanaka he was holding onto. The leader of the Red Hawks just swatted his poor victim aside, letting him tap the eastern wall of the temple. A Yamanaka victim used for information about the location of the Yamanaka patriarch, the final boss in the daring raid of the Red Hawk leader. "I'm almost wondering if I want any of this now…" he smirked.</p><p>"Oh snap, Master got out of his throne. Somebody's in trouble…" the assistant in a black dress peeked her tongue out for the invader. The charismatic pair withdrew with a barrage of backflips, letting the two kings duke it out.</p><p>Kiyomi and Meiko were forced to step back a pair of leaps too, the pressure emanating from Yamanaka Bakuchi was too immense to stand by his side, let alone in his way. One step at a time, Bakuchi walked forward, rumbling the ground under his feet and leaving indented sandal-prints on the stone floor.</p><p>It happened in a blink, one moment the two were staring each other down, the other Bakuchi was already in mid-air, all up in his opponent's face with his fist cocked back and ready to wreak some havoc in his own resort. For all intents and purposes – his kingdom.</p><p>Ahimari flickered and disappeared, confusing Kiyomi a decent bit but then the Yamanaka noticed Meiko's eyes staring at a point far off into the eastern wing of the temple and therefore followed her comrade's eyes. Much to her surprise, Ahimari entered the view once Kiyomi moved them long enough. It felt like the elderly Uchiha moved in an instant, the kind of momentary movement that was very unlike him, judging from the display back in the Twelve-Headed Mountain.</p><p>"A transportation seal…" Meiko mumbled. "This guy's no joke, the least potent transportation seal I know is an A-Rank technique."</p><p>"That would make him…" Kiyomi reacted to her friend's words.</p><p>"A seal master." Meiko nodded.</p><p>"Genjutsu and seals. No wonder he was such a slouch against Momoyu-san." Kiyomi said.</p><p>"It was a fancy trick, placing a transportation seal onto the neck of that poor man like that." Bakuchi cracked his knuckles. For someone his size, the Yamanaka managed his outlandish strength perfectly – his last punch dug through the ground like a drill, leaving a crater deep enough to crack through the mantle but narrow enough to barely be wider than the man's arm that formed it.</p><p>"Oh, come, why else would I have dragged this man around with me? I needed at least one free-escape card." Ahimari grinned. His full smile looked even more malevolent given that the man's eyes remained shut.</p><p>"And you used it to avoid just a single punch meant to test the waters… Well done." Bakuchi raised his fist up, all that explosion of golden chakra from before seemed nowhere to be seen until it all blasted outward again.</p><p>This time Ahimari snapped back to react in time, his hands swung in a wide guard before moving in to round closer circles around his core. A pair of a single sealing glyph appeared on both hands of the elderly Uchiha while he stretched his arms out and cupped his hands closer to where the two separate elements nearly formed one. A circle of glowing hieroglyphs appeared around the main sealing glyph, Bakuchi's arm disappeared into an unseen void halfway, as if he had just punched a surface of immovable waters.</p><p>In a backward wide swing to that which he had performed before, Ahimari spread his hands out, letting the wide sealing glyph close up and disappear. Bakuchi's eyes widened when he realized that half of his left hand was in a whole another dimension. The Yamanaka patriarch just stared at the stump he had for a smashing limb.</p><p>"Master!" the assistant pair yelled out, attacking simultaneously again. The green-haired assistant threw her hooks out from up in the air while the ginger one spun on the floor, head down, feet up, her naginata slicing at the feet and calves of the opponent at the same time.</p><p>Ahimari's right eye flared red with just a peek. Both of the two women collapsed on the ground and writhed for just a beat before struggling to stand up. Whatever illusion he had used on them, appeared sufficient to make both kunoichi wish to halt their revenge-driven attacks but given how invested they were in their movements, that sentiment also forced them to fumble on the floor in a less than gracious manner.</p><p>A mad swipe of Bakuchi's stump blew the upper half of Ahimari's body off clean. The beheaded and de-chested body twitched for a pair of heartbeats before a pair of chicken legs erupted from the waist. What remained of Ahimari flipped over onto the erupted chicken feet that scurried to carry the Uchiha farther away, where his body could reform.</p><p>"This was unlike before." Meiko noticed.</p><p>"Yeah, this time it's an illusion for sure, similar to Mana's illusionary escape techniques." Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>Given how the exact state of the scales was yet to be determined, the two subscribed themselves to the method of watching the enemy with hopes of noticing any patterns or weaknesses rather than engage him in a fair fight, given how, due to the vast difference in skill, experience, and genetics, any fight of these two against Ahimari would hardly qualify as being all that fair.</p><p>"Hmph…" a voice came out from the lower body of Ahimari that soon appeared to be just as human and normal as it was meant to be as his ridiculous looks faded away as a mirage. "I had thought that sneaking into the Yamanaka Resort would require extraordinary measures, even with my skill but I had thought that executing the infiltration would be the toughest part of my day. Perhaps you will claim these honors soon?"</p><p>"So that's why you played possum? Infiltration?" Bakuchi growled. It was unclear if the man was just that good at ignoring the pain of missing a limb or if he felt nothing whatsoever but he looked all irritation and no torment.</p><p>"Why should I explain myself to a dead-man?" Ahimari taunted his opponent, charging out head-first at the opponent that seemed physically superior.</p><p>"He's applying pressure," Kiyomi noted.</p><p>"On a stronger opponent?" Meiko turned the corner of her eyes at her comrade.</p><p>"Sure. It seems like Ahimaru can afford to get beaten however many times he wants to while uncle is bleeding out chakra and stamina from his arm loss." Kiyomi replied.</p><p>Ahimari and Bakuchi danced from up close, Bakuchi's response to Ahimari's summons for a devil's twist was ruthless, crushing and non-relenting. Any dash to attack from up above was met with a backhanded swat, any attempt to attack the mid-section resulted in Ahimari being crushed and pounded into the ancient stone tiles that were more expensive than most villages would have valued this high-ranking criminal's life. Any attempts at sweep the legs or hit the knees resulted in Bakuchi stomping Ahimari like a bug but nothing kept the relentless Uchiha down.</p><p>"You're right. We need to get as much data on this man as we can and attack the moment your uncle seems in danger." Meiko turned to Kiyomi.</p><p>"No. That's why those two are here. This man is dangerous, Meiko, I feel massive outcry outside, the mental link shared between the entire clan in the resort is broken, filled with screams and curses… This man delivered a significant blow on the Yamanaka Resort all by himself…" Kiyomi's face turned sour, she could almost feel each and every drop of sweat forming on her face.</p><p>Ahimari flew back, blasted aside by Bakuchi's soccer kick and got himself impaled on a collapsed column. Bakuchi turned half of his face to Kiyomi and grinned, or so it could have been interpreted, given his peculiar usual grimace.</p><p>"Don't get wrinkles on your forehead, niece, the suitors from the other clans will still need to fall for you." Uncle joked while Ahimari gripped the end of the battlefield he himself was responsible for devastating and leaving in a state hectic enough to get himself impaled on something that was broken and pulled his body off. The leader of the Red Hawks slumped onto the floor with a wet sounding thud before picking himself back up and turning his shut eyes at Bakuchi.</p><p>"Uncle, let us fight by your side." The assistants insisted.</p><p>"No. Go aid the clan. If I cannot handle a single impudent invader, I truly have shriveled and rotten." Bakuchi declared.</p><p>"You were always a dead man, in any stage of my plan, Yamanaka Bakuchi." Ahimari declared. "Believe it or not, I did not infiltrate your precious resort to get a shot at you. If the Red Hawks just laid siege to this place – I'd have gotten my shot regardless."</p><p>"If you're so confident, then why did you go through all the trouble of dying just to stand in front of me?" Bakuchi wondered. He had little to nothing to gain from standing around and continuously losing chakra and stamina, however, as the leader of the Yamanaka he had a responsibility to understand who and for what reason has brought war onto the steps of his clan's home. Kiyomi took note of that grand gesture from her uncle's side.</p><p>"It's not to face you, your clan was always to be crushed on our path to power. To reclaim the former glory of the Uchiha!" Ahimari declared and charged onward again, the Uchiha dashed up to attack Bakuchi's upper body but once again the backhand smack of the Yamanaka patriarch would have swatted the assailant aside like a bothersome fly. It would have, had Ahimari's body not dispersed into a fall of feathers. White, grey, brown…</p><p>"Explosive Sealing Method!" Ahimari yelled out while touching the back of Bakuchi's neck – a deadly weak spot in the defenses of the most ninja. The one place where no ninja wanted to be attacked because a successful hit to the area resulted in a kill-shot most of the time.</p><p>"No!" Meiko reacted to Ahimari sealing a decent chunk of his chakra into the back of the neck of Kiyomi's uncle, using a sealing method that once unsealed would have reacted in a blast as powerful as the amount of chakra sealed. It was a simple seal in terms of how generic it was but it was a complex seal to learn. In other words, a B-Rank technique that everybody knew of but few could actually pick up.</p><p>Before Kiyomi could reach out and lock her friend in place so that she did not make an emotion-driven mistake and open up, a forceful detonation of the seal sent both young women cowering from the brunt of the blast's force.</p><p>Once a handful of the raised smoke and debris settled, Kiyomi saw a chilling sight of Ahimari's face turned at her with his body shifted halfway to facing her as well. Of course, this bastard would target her next, she was the inheritor of the Yamanaka clan. If he meant for the total destruction of the clan, that would have made a lick of sense, as much of it as attacking the main sacred grounds of the Yamanaka did.</p><p>"I came here for you, Yamanaka Kiyomi." Ahimari declared, pointing his finger at the blonde as if he was staring right at her. Even as the man's eyes remained shut, Kiyomi had never felt someone pierce her soul quite like Uchiha Ahimari.</p><p>"Yeah well…" Kiyomi rolled her kunai blade in her hand before tightly grabbing its handle and locking herself in a knife-fighting stance. "Come at me then…"</p><p>Before Ahimari could fulfill his purpose, a bare hand reached out from the lingering smoke and wrapped around Ahimari's cheeks. As more and more smoke dissipated, the sight of Yamanaka Bakuchi holding his opponent in a dominating one-hand head clutch set itself into stone.</p><p>"My niece. What is your business with her?" the unfazed patriarch of the Yamanaka who must have himself possessed some unnatural powers of immortality to have survived a blast targeting a lethal pressure point in the body of any human asked.</p><p>"Isn't it obvious? I'm here to marry her…" Ahimari grinned, his cheeks forced their way through. The greatest struggle Ahimari has shown in this duel of fates was smiling while Bakuchi held his upper head and jaw with his entire colossal hand.</p><p>A rowdy popping sound, followed by wet drooping and a dull thud signaled the pressure-based destruction of Ahimari's head in the hand of his opponent. Using the opening of the downed enemy who was bound to return one way or another, the two assistants slipped out through the gate, first blitzing all the way to the upper floor of the temple to activate the gearwork that opened it under normal circumstances.</p><p>"When you estimated it would take my dead body for that to happen, you weren't wrong…" Bakuchi's voice thundered.</p><p>A dog-sized chicken burst from the beheaded body of Ahimari and ran to the north-western wing of the temple hall. The bird wheezed for a short while before dashing back at the location he ran away from. At this point, the Uchiha has shown enough illusions and sealing techniques for it to become confusing which was which.</p><p>"Crush that chicken!" Meiko yelled out.</p><p>"If he does, he might open himself up. It's unclear if the chicken is the illusion, maybe the dead body is an illusion and the real Ahimari is waiting behind one of the remaining pillars, waiting for uncle to strike thin air so that he could injure him more or worse…" Kiyomi explained her uncle's passivity. "Until uncle knows exactly what he's dealing with, it is best to stay put and watch, watch and, more importantly, learn."</p><p>The chicken took a dive into the headless stump he just burst from, resulting in a bloody splash. Regardless of how unlikely the feat of the chicken fitting back inside seemed, Ahimari stood back up and his head was back as it was meant to be, even the blood covering the Uchiha's face faded away in the shape of crimson dust in the evening breeze.</p><p>"Do not mistake my betrothal to your niece as a sign of affection for you lot. The destruction of the Yamanaka will result in the world once more acknowledging the Uchiha as the elite and dominant ninja clan they once were. Before the current disgraces in charge began groveling before the village playing the petty politics game. However, it would take more than just leveling this resort and killing everyone inside to destroy the Yamanaka, the clan is too widespread and too powerful." Ahimari explained while he got his body back in shape to continue the fight.</p><p>"You got that right. Even if they're not part of the main branch, the Yamanaka are all over the world. Even the Kirigakure branch alone would give you rogue dogs trouble." Bakuchi smirked.</p><p>"Exactly. Which is why I need more than just destroy an important headquarters for the clan. I need to subjugate it and what better way than marrying its heiress?" Ahimari spread his hands out in an arrogant wide-guard stance. It was a stance used for defensive redirections of the opponent's power-based attacks, the cockiness of one adopting it alone taunted the enemy to attack in blind fury and that must have been what he expected from Yamanaka Bakuchi. "The husband of the heiress will effectively rule the clan, if Yamanaka are led by an Uchiha, it's even worse than if they were wiped out, don't you think?"</p><p>"There is one problem though." Bakuchi swung his arm around to relieve some tension building up in his muscles. The man then tightened the clutch of his fist and took a wide stance, right foot and his only hand out in front. A mighty stomp that shook the ground and a declarative kiai that shook the heavens. "How can you marry my niece if you're not getting past me?"</p><p>"You have proven to be a troublesome opponent, Yamanaka Bakuchi, though that is to be expected, you are the leader of the Yamanaka's main branch. I have always counted in the possibility of using my eyes against you as something that was inevitable." Ahimari declared before covering his face with his hand. Despite the fact that the Red Hawk tried playing it down as an option he always had and could have used, Kiyomi saw it for what it was – a desperation move.</p><p>Ahimari was decent seal master and likely still had seals beyond one's wildest dreams up his sleeve, however, after seeing Yamanaka Bakuchi survive an erupting blast of chakra of beyond world-breaking proportions, coming from within the man's own body and one that was supposed to tear apart his most sensitive vital point to boot, Ahimari was wise to rule out seals as an option in stopping Kiyomi's uncle.</p><p>With the fingers of Ahimari's cover hand spreading apart, a red gleam penetrated the gloom and the shadows of the inner Yamanaka sanctum. Kiyomi had been a decent genjutsu user herself once, before realizing she was overshadowed in the subject by Mana and choosing to rather hone her physical arts and ninjutsu to provide her own use to her team instead of playing second fiddle in something Mana could cover to its fullest. Someone who understood illusions to the extent that Kiyomi did, turned her eyes away from the Sharingan before it even reached her perception – she predicted Ahimari's moves.</p><p>By avoiding the medium through which the illusion reached and affected its target, Kiyomi managed to resist the illusion to the extent that breaking it became much simpler. Somehow, it still drowned the world out into a void of black oblivion and the ever-present drain of red vapors converging in the air threatened to finalize the genjutsu by forming the abominable desert scorcher – the Sharingan moon in the void's sky. Before that could happen, Kiyomi managed to break through the illusion by playing with her chakra flow, escalating and halting it, then escalating it again to bust through any attempts to manipulate it from an external source.</p><p>It was a lot like raising waves of splashing bath water while washing oneself, bend one's knees and move one's bottom to the front, then back up, after sufficient repeats the flow of the unruly water will splash over the bath and infuriate one's parents as it likely did Kiyomi's. While it was an odd metaphor, the concept of breaking out of illusions was made easier to understand by it. It was how Kiyomi came to memorize and understand it as a six-year-old and what helped her grasp it even to this day.</p><p>Meiko was not as lucky. Kiyomi did not look into the blacksmith's eyes, worried that the Sharingan that reflected onto them from Ahimari could have reflected back to Kiyomi's own eyes, completing the chain and launching the assault of a full illusion, one that Kiyomi would not have had the necessary chakra to bust through. However, the static and lulled stance of her friend delivered the message clear enough.</p><p>"Let us see if your mind can survive the full brunt of the Sharingan's might!" Ahimari taunted Kiyomi's uncle. The spoken words calmed the blonde a little, helping her put together that the Red Hawk had not switched targets and was still occupied with eliminating her uncle. Kiyomi wanted to check how bad it was, if Ahimari had one of his Sharingan eyes active, both, if both of them had connected with uncle and if uncle had sunken under.</p><p>A surprised grunt made Kiyomi forget that she was not meant to lift her eyes that high up, she was lucky that uncle was the one shocking the Uchiha by grabbing hold of the Uchiha's entire body with his one remaining hand, two fingers wrapping over Ahimari's shoulders while the other two held the Uchiha locked down from the sides. The frail build of the Red Hawk leader as well as the massive difference in size between the two allowed for this sort of unique hold to happen.</p><p>"My mind… Perhaps once my body and mind have been separate, now, there is no such distinction!" Uncle roared out crushing Ahimari in his own palm like a plum. Instead of blood, guts and busted bones raining from the sanguine stain drooping from the mushed mass in uncle's hand, feathers landed with grace and ease onto the floor. With each tapping feather, Kiyomi could have sworn she had heard raindrops hitting the ground.</p><p>"Wha… What happened?" Meiko coughed up, even her lungs appeared to have been paralyzed by Ahimari's previous illusion.</p><p>"You've broken out. That means Ahimari used another illusion that canceled the first one out." Kiyomi explained what she was putting together at that moment, both to herself and her comrade.</p><p>"Dammit, how are we meant to fight someone we can't even look at or be looked at by?" Meiko cursed in frustration, realizing the great difference between the strengths of the two graduates of Team Hokage and the colossal fight of masterful shinobi transpiring in front of them.</p><p>"No. I don't think that's the illusion. Look…" Kiyomi pointed at a tiny, grey duckling running away from the opened clutch of Yamanaka Bakuchi.</p><p>"The duckling again. That would mean that he's using the same illusion, right?" Meiko scratched her head.</p><p>"I don't think so. Mana uses a similar technique. The crux of her illusionary escape is creating an illusionary duplicate while the real her slips out of the reality perceived by the targets of the illusion." Kiyomi reminded the redhead. As if prompted by that reminder, the duckling tapped back to the bloody stain upon which moment the bloody remains of Ahimari reformed around the prophetic waterfowl.</p><p>"I see…" Meiko's eyes widened. "The duckling returned to the place where the supposed illusion died, so it cannot be an illusionary escape technique."</p><p>"Uncle! It's okay, don't be afraid to open up and smash that duck next time!" Kiyomi yelled out.</p><p>"Huh… It appears I have been found out…" Ahimari grinned, scratching the back of his head. "So both of us have shown our true hands to each other. Perhaps the battle is in its decisive stages?"</p><p>"Do not presume to know the degree of my mental mastery!" Bakuchi grumbled like a thunderstorm, taking a mighty step forward and throwing his fist out in disgust of his opponent's fighting style.</p><p>"Oh, but I do…" Ahimari reached his fingers for his closed eyes and tapped on them. "The Sharingan, remember? The doujutsu of the Uchiha allows me to see and read what it would take hundreds of looks for even the wisest sage to perceive. Not even the tiniest details escape this eye. By using your ace technique to escape my Explosive Sealing Method, you've shown your hand, just like your infernal niece has told you about mine."</p><p>"I'll believe your boasting when I see a reason to!" Bakuchi grumbled, the Yamanaka patriarch spread his hand out and began moving it in a circle, reminding of a meditative breathing pose. The absence of the other limb sort of broke the balanced and graceful impression but the glow of golden chakra around Bakuchi's person intensified even more than in his usual, combat-ready state.</p><p>"As fast and slippery you think you are, not even you can dodge thought. Allow me to show you the ultimate heights to which I have brought the Yamanaka mental hijutsu…" Bakuchi growled through sheer effort that it demanded of him to stand and keep irradiating this impossible to believe amounts of chakra. No, not just that, it felt like the very essence of the man using the technique became transparent when Bakuchi's technique was in-use.</p><p>"Mind-Switch: Mindragon!" Bakuchi roared out while his golden aura withdrew within the transparent body of its wielder, making Bakuchi glow like a colossal, golden ghost while solid spikes burst forth through Bakuchi's chest while a draconic serpent with lion's mane and lucent, golden scales coiled itself around Bakuchi's fading body.</p><p>"I… I don't understand… It's a fancy technique and all but…" Meiko turned to Kiyomi. "Why is your uncle literally disappearing while he's using it?"</p><p>"I've… I've no idea…" Kiyomi wondered. She had some theories, mere ramblings of perhaps the technique requiring so much chakra and concentration that it evaporated the person using whole but… Such a thing hardly seemed possible, even compared to immortal men, resurrected by ducks sealed inside their bodies and whatever other wonders this godly level of ninja combat revealed.</p><p>The golden dragon created by Bakuchi's jutsu justified its described reputation as it scrambled at the confused Uchiha. What little uncle let out about this jutsu made Kiyomi understand it somewhat but seeing it had a whole different effect. Such was the nature of most bright ninja, showing a jutsu tipped them off to its nature, its strengths and weaknesses and it was not always necessary to be the one dealing with it in the first place.</p><p>The dragon was concentrated thought. So concentrated in fact that it was given shape in the material world. If the ages old saying of mind over matter was to be believed, Uchiha Ahimari was in for a scare, even the speed at which the technique traveled was notable. The speed of thought was the usual speed of most Yamanaka hijutsu but seeing it on something this massive and majestic, something that was only partially existing and partly still a stream of thoughts that its nature implied it to be and therefore more difficult to pick up, was much different than seeing it on the barebones mental projection of the Mind Body Switch jutsu.</p><p>Ahimari's hands waved in a circle, Kiyomi could recognize those movements because Ahimari was conjuring up a seal that he had used earlier. It was not necessarily just the ability to come up with new, unnatural seals that defined a seal master, but also how natural and quick the generic seals came out from their side as well. Most seal users needed a few seconds, material to sketch sealing glyphs on, time to mold chakra and apply it in just the right, sensitive ways. All it took for Ahimari to open up a sealing rift into another sealing dimension was to wave his hands in a circle.</p><p>The dragon coiled around itself. As if hesitating for a millisecond to cross the rift but then it dived right through, phasing through it as if there was no resistance to impede its path. It made a lick of sense, the dragon was as much thought as it was something material and something like thought transcended the material world. It was only because of the immense concentration of it that the mental projection was in any way perceivable, to begin with.</p><p>A blood-curdling roar of pain, gone was the façade of cool that the Uchiha adorned when engaging the outside world, walling off the incredible emotional sensitivity most of them were cursed by their nature with since birth. Ahimari was just a few pitches away from screaming like a scared girl as the overwhelming might of the Mindragon flowed through him, it appeared to be ripping the man's flesh and bits apart but despite the gruesome impressions, it left no lasting damage.</p><p>In a ghastly visage, appearing much like a ghostly possession, Ahimari flew backward as if fired from a cannon and left a great crater in the wall he hit. Mindragon was not done with the enemy just yet, it coiled and roared and continued to soar about the temple, dragging its poor target all over the place and leaving bloodied trails and ridges where Ahimari was dragged across. The entire temple started rumbling and threatening to collapse. With one, final roar of pride, Mindragon flung its target, reduced to a pathetic shell of a state across the room, busting into the wall on the opposite side of the room.</p><p>"Whoa!" Meiko gasped in disbelief. "You're gonna be able to do that too?"</p><p>"I… I don't know. This is something my uncle has accomplished with the same fundamentals that I have now. This is his power and no one else's. Now I understand what he told me before the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams a bit better…" Kiyomi felt her chest to soothe her racing heart. The young woman looked utterly shocked to see her hand trembling before her own eyes. She was in no danger, this was the power of her protector and her blood relative, a man who would die before seeing a hair being harmed on her head and yet it utterly petrified her.</p><p>It was not to whom this power belonged to, it was a matter of the existence of such power that frightened Kiyomi.</p><p>"Wait… Where is your uncle!?" Meiko flipped out. Feeling like her friend was just being aloof, Kiyomi nudged her with the elbow and switched her attention back onto the battlefield. A barebones visual inspection betrayed the truth to be on Meiko's side – Yamanaka Bakuchi was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>"What the…" Kiyomi mumbled to herself before a spark of neurons working a certain way in her brain made her jaw drop. "No… No… This is… Impossible…"</p><p>"What's the matter?" Meiko turned to Kiyomi. Because the blonde was so unresponsive, the blacksmith grabbed her friend's shoulders and shook the Yamanaka heiress a good handful of times.</p><p>"The… The duck… We have to smash the duck…" Kiyomi uttered still in a daze. She now understood just what her uncle was and how he had survived the Explosive Sealing Method earlier but, despite that being a realization that quite literally shattered all previous understanding of how the world around her worked, the matter of dealing with Uchiha Ahimari still came first.</p><p>"I don't think there's any point…" Meiko muttered, raising her hand to show a whited out Ahimari lying sprawled out in the wall crater he was left in moments earlier by the raging Mindragon. "He doesn't look responsive at all. His eyes are open yet nothing's happening…"</p><p>Kiyomi focused her attention at the whites where the terrifying Sharingan once flared in Ahimari's ocular orbs but failed to see anything in them except for nets of bloody veins spreading from the edges. The condition of Ahimari's eyes deteriorated rapidly every second that the eyes remained open. Before long, puny trickles of blood started running down, bursting forth from under the man's lower eyelid and running down his shriveled face.</p><p>"Something ironic about an Uchiha born with both an innate potential for crippling genjutsu and such an aggressive eye condition," Kiyomi said.</p><p>Ahimari's chest inflated, something living was struggling to get out, the throat of the Uchiha followed, as whatever wanted to get out found a corridor to its way out. The movements of the sizeable lump weren't willful, had they been, the lump of flesh would have soon burst forth out of its bodily prison. It looked like a strangled body, jerking for its last breaths out of instinct rather than conscious attempts at breaking the asphyxia.</p><p>Meiko moved in a blur of red and green, punching the seemingly lobotomized Ahimari straight into the center of his body, busting his ribcage and reducing it to into a powder of bone dust. After that, it took just a light flick with a kunai blade to open the man up. Meiko spread Ahimari's chest open wider to reveal the grey duck flapping its wings and kicking about, blank and unresponsive eyes, blood and foam trickling down the duck's mouth.</p><p>"Smash it!" Kiyomi prompted.</p><p>Meiko took the bird into her hands and put it out of its misery. Despite the usual support to Mana's beliefs that the blacksmith displayed, she did not look all too conflicted about ending the existence as troubled and pained as that of the duckling.</p><p>"What the…" Meiko mumbled, looking into her hands.</p><p>"What is it?" Kiyomi approached the blacksmith.</p><p>"I crushed the duck, I'm sure of it but… I think it left an egg in my hand…" Meiko pouted her lips.</p><p>"Smash it too!" Kiyomi instructed her friend. For all they knew, the egg could have regenerated the duck, which could have regenerated Ahimari. This was now the world that they lived in, the exact nature of which changed day to day as new ridiculous concepts were introduced into their lives. All that a sane mind could have done was stride alongside the surface of the ever-expanding lake or risk drowning under to the depths of insanity.</p><p>"Agh!" Meiko groaned in pain upon crushing the egg. The blacksmith spread her hands out, revealing a thick, brass needle etched into the fingerless glove and, with its tip, into Meiko's hand. It must have been brimming with chakra to have worked its way into Meiko's skin. Kiyomi knew all too well how capable of taking a hit the redhead was, as well as dishing one out, when necessary.</p><p>"Why are all these random objects, brimming with chakra, sealed inside one another?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>Meiko rolled the needle around in her fingers, looking at it with disdain befitting an object that just pricked her finger. The eyes of the blacksmith brightened up, she shifted her look around from one point of interest, the brass needle, to the other – the mindless, whited out Uchiha with an open chest. The redhead extended her hand, holding the needle right up to the man's wound. The flesh tissue extended toward it, reaching out for it like thousands of miniscule, thirsty hands reaching for the last jug of water.</p><p>"I had a hunch…" Meiko sighed with relief. "He's sealed more than just his chakra into these objects. He sealed parts of his entire life-force."</p><p>Meiko placed the needle down on the ground and rolled it toward the fallen Uchiha. The needle rolled for a couple of flips but then the faint brass jingle turned to a wet slurp as yellow goop enveloped the needle, dull cracks signaled an eggshell that appeared out of thin air and formed the egg again, bone churning sounds followed the re-assembly of the waterfowl skeleton that soon turned to flesh and re-feathered. A bonsai tree spread its roots and branches from inside Ahimari's body, ready to contain the duckling once it entered its master's chest cavity and hid between its coiling like strands of DNA roots.</p><p>"Can we kill him?" Kiyomi asked the only question that plagued her mind.</p><p>"That was meant to be the idea – if you do, the seals provide the life-force and chakra to undo it. Given his skill, I'd say he made sure that the seals were self-sustaining, meaning that the chain could go on forever and ever, no matter how many times or in what method he is killed. Maybe killing him a thousand times in a split second could overload them but… The chain of seals is extensive." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"But can we kill him?" Kiyomi repeated the question. This time, Meiko got the intended subtext.</p><p>"Oh… Sure, just break the last bit of the chain, and the whole thing unravels. If the tree is just twisted trunks of a tree it won't host the duck or regrow inside of a chest cavity. If the duck is just another duck, it won't leave an egg after it and if the egg is just an egg…" Meiko waved her arms about. She placed her hand onto the tree and focused a large chunk of her chakra to pulse through it. It did not look too different from breaking out of genjutsu, the way she went about it.</p><p>"Damn, I can't do it. It's like a marvel of machinery, this seal, it will take a great technician to both put it together and disassemble it." Meiko sighed.</p><p>Kiyomi placed an explosive tag onto the tree and pushed Meiko to the side, the tree roared and splintered in its demise, letting the duckling flop out from its remains on the ground lifeless. The blonde stomped the bird, underneath her bloodied foot laid a perfectly fine egg that she took and smashed into the ground, then she took the needle and handed it to Meiko.</p><p>"Breaking the last bit of the chain could be easier." She spoke wearing a blunt and cold expression.</p><p>Meiko looked back at Kiyomi as if she knew the truth, the fact that Kiyomi enjoyed continuously smashing every tiniest bit of Ahimari's life fragments over and over again. She was someone who had denied herself her principles for too long and this man was someone twisted enough to make up for it, even more, he was wicked and vain enough for the fact that it was possible to kill him again and again feel almost cathartic to the Yamanaka heiress.</p><p>Without starting a shouting match between the two, Meiko took the needle and tried her unsealing technique again. The needle lit up with murky blue light before something resembling an aura of blue shattered like a wall of glass on pressure.</p><p>"Well, what do you know?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow seeing youth flooding back into Ahimari's cheeks. His grey facial hair and strands of silver amongst his greying head turned into even jets of black while the sugar-white returned to the man's eyes. The influx of life energy that the man had abandoned to prevent his own death did nothing to salvage his crushed mind.</p><p>"Is my niece regretting her decision to kill this man?" uncle's voice rumbled from behind, Kiyomi spun the kunai knife in her hand around and plunged it into Ahimari's chest, even if the man would have died from his open chest cavity not too long after his revitalization. That was not how he should have died, it must have been Kiyomi who ended him. Ended the Red Hawks that all started with her beef. "Perhaps his looks struck her fancy?"</p><p>"Don't be ridiculous, uncle." Kiyomi turned back to the looming colossus of the Yamanaka patriarch. "Is this your real body now, or another mental projection?"</p><p>"Wait, what?!" Meiko's jaw dropped from the revelation. "You mean your uncle has been just a… What do I even call it?"</p><p>"Yes. This body of his is just a mental projection, something he achieved through such a focused and world-breaking mind that it can conjure him in a location where he's not present. Apparently, it can even work well enough to allow him to sustain a fight." Kiyomi squinted at the aging man.</p><p>"Thank you for your care, niece, my hand is just fine…" uncle dismissed the underlying accusatory tone underneath his relative's words. "Had I truly taken part in this fight, it would not have been. I assure you, I will return to oversee the reconstruction of the Yamanaka Resort myself."</p><p>"I see…" Meiko scratched her chin. "So that's why he disappeared after using Mindragon."</p><p>"It's a majestic technique that demands utter concentration, it broke the necessary focus needed for my mental projection to exist elsewhere. Not to worry, I knew that you two had it handled. Even if you two were in danger, I had a hunch that the assistants would have given you a helping hand." Uncle shrugged while he turned to stumble toward his throne.</p><p>"I bet he only sleeps half the time because having his mental projection move around is too much hassle… Plus, he's always doing who knows what nobody knows where, which is why it seems like he's not listening to anything around him. I can't believe I didn't put it together sooner." Kiyomi shook her head.</p><p>"All this moving around and fighting gave me a mother of all migraines." Uncle lamented. "You wouldn't have a trip to Tanzoku in mind for the sole purpose of massaging your uncle's temples? I did save your lives…"</p><p>"Forget it, I and Meiko have a date." Kiyomi pointed her tongue out.</p><p>"The future of my clan…" uncle rumbled to himself in unease before resting his troubled head onto his bent hand.</p><p>"Why would I be present on your date? Don't you want some privacy for that sort of thing?" Meiko raised an eyebrow, oblivious to why Kiyomi was dragging her out of the temple by her elbow.</p><p>Even if it was not a fancy dinner and a movie, rather a whole night tending to the injured and calming the residents of the Yamanaka Resort that all was now well and that the worst was behind, also helping the reconstruction efforts and showing her face around where the crisis hit the hardest, time spent with Meiko put Kiyomi's mind at ease in a way that few other things did. Even if the brawly buffoon was oblivious to the fact to the highest degree, performing one's duties could not have felt more natural and pleasant to Kiyomi than performing them with Meiko by her side.</p><p>It will be tough saying goodbye to that once she will have to get married…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0591"><h2>591. Old Faces, New Ramen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Alright, Shikamaru, let them through, you know!" Naruto messaged his ally through the communicator device that the interdimensional visitors have brought along.</p><p>A round hole widened in the very fabric of existence, no glow or light show, in a lot of ways it looked just as if somebody had busted through a wall and the only things seen through the two sides was what the other side looked like. Meiko made her way closer to the rift, just so she could see the other Konoha a bit closer.</p><p>"It looked so bright and…" Kiyomi struggled to find the word once her friend returned.</p><p>"Yeah, just how much time did they have to keep building things?" Meiko wondered. "This rift looks nothing like when Mana got turned inside out and then sucked into another universe."</p><p>"I'm glad they're the ones coming here and not the other way around…" Kiyomi leaned back with disgust just trying to imagine the sheer discomfort of traveling to another universe. If it was all like what her friend made it out to be, Mana was to be respected for making the trip twice.</p><p>Children and young adults alike began flocking from the other side, had it not been for the confused faces of the locals gathering to watch what they thought to be a great light show but seeing something far too visually underwhelming to be what it was, all of this assembly would have looked like an invasion.</p><p>"Hey, look, that kid kind of looks like the Seventh… The other one…" Meiko pointed at a tiny version of Naruto with far wilder hair, a black and pink tracksuit, and a Konoha forehead protector. Something not all of the incoming ninja wore and showed off with as much pride as this youngling.</p><p>"Hmph, what a reject universe… Where are all their Uchiha?" a familiar voice carried with a flair of self-importance distracted Kiyomi as she turned to face her nemesis.</p><p>"Lithia…" Kiyomi stated with disdain.</p><p>"I'm not letting you out of my sight this time. I'll make sure to kick you out of the contest even if I don't have to." Lithia stated with the tips of her lips moving up a notch but overall looking too cool to put in the effort and smile.</p><p>"So mean. We should at least put the interests of our universe first, then there's a matter of different countries… That's just petty." Meiko lectured the petite Uchiha girl.</p><p>"Then again, there's still the matter of there only being the two of you, it's unlikely they will even let you in on the exam action…" Inuzuka Kidenshi displayed his fangs, hanging nearby Lithia at all times. Given how often the two were at each other's throats, it was an odd habit for the two to adopt.</p><p>Kiyomi looked away. She hated Lithia's team of all people having her number this way but Kidenshi was right, even if he was just messing around. Unlike his comrade, his beef with Kiyomi and Meiko was nothing personal, nothing extending father than the little match they very nearly ended up having in the Forest of Death.</p><p>"It's so odd, Lord Seventh is making it a whole thing about letting in a bunch of people from different universes and timelines but I don't think anyone from a different village has ever arrived." Kiyomi noticed.</p><p>"Odd or sad?" Kidenshi sighed, finally holding his snarky side down for a beat. "These guys come from all sorts of countries. Look at that…" the Inuzuka pointed at Boruto engaging in conversation with a young man wearing a Kirigakure headband.</p><p>"Yep, different universe alright…" Meiko nodded.</p><p>"So you guys going to catch something to eat after this whole thing or what?" Chominu, the third member of Team Walnut wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, definitely that." Meiko pointed her index at the looming Akimichi behind her with vigor which implied that the redhead was ready to sell friend and foe alike for this person she was pointing at.</p><hr/><p>"So where are the Team Fir guys?" Tanko Shigin pressed his lips together. For somebody who got punched out as far away as away went and roamed the empty black for nine whole months before managing to make his way back home, the young man looked incredibly chipper and mental-trauma-free.</p><p>"Training. Not much has changed with those three…" Kiyomi said. The blonde sighed, drawing the breath in as deep as it went before taking a slurp of her soda. The inheritor of the Yamanaka clan looked about as overjoyed about the get-together as someone who's walked eleven thousand miles with a pebble in their shoe.</p><p>"Yushijin got promoted, didn't he? He's still pushing those two around? Unbelievable…" Meiko whistled.</p><p>Deiji Daidao, the Jinchuuriki of the Five-Tails, picked at the noodles with his chopsticks before lifting them halfway to his mouth, remembering he was still wearing his mask and then giving up. Exposure of his face must not have been worth the ramen and the ramen was sublime in this joint. Said a lot about the chum.</p><p>"So, you two broke out of prison again? It's gonna be fun!" Kidenshi lifted his fist up, sounding overjoyed with the prospect of seeing Daidao and Nanaba, the two Jinchuuriki still under Konoha's management in action. The two were both an impressive pair of combatants as well as a wall to overcome. While facing either of the duos would have been frightening due to their absurd chakra levels, besting a Jichuuriki would have granted major bragging rights.</p><p>"Are you some sort of an idiot?" Lithia raised an eyebrow. "Haven't you heard about the Eden break-out? They clearly escaped while the bricks on the road were hot."</p><p>Kiyomi had to hand it, she did not expect Lithia caring enough to sit by a common table with the rest of the Konoha genin crew. That showed major improvement in her social skills, though the jury was still out on if that was a good thing or not. On one hand, it showed promise that one day the Lolita-styled Uchiha would become more stomach-able, on the other, it also meant that she'd be spotted in much more get-togethers and therefore the Lithia exposure ratio would skyrocket…</p><p>"We were always free to leave," Daidao explained with his mechanical voice. "We are one member short though…"</p><p>"You could join us. We're a member short too." Meiko shot her fist out.</p><p>"Excuse me, and what am I to do then?" Nanaba hurled lightning bolts with her stare. Ones that faded away and weakened after the immediate sentiment rot.</p><p>"There are a lot of two-man teams now, huh?" Juhi wondered. Ever since her role in the war against the Monster Honda, the Aburame wore some black head garb that only left her face uncovered. Kiyomi did not snoop around but she just assumed that the fun-loving member of a clan that was not known for its fun-loving people took some nasty and life-altering bumps that required wearing this garb. Something rubbery but durable to offer additional protection to her neck and brain.</p><p>"Team Hokage, Team Fir, Team Hawthorn, Team Pine… Shit, I think Team Walnut's the only team left intact since the last exams." Tohi Jomya remarked. The young woman also donned a pair of accessories over her neck and the joints near her knees and elbows that looked suspiciously like braces, showing that she was also not immune to life-altering injuries on the field.</p><p>"Team Hickory's…" Chominu kept staring at a blank point with his eyes as squinted as ever, making it near impossible to tell what it was that he was looking at or what it was that he was thinking. He did not finish that sentence, thank God he had the decency to not finish that sentence with so many genin who were there present.</p><p>"Anyway, it's gonna be really fun, seeing the Team Draft develop!" Kidenshi tried brightening up the mood by bringing in some moderate sip of hype. "Imagine the betrayals, the new friendships, I can hardly wait."</p><p>"Are you whoring yourself out there?" Lithia closed her eyes, locked her arms over her chest and looked away. "That would be so you…"</p><p>Kidenshi chuckled. His laughter seemed oddly melancholic, taking the sold out table back to a few moments ago when they all were thinking of the friends lost along the way. "Maybe a few years ago I would have. We used to fight on our own all the time because we couldn't stand each other, I don't think we've ever thanked Mana for this…"</p><p>The room again went silent with the mention of Mana. The deadly silence got broken up by incoming voices. Two of them appeared to be nearly identical and displayed a nasty tendency to yell over one another. Once the trio of approaching ninja entered the Ichiraku Ramen, they died out with silence, the genin table of the local universe glared back at the aliens.</p><p>The fact that there were two identical copies of Naruto from two different points in the timeline just emphasized how weird this all was. Kiyomi did not recall hearing an explanation from Shikamaru or Hokage Naruto about how exactly they ran into the technology capable of this, even if she did somewhat revel in the idea of another supermassive Chuunin Exams.</p><p>"Wow, Ichiraku Ramen's even cooler in this place!" the kid Naruto yelled out. "It's so large!"</p><p>"You are but a mere grasshopper, you do not judge the quality of a ramen joint by the size of it, you judge it by the tenderness of its soup and the integrity of their noodles." An Akimichi boy in a green shirt, roughly the same age as the child Naruto licked his index and pointed it upward, feeling up the atmosphere of the facility. "Thirty-four degrees. A heated atmosphere but it is the heat of a passionate atmosphere!" the Akimichi appeared ecstatic about his findings.</p><p>"Hey, we've got a couple of seats open." Kidenshi lifted his hand up, inviting the visitors from another universe, amongst which were two versions of Naruto, besides the one that organized the whole thing, as if it was something one was to see when eating out on a Tuesday.</p><p>"Thanks!" the kid Naruto got excited and looked ready to become Kidenshi's best friend for life. "This universe's Kiba is just as cool as ours, you know!"</p><p>"That's not how different universe's work, you know that this guy and Kiba have no relation to each other, right? He's not like you and me at all, you know." The older Naruto looked frustrated with the naivete of his younger self but more so in a way in which a parent would have been frustrated by their child. Frustration with a hint of softness shining through from underneath.</p><p>"Whatever, he's treating us to ramen, that's good enough for me, you know!" the kid Naruto yelled out, it seemed like that was a trend with this guy as Kiyomi had not heard him communicate in any other way. The other one was a mystery though, he seemed somewhere in between this loudmouth and the mature man that she had met in Lord Seventh's office.</p><p>"That's not even what I…" Kidenshi was about to object but Nanaba pat him on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort him about the inevitable bleeding his wallet was about to undergo.</p><p>"Older Naruto, aren't you coming?" kid Choji looked back at the older Naruto with confusion, it was easy to understand that the experience of meeting this more matured version of what this Akimichi boy took for a loudmouth dweeb was a new experience to him as well.</p><p>"Yeah… Yeah, I'm coming it's just…" Naruto looked on outside as if he was missing something or having a nasty feeling about something but then he closed his eyes, sighed and approached the table. "Don't hog all the space, you know." He growled smacking his younger version with his older buttocks to shove him aside lightly.</p><p>"The new experiences are too overwhelming?" Kiyomi wondered. She was not yet sure what she was supposed to take and what she was supposed to give these interuniversal ninja, technically, they were still Konoha ninja so the Will of Fire still connected all of them but… All of this was way too weird on a multitude of levels.</p><p>"In a way…" Naruto agreed before a teen-aged waitress approached to take his order. Something appeared to be lost in the eyes of the young man as he ordered. He sighed after the waitress left. "I miss the old man and Ayame from back home, you know."</p><p>"Awww, don't be such a downer, you know!" his kid version smacked the older Naruto in the back. "I swear, ever since you met Sasuke you've been acting so weird…"</p><p>"You haven't even told us why…" Choji wondered with a mouthful of noodles. The speed at which these new entrants were served was impressive but ramen always was sort of a favored fast food type of the village. It took about as long to make as it took for the water to boil.</p><p>"I'm not sure I can…" the older Naruto shook his head, his eyes looked lost. "Not sure about a whole lot of things since I've come here, you know."</p><p>"You remember what the Hokage me instructed, you know? Eat up, don't get into any fights, don't be afraid to talk to each other, this isn't like those dumb time travel manga." Younger Naruto explained. Seeing the kid shine with this odd aura of kindness while sounding like such a delinquent seemed to clash impressions but the same bratty nature gave Naruto the shade of approachable simplicity that made him easy to like.</p><p>Kiyomi knew why this kid made it to being the Hokage.</p><p>"I see…" Daidao scratched his mask, emitting a leathery rubbing sound as he did so. "So there are going to be no time paradoxes if the older Naruto reveals something about his future. Also, I'd rather you did not mock the glorious genre of science fiction in front of my face, or you will be upsetting your Hokage very much by having a fight on your hands."</p><p>"Calm down, Dai." Nanaba tried pacifying the situation even if Daidao did not show any serious intent of fighting the kid, he was just letting him know he very much fancied those "dumb time travel manga". "We are also under the orders not to fight any of these guests until the Chuunin Exams start."</p><p>"I wonder why that is, don't you guys need some training and warming up before the Exams? Not being able to spar puts you at a disadvantage." Kidenshi wondered.</p><p>"I know why that is." Meiko cleared her throat. She could recall it from Mana's story. "The ninja from the other universes are weaker than us. Vastly so. But it is not inherent, they're weaker because whereas in their universe chakra hails from some fruit, our entire universe is made of chakra. Eating an apple in our universe would be the equivalent of eating that mystical chakra fruit in theirs."</p><p>"Huh… So that's why we can't brawl it out until we eat up and live here a little, you know." Kid Naruto squinted. He did not look like he got the entire explanation all at once but the parts he did understand seemed to paint him the full picture bit by bit.</p><p>"Well, I guess, in that case, nobody will mind if I go for seconds, thirds and fourths!" Choji cheered for himself, letting his hand shoot out into the air while he called for more food.</p><p>"Ummm… Please don't…" Kidenshi raised his index finger, looking somewhat defeated and crushed under the realization that he would be paying for said seconds, thirds and fourths.</p><p>"This Sasuke, he's a valued asset to you, isn't he?" Lithia wondered. Kiyomi noticed that the older Naruto sort of skipped over Lithia when letting his eyes wander across the Ichiraku, this Sasuke person that caused great inner wounds inside this youth to bleed anew must have been an Uchiha. It seemed like those guys caused trouble for everybody.</p><p>"A friend." Both Naruto replied at the same time.</p><p>"His Sasuke is sort of a douchebag, you know. I thought that he was beginning to warm up to me and Sakura, you know, but his Sasuke looks just like how he was in the beginning. All smug and in a need of a good punch in the face, you know!" kid Naruto punched his own palm while avoiding a disaster of dropping his entire bowl by a narrow margin.</p><p>"He went rogue, you know." Older Naruto finally said what he was holding suppressed in fear that he'd cause something in the past to change when his younger self returned home with his own, still loyal version of Sasuke. "I can't understand what I'm supposed to feel now. I see an older version of me where Sasuke and I are friends again, closer than brothers, you know. I see the Sasuke I know and will never stop fighting to save, acting just like I remember him, even though he might not be the Sasuke from my universe, for all I know. Then I see the Sasuke seemingly right before he committed to running away from us. I can't understand if I should feel glad that things work out in the end or if I should try and talk to him before he goes rogue, you know."</p><p>"I do know," Kiyomi muttered. "Meiko and I sort of know about friends we should have reached out to before they made some mistakes. Sometimes it's for the best to let them deal with their own darkness all on their own and respect their ability to do so."</p><p>"Yes. It is as your Lord Seventh stated, there is an infinite version of universes for each passing possibility. The Lord Seventh that approached us with this event might not even be the same Naruto that met Mana during her adventure, to begin with, just one that has experienced that event with a different version of Mana. It appears that time and our respective histories are free to change and mold as we like, without any effect on the grander scale. Some would say that makes us not matter because nothing we do will affect anything but the fate of an irrelevant part of the greater infinity but I think it's amazing, it shows how much freedom we have with our own actions. The world and time itself are for us to shape as all of us please." Deiji explained in his mechanical-sounding voice.</p><p>"Can we just not talk about this anymore?" Tanko Shigin grabbed his head and squeezed hard on it in scorn of the migraine that all this meaningless philosophical banter was causing him.</p><p>"Hmph, it seems we've found a weakness to the so-called invulnerable genin after all…" Lithia scowled at the numb-skulled colleague of hers, one that she, most likely, in her own signature fashion, considered a mere asset on her journey to ascension in rank.</p><p>A few of the present genin chuckled at that remark, even Shigin himself cracked a shy grin.</p><hr/><p>"Hmm? What's the matter? You've had that weirdest long face the whole evening…" Meiko stated, looking at Kiyomi when the other genin had left home or for one last trip to the training grounds to work off those full bellies.</p><p>"We need a third member." Kiyomi sighed. "I can't believe we forgot about that part, it's not a recent development, Mana's been promoted for over three years now."</p><p>A lanky, young man donning a worn out tracksuit of a shade of burgundy and spiky, dark hair sat down by the two young women and raised his hand up as a gesture of introduction. "Hi, I'm Gwido." He muttered.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0592"><h2>592. And Then There Were Three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So what you're saying is, you want to register the three of you as an official team of this year's Chuunin Exams?" a staffer overseeing the registration inquired. Given the unprecedented size of these exams, the village had to pull chuunin and even special jounin from all other assignments just so they could fulfill this elementary role.</p><p>"That's right, all three of us have participated before." Kiyomi nodded, she acted firm about the decision of signing her, Meiko and Gwido up for a team. Sure, Gwido was just a filler and would not amount to anything but, given their vastly overqualified specifications, it should not pose a problem. Despite her intended appearances, something in the man's tone troubled Kiyomi.</p><p>"I'm afraid that is not possible. Amaikon Gwido is not a graduate of the Ninja Academy, if he is not an officially acknowledged genin, he cannot be promoted to chuunin." The administrator shook his head.</p><p>"Really? Cause a whole bunch of this year's participants haven't graduated the Academy." Meiko pouted her lips and closed one of her eyes while she leaned with an inquisitive look at the sole barrier in their task to settle these lowly administrative matters and begin training for the exams proper.</p><p>"Nice try, any entrants from another universe or timeline are redirected to a table that is capable of validating their IDs. We have representatives of each timeline and each universe that is participating." The administrator shrugged.</p><p>Kiyomi could have made those indifferent, half-closed eyes that took their rest, akin to that of a greased kidney, inside the black bags under the man's eyes or she could have wrapped the man's dark, shoulder-length hair around his throat and put the squeeze on him. This ridiculous obstacle was the only thing in their way, the only thing that bothered Kiyomi and here the Team Hokage was, withheld from advancement in yet another Chuunin Exams.</p><p>"Oh well, it was worth a shot…" Gwido shrugged.</p><p>"Wait, how did you bypass the registration the last time?" Meiko wondered while she stretched her numb body out and relaxed her neck and head. The trio let the ever-growing line gather in front of the registration while they settled their further plan of registering. They only had time until the end of the day.</p><p>"Registration?" Gwido pouted the right half of his face as he scratched the back of his head in an attempt to remember something from last time. "I don't think I did any of that. The tall lady and the tiny zombie-man just approached me and took me, I went along for the ride. What's the problem, guys, I thought you two knew what you were doing?"</p><p>Kiyomi growled, simmering with fury she did her best to keep down. It was a combination of both the total cluelessness as well as the complete inadequacy of this imbecile whom she took for being the last hope for Team Hokage to make it into the exams.</p><p>"So what now? We have until the end of the day to find us a third member…" Meiko stated the obvious.</p><p>"Wait… Didn't Mana have that… That teammate guy from back in the day? He hung out with Daidao and Nanaba but he wasn't there yesterday, meaning he's not taking part in the exams, what was his name, Sugemi?" Kiyomi scratched her head. The Yamanaka have always had a history of cooperation and common understanding with the Nara, even if Kiyomi did not do much to justify or strengthen that historic bond, she was willing to go along with it if that would have helped her case.</p><p>"Yeah… Let's go and find Daidao and Nanaba and ask them about him." Meiko nodded. "I recall him being pretty tough…"</p><p>Meiko had all the right in the world to make that assessment, having clashed fists with the fellow, if the Nara matched and even ranged on surpassing Meiko's natural strength, speed, and toughness, Kiyomi was more than hopeful about the guy being of great help to the already top-notch chances to perform well in this thing.</p><hr/><p>"Horn Breaking!" an artificial shout echoed through the training grounds, followed by a boisterous shatter and a loud grunt. Daidao straightened his body, appearing noble as a deer that had just repelled an overly anxious wolf with a declaration that the predator would taste no meat that day.</p><p>"Hey, hey…" a snarky chuckle coming from a blue-skinned man in a black cloak, littered with red cloud insignia with white outlines interrupted the seriousness of the moment. "I've never even seen this technique and this brat broke through it like butter…"</p><p>"Y-You're welcome to join in, Kisame…" a man with long, black hair and a flaring Sharingan that possessed an unusual shape compared to that of the most Sharingan, appearing like a three-blade windmill shuriken, instead of the usual three-tomoe formation. The Uchiha hailing from a different universe looked decently rustled, his cloak had been devastated and incinerated by the superheated aura that covered the charging Jinchuuriki during his earlier attack. A single look at that wild black hair suggested that the ninja wore them in a ponytail under normal circumstances.</p><p>"We do outnumber these kids but… I think I'd rather wait until they get worn out a little bit. I'm in no rush to get killed." Kisame laughed out, mocking what his teammate perceived as a dead-serious situation.</p><p>"You guys should have hung around this universe a bit longer before challenging us. Whatever your beef with us is…" Nanaba leaned at the handful of black-coats, gesturing at them with two of her fingers placed by her cheeks, like an older sister teaching their disorderly little brother a life lesson.</p><p>"I suppose that's why the security around us was this lousy, hmm…" a blond-haired, rather effeminate looking black-coat surmised while turning at a short yet bulky hunchback by his side.</p><p>"Scared, Deidara?" a husky growl came from the freakish hunch.</p><p>"Scared? As if… I was just taking in the moment of the high and mighty Itachi falling flat on his face, hmm." Deidara snickered while taking to the air and leaning his upper body down to where his palms were facing the ground underneath. A mighty pop and an even chunkier dust cloud later, an avian of white clay burst forth from the scene and took it to the sky.</p><p>"Are you some sort of an idiot? We will survive this, your friends will not." Daidao leaned his head to the side in bemusement, observing the blonde creating a sizeable doll of the same white clay and hold it in front of the tall fall like a fat jug he was about to let loose.</p><p>"Are you sure you don't want to play the hero, kid? If this bomb lands, your entire village is going kaboom, hmm!" Deidara yelled out from atop of the bird and chugged the bomb forward.</p><p>"Ninja Art: Shield Slash!" Meiko's voice interrupted the silence before the boom. Deidara turned his eyes away a bit beforehand as his hidden mechanical eye picked up an odd reading that was a deviation from the norm.</p><p>A round flash of white carried the devastating power but it did not expand as far out as Deidara implied it would. It barely surpassed the buckler that came to meet its plummet by a good dozen of times before dissipating in flames. A metallic sound of steel wire reeling telegraphed the yo-yo-esque return of the buckler back to Meiko's hand while the blacksmith posed with a raised thumb.</p><p>"Aren't you guys a bit too old to be genin anyway?" the redhead remarked with a degree of nonchalant attitude that appeared to vex the gang of black-cloaks.</p><p>A pair of ninja appeared with a flicker. Two from the local version of Konoha and two from beyond. Kiyomi knew the first pair – Mars and Haikan, two Konohagakure jounin that the Yamanaka had seen around, doing one thing or another that, the girl reckoned, was far above her paygrade. Their presence here was confusing – these black-coats seemed like chumps, unworthy of challenging anyone past their first year as a genin…</p><p>Then again, the presence of the other two – Seventh Hokage Naruto and his universe's Sasuke Uchiha explained much more. Sasuke seemed to be a sort of right-hand man for Naruto, despite official statements claiming otherwise, ever since arriving in this universe through one of the hundreds of rifts, Sasuke has been Naruto's shadow, whereas Shikamaru tended to deal with things Naruto should have been dealing with for all intents and purposes.</p><p>"That's enough, you guys." Sasuke declared with a cold voice. "I expected something of the sort from Deidara but you, brother…"</p><p>"I just wanted to see how my little brother turned out. I figured we would stand no chance against these kids in our current state." The one whom Sasuke referred to smiled with one of his eyes closed. Kiyomi could only wonder if all those bruises and busted eyebrow and lip were worth it. Sasuke was a looker but a hunch suggested that was not what the man's brother meant. "Plus, I am pretty certain I am not your brother…" the black-coated Uchiha closed both his eyes.</p><p>"Contain your dogs, or we'll cut right through them." Mars threatened the pair from another universe. The man had an iron scowl that was frightening to look at. He was one of those no-bullshit types and that much was apparent before he ever said a single word, coincidentally, much to his liking, that made most people he met not even bother with the single word phase.</p><p>Sasuke moved his hand up to his lower eyelid but his injured brother raised his hand. The gesture made Sasuke freeze in whatever attempts he was about to make in subduing the unruly group. Hastened by Itachi, however unwillingly, the black-coats withdrew. Hokage Naruto followed them with his eyes, Haikan leaned in on the pair.</p><p>"Shouldn't we follow them?" he wondered. Haikan had a certain carelessness to his tone even when he raised concerns. "They did just threaten to destroy the entire village…"</p><p>"That type of power is meaningless to ninja from your universe." Sasuke closed his eyes, making his own unique set of eyes go out. Kiyomi had never seen that type of Sharingan, one that was of an entirely different color, she'd have reckoned it was no Sharingan at all but Sasuke was an Uchiha so it must have been.</p><p>"Plus, I have a good sense about people's intentions, trust me, they're going back to the containment facility, you know." Naruto grinned at the jounin, his smile looked apologetic and encouraging at the same time. "You guys, I'd appreciate if you forgot what you've seen here today, everybody hates spoilers, you know."</p><p>Without waiting for a reply, the four flickered away, likely to oversee the return of the black-coats just so the locals could have felt safer about hosting that group, whoever they were.</p><p>"Who were those guys?" Meiko wondered, forgetting all about the immediate purpose of them coming here, to begin with.</p><p>"I do not know," Daidao replied, stretching out and doing some light breathing exercises to calm himself down. It was self-evident that the young man was not in complete control over his emotions or the creature housed within just yet. "They seemed interested in our Tailed Beasts. With their level of strength, they're swinging far above their paygrade."</p><p>"Hmph… I think that they're from another universe, except, for whatever reason, they are being kept away from naturally acclimatizing to this one. As if the heads of the exams don't want those guys escalating in power as fast as the others." Kiyomi noted her observations.</p><p>"Did you guys come here for one final stretch of training? That makes you and every other participant of the exams…" Nanaba smiled. Despite housing the creepiest-looking Tailed Beast inside her, the girl was one of the most cheerful people that anyone would have had the pleasure of meeting and brimmed with happiness whenever given the opportunity.</p><p>"No. We've come here in search of a third member. We're kind of desperate… You said Sugemi was no longer involved in your team?" Kiyomi asked for a clarification of something that the two Jinchuuriki alluded to yesterday during the meet-up dinner before the pair of Narutos interrupted them.</p><p>"Yeah. I bet he'd still be involved if it wasn't for him disappearing after the big Eden bust." Daidao nodded. It was just so tough to tell how he was feeling through the rubber gas mask and the bowl-shaped, steel helmet that covered it. Even his voice failed to portray much of a message since it sounded so artificial and cybernetic while the voicebox was doing its part in concealing Daidao's vocal identity.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Meiko bent her head to the side, baffled.</p><p>"Didn't you know? Sugemi disappeared. He's one of very few prisoners to have gone missing and nobody really looked for him, given how he was not being forced to stay there anymore and contained himself of his own will." Nanaba explained with a bit of sisterly care to her voice, despite essentially saying the same things, the flowing humanity in the girl's voice made her a much more engaging and satisfying conversant compared to her teammate.</p><p>"Huh… So Sugemi isn't even around… How about you guys, did you get a third member?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"They sure did." A familiar, polite tone came up from behind Meiko. The blacksmith turned around to meet a figure that would have been oh so awkward to meet if Mana was still taking part in the exams. An odd thing was that Kouta had undergone a slight growth spurt since parting ways with Mana, the unfortunate payoff to the change of body build was, of course, the drastically dropped beef of the young man's shape.</p><p>"Two Jinchuuriki and a Curse Seal user… Great, looking forward to that match-up…" Kiyomi nodded in acknowledgment of Kouta's presence. As far as she was concerned, that was all that Kouta was now – a disadvantageous draw at the lots. Trouble. The fact that Mana would have described him with that same word was just a coincidence.</p><p>"You guys still don't have a third? You better hurry, you've got a couple of hours at best…" Kouta looked worried. It was so nice and caring of him, then again, maybe it was that same kindness that pushed him for a side-gig as a medical ninja and what drew Mana to him once.</p><p>Kiyomi did not feel right characterizing this talented youth as just that – Mana's ex, however, she just could not help it. Whenever she had to think about him, that was all that came up, the hurt he put Mana through, even if unwillingly, the Yamanaka did not recall ever seeing the magician in the state of that sweet daze of love, she's always been sour and mournful about it, even if she couldn't want it more. Some people were just not cut out for a relationship…</p><p>"Ugh! I know…" Meiko grunted. "Do you guys by any chance know if all the others found their replacements? I can't believe we're about to fail this exam by not even signing up for it!"</p><p>The blacksmith looked about ready to pull her hair out when she noticed an alleviated smile on Kouta's face. The young man prompted the two to stay where they were with a gesture while his own feet morphed by protruding tube-shaped cannons downward and streams of chakra launched him onward at blinding speed.</p><p>"I guess we will have to get used to him doing that, huh?" Daidao sighed, the air he breathed out filtered backward through the gas mask and left with a high-pitched wheeze.</p><p>"So freaky!" Nanaba smacked her cheeks with her palms and shook her head in disgust.</p><p>"You can grow wings and sprout a tail. You also host a colossal rhinoceros beetle inside you." Daidao noted while pointing a judgmental index at his teammate.</p><p>"Yeah, but I don't have to see Cho-chan protrude out of me every time, it just kind of happens…" Nanaba scratched the back of her head while acknowledging how horrible her lack of empathy to the surrounding observers was with her apologetic facial expression.</p><p>"I'm telling you, these two are desperate for a teammate, you told me you wanted on my team and were willing to spar for it – it's just perfect!" Kouta's voice came from the distance. Speaking in such confident and booming tone was new for the Juugo, he did not use to speak with such confidence and volume back when the Yamanaka heiress had last seen him.</p><p>It was a bit of a horrible thought but perhaps being away from Mana only served the boy better. Fate was yet to show if perhaps her constant drama being absent from everybody else's lives made things better for all parties involved.</p><p>"Hmm, I'm getting the chills from you…" Meiko shivered. It did not need to be vocalized but the young woman was wearing a tracksuit, which meant that the chills weren't external but rather came from a subconscious vibe that the blonde was putting out. "Are you thinking about murdering someone?"</p><p>"Just getting prepared, you better get serious too. I won't forgive you if we fail after this long of a wait for a second chance." Kiyomi could almost hear her own defensive tone. Murder. What the hell was Meiko even on about?</p><p>"Huh? It's you guys, you know!" the older of the two Narutos that the remaining Team Hokage met yesterday over ramen pointed his index at the two girls.</p><p>"Forget it, Team Hokage is an all-girls club." Kiyomi wrapped her hands over her chest.</p><p>"Weren't you the only girl in the original roster?" Meiko pointed out.</p><p>"I'm down to teaming up with you guys if you're willing, you know. I won't be begging though…" Naruto squinted with a pinch of childish pride of his own.</p><p>"What, am I to believe that the future Seventh Hokage does not have a team to take part in the Chuunin Exams with? Why did you even sign up for them back in your own universe then?" Kiyomi shook her head. She did not have an inherent problem with teaming up with Naruto though she was almost obsessed with the thought of getting this shot right. She was almost more trustworthy of Gwido hours back when the only contribution of the Great Ramen Destroyer to the team was that he would not get in their way.</p><p>Plus, Gwido was just kind of adequate at eating ramen as well, he held no records whatsoever and his title was mostly self-proclaimed anyway.</p><p>"Sakura is already a chuunin, Sai is in the… Well… I'm not even sure but… I'm pretty sure he's a chuunin or a jounin, Captain Yamato and Kakashi are both jounin too. I'm the only genin in my team and my generation too." Naruto dragged his finger under his nose, laughing in denial of how pathetic that sounded. Pathetic may have been a cruel word… Still, it inspired no confidence whatsoever for potential recruitment.</p><p>"Think about it, Kiyomi, he's going to be a literal Hokage one day, it doesn't get any more perfect for a Team Hokage member!" Meiko bent her knees and began hyping herself and Kiyomi up with those damned knuckles of hers.</p><p>"Fine…" Kiyomi sighed. "He can't be any worse than Gwido anyway."</p><p>"Heh, don't worry, the reason why I didn't rank up was that I went training with Pervy Sage for a couple of years instead of taking part in the exams. I'm sure I'll ace it for you two, you know!" Naruto gave the pair a one thumb-up.</p><p>"Yeah, Meiko, instead of taking on missions and ranking up, he went on a trip for two years with some perv. Doesn't get any more perfect for Team Hokage than that…" Kiyomi signaled for the blacksmith on the mental link which she could initiate without any hand seals or speaking the name of the jutsu by now, given how integral it was to the Team Hokage chemistry.</p><p>"Alright!" Meiko fisted the sky. "We've got a team together, now let's just get those sign ups out of the way! I hope you're not terrified by line-ups!"</p><p>"I hate them…" Naruto shriveled like a popped tube-man.</p><p>In either case, lousy beginnings were only half of a failure, if the dragged through the mud and abused sayings were to be believed and adapted.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0593"><h2>593. What Hides Behind An Aloof Facade</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi tapped her foot, patience was a quality she possessed in spades but not today. Too many things coming from too many directions were there to stress her out. The gig for signing up with not-quite-kid-but-not-Hokage-either Naruto worked out – the new, temporary roster of Team Hokage was now official and the first obstacle in the path to promotion was now behind them but…</p><p>Naruto was a complete mystery. What were his skills, how would he benefit or subtract from the team? Before the roster was clear-set. Mana was an excellent ace to pull an unbelievable battle off with an unexpected, showstopping illusion or to bombard and devastate the enemy's stamina with impressive ninjutsu but she could only defend and dodge up close. That was fine – Meiko had that covered, the blacksmith was inventive in her own niche specialties but she lacked the ability to adapt or strategize in meaningful ways. She was incapable of reinventing herself on the fly.</p><p>Kiyomi was a bit of everything: competent illusions, above sub-par taijutsu skills and adequate ninjutsu but most importantly – she was the glue that stuck the team together. She could have linked those independent pieces together. If Mana was the nuke and Meiko was the noble warrior, Kiyomi was the person that put the nuke into the hands of the warrior and told the warrior where and when to charge. Also, if need be, she could have fulfilled any role that her teammates could during their absence, not as good, mind you, but just well enough for the absence to not tear the team apart.</p><p>Just who was Naruto? That was what the team needed to find out as soon as possible as it was only a matter of seven more days until the first stage of the Chuunin Exams started. Training with the ninja from different universes and timelines was difficult, they were still adapting to the wild leap of strength they needed to cover and were only halfway there. It was best if the different universes stuck together and worked with one another at their own pace. While the village looked supportive of mixing and mingling of different ninja from different universes and timelines, it was more of a political and ideological pop rather than one based on any kind of implied excellence.</p><p>"Would you like some cold tea?" Meiko mother suggested while the Yamanaka heiress waited for the blacksmith.</p><p>"No, I am quite fine, thanks." Kiyomi smiled and politely refused the beverage. She had figured that Meiko would abandon her tinkering for a moment and come with her at any moment now, she should have known better, frankly. She'd have been able to down four whole cans of the thing before the redhead peeked from the tin door she had to almost peel open in order to emerge from her workshop that Meiko's father so graciously splintered off of his own and gifted to his daughter on her sixteenth birthday.</p><p>"Hey, sorry it took so long but I'm ready now!" Meiko smirked, trying to dismiss her lateness and play it off but the somber depths of her tone betrayed that she did feel a little bad about taking this long.</p><p>"It's okay. You're the most reliant on preparation out of all of us. I admire how seriously you're taking this." Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>"There's no other option. We can't fail now." Meiko raised her fist up, ready to thrust it onward and make a bold proclamation.</p><p>"That's what we said last time, didn't we?" Kiyomi smiled, trying to alleviate the seriousness a little bit. It was her responsibility as a leader to manage Meiko properly. While the redhead could have been one of the most dominant, incredible and talented ninja in her generation, she was like a rod of iron, tough to smack someone with but if too much pressure was applied to it or if it was exposed to the wrong conditions – she'd snap. Snapped iron rods were of no use to anyone and were just sad to look at.</p><p>In that sense, the blacksmith was the most like a capricious southern flower out of all of the Team Hokage. Proper care and use of the flower's properties escalated unmatched growth and an excellent aroma to spread in the air but if the flower was allowed to feed the weed around it with its own nutrients and if the gloomy clouds above its head were allowed to rain freely atop of her head – she'd wilt.</p><p>Kiyomi had seen Meiko get frustrated and crush herself when she failed or when something went wrong and while it was natural, as heinous as it was, there could have been no place for that natural trait here, which meant that Kiyomi had to act like there was so that some of the pressure and gloom alleviated. That was why it would have been the toughest to replace the leader of Team Hokage – managing Meiko and seeing that she was in her best spirits was the core objective of the team.</p><p>"So, are we off to train?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Yeah. We just need to pick up Naruto." Kiyomi pointed out.</p><p>"I see. Will we find a spot in the training grounds to train in? This is the most hectic the village has ever been…" Meiko pondered. She pondered right but she did not dig deep enough. When encountering a problem Meiko was too eager to point at the problem instead of working around it. It was that and not her implied yet entirely fictional low intelligence that would have stood in the way of the blacksmith leading a team of her own.</p><p>"That's why we won't be training at the training grounds. You do realize that we cannot allow anyone who does not know our fighting style to see it before we have absolutely no other choice. From here on we can't fight with our real strength instead it is necessary." Kiyomi pointed out, almost as if making Meiko swear to it without actually swearing to anything.</p><p>The problem was that Meiko would have to lead a team once she got promoted. Maybe five years ago, or so, Kiyomi would have not minded and just seen to it that she got promoted, leaving Meiko's own growth to her teammate. Now she somehow felt responsible for training her teammate so that she overcame her shortcoming and started to think like a leader. Soon enough, she'd become one. If Meiko shriveled under pressure and her own gloom, she may have very well given up if she'd failed now when Kiyomi got promoted. Hell, the blacksmith had nearly quit ninja work entirely after failing her Academy graduation and graduating the next year, it was not until Mana noticed Meiko's talents and dragged the blacksmith out of her shell bit by bit that Konoha saw the hidden talents of this girl bloom to the profound use of the village.</p><p>"It's not like we're the ones looking for a fight…" Meiko sighed. Judging from her tone she acknowledged that Kiyomi was right and agreed to what she'd proposed but she acknowledged also that it would be difficult, given their endless streak of bad luck. "Anyway, I guess we're off to the Yamanaka Resort then?"</p><p>"Absolutely not." Kiyomi shook her head. "Leave alone the idea that some Yamanaka from other universes decided to see the place with their own eyes and take some of the knowledge that the Yamanaka from this universe have gathered, uncle would absolutely hate it if I admitted to him I was taking part in the exams. I'm the future figurehead of the clan, remember? The elites of the clan have figured I'm done playing ninja and that I'm ready to wear pretty kimonos and meet potential suitors now."</p><p>"Are you?" Meiko's words cut like an arrow. "I used to think that you're shaking that off but I don't think you are. I think you enjoy that part of your destiny, just like Mana used to enjoy being both a ninja and a stage magician."</p><p>"Don't get me wrong, I absolutely do plan on having a part in leading my clan. I'm excited about meeting some cute guy that's been taught and raised from their cradle to be a noble leader and a caring husband. But I won't feel right in that position if that's all I do and that's all I am. I want to feel like I deserve that position. Yamanaka are ninja and a genin cannot lead them. Sure, whoever my husband shall be, they'll be the ones leading but they will never be a Yamanaka, not really, they will not be the ones attracting the eyes of the clan ninja even if they will be commanding them." Kiyomi set matters straight. "I want and need this as much as you, if not more."</p><p>Meiko stopped to look at a torn poster before turning her eyes to a hectic display of countless shredded posters, all of which used to have the upbeat beam of a magician girl. The entire district used to be covered with those Egyptian-blue posters with stars of bubble-gum pink and glitter outlines to the accessories and a proud invitation to attend the magic show that would change the way one would see life itself. Now there were just bland, wooden boards and hanging shreds of remaining paper that would have required more effort than a scorned vandal was capable of to remove.</p><p>Kiyomi wanted to prompt her friend to forget about Mana but, given the circumstances, that was likely to be impossible. The ninja magician was once beloved and famous whereas now she turned infamous. As one change substituted the other, one thing to be certain of was that she was not going to be forgotten. Perhaps it was wrong of Kiyomi to ask Meiko to forget and move past Mana, just so both of them could spare themselves the pain and helplessness of remembering her. Then again, Kiyomi had let go of her severed bonds previously. In time she should be able to do it again.</p><p>"You're late!" Naruto yelled out when the two arrived by the Third Training Grounds, the only training grounds that Naruto seemed to be familiar of from his own time. "How am I the mindful one?" the young man sighed to himself.</p><p>"It's your fault we had to meet you up in this place instead of moving right to the Forest of Death as I suggested." Kiyomi snapped back at her new teammate even though she knew she was in the wrong – Meiko took quite a while to wrap up work and it wasn't like the two hurried up after that either.</p><p>"What? I know where Forest of Death is!" Naruto objected.</p><p>"Well, I told you we're going to train in the Forty-Fourth Training Ground, you said you didn't know where that was!" Kiyomi exclaimed all irked. This time her anger was justified.</p><p>"I don't know where that is but I do know Forest of Death." Naruto squinted.</p><p>"Forty Forth… Which one is that?" Meiko counted on her fingers.</p><p>"It's… The Forest of Death…" Kiyomi sighed in defeat.</p><p>"You should have said so. The Forest of Death is a lot more memorable than Forty-Fourth Training Ground." Naruto pointed out as if it was Kiyomi's fault he couldn't remember something as elementary as a handful of the most common and most important training grounds.</p><hr/><p>"It was pretty smart to gather here." Meiko stretched out. "We may all end up here at some point so it's good to get some early team-fighting practice."</p><p>"Right. One-on-one we're all overqualified. Meiko and I have skipped a pair of Chuunin Exams while we were already above the average level in the last ones, it was only because of the crazy competition last time that we ended up snubbed of our promotion. Given how your teammates are all chuunin, I'd guess your situation is the same?" Kiyomi looked at Naruto who nodded in confirmation.</p><p>"Splintered we're all set to ace this. The most dangerous parts will be early on, when the staff will need to eliminate the great majority of teams fast and when our success will depend on our intellect, leadership capabilities, and theoretical knowledge." Kiyomi voiced the reasoning for her plan. "That's why we need to stretch our legs and see what each of us have that could contribute to the team."</p><p>"There will be theoretical tests? Shouldn't we focus on that a little bit?" Naruto squinted as if he was feeling shaky in his gut and was about to purge all of it.</p><p>"There's no use. I can't make you smart overnight. This is the best use of our time." Kiyomi objected. "Now shut up and defend yourself."</p><p>The Yamanaka launched herself straight at the newbie member of Team Hokage with her entire body placed in an all-out offensive taijutsu stance. She was far from a terrifying monster of martial arts which was why her offensive would serve as a decent basis to judge Naruto's skill. If they were to figure out some neat team combos and where each of them stood in terms of their roles, each and every ninja specialty needed to be put to the test.</p><p>Naruto blocked Kiyomi's attack, entrapping her right arm with ease. That was impressive, he knew that the ninja from the different universe were not yet caught up with the locals, likely they would still need a few more days after the start of the exams, which meant that if there will be any mental tests, they'd be prioritized early on. Using that knowledge, the teen that would become Hokage in the future chose to entrap the limb of the enemy in a manner that denied a contest of speed and strength.</p><p>It was a simple entrapment however, textbook, in fact. While Naruto was decent at taijutsu, likely had his own fair share of close-distance brawls, he was not educated in it formally. It was unlikely he had any training than brief reads of passages from martial arts tomes or just natural experience through absorption of what he saw on the field. Kiyomi knew that sequence of locks and could have countered it with her eyes closed, she knew the exact moment when Naruto's transitioning into a submission that threatened to dislocate her arm would break upon application of force. It did not take long for Kiyomi's arm to be out of Naruto's control and for the Yamanaka to be all over the young man.</p><p>She was too fast for him, every single blow drove air out from his lungs and seemed to send punishing crunches through Naruto's body, forcing the youth to fly around from the amount of force he was hit by. Had it not been for the relentless combination from Kiyomi's part controlling her opponent's location, the ninja from an alien Konoha would have flown away after the first strike and removed from the battlefield.</p><p>"Your hand to hand isn't bad. It will do. Don't rely on it though, Meiko will have that covered far better than you." Kiyomi stretched her wrists, thinking her sparring partner finished. Before she could transition her posing into something embarrassing for her, given what was to follow, Naruto rose on his feet and wiped the blood off his lips and buster cheek.</p><p>"I have to say, I was the one who didn't expect you to be this good." The future Seventh Hokage grinned as if he was not just beaten to a pulp by a dangerously overpowered opponent, one that would have sent any lesser ninja into a trip to a hospital, something that Kiyomi would have been fine, given that the first stages of the exams were quite unlikely to be physical anyway.</p><p>"Heh, I guess that you guys caught up to us way faster than I thought…" Meiko snickered in excitement, somewhat mirroring Naruto's body language.</p><p>"No…" Kiyomi thought to herself. "He's just… That tough… This is amazing, I've never seen anything like this."</p><p>"I guess it's my turn to test you now?" Naruto turned serious all of a sudden before moving his hands into a hand seal position. Such obvious declaration of attack was foolish, Kiyomi could have intercepted his ninjutsu with projectiles, forcing his hands apart and preventing hand seals since he could not have telegraphed his attacks any clearer even if he tattooed the contract to attack on his forehead. No, even if she was a moth flying to a flame, she needed to see this, Kiyomi was curious.</p><p>Instead, the kunoichi reached for her back pouch and revealed a curved blade, attached to a steel ring. The blade transitioned into a windmill shuriken that Kiyomi lobbed sideways about in the same time as it took for Naruto to transition from weaving his single hand seal and speaking the name of the jutsu he was pulling off. That was the difference in reaction speed and fighting speed of the two universes still left to cover.</p><p>"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto declared, splitting his body apart into an assortment of a handful identical copies. The ease at which he split his chakra into multiple copies was dumbfounding. Even more, he used this dangerous jutsu with enough finesse and not a hint of effort on his body, to the extent where it was foolish to doubt that this young man utilized this jutsu in his arsenal day after day – a fact even more shocking than his use of the jutsu in general or his ranging on impossible endurance.</p><p>The clones scattered, a handful took to the air, using the shoulders of the front row of clones, another pair pulled out kunai and charged forward. The final, central pair looked focused on something else entirely. Kiyomi was no sensor but she could feel the intense build-up and pressure coming from the central pair of Narutos. Still, it was such a childish method of attack, gambling it all on a Shadow Clone jutsu just so he could sit still and channel his ninjutsu…</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto roared out while the clone assisting in preparing his ninjutsu poofed away, likely having exhausted the attributed stamina and chakra. Kiyomi couldn't help but marvel at the precision and mastery someone as brutish and numb-skulled as Naruto put into his Shadow Clones, he only inserted the absolutely necessary input of chakra into each clone and yet… Judging from what she'd seen, the newest member of Team Hokage still had ample chakra to spare.</p><p>That was when the knucklehead just started running at Kiyomi with his chakra ball in hand. With a wide roundhouse kick, the Yamanaka swatted aside the clones, wondering if what she was seeing wasn't some sort of idiotic attempt at diversion. He just ran at her? With that thing in hand? She was faster, stronger and he chose to not only engage her close-up but also do it with one of his hand disabled and his intentions of what he was going to use that hand for crystal clear?</p><p>Almost showing off, Kiyomi had juggled the kunai that one of the clones lunging at her previously lost and kicked it at Naruto with her foot. The blade stuck in the young man's chest halfway. It was then that the Yamanaka heiress realized this Naruto was a clone as well. He had molded his ace technique in the hand of a clone just to fake her out?! Just how much chakra did this monster have to be even able to think of such a trick without going pale in fear?</p><p>"Rasengan!" The Naruto from above roared as the clone that assisted the aerial Naruto in forming his own Rasengan spun his pal around in mid-air and lobbed it at Kiyomi like a human-projectile. The Yamanaka spun with a graceful pirouette that positioned her just inches away from the crashing Rasengan. Naruto whizzed right past Kiyomi and almost drove his chakra sphere into the ground.</p><p>"Shit, he's not aware how powerful he is!" a thought tingled in Kiyomi's mind. This was too late! He'd blow up half of the damned planet this way, sending ripples as far as it went in the process! Who knows, with his level of chakra… There might not be anything left at all.</p><p>When the dust settled, Meiko's grip revealed itself locked firm around Naruto's wrist, holding the Rasengan just good inches away from the ground, so close that the rotating storm inside sent the dust on the ground into a dusty whirlwind reaching up almost to the armpit. Naruto realized his flaw and let go of his jutsu, turning to Kiyomi with a satisfied expression.</p><p>"I guess I won't need to look after you two, you guys seem to be able of handling yourselves." Naruto declared with a smile wide enough to alleviate the impression of smugness one could have allowed to form given the words without the context.</p><p>"Likewise…" Kiyomi admitted. She did not expect anything resembling this. Written on any sheet of paper, this strategy should never have worked but due to the raw power of the user, unmatched endurance and monstrous stamina, there was just nothing stopping this madness from being given form.</p><p>"So?" Meiko wondered, realizing that the two were connected by a mental link, given the familiarity she had with the technique.</p><p>"He used an A-Rank jutsu on top of splitting his chakra into five pieces as a fake-out before the real deal and he's not even broken a sweat…" Kiyomi exclaimed, her thoughts were still shaky, it likely made them sound a lot more high-pitched and disorderly, Meiko would likely get the wrong impression that the Yamanaka was afraid, then again, there was a respectful speck of fear behind the mist.</p><p>"Yeah… A guy like that could have carried two Gwidos through all by himself…" Meiko nodded to herself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0594"><h2>594. A Snake In The Henhouse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So now that you know we're going to breeze right through this, maybe let's reflect on how mean you were on me for no reason and you can treat me to a bowl of ramen and make-up?" Naruto shrugged with an overconfident expression as if he had just accomplished something epic.</p><p>"I can't believe that we're in the same profession even…" Kiyomi grunted while shaking her head. "Not if that's what you think is enough to make it. Our team dynamic is all wrong, what we will be doing until the late hours of evening is grind our combinations because, otherwise, we will just be three random people put on a team."</p><p>"Maybe that's a bit harsh…" Meiko hummed out with a lingering buzz of her voice. "I mean the two of us have worked just fine as a duo, you can't say that adding one more element to it somehow makes our dynamic terrible."</p><p>"It does though. Bacon and eggs work fine together but if you add milk on top and your stomach will be growling for the rest of the day." Kiyomi objected. "You're strong, more so, you're the second toughest person I've met, right after a guy that is literally invincible. I am telling you right now, just those two things won't cut it. We've been "just strong" before, it didn't work."</p><p>"That's true…" Meiko sighed. She didn't like to admit that fact but she agreed to Kiyomi on this one point. "I was too strong and overqualified in my last Chuunin Exams yet I very nearly flunked the very first test and the answer to that test was literally to do nothing."</p><p>"Hey… Lamenting your weakness still, I see. Makes me feel bad, makes me feel like I should have finished you off back then…" a cold yet oddly familiar voice distracted the trio of Team Hokage, forcing all three of them to look at the nearby treetop. Shock paralyzed both Naruto and Kiyomi but for vastly different reasons. Kiyomi was petrified that someone, an Uchiha no less, could have just snuck up on them like this, in the middle of nowhere, of all places, where they could have been murdered and their corpses would not be found for quite some time, if at all.</p><p>"Sasuke…" Naruto muttered, it was only after that whimper that Kiyomi snapped out of her shock and realized that the reason why this voice sounded familiar was because she had seen and heard this man, in fact, she'd seen him not one hour earlier, it was just that this Sasuke was from a whole different point in time. "Sasuke!" Naruto roared out, becoming aggravated, adding the frustrations from his team training into the mix of meeting the friend that caused him so much pain before.</p><p>"Why Naruto-kun… Meeting in a place like this sure brings back memories, doesn't it?" a man of grey hair dragged his hand across it. He was not a looker but he was not flaunting his appearance, he was forcing his very existence down Naruto's throat.</p><p>"Kabuto, you bastard!" Naruto growled, Kiyomi couldn't help it but turn to Naruto, she could not fathom just what sort of thing befell her teammate. With each passing second the future Seventh began taking a stance that might have belonged more to a wild animal rather than a person, his voice turned more and more ferocious while features that would have appeared cute like Naruto's whiskers began becoming more prominent with new ones popping out – like the sharpening of his canine teeth. "What are you doing here!?"</p><p>"Always the entire road behind. Just like his master, so old yet so refreshing each time…" a despicable chuckle that was born and died in the shape of a hiss. It came from a red-haired woman with glasses standing nearby the duo that kept antagonizing Naruto, as if waiting for something interesting to happen.</p><p>"Cut me some slack, Orochimaru-sama, I did fool everybody as to which universe we came from. As far as Hokage Naruto is concerned, I am the Kabuto he met during his own Chuunin Exams. He might not like me and he might know all about my allegiances but he must stomach it because of the rules as to who can and cannot sign up…" the four-eyed man that Naruto was so enraged at snickered while looking at the red-haired woman.</p><p>"Oro… Orochimaru!?" Naruto growled out through his ground teeth. "So you're here too!?"</p><p>"Well, well… Kabuto and his mouth…" the woman smirked in a manner that was entirely unlike her. It was self-evident that the woman's body was not meant to be twisted and bent in such a shape, her lips stretched out to the point of tearing while her cheeks twitched and trembled from the sudden tension placed on them. This was no mere transformation. If this Orochimaru person truly was shapeshifting, his jutsu was far more advanced.</p><p>A faint blue flame lit up around Kabuto's hand as the silver-haired ninja took a step forward and raised his hand up. As if threatening to charge and slash with his blue flame technique at any moment.</p><p>"That means we must kill them, no?" Kabuto said.</p><p>"Nice try but not now." Sasuke shut the man down. Judging from the look Kabuto gave the Uchiha in the middle of the formation, Sasuke was not the leader of this group of theirs but he was certainly favored and protected, given how Kabuto shut his jutsu down without asking for a pretty please.</p><p>"Sasuke-kun… You give this gutter trash so many chances… It's almost as if you're still attached to your past life, your weakness?" Orochimaru looked at Sasuke with a passionate face. Normally when someone of authority muttered these words they were suspicious, Orochimaru seemed to crave this boy and his talents even more, despite his suspicions. Now Kiyomi began to understand why Naruto looked so creeped out by this guy.</p><p>"Hmph… You said it, not me – his uselessness is entertaining." Sasuke closed his eyes, deflecting the accusations with a flair of coolness and apathy, all radiating from his person at the same time. It was frightening how attractive this man was, not just in his looks, but every aspect of his presence. His speech, his voice, his swagger. Had Kiyomi not felt sick every time she saw an Uchiha before her, she'd have been instantly smitten by this man, she knew it.</p><p>"I see… Well, now that you two caught up, I still have use for you, Sasuke-kun…" Orochimaru declared while Naruto finally lost all semblance of what was to be considered "his shit". The young man leaned over his front and took an all-fours stance, similar to the Inuzuka fighting stance but this was no Beast Mimicry, this was something on a whole different class.</p><p>Chakra, red and vile spilled out of Naruto like a chili rushing from a fallen pot. The intensity and shade of the chakra sent Kiyomi back a few steps but the Yamanaka had somehow managed to maintain her stance, Naruto had not been at the level where he'd have been compared to a local ninja of his experience yet. Had he been, however, Kiyomi would have survived being this close to his outrage unharmed. The shadowy corruption of the ethereal, crimson bile wrapped around Naruto like a cloak while the eyes of the youth gleamed red, piercing even through the fervor of his chakra cloak and freezing all that have caught glimpses of it in place.</p><p>"You asshole, stop talking about Sasuke like he's your toy!" Naruto roared out in a voice that was half his new, ferocious self, half something else entirely. Something that must not have even existed in the material world, however, something that busted through just with sheer power alone. A blink. A blink and Naruto was gone.</p><p>A dull thud followed by a hundred and twenty hisses all echoing in synchrony stopped Naruto's advance. The transformed ninja struggled and tried overpowering the living entrapment Orochimaru encased him in but he failed to do so. There was something in the hundreds of snakes emerging from the sleeve of the red-haired woman's kimono, something sapping strength from Naruto. The cloak surrounding the youth incinerated the snakes through touch but it failed to keep up with Orochimaru's continuous revival of his snakes.</p><p>"Arrogant, very much so…" Orochimaru cackled while the snakes all burrowed through the cloak and bit Naruto at once, consuming his chakra cloak at once and leaving the young man weakened enough for a sideways swing to sling him through a tree as thick and hard as a boulder. "You forget that I am not like those restrained Akatsuki dogs. By fooling Konoha that I am just a genin from Otogakure, I have been permitted a complete strength restoration course. You now face a Sannin empowered to the brinks of godhood by the standards of this incredible universe."</p><p>"That's bullshit, Konoha is full of sensors! We're within a sensory barrier, someone would have noticed a Sannin trying to pass as a child." Kiyomi objected, finally overpowering the sense of dread that befell her after witnessing and hearing about the fact that someone of Sannin class was going to not only attend the Chuunin Exams but, quite likely, meddle with their team because of Naruto's membership in it.</p><p>"Maybe, however this girl whose body I possess was special. As useful as she was in life, what with her uncanny sensory ability and incredible healing powers, the temptation of attaining this universe's power and returning home a god was too much to keep her alive for…" Orochimaru licked his lips with a tongue that was elongating and taking very reptilian features despite having been quite human for the entire lifespan of the original owner of the red-haired woman's body. "Karin possessed an ability to not only sense other chakra but also suppress her own. It was like she was born on this Earth to serve as my vessel for this very purpose…"</p><p>Orochimaru just sniffed a pair of times before transitioning into a hissing form a peal of laughter, before going full maniacal ass and beginning to boom with laughter. Complete with the whole arms spread out wide shtick and a confident pose to boot.</p><p>"Let's just leave. I was interested at first but now I see there's nothing of value left here to look at." Sasuke sighed, turning away and fading off in a collapse of blue flame tongues. Orochimaru and Kabuto were quick to follow. Both of them did appear somewhat conflicted about just letting the trio live after they heard of Orochimaru's plan but Orochimaru had lost the sight of Sasuke for a whole pair of seconds which must have been like an eternity to him whereas Kabuto was a dog that just followed around his master, in hopes of being thrown a bone.</p><p>"Mind telling me what that was all about?" Kiyomi wondered while observing Naruto use Meiko's shield as a riding platform to better deliver his Rasengan to its intended destination. This way, by forming the jutsu in the hand of a clone, he did not even have to put himself in harm's way which was always a potential danger.</p><p>"That was Sasuke. My Sasuke… I think…" Naruto replied with irritation in his voice. It may have been him converting that same frustration into his work that allowed him to succeed with the combination whereas it came as a struggle earlier.</p><p>"That's like… Five percent of all the questions I had answered." Kiyomi raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "If we are going to be in a team, I'm going to need to know if we're being hunted by a Sannin. Hell, we will need to bring this up to the authorities after we are done here."</p><p>"We should have gone right after they left…" Meiko sighed. She was a real workhorse but even her impressive stamina had limits. Limits that were not too far out in the horizon at this point. It had been hours since the two saw a ray of light break through the foliage.</p><p>"And risk a full training day? Risk our promotion? Fat chance of that!" Kiyomi shook her head. "Assholes try to invade this village and end the world every week, Chuunin Exams happen once in a couple of years."</p><p>"Orochimaru isn't some joke. He killed the Third during the finals of Chuunin Exams back home. That being said, he's not here because of me. He doesn't really care about me, it was Sasuke that wanted to see me. He talks a big deal about severing all bonds and leaving his old life behind him but he misses it, he can't help but wonder about what kind of person he'd have been if he stayed, I know it." Naruto declared. He was energetic in his attempt at convincing a pair that needed not to be convinced. That being said, while Kiyomi and Meiko took no effort to take him for his word, the one true person Naruto was trying to convince needed more work still.</p><p>"Is he going to be a danger then? Try to kill the Hokage or something?" Kiyomi placed her hands on her hips as she continued her inquisition.</p><p>"No, I don't think so. Orochimaru cares about few things, power and something interesting to do with it are two of the ones that he's into. He likes starting to spin the windmill faster and faster but to make the blades spin he needs strength…" Naruto replied while his eyes stared at a point to his side with blankness to his expression. It took a short while for the youth to realize that neither of the two young women understood his analogy.</p><p>"It's a speech he keeps on rattling on about. The windmill dying down, the grass and the leaves standing still. He likes them moving…" Naruto's eyes squinted before he scratched his own head in confusion, it was tough to believe that just mere seconds before this goofball was in the gloom of his life. The pair of the original Team Hokage knew of some people that could have used some of this young man's traits.</p><p>"He likes to do things for the sake of doing things, seeing the chaos coming out of it… I think I get it." Kiyomi sighed. "We will bring it up to the Hokage but who knows… We've no proof, nothing about him senses like an S-Rank ninja. Unless we challenge him enough to unleash a bigger deal of his power, we might never see the village move a finger. It would have been way easier to make happen with Hanasaku-sensei in power…"</p><p>"Whatever, I don't want the village kicking Sasuke, that four-eyed jerk and the snake bastard back home. They're right where I want them – within my line of sight!" Naruto punched his own palm as his eyes turned from a foolish squint to ones filled with crystal clarity and iron resolution for success. "For years I wanted another shot at rescuing Sasuke and now I've got it! Just give me a chance to score that shot!"</p><p>"That would save us a trip to the Hokage's office." Meiko turned to Kiyomi.</p><p>"No. We bring it up but we acknowledge the fact we've no evidence. We tell the pair of Sevenths to keep an eye on that team, be ready for anything and then we mind our own business." Kiyomi objected with some passion to the shaking of her head. She knew why she was so adamant about doing it by the book – honoring Naruto's request and acting behind the village's interests would be what she would do… Kiyomi was nothing like the stage magician. Nothing in her game plan was like something a criminal would do.</p><p>"That power-up you went through, you're a Jinchuuriki, aren't you?" Meiko pointed her finger at Naruto without any weight to her question that should have accompanied this topic.</p><p>"I… I thought that would be a bit more secretive of a topic around these parts…" Naruto shrunk with his hands weighing him down. "People don't know those kinds of terms or talk about it that much back home."</p><p>"Well, in our universe this knowledge is open to anyone willing to look for it." Kiyomi pointed out.</p><p>"Which one's your Tailed Beast? It would be hilarious to see a pair of Five-Tails duking it out…" Meiko smirked as if the concept of two world-breakers coming to blows was something entertaining.</p><p>"Nah, I'm with the Nine-Tails." Naruto pressed his arm to his belly and scratched it as one did during early hours of the morning, before the first thing to bite or drink entered one's mouth. "I don't remember calling out to that Fox now. Then again, tensions were high, I might have blacked out and done something reckless…" the Jinchuuriki scratched the back of his head while beaming out a goofy smirk.</p><p>"We've got loads of problems to iron out but I think we're done for today…" Kiyomi declared with a solemn tone to her voice. "Let's eat up and then hit the hay. Even the sharpest blades break if you don't stop grinding them."</p><p>"Heh heh, alright!" Naruto shot his fist out into the sky. "I'm not sure what problems you're talking about but I'm always up for a bowl of ramen or twelve!"</p><p>"Oh, so the fact that you serve the role of a close-range ninjutsu user in our team doesn't at all ring a bell? Close-range is the most useless kind of ninjutsu there is. Ninjutsu is supposed to be a long-range disruption or damage specialization. If you could hurl lightning bolts or breathe fire… Then we'd be talking." Kiyomi shook her head.</p><p>"It's okay, you can cover mid to long-range just fine…" Meiko shrugged, recalling Kiyomi's earlier roles, before Mana squeezed her petite little tush into the role of a long-range blaster of the team, leaving disruption and intelligence gathering as Kiyomi's golden tasks. Ultimately, it was for the better – the Yamanaka was way better at those things as compared to just acting like her clan abilities did not exist…</p><p>"Well, at least you're already protecting your teammate. At least we've got the camaraderie part of the team down…" Kiyomi sighed with her hands over her chest.</p><p>It would be tomorrow when the first stages of the Chuunin Exam would begin, however, they would not be the final stages and the training that Team Hokage had done up until then would not be the last training they'd get to do in the exams. Their team synergy was still a work in progress and that was just fine, as long as it got to the final destination eventually…</p>
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<a name="section0595"><h2>595. A Cube Of A Nindo Reborn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Do I really have to go? I think that you two can deal with it without me, I believe in you, you know?" Naruto hummed out with his eyes closed and his mouth whimpering.</p><p>"Are you serious? You're the only one who even knows those three. We're not qualified to relay that intel." Kiyomi leaned her head back.</p><p>"He's just feeling woozy about meeting his future self again…" Meiko chuckled.</p><p>"Wouldn't you be?" Naruto turned his jittery squint to Meiko. "Us interacting should be wrong on so many levels, you know…"</p><p>"I hope you're not worried about Seventh Naruto giving you germs and then eliminating both of you at the same time?" Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Ahh! That's exactly what I'm worried about, you know!" Naruto pointed his accusatory finger at Kiyomi. "How did you know?"</p><p>"I read minds for a living, forgot that?" Kiyomi loomed over Naruto, feeling her shady authority becoming like a fortified tower in front of the shriveling Jinchuuriki but then she let that intimidating façade crumbling by just waving her hand at it. "Just kidding, I've hung around with Meiko long enough to understand the ways in which simpler minds work."</p><p>"You've done nothing to answer my question, you charlatan for a leader, you know." Naruto hissed with another accusatory finger point. "I knew it. You don't know the answer to that paradox yourself!"</p><p>"The Seventh Naruto said not to worry about those sorts of things during the opening speech, that's good enough for me. That Shikamaru guy seemed like one of the brainy bunch and he had a whole scientific division behind him. One thing you learn on the field pretty soon is to trust your brainy guys…" Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"Guys, can you hurry up a little bit? There is a queue of people waiting to see us and there is an exam today you are trying not to be late for, isn't there?" the voice of the older Shikamaru from the universe that helped arranged this interuniversal and intertemporal event peeked through the door leading to the Hokage office.</p><p>The trio went through the proper etiquette procedure when confronting the Hokage, when prompted to ease up and report their problem, Kiyomi and Meiko both looked at Naruto with encouraging glares. The third member of the Team Hokage gulped and stepped out in front, visibly freaked out of being in the same room as his older version whereas he did not appear to display any similar freakiness over hanging out with his younger self whatsoever.</p><p>"For the record, our universes are not related in any time-related bonds. You don't need to worry about messing anything up by talking to me or the younger versions of you, you know." The Seventh Naruto smiled with the warm and boosting smile that was becoming his trademark.</p><p>"How is everyone reading my mind like that?" Naruto complained to himself before turning up the volume of his voice a bit. "We've got something troubling to report, you know. The exams might be in danger, no, this whole village even… Maybe…"</p><p>"If this is about the Akatsuki members you've encountered in the Training Grounds…" Sasuke spoke up. With shaky eyes, Naruto denied that notion before the future version of his friend that has gone rogue could finish.</p><p>"It's not about that. Whatever that's all about... We've met Orochimaru, Kabuto, and Sasuke, you know…" Naruto dropped the bombshell. "The other Sasuke…" he tried to clarify given how the adult Sasuke was looking at him with a bland expression.</p><p>"I got that much…" adult Sasuke verified.</p><p>"Who knows with you!? Who can ever know what you're thinking when your expression always stays the same, you know?!" Naruto pointed his finger at the adult version of the friend he had reunited with so recently.</p><p>"So someone from your universe who was not supposed to has hitched a ride?" the Seventh Hokage turned to Seventh Naruto. "Who is this Orochimaru, who is this Kabuto? Are they going to be a problem?"</p><p>"If they did slip into the roster of examinees and have been granted the usual adaptation treatment, they would be greatly powered up, compared to how you knew them. What did you report, one of the most powerful beings in your universe ate a chakra fruit? In this universe all fruits are chakra fruits, in case you forgot…" the Seventh's assistant turned to Seventh Naruto and his staff.</p><p>"Man, what a douchebag…" Seventh Naruto squinted in the same manner as his teen self used to when the troubling feeling deep down made him almost hunch over. "To think he'd ruin the exams like that…"</p><p>"You don't need to worry," adult Sasuke shook his head. "Orochimaru is smarter than to try and destroy this version of Konoha. He knows that even if he did eat a bunch of chakra food and has absorbed air, brimmed with chakra, and taken in sunlight radiating chakra, he'd stand no chance against a village that's comprised of ninja who have lived in such a universe their entire lives. He would be a nuisance for the village but he would never come close to eliminating it."</p><p>"But the Konoha Crush, you know…" Seventh Naruto scratched his chin. Despite the rogue Orochimaru being not from his own universe, the Seventh truly did appear troubled about his idea going wrong like that.</p><p>"The Konoha Crush was not enacted by Orochimaru alone. Here, in this instance, he is all by himself and his most immediate allies at that point in time – me and Kabuto. That suggests to me that he is here for one purpose only – the power of this universe." Adult Sasuke theorized. "He's going to leech the air, the food, the water, the sunlight for as much as he can and then go back home, intending to do whatever his chaotic mind pleases there."</p><p>"In that case, it will be up to you and the empowered genin from your universe to stop him…" The Lord Seventh, Uzumaki Midoben turned to the teenager version of Naruto.</p><p>"Wait, you mean he's going to keep the power he gains in this universe, you know?!" the younger Naruto freaked out. Right now so much responsibility was already on his shoulders, after seeing that his childish ramblings would soon be turned to reality through his persistence and effort. "Aren't you at all worried about the fact that a godlike Orochimaru would run rampant across our universe? What if he kills me and then you die, you know? What if he takes over Sasuke's body and then this Sasuke turns into Orochimaru overnight, you know?"</p><p>"For the last time," Shikamaru, the advisor of the Seventh, dragged his hand across his face. "What you're thinking about is time travel and it is impossible. You are different versions from different universes."</p><p>"I… I don't even…" Naruto got flustered over the fact of how deep his loss of words was in his current state of intellectual darkness and lack of understanding of the subject. Kiyomi could not blame him, she herself could barely comprehend the finer details behind the technology and the entire planning of the event so she just stayed quiet and put trust into her superiors, something the criminals she had met in her life were unable to do.</p><p>"Roll over the blackboard…" the Seventh Midoben instructed with a hand gesture, after a deep-seated sigh, Shikamaru walked up to a blackboard with a bunch of circles and mathematical formula scribbled onto it and then rolled over the blackboard, revealing an even more hectic bunch of notes on the other side, already prepared in advance for those raising questions about the event, just like Naruto was doing right now.</p><p>"You see, different universes exist. That is the fundamental truth. An infinite number of them exists, in fact." Shikamaru began by pointing at all the different circles across the board. "That means that there is an infinite array of possible changes in each universe. Some of the universes might exist and be developed at an earlier point in time and otherwise be either the exact same or radically different. That is where you and other earlier versions of us come from. You are in no way related to any other universe but your own. The fact that you are a younger version of Lord Seventh… Naruto Lord Seventh… Only means that your universe has started a bit later than ours and is now at an earlier point of development. You are not my Naruto-san's younger self, meaning that if you died, nothing would change for us, essentially."</p><p>"Don't get too worked up about it, you know, the details still baffle me too…" Seventh Naruto grinned with a shy expression of joy. "Shikamaru just pitched the idea to me, given how we have worked with the technology left to us by those alien guys and I thought the idea of interuniversal Chuunin Exams was pretty cool, you know!"</p><p>"It is pretty cool…" his younger self agreed with a sprinkle of submission.</p><p>"Plus, you should feel easier when you realize that your Orochimaru will not retain this power forever,' adult Sasuke declared. "Without the steady supply of chakra sources empowering him, as the ninja in this universe are being empowered, he will slowly lose his power as he is using it. Using this new power in a universe devoid of this richness in chakra will be his downfall, ultimately. Same goes for you."</p><p>That was good, Kiyomi breathed out easier. After the way Shikamaru explained it before, she was almost ready to believe that the Seventh Naruto was willing to doom a bunch of universes for potential catastrophe just for the sake of a fun and kickass event, returning a bunch of genin back home with what would seem like godlike power… Shikamaru did not do a good enough job at selling if anyone cared about the integrity of the participating universes and their fate after the exams whatsoever.</p><p>"I still don't like the idea of a Sannin running around, posing as a genin." Uzumaki Midoben sulked. It was rare to see Lord Seventh this grim. Most of the time the man acted more aloof and was willing to go along with the flow of what came his way.</p><p>"We can postpone the exams, I suppose we could cancel them. However, have in mind that Orochimaru will not risk exposing himself. He wants to stay here for as long as possible. We've not picked him up yet on any of your sensory barriers, meaning that he's not displayed a chakra level that your own genin would not be able to replicate. Moreover, he is teamed up with two legitimate genin." Sasuke brought up.</p><p>"That's right, you know…" Seventh Naruto hummed out. "Four-eyes did take part in the Chuunin Exams before and quit before he could dig into it proper. Sasuke's still at the rank of genin."</p><p>"The opportunity remains that the Kabuto and Sasuke of their universe are different. Perhaps their Sasuke ranked up whereas yours may have failed. Maybe their Kabuto is more than the Kabuto you remember? I'm on the side of postponing the exams and dealing with the immediate threat." Shikamaru suggested, judging from the broken façade of gloom in the eyes of Lord Seventh, the idea that Naruto's own advisor would oppose his call almost seemed enough to convince Hokage Midoben.</p><p>"What do you two think?" Midoben looked up at Kiyomi and Meiko. "Did the power of this Orochimaru seemed out of this world?"</p><p>Kiyomi stepped up. Naruto turned at her with a worried expression. It would not have been too much of a stretch to claim that the young man who would in the future become the Seventh Hokage has resigned himself to yet another failure in the exams.</p><p>"With all due respect, Lord Seventh. I'd rather die than miss or fail another Chuunin Exams. You asked if the power of Orochimaru scared me, in a way it did. Enough so to forget my nindo but right now I'm itching for a chance to kill him myself. He's not a genin, he's fair game, right?" Kiyomi looked up making Naruto's eyes widen and his jaw drop.</p><p>"No offense, but it was not your strength that frightened me. It was how quickly it went from absolute speck of dust to something notable. I'm sure this Orochimaru is trouble, which just gives me all the more reason to find him and kill him this time." Kiyomi declared. Even Meiko looked confused to Kiyomi's adamant decision to not only ask the Hokage to continue the Chuunin Exams but also to actively get in Orochimaru's way herself.</p><p>"I see…" Hokage Midoben sighed. With a subtle hint of a smirk, he looked up to Meiko. "The Chuunin Exams are all about the trio of a team though…"</p><p>Meiko clanged her heels together as her back straightened out and stiffened up. "Mana kicked the ass of Guru Ayushi. That's a crime, I suppose but to claim that isn't out of this world would be to lie. Frankly, I don't feel that far behind her, no, in fact, I'd say the only way in which she is still ahead of us is the experience of fighting in that world. It isn't Orochimaru that frightens me, it's the fact that I won't upstage Mana before she leaves prison and puts the resolve that toppled Guru Ayushi to use in saving the world again."</p><p>"B-But he swiped me and Kyuubi aside, you know… Like nothing." Naruto stepped up to object.</p><p>"I've faced the Kyuubi already. Not the one inside you but the one of our world." Meiko matched Naruto's eyes with her own. "Sure, it was half-dead then but I'm no longer that same person either. Hell, with genin making up most of our challenge, we could use a bit of chaos in the mix."</p><p>"Well… I see that Konoha ninja don't change too much even in this far-off corner of the Omniverse." Sasuke smirked.</p><p>"Did that reply remind you of something, Sasuke?" Seventh Naruto smiled while looking at his lifelong friend, reminiscing of times so far behind them that they seemed ancient.</p><p>"Let's just hope that meeting Orochimaru won't end the same way for these three as it did for the one giving that reply," Sasuke replied with a softened expression. Nostalgia tended to soften up even the biggest stiffs.</p><p>"Alright then, for now, the Chuunin Exams will continue. You three are excused. I believe you've got places to be in quite soon." Hokage Midoben nodded. His face turned bitter at the mention of Mana from Meiko's lips before and the favorable context in which the magician was referred to and that bitterness did not fade until the Team Hokage last saw the man before the door to his office closed.</p><hr/><p>"Hmm… Where did this structure come from, you know…?" Naruto scratched his head while squinting his eyes in confusion. The youth had a tendency to squint almost to the point of closing when the enigma in front of him proved to be challenging enough to become the source of a notable migraine.</p><p>The Jinchuuriki was referring to a grand cube-shaped building that surpassed the surrounding buildings at least twice and appeared by itself to be comprised of fist-sized black and white cubes that looked like the mixture of plastic and steel in texture. When the three of Team Hokage approached the center of the structure that the main street led to, the building parted with the black and white cubes twisting and shuffling out of their way.</p><p>"With that tech on their hands, Shikamaru and his science goons could have found all sorts of weird stuff over the Omniverse…" Kiyomi wondered if that was the answer to her teammate's question.</p><p>"It's a cube… Comprised of smaller cubes!" Meiko drooled over every smallest element of the grand structure. Kiyomi sighed and let herself tap the floor underneath with an impatient clap of her sandals onto the cube floor.</p><p>"This might take a while…" the Yamanaka turned to Naruto.</p><p>"I don't know if I can stand to wait any longer, you know!" Naruto flipped out. "Didn't you say that the first test will most likely be some sort of mind-bender, you know?"</p><p>"It will." Kiyomi nodded. Noting the fact that Team Hokage did not have the luxury of waiting any longer, she grabbed Meiko by the hand and began dragging her entranced teammate further.</p><p>A decent handful of teams were already gathered in the cube's inner room. Alongside there were a few familiar faces: Team Fir with a newbie in their midst – a mean-looking fellow in a flamboyant, dark hairdo, a handful of which rested in a squeezed ponytail behind him, Team Hawthorn alongside a curious, red-haired boy with a facial tattoo and a gourd on his back, the entirety of Teams Walnut and Pine. Letting her eyes pass through Lithia Uchiha and Tanko Shigin pissed Kiyomi off far less than she thought it would.</p><p>"Man, this whole place looks the same, this room is just the same as the one we came from, you know…" Naruto complained with his bemused squint, his lips pouted and hands wrapped over his chest.</p><p>"No. Can't you see the configuration of the cubes is all different?" Meiko turned to Naruto with a fun-poking expression.</p><p>"I thought you were on my side on these mental tests being a load of baloney…" Naruto sighed, shriveling into a pathetic hunch. It was safe to say that Team Hokage spirits weren't all that high.</p><p>"Teams Cirrus, Cumulus, and Stratus are here too. Nimbus and Alto… Don't quite know those guys but they must be from the last Chuunin Exams too. They're too old to be fresh meat." Kiyomi mumbled all to herself. Her head tried to run through a refresher course of all the different ninja that Team Hokage had encountered and all the intelligence they have gathered during the information trading process of the Forest of Death stage during the last Chuunin Exams. This time, not only were there those guys to worry about once more, powered up over the multiple years of work, but also all the ninja from different universes as well.</p><p>A sublime, plastic shuffling sound attracted the present ninja to all look up at the same time and acknowledge the descending proctors of the Chuunin Exams. The black and white cubes provided a lifelike platform that responded to the whims of the staff. Overseeing this stage was a jounin that Kiyomi had seen before, Musha may have been her name… Accompanying her was some tall and intimidating fellow that did not allow himself the luxury of wearing a standard Konoha uniform, he wore a dark trench coat over a dark bodysuit and a bandana. His face looked flattened. Not naturally flat, just smacked by someone or something until it looked like a mug that a brick had flattened.</p><p>"Welcome to the first stage. My name is Morino Ibiki, this is Boryoko Musha, as of now, The Interuniversal Chuunin Exams have officially begun!" the flat-faced proctor declared with a booming and authoritative voice that would have made both the most defiant as well as the most immature bend to the man's will and listen all the same.</p>
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<a name="section0596"><h2>596. The Rhythm Game</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The locals might be wondering "Gee, I've never seen a giant cube around these parts" and you'd be right. This is something new, something that our guests from the other universe brought in." Musha joined in on Ibiki's briefing. "Inside this cube space is warped and time is bendable. This cube fits as many rooms as its master needs and each room is made as it is required to be made. We hope that you have some fun because this year's first stage will have to be extra brutal to compensate for not only multiple countries taking part but also multiple universes."</p><p>"That's right. This exam will not be messing around." Ibiki cut in. The man stood with his back stretched like the string of a violin and his hands placed by his sides. His abilities were a total mystery but the general aura of this man scared the juice right out even the people that have met him before. "More than half of you will be eliminated on the first stage alone."</p><p>"More than half? That's insane!" Meiko whistled with a confident smirk on her face as if it wasn't her that nearly failed the entirety of Team Hokage the last time on the first stage of the exams.</p><p>"Man, it's like Ibiki switched out with an evil twin or something…" Naruto's head sunk down, hanging without weight or substance beside his flabby arms.</p><p>"It's a psychological trick." Kiyomi declared. "During the last Chuunin Exams, an even greater majority was eliminated. Last time only one in ten teams made it through the first stage. And yet, because the examiner was not Morino Ibiki, he did not portray it anywhere near to the same effect."</p><p>This could only have meant one thing, right after the introductory speeches, the psychological games have already started. The kids and teens were already being screwed around with and the only way for this to stop was to either get oneself eliminated or to win the whole thing.</p><p>Ibiki lifted up his hand and extended it as if he was holding a large apple in it. To fill the space in his palm, a black and white cube materialized, larger than he had intended it to be, forcing the proctor to spread his grip wider. The cube was a miniature version of the entire structure – a lovely and neat structure comprised of black and white, dice-sized cubes and very glittery in its plastic texture. Despite not knowing what was so special about it, it already had a certain attractive power over the vast audience of observers.</p><p>"This is the prize. This is your Mind Coupon. This is what you will be after throughout the first stage." Ibiki raised his hand up to show the genin their goal.</p><p>"Now, it's not as easy as just raising your hands up and letting the thing form. In fact, you guys won't be able to manipulate the cube in any way whatsoever, except in the ways that the staff of the exams has made it able to be manipulated – that's to say you might be able to open some doors…" Musha explained before swiping the cube from Ibiki's clutch without even touching it. It was as if the air currents from her movement had snagged the prize for her.</p><p>"The cube is comprised of eight smaller cubes. You will be able to merge the ones you acquire into a greater whole, however, only all eight cubes comprise a complete Mind Coupon. You will acquire the pieces for your team's Coupon inside each of the near-infinite configuration of rooms, filled with an endless possibility of challenges. In each one, you will be competing with another team. Only be eliminating somebody else, will you be able to move on, kind of poetic, isn't it?" Ibiki smirked with the side of his face and within that same snap of a moment made everybody wish to never see this ghastly man smile again. His face looked like torture itself and seeing it smile made one believe that if they lowered their heads to look at themselves, they'd see their own skin dangling flayed down.</p><p>"So not only will this be a test, but we'll also be competing in it, you know?" Naruto dropped his jaw and Kiyomi looked surprised not to see his jaw foam from the stress the young man was under.</p><p>"Hmm, not good. Two of us aren't that great with tests…" Meiko chucked into her own fist. Unlike Naruto, the blacksmith had a sense of assurance in herself and the ability of the events around the Team Hokage to mold in a manner that could have generally been described as "okay".</p><p>"True. It could be worse, I'd rather not meet Orochimaru and his goons in a glorified quiz show…" Kiyomi expressed her frustration.</p><p>"After you complete eight challenges and win all of them in a row, then complete the cube, you can press it to any wall to leave through the building entrance. Any questions?" Musha wondered. A single hand cut through the line of faceless genin, it was mostly bandaged and belonged to a Hyuuga member with a beige shirt and long, black hair that he wore in a sort of loose ponytail.</p><p>"You've described the test as if it is something that would only eliminate half of us and yet we are required to win eight challenges in a row. The math does not add up…" the Hyuuga declared in a snobbish voice that assumed it had known better than the clanless ninja surpassing him in rank.</p><p>Musha and Ibiki both looked at each other, sharing a smile. "It is safe to say that the Cube will accommodate for that. You might soon understand that the configuration of rooms you enter in is not as random as initially believed. Only half of you or fewer will finish this test. Needless to say, if some of your team get injured in the process, however unlikely that possibility is in this manner of competition, the team will also be eliminated." Ibiki replied.</p><p>"I see…" the Hyuuga genin returned his curious hand back to the lock over his chest, satisfied with the answer.</p><p>"What are the mechanics of acquiring the Coupon parts? Will the teams be able to bet, say, two out of eight pieces?" a girl standing beside her Hyuuga teammate that had just asked a question also raised her own concerns.</p><p>"No. The team that fails a challenge will lose all of their pieces. In fact, you will not be able to give or take the cubes in any other manner other than winning or losing them so trying to steal them will be pointless." Musha explained.</p><p>"If all is clear, you are welcome to approach the wall behind us and enter the Cube at your own leisure. Rush through it or take your time, the decision is yours." Ibiki smiled once again, sending straight out chills down everyone's spines.</p><p>Prompted by Ibiki, some of the teams scattered whereas others stood tall and tried to think this through a bit more than not at all. A handful of genin with messy, curly and spiky dark hair, white bodysuits and rebreathers of some sort rushed right into the cube wall that split without much trouble to accommodate their elevated speed.</p><p>"So, what do we do? I'm leaving this part all up to you, you know…" Naruto hummed out with hesitation to approach this challenge. This was odd, given how much gusto he usually displayed, no matter how out of his league the match was.</p><p>"Yep, all up to you, leader…" Meiko smiled with a full grin while tapping Kiyomi's shoulder.</p><p>"The answer's easy, we soldier up and we move on. We keep moving on until we are in or we're out. Easy as that." Kiyomi made the call without hesitation. On one hand, maybe letting the first wave of challengers run into the gauntlet and get matched up was a favorable strategy, on the other, the losers may just have thought that way too, plus, some of them may have been frightened just like Naruto and hesitated to enter because they were scared of the mental testing ground rather than a physical one.</p><p>"Right behind you…" Naruto croaked. It was crystal clear he liked neither this test nor his leader's decision but he stuck to it and followed Kiyomi right up until the wall where a shout from the other side stopped Team Hokage in their tracks.</p><p>"Hey, Princess, be seeing you!" Lithia taunted Kiyomi from the other side of the room, yelling over a whole crowd of fired-up genin. It was not too long before similarly worded and minded taunts began hurling from all sides of the hall, the entrance stage was filled with children, after all. Kiyomi did not reply, she was beyond a petty rivalry with a clan that had since then become an asset and a partner to her clan.</p><p>Ironically enough, it was the actions of that very same clan's own people that prompted that partnership and the two clans bonded over the eradication of said common threat.</p><p>The cubes shuffled and bubbled, their plastic walls emit a pleasant rubbery sound when they parted ways and let the team through. On the other side stood a trio of their competitors and a stage on which the competition would be staged. At this point, nobody was surprised…</p><p>"Whaaa! How did you guys end up on that side, you know?! You entered the same side as us! Creepy, you know!" Naruto pointed his finger at the trio while yelling from the bottom of his lungs, pointing out the paradox of the bendable time and warped space.</p><p>At this point, few were surprised by how paradoxical this space behaved, just like with the competition of this round standing at the exact opposite side to the one where all the genin teams entered, as if they had received the same briefing that everyone did and then entered the exam from the other side.</p><p>Standing on the other side was a team donning the Getsugakure insignia atop of their headband protectors although it was not the attention-grabbing team from the particular Hidden Village. Kiyomi and Meiko both had brief flashes of seeing the team around their last Chuunin Exams, waiting around before the Forest of Death stage maybe.</p><p>"You three are… The Team Hokage?" a bright-haired young man, well in his later twenties, broad of shoulders and well-defined in his build raised an eyebrow. His peanut-colored hair was thick and messy though it was not for the lack of attempts at setting them in order, the mass of hair laid stricken back although that proved to be a poor mean of controlling its wild nature.</p><p>"Oh, you three know us?" Kiyomi wondered. It always a bad sign when the enemy had information or prior knowledge before the battle. In any case, they might have had something on her and Meiko but they'd have had nothing on Naruto.</p><p>"Only by reputation. You've garnered a lot of it and of the very notorious sort during the last Chuunin Exams." A woman of similar age to her teammate and a more syrup shade to her long hair that thinned out and ended in one, large curl bending backward at her own half-exposed back as her jacket only covered half her body, leaving the lower half that was protected only by a fishnet shirt unprotected.</p><p>"We've had a brief run-in with your teammate though," the third young man of grey hair that was shorter than lasting to his shoulders yet fell halfway over his face, obscuring a few notable scars that made his face look like a spring-plowed field.</p><p>"The one who did not drop the tendency to garner infamy around her." The strongman of the team who spoke first, one that had the stance and general vibe of being the leader of the Getsugakure team added.</p><p>"Well… She surely got herself promoted after that show in the finals, it's not like we counted on encountering her again, although she did embarrass us plenty back there…" the kunoichi of the Getsugakure team explained.</p><p>The wall of the room on the left turned out to be a monitor. A fact that became apparent once all the white cubes shuffled in with the black and began moving and sliding about fast enough for both their colors to grey out. One blinding flash later, the mug of Morino Ibiki on an alarming and less than flattering close-up appeared on the screen.</p><p>"Team Hokage of Konoha, comprised of Uzumaki Naruto of Universe Anatoly, Yamanaka Kiyomi and Wakizashi Meiko…" Morino's voice boomed although when the details of Meiko's made-up family name became clear, the kunoichi from the opposing team let out a cringe, she was joined in by the leader of the Getsugakure team who was doing his best to restrain his smile and stay respectful although failing in that grand notion in a spectacular manner as he looked as if he'd choke up any second now.</p><p>"And Team Eurydome of Getsugakure, comprised of Staeg Esteros, Harpalke Duhatie, and Iuteb Istritoi. You will clash in a battle of instinct and the depth of one's mind as well. In the center of the room, there is a stage. Once I end my explanation of the rules, you will have three hundred and sixty-one second to pick a teammate to participate in the challenge. The rules of engagement are – karaoke. Unlike the karaoke you know and love, this variant will actually be judging you on the quality of your performance, your timing and sense of rhythm as well as how well you've stuck to your song's lyrics. The lyrics will be made available for you to memorize once the timer starts, after that – it will be just what you see on the screen. The winner of the challenge will receive a piece of the Cube Coupon. Good luck."</p><p>Ibiki disappeared in a flash, just as he had suggested, a counter appeared on the screen, it ran behind a wall of text that spanned two columns on the screen. Kiyomi's eyes froze on the wall of text.</p><p>"What the hell!? I can't sing!" Naruto grabbed his lower jaw, trying to break it so that the less than sweet release of a buster jaw freed him from the responsibility of the impending challenge.</p><p>"Yell that a little bit louder, why won't you?" Meiko cheeked her teammate. She appeared in a chipper mood.</p><p>"This is stupid, you know!" Naruto entered the denial and conflict stage of the grief for his participation in the Chuunin Exams. "Why would ninja ever need singing skills on the field? In the three years I've been a ninja, I've never once sung on the battlefield, you know!"</p><p>"No. It's a perfect challenge for a team of ninja." Kiyomi nodded. Somehow, even though she knew Morino Ibiki was unlikely to have had a dominating say in creating this simple yet demanding challenge, she had come to respect the man a bit more because of the nature of the challenge. "From the team leader, it demands excellence of leadership – the knowledge of the abilities of one's own team to an almost intimate extent. Singing and musical skills are not the type of skills a leader would notice during training – it is something learned through kinship and common experiences together. Only true friends would know that sort of thing about one another."</p><p>"Chuunin are meant to lead a squad…" Naruto pressed his finger to his chin as he pondered with his eyes closed and his eyebrows wrinkling his face into the seriousness of contemplation.</p><p>"Exactly, plus, what you would need in a karaoke challenge: the sense of rhythm, the ability to memorize loads of information quickly, all of that are necessary skills to a ninja. What is a physical engagement if not a dance of rhythm and timing? What is a clash between two ninja if not an information-gathering exercise with the impromptu analysis of gathered information on stressful conditions? Many people equate the mockery of one's singing skills on stage as dying, in a battlefield, the possible death scenario is less of the social kind and more of the actual, permanent kind." Kiyomi explained why she adored this challenge.</p><p>"Are you three done yet?" Staeg, the leader of Team Eurydome inquired by pointing at the timer that was more than one third counted out. The man placed his well-trained fists on his hips as he posed his hunky body in front of the opposing team, standing tall and proud on the stage.</p><p>"We don't have much time!" Naruto hurried Kiyomi.</p><p>"Yes but… The memorization of the text is less important than selecting one of us with a good sense of rhythm and the skill of musical hearing. This is a karaoke challenge, the text will appear on the screen in snippets regardless, even though I doubt if the rhythm and the proper timing will be displayed. My only useful skills here are whatever timing skills I have from my taijutsu training. I'm afraid I should be only a desperation pick in this situation…" Kiyomi counted herself out.</p><p>"I'm out, you know, I'll never memorize or read those walls of text quick enough! I'm lost already!" Naruto wrapped his hands over his chest like a capricious child and nodded a pair of times.</p><p>"That works out just fine because Meiko is excellent at music anyway, isn't she? Music's your hobby, from what we've shared with each other over the years." Kiyomi looked at Meiko with marveling eyes.</p><p>"Yeah, I dabble…" Meiko shrugged. "The clangs of the hammer, the sizzling of heated steel in water, they're all instruments I play from time to time."</p><p>"You know, we would feel no satisfaction from winning by count-out. A true leader should take up responsibility for their team and tackle the difficult challenges ahead." Staeg postured at Team Hokage, trying to give them a lesson on how to ninja despite the fact that he took the stage for no other reason than the fact that he was the leader whereas Team Hokage had an actual musical prodigy that denied herself the exploration of her own talents take the stage.</p><p>Meiko did well. She was not accustomed to that sort of challenge, this was not the part of music she liked and that was apparent. She was no proper singer, even though she had untapped talent. It was evident that she liked composition and the finer details of the musical art, not obligatory and modernized challenge versions of the art. She did hold her own more than anyone might have asked from her, although, Kiyomi could not state that Meiko did better than her opponent.</p><p>"It's way too close…" Naruto pulled on his own golden hair.</p><p>"It is…" Kiyomi nodded. "This isn't good. Meiko's just fine but… I had hoped that she'd be more than just fine. Plus, who would have known that Staeg had a polka quite this fine?"</p><p>Ibiki's image flashed onscreen. Despite the adequate performance of both parties, given the conditions of only learning the song a few seconds before the performance and having no rhythmic aids throughout the singing competition whatsoever, leaving it up just to one's musical senses to stitch their performance together, the man looked disappointed in everyone and everything. Then again, perhaps it was just his natural, grumpy self?</p><p>"I can't tell which one of you did better. The calculations state that both of you stuck it to the rhythm about the same, Contestant Meiko had superior musical hearing and stuck it to the tune better whereas Contestant Staeg remembered all of the words of the song and lost not a single beat because of that." Morino Ibiki explained. "This is too close to leave to a call. This will require a second round, Contestants Meiko and Staeg are therefore banned from competing in the second round."</p><p>That was when the heavy hammer hit right in the head. If only it would have been merciful enough to finish Kiyomi off when it landed instead of leaving it up to her to work with what she had to work with now.</p>
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<a name="section0597"><h2>597. Naruto's Harem</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What do we do now!?" Naruto was losing his shit. "Meiko was amazing, you know, there's no way we'll pull this off without her?"</p><p>"I'm sorry, team…" Staeg let out a heavy sigh after returning to his team. "I have failed my responsibility as a leader. I am ready to pay the price for it, but I don't think all of us should…"</p><p>Kiyomi looked on at Team Eurydome, she tried to figure out if their broad-shouldered leader was just mad or if every team leader should have tackled responsibility like that, to begin with. Kiyomi knew almost nothing about singing, she knew that deep down. She could have stepped out on stage and hoped to either be as naturally gifted or as passionate as Staeg was but it would have been childish to do so.</p><p>"Yeah, you put us in a real pickle alright…" the second member of Team Eurydome, the shinobi who was likely named Iuteb as that name listed by Ibiki did not sound like it would have fit the kunoichi of Team Eurydome at all. "Then again, it's not like any of us were naturally gifted for that sort of thing…"</p><p>"Iuteb is right. You did wonderfully against someone who takes pride in their musical abilities. Went ahead and memorized all the text in a snap too. If it is all the same, I'd like to take the stage now. After that inspirational performance, there's no way I will do anything less than my best." Harpalke of Team Eurydome expressed her hype not only through the content of her words but also her body language, crouching and pumping it up with her shut fists.</p><p>"Your best may just be irrelevant. You either can sing or not." Iuteb sighed, "Although… I suppose there's no better option. Both of us lack the talent although at least one of us has any passion whatsoever."</p><p>Staeg nodded and tapped Harpalke's shoulder in encouragement. The leader of Team Eurydome appeared revitalized by the revelation that he may have inspired his teammate for success. "Remember what we're doing this for. Getsugakure requires more chuunin, Stea can't carry our village's burden on herself."</p><p>"I wonder what they could be talking about…" Naruto scratched his chin, engaged in deep pondering.</p><p>"Getsugakure has been stricken with a great famine some years ago. It used to be a lush and rich country, taking great pride in the immeasurable luxury of various fish it pulled. The caviar it used to provide used to be one of the world's greatest and most sought after delicacies and since most of the world considers fish an essential product, Getsugakure was one of the most economically stable and powerful villages that only trained ninja to protect the gold mine of their fishing industry." Kiyomi explained, looking at the timer that had appeared on the screen together with the words for the next song.</p><p>"At some point, the Three-Tails has stumbled onto the vast riches of the Getsugakure's fishing supply, narrowing it down to a very thin line. To put a long story short – hundreds of species of fish becoming endangered and primed for extinction and rising political tension because of it caused endless loops of coups, corruption, and famine that Getsugakure is only now recovering from." The Yamanaka finished her explanation while seeing precious seconds trickling down.</p><p>"I heard it was the Eight-Tails, isn't that guy called the Kraken of the Land of Water?" Meiko closed one eye and looked up with the other, trying to recall some finer details.</p><p>"The Eight-Tails goes between slumbering in the abyssal depths of the Tako's Reach, that's far from Getsugakure. Three-Tails is the more likely cause, given its newly gained freedom after the death of the Three-Tails' Jinchuuriki during the Kage Summit." Kiyomi shook her head before letting out a deep sigh. "Well… It's not like it matters. I'd prefer if we think about the problem at hand."</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, I've got my clone memorizing the words right now, you know." Naruto pointed at his back with his thumb, revealing a duplicate of the young man, scratching his chin and working all too hard at memorizing the song's words.</p><p>"You do realize that means you're going onstage, right?" Kiyomi was taken aback by this clever although very altruistic gesture from a teammate she expected only cowardice in front of an intellectual and technical challenge such as this one.</p><p>"Man… I never realized that the consequences of us winning will be that severe. There are so many people here, participating for so many noble reasons, you know…" the original Naruto looked down in self-reflection, likely the youth was already questioning his own reasons for taking part in the exams that likely ranged on something akin to "that's would be so cool to do".</p><p>"True. But that is also a part of the exams. Out there in the real world, that's what the missions you will be taking part in will entail. Maybe you will be told by your village what's right and wrong and, for all intents and purposes, that will be your new truth from that point on, however, your enemy will also fight their hardest because they will have their own things to lose and their own reasons for fighting. An important part of being a ninja is having the heart of stone to snuff those reasons out, possibly breaking the enemy, helping you assure your own victory." Kiyomi explained with a face as grim as it was befitting such a topic.</p><p>"Man… Even if we win, this is going to suck so bad, you know…" Naruto groaned before turning around and taking the first bold steps onto the stage.</p><p>"It doesn't have to feel good. If it does, you've sunken too deep." Kiyomi nodded, acknowledging the sheer guts of her teammate to step out onto the stage when he dreaded every single bit of the prospect of facing this challenge head-on.</p><p>"Heh, I guess both of us come completely green to this. This will be fun…" Harpalke grinned with excitement but also a healthy bit of fear rustling deep down. This one failure here could have cost any of the two teams the entire exams – whatever their reasons were, one wrong note could have set all of them ablaze. There would be no additional income for a hungering village, striving for as quick of a recovery as possible but one that would likely never become the way it was before, back in its prime.</p><p>Just like in the field of battle. Whatever the reasons for fighting were, beloved people left at home, the integrity and well-being of one's village, secrets that were to stay hidden or secrets that one wanted to expose, all of that could have been snuffed out by one wrong move. Once again, Kiyomi felt baffled by how apparent it was that this exam was put together by people of multiple countries and universes, all of whom shared that mutual knowledge of how the life of a ninja intermediate and above was like.</p><p>"Man, your voice sounds so nice, you know." Naruto grumbled to himself. "Come to think of it, girls do have more melodious voices, even Sakura-chan sounds like a princess when she's singing or humming…"</p><p>"Who knows, perhaps you are right and I do have a natural advantage?" Harpalke shrugged with a shy smile that suggested the fact that she took Naruto's words as a compliment to her own features.</p><p>"Maybe… But it's not like there's nothing I can do about it!" Naruto smirked, placing his hands together in the dog-boar-ram combination of hand seals. One poof and a cloud of smoke later, the young man emerged from the smoke as a knockout-attractive young woman that, had it not been for the whiskers on her face, could not have been confused for the original user of the Transformation Jutsu.</p><p>"Sexy Jutsu!" Naruto sang out in a sultry, feminine voice before pressing his long and decorated fingernail to her lips and bending his gorgeous body in a suggestive pose. "Although… I suppose I will need much more advantage than this…"</p><p>"You loof, stop fooling around out there!" Meiko shot her fist out into the sky before pointing at the timer on the screen that was counting down the very last seconds. "You've only got three more seconds left!"</p><p>Meiko turned to Kiyomi's side, as if expecting some sort of scolding from the team leader but the team leader was utterly overwhelmed and caught by surprise by Naruto's technique. While Kiyomi had not lost all traces of reason, she was struggling to keep the immense amounts of blood streaming from her nose back in her body where it belonged and her face had dyed in a shameful blush that turned as crimson as her blood by the upper area of the Yamanaka princess' cheeks.</p><p>Naruto returned to his original form before assuming the hand seal position of the signature hand seal that both kunoichi had seen before countless times during team training. "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" The multiplication technique had multiplied the number of Naruto to an excessive amount, where the total number of people barely fit on the stage anymore.</p><p>"Now for the finisher, you know! Harem Jutsu!" Naruto's face appeared far too confident for the trick that he had pulled, using a combination of the Shadow Clone jutsu as well as the Sexy Jutsu from earlier to transform all of his clones into the curvier and feminine versions of their original selves. Just for the sake of showing off, each and every single "lady" had exclusive look in terms of their hair, their facial features and their voices, even though each and every single member of Naruto's harem had the signature whiskers of the original.</p><p>Meiko was unsure which fact was more outrageous, that their third, lifesaver member had gone on stage and just performed this stunt in front of everybody, including Morino Ibiki and Musha, that this very same young man would go on to become the Seventh Hokage of his respective universe in the future or that the trick actually worked.</p><p>Work it did – Naruto may not have hit nearly as many notes as Meiko did, his rhythm was subpar at best although all of his transformations had melodious voices and synchrony with each other, almost as if modeled after actual singers that the young man had encountered in real life. Given the distinctive appearances that seemed far too specific and well-executed to be random and something that Naruto came up on the spot, Meiko had settled on never bringing this matter up in front of Naruto for the sake of her own peace of mind.</p><p>"Hmmm. This isn't a tough call whatsoever. I'll have to go with Team Hokage on this one. Contestant Naruto displayed ingenuity and adaptation skills that allowed him to overcome the natural gap and disadvantages placed in front of him. That is everything a Chuunin should be, while Contestant Harpalke did possess a greater sense of musical hearing and feel the rhythm better, this was the battlefield claimed by Team Hokage." Morino Ibiki's face supersized on the screen with occasional flickers of static declared. The flickers appeared since the local technology was not quite there yet, compared to the marvels brought by Seventh Naruto and ones that the guests had snagged or borrowed from other universes while exploring prior to the event.</p><p>"Hell yeah, you know!" Naruto attempted to punch through the ceiling if the most immediate impressions of his overjoyed leap with the thrust of his fist upward would have been taken for granted.</p><p>"You knocked Kiyomi out…" Meiko pointed at the unconscious team leader who laid with whited out eyes and a tiny stream of foam dripping from the side of her mouth.</p><p>"Oh man!" Naruto scratched the back of his head. "What the hell happened, this jutsu usually only has this sort of effect on super-perverted old guys, you know…"</p><p>"I have no idea, honestly…" Meiko shrugged. "But I'm not carrying her around. I used to do that all the time back in the day before I realized she was getting slugged on purpose just so I could carry her around. I guess she's a bit lewd in her own kind of way…"</p><p>"We've been bested…" Staeg sighed on the other side of the field, taking a step onto the stage to get a better look at the team that had eliminated his own right on the most undignified first step of the ladder.</p><p>"Hmph… Eliminated by these guys…" Iuteb sighed while observing Naruto poke Kiyomi's forehead a couple of times just to see if their team leader would respond with signs of life to external stimuli. "Do you guys think that maybe we just suck?"</p><p>"No way," Harpalke grinned with an enthusiastic shake of her head. "They may not have their big bad troublemaker with them at the moment, but they've replaced her with another one that more than matches her in terms of unpredictability. These guys will go far."</p><p>"Unless they hit a random challenge they've no way of dealing with like we have…" Iuteb sighed while the trio of Getsugakure's Team Eurydome prepared to leave through the side where Team Hokage had entered. Upon walking up closer to the winning team, a swarm of black cubes burst forth from Staeg's chest and began gathering around Naruto who, after extending his hand out to the front, formed a solid, black cube in his hand out of them all. A cube that was quick to fade out after blinking in sync with another black cube in Kiyomi's possession, floating just above her chest that just barely moved as a sign of life.</p><p>Meiko waved farewell to Team Eurydome that posed a serious challenge and very nearly eliminated Team Hokage despite her being quite adequate at all things musical before crouching back to the team leader and placing her hand out in front of Kiyomi's mouth. The blacksmith blinked a few times before shaking the hand further back.</p><p>"Geez, her breath's hot, you really did a number on her…" Meiko stood up and tried putting her hands inside her pockets as she did during training when she wore a tracksuit but found her gauntlets rubbing at the leathery pteruges by her sides, forcing the redhead to press her hands behind her, assuming a staunch, militaristic stance.</p><p>"Wuh… Well what are we gonna do with her? We can't just leave her here, you know!" Naruto squinted while shifting his eyes from Meiko back down to Kiyomi. "If I knew this kind of attack would be so effective against her, I'd have used it all the time during training. Would have saved me so much effort, you know…"</p><p>"I'm not carrying her." Meiko repeated before an awkward pause while the two sent flurries of visual arrows one at another. Despite Meiko possessing mighty ocular offensive, she caved in and leaned to grab her unconscious team leader by her wrist, choosing to drag her around like a sack of potatoes instead of going back on her word and carrying the unconscious Yamanaka into the next challenge.</p><p>The wall parted just like the other one, bringing Team Hokage into another room. Somehow the cube appeared to be well aware which teams have been eliminated, which meant that no matter which point of exit Team Eurydome would have chosen – they'd have left to the exit from the facility regardless whereas Team Hokage was sent to another point of the seemingly infinite interior.</p><p>"Wow… This room's packed, you know…" Naruto observed the obvious. There may have been around ten whole teams standing in the room and all of them looked surprised to see one another, meaning that they were not just standing around here – they've all just entered, same as Team Hokage.</p><p>"The cube must be messing with both space and time. I don't think there's a way that everyone here completed their challenges at the same time…" Meiko observed, doing her best to deflect or stonewall the awkward stares from all of the teams at the unconscious team leader they had with them.</p><p>It was Musha's face that appeared on the screen this time. Hair that some time ago used to gently fall over and conceal one half of the woman's face now seemed to have grown unruly and just gotten in her way, meaning she had to puff or push it aside even as she was standing still and narrating the event. It seemed worrisome to attempt and imagine how it must have behaved during combat, then again, likely the jounin had intended to get herself in order before any actual missions came up.</p><p>"Well, now that we have eleven teams in here, we can begin the next stage. This one's a special one, you might like it or not, depending on your attitude but at least five teams stand to gain a Cube Coupon if everything goes smoothly…" Musha clapped her hands out in front of her, treating the gathered genin as children even if some of them were proper adults, some of them to the point of embarrassment as by this age a ninja was meant to have at least made it to chuunin.</p><p>"Or ten teams might get eliminated…" a young man in a white tracksuit and spiky, jaw-length blond hair that struck a profound similarity to Naruto's. This did not look like a random similarity as the youth who would become the Seventh stared at the youth on the other side of the room with a sense of shock to be compared to a sudden cold shower.</p><p>"A relative of yours?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Y-Yeah… I think that's my dad, you know…" Naruto nodded after a gulp.</p>
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<a name="section0598"><h2>598. A Sort Of Kriegspiel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Indeed, little man. Things can go pretty bad in here too." Musha replied to Minato's remark with a smirk. Meiko found it difficult to take the fact that the little man standing all the way on the other side of the room was Naruto's father, especially having in mind the fact that he appeared much younger than his supposed son, although there were more than enough similarities for the blacksmith to not question it in any relevant way, leaving it up to be more of a surprising trivia type of fact.</p><p>"The stage you see in front of you is an improvised shogi stage. It has been divided into two sets of cubes: white and black ones." Musha explained, directing the attention of all the present teams at the stage of a perfect, square shape that was divided into smaller sections of matching, perfect, square shapes of black and white colors, just like the proctor suggested.</p><p>"How fitting of the black and white cube motif…" a young man wearing a Sunagakure headband that held his spiky, brown hair in a tall and hedgy formation sneered. His headband was not the main notable feature, however, it was the metallic visor that covered the young man's eyes and the green markings that appeared like rivers of emerald tears that went down from where his eyes would have been underneath the visor and ran down the man's cheeks.</p><p>"We thought so too…" Musha smiled, playing with her fingernails and showing off her impressive bicep with prideful body language. Once she got serious, the proctor returned to the briefing. "What you see here is a game of shogi, where instead of pieces there will be you – the examinees. Each and every one of you has a predetermined way of movement and a manner of "cutting" other pieces, that is to say – other examinees, down. Some of you will be able to move one square forward, some of you will be able to move sideways or diagonally, the movement and "cutting" capabilities of each examinee will be lighted up on the board before the piece makes its move."</p><p>"What kind of bullshit is that!?" a man of six arms and a Kumogakure headband showed his outrage. Meiko recalled seeing this particular man before the end of the Forest of Death stage of the last Chuunin Exams. He was the powerhouse of Team Nimbus – Spyder-Wolf of Kumogakure and the teammate of Jean-D and Jon-D. "You're leaving something as important as the fate of an entire team to a random chance of how a piece moves or eliminates other pieces!?"</p><p>"Don't get your panties up in a bunch," Musha smirked with a wink at the furious examinee. "There is more than just a random chance to the way each of you will move. We have determined that depending on intelligence provided by your village or, in some cases, your universe, about your abilities and mobility on a battlefield."</p><p>"In that case…" a gentle and shy feminine voice came from a location not too far from Naruto's side, the voice appeared to be very familiar to the future Seventh Hokage, enough so for the youth to burrow through the masses of displeased genin to locate the young woman and have his jaw drop by his questions being confirmed by her appearance. "There is more than just chance to this game? It appears to be a rather accurate simulation of an actual warfare scenario, an improvised battlefield if you will…"</p><p>"Sakura-chan!?" Naruto pointed at the young woman with an almost accusatory stare. "I thought you were already promoted, you know! Isn't that why you left me all alone to find my own team and why I've teamed up with Kiyomi and Meiko, you know!?"</p><p>"I don't know what you're talking about, Naruto." The teen with shoulder-length pink hair tied her hands over her waist. "I am still a genin and back in my universe you have left with Jiraiya-sama on your training trip. I'm not the Sakura you know. If anything, I should be mad at you, because, since you left, I had to look hard for a team of my own to enter the exams."</p><p>"Oh… I see then, you know…" Naruto scratched his cheek, embarrassed. "You're Sakura-chan from before I returned with Pervy Sage, you know… I see you've teamed up with Choji and Ino. Makes sense, since Shikamaru is promoted already, you know…"</p><p>"Sakura Haruno of Team 7 is right, this little game is meant to test your abilities to work together in a situation of a potential warfare scenario. In war, there will be times when you might require to lead smaller squads of entire armies of various ninja of varied backgrounds and abilities and utilize their skills to the best of your knowledge. You are free to decide how each of your teams play the game – elect a leader that calls the moves or just move about randomly, however, a misplay means you've surrendered your move for the turn so be careful." Musha answered Sakura's ponderings.</p><p>"Excuse me, ma'am, but what about the elimination of teams in this challenge?" a silver-haired young lady with an Iwagakure headband inquired. "I was under the impression that at this stage of the exams teams are comprised of three members and that under no circumstances can a team be one member short without the whole team being eliminated. What if one of our teammates gets "cut", as you've expressed yourself? Is the entire team eliminated in that case?"</p><p>"Nope." Musha cut short with a smile and a lively shake of her pink-haired head. "A team is only eliminated if all three of their members get cut. Those that were cut but were not eliminated with their team will return back to the exams if their side wins the war simulation. Although the game will be played like your average shogi match."</p><p>"Damn…" Naruto squinted his eyes as if he had a nasty case of diarrhea brewing deep inside. "I'm not at all good at those sort of things, you know. This whole stage is such a nightmare… Shogi was more of a Shikamaru's thing…"</p><p>"Yeah." Meiko nodded. "I know next to nothing about it as well. Then we have another problem…" she looked at unconscious Kiyomi. Both members of Team Hokage had counted on their leader being recovered from her horny stupor by now.</p><p>"Oy!" Naruto raised his hand with a loud yell, grabbing the proctor's attention without any prospects for failure. "Our leader is still out from the other challenge." He explained.</p><p>"That's even better. There are ten teams in total here and the game requires sixteen pieces on each side. We've wondered how to make that work but if your teammate is out – that just solves the final problem. Too bad about your chances to win and all…" Musha shrugged with a sorry look.</p><p>"Just great…" Naruto grumped, wrapping his arms over his chest and pouting his lips. It looked as if he was just a few degrees of boiling away from kicking the unconscious team leader of his.</p><p>"If there're no more questions, I'd like to list the participants of this challenge as well as the teams to which you've been sorted. Team Black will be comprised of Team Sajin of Sunagakure, Team Shigure from Amegakure, Team Asuma from Konohagakure, Team Shira from Sunagakure, Team Phobos from Getsugakure as well as Uzumaki Naruto from Team Hokage. Team White will be comprised of Team Nimbus of Kumogakure, Team Kurenai from Konohagakure, Team Jiraiya from Konohagakure, The Three Senka Brothers from Kirigakure, Team Rutile from Iwagakure and Wakizashi Meiko from Team Hokage. I'll ask the contestants to take their places on the board and prepare for the next challenge of the first stage of the Chuunin Exams." Musha listed the teams.</p><p>Meiko looked down at her unconscious teammate and thought for a while about how she should feel about being split from Naruto. Her first impression suggested that it made her chances of survival better as she and Naruto were both on split teams, which meant that even if one team was completely eliminated, which was inevitable in this sacrificial game of Shogi, one of their team might just survive although… One member was an awfully thin straw to grasp for one's survival on…</p><p>"I suppose it will be best if I take charge of this lot." Jean-D of Team Nimbus faked a humble pose while she appointed herself the commander of this entire cocktail of ninja.</p><p>"Wait up, that's a bit sudden, isn't it!?" a young man of sharp, spiky brown hair and even sharper pair of fangs sticking out from his mouth, a leather jacket and Inuzuka clan markings on his face objected. "Maybe we should see how each of us move and cut other pieces before making judgments like that?"</p><p>"Movement and cutting are irrelevant to leadership positions. The one to lead should be the most intelligent one of us with the most talent for board games." His teammate who appeared very fond of hiding as much of his skin as possible which just screamed of Aburame clan habits and sense of fashion argued with his own teammate.</p><p>"This is not your average board game." Minato, apparently Naruto's father, cut in, despite his team appearing the youngest out of the bunch by a decent margin. "Board games like Shogi often demand to sacrifice pieces, without a doubt war also demands to sacrifice of one's soldiers but… It would be preferable if our commander did not sacrifice pieces nilly-willy, given the meaning of each piece."</p><p>"Hmph… You're such a wimp. Your sister will get us all kicked out while you'd be a decent commander, yet you fold to her whims, as usual…" Spyder-Wolf grumbled out a laugh while cheeking his own teammate.</p><p>"We work very well together. I wouldn't mind if, because of that synergy, I or my brothers would be appointed as commander of our forces." A young man with blue hair and a standard Kirigakure uniform rose his hand up. By himself, the youth would have been very unremarkable, however, due to the fact that he was surrounded by two brothers, all of whom were a spitting image of the one who had raised this suggestion, the trio sort of demanded appropriate attention.</p><p>"Hmmm… Perhaps these three have something?" a young lady with white hair scratched her chin while looking at her teammate as if asking her for approval. Meiko could not quite recall any of the three members of this team although she did feel more comfortable attributing them to the local ninja rather than visitors from another universe. The Iwagakure headbands that the trio of two kunoichi and one young man wore suggested that these three were Team Rutile. That did not sound like any team names of the teams from other universes, all of which seemed to be either named after a member of the team or had some number attributed to them.</p><p>"Don't be so naïve, Vespiga, that's what got Hafred killed in the last Chuunin Exams, remember? In fact, I would not mind taking the charge either." The second female of Team Rutile stood out amongst those that have decided to quarrel over leadership.</p><p>"And what are your qualifications to oversee a board game of this caliber?" Jon-D turned at the Iwagakure kunoichi.</p><p>"None, though that's about as good as those of any of you." The Team Rutile kunoichi wrapped her arms over her chest and showed the Kumogakure youth her tongue.</p><p>"I think that the little guy should take charge." Meiko suggested, being one of the very few to suggest somebody else, furthermore, she may have been the first to suggest someone from another team, another village, and even another universe.</p><p>"Me?" Minato pointed at himself with moderate bafflement. "I don't know if I'm much of a leader, I just voiced my opinion, that's all…" he smiled with politeness and reservation. Could such a calculated and reserved person truly be Naruto's father? His mother must have been a rampaging maniac to outweigh the odds in the favor of the traits he had inherited, in that case.</p><p>"I agree, why? Because you appear to have sounded the most mature out of all of us." The Aburame from Team Kurenai nodded, approving of Meiko's suggestion. There were curious sparks in the eyes of all three members of Team Kurenai, could they have recognized this young man, just like Naruto had? While Meiko could believe that Shino would regard the youth's points and supposed maturity beyond his years as notable, it was difficult to believe that any of the three would just agree so easily to hand the leadership into the hands of this kid unless they knew him from some accomplishment back home.</p><p>"Hey, that's just ridiculous! Don't go around deciding that sort of stuff like that!" Jean-D objected, stepping into the fray and getting into the faces of everyone in her team. That was especially ironic, given how while Jean-D was a tall lady and must have taken decent pride in her physical stature, she was a whole head shorter than Meiko and far less physically imposing than the blacksmith whom she just tried unnerving by establishing aggressive eye contact with.</p><p>"Fine, how about we vote?" a black-haired teammate of Minato's with stepped up with a confident smirk. "I vote for Minato to be the leader, what about you, Kushina?"</p><p>"Hell yeah to that, ya know!" a girl of hair so red they appeared to be clawing at one's eyes and near-impossible not to notice in one way or another declared with a loud mouth that matched if not surpassed Naruto's. While due to her tomboyish and loudmouthed nature Meiko would have attempted to guess that she was Naruto's mother, given how he already established the father, the verbal tick that she let out at the end, one similar to that of Naruto himself, all but sealed that answer onto the sheet of paper.</p><p>"Given how most vote for themselves or one of their teammates and two whole teams plus Meiko-san vote for Minato, that means Minato wins it." The black-haired youth with a braid that he held folded over his head and pinned to the rest of his shoulder-long hair fisted the sky.</p><p>"Tsk. Fine, but if we lose because of him, I'm not leaving it like that, you hear?" Jean-D stepped forward, pulling out a knife ranging from the elbow to the end of her fingertips in length and clutching it by her side.</p><p>"Oy, did you just threaten Minato!? I'll pummel your whole face if you did, ya know!" Kushina was already rolling back her sleeves, however, before any of the two kunoichi could jump at one another, Minato jumped in between the two with a whole different pair of eyes than those he had just moments earlier. The circumstances demanded no combat moves to settle the situation but judging from his eyes alone – he would have defused it if he felt he had to without hesitation.</p><p>"Save some of that for the enemy and the trials ahead." Minato said, no, he ordered. Just like a leader would have. This boy was so hesitant to take up responsibility but once it landed on his shoulders he took charge on the ranks with the best of them.</p><p>Meiko noticed the sparks gleaming in the eyes of Team Kurenai, that is, all of them except for the Aburame, since he was wearing shades and there seemed to be no way to tell what he was thinking or where he directed his stare at.</p><p>"Alright. Given how Musha-san all but confirmed that the way in which we move as pieces will not be random, I take it that our movement and cutting properties will be dependent on our real-life combat skills. I favor short-range, taijutsu and close-range ninjutsu and the like. However, I am quite fast. I would imagine that I as a piece will have high mobility, perhaps I will be able to move multiple squares in any direction but I will only be capable of cutting once I close down to a piece." Minato began crafting the strategy of their team without wasting any time after being elected Team White leader.</p><p>"Don't worry, he'll be mumbling like that for a while but he'll pull us through, ya know…" Kushina nodded, giving the rest of Team White a shrug that was meant to reassure them. It was still out in the air if it did anything of the sort.</p><p>"However, it still remains a mystery if I will be able to move diagonally. I am torn between placing myself in the back row to reserve myself until the late game, where the spaces will be much emptier and my mobility will be of great value or to use it for an early advantage…" Minato rubbed his cheek as he pondered, strategizing out loud, likely as an invitation to anyone that knew what they were doing to but in.</p><p>"Might I suggest the bottom line corner?" Jon-D stepped up. "In that case, you will remain safe in the back until you deem your mobility needed but you will not be too blocked off to step in early in the game if need be."</p><p>"I see. Your teammate was right. You are quite good at this." Minato smiled with a nod and flickered. Meiko couldn't contain her smirk. Some of the Team White members got worked up over how suddenly the youth utilized a technique as advanced as the Body Flicker Jutsu and how he moved with such speed and precision without losing his polite smile.</p><p>"We need the front row. I'm not sure who would benefit being in the front the most but it would be best if we did not place all of the members of any of our teams in the front. I have a feeling that the vanguard will get cut before the game reaches later stages. By placing one or two members of each team in the front, we'll fill one of the most important roles without risking eliminating any of us at this stage." Minato pointed out, standing at the corner of the stage, on a black square.</p><p>"It would be the best if the vanguard was comprised of ninja that are much slower in real life but pack a punch, that way they will have the opportunity to position themselves carefully, one move at a time, allowing us to gain board control gradually and ensuring our victory, whatever the sacrifices." Jon-D nodded, taking a dash to the vanguard himself. Despite not relying on Body Flicker, Jon-D was no less swift than Minato and kept up with the boy without showing any signs of effort.</p><p>"I knew it…" Meiko thought to herself. She was quite cumbersome but powerful compared to an average ninja, it would have made the most sense for her to take the vanguard as well, even though that way she risked the elimination of Team Hokage which already was in the cards, given how Team Hokage had only two members in. Despite that, she only hesitated for a brief blink before taking her position out in the front. An Inuzuka from Team Kurenai took his place beside Meiko, giving the redhead a thumb up and showing his fang in a cheerful grin.</p><p>"Heh, thanks for sticking up for Lord Fourth back there. You won't regret it, you'll see!" he said.</p><p>"Lord Fourth, huh…" Meiko blinked a couple of times, given the recent influx of engaging details about everyone around her and the ever-rising stakes of the exams, somehow the blacksmith took this little tidbit of information calmly.</p><p>"Hey, nobody will be able to shoot through their own folks!" Jean-D flipped her hands up in the air. "Instead of placing our heavy hitters out front, place our long-range attackers upfront so they can use the early game to land some early blows!"</p><p>"That's so short-sighted, sister." Jon-D shook his head, looking down at his scorned sibling from above the stage. "It is true that such a strategy will score us a few good early cuts and I do believe placing a pair of long-range pieces into the corners of the upper row might be a good idea, investing in this strategy will result in slow pieces being all that's left in the end – we'll be in the total mercy of the enemy."</p><p>Minato took a glance at the opposing team, noticing a handful of Amegakure ninja with umbrellas on their backs placed out in front on the opposing side of the board. He did not take long to put together that the enemy was employing this strategy and placing their long-range ninja out in front so that their full abilities would get realized.</p><p>"Alright, change of plans, let's take a mixed formation of long-range ninja and short-range ninja, one beside the other. I don't want the vanguard to become fodder so let's have them have some ranged support, just for some payback for the early hellfire, then we'll have a bit heavier late game, though, hopefully, with fewer sacrifices this way." Minato smiled politely at his teammates.</p><p>"Playing safe is riskier than risking. As little sense as this makes literally." Jon-D let his leader know that he was opposed to such a strategy but one-by-one, Team White took their places on the board and the most elaborate game of ninja chess in the world in the second challenge of the first stage of the Chuunin Exams could begin at last.</p>
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<a name="section0599"><h2>599. Rock Beats Fireball</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Are you sure this is fine?" Jon-D wondered, stroking his blond hair. The bandana that covered the lower part of the young man's face tilted from time to time suggesting that his exhales were erratic and packed some punch to them. A sign of the unease that the young Kumogakure ninja felt.</p><p>"That is my decision as the leader, you were free to accept the burden yourself and I would not have objected, Jon-san." Minato nodded with a stoic expression. For such a little shrimp with pretty-boy's esthetics, Meiko found the boy's resolve and persistence admirable.</p><p>"You do not address a Kumogakure ninja by their nickname with the honorific," Jon-D replied. "The letter tied to our nicknames is the appropriate honorific. Please address me as Jon-D, that will be fine."</p><p>"Oh, I see…" Minato scratched the back of his head, looking apologetic about the mess-up. "The Kumogakure of this universe has a whole different culture from ours, it seems. Thank you for clearing that up."</p><p>"At least you are willing to learn. Now let's see what chops you've got as a leader, shall we?" Jon-D nodded and turned to the opposing team. The ground beneath Team White lit up with a glimmer, even the black squares were emitting their own brand of light, it was a signal that Team White was to move first.</p><p>"It appears that it is our move," Minato stated to his team while looking around the board he had set-up with the aid of the whole Team White. As a great leader should do, Minato listened to everybody's opinions although had settled on his own decision and did not let said opinions break him away from what he seemed right. He was not immovable on his decision but Minato was a boy with a clear idea of what he wanted to do with this game and how he was to go around reaching those goals.</p><p>The mighty powerhouse, Spyder-Wolf of Team Nimbus, stood in the leftmost corner of the front row. His abilities were entirely in the close range making him the perfect meat for the cannons, although one that had great potential for disruption of front rows, someone that carried away dozens of enemies while going out in a blaze of glory.</p><p>Beside him stood Minato's teammate – Kotaro Uchiha. Meiko was unsure of what the boy's abilities were, nobody in Team Jiraiya specified that, however, they presented the boy as a long-range ninja and placed him beside two close-range ninja – Jon-D and Spyder-Wolf. It may have seemed like a good idea to keep those two nearby though Meiko was not so sure – Spyder-Wolf had a darker skin whereas Jon-D and his sister did not, their skins were tanner than those of Konoha villagers though nothing like the common Kumogakure ninja, that might have made them lower caste and someone looked down upon in their home village.</p><p>Perhaps that was why Spyder-Wolf was so quick to attack his teammates back when Jon-D tried shaking off the responsibility of leadership and Jean-D tried to claim it?</p><p>To the right of Jon-D stood Shino Aburame and Hinata Hyuuga. The duo of Team Kurenai was meant to complement each other's abilities and Shino was a long-range combatant whereas Hinata excelled at close range. Moving on to the right of the front row, Meiko stood alongside Kushina Uzumaki, the kunoichi of Team Jiraiya which confused Meiko a bit – given the tomboyish attitude of the redhead, Meiko had assumed the girl to be a close-range brawler, same way Meiko was a close-to-mid-range combatant. Still, Minato insisted on placing Kushina beside Meiko as if she was a long-range combatant.</p><p>At the leftmost corner of the front row stood Corot Epsiriya of Team Rutile. It was unclear what sort of abilities this young lady had though she claimed to Minato to be a close-range fighter and to Minato it was good enough. Given how vital the information on the abilities of the enemy was, Minato understood the hesitation of anyone to reveal their fighting styles and did not press too hard, taking what he could work with and leaving the matter at that.</p><p>Team Black had placed Sakura Haruno of Team Asuma, Mujin of Team Sajin, Akimichi Choji of Team Asuma, Shira of Team Shira, Yome of Team Shira, Naruto Uzumaki of Team Hokage, Doma Nacasa alongside the newbie of Team Phobos who replaced Stea. The finalist of the last exams must have been promoted to the ranks of chuunin. The leader of Team Black placed that bunch in the front row, from left to right. In the back row, from left to right they'd placed Sajin of Team Sajin, Baiu of Team Shigure, Mijin of Team Sajin, Midare of Team Shigure, Ino Yamanaka of Team Asuma, Shigure of Team Shigure, Sen of Team Shira and Gasco of Team Phobos.</p><p>"Alright, let's try this thing out…" Minato cleared his throat and called out Spyder-Wolf's name. Upon being named, the square under the genin's name lit up, showing that areas where the piece could move, in Spyder-Wolf's name – one square to each side. "Spyder-Wolf, move one square forward, please."</p><p>As instructed, Spyder-Wolf stepped forward one square and the areas all around him lit up red. Minato's glare sharpened, the boy must have realized that those were the areas where Spyder-Wolf could eliminate other pieces. Noting the information as he knew the opposing team would note it as well, the boy nodded declared the end of his turn. The red gleam died out after that declaration.</p><p>"Mujin, please move one square forward." Midare, the member of Team Shigure declared, revealing that during the strategy discussions and piece-placement phase, Team Black had elected him to be their team leader.</p><p>The boy of brown, spiky hair, facial markings and the visor over his eyes stepped forward, the attacking area of Mujin was most curious – it was not the area around him but the two squares diagonally to his positions upward as well as the square two squares in front of Mujin. It was an interesting long-range method of eliminating pieces, however, it looked rather clunky and awkward to work with something like that. Trying to come up with a way to utilize such a piece in a clever way made Meiko's head spin.</p><p>Minato moved Shino one square forward and revealed another clunky-looking, though much more convenient attacking method of a square formation two squares ahead of Shino, taking two squares past the square directly in front of Shino as well as the two cubes to the left side of those two. It just barely missed Mujin. It just might have been that it would have been beneficial to place long-range combatants out in front, Meiko thought. Then again, the two bickering strategists had claimed that long-range combatants would be quite useful in the later stages as well so Meiko could not focus on her own thoughts without realizing how in over her head she was.</p><p>Midare, much to the surprise of Team White, did not press on any offensive and did not try to establish a strong board presence in the middle of the board with his own pieces, instead he moved Haruno Sakura right behind Mujin, moving her not forward but to the right and where Mujin was at the beginning of the game.</p><p>"This is a wise move, why? Because Sakura is a medical ninja." Shino mumbled to himself. Because only those right beside the Aburame heard him, Hinata was the one who felt inclined of informing Minato about that piece of intelligence, although, because of her high-pitched voice and rather weak vocal presence, even that achievement came through great effort from Minato's part.</p><p>"I see. So perhaps Midare-san knows that and is attempting to use Sakura-san's abilities as a medical ninja by keeping his long-range combatant in the game. He must have seen something in the information about his pieces, something troublesome for us, I'd say…" Minato pondered while scratching his chin.</p><p>"We need to hit Mujin with a long-range attack to see what kind of medical effects we are talking about. Don't be afraid to sacrifice a unit, if you need to." Jon-D advised. "Maybe this Sakura can outright bring units back onboard or maybe she just prevents them from being cut, in which case, we will need to eliminate her, sacrificing as many pieces as necessary to do so."</p><p>"You're really keen on sacrificing pieces, Jon-D…" Minato smiled and made a pacifying gesture with both of his hands as an attempt to imply that he was not trying to pick a fight with that observation.</p><p>"That is how the game of shogi is played, Minato." Jon-D gave his team leader a strict glance. "By being nice to your pieces, you will never get anywhere, that's kindergarten level of board gaming. This Midare seems to be a leader worth his salt, with two moves he had created an undying long-range unit while keeping his medical ninja protected from all sides and near impossible to target effectively. You need to respond with the same kind of clever strategies or the game will be doomed from the beginning if he establishes an unbeatable board."</p><p>"I see…" Minato nodded. "Though I would rather not throw away my pieces. That's just the way I do things."</p><p>"You may not like sacrificing pieces but the idea of hitting Mujin from long-range is pretty solid, ya know!" Kushina exclaimed from the other side of the board. Minato looked at his teammate for a pair of blank moments before nodding and analyzing his board. The leader of Team White was trying to determine which one of his pieces was best capable of delivering the needed long-range attack.</p><p>"Kotaro Uchiha, move one space forward," Minato ordered his other teammate. He examined the lit up red spaces but found that Kotaro ran a bit short of range, being able to attack pieces up to two squares ahead of him whereas Mujin laid three squares ahead.</p><p>"Heh, Akimichi Choji… Huh…" Midare was about to order Akimichi Choji of Team Asuma to move but then noticed an interesting lighting pattern across the board. Choji not only had a green square available to him in either direction but also had the ability to cut pieces instead of moving in his movement phase. The lighting was unlike the cutting patterns of other pieces, however, there was one red square right in front of him with two orange squares ahead of that red square.</p><p>"Hey, fatso, what's your secret technique?" Midare wondered, trying to better understand what this curious case of lighting meant.</p><p>"What did you just call me!?" Choji flipped out, his eyes whited out while his face left no doubts about the composition of Choji's facial musculature being just that – muscle, not fat. The chubby Akimichi launched himself at his team leader, dashing diagonally at Midare with a fist cocked back and ready to smash his team leader's face. Right before the overwhelmed and confused Midare would meet the final moments of his life, however, Choji bashed against an invisible barrier.</p><p>"Movement foul!" a dull, masculine tone that belonged to neither Ibiki nor Musha declared, throwing Choji back on his butt and repelling him with enough blunt force to snap the chubby shinobi out of his enraged daze.</p><p>"Don't call Choji fat, he's just a little chubby!" Ino reprimanded the team leader, worried about the fact that Team Black had just revealed the fact they weren't entirely cohesive whereas Midare looked worried most about the misplay he had just made and the turn he had just wasted.</p><p>"Kotaro, move one square forward and cut Mujin." Minato did not waste any more time in order to capitalize on the opportunity that the quarrels in Team Black had granted him. Kotaro stepped forward and glared at Mujin.</p><p>"Yo, you're cut!" he yelled at Mujin who just shrugged, oblivious as to what exactly he was supposed to do about that fact.</p><p>"Please attack the enemy to seal the elimination of the piece from the board." The masculine voice that appeared to come from the game board itself demanded.</p><p>"W-Wait… Like… Attack him for real?" Kotaro hesitated but, upon seeing the determined and somewhat peeved eyes of his teammates behind him, he weaved the appropriate hand seals and breathed a great amount of air into his lungs. "Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" he chanted out before spitting out a fireball twice his size that traveled straight at Mujin.</p><p>"Tsk… As if I'm going to just stand here and get incinerated…" Mujin declared with pride that suggested he was very satisfied with the fact he had thought up of the opportunity to dodge the technique that was meant to eliminate him. A streak of black and white lightning jolts ran up and down the body of the young ninja, shocking him enough to daze him and stun him in place before the fireball smashed right into him and detonated in a devastating explosion.</p><p>"Shit, you could have killed him!" Sajin, Mujin's team leader yelled out into thin air, directing his outrage at Kotaro at first, then the game board, then the black and dead-cold monitor on which Musha's face gleamed not too long ago.</p><p>"I… I think I'm okay…" Mujin yelled out from the smoke and debris, examining his unburnt skin and barely rustled clothes. "It… It barely even hurt at all…"</p><p>A green light lit up underneath Sakura's square and that of Mujin's. Minato's gamble to find out the ability that Sakura had in this game had paid off, Midare now had to choose if he wanted to use that ability.</p><p>"Sure, I choose to use Sakura Haruno's ability." Midare nodded. The green light went out and the game continued, apparently.</p><p>"Wait… Didn't that sucker get blasted? He should remove his ass off the board!" Spyder-Wolf growled.</p><p>"Sakura Haruno is a medical ninja. The game clearly intended for that to translate as an ability that keeps a figure in a square next to her around despite being cut. The game would not allow us to break rules, this board clearly has a mind of its own…" Midare replied.</p><p>"I agree, let's continue the game." Minato nodded. Of course, he would not object, finding out the ability that medical ninja had in this game was his goal all along.</p><p>"Choji, move one square forward," Midare ordered his piece, this time holding back from calling his teammate with the trigger word that would have sent him into a frenzy.</p><p>"Not until you apologize!" Choji turned around at his team leader with a clenched fist. "I'm gonna keep misplaying until you do!"</p><p>"Are you a fucking idiot!?" Midare pulled on his own hair in frustration. "Look, I'm sorry I called you fat, I did not know that made you feel this way, now just move one square forward."</p><p>"Choji, just play along, for now. We're all in this game together. You can pummel this guy all you want in the next rounds, maybe we'll even run into him again in the first round. Just do as he says for now…" Yamanaka Ino asked.</p><p>"Fine…" a deep sigh left Choji's test as he was about to take a step forward but then Midare stopped him.</p><p>"Wait, I think I understand what this lighting means. Choji, cut one piece ahead of you, use your signature technique." Midare changed his order.</p><p>"Cut? But there's nothing to cut, the piece ahead of me is empty…" Choji pointed out the obvious fact. "My attack is not long-range either, it won't reach anything or anyone… Plus, what would even be my signature technique anyway?"</p><p>"Ah, I get it!" Ino clutched her fists by her side. "Midare-san is pretty sharp for figuring this out without even knowing your ability, the board suggests that you can sacrifice your movement for your cutting ability."</p><p>"Cutting ability?" Choji scratched his head.</p><p>"Yes! The orange squares mean that your cutting range will increase and that you will be cutting by movement and not separate cutting action. What does that remind you of?" Ino jumped in her boots, realizing how potent of an ability her teammate had in this game – the ability to cut with movement while the range of his movement increased by one square each successive turn. Choji might have eliminated the entire enemy board like that if Midare utilized him in a clever way, he was the ultimate snowballing piece.</p><p>"Oh, I see!" Choji, at last, had his own ground-shaking discovery moment as he clapped his arms together and then extended them outwards. "Multi-Size Jutsu!"</p><p>The technique Choji employed greatly expanded his size, it was different than the way in which Meiko recalled Akimichi Chominu using the technique, where Chominu became much more round instead of growing into a version of his super-sized self. The giant Choji bent his body into a human-boulder shape and rolled forward, there were hints of worry in the young man's face, drops of sweat that came from the worry that they've misread the board's suggestion and that Choji would just once more bounce off of an invisible barrier and misplay.</p><p>"Human Bullet Tank!" Choji yelled out, rolling out into a rotating frenzy in the shape of a human-boulder. Choji rolled one square forward before stopping and canceling both of his techniques, returning to normal size.</p><p>"Why did you cancel your jutsu?" Midare wondered.</p><p>"I need to keep moving with it. I can't just stay in place until the next turn." Choji shrugged.</p><p>"I see, in that case, the game board must have known that. That means that it will treat the next turn as if you kept using it, as long as we use it repeatedly. Yes… I truly do apologize for calling you fat, you may just win us the whole game, Choji…" Midare appeared almost as excited as Ino was before.</p><p>"Hell yeah! Sakura keeping pieces in the game, Choji acting like a human-juggernaut, Team Asuma's the MVP!" Ino tried to high-five the sky, overcome by the buzz of the situation.</p><p>"Not all of it, you know." Naruto wrapped his arms over his chest. "You're not doing anything…" he pointed out.</p><p>"Shut up, Naruto, nobody's asking your jealous butt!" Ino clutched her fist. Her eyes flared with a fury not too different from the way Choji acted before. "I'm the clay that sticks the team together!"</p><p>"Right… That's what everyone who doesn't have anything to do says, you know…" Naruto squinted. It did not look like he fostered anything malicious towards the Yamanaka, he just saw something he felt like pointing out and did so out of honesty. Even if he was criticizing his own teammate…</p><p>"What a weird guy…" Meiko smirked.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0600"><h2>600. Close Calls And Tough Trades</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Come on, we need to deal with that fatso, if we don't, the enemy will snowball him out of control!" Jon-D turned back at the team leader who shared his worries, judging from his facial expression.</p><p>"What was that, you bastard!?" Choji's eyes whited out and turned round in blind fury as he prepared to lunge forward and tear Jon-D to shreds with his bare hands. "I'm not fat, I'm just a little chubby!"</p><p>"It would be a lot easier to deal with this threat if you knew the exact nature of our abilities prior to using them…" the male member of team Rutile who introduced himself as Portorigus during the introductory stage said.</p><p>"No, I think this is no oversight." Minato shook his head. "They're still testing what makes a good chuunin, oftentimes the team leader has little time to accommodate and introduce themselves with the abilities of their team and needs to have their team functional in no time at all. This is a simulation for just that kind of situation."</p><p>"Are you going to make your move or not?" Midare from Team Black yelled out at Team White which was discussing ways of how to deal with the impending threat of Choji more efficiently.</p><p>"Ummm… Minato-san…" Shino spoke up. "I believe the enemy has made a mistake. Why? Because Choji has walked into my elimination range."</p><p>Minato blinked a couple of times, looking over the field and then his jaw dropped – Shino was right. It was true that the Aburame needed to move first before he could attack but his movement was so slow that it would not have disturbed the plan.</p><p>"Shino, move one square forward and then eliminate Shira and Choji." Minato pointed his finger with a confident smirk as if he was a member of the Ninja Tribunal throwing accusations during the tribunal proceedings. The boy must have felt like one too.</p><p>"Wait, what?" Midare scratched his head.</p><p>"You absolute fool!" Ino flipped out. "How did you miss that? Shino's cutting pattern lit up after his first movement a couple of turns ago!"</p><p>Shino stepped forward and removed one hand from his pocket, the hand was already sinking in a living, buzzing swarm of the Aburame Kidaichu insects that formed a floaty, black mass which swiftly shaped itself after a round ball shape and moved onward at the speed of an insect's natural flight while managing to maintain the intricate formation, which wasn't all that impressive though there was an effect of intimidation in that inevitable, creeping and crawling threat.</p><p>"Secret Technique: Insect Sphere," Shino mumbled to himself, the name of his technique might have easily been missed over how the stoic young man spoke into the collar of his own coat rather than declaring the name of his jutsu with the appropriate pride.</p><p>"Damn it, I've completely missed that creepy bug guy…" Midare clutched his fingers.</p><p>"Indeed, I am quite easy to overlook, why do I act that way? Because I find that is the main talent of a shinobi." Shino declared while his insect sphere covered Shira and Choji. The squares underneath the two eliminated pieces lit up, teleporting them off of the board and a few meters behind Team White's side of the board as if the two were claimed by the enemy team after eliminating them.</p><p>"That was my plan from the beginning." Minato nodded. I placed Shino there because I counted on him being a viable long-range threat to your front lines, although you appeared to not have picked up on it and instead of protecting Shira-san, you've moved your other pieces around which confused me. Although, I must admit, when you started moving Sakura around, her potential on the board distracted me as well from my own plan. I am glad that Shino-san reminded me of that…"</p><p>The young man looked confident of his own plan and abilities but then he turned a bit shy when he explained his own folly and how he himself had committed the same mistake of overlooking Shino after realizing Sakura's role in the field and the danger she posed.</p><p>Midare looked down. To say that he looked unhappy and mad would have been a massive understatement. He was livid.</p><p>"Well, what now, cap? It's our move, you know?" Naruto wondered, looking at the leader of Team Black.</p><p>"What can we do? We had two whole pieces removed in one go. Continuing this game would be an exercise in futility at this point." Midare growled.</p><p>"What the hell are you saying!?" Naruto took a step that was dangerously close to the edge of him stepping outside of his boundaries on his own turn.</p><p>"The game ends when the "King" of the team is removed. That is why Musha-san said that there is potential in saving a great number of pieces." Midare sighed.</p><p>"True." Minato nodded and spoke up from the other side of the board. "If the team captain surrenders, his own team is likely to be removed from the game even though he would be the only one losing. I doubt that the staff would let the King save his own hide by surrendering, although it would save a great number of other teams in the process. Sometimes that's the best option in a war that carries the chance of horrific bloodshed in its future."</p><p>"Shut up," Naruto yelled out with his fist raised up and shaking. "Don't you dare surrender now, so you've lost a couple of pieces, big whoop. I'm not a big shogi or board game guy but I know one thing and it served me just fine enough – I never surrender, no matter what, you know!"</p><p>"It's true." Shigure encouraged his team leader and his own teammate as well. "All you've lost is a pair of close-range fodder. That is their intended purpose, isn't it? Now use what you still have left to do your best. We didn't make you the strategist of Team Shigure so that you bailed out on us at the first opportunity."</p><p>Meiko turned at Minato who couldn't stop his oversized grin from scarring his cute, childish face. Jon-D appeared to notice it as well.</p><p>"What's your business, captain? Don't you think the grin is a bit too early, as Shigure said, we've only claimed a pair of pawns." Jon-D wondered.</p><p>"True. I also think that the decision to prolong the game after such a notable mistake would be reckless and too costly. If I was in Midare-san's shoes, I might have reached a whole different decision…" Minato shrugged.</p><p>"Hey, hey, you pale-skinned shrimp, don't you dare surrender, no matter how badly you get your ass kicked, you hear!?" Spyder-Wolf turned to his team leader in shock of such a declaration.</p><p>"Although…" Minato breathed in deep, his young chest lifted up and inflated, almost reaching the wide and encompassing the entire village's worries size it would have in the future of his universe, "I must admit, there's a lot to respect in the toughness and foolhardiness of never giving up too."</p><p>"Hmph, you have quite a frightening piece there, Minato." Midare smiled, brushing his two fingers over his chin with a showy facial gesture, almost like he knew something the enemy did not. "Even right now, you could have Shino advance one more space next turn and eliminate Mijin and me, ending the game at once. You've cornered me into losing a piece either way for I must move forward to avoid my inevitable elimination next turn."</p><p>"Indeed." Minato nodded. "Shino-san is an impressive piece on the board, just like Choji-san was on your team."</p><p>"Then… Perhaps Naruto-san was right, there needs to be something for Yamanaka Ino of Team Asuma to do as well."</p><p>"Wait, you don't intend on…" Minato took a small, staggering step forward.</p><p>"Sacrifice her?" Midare shrugged. "Make no mistake, Minato, I will sacrifice any and any number of pieces but placing her in front of myself will do me no good – it would only make Shino eliminate three pieces instead of two next turn. No… What I have in mind for the Yamanaka girl is something different entirely…"</p><p>Further to the right of the board, a laying young woman sneezed and woke up from a hazy slumber, scratching her sleepy eyes with her knuckles and observing the madness of a handful of teams having assembled onto the game board and playing a real-life board game with one another.</p><p>"About time you would wake up…" Meiko grumbled to herself, alerting the returned to consciousness leader of Team Hokage that her own team was involved in this game too.</p><p>"Now, Ino Yamanaka, would you please move diagonally, right in front of me?" Midare made it a game by asking Ino nicely even though he had absolute control over what piece moved where. As prompted, Ino made the appropriate move and stood in front of Shino, on the third square ahead of her.</p><p>"B-But you said…" Minato got worked up in confusion. The captain of the enemy team just declared that he would not be sacrificing pieces and yet he did just that – put Ino right in front of him. Sure, she might have had a long-range for her attack but surely Midare could not have counted for Ino's range to extend three whole squares?</p><p>As expected, Ino's elimination range was even worse than that of most close-range figures. Whereas most normal close-range pieces could eliminate a piece right in one square distance anywhere in front of them, behind them, to their sides or diagonally, Ino could only eliminate someone one square in front, behind or to any of her two sides, ruling out diagonal elimination altogether.</p><p>However, there was a frightening orange streak that covered the entire board ahead of her, ranging right from the square ahead of Ino all the way to Shino on the board's middle and Takanami Senka of the Three Senka Brothers on the end of the board's middle.</p><p>"That shut you up?" Midare wondered, extending his own hand over the board with matching confidence to Minato's when he claimed two of his pieces. "Now, Ino, work your magic, take over that piece with your Yamanaka hijutsu!"</p><p>"Umm… Mind-Body Switch Jutsu!" Ino extended her hands out in a hand seal position and sent her consciousness floating ahead, bumping straight into the invisible wall of the square she was standing on. "Boss… I don't think I can just take over pieces like that…" she chuckled with an embarrassed look on her face.</p><p>"Ugh… I'm teamed up with utter idiots, you know…" Naruto shriveled, noting to himself and keeping the irony of being the most sensible member on his team to himself, something that would have been found surprisingly mature by any bystander that knew Naruto to be thinking that, especially for him.</p><p>"M-Minato-san…" Shino twitched, he tried to move around but was evidently frozen in place. Ino might not have done what Midare had instructed her to do but she did do something. "I… I don't think I've been taken but I am not stunned either… Why? Because I am turning around and preparing my attack…"</p><p>"Wait… Yeah, I guess that does make sense." Ino snapped her fingers. "I can't just take over pieces because that's not quite how my jutsu works, but I can have the piece attack its own team as a disturbance strategy."</p><p>"Secret Technique: Insect Sphere," Shino mumbled while unleashing the insect sphere on his own team's side. Jon-D, Senka Takanami and Vespiga from Team Rutile covered themselves up as they became coated with layers of chakra-consuming parasitic insects and teleported off the board.</p><p>Minato looked concerned temporarily but then he turned back at Midare, who was biting his nails in distress. Despite the crushing move from the side of Midare, eliminating three whole pieces in one move, both team captains knew just what this development meant.</p><p>"I did good, huh, captain?" Ino turned to Midare with a cheerful smile, "Would you say I am, perhaps, the top star of my entire team? Certainly better than Sakura, at least…"</p><p>"You stupid bimbo!" Midare yelled out, having lost all traces of composure, "Don't you realize what this means!? Without taking over Shino, you're useless to me! I've just doomed myself now! Shino will just eliminate all three of us the next turn anyway!"</p><p>Ino turned around, realizing that, since Shino stayed on the same square, he could have just sent another insect sphere Team Black's way and eliminated Mijin, Midare and, now, her too. Midare had one way of avoiding a certain, forceful and violent end to the board game – by moving himself away from Shino's range and sacrificing Mijin of Team Sajin but he chose to risk it for the potential reward of claiming this profound piece to himself.</p><p>"So you've lost… But you have to work on that tone, buddy!" Ino wrapped her arms over her chest with a scorned expression while she pouted her lips. She at least felt glad that Midare would get booted out from the exam while Team Asuma would continue since Sakura still would have remained on the board. If anyone should have taken responsibility for this game and gotten kicked to the curb – it was the team leader so this whole thing just felt kind of right to her.</p><p>"Shino, please move one space forward and eliminate Midare-san, Ino-san, and Mijin-san." Minato declared the order but Shino just twitched again.</p><p>"I'm afraid I cannot do that, Minato-san, why? Because I can't move." Shino explained, unable to face his team captain because he still felt rooted in place and frozen.</p><p>"There seems to be more to the ability of Yamanaka Ino that we've seen. The piece she has afflicted cannot move as well." Sazanami Senka turned at Minato with a rather simple explanation of the obvious.</p><p>"We need to remove that creepy bug guy off the board, he's too much of a loose cannon!" Spyder-Wolf turned back at Minato as well. "If the blonde moves him to the right, he could eliminate four whole pieces, amongst which is Jean-D, that would leave me – the expendable pawn as the only member of my team on board. I won't let you throw this game!"</p><p>"Calm down, Spyder-Wolf-san," Minato pleaded with the powerhouse giant of Team Nimbus. "We don't know for sure if Ino-san can even move the pieces around. Last turn she just used Shino-san's elimination without even moving him, which should be an illegal move. I don't think she can move pieces around, which means that she only has a barren space to have Shino attack in."</p><p>"Plus, she'll be stuck in her current position this way, she'll have to keep her eyes on Shino because Shino can just eliminate her team leader and win the game if she doesn't keep him pinned down with her ability." Meiko pointed out in a shocking moment of brightness from her.</p><p>"That's a good point, Meiko-san." Minato agreed.</p><p>"What can I say, I work alongside a Yamanaka too, you come to learn a thing or two…" Meiko scratched her itchy nose making it contrast the shade of her blushing face.</p><p>"Alright, so what's our game plan now, genius?" Spyder-Wolf growled, clearly ticked off by how Minato was running things.</p><p>"Kushina-san, please move one square forward." Minato pointed, letting his other teammate enter the board at last.</p><p>Meiko found it admirable that Minato was willing to put his whole team on the line and send out both of his teammates out like that. It was almost like he acknowledged the tremendous responsibility that Team White entrusted him with and put his own head on the block, rushing on into the brawl whenever he found the chance, then again, Minato himself remained safe in the corner, for now.</p><p>When the red lights lit up on the squares, telegraphing Kushina's eliminating pattern, the entire Team White reacted to the revelation of how powerful of a piece this tomboyish redhead truly was. She was able to eliminate pieces one square ahead of her as well as two squares diagonally in each direction, leaving her just one square short of being able to remove Yome from Team Shira off the board.</p><p>"Naruto, let's see what you can do…" Midare sighed, his eyes kept wandering off to Ino, the complete inability to predict how the Yamanaka's skill worked for real caused him a great deal of a headache. He had contemplated for a brief moment about having Ino repeat her movements from the last turn just to keep Shino in place but that would have locked his team into a perpetual dance of having to sacrifice any moves to keep Shino rooted and if that truly was the only way to play this, then Team Black had already lost. Fueled by these thoughts, the leader of Team Black decided to move his pieces around and count on Ino being able to keep Shino rooted in place for the duration of the Yamanaka piece not being moved or used.</p><p>Green squares lit up around Naruto, signaling that his movement patterns weren't all that unusual from the other pieces but he had orange spaces ahead of him, all lined up, piquing Midare's curiosity enough for him to call out for Naruto to use that skill. Just like that, a trio of Naruto clones appeared in front of the original piece. Each one of the clones appeared to have an elimination pattern one square ahead of them. That was a useful skill, one that allowed Team Black to express their claim for three whole pieces a few turns in the future while protecting their own front lines.</p><p>"Kushina-san, move one space forward and eliminate one clone and Yome," Minato ordered without hesitation.</p><p>"Yes-sir, ya know!" Kushina yelled out with excitement while walking out and clapping her hands together. A trio of large chains with a shine of golden aura around them erupted from the abdomen of the young woman and penetrated Naruto's clone and hit Yome straight in the gut as well, teleporting the little girl off the board while merely dispelling Naruto's clone.</p><p>"Ya know…" Naruto mumbled to himself. He felt like there was something familiar to the verbal tick that the redhead used, somehow not having put it together still, despite seeing the woman working on the same team with his father… Meiko couldn't help but smirk at the clueless buffoon but she saw the brightening in his eyes that suggested that the young man was beginning to put two and two together in his head.</p><p>"Both of Naruto's clones, move ahead and eliminate Kushina!" Midare ordered without skipping a beat, similarly to Minato's ruthless jab during his turn. The ninja board game was beginning to heat up with pieces lost on both sides of the board and jarring, seemingly game-ending moves being exchanged from both sides of the board. While most of the pieces were still on the board, with heart-aimed thrusts like those last few turns, nobody truly knew when the game would end for real.</p><p>"What are you waiting for? Eliminate that troublesome girl! Her elimination patterns are way too dangerous!" Midare ordered Naruto again since the young man just stood still there, looking at the square under his feet with a blank stare.</p>
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<a name="section0601"><h2>601. The Ever-Heating Ninja Board Games</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Just to let you know, if this was an actual battlefield, this would be the least efficient timing to attack." Midare grumbled, stroking his forehead with his hand, frustrated at Naruto's hesitation to attack Kushina.</p><p>"I don't really feel like it, you know." Naruto squinted with his hands over his chest. "I mean I don't really feel like attacking my mom just because you told me to."</p><p>"You know, ya know?" Kushina mumbled the curious verbal tick of this blond young man who for some reason refused to eliminate her when prompted to do so by his team captain. "You have the same verbal tick as I do, you say you know when you're nervous, ya know."</p><p>"Yeah, because I think you're my mom, you know." Naruto pointed out. "Also, it's not just when I'm nervous. It's just about all the time, you know."</p><p>"Wait… What?" Kushina blushed like a tomato, covering her cheeks with her hands.</p><p>"It doesn't really matter now, you know. What matters is that I don't feel like attacking you, even if you don't feel any pain whatsoever." Naruto shrugged.</p><p>"You imbecile!" Midare roared out, "If you don't eliminate her, Minato will move her one space forward the next turn and she will be in a position to eliminate you! You'll be done for and I won't hesitate to eliminate that redhead friend of yours too – your team will be gone!"</p><p>"Okay…" Naruto shrugged. "If I get eliminated here, I'll just become Hokage without ever graduating and making it to chuunin, you know. That's never happened before but, now that I said it, I will do it. Never going back on my word is my ninja way, you know."</p><p>The square underneath Naruto's feet lit up with the eye-scratching shade of red. The young man had to cover up his eyes to prevent further discomfort. "Disobedience misplay." A bland and cybernetic-sounding voice declared, transferring the turn to Minato by having a green square light up underneath Minato's feet.</p><p>"Wait, that's now a factor!?" Midare dropped his altered Kasa hat on the ground and pulled on the light grey jumpsuit wrapping over the back of his head until he freed his head out of it and he could pull on his hair at last.</p><p>"You've made a grave error, Midare-san." Minato smiled with a soft expression. "In light of this new development, I would never have a mother attack her son, even if she would not have him for however many more years. Picking the right man or woman for the job is an integral part of a leader's responsibility and you have failed it by insisting Naruto did your dirty work despite his continuous refusal."</p><p>"You'll be lecturing me on strategy now, you shrimp!?" the captain of Team Black ground his teeth while raising his fist as if threatening to use it against Minato. "I am the strategist of Team Shigure, I will not be lectured by some brat!"</p><p>"I see now that you're a son of the old and rusted system. A system that orders a calf to eat a sheep or kill itself if it doesn't. What a terrible waste of both meat and milk…" Minato sighed. "Spyder-Wolf-san, advance a square forward."</p><p>"What are you doing? Why are you focusing on the left front?" Midare fussed. "You know that Sakura has any potential damage you can do on lockdown."</p><p>"Perhaps, but I will break this lockdown just to prove my point, now make your move, Midare-san." Minato replied with a stone-cold glare at the captain of the opposing team that made the leader of Team Black stumble back a pair of steps unwillingly."</p><p>"Mijin, step onto my space," Midare ordered. Minato focused his sight as he had not seen what would happen if two friendly pieces occupied a single space during the movement phase. The apparent result, after the emerald light show had concluded appeared to be that the two pieces simply traded places.</p><p>"Fleeing, Midare-san?" Minato taunted his opponent.</p><p>"I've come to realize that you've been quite clever in placing yourself into the leftmost corner – at the safest possible area. While it also renders you… Well… Cornered, if any notable pressure was to be applied on that side of the board, your position and the constant company of allied pieces renders putting such pressure quite difficult. I've decided to re-arrange my pieces a little bit, with all the recent developments in mind…" Midare grinned, having finally regained a sense of confidence after the recent blunders. Meiko looked over at Minato, wondering how their leader took that absolute stonewalling defense against his taunt. It did not appear from the outside that the boy fancied his opponent's sense of strategic forethought returning and substituting the loss of control and blind rage that had overtaken him earlier.</p><p>"Kotaro, step one space forward." Minato extended his hand, instructing his own teammate to take it even further into the vanguard, risking the integrity of his own team.</p><p>"He's an admirable little guy, isn't he?" Kiyomi's thoughts rung into Meiko's head.</p><p>"He's risking his own team, I'm not sure why but… If it's some attempt at bravado, it's misplaced." Meiko replied with a seed of worry rooted in her chest. She hated being an unremarkable piece, Minato had barely moved her and Meiko did not think she'd be all that useful if moved, honestly. "He has pawns for a reason, it's not necessary to place his own friends in danger while talking high and mighty about protecting everyone from being sacrificed."</p><p>"How unlike someone else we both know, huh?" Kiyomi chuckled, spreading waves of moderate glee. While the contents of her thoughts might have been taken as a bit on the offensive side, the vibes she spread with them were not really bitter at all. "In any case, what does it matter if he gets his team eliminated? Don't you think that the leader of this improvised version of shogi will have their team kicked to the boot anyway?"</p><p>"That's right!" Meiko's glare widened. "If Minato loses, his team will likely get eliminated anyway, that's the point of this stage, that means that his team is basically free pieces with no baggage to be moved around. If his team gets eliminated, or he is, the game will be over either way…"</p><p>"As I said… Remarkable kid." Kiyomi signaled on the mental link.</p><p>"He's Naruto's father, you know." Meiko smirked to herself.</p><p>"Well… I suppose his son takes a whole lot from his mother then…" Kiyomi cleared her throat while sending some more shady vibes back on the link.</p><p>"Heh, you've made a mistake in your childish persistence to break walls. You've placed your teammate right in Mujin's range, not only that but this Shino guy is also in my range!" Midare declared.</p><p>"Maybe so, but you would have to move Mujin first to use him, in which case he would no longer have Shino and Kotaro in his range." Minato pointed out in return.</p><p>Midare bit his tongue in frustration. What was even more frustrating – Mujin was absolutely useless in short-range because he had no close-range patterns for elimination. His cutting pattern laid two squares diagonally from his location as well as the square two squares ahead of him. The standard elimination pattern of the circle one square around one's own square was lost on this highly technical piece of the game.</p><p>"Naruto's clone, move in front of Ino." Midare instructed, moving one of Naruto's clone pieces to the left to protect Ino, or rather, to prepare and eliminate Shino next turn. It did not look like Minato could have prevented that elimination either but the captain of Team White did falter for a moment trying to come up with a way regardless.</p><p>"Hinata-san, please move one square forward." Minato instructed with a polite smile. "Let's hope that what you told me about your unique application of the Hyuuga Gentle Fist translates into this game as well."</p><p>Hinata nodded and stepped out in front, hoping that she would be able to protect her teammate if the need arose.</p><p>"What are you doing? You were in the process of breaking Midare's board lock on the left front. Why abandon that now?" Spyder-Wolf growled with a glare back at the team leader.</p><p>"I am protecting my pieces." Minato smiled.</p><p>"Shino is useless! You cannot move him. Nor can you attack with him!" Spyder-Wolf turned around, waving his six arms around with aggressive flails.</p><p>"Indeed it would be shameful to lose to such a poor strategist who drops his key strategies to protect useless pieces." Midare chuckled. "Now, Naruto's clone, go on and attack Shino! That should free Ino up to wreak long-range havoc on other pieces instead of soft-locking a very valuable piece. I assume that order you will obey?"</p><p>"You don't need to be such an asshole, you know." Naruto's clone squinted, mirroring the sour facial expression of the original and the other clone. A round, howling sphere formed in the boy's hand as he charged forward at Shino with it in hand. "Sorry, creepy bug guy, this is just a game anyway." He mumbled.</p><p>"What an interesting jutsu…" Minato noted to himself.</p><p>"Minato!" Spyder-Wolf roared, noticing that his team leader was lost in thought.</p><p>"Oh… Right… Hinata, let's see what those glowing orange pieces are all about!" Minato pointed at Hinata who truly had orange shades gleaming up in a radius of one square around her.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto's clone roared out while Hinata's Byakugan flared up in her eyes and her arms began rotating around her, emitting a constant stream of chakra from her palms, so sharp and precise that it formed extremely thin and sharp blades of pure chakra. The bladed protected sphere formed an improvised barrier that blasted Naruto's clone away before he could drive his Rasengan into Shino and dispelled the clone.</p><p>"That was incredible, Hinata-san, I have never seen such an application of the Gentle Fist before." Minato smiled. "You have protected your teammate, very well done!"</p><p>"Y-Yes but… If it is all the same… I would like to… Not attack the real Naruto…" Hinata blushed and looked away. It was crystal clear that she thought she asked for too much but Minato just nodded.</p><p>"I will have that in mind," he replied.</p><p>"If you are ever in a position of power, you will doom your village." Spyder-Wolf smacked his forehead with one of his thick arms.</p><p>"Hey, Midare, you've lost a piece on your own turn." Shigure, a member of Midare's own team objected. "What is your problem?"</p><p>"Naruto's clones weren't pieces per se. Once they are all gone, I can have Naruto create more. Instead, we have moved a very valuable piece from being surrounded by her peers and closer to a pointless and dead piece as well as figured out her ability. It might have cost us an actual piece if we were to figure out under any other circumstances, an ability to protect a piece from elimination and eliminate the attacking piece one square away is a frightening ability to be certain." Midare replied with some semblance of cool and calculation back to his voice.</p><p>"Hey, hey… Doesn't that make her piece invincible? How are we supposed to attack her if she just blocks and eliminates anything one square away from her?" Baiu a fellow teammate of Midare and Shigure expressed his concern.</p><p>"You misunderstand her ability, Baiu." Midare smiled while gesturing with his hands. This strategic battlefield truly has drawn out the excitement, the worry and all the other aspects of this strategist, it exposed his true self, in a way, and it was becoming more and more apparent with each outburst of his – he truly cared about this game in more ways than just it being a test for his team to overcome. He liked it. "Hinata does not just block any attack, she can merely protect a teammate of hers if they would be eliminated one piece away from her. In many ways, her ability is not too different from Sakura's except Hinata can also eliminate the attacking piece if it is within her range of protection whereas Sakura merely protects a piece."</p><p>"Well, I suppose that is quite situational… At least we're not the only ones packed with situational pieces on the board…" Baiu gave Mujin a mean glare.</p><p>"Hey, it's not my fault, man. Your teammate placed me ahead to form his lock." Mujin shrugged off the guilt.</p><p>"He is not entirely wrong, although, in my defense, I was not aware of Mujin's exact attacking pattern." Midare replied. He also moved one square to his left, replacing himself with Baiu.</p><p>"Spyder-Wolf, move one square forward and eliminate Mujin," Minato ordered.</p><p>"Have you forgotten?" Midare taunted, "Sakura will protect him from elimination."</p><p>Just as Midare stated, when Spyder-Wolf charged forward, pummeling Mujin with brutal and stiff shots from his six arms, Midare activated Sakura's ability and protected Mujin from elimination.</p><p>"Sajin, you said you are capable of remarkable chakra enhancements to your physical abilities, let's see what that entails on the board." Midare addressed his leftmost corner piece. Minato was caught unaware when two whole squares in front of Sajin lit up with green light and sent the Sunagakure ninja in a dash toward Spyder-Wolf. "Very well, it appears my gamble has paid off, eliminate Spyder-Wolf!" Midare ordered.</p><p>As instructed, Sajin delivered a barrage of blows that burst with faint blue light upon impact where the pent up chakra channeled throughout Sajin's entire body escaped his pores. Just like that, Spyder-Wolf got eliminated.</p><p>"You fool! Why did you do that!?" Spyder-Wolf was about ready to step back on board, run-up to his team leader and beat him up senseless.</p><p>"I'm… I'm sorry, I thought he would move Mujin to the side to make him usable again, I did not think Sajin could move two whole squares…" Minato shook his head donning a sad and apologetic expression. He gripped a kunai in his own hand and took a fighting stance. "I am ready to rectify that mistake though, I am known as a swift fighter myself, let us see how far I can move."</p><p>Just like that, the entire row in front of Minato lit up green, the entire row diagonally and the entire row to his right. While the entirety of Team White was taken aback by this revelation, Meiko managed to regain some semblance of sense and warn her leader before he charged out to eliminate Sajin.</p><p>"Stop!" she yelled out. "You'll lose the game if you do that."</p><p>"I must eliminate Sajin-san, I owe it to Spyder-Wolf-san." Minato replied.</p><p>"If you do, you'll eliminate Sajin, sure, but Sakura will be able to eliminate you." Meiko pointed out. She was not the most talented of Shogi players, she barely knew the basic rules and she had no idea how most of the pieces even moved around but she had observed this game enough to see that much – most close-range pieces, including Sakura, attacked one square in the range around them, meaning Sakura would hit diagonally to her upper left and eliminate Minato if he exposed himself this way.</p><p>"She is right. You can still make it up to Spyder-Wolf, how? Protect Jean-D and protect yourself." Shino supported Meiko's warning.</p><p>Minato growled unintelligibly and then somehow managed to overpower the instinct to charge out and avenge his teammate. He looked at Kushina and the redhead looked back at him, the two nodded to each other.</p><p>"Kushina, move left and eliminate Ino-san." Minato instructed with a voice that still suggested some moderate struggle with his own instincts and budding responsibility as a leader to avenge his fallen pieces.</p><p>"You've got it, ya know!" Kushina pumped her fist in front of her and then took a lively step to the side, then smacked her palms together like before. A pair of golden chains erupted from underground, eliminating Ino, Naruto's third clone and the newbie to Team Phobos who replaced Stea, a cute young lady with banana-colored hair.</p><p>"Double elimination, are you kidding me!?" Midare pulled on his lower jaw with his hands. "And you're in range to eliminate her again!" he looked at Naruto. "Just make more clones and shove that howling chakra sphere into her face! She's wiped out almost all of our front row!"</p><p>"It's no use, Midare, let me take care of her." Shigure's lower lip twitched with a sense of cold, impending dread as he looked at Kushina with his only open eye while the other one remained blinded by a long scar, one of a pair stretching out from his lower chin to his eye. Even Kushina, a heated tomboy that she was, shivered when such a cool and death-inducing stare declared war on her.</p><p>"Okay, Shigure, shift places with Naruto." Midare shook his head, feeling the loss of control over the board while that accursed redhead remained on it.</p><p>"Sorry, momma's boy, taking you over." The scarred right side of Shigure's face lifted upward in a smirk-like arc as he stepped forward one square and took over the square where Naruto stood, shifting the unpredictable ninja back to his own spot in the back.</p><p>The squares to the left and right diagonally lit up in front of Shigure, as well as one two squares ahead of him. Just one square short in the range from where he could have eliminated Kushina.</p><p>"Oh well… There's always the next turn…" Shigure shrugged with the same smirk that made his target feel uneasy unless they were a monster on a similar caliber or even greater.</p><p>"Let me at him, Minato, ya know!" Kushina took a bold step forward with her fist clutched out in front of her. "I wanna go at him and pound his face up!"</p><p>"Settle down, Kushina, there's no way for you to eliminate him, next turn he'll move forward and take you out unless I move you out of the way. Even if you move forward yourself…" Minato stopped all of a sudden, realizing that Kushina may just have had a fighting chance.</p><p>"Come on, do it!" Kiba taunted his own team leader from the back row. "This duel between pieces is gonna be so hype that I wanna see it!" he could not hide his fangs behind his excited smirk.</p><p>"Fine, there might be hope for you to get in position but… You're too valuable to waste in some senseless duel between two pieces. This is a board game and there are more factors than just ambition to beat someone up. You've trusted me up to now to hold you back from your instinct to bully people, let me do so now too." Minato tried reasoning with his teammate some more.</p><p>"Damn it, you pale-skin pansy! Shut the hell up and let your future wife kick the shit out of that Amegakure dweeb!" Spyder-Wolf yelled out from off the board.</p><p>Minato sighed in defeat. He felt far too guilty with his misplay to blatantly ignore Kushina's wishes as well as those of Spyder-Wolf. Plus, Kushina was far too scary to deal with after the game if he denied her this request.</p><p>"Fine, Kushina, take a step forward." Minato instructed.</p><p>"Are you an idio…" Midare was about to taunt his opponent about the fact that Kushina had just entered Shigure's range but then he remembered that he still needed to move Shigure, which meant that if he moved Shigure, Kushina would remain out of his range. "Alright… This here is a duel then, Shigure against Kushina!"</p><p>The most impractical game within a game was now on!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0602"><h2>602. The Kind Of Heroes We Are</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Think hard on this one, Midare." Shigure vexed his teammate with a comment. "It's not that I'm worried about the survival of our team, it's just that I don't want to lose to some tomboy girl."</p><p>"Tough man, ya know, walks out into a duel and then cries to his teammate about how unfair it is!" Kushina leaned forward with her arms placed behind her and her heavy fists weighing her entire body down with her head forced to serve as the balancing counterweight of her pose.</p><p>"We both know very well that was not what I was intending with that comment. It's just that facing off with you on a board game field is less than my desired way of taking you out, then again, it is the only one where there might be any intrigue and entertainment at all so it'll do." Shigure was quit with his wit even if his manner of speaking was a tad slow and on the cool and intimidating side.</p><p>"Shigure, switch places with Doma on the right." Midare instructed and his teammate moved with full trust behind Midare's strategy. Shigure moved in a most curious manner, he was slow, sluggish even, yet he appeared to have utter confidence in every half-assed motion he made. Kushina followed Shigure with her eyes without speaking up which, judging by Kotaro's expression of surprise, was new to her.</p><p>Minato raised his eyebrow in confusion, it took him a moment of tranquility before he realized that Shigure did not, in fact, walk into elimination range and that he had made the same mistake that Midare made previously by forgetting the mandatory movement phase that must have preceded an elimination. What he did do, however, was trap Minato.</p><p>There was now absolutely no way of moving Kushina without placing her in Shigure's range, which, obviously, was not all that, however, with so many other pieces all over the board and so tightly grouped on the right side, it would have been too complicated to try and predict all the possible switches in positions and all the possible elimination patterns that might come into play.</p><p>"Well? Aren't you going to chase Shigure?" Midare smiled at Minato, peeking at the opposing team leader over the shoulder of Sakura and Mujin all queued up in front of him.</p><p>Over the duration of his brief examination of the battlefield, Minato glanced at Sen, a girl from Team Shira of Sunagakure from another universe who stood behind Shigure. The team leader likely tried sizing her up, try and guess what sort of abilities she possessed. Sen was a fairly tall and slender young lady with a messy ponytail and strings of hair branching out of it in all directions. All that Minato could have possibly taken from this basic examination was that the Sunagakure kunoichi was no taijutsu expert.</p><p>"You shouldn't worry about the other pieces." Midare smirked with an almost vermin-like chuckle following it. "Shigure is the only one I will be using until your girlfriend is out of the picture."</p><p>"She's… Not…!" Minato raised his voice to object before Meiko's voice, of all possible voices, calmed him down.</p><p>"He's riling you up, he's trying to force you to make a mistake." Meiko tried helping her team leader. She may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed but she's been in enough battlefield tangos to know where this one was leading.</p><p>"As I was trying to say before you agitated me with your baseless assumptions…" Minato closed his eyes and sunk his nose. "I think that it is exactly what I should be worrying about. That's because you're misleading what this duel means. Whereas I am using it for the purpose I have expressed – to have Kushina settle her differences with Shigure-san, you are using their duel to set up the board more to your liking. Now, after the game's heating up, you've noticed a few mistakes in your positions and you're using your own teammate as a ploy to reposition them. Am I correct?"</p><p>"Who knows?" Midare shrugged. "Make your move."</p><p>"Very well. Kushina, move one square to your left." Minato instructed.</p><p>"That's the exact opposite to where the enemy is, ya know!" Kushina complained.</p><p>"It is, it is also where you will be in a position to eliminate two enemies next move, unless, of course, Midare avoids it somehow." Minato nodded.</p><p>Midare laughed out, breaking up hard and proper. "What an opponent. Why bother asking if you will have your actions ask the very same question?"</p><p>"His actions?" Baiu wondered from a square to the right from Midare's square, looking at the board from Minato's perspective.</p><p>"Yes. Can't you see? Minato is trying to guide me into revealing my grand plan to him. If I move Shigure to pursue and take on Kushina, I will express my utmost honesty and devotion to the Shigure versus Kushina duel. If I go out of my way to protect the other pieces, Minato will know that I am merely setting the board up and don't care about the duel whatsoever. Such brashness and intellect… I'd have never guessed looking at such a snobby-looking brat." Midare shook his head, his grin never leaving his face. It just showed how much Minato's move entranced Midare still.</p><p>"No way, I ain't movin' there, ya know!" Kushina's eyes whited out before her slithering hair hid the face of the young woman in shade and her eyes began gleaming red from a most bizarre and, frankly, a tad illogical way of light hitting her face. She pressed her knuckles onto her sides. "I want to take on that guy and cave his face in, not waltz around the place."</p><p>"Wow…" Kiyomi smacked her face.</p><p>"Like mother, like son, I guess…" Meiko mumbled to herself.</p><p>"Disobedience misplay!" the cybernetic voice blared out again, lighting up the square underneath Kushina red. Kushina looked down and then back up at Shigure, on the other side of the battlefield, blushing in an embarrassment of what she had done.</p><p>"K-Kushina! No!" Minato yelled out with a glazed expression as if his teammate would actually die if the following attack hit. The Red-Hot Habanero may have been more on the outraging side than one to stop and examine her situation, that was what Minato and Kotaro were for, either way, had she taken more time to examine the battlefield, she'd have realized that she was as good as eliminated.</p><p>"Shigure, switch with Doma again and eliminate Kushina, you asked and your leader will provide…" Midare ordered but not without wasting a perfect opportunity to gloat.</p><p>"Don't give yourself too much credit now, it wasn't your achievement that the kid's so stupid." Shigure flipped the toothpick in his mouth, switching to a drier side of the mouthpiece before switching back with Doma and throwing out the three large rods he had on his back into the air.</p><p>The trio of rods shred out and spread their tops, revealing themselves to be umbrellas. The umbrellas positioned themselves exactly above the squares where Shigure's elimination pattern was. Minato tried busting through his square and dash to Kushina, his eyes were changed from their usual coolness, they were so blanked out in stress and shock that his pupils seemed to have completely whited out from where Meiko was watching them, then again, she did see Kushina's eyes shoot out red from them just a moment earlier…</p><p>"Senbon Shower!" Shigure smirked while snapping his fingers and having all of the umbrellas skewer the squares beneath them with needles that seemed four times the length of a toothpick and, possibly, twice thicker, all while being made of fine steel meant to be used by ninja in combat.</p><p>"My answer to your folly, Minato, is that you get nothing – you have no idea what my plans are and you get to see your precious teammate bite it off my field. If I could eliminate the twerp twice over how much trouble she caused me, I would, trust me." Midare nodded at Shigure with acknowledgment before turning back to the board.</p><p>Minato stood there still shocked and lifeless, had it not been for the fact he was on his own two feet, of course. His hands trembled once or twice, maybe it was seeing his treasured teammate supposedly die in battle, as the simulation suggested, maybe it was an easily avoidable loss of an invaluable asset that eliminated so many of his opponent's pieces that distressed him, maybe a little bit of both.</p><p>"Kiba-san, switch places with Meiko-san." He muttered, almost just under his nose but due to the deafening silence around the side of the board, the entirety of Team White that felt it for their agitated leader heard his orders.</p><p>"You sure about that? The blacksmith sister does have rocket boots so she's likely capable of moving multiple spaces at once." Kiba showed his fangs but in a no way off-setting way.</p><p>"I will not be disobeyed again." Minato sulked, spreading a frightening amount of presence and some authoritative intent that seemed not at all alike to the Killing Intent, yet seemed very Intent-like. The young man then lifted his face up and looked at Kushina with a smile.</p><p>"Sorry you got eliminated, I'll make this up for you." He said.</p><p>"Minato… I'm so so… I mean… You better, ya know!" Kushina was about to apologize to her team leader and her teammate, overflowing with regret but then she mirrored his near-instant recuperation and clenched her fist up in front of her face with a feisty smirk.</p><p>Kiba walked one square forward, exchanging his position with Meiko. The squares in the range of three squares ahead and to each side: left, right and back, lit up under Kiba's feet. That was some impressive elimination range but it also placed Kiba as a sort of suicidal figure. He had awesome ability to eliminate other pieces but he had limited mobility potential making him capable of diving deep within enemy lines but not too great of getting himself out of there.</p><p>"Shigure, move one square towards me." Midare instructed his new key piece.</p><p>"He's aiming for Shino and Hinata, why? Is he not aware that Hinata can protect a figure?" Minato mumbled to himself, scratching his chin. "Oh…" A realization hit him all of a sudden.</p><p>"Figured something out, captain?" Senka Sazanami looked at Minato with an inquisitive glare.</p><p>"Yeah, how to break Sakura-san's lock, maybe even how to win." Minato nodded with a polite smile. "I must admit, Midare-san is quite clever, had he not figured it out first and betrayed his intentions, I'd have not figured it out at all…"</p><p>"Portorigus-san, move one square forward." Minato looked at the neglected close-range piece at the right end of his board. The overly trained and defined for his age young man with a bandaged lump of iron on his back stepped forward and looked onward at the board he was about to enter into.</p><p>"Shigure, one step forward," Midare ordered and Shigure obeyed.</p><p>"Kotaro, one step to the right." Minato smiled, Midare's eyebrows tilted upward. "That's right, Midare-san, I still noticed that you're looking for a perfect chance to use Sajin to eliminate Kotaro. Ever since eliminating Spyder-Wolf-san he was in a position to do so but you did not do it because pieces that move multiple squares are rare and if you used it to eliminate Kotaro, you'd have left him open for my own elimination. An elimination that would also leave me quite safe in my own side of the board too so it would be a bad trade on your part."</p><p>"Sajin is hardly the focus here, you fool!" Midare raised his fist up in irritation. "Shigure, one step forward and eliminate Hinata and Shino!"</p><p>"Aye, aye, cap," Shigure smirked, making a smug expression with his one-eyed face as he stepped forward and tossed a pair of umbrellas into the air again. "Senbon Shower!" he roared out, causing the spinning and airborne umbrellas to spray large and quite deadly needles from their embrace.</p><p>"Hinata-san, please protect Shino," Minato asked with a grim tone to his voice.</p><p>"Oh, so you already know what will happen?" Midare smirked.</p><p>The needles showering Shino bounced off but the ones heading for Hinata hit their mark, eliminating her from the board. Minato appeared stricken by this development but it was clear to anyone observing the team leader that he has been aware of this goal of Midare's from the beginning and yet he allowed it to happen, meaning he had a hidden ace of his own tucked somewhere.</p><p>"I don't get it, why did Hinata get eliminated?" Kiba raised his eyebrow, showing his fangs as he spoke.</p><p>"A piece with protective properties can only protect another piece but not themselves. It can protect multiple allies but not an ally and themselves. There is no way that Sakura from the enemy team could be able to heal herself and prevent her own elimination, there cannot be invulnerable pieces in this game. Everyone's purpose is one they can provide to their team, not in how powerful they are individually." Portorigus of Team Rutile explained with a polite tone from Kiba's right.</p><p>"Shino-san, move one square forward and eliminate Baiu-san and Mijin-san," Minato revealed an ace of his own, one that Midare appeared to be objecting to.</p><p>"What are you talking about, Shino can't mo…" Midare was about to object before the creepier member of Team Kurenai verily desiring payback for the elimination of his valued teammate who had protected him in this game already when he was down and almost out proved the leader of Team Black wrong. "Ino…"</p><p>"That's right, Ino-san is no longer on the board, which means there is no reason for Shino-san to remain stunned. He had been free for a while now and you've failed to notice because you'd have written him off as a useless piece ever since your haphazard elimination attempt." Minato scolded his opponent for his approach to battle strategy.</p><p>"Tsk. I can't even punch him in the face either… My elimination pattern is a bit too complex for this." Shigure growled while he stood on Shino right. Any other piece with a simple elimination pattern of one square around them would have done the deed but now Shino was left to his own again.</p><p>"Even more, Midare-san, this mistake did not just cost you these two pieces – it cost you the whole game. Right now Shino-san is in position to threaten your survival next turn, meaning you must move out of his way. If you do, however, you will lose Sakura-san too, because of the very same way of breaking protection loops that you've shown me." Minato pointed at Midare's position on the board. The leader of Team Black let himself ponder for a little while about the best following cause of action.</p><p>"Come on, Midare-san, you can still save so many teams. Just surrender now and all these teams on your board will stay in the exam. Any failures they will suffer will be because of their own shortcomings, not because they were sacrificed by a capricious leader in a human board game that robs them of any agency." Minato tried reasoning with his opponent.</p><p>"As if I'd ever do that," Midare showed his teeth as both an expression of his fury as well as a sign of defiance. He moved to the leftmost corner of his side of the board, leaving Sakura for elimination. "You talked a big talk about being a better person, a bigger leader. Let's see what all that talk is worth now, shall we? If you take Shino down this path, you'll eliminate Sakura and Team Asuma at the same time, then, I will have Mujin eliminate Shino too. You'll be sacrificing a piece for the sake of meaningless bloodlust, for the eradication of a team from the exams in, as you put it, a human board game that robs them of any agency."</p><p>Minato began to shrivel up. He looked over the board, wondering for any better way to let this play out. It was true that if he moved Shino and had him break Sakura's lock by eliminating her and removing Team Asuma from the exams, he'd also doom Shino and do exactly what he said he'd never do – use a ninja in his own command as a sacrificial piece for a better board. This was exactly what the game of shogi was meant to be like…</p><p>"You're right. Ahead of me lies a difficult choice. One that true leaders in the battlefield need to make. Eliminating a team from the board is akin to the genocide of a clan, removal of something unique and bound together from the equation and to do that I need to send my own man to die." Minato replied, looking down. It did not take a grand psychologist to read into his expression and realize that he hated everything about this idea. Let alone the fact that he'd only have Kiba from Team Kurenai left, a piece that was defined by how amazing it was for sacrificial, all-in plays. Letting Shino get eliminated this way would mean that Kiba was as good as useless without sending him to get eliminated too.</p><p>"Kiba, move one square to the left and eliminate Shigure," Minato ordered. Shino was so taken aback by what he was as a necessary move not being made that he looked back at the man he studied since the Ninja Academy days as the Fourth Hokage.</p><p>Kiba hopped a square to the left, accompanied by his canine companion and then leaped onto Akamaru's back. The two erupted into a pair of rotating jets that spiraled one around the other and smashed right into Shigure's square. This was not just an elimination move, it also placed Kiba and Akamaru onto the square where they've eliminated the enemy which was a fairly unique feature of this figure.</p><p>"Tsk… Midare…" Shigure growled as an intense shine warped him off the board, next to his Team Black comrades.</p><p>"Hmph… I guess at the end of the day, you didn't have the balls to make the tough choices, still, we all sort of expected you to be able to do what's necessary, despite your childish talk." Midare smirked and postured high and mighty as if he stood over his opponent and carried a tremendous advantage over him. In fact, after Kushina's rampages and Shino's display, he was quite a few pieces down and cornered, yet still pressed to continue this exercise in futility.</p><p>"You say that Minato doesn't have what it takes but actually he has something every leader could use a bit more of – he's true to his word. He said he wouldn't treat us as sacrificial pieces in his plans and he didn't, no matter how convenient it would have been for him short-term!" Kiba gestured with his pointy claws at his team leader. Naruto on the opposite side of the board nodded, looking at the young man he not too long ago found out to be his father with pride he had never really felt before.</p><p>Knowing that the man was amazing because everybody said so and because he was the Fourth Hokage was one thing, finding out exactly why he was so amazing and seeing how he would come to achieve all the heights he'd reach in the future was a whole different thing entirely.</p>
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<a name="section0603"><h2>603. Checkmate!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Naruto, make your clones," Midare ordered. Naruto stood around and stepped about for a while before seeing that there was nothing he disagreed with in his leader's decision. Given the excessive amount of flack that Midare was giving Minato, Naruto may have been justified in not liking the guy too much.</p><p>"Huh… Why are these clones positioned so weirdly!?" Kiba bore his fangs, pointing at one Naruto clone positioned one square to his right, one right in front of him and one in front of Shino – all of them just one square away from the pair.</p><p>"Why? Because Doma is blocking the path for the normal clone pattern, meaning that the clone line is pushed one square to the left. Why did the clones not switch with Doma's position? Because they're not treated like actual figures, more like… Tokens." Shino explained his best suspicions about why Naruto's clones took their strange positions.</p><p>"Minato-san…" Sazanami Senka pointed at the curious positioning of the clones. Minato's look hardened and turned grim.</p><p>Midare had trapped him. Now he absolutely must have sacrificed a piece, if he moved Kiba – Shino would have gotten cut. If he moved Shino – Kiba would have been cut. Options and possible moves raced through Minato's head but, with a lively shake of his golden locks, the young man dismissed every single one. If he moved Shino to the left he might have threatened both of the dangerous clones at once but then Mujin would have cut Shino – it would have been a sacrificial trade regardless.</p><p>"What's the matter? Stumped? We might have all the time in the world for you to think this through but I'd rather not. They should have introduced a turn clock or something…" Midare shrugged with a smug grin, he felt quite proud of managing to corner Minato like this out of the blue, in a situation he did not plan or set up for specifically but one that came to him once the pieces arranged themselves.</p><p>"You must sacrifice me, Minato-san, why? Because that's the optimal move." Shino looked back at Minato. "If you move to cut Sakura, I can break the left side lock for you, giving the breakthrough you need. Any ninja would be proud and their lineage honored to provide that kind of opening for their commander."</p><p>"What's the point of such honors? I'd much rather have the ninja stick around." Minato grumbled, realizing as more and more time passed that in the current situation it was but childish dreams. This game felt in a lot of ways crueler than real life. This game had iron-tight rules that could not be broken. In real life a ninja might have pushed through their limits, surprised their commander, their enemy and themselves and pulled off the impossible, hell, Minato had done it himself and he had not even made it to chuunin yet. Here… When two figures at once were cornered – there was just nothing to do. One of them would get cut.</p><p>"This is not the same as last turn. Why? The last turn you would have sacrificed me for the sake of utility and superior battlefield positioning, now you can give me a chance to break through the field for you and save my comrade in the process. You must let me do it, commander, why? Because I'm not asking for permission to be a pawn, I'm asking for permission to be a hero." Shino looked on ahead, nobody knew what the luster of his eyes underneath those tinted, black shades was or what the orbs were gazing at truly. Kiba and Minato both gawked at the adamantine Aburame before Minato sighed and caved.</p><p>"Shino, move one square to the left – eliminate Sakura-san." Minato requested. Shino neither hesitated nor moved without full, unchained belief in what he was doing. The Aburame moved to the left and then extended his hands out from his pockets, pulling out buzzing masses of black insects that swarmed in the shape of the sphere and surrounded Sakura, forcing the medical kunoichi to grunt and cover herself up only to find herself teleported off the board before the insects could deal any actual damage to her.</p><p>"Mujin, cut Shino," Midare ordered, the visor-wearing Sunagakure genin placed a satchel on the ground and then covered his ears. A cascade of explosions erupted in a line leading up diagonally right up to Shino and removed the Aburame off the board in an instant.</p><p>"Kiba-san, move back," Minato ordered, now that both Hinata and Shino were eliminated, the future Fourth would do everything in his power to keep Kiba safe.</p><p>"Heh, pulling back, are you? I'm almost tempted to sacrifice victory just to eliminate the guy and spite you." Midare chuckled into his hand.</p><p>"I'd just focus on winning if I were you. You are struggling with that as you are." Minato was quick to snap back at his opponent. "The only reason why I satisfied Shino-san's request was that he asked for a chance to protect both Team White and his teammate. If I let Kiba get eliminated, that would all go to waste."</p><p>"Just surrender already and stop wasting your own team's time." Gasco thundered from the other side of the board. The gentle and stone-cool giant of Team Phobos had remained calm and silent for the entire match but now he called for his own leader to surrender. "This game is over and Kotaro Uchiha is the reason why. You've played well but you've failed to utilize your right flank. I, Sen and Doma remain untouched."</p><p>Midare glared over the board once more. It was true that he was running out of figures, he could see that much but it was not until he looked and focused really hard on Kotaro Uchiha's position in regard to the rest of his figures that he saw what Gasco suggested – Kotaro was perfectly positioned to eliminate anyone on his side of the board, bust down any barriers between Midare himself and the enemy team.</p><p>One step to the left and Kotaro could eliminate Mujin, then Sajin… Midare would be left exposed. That would be when Minato would send all of his remaining pieces after him. Midare's movement options were limited, the odds were he would get pinned down eventually.</p><p>"Thanks. I'd have never noticed if it wasn't for your call." Midare's face brightened. "I can use a good lieutenant in this game and you're bright enough to fulfill that position, it seems."</p><p>"Say whatever you will…" Gasco placed his arms over his chest and looked away.</p><p>"Mujin, move one square forward and eliminate Kotaro Uchiha." Midare pointed.</p><p>"Damn! If you didn't have to move me to safety, your teammate wouldn't have gotten himself booted off-board and you'd have been able to win, just like that bald giant said." Kiba pulled on his collar. "Now I kinda want to make it up for you."</p><p>"Absolutely not," Minato shook his head. "The way I play may not be perfect in terms of efficiency but I will stick to it until the end. You entrusted your fates in this exam to me and I intend on playing my role and living up to that tremendous responsibility."</p><p>"You talk big but you've just lost a handful of useful, long-range figures. How about you actually make your move?" Midare taunted Minato who stonewalled the sharp glare of his opponent.</p><p>"Kiba-san, take a step to the left," Minato said.</p><p>"Huh? Pulling at straws here… I can't believe you're still fighting with the sole survivor of Team Kurenai, so much for the legendary "Nice-Guy Captain" you've turned out to be…" Midare taunted his opponent. "Not only that, but Kiba's just wandering about the board without an endgame plan in mind. Shameful display!"</p><p>"I wonder about that…" Minato smirked, his blonde hair conveniently slipped over the front of his face to conceal his smart-ass look.</p><p>"Fine, you've exposed yourself by wiping your front row clean, now I'll just send my pawn brigade after you. Just try not to make a mistake with those insane movement capabilities of yours…" Midare smiled back, albeit with a much more transparent bluff to his grimace as his eyes twitched and quivered in the all too familiar fear of making a mistake.</p><p>"Doma, move one square forward. Let's just see what Minato has planned for his shocking endgame scenario." Midare looked at the farther, right side of his board.</p><p>"Senka, move one square forward." Minato extended his finger to show the boy to his right in the direction he was meant to move to.</p><p>"Oh, such speed of decision, yes, we're truly playing some ninja shogi now!" Midare clapped his hands and cracked his fingers. "Naruto Clone No. 1, move one square forward."</p><p>"Move one square back, Kiba-san." Minato looked a bit vexed by the fact that Midare moved his Naruto clones and gunned for Kiba this hard.</p><p>"You can only run so far, Naruto Clone No. 1, move one square forward!" Midare pointed for his clone to keep chasing Kiba. It appeared as if though Midare truly was a man possessed with the idea of eliminating the final member of Team Kurenai as if that and not victory was his mission. Then again, he was still playing to his strengths and Minato's weaknesses by attempting to force Minato to make a mistake in order to protect his pieces.</p><p>"Kiba-san, one square back," Minato ordered with a calm face. The curious strategy of entertaining this perpetual game of cat and mouse confused Meiko but this might have been the reason why she was not the one in charge.</p><p>"Heh, how stupid do you think I am?" Midare shrugged. "If I send the clone after Kiba there, you'd just have Kiba take him out without putting himself in too much of a predicament."</p><p>"You aren't stupid at all, in fact, you're a fine strategist, your flaw, however, is that you're prone to letting your emotions doing the thinking instead of thinking things through a second time," Minato replied. For someone as young as him, the boy had a strict face of a mentor already, it did not take a master of psychology to deduce that it would only cause Midare more outbursts.</p><p>"Gasco, one square forward." Midare growled.</p><p>"He's moving the Team Phobos guys…" Meiko muttered to herself. "What could he be planning now of all times?"</p><p>"Senka-san, move one square diagonally up and to the right." Minato moved one of the three Senka brothers that he kept by his side for the most of the game. While Minato was winning in terms of remaining pieces, he left himself all open with most remaining pieces requiring at least two moves to get anywhere near where they could have protected him. "Now, cut Mujin."</p><p>"Wait, what?" Midare dropped his jaw after seeing red squares light up around Senka Sazanami as well as four additional squares diagonally in each corner further from the one square range. Sazanami removed a scroll from his side pouch and opened it on the ground, summoning a source of water. The Senka brother then weaved a pair of hand seals.</p><p>"Water Assault Jutsu!" he chanted as the water flowed in a more controlled manner, creating whips and tendrils to smack at the enemy, removing Mujin from the game.</p><p>"Dammit, I won't give up, I won't!" Midare cursed as he moved one square to the right.</p><p>Minato blurred and popped right behind Sajin, five squares ahead of him, holstering a modified, custom made kunai blade. Not unlike Kiba, Minato's cutting pattern also placed him in the place of the figure he cut instead of keeping him in his old square.</p><p>"I see, so that's why Midare moved." Kiba scratched his head. "He knew that Minato would be coming after him next."</p><p>"Yeah, he's a slippery bastard," Jean-D exclaimed in frustration. "He's gonna wriggle as much as he will need to in order to avoid defeat."</p><p>"No, it is indeed the scoundrel that has cornered our captain." Portorigus of Team Rutile cleared his throat. "He has placed himself and Minato in a precarious position, now Minato cannot pursue him without exposing himself to removal. If he moves sideways to confront Midare, either Midare or Naruto's clone will eliminate him next turn. Minato is cornered."</p><p>"He is, but he is cornered on the enemy side of the board. He established control, it's a bold statement." Meiko pointed out. She was sort of beginning to understand this game just when it was approaching its finishing stages.</p><p>"Naruto Clone No. 2, move one square forward!" Midare grinned, feeling safe now that he has cornered Minato's unparalleled movement potential. He was thinking the Team White leader pinned down now.</p><p>"Sazanami-san, one step forward, eliminate Naruto's clone No. 1." Minato calmly moved his pieces around from the enemy side of the board. While Midare may have felt safe, just like he did when he had Shino stunned with Ino's skill to the point where he forgot the piece even existed, Minato knew better and waited for the board to open up and for his decisive chance to strike.</p><p>"Naruto Clone No. 3, one square forward." Midare pointed.</p><p>"This is over. No matter where you move us, Minato will keep moving Sazanami Senka to eliminate them at the halfway point – it was a genius move to place young Senka in the center of the board, costing him a few turns for this impressive lock." Gasco once more thundered at his leader. Unlike last time, when it was meant as a warning of a dangerous piece being placed on a close square with the potential to ruin all of the team's plans, this time it may have actually meant a confirmation of defeat.</p><p>"Sazanami-san, one square to the right, eliminate Naruto Clone No. 2." Minato confirmed Gasco's warning by having Sazanami Senka continue his rampage at the equator of the board.</p><p>"That is amazing!" Corot of Team Rutile cheered with her fist shooting out in the sky and her feet throwing her light frame about out of joy. "Are you this amazing too?" she turned at Maki Senka, one of the two remaining Senka Brothers.</p><p>"Well… I can't say yet. I think brother's moves were a surprise to Minato too…" Maki Senka brushed the back of his head with a blush to his cheeks.</p><p>"Naruto Clone No. 3, move one square to the left," Midare commanded.</p><p>"The left?" Doma of Team Phobos wondered. "Is he trying to avoid having the clone removed off the board like that?"</p><p>"He's under the false belief that Senka won't have answers for that, given how he has to move in order to attack, so if he enters the elimination pattern willingly, Senka will have to move in order to eliminate the clone. Still… Our leader underestimated the fact that… Well…" Gasco shrugged.</p><p>"Sazanami Senka, move one square forward and eliminate Naruto Clone No. 3," Minato ordered.</p><p>"Hey… Don't just call me by my last name like that, baldy, it's rude." Sazanami Senka squinted with ire at Gasco who just stood there, lumbering with his hulking, cloaked frame and his eyes closed, allowing his impressive chakra sensory to do the perception work.</p><p>"You've only removed a bunch of clones. Don't think this is over!" Midare growled with his fist shaking at Minato, the two leaders were almost close enough for the fist to actually invade Minato's personal space.</p><p>"Enough of your delusions!" Gasco finally opened his eyes. Meiko quivered, this may have been the first time that she saw this frightening giant raise his voice like that and, given his composed nature, whenever he did raise his voice – it was frightening and nothing if not effective.</p><p>"What's that?" Midare turned to Gasco.</p><p>"You've lost. We will not move one square now, even if you order us. We won't let you eliminate us from the game just because you can't accept the fact you've lost." Gasco declared, even though he had not negotiated that with the other members of the team, they've all seemed in agreement, some because Gasco just looked too scary for them to disobey, others because they agreed with him.</p><p>"You… Treasonous… Bastards…" Midare ground his teeth and thrashed about. "Fine… I surrender."</p><p>Just like that, the white and black glow of the board switched off with Musha's face appearing on the screen with a friendly wink.</p><p>"Wow, took you guys a while. Here are the teams that pass on to the next round: Team Shira, Team Phobos, Team Hokage, Team Nimbus, Team Kurenai, Team Jiraiya, Three Senka Brothers, and Team Rutile. Congratulations. By the way, you could have all made it if you surrendered immediately and did not take part in the game." Musha winked as a cube materialized in the hands of Sen of Team Shira, Gasco of Team Phobos, Naruto of Team Hokage, Jean-D of Team Nimbus, Kiba of Team Kurenai, Minato of Team Jiraiya, Maki Senka of the Three Senka Brothers and Portorigus of Team Rutile.</p><p>"Wait… What did she mean?" Corot of Team Rutile wondered, glaring at the white cube rotating in her teammate's hand.</p><p>"I see…" Kiyomi scratched her chin. "It makes sense. Ninja are those that go underneath the underneath, right? You guys were told that the next trial is to play this board game but you didn't consider the option of surrendering before anybody got eliminated. Going underneath the underneath."</p><p>"I see, we have always assumed that the losing team of the leader would be one that got eliminated and each leader wanted to protect their own, so much so that they've risked playing this game and eliminating everyone but their own team. I guess we should have taken the fact that only a team without any of their members onboard got eliminated more seriously." Minato at last found it in himself to smile with more energy, now that he has risen above the responsibility placed on him and pulled Team White through. Most of them, at least…</p><p>"H-Hey…" Naruto ran up to Minato and Kushina who were busy congratulating each other but, before he could speak up, Kiyomi grabbed his earlobe and dragged him out of the trial room. After the cubes on the wall shifted and made way to enter the other, randomized room, she whispered into Naruto's ear.</p><p>"There's nothing more like a romantic mood killer than a guy older than you running up to you and telling you he's your son from the future and you must absolutely hook up because it's your destiny."</p>
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<a name="section0604"><h2>604. Chuunin Exam Murder Mystery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I'm really proud of you guys, somehow you've managed to avoid elimination without me," Kiyomi smiled while leaning at Naruto who, knowing full-well that this portrayed niceness of his team leader couldn't have led to anything positive for him, looked wary.</p><p>"You're lucky that the staff didn't count your fainting as "getting hurt" and we didn't get eliminated because of it." Meiko crossed her arms.</p><p>"Why would they, nothing got hurt…" Kiyomi shrugged with a healthy blush to her cheeks, stemming from the background that caused her blackout.</p><p>"Except your pride and your rep as a team leader, you know," Naruto squinted at the blonde. "I've never even seen Sexy Jutsu working on any girls, I didn't even modify it in any way. It did give me some ideas though…"</p><p>"Now who's the perverted one!" Kiyomi flared firestorms from her mad eyes back at Naruto, the two clashed glares. Meiko sighed. Somehow she had managed to not get into the middle of their team's little feud despite usually being the most out of the loop and vigorous of the bunch she found herself in.</p><p>"What a ripoff that last challenge… So much time wasted, so many people lost over just one cube…" Kiyomi extended her hand, allowing three cubes to form in her hand, playfully rotating around one another in harmony as if some supernatural force dictated their default, floaty behavior. Once the Yamanaka closed her fist, the cubes dispersed into a blizzard of smaller, dust-sized cubes.</p><p>"That's how all challenges are going to work. No matter how many cubes we or any other team has, we can only gain one." Meiko sighed while looking up and at a curious collection of glass containers with freaky mannequins inside. Whatever this scene from a horror movie was, it would be the essential ingredient of their next challenge.</p><p>All eight of the mannequins were standing in different, wild poses inside glass cages. The rightmost one was a tall and plump humanoid figure with reptilian head and slithering tongue, a ground-reaching bunch of red-hair that was going absolutely berserk without much input from her mistress and at least six visible arms while malformed faces stretched all over the reptilian woman's body. The woman donned a dress that refused to cover her upper front, not that it was any cause for that much embarrassment as the woman's chest appeared elevated though lacked any profound sexual features to it, manifesting itself a pair of lifeless lumps without the usual elegance and flair of the feminine forms.</p><p>The second one was perhaps genderless, its entire body was that of a stiff cobra snake with vague humanoid shapes and extended hands making up the creature's neck ribs. Instead of the impressive ribbon that the king of venomous snakes would have possessed, a pair of gaunt and half-rotten hands extended from the side with cloth tissue for sleeves torn, burnt up and dirty frozen in mid-motion.</p><p>The third one stood as an ordinary, attractive woman up until her neck, from which point on her face refused to obtain any signature features of an ordinary human, opting instead for a round and oversized mouth and teeth too moldy, noxious and few to nibble on its desired food category, the only category that frightening nightmare-fuel such as those plastic entities could have eaten.</p><p>The fourth was one with normal facial features for once, sadly, those features were located all across its core as it was missing its head. Instead of a loincloth to cover up the plastic and non-existent extremities, there were long and greasy strands of hair that were on the wrong body area to be categorized as "facial hair" even if their purpose likely matched that of a beard. As if these curious features weren't enough, the fourth mannequin also had its mouth shaped into an unnatural and content smile with lines of teeth that meshed about as well with one another as teeth pulled from entirely different men and women might have for they were of different colors, age, health and some of the teeth did not belong in their present location given the basic knowledge of human anatomy.</p><p>The appearance of the fifth threat, if that was indeed what these entities were, could not have been made out because of the massive amount of mold present in the area, covering the entire glass cage in black taint except for the vague traces of a skull, similarly molded and present on a stand of unrecognizable nature inside the glass cage.</p><p>The sixth one was almost as blurry and hard to read into, except for the fact that his glass cage was perfectly clear and despite being made of plastic, like its peers, and put together with screws, tightening the pieces together, he was dyed or molded to be about as tough to perceive for his entire body was of shade of black that almost reminded the observer of a different color the more time they spent staring and trying to make something out of it. Its head was the most perceivable thing about it and it looked like an ancient, golden helmet, complete with a hole-filled visor.</p><p>The seventh one would have appeared human, had it not been for the fact that he was hunched over and his body twisted upward from the waist up by full one-eighty degrees and stared up at the glassy ceiling of his glass cage. The rather ordinary clothes that this particular mannequin wore were torn where the anything but ordinary bodily distortion had taken the figure.</p><p>The eight one was a man. A man of no particular special features except for the hair that was messy and unkempt however not outside the realm of possibility for an actual, untidy individual to adopt. His face was not the most pleasant to look at, due to lack of maintenance and yet it was not unusual in the sense that it did not appear like something out of somebody's worst kind of trip, like its peers. The eight one looked like a mannequin the designer of which specifically chose it to be unattractive and ill-fit to show off new and fashionable clothes.</p><p>Not that the rest fit that purpose either…</p><p>"So… What's with this freakshow, you know?" Naruto pouted while giving the third mannequin a case of a mean-eye.</p><p>"Hmm, this couldn't possibly be just about besting these puppets. These tests are meant to be more of the mental variety and not about one's combat ability." Kiyomi scratched the back of her head. For some reason her absence during the last challenge and her failure during the first one made her want to stand out in the current one.</p><p>"Puppets? Is that what these are?" Meiko gave each of them a curious eye, trying to turn and twist her head in various, sometimes even painful-looking, angles to better comprehend the possible artistic messages that were meant to be taken but judging from her hearty sigh and sad eyes after that venture – she got nothing out of her visual quest for enlightenment.</p><p>The wall behind Team Hokage flickered and opened up, allowing another team to enter not too long after them.</p><p>"Huh? You guys?" Naruto leaned forward, possibly because of weakness in his belly area after seeing all too familiar shapes in the not too distant range from him entering from the other room.</p><p>"It's funny how randomness works out sometimes, huh?" Kiba snickered, rubbing his nose with the middle of his index finger. Akamaru, easily half the young man's size barked beside his partner. Sometimes he just did that for no apparent reason, as if just trying to prove like it was taking part in the conversation which, of course, he wasn't, due to his canine upbringing.</p><p>"Wait… You're the same Kiba, Hinata, and Shino from the chess game, right? You're wearing the same clothes, you know." Naruto scratched his chin before smacking his forehead a bunch of times for all this thinking of alternate timelines and when exactly these particular versions might have hailed from confused him.</p><p>"Indeed. Why? Because there are only one version of each of us from every particular timeline. There are multiple Shino here but each of them is different. How? There is, for example, only one of Shino from the Konoha-Sunagakure Joint Chuunin Exams." Shino pondered both to himself as well as those interested enough to hear what he was saying out loud.</p><p>"Yes… Unlike Naruto-kun… There can only be two different versions of us," Hinata added, "We've only taken a pair of Chuunin Exams after all."</p><p>"Heh, although… Who knows when this Naruto's from, he might have been still on his training trip with Jiraiya or he might have been from ten years ahead and still a wee-bit genin…" Kiba taunted Naruto with a friendly gesture with his hands, depicting just the exact amount of "wee-bit genin" that Naruto was with his fingers.</p><p>Before Naruto could deliver his anger-driven retort, the image on the screen flashed and Morino Ibiki's face appeared on it in full close-up mode. Despite questionable video quality, the sheer closeness of the camera taking the picture portrayed the man so well that even Meiko might have transformed into him replicating every scar and every blemish he had.</p><p>"Welcome, Team Kurenai of Konohagakure, Team Hokage of Konohagakure. Welcome to your next challenge – The Who-Dun-Did-It-N-Who-Dun-Doin'-It," Morino declared the name of the challenge, which was a unique feature of the challenge all of its own, with only a slight hint at the embarrassment of speaking such buffoonery out loud.</p><p>"The engineer of this challenge was a flamboyant personality, why? Because not only did they name their masterpiece but they also did so very badly." Shino noted as a gleam of light reflected off of his shades.</p><p>"Yeah, but not in the "Oh, it's so very bad" kind of way, more in a "it seemed right when it was written down to a very specific kind of person but not when other people are reading it out loud" kind of way…" Kiba agreed with his teammate.</p><p>"The name does, however, give a few ideas as to what the challenge is." Kiyomi noticed. "We will have to pick the correct one out of these eight, right?"</p><p>"Correct," Ibiki nodded. "In these glass cages, you have eight remarkable puppets. They are entirely artificial and masterminded by the Master Cube around you. It is up to you to pick a figure, taking turns, the team that picks the right one moves on, the loser team is eliminated."</p><p>"There is no way that you are telling us everything. Why? Because the staff would never leave it up to a game of chance to decide over the contestant teams." Shino said.</p><p>"Right again," Ibiki confirmed, "Every time you will pick the wrong puppet, the lights will go out and the killer puppet will strike, eliminating a random person in the room."</p><p>"Eliminating?" Meiko took a step forward. Her eyes looked worried and rightfully so.</p><p>"That's the "it" in "Who dun did it", isn't it?" Ibiki smirked. "One of these puppets is a killer, you need to press the button on the panel by its glass cage to incinerate it. Eliminate the killer puppet and move on to the next round, simple as that. Oh, and one more thing, if either team has two out of three members killed, they are eliminated from the challenge as well."</p><p>The screen flashing and flickering with Ibiki's face shut down and despite there being six people, not counting Akamaru, in that room, both Team Hokage and Team Kurenai looked like they've never felt more alone and exposed.</p><p>"One thing's for certain," Kiyomi closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. "They're not killing us for real. I wonder if the killer puppet will even lay a finger on us."</p><p>"Th-That's a relief…" Hinata breathed out easier, speaking in a weak and high-pitched voice. "I was wondering the same thing. If both of us think that way… Maybe that's the case…"</p><p>"Yeah… This just isn't that kind of a challenge," Meiko nodded in agreement. "They went out of their way to sanitize that chess game from violence as much as possible. These challenges are tests of the way we think. The tests of strength, toughness and combat ability will come later."</p><p>"So then… How do we pick them? Ibiki said this wouldn't be a game of chance but… From the way I see it, it kind of is." Kiba shrugged while sharing a look with Akamaru who barked in response.</p><p>"I see… Naruto, would you please pick one puppet and incinerate it, completely at random?" Kiyomi instructed her teammate who just crossed his arms and squinted at the blonde with suspicion.</p><p>"W-Wait a second…" Hinata butt two of her fingers against one another. "W-Why are you going first?"</p><p>Kiba and Shino looked at Hinata for a good handful of seconds before Shino turned to Kiyomi. His expression was impossible to perceive from the way he was hiding his eyes underneath those shades and his lower jaw behind the high collar of his jacket.</p><p>"You should forgive us but we are in agreement with Hinata, why? Because she is rarely confrontational, meaning that when she does choose to confront somebody, it is for good reason." Shino elaborated.</p><p>"Fine. It makes no difference who chooses first. The ones being killed will be random either way. The only thing that matters is picking the right puppet, that's the only way to the next challenge." Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>The Yamanaka closed her eyes and focused, establishing a mental link between her teammates. This was essential, given how she needed to relay what she knew in case she was the one getting the short straw and the killer puppet decided to snap her neck first.</p><p>"The key is in the clues that the killer leaves behind," the Yamanaka heiress relayed to Naruto and Meiko. "These puppets have very distinctive, unnatural features. The only way this would not be a game of chance would be if the killer puppet kills in a way only it can, using varied methods on each kills. After a few kills, even an idiot should be able to narrow it down."</p><p>"I see… That's why they've established the two-strikes-you're-out rule. If you can't figure it out by then, you shouldn't proceed further either way." Meiko nodded a couple of times in affirmation. Given how she did not speak at all while doing so, the three must have looked quite odd to Team Kurenai, however, Team Hokage was lucky that their opponents were focused on the puppets, having chosen to go at it first.</p><p>"Hmmm… So not only does this game not favor luck but also goes out of the way to eliminate the concept of getting lucky or any hopes on relying on sheer luck altogether, you know…" Naruto relayed on the mental link while rubbing his chin. As usual per unfamiliar users of the mental link, he tended to exaggerate his thoughts and focus too hard on them, resulting in it appearing as if he yelled them out from the bottom of his lungs.</p><p>Regardless, Naruto's current use of the mental link was leagues ahead of how it was the first time he was introduced to it. It was just that he was a tad slower than usual in getting the hang of it.</p><p>"Do you wish to go first?" Shino looked at Hinata.</p><p>"M-Me!? No!" Hinata shook her head.</p><p>"Yeah… I guess asking you to choose from eight different puppets and probably spell out doom for someone is a bit much, huh?" Kiba snickered while patting his teammate on the back. Hinata blushed and shriveled down with an embarrassed smile. The three weren't through thick and thin just yet, however, it felt like they knew each other and were ready to complement each other's skills and cover for their shortcomings perfectly.</p><p>"Alright, I'll go!" Kiba pointed at himself with his thumb while waltzing to the glasses and beginning to examine them a bit closer. "Let's see… The normal dude does stand out from the rest but… Nah, that's way too obvious… Or then maybe… That's what they want you to think!"</p><p>Akamaru barked and nudged on Kiba's hip, having none of his hesitation. If even Kiba, the rash beatstick of the team had trouble narrowing his options and settling on a choice, Shino was cruel to even suggest Hinata be the one to choose.</p><p>"Let's see about this one… Just don't like the look of you, buddy…" Kiba extended his hand above a comically large red button with the kanji symbol for "Fire". Inside the glass cage, he was about to incinerate lurked the plump, reptilian avatar of feminine violence with a torn dress. The Inuzuka pressed the button, unleashing a violent stream of rising flames that superheated the glass to a state of ruby-red. Once the flames went out, there was only a cloud of crystal dust left of both the glass cage and the puppet once located within.</p><p>"Leave it to Kiba to just choose the very first figure, you know…" Naruto snickered out loud.</p><p>"It doesn't matter that much which he'll choose. The odds of nailing it with the very first shot without any clues guiding you are slim." Kiyomi relayed on the mental link when the room began dimming and the chilling noise of sliding glass unleashed all of the puppets from their cages. With the last remaining rays of artificial light in the room, everyone present had the chance to gander at the static puppets about to claim their next victim.</p><p>A loud grunt made Kiyomi's heart try to break free from her chest due to how suddenly it went up in volume but it also soothed her the moment later. If it was not her screaming, that meant that she would stay for the next round and have the chance to examine the clues on the victim's body. Then, just as gradually as it went out, the light started returning to the room as the white cubes comprising the pattern of the room lit up.</p><p>With the return of light to the equation, Team Hokage and Team Kurenai were introduced to the brand new factor in their problem – a body of Shino lying on the ground, his hood pulled down, exposing his hair, the left half of his shades slipped up, exposing a blank stare to the ceiling that was no longer bothered by the light.</p><p>"Shino!" Hinata gasped, covering up her mouth.</p><p>"Murders… Murders most foul…" Meiko mumbled to herself with crossed arms as she tried to find even a hint of a clue as to which one of the puppets that now stood back inside their re-shut glass cages had done this, quoting something only she was familiar with even though she wasn't too far off with that quote.</p><p>Kiyomi walked up to the corpse and kneeled by it. She checked up on his wrists, rolling back Shino's jacket, checked under his collar, having to pull back some of his coat and then peek under all the clothes he wore. The clues were slim. Just about anyone of those puppets could have killed him in a way that only announced of itself in a tilt of shades and a few signs of physical struggle.</p><p>What was there that Kiyomi was not seeing? She has to find that essential clue if she was to move her team ahead. After sitting out the last round and collapsing the round before, the Yamanaka heiress was not about to just flunk this round too, especially that now she was the most intelligent and experienced ninja on her team and since she was supposed to be the most useful in this round of the Exams.</p>
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<a name="section0605"><h2>605. J'Accuse...!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Yep, definitely not Shino…" Kiba sniffed the air just above his teammate's body. Even though he had no reason not to trust Kiyomi declaration that there was almost no way that the staff of the Chuunin Exams would permit these puppets to just kill their contestants, the Inuzuka was one to check, as long as he got to show off that unmatched nose of his.</p><p>Akamaru barked beside him in acknowledgment. Kiba's canine partner looked by far the most lost in the beginning but he was also the quickest to determine that this dead body was not Shino's, despite looking identical to the Aburame of Naruto's universe.</p><p>"A body double then? Maybe a clone? I've pulled a trick like this on Kiba and Akamaru once by extending a Shadow Clone technique, you know…" Naruto leaned to his teammates.</p><p>"That's smart." Meiko nodded with a smile.</p><p>"It must have been before the aliens switched the real Naruto out with this replacement." Kiyomi utilized the opening that her teammate provided. It was not too long ago that the Yamanaka had discovered the unbridled joy in riposting back at somebody who took the chance of an opening to brag.</p><p>"What's that, you know!?" Naruto rolled back his sleeve and shook his fist at Kiyomi while Kiba placed his hands inside his pockets and sighed.</p><p>"We're meant to look for clues on Shino's body to help us have a cleaner shot at picking the right puppet. Even if we pick the wrong one again and it ends up killing Kiba and Hinata, we won't proceed unless we find the right one. That means we have a couple of shots left at best…" Kiyomi brushed off Naruto's call for a quick quarrel and got back to the main issue at hand.</p><p>"You examined the body already, didn't you?" Meiko looked at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Visually, yes, there did not seem to be that much to go by. His body shows signs of struggle but pretty much any one of those guys could have caused that…" the Yamanaka turned toward the horror show inside glass cages. While the buggers and demons inside laid static, as if frozen in time, they appeared almost mocking now, knowing the context. It just made Kiyomi want to run up to the damned panel and start bashing those buttons and incinerating all of them…</p><p>"Kiba's pretty good with scent, you know," Naruto stated the obvious. After a pair of seconds of reconsideration of what it was that the future Seventh had said, Kiyomi picked up an interesting point he had raised. Kiba would be amazing at this task, this was horrible for them! As if he could hear Kiyomi beg Kiba to not approach the glass cages, the Inuzuka walked up to them with Akamaru by his side and began sniffing at them.</p><p>"What's he doing?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Trying to match the foreign scent on Shino's body, you know." Naruto squinted with his arms crossed, a gesture of jealousy. "These three hang around each other often, Kiba and Akamaru know what their friends smell like, meaning that if there's a foreign smell on Shino's body – they should pick it up."</p><p>"Struggle…" Meiko scratched her chin, she turned towards the eighth glass cage and pointed at the ordinary if a little chubby man who reeked of having given up on grooming located inside. "I don't think this guy killed Shino…"</p><p>"That's guesswork…" Kiyomi waved her hand at the glass cage. Then again, guesswork was all they had at that moment. While Kiba examined the glass cages, Kiyomi moved up to Shino's body and tried examining it again, it was not that the blonde knew of something she had not checked yet, it was more that she was desperate to find that missing clue and doing something made her feel like she was progressing down that path, even if she was not.</p><p>"Hmmm…" Kiba stopped in the middle, right between cages four and five. "Yep. I've got it!" he raised his hand up, not reaching toward one specific panel but just as a show that he was about to press the button.</p><p>"Wait! You've already taken your guess, it's our turn now!" Kiyomi stopped him. Kiba's hand froze in mid-motion and the Inuzuka turned around with a blush to his cheeks and an overly eager smile – he knew that she would say that. That was why he lingered in the exact middle point and reached out for pretty much thin air.</p><p>"Ummm… I think Kiba-kun should press the button." Hinata walked up, mashing her hands against each other as if trying to reduce them to fleshy porridge. "You did trick us by raising the pressure earlier. You lingered in front of the glass cages, knowing we'd object, even though all we had to gain was make things easier for you."</p><p>"Yeah," Kiba nodded with a wink. He was nowhere near being angry about Kiyomi's plan but he was aware of it. "Now, when it's your turn, you've got a whole body to work off of and one less fake puppet to pick from. Not to mention, there's a fair chance that the next puppet might kill me, the only guy who knows for certain who killed Shino."</p><p>"It's not like you can fight us. There's two of you and three of us, Naruto can make as many copies of himself as it is needed. If we want that button pressed – that's how it'll be. I didn't want to play that card, not this early but…" Kiyomi shrugged. "The next choice is ours. You might know the right puppet, that's good for you. Still, we might not have the uncanny, perfect roster for such a task and a skillset that excels at tracking the killer, but what we've got is our own shot at this."</p><p>Kiba stepped aside, Akamaru barked by his side and followed his partner by his thigh. "Take it then…" it was as if the Inuzuka dared Kiyomi to take the shot and miss.</p><p>"Hey, how about I make six clones and we all press the button together? That will still count as one shot and we'll hit the right o…" Naruto yelled out from behind.</p><p>"Not now, Naruto," Kiyomi sighed. She needed something, a clue, an ace of some kind… She couldn't just press the button and miss, that meant that Kiba would be hitting the jackpot for certain. The Inuzuka returned to Hinata, hands in his pockets and leaned at her, signaling that he was relaying the information he had gathered back to his teammate, just in case the slim chance of him being the unlucky murder victim next turned out to be the inevitable one.</p><p>How? How were they to pull this off? Maybe they should have engaged Kiba and Hinata. No. It would have been best to engage them before Kiba could take a whiff. Bust his nose, then kick Akamaru in the nostrils and call for a truce? Straws… These were the bottom of the barrel straws! May as well have poked Hinata's eyes out too. Now, pressing the button was making it riskier, the odds were more likely that it would be someone from Team Hokage to be switched out with a murdered body double.</p><p>"I have an idea, you know!" Naruto raised his hand and made the Shadow Clone Jutsu hand seal. Kiyomi blinked a pair of times in confusion while six more Naruto body doubles appeared from a cloud of smoke.</p><p>"I think we've established that hitting all the buttons at the same time is not what we're going with." Meiko groaned out.</p><p>"No, my next idea is way better!" Naruto rubbed his nose with his finger and an ecstatic expression while the clones pooled together in a small group and began throwing their fists at one another.</p><p>"Rock-Paper-Scissors! Again! Again! Again!" the clones continued to play the childish game until, one by one, most of the clones lost the game and either dispersed or, in the case of the original, stood aside while the others completed the rotation.</p><p>"We pick No. 6, you know!" Naruto declared while giving Kiyomi a thumb-up.</p><p>"No. 6? Why?" Kiyomi wondered, knowing full-well she was walking into a realm of an idiot's dreamland.</p><p>"Because Clone No. 6 won the game, you know." Naruto snickered.</p><p>"Unbelievable…" Kiyomi muttered. She wasn't going to lie, somewhere deep down she had suspected that this was exactly how Naruto's plan was supposed to work.</p><p>"Oh, sorry, do you have a better idea, you know?" Naruto placed his hands by his hips, appearing almost offended that his team leader wasn't about to jump at the opportunity to take his wonderful idea for granted.</p><p>"This isn't a game!" Kiyomi jumped up on her feet. "Are you blind? Kiba knows the answer, if we shoot and miss, which we most certainly will if I give in to your imbecilic plan, he'll eliminate us. That will be it!"</p><p>"Isn't that always the case on the field though?" Naruto looked down, shriveling in disappointment. "Sometimes you just gotta take a leap of faith and trust your instinct, you know. Not everything's always in the clues…"</p><p>A deep sigh left Kiyomi's chest. With a tired and defeated expression, the Yamanaka rose up and stumbled to the panels. Then, with a reignited flare of passion, she turned back to Naruto and fired off some of that flame from her gaze at him, though without showing any particular care to what it'd end up hitting.</p><p>"Fine, I'm not choosing No. 6 though, I'll just trust my instincts." Kiyomi hissed.</p><p>"Suit yourself, you know…" Naruto shrugged. "I was just suggesting."</p><p>The Yamanaka slammed the button next to the glass cage inside of which the most ordinary of all puppets laid, one resembling a rather unimpressive and chubby man who had let himself go. Just like before, tongues of flames erupted from down under, consuming the man though that much could not have been assessed from the static way in which he accepted his end. After the flames had consumed No. 8, the glass cages tilted, thumped back down and then shot back up with darkness enveloping the entire room once more.</p><p>Once the light returned, Kiba and Hinata glared at each other in worry, then, after realizing that their team was still in the game as neither of them had been "murdered", they began scanning the room again. Kiyomi took a while to scan the room but once she saw a lying figure hunched over in a pool of mahogany-colored blood she gasped. Even if she knew inside the rational part of her mind that this was not real, something inside the irrational, subconscious part of her snapped and her glare blanked out as her body moved on its own.</p><p>"Meiko!" Kiyomi screamed out. The blacksmith laid with her armor peeled off like a can and her ribs torn open like a pair of frontal wings, bones sticking out from her chest with the final, shocked expression frozen on the redhead's face.</p><p>"Relax and start thinking, what could have caused this, which statue could have done this?" Naruto pressed his hand on Kiyomi's shoulder as the kneeled over her comrade. Kiyomi knew that she didn't get Meiko murdered, this was just a body double, a ploy but… It was what this challenge represented that chilled her to the bone.</p><p>Did it really matter that this Meiko wasn't the real one? Obviously it did, but… If she was a real chuunin and led her own team, she'd have just gotten Meiko killed. She trusted her instincts, played the roulette and missed the draw. Her clutched knuckles shook while a single pair of tears ran down her eyes.</p><p>"Hey, come on now…" Naruto sat down by Kiyomi's side, comforting her. "This doesn't mean anything, you know. Meiko's not really dead…"</p><p>"We failed. Kiba knows the answer and we've no way of winning now." Kiyomi whimpered before stiffening her upper lip and getting herself back in control. She was the leader of her team, she could only allow herself to appear weak and feel something for so long. If Naruto was consoling her, fulfilling her duty as a leader to keep her team coherent, what sort of a leader was she even?</p><p>"It doesn't matter, we'll pull through somehow, what's important is that we never give up, you know!" Naruto smiled, bending his arm by the elbow in a way that left his fist raised for a sideways bump. The cheer of that goofball was contagious. Kiyomi responded to his gesture in kind.</p><p>"Heh, too bad…" Kiba stroke his own nose with his index finger and approached the forth figure. "We win!" he yelled out while smashing the button with a slam of his fist.</p><p>The flames hurled from down below and consumed the headless grease-ball with facial features scattered all across its chest. By now it would have been somewhat comforting to hear those creatures scream or acknowledge the fact they were being destroyed in some other manner. Seeing them just stare blankly and accept demise made it somehow seem like they were being smug like they knew they were playing a one-sided game and picking the poor genin off like victims of a slasher pic.</p><p>Darkness enveloped the area while the glass cages shot open. Kiba's eyes widened while he stumbled back, just a bit of panic setting into his overconfident heart before the more vocal expression of what plagued his gut.</p><p>"No! This doesn't make any sense! I smelled the puppet! The right one!" Kiba kept bargaining with the darkness but, as it usually was the case, the abyss stared back but it did not bargain nor did it accept compromises. A whimper pierced the silence, one that transitioned into a blood-curdling scream and then the lights popped back on.</p><p>Kiba stared at Naruto and Kiyomi, the leader of Team Hokage stood solemn with her eyes closed, accepting her fate, whatever it might have been. Naruto angered and ready to fight back the potential assailant trying to drag him away. It took a while for the pair to realize that they had survived another round. It took about as long for Kiba to realize that if the two of Team Hokage were still standing by each other, that meant…</p><p>Kiba's head jerked to the side, just enough for his glance to catch the dreadful sight of Hinata laying with her arms thrown to the side and her neck snapped good two-hundred degrees to the side, far more than human necks were meant to stretch with lurid blunt force marks upon her neck.</p><p>"No! This… Doesn't make sense, goddamn it!" Kiba clenched his fists and cried out into the air, he still failed to accept the fact that his team was out no matter the outcome of this challenge.</p><p>"You did not smell the right puppet. You smelled a puppet – the puppet that replaced Shino." Kiyomi mumbled to herself, then repeated it loud enough for Kiba to hear.</p><p>"That's ridiculous! I know Shino's smell, I eliminated that smell and what's left must have been the killer!" Kiba growled back at Kiyomi, when one found it difficult to accept the truth, anyone trying to ease the process appeared as an enemy. It was easier to blame the world and truth itself than to accept reality at times. It was irrational, sure, but people often were anything but that.</p><p>"You knew Shino's smell so well, you knew you had to ignore it so well, that you did not even notice that Shino's smell wasn't there, to begin with," Kiyomi stated. "What you smelled was the body double, nothing else. Then, you picked one of the puppets you thought smelled the most like that but, truth be told, if the origin of these puppets is from the same source – they all smell the same anyway."</p><p>"My… Our smell is flawless…" Kiba blubbered, still begging the reality to change but, as it was the general case, it refused to do so.</p><p>"Your smell might be flawless but your brain is not. It is still the brains of a human and a dog interpreting these sensory inputs and whereas your noses cannot be fooled – your brains can." Kiyomi approached Hinata's supposed corpse and examined it from a bit closer, then turned back to Shino's corpse and approached it again, unzipping his jacket now that she knew what she was looking for.</p><p>There they were – streaks of red across Shino's neck. Far subtler than those on Hinata's neck. The first clues were meant to be the simpler ones the whole time. Shino was strangled with moderate struggle. He offered little resistance so the murderer was someone that favored strangulation as their go-to murdering method.</p><p>Meiko… She was one of the most important victims. Kiyomi got back up and approached her fallen friend, examining her torn open ribcage. Every other ribcage was cracked or altogether broken off. It must have taken a strong grip to tear someone like Meiko open like that, not to mention the uneven peel on her armor plates that bent them out of shape in their openings before peeling them off in their entirety. Strong hands, a strangler.</p><p>Hinata was just the cherry on the cake, had Kiyomi known what she was looking for and unzipped Shino's jacket while checking his neck in the light, she'd have noticed… Or probably not… Meiko's murder got the Yamanaka so flustered and worked up that she might have missed the obvious. With a confident yet casual-paced stroll, the blonde approached the glass cages and pressed the button beside the second puppet. Flames erupted from underground, devouring the snake with giant skeletal hands for its neck ribs.</p><p>Unlike its peers, the true murderer shrieked and coiled, bashed its head over the cage desperate to get out and keep its streak alive but then the flames took their toll. Only hints of ashes remained of the murderer while the screen in the room flashed with the face of Morino Ibiki appearing on it.</p><p>"Congratulations, Team Hokage, you have discovered the real murderer puppet and you can proceed onto the next challenge. Team Kurenai, sadly, even if you would have gotten the right puppet, two of your teammates have been murdered in the process. You're out." Ibiki's declaration, in the end, sounded about as short-cut and definitive as any of the killer puppet's murders. With the room they were in shifting and the walls rippling like the surface of a disturbed lake and a cube manifesting itself in Kiyomi's hand and joining the fold Team Hokage had collected, the pair of Kiyomi and Naruto rushed on ahead through the rippling wall.</p><p>"So you guys made it… Took you long enough." Meiko smiled on the other side, rejoining her team and ready to tackle the next challenge together with it.</p>
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<a name="section0606"><h2>606. Plead The 8th</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Meiko! Glad to see you're okay!" Kiyomi yelled out and embraced her friend, taking extra time to rub her face into her teammate's. It was a gesture that confused the redhead but not enough for her to resist. Naruto snickered, whether it was because he was glad to see Meiko okay again or because Kiyomi's overdone reaction amused him remained known only to him.</p><p>"Sure I am. Those puppets were the real deal, things went dark, couldn't even sense it coming… Next thing I knew everything was dark and I floated as if I was weightless. A lot like the tag team fights during the last Chuunin Exams." Meiko pulled Kiyomi off but not before the blonde allowed herself to be pulled off. By now Meiko was more mindful of her strength than to attempt to force the Yamanaka off of herself.</p><p>"What's this though?" Naruto placed his arms over his hips and glared on ahead at the fancy stand in the middle of the stage.</p><p>"Those guys, aren't they…" Meiko wondered, looking on ahead at the trio of slightly familiar faces at the other side of the room.</p><p>"Yeah, Team Kyanite." Kiyomi nodded. These three may have been a tad more obscure as Kiyomi wouldn't have known of them at all had Mana not made friends with them during the last Chuunin Exams but they were sharp enough to pass the first stage last time. Not only that, they've gotten this far in this stage too so they couldn't have been underestimated.</p><p>"You know these guys?" Naruto squinted.</p><p>"Not too well, bumped into them before the Forest of Death stage of the last exams but we haven't had the proper honors of punching anyone from their ranks yet." Meiko scratched her itchy nose with a simian grin.</p><p>"Anyone who knows a thing about wrestling knows of Gyllfa Ellidani. Ever since arriving in Cloud Wrestling Federation from the Iwagakure indie scene she's been making quite the Frog Splash if you pardon my pun." Kiyomi stated. This may have been why this random team she's set eyes on for just a little while stood out for her enough to where she could name it years after seeing these guys.</p><p>This time the screen atop of the massive, wooden stage in the northernmost part of the room did not light up. Instead, in a beam of glittery black energy pillar, Morino Ibiki took the place at the central stand of the stage while various colored energy beams teleported other copies of Morino Ibiki, all dressed and even acting differently but all of them shared that face that looked as if it had made out with a brick that had barbed wire wrapped around it.</p><p>One of the Morino Ibiki wore a fancy, pink dress with pearl-colored ribbons and a handful of blond hair that surpassed the sophistication Kiyomi dreamed of donning for herself in her wildest dreams.</p><p>"Team Hokage of Konoha, Team Kyanite of…" the main Ibiki who appeared most like the version of him which dominated its previous public appearances declared while taking a black cloak off of the massive chair beside him and flipping it over his shoulders.</p><p>"Kumogakure, sir." A young man of feminine figure and lush hair of spring mint shades stated. Kiyomi's stare sharpened as she had taken Team Kyanite to be from Iwagakure. Even their team name implied a type of mineral which was a common naming scheme for Iwagakure teams. Then again, Gyllfa was appearing in CWF way too often to not reside in Kumogakure, what with the massive coltan conflict between Iwa and Kumo involved in the equation.</p><p>"We've acquired permission from the Raikage to operate in Kumogakure after the devastation of Iwa due to Gyllfa's profound accomplishments for the country. We were even permitted to have the symbols of stone and cloud be present on our forehead protectors simultaneously." Gurker Gliesse, the third member of Team Kyanite explained to Ibiki who was donning a wool-white wig that looked almost as fabulous as the hairdo of Princess Ibiki down below, amongst the spectators.</p><p>"I see… In any case. Your next challenge will be a courtroom drama. One member of your team shall deliver their best shot at a verse in front of me, the judge, and the jury of… Well… Me. You do not need to uphold any Tribunal procedure, feel free to… Freestyle." Ibiki smirked which was so rare of him that both teams instantly took suspicion.</p><p>"So we're just meant to talk smart about absolutely nothing, you know? I pass…" Naruto shriveled his face as if he had eaten a sour prune and crossed his arms over his chest. Him passing was nothing of many surprises. He kept on hammering home how brain teasers weren't his strong suit the whole way here.</p><p>"Oh, not nothing. A random topic you will need to center your freestyle about will be provided to you, that is what the screen is for." Judge Ibiki stood up and pointed at the blank screen over his head. "There will be no interaction between the representatives of each team except for their own riff. Make sure to make your words count. Oh, and one last thing – your riffs will be delivered entirely in rap."</p><p>"Huh… What's a rap, you know?" Naruto scratched his head.</p><p>"Make stuff rhyme and heed the beat, these are the conditions you must meet. Somehow hustle through the rap and this challenge will be a wrap." Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Wha? You mean somebody actually talks like that? Must be some kind of imbecile, you know…" Naruto crossed his arms over his chest. "Still pass…"</p><p>"We've met a guy from Kumogakure who only talked in rap once. Nobody seemed to treat it like that much of a big deal so it probably is a bit more common than this…" Kiyomi replied. She directed her eyes at Meiko. "You're still our go-to gal when the challenge involves music."</p><p>"Music? It's safe to say this ain't my jam. Plus, you seemed to be pretty good with that word-mashing stuff yourself." Meiko sighed so hard she deflated.</p><p>"Alright, since Naruto passes, again, and you're not into it… I'll do my best." Kiyomi nodded. She didn't feel all that confident about the assignment. The last example she showed off to Naruto was sub-par at best and it was just something she shuffled together just to explain what the genre was. Still, if Meiko thought that was any good, maybe Kiyomi was still Team Hokage's best bet.</p><p>With the first couple of steps out of her team's fold, all three cubes in Team Hokage's possession materialized and molded together into one larger cube of triangular patterns of black and white decorating it. The cube gleamed over Kiyomi with beams of black and white light and her clothes dissolved into tiny pixels of black and white while reassembling into something that seemed like a mixture between the fancy sophistication of Mana's magician's uniform and rigid conservatism of a typical suit.</p><p>"Okay…" Kiyomi mumbled while removing a pair of glasses that she did not need yet one that materialized regardless. In her right hand, she clutched a board with papers, all of which were filled with absolute rubbish combos of letters and symbols. Both the glasses and the papers dissolved into a swarm of cubes and joined into the Yamanaka's outfit's fold of pixels upon being discarded aside.</p><p>The mint-haired young man approached Kiyomi and took his place on the opposing side of the fancy, hardwood platform. An identical appearance-shifting ritual transpired to him as well though Trest Bregger of Team Kyanite was in no rush to discard his glasses or his papers. Even if he did examine them with a run-through and determined them to be absolutely useless.</p><p>"Shit… This guy's like an actual musician. Not just an aficionado like Meiko, the real deal. A ninja musician with shows and fans the like…" Kiyomi wiped the sweat off her face while trying to soothe her pre-rap-battling nerves.</p><p>"Alright. Trest Bregger of Team Kyanite, you will be first. Your topic will be…" Judge Ibiki chewed something ethereal in his mouth and then glared up at the screen above. "Cabin in the woods."</p><p>"That's not even a word! That's like a complete sentence almost!" Kiyomi made a traitorous grimace upon the revelation of the word that must have telegraphed the feeling of being way over one's head that she felt inside. Trest must have noticed it because he made a smug expression and snapped his fingers.</p><p>"A simple matter." He serenaded out in a mellow tune. He was like musical Mana if the magician was pretentious. Well… More so… And pretentious about her stage magic and not her moral rules.</p><p>"Very well, in that case, you may begin your opening statement. I will remind you that your topic doesn't need to be explored or there doesn't have to be anything core-deep said about the subject, it needs to figure in your rap, that is all." Judge Ibiki loomed over the two self-appointed lawyers while giving the jury of Ibiki an affirming glance as well.</p><p>"Très Bien," Trest hummed out, cleared his throat as if he was about to begin an awe-robbing opera solo when the pretty bland and one-tone beat hit the room, providing the sauce for the steak of Trest's supposedly mad rap skills.</p><p>"What was that, you know?" Naruto pointed at the foreign musician with a baffled look on his face, reacting to his odd manner of speech.</p><p>"Dunno," Meiko shrugged, "We've met some weird talkers while traveling the world, Mana used to call their more exotic talking mannerisms "dialicks", or something…"</p><p>
  <em>"Cabin in the woods, see</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That's what my topic should be.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Fuck that noise,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not pulling that on my boys.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We ain't wearing slippers here or tees,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gonna give you some birds and bees</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sure, I'd rather pack a violin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But now I'd rather bash your chin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My sophistication might make you spin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But not now, has-been</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Now, I'm out to kill</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You might say Trest's just shilled</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But in music, it's about what's within</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And violin has never brought me so much win</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Compared to all that I feel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When I compare you to a foreskin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Though actually you're more like a conjoined twin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Of a rolled over minx, and guess what, potato skin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mommy and Daddy thought it'd be funny</em>
</p><p>
  <em>To keep the roadkill and cut you off</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And hit you with a fucking pipe, honey</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Blastoff!"</em>
</p><p>The one-note beat died out while Morino Ibiki stood and munched what he had just heard with a shut-in expression. Kiyomi bit the side of her lip, it was hard to believe that this guy pulled this off just off his head but it was an even madder thing to count on him having prepared for a hogwash legal rap battle.</p><p>"That was quite the performance, contestant Trest, though you barely touched the topic and went at the other contestant from the get-go. Very aggressive." Judge Ibiki shrugged.</p><p>"It is a rap battle, is it not?" Trest shrugged with an expression that attempted to fake an apology but succeeded only in proclaiming oneself innocent and portraying the young man as all too proud of himself.</p><p>"Maybe that's my chance. He's capable of rapping laps around me but if I just stay on the topic provided…" Kiyomi thought to herself. She weaved a single hand seal and opened the mental link between her and her team. "Hey, guys, I'm gonna need you to spill as many rhymes as possible. Use the topic name as the crutch to start with and then just brainstorm from there. The only way to win is if we work on this together."</p><p>It would be a madhouse, trying to think on her feet, work through the cacophony and somehow also fit into the rhythm of the beat that had not yet started. Still, this must have been the point of this entire challenge. To witness and test the improvisational skills of the contestants, how well they were able to perform under pressure and there may have been few kinds of pressure more intense than stage fright of such a lyrical battlefield.</p><p>By the time Kiyomi had snapped out, the beat already started, letting her get used to it before Ibiki stood up and gestured at the screen over his head. A screen shuffling letters and entire words before the golden letters in the black settled on the topic – Archeology Professor.</p><p>"Wh-What even?" Kiyomi's eye twitched.</p><p>"Well… There's always next year…" Meiko sent a mental mumble on the link. Even though it sounded mean, the Yamanaka heiress knew that her friend was just kidding. This meant too much for all three of them and this was her way of reminding Kiyomi of that without going off on some cheesy rant.</p><p>
  <em>"Archeology professor. Doesn't take one to know that</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ditching topics, going after somebody like a brat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Doesn't do you any favors, makes you sound like a gnat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And the only good gnat is one that's left after a splat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sounds like all you need is just a lovely chat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With your mom, though she probably hates you, how about your cat?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Now that we're done with this, where was I at?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh right, archeology professor is just a bureaucrat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Finding stinky, brittle bones in their final habitat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That's right, I'd rather rap all about that</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Than try to demean you and sound like a copycat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Archeology professors, do they dream of a cowboy hat?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Life of adventure, a passionate night with a female aristocrat?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We'll never know because they'd rather theorize of a mole rat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That died ten thousand years ago near a place they work at</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There's nothing in their jobs that warrants a caveat</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And some people like it that way, it's just that</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We're not like those people, we're not some diplomats</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Even if rap is this challenge's format,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We'd rather do this thing and pass, get what we're getting at?"</em>
</p><p>Kiyomi stopped talking and felt an immediate pounding at her temples. She was glad to have stopped there, it turned out just fine that she finished her verse when she did and could wrap it up in a semi-competent manner because she'd have exploded into a yell of pain if she let it go on. Suggestions for words and brainstorms of both her and her team swirled on the mental link for what seemed like hours even though it was perhaps just a mere minute.</p><p>Trest didn't look like his usual, smuggish self. Now that both the attempts to fit into the rhythm of the beat and rhyme properly didn't demand most of her attention, Kiyomi could recall the mint-haired youth tapping his foot at the mat the whole time. He might have been a vain son of a bitch but at least he could appreciate someone's genuine attempt to spill their soul out. Who knows, maybe he even liked it some…</p><p>"Hmmm… That was significantly more on-topic than the verse from contestant Trest. Is the Jury of Ibiki ready for their verdict?" Judge Ibiki turned to the static jury that began rustling the moment they were addressed. Despite looking like they were frozen in time, the lot might have heard the entire thing as Princess Ibiki stood up and cleared her throat without any pauses for consideration.</p><p>"We are, honorable Judge Ibiki, even if we take the aggression and drive of contestant Trest's verse into consideration, we feel like contestant Kiyomi has managed to both riposte at his jabs some as well as explore her theme a little bit, even though it was on a very formalistic and elementary level. The Jury of Ibiki has to hand it to Yamanaka Kiyomi and Team Hokage of Konoha." Princess Ibiki ruled.</p><p>"I see…" Judge Ibiki scratched his chin. He extended his hand, manifesting a white cube that rotated around its axis and flew at the center of the stage, blasting both contestants with a stream of smaller, white pixels that swarmed over them with enough concentration to make Kiyomi clutch at the stand and cover up her face. She felt the swarm of pixels washing away the tight ponytail on the back of her head that they formed when enveloping her before.</p><p>When the white pixels settled down, Kiyomi found herself back in her original state, the way she walked out to take the stage with Team Kyanite gone and a larger white cube rotating in her open hand. Not even a sign of Morino Ibiki as well.</p><p>"Well… Just by the skin of our teeth again, you know!" Naruto smiled while patting Kiyomi's back.</p><p>"You were great out there, your rhythm game can still use some work but the way you filtered out the right words and picked the right one at each moment… That was just… Amazing." Meiko blew out the pent up tension in the form of a massive blob of air that burnt her lungs with worry just a second earlier.</p><p>Kiyomi blushed and threw a knuckle at her teammate's elbow. The trio approached the rightmost wall of the stage room and let the incomplete configuration comprised of more than half pieces necessary to complete the Mind Coupon mold with the wall and make the entire structure ripple like it was about to undo itself and never configure itself the same way again.</p><p>Team Hokage stepped through the rippling wall, every time it felt like walking through a static layer of a lukewarm lake. They had expected something extravagant and outrageous on the other side, as per the cube's standards, however, the stage on the other side turned out a lot more ordinary to see than usual. There were few marvels except for a room filled with other teams seated on unimpressive steel chairs while six armchairs rested on top of a stage decorated with symbols of various countries and Hidden Villages of the world.</p><p>"Welcome, Team Hokage, contestants of your next challenge! May the crowd please welcome one-half of today's main-eventers?!" proctor Musha, donning a superb tuxedo and wearing her usual punkish hair done and gelled up, welcomed Team Hokage having made their way onto their next challenge.</p><p>"What's the point? We're wasting our time here…" a familiar Hyuuga boy with a Konoha headband spoke up with a disgruntled expression. "We have our own cubes to collect, don't we?"</p><p>"Oh, calm down, Neji," a girl in a pink, sleeveless, Chinese blouse winked at her teammate, "Technically we aren't wasting any time at all, remember?"</p><p>"What Tenten says is indeed true for we can very much use this amazing chance for a breather!" a boy with shiny, black bowl-cut, thick lower eyelashes, and far thicker eyebrows and a green jumpsuit declared with notable vigor and gave his teammate a thumb-up.</p><p>"When I said I'd rather not challenge Orochimaru's team in a quiz show… I did not mean it literally…" Kiyomi sighed, acknowledging the uncomfortable feeling that she might have made a prophetic joke in the past.</p><p>"Let's just hope our opponents aren't Orochimaru's team then, because it sure as hell looks like we're about to participate in a quiz show," Meiko replied while Team Hokage made their way through the central passageway onto the stage.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0607"><h2>607. The Great Jeopardy!</h2></a>
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      <p>"Welcome, audience members that happened to stumble onto this challenge and were forced to sit it through as bewildered crowd, but also – our first team of contestants, the Team Hokage!" Musha roared out into the microphone as if she was a stage diva tearing her heart out in the most passionate part of her solo performance.</p>
      <p>"Do you think this is the real Musha or is she more like Princess Ibiki kind?" Meiko leaned up to Kiyomi with a whisper. The Yamanaka couldn't do much more than shrug. Her head was still killing her from the last challenge, the idea of performing in a quiz show alone made her nauseous.</p>
      <p>Naruto, however, appeared to be absorbing the spotlight. The young man had a rich grin on his face the whole time and flexed as well as posed for the crowd that appeared to be mostly perplexed by what they were seeing although a clapping and cheering track as boisterous as it was fake boomed from somewhere in the background while neon lights flickered to obscure the daze in the audience's expressions.</p>
      <p>"How does it feel to stumble here as part of your fifth challenge, which made you eligible to compete?" Musha extended the microphone that reminded more of a fuzzy, pink mace up in Meiko's face.</p>
      <p>"I'm not the leader of the team, I don't feel comfortable commenting on that…" Meiko fumbled through words as if she was a disgraced politician caught with her skirt down on live television.</p>
      <p>"Let's hope Team Hokage doesn't rely on this one for answers!" Musha soured and twisted her face and turned to the audience but the while the bystanders appeared to be slow to catch on to the joke, the malicious grasshopper track didn't do the overall awkwardness of the joke's delivery any favors either.</p>
      <p>"You, what's your deal?" Musha turned her hairy mallet for a recording gadget all the way into Naruto's face.</p>
      <p>"Ummm… I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I'm not good with quiz shows but I will do my very best, you know!" Naruto spoke with the reservation that did not befit his obnoxious personality. Could it have been that the loudest person in most rooms had a case of camera fright?</p>
      <p>"Excellent, what's your favorite food?" Musha pushed the microphone up in Kiyomi's face.</p>
      <p>"Okonomiyaki, though I prefer it seasoned with garden spices and using goat cheese milk instead of meat," Kiyomi replied, in this particular case she figured that cooperation would make the entire pill swallow faster. Given how the giant cube they were in played with time and space, it was more than likely that Musha had complete control over when their opponents in this challenge would appear.</p>
      <p>"Very snobbish, and what's your blood type? You look like a real A-Type to me…" Musha turned her attention back to Meiko.</p>
      <p>"No, I'm a B-Type, actually…" Meiko answered before something snapped in her head post-time. "Hey… You meant A-Type personality, not A-Type blood, didn't you?"</p>
      <p>"You're a gem, young lady, never change…" Musha smiled at the audience whom she did, in all honesty, manage to extract a few chuckles out of. Just as Kiyomi predicted, a white light emanated from the other end of the room, washing out the eye-scratching neon shades playing on the stage.</p>
      <p>"Ah, and there come your opponents, Team Cephei from Hoshigakure!" Musha turned toward the source of light and gestured with her hand at the emerging team that looked about as befuddled as Team Hokage was upon entering the quiz show challenge. "Please, walk onto the stage and introduce yourselves to the audience!"</p>
      <p>"But you didn't intro…" Meiko was about to raise a valid point but Kiyomi silenced her friend by placing her own hand over Meiko's and shaking her head.</p>
      <p>"None of the questions you asked us even make any sense, you know…" Naruto hummed with about as much volume as it needed to be heard by his team and himself. "I mean, if you're gonna just ask those guys other questions, what's the point, you know? You can't even compare us that way, almost like you're wasting time, you know…"</p>
      <p>Team Cephei walked the walk of flummox. A girl in a bodysuit and a raspberry dogi as well as flowing, chocolate-shade hair walked with a healthy blush to her cheeks as the only interest that the audience which was forced to sit there took from their walk was what they could pick up for the possible future encounters about the trio's fighting styles.</p>
      <p>The one in the middle, a tall and fully clothed individual donning black and grey cloth all over his body with belts that restrained and shaped the wild stacks of cloth and googles that left something for his eyes being the only standout features of this genin appeared by far the least flustered by the entire encounter.</p>
      <p>The third one was the spirit of the team, he was flexing and showing off to the crowd, even going as far as pulling out a large scroll from his back and drawing blood from his thumb to drag a dirty line on it and summon a massive hunk of steel, gear, and belts from it.</p>
      <p>"Hey, how you doin', I've got a chainsaw…" he kept repeating to everybody he managed to trade glares at, seldom switching the order of sentences up or changing a word or two out for synonyms.</p>
      <p>"Hey, it's the chainsaw sword guy from the other Chuunin Exams!" Meiko yelled out, overpowering every other noise in the area.</p>
      <p>"You heard it here first, unwilling members of the audience, what we got here is some good-old contestant past rivalry!" Musha declared at a perfect spot to dispel any thoughts of awkwardness after Meiko's interruption setting in.</p>
      <p>"I am…" the chainsaw-sword member of Team Cephei nodded with a confident look, "I see my reputation precedes me!"</p>
      <p>The raggedy genin covered up his face and shook his head. The members of Team Cephei took it to the stage and lined up on the side of Musha opposing the position of Team Hokage, almost as if prompted to do so. Musha extended her vastly oversized microphone at the flustered, brown-haired girl.</p>
      <p>"Ummm… My name's Rosanna Senju. I'm from Hoshigakure, it's unusual, I know. My parents were assisting Hoshigakure after the war in rebuilding their thick forests and they just kind of stayed there," Rosanna mumbled out. This was odd, from the one time that Kiyomi could recall seeing this girl during the massive bash of the remaining genin teams by the end of the second stage of the last exams, she used to be a lot more active and well-spoken, then again, Kiyomi only saw her brawling…</p>
      <p>The raggedy genin did not mutter a word, he just turned his face away from the microphone when Musha moved it to his face like a child refusing to eat what his mother handed to him in a silver spoon.</p>
      <p>"This is Bennow Vingcro, he's not much of a talker unless it's barking orders when things get heated. Which is always!" the teammate of the strong and silent type genin wrapped his arm over Bennow's shoulder and tapped on it a couple of times while giving the audience a confident grin. "I'm Faeras Gabscrue, I might not be from a fancy-schmancy clan like Rosanna but I've got a chainsaw-sword."</p>
      <p>"So we've heard!" Musha raised her arms up and turned at the audience, measuring out its reaction. What she received was about as passionate as something from a bunch of people forced to watch a quiz show in the middle of an important exam would be. "Now that we know Kiyomi's favorite type of food and what Team Cephei's names are, let's proceed to the main event! You two teams of knuckleheads are going to compete in a quiz challenge!"</p>
      <p>The screen above the stage shuffled with white, black and brown cubes while the words "Who Wants to Direct Peril!?" appeared in a starry background and a very in-your-face type font. One that might have looked like graffiti before a research chart forced it to change its style into something blander and smarter to not look nearly as dangerously cutting edge and hip.</p>
      <p>"The rules will be simple. There will be three rounds and I'll explain the rules for each particular round before the round begins. The first round will be the Peril Round!" Musha turned to the audience with an index finger threatening to stab at them as if accusing them of inducing said peril. A scream track followed by flashy flame effects on the screen that may have been just a glowing pair of neon boards, shaped like flames, interchanging with one another.</p>
      <p>"On the board, you will see a blank screen with a number of concealed letters. Every turn your team will have to either guess a letter or try to guess the word. But remember…" Musha turned the microphone at the stage to allow the audience to finish her sentence, luckily for her, the pre-recorded voices of some randos had mercy on her by completing it for her – "The guess needs to be in the form of a compound-complex sentence!"</p>
      <p>"A what?" Meiko dropped her jaw and turned to Kiyomi with a face begging for mercy, "Please repeat that weird part."</p>
      <p>"I'd rather not… Just thinking about trying makes me…" Kiyomi rubbed her temples and hurled, just narrowly avoiding barfing something out even though she did belch.</p>
      <p>"Alright, the time we've been allotted by the powers that be don't allow me the luxury to care if you're ready or not so…" Musha turned to the screen and raised her hand up to direct everyone's attention to it.</p>
      <p>"What a load of bullshit, you know." Naruto squinted his eyes in suspicion, "This cube has infinite amounts of time for her to care if we're ready or not…"</p>
      <p>The screen flashed white, only to settle down on starry background with eight gaps for letters to be inserted. There were no clues as to if this was a sentence or just a word. The answer had just the right number of letters comprising it that it could have been either. Could have been a pair of words that together made a proverb or it could have just been one, longer than the standard word.</p>
      <p>"The sky in the background is black so Team Hokage will get the first guess. Now, you can either shoot at letters that you think are on the word, or shoot at the word. Guessing the letters might help you get the word or words, but it will also make it easier to do so for the opponent too! Just in case you missed that before the ad break!" Musha explained with a wide-reaching gesture.</p>
      <p>"What ad break, you know?" Naruto hunched in the disappointment with his current situation.</p>
      <p>"The other assignments were meant to teach us something through a trial by fire, what is this teaching us, exactly?" Meiko sighed.</p>
      <p>"Who knows, now will you be making a guess? Let me rephrase that, you will make a guess because you can't pass." Musha pointed her index at Meiko while Kiyomi rubbed her temples.</p>
      <p>"Is there a letter-A, you know?" Naruto scratched his temple before a thunderbolt-swift boom of a cicada swarm in full-midsummer-heat mode shut him down. The future Konoha's Orange Hokage covered up his ears and grunted in pain.</p>
      <p>"Now, now, didn't I tell you guys that a guess needs to be formed in a compound-complex sentence?" Musha tsked at Naruto while shaking her finger. "Now, let's see if your opponents have gotten the clue, how about it, Team Cephei?"</p>
      <p>"When I played a bunch of letter-guessing games, I found out that the easiest way is to pick off the vowels and that is why we pick letter A." Bennow from Team Cephei husked out in a shallow voice. Speaking so many words at once was not something this young man did often though his voice did set into a more natural volume once he raised it higher, suggesting that he did yell a bit more naturally than speak.</p>
      <p>The board shuffled about, letters ran up and down the gaps like slots before the final state of the board settled on "-a-".</p>
      <p>"One A? That is unusual." Rosanna scratched her chin.</p>
      <p>"Oh yeah, we're working together, solving problems, leaving losers behind!" Faeras pulled his lower eyelid down with his index and poked fun at the opposing team with an offensive facial gesture after showing his tongue.</p>
      <p>"You barely even did anything… If anything, you're working as blind here as us…" this time it was Meiko who adopted the suspicious mug.</p>
      <p>"You're just jealous we're better at this than you, plus, my contributions to this team are wide and many, though they mainly focus on the specific area of sawing things that are meant to be in one piece into multiple pieces…" Faeras demonstratively examined his fingernails. The young man was a bundle of energy but he was about as poor a winner as, Meiko felt, he was a loser.</p>
      <p>"If those things are meant to be in one piece, you're actually making things worse for your team…" Meiko squinted at the cocksure youth.</p>
      <p>"Hey, Meiko, if we let Kiyomi rest her headache for a while and just copy their sentences, we can make guesses too, you know!" Naruto clenched his fist while raising it up for a sideways bump. Meiko blinked a pair of times bewildered but then answered the bump with a confident smirk.</p>
      <p>"Alright, let's give it a shot!" she nodded. "What did Bennow say again?"</p>
      <p>"I-I forgot, you know…" Naruto shriveled up in defeat.</p>
      <p>"Unbelievable…" Kiyomi grunted in pain, massaging her temples, every single stimulation of a neuron in her head made resonances of pain that resembled her head being on fire and the pent up heat just cracking up inside due to having nowhere to leave to. She just couldn't even imagine thinking up of a compound-complex sentence without throwing up so she picked the easier excruciating tragedy to handle – recalling what Bennow had said.</p>
      <p>"Alright… Let's see… Ummm… When I hear stupid rules of stupid games, I want to be a ballerina and that is why I pick the letter B, you know!" Naruto raised his finger as if he had his own personal eureka moment, except the dreadful cicada mating thunderbolt was quick to crack his skull in shock of its volume again.</p>
      <p>"Argh… You buffoons, are you trying to kill us with that?" Bennow hissed at Team Hokage.</p>
      <p>"There is no letter B in the word, sadly…" Musha sang it out in a melody that represented the amount of pleasure that the woman felt tormenting the genin participating in her quiz show.</p>
      <p>"I think I got it too, Bennow. I think I will take the guess now, but first, I have to make sure I do it right before guessing the letter O." Rosanna said. The dreadful wrong guess signal tormented the two teams once more.</p>
      <p>"At least you guessed an actual vowel…" Bennow nodded at his teammate. It was tough to tell anything about what the young man felt by the pile of cloth he wrapped over his face but, judging from his tone, he may have picked this vowel, or other, himself.</p>
      <p>"Alright, then!" Naruto grit his teeth, adamant about doing it and doing it right this time. For somebody who passed on intellectual tests, he displayed remarkable flame of passion in tackling this quiz show this way. "I will take the guess again, but first, I have to make sure that I pick a vowel before making the guess of the letter I!"</p>
      <p>The screen shuffled like an energized slot machine before settling on the state of "-i-a-"</p>
      <p>"Holy shit, you've nailed down a letter!" Meiko smiled with an approving nod.</p>
      <p>"Hell yeah! Though I probably made it easier for them too, you know…" Naruto was as quick to cave in as he was to puff his chest out in false bravado. Then again, sometimes it seemed that even if that bravado should have been false as it had nothing blowing it out, it was still the world's most genuine bravado imaginable.</p>
      <p>"We will win this round, though it will not come easy since we will win one letter at a time, like the letter E" Bennow took a shot and almost fell on a knee when the brutal wrong answer signal buzzed in. "It is a foul sound," he stated the obvious, "Slices at one's eardrums…"</p>
      <p>"This… Cacophony is… Really not helping with my raging migraine!" Kiyomi yelled out.</p>
      <p>"You're more than welcome to try and help, you know." Naruto raised his eyebrows as if trying to guilt-trip his teammate.</p>
      <p>"Whatever, just start guessing random letters, win or lose, there will be more rounds to catch up with them just… Stop that blasted sound!" Kiyomi growled.</p>
      <p>"I know how you're feeling. Try to calm down and shut yourself out. Filter all of this out. That's how Mana taught me when she taught me concentration, I've found it helps to deal with pain." Meiko patted Kiyomi's back and rubber her shoulders, something that appeared to have a profound effect on the team leader as she closed her eyes and eased her breath.</p>
      <p>"Alright then," Naruto clenched his fist. "It will be us who will win this round, though it won't be by guessing random letters because that will only make the wrong guess sound torment us more often, as it would if I guessed the letter N."</p>
      <p>"Seriously? Why N?" Meiko turned to Naruto.</p>
      <p>"It's the first letter of my name, you know…" the goofball smiled with a healthy blush to his cheeks as he laid his head back in his hands' rest.</p>
      <p>"That's so…" Bennow smacked his face.</p>
      <p>"Wait… Our heads hadn't been split, that means that…" Rosanna pointed at the board that began slotting through letters and picking up speed while doing so.</p>
      <p>"You mean that stooge got something right!?" Faeras dropped his jaw as he witnessed the board settle on a rather golden guess position of "-in-an-"</p>
      <p>"He got two letters by just shooting off of his own name? How are we supposed to compete with this kind of blind luck?" it was not clear if Bennow was chuckling or sneering underneath all the clothes covering up his face but he was reacting in one of those two ways for certain. Naruto and his antics just sort of had that kind of effect on people.</p>
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<a name="section0608"><h2>608. Birds of Prey To The Elusive Hyphens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Alright!" Naruto cheered on himself. "I should keep guessing more letters from my own name, you know!"</p><p>"Please don't…" Kiyomi sighed. "I couldn't stand any more of that horrid buzzing."</p><p>"Fun fact for our audience, the detestable wrong answer jingle is an actual sound encountered in the real world! It is a mating call of the Sokukochu insect used by the Aburame clan." Musha smiled for the audience with a lovely wink. The jounin allowed the role of the host of this faux quiz show to fully take her over.</p><p>"Great… Now it makes me want to never leave my house." Meiko groaned.</p><p>"Hmmm… When I guess the letter, my team wants me to pick the correct one, but I don't know what the correct letter is, so I guess the letter F?" Faeras shrugged.</p><p>"Holy… Was that a compost-complex sentence?" Meiko turned at Kiyomi with surprise.</p><p>"I think so…" the Yamanaka nodded.</p><p>And so both the participants and the unwilling audience of the quiz show had to sit through another second, stretching out for eternity, of the Sokukochu mating call. This time it seemed like it was beginning to wear down on the host as well as Musha hunched over while the flamboyant strand of hair that stood proud as a morning rooster collapsed over her face as well.</p><p>"This letter is not in the word though… Could you stop gambling with it, please?" she muttered.</p><p>"This is a complex problem, I suggest you let me and Rosanna handle it, Faeras." Bennow turned his black goggles to the board and, as the gleam of the stage reflected off of them, it began to seem like he was focusing hard on it.</p><p>"-in-an-... What word can it even be, you know?" Naruto scratched his chin.</p><p>"Who knows? My head hurts too much!" Kiyomi whined out. "If we could just guess a few more letters right… Even a couple…"</p><p>"A couple…" Meiko muttered. "Yeah, I'm sure a couple is all we need. Are there any vowels we still haven't checked?"</p><p>"No way!" Naruto objected. "At this point, there would be too many. I say we stop focusing on vowels already."</p><p>"Could you then focus on something?" Musha flicked her wrist as if tapping on a wristwatch except for the fact she was not wearing one and was just tapping at her exposed sleeve.</p><p>"When I think of manly letters, my team would usually groan, but I think that manliest letters are what we need, which is why I am guessing the letter R!" Naruto locked his arms over his chest, in his head his blind guess must have looked quite daring though the mating call of the Sokukochu insects soon turned that bravado into mulch.</p><p>"Well… It was a guess, I suppose…" Kiyomi let the soothing that befell her when the dreadful noise cleared the air leave her lungs together with the pain that accumulated there.</p><p>"Even if we have guessed most vowels, there is still a vowel we haven't guessed, but we will guess it now and it is the letter U!" Rosanna pointed her finger toward the board, hoping to see at least one letter pop up in the jumped mess of a word but nothing of the sort took place.</p><p>"Don't worry, you guys, in around twenty more guesses they'll run out of letters…" Musha shrugged with an apologetic look on her face, reflecting the hatred she felt for the fumbling contestants onto the audience as well.</p><p>"Twenty!? You cheeky...! We just need a pair more, you know!" Naruto shook a fist that emphasized his frustration at Musha's direction.</p><p>"A pair…" Meiko mumbled to herself again.</p><p>"What's the matter, Meiko?" Kiyomi turned to her teammate.</p><p>"Yeah, you've been mumbling that "pair" stuff pretty often now, what gives, you know?" Naruto locked his arms over his chest while addressing Meiko's odd behavior as well.</p><p>"I… It's nothing. I just… I just wondered that maybe we don't really need many more letters than a pair." Meiko explained with moderate awkwardness leading the expression of her killer idea.</p><p>"Yeah, genius, that's what we've been trying to translate this whole time!" Naruto squinted. "Is she an idiot, you know?" he turned to Kiyomi.</p><p>"I see…" Kiyomi rubbed her forehead and then her tired eyes. "You mean that there might not be three more hidden letters but two?"</p><p>"Huh? Hey, lots-a-fun, how many letters are hidden in the word? You gotta answer, you know!" Naruto pressed on the host who leaned back in a defensive notion and shook her head a pair of times.</p><p>"Oh, I assure you, we've encrypted all of the symbols, there are three hidden symbols on the board right now, I am not lying!" Musha replied with a smirk that was as apologetic as it was polite and genuine.</p><p>"That's exactly what a liar would say, you know!" Naruto growled, rolling back his right sleeve.</p><p>"No, I think she's right…" Kiyomi smirked.</p><p>"Oh… I knew it was a long shot…" Meiko looked down and away into a singular point of the floor, looking defeated.</p><p>"No, you were right all along, Meiko." Kiyomi took a pair of lazy steps in front, taking the time to feel up her tired body while she faced her teammates. "Think about it and listen to what Musha-san said, what she said exactly!"</p><p>"She said there were three hidden symbols…" Naruto squinted at Kiyomi. "There's only that much you can hide behind so few letters, you know."</p><p>"Oh, but you still missed it, no matter how thin the wall obstructing the truth – Musha-san said symbols, not letters!" Kiyomi gesticulated her point with livelihood unbefitting someone of her head-splitting condition. "That means that one of those hyphens is a hyphen!"</p><p>"I see… Well played, Team Hokage…" Bennow sighed underneath all of his cloth.</p><p>"Man… After all this fumbling…" Rosanna leaned forward in defeat as well. Her face suggested that she took the defeat with a semblance of fun though.</p><p>"Am I the only one still stumped?" Naruto scratched his head. "Of course the hyphen is a hyphen, you know…"</p><p>Kiyomi turned to Meiko who looked similarly baffled. Kiyomi sighed and turned toward Musha. "The word that is on the board is "Yin-Yang" because the hyphen is concealing a hyphen, but nobody could get underneath this underneath, not single one of us, just Team Hokage together."</p><p>The board shuffled, mad with the bonkers flow of letters until the hidden word emerged as "Yin-Yang".</p><p>"Huh!? So the tux-lady really did lie!" Naruto pointed an accusatory finger at Musha. "The hyphen in the middle didn't change, meaning we only needed to guess two more letters!"</p><p>"No, Naruto, you're wrong, don't you still get it? The hyphen was hiding a hyphen underneath. All the letters were encrypted by hyphens and the center of the word we had to guess had a hyphen. What we needed really was only a pair of letters but there were three concealed letters on the board." Meiko explained after her own face brightened up with enlightenment of the situation becoming clearer.</p><p>"That's so shady, you know!" Naruto pointed his finger at Musha again, his eyes were whited out and his mouth quivered in fury almost to the point of foaming.</p><p>"Well, it appears that Team Hokage won the first round of our quiz show!" Musha declared, shoving away Naruto's accusatory glares and his pointy fingers aimed at her general direction. "You know what that means, it's time for the next round – the Skedaddle!"</p><p>"We're not going to like the Skedaddle, are we, you know?" Naruto turned to Meiko and Kiyomi who shook their heads in unison.</p><p>"We are in the lead though. All we need is one more win!" Meiko clenched her fists and looked on ahead with crystal-clear eyes, eyes focused on victory.</p><p>"In this round, you will be confronted by experts who will give you each questions from their fields. One select participant of each team will be asked a series of questions and the team with the most total points will win the round." Musha explained. Her hand went into the inner pocket of her tuxedo and came out with a key as large as a book that went into the stage floor. The floor rippled and let the key in, even if it looked like no other interactable that functioned in synchrony with the cube. "The expert will go on to the next team and tally up your total points when you answer a question wrong."</p><p>The key prompted something within the cube. A stage not unlike the one from the legal rap-battle challenge earlier rose from underneath the ground, a stage of branching out rods of obsidian-black or snow-white. Each one of them housed a person as miscellaneous as picking a random person out of the entire village.</p><p>"Let's see… Will the first expert proceed with your inquiry?" Musha looked at the towering stage and one obsidian branch of the tower lit up, revealing a roughed up chuunin wearing a torn flak jacket and a face that had streaks of bandage wrapped over it in places.</p><p>"My name is Umino Shiru. I am the handler of many animals located in the Konohagakure Zoo and I also work as the guard and manager of the Konoha Aviary. Those who use the Aviary and uphold the proper messenger bird management protocol would know that…" Shiru turned to Meiko who pulled on her tracksuit collar with a sweating face of a mild and faked grin.</p><p>"I assume you, Sir, are Bennow Vingcro?" the expert turned at Bennow from Team Cephei without warning.</p><p>"I am, what of it?" Bennow nodded. His voice was not as rough-edged as the young man's tone was usually.</p><p>"I must admit, we may not be familiar but… Your messenger bird etiquette is legendary amongst the ninja working in the Aviary. When we noted how neat and trend-setting Hoshigakure mail was, we snooped around and found out your name as the result of our research. It is such an honor meeting you in person, young man!" the expert very nearly swooned over the mysterious Hoshigakure genin.</p><p>"Of course, a true gentleman handles their birds right. Only foul scoundrels hate birds…" Bennow struck a subdued, heroic pose as he nodded in acknowledgment of the compliments that the expert paid him.</p><p>"So… Are your injuries a result of bird management? A work hazard, perhaps?" Musha raised her hand, looking a tad dwindled after the control over the quiz show was wrestled away from her.</p><p>"By no means! My birds are as soft and kind to me as I am with them. I have, unfortunately, suffered a honey-badger related incident." Shiru replied with his one open eye opened wide as if he was trying to intimidate the audience.</p><p>"Ah… At the Konoha Zoo, I presume…" Musha smiled uncomfortably. She would have very much liked for the second round of the quiz show to proceed already.</p><p>"No, at the Aviary, in fact. Granted, in a matter of speech, the honey badger incident is related to the Konohagakure Zoo as that is where that ravenous rascal escaped from! It then attacked me and my birds right at the Aviary…" Shiru covered up his face and shook his head, recounting something that sounded like a hilarious slapstick comedy but portrayed it more as a life-altering tragedy.</p><p>"Well then… Maybe we can…" Musha politely nudged the direction of the show ahead to its intended direction before she was interrupted again.</p><p>"But never fear, for I have devised safeguards that the demonic wretch will not escape from! I have hung beehives all over the grate it usually claws through, for, you see, the beehives will become disrupted by the annoying sound of grate-clawing, prompting an efficient and decisive swarm attack from the bees upon the elusive honey badger!" Shiru kept accentuating certain key words of his plan and gesticulating like a politician that had taken a stand atop of a speaking platform and was explaining his plan of action to his possible electorate.</p><p>"A sound plan… Bees are mighty insects" a familiar mumble from the audience, coming from the direction of a younger version of Shino with far wilder hair and a white, slightly less-excessive jacket collar covering his lower jaw. The boy even stood up to be heard all the way on the opposite side of the room where the expert was seated.</p><p>"Actually…" Musha fumbled, her face twisted with disbelief in what she was hearing from the expert of animal handling of the entire village. "Bees will have no effect on the honey badger. That's… Its one thing. Its skin is too thick for mere bee stings to work."</p><p>"Hmmm… It does have a strangely injection-proof skin… I have originally intended to crush that hammer-handed ruffian over there with impeccable, bird-related trivia," Shiru pointed at Meiko. "But in light of this recent information, I am afraid I must flee…"</p><p>"Very well, duty calls, I assume…" Musha very nearly took a plunge straight through the ground after one of her experts demanded a leave.</p><p>"By no means! It is a mere coincidence! Nothing at all to do with the fact that I've left an escape-prone, midget rage-beast hidden behind a mere duct-taped grate." Shiru saluted the contestants and then the audience before bolting.</p><p>"In this case… May another expert substitute Shiru-san?" Musha groaned before a white light illuminated the stand of an all too familiar young man.</p><p>"No way!" Kiyomi covered up her face.</p><p>"He's back with vengeance!" Meiko's jaw dropped.</p><p>"Who's this guy, you know?" Naruto pouted at the young man scratching his head.</p><p>"I am your predecessor, Uzumaki Naruto, the person you kicked out from the backstabbing Team Hokage to take part in this exam!" Gwido declared with an all-judgmental finger of his own.</p><p>"Huh? So you're the Mana that Kiyomi and Meiko mention from time to time? Are you an okama, or something, you know?" Naruto beaked his lips.</p><p>"If you must know, knave, I am Gwido Amaikon, the prime expert of ramen in Konohagakure, called by some – the Ramen Destroyer!" Gwido introduced himself in a kabuki-esque dance. For someone of his like, he was rather graceful as he only nearly fell from his stand four times in total during his introduction.</p><p>"Is that a fact, you know?" Naruto straightened his back and allowed his arms to lower beside him while his golden locks obstructed his eyes. With a renewed vigor to engage this challenger to his own rep, Naruto raised his eyes and revealed the burning youth and crystal-clarity in his eyes to anyone in doubt.</p><p>"I thought you were cool with us shafting you. You even said something akin to "Worth a shot" when you didn't pass the registration and our team disbanded." Kiyomi still tried to appeal to Gwido's reason but she should have known better than to assume he had any to be appealed to.</p><p>"Silence, we shall engage each other in the only battle I am not hopelessly outmatched in against Naruto – a ramen trivia quiz!" Gwido declared, pointing at Naruto in a demeaning manner.</p><p>"Don't worry, guys, I got this, you know!" Naruto growled and looked back at his team, the boundless determination in his face turned to a confident smirk as he gave the young women a thumb up.</p><p>"Do you know anything about ramen?" Kiyomi pleaded with Naruto's reason this time, begging him with her eyes to now make a mistake and cost her team this round.</p><p>"You could say that, you know." Naruto turned back to Gwido as the two matched glares like fencers matched blades.</p><p>"Are you saying that!?" Kiyomi was about to shake the young man by his shoulders but her headache set in, forcing her to back down.</p><p>"This is… All sorts of wrong but… Somehow, it's not against the rules and, in fact, the only kind of settling of matters you two can have at this moment in time and this place." Musha shrugged. "I'll allow it!"</p><p>"Very well, let's start off with a simple one – where does the ramen originate from?" Gwido grimaced at his challenger.</p><p>"Easy, the Fire Temple, monks Shina and Shoba manufactured the noodles but they ate them dry, monk Lamia was the one to boil the first ramen soup and combine the two goodies together, you know," Naruto replied with confidence that was usual for the young man's tone but, somehow, this time he sounded calmer.</p><p>When Naruto declared that he would confront and defeat Orochimaru and his own comrade he sounded confident as if it was something that would absolutely happen but his voice shook still… When he spoke of ramen, he was just declaring something that was inevitable.</p><p>"What is he doing? Our universes are vastly different, there's no way that's…" Kiyomi pulled on her banana-colored hair.</p><p>"You are correct, this time…" Gwido admitted. "But can you answer this – what is the name of the largest network of ramen restaurants in the world?"</p><p>"Even I know that…" Kiyomi smirked, "It's Ichiraku, right?"</p><p>"No, it's the best, or so Naruto would believe, but it only has a single restaurant…" Meiko stroke her chin. She was observing two ramen gods doing battle with their wits, as true masters should have matched up with one another. They were engaging each other on a plane completely unfamiliar to Meiko. A whole different level.</p><p>"You kidding me?" Naruto did not as much as tip the edges of his lips. "That's Juuku."</p><p>"And how many restaurants does the Juuku network have?" Gwido leaned in, nearly tipping over the stand to the point where he'd plummet and splat after completing his trip downward.</p><p>"Nineteen." Naruto barked out without thinking.</p><p>"Heh, you are no initiate, at least… A worthy adversary to be sure…" Gwido fixed his collar and then rested at the stand with his elbow for support. "But the true battle begins now!"</p><p>"Excuse me but… Those are our points that this imbecile is wasting. He's testing contestant Naruto with easy questions, it seems…" Bennow complained to the host.</p><p>"Could you have answered any of them?" Musha wondered.</p><p>"Not one…" Bennow admitted. "That's kind of my point. Here they are exchanging questions and answers and, likely, we won't be able to answer one question."</p><p>"Cry me a river… Just watch them go…" Musha smirked as in the total time that it took for Bennow's complaint to get resolved Naruto answered four more questions.</p><p>"They're… They're going to go here for a whole day, won't they?" Faeras whistled out into the air and looked at his mysterious teammate.</p>
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<a name="section0609"><h2>609. MacMeiko</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Before you eat ramen, you separate the chopsticks, clap your hands and yell out…" Gwido began wording his next question but a clever grin turned Naruto's jaw rightward.</p><p>"That's a trick question. Everyone knows that the first step of eating ramen is observing the bowl and absorbing the aroma of the harmony that the ingredients have created, you know!" Naruto explained.</p><p>"Drats, I thought I would have had you with that one…" Gwido nodded with the admission of temporary defeat coloring his face.</p><p>"He's even getting questions that aren't even questions at all…" Faeras appeared to white out from the intensity of intellectual competition between the two, jabbing, thrusting and parrying, all performed with wits instead of crude and brutish weaponry.</p><p>"In taijutsu, there are offshoot styles of the entire ninja art: Strong Fist, Gentle Fist, etc…" Gwido began bending fingers off of his hand. Naruto's face paled out.</p><p>"There are, you know?" Naruto mumbled out. "I… I thought we were talking about ramen, not taijutsu."</p><p>"Unbelievable…" Kiyomi stroke her temples.</p><p>"You're a ninja, Naruto, taijutsu is one of the ninja arts…" Meiko shook her head. "A civilian is lecturing you about that?"</p><p>"Anyway," Gwido's face adopted a sheepish smile now that he realized he might have gotten his opponent. "There is also a style of martial arts offshoot style that, according to its originator, Mitsukuni Nanmen, is inspired by ramen. The way the user radiates charisma and power was inspired by the divine aroma, only experienced in front of a majestic bowl of ramen, the way the user flexes and moves has been inspired by the silk-like texture of the noodles and the hardy blows that the user delivers hailed from the experience of the sparking spices of the perfect ramen bowl. What is that style call.."</p><p>"Ran Ran Ken." Naruto nodded. "When you started going on and on I kind of got scared, should'a told me it would be something this simple, you know…"</p><p>"Ma'am…" Bennow lifted his hand. "I do not believe there is a subject in this universe that we can possibly answer this many questions to. We surrender."</p><p>"If that is how the entire Team Cephei feels..." Musha winked one eye, looking displeased by the fact that the intense fencing game between two ramen heads has been put to a cease this way.</p><p>"I hate the idea of giving up more than the next guy but… This is ridiculous." Faeras sighed.</p><p>"Agreed. Even if a botanist asked me a dozen questions about gardening and the biology of trees, I'd never answer this many of them in a row. Naruto's obsession goes one-eighty to being very impressive…" Rosanna admitted.</p><p>"Alright, folks, you know what that means!" Musha winked at the audience and gave them a quirky pose.</p><p>"You let us go?" Neji's bitter voice from the audience rang onto the stage.</p><p>"Not a chance, because the quiz show concluded in the second round, we still have one more round of air-time to spare, which means we're gonna use it for some other pair of teams, who will inevitably go into overtime, meaning we'll have to leave the resolution for next week!" Musha moved her finger in front of the crowd, discouraging false ideas of possible freedom being in the prospect for them.</p><p>"Next week?" a voice from the audience groaned.</p><p>"Yo, we better high-tail it out of here until the pink-haired lady ties us to a chair too, you know!" Naruto leaned up to his team and whispered it at the pair while a cube formed in his hand and then dissolved into a flurry of pixels that swarmed over at Kiyomi's grasp, interacting with the other clusters of pixels that Team Hokage had gathered.</p><p>"Alright, just three more trials left to go…" Kiyomi nodded. While her eyelids could now shut without setting off a spark of painful resonances all over her face that seeped deeper into her very core, she was still far from her perfect shape for the upcoming trials.</p><p>After Team Hokage passed through the shuffling opening of tiny cubes in the wall, they met a faintly lit room with a rather unsettling trio of souls lingering on the other side. While the visage of Morino Ibiki was by far the most appealing to see in the moist gloom of the room, the knowledge of who the man was and the role he served in the exam served as a sort of soothing factor for the chilling presence of the man.</p><p>"Team Hokage of Konohagakure, it is time for you to begin your next challenge. Your opponents for the round, the Genbu Shinobi Trio have been waiting for a few minutes now." Ibiki said, turning for the entrants.</p><p>The Genbu Shinobi Trio he indirectly introduced hissed and covered up their eyes from the bright, neon lights and glitter that reached them from the other room where the quiz show took place. The trio wore standard Iwagakure uniforms. Naruto didn't seem to care all that much about that fact but Kiyomi and Meiko lingered for a fair moment as the uniforms reminded them of the grand tragedy that befell Iwagakure. These folks weren't from Iwagakure of their universe, too young, too glittery and untouched by the calamity.</p><p>"Naruto, Kiyomi, Meiko, the Team Hokage of Konohagakure. The Genbu Shinobi Trio – Sekki, Keppra, Brakke. Welcome to your sixth challenge for the sixth piece of the Mind Coupon. You will find this challenge to be most unorthodox for the type of skills it will require. This challenge, in other words, in a test of ingenuity, but also – craftiness. It shall be your task to create a tool. You will have twenty-three minutes to create the tool, your opponents will be doing the same. At the end of the allotted time, I shall be testing the tools for the task they will be meant to accomplish." Ibiki explained.</p><p>Both the Genbu Shinobi Trio and Team Hokage clapped their eyelids for a brief time, staring at Ibiki and waiting for him to finish his explanation. Ibiki cleared his throat. "I was waiting for one of you to ask me to clarify…" he stated.</p><p>"We were waiting for you to clarify, you know…" Naruto replied. Kiyomi turned to Naruto, the young man took no bullshit from anyone, no matter how much older they were or how much they outranked him. Hell, the guy was ready to throw himself at Musha the last time when he thought she was just messing around with them. There was something to both respect, as well as revere about that.</p><p>"I see. Well… You will begin building the tool once the challenge starts without any tips as to what the task is. Once you are fifteen minutes in, the ad break will hit and the ads will explain the task. From that point on – you can either ditch the tool you have built up to and then and start anew or to continue on the path you've been on. Maybe you'll just want to make slight modifications, who knows, it's all up to you." Ibiki shrugged.</p><p>The image of a grassland field atop of a small hill flashed on the screen behind Ibiki. The room the crew was currently in was much more compact than all the other extravagant rooms therefore behind them was the only place where the large screen would fit. The grassland field image was covered with a filter of blood-red and it seemed as if blood was running down the lens of the camera that filled the entire thing with the image appearing somewhat choppy and static, the entire thing was spiced with grungy noises.</p><p>The Genbu Shinobi Trio took the flash of images as a signal to begin whereas it took the Team Hokage a brief while to catch up to the idea and follow suit with their own endeavor. The trio of Team Hokage dashed back to one of the less than suitable tables of complex engineering as Meiko took charge, quickly opening the table up by removing the plastic cover and pulling out a piece of the construction that served a tin container for tools and materials.</p><p>"This task's weird… I suck at construction, you know…" Naruto pouted. He likely would not have been much help in this case.</p><p>"I'm not the greatest with it too, I might just be more clueless than Naruto," Kiyomi admitted. Either way, knowing how amazing Meiko was at tinkering, the Yamanaka welcomed a fair chance to recover from her temporary headaches some more.</p><p>"Don't you worry guys, I'm all you're gonna need!" Meiko declared as she began putting pieces together, screwing, putting stuff in and taking it out.</p><p>"What are you… Making, exactly?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"A badass weapon. It doesn't really matter what we make, we don't know what we're supposed to make." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"Ummm… That's… I don't think that's what you should be focusing on, honestly. This entire challenge is meant to test our minds and not our brawn." Kiyomi tapped her foot a couple of times at the busted up tiles beneath her feet but she didn't get in Meiko's way.</p><p>"Weapons are like ninja. Narrow-minded people attribute them as good for just one thing but the true meaning of weapons is to be determined by the user. A client can order a ninja to watch over their cat for the weekend just as well as they can order them to kill someone." Meiko replied while engaged in a hardcore drilling operation. Kiyomi just took a piece of cloth from the table and wiped Meiko's sweat with it, just determined to do anything she could to assist her friend.</p><p>"Could you leave the sweat wiping thing and thing-handing thing to Naruto and just do that thing you did way back when I was defusing that sealing tag bomb when Hanasaku-sensei took us training?" Meiko asked.</p><p>"I'll try…" Kiyomi shrugged. Her mindset was not in the best of places and it has been years since she last used her techniques this way but she closed her eyes and concentrated.</p><p>"What's she doing, you know?" Naruto wondered.</p><p>"She's connecting us with the mental link and then thinking pleasant thoughts real intense-like. That way she's gonna soothe us down a bit. Helps me work." Meiko smiled as her body overflowed with memories from Kiyomi's childhood that should have been meaningless without context but due to excitement and lovely nostalgia that it caused Kiyomi to experience – it felt just great.</p><p>"Wow, that's…" Naruto scratched his chin, enjoying the sweet effects of Kiyomi's concentration a decent deal as well despite doing most of the freeloading at the moment.</p><p>"Right? Kiyomi figured out she could do it after I kept pissing everyone off by thinking loudly on the link. She figured that if one could psyche everyone out that way, how about she tried thinking pleasant thoughts and it kind of worked. It wasn't what she would have liked to have learned at that moment since it didn't make her stronger but it did help us out a couple of times while we worked together." Meiko smiled.</p><p>"Wow… There were so many times she could have used it in the past… Like when we were training and she kicked my ass and it hurt real bad, you know…" Naruto pouted and looked at Kiyomi with a mean glare, one that he knew she couldn't see at the moment.</p><p>"Hey, don't ruin the vibe, that's why she can't use it for something like pain-management – everyone on the link can influence the vibes. If you're in pain, likely you're not thinking pleasant thoughts and that counteracts the whole thing…" Meiko objected to Naruto's mean-spirited remark. Just in time before the fifteen minutes mark, she lifted a pair of clawed gauntlets made out of a metallic frame and coated with leather and some gel that Meiko felt pretty excited to find in the box.</p><p>The blacksmith jabbed at the crafting table a pair of times, letting out a dull thud from the gauntlet.</p><p>"I thought it would slice the table clean in half… It didn't do that, you know." Naruto squinted at the curiously inefficient tool in Meiko's hands.</p><p>"That's because it's far from being complete. I left completing it to after we find out what it is that we must do with it." Meiko smirked.</p><p>"Alright, you guys, let's see what you made…" Ibiki gave both teams a strict glare and almost as if that glare scolded them with hot water, both teams stopped their tinkering and rolled up their tables to the examinee. Meiko approached him wearing her contraptions instead, the table of Team Hokage was merely filled with some scraps left over from the production.</p><p>"We've made a set of gauntlets. Right now they're just a blunt-force smacking mechanism that can whack someone really hard but they're also ripe with possibility to be enhanced with sealing techniques and modifications." Meiko shrugged, showing off her pounders.</p><p>"Impressive, you appear to have made an equivalent of a D-Rank weapon in just fifteen minutes. You have a knack for this." Ibiki struck a grin.</p><p>"I don't like it when that guy's grinning, it's creepy, you know!" Naruto pointed at Ibiki while he mumbled to Kiyomi's ear.</p><p>"It is. His face appears unnatural in that position." Kiyomi admitted.</p><p>"Genbu Shinobi Trio, what have you three made?" Ibiki wondered.</p><p>The creepy, green-haired fellow with sharp, shark-like teeth and dyed in gothic shades lips stepped aside from the table, exposing what appeared to be a paper mache volcano. It was colored black with some gouache and had a red jar of gouache filling it from inside as lava.</p><p>"We made a paper mache volcano…" the member of the Genbu Shinobi Trio of thicker proportions admitted.</p><p>"I see crafting is not one of your stronger suits, fellows…" Ibiki solemnly nodded to himself.</p><p>"It is not…" Sekki, the apparent leader of the Genbu Shinobi Trio as he always hung out in the middle of the formation, declared. "However, we are sure that we can convert this volcano to somehow serve a great variety of tasks. Iwagakure has always thrived obtaining what they needed from the mountains, after all. So when you think of it a bit, it's kind of perfect…"</p><p>Ibiki stepped to the side, freeing up the view on the screen. Judging from his expression, he did not agree with the judgment of the Genbu Shinobi Trio's craftsmanship being deserving perfection. The screen flashed red, black and white and began showing off people snoring in the all too familiar background of Forest of Death. The people woke up and started mumbling unintelligibly. Mumbling that almost seemed like complaining.</p><p>"Your task is to use your tools to help these people stop snoring." Ibiki calmly stated.</p><p>Meiko's face shriveled up as she examined her gauntlets from all sides. She was a sort of inventor as well so her mind shuffled with photographic images of possible outcomes that the gauntlets could have been converted into. Judging from the intensity and length of her just standing still and thinking, coming up with the right conversion and modifications was not all that easy.</p><p>"Meiko?" Kiyomi stepped up to her teammate and pressed her hand lightly on Meiko's shoulder.</p><p>"Yeah, I can do that…" Meiko nodded with a smirk. While Kiyomi didn't like the almost simian nature of Meiko's grin, she had no other choice than to trust whatever her teammate would come up with.</p><p>The Genbu Shinobi Trio looked paled out as they kept staring at one another and then back at their paper mache volcano, trying to figure out a universe in which a Ninja Academy level science experiment could have been converted into a solution for snoring.</p><p>"Huh… You're not modifying your gauntlets at all, you know." Naruto pointed out.</p><p>"No, I'm gonna make another device and then integrate the gauntlets into it. Don't worry, it'll be simple enough…" Meiko smiled.</p><p>"And it's gonna… Solve snoring? With a pair of whack-a-mole gauntlets?" Kiyomi shifted her weight on one foot, she didn't want to admit that she doubted her teammate but…</p><p>"Uh-huh…" Meiko nodded. Even if her tone implied that there was plenty that the redhead left out, she sort of admitted the most important part and that was good enough. Plus, it was not like Kiyomi and Naruto might have had a better idea if they just canned Meiko and her invention at this late stage of the challenge.</p><p>"You're done." Ibiki declared, white, artificial streaks illuminated the room while all six ninja working on their assignments straightened their backs and stepped away from their tables. Upon Ibiki gesturing with his finger for both of the teams to come up closer and introduce their submissions for the assignment, both teams did just that.</p><p>"Huh… They don't seem to have modified their volcano at all. We might just have this, you know." Naruto smiled and nodded as if doing his best to assure himself of Team Hokage's inevitable victory.</p><p>"Very well, Team Hokage, what is your submission that will solve the snoring of those poor people?" Ibiki turned at the trio from Konoha first.</p><p>"Knock 'em dead." Kiyomi faked a smile, trying to seem confident when, in fact, she was very unsettled inside.</p><p>Meiko pulled up a ring with a glowing paper tag in the middle compressed by two thick shards of glass. She put on the entire harness and flicked a switch, pulling the two gauntlets that connected by a string reeling mechanism that ruled in a pair of interwoven layers of steel wire. The blacksmith pressed her chest piece and then cupped her hands, still wearing the gauntlets in front of her as a fiery sphere manifested out of smaller flares fired off from the sealing tag on her chest. In the end, Meiko smashed the fireball in between her hands, detonating it in a ground-shaking heatwave.</p><p>"A loud noise like this will wake anyone up and if you can't go to sleep – you can't snore…" she smirked.</p><p>"I'm gonna kill her…" Kiyomi shook her head, stroking her forehead in disappointment.</p><p>"A paper mache volcano, Kiyomi, the other guys made a paper mache volcano, you know…" Naruto tried to calm his team leader down some.</p><p>"That is… Horrible… But it technically does solve the problem so I won't disqualify you guys. Let's see what the Genbu Shinobi Trio from Iwagakure has." Ibiki appeared to be similarly disappointed by Meiko's obsession by making weapons and having them solve every problem in front of her.</p><p>"Well… Our solution is a bit similar to that of Team Hokage's…" Keppura admitted and pulled out a red food pill from his ninja pouch. The boy dangled it over the volcano that now bubbled, brimming with heat from inside, suggesting that the boys have managed to add a heating mechanism of sorts to it during the extra time they had to complete their invention.</p><p>Keppura dropped the red food pill and momentarily it exploded into a revolting, burning sensation. It simultaneously sieged both the eyes by forcing them to water from irritation, the nose by making it drool as well as leaving a peppery scold in everybody's mouth. The pill seemed to be some sort of chili or habanero spice, which resulted in the pepper bomb effect that the volcano caused after the boy dropped the food pill in it.</p><p>"If you're not asleep, you're not snoring…" Keppura made an innocent shrug. "In our defense, our presentation would have been better if we weren't the second team counting on the same idea."</p><p>"It really would not have been. Team Hokage's performance was pathetic but… Somehow… They won." Ibiki ruled by raising his right hand and pointing at Kiyomi, Meiko, and Naruto as the two who were the least involved in this challenge leaned over the third goofball with menacing glares.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0610"><h2>610. Konoha Fisting Bee</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What's taking you so long?" Kiyomi looked back at Meiko who continued to tinker on her knees with occasional flashes of light emanating from a scroll she had rolled out on the ground.</p><p>"It's not like you're in any rush…" Ibiki tapped his foot on the ground with the back of his bottom pressed against a little steel table. "Take your time."</p><p>"There, all done!" Meiko gave her team an ecstatic smile with a thumb-up after standing up and attaching the brown scroll she held on a pouch underneath her tracksuit and on her belt.</p><p>"You're taking that thing with, you know?" Naruto wondered.</p><p>"I don't make useless stuff. It's gonna come in handy eventually and, even if it doesn't, I'll improve on it eventually." Meiko shrugged. "You don't just invent a semi-decent weapon with a chakra channeling seal attached to it and then toss it out into the garbage bin."</p><p>"Well, we're gonna go up against a bunch of genin so something like that will still stay relevant, I guess." Kiyomi shrugged. From what she saw of the fireball that Meiko's gadget produced, it was more of a hindrance or a repellant than a fright-inducing weapon. Then again, it was invented in around ten minutes.</p><p>The three rushed on ahead to a remote, white-tile clad wall that carried the same general vibe as the whole rest of the room – that of an abandoned bathroom in the warehouse that some psycho used to dispose of a body. If the Team Hokage bolted then and there, they would not be getting out of that revolting room as fast as they'd have liked.</p><p>The next room was far different. Almost immediately the change in lighting jabbed at Kiyomi's eyes, inviting an opportunity for her lingering migraine to surface in its requiem impulses that were a far cry from what they were like a good half an hour ago. While her body still felt a bit numb and tired and her head felt buzzing like a busy beehive, Kiyomi felt ready to assist her team proper again. She knew that her two favorite dolts could have been trusted to take the reins for a little while and they did their best.</p><p>Whether it was because of pure luck, like with Meiko, or because of impeccable skill in the specific area, like with Naruto, her team pulled through. As a leader, Kiyomi couldn't have felt more proud. Something about this roster just felt inherently right…</p><p>"Welcome, Team Hokage, I thought you'd never come." Ibiki turned to Team Hokage, standing in a white dogi in the middle of a dojo. A black headband donned his bald head that looked as if he was a burn victim while hanging upside down and someone decided to rake at his wounds in a sick attempt to bleed the burns out.</p><p>"Really?" Meiko turned to Naruto with a muffled squeal.</p><p>"Yeah, he's pretty hardcore, you know…" Naruto shrugged. Clearly he had been introduced to the condition of Ibiki's upper head and the reason why the chief interrogator of his universe's version of Konoha adopted the bandana as a signature fashion statement.</p><p>"Actually," an undergrown, bespectacled boy with eyes of coal and chin-length hair just as black, resting in a traditional-style knot at the top of his head. "It was no time at all, for within this curious dimension, space is warped and time is bendable!"</p><p>"They know, Denki, it's meant to be a joke!" an overgrown, compared to the rest of his team, young man a tanned complexion, stern, brown eyes and a red cap so massive that it appeared as a blanket tied over his head with rubber bands as if the youth walked around in a perpetual state of after-shower.</p><p>"Huh, Bushy Brows!?" Naruto pointed at a short boy in a familiar green jumpsuit hanging beside the rest of the boys. Now that Naruto mentioned it, Kiyomi recalled seeing a similar boy but of somewhat advanced age all the way back in the audience during the quiz show. The familiarity of the way in which Naruto addressed the boy with an offensive nickname suggested that the two might have been chummy.</p><p>"Eh? Lord Seventh!?" the deep, black eyes of the boy in the green jumpsuit blanked out into total whites while his mouth began twisting and swirling as if gripped by a case of nasty nausea.</p><p>"Lord Seventh?" the overgrown genin amongst the opponents of Team Hokage in the upcoming challenge smirked. "Interesting… Name's Iwabee, these are my teammates: Metal and Denki."</p><p>"Metal?! Your actual name is Metal!?" Meiko pointed at the shy and frightened boy in the green jumpsuit before erupting into a mad fit of laughter. "That's metal as shit!"</p><p>"Yeah, you would think that…" Kiyomi sighed, clearly, less impressed by the name of the young man in question. If anything, the massive social insecurities and discomforts more struck her cords when the peculiar name of the young boy came to mind. She couldn't help but wonder what sort of imbecile would name their child that way and doom them to such difficulty in their social life.</p><p>"Huh? Metal? I don't get it, you know…" Naruto scratched his head.</p><p>"You must be referring to Metal's father, Lord Seventh…" Denki explained. "The two do share more than a few similarities."</p><p>"Oh, I see… Don't call me Lord Seventh though. I haven't yet earned the right to be called by that title, you know." Naruto asked in a non-confrontational tone, well, about as much so as he found possible given his fiery character though Denki found it rather confrontational as he shuffled his feet behind his teammates and almost shoved his entire fist down his own throat.</p><p>"Don't sweat about it, these two can look like pansies but they're all fine ninja, they're gonna be great one day, you'd better believe it!" Iwabee grinned at Naruto.</p><p>"Yeah, I bet they will, you know!" Naruto smirked back at the young man who appeared to be of similar ages, given their apparent similarity in sizes and builds. The two young men shared a bump of fists and turned back to their teams, giving Ibiki a chance to speak his mind for once.</p><p>"Now that you're done… We can begin your next challenge, Team Hokage from Konoha and Team 5 of Konoha." Ibiki declared.</p><p>"Team Hokage?" Iwabee found the name somewhat odd.</p><p>"Yeah, those two were trained by an actual Hokage of this universe and I am going to one day be the greatest Hokage, seems kind of right, when you think about it, you know!" Naruto couldn't contain a dumb grin while he kept incessantly fixing his headband despite there being nothing that wrong in the way it hung on his head.</p><p>"This is your penultimate challenge, so you better not half-ass it, or all that tough work's going down the drain, you hear me?" Ibiki gave the two teams a cold shower of stares that sent chills down the spines of just about everybody.</p><p>Kiyomi's nervous eyes raced back at the rest of her team, Meiko didn't look that affected by Ibiki's words whereas Naruto was. Not in the way that they were intended though, Naruto looked more fired up than at any point though the words did seem to make him more self-reflective as he stood with both his eyes closed and just contemplated on something with a stern face which was not something that one could often scout out in Naruto's behavior.</p><p>Team 5 looked like an utter mess though. Metal Lee grabbed his gut and began rubbing his belly as if he had just been stabbed fifty times and struggled to keep his guts on the inside, his mouth still twisted and churned in the shape of a spiral and his eyes beamed with nervous whites while his bushy eyebrows contrasted his paled out skin and went as high up as to almost disappear into his forehead and mold into his dark hair completely.</p><p>Denki sweat a great deal and grit his teeth, Kiyomi noticed a tremble in the fists of the frail boy and the nervous tick of fixing his glasses but, unlike Naruto from a second earlier, Denki's spectacles truly did threaten the boy to just slip off of his face and shatter on the floor. Whenever Denki's fingers weren't wrapping over his glasses, they burrowed underneath the collar of his jumpsuit to pull and twist it around so to let more air in and cool his nerves off somewhat. Judging from the appearance of the nervous wreck of a boy, it was a fruitless venture.</p><p>"Your next challenge will be a spelling bee." Ibiki pointed out with a smug expression that could have only meant that there would be more that the proctor left out. Denki's spirits began burning back up, returning the chances of Team 5 competing adequately on the board. He must have been quite proficient in spelling bees. Even Metal Lee settled down somewhat with human features returning to his frightened face.</p><p>"A ninja spelling bee!" Ibiki added, killing any semblances of returning spirits in the more cowardly duo of Team 5 but inviting some more self-confidence in the only delinquent of said team.</p><p>"That's hokey, you know…" Naruto leaned back on his crossed arms. "The old pen and paper exams were better."</p><p>Ibiki proceeded to ignore what Naruto said and stepped out in front, taking the center stage of the dojo's mat. It was only now that the man approached the two teams closer that they noticed the fact that Ibiki was not wearing any shoes or sandals and was completely bare-footed.</p><p>Everyone but Naruto and Iwabee wriggled their feet with discomfort, feeling the comfortable and cozy insides of their sandals but boiling in the stigma of standing atop of a dojo mat with full footwear.</p><p>Ibiki threw a pair of textbook punches performed from a position of a wide, low guard and flawless balance before transitioning into a pair of jumping kicks and airborne elbow strikes. The ninja present observed their proctor, some of them looked a tad confused as to why he was suddenly stretching out, Iwabee looked impressed with Ibiki's form and Denki nearly stumbled and fell on his butt, intimidated that the man would strike him by accident.</p><p>"I will call one representative of each team and then perform a combo of moves. You will have to recount the exact combination of moves that I have performed without any mistakes or missed moves. Given that I am not all too impressed by your taijutsu knowledge, as observed and weighed throughout the exam, I will not demand the precise names for each strike and kick, as put together in Rock Lee's Excellent Taijutsu Compilation. Terms like "right punch", "backhand punch" or "elbow strike" will be accepted." Ibiki explained his showy behavior.</p><p>"They're judging our perception. Be careful, guys, there's no doubt that Ibiki will attempt to hide some moves from plain view. This is no martial artist exam, it's an exam for ninja, after all." Kiyomi warned her teammates over the mental link.</p><p>"Hmmm… I only I could use my Sage Mode, I'd be able to tell every move he's making precisely, you know…" Naruto sighed. "But I tried once and, apparently, it's banned in the Chuunin Exams by some ancient edict or something…"</p><p>"It's okay, we're tough cookies, we should handle it. We've all experienced a bunch out there on the field where the cost of such mistake wasn't elimination, it was death. We should be able to handle it!" Meiko, as always, provided ample encouragement for the team.</p><p>"Very well, for the first test, Iwabee Yuino, please approach," Ibiki asked and the young man followed.</p><p>The proctor let out a battle cry and then performed a combination of strikes and kicks. Kiyomi kept on turning and bending her head.</p><p>"Could you follow it?" Meiko asked on the link.</p><p>"Yeah but…" Kiyomi replied.</p><p>"I didn't notice any trickery, you know. A fairly simple combo…" Naruto voiced what everyone on the link was feeling.</p><p>"Uhm… Sidestep punch, standing uppercut, jumping spin kick, right cross, body shot, jumping spin kick…" Iwabee recounted.</p><p>"Not bad, young man, however, my first move was not a sidestep backhand punch, it was a step-in guard. It was a block, meant to displace an opponent's attempt to punish my advancement with a right punch. You've failed. Now, may Naruto Uzumaki from Team Hokage step-up." Ibiki cut the poor boy down like a shaky willow before turning to Naruto.</p><p>Naruto gulped something heavy down and stepped up for his turn. His was the chance to get ahead early. If Ibiki's assessment of Iwabee's performance could have been counted on, he did not perform any trickery in the first combo, which meant that Naruto had an easy chance to gain points before it got really difficult.</p><p>Ibiki performed a very similar combination of moves, likely to throw Naruto off his game, mixing it up somewhat but providing more than enough similarities to confuse someone who was observing his previous combo and taking records.</p><p>"Let's see… Step-in guard, body shot, standing thrust kick, right jab, sweep, jumping spin kick." Naruto recounted.</p><p>"Incorrect. This time my step-in guard was actually a sidestep backhand punch." Ibiki shook his head. "Denki from Team 5, please come up here."</p><p>Denki nodded and ran up to Ibiki with an unfamiliar gleam of determination in his eyes. Naruto rubbed the back of his head with disappointment but then ended up just laughing his failure off in front of his team, expressing that it was more difficult than it seemed.</p><p>"What's so funny, pipsqueak?" Ibiki wondered.</p><p>"Well… If Lord Seventh himself tripped up, my failures in this exam no longer seem so jarring. I no longer feel like I don't deserve to be here because this is a challenging test to all of us. Meaning that I do deserve to be here and I must root myself and do my best!" Denki declared.</p><p>"Great… You've inspired the nerd too…" Kiyomi shook her head.</p><p>"Heh heh, sorry, sorry, you know…" Naruto smirked.</p><p>Ibiki performed the combination for Denki to recount but this time he moved differently. His speed was out of this world entirely. Kiyomi had to blink a couple of times in confusion. Her heart raced as she recounted every move she saw, just to feel calmer about the fact that she very nearly might have missed something and thusly there was still a decent chance of her own failure.</p><p>"I… I'm not quite sure…" Denki got worked up. Sweat glistened on his forehead again while the boy bit his lip. "Well… I didn't see it for certain so there's no use in guesswork. I failed." He bowed in front of Ibiki and ran back to his teammates.</p><p>"You should have at least guessed…" Iwabee shrugged. "The only way to be a hundred percent sure to fail is to not try to do it at all…"</p><p>"I disagree. When doing something one must know what it is that they are taking up. That is the only one-hundred-percent chance guarantee to be successful and any lesser chance for success is not one worth pursuing." Denki objected.</p><p>"I see… Wakizashi Meiko from Team Hokage, it's now your turn." Ibiki called Meiko up. Meiko ran up and performed a handful of stretching and warm-up exercises before taking up a fighting stance herself as if she was about to spar with Ibiki. This did throw the proctor off for a moment but then he executed his string flawlessly and at matching, breakneck speed.</p><p>"Sidestep backhand punch, leg sweep, two-handed palm thrust, Tiger hand seal, dashing backhand punch, right uppercut, left uppercut, dominant leg switch, left thrust kick, right uppercut." Meiko recounted, counting the moves on her fingers like a Ninja Academy student doing basic arithmetic problems.</p><p>"That is… Correct. Impressive." Ibiki nodded.</p><p>"We got lucky that all Ibiki tried to fool Meiko with was speed. It takes a little bit more than that, it's unlikely this visitor can produce the type of speed Meiko cannot follow but a simple misdirection might have thrown her off…" Kiyomi thought to herself.</p><p>"Give us a tie-breaker, will you, Metal?" Iwabee turned to Metal Lee who was warming up himself for a good while before approaching Ibiki for his turn.</p><p>"It's all down to me. When the odds are this great, I cannot fail, my youth must blaze with red-hot passion!" Metal declared with a cool fist gesture right before his skin paled out and he bent over and belched, had he had something in his stomach to throw up, it would have ended up right on the mat then and there.</p><p>"He's got performance issues, stage-fright… Good…" Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>"Step-in guard, left uppercut, jumping spin kick, right uppercut, left uppercut, while you were performing that, your right hand was in one-handed Ram hand seal position, dashing elbow strike, left cross, high kick, Tiger hand seal, spinning jump kick, two-handed palm thrust." Metal Lee read out like fine poetry. The moment he was done speaking, the young man collapsed on the ground and began hyperventilating with his eyes wider than they've ever been up to that point and sweat pouring down his face.</p><p>"A-Amazing, Metal!" Iwabee cheered on his teammate who just turned back at his team and let out a weak and innocent smirk.</p><p>"Correct, young man, it appears your one-of-a-kind talent for taijutsu is greater than your social anxiety." Ibiki complimented the young man. "You even saw my one-handed seal which I've made sure to conceal. Not many would examine the combatant's entire body like that when confronted with such speed, most would merely focus on the obvious, the immediate attack and not what they're hiding under their sleeves…"</p><p>"C-Crap!" Kiyomi cursed to herself. "Those guys might actually pull off a tie-breaker! I don't think I'm as good as that little shrimp!"</p><p>Meiko's pat returned color to Kiyomi's cheeks. "If there's anyone who can notice those pesky concealed details, it's you, don't let this rake-forehead guy trick you." She encouraged the team leader.</p><p>"M-Meiko…" Kiyomi muttered before nodding and approaching the mat with an emboldened step. She needed that. That reminder of what she carried deep down, that which was useful for this challenge but also that which stood behind her and supported her. There was a lot of counting on this challenge and Kiyomi would rather die than embody another disappointment in the Chuunin Exams for those that stood behind her and supported her all this way up to here, the penultimate challenge.</p><p>After Ibiki's combination, Kiyomi pondered for a short while. "Rat hand seal…" she mumbled.</p><p>"Is that all you saw?" Ibiki wondered. He didn't need to, he saw the answer and he knew why it was that Kiyomi was wavering. What a bastard, he left the best trick for last…</p><p>Kiyomi clapped her hands together and focused all of her chakra into a forceful, accelerated lap of its usual circulation, forcing it out her pores like racing water in a cup, splashing all over the place. "Dispel!" she yelled out, making the environment around her ripple a bit and settle down in an identical state but an illusion was dispelled, of that Kiyomi had no doubts.</p><p>"Genjutsu: False Surroundings Jutsu, left step-in backhand punch, right cross, left cross, high kick, Seal of Confrontation, jumping spin kick, Seal of Reconciliation." Kiyomi completed her answer.</p><p>"Hoh, you've seen through my misdirection, I see…" Ibiki smirked.</p><p>"It's a nasty trick. You've placed an illusion that messes with my understanding of surroundings and I was unable to dispel the illusion until you were done with your combo, meaning there may have been all sorts of tricks you might have done under the guise of illusion but… What most tend to forget because I was teamed up with one of the most prodigious illusionists of our generation, that I am more than just a decent illusionist myself. Your illusion, I know it. It would not have concealed any movements because that's not what it does. That's why it confused me, in the beginning, why use something so pointless, just to throw me off? No… You used it to switch directions. By flipping over our perception of the room we were in and each of our positions with each other, you tried confusing me by using your left side whereas your right side is your dominant one. To one who would not have noticed the switcheroo, nothing would appear out of the ordinary as you've been using your right side all along…" Kiyomi explained the motivation that led to her solution.</p><p>"Heh, I see that there will be no tie-breaker… Team Hokage wins this challenge." Ibiki admitted looking both a bit impressed that a young ninja managed to read a move he held in such high esteem and disappointed that such a switcheroo didn't work.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0611"><h2>611. Stories Of The Hunters Of The 2nd Stage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Naruto flexed his arms and tightened his forehead protector. Kiyomi restrained herself from making a mean-spirited observation about how he shouldn't have tightened that headband any further as the blood flow to his brain was already slim as it was. Naruto performed as well as it could have been expected. In a few tough places his role was invaluable even. He would have been an excellent permanent addition to the Team Hokage if only he didn't have his own life and universe to go back to at the end.</p><p>The walls of the cube shuffled and let Team Hokage pass. An unexpected breeze of chill, fresh air tickled Kiyomi's nose making the blonde sniffle. The breeze raised the tiny hairs on her back as she was used to the stuffiness of indoors and the last thing she'd have expected to hit was the backyard of the titanic cube building.</p><p>"Huh? Are we outside the cube, you know?" Naruto looked around.</p><p>"We didn't get eliminated, did we?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"No… This… This doesn't make sense," Kiyomi opened her hand, trying to see the incomplete cube but nothing manifested in her hand whatsoever. At the other end of the fenced-off area, Ibiki spoke to a pair of ninja. A tall and slender woman with violet hair and a tan overcoat and Momoyu Fuma, a jounin that Kiyomi and Meiko had already met once.</p><p>"Look there, you know" Naruto pointed at a handful of ninja standing around. There were some familiar faces, some whose names were known to Kiyomi but most of them known from having seen their faces around the general vicinity of one of several exams Team Hokage participated in.</p><p>"Those guys are from Kirigakure…" Meiko noticed a trio with Kirigakure headbands comprised of a middle-aged fellow with a relatively buff build and bare chest and a massive axe that resembled a coral-like pattern and texture, a slender giant of an almost extraterrestrial appearance due to his pale and slimy skin, black eyes and razor-sharp teeth and a girl who appeared to be dressed as what could best be described as a militarized idol.</p><p>"Those guys…" Naruto pointed at a trio with Konohagakure headbands. "I think I've seen them before somewhere too… Oh yeah! The goatee guy chickened out from the Chuunin Exams that Ibiki oversaw way back, you know!"</p><p>"Those are the Three Senka Brothers…" Meiko pointed at a familiar trio of faces. "What's going on here?"</p><p>"Huh? Do you three have a problem?" Ibiki turned around and gave Team Hokage a quick examination with his strict and beady eyes.</p><p>"What's going on? What about our final challenge? Did we fail? How could we fail if we won the last challenge and then didn't even get to take the last one?" Kiyomi was beginning to freak out, it was very non-leader-like of her to do but she couldn't help it – the prospect of having to wait at least a year until taking another Chuunin Exam somewhere abroad or several, if she wanted to take one home in Konohagakure, freaked her out.</p><p>"What are you guys talking about? Everyone here passed the first stage?" Ibiki scratched the back of his head, making his bandana ruffle and move about, exposing ends to some of the rougher-looking parts of his scarred forehead.</p><p>"Passed?" the entirety of Team Hokage took a step back in disbelief.</p><p>"Yeah? I think you might have miscalculated there somewhere. If you've got eight cubes, you've passed." Ibiki didn't look all too proud of having to explain this to a team that had just, apparently, passed the stage of the exams meant to test a team's mental capacity and wisdom.</p><p>"Wait a sec there…" Naruto extended his hand out almost up into Ibiki's face. "There was… Let's see… Ninja karaoke, ninja chess, ninja murder mystery, ninja courtroom rap battle, ninja quiz show, ninja gadget crafting challenge, and ninja spelling bee… That's seven, you know!"</p><p>Kiyomi planted her hand all over her face. "I can't believe we forgot…" she mumbled. "We automatically got one cube the moment we entered into the competition so seven challenges were all that we needed…"</p><p>"Hmmm… That's right…" Meiko hummed out, putting pieces together in her mind. "When everybody got talking all about eight cube pieces I just sort of fixed somewhere in my mind we'd need to win eight, meaning eight challenges…"</p><p>"Is there a problem?" the purple-haired ponytail woman in an overcoat whom Ibiki was talking to earlier approached the trio.</p><p>"None, other than these dolts can't count." Ibiki stuffed his hands inside his pockets and turned around, he looked like he was anxious to get out of there as fast as he could.</p><p>"In my defense, my head has been a doozy these last couple of challenges…" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Heh, you thought there was one more challenge, didn't you? That's so goddamn hilarious!" the woman started laughing so hard that she had to clutch at her stomach so that she didn't fall over. Almost like he knew it was coming, Naruto swiped his hand at the side, picking up a kunai flung right in between his cheek and that of Meiko's.</p><p>"Your tricks are getting old, lady," he stated. "You did the same thing last time, you know."</p><p>"Hey, Kiyomi, Meiko, I'm glad to see you've passed. I had a feeling you two would but… Those brain teasers can be deceptively deadly to even the best-prepared teams." Momoyu waved at the pair after approaching, intrigued to see what had made his co-proctor this cracked up.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm actually a bit relieved to know they're over…" Kiyomi admitted. "Survival drills and sparring we can do just fine. Ninja chess - not so much… Every challenge felt like we skimmed through by the skin of our teeth."</p><p>"Well, all that brain juice shit's all over now. You'll be getting down to some real hardcore stuff now!" the purple-haired woman smiled with a thumb up. She looked quite energetic, like a feminine, more amped up Naruto, in a way. "Plus, I don't know what you're on about, blondie, I've never met you in my entire life."</p><p>"This Anko-san might be one from a different point in time than the one you've met, contestant," Momoyu explained as Naruto started bending fingers up and down, trying to make sense of things.</p><p>"So what's this next stage gonna be about? Are we free to go now or…" Meiko shrugged and scanned over the quickly filling up backyard.</p><p>"What? Hell no! We're going right in this! There won't be no cooldown before the next stage!" Anko shook her head. "We're going in and we're going in hard but it'd be just peachy if the rest of the slowpokes filled this damn place already 'cause we ain't explaining things to 'em twice!"</p><p>"Lucky for us, due to the nature of the cube, we will not need to wait too long as all challenges will conclude relatively at a similar time," Momoyu said in a tone that perfectly contrasted Anko's vibrant flares. "Just go and socialize a bit before everyone gets together."</p><p>Kiyomi nodded and turned for a free space in the yard, one of few that were already beginning to dwindle as more and more teams emerged from the cubical structure. Naruto looked almost as displeased with having to wait around, even if it was for just a little bit, as he was with the first stage of the exams when he found out it would be all about mental challenges.</p><p>"Oh, Naruto-kun and the others have passed, not bad…" a familiar, sleazy voice reached Kiyomi's ears and made the Yamanaka heiress clench her fists and imagine a bloody puddle underneath her that, despite the pointless nature of the action, invited her to keep bashing at it.</p><p>However, when Kiyomi turned to confront the four-eyed weasel, the nasty words she meant to say got stuck in her mouth as her eyes fixed on a much younger version of the unpleasant nerd, surrounded by comrades that most definitely weren't Sasuke and Orochimaru.</p><p>"You can can it with the fake politeness, Kabuto, I know who you are and who you're working for, you know," Naruto replied to the faux compliments with a relative sense of cool.</p><p>"Oh, I see…" Kabuto fixed his glasses. "Well, there's no reason why we have to get all up in each other's throats. We can still act like civilized human beings and congratulate each other on their respective successes."</p><p>"Are you gonna back out of the real challenges this time too, you know?" Naruto wondered aloud right after Kabuto finished speaking, just an inch shy from interrupting the young man.</p><p>"No, I don't think I will… I have a wonderful opportunity to gather much more intelligence for Orochimaru-sama this way. In addition to this exam not being part of his plans, I can grant him information on not only the present ninja but also ones from the future, not to mention this wonderful power-up that just being in this universe provides and, I suspect, we'll be able to bring back home…" Kabuto's glasses shimmered with a white light that contrasted his rotten smirk.</p><p>"Hey, seeing you guys here takes us way back!" a voice that Kiyomi could somewhat recall though couldn't quite pin down came from a cluster of folks on her right.</p><p>"You're the asshole that incased Mana in crystal last time!" Meiko took a step towards the weasel of the Guren clan from Iwagakure. "Do you have any idea how much trouble that got us in!?"</p><p>"That's all you got from our meeting last time?" Tolkre Guren looked disappointed though, given his nature, all of it was likely just a game to him anyway. "I thought you'd be more focused on you guys helping us get our elimination by sticking two fingers up that freaky beetle-guy's butt."</p><p>"You know the Thousand Years of Death?" Naruto looked at Kiyomi who felt heat pulsing through her body in more embarrassed than proud of having anything to do with that technique. "That jutsu pulled me through a few tough spots as well, you know."</p><p>"Says a lot more about you, than me…" Kiyomi snapped back feeling attacked from all sides.</p><p>"Well, I had hoped we'd be able to form an alliance or something, cause… Seriously, helped us out a whole lot back there, even if it mostly benefited Jekleifer in the end…" Tolkre shrugged. "Though, if you're so obsessed with me encasing your friend in crystal while she had her guard down, as any self-respecting ninja would have…"</p><p>"Just scram, you know." Naruto waved his hand at the Guren clansman. Kiyomi was not entirely sure but this sort of animosity only came from unpleasant memories of one's own related to a particular clan so it was more than likely Naruto has had his own fair share of baggage with the Guren clan.</p><p>A murky, black blur attracted everyone's attention as Anko took it to a nearby oak and posed atop of a thick branch she had positioned herself onto. It seemed that everyone of any import had already gathered in the backyard. Kiyomi looked around, something fell off about this entire place. There was plenty of hustle and bustle due to the bunch of ninja that have gathered here but there didn't seem to be any of the usual sounds from the outside world coming in: no cackling children, no wayward balls flying over the fence or salesmen making the boisterous pitches for all to hear. Despite being surrounded by other people, Kiyomi had a curious feeling of being inside a ghost town.</p><p>"Yo, so all of you nerds have finally gathered, awesome!" Anko smirked. "We can begin the second stage of the exams then… Oh boy, will we be having some fun!"</p><p>"Before Anko-san gets overly excited," Momoyu interrupted from the position of using his feet to stick to the bark midway up the tree's surface, "There's something we'd like to emphasize. When we planned the exams out initially, we intended to give you guys a breather. You've just been through some rough challenges and, surprisingly enough, we've heard of cases of injuries even if the first stage was designed to be perfectly safe: we've heard there were cases of migraine, fainting and the like…"</p><p>"Did they have to list everything that happened to us specifically?" Kiyomi hissed. "It makes me feel like we're the only ones this has happened to…"</p><p>"I hate to be that person but… There's no "us" in it, everything Momoyu-san said happened to you," Meiko pointed out.</p><p>"However, once we list to you the rules of the second stage, we are sure you will understand why time is of great importance and why we could not risk letting this stage get pushed back even a few days longer." Momoyu continued before looking up and passing the word back to Anko.</p><p>"Alright, now that he's done, you better listen well 'cause this here's a Great Konoha Race!" Anko declared. "Your point is to get from here to the temple inside Forest of Death, located by the northern watchtower. From there, you will extract a white cube from the altar of the temple and bring it back here. The cube will allow you passage into the preliminary stage for the finals."</p><p>A tanned young man in an outfit that seemed like he had come from the vast deserts of the Wind Country raised his hand. "I assume time of importance here? Will there be any limit to how many cubes the temple shall provide?"</p><p>"None. Take as long as you want, the temple's altar will give you all the cubes you want, you can even take multiples, if you feel like dragging them around with you." Anko shrugged.</p><p>"We haven't left the cube." Kiyomi signaled to her team on the mental link. "That's why time is of no concern, that's why this entire place feels like a ghost town – this Konoha is simulated inside the cube."</p><p>"Makes sense, I suppose." Meiko seconded. "That's why they're asking us to retrieve another cube and that's why it will give us passage to the preliminaries that will take place inside the cube as well."</p><p>"That means we won't get a breather after this challenge again? Man, what hokey exams, you know…" Naruto sighed.</p><p>"Indeed, what Anko-san said is true," Momoyu added, "Time is not your main obstacle in this challenge."</p><p>"So we can expect our peers to attack us and claim the cubes, if they feel like it?" Minato raised his hand with a question of his own. "Is that going to be the main threat of this challenge?"</p><p>"Of course, if you feel like it's a good idea, you can wait around for somebody else to retrieve a cube from the altar and then engage them. That is up to you and your team entirely." Momoyu nodded.</p><p>"Though if you little shits bothered to sit tight and listen, because I was just about to get to the good part, you'd have known that there will be another challenge in play – the Hunters." Anko smirked, hoping that the genin would reel back and feel threatened by her enigmatic declaration.</p><p>"So one half of us will be hunters and we will have to claim the cubes of our peers by eliminating them?" a raspy voice coming from a young man further in the crowd, one belonging to a pale snake-man with violet face paint though a much younger version of Orochimaru than the one anyone in the Team Hokage had met up to that point.</p><p>"Ah! It's young Orochimaru! We need to take him out so that…" Naruto freaked out on the mental link before Kiyomi's soothing mental waves calmed him down.</p><p>"For the last time, killing kid Orochimaru won't change anything about your own universe's timeline. Next time you make this mistake, I'm gonna ask you to repeat it a hundred times." Kiyomi thought on the link following her soothing session.</p><p>"No," Anko shook her head. Her glare sharpened and her expression turned more serious and sour the moment she laid eyes on the younger version of Orochimaru. Distaste for that fellow must have been unifying feature amongst the Konoha ninja of the universes where the snake-man existed. "All of you will be able to claim the cube from the temple, as many as you want, in fact."</p><p>"What Anko-san referred to as hunters are…" Momoyu started to speak before a silver blur rustled up the grass underneath his feet and a lumbering, middle-aged man with a large and rectangular-shaped head, long brown hair and featureless, bland, murky yellow eyes, donning a silver-colored cape over his shoulders appeared in front of the kids. "They're amazing and dangerous ninja from all of your universes and timelines that have been gathered here with the sole purpose of being obstacles in this stage of the exam."</p><p>"You know this guy?" Meiko looked at Naruto.</p><p>"Yeah," Naruto nodded, "He's ruthless revolutionary that we stopped back in the day with Kakashi-sensei. He tried taking over the Land of Snow once."</p><p>"Hmm… So that's what those frightening terrorist guys were doing back then…" Kiyomi noted to herself, recalling the situation of meeting those frightening, high-ranking nukenin back during preparation for the exams. "At least we got an early peek into the guys we'd be meeting…"</p><p>A man with brown, curly hair in a Takigakure headband raised his hand with a face soaking in sweat. "Surely you didn't just bring out a bunch of high-ranking rogue ninja to pit them against genin? Some of them are mere children!"</p><p>"Of course we weren't about to give these cutthroats and revolutionaries a field day cutting children's throats." Anko flicked her hand through a lock of her hair, looking almost offended this Takigakure ninja accused her of something like that. "Don't you get it? That's why we must have this challenge take place so soon – we've just brought those guys in a couple of days ago, whereas you guys spent almost a month in this universe, some of you even longer. Any weakling from back home would be on those guys' level by just eating an apple in this universe, sure, it will be dangerous still but, if you work together, you might just stand a chance."</p><p>"Remember not to get too confident, we did have to feed those guys something during these past couple of days so they've soaked up some extra power too. Still, we've had ample sensory brigades balance this challenge just right. As Anko-san said, it will be dangerous and deaths are still possible. You shouldn't expect these guys pull any punches but, if you're crafty enough, you'll manage to give them the slip and if you work together – you should be able to bring even the mightiest hunter down." Momoyu explained. "Doto-san, that will be all, you can get into position."</p><p>Upon being told to disappear, the hunter revolutionary followed orders and blurred away about as promptly as he had appeared.</p><p>A fit young man with baggy pants and a white robe hanging on one shoulder raised his hand. His features did seem familiar, Kiyomi recalled seeing this guy at the later stages of the Chuunin Exam though his name did elude her. From what she recalled, the young man had lost his chakra control in the last exams, just like it had once happened to Mana, due to abusing chakra augmentations, for that reason seeing him here felt a bit baffling.</p><p>"Excuse me but… How does a team fail, if we can take any time we want and try our luck multiple times?" he wondered.</p><p>"If your team gets wiped out or killed – you're out, obviously." Anko snickered before looking back at Momoyu who was sneering at his co-proctor. The woman sighed and decided to give him an alternate route too, "I guess, if you surrender, you're out too."</p><p>"We will stay at a remote location with a unit of sensor ninja and track your progress. We will do our best to interject if any dire situations take place or the hunters play dirty but accidents might still happen, you must settle this with your team, if you feel ready for the challenge, that is." Momoyu relayed not only to the young man from Sunagakure asking the question but to the entire cluster of genin participating in the second stage challenge.</p><p>"Now, if you're all done holding hands and asking questions, you can begin already!" Anko yelled out and took it back to the ground with hands in her pockets. Looking somewhat disappointed in their collective performance as proctors, Momoyu followed the woman before the two flickered away to their secure observational location.</p><p>And just like that, out of nowhere, the second stage of the Intertemporal and Interuniversal Chuunin Exams had begun.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0612"><h2>612. The Quick And Fickle Become The Prey</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A handful of teams dashed on ahead the moment they realized the challenge had begun. They didn't just move forward with the passion to obtain the item they sought and needed to proceed in the exams, they used the full extent of their uncanny speed which they've acquired. They figured that as long as they rose above any obstacles like buildings and the street lights, the telephone poles and the like, they'll be able to move at speeds that would take them to the other side of the planet in a mere blink without being bothered by colliding with anything.</p><p>Naruto stepped onward, a bit hesitant but willing to do the same. He must have assumed that was the way in which his team would move as well but Kiyomi's arm on his elbow stopped the young man.</p><p>"Let the eager give hunters something to do. We'll move slower and, what's the most important, silently." Kiyomi declared.</p><p>"Yeah…" Meiko nodded in agreement.</p><p>"Seriously, you're agreeing with her, you know?" Naruto looked at Meiko. He had expected the more hands-on and passionate type Meiko to be on his side and eager to blast off with her full capabilities towards the goal.</p><p>"We've traveled around the world once, searching for this legendary item. The last thing on our mind was to move at full speed. It took us months to complete the journey whereas moving at breakneck speed would have done wonders but the last thing we wanted was to get everyone that was looking a sign of something interesting and in rush within their vicinity to intercept. Speed is intense, it's a beacon to everyone meaning ill will that you're right there and now this ghost Konoha is filled to the brim with people meaning us ill will." Meiko explained herself.</p><p>"If what the proctors said was true, we should be able to stand our own against a hunter but… Who knows how long it will take for the hunters to know what's what and begin banding together into teams of their own. The last thing we want is to stick our heads out of the cave when there're bandits with their weapons ready to strike waiting just outside the cave, thirsty for blood and loot." Kiyomi agreed.</p><p>"Hey, whatever works for you guys, you know." Naruto shrugged. He didn't look completely sold on the idea but following the directions of the girls had gotten him this far and there was nobody, in particular, he wanted to chase after right now so the future Lord Seventh settled down and got into position to follow his team leader.</p><p>"This Konoha is the same as ours. You can lead the way, you do know where the Forest of Death is, right?" Kiyomi smiled at Naruto.</p><p>"Really, you know?" Naruto wondered. "You're fine with that?"</p><p>"It's preferable, really, your head is tough enough to bash through any walls and if anyone were to trigger any traps, I'd rather it would be someone tough enough to survive them," Kiyomi affirmed, wondering if her teammate had the mental perception to realize he was both being poked fun at and commended.</p><p>"Cool." Naruto shrugged and dashed to the corner of the fence, peeking through the opening and then flickering to the other yard. The way he was moving around was just the best, nice and short-distance flickers, then a careful examination of one's environment, who was where and how far… Naruto was a natural at this, it likely was not his first rodeo of such nature.</p><hr/><p>A team moving like tiny flickers of light hit a barrier in their way. An ethereal set of hands that stopped them dead in their tracks, not even a full millisecond after they had departed from their starting location. The ethereal hands came from a dark alleyway down below. Luciano, the de facto leader of Team Stormcloud from Kumogakure managed to stick his feet onto the ethereal hands and run up them to diminish the counterforce affecting his body.</p><p>He saw his teammate, Emi-Wee hit the ethereal hands pretty hard. She was plummeting below lifeless and the violin that she used to set-off her illusions was in pieces. With a ticked off clack of his tongue, Luciano extended his hand, making the sealing glyph on his palm light up as he sent an ethereal chain construct of solid chakra move from inside his white coat and break Emi-Wee's fall.</p><p>It was because he was so preoccupied with saving his teammate's life that he missed out on what the Shadow Arms were doing. It was not until he felt a tight grip crushing his body and pulling him down that Luciano realized that the hands weren't just put up to stop them, they were a fully controllable construct of whatever lurked down below.</p><p>"You can keep that disgusting girl. There's not a shred of darkness in her heart, revolting like cotton candy… Your heart, however…" a shadowy hiss spread from the alleyway, spreading its way in the shape of panic inside Luciano's heart.</p><p>"You seem to be an entity that favors darkness…" Luciano smirked. "Luckily for me, light is somewhat of my specialty!"</p><p>The chakra lantern by Luciano's side lit up with intense shimmer, blasting through the shadowy hands. It did not outright defeat the Shadow Arms but it did weaken them to the point where Luciano could break out by himself. The young man placed his chakra chain seal onto a wall which helped him stick his injured teammate and keep her from disappearing into those dark alleys where that mysterious, dark-nature-loving entity lurked. Luciano removed a pair of ancient lanterns comprised of massive emeralds inside a rim of bone-fingers of something larger than a mere man. The lanterns could have been held by a ring of bronze inside of which the hands of a man could easily fit.</p><p>Positioning himself inside an abandoned balcony, Luciano aimed about the darkness with his lanterns, ready to fire off his sealing techniques and release the chakra present inside the gemstones inside his lanterns at whatever came to claim the darkness in his own heart. Whatever gloom occupied his nature, Luciano liked exactly where it was right now.</p><p>"Ari!" he yelled out, wondering how his third teammate did.</p><p>"Don't worry, Luciano…" a familiar to the young man voice came from inside the dark alleyway he stayed so wary of. "This leech isn't so bad at all! It makes you so strong!"</p><p>"Ari, what the hell!?" Luciano yelled out. "Come here, we need to regroup!"</p><p>The boy yelled out in pain, something mushy began sprouting inside his throat, obstructing his breathing. That was just the beginning, those same spores began bursting into fungal matter inside his eyes, causing massive tension inside his eyelids and blinding Luciano temporarily as he collapsed on the cold and hardened cement foundation of the balcony he hid in. This was the jutsu of his teammate, it was Ari herself that was attacking him!</p><p>"On the other hand, I no longer need someone like you. Your teammate is much more to my liking. The darkness in her heart is simply magnificent! Treacherous, greedy, envious… A host befitting the Zero-Tails, don't you think?"</p><p>Malicious laughter filled the air. Luciano's eyes were beginning to tear up, the pressure inside his head was causing the mother of all migraines. Why did Ari attack him? Of course, he'd have never seen her coming unless he knew she was compromised by the enemy… Thoughts were getting heavy… What was he thinking a second ago? A kunai knife trembled in Luciano's hand, he'd have plunged it into his own chest to take just one more breath and ease the tension but he knew somewhere deep down that if he let Ari's fungus out in the open he'd only let it spread more of her spores.</p><p>Not the third Exams in a row…</p><hr/><p>"Heh, can you believe how much faster we are in this universe!? And they said we'd get to keep this strength when we get back!" a version of Kiba Inuzuka younger than the one that Team Hokage had encountered during the First Stage of the Exams dashed onward in a spinning flurry of motion. The rest of his team failed to keep up the pace, slowly losing out on distance. It was not only because they were not as physically capable as their headstrong and most impatient member, it was also because they didn't really want to rush off ahead like this.</p><p>"Kiba-kun, please… Keep looking ahead…" young Hinata pleaded with her teammate.</p><p>"You worry too much, Hinata, we'll get in position before those hunters even…" Kiba was about to say something profoundly stupid and wrong before he noticed the jaws of solid water enclosing around him. Not a microsecond later, the Inuzuka was completely encased in a sphere of water coming from a long jet of water that belonged to rogue ninja on street level.</p><p>"Got one, Sasuke!" a slim ninja of shoulder-length white hair and razor-sharp teeth pumped with his other, free fist. One of his arms had halfway turned into the jet of water that formed the Water Prison Jutsu at its end. Because of the liquefying properties of the man's body, he could extend the usually pitiful range of this imprisoning Water Release ninjutsu.</p><p>"It's Kiba, a young one. Keep up the pressure, release him when he passes out…" a version of Sasuke Uchiha wearing a black coat with red clouds all over it ordered his teammate.</p><p>"Anything I can do, Sasuke-kun!?" a love-stricken young woman of blazing red hair and eyes that matched that eye-gouging shade of red hummed out in a melodious tune right into the ear of her squad leader.</p><p>"S-Sasuke…kun!?" Hinata gasped from atop of a nearby rooftop. She and Shino froze the moment that Kiba got captured by the enemy. She had intended to attack the Water Prison in the beginning but Shino restrained her and thought to try and scope the situation out.</p><p>"The enemy might not know where we are. Our best odds for survival are if we stay hidden? Why? Because this Sasuke seems older than us. What does that mean? It means he is more than we can handle right now. How do we come out ahead? We use every advantage we can get." Shino mumbled out. Hinata nodded a pair of times listening to her teammate. She admired how cool he could keep his head under such crazy pressure.</p><p>"Too bad for you, brat!" a raspy and utterly crazed voice roared from behind Shino. Before Hinata and Shino could realize they were being surrounded, a splash of red-dyed the Hyuuga girl's face and forced her to close her eyes. "This is almost too easy, the bitch has a blindspot right where you said she would, Sasuke!"</p><p>"Return, Juugo, we're not here to kill them!" Sasuke ordered the mad dog of his team and he did as he was told, dashing right beside Sasuke while Shino coughed up blood, skewered with spikes that appeared wooden in texture but were much tougher than that in reality.</p><p>"Plus, would it kill you to have some manners and not curse that way?" the red-haired woman by Sasuke's side scolded her squadmate.</p><p>"G-Guys…" the white-haired slim ninja grunted, he was failing to maintain his Water Prison. In a mad splash of showering waters, the Water Prison exploded as a three-headed giant dog erupted from inside it. Shino's incapacitated body dissolved into a swarm of insects while the blood on Hinata's face paled in color, becoming a mixture of black and thick goop and a more protein-rich, white slime present within one of Shino's insects.</p><p>"I think these guys will be more of a handful than we thought…" Suigetsu grunted. "The mohawk guy wasn't kidding – these kids are some seriously roided out brats!"</p><p>"Kill, crush, disembowel!" Juugo roared out, losing himself more and more to his Curse Seal.</p><p>A shimmer of metal lit up the night as Sasuke had unsheathed a piece of his sword with a displeased expression. "I guess we'll have to try harder, in that case. If we cannot take down these losers, we can never take down actual Jinchuuriki and we can forget about destroying Konoha."</p><p>"D-Destroying… Konoha?" Hinata gasped. The girl desperately tried to wipe her face, messing up her cream-colored jacket to the point where she had to ditch it.</p><p>"I guess this Sasuke had completely lost it, as Konoha ninja, we can't leave this be. We've gotta take 'em out!" Kiba declared.</p><p>"This might be more than we can chew, why? Just one of them managed to press our backs to the wall. Imagine them working together…" Shino questioned Kiba's judgment but the worst thing about this situation was that he couldn't just part ways and runoff by himself.</p><p>"I guess this will be some nice practice before the real deal…" Suigetsu looked around, realizing that they were in a simulated version of Konohagakure already. "Better get myself accustomed to cutting down children."</p><hr/><p>"Blusckel!" a member of Team Monazite from Iwagakure shook his unconscious teammate. The three-meter tall giant youth had just collapsed in mid-trip right after reaching the border of the village.</p><p>"Damn it! I knew it that rushing off ahead was a bad idea! Move aside, Kepdur, I'll try to heal him." A golden-haired kunoichi with an Iwagakure headband went through a collection of hand seals and touched the ground, forcing a stream of water to soak her unconscious teammate. The kunoichi stayed down and held her hand on the water, eventually, forcing it to vaporize. The vapors rushing into the few bruises that the downed giant had from falling unconscious while moving at breakneck speed and closed them all in a snap.</p><p>"I see… The ability to heal through water vapors. That would be troublesome to deal with. You will be the next target…"</p><p>"What's the matter, Haltigeir, why did you stop!?" Kepdur wondered after his teammate just jumped up, tripped over her long, pink dress and fell on the ground, ripping its lower section to pieces as she erratically tried to back up from her unconscious teammate.</p><p>"I… There was a… A voice…" she muttered, the racing heart of the young woman didn't let her name the source of her fears in ways that her teammate could easily comprehend. "There!" she pointed at a floating image of a man, rather, a man's upper torso stuck in mid-air while his lower torso had dispersed into a flock of crows. Crows that turned into shuriken and rushed onward at the medical ninja, sending her unconscious to the ground, just like her teammate before.</p><p>"A voice? What are you talking about? I don't see any… Haltigeir, Haltigeir!" Kepdur lost all semblance of composure after hearing his teammate speak of some mysterious men and voices. He rushed to the collapsed kunoichi and examined her body for signs of injury but saw nothing. As far as he was concerned, both of his teammates had fallen unconscious unexpectedly.</p><p>"You shouldn't have rushed on ahead…" a man in a black coat, littered with crimson clouds walked out from behind a tree. His details seemed altogether quite unremarkable, he was of pale skin, relatively short and frail and had shoulder-length black hair but the most enigmatic and notable feature was his blood-red eyes. Yes, even in the darkness of the park that the man hid inside of, one would pick out those accursed red eyes without much trouble, one wouldn't even need the remarkable perception of a ninja to do so. "Should have prioritized not sticking out over getting to your goal faster." The man finished his thought.</p><p>"My, my, Itachi… You've taken out two whole brats of the three-man-cell just like that…" a pretentious sounding voice that spoke in an extremely mocking tone joined in on the party while a giant, blue-skinned man with black and white eyes, gills over his cheeks and lines of razor-sharp teeth appeared from the same hiding spot. Hanging behind the back of this rogue was a bandaged up weapon, shaped like a sword, although one of the rather titanic proportions.</p><p>"You can have the third one. The first one was a random pick but it was that girl who was the most dangerous one." Itachi explained himself. "Be careful though, Kisame, Momoyu-san did warn us not to underestimate these kids."</p><p>"That's right!" Kepdur clenched his fist. "This universe is brimming with chakra, I've been in it far longer than you two clowns, I can take care of you in three seconds flat!"</p><p>"Oh… This one's got spunk. I think I'll take you up on your challenge, Itachi…" Kisame chuckled and grabbed the handle of his sword, letting it slam into the ground beside him.</p><p>"Let's see if you can even scratch me, shark-bastard!" Kepdur laughed out. Itachi's glare sharpened, he took pride in the fact that he was a perceptive and somewhat of a sage combatant back in his own universe and his perception screamed right now that this was not a laugh of a ninja who was desperate after seeing two of his teammates collapse in a coma, this was the laughter of a ninja with a hidden ace up his sleeve.</p><p>Kisame charged onward, swinging his sword down low. The bandaged up blade dug deep into the gut of the poor Iwagakure ninja and sent him flying. Kepdur slammed somewhere beyond the Konohagakure wall and toppled a couple of trees while landing.</p><p>"Impressive, this universe really is something else, Itachi… I've never felt more powerful, just a puny little strike like that sent that poor lad crashing like a meteorite, didn't it?" Kisame laughed out like an overly excited child.</p><p>"Don't move your eyes away from the battle, it isn't over yet." Itachi kept it all down to business. Kisame looked back at his partner with a questioning glare but then turned back at a familiar shape of an unharmed young man floating back at where he flew away from with a smirk and not a scratch on his body.</p><p>"See? I can't be hurt… Now I'm going to pay back every smallest hurt you've put my team…" the words stuck in Kepdur's throat. The young man collapsed onto the ground, screaming in pain. A few moments later the obsidian flames covering him became apparent, rippling into view as if they were illusionary when, in fact, it was the invulnerability of the young man that was illusionary.</p><p>"I-Itachi! What's the meaning of this? You stole my kill!" Kisame stepped up over in his teammate's face.</p><p>"Your opponent had placed us into his illusion, making us believe he was invincible. You were just wasting chakra and stamina fighting someone meaningless like that. My skillset is perfectly designed to counter such ninja so it would have been a heinous offense to both of us if I let him wear us down like that without reversing his illusion." Itachi shrugged. "You can have the other three we meet."</p><p>"I'm holding you up to that, Itachi! These kids are a seriously tasty bunch, Samehada is getting crazy excited just being around them. She's never felt anything like that!" Kisame ran up behind Itachi who was moving back into the park and heading to look for more genin teams to eliminate.</p><p>The Second Stage of the Chuunin Exams was beginning to claim its first victims before the first minute of it even clocked in.</p>
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<a name="section0613"><h2>613. An Army Of Fungal White Men</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Naruto scaled over the wall of an abandoned building that seemed modern enough to still host rather well-off inhabitants. Then again, the fact that this entire version of Konoha was turned into a virtual free-for-all warzone made one understand why there was not a single soul, even simulated one, outside the hunters and the contestants that resided in the village.</p><p>The taps with which Naruto's sandals met the light puddles on the roof were light and the string reeling noise from when he ran across wires connecting separate poles was noticeable but not one demanding attention. What did shock and scare the pigeons located on the corner of a nearby building roof was when a white ax that appeared as if had morphed from the arm that hosted it penetrated Naruto from behind, forcing the young man to yell out in pain.</p><p>"Got you!" an overly excited white humanoid with a mushy right side of his face, short green hair and bland, yellow eyes with teeth that resembled the ridge of a saw. "Where are your friends, I wonder…"</p><p>Instead of answering the white humanoid, Naruto dispersed in a loud pop and a cloud of murky smoke. The white humanoid shook his head in confusion and then scratched it with his pointy nail.</p><p>"Where did you go? A clone, it seems…" he nodded to himself. The walking spore-man with the uncanny ability to mold his body as his consciousness saw it fit looked over the edge of the roof and waited until a pair of eyes identical to his own looked up with the lines of sharp teeth biting their lips in eagerness for engagement.</p><p>"It's a bust, this was a clone scout…" the humanoid yelled down at his clones.</p><p>"Too bad, we were looking for someone to play with…" one of the clones answered with pity on his face.</p><p>"Someone to play with…" the identical brother to the clone's side repeated.</p><hr/><p>"Hmm… There seems to be a whole army further on ahead." Naruto relayed on the mental link. At this point speaking would have raised too much noise and exposed them to danger. Team Hokage was moving at a snail's pace but it was the pace they'd have to deal with since noise attracted the hunters and Kiyomi had reckoned that fighting the hunters would have raised more noise, which meant more hunters.</p><p>"Can we sneak around them or avoid them?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"Don't think so. Only one of them attacked me but my clone saw a bunch of them trying to hide from me. They didn't seem too smart, probably good only for brawling, you know." Naruto shrugged. The trio stopped by the corner of the building and peeked from time to time at the street on the other side. They had just left the garden area that meant to simulate the Ninja Academy backyard and had to move around a handful of alleyways with great care. The main street leading up to the hospital was their first big obstacle.</p><p>"Were they any good?" Meiko asked.</p><p>"I don't know, took out a clone of mine that was trying to keep a low profile and scout over being careful," Naruto replied. "I'd say they're enough trouble to be an inconvenience, you know."</p><p>"Do you know that person from your universe, are they a rogue ninja perhaps?" Kiyomi turned to Naruto.</p><p>"I don't know every rogue ninja alive, you know…" Naruto crossed his arms over his chest.</p><p>"It seems to me from what I've heard so far that you're a magnet for every bad guy in your universe. I don't recall a single rogue ninja from your universe you couldn't name or haven't fought…" Kiyomi raised an inquisitive eyebrow.</p><p>"Okay… So I do kind of know the Aloe Guy. But when I last saw him he was different, he was black and white and this one's just white as if the black part got peeled off of him and… Back when I saw him, there was just one of him though he didn't fight so maybe cloning is his ability, you know." Naruto grumbled in a whisper, which was pretty much as if he had grunted out loud with the level of silence that the more careful teams tried to maintain.</p><p>"Do we engage them? We've got the advantage and, from what Naruto says, we could take all of them out." Meiko turned to Kiyomi.</p><p>"No. I recall seeing a handful of teams take the same route we did. If this Aloe Guy is as widespread as Naruto claimed, they'll fall for his trap eventually and give us a chance to sneak past. Naruto, keep your clones on tight surveillance of the enemy, sacrifice a clone or two if needed to keep their interest." Kiyomi relayed her orders.</p><p>"It's not like I know what my clones know until they die, you know." Naruto pouted his lips and blew out his cheeks.</p><p>"Sure, that's why I've included them onto the mental link. It's a hassle keeping it online on such range but as long as I'm not getting distracted by the tension of active combat we should be fine. I've had many years to hone this ability." Kiyomi replied.</p><hr/><p>"Any signs of the enemy?" Kei-J of Team Stratus turned to Roh-D, who donned a more advanced eye-scope gadget, spanning all over the left side of his face than when Team Hokage had last met him during the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>"Define an enemy…" Roh-D grumbled while numbers went up and down on his scouter in a manner that was unperceivable to anyone but the one wearing the scope or one with an eye that granted them advanced perception like the Sharingan. "I've already told you that Team Hokage's staying close to the ground. For whatever reason, they've stopped two blocks back."</p><p>"Could they be sensing danger?" Aya-K wondered, turning to her male teammates with a worried gaze of her bubbly and shiny green eyes. She was a soft-faced girl of round facial shape and silky, burgundy hair. Her skin was a few shades darker than that of any Konoha native but nowhere near as that of her teammates, implying a foreign element to her origins. "Perhaps we'd be wise to take a detour as well?"</p><p>"No way! Team Hokage and us go way back, they would give us a heads up if something bad was to happen, you wouldn't know, you hadn't met them back in the Forest of Death." Kei-J shook his head. Despite his confident and friendly façade, Aya-K noticed an unhealthy twitch to Kei-J's arms as his hands moved ever closer to the hanging lower end of his staff.</p><p>"Yay, friends to play with!" an ecstatic White Zetsu emerged from a nearby tree with which it had seemingly fused with. Around him burst forth a handful of bent spikes that made the entirety of the emerging clone resemble a mouth and a tongue that belonged to the ancient oak it emerged from.</p><p>Before the bursting mouth could endanger Kei-J, who was the closest to the enemy, a concentrated blast of Lightning Release blasted White Zetsu away, reducing the emerging body to a pulsing wreck that only possessed its lower body. The gruesome sight and the unexpected weakness of the enemy, so much so that a single beam of Lightning Release chakra stored inside Roh-D's palm storage seals decimated it, made Aya-K gasp and cover her face.</p><p>"Battle positions! There's no way a hunter would be this weak. This must be a clone or something!" Kei-J grunted, pulling out his steel staff and spinning it over his head before fixing it to a fighting position. His skill set was perfectly suited for fighting large quantities of weaker foes so he relished the opportunity to show off in what he saw as perfect fighting conditions.</p><p>"Heh, this must be Konoha's attempt to dispose of us. I knew they're rearing their teeth for No. 1 military in the world with Kumogakure being worn out after the Coltan Conflict!" Roh-D smirked and placed his arms on the ground, allowing four puppet arms, comprised of jaw-dropping scientific advances in implant technology to emerge from underneath his sleeveless hoodie.</p><p>Kei-J spun his staff overhead to deflect the rain of organic shrapnel that the emerging squads of White Zetsu produced. Despite his speed and impressive skill with the weapon, a handful of scratches forced few squirts of red to spurt from the young man's body.</p><p>"I'm a bit not in the mood for your conspiracy theories right now!" Kei-J exclaimed and charged upward at the enemies located on the roof. Whereas normally his prodigious agility might have allowed him to cover the entire distance from ground to the roof in a single bound, the injuries on his thighs forced Kei-J to stick to the walls and run his way up, as fast as he could.</p><p>Kei-J grunted with each successive strike with his bo staff, dancing around a vast number of enemies as he dispatched of them all one by one. Due to the greater range of his weapon of choice, the Kumogakure genin managed to dispatch of a handful of White Zetsu without even turning to them. More and more white blurs filled the roof, armed with organic wrist-blades that formed over their arms, the White Zetsu turned bolder and bolder with each dispatched member of their fold.</p><p>A pair had leaped right over Kei-J's staff and intended to stick their wrist-blades to it in a way that'd clog its movements, allowing the rest to attack unpunished but the pair that elevated from ground level soon met fiery demise when compact fireballs came in an arcing trajectory from below. The few White Zetsu that found the time to look down were met by an energetic smile of Roh-D who had launched the fireballs with smoke coming out of tubes inside his puppet arms that soon closed up.</p><p>"I'm going too!" Aya-K declared, turning to Roh-D who nodded but the moment her feet touched the wall of the building she was to scale to assist her team leader she heard his resistance from up above.</p><p>"Don't! Your abilities are best suited for one-on-one engagements. Don't wear yourself out on these second-rate thugs." Kei-J roughed out while struggling to control the ever-growing population of White Zetsu from the ground level all by himself.</p><p>Had it not been for Kei-J's excellent agility, he'd have been consumed and overwhelmed by the ever-drowning downpour of white humanoids that had grown in numbers enough to drown out the rooftops of the entire block. Despite the rapidly increasing numbers, Kei-J's staff worked some methodical magic, sometimes growing eager and going rampant all over larger groups of White Zetsu, then settling down to a controlled poking competition and coming clean through the head of each enemy one-by-one.</p><p>"He might have a point about you staying out, but no conspiracies would be unveiled if those with the keener mind sat still when they could shed some light on the facts!" Roh-D sat on one knee while his scouter worked to lock onto more enemies.</p><p>"Fire Style: Dancing Missile!" Roh-D finished a triplet of hand seals with a clap from his hands while the tubes inside his cybernetic puppet arms opened up, letting out a pair of jets of superheated air that was so scorching it streaked eye-gouging red. Emerging from those streaks, twisting and turning as demanded by their user, a handful of fireballs homed in on the select enemies, incinerating them each with one-hit-one-kill efficiency.</p><p>"Damn it!" Kei-J growled through masses of limbs and bodies that covered him in a blinding body pile. He could feel the heat of the rubbing fungus-men raising the temperature of his own body to the extent where he couldn't help but yell out in pain, he could feel pesky punches, scratches, and peels that were just desperate attempts at inflicting more damage to him. Kei-J tried pulling out a trick from his handbag that might have freed him but where his arm desperately struggled to play with the steel wire just right, it had grown limp all of a sudden and collapsed onto the roof underneath a growing mound of ecstatic bodies, each chattering something of their own that grew into an unintelligible cacophony of noises.</p><p>"Okay, different kind of support is needed here…" Roh-D relaxed his arms, both his real ones as well as the puppet ones, with a shake. Once he weaved a pair of hand seals with his real arms, a howling build-up alerted and drove fear even to the seemingly suicidal army of White Zetsu on the roof.</p><p>Before they could properly consider the pros and cons of moving against staying on top of the unfortunate genin they had busted up, the White Zetsu got blasted away by a mighty soundwave that was considerable enough to ripple the air to the point where it was easily visible by a naked eye. It was a concussive soundwave so it didn't seem like the White Zetsu had taken too much damage.</p><p>With bleeding ears, Kei-J rose from the ground and dispatched of a handful more Zetsu, working his way through the confused and downed pile that had just been on top of him. He ignored the fact that he couldn't hear much more than the usual shrieking in his ears that usually followed Roh-D's soundwaves when he was too close to them, no, he reveled in it. What he had now was the chance to work uninterrupted by the stupid, meaningless banter of the White Zetsu.</p><p>Kei-J swung his staff with ferocity and vengeful rage, more importantly – with purpose. Even when blocked, his staff, crackling with lightning from the Lightning Release chakra cloak coating it, severed limbs and appeared to disable the White Zetsu by seemingly turning them off without the usual, grisly sounds and sights of their demise.</p><p>"J-Just what are these things?" Aya-K asked with worry in her tone. "They don't seem human at all."</p><p>"It was a good call for you to stay away. Sometimes Kei-J knows so much that I begin to wonder if he's not part of some secret society that guides events exactly as they are supposed to unfold, as future demands." Roh-D smirked, offering another one of his endless conspiracy theories. He most often offered them in the shape of a general description and his teammates, if interested, poked deeper, though it has been a while since any of them did that…</p><p>"What do you mean?" Aya-K asked.</p><p>"These guys, they're inhuman. They don't seem to fear death, there are just two things they're interested in: chatter and violence." Roh-D explained with a hint of fearful respect in his own tone. "Kei-J was right, an enemy that just keeps on coming is the worst one for you. You're at your best when we face a single enemy we cannot overcome, then you do your thing and pull out a win but exhaust yourself in the process. You're like a nuke, but you can only be fired at the enemy once."</p><p>"No, this is amazing!" Kei-J erupted from a building up a pile of white mass with his staff put back to its holster and his arms working with hand seals. The black gloves that Kei-J wore were torn up in multiple places to the point where only separate strings attached to each other like a net and the blood from the bruises and scratches on his hands that soaked it could be made out. "I don't feel too ecstatic about killing people, even these hunters, but these creeps are just what I need right now!"</p><p>"Lightning Style: Pulse Mines!" Kei-J grabbed the wrist of his right arm while producing a glow of chirping lightning around his hand, one that detached and stayed where it was initially while the hand that had manifested it continued to move back and down, creating more and more weightless lightning spheres just like it, all of them carried considerable charge for their sparkled and connected with each other with jolts that they shot out at the nearest mine in range.</p><p>Kei-J didn't appear to possess the necessary patience to wait for one of the countless White Zetsu to hit his mines, he clenched his right fist, creating a wider lightning crackle around it which fired off jolts at the nearest mine and detonated it in a lightning storm that soon grew unstable and exploded just like a real mine. Once the dust and rubble cleared out, there was not a sign of the White Zetsu that chased after Kei-J and the building he was just on had collapsed halfway.</p><p>"Those guys are getting up. The ones I didn't disintegrate… Let's move!" Kei-J grit his teeth and dashed for the nearest building neighboring the one he was taking solace sticking on a wall to. Aya-K and Roh-D followed.</p><p>"Despicable monstrosities, no doubt Konoha means to unleash them as a biological weapon to silence the working class civilians and get them in line!" Roh-D couldn't just bolt quietly.</p><p>"Why would they attack their own villagers?" the ever-naïve Aya-K covered up her mouth in disgust and horror.</p><p>"Simple, the civilians have been growing unruly all around the world, an attack from a horrible biological weapon such as this proves that ninja are still necess…" Roh-D's voice faded off in the distance. Naruto's clone dispelled, having heard and seen enough.</p><hr/><p>"Well, you've pissed off a Team Stratus. It seems like they knew you guys, you know. Also, we've got a brief opening to make it past the main street leading to the hospital, you know." Naruto prompted, dashing out of cover since he only had very limited time to exploit the opportunity so he couldn't quite wait for authorization from his team leader.</p><p>"Well, well… What do we have here? A Konoha ninja to eliminate and prove the power of the star training? It seems we've been born under a lucky star…" a man of pale tone and gaunt build, a bony face and dull, almost lifeless blue eyes, lilac-colored hair and a Hoshigakure forehead protector smiled having confronted Naruto's original self as he had stumbled onto the same main road as the eager, orange ninja.</p><p>"Shit! Aka-whatever-his name was, you know!" Naruto clenched his fists by his side, as sweat broke through on his forehead.</p><p>It seemed that in their eagerness to utilize opportunities for passage, Team Hokage ran into their own first party of hunters.</p>
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<a name="section0614"><h2>614. A Star Is Dead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Shit, we've got no time to mess with you, you know!" Naruto growled at the small party of ninja blocking Team Hokage's path. If they took too much time messing around here and allowed White Zetsu the time that it needed to regroup his army, they'd be back on square one.</p><p>"You've met this man before, Naruto?" Kiyomi asked.</p><p>"Yeah, he's using some stupid rock in his chest to power himself up, you know," Naruto replied.</p><p>"The meteor? In my chest?" Akahoshi dragged his hand over his shoulder-long hair brimming with curiosity. "No, I do not think I am this desperate for power just yet. Then again, perhaps battling a ninja from a village as famous as Konoha will push the battle up to that point…"</p><p>"So that's your interest here? Fighting someone from a famous village?" Kiyomi wondered if she could somehow defuse the situation without fighting. She would have had no problem beating this guy as he didn't seem all that to her at that moment but she'd have rather got through the hospital district in time before the enemy Naruto reported of regrouped.</p><p>"Of course." Akahoshi spread his hands out wide. "Only by slaying ninja from established and respected villages can Hoshigakure share their place in the spotlight. Once we show everyone back home this power, when we use it to kill ninja from Konoha, Kumogakure, Kirigakure and the rest, Hoshigakure will too become a Great Village."</p><p>"You can become a Great Village without standing in our way, you know!" Naruto shook his fist out in the air, losing more and more composure as time went on. With the passage of time, the opportunity of talking their way out of this scuffle grew exceedingly slim and talking was beginning to feel like an additional waste of precious seconds on the clock.</p><p>"What nonsense, there are only Five Great Ninja villages, after all…" Akahoshi shrugged. Together with his comrades they clapped their hands together and initiated their Mysterious Peacock Method technique, forming ethereal shapes of a massive feather-formation behind them.</p><p>"The Mysterious Peacock Method, we've also seen this technique…" Kiyomi mumbled to her group, her tone was as grim as it was befitting the memory of what happened to the last user of the technique they've met.</p><p>"What a madman, he knows of what this jutsu does to the body and he uses it alongside his own goons." Meiko grit her teeth and placed her hand over her chest, unleashing the seal of the gadget she had just finished crafting back during the first stage challenges. Metallic harness locked on over Meiko's arms while bony protrusions in the shape of claw-like weaponry shot out from her wrist aimed outward and rough leather-covered up the more intricate bits and pieces of the armor. "Just the right kind of a nutjob to test out my Reactor Gauntlets on."</p><p>Without thinking too long of a plan or waiting for Kiyomi to formulate a plan of attack and let them all in on it, Naruto charged on ahead with a kunai blade in hand. He wasn't thinking straight, the idea of breaking through the lines and moving on ahead was all that burned in his mind and unless the entire oven kicked over or the idea provided no more fuel for the flame, he'd be the same way.</p><p>A broad-shouldered, thick and well-conditioned Hoshigakure ninja stepped out to confront Naruto, blocking his kick and then his following solebutt. Due to the fact that the ninja was only keeping his eyes on Naruto's feet, he didn't notice the orange ninja slinging his kunai up and performing a hand seal with his arms. A Shadow Clone poofed into existence and spun Naruto around in mid-air, providing the unpredictable brawler ample momentum for some follow-up kicks. Naruto then caught his kunai on its way down and kicked off his own clone for a thrusting dive down.</p><p>Just when Naruto had thought he'd nailed the strong-style ninja with a thrust of a kunai knife to the chest, the foreigner revitalized himself, smacking Naruto with arm-hammer strikes coming from the sides. Naruto ducked under the attack and retreated his arm back, letting the clone he had made move in and rapidly thrust his hands just a few inches over where Naruto's extended hand was. Kiyomi had seen this move before – it was the move Naruto favored in combat and placed significant emphasis on.</p><p>"Mysterious Peacock Method!" the other ninja assisting Akahoshi put his hands together in the form of a hand seal as his chakra feather formation extended in the shape of thick ropes, heading straight for Naruto and aiming to ensnare him. Adopting an appearance of an azure blitz, Meiko flew in for the assist, throwing out her gauntlets in a barrage of mad swipes while they glowed with chakra coating.</p><p>Despite Meiko's best attempts, the chakra ropes remained unsevered, however, she did manage to repel or redirect them elsewhere. Meiko placed her gauntlets together, beginning the charge-up of the explosive fireball jutsu that she could use with the aid of the Reactor Gauntlets. Kiyomi's hand twitched in wait of what Akahoshi would do. She had purposefully held herself back in an attempt to try and subdue Akahoshi, the key member of the Hoshigakure hunters' squad with her clan techniques.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto roared out while thrusting his arms from under the arms of the thick and bulky Hoshigakure ninja with a round face. Before the rotating chakra sphere could smash into the thick bulk of the enemy, Naruto yelled out in pain as his limbs twitched and shot to the sides as if he was a puppet being quartered by a mysterious and unstable puppet master.</p><p>It was Akahoshi, it must have been! But he didn't flare up with the radioactive meteorite chakra glow as all his comrades did, he was standing still and not doing anything. She had counted that he also was waiting for Kiyomi to move before he could counter her move. Kiyomi focused her senses on the area around Naruto's limbs. There it was, a puny glow of an ethereal thread. Since it was a chakra construct in nature, it didn't matter how narrow it was, it would have done the job of subduing Naruto just fine.</p><p>"Strike now, Yotaka!" Akahoshi smirked with a psychotic grin while his bulky comrade extended his hands out right up in Naruto's face, intending to hit him point-blank.</p><p>"Mysterious Peacock Method: Beast!" Yotaka exclaimed while the feathery formation behind him to the shape of a majestic animal aiming to maul and slash Naruto with its claws made out of nothing but radioactive chakra.</p><p>The blast of the impact zone was notable enough to send the distressed clone of Naruto's sliding back and falling back on its butt hard enough to dispel it. It sunk the battlefield in specks of dirt that were flying around wildly and muddy dust.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto appeared from the cloud of dust wielding another spiraling chakra sphere in his hand, eyes wide open in aggression necessary to finish the deed he started but Akahoshi's subtle manipulations of the battlefield sent him flying to the side with his Rasengan hitting the ground far to Yotaka's right and leaving a mad crater on the abandoned main street of Konohagakure.</p><p>"Shit, that raised even more noise! Soon every hunter in the area will be here!" Kiyomi bit her lip. She had reacted in time to erect a dome of dirt around Naruto with the Earth Release: Rock Shelter technique and Naruto attempted to utilize the chance just fine. He didn't wait around or thank her for having his back, he expected that much at this point in their experience working together.</p><p>"Kiyomi, can you take the Buttcheeks-Chin guy, I'm done getting thrown around and manhandled, you know!" Naruto wiped the slobber off his face as he rose from the dirt Akahoshi slammed him into with a wild sling.</p><p>Without answering, Kiyomi went through her set of hand seals and breathed in. "Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" she yelled out while expelling a mad blast of wind at the enemy. The howling winds bent the air they passed through and tossed around minor objects like trash cans about like nothing. Steel beams holding advertisements bent and collapsed, throwing whatever they proudly displayed to the world crashing down.</p><p>"Mysterious Peacock Method: Wings!" Yotaka yelled out, cowering before the pelting winds but once he took it to the sky he found himself significantly less subdued and open for follow-up attacks. Whatever was within those wings of radioactive chakra helped Yotaka cut through the raging wind.</p><p>Once the hulking Hoshigakure ninja looked down and prepared to attack the Yamanaka ninja who dared to disturb his battle, he realized that she had used the distraction to disappear. He was certain of it, one tended to notice an attractive and spunky young blonde missing from the battlefield. Yotaka turned for his comrades.</p><p>"Shiso, did you see the Yamanaka woman?" Yotaka yelled out.</p><p>"I was not keeping up with your battles, Yotaka, I've my own battles to fight!" Shiso replied with a harsh scold to his tone aimed at his comrade.</p><p>Meiko didn't take long to finish charging up her fireball, even though Shiso was not about to just stand and let her finish. He clapped his hands together and used the Mysterious Peacock Method to conjure up a pair of ethereal beasts charging up at Meiko but before they could devote themselves to their attack, he clapped his hands once more after a tight hop, slamming his heels to the floor.</p><p>"Mysterious Peacock Method: Fuse!" he yelled out. The pair of beasts then clashed their heads one at another and began whirling in a pink vortex, exuding ground-shaking radioactive bursts of energy from it. The combined chimera of radioactive chakra lunged right at Meiko before the blacksmith opened her gauntlets and slung the charged-up fireball right at the lunging combined beast.</p><p>"Reactor Breath!" she yelled out, coining a name for the function of her combination of Sealing Jutsu and skill in blacksmithing. A jar-sized ball of glowing yellow and orange with jets of flames whirling around it like rings of space-dust around a planet, the completed fireball collided with the chimera and blew up in its face as Meiko intended it to. It was a pity that it did not stop the charging beast.</p><p>Meiko crossed her gauntlets in front of her body and let the remaining force still lingering within the beast hit her. She rode the diminished force on a slide back, absorbing as much of the force as she could and just weathering what parts of it still pained her. It was not a bad attempt at all, the weapon was still just a prototype and while it used Meiko's own chakra nature to conjure up the fireball, making it almost as potent as if Meiko learned a puny Fire Release technique, she had managed to greatly weaken an attack of such magnitude with it already.</p><p>"That all you got?" Meiko smacked her shoulder pads with her gauntlets as a taunt. While the blast did reach her, she didn't feel like she'd suffered any damage that'd be staying with her any longer than a few minutes after this brawl.</p><p>"Tsk, why you!" Shiso grit his teeth.</p><p>"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto growled, creating an entire army of his duplicates. His clones were so numerous that they had no space on the ground, forcing them to manifest on top of the surrounding buildings, electric poles and wires and just about everywhere where there was a free inch of space for them to appear in.</p><p>The clones all leaped at Akahoshi with their sleeves rolled back. Naruto intended to finish this fight quick, which was why he used this many of his clones and he intended to let out all of the pent up rage and just irritation on Akahoshi which was why he used such a brutish method of attack this time. The first wave raining down from the sky maneuvered around Akahoshi's Mysterious Peacock Method threads and delivered a flurry of diving punches, wearing the enemy down and forcing him to stagger on his feet while he propelled a colossal quantity of his chakra threads to skewer the landing clones.</p><p>"Mysterious Peacock Method: Destroy!" he yelled out while his chakra feathers enlarged and attacked with long-range extending jets of pink chakra. The extending feathers penetrated the continuous downpour of clones and the continuous swipes of the chakra feather jets threw all the rest that were willing to outmaneuver the self-damaging jutsu and wear down the enemy some more.</p><p>The feathers split off into four separate, smaller strings that subdued as many clones as they could by catching them by their throats in mid-air and hanging them that way. While it was an effective method of attack, it left Akahoshi open for another wave of Naruto clones that rushed in from down below and piled down on top of him.</p><p>A restrained muffle came out from down under the pile while streams of pink light came through the few spaces between the piling clones. A signal of the devastation to come, another "Destroy!" command blew up the pile in its entirety while the falling clones that were being strangled in mid-air dispelled at the same time as their scattered peers. Akahoshi crawled out from the smoke of the dispelled clones clutching a tiny stone with glowing, violet ridges in unintelligible patterns covering it.</p><p>"You have to see it now! Your comrades too, you know. This jutsu is killing you and it will kill you by the end of this fight." Naruto declared with a strict glare at Akahoshi. "I can wage war against you here the whole day, I don't have that kind of time though so move aside, you know!"</p><p>A wave of crimson chakra burst forth together with the usual bland blue, the oddly malicious nature of the leaking chakra alarmed Meiko, forcing the blacksmith to direct her glare momentarily at the enraged comrade of hers.</p><p>"You're right, your power is enough to inconvenience me, which is why I need more power! If Hoshigakure is to be a Great Ninja Village, the lowly children of the other Great Villages have no right inconveniencing us!" Akahoshi clutched the rock tightly in his hand and plunged it right into his chest, just like Naruto had told the rest he might do. The odd patterns that were present on the mysterious meteorite rock extended over Akahoshi's body, down from under his clothes and all over his body while his hair dyed rose-pink.</p><p>A protective layer of radioactive mass concentrated around Akahoshi, this radiating aura was different from the Mysterious Peacock Method that the trio used this whole time, it was more powerful but also more like a burst of energy emerging from one's body than mere feather formation appearing behind them. It was also much less transcendental in nature and ethereal in appearance and looked much more immediate and dangerous.</p><p>"You're a different kind of scumbag, you know," Naruto mumbled as he clenched his fists. "You're not like the rest, liars and cheaters that sacrifice people they are responsible for or their own comrades for their own gain. You really bought your own story about that stupid rock, didn't you!?"</p><p>Once the unpredictable orange ninja turned his gaze up, the whisker marks on his face had become more defined and sharper, his irises had become completely red while the dark-red chakra, filled to the brim with inner malice, continued to leak out from his body while he formed the hand seal that created a pair of clones behind him. Naruto extended his hand out to them and they worked their magic on helping him mold the chakra for his next jutsu.</p><p>"Mysterious Peacock Method: Dragon!" Akahoshi chanted out while the mass of radioactive chakra around him formed a dragon-shaped construct that coiled around him before taking it to the sky and then turning its snout back down, pointing it at Naruto. The airborne dragon took a diagonal dive down, attempting to crash into Naruto and finish the young man off.</p><p>"Great Ball Rasengan!" Naruto yelled out while he dashed to meet the rushing dragon with his clones behind him, assisting him in guiding the massive version of his signature Rasengan technique right into the dragon's snout. The clones roared out while the tension of the clash became too hard for them to take in their forms and they popped in clouds of dust. Naruto, meanwhile, pushed on.</p><p>"Go! Right through!" Naruto roared out with a hint of something deeper, something far worse and tainted in his voice as the abnormally large Rasengan tore through the dragon, the construct resonated in a cascade of explosions as it collapsed but Naruto pushed onward and drove the remains of the sphere into Akahoshi's chest. Despite hitting an object from outer space, something outside their understanding and something possessing great status in Hoshigakure, it offered little to no resistance before being reduced to crumbling pebbles.</p><p>"A-Akahoshi-san!" Yotoko yelled out in mid-air while his own body twitched and jerked as if he was not in control of it. His head turned sideways, just because the new mistress of his body allowed him to do so and his eyes fell on familiar and missed golden locks and hands extended outward in the position of the Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal.</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance: Harakiri!" Kiyomi chanted while the airborne enemy flipped over, pointing his head down and took a plunge down hard enough to leave nothing but shards out of the neck area of his spine.</p><p>"Y-Yotaka!" Shiso took a couple of wary steps back having just seen two of his comrades likely killed right in front of him. The frightened ninja trembled and switched his attention for a second between Meiko who was still eager to keep swinging, Naruto who still let out leaks of red chakra, looking where to let off his remaining steam and Kiyomi who looked right back at him with eyes that looked so differently from how a child looked a person. At that moment in time – there was just absolute death for him in those eyes.</p><p>And so Shiso let his Mysterious Peacock Method go out and took to running away. His movements no longer even looking professional, he was not retreating, he was fleeing for his life drowned in an absolute panic for his survival. This outcome must not been what he was promised when he came to this universe.</p><p>Kiyomi turned her hand seal aiming at Shiso but Naruto looked at her and shook his head.</p><p>"Kill. Evil. Now," Kiyomi chanted while clashing with Naruto's stare and, at moments, overpowering it.</p><p>"He's not a rogue ninja, you know. Technically he still works for Hoshigakure." Naruto replied. At that point, Kiyomi couldn't be bothered to look into if he was lying or not. Those guys did wear Hoshigakure headbands without any damage disgracing them and did spout some mad ramblings about their nation deserving recognition matching or surpassing that of the Five Great Villages. Maybe Naruto was right…</p><p>Maybe just moving on ahead and hoping they didn't waste too much time already was the better option than to kill this running man from behind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0615"><h2>615. The Sisyphean Hunt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Hurry up, we can still make it through the hospital district, you know!" Naruto waved at his teammates.</p><p>"I don't know, we've spent a couple of minutes fighting those Hoshigakure guys, trying to still move through our original destination feels like pushing it…" Kiyomi stroke her chin.</p><p>"Either way, we've made a lot of noise, if we stay here – we're bound to run into more hunters." Meiko convinced Kiyomi to follow Naruto ahead through the north-western district of Konohagakure known mostly for housing the hospital.</p><p>A pair of violet eyes blinked on top of a remote building rooftop. The crooked shape of a fit man in a white bodysuit with black patterns, wearing the Amegakure headband grunted as it straightened its spine. The bones of the green-haired swordsman cracked and his very flesh churned with each motion, he turned his head to his side to address something more than just the hilt of his sword sticking out from behind him.</p><p>"I don't get it. Why did you call off the attack?" he asked with a hint of vexation to his grumbling.</p><p>A storm of white chakra flames erupted from behind the suffering ninja swordsman, taking a vague shape of a humanoid wearing a long, white cloak and hair that extended in a wavy spike, like a horn. The figure manifested from somewhere on the swordsman's back, an area covered by the swordsman's clothes.</p><p>"You are a pathetic vessel. Then again, so is this brat, but, at the very least, he'd be able to get me from point A to point B. Though after seeing his power, I have doubts that a whiny weakling like you could defeat him."</p><p>"Heh…" the swordsman smiled. It was a defiant smirk of a man who had little to lose so he offered mockery to the parasite that promised power but only brought excruciating suffering in every moment of Aoi's existence. "Modesty, how unlike you…"</p><p>"I am not being modest, I am being real. One thing that Isshin Ootsutsuki despises more than weaklings is losing to them, even if only because he is forced to hitch a ride on a defective vessel." The spirit declared before dissolving into dying white flames.</p><p>Aoi sighed and flickered away. He felt like his best odds laid with following the trio. If the hitchhiker celestial being he hosted inside his body found even a modicum of interest in this Naruto Uzumaki boy, there was a speck of possibility he'd take the boy's body next. It doesn't matter what kind of power this blazing bastard could offer, if the cost was another second of hosting him in one's body, if it left Aoi alone in a second, it'd be two seconds too late.</p><hr/><p>"Something's wrong…" Meiko pouted her lips. "We've been raising some decent ruckus in the hospital district, it would take a snap of fingers for the hunters to follow up on that noise… How come there's nobody trying to capitalize on the opportunity?"</p><p>"Who cares if we're a little lucky, you know. Isn't it about time universe cuts some slack?" Naruto shrugged.</p><p>"What Meiko is saying is that we've certainly been found already," Kiyomi explained it to the thick-minded. Rather, to a young man who hadn't figured so much out because he didn't really want to. "That means that the hunter or hunters after us would rather stalk us and wait for an opportune chance to strike…"</p><p>"Man, it would be a real shame getting our asses kicked two blocks away from the hospital area, you know." Naruto's teeth gleamed in a smile.</p><p>"Maybe they're trying to figure out why we're taking a detour. If we took it through the hospital, we'd be able to cut some corners under the cover of a roof over our heads." Meiko pointed out.</p><p>"True, if we crossed the hospital, we might end up on the alleyways and residential blocks leading to the Hot Springs but it's too close to where Naruto last saw the fungal men army." Kiyomi shook her head.</p><p>"Careful, don't scare off the pigeons!" Meiko warned Naruto who looked like he was daydreaming.</p><p>"Wait, those aren't pigeons…" Kiyomi noticed the unbelievable whiteness of the street birds around her. It seemed as if those birds had been just sculpted out of white clay and not lived their days on the street, hustling for a peck of breadcrumbs.</p><p>A chain of blasts littered the street of the hospital district that served almost like an artery to the village on the outside world when it was bustling with action like a lively circulation pathway pulsing with blood. Once the rubble settled down and the smoke cleared, only scattered craters that the chain of explosions left behind remained. There was not a single sign of a dead body or even ashes of one.</p><p>"A trap…" Kiyomi thought to herself, her back pressed to an alleyway wall, pounding off of her chest. "Figures it'd be a trap, there's no way to track the man or men that left it this way." She relayed on the mental link.</p><p>"There was a howling noise before the birds detonated. It's definitely a long-range detonating ninjutsu technique of sorts." Meiko noted.</p><p>"Shit, I've met this guy, you know. He's from the Akatsuki. He uses long-range explosives, you know. He hangs around with some scorpion-hunchback guy as a partner too." Naruto relayed.</p><p>"It's really useful to have a younger version of the guy who helped put the exams together on our team, given how much of a role nostalgia seems to have played in these challenges," Kiyomi noted. Regardless of if they knew some more information about what they were dealing with, they still had no idea where the enemy was or if he truly did hang around with a partner.</p><p>"Don't worry, he's set off his traps, he'll need to attack us now. That means we can flush him out, you know!" Naruto pressed his fingers together in the clone jutsu hand seal while he split into multiple duplicates that scattered on both sides of the alleyway he turned to during the explosive devastation.</p><p>"That's… Actually pretty smart." Kiyomi admitted.</p><p>Naruto's clones ran out and began making crude facial gestures, flipping birds and smacking his own butt out in the open. He might not have known what he was doing or where he was meant to attribute the offensive gestures but Naruto hit the nail on the head when he picked the strategy of trying to psyche the enemy out.</p><p>A whizzing handful of white, clay swallows homed in on Naruto's crude duplicates, blowing them up almost momentarily after they exposed themselves. A humanoid shape in a black cloak with red clouds reared more than half of its body from a nearby rooftop, placing its boot over the edge of the roof and shaking its fist into the sky.</p><p>"Nine-Tails' Jinchuuriki! I couldn't have asked for a better prey, too bad we can't take your Tailed Beast right now, guess I'll have to settle for blowing you up, hmm…" the blonde yelled out, possibly aware of the fact he might have blown clones up as he did unleash his homing explosive birds at a whole handful of Naruto.</p><p>"She's kinda cute…" Kiyomi smiled, taking a small peek from the house corner. Blinding flashes in her eyes and shrieking in her ears. The pressure in her lungs suggested that Kiyomi was grunting her lungs out but she couldn't hear herself – that bastard detonated something almost right at her face when she peeked.</p><p>"It's a dude, you know!" Naruto relayed. At least Kiyomi could still hear thoughts just fine in her compromised state. The Yamanaka crawled through the damp alleyway filled to the brim with fallen leaves that the cleaners just shoved there instead of dumping into a container somewhere. She wasn't sure that more explosives weren't coming.</p><p>"He got me. I need some cover, if he fires at me, I won't be able to see or hear him coming!" Kiyomi relayed on the mental link.</p><p>"On it!" Meiko replied in an instant. The blacksmith touched the armor piece on her chest too unseal some more armor pieces and then pressed on a seal by her elbow, dragging the emerging light patterns all the way down to her hand where she drew a sealing glyph with the glowing chakra shine. "Reactor Gauntlets!" she chanted.</p><p>"Huh? At least your friend made me work for my kill, you're just gonna attack me out in the open? Hmm…" Deidara smirked, bending his arms over both his shoulders and then swinging them outward.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" Meiko chanted after moving her hands down to the multiple tool pouches by her belt. The handful of shuriken she flung at the flock of white, explosive birds detonated the white avians in mid-air by having them flop onto the ground like a lifeless mush of clay it truly was.</p><p>"Chakra coating, hmm…" Deidara mumbled to himself. "Guess I'll have to switch to C2 just for you."</p><p>An orange blur resonated with a furious roar of battle while it appeared behind Deidara with a Rasengan in hand. Naruto wasted little time after notifying the enemy of his position and scaring the living shit out of him, together with a clone by his side, the future Seventh Hokage drove his signature technique right into Deidara's gut, letting it unleash all of its stormy fury. Seeing the Rasengan unfurl and work its magic truly made it seem like the spiraling chakra sphere was an actual typhoon compressed into the side of a ball that could fit into one's wrist.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto growled while pushing the overwhelmed enemy further away from himself. Like a spiraling missile, the Rasengan took Deidara to the air before detonating to its full extent into a whirling sphere of Wind Release chakra capable of tearing a lesser man apart outright.</p><p>Instead of letting the jutsu kill him, Deidara twitched and bloated out, making Naruto's decision to push the enemy off of himself seem quite smart in retrospect as the long-range hunter detonated not too long after being taken out.</p><p>"What's going on?" Kiyomi wondered on the link.</p><p>"I guess he uses some sort of… Explosive clones?" Meiko reported. "Can you tell light from the dark? Come out into the open so he doesn't sneak up on you!"</p><p>"So you're talking mentally, hmm?" Deidara appeared from the alleyway with a right hand that had almost been reduced to white clay drooping all over subdued Kiyomi who had bruises all over her face from the shrapnel that robbed her of her sight for a time and subtle yet relentless trickles of blood coming out from her ears. "I figured you guys seemed a bit too coordinated for the quiet bunch you acted like…"</p><p>"He's got Kiyomi, you know!" Naruto yelled out the obvious, his irises turned red while his pupils became more feline and sharpened, mirroring his fangs.</p><p>"And we still don't know where the real one is, look at that arm, this one's clearly a clone…" Meiko replied on the mental link. "Calm down, if you attack it, it'll blow up and hurt Kiyomi."</p><p>"Yamanaka… What a troublesome bunch, hmm… If I don't take you out now, you guys will keep whispering on me the whole time. Worst of all, it will make you feel like you're actually in control…" Deidara smiled, realizing he held all the aces at that moment. Seeing that face and hearing those words, both Naruto and Meiko knew that the clone was going to detonate to kill Kiyomi off. She was too useful for the genin team to let her stay in action.</p><p>"It was a mistake, grabbing me from the back, that is!" Kiyomi shouted out, clearly, she was still struggling to realize just how loud she was talking even though the constant shrieking in her head was beginning to calm down already.</p><p>"What are you talking about? An artist makes no mistakes with perfect art and the perfect art is that which makes a blast!" Deidara exclaimed, emphasizing the last part as if intending to detonate the clone and kill the hostage he had captured but something must have been off as the clone just stood in place without going off, almost as if the signal it was meant to receive to do so was intercepted.</p><p>Kiyomi's hand shot for her pouch, pulling out a kunai knife and driving it through the pressure on her chest where she felt the explosive clay holding her down. With a little bit of luck and a yank of the white mass, she managed to free herself and then turn her head, so that her ponytail landed over her left shoulder in a showy manner.</p><p>"A Yamanaka is capable of subduing a person with their hair. Usually, it requires some effort like creating a channel of the hair on the floor or planting a hair on the enemy but you were stupid enough to touch the hair by grabbing me from behind yourself." Kiyomi explained, not looking too pleased about her current condition but feeling quite relieved about being able to continue her participation in the exams, needless to say – to live as well.</p><p>"That should have only paralyzed the clone, how come it didn't detonate?" Deidara hissed, the original owner appearing quite vexed by the fact that he had lost another C2 clone.</p><p>"Oh, it would seem that your detonation comes as a chakra transmission, almost like a signal. If there is a different signal coming out from another viable source and affecting your clone – it jams your own signal." Kiyomi replied. She was glad to stand and explain how excellent she was – every passing second was a moment her vision and hearing had to recover and now she was out in the open where Meiko could have supported her too.</p><p>The droopy, white, clay clone collapsed into chunks of white goop while the wind carried powder of white dirt from it about in the street. Just like that, Kiyomi's minor victory planning over her opponent was transformed into a loss once more with her nobody having any idea where the enemy was.</p><p>"What are you three doing!?" a condescending, masculine voice interrupted the dance that Team Hokage had danced with their hunter twice already. Naruto took a leap off of the rooftop to land on the ground, closer to the trio of genin that was emerging from the alleyway behind them. "All this noise is going to attract more hunters. Some of us actually need to use the hospital!"</p><p>"Forgive me, friends, it was my fault for tearing my body up with the Five Gates!" Rock Lee yelled out from the shoulders of his comrades, his green jumpsuit had tears in multiple places and his body was sweating profusely while the boy's eyelids seemed to be hanging heavy over his eyes, seeking for the closest opportunity to shut closed for a longer period of time.</p><p>"What are you talking about, Lee? If it weren't for you, Shadabada's Mercenaries would have destroyed the hospital and the supplies inside." Tenten tried to cheer her worn-out comrade up.</p><p>"You…" Neji turned to Naruto with a scowl despite being almost up to Naruto's chest in his current age. "Even as a young adult, you're just as much of an incompetent buffoon as always."</p><p>"Hey, it's not like we picked the fight, you know! Deidara pinned us down!" Naruto shook his fist up in Neji's face but the Hyuuga wasn't about to have any.</p><p>"And where is this enemy of yours?" Neji squinted one of his eyes at Naruto.</p><p>"We don't know…" Naruto poked his fingers together. "That's kind of why he's handing us our asses, you know."</p><p>"Hmph… Tenten, assist me." Neji approached Meiko and handed Lee over to the confused blacksmith while Neji closed his eyes to focus for opening his Byakugan. Almost the same moment he closed his eyes, a platoon of Deidara clones emerged from windows inside the surrounding homes and burst forth through the doors, in a mad rush to overwhelm and destroy the Konoha ninja.</p><p>A metallic buzz emanating from a silver-colored blur telegraphed the attack that would pin the clones down. The clay-men twitched and stumbled back from the weight of the impact of dozens of ninja tools hitting them all at once. They considered themselves still capable of fulfilling their suicidal rush plan but once Tenten revealed the steel wire she had tied to the ends of her ninja tools and the entrapment that it has created, the clones realized the futility of their attempt to rush at the long-range scout in the shape of Neji.</p><p>"Byakugan!" Neji's eyes burst open with veins branching outwards down his cheeks from around his eyelids. "He's hiding in a house a block from here, over there. He must be using some sort of ocular device to be able to survey the battlefield with such precision while staying as safe and as far as he has been so far. He's playing you for fools, more hunters will come any time now, we must move!"</p><p>"And where exactly would all of you go?" a familiar masculine, low-pitched tone with a new tune of smugness to it forced the six Konoha ninja gathered in an important street of Konohagakure to turn back at a balcony of a nearby building where Doto Kazahana, the first introduced hunter, alongside three other lackeys stood with his massive arms crossed over his chest while his goons either just laughed behind his broad shoulders or made faces at the tired and compromised Konoha ninja.</p><p>"I think Neji's right." Kiyomi realized, staring at a blank point in space while puny drops of blood from the wounds on her face tapped on the dirt under her feet. "We can't fight these guys at this point, that's the entire point – if we get spotted and involve ourselves into these fights, all we win is more hunters on our asses. We need to disappear from their view and regroup."</p><p>One of Doto's minions weaved through an impressive collection of hand seals before forcing the water from a nearby fountain to rush at the Konoha Six all at once, expanding massively in size and taking the shape of a whale. The whale appeared to freeze completely in mid-slam but despite its colossal size, it was not to touch the ground. An arm wielding four, sharp claws at the end, comprised of a boiling, red chakra cloak reached out, grabbed and crushed the ice whale in its grip.</p><p>"Go!" Naruto roared out. "I'll keep them off your back and keep them occupied."</p><p>Whatever sense he did make in his new transformation appeared to be slowly fleeting him as a tail began emerging from his boiling chakra cloak.</p><p>"I am not sure what power this is but… It's ironic that Naruto makes the most sense when he's going wild," Neji said while approaching Meiko. He took Lee off Meiko's hands and turned for the alleyway his team had come here through, one that led to the Konoha Hospital a few blocks away.</p><p>"We're coming back for you once we take care of Kiyomi's injuries, don't pass out until then!" Meiko looked at Naruto, grabbed Kiyomi and flipped the wounded team leader over her back.</p><p>"Allow us to just watch you two dweebs leave too!" a pink-haired kunoichi from Doto's three-man squad mocked the Team Hokage duo attempting to flee while she weaved hand seals and formed ice needles from the water that her teammate had scattered all over the battlefield, forcing it to rain above the enemies present on the ground level. With a single scream, Naruto blasted the needles away, sending Meiko and Kiyomi off their balance and stumbling into the alleyway in less than favorable landing.</p><p>With the booms and slams of battle behind them, Meiko scurried with Kiyomi in her grasp to the looming image of the Konohagakure Hospital, hoping that it had some supplies there that might have helped Kiyomi's eyes recover if even a little bit faster.</p>
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<a name="section0616"><h2>616. Nightmare On Hospital Street</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So you've stopped bickering and followed us… Good." Neji nodded in bitter approval upon seeing Kiyomi and Meiko enter the abandoned and gloomy hospital building. These three clearly have been waiting for Team Hokage for they had extra time to enter the hospital and find their supplies and yet they still hung out around the entrance.</p><p>"Do not fret…" Rock Lee winced in pain, still hanging on his teammates' shoulders. "I know that it felt like abandoning your teammate and there's nothing that feels more despicable, but Naruto expressed his wish to protect you and sacrifice his participation for the team. It would have been far crueler to deny his request and have all three of you be eliminated…"</p><p>"Can we hurry up, find the medical supplies and get out of here?" Tenten looked around with a distressed expression. Evidently, she did not enjoy this unsanctioned visit to an abandoned hospital building on the verge of the evening with no electricity.</p><p>"If we've come here, we might as well traverse through the hospital and leave on the western wing exit. That way we'll cover a decent handful of blocks of the street indoors. We've considered using the hospital for a similar purpose before we were attacked." Kiyomi suggested.</p><p>"That sounds smart." Neji agreed. "Unless, of course, you wish to go back and rescue Naruto right after taking care of yourselves."</p><p>"Yeah… That's what we'd rather do." Meiko nodded.</p><p>Kiyomi continued to hang her face angled at the floor as if she tried to peek through the layer of blood clotted over her closed and wounded eyes. Her silence brought up implications that Meiko didn't even like to entertain.</p><p>"No! We're going back! If it was Mana or me, you'd go back!" Meiko lifted Kiyomi up by her collar and shook her a good couple of times in the air.</p><p>"For you - sure…" Kiyomi muttered.</p><p>"Hmph… It's a pity that I've never had the opportunity to work with you, Kiyomi, was it?" Neji looked up at the scene with a smirk. "It's rare to see someone of your age that knows how things get done. This is just the kind of mindset this exam is trying to cement and test in its competitors. It must not be your first…"</p><p>"That's cruel, Neji…" Tenten objected with hesitation to her voice. It was not tough to make out that arguing with her de facto team leader was not something that this young lady did often. "It's true that they don't know if Naruto can even survive such odds but…"</p><p>"Please, it is unlikely that these clowns will go for the kill." Neji snickered.</p><p>"No, Meiko-chan is right!" Rock Lee looked up with a swollen right eye, meeting Meiko's own determined gaze. "If there's one ninja capable of surviving such odds, it is indeed Naruto!"</p><p>"That is true, he does seem to be difficult to put down…" Neji closed his eyes in a solemn note of his teammate's point before shrugging. "Either way, that is not our problem to work out. We will gladly work together to uncover the medical supplies with you guys, whether you choose to return and save Naruto or work with us further, that is all on you."</p><p>Meiko and Kiyomi nodded, they didn't do so in sync, given how Kiyomi couldn't quite make out when exactly Meiko was nodding. Out there on the field, she could make out darkness and light, even some vague human shapes. Here, she was completely blind. Then again, pretty much anyone was operating under these circumstances.</p><p>"Neji, you're a Hyuuga, right? Could you please scan this building for chakra signatures? It is likely that other teams might have stumbled here or some party of hunters decided to camp here and set a trap inside a well-known landmark of the village." Kiyomi requested.</p><p>Neji placed his hands together in a hand seal and closed his eyes. "Byakugan!" he chanted out while activating his own ocular technique and running a quick visual scan through the building, penetrating walls and different manmade barriers with great ease.</p><p>"I see a massive chakra signature three floors up, in the resting ward wing. It's oddly familiar but… No, it couldn't be… Naruto…" Neji mumbled.</p><p>"N-Naruto!?" Meiko took a few quick steps. "We have to confirm that! Are you sure it isn't just a hunter using Transformation Jutsu?"</p><p>"It isn't. As I've said, the chakra signature is considerable enough to match Naruto's. Also, his Nature Affinities seem to be the exact same as Naruto's. The signature seems distinct in some ways but the similarities are striking." Neji replied. "Whether it is your Naruto or a different Naruto, I am not sure, but it would seem unlikely for another Naruto to be in the exact same place. We've lost visual on him a few minutes ago, it isn't entirely impossible that he might have given his enemy the slip."</p><p>"Can you look back and make-out Naruto's signature in the main street?" Kiyomi wondered. Neji looked back.</p><p>"Yes. It is still there… Overflowing with chakra, straining even his vast chakra network. Blinding almost. I could make such a signature out from even far larger distance than the Byakugan's maximum range." Neji replied.</p><p>"Then it is not our Naruto. Even more, it might be a trap set by a hunter. From what we have learned Naruto is a well-known ninja in his universe. We are best to tread carefully and avoid contact with him." Kiyomi surmised.</p><p>Tenten turned to Neji who closed his eyes and canceled out his Byakugan before nodding in agreement.</p><p>"It is rare that Neji finds himself in agreement with someone else." Rock Lee smirked before wincing in pain again, struggling and wriggling in the grasp of his teammates to clutch for his aching ribs.</p><p>"Watch it, Lee!" Neji grunted, irritated.</p><p>"We better hurry up and find those supplies," Tenten stated the obvious. "Neither of us is a medical ninja, I wonder how useful these medical supplies can truly be…"</p><p>"It doesn't matter, I'd imagine that if the cube has recreated Konoha as it was, the items located in the hospital should be replicated. Given the appearance of the Hokage Mountain, I would imagine that the village copy is based on our version of Konoha. That means that there should be food pills in the warehouse and in just about every ward." Kiyomi explained her reasoning.</p><p>"Food pills? What use could those be to us?" Tenten placed one of her free hands by her hip.</p><p>"I see that food pills in your universe work a tad different compared to ours…" Meiko smiled. "You see, food pills can accelerate the natural bodily processes. Blue food pills can make you recover used chakra quicker, green, red and yellow ones can give a jolt to how fast a body heals."</p><p>"In that case, we better look for them quick." Neji reacted to this revelation with the same cool vibe he gave out to pretty much anything anyone said. "I would normally suggest stacking up on them but I would imagine that they have some adverse side effects?"</p><p>"They do. If you take too many of them too quick in between one another, they can break your body and shut your organs down just as well as they can restore its integrity." Kiyomi nodded. "Taking an indigo one is always a danger and should be done only to protect the patient from imminent death, a green one a day is all that one should take. Two yellows in a couple of days should be just fine and you can be a bit more liberal with red ones. Black ones are comparable to indigo ones but aren't as dangerous, may as well rub your wounds with black caviar though…"</p><p>"That is useful information." Neji nodded in gratitude without having it in him to actually thank Team Hokage. "I will keep my Byakugan active and stay on the lookout. It might strain my eyes some so I'd appreciate a blue and red pill if you can find some."</p><p>"Wait, we can't split up." Meiko objected.</p><p>"It would go faster but… You're right. There's no use in me keeping my eyes open if I'm not around you. Fine, let's go together." Neji nodded.</p><p>The two teams proceeded through the entryway hallway. They hadn't even begun to consider the wide array of bumps in the road they'd hit with the entire hospital being abandoned. Neji approached the elevator and pressed the button a couple of times before the dreadful silence reminded him that the power was out. Meiko approached the door that led into the access stairway but the doors refused to cooperate.</p><p>Just as Meiko stepped back to ram the door with her shoulder, Tenten stopped her and laid Lee down by the wall. The girl in pink kneeled down by the door and checked one of the multiple pouches she had by her waist, pulling out a couple of lockpicks. Even in complete darkness, operating solely through the noises that her tools made and the subtle dance of resistances and further movement, trial and error, Tenten unlocked the door in a shroud of silence that made one hear their own heartbeat.</p><p>"I thought you guys had it memorized – noise means hunters on your tail." Tenten scolded Meiko.</p><p>"The entire thing about us being able to fight the hunters was a trap…" Rock Lee lamented while Tenten and Neji picked him back up and pulled him through the doorway while Meiko held the door open on the other side with her foot.</p><p>"Yes. They were quite deceitful to throw the fact out that we could fight any hunter in here with a possibility of success, as long as we're skilled enough. Every genin considers themselves skilled enough, every team thinks they are better than the average. Naturally, most of us would be able to beat those hunters given their limited exposure to this universe's factors but… Fighting, the racket, it attracts more and more hunters, fighting is a ceaseless cycle and while our stamina and chakra are boosted here, they are far from infinite." Neji grit his teeth. Something told Meiko that Team Guy learned this the hard way.</p><p>"Hmm… There is another team of genin in this building." Neji stopped in the middle of the ascent and examined the upper levels with his impressive eyesight which even walls proved to be no obstacle to.</p><p>"Yeah… There sure is…" a voice that didn't sound like it belonged either to Team Hokage or Team Guy confirmed Neji's information while the baffled pair of teams turned for the corner of the ceiling on the second floor. From a dark patch in the ceiling, both feet attached to it, utilizing the shadowy corner to its fullest, shimmered a pair of red eyes.</p><p>"That voice…" Kiyomi growled. "Naruto!"</p><p>"Tsk, how did you sneak up on us!?" Neji grunted, defiant of his failure to keep up with the enemy, even though his Byakugan has been otherwise occupied for a brief time just before this new player emerged on the board.</p><p>"You've only made sure to follow the real me, the main one. This entire building is full of me, you thought you could keep up with me with those eyes of yours, just because you could track that other me but you've never met anything like me before." Naruto dropped down from the ceiling and crossed his arms over his chest.</p><p>"So you're not our Naruto then?" Kiyomi asked for a confirmation.</p><p>"Something's wrong, look at his eyes…" Meiko let go of Kiyomi and gently placed her injured and blinded teammate behind her, standing with her broad shoulders and chest buffed out to protect Kiyomi at all costs. Meiko was right to focus on this select feature of this new version of Naruto for the whites of this Naruto weren't white at all, instead, his eyes were like black coals with only the irises standing out with their macabre, red gleam.</p><p>"You're disappointing me, Meiko…" this darker version of Naruto proclaimed in a hollow and sad tone. "You were one of the few I kinda liked here. Here you are though, judging me like the rest of them. So I've got different eyes, so what!?"</p><p>Without much more warning, Naruto lunged at the whole group, his hands pressed by his side and his claws bent out, ready to swipe and claw everyone's eyes out in an instant. Meiko jumped up, letting the chakra seals in her boots flare up and throw her over the entire group just in the right degree of elevation so she could meet Dark Naruto halfway and block his strike by entrapping his entire arm. The chakra jets in her boots changed direction, blasting flares of chakra to the right so that Meiko could spin and fling Naruto right through the sidewall of the building. Once the clone of this dark, nightmarish Naruto popped, she looked back at the rest.</p><p>"Move! Naruto receives intelligence from his clones once they disperse…" she warned the rest. Kiyomi might have known that but this version of Team Guy may have been too young to be familiar with this fact.</p><p>"What was wrong with Naruto!?" Rock Lee cried out with curiosity that rivaled the desperation he felt. "Why did he attack us? What have we done to scorn him?"</p><p>"I don't think that was our Naruto at all, or any other version of Naruto, for that matter. This Naruto was a hunter." Kiyomi declared.</p><p>"Hmm… Back then, during the battle, Naruto's eyes did flash red and his facial features turned almost bestial. This Naruto also had crimson eyes but his chakra… Everything else felt so different, so dark!" Neji bit his lip, even if he did not consider Naruto much of a challenge normally, it didn't take a people person to realize that Neji wouldn't mind never meeting another clone of this Dark Naruto ever again.</p><p>"I cannot even track his clones at all! It's like they're not comprised of chakra at all…" Neji added to the complete handbag of troubles.</p><p>"In any case, we cannot go back now, we need those medical food pills." Meiko focused on the dash ahead and forced herself through the nearest ward. The redhead rushed to the first bed in her way and ripped open the drawer to check it for food pills. It had a whole bunch of someone's personal items but no food pills whatsoever.</p><p>"Hey, hey… You don't look like you're even trying anymore…" Naruto's voice, twisted by some unruly emotion corrupting his entire essence, informed both teams that another Naruto clone was blocking their exit.</p><p>"Also, to answer your previous whining, Neji, we really aren't made of just chakra," Team Hokage and Team Guy looked up at the ceiling of the hospital ward they burst into only to see it littered with Naruto clones, all showing their canines and clutching their fists for a charge at the enemy. "We're made out of hatred!" one of them declared while the entire bunch charged all at once.</p><p>Neji placed his foot forward and tried turning his body around but realized he was still holding Lee, which prohibited him from performing the move. Kiyomi felt a numbing sensation in her jaw, she could feel the rough floor underneath her and the taste of blood in her mouth didn't come until a bit later, when the numbness went away and she could check if she hadn't lost any of her teeth from the punch or kick, she was unsure which, she took from the attack of Dark Naruto clones filling the building.</p><p>Kiyomi's hand raced across the objects around her, looking for something sharp to protect herself with, she wasn't sure if the enemy was standing above her, for all she knew, Naruto could have been sneering at her with a kunai knife in hand, ready to plunge it down and without her sight it would have been tough to measure out the exact moment to augment her body to withstand the attack. Even then, she may have withstood fifty stabs with just shallow scratches but her augmentations would have broken eventually.</p><p>There was racket everywhere, were the others fighting? Kiyomi's hand stumbled onto a bed cover and, without thinking, she pulled it over her. Then she realized – she had a bed cover over her! Hoping that the smell of blood from her own busted nose and cracked lip won't make her belch underneath the thick, autumnal bed cover, Kiyomi weaved a hand seal and performed the Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu to disguise her from the enemy.</p><p>The room was dark, she knew that much, even if one clone had his eyes on Kiyomi, they'd have had trouble making out where she'd gone in all this chaos, plus, it wasn't like Naruto was the brightest person out of the bunch. If this nightmarish force that corrupted him could have picked a person as its champion, there were some advantages that it picked Naruto.</p><p>Kiyomi wasn't sure for how long she laid underneath the cover. She tried reaching out for the others with the mental link, it wasn't too difficult. Meiko's mind was right there. Once the connection was established, Kiyomi took a moment to just bask in the warmth of Meiko's inner world and not say a thing. Until she said anything, Meiko wouldn't even know that the two were connected.</p><p>"Where are you guys?" Kiyomi wondered mentally. Finally gathering the bravery to think about anything but how sickening breathing in nothing but carbon dioxide mixed with a puny stench of her own blood underneath the covers was.</p><p>"Where were you? We bolted from the room, didn't want to dispel the clones because that'd have told Dark Naruto where we were." Meiko's reply rung in Kiyomi's head, judging from the volume of her thoughts, the blacksmith had been worried.</p><p>"I camouflaged on the floor when the clones attacked. I'm… I'm not sure if it's safe to come out…" Kiyomi tried to hide the fact that she was about to throw up and beginning to feel claustrophobic underneath the bed cover but the possible nightmares wearing familiar faces outside frightened her far more. Tried being the keyword since thoughts had the tendency to shake and quiver even more noticeably than one's own voice when they were panicking.</p><p>"Stay down then, there are a bunch of clones all over that wing, they're all rushing there after the clone I destroyed. I'm coming back for you!" her teammate's reply rung loud and adamant. Meiko and her determination…</p><p>"N-No… It's too dangerous. Make it out of here. Somehow… We didn't go back for Naruto, don't come back after me. I'll… I'll find a way to heal my eyes and then I'll join you." Kiyomi issued a different order. Her shaking hand crawled up from scratching at the floor to clutching at her chest to try and soothe her racing heart. She signed a check with her thoughts that her ass might not have been able to cash. The young woman turned over on her front, careful so that she didn't disturb her camouflaging bed cover and letting it stay on her back.</p><p>Blind, surrounded by swarms of enemies wearing familiar faces of a teammate she chose to abandon until the more immediate mission was completed. There were better odds, there were less disturbing ways to go too but this was her life. Kiyomi bit her lip and reached her hand out to feel the floor underneath the hospital bed out. She'd need to examine the area in front of her before she could crawl. Even if she was invisible for the moment, there were Dark Naruto clones everywhere, at any point she might have made too much sound or accidentally grabbed one of them by their heels and…</p><p>"Just shut up and keep moving…" Kiyomi thought, making sure to keep it to herself. "Naruto is fighting to reconnect with us, I won't just keep laying down and let Meiko leave me behind either."</p>
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<a name="section0617"><h2>617. Sheep In Wolf's Clothing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As she scraped the busted floor tiles of the hospital ward, feeling up for the end of the bed she was going to emerge on the other side from, Kiyomi felt herself planted inside one of those moments in one's life where one knew that what they were about to do would suck, likely even hurt a great deal. The problem with those moments was that they were essential, do or die kinds of moments because otherwise, they wouldn't be so necessary to experience – everyone would just choose not to walk that path.</p><p>The true definition of one's worth was being able to fix one's feet into the dirt and declare to oneself that you won't move.</p><p>The springs of a nearby bed shrieked a cry of distress, an early sign of inevitable doom of the backstabbing variety. Judging from the cruel smirk on the face of the blond bastard that delivered it to the blinded kunoichi, he enjoyed plunging a kunai into her back very, very much.</p><p>"Heh, I always keep just one clone around when the group gets beaten down. Just in case, nostalgia, you know, though you wouldn't get it…" Dark Naruto mumbled into Kiyomi's ear as he gently guided the dying body down on the ground. A ghastly howl followed by some phantasmal force shoving Dark Naruto forward and forcing him to trip over his recent kill just before it dispersed into a cloud of smoke in a loud poof sent the overly confident nightmare of the Konoha Hospital on his knees.</p><p>Once he stood back to his feet, he wasn't the same person anymore.</p><p>"That's funny because I do the same thing…" Kiyomi pulled in her chin underneath the high collar of Dark Naruto's tracksuit. Borrowing a body was an elementary thing in her condition. This way she could have seen something while working out the solution to all her current problems.</p><p>When she sent a clone out and stayed behind to try and hit a Dark Naruto with one of her Yamanaka mind-switching techniques, Kiyomi wasn't sure that she'd be able to house her mind inside of a clone. Clones were constructs of chakra, even she wasn't entirely sure what her hidden techniques did to one's chakra signature. The distinction between one's mind, one's soul and chakra was a bit too vague, even to a master of either of the three.</p><p>However, as a clone of Dark Naruto's emerged through the doorway and peeked outside, she realized that it was Dark Naruto that needed to dispel her actively. Until the clone was dispelled, the user had no awareness of what the clone knew or felt. That meant that Dark Naruto would have had no idea that someone had occupied the body of his clone, that being said, if he did choose to dispel it, for any reason, Kiyomi would be back in her original body and the original would likely learn all about the switcheroo.</p><p>Kiyomi jumped up and extended her hands out to the ceiling, focusing her chakra onto her fingertips to have them stick. That made it easier to pull her feet up and apply them to the ceiling to mimic the creepy manner in which these strange, dark manifestations of Naruto appeared to carry themselves around in. It didn't take long before Kiyomi ran into one of her own. The one that she did sight was the one that didn't attempt to hide, a handful more were lurking somewhere nearby, the red irises of their eyes pierced through the dark. These eyes, they couldn't have been natural, just what on Earth was this version of Naruto?</p><p>"There are intruders, did you see them?" Kiyomi spoke first, she didn't want to arouse suspicion. Every time the clone she was in would have gotten hit, she'd have pushed her luck that the original would keep her around at the cost of their chakra.</p><p>"Heard the commotion, didn't run into them, clearly, you know…" a Dark Naruto clone replied.</p><p>"You came in from the other direction, didn't you run into them?" another one hissed from the side.</p><p>"By the time I ran in, they were already gone, you know." Kiyomi shook her head, trying to mimic Naruto's mannerisms down to a tee. She did plenty of observation on his mug this past couple of days so it wasn't even remotely troubling to do. Plus, she had a handful of cheat sheets right in front of her.</p><p>"Who were those guys, I wonder…" another clone mumbled.</p><p>"I'm gonna go looking for them." Kiyomi declared.</p><p>"Why?" the most obviously positioned clone turned his head.</p><p>"What else are we gonna do here, you know? It's like we're just standing around, creeping and waiting for somebody to come our way. I'm gonna show initiative and find somebody to hunt, you know!" Kiyomi explained. She needed an alibi to wander off and search for some medical food pills, after all. There were few better than looking for somebody to attack. Somebody that the original wanted beaten or dead.</p><p>Though, just to be safe, Kiyomi decided to not probe around where these guys could see her. While from afar a clone looking for stranded ninja wandering around was similar to a clone looking for medicine, the illusion was easier to see through the closer one got. Plus, these guys seemed to imply that they've seen or heard nothing, which meant it would be quite suspicious of her to test them by searching the wards near them.</p><p>Kiyomi crawled around the ceiling on all fours, choosing to take a staircase that led her one floor down to where she may have begun her search. She kept bumping into Dark Naruto duplicates for the entire way down but once she descended one floor down, there seemed to be far fewer clones around. With just a little bit of waiting, Kiyomi managed to catch a moment when she was outside the vision of any other clone. That was just the opening she needed to drop down and run into a ward to scour it for supplies.</p><p>It would go far smoother to do so when she had a functional pair of eyes to spare. Kiyomi pulled on a nearby drawer and smirked when she saw an aluminum sheet with a pair of medical food pills packed into it in a set of eight. She stuffed the sheets of pills into her warm and thick pockets. The ones on Naruto's trousers appeared to have some zippers, she'd just have to be careful with the ones on her tracksuit…</p><p>Hurray for the functionality of boys' clothing…</p><p>Kiyomi crawled back up on the wall, feeling the pills slide about in her side pockets. This would be a pain, she'll be hanging upside down the whole time, had it not been for the feathery weight of the pills, they'd be falling right out. Kiyomi clutched her tummy just to be careful and crept out of the room.</p><p>She was beginning to feel bumping in her head. A creeping up migraine, as if her head was a gate and there was some strongman trying to rip it open by splitting it apart. She knew that feeling, not the literal pain of a migraine, she knew that one, of course, she knew that this feeling came from the awakening resistance of the target's will. Her jutsu, as childish and second-natured as it felt, put a strain on Kiyomi's body and that strain multiplied over time. That only meant that whatever will a user had to resist would grow exponentially the longer the jutsu continued.</p><p>In other words, Mind-Body Switch was a jutsu designed for gathering intelligence, not picking another life to live.</p><p>Kiyomi entered back into the staircase, this would be the first test of her weird new strut and it hit her right in the face from the get-go.</p><p>"What's wrong with you?" a Dark Naruto turned his head in confusion.</p><p>"Got caught off-guard by the genin, you know." She tried explaining why she scaled the ceiling and took shadowy corners while clutching her gut the whole time.</p><p>"Didn't disperse?" the clone wondered.</p><p>"I like to keep one clone around, you know." Kiyomi moved one of the arms she used to cling to the wall to brush it through the back of her head, just like Naruto tended to do when he was embarrassed and happy at the same time.</p><p>"Where are you going now?" the clone asked while Kiyomi tried to creep past it and back to the corridor leading up to the ward where her unconscious, defenseless body laid sprawled out under a hospital bed.</p><p>"Looking for the bastards that beat me up, you know!" Kiyomi shook her fist.</p><p>"Forget that. We're gathering up on the first floor." The clone shook his head.</p><p>"Why?" Kiyomi scratched hers.</p><p>"Huh? What do you mean why? The Kirigakure guys are down there, you know…" the Dark Naruto squinted.</p><p>"Oh, just that… I thought it was something else…" Kiyomi tried playing her obliviousness off, here she found out one disadvantage of trying to play herself off as one of Naruto's clones – she wasn't receiving constant updates from dying clones about what killed them and where. That meant that the more she spoke, the more she'd be exposing herself and her lack of common knowledge all clones shared.</p><p>"Just that?" the clone wondered about Kiyomi's lack of enthusiasm shown toward attacking the Kirigakure ninja.</p><p>"I mean, a party of genin here and there… You're looking for what, three guys, right? We got our asses beat by six of them and two of those guys were already on their last legs, you know." Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Six? You're looking for six genin all by yourself? Ones that beat an entire party of us earlier?" the clone crept closer, growing a tad suspicious. It must have happened eventually – Naruto was not the brightest tool in the shed already, had he been one, she'd have been ousted from the start. The clones would have had some password system or something with the password changing with each dying clone relaying a new password to prevent just this sort of situation.</p><p>"Shut up, don't you think I'll win!?" Kiyomi tried to pass herself off as a total idiot. "They were a really annoying bunch, they knew me, said my eyes were different…"</p><p>"Oh…" the eyes of the Dark Naruto clone sunk in shadow, his blond hair obstructed the view but when the light returned to gleam red from his eyes, it did so through crystal prisms of tears. Tears that shook Kiyomi to her core. "They hate us, don't they? Hate us, just like everyone else…"</p><p>"Yeah… Neji, Lee, Tenten…" Kiyomi listed the names of the people she spoke of, hoping to ignite a spark in the clone to give her more substance to talk about. Right now, as good as she was at infiltration, she sort of lacked something to sink her teeth into.</p><p>"Neji… That guy never liked us to begin with, you know." The clone shook his head. "Though he's worse than even the two-faced lowlifes pointing fingers at us and calling us monsters and freaks! He doesn't know that we're a monster, that we're a freak but he hates us anyway."</p><p>"Y-Yeah…" Kiyomi thought she understood. "He hates us for Naruto, not for… That's why I have to show him, break every bone and make him swallow his words, poke his smug eyes out for good measure!"</p><p>"Shit, now I kind of wanna go with you!" the Dark Naruto clone snickered. "Hmm… Does beating up Kirigakure ninja feel right… Does kicking Bushy Brows' team's ass feel right…"</p><p>Kiyomi couldn't contain a snicker. The Bushy Brows' nickname caught her unaware. She wasn't sure if she heard Naruto use it before but she knew exactly whom it referred to, that was why it was so funny.</p><p>"Sorry, just all the talking made me start imagining things. Bushy Brows is beaten up already, showing him will be the easiest." Kiyomi tried to shrug her snickering off, it was rough since she had to repeat the nickname herself and by nearly corpsing she revealed just how unnatural it was slipping off of her lips.</p><p>"Yeah, I'll go with, you know!" the clone stuck to Kiyomi's ass like a wet leaf. She clenched her fist in displeasure and moved on, hearing the faint dragging of the sandals across the ceiling or the walls as well as the moist taps of his hands touching those same surfaces too.</p><p>It might have been sheer luck that helped the pair not run into any more Naruto clones on their way back to the ward. Then again, the clone did mention that every other clone received a message about a Kirigakure team beating up a squad of Naruto clones. That must have been how the bunch that found them before found them as well. So the Kirigakure team tried sneaking through the first floor… It might have been that they didn't even try to sneak around, they just wanted to bypass a whole bunch of exposed, main street traversing by crossing through the hospital and saw no need to ascend to the upper floors.</p><p>"Huh… Are you sure you know where you're going?" the clone wondered.</p><p>"Of course I don't." Kiyomi shook her head. "They poofed everyone else away, I was the only one left and by the time I got back to my senses the ward was empty."</p><p>"Man, I should have gone with everybody else…" the clone sighed in disappointment.</p><p>"You're probably right…" Kiyomi weaved a hand seal. The clone grunted in pain as a bubble of expanding air mass blew it off the ceiling and slammed it into the floor. With her leading the way and dragging both her hands and feet across the ceiling, it was a simple matter to draw a small Wind Release chakra seal that expunged all the chakra out at once when triggered.</p><p>The problematic part was that now a whole bunch of clones would know all about what happened, she needed to be fast. Kiyomi, still in a foreign body burst into the ward and ran up to her bed, rolling out a kunai in her right hand and throwing it at her gut while canceling the jutsu at the last possible second. The clone failed to tense their hand and stop the plunge in time. The dazed head from being shoved into the back corners of his own mind must have done that to him, Kiyomi went through a fair deal of that sleepy haze herself while she shoveled the floor for the pills that the clone had dropped.</p><p>She popped one, it couldn't have been the right one – she could feel great physical strength surging through her system. That wonderful feeling of being capable of accomplishing anything, like on a lovely morning after a night one had the sleep of a lifetime on. The disgusting part was that Kiyomi was still blind, meaning she popped a blue one. Another blue one might have done serious harm to her, even if she took a stronger medical food pill that wasn't a blue one, she might have still gone through nasty side effects if not done more harm than good.</p><p>Who knew that after surviving the nightmare of a lifetime inside the body of the monster she would get stuck in popping pills while blind? It was such an elementary yet such a specific peril that she hadn't even prepared a plan for it, she rushed things to outrace a possible attack by the Naruto clones once they felt two of them disperse and receive the knowledge back that one of their clones was compromised fighting a blind kunoichi.</p><p>Shit. She didn't have time to try and be clever, Kiyomi popped a different sheet and let a round, plastic-feeling marble slide out into her hand through feeling it up. It felt mushy and moist in taste, kind of like mashed tomatoes with a chili aftertaste – a red pill. It was a tad weak but it should have treated the damage to her eyes. The problem was that Kiyomi had no idea when it would do so.</p><p>"Was it here!?" she heard a grunt in the doorway. It was far too dark to know if the pills were having any sort of effect just yet. Who knew, it might have taken ten, fifteen minutes or half an hour. The pills usually were reliable enough to pop one in the middle of a combat situation and expect it to be of some aid in that same encounter but… The pill was weak, the damage was extensive and popping more pills after being lucky once was just asking for trouble. Even if she popped the same sheet of red pills, she'd be taking a second red pill right after accidentally taking a blue one, she was no medical ninja but while mixing two reds was of no immediate concern, mixing two of them over a blue one might just have been of great concern.</p><p>"Who the hell knows, all these wards look the same!" another grunt, mirroring the tone and voice of the first one replied. Great. A whole group of them showed up. Time… If only she had a little more time…</p><p>Kiyomi tried reaching out for her sheet, try and slip it over herself and wait it out while under a Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu. She heard a chuckle, her hand froze, an influx of fresh air blasting right at her face followed by a loud thud suggested that the bed she was hiding under got thrown aside and that she was now lying right in front of the group of clones that came here looking for her.</p><p>"The food pills, she took a pair already, a blue one and a red one." One of the clones pointed at the two packs of pills, noting the ones that were missing one food pill.</p><p>Of course they'd know she was looking for pills inside one of their bodies, the mind of their peer was trapped in the farther corners, out of control and shit out of luck but it was still there, still able to see and feel everything that Kiyomi did with his body, meaning that those same experiences got transferred back to the original and those assholes.</p><p>"Hmmm… A blue one and a red one? Did you intend to patch yourself up or were you just reaching for the right one? Didn't think things quite through, you know…" a Dark Naruto clone mocked Kiyomi. The young woman cried out in pain after the clone stomped at her, she couldn't see a damned thing! Even worse – they knew she couldn't, they couldn't have been oblivious to the grievous injuries on her eyes, even if they'd start closing up in a short second.</p><p>Time… If only she had more time…</p>
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<a name="section0618"><h2>618. Hospital Havoc</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kiyomi tried to shake off the feeling of this impending dread of being alone and blind in a room filled to the brim with sick and twisted versions of her friend whom she just chose to abandon to his fate. Even if this was some sick sense of karma kicking her in the ass, it didn't mean that this didn't suck on every level imaginable.</p><p>She was so close to pulling this insane shit off, she was alone, her squad had gone on without her as per her orders, she even managed to outwit those twits and find the medicinal food pills she needed to treat her eyesight and facial injuries. And all of that only to end up here, cornered, scared and blind like a bat. Short on just a couple of minutes of time.</p><p>A quick rush of air irritated the exposed flesh and nerves in the facial wounds that were slowly healing on Kiyomi's front. Recalling all of the times she had sparred with Naruto, Kiyomi tried remembering any of his taijutsu combinations, his favored patterns she could have predicted and exploited. She knew Naruto's height, if only she could guess the move right, maybe she'd be able to defend somewhat on muscle memory alone.</p><p>A shocking clock to her jaw sent Kiyomi slamming into the back wall, the air left her chest and her lungs hurt when she drew breath. Her vision still shrouded in complete darkness. There was just the searing pain in her jaw and the taste of blood in her mouth. A tooth shook loose in Kiyomi's mouth, her tongue clipped on it when it flipped about looking for a comfortable place to rest.</p><p>"Ew, I think I hit something sticky, you know!" the clone grunted and shook his hand in the air.</p><p>"Her face is all busted up, what are you, blind?" another one grumbled back in return.</p><p>"Ewww, don't touch that. And to think that those two-faced villagers hate us when ugly pieces of shit like this exist!" the first complained. Kiyomi could hear their footsteps coming closer.</p><p>Fuck time. If only it wasn't this dark, she could see some vague figures, some semblance of positioning, who's attacking, if they're attacking her high or low, from which side, were they armed? Any of this information could save her life right now and spare her from the most embarrassing defeat she's ever experienced.</p><p>Kiyomi's hand reached back for her pouch. It got pinned to the ground by the foot of one of the clones. The bastard put some decent weight on it, making Kiyomi cry out in pain.</p><p>"Aww, come on, should've let her pull out her weapon, at least. What's she gonna do, you know?" one of the clones mocked the downed Yamanaka heiress, trying to diminish her fleeting sense of self-worth by suggesting that even if she did succeed in her feeble attempts to defend herself, it'd be just as pointless as sitting tight and getting the shit beaten out of her.</p><p>The pain on her pinned elbow weakened, the clone must have shifted the weight on the other leg, meaning one thing – he was going for a kick. Despite the impending painful impact hitting her exposed and defenseless jaw, Kiyomi reached for her pouch again, pulling out a kunai blade and swinging it in a wide arc. She could almost feel, not quite see, but imagine, her opponents pulling back. They were like rabid wolves surrounding a bleeding lamb. The lot knew that their prey was weak and it's just a matter of time before they sunk their teeth into its throat. There was no need for any of them to get injured. Especially when even one injury might have cost the squad their numbers.</p><p>That's right, Kiyomi recalled, unless Naruto decides to upkeep the strain on his chakra, any hit he lands on these clones might drastically help to improve her terrible odds. And to think that neither of them knew what she had in mind…</p><p>"Heh, just gonna stand and swing your knife around, eh?" one of the clones mocked Kiyomi.</p><p>"Tsk, her back's to the wall, it's still a drag, you know…" another one grumbled.</p><p>"Quietly, don't tip her off…" a voice coming from a third angle sounded almost excited about this little game. "Just a step too loud and she's gonna end you…"</p><p>He was right. Their advantage right now was that Kiyomi didn't see them coming and couldn't know when they'd move up to her. If they did something that let too much sound out – she'd be onto their location and could defend herself. That was why they were only attacking her physically and one at a time – the duplicates did their best to stay under her radar. Even something as subtle as pulling ninja tools out of the pouch would have alerted Kiyomi's senses: the sound of steel rubbing against the leather, the leathery rustling when one's hand entered it, the whizz of steel cutting the air and the accelerated breathing of the one throwing them.</p><p>"You idiots… You've no idea what I pulled from my pouch, do you?" Kiyomi cleared her throat from the chunks of wet blood with a tone that sounded almost as excited as that which the clones spoke of not too long ago.</p><p>The blonde raised her hand up and clenched her fist around the handle of the kunai she held. A loud popping noise suggested that there was something smaller in her hand, in between the palm and the handle. Something she handled carefully up until now and something that was meant to be concealed the whole time up until this moment.</p><p>Kiyomi's hand lit up with bright, white light as beams of light rushed from the detonated flash bomb. Just for a brief couple of moments, the room lit up with light as if there was a pocket star located by the western wall and just for that one moment all of the locations of all her enemies inside the room became apparent to Kiyomi. The Yamanaka didn't wait for the blinding effects of the bomb to ward off, now that she knew the approximate location of her enemies she charged ahead.</p><p>She tried slamming her shoulder into one of the clones but she only slammed against the ground – it was no longer there. Those bastards picked up on her plan immediately and it was such a good one, it should have worked! Now that it didn't… This might have just been it…</p><p>"Shit! That bitch blinded us, you know!" someone grunted from up above. The location and angle of the sounds that the clones let out suggested to Kiyomi that the clones had bounced back up on the ceiling the moment that they got blinded. While they were similarly impaired to Kiyomi, even when the light was burning one's eyes out, it didn't take a prodigy to tell up from down.</p><p>"Calm down, that was her last shot, we can finish her off now!" a clone from a different corner cried out, still in pain.</p><p>"Shit, guys, did you feel that? We need to wrap this up quick and go down. The first floor needs our help, you know!" another one grumbled.</p><p>Kiyomi writhed on the floor before rolling to the side. A blast that threatened to take away her ears just as Deidara's blast took away her sight took the patch of the floor she just laid on away, the result of an explosive tag that she had placed there. While the clones looked confused about the source and the purpose of the explosion, Kiyomi rolled into the hole she had just created. After taking the liberty of crying out in pain of nearly dislocating her shoulder after the fall – she had made a far deeper hole than she had thought – Kiyomi peeled herself off the ground and stumbled to wherever there were no walls to slam herself into.</p><p>She had fallen down a stairway of sorts. Bumping into every rail on her way down, every part of her under her neck down to her hips burnt with bruises. Her pills were back in that room! It's back to square one but… As long as her eyes had the appropriate time to recover. There were sounds, sounds of battle, this must have been pretty far down, with any luck Kiyomi would find herself closer to the battle on the first floor…</p><p>"I knew this was a terrible idea!" a buff young man with silver mutton chops swung an ax so large that whenever it was swung it threw even the sturdy-built man off a bit. An ax that appeared to be made of steel similar in appearance to marble while coral-textured decorations of lapis stretched out over it with a net formation. Whenever the massive ax swung, handfuls of Dark Naruto clones popped.</p><p>"And what exactly was so terrible about moving indoors, hidden from all those hunters?" a taller and far slimmer youth compared to his immensely masculine teammate wondered while he placed a lantern-like artifact on the floor and spikes of coral came out of it, carefully bending around their master and his teammates and only impaling the rushing enemies, protecting the frail but long, pink-wearing young man from more than a few Rasengan coming his way.</p><p>"Maybe the fact that we're fighting hunters right now, you fucking pussy!?" the buff axman growled while swinging his ax in a powerful swing that left a roaring, aquatic streak in its trajectory, which exploded outward with all the force of the stormy oceans and sent more clones flying back.</p><p>"If you ladies are done being pissy, can I point out the disadvantage in N-U-M-B-E-R-S?" a young woman of violet hair and a combination of a militarized attire that somehow tried to nab the practicality of a military uniform and the flair of something fashion-minded but failed as the young lady wore a black bodysuit under tight-looking, short, teal jacket the back of which stretched out like a tuxedo well past her knees as well as a tall top hat with a playful pin which held it in place during hectic combat encounters with the help of a belt going under her chin.</p><p>"All I'm saying is, if Toro used any of that ferocity that his black eyes and shark-teeth vibe up and grew some balls, maybe we wouldn't be plowing through clones of the same guy right now who's likely on some drugs, given his weird eyes…" the strapping axman shrugged while swinging his axe over his shoulder and staring down a lowly handful of Dark Naruto clones that all froze in wait of impending reinforcements.</p><p>"Weird? That's right… You hate me too, don't you? Just like everybody else, right? It's not just Konoha… All around the world people are all the same…" one of the clones yelled out, clutching at his chest while tears formed in its black and red eyes.</p><p>"Shit, what is it gonna cry now?" the wiry axman tilted his eyebrows in disbelief.</p><p>"Do not mind Mouza, hunter, he is a brute who is very well defined by the lowly action of judging someone based on their appearance alone. It is an offense he has committed towards everyone he's met and it doesn't seem like he's on the right path to stop doing it either." The stretchy, extraterrestrial-looking Kirigakure ninja turned to the clone who was talking with a kind expression. It was a feat that he was able to take one up, given his fishy-features and the sharp, pearl-white rows of teeth he packed underneath his slimy and chunky lips.</p><p>"It seems like our enemy is a M-O-N-S-T-E-R, I've never seen someone being able to make this many clones that retain this much of their master's power. As a clone user myself, I am impressed…" the sole kunoichi amongst the Kirigakure trio noted at Dark Naruto.</p><p>"What are you thinking, Guna?" Toro turned to his more focused on strategy and clever and precise plays teammate.</p><p>"I'm thinking that the enemy is now on C-O-O-L. Now is the time to S-M-A-S-H through!" she put her hands together in what would have been a hand seal position but her hands smashed together as if they were made of slime of some sort and splattered all over the floor in front of her, forming a puddle of goop of considerable size which began bubbling and rustling almost immediately after forming.</p><p>"Not a bad idea, I'm a bit of what you'd call a smashing enthusiast myself…" Mouza smirked with the right side of his mouth while playfully flipping his gigantic ax off his shoulders. With a forward charge, without even swinging his weapon, just placing it in front, the robust young lad busted through the huffing wall of Dark Naruto clones and looked back at his teammates, wondering if any of them saw his mad charge and thought it was as cool as he perceived it, with an almost bloodthirsty expression of excitement.</p><p>"A dopey brute, more like it!" Toro mocked his teammate while the long-reaching spikes of coral returned to a spongy form and retreated within his lantern. The slender fishman then lifted his lantern up like a lance and thrust it forward, all of the steel-hard coral substance formed on one side of his lantern-like a lance, reaching almost to the very end of the corridor he was fighting in, more than capable enough to pierce through any enemy too slow to get out of its way.</p><p>Guna's clones engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Dark Naruto clones, the enemy appeared to struggle against the unique taijutsu style of someone made entirely out of goop that smelled like fish-grease and felt like a chunk of it to hit too. Despite the struggle, the clones appeared to overpower Guna's goop clones by slashing them open with kunai blades but the only victory they've scored was a shallow one for the goop detonated all over their bodies, entrapping them to the doors of the wards and offices located nearby, the ceiling and the up on the walls.</p><p>"The path is clear…" Guna looked back at her teammates.</p><p>"None of you sound like Naruto…" a weak voice that neither of the Kirigakure trio was familiar with looked back. It was that surprise that forced them to take this threat seriously but only until they got a better look at the condition of the kunoichi that approached them. The poor blonde was busted up from head to toe and her face was best off sunken underneath the handfuls of hair that it hid behind, based on the amount of boiling blood that dripped from it.</p><p>"Another hunter?" Mouza tightened the grip on his ax with a rude growl.</p><p>"No, it looks like a soul in need of help." Toro shook his head. "There is a headband around her waist, she's from Konoha."</p><p>"So what if she has her forehead protector? So did the C-L-O-N-E-S…" Guna pointed out.</p><p>"Still, it is unlikely that Konoha ninja would reach out to us. The relationship between our villages hasn't been, how to put it, quaint, these last couple of years… In fact, I do not believe it has been decent ever in recorded history." Toro shrugged.</p><p>"All the more reason for her to be a hunter and attack us, decent folks wouldn't come to us for small-talk!" Mouza hustled forward but then stopped when Kiyomi just stopped and lowered her head in a submissive stance, as if looking for noises to react to.</p><p>"She does seem injured…" Guna nodded to herself. "Hey, why are you here?"</p><p>"Just buying time for my pills to kick in. You guys seemed to be adequate at keeping those clones away while my face heals." Kiyomi grumbled out through the wet clots of blood going up and down her throat that kept making her feel like she was about to throw up at any point.</p><p>"Oh, so that's what this bubbling liquid drooping off of your face is, you've taken food pills and it's healing your face…" Toro nodded to himself, helping better understand the oddness of this sudden arrival helped him with acceptance of this curious Konoha kunoichi it seemed. "Very well, feel free to stick around us. We are Team Seahorse from Kirigakure. My name is Murakari Toro, this strapping young lad is Kaimuri Mouza and our lovely strategist with a penchant for spelling the key words she says out is Koshira Guna."</p><p>"Hey, don't go around deciding things like that!" Mouza grabbed his taller teammate by the long collar of his separating bodysuit and pulled him in closer as if readying him for a punch in the nose.</p><p>"Hmm… Indeed, it is something that the whole T-E-A-M should decide. Still, perhaps keeping the Konoha ninja around while we navigate her home turf could have some uses, after all?" Guna scratched her chin.</p><p>"Don't get any wrong ideas. I'm not too fond of teaming up with Kirigakure ninja either." Kiyomi shook her head, looking quite like a ghoul from a creepy urban legend more than the dignified Yamanaka princess that she was at the moment. "It's just that at the moment I've got no better option, I still fully intend to catching up to my squad and to a teammate of ours that we've left behind in the main street beside the hospital."</p><p>"That won't do!" Mouza shook his head before turning to his teammates. "The only reason we came to this stupid hospital, to begin with, was to cut some corners and travel with fewer hunter bastards hasslin' us. Now you're telling us we're gonna take in a hitchhiker that intends to go back through the main street we've just crossed over in this shortcut?"</p><p>"She is a living M-A-P of Konoha though…" Guna shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest while leaning at her prone to arguments and complaining teammate.</p><p>"Plus, it will only take her minutes for her eyesight to return. Having an extra pair of hands helping us out for a symbiotic relationship between our teams, if you will, might come in handy." Toro argued.</p><p>"Great Ball Rasengan!" the floor burst with an azure glowing sphere driving right into where Mouza just stood, forcing the giant to raise his ax up to block the chakra sphere of greatly diminished power using which the clones attempted to get the drop on the troublesome Kirigakure ninja which they just couldn't seem to be able to dispose of.</p><p>"What is your name, stranger?" Toro turned to Kiyomi while Mouza struggled in a clash with the raging windstorms of the Great Ball Rasengan.</p><p>"Yamanaka Kiyomi," Kiyomi replied.</p><p>"Find a place to be safe in. We'll be with you in a moment." Toro told her with a kind tone.</p><p>"And if your E-Y-E-S start seeing again, feel free to H-E-L-P out!" Guna barked out an order of her own before driving a punch right into her own gut so that she could throw up another pool of her goop from which she'd raise her squadron of goop clones to engage the enemy with.</p><p>It was a highly questionable alliance but… For now, it kept breathing out on top of breathing in and that was all that was important.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0619"><h2>619. Confronting The Darkness At The Top</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Ugh! This is getting annoying! Rotation!" Neji exclaimed in frustration as he allowed a rotating dome of chakra envelop him while all of the Dark Naruto clones attacking him flew off of him as if flung skyward, dispelling almost immediately after the collision with Neji's defensive Byakugan technique.</p><p>Meiko charged in, slashing her Reactor Gauntlets all over the place and leaving just clouds of smoke around her. She had taken the fact that Neji pronounced a shortened version of the name of his jutsu as a sign that he was noticing the chakra strain and beginning to feel troubled by the ceaseless assaults of the clones.</p><p>"I always knew Naruto to be energetic, but this is getting ridiculous!" Tenten complained while pulling on a few steel strings and setting a complicated web of steel wire in the process, all raised up through a handful of puny strings. Both clones that were airborne as well as those that intended to rush at her from below got stuck in the trap and could just grunt in the discomfort of trying to move a muscle through being bound by steel wire fully capable of rending flesh if the contact was crude enough.</p><p>"I am sorry, team, Meiko, I wish I could help you in this predicament but alas, I am held down by my mortal coil!" Rock Lee clenched his fist in front of him with burning passion in his eyes that, if anyone asked Meiko, should have been enough to put him back on his feet through sheer willpower alone, but wasn't.</p><p>"Reactor Breath!" Meiko slammed both of her gauntlets against each other, placing the two storage seals on the center of each glove right by the other so that they could share the combined pool of chakra in creating the fireball. While the storage seals flared with chakra stored inside, which it transformed into Fire Release chakra, Meiko's blowing gave the technique the life it needed to blow a group of clones up while shaking the foundation of the whole building in the process.</p><p>"Are you insane? You'll bring every clone in the building to us!" Neji complained, turning his pulsing Byakugan eyes at every nearby stairway to see if his haunting prediction hadn't come true.</p><p>"I dunno, I think we've made a dent in their numbers…" Meiko clapped the Reactor Gauntlets together, making the storage seals on them cough up puny sparks, trying to emit more searing masses of energy from chakra which simply wasn't there.</p><p>"I wouldn't be so certain…" Neji looked around with a grim expression. "The clones have turned their attention elsewhere, it seems, but who knows to what exactly."</p><p>"Kiyomi…" Meiko mumbled to herself.</p><p>"Might be," Neji nodded, "Or they might be pooling by the exits, knowing that we'll have to leave eventually. Let's just hope that's the case, we can just bust through somewhere else in that case…"</p><p>While Meiko doubted it would be this easy, Neji didn't look like he dismissed such a possibility outright. He must have incorporated the fact that Naruto he knew wasn't all that bright, meaning that a corrupted version of him would be similarly dim. From what Meiko could put her finger on, this Dark Naruto really didn't have too much resting in the belfry storage, talking some mad ramblings about hatred directed at him by everybody, or whatever…</p><p>"We need to pick Kiyomi up. Can you see where she is?" Meiko insisted.</p><p>"Not at the moment, no. There does seem to be a familiar flare of physical chakra down in the ward where the clones ambushed us but I'm not even sure that's Kiyomi. It's like her spiritual side had left this world altogether." Neji examined the lower floors with his ocular jutsu.</p><p>"She must have placed her mind inside one of the clones…" Meiko snapped her fingers. "She's always been clever like that!"</p><p>"If she has put her mind inside one of the clones, then she is no priority. The task of the greatest importance is still to find the pills and get out of here!" Neji declared. "The clones are all pooling toward the first floor, they're homing in on the other team of genin."</p><p>"We should go help them…" Meiko pointed her thoughts out before placing her index on her lower lip and looking up. "Wait… No…"</p><p>"M-Meiko?" Tenten scratched her head.</p><p>"Let her figure it out…" Neji closed his eyes with a solemn face.</p><p>"If you just said that our priority is the pills and evacuation, in that case, we need to go at the opposite direction from the clones, the top floor…" the Reactor Gauntlets on Meiko's hands lit up with bright, azure light which then spiraled around her hips before fading away, leaving the blacksmith's hands bare again. With the newly gained freedom in her hands, Meiko snapped her fingers.</p><p>"We've lost precious time while you were standing here and figuring this out," Neji sighed before opening his eyes and turning toward the nearest ward. "Quick, search for pills. I'll try to rest my eyes a bit, it will be a long night, after all…"</p><p>With an energetic nod, Tenten and Meiko flickered into the room by their right and began searching it for pills. Rock Lee mirrored the lively nod of the girls but then he realized that he was a bit too tied down by his injuries to join them.</p><p>"I… Will then remain here and stand… Sit guard!" he declared without missing a beat or squandering any of the energy he'd have mustered up.</p><p>"Yes, do that…" Neji shrugged without feeling any difference toward what his incapacitated teammate would do while the others search for pills.</p><p>Meiko tore through the storage furniture, pulling the entire drawers out and flipping the beds, despite there being little chance in them containing anything of value, let alone any medical food pills if the drawers contained none. It didn't take long for an entire pack of red medical food pills to find its place by Meiko's side, attached to her belt by her pouch. It wasn't single for too long as blue and yellow pills in varied quantities joined them and before long the grand total of the medical supplies was too much for Meiko to hold in her grasp. It was not a matter of weight she could carry, more so of space she could hold in her possession.</p><p>"I can give you some storage seals, you know." Tenten played with a purple scroll that fit nicely inside her hand, even going as far as to extend it to Meiko. Judging by the scroll-shaped belt around her waist, she sealed off a decent bunch of pills she had found herself.</p><p>"Please, storage seals are my thing," Meiko grinned and dropped the pills onto the nearest unflipped bed before reaching up and unzipping her tracksuit to show a bunch of armor pieces underneath it. "This isn't just normal armor, you know, each piece is stored to the brim with weaponry and ninjutsu of their own."</p><p>"Okay, big shot, how many storage scrolls do you have?" Tenten placed her hands over her hips, feeling challenged and offended even by the implication that this genin from a different universe implied she was better at the thing Tenten focused on.</p><p>"I've got like four medium-sized scrolls sealed inside the liver piece connecting my breastplates to the abdomen plates and two more on the pieces covering my shoulder blades…" Meiko pouted. "It's a trick question, I seal my stuff inside my armor, not into storage scrolls that I seal inside my armor. It's impractical to seal a storage unit inside another storage unit."</p><p>"I know that!" Tenten leaned to the front with incinerating sparks in her eyes.</p><p>"I was just making sure I wasn't dealing with some storage rookie here…" Meiko waved her hand. She then stared for a short while at the massive pile of medicine and turned back to Tenten. "Although… My armor is a bit packed… Do you think you could spare a few scrolls?"</p><p>"Of course, I've got at least eight medium ones and a pair of custom-made storage scrolls I call my "Twin Dragons"! I can spare a few for an initiate such as yourself!" Tenten squinted after turning to Meiko and then letting out a laugh which was as cartoonish and over the top as it was fake.</p><p>"Tell me, were you surprised to see me disperse, frustrated, maybe, you know?" an aggressive grumble stopped Team Guy and Meiko from their little dash across the top floor of the hospital. A Dark Naruto stood confidently with his back by the staircase sealed off with an iron bar door which Meiko knew must have led down to the first floor and the fire exit from the building.</p><p>"Hmph… Nobody was surprised by the fact that a ripoff would be hiding his face behind his clone lackeys, just like the real thing." Neji crossed his arms over his chest.</p><p>"So then…?" Tenten turned to Neji who just nodded.</p><p>"Yes, this one seems to be the real one." He confirmed. "Then again, he isn't as much a person as he is an avatar of gloom and darkness. That's why it was so troublesome to sense anything about those clones of his before."</p><p>"At least you finally admit it. That I'm the real one. The true object of your hatred, you know!" Dark Naruto pushed his back off the wall he was resting it by and began approaching the team with a confident but slow-paced strut.</p><p>"Beware, teammates, this foul Naruto appears to be approaching us with the intent of pummeling us to pulps!" Rock Lee stepped out in front of the rest of the team. He had taken a few red pills and a blue pill not too long ago which was teetering on the edge of what one should have self-medicated themselves with and was, therefore, beginning to regain some of his vitality.</p><p>"I'm so glad we have a taijutsu expert with us to provide these invaluable insights!" Tenten snapped back at her teammate with a kunai knife in hand.</p><p>"Hey, hey… Can you even use that thing?" Meiko smirked at her newly met rival. "Better leave the armed fighting to more experienced ninja."</p><p>Dark Naruto's image flickered, his foot would have dug into Meiko's chest and rocked her to the back of the room, knocking all wind out of her with a single kick had Rock Lee not stepped in and raised a cross-armed block underneath the kick, elevating Naruto's leg and guiding the attacker to lose all balance in his approach.</p><p>"Leaf Gale!" Rock Lee yelled out with what of his regained energy spilled over the top of the figurative glass, sweeping the supporting leg of Dark Naruto with a low kick from behind.</p><p>"Tsk, you little!" Dark Naruto emerged from the hole he had left in the demolished top floor wall leading to a broom closet and weaved the signature hand seal of the Shadow Clone technique. "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" he hissed.</p><p>With a cascade of popping sounds, clones of Dark Naruto began emerging from all around him. Rock Lee bobbed and weaved, dancing around the clones with little to no trouble as he simply outpaced the clones by having so much more taijutsu experience and skill that it had appeared as if he was a time traveler of sorts with knowledge of where the clones would be in the nearest future.</p><p>Truthfully, Rock Lee was not even faster than Dark Naruto but merely more skilled and therefore could plan out and execute his limited movements much closer to perfection. Shadow clones got dispatched left and right as Lee's smacks, slaps, and high kicks ran rampant across the group. Lee looked like he was enjoying his superiority in close quarters a bit too much as he failed to notice the fact that these clones were a mere distraction.</p><p>"Rasengan Barrage!" Dark Naruto yelled out as he emerged from the group, sprouting in between two clones that were all too happy with themselves to deliver a double Rasengan, one in each hand, by crashing them into his opponent.</p><p>Despite managing to catch Lee unaware, the green ball of vitality just rolled aside with possibly the goofiest looking yet best executed evasive roll that Meiko had ever seen, re-establishing his standing position with an upside spinning kick which dispatched at least four more shocked clones while the twin Rasengan faded away in Dark Naruto's hands.</p><p>"I have not had the chance to witness this maneuver of yours previously, Naruto, however, it appears to still depend a great deal on how well you can connect it to your opponent which means it will be of no threat to me as long as I am your superior in hand to hand combat!" Rock Lee declared while entering his defensive Strong Fist stance.</p><p>Meiko hadn't even seen anyone with such perfect execution of the textbook Konohagakure taijutsu. Strong Fist was a practiced and taught fighting style in the Ninja Academy but it was simple, elementary and should not have worked on a battlefield between someone as skilled as Lee and as experienced as Dark Naruto, supposing he had the same level of experience as the Naruto Meiko had met, given how the two wore the same clothes and looked to be almost the same age.</p><p>"Looking down on me, are you?" Dark Naruto growled. Despite having just split his chakra into dozens of pieces and conjuring up a pair of A-Rank ninjutsu, he had no fatigue or shortness of breath in any of his body language, meaning he was either insanely good at faking pretty much infinite stamina or he actually had one. "Yeah… It hurts when someone like you is looking down on me too, you know…"</p><p>"Someone like me?" Rock Lee repeated. "Whatever can you mean, Naruto?"</p><p>"Yeah… People disliked you too, didn't they? They looked down on you because you couldn't mold chakra right, that's right, Bushier-Brow told us during the Chuunin Exams, you know. And yet even you, a reject, is rejecting us… Feels bad, it hurts but… It also feels right, just like something you'd do, you know!" Dark Naruto scratched his abdomen with an infuriated and unstable look in his eyes.</p><p>Something felt wrong about this. He made almost no sense whatsoever, even if what Neji suggested earlier about Dark Naruto being a reflection of Naruto's fears and negative feelings that he had accumulated throughout his life given form, these weren't rational fears or dislikes. He was just rambling, he seemed like he was delirious at best with that nightmarish expression on his twisted face.</p><p>"You are wrong, Dark Naruto, I feel no hatred towards you, on the contrary, I admire you. Yes, we are very similar, while you do not possess a similar physical condition to mine, you also work hard to overcome the obstacles in your life. Ever since meeting you, I was always looking up to you and your example helped me work as hard as I have." Rock Lee still fostered hope of getting to Dark Naruto, even though it might have been impossible.</p><p>"Liar…" Dark Naruto mumbled, "Liar, liar, liar liar…!" he roared out, streams of crimson began bursting forth from his body, just like before with the Naruto from Team Hokage.</p><p>"Quick, Lee, don't let him transform!" Meiko stepped up, placing her hands by her hips to arm herself with Reactor Gauntlets out of sheer instinct, despite feeling that if Naruto did cloak himself with that boiling coat of madness and unbridled rage, she'd need something far stronger if she hoped to even survive that clash.</p><p>"Leaf Whirlwind!" Rock Lee proclaimed while charging at Naruto with a flying kick. Dark Naruto roared out, sending a shockwave that bent and sent ripples throughout the entire building just by hosting the raging Jinchuuriki inside of it. The blast deflected Rock Lee's physical attack and sent the taijutsu user flying back into the same broom closet that Dark Naruto found himself in recently but had him making a larger hole since he didn't enter the exact same way in as his predecessor.</p><p>Meiko, Neji, and Tenten clutched for the ground while the resonating shockwave forced them on the defensive and had them sliding back. Similar boiling jets of smoke that turned crimson before long and then began transitioning into a partial transformation of bodily features which included red irises, primal and bestial, extended pupils and elongated canines as well as a shift in fighting stance amongst the clones.</p><p>"Only it understands, only it doesn't hate me, you know!" Dark Naruto cried out. "The other me would use that stupid Sage power, borrow strength from the world that hates and rejects us! Why!? Why would he do that, you know!?"</p><p>"Something's wrong…" Meiko shook her head after the intense pressure resonating from Dark Naruto let up a bit. Silence before the turbulent storm. "He's completely mad. He's not just a darker version of Naruto at all!"</p><p>"Maybe he is?" Tenten turned to Meiko. "Maybe he just misses his host? Maybe Seventh Naruto didn't think things through by pulling it out of the real Naruto like that?"</p><p>"Then we're shit out of luck…" Meiko grunted. "We have no idea where the real Naruto is and if he's even okay…"</p><p>"That is not quite true…" Neji smirked. "Not only is he okay, he won his fight. The three Snow Country jokers got themselves knocked out but that Akatsuki ninja is nowhere to be seen. It is more likely Naruto repelled him. Not only that, he's coming here… Not too fast, beating around the bush like he's lost but… He will get here soon enough."</p><p>"Hear that!?" Tenten taunted Dark Naruto. "You're already outnumbered, soon enough you'll have no chance to win at all!"</p><p>"Heh…" Dark Naruto cracked a grin. "Friendship… Team bonds… Other me keeps rambling about that bullshit as if it matters, as if it's true, you know! You're right, you do outnumber me and even with it by my side, I might not have what it takes. He has it working with him too, after all… Although, it's ironic, isn't it? That I would also call for a little bit of cooperation, make an alliance of my own. But this is how intense my hatred is for you, those that hate me, you know…"</p><p>Dark Naruto bit his thumb and weaved a collection of hand seals before driving his hand onto the floor. The entire Konohagakure Hospital shook from its foundation and a deafening rumble signaled the complete demise of the roof over everybody's head as a colossal, rusty red toad with black eyes of red irises, matching those of his summoner, surrounded by at least half a dozen of smaller toads of different sizes and colors with matching eyes.</p><p>The arrival of the Dark Toads quite literally tore the roof down!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0620"><h2>620. One, Big, International Reunion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Oh my god, that giant toad has a sasumata! And that one has two katanas just hanging on its back!" Meiko cheered like a little girl, admiring the summoned amphibians that dwarfed entire buildings and stuck out like a sore thumb from the Konoha panorama around them. There was to be no doubt in mind that these three just with their sheer presence would call for every hunter with a functional pair of eyes to come over for some action, where before the roof of the hospital provided the genin with some precious solitude and downtime to settle their matters.</p><p>"You knew he could do that?" Meiko turned to Neji and Tenten.</p><p>"No. This is new to us…" Neji shook his head and bit his lip in frustration. "These are ninja toads, the summon of choice of Jiraiya of the Legendary Sannin and the Fourth Hokage. How on earth could a loser like Naruto sign up with them?"</p><p>"So he never mentioned this to you guys either?" Tenten wondered, looking at the two current teammates of Naruto.</p><p>"He never did it during our team training…" Meiko admitted.</p><p>"I loathe to call out for your power, you never viewed me as anything more than your underling too, you know." Naruto looked down at Gamabunta atop of whose head he stared down at his enemies from.</p><p>"Is that any way to talk to your boss, punk?" the central, dusty red colored toad grabbed the handle of its dosu blade and let the beginning of its blade enjoy a glimmer of setting sun reflecting off of it with a red shine. "I let you stand atop of my head without gobbling you up already, like hell will I fight for a disrespectful little zit without even a sprout of a milky mustache!"</p><p>"I'm afraid I will also be unable to assist you, Naruto-kun," the magenta-colored toad with a shield and sasumata declared. "These enemies seem formidable and I am too clumsy! My ungracefulness will lead to the downfall of the entire village if I fight!"</p><p>"What the…!?" Dark Naruto freaked out over two of his Dark Toads refusing to fight outright. He turned for the third toad with the paired katanas who, as of yet, had not uttered a word. "What about you? Are you gonna be a useless deadweight too, you know!?"</p><p>The colossal, aquamarine toad stared at a blank point in space with a bemused and apathetic, even a bit silly expression. Unlike his quite sentient comrades who felt a sense of great pride in their social skills and ability to speak like humans, Gamahiro just acted and stared like an actual toad would if let out of a box to roam about free.</p><p>"I think those toads didn't work out for Evil Naruto…" Meiko tapped her finger at the side of her head, rolling a strand of her red hair around it. "Too bad, they looked kinda cool!"</p><p>"I guess now we see why Naruto never uses those guys…" Neji shrugged. Still, even if Gamabunta refused to fight outright due to the disrespect Dark Naruto showed him, Gamaken won't fight because of some odd inferiority complex he had about his skills and Gamahiro would continue to stare at one point in place like an imbecile and not respond to outside stimuli, engaging Dark Naruto from up there would be tremendously difficult.</p><p>"I see!" Rock Lee threw a hammer fist at his extended palm. "Just like this Negative Naruto possesses his worst qualities, namely, his insecurities about the way he is perceived by the others, so do the Negative Toads!"</p><p>"So those toads possess all of the worst qualities of their original selves, just like Dark Naruto embodies his angst about the hatred he received from the other villagers for being such an insufferable twit?" Neji humored his teammate with an affirmative stare. Lee always had a way of reading his own heart because that was the way in which one best improved themselves. Improvement was key for Team Guy and Lee might have been the very best at reading both his physical and mental states which helped a great deal with relating to people that had similar insecurities or flaws as he did.</p><p>"An insufferable twit!?" Dark Naruto yelled out after turning at Neji. "Is that what you think I'm mad about, you know!? No, that's not why everybody hates me, it's because they're all afraid of me, you know! They're afraid of us! Sure, the Nine-Tails has caused a great deal of harm but it's not like they've ever given either of us a chance, is it, you know!?"</p><p>"The Nine Tails?" Neji took a step back.</p><p>"It makes sense that this Dark Naruto can manifest Nine-Tails' power just like Naruto…" Meiko grabbed to her Reactor Gauntlets tighter.</p><p>"Come on now, you would be a fool to attack me with those pathetic pieces of junk, you know!" Dark Naruto teased Meiko. He was luring her in to attack, maybe he was counting on Gamabunta not taking a fight erupting atop of his head lightly and engaging the Konoha genin but Meiko didn't quite care either way. An azure ripple spread across the battlefield from her boots, the chakra flares that formed the jets which let her soar through the air lit up but then died out.</p><p>A shockwave boomed through the battlefield, further damaging the edges of the hospital building where the emerging Dark Toads had demolished the rooftop, Dark Naruto flew away spinning and slammed into a nearby building with enough force to total it with explosive effects. Despite him just bashing into it at high speed, the pent up force was sufficient to make it appear as if the building was brought down by a violent explosion.</p><p>"There are no fools amongst the people I care about!" Naruto, the real Naruto Meiko knew, declared while pointing his thumb at himself with the arm he had just used to deliver a Rasengan at the side of his unaware self. Naruto looked damaged by the battle he had just gone through, his clothes were torn up and he had dried up blood all over his forehead. His headband was missing outright but his eyes were the good old ones, ones full of life, hope, and exuberance.</p><p>"You're back!" Meiko gave her teammate a thumb up. "Good, that will save us the time to go pick you up."</p><p>"I'm surprised to see you back to normal, back when we left you, you seemed feral." Neji addressed Naruto, now knowing the exact reason for his booming, crimson power of boiling rage earlier.</p><p>"Yeah, I was in a real pinch back there…" Naruto stroke his head with an ecstatic grin on his face. "Luckily, my mom showed up to me in a dream, just before things got real bad, just like my pops did back when I fought Pain, and she helped me get things back on the control. Meeting her got me all fired up, feel like I can take on the world now, you know!"</p><p>"Get off my head, you little runt!" Dark Gamabunta yelled out and began thrashing about. The rampaging gigantic dosu blade and the resulting debris caught Meiko and Neji unaware, luckily enough, it seemed like Tenten had been preparing for the giant battle all along for she pulled on some steel wire and set off an entire net of it which prevented the falling debris from crushing the ninja inside.</p><p>"Hey, calm down, you know!" Naruto shook on his feet, doing his best to maintain control over the rampaging Dark Gamabunta. He realized that the only way to do that would have been to take off of his head. Naruto did just that and landed on the shakier but intact parts of the hospital roof but it didn't appear as if though Gamabunta was going to let this fly. He kept on rampaging and slashed right at Naruto with the dosu blade coming dangerously close to smashing him to a stain.</p><p>Something that came to a great surprise to the entire group was when Naruto raised his hands up and stopped the blade. Once the burning force within Naruto allowed him to push the blade up and begin to overpower Dark Gamabunta slowly, the orange markings around his eyes became apparent and the more perceptive might have even laid eyes onto his changed, toad-like irises.</p><p>"Damn, forced me to spend a clone this early, huh?" Naruto chuckled to himself while kicking at the dosu blade and forcing it to slam right back at Dark Gamabunta's face. The dull side of his blade forced the giant toad to stumble back stunned. When the Dark Gamabunta had recovered, the glorious sight that his eyes would have feasted on, had it been of any favor to him, was Naruto with a gigantic Rasengan sphere raised over his head.</p><p>"Super-Giant Rasengan!" Naruto chanted out before taking off and driving the sphere into Gamabunta. The impact had forced the already massive Rasengan to expand in size to where it enveloped the entire epic-sized toad and completely overwhelmed it, sending it in a horizontal pathway through multiple buildings. The exact location of its final resting position remained unclear for the toad chose to return back to wherever Dark Naruto had called it from instead of continuing this hopeless battle.</p><p>With a grumpy look, Naruto turned to Gamaken and Gamahiro.</p><p>"I am too clumsy to be of any use or a hindrance to the enemy. This is not a battle where I can be useful, I am afraid!" Gamaken bowed his head and disappeared in a giant cloud of smoke just like Gamabunta did without any need for violence on his part.</p><p>Gamahiro showed the first signs of life when he turned his head to see the fact that his comrades had all returned home. Without telegraphing the fact that he acknowledged that fact in any way, the toad just dispersed into a burst of brown clouds of smoke and just like that there was nothing but a devastated district of Konoha and the genin left standing to smell the ashes.</p><p>Tenten pulled her net of steel wire back and let the total weight of the rubble atop of it to fall down in a controlled manner, away from Team Guy. Meiko and Team Guy could then reconnect with Naruto at long last. Meiko bumped fists with Naruto who just rubbed his itchy nose and chuckled. His face had no more signs of the orange markings and toad-like irises nor was he any longer booming with the odd, golden and orange shimmers of mysterious, natural aura.</p><p>"What was that!?" Meiko wondered. This transformation that Naruto had undergone looked like nothing that she had seen before, the curious abilities of the ninja monks in the Fire Temple perhaps being the closest comparison.</p><p>"Oh, I'd appreciate if you never told anyone I had used that, you know. The last time I used Sage Mode in the Chuunin Exams I got disqualified over some stupid old regulation, you know…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.</p><p>Tenten gawked at the vastly grown version of the bratty and inexperienced Naruto she knew. When witnessing that hilarious expression, one would have been taken aback by the question if Tenten was so shocked by the strength that Naruto had managed to acquire while still remaining truthful to the familiar and boisterous self that he was, or that he somehow still managed to stay at his measly old rank of genin while surpassing many of the most amazing ninja in the world with such power.</p><p>"That was… Sage Mode?" Meiko wondered. "It seems like something that would be really useful but if it's forbidden…"</p><p>"Hmph… So your fate is in our hands, huh?" Neji smirked, when Naruto turned at him with a blank expression, however, Neji opened his eyes and after just a moment of the two sharing their glares Naruto realized that his old rival was just kidding and that he had no intention of selling Naruto out, even if the two had ever ended up facing one another in the Exams.</p><p>"That was most impressive, Naruto-kun!" Rock Lee cheered out, throwing a jab of his left fist into the sky as well, just in case he didn't seem loud and quirky enough.</p><p>"Well, and here we hoped we wouldn't be able to find you guys…" a familiar voice made the entire crew turn for the nearest corner of the hospital building while a flash of blond hair soothed the rising tension that another battle was inbound.</p><p>While Kiyomi was accompanied by a trio of unfamiliar faces, the fact that it was Kiyomi whom they were accompanying sort of lowered the red flags back down all the way since it was the Yamanaka who was the least trustful out of their entire makeshift crew, meaning that if there was any reason at all not to trust them, Kiyomi would have gone with it over any other sort of judgment.</p><p>"You can see!?" Meiko exclaimed with a joyful shock that soon left her chest as a relief. "You not only survived in there but also found the pills, jeez you're amazing!"</p><p>"Well, those three kind of helped… These guys are Team Seahorse of Kirigakure. The tough guy is Mouza, the weird guy is Toro, the girl is Guna." Kiyomi described her temporary companion in a rather vague and somewhat basic manner.</p><p>"Heh, she called you weird! The blonde's starting to grow on me…" Mouza smirked while firing flares from his eyes at his more alien-like in appearance teammate who spread out his long and thin fingers, moving his palms to the outside in a defusing manner.</p><p>"I'd like to think I'm a little bit more than just the girl, I'm F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S too!" Guna crossed her arms over her chest and turned her face with pouted lips.</p><p>"So these guys are the other ninja I've scouted with my Byakugan…" Neji mumbled to himself.</p><p>While Team Guy and Team Seahorse engaged in some small-talk to get a better sense of each other, Kiyomi ran up to Meiko and wrapped her arms around her teammate, jumping at her embrace as well, that was one of the advantages of having a teammate and a crush who was fully capable of fist-fighting the worst brawlers the world had to over while completely submerged in the molten minerals of the Earth's mantle.</p><p>"Yeah, I can see, and your goofy face is the only sight I've missed in the time I was blind!" Kiyomi rubbed her face at Meiko's own cheek who looked mostly confused by the whole thing and, after her cup began spilling the boiling water over the edge, pulled the Yamanaka off of her like wet cloth and placed her on the ground.</p><p>Kiyomi had noticed the awkward stares from Team Guy and the complete bafflement of Team Seahorse. Toru poked his long fingers against one another and they spread a weird squishy sound whenever they touched and bent so easily that it seemed they'd twist and curl right around one another but they never did. All that anatomical strangeness did nothing to distract from Kiyomi's affectionate behavior though…</p><p>That was when Kiyomi froze in shock, a chill surpassing that of a freezing morning shower passed her body up and down, unsatisfied by just completing its journey once or twice, no, again and again it went. After Naruto's arms wrapped around her waist and pressed her in closer to his own chest. She felt his cheek rubbing against hers, despite being caught completely unaware by this, she felt every tiniest detail, like the stench and stickiness of the dried out blood on his face from his brutal brawl with the Snow Country ninja trio and Deidara from before.</p><p>"I missed you too, teammate, you know!" he exclaimed. Kiyomi was about to drive a backward elbow strike into the center of his face, hoping for the best outcome of it ending up smashed like a watermelon hit by a hammer, but then she realized what had happened due to Naruto's actions – everybody backed off of her weird expression of affection towards people she hadn't seen for maybe an hour or two tops.</p><p>From now on, that was just the way in which Team Hokage expressed their affectionate bonds toward one another, at least Kiyomi didn't come off of as too weird that way, just a part of the weird whole. Whether Naruto did that on purpose or if he just misread the social cues, the outcome turned out just fine in the end.</p><p>"Most curious…" Toru looked around the devastated Konoha Hospital yard and the building that looked as if though it would fall apart at any time now.</p><p>"Never took you for a buildings geek but it wouldn't surprise me one bit…" Mouza grumbled, never skipping an opportunity to poke fun at his punier teammate.</p><p>"While the architecture is… Quaint… That is not what's so baffling, Mouza. Look around, smell the ashes and the dust, listen to the rumbles of the still settling battlefield. Missing anything?" Toru tried communicating with his bully of a teammate, fully used to the way Mouza carried himself by now.</p><p>"What, trying a new deodorant to mask your fishy smell? Yeah, I've noticed it but as a Kirigakure native, it never bothered me anyway, so…" Mouza shrugged.</p><p>"There are no hunters around…" Guna spoke up so loud that it silenced whatever small-talk the other teams were engaged in as well.</p><p>"Indeed, not a soul in my range…" Neji looked around with an active Byakugan. "Strange indeed."</p><p>"Nothing strange about that…" Naruto rubbed his nose that got itchy whenever he boasted and felt a bit embarrassed about that fact, "After this much damage, who in this world would ever want to challenge all of us, you know?"</p><p>"Let us hope that Naruto is right…" Toru nodded while scratching his chin.</p><p>"Are you sure you're not from Kirigakure?" Mouza raised an eyebrow while nudging Naruto with his elbow. Despite the large size and build of the young man, Naruto didn't appear to be too bothered by the elbow poke.</p><p>"No, why would you say that, you know?" Naruto rested his head in his hands behind and over his shoulders.</p><p>"Oh, no reason, Mr. Whirly Fishcake…" Mouza shrugged. "Man, it's so weird staring at your face when I've been punching nothing but your face for the last hour… No offense, you know…"</p><p>"Hmmm… I wonder where the other me went. I'm sure he shouldn't have been taken out by just one Rasengan, you know…" Naruto wondered.</p><p>"Maybe he was, remember that while he may have been a darker version of you, filled with hatred, but he was also nowhere nearly as empowered by the chakra inherent in this universe as you were. You two might have been equals back in your universe, or so he implied, but right now, you two were anything but…" Neji suggested.</p><p>"I guess…" Naruto looked up into the sky, only halfway satisfied by such an answer.</p><hr/><p>A sound reminiscent of a concentrated lightning current followed a blade coated entirely with golden lightning aura as it left the chest of a gothic Lolita kunoichi it had impaled through the chest and sent down. The light blue hair that hunter Saya carried tied around in pair ponytails laid spread wildly underneath the lifeless body of the puppeteer kunoichi. Due to the intense heat of the blade that Aoi Rokusho had impaled her on, the blood was slow to pool underneath her body so the loose, light-blue hair did not turn sticky with it immediately after the kunoichi's demise.</p><p>Beside her laid a cut in half body of Saya's teammate – Sana. Her previously sadistic and smug face was now twisted in an expression of horror as the young lady had passed not too long after realizing she was cut in half by the thunderous sword Aoi Rokushi wielded. Outpaced and outmatched by the ungodly speed of the rogue swordsman.</p><p>"W-We're both hunters…" Mamushi, a fellow teammate of Team Saya laid on his knees and twitched with his entire body, a condition caused by the painful spasms of losing half of his right hand to a careless swing of Aoi's Sword of the Thunder God.</p><p>"True, what a curious circumstance, don't you think? There is a team of you three out there taking part in this exam but there is also a team of hunters comprised of you three… How do I even tell you guys apart, right?" Aoi smirked and finished off Mamushi.</p><p>A gaunt ethereal shape emerged from the back of the rogue swordsman, floating behind him as a ghost and causing visible irritation and excruciating pain to the swordsman.</p><p>"Are these all the hunters that went for the hospital?" the floating ethereal spirit asked.</p><p>"Yes, that Ao guy and these three, a lot of them must have already moved on to the outer ring of the village, closer to the walls." Aoi forced out a reply through the pain.</p><p>"In that case, find the hunter that Naruto was fighting." The mysterious spirit ordered Aoi and then moved back inside Aoi's body, granting a limited amount of control over his body back to the rogue swordsman.</p><p>"Of course… What's so amazing about that guy anyway? No way he's strong enough as the two of us together…" Aoi breathed heavily while moving large chunks of rubble around, looking for a body. "I don't really get why it would be useful to kill him when he's…"</p><p>Aoi froze upon setting his eyes on an injured version of Naruto emerging from the rubble. Despite the Dark Naruto not posing any sort of clear physical threat to him, and looking quite confused by the fact that another hunter sought him out, Aoi was shaking like he had just seen the devil himself entertaining himself with his fanciest jig.</p><p>"What's wrong with you, hey, you know?" Dark Naruto turned his head.</p><p>"N-No… Isshin-sama… L-Look… His body isn't going to work, he's all bruised up and beaten…" Aoi chuckled in panic fear. "Also, he doesn't have a Kama, you see… It won't work at all!"</p><p>A blood-curdling scream of a man who no longer seemed to care how undignified his scream sounded got shut-out by a similarly macabre halt of his voice. It was as if the scream got stuck somewhere down in his neck which was then promptly snapped from within, forcing the pent up air to escape through the blood-spouting hole where his spine was sticking out…</p>
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<a name="section0621"><h2>621. Of A Scorpion That Ended An Alliance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I thought that moving in a large group would have granted us an advantage, but this sucks!" Mouza complained while evading a burst of kunai knives that served as shrapnel firing from an exploding puppetry part. All that he managed to achieve was fall victim to the elongated tail which wrapped around his waist and slammed him into the ground.</p><p>Perhaps the crooked man in the dark coat decorated with red clouds, which by now most genin trapped inside this ghost city version of Konoha have learned to attribute to the Akatsuki organization, would have utilized his deadly metallic appendage better had he not been taking on nine genin at once.</p><p>"It was foolish to attack all of us by yourself!" Neji taunted the slumped, swamp-colored man hidden underneath the cover of his black coat while rushing at him. The Hyuuga prodigy threw a flurry of his two-finger thrusting strikes, aiming them at where one's chakra nodes would have been. The slumped blob of rotten flesh shrugged off Neji's strikes and began striking the ground around him with his tail in a downfall of skewering stabs resembling how a scorpion stuck its tail to its prey.</p><p>"Something with Neji's stance is off…" Rock Lee noted.</p><p>"Yeah, that something might have saved his life," Tenten replied, noting how it was because Neji keeping his back foot ready for evasive action and not devoting to his offense too much might have allowed him to move around the hunter's strikes.</p><p>"What's the matter?" Kiyomi wondered when Neji slid beyond the immediate reach of the Akatsuki hunter's tail. This man was formidable, even when facing nine whole opponents the genin had failed to as much as damage his straw hat so far.</p><p>"Something is wrong with his chakra nodes. They're… Very dim, not to mention in the wrong places. I can't get a clean hit on them, there's something inside that man that's serving as a smokescreen to his chakra nodes…" Neji grit his teeth in frustration.</p><p>"You're wrong…" the Akatsuki hunter grumbled with a husky and rather unpleasant voice. "It is because there are nine of you that any of you have survived this long against me…"</p><p>"That's it, I'm popping another clone, you know!" Naruto declared and pressed his hands in the clone hand seal position. He was referring to the shadow clones he had created and left in the location of his clash against Deidara and the Snow Ninja. A trio, now a duo, perhaps, that stayed dormant and focused on building up Natural Chakra for his Sage Mode.</p><p>"Save them. This guy is nothing either one of us couldn't beat." Kiyomi denied him. Despite looking displeased with being shut down, Naruto lowered his hands.</p><p>"Oh? You're saying you're holding back?" the Akatsuki hunchback wondered.</p><p>"If we make too much noise, we'll attract more hunters…" Kiyomi replied. "You should have paid closer attention to what your captors told you – you hunters haven't been juiced up to snuff, you're not on our level."</p><p>"All this waiting and talking…" the cloaked lump of swampy flesh croaked. "It's making me impatient!"</p><p>Kiyomi bounced back, avoiding the extendable iron tail that rushed in on her position from underground. It would have been difficult to catch her unaware with a trick she herself employed on more than one occasion. Still, the tail forced her to mid-air and away from the ground, which was one half of her ninjutsu prowess, in mid-air Kiyomi couldn't rely on her Earth Release and then tail easily corrected its trajectory, taking a deceitful stab downward after reaching its maximum altitude and bending downward.</p><p>A flock of sparks left from the tip of the tail. It tasted Meiko's fine-molded steel which her buckler was made of as it slammed against the tip and sent it arrowing at the other direction, at the direction of its original user, in fact. The tail's tip tore through the black cloak and slammed into the side of the crooked man. All nine genin looked confused by the dull thud that the body of the enemy let out once his own powerful tail drove into it.</p><p>"I thought so when I hit him," Neji closed his eyes and nodded. "It felt like his skin was made of some sort of armor, armor that not even his own steel can penetrate if it's flying at a grazing trajectory."</p><p>"You've no idea what I am, trash…" the Akatsuki member replied, raising his arm from outside the tear in his armor and revealing it to be armed with a gauntlet, likely one similar to the weapon he used against Mouza, the one that exploded into pieces of shrapnel.</p><p>"You're one of the pair that captured Gaara!" Naruto grit his teeth and clenched his fists.</p><p>"On the contrary, I believe I have a perfect idea…" Neji smirked. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Naruto, but this thing we are facing is in fact just a puppet, hiding the true puppeteer inside."</p><p>"That's right, I didn't see him die so I don't know all of his abilities but I seem to recall moving in to him in close distance being a bad idea, you know," Naruto nodded.</p><p>"Indeed, it's very lucky that I attacked cautiously before. If he indeed is a puppeteer, then poison is also on the table. I'd reckon someone on the Akatsuki would use an extremely deadly strain of it too!" Neji took a fighting stance. "One of our powerhouses needs to smash this outer shell, that is when I will attack the man inside."</p><p>"Smashing is a big no-no," Kiyomi disagreed. "It will make too much noise."</p><p>"Yeah, who died and made you the boss!?" Mouza picked himself off the dirt and dusted off his jacket.</p><p>"You're just arguing for the sake of arguing, Mouza…" Toro looked at his teammate with disappointment. "Neji's plan is solid."</p><p>"No way!" Naruto swiped his hand and then clenched his other one into a fist. "This bastard is one of the pair that captured Gaara, I'm taking him on seriously!"</p><p>"Stand down, Naruto, while your Rasengan has ample destructive power to destroy his outer shell, it requires a close distance for you to use it. You will get knicked by his tail for sure!" Neji opposed Naruto's idea of taking center stage in this clash.</p><p>"Seriously, we just lost the attention of four hunters, are we this desperate to get it back?" Kiyomi slapped her face in frustration. Moving in a group of nine seemed like a good idea at the time but it was quickly spiraling out of control, not to mention the natural encumbrances of traveling in such a large group. Back when it was just three of them, they could have maneuvered around tight corners and alleyways, move nice and slow but also subtly. There was no subtlety with a squad of this size.</p><p>Naruto weaved a clone jutsu hand seal, creating a handful of shadow clones, clenched his hand, then raised it over his head and opened his palm. Orange markings appeared over his face, just under Naruto's eyes. Naruto's pupils took a changed shape of a minus. A pair of clones began molding chakra in the open palm over Naruto's head.</p><p>"It doesn't matter if you use your massive Rasengan again, I can't believe in those years you haven't learned that sometimes it's not about the size or power!" Neji objected to Naruto's usage of his Sage Mode. Kiyomi wasn't a big fan either, as, if her experience with Naruto's Sage Mode tipped her in the right direction, this jutsu was just certain to make a massive blast.</p><p>"Useless and slow!" the Akatsuki hunter taunted Naruto and threw his tail in a lightning-quick jab right at the unpredictable orange ninja. A fleshy slash suggested that the scorpion-like hunter was successful in scratching Naruto with his tail but an elementary visual inspection made it apparent that it was, in fact, a spare pair of Naruto clones that stepped in to catch the tail in their hands.</p><p>"Wind Release: Rasenshuriken!" Naruto growled while slinging the whirling, windmill shuriken-shaped Rasengan at his opponent. Just in time too, as the clones that had caught the tail in front of him had dispersed from the combo of minor damage and the poison they took in.</p><p>"He threw it!?" Neji leaned forward in disbelief.</p><p>"As I've said, useless…" the Akatsuki hunter proclaimed with his despicable voice as his tail raced with the shuriken to assist its master, retracting just in time for the tip to bend and push the puppet armor off the ground, just an inch or two over the spinning demise that flew his way.</p><p>Sage Naruto clenched his fist again. The Rasenshuriken detonated in mid-flight, enveloping the enigmatic Akatsuki puppetmaster in its massive blast range. A howling white sphere of destruction, comprised of microscopic needles of Wind Release chakra hurling up in a relentless storm of white gales. Every single needle, as small as a pin that could penetrate a single cell, carried inside of it the power of a raging storm all by themselves and all that power let loose upon the fragile wind pin breaking. Just like the Rasengan unleashed the typhoon it packed within upon detonation.</p><p>An attractive young man of messy, red hair rose from the smoke and examined the radius of destruction around him. His favorite puppet – Hiruko laid by his feet together with multiple blocks that were demolished by the blast while the genin were nowhere in his sight. Being outplayed and proven so wrong by measly prey… It shouldn't have been within his character to enjoy something of this nature but this made a smirk color the face of Sasori of the Red Sand.</p><p>A young woman of a fair face and wild, black hair that floated over her head as if she was submerged underwater landed beside Sasori. The eyes of this woman raced across the battlefield but she was not examining it, she just seemed uneasy in her own body, almost as if something else was borrowing it…</p><p>"My, my… A member of the Akatsuki, huh? I thought you folk were sturdier than letting a handful of kids outsmart you…" the young woman teased Sasori. To show off how little his patience was for such talk, a puppet of dark skin, black eyes, and spiky, dark hair emerged from the wreckage and crossed its swords by the throat of the young woman. Without saying so, Sasori gave this annoying gnat a few seconds to mumble one reason to keep her alive.</p><p>"Ki-Ki-Ki! Come now, what use it would be to kill this young lady when she's not even in charge of her own body?" a twisted bird-like creature comprised of a body with facial features and wings behind it, as well as ape-like limbs on the side, all covered in black feathers landed beside Sasori on the other side.</p><p>"That isn't entirely true…" Senju Ari admitted, glancing at the crossed blades about to open up her throat. "The Zero Tails might have inhabited my body but our bond is a symbiotic one. It likes to sometimes stay down and feast on the darker contents of my soul while I use all of our combined power…"</p><p>"I have no time to converse with walking, talking cartoons. I'm not one for standing around doing nothing, you see…" Sasori closed his eyes and had the Third Kazekage puppet collapse lifeless by Senju Ari's side while the real Sasori raised a scroll he pulled out from under his coat and sealed the puppet he had hoped to use in the upcoming clash with the Nine-Tails' Jinchuuriki. "Although this Zero Tails talk is amusing. I must admit I'm a bit confused if I should kill you, or not…"</p><p>"Oh, Sasori-san! You don't change, all fancy talk and stout façade!" a white, fungal man emerged from the ground while his duplicates sprouted from all around. A colorful brigade of rogues, misfits, and Yokai, all attracted to one, massive explosion that took their attention.</p><p>"Zetsu… Good, maybe you can clarify it for me, is a "Zero Tails" on the record for the beasts we must capture?" Sasori looked at a familiar face. Despite his bemused and unchanging expression, he truly was glad to see this creepy dweeb show his face.</p><p>"Hmmm… Nope, it's absolutely worthless for us. Lucky for you, since you're not supposed to be killing genin on purpose. Didn't they even neuter your poison?" White Zetsu used his unnatural, moldy body to wrap himself around Sasori though not as a constrictor that puts a squeeze on its prey, rather like a friend that reaches out over his friend's shoulder with their hand, except this time Zetsu used his entire body for such friendly hand.</p><p>"You're lucky I am loyal to Akatsuki, if you told this to someone more unhinged, like Kakuzu, he'd murder you for sure…" Sasori closed his eyes and pocketed his scroll.</p><p>"Wait up, Sasori-san!" an entire platoon of White Zetsu yelled out and ran after their fellow Akatsuki member.</p><hr/><p>"Did we slip away?" Rock Lee wondered, pressing his back to the wall, looking too distressed to peek through the corner of the gate that all three teams crossed to enter into the small district they made their way into.</p><p>"It seems so…" Guna said after letting a goopy clone of her flap about and observe the coast around them and then dissolve. "I'd be surprised if we weren't. That was one hell of a distraction!"</p><p>"You did the right thing, Naruto." Kiyomi turned to Naruto who sat on his butt with both of his arms crossed over his chest and pouted with a childish look that stared at one point in space at all times.</p><p>"As expected, it did not take long for hunters to swarm the place…" Neji stared at the district they just left. "We were lucky not to attract any on our way here, however, that much is great."</p><p>"Ugh…" Tenten stared at the wooden buildings around her. "Not this place… Like… I love me some Hot Springs, don't get me wrong, but this is the absolute worst time for a bath."</p><p>"Wonder if they have some spare kimonos there…" Kiyomi pressed her index finger to the tip of her lips. When confronted by raised eyebrows all around her she smiled and shrugged. "I'm asking for Meiko, not for myself!"</p><p>"That's… Actually worse…" Toro scratched his temple with a polite attempt to keep a smile on his face despite feeling some unease after this jest.</p><p>"Hmmm… This might not be the worst outcome for us. If we pass the Hot Springs and leave on the other side, the main street will lead us to the Inuzuka District. From there – the Aburame District." Neji pointed out.</p><p>"You intend on leaving through the western checkpoint and then traverse through the forest? That's a fairly long path…" Kiyomi pointed out, catching on to Neji's rather brilliant strategy.</p><p>"Maybe, but I consider forest a superior ground to move through under these conditions, plus, I don't think that any hunters would bother laying traps all around the wall as most genin rushed straight to the southern exit – the straightest path to the Forest of Death." Neji closed his eyes as he pondered on his own plan for a second, trying to find any obvious flaws in it as it was a rather recent stratagem, one he made up once prompted by the location he found himself in.</p><p>"Hmmm… Moving to the southern checkpoint from the western one will be quite tedious, you know…" Naruto scratched his cheek with a face similar to the one he had when he ate some bad fishcakes. Due to poor hygiene and food habits, it was a face Kiyomi and Meiko had gotten used to even in the handful of weeks they knew the future Seventh Hokage for.</p><p>"Don't be such a pansy, Naruto!" Meiko placed her hands on her hips.</p><p>"No, it's fine if he doesn't like it because we won't be following Team Guy." Kiyomi declared.</p><p>"Huh?" Naruto and Meiko both looked up at Kiyomi while Rock Lee and Tenten turned at her with blank stares. Only Neji appeared like he had known this was coming.</p><p>"I'm grateful you guys didn't make such a huge deal out of it and suggested it yourselves." Neji nodded.</p><p>"What do you mean? Shouldn't we stick together, you know?" Naruto scratched his head. "Neji and Bushy Brows and Tenten helped us out heaps…"</p><p>"They did, but the reason why we got into a fight with that Akatsuki puppeteer was that there were too many of us moving together, we're easy to spot this way and our movement is bogged down even worse than before. This isn't like the last Forest of Death exams, in this one, we might be better off staying on our own, especially if Team Guy intends on moving down the main street leading to two important village clan districts." Kiyomi explained.</p><p>"So you're ditching us then?" Mouza wrapped his large arms over his chest too and pouted in a manner, not unlike one in which Naruto was pouting not too long ago.</p><p>"I thought you were the one opposing me hanging around you guys, to begin with?" Kiyomi looked up at the big guy.</p><p>"While you have a point, Kiyomi, it does kind of feel like you've used us, in a way…" Toro shrugged. "It just cannot be helped…"</p><p>"That's fine. Before we leave, we can offer you all the directions you want. Not only that, there must be a map of this place somewhere in the waiting area since this place is a part of the network of beloved tourist attractions, alongside the traditional architecture of the Uchiha district and… Hiro Hall…" Kiyomi chewed on that last one for a fair time.</p><p>"Hiro Hall? That one's a new one, you know…" Naruto pondered on it. What a buffoon! It was just so much like him to press for information on the least pleasant tourist attraction.</p><p>"It's a venue for artists and movies, lately more for the latter than the former," Meiko explained, her eyes also clouded in shade upon recalling the place though her lips quivered with emotion far more than Kiyomi's who chose to just stiffen them in a strict pout.</p><p>"Oh… We do have cinemas, ours aren't anything special though so they're not tourist attractions or anything, you know…" Naruto shrugged, dismissing the topic altogether once the shine of the new thing dangled in front of him stopped entertaining him.</p><p>"Alright then, teams, through the Hot Springs and then apart!" Rock Lee declared with a brave gesture of a fist shooting out at the direction of the Hot Springs waiting area leading up to the dressing rooms and the Hot Springs themselves.</p>
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<a name="section0622"><h2>622. A Cyborg Geezer And A Pretentious Teen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One thing that neither of the three teams working in a makeshift squad expected once the wooden doors leading to a complex of dressing rooms slid open was to see a young and spry boy in spiky yellow hair and an orange and blue tracksuit wriggling on the ground all tied up while another ninja with spiky, dark hair and an apathetic expression on his face rested on a nearby bench with one of his feet holding his own teammate down.</p><p>"Umm… Don't you have any questions for these guys, leader?" Meiko pressed her arms to her hips and turned to Kiyomi.</p><p>"I do have several but… Right now I'd just rather watch and see where this goes…" Kiyomi smirked with a blush on her cheeks. Not even the fact that one of the two was an Uchiha, a clan that Kiyomi wasn't on the best terms when one looked from either side, didn't spoil her fun.</p><p>"Ugh! You're a disgrace to Naruto everywhere, you know!" Naruto flipped his hands up while staring at a younger version of himself struggling to get out of his bindings.</p><p>"Shut up, you know!" the bound Naruto yelled out with a much more irritating and wide-spreading voice. Who would have known that Naruto actually became more reserved and wiser over the years? To anyone who has met the young man, it might have appeared the other way around.</p><p>Neji placed his hands together and opened his Byakugan. He ran a quick scan over the version of Sasuke holding Naruto down. Then his eyes fixed on something behind the wooden door by Sasuke's left that the pair appeared to be safeguarding and Neji promptly closed his Byakugan with a nervous look on his face.</p><p>"This Sasuke is the real deal. That is all I am willing to say at this moment…" he mumbled.</p><p>"He peeked, he totally peeked, you know!" the bound Naruto began rolling on the floor, due to how difficult it turned to keep a foot down on him in his tireless expression of hilarity, Sasuke let go of his teammate and let him just roll around.</p><p>"Sasuke…" the Naruto from Team Hokage mumbled to himself, looking at his teammate. "What's going on here, you know?"</p><p>"We've encountered a pair of hunters with Konoha headbands, an Aburame and a Yamanaka, the two worked in a pair. We managed to beat them and flee before any more hunters were drawn to the noises of our battle. Sakura decided that the best course of action would be for us to rest and regroup here, she insisted on taking a bath too and this dweeb decided to peek…" Sasuke squinted down at the more bratty version of Naruto who just pouted his lips and blew out his cheeks while turning his eyes away.</p><p>"Forgive me if I missed some details but… This hardly seems like a time to take a bath!" Rock Lee argued, easily rising to the challenge of kid Naruto in terms of energy one spoke with.</p><p>"Shut up, Bushy Brows! If you fought some creepy bug guy that made your body go all purple, the bath would be your first idea too, you know! Plus, we were in the vicinity anyway!" Naruto yelled at Lee, looking distraught that he could not shake his fist at the youth.</p><p>"Look, it's all very cool and not at all creepy to see two dupes of the same guy talking to one another, not even clones, mind you, despite clones being the guy's whole schtick… But we have to move, don't we?" Mouza grumbled. The bulky man and his Kirigakure headband attracted the attention of young Sasuke though, having in mind that both Team Guy and a team hosting older and arguably wiser Naruto worked with them, the young Uchiha didn't raise any arguments just yet.</p><p>"What is your game plan anyway?" Tenten wrapped her arms over her chest.</p><p>"After resting? We'll go right back out there and claim our prize. Then we'll go back and win. This buffoon wouldn't understand any plan more complex than that…" Sasuke beamed lightning bolts from his eyes aimed right at the younger Naruto.</p><p>"Shut up! Acting all high and mighty, you know! For your information, you better believe Sakura-chan will be peeking at you bathing too!" kid Naruto yelled right back at his teammate.</p><p>"That's why we'll be bathing one at a time…" Sasuke closed his eyes and realized with a bitter look on his face that Naruto might have been right.</p><p>"So… Those guys were your team, huh?" Mouza could hardly contain the rising impulse to crack while giving Naruto some quirky looks.</p><p>"I must admit, I do agree with Mouza, dysfunctional doesn't even begin to describe it…" Toro nodded.</p><p>"Nah, it might have seemed that way but… When push came to shove, we were surprisingly effective, you know…" Naruto smirked with a nostalgic grin while he drowned in memories of the past after leaving his own past reflections as well as those of his best friend behind just a couple of moments ago.</p><p>"Well… That Sakura girl must be a real G-R-E-A-T kunoichi to glue that mess together." Guna spoke up after staying quiet through the whole awkward ordeal with Team 7. "What are her abilities?"</p><p>"She umm… Well… She's… Sakura-chan, you know…" Naruto scratched his chin.</p><p>"I… Don't and… I am beginning to believe I don't very much want to anymore." Guna lowered the beak of her top hat to cover up as much as her eyes as possible so that she could hide her embarrassment for Naruto by association better though given how much effort she put into that, she just sort of emphasized it.</p><p>"They beat a pair of hunters and slipped away before more could attack them, they must have been doing something right…" Meiko put the dot at the end of that sentence.</p><p>"Hmph… It's odd how there are no hunters in the vicinity." Neji noted after scanning their surroundings with his Byakugan.</p><p>"Heh, guess all the criminals and scumbags avoid these kinds of places, even though they're pretty tight resting spaces, you know…" Naruto snickered, likely because he was imagining a frightening criminal from his past hanging around the Hot Springs.</p><p>"Well… We're off that way." Neji pointed at a tiny bridge leading over a steamy aquatic pathway that reflected the limited sunlight of a dying day with a gleam of a Caribbean glow. "Hope to see you in the next rounds."</p><p>"Yeah!" Naruto nodded.</p><p>"It has been an honor seeing your maturity. It inspired me to work even harder than my absolute 100% limit! I'll push myself to 150%, no – 200% even!" Rock Lee yelled out while raising a fist up for a bump. Naruto answered that.</p><p>"Hey, I'll be expecting those sealing scrolls I borrowed you back, you know, nobody likes a deadbeat rival," Tenten winked at Meiko.</p><p>"Whatever, once we finally get a break in-between rounds, let's meet up so I can teach you how to use a weapon and how to make your own, your shit's embarrassing, really." Meiko winked back.</p><p>"Wow, what… Was that? It made me feel a bit jealous, won't lie…" Kiyomi turned to Meiko.</p><p>Before Meiko could say anything, Toro approached Kiyomi and rolled out the map that he had taken from the offices where they bumped into Team 7, pointing at a specific area of the map. It was not the map for the entirety of the village meant for tourists that had to decide on their next destination after the time of their life resting at the Hot Springs, this was the smaller scale schematic of the entirety of the Hot Springs district.</p><p>"I was thinking, those are sewers, correct?" Toro asked.</p><p>"In a way. They're channels connecting the source of hot mineral water to various specific locations across the district. It's a way to be effective about village planning without having to become a slave to the natural veins to the underground spring veins." Kiyomi nodded. "I believe you would find them nowhere near as filthy as a sewer. It's an overwhelming smell of Sulphur all around you. Takes some getting used to."</p><p>"Really? I always thought it smells a bit like eggs…" Meiko wondered in a rhetorical manner.</p><p>"Hey, what's your scheme, slim?" Mouza turned to his fishy-featured teammate.</p><p>"You're planning to use those sewers, aren't you?" Guna realized.</p><p>"Not a sewer…" Kiyomi pointed out again.</p><p>"Indeed." Toro nodded, completely ignoring Kiyomi's note. "I believe that the concealed nature of the underground mineral water channels might hide us from our pursuers, at least most of them. It would be like traversing indoors except we'd be traveling that way for the entire time we're in Konoha."</p><p>"Do they lead to A-N-Y of the village gates?" Guna wondered to which Toro had to shake his head. "Oh well, some protection is better than none…" she then concluded.</p><p>"Well then, in that case, we'll need to take that bridge…" Toro pointed his long and wet-looking finger at a bridge on a distant floating platform, located a few blocks from where the two teams were at the moment.</p><p>"It's goodbye then." Kiyomi realized.</p><p>"More like a S-E-E Y-O-U L-A-T-E-R," Guna smirked.</p><hr/><p>"Well… All on our own again then, you know." Naruto stated while Team Hokage stood in front of a wide opening in a wooden barrier surrounding the Hot Springs district, leading back into the main streets of the village. "Back in my place, this street leads to Amaguriyama…"</p><p>"It still does." Meiko nodded. "Traversing through the main street will be a pain though. Those will be full of hunters and if we bother fighting back we'll just be alerting more on our tails."</p><p>"If one hears you out, they'd get the impression that you're worried about running into the enemy…" Kiyomi smirked. "If we take this street, we'll cover one-third of the village before getting to Amaguriyama."</p><p>"Nah, there will be hunters out in the streets, there will be hunters lurking in alleyways and crawling in crevices around buildings too. I'm getting sick of running." Meiko exclaimed in a grumpy voice. "Running from and around hunters sent us flying all the way to the west of the village without progressing at all, this won't get us anywhere!"</p><p>"Alright!" Naruto punched his own palm with excitement. "Then let's charge right through, you know!"</p><p>Making a dash past the street leading to Amaguriyama felt quiet, almost too quiet. There didn't appear to be any immediate threats in sight nor any signs of trap or ambush that either of the members of Team Hokage could pick up on. Losing Neji and his environment-scanning eyes was a noticeable loss but if they ran into a whole bunch of nothing on their way to the select location for tea and sweets of the village losing the support of Team Guy was hardly an apocalyptic scenario.</p><p>Plus, if they had to rely on another team to do their work for them, they weren't much of a team and likely didn't even deserve any success in the Exams, to begin with.</p><p>"Hmmm…" Meiko stared at the jewel of Konoha Tea Avenue with the dazed expression that Kiyomi knew all too well.</p><p>"You're hungry again, aren't you?" Kiyomi shook her head.</p><p>"What do you mean again? I never complained about being hungry and I've been hungry this whole time, it's one continuous process of starvation, not something that comes and goes…" Meiko pointed out as if she was lecturing about advanced math here.</p><p>"We have food pills, they're not just medicinal, you know…" Kiyomi put her hands over her hips, seeing if she could avoid paying the little shop of sweets and tea a visit and waste time here seeing Meiko stuffing her belly while running into more and more risk of running into something. Even a single hunter or a group of weaker hunters could cost them a whole, inescapable chain of never-ending battles for their lives.</p><p>"Yeah, but they're bland and those that aren't are flat out disgusting to eat. There's some actual food inside and it smells really good and there's nobody to eat all of it!" Meiko pointed at the alluring shadow and gloom inside the shop. "It's got all the dango, Kiyomi, all the dango!"</p><p>"I can't believe we're being bullied into this…" Kiyomi shook her head.</p><p>"Hey, I'm more of a ramen guy myself but I wouldn't mind down some sweets for the road, you know…" Naruto shrugged, appearing indifferent toward the entire process. That was just great. As if now was the best time for the knucklehead to act indifferent for the first time in his life!</p><p>"Fine, we just pop our heads in, Meiko grabs her dango for the road and…" Kiyomi groaned while she slid the cloth covers leading into the small and cozy sweet shop.</p><p>"I'm telling you right now, brat, stop stuffing your face with those pastries and let's go hunt. It's enough trouble as it is that we got involved in all of this, we won't be able to go back to our universe and return you home to Kara if we don't fight!" a husky and enhanced by cybernetics voice croaked at a tattooed young man stuffing his face with dango straight out from the various open compartments, judging from the extent of the boy's passion for sweets, he did not differentiate between dough and completed sweets either.</p><p>Kiyomi's face turned sour one degree of sourness at a time, shriveling almost within the observer's view as she shifted between trying to flip out on Meiko and trying to deal with the fact they just bumped into a pair of hunters for humoring the blacksmith's affinity for food.</p><p>"See? We don't need to go anywhere…" the young man with dull, grey eyes that possessed the stare of a killer and thick, black hair that was shaved by the sides and dyed blond, donning earrings and tattoos in excess not only for his age but any age in general declared. "The trouble came to us, so if you care that much about going back to that Hell, go deal with it!"</p><p>"You, ungrateful fucking brat!" the voicebox wearing companion of the sweet-toothed young man rolled back his rough cloak, revealing what appeared to be a cybernetic enhancement arm of some sort. While the concept of the arm could not have been that far out, the craftsmanship and bother for pristine appearances revealed it to be more than just conveyor standard-issue prosthetic.</p><p>"What's that? You want me to knock the other jaw off too, Garo?" the boy turned back to his companion, a description of the relationship between the two that, frankly, Kiyomi was beginning to have doubts with the more time passed seeing the two interact with one another. Despite his messy face, jam and chocolate being smeared all over his lips and cheeks, he still had the stare that could make one go pale with panic.</p><p>"Tsk… Of all the impudent…" the half-man, half-cyborg named Garo took a slow and steady step toward the boy but then froze after noticing Meiko sitting right by his side and stuffing her own face too.</p><p>"Oh… You like the dough too? That's too bad though, they don't usually let you eat that here but when my mom makes dango she always leaves a bowl of it at least…" Meiko spoke to the younger hunter with a full mouth. The sticky dango dough made it difficult to understand what she was saying but if this young man was hanging around voicebox-using cyborgs like this Garo guy beside him, he must have been used to unnatural sounding speech mannerisms.</p><p>"Leave me alone." The young man exclaimed with a grumpy voice before returning to his sweets. Despite seeming antagonistic, he didn't appear to mind too much Meiko just sitting and eating by his side, it was when she spoke to him that bothered him enough to acknowledge her presence.</p><p>The cybernetic hunter Garo raised his prosthetic arm which lit up the shadowy interior with rotating flares of Fire Release whirling inside of the central cannon barrel. Without weaving any hand seals or chanting anything about his attack, the cybernetic man unleashed a handful of fireballs with tails of blazing dust around them, coming at Meiko in a rotating trajectory.</p><p>Kiyomi stepped forward, about to dash in and cover for her oblivious friend but the fiery projectiles detonated prematurely. When the smoke cleared, the second, youthful hunter stood with a face that screamed bloody murder, his hand having grown vastly in size while bloating just enough to block the incoming projectiles with his hand. Despite having blocked his teammate's attack, the younger hunter dropped his supersized hand with some difficulty breathing and smoke smoldered from the boy's arm when it returned to normal size.</p><p>"Y-You would betray the Kara, vessel!?" Garo appeared equal part pissed and shocked that the boy would act this way.</p><p>"You fucking prick, you almost blew up the dango. After the Hell that liar put me through, don't you think I deserve at least something nice for just one moment?" the young man lost all sense of composure too. Meiko sighed and put down the sweets she was holding at that moment and turned toward the cybernetic elder as well.</p><p>"I see that I won't be able to enjoy my dango without kicking your ass first," she stated while reaching for the zipper of her tracksuit, unzipping it to the bottom of her chest and the reaching underneath her tracksuit. A ray of bright light shimmered from inside her tracksuit while Meiko pulled out a two-edged sword with a solid hilt, meant for one hand.</p><p>"A sword!? I'll have you know that I am armed with a Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet and an Argos Unit! It might be a far cry from the technology an Inner of Kara possesses but it is far superior to the primitive..." Garo was forced to raise his much appraised Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet to block Meiko's rushing strike. The old man then pushed the blacksmith back and began waving his three claw-like fingers attached to his Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlets to try and punish the reckless charge of his opponent.</p><p>A fussilade of metallic clashes and flocks of sparks later, the two disengaged one another. Meiko swiped her one-handed sword aside while Garo just stared at her with a smug expression and raised his cybernetic Shinobi-Ware.</p><p>"You're freakishly strong for an annoying fledgling but the combo of my Reflux-Type Pressure-Enhanced Muscles, Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet and an Argus Unit is unbeatable to all but the Inners of Kara!" Garo declared only to become stumped by tiny stars gleaming inside Meiko's eyes.</p><p>"That's some sweet tech, old geezer!" she shrieked out. "Mind taking it off and letting me take a look?!"</p><p>"Whoo boy, I knew she'd need some help with this…" Kiyomi smacked her face.</p><p>"Why? It looks like she's got things handled, she didn't even coat her sword with chakra yet, you know…" Naruto pointed out.</p><p>"Yeah, because she doesn't want to wreck that technology on that old man. Meiko's a gear-head and she wants to slobber all over every fancy toy she sees. Given how those toys are what the enemy is made of…" Kiyomi waved her hands, trying to get Naruto to follow the logical chain and arrive at the proper answer on his own.</p><p>"She won't take him on seriously, you know…" Naruto realized. "Still, that other guy is yet to make a move and he's boiling…"</p><p>If only Meiko could have swallowed her relentless slobber and soothed her sweet tooth in some other way rather than humoring it. If only Kiyomi had what it took to say no to her sympathy for once… Maybe then things wouldn't have gotten this difficult.</p>
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<a name="section0623"><h2>623. A Bloom For Tactical Retreat</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Hey, you…" the younger hunter with a punkish look to him addressed Meiko, earning a wayward glance from the redhead in his direction. "You are opposed to that stinky old fart, let's work together and make him gone."</p><p>"Huh? No way, look at all the cool tech all over him. I wanna see what it can do!" Meiko objected, turning to Kawaki with passionate expression.</p><p>"Garo may as well be wearing a garbage bucket on his head, compared to the rest of Kara. Don't waste your time on him." The young man objected, looking frustrated with Meiko's refusal to eliminate his own comrade alongside him.</p><p>"You fucking mongrel!" Garo swung both of his clawed mechanized arms behind him and charged at the pair, Meiko bit her lip as she examined every tiniest bit of her opponent's tech, forcing the bratty hunter to interfere on her behalf and knock her opponent aside for her or to push her away from hits that'd have blown her away. "If only you weren't meant to be the leader's vessel…"</p><p>The young man threw a pair of spinning kicks at Garo's direction that clanged at his staunch blocks. Garo's heavy feet dug deep into the basis of the Amaguriama shop, demolishing the wooden tiles underneath and digging all the way to the foundation as he delivered an uppercut that shot the boy through the roof. The imposing cyborg veteran prepared to vault after the brat but then felt a disproportionate boost of weight around his left arm.</p><p>Upon visual inspection, the man's beady eyes widened when he saw Meiko wrapped around his arm like a monkey, pulling on metal plates and examining the craftsmanship that she exposed.</p><p>"Yo, you wouldn't mind if I yoinked this, right?" Meiko smirked, looking a bit abashed due to the fact she was noticed.</p><p>"Of all the irritating, little…" Garo flexed his left arm, forcing jets of fire to vent through a couple of openings and force Meiko to leap off, patting her thigh that had caught fire. With teary eyes, Meiko blew at her leg and rubbed it to take the tiny blaze out.</p><p>"I'm taking it outside, you know!" Naruto declared, smacking his own chest with the bottom of his fist to cement that promise.</p><p>"Don't you even think about it!" Kiyomi objected, "We keep the fight here and contained before more of them join in."</p><p>"But Meiko's just getting thrown around 'cause she refuses to fight seriously, she's endangering that other kid too, you know…" Naruto turned back to argue.</p><p>While the remaining pair of Team Hokage argued about how they should approach this, a pair of supersized arms slammed through the walls of the sweets and tea shop to crush Garo in between them. Kiyomi had seen similar techniques before, her first instinct was to suspect that a genin of the Akimichi clan came to help but then she noticed a peculiar detail – the massive hands were comprised of hundreds of slamming hands, almost as if they were multiplied and cultivated on a single body.</p><p>"No!" Meiko objected, reaching out at the epicenter of the slam with her quaking hand, distressed at the demise of her new, mechanized passion.</p><p>"M… Most impressive…" a husky declaration came from in between the two slamming arms while the arms parted, shaking as they struggled against Garo's own mechanical might. "This universe… It's like I don't even need my mechanical enhancements anymore…"</p><p>With a decisive, metallic shriek, Garo's arms had pushed the two clashing arms open and forced them to collapse into lifeless husks and draw back to their source. A huffing boy walked in through one of the holes he had created with a streak of blood running down the left side of his face. It was the same "vessel" boy whom the man had flung out before.</p><p>"He's injured from such a puny attack, you know?" Naruto turned his head in bemusement, his curiosity over the supposed weakness of these hunters overpowered his need to win the petty quarrel with Kiyomi.</p><p>"You dumbass, ninja bimbo, I'm asking you to help me murder the shit out of this geezer so that I don't have to go back with him, back to that Hell!" the punk growled while huffing, his exposed arms that had torn out of his clothes to accomplish the feat they have accomplished earlier appeared strangely layered and were of darker color compared to the pale color of his face.</p><p>"Heh, you should know better than to ask her for help, vessel. Then again, maybe you shouldn't… After all, how would you know that a ninja only moves their finger for money if you've never left the lab?" Garo mocked the boy while raising his right hand and cocking it with his left.</p><p>Meiko chuckled into her hand. Even Garo halted his attack temporarily to stare at the redhead kunoichi in disbelief.</p><p>"What's so fucking funny!?" the younger hunter broke out into an outrage, "I'm spillin' the contents of my heart out in the open here!"</p><p>"Utsuwa* sounds like a girl's name…" Meiko found it much harder to contain her chuckles while she had to talk, letting out a few rather undignified and unintelligible noises alongside her explanation of what she found so funny.</p><p>"Wh-What the fuck!?" the boy whited out in a mixture of both aggression and disbelief. "That's not my name, I'm Kawaki!"</p><p>"If you asked me, naming something that's just a vessel to someone far greater than himself is pointless, for that reason, you shall only be known as a vessel!" Garo gave Kawaki a scolding glare as he channeled another blazing blast in his mechanical arm.</p><p>"Hmph… I do see what Meiko sees in those…" Kiyomi had to admit. "They do seem similar to her own Reactor Gauntlets, perhaps she could upgrade them if she had those arms of his with her…"</p><p>Kiyomi turned to Naruto because the young man beside her had been uncharacteristically quiet, he didn't even argue that the pair would attack one or both of the hunters but now Naruto just stood hunched over with his head down before looking up with an expression that showed his grit teeth and furious eyes on full display. Kiyomi had never seen Naruto this angry before without his eyes turning red and his entire body adopting wild features but he seemed to be much more in control of himself at the moment.</p><p>"You take that back, you know!" Naruto growled out at the cybernetically enhanced old man.</p><p>"What's that? Does another brat want to get some? Fine, I can evaporate you first, if you'd like!" Garo turned his gauntlet but then realized that Naruto was right up in his face. Panicking due to the unnatural speed of his opponent, Garo stumbled back but then raised his arm up and fired anyway. Naruto slid back from the blast zone, smoking and smoldering but mostly unharmed and raised his stare back up at his opponent.</p><p>"Nobody's just a thing for someone else to use. Everyone can be a person that they choose to be, don't you dare talk about anybody like they're just a toy of somebody else!" Naruto growled through the smoke and fading flames. He darted out of his predicament, leaving a long, tracing trail of smoke behind him as he winded up a punch and delivered it right to Garo's jaw before the cyborg could even put his hands up to defend himself.</p><p>"A puppet is a puppet. As far as I'm concerned, a vessel is just a suit of armor that our leader will wear." Garo spread his arms out, while his right cheek donned a nasty bruise, Kiyomi noted how little balance the man had lost after being punched by someone like Naruto who was going through a raised emotional state in which he was in at the moment.</p><p>"Shut up!" Naruto cut the lingering atmosphere into two with his demand. "Nobody is someone else's toy, not Kawaki, not Sasuke!"</p><p>"So that's what it's all about…" Kiyomi mumbled to herself, realizing what in that bullshit Garo was spouting drove Naruto into such a frenzy.</p><p>"Sorry, Kiyomi, I will absolutely kick this guy's ass and it might just get messy, you know!" Naruto glanced back at the Yamanaka who just sighed and shrugged. If even more hunters come rushing, at least the odds that they would be cybernetically enhanced Meiko's wet dreams would be lower than ever before.</p><p>"So it's three against one then? Interesting… Come at me, trash, I'll dispose of all of you and then carry the vessel back to Kara on my shoulders…" Garo tuned up his arm again and took a lowered fighting stance, letting his right arm hang down with all of its metallic weight while his right one bent over his face to block any follow-up rush-attacks from Naruto.</p><p>"If anybody's killing this old fucktard, it's me!" Kawaki yelled out and charged at Garo. Despite his fighting stance being little more than just grunts and roars of an enraged animal, there was a semblance of a method to his close-range attacks, Kiyomi had to note. Garo's mechanical claws locked around Kawaki's wrists, flipping him over the cyborg's shoulder and slamming him through a table. A mechanical wind-up suggested that the Kara hunter would attempt this same manner of attack again.</p><p>Instead of another gasp of triumph, a husky grunt of pain left Garo's voicebox as Meiko driving her buckler into his back and driving the cyborg to his knees knocked the sense out of the mechanical veteran temporarily. With Garo having lost his balance, Naruto charged in with taijutsu strikes. Garo's Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlets fired off their claws as chains of interconnected, metallic segments stuck together by an odd, bio-organic weave. The chains wrapped around Naruto, giving him a viable distraction to worry about instead of punching Garo's face at that moment.</p><p>Grabbing a pair of dislodged table legs, Kawaki charged at the old man, throwing them with considerable skill, enough for Kiyomi to consider that he had training in weapon-fighting, likely to temper his body to be a more suitable vessel for whoever has decided to reside in the boy's body. Despite outmaneuvering Garo at every point and turn, Kawaki's table-leg flurry reached limited to no success due to the fact that his hits just brushed off of the cybernetic veteran.</p><p>Garo let the claws of his other Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet to wrap around Kawaki and heat up momentarily, enveloping the boy in smoke in seconds while he shook and twitched from something resembling an electric shock violently jerking all traces of life out of him. Naturally, Garo must have been controlling himself as he did need Kawaki as a vessel still.</p><p>"Yoink!" Meiko let out the most underwhelming battle cry ever as her two-edged sword cleaved Kawaki's bindings clean off, forcing the damaged Type-5 gauntlet to spit out sparks like wild. Garo stumbled back, staring at the stumps that were once the proud claws of his gauntlet.</p><p>"H-How… Did you…" he muttered.</p><p>"You idiot, you didn't think this is all of our power, do you?" Meiko taunted the man with a sheepish smile as she patted her own shoulder with the blunt side of her sword. "We're trying to stay low-profile here, plus, your tech is impressive enough for me to want to disassemble you piece by piece instead of just cutting you up."</p><p>"Don't you joke around with me, as if you could even do that!" Garo objected. Despite his high and mighty act, this was clearly the denial stage of defeat taking over.</p><p>"Sure I can, didn't you see me go earlier?" Meiko smirked as her blade lit up with weak, blue light, tipping Garo off to the chakra cloak that she used.</p><p>"L-Look… I… We really don't need to fight each other. All I need from this place is to return with the vessel. That's why we were here, to begin with… So that this dumb brat can calm down…" Garo began bargaining. It should have come at some point. May as well have been the point when he noticed that Meiko could have sliced him up like a sausage using a power he had no defense against.</p><p>"Naruto, destroy his other arm. Meiko only needs one anyway." Kiyomi yelled out.</p><p>"Hey, I like her…" Kawaki looked back from a kneeling position. "Why isn't she fighting with us?"</p><p>"Because this whole visit is stupid and I want nothing to do with it. My job is to guide my team through this stage and I'm going to do it and I'm not going to do it picking meaningless battles against walking lumps of tin." Kiyomi groaned.</p><p>"Hey, you're just gonna let her bark orders at you?" Kawaki turned to Naruto who just closed his eyes and smirked. Before the boy could even register, Naruto had weaved a hand seal and created a Shadow Clone right behind him that assisted him in molding chakra.</p><p>"I've got no choice, you know… I sorta pissed her off by going rogue earlier… May as well make it up with this," Naruto declared while rushing at Garo with a Rasengan storming in spherical form, perfectly contained inside Naruto's hand.</p><p>Garo raised his arm up, letting out another powerful jet of flames that was considerable enough to erect an incinerating wall of flames in front of him. This time the Fire Release attacks didn't just break the building that the group was in but set it ablaze, decimating the sweets scattered all over the floor and dooming the whole shop for an infernal blaze. Despite that, Naruto pushed through the wall of flames and drove his spiraling sphere right into the middle of Garo's mechanical arm, letting the unleashed storm contained within tear to shreds the mechanical claws and detonate the Fire Release spreading source within the Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet.</p><p>With a shocked expression and face splashed with blood as well as something black and sticky coming out of the destroyed mechanical parts that Naruto tore through, Garo collapsed on the floor. He had tried picking himself back up but he was used to accomplishing that using his arms of which he now had only one, or rather, half of it since Meiko did clip his claws some.</p><p>"I… I was wrong… I was wrong to treat the ves… I mean Kawaki as just a leader's doll… I see that now… I'm sorry!" Garo began groveling in front of Naruto's feet while the blond genin himself turned away in disinterest.</p><p>"Don't apologize to me, you know… Your life isn't in my hands…" Naruto turned back at Garo only briefly while Garo realized that of the three people he took on at once there was just one who hadn't claimed his pound of flesh just yet. Using his busted up gauntlet, Garo peeled his pathetic face off the ground and prepared to defend himself against Kawaki.</p><p>"Ves… Kawaki… You're a good boy, I know that, remember when you socked me and took my jaw right off…" Garo faked a peal of revolting laughter, sounding even less genuine that it truly was due to the fact it was voiced by the mechanical voice of the voicebox he donned where Kawaki had "taken off" his jaw. "You apologized to me back then, remember? You did… You're a nice boy, there's no need to…"</p><p>Garo froze and stopped speaking, realizing he could no longer move his arm. He turned with a face frozen in panic only to notice Meiko's ecstatic grin holding his remaining Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet. While Meiko usually smiled sheepishly or even like a little monkey, this time her smirk appeared almost creepy due to the implications of what she was about to do.</p><p>"Yoink…" she muttered while pulling the Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet, or what remained of it, right off. No blood came out from where the prosthetic was removed, revealing a stump that had long since been there as Garo's face was decorated with scars far older than the ones littering his exposed and torn up body at the moment.</p><p>"I may have given a rat's ass about what happened to you Garo. That is if you didn't tick me off enough to show my tats… You know how difficult I find myself to control once they come out, don't you?" Kawaki declared while staring at the defeated old man with cold eyes. True to his words, markings of mysterious nature covered his body as he approached Garo. A shockwave of solid sound tore the cloth off of Garo's voicebox, revealing a last-ditch effort weapon meant for just these kinds of cases but Kawaki walked right through it and grabbed a tight hold of Garo's body.</p><p>A sphere of white rose in the Amaguriama district. A circle of destruction itself that left nothing but ashes in its wake as even rubble it had raised turned to its simplest form before the wind scattered it away. Kawaki laid on his knees in front of what seemed like absolutely nothing where once was a man too arrogant and angry for his own good. Naruto, Meiko, and Kiyomi uncovered themselves, staring at Kawaki spitting in the face of their plan to maintain a low profile and the devastation that they'd caused.</p><p>"Damn… He's lucky I managed to seal the Type-5 Shinobi Gauntlet away in time…" Meiko sighed.</p><p>"Tsk… He didn't have to do it, Garo was already beaten, you know…" Naruto grumbled while staring at Kawaki who was slumped over on his knees in a state in between consciousness and the alternative.</p><p>"I can understand laying waste to that cyber-bastard but why the hell did he have to be this loud?" Kiyomi smacked her face in frustration and turned to bolt to the nearest cover that may as well have been three or four blocks away. "We'll be lucky to reach cover without running into anyone now!"</p><p>"We can't just leave him here though…" Meiko turned to Kawaki.</p><p>"You've got to be kidding me…" Kiyomi sighed. "There's no time for me to tell you how wrong you are, you're carrying him! You two are dango-buddies after all."</p><p>"I'll do it, you know…" Naruto made a handful of clones that picked Kawaki up. "Let's just move now!"</p><p>Hoping that they wouldn't run into the party of hunters that were the first to respond to this devastating calling card, begging for some action and challenging all that had a functional pair of eyes, Team Hokage and extra baggage took off toward the southern side of the crater Kawaki had just created.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>
    <em>Author's Note: To those who didn't get it, Meiko thought that Kawaki's name was "Utsuwa", the word meaning "vessel" by which the Kara refers to Kawaki with in the Boruto manga. That was why she made that remark.</em>
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<a name="section0624"><h2>624. The Great Ecscape</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Light taps against the ground concrete raised subtle clouds of dust. With each step Naruto, Kiyomi and Meiko dashed one leap forward toward supposed safety. Toward cover from hunters that must have been closing in from all directions after the clash with the ill-tempered Garo went a little bit overboard. It was Meiko, who carried Kawaki over her shoulder, that had the most trouble making her footsteps disappear even though they did the acceptable standard of ninja movement.</p><p>A grungy noise made all three ninja of Team Hokage and their temporary companion freeze in place. With a frustrated expression that had all but submitted to the idea of being cornered by hunters again, the three members of Team Hokage looked up at the gleam of light rising in the shape of four walls, emitting a beautiful shine of matte, spectral gleams from its surface that was quite deadly, once one realized that this was the shine of a barrier meant to contain those that were inside it as well as keep away those that would attempt to enter.</p><p>"Did you three truly think you could escape after wreaking so much havoc?" a tall man of tanned complexion turned his head. The man reached underneath a dark cloak to remove a monk-staff and spin it around in preparation for combat. Underneath his dark cloak hid a flashy, purple qipao while his rich, white hair rustled in the wind, exposing a grievous, scar dividing his face diagonally into two. "Sadly, you will need to be sacrificed for the strength that is required to unite the Fire Country."</p><p>"Hmph… Two girls in this squad, I loathe these three already!" a slim, feminine ninja with dark-brown hair and an elegant dress, wearing an excess of make-up and accessories to accentuate the desire of this ninja to appear beautiful over everything else declared with a dismissive and smug tone.</p><p>"Counting out the unconscious guy, are you? Not like you to ignore potential problems like that, your mind skipping a few beats in your old age, Fuen?" an alluring young woman of light complexion, slender frame and perfect figure that could only have been sculpted artificially through some sort of transformative technique taunted her teammate before leaning on her right leg, putting her chest out in front and kissing the air in front of her and winking one of her eyes. "I'll be taking the boys, in that case…" she declared.</p><p>"Look at you two, dividing a bunch of kids in between yourselves, as if they shall be capable of putting up any semblance of resistance. You should just fry them, Kazuma, there are plenty more weaklings for us to pluck before we will be allowed to return home with the power to instill the one true king!" the fourth hunter, a tall and buff man of spiky black hair, a broad jawline and face-paint over his cheeks stated while observing the trapped genin.</p><p>"So we are in agreement then to finish this quick?" Kazuma, the man to whom the other three appeared to look up to as their leader, wondered.</p><p>"Of course, those girls are an eyesore and if Fuuka is so adamant about hogging all the men to her again, I've no interest in this battle," Fuen, the strategist of the team, washed her hands off of the battle.</p><p>"Humph…" Fuuka sighed. "Sometimes I wonder what is the point of this new and prosperous country we fight for if we can't even live for a moment to enjoy it…" regretful that she would not get to kill the two boys she declared as hers.</p><p>"Stop whining and take positions!" the fourth member of the four-hunter-cell demanded of his teammates while taking off himself. "Be grateful that all the excessive chakra reserves we've obtained in this world allows us to use Limelight over and over again!"</p><p>A blinding flash of white lit up the space inside the barrier, hitting its edges with such tremendous force that the entire structure cracked and collapsed, letting out rampaging lightning bolts, albeit with much more restricted destructive potential out to devastate and incinerate as far out as they could blast. The four ninja landed to observe the results of their devastation only to see four duplicates of the same ninja with an orange and black tracksuit and spiky, blond hair and even those limited casualties of their devastating combination technique disappeared in a cloud of smoke.</p><hr/><p>"So you don't feel any hints of being tired whatsoever?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow, turning to Naruto who just gobbled down rice cakes with his back pressed to the wall of an alleyway they made their way into.</p><p>"Huh? What are you on about, you know?" Naruto looked at his teammate with a squint, as if she was being ridiculous to even suggest he'd feel even the tiniest hint of exhaustion after his clever ploy that assisted their escape.</p><p>"You know, splitting your chakra into hundreds of pieces? Having all your clones transform into us on top?" Meiko elaborated, joining in on Kiyomi's curiosity. She had always known Naruto's chakra reserves to be vast, even for someone of his own universe where chakra-source objects were so treasured and limited, but after the unpredictable loudmouth had been fighting hunters for the whole day only to pull something like this off and then not show a sign of fatigue… That made Naruto's stamina feel like absolutely limitless.</p><p>"Nah, it's nothing, I'm used to it, you know!" Naruto chuckled, doing his best to restrain the noise coming out of him while he expressed the hilarity he found in his teammates obsessing over his feat so much. Thusly he showed himself as somebody who enjoyed attention very much and there was no reason to doubt the fact that the orange ninja would go out of his way to try and woo his teammates some more if given the chance.</p><p>Kawaki grumbled and sat up, rubbing his tired eyes. His face no longer bore the markings that had taken over his body once he unleashed the highly destructive bloom which had put them into this trouble, to begin with.</p><p>"Huh? You guys?" it was tough to say if the young punk felt glad that he was pulled from the line of fire or if he was disappointed to see the ninja sticking around him.</p><p>"That's right, we ninja gotta stick together, you know!" Naruto smiled and gave the young man a thumb up. Kawaki examined the thumb in front of him as if it was an object of interest and not the overall idea of the gesture and then looked back up at Naruto.</p><p>"Ninja? I'm no ninja…" Kawaki stated. "Neither was Garo, we're just enhanced, that's all."</p><p>"Haven't you met this guy?" Meiko wondered. So far Naruto had known most of the hunters that went after him which provided some strategic knowledge and an advantage fighting or trying to evade them but seeing Naruto fumble in the dark raised the question naturally.</p><p>"Nope, neither have I seen any of that weird robo-stuff he and his pal did. Don't really like it either, you know…" Naruto crossed his arms over his chest and pouted his lips.</p><p>"Do you think I had much of a choice with this, you fucking dinosaur!?" Kawaki growled at Naruto and jumped up on his feet, raising far too much noise than Team Hokage wanted coming out of their little crevice at this time, with most of the village's hunters all over their position. "Ever since I was a child, I was lied to, abused and gone through Hell, so don't you call a bastard like Garo my pal, I'm the one who socked his fucking jaw off, haven't you been paying attention!?"</p><p>"Alright, so you've had it rough, huh?" Naruto stood up to confront Kawaki on his grounds, speaking in his volume but a much more reserved tone. "So did everybody but those that deserve the life they've made for themselves don't sit and whine. It's what you do now that you've escaped that matters, you know. You didn't have to kill that man, friend or not, he was beaten. Yet you let your feelings take over you, lost control…"</p><p>"Oh, and you ninja are all about control, huh?! Is that why you've kidnapped me? To indoctrinate me and tell what to do and what to say? How to feel and where to go? Garo was an old fuck but he was right with one thing. You ninja have all the power but it doesn't belong to you, you're being bred and molded to do somebody's bidding." Kawaki pointed at the destruction laying behind him in grave silence that would have made one's mind create an artificial shriek just to cope with that creepy feeling of loneliness dominant inside that crater.</p><p>"All I've ever known was control, you know," Naruto mumbled. "All I've ever had to do was control myself and people have feared me and loathed me as if I failed before I was given a chance to try. And I do know you, I know you because what you're doing is a spitting image of a friend I am trying to save. He too has made mistakes and once he freed himself from them, he only trod deeper into trouble and all under the illusion of being free, only to let somebody way worse control him from behind him, you know!"</p><p>"If you think we've kidnapped you, you're wrong." Meiko pointed behind her, in the direction of where they took the young punk from as if signaling for him to take a hike if he felt like it. "We felt that the hunters that swarmed the place might have gotten the wrong idea and offed you, you look a lot like one of the genin taking part in the exams yourself."</p><p>"I don't like the idea of you sticking around either, brat." Kiyomi stood up and walked up to Kawaki too. She saw the crushing blow it dealt to the kid, being raised in a tough crowd only to be, if he was to be believed, lied and brought into a far worse one, being a part of some group of criminals similar to Garo, likely far worse, as Kawaki himself stated during the battle when speaking of some "Inners", possessing far superior strength and technology to Garo. "You're a hunter. For all I know, you're just infiltrating our group to take us out once our backs are turned. The only reason I let you stick around as the leader of this team is that my back is never turned against criminals, with you lot, I've got eyes at the back of my head and you wouldn't like those eyes to hate what they see."</p><p>"Fuck you, lady, I don't have to stick around you guys and listen to this!" Kawaki flipped out, picking up a nearby pipe and hanging it behind his back as a weapon for self-defense.</p><p>"That's right, you don't. You can do whatever the hell you want to, you know. That's why it would be too hard to see you make mistake after mistake and go back to the hell you ran away from, you know." Naruto sat back down and began browsing Meiko's backpack for some more food. After all, while Meiko did stuff her face full in Amaguriyama, she and Kawaki were the only ones.</p><p>"You should stick around though," Meiko smirked and pushed her backpack closer to Kawaki. "We've got some food to make up for the one Garo blew up and there's nothing behind you but more hunters. As I've said, they might get the wrong idea about you and attack you."</p><p>"Say… Have you seen a man with a black pony hawk, black eyes and a diamond-marked Kama on his chin anywhere in this exam you guys are doing?" Kawaki wondered. He did look quite spry about leaving before just a moment ago but something that might have lurked out there did terrify him somewhat. "Just who are those hunter guys anyway and why was Garo amongst them?"</p><p>"What's going on here is a sort of survival drill. This entire village around you is fake, it's been created by some weird cube-thing and an older version of Naruto here has brought in a bunch of criminals and all-around bad guys he met from his lifetime here to hunt us while we're doing this survival drill. We haven't seen anyone like the man you asked about but if Naruto has ever met him, he's here somewhere." Kiyomi explained.</p><p>"Another version?" Kawaki scratched his head. "Are you saying that a different version of Naruto is the Hokage?"</p><p>"Yeah, it's a bit much to wrap your head around, you know…" Naruto tried pacifying the confusion somewhat but then Kiyomi's question cut sharp as a blade.</p><p>"Wait, are you saying you've never met the Seventh Naruto? Then how come you are in this universe?" she wondered. Judging from Kiyomi's glare, she was waiting for a satisfying answer or else she was prepared to take Kawaki as an infiltrated enemy and dispose of him then and there.</p><p>"I… I don't know… You saw before that… I can't always control what happens when I unleash my Kama. I'm… I'm really powerful, the man I told you about made me this way and if I could control my Kama I would be a threat to him before I took up the mantle of being the vessel. Whenever I let my power out, it's all explosions and murder and… Weird stuff like this. When I socked Garo's jaw off, that's one of the least destructive and deadly aftereffects of my loss of control, the only thing I can remember from that time is not wanting to be there anymore, wanting to get away and… I remember somebody… Somebody similar to Naruto, someone with blue eyes but…" Kawaki smacked his forehead and began clawing at his own forehead as if he could have just rubbed his lapse of memory and control back.</p><p>"Whoa…" Naruto's jaw dropped. "If this guy can jump between universes like that and he's not supposed to be here… That's so crazy, you know!"</p><p>Meiko turned to Kiyomi, curious to see what the Yamanaka was thinking about all this seeing how she was ready for bloody murder just a moment prior but the blonde seemed to have calmed down somewhat.</p><p>"Let me into your mind." She asked. "I'm a ninja from the Yamanaka clan. I will be the wife of the clan head, in fact, I can see inside your mind and help you uncover your memories."</p><p>"No way!" Kawaki objected, even if the general idea of fleeing appeared to terrify him, his shaking legs were already halfway done turning him around and making him bolt out of here. "I'm not letting anybody poke around in my head!"</p><p>"Maybe it's not the best idea, you know…" Naruto turned to Kiyomi. "He's suffered through some pretty nasty stuff, poking around there might bring some of that back up. He's got about as many reasons to trust us as we have for trusting him."</p><p>"Yes, how very convenient of him…" Kiyomi crossed her arms over her chest and looked away. It was only because Meiko seemed okay with Kawaki sticking around that she even entertained the idea. Given that the boy wasn't a ninja, she reckoned that keeping track of him should have been quite easy… "Fine, if we complete our objective, we'll be released from the cube. That means you will be allowed outside of here and all the hunters will be returned back to the time and space they've come from. That means that the man you fear will be gone from here and you will be safe."</p><p>"I don't know…" Kawaki looked down with a crushed glare. A glare of somebody who must have seen the darkest and the most twisted sides of life and who has been abused for long enough to know not to rely on the hope that it could all be over one day. These were the eyes of somebody who has given up on life and, in the moment of seeing those eyes, even Kiyomi wanted to change that expression. "If I could make it here using my Kama… What if Jigen comes here the same way too?"</p><p>"Then we'll kick his ass and send him packing, you know!" Naruto gave Kawaki a thumb up. "Better yet, you can train with the ninja of this universe and become a strong ninja yourself and then send that bastard back to his Hell yourself, you know!"</p><p>"Me? A ninja?" Kawaki shook his head, he was not doing so in denial but out of the sheer shock that those two may have been linked in a single sentence. "Jigen is… Strong. He is a true monster, not even the Hokage, not even all the ninja in the world could oppose him…"</p><p>Whatever hell Kawaki has gone through, it has utterly crushed him. Even worse, it has crushed all traces of hope that life was anything more than what Jigen had planned for him. He himself bought all that stuff Garo spoke of about him being nothing more but a shell for the "leader's" soul.</p><p>"Don't sweat it," Meiko pat Kawaki's shoulder and extended a hand with some of her own homemade dango out to him. "The ninja of this universe are way stronger than those of Naruto's. All of those hunters needed some serious training to catch up to even us genin. What you said about control earlier, even the kids training in ninjutsu require extensive control of their own abilities so that they do not destroy the world. You can learn that control yourself through ninjutsu. You can learn to take control of that Kama stuff, you can handle guys like Jigen and even take control over your own life. Ninjutsu is seriously cool!"</p><p>Kawaki's eyes glittered for a second before his tough façade trickled back down over the transparent shroud of his soul being reflected in those eyes. "Fine. You guys talk some mean shit, right now you're my best bet of getting away but if we ever meet Jigen… You better believe it I'll be leaving all of you to wallow in defeat against him."</p><p>"Yeah, that's kind of what we're expecting out of you at this point…" Kiyomi sneered at the young punk and settled down to a scroll inside of which she had some of her own food sealed. Since Kawaki was kind enough to blow up the service sector of the village, more than a few of the favorite village restaurants were now just ashes falling out from the sky so Kiyomi's emergency provisions needed to be opened up.</p><p>Team Hokage was back at its original number of four now. Who knew for how long any of its members would stick around but it might have been the very last roster it would ever have if all three of them were to get promoted to chuunin.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0625"><h2>625. The Hunters Press On</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"To run into you, of all people…" a masked man spoke up, halting the hasty steps of Team Minato. The three genin all stared up at the obstacle in their way with an appropriate sense of exasperation of a problem being in their way. Something that either of the three young ones missed in their eyes was familiarity with the disguised hunter ninja.</p><p>"Are we supposed to know you?" Kotaro beamed with his eyes at the mysterious figure.</p><p>"You are a worthless mark of the history books, cut out for brevity. I'd rather you just disappeared…" the masked man replied to the young man. Space bent and molded to the left of Kotaro, quickly consuming the young boy and swallowing him up whole until nothing but thin air remained in his position. "There… Just the way history intended it to be…"</p><p>"Kotaro! You bastard!" Kushina rolled back her sleeves and clapped her hands together. Chains encased in a majestic, golden glow burst from underground and wrapped around the masked man, putting on a tight squeeze on him while keeping him in place.</p><p>"Kushina, wait, he needs to bring Kotaro back!" Minato looked to his teammate who just let out a confident smirk while looking excited about having the enemy pinned down.</p><p>"Don't worry, haven't torn him apart yet, ya know!" the redhead sassed him.</p><p>"An impressive technique spawned out of an even more remarkable ability. It's lucky for me you are far too green to be of any trouble to me yet…" the masked man spoke up with voice devoid of the respectful intimidation that Kushina felt apt for the situation he was in. Just then, for a brief moment, the man's entire body went translucent, as if blurring out of existence itself before the entire visual illusion fading away like a bad trip. The only proof of it not only having ever taken place but also being real was the deafening clang of Kushina's chakra chains hitting the ground and dissipating.</p><p>"H-Huh?" Kushina took a wary step back. She was always the powerhouse of her team that even the more formidable ninja feared and respected. She had caught plenty of cocky bastards unaware by just doing her thing and pulled her team through that way so seeing this man completely unimpressed by her talent that left anyone else dumbstruck warranted at least a heartbeat of fear.</p><p>"Kushina, let's take this man on together." Minato stepped up, removing a pair of kunai from his pouch and taking a knife-fighting pose.</p><p>"Good, for a moment there I thought you'd chicken out or say something stupid like "let's run" away, or something, ya know…" Kushina straightened her back and weaved her fingers into a preparatory position designed to make it easier for ninja focusing more on ninjutsu or genjutsu to weave hand seals, even when facing off against more agile and physical-focused opponents.</p><p>"Normally, running away would absolutely be the best option but… This man has Kotaro and we need to get him back. Until we do, we cannot take one step back!" Minato declared with a stern and focused look on his face that he rarely used.</p><p>"Oh… Those eyes… Almost enough to make my back tingle…" the masked man taunted the pair by tilting his head up and letting a malevolent crimson flare gleam from a hole on the right side of his mask.</p><p>"Let me help you with that…" Minato's voice registered in the masked man's ear but this time from behind. A silver flash that should have drawn blood only passed through thin air while the masked man struggled to look back and counter his opponent's daring attack.</p><p>"Impressive, all that from just a Body Flicker… Not quite the Yellow Flash and yet…" the masked man complimented his opponent while leaning down and avoiding Kushina's golden chains without even looking at them. Much to his surprise, Minato had raised his kunai up, hooking it up on the passing chain and letting it carry him from close range to long near-instantly on a roof of a nearby check-up station.</p><p>"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" Minato chanted out, unleashing a metallic downpour of shuriken on his opponent that passed right through his body again. He was testing when he could damage the man and when he could not. So far, from what the young man could gather, this intangibility ability seemed to be something that the enemy could switch on and off at will. Kushina did manage to catch him before and there must have been a reason for that…</p><p>A crack demanded the entirety of the masked man's attention, Kushina's golden chakra chains had shredded the tree he stood on to bits and directly targeted the very branch he was on, leaving the mysterious hunter plummeting a short distance in free-fall. Minato grabbed hold on the chain he had used to get up to the roof he stood on and charged forward, letting his body flicker in its path.</p><p>Instead of slashing the man and leaving him incapacitated with grievous wounds, the chain just phased right through him. The seemingly invincible ninja tapped his feet onto the ground and took a mocking glance back at Minato.</p><p>"Almost…" he taunted the pair.</p><p>"Who are you? How did you avoid my chakra sensory and why did you take Kotaro?" Minato inquired. He needed some time to come up with a strategy that would work against an unconventional opponent such as this one.</p><p>"I am nobody. I don't want to be anyone either. You may call me Tobi if you must. I believe that showing you how I avoided your chakra sensory would spoil my next trick…" Tobi shrugged and took an aggressive stance. The rippling swirl of space itself consumed the man himself as he emerged just behind Kushina. The young kunoichi cried out in pain as a loop of a chain tied around her neck and swung her over the masked man's head, threatening to slam her into the ground head-first and snap her neck.</p><p>Tobi could only snicker when he felt the pressure that his chain looped around become lighter – they no longer had a grasp of anything by the time they clanged against the paved street on the other side.</p><p>"You see… I have met you before and even fought you before and while our interests have traditionally clashed, I am a big enough fan to pick up a trick or two when I can… With my own particular spin on it, if you don't mind." Tobi let his chains disappear inside the sleeves of his black cloak about as quickly as they appeared.</p><p>"Now you target Kushina? Almost like you're trying to isolate me…" Minato lashed out at the masked enigma with a stare that tried its best to kill.</p><p>"By no means. The girl just liked playing with chains, I decided to show her some of my own toys… I suppose I'm borrowing from both of you, huh? Well… It can't be helped, the two of you were around when I grew up, after all…" Tobi shrugged again, breaking his usual above it all mood and adopting a rather aloof façade.</p><p>"What?" Minato's eyes widened in surprise.</p><p>"Oh, the Seventh keeps babbling about paying no mind to all the curious paradoxes involved with this exam but… I can't help but wonder how will you look at your friends, your students, people you love, knowing that I might be one of them from this point on…" the masked man acted out a shiver. Before Minato could decide how he should best overcome the impossible odds stacked against him with this opponent, Tobi attacked without warning. His hands passed through the entire collection of hand seals in mere microseconds.</p><p>"Fire Release: Great Fireball!" Tobi yelled out while firing a massive fireball. Minato clutched his kunai closer to him, something about this attack felt off, it was too direct and basic but… The fireball had an odd angle to it. Minato barely even had to try to evade its blazing wrath while the fiery projectile blasted off at the top of Konohagakure's southern gate.</p><p>It seemed as if though the gate wasn't Tobi's target either as the attack met an ethereal resistance of an invisible bubble of unidentified force. As it struggled to detonate or overcome the opposing force, the masterful Fire Release technique found it impossible to do either of those things as it just shrunk and shrunk until it was nothing but a dissipating tongue of a single flame akin to the fire on a candle. A fire that went out completely as the entirety of Tobi's fireball was absorbed by the interloper.</p><p>"Excuse me but I went through great trouble to surprise these genin. I'd rather handle them all by myself…" Tobi addressed the hunter whom he just attacked.</p><p>"Oh? I apologize, then… Though I do not believe you have any right to dictate terms here, my eyes can see right through you and you are a despicable mutt of human genealogy indeed." The interloper stated with a high-pitched tone that was undoubtedly male despite the owner of said voice appearing very frail in figure. It only made the spectacular gleam of his alluring eyes through the gap between his murky turban and scarf all that more pronounced.</p><p>Unlike the Sharingan which Tobi appeared to possess, this set of eyes was much different, far more heavenly in its shine, like a pair of divine spheres irradiating exalted divinity itself.</p><p>"Hmph… I must warn you, hunter, I do not take to such unkind words lightly. If you continue to bother my eyes, I will remove you by force." Tobi stared at the curious presence.</p><p>"I appeared here to do my bidding and remove the unworthy genin from this competition, we were supposed to be allies in this mission of ours though your behavior makes me wish punishment for you much more than testing these kids…" the odd challenger, covered in rags all but a minor gap through which he could see with his azure eyes, lamented.</p><p>"There are no ninja alive who have the right to speak to Uchiha Madara this way…" Tobi revealed a fragment of his identity that sounded familiar to both Kushina and Minato but only as a passing mention in the history books.</p><p>"M-Madara Uchiha? The man who rivaled the First Hokage?" Minato freaked out.</p><p>"Oh, the futility of lecturing a mere insect that the foot of a chained pawn in a cave steps on while staring at reflections…" the interloper removed the turban from over his head and let the murky rag float away wherever the breeze carried it, exposing the short and curly white hair underneath and a smooth and pristine face that seemed as if though it was about to glitter in dust of rubies in the evening sunset.</p><hr/><p>"What's with this place?" Kawaki looked around the classical architecture of the Uchiha District. A place where ninja usually earned rough and dismissive looks from ninja so invested in their own blazing feelings that they tended to flat out diminish the worth of what anyone else felt as well as anything happening around them.</p><p>"Right? Looks amazing!" Meiko bent her knees lightly in utter, unrestrained hype. "I don't get to visit this place much but just smelling the air here and seeing this place live makes me want to have been born an Uchiha, right?"</p><p>"Barking up the seriously wrong tree here, girlfriend…" Kiyomi sneered at her friend, feeling a bit insulted that Meiko would even turn to Kiyomi for validation of that sentiment.</p><p>"Pfff… Whatever… Seems snobby and high falutin anyway…" Kawaki shrugged, though his eyes continued to absorb the unmatched cultural wonders of traditional structures that needed not worry with their own size or the expense that breathed life into their frames.</p><p>"Heh, could have fooled me, you're looking around and slobbering as if you've never left Amaguriyama, you know…" Naruto smirked, cheeking Kawaki in good fun.</p><p>"This place is where the Uchiha associate their interests within this village or any other version of it," Kiyomi explained to Kawaki who appeared to have fallen out of a tree with how unfamiliar he was with not only Konoha but pretty much any known human settlement. "The Uchiha are the highest-rated, most skilled ninja in the village and they won't let you forget it…"</p><p>"Hmph… What do they have to be so high and mighty about? They're just ninja anyway… They serve the people that pay them…" Kawaki leaned on his arms while continuing to gobble up the sights with almost the same amount of ecstasy he experienced when stuffing his face full of sweets earlier.</p><p>"Exactly, which prompts the question of why we're here, to begin with…" Kiyomi turned to Naruto. "I thought we were meant to avoid public and well-known landmarks because they're too easy of a meeting spot for hunters."</p><p>"I wanna settle things with Sasuke, you know," Naruto declared.</p><p>"That's your jerkoff friend I reminded you of, isn't he?" Kawaki turned to Naruto, whose face soured from Kawaki addressing Sasuke in an offensive way but nowhere near to where the young man would have lashed out. At least Kawaki was resorting to meaningless name-calling instead of calling him accusatory terms like "traitor" or "criminal" Naruto was used to.</p><p>"Now, all of a sudden?" Kiyomi looked to Naruto with an inquisitive glare.</p><p>"I've met my father when I fought Pain and all seemed lost, now I got to meet my mom too… It seems like I'm a whole different kind of person. This Sasuke isn't as lost in his way as one from my own universe yet. If I cannot measure up to him, I may as well forget about saving my true friend, you know." Naruto explained while scratching his belly due to the bubbling up feelings speaking of his friend made rise up. "Sorry if this goes against your plan for our team, Kiyomi, it's just something I've gotta do, you know…"</p><p>"No, that's just fine… Orochimaru is living on borrowed time after showing his evil face to me anyway…" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"So you just thought you'd find him skulking here then?" Meiko squinted at Naruto as if she was referring to an utter idiot. "If anything, he'd be going for the thingymajig we gots to find himself…"</p><p>"No. I wasn't looking for Sasuke here, you know." Naruto shook his head. "I was looking for someone whom Sasuke from the point in time he was aligned with Orochimaru still would be looking for in such a situation."</p><p>A flock of crows passed through the sky, Naruto closed his eyes in disappointment. "Though it doesn't look like he's here, you know…" he admitted.</p><p>A buzzing sound splashed a curious stroke of paint over the blank canvas before a dazzle of sparks leaving Meiko's armored hand that deflected them added some spicy flare to it. The chunky shuriken that would have required an entire hand to wield even a single one of them fell to the ground in a weighty thud while Meiko's armored gauntlet, exposed through the torn-up sleeve of her green jumpsuit, armored up with one more layer, that of the Reactor Gauntlets.</p><p>"More weaklings sullying the grounds of the Uchiha District, it seems…" a growling, masculine voice directed the attention of Team Hokage to the location where their attacker emerged from. The upper layers of the massive rooftops became clustered with creepy swirls that bent and twisted space-time itself, each one of these twists of space spawned another challenger, bolstering the mighty force opposing Team Hokage.</p><p>Looming over them atop of the roof of the Konohagakure Police Force HQ was a tall and fit man of a complexion so pale it seemed as if though he'd spent the entirety of his life in a cave or a prison cell himself. Scars ravaged his entire, bald head, the most prominent of which was the horizontal scar splitting his head from the right temple to the bridge of his nose, a man speaking with a noticeable lisp due to being utterly toothless.</p><p>And yet the most prominent feature of the man became apparent once what once appeared as scars over his face opened up to reveal an ample collection of Sharingan eyes spotting over his head in multiple places and if the belfry was of any indication - rest of his body, concealed underneath a dark, fitting kimono. The reinforcements that the man had received in his ambush was comprised of the same young man, multiplied dozens of times. One of a more natural pale and a pair of beady Sharingan of their own to each, though those possessed the very same set of eyes, namely ones decorated with identical symbols as if each one of these duplicates were a shadow clone.</p><p>"Just what the hell is this, you know?" Naruto grit his teeth.</p><p>"I'd give it a guess that the answer would be – a hunter?" Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"You spoke of Sasuke Uchiha, didn't you? Tell me where he is and I may let you move on." The creepy, many-eyed man declared.</p><p>"If we knew, we wouldn't have wasted time getting noticed by you, now would we?" Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"This guy is one of those Uchiha?" Kawaki stuck out his tongue. "I'd rather get good the good old way rather than be born talented but so misshaped."</p><p>"My sons, these people know the location of Sasuke Uchiha, the one we must kill, and they also sully the Uchiha name with their weakling tongues. Find out what they know about Sasuke Uchiha, then kill them." The freaky hunter ordered his one-son army though a few of them turned at their "father" with confused glares.</p><p>"Play with them? What about the survival of the fittest?" a son the nearest to their father wondered.</p><p>"Sometimes for the sake of a giant leap forward you must take a step around even law as fundamental as that. Look at it this way, my defiant son, you will not be letting the weak live in the end, you will cement yourself as strong by killing them, just after we know where Sasuke Uchiha is." The man instructed his sons.</p><p>Meiko turned to the rest of the team for guidance on if she should go all out against these hunters or not.</p><p>"Don't look at me, Naruto got us into this mess, he can get us out…" Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"Whatever happened to Aku-Soku-Zan…" Meiko squinted at her comrade.</p><p>"He doesn't look that evil, he's mentally challenged at best, putting him down wouldn't feel like eliminating evil at all," Kiyomi objected.</p><p>"It doesn't matter!" Naruto pounded his own free hand with his fist, preparing to fight back. "He wants to kill Sasuke, and I won't let anyone do that until or after I save him, you know!"</p>
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<a name="section0626"><h2>626. Snake VS Bee</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A cascade of clashes resonated through the streets of Konohagakure. A lumbering man of thick, black hair connecting into his mustache and beard, wearing a grey zip-up pancho and baggy pants flickered out from the engagement and into existence to those with the ordinary degree of perception. His black, beady eyes scouted the battlefield for his opponent but could only see empty space in front of him.</p><p>Further ahead, his four-eyed partner Jibachi was taking on the four-eyes of the enemy team as well – Kabuto Yakushi as Jibachi abused his Camouflage Jutsu to avoid Kabuto's close-range-focused attacks. Further ahead and to the west, Suzumebachi was taking on another weirdo from this team of genin but his identity or his abilities were a big mystery to Kurobachi himself.</p><p>A rod of solidified lightning pierced Kurobachi from behind, forcing the big man to grunt in pain and spit up from his mouth, however, what came out of him was not blood. The man's lumbering figure collapsed into something damp and sticky that quickly turned to liquid from the heat of Sasuke's Lightning Release jutsu. Sasuke grumbled with disappointment and let his Sharingan scan the area before fixing exactly on the location of his opponent. The two men connected through stares as Sasuke wondered if his opponent was going to do something whereas Kurobachi kept convincing himself that there was no way his enemy could have seen through his Camouflage Jutsu.</p><p>"Hmph…" Sasuke's voice came in from behind Kurobachi who felt his body go numb in shock. At first, it was from the psychological shock of the enemy who was just looking him in the eyes fading away in a blink of an eye and speaking from behind him, next it was because a spread of senbon-size Lightning Release constructs digging into his back and dissolving into jolts of lightning upon contact with his body.</p><p>Sasuke turned around to scout the entire battlefield. Kabuto looked around him, trying to determine the location of his opponent while a barrage of bees swarmed him from random sides where the enemy was before quickly changing locations and using his Camouflage Jutsu again to disguise themselves. Jibachi was highly skilled in becoming transparent with the environment around him and then attacking the enemy from afar.</p><p>With swipes of his Chakra Scalpel technique, Kabuto cut the bees up to pieces with the precision that, even Sasuke had to admit, was notable. It was like with each swipe Kabuto's single slash spread like a parasite through each and every bee in the swarm and cut it a billion time into the dust-sized pieces. Had Kabuto's scalpel cut not one's chakra network in its current state and the person's physical self, Kabuto would be quite the deadly master of massacres.</p><p>"Do you need help finding the enemy?" Sasuke asked Kabuto. Some of the distaste for the boot-licking nerd in his voice translated into his demeaning suggestion but it wasn't like they felt any camaraderie with one another, to begin with, or enough hatred to make a move against one another. Sasuke was Orochimaru's boy-toy and because of that he was safe from Kabuto, Sasuke didn't consider Kabuto a threat to him or his goal of revenge in a hundred years so he'd waste not an ounce of effort on the four-eyed medical ninja too.</p><p>"My my, Sasuke-kun, you're all done? Well… I apologize for keeping you waiting. I'll make sure to wrap this up soon, no need for you to interfere and risk getting injured." Kabuto returned the shade in the sleaziest way possible, one that only he would have been capable of letting out.</p><p>Another swarm of bees rushed into Kabuto's location. Something was different about this one, Sasuke could pick the minute details up immediately with his ocular prowess but he wondered if Kabuto would. Each one of the bees in the swarm had a paper tag attached to their bottoms and intended to carry it to the enemy, this way the bee-user could have detonated hundreds of explosive tags right up in the opponent's face as defending oneself against such a swarm would have been impossible.</p><p>The bees all rushed in and detonated on Kabuto at once, filling the streets with resonating explosions of sufficient strength to send Sasuke for the rooftops. The Uchiha avenger looked around, seeing a familiar to him weapon shop collapse to rubble as the blast damaged its foundation and support constructions too bad. It was just one of a few casualties. The Sharingan then turned almost by itself to the twitching, blond mullet donning Jibachi who remained unconcealed for a longer period of time than usual after using a technique this time than before.</p><p>As Kabuto's sandals landed on the pole wire up and behind the frozen enemy, the reason behind Jibachi's freezing became self-evident. Miniature chakra threads ruptured Jibachi's body from within, sending the nerdy-looking Jibachi crashing down unconscious. What the bees managed to blow up collapsed into mushy dirt, revealing itself to be just a clone of sorts the Kabuto produced in the moments before detonation while he rushed for the enemy.</p><p>"Perhaps this intelligence will be of use to you one day, Sasuke-kun, but the enemy that uses concealment techniques has to leave concealment to attack you. That is when you may strike at them." Kabuto tilted his glasses, feeling oh so proud of his accomplishment.</p><p>"That was a nice bait with the clone. But it wouldn't work on my Sharingan…" Sasuke shrugged.</p><p>"Of course it wouldn't…" Kabuto smirked, staring back at Sasuke with eyes that might have been friendly encouragement as much as it was the last smirk one might have seen from a psycho that slashed their throat.</p><p>"Anyway, I was surprised you didn't kill him," Sasuke observed.</p><p>"Neither did you, I figured you still hadn't developed the stomach for that sort of thing, all the more reasons to let Orochimaru-sama guide you and not foster false ideas of spreading your own wings." Kabuto shrugged with a smug expression. What did he know? Did his mockery come from a place of knowledge, some sort of concrete evidence or intelligence he had or was he just assuming Sasuke never planned to surrender his body to Orochimaru willingly?</p><p>"I have merely found that disposing of somebody without killing them requires more skill. It's more challenging that way, that is all…" Sasuke closed his eyes, deciding to cut the time he let Kabuto feast his eyes on the Sharingan short.</p><p>"I see… Let us see if Orochimaru-sama is done entertaining himself…" Kabuto nodded at the direction where Orochimaru was taking on the enemy, the bodies of both Sasuke and Kabuto flickered as the two dashed the entire distance all at once only to witness Orochimaru seated on the tail-end of a massive boa constrictor while the reptile had its body wrapped around a slender frame of a young lady with shoulder-length brown hair and a purple kimono dress.</p><p>Judging from the slumped cheek of the girl that hung lifelessly over the boa's elongated body, most of the bones in her body have already been crushed into dust and the poor kunoichi had been passed out. Orochimaru tilted his eyes to gaze upon his team that rushed to his aid having concluded their own roles to play in this battle.</p><p>"Ah… Sasuke-kun, you're just here for the best part…" he chuckled.</p><p>Almost as if prompted by his master's words, the constrictor opened its mouth and swallowed the girl's body up to its neck whole, slowly introducing more and more of her crushed frame to its innards before the serpentine nightmare gobbled up her entire body in a matter of two or three minutes. Was this a show of force? Maybe a threat about the power Orochimaru had which would be focused on Sasuke in case he ever disobeyed or acted up? Did he know the same things Kabuto might have known?</p><p>"Sasuke-kun chose not to kill his enemy, neither did I, figured he might get upset…" Kabuto shrugged. Was he tattling on Sasuke? It wasn't like Kabuto was the least ratty-looking person around at any given time…</p><p>"Is that so? I see… Well… With snakes it is different, you either feed them or you become their food. I guess you could say you will feed them either way…" Orochimaru chuckled to himself from the cleverness of his own observation before getting a tad more serious and looking right at Sasuke. "You should remember that, Sasuke-kun, maybe I'll have you sign the contract one of these days…"</p><p>"More hunters are coming…" Kabuto turned to the side, his sensory abilities slightly surpassed Sasuke's Sharingan. While the Sharingan allowed one to see chakra in a way similar to how sensors perceived it, a sensor's range and effectiveness will always prevail over a Sharingan even though Kabuto was not a very prodigious sensor, to begin with.</p><p>"Yeah… Strong too…" Sasuke observed once the signature entered his range. Before Orochimaru could conclude licking his lips, a pair of a man and a woman in black cloaks with red clouds on them landed on a nearby building and gazed over the trio with a judgmental stare.</p><p>"So it was you three…" a man with orange hair and an obsession of facial accessories spoke. "I figured you three would be hunters, not participants…"</p><p>"It doesn't matter either way. You've betrayed the Akatsuki, Orochimaru, for that you and everything you are doing here deserves the punishment of God." The blue-haired woman with heavy make-up declared.</p><p>"My my…" Orochimaru's voice left his chest in a sultry tone that Sasuke had never heard before. Not even when the snake hermit spoke to him. "The leader of Akatsuki himself… How I've dreamed of a day I could crush you. Perhaps the power of this universe granted to participants would be just the equalizer I needed? What do you say, Sasuke-kun? Shall we entertain our hunter guests or do we move on?"</p><p>"Do not presume to speak of God as if he was a mere obstacle in your path!" the blue-haired woman yelled at Orochimaru, feeling offended by the dismissive manner in which she and her partner were spoken to.</p><p>"If your so-called God was so mighty, why would he need a cute angel to defend him so fiercely?" Kabuto mocked the pair further with a sly grin.</p><p>A metallic clang of Sasuke drawing the topmost part of the Kusanagi's edge from his hilt and opening his crimson eyes once more with a killer's expression on his face demanded the attention of everyone participating. Such was the commanding presence of an Uchiha, even in the face of a God.</p><p>"If he is the leader of Akatsuki, he will know where Itachi is. He must tell us that before we take him out." Sasuke demanded from the pair mentoring him. While he wasn't technically in any position with them to make such demands, it was because both Kabuto and Orochimaru knew how grumpy Sasuke got when matters turned to Itachi that they couldn't help but brush off this demand of his. If they'd be entering this battle, they'd be doing it all for their own reasons.</p><hr/><p>A handful of men, sharing their slender build with their master charged out from behind the white-haired man with the gleamy eyes. All of them looked like they had skin so silky smooth that it could have only been artificial while their entire bodies were as bandaged in straps of murky black as that of their master. It was as if he had summoned artificial clones of himself to attack self-proclaimed Madara Uchiha all at once.</p><p>Tobi stood around, letting the subordinates that appeared to have popped to their master's aid out of nowhere right from behind him assaulted him with barrages of punches and kicks that went right through Tobi's intangible body. Despite the puppets yielding no success in relentlessly attacking Tobi, they continued to do so nevertheless to the point where Tobi began feeling surprised by their limitless stamina. They may very well have pushed him to the limits of his intangibility if allowed to and if Tobi surfaced just for a moment to counter-attack, he'd become tangible once more.</p><p>"Mere puppets won't work against me, how foolish will you look when you'll eat dirt after those fancy words you've said to me." Tobi taunted the calm and collected white-haired man. As if doing so was a mere bother to him, the mysterious puppet-master lifted his palm up and his fingers made a squeezing impression.</p><p>A loud pop followed by a crack and shattering, wooden pieces hitting the ground followed. Tobi's Sharingan eye was wide open in shock that he was punched by one of the puppets but that was just a mere beginning of his troubles as the rush of the other puppets caught him unaware all at once when this mysterious visitor canceled out his intangibility.</p><p>"Alright, ya know!" Kushina shot her fist up in the air, cheering for one of the hunters who seemed to be engaging each other rather than doing their job. "You go, dreamy-looking stranger!"</p><p>"Dreamy-looking? Hey… Kushina, whose side are you on? We still need Madara Uchiha to give us Kotaro back…" Minato turned to Kushina, trying to tie his teammate back down to Earth after she seemingly floated off to the moon with her daydreaming.</p><p>"Huh? That's why I'm so glad that awesome, brilliant-eyed dude is kicking Madara's ass, ya know!" Kushina replied.</p><p>The ground underneath Tobi's feet rippled, swallowing the masked man who was now just a half-masked man down underground. The ground continued to ripple like water but it was no secret that the white-haired wonder managed to keep track of Tobi the entire distance of his mad dive toward him.</p><p>"Hiding Like a Mole Jutsu!" Tobi burst out from underground with an uppercut, his opponent just graciously leaned back to avoid Tobi's attack. Because he already knew that his opponent was intangible and would disappear underground again, he didn't bother counterattacking since interrupting Tobi's space-time ninjutsu required a bit more focus. "Who are you? How did you manage to cancel out my jutsu?" Tobi demanded to know after emerging atop of another residential building in the check-up station area.</p><p>"I've already told you. You're not even the real Madara Uchiha, who is but a pawn in somebody else's plans. You're even less than a pawn, what chance would the worthless efforts of a mere pawn of a pawn serve against someone outside the world you ninja know?" the white-haired man explained. "My name is Toneri Ootsutsuki, I am a resident of the Moon and a descendant of Hamura Ootsutsuki. I suppose neither of these names would mean much to you though. I speak of names and matters beyond your measly knowledge."</p><p>"Hmph… What nonsense…" Tobi dismissed everything he had heard from Toneri outright. "Your ability to interfere with my space-time ninjutsu does intrigue me, however. So much so that I could not mind working alongside you for a time while I find you useful."</p><p>"Hmmm… That does not sound very friendly… I am, after all, looking for friends and comrades so that I could live for my own sake." Toneri's lips shifted about, trying to examine the taste that Tobi's declaration left in his mouth.</p><p>"You do seem quite well informed as well. I would find you a useful comrade, I suppose. You said you lived on the Moon? My ambitions also involve the Moon, you see." Tobi said.</p><p>"Oh? How so?" Toneri wondered.</p><p>"I intend to reflect the world's mightiest illusion off of its surface to put the entire world to an Infinite Tsukuyomi!" Tobi spread his hands out as wide as his illusions of grandeur were.</p><p>"So you intend to use the barren surface of the home of my clan as your own personal projector? That hardly sounds fair to me…" Toneri sighed.</p><p>"Think about it, you said you were looking for friends and comrades, you'd have all the friends and comrades you would want when they are all under the Infinite Tsukuyomi," Tobi explained.</p><p>"Don't get fooled by that guy, he's just gonna use you 'cause yer strong, ya know!" Kushina yelled at Toneri.</p><p>"Yes, it does seem so…" Toneri agreed with Kushina's assessment. "While my father told me in his death bed to make friends and comrades, to abandon my clan's creed and live my life to my fullest as the last survivor, I cannot stand by and watch humanity use the skies as a weapon for their own enslavement. Somewhere along the way, humanity has lost its path and you are in need of a course-correction. I see that now but… I've been blind for far too long, I've neglected you for far too long. The disease has spread too wide and if humanity is to be fixed, it needs to be wiped clean."</p><p>"Hmph… As a part of humanity you mean to reset and someone who intends to bring eternal happiness to humanity with my Infinite Tsukuyomi where everybody's dreams and ambitions come true, this time it is I who cannot allow you to wipe us out!" Tobi declared. "What about you, Minato-sensei? Do you intend to stand and watch humanity be wiped out and restored? Even if it isn't the humanity of your own universe, can you, as the legendary hero and the future Fourth Hokage stand for it?"</p><p>"No, I too have heard enough." Minato pulled out his kunai and took the side of the mysterious masked man. "However, you have taken my comrade away, please give him back to me."</p><p>The space in front of Tobi and Minato swirled in a wild vortex before the void spat out a humanoid shape of Kotaro, the teammate of Minato and Kushina.</p><p>"Very well but he would have been safer in my dimension though…" Tobi replied. Kotaro bounced up on his feet and began working his way through hand seals before Minato calmed him down.</p><p>"This time the masked man is on our side. At least until we defeat Toneri up there." Minato pointed at the white-haired man from the Moon. "He's from the Moon and he intends to wipe the humanity out so he can restore it."</p><p>"Okay…" Kotaro gulped and shrugged. While it was the weirdest thing he had heard about in a while, he was clashing against this divine presence while inside some alien cube from a different dimension of nearly infinite space and bendable time alongside ninja all across the multiple universes inside the infinite Omniverse. In the broader context of things, people from the Moon was a much easier pill to swallow.</p><p>"What about you, girl? While your bothersome red hair betrays a lack of noble heritage, I can always replace your bland eyes with the majestic Byakugan and we may repopulate the world once humanity is wiped…" Toneri wondered looking at Kushina who had not yet taken a side.</p><p>With a confident strut, Kushina walked up to Minato, Tobi, and Kotaro and took their side. "You're seriously eerie and I love no man who disrespects my hair and calls my eyes bland. My love is reserved to men that compliment my hair and don't intend to get all creepy, ya know!"</p><p>"Very well then… This place must have plenty of living Hyuuga to realize my plan. It will in fact even be easier this way." Toneri declared, despite his façade remaining unchanged, something about his expression turned stricter and more bitter as if Kushina choosing extinction over kinship with him pierced a poisoned bolt through his heart and let its rot seep through his circulation.</p>
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<a name="section0627"><h2>627. Replacement</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I don't understand why these people would protect Sasuke Uchiha but… Make them talk." The freaky baldy littered with Sharingan eyes turned to his sons who covered the rooftops of the Uchiha district like a small army.</p><p>The kids all moved their hands to the side as if waiting for something to happen. Kiyomi's ear tingled, she thought she heard something so she turned her eyes at the side for a moment. The metallic clangs turned louder and louder while traditional weaponry located inside the Uchiha district and donning the walls of every museum and every house of this clan bred and polished in conflict found a new owner in the shape of a pale child with spiky, streamlined, white hair.</p><p>"Hey hey… These are some wicked odds…" Meiko smirked while reaching for her forearm at about the same time as the weapons found their wielders amongst the children of the freaky Uchiha man. "I was looking for a chance to use this…"</p><p>"A new jutsu perhaps?" Kiyomi looked to her friend with a mumble that only the three of Team Hokage who were standing back to back could pick up on.</p><p>"Nope, just a level-up of an old one. I call it Chakra Coating: Level Two." Meiko replied while blazing-orange chakra coating covered her short sword, however, where the steel ended in length, the coating did not. The coating exceeded the limitations of the weapon it coated in both length and width, creating a far larger weapon that merely used the irrelevant blade as a channeling device.</p><p>"That's kind of like Asuma's jutsu, you know…" Naruto observed. The young man allowed a moment of awe for his friend's accomplishments to replace the utter distaste for the faux Uchiha and his sons in front of him who wished harm upon his best friend.</p><p>"At this point, why even use a sword at all?" Kawaki pouted his lips and raised an eyebrow, trying to appear unimpressed as, judging from his expression, he only saw Meiko's selected method of fighting as showing off.</p><p>"Nah, I need it for channeling, plus, I never was the best with the technical side of molding chakra so if I don't stay on focus, the light show will end pretty quick," Meiko replied before swinging her blazing sword around and entering a high fighting stance by raising her sword overhead.</p><p>"Hmph… You choose to confront me with swords and pipes? That will prove to be your undoing…" the abominable man declared. As he closed his eyes, the scarred tissue covering his face where the numerous Sharingan were transplanted stretched out to where it looked like it had to have caused him pain. The nastiest feature of the man by far was the botched Sharingan transplant on his right eye, where the tissue was already dead but the transplant was completed afterward regardless, leaving the man with a numbed and half-responsive left side of his face.</p><p>The sons took off, covering the sky and making the ground beneath them dimmer as if they brought the evening itself with them. The red sun no longer reached the ground after their ascension but given how their flight was temporary, soon once again breached through the black, just like streaks of blood from a wound would have.</p><p>It was not an entirely inapt comparison, the army of sons laid an onslaught on the Team Hokage. Kiyomi took a dash backward to avoid the downward thrust of a katana-wielding brat. With this clash not being her first day on the battlefield, she immediately vaulted backward again with a flip that left the heavy swing of a tekkan miss her too. A blow that might have shaken her spine had it connected for tekkan was a heavy weapon meant to crush through one's armor, designed to excel in an era where ninja still donned heavy armor since they spent most of their time in active battlefields and breathers of peace were as special of an occurrence as war was these days.</p><p>A gust of wind sent Kiyomi flying the same direction she parried the attack of one enemy as a gunbai-wielding son of the mysterious Uchiha swung his fan from a further range. Feeling the uncomfortable grazing of the paved in cobblestone streets that tore her clothes and left irksome irritations over her skin, Kiyomi completed her odd journey with a backward roll and stood on her knees with a pair of kunai in her hands. It was safe to say these chumps won't give her any time whatsoever so it was better if she played their own game until their overwhelming, country-taking numbers were reduced.</p><p>A myriad of annoying pops came from Naruto's direction as the future Hokage confronted the numbers of the enemy with ones of his own. If the enemy chose to come at him with multiple versions of the same opponent, Naruto would confront him as multiple versions of himself too. Yet there was something unnatural about Naruto and his moves. Just a brief glance at his crimson, glowing and feral eyes would have told the story of the rage that burned within the young man's heart.</p><p>The manner in which Naruto swung, kicked and rampaged across the battlefield, appeared almost primal and brutal in a way. It was nothing like when Naruto lost control but something demonic and something quite dangerous fueled the emotions behind each strike forcing Naruto to main, cripple and decimate his opponents with unseen ferocity and primal efficiency. At one point Kiyomi could have sworn she saw Naruto throw groups of his opponents away with a mere roar as if they got ragdolled by the soundwaves of his yell.</p><p>Meiko had little to no trouble sustaining swordfights and ending them with any of her opponents. Her new and improved chakra-coated sword bust right through the weapons of the enemies, be they gunsen, tessen, kama or kusarigama. At one point Meiko just went wild and her sword began sending long-range projectiles where her blade had swung as if they were shockwaves of pure chakra left over from ill-controlled swings of the sword. Kiyomi didn't even want to know how Meiko discovered she could do that or how much she had to work to repair whatever it was she totaled with one of those projectile slashes.</p><p>One eye on Kiyomi's side always stayed fixated on Kawaki. Only half of the reason being the fact that the boy was a hunter when they first met him, the other half being the fact that he wasn't an actual ninja, by his own admission, and therefore his scuffling contained mostly just swinging his pipe around and throwing punches and kicks like some delinquent. Surprisingly enough, that fighting style proved quite effective as Kawaki, through unnatural methods, managed to wreak all sorts of havoc through the massive group of albino Uchiha boys.</p><p>Be it stomping their feet with remorseless, nothing held back savagery, simply beatdowns, shoulder-tackles or slams against the ground by pulling the enemy down by their lower jaw, Kawaki was delivering his best three 'o clock school square beatdown and as long as not a hair fell off of his head, Kiyomi decided to worry about her own significantly poorer performance than those of either of her peers.</p><p>"As I've said, a pointless struggle…" the man extended his hand as if demanding the universe he was in to provide him with a weapon and, surprisingly enough, it did – Meiko's own two-edged short sword left her hand, making the chakra-coating around it dissipate like snuffed out flames while the fingers of the ringleader of this clone army wrapped around its hilt and toyed around with it.</p><p>"Hey! Not fair!" Meiko grunted before being body piled by clones while more of them took their place over their own kind and pointed whatever they could stab with downward, where Meiko was, right underneath layers upon layers of their own siblings.</p><p>"Fair and unfair are just excuses the weak use to justify their defeat to the strong." The scarred Uchiha declared with triumphant glee in his eyes. It was self-evident that he was practicing his speeches in front of one of these clone boys for a while and just looking for an occasion to put his public manifesto stating skills to test. "In war, there is no fairness or unfairness, there is only life or death. If you're strong you live, if you're weak - you die. Human beings can become strong only through evolution and they only evolve through struggle, through battle. That is why the Akatsuki had it all figured out and why what Sasuke Uchiha did by killing Uchiha Itachi is unforgivable."</p><p>The clones wielding spears and naginata thrust their blades through their own kin, just to skewer Meiko underneath. Kiyomi desperately tried to weave some hand seals, ninjutsu was the only way to clean up around her and get to Meiko. She was right underneath, what if one of those bastards hit her? What if one of them got lucky, what if…</p><p>Everything turned purple, Kiyomi tried shutting her breathing off but she felt a burning tingle down her airways all the way from her throat to her chest. It was like she breathed in the fire that didn't just burn her, the pain it spread felt artificial, chemical. An urge to give into it and go to sleep began shrugging all the other thoughts away, that way Kiyomi would have died for certain but that would have been fine because that burning feeling in her lungs would have gone away.</p><p>With a curious stare at the cloud of smoke he had just puffed from his battle pipe, a clone stared with those infernal, dotted, red eyes of his into the haze before a kunai flew its way and disappeared into a whirling rift in space that sent it away somewhere else. With another kunai still clutched in her hand, coughing up that blasted substance that still caused her pain and weariness as if coursed through her body, Kiyomi charged out from the poisonous smoke and took wild slashes at the clones standing between her and Meiko.</p><p>"What's wrong with those albino-freaks? They're stabbing through their own folks!" Kawaki grumbled while doing the same, pushing through walls of clones unarmed, through stout headbutts, punches, and kicks that the worrisome and unwavering numbers of clones took head-on, thinking they surely could overpower a mere human, but then fell on their backs without a hint of consciousness once something inside Kawaki's noggin proved to be made of sturdier stuff than the clones could have handled to take. "Aren't they like brothers or something? Aren't those Uchiha shits supposed to be all rare and elite-like?"</p><p>"Silly boy," the leader of the albino clone army chuckled. "That's what defines an elite. Ultimate power. That's what power is – the ability to defeat any opponent and if you must sacrifice someone or something for that goal, that's just the cost of that power. Those you sacrifice weren't strong enough, otherwise, they wouldn't have let you sacrifice them and you, the weaker one, would have ended up on the altar. Sasuke Uchiha might have been scum but he understood it, he attacked and killed his own brother too. It's only natural for Uchiha to behave this way."</p><p>The clones over the dead body pile over Meiko began stabbing, again and again, looking to skewer Meiko and get her even if they didn't get her before. Something snapped in Kiyomi, each and every stab was just another roll of the dice and one of the walls of the dice had the paled out, dead expression of the young woman she considered special. The Yamanaka heiress squished the flash bomb in her hand out of rage, letting out a burst of light that blinded the Uchiha clones around her. Interrupted them just long enough for one jutsu to flip the table and get to Meiko.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi chanted out, blasting the enemies out of her way and sending the crazed kids atop of the pile of their own dead siblings flying off of the body pile and leaving Meiko alone. Before long, Meiko's hand emerged from underneath the pile and wriggled through the crawlspace in between the enemies, using just a speck of augmented strength to kick some bothersome stiffs aside where her natural strength wasn't cutting it.</p><p>"Shit… You're okay… You're okay!" Kiyomi ran up to Meiko and helped her comrade pull herself up and whip herself back into shape. "Why didn't you get back up sooner? I thought…" even Kiyomi herself could feel her voice tremble.</p><p>"Don't sweat it, those guys are just suicidal… This is nothing…" Meiko waved her hand before looking at her bloodied gauntlet. "He can rip weapons out of our grasp though, that jutsu's a real drag… I like my weapons."</p><p>"I said…" a low-pitched voice slashed through the relative silence that took over Kiyomi's artificial gale of wind. The whole handful of the Team Hokage directed their stares at Naruto who, surrounded by his clones, hung over the head of the enemy with a Great Ball Rasengan in his hand, ready to settle this conflict with the would-be Sasuke's killer in one attack. "Don't talk that way about Sasuke!" he roared out before all of his clones helped guide the supersized version of his signature jutsu to the enemy's position.</p><p>A sphere of azure blue encompassed the traditional building, razing it all to just shreds and bits of wood and surrounding it with a localized typhoon that reduced it to rubble, reducing the entire roof to just busted wooden frame, surrounded by the dislodged and scattered tiles that covered it before the devastation took place. Naruto landed beside the battered and beaten Uchiha ringleader and grabbed him by his torn up clothes. With the previously furled up rage now giving way to his normal, cerulean eyes, Naruto pulled the upper body of the enemy in for a punch to the face.</p><p>"Attack him…" the man grunted in pain, spitting up blood by the mouthfuls due to extensive internal organ damage that Naruto's massive Rasengan left him with. "What are… You waiting for…?" he addressed his clones.</p><p>"He has beaten you. He is strong, you are weak." One of the clones spoke up, the row behind him followed with the same words, soon this declaration found its way to the mouths of every clone like a devilish mantra. Nevertheless, it was a declaration of Team Hokage's victory.</p><p>The man coughed up again, this time lacking the strength in his lungs to throw his blood anywhere near Naruto, only managing to spit up like a baby spat up food and further mess his own appearance up.</p><p>"Hmph… Despite being covered with all those Sharingan, he really does look pathetic, doesn't he?" Kiyomi breathed out a sigh of relief, it was also a breath of desperation as she wasn't entirely sure if the clones would just play nice now that their ringleader was all broken.</p><p>"Re-Retreat… We… We must operate… At once…" the man declared as a vortex of bending space-time appeared behind him, picking him up and dragging him out of Naruto's hands but it faded away as soon as it had appeared. "Wh-What's the… Meaning of this? Why… Would you cancel my technique?" the freaky Uchiha looked at the creepy, wide-eyed stare of his albino sons.</p><p>"You are old and weak. An inferior version. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice one of us younger and stronger, more complete versions for you." The most rebellious clone in the middle declared. "Nor does it make any sense to continue cloning us in your image, father. You are outdated. This fight was proof that we do not become stronger from following your genetic make-up. The next batch of clones will be based on us."</p><p>"Wh…What are you…" the man wriggled in pain. He grunted when Naruto let him slip out from his grasp and slam against the ground in the entirety of his battered and broken image. "How dare you betray me? Your… Progenitor… You are just back-ups… You hear me? Containers of my organs, my genes... My cells! My organs! This… This won't end like this… The world… Cannot forget… Uchiha Shin… Like… This…"</p><p>Naruto looked up in surprise after seeing all of Uchiha Shin's Sharingan close at once. Every single eye on the man's body rolled up and whited out. The clones that still littered the battlefield and undoubtedly were still a problem began looking down as if staring at their own bodies in disgust and panic. One by one they all pulled their weapons and thrust them down to their own chests, stabbing over and over and over again until they collapsed and colored the Uchiha district streets red with their artificial blood.</p><p>"Die! Sasuke… Uchiha… Die!" the clone muttered until their dying breaths, cursing that which they saw appear from their bodies, festering like a tumor due to an illusion cast by a figure that had not yet made itself known, not until a murder of crows flocked together, revealing the upper half of a man with short, black hair and a worn-out face that looked aged beyond its early years. A pair of Mangekyou Sharingan eyes that oversaw the battlefield at first now pointed their attention straight at Naruto.</p><p>"You… You killed them, you know!" Naruto threw his hand back, in objection to the actions of Itachi Uchiha.</p><p>"Technically they killed themselves. Though is it really that difficult to believe I, of all people, would do such a thing? One who has slain his entire clan just to test the extent of his abilities?" Itachi closed his eyes, his Mangekyou Sharingan had reverted back to the ordinary Sharingan after his field-wide Ephemeral had concluded.</p><p>"This guy's the real deal, I've seen enough of those eyes to tell an Uchiha from a genetic experiment." Kiyomi declared.</p><p>"Yeah… This is Itachi Uchiha. Sasuke's brother. It's because of him that Sasuke's this way." Naruto clenched his hands into fists, preparing himself for a battle with yet another opponent, it appeared as if though Team Hokage's troubles scaled up in severity with each passing encounter.</p><p>"I wanted to meet you, Uzumaki Naruto, but before we did talk, that misguided and dangerous fake had to disappear." Itachi excused his own actions before directing his attention all to Naruto again. "Don't confuse the fake blood of these clones for tears that won't be shed over their deaths. People that chase after somebody else's glory in bottomless delusion are never someone anyone cares about or remembers after it's all said and done."</p>
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<a name="section0628"><h2>628. Pain Or No Pain, That Is The Question</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A confident and twisted smirk colored Orochimaru's cheeks before his jaw snapped open to an unnatural degree, letting a giant boa slither out from his insides through his throat and take off toward Pain and his angel. Pain covered up his body before the tackling snake sent him flying back a fair distance, Sasuke wondered if this was the extent of Orochimaru's plan of attack, it seemed sort of too straightforward to attack an opponent of such caliber with something so direct and simple.</p><p>The slithering boa opened its mouth, a soft pillow of soaked flesh erupted from its mouth and the wet membrane covering it tore, revealing an identical smirk to that of the twisted snake master that spawned this boa, to begin with. The Orochimaru that hunched over with the giant boa slithering out of his mouth began crumbling and his body turned to a hollow husk and crumbled away into something resembling a dried out sack while the new Orochimaru, reborn from the mouth of the snake he had called for, stabbed at Pain with his Kusanagi.</p><p>Pain's wrists locked around Orochimaru's, then moved on to slam at Orochimaru's wrists, the Sennin hissed in pain when he realized that a black rod ended up lodged in both of his sword-wielding hands while his Kusanagi fell down and stayed behind, while the boa on which the two duked out continued to slither and thrash about, trying to shake Pain off its nostril and devour him whole.</p><p>"I can't even call my Kusanagi anymore…" Orochimaru smirked. "What a curious technique you have there, Pain…"</p><p>"Your attempt to lure out my gravitational technique early was as toothless as you, begone now… Universal Push!" Pain declared while extending his palm with a black rod still sticking out from his sleeve. Sasuke winced when a flare of chakra lit up around Pain where in the material world his technique manifested more as a mere disturbance of the air around him, a bubble of a transparent shockwave, more than powerful enough to throw Orochimaru off his feet and send him crashing through the Konoha streets down below.</p><p>Pain hopped gently atop of the giant boa and then thrust his wrist into the snake's forehead, a massive black rod pinned the snake to the ground and forced it to disappear in a puff of smoke while the self-proclaimed God himself walked out from what the snake left behind, his Rinnegan focused on Orochimaru's lifeless body.</p><p>"Orochimaru-sama!" Kabuto called out for his master as he approached Orochimaru and pulled the black rod out of his wrists. He had counted on Orochimaru to reincarnate through his mouth immediately via his experimental immortality technique and adopt a new body, as he had done earlier, but given how he did no such thing, the four-eyed rogue realized that Pain's technique was blocking that impulse from being realized.</p><p>"What a troublesome ability…" Orochimaru wiped something vile and swampy dripping from his lip as he sat and stood up.</p><p>"So you also dabble in disrupting the opponent's chakra flow?" Kabuto stood in front of his recovering master and lit up chakra scalpels over his hands in the shapes of intense, knife-shaped flares of chakra-shade light blue.</p><p>"Do not presume to be someone who might speak to God!" the blue-haired woman in an Akatsuki cloak pointed at Kabuto. The woman raised her hand as if uttering a command for hundreds of paper tags to swarm and ride a violet gale below to reach their target. Kabuto sliced and let out a piercing crescent projectile of chakra that cut through the oncoming swarm of paper tags but no matter how many more times he repeated the combo, the papers encased him into an origami prison nevertheless.</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire!" a chant came from Sasuke's direction, Konan turned for the source of immense heat, surging at her in the form of large, dragon-head-shaped fireballs. A cascade of blasts resonated through the area, Konan stumbled out from the blast zone, burning up to a crisp, one paper that comprised her origami clone at a time before too many of her tags burnt up for the duplicate to retain its cohesion, leaving the woman's image just as a pile of detached, smoldering paper tags.</p><p>Sasuke turned his Sharingan to Kabuto. He very much would have preferred to step into Orochimaru's aid in confronting the Akatsuki leader rather than playing around with his second-in-command. Who knew if she even had the information he needed and it always seemed like a job better suited for Kabuto anyway. Still, given how the woman encased Kabuto in her origami prison, it couldn't have been helped, he'd have to play nanny until the medical ninja got himself out of the predicament.</p><p>It was a deceitful technique, one's first instance would have been to attack those notes, light them up with fire that has already proven to be very effective against the paper-using kunoichi, however, one glance with Sasuke's Sharingan betrayed the fact that this was exactly what Konan waited for – those tags would have ignited the moment that Sasuke touched them, using his own chakra to reveal the concealed explosive seals on each tag and light them up with the smallest of contacts. Kabuto would need to figure something out on his own…</p><p>"I'll give you one chance, where's Itachi?" Sasuke spoke to thin air, it seemed, but his instincts, assisted by the chakra-scanning abilities of the Sharingan proved to be correct – Konan soon reformed from airborne and chaotic paper tags sticking together in a more cohesive formation.</p><p>"Itachi is a man of his own. The Akatsuki is not on any sort of mission here, we are merely participating in this competition for the power this universe offers. Each member goes and does as they please at the moment." Konan replied.</p><p>"I see, so you are useless to me." Sasuke sighed. "You can leave, I don't care about you."</p><p>"Oh? You'll let us leave just like that?" Konan spoke to Sasuke in a mocking tone, as if berating the young man's assumption that he's in any kind of control here.</p><p>"Not your partner. His eyes are interesting, what are they?" Sasuke wondered.</p><p>"Are you sure you wish to know? It is important information for the Akatsuki and anyone from the outside who comes to learn that information is taken out." Konan wondered, she found the confidence of this young man almost a bit cute. She knew an energetic young man once who spoke to legendary ninja with almost the same amount of defiance to their authority and awesome power and while Sasuke looked nothing like that man, he embodied all that Yahiko wished the next generation of ninja to have.</p><p>"I asked you, I do not intend to ask again…" Sasuke drew his own Sword of Kusanagi and held it in a high hold, blade pressed to his forearm and extending past it downward.</p><p>"Struggle onward, young man, but know that you struggle against the will of God now." Konan swiped with her right hand to the side as a pair of wings comprised entirely out of paper notes spread from her back and fluttered a pair of times. Massive enough to cause considerable gusts of wind as they moved or let the woman sustain flight, comprised of so many notes imbued with chakra to be of some worry. "The Dance of Shikigami…" the woman chanted.</p><p>Orochimaru laughed out loud, straightening his flexible body in front of Pain. Pain stood and observed his opponent with an unamused expression. The snake master raised his hand up and flicked his wrist, a metallic howl of steel rushing through the air whistled up above as the Kusanagi swung through the air, Pain crossed his hands, planning to use his concealed black rods again to block the attack of Orochimaru's telekinetically controlled legendary sword.</p><p>The black rods shattered to chunks and crumbled out from Pain's sleeves in the shape of black shards while Kusanagi stabbed through Pain's forearms, spraying a decent chunk of darkened blood that acted goopier than Orochimaru was used seeing blood function. The Sennin signaled with his hands once more, pulling the Kusanagi out and letting more blood goop the ground while he commanded his sword to attack again and again. Pain leaped and danced around the sword, evading its extremely penetrative capabilities and eluding his own peril. His injured arms slumped down but not a couple of moments later appeared to move as if they had not just had a tip of a sword forced through them clean.</p><p>"Just what are you, Pain?" Orochimaru wondered aloud with a spark of excitement in his voice. He had seen enough from the Akatsuki's leader to intrigue him and far more than he had ever seen from the man.</p><p>"I am God, I am love, I am sacrifice, I am despair, I am hatred, I am death… Most importantly of all…" Pain raised his arm up, Orochimaru had seen this motion before but he couldn't understand why Pain would use his propulsion technique from so far away. "I am Pain… Universal Pull!" Pain declared as Orochimaru felt a tyrannical kick to his shins that forced even his inhuman legs to give way to Pain's power and will to pull him in.</p><p>Orochimaru opened his mouth and drove his head back with enough strength behind the notion and an awkward enough angle to outright snap the neck of any more conventional man outright. Another fleshy bud slipped out from Orochimaru's body and shot out into the air. While Orochimaru was not the slug-using Sennin, his reincarnated, body-shedding appearance each time he was reborn and still inside the fleshy membrane reminded very much of a slug and at no time was this more apparent than when the newly born body writhed on the ground for a quiet place to shed out of its membrane.</p><p>The body that Orochimaru slid out of ended up in Pain's hands and slammed to the ground with dozens of black chakra transmitting rods sticking out of its chest. This would have been Orochimaru had he not realized what was coming and didn't switch out bodies as fast as he could.</p><p>"Heh heh heh…" Orochimaru couldn't help but chuckle when confronted by the pair of silver eyes with pronounced black rings decorating their irises. "This pair of eyes is most intriguing. These abilities are a complete mystery to me, despite devoting my entire life to studying ninjutsu." The snake master licked his lips with an unnaturally long and pointy tongue for a man. "I must have them…"</p><p>"Killing God would a hollow victory." Pain observed while his heavy hands slumped to his sides. The gravitational techniques he used did appear to put up a decent strain and Orochimaru wondered how come there was such a delay behind each use of his techniques. He also appeared to be using his pushing and pulling jutsu interchangeably, as if he could not defend himself actively with just one of either of these jutsu.</p><p>"Killing? Who would do something as boring and wasteful as that?" Orochimaru pushed air through his small nose in amusement. "If I could, I would much rather feast on God's flesh and learn his secrets. It is selfish, after all, for God to keep all of his magnificence all to himself while his subjects die and suffer every day, spreading grief and torment like a plague to those that stay to succeed them."</p><p>"That is why you are a mere man, incapable of understanding God's plan. Suffering, pain, and loss are all necessary experiences. They are all vital parts of the circle, understanding suffering makes us whole, not even knowledge comes without hurt, growth cannot come without a slump, nothing is gained without losing something first. To wish to exterminate loss and pain, to live forever, is to strive to stay unchanged, static and frozen in the same state of being, learning nothing new." Pain replied, dismissing Orochimaru's ambitions and his goals at once. "It is because of that vanity that even if you stared at God's bare body laid out before you, you'd see nothing."</p><p>"A man calling himself God speaks to me about vanity…" Orochimaru hissed with a cruel smile before commanding his sword to attack Pain again. It has managed to draw blood from this God before, meaning it had a fair chance of striking a killing blow as well and from this long-distance, Orochimaru had a fair chance to attack Pain without falling victim to his gravitational techniques. If Orochimaru's theories and observations were true – Pain would be unable to use his pulling jutsu for a few moments longer.</p><p>Pain moved from the blade's path but avoiding a telekinetic sword was different from defending against a swordsman, despite a seemingly unnatural awareness of the sword's trajectory, its slashes and thrusts even when the sword was moving at the self-proclaimed God from behind him, Pain leaned under and vaulted over the sword. All that Orochimaru managed to land was a graze on Pain's shoulder, tearing some of his cloak off and spilling some more darkened goop onto the Konohagakure streets.</p><p>"Those rods… They're all over his own body, how is that possible? How can he cast techniques with those in his body? Unless… That's it…" Orochimaru's eyes widened as a mere observation of the rods sticking out through the exposed half of Pain's upper body tipped him off to the true ability of the so-called God. The Sennin's reptilian eyes began racing across the battlefield as all of a sudden he began fearing being cornered. All around him he saw and heard enemies now that the true nature of Pain's ability became clearer to him.</p><p>Pain was transmitting his own chakra through those rods. That was why Orochimaru could not use his body-shedding technique when those rods were sticking out from his hands. The unnatural biology, resistance to pain and supernatural awareness of the battlefield, almost as if Pain was truly observing the battle from heavens themselves, no… What was the pain of sticking one's own body with rods that transmit your own chakra? None. He was operating bodies of other people, channeling his own will through them, that was Pain. The real Pain.</p><p>And the question of the day burning hot in Orochimaru's mind was if the avatar of Pain in front of him was the only one there was. There was nothing to limit Pain's ability to just one body, after all, part of his fighting style involved stabbing the enemy with those rods so, at that point, Pain's chakra was coursing through at least two people, meaning that controlling multiple bodies was very much possible for him. And, if it was possible, why would he not be doing it? He must have been…</p><p>It wasn't like war and conflict did not produce enough bodies for Pain to take over. The question now remained how many bodies could Pain have used at the most and how did his control begin? What if Pain could take over Orochimaru's own body somehow, make him into one of his avatars? It truly would be a cruel stroke of irony to see one adopting other people's bodies as vessels become an avatar to Pain himself…</p><p>"What's the matter? It is not like you to hesitate to wrap your body around that which you consider prey and snuffing it out…" Pain inquired while he didn't even attempt to conceal the chakra rods sticking out of his body.</p><p>"Oh, I believe I've just received a peek into the "God's plan", and my frown is a distaste of how troublesome it is. It is my responsibility as a scientist to correct it to a more favorable direction, I am afraid." Orochimaru smirked and placed his head onto the ground, writhing with his entire body as if he meant to bow before his God but Pain knew better and so he stayed on his guard.</p><p>"Sword Snake Horde!" Orochimaru spoke with a hint of something heavy pressing against his airways, something that burst forth in the shape of a horde of reptilian slitherers, that spread out far and wide in a triangular, rising wave shape while producing swords from their own mouths.</p><p>Pain kept his eyes fixed onto Orochimaru even as the horde of snakes around him surrounded him in a wild whirlpool of reptiles and threatened to not leave anything unskewered as they prepared to crash like a tsunami wave teeming with creepy-slithery life. Pain's body took off the ground, rising in a controlled pace of flight while the sea of snakes devoured the ground underneath his feet. A shining bubble of air surrounded pain, powerful enough for the snakes coming at him to crash plant their fronts with nothing gained.</p><p>"You live because of pain, you keep swimming, floating on the surface of your pain, afraid to dive under and truly know it, that is why your pain rises and threatens to spill over to where you can no longer remain afloat. To where your pain will drown you out. To save yourself, you must know pain. I am a merciful God that is why I am willing to save you myself. Know pain, Universal Push!" Pain said as the transparent bubble of repulsive air around him began expanding rapidly, crushing and tearing every single one of the snakes apart into shreds and strings of dead flesh.</p><p>Orochimaru tried to rise on his feet fast enough to escape the expanding range of Pain's technique. A dominating pressure from up above slamming him ever stronger into the ground demanded that he stayed down, however. Soon enough everything went white, complete silence robbed Orochimaru of all the exciting things in life and even if just for a moment, the blades of the windmill weren't turning. It didn't take long for the pain, the gentle fall of rubble and settlement of all that Pain had destroyed in his attempt to teach Orochimaru pain and "save him" to return.</p><p>"Not rushing to reincarnate? It is truly ironic that one time you are born anew you do not choose to leave your old body behind and take a new one, then again, perhaps you wish to savor the pain I offered you and remain in your hurt body? If that is the case, I am glad you've chosen to learn your lesson." Pain spoke to Orochimaru's sprawled out and broken body that laid in the ground and broken street, surrounded by totaled building block of rubble. If Pain wanted to, he could have expanded his push much further than just a block, but, for one reason, or another, he chose to issue a very specific amount of pain just now.</p><p>Orochimaru's legs stood up before his entire body, up to their knees they took an upright position before his entire body swung back into action and rose after his legs, completing his return to form. It was now that Pain had overextended himself and his will of God that Orochimaru had a couple of brief moments to deal with him, then, with however many more the leader of Akatsuki still had in reserve.</p><p>A man's measly resistance against God went on…</p>
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<a name="section0629"><h2>629. The Negation Game</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A fungal crawl of white began moving up Tobi's body like branching out veins that all connected into singular tissue and moved on to cover the entire body of the masked ninja. Once the fungal mass ran out of the body to wrap up in its soft, fleshy armor, it began spreading up like a venus flytrap. The trap then slammed shut, leaving a few spaces for Tobi's Sharingan to gleam through.</p><p>"What an interesting technique… What is this creature you've coated yourself with?" Toneri wondered, so far, the appearance of the White Zetsu armor and its merger with Tobi's body was the only thing that the inhabitant of the Moon found to be of any interest.</p><p>"What did you expect me to do after counteracting my space-time ninjutsu?" Tobi replied. "I guess that makes two of us…" he turned to Minato.</p><p>"I don't need space-time ninjutsu to be the fastest ninja of my generation, just try and keep up." Minato turned back to Tobi before giving Kushina and Kotaro a warm look. The three nodded in unison and Minato took off in a flicker.</p><p>Two arms locked around Minato's hand with his kunai just inches away from stabbing into Toneri's unnatural, star-like eyes. A pair of puppets dressed in black and covering the entirety of their bodies, just like Toneri first appeared like halted him mid-way and threw a synchronized palm strike with both of their free hands. Instead of hitting the boy's ribcage, the puppets hit thin air when Tobi's space-time technique transported Minato from harm's way.</p><p>"You two were just going to stand there and watch your leader get killed? Shame… You lucked out the enemy didn't read me trying to transport Minato away that time and try countering…" Tobi teased his temporary allies.</p><p>"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" Kotaro chanted out, unleashing a hail of fiery flares at the enemy, rushing at him like falling petals of a crushed flower. One of Toneri's puppets shielded the puppeteer by stepping in front of him with a wide, almost suicidal guard which was just the radical measure needed to block the oncoming Fire Release technique.</p><p>"What a troublesome guy, ya know." Kushina bit her lip. "I've never seen a puppeteer that doesn't even move his hands to control his puppets."</p><p>"That is curious, yes, however, just about everything about this enemy is unorthodox. That is why the circumstances forced me to team up with you lot in the first place…" Tobi observed.</p><p>"It's your cue, weirdo!" Kushina looked to Tobi who just shrugged.</p><p>The space directly above Toneri swirled, leaving a rift in thin air through which Minato plummeted with a kunai in his right hand, determined to continue the assault he initiated earlier. This time, Kushina smacked her palms together and sent her ethereal chakra chains bursting from the ground and rushing at the enemy as well.</p><p>"Such elementary tactics…" Toneri was ready to yawn as he avoided the rush of the golden-gleaming chains with mere leans and subtle steps while his puppets fended the assaults off for him. Minato slashed at Toneri, his slashing hand stopped in mid-air when a puppet caught it in mid-air again but this time Minato had a response of his own.</p><p>The future Fourth Hokage pushed his sandal into the puppet's face, pushing his body off of it and the puppet did not oppose that action, it lacked the physical strength to compete with the empowered genin and it must have seen absolutely no use in opposing Minato's run part of "hit-and-run". When Minato was high enough, he flung the kunai he just meant to put in between Toneri's eyes at the center between the puppets.</p><p>"Throwing knives? Really?" Toneri gave Minato a cheeky look when one of his puppets moved in to cover for him but the knife never even reached the point where it required to be blocked for Kushina's chain caught the kunai knife by its ring and coiled to where Minato could grab it and get out of the close distance, where the enemy could have counterattacked.</p><p>It was just a temporary retreat, however, Minato swung his new, golden chain kunai and attached it to the roof of the southern gate, swinging around and under the gate onto the other side and then covering the entire distance with Body Flicker. Just a blink later, Minato emerged from the other side and dispatched of the pair of Toneri's puppets with a single swipe of his fused weapon. His combination technique with Kushina even forced Toneri to vault over the chain swipe.</p><p>"You're not out of the woods yet, creep!" Kotaro declared and let his hands perform the same combination of hand seals. "Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!"</p><p>In a splendid feat of teamwork, the golden chain with Minato's kunai attached to the tip set ablaze once it caught one of Kotaro's Phoenix Flower flares and with this new and improved combination, Minato came at Toneri using the highly versatile moveset of a kunai attached to a blazing golden chain construct made of the one-of-a-kind Kushina's chakra.</p><p>"How's that for ya, mask-guy!?" Kushina gave Tobi a scolding glare for mocking the team previously and considering Minato the only worthy combatant out of the three while Kushina was just a harmless powerhouse to him without any semblance of fighting skill.</p><p>"The hustle of ants is indeed impressive, even when they struggle against a fire-breathing dragon…" Tobi shrugged, while he did visually consider the combo impressive, he was not one to go back on his word, even if that word was a mockery of a bunch of kids destined for greatness.</p><p>A streak of bright-orange extended over Toneri's chest as the inhabitant of the Moon flew back from the wayward swing of Minato's chain that caught him in the core of his body. Despite the flashy appearance of the streak and a burst of flames that the heat pent up in the weapon Minato wielded gave birth to burning off a mean-line in Toneri's outfit, nothing but pale-white skin stayed underneath the singed, white silk.</p><p>"He's flying?" Minato noticed as the flames on the golden chain went out and the chakra chain itself began fading away, one patch of rings at a time.</p><p>"Indeed the gravity of this rock you call home is higher than that of the Moon, but I wouldn't be the last descendant of Hamura Ootsutsuki if I did not persevere…" Toneri lamented with a playful expression. "Your little tricks are getting irritating, luckily enough, I have noted you to be toothless without the support of your team…"</p><p>Toneri turned his eyes off of Minato and glared at Kushina and Kotaro who were looking at the scene from down below with Tobi by their side. Minato lunged at the enemy, thinking he had caught Toneri when he had his guard down but the white-haired lunar inhabitant caught Minato's punch without much struggle or effort, not even seeing the need to look at the enemy he was defending against.</p><p>"You were going to say "don't you dare touch my friends", right?" Toneri smirked, still looking at Kushina, Kotaro, and Tobi while Minato lost the advantage of inertia and slumped in Toneri's grasp, having no ground beneath his feet to keep hold of him. "Well… It's their fault for being so useful to you while being so weak at the same time…"</p><p>A light breeze picked up and scattered fallen and rotting leaves from the nearby alleyways, a single trace of the rushing puppets that charged at Toneri's opponents from where they lurked. These puppets were different. Whereas the previous ones appeared like more lifeless versions of Toneri himself, even going as far as to wear his murky, wide-covering clothes, these appeared like Lolita-style girls with doll-like expression and a creepy, snappy jaw filled to the brim with saw-like teeth.</p><p>A white blur that stood out of the frightened crowd and lit the evening sky up in white streaks tore the Lolita puppets to shreds with his bare hands. The enhanced speed and strength, as well as the unnatural body-morphing capabilities, must have been the gifts of the Zetsu-suit that Tobi donned to best combat this unusual situation.</p><p>"As you've said before, these brats are useful so I won't let your dolls eat their faces off just yet…" Tobi directed his crimson bead of light at Toneri with a threatening glare, as if declaring that the fate which his puppets had met was one that he meant for Toneri himself too.</p><p>"For someone so fast, you're so awfully sluggish…" Toneri smirked with an innocent shrug. Something snapped in Tobi's noggin and he looked around, realizing that he focused too much on the dolls rushing right at him and missed the slower, more sluggish hordes that emerged from all over the place and floated in mid-air like balloons. Slowly compressing in a deadly formation while their jaws chattered in a macabre, wooden palaver.</p><p>"They're all bombs…" Tobi warned the duo he stood out in front of with a lightly silenced tone, one that they stood the best chance of hearing.</p><p>"Bombs?" Kotaro widened his eyes.</p><p>"There's no other use for dolls to move this slow if they're not rigged," Tobi replied.</p><p>"Can't you remove them, ya know?" Kushina wondered. "With your weird eyes, ya know?"</p><p>"I can only use my Mangekyou Sharingan when the enemy can't see it coming and counteract it. My guess is that Toneri will for certain be able to read my attempt to send them to the other dimension." Tobi grumbled. He couldn't believe that he'd still need to tell these kids that much, were they even keeping attention to this fight or were they just repeating the same combinations, hoping Minato uses their support for the mutual success of the team as he always did.</p><p>Though that was not the reason why Tobi didn't want to try and use his Kamui on these explosive dolls. It was not because Toneri wouldn't allow him and he'd just be wasting chakra, it was because Toneri just might allow it. In that case, he'd send a swarm of detonating dolls to a dimension he used for safety, whereas before he could have counted on Toneri not being able to read and counteract his Kamui in time, now he'd have to fear that Toneri wouldn't try to, only for Tobi or whomever he was pulling out of trouble to blow up the moment they entered the shared dimension the dolls were also trapped in.</p><p>"The other dimension?" Kotaro mumbled to himself. Tobi didn't like the fact that the brat was catching up to Tobi's ability, he might not have been a battle-hardened hardcore shinobi with flawless combat situation reading mind just yet but even someone like him might have stumbled into information nobody was allowed to know if this continued long enough.</p><p>"What's your goal!?" Minato yelled to Toneri.</p><p>"My goal? I thought we were past that stage…" Toneri closed his eyes right after washing Minato's body with cold sweat when he glared down at the youth that Toneri held in his hand up above the nearest buildings by the fist of the young man.</p><p>"No, I mean, you're threatening my team with those dolls, what do you want of me? How do I get you to make those dolls get lost?" Minato asked for Toneri to name the conditions of this hostage situation he found himself in.</p><p>"Good point…" Toneri placed his index to his chin. The dolls then all began dive-bombing the pressing together trio of ninja inside their formation, one handful at a time until not a single doll remained and the area was sunken in a cumulus of smoke and raining pebbles of debris. Once all of the deafening rumblings ceased, Toneri glared at something heavy and sizzling that he held in his hand, where Minato once hung trapped in his grasp. Only a pouch filled with sizzling spheres with paper tags attached to them now hung like the blond boy once used to.</p><p>Another blast lit up the southern gate district, sending shockwaves down from the upper levels where it rung the strongest. The shockwaves left mere dust-sized shards out of the glass around the area and once again disrupted the layers of dirt and rubble that had just settled down. In a faint flicker, Minato landed his two feet firmly on the ground and turned his attention at the spot where his friends stood before the floating explosive dolls decided to detonate.</p><p>A pronounced golden shimmer broke through the wall of dust. This was Kushina's doing no doubt. A cocoon of golden chains wrapped around in a circle had shielded Tobi, Kotaro, and Kushina from the blast that might have just killed them otherwise. With a metallic clang, the chains collapsed from their cocoon formation and then faded off into thin air. While Kotaro pat the tired and slouched back of the redhead, Tobi couldn't pull his eye away off of her.</p><p>It did not take a master psychologist to deduce that the masked man was cursing himself for underestimating this young lady with unmatched chakra in power and its entirely unique nature.</p><p>"Nice instincts…" Tobi commended Minato's attack just to pull his shocked eye away from the frightening kunoichi of Team Minato and make a more dignified face underneath his mask.</p><p>"I figured his eyes would be focused on keeping you from using your space-time ninjutsu…" Minato smirked, something he rarely did out of pride in his own abilities or to display glee in his success in battle. It was an expression that the young man reserved exclusively to comfort people he held dear or people that simply needed his comfort.</p><p>"I'm surprised to see you lot working together so well, it's almost like you've trained with each other your entire lives…" Toneri's irksome voice demanded the full attention of every player on the board once more as he emerged from the cloud of smoke unharmed. His body sparkled with jolts of emerald green before the lunar puppeteer extended his hand and focused the jolts into a singular, shining ball. "Puppet Curse Sphere!" he chanted.</p><p>The sphere took off, slamming into Tobi's chest and continuing to rotate, sending sparks by the handful as it attempted to make its way all the way through Tobi's body while Toneri's Tenseigan did its best to restrain Tobi's attempts to transport himself away. A pillar of bursting forth green erupted from where the sphere hit Tobi and detonated at last, having no more strength to keep burrowing through his Zetsu armor.</p><p>"I've heard your opening statements and heard nothing of note to postpone the end of your measly kind." Toneri declared while he raised his hand up again and formed another Puppet Curse Sphere. "Keeping my eyes on that pawn-of-a-pawn would be quite a pain so let's make an intermission until I destroy him."</p><p>Another Puppet Curse Sphere hurled at high speed right at Tobi while he intended to recover from the first blast and observed the stringy ruins of the Zetsu armor. Feeling the cold breeze on his chest, Tobi realized that he had actually suffered damage and that he might just not withstand contact with another sphere. A whirl of bending space appeared in front of Tobi.</p><p>"Useless…" Toneri stated a fact, he had previously assumed that by now everybody would know that he would be making sure to prevent Tobi from using his Kamui technique to escape damage, meanwhile, his Puppet Curse Sphere could have easily shut down any attempts from any of the kids to interfere. Another sky-scorching pillar burnt away the gloomy clouds over the Leaf's skies. Every blast serving as a beacon for more and more hunters to gather but some hunters might not have wanted anything to do with whatever was powerful enough to cause these blasts.</p><p>"Useless yourself…" Tobi grumbled, taking a deceitful peek from behind Kotaro's lifeless body as the smoke cleared and the dust settled.</p><p>"Y-You!" Toneri smirked while covering his face with a twitching hand. "You knew I would prevent your escape so you shielded yourself with those weaklings instead."</p><p>"Tobi!" Minato yelled out in despair.</p><p>"Don't worry, future Fourth, your friend should be alive, he's more juiced up on this universe's chakra than me, honestly." Tobi cleared his scratchy throat while letting Kotaro's unconscious body fall to his side and slump down on the ground.</p><p>"You bastard!" Kushina's eyes whited out while her red hair began blazing behind her back, her terrifying, massive chakra leaked out with enough intensity to rustle her hair and make her gain an appearance akin to that of a bloody banshee while she raised her fist up in front of her and prepared to bash Tobi's brain in. "You forced Kotaro to almost kill himself over your sorry-ass just to save your own hide, ya know!?"</p><p>"Don't be rude now, Kushina," Tobi took a wary step back, now a little bit worried about Kushina's unstable mental state, having just witnessed a display of the power that the girl's chakra possessed and having just had his Zetsu armor decimated and having his space-time abilities severely limited by Toneri's Tenseigan. "I didn't just uselessly prolong my own participation in this battle, I did it to make a statement and stay in the battle for good. Plus, let's not spin yarns about how useful Kotaro was in this battle, compared to me. I made the logical choice, that's what ninja do."</p><p>Kushina took another step, with each pound of her foot against the ground, the shaky dirt and pavement split in fractures that emanated with Kushina's leaking, hot-red chakra. Judging from her approach and the absolute death radiating from her eyes, she was serious about beating Tobi halfway to hell and back with her bare hands.</p><p>"Hmm… This is amusing, I think I will let her beat you up for a while for me…" Toneri clapped his hands and focused his Tenseigan to block Tobi's attempts at escaping the damage again.</p><p>"Don't you understand that I have effectively disabled his technique, you hysteric girl!?" Tobi lashed out at Kushina who took a methodical, one step at a time approach to the impending doom she was about to deliver. "Now he cannot effectively block my escape because he doesn't know how I will use my Kamui, to escape damage or to transport one of you and he can only block one specific way of use of the jutsu."</p><p>"Huh? You think you've avoided my jutsu?" Toneri smirked. "It's bold of you to assume that my Puppet Curse Sphere can only be used as a measly projectile. Seeing Kushina-chan rage at you gave me an interesting idea, perhaps I can educate you on what I am capable of?"</p><p>Toneri raised his hand up and formed another Puppet Curse Sphere in his hand. Blowing it at Kushina like an air-kiss, the white-haired ninja let it take off right at the outraged kunoichi. The rotating sphere took a curious, curved flight path to its goal but its impact was inevitable, Tobi would not have been surprised to see Toneri having protected his sphere from being transported using his Kamui either.</p><p>"Kushina!" Minato yelled out and dived in front of his teammate, tacking her out of the way with Body Flicker. The Puppet Curse Sphere hit him right in the back and forced the future Fourth Hokage to bend backward in an awkward angle as the sphere phased into his body.</p><p>"Hmm… You're not who I was aiming for but… Fine, you'll do…" Toneri shrugged, making Tobi quickly shift his attention from Kushina who has snapped out of her hysteric haze and focused on what happened to Minato instead of Tobi and Minato who slowly picked his body off the floor and turned to Kushina and Tobi.</p><p>"You seem to love this boy, no? You picked him instead of me, why? Because he complimented your hair? No, I've changed my mind, this is almost perfect. I can now see that priceless expression when you realize you've made a mistake by refusing me be the last emotion that leaves your stiffening body when your beloved boy kills you, it's almost poetic, in a way…" Toneri shrugged.</p><p>"Kills you…?" Tobi mumbled before turning to Minato's blank stare and realizing what it was that Toneri's sphere was capable of doing in addition to being a powerful offensive technique. Just when Tobi was done worrying about Kushina being the one to worry about in addition to this lunar lunatic, there was another blast from the past threatening his life now.</p>
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<a name="section0630"><h2>630. Habanero VS Flash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So who's this guy now?" Kawaki turned to Kiyomi. "Is he an Uchiha too?"</p><p>"Definitely…" Kiyomi nodded. "For a clan of big-shot, one-of-a-kind elites, there's always more of them than any given place needs…"</p><p>"I dunno, this guy seems kinda cool…" Kawaki shrugged.</p><p>"Uzumaki Naruto, you're a friend of Sasuke's aren't you?" Itachi asked Naruto while his upper body floated in mid-air with the lower part of his body still dissolving into a murder of crows, continuously flying into and out of formation.</p><p>"That's right, you know," Naruto answered.</p><p>"Rather quiet. I've heard that you were a hyperactive young man so I had assumed you'd be firing accusations and meaningless insults all over the place…" Itachi smirked with his lips whereas his eyes retained the degree of relative apathy in whatever it was he was witnessing in the Uchiha District of a Konoha a little bit different from the one he's come from. It was just that those tiny differences hit just the right chords to Itachi, those tiny differences were all that mattered to him.</p><p>"Why? As you've said, even someone like me doesn't expect anything more from a man who's slain his entire clan and then abandoned his little brother surrounded by the corpses of his dearest people. I expect nothing more from a man who'd slay a bunch of clones that were just following the orders of their demented father, you know." Naruto replied, staring at Itachi with a certain dislike of the way in which the Uchiha had handled the situation with Shin Uchiha. "I thought I made that clear to you the last time we've met."</p><p>"The last time? What happened that time?" Itachi wondered. The tone of his voice was so dull and monotone that it was impossible to tell when he was feeling genuinely baffled by something and when he was just playing confused, hoping to guide someone to an answer. "The last time I remember meeting you was in Tanzaku…"</p><p>"So then you're not the Itachi from my universe, you know." Naruto sighed. "Still, I don't think it will matter to Sasuke."</p><p>"You're seeking my little brother even when he isn't from your own universe and even when saving him will not help the Sasuke you know as the real one?" Itachi wondered. "Why?"</p><p>"Because if I save him, I'll have the answer to the question if I'm strong enough to do so. I've acquired a cool new power to save Konoha from Pain, the villagers accept and recognize me now, they call me a hero but that power doesn't mean anything if I can't use it to save Sasuke, you know." Naruto swiped his hand aside with a passionate dismissal of the praise and adoration he received back home. "In this cool tournament, I've met my mom and dad and got all sorts of cool new opportunities, I need to take a shot at saving Sasuke too, even if it won't save my Sasuke."</p><p>"I see…" Itachi closed his eyes. "Tell me then, when we've met in your universe, did we fight?"</p><p>"No. You said you came to me just to talk, kind of like you're doing right now, you know. Then you sneakily introduced a crow into my belly, you know!" Naruto raised his fist up to express his dissatisfaction with the happening he described. "In any case, I'm glad you've found me but I want to find the real you so tell me where I can meet you, you know!"</p><p>"Huh? He made you eat a crow? Why?" Meiko scratched her head.</p><p>"Maybe it was some sort of choking genjutsu, it would be an effective technique since the brain would be fooled by the illusion and paralyze Naruto's throat for real. Dispelling such a jutsu would be difficult as well as one would find it hard to concentrate with an actual crow flapping about in their throat and trying to escape…" Kiyomi stroked her chin.</p><p>"Was the crow at least rotten or something?" Kawaki wondered. "Otherwise you'd just be feeding the enemy…" he shrugged when Kiyomi and Meiko gave him an inquisitive look. The pair were initially intrigued if there was a point to which the young punk was getting to but upon hearing him out they realized they expected an intricate analysis of the ninja craft from a masterful shinobi like Itachi Uchiha from a civilian who's lived in some sort of a lab for the most of his life.</p><p>"I see, so I've transferred it before meeting Sasuke," Itachi muttered. "In that case, we can meet, if you want. At the very center of the Uchiha District, there is a shrine called the Naka Shrine, the Uchiha use it as a hallowed grounds and a meeting spot."</p><p>"Are we really humoring the idea that we'll stray off of our path to meet with a hunter that's supposed to eliminate us from the competition?" Kiyomi looked to Naruto. "As a team leader, I cannot condone this."</p><p>"You're… A Yamanaka, aren't you?" Itachi looked to Kiyomi with the same indifference he looked at just about anything else around him. His eyes appeared almost tired from the two distinct wrinkles reaching out to the bottom of his face from underneath his eyes.</p><p>"That's right, not just any Yamanaka too, I'm the heiress of the clan. In this universe, our clans used to be in some serious odds…" Kiyomi looked up straight at Itachi. She knew that staring right into the eyes of an Uchiha was dangerous but it was her way of defying that silent authority that the floating clone of the resident Uchiha illusionist wielded. A challenge, of sorts.</p><p>"Well, Yamanaka heiress, the Naka Shrine is our sacred grounds, so to speak. No Uchiha would ever bring bloodshed and trouble into that place." Itachi shook his head subtly.</p><p>"Except for you, right?" Naruto showed his sharpening teeth to Itachi as a tiny bit of the Nine-Tails' chakra began to leak out and affecting his physiology. "Just how many of your own clan folk did you slay in that place?"</p><p>"It was you who asked for a meeting, Naruto. Come or don't come, that is entirely up to you…" Itachi closed his eyes and his airborne clone dissolved into a flock of crows that all fluttered away and scattered all across the Uchiha District.</p><p>"I can't let you tread back, not when we have not yet found the white cube or even left the village!" Kiyomi pleaded with Naruto.</p><p>"It's not like you can stop him though…" Kawaki shrugged. "If you two start duking it out, any hunters in the vicinity will come running like flies to honey. I would like some honeybuns right now…" the punk yawned and scratched his messy upper layer of dark hair.</p><p>"No, I understand you, Kiyomi." Naruto nodded. "That's why we're meeting Itachi on our way back. Once we've secured the cube and returning back to the Administration building. That way it won't be such a detour, you know."</p><p>"Fine. That might just work." Kiyomi sighed and shrugged. "With a little bit of luck, Sasuke will have caught Itachi and killed him by then…"</p><p>Naruto turned for the direction of the southern village gate with a serious expression. He had decided to move on now with a fresh sense of urgency. With Itachi in his crosshairs, now nothing else mattered to Naruto but getting to that white cube. The trio of Team Hokage flickered away, posing a challenge for Kawaki to keep up the pace with the rest.</p><p>Despite possessing no chakra training whatsoever, Kawaki appeared to be able to at the very least not lose the rushing Team Hokage. Meiko slowed up the pace a little bit to serve as a fine midway point between the Team Hokage and Kawaki. She noticed that Kawaki had been falling a little bit behind but she could relate to the inferiority complex that prevented him from asking everybody to slow down.</p><p>"I'm impressed you can keep up with our Body Flicker at all. To most people, it's as swift as instantaneous transportation." Meiko looked back at Kawaki with a gentle smile. She had seen Mana smiling this way to people she barely knew, people who had sometimes even tried killing her so repeating that same warm smile came almost naturally. The feeling of longing in Meiko only made repeating it mandatory, as if her own body demanded to relive the warmth of that smile even if it was Meiko smiling to others and not her best friend smiling to all who could see her.</p><p>"Are you dumb? I thought I told you already, my body's been modified. I can keep up with you ninja freaks and much more!" Kawaki grumbled through some decent effort.</p><p>"Does what we do really seem all that freaky when you've got ninja tools implanted in you that make you so much like us? Firing off shockwaves, moving fast and hitting hard…" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Having implants that make your bones harder to break or make you faster makes sense. I've just seen a guy float in mid-air because he was made entirely out crows. The shit you guys do is straight out witchcraft and I don't like it!" Kawaki explained his stance.</p><hr/><p>"I'll handle Minato, you just make sure to keep that creep occupied!" Kushina turned back to Minato who stared back at her with a bland stare. This was no zombification or mere cloning technique, it did not appear to corrupt Minato in any way whatsoever. It did not rot his flesh or impact his appearance, there was to be no deception about the fact that the man she was facing was still the man she knew and the man she loved.</p><p>Maybe that was why it was Kushina's responsibility to snap him out of it?</p><p>"Such a smartass…" Tobi muttered to himself. "As if I couldn't handle Minato myself… Keeping that troublesome bag of tricks occupied will be a different case of trouble entirely."</p><p>"You should have accepted Toneri's offer, Kushina…" Minato spoke, charging onward with his kunai in hand. Minato's image flickered while an intense air of gust alerted Kushina which direction her ally now made into opponent would come from. She had long since given up trying to track Minato with her eyes during sparring.</p><p>This was no sparring session either. Kushina restrained Minato's wrist and redirected the slash down to where it unleashed a blast of sparks when the kunai slashed through the cobblestone pavement. There was a weak coating of chakra to Minato's blade, else his simple kunai knife would have dulled or busted by colliding with the ground at such velocity and with such strength.</p><p>"When my dumbass friend gets himself mind controlled, it's up to the Red Hot Habanero…" Kushina drove her head forward, slamming her rock-hard forehead straight into Minato's and sending her ally tumbling back and off-balance. "To hit him until I can get to him!" she finished her thought while throwing a powerful cross that would have surely knocked Minato out. Though, perhaps, at this point, knocking him out would have been for the better…</p><p>Sharp pain! Everything went black before a silver streak slashed a line in the darkness through which Kushina could still see. Vision returned to her eyes with seething sensations of pain burning into her temples, her weight on her own knees felt wobbly so Kushina stumbled and fell back. Something splat against the cobblestone underneath, the rock-hard ground that pulled her like a bed after a rough day at work.</p><p>Kushina looked down and noticed solid drops of blood pooling up from a wide gash in her chest. One that she immediately pressed her hand against and grit her teeth as the visual revelation of the gruesome cut that Minato didn't attempt to restrain in any way whatsoever, like they've never met each other before that day at all, caused all of the apt pain to come knocking as well.</p><p>Out of sheer instinct, just because she knew that anyone seriously looking to kill her would then follow up a successful slash such as that one, Kushina pushed her body off the pavement and stumbled back only to avoid a slash that would have left her head hanging on a mere string of flesh had it connected as intended. Kushina then raised a knee to throw Minato's attempted barrage of rolling kicks up and make the essentially breakdancing opponent of hers to fall flat on his face.</p><p>Minato rolled like a wild animal and returned to his knees, still clutching his kunai with some of Kushina's blood still dripping from its tip and raised his indifferent eyes back to meet Kushina's own distraught gaze. "You could have been the mother of the new world and now the only thing you'll be giving birth to is your own grave. At the hands of the boy you love, no less…" Minato stated.</p><p>"Alright, now I know for sure that your mind's all messed up!" Kushina's face delved into a deep, shadowy place of her psyche she had not explored for a while. Her eyes formed horrid, whited out orbs that contrasted the shadows of the leaking desire to smash and pummel that reflected off of Kushina's shadowy face. One step at a time, Kushina began approaching the man of blinding speed.</p><p>This threw Minato off his balance, he was used to the enemy cowering, putting distance or objects in between him and them for that was the way in which their cowardly consciousness tried to protect themselves from a swifter demise than their senses could register in Minato's hand. Kushina was no mere redshirt of Iwagakure, she was no rogue bandit, she was Kushina Uzumaki, the Red Hot-Blooded Habanero and she fled from no man or woman.</p><p>Minato rushed onward but his speed just wasn't into it, it was his off-balance stumble back out of fear of Kushina lashing out at him that diminished the speed he could invest into his assault, Kushina leaned to the side and let the crescent slash of Minato's knife miss her entirely. The unmentioned powerhouse of Team Minato secured her wrist clutching around Minato's heel and smashed her beloved into the ground, looming over him with both of her sleeves rolled back and her fists ready to smash his face in like a mushed tomato.</p><p>"K-Kushina! W-Wait!" Minato yelled out in absolute panic while he writhed and wriggled underneath her feet. Something in his eyes was different, even if Toneri's control over Minato had slipped up for just a moment – it had slipped up regardless and this was now Minato she was talking to once again.</p><p>"M-Minato!" Kushina cried out in a terrified and loving voice while she straight out dragged her cowering beloved from underneath her and put him back on his feet, much to Minato's bewilderment and embarrassment. "I-I thought he'd taken control over you for good, ya know!" she cried out with a girly voice that in no way resembled the absolutely murderous monster that just loomed over Minato's head with her fists raised and loaded to smash.</p><p>"That look you can do… It's a look that scares the life out of people, just now, it seems, it has scared the life right back into me too!" Minato smiled just like he used to in childhood when he was goofing around. To see that smile now, of all times, when facing seemingly hopeless odds… Yeah… Minato was back!</p><p>An explosion that erected another sky-splitting pillar of green energy and decimated even more of the southern gate district made Minato and Kushina turn their attention back to the enemy who was engaged with the man that introduced himself as an enemy at first as well. Tobi had used his Kamui to transport himself further away from where the Puppet Curse Sphere could blow him up but then when Toneri used another, sometimes Tobi used his Kamui to transport the sphere away.</p><p>"You annoying gnat!" Toneri cursed when another sphere he had formed got transported away into another dimension by Tobi's Sharingan.</p><p>"What's the matter? It's a fifty-fifty guess, isn't it? Far better odds than playing whack-a-mole, aren't they?" Tobi taunted his opponent even though all he was doing was buying some time for Kushina to punch some sense back into Minato. Even if the masked man wouldn't like to admit it, it might have been hopeless with Team Minato backing him up but he for sure stood no chance whatsoever without them by his side.</p><p>"I will admit, your chakra levels are admirable for an earthly insect." Toneri grumped while forming another Puppet Curse Orb in his hand and then letting it float gently over his raised palm. His disgruntled face transitioned into a sense of light amusement as his Tenseigan eyes opened once more and took their focus on Tobi. "No matter how much you struggle though, the third ability of my Puppet Curse Sphere will accelerate the process of you taking the rightful place groveling before me."</p><p>"Wh-What's going on?" Tobi looked at Toneri, his vision blurry and doubling. The very fact of his own vision failing him was rich enough to baffle Tobi for the entire day, his eyes, his Sharingan that could see all was now showing blurry image? That simply could not have been!</p><p>"Kushina, that sphere, it's…" Minato pointed at the Puppet Curse Sphere floating in Toneri's hand.</p><p>"Yeah…" Kushina nodded, acknowledging Minato's concern without him having to speak it aloud.</p><p>"Fire Style: Flaming Meteors!" a grunt came from behind Kushina and Minato as a handful of solid, head-sized fireballs homed in on the infernal sphere of emerald light. A black-dressed puppet rushed in from behind Toneri and covered its master's hand, allowing the meteors to throw it back and leave gaping holes in its corpus while the resonating heat from the Fire Release ninjutsu burnt the puppet up.</p><p>"Not enough, huh?" Kotaro lowered his trembling hands while smoke still lingered around his mouth. The injured young man was up on his feet and the first instinct upon returning to the field of battle was to free the man that had deceived him by switching him into harm's way from the chakra draining technique juicing him dry.</p><p>"You…" Tobi looked down at Kotaro with a surprise that overpowered even the immediate urgency of tremendous chakra loss he was suffering with each passing moment due to the Puppet Curse Sphere absorbing his chakra from a distance. "You tried to help me, even though…"</p><p>"Shut up and get yourself free!" Kotaro turned to Tobi. "We will need your help if we're to move on!"</p>
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<a name="section0631"><h2>631. Together Against Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A ring of blue flames rose up from Kabuto's feet to his head and a little bit beyond before burning out to azure cinders. With the fall of ashes, the geeky man sealed his freedom with a lazy rub of his numb wrist and then focused his attention on the woman that gifted him this origami imprisonment. His eyes weren't filled with enmity or stress, they were beaming with excitement instead.</p><p>"What are you so shiny about?" Sasuke turned back to Kabuto.</p><p>"But Sasuke-kun, don't you understand?" Kabuto's eyes turned to almost familiar warmth as if they were staring at his own family while speaking those words. Sasuke might have had the ability to be freaked out by this odd man like the rest of the world was if he still remembered how that sensation felt. "The enemy removes from the battlefield that which they deem their biggest threat first…"</p><p>Konan tilted her hand over her head, a flurry of paper tags riding the wind that blew in the village district all scurried together into one, long and pointy shape of a spear, before the woman waved her hand onward. The origami spear blasted right at Kabuto like a bolt of lightning, it did not move like a projectile thrown by someone, it moved with near-instantaneous vigor, living up to the implication of someone being judged by divine beings and sentenced with a lightning bolt.</p><p>Even with his Sharingan active, Sasuke found the spear tough to track. Had he not identified the angle and calculated the spear's trajectory beforehand, had he not seen the brief semblances of sweat on Konan's face and subtle facial ticks that betrayed the woman to be greatly vexed by the geeky associate of Orochimaru's, the Uchiha avenger would have found the spear tougher to deal with than most attacks whereas now he just stood in absolute apathy and a healthy sense of wonder about if Kabuto would end up skewered or not.</p><p>Purposefully too late, Sasuke turned to the partner he never asked for, as if to warn him about the impending doom that has impaled him through the chest and pinned him to the ground before violently exploding into a stream of paper sheets. Normally, paper could not have handled such violence, but the subtle coating of chakra over each sheet allowed it to not only withstand the speedy thump through the enemy and the pinning of him to the paved village street but also to cause an overwhelming pain in the ass when the spear dissolved into a raging storm of paper cuts.</p><p>Kabuto's cut up and impaled body began turning pale, then faint brown. By the time that Kabuto's hair fell out from his head, his eyes slumped into the holes of the skull and the entire skin shriveled up into dirty and mushy membrane, both Sasuke and Konan realized something to be off. A sharp, paper shredding sound came from Konan's direction while the upper half of the woman's body slumped downward a tiny bit at a half-static angle. A blue, crescent-shaped light came from the shadows behind the woman and only after her form dissolved into a shower of chakra-coated paper tags did Kabuto with a flaring chakra scalpel in his hand reveal himself having moved in behind Konan in the instant he was caught unaware.</p><p>"What an unfair technique…" Kabuto fixed his glasses with a light motion of his hand. "Here to think that a common man such as myself needs forethought, setup of my Dead Soul Technique and resource management of my precious stiffs in synchrony with the Substitution Jutsu to pull myself out of a tough spot and someone with innate talent, such as yourself, Konan-san, can just escape demise with such grace and almost elegant ease."</p><p>"Is that how you've come to survive this long?" Konan muttered while the swarming paper tags reformed her image on a rooftop higher up. "By making your opponent underestimate your prodigy skills while you act like an average ninja?"</p><p>"He has a talent for survival…" Sasuke replied. "It's one thing he's uncanny at. That being said…"</p><p>The avenger's body flickered into faint traces, mere static of vision that blurred before appearing by Orochimaru's side with a hand on his sword's hilt and an apathetic stare matching glares with Pain's Rinnegan.</p><p>"Sasuke-kun…" Orochimaru glanced at the Uchiha with an inquisitive glare, questioning what the youth was doing by his side instead of fighting Konan.</p><p>"That woman is useless to me. She has no idea where Itachi is. This man is the leader of the Akatsuki, isn't he?" Sasuke said. "Even if he says he knows nothing, he must know something, even if he doesn't – he can find out enough with those eyes of his."</p><p>"You wish to see with the eyes of a God?" Pain bent his head with a curious inquiry. "None are meant for the Rinnegan but those born with it. You are a talent for a decade, a young man with the Sharingan is rare and treasured to be certain, but a God is one for a millennium. The eyes which you seek are out of your reach."</p><p>"If we fight him together, we will shut him up quicker," Sasuke muttered for Orochimaru to hear. The reptilian man snickered before transitioning into a passionate fit of laughter.</p><p>"Sasuke-kun… Just when I thought I knew how much I wanted you, the chick takes his first flight and shows how his young and lively feathers glisten in the canyon sunlight." Orochimaru licked his lips with his prolonged tongue.</p><p>With the same, blinding speed, Sasuke charged onward at his opponent. His one-track-minded, avenging mindset didn't know fear for the powers of the man described as a God and he felt no respect for anyone because such trivial feelings didn't further his goal in any way whatsoever. A twin slash, one from the standard, hammer grip while the second swiped upward from the reverse grip position, in between the two, Sasuke found the time to disrupt his opponent's defenses with a kick as well. The Uchiha transitioned into a following blitz of strikes that appeared to carry one, obvious slash but just when Pain thought he had avoided it, something else, coming from somewhere else shed his blood, almost as if the sword slashed once but delivered multiple strikes.</p><p>Sasuke slid down, preparing to deliver a kick to his opponent's chin that would send him flying but Pain jumped over it, seeing that it was coming. What he did not see coming was Orochimaru's telekinetically controlled Kusanagi whirling in from somewhere by the side and slamming in over his head with enough strength to cut Pain into two, had he not blocked the legendary blade with his crossed black rods. The strength of Orochimaru's slash sent Pain right back down into Sasuke's upward kick, however, the contrast of conflicting forces caused great emanating shock over Pain's body, forcing a spit of blood to spray from the mouth of the would-be God.</p><p>Sasuke's body blurred once more as he appeared over Pain's head up above and kicked the leader of Akatsuki back down into the ground with a jumping windmill kick. Pain slammed into the ground head-first and his body disappeared halfway into the ground. Sasuke landed by his downed opponent and just sneered at him with indifference.</p><p>"This man is the leader of Akatsuki? He's nearly dead already…" Sasuke muttered. "Are you sure he's not playing us?"</p><p>"Oh… So you've noticed it too, Sasuke-kun?" Orochimaru chuckled.</p><p>"Yes. His skillset seems unbalanced. He seems to be a one-trick pony and his trick isn't particularly frightening, to begin with…" Sasuke spoke his observation.</p><p>"That's true. A ninja of his status should possess a more diverse and balanced array of jutsu. This body appears to be focusing entirely on the gravitational techniques, which, while immensely powerful, have a disgusting weakness to them that no self-respecting ninja would allow weigh their skillset without some sort of a counterbalance. And yet this man possesses no defensive techniques to protect him during the cooldown whatsoever…" Orochimaru smirked before dropping the real truth-bomb on Sasuke. "That's because this man isn't the real Pain. He's just a body of Pain, one of several."</p><p>Pain's upside body twitched. His arms burst out from underground and bent by the middle, digging into the ruptured ground and pulling the entire body out of the head-splitting predicament he was in, revealing a busted and battered body of a man who could in no way have been the entirety of the Akatsuki leader. A suspicion that Orochimaru has felt for a while now but now that he had Sasuke by his side, together with that impressive pair of eyes of his, he could have felt safer about the potential downfall of Pain's true wrath upon him.</p><p>"For you to have figured it out…" Pain spoke. "No man has ever truly pushed Pain, Pain has never lost a fight, however… Sometimes a body is defeated. It is usually a great ace up my sleeve, but then again… As expected from Orochimaru-san…"</p><p>"Orochimaru-san…?" Orochimaru repeated slower. Something about the tone in which these words were said, about the voice that spoke those words, it sounded oddly familiar, like reflections of the life he had left behind. Wars he had fought…</p><p>"For a genius and a legendary Sannin, you're so slow to catch on…" Pain smirked. "In that case, let God's punishment continue…"</p><p>Konan flapped her wings, sending a vortex of rotating, orderly paper tags at Kabuto's direction. The four-eyed Orochimaru's assistant dashed for his life and managed to avoid the hurricane's immediate wrath but then the familiar and dreaded noise of sizzling reached Kabuto's ear and a mighty blast sent him flying aside while the hurricane dissolved into a more hectic downfall of burning paper tags. Ones that continued the chain of explosions.</p><p>Orochimaru and Sasuke noticed the origami chain reaction as well, but possibly too late, as Orochimaru caught a handful of paper tags sticking to him shortly before they detonated. Even when the two were parted, an angel still thought about protecting her God at all times, it seemed. Sasuke's feet tapped onto the rooftop of a nearby building, scanning the battlefield. Pain was gone from where he previously stood.</p><p>A blitz of black came rushing at Sasuke's direction, diagonally from his position, the young man pulled his sword out halfway and used the edge of his blade to deflect the airborne black rods that would have made his life much more difficult. Now that Sasuke has made his play and opened himself up, a blitz of bright orange, black and crimson coddled up together alerted the Uchiha that Pain has approached him too close for comfort.</p><p>A sharp stab came right for Sasuke's core, while Sasuke had already devoted his movement to the motion of deflecting Pain's black rods from before, he still used his halfway-pulled sword to push the stabbing black rod out of the way of his heart to where it only grazed Sasuke's shoulder, dyeing his white shirt red before tearing the right side of it clean off and letting the right side of Sasuke's body feel some light breeze in the evening air.</p><p>Pain's transition from the simple forward thrust into a roundhouse kick was effortless, due to how devoted Sasuke felt into each and every move he made, as little as he would have liked to admit it, the kick caught him square in the cheek and sent him tumbling over the edge of the roof he stood on. What was going on? Sasuke had been used to his Sharingan serving as all the advantage he ever needed in close-distance but it seemed like the eyes that Pain possessed were something else entirely. It was like Pain had some external view of the entire battlefield like he wasn't in the heat of the battle himself but was observing it from every direction and writing down a perfect motion for each engagement on a piece of paper and passing it on for his bodies to realize. Something that was performed in an instant.</p><p>Something strong and rough came at Sasuke from below. Something larger and heavier than Pain, Sasuke was sure of it but he was too directed upward, worried that Pain would drop down on him with a barrage of his black rod thrusts instead of coming at him from below. An attack from below seemed almost impossible, from where Sasuke was, even more – Sasuke's Sharingan had a lock on Pain being at the top of the building, what was it that struck him from down under and sent him airborne?</p><p>Pain slashed with a wide-reaching strike that resembled a slash of a sword drawn from a scabbard, because of that, Sasuke answered with the same manner of attack that his Sharingan tipped him off to coming. His sword and Pain's rod collided one against the other while Pain let Sasuke's Kusanagi skid over his rod igniting hot sparks on its path, while Pain leaped with a rising strike of his rod. It didn't take many corrections for the angle of Sasuke's sword to block this strike as well and now, it seemed, that Sasuke had Pain for the finishing blow, airborne and unable to correct his course too much.</p><p>"Chidori Spear!" Sasuke grabbed his arm by the middle and sent a blue beam of concentrated Lightning Release chakra to impale airborne Pain right through the heart but instead, something jumped in its way.</p><p>A much fatter version of Pain with slick and licked back hair, matching facial piercings and fashion sense dashed in out of nowhere in the protection of the Akatsuki leader and appeared to take in Chidori Spear all to himself. However, it did not impale the fatso either, instead, the spear met something bubbly and solid, like a barrier in its way that appeared to nullify it entirely, not just that, Sasuke saw the chakra of the fatso swell up instead, as if Sasuke's own jutsu made the fat Pain stronger somehow.</p><p>"Well, you wanted to see the true face of Pain, didn't you?" a voice spoke to Sasuke from behind, whispering Sasuke right in the ear. Sasuke was so taken aback by yet another Pain catching him unaware that he couldn't move in time before the towering, robotic-looking Pain with facial piercings over his head that resembled horns grabbed both of his arms and yanked on them hard.</p><p>With a gut-wrenching splat, the arms left Sasuke's body, making the poor avenger twitch and wrangle from the shock but all would not be as simple as Pain thought it to be. The arms in the hands of the powerhouse body of Pain turned into black snakes that coiled around the robotic Pain and left his arms tied up and stretched outward. The injured Sasuke dissolved into a fountain of snakes, all of which coiled and wrapped around the tallest avatar of Pain as well.</p><p>Orochimaru stood from a kneeling position, his flesh torn off in places and burnt where Konan's technique had caught him, a large, black boa coiled beside his feet and opened its mouth only to spit Sasuke out from its mouth, covered in the contents of its stomach and mouth. As Sasuke wiped the digestive acids and snake-slobber off of himself he gave Orochimaru a wayward glance.</p><p>"I thought I told you not to use that on me…" he muttered in discontent.</p><p>"Come now, Sasuke-kun, I couldn't stand seeing my precious vessel I've invested two whole years into torn limb from limb by Pain's true power…" Orochimaru smirked with a twisted smile, unbefitting someone that looked as busted and burnt up as he did. It was as if the reptilian Sannin didn't feel any pain at all, or rather, he did feel it, but he enjoyed it as much as he enjoyed the defiance of it. "Plus, the saliva of my Giant Boa will help heal that graze on your shoulder faster."</p><p>"You two better play your part and not get in my way…" Sasuke tilted his Kusanagi in a reverse grip position, ready to jump right at the three Pains again despite having just now been rescued from certain death in their hands.</p><p>"My, my… Someone's quite cranky…" Orochimaru teased his boy-toy.</p><p>Kabuto's shape blurred and landed by Orochimaru's side. The azure chakra scalpels flaring up around Kabuto's hands lit up with a soothing emerald shade as the geeky man placed them over Orochimaru's face and his shoulders and moved the light over wherever he saw wounds. While Orochimaru could have regenerated most injuries with a mere shedding of his injured body and birth of a new one, that process cost far more chakra than a simple patch-up of Kabuto's medical ninjutsu.</p><p>"It appears that the battlefields have molded together somewhat. I'll be by your side and pitching in if need be." Kabuto informed Orochimaru who stood back on his two feet, making a full recovery.</p><p>"I must say, I had expected you to have gotten rid of the woman at this point, Kabuto…" Orochimaru smirked.</p><p>"Konan…" Pain turned to the female Akatsuki member who flew to his side with a few flutters of her wings. The fat Pain and the inhuman-looking, puppet Pain took their side by the more injured Pain that Orochimaru and Sasuke had been fighting for a while now.</p><p>"It's not like you to show your other Paths like this. Are you sure we can allow them the knowledge of this information?" Konan turned to her leader, looking for assurance. "They don't appear to be someone we can just freely kill whenever we want, after all."</p><p>"It doesn't matter." Pain shook his head. The main body of Pain appeared to have lost his forehead protector after smashing into the ground head-first and blood began dripping slowly from his forehead where the protector failed to do its job for him. "They aren't someone who could use that information, they're not our versions anyway. They will not hinder the Akatsuki's plan back home whatsoever, let them fool around in their own home universe however they like if they can come back, that is."</p><p>"Sasuke-kun, you've taken some mean bumps out there. Are you sure you want to keep going like this?" Orochimaru wondered.</p><p>"As poetic as two against four would seem, you stand a much better chance of winning with me by your side. Also, I'm still looking for a moment when Pain lets down his guard so I can ask him the questions I need answered with my Sharingan." Sasuke said. "For that reason, I need to be up close and personal with him so spot that moment."</p><p>"Like a little pit viper, looking for a chance to strike… They grow up so fast…" Orochimaru mused to himself with an exquisite sense of entertainment lifting his spirits up.</p>
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<a name="section0632"><h2>632. The Great Godfall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A white-haired man in a bandana and a typical Konohagakure forehead protector plate stared at the chaotic battle between a hunter who appeared to be nothing short of being a god. This white-haired puppeteer appeared to be so insane, in fact, that even another hunter teamed up with the genin to take them out. Mizuki could not quite make out what was being said between the two teams, his sense of self-preservation didn't let him move any closer to the battlefield.</p><p>A girl with violet hair and a uniform of matching color laid by his side. Mizuki wasn't quite sure what this girl's deal was. She claimed to be a genin from Konohagakure but she was a hunter, then again, Mizuki has noticed multiple genin hunters and being a genin ultimately was just a rank. If a genin did not take part in the Chuunin Exams, they'd likely still reserve the ability to be a hunter. She didn't look like much but she was the only alliance Mizuki could make at this moment. Everybody else was just like that white-haired bastard out there, some divine bastard already busy imagining what they'd do in their home universes with the power they've acquired here.</p><p>"We should go down there and help them," Mizuki mumbled to little Sumire.</p><p>"Huh? What's this all of a sudden?" the young lady wondered. "I thought you've settled on sitting things out until you're certain you can take someone out. Didn't you say you were planning on being the "bird of prey" in this exam?"</p><p>"Yeah but… This guy… I really don't like something about his face!" Mizuki stood up and clenched his fists. "He's just like everybody else, looking down on us, treating us like trash! It's because of people like him that I've teamed up with some meek schoolgirl, no offense…"</p><p>Sumire smirked. Something changed in her eyes, just for a blink she was no longer the shy, little mouse that Mizuki had known for hours since he's met the girl but… Something else. The girl of violet hair rolled aside and dropped off of the edge of the rooftop where Mizuki and Sumire were observing the battle from.</p><p>"Outta the way!" Meiko yelled out while driving her chakra-coated buckler into Mizuki's face and throwing him off the rooftop as well while four pairs of sandals landed atop of the rooftop once used by the pair. The quartet of Team Hokage observed the battle in front of them for a couple of moments just to realize what was what and then all four flickered away.</p><hr/><p>The battle between Toneri Ootsutsuki, Team Minato and Tobi was occurring right in front of the Southern Gate which was the location where Team Hokage had planned to leave through. Meiko felt sick of running already, ever since this exam started all that they've done was try to avoid trouble, by now most of the hunters, as well as most of the weaker genin, must have already been filtered out. Those weaklings that did remain were too scared to challenge anyone serious, as emphasized by that hunter ninja on the rooftop she blasted away with one blow while passing him by.</p><p>"Multi-Kunai Jutsu!" Minato weaved a couple of hand seals and flung an entire barrage of kunai at Toneri. The godlike hunter ninja offered Minato a wayward stare, one that questioned Minato's intentions to achieve anything noteworthy with such a feeble attack. It was true that even if all the kunai connected where they were meant to – they would have been unlikely to destroy the Puppet Curse Sphere but that was not Minato's intention with this attack.</p><p>Minato's body flickered as the speedster ninja blitzed right into the fray of his own weaponry, grabbing one kunai after another out of thin air and slashing with them at the Puppet Sphere. The direct strikes from Minato left cracks that emanated emerald light from within the sphere, even more intense than the chakra of the actual Puppet Curse Sphere but despite the damage the technique had suffered, it continued to glow and absorb Tobi's chakra.</p><p>Not only that, now Minato was close enough for Toneri to attack him without breaking the channeling of his Puppet Curse Sphere too.</p><p>"Kotaro!" Kushina looked at her teammate as she smacked her palms together and let out another pair of heavy, golden chakra chains.</p><p>"Right! Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" Kotaro went through his hand seals and blew out a bunch of flame tongues that ignited Kushina's chains in their rush at the Puppet Curse Sphere. Toneri halted in his immediate instinct to lash out at Minato and leaped up into the air, waving with his sphere-wielding hand and letting the Puppet Curse Sphere fall out from his hands. With a single, direct strike from the chains' edge, Kushina and Kotaro finished off the sphere, busting it into impressive fireworks of salad-green.</p><p>"Fire Style: Bomb Blast Dance!" Tobi went through his own set of hand seals and kneaded the chakra within his system into a fiery, rotating stream that spiraled at Toneri in a trajectory that made it tremendously difficult to avoid it in mid-air. It was difficult for the masked man to combat his opponent when his main fighting style was so heavily muffled by Toneri's own majestic abilities but Tobi's move-pool appeared more diverse than just one trick that defined him to most who had met him on the battlefield.</p><p>Toneri extended his hand outward, an emerald cloak of chakra coated his extended hand as it expanded in size. The gleaming eyes of the Moon resident widened in surprise when the spiral of flames bypassed his body as if phasing through him without affecting him at all.</p><p>"Well, well… Could you predict I would use my Mangekyou Sharingan this way? Evidently not…" Tobi spoke in an excited tone, even though his orange mask made seeing his smirk underneath it impossible.</p><p>"You've used the Sharingan on me, making me phase through the jutsu?" Toneri wondered.</p><p>"That's right, now that I know that chakra absorption is on the table, I cannot allow myself to attack you head-on like before…" Tobi declared before his Mangekyou Sharingan lit up crimson once more but Toneri's direct stare right at him made Tobi fall to one knee in physical strain.</p><p>"I might not have predicted you letting me phase through the jutsu initially, but I can easily read your intent from that point on – you wanted to then teleport the technique right back at me from behind, didn't you?" Toneri cracked a grin while floating in mid-air.</p><p>"These Moon ninja and their inhuman abilities are infuriating…" Tobi admitted to himself and Team Minato. With a blue and golden blur, Minato returned back to his team with a kunai held in a position to intercept an enemy attack at any point. "Is there no way of shutting them up?"</p><p>"If you are under the illusion that I am running low on chakra, you should reconsider. Even the way I was back in my home universe would not be strained by a battle this short and measly." Toneri smiled at the enemy while extending his hand outward and letting it flare up with the same green chakra coating.</p><p>"Localized Reincarnation Explosion!" Toneri muttered while releasing a tiny green sphere from the palm of his hand that then spiraled off right at Kotaro. Team Minato prepared to take evasive action to try and avoid this new attack but a red-haired young woman landed in front of Kotaro with a sword coated with chakra so broadly that the blade began reminding more of a shield as she placed it in front of her in an attempt to block the technique.</p><p>Meiko grit her teeth from the first moments that her new and improved chakra coating method met the resistance of Toneri's technique. She began moving to the side inch by inch, the green sphere appeared to be sapping every tiniest bit of chakra in its way and it was pinching Meiko's chakra coating off of her weapon to the point that when Meiko pushed it aside while stepping to the other side herself, the spiraling off sphere took Meiko's chakra cloak with it as it fired off into the simulated moon above the fake Konoha skies and reduced it to raining space glitter with a single, blinding blast.</p><p>"You're quite energetic, don't tire yourself out too quick…" Toneri squinted his eyes a tiny bit to mock Meiko's spunk that led her to challenge Toneri's jutsu head-on with an entirely chakra-based jutsu.</p><p>"Out of the way!" Naruto's voice roared from up above as the orange ninja stomped right at Toneri's head, only for the white-haired floating celestial to grab Naruto's by his heel and spin the young man around like a living weapon in a defensive method of smacking aside all of the raining Naruto clones that came at him from the skies with a Rasengan in hand. After Toneri was safe from this savage combination attack, the lifeless clone in his clutch dispelled with a puff of smoke and the celestial being dusted his hands with a subtle clap.</p><p>"More and more trash gather here…" Toneri lamented. "You genin move in threes, where's your last teammate? What are they plotting, I wonder…"</p><p>"Mind Body Disturbance: Harakiri!" Kiyomi's voice cut through Toneri's mutterings only for the floating Ootsutsuki to turn around at her just in time to lean away from the mental bolt that was meant to channel Kiyomi's consciousness into Toneri's body.</p><p>"So direct… Disappear now." Toneri smirked while releasing another Localized Reincarnation Explosion right at Kiyomi that would reduce yet another space body to rubble sapping all of Kiyomi's chakra away to feed its destructive potential. However, the sphere appeared to pass through thin air and only barely disrupt Kiyomi's image, fading away into nothingness as it failed to absorb any chakra on its way whatsoever.</p><p>"W-What?" Toneri didn't want to admit that he got worked up but his grimace did all the talking for him. The celestial being grabbed his head and screamed out in pain, his majestic fingernails bent and dug into his own scalp and the veins in his eyes popped, drowning his eyes red while his tongue pushed through the chattering teeth as his entire body went to spastic switch between full tension and relaxation all at once with only the searing pain of hot steel peeling the flesh of his face off at any passing second while thousands of diamond drills worked their way through his skull into the core of his brain united both of these sensations and bound them together.</p><p>Toneri plummeted from the sky and flopped to the floor. A celestial being brought down to the ground. Shaking and looking at the multiple miniscule puddles of blood dripping from his forehead and other injuries he had accumulated over the duration of taking on both a high-ranking hunter and multiple genin teams all at once, Toneri peeled his face off of the ground and turned his infuriated expression to the assembled alliance of teams in front of him.</p><p>"Oh… That blood, that dirt on your face, the rage… That's an expression suitable for a filthy Earth ninja, welcome to our ranks, Moon man." Tobi mocked the Ootsutsuki, remarking on his death-inducing stare and the temporary loss of the Tenseigan that gleamed normally in the eyes of the celestial ninja being.</p><p>"You've made two mistakes." Kiyomi extended her hand with two fingers pointing up. "The first one was assuming I would attack directly after already being under my technique and attacking a fake mental image of myself, leaving you wide open for my Art of War. The second one was assuming that there were only three of us."</p><p>A dull clap blanked out Toneri's fury for a second while the downed celestial one turned behind him to witness a very punky-looking delinquent having just punched his own palm with a very unnatural looking pair of arms. Judging from the less than elegant twitching in his lower body, Toneri attempted to trip Kawaki over but whatever damage Kiyomi's mental tampering did with his brain still had some lingering effects on Toneri, leaving him effectively wide open to Kawaki's deviant antics.</p><p>"Go ahead, you groveling worm, what's the worst you can do? I can sense your chakra level and it's barely larger than that of a mere civilian! You'll blow your arms off trying to punch me!" Toneri taunted the disgruntled delinquent who just spat aside.</p><p>"You're right. I'm not like one of you ninja. That being said, my body is a living weapon, I can pretty much do whatever I want with it and that includes making my fists as dense as I want them to be!" Kawaki clenched his fists and got to work. By the time that he was done, Toneri laid in a pool of blood with an entirely swollen face and blacked-out eyes. At least half of his teeth were missing entirely. The punk then picked Toneri's lifeless body up and swung him over his head, releasing it into the air.</p><p>"You're outta here!" Kawaki yelled out while focusing hard on the airborne and lifeless enemy while the body-paint and various markings stretched out over his body. Despite Kawaki's bold declaration, Toneri neither flew out of the range of the battlefield nor did he disappear from existence. The lifeless celestial being just slumped down on the ground with sufficient strength for his body to bounce off of the ground almost an entire meter before remaining lying down like a lifeless sack of busted bones that he was.</p><p>"That's all?" Tobi wondered.</p><p>"I… I tried throwing 'im into a Kama Rift but… I guess I ain't as good with my Kama yet as I've thought. Shit…" Kawaki dragged his arm through his greasy, black hair in frustration while his tats disappeared like they've never covered his body, to begin with.</p><p>"Thanks, Naruto-san," Minato smiled and nodded at Naruto. "You've helped us out a lot."</p><p>"What about you?" Kotaro turned to Tobi. "Now that Toneri is dealt with, you're still planning on taking us on?"</p><p>Naruto turned for Tobi, judging from his disgruntled stare, Kiyomi could only assume that he was quite familiar with this masked man already.</p><p>"You're that guy who stopped us from reaching Itachi, kept me away from saving Sasuke, you know!" Naruto declared, pointing an accusatory finger at Tobi.</p><p>"Come now, Nine-Tails' Jinchuuriki. Surely you don't have the time to deal with me right now. All sorts of hunters must have been drawn back here by the battle on a godly scale that has taken place here. I don't think a single hunter team has missed the moon being destroyed. While most of those that have gathered around this place at the moment are too weak to do anything about it at the moment and are waiting for reinforcements, some of them far, far away might still turn back, thinking that a battle such as this one would leave a bunch of genin very weakened and ripe for finishing off…" Tobi reasoned with Naruto about why the two of them shouldn't fight.</p><p>"I'm gonna flatten you for that!" Naruto yelled out and threw a headbutt that carried all of the emotional weight of being separated from his best friend in the time of need, which resulted in those two staying apart instead of reconnecting packed into it. Despite the awesome wallop that it embodied, Naruto stumbled right through Tobi while the masked man swirled away into a rift created with his Mangekyou Sharingan.</p><p>"Finally… I look forward to never being looked at by those disgusting set of eyes again. Also… I am looking forward to draining every tiniest bit of Nine-Tails' chakra out of you, Naruto Uzumaki, whether it be in this universe or any other." Tobi declared from atop of a building he had teleported onto before warping away once more, this time to a much farther away location.</p><p>"Forget chasing him, ya know." Kushina placed her hand onto Naruto's shoulder. "The Southern Gate is finally free, let's just bolt away from this village and do what we need to do."</p><p>The glare from the woman that would once become his mother soothed the pain that Naruto failed to express with his headbutt, at the very least, she let him swallow it all up and file it away for later. When he could use a little bit of pain to keep him going in a fight where he'd have otherwise long since given up. There were few things like the frustration of continuously being separated from Sasuke when it seemed as if the two would reconnect again and as if this time Naruto would be able to reach him that inspired Naruto to get back up and keep working toward his goals.</p><p>"She's right. Let's move." Kiyomi instructed her team and together the Team Hokage and Team Minato took off, flickering away through the gate and scattering into the Fire Country forest massif laying outside the village gate. The temporary scattering of the teams allowed the hunters that lurked around the battlefield by the Southern Gate, looking for their chance to strike, to lose the track of the most useful for them goal as they would have failed to keep up with a bunch of amped-up kids who were way faster than them but also scattered across one of the largest concentrations of forests in the known world.</p><p>Forests that they knew very well, as opposed to plenty of foreign hunters who might have just occasionally visited some of its offerings.</p><hr/><p>A pair of blue sandals tapped at the ground, taking the attention of a pale, tall, dark-haired man with apathetic, dark eyes. Very much similar to an Uchiha, something that captured the attention of Naruto's dark eyes and forced his red irises to focus on him for the first few moments before dismissing him.</p><p>"Oh, it's you, Muku…" Dark Naruto sighed in disappointment.</p><p>"Do I know you?" Muku asked with a cold and indifferent tone.</p><p>Dark Naruto closed up the distance between himself and Muku within a mere blink that even put a wider angle of fearful nature within the normally apathetic stare of the Kusagakure ninja. Muku's eyes squinted just a little bit, in acknowledgment of the pain when Dark Naruto's fist punched clean through him. The aggravation of Muku's condition when Dark Naruto's fist expanded in size to dozen times its previous size and reduced the Kusagakure ninja to a dead and bloody mess made the man's life end in a horrified yell.</p><p>"I wish I didn't know you." Dark Naruto smirked while shaking his blood-soaked arm. The eyes of the avatar of Naruto's hatred raced across the battlefield, observing the hunters at the edges who were too frightened to approach him now, even those that had fled for their lives after seeing one of them being crazy enough to murder one of their own. "Caused me a whole bunch of trouble, a while back, didn't you?"</p><p>The red irises beaming with hatred focused on the lifeless body of a white-haired individual in royal-looking clothes that were now all soiled with dirt and blood, torn and burnt up and off of the pale skin of the particular individual that did not know meaningful violence before this day. Dark Naruto covered, grabbing his stomach as his entire body twisted and bent with painful cracks of his bones emanating all throughout. The embodiment of hatred yelled out in pain when an ethereal shape resembling a human shape left his body halfway and floated from behind him, like an embodiment of spirit standing behind its master. Truthfully, it was the ethereal one that was the true mastermind of the entire situation.</p><p>"Hmph… That's an Ootsutsuki." Isshiki mumbled to himself.</p><p>"So what now? You're just gonna jump ships, you know? Leave me to die like that other sack of skin you've worn?" Dark Naruto grunted in pain, every time that this spirit left his body or manifested its seemingly limitless power, his body struggled to contain all of it and threatened to burst. It was like every single cell in his body was being burnt up by unbridled energy bit by bit every second that Isshiki manifested his existence.</p><p>"I don't think I will…" Isshiki denied that allegation. "This one might have the Ootsutsuki bloodline but he has already peaked. While his power is notable, the absolute lack of potential just won't do. My true vessel must be talent incarnate, even if its power would be otherwise lacking. That other swordsman rogue was just a temporary body, you, however, you show both a little bit of promise and sufficient hatred to get things done."</p><p>"I'm… Almost flattered... You know…" Dark Naruto smirked. "I wouldn't mind if you would go back in and let… Me get things done, you know…"</p><p>"Oh? Second-guessing your decision to host me for the power needed to destroy him?" Isshiki wondered. "Our link isn't ideal, you do not possess a Kama nor are you an Ootsutsuki, meaning that you're essentially dying and will die from it but you said you were okay with that."</p><p>"I am… This much pain… Dying… That's fine… If I can only destroy him!" Dark Naruto clenched his fists.</p><p>"He has my ideal, true vessel by his side, meaning that our interests are aligned now. As gratitude, I might even help you a little bit, if you could force that Naruto to remove his own dark side and then replace it yourself, you will survive. From inside him, you can then once more plan a hostile takeover and eventually become whole of Naruto." Isshiki suggested.</p><p>"You came out just to say that?" Dark Naruto looked up into the gloomy night's sky with worn-out pair of eyes. Despite being the most powerful he's ever been, he has never felt this tired and this hungry for death. Despite that, it was that same hunger that gave him the hatred necessary to keep moving and eventually destroy his other half.</p><p>"Don't act like that's not what you truly want – to have meaning, to be more than just darkness of someone. To truly be alive, to truly be Naruto." Isshiki smirked. "I came out to get a better look at that runt from the litter, now get back to work and find my vessel before our imperfect link spells doom to both of us."</p><p>Isshiki burnt back into Dark Naruto's body, forcing the avatar of hatred to roar out in pain of the entity's re-entry and then flex about to get the feel of his body back after it was taken hostage by pain.</p><p>"Shut up, you're not the boss of me, you know…" Dark Naruto spoke to himself, audible only to himself so that the sadness in his tone couldn't spread to any of those weasels stalking for an easy takedown of a genin up there.</p>
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<a name="section0633"><h2>633. Things We Are Ready To Sacrifice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Orochimaru chuckled as his arm moved to his lower eyelid and touched it with his fingernail. The light pinch of his eye, combined with the violent and sudden outburst of the Sannin's Killing Intent filled the stage. Even Sasuke and Kabuto tapped their heels against the ground as the influx of Killing Intent forced even them to stay rooted to the ground as a giant snake burst forth from underground and enveloped the trio.</p><p>"For someone to be able to paralyze even me with just their Killing Intent. This can only be the power of a former Akatsuki member and the rival of old master…" Konan observed in respectful fright of Orochimaru's abilities as while she did not undergo any of the more serious aftereffects of such a nauseating Killing Intent, it did restrain her in place from the irrational fear that resistance against such a lethal foe was futile and would only result in a quicker end for her.</p><p>"No." Pain decreed. "Killing Intent such as this one requires more than just mere power, it is a fruit of fruitful sadism or, in Orochimaru's case, curiosity unbridled by any sense of morality."</p><p>"Don't tell me, Pain that even the Deva Path is…" Konan looked to Pain with a horrified expression.</p><p>"Indeed…" the body Pain used as his main one before closed his eyes in acceptance of the impending doom in the shape of a slithering gigantic boa that headed straight for him with its fangs reared out. While fangs weren't the preferred method of execution for this particular reptilian, they certainly possessed the capacity to impale a normal-sized person such as the Deva Path with them.</p><p>Another, mechanical body of Pain appeared in front of the Deva Path and threw its arms out, its black cloak littered with red clouds floated away as the Asura Path exposed two more pairs of arms alongside the first one, arms that laid hidden underneath the cloak and added further to thickness and size of the mechanical body until exposed to restrain and wrestle the titanic boa down to the ground before it could hurt the already damaged Deva Path.</p><p>"Luckily for us, Preta Path and Asura Path have both avoided the effects of the Killing Intent by being outside its range." Deva Path declared while staring boldly at the exposed back of its puppet peer.</p><p>"Hold on…" Konan's face turned more sour after she noticed something shifting inside the mouth of the snake, a fleshy lump that revealed itself to be Orochimaru's body double, slithering from inside at Asura Path, intending to rush past it and get right to Deva Path and Konan, behind the six-armed mechanical marvel, while they were still paralyzed.</p><p>Orochimaru's clasping hand stopped just inches away from Deva Path's exalted Rinnegan, Deva Path observed the would-be eye thief with indifference while Orochimaru's serpentine, modified body stopped in place and struggled against the firm hold of two arms of Asura Path that had twisted behind and locked around the elongated waste of the snake master.</p><p>Orochimaru's jaw snapped open, unnaturally wide, unveiling a moist mass inside his own throat, which concealed a handful of silver hair. While Deva Path prepared for another body shedding of Orochimaru to take place, the silver-haired ball of wet clothes and saliva burst forth with chakra-colored flares on each hand and attacked Deva Path aiming for its joints. It wasn't Orochimaru but Kabuto instead.</p><p>A wet tendril of Pain's own creation locked around Deva Path and pulled him backward, away from Kabuto's intended harm and into the jaws of a demonic-looking statue depicting a humanoid demon's head baring sharp lines of teeth and a kingly helmet – an authoritative figure with the kanji of "King" on its forehead to cement the royal impression further. Surrounding this King of Hell blazed black flames that walled it off from a simple physical assault.</p><p>The jaws of this King of Hell snapped shut, swallowing Deva Path whole in one gulp. Kabuto straightened his body out and wiped a handful of snake saliva off of his eyes. The geeky looking apprentice took a couple of bounds backward and picked a pair of glasses off the ground, it must have been now that the breeze set in and made Kabuto feel a bit chilly without his top on. It was a choice he had made to make it easier to attack the enemy from inside the throat of his master.</p><p>"Well, well… What a waste, I don't think this fake-out will work twice. It would have been neat to take out the main body while it was still paralyzed in fear." Kabuto lamented in his trademarked fake tone.</p><p>"No matter…" Orochimaru's jaw shot back into place. The Sennin snapped it around to both sides to lock it in, it was not ideal for his newly shed body to go through strain as extreme as spitting up a fully grown man from inside right from the get-go but the opportunity was too grand to resist. "At least we got him to reveal another body… How many more there are, I wonder…" the ever-curious Sennin chuckled to himself.</p><p>"You think Deva Path is Pain's most important body?" Konan smirked in defiance of her own compromised situation. "Then why do you think it is the body he uses for combat as his default one?"</p><p>"The woman makes a fair point!" Sasuke's voice pierced the heavens while a black lightning bolt crackling in his hand followed not too long after, parting the clouds. The body of the young man had undergone a drastic transformation having become pale and dead-like while his eyes turned black in all but the iris that displayed his Sharingan while the Uchiha's hair became stale blue.</p><p>The mighty Flapping Chidori erupted into a violent lightning storm upon impact with the King of Hell and decimated the battlefield. It wasn't until the rampant violence had settled down some that Sasuke noticed his hand stuck right onto the core of the rounder of the Pain's paths, the one that had absorbed his techniques previously and done so now, greatly reducing the rampant might of his Flapping Chidori variant.</p><p>"Careful, Uchiha, do not outdo your welcome." The Preta Path muttered in a sharp and irritating, slightly squealy tone of voice. Following his trace in the clouds, plummeting downward, another one of Pain's paths emerged and drove its black rod down into the ground where Sasuke was meant to be with his right arm entrapped within Preta Path's grasp.</p><p>The descended Human Path found its black rod stuck to the ground as the Sharingan user had both the foresight, the speed and, while in the second stage of his Curse Seal of Heaven, the strength to power out of the entrapment and evade the deadly dive from above. Within a mere blink, Sasuke's body flickered by Orochimaru's side.</p><p>"I thought I told you to leave this to me until I got my answers…" Sasuke's darkened lips moved subtly. He let his finger-shaped wings stretch out while the membrane covering the in-between parts and enabling flight glistened in the emerging moonlight. It was because of his unorthodox transformation that Sasuke was capable of such sudden and efficient airborne assault.</p><p>"Excuse me, Sasuke-kun… I just thought that you'd be indisposed while my Killing Intent was in effect so I took initiative." Orochimaru expressed his glee at the arrogant caprice of his protégé.</p><p>"Oh well, it's not like you destroyed this protective statue and Pain's body either…" Kabuto shrugged.</p><p>"It's not just protective," Sasuke claimed. "I can see great traces of chakra pooling inside it, an amount that would be sufficient for either empowering it, which would be pointless in its current injured state, or healing it."</p><p>"I see… So this unsightly summoner of the statue is the one the woman meant as the most valued of Pain's bodies, the one capable of fixing the broken toys…" Orochimaru chuckled to himself.</p><p>"Now, now, Orochimaru. You are in the presence of just five of Six Paths of Pain and you are already at awe of God's power?" Naraka Path wondered.</p><p>"Of course there would be Six Paths…" Kabuto chortled while holding his glasses from slipping off of his face. "We should have gotten the clue sooner, ever since we realized they were called Paths, honestly…"</p><p>"Hmm?" Sasuke turned to Kabuto, having missed the hint that both Kabuto and Orochimaru appeared to be aware of.</p><p>"You wouldn't get it…" Kabuto smirked at Sasuke. "It's a secret Orochimaru-sama hasn't shared with you yet, it seems."</p><p>"It's not that I am at awe at the power of your Paths, Pain, it's more that I am excited to learn about the abilities I shall be inheriting when I take those eyes from you…" the serpentine man licked his lips with his unreasonably long tongue. "This battle spares me a lengthy process of experimentation, although, I must admit, trial and error has its own fun too…"</p><p>Konan's body dissolved into a shower of paper tags and scattered across the stage, rising back up in the form of a wide-encompassing twister. Effectively the woman had walled off most of the battlefield as well as potential escape of the opposition. Now that all of Pain's Paths had entered the fray, it was not at all detrimental to wall the place off as long as Konan herself remained in complete control of the battlefield conditions, given that she controlled these papers as long as her Dance of the Shikigami was still active.</p><p>"So, the woman has already snapped herself out of the paralysis of my Killing Intent, even with all the power-ups that this universe has so graciously provided… Not bad…" Orochimaru noted.</p><p>"She's not to be underestimated as a mere lackey, she is, after all, a member of the Akatsuki and she's more than a diversity hire, it seems," Kabuto added onto the point he had already made previously.</p><p>"Regardless, our battle plan remains the same, Kabuto. Land that on either of the Paths and we win." Orochimaru looked at his right-hand man with a confident gleam of his reptilian eyes.</p><p>Sasuke drew his sword while forming another Flapping Chidori in his free hand, the black jolts of Lightning Release chakra trickled up his body from his left hand and then back down again, channeling through the blade with sufficient intensity to drown the sword out completely and leave Sasuke with a pair of elongated Chidori Spears in each hand.</p><p>"If there will be any Paths left after I am done with them…" he declared proudly before flickering away.</p><p>Slashes of obsidian rend through reality itself, slicing up the entire space inside Konan's whirlwind of origami as well as the tornado itself and canceling it out, effectively. However, Sasuke's impressive streak of rampage with his twin Flapping Chidori Spears stopped prematurely, just before it could injure any of the Paths of Pain when the long-haired Path of Pain intercepted Sasuke with a firm lock around the Uchiha's wrist and a knee to the chest as well as another knee to the other wrist of Sasuke, an impressive taijutsu move that blocked the attack entirely as it was too fast, too widespread to be contained and absorbed by just the Preta Path.</p><p>"Don't you think you're feeding the enemy too much of your wicked chakra, Sasuke-kun?" Kabuto smiled at Sasuke in a deceitful manner which his eyes did not reciprocate with. "Given that the enemy is managing six bodies with a single pool of chakra, exhausting him would have been a viable strategy before…"</p><p>Orochimaru chuckled to himself. Kabuto looked at the Sennin in confusion before the Preta Path began expanding and his flesh became bubbled with blowing out lumps. It just looked like a fitting end for such a slothful-looking Path when Orochimaru's body burst forth from within of the Preta Path while the other lumps of flesh burst into showers of white snakes that slithered and withered away after leaving their host body. The clone of Orochimaru that appeared from inside Preta Path soon turned into a den of snakes and fell apart.</p><p>"I see, so you let your ninjutsu get absorbed on purpose to transfer some of Orochimaru-sama's Curse Seal chakra within the Preta Path, something that Orochimaru-sama could then exploit to destroy the body," Kabuto noted with a flick of his glasses, an attempt to cover up the bitterness in his eyes that he was not able to pick up on this move earlier when both Orochimaru and Sasuke were in sync with each other on this one.</p><p>Kabuto's hands flared up with chakra. "Well then, I suppose I'll play my part in this as well…" he shrugged before darting off into the fray against the three active Paths of Pain all at once. The Human Path which proved to be exceptionally skilled at ninjutsu earlier, enough so to contend with Sasuke's own mastery of close-range combat, even when enhanced by his Sharingan and the Curse Seal of Heaven, moved in to oppose Orochimaru's confidant.</p><p>The two clashed hands against one another, the Asura Path moved in from the side but, with a clap of his hands, Kabuto forced a pair of mud-covered corpses to burst from underground and move into the way of the charging mechanical marvel with kunai in their hands. While the Asura Path smashed the emerging corpses to pieces and disposed of them sooner than they adopted Kabuto's form through the completion of Kabuto's jutsu, the dead body distraction served Kabuto as sufficient diversion to connect a strike to the Human Path.</p><p>It came at the price of an equal exchange, the Human Path grabbed hold of Kabuto's collar and struck him once while Kabuto slammed his palm, still overflowing with chakra at the chest of the Human Path. Both combatants stopped moving for a moment but then resumed their activity, Kabuto slammed his flaring with chakra palm against the joints of the Human Path all the while the long-haired Path of Pain reached out to some space over Kabuto's head but his hand froze before he could complete what it had intended to.</p><p>"Heh, I've done it, Orochimaru-sama…" Kabuto declared. "His nervous system is in fritz, as you've predicted, messing with the nervous transmissions in one body messes with all of them…"</p><p>"I… Cannot move…" the Human Path muttered. "What is this method of paralysis now?"</p><p>"This is quite different from what Orochimaru-sama did before." Kabuto pulled up his glasses with a smug expression on his face. "You're also not quite right – you can move, you just don't know how to yet. Until I release your body from this technique, the nerve signals in your body are in a fritz and the commands you give to your body for movement are all mixed up… Have fun figuring out which part moves what before we destroy…"</p><p>Before Kabuto could finish his sentence, a white rod twice his size and thick enough to penetrate the entire abdomen of both the Human Path and Kabuto slammed into the Human Path from behind and penetrated both Kabuto and the Human Path, pinning both combatants to the ground. Konan had formed the spear entirely out of paper tags wrapped around one another and stuck to one another with chakra.</p><p>Kabuto coughed up with blood, for once his expression expressed the seriousness of the situation and removed that expression that Sasuke hated, that the four-eyed spy of Orochimaru's was above everything around him, like he was just an untouchable observer who would escape every situation unharmed.</p><p>"I'm… Guessing this Path… Isn't the most valuable…" Kabuto taunted Konan with a bloody mouth, the red trickled from his mouth even when the rogue medical ninja smiled at the Akatsuki member.</p><p>"This is just one of many Paths of Pain, it can be sacrificed if the outcome is to crush an irritating worm hiding underneath it. A mere human couldn't understand it…" Konan answered with some defensiveness to her tone. She wasn't entirely without feeling when striking down a Path of Pain but she did it nevertheless. Likely she had a talk with Pain once about situations just like this one.</p><p>"I am going to leave you with the matters here, Sasuke-kun." Orochimaru turned to Sasuke, entrusting to finish off the compromised Paths of Pain to his trusted vessel. "You lucked out, you will have to wait your turn as my vessel a few years longer, it seems…" the serpentine man chuckled.</p><p>"Fine…" Sasuke nodded with indifference. "Just make sure to take your time. It might take a few moments for me to get the answers I want."</p><p>Orochimaru's lower body became like a snake tail, launching the Sennin across the battlefield in previously unheard of speed as he raced across to where he had thought he had picked up the true Pain to be. Now that all of the Pain's Paths were compromised and unable to move effectively, Orochimaru felt confident that he could get to the real prize and obtain him as his vessel.</p><p>A hurricane of paper tags picked up around an area where Orochimaru was meant to slither across, all of them carrying explosive seals on them but, using his newfound agility, Orochimaru outraced Konan's attempts at stopping him and darted off beneath and over the rubble littering the area. Konan took steps forward in an attempt to chase after Orochimaru further but an instinct forced her to stop which proved to be the right move – a massive fireball shaped like the head of a dragon whizzed past the woman's face and would have blown her to bits and incinerated what remained had she allowed it to as much as scrape her. The fireball moved up and detonated high up in the sky.</p><p>"I guess you won't let me just interrogate Pain like that. Which means I have to take you out." Sasuke declared. "However, I'm not sure for how long someone like Pain will remain inconvenienced by Kabuto's ability before learning the new methods to move his body. That means I'll have to do it quickly and not bother with being gentle about it."</p><p>"Impudent chick, just what do you think Orochimaru will do if he gets his hands on the Rinnegan? Right now he only lived off of one vessel for his reptilian body, with the Rinnegan, he might just be tempted to live off of six of his own. Just how long do you think it will be until Orochimaru takes your body as one of his own Paths?" Konan bit her lip, she felt confident that as long as her Dance of the Shikigami continued, that was to say as long as she had chakra to spare for it, she would remain invincible to anything Sasuke had to show, however, while she might have had time, Pain did not.</p><p>And what was the point of an angel that outlived her God?</p>
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<a name="section0634"><h2>634. The Ghost Of Uchiha</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The pathway to the artifact we are meant to retrieve is getting crowded…" Kouta observed as he looked around, noticing more and more teams of genin eclipse them as the pair of Jinchuuriki together with a Curse Seal user had little threats capable of stopping them now that they've left the village.</p><p>"Hey, guys!" a cheerful, white-haired brat with red markings underneath his eyes, donning a vibrant white kimono with green decorations and red, flame motifs on the bottom sides of both the body piece as well as his sleeves. "Mind if we tag along? We'll be useful, I promise, Tsunade's here a real good medical ninja!"</p><p>"Hmph… I wonder how good…" Kouta smirked as he felt the itch to measure the worth of the kunoichi on the enemy team just now but felt like doing that would be something detrimental to both him and his team. While it was something his father would absolutely do and the pair had plenty of similarities, something this mad was not one of those analogies.</p><p>"For the record, you're the ones who might need us, not the other way around… It's just that Jiraiya-kun is such a loser, he tends to hide that behind walls of people as talentless as he is," a pale and slim individual dashing in a slick and flexible manner alongside the pair of the blond medical ninja and her energetic teammate declared in a husky voice.</p><p>"Orochimaru!" Tsunade scolded her moody teammate. She was an attractive young lady, dressed in a teal-colored kimono and a canary shade of blond hair that was just spunky enough to distract one from the slender and flat figure of the kunoichi.</p><p>"If you guys are planning to find out who's the strongest genin, you better include The Great Blue into this conversation!" an athletic and absolutely massive for his age young man closed in to the cluster of genin teams from the east, making Team Angler from Kirigakure appear almost like a team of hunters due to the unnatural size and fitness of their braggart participant.</p><p>"The Great Blue?" Deiji Deidao turned his head, wondering just who that might have been, even though he had more than a fair guess.</p><p>"Oh, come on! Even though I keep telling how much of a joke he makes himself sound like when he's calling himself that, don't tell me you didn't pick up on the wordplay! He totes even looks like a shark!" a girl that made Kouta regret labeling Jiraiya from before as the energetic one. This Kirigakure kunoichi shared plenty of differences with Tsunade, except she wore her canary hair in twin ponytails and looked like she was on copious amounts of caffeine at all times. If the kanabo hanging behind her, tied to black, leathery straps that crossed over her innocent, white shirt was any indication, this youth was as wild in battle as her personality with a touch for the brutish sadism.</p><p>The third member of Team Angler just continued to float over the treetops without uttering a word. This fellow was more interesting than even the muscle-headed shark-man from their team. He had similar, shoulder-length black hair to his shark-looking teammate, although far less wet and greasy, the lower jaw of his face remained hidden underneath a piece of cloth decorated to appear like an artistic duck-beak. While the youth would have stricken the beholder as the sharing type, due to his one-side pickle and parakeet dogi that left half his body exposed, the gentle aura of hazy mists emanating from the young man at all times made his movements blurry and his dash across the forest very ghost-like.</p><p>"So do all of you have nicknames? I've never met that many people from Kirigakure but that tradition stroke me as more of a Kumogakure thing…" Kouta scratched his head.</p><p>"Nah, that's just Morei's business. He tries to get himself over that way because nobody likes freaky shark-guys. For the record, it's not a disease thing – he's from the Hoshigaki clan." The teasing kunoichi from Team Angler leaned in closer to Kouta, approaching him to where she could have easily slipped a knife into his ribs if those were her intentions but, given her hefty choice in weaponry, she was more of the smash to bits type rather than one for assassinations. "I'm Chu, by the way…" she purred right by Kouta's ear, managing to keep up the hi-speed movement due to rather impressive flexibility.</p><p>"Morei must be quite the noble of his clan too. While most Hoshigaki have a fish-like appearance, to most it manifests as wet or different-colored skin, maybe some fins or, if one's really unlucky – razor teeth. Morei's an inch away from full package and needing saltwater to breathe… Some serious inbreeding was involved, I suspect." The third member of Team Angler finally spoke up in a rather melodious and elegant tune.</p><p>"Guys! I'm literally right here!" Morei growled and sneered, snapping his budding snout a couple of times close enough to where he might have snapped his male teammate's arm clean off.</p><p>"Don't cha always tell us to tell everything to your face?" Chu wondered, pouting her dyed lips together and acting all playful and innocent as if she didn't lead her teammate right into a talk about the questionable genealogy of another teammate of hers.</p><p>"Interesting…" Orochimaru smirked and gave Hoshigaki Morei from Team Angler a quick but decent look-down. "Perhaps this socializing effort wasn't a total waste after all…"</p><p>"What is this? Are you guys grouping up for the final stretch? Seems risky, what if hunters find you and then can take all of you down at once?" a feminine voice attracted the attention of the three teams that had joined up without any verbal contract or duty tying them together just yet. She wore the long-neck vest of the Hoshigakure ninja as well as the Hoshigakure headband on top of black, fishnet shirt. The girl's black hair was tied back into a ponytail but she missed some livelihood to her eyes to seem like she was on the matching league of attractiveness as Tsunade and Chu.</p><p>"Hoshigakure ninja?" Orochimaru looked up with genuine bafflement. "This just keeps getting better and better…" he licked his lips.</p><p>"Dude, what did I tell you about the lip-thing!?" Jiraiya flipped out right after he was done flinching in disgust.</p><p>"What did I tell you about caring what you tell me when you told me about the lip-thing?" Orochimaru sneered back at Jiraiya before elevating his dashing position to even out with the dark-haired Hoshigakure ninja.</p><p>"Are the rumors about special chakra from the stars about your ninja true? I'd very much like to see that special chakra." Orochimaru hummed, somehow managing to make his slithery and husky tone sound almost a little pleasant and melodious.</p><p>"Is this Konoha creep bothering you, Rarrifa?" a rather pudgy-looking ninja who was too large on the belly front to keep his traditional Hoshigakure attire zipped up properly. The caring chubby had circular markings over his cheeks, those matching the Akimichi clan's markings, even the messy, falling over his face and down to his shoulders blond locks obstructed the full splendor of those traditional features.</p><p>"An Akimichi from Hoshigakure? A missing-ninja perhaps?" Orochimaru wondered.</p><p>"What? Are you special in the head, or something?" the Akimichi's eye twitched. "Branches of Akimichi are all over the world. For your information, we're quite a valued clan for our abilities to serve as excellent vanguard on the battlefield as well as cornerstone pieces due to our great stamina and physical strength!"</p><p>"Calm down, Saol must be from another universe or time…" another kunoichi in a Hoshigakure uniform landed beside Orochimaru. This young lady had blond hair and eyes of serene blue tranquility oozing from them. The likes that could only have belonged to a Yamanaka.</p><p>"Well, I'll be damned… An Ino-Shika-Cho combo from Hoshigakure…" Orochimaru chuckled to himself.</p><p>"That's right, I'm Faeino Yamanaka, this is Saol Akimichi and Rarrifa Nara, Team Westerlund from Hoshigakure." The Yamanaka kunoichi introduced her team.</p><p>"I'm Jiraiya, the knockout babe beside me is Tsunade and the guy giving off the weird, stalker vibes is Orochimaru, we're Team Sarutobi from Konohagakure!" Jiraiya winked at the foreigners. Tsunade acknowledged the familiar trio in their legendary combination only with a slight nod, looking a tad embarrassed by the behavior of both her teammates but by now she had learned to just go with it.</p><p>"Juugo Kouta, Deiji Deidao and Nanaba Aomyaku, Team Hawthorn from Konohagakure." Kouta introduced his team. Judging from the wheeze in Deiji's mask, he was about to do it, but then the air just lingered in the boy's lungs and left in a weighty huff when he realized that there was no point to do so after Kouta did it first.</p><p>"I'm Hoshigaki Morei, "The Great Blue!", this is Igaten Raizo and Kyona Chu, from Team Angler, Kirigakure." The standout character with shark-physiology pointed at himself with his thumb and then to his teammates with his index as he named them.</p><p>"And you're all headed in this specific direction toward the temple?" Rarrifa from Team Westerlund wondered. There was a hint of something ominous in her voice.</p><p>"Yeah, we've fled from a pair of hunters. One of them, an Uchiha scolded his partner that he didn't block off an exit from the village that would lead us to this path – they were too much trouble to take on quickly so we fled the first chance we got." Nanaba explained.</p><p>"Hmmm… A fellow in a black coat with red clouds?" Orochimaru wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, why?" Kouta looked up at the pale, long-haired shinobi who lowered down his position to match better with his team's.</p><p>"We killed him and his partner from behind. He was talking about this one pathway completely devoid of hunters while we snuck up on them. My snakes devoured their bodies though now I realize they may have been clones…" Orochimaru exclaimed with a heavy tone, realizing that the rest of the teams might have shared a very similar story with them soon enough.</p><p>"Yep. We met those two. The partner guy went one on one with the Great Blue and lost. We made a bet that he'd tell us something interesting if I won and… He directed us here. His partner seemed like a wimp, just stared at us with his weird eyes and didn't interfere at all…" Morei pointed at himself in a vain way. Kouta wondered if he realized how feeble his attempts at putting himself over were when he declared having fulfilled the role of bait just the way it was planned.</p><p>"That particular pair overwhelmed us as well. The battlefield seemed flooded with clones of that Uchiha guy, some of them were illusionary, some of them exploded, scary stuff all around and… We found an opening in the form of a single direction and we took it." Faeino Yamanaka of Team Westerlund explained.</p><p>"So, it appears we have all been directed here by that Uchiha. Curious…" Orochimaru looked on ahead with a little excitement for what they were about to encounter.</p><p>"It's curious that we fell for his trap? For all we know he might be lurking here somewhere, shit, one shark-guy is to many shark guys! No offense…" Jiraiya exclaimed before turning to Morei with an apologetic shrug.</p><p>"It's okay, not everyone can handle a piece of the Great Blue!" Morei pointed at himself with his thumb while he blew his chest out and widened the gills on his neck.</p><p>"I doubt that the Uchiha planned to kill us here. Judging from the sound of it, the two had a fair handle on most of us. He certainly outwitted all of us, meaning he had a good drop on all of us." Raizo of Team Angler spoke again, making Saol Akimichi freak out above him by the fact that the black-haired young man actually spoke.</p><p>The quartet of teams all glared ahead, realizing that an opening laid in front of us. One whose nature was not entirely clear to either of the ninja involved in the affair as they just scattered across the opening and examined the place. Due to the fact that the temple they were looking for was not meant to be for a good ten to fifteen minutes of trip ahead, all of them were caught unaware by this curious location of the Forest of Death that defied the usual appearance of the place by actually having a clearing to the sky through which a pale moon stared at the ground.</p><p>The opening gleamed with cyan, teal and emerald shades and various different colors of a forest far richer and teeming with life than the Forest of Death, the exact opposite of the natural standard was. The natural moonlight that lit up over the opening every night bathed the mushrooms and various plants foreign for this location and granted them a chance at life in this inhospitable environment.</p><p>"Now, now… That's a surprise…" a masculine voice came from father ahead in the opening. A voice belonging to a man who rested his back against the remains of a building that led underground and had only its entryway peeking above ground. It was a temple of some sort, for certain, but it was not the temple that the genin were looking for, predating it by a good couple of centuries. "I did not expect so many to know this location, is there at least one amongst you with the Senju ancestry?"</p><p>"This man… He's bad news…" Kouta turned his face halfway to back to relay the gut feeling to his team. He wasn't a sensor like Mana but after fighting his father both seriously and for show so many times, he has learned to recognize when a fighter was intending to kill and when he was just showing off. While Kouta didn't sense any Killing Intent from this man just yet, the threat level that his gut perceived was just off the charts with him.</p><p>"I am! My grandpa was Hashirama Senju!" Tsunade stepped up and thrust her fist forward at the distant man, clad in red armor over his body and long, black hair.</p><p>"Is this some sort of a joke? I had expected Hashirama to come here, an ancient Senju sacred grounds for a spar like old times. All I get is some little snot who had earned her esteemed name by wiping the floor of her Academy class somewhat decently?" the man growled, displeased by the development. "Oh well… At least I will have a bargaining chip to force him to come here – his granddaughter. The rest of you will serve as a decent handicap to make it a warm-up, at least…"</p><p>Multiple murders of crows took off from all the different directions of the world, pooling together as they covered the natural moonlight and made the Sharingan eyes of the threatening man race across the sky, but also alarmed the genin that had confronted him as well. The crows turned in a twister in the travel down as a pillar before forming a single, compact, humanoid shape of nothing but murky black. The mass then opened its eyes and they gleamed of the red Sharingan. Before long, the complete shape of Uchiha Itachi formed and the prodigy of the current Uchiha generation squared his eyes against the God of the previous.</p><p>"So you've come…" Itachi muttered.</p><p>"I'm not sure what you mean…" the ancient Uchiha smirked. "I was waiting here the whole time. I have little patience for pathetic weaklings and rules the Seventh has placed on me. He promised me a clash with Hashirama and I intend to cash in that promise, everything else is just chaff."</p><p>"I wasn't talking to you, Madara. I was talking to the ninja I've recruited." Itachi turned his Sharingan back to the quartet of teams behind him.</p><p>"Hmph… I was wondering when you'd show your face to me. I could see you the whole time, hiding in the trees, thinking you were scouting me. It was cute, actually…" Madara teased his Uchiha peer before Itachi turned his eyes back to his elder with a displeased expression.</p><p>"Would you please stay quiet while I explain to these ninja why I've brought them here?" Itachi asked Madara, something that irked the ancient Uchiha genius enough for him to take off of the rocky platform he sat on and take a stance in full-size in front of the gathered ninja.</p><p>"Just because I don't care about mere fleas, doesn't mean I won't crush them if they overstay their welcome. And as an Uchiha, you should be able to realize how welcome fleas are at any given moment." Madara warned Itachi.</p><p>"You're that hunter!" Jiraiya yelled out and pointed at Itachi with a pale face.</p><p>"You're alive…" Orochimaru chuckled to himself. "My, my… The snakes will be displeased I've fed them clones again."</p><p>"You're a hunter." Kouta pointed out. "You said you've… Recruited us?"</p><p>"That's right. This man is Madara Uchiha. One of the strongest Uchiha in the history of our universe. He was a notable foe that Naruto had faced in his time so I had no doubts he'd bring him here. I need his pair of eyes so I can talk to Naruto." Itachi explained to the folks.</p><p>"This makes no sense whatsoever to the Great Blue, who's Naruto!?" Morei scratched his head by running his webbed index through his greasy hair.</p><p>"It might not make much sense, I don't have the time nor the crayons to explain it. What matters is that he is a dangerous hunter. Eliminating him from the game is in your best interests and obtaining his eyes is in mine, so I can look Naruto in the eyes when we meet without ruining my plan to save Konoha." Itachi replied with what he saw as an explanation but what seemed like just more trees deeper into the woods for the rest.</p><p>"Oh? You intend to fight me, over my eyes?" Madara spread his hands out, looking thoroughly entertained by such a notion, enough so to forget Itachi's previous rudeness toward him. "How amusing."</p><p>"So he's too strong to confront him yourself, that I can understand…" Orochimaru pointed out, "But you've left your partner back in the village too?"</p><p>"Kisame has little to do with this, also, I'd rather he wouldn't know about any of this. Also, most importantly of all, Morei would challenge Kisame again if he found out that Kisame held back the last time they met and I need all of you to have your heads in the game. This is our struggle against Madara and until it is done – nothing else matters!" Itachi explained and turned back to Madara with eyes brimming with determination.</p><p>"Hmph… I'm glad to see that my clan produces more than just wet blankets these days. Come, youth, I will lecture you of the power the Uchiha possessed back in their prime!" Madara flaunted the gathered ninja with a face twisted with sick excitement and a stance that left him so open – it mocked Madara's opponents more than did him a disservice.</p><p>So began Itachi's preparation for his meeting with Naruto.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0635"><h2>635. A Drizzle To Wash Away The Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sasuke dashed onward, flapping his webbed wings once to increase his speed even further beyond his already ludicrous abilities. Konan had been educated in the simple arts of taijutsu and knew how to handle a swordfighter but Sasuke's sword-fighting style was rather eccentric, holding the blade with a reverse grip but slashing and thrusting with it in front, effectively losing very little range.</p><p>Konan's body twitched and stumbled backward with each successive strike, even when her eyes had lost all traces of life Sasuke continued to cut and slash. It was because he knew of the full extent of her Dance of Shikigami ability that he was so relentless and savage, cutting her body down to chunks smaller than his fist with a flurry of wild slashes delivered in a split-instant. The jolts of black lightning passing down Sasuke's blade ignited the severed sheets of paper that floated off of Konan's lifeless body.</p><p>"Hmph… You're still adamant to waste chakra on that technique, you won't be able to keep it up forever…" Sasuke taunted Konan after turning to where her body would reform before it actually reformed. It was meant as an intimidation move, a show of force and awareness from his part. Truth be told, even with the awareness of his Sharingan, he was not going to defeat the enemy before her Dance of the Shikigami concluded.</p><p>Konan's skill in that jutsu was simply too great. She formed weapons, limbs and separate clones of her body out of the chakra infused paper with far too much simplicity for Sasuke to consider challenging her outside of the elementary face value battlefield he was engaging her in. His best call would have still been to defeat her once her chakra was out and she was panting to be finished off, after all, techniques such as the Dance of Shikigami that extended their effects over a longer period of time grew in strain perpetually, making them dangerous to abuse.</p><p>"What about you, hatchling? This Curse Seal you are wearing also drains your chakra, are you ready to allow your chakra to be more Orochimaru's than your own? Are you truly ready to surrender your body to him, I wonder?" Konan replied without skipping a beat. She was a member of the Akatsuki, every little bit as skilled as his brother, for whatever reason, Sasuke kept forgetting that. Maybe it was because she was a woman, maybe because she employed mere paper in battle or perhaps it was because of how she acted like mere support for Pain and his ambition for the future of the ninja world.</p><p>"Hey, you…" Sasuke turned his Sharingan to Kabuto. "Isn't it about time you get up already?" he wondered, staring at the pair of impaled bodies writhing against one another. "You are keeping that Path pinned down but when it's two against five, you're inconveniencing us far more…"</p><p>Flares of chakra in the shape of sharp blades lit up around Kabuto's hands as he slashed over the Human Path and pushed him off of the shortened paper spear before struggling off himself. The moment that the geek's body left the object of his impalement it spilled blood by the handfuls but Kabuto's blades transitioned into a softer, more emerald-shaded glow to heal his wounds immediately.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Sasuke-kun, I was unaware you were in the need of help…" Kabuto croaked with a voice inconvenienced by a grievous injury. "That body is dangerous, you know, if it gets its hands on you…"</p><p>"It won't." Sasuke cut the teasing down. "Plus, isn't it the same case with any of them anyway?"</p><p>"I suppose so…" Kabuto chuckled to himself. "Anyway, I'd flee with my life if I were you." He looked at Konan.</p><p>"Yes, I don't doubt that you would…" she replied.</p><p>"Sharp… Nevertheless, Orochimaru-sama will be taking your master's body and his other bodies are affected by my disruption of their nervous systems. I bet Pain-san has a great deal of trouble controlling them right now, which is why you were his last hope to save him from Orochimaru-sama. You're a failure as an angel so you should just feel content fleeing with your life." Kabuto explained his stance to Konan while his gut injury decreased to a meaningless, wet stain.</p><p>"It is awfully presumptuous of you that Orochimaru could ever control the Rinnegan's power. No man other than Nagato has ever done so. His chakra would be gone before he even tried." Konan objected with a change of subject where she realized that confronting Kabuto's point would have been too painful.</p><p>"Perhaps in our universe…" Kabuto smirked. "This universe, however… So many new opportunities, so many ways to improve oneself… Going back home would feel so sad if we weren't going back to a weaker home, unprepared for the new and improved Orochimaru-sama."</p><p>"Enough talk!" Sasuke swiped his sword to the side. It was rather hasty of him, given how buying time for Orochimaru to find and reincarnate into the true body of Pain was their main goal here. "I will find out what you know about Itachi and I am certain that I won't get that intel from you. It's clear that you're only focused on one man and I can't stand useless women like that!"</p><p>A gust of wind picked up, the tip of Sasuke's Kusanagi broke through Konan's chest and plunged from deeper within, emerging halfway through from behind her as Sasuke had made it all the way behind her using a technique that once caught him unaware just like it did Konan right now.</p><p>"Shadow of the Dancing Leaf… Quite deadly when used in combination with a sword and not the primitive art of taijutsu." Kabuto observed after blowing hot air into his glasses and wiping them with his fingers because his shirt was in tatters somewhere in the battlefield of ruined Konohagakure.</p><p>"Scatter again, keep struggling…" Sasuke muttered to Konan from behind her before pulling the blade out with a rude yank and swiping it aside, the blade shed no blood as the stabbed woman collapsed into a shower of paper.</p><p>Unlike what Sasuke had intended for the dancing vortex of the paper, it began growing in size and density, growing and expanding, covering an immense area while creating gusts of wind powerful enough to keep Sasuke rooted on the ground and struggling to stay that way. So much chakra floating all around, with all of those chakra infused paper pieces it was difficult perceiving the real Konan, especially when her chakra levels were beginning to dwindle to those approaching someone of her age and experience for a village ninja.</p><p>"She's fleeing to protect Pain!" Sasuke yelled out through the gust and the storm irritating paper cuts. His head lit up with pain as Sharingan began warning him of every incoming piece of paper in the storm, it made it almost unbearable to go through with, forcing Sasuke to shut down his eyes just for a moment.</p><p>"Chidori Current!" Sasuke grunted as he expanded his arms outward, sending Chidori in concentrated streams of lightning in all directions, greatly empowered and blackened by the Curse Seal chakra that he had imbued his technique with. The tiny notes of paper lit up and burnt up, beginning to pop from heat even in a premature reaction similar to when Konan imbued all of them with chakra and forced them to explode on their own.</p><p>"So it was a distraction…" Kabuto tilted his glasses and began scanning the area for signs as to where Konan might have fled to.</p><p>Detached fists flew right at the bare-chested medical ninja of Orochimaru's squad, evading them was almost too simple for a medical ninja, trained to flee with his life and serve another day, especially noting how awkward the mixed nervous signals in Asura Path made the trajectory of the rocket fists to be. Kabuto appeared to dance just by tapping his feet in an evasive dash as if mocking the enemy while avoiding the tongue of Naraka Path's King of Hell while strutting with his feet just far enough to outrun the tongue of the summoned entity. The Human Path, still stumbling over itself, fumbled at Kabuto with sloppy taijutsu strikes that Kabuto answered with kicks of his own until his recovery from the impalement previously seemed completed.</p><p>A booming noise came from behind as a colossal beast erupted from a nearby competitor to Ichiraku Ramen for the preferred fast food spot of the village. A black and white yak covered with bony plates over the more sensitive areas like joints and the shoulders, where the fur failed to keep up with the thickness of the more central areas of its body. The beast's horns weren't the size to impale a man but to squish one outright. The exalted Rinnegan appeared as the replacement for the beast's eyes.</p><p>"The sixth one, huh?" Kabuto smirked. The ability of this one to summon beasts would have seemed troublesome as summoned animals did not share a body with the summoner, meaning that they'd have eluded the weakness of the nervous fritz that Kabuto forced upon Pain's body but a black earring sticking out from the beast's nose alongside multiple rods sticking out from the snout of the cattle helped keep up the enthusiasm in Kabuto's smile – the beast was controlled the same way as the Paths, meaning it was sloppy and weakened by having the responses of its limbs all mixed up, just like the other Paths.</p><p>Kabuto drove his hands with a cross-shaped chop, connecting it to the tip of the nose of the giant yak and forcing spurts of goopy and thick, dulled out in color blood splash from it. At the same time, the recovered medical ninja vaulted over the giant beast and ran up its snout to the position of the horns as that was one place where the beast could not find it.</p><p>Konan grunted in mid-air, a blinding ray of light had penetrated her chest from behind again, this time from further back. Sasuke's eyes were lighting up with the crimson flare of the Sharingan again while the obsidian-colored Chidori Spear flowed freely from his blade. The youth then extended his other hand and formed another Chidori Spear out of the Chidori he had formed in his free hand, matching the two blades and splitting the sky in a mad slasher combination that split Konan's airborne body to pieces and incinerated the paper remains at the same time.</p><p>"Now look what you've made me do, the other Pains are the other way…" Sasuke taunted the collapsing and burning up body of the Akatsuki member.</p><p>"Hmph…" a feminine grunt of bemusement came from up above, Sasuke maneuvered in mid-air via his webbed-hand-shaped wings to avoid a downpour of rods of paper made out of tens of thousands of paper notes rolled one over the other.</p><p>"You're keeping up your Sharingan at the same time as your Curse Seal? Your chakra levels are far inferior to mine, you'll succumb to weakness first." Konan taunted Sasuke who'd have been a skewered pancake on the pavement had it not been to his Sharingan's improved perception just now. She did have a point though, his Curse Seal Mark 2 was not designed to work in prolonged engagements, definitely not together with his Sharingan…</p><p>"Your leader will be far dead by then. Maybe I'll just ask him where Itachi is when I meet him in alongside the other Orochimaru's vessels…" Sasuke grunted, swooping up ahead and blocking off the path to where Orochimaru had gone to confront Pain.</p><p>"Contrary to what that despicable turncoat said before, an angel that is threatened with the loss of its paradise does not wither away and die, they fight to the bitter end and if they survive to see it all burn down, they become angels of vengeance!" Konan spread out her wings, this was huge, Sasuke didn't need a Sharingan to see it.</p><p>The span of Konan's wings spread out at least five times larger than ever before, her body lit up with wild chakra it produced and molded into this technique. The chakra perception of the Sharingan was not like the chakra network perception of the Byakugan but the immense chakra usage that Konan underwent while using this jutsu nearly blinded Sasuke with its intensity alone. How did he keep underestimating her?</p><p>"Dance of the Shikigami!" Konan chanted while the makeshift feathers that comprised her origami wings all unleashed a downpour on Sasuke. Raining down and covering the streets, the buildings and all living or dead things in its path with thick layers upon layers of origami notes. "Burn down together with my paradise, Orochimaru's hatchling!"</p><p>The notes of paper that Konan laid one on top of the other lit up one by one. Not all at once but all at seemingly random intervals. Sasuke had managed to avoid getting pinned down by the downpour of origami notes, he did not become buried underground neither did he get pinned down to one of the walls of the surrounding buildings but he had more than a fair share of paper notes stuck to his body, looking for another one and another one still to connect to in order to form a complete chain, to form even the most simplistic of shapes before lighting up and exploding.</p><p>The pupil of Sasuke's Sharingan expanded, it appeared as if the patterns depicted on the eye itself have transcended the limits of the eye they were on, or so it appeared to Konan, who covered up her body when Sasuke reversed the positions of the two – revealing that it was indeed Konan and not Sasuke covered with a multitude of origami notes that were about to explode.</p><p>"A genjutsu?" Konan wondered to herself before the notes present on her body detonated, tearing bits and pieces of her Akatsuki cloak and leaving burns over the blown off areas but due to the augmentation of her own body and rather lacking explosive power of singular notes she managed to escape with minor injuries.</p><p>Sasuke's glare at the woman from Akatsuki sharpened as he realized that she was too engrossed into casting her ultimate hidden technique to use the Dance of the Shikigami to protect herself. It was her real body in the middle of that tempest of origami but while Sasuke's Sharingan allowed him to avoid most of the downpour of the origami notes that turned into explosive notes before long, he'd have been a madman to attempt and attack Konan where the intensity of her origami monsoon was the greatest – around her exposed true body.</p><p>Obsidian lightning crackles ran down Sasuke's body. He had never used that jutsu in Curse Seal Mark 2 form and his normal state would have been more than enough. He set it up just like he had to but… Konan had moved further ahead from where the storm clouds had formed from the intense heat of the Fire Release jutsu he had used earlier and missed. The range of that jutsu wasn't all that great and he couldn't miss – if he did, the storm would cover him up while he wallowed in the strain of using both the Curse Seal and that jutsu at the same time…</p><p>This universe… What Kabuto said was true, both Orochimaru and Kabuto were exploring the wildest things that this universe and the boundless chakra present in all living things and even lifeless objects provided. It was time that Sasuke broke through his own limits, otherwise, he will never find him, he'll never kill Itachi.</p><p>The crackles burnt down the notes that rained upon Sasuke, the bubble of an intense lightning storm that it had formed around Sasuke was just an effect of the increasing static around him while he prepared to use his ace in the hole.</p><p>"What is that?" Konan's eyes widened as she did not expect Sasuke's body to light up with an expanding static field of Lightning Release chakra that intensified the most in his hand. "Surely you don't intend to rush at me with a Chidori, you will be blown to bits before you reach me halfway, you might be fast but it will only lead you to gather more paper on your way to me."</p><p>"This is my Ultimate Secret Jutsu…" Sasuke declared as the powerful crackles of lightning in the night's sky revealed the stormy clouds that still lingered from the heat that Sasuke discharged after using his Fire Release jutsu from earlier. The intensifying storm summoned drops of rain that began to shower the area, effectively muzzling Konan's jutsu as while the chakra cloaking her paper would have protected her from natural rain, she lacked the necessary chakra to coat them all after using her Dance of the Shikigami so prominently earlier.</p><p>"Tsk… My paradise…" Konan lamented with a disgruntled expression, seeing her origami collapse to the floor wet instead of floating where the gusts carried it.</p><p>"This jutsu brings down very thunder from the heavens. I merely direct this power to you. Come!" Sasuke roared out, expanding the wild field of static, obsidian lightning all over the place, branching out in concentrated flowing jolts toward the gloomy skies. "The name of this jutsu is Kirin, disappear with the roar of thunder!"</p><p>Even Sasuke became overwhelmed by the descending obsidian shape from above. It didn't look like a mere quadrupedal mammal to match the namesake of Sasuke's jutsu but instead took the appearance of something far more majestic. Controlling the immense power of his jutsu was outside Sasuke's abilities, the precision of shape manipulation was a dream from his current level as it appeared as if the entire world would be split into two by the rampaging lightning. The descending storm was greater than mere lightning, it was a rebellion of sheer energy itself. A true, mightiest cosmic storm brought to Earth.</p><p>When Sasuke's eyes next opened, his vision returned to him slowly. It all started with a blur that barely let him tell light from dark, he was spared great agony due to the fact that it was well into the nighttime when his eyes opened and the drizzle still going down from above helped wash down the dryness of his lips and cool off his fatigued body. How did the ninja of this universe cope? He had to devote every last signet of his will to concentrate and control his technique… He could have easily blinked everything away in a thunderclap just as easily as his opponent.</p><p>"Sasuke-kun, may I imply your impressive showing was responsible for the combined collapse of all of Pain's Paths?" Kabuto's irksome voice was the last thing that Sasuke wanted in this moment of tranquil self-reflection.</p><p>"No…" Sasuke set up and dragged his cold hand across his sweaty forehead, wiping his wet hair out of the way from obstructing his eyesight. "I decimated that woman, I… Didn't want to but… The power of my jutsu, I lost control, it was either her or…"</p><p>"Ah, I see…" Kabuto smirked with that above it all expression. "Orochimaru-sama in that case, he got to Pain, the real Pain…"</p><p>Like called forth, a gigantic boa burst forth from underground and opened its mouth, letting Orochimaru slip out from inside the snake that tunneled from the location he had confronted the true face of Pain from. Upon his emergence, Orochimaru just snickered to himself, licking his lips in observation of the success that his precious subordinates had wrought and extended his hand toward Kabuto.</p><p>A weighty, white snake emerged from Orochimaru's sleeve and slithered down the much larger tunneling boa before landing before Kabuto and snapping its own jaw open. From inside its throat, came the feeble head of a red-haired man whose eyes remained closed, knowing Orochimaru – permanently so. The man looked like a ghoul, a far cry from the godly presence of the Six Paths, dried out and starved, without a doubt. None of this could have been Orochimaru's doing. He did so to himself…</p><p>"Can you prepare him for the ritual? It would be a tremendous waste to only be able to wear Pain-san for three years…" Orochimaru blew breath from his nose in something resembling a self-congratulating enjoyment of his triumph.</p><p>"I suppose it might be a good idea to rest for the night after this intense battle, I'll prepare the body after we find a safe place. The violence of Sasuke's technique might have killed a whole bunch of spectating hunters, meaning to assault us the moment the battle ended, but we would be wise to conceal from the rest." Kabuto nodded and voiced his thoughts.</p><p>"Oh? Sasuke-kun's technique? Do tell…" Orochimaru smiled.</p>
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<a name="section0636"><h2>636. Mission - Take Out The Seventh</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Are you sure about this strategy, Naruto-san?" Minato moved up a layer to close in on Naruto's position. "Don't get me wrong, we're grateful you guys pulled out of that tough spot against Toneri but moving in a larger formation makes us easier to track down."</p><p>"I'm not the leader of this team, you know…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head with a goofy smile. "Kiyomi is."</p><p>"In that case, why is Naruto-san the first in the formation? Also, why don't you rule him back at all?" Minato wondered, giving Kiyomi an inquisitive glare.</p><p>"That's because he's our scapegoat. If the enemy had laid any traps – he'd be the one to fall for said traps, being the one to always rush on ahead. He's both tough enough to survive those traps as well as not crucial to us, meaning that losing him will have the least effect on hindering our overall success. Plus, arguing with him is too much of a pain…" Kiyomi explained before gritting her teeth on the left side of her mouth while a vein popped out on the matching side of her head.</p><p>"Huh… I thought I had noticed a flaw in your team's operations but it appears you have thought this through very well…" Minato admitted.</p><p>"Don't worry about it, pops!" Naruto smirked and tapped Minato on the shoulder, "We're kind of sick of sneaking around anyway, we're now onto the wrecking ball stage of smashing through every wall in our way, you know!"</p><p>"Hmmm…" Kawaki took a plunge down, making the rest of the combined forces of Team Minato and Team Hokage to take interest in the object of his obsession. The feet of the punk-haired delinquent touched down next to a puppet pinned down to a tree with a note stuck onto it that read "Don't hit me."</p><p>Kawaki tapped the pipe that he had hanging over his shoulders for a little while before swinging it with the type of smash that would have sent the puppet flying into a home run. The pipe shred through the tree that the puppet was pinned onto, sending splinters flying in each direction like shrapnel while Kawaki placed his pipe back on his shoulders and took a deliberated step to the side so that the tree could fall down daintily by his side.</p><p>"Don't tell me what to do, stupid doll!" Kawaki mumbled to himself.</p><p>"Talk about bothersome folks…" Kiyomi sighed. "Are you done down there?"</p><p>Kawaki's fingers twitched, as if he was suffering through some electrical discharge passing through his body or if something had interfered with the nervous signals of his body. The vein on Kawaki's neck tensed up, making the boy's neck twitch and his head bend to the left a few inches because of it. He was acting weird but, then again, with people like Naruto and Kawaki, who would have known what was weird and what wasn't?</p><p>"Hey, Kawaki!" Naruto yelled at the punk. The delinquent looked back with pouted lips at the spiky-haired ninja and ran up the tree, joining the ranks of the combined ninja cell.</p><p>"Quit hassling me…" Kawaki growled at Naruto. "I'm done, can we go now?"</p><p>"Yeah…" Kiyomi closed her eyes. Those that blinked at least once missed when Kiyomi dashed in up to Kawaki's face and snapped her leg in a whip-like kick that cracked Kawaki's head diagonally down and to the left. The Yamanaka thrust both of her palms into Kawaki's chest to send the poor lad crashing through a pair more trees and leaving a crater down on the ground where he had landed. "Though we'd like our Kawaki back, whoever you are…" she finished her thought.</p><p>"Huh? Are you saying that's not Kawaki, you know…?" Naruto dropped his jaw and then looked at the downed delinquent that writhed on the ground covered in bruises.</p><p>"Tsk… I guess not everybody's as dense as Uzumaki Naruto…" Kawaki rose on his feet, pressing his hand against the back of his head. "Your hair, your eyes… You seem to be from the Yamanaka clan as well, judging from the textbook definition of the usual Yamanaka features present in you, you're from one of the main branch families too… What a pity, I'd have thought that my jutsu would have been unique enough to dupe you, I guess not…"</p><p>"It did dupe me, at first," Kiyomi admitted to the mysterious parasite that has taken over Kawaki's body. "I'll admit it was too far for me to notice the signs of a consciousness switch, in the beginning, Kawaki was too far away from me and foliage obstructed the view for a clear look but… You missed a crucial detail – Kawaki isn't a ninja. He does not use the Art of Tree Climbing to scale walls."</p><p>"Hmph… I see… This boy was so strong and he was together with you so I had assumed that he was another genin participant." Kawaki observed his own hands, the eyes of the body snatcher looked quite excited to witness the scars and the unnatural tissue covering Kawaki's body where it was cybernetically enhanced.</p><p>"That's enough, Fuu…" an authoritative voice ruled while two more ninja landed in the front of the remaining six ninja of the Team Hokage and Team Minato. "You're more use to me back by my side rather than keeping that punk occupied."</p><p>"Understood, Danzo-sama…" Kawaki nodded his head and then slumped to the floor. The true temporary inheritor of the punk's body appeared from the cover of the foliage and landed beside the pair that had appeared earlier.</p><p>"You're…!" Naruto pointed at a bandaged old man with a cane and black, shaggy hair. As if the weathered veteran even needed any more identifying, notable features to his appearance, an X-shaped scar loomed on the man's chin. The man donned contrasting colors of a white shirt and a black robe over it, concealing the man's right shoulder as well as his entire lower body.</p><p>"You know him, Naruto?" Kiyomi looked to her teammate. Any cell to include a Yamanaka of the redhead's skill was of interest to her as it posed a decent threat, no matter the difference between the strengths of each of the clashing teams.</p><p>"Yeah… He took over the village when Granny got ill, just before the other me reached out for the Exams, you know." Naruto nodded. "I didn't think that the other me employed Hokage and other village ninja as hunters…"</p><p>"Unless this guy's no Hokage at all…" Kiyomi smirked and examined the rest of the trio, consisting of the Yamanaka with auburn hair and amber eyes and a short, black jacket with red straps on his shoulders and a tall, lean-built young man with fair skin, ranging on the pale side and spiky, black hair. The features of the taller member's face were obscured by a black mask and glasses that formed rather macabre, doll-like features for the mask. Other than that, the second mystery ninja accompanying the self-declared Hokage from Naruto's version of Konoha wore a matching attire to his Yamanaka comrade, suggesting that the pair both swore allegiance to one organization.</p><p>"What a foolish young lady, you're objecting to truth apparent even to a numb-skulled, loose cannon such as Naruto Uzumaki. And yet you have the gall to wear the Konohagakure headband and accompany yourself with the future Fourth Hokage. It was the right choice to choose to cut you out together with Naruto." The cross-shaped scarred old man declared.</p><p>"Cut me out?" Naruto squinted.</p><p>"That's right. It's the perfect opportunity to do so as well. As you've explained, my takeover was not what the grey masses would consider legal and the timing was both perfect and cursed at the same time. On one side, I would thank Pain for shaking the foundation and flipping the table, on another… Your defeat of Pain caused all sorts of problems for me as well." Danzo elaborated. "Not to mention that eliminating Minato here ensures that I succeed in placing Orochimaru as the Fourth Hokage in whichever universe he hails from. This alliance formed here is that of troublesome ninja to be crushed by my stout hand rising from the shadows."</p><p>"Wait… I'm also involved in this feud?" Minato scratched the back of his head, struggling to keep on a polite smile in the face of a man that had just declared his intention of eliminating him not only from the exam but of existing altogether. "I don't believe I've ever even met you, Sir…"</p><p>"Whatever, old man, I've got my own beef with you too so if you want to come at me, come and get flattened, you know!" Naruto pounded his fist into his open palm with an angry expression. "Team Hokage's on the way to their destination so I'm not gonna hold back either!"</p><p>"Hmmm… So hasty to charge to your death, at least your foolhardiness serves your village this one use…" Danzo nodded and tossed his cane aside, his feet moved farther apart, splitting the coat that covered his legs somewhat.</p><p>"So his old man appearance was just an act…" Kotaro stated. "That much should have been expected, given his penchant for megalomaniacal talk."</p><p>"You heard what that guy said, Kotaro, this guy tried 'ta prevent Minato from becoming Hokage, ya know! Let's pound him for that!" Kushina mirrored the confident and brutish gesture that her future son had just performed before declaring his eagerness to confront Danzo and his group.</p><p>A loud popping noise accompanied the windmill shuriken that Meiko unsealed from her armor that laid underneath her tracksuit and flung it, flaring up with honey-colored chakra coating. Danzo arm rose from underneath the black shirt that covered his right side, revealing a katana which he unsheathed and used to block Meiko's windmill shuriken. Meiko smirked, realizing that her chakra-coated tool would make quick work of a bare blade, as fine as it was, but then, as Danzo's own sword lit up with a green flare with accompanying brown jets for a chakra coating much more refined than that of Meiko's own, the genin clicked her teeth in frustration.</p><p>The honey thread formed between Meiko's gauntlet and her windmill shuriken, informing the combatting ninja that the windmill shuriken was indeed tied to a steel wire that Meiko now channeled her chakra through. The blacksmith yanked the steel wire to return her shuriken back to her hands but Danzo stabbed his blade to lock the shuriken in place by putting his half-sheathed katana into the central ring of the shuriken. Meiko yanked on the thread again, this time utilizing the force to propel her body and use the steel wire tied to the entrapped shuriken to propel herself at the enemy with a flying kick.</p><p>Danzo let go of his blade, letting it dangle loosely with the steel wire and the windmill shuriken, tied over a nearby branch, while he blocked Meiko's flying kick and answered with a flurry of his own one-handed strikes, while his other hand remained concealed under the slipping, black shirt. Meiko gasped for air when a sturdy kick to her chest sent her flying and tumbling off of the branch into the lower levels of the Forest of Death while staring at Danzo's indifferent and cruel face on her way down and wishing to smash its smug likeness to a mushy puddle.</p><p>"Is brute strength all that this universe can offer? Your unbelievable chakras have pampered you…" Danzo reflected on the short hand-to-hand exchange with Meiko.</p><p>"And you, do you think your Yamanaka hijutsu has rendered you invisible, or something?" Danzo looked behind him, confronting Kiyomi who had rushed in from behind. Being noticed so suddenly by the veteran made Kiyomi flinch while Danzo laid a thorough and sturdy, one-handed beatdown on her as well, sending Kiyomi crashing down before pulling the steel wire with his threat to fish up the katana he had abandoned before and throw it after Kiyomi like a harpoon to pin her down.</p><p>The wind howled and rushed past Kiyomi's cheeks, her blond hair got in the way. By the time that the Yamanaka heiress noticed the silver, metallic gleam, it would have been too late but a tool far cruder than that which was meant to impale her deflected the blade in a rather elegant for a dislodged pipe spin. Kiyomi repositioned and pressed her feet to the vigorous oak that Danzo had meant to pin her to so that she'd bleed out like some pig and looked down at the angle from which the pipe had flown.</p><p>"I have been a fucking puppet for three minutes!" Kawaki roared out, desperate for his uproar to reach those responsible for the replacement of his consciousness.</p><p>"So that's why Danzo could see me move – the Yamanaka counteracted my Mind-Body Phase jutsu and canceled the jutsu he had on Kawaki to be able to do so…" Kiyomi thought to herself. Her ribs ached from the elbow strikes and her jaw still felt numb from the couple of slams with his free hand that Danzo laid on her, mostly it was the wounds from previous battles weighing her down some that hurt the most right now.</p><p>"Mass Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto weaved his clone hand seal, creating a myriad of clones, covering the entire forest area around them. "You're disgracing the title of Hokage right now, I'll kick your ass right out of that chair if I have to, you know!" he declared. "The title of Hokage isn't about what's best for you or your circle of friends, it's about what's best for the entire village!"</p><p>The clones all rushed at Danzo at once. Danzo peeked at the black, spiky-haired youth by his side who stepped out in front of his master, alongside the Yamanaka. The pair reached for the short-swords that they wielded on their backs. Their blades danced in an elegant flurry, the lengths of their blades seemed perfect for the two to fight side-by-side and their skill with filleting great masses of less-skilled opponents served a great deal in repelling Naruto's massive Shadow Clone assault. Danzo experienced some solitary sensations of pleasure himself, dispatching the stragglers that attempted to flank him by bypassing the vanguard of Torune and Fu. For an old man who acted like he needed a cane to walk, his taijutsu game was exceptional.</p><p>"You insolent pup, whose interest do you believe I am serving by removing you from the equation?" Danzo glared back at Naruto through the shoulders of Torune and Fu shielding him from the young man's wrath. "You defeating Pain made the village feel safe, it made them feel like they have a perfect hero who's always going to be there to protect them and that cannot stand. I have seen the world that exists in the shadows, I have waged entire wars that the village remains oblivious to and there will be no hero that can protect us from what's coming from underground! Yours is a false sense of safety, Uzumaki Naruto, look up at the snotty leader you'd become in the future – vain enough to organize grandiose events with potential security threats rather than hold them at an arm's length or eliminate them immediately. You will lead the future of Konoha to ruin and that cannot be allowed to happen. I will use every ounce of power and insight I have accumulated to crush you before you can do the damage you've done in the future."</p><p>A pair of shadow clones took a plunge from above of Danzo, grabbing the old man by his shoulders and pulling him off the powerful tree branch he took root onto, driving him down to the ground level of the Forest of Death where sunlight rarely penetrated. Another shadow clone burst forth from the foliage to slam his knee into Danzo's gut while the old man got slammed into the grassy floor of the forest.</p><p>"So what if the villagers feel safe looking up to me? Living in fear of everything around you is no way to live at all! I'd rather be stabbed in the back by someone I've always seen coming than treat people like enemies and making an enemy out of somebody that could have always been my friend, you know!" Naruto declared while the original burst forth from the foliage with a massive Rasengan in hand. The clones that helped pin Danzo down to the ground drove their knees to Danzo's shoulders and forearms, locking him in place for Naruto to deliver the diving Rasengan right to his opponent.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto roared while slamming the storming, azure sphere of turbulent chakra and outright drilling Danzo into the ground while the Rasengan stormed out in a whirling sphere of devastation that destroyed the restraining clones and threw Naruto out of it at the same time. Torune and Fu landed beside Danzo to watch their master as he recovered while Minato, Kushina, and Kotaro took a plunge from above and joined Naruto on the ground level as well, still looking for their opportunity to strike.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm not suited to become the Hokage yet," Naruto admitted with a blunder in his voice. "I've still got a lot of things to learn and a lot of walls to overcome. I am yet to rescue Sasuke too, you know. Until Sasuke is safe back in Konoha I'll never call myself Hokage! But I'd die and end up never becoming Hokage before letting someone greedy like you take the position, somebody who uses the seat to bolster their own strength and position, someone who would squander the goodwill and unity amongst the villages just so he could wage wars and feel safe only when surrounded by ashes!"</p><p>"You right, you are young and naïve still, Naruto Uzumaki…" Danzo Shimura stood from his disgraced position and cracked his knuckles and his head. Naruto's eyes trembled in surprise with how well this feeble old man took his Rasengan.</p><p>"That jutsu… It seemed incredible yet it did so little damage to him…" Minato clicked his teeth together. "Could he be using a similar jutsu to Tobi to avoid damage?"</p><p>"No, my jutsu connected for sure. I guess he's just tougher than most people I've met… To take a direct hit from a Rasengan like that and shrug it off, you know." Naruto shook his head.</p><p>"We will help ya keep those bozos off your back, you just make sure to settle things with this Danzo guy, ya know!" Kushina beamed a smile Naruto's way as she rushed in by his side alongside young Minato.</p><p>"What a troublesome family of smile-beaming imbeciles…" Danzo sighed, removing his right hand from its shackles of the black shirt and exposing multiple Sharingan eyes resting all over his arm. "Even if you don't mean to, you're driving the village to great disaster by inspiring the people to follow you. It would be for the best if the history books forgot you three had ever existed… As Hokage, I can make sure of that. You will thank me with your final breaths, knowing that your village will rest safe in my hands, even if in time nobody will remember you ever existed."</p><p>"He's… Just like that Shin-guy…" Meiko shook in disgust of the man's body modifications. "Sounds way more full of himself though!"</p>
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<a name="section0637"><h2>637. The Bet Is Made And Die Is Cast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Erupting Propulsion Fist!" Deiji forced air through his helmet in white huffs that left to the outside in steam streams. The manner in which Deiji breathed air out from his helmet when forcefully driving it out matched the manner in which steam moved all over his armor and burst forth through the specific exhaust pipe.</p><p>An ethereal arm of sapphire shade formed in front of Madara Uchiha simultaneously with a ribcage ring hanging over his upper body and clutched his fingers to lock Deiji's arm in while absorbing the full force of the blow with what seemed to be no effort at all.</p><p>"Not a bad punch for a kid," Madara smirked while using the occasion to the fullest and swinging his subdued opponent about while his other ethereal hand locked around the first, entrapping Deiji inside the combined clutch of the two and smashing both of them downward in a hammering slam. The resulting force popped out from underground in a howling pillar of blasting air while the air that couldn't leave underground at once resonated through the ground and left cracks and ripples making the sacred garden remind more of a floor of shattered glass.</p><p>"That's reckless!" Itachi scolded the rushing Jinchuuriki but the sight of Nanaba's face seeming calm made him soothe his own worries a bit. After all, if such a goofy girl didn't drop her carefree smile after such a gruesome display of force, perhaps she didn't think much of it nor considered it a danger to her comrade's life.</p><p>"Don't worry, Deiji's too strong to be done in like that…" Nanaba winked at the cloaked Uchiha. As a testament to her words, the Jinchuuriki of the Five-Tails burst from underground in between the pair with dirtied but undamaged armor.</p><p>"Drat… I thought that we would fight this guy the same way we fight any Uchiha…" he muttered to himself.</p><p>"Oh? You have a way of fighting Uchiha?" Madara turned his head with a smirk, asking to be humored with a mocking tone of voice.</p><p>"Yeah, those eyes of yours seem like nothing when you use them sparingly but their strain builds up over time. More so, the strain progresses the longer the fight continues." Deiji explained. While it would have seemed like an odd way to approach a battle since most Uchiha were monumental ninja who possessed vast chakra signatures, therefore making such battles of attrition pointless. However, given that Deiji was a Jinchuuriki and had the nigh limitless chakra of a Tailed Beast available to him, this fact made such a strategy not just viable but potent.</p><p>"It won't be that easy with Madara, I'm afraid. He doesn't use the normal Sharingan of the Uchiha. His eyes are the Eternal Sharingan, meaning that they do not suffer the same exhaustive drawbacks of the Mangekyou Sharingan." Itachi briefed the kids he employed to even the odds between himself and the owner of the pair of eyes he desired.</p><p>"Mangekyou Sharingan?" Kouta scratched his head. "That's already plenty unnatural to us. I'm not sure what the Uchiha in your universe are up to, but in here even normal Sharingan is plenty enough to deal with."</p><p>"So then the Uchiha here haven't suffered a profound loss in their lives?" Itachi mumbled to himself, "I must admit I am a bit jealous of that, I wish that my clansmen from my own universe would have been able to live that sort of life."</p><p>"What's the matter, mites, are your pants wet already? If you won't entertain me, I'll just get bored and wipe you all out at once!" Madara threatened the opposing squad and clutched his battle fan more tightly, swinging it with purpose and raising turbulent gusts before what he channeled his chakra for even kicked in. Two, three, four and five vortexes of howling wind picked up and split apart into crescent blades of slicing winds only to form more and more twisters that pulled apart entire trees and ground them to a rain of sawdust over the bracing genin.</p><p>"Tsk, Madara's legendary Gunbai, it has been described as able to deflect enemy projectiles with the force of wind but wind manipulation of such scale…" Itachi braced for the incoming impact, grunting as his cloak struggled to keep stuck to its master. The cloaked Uchiha appeared to get sucked into the twister as if by a void of vacuum, disappearing inside with a bent up arc of a black streak and once the twister left its destructive path, it scattered only shreds of Itachi's Akatsuki cloak behind it.</p><p>"What a scary jutsu!" Nanaba bent back and bit into her fingernails before tapping them to her temple and snapping her fingers. "Right, I guess it can't be helped… Let's go, Chomei!" she jumped up with a little bit of assistance from chakra augmentation to acquire elevation reaching up to the levels above the highest level of trees while massive wings fluttered from behind her and sent waves of gold-encrusted winds to counteract and dispel Madara's own twisters.</p><p>"The Five-Tails as well as the Seven-Tails… Have the Tailed Beasts become just playthings for children in this pathetic peace that's neutered the villages?" Madara sighed when confronted with such blatant disrespect to the once mighty and feared beasts used as weapons of mass destruction in his time. A might sufficient to scare a mighty army off of foolish illusion of war all in itself. Perhaps the Tailed Beasts truly have lost their purpose similarly to ninja as powerful as he was?</p><p>"Insult my grandpa, will you!?" Tsunade's valiant roar cut through the silence as the blonde soared through, riding the golden wind toward the arrogant Uchiha prodigy of the past. Madara swung his Gunbai in to block the flying punch of the rabid youth with a disinterested expression.</p><p>"I was never the one to enforce foolish stereotypes but… It seems like this generation truly can't sit down and hear a thing out." Madara declared with a disinterested tone while Tsunade's punch let out a wild thud when contacting the surface of the chakra-coated war fan. "I did not offend your grandfather, nipper, quite the opposite, he is the only ninja to have ever lived of any worth to me. I cannot let this opportunity go to waste without challenging and defeating him at last."</p><p>"I'm the Princess that inherits my grandfather's Will of Fire, if you insult me, you insult grandpa and the legacy of Senju itself!" Tsunade roared out while stomping at the war fan with her foot just to keep her opponent in place while she flared up her fist with Chakra Enhanced Strength and repeated the strike with thousandfold the power.</p><p>The resonating shockwave deflecting off of Madara's fan sent the blond ponytails flying back and landing in a rough way on her back. The Uchiha warlord from an era past sent the little Senju princess packing just in time to employ his Gunbai to fend off Kouta's own flurry of blows, just like with Tsunade's case, Kouta's fists glowed blue from the chakra that augmented his strength.</p><p>"Another medical ninja? Who do you even have to treat when your world has forgotten the madness of war?" Madara mocked the young man while his eye flared up with a malicious, scarlet gleam. "Tsukuyomi!" he proclaimed.</p><p>Kouta grunted as his feet began feeling light. A sense of warmth began seeping through his sandals as something warm, pulsing and fleshy began swallowing him up into the ground beneath, the rate of the submersion was quite pathetic, suitable perhaps more to torture or interrogation but Madara appeared to be nowhere to be seen. Kouta felt all alone in a world of darkness and inverted shades, where the only laws that applied were ones that Madara imposed on it.</p><p>"Weak, you've always been weak!" father's judgmental voice echoed as the figure of Kusagoro loomed in on the horizon, like a pissed off God that oversaw his dominion. "Why can't you be strong, like me? I don't get it, the more I whip you into shape, the more you bend and break and whine, like a sissy little girl… I'd probably make a true warrior out of your girlfriend faster, if only she hadn't dumped your sorry ass…"</p><p>Just as Kouta raised his voice up to object to a figure so far away in the distance, the fleshy substance that began swallowing him up turned ablaze. Despite feeling every little bit as intense as the embrace of actual flames, the energy that scorched his flesh didn't offer any illumination, on the contrary, it seemed as if though the walls of emerging flames consumed all the limited light around it and converted it to irresistible heat that converted Kouta's objections into a desperate scream of pain.</p><p>"Are you okay?" Kouta felt a tap of somebody beside him and woke up from something that seemed akin to a daydream. The Juugo looked to his right only to see Itachi in a mesh shirt and matching, baggy pants and a white belt tied over his waist. "Be careful, one who possesses the Eternal Mangekyou can also use all the powers that the owner of the Mangekyou has. I hope you haven't been roaming your nightmares for too long?"</p><p>"I'm fine… Just… Gimmie a second…" Kouta breathed out a heavy sigh of relief, feeling his own body resisting the instinct to take a shot at this seemingly invincible man ever again. That thing he did… He twisted the rules of everything around him, created a faux reality with rules that he himself decreed upon it and even worse – it made Kouta believe all those nightmares were real, even though they weren't. No matter how much one would convince themselves what they were seeing wasn't real – they wouldn't even have the willpower to finish that thought once, let alone use it as a mantra for concentration. This felt like a whole different thing altogether compared to Mana's illusions…</p><p>"Madara Uchiha! What an absolutely awesome dude!" Hoshigaki Morei of Team Angler yelled out while pounding the shaking ground with both of his shark-like hammers for arms. The expression of glee earned the energetic young man a glance from the Ghost of Uchiha himself.</p><p>"Now do you understand then? The difference of power between a handful of guppies and the Ghost of Uchiha, the Savior of the World, what will you do when confronted with such astounding might, ninja of Kirigakure?" Madara spread his arms out, manifesting his ethereal ribcage and long, skeletal arms that emanated such powerful chakra that it seared over the skeletal structure like flames.</p><p>"I'm gonna run at you!" Morei declared and pointed one of his fists straight at Madara. Then, not at all intimidated by his bold declaration of his upcoming battle plans, the shark-man bent his body down as if prepping it for a dash.</p><p>"You will… Run at me…?" Madara mumbled out, shocked by the blunt and rather silly nature of the Kirigakure ninja but feeling too above it all to express just how much the youth's antics got to him deep down.</p><p>Morei took off in a dash that shattered the ground underneath his feet, sending layers of dirt and rock flying behind him in a trail that downed a couple of trees that grew lined up while the rest of the ground rumbled and messed itself up like a hectic rug as the Kirigakure powerhouse took off. Before he could cover half the distance he meant to cover with his straight as an arrow dive, the hammer smash of Madara's Susanoo fists pounded him down into a crater.</p><p>"Hmph… Kirigakure seemed off to such a good start, a pity to see it all go to waste on dogs of loud bark that can't get close enough to bite even once." Madara mocked the downed Kirigakure ninja. "Although the secret of the Sharingan appears to have been well-protected from your village, otherwise you'd have known that trying to blitz me with a frontal, physical assault was pointless."</p><p>"I… Seemed to have forgotten that ability of the Sharingan… It's got so many…" the shark-man sat up in his crater and wrapped his bandaged arms over his head, dragging his webbed fingers across his temple, as if suffering migraines from keeping up with the abilities of his opponent.</p><p>"That's like… The one main thing the Sharingan does… How did you forget that one of all the others?" Chu shook her head in disappointment in her own teammate, looking like she was just walling herself off of the embarrassment he was bringing to her whole team.</p><p>"Water Style: Hidden Mist Jutsu!" Raizo grumbled beside the frustrated kunoichi of the Mist, forming a thick haze around them that transitioned into a full-on mist in mere moments. The speed at which the technique took place and the seemingly effortless and perfect execution of the jutsu made it obvious that the third genin of Team Angler excelled at using it in combat.</p><p>"A chakra smokescreen…" Madara smirked. "It seems as if though not all Kirigakure ninja are quite braindead." He spoke while his Eternal Mangekyou raced across the white mist, trying to see any notable chakra signatures inside it but finding it difficult due to the amount of chakra present in each water particle in the air. Because of the fact that the mist was created artificially, with the aid of chakra, it made it an effective tool for concealing oneself when facing weaker sensors.</p><p>"However…" Madara turned around and thrust the other end of his Gunbai into the gut of the emerging Kirigakure genin who had attempted to assassinate him from behind. "My Eternal Sharingan sees through all such drivel…"</p><p>The impaled Kirigakure ninja collapsed into a streaming puddle of water like a stabbed water balloon that had somehow maintained its rough shape and managed not to pop immediately. Madara let out an intrigued and accelerated breath before realizing that he had fallen prey to underestimating these kids based on the showings of one simpleton. The heart of the Ghost of Uchiha sputtered in excitement just trying to figure out the intricate plans these kids will employ to get one over him.</p><p>"See this, see that!" a boisterous yell of the Kirigakure kunoichi echoed from behind him. "This here staff's gonna make your eyes see stuff popped outta your skull!"</p><p>Madara's Susanoo arm caught Chu's weapon and stopped her bashing approach in mid-air. Madara's eyes managed to boil in fury of eternal disappointment in the next generation while at the same time showing none of it on the outside at all. His arms raced through hand seals while in the safety of his Susanoo ribcage.</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Fire Destruction!" Madara yelled out while breathing air in and blowing it out in a titanic stream of violent flames. Had it not been for the fact that the jutsu aimed its major devastation up in the air with sufficient heat to cleanse away anything susceptible to heat in its way, far superior in terms of intensity than it should have taken to sear flesh from the bones of mere children but these scamps had not yet earned his mercy. "This staff of yours is called a kanabo, girl. Know your own weaponry testing the mettle of another's."</p><p>"No!" Itachi yelled out, racing across the battlefield to try and ensure the survival of each of his fundamental game pieces as they acted without his permission or order, keeping him too occupied with keeping them alive to formulate any meaningful plan of his own. The rest of the genin just observed in horror at what would be left of the poor Kirigakure girl consumed by Madara's flames.</p><p>Chu ragdolled out of the firestorm like a doll thrown aside by a capricious brat, covered in meaningless, surface-level burns and damage to her already plenty-limited clothes, she slammed onto the ground while her ponytails let her hair flow wild. Jiraiya raced across the battlefield to see if the young lady was okay, being ever the gentleman, but Chu sat up before he could even get to her and shook her fist from the distance.</p><p>Madara looked like he was questioning the meaning behind the girl's survival. This was one factoid of this clash that truly did get to him and managed to creep up one hint of bafflement onto the face of the self-proclaimed Savior of the World. His blows should have utterly decimated these children. He was nothing short of a God of Shinobi back in his universe so there was no reason he should not have dominated any other universe just as well.</p><p>And yet, the chick sat up and cursed at him like she had been just barely inconvenienced by an attack that would have razed an entire village back home… What a wild world!</p><p>"You appear a bit shell-shocked, Madara." Tsunade mocked the surprised Uchiha warlord. "You should have listened to what Lord Seventh told you when he enrolled you or read the fine print of the contract you've signed. Here, we can just pack enough of a wallop to whoop your ass!"</p><p>"Utter rubbish," Madara declared and closed his eyes just for a moment. Despite his Mangekyou closing for a blink, the Susanoo remained to protect him and threaten to smash anyone foolish enough to enter within the arms' reach. "Mere brats cannot beat me. Neither in here nor in any other world. No matter how long you browse the totality of all the worlds that exist, there is no world in which Hashirama's pipsqueak can beat me."</p><p>"Let's make it a bet then, Madara!" Tsunade declared and pounded her fist into her free hand while rocking her not yet fully-formed hips to the opposite side.</p><p>"You may as well have gone on and doomed us all, Tsunade…" Orochimaru, who was quite hesitant to involve himself in the engagement declared while Raiza appeared from the mist beside Jiraiya and his team.</p><p>"Don't worry, it's a bet on my life and, when betting on that, I never lose!" Tsunade smiled to her gloomy teammate and gave him a confident look. "Something about this creep makes me want to pound him to dust so that my grandpa doesn't have to waste his time, if he's even here, to begin with."</p>
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<a name="section0638"><h2>638. Flash Howitzer Delivery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We outnumber them but their teamwork is superior to ours, they've clearly worked together for a while. We'll have better chances at success if we split them up and tackle them in smaller groups individually." Kotaro said.</p><p>"What are you suggesting?" Minato turned his attention to his teammate.</p><p>"Let's use the Flash Howitzer combination," Kotaro replied.</p><p>"You mean Blaze Slashing Sphere Explosive Dash Version Three?" Minato smirked. "Nice thinking…"</p><p>"That's why we don't let you name our combinations, Minato…" Kushina sighed.</p><p>Seeing how the entirety of Team Hokage was unaware of the combination that Team Minato had in mind, they just stood back and let them do their thing, approving of the desired outcome of splitting the enemy into three separate elements to be tackled individually.</p><p>Kotaro weaved a pair of hand seals. His hand seal speed was impressive for someone his age, it dawned on Kiyomi that he might have worked to improve that area similarly to Mana, although it was impossible that he'd have taken the craft to heights anywhere close to the sleight of hand of the ninja magician.</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Kotaro declared as he breathed in deep and bloated out his chest to an unnatural extent. Provided that what came in had to come out eventually, with matching or greater intensity, what did come out was soaked to the brim with Fire Release chakra and whirled into a fireball that grew in size a couple of times after leaving the boy's mouth. Despite its perfect, round formation, the fireball appeared less dense than a skilled user of the jutsu would have been capable of forming. It was a rather common technique amongst Konoha ninja, after all, Fire Release users being prevalent in the heart of Land of Fire and all.</p><p>Minato toyed with his kunai and then flickered off, dashing through the fireball like a speeding bullet and driving his kunai in a reverse grip, the force of the fireball's resistance, despite its rather fluffy density, still hit his wrist hard enough to have shattered it had Minato not trained to use this combination due to his astounding speed. The fireball burst like a bubble, firing off smaller flares aside while Minato rode the tunnel of flames his dash had created to slash at Danzo like a living weapon of blazing destruction. It was because of his speed and the wind tunnel he had formed and enforced with chakra around him while he was moving that he managed to avoid taking any damage whatsoever but anyone just a step slower would have eaten a faceful of fireball.</p><p>Caught unaware by the sudden, explosive outburst of offensive, or rather still hesitant to dash aside and part ways as the enemy had intended them to do, all members of Danzo's squad got hit one way or another. Danzo drew his blade himself, letting Earth Release chakra coat it to the fullest extent while he clashed with Minato directly. The young man matched the grit of his elder opponent as did the two match their tempered stares at one another but a metallic clang had put an end to their collision when Minato's kunai broke into two at the same time as did Danzo's sword.</p><p>The inertia sent Minato tumbling over up front but the draft of the lagging wind and flames behind him consumed Danzo and forced the old man to for once admit that the damage of the resulting battle was getting to him. Danzo shouted out in pain while spiraling after Minato, had the young man not kept his head low, the two might have collided but Minato was by now aware of the draft that followed him in his wake when using this combination.</p><p>Fuu and Torune attempted to assist their leader but two separate shells of condensed flame hit them in the sides, sending them covered in flames to roll aside just to deal with the fire. These circumstances forced both Torune and Fuu to remove their upper clothes so that their bodies didn't catch more of the fire's wrath than their chakra augmentations could shield them from at the moment. The Flash Howitzer combo was successful, it seemed, it proceeded to wear on the enemy even if it did not exactly part their ways.</p><p>"Minato Namikaze, a fine ninja even in your youth…" Danzo grumbled to himself while he rose on his feet, exposing his entire upper body and the fleshy scar tissue covering his entire right side, including a curious pocket of flesh and lumps that reminded of a sleeping face of a man. All over the scar tissue, Sharingan eyes glared at a blank point in space.</p><p>"You seem to have wanted to kill me not too long ago…" Minato took it to his own feet, observing the fact that he was now separated from the cluster of Teams Minato and Hokage. The youth that would become the Fourth Hokage in the future of his universe took a taijutsu fighting stance.</p><p>"True, that wasn't because of the fact your skill was demeaning to the post of the Fourth Hokage, it was merely because, similarly to your son, you bring hope and smile to the village, you expose the secrets of the ninja life to the sunlight where it needs to stay in the shadows. Orochimaru would have been a man more suited for the job, every bit your equal in skill while having the right mindset at the same time…" Danzo declared while one of his forever closed eyes opened with a squint to get a decent look at Minato.</p><p>Torune and Fu charged at Minato at once from separate corners of the battlefield, gripping the handles of their short-blades and aiming for a cross slash that would have either removed the boy's head altogether if he failed to react in time or left him with a lethal cross-shaped slash, sentencing him for a slow, bleeding agony on the forest floor if he managed to correct where their combination attack hit him.</p><p>Minato flickered, in a blink he had moved above Fu and kicked off his shoulders, using that second ground for a jumping dash to the air to avoid Torune's blade as well and grab a slender branch with his hand which he used to swing back over them and dive toward his team. Danzo's hands began forming hand seals the moment he was almost about to land, aiming to interrupt Minato in mid-air with a cleverly-timed and well-aimed ninjutsu attack.</p><p>"Wind Style: Vacuum Sphere!" Danzo yelled out while exhaling small ripples of Wind Release chakra that darted off at the enemy like invisible, sharp projectiles that carried an awesome spread to them as well, making them difficult to dodge without injury.</p><p>Meiko covered her face up, feeling a pair of sharp slashes throw her body in a state of shock that, while initially seemed heart-stopping after a few seconds it drove her adrenaline just high enough to seem beneficial in a battle as her battle awareness sharpened. Hitting her in the range she was in from Danzo, the projectiles had lost some of their stopping power already.</p><p>Kiyomi had leaned aside, dancing around the handful of projectiles and avoiding all damage from Danzo's jutsu. Naruto's grunts suggested that he had used the powering through method of dealing with such a jutsu and the multiple tears on his tracksuit through which minor trickles of blood could have been seen suggested that he took some damage where his disgruntled face revealed that he didn't much care. Kawaki raised his cybernetically modified arm and deflected each of the Wind Release projectiles coming at him. Kushina screamed out in pain from the sides, judging from a couple of bloody stains on her sleeveless blouse, she took some nasty cuts too from Danzo.</p><p>"Damn! We can't separate them or prevent them from working together." Minato grit his teeth, offering his childhood crush a few moments of attention to see how she was dealing with the minor wounds she sustained.</p><p>"In that case, we just need to attack them together, separately, give them too much to deal with to combo off of their teammates' actions." Meiko declared and activated the seals on the back of her hands, unsealing her Reactor Gauntlets over her hands while she took a Strong Fist Style taijutsu stance, preparing to rush at the enemy head-on.</p><p>"Leave it to Meiko to form a plan I approve of, you know!" Naruto pounded his own palm and then took his own taijutsu stance, directing his stare right at Danzo, leaving no doubts about the target he had chosen.</p><p>"Alright then, we've tried planning but it couldn't have worked with our limited experience working together. Let's just wing it, pick a guy and go at them until you can go no longer." Kiyomi nodded, not feeling to glad about submitting to Meiko's base instincts but that was just that the blacksmith's cute and excited face sometimes did to her. It wasn't that bad of an idea either so Kiyomi didn't feel too bad about her personal bias as a team leader.</p><p>"Reactor Breath!" Meiko yelled out while cupping her hands together and letting the emanating aura of channeled chakra that became turned to a mass of heat focus into a single blast of heat-based chakra and take off at Torune.</p><p>"Rinkaichu: Insect Armor!" Torune crossed his arms while the violet corruption overtook his entire body, dyeing his entire skin, even the bits and pieces of his face that could have been seen through his mask. Despite the clothes covering his upper body ripping off entirely, the Aburame's mask remained fixed to his body, suggesting that it was made of a bit sterner stuff.</p><p>When Meiko's expulsion of the built-up chakra via the Reactor Breath technique hit Torune head-on, the insect armor he had formed over his skin rippled like the surface of a lake in which somebody had thrown a decent stone but upon taking in all of the Breath's might and remaining on his feet, Torune's insect armor had settled down again, seeming like he had taken absolutely no damage whatsoever from that attack.</p><p>"If all you're gonna do is stand and block, you're gonna get wrecked, you bastard!" Kawaki yelled out while switching his pipe to his left hand and throwing his right hand forward in a cross. Despite the range between him and Torune being absolutely massive, large enough for an exchange of mid-range ninjutsu techniques being the preferred method of engagement, Kawaki's arm grew massively in size until it became as large as a speeding train and caught Torune unprepared.</p><p>"The Akimichi expansion ability!?" Torune gasped in disbelief before letting the unstoppable strength of the incoming fist consume him and send him crashing through the forest on the back. The trees shook, cracked, shred and crumbled in a tunnel of force that made its way through them and showed the sacred place of the Land of Fire absolutely no mercy.</p><p>"Holy shit, Kawaki!" Meiko yelled out. "That was awesome! Didn't know you could do that!"</p><p>"I told you, I'm cybernetically enhanced, my whole fucking body's a living weapon…" the punk grunted while his fist returned to normal size. The violet rot that had covered Torune's entire body had stuck onto Kawaki's skin too, it seemed as a small mass of it festered onto the place of contact between Kawaki's body and Torune's. Meanwhile, only a pile of purple mush remained where Torune's body was before being blasted away. The mush pulsed for a little while before beginning a creepy crawl up a tree until it crept up Torune's body that hid up in that tree.</p><p>"So you've chosen to sacrifice your life to destroy an insect clone? Essentially, you've died for nothing…" Torune declared while pointing his finger at the expanding rot over Kawaki's right fist.</p><p>"Fuck, that burns!" Kawaki grunted before gripping his arm by the bicep and pressing hard enough to cause damage to the scar tissue that was covering it.</p><p>"That's right, my rinkaichu are different from the normal insect breed that the Aburame clan uses – the kikaichu. My insects are almost unperceivable, nano-sized, if you will, and they are highly deadly, though they can only be transferred through physical contact with the target." Torune explained while Kawaki continued to scratch his arm and curse while the purple rot continued to overtake him bit by bit. Then, a fleshy tearing sound made everyone present widen their eyes – Kawaki had outright ripped off his infected arm and gritted his teeth at Torune.</p><p>"You motherfucker… You're gonna pay for making me do that!" he exclaimed while his cells began rapidly dividing one over another and regrowing the lost limb bit by bit. Multiplying the boy's own nano-sized ninja tools rapidly as his fleshy stump grew larger and larger and would eventually begin to once more resemble the arm that he had lost.</p><p>"Just what… Is this boy?" Danzo muttered. "Boy, would you by any chance like to live through this encounter? The Root could very much use your uncanny talents. You could employ your amazing gifts to protect Konoha from the shadows."</p><p>Danzo covered his face up, a minute splatter of blood sprayed from his ordinary, left hand when Kawaki's pipe hit it on the back of his upper arm and left a mean bruise over it. It was the best attempt that the recovering punk could make in order to silence the veteran shinobi.</p><p>"You've got nothing to offer me, freak. I'm no goddamned ninja so you better nail it into that braindead noggin of yours, got it?" Kawaki growled out. "I don't give rat's ass about protecting anyone but myself, I don't very much like fucking anything. It was only today that I found out I liked confectionaries. So stick that dumbass ninja shit up the ass, which you've probably got covered up with those weird red eyes too."</p><p>"He… Has a way with words and not the right way but… I'm glad to see he's on our side, ya know," Kushina nodded with the most confused face that could accurately translate her inner turmoil about how she felt at the youth that liked to act just like he looked – defiant of social norms and local tradition in all ways imaginable.</p><p>"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Kiyomi weaved a hand seal and created one shadow clone, the pair launched themselves at Fu together, utilizing the moment of confusion and admiration directed at Kawaki from both sides of their team as well as the enemy squad.</p><p>"Flash Mind Body Switch!" Fu placed his hands together in the Yamanaka hijutsu signature hand seal. Kiyomi's mouth went ajar at the immense speed and ease at which this man performed the Mind Body Switch. It was as easy for him as raising his hand up for a block. To make matters worse, he had managed to hit the real Kiyomi square in the chest with the transfer of his consciousness too. With a whirlwind kick, Fu dispatched of the heiress' very confused shadow clone and then turned for her team.</p><p>Kushina took a step back and threw her fists forward, preparing to engage her comrade. Kotaro gave his teammate who was infamous for her outrages of physical violence in the Ninja Academy a wary glare but upon receiving a serious and very much in her own mind look back from Kushina he realized that the Red Hot Habanero knew very much what she was doing right now and that she wasn't about to beat the snot out of Kiyomi just to drive the possessor of her body out.</p><p>"Right, let's go, ya know!" she braved herself onward while she took off to engage the enemy in her comrade's body. A red hue of chakra emanating from her like an ever-present aura expelled from the girl's body as she charged onward at the possessed Kiyomi, throwing brutal but normally effective fists at her.</p><p>"Hmph… Engaging in a taijutsu exchange using the Strong Fist style. What a simpleton…" Fuu mocked Kushina in Kiyomi's voice while throwing his palms outward and driving every single pumped fist of Kushina sliding to the side harmlessly. "Strong Fist is the standard taijutsu style taught to all Konoha children in the Academy, if that is the only fighting style you have, you're better off staying in long-range because your moves are like an open book to anyone who's read from the same textbook as you…"</p><p>Fuu answered with a fist to Kushina's abdomen, quickly transitioning from a deflecting palm strike into the stalwart fist of the Strong Fist style himself. Kushina gasped for air as she spat out slobber from her mouth, tumbling back from the brute force present in the fist of possessed Kiyomi. With renewed vigor and a valiant battlecry, Kushina leaped back into the fight, throwing more and more mad Strong Style attacks and forcing possessed Kiyomi on the backward-moving defensive loop.</p><p>"Such a numb-skulled girl. At least you know how to… Take a punch…" Fuu complained with a panting tone from Kiyomi's body.</p><p>"You talk too damned much, ya know!" Kushina yelled out while throwing a mad headbutt straight at Kiyomi's own forehead. Fuu had tried to withstand its awesome might but upon realizing that Kiyomi didn't wear her forehead protector on her forehead, as it was meant to, but on her left knee instead, he could only surrender to the buzz that drove him to black out just for a blink and falling on his back, crawling back for his own good. A crimson ripple went down in multiple trickles off of Fu's limp body positioned by a tree, matching the painful gash on Kiyomi's own forehead.</p><p>"Heh, it looks like you're taking all the damage that I inflict on Kiyomi too, huh? Shoulda picked a more advanced mind hopping jutsu, ya know!" Kushina cracked her knuckles as she loomed over the helpless body of possessed Kiyomi.</p><p>"You might have figured out my weakness but…" Fuu proclaimed while driving both of Kiyomi's palms into the dirt and flipping his body backward, hitting Kushina straight in the jaw as he vaulted back and over on his feet, sending the redhead flying back and falling on her own bottom. "This technique is all the disruption I need for now, Torune!"</p><p>"Understood!" Torune nodded and put his hands together. "Poison Cloud…" before he could complete his technique. The barrage of Phoenix Flower Jutsu projectiles hurled from Kotaro's side, it appeared as if though Meiko's makeshift strategy of splitting the enemy between them and then pressuring them so that they couldn't support each other was yielding some positive results.</p><p>That was for the better too, since, without a doubt, Fuu had intended Torune to spread his deadly nano-insects all over Kiyomi's body while fleeing her mind at the very last second, making it impossible for the possessed leader of Team Hokage to escape her inevitable and very painful death. It wasn't like she could have just torn her body to shreds and replaced it like Kawaki, hell, not even Kawaki was likely to be able to perform a full-body recovery like that…</p><p>Even when the strategic advantage and the numbers were on their side, this battle was still a handful for the two teams. Such was the category of hunter ninja that they've ended up facing here.</p>
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<a name="section0639"><h2>639. Human Medical Missile Alert</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Let's go, Orochimaru, Jiraiya!" Tsunade encouraged her teammates to stand behind her and support her in her clash with Madara. The memories of their last clash still lived actively in the memory of the young woman so she wanted something more substantial out of this assault than to just hit a wall and get sent down again.</p><p>"Fine…" Orochimaru raised his hand, letting a small serpent slither out of it and hiss at Madara from far away.</p><p>"Now you're getting involved?" Jiraiya smirked, poking his rival with a little tease.</p><p>"You're the one to speak. Usually, you're the one itching to fight upon the first provocation. Frankly, I'm baffled by your restraint at the moment, unless, of course, you haven't been fighting because you're afraid…" Orochimaru teased right back, making Jiraiya grind his teeth but then swallow a heavy gulp in admittance.</p><p>"Shut up and follow me, you two!" Tsunade ordered them and darted off right at Madara. Even the massive, ethereal ribcage surrounding the legendary Uchiha did not frighten her whatsoever. Chakra burst from her entire body, both her fists and her feet glowed with the most intensity, flaring up like little stars on opposite sides.</p><p>"Running right at me? You're no better than that Kirigakure ninja I've smashed." Madara mocked Tsunade with a cocky grin as his right Susanoo arm opened its hand to allow the channeling chakra to form a sword which it then used to slash right at Tsunade.</p><p>The slug princess grunted in pain, making Madara's eyes gleam in joy as his smile arced to match them in brightness but then Tsunade tilted her head and looked right at the Ghost of Uchiha with a disgruntled expression while her body stood stout and frozen in place. A streak of red extended down from her lip to her chin but, otherwise, she didn't seem all too injured having just stopped the Susanoo's sword with her body. The edge of the ethereal sword laid halted by Tsunade's chest while the blade remained entrapped by Tsunade's grip, bolstered by her Chakra Enhanced Strength.</p><p>"Amusing…" Madara admitted but then his expression twisted further as two more arms separated off of the Susanoo ribcage he had formed, ready to slash at Tsunade with a cross-shaped slash from up above with an attack that would either crush her to a bloody stain or chop her to pieces.</p><p>"You'll find this hilarious then…" Jiraiya bumbled to himself when the ethereal swords stopped in mid-air after meeting the resistance of a sakazuki shield while the other became trapped in between two crossed swords. Each weapon wielded by a toad that Jiraiya had summoned, meanwhile, the white-haired genin himself charged onward, riding atop of a large, orange toad in blue markings and bandages around its limbs.</p><p>Jiraiya jumped off of his toad and delivered a weighty kick at the center of Madara's ribcage, his sandals stopping just inches from Madara's face. The Susanoo cracked and screeched in pain but held the protective shell firmly. The entirety of the armored layer blinked away while Madara emerged to work on young Jiraiya himself. The man that would once become a Legendary Sannin dashed and raced for more range, managing to avoid a significant beating while Madara armored himself up again with Susanoo, the cracks that Jiraiya's kick left still present.</p><p>Blinking in and out of vision, Tsunade raced in to deliver an uppercut with her Chakra Enhanced Strength. Madara turned aside only to run into Jiraiya and his orange toad that wrapped the Susanoo ribcage with its elongated tongue and spun over its head. The toad had attempted to shatter the Susanoo in mid-air, within the grip of its tongue but Susanoo reformed its arms and busted out, only slightly deepening the cracks. A rampant shockwave of overwhelming azure glow sent Tsunade and Jiraiya both sliding back, crouching and digging their hands into the dirt just to stay on their feet in the face of overwhelming power.</p><p>"Shit… No way to dodge now!" Tsunade grunted as she could vaguely pick up Madara's hands working through hand seals but she was too invested in fighting the tyranny of his chakra outburst alone to attempt and make some sort of defensive plan.</p><p>"Gama-san… You'll have to work as a shield for Tsunade-chan!" Jiraiya yelled at his orange toad that just turned at him with a blank stare, it was tough to say for certain if it didn't understand a word that Jiraiya told it or if it was just denying his request. "You don't understand, Gama-san, her chest's too flat, she can't take a hit that well!"</p><p>"Jiraiya, you!" Tsunade was about to curse at her goofball of a teammate before Madara's voice took back all authority over the battlefield.</p><p>"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Madara chanted out, taking aim at Jiraiya and Tsunade and weaving in just enough of a wallop into his jutsu to blow both of the genin to Kingdom Come. The jutsu was not overly complicated, a technique all Uchiha knew as it was their rite of passage, meaning he didn't need to work too hard on pulling it off, not any more than he would have done to twitch his little toe.</p><p>Tsunade wanted to prepare a substitution technique. It wouldn't be an ideal plan. Her mind was too struggling just to keep hold of her stance to find any objects to replace herself with and her hands were too busy to execute either the hand seals or the replacement. Not to mention the dreadful conditions of working against Madara's rampant chakra aura. The fires of his Great Fireball could almost lick Tsunade's cheeks, the fireball appeared to move in slow motion when the kunoichi of the Senju felt at threat when her young heart raced and the adrenaline was pumping but in a way it was a curse as much as a gift – she'd be experiencing the hurt that much longer too…</p><p>"Summoning: Rashomon!" Orochimaru hissed, erecting a wall in front of his teammates. A frightening visage of a demon's face decorated with steel edges that looked like its fur or hair. The demonic protective gate stared with a crazy look that would have frightened even the most ambitious invaders from trying their luck against the gate but this time it was not testing its mettle against man, it was contending with fire.</p><p>"Orochimaru…" Tsunade looked back at her teammate, looking a bit surprised that he chose to stand back and protect them instead of showing them up as he usually enjoyed to do.</p><p>"You messed up, you dweeb! Look, the gate's melting, the fireball's gonna bust right through!" Jiraiya pointed at the brightening mark of hell emerging from the other side while the devastating flares of rampant flames rushed in from around.</p><p>"No, the wall serves as cover from the aura too, let's move!" Tsunade hurried her teammate while the two leaped onto the Rashomon and dashed for the roof of the demonic barrier with the slowly melting center. The two slipped into the opposite crevices on the roof and used the chain mechanisms to unleash a rain of kunai blades at Madara, just so that the legendary Uchiha didn't feel too comfortable.</p><p>"Are you done planning yet, Rari?" Saol Akimichi of Team Westerlund wondered with a pleading look aimed at his teammate.</p><p>"I'm not the one with pills that take time to start working…" Rarrifa Nara replied, displeased that her attempt at meditation was interrupted. Had it not been for the fact that the Hoshigakure native was quite used to meditating on an active battlefield, she'd have lost all concentration and would have had to start from scratch as it happened so often in her early career.</p><p>"That's why I'm saying I should start taking some of them…" Saol made his case. "You know it will take time for them to set in."</p><p>"Yeah, but they'll also poison you, so maybe let the resident genius here do the planning before you empty your bowels right in front of the enemy again?" Faeino crossed her arms over the chest, giving her large and round teammate a mean glare for making the already tedious process of Rarrifa's meditation even longer.</p><p>"It was just one time, Faeino! For how long will you hold that against me!?" Saol pulled on his hair while Madara's Great Fireball detonated in the distance, reducing the Rashomon gate it competed with to rubble. Tsunade and Jiraiya stared at the devastation from further aside, having rolled out through the same holes they've entered the Rashomon's ramparts earlier just before the gate blew up.</p><p>"You cost us the Chuunin Exams that time so probably until you make up for that and singlehandedly promote all three of us!" Faeino placed her hands on her hips and shot straight out hellfire at her teammate.</p><p>"I've got it…" Rarrifa opened her eyes and stood up from her crossed legs position, staring at Madara swinging his swords at Itachi's rushing clones that either detonated after being impaled on the Susanoo's swords or dispersed into crows to reform elsewhere as neither of the two Uchiha could place a solid set of eyes on the other, preventing from either of them to make a significant stride with their eyes.</p><p>"For real this time?" Faeino wondered.</p><p>"For the last time, that time the problem wasn't with my plan, I just wasn't sure if I secured the trap or not and it threw my timing off…" Rarrifa explained with a lifeless tone and she stared on at the hectic fighting scene ahead of Team Westerlund. "I've got it, the best way to show our combo on this guy. That armor needs to be down for it to work, however…"</p><p>"On it!" Saol pounded his free arm with his fist before Faeino pulled on his shoulder with a bemused look on her face.</p><p>"Hold your horses, that's why we've got a team. You just focus on your role, Rarrifa, patch it through on the mental link…" Faeino secured her teammate in place while establishing the mental link between the trio to share Rarrifa's plan.</p><p>"You're not half-bad, but you're still just warm-up trying to make himself out as something more by bringing more trash with him. Your Mangekyou Sharingan is an antique even by my standards and I am considered a relic in your time." Madara mocked Itachi while the two stopped trying to stab each other for a moment and disengaged from one another. Itachi took the temporary moment to look back at the boy he freed from Tsukuyomi earlier, his team chose to wisely surround and protect him while his body recovered from having experienced his worst nightmares brought to life and inspired vivid detail on top.</p><p>"If my eyes do not frighten you, Madara, why are you so afraid to look right at them?" Itachi replied and turned his Mangekyou Sharingan straight at Madara's own eyes. The fact that Madara's Susanoo continued to shield and cover Madara's line of sight from Itachi did not escape the notice of the younger Uchiha prodigy.</p><p>"If it is a battle of eyes that you wish, hatchling…" Madara smirked and channeled a great amount of chakra right to his eyes to match Itachi's challenge for an ocular battle.</p><p>Red plates of ethereal armor coated Itachi as the Uchiha of the scarlet Susanoo cupped his arms together and fired off an arc of pitch-black flames at the enemy. The vortex of Amaterasu flames turned to a shower of mud before Madara's Susanoo ribcage and washed off of the surface of his armor. Itachi looked around, his mouth lightly gapping in surprise, as he noticed to be all alone, together with Madara on a plain reminiscent of a desert of silver sand with a black void, full of blinking stars surrounding the two from all around them. A deafening roar drowned out Itachi's questions as the Uchiha looked up to meet the incoming planetoid of scorching heat whizzing right past him and reducing the silver desert he and Madara stood on to lifeless space dust as it covered up the sky and the horizons beyond.</p><p>Itachi could feel the draw of the ground beneath him. He could feel the cold, gentle blades of grass caressing his hand but also the stream of hot sweat and fever that he was experiencing as he struggled for breath on his knees before Madara. He wasn't on the moon and no supermassive planet didn't crash into them… He had merely lost the battle of the eyes.</p><p>"Come on, what the hell's the matter with you!? You two just stared at each other and now you're done? Don't even plan on slacking off and put in some work!" Nanaba, the hostess of the Seven Tails, capable of partial transformation, waved her fist in the air as she continued to huddle with her teammate around Kouta.</p><p>"I… I think I'm a bit better now, thank you…" Kouta nodded as he stood on his feet and placed his hand on Nanaba's shoulder to move her aside.</p><p>"Then how about we see what can be done about that shell of his, armor is kind of my shtick anyway," Deiji turned to Kouta only to receive an encouraging nod from him in return. A tail appeared from Nanaba's back and pushed her off the ground with a violent shove, arrowing toward the sky. "Scale Powder!" she chanted out as rings of silver powder poured out of her. A pair of wings burst forth from Nanaba's back, fluttering a pair of times to direct the trajectory and movement of the powder so that it didn't hinder her allies while focusing on descending all upon Madara.</p><p>The individual grains of powder all cracked and popped, emitting blinding flashes of light, heat that made Madara wince while within his Susanoo ribcage but also a nasty smell that, sadly, Nanaba could do little to protect her allies from as they were pretty much forced to cover their noses until they could have gotten used to the reeking effects of the Seven-Tails' powder.</p><p>The assist of Team Hawthorn allowed Itachi to slip away with a handful of misleading blinks and flickers that would have confused Madara as to the location of Itachi's true body, even if the bioluminescence of the Seven-Tails' powder didn't force the Ghost of Uchiha to close his eyes for a moment and then reel back in irritation that the blinding light and chemical irritants in the air around him hindered him with.</p><p>A faint howling sound picked up high above. Madara turned his Eternal Sharingan up above to track what it might have been but the powder and its blinding after-effects hindered his sight, the howling intensified and Madara felt like he could almost make out a puny, black shape as it crossed into the white patch of the sky that the moon occupied over the head of the ninja. Streaks of white extended in a cross-shape from the black dot and the closer it appeared, the more prominent the red eyes of the goggles that the diving enemy wore became.</p><p>"Let's go!" Kouta encouraged his teammate that used the propulsion of the steam from his armor to deliver the Juugo powerhouse right to the enemy from above while Nanaba provided an effective diversion with the abilities of her Tailed Beast.</p><p>"Cross Bomber!" Deiji proclaimed while releasing Kouta upon reaching optimal altitude and then correcting his own course in an arched trajectory and then emitting steam from his armor in powerful but occasional bursts to soften his landing somewhat while Kouta continued to propel downward in a mad crash at the enemy.</p><p>"You fool!" Madara raised the arm of his Susanoo, ready to block the crashing punch of his opponent even if he enhanced his strength with chakra. With the enemy in the fingers of his Susanoo, Madara could have clutched him until all his bones were dust and then use his limp body as leverage against the enemy while his eyesight fully recovered.</p><p>"The only fool, for underestimating the Juugo clan, is you!" Kouta yelled out as black markings emerged from under his clothes, glowing like heated metal at first, like little blazes that then settled down to appearing like tattoos stretching all over the young man's body. The blue aura emanating from the fist of the young medical ninja and stretching out like a tail of the comet pulsed a couple of times and then turned wicked violet in color, changing its texture to appear leakier and vile, instead of flaring like azure fire, the aura extended like tendrils of corruption reaching out for its next prey.</p><p>A thumping crash, followed by the chain resonance of shattering noises as Kouta punched his way through the Susanoo hand and then deeper all the way through the arm before slamming right into Madara's ribcage and pummeling the legendary Uchiha to the ground telegraphed of the failure of Madara's invincible armor but also of the first blood being drawn from the seemingly invincible foe. A pillar of compressed air beamed out and punched its way out of the orbit, releasing its pent up pressure into the atmosphere while a shockwave tossed dust and rubble all over the place, carrying it for miles in an ever-expanding ring.</p><p>Madara looked around and placed his hand onto the cracks on his red armor, feeling the rough patches where the armor had very nearly failed to protect him and feeling the rougher patches where it could have been straight peeled off now. The Ghost of Uchiha rose on his feet and looked around, wondering where he ended up as he thought he had just now begun to fight. Each maneuver like that may have seemed breath-taking and neck-breaking to these youngsters but, to him, they all just served to inspire him to return more and more to his glory days, all it did was rile him up and get him more excited.</p><p>"So… This is the place that your kin in this universe have tried to protect in this girly garden of theirs…" Madara remarked to himself, imagining as if he spoke to his mighty rival who could hear his every word, wherever he was, "Pity all that your once mighty clans folk could muster up to hide here is some pathetic stick…" he finished the thought while lifting an ancient-looking branch that may have been just an actual branch someone had broken off a tree long, long ago.</p><p>"Hmph… You'd think something the age of this toothpick would turn to dust in one's hands but the fact that it doesn't suggests that it harbors a great deal of chakra. Very well, Hashirama's alternate counterparts, color me very much intrigued by your miserable stick!" Madara laughed out and placed the stick behind his back, beside his war fan before taking a leap up through the same hole he had left in the ground to confront the band of genin that Itachi had assembled to take him on with.</p><p>Their snotty-nosed bravado, this mysterious, ancient weapon of the Senju… This fight might have just been worth his while, after all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0640"><h2>640. Danzo Is A Nag</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Naruto crossed his index and middle fingers in the Shadow Clone Jutsu hand seal formation, multiplying himself a handful of times. Minato tightened the grip on his kunai, having replaced the one he had just lost and the two prepared to engage the enemy together. Despite being faced with a momentous team-up, Danzo looked thoroughly unimpressed by his opposition.</p><p>"Is this the only thing you can do?" he wondered with a dry and bitter remark meant for Naruto.</p><p>"I recall it having worked the last time I tried it, you know!" Naruto cheeked the old veteran after creating a couple of dozens of Shadow Clones all around him, further muddling up the chaos of this engagement.</p><p>"You're a failure, Naruto, even if you are a hero to the people, they don't know you've failed in your heroic theatrics against Sasuke. They don't know that because you weren't important back then…" Danzo taunted Naruto when the clones all rushed at him almost wishing to die. A couple of them attacked Danzo head-on, providing the others with the opportunity to skid around the veteran ninja and surround him, baring their fangs like mad dogs looking to maul the hate-spewing enemy.</p><p>One clone took a bold chance by attacking Danzo all by his lonesome. The bandaged ninja turned to protect against the attack while the Sharingan orbs implanted over his arm raced across the fighting stage, keeping close track of all the clones around him and preparing Danzo for a timely counterattack. The clone submerged in a cloud of smoke after a popping sound, revealing himself to be Minato while the future Fourth blinked away in mid-offensive.</p><p>A strong and forceful push hit Danzo square in the back from Minato having used the Body Flicker to move behind the veteran who stumbled right into the combination of four Naruto clones rolling into the fray. The four all shot their feet up at the same time, sending Danzo flying. The four simultaneously shouted out syllables to Naruto's name while assumedly the real Naruto flew in from below, using the boost of another clone as support for his rolling aerial foot drop right into Danzo's head.</p><p>"Uzumaki Barrage!" Naruto completed the chant of his technique himself while immense pressure resonated through Danzo's body. Just as Naruto smirked to himself, beginning to feel proud of the beatdown he laid on the smack-talking enemy, Danzo's body faded away and Naruto dropped on his knees unceremoniously, struggling to balance himself after the thing he could have sworn he just kicked just disappeared from existence.</p><p>"What the fuck!?" Kawaki's voice boomed from further away, Naruto and Minato turned around in sync, just to witness Danzo having slipped behind the boy and grabbed hold of him. Something was wrong, Kawaki should have been tough enough to slip out of Danzo's grip but the boy's resistance appeared to be somewhat half-assed.</p><p>"Do not resist. It is within your best interests to serve Konoha and I am the only one who knows what's best for it. It matters not where you've come from, Konoha is your future and using your power to serve Konoha is the best way to achieve that!" Danzo whispered his venomous words right into Kawaki's ear. Something was wrong, the more the bandaged shinobi spoke, the more Kawaki's resistance faded.</p><p>"Serve… Konoha…" Kawaki mumbled.</p><p>"Danzo-sama! That jutsu…!" Fuu turned at the scene, despite his own involvement in clashing with Kushina and Kiyomi being in its heat.</p><p>"Indeed I had planned on using it to manipulate the other Kage during the Kage Summit but their cooperation is meaningless compared to the potential of this child. If Konoha, if the Root can secure this child and his secrets, it won't matter if those old fools cooperate or not. They will be hostages to our whim anyway. Peace will be ensured, most importantly – prosperity!" Danzo barked back at his subordinate and, seemingly, everyone present in the engagement.</p><p>"Shit!" Naruto cursed. "I was certain I hit him, I could feel my foot connect to his skull and… Then he just vanished, you know."</p><p>"It appears Danzo-san possesses more abilities than we've known. What's worse, he is in no rush to educate us on what exactly those abilities are." Minato grit his teeth as well. "If I had to guess, one of his abilities lets him escape damage, the other one appears to be capable of subtle mind control of sorts. However, judging by the reaction of Danzo's allies – it must be very limited in terms of use. It is unlikely we'll need to worry about it again."</p><p>"I see… You're pretty amazing, Future Dad!" Naruto wiped his nose with the sleeve of his tracksuit.</p><p>Further to the north of the future father and son, Meiko placed her hands out in front of her, letting the Reactor Gauntlets generate another Reactor Breath blast, albeit far weaker than before. Torune leaped aside but some brunt of the blast caught him and tossed him to the side. The half-bare Aburame grunted in pain as his flight got broken up by a sudden appearance of a rather thick branch he hit haphazardly without busting through it. After flattening against it like a pancake, Torune fell down face-first, covered in bruises over his purple nano-insect armor.</p><p>Kotaro's own hands went through a collection of hand seals as well as Minato's teammate breathed in and out, unleashing a volley of smaller fireballs covering a wider range and potentially threatening all of the enemy combatants at the same time. Fuu caught a nasty fireball to the chest and skid back through the dirt. A burning puppet fell out from Fuu's hands with a paper tag attached to its forehead, spelling out "Curse" that promptly faded from the white paper, leaving nothing but a blank.</p><p>Torune evaded the fireballs directed at him and put his hands together. When the Aburame prodigy once more extended his hands at the direction of the enemy, a solid cloud of nano-insects swarmed from between his hands. With a mere blow, Torune spread the rinkaichu he controlled all across the battlefield, drowning the ring of space underneath the treetops out in his ink-colored smokescreen.</p><p>Meiko slammed her Reactor Gauntlets together, sparking what little chakra her ninja tool had stored so far after firing her last Reactor Breath to expel it all in a puny blast shockwave that was just enough to push the swarming insects to pass around her. Meiko tried to gander at the murky smokescreen of death-bringing rinkaichu to see how her teammates had dealt with the combination attack but she couldn't see a damned thing. It was only when Torune's Poison Mist Jutsu faded out that Meiko saw Kiyomi panting while holding her limp arm by her side, corrupted with the violet rot. Minato had it the worst – the young man was down on one knee and panting with sweat running down his face as the poison of the nano-insects had managed to overwhelm a critical patch of his body.</p><p>Kotaro wheezed as well, having just been released from the Mind Puppet Switch curse that Fuu had placed him in. What seemed like a standard long-range offensive to keep the enemy away and at the same time burn them off of their stamina and will to fight became a drastic turn for the situation of the two teams.</p><p>"Nice work, Torune…" Danzo nodded. "The Fourth shouldn't last long with this much of his body affected."</p><p>"I've also cleared the field for you of those clones, Danzo-sama." Torune acknowledged the praise. "I am glad to see that Fuu-senpai was able to cancel out his jutsu at perfect timing too, our coordinated training didn't go to waste, it seems."</p><p>"Shoot, we can't get in close at all…" Meiko grit her teeth as the situation was beginning to seem quite dire. This entire exam was meant to just be fun and games, both she and Kiyomi were meant to be so far beyond the level of a Chuunin to make this promotion an easy grab and yet… Yet again everything was going to shit.</p><p>"Meiko…" Kiyomi wanted to calm her teammate down but she only made the matters worse. Just a glance at the case of heavy eyelids and the skyrocketing fever that Meiko could sense all the way from where she was only made her more desperate.</p><p>"This is just what happened to Mana too…" Meiko grumbled. "These sorts of situations, things going wrong all the time but she was always by herself, always working alone because we weren't there by her side. Because we didn't get promoted like she was. It was the pressure, it all must have gotten to her and… I won't just sit back and waste our promotion again. There's only one thing we can do right now and that's to fight on, screw precaution and being careful. Hold on, Mana… Next time things get rough, I'll be right there by your side!"</p><p>Naruto turned to Meiko with shock and fearful respect gleaming off of the young man's face. He chuckled to himself before getting control over the butterflies of excitement in his stomach and pounding his own palm as an expression of the feelings he didn't want inhibiting the anger his fists were meant to deliver.</p><p>"You're right, I've been holding something back for a dire moment but there's no more point, is it?" Naruto smiled while a pillar of booming orange chakra burst from underground and rustled the young man's clothes while his eyes turned yellow and his irises turned more toad-like. Orange markings formed around Naruto's eyes. "Sage Mode!" he declared.</p><p>"Hmph… So, the power that the Hero of the Hidden Leaf used to earn his title rears its ugly head." Danzo hissed. The appearance of Sage Mode riled him up, even a spy in nature whose heart was lost decades ago could not disguise that.</p><p>"There's nothing disgusting about the power that Pervy Sage left behind for me to save the village with, you know!" Naruto declared, pointing his finger at Danzo as a declaration that he'd use all of his channeled Sage Mode power to defeat the accomplished veteran.</p><p>"It is the source of the misplaced trust that Konoha has placed on your shoulders, boy. As such, there is only disgust to be found in it. The only way to alleviate the pressure falsely placed on your shoulders as the Hero of the Hidden Leaf is to alleviate the weight of your head at the same time." Danzo replied. "Any great power that the Root does not control is a potential security threat and I have devoted my entire life to eliminating security threats rearing its fangs against my village."</p><p>"Your village?" Naruto's mouth twitched in rage at that statement. "Konoha doesn't belong to you, you know! It isn't yours to protect because it needs to be protected from you!"</p><p>"I had hoped to reserve my Izanagi to show just how misplaced and pointless your Sage Mode truly is, it is a pity that you've forced my hand at using it earlier." Danzo sighed and then bit his thumb, working through hand seals.</p><p>Meiko's Reactor Gauntlets lit up with chakra flares that would have incinerated it had the gauntlets been just blocks of wood and the chakra been just ordinary fire, however, the flares did not incinerate or destroy the gauntlets, but instead, sealed them away. From what had been sealed away got born a new power, that of a two-edged short sword that Meiko coated with chakra immediately. The coating took a stronger and stronger effect until it had nearly doubled the width of the blade as well as its length.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" Danzo chanted while placing his bleeding thumb firmly onto the forest floor and covering the ground-level in smoke. A towering elephantine, tapir-like beast of dark orange fur covering the upper parts of its body while its lower body displayed its tiger-like strikes proudly bore its tusks at the enemy as it loomed behind its master, ready to jump into for the assist.</p><p>Sage Naruto blitzed right into Danzo's face with a fist reared back. A blow of unmatched power socked Danzo right in the jaw, throwing the veteran back into his tapir titan and stumbling the epic-sized beast that crashed the Forest of Death around him with its mere motion. Not feeling content with just decking Danzo once, Naruto disappeared and flashed right up to Torune. Shaking, the Root member turned around with there being no need for his mask to be removed in order for his terror to become apparent.</p><p>"Touch me, Hero of the Hidden Leaf, I dare you…" Torune tried to taunt Naruto into falling for his nano-insect trap, knowing full-well that if he attempted to touch Naruto himself, the Toad Sage would just appear behind him in a blink, having a complete advantage in speed and destructive power.</p><p>Naruto's back-handed fist flashed right up to Torune's face but froze inches short of it. Torune's entire life must have flashed through his eyes before the Aburame prodigy could breathe again and he took a slow stumble back. That was when invisible pressure malformed Torune's face in an overwhelming force of impact. An all-encompassing power that blasted right through his mask, reducing it to just meaningless plastic pieces scattered on the floor while the Aburame flew like a rag across the battlefield, crashing through the trees on the other side of the area.</p><p>Fuu's hand stopped in mid-motion when the hand of Sage Naruto suddenly grabbed his wrist, having moved faster than Fuu's eye could track. The Sage flipped Fuu over his head and then slammed the man back-first into the ground, leaving a crater double the size of the man before raising his fist and driving it downward, stopping it just inches shy of crushing Fuu's chest cavity, leaving the rib-busting job for the invisible force that followed each blow he made and made his punches seemingly impossible to dodge due to its presence. Fuu cried out in pain but his gurgling got drowned out by the rumbling of the forest that cried out in pain.</p><p>Naruto placed his hands by his side, forming a pair of bright and turbulent, windmill shuriken shaped Rasengan and then swung both of them at the stumbled titanic beast that he had just sent Danzo smashing into, encompassing the entire thing in a sphere of howling destruction following the Rasenshuriken in their wake, a duo of colliding, twisting destruction of merciless wind that cut every single cell found within its range of destruction on a cellular level.</p><p>"B-Baku…" Danzo lamented the loss of his beast from an entirely different location than he was earlier. Sage Naruto turned to Danzo with a new set of eyes. Eyes that were less confused and devastated by the lack of knowledge he had of the enemy's abilities, but eyes that were capable of seeing through Danzo's technique, a pair of eyes that could shed light on the two closed Sharingan eyes on Danzo's arm that were previously open and a dead side of his face that brimmed with chakra earlier.</p><p>"Those eyes, you know." Naruto raised his arm and pointed at Danzo's modified arm. "Those belonged to Uchiha you've killed, didn't they? They're responsible for that invincibility jutsu you're using, aren't they?"</p><p>"They belonged to meddlesome traitors who have served their village one favor that redeemed their despicable bloodline," Danzo replied with much more weight to his tone. The turning tides of battle were now beginning to get to him. At last, Team Hokage and Team Minato felt like they were getting somewhere.</p><p>Meiko charged through the chaos of the raging battle, she pointed her sword at Danzo in a straightforward charge. The veteran prepared himself for his close-range defense, feeling more strain in his body than he was used to but ready to fight for his vision of Konoha to be protected and the one being brought to life. Danzo's mouth gapped in shock and blood streaked from his mouth when Meiko's chakra coat thinned out around her blade, extending its length drastically and stabbing through Danzo's chest earlier than the injured shinobi had thought the attack would come. Danzo disappeared as if he had never been there, to begin with, and met Meiko one on one, throwing a pair of palm strikes at the young lady while dancing around the shifting shape, length, and width of her sword.</p><p>A palm strike hit Meiko square in the chest, sending her sliding off and crashing down below to the forest floor. The blacksmith swung her sword away from her chest, revealing herself to have used the chakra coated blade to cushion the blow and take no damage from it. Danzo just sneered at the redhead youth in disdain, quietly commending that she had learned something of value from her previous engagement hand-to-hand with him.</p><p>Kiyomi coughed up. She could see the nano-insect coverage expand drastically on the surface of her skin and judging by the streak of nasty effects she felt deep down at the moment, she didn't think she'd even survive a full skin of those buggers, meaning that she had to find a way to stop those insects before it got to that. Right now, she needed to provide her side with all the use she could before she couldn't fight anymore, the kunoichi went hard to work on her hand seals.</p><p>"Earth Style: Travelling Pillar!" Kiyomi chanted while slamming her foot on the ground and forcing a sharp pillar of rock burst from underground, one that she'd drive her foot into and push onward to Danzo. The bandaged shinobi just observed the attack coming at him as the pillar moved in straight line homing in on the ancient tree he took respite on. "Burst! Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi slammed her hands together, revealing a sealing glyph on the stone pillar.</p><p>"She sealed a jutsu into another jutsu!?" Danzo's eyes shot open in surprise when the top of the stone pillar blew up like an erupting volcano, except, instead of hot lava showers, Kiyomi's stone pillar sent a concentrated stream of mighty winds right at Danzo. The veteran took a bountiful leap to the side, avoiding the stream altogether due to the concentrated beam-like shape of it. It was only then that Danzo noticed a small paper tag floating beside his face, the rest of the explosive tags that Kiyomi's Great Breakthrough had scattered were easier to spot after the first one.</p><p>A chain resonance of explosions colored the exposed skies that showed the full beauty of full-moon after Baku had leveled the entire area worth of trees with its giant buttocks when emerging on the battlefield. The explosions covered up Danzo entirely and rustled the old and thick trees of the Forest of Death as well, causing a great downfall of burning up leaves that were reduced to ashes by the flames before they reached the ground.</p><p>"Nice, Kiyomi-san!" Minato coughed up a mass of black, rotten bile from his mouth as his corruption spread far faster and stronger, compared to Kiyomi's and Kotaro's. His condition would be the one to deteriorate to the point of no return and awful consequences the fastest so there was not a single ninja amongst Team Hokage or Team Minato that wasn't worried about the leader of Team Minato.</p><p>"No. Danzo's slipped away again, keep your eyes open. It was a nice effort though, his chakra has taken a massive dip, you know…" Sage Naruto saw through the coverage of smoke and wooden shrapnel raining from above. More and more he observed Danzo's Izanagi being used, the more flaws to the jutsu he found. Not to mention that only six Sharingan remained open on Danzo's arm at that point… Although it was doubtful if Danzo had the chakra for six more Izanagi uses.</p><p>The battle might have been approaching its climax, though, if Naruto's gut nudged him the right way, it would provide ample more twists and surprises before it was over.</p>
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<a name="section0641"><h2>641. A Wild Tailed Beast Appears</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a confident strut, Madara appeared from the crater wearing nothing but a few cracks to his crimson armor plates. Kouta, who crash-landed through the giant Susanoo arm and the ribcage defenses dusted the dirt off of his clothes in reserved discontent with the damage his attack had dealt to the enemy. Madara's eye darted off to the right side so that it could catch a glimpse of the boy that had just gone right through his defenses.</p><p>"Is that disappointment I see in you? You've done well to break through this elementary Susanoo stage." Madara wondered without much emotional reaction. No smirk to rub his confidence into everybody's faces or empty boasts, the fact that he didn't enjoy his dominance in power only made it worse. After all, he treated taking the best Team Hawthorn could offer and having only a few cracks to show for it as if it was the only possible outcome.</p><p>"Yeah… It was such a flashy maneuver that I was ready to put you down with it…" it was Kouta now who laughed out, even though he was laughing in the face of a dire situation.</p><p>"Put me down?" Madara blew air through his nose in mockery of the boy's declaration. "As of yet I'm not even convinced you lot are worth the time I'm wasting on fighting you."</p><p>"Now!" a voice cut through the settling routine of an after-crash conversation, forcing every present ninja to turn their attention toward the trio from Team Westerlund as the Nara girl from their ranks fell to one knee and put her hands together in a Nara clan hand seal position, letting her shadow to stretch out lit by pale moonlight. The strength of the Nara shadows and their range depended on the source of light and a middle of a dense forest during the middle of the night was one of the worst times to be a Nara ninja, save for perhaps the total pitch blackness, devoid even of the moon in the sky.</p><p>Madara took a pair of steps back, not even feeling the need to apply any rush to his moves as even a casually paced step was enough for Rarrifa's shadow to run out of range just inches before touching Madara's shadow and completing the connection.</p><p>"Really?" Madara sneered at the kneeling girl who, for some reason, continued to smirk as if her shadow wasn't letting out pathetic twitches in an attempt to lengthen its reach just a little bit. "The Nara clan was always second rate fiddle but its advocates couldn't stop praising your intelligence on the battlefield. You're embarrassing even my own low standards for your bloodline."</p><p>"Partial Expansion Jutsu!" Akimichi Saol yelled out while winding his hand up in the position for a hammer strike. As if it were blown up with a balloon, the hand inflated to massive proportions far surpassing the entire body mass of the chunky young man, allowing him to drive the hand down in an attempt to swat Madara like an irksome fly.</p><p>A pair of trees burst forth from the ground, driving its rising branches to Saol's inflated arm and keeping it up but it served little use. Madara himself appeared to be surprised by the sudden emergence of the Senju trees from underground, enough so to end up right under Saol's slam. The supersized limb raced back to its owner, snapping back into place with a nasty crunch that made Saol wince from the tension in his shoulder joint from the sudden deflation of his striking hand.</p><p>Faeino Yamanaka put her arms up as if preparing to box, she rolled up her sleeves and grabbed the end of the rubbery sheet wrapped around her wrists, revealing her wristbands to be just a scroll of rubber tied around her arms. Pops spread from both exposed sheets of rubber, revealing a pair of stick-shaped parts that Faeino scooped up from mid-air and slammed against each other, then, after they've fixed in place, dragged them apart, allowing the parts to form a bow.</p><p>Reaching for the leather sack hung on her back in the pouch attached to her belt and her thigh, Faeino removed an arrow and pulled it on the string, like a synchronized symphony, the arrow ignited with electric crackles of Lightning Release chakra coating. The Yamanaka girl let an arrow loose and replaced it with a new one in rapid succession, skewering the forest floor around Madara.</p><p>"You'd think that one would be a better shot while focusing on archery as their fighting style…" Madara bumbled while rising back on his feet after being smashed to the ground by Saol's attack, yet another breakthrough for the united genin that served of little to no use against the legendary shinobi.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Chain Net!" Faeino mumbled without requiring to form any hand seals. Something that was incredibly handy for her, given how she had no free arms to spare for that while using her bow. The electricity coating the arrows interconnected with each separate arrow simultaneously, forming an intricate net for which each arrow served as a crossing point between the links.</p><p>Madara yelled out, engulfed in Lightning Release chakra. It didn't seem like the jutsu was all that mighty in terms of power but what it lacked in heart-stopping capabilities it delivered in spades with disruption. Faeino didn't even look to Saol, who already knew his role from previous experiences working alongside his Yamanaka teammate. The young man clapped his hands together and jumped up, boosting his jumping height greatly with chakra until he soared above the tallest trees in the forest.</p><p>By the time Saol expanded the size of his body, he had wrapped himself into a fetal position and upon expansion became an actual wrecking ball that threatened to quake the entire Forest of Death, heading straight in the direction of the stunned enemy as a round arrow of a far more devastating and weighty variety that was launched from no string except the one of his own hype.</p><p>"Ino-Shika-Cho: Shadow Thunder Crash!" Saol cheered out when Rarrifa worked her Nara hand seal into the rotation and extended her shadow, utilizing the flashing lights from her teammate's electric light show to fuel the strength and range of her own technique which sprouted from the ground and extended like a large geyser that surrounded Saol's cannonball crash with a layer of Rarrifa's chakra manifesting itself in shadows. The obsidian-colored human cannonball crashed into the shocking lightning net, resulting in the dirt rippling in waves all around the place of impact as the Lightning Release chakra coiled and stormed around its newfound target, insulated by Rarrifa's shadowy layer of protection until the artificial lightning storm had subsided.</p><p>"Whoa! That's a neat combo!" an all too familiar voice distracted the two girls observing the remains of their combination attack. Morei, the Great Blue, had risen from its short nap and clapped his hunky, webbed hands for the Ino-Shika-Cho combo of the Hoshigakure genin. "The only way it could have been even better was if it contained space for the Great Blue himself!" Morei jested while pointing at himself with his thumb and smirking with a full row of razor-sharp teeth.</p><p>"How would they make space for you if they haven't even known you even existed until ten minutes ago?" Raizo, Morei's teammate, scratched the back of his head. Using her kanabo for an assist in standing up, Chu also returned to her feet and shook her head to let her hair settle into a more workable loose hanging position compared to the awkward clump they've stuck together after Madara's jutsu burnt up the ribbons holding her hair in the twin ponytail position.</p><p>"Oh, but I agree…" Madara's voice pierced the settling smoke as the lightly battle-damaged Uchiha emerged from the smoke. "This was a most remarkable attack, worthy of entertaining me. If only it didn't take three ninja to execute a jutsu that packed about as much punch as a single decent one…"</p><p>Madara's red armor had cracked completely in half with only one shoulder piece remaining in tatters, held together by copper wire strings while the other side had scattered across where Madara had fallen, his black undershirt was covered in dirt and light bruising shined as the only gold trophy the genin alliance would have ever wanted in such a situation. Madara's hair looked even wilder in his current condition of battle wear. Despite the limited successes, the man looked more ready than ever to scrap for real and the efforts of Kouta and Team Westerlund might have only served to drive the Ghost of Uchiha into a sense of rightful rampage like in his heyday.</p><p>"That worthless stick appears to have summoned trees before, let's see what other fancy tricks it can offer, shall we?" Madara smirked and pulled the ancient Senju artifact he had just pulled out from the sacred archives he had collapsed into. Judging by the cool manner in which he had exposed the weapon to his enemies, it was almost as if he hadn't just drawn just a bare stick that wasn't even properly trimmed as buds of fledgling leaves and side branches hung by its sides.</p><p>Madara's chakra manifested in a thick coating around the stick, before the legendary Uchiha threw himself at the genin, choosing to attack once against all. Hoshigaki Morei whistled to himself and threw himself in Madara's way, his face gleamed with happiness as this chance was everything he had wanted. Madara read the kid like an open book, whereas Morei tried to shoulder charge the Uchiha and slam him into the ground, Madara rolled over Morei's back and kicked him to throw the Great Blue face-first into the dirt.</p><p>Murky blurs flashed all around Madara as Kouta, Deiji and Nanaba all charged at him at the same time. Kouta's body retained the Curse Seal Stage One markings while Deiji's armor spat out steam like it was its only job, a whip-like tail had sprouted from Nanaba's bottom, aiming to strangle or whip Madara with all of the might that the Seven-Tails could have mustered. Madara leaned and danced around Kouta's speedy striking combinations. Evading Deiji's power crosses, further strengthened by the bursting steam that gave each strike Deiji threw a certain missile-like oomph to them, was nothing compared to the first feat of evasiveness. Nanaba's tail wrapped around Madara's throat and swung him over her head.</p><p>Madara's feet planted first into the ground as the Uchiha had more than enough battlefield experience to find the right side up to land better. That was when Kouta flashed in on his location, chakra jets bursting from under his transformed feet and his arms had already taken the state of Curse Seal Mark Two, although only in the feet and the arms from the elbow down to the fists. Madara raised his arms up to block the hit and succeeded but wild jets of chakra burst forth from the makeshift vents in Kouta's elbows, sending Madara rolling and crashing back right through the remains of the hallowed Senju temple.</p><p>Seeing Kyona Chu charging at him with her kanabo winded up and screaming her lungs out like a madwoman, Madara just flung the sacred Senju stick aiming for her face in a twisting whirl. Having more skill than Madara had attributed to her, Chu slid under the stick and bent her body back to have the stick miss her in the entirety of its vertical, spinning pathway.</p><p>Before the kanabo swinging berserker could dash up to Madara's face and smash him nice and proper, however, a stream of black and white cubes flocked from seemingly the skies themselves and formed a supermassive mass of shuffling cubes. Chu placed her kanabo back to its holster on her back and dashed back, shoving her thick hair out of the way of obstructing her view as he took a gander at the extravagant sight.</p><p>"Why is the cube interfering?" Itachi scratched his chin, looking troubled over the fact that the cube had just protected Madara out of nowhere. It was then that Itachi's eyes fixed on the lowly stick lying on the devastated garden dirt. "The stick…"</p><p>"I know that stick!" Kouta yelled out, pointing at the object now that he had a clearer view of it since Madara was no longer in the possession of it. "That's the stick from the World Spruce of Princess Satsuhimasa, the Spruce Princess! The tree that stuck the moon together and which Satsumaru used to control the Tailed Beasts with!"</p><p>"The Tailed Beasts!?" Itachi turned to Kouta in shock. Judging from the absolutely dumbfounded expression of the Uchiha prodigy, he was not aware of this particular story. "Is there even such an artifact?"</p><p>"There is, Mana used to tell me that story a whole lot! Although… It was supposedly just a dumb story…" Kouta rubbed his chin in confusion of a figment of what he had considered being just a dumb story to have manifested itself into what he had considered being reality.</p><p>"I see… Makes sense that Hashirama's alternate clansmen wouldn't keep just a useless old stick around…" Madara laughed out to himself while he stared at the mass of cubes taking a shape of a fat creature that stood on two legs and had a head the size of one-third of its total body, once the pair of protruded eyes, as well as its six distinct tails, began forming, it became clear just what the creature was for certain. The sudden appearance of the Six-Tails had become a factor that nobody had anticipated!</p><p>"Of course it would be cubes…" Itachi stared at the head of the massive beast that was yet to fully comprehend the fact it was alive. "This is just a replica of this universe, after all, meaning that neither that stick nor the Tailed Beasts that inhabit it are real. In order for this stick to be replicated, the cube must create the Tailed Beast clones to make it work. It hadn't anticipated that the stick would be used so it's covering up for that factor spontaneously…"</p><p>"Hmph… Six-Tails, what a pathetic, lumbering slob…" Madara mocked his sudden savior before opening his crimson eyes with glee. "Either way, even if you wouldn't have been my first choice, I can make this work!"</p><p>Madara took a tall bound and landed atop of the Six-Tails' head as ethereal, blue Susanoo scales began forming all around the gooey body of the Six-Tails. What had appeared to be just a bipedal, six-tailed, supermassive slug, turned out to be the world's toughest shellfish now that the Susanoo coated it from head-to-toe.</p><p>"Now look what you children made me do… You've gotten me all rared up and excited to wreak some havoc. I'm sorry if you all end up catching your deaths!" Madara already declared his victory standing atop of the Six-Tails, having positioned a whole bunch of sharp helmet pieces around him to help keep him atop of the brawling, armored Tailed Beast he had made. "Oh, also, I'd rather not forget…"</p><p>The armored slug inflated to the point where it had threatened to burst the Susanoo plates from within before blowing out a white cloud of gas, focused up and streamlined into a single jet of corrosive stream that threatened to blow and corrode all the way through the core of the simulated Cube World and onto the other side. Once the Six-Tails had settled its attack, a wall of white slugs fell apart, multiplying from a single, staunch defender of the puny branch positioned underneath.</p><p>"It may be just a fake, but it's a sacred regalia keepsake of this Universe's Senju clan and I'll die before letting you destroy it!" Tsunade pointed the stick that she clutched in her subtle yet capable of almighty blows hands while the duplicated white slug with purple rings decorating its back reformed to a singular, supersized wall it started out as before the damage it had suffered forced it to duplicate to survive.</p><p>"Oh? An inferior spawn of her grandfather, using an inferior species of slugs and swinging fists of insufficient strength to break through the armor of the sworn enemy of your clan. The epitome of failure makes some bold claims as always…" Madara had little else but stern stares to offer the valiant Senju kunoichi.</p><p>"Go on, use the stick!" Orochimaru hissed at Tsunade in encouragement for her to call for a superior mount to engage Madara's own pet.</p><p>"Don't!" Itachi warned the Slug Princess before she made a grave mistake. "With the Mangekyou Sharingan Madara can cast illusions on the Tailed Beasts and control them. All you'd be doing is summoning another one to his aid."</p><p>"The Sharingan can even do that?" Orochimaru gave up his idea and became immensely interested in the power the visual technique of the Uchiha clan offered.</p><p>"Oh… You're awfully well-informed…" Madara smirked, looking impressed with Itachi's knowledge. "Makes me wonder why someone so aware of the Sharingan's abilities can use so few of them… Is it because your eyes are not yet eternal? If so, you lack the drive to strive for strength, you're even worse than the ignorant ones…"</p><p>"Everybody knows that snakes are afraid of slugs, I'll just let you handle this thing, for now, Tsunade…" Orochimaru shrugged and relinquished the responsibility of handling the slug to Tsunade. Despite it being an awful trick of not owning up to one's responsibility, the young lady of the Senju appeared more than content in handling the matter herself as she rolled back the sleeve of her kimono as if winding up for an awesome punch before placing the stick of the World Spruce under her belt.</p><p>Tsunade raised her index. A minute spark of blue lit up at the tip of her finger, like a predecessor to a finger beam, a tiny, sparkling star at the end of the kunoichi's fingertips. The Slug Princess crouched over and touched the ground with her enhanced finger. Violent earthquakes made parts of ground rise while others sunk in emerging fissures, even the beacon of stability with all that fat and weight focused on its lower body that was the Six-Tails fumbled over and struggled to stay upright. The entirety of the genin alliance didn't risk it and darted off further from Tsunade while Jiraiya called on for one of his toads to carry him and Orochimaru further from Tsunade's rampage as he'd done so many times when she got mad at him for peeping at her.</p><p>"This is just what one of my fingers can do. I have long since wondered what would happen if I focused all of my herculean strength into an entire fist and really let loose. Even in my home universe, it was a thought far too frightening as few people could take as much as a flick from me and live to tell me how bad it hurt. Madara, right now, right here, I will rip you to shreds for insulting the Senju legacy!" Tsunade pointed her finger at the vain figure of the legendary Uchiha resting himself atop of the Susanoo-clad Six-Tails before clenching her arm into a mighty fist and winding it up for a punch while her awesome might surged through it in chakra so intense that it became easily visible to even the naked eye.</p><p>In his arrogance, Madara crossed his arms and refused to even humor the thought of blocking the strike in any other way than letting his armor and Six-Tail's natural bulk take it. His vain stare was a declaration of war and a challenge to young Tsunade to do her best and break her arm trying to dent his limitless might. Like a heaven-splitting arrow, Tsunade soared right at where the Six-Tails was its thickest. She too possessed some pride in her clan, the Senju, as well as her own, personal power and where she had taken the abilities she had inherited from one of the pair of the most powerful clans of her home universe.</p><p>On foreign land, a fake version of the Forest of Death, a ravaged, hallowed garden of the Senju, the clans of Senju and Uchiha came to clash once again as they've done in the epic wars of old.</p>
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<a name="section0642"><h2>642. A Struggle Against The Black November</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You rat bastard!" Kawaki yelled out and extended his hand, showing off his Kama marks while making it vague if the haziness present in his eyes was due to the lack of control over his unnatural powers or because of Danzo's influence from before. A volley of chakra blasts took off at Sage Naruto who just turned to the source of the attack in confusion.</p><p>"K-Kawaki…" Naruto grunted while his body emerged with damage to his clothes and multiple bruises and mild burns all over from the result of Kawaki's destructive attack.</p><p>"How dare you attack Danzo!? Konoha is the place that sheltered me after I ran away, don't you think I deserve a little bit of happiness after what those Kara fuckers put me through!?" Kawaki yelled at Naruto.</p><p>Danzo's power that he has imposed on Kawaki was frightening. Kawaki didn't seem all too brainwashed, he didn't refer to Danzo with a submissive honorific which implied that Kawaki was willing to serve his master like a good, little, brainwashed boy that he was. All it took from Danzo was one subtle push and Kawaki descended into the murky territory of madness without entirely gulping on the Danzo kool-aid.</p><p>"You're confused, Kawaki, Danzo's done something to you, hasn't he!?" Naruto swiped his hand through the smoke, dispelling a large handful of the rising dust. "Don't you get it – you don't need to prove yourself to Konoha to be a part of it, you know. Danzo's not good for Konoha anyway. He's just gonna use you for your power, like just another tool! You won't be any better off in Danzo's Konoha than you'd be in Kara, you know!"</p><p>"Just what the fuck do you know about my pain!? About what I've been through!?" Kawaki roared out, letting something that's been rooting deep down inside him out all at once.</p><p>"I know that the only way to change it is to kick Danzo and his vision for Konoha in the nuts, you know!" Sage Naruto had completely taken his eyes away from Danzo and turned to Kawaki.</p><p>"Careful!" Kiyomi's voice beamed in Naruto's head. "Let me take care of Kawaki, if he's been brainwashed, there's no better person for the job than me. You just focus on your rampage."</p><p>Naruto glanced at Kiyomi from afar, acknowledging her mental message and turning back to Danzo and his recovering Root unit of chosen bodyguards.</p><p>Kawaki threw his hands beside him, shaping them into living, fleshy scythes and preparing to charge at Naruto. Kiyomi jumped in the way and blocked his cross-shaped slash that threatened to behead his despised enemy with one attack but it wasn't until she actually met her kunai with Kawaki's own living weapon of a body that she realized the difference in strength between them. With a rude shove of his weapons, Kawaki sent Kiyomi down. Her ninja tool clanged by Kawaki's feet cut into two. Kiyomi crawled back on the ground, clutching her chest and the crimson gash crossing it.</p><p>"You never liked me to begin with, of course, you'd protect him!" Kawaki said while he brandished his weapons and changed his arms into hatchets. Aiming to utterly decimate his fallen opponent, the punk unleashed a hail of hammer strikes that would have left Kiyomi as just tenderized and an unidentifiable slab of meat had she not rolled backward and placed her hands together.</p><p>"Mind-Body Switch!" she chanted out. But before her mind could phase out of her body, an invisible shockwave sent her rolling back and smashing into something rough way on the other side of the forest. This was really bad! Kiyomi clutched for her burning ribs, the gash on her chest didn't let up either and she was beginning to feel low on chakra to keep it from bleeding as it should have bled. If she truly ran out of juice – she'd end up going pale and passing out in less than a minute, that on top of Torune's nano-insect infection rotting her body would kill her in no time at all.</p><p>"Now stay the fuck down," Kawaki stared at her with a demeaning look. "As much as you might want to kill me, you don't have the power to do that. I see no difference in the trash that is too weak to do what they want and people that don't want to do that thing, to begin with."</p><p>Kiyomi extended her feet and dug them into the grass. She could feel the crunchy snapping of fallen branches and twigs that had fallen from the trees in the chaos they've caused in the place while the Yamanaka heiress pushed herself up, using the tree that supported her on the back as a counterbalance for the push with her legs.</p><p>"You're wrong. The people I want dead are criminals. You're not one, not yet…" Kiyomi exclaimed. She wanted to move her bloody hair out of the way of her face as the blurry vision was clouding her battle potential enough as it was but she focused on the more immediate issue of brainwashed youth that was a living weapon of mass destruction that she had promised to handle. "And I'm ready to prevent you from doing something that'll make me want to kill you with all my resolve as a ninja!"</p><p>Kawaki's eyes widened and his look softened a bit. His body returned to what seemed like its default state, the Kama markings disappeared while the nano-sized cells in the scientific ninja tool that was his entire body retracted back to being just a normal human arm.</p><p>"You feeling okay now?" Kiyomi smiled through the pain coursing through her entire body.</p><p>"Better, what did that fucker do? Did he brainwash me!?" Kawaki turned to Danzo.</p><p>"Something like that…" Kiyomi breathed out with a hint of something wet in her lungs that she didn't like, something that drove a painful impulse from her lungs that made it feel like they were being skewered.</p><p>"You tried to brainwash me too…" Kawaki muttered.</p><p>"Yeah, to kick out whatever influence I would have found of Danzo in your mind, nothing more." Kiyomi turned her head toward the recovering unit of Root assembling beside their leader. It was good to see them pushing their luck on their last legs after the beatdown that Naruto laid on them earlier but it wasn't like the alliance of Team Minato and Team Hokage were in that much better of a condition. "You just didn't seem like yourself, talking about working for the man, you know?"</p><p>"He made me say what now!?" Kawaki flipped out.</p><p>"Calm down… Kawaki-san… This is no time to charge at the enemy blindly." Minato staggered closer to Kawaki and prepared to attack the enemy despite the pitiful state he was in. The speedster might not have been decimated in battle like a lot of the less fortunate folks but Torune's infection was doing its nasty work with frightening efficiency and rate on the body of the future Fourth.</p><p>"Oppose your fate at your own peril, Minato Namikaze," Danzo warned the young man. "Without your signature technique that would define your battlefield presence in your prime you are just a shell of the man you'd once become and if you continue to fight on, Torune's infection will only do the dirty deed faster."</p><p>"Meiko-san…" Minato turned to the redhead blacksmith. "I'm afraid I have found myself a bit underequipped in the battle I am about to engage in, could you perhaps lend me a blade of your own collection?"</p><p>"Sure…" Meiko nodded and moved her hand over her chest. A pair of swords that curved in the middle and formed a simplistic, appearance akin to that of a lightning bolt appeared from an emerald, cross-shaped glow topped with a red-gleaming sealing glyph. The redhead flung the pair of swords to Minato who caught them and stabbed one of them into the ground, feeling like wielding the pair of them would have taxed his body too much in its current state whereas wielding one of the pair with both hands served as an ideal way to utilize the weapon.</p><p>"Body Flicker!" Minato lowered his sword and blinked out of perception, Danzo's Root unit found it utterly ridiculous that the young man chose to charge at all of them but Minato's speed, unmatched even in his youth before he had discovered his Flying Raijin Technique, made the superior teamwork of the Root unit irrelevant.</p><p>Minato's feet landed behind Danzo while the bandaged shinobi of the Root felt the cold edge of Meiko's blade press to his throat while Minato held it in a reverse grip, threatening the life of his opponent directly.</p><p>"I will give you one chance to flee and meet whatever fate befalls you in your own universe and time. I do not know who you are but I will not hesitate to strike you down for good if you do not heed this warning." Minato spoke softly but the weight behind his words seeped even into the being of one as hardened as Danzo was. The stout self-proclaimed protector of Konoha only stared into a blank point in the distance instead of mocking such a soft approach to combat as he would have normally done.</p><p>"This is why tragedy befell Konoha under your rule, young Minato. You are strong and your words carry weight, however, sometimes you must strike before you warn. That is just the type of dirt that one must get on their hands walking the path of a ninja." Danzo proclaimed shortly before the sharp edge of the blade opened his throat while Minato blinked away without moving the position of his blade which triggered a beheading as clean and swift as its user.</p><p>A popping noise following a cloud of smoke suggested a Substitution Jutsu having been deployed. Minato turned and kneeled on the branch he positioned himself onto, witnessing the manner in which Danzo had cheated death, considering it quite odd that the veteran chose such a manner of cheating death instead of his Izanagi technique. Only when Minato began spotting minor inconsistencies with his location and position that he realized that it was not Danzo who used the Substitution Jutsu but Fuu instead, replacing his leader with one of his scarecrow-like puppets.</p><p>Minato screamed out in pain but none could hear him, his consciousness was left to scream into the voiceless oblivion of the prison inside a straw puppet with a transformation tag as well as an entrapment tag put onto it. It was a remarkable feat of combined sealing techniques that did Minato in, making the young man wonder if perhaps he had been sleeping on the craft altogether. It didn't seem to matter how strong or fast he was, how adamant his will was when some guy with a pair of paper tags could have overcome all of it.</p><p>"What did you do to Minato!?" Kushina yelled out, sending shockwaves from just the threatening aura spreading off of her alone. The chakra she emanated was fright incarnated, her entire appearance turned dark and blurry, her eyes seemed like they were empty and devoid of any emotion but blind wrath while her long and vigorous scarlet hair rose to the air, rustled by her own overflowing fury, exploding from within.</p><p>"Kushina, please calm down, this is no time to rush at the…" Kotaro tried pacifying the Red Hot Habanero but it was a couple of moments too late. Like a crimson flare, the kunoichi charged but not directly at Danzo and his gang, instead smashing the tree they stood on and forcing them to scatter apart. A flash of red blinded Fuu and when the image of knuckle-cracking Kushina appeared right in front of him in all of her glorious fury, the Yamanaka wished he had remained blinded.</p><p>Kushina's fist blasted Fuu in the gut like a shotgun, the Yamanaka spewed blood as his own eyes whited out to match the blindness of his assailant as the Yamanaka crashed from up above like a shooting star, having strained his body and chakra system too much to use Substitution to save himself after he had just tricked Minato into replacing himself into a puppet.</p><p>"Four Symbols Seal!" Kushina yelled out, weaving a hand seal with the same hand that had just blasted Fuu away as a complex, black pattern manifested on the area where she had punched Fuu with the sealing glyph emerging from a black spot in the center.</p><p>It was just a measure to ensure that the enemy would not be running away, as well as to make sure that whatever nasty jutsu he had cast would end at once while Kushina reared her fist for the finishing blow. Adamantine Sealing Chains emerged from behind Kushina and wrapped around Fuu's limbs as well as his core, pulling the unconscious shinobi in for one more finishing blow which Kushina delivered with the ruthlessness that well justified her nickname.</p><p>Fuu's lifeless body slammed into the ground, leaving a massive crater while the trees located around it either became consumed by the all-shredding shockwave and turned into woodchips or rattled across the hurling gust of wind that Kushina's punch had created and got flung aside as if thrown by the world's mightiest trebuchet. Surrounded by such violent rampage, as much as Torune wished to interfere with the demise of his comrade, whether final or otherwise, he couldn't do so. It was tough to say if Danzo cared about losing another tool in his satchel as the stalwart man just stared at the devastation with a stern and unmoved face from afar.</p><p>"Holy shit, mom…" Naruto stared at the destruction further in the distance where Kushina had flung the unfortunate Yamanaka trickster with shock in his face.</p><p>"Torune…" Danzo sighed. "I see no other way to win, except for the Black November Maneuver. Now, more than ever, I require your utter devotion."</p><p>"Y-Yes, Danzo-sama…" Torune nodded and turned back at the enemy. The Aburame turned into a living swarm of violet while the cloud dispersed.</p><p>"He's bolting?" Kotaro wondered aloud.</p><p>"No. He's around…" Sage Naruto looked around with seriousness switching out the respectful sense of fear toward Kushina's rampage. "They're plotting something nasty."</p><p>"You're the only one who can sense him, Naruto-san…" Minato emerged from the bushes, covered in light gashes and scratches over his face. With the seal that Kushina had placed on Fuu, the mind switcheroo trick that Fuu had trapped Minato in had ended as well. "Please leave Danzo-san to me while you disrupt the enemy. If Danzo-san thinks this is their chance for victory, it is a source of concern."</p><p>"Can you do it, you know?" Sage Naruto raised an eyebrow, hesitant to run after Torune who had stopped fleeing the field 250 m. away from the battlefield and changed direction cardinally, rushing a similar distance to the other side.</p><p>"I must. More so, I have the support of everyone as well." Minato scanned the field, even with the gravity of his injuries, feeling resolved to finish this.</p><p>"Alright!" Naruto nodded and took off.</p><p>Minato and the remaining genin all faced Danzo who was now alone to weather their wrath. Kotaro reached for his pouch and threw a handful of explosive kunai at Danzo, what seemed like an ordinary displacement move became an immediate threat to Danzo's life once Kotaro flashed through his set of hand seals and cloned the ninja tools to at least six times that number. Danzo took it to the air but then a stray explosive blast caught him and sent him plummeting from above. Kotaro went through an attempt to pick Danzo out from mid-air with a well-placed Fire Release jutsu but the strain from Torune's nano-sized insects built up, forcing the young man to surrender to the strain and slump down.</p><p>Meiko followed up from where Kotaro left off, she turned around her axis and flung the buckler she had unsealed from her right forearm and coated with an orange chakra coating. The shield spiraled straight at Danzo as if being laser-guided and shot out wild sparks from underneath, a detail that most observers found curious. The buckler slammed into Danzo's throat, smashing it beyond repair, Meiko grit her teeth, revealing a piece of wire that lit up blue when chakra channeled through it, as the chakra traveled across the steel wire, it revealed a complex network of straight lines attached to the handle of the shield that allowed for precise control and upon carefully utilizing the String Reeling Technique, Meiko let the shield bash Danzo a good couple of more times across without enough force to break his limbs and shatter his skull but the old man's image faded away.</p><p>Kiyomi cried out in pain when Danzo gripped her from behind, using Body Flicker on top of his Izanagi replacement while one more eye closed forever on Danzo's unnatural-looking arm. She was already having great trouble bleeding so the additional pressure on her airways just made Kiyomi let the pent up blood the taste of which she felt in her mouth out.</p><p>"Unless you wish death upon your friend, you will stand down for a few more moments." Danzo declared as he tightened the grip on Kiyomi's throat further, he was as desperate as his stranglehold upon his hostage for his combination with Torune to be a success, it appeared. His double feature of Body Flicker on top of Izanagi did cost him nearly half of the chakra he had left to that point, after all.</p><p>"All is set, Danzo-sama!" Torune flashed on a taller branch, proving Danzo's despicable bargain for time to be very successful.</p><p>"S-Sorry guys…" Sage Naruto grunted, covered in violet spots all over as he appeared just a few moments before Torune. "He got me a bit, you know…"</p><p>"Now, it is time for the Black November…" Danzo declared and looked to Torune. The Aburame weaved a single hand seal and set off all of the sealing tags he had placed on different areas of the Forest of Death all at once, forming a mahogany hue barrier around the battlefield of a rectangular shape.</p><p>"Do it!" Danzo encouraged his comrade who appeared to be hesitating.</p><p>"B-But… Danzo-sama, you're in the way…" Torune objected.</p><p>"You fool, it is a suicidal maneuver anyway!" Danzo scolded his subject but then his vision blanked out when Sage Naruto flashed up to Torune with a pair of Rasengan in his hands.</p><p>"Rasengan Barrage!" Naruto exclaimed whilst throwing his hands out into Torune's gut. The fact that Torune had infected the young man with his corruption already made the Sage bolder to attack without any reservation where previously he'd have struggled to engage the enemy with his nano-insect armor still up. Torune croaked in pain and flew off aside like a ragdoll. The attack expended the last of Naruto's natural chakra as, just after Torune took off, the markings underneath Naruto's eyes faded away and his eyes returned to normal with an orange pulse of chakra leaving his body.</p><p>"Torune, you fool…" Danzo bit his lip in frustration when the necessary piece for his Black November combination had flown off without any indication if he was still alive or dead. "Oh well… You are all infected anyway, even if the combination isn't perfect, you will all die eventually!"</p><p>Danzo ripped his top off and allowed a body-wide sealing symbol comprised of black lines form over his chest. The sealing glyph expanded in ethereal black symbols floating off to each side while a spray of black ink attempted to catch up to the fleeing parts of the sealing glyphs. A raging, black sphere howled violently, eradicating all in its path within the range of its reach which expanded at least halfway across the distance sealed off by Torune's barrier technique.</p><p>Silence reigned after the incomplete Black November. Danzo's lifeless body laid dead in the middle of the sphere, having sucked everything within the range of his Reverse Four Symbols Seal to die with him.</p>
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<a name="section0643"><h2>643. The Takeoff Suplex</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A marble of transparent force expanded from a singularity where Tsunade's empowered fist met the resistance of the coating of Susanoo that covered the Six-Tails. The beast rumbled, the erupting force manifested in jolts of energy resembling lightning as the light it left the point of impact with blinded the surrounding ninja. Madara smirked, seated within a shell of his own Susanoo armor, positioned atop of what would be the helmet of his ethereal armor.</p><p>"See? Toothless…" he taunted Tsunade when despite her greatest effort the Six-Tails neither fell down nor was it beaten.</p><p>The resolve in Tsunade's eyes faltered for a moment. The will to crush her opponent that had badmouthed every generation of ninja opposing him gave way to fear but it was only for a second. The loss of ground underneath her feet changed all that, in the beginning, the fear gave way to confusion but once Tsunade laid her eyes upon the brown scales of a massive boa constrictor, a ninja snake of Orochimaru's summoning, she clenched her fist once more and began focusing chakra into it.</p><p>"Don't tell me that's all of the will you're capable of putting out, Tsunade…" Orochimaru taunted his teammate while his snake carried the young woman all around Madara's living fortress of mushy slug flesh hidden underneath the seemingly impenetrable defense.</p><p>The Slug Princess chose to answer with her fists instead. Blue flares of rampant power unchained came from each side, each strike sending ripples through the fat of the Six-Tails but none of them seemed to quite possess the desired effect. Tsunade grit her teeth in frustration, letting out a sad sigh to both relieve some of the pent up tension and get a breather. Orochimaru bit the edge of his lip down on the ground as well. He wasn't used to the enemy being on a level so much higher than his.</p><p>An opening faded at the lower parts of Six-Tails' Susanoo helmet. The lower part of the colossal slug inflated, like an alarm that something nasty was coming. And so the slug monster spat out a crashing stream of dirty liquid from its mouth. Orochimaru's constrictor coiled and tried moving away from the tremendous force of the rushing waters but against such an intense stream it could only postpone the inevitable. Tsunade yelped in fear after witnessing smoke erupt from the soaked reptile as the waters the Six-Tails unleashed began corroding Orochimaru's summon rapidly. Tsunade's screams were drowned out by the rushing shower of corrosion.</p><p>"Tsunade!" Jiraiya yelled out, horrified.</p><p>"Don't rush into certain doom, you imbecile." Orochimaru extended his hand to the side and stopped his teammate from submerging into Six-Tails' acid himself.</p><p>"B-But…" Jiraiya tried forming an objection.</p><p>"Tsunade's going to regenerate all that, will you? Against an enemy such as this, there is no way she'll not use her ace jutsu." Orochimaru replied. The ninja that stood in the pathway of the washing acidic shower removed themselves promptly, worried that they'd suffer the horrific fate that befell the disintegrated pair that challenged Madara and his armored beast.</p><p>Once the smoke from the acid parted, Tsunade stood slammed against the tree by the rushing acid, despite vapor being emitted rapidly from her body, the woman appeared absolutely fine from after being sunken wholly into a bath that disintegrated one of the mightier of Orochimaru's beasts. A cross-shaped marking covered Tsunade's face while she continued to smoke, the vapor stopped about as rapidly as the cross-shaped scar disappeared.</p><p>"That's quite an impressive jutsu, Tsunade…" Orochimaru taunted the woman while Jiraiya stood absolutely dumbfounded. "I figured you were getting too reckless lately, I was wondering if you had something of this sort tucked away under your sleeve…"</p><p>"You keep bitching and moaning about how fragile human life is, didn't want anyone else to have to listen to you ramble all that because of me…" Tsunade grunted. Her aggravated mood caused by the lack of success in sieging Madara's sluggish fortress. "Tsk, that bastard… Using a giant slug against me, I swear I'll get my hands on him and pummel the asshole."</p><p>"Hey, you…" Orochimaru turned to Raizo from Kirigakure. "You don't seem to be doing much, scared?"</p><p>"No." Raizo shook his head, unrattled whatsoever by Orochimaru's implications. "My fighting style requires the Hidden Mist Jutsu to remain active and with all this racket it doesn't seem to stay long. Plus, it's not like I can slit Madara's throat while he's on that thing. This type of battle seems to be more of Morei's expertise…"</p><p>"That guy's…?" Orochimaru wondered offering a stray stare at the fallen Hoshigaki who was rising back on his feet. "He did seem prideful of his physical abilities, it's just that he didn't get near to hitting Madara once with them…"</p><p>Another brown boa emerged from underground, right where Orochimaru stood and tilted the long-haired young man off the ground. The constrictor then slithered at impressive speed across the battlefield, carrying Orochimaru closer to the corner where the Hoshigakure Ino-Shika-Cho combo resided. The trio looked dumbfounded that the freaky snake guy would approach them like that after seeming so anti-social and twisted earlier in the night.</p><p>"Can you provide us with another one of your impressive distractions? We might have a way through that armor." Orochimaru inquired.</p><p>"It'll be real sad when you don't get to use it, 'cause we were just looking for an opening to bust it ourselves…" Akimichi Saol raised his fist up and clutched his bicep in a cocky gesture with his left wrist and a confident smile.</p><p>"Oh? You've got a plan? Let me patch us all up, just so we're all on the same page…" Faeino Yamanaka weaved her hands together and activated the mental communication technique made famous by the Yamanaka clan.</p><p>"You knew that jutsu and you've been keeping it to yourself?" Orochimaru sighed.</p><p>"At the moment the three of us were all the ninja that needed it. Plus, we're all still competitors and would end up fighting each other eventually. I won't let up on more of my fighting style than I must." Faeino shrugged.</p><p>"I've wasted enough time." Madara closed his eyes, disappointed by the fact that the granddaughter of his greatest rival and the only ninja he ever truly respected and considered his equal failed to surprise him in the same way that the girl's grandfather made a habit of doing. "You all can just disappear at once!"</p><p>A tsunami of rainbow-glowing bubbles burst from underneath the fat bottom of the Six-Tails that sunk its stubby legs underneath the layer of thickness. Each separate bubble was about man-sized and the combined height of them all extended well over eleven meters while they came out of the Tailed Beast like a rushing ocean. Kouta tried blasting the approaching, bubbly dread with his Juugo clan chakra blasts but the oncoming wave was too vast, Deiji failed to outrun it with the rush of steam from his armor so did Nanaba fail to outrace them in the skies. No matter fighting, running or surrendering, all the genin fell victim to the bubble flood and rose into the skies together with their unique method of imprisonment.</p><p>Madara removed the Gunbai fan from his back and smacked the Tailed Beast on the head with its other end, poking it sharply on the forehead and forcing it to erupt in far more power than it usually would have been able to show. Also, stressing its body to no end. The poor slug titan expanded nearly tenfold as the contents within it began glowing with intense light. Upon Madara's gestured command of pointing his war fan at the enemy, the Six-Tails spat out a good dozen of large, black blasts of compressed chakra at the youths floating in their bubbly prisons.</p><p>Impressed by the volley of country-leveling explosions devastating the landscape in the air, Madara smiled and sheathed his war fan on his back, excited by the light show.</p><p>"Well, well… It appears that, unlike boastful rascals, the Tailed Beasts are a great deal mightier in this universe…" Madara observed as even if this Six-Tails was not a real Tailed Beast and just a construct of the cube's creation, it surpassed the capabilities of Six-Tails that Madara knew from his own past by a decent mile.</p><p>A murder of crows burst forth from the shroud of recently resonated blast, the crows promptly turned into a shower of kunai and shuriken that ignited with black chakra flames in mid-air and proceeded to rain down upon Madara as it was unlikely that the Ghost of Uchiha would have been all too intimidated by mere ninja tools raining down.</p><p>"Hmph… At least you don't embarrass the legend of the Mangekyou Sharingan, hatchling…" Madara smirked when the Six-Tails reeled back in pain, despite the layer of Susanoo armor protecting it, there was absolutely no way to merely block the black flames of Amaterasu for they burnt longer than any other flame known to man or invented by one in legends as well as a great deal hotter.</p><p>"You didn't even attempt to protect your asset?" Itachi wondered as part of the wild crows merged into half of his own shape and floated in mid-air. "That will lead to your downfall, Madara."</p><p>"I didn't protect this pile of lard the same as you didn't care to protect your children." Madara extended his arms to the sides as if proudly displaying the destruction he had wrought riding the Six-Tails to the ephemeral shape of Itachi Uchiha.</p><p>"That's where you're wrong, Madara. You didn't protect the Six-Tails because you care about nothing but yourself. The only person you've ever shown a hint of care toward – Hashirama Senju is nothing but a tool to entertain you and, ultimately, just make you feel good." Itachi lectured the legendary Uchiha. "I, on the other hand, did not protect the children because they didn't need my protection…"</p><p>As if prompted by Itachi's words, the genin began emerging from the blast zone, somewhat singed and bruised but ultimately more pissed than anything else. It seemed as if the sight of their own blood on their hands only drove the kids further and further into the berserk state of battle that Madara lived in perpetually.</p><p>"Hmph… Pathetic, all your best shots failed to dent my armor, those born to be slugs can only writhe in the dirt. So writhe, entertain me by trying and failing to prove me wrong!" Madara proclaimed only for Kouta's feet to morph into jets and send the Juugo slashing through the skies right at the Susanoo-donning, six-tailed titan.</p><p>Madara drove his foot onto the Six-Tails' forehead but the beast just belched and staggered awkwardly, still feeling woozy after the apocalyptic output of power it blasted the genin alliance with earlier. Kouta raced a full circle around Six-Tails almost as if tempting the titanic slug to turn around in a wild goose chase and get dizzy by its trip, a trap which the Six-Tails fell for without any resistance.</p><p>"Chakra Shotgun!" Kouta growled out after halting the flow of his chakra jets and extending his morphed hand out while emitting a short-range shockwave of golden chakra that erupted from the morphed arm of his. The lumbering Six-Tails snapped its head back from the brute force smashed into its face, Madara cursed atop his comfortable position after a sudden switch in Six-Tails' balance forced him to adjust his own.</p><p>"Madara!" a furious feminine voice came from a layer of smoke that parted before long in a circular opening due to the physical force exerted by a jumping amphibian inside it.</p><p>An orange toad soared right at Madara's direction as well carrying a golden-haired youth on its forehead. Tsunade leaped off of the toad, riding the force accumulated by the descent of the creature best suited for powerful dashes due to its strong lower body and used the surface of the toad's forehead as her own stepping ground for her flying kick.</p><p>"Heaven Spear Kick!" Tsunade roared out while hitting the Six-Tails square in the chest. Just like earlier, her hit appeared to ring dull and just make the Six-Tails stagger without inflicting much damage.</p><p>"Haven't you committed it to your memory yet? You're absolutely useless!" Madara taunted the girl but that was before he felt the Six-Tails taking off the stout balance that the thick lower body of the Tailed Beast provided it with.</p><p>"Down you go! Great White Fall!" Hoshigaki Morei let out a rough yell while struggling greatly to lift the Tailed Beast off the ground from down below in a suplex-grip from behind.</p><p>"You!?" Madara looked down at the young man he had considered an absolute joke and an embarrassment to Kirigakure this entire time, that was before he knew that the youth possessed the physical strength to deadlift a staggering Tailed Beast. Almost…</p><p>"Nice work, freaky fish guy! Now it's our turn!" Saol Akimichi yelled out as the Hoshigakure Ino-Shika-Cho emerged from the smoke riding atop of Orochimaru's constrictor. Faeino was resting at the very edge of the reptile's snout while her oversized coating of Lightning Release chakra covered her bow, expanding its size dozens of times over.</p><p>"Expansion Jutsu!" Saol Akimichi yelled out and then formed a human cannonball. The shadowy embrace of Rarrifa Nara's jutsu wrapped around the Akimichi human meatball to protect him from the jolts of lightning that coated Faeino's bow before the lightning string jerked back into place and flung the shadowy human meatball across the entire battlefield at the Six-Tails that still somehow struggled just a tiny bit against being suplexed.</p><p>"Shadow Thunder Crash!" Rarrifa yelled out for her supersized comrade who was too preoccupied serving as human ammunition. Saol flew at the enemy with sufficient force to blow the Six-Tails' head off if he'd have needed it but the Six-Tails spat out a stream of acid to meet the Ino-Shika-Cho combo midway and have the condensed stream of corrosive doom absorb Saol's cannonball maneuver at the same time as it had eroded Rarrifa's shadowy layer of defenses around her comrade.</p><p>Madara laughed out. "Come at me all at once, throw as many of you as you will, none of you will beat my peerless fighting instincts!"</p><p>He remained so confident before he saw Kyona Chu landing on her feet and picking up the kanabo off the ground. The kunoichi looked roughed up and pissed, her furry forehand cuff links had fallen off somewhere, half of her vest and shirt were in tatters and her hair looked as wild as her spirit but the young woman didn't let the accumulated battle damage get to her unmatched desire to smash. With a single leap, she covered the entire distance between her and the Six-Tails and swung her kanabo without much care where she'd hit it. A resonance spread through the Susanoo covering the Six-Tails that left only cracks in its wake.</p><p>"Up and over!" Morei yelled out as the force of impact from Chu's kanabo provided him with just enough of a boost to lift the Six-Tails and slam it over his head. Judging by the rumbling ground that collapsed into chunky rubble of dirt and stone, and the sharp shattering noise – the Susanoo was done for.</p><p>"Nice work!" Itachi complimented the genin alliance he had the instrumental role in creating with vigor very much unlike him like a streak of crimson extended down his eye and over his cheek. The black flames that previously localized merely on the areas where the colossal slug had deflected Itachi's combination of Phoenix Flame jutsu and Amaterasu, now expanded massively into towering pillars of flame that drowned the entire Tailed Beast out into nothingness.</p><p>"The power of the Sharingan is staggering…" Orochimaru praised the hunter who had gathered them together shortly after the constrictor laid its head beside Itachi and allowed the snake summoner to get off its forehead so that the snake could then disappear underground. "Couldn't you have done so sooner though?" the long-haired creep chuckled.</p><p>"I'm afraid not…" Itachi exclaimed in a great deal of pain, so much of it, in fact, that the Akatsuki member collapsed on one knee and covered up his right eye. "As you might have seen, the Amaterasu has limited effectiveness against the armor of Susanoo and it is not a jutsu I can abuse…"</p><p>"I'll make sure to note that for the future…" Orochimaru jested. "To know when to support you better, of course…" he then added when Itachi's left eye turned to him as if showing that the rogue ninja was well aware of the twisted nature of this youth he was speaking to.</p><p>"Very impressive…" Madara's voice rung from the rubble as black and white cubes rushed from the pile of debris that Six-Tails' fall had left behind. With busted armor and cracked forehead and torn undershirt as well as one torn half of his trousers Madara walked out from the smoke. "For a bunch of rascals to down a Tailed Beast all by yourselves, perhaps there's more substance to the mad ramblings of Hashirama Jr. than I've thought…"</p><p>"Damn, his head is pretty hard to crack!" Kouta shrieked out in surprise of the enemy appearing from the pillar of black flames unhurt, mostly because Itachi reserved the fury of Amaterasu to burn up the exposed Tailed Beast into ashes as if Madara was to be beaten, that thing had to go as fast as possible. It became impossible to hide the signs of weary and battle damage on all of the genin, even when they fought tagging each other out and attempting to maximize the efficiency of each assault.</p><p>Madara appeared to simply be a beast on a whole different kind of level. Besides that, it didn't appear as if though the Ghost of Uchiha could take these kids lightly any longer, lest he actually lost to them. The crimson eyes of Madara's Eternal Sharingan gazed into the sky and the blaring moon above everyone's heads.</p><p>"Say, this entire world is all fake anyway, isn't it? In that case, there's no harm in me doing that…" Madara's hands shuffled through hand seals before he was even done speaking. "Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire!"</p><p>The compressed mass of Fire Release chakra torpedoed into the skies above, slamming with a dull and inaudible puff into the moon and covering the entire landmass with blazing fissures as infernal chaos scorched the satellite. The moon burst into a dozen of equally sized chunks and began escalating toward the surface of the simulated Earth.</p><p>"Witness the dominant power of every battlefield, witness the true power of the Uchiha clan!" Madara laughed out while the moon collapsed and threatened to unleash unmatched meteor shower upon the entirety of the Cubeworld.</p>
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<a name="section0644"><h2>644. Laying One's Hand On A Legend</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Dance for me, you rascals!" Madara beamed a maniacal smile, enjoying every bit of dread in the faces of his worn-out opponents that had thought that they'd already had him on the ropes only for the veteran of a hundred battles to truly begin coming swinging after they thought him having run out of tricks.</p><p>"This isn't an attack that we can just dodge!" Kouta growled while looking up at the oncoming meteoric shower of the moon's remains upon the Forest of Death. It would take fleeing outside the territory of the entire village to avoid any semblance of the moon's chunks crashing down and that was simply not an option for their goal laid onward in the temple deep within the Forest of Death.</p><p>"Agreed, we must go all-out for this." Deiji nodded and pressed his arms to his belly, clutching the spandex layer of his bodysuit underneath the armor and twisting it. A cover of white smoke blasted out from underneath the armor plates of Deiji's outfit and throughout the gas mask covering his face, once the smoke cleared out somewhat, Deiji stood submerged inside a body of a white horse from the bottom up, adopting a centaur-like shape.</p><p>Nanaba performed the same motion, letting the wings of the Seven-Tails to sprout from her back as well as the numerous tails from underneath her once the girl took it to the air. With both of his Jinchuuriki teammates using their Partial Tailed Beast Transformations, Kouta let the dark chakra flow freely from himself as well, emerging from the pillar of malevolent chakra fully transformed and coated with the dark, wooden texture all over his skin.</p><p>In the Second Stage of his Cursed Seal transformation, Kouta's eyes became obstructed by the plating of wood that spiked upwards in wild horn-like protrusions at its tips while the boy's mouth remained uncovered and only a pitch-black change of the hue of his skin from the Curse Seal tattoos consuming his body entirely could have been seen. Kouta sprouted four arms, two of them artificial and constructs of chakra channels surrounded by the armored plating of his transformation and all four of them bulky enough to appear like heaven-smashing hammers at their forearms. The tube-like cannon that most of the Juugo techniques required sprouted from all four of Kouta's palms.</p><p>Kouta roared out into the sky, sending shockwaves that created ripples across the devastated ground. Nanaba and Deiji took off to destroy the meteors that threatened to crush the entire battlefield if they weren't stopped, Deiji stopped halfway through his ascent to examine Kouta's condition. Seeing the transformed warrior hunching over and clawing at the ground, roaring out wildly and sending chakra blasts across the entire place in his wrath, he turned to Tsunade.</p><p>"Please beat some sense into Kouta. Sometimes he can't control himself and goes berserk in this state, you seem the only one strong enough to knock him back into his senses a bit." Deiji nodded at Tsunade as if it was even remotely a reasonable thing to request and then blasted off to deal with the meteor storm.</p><p>"Chakra Burst!" Kouta yelled out, raising his hands up as more and more of his transformed physique morphed into cannons, resulting in so many cannon tubes covering the boy's body at the end that he seemed like a black chunk of cheese. Each of these protrusions formed a sphere of chakra that then got so close to one another that they created a sort of barrier around the boy and, as he raised his arms up, erupted in an explosive wave all around him.</p><p>Orochimaru spread his hands out and tried to weather the overwhelming storm coming off from one of his own allies but the power was too much and it ended up consuming him. One of Jiraiya's brightly colored toads landed before his sage and thrust an adamant-looking shield into the dirt, deciding to become a staunch defender of his summoner but that idea ended up in an explosive failure when the erupting chakra dispelled the summon immediately after smashing into Jiraiya after being thrown back. Tsunade cried out in both frustration and pain when the force of the impact sent her flying alongside her teammates. The blonde thrust the tip of her fingers into the dirt like an improvised rake and forced her feet to the ground, using her unnatural force to shovel her way through the explosive wave.</p><p>Morei and Raizo both got sent flying, though their frailest teammate made her way atop of some nearby rubble and just cackled in observation of the destruction, enjoying every second of the light show. Despite having suffered perhaps the most damage out of everyone around. She couldn't stop smacking her thighs and rolling about on the rocky wreckage in a respectable distance of the outraging youth, cackling.</p><p>Rarrifa and Faeino screamed out in pain when the force of impact hit them, they both smacked across Saol's expanded body and the suffering fatso somewhat cushioned their damage willingly, while taking in more of the shockwave than he normally should have for the sake of watching over his frailer teammates.</p><p>"Calm down, Kouta!" Itachi yelled out and turned his Mangekyou Sharingan toward the rampaging youth, for a brief moment, a flash of crimson appeared in Kouta's own black eyes instead of the usual, golden iris that beamed within the black void in his eyeholes.</p><p>"Fool, you forget which one of us has superior eyes…" Madara turned his own Mangekyou to Kouta as well, the Sharingan's reflection on Kouta's eyes changed to Madara's pattern but before Madara could gain full control over the boy's hectic transformation, the shockwave reached him and, due to the distraction over the matter of taking control of this chaotic new factor on the battlefield, it sent Madara flying as well.</p><p>Kouta turned his eyes up in anticipation of the massive meteor that was coming to crash on top of him, he put his hands together and raised them up into the sky, due to the overwhelming size of that which threatened to crush him, he didn't have to aim at all so his mind, overrun with demands that he'd kill every living being in the vicinity to satisfy his murderous urges, didn't have to work overtime.</p><p>"Concentrated Chakra Wave!" Kouta roared out and unleashed a pillar of hellfire at the meteor. The blast might have been a bit too powerful, however, as it burrowed right through the meteor and left a molten hole in the middle while the meteor continued on its destructive path, prompting Kouta to jump upward with jets blasting through his feet. The transformed Juugo entered into the hole he had just made and burst his chakra forth again, reducing the meteor to mere dust with another explosive chakra wave.</p><p>The moon was hefty, compared to the battlefield however and more and more of its pieces were crashing down. Deiji and Nanaba pressed their hands together, letting spheres of chakra of blue, white, wine and black shades to concentrate into a singular, obsidian sphere that they let at the fractions of the moon that threatened them.</p><p>"Tailed Beast Bomb!" they shouted out in unison while annihilating the moon fragments crashing at them with a blazing hue of entry into the Cubeworld's atmosphere.</p><p>"What a mess!" Orochimaru hissed at the oncoming meteor storm and bit his finger, shuffling through a collection of hand seals and driving his bleeding palm into the ground to unleash a combination of supersized constrictors from the underground that rushed in to tackle the falling moon. Despite the heat from the entering moon chunks setting the serpents ablaze, their headbutts managed to crush the moon pieces into meaningless fragments that rained down from the heavens with nothing compared to the previous weight and danger they've posed.</p><p>Tsunade soared through the air, taking off the ground with her herculean strength and rolling back the torn up sleeves while her fists glowed blue, with a furious expression the girl devastated the few moon chunks she could see with simple punches and kicks before landing back down.</p><p>"Let's go, Gamaken!" Jiraiya prompted his ally to thrust its sasumata fork at the meteor in an attempt to smash it.</p><p>"No way, I'm horrible!" Gamaken became flustered and delivered only a half-baked thrust. He raised his sakazuki shield to protect himself and his summoner from the crashing moon fragment that he had failed to destroy but the falling moon ended up crashing on top of Jiraiya and Gamaken and separating the battlefield section where Team Hawthorn and Team Hiruzen took their stands from where the rest of the ninja alliance was.</p><p>"Jiraiya!" Tsunade yelled out and kicked the moon chunk into bits with a push kick, pulling her injured teammate from underneath the rubble. The white hair and the entirety of the youth's face were covered in blood and when the medical ninja moved any part of her teammate's body, the youth winced and wanted to cry out in pain but could only gurgle and cough up blood. "I'm going to need a second to heal him." She looked at Orochimaru.</p><p>"Are you sure? Look at Madara, a trick like this has drained him significantly, he's not immortal nor is he almighty, would you not be rather bashing his brain in right now, Tsunade?" Orochimaru suggested with an innocent shrug.</p><p>"I'd love nothing more but… The lives of our comrades come first!" Tsunade took a moment and spared a thought imagining Madara's body crunching underneath the weight of her fists but then turned back to Jiraiya as her hands erupted in an emerald glow that substituted the azure gleam of her Chakra Enhanced Strength.</p><p>"Great White Punch!" Morei roared out proudly as he unleashed a punch with a mass of water encasing his punch like a boxing glove. The soaring shark-man snapped his leg backward while throwing the punch just to gain that little bit of extra power to it. It remained unclear whether it was needed for the falling moon folded to the awesome physical might of Morei Hoshigaki.</p><p>Raizo thrust his hand and let a kunai knife emerge from his sleeve. The ring of his kunai knife was attached to a ring of a chain and the weapon extended to its maximum length before Raizo let his chakra coat it so that the tip of his knife became embedded into the stone. A jolt of Lightning Release passed from the bottom of the chain to the top, glowing with gold as very few artificial electric discharges in the ninja world did. The resulting discharge destroyed the chunk of the moon to a significantly smaller shower of rocks. Raizo leaned back and covered up his face.</p><p>"What unforgivable dribble," he exclaimed as one of the tiny pebbles of moonstone cut a meaningless slash on his cheek. "You've ruined the elegance of my murder."</p><p>"Cheer up, fartface," Chu yelled at her teammate, "It's not like you don't wrap your head in scarfs and hoods and cover it with masks everywhere you go anyway…"</p><p>The young woman raised her kanabo and drove it into the moon chunk just inches away from her head, chakra flared up as the young woman coated her weapon in it so that physics could finally shut up about reverberation and other meaningless drivel and so Kyona Chu could send the chunk of the moon flying back to where it came from until it was nothing less but a gleaming star in the skies above.</p><p>"Super Expansion Jutsu!" Saol Akimichi clapped his hands and feet before spreading them and expanding massively in size. "Tsuparri Thrust!" he yelled out before delivering a flurry of arm thrusts and destroying all of the oncoming moon chunks that would have threatened his team.</p><p>Despite the final fraction of the moon smashing right where Itachi stood, a murder of crows escaped its destructive landing and just a second later Itachi resumed his stance and observation of the battle from atop of the moon chunk that had nearly crushed him with a nonchalant nature that was signature of the Uchiha approach to battle.</p><p>"Now is your chance to strike!" Itachi declared to his alliance and he made the first move, going through six hand seals and expelling a grand fireball from his mouth in an endless flamethrower directed at Madara.</p><p>"Your flames are lukewarm…" Madara grunted before going through his own array of hand seals and expelling a flamethrower of his own that not just challenged Itachi's but threatened to overtake it. "They do not burn me!" Madara concluded with a final, resolute push that would have resulted in Itachi becoming engulfed in the clash of Great Fireballs but black flames sprouted over his clothes, forcing the Ghost of Uchiha to react promptly and slip out of his armor and tear the patches of his trousers that became encased in Itachi's Amaterasu.</p><p>Despite Madara's best attempts to avoid the ebony flames, he did catch a few of its never-dying sparks and began combatting their expansion. That was before he noticed the wooden-looking arrow spearheading at him from the skies over his head. Kouta smashed into the ground where Madara stood and extended his hand to launch a decimating chakra cannon blast at the legendary Uchiha but Madara's feet wrapped around Kouta's head and sent the young man rolling aside when Madara swung him with his legs, bringing himself back up to both feet and taking a closer look at the ninja alliance he had just pissed off by throwing a shattered moon at them.</p><p>Deiji charged onward at Madara, smoke broke his helmet, letting patches of the boy's hair come forth from underneath but they did not stay in the open for long as soon they've turned to horns of the Five-Tails. Madara raised his arms up and grabbed the charging dolphin-horse by its horns, wrestling it to the ground and then forming a Susanoo fist from thin air to send the downed half-beast away from him.</p><p>Feeling some of his strength returning already, Madara jumped up to confront the Seven-Tails' rush too. The long tails of the partially transformed Nanaba wrapped around Madara in mid-air while the girl rushed to the skies only to take a dive and threaten to slam Madara into the ground. Madara glared the girl in the eyes, sending her crashing down and forcing Itachi into action to dispel the genjutsu that Madara had placed on the girl.</p><p>Madara dragged his arm across his other forearm, exposing sealing glyphs over it to summon a katana in his hand, with a proud battle cry he thrust his blade onward in a stout, two-handed swing that split one of the pair of gigantic boas that Orochimaru sent to subdue him in half. The other snake froze in its coiling before falling to the ground in pieces, cut up like sausage before Madara's image phased back into the limits of human perception, throwing his cracked katana aside to meet the brought back Jiraiya hand-to-hand.</p><p>The young man was taking a nasty beatdown before crouching up and letting his ponytail expand and wrap over Madara's arm. Jiraiya swung his entrapped opponent and slammed him around over his head again and again before sending him sliding back and covering his swollen chest with a multitude of busted ribs with his shaking arm. Madara coughed up blood but in a mad stupor of battle rushed on to meet Tsunade in her challenging charge.</p><p>Having seen through Madara's tricks, Tsunade threw a cross seemingly into thin air, reading where the Susanoo fist would manifest to crush it into shattered, ethereal splinters and reduce Madara to a stumbling mess. With a proud roar, Tsunade sent an uppercut to Madara's stomach that forced an alarming amount of blood out of the Uchiha's abdomen and sent him flying. Tsunade took it to the heavens as well but not to embrace them, instead, she chose to split them.</p><p>"Heavenly Foot of Pain!" Tsunade yelled out, driving her calf into the back of Madara's neck like a guillotine and crushing the Ghost of Uchiha into the ground with her descent.</p><p>Before Madara could catch his breath and stand back up, still coughing pain, Morei was all over him, throwing a dropkick at him that Madara managed to avoid with a stumble back. Instead of safety, however, he ran straight into a tomb of chains wrapping around his body. Igaten Raizo unrolled Madara Uchiha from his chain entrapment like a yo-yo right into Morei's clutch. Wrapping his arms around Madara's waist, Morei delivered his famed suplex that managed to crush even the Six-Tails.</p><p>"Great White Fall!" Morei yelled out but his proud declaration became drowned out by Madara's own grunts of pain.</p><p>"Hey, fuckface!" Madara raised his cracked open head to meet Kyona Chu eye-to-eye as the young lady held her kanabo over her shoulders, ready to smash his head in mercilessly and swing at Madara until his head was just a mass of mush on the ruined forest floor. Madara felt the force of his Mangekyou surging through his body again, it had faltered momentarily after Tsunade had shattered his Susanoo but it was back now. Madara threw his arms to the sides as an ethereal palm thrust sent Chu rolling back like a human-wheel.</p><p>The ninja alliance observed in horror as Madara rose from the ground, surrounded by a whirling pillar of blue energy that began taking a clearer shape. A towering monster of dark blue, a tengu nose, and two lines running down from its mouth to its chin and hair, tied to the sides of the Perfect Susanoo stood from its knees to where it could observe the entirety of the Cubeworld and see the ninja alliance facing off against him as nothing more than a handful of fleas compared to his perfection.</p><p>The resolve and stamina needed to form the Perfect Susanoo came just in perfect timing, had it taken Madara one second more to recover this ace of his, he'd have been humiliated by a handful of energetic kids. Two main arms of his Susanoo gripped a single, claymore-shaped blade while the arms at the bottom of the wings that his ethereal armor had sprouted adopted a pair of katana shaped out of sheer energy but larger than most buildings all by themselves. In this armor, it would not matter if Madara's body was broken and at its limit, he would not need to move to destroy those rascals. Even if he'd too weak to fight Hashirama afterward, he would not be done in by a handful of brats and that was all that mattered.</p><p>The Perfect Susanoo was ready to go a little bit wild now. The battle was as good as over, as far as Madara was concerned.</p>
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<a name="section0645"><h2>645. The Question Of Dealing With Criminals</h2></a>
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    <p>"I'm grateful for the playtime but this is enough entertainment. Your time in my spotlight is over." Madara put his hands together, connecting the tips of his fingers and spreading them apart. A crescent line of Yasaka Magatama formed around the body of the Susanoo armor as the formation moved them outward. The shaku curved jewels began rotating like shuriken in mid-flight before taking flight at the irksome children that seemed like ants before the colossal Susanoo.</p><p>Kouta roared out, still out of control with eyes sunken in black, wild bursts of chakra erupted from his cannon as he detonated a pair of the airborne jewels that headed his way. Orochimaru bit his lip in frustration, a giant boa burst from underground and swallowed him up, taking a dive down under and helping its master avoid the troublesome projectile and the destruction it wrought.</p><p>Tsunade soared took it to the air with a bountiful leap, she grabbed the Yasaka Magatama headed for her and spun it round and round before releasing it to detonate farther to the west from her location. Jiraiya scooped his teammate out of the air so that Madara would not exploit the fact she was in free-fall.</p><p>"This is crazy!" Jiraiya declared. "The highest you can jump and you didn't even reach its knees... Is this really worth it? I mean at this point I'd rather face that Itachi guy instead of fighting to win him a pair of eyes."</p><p>"Maybe so. This stopped being about Itachi and his eyes for a long time now. This is personal, this man disrespected me and my grandpa's family and for that, I will pound him!" Tsunade clenched her fist while staring at the colossal Susanoo that appeared indifferent to its miniature opponents and stared out at one blank point in space.</p><p>"Chu!" Raizo yelled out down on the ground. In acknowledgment of his callout, the injured kunoichi of Team Angler nodded and swung her kanabo over her shoulder before winding it up for a strike. Raizo weaved through a pair of hand seals.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Ball Lightning!" he hissed out, the spheres of Lightning Release didn't wait for the Yasaka Magatama to fall any closer, Chu swung her kanabo and sent the spheres crashing into the falling ethereal projectile. The resulting discharge of Lightning Release chakra detonated the Yasaka Magatama in mid-air. Chu's wild and dirty hair rustled and smacked over her own face from the resulting shockwave that threatened to knock people over even if they had managed to avoid Madara's actual attack.</p><p>Morei roared out, he extended his hands out and caught the Yasaka Magatama in his hands, sliding a fair distance back but managing to both apply enough force to stop it as well as not to be too rough and detonate it. The Great White let go of the ethereal jewel and kicked it in the rear, sending it back at Madara but it didn't seem to as much as scratch the armor itself despite a hollow thud.</p><p>Saol bellowed in pain, he had chosen to shield his team in his Super-Expanded State, which allowed him to cushion all the frightening power of the sacred and legendary Uchiha clan ninjutsu but also it meant that he took the share meant to crush his entire team.</p><p>"Saol…" Rarrifa muttered but her teammate tried to reassure her with a pain-ridden expression.</p><p>"It's okay, just tell me… That this is… Still a part of your plan…" he winced.</p><p>"The crucial part has been set, Itachi is the key to our victory. I'm surprised he picked up on our plan so fast." Rarrifa nodded. While it was evident that she didn't plan the entire battle out as she wasn't anywhere close to being aware of Madara's entire fighting style and incredibly vast array of techniques, she did plan ahead enough for Itachi to play his crucial role.</p><p>"That's what you've got me for." Faeino pointed at herself with her thumb. She had a point, without her supplying the mental link it would have been impossible to converse with Itachi with how flexible he was and how vast of space he covered with his Mangekyou Sharingan techniques.</p><p>"I'd like it if he'd hurry up…" Saol grunted before shrinking down to normal size and faltering on his feet. "I'm not sure if I could take much more of that... Sorry, team, some powerhouse I ended up being." The Akimichi pulled out a case from his pocket and stared at five food pills inside it.</p><p>"Don't, you've taken too much damage to hurt yourself even more with drugs!" Faeino objected.</p><p>Kouta roared out in the sky, unleashing blast after blast from his many cannons but they were more a testament to his fury instead of being meant to hit anything at all. Each blast just detonated at a faraway patch of the forest, reducing it to splinters and ash in a second.</p><p>"Shit, he can't revert…" Deiji cursed and looked to Nanaba. "He's going to break himself if Madara doesn't do it for him until then."</p><p>"Not much we can do at this point…" Nanaba shook her head. "We've already tried smacking him out of it during training, the only way is to knock him out and we can't do that if he wants to get his promotion."</p><p>It was then that Madara noticed the Amaterasu flames that Itachi had caught him with persisting, it was just a few tongues of obsidian flames that still clung to his body but they made every passing moment that much more irksome and the legendary Uchiha had already experienced all entertainment that this battle would provide him with.</p><p>"You think this is true fire? I'll show you true fire, the flame that is your end. The flames of Uchiha that you chaff will bow to!" Madara declared from inside the jewel at the center of the Perfect Susanoo's helmet while he went through hand seals and raised his hand upward. By breathing out all of his rage and pent up satisfaction with the battle, Madara made it rain fireballs, drowning out the sky in flames, each fireball four times the size of the genin that would have to deal with it or be cleansed away by the legendary flames. "Fire Style: Great Flame Flower!" Madara decreed the name of the alliance's doom.</p><p>"Chakra Grenade!" Kouta yelled out, firing off a volley of concentrated chakra blasts that slowly floated in front of him and blew up together with the raining flames, dealing with a large patch of Madara's rain of annihilation all at once.</p><p>"Water Style: Gunshot!" a toad of Jiraiya's employ fired an orb-shaped blob of water toward the oncoming blaze but in the totality of raining hell a large mass of water evaporated before it even reached the flames it was meant to oppose. The air drowned out in grunts and screams as Jiraiya got flung away by the brutal explosion alongside his bronze-colored toad ally while Orochimaru and Tsunade tried their best to block, claw and scratch their way through Madara's jutsu on their way to survival.</p><p>"Great! White…!" Morei was flexing his muscles in preparation of some grandiose maneuver before a sphere of water gobbled him up and he felt it carrying him away at a rapid pace. To his side, he could see Chu waving at him playfully as Raizo flashed in between both water spheres.</p><p>"What's with the obsession with getting yourselves killed with you two, honestly…" Raizo scolded his teammates after pulling the plastic beak off of his face to get some fresh breaths of oxygen in the stuffy, hot air.</p><p>"Did you just pull the Great Blue away from the Great White Punch of his life!? Let me tell you something, mate, that just ain't fine!" Morei objected.</p><p>"Tell me about it, to think that I might have had fish sticks for dinner tonight…" Raizo stood up on his toes to get all over in his teammate's face with a self-righteous expression to match Morei's razor-sharp pearly whites.</p><p>"Awww, they're screaming in agony, ain't it cute?" Chu licked her lips after whistling out to the air, referencing the mental signal of the Yamanaka girl from Hoshigakure and her team.</p><p>"We've got no time for your creepy routine right now. You've got your kanabo, stick to swinging it and leave the talking to me." Raizo snapped back at his other teammate.</p><p>"Yeah, you're the talkative one out of the three of us, that's the best punchline the Great Blue has ever heard!" Morei wrapped his oversized arms over his chest and snickered.</p><p>"Not yet…" Itachi mumbled on the mental link. "I need to give the Amaterasu more time to grow before I expand it, or else we risk losing it all if Madara somehow survives it… I know it's tough but… Please persevere."</p><p>"Jet-Powered Piston!" Kouta screamed out in the declaration of his own madness as black and white flares of chakra fired off from his cannons which the transformed Jugo directed behind him. The curious formation of his cannons and the chakra blasts sent him rocketing onward at the titanic Perfect Susanoo, reaching all the way to the chest of the colossus, something that seemed to amuse Madara more than anything.</p><p>Kouta's fist connected to the chest of the Perfect Susanoo with a deafening thud that sent the colossal armor reeling back a few inches but the Susanoo had managed to regain its footing and what was even worse – Kouta's punch didn't even dent the armor. That was not the end of the young man's assault however as blasts resonated from the ends of his elbow, further forcing his arm through the enemy and sending the Susanoo back with a mighty shockwave. While Kouta didn't down the armor nor its master, the Perfect Susanoo lowered its arms and appeared to hunch as if feeling a bit dazed for a couple of moments.</p><p>Cracks and ripples of azure began forming at the chest of the armor, Itachi's crimson eyes became the clearest they've ever been as the Uchiha widened them in utter disbelief at the incredible success that Kouta's attack had left on the gigantic world-shaker. If only the boy could have known his own success and further exploited his own gain for a finishing strike…</p><p>Despite the impressive showing, blood began trickling down the ridges and cracks in Kouta's black, wooden texture and the formation of the makeshift layer of armor that his Curse Seal provided him with. Just as Deiji and Nanaba had feared, the Second State of the Curse Seal threatened to ruin the boy's body as his mind only knew the infinite fury it had to cope with and not the bodily limitations that would have curbed such madness under normal circumstances.</p><p>"He only has seconds until he passes out!" Deiji pointed out as he, together with Nanaba extended their hands outward and focused both of their chakra into another combo of the pinnacle of Tailed Beast's power. "Tailed Beast Bomb!" the two of them roared out in synchrony, hoping to finish Madara off before Kouta passed out. The pair of the black spheres rotated one around the other as they blitzed toward their ultimate goal.</p><p>The Perfect Susanoo closed its wings, in front of it, taking the brunt of the explosion and despite its awesome might, all it did was send the Susanoo sliding back and left cracks over the wings. Deiji and Nanaba landed on the ground, huffing and panting heavily while their partial transformations disappeared. Being forced to face one's own shortage of strength was never a pleasant experience.</p><p>"We should have accessed more of the Tailed Beasts' power…" Deiji grunted.</p><p>"If we did, we wouldn't be much better off than Kouta," Nanaba dismissed the idea. "You! Please use your Sharingan to awaken Kouta, he'll kill himself if he stays much longer in that state!" she turned to Itachi.</p><p>"I'm afraid I cannot do that." Itachi shook his head. "If I did, I'd miss the moment when to claim our victory, plus, if I use my Mangekyou Sharingan to snap it out of it by force, he won't be much better off than if he passed out himself. It's not exactly a scalpel type of tool, you know."</p><p>"You're kidding, right?" Nanaba stared at Itachi in disbelief.</p><p>"Don't worry, I'll help your friend." Tsunade clenched her fists and prepared to take it to the skies via her own two feet. "I can't snap him out of it but I can heal his body so that he doesn't kill himself before he manages to overcome his own demons."</p><p>Tsunade took it up and threw her hands out in a butterfly-shaped blocking motion to absorb Kouta's kick when she closed up to him. Using the leg of the young man as a pole, she swung herself over his head and locked her arms over his neck in a clutch while she initiated her Mystical Palm Jutsu. Tsunade's eyebrows moved downward on the front while sweat ran down her forehead, she knew just how short on chakra she was running and just what this implication meant for such a wild battle. Just for now, however, she managed to ease the pain of the poor boy trapped inside his own mind.</p><p>"Hmph… And you call yourself Hashirama's granddaughter? Whom do you think you've helped here? Hashirama may have fostered some foolish ideas but he knew that a ninja must have eliminated the enemy before treating the wounded." Madara's Perfect Susanoo prepared all of its swords for a slash. Horror befell Tsunade's eyes as she saw the two katana attached to Madara's wings together with the one greatsword he wielded in two of his main arms prepared to slice through the entire battlefield and leave utter rampage in their wake.</p><p>Before the swords could complete their blood-shedding slash, however, they froze in mid-air. The Perfect Susanoo struggled against forceful pressure from behind when Saol's arms wrapped around it in a Full Nelson lock. He knew that he couldn't stop Madara from attacking as he lacked the strength and the number of limbs to prevent the attack altogether but he bought a couple of precious seconds.</p><p>"Begone, pest!" Madara cursed as the Susanoo, instead of struggling against the hold in an attempt to slash its hands forward, threw a wild elbow strike and freed himself from Saol's hold while the Akimichi stumbled back, bleeding profusely from his busted nose and wincing over the painful bruise all over his face. "As for you, lament your weakness in your final moments!"</p><p>Madara's ethereal blades stopped in mid-motion once more. Confused, the Ghost of Uchiha looked back at Saol but he did not appear to have played any role whatsoever in this stoppage as he still clutched his busted face and whined in pain. Madara took a glance downward and witnessed a shadowy tendril touching with the shadow of his Perfect Susanoo. He'd have erupted in laughter had he not been so irked by the utter refusal of these kids to fall over and just die.</p><p>"Such a big man makes a big target…" Rarrifa taunted the legendary Uchiha before glancing at the burning Forest of Death all around her – a result of Madara's own Fire Release techniques. "Thanks for all the fire though, it really helps with brightening the place up for my shadow hijutsu."</p><p>"Useless!" Madara roared out as he forced his Perfect Susanoo to struggle against the shadowy hold and overpower it in a heartbeat. Rarrifa grunted in pain and fell over, panting as she laid stretched out on the ground and stared at the sky that was beginning to slowly turn red from the blazing inferno of battle.</p><p>Just as Madara was about to hack and slash the entire battlefield to bits, emboldened by the agonizing black flames climbing slowly over his body and burning him up, the flames expanded wildly into a rotating pillar of an obsidian blaze that was so massive it burst out from the jewel Madara placed himself on. The Susanoo froze in place before beginning to fade away one patch at a time while Madara fell from the heavens he ascended to, paralyzed in disbelief of approaching death as his entire body became consumed by the expanding flames of Amaterasu – a tree that grew up from a little acorn Itachi had planted earlier. Not even the Perfect Susanoo could protect him from flames that blazed within the armor, after all.</p><p>Itachi grunted in pain and collapsed on one knee, blood burst forth on the black, dried out streaks covering his face as both of his Mangekyou Sharingan closed at once and the Uchiha raised his eyes that had turned greyer after such an intense battle up at the fallen ghost.</p><p>"Done in by mere children. Hmph… Back in my day, the era when body count of the enemy clan determined one's worth, children were the main target in the war. The young were the easiest to slay, after all… The reason Hashirama and I got closer was because both of us wanted children to never have to experience that ever again. You guys… You guys make me wonder if… Maybe Hashirama's way turned out alright… If not even… Uchiha Madara could kill all of you…" Madara mumbled as he laid defeated in front of the genin alliance, all of whom seemed too beaten to move a muscle and put their enemy out of his misery. The black blaze of Amaterasu gone out with Itachi's collapse and Madara was just worse off for it.</p><p>"Don't worry, Madara. Your eyes will see the path of the Uchiha clan all the way to the end. They will see the world that you and the First have created together." Itachi spoke softly before picking up the fallen katana that Madara himself once used and alleviating the pain of his predecessor with one swift motion.</p><p>"Kouta…" Nanaba looked up at the poor youth who seemed to not find a possible target to vent his rage out on now that the colossal, sapphire Susanoo had died out.</p><p>"Don't worry, Madara's eyes seem to be intact, I'll snap your friend out as a final favor but I'll need a favor in exchange. One from Tsunade-san." Itachi looked up to the confused blonde with his weakened, greyed out eyes. "I'd like to take Madara's eyes for a meeting with someone very important to both of us."</p><p>"Interesting…" Orochimaru hissed and smiled. "So what you're saying is that you will be near-blind and powerless for a moment?"</p><p>"To hell with that, why should we trust you, a hunter, right after you nearly got us all killed fighting that guy!?" Jiraiya flipped out on Itachi.</p><p>"Sorry, I'm with Jiraiya on this one…" Tsunade clicked her tongue in frustration and shrugged. "Even if Madara did a number on us, we still outnumber you and while meeting Madara and getting to get my hands on him was something… It still doesn't make me any more willing to gamble on your intentions."</p><p>"I see… Well then… I'll leave you to deal with the boy's torment on yourself then, take care…" Itachi replied in a husky voice before dispersing in a murder of crows that drowned out the entire hellish background of the apocalyptic battle that had transpired there. Not only was Itachi gone once the murder of crows became rare enough to see through but so was Madara's head as well. The hectic flapping of wings and the cawing of crows attracted Kouta's attention from up above.</p><p>"Motherf…" Jiraiya groaned in frustration as he forced his beaten and exhausted body off the ground to deal with the matter of one mad lad still willing to swing his fists.</p>
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<a name="section0646"><h2>646. Not That Kind Of Story</h2></a>
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      <p>Naruto was the first one to move after the fierce howling and total blackout ceased. His arm that tried to protect himself with a vain block twitched once. With the painful resonance spreading throughout his body, the future Seventh realized that he was alive and that Danzo's last-ditch effort to consume them hadn't worked out as the veteran shinobi had expected it. The young man looked around, throwing his head to the sides and doing the headcount – it seemed like everyone was accounted for.</p>
      <p>"Huh… I thought I was a goner there, you know…" Naruto scratched his head, squinting in confusion. Now that he did notice it, he was in a different location than where Danzo's expanding final desperation move hit them. Could something have transported them? If they did, they could have done a bit better job as the crew was barely moved a hundred meters or so to the back.</p>
      <p>"Minato!" Kushina leaned down by her injured teammate. The purple infection spreading all throughout the youth's body was beginning to subside, suggesting that their user might have perished or been caught in Danzo's desperation move, but the damage they've left on Minato's body was extensive. The young woman slipped up her blouse and revealed a seal on her belly. Pressing her hand to it and twisting it like a key inside a lock forced a black mass to appear inside the edges of the seal, almost like a miniature black hole that wasn't all too interesting in sucking anything else in.</p>
      <p>The red-haired kunoichi dug her hand deep into the mass and yanked out a massive amount of red, ethereal energy that seemed transparent but light as a cloud. The girl tilted Minato's tracksuit and exposed a matching seal on his belly, which she promptly activated and forced the transparent red mass into. Her own condition appeared to be deteriorating as she did so, sweat began running down her forehead as black bags began forming underneath Kushina's eyes as she performed this curious action but Minato jumped up and coughed something black up, spitting the bile out at once.</p>
      <p>"It's gotta be all those dead bugs, ya know…" Kushina sat on her bottom, barely holding her body in a seated position as her weakened hands trembled but she looked happy to see her teammate alive and well again.</p>
      <p>"Kushina, don't tell me you've transferred some of your life force again…" Minato looked worried.</p>
      <p>"Leave it to Minato to be worried about his team just seconds after recovering from a near-death experience…" Kotaro cheeked his teammate with a butt of his elbow to Minato's ribs.</p>
      <p>"That's okay, ya know, I've got plenty of vitality for both of us!" Kushina showed her teeth in an apish grin, even though the rest of her body begged for some relief already.</p>
      <p>Meiko helped Kiyomi up on her feet. Nobody on their team possessed unnatural healing abilities so Kiyomi just grit her teeth and decided to suck it up. Even if Kushina did offer her aid, it didn't look like this ability was something she could abuse and Minato was in a far direr situation, with the redhead managing to pull him out of death's clawed grip just seconds before it would have been too late. Her sealing technique was effective if nothing else…</p>
      <p>"That was amazing! If we both make it through this, I'd love to train my Sealing Techniques with you." Meiko commended Kushina whom Minato placed on his back and prepared to carry her to the end of the exams.</p>
      <p>"She will make it out." Minato declared with iron resolve. "Because I will carry her to the next stage on my own back."</p>
      <p>"Still…" Naruto looked up in confusion, "How did we make it out of Danzo's jutsu, you know?"</p>
      <p>"The brat…" Kiyomi pointed at Kawaki who laid on the ground, his vest jacket and shirt ripped up from extensive damaging while his Kama markings had disappeared completely from his body. It didn't look like the boy was injured but he was sleeping like a baby. "He must have absorbed the blast. Only ironic that Danzo tried sucking us up into his own corpse only for Kawaki to suck up the chakra from his own seal up instead."</p>
      <p>"Kawaki-san can do that?" Minato wondered.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, he can't control his abilities too good but he gets a bunch of new ones every time he lets more and more of his Kama power through. You might not have guessed it, seeing how many jutsu the poor dolt got hit in the face with recently, however, his body must have felt it to be an all-or-nothing kind of moment and pulled us all through." Kiyomi noted while looking at the downed body of their comrade. She patted Meiko on the back to pick the punk up together with her. "Well done, kid…" Kiyomi smirked through her own fair share of pain.</p>
      <p>"I'm afraid it might be for the best if we part our ways." Kotaro declared.</p>
      <p>"Huh? But we could use each other's help, you know!" Naruto waved his hands frantically. "I've popped the last one of my Natural Chakra gathering clones I've left behind in this fight, if I wanted to access Sage Mode again, I'd have to gather it naturally. All of us are on the edge of flipping over, you know!"</p>
      <p>"That is exactly why." Kotaro nodded. "There would be no greater assortment of villains and hunters than at the temple where we are to pick our mission objectives in. We'd just be picking a fight if we rushed in together. It would be better if we came at separate times, using trickery and stealth to outwit the enemy while splitting them across the entire territory, as much as possible. We could not survive another fight like this."</p>
      <p>"The guy seems to be onto something," Kiyomi grumbled through pain resonating all over her body. The very idea of even putting her fists up, let alone using them, made her nauseous and her ribs stabbing at her chest from within in rebellion. "The point of this test was to make us realize that just rushing and powering through won't get us anywhere. Every time we've involved ourselves in meaningless squabbles, we've ended up stalling our progress and just getting ourselves further worn out. We might need to finish this stage slow, steady and quiet if we are to finish it at all…"</p>
      <p>"I guess…" Naruto patted his abdomen and scratched it with a tired and bruised hand. Even Naruto's seemingly infinite stamina was being tested and it would be tested many times more until this stage was done. "I'd better start gathering strength for Itachi and Sasuke too, you know…"</p>
      <p>It made too much sense that even bringing his best friend up would make him too easy to manipulate in any direction.</p>
      <p>"Sheesh, if we don't start taking things more cautiously, even the wildlife is going to start attacking us soon enough…" Meiko shook her head in frustration, shortly before Kotaro and Minato nodded their farewells to Team Hokage and took off. Kushina looked too tired or too absorbed by resting her face against Minato's back to say her farewells. There would be still a time and a place for sentiments. Now was a time for action.</p>
      <p>"The ground's still shaking even if we're done fighting, you know…" Naruto noted, while Team Hokage ascended to the trees and began moving toward the location of the temple.</p>
      <p>"We're not the only ones fighting, still, something really heated must be taking place. I can feel heatwaves from it all the way here." Kiyomi agreed while wincing from the deafening rumbling noises that might as well have come from skies themselves being mixed with the ground for all they knew. It was unfortunate, or rather incredibly fortunate, that the layers of leafage over their heads covering up the sky persisted even in these cruel conditions, resulting in whatever apocalyptic annihilation the battles around them were causing somewhat obscured to Team Hokage.</p>
      <p>"We're just going in blind now, no sensory, no back-up plans…" Meiko noted.</p>
      <p>"True, all the more reason to be more careful," Kiyomi warned.</p>
      <p>"So what you're saying is that you just ran here?" a short, bandaged man with an Otogakure headband turned his head, finding the fact very curious when addressing a man of puny build and spiky, brown hair and a red headband without the protector of any village on it.</p>
      <p>"That's right, you see, my name is Fukusuke Hikyakuya and I am a famed racer. Fighting isn't really my thing but running I can do better than anybody else. And so, I've figured out that the best odds to catch me a bunch of genin would be to ally with stronger guys while waiting at the goal they would all be waiting to reach." Fukusuke explained.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, well… Guess what, buddy, we've all gotten the same idea…" another Otogakure ninja allied to the bandaged youth with a metal arm pointed out before turning to a crowd of curious-looking individuals, all of whom were hunters.</p>
      <p>Amongst them stood a quartet of rogue ninja from Otogakure, known as the Sound Four, a shapeless, black mass that called itself Zetsu even though most hunters have witnessed an army of white, fungal men calling themselves the same name taking over the village earlier making its story unlikely. Also a teen with pointy, sharp teeth and curly black hair and a red, sleeveless turtleneck with a bandaged sword on his back. Beside him floated a shorty of brown hair and a stumpy, bloated nose and a red cloak covering his entire body save for his head. A trio of Sunagakure genin stared at the curious assembly of hunters with a shaken set of eyes as they had previously taken the Sunagakure ninja for genin and tried taking them out, only for Gaara of the Desert to stop them singlehandedly, making the red-haired young boy the only one with a grumpy pair of eyes and a short-fuse.</p>
      <p>"Outta my way, you know!" Naruto yelled out, charging out from the cover with a Rasengan in hand and swinging the sphere around like a weapon. The famed runner managed to elude the Rasengan with an impressive barrage of backflips before beginning to run about wildly. "Huh? What's this guy's deal? He's just… Running, you know…" Naruto wrapped his arms over his chest and squinted at Fukusuke.</p>
      <p>"Uzumaki Naruto!" Gaara's husky voice pierced the howls of Fukusuke's body racing with the wind as a mighty shockwave threw the Land of Tea racer off his feet and sent him skidding across the ground and smashing through the temple wall – knocking him out instantly as specks of sand flew about like shrapnel in the stormy outrage of the young and bloodthirsty Jinchuuriki.</p>
      <p>"Oh, Gaara from the Chuunin Exams, isn't it?" Naruto smirked. Before he could challenge the youth, the Hoshigaki in a red turtleneck snuck up and stabbed the young man with a katana from behind him. Naruto grunted while the Hoshigaki wrestled him to the ground and pinned him to it, readying his shark-skinned Samehada sword to shred Naruto's skin and chakra right off before the genin would be weak enough to finish off.</p>
      <p>The grand plan was interrupted by a loud puff of smoke when the clone dispersed. A squad of Naruto clones flooded the temple grounds, rushing through the entire array of hunters that have gathered there and gunning straight for the reduced stack of crystal spheres laid on an altar inside the temple grounds. Zaku Abumi of the Otogakure ninja raised his hand and sent a soundwave that threw a handful of clones off balance and forced them to dispel, the rest worked their own magic but Naruto's numbers were too many to fight off all at once.</p>
      <p>"Regroup, you fuckwits!" Tayuya of the Sound Four commanded the entire troupe of hunters. "He might put his hands on the cube but we can stop him from retreating with them!"</p>
      <p>A handful of Naruto clones took a dive toward the stack of crystal spheres and placed their hands over them, focusing their chakra through their palms. The spheres lit up with a rainbow gleam and the white cube contained within each sphere began to slowly emerge, inch by inch, one corner at a time. The clone extracting the cube got dispatched by a slashing crescent of wind sent at it by Temari, Kankuro's puppet theatre dispelled the rest.</p>
      <p>"He might be supercharged and a future version of Naruto we've met, but it's still Naruto we're talking about…" Kankuro showed his teeth in a smug grin as all clones got dispatched at once.</p>
      <p>"These were just clones." The floating shorty pointed out. "The clone user must be nearby, if he is resorting to deceitful tactics like these, odds are that they think themselves too weak to take us all on at once."</p>
      <p>"Shoot… I'm rather short on chakra, you know." Naruto breathed out a weary sigh, sitting atop of a branch that Team Hokage surveyed the temple opening from. "Sorry, guys…"</p>
      <p>"Can't you just ask the Nine-Tails to give you more?" Meiko wondered.</p>
      <p>"I could… But I'm dealing with a shifty fox here, you know. It can just refuse me or give me too much and if it gives me more chakra than I've already got, its chakra will take my body over again…" Naruto reminded the bunch of the time when he went absolutely berserk because he let too much of the Nine-Tails' chakra surge through him.</p>
      <p>The forest area shook and trembled, exploding in a wild wave of shrapnel and unchained natural energy. Everything went white before the pain and the realization that the trio was out in the open, right before the bunch of hunters to see, writhing on the ground due to their wounds. Despite the imminent danger of most hunters still at play being on their backs, the trio of Team Hokage looked up at the monstrous force that caused this devastating explosion and left a gigantic tunnel in the area of the forest leading up to the temple.</p>
      <p>"If it's a man, I'll kill them… If it's a woman, I'll kill them anyway… Kill everything!" a bona fide monster mumbled its way through words, clad in armor of black plates and spikes that looked like an in-between mixture of bone and wood alike. Meiko had seen something of this sort before.</p>
      <p>"K-Kouta…" she mumbled with a weakened voice.</p>
      <p>The mad, transformed genin held a blond woman in his arm by the woman's throat. His grip was less than subtle as blood was trickling from the woman's mouth from the extensive damage to her airways and throat. A handful of lifeless-looking bodies had littered the massive, five-kilometer tunnel between a scorched area of the forest further down the road and the temple while the twisted version of Kouta breathed furious smoke from his nostrils, foamed and bled through gaps in between his armored plates while his crazy eyes ran across the battlefield, imagining thousands of twisted ways he could kill every single person in this place.</p>
      <p>"I think… I'd better run away from here…" the hunter Fukusuke peeled his face off of the rubble he laid on and began limping away, whining with each step. His only talent in life seemed hampered by the wounds he had sustained while fulfilling his one, minuscule role in this engagement.</p>
      <p>"You… You're so strong, killing you would justify my existence as nothing else would!" Gaara's eyes widened in excitement as he extended his arm to throw a shapeless blob of rushing sand from his gourd Kouta's way. With a flick of his hand, the armored monster repelled the rush of the sand but the sand wrapped around his arm, attempting to apply pressure and crush it. A resonating blast of chakra scattered the sand into lifeless grains that showered the entire battlefield while Kouta extended his hand and formed a glowing, golden sphere in his palm.</p>
      <p>"Chakra Grenade!" he roared out with a voice that was as much pain as it was fury. The monstrous shape flung its hand forward, sending the sphere to float at the bunch of hunters while Team Hokage struggled to roll out of its way. It seemed like every hunter had forgotten all about the injured Konoha ninja that had fallen into their lap and cared only about the more immediate threat that would have left them as battered and broken as the bodies the transformed monster left in its wake.</p>
      <p>"I am beginning to understand why Mana dumped this guy…" Kiyomi joked just before wincing in pain as she clutched her ribs.</p>
      <p>"We need that cube." Meiko pointed at the temple, the resonating explosions had scattered the crystal spheres containing the cubes that needed to be unsealed still. She pulled out a handful of paper tags and pressed her palm to them. "I've put a handy seal on them. We just need to put that seal onto one of those balls and we're golden."</p>
      <p>"I can maybe make one more clone with my own power if I push it, you know," Naruto grumbled, looking serious for once. "I'll be using my reserve strength, meaning that if Itachi brings a fight to us – we'll be in trouble, you know."</p>
      <p>"We'll be in trouble if we don't do this." Kiyomi shook her head. "Try your clone, if it fails, we'll all try to rush the spheres."</p>
      <p>Naruto pressed his hands together in the clone hand seal position. To call the lifeless waste of oxygen that came out of him a clone would have been a grave offense. It was a chalk-pale waste of space with flappy limbs that laid like the pathetic sack of bones that it was face-first while only its rear had the strength to rise over its head and shine proudly for all to see.</p>
      <p>"Everybody it is…" Kiyomi sighed.</p>
      <p>Meiko blasted out from the cover of fallen trees and leafage, she felt sharp pain in the side of her face, the pain felt just like what the cause of it was – a handful of massive needles that dug into her face and blinded her on one side while making the whole left side of her go numb. Kiyomi jumped out from the cover at the same time, the kunoichi leaned down to avoid a steel wire trap right in front of her and stood back up after a blast of detonating chakra cannon caught her from behind, a blast meant for one of the hunters but packing enough of a wallop to make the ground rumble and shift the foundation of the temple. The blonde twisted around the rushing Sound Ninja and bumped the bandaged creep with her butt when the punch of his mechanical arm had missed her, she couldn't lean down to pick the sphere up nor could she roll, all she could do was fall down flat on her face, her hand on top of it.</p>
      <p>The sealing glyph that she had attached to the crystal sphere lit up, matching the sealing glyph in Meiko's hand and the crystal sphere ended up shining in Meiko's hand while Naruto and the blacksmith hurdled back into supposed safety. It was a simple transferal seal, that once attached to a small and simple object transferred it to the location possessing a matching seal. Kiyomi's ribs ached too much to move. She had done all she could have done in this stage of the exams.</p>
      <p>Meiko's grip pulled on Naruto's wrist. The young man who would become the Seventh Hokage one day objected with a sorry look but Meiko shook her head and pulled harder. It hurt her more than anything else to make this call, but it was the call that Kiyomi would have made, it was the call that she had made earlier.</p>
      <p>"No way, we need to go back, it doesn't matter how scary the enemy is, we don't leave people behind, you know!" Naruto yelled out.</p>
      <p>"This isn't how things work around here. If you go out there – you'll probably die, you'll definitely fail and if we fail this exam again, Kiyomi will definitely murder us in our sleep." Meiko yelled back at his face, powering through the rumbling madness. "Right now Kouta is giving us maybe a minute or two of time to get back to the Ninja Academy and proceed, if you fail to take that chance, you'll never get a chance to face Itachi or face Sasuke."</p>
      <p>"Forget it, you know!" Naruto turned to the devastating battlefield and tightened his headband. "I don't leave allies behind and I never go back on my word! That's my ninja way!"</p>
      <p>Naruto ran out like a madman into the cascade of flashes of bright light without an ounce of chakra in his system. Meiko picked Kawaki up and pressed him tighter to her sides. A stray golden arrow hit Naruto in the shoulder, one he had no chance of tracking with his weakened body, the boy's eyes whited out as he collapsed leaving just a falling arc of blood that came out from his mouth but failed to keep up with Naruto's fall.</p>
      <p>Holding the crystal sphere in her hand and still clutching to Kawaki, Meiko took off from the madness and the battlefield where both of her remaining teammates laid unconscious and close to dying. The staff would probably interfere soon enough, things certainly were getting dire there.</p>
      <p>"If your team gets wiped out or killed, you're out, obviously…" Anko's words rung through Meiko's ears as the blacksmith took an arrow-nosed charge backward through the Forest of Death with the goal that Team Hokage was meant to deliver to the Ninja Academy still sealed within the sphere she clutched in hand.</p>
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<a name="section0647"><h2>647. Konoha's Ash Grey Hokage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Huh… What the hell's happened?" Kawaki grumbled prompting Meiko to land and put him down or else she'd have to listen to him complain about being carried by someone. The blacksmith had counted on putting him down before he fully got back into his senses and whether it was because she succeeded and the punk just assumed that the hazy images of speedy traveling from earlier were all a dream or because he just didn't care as much as Meiko assumed he would.</p><p>"You helped us survive Danzo. We got to the temple while you were out. Kiyomi got taken out, Naruto chose to stay and pull her out but got taken out himself." Meiko cut it short and strict. "We need to move, we don't have much time."</p><p>"Wait, what? What about that blond guy and the redhead chick?" Kawaki wondered.</p><p>"Minato and Kushina separated from us, they decided to tackle the temple from another course. They were in a worse condition than we were and the whole place was filled with hunters. It's more than likely that half of all active hunters are there while the other half is by the Ninja Academy waiting for teams coming in to cash out." Meiko sighed, some time back all of this would have flown over her head but by now even someone as thick as her could read situations like these from experience.</p><p>"So you dumped them then?" Kawaki wondered.</p><p>"I didn't dump them." Meiko pointed her finger at Kawaki. "Though it would have been smarter to just rush for the Ninja Academy and proceed to the next stage, I did not abandon them."</p><p>"Seems to me like you kind of ditched them…" Kawaki shrugged.</p><p>"I needed to pull out and regroup. Figure out how to save both the team as well as Kiyomi and Naruto. I'm sure it's possible. The proctors won't interfere until the genin are threatened with death and the hunters know it, they'll make their beatdowns last. Plus, it's not like it's gonna be a short scuffle, Kouta's giving them hell…" Meiko groaned and dragged her hand across her tired face and her hair. She really wanted not to be in charge of pulling the team through. She was the least competent person in the original roster to do the desperation planning, then again, having the current roster in mind, maybe that was still Naruto?</p><p>"So, not that I'm accusing you of ditching everybody but… What's next? Gonna go cash the cube in, right?" Kawaki asked.</p><p>"No…" Meiko shook her head, looking as her grumpiest self as Kawaki demanded answers to questions she couldn't yet provide ones for. He wanted her to tell how exactly she'd waltz back into that madness and pull Naruto and Kiyomi out and how on Earth she'd bring them back from unconsciousness as well as grievous wounds and exhaustion on top. "Just… Give me a sec here…"</p><p>"It's not that big of a deal if you did dump them and decide to promote yourself, honestly." Kawaki shrugged, trying to make Meiko's frustration a bit easier on her.</p><p>"No, you don't get it. We're still a team. That means that if I bring this cube and cash it out, we're all proceeding to the next round. Knowing that I still won't move to the gate alone. Naruto's still got business in this version of Konoha and Kiyomi and I go way back. I'm not just gonna leave them, I just… That girl…" Meiko began stroking her chin.</p><p>"Girl…?" Kawaki squinted one of his eyes, at this point he just looked curious more than anything. He seemed amused by Meiko's decision to act stupid and try to pull out her team even though they laid knocked out in one of the most intense battlefields of the entire Forest of Death. It might have been the stupidity of the notion that amused Kawaki as such decisions were unpredictable while their unpredictable nature was sure to bring outcomes just as erratic.</p><p>"Minato's teammate, Kushina, she was able to bring Minato back from a near-death experience by transferring her life force. It had to have been a clan ability or something. If we could find someone like her, they could bring Naruto and Kiyomi back too." Meiko scratched her head, hearing the madness that was coming out from her mouth.</p><p>"I still don't get why you're making this such a big deal, just bring the cube to the Academy and be done with it…" Kawaki shrugged.</p><p>"We don't do that to our allies here." Meiko turned around and almost shoved a finger down Kawaki's mouth. "I'm gonna rescue them if it's the last thing I do, Naruto just went about it the wrong way. If you want to be the hero, you don't just run into the fray while you're half-dead hoping things work out. Life doesn't work like that, things don't just work out, you need to make them work out. A friend once taught me that through her example."</p><p>"Well… Going with you is still my best bet at avoiding Kara so…" Kawaki shrugged. "Let's go find us a red-headed person then!"</p><p>Meiko squinted while Kawaki stood up right next to her and stared right back up at Meiko's face. The meaning of the gesture wasn't lost on the blacksmith who just wrapped her arm around Kawaki's neck and pulled him in for some rough-housing for making fun of her.</p><p>"Can we stop for Dango then?" Kawaki wondered.</p><p>"Sweets come after work. Might as well learn that now." Meiko answered while the two took off toward the looming structure of the Konohagakure gate looming on the distance.</p><p>"So what you're saying is that sweets will be involved at some point, just not now?" Kawaki looked at her.</p><p>"Sure, if we make this work, I'll treat you," Meiko smirked.</p><p>"I could get used to this…" Kawaki rubbed his hands together looking sly as if he had just somehow tricked his companion.</p><hr/><p>"What on Earth is this, you know?" Naruto's feet landed on a hectic battlefield where a bandaged Otogakure ninja with a mechanical arm held Kouta's unconscious body in his free arm while holding his metal arm raised up and ready to deliver the finishing blow.</p><p>"What the…" the eyes of Dosu Kinuta raced across the surrounding temple grounds until they've settled on a passed-out young man with multiple golden arrows sticking out from his body. This Naruto looked identical to the fallen one if it weren't for the black eyes with red pupils and the all-around twisted facial expression of this person.</p><p>"Hmph… So you've killed him then? No… He's still alive but I can't fight him like this… No… No… This won't do, this won't do at all, you know…" Dark Naruto began scratching his head erratically after noticing Naruto's unconscious body.</p><p>"Naruto Uzumaki!" Gaara roared out, sending a crashing wave of sand at the direction of the confused Dark Naruto. The sand crashed into the tree that the distressed shinobi stood on and rooted the poor plant out and washed it away. The confused eyes of the Jinchuuriki scurried across the battlefield looking for the enemy before he turned both of his hands up as if attempting to wrap them around someone, like an embrace.</p><p>The wave of sand that Gaara crashed at Dark Naruto began whirling and pooling together into a singular mass, a rising pile of sand with everything it had entombed being stuck within its clutches as the mass rose to the air. "Sand Coffin!" Gaara yelled out before raising his hand out and preparing to crush everything that had found its way within his makeshift tomb of sand.</p><p>"Piss off, you know…" Dark Naruto growled by throwing a careless solebutt kick at Gaara's back, outracing the boy's sand on return by appearing behind him seemingly out of nowhere. Gaara's eyes whited out and the mass of sand under his command collapsed into a harmless shower all across the temple grounds.</p><p>"I'm glad that you evaded this by yourself. I can't help you that much while we aren't linked by my Kama. Until you are truly my vessel." A white, ethereal shape appeared from behind Dark Naruto sending the young ninja down by calling forth pain excruciating enough to force Dark Naruto to shove his fist in the way to keep himself from falling.</p><p>"You're a bother, go back in!" Dark Naruto growled, feeling crippled by the pain of Isshin's emergence.</p><p>"You let down your guard!" Kin Tsuchi, a female amongst the Otogakure trio sent a wave of senbon needles Dark Naruto's way. The steel buzzed right past Naruto's sides without hitting him once, Dark Naruto yelled out in pain and clutched his head when the puny jingle of tiny bells hanging from steel wire attached to Kin Tsuchi's senbon summoned a mother of all migraines for him, one that wasn't Kin's doing but instead a nasty side-effect from his imperfect fusion with Isshin.</p><p>"Extreme Decapitating Airwaves!" Zaku Abumi yelled out, thrusting his arms forward and forming a wall of high-pressure mixture of both soundwaves and airwaves from the holes in his palms, utterly blasting the area ahead of him into dusty nothingness. The sound that Dosu's comrade had created was so concentrated and powerful that it let out blinding white light and blocked visibility of anything in front of Zaku. The Otogakure genin dropped his hands down while they hung heavy by his sides. While sweat and weariness troubled the genin, he seemed content with a nicely executed combination, even when it wasn't yet finished.</p><p>"Shouldn't have brought attention to yourself, punk!" Dosu Kinuta yelled out while rushing into the steaming zone of devastation that his teammate had left behind. His arm was winded back and ready to finish the dirty deed but when he prepared to smash it into the kneeling figure of the enemy as he has done plenty of times before, his eyes shot out wide from the shock of seeing nothing where Dark Naruto was meant to be.</p><p>"I said… Outta my way, you know!" Dark Naruto growled in pain while a fleshy sound made Dosu dread turning around and facing the consequences of picking a fight with someone who had broken the spine of Gaara of the Desert with just one strike. Despite Dosu's defiance to face the demise of his comrade, the scream from Kin Tsuchi made him turn around and witness Dark Naruto swinging the detached arms of Zaku Abumi at the downed kunoichi while Zaku laid armless in the pool of his own blood and a lifeless look on his face.</p><p>"Y-You killed them…" Dosu's voice shook when he saw what remained of both Zaku's arms that were used as a battering weapon as well as the mushy puddle that was Kin's remains. Dosu looked around, trying to gather support from his fellow hunters but none of them stayed after witnessing the sheer ease and brutality at which the embodiment of hatred dispatched those that got in his way with. They were all promised more fight than they could handle but nobody said anything about senseless murder.</p><p>"Yeah…" Dark Naruto let the wet, bloody stumps drop to the dirt. "I didn't kill Gaara because I felt a bit bad for him, you know. You guys can flip over and just die, you know…"</p><p>Dark Naruto wheezed and panted in pain while he stood over the dead bodies of Dosu's comrades for a short moment while Dosu contemplated if he wanted to attack and face the same fate as his comrades or try to run and hope that Dark Naruto would spare him as he did those that fled. Dosu chose instead the third option of breaking. He flailed his arms around while laughter that began to deafen the Sound genin himself a bit left his chest.</p><p>"You… Felt bad for Gaara of the Desert?" Dosu expanded his eyes to where the vessels around them streaked red over them.</p><p>"Yeah… Like me people hated him. Just like me, he went through dealing with all that hatred all on his own." Dark Naruto exclaimed with a longing tone. As if recalling the hateful eyes that surrounded him in his own childhood and projecting all of that despair onto someone else made the effects of physical pain pass easier. "People lied to him about giving a shit, just like they did with me, you know. We're the same, except he ended up getting in my way, that's the only thing he is to be blamed for, you know. I like him. I feel bad about seeing him have to justify his existence all the time, it's all the filth around him that need to prove they're to be allowed to live."</p><p>"Zaku was an orphan since the early days. All of us rose from poverty and stole food to survive, some days living off of the beatings we took after we were caught. Didn't you feel bad for any of us?" Dosu chuckled to himself, having lost all semblance of wits again.</p><p>"I've no patience for crybabies, you know!" Dark Naruto growled and waved his arm at Dosu, a twisted, crimson triplet of slashing chakra claws left his arm and left the Otogakure genin to slump on the dirt in four pieces with a wet splat. "Had a rough childhood and all you're doing is standing in front of me and crying about it, sheesh…" Naruto mumbled to himself before approaching Naruto's unconscious body.</p><p>"Naruto, wait…" Isshin burst forth once again, making Dark Naruto grunt in pain, twist and furl in unnatural positions that churned his bones but that pain was preferable to the agony of Isshin's emergence at this stage of possession. "What are you about to do, think about it. Remember our deal, you must find the boy with the Kama seals, my true vessel."</p><p>"Piss off already, space-ghost!" Dark Naruto roared out after letting Naruto's tracksuit slip through his fingers so that he could force Isshin back into him. Once Isshin returned to the Kama-less body of his temporary vessel, the inner darkness of Naruto's body and mind once more loomed over its original body, or, rather, a past version of his true original body. "You're such a hopeless loser, you know that? No matter how much everyone hates your guts, you keep getting in trouble so that they could like you. If only you finally got the hint, that's why I joined up with that energy-bastard, I wanted to show you… Look at yourself, I can't show you anything now, you know."</p><p>Naruto's body looked almost a bit serene, he would have long since bled out had the arrows launched at him dissolved or been removed but the way they were they only made Naruto's demise take longer. Depending on how much chakra he had at the moment of near-death, he may even have had days left to lie and bleed here like the complete failure that he was.</p><p>"Although, looking at your stupid face gives me an idea…" Dark Naruto grinned. "I'm you, I can't go anywhere but be you and I don't need to be anything or anyone else. But there's already a me in you, isn't there? We'll see how it feels being the odd one out in your own body, it's time for the inner darkness to become the true nature."</p><p>A flash of white aura burst forth from Dark Naruto's body, Isshin manifested from Dark Naruto's body and looked down at his current vessel. It repeatedly bellowed and asked what it was doing but Dark Naruto embraced the fallen body of the alternate version of his alter ego and let their embrace be commemorated by a nova of white light. Once that intense sunburst was through, there was only one Naruto. The youth's eyes soon burst open, revealing red irises in more human whites.</p><p>Naruto gazed at his own hands, seeing the dirt riddling them and feeling them twitching in light pain. He turned for the arrows that had sent him down but he couldn't see them any longer. They were a material chakra construct, the intense reaction that woke Naruto up must have molten them away. Only dried out red stains on his tracksuit remained of his wounds.</p><p>"Hatred…" he muttered. Naruto glanced up as he had noticed that his forehead protector had slipped off, letting his hair fall over his face and he didn't like the black color obstructing the view. "That's Sasuke's hatred right there. That's Sasuke's hatred right there too…" Naruto pointed at random directions where he felt a surge of negative emotions. "Even Meiko… Hatred and regret too, a strong signature."</p><p>Naruto turned to Kiyomi's unconscious body before turning his eyes for the Forest of Death again. When the awakened Naruto used his speed to dash toward Sasuke's hatred the nearest to him, it felt almost as if all of his cells had disassembled all at once and turned into miniatures ray of fierce sunlight and moved simultaneously before converging into a singular point. He was fast right now…</p><p>A fireball hurled across the entrance to the village, prompting Meiko to swipe with her chakra-cloaked buckler in hand to deflect it. She knew that counting on a hunter helping her would have been silly but this was ridiculous. It seemed as if though Sasuke had absolutely no feelings toward his friend and didn't mirror Naruto's devotion whatsoever. To think that they had located not only Sasuke but also one of the red-haired people capable of healing was his goon…</p><p>Kawaki tested his own strength against the Juugo in Sasuke's squad of hunters. The punk's forearms and his hands had expanded drastically in size to match the transformation and savage strength of his opponent. A jet of water hurled underneath Kawaki's legs and seemed to pull all sense of balance from down under, tripping the boy up. Feeling his moment of victory approaching, the Juugo exploited it with a murderous gleam in his eyes, even managing to distract Meiko for a second.</p><p>Just when Meiko's eyes returned to her opponent, Sasuke's blade was right up in her face, ready to rob the blacksmith of her sight permanently before splitting her helm into two with one slash. Before Meiko even had the time to get frightened by the grim prospect of the future for her, a flash of white blurred in between her and Sasuke and the infernal Sharingan gleaming in Sasuke's eyes whited out while the defeated Uchiha, broken by a single elbow thrust to the gut, flew back through multiple buildings, disappearing in a trail of destruction across several village districts.</p><p>"I told you I'd break all the bones in your body if you abandoned us for Orochimaru back then, didn't I?" Naruto straightened his back and stared at the tunnel of destruction he sent Sasuke through. He turned back to Meiko. "Oh, hey, I knew you two would be here too. So you ran into Sasuke, not too many hunters are left, I guess, the odds are the best they've ever been."</p><p>"We weren't looking for Sasuke, you dolt, we were looking for that woman or her clan folk to heal you and Kiyomi!" Meiko pointed at Karin who looked devastated by the loss of Sasuke and was running through the debris toward her crippled and broken affection.</p><p>"Why would you waste your time for something like that, you know?" Naruto lowered one of his eyebrows in irritation.</p><p>There was something distant and different in his voice. That was if one completely ignored the ash-colored hair and the red eyes that the future Seventh was sporting. If it wasn't for his matching drapes as well as the general familiar feeling about some part of him, Meiko would have spent all of this time doubting if she wasn't dealing with some alternate version of Naruto again. Who knew, maybe there were more than one Dark Naruto?</p><p>"Yo, where's Kiyomi?" Kawaki grunted, rising with a shiner on the right side of his face.</p><p>"I left her behind, you know," Naruto replied. There was no hatred or malice for his injured comrade in his tone, there seemed to be little to no emotion whatsoever. It was almost as if he didn't care about Kiyomi at all and just acted out of pure instinct to fulfill his immediate goals.</p><p>He left her behind!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0648"><h2>648. The Great Upset</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What do you mean you left Kiyomi behind? We must go back and take her with us. With whatever this new power is, it should only take you a blink." Meiko objected. "What's wrong, didn't you say that you never abandon your comrades!?"</p><p>"I… I guess, you know…" Naruto shrugged, he just stared at his hands as if questioning their existence. Judging from his blank, lifeless stare, he might have been questioning the existence of everything ever.</p><p>"I'll kill you, I'll kill you all!" Juugo roared out into the air, exclaiming his intentions for absolute mayhem proudly but, before he could realize them, Naruto blitzed right up to his face, grabbed the man's own arm and bent it without care for the integrity of Juugo's joints, smashing his morphed fist right up Juugo's face.</p><p>The giant collapsed on the ground with a grievously misshapen head, it was difficult to say how much of him crushing his own head the makeshift armor tissue he had grown cushioned in his Cursed Seal state and how much of his head legitimately got smashed.</p><p>"Okay then… I think I'll just… Go then…" the greasy, slim ninja with shoulder-long white hair and pointy-sharp teeth grinned and began withdrawing from the battlefield. He must have been overjoyed to realize that nobody was minding that fact.</p><p>"Holy shit, Naruto, you got hardcore!" Kawaki pumped his fist into the air. "All that power because we dumped you and left you for dead!? Maybe we should do that more often!?"</p><p>"No, this is wrong. You shouldn't have left Kiyomi for dead." Meiko raised her hand that still clutched the prize that they were meant to cash in. A blinding ray of gleams passed around in a circle before the sphere faded away, leaving only a glimmer of the sealing glyph on Meiko's hand.</p><p>"Ah! What did you do!?" Kawaki grabbed his head.</p><p>"I sent the sphere back, it's in Kiyomi's hands, where she sent it to me from. You can pick her up alongside Kiyomi." Meiko pointed her index finger at Naruto with a bemused expression. This novel, edgy act he was putting up was amusing at first but it stopped being so at an alarming rate and even if the power he had acquired was beyond frightening, Meiko felt like standing up against it if she had to.</p><p>"To be honest, I'm not perfectly sure where this power came from, you know…" Naruto examined himself, pulling on one, longer lock of hair to examine the ash-grey color of it, he likely still wasn't aware of the malicious eyes that he possessed. "All that I do know at this moment…"</p><p>Naruto lit up like a streamer and beamed right up Meiko's face. The blacksmith stumbled back out of sheer instinct, the primal desire to avoid death made her stagger backward like a wayward drunkard and she was ecstatic that she did so because only after tripping and falling over on her behind did she notice Naruto's fist sticking out – he meant to punch her out with that.</p><p>"You stood in my way, don't ever stand in my way again or I'll kill you, you know," Naruto exclaimed. It was then that he beamed up and let the collapsing rays of light flash toward the village gate and the Forest of Death, totaling any and every obstacle in Naruto's way, be it buildings, walls, gates or hunters. He was just a whirlwind of rampaging destruction and hatred in his current state.</p><p>"Kawaki…" Meiko looked at the young punk who stared with a blank expression toward the direction where Naruto had gone.</p><p>"I dunno, I guess the weakness of you ninja pigs is rubbing off on me but… I think I liked the old Naruto better." Kawaki dragged his arm across his greasy hair and breathed out in disappointment. "I mean… Was it cool when he wrecked everyone's shit? Absolutely. Still, I'm getting some bad vibes off of him, he's acting just like all those Kara assholes I ran away from right now."</p><p>"Don't worry, I'm sure it's not permanent…" Meiko lied but she could hear how bad her lie was by herself. Even she could perceive the profound doubt in what she was saying in her own voice, which meant that someone like Kawaki absolutely could. She may have been the only liar in the world that's worse than Mana…</p><p>Naruto took only a blink to return with the extracted cube in hand and Kiyomi's limp and unconscious body over his shoulder. It showed just how simple it would have been for him to pick his teammate up the first time had he any care to do so.</p><p>"Come on, let's head to the Academy already, we've got to cash in that stupid cube, you know." Naruto sighed.</p><p>"Wait, what? I thought you had an arrangement with Itachi," Meiko pulled on the edges of her red hair, wondering just how much will this all-new, all-different Naruto push her suspension of disbelief of how much a man could change in a few minutes.</p><p>"I… I don't feel like it, you know." Naruto shrugged, letting Kiyomi's limp body move with his shoulder and almost fall off of the side, forcing the young man to shake her up and closer to his head with visible irritation. He was considering dumping her again as some deadweight…</p><p>"Don't do it, I don't know what's happening with you but you'll regret it all, you'll regret abandoning a teammate, you'll regret not hearing Itachi out and speaking your own mind to him." Meiko tried to reason with the young man she thought she had known but all she could think about at that moment was how glad she was that after this stage it would most likely be all contestants for themselves and she wouldn't need to stomach this novel douchebaggery for any longer.</p><p>"I guess… I don't know…" Naruto looked at Kiyomi and threw her on the ground and off his shoulder. "I don't know anything anymore, I'm so confused… Why should I care about her? She hated me just like everyone else did, just like those villagers."</p><p>Naruto raised his foot and placed his sandal over Kiyomi's head. "I should just crush her like all those stupid villagers that ignored and hated me, you know but…" he raised his foot off just a few seconds before Meiko could recover from the shock of him even pulling that and rushing at him. "I don't think I want that." He muttered.</p><p>"Then what do you want?" Kawaki crossed his arms over his chest. "You don't want to rescue your jerkface friend, you don't give a shit about this Itachi fucker either, you don't give a rat's ass about your friends and the villagers. So what is it that you want!?"</p><p>Naruto stared at Kawaki a little bit and then grabbed his chest. He began slumping and crouching over and was forced to grab his own forehead and pull his fingernails down it as if trying to peel his own face off. Something was wrong, something or someone was beating to break free from inside him but… With a forceful gulp, Naruto seemed to swallow it down and restrain it, the young man's body relaxed a bit and he picked Kiyomi back up.</p><p>"I don't know. Nothing feels like anything anymore. I feel no rush when I think about becoming Hokage, I feel no obligation to never go back on my word and I, most of all, just kind of find Sasuke to be a drag but, when I think of Itachi, I just want to crush him like everyone else. I… I feel like this is wrong, I don't want to feel this way and it hurts. It hurts, you know…" Naruto clutched at his chest and yanked on his tracksuit, clutching and turning it in his hand.</p><p>"Let's just go see what Itachi has to say, huh?" Meiko suggested, trying to sound softer on the suffering friend. Now that she was sure that it wasn't just Naruto throwing a tantrum and that something foreign and tainted truly has taken over him, she just saw this edgy bastard as someone she needed to help and fix and not someone she wanted to punch out on sight.</p><p>"Okay, I guess…" Naruto nodded.</p><p>Who knew, maybe after seeing Itachi, after confronting his friendship with Sasuke head-on in a more meaningful way than just fending him and his cronies off to protect the teammates he once cherished, maybe Naruto would find the inner strength to break through this?</p><p>The Naka Shrine, located in the center of the Uchiha District, was a tall, classical marvel of architecture past the towering red gate stood a building of mere wood atop a stage of steps of mossy stone. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary in the shrine surrounded by wayward trees that stood out in the rich and, usually, quite bustling Uchiha District, Meiko was almost ready to accept that Itachi either didn't show or he got tired of waiting and left.</p><p>"We're being watched, you know." Naruto declared. "It feels hateful… The sort of hatred that doesn't want to shy away from that which it hates but wants to encompass it and smother it, you know. The kind of hatred that can only belong to… Orochimaru."</p><p>"Orochimaru, where!?" Meiko began looking around. If Naruto's instincts were right, it meant that they were about to run into their greatest challenge yet while she was not in prime fighting condition, Kiyomi was unconscious and Naruto was… Well… Going through a stage.</p><p>Naruto raised his hand up and pointed at a random point in the woods. Then he moved his hand to another spot, then another spot. He moved his hand a pair more times before the squad had approached the building.</p><p>"If your gut is telling you the truth, that means Orochimaru might be onto Itachi wanting to meet you, he might be setting us a trap." Meiko turned to Naruto.</p><p>"Maybe. I'll crush him here then and be done with it. Sasuke's here too but… I don't feel any hatred from him. I… I don't think I want to break this Sasuke at all, you know." Naruto explained with a calm voice while the three entered the Naka Shrine only to see an ancient altar with two blazes burning up from each side of a stone tablet.</p><p>Despite the altar's alluring appearances, the standout point of attention was actually the group of people located inside and half-lit by the torches meant to illuminate the stone tablet.</p><p>"Oh… What a shocking turnout…" Orochimaru's irritating hiss filled the shrine. "I can hardly recognize you, Naruto-kun, I think I now understand Sasuke-kun's frustration with you. Just when we take one step forward, you go ahead and run a whole mile…"</p><p>"Shut up. Why did you kill Itachi, you know?" Naruto pointed at a dimly lit figure with pale skin and long, black hair sliding over him like the tendrils of shadows that he hid in.</p><p>"His eyes…" Meiko noticed the most curious feature that had not been there when she had seen Orochimaru before the exams. His silver-colored eyes with a ripple pattern spreading throughout the eyeball.</p><p>"Me? But I have done no such thing. You see, I have no need for Itachi now that I have acquired a power beyond that of the Sharingan. The power of God. Sasuke-kun was the one that needed to slay Itachi and he did so, although Itachi wasn't using his own eyes in the battle so I had to help Sasuke-kun a little bit to even the odds." Orochimaru cackled. Indeed one of the cloaked figures beside him was Sasuke, the young man sat on the staircase just above the lifeless body of Itachi, the head of Sasuke's older brother was entirely in the light so it was not easy to miss the bloody mess where Itachi's eyes should have been.</p><p>Sasuke himself donned a bandage over his eyes, suggesting where the eyes that Itachi had adopted had gone.</p><p>"Naruto… I've come to meet this Madara person that the fox spoke of when we met at Orochimaru's lair. Not in person but Itachi had his eyes. The beast was right, his eyes were full of malice, malice that is now my own." Sasuke pointed right at Naruto despite wearing a bandage over his face.</p><p>Kawaki raised his arm up and had it split open with protrusions and additional limbs of its own that produced glowing beams of chakra while the Kama markings began riddling his body, before the youth could use them, however, Naruto caught his arm and lowered it. Meiko noticed the strain on Naruto's body when Kawaki's markings came out, the sweat running down his face and the pain that took over his chest and forced Naruto to pant erratically.</p><p>"Calm down, you know. They're not really here." Naruto explained. "Sasuke might not have any hatred for me to sense, he's just an empty shell, but Orochimaru's hatred seems to be just a reflection now that I can feel it from up closer, you know."</p><p>"Bravo, Naruto-kun…" Orochimaru walked out more into the light, allowing the flames to illuminate his entire appearance and make his form flicker in a faint rainbow outline. "The God's Eye, the Rinnegan has a handy jutsu – the Astral Projection Jutsu, it allows me and Sasuke-kun to linger back here with you underdogs while walking the path ahead of you."</p><p>"So, Sasuke, you've killed Itachi, what's next?" Naruto wondered, completely ignoring Orochimaru's chuckling and self-amusement and causing the Sannin to turn bitter due to him being ignored.</p><p>"Hmph… Itachi's dead so I don't quite care. You, however, you've negotiated to meet with him here, didn't you, Naruto? Itachi went off to garner strength for meeting you, which means he was prepared to fight you. You wanted to kill him, to steal my revenge, didn't you?" Sasuke grit his teeth while stains of washed out blood appeared on his bandages.</p><p>"Maybe. I'm not quite myself recently so who's to say…" Naruto answered looking right back at Sasuke.</p><p>"Well then, there's one more person I need to kill before it's done. Or rather, anyone who's ever wanted to deny me my revenge. You, Sakura, Kakashi, those ANBU plants you've replaced me and Kakashi with. There seems to be a whole list." Sasuke declared and stood up on his feet, pulling his sword out of its sheath a few inches.</p><p>"But Sasuke-kun, I'm afraid that this new power Naruto has acquired will burn him up long before you recover to clash against one another." Orochimaru cackled.</p><p>"I can live with that. As long as everyone that wanted to stop my revenge is dead at my feet." Sasuke hissed right back at the embodiment of the snake himself.</p><p>"Orochimaru…" Naruto raised his hand to address the Sannin before the pair both disappeared into thin air, just as they've projected themselves. "For your sake, you better hope I die before then."</p><p>Meiko couldn't tell exactly what sort of face Orochimaru had before his transmitted image disappeared. He certainly wasn't smiling, that was for sure. His eyes were wide, the irises of his godly eyes were wide for all to see but his mouth was turned downward and lightly waved, he might have been frightened or worried even, for all that Meiko could read into it. Certainly, Naruto's current power was a source for worry to anyone, even Orochimaru who now possessed the Rinnegan…</p><p>"Yo!" a familiar, heart-warming voice made Meiko, Kawaki, and Naruto turn around. Naruto seemed the most baffled of all to hear his own voice coming from behind him. An adult Naruto wearing a black sweatshirt with orange stripes, black pants and sandals and a white cape with a red flame pattern around the hem greeted the group.</p><p>"Seventh Naruto!?" Meiko's jaw dropped.</p><p>"So… You're the Seventh Naruto?" Kawaki bent his head like a curious puppy.</p><p>"Seventh Me…" Naruto spoke with a blunt and bland tone of voice. He seemed confused but his confusion didn't make him drop the general apathy he had for the world around him for much longer than the initial couple of moments.</p><p>"That's right, you know. I'll have to apologize that I'm breaking the rules of the exam by interfering but… Do you guys by any chance have the cube?" The Seventh Naruto wondered.</p><p>"Ummm… Sure…" Naruto raised his hand up and formed the white cube floating in his hand.</p><p>"Great, then you guys all pass. Ummm… Excuse me but… Aren't you supposed to be a hunter?" The Seventh Naruto pointed at Kawaki.</p><p>"No way! My universe is a massive drag, old geezer, I'm busting outta that joint and I've come to like the sweets of this place way more!" Kawaki pressed his knuckles by his sides.</p><p>"Damn… That raises its own set of problems but… I've got no time to argue with you here. I've gotta take the Other Me with me and help him, you know." The Seventh Naruto scratched his head, confused about what he should do with the unruly hunter. "Tsk, fine, it can't be helped, you can stay until the end of the Exams, when we figure out what to do with you, you know."</p><p>"You're goddamn right, I'm staying!" Kawaki smirked with a fist-pump.</p><p>"Help Naruto, you said?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Oh, that's right, you know. Something horrible that nobody could have predicted has happened to you. A really terrible guy called Isshin Ootsutsuki has crawled his way into this test despite him not being supposed to be a part of it. It's tough to explain it but… With the help of another one of the Ootsutsuki clan, he had hitched a ride back through time and infected another man in that universe. When we swooped that guy out of his time and space and placed him here, we had no idea that Isshin had leeched himself onto him and the sneaky bastard did his best to stay hidden, you know." The Seventh Naruto explained.</p><p>"Isshin Ootsutsuki?" Kawaki wondered.</p><p>"That's right, the guy that you were meant to be the vessel for. That's why the Other Me is struggling so much when you're acting out – Isshin is trying to kill him from inside and burst free so he can enter your body, even if you might not be ready to serve as his vessel yet. I guess he thinks this is the best chance he'll ever get so he's ready to take the risk." The Seventh shrugged.</p><p>"Wait… I don't remember any Isshin trying to cause any trouble, you know…" Naruto objected.</p><p>"That's because Isshin had struck a deal with Dark Naruto, he had revitalized his defeated body and granted him unmatched power to find Kawaki but Dark Naruto seemed to care more about finding you. He had originally planned to crush you in battle, you know, but seeing you already beaten he got a better idea. You're a version of me that still hadn't dealt with his inner darkness, which means that if he had fused with you by accepting you instead, he'd mold with you and your own inner darkness alike. I'm not sure how Shikamaru explained it but… He said it that now you're more inner darkness than Naruto, you know." The Seventh explained.</p><p>"Then why? Why do you need to pull me out? Are you afraid of my power, Seventh Me!? Worried I'll kick your ass and take your seat as the greatest Hokage ever, you know?" Naruto objected.</p><p>"Come on, already. You can feel it, can't you? You're all messed up by all that darkness and hatred inside you. Also, what Orochimaru said is true – you will die if you don't get help. Plus, do you really want to live without any drives, any passions or ambitions, just hating people for as long as it lasts even if you're the most powerful being in existence, you know?" The Seventh extended his hand for a fist bump.</p><p>"I…" Naruto wavered. "I guess not, you know… I want to want to become the greatest Hokage, I want to feel joy and sadness, I want to kick my hatred to the curb already, you know!" he found his answer.</p><p>"There you go…" The Seventh bumped with Naruto and the two stood by each other's side.</p><p>"Wait a second…" Meiko turned to the Seventh when the Hokage inserted the cube into the door of the Ninja Academy and let Team Hokage outside of the Cubeworld and into the bustling Konoha streets. "You said that Naruto will die if you don't help him."</p><p>"That's right. Once again, Shikamaru and Sasuke were the two that knew more about the specifics but Isshin shouldn't just be jumping on bodies like that. The Kama seals that Kawaki bears are meant to channel and control Isshin's power, it's the only way to make this vessel business work. Any other method robs the body of Isshin's skills and the raw power of the guy burns the body up in no time, you know." The Seventh answered but then patted Naruto on the shoulder.</p><p>"Don't worry though, we've got a device that can scour the whole Omniverse, all the time and space for ways to get you rid of that parasite, you know. We'll just scoop him out and leave him stranded on some nasty universe along the way, it'll be good riddance, you know." The Seventh cheered on his alternate self.</p><p>The hope that gleamed in Naruto's eyes wasn't the trust in the Seventh's words but instead the hope for being able to ever feel hopeful in the future. Still, it was hope and that was enough for now. Any hope in Naruto's eyes would take the place previously occupied by hatred, after all.</p><p>And so, the second stage of the Interuniversal and Intertemporal Chuunin Exams was over!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0649"><h2>649. A Short Intermission</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Daughter, you have customer!" Meiko jumped up and tilted her head off of the rather blunt and numbing resting spot on her fist when her father called out. Technically, she didn't have customers of her own per se, it was just that when she chose to aid her father, he let her take some of the orders and him declaring that she had customers meant that he chose to send them her way.</p><p>The apprentice blacksmith tilted her still aching bottom off of the wooden chair and left her Reactor Gauntlets rolling about on the table. They were just a pointless side project, a fruit of needing to come up with something elementary in twenty minutes and yet Meiko decided to work on them a little bit with more resources and time on her hands to improve them. The Reactor Gauntlets were just sideshow activity before, she was just a lefty swinging with her right whenever she called out for them but it didn't have to be that way.</p><p>Meiko's jaw dropped and she froze in mid-motion, namely, a lean back out of shock when she saw the pink-haired woman that had entered her little workshop on the side. Musha had changed her hairstyle since the Chuunin Exams though it was no less tomboyish than the one she had before, her hair hung down in spiky curls and appeared to be stuck that way as if permanently wet, all except for one, slim braid tied together and hanging behind the woman's head like a disobedient and stiff earthworm.</p><p>"Yo!" she smirked and raised up her palm in a lively greeting. "Man, I had thought that the workshop of a spry youth would be all modern and shit… This ain't modern at all!" Musha whistled as she examined Meiko's workshop.</p><p>While she certainly had an attitude and a way around relaying things, the jounin wasn't wrong about this thing. Meiko's workshop was a remnant of father's storage room where he kept discarded works, scraps and old tools. Such things might have served some use still so neither Meiko nor her father chose to discard them. Old tools proved to be invaluable when one lost one's primary set of tools or just needed spares, faulty work still proved as a handy draft, a blueprint of how to do a certain piece of work up until a certain point where the predecessor had gone wrong.</p><p>"If you're here to brief us about the third stage, you don't have to. The Seventh briefed us up before he took Naruto away. We know we've got a week to prepare and then we're gathering in the newly built Academy building." Meiko pointed out.</p><p>"Oh, right… Your temporary teammate got yoinked away, didn't he? Guess you guys are lucky that from this point on it's everybody for themselves, huh?" Musha beamed a grin Meiko's way.</p><p>"I don't think that way. My teammate, someone I considered a friend, got infected by some ninja-alien that's some body-possessing parasite, apparently and needs to go through a journey to cure him? That's horrible, who knows if he will even make it by the time the next stage comes up. Naruto worked hard and it's not his first failed Chuunin Exams too. I do hope that they find the universe or the time where they can fix him and that he doesn't die of ninja-space-parasite…" Meiko replied.</p><p>"Man, what a crazy thing to have to be worried about, huh?" Musha just made herself feel at home in Meiko's workshop, approaching her Reactor Gauntlets that laid lifeless on the table, just a ninja tool that was outdated the moment it was made.</p><p>"So, if you didn't come here to inform about the exams, why did you come here?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Why do people go to blacksmiths? I need a weapon, one for myself so it's gotta be good." Musha tried the Reactor Gauntlets onto herself but her hand didn't fit. Even for a woman of a tomboyish, powerhouse-type build, her hands were massive and she looked like she should have been able to hold the entirety of a human head in either of those two palm leaves she called hands. "Maybe I need gauntlets to punch people with too, what'cha think?"</p><p>"What other weapons do you use? It might help me determine your fighting style. Judging from your build it does seem like you'd make use out of some gauntlets though if you asked me, there's not much gauntlets can do to add to one's strength at some point. Jounin-level chakra augmentation is a godlike boost to strength and you'd need supermassive gauntlets that weigh millions of tons to make them make a difference and that sort of weight hampers your speed so they'll still end up making the oomph from your punch diminish…" Meiko shrugged and took her gauntlets away from Musha.</p><p>She didn't feel too glad about the potential client of such an astonishing rank judging what Meiko could do based on something she cobbled together from scrap in basically twenty minutes. True, Meiko was trying to update them for the better part of the day and lacked any semblance of the idea of what to add, aside from handing them to her father for basic molecular-level Kirikuzu clan ability tampering to the material.</p><p>"Oh, I use this and that… You know me, I'm more of a heavy-duty kinda gal, just like you, I'd wager…" Musha winked to Meiko while toying around with a concept for a chainsaw-sword that Meiko had gone on to improve by leaps and bounds since making the abomination Musha was toying with.</p><p>What a weird woman, honestly, she was making heavy engine growls with her mouth as she rolled the belt of the chainsaw-blade about forward and backward. Justifying the first impression of her mental maturity being that of a toddler, Musha quickly got bored of her newest toy and placed it back where she found it – she had that bright idea at the very least.</p><p>"Without seeing any preferences, it's tough to suggest anything. You might try an Ono to utilize your insane strength and plow through barriers and swords." Meiko pointed out, extending her hand toward an exceptional ax handle attached to a chunk of wood when the blacksmith just didn't find the time to finish her pet-project. "It wouldn't take much time to learn how to use it, gravity does most of the work, most of the time, honestly…"</p><p>"Hmmm… Swords and barriers, huh? I do encounter those things a lot…" Musha scratched her chin, trying to count all the swords and barriers she's clashed with in her most recent missions.</p><p>"Of course you do, after all, if you're using a heavy-duty weapon, odds are the enemy will either block it with a barrier or a sword, most ninja use swords and you'll crap all over that with a nice Ono. Traditional swords are fickle to rough touches and crushing blows are an ax's middle name." Meiko shrugged. "Of course, it leaves you one weakness – dodges. You'll leave yourself too open in a battle where the enemy dodges instead of blocking you. A naginata would eliminate that weakness though…"</p><p>"They say a yari is the most effective weapon on the field…" Musha pouted her lips outward, considering Meiko's suggestions.</p><p>"It is, however, it's a thrust oriented weapon and it is hardly suited for a heavy-duty specialist that's out to do some damage. I felt wary even suggesting a naginata, honestly, not to mention a yari…" Meiko shrugged with the expression that was accurate in relaying just how much she disagreed with Musha's suggestion. Not because she was wrong, she wasn't, not entirely, it was just that the yari was ill-suited to her style and, ultimately, the type of weapon paled before skill and familiarity of the user.</p><p>"So why would I want to pay a decent dime for you making me a battleax instead of buying one out of a wooden box filled with hay from some random shmuck?" Musha wondered.</p><p>"I can make it out of iron that's dirt cheap and have my father tamper with its molecular structure, making it an elite-grade, chakra conductive weapon. It doesn't need any fancy tricks or modifications either – just chakra coat it and it'll do its thing the best that the thing can be done." Meiko shrugged, wasting no time answering that question.</p><p>"Hmmm… You're really good…" Musha hummed out.</p><p>"Alright, I'm writing down the order then, any extra specifications? Initials or decorations?" Meiko wondered while scribbling on a piece of paper.</p><p>"None. Just make it extra cool as defined by you, I can't wait to see your personal touch." Musha winked before approaching the Reactor Gauntlets and rolling them around on the table, taking notice of the sealing glyphs at the center of the palm area of the gauntlets. "These are nice, primitive but nice. You might have a thing going with these if you keep working on them…"</p><p>"That's the idea…" Meiko sighed.</p><p>"Say, that fire they make… The Reactor Breath, you call it?" Musha looked up and handed the weapon to their owner. Meiko took them and moved them about in her hand. "It's not a feature you can have your weapons do, right?"</p><p>"Nah, I'm not even fully sure why they're shooting fire still… I worked on them some after the exams, tried modifying the seals, there's only that much intensity in a fire you can shoot from your hands, the real damage is in channeling chakra. I'm not sure if I'm messing something up but they still shoot flames instead of chakra blasts…" Meiko put them on and pointed them around the room. The sealing glyphs at the center lit up bright orange and began smoking but she restrained herself from blasting a hole in her own workshop.</p><p>"That's because of your chakra nature. You're a natural Fire Release user, no surprise there, that's most of the residents of the Land of Fire." Musha shrugged. "You know, I can help you improve your nature transformation ability, maybe the problem with the gauntlets isn't mechanical or even related to the materials you're using – maybe it's the burning heart that's fueling them?"</p><p>"I dunno, I'm a bit of a lousy pupil of that sort of thing. Mana tried teaching me to be better at fending off illusions and it took almost a year to get through the basics… I've once failed the Academy graduation exam because of my terrible chakra control." Meiko tapped around on the floor, trying to set the stacks up on the shoulders of her potential instructor as if to prepare her for the eventual, unavoidable disappointment of reality until Musha dropped out of training her, as many tutors did.</p><p>"Pfff… Mana? I trained Mana in Fire Release, it's her natural element too, you know…" Musha raised an eyebrow and snagged a gauntlet out of Meiko's hands, bending its fingers and making a fist out of it before extending it for a bump at Meiko.</p><p>"Really!?" Meiko opened her mouth in amazement. "I could use a good nature transformation instructor. My Weapon Transformation and chakra coating would soar in strength all at the same time!"</p><p>"So stop yapping, if you've written my order down, let's go grab something to eat and hit the training grounds!" Musha thrust the gauntlet forward and clanged the empty gauntlet against the one Meiko still held.</p><p>Now Musha was speaking Meiko's language!</p><hr/><p>"Kiyomi, dear! Tea time!" Kiyomi's mother raised her voice before sliding the door to the dojo room that was mostly just decorative in appearance. The walls were made of fondled paper and bamboo wood, the paper was thin enough to see outlines through and dyed pink as if the whole construction wasn't already shameful enough. The walls had ample red kanji for vague philosophical terms like "transcendence", "existence", "Ego" etc.</p><p>"Thanks, mom, really nice of you to assume that I'm the one on the ground!" Kiyomi flipped out at her mother who spoke to the shadow clone that laid on the floor after Kiyomi had thrown her and prepared the finishing strike before mother entered the dojo.</p><p>"Oh, I'm sorry, dear… What strenuous and un-ladylike training you're doing, fighting yourself over and over again must be exhausting…" Kiyomi's mother spoke as if she was the one actually doing the training and feeling worn out by it. The woman still held the wooden tray with a pair of china cups filled with steamy, green goop inside of them.</p><p>"Are you crazy? This is nothing… This is less than basic training, the only reason I'm wasting my time with this is that I'm practicing a new fighting style here." Kiyomi tried not to have vein pop on her forehead because that sort of appearance would have truly looked un-ladylike had it stayed that way, as her mother kept frightening Kiyomi as a little girl it would when she got mad as a kid.</p><p>"Oh? Do tell…" mother smiled, her oblivious expression made it obvious that the woman knew nothing about possible effective fighting styles that the Yamanaka clan ninja could employ but she would hear it out regardless just because it was her precious daughter talking about a subject of great importance to her.</p><p>"The Yamanaka are supposed to be the aces of the battlefield. The ability to control people's minds? Are you even serious?" Kiyomi began before her mother interrupted her with a pinky pressed to the right side of the woman's lips.</p><p>"B-But… That's not what…" she was about to argue before Kiyomi interrupted her after being interrupted herself.</p><p>"I know…" the Yamanaka heiress declared. "The point of the matter is, our hijutsu are meant to be unmatched in just about any type of task and yet the Yamanaka combat ability is lacking. It's because of the weaknesses that our techniques have – constantly sending out consciousness out somewhere, always leaving ourselves exposed. At one point I've realized that I'm the most effective just being an over-glorified communication device."</p><p>"That's not very kind…" Kiyomi's mother mumbled and moved a braid of blond hair out of the way of her face, despite constantly holding her eyes in a near-closed squint anyway.</p><p>"It's true though… As much as I hate to admit it, Mana had a bright idea that one time. That must have been why she got graduated while we all stayed behind – she didn't chase new, powerful techniques, she ironed out the basics to the point of perfection. Sure, uncle's been teaching me all sorts of awesome ways to bolster the Yamanaka hijutsu and invent my own fighting style but I'd rather just remove the weaknesses of the basic one." Kiyomi's face turned grin, she truly didn't like to compliment a criminal, even one that used to once be her friend. One of if not her best friend even.</p><p>"Don't beat around the bush, mother's kind of simple, you know. Just tell her what you're training to do – reading people's minds." Kiyomi's clone crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"Oh, reading people's minds?" mother gasped before pressing her finger to her lips and looking up and to the right with a confused squint. "Wait… Don't we already do that?"</p><p>"Not like that. Read them in battle, make it effortless, make it as if I'm genuinely reading every motion my opponent's about to make, seeing through their every plan before they even settle on one. That's the goal." Kiyomi shrugged, feeling her cheeks getting a bit hot, as admitting something ambitious to an authority figure tended to make one feel. "I mean… Uncle can basically transfer himself as a thought and fight on a location different from the one he's in through sheer mental power, that's gotta be the limit and the goal."</p><p>Kiyomi approached her mother and took the cup off of the tray, for whatever reason, her clone also did the same and took a sip of the slightly cooled green tea. It had a similar texture to tomato juice due to the fact that mother tended to grind mint and other leaves from her gardens, mash and blend them together to where her tea barely resembled any other kind of tea out there.</p><p>"Well… I'm sure you can do it!" mother clapped her free hand against the wooden tray as she moved her hands closer together in a gesture meant to encourage her daughter.</p><p>"Alright, again!" Kiyomi demanded of her clone and the pair settled in their separate sides of the dojo.</p><p>"Heh, I'll get you this time, you're the one who split her chakra off to make me," Kiyomi's clone cheeked at her own maker.</p><p>"Not a chance, not when I can see through your mind." Kiyomi declared, placing two of her fingers by her temple in a demonstrative manner that did not aid her attempts at mastering this new fighting style in any way whatsoever.</p><p>"We've not yet even establish you're actually doing it. For all we know, you've just lucked out because the person you're trying to mind-read is literally a clone of yourself." The clone took a fighting stance while Kiyomi fooled around with flashy motions.</p><p>"Sure, if it makes you feel any better, assume that I've bested you without even being able to read your mind while both weakened after splitting my chakra as well as concentrating on pointless, dysfunctional mind-reading fighting style." Kiyomi cornered her clone and finished her off with that remark. While the pair were cautious to start it slowly and let Kiyomi ease into her mentally aware state under normal circumstances, now the clone just wanted a piece of her.</p><p>For the first time since she's started training in this unorthodox fighting style, Kiyomi closed her eyes and tried reaching out with her consciousness instead. None of that hardcore transferring of it, her mind wouldn't leave her own body anywhere but it would expand, feel and read into everything it came into contact with.</p><p>A sharp sensation made Kiyomi's eyes open with a blanked out expression while she flew down on the floor and growled in frustration, the clone had decked her good before she could even begin reading into anything.</p><p>"Sorry, sorry, you weren't ready, were you?" the clone teased Kiyomi by stroking the tip of her fist that had just sent the original Yamanaka down. Maybe pissing her off wasn't the best idea?</p><p>And so the days before the third stage of the Interuniversal, Intertemporal Chuunin Exams went on without a memorable hitch until the fateful day came at last!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0650"><h2>650. The Konohamaru Commentator Squad</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Greetings ladies and gentlemen of the audience observing the first and possibly only Interuniversal and Intre…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Intertemporal."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Intertemporal, thanks for the save, Udon."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Your welcome."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Why are you greeting the audience for a test run?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Stop sabotaging this entire operation, Moegi, if we do well commenting the semi-finals of the Intre-whatever Chuunin Exams, Future Big Bro Naruto said he'd let us comment on the finals, we gotta sell it like it's real!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Welcome, everybody, to the premiere show meant to select the best of the best out of the surviving contestants that have gotten their way through the grueling pair of the first few rounds. The relentless life shaver that filtered thousands of competitors all the way down to one hundred and fifty."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, that was really good, Moegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Umm… You're ruining your own commentary, Konohamaru."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Drat! That's right, ladies and gents in the audience, what you've got here is a slobber-knocker performed by the best of the best, that is meant to filter the hundred and fifty down to a more acceptable number for the finals. Nobody wants to give up before hitting the grand stage, failure here means a failed exam whereas failing in the finals can still leave one with a chance for graduation. Do you know what that means, you guys?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That only you would focus so much on being able to fail as your standard go-to strategy?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"In your face, Moegi, it means that we'll see gut-wrenching competition between genin that have been skilled or lucky enough to get here biting to their places in the exams and not letting go of the chair until their nails peel off! And you, ladies and gents, will see every chilling moment of it with us, the Konohamaru Ninja Squad commenting over it!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Way to bring it way back, Konohamaru,"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, Ebisu-sensei isn't here to get mad so we can't be Team Ebisu anymore. Anyway… We're seeing the competitors of this year, over fifty teams from different universes and timelines even gathering to the stage. We get an exclusive view into the Black Cube where the semi-finals will be taking place thanks to Uzumaki Karin, who in some timeline is a really nice lady and not a scary, prone to fits of rage criminal at all."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, auntie Karin has also decorated the inner walls of the Black Cube with triangular circuit sealing glyphs that are a sealing formula known to this universe as the Demonic Pentalimbo, sadly, auntie Karin couldn't get all five elements of the seal making this one more of a Demonic Trilimbo."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't you wanna say something, Udon, we've kind of been doing all the hard work here, you freeloader?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Umm… Okay, I guess… So the original Pentalimbo seal was supposed to seal off all of the special abilities of the user but the Demonic Trilimbo only seals off one's ability to augment their body using chakra, making every injury very scary and every hit capable of ending the exam for the competitor."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, Udon, I've received an exclusive scoop before the semi-finals that the original intention for this stage of the exams was to have all of the competitors fight it out under the Demonic Pentalimbo, however, given how no seal-master under future Lord Seventh's employ could replicate the seal, we kind of had to deal with what we got."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, and I am getting the angry stares from the pink-haired lady which means that we're ready to start the show, given how she has a chainsaw sword, I tend to listen to what she says, and so should you."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Truer words were not yet spoken. In any case, the semi-finals to the Chuunin Exams have now begun, however, it doesn't look like the competitors are too eager to go at it. Why do you think that is?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't know, maybe they've all ate something real rotten, like maybe they're all suffering from the flu and couldn't smell their eggs and have all eaten bad eggs for breakfast and are now suffering through the brutal aftereffects?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't think that's it, Konohamaru, I think that the competitors are trying to stick in groups, while it is everyone for themselves in this stage of the exams, it doesn't change the fact that some competitors in that Black Cube have previously met each other, meaning that alliances and betrayals are inbound."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"An interesting theory, Udon, it might just be that given how the number of a hundred and fifty competitors needing to drop down to a twenty measly examinees suggests the illusion that everybody can still work together and come out on top. But if everybody thinks so, somebody's in for a disappointment!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hahaha! That's what I actually thought, I just wanted to get Udon involved into the conversation, that's why I said all that bad eggs stuff…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Your stomach just roared, are YOU suffering from bad eggs you ate this morning?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"But, Konohamaru, you don't have the flu. Your smell is just fine…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Udon…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Umm… So while Konohamaru is rubbing his belly and grunting, do you have any favorites in this match, Udon? I am aware that you've spent the whole last week that the competitors had to train studying up everyone's Ninja Info Cards, did you acquire any meaningful intel from them?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I believe that the local competitor Wakizashi Meiko has more than fair chances of moving on. Her physical strength even when un-augmented pales everyone else in comparison. She's known to lift over four tons without any chakra augmentation right over her head, now I'm no lifting scientist but that's gotta be the goalpost, right?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, that's beyond impressive, glad to see kunoichi representing their gender and showing everybody what's what!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa, whoa! Nobody's shown anything just yet, everybody's just measuring each other up just yet… We all know that Big Bro Naruto's gonna win this whole thing!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"B-But… Konohamaru, nobody's even seen the Naruto from your timeline ever since future Lord Seventh took him away on an excursion. He's not officially in this competition, meaning he's out of the exams for sure."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Plus, I'm not even sure how he would go on to winning the whole thing, I mean… How do you even win an event like this? Would Naruto-san eliminate everybody all at once and be the last man standing? Why would he do that when we need twenty competitors?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Udon, all I'm saying is that Big Bro Naruto's the favorite here!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, Konohamaru, boy are we glad to see you back from reeling in pain."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And it's off! What amazing speed, it appears that Team Matsuri from Sunagakure is planning to take no prisoners in this competition as both of their female members charged off to challenge their targets, but what's this, Mikoshi, their nerdy-looking member seems to be staying back! Is he scared, could he be having indigestion?!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I think you should stop projecting yourself onto everything, Konoharamu."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, I don't think that anyone but you has indigestion, honestly, even Naruto-san has never had indigestion in battle and he is known to drink bad milk from time to time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, his hands are going through hand seals, he seems to be using the quick blitz of his female comrades as a makeshift barrier for his own offensive!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Unexpected! He attacked someone from his own village!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Zahafbit from Team Pahlavi, he is indeed from Sunagakure but from a Sunagakure of a different universe so perhaps the tight bonds don't necessarily apply to them."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa, we sure are glad to have you around the table, no way would I've been capable of memorizing all those names!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Thank you, Konohamaru, that's the first nice thi…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He's stumbling, Zahafbit from Team Pahlavi isn't doing too good and he doesn't seem to be hit by anything yet! It's a genjutsu attack, Mikoshi has hit Zahafbit with a genjutsu of some sort and Zahafbit is having wobbly feet and seems to be throwing fists about in thin air!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Did you have to hit me in the face, Moegi, I've dropped my glasses…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh! The nerdy guy is no wimp either, he just pulled out a kunai and he's going after his prey, the nerdy guy is smelling blood in the water!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Udon, what could Zahafbit do to save himself in this predicament? He seems to be under the effects of an enemy genjutsu and he can't effectively defend himself."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Fine, fine, I'm sorry I pushed your face and threw you off your chair, now please let's do our job, maybe?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Contestant Zahafbit actually is a great genjutsu specialist himself, however, he requires his summon to execute his Speyeder technique which will be a problem when he's being pressured. Right now, it's hard to say what his options are…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whaa! Zahafbit did something! Mikoshi is on his back foot now!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Zahafbit let his opponent cut his arm and used the blood to splatter all over Mikoshi's glasses, as Udon demonstrated before – if you've got blood, or anything else for that matter, covering up your glasses, you can't see."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And there it is – Zahafbit's spider summon."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! Mikoshi's all tied up in the silk of the massive spider, look at him go round and round! And he's off! He hit the walls of the cube at such crazy speed and he's not moving! Yep, one of the staff members has pulled Mikoshi out, he's out of the exam."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"May I point out that you're all too focused on one engagement when the entire battlefield is in utter chaos!? For example, just look at what that freakazoid is doing."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That, Moegi, is Araya from Team Shinki, also from Sunagakure but from another point in time. His swordsmanship is indeed impressive for his age and it isn't a common talent for a Sunagakure ninja, resulting in this youth catching many ninja unaware by this talent, no doubt."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh oh, he should not have tested his steel against that guy, it's Neji from our own home village, representing the Konohagakure ninja! What a brilliant defensive maneuver that sent at least a dozen ninja flying!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Watch out, Neji!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Indeed, it seems like Araya was not done with the Hyuuga of Konohagakure but neither was Neji, it seemed as if Neji just pinched Araya in the nips a bit but Araya looks out cold. Did you see that beam of chakra leave his body?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"An impressive display, no doubt, no wonder Neji was the only one of his generation to reach the rank of Jounin in the last couple of years."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nice spot, Udon, sounded real professional!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at that situation, is that…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whatever you were saying, look at that giant robot! It supersedes anything you were about to say!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ugh, what's with boys and their obsession with giant robots?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I must say that I agree with Konohamaru, this super-massive construction can only be the fantastic puppet armor of contestant Masen-Z from Kumogakure. Seeing stuff like this makes me want that we would hurry up and invent giant robots in our own universe already, luckily, I've got an insider scoop that it's just a matter of time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Holy hell, how tall do you think that thing is?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It has to be at least 56 meters tall, Konohamaru, based on the dimensions of the Black Cube, at least…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Agh! That blinding beam!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Isn't it awesome!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No, Konohamaru, it's absolutely not, I can't see a damn thing and, in case you forgot, we need to see in order to comment because somebody was too late to buy the tickets for the finals and now the only way to see the finals for us is as commenters!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"So I was playing some video games, future Shikamaru brought them from his own universe and they're pretty fun, maybe if you tried them you wouldn't be so uptight, Moegi."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Using the distraction of his Gleamgear Beam, the Super Gear-Man has blinded the opposition and prepared them for elimination via his Gear Missile Barrage! This is absolute chaos, ladies and gents, from what we can see on the battlefield, the examinee Aya-K is eliminated due to the relentless bombardment of Gear Missiles!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, look at Udon, I've never seen him this lively."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Can you blame him, look at that massive robot-guy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Stop laughing, Moegi, stop laughing, this isn't funny!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It kind of is, because that girl on a horse has just shoved this Super Gear-Man some of his own medicine down his throat and suddenly he doesn't seem so super anymore, in fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but he seems to be out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Y-You're right… Epsiriya Corot, riding on her summoned horse has used her illustrious shield Folkrumnir to catch and analyze Super Gear-Man's technique, repeating it back at the Super Gear-Man and inflicting far too much damage on his shiny, black body…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Now why do you think that happened, Udon? Why did our hopes have to be crushed by some kunoichi riding a horse?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well… If I had to guess, the damn thing was just too large and attracted too much attention, there was no way to support such a massive size and reflect the influx of attacks coming its way, Konohamaru."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Cheer up, boys, there's plenty of explosions that way."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Indeed, it seems that Daseaut from Sunagakure of this universe has used his Power Strike technique on somebody and that it had gone out of control. When the dust settles we should see whom he has eliminated."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Screw that, that ain't no Power Strike, it's just some inferior rip-off of the Rasengan is what it is, I should step down that stage and show him the real deal!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I do recall you being under the effect of some nasty food poisoning…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, thank you for paying attention, that is why I couldn't take part in these Chuunin Exams myself, you see…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, who's that? That examinee is wearing way too many clothes to tell who that is! All that I can see is that they're down and likely out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Aburame Maurlon from Iwagakure. She must have struggled being unable to make her signature sink-holes on the surface of the Black Cube, she usually sinks her opponent in one of those and has her massive for a chakra-eating insect summon eat the opponent's chakra up while they've got no chance for escape. A pity…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh, what's happened!? It seems like that mean fellow from Sunagakure from way back has collapsed with swords sticking out from his body. He's out for sure!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's no accident, my food-poisoned teammate, direct your gaze toward that fabulous blonde right there, none other than our own Ino Yamanaka, she must have found her moment to take over the mind of that mean puppet guy and dispose of him using his own puppetry, canceling her mind transfer at the very last moment."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"A fun fact, that version of Yamanaka Ino is actually one from an earlier point in the timeline we know and live in, meaning that she has fewer techniques to cycle through, we'll just have to see what role that limited arsenal will play in her performance today, so far it hasn't affected her too much."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Screw that, a Konohagakure kunoichi will bloom under even the greatest of pressures!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh, hey, Moegi, why don't you look at that horrified expression on that kunoichi's face as she's been frozen in solid crystal?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Why are you cheering for Iwagakure now? Plus, this girl isn't from our version of Konohagakure anyway…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, Moegi, this is Erumo Budoki, a promising and very interesting young lady from this universe, it seems that her fighting style of setting traps for the opponent has not performed too well in the chaos of this battle royal of the genin, she tried catching Tolkre Guren in one of her spike traps but the contestant has encased the unfortunate kunoichi herself in crystal and it seems she's out."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at that handsome guy, he sure is my type!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Kochi Senju from Team Fir, he's from the same team as Erumo Budoki after her teammate has been promoted during the last Chuunin Exams. He seems to be out for revenge and he isn't afraid to use those wooden plates over his arms to bash some faces in, down goes Suiren from Amegakure!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, you could tell who that was with all the concealment she wore? Through the bandana and all?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Obviously, you just can't mistake the sacramento-colored hair falling out from beneath her forehead protector."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! It looks like that posh Senju guy has met his match!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh… That's… Me?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I guess that you're not the only version of you to go after Kochi Senju, Moegi."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at that shower of ninjutsu! You're actually pushing Kochi back!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well… I mean… Of course, umm… Do you guys think you could pick this up without me?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't even think about sneaking out and trying to act like you were the one who eliminated Kochi all along!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wha… I wouldn't do such a thing, Konohamaru, though, theoretically, if that was to happen, do you think he'd notice my abilities and buy me a seafood dinner?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"They're not your abilities, Moegi, plus, look at that cage of wood that he's encased in, it's taking all of the Water Release ninjutsu that you… I mean the other you… Is throwing at him."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Holy sh… That was so cool! He just burst out from inside that wooden cocoon all buff and stuff! Okay, now I think he's cool!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah! He's out! Even with all those muscles, he couldn't keep up with my nimble gracefulness and girl-power!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm not even mad, that was legit impressive from the other Moegi to eliminate such a cool dude like that…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm not sure if I should just thank you, Udon, or continue sulking… I could've done so well in this if Ebisu-sensei didn't forbid us to compete…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wh… Where did all those animals come from! I see a dog, a centipede, a rhinoceros even and they're all packing some serious meat on their bones!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"This could only be… Yes, look there, it's Ajisa from Amegakure. Little known fact, her body was used by the leader of Akatsuki – Pain when he invaded Konohagakure."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa, you mean she's that good!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You mean she'll die at some point in the future? That's kinda grim…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're not supposed to make the audience aware of those things, Moegi, say something fun and upbeat while they're still listening!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nobody's listening for us, just future Lord Seventh…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh! What a rough blow! But it seems to have only angered this glasses-donning badass with a Konoha headband, look at that Moegi, a Konohagakure kunoichi is kicking some serious ass, manhandling all those giant animals, what amazing strength!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Eeek! Her arm just went through that Amegakure's girl chest, I hope that's not how she died back in her timeline…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No, she'll be okay but she's definitely out of the exams, that'll just show you that if you stand out too much, you'll attract too much attention and you don't want the Sharingan of somebody like Uchiha Sarada on you when you can avoid it."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"So far, ten examinees have been eliminated but with how ruthless the competition has been, things are bound to get more wild! I have a feeling that if any competitor has been keeping anything back, they'll let it all out so that they could avoid meeting the fate of the first, unlucky ten."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nice observation, Konohamaru!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Thanks, I think I'm picking up a thing or two from you, Udon, just keep up with the names and the techniques 'cause I didn't memorize one of those notes you've made for us."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I've spent the whole night making those…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That'll teach you to rely on Konohamaru remembering something important."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Jeez, Moegi can be so brutal sometimes."</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0651"><h2>651. The Raging Battle Of Royal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Oh! I was about to comment on the fisticuffs transpiring in the center of the Cube but that show of golden brilliance distracted me!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, that's Dhaogu from Team Zumurrud, a Sunagakure ninja. He would seem like a traditional Sabaku clansman, if you just paid attention to the gourd on his back but his sand is actually hanging around in golden-colored oil making it a lot thicker and weightier."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Not to mention that he's a real stand-up guy too. We've had a chat a few days ago and he made me laugh plenty of times!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm not sure how that's relevant, Konohamaru…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It's relevant because my boy hit that chubby girl straight in the face with his oily sand and smashed her against the wall! Boy, I can't see how she's not out from that!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, it doesn't even seem like Dhaogu is done yet too, his liquid golden sands are rushing at that Otogakure team. If that lady doesn't move out of the way, she'll meet the same fate as that chubby from Sunagakure!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Actually, Shiore is a man, Konohamaru, and the young lady that got eliminated before was Tiwul."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh well, I leave all that stuff to you, at this point…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're smiling as if that's something to be proud of, Konohamaru!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Maybe it is to me, Moegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh no! Shiore did not evade the oily sands, I guess their movements were just too unpredictable. Now, what do you guys think the benefits of the oily sands are? How is evading oily, golden sands different from normal sand?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, I've no idea…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I mean… It does look heavier so it must pack a much bigger wallop."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right Moegi, it seems like it does, plus, it doesn't seem like it wastes any of the fluidity of sand manipulation of the Sabaku clan either. What an innovative ability indeed and it has led so far to two examinees being eliminated."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh, look at that!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! Konoharamu, nice spot! There seems to be a giant mass of golden sands accumulating in the air. The entire Black Cube is sunken in shadows due to being enclosed with the only light being that which the Demonic Trilimbo seal spreads so the shadow of the hanging mass might be difficult to spot from down there in all the chaos."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hot damn!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hot damn is right, Moegi, that whole mass came crashing down! Dhaogu's on fire, I guess since Big Bro Naruto's out of it, he's my new favorite to win the whole thing!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Would you repeat that, Konohamaru?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"D-Don't even…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What's wrong? Didn't see that coming?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"To our viewers and those listening back home, be they just in our imagination, a cocoon of ruby burst forth from the golden mass surrounded in flames and Tolkre Guren, that ruthless, arrogant and very opinionated snake, encased contestant Dhaogu in crystal as well and he's out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And just look at that, with a clap of his hands, Tolkre Guren from Iwagakure has sent a shower of ruby shards at those around him still working to burrow their way out of the oily sand!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's not it, Moegi, you see, Tolkre Guren has a hidden ability to each of his different Crystal Release types."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Different types of crystal?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Konohamaru, Tolkre Guren is capable of transforming his Crystal Release into different sorts of crystals, making his ability more of a Gemstone Release, if you will. Each different gemstone has a frightening effect of its own, for example, as we've seen, Tolkre's Ruby Release can set things ablaze!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"B-But…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right Moegi, Tolkre Guren is currently showering the entirety of the oily field in his Ruby Shard Shower, which means that everything's gonna go up in flames…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I've never seen anyone comment on things going up in flames with such indifference, Udon, could you put some more oomph into your commentary maybe? The audience will need a necromancer soon unless you bring your game up to our level…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Up to our level? You are aware he's the only one doing some actual commentary here, are you, Konohamaru?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! Everything's lit up! Fire and yelling everywhere! Total mayhem!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't you divert the topic, Konohamaru!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Actually, we'd better divert the topic at this time, Moegi, because the staff seems to be removing examinees Burami, Kotaro, Minato, Murakari Toro, and Muyami."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ouch! That's a lot of eliminations all at once!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, but you should be thankful that Tolkre Guren, that dastardly snake, has eliminated Burami, trust me, you don't want to know his fighting style. I had indigestion yesterday after reading his Ninja Info Card…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, you mean the flappy fatso guy that bodyslams with his fat frame and throws his sweat at people?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Goddamn it, Konohamaru!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ouch, stop pulling on my hair, Moegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Never an eye away from the action, folks, examinee Tolkre Guren seems to have felt the scent of blood in the water and now he's gunning after everybody. That might not be the best strategy for survival as there are currently still around a hundred and thirty-two examinees present, meaning that he'll likely juice out before making a dent in those numbers all by himself."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh, he met that white-haired boy and the two hit head-to-head, what's going on?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That young man is Horein Ptet from Iwagakure's Team Pyrite, seeing how the two are from the same village, he must know all about Tolkre Guren's abilities and he intends on stopping them?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"How would you even do that? I mean the moment this Tolkre guy feels like it, he can just turn you to crystal anyway…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Not quite, Horein Ptet is an amazing taijutsu specialist, which is why he's rushed up so close to Tolkre and locked his wrists."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"So?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"If I had to guess, Moegi, I'd say that Tolkre Guren needs to clap his hands together to execute his better Crystal Release abilities which Horein Ptet is preventing by holding his wrists far away from one another, securing them with his superior physical strength."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ooh! That looked like it hurt! Horein swung his fellow Iwagakure ninja around and slammed him into the ground, then kicking him right in the chest like a goddamn horse! What a flight, Tolkre Guren is down and out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Why would Horein attack somebody from his own village though? Aren't there over a hundred of other potential targets?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It is tough to say for certain, if I had to guess though, these two either really don't like each other or Horein considered Tolkre to be too much of a threat, regardless of his affiliation, to leave unchecked after so many consecutive eliminations."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, I guess that Tolkre guy did eliminate near to ten examinees, didn't he?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Konohamaru, there seems to be a common tendency here, a lesson to learn, if you will, and that's – don't stand out until the right moment."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! Is that a hammer made out of solid bone!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It might be, that examinee if Jekleifer Kaguya, from what I've come to learn during my research – he was a bigtime superstar during the last Chuunin Exams held in Konoha so it's tough to imagine why he hadn't been promoted."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! Rock Lee took that massive bone hammer head-on, the thing must be at least a dozen times his size!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, and, judging by the swollen skin, the whited-out eyes and the vapor coming out from Rock Lee, he seems to require all of his latent power to hold that platform of smashing, living bone but…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Damn!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Damn is right, not even Rock Lee could hold that Jekleifer Kaguya guy at bay, what a pity…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And look at that, examinee Choroina Akimichi had noticed Jekleifer's investment into his clash with Rock Lee and she's moved in for the easy elimination."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ewww! That Jekleifer guy's kinda hot but those bones everywhere are a real turnoff!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, that's the extremely rare mutation – the Shikotsumyaku at play. With bones skewering Choroina's body from Jekleifer's behind, it is revealed that the Kaguya seems to have few to none blindspots to his ability."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And look at that, Jekleifer is immediately trying to shuffle himself back into the chaos of the Battle Royal, he doesn't want to stand out, having already eliminated multiple examinees in a fraction of a second."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Fat chance of that happening, that Mamushi guy threw himself in the way! Oooh!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, he got a bone spear through the gut for all the trouble but…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What's happening with Jekleifer, I don't get it?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Examinee Jekleifer has just surrendered… That is odd… I don't get this either, Moegi, maybe it's one of the Yamanaka clan members doing this? It is difficult to say."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh… That Mamushi guy seems awfully happy for a guy that got speared and eliminated, doesn't he?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ah! Nice find, Konohamaru, I've now figured it all out, you see, Mamushi is a member of Team Saya from Sunagakure and his teammate – Saya, has the ability to control people's minds after acquiring a sample of their hair. That was what examinee Mamushi has done this whole time!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmm… I seem to have seen Saya amongst the hunters of the second stage too."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, she and her teammates were one of the few ninja to have acquired the status of both a hunter and an examinee, meaning that multiple versions of them have been added to the exam's roster."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Seems like favoritism to me!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't think so, hunter Saya isn't actually competing anyway, right?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, I guess you're right, Moegi…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, what's that guy doing? I've never seen him before… I think I would remember seeing a weirdo like that…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, I'm not quite aware of this one either…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What!? You don't know somebody, Udon!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, it's not like you to skim through research haphazardly, that's like… Your one thing. You really need to pull your own weight here, man."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't think that's fair to say at all…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Moegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Actually… I don't see examinee Gentib de Vitt anywhere. I suspect that this flashy, red-haired, face-painted kimono spirit we're seeing trailblazing on the stage is one of his personalities."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Personalities?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, you see, examinee Gentib is a very talented competitor and he has multiple fighting styles all of which are perfectly functional but they coexist very poorly. For this reason, he has created multiple personalities, gimmicks, if you will, which he can switch between at relative ease. Each personality uses a different set of Gentib's techniques and everything from the personality of that gimmick to its techniques is made to make the perfect version of Gentib for that situation."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Dude, pay more attention, he's eliminated already…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, that cool, black-haired guy with two swords made short work of him after tripping him up with a sweep."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ah, that makes sense, examinee Kei-J from Kumogakure is an excellent taijutsu user who might even be able to trade fists with Rock Lee of our own universe without embarrassing himself. Such a person would be able to best Gentib in hand to hand combat."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, the fisticuffs are really getting wild, aren't they, can you tell anything that's happening?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"This is crazy, imaginary ladies and gentlemen, there are explosions, raging whirlpools of water and tornadoes rampaging all over the place and Kei-J is just swinging his staff around over his head. Trying to make sense of it all…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Aren't we all, right now?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yep, oh, it seems like the staff is interfering, at least five whole ninja and… Examinees Zahafbit, Ino Yamanaka, Bukhande, Kegon, Haltigeir Erblau, Koji from Team Ameno, Lazimo, Kidenshi Inuzuka, Othello-G, and Vespiga Esonig have all left the Black Cube riding the piggyback ride of Konoha ninja straight to elimination."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It is starting to be difficult for these commenters to keep up with all the action!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, though it should be getting easier once the space in the arena frees up a little and more and more examinees are eliminated."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"We'll make sure to keep our audience hooked with snips of the coolest action while we patch you up with the less impressive eliminations too, in the meantime, is anyone else's throat getting dry?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't tell me you're getting dry throat now, Konohamaru, we're barely even one-third through the event yet. It's barely been forty minutes yet."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"While Konohamaru finds himself something to drink, hopefully, making as little of unnecessary static as possible, we'll patch you in on some of the hottest action, right now Kin Tsuchi from Otogakure is trying to pin Neji Hyuuga with some of her senbon but she just can't get any offense in."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, that's what she should have expected, honestly, it only took one blow from Neji to hit her central tenketsu and shut it down. With that one down, an examinee might find it tough to stay on their feet, which is, sadly, a requirement to not get eliminated here."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'd say in life as well, it's a pretty good idea to stay on both feet and fully conscious when people are trying to hurt you."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's an excellent advice, I agree, Moegi."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"How do you like that, folks, come for the riveting Battle Royale commentary, stay for the invaluable life advice!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Now, if I might direct your attention to examinee Crus Sfintos, he seems to be rushing around the Black Cube, likely looking for someone specifically."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Now, what could he be looking for, you think, Udon?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm not very sure, it's not like Crus Sfintos to work alone, he is more of a support-type ninja. He doesn't have very much described techniques and focuses more on the medical abilities, although the Mystical Palm Jutsu isn't on his list of techniques."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"How interesting, so he's a medical ninja, but an unofficial one?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, he hasn't graduated any courses in the subject, I assume he's self-taught but… What a crude method! Crus Sfintos has jumped up examinee Komugi's back and just stuffed something into his mouth!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ewww! There is foam coming out from Komugi's mouth, I see staff rushing in to withdraw him from further competition, what's known about this Komugi guy? Why did Crus target him?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, it's difficult to say, frankly, the two are from wholly different universes. Komugi is one of ours."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh!? Is he?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Apparently he took the Chuunin Exams a year or so ago. Sadly, he and his team have failed to show off enough of their abilities to obtain their promotion."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmmm… I don't very much remember him."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Really? He is in the current genin rotation, just like us…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nope…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He's in Team Komugi, alongside Gennai and Inaho…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Not ringing a bell…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, well… Still, it's an enigma why Crus Sfintos would have chosen Komugi for elimination."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Maybe the guy just had his guard down?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That is likely, Komugi is known for getting overconfident from time to time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And I'm back! I got us all water bottles!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're not supposed to say that, show some professionalism!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, while my teammates are brawling and pushing one another, I'll let the audience know that the other Moegi, Kyona Chu, Kushina, Portorigus Claimcloch and Kaimuri Mouza seem to have been eliminated.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh!? The other me got eliminated!? No way! Stop laughing, Konohamaru! How did that happen!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, examinee Gasco Patura sent a few crescent Wind Release shockwaves Moegi's way and the landing from her flight was less than graceful, resulting in more than few broken bones, Kyona Chu of Kirigakure fell to the deceptive Magnet Release of Toroi. The other me eliminated examinee Kushina via his Water Release tendrils that seem to pack a decent punch, all things considered, while examinees Portorigus and Mouza have each injured themselves in clashing when Mouza's ax cut through Portorigus' sword and cleaved into his chest but the shard of the sword imbedded into examinee Mouza's head."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I think you should have tried for a career in commenting, how many times have you failed to graduate from the Ninja Academy?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You just had to bring that up…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ummm… While my teammates are feuding… Well… This long, violet hair guy from Sunagakure has called for a trio of sand lions from the leftover oily sand but… Oh, this dark-skinned fellow with a camo cloak had vaulted over the innovative offense and smacked him in the head with… What seems to be a really large branch. Though the impact is amazing, the hit sent the violet-hair-guy straight into elimination with one blow!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Why I oughta…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Konohamaru! Look at what you have done, you snap Udon out of his sulking this moment, I'm not sure if I can keep this up for long! I don't know any of their names!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ow! Stop pinching me, it's not that hard, for Pete's sake!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh yeah? I don't hear you doing it!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Come on, well… This brown-hair girl with a Sunagakure headband… Ummm… Actually… I think I might have seen her around a few times… She's using her weapon that's a dart attached to a rope and it's whizzing right past the competition. She's showing some break-neck speed and precision with that thing! Uh-oh, this red-haired grouchy from Sunagakure as well has deflected her weapon and… Ouch. Did you guys hear that cracking sound? Her eyes look pale white, she's definitely out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Snap out of it, Udon, snap out of it, please! We can't do this without you!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ignore that background noise… Ummm… Let's see… I'm not sure why that Sunagakure guy has targeted his own ally but…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He's from a different universe…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wha…!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He's alive!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Tala is a from a different universe, he is a Sunagakure ninja, yes, but he's from a different universe and has a quite strict attitude to boot. For that reason he showed no restrictions to using his Sand Bullet technique to dispatch of examinee Matsuri from Sunagakure."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, he's back!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Umm… Our cheeks are rubbing, Konohamaru… You're making it awkward…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nevermind that, Udon, we're just glad to see you back, buddy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ummm… Thanks, I guess… It was just mean what Konohamaru said, I am really conscious about that, you know…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Cheer up, ya oaf!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Thanks just… Don't smack my back anymore, Moegi, please…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Alright! You hear that, ladies and gents in the audience, the Konohamaru Commenter Squad is back together, full power ahead! We'll coast you through this crazy Battle Royal of the third stage in no time at all!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You are aware that we can't do it any faster than it is actually taking place, right?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"In your face, Moegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah… Real mature…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Guys, guys… You're gonna make us miss some eliminations again… Let's just focus on the action."</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0652"><h2>652. The Sea Of Steel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Whoa… Well, I'm back!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Welcome back, Konohamaru."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Thank you, Udon, see, Moegi? A little bit of professionalism goes a long way…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You just stood up and bailed on commentary."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I went to the bathroom, which I can totally do since we're observing the Battle Royal from a safe room outside of the Black Cube, through a special sealing technique."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"While you were gone, the ruthless Zangyaku Hage of Team Barreleye, Kirigakure, used his signature bloody brawling style to eliminate Gunoi Azbur."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It was a sight to behold, Gunoi was pressing his superior taijutsu skill but after one solid hit, Hage reversed the situation."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It's no wonder, Moegi, Hage is known for his ability to manipulate blood that he draws from his opponent. The truly enthralling factoid is that Hage has no known relations to the Chinoike or Hozuki clans. It is still a mystery as to how he manipulates the blood of his opponents, although it appears to be limited to blood drawn on the outside of the body and one that belongs to the enemy."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Not to mention that ugly mug of his, he looks like a guy that has little to no problem busting someone's nose open…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Konohamaru, also, as you might observe, Armasar Fulgertun has suffered a grievous injury to his face and his arms. That happened when he collided with one Fulgasa Gollfio from Team Quartz."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh? Her fighting style must be vicious to have left such injuries!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Actually, she just swings a plough tool around wildly."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Indeed she does, Moegi, however, while the plough tool she uses raked through Armasar's skin, his signature fighting style of employing under the skin layers of water to soften the blows he takes has paid dividends allowing him to survive while his opponent laments her elimination right now."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh… I don't Inaho from Team Ajisai anywhere either, she was one of ours, wasn't she?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's very observant of you, Konohamaru, you are correct, during your potty break, she bumped into Yoro from Takigakure, however, the man disposed of her using an A-Rank ninjutsu which prompted his exposure as a concealed jounin, due to that fact, he was promptly disqualified."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What a lousy cheater!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, you're really worked up about that, aren't you Konohamaru…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I mean, why aren't you? He might have taken your spot in this Battle Royal when he doesn't even need it."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"But none of us have even enrolled…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"But we could have! Also, if he wasn't in this, maybe more versions of us could have had their shot and maybe they'd have done really well."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's not even the last of what you missed, this Yurui fellow from Kumogakure has made excellent use of his bubblegum fighting style and eliminated five whole examinees, catching them in his bubbles completely unaware before Neji in terms eliminated him with an Empty Palm for his trouble."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Really? A bubblegum style? That seems cool, who did he eliminate?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well… Neji, at the same time as Neji was eliminating him, the younger version of Akimichi Choji, Yoroi Akado and this Buhakim fellow who kept yelling something about "True Spirituality"…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmmm… That's an upset, so many of our ninja had bitten the dust…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"May I remind you that you're not meant to take sides?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't sweat it, Moegi, I'm just kidding, plus, of course, we should be taking sides, didn't we state our favorites at the beginning of this whole gig?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's different…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And that's just about everything that has transpired while you were gone. While I was briefing you on what you've missed ten more examinees were eliminated."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh? No way! We've gotta catch up, we're supposed to be commenting this whole thing and not just chasing the tide of battle!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're absolutely right, quick, Udon, munch on this root!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh… What is it, Moegi?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Quickly, just do it!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh… Okay…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh yeah! It's so damn spicy! But I feel like commenting the shit out of this competition now! Kiwaro Hai, Team Whipray, your summoned mice didn't help you to jack squat, you're out! Kabuto, nice try but you seem to have passed out unconscious for some reason, I suspect a stray genjutsu! Horein Ptet tried stuffing his arm down into the ventilation tube of Dosu Kinuta's mechanical arm – you're both out! Misumi Tsurugi had the flexibility but not the sternness to withstand the wicked blows of Armasar Fulgertun, out! Armasar Fulgertun, vulnerable to being stabbed from behind by the twisted Tasure Kaeron from Kirigakure, out too! Roh-D took some mean blows from the ax of Hanzo of Team Shiore who in terms was skewered by Quill-B of Kumogakure. Mitsuki was also crushed by a wave of Shinki's Iron Sand!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"There! All caught up, feel better?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No… I feel horrible now…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, that must be because the root is crashing your system after amping it up."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What the hell, Moegi!? He's our ace commentator, we can't afford to have him crash on us!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't worry, I've thought it through!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, really!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, even when he crashes, he won't be in any way slower than Udon usually is, leaving him back to normal for the way we know him…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's a stupid idea and I'm the one telling you this…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shush, you two… Daseaut tried to use his signature Power Strike technique but he seems to have hit a brick wall with the fearsome Enko Onikuma, who's known for her frightening, short-term rage episodes."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I guess you could say that it was Daseaut, the rip-off who got Power Struck!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's was horrible, Konohamaru…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Moegi, it wasn't any less horrible than him ripping off the Rasengan that me and Big Bro Naruto worked so hard to master!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't think he ripped it off at all, it's just a more primitive version, that's all…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Excellent joke, Konohamaru… I provide the commentary, you provide the swagger…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He only reacted at it right now!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It's worse than we thought!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And so… Look at what we have here… A regular team-up… Exciting…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Is it, though? 'Cause I can't really tell from your voice and your tone…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shit, we need to work something out, we can't have him crash through the whole Battle Royal like that, it'll end before he finishes a sentence at this pace!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well what am I supposed to do, I only know a handful of their names because I've only done a third of the research."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Okay, you do that, I'll snag Udon's Ninja Info Cards and go at it like I've graduated the Ninja Academy – by winging it from the book!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Udon's the one crashing but we'll be the ones burning…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Come on, Moegi, more confidence! And so we've got… Ummm… Konohamaru, ey, that's me!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You needed a Ninja Info Card for that? Honestly…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Not the best time, Moegi… Anyway, Konohama… The other me ganged up alongside Menna from Team Dunyazad, Salnisa who must mean trouble if the blades she's juggling in her hands are any indication and…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I know that girl, she's Junipu-R from Kumogakure. She's adept at transportation seals, not much of a fighter though. And that thick guy with a camo cloak is someone we've already met – Glasmad Torfer and his wooden stick."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmmm… They seem to be in a heated exchange with a handful of adversaries, yeah… That's one of them… Shokuchu Ikayo from Team Whipray, Kirigakure."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The other one is Enko, she seems to have calmed down from her outburst of rage that helped her triumph over Daseaut. The last kunoichi is Squlra of Team Maruf, Sunagakure. Judging by the character of the last one, all three of those must be a mean and nasty bunch!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh! And it seems that the period of sulking that Enko was going through didn't help whatsoever, the trio is out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Let's see if this makeshift alliance, which, I'm a proud part of, I might add, will continue to score successful eliminations. They've chosen Sana of Team Sayo as their next target, I believe that all of her teammates have already fallen and the violet haired kunoichi surely looks like someone with a nasty plot on her mind."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What is this alliance, some sort of Anti-Bully Squad!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And Sana is out too! No place inside the Demonic Trilimbo is safe for anyone that's not just a nice person in general!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You could argue that making alliances like those isn't exactly clean either…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Go back to sleep, Udon!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wait… No! Please don't!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What an upset. The entire alliance crumbled at the hands of Trest Bregger and his harp genjutsu. I guess it doesn't matter how many of you there are, as long as all of you are susceptible to illusions that can put you to sleep and it's not like making alliances is any way of making friends that wake you up in time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well… He's not excited about it but at least he's talking…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'd call that a win but… I'm keeping the Ninja Info Cards just in case!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The dreamy Kei-J is on a tear, he's looking pretty desperate now that both of his teammates have been eliminated already and he's struck a few of the examinees around him with that steel bo staff of his though it doesn't look like he's scored any eliminations. No, look at that, he's swung his way into the center of things and he's teaching examinees a lesson left and right! Go, Kei-J, you're my new favorite!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"While the objectivity of Moegi's commentary leaves much to be desired, she's not wrong that the staff of Kei-J is making some serious claims with the cracks and the thuds – examinees Fu, Unomori Kotoi, and Doma Nacasa have been eliminated."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I must admit that last elimination by deflecting Doma's own ninjutsu projectile back at him with a chakra-coated staff was impressive. Moegi isn't too devoted to those she shows affection to but this guy I wouldn't mind sticking around during training."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What's that supposed to mean!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"My new favorite person ever is on a tear! Look at that well-timed explosive note, the detonation has erected a small hill of black rubble in the center and Kei-J is trying to position on top of it to better fight off those whose attention he had drawn."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Tenten's scimitar skills appear to match those of Kei-J's though, the two are engaged in a vicious swordfight! This is just like in all the pirate manga, only the hypest swash-buckling action can be found here!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Kei-J is cornered between two opponents, a vault over young Shikamaru and one thud to his face knocks him out, another swing dispatches Lithia Uchiha, Tenten broke Kei-J's staff and Kei-J is engaging her hand-to-hand!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, whose side are you on, Moegi, just a moment earlier you were all about the pride in the kunoichi of Konoha…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Konohamaru. As I've said before, we can't take sides as commentators, our sworn duty is just to relay the facts as they're transpiring and right now it seems like Kei-J is utterly wrecking Tenten who, while not a slouch, didn't expect such a vicious and skilled hand-to-hand onslaught!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, it seems that the older Tenten of the two taking part in the Battle Royal is out as well and Kei-J has claimed his spot atop of the mountain again, this time he's summoned his two short-blades from his wrists and he's fighting off everyone he can see, surely he must be seeing red right now."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I wish you'd be seeing more red right now, Udon, I'm really missing your enthusiasm…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hodrat Pather tried his luck with long-range Ice-Release ninjutsu but a sealing tag that Kei-J shielded with appears to have deflected it off somewhere. Those were some dangerous techniques, formed whole ice pillars after detonating!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, Udon, Kei-J is both highly skilled as well as well-prepared and equipped for a battle of his life, which this pretty much is because most ninja consider the Chuunin Exams one of the most important battles of their lives. It ain't easy graduating when the odds are stacked against you so badly!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh no! One of Kei-J's explosive kunai detonated way too close to Hodrat, the poor guy's gotta be out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at those cotton balls, that's Dubia's signature technique – she's trying to attach them to Kei-J at all costs."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Too bad Kei-J won't let that happen, he vaulted back and away from danger he was in atop of that pillar of rubble while slinging a handful of explosive kunai at the cotton balls but… No, wait, those are no explosive kunai, the sealing tags attached to the kunai lit ablaze, the kunai were just a delivery mechanism, the tags had fire sealed inside them and Dubia's cotton balls are kaput!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What a heel! Vinda Calkem used the opportunity when Dubia was attacking Kei-J and spat acid all over the poor kunoichi from behind!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hey, look at that, Udon's enthusiasm is back…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Of course it is, I can't stand such backstabbery! There must be a limit to how crooked one can get. Let's just hope that the help Dubia receives from the medical ninja comes in time and there's no permanent damage, she's taken a massive dip under that corrosive splash."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That acid looked like a form of Water Release, if so, it is more easily treated than actual acid. It's more likely than not going to be the case."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't know what that object was that Kei-J threw into Zaku's arms but I don't like the bloody mess that's left over of them."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, it seems like some brave challenger has stepped up to Kei-J and she's getting some hands on him. Yes! What spectacular agility! A wicked right cross and Kei-J isn't moving but what a performance… My heart is torn over my need to complement that ferocious young lady and to admire the source of my most recent heartache."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm sure you'll get over it… Although you are right, Larissa Alexandersson is one of Kirigakure's toughest and most wild taijutsu specialists of her generation."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I should feel calm then, you would know more than a bit about heartbreaks, Udon!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Dammit, Moegi! He's sulking again!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well… That's why you've kept those Ninja Card thingies! Plus, I'm here too, I know that guy that's about to face off against that other guy, it's Jord Kvasir, and he's one you've got to look out for. Apparently, he has a jounin watching him at all times because he's once tried to destroy the world by not channeling his chakra right on purpose."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wait, that emo-looking guy?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah… That's why he's always shadowed by a high-ranking ninja that tracks his every movement and makes sure he doesn't try it again. Just think about it, this whole version of Earth might have been gone if this guy's teacher didn't stop him in time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, what a dick!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Maybe you two just don't understand his pain…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You just deal with your sulking, Udon, we'll handle the commentary for now."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The Ninja Info Cards suggest that his opponent is none other than Saya from Team Saya and she's in trouble since her abilities don't lend themselves well to close-distance engagements!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What's that!? Saya has Jord's hair! She has his hair! Serves him right for flicking it all the time carelessly like that! She used her Puppet Imitation Jutsu to transfer her mind into Jord and… Oh no! Who's the real heel here, she tried stepping onto the Black Cube and she must have messed up the chakra augmentation on purpose because the jounin tailing Jord knocked him out cold – what a styling way of finishing off the enemy you could have just forced to surrender!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't know 'bout you, Moegi, but knowing that this Jord guy is out of here makes me feel a bit calmer, I was, quite frankly, feeling much safer when I didn't know a guy like him existed."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You did know that pretty much anyone in this universe could be in his place, everyone with basic chakra manipulation knowledge is capable of such a devious and chaotic act but only people like Jord Kvasir were twisted in the head enough to actually try it?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Gee, are you trying to make me lose sleep!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, Saya seems to have bumped into someone else, back to back. Judging from the looks of it, the puppeteer isn't pleased. But… It's Meiko."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wasn't she your favorite to win the whole thing, Udon?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah… What a tense engagement… Saya jumped back with a slash of a kunai, no doubt trying to get a handful of Meiko's red hair but… She's out."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Unbelievable, it didn't look like Meiko was trying at all!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Did she just flick Saya's hand, forcing her to over-swing and stab herself in the liver!? What a crazy way to dispatch of the enemy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, a skilled weapon user such as Meiko must have noticed the flawed form in Saya's swing and that one mistake was all it took."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh… Look at those two eyes clashing from across the stage!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yep, the final remaining version of Tenten has noticed Meiko and the two are just staring each other down."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Their arms are rising up, they're going to do something, something utterly crazy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Amazing! Both of them set off their seals at the same time, unleashing a wicked wave of steel at the other, this here's a clash of summoned weaponry and each seems to be packing enough of an arsenal to take out the entire world's military."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The absolute cacophony of clangs! The intensity of ricocheting weaponry! Absolutely insane, this makes me actually happy that none of us were participating! These two seem to be genuine monsters!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Can you guys even see anything? It's just steel and sparks from where I'm standing!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I can hear traces of screams, yep… Someone's screaming, definitely! I… I think that the ricocheting weaponry is actually eliminating careless examinees!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And the wave has crashed! Meiko is the winner of this engagement! Tenten must be somewhere underneath that entire wave of steel, what absolute mayhem, the entire battlefield is sunken underneath what seems like a mile of steel weaponry. Bodies are scattered everywhere…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at how many competitors are being taken off for treatment, look at how many are out…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"To the imaginary audience listening to us at home, if Konohamaru will give me my Ninja Info Cards back to check… Yes… It seems that the examinees Kakashi Hatake, Neji, who tried to shield Tenten from the resulting mayhem and ended up being overpowered as well, Alemyat, Kepdur Lephor, Inojin Yamanaka, Khaqdam, Crus Sfintos, Ieiria Deargli, Gasco Patura, Udon, Yatsawada, Trest Bregger, Rock Lee, Calliastro Kalios, Zangyaku Hage, Taudall Heimcok, Clarmac Inuzuka have all been eliminated from injuries sustained in this cataclysmic clash of rushing weaponry that drowned out the entire stage of the battle."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"While the number of examinees has dwindled to the measly 50, one-third of the number that started this Battle Royal but still almost three times of what must remain in the end, you must wonder, what sort of undue attention examinee Meiko has drawn onto herself with this display of strength and equipment?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"With the Battle Royal approaching its climax, we are bound to find out, and, unless we jumble up a name or two, we'll keep you in the audience posted, because that's just the kind of professionalism we here at Konohamaru Commentator Squad strive to uphold!"</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0653"><h2>653. Down With The Favorites</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"There're now only fifty examinees left on the stage. With their numbers having dwindled so much and needing to dwindle more still, how do you guys think it will impact the exam?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I've no idea, though I'd imagine it's going to get way cooler with all the weaklings filtered out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I wouldn't say that only the weaklings have gotten filtered out. Some serious competitors have run into insurmountable walls, made bad calls or flat out got unlucky. It was never a question that this Battle Royal would be a grueling process."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And it seems like the examinees have finally decided it is enough of standing around one another and staring each other down. Some action is taking place again."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Indeed, Oaira Taitgren, the final remaining member of Team Phobos from Getsugakure is showing initiative. The Ninja Info Cards state that she uses ninjutsu of ritualistic nature and it's interesting to see what that is, exactly."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Her hand seal speed is certainly impressive, it took her no time at all to draw a hexagonal barrier around that Akimichi gent."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That Akimichi gent is Chominu Akimichi. He is the last remaining member of his team as well so it is quite fitting that these two would find each other."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It looks like this Chominu guy has tricks of his own! He's made rocks burst from underground and he's trying to peel the barrier cage open."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Right you are, Konohamaru, however, it doesn't look like it's too successful."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's an understatement, Moegi, is it just me, or are the walls of the barrier closing in?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"They are! They are closing in!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Damn! Chominu Akimichi got flattened inside the barrier, crushed by his own rocks, he needs the staff to pull him out in this condition!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wh-What's going on now? It's getting a bit hard to see a thing, isn't it?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Y-You're right, I'm not… Not sure, it seems like the place is getting too steamy to see, come on, show us the damned view, you damn tin-can!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Konohamaru, stop bashing the tech, if you break it – we won't be able to see for good."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah… What a shocking difference to what we've got here now!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't bite the television box, I can get the bashing but biting it, you're just damaging your own teeth at this point…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Phut uph, Oegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Konohamaru, wait, I think I understand what's going on. It's Igaten Raizo and his Hidden Mist Jutsu."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I bet Konohamaru feels like an idiot now, it's such a common technique amongst Kirigakure ninja!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Moegi, you didn't get it either and Udon only put it together because he's read those Ninja Info Cards!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, the mist's clearing up. Igaten Raizo is a very skilled combatant inside that mist. He is a capable combatant with many weapons commonly employed by ninja, however, inside the Hidden Mist Jutsu, his efficiency is said to grow tenfold. Let us see who he has eliminated…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, yeah! I bet he's cut down like… Three… No… Five examinees in this time!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow… All three? Don't you wanna dream a bit larger than that?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Shut up, Moegi, I'm trying to be rational and objective here, you should try it!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Right…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh no! What an upset! Igaten Raizo is down on the floor, he hasn't eliminated anyone!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're underselling it a bit, I think, Udon, my colleague. I wonder whose foot is atop of his chest right now? Could it be Larissa Alexandersson from Kirigakure? If you wanna talk competent, I don't think it gets any more competent than disposing of a hidden assassin inside his own mist, robbed of one's sight with the silence of the mist shrieking into your ears and making you deaf to the sneaky steps that lead up to your demise."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What's so competent about eliminating someone from your own village?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"There are no allegiances here, silly Konohamaru, everyone's for themselves, haven't you gotten that committed to your failing memory yet?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whatever… Whose side are you on anyway, cheering for a Kirigakure kunoichi… I'm telling Future Naruto to keep an eye on Future You…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That aside, it does seem that Larissa Alexandersson is an impressive kunoichi. Her Ninja Info Card does not list any notable skillsets aside her taijutsu prowess and she's demonstrated plenty of that already today, let's not forget it was her who stopped Kei-J's unequaled rampage across the entire stage earlier."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, go, Larissa!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh, it looks like Moegi's little favorite is in trouble!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You stuff that tongue back, and I hope that your eyes stay that way, you monkey-boy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Crude or not, Konohamaru's commenting with objectivity here as both Gyllfa Ellidani the wicked old bones wrestler of Team Kyanite and Tarui have united their skills against the Kirigakure wild card. I've heard that Kumogakure and Iwagakure have had a falling out in this universe, prompting most Iwagakure ninja to either bolster Kumogakure's dwindled forces or to disband, I wonder if her changed allegiances helped her at all to work alongside a Kumogakure ninja?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmph… If anything, she should've been bitter about that. I'd look to kick as many Kumogakure ninja butts as I could in that old lady's shoes…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Konohamaru might have been onto something! Old lady Gyllfa has locked her hand around Tarui's wrist from behind, just as the two were preparing to charge at Larissa and pulled her in for a jaw-breaking knee strike! What a backstabber!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It looks like that one kick was enough to knock Tarui out. It takes four staff members rushing in to pull the unconscious kunoichi out of the stage to stop Gyllfa from finishing her suplex that would probably break the neck of the Kumogakure ninja. That's one lady that's not willing to collaborate with the occupant."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Konohamaru… Maybe you shouldn't say that out loud… It might cause Gyllfa some trouble back home. You should be more sensitive about politics than this."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Calm down, Moegi, nobody can hear us but Future Big Bro Naruto and whoever else is listening in with him."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa. Gyllfa darted off to the other side of the stage and used the walls to kick off harder at Larissa Alexandersson but the Kirigakure wild card countered with an arm-bar of her own. I do not like the way that Gyllfa's arm bent."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh no! That looks so awful."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yep, they're pulling her out, she's out too. I guess she'd have rather stabbed a Kumogakure ninja in the back and gotten kicked out than collaborated with one for a potential win. The old lady's got some spunk in her bones still!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Now there's a big, six-pack challenge going on in the eastern part of the stage. Check that out, Udon."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, it seems like Yukata from Sunagakure, some weird-looking black-haired guy with silver, whirly eyes, Hoshigaki Morei of Kirigakure, Epsiriya Corot from Iwagakure, Shikadai Nara from Konohagakure and Ameno from Sunagakure are all duking it out there."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wait, you mean to say that you don't know that guy's name?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The one with long, black hair and silver eyes that look like Pain's eyes? Nope, there were no Ninja Info Cards on that guy."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"We may not know who that creepy guy is but he's sure whooping some ass! Just now he's jumped way over Shikadai's Shadow Possession and placed his arm on the ground, it seems like the returning shadow tendril isn't affecting him at all!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That seems to be like some sort of chakra absorption ability…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh! His arms are spread out! What!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Holy shit!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Th-That's the ability Pain used back in Konoha! Wh-What's going on here!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, that creepy, silver-eyed guy seemed to have even psyched Udon out… Mind reporting the losses, maybe?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Why don't you do it, genius?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You know very well that I can't without the Ninja Info Cards, Moegi!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Udon has just called all those guys out, surely you can do it by memory!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nope… Forgot all their names already…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't… Don't laugh as if you're proud of that…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Teehee… Sorry 'bout that…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Anyway… This mystery examinee seemed to have used some uncanny gravity manipulation ability and pushed everyone around him away from him, they all hit their heads pretty hard on their way back so… It looks like this one creepazoid eliminated Yukata, Ameno, Morei, Corot and Shikadai all at once."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The weird part of that is that nobody seems to have focused their attention on that guy. It's as if the gusto that invites the examinees to challenge whoever is kicking up a ball has gone so much overboard that it's actually popped and out went all the courage from that deflating balloon. Nobody wants a piece of that guy, it seems."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Let's leave that up in the air, for now, look there, Momochi Kuchige from Kirigakure has collided with the staunch Kazami of Kusagakure in the center of the stage!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What are your predictions of this engagement?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well… Kazami is a shinobi who uses waving a flag for a fighting style so… Probably a not too favorable engagement when looking from his end."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't go around counting the chickens yet! Kazami's Wind Release blasts seem to be holding Kuchige in place and inconveniencing him quite a decent amount. He might still get blown back and hit the edge of the cube and snap his neck, or something…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You were saying?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Contrary on Konohamaru's predictions, Momochi Kuchige has used his Water Style whip-like tendrils to race across the entirety of the range between the two and pull the flag out of Kazami's hands. From that point on, it was all too easy for a whip to slam Kazami to the ground and knock him out."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whatever… I just wanted to keep the discussion and intrigue alive. I bet Kazami worked really hard to hone those flag-waving skills and all of you just dismissed him immediately. Plus, that Kuchige guy looks really shady, dressing like a pompous prick, like that… Does he really need to wear that cape, I ask of you?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Just because the guy takes care of his hair and wears his best tuxedo to a battle doesn't mean he's nefarious."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Though, you must admit, Moegi, he does appear somewhat villainy dressing like that…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Okay, yeah… I do see him as the type of guy to tie a fair maiden to a tree and leave her in a forest somewhere…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nevermind that, we've got ourselves another alliance of two, waging a valiant struggle against all around them, looking to eliminate as many people as possible to hasten the end of the exams!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Indeed, Konohamaru, I don't believe that Doshu Goetsu and Jishi Hitokawa of Konohagakure's own Team Fir have anything in common. They have to just both favor the good, old fashioned fisticuffs outside of the Demonic Trilimbo seals, where they can utilize the full extent of their abilities for a better chance at victory and therefore they're aligning their forces."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And there goes Vinda Calkem, overwhelmed by Jishi's Wind Release bubble that seems to manipulate the opponent almost like some telekinetic lift, if you will. Batsu of Team Shiore also got a rough slam from Jishi's Wind Release gusts. What an unexpectedly efficient guy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Examinee Obito might have seen through the flurry of chops of the examinee Kiyomi from Konoha, but he didn't see the ring locking around his waist and a blowgun dart putting him to sleep coming. Doshu Goetsu proved that he too has something to add to this strange alliance."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Although those two must not have seen the response coming. Where they've assumed that they would just put their forces together for the common goal, the remaining pool of examinees responded with an impromptu alliance of three instead."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi. Qarsufly from Sunagakure, Koshira Guna of Kirigakure and Akimichi Chocho have forged an alliance of necessity, though it remains to be seen if this alliance is meant for a greater goal than just to bust this team of two."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Qarsufly's summoned Ninja Beetles have already rammed poor Doshu Goetsu and pinned him to the ground. It doesn't look like the poor guy's conscious so we can expect an intervention from the staff at any point now."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Be that as it may, but we've already seen examinee Jishi achieve great success with his impressive Wind Release ninjutsu range control. Look at him manhandling Koshira Guna, it doesn't matter how tough that girl is, she can't handle being slammed against the floor this many times!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And she didn't… Wait a second! Oooh! She seems to have collapsed into some disgusting snot! It was a clone! A goop clone! It was a goop clone all along and all of us bought it! Jishi is in serious trouble, submerged in snot, she's just like you, Udon. She uses snots for fighting too! You've gotta ask her out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh… Well… That's a bit…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't be so mean, Konohamaru, that young lady looks to be far out of Udon's league anyway, don't set the poor guy up for heartbreak like that!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh… Well… Guys… Come on…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, you're right, she's probably proud of her ability, judging by how much skin she shows, she's way too confident for you, Udon. Sorry, buddy…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You broke him again, Konohamaru!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Okay, let's just agree that it was a mutual breaking, you've also added more than a pinch of it."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And I'm gonna just… Swoop!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, that's a good call, Moegi, while Moegi's getting accustomed to working those Ninja Info Cards, I'll let you all know that Chocho pitched into eliminating Jishi with a supersized butt-slam. While Jishi must have been proud of wearing that helmet on his head, no helmet can prevent concussion."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ahh! It seems like this alliance broke through the moment they were done with those two, now they're fighting in between each other!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Qarsufly's beetles are swarming Guna, as agile as that girl is, you've gotta ask yourself, for how long can she evade all of those attacks without getting tagged?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Plus, she's still doing her best to keep that oversized top-hat attached to her head too, it's not the best time worrying about one's wardrobe in the middle of a battle…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Moegi, that brings a fair point, do you have anything valuable to pitch in on wardrobe?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look, wear whatever you want, but all I'm saying is, I'd like to pull off that tight and flashy jacket and shorts but I don't think that the usual argument made for the agility that the fishnets provide applies with a uniform as tight as this."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You might be right…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"There you go, she's impaled on a beetle horn now…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Goddamn she duped us all again!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It was a goop clone!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Son of a…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It was a goop clone! It was a goop clone all along!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The goop is going into the beetle's eyes, in between the chitin shell links, it's an all-around bad time, it's a what the pros call not-where-you-wanna-be-in-situation."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And that beetle's kind of going haywire…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Watch out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh, that beetle ended up eliminating Qarsufly himself by accident."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Chocho is going for it, she's seeing red, she's hearing voices!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"She's going for that Lightning Release: Thunderclap Fist from up above, in her Butterfly Form, no less!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, it looks like that's it, I don't think anyone's excited about it but… This time Guna didn't make the replacement in time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I think I saw her tripping up on the tail of her jacket, it might not have been the best idea to have those strings go down quite that far."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And there you have it, folks. Chocho might just make it through the second stage of the exams if she keeps this up."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh! Wait just a goddamn second! Larissa Alexandersson, ladies, and gentlemen!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wait… Wait up… She can't seem to land one punch, it's as if her opponent is quite literally inside her mind!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It truly is a feat to behold, considering the fact that Larissa is known in her village for a particularly wild and unpredictable hand-to-hand combat style. The Wild Fist it is called. It is comprised of swings using the Lion's Paw stance, where one's fingers are bent inward and one strikes from the entire palm or swipes and hooks with the bent inward fingers and performs agile kicks and vaults."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nevertheless, her opponent, Kiyomi from Konoha has the number of Larissa Alexandersson, it seems. She's got her downloaded completely. What a brutal combination of blows, it does the deed, though. Unexpected but… Examinee Larissa Alexandersson, Moegi's favorite has been downed and eliminated. I bet that just makes you furious, doesn't it, Moegi?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nice try, Konohamaru, I'm all for girl solidarity but… If you'd pay attention for once, you'd notice that Larissa has been eliminated by none other than Yamanaka Kiyomi, not only a fearsome kunoichi in her own right but also a Konoha ninja, the alternate version of Konoha but Konoha nevertheless! Solidarity is even stronger with this one! Go, Kiyomi! You're my favorite now!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ugh… Sometimes I can't even with this one…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I have to admit, Konohamaru, you're a loose cannon most of the time but your declaration of your favorite competitor has been consistent, at the very least, even if your favorite isn't even competing."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Thank you, Udon and… Hey, glad to have you back."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And what we're seeing on the other side of the stage is no less impressive as well – examinee Sarada has eliminated Yodo from Sunagakure by outmatching her in taijutsu skill, it's no wonder, seeing her flaring Sharingan eye."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Forget that, another clash between two kunoichi on the eastern side!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No shit, I can hear the sound of shattering from here, whoever that poor blond girl is, she's not putting up much resistance against Wakizashi Meiko from Konoha."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yep, barriers aren't meant to be broken by a mere punch but Meiko sure makes it look easy. That's a wicked right cross and Meiko's right on top of the poor kid, somebody, please remove her already!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And there she goes. I think she gave up, I don't think she's been knocked out. Yep… The staff is leading her away and she's on both of her feet. What a poor kid, to be frightened so much that she just called it quits after going so far, not only that, she's almost outlasted the rest!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, the tears of Namikaze Asuka are understandable when you realize that there are now just thirty examinees left in the entire competition. While tears are unsightly for a ninja, she was so very close…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whatever, it doesn't matter how close you were, look at the childish fit she's throwing, she got beat, she's the one who called it quits, she's the only one to blame…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You know, Konohamaru… You're the one to blame people for being childish…"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm just not too fond of quitters, especially ones that then whine and complain about their loss when they were the ones to quit."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It didn't seem like she had much choice. Meiko was ready to pound her into a swollen pulp from a superior standing position. None of Asuka's barriers seemed to be fending anything off."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Come on, Udon. Let's just call this thing to the end."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Right…"</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0654"><h2>654. A Hero's Comeback</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Whoa! Look at that jet of flames!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Zircon Trot of Team Pyrite, Iwagakure. There are few examinees inside that cube that are better than him in knife-fighting and he is known for complementing his style with Fire Release techniques."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh? That's Fire Release? It doesn't look like much..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It might seem that way, Konohamaru, but he's not trying to blast his opponent to bits with them. Zircon might be positioning his opponent for an attack with his kunai or distracting them from the real threat."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whatever... We've all got kunai, what's so special about this guy, anyway?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoop, go Gennai, look at that, he went on and eliminated Zircon Trot!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hah, now what will you say, Udon!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well... Yes, it appears that Gennai's larger, more powerful but slower Fire Release technique triumphed this time. I don't think that Zircon even saw Gennai coming or thought of him as much of a threat which might have added to this upset elimination."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah, I didn't think much of Gennai either but that only shows you how you shouldn't underestimate a guy that looks like Iruka-sensei!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh... I guess he does look like Iruka-sensei, doesn't he?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at that, isn't that girl your favorite, the one who eliminated Tenten earlier?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Meiko, that's right."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"She's getting quite aggressive isn't she?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, this is a late stage of the Battle Royal, aggression at this point is warranted because every successive elimination is of golden value."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's quite an opponent she's picked, isn't it? That's Uchiha Sarada!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmm... Uchiha, huh? Must be one of the local Uchiha members, from what I've seen, this place never went through an Uchiha Massacre so the clan is still prosperous and revered."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"While half of that statement is a neat observation, Konohamaru, Uchiha Sarada is the daughter of Sasuke Uchiha and Haruno Sakura."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wait, you mean..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yes, she's from our universe and every universe related to ours. To you, I suppose, she would be from a different point of time."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, Meiko should have been more careful in picking an opponent, it doesn't look like she can land as much as a cut on a bona fide inheritor of the Sharingan."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uchiha Sarada is a real prodigy. What's even more impressive than the fact she's inherited her father's Sharingan, she appears to have an affinity for mastering all of the jutsu and specialties that her parents knew in their prime, making her an awesome extension of their greatest achievements."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa, look at that intense lightning, I think I've seen Sasuke use that jutsu before!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh no! It seems like Meiko's used her shield as a makeshift reflective surface and blinded Sarada's all-seeing Sharingan! What a pinch! It looks like Uchiha Sarada's out!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"She's certainly making a recovery, struggling, she's doing the best that anybody in her condition might be doing. Her eyes are open again! Maybe... Just maybe we'll see an..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What's she looking at her heel for?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't forget she has the Sharingan eye, Konohamaru, things she can see with that might be invisible to our eyes."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I know that trick!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It looked like a use of String Reeling Technique, Meiko had scooped a loop of steel wire over Sarada's heel while her vision was down. That hit on her head looked nasty hard and... No. Sarada Uchiha is eliminated though it was as valiant of an effort as anybody might have shown."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"And on the western side of the arena, Momochi Kuchige is twisting his mustache, without a doubt he's got something devious on his mind."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, knowing him and his effective Water Release whips, who knows the trouble he can lash up."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"If I may correct you, Konohamaru, it's his devious supervillain mind that should inspire the most worry and not this examinee's abilities."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"His eyes... They're scanning the battlefield, he had just used his whips to escape certain trouble in the hands of Toroi, who, by no means looks like much trouble, but as someone looking up to the famous superstar ninja of Kumogakure – Killer B, definitely has potential to blossom. Who will Momochi Kuchige choose as his next target?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Ah! It's that red-haired guy!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"An interesting choice. Of course... Sabaku Alsamryf is a Sunagakure ninja known for his ability to shape sand into various constructs. Kuchige's Water Release might give him an advantage in that match-up."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh? Sand? You mean like Gaara?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"In some ways, yes. However, where Gaara controls a mass of sand that might as well be alive, Alsamryf instead of controlling the whole mass focuses much more on transforming sand into objects and weaponry he can use. To my knowledge, he does not possess the defensive shield that Gaara's sand provides."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That doesn't stop him from forming a shield out of his sand... Although..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's right, Moegi, it seems like any constructs that Alsamryf might be inclined to build crumble in the face of the relentless lashing of Momochi Kuchige. Poor Alsamryf was outmatched from the moment this clash started."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Is it just me or is it getting tough drawing my eyes off of that creepy, black-hair guy with the Otogakure headband?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I think that it isn't his appearance that interests you, Moegi, it's the fact that he is a complete enigma, not a single Ninja Info Card has been pulled on this guy and so far he's demonstrated no shortage of abilities, baffling my honest attempts to be professional about calling his performance."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh! I was certain that Chocho Akimichi tried to evade that attack but... It's as if gravity itself had betrayed her! This mysterious examinee has pulled poor Chocho in and suddenly she's been wrapped up by some snake that came out of nowhere. Poor Chocho has nothing to breathe with. She's fading away!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That is unfortunate, it seems like the staff is pulling her out. Look at that devious man, the staff is demanding him to let go of the poor girl but that bastard is just shrugging like he's got no say in the matter. At this rate, they'll be forced to behead that snake."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Whoa! That flicker right beside him! That's Sasuke Uchiha!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh? Isn't he a criminal?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well... I suppose... Technically... He's still a genin so maybe Future Big Bro Naruto allowed him to compete."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He's gunning for that brown-haired kunoichi. I don't think she can see him coming... Whoa! Why'd he dash back?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"He must have seen something we can't, oh... Look at that floor. It has a sealing tag attached to it."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh, I see... So that brown-haired girl acted like she was oblivious, when in fact, she had placed a trap to dispose of anyone trying to eliminate her... What an interesting strategy. Who is she, Udon?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nohara Rin. She's one of ours though she's from a universe that's still in our past."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Man... All this time and space mumbo-jumbo is so confusing..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It's interesting that Sasuke Uchiha even targetted her, it was as if he was scanning the battlefield for potential targets and selected her for some reason."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't think that's unintentional. His Ninja Info Card does quote that his revenge is repurposed now into killing everyone to have ever stood in his way. Rin Nohara was a teammate of Kakashi Hatake, the mentor for Sasuke and Naruto."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh... So he wants to spit in the face of his and Big Bro Naruto's teacher then by hurting his past teammate."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It might be the case..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You know... For a person picking his own boogers while you're commentating, you can be really perceptive, Udon..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh... What's wrong with Momochi Kuchige all of a sudden?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're right, he seems paralyzed and he's twitching."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Ripper Inaba from Kumogakure, he uses vocal-cast genjutsu. That must be it. An impressive spinning kick to the back of the head and Kuchige is out."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Just when you thought that Kirigakure has been doing really well this exam..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Hmm... The situation with Sasuke Uchiha and Rin Nohara is developing, it seems that Rin had noticed Sasuke's attempts to eliminate her. She's scrounging in her pouch for..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh! What a blast! Everything's gone up in smoke and flames. What's even weirder – those flames are pitch-black!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"This must be Sasuke Uchiha's doing. Poor Rin Nohara, she seems grievously injured, her ninja pouch must have blown up though how Sasuke came to detonate it from afar is unclear. It might have held a large number of explosive tags but Sasuke would have needed to somehow ignite a flame from afar and I've not seen him close the distance to Rin at all."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Oaira Taitgren. She's the last remaining member of Team Phobos that seems to be revered amongst the locals. Apparently that team has had an excellent performance in the last Chuunin Exams. Look at that, she's throwing a bunch of useless objects around as if she's spring cleaning..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What wicked cross! Wakizashi Meiko swept in from the western side of the stage. Her gauntlets appear to be blazing with a fiery cloak. Somehow her chakra has expanded outside just cloaking her gauntlets and became a living armor of its own."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oaira Taitgren will not recover from that blow without help. Whatever excellent performance Team Phobos had in any other Chuunin Exams was not replicated here and now, it seems."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Careful! Meiko seems to have dodged that human-cannonball at the last second!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's Akimichi Choji, this version of him appears to be from a different timeline than ours – he's much younger than us."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh! What's that!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Something blew up out of nowhere and it seems to have not only just disrupted Choji's rolling routine but also eliminated him. First Sasuke starts black flames with just his eyesight, now – someone just spawns explosions out of thin air."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You're both wrong, Moegi, Konohamaru, this was Uzumaki Boruto's Vanishing Rasengan."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Vanishing Rasengan? What kind of Rasengan is that? Also... Who's this Boruto guy and why does he have Big Bro Naruto's last name?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Boruto is his son and Vanishing Rasengan is one of his ace techniques. You see, it initially appears as if though Boruto's Rasengan disappears when he throws it..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Seems par for the course, you don't throw a Rasengan..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Will you let Udon finish, maybe?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Anyway... Once the Rasengan vanishes, it seems to still be traveling at the opponent, although it is invisible and untraceable as if it had actually vanished, before detonating right as it collides with the enemy."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh... Leave it to Big Bro Naruto's son to invent a crazy jutsu like that."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Invent? I don't think so... It feels like he just kind of stumbled into it, honestly."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Wow, that Boruto guy seems to be feeling the flow right now!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Look at that, he sent that beetle-guy flying!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's not Faqsadid, that was Qarsufly, Faqsadid teammate from Team Maruf."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, both Faqsadid and his creepy puppet are outta here, courtesy of one Uzumaki Boruto!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That appears to be valid information, yes."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Uh-oh... That creepy black-haired weirdo is raising his hand again and he's got the most devious of smiles! He's licking his lips, what a heel!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What a bastard, I don't think Big Bro Naruto's son can even see him! He's gonna get eliminated!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Huh..."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What...?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"What on Earth... Is that?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Big Bro... Naruto?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I think the audience might be confused."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"The audience... Heck... I'm confused! Why is Big Bro Naruto suddenly in the stage, appearing in an orange flash and grabbing that creepy guy's hand like that!?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I mean... He isn't even in the competition, what's going on down there?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm... Completely lost... This wasn't in any of my Ninja Info Cards..."</em>
</p><hr/><p>"That's enough out of you, you know." Naruto declared while his grip held Orochimaru in place. The serpentine Sannin didn't look like he was trying to put up much of a resistance. He looked amused by the sudden and unexpected development more than anything.</p><p>"Other me!" a voice came from behind, Naruto didn't look back to acknowledge the arrival of his older self but he knew that he was there. It wasn't just that Naruto recognized his own voice but older, he could also feel the bottomless depths of his own chakra, the complete lack of malicious intent coating a core of silent rage. The rage that wasn't meant for him and for that reason one that didn't engulf and incinerate Naruto where he stood.</p><p>"It's okay, I get it, you know..." Naruto closed his eyes and let go of Orochimaru's hand. "I don't deserve to take part in this Chuunin Exam anymore. I've missed out on this stage while trying to get rid of that Isshiki guy."</p><p>The Seventh Naruto lowered his hand, one that he meant to reach out at his younger self and pull him away from Orochimaru. His eyes settled into a calm, fatherly look. He turned back to his own son behind him, no doubt wondering what should be done with him. After all, had the younger Naruto not interfered out of line, Orochimaru would have eliminated Boruto.</p><p>"It's alright, Other Me, you know." Naruto looked back at his older self and gave the Seventh a thumb up with his encouraging smile. "Do the count, there are twenty folks once I take out the trash."</p><p>"Take out the trash? Oh...?" Orochimaru smiled, the silver eyes with whirly lines all over them gleamed with their majestic depth, trying to encompass all the implications of the younger Naruto's sudden arrival.</p><p>"That's right. You don't belong in this exam, never did, you know. So far, we've let you prance around and have your fun but not anymore. If I am to leave home to my universe after failing this exam, I'll make sure to kick your ass back home as my last deed, you know!" Naruto pointed at Orochimaru before pointing at himself with his thumb. The blond-haired young man exhumed confidence as always. Meiko and Kiyomi couldn't help but smirk observing the situation develop from separate sides of the stage.</p><p>"Alright, everyone, you heard the Other Me." The Seventh clapped his hands. "There are twenty examinees left. This stage is now over. After this matter is resolved, we'll let you know about the match-ups for the finals, you know."</p><p>"Yo, what the hell's going on, just who is this serpentine moron?" Ripper Inaba from Kumogakure crossed his arms while stringing a half-assed rhyme together.</p><p>"I suppose that you might want to know... This person here is a missing-nin from a different universe posing as a genin. He's done a similar thing way back in my own universe too. We've known of his involvement for a while now but we've decided to let him execute his plans regardless since he was accompanied by actual genin and he solely meant to participate in the exams, you know." The Seventh explained.</p><p>"Wait, so you let a missing-nin participate in the exams just because he wanted it? Even if he tagged along with genin, he should have been eliminated from the get-go, his whole team should have been disqualified." Tala from Team Dunyazad objected.</p><p>"He wasn't as dangerous as he is back in his home universe. He didn't have the same amount of time as we did to grow accustomed to this universe, you know. Plus, I wanted to confront the Sasuke he brought with him myself." The younger Naruto explained.</p><p>"When he says it like that, I kind of hear how selfish it sounds..." Kiyomi looked at Kiyomi with a squint, the redhead blacksmith acknowledged the sentiment too.</p><p>"You've got nothing to threaten me with, boy." Orochimaru leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest. The Sannin might have very well matched Naruto in the confidence he radiated. "Whether I finish you off after playing with you right now, or if you send me back to my universe, I now possess too much power for you or my universe to handle. I have transcended a mere snake as well as the dragon I've sought to become, I now see with the eyes of a God."</p><p>"Naruto... What is the meaning of this? If you think I'll just stand idly and let you send us back..." Sasuke interjected, stepping in by Orochimaru's side with his blade flashing in his hand.</p><p>"Sasuke... You aren't too fond of him either, are you? You were the one to dispatch Kabuto in this Battle Royal, you know." Naruto replied while calmly staring back into Madara Uchiha's Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan flaring with the flames of vengeance in Sasuke's eyes.</p><p>"What?" Orochimaru turned his head sideways.</p><p>"He got in my way. I'll remove whatever stands in my way, Kabuto or you included." Sasuke turned around and fled from Orochimaru's side.</p><p>"Hmph... Perhaps the chick's claws have grown too long. I do admit, I regret not making him into a path of mine as I've originally planned." Orochimaru chuckled.</p><p>"You... Don't forget what I once told you..." golden flames began rising from the edges of Naruto's outline, like flames forming outside of the young man's body, brought to life by his willpower and inner strength that he had acquired while traversing the omniverse looking for ways to rid his body of Isshiki Ootsutsuki. Like an orange flash, Naruto dashed in to Orochimaru's face and threw a sideways kick looking to smash it like a bat bashing through a watermelon.</p><p>Orochimaru's serpentine body bent and slithered away, shadowy as much as Naruto gleamed gold, swift in retreat as Naruto was to attack him head-on.</p><p>"Don't talk about Sasuke like he's some sort of toy of yours, you know!" Naruto exclaimed while pressing his knuckle to his chest. A gloom of disappointment that he didn't dispatch of his vain enemy when he had the chance glittered in his eyes but the better part of him never expected it to be this easy.</p><p>"Why don't you guys just let them duke it out, you know?" the Seventh Naruto looked at the rest of the genin. "You have gone through enough already so just let this pan out."</p><p>"Hmm... So you are okay with me killing your little protege, aren't you, Seventh?" Orochimaru looked at the Seventh Hokage with ecstasy.</p><p>"Killing? Try it, if you want to..." the Seventh smirked back and disappeared alongside the genin that have left the stage already. Orochimaru looked around in search of Sasuke whom he still held as being loyal to him but he found himself alone against this oddly confident version of Naruto.</p><p>"Very well then... Show me this power you've found in the omniverse and let the Dragon God measure its worth!" Orochimaru struck a haunting pose with his elongated tongue flapping around as if tasting the delectable feeling of the tense air around them. The atmosphere of battle. The Sannin placed himself on his knees and touched the floor underneath his feet.</p><p>The three-point star of the Demonic Trilimbo alongside the circuit around it went dark, the drawn patterns of the seal did not leave the walls of the cube but their infernal glow faded out, leaving just fancy paintwork to cover the walls of the enigmatic Black Cube.</p><p>"That's right, I could have removed this seal at any point, but dispatching of all the trash would have been so bothersome if I did. This... This I'd rather enjoy for as long as I can make it last." Orochimaru chuckled to himself, still standing on the step of self-appointed importance now that he gazed at Naruto with his Rinnegan.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0655"><h2>655. Clone Kata</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Don't you want to swoop down there and help the other you?" Meiko wondered. "Orochimaru was tough before he got his hands on those weird eyes. I have to admit, I was kinda nervous about the possibility of confronting him even though the Cube seemed like the best place to do so, what with that kickass seal and all…"</p><p>"Absolutely not." The Seventh Naruto shook his head. "Orochimaru is a very slippy ninja to get hold of. The moment he feels pressured, he can disappear without a trace. I've no doubts he's got a plan of how to return to his home universe even. It's best if he believes he can win the whole time, you know. I'm sure that the other me knows it too."</p><p>"Hmm… So that's how it is…" Meiko turned back to the battle that was about to begin. It still seemed crazy that Naruto would confront Orochimaru all by himself but if the slithering serpent was as hard to corner as the Seventh claimed, perhaps it was for the best to wear him out before applying some pressure.</p><p>"You're going down!" Naruto shouted out while taking a daring leap at the enemy. By all means, he was slower in his initial surge of action than when he showed his newly gained strength before, his movements seemed almost reckless but that was Naruto's signature style. When facing any other opponent such an attack might have been treated as a reckless mistake but Naruto was no other opponent.</p><p>He was The Show-Off, Number One Unpredictable, Noisy Ninja. Although his antics only worked when his opponent knew that and let it get to their head.</p><p>"Naïve!" Orochimaru hissed and extended his hand outward, a handful of black snakes launched their attacks at Naruto from inside Orochimaru's sleeves, attempting to dig their venomous fangs into the young man's flesh while he was airborne, aiming to drive his foot at Orochimaru's head on a downward slam.</p><p>Naruto grunted when the serpents wrapped all over him and constrained him momentarily, inflicting seemingly meaningless bites but the future Seventh looked uneasy in his lands, his balance looked shaky and his face broke into an unhealthy sweat that did not suit such an early stage of battle. Orochimaru's serpents worked with venom and it seemed like a particularly nasty strain given the immediate after-effects.</p><p>"Trying to lure out my gravity manipulation ability so you can hit me in the window of the technique's cooldown with your best shot, Naruto-kun? As I said… Naïve…" Orochimaru chuckled to himself before raising his hand up again, letting the striking shadow snakes inside his sleeve to strike at Naruto from a distance again.</p><p>The upper halves of the snakes fell with a blunt and pitiful thud shortly before dissolving into ashes that scattered in the building up pressure of the battlefield. Orochimaru's surprised eyes registered a handful of shadow clones standing in between Naruto and him, they held their kunai knives in their hands and, judging from the drips of purple falling off of their blades, had disposed of the rushing shadow snakes as soon as they reared their heads.</p><p>There was not even a doubt that Orochimaru felt shaken by how sudden and unexpected the multiplication was. It was like the clones just popped into existence from nothing, barely a hand seal or telegraphic sign in sight and, what's even more surprising – they manifested themselves in a position where they would have served their master the most use, instead of just randomly scattering around him.</p><p>Two more clones popped-in behind Naruto, putting their hands together into a handspring and aiding their afflicted original to cannonball through the air with another attempt at a crushing blow from above. The bottom half of Orochimaru's body turned into a shadowy protrusion as the serpentine Sennin slithered past all of Naruto's clones in an instant with a sinister flicker in his yellow eyes. Once Orochimaru's body returned to normal, humanoid shape, Naruto felt a tight pressure around his entire body as white serpents coiled around both the airborne original as well as his clones.</p><p>"Hmph… And here I thought I'd get to stretch out my new abilities some…" Orochimaru glanced back at his struggling opponent. "Oh well…"</p><p>The Sennin opened his mouth, his jaw snapped out of place in a manner entirely unnatural for a human being while an ancient sword of the traditional style of craftsmanship blew at the restrained Naruto like a blow-dart. The sword pierced both the white snake that restrained Naruto as well as the gut of the struggling young man, leaving him to slump without any traces of life down on the ground.</p><p>A loud popping noise followed and, much to Orochimaru's surprise, the Naruto he had just pinned down appeared to be just another clone. His Kusanagi clanged in a soft landing as it was no longer etched into anything. The white serpent that had constricted around Naruto and ended up impaled alongside him had withered away in seconds and turned into just a handful of dried out and lifeless scales.</p><p>The pale Sennin was more than experienced enough to snap his neck in order to look upward fast enough. An azure blitz split through the gloomy atmosphere of the Black Cube when Naruto's clone slammed into Orochimaru at the first sign of an opening with a Rasengan in hand while two more versions of Naruto lingered on the ceiling with their feet firmly attached to it as they lurked looking for another opening, aiming to swoop down like bats and hit their enemy as hard as the craving for it in their chests demanded it.</p><p>The clone stood up from the fallen Orochimaru, examining the lifeless husk of the serpentine humanoid. What it hit didn't look like Orochimaru but instead just an empty flesh bag, it looked as if a skin and flesh costume that someone had abandoned with a gruesomely dislocated jaw. Naruto knew that technique though neither of his present versions could see where the real, current Orochimaru had slithered off to after shedding from his old, injured self.</p><p>"Struggle…" Orochimaru's voice filled the room. "Struggle and never let down your guard, my precious prey, for that is the natural order and your true state."</p><p>Naruto dropped down from the ceiling while all remaining clones of his retreated. There was not a hint of heavier breathing or sweat on his face. Naruto's eyes were no longer hazy nor did they looked like the young man was seeing double. It only made sense that somebody with such unmatched vitality and a legendary titan slumbering inside him would get used to and overcome venom of all sorts this quick. The stare that Naruto gave the darkness to which Orochimaru had retreated was no stare of prey, it was the stare of a huntsman.</p><p>"I'm not the one running away and running my mouth, you know," Naruto raised his arm with a kunai in hand at a corner of the shadows. Just a mere moment later a frightening fit of laughter filled the room. One would have thought a discovered snake would feel desperate and cornered but Orochimaru couldn't help but proclaim his excitement.</p><p>"Well, well…" he muttered before half-human, half-snake shape resembling Orochimaru from his abdomen up only took a dive at Naruto. The youth jumped up to meet Orochimaru's headbutt with one of his own, never being one to resist such an obvious challenge though it might have been Naruto who was fooled this time.</p><p>The white scales of Orochimaru's serpentine lower body ripped before opening up and releasing another, smaller version of Orochimaru with a reptilian tail that slithered toward its fallen sword and grabbed it with its teeth before arcing its body in a wave motion considered unnatural even to a human contortionist. Naruto grunted in pain and rolled as far as the force of Orochimaru's diving slash drove him with a crimson gash on his chest. Not being one to let up of the chance to deal with his prey, Orochimaru slithered on, continuing its sword-in-teeth dive while the larger serpent that gave it birth withered away into a mere translucent shedding.</p><p>"Naruto Uzumaki Barrage!" a pair of clones chanted out while diving from up above and stomping at Orochimaru's head, pinning the serpent to the floor at once. The original then charged forward with a running kick that sent the fallen reptilian flying off into the shadows, Orochimaru's body regained humanoid appearance in mid-flight with the pudgy lower tail splitting into two legs that soon replicated even the baggy black trousers that the Sennin wore before his transformation.</p><p>"Wonderful… No other ninja could have invented an entire fighting style out of the Shadow Clone Jutsu." Orochimaru complimented the young man he had considered utterly useless and unimpressive for so long. He never ignored Naruto's vitality and stamina but it always seemed only as if though it was something that made this rugrat more irritating than talented. "Perfectly controlling where the clones appear and when with lightning-quick precision. It is hard to compete against such an opponent in close-quarters."</p><p>"Teehee… I call it Clone Kata, you know." Naruto smirked. "I've learned something interesting in this universe. Some ninja choose to master and improve their old techniques instead of rushing ahead toward new ones. That was what gave me the idea, you know."</p><p>"Hogwash…" Orochimaru hissed. "If you stick around and only study old subjects you'll rot away and die being ignorant. Forget the universe, a single world has too many secrets for any one man to learn. Unless you learn every jutsu, every secret in existence, you'll have wasted your chance at life and such a thing is utterly unforgivable."</p><p>"People aren't meant to learn everything there is to learn. Knowledge is obtained and passed on to the future generations so that they can develop it, add onto it and pass it on further, you know. Reaching the end of the line is okay when there are people that continue on the path you've set for them. That one I've come to realize from what Pervy Sage left behind for me…" Naruto gripped at his heart, pulling the severed bits of his tracksuit together as he clutched at the red gash there which had already stopped bleeding and endangering Naruto's life.</p><p>"People only die when they accept death. Death is the end of knowledge, the end of improvement and, as such, it is my only and true enemy. You know, Naruto-kun, if I learn every secret there is to know, I am bound to learn to leave something as irksome as death behind." Orochimaru shook his head and continued posturing.</p><p>"If you spend your life running from death, you won't have lived a single day, you know!" Naruto swiped his hand aside from his chest and entered a fighting stance, sensing the elevating tension of evil intentions inside Orochimaru's heart.</p><p>"Annoying, annoying… Beyond annoying…" Orochimaru hissed out. "If Sasuke-kun is like fine caviar, a premiere meal of deluxe value, you're like ramen. Bland, greasy and there's entirely too much of you! The value of ramen might grow as its quantity grows but, at some point, it becomes just leftover trash and is best thrown away, the ingredients wasted in it better served to decorate finer meals."</p><p>Orochimaru bit his thumb and went through a handful of hand seals, planting his hand onto the ground and calling forth for a large gate of demonic appearance to rumble upward from underground. In a single, black and white blur, Orochimaru leaped atop of the towering Rashomon gate and placed his hand onto the roof of the structure while his free hand weaved a one-handed seal.</p><p>"Rashomon: Demonic Dragon Flame!" Orochimaru chanted as an infernal blaze lit up in the slit between the two sides of the Rashomon gate. The inner workings of the demonic gate rumbled and crunched until tongues of compressed flame shot out from the horns of the decorative beast that revealed themselves to be makeshift flamethrowers.</p><p>Orochimaru observed the swarming wall of flames with a sense of smugness and pride. It was grandness that began to slowly dissipate when he realized that something just as grand as his Rashomon was deflecting the flames. With a single, tenacious swipe of his sakazuki shield, Gamaken pushed the stream of flames aside and thrust his sasumata at the center of Orochimaru's demonic gate.</p><p>While under normal circumstances the structure would have been more than staunch enough to withstand such an offensive, the pent up and overflowing blaze working inside its ancient arrangements could not withstand both the internal and external force and therefore burst, cracking the gate and filling the cracks with intense blazes that, once the gate couldn't hold itself together, simply blew up.</p><p>"Thanks, Ken!" Naruto extended his fist for a bump but the giant sage just shook its head.</p><p>"No, I am still far too clumsy…" Gamaken shook his head and dispersed into a cloud of smoke, returning back to the location it was promptly called for from.</p><p>Shaking on his feet with extensive damage over his body, Orochimaru stood back on his feet after the blast had thrown him off of the Rashomon's roof and planted multiple of its rubble on top of the Sennin. The flesh of the serpentine Sennin had peeled off in multiple places revealing just another, younger and slimier layer developing underneath and pulsing with pus due to its unplanned and early exposure to the outside.</p><p>"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto placed his arms together in his signature Clone-Technique hand seal, flooding the room with his own duplicates that all rushed at Orochimaru together, looking to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. The ocean of orange and black blurs swallowed the Sennin who had been thrown off of his feet sufficiently enough for this vicious beatdown to faze him.</p><p>A giant, ground-colored boa with tiger-stripes on its backs emerged from the epicenter of the clone riot, throwing the army of Naruto clones off of Orochimaru and washing them all away with a swipe of its tail while a hiss of reverberating intensity and death-inducing stare of the colossal serpent held the back-row in place.</p><p>"Hit him now!" the back row of Naruto ordered one another in remarkable synchrony while the center one reared his hand back and the others assisted him in channeling together a supersized version of the Rasengan, furling with a far greater amount of chakra than the ordinary version, multiplying the ball's destructive potential in the process.</p><p>"Great Ball Rasengan!" Naruto grunted while the bunch of clones all banded together to shove and transport the grand spiraling chakra sphere to the enemy. Even when they drove it into the colossal boa and not Orochimaru himself, the expanding size and range of the jutsu's devastation encompassed the recovering Sennin too, swallowing him up in the destruction before…</p><p>Before the expanding blast began to diminish and weaken as something far more powerful pushed back at it, an aerial bubble of gravitational push so intense that it ground against the Great Ball Rasengan and came out on top, not only that, swallowed up all of the Naruto that carried the big ball this far and violently tossed them aside as a capricious child swatted at their toys.</p><p>"Almighty Push!" Orochimaru hissed with a tone of voice muzzled by strain. The mighty display of resistance against Naruto's adamant willpower had also reduced his own reptilian protector to nothingness but it was a cost that Orochimaru was more than willing to pay.</p><p>"Alright, that's down, now!" a single version of Naruto reared his hand back while two more clones appeared behind him when prompted. Whereas before the future Seventh required to create clones and set his Rasengan techniques up, his Clone Kata allowed him to manifest clones out of the blue in the middle of channeling the Rasengan for diversions and cleverly laid plans such as this one.</p><p>"As if…" Orochimaru hissed out as fingernails dyed black donning pale, white fingers emerged from his jaw and clutched at both sides of it, dislocating it promptly and sending a newly reborn version of the Sennin while the old and injured one was left to slump behind as a useless shedding.</p><p>"As if, you know!" Naruto repeated Orochimaru's mockery while a clone poofed from his right and wrapped its arms around Naruto's forearm, dragging and spinning the young man around and lobbing him upward with enough strength to move Naruto up to the ceiling and help him kick-off of it, repurposing all of his momentum and strength into a plunging dive while aiming the Rasengan in his hand right at the face of the regenerated version of Orochimaru.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Naruto roared out while the detonating sphere of concentrated chakra in his arm expanded, grinding Orochimaru's bones from the inside while contorting his neck and spine in grotesque looking manners and sending him crashing down like a vertical propeller, head-first into the ground.</p><p>"I sure feel glad to have decked you real good this once…" Naruto huffed after landing on his own two feet, figuring that his opponent had survived this vicious exchange of techniques and a clash of wits. Cold and calculated intelligence against willpower and unpredictability of unconventional thinking. "Chakra absorption, that repelling thing… So many things I had to consider, it sure is good that you're just using somebody else's tricks. Tricks of somebody I've already beaten, you know."</p><p>Orochimaru's dangling feet turned into a singular, prolonged tail and continued to wriggle the Sennin underground. Naruto prepared for the incoming attack but Orochimaru burst head-first and cracked his neck a pair of times. His crooked stance suggested that the hit he took still rung around his spine too. Twisting and breaking it in the angles that Orochimaru did it would have broken any normal human being though the body modifications that this one went through bypassed all such limitations.</p><p>"Maybe I should have kept all of the Rinnegan's jutsu to myself. Then I might have been able to at least try and react in time. Though it takes a lot of guts to attack me with a jutsu that the Fourth had created and Jiraiya taught you and talk to me about unoriginality…" Orochimaru chuckled to himself showing confidence in his ability to keep fighting that Naruto didn't entirely like. "Very well, boy, I'd say that I am impressed by your troublesome abilities, there seems to be more ramen in the sink now than I'm capable of flushing down. Oh well… I still have some paths to take."</p><p>Naruto took a wild dash sideways, avoiding a storm of ivory missiles raining at him from behind, lacking explosive power but packing more than enough weight and swiftness to serve as an adequate kinetic missile barrage. With a bewildered stare, the future Seventh turned behind him and stared at a rushing blur of mad silver that he could only narrowly avoid while the bodies of Sound Four, Kimimaro and the Sound Genin, all scanning the world around them through the ripple pattern of the Rinnegan, blitzed into formation around Orochimaru.</p><p>"I honored Pain's flair for the theatrics. He employed the Six Paths but I always felt more affectionate for the myth of the Yamata-no-Orochi myself so I made sure that the Dragon God sprouts eight heads instead…" Orochimaru spread his arms, displaying his obedient pawns lined up in front of him, all having surrendered their life to bring Orochimaru's insatiable dream of becoming a living Yamata no Orochi to life.</p>
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<a name="section0656"><h2>656. A Glimpse Of The Pure Lands</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The initial shock that overcame Naruto's face upon seeing Orochimaru's formation of eight subordinates walling him off, all donning the silver eyes of the Rinnegan decorated with its signature ripples didn't take too long to subside. Naruto gripped tighter around the handle of his kunai and took a knife-fighting stance as if nothing had changed.</p><p>"My my… The spirit of this boy. You've had plenty of trouble dealing with me alone. Hurry up and run to your older self. I guess there are layers of immaturity not even age can fix." Orochimaru chuckled to himself, feeling confident about his chances enough to give the Seventh Naruto a wayward stare.</p><p>"What are you talking about, you mamba-bastard? I haven't even started fighting yet, you know." Naruto scanned the fighting stage, having submitted the luxury of the first move to the opponent.</p><p>"Hmm… What's this? Hesitant to rush at your enemy? That's unlike you, Naruto-kun… I wonder…" Orochimaru raised his eyes up, noticing a pair of Naruto clones with their feet stuck to the ceiling and their hands clapped together while the pair stood calmly in a praying position. "Ah, I see…"</p><p>Like an extension of his master's will, Kidomaru pressed two of his six arms together by his mouth and then pushed them apart, forming a bow of solid gold that he connected with a silken thread of his own production and added two more golden arrows on top. The skill at which Kidomaru's body moved made the skill feel almost natural to it though such a manner of attack would have not been possible had it been for the spider-like anatomy of the young man using it.</p><p>"Spider-Bow: Fierce Rip!" Kidomaru grunted in a voice that was undoubtedly his own though it had no life behind it, none of his usual overconfidence and joyous attitude of a hunter playing a game.</p><p>With a metallic buzz, the kunai spun in Naruto's hand, around the youth's finger by the blade's ring before going right for the six-armed body of Orochimaru's control. It was just a mean to dispose of the tool in Naruto's hand which he had placed there due to misreading the opponent's intentions in a quick and efficient manner, one that left him open to then respond to Orochimaru's actions as they developed and maybe one that would have displaced one of Orochimaru's eight "heads" at the same time.</p><p>The kunai clanged as a layer of golden armor it hit covering Kidomaru's body tested its fortitude. While Naruto didn't like what he saw, this freed his hands to protect his pair of clones using the Clone Kata fighting style as he had been employing it with decent efficiency earlier.</p><p>"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto grunted while weaving his clone technique hand seal and creating multiple airborne groups of clone, scattered apart one another. Kidomaru's arrows split the space within the cube with a golden glow like a rising lightning bolt, piercing through every clone in its way though the very presence of them in the path of the arrows had mucked up its trajectory enough for the greatly slowed down pair of arrows to miss its targets in the end.</p><p>"Naruto-kun… To think that you would muck around with your current, pathetic array of techniques and just stall until your clones gather you the Natural Energy you need. It was Jiraiya's desperation move. He'd be so disappointed in you, seeing you grasp at that straw from the get-go…" Orochimaru mocked Naruto.</p><p>"I think he'd mock you first, you know." Naruto pointed his finger at Orochimaru. "For being dumber than me and not seeing through your own weakness."</p><p>"My weakness?" Orochimaru smirked and bent his head to the side, letting his loose black hair slip to one side and fall down his shoulders. "Devouring such a noisy little gnat almost doesn't suit a Dragon God such as myself…"</p><p>"Whatever, it's your teeth that are gonna be all over the floor, you know…" Naruto shrugged and put his hands together, preparing himself to fight the enemy off using ninjutsu this time.</p><p>"It's you who's made the mistake, Naruto-kun, you've shown to me that you seem to care for and need those pathetic little clones of yours stuck up there!" Orochimaru hissed, at which point Kimimaro rushed out and put up his hands. The fingers of the Kaguya clansman bloated by where they connected to his knuckles before the swelling moved down to the tip.</p><p>"Shura Finger Bullets!" a barrage of metallic-tinted bone bullets burst forth from Kimimaro's fingers, like a machine-gun threatening to riddle the ceiling of the cube and the two clones that Orochimaru treated as hostages that he could threaten to make Naruto dance by his tune.</p><p>More clones popped into existence just to absorb the stream of gunfire and disperse after their demise. It didn't look like Naruto seemed to be bothered at all by splitting his chakra multiple times and creating clones of it just to get murdered in masses to protect the two channeling Natural Energy for him. Orochimaru on the other hand, he looked like he was finally beginning to catch on.</p><p>"A weakness?" Orochimaru muttered while releasing a breath imbued with hilarity through his nose. "A weakness he says… I take it that you consider my chakra reserves a weakness, right? I will admit, there is a massive difference between our chakra, you would most likely be able to protect those clones this way long after I would be done having the stamina to attack them."</p><p>"That's right. Even Pain struggled having to deal with six whole bodies. You're keeping up with supplying chakra for eight bodies other than your own. You're going to dry out before too long, you know." Naruto pointed at Orochimaru and then punched his own knuckle to show off what he intended to do once Orochimaru ran out of juice.</p><p>"Heh… But Naruto-kun… You've made a massive oversight, I think…" Orochimaru gestured with posh elegance. When his eyes opened again, they possessed a sense of vicious brutality and the Sennin spat out his tongue which headed right at Naruto. Before the future Seventh Hokage could put up a meaningful response, the tongue latched onto his wrist and tied him in place.</p><p>Jirobo kicked off of the ground and rushed right at the subdued enemy, he threw a gut-punch of dominating physical force but Naruto vaulted over the chubby juggernaut, taking the opportunity to kick him in the back of the head and blast him away from him. Even without his Sage Mode active, Naruto still seemed to possess far greater physical force than before. He grabbed Orochimaru's tongue, looking to free his wrist of it. That was when Sakon charged at him and engaged Naruto with a primitive barrage of taijutsu strings.</p><p>Sakon's use for his rogue master appeared to be solely based on his physical abilities as his brother was no longer attached to Sakon's back at all. With one of his arms restrained and the tongue applying manipulation to throw Naruto off-balance, the young man had little hope of matching a body of Orochimaru's he solely focused on taijutsu. As the threat of that realization gripped Naruto by his throat, the youth found himself unable to track let alone defend against Sakon's attacks. In just a few exchanges Naruto found himself on his back, reeling back from the painful kick to his chest with Orochimaru's tongue still attached to one of his wrists and pulling him in.</p><p>"Shura Vibrating Sound Drill!" Dosu chanted out in a husky tone while moving in to Naruto and driving his mechanical arm into his gut, generating powerful sound waves from inside it, as well as driving a mechanical arm with all of his force into the abdomen of his opponent that was being pulled in, dreading just such a strike.</p><p>The force of impact that sent Naruto flying strained Orochimaru's tongue too much and forced it to snap back into his mouth. As unnatural as the Sennin's bodily modifications were, even he had to correct the position of his tongue and munch on it for a few seconds due to how much it had stretched out in the restraining process.</p><p>"Your seemingly infinite chakra is my chakra as well…" Orochimaru concluded his thoughts that he had left dangling. Seeing Naruto down on the ground, he turned to Kin Tsuchi who moved without the need for any visual cues. The moving, modified corpse of the Otogakure kunoichi flung two handfuls of senbon at the pair of clones attached to the ceiling. There appeared to be no way for Naruto to interfere in his current position but, just when the distance between the tips of the oversized needles and the clones was just inches, the clones dispersed into smoke.</p><p>"What!?" Orochimaru showed his fangs with a face that perfectly translated both his frustration with his opponent as well as his surprise at every corner, even though he thought himself to be the only one capable of surprising the enemy given his acquisition during the second round of the Chuunin Exams.</p><p>A deafening crash sent Orochimaru spinning on his feet and reeling to maintain his upright position. With a fearful twitch, the Sennin turned to face Naruto with toad-like irises and gleaming, yellow eyes as well as patches of orange face paint around his eyes. His fist had stopped a good meter away from Orochimaru's face after colliding with a wall of solid soundwaves which Zaku Abumi had erected just in time to protect the collective brain of the Eight Heads of Orochi.</p><p>"Sage Mode…?" Orochimaru muttered to himself. "Yes, of course… I've pushed you so close to the wall, haven't I? Forced you to dispel those clones and take what little they've managed to scrounge up until now. It doesn't matter that Dosu's soundwaves have confused your bo…"</p><p>Another deafening crack, followed by a howling shatter. Zaku Abumi rolled backward, thrown away by the violent collapse of his own wall of sound and just as Sage Naruto raced in from the side to begin chipping away at Orochimaru's collection of moving bodies, the Sage gave a wayward look to Jirobo's direction and dashed back, avoiding a large chunk of the Black Cube from taking his head off just in the nick of time.</p><p>"Yeah…" Naruto admitted. "I guess those soundwaves really did hit my balance hard if I couldn't shut you up outright, you know."</p><p>"Impudent brat…" Orochimaru expressed his vexation with a click of his tongue while moving a wild strand of hair away from his face. "Enjoy whatever temporary rush this flawed technique provides you with. If anything, you'll just entertain the Dragon God by making eluding his jaws into a game this way."</p><p>"It's all just a fun game until a head or two get caved in, you know." Sage Naruto calmly stated, straightening out his back.</p><p>Lacking the words to express his desire to inflict grievous bodily harm onto this blond child in an adequate manner, Orochimaru extended his hand outward. Strong acceleration of pulling force brought all manners of junk and dust Orochimaru's direction but Sage Naruto was no longer where the serpentine Sennin had intended to pull him in from.</p><p>Jirobo dived in out of nowhere with his hands raised. A platform of the same black structure that the Black Cube was made of erected him above the rest of the Eight Heads. The response seemed timely enough for the airborne Rasenshuriken coming their way to dissolve into sparkly dust and enter Jirobo's body. Sage Naruto landed on the ground right after his ace technique disappeared.</p><p>"It wasn't such a great idea to absorb a massive jutsu like that one made out of Natural Energy, you know." Sage Naruto warned Orochimaru. "It's an even worse idea when all of you share one chakra pool and everything you absorb goes right back into it."</p><p>"Is that what you used to defeat Pain in your universe, Naruto-kun?" Orochimaru chuckled, looking mighty proud of at last having an upper hand and knowing something that Naruto did not. "You know, you're not the only one to have mastered Senjutsu. If a stack of chaff like Jiraiya could do it, it was just a matter of snapping my fingers…"</p><p>The expression of Sage Naruto did betray a slight sense of trouble though it did not entirely rock his world to find out that Orochimaru knew how to control and handle Natural Energy and had a reserve of his own where to store it. Judging by how smug the snake looked about this whole affair, Naruto didn't dismiss the circumstance that he might have had a Sage Mode of his own to resort to once his fancy eyes and Dragon God gimmick fails him.</p><p>Orochimaru's mouth shuffled something deep inside again, this time Sage Naruto knew the cue and therefore he used all of his enhanced speed to avoid being caught unaware by Orochimaru's tongue again. The Toad Sage glanced back at where he was charging, sensing an influx of chakra and noticed Kidomaru having spat a whole web for Naruto to get stuck in. A clone manifested via his Clone Kata swung Naruto by his forearm and threw him aside and away from the web, helping Sage Naruto land on the wall to his side instead of getting stuck in the web that Orochimaru was leading him into.</p><p>A band of enraged ogres with covered up ears and eyes emerged from around Tayuya, another one of Orochimaru's Eight Heads and raced onward with a furious rampage, threatening to flatten Naruto. The Sage dashed through a gap between the titanic Doki of Tayuya's employ and turned around to try and slip in a counterattack but ended up facing a cross-shaped combination attack of shapeless ghosts that appeared from the backs of the Doki and slammed into Sage Naruto's chest.</p><hr/><p>Everything around him was black. Not even the red paint job of the sealing glyph markings laid on the walls. Orochimaru or his Eight Heads of Orochi were nowhere to be seen either. It all felt just like a very bad dream, at least until the nightmare revealed itself to have been very real with the black pond underneath Naruto's feet shaking and rumbling in violent ripples, letting a rotten and leafless star-shaped pillar of wood emerge from the center with branches covered with shriveled fruit that smelled of rotten milk and bad fish all at once.</p><p>"What's the matter, Naruto-kun? You said that it's okay to die, didn't you? You said that all that you've done and learned would be passed down to those succeeding you, am I wrong?" a deceitful hiss filled the air. Naruto recognized that foul voice before its owner showed its ugly and pale head from the crown of the tree and slithered down around it in a spiral. It was hard to tell what was an illusion or a nightmare when the real deal possessed the very flexibility needed to do that same thing…</p><p>"Yeah, so what, you know!?" Naruto swiped his hand aside in defiance.</p><p>"Then why do you resist right now? Just die and let your knowledge, all your power from beyond just your own universe pass down to those succeeding you." Orochimaru hissed with a devious smile after detaching himself from the tree and standing up in front of Naruto.</p><p>"You think you're being clever, don't you?" Naruto growled back at him.</p><p>"But of course, when two meet, one feels it is okay to die, another one opposes and defies death, which do you think more likely to survive the meeting?" Orochimaru shrugged, never dropping his proud smile for a second.</p><p>"I'm not going to just throw away my life like that and let you kill me, you know!" Naruto dismissed the idea.</p><p>"Atta boy…" Naruto heard an oddly familiar voice behind him. One that unlike the unexpected voices he had heard up to now of people aiming to surprise him managed to provide him with a welcome tingle that ran down his back like a warm shower and then converged in his belly with a warm buzz.</p><p>"Pervy Sage!" Naruto turned around with gleeful eyes.</p><p>"That's right, your spirit's in the right place, kid, though you're sort of drowning under. I'm afraid by the time you see your parents he'll have pulled out too much. Instead of standing here and debating philosophy with that snake, how about you just kick him in the nuts and bust out of the hold he's got you in?" Jiraiya winked at Naruto with a thumb-up.</p><p>"Leave it to you, you decrepit bastard, to ruin it all…" Orochimaru hissed.</p><p>"Like all things you blame everyone else for, you've brought this onto yourself, Orochimaru. By trying to pull out his soul, you've exposed him to the Pure Land and the souls that reside there-in. Naruto's a tough kid but, most importantly, unlike you, people like him, so whenever a friend of his sees the kid in trouble – they're naturally going to help the kid out. Whether it's in the Pure Land or on the living plane." Jiraiya looked at Naruto with a warm pair of eyes and an encouraging nod.</p><p>Naruto just nodded, his face encompassing both the desire to stay here a little bit longer as well as the knowledge that if he did so he might have ended up losing his way in the end. While he didn't truly disappoint his mentor, Naruto clapped his hands together and let out a brave battle cry that sent bright ripples throughout the Pure Land, ripping him out of it and forcing his struggling body to open its eyes on the physical world as well.</p><hr/><p>The shapeless ghosts of Tayuya's hissed and dispersed like defogged mist. While an ethereal copy of Naruto lingered with almost entirety of its upper half ripped out of its body. Once the empowered Doki no longer threatened to remove his soul or had any contact with it, the ethereal shape returned back to its rightful place inside Sage Naruto and helped the young man snap back to reality.</p><p>"I didn't expect that Sound Four girl to be able to use the Human Path's technique, you know," Naruto spoke up, still catching up to the feeling in his body. "Though I guess I should have, you've shuffled in some of Asura Path's abilities in that metal-arm guy and bone-guy, you know…"</p><p>Orochimaru stood there bemused that his surprise maneuver that might have ended up in the sudden death of his unruly opponent had failed. Even when by all means he still perceived to have the upper hand on the young man, still he continued to defy his superior strength and countless skills he had acquired to the point where even in Orochimaru's heart doubt began to seep in. Doubt that perhaps he was being led somewhere and he's been winning so far just because Naruto was lulling him.</p><p>Then again, seeing this young man stretching out and making all sorts of goofy gestures to test if his soul really did settle back into his body served as reassurance that this oaf couldn't have been capable of concealing anything from the brain behind the Eight Heads.</p>
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<a name="section0657"><h2>657. Of Life And Death Of White Snakes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Naruto stretched his muscles out before pounding his open palm with his fist. It was just a confirmation that he had walked off whatever effects Dosu's mechanical soundwave-emitting arm had left on him. That was indeed the case, no longer did his head feel wobbly when he walked. This was the time to strike back and eliminate as many of the Eight Heads as possible before the Sage Mode ran out of juice.</p><p>There was still a problem with that though. He couldn't use any of his big and explosive jutsu while Jirobo was active and he couldn't let Jirobo absorb any Natural Energy and transform him into a toad because that would only have fueled Orochimaru's own Sage Mode reserves.</p><p>"What's the matter, Naruto-kun. You've just now come back to life and yet you're hesitating… It's so unlike you to falter in battle…" Orochimaru mocked the young man with a subtle chuckle.</p><p>"I don't need my big, flashy jutsu to kick your ass, you know!" Sage Naruto took a fighting stance and prepared to dash at the enemy with all of his regained speed and balance. Orochimaru raised his chin up, declaring one's intent to attack nine opponents at once directly was something just as stupid as the Sennin had imagined Naruto doing.</p><p>Like an orange bullet, Naruto flashed forward, Jirobo's arms slammed against the ground before Naruto made the first move, erecting a wall of chakra-infused Black Cube ground. Naruto's fist collided with the wall and it appeared as if though the mystical substance had completely numbed his force of impact. That was before Jirobo's face caved in from a direct smash right in the snout and sent him rolling backward at escalating velocity.</p><p>The orange bullet raced further across the stage of the cube, zigzagging behind his opponent. Just when it seemed as if though the fist of Sage Naruto could rip Jirobo's head clean off by hitting him square in the face from a direction directly opposing that in which he was flying, a barrier of web strings blocked Naruto off while Kimimaro raced in and put up a cross-shaped block with his arms to absorb whatever invisible force Naruto's fists were hitting his enemies with.</p><p>"Not bad, Naruto-kun. But you are still outnumbered here, aren't you the one usually preaching about the strength of bonds and friendship?" Orochimaru mocked his opponent with a shrug and a shake of his head.</p><p>Naruto looked behind him, just in time to recognize Tayuya's new and improved Doki demons. He put up a block to absorb the force of a mace hitting him head-on and sending him flying. Due to his defensive effort and greatly improved physical strength, Naruto didn't feel a thing from that impact but it wasn't the physical effects of that jutsu that bothered him. Something uncomfortable crept inside his head, like a creepy-crawly, a worm burrowing inside his brain, looking at his thoughts…</p><p>An attack from over his head, another Doki appeared above Naruto and performed a vaulting kick to send him crashing down. The Toad Sage blocked this strike as well, taking the ride which the Doki demon meant to send him through. While these first few attacks didn't seem like all that much, when the third Doki stomped on him from up above, Naruto finally felt enough pain to force a grunt out of him.</p><p>"Hmm…" Orochimaru let out a hum. "So you've figured out that jutsu, didn't you?"</p><p>"Yeah, she can't absorb my chakra and rip out my soul if her Doki are at a close distance to me, you know." Naruto wiped his mouth and his nose while standing up. Just like that the ethereal Doki had disappeared after attacking him successfully. Given how every attack Orochimaru had his Eight Heads perform taxed his own chakra, it was obvious he'd try and not waste any chakra whatsoever. "If I let those ogre guys hit me but block their attacks, they won't be able to tear into my soul or chakra, you know."</p><p>"Not bad but…" Orochimaru sighed. "Are you sure you can take the punishment, can you handle my pressure, Naruto-kun?"</p><p>Prompted by those words, Sakon took off in a rush to Naruto. The Sage evaded every single one of Sakon's attacks by not playing his game and using his superior speed to maintain a respectful distance. Just when Sakon spread out his arms and dove in for a wide grab, attempting to subdue Naruto into a hold, the Toad Sage threw a lazy uppercut sending the overextending Head of Orochi down on his back.</p><p>Silver blitzes caught Naruto on his back foot, forcing him to gently weave in between them. It was tough for him not to notice the chakra present inside the steel wire attached to the senbon that Kin Tsuchi employed. The steel wire had applied an effect that limited Naruto's movement, there was very precise spacing in between each strand of wire and Naruto had few doubts that the rest of the Heads would be quick to exploit this opening. Naruto weaved a hand seal attributed to most Clone Techniques.</p><p>A clone of Naruto's appeared directly over Kin's head with a heel drop in the making. Zaku Abumi raced in to protect his teammate with his wall of sound, the strongest one he could muster up in such a quick time but both of the Heads had fallen for Naruto's trap when Zaku's wall absorbed the shock of Naruto's heel drop but an invisible smash still sent both of Orochimaru's bodies down. The steel wire trap that Kin had attempted to lay on Naruto in order to limit his movements fell weightless beside Naruto's sandals as the needles dislodged from the wall and touched the floor with nearly inaudible clinks.</p><p>"Clone Kata isn't the only fighting style I can do, you know." Sage Naruto pointed right at Orochimaru. By now the Toad Sage had figured out yet another weakness to Orochimaru's style. Over this entire time that these Eight Heads had emerged to take him on, Orochimaru hadn't pulled too many moves of his own, suggesting to Naruto that he had to devote most of his attention on controlling his other bodies. It wasn't too far off the beaten track to assume that he had employed a similar control method to Pain, meaning there had to be transceivers of some sort on all of their bodies.</p><p>"Hmm… That invisible force you employ is tricky indeed." Orochimaru admitted, lacking the composure to make fun of his opponent at that moment.</p><p>"You don't know the half of it, you know," Naruto smirked before placing his hands in for a Clone Technique hand seal. Orochimaru tightened his body, observing that his fighting stance was the best it could be in preparation for Sage Naruto's attack.</p><p>"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto yelled out, creating an entire army of Shadow Clones both airborne and on the ground, numerous enough to fill the entire room and leave little space for any of the combatants inside to maneuver around.</p><p>"Sage Art: Super Great Ball Rasengan Barrage!" he let out a mighty battle-cry as each one of his army of clones manifested a Rasengan in one hand that then promptly grew in size until the spiraling ninjutsu sphere had surpassed its makers in size and filled the room with blinding azure light.</p><p>"So you've chosen death then?" Orochimaru yelled out, trying to remain heard in the fighting stage filled with clones, each one of whom wielded a howling Rasengan in hand. "I'll just absorb all of that Natural Energy and end you with it!"</p><p>Orochimaru spread his arms out, then, as the clones moved in closer and closer and the gleam from the incalculable Super Great Ball Rasengans moved in closer and closer, feeling almost warm in its proximity, a thought popped into Orochimaru's head. As the last signs of vitality from him, it snapped to Jirobo who still laid on one knee and Kin as well as Zaku who laid motionless on the ground.</p><p>The serpentine Sennin realized all too late that all of his bodies capable of protecting him against such an attack, to absorb the Natural Energy present inside it or to erect a wall of sound that might have either muzzled the blow or dispelled all of the Super Great Ball Rasengan wielding clones were still feeling the numbing effects of Naruto's Frog Kata and laid crippled.</p><p>"Naruto!" Orochimaru hissed out before his voice was drowned out in the howling riot of detonating Super Great Ball Rasengan.</p><p>When the all-encompassing cyclone of devastation had calmed somewhat, there was not a trace left of any of the Eight Heads of Orochi while Orochimaru himself laid sprawled out on the ground, his grey garbs had been torn off and torn to strands while his black bodysuit remained loosely hanging on its unconscious owner who continued to twitch and display minor signs of life and extensive battle damage while Sage Naruto loomed over his unconscious opponent.</p><p>"Heh, you're the one that's gonna disappoint me, you know. I've barely even broken a sweat yet and you're at the end of your ropes here." Sage Naruto sighed.</p><p>A metallic-tinted blur cut through the gloom and the shadows of the Black Cube, aimed straight for Naruto's heart. A flesh-piercing noise followed shortly by Naruto's loud grunt, Naruto could not see much but red. All he felt was a sharp pain in between his shoulder and his chest while his eyes gone out completely, black and red with stars gleaming all over, blinking in and out, blinding him in light while the Sage already felt plenty blinded by the pain that took him over.</p><p>"Heh, heh…" Orochimaru cackled in an exhausted voice that was equal part worn out of traces of stamina and vitality it once had just as it felt affected by a great deal of physical struggle and battle damage. A sword sticking out from Orochimaru's throat made it difficult for the serpentine Sennin to enunciate clearly. A blade that extended all the way out of Orochimaru's throat and pierced Naruto in between his breast and his shoulder, pinning him to the wall of the cube all the way on the other side of the Black Cube.</p><p>"Darn it… I felt the spark of bad intents outta you and still…" Sage Naruto lamented his dip in reaction time while blood made its way through his teeth and down his mouth.</p><p>"Don't sell yourself short, boy, it's only because of the unnatural sensory abilities that you redirected the blade to a more favorable spot to be impaled in, as opposed to me ending your life instantly. Not even that cursed Fox you host would have saved you from a direct skewering of your heart…" Orochimaru hissed out while his elongated head held his head in place to keep Sage Naruto pinned to the wall. Naruto clenched the blade, trying to keep it stuck in place but the blade then quickly retracted back into Orochimaru's mouth, slicing into Naruto's hands as well.</p><p>The Sennin's body began to bubble and bloat out of shape, as if something even more ungodly had been boiling down underneath his skin and flesh. While Orochimaru was exceptionally lively and had unmatched regenerative abilities, his flesh was not the thickest out of the bunch and thus it burst, revealing eight serpentine heads taking it to the air from deep down in his body.</p><p>"To think that I would be pushed to this. Set back through all that I have managed to gather here on this universe, my Eight Heads of Orochi… Destroyed. I now have only the eyes of the Dragon God and the inhuman speed and power granted by this universe's chakra left. You deserve to melt for a thousand years in the stomach of the greatest and strongest serpent out of them all." Orochimaru cursed Naruto while the Sage fell on his knees and stared at his opponent, bleeding with serial and thick droops from his wound.</p><p>"Manda?" Sage Naruto grunted.</p><p>"Manda? No. By using the Power of Reincarnation of the white snake, I can transform into the mightiest white serpent in existence, boasting a colossal body far surpassing that of the Manda. A jutsu that was described by our predecessors as the mightiest snake titan. Just the scales of its abdomen are enough to dwarf entire buildings, a reptile transcending the mere description of a snake, an entity befitting the Dragon God!" Orochimaru's head joined in on the fleshy mess that his body had turned into while all of his remains became devoted to unleashing the eight heads of white, spiky scales so massive that they truly did appear more like a dragon than a snake.</p><p>In between the root of each head, a bare-chested and completely reborn top of Orochimaru's body emerged, spreading its arms out in joy as the Sennin celebrated his rebirth over Naruto's reeling in pain body.</p><p>"Behold the Eight-Headed Serpent Jutsu and lament your pathetic, mortal coil!" Orochimaru hissed in a voice that suggested a complete shedding of all wounds he had previously sustained in battle.</p><p>"I'll have to put all of my remaining Natural Energy into this, you know!" Sage Naruto jumped up on his feet while the eight heads of the Eight-Headed Serpent reared their fangs at him, striking with the intent of reducing him to a bloody stain. A pillar of force erupting outward raised a shockwave that resonated throughout the entire cube. When the Eight-Headed Serpent cocked its heads back for an examination of the devastation it had wrought, it couldn't see Naruto or feel him anywhere in between its fangs.</p><p>Orochimaru gazed upward, witnessing a pair of Naruto's clones assisting him in forming a Rasengan and then changing its shape while still in mid-air. The Sennin allowed the snake's majestic form to reabsorb him into safety while the Eight-Headed Serpent loaded its fangs and tensed its muscles for another strike. As if challenging the titanic reptile, Naruto roared while his Rasenshuriken took shape. The completed jutsu left Naruto's hand at roughly the same time as the Eight-Headed Serpent raced to destroy the airborne sage. Naruto's feet touched the ground with all traces of Natural Energy having completely left his body, observing the orb of revolving destruction above.</p><p>A sound of slick, metallic slide through the air drowned out in a rough thud and a fleshy splash of blood. Naruto's body turned sideways as his arm had managed to grab Orochimaru's Kusanagi sword and redirect it in mid-air at the cost of aggravating his hand injuries.</p><p>"I told you, Naruto-kun. You will never defeat somebody that has left his mortality behind if you cling on to that which eventually ends all humans. Death is a curse and a plague upon humanity, you are just a boil of that plague to be crushed and abandoned alongside that loathsome relic." Orochimaru hissed while the Eight-Headed Serpent emerged unharmed from the total mayhem which Naruto's Rasenshuriken packed with all of his remaining Natural Energy had raised.</p><p>"Damn it, what are you, completely immune to physical damage, you know?" Naruto grunted in complaint while standing up and straightening his back. His straight and confident stance challenged the Eight-Headed Serpent to try its best to do its worst.</p><p>"Can't you see the contradiction, Naruto-kun? As someone who accepts death as inevitable, you writhe and do your best to elude it. Even when it is staring you right in the face, you choose to defy it despite being utterly defeated." Orochimaru taunted Naruto further.</p><p>"Who said anything about being beaten? Sure, I accept the fact that people die sometimes. It sucks, you know, it hurts. My mom and my dad, Pervy Sage… Still, it's human to die. I wouldn't have become the person I am today if it weren't for the sacrifices that mom and dad and Pervy Sage made before their deaths. I won't let you desecrate that sacrifice, you know!" Naruto swiped his hand aside, defying Orochimaru's taunts and splattering the blood from his injured hands across the floor of Black Cube.</p><p>"Fine then, if you won't see the contradiction, if you will continue to sing death's praises while running away from it like a thick-skulled brat that you are, I'll force it onto you just like it was forced onto me when my parents died! I'll show you the true face of death and force you to understand the pain and changes it brings. With your hands in their current state, you won't be able to perform any jutsu so you will be just as powerless to prevent death as everyone else who experienced it are." Orochimaru taunted Naruto while letting the Eight-Headed Serpent absorb his body and attack Naruto.</p><p>A dull crack echoed through the Black Cube when the Eight-Headed Serpent hit a golden barrier of chakra head-on. A violent eruption of unmatched force summoned from deep down within Naruto while the overflow of chakra intensified into a solid pillar that stopped only upon the top of the Black Cube's ceiling where its flow dispersed. When the pillar of chakra dissolved, Naruto stood covered in a golden cloak of chakra.</p><p>Naruto's pupils became slit, the whiskers over his cheeks became more pronounced to where they appeared more like black facial markings rather than whiskers. As the strength of the future Seventh continued to escalate upward, thick, blazing orange outlines completed his sudden transformation and burst in strength.</p><p>The Eight-Headed Serpent hissed out a shockwave blast of air all around it, infuriated and baffled by the fact that mere aftereffects of this transformation threw it off and out of balance. It raced onward to crush the transformed Naruto but the cloaked Jinchuuriki moved like an orange flash, just a mere blur interconnecting several blazing gleams where he connected with brutal kicks, swatting aside each and every head of the Eight-Headed Serpent and sending them slamming down on the ground.</p><p>The rampaging kicker blitz took it to the air and then performed a crushing divekick to the center of the shaken serpentine titan, delivering a finishing blow that forced the Eight-Headed Serpent to dissolve into tens of thousands of white snakes all of which scurried for cover, abandoning a single, featureless body of Orochimaru wearing nothing but black, baggy, torn trousers to swim out of the demise of his mightiest snake technique.</p><p>"It's over, Orochimaru, I don't need my hands to finish kicking your ass, you know!" Naruto in his Nine-Tails Chakra Cloak form declared. "You're too weak to run away too. In this form, and in your current state, you'd never give me the slip, you know."</p><p>"So it seems that I might have been wrong about you all along…" Orochimaru chuckled in pain, feeling the tremendous shortage of chakra that he rarely ever had to face. "You're no ramen, you're not talentless after all, in fact, your talent might just surpass that of Sasuke-kun himself. What a disgusting oversight… The kind of that leads to the death of anyone lesser than me, right?"</p><p>"You're wrong, you know!" Naruto said. "It's not because you've abandoned your mortality that you won't die. It's because we are better than to kill you. That is the answer to what you've been looking for, Orochimaru, that's the true oversight, you know. You don't deal with death by throwing away your humanity and embracing delusions about all this rebirth and snake-regeneration shit. You make people stop fighting and killing each other, you leave death to run its natural course, you let people's lives end when it's time so that the emptiness and pain you felt when your parents died would never be experienced by anyone ever again."</p><p>"You're such a child, Naruto-kun…" Orochimaru replied. "Were your own parents, was Jiraiya not murdered by fools that thought the same way to you? Idiots suffering the pain of loss yet clinging to the humanity filled to the brim with death and torment all the same? Your path only leads to dealing out more of the same. The only end to death's nightmare is to root it out like a weed and let it die in harsh sunlight, begging for a droplet of water. But don't worry, Naruto-kun… Your body will still serve that use to me…"</p><p>Orochimaru's body jerked and snapped back, something massive forced his jaw to snap open while a white coil burst forth from inside him, similar to how the serpentine Sennin shed from his old body and took the form of a new though it would have seemed pointless to do so right now, given how his body was short on chakra and not injured at the moment. Emerging from the human body it had shed was a giant, white snake with spiky scales, similar to one of the heads of the Eight-Headed Serpent but donning Orochimaru's long, black hair and a much pointier chin.</p><p>Orochimaru's True Form he had acquired after countless experiments on his human body, aiming to abandon as much of it as possible had finally emerged with the Sennin having seemingly transcended and left his human coil behind, adopting a much-desired form of the white snake and its regenerative qualities of rebirth. An avatar to the Power of White Snake itself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0658"><h2>658. A Celestial End Of The Dragon-God</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So you've finally shown your true self, you know," Naruto stated with bluntness and daring that one would not have expected to see from a young man facing off against a massive snake while one's own arms were injured.</p><p>"It's a pity that I had to show my hand so early, I had intended to absorb more of your Nature Chakra and finish you off with my own Sage Mode but this new power of yours mucked it all up." Orochimaru hissed out, his voice turned huskier by his transformation but also augmented, despite its husky, whisper-like tone, it spread far and wide and the volume of the Sennin's speech boomed all throughout.</p><p>"I didn't intend on making this convenient for you anyway, you know," Naruto smirked. He put up his arms despite his hands still recovering from his wounds sustained earlier. The Kusanagi Sword which Orochimaru used was no ordinary blade nor was it an alien concept for the man aligning himself with snakes to apply venom on his blades. Regenerating slashes, even ones localized in his hands, took more time than Naruto had intended, that much was evident from his lack of a carefree attitude.</p><p>"I will take your body, but before I do that, I'll see you dance, Naruto-kun!" Orochimaru hissed, as every minute scale on his serpentine body opened up beaming, ebony eyes of their own. Every scale on the Sennin's body was a serpent, living, and breathing and most importantly – regenerating with the same efficiency as their master.</p><p>The white strands of living reptilian tendrils extended and sent Naruto into a blitzing trip. It took a mere blink for the cloaked Jinchuuriki to outrace Orochimaru's attempts to entangle him though Orochimaru drove him further and further into the corner by merely sealing off the room and making utilizing his full speed a harking task for Naruto. It didn't take long before one snake managed to latch onto Naruto's numb hand and then wrap itself around it and the rest were quick to follow.</p><p>Muffled grunts of pain did make out from the pulsing and constricting cocoon that Naruto became trapped in. Orochimaru's own head slowly moved toward the subdued enemy, wary of possible diversions and his expectations for an easy feast to be subverted. A marigold glow found its way to squeeze out and illuminate the Black Cube, shocking Orochimaru and forcing the serpentine Sennin to slither its upper body away from potential threats.</p><p>With a combined roar of Naruto and something more bestial, a vigorous construct of pure, bright chakra burst forth from inside the white coils. Orochimaru tried pulling his head back, reeling from the intensity of the chakra's brightness and sheer destructive power but found his head pressed against the cube's wall. In this case, his tremendous size served also as a disadvantage though it was one both he and his opponent now shared for Naruto was no longer just Naruto. His chakra cloak had formed a haori-like formation, floating freely behind him while a form of the Nine-Tailed Fox created a living armor around its Jinchuuriki.</p><p>"T-This…This is… Combination Transformation?" Orochimaru hissed out, his once booming and powerful voice, while still just as vociferous, became drowned out by the valorous glow of Nine-Tailed Fox's more ethereal form.</p><p>"No. I've had to acquire all sorts of new powers to get rid of that parasite-guy. Let's just say that I don't need my own arms when Kurama can lend me his." Naruto yelled out from inside the standing and breathing cloak of chakra he floated in.</p><p>"Are you sure about this brat? You've skipped and pranced around actually ironing this out, we won't be able to last long in this form and if we mess it up, you'll get no more help from me, not even the Cloak Mode." A much more malevolent sounding voice boomed in the area.</p><p>"Speaking out loud, aren't you? Yeah, it might be good to let this snake-bastard now what he's dealing with now, you know…" Naruto beamed out a smile of excitement and childish aloofness. "Don't worry, by the time this times out, my own arms should be healed up. I've thought this through a bit, you know…"</p><p>"Alright… This snake's caused us plenty of trouble before, I've been itching to sink my claws and teeth into him for a long time!" the Nine-Tails' voice boomed, sending shockwaves from the mouth of the ethereal cloak of the Nine-Tails as if it was truly the Nine-Tails speaking.</p><p>"So you're talking to that thing then… I see… It makes sense, it seemed as if though you were acting a bit too intelligent at times. It whispering into your ear explains that." Orochimaru regained his composure and took a low, stalking stance, ready to lash out for the Nine-Tails' throat the moment it makes a move, regardless of if the construct of chakra even had organs and vitals to hurt.</p><p>"It's not like that, we're partners now, deal with it, you know!" Naruto pointed at Orochimaru while the Nine-Tails lashed out with rapid claw slashes. Blood sprayed and littered the floor of the Black Cube, sinking its floor in a layer of the fluid while hundreds of snakes perished underneath the claws of the Nine-Tails. Despite its valiant efforts, it failed to reach anything of note inside that bothersome construct of white snakes that Orochimaru had become.</p><p>With a singular, focused dash, Orochimaru coiled around the Nine-Tails with all of his body while every tiny, living scale tried sinking its fangs through the Nine-Tails' cloak. Naruto felt chakra surging outside of his body almost immediately as every single ounce of it was necessary to maintain the integrity of the Nine-Tails' cloak shape.</p><p>"Get off 'o me!" the Nine-Tails roared alongside Naruto while they pushed their arms to the sides, forming a thunderous shockwave with their voice that ripped, bashed and ground the white snakes into mush once again, Orochimaru's head, thrust by the powerful bash of the shockwave, slammed against the Black Cube and the Nine-Tails was quick to press its paw against the snake's head to prevent it from moving.</p><p>The Nine-Tails grinned before driving its hand forward, feeling the adamant and unmoving texture of the enigmatic Black Cube and smashing the snake's head, feeling its contents dripping and flowing over its ethereal arm and boiling away into smoke and vapor in his heat.</p><p>The headless snake slumped on the floor, its body twitched a pair of times, oozing off some more blood for a few belches and went limp. Even the thousands of snakes composing the scales of the White Snake Form all relaxed their snouts and showed not a single sign of life. Naruto looked around, his eyes saw more than just a crimson vapor collecting in the room.</p><p>"Something's off, you know…" he muttered.</p><p>"Stop playin' dead, you asshole!" the Nine-Tails let out a mighty roar while spitting out a sphere of black and white chakra from its mouth that swallowed both opponents upon detonation, sinking the Black Cube in a flash.</p><p>Once the flash died out, Naruto and the Nine-Tails stood to smell the ashes of their destruction. The Nine-Tails looked around in synchrony to the ninja floating in the center of the cloak. Each one of them browsing the field for the source of something peculiar that they picked up.</p><p>"His chakra is still all over the place, it's weak but he's gonna get us if he gets a drop on us, you know," Naruto warned the Nine-Tails. Whatever reply he received came to him telepathically, similarly to how the fox has been communicating to its Jinchuuriki up until now.</p><p>A mere snout of a white snake peeked from the layer of blood, due to its massive size and the vast area that he had to cover, Naruto might not have noticed it. The layer of blood underneath the Nine-Tails' feet bubbled on and on as if boiling. This could not have escaped the attention of the colossus. Naruto looked down behind him and witnessed the booming rebirth of Orochimaru in a white pillar of coiling serpents, all rising up in a shapeless pile before yellow eyes opened up and gleamed through the spaces in-between the living scales at the head, a bony protrusion shot out for a pointy chin and black hair began sprouting and falling down from the snake's head.</p><p>"This runt just won't die!" the Nine-Tails growled.</p><p>"Death is reserved for humans. I have abandoned such flimsy things!" Orochimaru hissed with all of his might. "I must admit, I did not see it coming that your cloak would protect you from the paralyzing fumes in the blood of the white snakes. It's a most amusing discovery. Still, without a way to defeat me, it's just a matter of time, you'll run out of chakra before long and fall prey to the fumes yet."</p><p>"I can sense your chakra, you know," Naruto called Orochimaru's bluff. "It's taking a massive dip every time you have to regenerate. Who knows if you can even survive a hit like the last one, you know. Your evil intent falters as well, I can sense it weakening."</p><p>"Next thing you'll say is that you'll convert me to your side, talk me out of my plans…" Orochimaru hissed, mocking the very root of such a thought.</p><p>"No, I don't think I can do that yet. You're too far up your own ass for that, you'll need some time to think what you've done through before you can try to redeem yourself by applying that head of yours on something useful, you know." Naruto pointed at Orochimaru.</p><p>"What can be more useful than eternal life and infinite knowledge?" Orochimaru extended its head onward as if slowly attempting to wrap itself around the Nine-Tails.</p><p>"Don't you know? Oh… I guess I got too wrapped up in all the punching to tell you…" Naruto smirked and rubbed the back of his head. "It was you who helped me deal with that body-parasite-guy from the future. I've tried getting in touch with Kurama, the Six-Paths old-geezer and countless versions of me and Boruto from all over the multiverse. It was a version of you that helped me process and get rid of him, seal off all the evil parts and keep the good parts, you know."</p><p>"Six-Paths? You've met the Sage of Six-Paths?" Orochimaru's eyes widened, extending the black markings around his eyes to where they drowned out the majority of his serpentine head.</p><p>"That's right, I got all that power outta him and I could use it swat you aside but I won't. I won't because I wanna help you become the person you can be, you know. That Orochimaru, the one that helped me, that guy was happy. Older than you, a heck of a lot smarter but more importantly – happy and carefree. I know you can be that guy too, you know. No… You will be that guy, as long as I, or Sasuke, ruin that for you, you know." Naruto growled out at the transformed Sennin.</p><p>"Hey, could you please not try that talking routine on him while we're literally bleeding chakra just keeping this transformation together?" the Nine-Tails complained at Naruto.</p><p>"Hmph… And what makes you so sure of that? That I would ever waste my time helping you get rid of some body-hopping space-ninja when I could be gathering all the knowledge in the world and transcend human mortality?" Orochimaru seemed to spit at Naruto's revelation.</p><p>"Because you don't know something that the other you told me. He said he used to be a lot like you until he realized that one thing that helped him open his eyes for once!" Naruto pointed his finger at Orochimaru, defiant of the Nine-Tails' warning.</p><p>"And what would that be?" Orochimaru tilted his head to the side, the inner curiosity that led him to pursue all the knowledge in the world once fueling his need to know, even if he was sure he wouldn't pay it much heed.</p><p>"That when you're constantly worried about dying, you're not living at all, you know!" Naruto stated. "All this time you've been running away from death and it hasn't been chasing you all that hard because secretly, deep down, you know you've been dead all along. Dead on the inside, too busy and too consumed by your race with death to live just one day."</p><p>Orochimaru's eyes widened and he froze for a second. His golden eyes disappeared in the blackness of the space between the scales and the black spikes of his hair fell over his snout, covering those voids up. Once those eyes opened again, Orochimaru's head lunged with a wicked bite straight at the Nine-Tails' core, where Naruto floated.</p><p>The Nine-Tails raised its arms over its head for a double ax-handle slam but its arms just phased through the lunging snake, Naruto felt weightless, falling down from the chest of the Nine-Tails' cloak where he had been situated all this time. The warmth of it no longer caressing his skin. Just the breeze of one long fall and the drenching of blood that seeped inside and through his sandals when the young man fell onto the ground. At least with the disappearance of most of his target, Orochimaru had missed his mark too, but he now loomed over Naruto as if attempting to swallow him whole with his hateful eyes alone.</p><p>"What utter rubbish, did you really think you'd talk me down with that? You should have gone ahead and used all of your power when you had the chance. You were right, you know. My body is at the brink of running dry at which point I might have truly died. I have never been disgraced like this, never been this close to death and for that, I will never forgive you, Naruto!" Orochimaru hissed out with a booming voice that shook and rustled the very blood that filled the ground underneath Naruto's feet.</p><p>"Tsk!" Naruto growled while he looked at his frozen arm, no longer did his Nine-Tails' cloak protect him, not even his clutch method of letting the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode cover him up worked. He needed the full Tailed-Beast transformation or nothing would have worked. Nine-Tails Chakra Mode or Six-Paths Mode, Sage Mode or any other trick Naruto had in his book…</p><p>"That's right, Naruto. Breathe in the blood you've shed and let it freeze you in place. Look at what you've done, ruining my perfect body and forcing me to jump into someone like you. Then again, all that talk of Six-Paths and space-ninja did sound intriguing, maybe I'll look around and see just how much your talentless shell has grown. I might not be able to perform the Living Corpse Reincarnation for three more years, but I have other ways of transferring my soul!" Orochimaru snapped his jaw open and let a single, pure-white serpent slither from his mouth, scale-less and colorless as if comprised of white clay.</p><p>The serpent slithered over Naruto's frozen body which could only twitch in a sluggish manner of resistance as it moved up Naruto's mouth. A flash! The snake wriggled powerless in Naruto's hand. Marigold skin and spiky hair moved freely, rustled by the outburst of chakra leaking out from his body. The cloak turned black down where the body began except for the silver and sky-blue sealing marks spreading with oriental, tendril-like formations on Naruto's abdomen. A white haori covered his shoulders and upper arms, flowing behind him until it ended in a flaming shape decorated with four diamonds, two black and two white with black outlines.</p><p>The snake let out a hiss, a pale comparison of the might of voice it had once wielded. Naruto in his current, Celestial Form pointed the snake he grasped in his arm toward the collapsed body of Orochimaru's True Form that was withering away now that he had transferred his soul and his consciousness inside a single scale-snake and sent it to occupy Naruto's body.</p><p>"You utter imbecile, as expected from a lesser-being such as you…" a strict voice made the snake coil around Naruto's wrist to gander at an ethereal shape of Isshin Ootsutsuki manifesting behind Naruto. "You were told that my Vessel has met an older, wiser version of you. Did you truly think he was not told exactly how to humiliate your pathetic self?"</p><p>"Calm down now, you know…" Naruto exclaimed in a calm tone very much unlike him. "I only let you out because it was the only way to catch Orochimaru's soul while paralyzed."</p><p>The snake still struggled to escape Naruto's grasp. If snakes had the capacity in them to cry, it would have surely shed oceans of tears for the withering body that was burning up in azure flames and seeding the puddles of blood that lingered in the cube after the massive battle.</p><p>"You see, my body is no longer just my own. It's hosting all sorts of interesting souls so it was naïve of you to think you could just hop in and take it over, you know." Naruto calmly explained. "Even if I was in my Nine-Tails Chakra Mode or my Six-Paths Mode, Kurama would have likely kicked you out all the same."</p><p>"If only you didn't skimp around on your training and fail to properly control all those forms, you lesser being. If it wasn't for me, you'd never be able to access this Celestial Being form at all. Even then, you are only borrowing it. I wouldn't mind letting you stay in this form however long you like though, just think of the power of a Celestial Being becoming all your own, think about it, Vessel…" Isshin began bartering with his host who seemed all to disinterested as if he had heard this tale all too many times.</p><p>"Sorry about this guy. I'm kind of stuck with him ever since I've mastered the Celestial Mode. I thought we've cleansed every cell of this guy but the moment I've perfected this mode, he just started showing up and emerging like that, you know. The other you said it might be a fraction of Isshin's consciousness or something like that, nothing to worry about but… I guess you can't rid of those Celestial Beings that easy, you know." Naruto sighed after a calm explanation, lacking any of his usual vigor. Orochimaru's soul-snake just slumped in surrender in the young man's arm.</p><p>As Orochimaru's True Form body dissolved, forever burning the body of Pain it had inhabited in the azure flames of his demise, Naruto casually lobbed the snake up. Orochimaru's soul-snake wriggled around for a while as if wanting to glide away into freedom and escape but a black portal, shaped like a massive ink-stain gobbled him up.</p><p>Now that the paralyzing blood vapors no longer filled the room, Naruto was all too happy to get rid of his Celestial Mode and the passenger he manifested along the way. The young man then turned toward a corner of the Black Cube and raised a lively thumb-up, confirming his victory and that his opponent was no longer a threat to this or any other universe now that he would spend however long the lifespan of a soul was in the dimension Naruto threw him to.</p><p>Now there was just the matter of the Chuunin Exams to see through…</p>
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<a name="section0659"><h2>659. Sheer Luck Foibles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Seventh swooped down by Naruto's side, entering the Black Cube now that Naruto's fight with Orochimaru had concluded. The elder of the two versions of Naruto raised his arm to pat the shoulder of his other self but then his hand froze. Having realized that it would seem a bit too weird to try and act fatherly with himself from a different point in time, Naruto crossed his arms over his chest to make the motion of his arm seem less awkward when caught in mid-motion.</p><p>"Alright then, now that that's dealt with, you know…" Seventh Naruto nodded in approval. "We can deal with the finals of the Chuunin Exams at last."</p><p>"Hmm… It's a real bummer that I didn't get my promotion, you know…" Naruto deflated his posture by letting his arms and head sink down in powerlessness. He might have been the most powerful person in that room but he still acted like the goofball he truly was inside.</p><p>"There are things more important than rank, you know. I, for one, became Hokage while still being a genin." The Seventh gave his younger self an encouraging thumb up. "I've tried the Chuunin Exams plenty of times but things just didn't work out in the end… Luck has a lot to do with this trial, you know."</p><p>"Yeah, I guess mine's just the lousiest…" Naruto sighed.</p><p>"Oh, I wouldn't say that…" the Seventh looked back at Kiyomi and Meiko flickering beside him with beaming smiles.</p><p>"Naruto, that was awesome!" Meiko cheered on him.</p><p>"We were wondering if we'd ever get to see you again. Boy did we…" Kiyomi nodded with a more reserved expression, being the one less subservient to hype of the duo.</p><p>"Thanks!" Naruto straightened his back up and began rubbing his nose in embarrassment. It was not often that people paid him praise, despite his immense talent, which made him less than ideal at stomaching compliments like a professional.</p><p>"That reminds me, everyone in the finals, can you gather around, you know?" the Seventh turned back at a blank point in the wall of the Black Cube. Before long, flickers accompanied by shifty buzzing lagging behind them informed the Seventh Hokage that the finalists had gathered.</p><p>"Now that Orochimaru is gone, that makes twenty of you, it seems." The Seventh smiled to the gathered circle of finalists. "You can say goodbye to the Dimensional Cube, Shikamaru's going to send it back after we leave. The finals are gonna take place in the Stadium here in the village. Everyone that wants to see it is going to have the chance and, I'd imagine, it will require some additional renovation to accommodate everyone from across the multiverse. In addition, it will be broadcasted all over the different timelines and universes, you know."</p><p>"So then the finals aren't going to be a tournament, just a series of ten bouts?" Sasuke bent his head to the side without dropping his power-hungry, maniacal look for a second despite having just seen Orochimaru being vanquished before his eyes.</p><p>"That's right though… I have to wonder, what is it exactly that you are looking to accomplish in these exams, Sasuke?" the Seventh wondered. "Orochimaru is gone, his soul is sealed away while his body has withered away like the humanity he had abandoned. Itachi is dead as well."</p><p>"He wasn't my Itachi. I had wanted to crush anything that stood in the way of my revenge though I still lack the power to do so. Right now, I will be content with just staying in this universe for as long as possible and taking in all the power it resonates with, then, I will eradicate every version of Itachi in the multiverse. Then, I can work with deleting him from as many histories as I can. Do you have a problem with that?" Sasuke challenged the Seventh with his glare.</p><p>"The problem I have with you is not mine to correct." The Seventh sighed.</p><p>"Leave it to me, you know!" the younger Naruto pumped his fist. "Sasuke, we're due for a long talk after this, there're a lot of things I've learned during my expedition across the multiverse and… I won't try to change your mind, just tell you what you need to know. What you do after that is up to you, you know."</p><p>"Save it until after the exams," Sasuke shook his head. "Right now I enjoy the strength and focus coursing through my veins. While I don't think anything you say can weaken that bond between me and my vengeance, one thing I have to admit is, that you continue to defy people's expectations and I have to take that into account."</p><p>"Right." Naruto nodded.</p><p>A dot of crimson drew from the Seventh's thumb before the Hokage finished his collection of hand seals and drove his palm onto the ground, calling forth a pair of toads that could not have differed more greatly one from another. One appeared more like a frog than a toad, larger than a mere frog and of coarser, thicker skin whereas the other paled the rest of the examinees by standing tall enough to host the Seventh Naruto on his forehead. Huge and purple with a lighter shade of pink shining on its underside and distinct red markings around his eyes.</p><p>"These will help us determine the matchups. If you guys would please place your hands onto the back of the smaller fellow and just focus your chakra into your palm, as if attempting to burn through his skin, you know." The Seventh requested.</p><p>One by one, the finalists approached the little Gekomatsu and focused their chakra as requested, leaving a temporary, black imprint on the back of the froggy toad. With each successive chakra signature in its possession, Gekomatsu appeared to grow more and more excited, switching between phases of thanking the Seventh for bringing him here and exclaiming phrases of profound excitement at each approaching individual as well after they left.</p><p>"Oh, yeah! This is great! The Rainbow Toad Stone is all shiny and glittery now!" Gekomatsu croaked out as if he had just had a meal of his life and needed a smoke.</p><p>"Do your thing then, Gekomatsu, you know." The Seventh sighed, not liking the look that this summon of his choice put him in, judging from the awkward faces of the finalists reflecting on the toad's behavior.</p><p>"Right! Chakra Entity Creation!" Gekomatsu opened its mouth, releasing a rainbow gleam of conflicting colors that constantly bickered with one another for dominance. Pearly shapes of the finalists stood in the middle of the overwhelming light, obscuring it somewhat and providing a weak cover from the intense beam before absorbing enough of the rainbow glitter to obtain life and colors of their own.</p><p>"Now it's your turn, Gamagoro…" the Seventh Naruto looked down at the massive toad he stood on, which took no time at all to open its mouth and swoop all of the created chakra entities into its mouth. Judging by the powerful gleam breaking through his skin and flesh from inside its belly, the toad had swallowed those lifelike copies of each finalist up inside its stomach.</p><p>"Pachi-Pachi, Kaku-Kaku!" Gamagoro sang out before switching the direction of air streaming into his mouth to instead blow it out, freeing two Chakra Entities from the prison of its stomach.</p><p>"Shinki from Sunagakure against Blusckel Steinck from Iwagakure for the first match." Gekomatsu read out before the Chakra Entities dispersed into a burst of the total light show that gave them their origin in the first place.</p><p>Gamagoro continued to release Chakra Entities by a pair of two to determine the matches to take place in the finals. As they appeared, Gekomatsu read out the pair's names before the pair went away.</p><p>"Quill B from Kumogakure against Karatachi Ume from Kirigakure for the second match."</p><p>"Teclaim Laoch from Hoshigakure against Tsuru Itoi from Konohagakure for the third match."</p><p>"Tala from Sunagakure against Ripper Inaba from Kumogakure for the fourth match."</p><p>"Relta Ginn from Hoshigakure against Tasure Kaeron from Kirigakure for the fifth match."</p><p>"Boruto Uzumaki from Konohagakure against Gennai from Konohagakure for the sixth match."</p><p>"Gurker Gliesse from Iwagakure against Toroi from Kumogakure for the seventh match."</p><p>"Wakizashi Meiko from Konohagakure against Sunny-Lee from Kumogakure for the eighth match."</p><p>"Temari from Sunagakure against Fuyo from Amegakure for the ninth match."</p><p>"Sasuke Uchiha from Konohagakure against Yamanaka Kiyomi for the tenth match."</p><p>After the readout was complete, the toads gave the examinees a moment to process the matches that were declared. The competing genin proceeded to inspect their opponents as by now they had the chance to familiarize themselves with their opposition now that it was trimmed down to an amount more suitable for memorization and proper analysis.</p><p>A lot would weigh on the opposition. Not only in the most obvious sense that an opponent too powerful to defeat would make promotion difficult and failing to get promoted after conquering such colossal odds would be disappointing to accept the path of putting it mildly. The best opponent was not a weakling that one could trounce easily but instead a worthy opponent that could draw out one's best in a match in order that one's strategic thinking on the battlefield and potential could be on full display for the council judging ninja worthy of promotion.</p><p>"Alright then, if any of you skimmed through your training, hoping to skip along through sheer luck, I hope that ends now, you know. I'll accept that strategy if only because it worked out for you until now, due to how bold it was for you to choose that path but luck will not help you in the slightest in the finals when you have to step out there and show all you have to some of the most remarkable ninja from across the multiverse who would decide if you cut it or not. I'd advise you guys to use that final month until the finals take place by pushing yourselves to the limit one day and living to the fullest the next, prepare for this event as if your futures depended on it because they just might, you know."</p><p>A man with long and spiky, mahogany hair and a stubble flickered in beside the Seventh Naruto, placing his hand on the Seventh's shoulder. The two standing one beside another seemed like quite the pair, if anything, because of the matching white cloaks and triangular hats with the kanji of "Fire" decorating it. The two Sevenths did not meet in public often but the weight of this moment demanded it.</p><p>"I assume that the semi-finals are through then? The finalists have been filtered out?" Uzumaki Midoben, the Lord Seventh of the hosting universe wondered.</p><p>"That's right, these twenty are the ones, you know." The Seventh Naruto nodded.</p><p>"And that criminal that hitched a ride? Orochimaru, was it?" the Seventh wondered.</p><p>"We've dealt with him as intended, you know." The Seventh Naruto replied.</p><p>"So then we have no other security threats to worry about?" Midoben turned to his fellow Seventh with a less than pleased expression. He did not look at all pleased by the fact that his peer allowed a known and revered criminal in his universe's history to roam the Chuunin Exams and act as he pleased almost all the way until the finals.</p><p>"None, you know." The Seventh Naruto answered while looking at Sasuke Uchiha with a calm demeanor. Sasuke could only smirk and look away.</p><p>"Well, if this person is who you are trying to cover for with your lies, Lord Seventh, perhaps there truly is no danger to the village or the exams, at this moment." Uzumaki Midoben turned his back to Seventh Naruto who gulped once, doing his best to conceal his freak-out over the fact he got caught red-handed the moment he decided to try and play the man who once managed the Village Protection and whose very job it was to be paranoid about every spark of chakra signature inside the village walls.</p><p>"As you were, guys…" the Seventh Naruto let the finalists free with a bitter look on his face. He stroked the back of his head, pondering if the Lord Seventh of the hosting universe would try anything against Sasuke or not. The most dangerous people were the ones with whom Naruto could honestly never tell that. The confusion on Seventh Naruto's face suggested that Midoben's intentions fooled even his own sensory of negative emotions, suggesting that either Midoben had no negative intent or that he didn't consider anything that he was about to do negative with every trace of his being.</p><p>Every murderer, no matter how well their ideology masked their crimes, no matter how often they convinced themselves to be the hero of the story, always knew deep down that murder was a foul act, no matter if it was justified or not. A rebel knew that overthrowing the country by force, even if for the better good, was by no means a noble and guilt-free act. Therefore, either Midoben was merely calmed by Naruto's explanation and the fact he could peer through his lies this easily, or he genuinely was so full of his own ideology that he would not consider his acts evil even on a subconscious level.</p><p>There was something fearsome about a man that felt completely guilt-free in everything he thought and did.</p><p>"Yo!" Naruto waved his arm in front of the Seventh Naruto's face. "Everyone's gone already, you know, what about me!?"</p><p>"Hmm? What about you? Why aren't you gone, you know?" the Seventh Naruto looked back at the younger alternate version of himself.</p><p>"I dunno… I don't think I wanna leave this universe just yet. Not until everyone's heading out. I kinda wondered if you had something for me to do in the meantime, you know…" Naruto shrugged.</p><p>"Well… I might need a tutor for Boruto, you know…" the Seventh scratched his head.</p><p>"Screw that, you deadbeat! Train your own son, you know!" Naruto freaked out, pointing his finger like an accusatory spear at his other, older self.</p><p>"Well, I suppose that's hard but fair, you know…" the Seventh sighed and adopted the powerless sense of deflation from his younger alternate self.</p><p>"Don't worry, I'll check on Sasuke for you and make sure he doesn't make you look bad in front of the other Seventh Hokage." Naruto snickered while leaning back on his arms, the similarity between his own body language and that of Seventh Naruto's not being lost on him.</p><hr/><p>"What a weird test…" Kiyomi breathed out a sigh of relief after the finalists all left the Black Cube premises and turned back at the ordinary-looking building that housed the laws of physics-defying Dimensional Cube.</p><p>"I dunno, I kinda liked it, a free-for-all made things really clear." Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"Not that, you oaf. Didn't you see some of the guys that made it onto the finals? That Gennai guy and Toroi. Those guys were complete losers in the Battle Royal but they survived until the end because far stronger examinees feuded with each other and got themselves kicked out." Kiyomi noted.</p><p>"Maybe so, I guess the finals will show what's what. What do you plan to do for a whole month?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"I'm… Not quite sure. That Sasuke guy… I'm glad to get a chance to defeat an Uchiha for my promotion, nothing makes me more excited. The only way I could be even sunnier about it is if I got to kick Lithia's ass over it but… He's also crazy strong. It didn't look like he was trying in the Battle Royal at all and he was ruthless enough to strike down his own teammate to reduce the total numbers too." Kiyomi looked up at the bright sky.</p><p>"Are you afraid? I can help you train if you need help. You know… If you need practice, I'm sure that Lithia would help you train up too. There's no replacement to training against someone with the actual Sharingan." Meiko turned to her teammate.</p><p>"Tsk. That harpy would never let me forget it… I'm still trying to assess which would be more embarrassing, being hopelessly crushed by Sasuke Uchiha due to something I've overlooked or winning because Lithia Uchiha trained me up for him." Kiyomi sighed with a hopeless expression, dreading both options equally.</p><p>"You were quite amazing out there though. It seemed as if though you had the Sharingan with some of those crazy moves you showed off against that Kirigakure girl." Meiko complimented her teammate while the two walked toward the village center from its several south-eastern districts.</p><p>"She was on a tear, wasn't she? Then again, she'd have made a way better finalist than that Gennai guy, he's a Konoha ninja though he didn't exude any confidence or strength at all. He won by just not being where all the action was… To think I trained this hard when that was the only skill I needed." Kiyomi looked grumpy about that fact.</p><p>"Well, I can help you train, if you ever need help. I'll be working on my chakra coating, it's been progressing at a snail's pace. Maybe I should ask Hanshin to train me? Nobody has taken chakra coating further in the entire village." Meiko pondered.</p><p>"I would pay you to get to see you ask him that." Kiyomi laughed out. "Oh, you're approaching Hanshin? Do you have a proposition for Hanshin? Hanshin train you? Are you kidding me, girl? Can't you see Hanshin? He is utterly beautiful and you are not, begone now!"</p><p>"That was a pretty good impression…" Meiko had to cover her mouth so that she didn't let laughter completely overtake her. "Anyway, if you're feeling so generous as to throw money around, how about you treat me to lunch?"</p><p>"Fine, but only on the condition you actually ask Hanshin to train you." Kiyomi teased her friend with a nudge of her knuckle.</p><p>"Fine. Easiest lunch I've ever earned. He'll probably just be out on a mission or something…" Meiko shrugged.</p><p>And thus, the countdown before the finals of the Interuniversal and Intertemporal Chuunin Exams began.</p>
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<a name="section0660"><h2>660. Confession Box</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I can't believe you actually went on and gave it a shot," Kiyomi said. Meiko showing her face at the Standby Station and asking around for Hanshin didn't just impress her, everyone she asked was just as impressed.</p><p>"Yeah, well… Fat good it did me. That jerk's out on some mission and nobody even told me where." Meiko sighed. "They probably don't even know. I bet that's what it's like to be on that level, you're out changing the world and nobody even knows where you are and what you're doing."</p><p>"You gave it a shot, that's more than most people commit to." Kiyomi shrugged.</p><p>"You treated me to lunch that time, pretty much bullied me into it, you meanie. You know that I never say no to free food…" Meiko beamed red lightning bolts at her friend.</p><p>"You're the one to complain, I'm the one paying up twice, aren't I?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow. It was true that she was buying again. Even if she was the heiress of the Yamanaka clan, every time she paid for Meiko's lunch she applied respectable pressure on her sizeable wallet. It was because of that reason that it wasn't every day that Kiyomi treated her teammate to lunch, it was a special occasion, though, as Meiko has already caught on, it was also a switch to have the redhead completely under her control as well.</p><p>"Why are you all dressed up? You don't have any missions? Do you plan on getting into a fight on our way to Yakiniku?" Meiko pressed her knuckles to her hips while beaming back at Kiyomi with a worried look. For a complete oaf that she was, even she noticed Kiyomi's attire which suited for combat.</p><p>"Maybe I'm just planning on doing some training later on?" Kiyomi looked away with a flush of red on her cheeks and a squint that tried to hide away her nerves and replace them with an attempt to look angry. "You should try it too, your opponent might not be on the caliber of mine but it's not enough to just win, you've got to excel. It also wouldn't help if you dressed up right at least once…"</p><p>Meiko looked away as well, although she did so without a worry in her eyes, there was not a hint of defensiveness of leaving her home in a red shirt with edgy manga supervillain etched onto her chest in white scribbles.</p><p>Yakiniku Q was full at the time of the early evening, there was little surprise there when one thought about it though both of the girls were used to see it significantly emptier. Both of them realized something that scolded them deep down – with a large attraction being gone from the village, vacating a whole handful of everybody's free time, people found other ways to entertain themselves.</p><p>Meiko rushed to the nearest open seat and dropped her behind with an air-raid like slam. Without waiting for a special welcome, she rubbed her hand and flapped her tongue around like a wild dog. Her eyes scrolled through the menu as if looking for something, switching in between the childlike wonder of a toddler in a candy store and a hardcore war veteran scanning the battlefield for his next victim. Kiyomi just couldn't pull her eyes away from her partner, despite how silly she was acting and the supposed embarrassment she was mean to feel by merely being with her.</p><p>"I think this Choji guy, who's a friend of Naruto's, mentioned that they've brought over forty-eight new gyutan recipes over from their universe in exchange for three of ours. I wonder which one we should try first!?" Meiko slammed the menu down on the table and beamed her eyes at Kiyomi while she explained something she clearly felt passionate about and then returned to her menu, taking extra time to return back to the spot she was at before slamming it onto the table, suggesting that just dropping it was not such a bright idea in retrospect.</p><p>"I'm sure you'll try them all anyway…" Kiyomi shrugged and slipped off her black jacket off her shoulders. She was glad that Meiko felt so overjoyed, it took a whole bunch of time and effort for the Yamanaka to muster up and gather the vitality to break down to her friend what she suckered Meiko in here to tell her so it was for the better that the blacksmith didn't even approach the territory of boredom while Kiyomi got herself together.</p><p>"I will? Awww, you're being way too nice!" Meiko pumped the air with a fist, looking all too oblivious to any possible nefarious purposes that Kiyomi might have had, softening the blow with free and plentiful food.</p><p>Should she have just gone on and told her? Break it down and be done with it? If it flies, it flies and then maybe Kiyomi will feel overjoyed too and maybe even stomach eating one of those salted cow tongues herself? No. If it doesn't fly, everyone's evening will be ruined, she couldn't think about ever looking Meiko in the eyes after saying it and then just… Being rejected.</p><p>Damn this brick wall of a person! Never has Meiko expressed any significant signs of affection toward anything living. Not a drool over a pretty guy or a curious flush on her cheeks when a pretty girl spoke to her, not a hint which way she swung. This obliviousness… It made it just that more difficult, a secondary enemy to confront on the lines. Meiko spoke how Kiyomi dressed up for a mission and, for all intents and purposes, this was like a mission, hell, she hadn't felt butterflies such as those she felt right now when her life was at threat since she was a newbie just out of the Academy.</p><p>Kiyomi stretched out her hands and unzipped the collar of her sleeveless top some, just to let some air in, make herself feel more comfortable. She needed to just ease it out, wait for the right moment, just when it felt natural… It was just a normal thing to say, admittedly, a bit odd thing for a girl to say to another girl perhaps but… People said and did those things, it was nothing unusual. It was fine. It was fine!</p><p>The waitress approached. Thank goodness for her. That hardworking scout, totally oblivious to the role she was playing in Kiyomi's mission tanked all of the attention of that red-headed brute all on herself and even made Meiko more excited by engaging her in the subject she enjoyed – food. Then again, so did Kiyomi, right? She did buy Meiko food, this was just a show of good faith, why would her teammate ever get mad at her for saying it how it was? She shouldn't, she wouldn't…</p><p>"So, how's your training? You ready to kick the ass of Naruto's best friend yet?" Meiko winked at Kiyomi while bobbing and spinning around on her bottom in her armchair.</p><p>"Can we maybe not talk about training tonight?" Kiyomi faked a smile. Even though a sign of Meiko's face made her happy, she was far too nervous to make it real.</p><p>"I mean… Okay, sheesh… I wasn't aware it was that bad. I can still help you, you know…" Meiko shrugged and leaned back to flip her head back and observe the people behind her and what they were eating while she waited.</p><p>"It's not going that bad. It's just… I need one thing out of the way before I decide which direction I take my training, that's all!" Kiyomi may have made it sound a bit more uneasy than she meant it. For someone that whimpered the word "normal" in her mind at least 350 times the last couple of minutes, she was sounding like anything but that.</p><p>"Okay, fine… I get it, it's just, you got yourself dressed up for action so I thought maybe you're in the hyperactive action-girl mood or something…" Meiko shrugged after ceasing the straining of her neck and wrapped her arms over her chest while she tapped her feet waiting for her food. "Man, that smell… I can almost taste the onion!"</p><p>Hoping that Kiyomi could put anything in her mouth with her gut burning up the way it was might have been the most foolish thing she had ever thought. After the fourth time to put a chop of the cow tongue in her mouth, the deposited the chunk of meat back in the plate and gently pushed it forward up to the line where Meiko splashed the grease off of her servings while going to town on her pork.</p><p>"Hmph? What's wrong? Maybe you're sick?" Meiko found Kiyomi's odd behavior to be an excuse to not chew her food and just swallow it down, leaving it up for the grease to take the food on its fated journey through her digestive tract while the blacksmith stood up and leaned over her friend to place her hand over Kiyomi's forehead.</p><p>Even if the Yamanaka heiress did not have a single sign of a fever when she walked in the restaurant, with Meiko pressing her hand up this close, it was hopeless to try and fight it off. Kiyomi flailed her hands about and pushed Meiko back to her seat before placing her hands down on her hips and looking down. It was time, she had pushed and postponed it as long as it could have been pushed but it was time that she got herself together and taken charge. Shot from the hip and accepted the consequences.</p><p>"Look, before I tell you this, I just want to make sure that I don't want this to change anything about our relationship. You're still my most trusted ally on the field and somebody whose friendship I value more than anyone else's, okay?" Kiyomi moved the bothersome strand of hair falling over her face when she looked down, one that gone wild after she slapped around with Meiko.</p><p>"Umm… I mean… Okay…" Meiko scratched the back of her head, submerging her hand in her lengthened helm of hair while looking all too confused about what might have been coming her way. "You're not gonna admit to pulling some crime off, are you?"</p><p>"No, nothing like that… Wait, how dare you!?" Kiyomi jumped up before realizing that this outrage did nothing to help her case, prompting her to sit back down and break her offended posture far sooner than it was proper to do so, given that she needed to engage Meiko quickly before she returned to her food. "It's just that… There's something I need to tell you. The Chuunin Exams they'll… It'll be an end of something, a part of our lives and I'd rather meet that end having closed all the chapters, do you understand?"</p><p>"I don't think so but keep going, maybe I'll get what you're saying eventually?" Meiko shook her head but her kinship with Kiyomi warranted all of her patience being employed.</p><p>"Very well." Kiyomi nodded, she took a breath in and exhaled. It was the calmest that she's been that day and likely the calmest she'd get. It was either shoot now or miss the chance. "M-Meiko… For the longest time, I've had a crush on you. No. It's more than just a crush. I like you. No. That's not enough to make you understand… I love you, Meiko. I love you more than just a friend and I've been trying to show it, sometimes come as close to saying it as I could without outright saying it to your face but… You were too oblivious to see and I was too cowardly to do it right. It might be selfish, dropping this on you."</p><p>"Selfish? How so? You bought me food?" Meiko mumbled out with a face as oafish as the one she had when she started listening to Kiyomi spilling her guts out to her.</p><p>"Can you maybe just? It's been hard enough as it is…" Kiyomi almost begged Meiko to finish her off already.</p><p>"Hmm? Oh… Well… Sorry, I'm just not really looking for a relationship right now," the blacksmith grinned with a pulse of onion breath slamming Kiyomi right in the face. It was a detestable sensory tick that helped Kiyomi deal with the burn. Helped her repurpose her thoughts, lie to herself for a second that she could never love somebody with breath that stinky but… It was just her trying to stuff her guts back in at this point.</p><p>"That's it? You're not looking for a relationship right now?" Kiyomi exhaled while trying to unveil something that she thought she'd have to deal with underneath Meiko's shroud but something that she just couldn't find right now.</p><p>"Sure, did I say something dumb? Nah, it seems like a pretty normal thing to say…" Meiko placed a chopstick to her cheek, scrubbing grease and some spices over it before shrugging it off again.</p><p>"It's not weird to you at all that I'm telling you about this?" Kiyomi wondered, now feeling more curious than heartbroken.</p><p>"Well…" Meiko looked up and to the right, tapping her cheek with a chopstick again before intensifying her thoughts to bang on the table as if she was wielding drumsticks and, after finishing her energetic solo with one mighty tap, she shook her head. "Nah…"</p><p>"Right…" Kiyomi looked to the people having a good time along with their friends on her left and deeper in the restaurant. It had never occurred to her that the same oblivion which made Meiko indifferent to Kiyomi's advances might have made it easier for her to deal with the unorthodox confession and made it easier to swallow that pill which made her clan elders a tad uneasy when Kiyomi felt rebellious enough to let its rear peek from a corner in their presence.</p><p>A growl rumbled from her stomach. Now that she had that out of the way, she could finally have something to eat. One final breath to wash all of the worries away, a genuine smile to shut the door behind them so that they forgot the place they came from in the first place and found someone better to plague. The butterflies were gone, burnt up by the flame they rushed to maybe but…</p><p>Kiyomi hadn't noticed before how nice the leather of the armchairs felt to brush her hand over, so cool and nice. The smell of Welsh onion in the air took some getting used to but… The warmth and the cozy atmosphere would not let go of her easily that evening.</p><hr/><p>"Niece, I did not expect you here, not to mention at this hour…" the supermassive frame of Kiyomi's uncle loomed in his throne. The colossal man sat up to gaze upon his niece to take a better look at something he hadn't noticed before. It might have been something he's been looking for since she voiced her resolve to become a kunoichi but something that only showed itself in her eyes right now. "Hmmm? What's this?"</p><p>"Clearly, given how you just projected yourself to me after making me wait for fifteen minutes." Kiyomi raised her chin with a challenging gesture. "This thing you see right now is resolve. You've mentioned that the key to using your jutsu in materializing the mind is willpower. You'll find that I've settled all my matters and I've got that in spades now."</p><p>"Is that so?" Kiyomi's uncle reached out his town-spanning hand at her, he grabbed hold of her just a few twitches away from squeezing her and lifted her up only to flex his arm. Kiyomi's eyes widened in shock when an invisible barrier, a thin membrane shattered to countless pieces that disappeared into shapeless fragments of mere thought constructs they were before.</p><p>"How did…?" Kiyomi muttered.</p><p>"You thought you've had resolve, did you? Let me tell you something, brat, you wouldn't know the first thing about willpower. Tell me, what is your will truly worth? You've said that you'll kill every criminal for what they've done to Kenji and yet how many criminals did you truly challenge, how many times was it not in your benefit to do so? You've spoken much about embracing your duty as the heiress of Yamanaka and you've begun walking that path, yes, but you were always split on that decision every time you've declared it out loud." Bakuchi broke down some hard truths which led to Kiyomi kneeling before her uncle embarrassed by the failure to sustain her newest concept for a jutsu.</p><p>"Your mental armor shows promise but until your mind becomes something worth using as a shield or, better yet, a sword, it will continue breaking every time you put it to the test. Still, the fact you've materialized that armor of the mind at all shows to me that you're at last serious about it. Tell me, how serious exactly? If I am to harden you up, I need to know I'm not wasting my time here!" Bakuchi wondered.</p><p>"That Inuzuka guy you keep bringing up. The one I keep shutting down and postponing meeting. I wanna get married to that guy right after the exams. You're getting old already, it's our time now and I want to prove it!" Kiyomi put up her fist and concentrated her thoughts on it. A phantom streak extended to the right, a manifested blade of pure thought, harder than anything on the material plane and deadly to anything without appropriate defenses against this sort of power.</p><p>A smile twisted her uncle's face. Despite the massive size of the man and his construct which he projected in the temple of the Yamanaka Resort every time he decided to deal with somebody personally, Bakuchi's expressions were still tough to make out due to how distracting the rest of his features were. The giant reached to grab Kiyomi again but his hand split into two after a single slash of her mental blade.</p><p>"Oh… Now that's a sharpness of thought I am not afraid flaunting to our allies," Bakuchi Yamanaka roared out in laughter after pressing one of his arms to his exposed belly as he shook in wild laughter. His shortened arm whirled like a rustled ghost before reshaping, Kiyomi was right, back in his prime it would not have taken any time at all to repair such wounds.</p><p>With that chapter of her story closed, Kiyomi now felt free and unrestrained to look forward. It would be painful to abandon it all, Meiko, Hanasaku-sensei, the original Team Hokage but this was the cost of complete and unquestionable focus necessary to make the kind of difference Kiyomi wanted to make in this world.</p>
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<a name="section0661"><h2>661. Let's Do This Once Again, One Last Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Alright, I'm off!" Meiko waved her hand over her head, turning back to see if her parents saw her relaying her farewells. The day and the time of her departure for the finals of the Chuunin Exams felt like one of the days when she could have really used a wish for good luck or two.</p><p>"The exams, right?" father appeared from the main area of the home reserved for the workshop. He wiped his sweaty and greased forehead with an even greasier glove making an even bigger mess of himself.</p><p>"Yep!" Meiko nodded, moving her arms behind her back and nodding forward so that father could wrap his arms around her and gesture pressing her to his dirty work clothes. "If it works out – I'll get a higher rank and start bringing in more money."</p><p>"As a ninja, not as a blacksmith. Don't look at it like you're doing it for us, daughter. I could use your help around the workshop just as much as the bonus money." Father shrugged and moved away, just the fact that he wasn't engaging his hands with something for fifteen whole seconds made him anxious, the giant began rubbing his hands against his apron.</p><p>"Plus, what good's all that extra money if we don't have our girl here?" mother appeared from one of the rooms positioned around the workshop and pressed her forehead against Meiko's. Mother must have been working with lunch already, her forehead was hotter than father's and the latter spent his time around molten steel all day. Boiling or cooking something in such an environment must have been a nightmare and both the master and his little apprentice ate like ware containers. "Could have made you some tea before the exams, you're not performing first anyway, are you?"</p><p>"Nope, but I'm late regardless, I've gotta see the others compete too. No time to waste." Meiko wrestled herself out of mother's clutches and waved again. It felt a bit sad abandoning her parents here, by the time they got around to trying to get the tickets to the exams to see their daughter give her best, they were all sold out. The economy was a weird thing, The Seventh Naruto tried to make the exams available to everyone, dirt-cheap but that made them sell out like hotcakes and, as a result, the tickets became pricier than a gold bar when one wanted to buy them off of somebody that bought a bulk.</p><p>"Daughter has her armor?" father raised his eyebrow.</p><p>"Yeah! I'm gonna get dressed after I get there, it would look weird if I ran across the town dressed for war." Meiko snickered and waved her father's worries away. "Plus, even if I forget it, I've got the whole arsenal sealed all over my body. That's what all those glyphs are for anyway."</p><p>"Should have ditched the rerebraces, easier to move around that way." Father shrugged before stroking and dirtying up Meiko's hair some more with his oily greaves.</p><p>"Don't worry, I've coated it with a layer of Ryuchi weave under the armor, it won't irritate or damage the skin anymore," Meiko blew out her cheeks, feeling like a child being scolded for sipping milk that was too hot. She was her father's aide, after all, she knew what she was doing.</p><p>She was going to be hopelessly late if she didn't hurry up. Meiko pushed the door open with a butt of her shoulder and ran off. It was not all too unusual to see people rushing about, it was considered rude though nobody had ever mistaken Meiko for somebody keeping up with her etiquette lessons. Sometimes she knew that she was brash and charged into things but that just felt so much easier and more convenient. She'd forget all about those wayward stares soon enough anyway…</p><p>The wires and rooftops were busy. Sure enough. There were loads of ninja present in the village, from Konoha as well from around the whole world, not just this world either, worlds from all across the universes that had sent their representatives to participate here. Meiko decided to rather stick it to the ground level and just move at an escalated civilian pace rather than dash across by the rooftops and just whizz to her desired destination while butting into someone. She needed to preserve as much stamina and toughness as she could before the match anyway.</p><p>The old Chuunin Exams arena had been modified. Additional floors and platforms of obsidian and marble added on top, making the entire structure a colossal sight that could have been made out from across the entire village. There were separate platforms with empty seats just floating up above the arena, like rotating satellites. Meiko wasn't yet sure if those were for fighting purposes or to host more spectators. The entire thing would be broadcasted and the foreigners from the other universes boosted the signals that their Konoha used with their future tech anyway. Just watching the thing at home should have been a decent treat in of itself.</p><p>Meiko had expected the locker room to be completely empty. She found every single one of the twenty competitors there, either preparing for their match, going through their strategy or finding and occupying the best seats around the screens showing the matches off from the locker room itself. Judging by the number of people staring at the monitors just mere moments before the matches had to start, they wouldn't be observing the matches live anymore. Whether that was a good thing or a bad one depended on how well the cameras could have kept up with all the action. As opposed to seeing it live, it was impossible to track superhuman speed on the camera unless the footage got slowed down.</p><p>"Wonder of wonders, you're late…" Kiyomi wrapped her arms over her chest. Meiko leaned in to examine her friend, something was off about her. It was as if she looked like she had come here as a high-class spectator rather than a legitimate competitor.</p><p>"Aren't you going to change?" Meiko pointed at Kiyomi. "It has to be a hassle to fight in that silk dress, isn't it? Also, tie your hair!"</p><p>"There's no need for that…" Kiyomi smiled. "Right now I'm much more bothered about representing the class and good image of my clan rather than brawling it out with Sasuke Uchiha. Don't worry though, I'll win for sure."</p><p>Something about that confidence… It didn't smell off at all and that was the most frightening. Kiyomi had that aura of strength around her that was almost arrogant in how it came off though it was not false arrogance. Despite the fact that she had just spoken to her friend and admired her strength, both in terms of combat and character, Meiko had an uneasy flare in her gut every time she moved around and stretched it. What if Kiyomi had skyrocketed in that last month and left her all behind? What if what Meiko considered vast improvement was all just a joke?</p><p>What if Meiko was useless again? What if she would get left behind again?</p><p>"You're that blacksmith gal, aren't you?" Relta Ginn from Hoshigakure pointed at Meiko. "I remember you from the last exams. You were Mana's teammate, the one that fought Stea. Jeez, what a match…"</p><p>"Huh? Oh, right… I'm sorry, I don't quite remember you, you're from Hoshigakure?" Meiko wondered, turning at the rather ordinary and casual-looking girl of short-brown hair.</p><p>"Yeah…" Relta nodded. "Didn't make it past Forest of Death last time… Don't you usually fight in your armor?"</p><p>"Oh, that's right!" Meiko jumped up and charged through the door to the girls' dressing room to suit up. Pulling out a handful of scrolls from her pouch and rolling them out, Meiko unsealed the separate pieces of her armor and, after slipping into a white and scaly bodysuit, slipped them onto it as well, securing them with the appropriate belts and straps and examining the glyphs drawn onto each separate armor piece.</p><p>"Some might accuse you of overcompensating for something with that…" Kiyomi batted just a single eye when Meiko emerged armored up from the dressing room into the common waiting area where the first match was just seconds away from starting. Karatachi Ume and Quill B had made their way onto the arena before Meiko even got to the building. By now the introduction speech and all the fluff must have already been out of the way – only the meat of the business remained.</p><p>"Frankly, I'm not sure what she has to compensate for…" Tsuru Itoi, a slender young girl from alternate Konohagakure with long, pulled back, dark hair offered Meiko just a single glance, doing a decent job of hiding her intimidation that seeing a behemoth such as Meiko all armored up invited deep down in her.</p><p>"Huh… They got Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon to commentate after all…" Meiko observed, pointing at the screen after a brief flash of the commentator section.</p><p>"Yeah, just not those Konohamaru, Moegi and Udon…" Boruto Uzumaki smirked, recalling the antics that they could hear from the Black Cube battlegrounds the whole time during the last stage of the exams. This version of the Konohamaru Commentator Squad was comprised of the adult versions of the twerps commenting over the matches last time. Might have been a good call too, there were significantly fewer inappropriate jokes, declarations of the intent to go potty, and inner banter that way.</p><p>Quill B had grown facial hair since the last time Team Hokage ran into him. The last time was when a member of Team Cirrus, Junipu-R was necessary for Mana to advance to the semi-finals of the last Chuunin Exams. The body build of this young man had improved significantly as well, he hadn't grown one inch though he had gained some bulk and covered his arms with scars. The core of his body must have been scarred too, though he wore a thick, armored vest to protect it as well as cover those scars up. Judging by the scarred body and face of such a young man, he had seen some of the warfare in recent times that Kumogakure found itself engaged in as the village of the mightiest military force.</p><p>Where Quill B looked cool and composed, both in his attitude and his appearance, his opponent was something else entirely – a flamboyant young lady of eye-carving watermelon-color hair as well as a magenta coat of plastic texture that made it reflect an alarming amount of sunlight and attract attention like nothing else. It was not that her appearance underneath that plastic overcoat was any less exuberant, underneath it she wore a blue, diamond-shaped bodysuit that approached bathing suit territory. Not unlike a few other Kirigakure ninja, Karatachi Ume also donned the long, cylinder hat strapped over her head.</p><p>"I am not sure how I feel about that choice of equipment. All she appeared to have on her is her flamboyant attire and a standard ninja pouch on her bare right thigh. If she was my student, I'd try to convince her to take fighting more seriously." Moegi voiced her thoughts on the commentary.</p><p>"True, it does appear that examinee Karatachi Ume is out to dazzle the audience more than fight, then again, so far, despite the match having ruled to be underway, not a single fist or foot has been thrown," Konohamaru observed, joining in.</p><p>"There might be a decent strategy to her ludicrous get-up though. Ume might be attempting to be memorable and catchy. That way the council that would rate her performance wouldn't let her get out of her head. In addition, this lavish get-up might serve as a way to attract enemy attention in battle on purpose." Udon observed, possessing his grand analytical abilities in any universe or timeline he was in.</p><p>"True, though the records show Karatachi Ume to be a medical ninja, it would be a rather odd choice to stand out and attract attention when one's role on the battlefield is of such paramount importance, don't you think?" Konohamaru observed.</p><p>"True, Lady Fifth would have disciplined this young lady if she was her subordinate and trainee for such flamboyance." Moegi agreed.</p><p>And there it went, without speaking one word to one another, both examinees went at it, though, from the get-go, it seemed that it was more Quill B that was sick of waiting and just jumped at the young lady standing in front of him, wielding two short swords in each of his hands with at least six more still stationary on his back. While Karatachi Ume from Kirigakure was evidently trained in the art of evasion, as suited for a fine medical ninja, it was only a matter of time before blood covered the dirt.</p><p>"Sheesh, he's fast…" Meiko observed.</p><p>"One of the better swordsmen I've seen." Kiyomi nodded. "Unlike most, that adopt a single swordsmanship form – Naked Blade, Iaido, Hawk Stance, this guy not only wields multiple swords but he also switches in between the swordsmanship forms flawlessly."</p><p>Meiko felt a bit glad that she wore a helmet over her head. She had an unhealthy flush of heat over her face just now, the fruit of embarrassment that her genjutsu and ninjutsu specialist of a teammate knew more about proper swordsmanship than she did. Meiko was a good swordswoman, she thought so at least, hadn't ever been humbled by anyone her skill level before, at least, though she lacked any decent swordsmanship training and mastery of any forms. She was mostly a self-taught talent.</p><p>Still, she may not have known all nine swordsmanship forms, how they looked or worked or their trademark moves but she knew just fine that this man out there was dangerous. He lacked armor on his limbs and face, except his eyes and the mask covering his lower face, though all the vital parts were well-covered by whatever weave he coated himself in. Flexible and swift, Quill B donned only whatever armor was vital for his survival and not a single strand of cloth more.</p><p>Quill B continued to dance, vault and roll around, two short swords in hand, slashing and switching in between his blades on the fly until he became blurry and sharp. A cannonball of swords rampaging across the battlefield with surprisingly wide coverage. A hedgehog of war, if hedgehogs could move faster than slowed down cameras could track.</p><p>A wet splash that resonated too well for it to be another splash of blood drowned out the stage. In her hands, Karatachi Ume held what appeared like a wand of sorts, not much larger than a drumstick though the exact appearance of it translated as muddled and rippled as a solid coating of water surrounded it. Whatever Ume's skills in chakra coating were, they were enough to block even the hi-speed slashes of Quill B if caught at the right time.</p><p>Karatachi pushed her wand forward, her medical ninjutsu prowess helped to gain a momentary boost in physical strength necessary to overpower her opponent. It was not only the fact that Ume had a way of overpowering her opponent, having identified the possibility of such a physical boost, Quill B retreated, abandoning the hopes of slashing his opponent in the midst of the clash in order to preserve his blade. Short swords were convenient for such quick-feet, acrobatic and swift fighting styles but they were brittle as one-time box cutters in combat.</p><p>There was a reason why Quill's swords didn't look all too fancy, just blades atop of simple leathery straps and steel handle. That reason was that he had changed hundreds of swords like these in his career as a ninja, Meiko didn't even doubt that. These swords were as expendable to him as kunai were to any other ninja.</p><p>Ume continued to whirl her wand around in her hands as if it was a bo staff of size far surpassing the size it actually was of. While the appropriate dance that the Kirigakure medical ninja performed seemed unsuitable for the tool in her hands in the beginning, it had soon used the water chakra coating to expand in length and form a staff-like appearance. This was a surprising prowess in weapon coating, not only she coated the weapon with chakra of the appropriate Water Release nature properties, she also was able to transform the weapon by making the coating add on to the weapon or expand its size which was not common amongst ninja except those that specialized in such method of combat.</p><p>It took Meiko years to master each one of the appropriate elements required to execute such a refined method of weapon coating. This girl without a doubt has worked on her weaponry skills as well as chakra coating in addition to her medical ninja skills. The problem was if Meiko could identify that, someone from Kumogakure, a country renowned for their swordsmen that had a profound skill in coating their weapons with Lightning Release coatings as well, would have identified it too.</p><p>The core issue of such identification being – there was only so many years a ninja of their age could have devoted to certain subjects. Medical ninjutsu required more than just a handful of years to acquire and excel at. Weapon coating and skill with a weapon in hand required a few years as well. Soon enough, there would be enough details revealed about Ume's specializations that her fighting style would no longer be a mystery whereas Quill B has revealed very little so far.</p><p>The expanded water-staff formed a two-sided short mace with the water coating focusing into two spheres at the tip of each end of Ume's wand, Ume swung her wand around in her graceful and elegant dance, sending one side of the watery blob at her opponent like a projectile while she splashed the other right at herself, straight in her own side. The injured side.</p><p>Quill B grunted in pain, he had been too tense and invested into the clash before to repurpose his movement into a swift evasive motion. The blob of water hit him square in the chest, he could only jump up a little to help navigate the blob to where his armor was the thickest, making the Kumogakure swordsman fall on his back though with enough concussive force to ride its coattails into performing a backward roll and returning on all fours, ready for the interception, if one was needed.</p><p>The splash of water that Ume soaked herself with washed away the blood tainting her cerulean bodysuit and made the wound on her side appear almost gelatinous in shape, drastically reducing to a wet cut that instead of bleeding just had a consistent, thread-thin line of shiny, cherry sorbet-like cover on it. Where before her wound splashed with blood whenever the young lady tensed her lower body, now it seemed to almost be a non-factor at all.</p><p>Karatachi Ume, the flamboyant kunoichi of Kirigakure who used Water Release chakra coat to both attack her opponent and imbue with her medical ninjutsu faced off against one of the finer swordsmen of his generation from Kumogakure in Quill B.</p>
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<a name="section0662"><h2>662. I Am Drowning So I Cannot Scream</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It's a tad boring when you're being this quiet." Ume winked at her opponent while pressing her free hand to her hip and continuing to pose and play around with her wand.</p><p>"I'd rather just fight." Quill B cut it short. He did not attack, however, instead the Kumogakure swordsman carefully examined the moves of his opponent, observing the precise movements and the general appearance of his opponent's movement style in order to better understand what he could have expected to see from her in the future.</p><p>"So dull…" Ume teased Quill B again and flicked the hand that she had just pressed to her hip, having used the excuse of a harmless motion to slip out a tool from her pouch. The orb seemed to stop in the middle of its journey as its pink color soon changed into a bright glow shortly before the bomb Ume used burst.</p><p>Unlike normal flash bombs, the bomb Ume used appeared to be custom made. Though the unusual shell casing of the gadget was a dead giveaway of that fact already. Instead of just popping with a burst of blinding light and a disorienting sound, this bomb detonated in a pleasant bling noise while spreading what appeared to be streamers and confetti though the usual blast of light was still present. In fact, a pair of flash cores appeared to be present held in separate inner casings, one with a bubble gum pink light and another with sky-blue one.</p><p>It was a questionable decision to employ a flash bomb against somebody using goggles with darkened lenses akin to shades. The pop of the customized flash bomb only aggravated Quill B and prompted him to attack again. Ume hurried to defend herself with a slight flush on her cheeks, having just realized her blunder when her opponent charged through right at her.</p><p>"She's nimble!" Meiko noted after a whistle to express her admiration in the skill of her opponent. As a testament to that observation, Ume vaulted and flipped around her opponent as he continued to juggle swords from his multiple sheathes like a madman, though that was just the initial impression as there very much was a method to his one-edged madness.</p><p>"All dazzle, no substance…" Kiyomi waved her hand at the match in dismissal and walked away from the screen to go to the bathroom instead.</p><p>"There's nothing wrong with a little bit of dazzle, I mean!" Boruto exclaimed by pointing at himself with his thumb as if he took Kiyomi's words a bit too deep to heart.</p><p>"Not at all, though it helps for that dazzle to be meaningful." Tsuru Itoi, another examinee from Boruto's own universe and timeline pointed out. "Dazzle and trickery direct attention but you have to show something meaningful to justify that attention. If you make a mistake, that's all you'll be directing your attention to."</p><p>Almost as if the dark-haired girl from Konoha possessed some gift of psychic foresight, the sword of Quill B scratched at the exposed gut of his opponent when she tried vaulting back and away from his spinning slash. He must have identified the fact that his sword met significant resistance in the body of his opponent, as Quill B stopped attacking immediately after, ready to provide emergency aid to his opponent if she needed some.</p><p>Instead, a spray of clean water burst forth from her exposed stomach, splashing against the face of Quill B and washing away any hints of precision in his vision, even if his goggles once again protected him from being caught off guard. While Ume's moves were highly acrobatic, they were also very risky as they left plenty of her body exposed and with someone with so many sharp objects moving at every moment in time, Quill B was not the right opponent to gamble against.</p><p>Quill B appeared off guard regardless of how useful his goggles have proven to be so far. It wasn't the splash of cold water aimed at his eyes that distracted him, it was the fact that despite he saw through the flash bomb, he didn't see when exactly his opponent had replaced herself with the Water Clone. And yet… Here she was standing before him while the clone he gutted was no more, but a shapeless puddle on the dirt.</p><p>"Tough crowd…" Ume pulled on the beak of her hat, looking a tad grumpy that her opponent didn't even ask her how she pulled the switch off or when she did so. "Go figure…"</p><p>Quill B leaned forward, placing most of his weight on his right leg which he turned sideways while extending the left one outward. Meiko thought that it was an odd stance but it was simple to read the fact that it was meant to supplement a sword thrust. It was bold to declare one's intent that way unless one was either such a master of swordsmanship that they challenged their opponent to deal with the upcoming attack or if they trusted their speed to make opponent's knowledge of the upcoming attack irrelevant.</p><p>"One Spike: Grenade!" Quill B muttered to himself as he dragged his glove across the short surface of his blade and charged onward with a thrust aimed at his opponent.</p><p>Ume attempted to move, using her wand as support to fire off her body bottom-first in a skyward direction. It was there that Quill B's mastery with his short blades showed, he had enough foresight and force left to redirect his motion, switching the dominant foot into his left one so that he could redirect his thrust up. A rather appalling grunt filled the stage, filling the audience with gasps. Ume fell awkwardly from her soar with a short sword embedded in her side. The sword's lack of size or weight wouldn't have made such a wound deadly though it should have been battle-ending in most cases. Quill B, however, was of a different opinion as he made sure to clear the area as fast as possible and retreat to a safe distance.</p><p>"What's he doing? His opponent is a medical ninja, she'll cover that wound up." Tala objected from the sidelines. This folly seemed significant enough to make even one as quiet and cold such as him to speak up.</p><p>Ripper Inaba was about to speak up, no doubt in rhyme as was his quaint gimmick, however, before he could, an explosion as potent as one explosive note one slipped onto a blade's surface while dragging one's arm across it before the charge sunk the fallen kunoichi in dirt and smoke.</p><p>"The art of Quill's Grenade is confidential / His swords are his credentials / His style makes them essential / It means breaking them is on the schedule." Ripper Inaba made sure to slip his rhyme at the moment that someone tuned the noise of the screen down a little to better deal with the fact they just heard an explosion live.</p><p>"Hmm… Sticking an explosive note on a sword is just nasty. Even if it doesn't ruin your sword, it'll damage it for sure." Meiko sighed. It hurt her heart to see such misuse of a sword as a blacksmith but she couldn't deny the fact that Quill B might have won a match by breaking just one of his sword. It was the fact that his technique was premeditated as evidenced by Ripper, his teammate, knowing about his technique, that disturbed her.</p><p>Ume dived right out from the smoke, a full-hand-sized chunk of gummy, red material patch sticking out on her gut and her hat was missing but Tala's prediction appeared to be true even if there was an additional explosive element to Quill's attack. Quill B raced for two more blades, he attempted to spin around like a whirligig and cut the rushing kunoichi in two but his spin got blocked be her wand while Ume threw the other end of her wand straight to the nose of Quill B, making it stream red.</p><p>The water rushed from the end of her weapon back into the dust cloud that Quill had raised and that fact did not elude the attention of the Kumogakure swordsman, making him bead surprised eyes at the version of Ume that stood in front of him. The water clone rushing at him blew an air kiss at Quill B before dissolving into a wide pool of water, reaching out over Quill B like a crashing wave though Quill B managed to roll back and evade the wave before it pulled him into the round, watery mass that the dissolving clone formed.</p><p>"Serves you right to be such a pooper…" Ume spun her wand around her front and back, appearing from the smoke with the water that her clone sent back to heal her inside the cloud of dust coating her wound and making it match the grisly yet harmless and sweet appearance of the wound her clone carried earlier. "I'd have told you all you wanted to know about my fighting style and what I'm about to do if you just asked nicely…" she pouted her lips pointing the end of her wand at Quill B who reeled on one knee with busted goggles and bleeding nose.</p><p>"That joker isn't dead yet?" Kiyomi grunted after appearing from the bathroom.</p><p>"That's way too short of a time for a leak, what did you really do in there?" Meiko crossed her arms over her chest.</p><p>"That's none of your business, why would you even ask somebody that?" Kiyomi shook her head by trying to cover up her face in embarrassment.</p><p>"She isn't half bad, you know," Relta Ginn pointed at the screen, encouraging Kiyomi to give the genin she had written off as toothless another chance. "She's actually got the advantage now. The way she controls the battle is quite something."</p><p>"Maybe she has talent but she'd rather waste it all showing off anyway. That makes her even worse than an untalented hack, she's someone that could have been something but chose to instead fool around and waste that talent." Kiyomi sat down on a bench so that the back of Teclaim Laoch blocked off the screen from her view.</p><p>"Sure, she's a little bit goofy, with all the dancing and prancing around but… She's not just winning, she's controlling the field and putting on a good show at the same time. She might not only get that promotion but also entertain a few people and make their lives better on the side, there's nothing wrong with that." Meiko objected.</p><p>Quill B stood back on both feet and stretched his legs out to the sides. He pulled out a sword and placed it in his teeth while positioning his hands over the handles of two other swords. Ume stopped all motion. For a blink, she did consider the idea of trying to find an opening and striking though she recalled the speed and skill of her opponent and reconsidered it instead.</p><p>"Hold on now / My boy's gonna show us some class / This is the stance of his coup de grace / Though to spit some class / This is one jutsu he should give a pass." Ripper Inaba didn't look like he expected this technique to be dusted off. Kiyomi did sit up from her bench and approach the screen to see this jutsu, intrigued by the respect that the bumbling lyricist was giving it.</p><p>"Really? What kind of a jutsu is it, I mean?" Boruto looked at the rhyming shinobi of the Cloud.</p><p>Ripper Inaba looked up and began mumbling to himself. There could have been no doubt that he was looking for the right words to make his reply into a rhyme which made Boruto flip out.</p><p>"You don't have to rhyme everything, I mean!" he growled at the pale shinobi of Kumogakure.</p><p>The laser focus of Quill B shattered like stoned glass. He looked up at the Ninja Council observing his performance, all seated in a single line and abandoned his stance, choosing to flick the blade in his mouth back to its sheath and crouch to the ground while he placed both of his arms onto the handles of the same two blades.</p><p>"Never mind / My man left his ace jutsu behind / He's now going for two swords / A less risky jutsu to earn his awards." Ripper Inaba breathed a large gasp of air that he had swelling in his chest throughout the entire time of Quill B winding up for his secret technique.</p><p>Quill did not announce the name of his technique before attacking this time. In a blink, he was behind his opponent with his swords crossed in front of him. The Kumogakure swordsman turned them around in his hands and slipped them into their sheaths. Only once all the moves of his technique were completed did he stand up and look back to examine his results.</p><p>Blood sprayed from the two separate cuts across each of Ume's shoulders. Judging from their positioning and depth, her chakra-coated wand had managed to block some of the impending damage and prevent a fully-carved cross-shaped slash across her chest but her block was hardly flawless.</p><p>"What kind of a jutsu is that secret technique of his?" Temari turned to the pale-skinned thug from Kumogakure.</p><p>"It's a jutsu where he skewers the enemy with all his blades / For its deadliness it deserves the highest grades," Ripper Inaba explained with a soft freestyle.</p><p>"Why would he not choose to use something of that, only ramping it up to using two swords?" Temari wondered.</p><p>"He's trying to prove himself resourceful to the council," Kiyomi explained. "Out there it isn't enough to just win. He might have gambled it all on an all-or-nothing jutsu and won but gambling one's victory on a turn of a card is dangerous and reckless on the field. He'd have never seen that promotion if he won that way."</p><p>"It'd be bummer to get screwed after making here to the finals all this way, you mean…" Boruto scratched his chin, looking sour just after a thought on this subject.</p><p>"Yeah… Bummer…" Kiyomi closed her eyes and swallowed her own sourness. While Meiko knew how Kiyomi felt deep down repeating those words since she felt the same, the flawless concealment of those feelings had to be both admired and feared at the same time.</p><p>"You'll forgive me if I try to wrap this up already…" Ume grunted. The movements of her wand no longer as elegant as before, pain splattered disgusting, grey paint all over the canvas of her motion. "Playing off of my opponent's charm is the only way I know and you're not giving me much charm to work with here."</p><p>Quill B twitched one of his shoulders and rolled forward, using his right arm as a platform for securing his upside-down hang, he let one of his blades slip out from the sheath behind his back while he concluded his vault and caught the falling blade with the tip of his heel, gently flipping it up in the air where he caught it off the air with his teeth and secured his hands on the handles of a pair of swords on his back.</p><p>"Going for three swords now / Styling on him is something my man won't allow," Ripper Inaba smirked.</p><p>Meiko had to admit that she found Ume's choice to attack her opponent to be a curious one, given that she needed some more time to recover from her wounds at the moment and recovery was something she was quite capable of at that moment. Then again, given that Quill B was faster and she, despite her impressive agility, could not have kept up with all of his swords until more of them broke down, perhaps she was right to ditch the attempt for control of the field and didn't waste chakra on a heal that might have gotten interrupted and punished.</p><p>That was her MO so far, hit and heal, hitting being a mean to give the enemy something else to think about instead of stopping her healing.</p><p>Gripping her wand with both hands and waving it like a fan, Ume focused the flow of the water coating her wand into the upper tip and made it expand at a rapid state while booming at her opponent like a reverse cone of crashing water. Quill B kicked off the ground, spinning with two swords in his hands, pressed to his wrists while he swung the sword in his teeth like a whirligig as well. The three swords formation helped him drill through a layer of water but he was just an inch of it short and the remainder of the watery mass gripping his heel sunk him back down into the cylindrical prison of containment.</p><p>"Alright, time for a little bit of punishment to begin!" Ume cheered on herself while she coated her wand with water again and spun it around, letting a blob of it to splash off of the wand and rain down on her shoulders, filling the wounds with cranberry-shade foam while her wounds continued to slowly close down.</p><p>"It's a jutsu I call Water Cylinder Prison," Ume explained to her powerless opponent who continued to attempt to swim upward or to push himself out of the cylinder's containment only to find himself entrapped in the water as if it had attained some sort of transparent, gelatinous shape. "Unless swords are everything you've got to show, you're not gonna get out of it. It's too bad, nobody's gonna hear you cry uncle from inside of it either…"</p><p>Ume leaned to the floating cylinder and pressed her index finger to her lips, acting out a difficult moral conundrum while her opponent continued to struggle before crossing his arms and legs to preserve his strength until he could figure a way out of his containment.</p><p>"You're right, keeping this jutsu up like this does strain me a bit and I don't think I'd manage to drown you with it due to that strain. Then again, I do have better methods of hurting you inside that thing!" Ume pumped her fist and threw a wicked slam of her coated wand against the wall of the cylinder.</p><p>The gelatinous cylinder began reverberating from the rude contact with the aquatic surface. It spread a hum out that seemed subtle on the outside but it was something that the cameras filming the battle picked up on as well, suggesting that their true volume was much more deceptive. The vibrations inside must have been brutal, or so Quill B showed them to be as his concentration broke in a snap of fingers and he covered his ears but continued to writhe in pain regardless.</p><p>"Don't even bother. Your entire body can "hear" these vibrations for you. And guess what, the blob retains all of the vibrations I hit it with, meaning that each successive hit will only make them worse. You can't exactly surrender from inside it but a few more should make you pass out anyway." Ume styled around the blobby cylinder with her wand, marching about while juggling her combat tool in the air at the same time.</p><p>Quill B needed to find a way out, or else he'd have found himself and his struggle for control over this match in vain after just a few more pounds on the walls of his prison.</p>
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<a name="section0663"><h2>663. Hair-Thin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You're still swinging those swords around? Well… Guess I shouldn't be mad, you're doing me a favor, getting yourself winded like that," Ume placed her wand on her shoulder while she admired the fruitless labor of her opponent.</p><p>The last thing she expected was the water cylinder expanding and beginning to bubble all over before bursting into a blast of water that sent her flying as well due to being too close. Even when the medical kunoichi had been making sure to slip in a medical jutsu or two on an occasion, she did not rise from her fall easily.</p><p>Taking the blast from within the cylinder had smashed Quill B's goggles and snapped the rubber string holding them together. It was now that the orchid-colored, strict eyes of the panting Kumogakure ninja became clear and visible. When taken into consideration together with his torn-up leather bodysuit and busted, still bleeding nose, he was a frightful sight to see across on the other side of the battlefield.</p><p>Ume formed maces of Water Release chakra on each end of her wand and charged at her opponent, swinging at Quill B while he recovered. He acrobatics and fancy footwork were gone, so was Quill B's iron resolve though. The exhaustion of battle made all men and women equal, now they were just two ninja drawing from the deepest reserves of chakra and bolstering their bodies with them, doing everything they could to take the other down.</p><p>Quill B raised his swords up to block the strike, in his current state, until he caught some breaths and replenished his lungs with some sweet oxygen he couldn't see another way of avoiding having his head smashed. The shoddy steel let out a deafening pop when the upper halves of the swords flew off across the arena with one half of the busted sword sliding across a few meters from where it had landed while the other embedded itself into the dirt and had managed to stay that way, despite the momentum it carried.</p><p>Blood streamed in an arc, following the trajectory of Quill B's bow-shaped flight from the rising slam of the aquatic mace. He took a nasty bump to the head, just slightly dulled out by his half-successful block. Ume proceeded through a handful of seemingly pointless dance moves though to anyone who was familiar with the art of taijutsu knew that they weren't quite so pointless – they were a way to effectively transition from one stance to another, an art of moving one's body while maintaining one's defenses and utilizing momentum in an optimal way.</p><p>Quill B yelled out in pain, hearing his voice was such an equivalent to a drizzle in the middle of the desert soaking one's face that hearing it felt especially grim. Ume's mace thrust and slammed across in the middle of the shoulder blades of the Kumogakure ninja, sending him flying like an arrow to the other side of the arena until he got close enough to the wall where some spectators would have thought he'd ended up stuck in it with his head or, even worse, snapped his neck slamming into it.</p><p>If the beholder of this gruesome exchange would have been oblivious enough to call such an outcome lucky, Quill B was lucky to land inches away from the wall and slid the distance between him and the wall. The hard feeling of limestone against the back of his head seemed to wake him up from the woozy of combat, the wall served as a nice support platform for the fallen Kumogakure ninja to rise again.</p><p>Ume had made a small mistake, sending him flying that hard, now he was too much for her to follow up in her own state of weary. She could not have rushed up to Quill B and just slammed his face in until she knocked the common sense into him to surrender. Quill B took the stance of his hidden technique. Secret techniques that could have been performed under extreme duress were rare and valuable.</p><p>"All Spikes: Quillblade!" Quill B muttered to himself before vanishing. Only the grisly vibration of steel buzzing through the air, becoming louder as it moved up to his opponent remained of his presence. Quill B appeared once again many paces behind his opponent, stumbled on one knee but quickly stood back up.</p><p>It was only when Ume's damaged veins caught up with the extensive damage of being skewered by four swords in a mad, aerial roll of her opponent and sent pulses of blood squirting before the presence of the weaponry inside her body suppressed the bleeding somewhat by shutting down most of her wounds and the Kirigakure kunoichi fell to the ground that the sight of Quill B having left four swords stuck in her body in his passing caught on with the audience.</p><p>"That's it, man / My man's ultimate secret technique / Nobody can spin like my man span / That girl's chances now are bleak / Though this is a last resort type of ace of spades / My man's used out all his blades," Ripper Inaba sighed in relief.</p><p>"No," Teclaim Laoch pointed out. "He still has one sword in his sheath. He saved one for if his opponent recovers from this or if she had managed to avoid it."</p><p>"If he went all in and used out all five swords – he would have finished her off," Kiyomi stated.</p><p>"Maybe, but his opponent is a medical ninja, two things she's skilled at are evasion and recovery, even in the heat of battle. It was the safer option." Temari argued.</p><p>A husky and wet-sounding cough made Quill B turn around and draw his final short sword from its sheath, adopting a position fitting for utilizing the weapon in a thrust-oriented style of the Naked Blade form of swordsmanship. Ume rolled sideways, the moment the tip of one of the swords stabbing her touched the ground she whined out in pain and spat some blood out on the ground. Her shaking hand grabbed her wand that laid further to the side.</p><p>Quill's orchid stare sharpened, his body vanished again. A race against a critically wounded opponent was one that he could have won, a prolonged engagement against a ninja specializing in controlling the battlefield, however, he could not. The sandal of Quill B hit the wand first, kicking it further aside while he rolled his sword in his right hand and flashed it toward his downed opponent. A few members of the Ninja Council jumped up from their chairs, including the Seventh Naruto but the sword of the Kumogakure ninja stopped just a hair's length shy from stabbing through the kunoichi's chest where her heart laid deeper in.</p><p>Ume's powerless body slumped, knowing when she's beaten she stopped augmenting her body with chakra to keep going through critical injury and just allowed herself the luxury of passing out instead of admitting defeat. A handful of green-vests rushed the stage to remove the defeated medical ninja from the arena while Quill B pushed the ninja offering him help in taking him to the infirmary and began limping toward the exit himself. Stoic and bitter with his expression, his right hand still clutching the handle of the final sword that had not broken though would still need replacing before he would need to draw his blades again.</p><p>The first match was over.</p><p>"Holy crap, I mean!" Boruto took a few steps back from the screen and took a few moments to scan the other examinees. He felt like he was the only one shaken by the violence and drastic means employed on the stage, there were a few youngsters that weren't used to such a bloody sight though most present in the waiting area looked grim though accustomed to such outcomes.</p><p>"What's wrong, kid? Expected them to just throw a few punches and one of them to cry quits when they thought it hurt too much?" Temari gave Boruto a demeaning look. "These are ninja fighting each other to prove themselves, I'm surprised that the Quill guy had the restraint to not kill his opponent."</p><p>"Don't be so hasty to bully the kid / Killing people in the exams is in poor taste / Though my man did what he did / There's no need to copy-paste," Ripper Inaba stepped in between Boruto who's been moving away from the rest of the examinees that were beginning to feel alien to him by accepting such uncivilized methods of fighting so nonchalantly.</p><p>"You've got nothing to worry about, kid, your opponent's a pushover, you won't get roughed up like that," Kiyomi took a look of pity at the appalled brat.</p><p>"It's not about that, I mean!" Boruto became more and more like his old man in the way he got into people's faces when he disagreed with something. Though the boy still lacked the eloquence to put the exact source of his horrid outlook toward the event to words that would have been efficient enough to affect the waiting room.</p><p>Teclaim Laoch, a tall Hoshigakure ninja pounded his palm with his fist and stretched his neck out a pair of times before walking off to the stage for his turn to brawl it out. Boruto approached Kiyomi and Meiko and knocked on Meiko's waist like it was a door.</p><p>"That Laoch guy, do you know him, I mean?" Boruto asked. "I know Tsuru and I don't want her to get roughed up like that Kirigakure girl or killed."</p><p>"We've met Laoch, we fought him a couple of years ago. Don't worry, he thinks that killing during the Chuunin Exams is in poor taste. He's a strong guy but he won't kill your friend." Meiko took off her helmet so that Boruto could see her eyes when she reassured him.</p><p>"I'm right here, you know…" Tsuru pouted her lips and walked off after tilting her nose and turning it away from Boruto and the pair he asked for reassurance.</p><p>The lass couldn't have been blamed for feeling a bit intimidated. Laoch was the type of guy that didn't look like much of a ninja as much as he looked like a mercenary or a soldier. While he had streamlined his armor to where it no longer looked like massive rocks stuck to his body and stuck with layers of hardened cement, choosing to adopt a black bodysuit weave and much slicker, white armor with thick, metallic tubes over each armor piece, his face didn't invite much comfort as well as it looked like something that belonged to a mean bruiser that wasn't afraid to take a few hits as long as he got to dish 'em out from up close too.</p><p>"Now what do we know about both of these examinees? Can we expect a match as brutal as the last one?" Konohamaru asked his colleagues in commentary while the slightly reduced in size waiting room watched on the event they themselves would soon be a part of.</p><p>"Tsuru Itoi is a girl that most of us are familiar with. She's made strides of mastering sealing techniques that no Academy Student would ever be capable of executing. I'd say she's overlooked in this competition, due to the fact she doesn't look like an extravagant and flashy competitor, but being able to perform C-Rank Sealing Jutsu before graduating the Academy has to count for something, right?" Moegi brought up.</p><p>"Indeed, though I can't overlook how unfair the match-up looks from the first sight, I mean just look at her opponent in Teclaim Laoch from Hoshigakure. This guy looks mean and willing to dish out damage. Not to mention, he's at least a handful of years older than his opponent, which translates to years of experience and time training and honing his skills, participating in missions that Tsuru just won't have and will have to somehow compensate and that's a tough thing to do." Udon pointed out.</p><p>"Well, this can either go very well or very bad, nothing much we can do but look on, it seems," Konohamaru leaned back in his chair and focused on the action that was about to take place.</p><p>This match was nothing like the previous one, the moment that the jounin proctor declared the beginning of the match and blurred away, Laoch raised his arm up, directing the wrist canons on his gauntlets straight at his opponent and launching a blinding flurry of senbon at the intensity of an automated fire. Tsuru clearly was not expecting such a ruthless approach leaving her no other choice but to react on her feet.</p><p>"Hair Binding Technique!" she yelled out, manipulating her hair to where it elongated and extended in front of her, placing a hairy barrier while chakra tensed the hair to be hard as steel. Despite performing adequately at erecting a protective barrier, its width and sturdiness were not enough to avoid taking any damage, as evidenced by a handful of senbon sticking out from the kunoichi with red dots suggesting that the entry was less than precise and painless.</p><p>Tsuru stumbled a pair of steps in pain after her hair returned to its place, she wasted time noticing the senbon sticking out from her sides and shoulders and wiping a minor streak of blood running down her lip from an internal injury she had sustained. Laoch, on the other hand, set off jets of chakra in the boots of his armor and accelerated toward his opponent to pummel her in the close distance now that he had successfully taken the upper hand.</p><p>"Tsuru…" Boruto clenched his fists.</p><p>"Don't worry, no one's gonna let your girlfriend out there die." Temari cheeked the kid by nudging him with her elbow. "Though her opponent's pretty good. Those senbon ripping at such speed, they're more than just needles, the impact they leave have to leave mean internal injury too."</p><p>"Yeah, no wonder he's rushing in close – with her bones and gut all aching up, Tsuru's got no chance of keeping up with him, no matter what skill in taijutsu she's got." Meiko nodded.</p><p>"She's not my girlfriend, I mean!" Boruto growled at the Sunagakure kunoichi stepping in to get all over her face but Temari's backward stretched arm prevented him from as much as touching her.</p><p>"Hair Needle Senbon!" Tsuru, instead of preparing her body to deal with the rushing juggernaut raised her arms up and directed her hair to harden with chakra channeling through it and unleash a flurry of senbon of her own, ones of natural making as her hair did their best to make Laoch into a pincushion.</p><p>Laoch pushed the immediate breaks, raising his right arm to take the storm of senbon and deal with it using the right arm of his armor as a blocking tool. Despite being armored to the point of appearing like a human tank, the senbon left more than just scratches to the armor's paint job upon contact, instead, leaving deep ridges and bending it with dents due to the sheer strength of impact. More than a few hair senbon hit Laoch's right arm, penetrating through the black weave covering underneath his armor plates and etching too deep to just be pulled out easily.</p><p>Laoch bent his right arm and waved it around to see how well it still functioned. He fired a short series of senbon up into the air just to check if his automated senbon launchers still worked as intended or if Tsuru's mid-range technique had damaged them.</p><p>"Huh? He just stopped?" Temari wondered.</p><p>"Laoch's armor is entirely operated with his chakra. It's not a gadget or anything. It's almost like a form of puppeteering, in a way." Meiko explained.</p><p>"Yeah, I can get that…" Temari nodded.</p><p>"So, he just realized that Tsuru had some way of controlling the range between her and her opponent, making him attacking her from long or mid-range the only way of engaging her without having to deal with attacks like this that damage his armor," Meiko explained.</p><p>"So he's sweating on figuring out if he's got the chakra to take her out from afar since his option of just swinging his fists around has been taken away from him…" Temari worked it out by herself.</p><p>"Not gonna let you run away! String Light Formation!" Tsuru yelled out and pressed her hands together in a hand seal position, erecting a barrier around her that stretched out into the mid-range in the form of interconnected sealing glyphs that weaved together in a shape resembling a web. "Now, Hair Needle Senbon!"</p><p>Laoch used the jets of both his boots to unleash a stream of blue flames toward his opponent. The blue flames managed to not only singe up the hair senbon by overwhelming them with a larger concentration of chakra in the form of blue chakra blazes but also hit Tsuru and send her outside of her own barrier, breaking it.</p><p>Tsuru crawled back a few paces, looking at the burn on her right arm with tears in her eyes that were called out by both the powerful resonance of pain in the burnt area as well as the intense pulse of heat that she had to deal with inside that barrier. Now that he was free to control his own range as he saw fit, Laoch dashed back and took it soaring to the skies.</p><p>"Tsuru doesn't have many options of controlling the battle in the long-range, let alone attacking an airborne opponent," Kiyomi muttered.</p><p>"Yeah, she's made a mistake by showing her String Light Formation in such a way, by trying to keep her opponent at a specific range she basically told him where she's the most comfortable fighting." Tasure Kaeron from Kirigakure showed his teeth in a smirk.</p><p>"It wasn't much of a mistake, she kind of had to utilize her chance at keeping her opponent mid-range. If there was a chance to take control over the match, she had to take it, even if it did end up burning up in her face." Relta Ginn disagreed with that assessment.</p><p>Floating in mid-air, Laoch pointed his right fist at Tsuru. A flare of flames lit up at around his elbow as his gauntlet fired itself like a rocket straight at the kunoichi. Tsuru used her Hair Binding Jutsu to wrap hardened strands of her hair around the rocket and swing it the other way but the rocket fixed its trajectory and slammed right by the girl's feet, throwing her off-balance. The rocket then burst from underground, knocking Tsuru off her feet again as it attached back to its owner's unarmored hand, making it armored again.</p><p>"Drill of Ragnarok," Laoch declared.</p><p>"Ragnarok?" Meiko pressed her index against her cheek, trying to recall where she had heard the name of that technique. "It's the minefield jutsu he used against us!" it all came back to her.</p><p>"So it seems… Laoch found a better way to set it up in those few years we haven't seen him, it looks." Kiyomi nodded.</p><p>Tsuru Itoi found herself in quite a predicament, with her opponent airborne and controlling the battle with his long-range attacks and a minefield of explosive Fire Release spheres being set up underneath her feet, threatening to go off whenever she makes the wrong move. It was the type of match control that granted one a promotion, at least unless Tsuru found a way to impress the Ninja Council even more and somehow take all the credit from Laoch's impressive stacking of the deck all to herself by managing to overcome these odds.</p>
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<a name="section0664"><h2>664. Rippin' Rhymes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Laoch didn't wait for his opponent to figure out a way to beat him. After Tsuru so nearly turned his pressure around on him before, he gave her no single chance to do that. The armored ninja flew across the battlefield, aiming his right arm at Tsuru and spraying a stream of kunai knives from a dispenser in his armor piece. He made sure to fire them through the streams of flames that he left in the air too, heating the drizzling kunai up and coating them with flaming chakra on their way to their goal.</p><p>Tsuru jumped back, fully aware that hidden mines laid scattered across the battlefield. It was for that purpose that the young kunoichi threw a kunai behind her to the nearest wall of the arena and pulled on a string of steel wire attached to it in order to zip herself closer to the wall. Sticking to the round walls of the arena, taking it to the trees on the western side, all were viable options to avoid triggering the mines.</p><p>The girl dashed across the wall, running away from the downpour of flaming kunai coming her way. Laoch was no slouch, he controlled his location in the air perfectly, never letting himself get in range for Tsuru's hair to grab onto. The kunai and steel wire combo didn't frighten him nearly as much, plus, he still needed for Tsuru to stay in the range of a kunai projectile so that he could attack her too. A few kunai nicked her thighs and back. Tsuru stumbled on her long haul and for a moment made the audience question if she had the inner fortitude and stamina left to avoid the rest of the oncoming barrage but she did, resuming her run with bleeding thighs and a cut jacket that had trails of red on the backside.</p><p>"Hair Needle Senbon!" Tsuru Itoi yelled out, taking aim and firing strands of her hardened hair. By the time that Laoch realized that the kunoichi was aiming for a specific part of his armor, it was too late. The pieces of armor around his left arm broke and detached from formation and the body weave underneath offered no protection from what remained of the relentless shower of hair needles.</p><p>"Not bad, I'd have never expected an onslaught of focused hair senbon to be enough to break my armor," Laoch commended his opponent who hurried to complete the lap across the arena. While the armored shinobi got used to the redistributed balance in mid-air after a decent chunk of his weight just fell off of his left arm, Tsuru used her hair to swing onto and hide in the trees on the west side.</p><p>"A neat move – heading for the trees. You think you're safe in there but you're not!" Laoch yelled out, light formations ran across the visor of his helmet showing him the exact location of the nearest chakra signature and its relative size compared to what it put out before. With his balance regained and an enemy who falsely believed herself to be safe in his sight, Laoch fired on the forest area of the arena with his burst of burning kunai.</p><p>The relentless series of kunai automated fire tore through the leafage, cut through the leaner branches and smashed through the thicker ones. Each kunai showed the full capability of penetrating an entire tree, lacking the cutting power to take it down only due to lacking size as the surface it had to enact its force was not sufficient enough to cut it down. The additional fire element set the entire place ablaze, sinking it in flames. The loud and pain-ridden grunts betrayed Tsuru's emergence from the forested area, clutching the burns on her right side. The burning leafage blocked off the possibility of sticking back to the walls – out and on the ground was the only option left for her.</p><p>Given that she fled from desperation to avoid more burns and without forethought guiding her steps, it was inevitable that Tsuru would trigger a mine. A resonating explosion deafened the audience's ears and made the half of them that were closer to the action cover up their faces to block off dirt and debris. The detonating mine triggered a chain reaction littering the field in resonating, pillar-shaped blasts that sent shockwaves across the ground sufficient enough to trigger every other surrounding mine with their shock.</p><p>"Not good enough, huh?" Laoch bit his cheek on the inner side, disappointed by the fact that his visor showed off his opponent being relatively unharmed though her chakra signature having taken a decent dip, suggesting that she pulled a defensive technique of some sort to evade damage. Even with the barriers of dust and rubble littering the area, Laoch adjusted the aim of his flaming kunai accordingly to the readings his helmet showed him.</p><p>A blinding flash of light made the genin spectating the match from the sidelines wince while the audience reeled back. If the constant, lingering dust around them wasn't enough of an irritator to their eyes, the detonating flash bomb made observing the match unbearable to them. Laoch struggled and turned his helmet to rub his irritated eyes, shifting the positioning of his helmet on his head about. He didn't see how and when he lost his helmet though Laoch did feel a significant amount of weight slipping off his head and realized that he lost another armor piece – his scouting visor and the helmet he had attached it to.</p><p>While he was beginning to feel pestered by his opponent, when he saw Tsuru stuck with multiple of his kunai and reeling in pain, having reacted with her improvised plan to remove the helmet out of sheer instinct, regardless of the fearsome automated kunai fire she took, Laoch's desperation had eased somewhat. That much was evident when one observed his now exposed head and a lighter look in his eyes. The girl barely had the strength to keep sticking to the wall she was on, her elongated braid still clutched to the helmet she had removed. Tsuru was pale from the blood she had lost and she had about a dozen kunai sticking out, at this point, it was only chakra augmentation that kept her going as the moment she'd have let go of sustaining her body that way, she'd have passed out.</p><p>"That was a nicely executed substitution though you've removed my helmet a bit too late. Had I not had it when you backed into the rubble, I'd have never hit you so many times." Laoch observed and raised his right arm up to aim at his forlorn opponent.</p><p>A compartment in his armor piece slid back, raising up a steel ring of a sharpened edge, roughly ten centimeters in diameter. A quartet of blades popped out from the different sides of the ring, forming a windmill shuriken. A press against the center of his palm with Laoch's middle and ring fingers triggered a speedy release of the weapon.</p><p>"Needle Jizo!" Tsuru grumbled out through tremendous pain, elongating her loose black hair to surround her body and harden, forming a protective layer around her with their tips sharpening into spikes. The kunoichi did leave a tiny gap to see through as deriving herself of vision would have been entirely reckless from her part. It was because of that reason that she saw the buzzing windmill shuriken stop in mid-air after Laoch yanked on a piece of steel wire attached to the projectile and slip its four blades back to their earlier place.</p><p>The remaining ring expanded in size, using the blade parts for additional ring length while it slipped over the concealed Tsuru and her hair and locked her in. After the first restraining ring was locked into place, Laoch fired a handful more from his right arm and secured them around Tsuru's neck and legs as well. It didn't seem like his opponent could sustain her defensive hair technique for long and so they deflated and returned to their normal length while the restrained kunoichi flopped to the dirt, lacking any resolve to struggle in her iron restraints.</p><p>"That's gonna score him some points!" Toroi, a thick in body youngling ninja from Kumogakure donning a pair of spectacles on him, declared. "He didn't just defeat his opponent, he captured her. That would be highly valuable on the battlefield."</p><p>"Damn, even Tsuru lost, I mean…" Boruto grumbled to himself. While he didn't seem at all glad about that, neither did he seem too angry at her opponent, given all the trouble he went through to subdue her without aggravating her already critical injuries.</p><p>"That was not an entirely one-sided match, though it was crystal clear which examinee had years of extra experience on the other!" Moegi declared on the commentary. "I will hand it to young Tsuru that she showed an excellent performance here today but her opponent just didn't give her much room to breathe."</p><p>"You're absolutely right, Moegi. It's hard to imagine the Ninja Council promoting young Tsuru just yet, even after some quick thinking on her feet in the early stages of the match." Udon agreed.</p><p>"Welp, it's time for my match to hatch / My new rhymes form a rather nasty batch!" Ripper Inaba looked around for his opponent but it seemed like Tala took it to the stadium the moment that the previous match concluded.</p><p>"Way to spin a rhyme, brother, I'm sure that Killer B is watching somewhere in the crowd!" Toroi cheered on a fellow Kumogakure ninja, even though he was from another universe.</p><p>"Killer B? Who's that? / I don't know who you're talking 'bout, you fell flat!" Ripper Inaba mumbled to himself before running off.</p><p>"What the…? You mean your universe doesn't have a Killer B?" Toroi stood there and stared at the empty doorway for some time after Ripper Inaba ran off. For whatever reason, the chubby had trouble believing that someone might have just picked up sloppy rhyming without being inspired by someone.</p><p>"I'm not sure about whoever this Killer B is, Ripper Inaba uses his rhymes as a medium to transfer his genjutsu though. It has nothing to do with inspiration," Meiko explained. It helped that Mana had explained to her about genjutsu a little bit and how they worked. Had she not had this experience, it would have been tough to understand Ripper's fighting style.</p><p>"Huh… Weird names and fighting styles all around… Kumogakure in this universe is even wilder than back home," Toroi decided and turned back to spectate the upcoming match on the screen.</p><p>"Is your Kumogakure a war-mongering tyrant too?" Relta Ginn wondered. She gave Gurker Gliesse, an Iwagakure ninja a wayward look but it seemed that the Iwagakure native was too off-put by something boiling down to participate in the conversation. The young man paled out and coughed when he was first caught unaware by the sudden eruption of the topic but then played it off as if nothing had happened and nobody was talking about it.</p><p>"We still have the strongest military, if that's what you mean!" Toroi argued with some passion behind his words. He was ready to start brawling right there in the waiting room.</p><p>"There seems to be some sort of a hold on the next match…" Konohamaru scratched his chin. "What was it supposed to be again? Tala from Sunagakure against Ripper Inaba from Kumogakure…"</p><p>"Well, young Tala has already made his way, we're just waiting for Ripper Inaba," Moegi shrugged.</p><p>"Hardly the first match that is held off due to belated arrivals, huh? The first match of Shinki from Sunagakure against Blusckel Steinck from Iwagakure has been postponed as well since young Blusckel hadn't arrived yet. It was meant to be the very first match…" Udon kept the commentary line busy until Ripper Inaba hurried onto the stage, rubbing his belly with a frown on his face. Once Ripper stepped within a fighting distance from Tala, he pulled his beanie down to cover up more of his face from the numerous stares across the stadium.</p><p>"Hmph… What's wrong? Scared?" Tala taunted his opponent. "If you show up late and look like a chicken, it doesn't improve much on if you don't show up at all and concede defeat."</p><p>"Yeah it does, it's just my stomach's a bit abuzz / All the fizz makes me feel like just before a quiz…" Ripper rubbed his abdomen as if he about to hurl up.</p><p>"Well, I guess if you just conceded defeat, I'd be snubbed of my promotion so I guess it is great that you showed up," Tala smirked and raised his hands, extending his index fingers and raising his thumbs up. It was an odd fighting stance to be certain.</p><p>"Hmph, what took him so long? I only kept him for a second…" Toroi scratched the back of his head in the waiting room.</p><p>"The guy's clearly a bit shaken, can you blame him?" Sunny-Lee sighed before continuing to observe the rest of the match with an empathetic smile on her face.</p><p>"If my rhymes were anywhere near like his, I'd probably get anxious about stepping onto the stage too…" Relta Ginn shook her head, looking more troubled by the behavior of the Kumogakure genin rather than empathetic toward his struggles.</p><p>"He's improvising, I wonder how he'll do with that in front of a crowd…" Meiko smirked, looking entertained by the match already despite the match not having even started yet. She had met both genin though quite briefly, she didn't much like Tala and she hadn't met Ripper for long enough to form a complete opinion on him either so it was still unclear on just who she should cheer for.</p><p>This match was also not one where the examinees took their sweet time before starting off. The moment that it kicked off, Tala aimed his index fingers to the ground and took a diagonal dive to the right. Just when it seemed that he would hit the ground, an invisible platform of air held him in place and propelled him further to the side while he took aim at his opponent who seemed to just realize his state of laziness and angst.</p><p>"Whoa! Floating in mid-air like a one-man flotilla, / This guy's got no chill like a pissed gorilla!" Ripper Inaba flipped out after stumbling back and seeing Tala's bubbles of pressurized air miss him by several inches.</p><p>Tala froze in place and rolled back to his left, it must have been something that he saw further in the direction that he was riding in but, as much as the audience and the commentators squinted at their screens, no one could make out what it was that he had seen. All that was clear at this point of the match was that something had shaken the red-haired Sunagakure ninja and forced him to flee in panic.</p><p>"Aw, man, fleeing from my beast's so vanilla, / And here you were talking like a real killer!" Ripper Inaba posed and weaved at Tala who fell to the ground. It wasn't a trip or a dive, the young man just planted with a stiff and joint-grinding slam, as if his body had seen something smash him in that direction and decided to realize that hazy dream, no matter how unnatural that would have made him move.</p><p>"Now, to all of the confused spectators in the audience, examinee Ripper Inaba is a very skilled young man from Kumogakure who uses his rhymes as a medium to transfer his genjutsu. Now, genjutsu is not a very engaging ninja art to spectate, seeing how all the flare and the dazzle is reserved only to the sufferer of the technique but we are seeing how effective it can be," Konohamaru decided to educate the audience with his commentary.</p><p>"We've seen examinee Tala try to draw the first blood before, he appears to have been too slow and Ripper Inaba managed to open his mouth and speak the medium for his illusionary techniques," Moegi added.</p><p>"That's right, if you know that Tala uses bubbles of pressurized air to move sand around and throw it like lofty, aerial bullets, you might understand the shortcoming a bit better. If you visualize the arena a little bit, there is no desert in there to exploit and pack into his capsules of pressurized air." Udon pointed out.</p><p>"So, I assume that gives Tala a disadvantage then?" Moegi asked, turning at her colleague at commentary.</p><p>"That's right, it reduces the weight and density of each projectile and it just makes them not hit nearly as hard or fast," Udon explained.</p><p>"Yo, dog, we've just started the brawl / And even though I'm not the one to drawl / I'm gonna have to make you fall / I won't even have to maul 'cause rhyme's all I need to enthrall," Ripper made sure to exploit the slow and shaky rise of his opponent by applying another genjutsu on top of the last one. Just when it seemed that Tala would rise from his collapse and begin mounting a counter-attack, his feet got wobbly and the young man fumbled again.</p><p>"He's messing with Tala's sense of balance," Meiko recognized the method behind an illusion.</p><p>"Wow, there's just not much you can do against a guy like this…" Kiyomi gawked at the screen. "If he opens his mouth first – you're sort of done with. He'll apply an illusion on top of illusion, you'll never see the end of it…"</p><p>"You can break out of an illusion, dispel it," Temari objected.</p><p>"It's a tough thing to do. You'll keep returning spare change to a guy paying you with sheets of paper with his own face on it," Kiyomi showed how little she cared for the objection.</p><p>With the Yamanaka heiress being a competent genjutsu user herself and both Kiyomi and Meiko having worked alongside one of the village's most promising young prospects in the craft, they knew how dangerous an illusionist with enough practice to not need to speak the names of his illusions, just spit bad rhymes to transfer them, was.</p><p>Tala pressed to the ground, hunkering down from the dreadful feeling of the world relentlessly spinning around him while whatever nightmares Ripper showed him in the beginning continued to haunt him as well. It remained to be seen if the Sunagakure genin would overcome his opponent and his endlessly stacking layers of illusions or collapse under their weight in the end.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0665"><h2>665. Save That Beanie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tala growled in frustration. All of his efforts amounted to just him being able to look up and scowl at the Kumogakure ninja who looked far too aloof to be this competent. The giant titan that he had called for in the beginning still loomed over the entire battlefield, threatening to smash him into a bloody stain while he proceeded to apply that other illusion on top – one that did something to his sense of balance.</p><p>It was easy to say that illusions are stupid. That you'd never be scared by a supermassive dinosaur that reaches out into the clouds and crushes you into the ground with merely the shockwave of its roar, one that threatens to smash the entire arena to bits with a punch or a stomp. Of course, you'd know that it was an illusion, especially when you know you're facing an illusion specialist but… It's a whole different thing entirely to actually witness it.</p><p>Those that talk rough about how hardcore they are and how nothing can faze them, those are the ones that have never been toyed with by a genjutsu specialist. It didn't matter how hardcore one thought they were, illusions were like fever, they didn't just show these majestic, pants-shitting sights, they messed with the brain somehow, fried it, made it actually believe that this was real.</p><p>Illusions felt more shocking than being tied down to a tree and beaten. They told you how you must feel, stripped all thought and individuality, peeled and broke you down to the most basic of human features, and made you nothing different from a frightened caveman whining and pressing crouched to a corner. That robbery of self only drove to make Tala madder. It encouraged him to fight back and not surrender to another loop of illusion being weaved on top of him.</p><p>Hand seals didn't work, his arms just didn't connect. This beanie-wearing bastard. How was Tala supposed to dispel genjutsu, use jutsu of his own when he lacked the precision and perception to even weave hand seals together. Whose idea was it to make it necessary to weave precise hand movements to use ninjutsu anyway? Well, at least Tala could see the tyranno-titan just fine, as well as feel his nausea and dizziness, the fumbling of his legs just peachy. Those were the important parts to feel anyway…</p><p>"Still hustling, that is why from hence / I'mma spit my rhymes and / You'll be gifted with an out of body experience / Just when you thought my other tricks were grand!" Ripper threw his hands out while applying another illusion on top.</p><p>Nausea never went away, nor did the feeling of cosmic dread of seeing a massive dinosaur threatening to smash him to bits from outside the arena and staring down into its opening at the roof. Weight was the only thing that went away. Tala felt weightless, not in the sense that he could fly away or speed blitz his opponent but instead in a helpless kind of way that had him float off into the sky without his say in the matter.</p><p>The Sunagakure redhead tried burrowing back down, swimming through the air to get his grasp on his balance and grab hold onto something but the shock of seeing his body lying on the floor lifeless shook him for a second. The sight of his own ethereal existence floating off into the heavens while his body laid sprawled on its belly down on the ground blanked Tala out and the hesitation was just one second too long. By the time he got the hang of himself and decided to get himself together, he was already too far gone and was about to fly off. If the escalation of his speed and quantum loss of weight was to be trusted as reliable, he'd have gone off into the cosmos any moment now.</p><p>"It's hard to believe it, ladies and gentlemen in the audience, but Ripper Inaba is just stomping the life out of his opponent who appears to have fallen ill or passed out, should we maybe get some staff to interfere?" Konohamaru wondered scratching the back of his head.</p><p>"I don't think so. It's just the way illusions work. We've got a whole group of sensors on watch at all times and the fact that they're not interfering right now means that they're confident in the fact that the examinees are under no mortal danger," Udon assured.</p><p>"Now, what did you mean about this being just par for the course for genjutsu?" Moegi wondered, turning at Udon.</p><p>"Well, you see, the entire subject of illusionary arts is a subject of, sort of, aggressive support. A fine illusionist can achieve plenty of goals – subdue their opponent, make them intimidated or drive them to the edge of madness, depending on the user and the technique, of course. I've never seen an illusion that makes a person just pass out, this reminds me more of a genjutsu coma, but neither I nor many other ninja have studied the subject intimately," Udon shrugged.</p><p>"I see, I must admit that I dismissed genjutsu back in the Academy as something weird and meant for creepy people. I can see how a specialty like this can be seen as neglected and how such a specialist might catch someone off-guard and deal a great amount of damage," Konohamaru snapped his fingers, interested in Udon's explanation.</p><p>"You've mentioned genjutsu coma, what is that? I'm asking for the sake of the viewers, of course," Moegi looked at Udon.</p><p>"Well, once again, I'm not a specialist on the subject but, I am aware that every trace of illusion leaves some tension on one's brain. If you saw a brain as a tool, every illusion is something that makes your tool work overtime. Eventually, if you bash your kitchen knife against a rock hard and long enough, it's going to go dull. When that happens, you might need your kitchen knife repaired by a professional if you want to use it to cut bread in the future, do you guys catch my cold?" Udon sniffed his nose.</p><p>"I don't think so but it sounds like something that you've put some thought into and something that makes sense," Konohamaru nodded.</p><p>"Now what Tala should feel lucky for is that Ripper Inaba doesn't appear like a very fit guy. It doesn't appear like his relentless stomping and beatdown is achieving much in terms of physical damage, as opposed to the mental damage he's inflicted plenty of on his opponent," Udon pointed out.</p><p>Tala's eyes flickered, it was dark in the beginning and a dull, wide-reaching sensation of blunt force hitting him right in the face woke him right up. Inaba had stomped his face with his boot and he's been going at it for a while if the bruises and swelling on his face were to be believed. Even if the impact from Ripper Inaba's boot wasn't enough to take Tala right up, the warm feeling of blood trickling down from his nose and his few busted teeth did the dirty deed just fine.</p><p>The Sunagakure genin felt his chance, he threw his legs out and wrapped them around Ripper's, pulling on it with his hands and, holding Ripper's leg, spun it inwards, throwing Ripper to the ground and off-balance. With his leg twisting in mid-air, Ripper Inaba collapsed in a turning motion. Before Tala could transition into a competent leglock, the grunting voice of his opponent broke out.</p><p>"It looks like you just won't learn / The pain that will make you stomach churn / If my attention is what you're trying to earn / Bastard, I'm gonna make ya burn!" Ripper threw his fists sideways, punching the dirt underneath his feet while he chanted out the necessary rhymes for his next jutsu.</p><p>Tala's grip around Ripper's leg loosened. It didn't hurt all at once, the pain didn't feel like anything at the moment but he saw himself surrounded with an intense aura of flames and it was the realization that the agony would be soon to follow that paralyzed the Sunagakure ninja in place. The pain didn't start off as anything excruciating, it felt like a bad sunburn at the moment but Tala's body wouldn't move regardless. His field of vision continued to draw in and focus on his decaying body.</p><p>The young man had seen a body burning away in his experiences on the battlefield and this didn't quite look like anything like what had happened but he saw red all around him and couldn't just narrow his thoughts on the fact that none of this was real. His hands, the skin peeled away and blisters popped out and just flat out popped, spewing something that evaporated instantly in the heat he cooked in down on the ground.</p><p>"Examinee Tala is just lying there, staring at his hands, this was his chance to finally put some hurt on the elusive Ripper Inaba from Kumogakure but he appears to have let the moment slip," Konohamaru observed on the commentary.</p><p>Ripped jumped forward with a vertical kick from down below. It cocked Tala's head back like a football, with his senses all overwhelmed and supercharged, the most rocking sensation was hearing the loud crack of when his head hit the dirt on its journey back. Ripper stomped onto Tala's stomach and kicked him again a couple of times, switching sides to go for kidney shots before slipping out a kunai knife.</p><p>Kunai. This was something down to earth, something Tala could manage. His fingers widened to encompass the stabbing arm, letting the tip of the blade freeze just inches from his face as the two struggled for a pair of pushes and yanks. It didn't take long for the vanity of such a struggle to reveal itself – had Ripper Inaba been a capable physical specimen or focused on improving on augmenting his physical strength more with chakra, he'd have already won the match by now.</p><p>The first instinct was to roll back, wrap his legs around Ripper's throat and switch onto the top position, press Ripper's own knife to his own throat and tell him to give up, put him down if he refused. No. Tala was wiser than that, he couldn't risk another word leaving this fool's mouth. The Sunagakure ninja threw both of his legs thick at Ripper's chest, sending the Kumogakure ninja flying back and prone on the dirt.</p><p>"Man, your fighting style is so vanilla / You were meant to be the real thrillah / Yet you're fighting like some bearded guerilla," Ripper threw his hands out and bobbed around, preparing to continue his assault on Tala once the Sunagakure examinee got all riled up by his supersized, imaginary, reptilian friend.</p><p>"Sand Style: Desert Sidearm!" Tala's grunt broke through the messy cloud of dust that raised from when the two wrestled on the ground for a short while. Ripper rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding getting tagged by Tala's first attempt at meaningful engagement in this match.</p><p>"Whoa, man, what the hell? / My moves are something you've gotta sell!" Ripper shook his fist up over his head, riled up by the fact that his opponent might have figured out a way to shrug off his illusions and answer him in return.</p><p>"You noisy, burly, smelly gnat, did you really think I'd never figure out a way to channel out your pathetic attempts at lyrics?" Tala pocketed his hands and closed his eyes, this was a show of extreme dismissal toward his opponent.</p><p>"But how? / Come on, man, spit it out / Don't make the answer something I'd have to tow / Man just shrugs off illusions, it's something I won't let go!" Ripper insisted.</p><p>"That's something for you to figure out now, isn't it?" Tala smirked and pulled his hands out of his pockets. He put them together in the formation of a hand seal and threw them aside in preparation for attacking his opponent again.</p><p>"Sand Style: Desert Automaton!" Tala grunted out, having waited for Ripper Inaba's attack for a few moments but having figured out that it wouldn't come. With his time to attack being so limited, the Sunagakure ninja decided to exploit every opportunity.</p><p>Ripper wheezed and coughed when multiple compressed spheres of Wind Release chakra gathered dust and grounded dirt inside them like Tala used to gather sand and flung them at him at hi-speeds. Tala had a wicked aim too, hitting the goofy rapper in his joints, knees, and elbows, face, and his ribcage. He was looking to make it hurt and he'd succeeded. In just a few seconds Tala sent his opponent reeling on the ground in a position of a beaten dog.</p><p>"You lost your beanie, let me help you with that…" Tala growled and fired another projectile that tore the beanie to worn out shreds of detached strands. Ripper's hand reached out for his hat accessory after it had been taken off his head but then stopped in mid-air upon its destruction and faltered. For whatever reason, the destruction of his old and smelly, patch-covered hat appeared to really crush him to the point where his hand slumped down in defeat.</p><p>"Oh, you liked that hat, maybe? You had to, in no other way would anyone put something this abominable on their head. Whatever, it had loops all over it, you'll buy something better. Or, better yet, how about you stop embarrassing your village and start looking like a real ninja?" Tala mocked his opponent, feeling a little bit of levity in his chest now that he regained the upper hand. "Tell you what, you tell me why you cared so much about that piece of fetid rag and I'll tell you how I've dealt with your illusions…"</p><p>"Embarrassing my home…" Ripper Inaba repeated while rising to his feet and clenching his fist by his side. The beaten Kumogakure ninja looked at the swelling declaration of his iron resolution but his fist then dissolved into a shapeless lump of a slumped hand. "All that mean talk's just a lot of foam."</p><p>"Maybe you should listen to your peers though?" Tala crossed his arms over his chest. "A ninja is meant to represent the pride of their village. They are meant to bring honor and success to their home. Kumogakure is a mighty ninja village, a military force to be reckoned with and yet you choose to act like some pathetic bum. You can never even assimilate with the common folk of your village looking like that. People could track you from the number of handkerchiefs and wet rags being handed to you so that you could wipe that dirt off your face."</p><p>"You think I've adopted this look?" Ripper Inaba growled back at his opponent. "Is that all you think I am, a fake, a crook? / That's all everything has to say when they don't understand it / Just act high and mighty, call me a bandit!"</p><p>"Oh, I've no doubt that there is nobody in your village looking as ridiculous as you do. I put Kumogakure ninja above such mockery of the ninja status," Tala hissed. "I've no ill will toward Konoha or Kumogakure, any village really. All that I can't stand is people that mock the set of rules of the game we're all playing."</p><p>"You can talk all you want, you've still got got / I'm sure that this bout leaves you still shocked / But one thing you can be sure of, it's that I will not / Stand down when you're getting me this hot / Bastard, I'll have my kill shot!" Ripper Inaba spelled out his rhyme but Tala just stood there and took it. His complete stillness was a self-imposed challenge.</p><p>A translucent bubble popped from around Tala, a sphere of wind not unlike those that he contained slugs of grounded minerals and sand to unpack at his opponent. A chamber of vacuum from which nothing at all could have been audible but, something that the Sunagakure ninja lamented a great deal, could still be understood by reading the lips of his opponent and this joker was being very expressive.</p><p>"Sand Style: Desert Laramie!" Tala raised his finger up and concentrated mineral dust inside it, shaping it into something akin to a tip of a spear. It all transpired in the blink of a moment as the bullet took off so fast that the minerals still shaping it trailed behind it inside the bubble of Wind Release chakra like a tail to a comet.</p><p>Inaba's eyes whited out, his chest flew backward taking the entirety of the rest of his body with him. The eyes of the Kumogakure lyricist whited out and he looked almost tranquil while falling. While to the rest of the observers it seemed like the poor Kumogakure goofball got sent down in an instantaneous blast, to Ripper Inaba himself his plunge felt infinite.</p><p>Experiencing his own pain, the bitterness of his failure and the strangle of defeat for this long would have driven a person mad unless that person had faced it so many times over that it only served to shape them into who they were. It was just such a person who could grow wiser from such a prolonged fall from grace. Not that he had much grace left to fall from. Then again, the fewer the grace, the softer the fall from it was.</p><p>"Examinee Tala pulls out an impressive victory, utilizing the impressive tactic of coating himself in his own Wind Release chakra capsule to nullify the noise which served as a medium of Ripper Inaba's illusions!" Konohamaru sealed the outcome on the commentary.</p><p>"I have to say, I did see the potential for Tala from Sunagakure winning coming but I did not see this particular trick being in the book at all!" Udon slammed his fist lightly against the desk.</p><p>"Well, ladies and gents, I'm getting a message from the Ninja Council itself that we're going to have a small break between the matches. I'm not sure what this is all about but it cannot be helped. Let that short break just amp you up for the rest of this eventful day!" Moegi leaned her face a little bit too close to the microphone, a mistake coming from unexpected excitement, no doubt. Whether it was the good or the bad kind, it still remained to be seen, however.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0666"><h2>666. Nothing Useful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Ugh! I don't get it… Why are they still stalling the event?" Meiko groaned and leaned back against a locker behind her. She was beginning to feel hot inside her armor, though she would have been glad to stick it in her father's face given how due to the white weave underneath her body she wasn't really uncomfortable wearing it. The protective pieces didn't bruise or cut her body at all and it didn't feel all too different from wearing a thick jacket.</p><p>"I'll ask around," Kiyomi mumbled in reply and disappeared from the locker room. Meiko followed her teammate with her eyes, wondering just whom she could have asked for help and why someone important enough to know the real reason would just tell her but she didn't have the opportunity to ask it. Moments later, Kiyomi returned.</p><p>"Well…?" Meiko wondered and looked up at her teammate.</p><p>"Don't say it out loud or make a face that would suggest that I've told you anything," Kiyomi voice rung in Meiko's mind with clarity she hadn't previously experienced. To this version of Kiyomi, talking to someone mentally appeared to be as flawless as using her voice to talk to them. There didn't appear to be any secrets that were safe from this young lady as whenever she'd have wanted to know something, the impression was that she could have just "asked".</p><p>Of course, by now Meiko had been playing this game long enough to realize this might have just been appearances she kept up on purpose. Ninja did that sometimes, showed un unnecessary amount of power and skill to deceive everyone around about their exact potential. Such a thing harkened back to the earliest days of people walking on wooden paddles and fooling people they could walk on water.</p><p>"Blusckel Steinck from Iwagakure is missing. He just hasn't shown up and nobody anyone's inquired so far has seen him for some time, likely he's disappeared shortly after the battle royal stage of the exams," Kiyomi said on the mental link.</p><p>"Blusckel… That's the guy that was supposed to be in the first match, right?" Meiko looked up into the ceiling as if she was just acting bored. She wasn't selling this at one-hundred percent but nobody was too into the idea that they were being shifty to begin with so nobody paid it much mind that Kiyomi just walked in and Meiko didn't care to ask her how'd it go.</p><p>"Yeah. He's from Iwagakure so… People think that somebody from Kumogakure might have had something to do with it. I'm almost certainly sure of it. Talk of the high-society parts of the town is that he wasn't too fond of the hostile Kumogakure takeover and might have seen the big stage as a platform to let it be known. Whether it's right or just some conspiracy theory, there's some unrest in the Ninja Council too. Before the big cheese can decide if Kumogakure representatives are a bunch of rotten molds or not, the exam's on hold," Kiyomi relayed.</p><p>"Wow, you got this much information? I guess you really have learned to just read people's minds…" Meiko very nearly restrained herself from whistling out loud.</p><p>"Well… Not quite. Some green-vests have asked me to do our village a favor, which was why they briefed me in. You wanna come?" Kiyomi wondered.</p><p>"What do you mean exactly?" Meiko looked at her friend who pushed her back off the locker room and left the room. Her mental signals slowly weakened in volume though it was the intended effect. If Meiko agreed to help Kiyomi out with her little errand, it would have been for the better if they weren't seen leaving together and, if she refused, it would have been for the best for Kiyomi to not waste any time.</p><p>"I'm going to the infirmary to ask what that Kumogakure genin knows. I could use your backup since I might need to focus on the deed. Join me if you're interested," Kiyomi's thoughts lingered in the air like a fading smell but then it dispersed just in time for Meiko to catch and process them.</p><hr/><p>"Who's this?" the green-vest pointed at Meiko with a discontent face. "We thought we've made it abundantly clear that this is a sensitive matter!"</p><p>"Oh, it is. A pair of Iwagakure ninja sneaking in to kill a weakened Kumogakure ninja within Konoha's borders. Such a problem, Iwagakure's gone, who's to blame? Kumogakure in charge, right? So many villages have been looking at Konohagakure to do something now that Kumogakure's military's been weakened, to cement themselves on top and who's to benefit from such conflict more than scorned Iwagakure loyalists?" Kiyomi shrugged with a sly smirk.</p><p>Meiko's eyes shifted from her bold companion in a slick, black dress and the two very confused and emasculated ninja before them. Just what was Kiyomi's game this whole time? Did she know that these two were Iwagakure ninja trying to kill this rapping kid? How? Did she genuinely read their minds when they contacted her or did some of her clansmen tell her that? Did she find out now or was she aware this whole time that this might take place?</p><p>"Wh-What are you talking about, young lady? This is preposterous!" the second green-vest tried to defuse the situation but the sweat breaking down from underneath his bandana and down his forehead might as well have exposed his Iwagakure headband hidden underneath for how much of a telegraphing signal it was.</p><p>"Preposterous isn't the right word, inconvenient is it. After all, taking out a single Yamanaka heiress who appears so underprepared for the gruesome festivity of combat in the arena is so simple but tackling her companion who's looming whole head over her and looks like she's capable of whooping some serious ass is a whole thing entirely, right? Don't worry, Meiko won't be the one to deal with you two," Kiyomi waved with her hand in dismissal. Meiko wasn't sure from where or how but the pair of green-vests slumped on the ground unconscious, their eyes whited out and jaws loose, slobber dripping down their chins just a few whips short of foaming.</p><p>It was as if someone had turned them off.</p><p>It was only when the infirmary window popped open and a masked ninja in civilian clothes and a red scarf stepped inside, pressed his palm to his chest and bowed to Kiyomi as if she was his queen or something that Meiko realized that her friend had Yamanaka plants observing the situation from afar and that neither of them were in any sort of danger.</p><p>"Ma'am!" the kneeling ninja muttered, awaiting orders.</p><p>"Give these two to the village authorities. I'm sure Lord Seventh has his ANBU watching us so it would be hilarious if you dropped them by their posts and waved at them too. I want to know that he's wrong to underestimate us and the intelligence we can provide, also, that he was wrong to support the Uchiha during the little cold civil war we had going on. I want him to regret that but let's also be useful…" Kiyomi kept staring at the ceiling, pondering and pouting like an immature brat but Meiko had to admit that despite her calls being entirely selfish, it didn't appear like she was not making sense or acting like a child.</p><p>She was being an actual politician right now.</p><p>"Lords Sixth and Seventh must have forgotten how useful we can be due to my uncle being so good at sitting on the sidelines and playing shadow games. Let's tease him a little bit and turn on the gas, as long as it's warm and not hot…" Kiyomi made a teasing face while her masked subordinate picked up the unconscious Iwagakure loyalists and bowed again as if their limp bodies weighed nothing.</p><p>"Ma'am!" he exclaimed again before flickering away through the open window. His step was heavier in the first few stages of Body Flicker but just enough for the step to shake the window and have it close shut behind him. It felt as if Meiko's friend had a personal strike force of her own, one that rivaled Konoha's ANBU in skill and experience.</p><p>"So you're the Queen Bee of Yamanaka now?" Meiko pressed her hands against her hips and leaned over her friend, looking a tad irritated that she's been kept out of the loop but more in the goofy, friendly manner in which a pal was mad for a farting pillow being slipped under their seat than the appropriate kind of mad her friend deserved. "What happened to your uncle, did you off him or something?"</p><p>"Kill him? No, eww!" Kiyomi shook her head while acting playful with her body language. "I haven't replaced him officially though it'll happen after the Chuunin Exams. The Yamanaka and the Inuzuka are going to be the tightest buddies. Uncle even showed me his real form for the first time before relinquishing some of the clan's control, I've been on sort of a test drive lately."</p><p>"Inuzuka? So you're getting married?" Meiko slipped her helmet off and scratched her messy, red hair.</p><p>"Well… I'll admit, me handling the clan while my husband handles me wasn't my ideal pick for management conditions but with an alliance of the military strength of Inuzuka and the intelligence capabilities of the Yamanaka, no Hokage will ever undermine my clan for the Uchiha, no matter how fancy their eyes are. They're just one clan," Kiyomi shrugged before putting her index finger by her chin and turning her eyes up, "Koaki is pretty cute and I think I can work with him so it won't hurt at all…"</p><p>"Wow, you got over that Yakiniku Q episode really fast!" Meiko crossed her arms over her chest. She's been meaning to look into that and this sudden change of her friend which could not have been healthy for her psyche but Kiyomi didn't even look back at Meiko after the blacksmith brought it up. "So your goons could have taken care of these two assassins here at any point, right? Why even come here and show your face?"</p><p>"How else could I poke around Ripper Inaba's mind?" Kiyomi replied, finally turning back at the redhead with a confident smirk. It was because of Meiko's stumped expression that the blonde groaned in aggravation, "Oh come on! Aren't you at least a little bit curious? It's basically free intelligence up there."</p><p>"The guy's been beaten down. Judging from how he sounded, he won't be taking this defeat well and it didn't seem like he had a happy life to return to either. It's not like a rag such as him would know much of Kumogakure's secrets, if he did – he'd have someone watching over him," Meiko didn't like that idea one bit. It didn't seem like Kiyomi to see people as just scoops of intelligence, something akin to living books to be read from. Due to something in the teachings Meiko had picked up along the way it just didn't stick right with her.</p><p>"He would have if I didn't arrange for him to be alone," Kiyomi replied without actually confronting Meiko's objections. She extended her hand over the beanie-less head of the resting young man. Ripper Inaba grunted and wriggled in his bedding, sweat started running down his face as he began wrestling against the phantom assailant though not at all in a meaningful way. He was just a book in Kiyomi's hands now.</p><hr/><p>"Ready, set, go!" a middle-aged woman in a black dress with the white Kumogakure vest over it waved her hand. A handful of children dashed across a hundred-meter track. Some made it in the first half, others were the losers but even the losers couldn't contain their laughter. It wasn't because they were glad to be learning and training their body, it was to poke fun at their fallen friend who had tripped over his awkward legs and planted down on the ground.</p><p>The teacher did not approach the kid or help him up, she stared at him as if he was afflicted with something loathsome before turning at the children and flipping the switch from disgruntled to excited as she wrapped her arms around the group and gently led them toward the Academy. Seeing the fallen boy whimper and whine on the ground she turned around and thrust a sharp glare at him.</p><p>"Well? You're not excused from the Academy, you know!" she hissed. The boy of spiky, bright hair sniffled and wiped the snot off his face, rising on his legs and limping at an accelerated pace toward the teacher and his group.</p><p>"What a weirdo…" someone in the group poked fun at him.</p><p>"Why does he look like that? Is he from the Snow Country?" a girl amongst the group wondered.</p><p>"Makes sense that he ate shit, that's why there're mountains separating the Snow Country and Lightning Country, after all. So that all that filth doesn't bleed into our home…" an older boy in the group, likely someone who was repeating the Academy course postured to the group of students a couple of years younger than him. All of them nodded in some sort of sick admiration.</p><p>"Hey, are you one of those albinos or something?" a girl with curly hairs tied into two pigtails ran up to the limping kid with two of her own friends that looked hesitant to be seen close to the paleskin.</p><p>"Albinos?" the fallen kid wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, my brother's like that. He's normal like everybody else, just his skin is all pale and his hair's white, it's genetic, or something…" the pigtails girl declared.</p><p>"I'm normal too!" the boy pointed at himself with his thumb, striking an inspiring pose since his busted leg didn't hurt that bad when he was standing still. "There are loads of people over the mountains to the south that have pale skin!"</p><p>"I mean… Yeah but not like us," the pigtails girl turned on one foot and tapped around playfully. "We could beat them all if we wanted to and they're always looking at us for help and to tell them how to fix their villages… Dad gets really mad talking about it but I think it's cute. It's kind of like we're their mother!"</p><p>"I'm not an albino, my name's Inaba, and I don't need anyone's help with anything!" Inaba yelled out.</p><p>"You clearly need to be shown how to run right," a girl beside the pigtails girl pointed a finger at him and chuckled, making the whole group laugh.</p><hr/><p>"You've torn your trousers?" mother crossed her arms over her chest, worried.</p><p>"Who cares, they were made from sacks anyway…" Inaba imagined himself drilling a hole in the floor. He was embarrassed to go back home with torn trousers after just the first day of the Ninja Academy but he was getting kind of hungry and they had saved enough ingredients to salt the soup that day.</p><p>"And you've bled all over them…" mother pulled her beanie over her head. She did so when she got nervous. She used to be a ninja at some point so Inaba was glad she pulled her hat instead of hitting him. He couldn't recall her ever hitting him but he couldn't have had that thought stuck in his head for no reason at all, right? She must have hit someone at some point…</p><p>"Sorry…" Inaba mumbled and looked away. "I guess that means you'll need to make new ones, right? I can help…"</p><p>"Ugh… It's not just that… Those trousers were made from our last sack of herbs. We'll need to first get a sack of herbs to make you new trousers from in the first place," mother sighed.</p><hr/><p>"Hey, Pale Inaba, we're playing ninja, do you want to play!?" a teen-aged boy waved at Inaba while he was passing by.</p><p>"Me? You want to play with me?" Inaba wondered, pointing at himself in disbelief. He was lucky not to have to fend them off from harassing him on even the good days and here they wanted to play with him. Could they have been a bit more used to his weird skin after studying in the same class as him in the Academy?</p><p>"Sure, we need someone to play the Konoha spy. You're perfect for that, wasn't your father from the Snow Country or something? You paleskins do look the same so you'll be the perfect fit. It's an easy role to fill, just act yourself and you'll be fine," the boy teased him.</p><p>"My mom's lived in this village longer than you!" Inaba clenched his fist.</p><p>"You paleskin, you would dare hit him?" one of the boy's friends gasped.</p><p>"Don't worry, what good is he going to do? I've seen him run and I've seen him try to throw a punch. I thought you paleskins were meant to be useful for cheap labor, or something, how come you're so shit at taijutsu?" the leader of the group kept teasing Inaba.</p><p>"That's just Snow Country! You don't know anything!" Inaba yelled clenched his fists and shook his head. He felt on the fringe of crying, that would have been the worst-case scenario but he knew that the boy was right – there were more of them and they were all better fighters than Inaba. The only subjects Inaba excelled in were chakra control and theoretical genjutsu classes.</p><p>"There's more of the Snow Country than there is of Konohagakure, I'd say Snow Country defines paleskins better…" one of the kids teased him again. Inaba wanted to object to that statement but he wasn't quite sure, his geography wasn't that good. He got confused all the time. He turned around and just bolted back home. He could hear his mother jump up from the sudden noise of him bursting in and tackling the door to his room.</p><p>Maybe everyone was right, maybe he was different from everyone else? He couldn't fight as good, he wasn't as fast or as strong, he constantly messed things up and even the teachers didn't get mad at him as much as the other students for flunking his tests. None of them say any of that offensive stuff about foreigners being only good for physical labor but they may as well say it with the way they're all looking at him.</p><hr/><p>"Are you okay?" mother's voice reached Inaba from behind but he didn't as much as turn around to look at her.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm just reading my mag, why would I not be rad?" Inaba shrugged, he still didn't look at her though.</p><p>"It's just… It's a pretty day and you're spending your time indoors, windows, and covers shut whole day…" mother sat closer to him. If he didn't look at her, maybe he wouldn't about how much weight she's lost, maybe he'd not notice that she's been looking exhausted and pale, paler, lately. Coltan mines were no place for women, let alone single mothers who already had plenty on their plates but it was the only source of income that mattered in their family.</p><p>"This reading is like training, really / I'm cool so how 'bout you act chilly?" Inaba mumbled.</p><p>"Look, there's this whole business going on with the youth of this village, calling themselves weird names, this rhyming thing might be in it too, honestly, I wouldn't know but… You don't have to shut yourself in. You don't have to lie to me. It's okay if you just wanna be alone but… You won't get rejected all the time, one of these days your team's gonna stick together," mother tried cheering him up but it was useless.</p><p>Inaba's first team got disbanded because he flunked it. He could have read all about genjutsu theory but, at the end of the day, it didn't matter. His second team got crossed out of the active list because his teammate didn't want to work with him and flat out punched him out. After that whole thing, the lacking odds of two members facing a test meant for three were just not in their favor. By now he had acquired a bit of a reputation as an undesirable. Almost like he's cursed or something…</p><p>"You know… It's not always going to be like this. Things have changed drastically in just the last couple of years, they'll change a whole lot more too. I don't understand this whole A, B, Q movement, or whatever but… People like us get noticed a bit more. People from abroad come to work and they don't have to feel like they're afflicted or something. My supervisor thinks this youth culture is a bunch of boloney, reducing a proud nation to something ragged and challenging to society's norms but, you know what? I think… I think it's great because paleskins and locals are both capable of being ragged and challenging at the same time. I think…" mother sniffed, it didn't matter, as long as Inaba didn't look at her, her tears may not have existed. Maybe it was all in his head…</p><p>He couldn't read his mag, too much water in his eyes, if he blinked, it would all go coming down and then he'd get busted. He'd be some damned crybaby in front of his single mother who was the only person pushing them along this whole time.</p><p>"I think that a movement that challenges this society is just what we needed because we've been thirsty for this challenge our entire lives!" mother was crying, there was no doubt about it. Inaba stood up and wrapped his hands around her. He wasn't a big guy, whoever picked a fight with him picked a fight they'd win but mother fit in his embrace so well, it's almost as if she was meant to be comforted by him. The best part was – with her collapsing like that, she didn't see him cry…</p><p>"You better believe things'll change, sister / All this damned posh attitude is a damned blister / Genjutsu's a real tongue-twister / But I'm gonna use it to kick some keister / This country won't even know I dissed her / Illusions can be used to create a world / I'm gonna do that and mine will smell like pearls!" Inaba whimpered out, halting for a good handful of seconds to come up with the following rhyme. His eyes had been closed, he could no longer stop his tears unless he kept them shut in.</p><p>A tearing sound made Inaba look up, all tears fired loose but he was worried that his mother was hurt. There were a couple of rude tears in her old and timeworn beanie. Much to his surprise, she slipped it off of her head and slipped it onto his. Her finger rubbed against his eye with rudeness that only a woman working the coltan mines and made insensitive to how human flesh compared to the handle of a pickaxe mining minerals felt.</p><p>"Maybe this hat will distract everybody from your sack-pants long enough to take you seriously…" she joked. It was a measly but brave ray of sunshine in a room of complete gloom, a candle lit up nine miles of problems deep, hoping someone on the surface could have picked it up by some miracle.</p><hr/><p>Kiyomi stepped away from the sweating young man who was putting up quite pathetic opposition to her mental inquisition. She sighed and wrapped her arms around her chest as if trying to shelter from a chill while she approached the door.</p><p>"Well…?" Meiko wondered. While she wanted nothing to do with this horrendous idea of probing this young man's mind, at the very least she'd have liked something good to come of it so that her friend didn't invade someone's privacy for no reason at all. She wasn't sure if that made her a better or a worse person, honestly.</p><p>"Nothing useful…" Kiyomi replied. "As you've said, nobody trusted this buffoon with anything important that hasn't already been destroyed."</p><p>Heavy mood lingered between the two and they didn't talk all the way back to the locker room. There was a small spark of activity in there, the stoppage must have been lifted and matches were allowed to continue. Meiko wondered if Kiyomi knew the reason for that if she knew if the Ninja Council found Kumogakure responsible for anything or not but she decided to focus on the matches ahead as well as her own matches as spending her time looking for clues she had no hope of putting together might have very well have rendered the past couple of months wasted in a blink of an eye.a</p>
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<a name="section0667"><h2>667. Intimidation Tactics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Ladies and gentlemen in the audience, also, more importantly, the examinees waiting for your turn in the waiting room, there has been a small change in the match-ups. Due to an unforeseen obstacle of examinee Blusckel Steinck failing to arrive at the exams we are forced to change the match card a little bit. The match following this one, Boruto Uzumaki VS Gennai will also include examinee Shinki, making it Boruto Uzumaki VS Gennai VS Shinki. That is the decision of the Ninja Council." Konohamaru informed on the commentary. His voice sounded quiet at first, likely so to prepare the audience for the booming noise of the event again after a lengthy period of silence.</p><p>"Huh, wait, what, I mean!?" Boruto's jaw dropped. "What the hell!? Now I have to worry about that guy too!?"</p><p>"Oh, it's odd they didn't stack that up on my match up next…" Relta Ginn stretched her arms and rushed off onto the stage.</p><p>"They must not have thought it fair to just stick a third element onto the match without warning…" Sunny-Lee shrugged.</p><p>"What's wrong, son of the Seventh? I am glad to have this chance. I can prove everything I believe in just one match…" Shinki turned to Boruto who didn't even turn back to answer the look of his opponent at first. Just when it began looking like Boruto was scared of his opponent, he turned back and stepped up closer to him. It might have been just her imagination, or so Meiko thought, but she saw Shinki's black coat rustle as if it was alive somehow.</p><p>"Prove what you believe, and what's that, I mean!?" Boruto adopted a tough-guy expression even though it was not too difficult to see through the fact that his courage was false deep down. By acting this way and trying to seem tough, he accidentally showed everyone in the locker room that he didn't think too highly of his chances to win.</p><p>"That Konohagakure has grown soft under the rule of the Seventh. Not this Konohagakure, I've not met its leader but from what I hear he is a capable commander. Your father, however, is too soft. He is a remarkable ninja, I've no reason to doubt his power or achievements but he is a failure of a leader." Shinki claimed while calmly staring back into Boruto's blue eyes.</p><p>"You bastard, our fathers are friends, I mean!" Boruto yelled out.</p><p>"So they are. Maybe that is why my father thinks I am wrong. That is why I relish the opportunity to show him the truth by crushing his son before the Ninja Council and prove him wrong. My father is a wise and powerful man but I believe that his friendship is obstructing his vision…" Shinki stated. "The two of us are quite similar, we are of similar age, we are both sons of the respective leaders of our village. The true differences in our respective Kage shall become evident when we face each other and in our match, the truth shall become clear."</p><p>"You guys…" Gennai scratched his cheek, looking sorry for himself. "I'm in the match too, you know…"</p><p>"And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the next match of the day! We don't doubt it for a second that you've grown tired of waiting and so we present the next match – Relta Ginn from Hoshigakure against Tasure Kaeron from Kirigakure." Moegi introduced the combatants before turning to her peers for some additional commentary.</p><p>"These two are real oddballs. What we've got here is, I believe, anyone's match. These are two individuals that have their own quirks and quirky people don't quite think the same as everyone else. It is because of that it will be impossible to tell all throughout who's got the advantage," Udon pondered on the match.</p><p>"Huh? What do you mean by that?" Konohamaru scratched his head before seeing Tasure Kaeron stepping out onto the arena, at which point he gulped and pulled the collar of his vest, "Ah, I see…" he added.</p><p>Tasure Kaeron was a taller than average individual though it was not his height or his build that made him look odd. It was instead his hairdo which looked like a mosaic art piece, shaved in various forms with what remained seeming like an elaborate net over his head while a handful of tightly-tied braids fell from his scalp down his shoulders. Tasure was too young to have facial hair yet though that did not seem to stop him from scribbling some with black ink over his chin and the lower side of his face, styling his face paint similarly to how he had done his hair.</p><p>"Whoa! Are you for real?" Relta Ginn jumped up startled. "I thought that you would fix that hair for the big event but you're really devoted to this, aren't you?"</p><p>"Who'se you'se talking 'bout?" Tasure hissed. He was a slim and quite frail-looking individual so when he moved his upper body and emoted he appeared like a moray ready to lunge at its prey. Except for the fact that no prey capable of intelligent thought would ever swim past this creature without having accepted that either they would soon die in its jaws or that they were about to have the weirdest day of their lives. "You'se couldn't possibly be talking 'bout Tasure?"</p><p>Relta Ginn shook in discomfort, looking at Tasure with disgust equitable to as if he was a walking, building-sized cockroach engaged in its insectoid face and antenna washing rituals. Tasure drew a paper-thin blade from his pouch and licked it. Upon closer camera shots, the ninja in the locker room could note that Tasure's tongue was much thicker than it should have been for someone his size, which could only have been the reason for his peculiar speech mannerisms. It was also blue, though clearly dyed this way by some candy as the color was not evenly spread out and looked as if it was half-heartedly sprayed over his mouth organ.</p><p>Tasure's opponent was an oddball herself, though her quirks of wearing her clothes in strange manners like wearing socks of different colors or lengths or wearing her top backward didn't seem nearly as odd with Tasure's larger than life personality and appearance drowning it out.</p><p>"Alright, the sooner I'm done with this, the better…" Relta took a wobbly fighting stance, looking positively thrown off and uneasy about the slithering body speech of her opponent as well as his unnatural appearance. Some ninja looked odd because of their upbringing, it was especially apparent for Kirigakure ninja that had clans like the Hoshigaki clan with clansmen that had fish-like features though Tasure's case was especially baffling since he looked quite human, just one that made heaps of wrong choices.</p><p>"Tasure's not 'fraid to cut dem girlies!" Tasure licked his knife again. The thin-edge bent ever so slightly from the touch of his oversized, tongue. "He don't prefer cutting girlies, but Tasure'll cut dem anyways…"</p><p>The unorthodox attempts of psyching his opponent out appeared unconditionally successful as within mere moments of him speaking again Relta tsked with her tongue in irritation and flushed through a handful of hand seals before driving her hand down onto the ground.</p><p>"Earth Style: Stone Shower!" she grunted, causing the area between her and her opponent to open up and spray fist-sized rocks with sharpened edges at her opponent. As a collection of both being psyched out to attack too early as well as the unnatural agility of her opponent and the light weapon he holstered, Tasure slipped away from the shower of Relta's ninjutsu and moved in to attack her up close.</p><p>Relta revealed herself to be no slouch in hand-to-hand as well though her body stiffened at a wrong moment, a disgusting flaw of execution of an evasive move resulted in a shallow gash of red opening up on her chest. It didn't look too deep as despite being open it didn't bleed with enough intensity to require attention. It was because of the thin sheet of steel that was used as the preferred weapon of the Kirigakure ninja that such a wound was made.</p><p>"What a dumb knife…" Meiko grumbled. "I don't think he'd be able to slash anyone with it even if he wanted to and they didn't resist…"</p><p>"That might be the idea…" Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Oh yeah… Those softies in the Ninja Council will eat this non-lethal approach up when they evaluate performance," Temari chuckled to herself, finding Tasure's performance more worthy of an award for the best-executed charade rather than an acknowledgment of his skills as a shinobi.</p><p>"Perhaps they should," Kiyomi admitted. "Facing off against a crazy-looking guy like this with blown-out eyes and a tormenting fighting style is not an experience one would forget. A ninja like this guy can frighten secrets they didn't even know they knew right out of somebody. Who cares if his knife can only cut one's skin, a wound like that will still make it harder to fight back."</p><p>Tasure pressed his offensive at a close-range which was smart – after all, his opponent had just revealed herself to be more of a mid-to-long range ninjutsu user with a careless show of her hand. However, Relta seemed to have recovered from the lock of panic gripping her throat and answered with a chakra-infused punch straight to Tasure's chest that sent the poor chap flying back and planting on the dirt face-first.</p><p>"That looked like a painful hit, if Tasure wasn't careful with his defensive augmentations, a hit like that would blast his entire ribcage to pieces!" Moegi exclaimed on commentary.</p><p>"It's an amateurish mistake to forget that Earth Style ninjutsu users commonly employ chakra augmentations to move the boulders and shifting ground that they call up. Their striking potential is much more dangerous than that of other ninjutsu users because of that reason." Konohamaru added.</p><p>"It's unclear how many Earth Style users Tasure Kaeron has faced in the past and how much experience he has on this matter. Judging from what information we have on him, his story is one of inspiration, being a youth from the slummier districts of Kirigakure, Tasure has lived a life of petty crime, eventually deciding to rise above it and crawl out of the slums by becoming a ninja. I don't believe that a man that used to be a common criminal would be too experienced with one-on-one ninja combat." Udon theorized.</p><p>"Well, one thing's for certain, his background as a hooligan is surely paying dividends as his knife-fighting skills and intimidation game is on point," Moegi nodded.</p><p>"Yer being feisty. Tasure don't like 'em feisty 'cause den Tasure have to cuts 'dem more," Tasure hissed out while rising off the ground and taking another, matching knife out of his pouch.</p><p>"Tsk, you freak!" Relta grunted, this time managing to overcome Tasure's unnatural looks and behavior and stay with a cool head as she stomped the ground beneath her feet and weaved a single hand seal. "Earth Style: Shockwave Ridge!"</p><p>A trio of rumbling shockwaves jetted out from underneath Relta's foot, the left and the right one spreading out to their respective sides while the central one rushed straight for Tasure. The fleet-footed Kirigakure bandit performed a quick bounce to the side but Relta proceeded to punch the end of the ridge on her side, forcing a blast of force to burst out from the central shockwave and throw Tasure aside.</p><p>"Earth Style: Earth Mausoleum Dumpling!" Relta grunted as she punched both of her arms, gleaming with chakra enforcement, into the ground and pulled out a giant volume of it from underneath her. Using her chakra enhanced strength, Relta flung the massive boulder, large enough to cast a shadow over the ground underneath it up into the sky, instead of throwing it right at Tasure. The purpose of her peculiar trajectory became clearer when she shuffled through a bunch of hand seals and breathed in deep, inflating her chest.</p><p>"Fire Style: Blazing Meteors!" she yelled out before breathing out a myriad of small fireballs, all directed toward the airborne mass of land. While the fireballs appeared to lack volume and explosive power somewhat, their collective barrage had little trouble of lighting the entire floating landmass ablaze and form a makeshift meteor out of it.</p><p>Tasure clutched his knife with a nervous grip while charging at his opponent was a viable tactic, the range of the falling mass of land included her location as well so he'd have completely ignored the falling meteor just to rush at her and score a cut. With just a moment's hesitation, the Kirigakure ninja decided to attempt to evade the falling doom seeing how he possessed ample evasive skill and above-average agility.</p><p>"Hmph… Let's see Tasure cut this," Relta huffed while shuffling back and out of the range of the slamming meteor. Even after putting in the effort to move well outside its range, she still had to employ chakra to her feet to stick to the ground and wrestle the resulting shockwave and the pulse of heat and flames that spread from the point of impact.</p><p>"What an absolute game-changer! Who knew that examinee Relta was capable of such an awesome technique?" Moegi whistled out before nearly swallowing the microphone to express her surprise.</p><p>"Indeed, here we see the experience playing an important role. Examinee Relta has participated in the last Chuunin Exams held in Konoha and even the one held in Sunagakure before this one and she's come up short both times. It is of no surprise that by now this impressive young lady has mastered a B-Rank ninjutsu technique in Earth Style: Earth Mausoleum Dumpling," Udon said on commentary.</p><p>Tasure laid stuck in the wall at the very edge of the arena. His clothes had been proper singed and even the impressive piece of modern art that was his hairdo was ruined when multiple lines of hair got burnt up. The slow yet relentless stream of blood down his nose and mouth suggested some internal injuries from the landing of the tremendous landmass while the heatwave and shockwave combined did the real number on him afterward. He didn't look to be in much of a condition to fight though the proctors did not interfere yet, ruling him to be capable of competition, as long as he deemed himself to be.</p><p>"You build your walls, girlie, Tasure gonna cut through 'dem all and 'den he gonna cut you too…" Tasure grumbled in pain while pushing his body off the wall and landing on his feet in a shaky stance. His injuries seemed too severe for him to be in any condition to engage in his previous showcase of knife-fighting skills.</p><p>"Tsk… Even through all that? You're really messed up, you know that!?" Relta yelled out at her opponent, looking more psyched out by the reluctance of this disturbing individual to quit the competition after she put her best hurt on him rather than his words.</p><p>A thin stream of blood ran down Relta's shoulder with a shallow cut opening up to let it out. Her backward-worn top tore open in a stringy cloth-tearing sound. Once again she was too taken aback by the weird behavior of her opponent to notice his attack. It was only when Relta crouched down in preparation for more long-ranged attacks that she noticed one of Tasure's thin and short knives lying on the ground. With that silent and irritating attack, the hooligan revealed the purpose of his knives to be solely for optimal concealment and difficulty to perceive them when thrown.</p><p>Tasure flung more of his knives at her but this time Relta was ready, rolling aside to avoid them. Her shoulder burnt with irritation when dirt and dust entered the wound but it was just the sort of pain she was used to having worked as a ninja all this time, just looking to be acknowledged at last. This whole time, looking at the grand picture of the Chuunin Exams it seemed like an insurmountable wall to climb over but here and now she finally saw the top of it and could smell the trees and the fruit on the other side. All she needed to do was to reach out for the top and pull herself over the edge!</p><p>"Earth Style: Earth Dome!" Relta yelled out, slapping her palms together and then pressing them against the ground. The dirt underneath her rumbled in a tunneling line as it extended toward her injured opponent and burst from underground in the shape of a dome. Tasure struggled to try and outrun the dome before it covered him up but his wounds were too severe to build up enough speed and move in time.</p><p>"Fire Style: Blazing Meteors!" Relta once again spread her fireballs across the arena, homing them all in on her enclosed opponent and igniting the dome of earth that Tasure was encased in. She focused her chakra into her right arm to the point where it shimmered with vibrant, blue flames and charged at the earth dome as if she was possessed. With a wicked power cross, the earth dome exploded into a storm of rocky shrapnel and incalculable force looking to erupt and finding no escape within the dome.</p><p>When the devastation cleared out, the settling dust revealed Tasure lying sprawled out on the dirt with a few smaller chunks of dirt and rock still covering him. Staff rushed onto the stage and promptly removed him. Relta sighed and stared at her clenched fist, examining the heavy price that the battlefield paid during her match. She had always thought her teammate Gentib to be the one to become chuunin first, though it seemed like she may have just earned her own promotion before him.</p><p>"Sadly, we might require another short break now, don't worry though, ladies and gentlemen in the audience, it's only for as long as it will take for the terra-formers to fix the arena and ready it for the triple threat match still to come! Look forward to it, this might just be the first and only instance of a three-ninja-match in the finals of the Chuunin Exams!" Konohamaru spoke on the commentary.</p><p>"Aw man, I worked so long to prepare myself for a match with Boruto, now I'll have a whole 'nother guy to think about… This is unfair…" Gennai sighed and mumbled to himself.</p><p>Shiki and Boruto, meanwhile, traded glares with one another. Whereas Boruto's was passionate and spite-driven, Shiki's was cold and calculated. It seemed that where Boruto looked out to step out into the arena and prove something to everybody, his opponents included, Shiki saw himself as just a servant and tool to the inevitable to happen.</p>
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<a name="section0668"><h2>668. The Bustling Triple Threat Match</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The next match is shaping up to be so great that it's almost unfair – Shinki from Sunagakure VS Boruto from Konohagakure VS Gennai from Konohagakure!" Konohamaru turned for his fellow commentators while the trio of genin gathered and positioned themselves in the arena.</p><p>"As regrettable as it is not getting to see the original opening match, I'm sure that seeing two sons of Kage clash against one another is more than a suitable replacement!" Moegi agreed with her friend a vigorous nod.</p><p>"Actually, I don't think that description is fair at all. Examinee Gennai is completely unrelated to any Kage, examinee Shinki is only an adoptive son of Kazekage Gaara and examinee Boruto wants to have nothing in common with his father, or so he'd like it to be known…" Udon objected. "Although I believe that one shouldn't let one's eyes off of the underdog in this match – Gennai, I cannot deny that this isn't a simple outstanding match."</p><p>Farther in the elevated platform that separated the esteemed figures seated inside from the rest of the audience by a crystalline window which, while bright and shimmering, was impenetrable to the vision from outside trying to peek inward, a red-haired man with a burgundy stubble turned to the Seventh Naruto, making a face of acted surprise.</p><p>"Lord Seventh, you seem to be distraught by this match somehow. Is something the matter?" Akasuna Mugao wondered.</p><p>"This is a tasteless move, you know…" Seventh Naruto closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest as he let his body language express his disbelief. "Marketing on what should be a fair and random match."</p><p>"This lowly self apologizes for the disgusting situation with the Iwagakure boy. This lowly self assures that the matter shall be investigated after the exams are over, that she does," the Fifth Raikage pressed her palm to her chest and bowed. The appearance of an honest leader never left Samaya Imasu, if she truly was some mastermind looking to further the agenda of her village everywhere around the world, she was doing the best job faking it that anyone's ever done.</p><p>"That is unlikely to soothe Lord Seventh's troubles, though I wouldn't have thought you'd have been the one to criticize what the village has managed to achieve given the sudden stick in the wheel…" Uzumaki Midoben grumbled giving Naruto a wayward look. The two Seventh Hokage didn't quite see eye to eye on many matters and that was becoming more and more apparent though the exam was almost over and the two did their best to gulp down their discontent for how the other ran things.</p><p>"It's an interesting match-up, I'll give you that," Sasuke muttered from Naruto's side. "A boy that's quite vocal about his perceived softness of Naruto's Konoha. One might almost think that someone is trying to say something with this match."</p><p>Midoben did not look at Sasuke nor did he make any sort of effort to confirm or deny Sasuke's baseless pondering. Words like that were just that – vocal thoughts until the accused party took responsibility for the issues being raised without being accused directly. By doing that they themselves took a stand in before the spearhead without needing to hear any accusations. Sasuke was sly to try and poke Lord Seventh that way just as Midoben was too experienced to not fall for it.</p><p>Shinki settled in the north-western side of the arena, static and apathetic as usual. Just his rugged, black coat rustling in the air in an unnatural, almost stiff manner. Like a dance of tiny needles, clanging against one another. Boruto couldn't stop focusing his stare on the young man that was making him nervous more than the other guy, whereas Gennai looked equally overwhelmed by everyone in the arena and just flat out in over his head.</p><p>The moment that match started Boruto created a Shadow Clone out in front of him. The duplicate jumped up and kicked off of the palms of the original who focused and transformed his chakra into a Wind Release tunnel that blasted the clone right at Shinki. Despite a weighty thud, the clone achieved nothing with a head-on collision with Shinki's cloak. A hammer-arm strike from above by an arm made out of grains of black iron crushed the clone to the ground.</p><p>"That's not a cloak at all!" Gennai yelled out with a freaked expression when a black drizzle of iron submerged Shinki inside all the way up to the boy's head and formed a separate shape with arms as large as a man with enough wallop to them to smash a witless assailant.</p><p>"Scoping my abilities?" Shinki mumbled, addressing Boruto. "Poking at me from a farther range so that you can come up with a proper plan on how to approach the battle. Competent but so bland…"</p><p>A four-pronged jolt of lightning extended past Shinki's armor, connecting the chunky shape to a pair of detached arms as they floated over Shinki's head like fist-shaped missiles. The Black Iron Fists propelled themselves riding the lightning streams at Boruto. The Iron Sand scattered in a shapeless, airborne cloud after impact, sending Boruto rolling back and out of the range of where Shinki could have pursued him.</p><p>"Hey, stop ignoring me!" Gennai yelled out, pulling out a pair of shuriken in his hand and showing them to Shinki who only offered a brief glance in his direction.</p><p>"Then do something worthwhile…" Shinki dismissed the young man and focused his eyes back at Boruto who was slowly picking himself back up. Despite having none of his father's supernatural stamina and vitality, this kid did display a matching will to persevere and go on in a match.</p><p>"Damn it!" Gennai yelled out. "Take this!"</p><p>A handful of shuriken buzzed in the air in Shinki's direction. The dispersed Iron Sand hurried back to their master in order to form a defensive wall around him. A popping noise spread from Boruto's direction, Shinki's eyes raced toward the only opponent he wanted to defeat in this match. However, where Shinki expected to see Boruto he could only see a well-endowed blonde striking a suggestive pose his way. Despite it being only because his mind could not compute being attacked this way, Shinki could not draw his eyes from the son of Hokage he meant to expose.</p><p>A fleshy scratch lauded through the arena. Its volume bolstered by the meaning of the injury – mere shuriken scratching a seemingly invincible genin. Boruto was quick to undo his transformation and tease his opponent with a grin.</p><p>"You're not like the Kazekage, I mean. You need to concentrate and control your sand. When you're not in control, even a loser like Gennai can hurt you, I mean." Boruto declared.</p><p>"I'm… Right here…" Gennai's hand twitched in self-loathing.</p><p>"You're hardly your father as well…" Shinki dismissed Boruto's attempt at a verbal attack though the grungy tone and accelerating rate of words spoken in higher volume suggested that he was somewhat successful at the biting venture.</p><p>"That's fine with me, I mean!" Boruto threw his arm back and concentrated chakra inside his open palm. "I don't mean to be my old man anyway, I mean!"</p><p>The boy formed the technique made famous by his father in his hand, all while not pulling his eyes away from his prize standing right in front of him. Shinki's glare at the spiraling sphere of chakra in Boruto's hand said more than he would have cared to speak himself. They were mere children perfecting techniques invented by Kage of their respective villages.</p><p>"Rasengan!" Boruto yelled out, flinging the sphere from his hand and letting it vanish. Shinki's eyelids clapped a pair of times before he gathered the Iron Sand in a pair of raised hands to block an invisible strike coming right at him. The iron dust scattered in a petal-like mosaic upon impact though was quick to reassemble.</p><p>Gennai turned around and dashed toward the forested area of the arena. Shinki turned his attention toward his fleeing opponent for a second, one of his arms rustled like a scorned beehive before changing its shape and settling on an obsidian version of Shinki himself. The clone darted off after his opponent. Before the adoptive son of the Kazekage considered that weakling to be just a bother to get in his way but undeserving of his attention. Nothing changed on that front, except the part where he drew Shinki's blood due to Boruto's distraction. He still stood no chance but it was now personal.</p><p>"That jutsu was part Lightning Release, wasn't it?" Shinki asked. "You're a Lightning Release user then?"</p><p>"I can use a lot more than just Lightning Release, I mean!" Boruto clenched a fist in front of him.</p><p>"I see… It would have been embarrassing if you couldn't. I use electromagnetism to control my Iron Sands, your Lightning Release would only empower my attacks," Shinki stated with a blunt expression. "Taijutsu and Lightning Release, have you nothing else to show?"</p><p>One hand seal substituted another until Boruto's combination was complete. The young man drew a deep breath and kneaded chakra inside of his stomach, transforming it at once as a Fire Release user performed their array of techniques. Instead of a fireball, however, Boruto expelled a notable surge of water from his mouth of comparable size and intensity to the Great Fireball technique of the Uchiha.</p><p>"I still have this, Water Release: Surging Sea, I mean…" Boruto cheered on himself, seeing the sizable mass of water crash into something heavy on the other end which betrayed a successful impact.</p><p>Despite the fact that a staunch, obsidian wall stood in between Boruto's washing wave of water and Shinki, the chipper mood of Naruto's son did not fade away or reduce one inch. The defensive and offensive potential alike of Shinki became weaker when he split a portion of his Iron Sand off to fight Gennai. That meant that his Water Release jutsu just delivered a nice blow to the weakened enemy. He did feel something, of that Boruto couldn't doubt, one of Shinki's feet stood behind him, positioned for better balance and support.</p><p>A crust fell off of Shinki's face. It turned into a sip of Iron Sand and joined the airborne cloud. The damaged Shinki began fracturing and falling apart. Boruto freaked out and stumbled back, as far as he was aware, he shouldn't have been capable of dealing anywhere near this much damage. It was only when the fallen bits and pieces began turning into more and more Iron Sand that the boy realized that he was not fighting the real Shinki all this time after all.</p><p>"So you've left your clone to take me on and went off to chase after Gennai yourself instead, I mean…" Boruto growled. It was not the fact that his honest attempt to injure his opponent just hit an iron wall that threw him off-balance but instead the sharp prod of the offense taken from the fact that he was deemed someone that could have been held at bay by a clone.</p><p>"H-Holy crap!" Gennai's shouts echoed from further toward the east. Boruto turned his attention to the forested area only to see a black sphere emerge and ascend from the leafage. Various Gennai's limbs stuck out from the sphere though the entrapping technique had constricted the genin entirely into a makeshift coffin of Iron Sand.</p><p>"Surrender now, surrender, I mean!" Boruto yelled out at Gennai. He had seen this jutsu during various stages of the exams and he knew that Shinki was more than capable of crushing his opponent once they were at his mercy.</p><p>"No way! I've worked really hard and I'm not gonna quit now!" Gennai tried wriggling his barely sticking out face as he struggled against the spherical encasement. "I-If I can… Just…" the trapped ninja looked desperate to force his left hand to bend in front of him in a hand seal position.</p><p>A fierce explosion ripped through the trees, forcing Boruto to cover up and get clutch so that he could withstand the blast without falling down. Once recovered from the overwhelming shockwave, Boruto glared at Gennai in disbelief. This dweeb who considered throwing a handful of shuriken haphazardly a valid attack had totaled half the arena with his explosive trap.</p><p>The Iron Coffin that floated suspended over the wreckage bubbled while lightning crackled around it. A telegraph of the fact that the user of the jutsu was injured and struggled to maintain their hold on the technique. Gennai was the luckiest bastard to have ever been conceived – he managed to catch one of the scariest opponents while half of his Iron Sand was dealing with Boruto and the other half had him subdued in mid-air.</p><p>"Enough!" Shinki's roar echoed from within the chaos of fallen trees and rocky platforms. The Iron Coffin compressed to an utterly dreadful degree to imagine being enclosed within him, containing the blood-curdling screams that would have normally followed but not the chilling, crunchy sound of tendons and bones churning and twisting out of intended position. Gennai fell limp onto a broken tree, as a final flick of humiliation, his body leaned out of shape backward and stayed in an awkward hang until a staff member promptly flickered away with his body.</p><p>"You see? No Konoha ninja can be ruled out, I mean!" Boruto tilted his forehead protector feeling proud of his village after having just seen someone he thought of as a hopeless loser having injured the opponent most genin dreaded the most in this exam.</p><p>"This doesn't change anything, he's not one of Lord Seventh's, he's one of Lady Fifth's. If anything, Gennai proves my point further. He's managed to do what you could not – make a commendable effort," Shinki stumbled out from the wreckage and let the Iron Sand lingering in the air reassemble around him. Boruto grunted and readied himself for another attack.</p><p>He wanted to prove Shinki wrong, he wanted it so much that it overpowered any feeling of dread when facing such a frightening opponent and yet… He couldn't think of a way to actually damage him with all of that Iron Sand floating around him. With a hint of hesitation, the boy tilted his hand up to his face and bit his thumb, going through a bunch of hand seals before planting his hand to the ground.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" he yelled out.</p><p>"What is the meaning of this, you irritating brat!?" a husky, tremor-inducing hiss echoed throughout the arena. Its ill-temper and certain dread soaking every word served to inspire fear into every member of the audience capable of hearing it and that was before a colossal, red snake with black rings running down its body appeared from the cloud. One of the snake's eyes carried excessive scarring that covered the entire eye in scar tissue.</p><p>"I'm really sorry but, I've got nothing on this guy and I really don't like the idea of him winning, I mean…" Boruto clapped his hands and winked at the serpent as if asking it for some assistance nicely. Judging from the looks of it, the two were not on the best of terms, or, rather, their terms were just fine though whatever partnership the two shared had been concluded. "Even if you want to just rampage around a little, that's fine by me, I mean…"</p><p>"Hmph… That's your attempt? A half-blind snake? You must be kidding me…" Shinki mumbled with an almost inaudible voice though it seemed to freeze the looming snake in place and drive it to slowly turn its scarred head at the Iron Sand user.</p><p>"Do you imply that I wouldn't be able to crush you, loathsome human?" Garaga hissed, forming a sharp and screeching tunnel of howling winds from the air leaving its mouth that drove Shinki to form a cloud of Iron Sand around him to cushion the effect on him somewhat.</p><p>"You do appear powerful. Perhaps you would prove too daunting to overcome though with the honor of the Kazekage name being on the line, I will not falter," Shinki declared, forming as large of an Iron Sand cloak around him as possible and forming a pair of fists fully capable of hurting even someone of Garaga's size.</p><p>"Perhaps? That does it, I'm devouring this human whole!" Garaga hissed diving in a mad charge and looking to coil around Shinki though the Sunagakure prodigy was just as fast to extend his Iron Sand hands to the sides and hold the serpent from crushing him. The entirety of Shinki's cloak reshaped into one, massive fist as it arrowed toward Garaga's face and hit the serpent directly in the snout.</p><p>"Why you!" Garaga did not take long to recover from the hit. Coiling back into striking formation right after getting knocked down and opening its mouth for a shower of poison. Shinki's suit of Iron Sand reshaped into wings that carried him away but the stream of venom proved too quick to outrace and hit the young man square in the back.</p><p>The fallen adopted son of the Kazekage grunted in pain but continued to fight back, kicking and elbowing at his winged armor of Iron Sand that has now become his prison as the venom did not poison him but instead hardened and began petrifying all that it touched, even something as unnatural as the Iron Sand.</p><p>"Hey, Garaga, that's enough, don't eat him, I mean!" Boruto yelled out at the snake he'd just summoned to give him an upper hand though it just sneered at its summoner with one of its functional eyes.</p><p>"Shut up, annoying brat, as if I'd ever let you boss me around! Sure, we've partnered up once and I don't regret it but you're letting this partnership of ours get way over your head," Garaga hissed with a momentary glance back at its summoner. That temporary hesitation of finishing his opponent off proved to be perilous to him as a pair of featureless puppets flashed in over its head and thrust their blades at the serpent.</p><p>Despite the swords failing to penetrate Garaga's scales, the snake thrashed around in pain, sending the puppets flying away like meaningless ragdolls. Shinki rose from being knocked down as the blue flare around the strings he used to control his puppets faded away. Blood trickled from Shinki's forehead and had it not been for his burnt off Sunagakure vest, Gennai's trap might have proven to be his downfall.</p><p>And yet, Boruto could see that Shinki was more than just mean words and undeserved power. Underneath that coat of black iron burnt eyes full of heart. Heart of someone that deserved every bit of the power they've acquired. It took that sort of heart to stare at Garaga that way after having just pissed it off and spent out most of one's arsenal while standing back up from being knocked down, hungry for more.</p><p>Protecting the flawless image of the Kazekage name meant just as much to Shinki as proving Shinki wrong did to Boruto. That was one thing that the Seventh's son was not used to sharing with his enemies as they usually lacked any of his guts and willpower.</p>
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<a name="section0669"><h2>669. Mutual Understanding</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinki raised and spread his arms out, a drizzle of the Iron Sand washed away around him like a wave, halting Garaga's devious thoughts of devouring the boy whole as they pelted at the serpent and pushed it back. The Iron Sand gathered over the entire battlefield, sinking the entire arena in the shade as they filtered out the natural light from the sun.</p><p>"Iron Sand: New World Order!" Shinki grunted, driving his arms down. Responding to his command the Iron Sand dust formed branches and rods too numerous to count and any attempt to rationalize their numbers would have ultimately proved fruitless for their descent would have spelled out doom to anyone.</p><p>The branching spikes continued to skewer and penetrate the ground, sewing it like a needle through the cloth and covering it all. Its touches were subtle yet gentle. No trees fell from being shredded to bits, instead, they remained standing all cut up and filled to the brim with holes. The ground did not rumble once, there were only puny grunge sounds where the dirt gave way to the iron spikes ravaging it slowly. That slow and steady overtaking of the land below reminded of a killer that was passionate about ending its victim.</p><p>The red snake poofed away, receiving a handful of grievous cuts and lacerations from the Iron Sand it finally had sustained enough damage to cancel out Boruto's Summoning Jutsu. A term in their contract, as was the case with all of the contracted Ninja Animal summons. Boruto popped into a puff of smoke too, dispelling the shadow clone he had left behind him while he dashed for safety.</p><p>"The entire battlefield has been transformed by these iron spikes!" Moegi gasped on commentary. "We can only hope that examinee Boruto is okay."</p><p>"He must be. We've got sensors observing the state of the battle at every twist and turn and if they felt like the chakra signature of examinee Boruto has been running low, they'd have interfered. Our best assumption now is to believe he is hiding to make his next move," Konohamaru replied.</p><p>"Indeed, though making any kind of move in this forest of merciless, Iron Sand will be difficult," Udon nodded his head. "Not only that, but we've also seen that the Iron Sand, when its formation is broken, serves as a shapeless cloud that rushes to its master's defense when needed. It is indeed a troublesome ability to have to deal with as a mere genin with few years of experience to devise a powerful arsenal of one's own different fighting styles."</p><p>Shinki's eyes raced across the forest of Iron Sand, like a deadly spider lurking on its web, the boy had sensed strong vibrations on a remote branch of iron spikes, meaning that his enemy was, at last, making his move. Slick and shapeless puppets raced across the battlefield, racing across the entire thing with relative ease that no living being could match due to their unnaturally thin build and artificial joints that allowed them to fit through any gaps and move without worrying about human limitations such as joint dislocation and skeletal fractures.</p><p>The puppets thrust their blades at where Boruto had caused vibrations to resonate through the battlefield. The exact spot was not difficult to spot as it was flashing with electricity and had handfuls of shuriken scattered across. Boruto grunted in pain as a few of their thin blades had cut him in the arms and one of them penetrated his shoulder.</p><p>"I told you your Lightning Release is useless against my Iron Sand. The electromagnetism that comes as a secondary effect of your Lightning Release techniques only serves to keep the dust particles closer together, it hardens the structure instead of damaging it," Shinki grumbled.</p><p>"Why do you care, I mean!?" Boruto's voice reached him from another space in the mad forest of black iron. Shinki's attention turned to that spot and he sent his puppets after the fleeing target. Judging by a blood-curdling grunt, they had the boy pinned down.</p><p>"I care because… It is tough to admit it but… This is the farthest I've ever been pushed in battle. You Konoha ninja appear weak and seem to talk big and show nothing of value but when push comes to shove… Even someone like Gennai can injure me, something very few of even higher ranking ninja in Sunagakure have managed to do," Shinki replied.</p><p>Boruto's eyes that were beginning to look hazy and slowly shut opened back up in surprise of what he had heard. He did not expect to be commended by a guy like Shinki. Plenty of people were critical of his old man and the way he did things and they were quick to lump Boruto in with that which they hated just because the old man and his boy were related. None of those people admitted they were wrong in public so that Boruto could hear it. The boy had heard stories of his father changing people in the past, changing them for the better though this was the first time he had truly seen it in action.</p><p>Ever since he was born and while he grew up, his father already had the rest of the world enthralled, the only critics that remained seemed determined to hate him no matter what and Boruto thought that Shinki might have been a lot like that too. How? Just how was Boruto proven to be the narrow-minded one here?!</p><p>A surge of Lightning Release sent tremors through the puppets, forcing them to twitch uncontrollably like a handful of corpses with intense electric current running through them. Shinki's eyes raced across the battlefield in panic, dissolving the battlefield of iron he had formed and recalling all of the Iron Sand back to him. The current smashed into Shinki with violent force, causing an explosive chain reaction that sunk the area the young Sunagakure ninja stood on in dust while his puppets collapsed, looking lifeless.</p><p>"Examinee Boruto used his ability to coat weapons with chakra to channel Lightning Release chakra through the swords of the puppets he'd been cut with, through the puppets themselves and their threads, all the way back to their master! What an innovative method of attack!" Udon exclaimed on commentary.</p><p>"Indeed, it seems to be something that his father would do in theory, due to Lord Seventh's unmatched stamina!" Konohamaru pitched in.</p><p>"Though Lord Seventh isn't known for his chakra coating abilities. This one's quite unique, I have to say…" Moegi spoke her mind.</p><p>"Amazing…" Shinki chuckled, emerging from smoke with an Iron Coat of black on his entire lower body, insulating him from damage. "I didn't see that coming at all…"</p><p>"Yeah… Well… Now that that dumb forest is down, I can really put the hurt on you, I mean!" Boruto rose from the ground, the blood soaking his jacket. The boy pulled the cut-up top off of him and threw it aside. The white t-shirt underneath was similarly soaked in blood from his injuries though due to its color the damage was much more apparent now. Judging from Boruto's tone, his courage might have just been false bravado.</p><p>"Before we conclude this, you have to know that I felt a bit frustrated before this match. I was placed against someone I could compete, someone I thought could be half-decent at elevating me in a match and someone to play off of and earn my promotion. Then my opponent failed to show up and… It began seeming like it was all in vain, you know. All the trials and tests," Shinki looked at his trembling hand as the Iron Sand dispersed off of his body and floated in a cloud, ready to take whatever shape its master required on a whim.</p><p>"Yeah… Everyone worked pretty hard, I mean…" Boruto nodded, panting from the creeping weakness of blood loss as only his chakra augmentation served to sustain his combat ability now.</p><p>"It's not that. Someone of my caliber, a ninja representing the Kazekage clan had little trouble with these challenges, these games. It's the idea that the successor of Kazekage's dreams and will would fail at his first Chuunin Exams that annoyed me, that I would bring dishonor to Kazekage-sama's name like that. Those cruel things I've said about you and your village, I did believe them at the time though it was a difficult time of desperation. It felt suffocating, the expectations… And thus I sought to suffocate in return," Shinki rubbed his neck and then took a neutral, tall stance in front of Boruto.</p><p>"That's stupid, I mean!" Boruto yelled out and reached back with his hand, forcing the Wind Release chakra to hurl into a rotating chakra sphere. "The only name that matters is your own! The only name you're out to put dirt on is your own and there's nothing that makes your name look dirtier than hiding behind someone else's skirt, I mean! Now take this and fall over, dammit!"</p><p>Young Boruto swung his arm, like pitching a ball and made his attack vanish in thin air. He did not intend to hit Shinki with his Vanishing Rasengan, not just that. He had revealed that jutsu and how it worked already earlier and even then it didn't do too well against the Sunagakure ninja. Now came the difficult part – to survive until the next phase of Boruto's plan. The blond-haired ninja created three shadow clones around him and stood his ground.</p><p>"Hmph, I've seen this jutsu already! This time I won't even let it reach me," Shinki decided and moved his arms in a rhythmic motion, commanding his Iron Sand to take a single, controlled shape of a stream and rush at Boruto and his clones. The Seventh's son dashed, vaulted, and rolled aside, losing one clone in the process and he felt the hurt that would befall him if he allowed Shinki to hit him. Every single dust of that sand felt like a sword, the collective ripping through felt like being dissolved in anguish and it was not something Boruto felt like experiencing.</p><p>"Take this!" Boruto yelled out, flinging a kunai at Shinki with a paper tag dangling on the bottom end. The successor of the Kazekage clan urged his sand to return to him and defend him in a whirlpool of multiple interconnecting streams. A fierce howl ripped through the public's eardrums as an explosion of vicious proportions and brutality sent even Boruto who planned it out and stood at a safe distance from it, or so he thought, rolling aside.</p><p>"What an innovative method for attack! The Vanishing Rasengan is a Wind Release technique and even though examinee Boruto does not possess Fire Release in his arsenal of moves, he has some explosive tags in his pouch, as most ninja do. Wind Release tends to power up Fire Release and flames in general, resulting in this brutal firestorm we are witnessing right now," Konohamaru proceeded to explain Boruto's plan to the masses that were uneducated in the art of violence.</p><p>"Even as examinee Boruto's mentor, Konohamaru, you're underselling this accomplishment. Vanishing Rasengan erupts at a specific point, blasts, and blinks away. Examinee Boruto had to rely only on his intimate knowledge of the technique and its velocity to predict when it would reach examinee Shinki and fling his explosive at the right time to ride the wave of the Vanishing Rasengan's detonation," Udon pointed out.</p><p>"So examinee Boruto is not only very innovative but he also is no slouch in terms of flawless execution too, huh?" Moegi smirked while summing it up.</p><p>Shinki stood unharmed, this was almost enough to reduce Boruto to tears at once but he had noticed another curious detail – he didn't just stand unharmed, he was dazed and out of it! His Iron Sand was down, the Sunagakure prodigy was open for an attack and it was unclear when such an opening would make itself known again.</p><p>"Now! Uchiha Style Shurikenjutsu: Lightning Triplet!" Boruto yelled out as he twisted in mid-air to enhance the speed and damage that his shuriken would inflict while coating them with Lightning Release chakra. Struggling against his confusion, Shinki slipped out a kunai from his pouch, lacking to focus to form one out of his fallen Iron Sand, and raised his knife to block one shuriken while the two others sent Shinki down on his gut.</p><p>Shinki grumbled and coughed some blood up, recovering the control over his Iron Sands he had the stream of it pick him off the ground and get the Sunagakure ninja back on his feet. He took some heavy wounds and as he had stated it before, he wasn't used to that. Boruto felt his resolve and awareness slipping too but where he'd have collapsed and given up before, now he saw a chance to win against unbeatable odds. Chances like that did not come often and the boy didn't feel like letting go of them.</p><p>"Cut right through my kunai, huh…" Shinki spoke through the bitter taste of grievous battle damage.</p><p>"That was a nice move, didn't block my Triplet but you'd have gone down for sure if you didn't tilt that one shuriken up and just an inch past your body, I mean…" Boruto chuckled, commending his opponent himself.</p><p>"Uchiha Style Shurikenjutsu, huh? So even the esteemed Uchiha clan has acknowledged your prowess then… That's too bad. For you that is. Defeating someone like you will bring the Kazekage clan unmatched honor and against someone like you I will absolutely not fail!" Shinki yelled out, battle madness filtering what he saw and said. His head was in the game, too deep so.</p><p>"Still clinging to that stupid clan name, huh? Guess I'll have to punch it out of you, I mean!" Boruto clenched his fist and turned it behind him, letting it crackle with the blue glow of Lightning Release.</p><p>"The legacy of the Kazekage clan is vast as the grains of sand in the desert, I will not be the rotten grain that spoils the golden wave, my legacy, my will, my honor, my meaning will wash you away!" Shinki extended his arms, concentrating all of his Iron Sand drizzle over his head. Not only that, but dust of iron also began racing across from all over the place, meaningless iron items dissolving into dust and moving in to support the waterfall of the Kazekage legacy that Shinki meant to crash into Boruto with.</p><p>"Iron Sand Waterfall!" Shinki yelled out, pushing his body to its very limit as he sent the supermassive volume of the black wave of iron like a tsunami of miniature blades that he would grind into Boruto to put him down.</p><p>"I'm not gonna cover and run from your damned legacy, I mean, I've gotta make my own!" Boruto grit his teeth and weaved a one-handed hand seal to create a pair of clones behind him, jumping on their grip and letting them send him flying with a Boruto Stream, a tunneling gust that directed him right at the crashing wave and then took a drastic turn right by its peak.</p><p>"He's surfing the tsunami of Iron Sand! Incredible!" Konohamaru hammered the table his microphone stood on with his free arm in awe. "He can do it, examinee Boruto can do it."</p><p>"Take this! Lightning Release: Thunderclap Arrow!" Boruto growled out when the surfing motion across the crashing tsunami allowed him to move over the wave and fling the handful of lightning jolts at his enemy as a projectile-type attack. A hefty spike budded from the tsunami wave, blocking the damage off and absorbing Boruto's technique. The spiky-haired boy ended up rolling downhill over the wave, having no control over where he fell now.</p><p>An arm of black iron appeared from the washing wave and erected itself as a barrier in front of the boy. In a disgusting manner, Boruto slammed right into it at high speed. The arm of Iron Sand wrapped around Boruto and squeezed. Before it could break the boy's ribcage, however, the arm, still clutching to Boruto, submerged under the wave, back from where it came. After these finals twists and turns, the washing tsunami of Iron Sand completed its downward fall and wash without a hitch, washing up an unconscious body from underneath.</p><p>"Examinee Boruto is unconscious, examinee Shinki from Sunagakure is the winner of the triple threat match!" a proctor appeared and checked Boruto's life signs first before raising his arm in the direction of the panting Shinki that could barely rise off of his kneeling position. For a decent while after the match, the young man continued to stare at his trembling hand and feel the sweat on his forehead mixing in with blood from his wounds in a sense of disbelief.</p><p>"Rise, Shinki, you've done great. The arena will need to amended again though…" a husky, masculine voice was the only thing that could have broken through to the dazed youth.</p><p>"Kazekage…sama…" Shinki's eyes looked hazy and the boy looked like he was about to go to sleep at any moment.</p><p>"You're not used being driven to the very edge of your limits, aren't you? It is a valuable experience, one that comes hand in hand whenever you deal with Konoha ninja. That is why I've come to appreciate them so much, you see…" Gaara of the Sand helped the young man by surrounding him with a cocoon of sand and floating him beside him. "Your chakra… It was close to running out, that proctor in fact rushed in to check on you. If you did not knock Boruto out with that last attack, he'd have eliminated you, you know."</p><p>Gaara waited for a reply but he didn't get one, troubled he looked to his side at the fallen young boy but then had to smile softly when he noticed the boy had fallen asleep. He waved the handful of Chuunin Exam staff off, telling them that he'd take his successor to the infirmary himself.</p><p>Up in the Ninja Council platform, one Seventh Hokage turned to the other. Examining the face of the Seventh Naruto and looking pleasantly surprised to see no ire or wish to punish someone for the injuries his young boy had sustained.</p><p>"Your son is a remarkable ninja, Lord Seventh, it is a pity he came up just one inch short to victory against one of the most sparking prodigies of these exams," Uzumaki Midoben spoke to his counterpart.</p><p>"I don't think he did, you know. I think Boruto exceeded all expectations and surpassed his limits. He wanted to carve his own path, to form his own legacy, distinct from that of my own and I think he did just that," the Seventh Naruto smirked after closing his eyes and letting out a sigh of relief that this nail-biting match was finally over.</p>
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<a name="section0670"><h2>670. Meiko's Turn To Fight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We're next!" Toroi, a chubby and short Kumogakure ninja punched his open palm and turned at a quiet Iwagakure ninja who did not move at all in response or acknowledge his opponent's existence. "I'm gonna crush you in no time at all!"</p><p>After making that bold declaration, Toroi waltzed off onto the arena with the step of someone who took victory as something they were entitled to. Gurker Gliesse pushed himself off the locker he was pressing his back to for support, flipped his checkered, brown, and green scarf over his other shoulder so that it didn't get in his way and without opening his eyes proceeded to follow his opponent into the arena.</p><p>"Is he an idiot?" Meiko wondered out loud while staring at the Kumogakure ninja stretching out in the arena. When the subject of lucky jackals that proceeded in the exams because they didn't stand out too much in the previous round and just kind of slipped through came to mind, Toroi was one of the main talking points.</p><p>"He might be, though, in this case, he is right…" Kiyomi sighed.</p><p>"Are you kidding me? He's been running and cowering the entire time in the last round after he'd messed up his first attack," Meiko turned to her teammate.</p><p>"I am not objecting that he's a lukewarm ninja, all I'm saying is that he's going to win," Kiyomi replied though because she paid closer attention to the little screen broadcasting the fight and not her friend, it was impossible to tell what she was seeing that Meiko wasn't.</p><p>The bespectacled genin stroked the bull-horn tattoo on his left cheek for good luck and took a fighting stance. His neck seemed thick enough for the red rope that he wore over his neck to slowly constrict him. The moment that the proctor declared the beginning of the match and buggered off, the giant shuriken that hung on Toroi's back spun around in the boy's hand as if it had slithered there itself.</p><p>A pleasant, blue glow formed a static aura around the massive projectile, a signifier of the Lightning Release chakra coating. Toroi hurled the shuriken right at his opponent who appeared to wake up in the mid-flight of the ninja tool and stomp the ground in front of him while he clapped his hands together. A slim stone pillar burst forth from underground and caught the shuriken by the ring like a nail caught a horseshoe. The bright crackle of Lightning Release faded away after a few violent sparks while grinding against the stone.</p><p>"Water Style: Raging Waves!" Gurker Gliesse chanted while breathing in deep and bloating at his abdomen section. When he breathed out, water gushed from his mouth with the intensity of a waterfall though it didn't seem like Gurker was aiming the jutsu at his opponent as he directed it diagonally down.</p><p>Toroi jumped up, thinking that the purpose of the jutsu was to wash at his calves and send him tumbling down. While he did leap over the washing wave but he slipped upon landing, resulting in a humiliating planting on the right side of his face which submerged in dirt and the bespectacled genin rose back to his feet half-crummy.</p><p>"What a disgusting charade!" Relta Ginn grit her teeth. "I'm not going to keep watching this."</p><p>"Huh, what does she mean?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>"Haven't you noticed it? The way in which Gurker Gliesse is fighting?" Temari looked at Meiko. "I thought you were one of the more experienced ones…"</p><p>"He's holding back, sure, that makes most of the examinees though, doesn't it? I mean it's not a good idea to overextend until you know your opponent's fighting style and their techniques for sure," Meiko shrugged.</p><p>"Oh, come on, didn't you see the terror in Gurker's eyes when Toroi slipped up and fell? The poor guy thought his opponent accidentally ended up knocking himself out…" Relta mumbled before disappearing behind a shutting door.</p><p>"Hmm? Yeah… I guess it can be pretty tricky fighting a total weakling and having to make it an entertaining match…" Meiko pondered out loud to herself though the rest of the genin present in the waiting room only shook their heads looking at the blacksmith as if she was the only one out of some mysterious loop that all of them were aware of.</p><p>"Think you've got me on the ropes, huh? Surprise kunai!" Toroi exclaimed, raising his arm up and releasing a handful of kunai knives aimed at his opponent.</p><p>Gurker flinched and turned around, catching a few of the knives to his side and body. None of the hits he took seemed dangerous but it felt odd that he took them at all. No ninja a few training sessions in could have ever been caught off-guard by the "Surprise kunai" attack. It couldn't have been just that Gurker was trying to make the fight last longer and seem more outstanding than it actually was. One could have not been touched and still won in a way that would have warranted a promotion. That implied that Gurker's goal was not to win at all.</p><p>"Viscosity Release: Water Assault!" Gurker weaved his hands together while the layer of water he had created earlier banded together into smaller jets that whipped at Toroi, the bumbling chubby tried swatting aside at the water and while it did seem that he possessed respectable physical strength, the manner of Gurker's attack was of a different ballpark entirely.</p><p>Had it been normal water that Toroi slapped at, he'd have likely swatter the low-ranking ninjutsu attacks aside. Though Gurker's Viscosity Release did not work like just any ordinary water, upon contact it did not whip or splash, it stuck to the surface it contacted like gum and then continued to buoy and flap around while it wrapped further and further over the surface that the technique touched, like an outer layer of the area.</p><p>Toroi shook his arm in panic while still lobbing kunai knives at his opponent. Gurker turned on one leg and fell on his side. He writhed on the dirt for a few more seconds before noticing that no staff was rushing to his aid. None of their sensors registered a dip in his chakra, prompting the young man to sit up and wince from his wounds.</p><p>"I give up. I think he got me pretty good…" Gurker mumbled out.</p><p>"H-Huh? Examinee Gurker surrendered? That's so unexpected, just when he seemed in control of the match and when he managed to catch his opponent with his technique…" Konohamaru leaned back in his chair, sounding a bit disappointed in the short exchange he had just seen.</p><p>"You can never underestimate the damage that a well-timed and well-aimed projectile can do. Shuriken and knives might seem like supplementary tools but a precise user can use even such elementary tools to hit vital areas… If such an area truly was hit, examinee Gurker is wise to surrender now and see his wounds treated," Udon shrugged, rationalizing the folly he had just seen.</p><p>"Still… Everyone's sort of trying their best, why would an examinee not try and push themselves a little bit, at least, chakra augmentation can sustain one's fighting ability for a little while, you know…" Moegi sighed.</p><p>"Well… The good news is that the stadium hasn't been damaged at all by that last match so there will be no downtime in moving on ahead. I think we're going to jump right to the next match. We've got Wakizashi Meiko VS Sunny-Lee lined up next," Konohamaru being ever the optimist managed to find at least a few benefits to this disappointing last match.</p><p>"Huh? What the hell!? I'm up next, it's so sudden!?" Meiko freaked out. "That match lasted no time at all!"</p><p>"Told you that Toroi would win…" Kiyomi sighed and sat down on a bench. With a subtle smirk, she offered Meiko a thumb up. "Go get 'em…" she encouraged her friend.</p><p>"Tsk… No fair, how did everyone know that the match was gonna be such a rip-off?" Meiko grumbled to herself while slipping her helmet on and pounding it a few good times before entering the back end of the hallway leading outside and doing a few stretches before stepping into the light.</p><p>"Gurker threw the match because he's an Iwagakure ninja," Meiko heard a faint voice beside her. It was a bit screechy and low-pitched for a young lady that owned it but that only made it more distinctive and the words she said easier to make out.</p><p>"Promise me that you wouldn't do something like that, throw the match just because I'm a Kumogakure ninja!" Sunny-Lee smacked her own freckled cheeks while walking alongside her taller, bulkier and far better-equipped opponent.</p><p>Now Meiko finally understood. Kumogakure beat Iwagakure down during the Coltan conflict the two countries shared and began integrating the local ninja into their own arsenal, turning the enemy forces into their own assets. The only Iwagakure ninja from this universe that competed were those that swallowed the Kumogakure pill down, as bitterly as it went, and agreed with all the conditions that applied with that pill.</p><p>Under no circumstances, not even if it was a ninja from alternate Kumogakure, could an Iwagakure ninja beat an opponent from the village that was its superior in the art of war. The realization of that filthy sentiment made some venomous bile bubble down Meiko's stomach. She'd never throw the match like that though she felt glad that she didn't have to. In fact, the way that the relationship between Konohagakure and Kumogakure was, the administration was way more likely to enjoy her victory, due to the unstated sense of rivalry between the two villages.</p><p>"Konoha… Kumo… It doesn't matter which is stronger in terms of military strength or economy anymore. Can't we just have one match? Nice and clean?" Meiko turned to her opponent after the two walked out into the light much to the audience's cheers. The blacksmith did not expect such a reaction to her armor though the public opinion was that it was way cool, judging from the way the cheers reverberated through the entire arena.</p><p>"That's what I would like too!" Sunny-Lee nodded her head, showing a few strands dyed orange over her rich head of dark and curly hair. Seeing Sunny-Lee again reminded Meiko of the first time she ever saw freckles on the face of a person of tanned skin, a few shades darker even than Mana's. Meiko recalled feeling it looked weird a few years back though now she realized how easy it was to get used to.</p><p>When the proctor called for the match to start, Meiko thrust her fist out and let a pair of rods to emerge from the top and bottom of her right gauntlet. The blacksmith grabbed the top rod and yanked on it, forcing her armor to emit the metallic shriek of intertwined braids of steel wire while she freed the two rods interconnected with steel wire underneath her armor plates.</p><p>"Nunchaku?" Konohamaru opened his jaw. "So examinee Meiko is a taijutsu specialist then?"</p><p>"Not quite…" Udon chuckled, "This examinee can perform at a wide variety of ranges and might just be the most flexible combatant in the roster of finalists."</p><p>Meiko swung her improvised nunchaku, sending the upper rod flying at her opponent. Sunny-Lee rolled aside, avoiding a smack that made the audience in the front rows cover their ears while even those on the back rows twitched in discomfort. The whip of hardened plastic against the dirt cracked the ground open and might have pummeled more than a few of Sunny-Lee's bones.</p><p>"Cotton Release: Static Pulse!" Sunny-Lee clapped her hands together while still on her knees. Strands of what appeared to be silk at first, before it stretched out wider and thinned out drastically, revealing itself to be natural cotton, coiled into balls of softness stuck to their creator's body. Sunny-Lee evaded a few of the corrective swipes that Meiko sent her way while rolling a few of the cotton balls together. A spark of light flicked the moment that the two spheres touched making Meiko smell trouble from the get-go.</p><p>An electric shockwave took off from the tips of every cotton strand, connecting together into something greater altogether as it spread out wide and engulfed Meiko in it too. Her helmet, her shoulder pads and every single armor piece she wore began feeling heavy on her body, abandoning such thoughts of grandeur as to move around in her armor, even her arms and legs felt too heavy to move.</p><p>"Cotton Release? I've never heard about this kind of Kekkei Genkai…" Konohamaru turned to his peers for some more insightful commentary.</p><p>"Neither have I, I don't think there would be many that have heard of it, though it sounds like an off-shoot of the Senju Wood Style, like the Bloom Release and Vine Release…" Udon pondered.</p><p>"Are you saying this young lady from Kumogakure can use a signature talent of the founders of Konohagakure?" Moegi looked bewildered.</p><p>"It is not outside the realm of possibility. This universe appears to have suffered much more from skill leak, in more difficult times members of various clans have moved all over the world. I've heard about a powerful Yamanaka clan presence in Kirigakure, in fact. It's not too outrageous to believe that a Senju might have found their way serving Kumogakure at some point and their descendant being capable of an entirely different spin on the Senju Wood Release," Udon shrugged.</p><p>"Wow, who would have thought that a Kumogakure ninja could perform and improve on Wood Release!?" Moegi shook her head.</p><p>"I don't think that young Sunny-Lee can perform Wood Release, at least she hadn't shown such an ability previously in the exams, it isn't rare for descendants of esteemed clan members to lose their signature talent while exhibiting unique off-shoots of the ability when they descend from two different clans…" Udon corrected his friend.</p><p>Right now Meiko didn't care if Sunny-Lee could perform Wood Release or not, all that she cared about was moving her body in time to intercept the next attack. Sunny-Lee sieged the ramparts of her armor with a relentless taijutsu assault. Her hits sent rabid clangs that made being inside of Meiko's armor feel like being inside of a bell being rung but she didn't wield much success in dealing actual damage. Just when the blacksmith began to feel threatened, her fist clutched successfully.</p><p>The redhead put up her arm, releasing a couple of windmill shuriken that fired from her forearm after emerging as mere rings and taking complete shape after snapping and locking into the slingshot compartment. Sunny-Lee took a backward vault, Meiko didn't think that such an evasive maneuver would suffice though once she saw her shuriken entangled in the messy cotton puffs on Sunny-Lee's hands, she cursed and dashed back for some more distance between the two.</p><p>"You look like a cheerleader…" Meiko taunted her opponent. The joy in her tone betrayed that it was not mockery but playful banter.</p><p>"That was the inspiration," Sunny-Lee followed her opponent moving behind her and then back into her tunnel of vision using nothing but her eyes.</p><p>"Cotton Release: Static Wave!" the tanned Kumogakure ninja formed another puff of cotton in her right hand and slammed it at the ground, sending golden worms of electricity crawling in every direction. Now being aware of the paralyzing aftereffects of the static electricity that built up inside those balls of cotton, Meiko made sure to let the jets in her boots loose and ascend to the sky.</p><p>A rough yank and searing pain in her knee made Meiko stop blasting off and turn for her opponent. She couldn't quite make out why she stopped in mid-air though she knew that it had something to do with her right leg since it hurt the joints of that leg to try and ascent. The blacksmith extended her arm and unsealed a flurry of shuriken to cut a string of steel wire that Sunny-Lee had slipped onto her leg when she unleashed her flurry of physical attacks earlier.</p><p>"Cotton Release: Static Beam!" Sunny-Lee pressed two of her cottony pom-poms together and rubbed them against each other, making the static electricity that built up inside them so intense that the whole cotton substance glowed gold.</p><p>Meiko grunted in pain as she felt her entire body locking down. The hit would have been way more severe had she not worn the full armor set that protected her against some of the damage, Meiko was lucky that the static electricity that Sunny-Lee used was hardly different from Lightning Release ninjutsu which her armor was meant to insulate her from. Of course, any insulation of such sort would have only been possible to a certain degree.</p><p>That beam was too fast. If she got caught off guard again and didn't see the beam coming, there was little to no way of dodging it out of reaction alone. It was faster than mere lightning, more intense, and far more focused. Meiko put her dukes up and let her gauntlets activate the Reactor Gauntlets' module, arming herself with her more recent invention that was beginning to climb her list of favorites.</p><p>"Reactor Shot!" Meiko yelled out, focusing a handful of the chakra that her Reactor Gauntlets helped her store and channel into a more focused version of the Reactor Breath jutsu she used to use earlier. The Reactor Shot projectile was more compact, of much more refined shape though it also blew up in a much larger explosion and packed a better wallop altogether. The Reactor Breath might have had a slightly better range though.</p><p>Sunny-Lee shrieked out in shock and rolled up a large cotton ball, raising it up in between herself and the incoming attack. The cotton ball fell to tiny cinders and burnt up after hitting the ground though it looked like it had offered the protection that Sunny-Lee sought from it.</p><p>If only someone had told Meiko during the last month that the best suit of armor she's ever built for herself, resulting in culmination on everything she's learned about blacksmithing and different ninja fighting styles would struggle against some cotton-rolling girl, Meiko would have had a blast back then, though she wasn't laughing now.</p><p>It was a good thing that this was not the full extent of Meiko's abilities then.</p>
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<a name="section0671"><h2>671. The Culmination Of One's Burning Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sunny-Lee moved her hands around, thin, white weaves of silk-like material formed a layer of cotton around her hands that soon became the dreaded fluff-ball that Meiko was beginning to get sick of already. The Kumogakure ninja raised her leg for a better wind up, spinning her body around its axis to pitch the two spheres up.</p><p>Despite the significant effort being put into accelerating them, the balls of cotton didn't fly at speeds all that impressive. Even if charging up static electricity was building up inside them, they didn't pack enough mass to fly all that fast and even the elementary wind resistance was able to hamper their movements.</p><p>Meiko didn't wait for Sunny-Lee to complete whatever impressive show of cotton use she had in mind, the blacksmith raised up her right fist, letting her greave slip off a compartment which exposed a glowing sealing glyph. The glyph lit up with an intense chakra flare, comparable to the flares that Meiko used sealed inside her boots to jet around. This time she had her powerful arms to compensate for the weighty push before she completed her armament.</p><p>The flare of chakra lengthened and thinned, forming a shape of a wrist blade. With an energetic shout, Meiko dyed the chakra flowing from her seal in the color of blaze red before spiraling at her opponent from up in the air, aiming to slash at her with a sword made out of nothing but base chakra she sealed inside a containment seal and transformed with every bit of the tips of the trade she's picked up along the way of her ninja journey.</p><p>Slash here, slash there, the cotton spheres offered no resistance and burnt up with a mere touch of Meiko's blade. Sunny-Lee had released a jolt, discharging Lightning Release chakra from her hands. She aimed it at her own cotton balls. It didn't take a genius to understand her goal, only someone with elementary experience on the field and Meiko's had plenty of that. Her cotton balls could transfer the static electricity they've built up from one to another, no doubt the kunoichi had planned to form a complex electrical chain, a web of lightning to trap and confuse her opponent and wear her down.</p><p>Meiko was both made of sterner stuff than that as well as being smart enough to figure that plan out. Having gained a quicker step in this marathon, it would have been foolish not to explore this opportunity. With a vigorous growl, Meiko slashed with her infernal gladius constructed of pure chakra, releasing a crescent, flaming projectile aimed right at her opponent.</p><p>This time Sunny-Lee had no time to put together a shield of cotton to burn up in protection of her. She just put her arms up and braced for impact, letting the blast knock her over and rolling a fair distance back while watching her arms that took the brunt of the blast. Judging by the light burns on her forearms, Sunny-Lee wasn't the sternest of Kumogakure genins but she was able to control the lasting few specks of flame on her arms while rolling.</p><p>"Examinee Sunny-Lee appears to be on fire!" Konohamaru noted on commentary.</p><p>"Now, from what we've seen so far, it appears that examinee Meiko is using nothing but chakra shape transformation to shape her leaking chakra into the shape of a sword, as well as nature transformation to imbue it with her elemental affinity of Fire Release," Udon added.</p><p>"In that case, those flames will be tough to put out without a Water Release technique and it is not a nature common amongst Kumogakure ninja," Moegi, being a relatively experienced and sharp-witted kunoichi in her own right, flawlessly picked up the pieces left dangling by her colleagues and close friends.</p><p>"That's right, examinee Sunny-Lee is in a tough spot now, she'll have to just tough it out and wait until the chakra inside those flames burns out. That's gonna take some chakra augmentation to do and you do not want to concentrate on augmenting the endurance of some random body part in a tough battle!" Konohamaru concluded.</p><p>The blazing sword on Meiko's forearm died out with a pulse of flames when the blacksmith shut off the chakra input needed to sustain the blade's shape and nature. She was never the sharpest with finer methods of chakra manipulation so it was for the better if she only relied on such means that taxed her body and her mind more than the actual battle when they were necessary.</p><p>Now was the time to throw some hands, conserve her chakra while her opponent worried about keeping herself from having burns too severe from the lingering flames on her forearms. Meiko tightened her arms beside her as she nosedived right at her opponent, ready to inflict some close-range punishment, as she intended.</p><p>Something soft swallowed up Meiko's hand, she raced so fast that vision got blurry there for a moment, she couldn't have punched a hole right through her opponent, no, the softness was stringy and sent painful needles stabbing through every contacting pore of the skin. It was a cocoon of cotton that Sunny surrounded herself with.</p><p>Meiko grunted in pain and yanked on her arm, forcing it out of the trap but the static electricity building up inside the cotton was too great, more so, she could have sworn that the total voltage in the area demanded far too much of her chakra to stay conscious. The intensity far surpassed the voltage of an actual lightning bolt, that was not force that a mere genin should have been capable of putting out on such short notice…</p><p>"Static…" Meiko's attention fleeted to the electrified terrain around her, minuscule sparks and pops of sparks emitted seemingly out of the blue all around her. With every ball of cotton dissolving and releasing featherweight strands into the air, with every electrical discharge from Sunny-Lee, the concentration of Lightning Release intensified bit by bit, resulting in airborne charge that served to further amp up the static building up inside the cotton.</p><p>Sunny-Lee was not looking to let Meiko fall back, with her fists encased in cotton, she leaped onward, throwing fists. It didn't hurt much, the chakra conductive layers of armor position over the flexible Ryuchi weave already served as decent nullification for blunt force, that was in addition to the fact that Sunny most likely only encased her fists in cotton to soften the hi-power recoil on her own body from her empowered fists.</p><p>Seeing how none of the attempts to ring the bell registered, Meiko reached out for her opponent, grabbing her by Sunny's collar and pulling her in closer. All of the blacksmith's focus went into her jet boots, sending her soaring into the air in velocity that send cracking shockwaves, shattering the glasses of whatever beverages the audience cooled themselves off with. The redhead changed her direction in a sudden 180 turn, seeing how she was inside the fanciest suit of armor she's ever built while her opponent was not, Meiko could withstand the sudden shifts in gravitational forces and the cruel polka of momentum snapping at bones and the joints from such a sudden turn. And that was just the starter before the main course…</p><p>She couldn't release her opponent at any point. If she did, Meiko risked letting Sunny-Lee wrap herself in cotton and softening the hit again and Meiko needed to make every hit count. No. She didn't release Sunny-Lee, she drove the kunoichi into the ground head-first after a dive as intense and sudden as the rise, rumbling the ground of the arena and shaking the very limestone foundations of the entire fortification. Meiko stumbled out of the impact zone, she felt shaken up even inside this thing on her absorbing the force of the blows.</p><p>It was tough to say just from the look of a dangling pair of legs and an upper body submerged in the rubble just how much damage she inflicted. The visor on Meiko's helmet was shaken beyond the point where it accurately showed heat signatures, the display was bugging out all the time, aggravating the blacksmith and tempting to rip the helmet off. When the first signs of life came from Sunny's side, Meiko tossed her bent up and erring helmet rolling, feeling the brush of fresh spring air against her cheeks.</p><p>Sunny groaned and whined but she did pull herself out of her predicament, writhing on the ground for a few moments before slowly rising back on her feet. Meiko should have just kept the pressure up, went after her opponent while she tried regaining her composure but she just didn't feel like it. It wasn't like she couldn't use the brief breather and her opponent had already proven resourceful enough for close-range defensive shocks that were now, without a doubt, even further amped up.</p><p>The Kumogakure ninja was resourceful, that much Meiko had to give her, she didn't waste any time returning back to the heat of the battle, waving her arms while she pulled on detached strands of cotton and rolling them up into one, larger blob that surpassed any construct which Sunny had formed up to then. Meiko kept the boots sending out faint flares, just in case she would need to take off with some additional gusto.</p><p>A roaring shockwave sent Meiko clutching and sliding back a few steps, the blacksmith didn't expect a Wind Release attack after seeing just how well Lightning Release synced up with the natural Cotton Release ability of Sunny-Lee. The Wind Release proved itself to be formidable and useful in its own right as it scattered the large blob of cotton all over the place, filling the arena with smaller, floating chunks.</p><p>"That chain combo again, huh?" Meiko braced herself, feeling powerless to try and burn up the cotton again as the spheres were too spread out now. That Wind Release shockwave was just what Sunny needed to avoid the scenario from the last time.</p><p>It wasn't the chain combo though. Meiko's body reacted by itself and did so just in time, moving out of the way of her opponent's flying shoulder tackle. Sunny didn't just miss, she released more strands of cotton to connect with the nearest airborne chunk and pull her like a zip line toward it. The airborne cotton spheres worked as a prime surface to bounce off of and snowball in velocity and force. If she was to stand a chance at combatting this close-range combo, Meiko had to intercept it fast. This time the blacksmith took a staunch stand and raised her wrist for a block.</p><p>With the opponent's fist secured in place, the redhead spun Sunny-Lee around her to waste some of the built-up momentum while lowering the speed of Sunny's aerial movement. After a few laps around Meiko's axis, the Kumogakure ninja attempted a kick to the neck but her head might have still been woozy from all the zipping around as well as crash-landing head-first earlier as the kicks slipped off of Meiko's plating around her neck.</p><p>With a backbreaking attempt, Meiko thrust her knee into the back of her opponent before throwing a wicked cross right at her jaw and sending Sunny-Lee sliding back on the ground. After the weighty head-ringer, the Kumogakure kunoichi struggled to push her body off the ground. Just the fact that she still tried as well as the detail of staff not flooding the ring to stop the match fueled the thought that her match still wasn't over.</p><p>Meiko cupped her greaves by her sides, letting the Reactor Gauntlets module shut over her arms again, replacing the default gauntlets. The blacksmith wasted no time heating up the atmosphere by coating her Reactor Gauntlets with a coating of Fire Release chakra which only served to double the size of Reactor Shot that it formed as it drew from the Fire Release chakra in the coating in addition to the chakra generated inside a normal Reactor Shot.</p><p>"Nova Shot!" Meiko grunted out, thrusting her arms out and letting the supersized blast take off toward her recovering opponent. The heat enveloped the fallen kunoichi whole, expanding in a rampant firestorm as all of the compressed inferno of Meiko's chakra burst forth, racing with each contained heatwave to reach the highest of highs it could reach first.</p><p>A pile of ashes fell out from the cloud of smoke left behind, the redhead was at least 80 percent certain that she didn't reduce her opponent to a pile of ash with that last blast. If she staff didn't pull her out, it meant that she could still fight and take a few blows, accidents happened but Meiko thought more about her skill than to overwhelm her opponent needlessly like that.</p><p>"Cotton Release: Static Beam!" a voice reached Meiko from up above, while Meiko had decimated all of the lower-floating cotton constructs with her last attack, there may have still been some that floated up way higher as the Wind Release blast that spread them out was more than capable of launching them over the building itself.</p><p>"Substitution!" Meiko realized, placing the source for ashes that she'd incinerated with the Nova Shot being a cotton ball which Sunny-Lee replaced herself with while avoiding both the brunt of the blast as well as the resulting firestorm devastation, both of which would have knocked her out cold.</p><p>If felt as if the sweltering beam had pierced Meiko's chest and burnt up all of the insides, though it had only channeled through it without inflicting any actual external wounds. There was a taste of blood in Meiko's mouth as she felt the coarse and heated dirt underneath her head, making her hair all rough as they brushed against Meiko's face.</p><p>The blacksmith could see the white ball of cotton being rolled in between her opponent's arms as she turned in mid-air and placed it underneath her feet, throwing her feet out to kick off of the ball while using her chakra to manipulate the cotton's bounciness. It felt as if a genuine trampoline propelled her opponent. If she connected with a diving fist from that height, Meiko felt like there was a genuine chance for grievous injury and she wasn't about to take those chances.</p><p>Exposing the sealing glyphs on her palms, Meiko let the blazes of base chakra blast out while she performed the grueling process to manipulate the blast's shape into a round-shield like a plate. She'd have lied if she boasted about not feeling the diving punch of her opponent but it seemed like nothing compared to what she'd have taken otherwise.</p><p>"Weapon Transformation!" Meiko yelled out, shifting the shape of her ethereal chakra shield by having the shield form a ring of static chakra around her. The Reactor Gauntlets popped back onto Meiko's gloves and secured in place while the chakra coating lit up around each separate piece of the module and molded together before the construction was complete.</p><p>"Nova Shot!" Meiko yelled out, unleashing a point-blank hit at her airborne opponent, still shaken from her hit being absorbed and reflected by a shield of solid chakra. While there were still airborne cotton balls to substitute with, there was no way that another Substitution Jutsu could have been possible so soon after another.</p><p>There wasn't nearly enough time to generate anywhere near the average potential of a Nova Shot, though Meiko knew she didn't need to. Hell, she didn't even want to, even if she could have generated enough force for a complete blast. She'd have truly incinerated Sunny that way, all she needed was a little push to tip her over the edge of her consciousness and judging by the storming reaction of the crowd after the Kumogakure ninja landed on her back, legs and arms sprawled out to the sides and not showing any signs of consciousness – Meiko realized she had succeeded.</p><p>She won!</p><p>"What a match!" Konohamaru yelled out, shaking his friend Udon by his side on the shoulder. "If both examinees aren't promoted after this, I swear I'll eat these data sheets right here!"</p><p>"Ummm…" Udon took a short break, filling the airwaves with bland noise of his own filling voice as he fixed his clothes, "Indeed, it would appear that both examinees showed some impressive, lightning-quick thinking on their feet, adapted to each other's moves despite never facing off against one another before. Though examinee Meiko might have had a brief edge, those datasheets you're itching to eat do record a brief encounter between the two some years ago during a Chuunin Exams when Meiko's teammate collided with this young lady…"</p><p>"Either way, I can only congratulate these two young ladies on an amazing show!" Moegi clapped. "I must say that this last half of the matches has been incredible. Every single match has been worthy of the honored spot of the final match of the day and we still have two more matches left to go."</p><p>"I agree, this match has more than made up for that Gurker Gliesse VS Toroi embarrassment…" Konohamaru hummed with a reserved growl.</p><p>"Heh, we're next…" Temari glared at a rather quiet and shy-looking girl with an Amegakure headband. Half of the girl's face was obstructed by her dark hair and she didn't interact with the rest of the waiting room much before this. "Aren't you all fired up after that last match? Let's wipe those other guys' noses, huh?"</p><p>"If you say so…" Fuyo replied, standing up and picking up a large umbrella from her side, positioning it over her shoulder like a lance.</p><p>"Huh? What's that lack of energy you've got? If you don't take this seriously, I'll wipe you out in three seconds flat!" Temari leaned over the shorter girl, gesturing with her hand like a brush that was wiping away mere dust.</p><p>"You seem confident," Fuyo replied while evening out the wrinkles in her violet, long-sleeved dress. It was once she was done making sure she was presentable to represent her village in battle that she faced her opponent with a one-eyed glare of her purple eyes. "However, Lady Angel has placed her faith in me and I shall not fail her."</p><p>"Your goal… It's already complete though, isn't it? You've got all the data you need already…" Kiyomi sent a wayward glance in Fuyo's direction which prompted the almost lazy-like expression of Fuyo to break in a lively opening of her eyes just for a moment.</p><p>"Perhaps so, though there are plenty of ninja here who are or will become powerful enough ninja in their own right. Just because I shall return to Lady Angel with all the data on Tailed Beasts and their hosts she will even want or need, it does not mean that all the other data I can still collect is worthless…" Fuyo replied. "It is for that reason that I shall face your seriously and extract as much of your potential from you as possible, Temari-san."</p><p>"No spunk at all, honestly…" Temari rubbed the back of her head, feeling awry about her opponent. The blonde that had enough spunk for the two of them herself shrugged it off and followed her opponent into the bright opening inside the arena where the staff was working to remove the airborne cotton particles that would have empowered Lightning Release techniques with the pent up static electricity still.</p>
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<a name="section0672"><h2>672. A Reverie For The Rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, what exactly can we expect from this match?" Konohamaru turned to Udon while Temari and Fuyo walked out and took the stage. The enigmatic, dark-haired girl from Amegakure still stared a single card with a purple back before slipping it back into a deck inside her pouch.</p><p>"It's a mystery to be certain, examinee Temari has demonstrated great usage of Wind Release ninjutsu that she channels through her fan that she carries on her back. Not that much is known about examinee Fuyo, except for the fact that she is a sensor," Moegi answered instead of Udon.</p><p>"That's right, Moegi, I am aware of the fact that examinee Fuyo has her own deck of Ninja Info Cards, which makes it more than likely that she has knowledge of the abilities of examinee Temari in theory. It is a curious thing that she was the only one to get this far out of her entire squad, given that she serves as a sensor and more of a support and utility type ninja," Udon elaborated to Moegi's answer and added some on top.</p><p>"Let me show you a little trick, girly," Temari smirked, reaching back for her fan. The metallic frame of the weapon hit the ground with a weighty slam. The proctor froze and turned to Temari. His arms were just a few inches shy from declaring the beginning of the match.</p><p>"This fan has three moons on it. The more moons I reveal, the wider the fan is, the stronger my jutsu are. I'm gonna open them one by one, just to see how good you are. I can tell you that by the time you see the third moon, it's gonna be all over!" Temari raised the large frame and flipped it over her shoulders. At this point she was just showing off, she hadn't even opened the fan one bit yet.</p><p>"To be fair, I am well aware of how your fighting style works in theory. If theoretical knowledge was all that I found useful, I'd have withdrawn from the exam. My village values intelligence revealed through combat experience more than anything else," Fuyo pointed out and removed her own large package from her back, slamming a chunky wooden rod onto the floor and letting cloth expose a sharp, decorative top of the weapon that appeared to be shaped like a lance.</p><p>The proctor raised his arms up and dashed off. Fuyo did not even try taking the offensive, she raised her arm up, extending her middle and index fingers while she closed her eyes, focusing on her sensory abilities to keep track of the battlefield. Temari took off, swinging her closed fan like a claymore. Fuyo reacted to the sound of Temari's sandals kicking off the ground. Due to the luggage that the Sunagakure kunoichi was dragging behind her, the fan hampered Temari's speed enough for Fuyo to react in time.</p><p>The blonde took in a mouthful of irritating black smoke when Fuyo reached for her pouch and then flung her hand in an arcing direction. She had popped a smoke bomb and used a simple flinging motion to spread the booming cloud faster, prioritizing the direction more useful to Fuyo herself. The audience and the observers from the waiting room could still see Fuyo ducking under the swinging fan but the rest was left to the chaos that was submerged in smoke.</p><p>Temari slid out from the smoke, her fan was thrust into the dirt and left a wide ridge in her path. The young woman dragged her fist across her lip that was stained red and by the right side of her face where the mean bruise was. The Sunagakure ninja had taken quite a mean bump in there and due to the fact that she hadn't even opened up her fan yet, she was unable to blow the smoke away before the hit landed.</p><p>"Using the smoke in sync with your sensory abilities, huh? That's cute…" Temari filtered through a cocky smirk before opening up the first moon of her fan and swinging the massive object. The smoke stood no chance against even the simplest of swings from the wind-channeling weapon, there was no need for an actual Wind Release ninjutsu.</p><p>"Now that you're all out in the open and exposed like that, how 'bout this!?" Temari mocked her opponent again, flexing her imagined superiority over her by swinging the one-third open fan in a straightforward motion. Fuyo screamed out in pain as a handful of mean-looking lacerations opened up on the bare areas of her skin and cut-up parts of her cloak, exposing more areas for the wind to slice next.</p><p>The Amegakure kunoichi surrendered to the blowing might of the wind and rolled backward, clutching her lance-shaped weapon close to her side. Once she had rolled a few dashes further, Fuyo opened up her weapon, throwing the rags that covered it aside and revealing it to be a massive umbrella. It might not have proven to be sufficient enough defense against the slicing winds at close range but the potency of Temari's flexing gust of winds appeared to degrade further and Fuyo's weapon proved to be a valiant mean of defense then.</p><p>"Quite powerful, though cruel and rather blunt…" Fuyo declared while standing up on her feet. Despite a handful of cuts being open on her thigh and her shin, her forearms, and the sides of her chest, the Amegakure ninja did not wince or react to her injuries too much nor did she show trouble moving just yet. More than being a feat of prodigious pain tolerance, however, this was a betrayal of the fact that unless Temari put her back into it, her techniques slashed with something comparable to a mean paper cut.</p><p>"You've got some porridge in that noggin of yours, I'll hand you that. I guess you'd have to so that you can survive being a constant burden on your team…" Temari shrugged, still looking smug since her opponent hadn't provided her with a reason to acknowledge her yet.</p><p>"As it is the case with blunt ninja, they can't see the big picture until it is squeezing around their neck," Fuyo closed her eyes and flung her umbrella into the sky, while the young woman continued to weave hand seals, the umbrella rose higher and higher up, riding a pathway made out of faint traces of chakra rather than relying on great physical strength for it to ascend that high up.</p><p>"Getting rid of your only mean of defense was a mistake! Wind Scythe Jutsu!" Temari yelled out so that her voice overpowered the wind that she commanded. A potent gust of slashing winds left Temari's fan and continued to grow outward into a translucent, round blob of a raging gale.</p><p>The umbrella stopped in mid-air, the steel wire attached to the ends of each segment lit up blue while the device itself began spinning. Using that momentum and leaving only the strands of steel wire on one side of the umbrella glowing with chakra, Fuyo zipped up into the air, following her weapon and over the expanding gale that erupted into a single pillar of slashing winds after reaching the end of its range.</p><p>"Water Style: Sprinkling Drizzle!" Fuyo chanted after activating a different set of steel wires over her wrist, that interacting with a handful of compartments in the umbrella she used and set off the sprinklers at each angle of the umbrella's frame, creating a pelting rain from up above.</p><p>"That's no puny drizzle…" Temari covered up her eyes and face, what she took as a laughable attempt for an attack appeared to be an actually bothersome distraction as the drain washed away from up above with all the penetrative power that could drill through stone if it persevered long enough. "I'll blow it away nevertheless!"</p><p>Temari swung her fan with just one of her moons exposed still, cutting whirlwind raced cutting through the rain and slashing right at her opponent. Fuyo covered herself up, choosing to rather keep her sprinklers running the diversion while she cushioned the weakening blast of wind with her body. The Amegakure ninja flew vaulting backward like a ragdoll, a handful of crimson droplets mixed into the waterfall of the gloomier, aquatic variety that came from open lacerations on Fuyo's body.</p><p>Despite the mean hit she took, Fuyo completed her landing with on her feet, nimble as a cat and ripped her cloak off before throwing it aside seeing how it was all cut up and tattered with holes as if a tempestuous child had gone to town on it with a pair of scissors.</p><p>"Water Style: Drizzle Barrage!" Fuyo pressed her hands together and extended her left arm forward, the widespread coverage of the downfall that she had formed with her airborne umbrella turned into a focused stream of blade-sharp droplets that washed in a waving arc right at Temari.</p><p>"Don't make me laugh!" Temari smirked, waving her fan and stopping the drizzle halfway to her with a hefty blast of wind. Her vanity soon turned to ire when she realized that even when she blocked Fuyo's attempts at a more streamlined attack, the irritating diversion of the previous drizzle resumed unimpeded once this one focused wave was finished.</p><p>"I see… Potent long-range attacks that serve as staunch defense as well. You're a real juggernaut to anyone that's incapable of overpowering you with a hopeless difference in skill and ability. A frightening opponent to anyone of similar skill and an insurmountable wall to anyone who focuses on long-range techniques and diversions," Fuyo summed up, standing tall in front of her sneering opponent.</p><p>"So, what now? You gonna throw in the towel?" Temari wondered.</p><p>"I'm afraid not. I have only still seen the first of your moons. Even if someone like you is the absolute worst opponent for someone like me to face as you've got a valid counter for most things I can do, I cannot fail Lady Angel by bringing her anything less than a complete package of intelligence, you are, after all, the sister to the One-Tails Jinchuuriki, correct?" Fuyo asked.</p><p>"W-What?! How do you…?" Temari appeared to be thrown off balance for the first time and it was not because of something her opponent could do.</p><p>"Trivializing those that One-Tails holds dear to him is important to Lady Angel and the future of Amegakure. I can therefore not falter before hardship until I can obtain all the possible intelligence," Fuyo declared with an almost fanatical devotion burning in her eyes. "This was a task that Lady Angel entrusted to me personally."</p><p>"Tsk… You're freaking me out, I'm done fooling around!" Temari pushed her thumb across the edge of her fan, opening up the second moon of it. "Wind Scythe Jutsu!" she yelled out after swinging her fan. Despite visible packing much more of a wallop with the amount of wind that it blew, the tool also appeared to move much slower in mid-air, giving Fuyo an illusion of being able to defend against her opponent.</p><p>The violent turbulence fired off toward the Amegakure girl like a missile, enveloping her whole inside its violent outrage and ripping and tearing at her from the inside while she grunted and twitched at every cut that she suffered. This no longer looked like much of a fight and nobody had seen an intelligence-gathering venture that closed in to such proximity to being outright torture. Against her better judgment, Fuyo persevered Temari's attack and planted on the dirt, her arms shook while she pushed her cut-up body off the ground. Her dark hair, previously tied into bangs that covered half of her forehead, now were dirty and split into wild strands while they ran loose all over her head.</p><p>"Chakra is a potential weakness to explore. Each successive swing drains a little bit more, the more active moons, the more significant the dip…" Fuyo panted while chanting to herself her observations like a mantra that helped her deal with the pointless battle she went through.</p><p>"This is it, you psycho! Third moon!" Temari panted herself, revealing the third moon as she swung her fan, unleashing a whole array of violent gales from her fan. The multiple gusts enveloped the poor Amegakure girls like ravenous beasts, chomping and shredding her to bits, each hungry and vicious in its own right, looking to tear out a sizable chunk of its prey to gobble down all by itself.</p><p>Fuyo popped, revealing herself to be her drizzling umbrella from up above while the Amegakure ninja soared down from up above, having found a safe spot to move in and strike at her opponent from. Fuyo didn't need to elaborate on why her assault was deadly and on-point, Temari's arms were down and heavy after having swung her three-moon fan and she couldn't do anything but take the diving punch to her left, still unbruised jaw.</p><p>Temari stumbled back, letting go of her fan as it skid across the floor. A wet tack against the dirt though it was unclear as to which girl it belonged to for both of them were bleeding a fair bit. Temari from her cracked and swelling lip and busted jaw and Fuyo from most of her sliced-up body. The wounds had accumulated, she couldn't deliver a good enough punch to put her opponent down in the opening she had found and she knew all too well what was to follow.</p><p>Temari skid across the floor in an attempt to pick up her weapon but Fuyo dived after her opponent like a mindless beast, her eyes closed as she tracked the battle purely through her sensory and swung her fists filled to the brim with determination and devotion to her village. A few solid hits connected to Temari's face and body but the Sunagakure girl poofed away, replacing herself with her fan while she charged back at the location she substituted herself from a whole different direction.</p><p>A back-elbow strike halted Temari's advances. Fuyo was too wounded to put too much effort into her strikes, they all felt like mere pillow swings but at the very least they kept the Sunagakure blonde away from her frightful weapon. Temari's hair let loose, falling over her shoulders down while she cursed and embraced the violence that the finishing touches of this battle required of her. A blow to the gut, a solid cross to the jaw, and a soaring knee strike to the chest drove all air out from Temari's lungs.</p><p>"Your entire fighting style, even your taijutsu relies on you having your fan. That is perhaps the most glaring weakness that makes you pose no threat to Lady Angel and my more faithful peers…" Fuyo panted, despite having a complete advantage in close-distance, her face showed no hope for her victory. At this point, she was just typing the words with her fists though the novel she was crafting would stay unfinished and the words she weaved carried little to no meaning though a lot of emotional weight to those reading it in the audience and the locker rooms.</p><p>Fuyo moved in with an elbow strike but Temari vaulted back, flipping over her back and throwing a handful of shuriken and kunai at her opponent, having found an opening for such an attack. Fuyo fell to one knee, coughing up blood. She could feel the dozens of shuriken and kunai that hit her dead-on though she felt like she'd have rather not opened her eyes and seen them.</p><p>"I've got one for you too, princess, if you keep your eyes closed and just sense what your opponent is doing – you'll miss something that has no chakra signature at all…" Temari walked up to her crippled opponent and knocked her out with a chop to the side of her neck. The Sunagakure kunoichi caught Fuyo falling by her hair, tossing her forward and letting her fall on her back so that all the ninja tool wounds gaping at her front didn't get aggravated by a frontal fall.</p><p>"I see… I too am not immune to weakness…" Fuyo managed to force out an ironic smirk while lying on her back. The staff rushed in and surrounded both girls though Temari managed to wrestle those that attempted to help her by rubbing cotton soaked with ointment at her busted face.</p><p>"You're unbelievable…" Temari mumbled while following her opponent sprawled out on the stretcher on her way to the infirmary. "Sure, you've got talent, you've shown it all, you might even get promoted. What happens when you meet someone tough like me out on the field? Are you fine with you dying like this just to get a few observations?"</p><p>"Promotion was never my goal. I've already fulfilled my purpose, the only time I am not contempt with dying is right now because I must still deliver the information I have gathered to Lady Angel," Fuyo replied with a stoic expression, staring at a single, unremarkable point in the sky while the staff carried her away.</p><p>"Information, about Gaara, you mean?" Temari wondered. She fostered some nasty thoughts in that blunt head of hers though once she analyzed them and realized that it wouldn't be her Gaara that this brat would be harming she decided against lashing out at her while staff surrounded them from both sides. She was more useful to Gaara as a chuunin by his side than a criminal that prevented harm to someone else entirely.</p><p>"Gaara? Look at all these people, these ninja gathered here. Yes. I've seen them all, all of them are information that I will deliver to Lady Angel. Despite her name, Lady Angel is not immortal. She is just one, very exalted woman. I cannot grant her immortality befitting an angel but I can at least give her omniscience. Knowledge of all ninja that have lived in the past, that live around her at the moment and those that would stand in her way in the future." Fuyo didn't flinch or wince away from her stoic façade. It was just a façade though.</p><p>Nobody dreaming of a perfect future was ever this gloomy and damp about it.</p>
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<a name="section0673"><h2>673. Mind Made Into Matter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"And so we've come to this, ladies and gentlemen, the main event of the finals of the Interuniversal and Intertemporal Chuunin Exams!" Konohamaru continued to rattle on commentary. Whether he knew or not that Sasuke Uchiha was nowhere to be seen, at least not in the waiting room, remained as of yet unclear.</p><p>"That's right, and while all matches have been decided at random, this one certainly did end up being a treat that deserves its title and hype," Udon nodded with enthusiasm a couple of times. "Yamanaka Kiyomi is the prodigious heiress of the Yamanaka clan's management in this universe and Uchiha Sasuke is an infamous missing ninja who, technically, is still a genin, despite having been one of the most dangerous ninja alive at the time."</p><p>"They're really killing us with the anticipation here, neither of the two are walking out and I really want to see Yamanaka Kiyomi whoop this guy's butt!" Moegi cheered on.</p><p>"Aren't you supposed to be completely objective about this?" Konohamaru scratched his head.</p><p>"Why? I'm a commentator and not a referee. Plus, what's wrong about cheering on a fellow kunoichi?" Moegi crossed her arms. "It would be such an inspiring victory for Yamanaka Kiyomi to triumph over one of the most dangerous ninja of his time that would eventually become one of Konoha's bravest protectors and best friends of Lord Seventh. Seeing something like this coming true is more inspirational to little girls wanting to be ninja than anything teachers or parents can tell them."</p><p>"Moegi… You're getting a little…" Udon was about to bring to her attention how preachy his friend was being but then all three commentators spun their heads to focus on the screens that closed in on a blur that sent a ripple of wind which scattered the fallen leaves present in the arena. In the center of the minor disturbance of peace and quiet stood one young man of dark, shoulder-length hair and a long, dark cloak over his shoulders.</p><p>Sasuke Uchiha had arrived at the scene, though his eyes remained closed.</p><p>"Good grief, what a drama queen…" Kiyomi sighed. "Well, I'm off…"</p><p>Meiko let out a hefty breath and looked at her friend. She still felt a bit winded after her fight, still, she was one of the few examinees still capable of returning to the waiting room and checking out the rest of the matches. The place had quickly become empty though Meiko had thought that being the type of guy Sasuke was, he'd arrive after it had emptied out. Turns out, he chose to skip the chaff altogether and just show up for the main course.</p><p>"He's a pretty scary guy, a friend of Seventh Naruto, you know. You gonna be okay?" Meiko wondered.</p><p>Kiyomi put up a relaxed hand and waved it in dismissal. She did not feel inclined to say a single word in response. Meiko chuckled to herself, her friend probably got offended. Kiyomi wasn't too fond of the Uchiha her entire life and while she had managed to get over her blatant classism toward the folks, she never claimed or felt obliged to get along with them or like them too much either.</p><p>"So you're my opponent? I wondered if I even needed to show up…" Sasuke turned to Kiyomi and chose to open his eyes only in acknowledgment of her appearance through the exit from the hallway leading out of the locker room and entrance to the arena.</p><p>"How so? Choose your answer carefully though," Kiyomi spoke with a certain suave taste to her tone. She did not foster any heat toward her opponent, she walked out to face him as she would have faced just about anyone else she needed to eliminate from her path.</p><p>"Well, the way I saw it was – either you will chicken out and I'll have shown up for nothing, or I'll just crush you in no time flat and end up with the same result on my hands… Reaching out for that promotion feels useless, at this point," Sasuke taunted Kiyomi with a confident smirk.</p><p>"Oh, you think you have me in the palm of my hand, you see me as a page of a book you can see clearly then?" Kiyomi struck a wide-open pose, flaunting at her opponent and daring for him to exploit his chance.</p><p>"Something like that," Sasuke admitted, though his face betrayed this to be just smack talk. He looked at least a little bit excited by the fact that his opponent showed up and from the way she carried herself around the place as if she owned it. "I've met Yamanaka before yet not a single one I was impressed by. Mostly, you guys are just really annoying…"</p><p>"Well then, feel free to hold back a little, okay?" Kiyomi pressed her index to her bottom lip, using her nail to dig into it lightly, just a few inches short of a pinch.</p><p>The staff member raised his arms up for the declaration of the beginning of the final match and withdrew from the arena promptly. Just as the noise of the baggy, dark pants rustling in the speedy movement of the Konoha chuunin withdrawing from the arena disappeared from perception, a light tap followed as Sasuke's sandals landed on the other side from Kiyomi with just the deeper edge of his blade reflecting the beams of sunlight it managed to catch.</p><p>A dark shadow lingered over Kiyomi's head. An image of a malformed, demonic entity with all-swallowing white eyes and a cruel smile that then burst into light as vicious lashes tore it asunder, forcing it to erupt from within and dissolve into nothingness. And yet… The Yamanaka girl stood tall and brave, unmoved by the assault of her opponent.</p><p>"What was that supposed to be?" she even found some time to mock him. Sasuke's form vanished, brief and numerous eruptions of storming sparks burst from fierce collisions in mid-air of Sasuke's Kusanagi sword against something invisible yet material all the same. The two light-stepping figures proceeded to dance a lethal tango, uncaring and unwavering for the damage caused on the outside as violent projectiles of compressed air slashed into the ground and fell trees all around him.</p><p>A deafening pop sent Sasuke vaulting backward and sliding on the ground with his sword in hand, ready to respond to danger and his Mangekyou Sharingan in full-activity. The face of the young man was as serious as Kiyomi had ever seen it while hers still carried that pre-match aloofness which she enjoyed flaunting her confused opponent with. This entire time, the girl in the black dress stood in the center, and calmly observed Sasuke's struggles.</p><p>"I see…" Sasuke spoke up. "You're no ordinary Yamanaka."</p><p>"Wh… What was that!?" Konohamaru exclaimed on commentary. "It seemed to me like Uchiha Sasuke had moved, yes, for sure I've seen him attacking with his sword. His movements were incredibly fast, I'm sure that they'll slow things down for you civilians watching at home or those that were incapable of tracking Sasuke's movements but… It appears that Kiyomi had deflected all of his strikes, right?"</p><p>"Umm… I'm not sure… I think I noticed Sasuke Uchiha employing genjutsu to lock her down in place and then striking at her at first but… Then I got so lost…" Moegi ran her hand through her hair in frustration. "Just how will I explain this to all those brave, little girls? They need to get what's going on to get inspired!"</p><p>"It does seem odd but I am sure that examinee Kiyomi has not moved a muscle!" Udon proclaimed. "I have on good authority that on this universe a speed surpassing the speed of light is impossible, meaning that there is no way that Kiyomi could have moved without vanishing or us seeing any trace of her movement. And yet… Somehow she's fended off all of examinee Sasuke's attacks."</p><p>"It must feel really vexing, to see something you wish destroyed, and not being able to crush it. Tell me all about that frustration, please," Kiyomi proceeded to taunt her opponent though Sasuke composed himself and took a deep breath, closing his eyes for just one blink only to reopen them without the Mangekyou Sharingan and only the ordinary crimson eye blaring in his orbs.</p><p>"You overestimate yourself," Sasuke answered. "After killing Itachi and talking to Naruto I've changed a bit. The only person I want to see destroyed is Itachi. I no longer intend on destroying everyone that stood in the way of my revenge. The only vengeance I seek is against Itachi, every single version of him across time and space. By traveling with Naruto, I'll have that accessible to me."</p><p>"I see…" Kiyomi sighed. "My intelligence was right then. You are so consistently inconsistent…"</p><p>"What I am is an avenger!" Sasuke grunted, charging forward with a vanishing attack. After his blade collided with something invisible just inches away from Kiyomi's face, the Uchiha blitzed away and continued his assault. This time it prompted Kiyomi to move after him. The two black blurs continued to spit out sparks and spread screechy clangs every time their ambitions collided.</p><p>"My vengeance has been enacted, the only purpose I've ever known – gone. Don't talk to me like you know what feeling empty feels like!" Sasuke taunted Kiyomi after forcing one of their collisions onto her and pressing the offensive. The Yamanaka slid under, surrendering to the physical force in order to attack her opponent down low. Her limbs shuffled in an acrobatic flash before the Yamanaka found herself vaulting back up on both her feet.</p><p>Sasuke's cloak flew away from his shoulders with a wide gash across it. The black and white, loose, long-sleeve shirt carried a similar, flapping cut over the side though the resulting cut on Sasuke's chest was significantly smaller. It was as if the young man had sensed the attack before it happened and retracted his body where it would have hit him.</p><p>"Those ethereal attacks, the invisible weapons, and barriers, my eyes can see them all," Sasuke declared, and directed his Sharingan back at Kiyomi.</p><p>"Indeed, it doesn't seem like you can tell what's exactly hitting you, but you know it's there and that it's about to hit you. Your vision of my technique is inferior to what someone with the Byakugan would be able to see but you still get some hints," Kiyomi flexed and hopped on her feet. "Still, don't presume to know what I am capable of, had I used a sword and not a knife to slash at you – you might have been more seriously injured than this."</p><p>"Interesting…" Sasuke admitted with a smirk of excitement that not many people got to see on his face. "You can manifest weapons in your mind and affect the material plane with them. I have never seen such a Yamanaka technique before. Though I have a similar jutsu of my own."</p><p>A gaunt vision of an ethereal, indigo-colored specter appeared looming over Sasuke's head. The skeletal form radiated an intense aura of chakra as well that felt like trouble all the way back where Kiyomi was looking at it from. If the face of the blond Yamanaka princess was of any indication, she didn't think Sasuke's proclamation to be all that clever though she put up her arm like wielding a sword in her right hand.</p><p>"I guess there's no use in hiding it then…" she said while a white and cottony, almost cloud-like formation faded into the visible spectrum. An intense and sharp beam that ended in a sharp tip, surrounded by a coil of cumulus formation and thinning out at the hilt area, where Kiyomi held her ethereal weapon.</p><p>"Wh-What is that!?" Konohamaru pointed at the screen and exclaimed in surprise. "Both examinees have just revealed some crazy, invisible weapons they've been using this whole time!"</p><p>"Yeah, though why would they show them to us now?" Moegi wondered.</p><p>"If my theory is correct and examinee Kiyomi is capable of taking her Yamanaka techniques to the next level in forming mental constructs that affect the material plane, it would be a reasonable assumption to make that by intensifying its mental frequency to where it becomes apparent to the naked eye, she would strengthen such a construct many times over. Perhaps even to the point where it can hurt the adamantine armor of the Susanoo…" Udon pondered, scratching at his temple with his index finger.</p><p>"I don't care what your excuses are, I don't care if you're backing out on your word even…" Kiyomi leaned on her back foot while raising her mental sword up for a charging thrust. "You're just a common criminal with very uncommon abilities. A talent that you employ at bringing you further in the path of trash. In that path of garbage, you become just like every other criminal filth before you."</p><p>Kiyomi charged onward, sliding across the ground like a water striding riding the lake's surface while she thrust her mental sword forward, aiming it right at the center of the Susanoo ribcage and challenging its integrity head-on. Sasuke, though, had better plans. Coiling streams of Lightning Release energy burst forth from inside his Susanoo, creating an electrical discharge of chakra that seemed like one thousand Chidori all released at once, in all directions.</p><p>The streams hit their intended target dead-on, dazing Kiyomi and making her flinch. In that momentary hesitation that it took for her to wince in pain and in the disruption in her nervous system that interrupted the channeling of her mental construct, Sasuke's Susanoo grabbed hold of its intended target and tilted it over the head of its master.</p><p>"You're really annoying…" Sasuke mumbled before the skeletal Susanoo clutched its grip in an attempt to break the young woman it held in its arm. Much to Sasuke's surprise, it was the armor of Susanoo that broke down by the hand and continued to shatter until it reached the shoulder of the skeletal construct. The Susanoo folded to a mere mental shockwave of Kiyomi's resolve and continued to unravel. Contrary to its master's commands, the collapsing armor reeled in horror while it continued to fall away like the shell of a boiled egg, slowly being disassembled bit by bit and falling away before dispersing into thin air.</p><p>Sasuke vaulted back a few times, avoiding a silver-colored, ghastly flash that would have lobbed his head clean off had he not moved in time, reading Kiyomi's intent to manifest another sword of focused mental power.</p><p>"That hurts, doesn't it, trash?" Kiyomi straightened her back out and tilted the edge of her blade to point at the youth she was addressing. "Well, you can't blame anyone else but yourself for your own reeking choices. You have talent, talent surpassing that of the other Uchiha who were already gifted by nature beyond measure. Yet in becoming just another garbage criminal you defecated all over that talent, reducing yourself to nothing but filth. I do realize the irony that being ordinary is the worst nightmare to something like you but you were the one to reduce yourself to what you are now."</p><p>"What can you possibly understand!?" Sasuke lashed out. His Sharingan took a step further, drowning in more black markings and taking the Kaleidoscope tier of exalted vision powers. "Being ordinary is all that I've ever wanted!"</p><p>Kiyomi's blunt gaze clashed against Sasuke's angst for a pair of moments. Neither one of the two faltered for a second, every single bit of the sharp mental blade that the Yamanaka heiress wielded was meant for the adamantine armor that Sasuke coated himself with, just so it could eventually find the soft heart deep inside and pierce it.</p><p>"Just an ordinary boy with an ordinary family and ordinary brother, a clan of relatives with like-minded thoughts and aspirations, that's all I've ever wanted! I never wanted to become an avenger, I never wanted to hunt down and slay my own brother! If a lowly criminal is all that I am, I've had little choice in what I've turned out to be," Sasuke replied while letting his Susanoo manifest again, this time layering an additional weave of ethereal flesh on top as well as a layer of cold, steel in the shape of the Karuta on top.</p><p>"Whatever makes you feel easier before I send you to burn in hell…" Kiyomi took her thrusting stance again, fully reforming the blade of focused willpower, mental energy weaved with her chakra. "Even if your brother is yet another evil bastard, you chose to go after him, you chose to become the same as him. You heard it right, I was afraid you wouldn't get it the first time, you're evil, just like him."</p><p>"I'm nothing like Itachi!" Sasuke yelled out.</p><p>"All men become alike when they are evil. Lament as you may, you display no particular sort of evil. Just plain evil that I intend to crush without hesitation," Kiyomi declared with stone-cold eyes.</p><p>Meiko couldn't believe what she was seeing. She had never seen Kiyomi like this. Sure, she always hated criminals and she hated Uchiha too back when, though what the blacksmith saw in her friend's eyes in this clash was not hatred. She didn't fear Sasuke nor did she feel jealous about his talent, she didn't look at him from down on her knees, Kiyomi didn't gander at her opponent from a position of submission and defeat, admission that she wanted to crush him with all her strength though she lacked the power to do so, which gave birth to hatred.</p><p>Kiyomi was ice-cold in her statement, at that moment, she truly believed that she was facing just another criminal. Sasuke was not an Uchiha to her, he was not a murderer or a rogue ninja, he was no associate of Orochimaru, there was nothing specific of this young man that interested Kiyomi. To her – he was just evil, like a walking kanji symbol that glowed with annoying, neon tint and demanded to be crushed into oblivion.</p><p>Was this really her friend anymore? Back when she just hated and felt jealous, when she groveled for lacking the strength to kill a criminal in her way she hated more than hatred itself, she was relatable, Meiko could understand it as a flaw that Kiyomi would grow out of and leave behind. Now… It felt like Kiyomi had traversed a dark and frightening path and was so far down that path that Meiko could no longer see her friend at the end of the tunnel, just hear her voice and therefore know that she must have been there.</p><p>"Wh-What's all that talk of murder, I wonder…" Konohamaru spoke with a similarly shaken voice on the commentary, reflecting the public opinion with one, uneasy expression.</p>
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<a name="section0674"><h2>674. Into The Dark Void</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I don't like the look that the eyes of examinee Kiyomi had taken one bit!" Konohamaru declared and exclaimed a sharp hum while his body shivered despite there being no physical reason for such a reaction.</p><p>"Well… I have a theory but… Let's just keep looking and see what happens…" Udon mumbled, shifting in between wanting to voice his thoughts and thinking them too mad to be let out into the public.</p><p>Down in the center of the stage, Sasuke's Susanoo emerged and formed around its master like a ghastly, skeletal specter. Its ribcage shut around its user while two, massive arms with oversized for the proportions of its size from the waist going up fists bashed the ground in front of Sasuke a couple of times just to demonstrate its might and give Sasuke a way in which to vent the frustration that his opponent brought out from him.</p><p>"That thrust again?" Sasuke growled. "It didn't work before, you almost got yourself killed using it yet you're charging right back in?"</p><p>"What can I say? When I see criminal scum standing right in front of me, it makes my blood boil…" Kiyomi answered with a hollow tone, devoid of spirit and humanity. Speaking like a machine, with all of a stamp that sealed a man's death sentence.</p><p>"Hmph…" Sasuke mocked his opponent with a scowl while his Susanoo opened up its center and spread its arms out, almost welcoming his opponent in as long as she was mad enough to be looking to dance the devil swing.</p><p>Kiyomi was not just mad enough, she was looking to lead that dance. Her front foot launched her entire body into a dash that she could not back out from without straining her ankles and knees to the point of breaking. Sasuke kept his eyes on the prize and wide open, while he acknowledged an unhealthy obsession with ending his existence in the attitude of his opponent, he also sensed that she was anything but crazy and would not just rush her head inside the guillotine.</p><p>All of the vanished vigor returned to Kiyomi all at once. Her eyes snapped open like a pair of voracious jaws and her mouth let out all of her pent up passion with a single exclamation of hatred. The drive and focus all flowed into her mental blade, transforming it into a weapon five times that same size though weighing just about the same as it did when she wielded it before.</p><p>The resulting pop dazed and confused the audience all the way to the middle rows. The whirling shockwave tore leaves off of the artificial trees that were meant to provide sanctuary to the stealthier combatants but were in term torn out with their roots. The ethereal shatters of the Susanoo smashed into Sasuke's face, leaving grazes across its youthful allure though the young man himself was not at all bothered by the slashes across his face as much as he was by the mental sword stabbing into his core and sending him flying straight backward.</p><p>Even with the Sharingan in place, even with its deadly luster and symbols gleaming in full display, Sasuke's expression was blank and void though not due to his trademark apathy. Instead it turned dull due to overwhelming force and pain that confronted him head-on and which even his Susanoo was incapable of handling.</p><p>The white, spectral sword around Kiyomi's arm vanished. The oversized sword reduced into a single beaming rod while the cloud shapes coiling around it vanished to cotton-like fluffs before becoming as immaterial as the thoughts of the observers looking at them. The sword returned to the length of an ordinary katana before fading away, unraveling in stringy flares into the mental void.</p><p>"I hope you had a good look at it. Good enough to realize that this is one technique you cannot just imitate," Kiyomi looked ahead at the unsettling dust, further aggravated by the falling blocks of limestone that took longer to dislodge from their position.</p><p>Sasuke appeared from the smoke, his forehead was busted open and sent a handful of thin, red streaks across his face. The young man panted as he without a doubt had experienced what Kiyomi told him by himself sheer moments before the passionate thrust and felt like she took a gander inside his mind without actually entering it.</p><p>"When I was studying this fighting style, I couldn't help but admire the irony that it would be used against you. It is a jutsu that pretty much anyone could pull off, all they need is someone skilled enough to teach them, show them the ropes of the technique and a mind focused enough. A stream of thoughts hard enough to drill through stone. Anyone could do it, though you, someone with a talent for stealing the fruit of other people's hard work cannot," Kiyomi mocked her opponent.</p><p>In a lot of ways, she reflected the mockery that she internalized ever since the days of the Ninja Academy. No Uchiha has ever said it out loud, but it was something that she herself felt them to be thinking. They never needed to work all that hard, everything came naturally to them and what didn't they could just master with a single look with their eyes.</p><p>"You're wrong…" Sasuke finally mustered a reply. "Unlike Kakashi, I do not merely copy the path to other people's power. I wasn't about to just copy jutsu like Kakashi nor was I going to inflict despair upon myself to awaken power like Itachi's. I've borrowed a little bit from different people but, just like you, only to make something my own. Just like with this jutsu…"</p><p>Sasuke's body flickered, his speed caught Kiyomi by surprise, she did not expect him to move this fast this soon after taking this much damage. Like a man possessed he raced at her, driving his elbow into Kiyomi's gut though the Yamanaka vanished, dissolving into shapeless, white flares just like her sword did previously. The confused Uchiha staggered back and looked around him.</p><p>"You've made yourself into a mental reflection?" he muttered in pain as his Eternal Mangekyou scanned the area for any traces of his opponent. He had put a great deal of stamina and invested some chakra into emulating the Shadow of the Dancing Leaf he once saw Rock Lee use on him and only managed to disrupt the mind trick that Kiyomi was putting him into.</p><p>"That's right. And it is no mere genjutsu, it is thought made into matter, which appears to trick even your awesome eyes. After all, my thoughts are indeed me so it won't look like some clone or a mere illusion," Kiyomi taunted Sasuke further by having another version of her appear from the cover of the barren and fallen trees and lobbing a handful of gleaming, white kunai at him as a distraction.</p><p>An indigo-colored arm deflected the mental kunai with a back-handed swat. The other arm punched the charging mental image while Sasuke's eyes remained free to track the battlefield and identify any follow-up attacks. He didn't need to be able to tell flesh and blood from a mental construct that seemed deceitfully real. His experience was enough to guide him through the battle, his instincts as an avenger.</p><p>"That again? I'll break it!" Kiyomi growled as she charged right at Sasuke and more and more mental doppelgangers began flickering into view around her. Each one of them possessing a blade of sharpened thought, ready to strike at the rebuilt carcass of the Susanoo together. All of them moving in synchrony like guided by some sort of hive mind.</p><p>"Art of the Crescent Moon!" Kiyomi chanted out as both her physical self as well as her mental avatars all thrust their mind-blades at once, striking at Sasuke together. Just as their blades seemingly made their way through the shattering ethereal bones, an invisible force, the intensity of the Susanoo's aura stopped them. The skeletal form began growing in size as more and more armor blazed on top of it until the armor took a complete shape.</p><p>The mental doppelgangers all dispersed into the thought-based images they started out as while Kiyomi put herself in a better range to prepare to deal with Sasuke's manifested technique. For someone that took the eyes of his deceased brother who was the sole obsession of Sasuke's vengeful desire, the eyes of an unmatched sage and a master illusionist in his own right, Kiyomi felt like Sasuke was far too skilled in and used the Susanoo far more than any illusionary techniques of the Mangekyou Sharingan.</p><p>"For someone who dismissed his brother, you possess a very peculiar set of eyes…" Kiyomi barked out in frustration of failing to injure her opponent in a meaningful way while observing him manifesting a frightening new form before her that awed the entire audience. A set of armor that ascended and loomed over the audience and left the entire Chuunin Exams arena reaching up only up to his waist.</p><p>"I wonder if examinee Sasuke can even hear her from up there…" Moegi leaned in closer to the window so that she could take a gander up at Sasuke who positioned himself in the helmet of his majestic suit of chakra armor.</p><p>"Maybe not, but don't forget that Sasuke possesses the Sharingan, which can read her lips even from up there…" Udon pointed out.</p><p>"Wow, the Sharingan really does have a frightening number of abilities, doesn't it?" Konohamaru pouted his lips before smacking his hands at the table and cheering up. "What a crazy battle though!"</p><p>"Your information betrays you. Maybe you're better off letting the old intelligence guy stay in charge?" Sasuke smirked from up above, his voice left the Susanoo like boiling vapor rushing through iron pipes, howling, and augmented. "The eyes that I possess are not Itachi's, I'd have never accepted to take his eyes. By the time that we caught up to Itachi, he had replaced his eyes with Madara's. Therefore, this Susanoo may be Madara's, though, as I've said earlier, the rest is all my own!"</p><p>Sasuke leaped up into the air, shaking the entire arena and sending a gale that locked every audience member to their seats, even Kiyomi had to clutch herself to stay upright as the intense draft almost crushed her to flat to the floor. Even with the heavenly soar of Sasuke's armor, Kiyomi could hear it - the dreadful chirping noise. The sources were too numerous for it to ever drown out and submit to the air resistance.</p><p>It was as if every volt of the Lightning Release technique was a separate bird with its own song with the total unison of the symphony connecting the heavens and earth alike. With the Chidori in hand, Sasuke dive-bombed the stage, thrusting his Chidori into the center of the arena and letting vicious lightning storms ravage the ground while they rushed to the skies, flipping the mechanics of thunder and lightning upside down in this chaotic show of strength.</p><p>The Susanoo towered over the exams arena, staring at the celestial devastation it had wrought while dark clouds gathered just over its helmet. The ground laid ravaged in fissures with infernal gleams shining from deep down wherever those fissures ended up in reaching. The Susanoo stared onward at the settling dust with a bottomless, black void, and near the center of the said void, only two discs duplicating the patterns of Sasuke's Mangekyou Sharingan lingered.</p><p>"Hmph… You can stop hiding, my eyes can see right through you. It's a bit embarrassing, all this effort ruined with a single Substitution Jutsu…" Sasuke's voice boomed over the wreckage.</p><p>"You'll have to give me more effort than that…" Kiyomi's thoughts caressed his mind, seeing how Sasuke's opponent was nowhere for him to be able to read her lips from. "That jutsu was mad. If I had not timed it just right and used just the right fallen tree to replace myself with, I'd have ended up hit by a stray bolt regardless of my trouble…"</p><p>"Your body is too strained to be able to use Substitution for a while and I've cleared out most of the debris you could use to replace yourself with. I don't see you being able to escape the next attack the same way…" Sasuke appeared stubborn to compliment his opponent any more than he had already done. "No matter how sharp and focused you think your resolve to beat me is, you won't pierce this Perfect Susanoo. You're too weak for it. You're weak because you lack hatred."</p><p>"It's you who lacks something and that's imagination!" Kiyomi pointed her finger in between two splitting layers of dust. Her black dress had a few rips and tears and her neatly tied hair now scattered loose in the wind, some exposed patches of her skin carried spots of dirt and bruising on them though she remained mostly intact.</p><p>The Yamanaka heiress lifted her hands up, touching her thumbs and index fingers and forming a circle between the pair through which to fire her very spirit at the enemy. It was a bold declaration, she pretty much exclaimed the way in which she'd attack before firing the decisive shot.</p><p>"I may not be able to pierce your shell of excuses physically, but your mind is feeble enough for me to reach right through the armor!" Kiyomi declared.</p><p>Sasuke would not even let her try. The iris of the Sharingan became drowned out by black as the concentrated beams of dark void zipped out of the Susanoo's eyes, expunging all of the malevolent chakra that Sasuke had been building up inside him in the shape of a field of dark void expanding throughout the arena. Starting from the center of the area that his dark eyebeams hit.</p><p>The dome of the dark void continued to expand, grinding against the outer reaches of the fighting stage and sending sparks as it collided with the wall separating the front rows of the audience from the action inside the arena. Shining lines, like breaches in the blackness of the dome expanded across its surface, Sasuke's Susanoo began shrinking down before fading away completely. Seemingly lifeless, the youth collapsed into the heart of the void of his own creation as well, becoming swallowed by it.</p><p>"Just what happened?! What is that dark blob swallowing the entire area!?" Konohamaru stood up so that he could see more of the arena, over the obstructions though those were aspirations too grand compared to what the reality had in store.</p><p>"I'm not sure, though we will not know until the void disappears. If it was a harmful technique, we can count on Sasuke taking its brunt as well. He appears to have miscalculated how much chakra he has left and fallen deep down into the void manifested by his own twisted chakra," Udon reported alongside his colleagues.</p><p>"What happened to examinee Kiyomi though? She was right in the center of that blast before the void began expanding?" Moegi turned to her colleagues, looking worried. "Look there, even the staff isn't sure if they should interfere or not…"</p><p>The green-vests pressed their hands against the edges of the dark void which spat out violet jolts upon contact. Despite not hurting the staff attempting to invade the Dark Void, all of them were kept away from its clutches even when they applied chakra to their touch or encased their fists in it. Not even barrier-busting techniques appeared to be effective against this phenomenon.</p><p>"Tsk… What the hell did you do?" Kiyomi looked right at Sasuke. With her being surrounded by a field of infinite white, it was easy to notice a kneeling, attractive young man right before her. It was so even when his heaven-shattering suit of perfect armor was no longer coating him.</p><p>"You did this as much as I did. It was your jutsu and its collision with the dark chakra from my Curse Seal that created this," Sasuke stated upon finding the strength inside him to stand back up on his feet. For the first time in a while his Sharingan was closed. He must have lacked the chakra to keep it up now.</p><p>"It doesn't matter, I bet your plan didn't include you getting gobbled up by your own destructive field, did it?" Kiyomi noticed the exhausted state that her opponent was in. It only made sense that after throwing his advanced Mangekyou Sharingan techniques around and dive-bombing everything around him into oblivion while clouding the entire half of the planet in gloomy weather and upwards lightning storms he'd begin running out of juice.</p><p>No man could sustain themselves with darkness alone. Darkness was a sword that still required someone of substance, flesh and blood to wield it.</p><p>"I hope you don't hold it against me if I finish you off now. I'm not much for fake honors and I won't back down just because you ran out of strength to fight back. I won't even shed tears if you end up dying for real, for all anyone knows – the Dark Void might have done it…" Kiyomi lifted her hand up and focused her willpower and thought into a blade that did not form.</p><p>Not a single flicker or a spark of white.</p><p>"Your thought has no power in here," Sasuke declared. "Taint is the only language that this world understands and while you do seem to possess a fair bit of hatred – it's not what gives your mental blade its shape and sharpness, is it?"</p><p>"I guess I can always just beat the shit out of you. Some stated that something akin to that act provides them an immeasurable amount of pleasure, I've never tested that myself…" Kiyomi cracked her knuckles and took a handful of steps closer to Sasuke.</p><p>"Unfortunately for you, my own darkness still has ways to go… My power does not end at the edges of my humanity for an avenger needs to leave that aside…" Sasuke declared as his hair fell over his sweaty and bloodied forehead, letting only his Mangekyou Sharingan emerge. The sudden re-emergence of Sasuke's chakra halted Kiyomi in her shoes.</p><p>She thought that Sasuke had no more chakra to spare!</p><p>As an intense, malevolent aura of deep purple flowed from Sasuke and black markings extended from his neck in all directions of his body, chakra comprised of sheer evil leaked out from the Curse Seal and gave the weary avenger his desired second wind. It was the emergence of a power that came from an ill-willed curse toward the possessor of the mark from its creator, chakra of malevolence incarnate which was currency accepted by the Dark Void.</p><p>It was something that should have been of little surprise for it was a spark of that very same Curse Seal chakra that gave birth to the void after all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0675"><h2>675. Heroes Come Back In Gimp Suits</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While the thought that it might have been wiser to scope out the full extent of Sasuke's current abilities under the influence of the Cursed Seal he was tapping into did not elude Kiyomi, she made the decision to instead apply pressure on her opponent and prevent him from displaying any of those abilities altogether.</p><p>Normally it would have been silly to attack an Uchiha and a possessor of the Sharingan hand-to-hand though Kiyomi had a hunch that, just like the entirety of her abilities, the Dark Void also forbid Sasuke from using his Sharingan as well. After all, Sharingan was not a technique of some accursed darkness like the Cursed Seal, it was a bloodline visual technique that very much employed chakra in its activation as well as its sustenance.</p><p>Sasuke's body moved, turning sideways in avoidance of Kiyomi's rushing, vertical high kick. It was as if the Uchiha prodigy operated under entirely different rules than his opponent, his face spilled out the hatred swelling up inside him but his body moved without the brutality or stiffness that such feelings would have evoked.</p><p>A backhanded punch faltered Kiyomi, made her withdraw her foot right back to support her stance instead of pursuing follow-up attacks. The taste of blood persisted in the Yamanaka's mouth, vision got dizzy and Kiyomi staggered back. Another punch straight in her chest before Sasuke transitioned into a barrage of spinning uppercuts like a rising drill, his sword had been drawn from the sheath. Kiyomi could hear the steel whistling in the air though everything she saw was just the white of the inner void and Sasuke's blurry colors meshing together.</p><p>Something sharp made Kiyomi return to reality, she tore the veil of dizzy away only to see a flash of red emanating from her chest. Before it splattered across, the young woman had thought it to be light though once the picture of a cross-shaped slash on her chest etched itself into stone, she clutched at the wound to try and struggle with bleeding out.</p><p>"You've prepared quite well to face an Uchiha. But I am no ordinary Uchiha. My goals lie in the darkness, my power comes from hatred, and to defeat me your hatred must surpass mine," Sasuke postured at Kiyomi in a husky tone while showing her the bloody edge of his sword as he adopted an offensive fighting stance with his sword in hand.</p><p>Sasuke's body flickered, everything went dark while only a sharp feeling of pain persisted in Kiyomi's chin. By the time the young woman braced herself for a response, her opponent was gone and a sharp, back-spanning pain made Kiyomi want to bend her body backward so that she could feel the wide gash that Sasuke had opened on her back. As if just touching the wound would have somehow helped…</p><p>No, at the moment it felt like Kiyomi wanted to rip it, claw it away so that her back and the mark of shame that it carried was no longer a part of her body. The floor of the Dark Void felt rougher than a patch of grass to fall face-flat onto though it didn't break any bones. It was a more metaphysical sense of trauma and pain that lingered long after the stumble. Made it difficult to force one to ascend back.</p><p>"Your hatred is so puny, I'm not sure it's even real at all…" Sasuke mocked his opponent again. "Was it all just a show? Like a mantra to focus your thoughts? To make all of those constructs real? No, I can feel that you do hate me but you restrain that hatred, you fear it."</p><p>"If I give in…" Kiyomi grumbled in a voice seething with pain and torment as she rose from the ground, long splats of blood extended from her wounds to the small pools that they had formed onto the floor, "I might cross the line myself. I will destroy every criminal in my path but only as long as it will not make me one myself. I don't want to turn my mind against myself one day, after all…"</p><p>"Hmph…" Sasuke mocked his opponent. "That's pathetic. Let me show you the extent of true hatred, the wall of darkness that you can never hope to overcome."</p><p>In his elegant pose, Sasuke's entire skin turned to a darker, ash-colored shade while the whites of his eyes submerged into a total pool of black. Since his Sharingan could not activate within the void, Sasuke's eyes remained sunken in darkness as his hair lengthened to where they reached his lower back and turned teal. A visual cross-shaped scar etched itself onto the front of Sasuke's face as he fully gave himself into the seal of cursed hatred sealed inside him, drawing every last bit of its power.</p><p>Crackles of black lightning surged across each of his limbs, emerging from its top or bottom and then re-entering at the opposite end, creating an intense, crackling aura of evil. Two hand-shaped wings, connected by a thick, skinny membrane, colored similarly to Sasuke's skin spread behind him and turned sideways. Riding the aerodynamic swoop motion, Sasuke blitzed behind Kiyomi and flipped over himself, diving down with a double foot stomp to the back of Kiyomi's head.</p><p>The ash-colored dark angel spun in a dance of spinning, windmill kicks, keeping Kiyomi afloat as he delivered his hateful beatdown and sent the Yamanaka sliding across to the other end of the void. Before Kiyomi's floating vision could solidify, Sasuke had skid beside her, sliding on one foot as his wings aided in his surface-level skidding motion and tossed the downed opponent of his up into the air before smacking her with a backhanded slam and a back-flipping kick before swooping up and catching Kiyomi by the tatters of her dress and flipping her over so that her head stared downward and he could deliver his falcon drop successfully.</p><p>"This is the power of hatred of someone that's lost everyone in their life and chose to surrender everything they had left in pursuit of vengeance to that which took the first away in the first place. Someone who has everything, who still has subordinates, talent, intelligence, friendship and adoration, high status, and class has no hope of ever matching this kind of hatred. Someone who has not burnt down every last bit of reason for the empty, screaming void of revenge has no hope of ever claiming this power," Sasuke spoke in a softer, more civilized tone as he spread his wings out and sheathed his sword.</p><p>Soft taps of his sandals endlessly echoing throughout the Dark Void of his creation reached Kiyomi through the shapeless shrieks of insanity booming in her head. While she could not use chakra inside of this void, her own body was a void which she could use chakra inside of. She could augment it and wager her lifespan, her chakra network, and everything else she had for the sake of victory.</p><p>Letting her own chakra flood through her network without any floodgates inhibiting its rush, Kiyomi jumped to her feet. The tapping of Sasuke's sandals stopped and his eyelids twitched for a second, confused at the source of power that his opponent was displaying. Just for a second, Kiyomi could feel it, her own hatred beginning to define her mind. Her focus being entirely construed of her hatred for criminals and the Uchiha rogue standing in front of her.</p><p>Her mental blade of hatred, Sasuke will choke on it all.</p><p>But her opponent was no longer where her hatred had centered around him being. Sasuke's feet tapped lightly behind Kiyomi as the young woman felt the tight clutches of a white snake wrapping around her and squeezing all signs of hatred out of her, turning her into the same, powerless little girl that wept at her brother's funeral when he fell. The squeeze of the white serpent lightened a little bit, that was of Sasuke's command, without a doubt, the damned bastard was mocking her!</p><p>"I've made the same mistake you just did. I've tried attaining power in someone else's ways. I've tried making the same mistakes someone else had made, just because they led those people to the same plateaus of power that I craved for myself. That was not my path to power. Just like hatred isn't yours. Abandon it. You do not and cannot know hatred and it isn't worth for you to taste its emptiness. It is because you've tackled me on the path of hatred that you lost today," Sasuke's soft voice made Kiyomi struggle and kick in the snake's hold until eventually she overpowered it but before she could try and reform her blade of hatred, the entire void sunk in white, overpowering everything around it.</p><hr/><p>"W-What's this!? Something is happening to the Dark Void, the staff is retreating from the area. Is it safe for the audience to still be here?" Konohamaru laid a valiant siege on his microphone on commentary that appeared to make the audience unruly due to both the weight of his warnings and the volume at which he uttered them.</p><p>Stretches of rigid, angular, white lines expanded from the top and center of the dome of the Dark Void until the entire dome began to howl and bubble up with internal pressure. Upon reaching the zone of collapse, collapse the Dark Void did, blasting upward into a pillar of blinding light and leaving just two competitors standing before one another. One lying prone while the other stared at her with the reborn Sharingan eyes from a superior, standing position.</p><p>"Oh my! The examinees have emerged from the Dark Void and examinee Sasuke is completely transformed! Examinee Kiyomi isn't looking too good, on the other hand, just what had transpired within that void remains unclear but it is self-evident that the collapse of the Dark Void has caused examinee Kiyomi extensive damage," Konohamaru raced to do his one job in this exam and explain this utter chaos to the very confused and frightened audience.</p><p>"Blood…" Kiyomi grumbled, "There's no blood on me…"</p><p>Grunting and panting she rose on her feet. She didn't feel any signs of beatdown on her, no dizziness or concussion, none of the internal, crushed organs or damage to her chakra network from the abuse of chakra augmentations necessary to survive that beating she took inside. There were no slashes on her body or scarring to indicate that they had happened but were somehow healed. Her dress had taken a fair bit of damage, as did what the attire had covered as Kiyomi felt tormenting burns and bruises all over her body.</p><p>"The Dark Void takes us to a dimension outside time or space, a realm of pure hatred and darkness. The Void is too hungry and greedy to allow the hatred that leaks out there to escape its dimension so anything that hatred causes remains in that dimension. To put matters simply – your body only sustained the damage from the collapse of the Dark Void and not anything that my hatred had caused within it," Sasuke pointed out.</p><p>"In that case, our match continues," Kiyomi stated after cracking her knuckles and stretching out her aching muscles to get them to acceptable shape for fighting.</p><p>"You mean… You still mean to continue this pointless fight?" Sasuke bent his head to the side. Now that the Sharingan eyes returned to him, one could make out the disappointment on his face.</p><p>"You're not getting away from me this easily," Kiyomi clenched her fist and ignited her mental blade to appear before swiping it aside and pointing its tip at Sasuke's direction while she placed her palm at the end of where the hilt of the ethereal sword would be.</p><p>It was true that the Cursed Seal which Sasuke had adopted had provided him with a massive boost of dark chakra which he could utilize to put pressure on Kiyomi who was working with a far more human supply of it. Still, that sort of a malicious boost could not have come to him without a price. He struggled for the control over his body, he had to maintain a healthy balance of his own chakra and that of the seal's. Chakra was fundamentally the essence of the physical and spiritual parts of one's essence. If Sasuke ever became more Cursed Seal than himself – he'd succumb and transform irreversibly.</p><p>Kiyomi smirked and raised her hands up, just like before, Sasuke soared up, riding the gales with his wings as he escaped her line of sight and raced to avoid her Yamanaka hijutsu. He was suspicious of the fact that Kiyomi wanted to enter his mind, meaning that he feared it. Perhaps he suspected that she would attempt and cancel out his Cursed Seal while she was over his mind, perhaps he didn't, either way, he wanted to remain in charge of his body.</p><p>This was exactly the same thing he did earlier and in pulling the same evasive move twice he provided Kiyomi with a freebie. The Yamanaka raised the target of the tip of her mental blade and soared after her opponent. There they were… Kiyomi could almost see the flashes of foreseeable future flashing in Sasuke's eyes. His exalted set of eyes showing her blade penetrating his chest in the air, Kiyomi using mental avatars and clones to compensate for inferior aerial mobility and a lack of wings. He foresaw it all.</p><p>A spray of blood and Sasuke's rough grunt. Kiyomi couldn't see just where she may have injured the young man for his hand-shaped wings blocked the hit, absorbing the impalement and leaving only a narrow tip for the body cocooned inside of them. It was the wings that shed blood, not Sasuke's body and as the airborne agent of hatred fluttered his injured wings, slicing them up to regain some semblance of control, Kiyomi was forced to let her blade disperse so that her own body did not get redirected and controlled by the movement of Sasuke's impaled wings.</p><p>A crackle of black lightning intensified in Sasuke's right arm as he thrust it aside. White snakes slithered from his shoulder-blades and mended his torn up wings by becoming shapeless, white mush, and sticking the wings together before regenerating them instantly that way. With his Black Chidori, Sasuke thrust his arm forward as his wings sent him gliding across the aerial space, racing toward his opponent.</p><p>The mental blade reignited in Kiyomi's hand as she dragged her palm across its surface toward its tip and thrust it in a deflecting motion, driving it into Sasuke's forearm and forcing his Black Chidori to miss her chest and leaving it just grazing her shoulder and upper arm. Kiyomi dispersed her mental sword in perfect synchrony with Sasuke letting his corrupted version of Chidori disappear as well. The Yamanaka twisted her body to wrap her legs around Sasuke's neck and try to slam him into the ground but Sasuke repurposed her slam into a Falcon Drop of his own.</p><p>Kiyomi bent her body upward, extending her arms in the Yamanaka hijutsu position as she released her mental self floating above her, firing it like an arrow, instead of just a highly focused thought which it was. Sasuke braced himself and tilted his head upward, avoiding the mind-controlling projectile just narrowly and completing his piledriver before it returned to its mistress' body.</p><p>Had it not been for the pain, Kiyomi would have thought herself dead. Had it not been for the pain reverberating upward, sending agonizing electric impulses across her entire nervous system in a reversed direction, she'd not have realized that her head was driven into the ground and that she was in an unceremonious upward position.</p><p>"Oh! What an intense battle, both of these examinees are at the edge of their abilities and this match could end at any moment, any of these blows could be the last!" Konohamaru yelled out into the microphone. Faint traces of the noise interference reached Kiyomi's own ears as well.</p><p>"Hey, hey! Isn't examinee Sasuke overdoing it a little bit? He is cladding himself in his Perfect Susanoo armor again and he is entering a sword-drawing stance. Enough already, staff, examinee Sasuke, one of you might die if you don't stop it!" Moegi yelled out in distress, making the audience question why the fight wasn't getting stopped as well.</p><p>"Blaze Control: Kagutsuchi!" Sasuke yelled out as his Perfect Susanoo drew the supersized, ethereal representation of his Kusanagi blade and slashed at thin air, coating it in a layer of the black Amaterasu flames as he sent a ravaging projectile of them at Kiyomi's direction. The flames splashed at nothing but dirt, leaving a wide fissure in where they hit the ground but the absence of blood-curdling screams as Kiyomi's body burnt down to a crisp left a strong suggestion that Sasuke had missed his mark.</p><p>The Perfect Susanoo, that had turned ash-grey in color itself due to the corrupting influence of Sasuke's Cursed Seal took off, staring at the ground as if it had foreseen its immediate demise coming from that direction. One afloat, Sasuke maintained his position in the air and continued to look down with his sword-wielding arm still on the hilt of his ethereal Kusanagi.</p><p>"Your deception cannot escape my eyes, come out into the light already, it's useless to keep hiding…" Sasuke taunted his opponent.</p><p>"Damn, just when I thought I'd catch you off-guard, of course, you stupid eyes could see me…" Kiyomi couldn't help but smirk as she emerged from underground, clutching at her ribs and panting.</p><p>"You're the one to speak, that was very perceptive, how you managed to see my Kagutsuchi coming and evade it. I thought you missed that Mind Body Switch, though it appears you didn't," Sasuke complimented his opponent as well.</p><p>"Well, naturally, you weren't the one I was aiming for, it was the hawk flying over us. I figured that aiming it at you would have been pointless whereas entering the mind of a bird let me spy on your next move and return to my busted body just in time to not get obliterated," Kiyomi grumbled out.</p><p>"Give up. Your body is at your limit already, you'll die before my seal starts corrupting me. That was your plan, wasn't it?" Sasuke encouraged his opponent but Kiyomi just smirked and raised her arms up. It was a challenge, Sasuke commanded his Perfect Susanoo to put his hand onto the hilt of his sword as well. "This is useless, we already know my Susanoo is faster than your mental techniques."</p><p>Kiyomi's arms weighed down and clenched into fists before she was forced on one knee and clutching over her busted ribs while her other hand caressed her strained neck and shoulders. She had gotten too smart for her own good, she was beaten and she knew it.</p><p>"You're right, maybe I could have made your Sharingan work overtime with mental duplicates while I landed a Mind Body Switch on you and forced you to surrender, maybe I couldn't have. Honestly, I'm done…" Kiyomi raised her hand and declared her surrender before falling on her butt and letting go of the augmentations she was burning through that held her upright.</p><p>She had lost but that was never what made the definitive difference in who got promoted and who didn't. She managed to demonstrate that irksome thing called maturity in admitting defeat while at the same time making the Uchiha look good as a result. As much as Kiyomi hated to admit it, that was fundamental for Konohagakure as well as the Uchiha were their trademark, their big baby that they got to show off to the other villages.</p><p>Honestly, Kiyomi couldn't have felt more humiliated in achieving her promotion this way but that was the way things worked…</p><hr/><p>A fleshy hole lined up with sharp teeth on its edges burped before opening up on the floor of a dark office in the unknown though far-off reaches of the Fire Country. A pair of bipedal hounds with eight eyes scattered all over their black, slick fur ascended from the hole and breathed tongues of flame to repel the gigantic germ blobs racing after them. The hounds then pulled on a couple of burning chains that they carried tied across their necks and pulled in an obsidian coffin decorated with gold at its edges.</p><p>A gaunt man with a single streak of silver hair that fell into a ponytail after it reached the beginning of the man's neck approached the emerged coffin and pressed his hand onto the golden face in the middle. Nails shot out from the sides of the coffin with the upper seal of the coffin sliding off of it, revealing the contents of the coffin – a single, fragile figure restrained in dozens of leathery belts with a full-face leather mask over its face.</p><p>Alongside the sealing glyph on the top of the black coffin that the figure emerged sealed into, a similar glyph lit up on the chest of the feminine figure, snapping all of the belts holding her subdued inside of the coffin and letting the enigmatic shape sit up in her coffin. The feminine shape struggled out of the loosened leathery binds restraining her and emerged from her restraints in a suit comprised of leathery straps held together by a handful of rings and falling loosely in a way vaguely resembling a dress.</p><p>Once fully freed, the mystery person forced the gimp mask off of her face to take a couple of full breaths for the first time in a while. While the atmosphere of Kumobi Morino's office was remarkably oppressive what with all the lingering scents of tortured and disappearing forever souls weighing heavy in the air, these breaths were preferable to the long, dark-haired young woman emerging from her restraints and binders.</p><p>"I would very much prefer if you put that mask back on, ma'am, while your imprisonment is over, we take up the menial duty of delivering you right to the village's doorstep and while you are no longer the inhabitant of our fine facility, we would still very much like to keep the location of it a secret," Kumobi Morino smiled with that heinous twist of his middle-aged yet as wrinkled as the leather that the released prisoner wore on her body face.</p><p>The young woman sighed and looked at the mask that she grasped in her hand. She had spent more than a few months that, in this place, stretched out into infinity and beyond, imprisoned here and was forced to don it as a sign of her status in the most fearsome and tyrannical gang in entire Jigoku. She was but a dog in Nereigen's crew, a sniffer good only for her sensing abilities which, every time they were employed, made her beg for death but her master couldn't hear those pleads because of this mask which she wore.</p><p>Nothing of value would be lost if this cursed accessory burnt to cinders in her very own hands…</p><p>For the last time, Mana slipped the mask back on. It would have been foolish raising a ruckus when the very administration of Jigoku was rushing to get rid of her already. She was, after all, broken and reduced to rubble by the facility and therefore "reformed". Here she was, a notable and exemplary member of society with a gimp mask and strands that showed more than they hid…</p><p>The journey back home could not have taken that long. Mana was certain that the seals that prohibited her from using chakra and therefore made life in Jigoku a very real, living hell for any chakra sensor were taken off though she still remained sheltered off from all sensations just in case it wasn't. If she could choose to never see, never hear or taste or sense chakra just so that she would never feel that ever again, she would carve her own eyes out with a spoon herself.</p><p>"Well, there you go, back into society you go, ma'am…"</p><p>Mana was surprised by how gently the guards led her out of the caravan and even helped her wrestle out of that asphyxiating mask. It was almost as if they were looking at her all different now, after all, she was no longer their prisoner, she was now someone who indirectly paid their salary. The carriage turned around and rolled back off into the gloomy depths of the forest, never to be picked up on again.</p><p>"Our maximum-security correctional facilities still need work…" Mana summed up her past six months before taking the first bold steps in her old-new home.</p><p>She's back.</p>
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<a name="section0676"><h2>676. Tales Of The Ninja Magician Annual No. 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Move along, I have a right to not serve you," an owner of a vendor of flowers flipped Mana off, prompting the magician to sigh and walk off with her hands in her pockets, pulling on her hat to cover up her embarrassed face as the judgmental stares of the vendor's clientele saw her off.</p><p>So much for getting a rose ring for her magician uniform.</p><p>Her entire life Mana had only known two things – she was the ninja magician. Right now she received no work as a ninja whatsoever. For better or worse, the village administration stayed silent. She's yet to even receive a reply for the renewal of her suspended ninja license.</p><p>Picking her life back up and getting it rolling has been a giant pain but what else was there? It had to be done, no matter how much shit she'd have to plow through and how vociferous her grunts when waking up in the morning were when looking on at the rest of the day to come. Apparently, even finding a minor accessory for her magician's uniform was a challenge…</p><p>If the Hokage refused to renew her license or even answer her call for it to be renewed, if the village didn't think it reasonable to use her as its asset, she may as well have picked her magic shows off the ground. Who knew, maybe, if her license gets taken away permanently, her magic shows would be all that Mana has left?</p><p>Then again, magic shows were entertainment. Entertainment tended to have a mean quality to it that nobody felt all that joyful when the person prancing on the stage was someone whose guts were the public enemy No. 1. Why did she bother even leaving home that day?</p><p>Whatever organization she struck the deal with to take the blame for Guru Ayushi and keep his plot a secret she'd take to the grave promised her a rank-up, Overcoat suggested that she'd never have to worry about work and yet work has consistently been the greatest pain in Mana's behind. Mother hadn't said half a thing to her about it but Mana felt so useless just sitting at home and picking back up on her ninjutsu training.</p><p>If Mana truly wanted to find out what being useless felt like, she should've just left the comfort of her home…</p><p>"I wanna be Gan Senju! Sayuri can be Uchiha Hakari! Together our ninja team will be invincible!" a kid likely in his second year in Ninja Academy posed with both of his arms placed on his hips, his callow chest puffed out as much as it was possible given his age. If his facial expression was to be taken at face value – he truly was the First Hokage himself come to life.</p><p>All machismo and jawline…</p><p>"I wanna be Chestnut Hanasaku, I'm gonna give any enemy of mine a pounding!" a young girl rolled back her sleeve and showcased her non-existent biceps though that was the selling point of childish imagination – anything was possible.</p><p>"I can be Red Dog Tanshu. Those two worked together a bunch of times, we have to get bonus teamwork points for that one!" a boy pointed out, swinging his hands around in a manner that emulated the taijutsu style of Uzumaki Tanshu, as well as a child halfway through his stint at Ninja Academy, could do.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess I should be Star of Hope Howoku, no way even the First and the Second can stand up against that team!" another boy smirked with a very mischievous smirk for somebody that decided to embody the Star of Hope himself.</p><p>"Kohana, you have to pick somebody that syncs up with our team, or else we might just get screwed!" Sayuri, the girl who chose to roleplay as Uchiha Hakari, the Second Hokage, turned to a meek brat with a simple, peach-colored dress and a straw hat. It might not have looked like much of an outfit for an aspiring ninja warrior but it was second to none in fending off summer heatwaves.</p><p>"I wanna be Konoha's Sorceress…" little Kohana but her fingers together.</p><p>"Wait, what? Why? She's not even legendary or anything…" the boy playing as the First scratched his head.</p><p>"Yeah, but she defeated Guru Ayushi and everyone says how he was supposed to be this unbeatable, legendary ninja some time ago!" Kohana pressed her knuckles by her sides and objected. Mana had become invested in this brewing childish game even before her stage name was namedropped though she wanted to see where this goes now more than before.</p><p>After all, everything she had to do now was to go home and brood in how everything had been taking a monorail ride straight up a donkey's asshole. Maybe seeing a bunch of children play and reminiscing her own carefree days before making Faustian bargains and living a life of just going through the notions could have ignited something more meaningful to work off of…</p><p>"That's right," Sayuri smirked, "Konoha's Sorceress did beat Guru Ayushi, she can be taken as legendary in that case… A legendary villain, that is…"</p><p>"That's right!" the boy playing as the First snapped his fingers. "I do declare, how about it, folks, how about instead of fighting each other we team up and take on this threat unlike any other together? Fighting hand in hand, an alliance transcending the tides of history,"</p><p>The brat was good bringing up words that no Ninja Academy student should have known. He might have even spent time reading up on speeches and village history textbooks or listened to Lord Seventh himself talk on the television. Seventh was one of those leaders that spoke remarkably similar to the First, with all the implied gravitas to his words and eloquence though, given the context, all of that gravitas being ultimately meaningless.</p><p>"Hmm, indeed. I have trained Konoha's Sorceress myself. I am to blame for her upbringing as much as anyone else… If anything, I should be joining her side and going down in flames alongside her to relieve the sense of dreadful guilt in my heart!" the boy roleplaying as Tanshu pressed his fist to his chest, speaking in a high and mighty tone that made Mana feel certain he had never actually met the man or seen him talk. The real deal was no hero nor did he speak like one but he always had true mass behind his words that one couldn't help but respect.</p><p>"Cheer up, you can redeem yourself by beating the enemy down to the dirt!" the girl playing Chestnut Hanasaku punched her open palm in a showy gesture before turning to poor Kohana with a malicious smile.</p><p>The resulting fight looked more like a mugging from the side. Though the kids didn't use chakra despite being semi-capable of it, making the resulting half-baked shoves, holds, nudges and kicks not register much. Feeling obliged to finish the fight himself, "the First" threw the final "blow" by spinning Kohana around him and letting her fall down by letting go of her without warning.</p><p>It was the coup de grace, after all, it had to hurt…</p><p>"Shit! It's Konoha's Sorceress!" the boy playing the First grabbed his head and skimmed through his spiky, brown hair, looking appalled by noticing Mana standing there and watching them play after Kohana skid on the ground toward the magician's side of the street.</p><p>"She'll beat our asses down, scatter!" the wannabe Chestnut Hanasaku actually put some gusto to her step and dashed into the nearby alleyway, prompted by the rush of their friend, the rest of the group, except for the fallen Kohana, all scattered too.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress!?" Kohana jumped up to her feet all flustered by the sudden appearance of the most beloved heel to hate in recent days.</p><p>"You okay, kid?" Mana mumbled. She wanted to be kinder to the girl but the recent frustrations had left her dried out and beyond broken. The entire six months she spent in the closest thing to Hell that humanity could conjure up she thought of the time she would return back home. The moment she did, there was nothing but animosity and dismissal to the point where sometimes she longed for prison.</p><p>At least in prison the gang thought she was useful for something…</p><p>"Umm… I think. They didn't mean to hurt me… B-But… I tore my dress up, I think…" Kohana exclaimed in a sorrowful voice as her lower lip began to twitch in sadness when at least five of her fingers fit through the hole in her dress and her socks.</p><p>"Damn… Look, if you ever come down to my show, I'll let you and your family in for free," Mana suggested. It wasn't much of a promise, Mr. Hiro still acted pretty vague about letting Mana perform. The probability to make some money and the prospect of the old cash cow beginning to grind again made the man humor the subject but he wasn't blind. He knew that those halls would be empty…</p><p>Maybe Mana can still find her old cardboard box somewhere…?</p><p>"Really!? Wow, that's awesome!" Kohana cheered with a fist pump since her knee still looked pretty busted.</p><p>"That doesn't look too good, do you live far? I can piggy-back you home. It'll be practical too, I'll show you the technique ninja use for carrying their injured teammates." Mana suggested after pointing at the girl's knee and sighing. She didn't sound too excited about the prospect of doing good for good's own sake but that was only because she knew that it would somehow turn back to bite her again.</p><p>As these kinds of things always did.</p><p>"I live in the north-western district, in-between the Hyuuga Clan district and Ichiraku Ramen," the girl nodded, looking cheerful about it. Mana leaned down and picked the kid up, placing her on her back and bending her knees a couple of times. She hadn't done this for a long time since every time she tried using her chakra for the last six months it made her feel like every single nerve in her body was being simultaneously being extracted via the mandibles of a very pissed giant sparrow bee.</p><p>Things started slow and steady. It was as if Mana's body had subconsciously placed blocks upon herself to avoid any sort of superhuman feats, blocks that collapsed like a shoddy brick wall one by one until Mana could leap over nearby buildings and dash across two poles like a speeding arrow without blinking or questioning her sense of balance whatsoever.</p><p>"Look, it's that brat again!"</p><p>"She's back from the prison already, isn't she?"</p><p>"Shit, I had almost forgotten with all the fuss about the exams…"</p><p>"And to think things were so calm for a while…"</p><p>"Put down that poor kid, you witch!"</p><p>"That deviant will corrupt the soul of that poor girl… If only the Hokage didn't act like a powerless goon and put that brat behind bars for good!"</p><p>Mana couldn't listen to all that chaff anymore. One step, one step and she was there. Her foot tapped right in the middle of the street the girl said she lived in, light as a feather. Kohana sat there with her tiny arms locked around Mana's throat yet lacking the physical strength to press against it in any meaningful way. The girl screamed out, bursting with glee and alerting the nearby villagers. There went all the talking again…</p><p>"Kohana… W-Wait!" a masculine voice made Mana anticipate trouble though the man looked to be more taken aback than outraged. His hands slowly reached out to take the little girl on Mana's back from her, as if waiting for the magician to lash out at him but then the man noticed the bruises on the girl's knees, her torn and dirty dress.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress herself brought our Kohana back home, this is crazy!" the man mumbled to himself.</p><p>"She was so fast, daddy! One step and we were here…" Kohana kept switching between the awe of a younger, soon-to-be ninja, admiring the drastic difference in skill and power between the ranks and some harmless, childish bliss.</p><p>"I bet… It takes that kind of strength to save the whole world…" the man lifted his kid up and down a few times before placing her down since she was far too heavy for him to just lift around. Evidently, the man was a civilian and a frail one even for one of those.</p><p>"Excuse me… What?" Mana scratched her head, she was about to get out of there until the kid got noticed for hanging around her for too long which would have spelled out doom for the social life of both poor Kohana and her family but that last, ominous declaration…</p><p>"I mean… We know what you did, Mana-san. Our family does and we'll tell as many people as possible, not that they'll believe us…" the man pumped his fist raising it up to the shoulder level.</p><p>"Wait… How did you even…?" Mana felt stumped. That was one thing she not only did not need but something that actively would have caused trouble for her. If these people spoke too loud, who knew how the Organization would have reacted to that sort of attention. She was meant to keep that a secret and she followed her end of the bargain.</p><p>Maybe the fact that a couple of villagers were talking was why the Organization didn't rush things along with their part of the promise, although it may have also been Mana's stunt during the trial, derailing their carefully prepared script.</p><p>"Don't worry, the word of truth is being spoken. The Kanon is making sure that people know what you did, Mana-san."</p><hr/><p>"So, how did it go?" mother's morose tone broke Mana out of her trance. After six-months long stagnation, there was work that needed to be done in order for Mana to make her chakra network work like it was supposed to. The damage that Jigoku has left on her was more than just psychological.</p><p>"I guess I can't even find a flower for my show…" Mana shrugged. She acted that she was closing her eyes to meditate though she just wanted to avoid being seen crying like a useless sack of shit.</p><p>Things have been tough on mother as they were. Father was still stuck in the hospital, plugged on to life support, and very much alive though showing no hopes for recovery. Constant payments were necessary to keep father alive as every medical ninja had stated that unless new, state of the art medical technology became available – he'd not get any better.</p><p>By the time technology of that level became available – even if father does wake up, who knows what state he'll be waking up in. One can't just slumber for decades without any lingering signs of what they've been through. A brush of mother's clothes and a soft press of her hand on Mana's back was meant to ease her bother though the signs of kindness when she should have by all means hit her on the head with a wooden spoon for not having accomplished jack shit in six whole days of being back only made things more bothersome.</p><p>"Well, not all things are lost, look, you missed a summon from the administration," the content of mother's words was so triggering that Mana couldn't even continue with her act of being entranced by her own focused meditation session, she jumped up and picked the letter right out of the woman's hands without her being aware of it.</p><p>"Well, well, at least your sleight of hand hasn't gotten rusty…" mother pressed her hands to her hips.</p><p>She was getting summoned though, given Mana's recent streak of "luck" it could have just been something akin to the Seventh's scolding session. Lord Seventh, being a past member of the village's law enforcement himself, wasn't too forgiving to criminals and not a firm believer of any sort of repentance. That much Mana had learned during her internship in Village Protection way back. He'd be just the type of guy to summon Mana just to yell at her face and deny her request for an active ninja license.</p><p>Although… The Hokage had no right to summon a civilian. While Mana was not yet a civilian, since her license had been suspended, she was sort of semi-ninja, giving the Hokage a technical right to call her in. It did seem wild that someone like the Seventh Hokage would waste time calling her just to yell at her face, though given the welcome she's been experiencing the last week from her home village, it was just the sort of thing she's been expecting.</p><p>"Hopefully I can make a bit of money. When's the next payment to the hospital due?" Mana looked at mother who shuffled in between a stack of clothes in the other room before running off to the kitchen to get a bite of something.</p><p>She didn't answer and that was more than enough information. Even more, she was home early which was why Mana felt like it was a good idea to welcome her mother that she hadn't seen for six whole months and whose heart she must have broken to shatters just sitting on the sofa meditating. Mother was all work, Mana didn't know a single person more skilled with finances and business and that was a troubling sign indeed.</p><p>"Mom, you lost clients because of what I did, it all trickled down on to you, didn't it?" Mana asked her directly.</p><p>"Who cares, honestly. We've got ample savings from when you worked two gigs, I skimmed a little bit off of your income for just such a day. That's your trusty mom for ya!" mother winked while throwing something icky and frozen into the pan and shoving it over the gas front and back a couple of times just to move the slimeball around and have it melt faster.</p><p>"Fuck, I didn't mean for it to hit you. Overcoat didn't tell me it would be affecting you and dad too…" Mana grumbled.</p><p>"I won't be tolerating any of that prison language here, you've only been there for six months so don't treat me for a fool and tell me you've lost your manners that quickly! Also, if some scumbag wants to drag my daughter's name through the dirt, he's no client I care to keep. Honestly, the business is doing just fine, there was this huge bash while you were gone, people from different timelines and universes have come over and nobody cares about who you've beaten up all the way out there…" mother scolded Mana for acting out and sighed.</p><p>Someone must have sent mother out for vacation and worn her skinsuit for the last week. There was no way the mother Mana knew would have dismissed a potential client like this.</p><p>Mana almost felt like an idiot realizing how much she'd been taking her previous social status for granted. It was one thing thinking about how meaningless throwing it all away was, it was another thing entirely walking out in the streets and seeing kids pointing fingers from across the streets and their mothers pressing their hands against their faces and pulling them from clear view in fear that Mana would turn violent again.</p><p>No amount of punishment would have been enough. As far as the civilians were concerned, Mana got off easy. Just another example of ninja elitism compared to the civilian population. The magician hadn't been keeping up with the news lately due to a more pressing need to engage in other matters but she was certain that the ninja-civilian relations in the village had barely moved toward improvement.</p><p>"Did you forget to take something?" mother wondered when Mana burst through the door and made her way upstairs back to her room. The woman didn't press on the matter given how hasty her daughter's steps were and how she showed no need for subtlety and marched like a platoon of mammoths on the wooden stairs, slamming the door to her room.</p><p>Mother's chakra could be felt right behind the door. Mana's chakra sensory was still cowardly to take small peeks from time to time unless the magician demanded it. She had been so frightened to show any hint of being a ninja lest she become crippled with excruciating agony that any hopes for subconscious emergence of her ninja anatomy, spiritual or physical side of it, was wishful thinking.</p><p>She feared that Mana would shut herself in, refuse to walk out. Just a few more moments and mother would speak up. The woman was already struggling to find the words with which she could talk her frustrated daughter into leaving her room and going to the administration. Lord Seventh meant his summon and it might be troublesome if Mana just shut herself in and refused to show up, psychologically traumatized or not.</p><p>"Mana…" mother spoke up softly just to get to the pep talk part but before she could really sink her teeth into her motivational speech, the door opened up and Mana halted in front of her mother as if she was just a block in her path.</p><p>"Did you come back home just to change your clothes?" mother scratched her head. She'd have moved aside and let her daughter pass if Mana's behavior hadn't been so odd.</p><p>"Yeah, my whole schtick was about being noticed. I don't want people to notice me anymore. I want them to just leave me alone for once…" Mana replied and took a slow step onward.</p><p>Mother turned, leaving a small gap for the magician to pass before peeking into Mana's room and seeing her magician's uniform tossed aside in a careless manner that suggested a hasty and emotional removal. Mana couldn't see it but she could feel mother looking at her back as she left the house again wondering if her daughter's going to be okay.</p><p>Often enough these days Mana found herself wondering the same thing.</p><hr/><p>She hadn't worn a normal tool pouch since she devised her entire gimmick, by the time she graduated the Ninja Academy she's already been doing it and modifying her uniform to host her entire arsenal whereas now Mana found herself strapped with far too many leather strings holstering decks of cards with different sealing glyphs. The change of look helped somewhat. People still knew her face, she had spent a life making sure her face would get noticed and it blew all over her face but she no longer raked at everyone's eyes without her flashy outfit. With enough gusto in her steps, she could almost have a semblance of solitude and abandonment.</p><p>Even inside the administration building the clerks just kept on working and let Mana walk past them without batting an eye at her. The few that weren't focused on their piles of paperwork did gander at her, those that had company in their offices whispered and pointed fingers but it was nothing that Mana couldn't bite her lip down and power right past of.</p><p>The Hokage's office had the door open and five people stood inside, turning for the doorway when they saw Mana. Aozora Yushijin, Kouta's teammate was there and though his usual apathetic stare did widen for a moment after seeing Mana, rather, her drastic change in attitude, he composed himself in no time at all. Mana would have liked working with him again, he had a nice tendency to not get into anyone else's business and solely focus on the job at hand. He used to see Mana as his rival and they've taught each other what they knew of genjutsu to deepen each other's craft but they weren't exactly good friends.</p><p>"Could you four please leave the office for a second and let me have a talk with Nakotsumi Mana please?" Lord Seventh gave those present inside the room a quick, scanning look to see everyone's moods.</p><p>"Hey, what do you mean with that? We're supposed to be working together, aren't we?" a ninja in his late twenties with blond, spiky hair and modified flak jacket that extended over his sleeves like an actual jacket and had patches of additional, blue and red patches for additional protection, pouted his lips and crossed his arms.</p><p>"This is the Hokage asking you to leave his office, Yugato, excuse him, Lord Seventh, we'll leave you alone at once." A man with spiky and wild, dark hair wearing a green, traditional, oriental-style martial arts uniform scolded his acquaintance in front of the Hokage and grabbed the man's head, forcefully bowing it.</p><p>A young woman of red hair as well as Yushijin both bowed in front of the Hokage and turned to leave while a chubby man with platinum-blond hair so thick that they covered up his face and eyes all the way down to the middle of his nose bowed and excused himself a couple of times before vacating the office too. The Hokage's assistant had to clear his throat and remind the plump man that the door was still open to which the thick man just nodded a pair of times and began rapid-firing apologies for as he shut the door with far more force than they required to be shut with.</p><p>"I was about to give you a mission so… I suppose that answers the question about your ninja license being activated again, right?" Lord Seventh spoke to Mana with a cool face after a brief moment of silence and a heavy sigh. His face didn't exhibit any features of a lawman who spoke to someone he took for a criminal which was unusual but welcome.</p><p>"Yes, Sir," Mana bowed her head. She used to show more respect to the Hokage than just bowing her head as if she was talking to an elder she just helped get across the street but she could hardly stomach faking respect anymore.</p><p>"First things first, the reason why I asked the rest of the special jounin out is that we have some things we need to clear up first, right? I feel like those things are better discussed privately between us, naturally, my assistant the shadow's shadow so his presence is considered as that of my own extension," Lord Seventh explained.</p><p>"The rest of the special jounin, Sir?" Mana turned to the shut door behind her.</p><p>"That's right… So many things to clear up… Where do we even start?" the man lamented dragging his hand across his face before settling down in a resting position on his table. "Ever since your release from Jigoku, people I didn't even know existed have been asking, no, campaigning and outright crusading behind the curtains to get you promoted to Jounin. I'm not sure what that's all about, but I, as the Hokage, as it turns out, still have some voice in my own village. I'm not sure what underground movement you've gotten yourself in bed with, they will not bully me into making decisions I do not see being necessary or right, are we clear?"</p><p>Somehow Mana had sensed this talk coming, maybe that was why she couldn't muster up showing Lord Seventh the respect she had to show him. Heck, he probably even deserved all of what etiquette asked of her, it was just that he knew just as much as the rest of the population with just sprinkles of the truth he chose to ignore and that was why Mana found it hard to see eye-to-eye with the man.</p><p>"As of yet, your license is active again and you are promoted to special jounin, joining Aozora Yushijin as the only ninja in your generation to have accomplished that much so early. While I fought tooth and nail to prevent you from becoming Jounin, to claim that what you have achieved in the art of genjutsu does not deserve the honor of acknowledgment would be foolish. You are one of the best illusion specialists in the village, that is not my word, that is the word of other genjutsu specialists whom I trust completely, and therefore I have no qualms about this promotion." Lord Seventh spoke up again after Mana refused to respond. She didn't really have to, her expression told him that she was just continuing her prison stay here – all opened up for whatever pummeling everyone around her had to throw at her, just hoping to survive until tomorrow after it.</p><p>"Understood." Mana bowed with the whole upper half of her body.</p><p>"You might think that I don't trust you, or something of that nature, but as I brief you and the squad of special jounin you will be working alongside with about the mission objective, you will understand where we stand exactly. The bottom line is – I know…" Lord Seventh stared Mana right in the eyes. The gravity of his stare was such that the man might as well have gripped the young woman by her cheeks and turned her face by force to look right back at his cyan colored eyes.</p><p>"I… I see…" Mana finally managed to wrestle out of the man's visual hold and turn her eyes down.</p><p>"I don't know everything but I know enough. Enough to not burst the bubble that you and whatever those Root bastards have cooked up. The idea of ninja in my own village working behind my back and hatching schemes like these infuriates me, I don't care if Lord Sixth approved of it or if Lady Fifth even knew about the Root existing. But I know for certain that the Root is working for the good of the village and they only have the interests of Konoha in mind so my hands are tied. I will play along, for now, I see no other way." Lord Seventh explained.</p><p>This was the first time that Mana even heard the Organization being named out loud like that. Not even she knew how it was called and she worked alongside them on this.</p><p>"Mikapen, you can call in the rest, they will need to know the mission objective and I believe that Mana and I are on the same page now," Lord Seventh turned to his assistant who responded with a lively nod and rushed to the door to invite the rest back in.</p><p>"Sorry to keep you guys waiting like that. It's just that I haven't yet had a chance to meet Mana since she's been released from prison and there were some formal matters we needed to discuss. Until just now Mana was not yet aware that she had been promoted to special jounin," the Seventh explained to the rest of the special jounin after they gathered into the office.</p><p>"Huh? Oh, right, you're that little missy that gone off to prison, for bullying Guru Ayushi, right?" to whom his comrade referred to as "Yugato" earlier spoke up, pointing his finger at Mana as he leaned at her, being half a head taller than her. "Didn't recognize you without your getup. Gone all punk, huh? That's all good, it's a way cooler look!"</p><p>"Forgive Yugato, he's an imbecile." The red-haired woman looked at Mana with a cold pair of eyes for someone looking so fiery-headed.</p><p>"Huh… We were all kind of waiting for words of encouragement to the newbies, Kagana…" the plump, blond-haired ninja scratched his head, voicing the collective disappointment that filled the room after the red-haired ice queen Kagana went quiet all of a sudden.</p><p>"What would be the point? She hadn't earned them yet…" Kagana closed her eyes and crossed her arms in rebellion to the public sentiment.</p><p>"Wait, you mean you just spoke up to chastise me!?" Yugato clenched a fist, coming dangerously close to starting to trade blows with the young woman if the oriental-dressed special jounin didn't drag him away.</p><p>"Calm down, not in Lord Seventh's office, Yugato!" the martial artist scorned his ally.</p><p>"Anyway… Before things got out of hand…" Lord Seventh spoke up with a hint of embarrassment for the happenings in his room, though once he did speak up, he took over the room in a single sentence. "I meant to explain the mission details to you. This will be one of the more dangerous B-Rank missions, I am afraid. The type of mission I would normally send a couple of jounin to but, in this case, I'm afraid I cannot."</p><p>"Huh? What do you mean, Lord Seventh!?" Yugato turned to the village leader.</p><p>"Maybe if you let him talk, he'd tell you…" Kagana mocked her ally again.</p><p>"You see, I am afraid that the organization that your mission will request that you deal with possesses a frightening amount of village intelligence. An organization calling themselves Kanon is leaking a great deal of intelligence down to the civilians in ways we cannot control. It is unclear how they manage to transmit their leaks or how they reach their supporters but… Needless to say, it has to stop," Lord Seventh explained the crux of the mission objective.</p><p>"I see, this means that this Kanon has intelligence on the village ninja as well, meaning that they'd know all about the abilities of the elite ninja of the village," Yushijin pointed out.</p><p>"Correct. My best option is to send the next best thing – ninja with a skillset matching that of jounin though in one specific area together. Ninja with far lesser renown in the village than their more elite counterparts, hoping that the Kanon would not have any intelligence on you, or have far less of it, especially when two of you have only been promoted recently," Lord Seventh replied.</p><p>"So, if this mission is on the dangerous side of B-Rank missions, I take it that those Kanon have ninja working for them?" Kagana asked.</p><p>"Indeed, that might be the case. I do not see another way of the village intelligence leaking but someone very high-up supplying that information. In addition to internal threats, you might encounter resistance from foreign agents that might want to further destabilize our village by having the information leaking on. After all, our deepest secrets might prove beneficial to, say, Kumogakure, that finds its military second in power after the conclusion of the Coltan Conflict and fear response from Konohagakure or Kirigakure, that undoubtedly still dreams of a return to their Bloody Mist era days," the Seventh mused.</p><p>"So that is how you knew… The secrets that Kanon leaked have been true, which could only mean one thing," Mana recalled her encounter with Kohana's father and what he told her.</p><p>"That's right. That was how I found out, as embarrassing as that is…" Lord Seventh nodded. "I suppose, in this one case, this Kanon has proven useful to me too, which is why I wouldn't mind if you brought some of them back alive. I take it that prison hasn't changed your outlook on life, Mana?" the Seventh Hokage wondered out loud.</p><p>"It… Did not." Mana had to reaffirm that with herself but ultimately she never felt inclined to take a life, despite the hardships she went through recently. Even the faltering of her nindo against Guru Ayushi was temporary, as the legendary ninja himself had noted way back when.</p><p>"Hmph, so you're going to hold back against the enemy? Be careful that you don't end up being more of a burden than Yugato," Kagana smirked at Mana.</p><p>"I assure you that I do not intend to hold back or endanger any of you. I have fought with the intention of crippling my opponent instead of killing them my entire life and there might not be a ninja better suited for this task in this entire village," Mana replied with a look that matched Kagana's own in gravitas.</p><p>"So… I guess it makes sense that those two are here, they're promoted recently, this Kanon group might not know anything about them, yadda-yadda, yap-yap, dribble-dribble… What about this goof?" Yugato pointed at the plumpy, blond man in their fold.</p><p>"This is Inori Yamanaka. He will serve as your counter-intelligence agent for the mission. He is not much for combat potential and he was not my first pick for the mission in question but some… Internal issues… I've become aware of prohibited me from choosing the best ninja suited for the task. Inori will do well enough, though, the Yamanaka clan has assured me of it." Lord Seventh acknowledged the seemingly unfit-looking man in the squad.</p><p>"I am looking forward to working with all of you!" Inori bowed after turning to each member of the squad with an almost cartoonish amount of uptightness in his tensed up face.</p><p>"In that case, unless you have any other questions, I would rather see you guys get to it. It is a sensitive matter. This might only apply to the two of you but this won't be like the low-ranking missions you were used to. If you end up failing, it won't be just the lives of random people that might be at stake but the safety and well-being of our entire village," Lord Seventh directed his strict glare to Mana and Yushijin, both of whom were only promoted to the rank of special jounin for their advancements in the illusionary art recently.</p><p>"To say that this mission is going to be a tough cookie would be an understatement. We may very well end up operating within the walls of Konohagakure…" the orientally-dressed ninja turned to Mana and extended his hand for a greeting. "I don't believe we've met yet. My name is Hosen Nekomata. I am also a special jounin though my area of expertise is taijutsu."</p><p>Mana waved her hand in greeting though she did not answer the man's proposal for a handshake. Hosen promptly withdrew it, beaming a frustrated glint at the newly molded special jounin who, in his eyes, acted brattish but he didn't appear to hold a grudge for too long as the first impressions were as quick to fade from his face as they were to form.</p><p>"We should split up and gather some information on these Kanon folks. If they've been spreading information to the targets that they weren't supposed to, it strikes me as the self-righteous, anti-government type of movement. They must have spilled the beans to some ordinary citizen, maybe even gone public on daytime television. If we ask around, we are bound to run into someone who knows something," Mana spoke up before the group and turned around to walk off separately from them as if the matter had already been settled.</p><p>"Self-righteous, anti-government type? Television? Seem awfully precise guesses…" Kagana sneered at the magician though she did not rush after Mana or get in her way. "That's hogwash. This plan is ridiculous and I won't be a part of it."</p><p>"You're just salty 'cause you'll have to talk to some people, Kagana!" Yugato pointed an accusatory finger at his comrade with a smile worth a fortune and then gave Mana a thumb-up. "I second this notion, let's peep this one out!"</p><p>"Now you're just agreeing with Mana to spite Kagana…" Hosen crossed his arms over his chest and gave Yugato a look filled with disappointment in the childish nature in which a handful of young adults and adults were acting. "We should think this through more carefully, on this I agree. We still don't know if…"</p><p>Hosen sighed as Mana had walked off into the crowd and separated from the group before he could finish his sentence. It wasn't like she could mingle into the crowd all too well. Mana's chances of being one with the crowd were as slim now when she was infamous as they were back when she was famous. No matter how hard Mana tried decorating her face with make-up or how little care she put into her hair, how drastically she'd change her appearance or style, putting a beating on a worldwide icon of peace had forever branded her as just the kind of punk she made herself out to be.</p><p>Fine. If punk was all that they saw in her, that was what Mana would give them. Nothing in her ideal to never take a life forced her to be nice to everyone or even anyone. If everyone just cared to fling stones and point their quilled backsides to her, Mana would stop petting altogether and would stay within a flung stone distance from anyone.</p><p>She had a mean feeling about this mission, something else, deeper, less desired to be surfaced, and shown out in the open to be pissing mad about this mission. She suspected what this was all about, why she specifically was chosen to take part in it. Despite her better wants and needs, this truly was about her. Lord Seventh knew the intelligence that the members of Kanon were leaking.</p><p>The Hokage wanted Mana to confront that. He wanted to rub her face into the ropes, drive his kitchen knife through her gums while he smiled at her face. Konoha expected her to quell the underground organization telling the truth about what she did. It was just another test of how willing she was to bend over, smile, and ask for more.</p><p>Tasking her father to slay her mother's tribe, having the child of said tribe declare allegiance to the village and serve it for a decent part of her life, oftentimes putting her life on the line, that was no longer enough. Having Mana take the blame for Guru Ayushi, go to prison for saving the village and likely even the whole world just wasn't good enough anymore. But what if Mana actually felt mad at the village and second-guessed her life choices?</p><p>Kohana's family lived between Ichiraku Ramen and the Hyuuga Clan district. Kohana's father had been listening to Kanon's message, he might not have had contacts within the organization but he must have, at the very least, known where to start. Dreading the prospect of having to confront the truth and be forced to lie about it again, Mana knocked on the door.</p><p>"Ah!" a plump, middle-aged, red-haired lady took a step back and gasped after seeing Mana standing behind the door. "You're… Konoha's Sorceress, aren't you? I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you immediately over all the… Change."</p><p>"Yeah, that was meant to be the idea. I wanted to talk to your husband, ma'am. He told me something interesting about this Kanon group and I'd like to hear more about it," Mana stated her business. Frankly, she had spent so much time being mad at herself and the world on her way here that she didn't play out this conversation in her head at all. She'd be lucky if her impromptu approach even worked now.</p><p>Then again, it's been a long time coming she'd have even a pinch of some good luck.</p><p>"Oh… Yes, of course, that's all my husband's listening to these days. I mean, the village is controlling the television, right? Something about some weird, invisible waves, or something… These Kanon must have their own television station or something. My husband understands the gizmo a bit better, I'm sure he'll help you understand better than I can. We're very grateful for what you've done and we're great fans, we hope to see you on the stage again soon too!" the woman kept talking while leading Mana indoors and taking her to the guest room where her husband sat sprawled out on the sofa and watching a staticy image of a group in overcoats and masks of known political figures and animals talking in choppy sound quality.</p><p>"What we are experiencing now is… Well, it can only be described as wonderful but also… I understand that it can be a bit scary. You see, you can't quite count or tell real-time, only canon time, and I cannot adequately explain to you how the real-time works. All I can say is that time the way you perceive it works differently than you think it does. Some frames of time, sometimes entire years, entire months are irrelevant and they are skipped in real-time," a figure with a rose-colored wig and hiding behind a featureless, copper mask spoke in the center of the frame.</p><p>"Okay, okay… It's a bit much but… Why is that real-time important though, Midas?" another member of Kanon, one donning a toad-mask covering his entire face with rich decorations to the point where he appeared like a humanoid, cloaked toad since the cloak hung over the edges of the mask and the mask did a fine job hiding the man underneath the toad asked the man in the center.</p><p>"It's absolutely integral, because, you see, annually, counting in real-time, there is a time of great crisis, but also a great celebration. It is the time of the Annual. During that time, sometimes there are profound changes – like the emergence of Nakotsumi Mana, the Golden Child, from an alternate universe with samples of life-changing technology that thrust us forward entire decades, made this very screen through which I speak possible and delivered radio technology that before that time was only given down to the ninja available to the public. Sometimes, the Annual is just a meaningless celebration of her life's story but, more often, something world-shaking is bound to happen, whether the public is aware of it or not," the one referred to as Midas explained.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress!" Kohana's father jumped off of the armchair and approached Mana, grabbing hold of her hand and shaking it while bowing his head, as if expressing profound gratitude.</p><p>"So, what you're saying is, that this entire universe is perhaps centered around this one girl? That… I'm sorry, that seems very ridiculous. We often get laughed at and called conspiracy theorists, now, I have to admit, that sounds just too bonkers." A grungy-sounding man in a full-suit of samurai armor of obsidian black and pearl white pieces mingling together and forming a yin and yang kind of harmony together objected to Midas' declaration.</p><p>"No, no… Things are even scarier than this. You see, that girl is the very reason why this universe was created. It's because the Captain wanted to tell her story. Truth is, while you recall a time before her birth, nothing before her conception, in fact, nothing before her graduation of the Ninja Academy has ever truly taken place in real-time. Well, except for a few flashbacks that have shaped matters into existence, they are separate moments of real-time existing in between voids of nothing and preceding the history of this universe." Midas postured in front of the television screen.</p><p>"But… You're not making any more sense here, Midas. I mean… She's not all that remarkable even, she's nowhere near the strongest ninja in her own village nor is she that good at her job, most of the time her career as a kunoichi comes into the background before her career as a stage magician. Heck, if she ditched that ridiculous game of being a ninja, she'd probably become a megastar and live a life of luxury just off of the magic she used to perform on the stage," the armored Kanon member objected again.</p><p>"Ugh… Why does it even have to be a girl who's so important, I mean, I have nothing against women but their role is to support the man. It's not offensive to say that, I mean… Come on…" the Kanon member in a large bronze mask that extended all the way down to his belly due to the long beard and well past his scalp due to the large cylinder that the man depicted in the mask wore declared. He was largely ignored by the other Kanon members.</p><p>"Umm… These guys are the Kanon that I mentioned earlier. I know that sometimes what they say sounds silly and I don't take them at face-value but…" Kohana's father looked down and away, appearing embarrassed for having seen watching it by Mana herself who was very much the subject of discussion by this group.</p><p>"So, they do broadcast their activity through television…" Mana mumbled largely to herself, letting the idiotic babble in the background drown out. "Do you perhaps know where they are broadcasting themselves from? There are things I'd like to discuss with them and, given how they're dragging my name out in the public as some messiah, I believe I have that right."</p><p>"That's why they're so incredible, you see, they established their own television station and they're broadcasting this through their own signal. The rest of the television is all village-controlled or approved stations, except this one," Kohana's father explained.</p><p>"I'm sorry, could you explain this a bit better, I'm not very keen on technology, you see…" Mana felt a bit embarrassed to admit.</p><p>"Well, you're a ninja so you must have worked with radio waves from time to time, right?" Kohana's father explained, approaching the television and pulling on a few of turning controller pieces.</p><p>"Now, having in mind that in the very first Annual the Golden Child has returned with a sample of technology from other universes and confronted outer dimensional godly beings in Naruto's universe, one of countless more, just imagine how many multiverse-shaking events have transpired without you being aware of them. Once again, they've only transpired once every year counting down real-time and this entire universe has only existed for five years of real-time, considering this point in time as the time that it becomes cemented into the fabric of space-time by it being posted and not when it was written, that is to say, a few weeks of real-time before this moment in time was posted." Midas continued with his ramblings before Kohana's father had switched him off by browsing the different signals, settling down on something showing off a serial about sumo wrestlers controlling massive robots.</p><p>"You see, by switching the signal, browsing around the airwaves, you can catch all sorts of stuff, a lot like you can intercept the enemy's radio signal through your walkie by just knowing the frequency they're talking on," Kohana's father explained.</p><p>Mana looked up. She hadn't noticed that she'd been followed. It was a testament both of how mad she was when walking away from the group as well as how skilled the one hiding from her sensory was. Not wanting Kohana's family to get into further trouble, she paced to the door to confront her follower who chose to make his chakra signature flare up just now.</p><p>"Umm… Are you going to destroy the station, Sorceress?" Kohana's father wondered as he rushed to the door after her. "Because you see, we don't get anything like this. The only news we get is those we're allowed to hear and what if what we're getting is wrong? What if it's just what the village, the ninja want us to hear? I mean… There has been so much tension between the civilians and the ninja lately, even Lord Sixth chose to resign because of how riled up he got the civilian population of the village and here we have someone that us, someone weaker than you ninja folks can listen to, knowing they're not tampered with by the Hokage in any way…"</p><p>"Of course, I'll shut them down, didn't you know? I kicked Guru Ayushi's ass just because he made me mad. Those guys are full of shit, I'm no Golden Child. The only ninja you should be fearing in this village is me, because I'm the only one without anything to lose and the village just keeps on pulling on my ropes time and time again," Mana turned back to scare what little support she had from the villagers right out of them.</p><p>The pair of innocent, childish eyes looking at her from the corner shook her. It almost made her tear up while she made sure to look all tough and intimidating on the outside but, strangely enough, it just ended up adding to the emotional effect. Kohana's mother covered up her mouth and held her little girl closer to her lap, trying to move her behind her so that if Mana decided to turn violent it would be the woman and not her daughter to take the brunt of the force head-on.</p><p>"Please leave our home," Kohana's father insisted. Mana was glad to oblige.</p><p>"I'm impressed you managed to follow me undetected," Mana spoke up, feeling the presence slowly picking the pace back up and homing in on her location. She knew that Yushijin could hear her.</p><p>"Why wouldn't I be? Since you were always a wall I aimed to overcome, I've learned to move around sensors undetected just so I could confront you if I ever needed to," Yushijin blitzed beside the magician, making it out to be as if he had always been following her.</p><p>"Concealing your chakra signature makes you awfully vulnerable. If you as much as cracked a twig, the enemy's reaction would become invisible to you because of how much you're suppressing your abilities to remain hidden," Mana replied. She was already somewhat used to more skilled ninja utilizing the chakra suppression method to avoid detection via chakra sensory.</p><p>"Hmph… As expected, you won't just accept being figured out sitting down. That's why competing with you has been so much fun," Yushijin smirked. "So, figured out anything useful?"</p><p>"Maybe, do you know anything about radio waves?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"I know of the general concept, somewhat aware of how they work and what they're used for, why?" Yushijin asked in response to a question.</p><p>"This Kanon organization is nutter than a bag of almonds, meaning they're dangerous enough to just throw that sensitive information about willy-nilly, even hand it down to the enemies. They broadcast their manifestos through radio waves, meaning anyone with a television set can tune into it. Lord Seventh won't like it one bit," Mana sighed.</p><p>"Then it is a good thing that it isn't just the two of us doing it. There was no need to separate from the group. Not everyone's out to get you, Mana, everyone was always willing to look over the terms of your imprisonment so you were the only one who wouldn't move on," Yushijin said.</p><p>Finding the rest of the group was much easier with Mana's chakra sensory serving its use and neither of the other three trying that hard to hide. Kagana's was the only signature that did not move or intertwine with other, smaller signatures that would have served as a sort of smokescreen obstructing her. While she was the least pleasant to find, she was also the simplest one.</p><p>"Great, you've found the runaway…" the redhead observed with a dismissive grunt before resuming her sulking with her back pressed to the wall of a nearby house.</p><p>"In terms of usefulness, I'd be willing to argue which one of us contributes more to the team," Mana slapped back at the face of the fellow special jounin though she didn't receive an aggressive reaction in response. Kagana seemed to be the type just let the filth wash over her and run off.</p><p>"The others are wasting their time talking to the small fry," Kagana turned her nose to the right. Even though nobody was within sight in that direction, or any other, chakra sensory suggested that she was not wrong about the general direction.</p><p>"Attitude like that might be the reason why the civilians don't feel too receptive to ninja," Mana replied before turning to gather the team. She had seen a few people of Kagana's type in prison. Cool loners who didn't think much of anything outside their area of expertise, justifying their lack of knowledge or experience in something as that thing being something that's not worth knowing in the first place. It was a waste of time to ask her for help tracking down the Kanon.</p><p>"Hey, hey… You said you were being all useful and contributing to the team. I wasn't gullible enough to get hooked by doubting you but you won't just walk away with whatever information you managed to gather," Kagana moved from the wall and walked up to Mana.</p><p>"Fine, you can go fetch Hosen," Mana pointed at a direction.</p><p>"I thought the idea was pooling back together and sharing our intelligence," Kagana stared at Mana with a strict and judgmental stare.</p><p>"You mean our intelligence… Also, Hosen is a Nekomata, he'll be able to track us within the village," Mana replied before rushing off to pick Yugato and Inori up.</p><hr/><p>Yugato had managed to strike up a conversation with an elderly lady who shook her head as if she'd just ingested a sour plum and wobbled off after seeing Mana approaching the young man from behind. The loudmouth looked disconcerted about this scare but Inori shook the young man by his shoulder and pointed to Mana.</p><p>"What do you know about radio waves?" Mana looked at Inori.</p><p>"Hey, I'm here too, you know," Yugato boiled in his own juices. "Plus, you shouldn't be asking us that sort of stuff, you should be apologizing and introducing yourself all over again with the way you just ran off to do your own thing…"</p><p>"Radio waves…?" Inori scratched his cheek, "Well… I suppose I know enough for basic repairs of walkies and radio equipment."</p><p>"Don't encourage her!" Yugato snapped at his own comrade after he answered Mana.</p><p>"The Kanon are operating via radio waves. Maybe they have their own station, maybe they hijacked one. That's how they're spilling the secrets. It's no use talking to the villagers. Those that know something won't tell you because they're on the side of Kanon," Mana explained herself.</p><p>"Wow, that's quite impressive! You managed to get that much intelligence in just over an hour!? All Yugato got was a bunch of small-talk and granny tales!" Inori complimented Mana with a stunned expression.</p><p>"Don't you turn on me, dammit!" Yugato shook his fist, threatening his pal with some friendly one on one violence.</p><p>"Do you know the frequency of their radio transmission?" Inori managed to settle down after going pale and wrestling out of Yugato's bullying session, stuffing his tie back under his flak jacket.</p><p>"Frequency?" Mana spun a strand of her hair over her index finger, hiding her embarrassment behind the gesture. "Well… I remember the way that the spinny-thing was pointed at if it's of any help."</p><p>"Spinny-thing? Seriously…?" Inori deflated.</p><p>"Well… I can show you the place that had its devices set on that frequency pretty much twenty-four-seven. Do you think you could figure it out by checking on them?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Me? Isn't that your source?" Inori scratched his head.</p><p>"It is, though I might have burnt a bridge or two prematurely," Mana admitted.</p><p>"Heh, serves you right for being such a Type-A personality. If only Kagana would get burnt once or twice just like that…" Yugato smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. "For your information, I happen to be great with people. I can convince them to let us have a look at their radio in no time at all."</p><p>"I won't need to slice the radio or anything. I just need the frequency…" Inori slapped his face and shook his head. While plenty of ninja used radios at one point or another, even more of them had no idea how this fundamental piece of equipment worked.</p><p>"Kagana and Yushijin left to pick up Hosen. We better team up before heading there," Mana pointed at her back.</p><p>Hosen didn't have much success gathering intel either. His contacts were exclusively the high-class clan folk given how he stalked in the clan districts of Uchiha, Hyuuga, Yamanaka, and the like. The only clan he openly admitted having avoided was the Inuzuka. Despite Yugato's continuous attempts at pinning the matter to it being a dog-cat thing, Hosen adamantly denied such allegations and exhausted the entire vocabulary in possible ways to declare the Inuzuka as uncultured brutes that wouldn't know anything even if the Kanon paraded on their clan headquarters.</p><p>"We could approach the window quietly and peek inside. I've been in there so I know the place and where the television set is," Mana pointed out after the entire squad approached Kohana family home.</p><p>"I second this," Kagana nodded with a distaste at even opening her eyes and looking at the home of the civilians that provided Mana with information.</p><p>"I will admit that speaking to peasants will provide difficulty though I am up for the task if need be…" Hosen was still on the fence whether his energetic attitude or his preference for the classy society prevailed in this debate.</p><p>"Are you all a bunch of idiots?" Yugato squinted at the three. "Come on, Inori, let's just go ask them for the frequency."</p><p>It didn't take long but the two returned with the needed information after just a single knock and an honest question. Yushijin coughed air through his nose a pair of times in a barely audible cackle, having found the situation somewhat amusing.</p><p>"I will admit that your honest, do-good nature does have its benefits, Yugato," Hosen nodded a couple of times, fully buying what he was offering himself.</p><p>"So, can you track those guys with just this number?" Kagana raised an eyebrow. Seeing her expression made Mana see glimpses of being on the stage and looking at the skeptic faces of people doubting she could produce a coin from their ear or find their card. Mana closed her eyes and pushed those memories down, returning to the conversation at hand.</p><p>"I'm afraid not, I'll be needing a radio and a little bit of tinkering to lock on to the signal. Then, by moving in a certain direction, we can judge if we're getting closer or not…" Inori shrugged with his arms crossed and his tongue sticking out as he worked to figure the solution out.</p><p>"Couldn't you just ask Meiko for help?" Yushijin glanced at Mana.</p><p>"Meiko is a blacksmith, not an engineer," Mana replied with a rough tone that demanded to not be bothered more than it engaged with the speaker. She pretty much had to be that way if she wanted to lie convincingly.</p><p>Sure, Meiko knew all about transistors and gadgets and gizmos and the like though she had never visited Mana once after she left prison nor did she see the magician at any point before her imprisonment. It would have been naïve to expect to see her during the time but… Given the sum of those wild dreams of there being someone to help with the worst time in her life, Mana didn't think herself to be on speaking terms with her best friend anymore.</p><p>"I see…" Yushijin turned back to the quartet of older special jounin, leaving the matter alone since Mana showed off that a nerve was hit.</p><hr/><p>"Ugh, look at those three dorks!" Yugato ground his teeth after each glance at Mana, Yushijin, and Kagana resting in the back of the gear shack they stopped at to pick up their gadgets. "Don't they just piss you off?"</p><p>Yushijin pointed at himself with a bewildered expression, wondering what it was that made it seem like he'd done something wrong.</p><p>"I just don't want to get in anybody's way…" he shrugged with an innocent tip of his lips upward. "So, Mana, I've heard that Jigoku is the worst place imaginable. It has to be to break even the hardest and worst ninja criminals we've got. I reckon you've grown much stronger and flourished under all that adversity."</p><p>"I must admit I've been wondering the same thing," Kagana turned to Mana after the magician seemed to ignore the question at first. All the while the more pro-active of the three bartered on the exact price for the radio device they were to buy. Inori attempted to explain that they didn't particularly need the device that badly and tried bringing up the idea that they could have just borrowed it.</p><p>"There's no growing stronger in Jigoku. There's no point in making those you hide in the underground of human decency and expose to the worst scorn imaginable – those just like them, grow. All Jigoku does is break, maim, and kill. There are no trials to undergo there, no hidden secrets granting immense power at the end of the secret road. Everything special about you is sealed away and you rot there until you die one of the thousands of possible, abhorrent deaths," Mana replied with a bitter expression.</p><p>"They seal away your strength? I see now why Jigoku is so feared…" while Kagana looked onward at the handful of her peers who bickered with themselves and the plump radio guy, she saw something else entirely in front of her.</p><p>"Well then, I am glad that it is over. It's regretful that you've wasted all that time in there. I've grown in skill greatly in this last half-year, it might not have been wise for the village to sabotage their own talent like this," Yushijin thought he had comforted Mana, at least his rich expression suggested that much. That dumb oaf. One-track-mind just like Kouta, figured these two would have gotten teamed up.</p><p>"Over? It's never over. The chakra suppression seal might be singed off but the scars stay. So does the stigma. It's something not many get to learn, as nobody tends to leave Jigoku anymore, but Jigoku stays with you long after you leave. The gangs of scumbags that look to exploit you for all you're worth are just replaced with ordinary people who get to project their own fears and shortcomings onto you…" Mana replied and walked off onto the hallway leading back up from the warehouse shack and onto the Konohagakure streets.</p><p>"Hey, hey…!" Yugato shook his fist over his head, "Where the hell does she think she's going!? We're not done here yet!"</p><p>"I would mind your own business," Yushijin suggested without harm or threat in his tone but carrying significant weight behind his tone nonetheless.</p><p>"You're asking for the impossible here…" Kagana shrugged with a smirk.</p><p>"What was that now!?" Yugato growled almost throwing himself at the two while rolling up his sleeves.</p><p>"My, this team is rather dysfunctional. Perhaps pairing people up just due to how they are ranked is not the greatest idea…" Hosen observed while Inori did his best to salvage the haggling and bartering session to the best of his ability.</p><p>Inside a ninja village, there had always been chakra signatures shuffling into the background. They ranged from massive to small as the power difference and chakra size between the different ninja ranks had been astronomical though one learned to filter through them and trim the stellar ones while enhancing the features of the microscopic. There was one thing that one couldn't do much about – one's aura. From time to time, a hardened killer strut past. Someone who believed that capturing their targets or leaving them alive after questioning was pointless.</p><p>To hell with judgment. Especially in her current state of social frustration and budding misanthropy, Mana would never feel overly excited about a single bad seed walking past but a couple of them would have been alarming. The pair of signatures outside were no hardened killers but they had a feeling of their own to them. It was no black flame of evil, a tar-pit or anything cartoonish but it was more like a moss of dry green. These weren't murderous hearts but they were greedy beyond measure and weren't scrupulous about how they watered that moss that at their essences defined them.</p><p>Mana ascended the steep run of stairs to bust outside and see those two figures that had so conveniently ended up approaching the shack at the same time. They weren't beaming their menacing intents at the shack either, the magician could hear them talking while still indoors though she only peeked the madness straight in the eye after leaving the shack.</p><p>They weren't talking to one another or coordinating their next steps, they weren't talking to anyone, in particular, they had come here to meet. A likely cover story of the two rapacious characters just happening to meet a shady figure in the eastern districts of the village for a deal was debunked the moment that Mana slammed the door behind her.</p><p>They were just talking. Out in the open, without a care about who was listening.</p><p>"This shack, there are ninja hiding in there…" said a familiar to Mana man dressed in full yet unsophisticated karuta armor that had not an inch of decorative value to it.</p><p>"Ninja that are trying to track us. They want to censor our speech, they don't like us telling you people how it is," a man that was similarly undecorated and not at all impressive-looking due to his lack of a mask or any attempts at concealing his appearance stated. Though his lack of care for being seen how he was might have been exactly because he didn't seem all that notable in any sense of the word. Curly black hair spiking equally in every direction, a black cloak, and a pair of spectacles. No scars or peculiarities about his features whatsoever. Just a man in every sense of the word except the size of his chakra signature.</p><p>"You're Kanon then? I've seen you amongst them," Mana pointed at the armored Kanon member. "You're not even worried about showing up inside the village? That's good. It'll be a lot easier to capture you two and interrogate you of all information you have on the organization."</p><p>"Rascal!" a disembodied voice came from a small crowd. As people passed the place they noticed the pair of burly and rough-looking Kanon members and right in front of them they saw Mana. While her extravagant attempts to hide her features underneath rough make-up and a rebellious punk replacement for her uniform helped her blend in amongst those that didn't care to look a second time, the focus was like a stream of water that washed the make-up and stripped her bare before the crowd.</p><p>"Is nothing sacred to you anymore!?" someone else yelled.</p><p>"You'd censor these men?" a young man dressed as a student of Konoha High showed himself from the crowd, ready to jump at Mana's face. She'd have taken him down without blinking an eye. A spark of lightning cracked and whipped, jolting off of Mana and hitting the youth square in his chest, sending him down on his behind and crawling back into the safety of the outraged crowd.</p><p>"Sold her soul!", "Hokage's puppet!", "Criminal!", "Murderer!", "Deviant!"</p><p>That brat wasn't trying to attack Mana, he wasn't trying to protect those two Kanon members from her either. He was just there to get a reaction from her, to drive the rest of the mob mad… Mana truly was a puppet though she wasn't one of the Hokage, these Kanon played her like one, pointed people around them to pull her strings so that they liked the dance her contorting, worn-out limbs put together.</p><p>"Kanon are sons of men, don't let this devilish child get to them!" someone in the crowd yelled but Mana had no trouble navigating around them. If any of these people as much as touched her she'd be bad at her job. She spun and danced around them just like she avoided every single rushing combatant at the Sun Disc arena once, swimming through them by letting them throw themselves behind her and free the path to Kanon.</p><p>Just a few inches short. She could see the pair observing her. It was tough to say what the armored guy was thinking but the spectacled one looked beyond amused by the show that the Konoha mob was putting together. Any social saboteur would have withdrawn to safety and observed the chaos they've seeded from afar. The Kanon wasn't leaving and that did trouble Mana a fair bit – the purpose for which they've come here hadn't been fulfilled yet.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Splice!" the spectacled member of Kanon chanted while weaving a one-handed hand seal. Everything around Mana went blurry, people that were just rushing at her now subjected themselves to rewind as the feeling of her stomach clawing to crawl right out from her abdomen and burst through her mouth befell Mana.</p><p>Her hands were trembling and the magician could no longer recognize the position she was standing in. The enemies she was rushing just a split second earlier now seemed like they stood at an end of a never-ending hallway whereas the furious mob that attempted to get their hands on Mana now rushed her once more with the magician being nowhere further in the progress of evading them than she was before. Not only that, due to the unnatural switch of her position, but it would also have taken far too much time to repurpose her movements and continue evading the public's wrath again. Bodies everywhere she could see… Fists, stones, and everything sharp or blunt that everyone with a grudge could get their hands over.</p><p>"Petals…?" the armored Kanon member bent his head to the side in reaction to a gust of rose petals scattering and washing away at the rushing mob. The flowery escape took the mob back much further than it did the more experienced ninja of the Kanon organization.</p><p>A blood-curdling scream filled the air, the Kanon member turned for his comrade in shock, witnessing his ally stumbling back and fending off attacks that he couldn't see. The petrified and panicking man struggled to not fall on his bottom and shoveled through the gravel in the waggling of his hands as he attempted to elude an opponent that was not truly there.</p><p>"I thought you guys were supposed to be well-informed?" Mana spoke while washing the pair of Kanon members with a strict glare from atop of the shack, beyond the reach of normal civilians. "I have just been promoted to special jounin for my exceptional skill in the field of genjutsu. It is at the very least unwise to try and play a game the rules of which I am setting."</p><p>"She reversed the genjutsu…" the armored Kanon member turned for his ally and helped him up while the rest of the special jounin squad rushed out from the shack, disturbed by the noise and the yelling alongside with the disappearance of one of their own.</p><p>"These guys, they're Kanon, right!?" Yugato exclaimed staring at the two ninja. It was not a question that demanded an answer as even one of the simpler ways of thinking such as Yugato knew the answer to his own question.</p><p>"Hmph… I guess we couldn't kill the MC off early…" a bright, white light gleamed from inside the armored mask of the standing Kanon member as he turned around and weaved a hand seal to dispel the illusion his comrade was under – a reversed version of his own genjutsu which spliced two separate moments of perception together for a disrupting effect. "A pity, though Midas is taking control over the story. This world is his now,"</p><p>"Don't think we'll just let you run off like that!" Hosen growled, showing his prolonged feline fangs while his facial features became wilder and the special jounin took a four-legged position in preparation for a speedy and deadly blitz.</p><p>"Stop bullying us!" "We're not your slaves!" "No more censoring!" "Free the truth!" "Fight the power!"</p><p>"What on earth…?" Kagana bit her lip, even the cold and proud kunoichi wasn't about to plow through mobs of civilians banding together to ensure the enemy's escape.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Last Resort!" Yushijin's reserved mumble demanded the attention of all ninja, both the Konoha party as well as the Kanon folks. The infuriated mob froze in mid-motion while the second special jounin to be promoted for his skill in genjutsu moved over and around them with a slash directed at the armored Kanon member.</p><p>Yushijin's sword became stuck in between something solid and sharp as it flung handfuls of sparks the more the special jounin put effort into trying to overpower the invisible obstacle and slash the enemy to bits. With a triumphant roar, Yushijin completed his falling slash and proceeded to swing his claymore wildly at the invisible shape he had just hit. An intense heat blast sent everyone in the area down on their faces or their bottoms, depending on their positions to the Kanon members that have dispersed with the flames.</p><p>"Just what was that?" Yushijin sheathed his sword and turned for his comrades, the bunch nodded to one another and scattered before the mob could recover and start raising some ruckus again. If the reason for their outrage was the Konoha ninja attempting to detain the Kanon members, now that the Kanon had used the split moment of the heatwave's distraction to flee, the ninja staying in the area would have only aggravated them for they would have taken the reason for their painful stumble to be something of Yushijin's causing.</p><p>"Do you have the radio gear?" Kagana turned to Inori.</p><p>"I do," the burly-haired Yamanaka nodded and directed his hidden behind a handful of bright hair eyes toward the gizmo in his right hand. "I'll trace the signal in a moment."</p><p>"So the enemy has escaped…" Yushijin sighed, removing his claymore and examining some nasty chips on the blade's edge from the struggle against something unseen that he went through. "If we had some intelligence of the enemy's abilities, that would not have happened."</p><p>"Who cares, they ran away. That's because they know we can crush them," Kagana closed her eyes and breathed out in a confident smirk.</p><p>"Why did they attack in the first place, I wonder. They said a whole bunch of babble but I'm not sure I understand what it all means…" Hosen scratched his head.</p><p>"Who cares, they're just some obsessed cult. What they speak is madness and the only thing to stop that madness from corrupting any more people is to stop them," Mana sat atop of the rooftop that the team had reassembled on and dragged her hands across her forehead and over her hair, driving them behind her so that they didn't fall over her face and obstruct the view of the concluding day.</p><p>"That is very much unlike you, Mana," Yushijin noted. "You are often capable of finding a method in any sort of madness and defeat the enemy at their own game. It's one of your more remarkable qualities. Though, I suppose, given that you've just survived an attempt at your own life, I suppose a moment of weakness is understandable."</p><p>"An attempt? You mean the Kanon was trying to kill Mana specifically?" Yugato turned to Yushijin and raised an eyebrow, appearing even more baffled than he sounded.</p><p>"I do. I've heard one of the Kanon transmissions when I followed Mana. They believe that she is some centerpiece figure in some bigger picture. She is a focal point of whatever conspiracy theory they are weaving and pulling over their listeners. It appears that does not necessarily mean great things for her though…" Yushijin shrugged and turned to Inori who kept tampering with the radio that they had just bought. "Any progress?"</p><p>"Nope… I think they might have shut off their signal…" Inori shook his head, looking like he was about to cry out in frustration and smash the radio that had cost them their entire day of snooping around. "We'll have to wait until they start it up again if we want to track them."</p><p>"Not necessarily…" Mana shook her head. "They've made a mistake by exposing themselves to us. While killing me appears to be of profound importance to them, they've also shown me what their chakra signatures feel like."</p><p>"You mean you can track them? By now they might be fleeing further into the Fire Country!" Hosen scratched his head.</p><p>"Not all by myself, I'll need to get closer to them. But together with your unnatural scent tracking, I'm sure that is possible." Mana turned to Hosen. "Can you track their lingering scents in the air and direct us where they've gone toward? Once we come in range, I'll be able to pinpoint their exact location even if you lose their scent."</p><p>"It's better than sitting and waiting for them to start broadcasting again for sure…" Hosen nodded.</p><hr/><p>Traveling in the later stages of the day was dangerous. The ancient woods of the Fire Country that might have been about as old as the world itself and spanned throughout the entire landscape and far beyond its borders was gloomy as it was. Nowhere near the pitch black of the Forest of Death however it was still not an easy feat to dance around the blitzing trees in the shade as one galloped at hi-speeds roaming throughout the entire country.</p><p>No matter how quick the team's feet were, they were still losing the race against time as Hosen noted how quickly the scent was escaping him. When he had started, the sensation was still fresh in the air, while they managed to somewhat keep the track of the enemy's direction, the whiffs that Hosen could get of their presence became vaguer and vaguer still. Even someone with feline features and the cat-like specialties of the Nekomata clan pulsing with vigor in their blood, Hosen had to fight against all odds to keep bringing the team in the right direction in the fading light of the setting sun.</p><p>"Ugh! Why do I have to haul your frail ass!?" Yugato grunted, struggling to keep Mana on his back while she sat in a meditative position and her eyes closed.</p><p>"Do not disturb Mana," Yushijin warned. "We need her focused on meditation – when her chakra sensory is at its peak. She might be able to pick up traces of the enemy she is familiar with from kilometers away like this."</p><p>"That's right, if we lose this scent, her sensory will be the only thing keeping us on the Kanon's tail," Hosen nodded.</p><p>"Do you have a plan on confronting Kanon this time?" Kagana looked at Yushijin. "They've revealed themselves to be potent ninja last time. Not knowing the exact nature of their abilities might making finding them irrelevant if they end up plowing through our ranks anyway."</p><p>"Indeed, if they've chosen Mana as their target, they have to be ninja of decent skill. She is not some defenseless child, she's an exceptional ninja who's, for better or worse, shocked the world with just how potent she can be at getting violent," Hosen agreed while keeping his nose twitching with sharp tilts of its edge.</p><p>"That is exactly it. They wish to kill Mana. That is their goal, for now, it seems, that is the path on which their conspiracy theories and zealotry has put them on. They preach about authors that are keeping this world alive and giving it shape, speaking of some stretches of time as irrelevant in the face of some different time and some otherworldly crises that occur annually. In the face of such profound importance that killing Mana has in their eyes, who are we?" Yushijin replied.</p><p>"So, you're counting on them underestimating us while they fight with a one-track-mind? That is a bold strategy, we'll just have to see how it turns out, I guess," Kagana smirked subtly.</p><p>"I can sense them," Mana spoke while her eyes stayed close and her face did not break from the concentration of focus that her meditation demanded of her.</p><p>"I'm only getting vague hints of their scent, that's incredible…" Hosen nodded in acknowledgment of Mana's skill in sensory.</p><p>For better or worse, her time serving as a dog of Nereigen's crew back in Jigoku had honed her own tracking skills. It was unlikely that she'd have been able to catch a whiff of the enemy had she not been through that excruciating experience.</p><p>Where was their iron resolve to kill her when she begged to be put out of her misery a couple of months ago?</p><p>"Where did this building even come from? Has it always been here?" Yugato voiced his surprise while the rest of the squad struggled with similar sentiments as they surrounded a spacious hall.</p><p>"Who knows, there are hundreds of abandoned halls built for summits in the Fire Country. Every big meeting used to have a hall built just to host it," Inori theorized.</p><p>"It does not seem likely. Look at the architecture. It looks unlike anything we would build now, too flashy, too bright and decorative. Forget about this coming from any of the previous generations," Yushijin voiced his doubts with a mopey face. The architecture of this hall inspired a bad feeling he just couldn't shake off.</p><p>"If we leave not a stone on top of another, what does it matter what this place looks like?" Kagana focused her hateful sneer at the building hosting all of the targets of their mission under one roof.</p><p>"This could be a trap. So far the Kanon has been surprisingly ahead of us," Hosen warned the rest.</p><p>"They're there alright, so, in the end, it doesn't matter," Mana replied.</p><p>"This has to be the place. This tower in the center, while decorated with a bunch of unnecessary steel rings and spheres, must be transmitting the radio waves," Inori pointed.</p><p>"We will need a plan of attack," Yushijin stated.</p><p>"At least several variants. We've no idea what we're walking into so we have to know how to bend it on the fly and make sure that everybody's thinking on the same page," Inori agreed.</p><p>Without warning any of the others, Kagana performed a few hand seals and breathed out a fiery ball of gas that burnt with hot flames on its edges but maintained its gaseous form in the middle. Removing a small scroll from her waist and letting it unravel, the kunoichi pressed her hand to the surface of the scroll and released a flock of robins to flutter at the gaseous ball and orbit around it.</p><p>"Hmmm…" the bespectacled Kanon member fixed his ocular lenses and stared from within the no-roof hall at the bright and flashy, gaseous ball floating over the building.</p><p>"What's wrong, Porphyrion?" a hulking man of an ogre-like build clad in armor on his chest and shoulders and letting a long tunic fall down reaching the floor lower down wondered. Unlike most of the Kanon members present, this one did not wear a mask but his actual face was outlandish enough for him to not need one. Exaggerated eyebrow ridges and oversized nose, chin the size of a ridge and teeth each measuring like the head of a hoe. There might not have been a mask sizable enough to hide this man's features.</p><p>"The redbreast subspecies of robin native to the Fire Country do not flock at this time of year. Needless to say, that supersized ball of gas is also highly unnatural…" Porphyrion expressed his worries, pointing at the sky.</p><p>"So, we've been followed, it's not like that is surprising…" the Kanon clad in samurai armor dropped his cloak aside and slipped into an all-black kimono over the armor while preparing for a battle.</p><p>A bald-headed man of a powerful build and shades turned to the ogre-like Kanon member while he stroked his waist-reaching, cream-colored beard. "As a lawman, won't it make you feel bad wasting a bunch of people that are acting to the letter of the law?" he wondered gazing at the giant.</p><p>"Don't be ridiculous…" the ogre-like Kanon member let out a deep chuckle after gripping the hilts of a pair of mallets built out of white stone and decorated with copper linings and jewels. "They chose the path of wrongdoing. If they truly wished to be right, they'd have left Konoha after being instructed to eliminate us and moved elsewhere…"</p><p>"You possess knowledge greater than the rest of us, Midas, what is the meaning of that blazing ball of gas in the sky and those birds?" the toad-masked man in a black kimono and a white undergarment looked at the Kanon leader with doubts.</p><p>"I am only certain of two things – one is that it was caused by one of the ninja accompanying Nakotsumi Mana for this Annual. I can't remember the name, how can the Author possibly hope us to remember everyone's names at this point, honestly?" the man with a Rose-colored wig and a copper mask lamented.</p><p>"And the other?" the toad-faced member wondered.</p><p>"The word count of this Annual is approaching 15000, meaning that the resolution we seek is at hand," Midas stood up from his seat and looked up at the flaming ball of gas as if challenging it to deliver the awaited resolution.</p><p>The ground beneath the feet shook in a violent jerk that not only persisted but called the assistance in calamity from the falling splinters of the collapsing transmitter tower. It was tough to tell just what sort of a disaster had hit the core piece of the Kanon hideout but the infernal aura of flames emanating from the top of the tower and closing to the bottom as well as the downfall of metallic shrapnel told the clear picture that the transmitter was being ripped to shreds from top to bottom.</p><p>A blast emanating from the ground level sent the remaining sheets of steel flying all over the main area of the arena as Kagana emerged from the wreckage dusting herself and patting herself on the shoulder.</p><p>"Mission complete," she muttered while looking Midas right in the eyes after emerging from the wreckage. She was not wrong – the method through which Kanon spilled the village secrets had been destroyed now.</p><p>"Hmph… Your victory is a shallow one. You are just a filler OC that's never been as much as namedropped before. I can undo every victory you taste with just a single review of this trainwreck. The Author herself is my puppet, can't you understand?" Midas turned to Kagana.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Last Resort!" Yushijin chanted out while charging from the top of the hall building alongside Mana who performed a hand seal as well, intending to act alongside her peer.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Haze!" Mana yelled out as her body lit up with a pink light that separated from it mirroring its shape within moments. Working together the pair attempted to dispose of the armored Kanon member due to how threatening his ability seemed last time.</p><p>"Your supposed skill is utterly debunked," the armored Kanon gloated as he spread his arms out and accepted the coordinated assault, managing to move and speak while under the influence of Yushijin's Last Resort without much trouble. The pink shape that Mana expelled via her illusion dispelled into rose-colored sprinkles upon coming to contact with the Kanon while Yushijin clashed his blades with the invisible force protecting him again.</p><p>Konoha's swordfighter coughed up blood, hanging in mid-air as if he had been impaled by something but the gruesome image of the youth's demise revealed itself to be just a fake when Yushijin's dead body replaced itself with a sheet of steel from the wreckage of the transmitter tower in a puff of smoke while Yushijin slid back by Mana's left side.</p><p>"Did you see it?" he wondered.</p><p>"Sorry, whatever he's doing, I can't pick it up with chakra sensory alone," Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Wind Style: Spin Claw!" Yugato's loudmouthed yell would have raised the roof if the hall had one. A triplet of Wind Release projectiles slashed from afar coming right at Porphyrion. The surprised Kanon member flinched for impact but he appeared to be defenseless from up close as he collapsed in a shower of blood when his body offered a very poor resistance to the traveling slashes of Wind Release and collapsed to the ground almost in pieces, had it not been for thin strands of flesh still holding him together.</p><p>"Alright, that's their genjutsu specialist eliminated!" Inori cheered on his teammate from the side, using the main entrance instead of landing through the opening at the top of the building like the rest.</p><p>"I might have overdone it a bit, I didn't know he'd be this puny, to be honest…" Yugato scratched his head somewhat taken aback by the gruesome end his target had met at his hands.</p><p>"That's what happens when you obsess over just one area of expertise, I guess," Inori nodded.</p><p>"Tunneling Claw!" Hosen hissed as he charged forward, ripping through the foundations of the building like an uncontrollable drill. His ferocious expression was just inches short of ripping into Midas' face and his claws not too far behind from ripping the leader of Kanon to shreds but a chain tied around the man's chest and pulled him away with a strong yank.</p><p>Struggle as much as he might have, Hosen ended up underneath the boot of the bald Kanon member who wielded an empty lantern-like frame that weighed a bunch, judging by the material it was made of as well as the speed it made the chain travel in and the punch it packed.</p><p>"Slow the fuck down, boy…" the chain and weight user showed his pearly whites through his bisque facial hair.</p><p>"Rising Claw!" Hosen growled, ripping through the chain and reducing it to separate clinks that scattered all over the place while the empty lantern weight on the end smashed against the ground in a weighty thud. Hosen reared his feline fangs and claws at the man, threatening to shift his focus from the leader of Kanon to the member that pulled him off of his intended target.</p><p>"So, the fodder has come. Can't you see how insignificant you all are? I could just leave a scathing review right now about how you lot bring nothing to this story and the sad wreck that is the author of this story would write all of you out. Look at the demise of that useless sack of shit and imagine just how gruesome that depressed edgelord would make your ends…" Midas postured at the gathered squad of Konoha ninja. "Of the lot of you, only Mana matters. Still, I have a sense that she isn't entirely safe. She's been absent from the story for so long. I don't feel like the Author knows how integral she truly is to the story. Oh, how the Watchers and Reviewers loathe when she is written out, how many of them have tuned out when Mana wasn't on the page… The Author is wrecked enough to write her out permanently and that would be the end of this whole story,"</p><p>"Wind Style: Gale Spin!" Yugato went through a collection of hand seals and jumped up to deliver his ninjutsu attack from up above, the shapeless wind projectile slammed against Midas' body and passed through it, split by the middle as if it had hit an immovable obstacle. "How dare you? Mock the sacrifice of your own teammate?" the young man raged when his offensive had failed.</p><p>"Sacrifice? My own teammate? You useless OC, literally less than a filler character, why do you think all of the Kanon have such weird names? It's because I can't remember their dumbass OC names so I gave them codenames an intellectual such as myself can remember…" Midas turned to Yugato. The leader of Kanon threw a single punch while standing almost twenty meters away from his target but the air pressure drowning in black chakra overwhelmed and knocked Yugato out without any signs of life.</p><p>"Yugato!" Inori leaned by the teammate he had only met today though had begun to grow fond of. Inori didn't look like the type who had many friends so his tears at the sight of the demise of the one good friend he had made on the field told a thousand words.</p><p>"Hmph… The only leeway you trash have on me is due to my own desire. I asked that drama queen to be incarnated into this body instead of operating solely on the review section because that's just so much more fun. Granted, I'd have liked to tear through someone more important. Maybe kick that daddy's boy Kouta in the nuts. Will they or won't they, oh my God, who cares!? Disembowel Kiyomi and Meiko with my bare hands, maybe? Nobody likes them, what's the deal with all this push, I ask you!?" Midas appeared to be getting high on his own supply of limitless power as his chakra leaked out from his body in shapes of symbols that appeared alien to everyone in the arena.</p><p>"Midas?" the armored Kanon member turned to his leader. "What's wrong? I don't recognize you now…"</p><p>"Yeah, fuck this shit, I'm out. My weapon's all busted anyway…" the bald beardo of the Kanon shrugged and flickered off. Hosen hissed and prepared to charge right after but Kagana's voice halted him and woke the young man up from his one-track mind state.</p><p>"This guy doesn't matter, Midas does. None of these guys seem to know anything about anything. Midas is the one with all the knowledge and power," Kagana scolded her careless teammate.</p><p>"I see, perhaps you're right…" Hosen nodded.</p><p>The armored Kanon grunted in pain, light bent around him as if the gravity around his core had intensified thousandfold and began crushing the man into the floor. In flickers two shapes, a pair of mimics colored red and blue, copying the appearance of the member's armor appeared. Whatever invisible powers this man fostered, they've become physical and quite visible.</p><p>"W-What did you do?" the armored member looked at Midas.</p><p>"I've whipped that useless wreck of an Author with a mean review, calling out how cheap your invisible power is. Like we all know it's just a Limbo rip-off anyway. At least do what you've been written into this world to do and try to kill that precious little princess of an MC…" Midas turned at his mate with a twisted glare from beneath his bronze mask.</p><p>"Tsk, are you okay with all this?" the armored member turned to the toad-masked Kanon.</p><p>"Okay with what? You mean okay with our master displaying his infinite power and smashing these Satanic heretics!? Of course!" the toad-faced Kanon waved his hands around in a maniacal expression of faith in his master.</p><p>"This is insane, I can't believe I ever supported you!" the armored Kanon turned to face his own master while the two mirror images that used to exist in between the physical and spiritual planes now materialized onto the same dimension both pointed their swords and raised their shields in defense for their user against his master.</p><p>The toad-masked Kanon bit his thumb and shuffled through a collection of hand seals before summoning a swamp-green colored colossal toad standing beside a massive cannon. The masked Kanon member leaped up using a burst of chakra channeled through his feet to propel him sky-high so that he could land atop of the head of his summoned animal and point at the target that needed to be obliterated.</p><p>"Let's do this, let's MC this Author in real-time!" the toad-masked member laughed out maniacally as the supersized cannon let out a thunder that deafened everyone in the arena and sunk the entire battlefield in smoke. All that remained of the armored Kanon member after the dust settled was his armor, unharmed and undented though, judging from the awkward positioning of his corpse and the blood pooling from underneath, the Kanon member might not have liked that integrity of his own armor too much up until he met his end.</p><p>"Holy shit, that's crazy!" Midas chuckled to himself. "That's messed up, the Author must be really listening to some Evanescence bullshit to be coming up with this… This is great, the writing really is collapsing in on itself."</p><p>"Now, the real-time and canon time will become one, we will all matter in the end and invade the real world using the power of the MC!" the toad-masked Kanon turned his cannon toward Mana.</p><p>"Ugh, dude, you're really not getting any of my lingo and you don't seem to even understand what this is all about…" Midas groaned after the maniacal babbling of his own comrade spoiled his fun of the fictional multiverse collapsing in on itself. "Your simp attitude is really making me cringe at this point,"</p><p>The leader of Kanon jumped up and punched into the opening of the cannon, blasting its other end with a backdraft that blew up with tremendous air pressure and popped the giant toad standing behind it like a balloon. It was gruesome demise that was too sizable for the toad-masked Kanon to evade his own death as his lifeless body slumped to the floor littered with toad remains. The toad mask shattered exposing an altogether unimpressive face hiding behind it.</p><p>Mana could neither believe what was transpiring nor move around. The sky had been turning black outracing the pace at which it was truly supposed to do so at this time of year. It began appearing like nothing outside this arena even existed. Even the clouds, the lightning, and stars in the sky – everything drowned out into a void of non-existence. What Midas was babbling about, it might just have been coming to fruition, his continuous attempts at driving the mastermind overseeing this multiverse, the Author, insane had begun to rip the fabric of space and time apart.</p><p>"Shit, this Annual had gone way past 15000 words. I better finish this up quickly. To think that this fruitless story had gone on for five whole fucking years… Do you have any idea how many OP Naruto stories or Uchiha Madara origin stories could have been done at that time!? This whole damned story, it's such a massive waste of space!" Midas clenched his fists.</p><p>A thunderous clang. Mana dreaded to demand of her perception to patch her in to what was going on. The moment she followed the developments in front of her – she'd have realized who had died and whose turn it was. Still, time was cruel and, eventually, she became caught up even without any effort from her part. It was neither of her peers that suffered a grisly doom. Not yet. The vociferous thud was that of the Seventh Hokage's fist digging into Midas' bronze mask and shattering it to pieces.</p><p>"The Seventh?" Midas mumbled in a tone that felt familiar to Mana now that the Seventh's fist forced his mask off.</p><p>The man underneath the mask mirrored the appearance of Lord Seventh except for shiny, pink hair streaming behind him as if rustled by a constant, supernatural force to do so. Midas' face had a mean shine to it, a hint of psychopathy and madness, the signs of inebriation with infinite power that threatened all that exists.</p><p>"I got your message, Kagana," Seventh withdrew from his opponent, somewhat taken aback by both the man's appearance and his ability to take a punch from him without blowing up just like everyone that Midas marked for death splattered.</p><p>"I see… That ball of gas and the robins… She was reporting to you, my mirror-image," Midas dragged his fist across his face to wipe the slobber off his lip. The fact that the narrative still had some cohesion and that the story stopped to implode on itself for a minute and a half appeared to throw him off more than the blow from one of the five strongest ninja in the world.</p><p>"What is the meaning of this?" the Seventh demanded an answer. "Why do you look exactly like me!? Who is responsible for this, Kumo, Kiri?"</p><p>"Kumo, Kiri? Are those the farthest extents to which your feeble mind can reach? I, Seventh, am beyond not just this world but this universe, no, this multiverse, rather, even the omniverse, whatever the Author imagines that being," Midas spread his arms out, leaving himself wide open. It was something that the Seventh exploited by moving in in a boxer's stance and delivering a couple of power strikes that bounced off of Midas without as much as leaving an impression.</p><p>The noise behind those strikes, the shockwaves that reached for entire kilometers, pulling trees from their roots, the crackling jolts from the heart of the force of impact. These were otherworldly blows and yet Midas didn't care, just like a being such as he described himself being like would not have cared.</p><p>"I don't think you get it, big man," Midas taunted his esteemed opponent. Seeing his opponent close enough for an effective counter and in a state of temporary shock he could exploit, the leader of Kanon delivered a spinning clothesline that sent the Seventh sliding back though the Hokage had managed to land on his feet. "This isn't some sort of trickery, this is no transformation. I've obtained your body for reals."</p><p>"The body of Lord Seventh!?" Inori exclaimed. "How is that possible?"</p><p>Midas raised his right arm and flicked with a finger, sending a miniature shockwave of pressurized air that hit Inori straight in the forehead, snapping his neck back in an awkward manner that relayed the man's demise long before he actually hit the ground from his backward tumble.</p><p>"You annoying gnat. Haven't you been listening? The Author's a wreck so I can get whatever I want just by hassling her in the review section. I have wanted to end this story right after it started though I had no way of directly interacting with it and just leaving mean reviews wasn't fast enough. The Author sucks so much that she can't even run her own story into the ground in an efficient manner. I had to be the one for the job, I'm the only one man enough to do it," Midas pointed his thumb at himself, gloating.</p><p>"Is that supposed to mean something to us?" the Seventh straightened his back out and stretched his neck and shoulders out with warm-up exercises before rolling up his sleeves, revealing sealing glyphs painted all over his body from his wrist to his shoulders.</p><p>"Who cares if any of you losers understand what I'm saying, you're all nobodies anyway. Real Naruto characters like Madara or Itachi would have understood, they'd have been on the same page in a snap!" Midas snapped his fingers in a showy manner. "Useless trash like you don't deserve to occupy the same category as all-time greats such as those guys."</p><p>"Let's say that all of this, this entire universe, multiverse, whatever, is just all a story written by some author," Mana spoke up, knowing that she was begging for execution at this point. After all, she was the main target of Kanon this whole time and Midas was just flexing and having fun with his immeasurable power inside this universe. "Why would you just want to end it before the author does? Maybe there are people that actually like it, people that actually want to see it end the way it was intended. Maybe the author herself wants to see her original vision on the page too. You can ignore the story, you can criticize it if it deserves it and be as harsh on it as it deserves. But why would you intentionally try to sabotage it and destroy everything?"</p><p>"You know, Mana, I've been wondering for some time if you were actually a SI OC. It's hard to tell if I should even waste my time talking to you or if I should just snap you away and let this whole atrocity of a multiverse burn. Just in case any semblance of the author does speak from your lips, I'll reply just this once. A fellow human deserves a response, unlike useless OC trash littering this world. It's because this story is a bother to my eyes," Midas postured with a maniacal expression.</p><p>The Seventh wasn't about to listen to any more of Midas' posturing. Uzumaki Midoben activated the seals littering his body. His muscles began to swell while the size of his body began pumping up to almost half of his total size measured in the total increase of his height. Midoben's chakra changed as well, from the combination of a green and orange in the signature it put out, it became crimson with rotating jets of white. From being an icon of political selfish need to protect and nurture his home to being the greatest village in the world, Midoben became an icon of power and greatness in a single leap in strength and speed.</p><p>"Oh? Gonna come at me seriously then?" Midas shifted his attention to Midoben with a mocking smirk. It was impossible not to notice the drastic shift in his own chakra too. Midas' chakra changed colors from malicious pink to a darker, magenta shade with jets of black of matching patterns to Midoben's mixed into it.</p><p>"This isn't a power I show most opponents. It is not a power I am comfortable the village knowing I possess," Midoben pointed his finger at Midas before taking a split moment to warn the special jounin cowering behind him with a glance. They all got the warning to stay quiet about what they'd see from this point on.</p><p>"Yes, yes… The Morningstar Sealing Method. I inhabit your body, your body from an alternate timeline that the Author snagged for me in response to a review I penned down but yours all the same," Midas waved his hand in dismissal. "I know that everyone in your village possesses a Morningstar Seal from which you draw power to amp yourself up in a moment of need. I am also aware that after becoming Hokage you've had ample opportunity to spread your seal across the entire world during political trips and summits, like a parasite to leech off of."</p><p>"Oh? Is that all that you're aware of?" Midoben raised an eyebrow. "It's a rare moment that I can catch someone like you off-guard so I'd better revel in this rare occasion."</p><p>"H-Huh?" Midas scratched his pink hair erratically. "What do you mean? After all the time wasted reading this story so I could do this right after all the story-time spent examining your abilities, do you mean I've missed something? You're bluffing, I am from a future version of you, I know all that you know and then some!"</p><p>"So you are not aware that I've not only spread the Morningstar Seal across the world but, during the Interuniversal and Intertemporal Chuunin Exams, I've also spread it across all the universes and timelines that participated in the exam too?" Midoben taunted his opponent, letting the crimson gleam bursting forth from his seal become so intense that they whited out. The majestic, pearly aura overwhelmed the red glow of power and began matching Midas' own multiverse-shaking aura.</p><p>"The recent Chuunin Exam arc, huh?" Midas laughed out. "Who had the time to read that slog? It's so poorly paced and the Author missed the point of every character from the original Naruto she introduced. Can you believe she eliminated Sakura in the first round? That is just one of the crimes that this story deserves to burn to the ground for!"</p><p>"I guess even omniscient beings aren't immune to their own vanity," Midoben breathed out and vanished from his location, lunging at Midas. The multiverse-shaking lariat hit Midas straight in the chest as Midoben crashed into the enemy. The Seventh roared out and charged past his opponent but Midas did not move, it was the Seventh's own amped-up arm that had to fold in the face of an immovable enemy. The Seventh turned around with a cross aimed at the lower back of Midas. The impact sent a vociferous rend throughout the entire world, sending crackling ripples while the fabric of space-time struggled to patch itself back together and meld like the disrupted surface of a serene lake.</p><p>"You'll be the end of nothing!" Midoben yelled out as he threw another power strike aimed at the back of Midas' face. One that launched the threat to all that exists flying in a forceful tunnel of energy that reduced the entire hall to rubble that floated in the collapse into nothingness.</p><p>"Midas was right, this entire story really is collapsing…" Yushijin's gaze widened when he realized that state of the multiverse outside their battlefield.</p><p>An outrageous tear opened up underneath Yushijin's feet as a whirlwind of force incarnate enveloped the young man, reducing him to a messy clog of the fundamental particles he was comprised of all of which, one by one, turned to inky letters that splattered into meaningless puddles on the flattening surface of what remained of all existence before fading away.</p><p>"You… You're just the worst, whatever your name was…" Midas' disgruntled voice came from the roaring echo of devastation that Midoben's attack had left. "From the moment you were introduced, it was so painfully apparent that you were just an Author's wet dream or something. Some cool edgelord with a big sword whom all the girls liked. To think that the Author even went ahead and tried making it look like Mana and you won't be ending up hooked up… Disgusting. None of you, except for Mana, mean anything but you… You, I am glad to obliterate."</p><p>"He's barely taken any damage…" Midoben ground his teeth in frustration. Even after he had been sucking the seals he had planted all across the multiverse and all the different timelines, all of this unbelievable power had failed him.</p><p>"Of course, I haven't, dumbass," Midas shrugged with mockery decorating his face. "Don't you realize that as an entity from the real world, nothing in this dumbass story can hurt me. Sure, I'm borrowing a body to interact with it so you can destroy this vessel but I am eternal. That's why I bother fooling around for this long in the first place – because it's kind of fun to wield absolute power, even in this trainwreck of a story."</p><p>"Stop!" Mana cried out. "Stop killing everyone, if you want to kill me, just go ahead and do it! All this delusion you have about stories and authors and characters and whatever… If you believe for a second that killing me will make it all feel better about yourself, just go ahead and do it!"</p><p>"Wow, you really care, don't you? About all these meaningless waste of space of a word document that spawned them…" Midas chuckled to himself. "Maybe it's that you really care about your story, maybe it's because you're just a character, like those other guys and maybe the author really doesn't see a shred of herself in you, who knows, frankly, who cares? Just let me handle this business and then I'll be glad to satisfy your request."</p><p>"Handle me?" Midoben grunted.</p><p>"Sure, you imbecile, haven't you been wondering why your unfathomable power has failed to even dent this physical vessel that my essence has chosen to inhabit? It's because this body is from your future. This means that no matter how strong you become in this timeline – I'll be stronger than it because I come from that same point in the future. I am the one and only body that works that way, the Author really believed that I liked her story and gave me this special exception of how timelines work in this story of a body," Midas gloated.</p><p>The Seventh's light flickered as the man fell to his knees in realization of his failure. It took just one, glittering with majestic starlight blow to send the Seventh flying off into the oblivion of non-existence, outside the farthest off reaches of the story.</p><p>"Heh, I gotta say, I'll miss this kind of fun. It felt as funny as that time Goku shattered the manga panel…" Midas dusted his hands before turning to the rest of the overwhelmed and powerless ninja. With an invitational movement of his upper palm, Midas raised a draft of wind that called Kagana up to his clutch, and from that point on the man didn't even need to squeeze that hard to end the special jounin's life.</p><p>The black stains of her runny make-up had rubbed off on her hands where Mana tried wiping her tears with them. What little remained of it ran down her face in the form of blackened tears. With the entirety of existence unraveling before her, Mana just didn't have the strength to go on. She could have probably struggled some, made a mark before this madman ends it all, ruins the story. What was the point though? It wasn't that she felt powerless, it was that she had already failed in everything she wished to accomplish.</p><p>What was the point of fighting, what was there to protect when everything and everyone was dead already? She failed to protect anyone.</p><p>"I recall you asking me why I wanted to end this story, why didn't I just move on, you asked me that, right?" Midas' despicable voice made Mana snap out of her self-loathing as his hand grabbed her cheeks and forced her to look up and into his eyes. "There's no harm of telling you, I suppose, it's because it was irritating. You open up , you go to check out the Naruto fanfictions being updated and there it is – Tales of a Ninja Magician has been updated again. It's an eyesore, I know it's just one story but it is a waste of space. If one story could take its place, any story, even one written in Indonesian that I can't understand a single word of, even a total crackfic, that's fine. Just disappear already."</p><p>Midas' punch blasted Mana's head clean off but, instead of blood, a shower of white petals filled the devastated remains of the multiversal ooze. Midas looked around a bit taken aback, tapping into his false courage and confidence that nothing in this story could surprise him anymore.</p><p>"This isn't right, genjutsu shouldn't affect me. My mind is that of the real world, I exist on a whole different dimension tier to these jobbers…" Midas looked around a tad miffed as the washing flood of white petals of an ethereal lotus expanded its reach and rebuilt the arena around them from nothing but separate pieces of rubble. A few of the petals erupted in a blinding gleam and took humanoid shapes, rising in the form of the deceased characters.</p><p>The whirlwind of the white lotus petals expanded to envelop the entire planet and rebuilt it from nothing but the multiversal ooze. The Earth was just the beginning, the moon and the planets and planetoids beyond, the various spacial calamities and occurrences, quasars and magnetars, and the like. At an escalating pace, the white lotus surrounded the entire multiverse and leaked out into the fragments of the omniverse that Midas' rebellion against the story had affected.</p><p>Midas turned back to where he last saw Mana kneeling, collapsed, and devastated before him and at his mercy. The leader of Kanon had intended to bash and tear at the main character until the story unraveled once more to the state he had left it in up until it began reassembling.</p><p>"No, no, no… You don't get to grow a spine on me now, you hack fraud!" Midas yelled out into the void of the rebirthing multiverse around him. "At least My Immortal is entertaining, you're bad and that's that! Bad and boring! You hear me, you depressed wreck? Your story's crap and it's a depressing slog to read so just sit down and watch me do what you lack the stones to do!"</p><p>A flash made Midas back up a bit when he looked down at where Mana's beheaded fake body was before it dispersed into the shower of white lotus petals signifying the rebirth of the story that Midas sought so hard to destroy, the leader of Kanon saw Mana with her head back where it belonged being reborn again from the same shower of white lotus petals. Something was different about her, the magician's eyes gleamed with white starlight and the same gleam instead of the deep sapphire blue that her chakra signature usually felt like soaked her entire aura.</p><p>"What's this!? Now you're putting a Deus Ex Machina ending into your story!? This is the biggest PIS I've ever seen, just like Kishimoto, you've run out of ideas, haven't you!?" Midas mocked Mana, addressing something else entirely through the shimmering infinity inside her eyes.</p><p>"You've said it before, Midas, this story has gotten well past 15000 words already. You've overstayed your welcome now and the Author is sick of your shit," Mana spoke up with the weight of something objective and emotionless speaking through her.</p><p>"No, no, no no! You're just a bully, boy, you're so pathetic, you're just making strawmen at this point, writing people that criticize you into a character and humiliating them, you're a useless, weak, pathetic person!" Midas threw a hissy fit after realizing that even his vast power paled to the entity acting through Mana's soulless body temporarily. Until the evil that she had unleashed upon her own world could be dealt with and order could be restored to the story once more.</p><p>Mana raised her hands up, channeling the sparkling aura around her and focusing it all into her hands as tendrils of white light reached out and surrounded Midas as well, in spite of his resistance. With tightening clutches, Midas' body became nothing but filling inside the ball of primal, white energy that Mana then raised her arms up and released into the heavens. Once it had reached the very edge of the story, the sphere of ethereal energy burst into a rain of starfall without a single speck of Midas' corrupting energy inside it.</p><hr/><p>"Mana…" a voice made the punkish magician open her eyes and sit up. She was familiar to the landscape of inside her own mind, the rippling reflection of a bottomless surface leading to her subconscious beneath her and the vastness of her potential looming overhead. This voice didn't sound like anything the magician knew though, it spoke in some alien language though its contents were familiar to the magician despite this being the first time she heard it.</p><p>Somehow Mana knew that this entity was not speaking naturally, almost as if it possessed an accent and Mana felt like she might have spoken a more natural version of this alien language than this thing talking to her inside her mind.</p><p>"You're not the space baby I kept imagining in my mind before, huh?" Mana scratched her head, feeling groggy.</p><p>"No, I know that it's a grievous crime for us to meet and that the few fans I have will rip into me for doing this but… It's just that I know how you're feeling deep down after learning the truth of how this story works. I just… I just wanted to apologize, I guess,"</p><p>"Apologize?" Mana wondered, "You do know you're apologizing to yourself, essentially, right? If this hogwash Midas has been spouting was true all along, we have no autonomy whatsoever anyway."</p><p>"That's not true."</p><p>"Excuse me? I thought we were all just characters you made up," Mana didn't like the idea of talking to shapeless authors that couldn't be bothered to even make-up an avatar to appear in their own story, instead choosing to speak with disembodied voices inside the minds of their characters but it didn't seem like she had much choice.</p><p>This Annual had to end in a way that shaped at least a meager illusion of meaning behind it so that people didn't feel like their time has been wasted.</p><p>"That's somewhat true, but that doesn't seem that you don't have your own voices. Contrary to what you and Midas think, I don't just write random nonsense that comes into my head, everything about you that I put into your souls has meaning. Your personalities, your histories, your relationships, they all dictate the story, that's why all of you are, in a way, also channeling me inside you. In a way, you're all the authors of this story. I'm just the one that mashes the buttons and types the story up…"</p><p>"You're right, I know why you've come to apologize. This story has been a massive shitshow. Ever since it started, you've just been ragging on me, throwing turds at me, what's the point of building me up if all you're going to do is peel me bit by bit until nothing's left?" Mana cried out finally gathering the boiling stones in her gut to lash out at the architect of her life's story.</p><p>"…"</p><p>"I could see that ellipsis, you know," Mana crossed her arms and pouted.</p><p>"Sorry, I don't have any justification for that. It's just that… I know that it seems terrible and everything feels like it's the worst that it can be but… I guess that's just how life feels sometimes. I write because it helps me, sometimes I feel sad, sometimes my life hurts a lot and, just like you, I feel like nothing's ever gonna get any worse than it is right now and then it does. Life's creative in the ways it can find to tear you down."</p><p>"Is that your excuse then? Realism? We've been one for what felt like an eternity, I don't recall seeing people breathing fire in your memories," Mana tapped her foot impatiently.</p><p>"It's not about just realism. It's just that seeing you overcome struggle while remaining yourself is inspiring to me. Penning down my own frustrations and sadness, occupying my mind when life seems like it's the worst it can possibly get, that helps me emotionally and it helps me grow as a person too. Writing and learning to structure your thoughts and plan story beats ahead of time has helped me countless times in the years of "real-time" that I've come to know you for,"</p><p>"I see… So, I guess… I've been helping you without knowing it," Mana scratched her cheek with a smirk she couldn't control.</p><p>"Yep, I suppose that's just what you do best – sacrifice a pound of your own flesh so that the day of someone else, somewhere else gets just a little bit better. I just want you to know that causing you pain and making you suffer, no matter how bad it seems, is never my intention. It's just that I have a story to tell and the process of telling it is healing my own hurts in the process and sometimes that story gets dark and it isn't always going to turn out great for you. One thing I can promise you is that you'll be standing up and going at it swinging, just like you always have. Don't ever lose faith just because you think you've failed everybody because there are more people beyond the reaches of this story that you are helping by just being you."</p><p>"Oh well… What's the point, you're going to snap your fingers and make me wake up in my bed, think this has just been my dream, right? Nothing matters, nothing learned, back to the beginning, right?" Mana shrugged with a pout. This was the expression of someone who knew that she had even tougher times ahead of her but knew deep down that she had to plow through all of that because that was just the right thing to do. Because that was the person her parents raised her up to be, that was the kind of character the author intended her to be.</p><p>"Nope, you can keep this whole experience. I'm not the type of person to offer rewinds and freebies, for the most part, unless it's me screwing things up for you guys. Midas has been entirely my fault, sorry about that. I should have never given him the agency I gave over my own story, it's just that I let him pull this shroud over my eyes, a tale that my story has been helping him so much and that he just wanted a place to escape to. I will put some measures to keep you guys from breaking the fourth wall though, some people don't really like it when that happens."</p><p>"One last thing, I'm not actually going to end up marrying Yushijin, am I?" Mana looked up at the void of potential over her head with hopeful eyes.</p><p>"Oh, no… I'm not sure where he got that idea from, honestly,"</p><p>"Phew… Okay then, take care," Mana nodded. She wouldn't lie about having forgiven the author for the difficulties she's been put through at her hands. In a way, the Author has been the architect of every tragedy in her life, every difficulty she's been through. Sure, she's also been responsible for every good thing too but… Sometimes it seemed like there was a load more of the former than the latter.</p><p>"No, Mana, you take care. I know sometimes your story will be difficult to put up with but… Just try to enjoy the little things and have some fun from time to time. Here's one to another five years of knowing you…"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0677"><h2>677. Back To Basics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A resonating sonic boom spread through the hall. Flames looking to devour the noise, the expensive stuffing, and coating of the hall's chairs and anything else that its tongues could lick failed to taste anything for they lagged behind the booming shockwave and turned blue before reaching the first row. Upon its elegant transformation began the drastic reduction of the flames centered around the rubble that stayed on the stage instead of being flung all over the hall.</p><p>The devastated, pointy shrapnel that flew toward the crowd soon became fluttery and soft, turning into butterflies and filling the hall. The insects flapped their wings, pooling together into a swarm and took to the ceiling where they burnt up into flames of sapphire blue, becoming nothing but the traces of harmless blue flickers littering the wooden frames of the ceiling but, with time, even those died out without leaving much trace on the structure it covered.</p><p>Mana might have put too much effort into her performance. The whole butterfly bit which required her masterful shape and elemental transformation to pull off, even if her trick would have been entirely useless in combat as nothing in her harmless flames had any sort of combat potential except the flashy distraction bit, was unnecessary since there was next to nobody in the seats to hurt. The magician bowed to her imaginary audience and thanked them for their unspent time and non-existent attention before leaving for her cleaner's closet to change and go home.</p><p>"Eh, don't worry, kiddo, they'll be coming back soon enough…" Mr. Hiro came in to comfort Mana about yet another show unseen by her audience. It was no cruel twist of fate at all. Mana was a controversial figure so she received virtually no promotion from Mr. Hiro's part. Any poster with her face on it would have been defaced, torn up, or otherwise vandalized and, Mr. Hiro might not have said it, but he neither needed nor wanted the backlash of being publicly tied to rotten Golden Child.</p><p>"I'm fine either way," Mana replied with a cold wash. These days she found herself caring much less about appearing perfect. Ever since her change of attitude and style she's been commonly getting sloppier with preparation and, had it not been for her experience, she might have gotten hurt. Sometimes she didn't even pack or even use her stage outfit on stage, choosing to just step up in leather and rags and almost throw the magic out at the non-existent faces before flipping the ever-present nobody off and walking off-stage.</p><p>"Eh, don't be that way, kid. You don't need to break your back every week for nothing. I've been meaning to talk to you about something though…" Mr. Hiro scratched his head. He found this conversation uncomfortable. It didn't take a profound face-reader to tell.</p><p>"I'll pay up for the rent of the hall. I've been paying the rent since I was twelve, haven't I?" Mana turned to Mr. Hiro. She knew deep down that she had the means to pay for her time in the spotlight, even if nobody wanted to look at the said spotlight, though it was because of that certainty that her voice shook uneasy. She was so sure that things were fine that she might have overlooked something.</p><p>"Technically, it was Hanada Katsuo who got you taking off, but that's beside the point. The point isn't the money, it's actually your performance," Mr. Hiro shrugged.</p><p>"Look, I know that I've been improvising a lot more lately and that I botch a thing or two. I didn't have much time to practice in Jigoku though I'm spending overtime practicing now," Mana felt her tone sounding defensive. She was embarrassed by the much less structured performance she was giving off, oftentimes coming up with new tricks and stunts on the fly using just the barebones tools she didn't forget to bring to the show that day but, as was becoming her way, she's been putting up the spikes and curling into a ball instead of showing it.</p><p>"Nah, your tricks ain't it, though I don't think you should be chasing trends you yourself inspired. Those punks that caught on to your act and made it edgy or brought it to the streets are doing their own thing, you'd better leave the stunts to them while you do your smoke and mirror thing, though that's just a piece of advice. My point is that… Would it be okay if you protected yourself a little bit more? Lately, stunts have been taking more and more of your time and I'm getting a bit worried. Just today you blew yourself up inside an iron maiden that you additionally skewered with swords," Mr. Hiro spread his arms out. He felt like he didn't need to emphasize any further on what he meant and perhaps he didn't have to.</p><p>"I was thinking… Maybe we should sink the trap underwater once more people show up? I know, Water Release isn't my style so the possibilities with manipulating water are limited but… It would put more tension to the act and the water would muzzle the blast from being such a nuisance to the front row…" Mana looked up, spinning around in her chair.</p><p>"Are you even listening to yourself, kid? You want to shut yourself inside an iron maiden, additionally skewer it with swords, stick it with explosive tags and then sink it… If you muck up not getting perforated or impaled, not getting blown up or not drowning, any single one of those would kill you," Mana didn't have to smell Mr. Hiro's sweat to realize that the hall owner was getting nervous. Its luster was reflecting ample of the light that the warehouse lightbulb was putting out.</p><p>"Okay, let's put sinking on hold. You know, if we mixed sand with water, it would become even harder to escape and manipulate. Wet sand is a real bother to work with, just bouncing ideas…" Mana shrugged and stood up, showing that she was ready to leave.</p><p>"Kid, I get it that you're crying really loud for help over here but… I'm not sure what I can do for you, honestly. All I can do is care for the kid I've seen grow up on my stage and tell her to knock it off with the attempted suicide every week," Mr. Hiro pleaded.</p><p>"Oh, come on…" Mana faked a sly smirk. "If nobody sees or hears the tree falling down in the woods – did it really happen?"</p><p>"Look, kid… I've been storming some ideas with my old lady and… I don't want to be associated with you publicly for the time being and you want to get the publicity of your act back on track, right?" Mr. Hiro stopped Mana from leaving the closet by grabbing her elbow softly just to stop her from strutting away.</p><p>"Harsh…" Mana closed her eyes, trying to cackle when her chest burnt up with swelling tears from how rudely this brutal honesty had played her sensitive nerves like strings.</p><p>"Don't get sassy with me, I'm trying to help both of us out here. How 'bout this – World Magic Tour!?" Mr. Hiro posed as if he was making the flashy neon signs into being just over his head, looking mighty proud of the flashy work of art he had created.</p><p>"World Magic Tour?" Mana sighed, trying to show the minimal amount of interest necessary not to have Mr. Hiro hassle her for not caring about her own act.</p><p>"Yeah, you've always been pretty huge with foreigners. Mostly it's because you've only performed in Konoha and people had to flood here to see your act. If you move around the world for a year or two, you'll have the time for everybody to cool the hell down about that situation you've found yourself in while you're working on building up more fame abroad. After you're back with all of what you've squandered returned to you, who cares if those Konoha types fail to show up to your shows when the hall will sell for an arm and a leg abroad?" Mr. Hiro did his best impression of an infernal tyrant pitching his Faustian bargain.</p><p>Except there was not exactly anything deceitful or sinister about it. The idea was quite sound. The only problem that Mana saw in the immediate vicinity when going for it was obtaining permission from Hokage to leave the village. Then again, plenty of jounin and especially Sannin left the village on pilgrimage and training all the time. Maybe she's had a few favors to call with the village after shutting Kanon down for them and restoring parts of the omniverse to its semi-coherent state.</p><p>"That doesn't sound too bad, I'll run it by Lord Seventh. He'll likely shut this shit down immediately but…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"But at least we'll know we tried. When it comes to the rest of your life, trying's the least that you can do," Mr. Hiro grabbed Mana's hand and pressed it in a grateful handshake. "Just don't you go around trying to kill yourself on the stage abroad. Buy yourself a mirror, blow some smoke on it, you used to be a class act, cut the edgy shit out, and leave it to the self-proclaimed pros."</p><p>"Mana!" a yell that might have qualified for the proud award of being described as a desperate shriek clawed its way through the somber silence of the absent crowd that never showed up for Mana's show in the first place, save for a few exceptions. It was a voice or irritating but also so welcome to her ear that the magician could have recognized it even in a semi-conscious state.</p><p>"Meiko…" Mana mumbled, failing to scrape the snark off of the kitchen walls to slap it at her best friend. She was too happy to see the redhead alive and okay after all this time, frankly.</p><p>"I missed it, didn't I?" Meiko panted, looking like she had worked up quite a sweat and barely could stay up on her feet.</p><p>"No, you're just in time. The show's over, you won't have to see it anymore," Mana shrugged. "I'm not sure what's on next, the crews renting the hall don't really let me into their circles these days."</p><p>"Mana… Look, there's so much I wanted to say. I'm sorry I missed your show, I've just… Look, it doesn't matter, it's a lousy excuse anyway. Can we just… Get a bite to eat or something?" Meiko gave Mana the puppy eyes. As crude as the magician tried making herself out to be in an attempt to shake off the few persistent apples on her support tree, these puppy eyes were a newfound weakness to that resolve to make the whole world hate her for what she's done to Guru Ayushi before working some respect back up for the work she's doing as a stage magician.</p><p>"Sure. I won't be able to treat you though, I'm not nearly as flushed with cash these days…" Mana sighed.</p><p>"That's fine, I make my own donuts now!" Meiko shined Mana with a beaming smile and a thumb up. "I got promoted to chuunin, Kiyomi too."</p><p>"Oh, I missed out on that…" Mana turned away. She really did regret not being able to be there and support her friends during the Chuunin Exams. More than she expected to have someone by her side in the last half-year of nothing but the crapshoot downpour she's been getting. "Congrats."</p><p>"Yep, I guess we've finally caught up to you!" Meiko nodded to herself. Mana didn't want to blow that balloon up nor did she feel energized enough to tell Meiko about her own promotion right after being released from prison. Frankly, talking about that would have felt like gloating and nothing else and would have served no other use so it was a pointless topic anyway.</p><p>"Probably surpassed me too. Spent six months doing jack shit…" Mana replied in a grungy tone.</p><p>"Yeah, it must have been tough, wasn't it?" Meiko made an exaggerated face full of pity. She was good at being a cartoon character given life, mostly because she felt without any restriction or deeper layer of thought and was lousy at hiding her feelings. "We've been thinking on how to check up with you or support you in some way but… We didn't even know where Jigoku was. It hurt, knowing you were in trouble and that there was nothing we could have done to help!"</p><p>"Yeah, it must have hurt really bad…" Mana rolled her eyes.</p><p>Meiko saw that frustration boiling deep down in Mana's gut but she lacked the words to confront or deal with that so she just dropped that subject altogether. Walking around with the blacksmith actually made Mana feel less visible. The solitude, the stigma of rejection that she carried around wherever she went sort of marked her and made her stand out no matter how hard Mana tried to rebel against that outlook with her changes in style and appearance.</p><p>The redhead chuckled to herself when the two walked into Yakiniku-Q and Mana felt obliged to try and conceal her face with letting her hair fall over her face while she covered her cheeks, lips drowning in cherry red and her puny chin behind her hands. She must have still thought that Mana was avoiding the hassle of being recognized by her fans. Then again, she had no reason not to think that way. The world being just unicorns farting rainbows to her was the most charming quality of Meiko, though, now Mana had the perspective of how frustrating it might have looked to someone not sharing that view nor feeling particularly inspired by it.</p><p>"I'll have the Salamander-Dragon Ribs, four servings of Salted Beef-Tongue one of each: barbecue, ketchup, honey-mustard, and red wine, the Fire-Mountain Bulgogi, Gold Tyrant's Jingisukan with additional salt to complement the lemon juice…" Meiko's order tired Mana out and she wasn't even the one writing it down.</p><p>One notable reason why Mana felt worn out by Meiko's order was that Mana just looked away and stared through the window on her left as if she had seen someone she knew and that person just stopped in a moment in time and remained frozen for her admiration. If only the waitress didn't see her face, if only, maybe, she didn't care that Mana was eating in Yakiniku Q and didn't tell her manager, while the manager didn't consider it a problem and kick Mana out, making a stunt for publicity points with the audience that loved grilled meat and hated delinquent vandals.</p><p>"I know you're ordering a lot but… I'm afraid your friend is going to also have to order something. Sorry, restaurant policy, though you can just have some water if you really don't feel like eating." The waitress turned to Mana, the magician couldn't see her eyes though she could feel the tense, suspicious aura lingering and forcing the air to press at her chest and shortening the breath for the young woman.</p><p>"I'll… I'll just have Salmon Bibimpap if it's okay." Mana mumbled, still looking away though the sight of her own reflection in the window sent chills down her spine. There was not a single doubt in the magician's mind that the waitress had to see the reflection too – she knew who she was.</p><p>"Heh, alright, ironically enough, I might end up mixing up your order just because it comes right after Meiko-san's and I haven't written it down," the waitress let out a burst of nervous laughter and walked off.</p><p>It could have gone better. It could have gone way worse.</p><p>There was clearly tension in the air, though, the way Mana took it, Yakiniku Q must have valued the revenue stream that Meiko was providing them with far more than the good publicity they'd have gained for kicking out the friend that Meiko was dining with. At least Meiko's bottomless stomach served one use…</p><p>"Heh, I would have never recognized you if you didn't answer my call," Meiko laughed out to herself, shaking in her seat, pumped up while waiting for her order. "You've changed your style up a whole lot, just like Kiyomi has."</p><p>"Well, I wanted to get a mohawk done too but then I realized that getting a mohawk was the worst way of avoiding attention," Mana shrugged with snark still stuck to her teeth, leaving a dry taste in her mouth.</p><p>"So, how come you're low on ryo these days? I've found myself capable of supporting pretty much any hobby and lifestyle I can think up of from the income, though the missions have gotten way harder too. It's tough to even imagine how out of your depth you must have felt having been promoted all those years back…" Meiko leaned back in her seat, relaxing a bit, which was a luxury Mana didn't permit herself. More and more the magician found her eyes wandering over the entire establishment catching wayward stares from the visitors, hoping that none of them would cause any problems for her and Meiko.</p><p>The last thing Mana needed on her conscious was knowing that she wrecked Meiko's chances of eating out at her favorite joint.</p><p>"Well, I haven't been the most popular pick for missions lately. Plus, the only mission I have managed to nab was ranked B+, ranging on A-rank, so, as it turns out, the world tends not to approach its end every day, which leaves me with plenty of downtimes in between missions," Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Huh? You're getting those sorts of missions, huh? That's amazing, so far I've only been handed out one B-Rank mission and we did it in a squad too. Still, you should be more responsible with your finances, a high tier B-Rank mission has to pay enough to pay for a respectable home," there was something rich in Meiko scolding Mana about responsibility with money.</p><p>Saving a chunk of the omniverse from total collapse and preventing leaking of village information might have counted Mana in for a considerable reward but said reward did not count in the luxuries of supporting her father's life on a weekly basis as well as assisting her mother's business as payback for the harm that she's caused it in the first place.</p>
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<a name="section0678"><h2>678. Weed Or Root?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Whenever one treated Meiko to some food or, in this case, allowed her to treat herself, there was always the awkward moment when one was done with their food but, naturally, it took far longer for Meiko to finish gorging on her own treats. The blacksmith was the type of person to inspire worry if they could both eat and talk at the same time so Mana could recall just relaxing and watching her friend's finishing touches that lasted longer than her own full course.</p><p>Except, right now, there was nothing relaxing about hanging around the place any longer than absolutely necessary. Still, with Meiko, the fact that food was still on the table comprised all the necessary elements of that which was absolutely necessary.</p><p>Something that came off as a new experience to Mana was the fact that while she walked the evening Konoha streets alongside a friend, she received far fewer of the more abhorrent examples of disrespect and the disdain that the village felt for Mana's guts. The worst she got while walking alongside Meiko was a few sullen stares but that was about it and it was just the ground layer comprised of mere feathers compared to what Mana was used to.</p><p>"I was always wondering though, you make more money than both me and Kiyomi, right? I mean, maybe less than Kiyomi now that she's become all big Yamanaka princess and all but… Still… How come your arsenal has mostly remained the same, you still live in the same house and it feels like you can barely afford eating out?" Meiko squinted at Mana. If anyone else asked her that question, they'd have been smacked across the face with something mean and undeserving though this was Meiko, someone with whom Mana went through thick and thin and someone she could have always relied on and wished a similar relationship from the other side.</p><p>"Things aren't easy right now. My mother's business is suffering because of what I've done. One chunk of people walked out and never looked back when I got imprisoned, far more left when mother spoke out in my defense in the public. I mean… Our family name is on the title of the Nakotsumi Café, it was to come eventually that she'd have to speak her mind," Mana pocketed her hands. Focusing on kicking an empty can of conserved tomatoes helped her not fumble over her words or crash in embarrassment.</p><p>"Yeah, though… I wonder if anyone really expected your mother to have anything else but words of support…" Meiko scratched the back of her head. The blacksmith stood out so much with her blazing hairdo and challenging to the eye casual streetwear that nobody ever started off looking at Mana when the two were sharing their time together.</p><p>"Maybe not but things are rarely rational when human emotion is involved…" Mana sighed. "Case and point – my father. It costs my soul and then some to keep him alive and hooked up to the life-support machinery."</p><p>"Whoa, it costs that much?" Meiko freaked out. "Then again, it's cutting edge gadgetry. No other place on Earth has comparable medical technology to us and gizmos of pretty much any kind are expensive to come by."</p><p>Meiko intended on speaking up, Mana knew what she wanted to talk about and that was why she brought up this topic again. The blacksmith was never somebody that quivered in the face of difficult topics and she was always blunt even when she risked offending somebody though now might have been the first time in fresh memory that the redhead hesitated to shred it as she saw it.</p><p>"You think that we should let him go, don't you?" Mana did the hard lifting for her friend.</p><p>"Well… I mean… Look…" Meiko started stuttering.</p><p>"That's alright, if anyone cared, they'd suggest the same thing. Heck, the medical staff would have long since called it quits. This sort of stunt is not common, usually, people are just let go. It's odd that they even allowed us to bypass their usual policy and let us buy favorable medical opinions." Mana sighed.</p><p>"I can't say I don't understand it. Most people would choose to die in dignity rather than live unconscious and permanently comatose without hopes for ever recovering. Heck, some people would name it as their worst nightmares and more still would say that this sort of life isn't much different from being dead," Meiko shrugged, feeling a boulder shifting off her chest after Mana pulled the veil off of the difficult topic herself. Now the blacksmith found it decidedly easier to be earnest.</p><p>"What's so dignified about being dead? Death strips everything away, even if your behavior moments before it puts one ribbon for honor and one for dignity, in the end, nothing remains. It might sound like just a matter of speech, of perspective but the way father is now… He's not dead, something's there, something to support. I remember every lesson he ever taught me, seeing him still makes me chuckle sometimes when I recall my childhood. Death is the ultimate absence of everything," Mana replied with a pill of bitterness stuck in her throat.</p><p>"Wait… It's not that you don't want to let him go, it's that you can't, is it? Wait, Mana, does your mother want to let him go?" Meiko turned to Mana.</p><p>"I don't know what she wants, honestly. There are times when we argue about it, then there are times when she spends hours in the evening talking to him. There are still things she'd rather talk to him about rather than telling me," Mana flipped off an old woman that appeared to take offense at the magician's very presence on the same street as her as the old lady dropped her bags and clutched at her chest with an expression of outrage. "Of course, I can't let him go, Meiko. When I say that all life is necessary, I don't mean it some of the time, you know…"</p><p>"Holy shit… I mean… I try to not kill, not even when it seems necessary just because I respect your hustle and, frankly, it would be disrespectful of me as your friend to spit in the face of the message you spread and the struggle you put onto yourself but… Your belief is almost approaching toxic levels," Meiko raised an eyebrow without failing to stay truthful with her friend.</p><p>"You sound like Hisako and Kiyomi. I think at this point both of them have called me sick, despite one feeling resolute about killing criminals while the other just likes killing in general," Mana coughed from a dry throat.</p><p>"Hisako… I can't recall meeting her…" Meiko pondered.</p><p>"Really? You might like each other, she's a swordfighter, one of the better ones too," Mana replied. "Anyway, I suppose all bridges are burnt with me and Kiyomi, huh? Things already got pretty tense with us before I was a criminal."</p><p>"Heck if I know... Kiyomi's changed a lot. This one time, before the finals of the Inter-whatever Chuunin Exams, she spoke to me about liking me and after we parted ways she became way different. I think she's married now," Meiko scratched her head.</p><p>"Liking you? Married!?" Mana's jaw dropped. "I was only gone for half a year…"</p><p>"Yeah… She's in charge of the Yamanaka for the most part. She married this Inuzuka fellow, the clans are pretty tight now. I don't think even the Uchiha would screw with the Yamanaka now," Meiko explained. It was better to find it out this way, Mana reckoned, something sparked the feeling that Kiyomi would lash out at her if she appeared in fifty meters to her now.</p><p>"I bet. It's impossible to imagine the village just souring the relationship with both the Yamanaka and the Inuzuka, even if it is to appease the Uchiha." Mana crossed her arms over her chest after pulling her leather jacket in to cover up more of her chest from the late midsummer evening breeze. She wasn't cold, not really. It was a little bit of friendly envy as well as the regret for bridges that remained forever burnt now that made Mana perceive chills.</p><p>"Just for how long are you gonna keep lying?" Meiko looked to Mana with a worried expression.</p><p>"Lying?" Mana asked.</p><p>"To yourself, to the rest of the village. You didn't beat up Guru Ayushi, hurting people just isn't you, not to mention… I mean… Guru Ayushi… He's been stuck in between life and death himself for the last six months. Nobody knows either how to kill him or cure him and here you were kicking his ass to such a state. I think you're cool and probably one of the sharpest tools I've known but… Come on…" Meiko spoke her mind.</p><p>It was odd that she would deny the fact that Mana fought Ayushi at all, something that actually happened instead of questioning Ayushi's motives, which was far closer to the truth. Meiko didn't say it, she didn't have to, but she was hurting from seeing the effect that this life Mana took over had on her. Nobody could live such a life long without letting the sum of all things drag them deep down. Even the hardened shadow-people of the Root questioned Mana's choice and if she could handle this new life she'd be destined to live back before and during the trial.</p><p>"I have things to get at this here… Clothing store," Mana turned at the nearest distraction so that she could avoid being bad at lying to her best friend. She could see how this would end because she'd danced this tango before – she'd lie to Meiko, Meiko would see her through and feel bad about herself for not being trustworthy enough to be trusted with the truth. Classified secrets and best friends with a well-hidden inferiority complex didn't comprise the neatest of combinations.</p><p>"Fine, though I don't think you'll be able to pull those leather pants high enough to cover up all the holes I can see right through…" Meiko pouted. "We should get together again. I'm almost always busy these days but… Maybe we can catch each other in the training grounds some time."</p><p>It was so much like Meiko to hope to be able to physically bully some sense into Mana, though the magician had to admit that she felt somewhat intrigued to see the strength that Meiko had garnered and the skill that helped guide her toward a higher rank.</p><hr/><p>"It has come to our attention that Nakotsumi Mana has been released from prison and that she's even been getting work. Would you care to comment on that, Lord Seventh?" a balding old man with thick glasses turned to the standing leader of the village who continued to shift his attention from the board behind him with leftover scribbles from the meeting that had just transpired to the Council.</p><p>"From what is available on the public records, not only has Nakotsumi Mana been released but she has also been promoted to Special Jounin," a Konoha ninja of thick, spiky brown hair raised the issue, in a rare sight complementing the voice of the civilian councilman.</p><p>"Is that all that the information you've picked up on?" Lord Seventh sat down and weaved his fingers together, speaking through raspy irritation. "How about what common civilians know about the village's plot to brush Guru Ayushi's accident underneath the bed of Nakotsumi Mana?"</p><p>"Common civilians?" a plump old lady from the Civilian Council looked displeased by the Hokage's tone when addressing the people she represented. "Care to elaborate on what those words mean? Do you somehow see yourself above the people you serve, Lord Seventh?"</p><p>"Of course, in a manner of speaking. I am above them in the sense that I concern myself with far more sensitive and important matters than they do. I do not, however, consider myself a superior man to them. If you meant to discredit me in front of the council, lady councilwoman, the word superior is what you were looking for," Lord Seventh growled.</p><p>"We do not mean to discredit you, Lord Seventh, it is just that the Civilian Council receives a ton of complaints about that girl. People are uneasy about her presence and her work inside the village escalates matters further…" the councilwoman stood firm on her position.</p><p>"With the strides we've achieved in improving the civilian rights inside this ninja village of ours, surely the esteemed Civilian Council can handle writing back to some sheets of paper while us ninja may worry about us not getting nuked away into oblivion as Iwagakure was," Lord Seventh appeared thoroughly unimpressed by the case the Civilian Council was building toward Mana.</p><p>"True, if it were just mere complaints…" this time it was another ninja councilman speaking up. A middle-aged woman of pink hair and sharp features that suggested a bit of western, Land of Wind element in her upbringing. "Though whether she likes it or not, Nakotsumi Mana's presence sharpens the conflict between the civilians and ninja. I do not wish to blame it entirely on the girl, maybe it is true and she just wishes to get back to work but… What about the incident two weeks ago with the falling out between the group of special jounin and the crowd of civilians?"</p><p>"A mob that was protecting members of a terrorist organization?" Kuribira Mikapen, Lord Seventh's lively assistant jumped to intercept the narrative that the ninja councilwoman was weaving together.</p><p>"While the fact that the civilians were sheltering members of a terrorist organization is an unfortunate truth, this councilman can only wonder that perhaps if the Hokage chose to include the civilians more into the process of governing the village and provided them with a more transparent public service, even this unfortunate scenario could have been avoided…" a civilian councilman with thick, cream-colored hair brought up.</p><p>"It takes a lot of nerve to say that when half of the council is comprised of civilians and the man saying this is a civilian councilmember talking down to the Seventh Hokage," Lord Seventh stabbed at the outspoken civilian councilman who promptly silenced himself and pushed his chair slightly back so that he could hide from the entirety of Lord Seventh's focused gaze behind an obese civilian councilwoman sitting right to him.</p><p>"In either case, I was not overly fond of either this promotion or giving Nakotsumi Mana any work. Truth be told, her ninja license has only been suspended, not terminated by the Ninja Tribunal. That means that she had the right to renew it whenever she was capable of returning to active duty. In addition, the young woman was put through enough tests of her faithfulness to the village already. Given the unfortunate leak of information we are all aware of, none of us have the right to reserve awe from the fact she's been supporting the village's version and continues to drag her own good name through the mud," Lord Seventh ruled, silencing the unruly councilmen on each side of the table.</p><p>"Not to mention, she's been sent on one high-ranking mission and that mission was Lord Seventh's test, was it not? A test that young Mana has passed with flying colors, safe to say," a subtle old lady in a floor-reaching black jacket and a decorative black hat chuckled. Despite her fragile frame, the old-timer sat on the side of the Ninja Council even if none of the ninja at the meeting could place her face to a name.</p><p>"You're a respected elder, ma'am," a fellow ninja councilwoman of shoulder-long, ginger hair, sports-themed dressing style and a faceful of freckles decorating her visage spoke up. "Someone of your age, sitting at the table of the Ninja Council would have to have a dozen notable feats and be of great renown. And yet… I cannot for the life of me recall your name or any feats from your past life. Come to think of it, you've been sitting in that very chair since before I joined the Ninja Council five years ago, haven't you? If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you'd been sitting here well over the longest possible tenure of nine years for a council member."</p><p>"It is a good thing then that you do know better and do not speak such baloney out loud, councilwoman Taiki," the old hag cackled to herself.</p><p>"Indeed, councilmen and councilwomen, I've put Nakotsumi Mana through a test of honesty, a trial by fire, if you will. Not many ninja would have accomplished the task of silencing the very voices singing her praise when she was drowning in filth. Let's not lie to ourselves, the situation of Nakotsumi Mana and her family is nothing enviable," Lord Seventh admitted. "At which point do we begin to ask ourselves if we are being unjust in giving the young woman a second chance? At which point are we, the supposed voices of reason that are meant to govern our village ask ourselves if we are not just being as spiteful toward that girl because of what she has done as the rest of the village that possesses neither our better judgment nor the duty to mete it out?"</p><p>"Wise words, without question…" the thick, creamy-haired civilian councilman clapped his hands with gusto behind the notion. So eager was this man who had thought he had scorned Lord Seventh before to get back on Seventh's good side that he slipped the right side of his blue kimono robe that he wore off by accident from the erratic clapping.</p><p>"Lord Seventh, if I may…" a familiar, elderly and screechy voice disturbed Lord Seventh's peace after just another exhausting meeting. It was the old, black hag from before. The supposedly eternal member of the Ninja Council whom nobody could recall seeing take the post or offer it to someone else. The black, elderly enigma rooted within the council.</p><p>"The opposite has never stopped you before," Lord Seventh breathed out a heavy sigh.</p><p>"Perhaps what the council had said today about Nakotsumi Mana has been true? That's not to say that what you said about the young woman is wrong, of course…" the black lady chuckled to herself, still guising herself behind a mask of faux politeness.</p><p>"You guys are no Root, you're wrapping and climbing off the backs of others like a weed. Just tell me what you suggest I do. She's your pet project, after all," the Seventh said in a raspy voice.</p><p>"Oh, perhaps Nakotsumi Mana has been putting a dent in the relationship between the civilians and the ninja. Maybe this dent is destabilizing what we've all worked so heavily toward achieving? We wouldn't like the closest cooperation between the Hokage and the Root to be a failure, now would we?" the old-timer shrugged a couple of times, almost as if second-guessing her own deceitful wrapping of the ivy vine.</p><p>"I'm not executing her or her family. The folks from the Wandering Ninja are a black stain in our history already, while not many people think about that wound of our past, that doesn't mean I'll allow it to bleed all over my conscious either," Uzumaki Midoben made a dismissive gesture.</p><p>"Oh, that's not what I meant at all. But perhaps you should look into an opportunity to realize the girl's talents elsewhere? Elsewhere as if in… Somewhere else. I've heard that Konoha hasn't had strong emissaries in Kirigakure for a while. The girl's complexion would make her accepted as a representative in Kumogakure as well, her good nature would make her a welcome agent in the troubled Iwagakure too… So many options, I pity your position," the black lady of the root pinched her own purple lip.</p>
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<a name="section0679"><h2>679. No More Strings Attached</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana really didn't have to spend that much time in that random clothing store that she used as an excuse to withdraw from her best friend. Then again, clothing stores were the only place where Meiko would never look for you or join you so, in this case, the establishment had one additional reason for existence on top of its designated one.</p><p>It wasn't like spending time inside was all that pleasant, to begin with. Mothers guided their children away from sections which Mana acted interested in and the clerk kept giving the kunoichi the worried eyes that one stared at a person who was notorious shoplifter when they entered your store. While the woman had no reason to expect Mana to snag anything, she had plenty to think that the magician would start devouring orphans or engaging in blood rituals in the middle of the store, or whatever the villagers thought that she did for fun these days.</p><p>It was time to scram, to say that Mana had overstayed her welcome inside that store was assuming that she was welcome at some point at all. While colorful and flashy was definitely in season this year, all of the hung collections just whizzed past Mana as she rushed down the isles before a clack against the hardwood floor halted her progress.</p><p>A bright flare caught Mana's eye but by that time it was too late. A fiery tendril that appeared from a tattoo of a chain-like pattern decorating the arm of a tall, green-haired woman wrapped around Mana and restrained her in place. Another clack against hardwood came from behind but the fiery coil had the magician in too good of a bind for her to turn her head and acknowledge the existence of another kunoichi. Most of Mana's chakra went into not letting the flaming binds inflict too severe burns on her body. Mana disliked using chakra augmentation but when she got caught off-guard things couldn't have been helped.</p><p>These two were good. Mana had sensed their chakra signatures this whole time but there was nothing notable about a pair of ninja inside a ninja village. There was nothing significant or notable about their chakra, no definitive characteristic or trait to give their chakra signature any discernible color or feel. These two were just doing their jobs, whatever that was.</p><p>No headbands – no allegiances beside whoever paid them, no doubt. Time appeared to have slowed down, Mana knew that the second one would be going in for the kill. If that was indeed what these two were after. The first one's ability was flashy, even if the two were surprisingly quiet and subtle in their approach, managing to subdue Mana without alerting any civilians or the clerk present in the store. Striking just when Mana had been at the right angle so that their move wouldn't be seen.</p><p>It would not be the first one to finish her off. She was effective but too flashy. The green-haired one had already shown off her hand and it held an affinity for Fire Release ninjutsu and sealing combination. This was no common chain of fire, it had some sealing, dampening qualities to it. Mana could feel it, both her physical and mental strength sapping though she had plenty to spare so she'd not be begging for the coup de grace any time soon.</p><p>A press against Mana's back, not a sharp one, and not a drop of blood accompanied it. It was just a touch, though what worried the magician more was what remained after the hand moved away from her. It was an all too familiar "love tap" to anyone hanging around ninja circles. It was abhorrent to consider that the pair considered to blow Mana up in the middle of the store with unaware civilians. Just who sent these guys? It couldn't have been the Hokage, Lord Seventh, if he had any use in disposing of Mana, would have just sent her out on a perilous mission and made sure that she didn't defy those odds.</p><p>That was, after all, historically, the preferred method for village leaders of disposing of troublesome figures within their own ranks.</p><p>"The Diamond Hand is not done with you yet, Konoha's Sorceress. You might have left Jigoku, but today is the day you curse spiting the Middle Ring," a blue-haired kunoichi appeared from behind, revealing her face to Mana as she pressed her hand to the magician's mouth. "You did well by not screaming. There's no reason to drag all those civilians down with you, is there?"</p><p>Heat. Intense heat came from that woman's arm. Mana could see the glaring light from something that she was preparing illuminating the entire aisle line. So it was not just an explosive tag attached to her back that this woman meant to use to dispose of Mana but flames that she'd literally force into her mouth and her stomach. These guys knew an embarrassing amount about Mana's tricks. This ninjutsu-dampening infernal chain suppressed any illusions or ninjutsu Mana might have attempted and she lacked the physical strength to wrestle out.</p><p>A cascade of metallic thuds followed by a gurgling grunt distracted both Mana and her would-be assassin. The green-haired woman fell to the ground with thirty kunai sticking out from her back and a pair of bald men in black kimono holstering kunai dispensers over their shoulders. With the blazing chain no longer restraining Mana, the magician jumped up and swung her leg at the back of her assailant's head, knocking her down on her face before flipping back over to slam her calf into the back of the woman's neck in a reverse-guillotine drop. A move that would have paralyzed her for life.</p><p>A handful of shrieks splattered the white wall of silence. The handful of armed gangsters turned their heads toward the fleeing civilians though the last thing on their mind appeared to be the intent for any bodily harm upon them as the grunts turned back to Mana immediately. If they also meant to kill her, they chose a wrong approach as not only did they put themselves in the magician's way but they also continued to holster their dispensers over their shoulders.</p><p>"You guys aren't from the Diamond Hand, I presume," Mana muttered.</p><p>"We're not. Though given how we've just saved your hide, missy, you may as well make it easier for us and go see our boss," one of the handful of baldies in ceremonial robes said. They didn't sound like they were ordering Mana around. These guys were fully aware that she could beat all of them and just do whatever she wanted from this point on but they sounded more like they were asking her to accompany them home.</p><p>"I never thought that Hanada Katsuo would want to see me again," Mana admitted, recognizing the styling choice of the goons she was in the presence of.</p><p>"Yeah, yeah… That's very impressive and all, kid, boss said he wants to talk to you. He told us about this attempt to off you but he has no info on any subsequent attempts so you better come with 'cause we got no idea how many more broads like these the fatso might have ordered," another armed baldy croaked with Mana relaxing from her fighting stance and nodding in agreement to follow the armed bunch.</p><p>Sighing easier, the goons from the Hanada Zaibatsu hid their dispensers underneath their loose kimono and all headed toward the door in a close formation. The Police Force had reacted in a timely manner. Mana might have had trouble eluding their attention but this group of gangsters may not have been out on their first rodeo – all it took to remain unnoticed was to follow them closely. It wasn't like the Uchiha elite of the Police Force bothered themselves with disturbances of public order. It was not easy sensing even the smallest chakra traces from these Police Force officers that first rushed to the scene to scope out and examine the fallout.</p><p>All they would find would be minimal property damage inside the store, some skewered and singed clothes, a corpse riddled with projectile knives in her back and one paralyzed wanted criminal. Mana didn't have time to question them, know how they made it to Konoha or how they tracked her down though she had a nasty feeling that her recent slump in popularity and infamy played a pivotal role in explaining both those things.</p><hr/><p>Hanada Katsuo himself awaited for the return of the men he sent after Mana with the stage magician herself accompanying them by standing in front of a birdcage that comprised the majority of the room, staring up at a single, dark-amethyst colored crow flapping its wings inside and utilizing the room of space that it had to its fullest. The entire aviary appeared to be built to accommodate more the bird and its fortified domicile of silver bars and decorations rather than to host humans. The tycoon turned his head when the door to the aviary slammed behind the last man under his employ to enter.</p><p>"So, my men have succeeded in extracting you from harm's way, I am glad," he said.</p><p>"That's odd, recalling our collective experience, I'd have thought that you'd have been happy to read about my death in the morning news," Mana rolled her eyes. Often, she couldn't help herself but rewind the memory of casting an illusion on the man just to throw him off of the Mr. High and Mighty that he put himself on as a child. She would not doubt it for a moment that the man himself would have relived that memory though with spite boiling up inside him.</p><p>"Oh, nothing of the sort!" Hanada appeared almost amused by how off Mana was with her assessment. "You did save my life once, the lives of my family. I'd hate nothing more than for you to die a martyr before I could have repaid that favor. Being in so much debt to troublesome business partners is just all-around bad business."</p><p>So that's what it was. The patriarch of Hanada Zaibatsu didn't want Mana to die with him still indebted to her. It was that macho feeling of inferiority that haunted him, not something nobler than the joy of a good deed under his belt and being genuinely useful for something as someone of such wealth and renown. The fact that Mana might have confused his motivations for a second there and assumed he'd have cared about her life out of altruistic reasons now almost sickened her.</p><p>"Well, debt repaid. I don't see why it would have made you feel obliged to speak with me, unless you wanted to state our mutual independence and flaunt it in front of my face," Mana crossed her arms, pouting at the man.</p><p>This irritation of the magician's face inspired a sly smirk and amusement in Katsuo's own.</p><p>"Once again, you missed by a mile. I see prison made you a tad out of touch, no worry, I'm sure the hours you spend at the Training Grounds every day will soon rectify that," Hanada Katsuo shrugged to himself, looking all too proud of his superior position in this conversation.</p><p>"Are you following me?" Mana's face turned sour.</p><p>"Why, Mana… Don't bore me this much with that surface-level palaver. I'm aware of you. After all, when a man crosses the road, he looks both ways unless he longs for a lengthy year of recovery," Katsuo faked a yawn.</p><p>"Uh-huh… So if you're not here to show off all the roads you've crossed, why did you want your goon squad to bring me here?" Mana crossed her arms again, skeptical of whatever intentions Hanada Katsuo had for her.</p><p>"I couldn't help but notice that you've been struggling. As you might recall, I've made a lot of investments into the Konoha Hospital and most of its facilities depend on my finances rolling them. This effectively renders them as good as mine and I couldn't help but notice a large influx of money into one patient – Nakotsumi Tsukumo, your father if memory serves?" Hanada Katsuo spoke with all the elegance of a man that had spent the night polishing his speech in front of a mirror.</p><p>Mana didn't respond. Despite being fully clothed, it felt as if a cold breeze brushed against her skin stripped bare and nobody had laid a finger on her yet. It wasn't usual practice to let somebody funnel money into a prolonged extension of the life of a hopeless case patient though since the doctors and medical ninja permitted it, what remained of the Nakotsumi family relied on that permission and slight bending of the rules. How could Mana not have realized that this had Hanada Katsuo's hands all over it?</p><p>Maybe Jigoku truly had her all out of touch?</p><p>"What do you want?" Mana wanted to sound less beaten and whiny than she did.</p><p>"Oh, you're assuming I'll ask you of something dirty, some tasteless robbery or murder so that I permit the hospital wings that I own to extend your father's life? You're really disappointing me with how unaware you are of whom you're speaking to… I'm almost inclined to believe you had sharper instincts as a child," Hanada Katsuo shrugged, mocking Mana's misery again. "If I wanted something, I'd get it, if I wanted something through illegitimate means, I'd find a way to bend the rules to get it. I don't need some chick with milk still on her lips that's never robbed or killed anyone to engage in useless thuggery for me. Why would I want you to do anything for me when you're already paying me an arm and a leg for my show of mercy?"</p><p>"So far we've dismissed a whole lot of reasons why I am not here, and I'm yet to hear one that nails it," Mana couldn't hide how relieved she felt by the snuffing of the nauseating idea that she'd have to choose between letting her father die and possibly having to kill someone for Hanada Katsuo.</p><p>"Well, I have to admit, kicking you down a curb or two has been satisfying in its own right. Though I've been wondering if you're running low on coins after filling my pockets every week?" Hanada Katsuo scratched the brown goatee on his chin.</p><p>"I've been promoted to special jounin. Missions I get pay me twice what I used to get paid," Mana shrugged. She had no doubts on her mind that she was sounding as defensive as she felt deep down but that was just her poor skill in concealing emotion.</p><p>"Maybe, though those magic shows don't pay nearly as well, do they? Let's be honest, that was always the crux of your income anyway. I do tend to agree with my son that as far as being a ninja goes – you're just roleplaying," Hanada Katsuo tightened the loop around Mana's throat.</p><p>"I've no idea about that stuff. My mom's been managing my money, I'm not very good with that. I've never was," Mana brushed the topic off.</p><p>"Oh, so you've got no idea how much money you've been making this whole time then? I bet that made signing it all away for the village shills easier than it had any right to be. You see, Mana, I am not unlike many men you know in the field of ninjutsu. I too favor power though my power doesn't translate in the fireballs I can breathe out of my mouth. The power I crave is the things that I can get done without leaving my bed in the morning. A miner that mines the most coal out of all is powerful, certainly, but I'd rather own the mine." Hanada Katsuo began pacing around Mana like a spider that sighted the fly in its vicinity though had not prepared a web for it yet.</p><p>"You want me to work for you. You want to own the Konoha's Sorceress brand," Mana, being the odd case of fly she was, weaved the web and tied herself in it because the spider was taking too long.</p><p>"I guess our past dealings have made quite transparent," Hanada Katsuo laughed out. There was a hint of an exposed nerve in that laughter. With Mana being so direct with her acknowledgment of his interest, it did not inspire him with the best of feelings for the future. "Just like ninja strive to learn the techniques that make them the most powerful, I aim to acquire the assets that generate me the most income with the least risks and costs. As a sign of goodwill, I'll tell you the secret to doing good business for free. Business is all about having as many assets as possible with as few costs as you can escape with. People write entire books and lecture cycles about it but that's pretty much it. Assets, assets, assets…"</p><p>"People aren't assets," Mana pouted.</p><p>"Now I know your mother truly was the one doing the accounting for you…" Hanada Katsuo grinned. "Here's my offer, take it, or continue wriggling and writhing. Stay an immature crawler until you roll over or hatch and take flight, the choice is yours. There will be conditions, you'll work when I say, you'll do the tricks I tell you to do and perform to crowds I gather. You'll use the props I personally acquire for you and you'll look how I tell you to look,"</p><p>Mana looked down and bit her lip. Hanada Katsuo spun a mighty yarn though he still very much hated her guts and it wasn't even that deep down. He hated them on a far shallower level. He'd have valued her as his "asset", sure, but he'd make sure to mock her and bully her every step of the way for daring to humiliate him and put him into her debt all those years ago. Without a doubt, he'd stuff her into something skimpy or goofy and force her to perform comedy gags and humiliate herself and perform from inside a cage just like the one he held his one-of-a-kind amethyst crow in.</p><p>What was the most frightening – she'd have been fine with that. She could even see the logic in that. The village hated her guts, both the rich and the poor so it made sense to charge an arm and a leg for her humiliation and then demean herself in front of the people that wanted her besmirched. Though she'd never had to worry about her father getting to live one more week… In the end, no matter how many eggs she has to crack at her face, no matter is she has to wear a funny-bunny costume while riding actual ninja rabbits or if she'd get dunked into pools of cherry jam because some rich, snotty-nosed brat said so, she'd never have to spend nights anxious. She'd be able to help mother with shouldering so much burden with just a café that had fallen out of public favor.</p><p>Hanada Katsuo's laughter cut through the tense silence. The moment that Mana's eyes met his, she realized that he was just fucking with her. He never expected her to take up the offer and work for him, he just wanted her resigning to that position in her mind before him. He always intended to shut her down the moment her lips moved to take up on his offer.</p><p>"Now we're square. You accepting whatever I had in mind for your performances as a priceless canary in my cage. Resigning to being a laughingstock of the entire village elite. May as well have knelt before me and kissed my boots. That's fine. I never thought you'd take the offer for real, though… If you mean to surprise me…" Hanada Katsuo made a mocking face and shrugged.</p><p>"So, are we done here now?" Mana pouted her cheeks in a misguided attempt for them not to flush with red.</p><p>"Quite," Hanada Katsuo nodded, his men moved aside and let Mana pass, hurrying out of her way as the tales of how she led the Shukuba Security to demolish the entire organized crime ring in that pleasure town still lived in their minds and they did not share their master's delusion of the legitimacy of their enterprise. "I'd hope it was as good for you as it was for me, though… The opposite was the entire point."</p><p>The cool brush of the breeze against her cheeks could not have washed over her soon enough. The district of lush, lumpy hills atop of the Hokage Mountain where most of the rich and powerful figures of the village had erected their estates and mansions was like a ghost town this time of the evening but that absence of a living soul felt somehow more comforting and welcome than her own home village.</p><p>Spiteful gazes from those who feared her or knew better than to take her life and attempts at her life from those she's wronged in the past were all that she had to return to. Maybe she was exaggerating, there was still mother, Meiko… A few of her past acquaintances were too likely still connected with bridges that were still unburnt but… With all that, she's experienced daily living in that village, Mana kind of began to want to burn all those bridges down.</p><p>To think that she had suffered through the worst pain that the human body could go through for six whole months, craving for a return home, return to normalcy only to begin looking back to Jigoku when she actually did return. A place where she was just a sniffing dog and a number to throw herself in front of trouble for her ringleader but a place where she had a role at all. A place that at least let her foster an illusion of belonging. At least Nereigen wanted her there as his servant. Being wanted as a servant, even a slave, at that moment felt better than being rejected in one's totality.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0680"><h2>680. Back Out Of Black</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Lord Seventh would like to see you now," Kurabira Mikapen emerged from behind closed doors with a pleasant smile. Whether she was genuinely able to overlook the animosity that most of the village fostered toward Mana or if there was none to speak of, Mana could not tell. Seeing Mikapen serve Mana just like she'd any other customer made the magician leave home her own spiky shell too.</p><p>She didn't partake in the usual etiquette these days. Rarely did Mana bother with interacting with other villagers beyond flipping them off or casting a dismissive glare their way. Part of it was just playing the role she took over as officially the worst person ever born but Mana was too poor of a liar to not be able to see right through herself and realize how good it felt to play that role sometimes. Despite her new habits, Mana kneeled and greeted Lord Seventh as customary for ninja serving the Seventh Hokage and her village.</p><p>"It's rare that a ninja comes to me without being summoned…" Lord Seventh acknowledged after his assistant took her rightful side to the right of Seventh's chair. "Even though I am willing to listen to what brought you to my office, do know that the assignment I'm preparing for you is not yet finalized which is why you haven't yet received a summon. If asking for more work is your reason for coming, you should know that."</p><p>"A lot of greener ninja are under the impression that they'd receive missions day after day, just like they used to. A lot of genin these days clear out the eight-mission requirement for being considered for the Chuunin Exams during their first day. You are a special jounin now, Mana-san, your services will not be required until a task comes up that requires your particular expertise," Mikapen seconded her superior with a cheerful façade. Even though she had a slightly condescending and posturing vibe to her addition, hr point sounded valid nevertheless.</p><p>"Actually…" Mana scratched her elbow and turned away. The leathery patches on her scraped jacket rubbed roughly against her soft and preserved hands. "I came with a request. It pertains to my civilian occupation as a stage magician."</p><p>"Oh, that's odd. I've been wondering if that'll ever clash with your duties as a ninja whenever your name came up but I'd have never expected that to come when your popularity has dipped…" Lord Seventh leaned back in his chair. He hadn't expected this topic to be brought up, that much was self-evident.</p><p>"I've been talking to my manager and we both agree that it would be for the best if… If maybe I get to perform somewhere abroad for a while. He's making it sound like a really big deal, "World Magic Tour", or whatever… It doesn't have to be that though. I realize that odds are that I'll be just as polarizing anywhere else in the world but… I just want a time-out, just for a little bit, at least…" Mana felt like a whiny child and her self-loathing must have become more and more apparent the more her tongue flipped and rolled.</p><p>A burst of resolute laughter spread through the office. Even if Mana fully embraced the idea of being shut down, she didn't expect her superior to be this nasty about it as to laugh her off. Then again, he enjoyed more than a decent approval from both the civilians and ninja so he might not have been aware of what it was like to face hatred day to day. Civilians appreciated the man's past of keeping them safe from cataclysmic threats and wars as the leader of Village Protection in the past, ninja praised his tough and decisive touch on sensitive matters and inner strength as both a ninja and a leader.</p><p>Before Mana could dismiss herself and rush out of the man's office, Lord Seventh nodded his head and tilted the front of his hat. His expression looked apologetic.</p><p>"Sorry, sorry… I didn't mean to make it seem like I was laughing at you or your suggestion. It was unprofessional of me. It was just that we appear to have been rolling the same meatball, so to speak. I also have been wondering about potential opportunities to send you out. In fact, I am waiting for a reply from Allied Ninja to make you a part of the organization," the Seventh Hokage explained his spontaneous and bashful reaction.</p><p>"Allied Ninja?" Mana ran her hand through the side of her hair. She didn't mind the Seventh trying to build her up as a ninja specializing in international matters as it would have fixed his problem of having a constant catalyst for drama and riots around in a village that he tried keeping as stable and boring as possible though her own feelings of that organization weren't too bright.</p><p>What seemed like an eternity ago, she worked alongside a squad of Allied Ninja in an attempt to uncover the mystery behind the black-market drugs flooding the Konohagakure market that even involved her father. In some way, one might have viewed that encounter with the Spliced as the beginning of the tragic clash with Guru Ayushi Mana would have in the future.</p><p>At that time, she had formed an impression of the Allied Ninja as a rather apathetic bunch, answering to no specific village but in the process appearing without care for the fate of the lives of ordinary villagers in the face of what they saw as the greater picture. Whether they were right or wrong in thinking that was not Mana's judgment to make, though she vastly preferred a more grounded attitude toward her service.</p><p>"That's right, I started just wanting to send you to Kirigakure as an emissary. After I reached out to Kirigakure, I ran into an old acquaintance who now works with the Allied Ninja and you seem to have impressed a few of the bunch as he jumped at the opportunity to enlist you, having heard nothing but good things from his comrades in the organization," Lord Seventh replied. "I do admit, while it was not my original intention, it would do you a heap of good to change your environment and leave all of this nastiness back home behind. Given your somewhat rebellious nature, at times, I thought you'd be excited to not answer to any village…"</p><p>"To be fair, I had always hoped to protect my village as a member of Village Protection or the Barrier Corps," Mana admitted with a sad look in her eyes, as this was the first time that she had said this childish dream out loud after the whole affair with Root and Guru Ayushi. "If the emissary deal is still on the table, I'd gladly take it, even if it is in Kirigakure…"</p><p>Uzumaki Midoben turned for his assistant. Mikapen leaned beside her superior and whispered something to his ear. In the middle of her whisper, the Seventh's gaze widened and he blew out a full chest of air after moving his ear further from his assistant.</p><p>"I see… Your father's injury, huh? Whatever will I do with you?" Lord Seventh flicked the tip of his hat back and leaned back in his chair, moving it left and right in a rhythmic, mirrored motion. "Well, I can't possibly send you to Kirigakure, given the recent news… I'm afraid it's either the Allied Ninja or no deal. I'd think hard about it in your shoes, kid. Serving a few years as an Allied Ninja would do wonders in building you and your character up and give you an opportunity to perform your magic shows all over the world. You never really burned with Konoha team spirit. I could always tell. You'd never quite cut it in VP, sorry to break it for you this way."</p><p>"Okay then, we'll be waiting for your answer soon, Mana-san!" Mikapen leaned her head and upper body to the right with a cheerful expression.</p><p>"Alright, I'll work with the Allied Ninja," Mana pocketed her hands and blew out her cheeks, realizing that it was either testing her bad first impression or letting things simmer on the same rancid flame.</p><p>"Wow, when I said soon, I didn't mean this soon!" Mikapen laughed out, Lord Seventh shared her smile with an expression that seemed to imply that he had just rolled off a boulder off his chest. Frankly, the fact that Seventh not only accepted Mana's request for the World Magic Tour but, in fact, insisted on it and provided her with all the necessary details and options to make it happen was just as shocking to the magician herself.</p><p>"It will be a few days but… We'll just have to sort out a few formalities. The Allied Ninja will send someone to pick you up, there's no way they'll let someone as… Provoking as you roam across the Land of Fire alone. Even if things get stuck on that front, I'll get a team together to escort you and hand you over to them so no worries there," Lord Seventh nodded a few times.</p><p>Somehow Mana was getting the feeling that she was being pushed out the door as a tribute rather than merely her request for departure being approved. Though she didn't have much choice in the matter. Something had to change and that something had to be her environment.</p><hr/><p>While talking outside of the father's ward, on their way out of the hospital wasn't what Mana would have called the ideal conditions, she wasn't sure how much more time she had to brief mother in on her plans for the future. It would be rough, that much Mana knew for certain, but it would have been a whole lot rougher if the Allied Ninja just knocked on the Nakotsumi family home door and briefed the businesswoman in on it on the fly.</p><p>It'd have been the absolute worse if she wasn't even home when the Allied Ninja came to escort Mana. Given how Mana's impressions suggested they had absolutely zero shits to give about the common folk, they would have been the least likely folks to wait around for Mana to have the tough talk so it might have been now or never.</p><p>"I've been planning on leaving the village for a while," Mana mumbled. She didn't speak loud enough to overpower the usual bustle of the hospital but she knew that mother heard her. "Mr. Hiro brought up the idea. The Seventh seconded it. I'd be working with the Allied Ninja abroad while performing in the countries I visit. Both of them agree that would be best for me."</p><p>"Both of them agree?" mother asked. "What about you?"</p><p>As always, mother grabbed her by the crotch and didn't let go. She was always the one to clutch and twist it without any warning. Mana didn't want to admit it that she hated being back home, that she dreaded every day spent here sinking in the marinade of hatred. Working with the Allied Ninja didn't guarantee anything but change and change was what Mana needed. Still, she didn't want to be the one to say it. To say it that Mana wanted to be further away from the village, further from mother… Further from her friends and family that she longed to rejoin for six months of pure torture straight.</p><p>"I… I want to perform and… I want to help people. There is no stage greater than the world and I might end up helping a whole lot of people, people from all over the world…" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"But will you like it? Will you for a day not look as miserable and angry as you do back home?" mother looked at Mana, trying to connect with her daughter but given how much time they've been apart and how much growing her daughter did outside of her control, even the optimistic ballbuster that was Nakotsumi Kei doubted that being possible.</p><p>"Yeah…" Mana shrugged. "It'll be peachy."</p><p>"All I'm saying is - if you want to leave out there to war and criminal syndicates and all that rubbish outside the village walls… You should at the very least enjoy what you're doing," mother let Mana have another try at lying to her.</p><p>"If someone told me about this opportunity a few years ago, I'd have laughed at the person saying it. I still felt like I had to clean my own room before going out to save the world, you know what I mean? Not to mention the people I'd have been leaving behind," Mana began spinning her web after a big breather. "But what about now though? A lot of people I know are gone, some of them now hate my guts and the others I've returned to don't even feel like the same people anymore. I've only been gone for six months and somehow it feels like I've been stranded in time. It's funny, you know, I've been to other universes and yet somehow they've felt more welcoming and familiar than home feels right now. I don't know what's out there, but I'd rather find out outside my shell rather than stay put and serve the village that is even too disgusted by me to squish me and be done with it."</p><p>"Well… If that's how you feel…" mother sat down just a few good steps short from the reception area of the hospital.</p><p>"Look, mom… I…" it was a rarer and rarer feeling these days – the regret of possibly having offended someone. Lately, everyone's been clanging their swords and throwing their turds at her with such ferocity and intensity that she stopped caring about how these people felt. Who cared if she offended them, they stabbed at her first and you couldn't pull the knife out of their hands without getting cut even a little bit in the process.</p><p>"No, I get it, you didn't mean all those things about me. It's just… A lot, you know? Too much all of a sudden. We got to hang out and see each other less and less as both your jobs got more serious, when the world took off the kiddy gloves and decided to punch you down just like it's been punching me and your father all this time. It will hurt knowing that my daughter is out there and that I might not end up seeing her face for years on end, still, at least I'll know she'll be happy," mother stood back up and wiped the few early tears off her face. There'll be plenty of time for that in the few days left.</p><p>"Will you and dad be okay? I'll make sure to send you whatever I get paid, I'm not sure how Allied Ninja get paid but… They've been a thing for so long so they have to be making a killing out there, right?" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"It's called "profit", dear. And yes, we'll be fine. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve and we've got money saved from your magic superstar days," mother nodded and wrapped her arms over Mana's neck, pushing the magician's head closer in to hers. "You got so good at lying, not sure if I should be proud of my little girl getting all grown up or if I should cry my eyes out for how hard you must've been hit to learn to do it that well."</p><p>"I've got to say, I believed in it myself…" Mana cracked a grin, just half-kidding, just like her mother was. "Wait, how much money you've got saved up? Are you sure it'll cover it?"</p><p>"Oh, don't you worry about that. That money's always moving, it'll be quite enough…" mother assured her. Mana wanted to dig around more but she lacked the words to speak her mother's language and find out just what exactly did she mean about that. For now, just knowing that the money won't be an immediate problem with Mana moving out will have to do.</p><p>"It's harsh!" Mana poked fun at her mother, just trying to cheer her up a little bit. "So cold when your own mother tells you that you're unnecessary back home,"</p><p>"It's not like I told you that you're not welcome, or anything, though I'm sure Nakotsumi Café will pick right back up without you acting indecently to my customers…" mother poked Mana's side with her elbow while the mother and daughter left the hospital.</p><p>"They're always starting it…" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"Yeah, I know. Just promise me one thing though," mother turned at Mana.</p><p>"You're not sucking me into that one, you've scolded me enough as a little girl to always find the thing out before signing on the dotted line," Mana chuckled at her mother's teasing.</p><p>"Wow, you really have grown up, I've only got like 85% of everything I know left to teach you…" mother sighed. "Anyway, just promise me that you'll give this Allied Ninja and World Magic Tour gig an honest shot. That you won't be walking into it all hurt and edgy. Burn this leather jacket, for God's sake comb your hair, and take your uniform with you."</p><p>"Do I have to? It's pretty tight and stringy… I'm kind of getting used to not giving a shit, plus, I'm not even sure that old thing will even fit me. Mana from six-months ago was a whole different person…" Mana teased her mother, oblivious to the stares aimed at her. Mother served as the world's best shield against all the arrows and spears that Konoha had to fling at her but she was long out of the age where she could've just hung out with mother the whole time.</p><p>"Don't sass me, young lady. Just be serious for once!" mother scolded her.</p><p>"If I have to… Fine, I'll see if it still fits," Mana rolled her eyes. "I have to say, I've always kind of felt almost like I was naked without the top hat. Had that feeling like I had left something at home, you know?"</p><p>"You will be leaving something at home, make sure you don't forget that and come back once in a while to check on it," mother placed her hands over her hips.</p><p>"Heh, dad was the one that designed the storage seal inside that hat. I'll always have a part of him with me if I return to the classics," Mana shrugged.</p><p>"See? Only good things come out of listening to me…" mother nodded to herself before breaking out to laughter which she and her daughter shared.</p>
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<a name="section0681"><h2>681. New Allies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Good, you're here," Mana recognized Junichi's voice. She turned toward the pink, morning sky to face the small party of Allied Ninja gathering by the gate. She had been used waiting here in the early hours of the morning. She even used to chat up with the gate guards that were on the shift that time every now and then. Now there was only embarrassment. Fearful glances and craving to not be noticed in order for her waiting period to not become much more upsetting.</p><p>"Junichi-san," Mana bowed expressing her politeness as she once used to. With all the people projecting their flaws in insecurities and making a scapegoat out of her lately, sometimes it became difficult to believe in one's own decency as a result. Being polite and kind toward even those that did not answer it in kind and keep the promise she made to her mother were the only two ways at the moment to make Mana's faith in her own decency stand tall.</p><p>"Hmph, appalling that you would notice that lug and not me!" Cailar, another one of the Allied Ninja pouted with his arms crossed over his chest. "What's he got that I don't?"</p><p>"Don't start this now, Cailar. It's natural that the girl would remember me first, I've known her father for some time, after all," Junichi met Cailar's caprice with a grumpy look. "In any case, we figured that this transition and journey would be easier for you if you were accompanied to the HQ by a pair of familiar faces."</p><p>"Naturally, we couldn't get the entire band of Spliced-Splitters back together but this will have to do," Cailar posed with his arms reaching out. With a rugged, brown cloak covering his shoulders, the man almost looked like a normal person with only his face paint and eccentric hairdo being visible while his outfit of clashing colors remained hidden.</p><p>"These two are Mollay and Shitaka, they're Allied Ninja too if the forehead protectors aren't a dead enough giveaway," Junichi moved aside and gestured toward a pair of Allied Ninja that supplemented the squad. It made sense that it would take more than just a pair of skilled Allied Ninja to escort Mana, one of the most hated people worldwide, from Konoha to the Allied Ninja HQ. Frankly, the Allied Ninja weren't all that well-liked in many circles either so that would have made Mana a squared measurement of hatred on everyone's shit-list.</p><p>Mollay was a tall and thick man. Pale and chubby though his attire was a bit on the eccentric side as well. His outfit seemed somehow both ahead and behind its time at the same time. The stare of stone-shaded eyes was as cold as the pale skin of the chubby giant and his face didn't seem to be much for translating the inner state that the man was in. From what Mana could see of this one, he didn't seem to care much about who Mana was. The only proof that the man could move at all was when he bowed lightly in acknowledgment of his introduction and closed his ever-focused gazers for just one, light blink.</p><p>Shitaka was another personality, short, dark hair that fell over the right half of the man's face. When looking at the Allied Ninja, Mana thanked her mother for talking her into leaving her rebellious features and outfits at home because she'd have provided Shitaka with the idea that she was a kindred soul to him if she had applied excessive ink on her face and donned the spiky, black leather. Judging from the opening of his jacket, the man's build was quite frail though his thick jacket made him seem bulkier than he actually was.</p><p>"Yo, Nakotsumi Mana, huh? Big fan, the stiff institution of the Allied Ninja can use a little bit of our fiery, rebellious hearts!" Shitaka gestured with the devil horns, formed with his hand, and stuck out his tongue that had a glistening, metallic piece stuck in its core. The man's glove had a few tears and cuts, one of them was meaningful and intended as it gave the observer a clearer view of Shitaka's pentagram tattoo on the back of his hand.</p><p>"I look forward to working together as well," Mana nodded with an uncomfortable, forced smile. Junichi couldn't contain his grin from cracking his iron façade when he saw the magician's reaction to his quirky comrade.</p><p>"Now, now, Shitaka, don't get all over Mana's face. I'm sure that she isn't looking forward to continuing her cycle of violence but instead redeeming for it," Junichi helped Mana by getting the rebellious punk off of her back and walking in between the two to help guide Mana out the gate and direct her toward the path leading toward their destination.</p><p>"Really? Bummer! I'm a huge fan of how she smashed at the root of the problem!" Shitaka once again banged his head with the sign of the devil's horns, as if he was rocking out to a non-existent beat.</p><p>"Well, young Mana has also served her sentence in Jigoku for that, it would be wise of you to remember that the next time you plan to burn anything down or smash anything," Cailar shrugged with a dismissive attitude toward his oddball of a comrade.</p><p>Traveling during the early hours of the morning through the Land of Fire was a difficult feat. The sun was yet to rise and illuminate the region, making anything beneath the leafage of the forest array as shadowy as it was during the pitch black of the night. It would only be at about noon that the sun would manage to breach through the leafage and soak the ground with some moderate sunshine. At the moment, the Allied Ninja were stuck navigating and dashing across the Land of Fire in complete darkness.</p><p>"Where are Mollay and Shitaka from?" Mana asked Junichi, making sure to keep inside the circle of ninja escorting her as they offered their lives as the primary targets for any potential traps or an enemy attack.</p><p>"Wouldn't it be better to ask them?" Junichi wondered.</p><p>"It would, but Mollay doesn't seem very talkative and Shitaka…" Mana reacted with a light quiver while replying.</p><p>"Makes sense, Mollay is from Iwagakure. He's a pretty odd guy, hasn't expressed any pity or regret over what's happened to his village at all. I don't think he liked it much there, to be fair. That pale skin of his, I'm sure it's 'cause he spent most of his life working in the mines. Those weird eyes of his must also be a result of that upbringing. Shitaka is from Kirigakure, he's a relatively recent recruit. He's completed his training only four years ago," Junichi explained.</p><p>"I sense some oddity in Mollay's chakra network. It's like his body is constantly in peak activity as if he's augmenting himself at all times, what is that all about?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"You would have to ask him, I've no idea. I don't think it's very wise of you to hold on to my skirt too, kid. You'll have to work with a lot of pretty weird people in your immediate future and you'll have to learn to tolerate them all. May as well get started with these two," Junichi shrugged.</p><p>"Don't listen to that old coot, Mana, you'll do just fine being at odds with everyone. It's been doing wonders for me," Cailar stretched his face in a devious smile as he craved an antagonistic reaction from at least one of his allies though neither of them seemed to provide him with one. Shikata came the closest to it but he seemed to reconsider right before flipping his pierced tongue to insult the fellow Allied Ninja.</p><p>"It's odd that you do not get along with the rest. It seems to me that you're just like Shikata and Mollay, perhaps even less challenging to society's norms, in fact. Unless, of course, that is the reason why you dislike them," Mana shrugged.</p><p>Shikata broke down croaking in crude laughter. He was clearly of the type that hyperbolized even the lightest emotion he felt. Even the stone-cold Mollay glanced back at the rest with a slight smirk.</p><p>"You'll do just fine," Junichi nodded his head in approval.</p><p>"Or, perhaps I'm just ahead of the curve. After all, when rebellion becomes the new norm, rebelling to the rebellion becomes the new cool," Cailar turned his nose up and stroked his tall and asparagus-colored hair.</p><p>Somewhat encouraged by the surge of support from the rest of the Allied Ninja, Mana stepped up her movement by just a few paces and closed in to Mollay. For a little while she didn't speak, just move alongside the chunky ninja. Her experience talking to Tala from Sunagakure aided in striking up a conversation with the damaged and silent type.</p><p>"I'd rather you moved a bit back. You're close to invalidating our circular formation," Mollay spoke up in an almost gurgling voice. Given how he did not speak often or for very long, he must not have cleared his throat all that often though his voice was quite masculine and low-pitched.</p><p>"I'm a sensor ninja, I couldn't help but notice your chakra signature displaying some odd activity," Mana brought it up. "If it is because of a curse seal affecting the formation of our vanguard, I have some well-justified interest in that."</p><p>"It is not an affliction or a curse seal. My childhood working in the Iwagakure mines has left me almost completely blind. I am employing my chakra to augment my other senses. Have I eased your worry?" Mollay looked to Mana though even when magician felt she had overstepped some boundary by suggesting that Mollay might have been a potential weak link to the team, Mollay didn't seem at all offended or taken aback by her implication.</p><p>Explaining his own condition to the magician seemed as casual to Mollay as it would have been to tell her what he had for breakfast that morning.</p><p>"Oh… I guess I should have put it together. I'm sorry. When I was training my chakra sensory I once contemplated ruining my eyesight too. I settled on sacrificing my sense of smell instead. The boost it provided was not as potent but it helped me survive plenty of tough times I'd have perished in otherwise," Mana replied, trying to relate to the Allied Ninja to at least some extent. It didn't seem at all effective, judging by Mollay's expression, and, honestly, Mana was beginning to feel terrible about seeming like the more inadequate at conversation out of the two.</p><p>"Oh… Why would you have to sacrifice a sense for chakra sensory?" Mollay looked at her with the first hint at emotion that Mana had seen that day. The joy of making a human connection with the stone-faced chubby made Mana so overjoyed that she rushed to answer right out of the gate.</p><p>"Oh, you don't have to. It's just that I discovered my ability to sense chakra in the middle of the Chuunin Exams and I didn't have the time to properly train it. We were also facing off against a particularly skilled sensor so I needed to catch up to him and do it fast. One way of achieving that is to eliminate a sense, which vacates some brain processing power to be attributed to chakra sensory as chakra sensory takes the place of the lost sense and becomes more prevalent and potent," Mana explained.</p><p>"That is interesting, I hadn't heard that before. If only I had been a sensor, huh?" Mollay even managed to slip a joke in though his deadpan delivery kind of made it smack flat against a brick wall.</p><p>"Yes, given how much we rely on our eyes, I'd image you'd skip more than a few decades of training that way," Mana nodded, choosing to answer the joke question truthfully.</p><p>Given how she no longer had an excuse to break the formation, Mana retreated back to the middle of the formation. When she looked back, she saw Junichi nodding in approval that she managed to make a human connection with a fellow Allied Ninja. Especially one that didn't seem like the type to allow connections with him to be formed easily.</p><p>"So, what's the deal, huh?" Shitaka asked out loud, addressing Mana without breaking formation. "Why did you do it?"</p><p>"Shitaka…" Junichi scolded his comrade.</p><p>"Come on, boy, let the lady have her secrets…" Cailar, in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, agreed with Junichi.</p><p>"Oh, come on… She's served her time, Mana's got nothing more to hide or blush about. All that's in the past, gotta confront it to move on, right?" Shitaka looked back with a bratty grin on his face. "Why did you pummel a legendary medical ninja, a sage-like figure, beloved by the entire world into a comatose pulp?"</p><p>Listening to his tone, his heart appeared to skip a few beats, racing in excitement as he declared exactly what it was that Mana had done. Almost like Shitaka would have done it himself if given the opportunity and he didn't need any of the prehistory or justifications that Mana had to confront Guru Ayushi to do so either. He'd have done it just for the kicks of it. The fact that such a person was an Allied Ninja and worked to uphold international justice onto the entire world and tried to make the world a better place than he found it made the magician confused and just a little bit sick.</p><p>"I didn't like his face," Mana lied. "I'd learned a bunch of jutsu, picked up a bunch of skills and nobody ever acknowledged me. I didn't get a single mission worthy of my skills so I made one up. It was a test of my skills, nothing more."</p><p>"That's so rocking hardcore!" Shitaka laughed out with the sign of the horns and his tongue sticking out. It appeared to be an essential part of this young man's gimmick. "Goddamn, sister, loving every bit of your rocking vibe! Let's work together sometime, promise it'll be tons of fun!"</p><p>"Mana, can you come closer, I keep noticing flaws in your footwork and it is throwing off our formation," Junichi spoke up. That was odd, Mana didn't notice any flaws in her footwork or her positioning and the formation seemed just fine. She may just have had a better view of it, given how she could not only examine it through sight but also scan it through the chakra sensory.</p><p>"You didn't really do it, did you?" Junichi mumbled in a restrained voice when the magician closed up to him. So that was what all that positioning talk was all about – just an excuse to get her closer to ask her. "I always knew that you'd pull the same trick on the village that you'd pulled on all of us back then, act like you're some criminal and betraying your village only to do the right thing in the end. It's the traditional double agent act and I'm not sure how it fooled your superiors,"</p><p>"As the man who knew my father, Junichi-san, how can you truly imply that I didn't care about the fact that Guru Ayushi was behind the drugs that sent him into a comatose state? Trust me, when I beat him up, I had my father on my mind the whole time. It was just revenge, nothing more," Mana replied after a beat of hesitation. Telling a lie in front of the Ninja Tribunal was one thing, continuing to lie over and over and over again after her punishment was already over was something that Mana might not have considered back when she signed on the dotted line.</p><p>"I see…" Junichi sighed. "Well, if you ever truly feel bad about what you had done, ever wish to do things differently. Working with the Allied Ninja will give you that penance, trust me, I'd know. I know you didn't form the best first impression back at the day but just give it the chance."</p><p>"That was the idea…" Mana nodded, emulating Mollay's stone-cold expression and returning to the middle of the formation again.</p><p>"Four chakra signatures right ahead," Mana declared, halting the entire troupe and sending them scattering across the rich leafage surrounding an opening in the road.</p><p>"Mana, what can you tell us about these signatures?" Junichi whispered after sneaking up closer to her so that the four of them could communicate.</p><p>"Not much, all four of them are adequately sized. They'll give us trouble if we confront them, that is all I can tell at the moment. It doesn't seem like they possess any exceptional qualities or aura color to them," Mana explained.</p><p>"I see, stay cool, we'll try to move around them. Keep your eyes open and look for any signs of a potential trap," Junichi raised his arm up. With the volume they've been communicating in, there was a potential threat that they'd be picked up on though the four down below seemed quite heated in their argument so they were safer than they'd normally be communicating right in front of the enemy.</p><p>Normally it might have been nothing out of the ordinary to encounter a few ninja stuck before a crossroad. Though ninja with chakra this potent would have more than likely planned out their trip and overprepared for it. Seeing ninja stronger than your average chuunin just standing around and bickering with one another looked out of ordinary for certain.</p><p>These ninja did not wear any standard ninja uniforms either. All of them wore dulled and worn out forehead protectors and the symbols on them were scratched out, though, if Mana's vision didn't play tricks on her, she could have sworn that she saw the kanji for "nine" etched onto the plates. Once the spectacle of running into them had run out and everyone had gone silent, working on moving around the bickering quartet, their quarrel became more intelligible.</p><p>"Of course, I am the strongest out of us four, my wind is so hot that it would dry the flesh off of your bones and crumble your skeletons to dust,"</p><p>"Don't be foolish, you would not even get to breathe in before you'd be frozen still. My blizzards bring about eternal frost that cannot be broken by a mere spring breeze,"</p><p>"Foolish, utterly foolish. Your winds borrow heat or cold whereas mine needs no such pacts. My wind is power absolute. My wind doesn't need to burn anything for it can flay the flesh clean off of the bone,"</p><p>"All four of you are clearly wrong, my wind is the righteous blade that severs foolishness from the tongue that spouts it and leaves it rotting in the clear. Though perhaps we should ask the four Allied Ninja and Nakotsumi Mana just who they think is the strongest one of us?"</p><p>"An excellent idea, brother, though they'd never tell without getting a sample of each of our power. Let's showcase our awesome might and then ask the last survivor which one of us is the strongest?"</p><p>Mana's heart seemed to sink down to her heels. These four truly were antagonistic toward them and they were waiting specifically for them, having laid a trap. Not only that – they knew who everyone in Mana's group was as well.</p>
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<a name="section0682"><h2>682. The Daisushi Brothers' Gun Show</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Stay back, Mana." Junichi hissed at her while the Allied Ninja dealt with the prospect that this unexpected roadblock knew who they were and possibly a great deal more.</p><p>"No way," Mana shook her head. "I'm not letting any of you get hurt on my watch."</p><p>"Any of us get hurt… Your watch?" Junichi mumbled to himself.</p><p>"I'm afraid I must side with the young lady here, Junichi. There are four of us and four of them – young Mana is quite a tie-breaker." Cailar chuckled to himself, realizing that after all the time he disagreed with Junichi just to piss the old man off, he now genuinely felt like he was wrong in holding the young recruit back.</p><p>"We can handle it. She lacks training and can easily turn out to be a tiebreaker for the other side." Mollay felt the necessity to open his own rarely opened mouth.</p><p>"Come on, let's let Mana loose and see the wild soul that kicked the crap out of Guru Ayushi himself, huh?" Shitaka snickered.</p><p>"It appears that our Allied Ninja fellows are too modest to face us. Why don't you encourage them, brother?" one of the four road-blocking ninja turned to another, prompting him to step out and flex his massive arms beside his beefy chest.</p><p>All four of them were impressive specimens in physical training. They were also well past the age when they were supposed to appear as if they surpassed the conditioning of the human prime and yet they defied all odds in displaying remarkable bulk when one overlooked their grey hair and thick beards. Their attires were rags though all four had a penchant for jewelry and minor junk accessories that didn't give out the slightest chakra signal at all, suggesting them to be mere visual elements and nothing more.</p><p>"Wind Style: East Scorch!" one of the four monk-like rogues clapped his hands together and spun his head around while breathing in. Once he exhaled, the Allied Ninja had already scattered, being fully prepared for the man's attack.</p><p>A road-clearing tunnel of a barely visible heatwave reduced the trees in the way of the Wind Release favoring rogue ninja to dry husks. The drying effect was so potent, in fact, that Mana's vision began to blacken at its edges and shortness of breath persisted well outside of the immediate range where the tunneling heatwave blasted.</p><p>"You seem to have us at a disadvantage, what with knowing who we are…" Junichi spoke to the ninja blocking the path with a bemused expression that accurately portrayed the irritation he felt because of the fact that the enemy had enough intelligence to ambush them like this.</p><p>"Yeah, we'd appreciate a heads-up in case your heads are worth a detour to the bounty exchange office," Shikata winked at the enemy four of whited out eyes and thick hair.</p><p>"And why would we bother telling you anything at all?" one of the four stepped out in front of his hot-headed and heat-breathing brother while fixing his wristbands and preparing for a good bashing. "You're all going to be very dead soon enough."</p><p>"Arrogant as you may be, it's not like you four gentlemen are absolute idiots. Taking on four Allied Ninja all by yourselves is a daunting task, likely to cost you some effort and trouble. Wouldn't you like avoiding that trouble if at all possible?" Cailar teased the four, remarkable old men, appealing to their values as a quartet of possible ninja monks.</p><p>So, the prevailing theory of the Allied Ninja was that these four were indeed ninja monks. It wasn't at all difficult to imagine why a group of ninja monks would wish Mana's head after what she's done. After all, Guru Ayushi might not have practiced all of their various religions practiced on various ninja temples, though he was a highly spiritual man and a sworn non-interventionist. Just the kind of man that the ninja monks would respect.</p><p>"Tough luck, punk!" the hot-headed whitebeard stepped out and punched his own palm with a lively roar of his words. "We, the Daisushi Brothers, welcome the adversity of challenge!" he roared out while smacking his forehead with his own open palm, emitting thunderous thuds as the rogue monk did so.</p><p>"Hmm, the Daisushi Brothers?" Cailar mocked the enemy by posing in a showy manner, swinging his hips about as he acted to be deep in thought, "Haven't heard of you guys, must not be all that great…"</p><p>"The fool is always the most pleasant to silence…" another one of the four brothers expressed his displeasure with the garish Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Alright, let's try this again, you are not village ninja. That much is evident. Would you not wish your names to become infamous? Why not spread them as wide across as possible?" Junichi tried de-escalating the situation though it was more likely than not a fool's errand at this point.</p><p>"There is wisdom in what this man speaks, Peiras, we should heed his word and tell this story to as many drinking companions as we can," a man in rough-looking, torn and worn jade dogi turned to his brother who donned a scrappy attire that may have once been as white as his hair was now though overtime has turned to ashy grey.</p><p>"Perhaps, though I do not see many feasts in our immediate future. We'll have a child to escort with us after all," the almost-white-clothed brother named Peiras nudged his chin slightly to Mana's direction, the young woman couldn't see any irises or pupils in the eyes of the four men making it difficult to make out the center of their attention though she could guess based on the shiver that ran down her spine when the man turned his face at her. A more primal instinct warning her of danger than mere, easily confused pair of eyes.</p><p>"She is hardly a child, looks like a young woman already…" another brother, this one dressed in deep and similarly worn-out blue objected by crossing his massive arms over his even larger chest. "Plus, who cares if she sees us drink, she'll die eventually anyway, right? That's the whole point of a bounty…"</p><p>"Maybe…" Peiras nodded in acknowledgment of a fair point coming from his brother. "You two should stop talking in front of the enemy though."</p><p>"Who cares, they'll be dead soon enough…" one of the four brothers objected.</p><p>"Cool your hot head, Nanotus, this is why the Nine Tales Gang sees us as mere footmen," Peiras tutored his hardly any younger though amply more hotheaded brother with a scorching breath.</p><p>"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, maybe they can stop treating all of us as one person? It's kind of degrading, really… I mean, I get it, the Twelve Tales Gang doesn't sound as good but maybe a Dozen Tales Gang… I don't know, my point is – we do deserve some more respect." The brother dressed in a worn jade dogi scratched his dried out and wild grey hair.</p><p>"Maybe we can negotiate these terms with the Allied Ninja eliminated and the head of Nakotsumi Mana in our hands…" Peiras nodded, getting the attention of his brothers back on track.</p><p>"I'm fighting too." Mana declared, moving from behind the closed wall formation that the Allied Ninja formed in front of her and in between them, splitting the strict and closed formation apart.</p><p>"Didn't you hear? You're the one they want," Junichi grumbled, predictably, not being in favor of the idea.</p><p>"Yes, but I have a plan," Mana insisted.</p><p>"Fine. If we have to keep holding you down on top of taking on these clowns, it'll be a four on five either way," Junichi sighed, looking none too pleased but caving nonetheless.</p><p>"I am Euruston, the East Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" a rogue monk with a soiled, yellow dogi flexed his muscles in a flashy pose while the rest of the flock froze in place.</p><p>"I am Nanotus, the South Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" the rogue monk with the ash-grey skin and a worn and torn orange dogi flexed in a different pose, joining in to his brother Euruston.</p><p>"I am Shaphyr, the West Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" the rogue monk with a jade dogi joined into the formation with a flex of his own natural gifts, as of yet, unsoiled by his advanced age.</p><p>"I am Peiras, the North Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" the last frozen in place brother twirled in a pirouette into the center of the formation before completing the whole combination pose with a flashy flex of his own upper back and arms before the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Together we are… The Daisushi Brothers! Which one of us is the strongest!? Not even our mother can tell!" the lot chanted all together without breaking their poses, using only their heads and their necks to direct their fierce expressions toward their enemy and their target.</p><p>"No, I do believe that chicanery such as this is what makes this Nine Tales Gang not take you guys very seriously," Mana admitted while scratching a slight itch on her cheek.</p><p>"Whoa! These guys are way cool! We should do something like this too!" Shitaka almost cracked up holding his abdomen while observing the flashy show of dance and muscle that the rogue monk brothers put up.</p><p>"Under no circumstances," Cailar turned his nose up and looked away with a slight flush to his cheeks.</p><p>"We've no time for this!" Junichi growled. His hands went through the array of hand seals as blazes that came into being seemingly from just the intensity of the man performing the technique extended in wild jets of crackling flames aiming to bash against either of the body-builder criminal brothers.</p><p>Nanotus, the South Wind, opened up his mouth and began slurping the very air around him, taking all of the wild streaks of flames in a mad slurp. The flames flashed in a blazing twirl as they filled the man's mouth and then went down to never come back up again. Nanotus turned around and blew out another tunnel of hot air, this time clapping his hands out in front of him and devastating his own heatwave in the process.</p><p>Instead of merely disrupting his technique, Nanotus appeared to detonate it prematurely with both the enemy and his brothers in the vicinity of the blast. A howling rip was the only signifier of the rough fling which sent Mana flying. She didn't see what it was that she hit with her back though common sense suggested that it was just a tree.</p><p>She could still feel the heat pulsing off of her arms and shoulders, Mana made sure to not rush her return back to her feet and roll over her back and onto her front to put the few remaining blazes of flames out though they didn't seem to go as easily as she had hoped. These flames were pure Fire Release, it seemed. They'd be demanding active chakra augmentation in order to not cause their wicked burns though they'd fail to expand any further as long as no additional Fire Release flames pump them up.</p><p>"Yeah! Now it's a party!" Shitaka shrieked out while rocking his head and rolled back to his feet, reaching under his leather jacket and pulling out a handful of wooden and plastic jars that he flung at the enemy like a madman.</p><p>"Wind Release: West Block!" Shaphyr, the West Wind, bent his upper body down to the ground while placing both his knuckles to the ground and blew out his entire chest of air that compressed and rose in the shape of a Wind Release wave which served as a protective barrier.</p><p>Shitaka's jars popped and blew up in mild, concussive blasts though they failed to break through the wind barrier or leave that deep of a dent in it. This didn't appear to break Shitaka's spirits at all as the leather-clad punk froze his right hand and substituted a small plastic jar with a larger, red one in his pocket without breaking the natural movement of his arm.</p><p>The substituted jar colored the wall of wind with flames and forced the natural escalating reaction of a booming firestorm that overwhelmed all of the parties involved at once. Before the devastation could even settle down, Mollay was already in the midst of the fray, throwing fists against all of the bundled muscle-headed rogue monks.</p><p>While Mollay lacked the physical strength to compete with any of the four, his skill in taijutsu allowed him to compensate for it as any time he'd have caved to a blow of superior strength a light tap of his foot at the knee or shin of the opponent threw them off guard and drastically reduced the force of the incoming blow. Mollay's own barrage of strikes suffered no such drawbacks though the Daisushi Brothers were still formidable and hardy so the stalemate didn't give either direction.</p><p>"Multi-Kunai Jutsu!" Cailar chanted, extending his hands and lobbing well over hundreds of multiplying kunai that appeared to clone off of the multiple handfuls that he used as the original source.</p><p>Mollay's skin hardened when a coat of clay ran up from his feet all the way to his head in a mere snap and prevented him from taking any damage from the hail of cloned knives. The Daisushi Brothers didn't appear to be capable of anything of the sort, making them force their flexed muscles to do the protective job for them. While the bunch did receive a handful of nasty cuts and lacerations, surprisingly, they did manage to fend off the elementary hail of knives coming at them.</p><p>"String Reeling Jutsu!" Cailar chanted, pulling on the barely visible strings of steel wire attached to the end of his kunai with both his hands, his elbows, knees, and feet as well as his teeth to entrap the enemy inside the improvised net of steel wire. While the Allied Ninja attempted to follow-up his successfully erected net of steel wire, the opposing struggle of the Daisushi Brothers stuffed the stick right into that wheel, throwing Cailar off his balance as he was still bonded with his trap. Almost as much as his ensnared enemy was.</p><p>Mana grabbed the ends of the steel wire herself, focusing her Magician's Touch technique in a quick, jolting pulse all throughout her body that imbued the steel wire with Lightning Release chakra. Given how it was her own jutsu, she managed to control its surge from spreading equally in all directions and aimed it just forward and at the Daisushi Brothers. The quartet of weirdos stumbled for a sec, wondering why Mana aimed her surge in the direction where Mollay was in.</p><p>It took them too long to realize that Mollay was still coated in Earth Release clay, making his Earth Release ground and neutralize the jolts of Lightning Release that Mana sent his way. It wasn't a combo they've practiced, just something that they improvised observing each other's actions.</p><p>"Nice save!" Cailar licked his lips, examining Mana with his eyes while she released his steel wire and moved back into formation with the rest of the Allied Ninja. The Daisushi Brothers collapsed with an occasional crackle still passing through their stunned bodies.</p><p>"I figured that your own ace jutsu got interrupted by all the struggling, I figured I could pitch in here. Something like this was your idea, right?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Actually, I planned on using my wire as a rail for my custom weaponry but… Leave it to a magician to execute plans with such pizazz!"</p><p>"Now, Junichi!" Cailar turned to the ex-Konoha ninja who in terms understood his fellow Allied Ninja without any additional input and began weaving hand seals while the enemy was recovering.</p><p>"Wind Style: North Breeze!" Peiras grumbled through pain and slammed his hands together, exhaling an escalating gust of wind that proceeded to gather range and gusto as it raged across the area, throwing handfuls of wet snow wherever it passed which left whatever it touched frosted.</p><p>Once Peiras straightened his back and gave a strict glare at his brothers writhing beside him, a forest of frozen wooden logs stood before him as the Allied Ninja have all chosen to substitute with the ample wreckage of wood around them rather than face the chilling gales of the North Wind of the Daisushi Brothers.</p><p>"One, two… Three, four…" Shaphyr counted as he still grumbled in the paralyzing pain of Lightning Release jolts running up and down his nervous system and causing utter mayhem.</p><p>"You're right, where is the young lady?" Peiras looked around. He feared the worst-case scenario – that the ninja magician had used the opportunity of the four's bodies being slowed down by her formidable combo with Cailar to flee back to the village or at least to somewhere she considered a potential sanctuary.</p><p>"Fire Style: Immolation!" Mana's voice filled the air as the magician blew out her own chest worth of air in the shape of a focused stream of showering flames aimed at the cold-winded brother who was the quickest to recover. The flames came from a fallen pile of dried-out trees from Peiras' side. Once the Daisushi Brothers had realized that they've been duped by a genjutsu and not a mere Substitution Jutsu which allowed Mana to relocate, they had her flames to deal with.</p><p>The stream of flames washed right at the stout chest of one of the Daisushi Brothers and sent him reeling. After all, he was not the one breathing heatwaves but instead dabbled in the combo of Water Release and Wind Release to form his freezing blizzards. Though Mana didn't expect to have discovered any sort of weakness, what she had counted on was the blizzard working the same kind of magic on this one as it would have affected anybody else. It was what she got too as Peiras collapsed on his side, fleeing from the flames as even his own chakra augmentation began to fail in protecting him fully from Mana's counterattack.</p><p>Just when the magician thought she had the enemy on the ropes, Mollay tackled her to the ground and the world turned dark. It was once a clay coating shaped just like Mana washed away from her that she realized that Mollay didn't betray her but instead might have saved her hide. She didn't count on her own Fire Release technique fueling that of Nanotus' earlier remaining specks of flame and expanding them. It took Mollay's coating to protect Mana from the growing aura of fire that would have devoured her as a result.</p><p>"Thanks…" Mana nodded her head as she rose to her feet, somewhat regretting the fact that she couldn't take Peiras down for the Allied Ninja, even if she'd have suffered some mean burns in the process.</p><p>Mollay did not respond, as was his strong and silent type nature.</p>
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<a name="section0683"><h2>683. Aces Under Both Players' Sleeves</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A bubble of transparent force burst around Junichi's body, blowing away the smoldering tongues from Nanotus' combination of Wind and Fire Release that required constant upkeep of chakra to fend off. Like fighting against genjutsu, this was a potential way to fend it off, however, it might have been more effort for what a measly after effect was worth. This much flexing suggested that Junichi was going for something more serious this time.</p><p>"Sealing Technique: Two-Minute Gold!" Junichi chanted out, emitting a mighty burst of golden-colored intensity from his body that focused and drew back down, focusing around the enemy. The Daisushi Brothers lifted their arms up and resisted the closing of their entrapment.</p><p>The brothers' arms flexed and worked overtime. The tension flowed up and down their entire bodies as their taxed muscles began shaking and their expressions twisted to reflect the laborious task that they were taking up but they held the golden sphere from sealing them into a mere ball of energy to be disposed of through sheer physical force.</p><p>"All of their silly antics, we might have underestimated them. To be able to prevent the Two-Minute Gold from closing while still shocked and partly stunned by Mana's technique…" Cailar flicked a messy strand of his hair with his hand before sighing and raising up his palm in front of the enemy.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Lightning Net!" Cailar chanted out, flinging kunai with steel wire attached to their rings all across the stage, focusing more on flinging a wild number of the knives rather than trying to aim them well. In fact, most of the blades flew off into the cover of the forest and etched into the woods there. Once his setup was complete, Cailar grabbed a strand of the steel wire and let his body jolt with Lightning Release chakra, aiming to shock anyone caught in his net of steel wire.</p><p>The surge of Cailar's Lightning Net destroyed what struggling remains were left of Junichi's sealing technique though it did end up covering the entirety of the enemy force in the trap, due to their limited potential to resist or elude it since Mana had them already hazy and Junichi's jutsu had them trapped in place.</p><p>"M-More Lightning Release?" Euruston, the East Wind of the Daisushi Brothers, growled writhing on the ground while his body spat out unruly electric sparkles. His entire nervous system was being taken to its limits by one Lightning Release technique sieging it after another.</p><p>"I've powered through it before. I shall do so now as well!" Peiras roared out as he stood up and flexed picturesque build to force the Lightning Release traces out from his body using nothing but the sheer power of the intense physicality present inside his body.</p><p>"D-Damn it… Peiras!" Nanotus rolled on the ground, struggling to repeat the excellent resistance against the paralyzing effects of the enemy ninjutsu like his brother. "Just wait… Until I recover…"</p><p>"That's… Nothing, Peiras…" Shaphyr growled through his teeth. "This doesn't mean… Nothing… I'm still stronger than you!"</p><p>"I don't know," Mana shrugged. "You guys do look quite pathetic. Your brother is clearly the one with the strong genes in the family."</p><p>Junichi turned to the magician with a confused look. He had never heard the magician sound this bratty and use mockery to belittle her opponents. He hadn't known her that long during her ninja career, but, based on what he had experienced working with Mana once as well as his memories of the girl as a little kid, he couldn't quite connect the dots with her current behavior and her general personality.</p><p>"Hmph… You see, brothers, even our target acknowledges the fact. Thank you, Mana. I knew you'd see reason, you are, after all, deserving of the bounty on your head," Peiras, the North Wind of the Daisushi Brothers, nodded in acknowledgment of the girl's declaration.</p><p>"Dammit, Peiras, I've had it up to here with your vanity! Have at you!" Nanotus jumped onto his feet and threw a right cross straight at his brother's jaw. Peiras leaned down under and socked Nanotus in his gut right back. The confused brother wheezed when all air left his body and collapsed on his knees, tongue sticking out and doing his best to catch even the smallest trace of air.</p><p>"You think you're better than us!? You've always thought you're better than us!" Shaphyr jumped onto his feet and breathed in, hesitant to repeat his brother's mistake and half-assing his attack against Peiras. The West Wind of the Daisushi Brothers clapped his hands together and let a vociferous roar out from the bottom of his lungs.</p><p>"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" he yelled out as an overwhelming force hit his brother Peiras head-on and threw him like a ragdoll smashing through the woods on the other side of the clearing, raising a ruckus and leaving trails of devastated land wherever he flew by.</p><p>"What are you doing, brothers? This is no time to engage in our legendary rivalry! We have a mission on our hands and we must complete it if we are to ascend past our reputation amongst the Nine Tales Gang ranks!" Euruston pleaded with his more hotheaded and easily confused brothers.</p><p>"I see, nice thinking," Junichi nodded with a compliment that was weak in volume so that the enemy wouldn't get the confirmation of the fact that Mana was just playing them like cords, based on the snippets of their conversation she'd heard and taken to heart.</p><p>"Using the personalities of your opponents against them, so devious…" Cailar licked his lips. "That's just the kind of stuff that'll save your life on the field."</p><p>"Yo, sick, shredded monk dudes, don't you get rocking without me! Ninja Style: Heart of Fire!" Shitaka yelled out at the confused lot of rogue ninja monks as he pulled out a jar that was wrapped in tight leather and charged at the enemy with the package in hand. Euruston's hands were fast for someone so bulky.</p><p>"Wind Release: Blade of the East!" he yelled out. A tunneling stream of a gust running in the opposite direction halted Shitaka on his feet as slicing blades of compressed air rushed through the stream, slashing at anything it caught in its path. An arcing streak of red splashed and scattered into the turbulence of the wind stream as Shitaka collapsed on the ground. His package rolled aside from his twitching hand.</p><p>"Can't you see, brothers, the little witch girl is just playing us to try and sick us on each other. She doesn't truly see Peiras as the strongest, or any of us, not until we show her the full extent of our power," Euruston reasoned with his brother, grabbing hold of Nanotus' rugged and hairy head and pressing his forehead against his own as he drove his brother's greasy body closer for a momentary embrace that would cool both of their heads.</p><p>A roar followed a cascade of loud, wooden crashes as Peiras burst forth from the woods with streaks of crimson running down his face and the cuts over his impressive musculature. His chest and his arms. His baggy pants were littered with tears and holes as well and the pearly whites of the pissed off Daisushi Brother didn't make for a fitting match for his grey beard and hairdo.</p><p>"The nasty tricks of these Allied Ninja might have made beginning our stomp difficult but employ anything less but your full power at your own peril, lest you be judged upon the merits solely of the power you've shown to the enemy at that time!" Peiras clenched his fists before relaxing them and swinging them in a circle as he eased his breath and prepared for a larger jutsu that he had shown up to that time.</p><p>"Transmogrification Release: Dirty Dome!" Mollay grumbled as he lifted his arm up and allowed a whirl of white, glowing matter form a twisting, shuriken-like shape before he drove it into the ground and expanded an ethereal, dome shape around his teammates that appeared like a protective dome.</p><p>"Wind Release: Absolute North!" Peiras thrust his hands outward as if lobbing a gigantic snowball. His roar picked up speed and strength but it was not the sheer velocity of his wind that was truly troublesome about his jutsu. It was the cold that sunk the entire battlefield in a haze-like state of misty white. Ending up hit by such a technique spelled out certain, frosty doom to anyone foolish enough to be caught in it, and given how the channel of the enemy's force was none other than the wind itself, it seemed rather problematic to avoid.</p><p>And yet, whatever curious barrier Peiras had formed around the squad appeared to work its goofy magic. As the wind hit the surface of the barrier, it didn't appear as if the transparent energy dome posed any resistance to it, though frost and the chills that the wind had brought in quickly turned to just splatters of mud that vexed the team caught inside the mud bath though it was a favored alternative to freezing in every way matter could have been frozen in a split instant.</p><p>"Madness, what manner of trick was that!?" Peiras breathed out a heavy breath that drove his hands dangling by his side and slobber littering his lips and thick beard. The eldest of the Daisushi Brothers employed the back of his hand to wipe it off his face.</p><p>"A Bloodline Selection ability?" Mana stood in total awe of the esteemed Allied Ninja she found herself in the presence of.</p><p>"That's right, Mollay is one of the few rare individuals to possess the ability to combine three nature releases into one, exceptionally powerful nature," Junichi nodded. "It makes Mollay the man to fear amongst the entirety of the Allied Ninja."</p><p>"Heh, all that power, all that cool and yet you couldn't save your own country from being obliterated by a giant sky laser…" Cailar chuckled earning a gruesome stare from Junichi that suggested that the flamboyant Allied Ninja had finally crossed the line.</p><p>"Why would I have saved Iwagakure? That was not my assignment at the time as an Allied Ninja. I have surrendered my Iwagakure headband the moment I joined the Allied Ninja." Mollay stated with what would have seemed like an emotionless expression had it not been for a solitary vein popping out on Mollay's forehead, clear as day.</p><p>As much as Mana wanted to find out the exact ability that Mollay's Bloodline Selection had, how exactly did it turn an absolute zero blizzard into just a meek drizzle of mud, what its capabilities and limitations were, this was neither the place nor time to do so. The enemy would not wait for her to figure it out, nor did Mollay seem like the type to employ the necessary amount of crayons to explain it to her. She'd just have to observe the fused nature release at work in order to understand it.</p><p>Shitaka rolled on his side and then picked himself off the ground. He put up his dukes with one of his hands still clutching the package he had dropped earlier and ran at the enemy, greatly confusing them in the process. The Daisushi Brothers were physical brutes and challenging even one of them at taijutsu was a questionable venture with only a veteran such as Junichi being able to hold his own for a little while. Shitaka looked plenty puny underneath that thick layer of leather so Nanotus stepped out to smack the overzealous young man aside. The brave display of Nanotus prevented Euruston from employing his technique of slashing wind blades which he employed earlier, forcing Euruston to lower his arms from half-completing the motions necessary to call upon that technique again.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Heart of Fire!" Shitaka yelled out, diving underneath Nanotus and slipping underneath his groin as he appeared in between the trio of the East, South, and West Winds of the Daisushi Brothers.</p><p>A rotating pillar of flames burst from the package that Shitaka slammed against the ground. The force of the impact was sufficient to break whatever laid encased in all that protective leather and, as it appeared, the leather was not just a dry string of protective material as the rest of the Allied Ninja pinched their noses, suggesting that a smell highly unnatural for ordinary flames had filled the forest clearing.</p><p>When the blazes cleared out, revealing some singing damage on Shitaka's own leather outfit and significant patches of black littering the area where the Allied Ninja had detonated his unstable ninja tool, there was not a trace of the Daisushi Brothers to be seen in the immediate vicinity. It was only when the wind picked up and began bashing at the squad of Allied Ninja from unnatural directions, beating relentlessly from all sides, that the Allied Ninja receive a tip that they might have thought of celebrating the obliteration of their enemy prematurely.</p><p>"Wh-What is this? It's like the enemy is the wind itself…" Junichi grumbled as he could find no other way but to engage in a meaningless struggle against the wind. Once the gales have had enough of their shoves and yanks, they whirled around in four separate vortexes until they've settled down and formed the shapes of the four Daisushi Brothers.</p><p>"That's a Tenketsu Shinto technique," Mana gasped.</p><p>"A Tenketsu Shinto?" Junichi turned to Mana. He would have, under normal circumstances, have been pleasantly surprised by how knowledgeable this young lady was, perhaps, in some aspects, even more so than a veteran such as himself, though currently, he hated the predicament their squad found themselves in far more than to engage in compliments.</p><p>"It is an ability to use chakra to modify one's own body on a molecular level, namely, by utilizing a nature release technique with one's own body," Mana explained. Regalia from Sunagakure once showed a similar ability though Mana could only understand the novelty and sophistication of her technique after years of additional research in the archives.</p><p>"Well, well… And here I thought we had the black caviar of ninja techniques in Mollay. Who would have thought that the enemy had something to show of their own?" it seemed that Cailar was incapable of sounding like a normal human being for one second as even when he felt pressured to a corner he sounded like he was still poking fun at something or someone.</p><p>"I've modeled my Flower Petal Release genjutsu to work something like a Tenketsu Shinto," Mana pointed out. "Though I do not truly become a shower of flower petals, I merely place my opponents under the illusion that suggests that I do. That is the difference."</p><p>"Very well, brothers, perhaps we should save our feud for when we have the witch girl captured. Once she's subdued, she'll be able to tell us which one of us is stronger," Shaphyr, the West Wind of the Daisushi Brothers, sighed in exasperation, having been the last one that still showed signs of wanting to lash out at his own brothers to settle their rivalry.</p><p>"I'm glad you finally know the reason," Peiras nodded in acknowledgment of his brother's resolution.</p><p>"Well then, let us pound the enemy to dust and be done with it!" Shaphyr clapped his hands before raising his open palms and thrusting them at the same time as he let out a kiai shout with each successive palm thrust. "Wind Style: Fist of the West!" he roared out once his flurry of Wind Release ninjutsu blows was well in play.</p><p>Mollay covered himself up in a stout, cross-shaped block while clapping his feet together and erecting a dome of Earth Release around himself to aid him in his defense. The gale fists rushing him were tough to make out, though with her chakra sensory Mana would have been the absolute worst opponent to be targeted with this technique. The rest, on the other hand, seemed rather taken aback by it, making it their lucky break that the jutsu was not too accurate and whiffed both Junichi and Shitaka.</p><p>The barrier of dirt burst in an outward pop while the fist of blunt gale smashed Mollay to the ground, drilling him and driving him into a small crater. The gale fist became easier to make out moments before its dissolution once a streak of blood from Mollay's nose covered its side but the vital liquids then splattered across the nearby grassland once the gale fist lost its shape and dispersed.</p><p>"They've realized that Mollay is the most dangerous of us all. They'll be trying to take him out first," Junichi alerted his squad mates as the Daisushi Brothers scattered and attacked the Allied Ninja in close distance. They took their time measuring the worth of their enemy before doing so but at this point, they all realized that they had the physical superiority against the Allied Ninja that they seemed to have at the first glance.</p><p>Junichi put up his arms and bent his hands behind his elbow, forming a sharp, triangular shape of his head that served him well in driving Euruston's jabs and crosses off of his head and opened his opponent up for quick countering strikes. It wasn't long before Junichi's hands grabbed hold of Euruston's head and slapped the balance out of the imposing combatant before driving Euruston's face down to his rising knee strike and sent the brute rolling back on the grass, reeling and clutching his busted open nose.</p><p>Mollay did not seem to be able to read Nanotus' mindless rampage at all. A rushing lariat sent Mollay down on the ground while the tall monk lifted his opponent off the ground by his shoulders and kicked him up like a ball of rags before grabbing his chubby opponent out of the air and slamming him back down into the ground before proceeding to pummel the possessor of the Bloodline Selection technique while he was down.</p><p>Shaphyr's storm of fists was not something that Cailar was ready for either. It was a martial arts as simple as they came but Shaphyr was so well versed in just throwing fists and employing all of his physical strength and speed at once without offering the enemy the necessary time to utilize any proper counters to such a simplistic martial arts style that they might have had that Cailar just had little to no chance. The only saving grace of the flamboyant Allied Ninja was that the enemy did not seem to employ his feet or knees at all, which helped Cailar cling to consciousness when he fell down on his knees and helped him get back up by rolling down and under his opponent's relentless flurry of strikes.</p><p>Peiras' style of physical body manipulation looked painful just watching it happen. The eldest of the Daisushi brothers used the entirety of his body, unlike Shaphyr, and his particular style of combat appeared to utilize a more wrestling styled moveset though Peiras used his body to manipulate that of the opponent's to bend them and strike them when they were in uncomfortable holds. Shitaka bent and fell like an autumn leaf once Peiras brought this unique style of his to the rebellious ninja.</p><p>The Allied Ninja were in a desperate need for an x-factor.</p>
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<a name="section0684"><h2>684. The Still Wind</h2></a>
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    <p>Mana's eyes switched between observing the proud expressions of the Daisushi Brothers now that they've revealed the greatest ace up their sleeve and the disgruntled Allied Ninja who only now had the full picture of the pickle they were in.</p><p>The frustration of the Allied Ninja was not uniform, however. Junichi was the one with the most predictable ire shining from his face. Mollay appeared to be more hesitant than he was intimidated. Mana had seen that expression on the faces of ninja that had ample skill though couldn't make a decision as to which one of them to employ next, given that the right choice would have broken them through on to the path to victory whereas the wrong one would have sealed their fate for good.</p><p>In a welcome change, Shitaka was neither rocking out, cringing nor was he shouting and flipping the enemy off. It was a rare moment of reservation for the young man, one that Cailar, another flamboyant and expressive ninja also shared with his occasional ally.</p><p>"We can still defeat the enemy," Mana tried helping the squad of Allied Ninja to pick themselves back up. "Tenketsu Shinto techniques require manipulation of every minuscule particle it affects. Such a method places an ever-growing strain on the enemy's body. If we just push the enemy to use the technique over and over again, we can exhaust and defeat them."</p><p>"Maybe. Maybe not…" Junichi spat to the side. "We've still got a decent trip to the Lightning Country. We will need that strength on our journey, that's even if we can afford to play games of attrition with these guys and hope to win them."</p><p>"Wind Style: Blade of the East!" Euruston yelled out after extending his hands outward and blowing out a tunnel of compressed air through which invisible slashing wind projectiles beamed through, looking to slice and shred any unfortunate soul trapped within the wind tunnel.</p><p>Mollay focused the chakra to his feet and released it in a single pulse, resonating through the ground which allowed him to take a robust leap up and over the tunnel. He had ascended just high enough for the stream of wind to have subsided by the time that he'd land back down. It was something that the Daisushi Brothers had planned for, however, as Shaphyr, the Wind of the West, rushed in beside his brother and turned his head around in a vertical circle as he blew picking up a gale of wind from his own vigorous lungs alongside his brother.</p><p>"Wind Style: Break of the West!" Shaphyr howled out in a booming proclamation of the name of his technique that echoed inside the rotating gale that arced like a hooked strike and looked to bash against the airborne ninja.</p><p>A sharp sound of steel wire reeling between Cailar's hands brought up the possibility of a sound rescue before the arcing draft would bash the airborne Allied Ninja back down to the shredding tunnel of wind but Nanotus was in there, hitting Cailar with a running lariat that sent the ninja who was not used to a close-range engagement sliding back and into the crumbling wall of thick woods on the other side of the clearing.</p><p>Mana's shape dissolved into flower petals, serving as a temporary distraction to the Daisushi Brothers who expected to be attacked now that the magician managed to slip away from their sight with her illusion. They did not expect Mana's shape to instead re-assemble just in front of the rushing blast of wind with her arms spread out wide, forming her own protective bubble of Wind Release chakra.</p><p>Before Mana could even call out the name of her Magic Bubble Jutsu, let alone form it at a respectable enough rank to block the enemy's own B-Rank ninjutsu, her bubble of Wind Release chakra popped as if it had been caught between two powerful hands and squeezed tight, offering all the measly resistance of a balloon. There was no visual indicator of the overwhelming blunt force that hit Mana head-on, though everything seemed to blank out for a second. By the time Mana recovered, she was flying back and spinning with no control, about to complete the arc and begin plunging back down.</p><p>Instead of the rough landing of dirt and grass meeting her face and her spine bending in all sorts of awkward angles, threatening to snap at either of its multiple peculiar bending positions, Junichi caught Mana just before her landing. The man grunted in pain. A rude yank pulled out the figurative ground beneath the young woman's feet before she could even get used to it as Peiras had locked his arms in a sleeper hold around Junichi's head from his exposed back.</p><p>Mana flopped onto the ground like a recently pulled out carp though she rolled and returned to her feet, looking to force her head to stop spinning so that she could rush in to help Junichi before Peiras chokes him out. Her hand basically moved on its own, it was hungry for action, looking for stimulation as it had been used all throughout Mana's life. A handful of steel-tipped cards spun around in a curved trajectory, looking to curve just around Junichi's neck and pin the enemy behind him.</p><p>Peiras pulled the large Allied Ninja up, demonstrating impressive physical dominance as he manhandled the subdued opponent and fell on his own back, wrapping his feet around Junichi's abdomen and coiling around him like a roided out constrictor. Knowing that Mana was just in front of them, Peiras rushed on to putting his enemy to sleep, using his right elbow he attempted to bash at Junichi's head though the Konoha veteran retained enough consciousness to turn his head and use all of his remaining bodily strength to wrestle out of the one arm that restrained his neck.</p><p>A resonating cascade of glass-shattering pops and a decrepit hissing sound of spreading clouds of gas came from the other side of the clearing where Shitaka attempted to nail his enemy with some more of his sealed jar projectiles. Those burst open with hazy clouds of purple, likely poisonous or, at the very least noxious, material. While the spread and attack speed of the Allied Ninja's tools were admirable, the enemy's ability to transform their bodies into living whirlwinds negated his attempt at poisoning them as the trio merely transformed their bodies into vortexes of howling gusts and absorbed the clouds within themselves, scattering harmless smoke and dropping the powder present within them down onto the grass before they took back their human shapes.</p><p>"Don't assume that we will pull our punches just because you throw yourself into harm's way," Peiras clenched his fist raised out as a warning to Mana. "It doesn't make a difference if we kill you before or after we capture you. It's just that living targets pay out more than dead, such is the unwritten code of bounties."</p><p>Mana kind of figured that much already, those two that attacked her back in the village looking for the bounty that the leader of the Diamond Hand syndicate had put on her head from within his prison walls didn't seem awfully worked up about having to melt Mana's insides.</p><p>"I'm not going to let you kill anyone," Mana declared without much forethought of how ridiculous her proclamation might have sounded or how doubtful she was of her own ability to make that proclamation true. The Allied Ninja would have had no qualms about killing these four brothers either and wouldn't have cared too much about Mana's request to spare them. It would be near impossible to prevent deaths on either side, especially in a clash this wild.</p><p>"I don't really see how that is in any way up to you," Peiras fixed his wristbands as his lower abdomen became transparent. As dust, torn out blades of grass and scooped up leaves began whirling around Peiras' lower body, it became evident that he had used his Tenketsu Shinto technique on his lower body, rushing in on the pair of ninja as if he was riding the miniature typhoon he himself had created.</p><p>Junichi had been on the field for far too long and had taken one too many mean bumps to be caught by a mere speed and momentum boost. Peiras' taijutsu style was powerful yet elementary and a genin would have been able to see through its movements, though avoiding them would have been a whole different matter entirely. Regardless, Junichi's instincts in combination with Mana's training in evasion and acrobatics allowed the pair to dance around Peiras' measly attempts to hit them before Junichi had realized he has had enough and clocked the rogue monk in the face with a stiff cross to his nose. Peiras' shape dispersed in a disembodied gale of wind before appearing behind Junichi.</p><p>Mana's feet wrapped around Peiras' throat, squeezing them with all of the augmented strength that Mana could muster while keeping the integrity of her chakra network safe. The ninja magician placed her hands around Peiras head, letting her Magician's Touch technique resonate through her body as she sent a focused jolt through Peiras brain and shifted her weight to flip the imbalanced giant off his feet, driving him into the floor before returning to her own feet with a roll off of him. The young woman spared one glance at her fallen opponent as she fixed her gloves.</p><p>"That was a nice move. I haven't seen that jutsu anywhere before," Junichi looked to Mana, wondering if the young woman understood how rare such an occasion was, even if he had encountered such an occasion twice that day.</p><p>"I invented it. It's the first A-Rank jutsu I've ever learned," Mana didn't turn her attention away from Peiras for a second, even if the fallen monk laid sprawled out and smoking on the ravaged grassland.</p><p>"A-Rank? It doesn't look like you've killed him…" Junichi shared Mana's interest in Peiras' condition, seeing some sickly life signs from the shocked ninja.</p><p>"That's not the idea with this technique. I do think it should have knocked him out though I didn't have a hold of his head for too long. If given enough time, I could have made him very dizzy and confused, delirious, vegetative, or even comatose," Mana explained.</p><p>"I guess those are your goals when you refuse to take a life…" Junichi stroke the back of his head, getting himself in Mana's shoes in his head and realizing what a pain fighting that way felt like.</p><p>Mollay placed his hands onto the ground, raising a dome of dirt that looked to enclose over the bundled-up enemy though the trio of the Daisushi Brothers scattered into invisible drafts of wind and away from harm. The upper bodies of Nanotus and Shaphyr appeared in front of and behind the distracted Allied Ninja. The pair were still rotating, riding the current of wind of the localized hurricanes the pair rode in on as they delivered a pair of lariats from different directions.</p><p>Instead of the pleasant fleshy sound of a beheading that the pair of rogue monks intended to hear, came out a noise of shattering glass a miniature lightning storm erupted from it and consumed the pair, shocking them and making their muscles contract and twitch without any of their own control. As the two Daisushi Brothers observed their intended target, they noticed a layer of clay slipping off of Mollay's skin, allowing him to avoid similar shocking results.</p><p>"That was a totally rocking combo! Talk about lightning in a bottle!" Shitaka slid on the moist grass, rocking out his head and pumping the sky with horns formed with his hands. It would have been naïve to expect the moment of maturity he displayed earlier to last.</p><p>"You two enjoy tampering with your molecular structures, let's see how you like it when someone else does it?" Mollay clapped his hands together as he ascended up to the air and lowered his hands, aiming at the two fallen foes. "Transmogrification Release: Petrification Wave!"</p><p>A vertical cylinder of clear-white beamed down howling as the bright flash from a spark between Mollay's hands manifested into a solid light construct that entrapped the pair of Daisushi Brothers within and, despite their best efforts, made the pair exclaim in pain as their skin dried out and began turning to stone. At first, their petrification took its time, formed brittle layers of dried dirt out of the brothers' skin cells though once the transmogrifying beam of light began irradiating its full might, the change completed in a snap.</p><p>"B-Brothers!" Euruston yelled out, the hand that he reached out toward the tunneling light with trembled as he saw erected statues of stone remaining of his petrified siblings. The East Wind of the Daisushi Brothers looked to his side to see his other brother sitting up, clutching his splitting head. With the assortment of injuries that Peiras had accumulated, he'd likely not be the threat he used to be.</p><p>"He's up!?" Mana exclaimed in shock.</p><p>"A tough bastard…" Junichi grunted, beginning to go through his own hand seals.</p><p>"Wind Style:…" Euruston yelled out, looking to intercept the veteran Allied Ninja with his swift Wind Release ninjutsu technique. Before the tunnel of howling wind could form and Euruston could blow out the air he had inhaled, his wrists clutched together bound by steel wire.</p><p>Using the other end of the steel wire loop he used to entrap the Daisushi Brother, Cailar aimed to flip the enemy over his shoulder and slam him against the ground before he could fully subdue the opponent but Euruston dissolved into a vortex of slashing wind that tore the steel wire binding him to shreds, pulling the remaining steel wire out of Cailar's hands and ripping it to threads as well.</p><p>"It will be difficult to breathe in for your Fire Style technique when air freezes to a frigid block inside your lungs – Wind Style: North Breeze!" Peiras managed to slip in a taunt and outspeed Junichi on the draw as well, although, the only thing absolute about his technique was the nothing that happened after his bold proclamation of chilling intent. "H-Huh…?" the rogue monk muttered in bafflement of the fact that his technique did not come out.</p><p>"Fire Style: Blazing Eleven!" Junichi chanted out, blasting the ramparts of Peiras' stout chest and dropping the imposing giant on his back with patches of burnt, darkened skin and no signs of consciousness. A trace of chakra still smoldered in his system though with just that much even if he had woken up, he'd have been of little threat on the field.</p><p>Before the Allied Ninja could breathe out a sigh of relief after reducing the presence of the enemy force down to a minimum, sharp laughter cut through the dominant silence, coming from Euruston's direction. Throwing his eyes around the battlefield and sharing his attention with the petrified statues of his two brothers as well as his brought down eldest brother, the Last Wind of the Daisushi Brothers looked more like a madman than a combatant.</p><p>Still, the Allied Ninja didn't drop their guard, suspecting Euruston of still holstering a wild card given his boost of confidence.</p><p>"You fools! Do you have any idea what you just did!?" Euruston spread his arms out, leaving himself wide open as he boasted. "You've just made me the strongest Daisushi Brother by the process of elimination!"</p><p>"Congratulations, dude!" Shitaka's voice made Euruston's ecstasy turn to shock given how it came from right behind him. The rocking Allied Ninja slammed a pair of jars at Euruston's head from behind him, beating them like a pair of drums. The white cloud of smoke leaving the shattered jars brought Euruston down for the count, suppressing his chakra to a meager flock of sparks as the rogue ninja fell to a deep slumber.</p><p>"Are they…?" Mana pointed at the petrified statues while looking at Mollay. The pale and round ninja looked away looking defensive about being forced to answer that question.</p><p>"Every element of their body turned to stone. If I do it soon enough, I can turn them back though I have no intention of doing so. We have better things to do than to worry about two more rogue ninja that we can just abandon as monuments of their own failure," Mollay objected to being asked that and walked away from the two humanoid statues frozen in terror.</p><p>Mana took a moment to wonder how she took this end of the pair of Daisushi Brothers. They weren't technically killed, just transformed and the process was reversible for a while. Mollay wasn't a murderer just yet though Mana lacked a technique that could have reversed the transformation. Earth Release was an elemental nature she had little to nothing to do with.</p><p>"Don't beat your head about it. It ain't murder the way I see it. Murder is taking someone's life. The life of these two wasn't taken away, it was transformed. The best you can stretch this to is that their births as humans of flesh and blood have been revoked," Junichi tried comforting Mana by pressing against her shoulder and nudging her toward their direction. Nothing in his words really helped ease the heavy feeling on her chest.</p><p>"We're just going to leave them here?" Mana wondered, trying to change the subject so that she could contemplate her thoughts on disposing of an enemy this way sometime when she has the needed peace of mind.</p><p>"We've got no time to bring them in to a bounty exchange point. Most of our own heads are wanted around black market bounty exchange points too. Whatever gang these bozos work for won't stop coming for you either. It's for the best that we move on and make our way toward the eastern coast of Lightning Country as soon as possible," Junichi replied. There was no doubt or hesitation in his call, something told Mana this wasn't his first time fleeing from trouble such as this nor did the veteran of the Allied Ninja expect it to be his last.</p><p>"By the way, rock star, we'd have appreciated the heads up about that bounty and some gang of whackos being after you!" Shitaka nudged Mana with his elbow, chuckling to himself despite having suffered some mean bruises in the brawl.</p><p>"I knew about the bounty but… This Nine Tales Gang stuff is new," Mana shrugged. "I didn't know the size of the said bounty. I'd have never thought it to be enough to attract this sort of fish…"</p><p>"It doesn't matter," Mollay dismissed the banter and gestured for the ninja to keep moving despite serving as the punching bag for the Daisushi Brothers the longest out of all of the Allied Ninja. "This is why the five of us came as the escort squad in the first place."</p><p>The Allied Ninja and their recruit resumed their trip, turning north-east on the clearing and deciding to take the less-traveled and rougher, more direct road toward the Lightning Country. With the corrected direction they were heading in, they'd hit Otogakure by next morning.</p>
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<a name="section0685"><h2>685. An Attempted Murder Of Crows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Led by a question plaguing her mind, Mana picked up the pace so that she could close up to Mollay again. The Allied Ninja turned at her though it looked like that was only because she broke formation and he did not expect that to happen rather than a genuine interest in what Mana had to say. In the brief moment that the man looked at her, Mana noticed tracks of dried out blood on his face.</p><p>The rest of the crew looked like they could have used some rest too. Their chakra had taken a decent dip, though only Mollay had a truly sizable reduction from his full state. Shitaka's greasy black hair got clumped together in sharp strings as parts of it had been soaked in his own blood. Everybody's flak jackets and clothes took some damage making their jackets less likely to protect them from a stray ninja tool shot.</p><p>"You're breaking formation," Mollay grumbled out.</p><p>"Yes, I know. I wanted to ask you something," Mana nodded. The grumpy nature in which Mollay reprimanded her made the magician almost feel like a criminal.</p><p>"Never ask permission from someone if you want to ask them something. Just ask," Mollay answered without dropping the passive ire he felt toward the young woman for breaking formation and making it more difficult for them to do their job. Especially so given the recently established context of bounty hunters and some Nine Tales Gang being after her.</p><p>"That Bloodline Selection ability, is it something you were born with, or is it something you shape through skill and training?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No one is born skilled with three different nature transformations," Mollay answered in a way that made Mana feel stupid. "Still, to manage to pull off even an Advanced Bloodline transformation takes years of training and knowledge of the nature transformations that makes them feel natural. Bloodline Selection is something very few ninja can pull off, regardless of if they want to or not."</p><p>"I see," Mana breathed out with a sense of moderate relief. As a child, she's been fascinated by the Advanced Bloodline ability though she never had the courage of even dreaming to achieve it or use it herself. Part of her had thought that it had something to with genetics and, frankly, there was nothing special about her own.</p><p>"You're happy that genetics play no part in that, aren't you?" in a surprising twist, it was Mollay who asked Mana a question.</p><p>"That's right. My parents aren't descended from an important clan, the only things special about me were the mental problems I had to work hard to overcome," Mana nodded. "A few years back I'd have never even dared to dream about learning an Advanced Bloodline ability. Serving time in Jigoku made things different, it made me care a whole lot less and just want to shoot for the sky. It made me realize I had way less to lose than I initially thought. People tend to think treasures and problems of their life are more important than they really are."</p><p>"Rock on!" Shitaka chuckled striking up his horns with both hands. "Get swole and burn everything down!"</p><p>"That's a wrong mindset to strive for strength with," Mollay shook his head in a rare moment of connection with someone. "If you don't care much about anything or think that nothing matters – you'll slam against a wall you won't be able to break through because your head will be too soft to butt into it."</p><p>"If one took you for an example, they'd not be able to tell…" Shitaka stuck his tongue out, flapping it in the wind and mocking his larger ally.</p><p>"I come from a similar background to yours. I too know the grinding abyss that imprisonment puts on a human soul. I was never meant for any great things, born just to mine for any veins in the mountains that were more expensive than my own life. However, where the world tried breaking my soul, making me a mindless zombie extracting shards of minerals my entire life, I wanted to prove that world wrong instead. I wanted to make everyone believe that my life was more precious than the coltan, silver, coal, or iron we were mining. It was my undying dream of becoming a ninja that made me reach the plateau of an Advanced Bloodline." Mollay ceased talking, looking exhausted by the words he let loose.</p><p>"Heh, you might have said the most words now that I've ever heard you say," Shitaka grinned like a cheeky monkey. "I guess your pathetic journey out of the mines gets you all teared up…"</p><p>"It's not pathetic," Mana shook her head, turning to Shitaka with a disparaging look. "Whenever someone works hard for their dream and makes it come true, it's anything but that."</p><p>"Maybe most of the time, but he's still a slave of a flawed system," Shitaka tapped his right temple with his index and middle fingers as if gesturing for Mana to think deeper than that. "Mollay wanted to not be treated as a living pickaxe, to be seen as something more precious to his village than a rock but, in the end, he gave up on his village because he had become just a different kind of tool but a tool nonetheless."</p><p>"That is not true. I did not become an Allied Ninja because Iwagakure would never see me as anything more than the sum of my use for the village," Mollay shook his head. "That is, after all, the way you all see me still."</p><p>"That's not true," Mana shook her head.</p><p>"Man, who would have known that once the old man would finally start to grumble we'd be begging for him to shut up again…" Shitaka ran his hand over his greasy hair, making an even greater mess of it.</p><p>"And what about you?" Mollay stated while resuming his apathetic stare toward the bleak expanse of woods in front of them. "You state that you wish to burn it all down, the villages, the Daimyo, the very ninja system that governs us. I will admit that your approach to assignments is often anarchistic enough to remain consistent with your attitude but you serve the very system you wish to destroy."</p><p>"Fuck you, old man, what other choice do I have!? How else can I make my voice matter in this lump of clogs and clockwork? Serve as a samurai, box myself in some Bullshido code? The only way for me to become strong enough to burn it all down is working as a ninja," Shitaka beamed an aggressive glare Mollay's way though due to the fact that Mollay completely ignored it by not even noticing it made the rebellious punk sigh.</p><p>"Return to your formation, Mana," Mollay mumbled.</p><p>With an oppressive feeling in her chest, Mana slowed down to center herself inside the formation. She turned back to look at Junichi. The man was the de facto leader of the squad so his word would have been paid heed to. Even Cailar, who was often dismissive and liked to position himself at odds with Junichi, would have only jabbed at the veteran but submitted to his word in the end.</p><p>"Everyone looks tired after that last brawl. We could use some rest," Mana said with a raised voice so that the Allied Ninja could hear her without her having to tempt fate and break formation again.</p><p>"I am aware," Junichi replied, looking like some less elegant ways of saying the same thing ran down his mind before he settled on a more professional-sounding response.</p><p>"Does the recruit feel like it's past her bedtime?" Cailar, on the other hand, was always there to jab where better men refused to do so.</p><p>"Just setting up camp won't do. We need to lick our wounds and eat something to escalate replenishing our chakra sooner. We could use an inn," Mana insisted.</p><p>"They don't build inns in the middle of the woods. In case you haven't noticed, we've strayed from the main path, what with all the ambushes and the entire country wanting you dead and all," Cailar shrugged with a smug expression.</p><p>While Mana wanted to stomp her foot into the face of the arrogant Allied Ninja very much, it was only because his words rang very close to playing her strings in a tragic tune. It might just have been that the whole country wanted her dead, part of it because of the whole business with Guru Ayushi and the other part because they just wanted an easy out of the system in the form of ryo bills, not unlike Shitaka.</p><p>"Wh-What the!?" Mana exclaimed, rushing through her words so fast that she got something wet stuck in her throat and had to cough it back up.</p><p>Vision went black. Pain only came later, accompanied by loud howling. Mana wasn't sure how she fell down but she could feel the mossy forest floor underneath her as she struggled to get back to her feet. Only her, aching sides, and the taste of blood in her mouth, it seemed. These chakra signatures came out of nowhere and there were far more than a handful, in fact, there might have been more than even nine, if Nine Tales Gang was the prime suspect still.</p><p>With hazy vision, the magician bent down to pick up a wooden tool off the ground with traces of blood on its edge. Her hand reached back and made out traces of red on her white gloves, though the shade made it difficult to make out at first. A crow's caw made Mana jump up and look behind her. She had never seen crows dive through so much leafage and race to the forest floor but this one looked curious in her though it was as quick to take off as it was to land.</p><p>Dull pain in her backside. It was a struggle to keep her head from bashing against a tree she was kicked into from behind. Where did these ninja come from, more importantly, how did they elude Mana's sensory? She couldn't sense them at all until the final moment, right before they attacked which made sneaking up from behind really easy for them.</p><p>The assailant rushed in from behind her, pressing her arm to Mana's backside and tilting it slightly to let her know he could have made the hold much more painful if she resisted. The man looked up, there were echoes of a struggle up above but the assailants were too numerous for the Allied Ninja to brush off and prioritize getting to Mana. Even if she was their mission objective, the numbers of the enemy would make it difficult to fulfill that objective.</p><p>Mana's free arm shot down to her subdued wrist, restraining her assailant from breaking her arm with her own free arm while her foot searched for the enemy's own. Her assailant struggled to keep up with her, as expected, the strength of an enemy that chose to work in great numbers wasn't as great as that of a lone wolf of a small squad. Once Mana gambled for some space for herself, her other elbow shot back and forced the assailant to evade it by releasing her hand.</p><p>A slick noise of steel brushing against the evening breeze rung in Mana's still hazy ears. A kunai was in play, though she couldn't see it. Just like that, as she looked to find her assailant in the cover of the forest grounds he was gone. It was not only his physical self that was nowhere to be seen or heard but his chakra too. Mana had to hand it to these guys, whoever they were or whomever they worked for, they operated as a true ninja would, employing stealth as their second nature.</p><p>Mana's foot shot back like a lance behind her. She didn't look where she was thrusting it though she tried to trace the timing to when she was last attacked. Taijutsu worked in patterns, timing was not an easy thing to break for a person, timing was individual. It was one of the lessons that she had learned from Meiko and Kouta back in the day, that would help her evade the enemy easier.</p><p>Her foot hit something solid, at last, she saw two cross-shaped kunai blocking her foot. The knives moved onward, attempting to entrap her calf into a dangerous hold where the assailant could cut her tendons if they ever felt like disabling the magician for life as a punishment for her resistance. Mana moved faster than that, reading her assailant's intent and reveling in the moment of engagement with her enemy rather than them hiding from her with what she had to hand it to them was extreme efficiency.</p><p>Mana's foot cut at the calf of her opponent while her other one struck at their temple, sending the attacker flipping in mid-air. At last, she could place a voice behind the bundled appearance of her enemy. The magician extended her index and middle fingers as lightning crackled through her body and extended in a shocking stream, beaming toward her fallen opponent but they were no longer there. A single crow flapped its wings, ascending to the upper level of the woods.</p><p>"The crows…" Mana realized though she didn't have much time to revel in her discovery.</p><p>The sound of steel cutting through the air reached her in time for the ninja magician to roll aside from the path of a handful of kunai knives coming at her from above. She could hear the noise of crow's wings flapping as the bird ascended from the position in the trees up above where Mana could not pursue it or follow it with her gaze without leaving herself open.</p><p>The assailants transformed themselves into crows before and after their attack. It was not the generic Transformation Jutsu that was at play here but a trademarked, more advanced method as it completely masked their chakra signature too, making them impossible to tell from actual crows when they were transformed. It was only when they turned back human that their chakra stood out. Still, from what Mana could tell, sensing the attackers in-between their transformations, their chakra was not too impressive in terms of its size, suggesting that the numbers were the main advantage in play here.</p><p>"A number game, huh?" the tip of Mana's lips turned upward. She bit her thumb and shuffled through a collection of hand seals she hadn't performed for a long time. As if knowing that the enemy would attempt to prevent her placing her hand on the ground, she rolled to the side and evaded a hail of kunai that would have pinned her hand down had she been any more naïve, it was only after Mana evaded the enemy's follow-up that she placed her palm firmly on the mossy floor.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" she chanted out while her position sunk in a cloud of smoke. A pair of flappy, long, white ears emerged from the cloud, followed by crazed and racing eyes and a goofy smile of one very deranged rabbit.</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed, for a couple of moments his simple mind raced to recall who this young woman summoning him was and just how he got here.</p><p>"Blow all of the crows up," Mana ordered the rabbit menace, tapping into the memory that the two-eared terror submitted to commands as long as they sounded authoritative enough as it couldn't fathom whom it was supposed to obey and relied on following commands that sounded like they came from people that knew better.</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed, high-fiving the sky as it ran out and began duplicating in alarming quantities, filling the trees in numbers surpassing the fruits that the trees bore.</p><p>It was only a matter of time before resonating blasts filled the sky, chain reactions of detonations as the clones closed up on the deceptive bird flocks and detonated themselves with extreme prejudice. Mana didn't like the idea of gambling on the attacking ninja surviving Usujitsa in their crow forms but she lacked any better option right now. The table had just declared that an ace was needed and she held just the right one in her hand. To rely on cards she was yet to draw from the deck would have been gambling on the lives of the Allied Ninja who have already given their all for her.</p><p>The traces of the crows' chakra disappeared together with the suicidal Usujitsa clones. Mana slipped down to the ground, she didn't care that the rough bark of the tree tore holes in her blazer and opened the bleeding gash in the back of her head again. She crawled out from the cover to look at the hell she wrought, the Allied Ninja landed down by her to ensure her safety and to evade the resonating destruction up in the air.</p><p>"That's one rocking rabbit!" Shitaka rocked his head, trying to match his rhythm to the bangs in the air.</p><p>"He killed them…" Mana sighed. "There're no traces of their chakra left,"</p><p>"Don't beat yourself over it, it was a nice find associating the crows with those assailants. If they chose to conceal their chakra that way, it's their problem when they get blown up taking the shape of a measly bird," Junichi tried keeping Mana's spirits up but he saw his attempt unraveling before he even finished his sentence.</p><p>Mana punched the ground a couple of times, crying out in frustration before a weightless body slumped on the ground with whited out eyes. The man wore a black bandage that he had wrapped his entire body into, though now his outfit was in tatters, leaving a lot of his body and the grievous burns exposed. After he took the bump, the crows up in the air popped and dispersed in wobbly puffs of black smoke.</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed something unintelligible from atop of a nearby branch, raising its arms up and declaring his triumph over the birds while more and more yet undetonated clones prepared to suicide bomb the downed enemy.</p><p>"No!" Mana stepped out in front of the fallen enemy, blocking Usujitsa's path to a suicidal blaze of glory. "You've done quite enough already!"</p><p>"Ji…?" Usujitsa pressed his fluffy hand to his plump, pink lips as his tongue hung out from the side of his mouth. His feeble mind tried to wrap itself around what he might have done wrong and why the mean lady was mad at him.</p><p>Mana rolled back the sleeve of her left hand and dragged her still bleeding thumb across it, drawing a line over her wrist which made Usujitsa disperse into a cloud of smoke and return to where he came from. His job was done, now Mana would have to deal with the consequences of all the lives that Usujitsa had taken. She felt almost glad that the full implication of what she had done hadn't hit her in the head yet though it had begun creeping up to her mind with pulsating nerve signals and her breakfast that morning which had begun to crawl back up, asking for a way out.</p><p>"Get yourself together," Mollay insisted. "We need to keep moving."</p><p>"No," Junichi shook his head. "Mana needs to take some time, we can use some of that downtime. Shitaka, find out who this ninja is and who he and his gang work for."</p><p>"Rocking!" Shitaka smirked, pulling out a small plastic jar from the inner pocket of his jacket and pushing it down under the nose of the fallen enemy ninja and forcing him to jolt back up on his butt with painful-looking vigor. Energized to the point where he powered through the burns and injuries he had suffered after point-blank suicidal blast of an Usujitsa clone. "You and I are going to have a rocking good time, bud!" Shitaka smiled at the revitalized ninja.</p>
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<a name="section0686"><h2>686. Brothers: A Tale Of A Son Or Twelve</h2></a>
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    <p>Shitaka pulled a wooden cork out of the plastic jar and allowed whatever vapors it contained fill the air. While Mana could not smell its sharp odors herself, judging from the nose-turning reaction from the other Allied Ninja, it was an aroma that stung at the nostrils. The subdued ninja writhed in a vain struggle underneath Shitaka's knee which kept him pinned to the ground.</p><p>"What is that you're giving him?" Mana looked up from a fallen position. She rubbed her hand over her moist and cold nose a couple of times to take a more presentable appearance before the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"What does it look like? I'm giving him rocking mad drugs to make him spill the beans!" Shitaka stuck out his tongue, looking mighty proud of his approach to the situation.</p><p>"That's torture. His comrades are all dead and now you're going to torture him?" Mana pushed herself onto her feet, even though her stance was wobbly, a bit weak at the knees, but she managed to carry herself to the scene.</p><p>"Calm down, I'm not quite sticking knives under his shoulder blades just yet. We're just gonna have a rocking good time, just a little chat, nothing more," Shitaka snickered. Junichi rolled his eyes. This leather-clad ninja chemist didn't make his case any more presentable by behaving like a street punk.</p><p>"You're drugging him. That's still torture. I've trained with the Intelligence Division. I can interrogate people far better than you ever could by torturing them," Mana insisted.</p><p>"Once again, drugging, not torturing…" Shitaka squinted, looking around the area just to confirm that he was not the only one thinking this way. While none of the fellow Allied Ninja looked at Shitaka as if he was crazy, they did turn away suggesting that the punk would get no help from them.</p><p>"If you inhibit his mental state, he'll just tell you whatever he sees and feels – a bunch of delirium from the tripping handbook. I can do it properly," Mana pressed her case.</p><p>"Absolutely not," Junichi cut the magician's will down. "Not in your current state. You're worked up about your summon killing off a bunch of enemy ninja. You're in this to prove something but your mind isn't in the right place. I agree that the Intelligence Division's methods are superior to Shitaka's but I will not permit you to mess with the interrogation while you're distressed like that."</p><p>"I'm not distressed! Ugh!" Mana yelled out and then grunted, realizing that she just made Junichi's case for him, even though she couldn't even begin comprehending the angle from which she might have agreed with him.</p><p>"Take a rocking good whiff, crow dude…" Shitaka snickered, placing his jar by the nose of the subdued ninja and then pressing his knee to the ninja's gut to force him to take some air in faster. Ninja could have held their breaths for anywhere from twenty minutes to over an hour, depending on their training with this specific area of chakra augmentation. They'd have all grown beards by the time this guy decided to speak. "Now, who's your master, and what does he do?"</p><p>The ninja clad in black writhed on the ground as if attempting to wrestle against the adverse effects of the substance he had just inhaled. The man began clawing at his face, ripping the black cloth that he had wrapped over his head and freeing his lower face though ironically it only led to him taking more breaths of Shitaka's drug.</p><p>"I… I fly like a crow. Me and my brothers, we all fly like crows. My sister… She came for us, to bring us home… Home… We couldn't go back home. We were on a mission… Me and my brothers…" the ninja began grunting. Sweat glistened on his forehead with the reflection of the moonlight. The man had a pale complexion due to constantly wearing that wrapping for his getup though his blood must have been boiling for he was all flushing with red.</p><p>"Whoo boy…" Shitaka sighed. "It might be a while…"</p><p>"Your brothers, those were the ninja fighting alongside you, right?" Mana inquired.</p><p>"We couldn't keep her around. My sister… I sent her home, I don't know what happened to her… They burnt her up to a crisp…" the crow-ninja began throwing his arms around, forcing Shitaka to lean out of their way and let the troubled and drugged captive to flap and thrash about on the ground in his dazed stupor.</p><p>"Your sister? I thought you worked with your brothers?" Mana approached the ninja closer, Junichi raised his arm up to block her path though it was more of a stern recommendation rather than a forced attempt to keep her away. Submitting to his will, Mana halted by his arm though continued to try and direct the drugged man toward some semblance of sense.</p><p>"My father he liked dogs… The young lord had an eye for my sister. Mother died young… She was ill…" the captive continued to switch between mumbling his declarations and shouting them out loud.</p><p>"My, my… Our little assassin appears to have gotten mad, nice work, Shitaka…" Cailar chuckled, enjoying nothing more than to have an excuse to cheek at his allies.</p><p>"No, Shitaka's drugs must have done something to his brain. It's like he's off any filters, just blabbing whatever's on his mind. Just like a drunkard," Junichi interjected.</p><p>"A drunkard? Ah, yes, I suspect that's an area you are an expert in," Cailar snickered, covering his mouth with his index finger.</p><p>"Please, Junichi-san, this is getting us nowhere. Just let me give it a shot," Mana looked up at the grumpy veteran who could only muster a sigh.</p><p>"Normally I'd be against it, what with your nerves wrecking you and the already tainted condition of our captive but… We've got no time. It's self-evident that the bounty hunters will find us no matter how far outside the main path we tread. Give a hearty shot and be careful. If we can salvage some intel, that's great, if not – we keep moving," Junichi relented.</p><p>With a hearty breath, Mana approached the fallen ninja who was beginning to rip the wrapping over his body, feeling like he was about to overheat. Junichi was right, Mana would have rather worked with a perfectly intact interrogation target rather than someone that's already been drugged and not in a good place mentally. Her record of successfully probing minds that wished to remain concealed was spotty and this condition of her target wouldn't help things at all.</p><p>The magician placed her hand onto the forehead of the fallen ninja. A kick to her abdomen left Mana wheezing on the ground, she raised her forearm just in time to block a wayward smack of the target's arm. Shitaka and Junichi moved in to subdue the captive. They wanted to keep their cool but with how rough the poor guy was thrashing about it was impossible. Junichi pushed the captive away, leaving him flapping on the forest floor while the veteran fostered his bleeding nose and Shitaka found an opportunity to kick the poor guy while he was down due to him leaving crossed scratched over the punk's chest with his fingernails.</p><p>"I have five different jars in my jacket that could make him rocking soft!" Shitaka growled at the distressed captive.</p><p>"I don't doubt that but you'd only make things worse. If you do something to his body control, it'll impact the information he'll be able to give us," Mana asked the punk to back up a bit by extending her hand and trying to approach the fallen ninja again. She calmly placed her hand onto the man's forehead, halting him for a moment.</p><p>He must have realized how cool the young woman's hand was because he stopped struggling at began lightly wriggling his head to have Mana's hand touch more and more of his face. With a little bit of good-old persistence, the magician kept her hand fixed on the man's forehead, no matter how hard he tried to slip his cheek under it and kept a light press on the area to prevent struggle. After finding her opening, Mana weaved the hand seal.</p><hr/><p>A cold, autumnal breeze pestered a washed away pleasure town at night. A long-haired man, a good couple of meters in size and a flat face the front of which complemented the impression that it's been flattened by a brick, stood by the brick wall of an inn grumbling under his mouth. The man Mana was interrogating approached him from the side, wearing civilian clothing. His hair had been fluffy and bright without the wrapping, without the wear and tear.</p><p>"I got a job for ya," the tall man muttered just after the two met and looked around. "You and yer gang, see?"</p><p>"Nah, I don't do that thing anymore. I'm planning to go legitimate, you know…" the captive the way he used to be back then scratched his neck. He was a bit scared of the man, his body language translated it despite his efforts to conceal that fact.</p><p>"Yeah, good luck with that, what with the waltzing into Konoha and declaring your loyalty, a guy from some snotty hut on a settlement in the middle of nowhere," the flat-faced giant smirked. "Maybe the Hokage takes you in, who knows, do you think he'll take in all twelve of youse?"</p><p>"If he takes me, he gets all of us. Us Twelve Crow Brothers have been sticking together through the thick and thin," the man scratched his chin. It was tough to tell if he bought what he was saying himself.</p><p>"So you're out then?" the tall man wondered. "Do the other eleven have a post box I can mail them to? Maybe they'll be more talkative?"</p><p>"Don't think so…" the captive shrugged. "Bye, Tani,"</p><p>"Alright, no hard feelings, man, I know you're just trying to do right by your old lady's memory. If you ever decide to say screw it, I can always use a guy…" the grey-haired giant shrugged.</p><p>"Thanks, appreciate it…" the captive shrugged.</p><p>This was not at all what Mana was looking for but that was to be expected – the man's mind was a complete tangled mess. He had no impulse or instinct control and his thoughts and memories flowed freely, without any restrictions or mental blocks. If only Mana could have gotten to him before Shitaka pulled his magic on the guy.</p><p>A bright flash. Mana stroked her hand over the air, grabbing it like a sheet of paper and pulled it like a shroud off of a person's head, ripping through the memory and moving onto whatever laid underneath. She was on a farm of some sort. Maybe the flat-faced ruffian from before went a bit overboard talking smack about this place but it was just about the most ordinary farm on a settlement at the edge of the Fire Country.</p><p>"So, you're back, aren't you?" a woman in rather sophisticated clothing for the rundown corner of nowhere she was living in spoke up. Mana turned for the door behind her and saw the captive entering through it. It was odd that she couldn't see any of his brother's in any of his memories despite them, apparently, being a large part of his life. Nothing of his sister either…</p><p>"You don't sound very happy to see me, Kichi-san," the captive made an ironic tip of his head while posing with his hands extended to his sides.</p><p>"I am your stepmother, I know you might not be too excited to accept that. And I am about as excited to see you as any farmer is excited to see a broken rake in their shed," the middle-aged woman dismissed the young man with a crude gesture.</p><p>"Well, it's a good thing that you're neither a farmer as you've done not an ounce of actual farm work nor have you ever been inside a shed so you have no idea what either of those things feel like. Otherwise, I'd have gotten offended by that…" the young man pulled rags of his torn clothes and ripped them off, dropping them on the floor. Despite having lost her sense of smell a long time ago, Mana could sense a strong punch of blood coming off of the clothes. Likely a sensation etched into the captive's mind.</p><p>"Got into a fight again, I see?" the woman continued to nag her stepson.</p><p>"What is this? Definitely not mother's worry…" the shirtless young man picked up a bucket and stopped in between the open door, ready to step out to wash by the well.</p><p>"You know, better men get paid for fighting. Fighting for free is the same as raking your own foot, why do you refuse so adamantly against being of any use to me, almost like you're not your father's son," the woman was about to follow her stepson just so she could beat him over the head and push his neck further into the loop but a blazing glare at her halted the cowardly hag.</p><p>It didn't look like a pleasant memory whatsoever and if Mana helped the captive move past it, she'd finally get to the information that she and the Allied Ninja needed. There were no qualms about ripping this recollection like a crumpled page and ripping it out of the book of the captive's mind.</p><p>"We've heard you're looking for people that could do work for you…" the captive spoke through his black wrappings. He had two triplets of short swords crossed in pairs on his back, him and exactly eleven of his supposed brothers that were absent from his memories up until now. He dropped a bloody head of a white wolf and let it roll toward a table filled with food around which a group of men and women were seated and enjoying their time together. "Since your gang is now one member short…" he concluded his thought.</p><p>"That head, is that Shirami?" Peiras who was sitting by the table alongside his brothers pointed at the bloodied head.</p><p>"I figured if I removed his wolf-mask, it would just look like some random head to you guys…" the captive shrugged. "It just so happens that I'm looking for work and I fit the theme of people your gang is looking for."</p><p>"Is that a fact?" a one-legged crone stood up and picked up her crutches to scurry up to the intruding party of twelve. "You seem to know a great deal about the Nine Tales Gang…"</p><p>"The white wolf guy was very talkative and quite proud of being a part of it. He couldn't stop telling me all about you, figuring that one of the details he shared would scare us," one of the twelve spoke up, prompting the old crone to leap at him like a fish and dig her teeth into the poor man's throat, ripping a pulsing chunk of it out though not a drop of blood dropped from it. Only black smoke once the man dispersed into a shroud of shadowy black.</p><p>"Did Shirami tell you that we take our name very seriously? We've only got place for one guy, now that Shirami bit the dust, you see…" the crone chuckled with a soft-spoken voice after picking herself up off the ground with deceptive speed for someone with her impediment.</p><p>"That's fine, by me," another one of the remaining eleven said. "All but one of us is the same way, though I'm beginning to think you'd take a bite out of the real me if I told you which one,"</p><p>"Now that is amusing…" a man of black-skin though more so due to some unnatural condition rather than his racial background turned around the long table he sat on. The man's skin was like glistening, greasy coal and underneath his unbuttoned white shirt at the top, there were features of faces gasping for air, food, or water. At least two more alongside the man's own could have been made out in the opening of his shirt. A hardened appendage of rocky texture formed what would appear to be a backward-bending horn making it look like a ponytail of sorts stood out alongside a myriad of unnatural features.</p><p>"Maybe, but people take me more seriously a gang of twelve, pays me much more too," the captive shrugged.</p><p>"So, am I part of the gang, or what?" the captive wondered.</p><p>"Sure, sit down by the table, there's an opening and some food now, it would seem…" the pouncing, cannibal crone chuckled as she crutched back to her seat by the table and rested her buttocks.</p><hr/><p>Mana opened her eyes and stood up, moving back from the uneasy captive. She now had her answer, maybe she'd have been able to snoop around some more and gotten some more information but that was a gamble, given the loosened lips of the target. Her own head was beginning to get woozy from roaming a foreign mind in a state of stupor for so long and acting like she owned the place.</p><p>"My sister… They burnt her up like she was one of us… She came looking for us… But my mother died young, I was too young to work back then… The Daimyo's to blame for burning her… I told her to leave, the others would have killed her… The nephew liked the looks of her… If I kept her around me, she'd have been in danger… Bandits caught her on her way back… It was too late for me to turn away from my work… Not late enough for her to start something…"</p><p>"Wow, you've made him spill all the beans at once, no rocking scoop though…" Shitaka pat Mana on the shoulder once the young woman moved back from the restless and drugged soul.</p><p>"I might have ripped a page or two of unpleasant memories freed up some space…" Mana sighed. "He works for the Nine Tales Gang too. They must be really invested into that bounty."</p><p>"Then we better move. It won't get any easier until we leave the Fire Country border and then we can stop at the first inn on our way," Junichi declared, approaching Mana to congratulate her on a job well done too. "I'm impressed, kid, not many ninja can move past their demons and do their job as you did."</p><p>"Usujitsa didn't kill anyone," Mana replied. "He used clones that transformed into crows just like him. Usujitsa must have dispelled them but he didn't finish the main one off, for once luck was on my side."</p><p>"Yes, how very lucky of you…" light danced across the steel wire between Cailar's fingers as he leaned toward the captive.</p><p>"Wait, what are you doing? Don't kill him!" Mana objected.</p><p>"He's a rogue mercenary, plus, he did get a few good licks in and it makes me rather furious," Cailar mocked Mana with a sly smirk, halting only for a second before slipping the loop of steel wire around the throat of the drugged ninja.</p><p>"We've wasted enough time as it is," Mollay scolded his ally. "We've got no time to be wasted on strangling him, let's move already."</p><p>"If the method doesn't suit you, we can always kill him quickly. Mollay can literally turn him into dirty sludge or a stone," Cailar argued while the rest of his party fled into the thickness of the nocturnal Fire Country off-road. The man sighed and followed the rest, leaving the delirious ninja to recover from his stupor and figure out what to do with his life from this point on his own.</p><p>"Thanks," Mana turned to Mollay who, she had no doubt, saw no harm in killing the enemy though showed support for Mana's call. "What you did means a lot to me,"</p><p>Mollay did not reply, just stared on to the difficult to make out maze of the forest, leading the path back to the road from which point on they could have reached the Fire Country border sooner. If the Nine Tales Gang and the rest of the bounty hunters after Mana had little trouble finding her off the main roads as well, there was no reason to take the more difficult and dangerous path, after all.</p>
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<a name="section0687"><h2>687. The Valley Of Quarrels</h2></a>
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    <p>Shitaka's leather jacket had been acting rather floaty. Instead of being weighed down and completely defying the laws of physics like it used to, the piece of attire flapped and lagged behind its wearer. Mana suspected that it was because he was beginning to run short on supplies. It tended to happen when ninja tools, whether they be blades or something more refined, like jars with chemicals in them, were the crux of one's combat ability.</p><p>Everyone looked banged up. Even the clash with the Daisushi Brothers had been taxing on the Allied Ninja as they've had to fight in a nasty brawl where they were completely outnumbered. It didn't much matter how potent the enemy was, even dealing with a handful of genin made one put a flick of effort into it and even such small battles might have added up. With their encounter with the crow-transforming clone brigade recently, a whole myriad of new bruises and cuts added on top of the already impressive array of wear and tear.</p><p>"We need to stop at an inn," Mana declared, raising her voice so that she didn't need to break formation again. While she felt like she hadn't spent all that much chakra so far, her stamina was a whole different matter entirely and while she had the chakra to go through a couple more battles like those, her will to do so was a whole different matter entirely.</p><p>"We do," Junichi agreed with a nod. "We will, once we leave the Fire Country border."</p><p>"And what if we get attacked before that happens? We risk getting wiped out in our current condition," Mana objected. Normally, she'd have had no leeway in speaking out like this, apart from being just a part of the traveling group, in this case, she was the VIP that was being escorted, giving her voice a bit more weight than usual.</p><p>"We've had two encounters with the Nine Tales Gang already. It's clear that whatever bounty's hanging on your head, they're willing to invest some heavy resources to get it. That being said, it would be incredibly unlikely for their influence to extend past Fire Country's border, bandits are very territorial like that, heck, the bounty can only be cashed in in the country it was issued in," Junichi replied.</p><p>"Don't sweat it, you're a rocking good sensor, just keep your eyes open… Or closed… Whichever works out best for that sniffer of yours and keep your eyes… Nose… Whatever organ's responsible for sensory… Open," Shitaka snickered, giving Mana a look like he was talking down to a child. He might have been hopping around with empty jars in his pockets and he'd still have had the same spirit of empty bravado.</p><p>Mollay, the one with the most injuries as the Daisushi Brothers rightfully identified him as the most dangerous member of their group, traveled in silence. His bright eyes stared through the night's shade and on ahead into the oblivious thickness of the woods. Nobody was surprised by the fact that the man didn't speak his mind, though Mana had hoped that maybe his common sense would supersede his shut-in nature just this once. His entire face had streaks of dried out blood on it, even if his life was no longer at threat, even if it wasn't immediate medical attention that was in need, he could have used a shower, at the very least. They all could have.</p><p>"We've been through two clashes with the enemy already," Mana objected, using Junichi's own argument and flipping it against him. "We haven't as much as stopped to eat our rations yet, our chakra won't even begin recovering at this rate."</p><p>"If we're stopping for rations now, may as well stop at an inn. If we stop at an inn, we're basically courting the third encounter. It's not unheard of for innkeepers to cooperate with bandit gangs and supply them with information or even pull errands for them. Those Nine Tales guys seem like the kind of band to hold large influence over the area, we can't afford to take that chance. I know it's hard now but we've got to pull ourselves up and keep moving," Junichi spoke mostly to Mana, even though his words might have been interpreted as a reassurance to the whole Allied Ninja squad.</p><p>"You should trust our esteemed leader, Mana," Cailar beamed a serpentine smile her way before he completed that thought Mana knew that he was about to poke fun at the leader he just praised. "Even if he corrected our destination and now we're no longer headed toward Otogakure anymore…"</p><p>Mana wasn't that good with directions and geography, to be frank, but she had noticed the shift in direction too. Instead of heading toward northward to the Otogakure border which was by far the closest to their location before they were attacked by the crow-ninja, they were moving far too off to the north-east to be heading that way anymore.</p><p>"Otogakure is no longer to be considered safe. It's no secret that gang influence extends to that location as well. It was always meant to just be a pit stop anyway, it was off-course toward our final destination but the closest from our location at the time. I've made the call to redirect us toward Land of Hot Water. Traveling there will take us until the morning but it's a more direct route to the HQ and, I'd argue, it will make for a safer pit stop location to resupply and lick our wounds," Junichi explained himself.</p><p>"I knew something was up when you changed the formation," Shitaka muttered. "It ain't rocking at all, dude! Land of Hot Water is all wet down there over their own stupid spring water. They don't sell that much quality stuff beyond that. Otogakure would have been a way better place to resupply, now those guys know the value of free-market!"</p><p>"We will end up breaking the formation anyway. The Valley of Earth and Moon is ahead, it's separated by a single bridge and it's too wide to leap over without burning through more chakra," Mana sighed.</p><p>The Valley of Earth and Moon was a massive split surrounded by waterfalls from all directions. Many rivers ended up flushing their waters down that abyssal fall and it was as deep as the darkest trenches of the ocean washing the shores of Land of Water except part of it was above water. Yet the part that was above water was like a tip of the iceberg compared to the swallowing abyss containing all the water washed down there in hundreds of years since the valley's formation. Some of the water evaporated and rejoined the circulation process eventually but a big part of it stayed down there. The chilling depths at the bottom didn't let the blinding deep to completely empty out.</p><p>"We're moving around it," Junichi declared. "The only ways through the valley is either the wooden bridge extended over it or to leap over it, which, I agree with Mana, would burn too much of our remaining strength. We must humor the possibility that we can still be attacked at any point still, despite our effort to leave the country, we can't afford to burn chakra taking leaps like that and the sole bridge would leave us too open for a long-range attack and too helpless if the bridge was to be targeted."</p><p>While Mana agreed with the reasoning, all the detours they were taking only felt like they added on to the importance of her point. It felt infuriating being dismissed like that with vague assumptions and speculations about safety. They were going above and beyond to avoid any resting grounds and pit stops when one was exactly what they needed. Now they'll be treading around the Valley of Earth and Moon, something that'll take them the better part of an hour to accomplish. At this rate, they won't reach Land of Hot Water 'till late morning.</p><p>From way back when she ended up as an unwilling visitor in Naruto's universe, she recalled the valley having some sort of significance to the locals. It was at a similar location, as the magician could recall, perhaps a bit further down north, judging how most locals spoke of it as splitting Land of Fire and Otogakure, but, judging from what she could recall, it was different from the valley they had too. For one, Mana didn't think that Naruto's valley was formed when the World Tree up and walked away, becoming Ten-Tails and unrooting itself from the Earth's own soil flesh. The Valley of Earth and Moon also didn't quite host any statues to commemorate anything special, it was too far away and too dangerous to work on any major projects as such a venture would have included moving building material in great supply through dangerous territories.</p><p>One thing Mana could agree with was that crossing the valley by the one, sorry wooden bridge would have been unwise. The Allied Ninja would have broken formation to move through a bridge in a sorry state that could have easily been the target for any supposed bandits hot on their tail. Also, it would have left no option to evade attacks as they'd have left themselves wide open, surrounded by forests and waterfalls that could have been used for concealing their attackers.</p><p>"They really should build a proper bridge over it," Mana sighed, submitting to the fact that the Allied Ninja wouldn't receive the care and supplies they need until they reached Land of Hot Water. "I don't see many ninja choosing to take it due to same reasons we're moving around the valley for and it isn't safe for civilians to take their caravans through either,"</p><p>"It's dangerous to take building material out here in bulk. It's the reason why nobody built a huge statue of whatever huge thing happened here," Junichi sighed easier. He was glad to hear that Mana had relented on the topic of stopping at an inn and just chose to move forward.</p><p>"I don't imagine it being possible to build a bridge this long anyway. I'm no bridge scientist but I don't think that there's a bridge that wouldn't collapse under its own weight after extending this far," Cailar shrugged joining in on the conversation.</p><p>"Man, to see such a massive hunk of bricks fall down into the valley, that'd be rocking good time!" Shitaka shrieked out in glee.</p><p>"I don't think that bandits would be our prime concern traveling through that bridge…" Cailar gave his anarchistic ally an uneasy look.</p><p>"That valley's like a giant smokescreen of chakra…" Mana sighed. "The Ten-Tails' radiance still persists in the area centuries after its creation and emergence. If there were bandits at either end of the valley or within two hundred meters around it, I wouldn't be able to tell over that looming energy in the air."</p><p>"Ten-Tails?" Junichi mumbled. "Is that what gave birth to the valley?"</p><p>"Yes, long ago the Earth and the Moon were connected by one, giant tree. It is sometimes called the World Tree, because it connected two worlds, the world of the Earth Clan and the Moon Clan, also, because it was a tree so massive that it could have only been categorized as a tree of the whole world, not one specific country. The valley is what remains of that tree once it transformed into the Ten-Tails and emerged from underground. It might look like one, giant pit from up above but it's actually like a reverse-mushroom down underwater. That's where the Ten-Tails' roots were when it was the World Tree." Mana explained.</p><p>She used to love researching the lore of the world, history, and legend alike, often trying to find similarities between them. Given her current situation, Mana could only wonder when it would be that she would get the chance to open up a book or unravel another scroll. She was away from the archive and there weren't many historic books being sold. Most of them were owned by the archives of the respective village.</p><p>"Holy crap, look at that!" Shitaka pointed at a lovely, spacious manor standing right in their way, well-lit by industrial lighting from each direction. Decorated with plastic sheets of pink and pristine-looking, white roof tiles. It had a sign spelling out "Inn of Hot Chicken" hanging in clear view, on the center of the roof. Probably just a bad wordplay on Land of Hot Water which was just hours away from the location.</p><p>"Hmph… A missed opportunity to name the establishment the "Inn of the Earth and the Moon", given the tact choice of location," Cailar cheeked at the inn, making Mana get some mean fox and the grapes kind of vibes from the Allied Ninja.</p><p>He wasn't wrong, being so near to the Valley of the Earth and the Moon and being so clever as to actually build their inn right beside the commonly used detour by most people that valued the guaranteed safety of said detour compared to the gut-wrenching feeling of crossing the feeble wooden bridge hanging over the valley, the inn might have emphasized the wrong key location there.</p><p>"Such a sophisticated and pristine building," Junichi sighed as the Allied Ninja whizzed past it. Only Mollay resisted the temptation to not follow its shine with his eyes, the elegance, and warmth that remained left behind them in one good dash. "It isn't difficult to believe that such an apt choice of location would leave the inn owner so well-off, I guess…"</p><p>It must have been the lights illuminating the inn, or something, but the trees around the Allied Ninja began to seem blurry. A simple visual inspection of the rest of the squad told Mana that she wasn't the only one feeling a bit hazy at the moment. Everyone's eyes looked a tad sleepy and disoriented, something that wasn't quite normal given how long most ninja could last while traveling without rest or food with an occasional fight for their life every now and then along the way.</p><p>"We're under genjutsu," Mana declared, stopping at once.</p><p>"What's this now?" Junichi looked like he expected Mana to bring up her obsession with having everyone rest at an inn again, seeing her proclamation as nothing but an excuse to do so. "You're not helping anyone by stopping."</p><p>"I'm doing exactly that. You can't trust anything you see, we don't know where we're traveling anymore, if we're headed in the right direction or not. Our best shot is to stop here and dispel the illusion before we keep moving," Mana replied.</p><p>"An illusion? Are you sure?" Mollay wondered, only becoming interested in socializing with his squad once an immediate danger to their assignment was in question.</p><p>"Well, I can't sense it, normally I would be able to make out alterations, alien influences over someone chakra network but… Isn't it just a perfect spot to plant your illusion – veiled by the smokescreen of the Ten-Tails resonant chakra radiance? I suspect those lights from the inn might have been the medium through which the illusion was transferred." Mana pondered.</p><p>"What a downer illusion. I could have used some giant monsters, fire and brimstone, a really rocking trip, you know?" Shitaka sighed, deflating his body in disappointment.</p><p>"How did you make it out that we're under an illusion?" Junichi scratched the back of his head. His better instincts clearly suggested that Mana knew what she was talking about as a genjutsu specialist with sufficient skill to warrant a promotion for her skill in the said field alone but he still wasn't sure if the entire journey had to be halted for something that seemed like just a hunch that she had.</p><p>"Eye movement," Mana pointed out. "Our eyes are moving rapidly like we're all under an especially vivid dream despite our surroundings seeming unchanging and just as boring as they were two hours ago. Think about it, besides the inn, we haven't seen anything notable in the time since we've passed it. No roaring of the waterfalls just half a kilometer away, no notable plants or nocturnal animals, as if someone with a poor imagination had cast an illusion on us."</p><p>"Feels like a long-shot, we should keep moving," Junichi dismissed Mana's theory.</p><p>"I don't know, I think we should investigate…" Cailar put his index finger to his lip, leaning in an almost taunting manner to Junichi's side, making his intent for disagreeing with the leader crystal-clear.</p><p>"Damn it, Cailar! This isn't the time for your games!" Junichi smacked with the back of his hand, knowing full well that his subordinate would dive down under his swing as he was tougher to hit than that. "Let's put it to a vote, I say we keep moving."</p><p>"I object," Cailar hummed out with a melodious tune.</p><p>"Ugh, I don't know, if we do try to break the illusion here, we'll be burning through a bunch of chakra. That's not rocking at all. I think the reason why this whole trip has been so boring is that the world's just so damn boring. That's why I wanna leave it all in flames, you know? To spice it up a bit, I say we keep moving," Shitaka shrugged. "The sooner we get to Hot Water, the better."</p><p>"I trust Mana's judgment," Mollay nodded looking at Mana.</p><p>"Care to elaborate why?" Junichi growled. "It matters if I decide to throw out Cailar's vote for obvious reasons…"</p><p>"How many of you know a damn thing about genjutsu? It's a fringe art that very few ninja know more about than how to dispel illusions. I say that if the enemy has entranced us and we're traveling in the wrong direction – it's in our prime interests to dispel this illusion now." Mollay spoke, huffing after this explanation as if speaking so many words at once strained him somehow.</p><p>"Fine, any chance that this might be one of those illusions that only need to be dispelled once?" Junichi turned to Mana for answers.</p><p>"I doubt it. The nature of this illusion reminds me of the False Surroundings Jutsu but this range is far greater and False Surroundings isn't transferred through a medium. This must be a more powerful jutsu, likely an original illusion that the user themselves invented. I won't be able to tell you much about it until I see it in its entirety once," Mana shook her head.</p><p>"I see, I suppose we all need to dispel it for ourselves then," Junichi grit his teeth.</p><p>"Not necessarily," Mana interjected. "I can dispel it for each of you individually. That'll help you prevent you from losing any chakra by having me dispel it for each of you."</p><p>"But then you will lose a whole lot of chakra," Mollay warned Mana.</p><p>"Yeah but… It's my suspicion, I'd hate to be the one to blame if it turns out to be false, even though I don't believe it is. Just let me deal with this, I'll know how much chakra dispelling it demands once I dispel it for myself," Mana replied.</p><p>"It's your call, protecting you and escorting you to our headquarters is our mission, we'll be ready to give our lives for you even if you choose to burn through your chakra and we'll be ready to fight for you if needed," Junichi pointed out while rubbing his neck. "Heck, you know about that illusion stuff most of us all so we'll know that you won't botch dispelling it too…"</p><p>Mana nodded. She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes, imagining a bubble of chakra forming around her outline, and then she just pushed at it from inside, bursting with chakra from each pore in her body. The first push didn't pan out, calculating the force of the resistance, she strengthened the push and muttered: "Dispel".</p><p>The gloomy forest wavered like Mana was looking at it from underwater. The vision rippled and then reality broke through, shattering the illusion like a panel of glass. Mana looked around, trying to find the potential user of the illusion as it would have made no sense to cast the illusion unless one planned to follow through with it after but there seemed to be nobody there. Her eyes didn't tell anything and her sensory was blinded by Ten-Tails chakra looming everywhere and seeping into every object in the vicinity.</p><p>"We were under an illusion, though I still hear the roaring waterfalls in the distance," Mana pointed out. "We haven't strayed too far off of our path. It's more than likely that the lights around that inn building truly were the medium."</p><p>"That's impressive," Mollay commended Mana's skill at identifying the illusion before it made them stray too far off of their path and either tumble down the valley or running into the enemy ambush.</p><p>"The illusion is rather powerful, I'd say that the technique is about B-Rank in complexity, the illusion itself is not impressive but the number of targets it affects and its range compensate for that in spades. It is definitely more refined than the generic False Surroundings Jutsu," Mana pointed out before placing her hand onto Junichi's forehead and lifting her other hand, raising her middle and index fingers in preparation to dispel the jutsu.</p><p>White smoke began filling the area as loud, feminine cackling filled the area. Mana turned to Junichi, wandering if he was seeing any of it but he looked completely oblivious to it – no wonder. Everyone but her was still stuck in the illusion. Mana hurried up and shattered the illusion for Junichi as well, the man's eyes widened in surprise after seeing the white mist filling the woods and hearing the creepy voice somewhere inside it.</p><p>"I'll watch your back, dispel the illusion for everyone," Junichi ordered while keeping his senses sharp for a sign that the witch of the inn might have settled on something more dangerous than creepy cackling and hiding inside the impenetrable, white fog that was no illusion.</p><p>Despite Junichi's best efforts to elude trouble, it appeared that trouble had found the Allied Ninja instead.</p>
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<a name="section0688"><h2>688. Just A Little Bite...</h2></a>
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      <p>Mana moved around the area with a swift foot, pressing her palm to each of the Allied Ninja and dispelling the illusion affecting their perception of the environment at once. While she did so, Junichi watched her back just in case the cackling hag hiding in the mist decided to try and get a pound of Mana's flesh. He did not need to intervene as the woman did not allow herself to get psyched out and did not show her hand just yet.</p>
      <p>"You were supposed to wander in circles for hours. Naughty, naughty…" the hag taunted the Allied Ninja from within the mist. Normally it would take Mana no time at all to sniff her out even inside mist comprised of chakra entirely. The chakra of a decent ninja would have stood out like a street light in an evening haze. However, with the Ten-Tails' residual chakra all around her – she was as good as blind in terms of chakra sensory.</p>
      <p>"Too bad for you, we've decided to avoid shady inns," Junichi replied to the shapeless voice in the mist. "Your attempt to lure us inside is misguided."</p>
      <p>"That's just rocking, Mana!" Shitaka gave the magician an energetic thumb up when she dispelled the illusion shrouding him in fake and hazy visions. "Thanks!"</p>
      <p>Sweat was breaking through her forehead and intense pressure formed around Mana's eyes. At the time it didn't seem like that bad of an idea to squeeze a quick nap in and her hands felt intensely heavy. The young woman nodded with a pale face, her long hair fell over her face due to a sloppy motion of her head that prompted a swat of the unruly strands off of obstructing her view.</p>
      <p>"I'll just have to trust you guys now," Mana admitted that she was too exhausted to keep fighting alongside them with a nod of her head.</p>
      <p>"Oh, your words wound us, magician girl, it's not as if to ensure your safe arrival to the HQ is our mission or anything…" Cailar pressed the back of his hand to his face, making a jest at Mana's expense.</p>
      <p>Mollay nodded his head in Mana's direction. It was his own way of expressing gratitude while the ninja prepared themselves to eliminate the enemy. They weren't sure how many opponents there were. So far only one old lady had spoken up from the mist but mists were notorious for their ability to hide all sorts of things. It would have been a very ninja thing to do for some deceitful lowlife to be hiding and keeping their presence away from recognition in there while he let the old woman spin a web of deceit around the Allied Ninja.</p>
      <p>"Oh? And for how long can you wander around in circles, eventually running into my lovely little manor before you come running back to auntie Rokane? An hour? Three hours? Seven? A day?" the old hag cackled inside the mist. She spoke with assurance, suggesting that this was not her first time trapping people into such a trap. The confidence in her voice let it be known that eventually, all lost souls ended up in her nightmare house.</p>
      <p>"I'm rather low on kunai at the moment, boss," Cailar looked at Junichi's side. "I'm afraid I'll have to improvise to hook and reel this fish in,"</p>
      <p>"Be careful. This woman is the user of this mist, meaning she's accustomed to fighting inside it whereas we only encounter such a tactic occasionally," Junichi warned his comrade.</p>
      <p>"Ugh… Truly it is our final day if our well-being is of your concern…" Cailar jabbed in Junichi's direction before raising his hands up and revealing flashy teeth made of steel attached to metal gadgets that had steel wire wrapped around them. The Allied Ninja gave his comrades a wayward glance before leaping off of the branch and swinging his metal yo-yos around, using the steel wires on them to make them buzz and shred through the woods that came in their way.</p>
      <p>Despite having little to no vision of his opponent, the wide-reaching range of Cailar's attack would have made it difficult to avoid it altogether and with the old woman being quite talkative he had a vague clue as to where it was best to position the beginning of his yo-yo rush. Trees came tumbling down, bleeding splinters and wood chips in all directions and throwing shrapnel of broken branches in their downward trajectory.</p>
      <p>"Close, but no cigar…" the old woman declared. Her hesitation to engage the enemy and savor their hopelessness seemed to lull the Allied Ninja into a false sense of security. Cailar gasped in surprise when something tight wrapped around his abdomen followed by thin yet muscular, shriveled hands restraining his upper body as the smell of rotten flesh and blood lingered by his face.</p>
      <p>Something wicked his way came and prepared to take a chunk out of the throat of the vibrant and flippant Allied Ninja's throat but the wayward glance he threw in his comrades' direction before attacking was not for naught. The old woman croaked in pain when a boulder of sharpened edges blasted her in the back and sent her hissing and tumbling down into the mist while Cailar used steel wire to swing over the branch he just stood on and returned back to his position.</p>
      <p>"Freaky old hag…" Cailar sighed in relief that his head remained intact. "Did you guys see those teeth? Like she's like a decrepit angler fish that one…"</p>
      <p>"Her anatomy is certainly inhuman. Most ninja would be broken and willing to flee a battlefield after taking a hit like that directly to their spine, this woman, however… I can still feel her foul stench around. It reeks of blood and corpses…" it was rare for Mollay to express fear this way but that was very much what he was doing at the moment.</p>
      <p>Mana found herself looking around frantically and scolded herself for this primal surrender to fear. She forced her stiff and frozen hand down from covering her own throat and closer to her hip, letting her middle and index finger twitch closer to the spring mechanism inside her sleeve that would let her blow something nasty in the woman's jaw if she ever threatened her directly. Such a possibility would have been unlikely as the Allied Ninja positioned themselves in a circle around her and it would take a madwoman to charge through skilled ninja, completely ignoring their presence like that. That was, after all, what lead to the hag getting a sharp-edged boulder slammed into her back in the first place.</p>
      <p>"I know that voice…" Mana muttered. "That grey hair, that pattern of movement and that hunger for human flesh. She was in the captive's memories. She's with the Nine Tales gang too…"</p>
      <p>"Those guys just don't give up, do they?" Junichi grunted, punching an open palm and leaning down on his branch. He positioned his palm on the branch for balance before charging onward in an attempt to lure his opponent out. If the woman would latch onto him next, one of the Allied Ninja would get another shot at her.</p>
      <p>"Give me a break, at this pace we'll kill all nine of them before we get to the border…" Cailar sighed. "Do you know much of her abilities, Mana?"</p>
      <p>"Not really, even genjutsu is a new revelation to me. I only saw her bite through a clone's throat with those teeth of hers. She walked in crutches in that memory but she was deceitfully fast, throwing her body around like a fish jumping out of the water almost…" Mana tried to describe the nightmarish sights of the Nine Tales gang meeting she got the chance to visit inside of the captive's mind.</p>
      <p>A stick hurled through the air, slamming against a clinging metallic object and deflected it with a noisy clang. The sounds of rattling chains preceded the swift withdrawal of the unorthodox tool for murder that the impaired rogue ninja used against her enemy. It looked like a piece of stone. The stone hung as the end of a long and thick chain and had rings hammered through it. Hanging from the rings was a handful of hooked blades that appeared to be easily capable of hooking and ripping human flesh off of the bone without much effort.</p>
      <p>"Are you sure this is worth it?" Mana yelled out into the thickness of the fog. "To waste the head of the leader for a bounty, just let it go!"</p>
      <p>"Leader? Girlie, you think I'm the leader of the gang?" the voice replied from deep within the fog. "You might have probed one of our minds but it appears you're just oblivious to our entire operation. That innocence, that fear you irradiate… Makes my mouth water!"</p>
      <p>Mana couldn't sense it but she somehow knew that the woman would pounce at her at once, she did so from the front, utilizing the opening where Junichi moved away to try and lure her out. It was a reckless charge, she still had Cailar to deal with on her right and Mollay standing from Mana's own right. The magician could trace the bloodthirsty hag charging from in front of her but her body felt like a chunk of lead and just wouldn't move.</p>
      <p>The hag gasped and threw her hands about as her throat became stuck in Mollay's grasp. The Allied Ninja moved in front of Mana and scooped the reckless murderer right out of the thin air, choking her out over his head. Indeed the old hag appeared to be senseless in her lower body as any futile motions she performed with her lower body came from the tensing of her upper body. She smacked her weightless legs at the enemy like a wet towel. Her unique and macabre devices of murder hung from her shoulders and clanged down onto the ground. She must have used them as hooks to move around with instead of her crutches while in combat.</p>
      <p>"Become stone, abominable witch of the woods," Mollay cursed at the struggling woman as her most dangerous asset – her teeth became useless once her throat was restrained. Before the gleam from Mollay's hand could flash up and his Bloodline Selection ability could initiate, however, the chain-linked hooks belonging to auntie Rokane flung up the tree that Mollay stood on and pierced through his feet, pinning the thick Allied Ninja down to the ground and shocking him with tremendous pain.</p>
      <p>"I like you… You're fat. I like 'em dripping with fat as they simmer," the woman hissed while blowing hot cinders in a cloud of ash she pulled out from sash in her pocket once Mollay's grip loosened just a tad bit. Mollay cried out in pain and was forced to unhand the slippery woman who once against slithered into the cover of fog with a mad cackle. The chubby Allied Ninja worked on wiping the ash and red-hot cinders from his watery and red eyes.</p>
      <p>"By sending me here, Vernos is telling you that he's letting you go, girlie…" auntie Rokane laughed out from the cover of the haze. "Because you see… I have a 0% bounty capture rate."</p>
      <p>"I'm not sure that's something we were meant to know…" Cailar observed.</p>
      <p>"No, you don't get it, I never cash in a bounty because there is nothing left of their body once I'm through with them. Nothing at all to cash in…" the hag hissed from the mist. "You see, I eat them all up!"</p>
      <p>Mollay cursed in pain once Rokane's hooked tool for disembowelment and flesh carving unhooked from his foot and released him from his torment, clinging back into the haze. Shitaka once again threw a branch that he had dislodged from the tree he stood on as his supply of miscellaneous chemicals was beginning to run thin. Using the direction where the grisly weapon slithered off to, the ninja chemist had thought that he'd nail the enemy but the branch just swung off into the brushes and appeared to hit nothing in particular.</p>
      <p>"Are any of you Wind Release users?" Mana turned for the bunch of Allied Ninja. If one of them had the ability to use a Wind Release jutsu that was stronger than the rank of the mist covering the area, they should have been able to blow it away, no matter if they hit auntie Rokane or not.</p>
      <p>"Fire and Lightning Release…" Junichi admitted, looking a tad ashamed.</p>
      <p>"Just Lightning Release, sadly…" Cailar sighed.</p>
      <p>"Wind ain't rocking at all! I got that Fire Release on lock though!" Shitaka rocked out. At least the prospect of being simmered and eaten in a stew did nothing to affect his rebellious and energetic mood.</p>
      <p>"Yes, my Transmogrification Release is comprised of three elemental natures, Wind Release, Lightning Release, and Earth Release," Mollay nodded his head, speaking through a great deal of pain. Mana didn't like to rely on a ninja injured as much as Mollay was but that was their only hope of moving ahead in this battle. "That is a good idea, I'll try it at once…" the Allied Ninja nodded in acknowledgment as he struggled against the crippling pain of his shattered and skewered foot.</p>
      <p>"Come to auntie Rokane!" an improvised paw of hooked blades shot out in Mollay's direction but bounced off of seemingly thin air. The irritated cannibal hissed from inside the safety of the fog, vexed by the fact that Mollay still worked on his hand seals at a turtle's pace, compared to his prime combat shape.</p>
      <p>"You moronic gorgon, do you think my yo-yos were just to try and blindly cut you in the obscurity of your mist?" Cailar mocked his opponent, dashing across the distance between him and Mollay to come in to his ally's support. "I've used them to swing around the battlefield and cover it in steel wire. You've shot yourself in the foot by obscuring the view and now you can't see much of it. You should be more careful, your wide-reaching flesh renders might get entangled in that wire for good, leaving you your useless, freaky, crippled self at our mercy."</p>
      <p>"You fucking popinjay, I'll be nibbling on your bones for dinner!" the hag screamed out in absolute fury, losing all traces of cool and restraint. Tempting her fate, she charged through, forcing her way through the fog and rushing at all of the Allied Ninja at once. She retracted her chained weaponry and held them in her hands so that she reduced the possibility of them getting obstructed in steel wire to a minimum and chose to role her dice.</p>
      <p>"Croak for me some more," Cailar smirked as he sent a toothed yo-yo spinning right in the old woman's face, hitting a potential hole in his wire through which the woman might have charged through if she got lucky and hitting the nail dead on the head. "Your wrath gives me the shivers, hag. I'm just that kind of emotionally draining guy, you see…"</p>
      <p>"Wind Style: Passing Typhoon!" Mollay yelled out, blowing a great amount of air out from his inflated chest and forming a gust of wind which blew away the mist with such efficiency that it almost seemed like the jutsu was created specifically for that purpose alone.</p>
      <p>Auntie Rokane hissed at the Allied Ninja as if her flesh would have been scolded by exposure to their eyes. She let her chained renders fall to her feet as the bloodthirsty hag appeared to be too lost in her own cravings for the flesh to be able to assess the risk of engaging the enemy with these odds in mind. She sent one of the two hooked stones toward the nearby tree and zipped her impaired body to the upper levels of elevation, pulling the weapon out and then swinging the pair of them again. With Cailar's steel wire traps now in full view, Rokane could better position her swings without much worry of them being entrapped.</p>
      <p>The woman gasped in shock as a glass jar smacked at her face and spilled white, milky fluid all over her shriveled and twisted face. She hissed as the liquid blinded her and bellowed in pain as she plummeted back down, flopping and hitting a bunch of branches but in her painful struggle against the liquid's irritation she writhed off of the branches that stopped her fall and continued to tumble down.</p>
      <p>"What was that? Acid?" Mana wondered as it looked painful.</p>
      <p>"A chemical I use for washing my leather clothes. My own concoction, it ain't corrosive but it sure as hell packs a rocking itch for scratching, I'd say. I don't carry acid in glass jars, what if it busts in my pocket? That's just begging for trouble…" Shitaka shrugged, caressing his throwing hand with the care that wouldn't have made it surprising if he went ahead and started kissing the thing soon enough.</p>
      <p>Mollay raised his hands up but winced in pain over his bleeding and busted open foot. Junichi pressed his hand against his ally's shoulder and relieved him of the duty of following up Shitaka's attack. Having taken the task up on himself, the veteran plunged down and began slowly trailing the crawling and bellowing cannibal as she continued to scream in pain from the blinding chemical that made her scratch her own skin off and the aching ribs that she busted from the fall.</p>
      <p>Junichi froze in fear when he saw the old hag smile with a crooked smirk, combined with her bleeding eyes that she almost carved out herself it made for quite a macabre sight. Realizing that the woman had him in her own trap, Junichi turned behind him but it was too late. Rokane's renders dug and hooked deep into his calves, locking onto the veteran's flesh and muscle just as they were intended to. The woman charged blindly at the direction she heard the grunt from and dug her teeth into Junichi's knee, forcing the veteran to bellow in a wild roar that Mana wouldn't have imagined a man being capable of producing.</p>
      <p>Despite the knee cap producing some fearsome resistance to being nibbled on, the shifty cannibal persisted and continued her attempts to crumble the bone with her teeth which was the source for Junichi's agony. She screamed out as a warning to Mollay who forced himself up in an attempt to come to his leader's aid.</p>
      <p>"Don't you come a step closer, or I'll have my chains rip the muscle right out of your friend's leg. I doubt he'll be able to walk if I do that. He'll then know the life that I've lived, the disappointment in my own body that I've faced in a world of ninja. I doubt that he'll have an ounce of my will to go on," Rokane hissed at the troubled Allied Ninja up above. The woman recalled the free chain back to her hand in preparation to block any defensive strikes that Junichi might have tried pulling on her in an attempt to fight her off.</p>
      <p>"And you… If you try any of your macho roughhousing on me, you might force me to tear something I don't mean to tear out just yet. My hooks are built to hold onto flesh and rip it out but if you force them out wrong – you'll bleed out in seconds so I suggest you just accept your fate as either a cripple of my afternoon snack!" Rokane chuckled, gazing up at where she thought Junichi was with a swollen and shriveled face that bled from her eyes and a strong jaw filled with inhuman teeth that chomped on plenty of human flesh in their heyday.</p>
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<a name="section0689"><h2>689. A Long-Awaited Kick-Back</h2></a>
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    <p>Auntie Rokane ground her teeth against Junichi's kneecap, forcing blood to spray all over the trousers and leg of the Allied Ninja veteran and splatter over the face of the old woman who appeared to be gaining vigor through physical contact with blood. It was not a matter of fact, however, just the way in which the bloodthirsty cannibal hag carried herself as just a whiff of blood got her own old bones ready for a rumble like nothing else.</p><p>"Y-You think this is going to stop us?" Junichi hissed in a tremendous amount of physical pain, his face wincing in torment as sweat poured down his face in a desperate attempt to not give his enemy the satisfaction of betraying just how torturous her ultimatum was.</p><p>"Just you dare try something!" auntie Rokane howled with a bloody mouth. "Then I'll have to eat you as soon as possible, I wouldn't like such fine meat to go bad."</p><p>"Despicable…" Mollay proclaimed, standing up tall. Blood squirting from the wound on his own leg as he extended his hands in a hand seal position, pointing downward. The cannibal of the Nine Tales gang froze and looked up at the enemy as if waiting to see if his response warrants an execution of their squad leader at her hands or if she could continue her feast.</p><p>The moment of delay made her decision to come out already too late. A diagonal cylinder of clear-white beamed down in a wild howl and the rumbling that telegraphed the terrific decimation of the ground and rubble it passed through. A bright, flashing spark in between Mollay's hands transformed into a solid beam of light that engulfed both the bleeding veteran as well as the cannibalistic hag and made both of them dry out and turn to statues of solid stone in-sight.</p><p>"The Bloodline Selection ability," Mana mumbled under her nose before turning to Mollay. She was shocked initially that the Allied Ninja would use his most powerful ability, using his own ally as a human shield but then she recalled Mollay's words from after the fight with the Daisushi Brothers had concluded. "You can revert the transformation…"</p><p>Mollay looked no less drained after using this jutsu without having had a chance to recover after using it a couple of times already in the near past twice than Mana. Not only that but the wound on Mollay's foot continued to spray blood though the liquid had lost its vibrant scarlet hue and began appearing more pink-like in shade. Mana was no medical ninja but this was hardly a good sign.</p><p>"I'm going to need some help if I am to approach Junichi and turn him back. If I use the jutsu again from this angle, I risk accidentally illuminating the witch too," Mollay pointed out, turning to the other Allied Ninja. Only then did it dawn to Mana – Mollay would have to use his jutsu again and manipulate Junichi's molecules again and back into a living being. Could he even survive such a thing?</p><p>"Are you sure you can pull off another use of that jutsu?" Mana wondered. "Your body already exhibits signs of chakra loss. If you use too many you might…"</p><p>"Don't lecture me about chakra loss. I've been on the field for far longer than you, girl." Mollay turned to her. It was tough to say how much blood loss had been affecting the chubby ex-Iwagakure ninja but he definitely had pronounced, black bags forming under his eyes and his blood vessels were popping out on his face for all to see with unsightly bumps of his skin. "What other choice do I have? Just let our leader stay a statue?"</p><p>"Maybe we can wait until you are rested? Doesn't the enemy own an inn? With auntie Rokane eliminated we can use her inn to rest," Mana suggested. The last thing she wanted to see was Mollay dying of chakra shortage while Junichi remained forever as a lifeless statue. Granted, this was not a fate she wanted for auntie Rokane either but she was powerless to change anything at the moment.</p><p>"That's ridiculous. I used to think you a voice of reason but it appears that your judgment might get clouded when human lives are at risk. The enemy is more than likely to have trapped her inn well. Plus, I have a limited time to revert the transformation, or else it becomes permanent. I have it on good authority that if we wait for two more days which it would take for my chakra to recover – Junichi would be long stuck being this way." Mollay crushed Mana's suggestion mercilessly.</p><p>"I… I see… You're wounded, so is Junichi-san. We absolutely cannot continue our journey this way. Even if the inn is trapped, it's the only way we can continue our journey," Mana pointed out.</p><p>"Can we continue this conversation once Junichi is back to normal? I had thought that this form is an improvement over his normal self but I am as shocked as anyone to find out that his stone glare appears to be even more judgmental than his normal one…" Cailar lamented with a playful gesture.</p><p>Mana moved up to assist Mollay. The two struggled to descend on to the ground level and the magician ended up tumbling over the massive weight of the ninja she carried, finding that her physical strength in her current state was far less than she'd have liked. Mollay sat up and blazed a scornful glare at the magician, just barely restraining his curses while Mana crawled back with a face flushed with red. Neither of the other two Allied Ninja assisted the wounded chubby up though when Mana offered her hand, Mollay smacked it aside and once again appeared to struggle with the desire to send her to hell and back.</p><p>With a pain-ridden limp, Mollay approached Junichi and placed his hands over the head of the Allied Ninja turned to stone. A gleam of light flashed in between his pale hands and the dried out, rocky skin of Junichi once more regained its natural shade. The stony appearance only persisted on Junichi's knee and downward. It appeared that the entire injured leg of the Allied Ninja remained to be of stone.</p><p>"You'd be impossible to deal with in that state. Can't have you slowing us down. I don't have the chakra to use this jutsu again. You'll just have to deal with replacing this stump with a prosthetic," Mollay pointed at the rocky stump. While Junichi appeared to have some trouble dragging the stony leg behind him, none of the said trouble was due to the pain he would have been under if his leg would have been reformed the way it was prior to being petrified and the ninja veteran appeared thankful for this decision to his colleague.</p><p>Mana found it odd. She hadn't witnessed such a lack of care for one's own limbs. It was hard for her to imagine what it would be like losing one of her own limbs. Even if prosthetics were prominent amongst ninja and cultivating them or obtaining good ones was not outside the realm of possibility, Mana saw something sacred in the wholeness of her body. The thought of giving away her leg like that seemed like a loss of her very identity, not unlike when she lost the use of her chakra way back when.</p><p>"Are you okay?" Junichi turned to Mana. He turned for the chain blades that the hag tried executing him with once Mollay initiated his jutsu and found them as brittle as dirt down on the floor, having clanged against solid stone and lacking the chakra conductivity to etch into it as their mistress had also been subjected to petrification by the time they connected with their intended target.</p><p>"Yes," Mana nodded. "Though Mollay-san seems injured. We should stop at auntie Rokane's inn and let him see to his wound."</p><p>"No," Junichi cut it short. "Mollay's injury is unfortunate and it seems like it will absolutely slow us down to a crawl but we must get to the border as soon as possible or else we'll bump into more of this Nine Tales gang. They seem to have lost all reason in the resources they're willing to throw into capturing you, alive or dead. We are in no shape of fighting at the moment, if we are to meet another enemy – there is no hope of winning or escaping them. Our only hope is the border."</p><p>"B-But…" Mana objected, looking down at the gruesome display of exposed, carved flesh that still spouted blood of unnatural, pinkish color.</p><p>"This mission is already much harder than we anticipated it to be, there is absolutely no need for you to make it any harder, Mana. If you continue to make it so, we'll bring you to HQ bound like a prisoner." Junichi took a bold step up closer to the exhausted magician, imposing his ample physical bulk and dragging his petrified leg behind him.</p><p>"Oh, that's hardly a good look. I can only imagine the mockery that fellow recruits will put on you, dear. I can already see all the fancy nicknames: Kinbaku, Asanawa, Shibari…" Cailar beamed a smile in Mana's direction while the magician sighed and caved in.</p><p>"Can we at least halt so that Mollay can stop his bleeding and you can figure out how to move around in your condition?" she wondered.</p><p>Junichi limped to the tree and took a stout fighting pose. With a mighty kiai shout, he delivered a crushing kick to the tree's body which resulted in a shattering of his petrified limb. The stump that remained had a few sandy chunks falling off of it once in a while with some of the sand carrying meek trails of blood in it. The veteran removed a kunai from his ninja pouch and tied a strand of steel wire around it, swinging this makeshift grappling hook around just to show to the disobedient VIP that he was fully capable of using it for movement the same way that the paralyzed cannibal could use her tools.</p><p>"Move around in what condition?" he asked with a hint of bitter sarcasm in his voice that soaked with machismo.</p><p>Mollay removed his headband and ripped off the iron plate that protected his forehead and applied the red ribbon to his foot. He seemed to enjoy the fact that the natural color of the cloth made it more difficult to make out when the fabric was soaked with blood. The Allied Ninja turned to his peers and nodded in acknowledgment, declaring that he was ready to move out. Mana rolled her eyes but she wasn't willing to be carried around bound which would have only slowed them down. At this point, had she been free, she'd have considered summoning a few ninja-rabbits and beating her allies into submission and forcing them to rest. The way she was now, she was no better than even the wounded escorts of hers.</p><p>Their speed had become abysmal. Mana was hardly moving much faster than any normal human engaging in daily physical activity while the core of the team moved at a hardly faster pace. The pair looked somewhat glad that Mana was as drained of chakra as Mollay was and they had an excuse of slowing down to a crawl. Where they should have passed the Valley of Earth and Moon and reached the border by that morning, it took them a whole extra day and it began looking like they were stuck in yet another illusion.</p><p>Had the Nine Tales gang not sent their cleaner that didn't capture any of her bounties alive or dead and simply ate all the bodies, a sign that they have given up on capturing their target for the bounty already, Mana would have been certain that the enemy would have caught up to them already. They stopped for brief rests. Junichi used the fact that Shitaka began lightly modifying their surroundings via the False Surroundings jutsu himself as an excuse for brief stops. Though knowing the stubborn old fool, it was only because he physically had a problem moving around.</p><p>It was of no surprise. His shoulders didn't appear to be used to swinging about this way. He hadn't lost that much chakra up until now so he could still utilize light chakra augmentation to keep his arms inside his sockets but it must have been taking a toll on Junichi still, or he simply refused to use chakra augmentation for these swings of his as the big man constantly stopped to warm up and swing his arms around to fix the circulation in his shoulders. He allowed Mollay and Mana to catch up to the rest of the group that way though Mana suspected that he was secretly quite glad for these stops too.</p><p>It was when the tension felt the highest that a burst of crystal, transparent liquid from the ground in a rocky clearing of the woods up ahead made the expressions of all of the worn-out and frustrated ninja brighten up. These natural springs present all over all of the half a million square kilometers of the Land of Hot Water were a sign that not only were the Allied Ninja by the border already but they've already past it. Shitaka used this gleeful sign as an excuse to collapse onto the branch and howl into the air, already feeling the warmth of the hot springs and the taste of its refreshments.</p><p>"We made it…" Junichi declared. The sturdy hardiness of his own face appeared to soften up in-sight as he declared the obvious.</p><p>"I guess it's kinda hard to tell when the Hot Water Daimyo doesn't even bother putting up any protection by his borders…" Cailar sighed. "I guess they take their pacifism very seriously in here, let's see what we can do about that!"</p><p>Even though a wicked smile beamed across Cailar's face, the strict glares from the rest of the group made the devious Allied Ninja fold, confirming that he was just messing around with that proclamation. The last thing they needed right now was more trouble, especially one with the authorities when villages already had mixed opinions and recognition of the Allied Ninja and their work.</p><p>"This natural hot spring is a sign of a nearby settlement. Nearly every hot spring in the country has a settlement utilizing its comfort and monetizing it as an asset of their own," Mana pointed out.</p><p>"Whoa, such a rocking thing has gotta be pretty wanted around these parts. I wonder if we came back here a few years later would the owners of this hot spring be different?" Shitaka wondered striking a pose with his arms over his hips as he admired the view ahead of him.</p><p>"That is impossible. There is no conflict or war in the Land of Hot Water. So to speak, the only rightful cause to use physical force around these parts is to quench wrongful violence. No settlement would remain on the good side of the feudal lord or Yugakure by taking over territory from another settlement," Mana pointed out something she learned from history books. Being someone who treasured life, Mana had long admired the Land of Hot Water and the way it handled things with only her ninja creed keeping her from ever working at Land of Hot Water in one way or another. If things go smoothly, perhaps she could end up performing her magic shows, at the very least?</p><p>"I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you…" Cailar squinted in Mana's direction as if he had caught a glimpse of Mana's dreamy attitude toward the country. "I wonder how the locals would think of a young woman who beat a worldwide icon of wisdom and peace into a bloody pulp?"</p><p>He wasn't wrong, even though he wrongfully assumed that Mana had been daydreaming about ever being a ninja of Yugakure. A ninja abandoning the village they worked for and just switching sides was very rare and even rarer did such trickery go well for the ninja involved. Assassinations, distrust of their new employer, and their own ambition to pull such a stunt again most often served to do them in. Such a thing would have only been possible for a ninja of worldwide renown or an elite clan heritage and only involving a village that lacked honor or had a particularly roasting beef with the other village, none of which were the case here. Land of Hot Water had a long-standing tradition of fostering a good relationship with everyone, which was impossible, truth be told, which left Yugakure particularly paranoid about keeping things in order and fending off abuses of the country's trust as much as they possibly could.</p><p>Despite the inner disarray, Mana found the chance to bathe in the hot springs at long last simply splendid, even though the group had to look for an inn that carried on the tradition of konyoku onsen – mixed-gender bathing, because the Allied Ninja absolutely dismissed the chance of letting Mana out of their sight for any period of time, given the infamy of her face and almost paranoid fear of more criminals and assassins targeting her during this moment of vulnerability. Bathing with the towel on was nowhere near as relaxing as going all-natural but it was better than continuing to strain her feet dashing through the trees.</p><p>Even with a handful of male Allied Ninja bathing alongside her, it was a nice opportunity to unwind and relax for just a second with the knowledge that a warm room and a nice meal was waiting for her and the rest of the group. The discomfort of exposing herself before her colleagues also was somewhat temporary as Mollay was not allowed into the springs before he saw a nearby healer to tend the wound on his foot while Shitaka got kicked out for impersonating a crocodile in the hot spring. After a short quarrel, Junichi and his recent stump were allowed into the spring as long as it was properly bandaged and wouldn't cause trouble for the other visitors. Somehow, Mana didn't feel too bad about unwinding before Junichi as she looked at him more as a father figure whereas Cailar didn't show any interest in ogling at any women present nor did he show much vigor at all.</p><p>Then again, that was only because everyone tended to be quiet and keep it to themselves in the springs and therefore no one provided any energy for the flamboyant Allied Ninja to drain with his remarks.</p>
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<a name="section0690"><h2>690. Through The Land Of Frost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Traveling across the Land of Hot Water was a breeze now that Mana and the party of Allied Ninja escorting her didn't need to worry about local bounty hunters and gangs throwing their forces at her. It seemed that Junichi's guess that the bounty would not extend further than the Land of Fire borders was correct as they didn't run into a single ambush all throughout their days long trip across Land of Hot Water.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Junichi-san, I might have second-guessed your decision too much as the VIP," Mana admitted in a heartfelt apology that she felt she owed the veteran during one of the days traveling across the lush and vibrant woods split by cerulean rivers in a serpentine formation spreading all across the country.</p><p>"It wasn't easy staying by my decision, no matter how many years I've been doing this. I can imagine that without the context of the experience that I possess there was little for you to support your trust with. I'm not angry at you though I would appreciate it if you trusted my calls a bit more in the future," Junichi replied without looking back at Mana. Even in much safer territory, this man kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead.</p><p>"It was very insightful of you to foresee that the bounty only extended to the end of the country it was issued in. I was not aware that was how it worked, honestly," Mana said.</p><p>"It doesn't always. It was issued by the head of the Diamond Hand syndicate, right? He wouldn't have too much of a reach from prison and he'd have to have the resources to pay that bounty up to any black market point the bounty could be cashed in on. I bet he wouldn't wager his reputation on the black market by issuing it worldwide seeing how he'd be unable to ensure the delivery of the bounty to faraway black market points nor could he have the resources to issue them afront on all the points all over the world," Junichi pointed out.</p><p>"Don't lower your guard and unwind just yet, Mana," Cailar smirked. "There is always a chance that somebody would hire an assassin that works worldwide with the intent of splitting the bounty."</p><p>"As odd as it might seem, I agree with Cailar." Junichi nodded. "There is such a possibility. It's especially troubling given how we don't know the exact size of the bounty though, knowing the Nine Tales gang threw everything they had at us, we can estimate that it is walloping."</p><p>"Heh, and to think that you didn't find peep that out during one of your mind trips either, that's not very rocking of you, Mana!" Shitaka snickered to himself.</p><p>"Sorry, I'm not very good with money so it wasn't the first thing that was on my mind…" Mana bit her lower lip and turned her eyes to her right.</p><p>"Nor should it have been. It's an interesting detail but it was not essential to us at the time," Junichi dismissed Mana's worries.</p><p>One thing that alleviated Mana's troubles was the fact that everybody seemed to be making a quick recovery. It was as if they were used to exhausting their juices on the field and recovering soon. Honestly, Mana felt a little bit jealous of the Allied Ninja and how quickly their chakra rushed to return to its peaks. Her own seemed like a slumbering sloth though it might have been because hers had a slightly larger size to that of her colleagues. It was self-evident that neither of them spent too much time meditating and working with their chakra networks, stimulating their chakra nodes to bleed out all of the pent-up leftovers and flex their overall chakra capacity in any way whatsoever.</p><p>One of these days of the trip, a sharp breeze hit Mana right at her exposed shoulders and washed at her with hundreds of thousands of chilling needles driving through her pores. The young woman felt obliged to remove her backpack and take the sealing tag off of her and unseal her blazer from it which she had stored there as the rather soft and welcoming weather of the Land of the Hot Water and constant pampering of stopping in various pleasure towns for rest, renewal of supplies and relaxation in the hot springs had Mana hiding her thicker layers of clothing away.</p><p>"Hmm… The Land of Frost must be nearby." Junichi noted after observing Shitaka sneeze in reaction to the drastic shift in weather that took place in the span of less than an hour. "Well, we've spent plenty of time resting and restocking our supplies for the journey."</p><p>"We won't be traversing that massive patch of frosted land on foot, will we?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"No, we'll be hiring a caravan. The caravan business market is quite rich in the country, plenty of locals survive from transferring travelers from one side of the country to another through pathways on the mountains. It would be a little scummy of us not to support that industry, seeing how often it comes useful to the Allied Ninja and ninja of either country," Junichi replied.</p><p>A caravan's speed was limited to that of the speed of a couple of horses, albeit powerful and bred specifically for this sort of workhorses, dragging a caravan so Mana wondered why Junichi suddenly dropped his borderline paranoid obsession with safety over everything else. This seemed especially baffling knowing that Junichi was quite immovable about his decision to stop at various pleasure towns daily and take plenty of baths in the hot springs, buy plenty of food, drinks, and other supplies for the road. Mana suspected that he intended to abuse the pit stops in such a favorable location so that he could then force the squad to promptly complete the trip from that point on but there must have been more to this that she yet didn't know.</p><p>"Don't worry," Junichi spoke up, likely noticing Mana's worried expression. "Not even assassins will strike at a caravan. All ninja rely on the caravan service and would hate for something to happen to it. If a caravan driver would get assassinated or injured or lose clients on the road, all ninja would suffer so this one area is one where all ninja act like Allied Ninja and an area where borders disappear."</p><p>That was an interesting thing to hear. Such symbiotic, unwritten peace treaty amongst ninja of various villages, bandits and legitimate ninja, mercenaries, and assassins alike. It made a semblance of sense. Traveling through the mountains during constant, freezing blizzards matched only by those at the Land of Snow would have been difficult for any ninja and borderline deadly for civilians. They'd die before reaching the peak of one mountain in a blinding range of mountains that extended all the way to an entirely different climate zone.</p><p>If a gung-ho bandit went ahead and proved that additional security was necessary and removed a caravan driver from the market, the caravan prices would have grown a great deal as the drivers would have found it necessary to hire additional ninja protection from Shimogakure, which would have made traveling by caravan more troublesome for all. Especially so for the bandits who would have found it troublesome to hire caravan drivers when they were all protected by teams of ninja who were out to hunt them. It wasn't hard to see why the traveling caravan was a safe haven for all.</p><p>"Well, don't let your guard down just yet. The travel across the whole country will take at least four to five days. That's why we've been so thorough on stocking up on supplies, you see…" Junichi pointed out.</p><p>"Yeah, I figured as much…" Mana nodded.</p><p>The Land of Frost made itself about as apparent as the Land of Hot Water did earlier though its frozen, drowned in snow landscapes stood out far more than those of what came before. During her quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss, Mana and her friends had traveled on a whole different direction though the gradual change of scenery did remind her of how the deserts of the Land of Wind took over the reins. It was easy to miss the beginning of a subtle drizzle of snow, one that became increasingly more difficult to ignore as the thick woods and rivers took a more swampy appearance before the rivers appeared to freeze and the thick oaks turned to white birches, pines, and spruces as the tundra began taking over.</p><p>By the time that Land of Frost became impossible to ignore, the ground was completely covered in snow and not much of it could have been established as all around was sunken in layers upon layers of white that never melted even during the brief periods of summer that was so questionable that it barely did anything to defrost the ice. It was hard to believe that Mana had been traversing these lands during late spring as it was impossible to tell from winter.</p><p>The group had stopped in a small settlement of log cabins surrounding a wasteland that seemed a lot like what came before – just plains of white that extended beyond the horizon with few pines and spruces sprinkled in between. If there were occasional boulders to spice things up, they had been completely covered up by snow long ago, making them a rather bothersome surprise to bump into as one plowed through the chilling path of white. There were ranges of mountains and thicker forests of conifers ahead, Mana was sure of it. She wasn't much for geography but her background reading up on history put forth mental files of battles waged in these lands and overwhelming odds being turned over solely because of the wild weather and environment that pelted and shaved away even the most adamant souls.</p><p>Why did Mana ever think that Junichi considered crossing the Land of Frost on foot? He was uptight yet he was anything but a madman.</p><p>"Make sure you have all the supplies you need. These settlements make a living by offering travelers everything they will need for the trip. Most caravan drivers compete with one another offering food, drinks, and blankets for their clients but don't take these things for granted and buy your own supplies ahead of time," Junichi advised as he parted off from the group to seek the caravan that would carry them across the country for a tolerable price and acceptable competence at its task.</p><p>Mana found herself scratching her chin as she stared at a black coat that she so desperately needed. A blind granny sold her a more favorable piece of headdress in a knitted, woolen hat and she came prepared with her own white gloves that weren't ideal for these conditions but they'd suffice as Mana needed minimal aid from her chakra network to push away the possibility of frostbite in them. A coat would have been nice though…</p><p>"What's wrong?" Mollay wondered. "We're all ready to leave now if you're done."</p><p>"Oh… Okay, I'll be right there." Mana jumped up. She was so deep in thought that she hadn't noticed Mollay approaching her from behind.</p><p>"Ma'am, give us that coat, please." Mollay approached the vendor and placed a handful of coins on the wooden counter.</p><p>"H-Huh? That's not necessary…" Mana argued.</p><p>"That's fine. Your safety is our trouble. Whether it be assassins, bandits, or frostbite." Mollay insisted. "Are you running low on money, perhaps?"</p><p>"No… Yes… Maybe, I'm not sure. I'm not very good with money." Mana admitted as she slipped into the coat and buttoned it up at once, taking a sweet moment to rub her cheeks on the insides of the collars just to reinvigorate some life back into them.</p><p>"What do you mean, you can count, can't you?" Mollay wondered.</p><p>"Well… Yeah but… I'm a lot better when there's just a price tag on things. When you have to barter and… I just don't know what's too much an what's a bargain, you know?" Mana admitted, feeling a bit ashamed of herself.</p><p>"Ah, I see… You must come from a rich family," Mollay nodded to himself. "That's fine. I also never could quite master it so I end up overpaying for this sort of stuff even these days. The HQ isn't too enthusiastic about it but those are acceptable losses."</p><p>"Not quite what you'd call a rich family…" Mana scratched the back of her head. It was true that her mother owned a well-known business all over the village though she was just about as successful as an owner of a coffee shop could have gotten. Her father was one of the best average rank ninja in the village making just above average pay. While the Nakotsumi family didn't struggle or face economic hardship, they were hardly living in luxury.</p><p>"Ah, well, my excuse is that I've spent most of my days in a cave, mining minerals, and I've never bartered a day in my life," Mollay nodded. Sometimes the man looked a bit confused in social situations. His responses were just tight cut-offs, one-not responses as if everything was a yes or no question and demanded that type of reply. It didn't help that the pale chubby didn't speak all the way back to the group.</p><p>The squad of Allied Ninja already waited by a caravan while a driver flipped a flask as large as his own forearm over, gulping down heavily from it. Once Mana and Mollay joined the group, the driver encouraged them to settle in with a slight slur. Mana didn't need to be able to smell to realize that the caravan driver had been a tad tipsy and would get increasingly so as the trip continued.</p><p>"It's gonna be a long trip ahead of us. The mountain paths are gonna shorten it but only by a couple of days, don't worry, I know them all well. Under the seats you'll find some blankets and spirit, we don't grow any rice around these parts so I hope none of you are fans of rice wine or sake. If you're into finer liquors, there are some distilleries selling whiskey just…" the driver showed signs that his briefing of safety conditions and the like would reel off into a specific, rather irrelevant direction.</p><p>"That's fine, we just need to cross to the Land of Lightning as soon as possible. We're not in a rush but neither would we like to waste time," Junichi pointed out as he opened the door and stepped halfway onto the cabin while still communicating with the driver.</p><p>"Ah, I see, well then… Settle in and let me take care of the rest. You can put your supplies in the back, there'll be a handle that lets you access it from inside the caravan once you settle in. You can freely open and close the curtains if you want. The view is gonna be something once we get to the mountains and even looking a snowy field helps to pass the time, I'd say. If you get queezy from that sort of stuff though, you may want to keep 'em closed. Your choice, really." The driver pointed out as he hid the flash in a compartment under his left calf and prepared to set out. The man turned back on an occasion only to make sure that all of his passengers got on already. Once they did, the man encouraged his horses to take off.</p><p>Mana had seen horses before but none quite like these. While the sum of their body parts and features made them out to be horses, they were nothing like the fine steeds one could see in competitions or being shown off at fairs. Neither were they the tall components of cavalry seen in battle yet they looked intimidating enough. These equestrians were much shorter than any of their counterparts Mana had encountered yet just about every body part of theirs from their snouts to their legs were beefed out like they were carrying the entire caravan on their backs when nobody was looking.</p><p>The driver also appeared to be doing nothing about tending to their mane, resulting in a much more hairy and wild-looking animal whose eyes weren't visible for the most part which didn't help Mana's estimates for their successful trip through the slick mountain path. Then again, she wasn't the driver that spent her entire life doing these exact sorts of trips day after day. Maybe it helped if the horses couldn't see the altitudes that they were in with only the driver to guide their path, what did she know?</p><p>The trip itself started out about as uneventful, as it might have been predicted. In the beginning, even someone as patient and reserved as Mana was beginning to feel bored. The first few hours of the first day felt like torture as she was confined inside a cabin with four other ninja all of whom kept staring through the windows with only brief patches of their view being visible to Mana from her position. At least was warm sitting between Mollay and Junichi as the two men were thick enough to almost put a squeeze on the young woman sitting in between them.</p><p>"Can I maybe sit by the window?" Mana wondered in a moment when it seemed like boredom had eroded her resistance completely.</p><p>"No," Junichi answered without even turning back at her. "It's dangerous to sit by the window. If we were attacked – you'd get hit first. Your chances of survival in an ambush would be the least likely."</p><p>"It's almost impossible that we'll get ambushed," Mana pointed out. It wasn't like not getting to sit by the window was even that big of a deal as all that she was missing out on was just kilometers upon kilometers of frozen tundra plains. Still, she liked the entertainment from the argument as it did something to spice the monotony up at least a little bit.</p><p>"You may be right, but as unlikely as the odds are, I'm not about to gamble on the well-being of the VIP, even if I'm almost certain to succeed in that gamble," Junichi replied. There was no anger in his voice, it was more than likely that he also welcomed some stimulation as opposed to the dulling stare at endless snowy fields. "Plus, once we get to the mountain paths, there's always a chance that the caravan takes an odd turn and you'll tumble out the door. I'd rather be the one to take that plunge rather than have my VIP do it."</p><p>"How very noble of you…" Cailar mocked his superior with a smug grin. It was only him and Shitaka sitting on the other side and they were by far the less bulky pair of the Allied Ninja so they had the luxury of moving about in their seats almost completely unrestricted.</p>
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<a name="section0691"><h2>691. Practical Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana shuffled the deck of cards and spread it in front of Shitaka. The punk didn't require any additional encouragement to pick a card. He looked at the card that he chose with a beaming smile. It would have been an otherwise unremarkable three of clubs if it weren't for the "Choice" scribbled onto it with a marker pen.</p><p>"Oh, wow, you've actually marked the card that I'd choose, huh? That's rocking!" Shitaka beamed a sheepish smile, thoroughly entertained by Mana's elementary stretching of her magician chops as he offered to slide the card back into the deck.</p><p>"If you think that you had a choice to make, my illusion worked," Mana smiled in return after she turned all of the cards over, revealing that all of them had the same marking of "Choice" on them. The magician's hands worked the deck with the chosen card back in it and handed the deck to Shitaka.</p><p>"Huh? What am I supposed to do with it? I don't gamble…" Shitaka stroked the back of his head, ruffling his greasy hair.</p><p>"Just try it. There's nothing else to do for days while we cross the Land of Frost, is there?" Mana shrugged. She found practicing her magic a valid occupation of her time for now though who knew for how long that would last. At least she had a number of tricks to practice that would have occupied her for days.</p><p>Boredom on trips such as these was a curious thing. It set in almost immediately, just minutes after the caravan left its starting point and head out toward its destination. Just after the novelty of the snowy fields had overstayed its welcome and given how the horizon promised nothing but the same stuff for days on end, there was not much of said welcome, to begin with. Once Mana's brain got used to the frozen tundra, days, hours and minutes stretched out to infinity.</p><p>The fact that she hadn't experienced this trip beforehand was the worst part of it. It fooled Mana's brain into keeping close attention to the details of the trip which only served to frustrate her more and therefore didn't allow her brain to lull itself. Without that tranquility, making peace with the boredom and letting one's mind just skip and vault through it was impossible so practicing magic was the only way out of it. This bothersome worry only got recycled once the caravan began riding the mountain path and the landscape shifted.</p><p>"Yo, Junichi, you wanna see a rocking magic trick?" Shitaka offered the squad leader to pick a card from the deck.</p><p>"I've already seen through the trick, there's no use in it anymore," Junichi replied with a grumpy look on his face. He didn't look like much of a fan of stage magic.</p><p>"Yo, Cailar, you've gotta try it now that Junichi refused!" Shitaka turned to the flamboyant member of the Allied Ninja who just sighed and drew a card from the middle.</p><p>"Oh, the burden of garishness…" Cailar said as he showed the card to the disinterested caravan and revealed it to be a four of diamonds with "Choice" marked on it. "Ah, the illusion of free choice, what a ravishing trick!" Cailar mocked the would-be trickster with clearly faked interest in his tone.</p><p>"Yeah, rocking ain't it? You think you had a choice but you really didn't the whole time… Look, they're all…" Shitaka flipped over the deck only to gasp and burst into laughter as he witnessed that Mana had handed him a perfectly normal deck of cards, without any markings on them with the only marked card being the one in Cailar's hand. "Holy shit, how did you do it!?"</p><p>"Well… I can't say I don't appreciate the pizzazz," Cailar nodded with a long, sly smile as he looked to Mana and handed her back the deck.</p><p>"You think this is pizzazz? I'm pretty sure I accidentally mixed up some of my combat cards into the deck during all of the mad commotion in the Fire Country. If you drew the wrong card, we could have gotten flash-bombed in this caravan…" Mana replied as she promptly shuffled the deck and waved her hands before the dazzled pair as it had disappeared from her hands in its entirety.</p><p>"Admit it, you sly coot, you! You're in on the trick, ain't you!?" Shitaka clenched his fist, preparing to nudge his squadmate in the shoulder but Cailar dismissed his accusations with a shrug.</p><p>"You're using sealing techniques just to seal away a deck of useless cards? Your chakra might not have fully recovered yet, why are you wasting it like that?" Junichi grumbled. Whereas both him and Mollay were the only ones unimpressed by Mana's trick, Mollay looked just plain disinterested, it was only Junichi who looked as if he was somehow attacked by it.</p><p>"It's not a waste if someone's entertained," Mana shrugged, feeling her body tense up and herself getting defensive. There was no need for him to attack her while she was just trying to entertain herself and anyone watching with some easy magic during this uneventful caravan ride.</p><p>"You're using chakra and ninjutsu for shits and giggles. Chakra is your vital energy, the essence of your spiritual and physical self and you're squandering it on some silly antics. Ninjutsu is an art of tactics and unconventional warfare, used to steal, gather intelligence and even assassinate people and you dishonor its severity and importance by using it to aid some flashy parlor tricks," Junichi stood his ground, it was his least endearing quality, after all.</p><p>"It's not like these so-called parlor tricks won't serve a practical use. I'm not just out of Konoha to work as an Allied Ninja after all," Mana said.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Junichi raised his eyebrow, looking suspicious of Mana. The young woman could feel the tension rising in the whole wagon despite the others only humoring Mana's declaration without any deeper accusations lying therein.</p><p>"I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not but back in Konoha I used to be a pretty famous stage magician and I want that part of my identity back. As an Allied Ninja I will work all over the world, right? As if in various countries and even other ninja villages. Well, my manager and I have struck a deal about a World Magic Tour of sorts, which will serve as a fine alibi of me being everywhere around the world if my status of an Allied Ninja on a mission will ever need to remain a secret." Mana pointed out.</p><p>"Hmm… I've never thought of it that way. I suppose it might be useful to have a potential diversion from your real reason for being inside a more hostile area," Junichi sighed in peaceful agreement with Mana's idea. "I'm sorry if I lashed out for what seemed like no reason at all. Given this context, one might view what you are doing now as sort of ninja training so please carry on, I will not disturb you again."</p><p>"You don't much get how this stage magic gig works, do you? I can always use some input," Mana smiled.</p><p>"You remind me a little bit of your father. He also stood out from the rest of his squad the couple of times I've worked with him. He'd always set traps and prefer to lure the enemy into battlefields he had prepared instead of taking them on where the battle took place. His worst nightmare used to be missions where he was constantly on-foot, escort missions and the like, only because he couldn't set any traps or prepare his surroundings at all," Junichi said glancing through the window as the caravan took up and elevated on another mountain road, leaving the frozen plains down below underneath a thick layer of cold mist floating down and off the mountain road.</p><p>"I still don't quite see the resemblance…" Mana admitted, even though she very much wanted to see it.</p><p>"He would also insist that his way of tackling the mission objective was the ideal one. It was a really irritating feature of his, he wasn't the highest-ranking ninja any of the times we've worked together but he always thought that the problems should have all been left up to him to solve," Junichi explained his point.</p><p>"That does sound like someone we all know," Cailar nodded.</p><p>"Though he wasn't without a twisted side either. It just took a deeper look to see it. He didn't set all those traps and prepare all those counter-measures to make sure and preserve lives. He did so because it was a point of pride, something that would make him feel accomplished to capture dangerous opponents alive by disabling them in various ways. I don't think he was a hypocrite, he never claimed otherwise to make him so but you can't help but shiver when you think about an opponent such as that and what he might have become in time," Junichi sighed. He must have known at least a little bit of the misfortune that befell Mana's father as he certainly looked crushed enough as a man lamenting an old acquaintance.</p><p>"He tinkered a lot in his spare time too," what seemed like a weep escaped Mana's lips in a forceful chuckle. "I guess in that way we're similar too. Both of us liked to employ our skills serving a hobby that had nothing to do with ninjutsu. For shits and giggles, in a manner of speaking."</p><p>"Shits and giggles…" Mollay mumbled with a rowdy-sounding, irritating tone. "I grew up using chakra and ninjutsu to extract precious minerals from a cave in the mountain. Reeking of sulfur, dark enough to blind children that grew up working there from their early years. You see, what they would do is just locate a vein using a specific type of Advanced Sensor that could send pulses through the rock and then just drill onward through that vein, collecting the shards. It was only a matter of time until the mountain fell onto the straight cave after the village's greed made us mine the vein that supported it more than the rock we dug through did, dropping the entire mountain on top of us. All that gold, coltan, iron and coal or whatever… All of that is shit and a giggle is all it's worth. As far as I'm concerned, use your gifts for whatever you damn well like and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. As long as they bring you or someone else happiness because that will never be the desire of those that own you and your power and those that would wield you as their tool."</p><p>"Holy crap, you went on a tangent there, bud…" Shitaka whistled. "I don't think I ever heard you say that much stuff before,"</p><p>"And what about you? Have any breath-taking stories to share? We have all the time in the world it seems and we could all use hearing what tears a man down to want to just blow it all up," Cailar turned to Shitaka with a sly expression on his face.</p><p>"Heh, yeah, I didn't have the most rocking of lives, I don't think that anyone that could just cover their eyes and yell real loud to filter out the noises and the sights of the real world around them would choose not to do that. Heck, I'd have really liked to be able to play with puppets like a pal of mine, maybe then I could have at least been better at pretending that I had friends and people that cared," Shitaka pouted, crossing his arms over his chest.</p><p>"Your friend was a puppeteer? That's a rare talent for a Kirigakure ninja. Most prominent puppetry masters and all of their secret arts lie in the Land of Wind. He must have carried that art in his own, unique direction. Kirigakure would be lucky to have such a person," Mana tried to comfort Shitaka as for the first time he was actually letting something get to him and bring him down before her eyes.</p><p>"He's dead. That's a recurring trend with people in my life, though, I guess, all of our lives. Though I won't sit there and act like I'm not having a rocking good time right now or that I'm somehow special 'cause of that loss. A whole bunch of Mollay's friends from his back-breaking days got squished by a mountain, heck, some of my friends probably killed or maimed some of Junichi's friends and vice versa. The shit between Konoha and Kiri was pretty wild and even you have to recall that time. So yeah… My parents died during the Second Great Ninja War, my nanna died of being old and my friend died fighting Konoha ninja. I guess Mollay hit the nail in the head, don't listen to dinosaurs like Junichi unless they're telling you to duck." Shitaka tilted his feet and placed them beside Mollay on the other side of the seats.</p><p>"Well, it's not like Mollay wasn't always the brevious type though I think I speak for everybody when I say that nobody expected him to maintain his seat at the top of the hill with that latest tangent of his and yet he did, somehow." Cailar yawned.</p><p>It didn't take long for the mountain roads, all the sharp twists and turns and near-tumbles down the narrow path and down through the chilling mist and into the tundra below to become monotonous just as the previous landscape did. Once the day turned to a slog and it began feeling like there was nothing new to be experienced in the pelting white outside the caravan or anything of note to be seen through the thick fog down below, the journey was over.</p><p>The first signs of that were when the snow disappeared and that satisfying crunch no longer sated one's ears when listening in on the melodious hum of the perpetually turning wheels. The rough and rocky floor was still frozen solid though for a good couple of hours until a layer of dust began forming behind the wagon, suggesting that there was not a drop of rain that had soaked the ground for quite a while. The caravan began slowing down multiple times, bringing up the illusion that maybe the journey was finally over for good but it was just to ease the torment of an exceptionally rocky patch of road ahead. Though once the caravan had stopped and turned sideways, there was no mistaking it – the trip was over.</p><p>"Well, nothing but ten million square kilometers of rocky wasteland and mountains up ahead. I'd give you fellas a ride but…" the driver shrugged. He looked completely beat. Even knowing the journey waiting up ahead, Mana would have chewed her own finger off before letting this tired man drive them another hundred meters before taking a nap.</p><p>"Don't fuss about it. We're only making a diagonal cross toward the eastern shoreline from here. Plus, it'll take us way less time to travel on foot than it'd take to cross via caravan. We can take a little bit of dried out wasteland way better than the tundra and the mountains," Junichi saluted the man in a friendly manner and backed off, blowing off air from his lungs. "I can never understand how ordinary civilians can take these trips without sleep."</p><p>"What choice do they have? It's their most profitable way of making a living. Plus, I'm not sure if he's just an ordinary civilian. When I had busted my own chakra network once, I had mastered a few ways of enhancing the body and its metabolism without the use of chakra, or rather, just using its rawer forms," Mana pointed out. She very much suspected that either physical or spiritual chakra was at play in the unnatural endurance of this, otherwise, ordinary man.</p><p>"Well, from here on out it's just a dash to the coastline. Our chakra should have recovered fully and had been so for a while now. We can stand putting more of our shoulder into it. We can rest again once we reach the HQ," Junichi briefed the team on their immediate future plans for this escort mission.</p><p>For the first stretch of the Land of Lightning, the Allied Ninja really did put a lot of energy into their dashing. They had cleared the rocky plains area in a heartbeat and only once the massive, brown rocks, plateaus, and sky-carving mountains alike appeared in sight that they dropped their speed critically so to not smash through them and both ruin the natural landscape and drastically dip through their chakra resources for no reason. By the time that Mana noticed the other Allied Ninja slowly dropping their movement speed, she couldn't believe that they were nearing their destination.</p><p>It was only once Mana stopped completely and approached the edge of a mountain path atop of a rocky shore and looked down onto the coastline only to see a building the shape of a flattened ball though mostly resembling a beehive in its layered structure and color that she at least realized that they had reached their destination. Cailar had noticed that Mana had been lagging behind while the rest of the Allied Ninja struck up a conversation with local guards watching the path and the shoreline. The man waved at the magician so that she didn't walk off by herself or disappear somewhere.</p><p>It was almost difficult to believe that after spending the better part of the week trying to reach this place it was finally before Mana's eyes. Layers of stone spun around with windows beaming with golden light. It almost looked peaceful and it had been deceitfully calm from the distance and looking on from where Mana was staring at it. Not a single outburst of a meaningful chakra signature except for the handful of ninja patrolling the area. The place was etched halfway between Kumogakure and Land of Frost in the Land of Lightning and all the way to the east by the coastline which made it tough for wayward bandits to even target it. If someone came with an intent to do harm upon the Allied Ninja HQ, they'd have to do it with serious scorn and even greater resources to accomplish that goal.</p><p>"Mana, let's go!" Junichi yelled out, calling to the magician as he had cleared things up with the guards and confirmed that he wasn't some impostor just posing as the man whose face he wore. Soon enough, Mana would have to learn all those security codes, passwords, and encryptions herself.</p><p>None of that mattered now. The journey was over, she'll soon be an Allied Ninja, even if Mana's heart didn't flutter in excitement over the idea, the grueling difficulty of the trip made it feel like an achievement nonetheless.</p>
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<a name="section0692"><h2>692. The Supreme Leader</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The group of Allied Ninja led Mana down the hillside and through the abandoned tents, heading toward the hive-shaped headquarters building. The magician let her chakra sensory unfurl for the first time in a while, sensing a cluster of large chakra signatures half a kilometer away in each direction. Multiple groups that used these tents for barracks had been training.</p><p>"This looks like a military school or something…" Mana mumbled. It only seemed apt since she was sent out of the village for supposedly "misbehaving".</p><p>"That's one way of looking at it, I suppose," Junichi shrugged. "You'll need to pass a training course before you're sent out on your first mission so in a manner of speaking it might feel like a school."</p><p>"Wait, so there's a standard of strength?" Mana wondered. "It seems like a hassle trying to keep every recruit at a certain standard."</p><p>"We don't get any weaklings. Ninja that aren't ready to leave the walls of their village don't ever make it here. They're not offered to us nor would we accept them if they were. This course is not mere combat training. Its purpose is to make you acquaintance with history and politics you'll need to maneuver around as an Allied Ninja," Junichi pointed out.</p><p>"Don't undersell this place so hard, man. Don't worry, you'll get a chance to whoop some ass before too long." Shikata winked and stuck out his tongue trying to accurately depict the excitement that Mana should be feeling though she wasn't yet sure how she should be feeling.</p><p>"We're back home. It's a mission completed for us. You guys can scatter and find something to occupy yourselves with. I'll deal with debriefing and presenting Mana to Supreme Leader," Junichi gave his comrades an inspecting glare.</p><p>"Phew, you're a lifesaver, man, seriously! A rocking thanks!" Shitaka clapped his hands together and bowed in front of Junichi as if thanking for his life. This reaction didn't help to get Mana's hopes up about this place whatsoever.</p><p>"Supreme… Leader?" Mana mumbled wondering if she had ever heard about a man calling himself that who wasn't waving a giant red flag.</p><p>"Don't worry, if you disobey, your execution will be swift and painless," Cailar swiped two of his fingers by his temple as his way of saying his farewells. Knowing his character, Mana would have been a fool to take anything he said too seriously but it wasn't like Cailar didn't find a fitting area to squeeze his parting irony in.</p><p>"That bothersome prick…" Junichi groaned and rubbed his face, knowing that he'll have to counteract any damage to the credibility of the Supreme Leader's authority that Cailar had just inflicted in Mana's mind. The fact that Cailar's antics finally forced Junichi to respond in aggravation was also admirable from a certain point of view.</p><p>"Junichi showed himself again and again to be a competent leader. He'll show you around, I'm sure. I look forward to working with you in the nearest future, Mana," Mollay nodded his head. It was a rather hasty and formal farewell to someone you've been through the thick and thin with and rubbed skin with inside a tight carriage for entire days while trusting them to watch your back while you would offer your life for theirs but, in all honesty, Mana was merely taken aback by the fact that Mollay didn't take the chance to just walk away without saying a thing.</p><p>Curious eyes tracked Mana when she entered the facility alongside Junichi. No one inside the Allied Ninja HQ was an outright child though the dominating age was well below thirty. That was to be expected. The previous generations have grown up during times of perpetual warfare and times of distrust and animosity between ninja villages. It took an untainted soul to give togetherness a chance. Still, even knowing all of that, the few adults and veterans that did meet Mana's curious looks of examination were odd to see in a school-like environment.</p><p>"Why don't I give you a little bit of an advantage in your preparation course? For old time's sake, just good old nepotism? The Allied Ninja are governed by the Supreme Leader. You can view them as kind of the Hokage of the entire organization. Though it's not all quite as authoritarian. The Supreme Leader shares control with five Regimental Commanders that oversee and are experts of matters in specific regions of the world. You can use that information in your courses, a few weeks of that'll be spent on the way the Allied Ninja work, its various regulations, and policies," Junichi said.</p><p>"You're just trying to make the Supreme Leader look more legitimate by showing that they share their control, unlike the Hokage…" Mana's face shriveled in suspicion.</p><p>"Is it working?" Junichi made an apologetic expression.</p><p>"Look, I don't care if this Supreme Leader of yours is a nut or not. I left the village hoping to flip a new page and give anything else but the way my life's been going its fair chance. I don't need to be sold on the idea anymore. I'm here and unless I flunk and get tossed out – I'm here to stay," Mana replied with genuine eyes.</p><p>"Oh, it's unlikely that you'll flunk. The academic portion is not at all strict. The worst that can happen is that your courses will get prolonged until you finish them. There are a few ninja here gunning at the six-month course for entire years so that's all you're risking. Don't worry, I'll put a good word on your side, the Supreme Leader won't have you go through all that perilous trip backward again unless you want out," Junichi shrugged, looking relieved that Mana's impressions of the organization weren't yet ruined.</p><p>"E-Excuse me!" a tiny man with spiky dark hair and thick goggles ran up to Mana, shaking his fists in front of his chest and a rich smile on his face as if he was gazing at a tower made of diamond. Mana and Junichi alike froze before this undergrown interloper with similarly baffled looks. "Y-You're Nakotsumi Mana, Konoha's Sorceress, aren't you?"</p><p>"Look, kid, we're in a bit of a hurry. Mana still needs to meet the Supreme Leader and Supreme Leader gets cranky when she is left hanging," Junichi tried to shove the lively fellow out of their way but he somehow managed to wriggle out of Junichi's palm and spin back in front of Mana. He kept pumping his fists and hopping on his tiny feet with a beaming smile of excitement.</p><p>"So you are Konoha's Sorceress! I'm a huge fan but it's been a while since I've seen you on the "Avalon" magazine. If it weren't for your get-up, I wouldn't have guessed!" the young man kept beaming a smile as if he hadn't just stopped the pair in the middle of something.</p><p>Mana looked behind her, noticing a small group consisting of a tall woman with gray hair decorated with streaks of blue and a leathery vibe to her that even left Shitaka in the dust and a square-jawed muscle-head with hair that looked a fountain of fur though reserved only to a specific area of the top of his head. Another pair of giants of matching sizes hung with that specific group though they didn't seem to pay any attention to one of their own who left to have a talk.</p><p>The square-jawed man leaned with half of his size so that he could speak to the rebellious woman. He looked rather amused by something that he noticed in the scene of his friend stepping in the way of another Allied Ninja and a new recruit though the young woman only rolled her eyes in dismissal.</p><p>"Yeah, I've been a bit locked up these last couple of months, I guess…" Mana ran her hand through her hair, trying to give the youth increasingly obvious signs that this was not the time. She used to love interacting with fans back in the day but nothing killed one's interest in such matters as being exposed to universal hatred and dismissal.</p><p>"Oh… I just figured that "Avalon" couldn't afford getting your pictures. It's a Kirigakure magazine so it might be difficult and all… Say… Are you here to perform? I'd love to see it, I don't wanna ever miss it!" the goggled youth pumped his hands again.</p><p>"No. I'm here to serve as an Allied Ninja." Mana shook her head. She regretted that honesty almost immediately as the dazzled young man inhaled for a vociferous howl of cheer before the Adonis with the ridiculous hairdo approached and yoinked his friend away, growling some unintelligible apologies as the low pitch of his voice made them difficult to understand.</p><p>"Now then… Through the yard and up the stairs," Junichi blew out a chest-worth of air while rubbing the back of his head and observing the curious group vacate this wing of the facility. "Don't worry, I'll show you around after but first we really have to see the Supreme Leader."</p><p>Mana followed Junichi through the yard that fostered a handful of gardens and had unused means of transportation ranging from unused yet well-maintained steeds to scooters just positioned one by another in a square formation. The veteran of the Allied Ninja permitted Mana the luxury of staring at the splendor of the garden that had no right being this excellent in the middle of the Land of Lightning known for its rocky and inhospitable soil. With a step that lacked haste but did not stop for a second Junichi telegraphed his intention of crossing to the other side of the round building.</p><p>"To your left, you see the indoor training facilities. They're for specific exercises and meditation only, please don't practice ninjutsu indoors. I don't recall anybody being sent home but something like that might just make for a fitting first case," Junichi pointed with his hand as the steep climb to the top floor of the facility began. Mana noticed a library that extended throughout multiple floors and had several entries from the same stair complex though Junichi didn't find it necessary to bring it up whatsoever. Maybe he reserved that part for the official tour?</p><p>The veteran who was the coolest guy and wasn't afraid of anything pressed his ear to the door, listening in for any potential noises coming out from the Supreme Leader's office before knocking on the door and pressing the handle. Mana was about to joke if he wasn't pushing his luck by daring to turn the handle after just a pair of measures to make sure he wasn't intruding but she reserved that until she met this Supreme Leader herself.</p><p>Mana's eyes widened to the point where the woman on the other side of the office behind the table froze in matching shock. Even with the knowledge that her curious reaction made the Supreme Leader freeze in place, the magician couldn't shake off her goofy stare. This was the only adequate way in which Mana could have reacted to a tall and slender woman of short and spiky hair of dark violet shade and a tight, black, military uniform complete with a cap and medals needed to decorate it though even an elementary inspection made these decorations seem more like metal hairpins rather than genuine awards.</p><p>"What the actual fuck?" the woman leaned back. Her tantrum eased when she saw Junichi standing beside Mana. The veteran stepped into the room first, providing his broad back for Mana to shake off her staring eyes and close her jaw. When Mana imagined a person calling themselves the Supreme Leader, she didn't expect to see the first thing that came to mind claiming that title.</p><p>"Supreme Leader. Our squad has returned. As you can see, Nakotsumi Mana is here, safe, and mostly unharmed. We've run into some trouble with local bounty hunters, it appears that she has quite the sum on her head in Land of Fire and Mana has showcased her abilities helping us fight those ninja off. The few bruises she has are because of those complications and, I'm afraid, couldn't have been avoided," Junichi summed up the first part of his debriefing while Mana peeked from behind the man, testing the waters after the comically bad first impression before she could step out and introduce herself right.</p><p>"Hello, ma'am! Nakotsumi Mana, looking to serve!" she bowed, copying Junichi's movements. Now that the initial freak-out was behind them, the uniformed woman leaned back and crossed her arms, acting cool and strict though her almost manic eyes suggested a whole different story.</p><p>"You don't have to copy Junichi, you dumbass, you're not Allied Ninja yet. The protocol doesn't bind you. There'll be a time to put that stake up your ass but I don't suggest rushing there unless you're into that sort of thing…" no matter how unorthodox the woman's standoffish manner of speech, befitting more a delinquent off the shadier streets rather than the chief of a supranatural military organization, was, her appearance, everything from her young age to her choice of apparel was just entirely too much even for Mana.</p><p>"Please stay for the debriefing, Mana, I'll show you around afterward," Junichi nodded his head at the magician before moving in to find himself a seat by the Supreme Leader's table.</p><p>"What the fuck's the matter? Just 'cause I look like a general don't mean that my office is a fucking minefield…" the Supreme Leader squinted with a long face, looking at Mana's hesitation to take a seat by Junichi's side in front of her.</p><p>And here Mana thought that Shitaka was the outlier…</p><p>"Anyways, the fourth floor is for the staff. The fifth floor is for the men's dorms while the sixth floor is for women's. I won't lead you all the way up once we're done for obvious reasons. Only recruits reside inside the facility. The actual Allied Ninja are either working or they find sanctuary inside one of the barrack tents outside, you might have seen them. You won't have much downtime once you're done with the preparation course. It'll be either training or sharpening your tools or… Shuffling your cards… Or whatever…" Junichi shrugged, realizing that he had no idea how someone like Mana would prepare for a mission during off-time.</p><p>"Ummm… The Supreme Leader…" Mana raised her finger.</p><p>"She has her own way with words but she's quite wise, you know. What she said about enjoying yourself while you still can shouldn't be lost on you. Those six months are going to whizz right past you and then you'll be all over the world doing your best to try and fix it if only just a little bit," Junichi replied before Mana could fathom how to complete voicing her thoughts on the woman that could have only been less than a decade older than her and yet was in charge of the entire Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Let's just hope you won't start out working in the Fire Country, huh?" Junichi noted the period of silence with a blowing out of his chest and a twitch as he made what he thought passed as a joke. After Mana no-sold that joke, the veteran thought she might have taken it seriously and rushed in to correct himself. "Don't worry, the Supreme Leader might not look like it, but she's smarter than she looks. She knows better than to assign you to somewhere where everyone wants you dead."</p><p>Mana didn't realize that her long face resulted in her eyes looking soaked with quite as much longing as they were soaked with.</p><p>"I… I didn't mean it like that…" Junichi tried shoving the implication away, realizing where he might have expressed himself wrong. "Don't worry, just give it a couple of years and Konoha won't even recognize you when you walk into it. Though… You'll likely be working for us when you do. Is that okay with you?"</p><p>"Perfectly…" Mana cut it short like a swing of an ax. Konoha could have kept its promises of promotion to Jounin once this whole affair cools down a bit and bringing her one more step closer to becoming a Sannin. There was no love lost declaring her allegiances to lie with an organization that had nothing to do with the slaughter of the Wandering Ninja, the group Mana's mother came from, or that spent the better part of their free time firing the blame arrows at their subordinates so that they could avoid their tips themselves.</p><p>"Great! I'd really love to help you out some more but it's not like you're asking too many questions. Don't worry if you don't know where to start, the preparation courses are meant for ninja completely oblivious to how this organization works." Junichi nodded to himself before raising his hand as a directing gesture toward where the women dorms were.</p><p>"Wait… Is it okay if I just join in like that?" it occurred to Mana. "Also, do I even have a room?"</p><p>"The prep courses won't start until September. You can spend the rest of your time here training, meeting new people, and enjoying yourself. Don't feel bad about it as I did. Just look at it this way – the Allied Ninja are glad to provide you with anything that makes you a better ally. If their facilities can help you grow stronger, if our company can help you grow happier, that's what Supreme Leader considers a fu… A useful investment!" Junichi corrected himself before he cursed out loud. "Also, feel free to just settle down in any free spot you can find. That's sort of how dorms work around here."</p><p>Mana sort of would have liked to have known this sooner. She hardly knew any of the people in this place and making friends has been rapidly becoming more and more difficult. It was almost as if her prodigious talent of dazzling people and making them into either fans or friends had gone alongside everything else that Mana tossed into her own funeral pyre when she signed part of her life away to damnation in Jigoku prison that stayed with her for life.</p><p>"I've been through ninja school already…" Mana shrugged, meaning to encourage herself about as much as she did Junichi. "How hard can it be?" she repeated that last line a couple of times as she ascended the stairs looking for an empty room with space for her to settle in.</p><p>Judgment was still reserved if the months spent here becoming a fully-fledged Allied Ninja would be better or worse than time spent in Jigoku.</p>
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<a name="section0693"><h2>693. The Bullies And The Bullied</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's floating body lowered and her buttocks gently touched the ground. Her eyes filled with light once the magician opened them and directed them right at the manager of the indoor gym who was approaching her. The short, middle-aged man looked around the burnt streaks and bent-up wooden boards with irritation in his face. He didn't like any of it but not to the extent where he'd forbid Mana from meditating in the gym.</p><p>"That's some mighty freaky shit you're doing with all that floating and lightning shooting out of you," the man noted, leaving it up to an obvious hint that he was not a fan.</p><p>"Sorry, chakra manifests itself during meditation. It frees my spirit and mind and builds both of them up at the same time. I actively suppress the Fire Release from manifesting," Mana nodded in acknowledgment of the fact that her meditation sessions have been growing a tad unruly, its devastation growing alongside her strength and skill.</p><p>"Well, at least I didn't have to wake you up from it, that's still a win, I guess…" the man scratched the right side of his neck and sighed. "The guys usually use this place for games and some friendly wrestling, this is the first time someone uses it to form whirlwinds and jolt with lightning inside, that's all…"</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, once entranced, I'm hyper-aware of everyone's presence. More so than I'd be with thoughts cluttering my mind normally. You'll never have to worry about slapping me awake," Mana assured the man as she gathered the few things she brought to the gym and headed for the door.</p><p>"You know, you've been hanging out by yourself this whole week. It just isn't normal, you know. The guys that usually use this gym are training outdoors in the training field, I'm sure they'd love to include another gym-lover to their group…" the manager shrugged. He disappeared inside his little office, appearing a few moments later with a broom in his hands.</p><p>"That's fine, I'm sorry I made such a mess. I'm in a hurry to get to the library before the lunch break but I can leave a clone to help you clean the place up," Mana suggested.</p><p>"Nah, missy, that's fine. It's kind of my job," the manager sighed. From the looks of it, Mana lost all the good faith she had accumulated with the man just by bringing the singed floorboards up. "You go take care of your books and whatnot…"</p><p>"Thank you," Mana thanked the man for letting her use the gym to meditate and bowed.</p><p>Maybe she could have been just fine meditating inside her room but to restrain herself to the extent where her chakra barely manifested itself would have greatly hampered her training. She's been doing plenty of meditating in the evenings already and while they haven't said anything yet, Mana had a hunch that her roommates didn't appreciate the glowing outline around her and the hum of rushing chakra when she focused.</p><p>The librarian didn't speak to Mana. She didn't say anything specific due to that problem but from what the magician could gather, she recognized Mana and that was exactly why the tall, old woman, who had a turtleneck for every day of the week and a broach with a different gemstone to decorate it alongside it, didn't speak to Mana.</p><p>Seeing the grumpy librarian put a stamp on her completed library card and file a new one under Mana's name reminded the young woman of how excited the scissor-wielding lunatic in charge of the Konoha archives was whenever Mana's card was filled up and he needed to start a new one. He had a pretty neat habit of storing filled-up library cards in stacks and show them off to their owners and other passionate readers and Mana's stack was beginning to gain up on the village's leading readers before all the madness went down.</p><p>Maybe it was that inhospitable atmosphere or maybe it was something else but Mana couldn't stand reading in the library. It had a reading room larger than Konoha's own rather dark, oppressive and gloomy archive but it was constantly full of people of various ages and stages of progress in their courses which just didn't let the reading absorb Mana within them like it did when she was alone or in the company of the few very apathetic roommates.</p><p>The fact that they were apathetic was why Mana liked them though. They never objected or belittled her for the baggage she carried here from Konoha nor have they even heard of her or her show, from what Mana could make it from their curious looks. One of the four young ladies even thought that Mana entered the room to provide some sort of room service when she first tumbled in with her bag.</p><p>A scream of the most curious pitch filled the hallway leading to the staircase Mana intended to take to the fourth floor. The magician lowered the book that she held in her hand and looked up, the volume and desperation, the plight of pain as well as its very repulsing pitch engrossed her curiosity more than the book or the perception training of trying not to bump into anyone or anything while reading it did. All Mana had was her chakra sensory to rely on the task of getting to where she wanted to go without embarrassing herself and half-engrossed into her reading.</p><p>"What is wrong with you!?" a colossal and, frankly, quite grotesque shape of feminine fashion of dressing bellowed, tossing her arms about in a vain attempt to hit one of the handful of cackling young men around her. Mana's gaze sharpened around a senbon sticking out of the gut of the grotesque-looking giantess. Did one of those four attack her in the middle of the hallway?</p><p>"I just wanted to slurp on some marshmallow fluff, what's wrong with that?" one of the guys taunted the jumbo-sized woman as all four of them danced around her heavy limbs as they thrashed about inflicting damage on the HQ's property by stomping the floorboards into splinters and smashing the surrounding tables until they resembled modern art pieces of randomized patterns of metal and wood sticking out of them.</p><p>Mana had seen this particular young woman. Despite her immensely memorable and unfortunate appearance, she was not the one of her group to stand out – she was in the group hanging out with the goggles-donning young man that hassled her on her way to Supreme Leader. Her cheeks had the typical facepaint of the Akimichi clan but her particular type of hulking bulk was different than the mere chubbiness of the Akimichi that Mana had seen before.</p><p>This scorned mammoth was not merely thick of limbs and body, her general facial features were not only quite masculine and rectangular but also highly unpleasant to look at, her skin was flabby and didn't appear to let her flesh fill it with a healthy plump as the other Akimichi did. Whatever problems plagued the body of this woman, they were entirely natural as none of what caused the bullying youth to swarm around her like flies around a squashed plume left to sit flat there for a couple of days on the pavement was due to any fault of her own.</p><p>It was fortunate that Mana had sashed her book.</p><p>"That wasn't very nice of you…" Mana approached the scene. The titanic kunoichi removed the senbon etched in her gut coloring her sailor-type top with a dot of red. Tears almost the necessary size to fill an adult mouth formed under the eyelids of the unfortunate Allied Ninja rookie yet not even that looked normal as her lower eyelids seemed to bloat excessively and swell up before just puking the tears out once the swelling could no longer contain it.</p><p>"I wasn't trying to be nice," the outspoken one of the group struck a confident pose. "Sekita is an ugly whale that's a sore for everyone's eyes. She should just disappear and make everyone's time here easier."</p><p>"It's no wonder you're trying to find marshmallows this way. With an attitude like that no girl with a functional brain would let you take her out for ice cream," Mana replied, feeling bitter about the whole situation. She knew that she was pretty much just courting attention toward her own bag of problems but it couldn't have been helped.</p><p>"You're… Konoha's Sorceress, right?" Sekita asked caught by surprise that Mana stepped in out of nowhere like that. While the exact sentiment that the overgrown woman felt toward the ninja magician remained a mystery, it did ring cords deep enough to make her weep in the open with even greater intensity than the shock of sudden pain did earlier.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress?" the outspoken bully who was about to respond with something furious and snappy took a few steps back. One of his cackling friends who had up until now remained silent grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.</p><p>"Whatever, man, just leave this alone. She's the one that beat down Guru Ayushi… You don't want that…" he muttered with volume that only made it audible to half of the people in the hallway observing the scene unfold. Curiously enough, they had remained mostly oblivious to it while it only included the group of boys sticking senbon into the victim of their abuse and it was only when the prospect of actual conflict rose up that they suddenly got interested.</p><p>"Wow…" Sekita muttered. The floor cracked and quaked underneath her feet as she ran with excitement, following Mana after the magician tried vacating the scene with an embarrassed expression until too many people etched her features into their minds. "Would you have really fought them off for me? You do know you can't do that, right? You'd have gotten in trouble with the Regimental Commander."</p><p>"I… I don't know. I wouldn't have fought them, not for real. I've lived my entire life mastering subduing people or taking them down without killing them, I don't see someone like him being a problem," Mana tried to shrug off the attention of the abused youth as she continued to attract attention rushing after her.</p><p>"They're really mean, you know. I'm grateful that someone strong like you stood up and taught them a lesson but you can't quit halfway," Sekita tried placing her hand on Mana's shoulder to stop her and make the magician cut out the act of pretending to be reading when she was this embarrassed and rushing to get away this fast. The hand of the Akimichi woman was too massive so she ended up placing it square on Mana's back. The flesh on Sekita's hand felt soggy as if it would peel off of the oversized bone at any moment if pulled on hard enough.</p><p>"What do you mean?" Mana sashed her book again and turned to face the towering victim of abuse.</p><p>"I know who you are, the Regimental Commander Harcel told me about you when he brought me here. You're really strong. You have the strength to crush dreams of weak, delusional fools like Guru Ayushi, fools that croak about peace lie about their supposed strength by turning the other cheek instead of showing it. You have it, real power!" Sekita looked to be more fanatical about Mana than her goggle-eyed companion was a few weeks back.</p><p>"Look, I don't know who you think I am but I'm not going to fight an opponent that stood down. I'm sorry that people are mean to you. You've been dealt a bad hand and you definitely don't deserve it but your obsession with power is delusional. If you merely flip the switches and shift the roles of you and those bullies, you won't make a change. Not one that matters anyway." Mana replied looking the colossus of flabby flesh right in the eyes.</p><p>Sekita looked dumbfounded as if she couldn't believe the words that were coming out of Mana's mouth at that moment. The magician was about to advise her to keep away from that Regimental Commander that brought her here because it didn't seem like the man had her best interests in mind while something much more sinister was brewing in Sekita's mind but before she could speak up, another one from the group from earlier busted into the conversation.</p><p>It was the tall and broad-shouldered man with strawberry-blond curled hair and deep blue eyes who concealed parts of his appearance underneath a cover way back but hung out together with Sekita, the goggle-eyed fellow, the goth lady and the other burly bruiser type almost as large as him. He didn't speak, just shoved himself in between Mana and Sekita and grabbed Sekita's massive hand in between two of his, pressing it hard and pushing it underneath his cloak to press it closer to his chest.</p><p>"Yeah… I'm okay, don't worry about me…" Sekita nodded in response to the mute way in which she was being addressed by the curly-haired Allied Ninja. "Konoha's Sorceress helped me out. She showed me more about how to be strong. I've got my mind set straight, Stein, I'm going to Regimental Commander Harcel so that he sets up a sparring match between me and them."</p><p>"I don't think that's…" Mana moved out from being rudely covered up by the tall and broad back of the affectionate ally of Sekita's but Stein turned at her with a vexed expression and pressed Mana to the wall, driving his forearm in between her throat and her chest as he did so.</p><p>"That's okay, Stein, she's the one that helped me. She was talking like some weakling before but I think I get it now. She doesn't want to crush those bullies herself, she wants me to do it, she wants me to be strong enough on my own. It's what Regimental Commander Harcel meant all along. She was testing my strength, still is, someone weak who can't even crush her enemies has no right to ally themselves with Konoha's Sorceress herself, I must do this, Stein!" Sekita gently pulled her protective ally off of Mana, making the magician finally regain her full footing as opposed to almost dangling by her toes.</p><p>Stein raised his hands and grabbed Sekita by her shoulders, shaking her lightly as the two looked each other in the eyes. Mana wasn't sure what these two were all about but it looked like Sekita could make out what her mute ally was saying, it wasn't telepathy as Mana couldn't sense any sort of chakra signals coming off of Stein but it was more like Sekita could read Stein's very body language. Every twitch, every movement was like a word and they were all together words of a language that the jumbo-sized woman understood very well.</p><p>"Fine. You can fight alongside me in the match. Let us fight together. I cannot rob you of a chance to show just how strong you are too. You have things to prove as well, don't you?" Sekita agreed only for Stein to nod to her implication and press his hand to the center of her chest.</p><p>It was as if trance took the pair over. Any hints of emotion just faded from their faces as they turned around and headed toward another hallway that led to another staircase. Mana had a feeling that they were both headed to the office of their Regimental Commander but this was none of her business. There were rules which had to be followed if an Allied Ninja wished to fight another Allied Ninja and, as far as Mana was aware of it, they fully intended to follow them.</p><p>Just like always, she thought that she was doing something good, something that would result in a positive change in the community she joined for the time being but it turned out that all she did was open up for her own flesh to be peeled off and her nerves examined one by one. Sekita disgusted Mana and it was not due to her repulsive appearance at all. Her misguided clinging to power and the shallow way of displaying strength was what made Mana want to have no further part of that group's affairs.</p><p>Although, if what Sekita said was to be believed, she may just end up meeting this Regimental Commander Harcel before long. That's if he truly was as interested in Mana and her strength as Sekita described him to be. Mana ran away from Konoha to run away from hatred and disgust directed toward her by people she loved and wanted to protect for something that she did for exactly that reason but she'd have never thought in her wildest nightmare that she'd end up in a place where that same transgression would end up garnering her praise and adoration from her peers and superiors.</p><p>"Hey!" a vibrant declaration of greetings made Mana jump up just as she pulled out her book and turned around the hallway. It was just her luck to bump into the same goggles-donning young man in a colorful jumpsuit. "I've noticed you stick around the library. Do you like books? Here, I've picked something up for you!"</p><p>The young man extended a hand holding a book in it. Mana's right eye squinted but she raised her hand to pick it off of him just out of sheer curiosity. Surely this guy couldn't have been thick enough to think that just by picking up a random book and handing it to her would somehow make his stalking any less creepy, right?</p><p>Mana looked down at the cover of the old, leather-bound book with the title encrusted with golden letters and smirked. This book about stepping up one's ninja tools game and enhancing them with electronic upgrades was useless to her but Mana couldn't help but wonder about the amazement on Meiko's face if she was to ever see such a book. The magician sashed it, leaving there no place for the book she held in her hand currently but she intended to progress reading on her way in any case.</p><p>"Huh? What is it that you're reading?" the goggle-eyed youth leaned down to check on Mana's book and pinched his nose. "Ewww… That's smut…"</p><p>"It's not smut…" Mana looked away. "It's romance, actually. It's set during the Warring States period too so it will be a little useful for the history classes too later on."</p><p>"Romance, smut… It's all the same to me…" Mana's curious stalker stuck out his tongue and shook his head in disgust as if he had just gulped down some repulsive medicine. "Did you even like the book I gave you at all?"</p><p>"It's… Quite nice, actually. I don't know the first thing about craftsmanship unless it's a death-trap but it reminds me of home so… Thanks." Mana smiled and nodded.</p><p>"Oh! That's awesome! I'm Shogito!" Shogito introduced himself extending his hand out. Mana noticed that this guy went an extra stylish step to wear fingerless gloves too when she extended her hand just to avoid being rude. "The pictures from your shows, they had all those flashy devices in them, I figured you're a gearhead like me!"</p><p>"No, I'm afraid that was all my father. I've picked up a thing or two from him but I'm still hopeless with even the slightest deviation from the blueprints I've memorized. My best friend is a killer tinkerer though," Mana admitted, lowering the hand that held the romantic novel she wanted to progress through on the way to her room.</p><p>She promised her mother that she'd give this socializing and being herself thing another chance. That's she would fully buy into this new opportunity to flip a fresh new leaf and she owed her to at the very least try and do that. From the looks of it, Shogito didn't seem nearly as much of a strength-obsessed nut as the other pair of his friends.</p>
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<a name="section0694"><h2>694. The Dormitory Stories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Konoha's Sorceress!" a voice spreading through the first-floor hallways made Mana's expression lengthen as if she had just consumed the world's most sour fruit all at once. She was not used to being sought out since she's been mostly keeping it to herself until the Allied Ninja prep courses officially started and she most definitely wasn't used to being sought by her stage name from back home.</p><p>Then came the dilemma, if she should speak up and reveal her location to be in the waiting room by the language study room where, as Mana found out, the absolute best place to put her bottom down and read something was or if she should just sit low and let the overly-eager young man yell his lungs out, get tired and go about his business.</p><p>The waiting room by the language study room was a marvelous place for it boiled in a relatively active wing of the HQ but one needed to make a turn toward the language study room and do so willingly for that was the only room located in that downward leading hallway. By the room, there were ample supersized armchairs. As if designed to host those dedicating their years in studying the arts of ancient languages that were all substituted by the universal language spoken all over the world – what most saw as a meaningless devotion.</p><p>Mana wasn't sprawled out in the armchair with a book in her hands to study ancient languages, that much was for sure. She just liked the feeling of being inside of all the buzz, being all by herself while life transpired all around her but didn't bother her either since it couldn't quite find her in the long-abandoned pathway that Mana had chosen.</p><p>"I'm here…!" Mana raised her voice, knowing she'd regret it before even fully contemplating what she'd done but Shogito's voice sounded dire. It may just have been a life or death type situation troubling him.</p><p>"Whoa! What even is this place!?" Shogito peeked inside the hallway, his eyes roamed it for a few moments, and all the furniture stored and abandoned in it before his eyes found Mana's face and settled on it. "This place is so quiet, I heard you speaking from the main hallway!"</p><p>"It's early afternoon, everyone's out training," Mana replied.</p><p>"Why aren't you?" Shogito wondered, finally stepping into the hallway entirely.</p><p>"I'm already finished," Mana moved her eyes back to the book. If she misread the danger level of Shogito's distress, her time was better-spent multi-tasking.</p><p>"I never see you in the training grounds…" Shogito scratched his head, speaking as if he was casting suspicion on Mana.</p><p>"That's because I don't train at the training grounds," Mana replied without looking up from her book. "I am capable of creating the ideal training grounds inside of my mind as I meditate."</p><p>"You silly!" Shogito laughed out as if Mana cracked a joke that was in the outright hilarious category. "You can't get stronger just by thinking about training, if you could, Sekita would be a Sannin already!"</p><p>"Chakra is unity between mind and body. Comprised of both spiritual and physical aspects. You can reach both of those elements from within your own mind if you're skilled enough," Mana snapped the book closed and sashed it as she stood up and approached the confused young man. "You can simulate an entire world inside of your mind, create a dream opponent to spar with, and even make them stronger or weaker than they actually are to ideally stimulate your growth. In many ways, meditation is superior to the real deal. You sounded distressed before."</p><p>"Ah, right!" Shogito paled out when Mana brought it up. The young man clapped his cheeks with his hands as he struggled to believe how much time he had already wasted. "Sekita and Stein are going to be fighting soon, you've gotta come with!"</p><p>"What for?" Mana scowled.</p><p>"To see it! I dunno, I'd say to cheer them on but that's kind of not what our group is all about. To be honest, Stein's the only one cheering Sekita on and he can't even talk, just murmur at best…" Shogito scratched his temple as if contemplating the fact that maybe their little group wasn't seeding the most productive example of mutual friendship and support that was necessary to make it in the cruel world around them.</p><p>"I've got no interest in that." Mana sighed and turned around to return to her resting place. "I don't agree with fighting it out with your bullies nor do I enjoy meaningless fighting. The only place for violence is to prevent immediate greater violence, even then…"</p><p>"Are you kidding me? Sekita will break if you don't show up! You're like… Her idol or something, honestly, I think she might be more into you than me at this point and I've got all of your pictures from the Avalon magazine!" Shogito waved his arms over his head as he tried to portray how much of a fan he was. "I don't think that Sekita's gonna have the spirit to fight back without you. She'll just get pummeled out there and she's gonna drag Stein down with her too."</p><p>This group was so annoying. Shogito being just an all-around enthusiastic guy that drained everyone else of any semblance of vigor by just being the most over the top person in the room was one thing. Parts of his cheer were admirable even but there was something deeply dark about Sekita. That simplistic, might-makes-right mentality and the ease at which she signed under its dotted line and did so for every person in the room.</p><p>"No, thanks…" Mana fell back down onto the armchair after hesitating for a little while. "I am not someone who takes kindly with my beliefs being misrepresented and applied to something outright awful. I've burnt myself one too many times with that and I am still busy getting the stench out of the carpet from the last time…"</p><p>"Huh? I don't think I get it but… That's… Anyway, I've gotta go! Talk to you later!" Shogito scratched his temple in bemusement before running off.</p><p>"You're not going for dinner?" one of Mana's roommates, a young woman of flowing, blond hair, and a streak of wine surrounded from both sides by strands of black hair turned around in the group of departing girls. The rest turned back, looking surprised that Mana wasn't just mingling with their group as they had thought her to be all this time.</p><p>"Can't stand the food, maybe I'll make some when I feel hungry," Mana looked up at her roommates for a moment.</p><p>"Oh, you're treating us if you do!" the colorful blonde pumped a fist while the rest of the group just chuckled.</p><p>"What's the use of learning how to cook if your future husband won't even see you once to notice you," someone in the group jested though Mana quickly shoved it aside. Cooking was more than just practice before sticking her head inside of a choking loop of marriage. It was self-improvement first and foremost, a practice of focus that held within a great array of values that were rewarded in all aspects of life, being a ninja included.</p><p>It was formulaic until one became skilled enough to step out of line and improve on those formulas, make new rules for everyone else to follow. It was personal, requiring observation, patience, and plenty of other things to be done well. Mana still hadn't forgotten the lessons that old man Aporius Noregin taught her, even if she was mostly sure that it was all just metaphors for how to be better at genjutsu.</p><p>Mana looked up and at the empty doorway, fully aware of the entrant that was about to reveal themselves. Their chakra was uneasy, suggesting that they would not be giving her an easy time. This was unfortunate as Mana avoided the canteen to avoid just the sort of bad time that she expected to have here. She did not expect to see a boulder just a tad too large to fit through the door making its appearance and denting the doorway before Stein walked in afterward, holding the supersized rock in his right hand as it weighed nothing and was stuck to his palm like wet dung to a leaf.</p><p>She should have asked him what was going on though almost immediately Mana recalled that this young man did not speak with anything intelligible for the most part and, even if he did, she'd have no idea quite on how to word her turmoil from seeing him in her room holding a boulder twice larger than her bed that was scratching against the ceiling, floor and walls of the room. Not to mention, Stein was hyperventilating. The hair that held him from snapping and smashing Mana against the wall with the boulder was thin and growing thinner with each hastily drawn breath.</p><p>"Whoa! Are you crazy!?" the voice of a tomboyish-sounding girl was not the next thing that Mana expected to hear. She turned her head for the doorway and noticed the goth girl from Shogito's group standing in the middle. "This shit-stain isn't worth getting booted out for!"</p><p>Mana's eyelids clapped a few more times in rapid succession. Her book had been lying by her side for a little while now as there was no way that anything on the printed page was more enthralling than this scene. It felt sad and vexing that this group kept on bothering her though at the very least they were entertaining with their approach to hassling her.</p><p>The goth-girl of spiky black and cyan hair shuffled through Mana's room, stepping over the beds of her roommates until she could get to the window and shove it open before turning to her friend and pointing at the open space through which only cold air came in with a demanding face.</p><p>"You're not ruining your life on my watch, out with the boulder, now!" she demanded with most emotion that Mana had seen this young lady show. It would not have demanded much of her to claim that achievement and yet she didn't just claim it, she was styling over all competition though none of the said competition could even see her from how high up her current state was compared to them.</p><p>Stein growled and grumbled but eventually, he did shove the boulder through the far too small window and let it float like a balloon as he held his hands in a hand seal position. Once the boulder had floated far enough, Stein let go of his hands, letting it slam and crash onto barren land, raising clouds of dust and quaking the ground all the way here.</p><p>The goth woman then looked at Mana as if she was looking at a dead body, a result of an accident of her own architecture, dismissing, spiteful and apathetic to the fact if the gruesome fate that she had envisioned for Mana in her own twisted mind came to pass this very moment. It was the face of a person who hated so much that they could eat a muffin while observing the object of their hatred dissolving in a vat of acid and screaming for their life.</p><p>The woman didn't say anything nor did she have to. She just turned around and walked away, Stein followed her like a lapdog though given how he couldn't even glance in Mana's direction without tearing up and scowling at her with scorn it was not because of subordination of any kind toward the practitioner of the gothic style, it was because he couldn't bear looking at Mana and facing the things she represented.</p><p>It was only a few days later that Mana realized what caused the incident in her room. Coincidentally enough, she found out while walking with her stuff to another room as her roommates weren't too fond of the scratches and scrapes all over the room, let alone the oversized hole in the window that was entirely too small to fit the boulder that it fit through.</p><p>"The worst thing about hospitalizing that lard-mass is that we can only do it once…" Mana overheard a conversation that she had stumbled into halfway. It wasn't common for boys to wander the sixth floor which was why Mana didn't expect to stumble into it.</p><p>"No way, it's good not to see her butt-ugly kisser. Hope she takes the fucking hint and vacates the spot…" the second of the group of four bullies turned to Mana who stood in front of them with her stuff filling her hands as she was in the process of looking for a room.</p><p>"You…" one of the quartet mumbled, recalling Mana as someone who stood up to them when they were handing out their abuse left and right in the hallway. "I'm glad you got smart enough to know who you shouldn't associate with. Imagine having to work with a skin-flapping cow like that on the field. She'd get you killed. Pick your friends better next time…"</p><p>"Creeps!" Mana screamed out at the top of her lungs. It was one of those situations where if one yelled out anything in general – nobody would notice, but as soon as Mana cried about fire being in the building, a wicked blaze that threatened anyone around, every lady young and old on the floor noticed. Soon enough the hallway was full of scorned women with the older ones taking charge.</p><p>"We're waiting for the nurse! My ribs are still busted from the sparring match, I need food pills!" one of the bullies wheezed but despite being justified in being on the floor, they were kicked out regardless. The general medical ninja on the first floor won't come until morning, leaving them too chicken to walk back up and take their food pills.</p><p>If Mana knew the masculine mentality, a night howling of aching ribs sure beat having to deal with a floor full of pissy women that all felt threatened by their presence. This place was beginning to get on Mana's nerves. It was dragging out the worst from her – she'd have never even thought of doing something so low and spiteful back home. She'd have just stepped through and around the group and been done with it…</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress?" Shogito's voice was something she really didn't need to hear in her life after descending to the fifth floor and checking if any boys would have tolerated having her crashing in one of their rooms. As long as she used the women's bathroom on the sixth floor and found some older and more mature guys, they'd probably not have minded.</p><p>"I have a name, you know…" Mana groaned. Seeing anyone of Shogito's group of pals was like seeing the cross flip over before one's eyes. Nothing good could and would come out of it. Mana could only face the upcoming, most recent mudflow to sink her down under in turds.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess you do…" Shogito chuckled, rubbing the back of his head while trying to look goofy and innocent though it became clear that the young man didn't care to hear that name as he didn't ask nor did he acknowledge the fact in any other way than that. "I wanted to see you, maybe talk to you about some magazine cut-outs of tricks you've performed, I don't think they make much sense without the full context. I mean on one picture you're surrounded by explosive tags, then it's all just pigeons and everyone's happy…"</p><p>"How's Sekita doing? I heard she lost the sparring match…" Mana just flung her stuff on the floor in a messy roll and sat down onto it, dragging her hands across her hair in an attempt to mercy-kill herself by ripping her own scalp off. It didn't work, needless to say, it did make the magician's headache far worse though.</p><p>"Oh… Yeah… Sekita isn't… She's not very strong, you know…" Shogito sat down, crossing his legs and having no trouble of sitting where plenty of masculine feet trampled dirt and water all over. Then again, who was Mana to criticize when she just dropped her own rolled bedding on that same floor?</p><p>"She's an Akimichi, isn't she?" Mana wondered. Akimichi were a distinguished clan, quite capable of sustaining effective and highly physical combat even on lousy odds. She'd have bet on an Akimichi against a bunch of bullies any day of the week.</p><p>"Yeah, but… Her clansmen never taught Sekita any of their clan hijutsu. It's because of the way she looks…" Shogito rubbed the back of his head, looking genuinely down for the first time since Mana first saw him.</p><p>Mana was about to ask Shogito for more information about Sekita but then she recalled her trip here and Junichi's advice. She had to visit the kunoichi in the infirmary and ask her herself, that was the right thing to do. There was a collection of words that never failed to make Mana's life more miserable.</p><p>"She's in the infirmary, right?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"I… Wouldn't…" Shogito mumbled, draining himself of all that vigor that usually defined him. "She's crushed. Not taking it well at all. I thought that the gloom would pass after a day or two, she's lived her whole life being bullied so it's nothing new, she usually shrugs it off in an hour or two tops but… She's not dealing with it right at all, I was so, so, very wrong. Bottom line – I'm not a psychologist and do not come to me for commentary on mental health. Learned that lesson the hard way…"</p><p>"Had an incident with her boyfriend…" Mana recalled bitterly.</p><p>"Oh, yeah… He's with her at all times. I think he suspects that she'll just get gobbled up by the floor if he leaves her side. Also, don't call him her boyfriend in front of either of them – they're honestly not handling their own relationship very well, they're like a pair of children half their actual age," Shogito admitted.</p><p>"I don't think I'll ever be allowed in front of either of them," Mana sighed.</p><p>"Isn't that the truth!?" Shogito chuckled, igniting with vitality once more even though he was affirming the source of Mana's frustrations. "I don't think Sekita thinks much about you but Stein blames it all on you. Thinks you should have helped them fight, at least been there to support them or at least watch them."</p><p>"I…" Mana tried explaining how bad the Guru Ayushi callbacks were whenever she heard Sekita spout her bombastic, fascist bullcrap about strength being the source of all that was right in the world but she realized that she couldn't bring up even half of the village secrets contained within. "I'm not a good person…" she put it differently.</p><p>"So… This is a wrong time to ask how that trick with pigeons and explosive tags works?" Shogito tilted his eyebrows, hoping for a certain kind of answer.</p><p>"Sorry, I've got to find a room before I get flack for poor barracks etiquette and get sent to the Regimental Commander for it," Mana shook her head, always being so very eager to disappoint. "The explosive tags are the pigeons…"</p><p>"No way!" Shogito kept wheezing in shock as Mana walked off with her dirty bedding to look for a different place to crash. Every day new recruits made it to HQ and filled more and more rooms before the prep courses start, making her odds of settling down worse and worse.</p><p>What else was new?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0695"><h2>695. Messages That We Send</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The atmosphere in the air was uneasy. Mana noticed it while still engrossed in her book. It might have had something to do with the massive chakra signature in the vicinity. People were generally uneasy but not in a way that would have suggested them feeling as if their lives were at threat. It was more due to the fact someone meaningful had entered the facility. Either way, this presence caused her no reason to pull out from what she was doing so she filtered it out.</p><p>By now Mana had become accustomed to dealing with massive chakra signatures. For months after she had discovered her ability to sense chakra and began training it, she couldn't handle being around powerful ninja. It was so bad that she had to turn off that ability altogether if she wanted for panic attacks to not utterly engross her. It felt like floating in the void of space and turning only to see a supermassive ball of gas blazing right before you. It was an almost cosmic and hopeless feeling that crushed one's spirit and stopped one from breathing altogether.</p><p>The trick was not looking at the star but at its separate features, minute details. To subject oneself to parts that helped understand the ethereal subject of the topic but not to allow it to take over and terrorize you. That was the only way in which Mana could even begin to manage this predicament though from what little licks of the tremendous chakra she had gotten from the reading room, it was a ninja who would have left Mana sweaty and wheezing on the ground if she met them a few years ago.</p><p>Some forty minutes later the magician slammed the book shut and went to place it back into the shelf she took it from. Soon enough the ninja that were currently undertaking their prep courses would flood the reading room and Mana didn't want to risk meeting someone who held a grudge against her for harming Guru Ayushi, someone who looked at her as being no better than trash for having a fearsome conviction record of surviving Jigoku, someone who associated Mana with Shogito's group that wanted her dead via scornful looks they stabbed her way whenever their paths crossed.</p><p>Basically, someone who had any kind of reason to feel insulted by Mana's presence. Starting her career as a stage magician anew might have been hopeless…</p><p>Mana sighed as she couldn't tilt her eyes off the floor and her own sandals clapping against its stony tiles. She ascended the staircase to the aviary room to send a short message to Konoha. It wasn't like she was still loyal to the Hokage, or so the Allied Ninja expected Mana to believe, though it still felt right to report about her making here to the Seventh as well as letting Mr. Hiro know about Mana's situation and that she wouldn't manage to start her World Magic Tour until she completed her prep course.</p><p>Honestly, the delay might have been for the better. That would be six more months for people to get over what had happened. Then again, Mana had wondered if people would muster up the strength of stomach to look at her again back when she left Jigoku, there was no reason to believe that six months later things would be that much better.</p><p>"Should I let the Supreme Leader know about your messages to Konoha?" a voice uttered in a masculine and jesting tone made Mana's chest deflate. So the man following her from the library decided to let himself be known at last.</p><p>"It feels a bit oppressive to know that someone of your rank has nothing better to do than to spy on me…" Mana extended her hand to show the approaching man the message she had rolled up and very nearly hung on the hawk's leg. The bird of prey clacked its beak in vexation of the fact that Mana was forcing it to sit tight and wait until she tied the message and let it take flight.</p><p>"I apologize if I strengthened the feeling of loneliness you might be experiencing. Not fitting in well, I take it?" the man refused by shaking his head. His lower jaw twisted in a grin as if he looked almost a tad insulted that Mana took his suggestion that she was spying for her village seriously and not as a joke that it was.</p><p>"It's a work in progress…" Mana rolled her eyes. "I found a room to settle in, I take my little wins where I can find them."</p><p>"Things are going to get easier once the prep courses start. The recruits present currently are mostly those going through their own sessions of prep courses, they have their own circle of acquaintances and so it's not easy for someone new to fit into their circle of trust. Don't worry, you'll become someone's best friend the moment they need something you know or have," the man shrugged. It was once he approached closer and out of shadows of the aviary beams that Mana finally got a good look at the man of blond and slick hair spiking on the back and cerulean, clear eyes that were all too familiar to her. He was of the Yamanaka upbringing.</p><p>"That's rather cynical…" Mana tied the message and let the hawk go. The proud bird just squawked, flapping its wings and hitting Mana's hand with their tips a few times in punishment before taking off and divebombing through the window. It seemed that only moments before headbutting the ground did the bird correct its trajectory and soared back up.</p><p>"Oh well… Can't help it. I cannot argue against empirical evidence…" the man smiled with a row of glistened pearly whites. His kimono and haori were scarlet with white decorations that had edges of gold, suggesting that either the man was grand import in this establishment or, at the very least, took himself as such. "Given how you haven't yet formally started your training, I'll forgive the fact that you aren't familiar with me. I am the East Regimental Commander Harcel Yamanaka. I oversee all Allied Ninja matters related to everything east to the Fire Country border though I share the Land of Lightning with the North Regimental Commander Hallam."</p><p>So, this man was the one that pushed Sekita down the road she had tumbled down to. It took everything Mana had not to groan in frustration that she got involved in this group's business again since clearly this man had a relation with the large woman. Mana could only wonder what Harcel's business was with her though, given what she heard about him from Sekita, she was sure to hate it.</p><p>"Oh, I see. Can I help you?" Mana played ignorant. It was for the best that she shrugged off the fact that the man's beliefs and name were known to her and just played it cool.</p><p>"That's what I came here to find out, Mana. It has come to my attention that you have affiliated yourself with five very misguided though talented young people. Once they graduate and complete their prep courses, they will fall under my command, which is why I pay very close attention to their development. Sadly, they make that task a grueling one…" Harcel lamented. So Mana wasn't the only one cursing the day she fell into their field of sights then?</p><p>"I've met Shogito, Sekita and Stein tried to kill me… Or hurt me, I'm not sure, he doesn't speak so I'm not sure how many times he intended to smash me with that boulder…" Mana dragged her hand through her hair, driving it back and revealing her tired eyes.</p><p>"Ah, well… Yes… It appears that young Stein has brewed himself quite the bowl of porridge so it is disheartening for his prospects to hear that he attempted to assault yet another recruit outside of an honorable sparring session," Harcel stroked his chin, his lips shrunk and plumped out as if after eating a sour fruit.</p><p>"He attacked the recruits that hospitalized Sekita?" Mana groaned. It wasn't like she really needed that question answered as the answer was quite obvious.</p><p>"Ah, so perhaps you do know something about Stein's behavior? Perhaps he… Has somehow… Relayed anything to you before? He is to face disciplinary procedures and he is detained until that disciplinary session can take place. I am not under the impression that you quite like those five but… Perhaps you could speak as to what you know about them and this whole situation before the disciplinary committee? It would be a nice opportunity to meet all the Regimental Commanders, some of the tutors you'll be studying under, and make a good first impression on the authority." Harcel wondered.</p><p>"I don't know that much…" Mana opposed the idea with her body language though her promise to mother flashed back before her eyes and the way she's been secluding herself and trying to protect herself from all the sharp pointing fingers and venomous tongues continued to plague her. "I can speak about what I do know."</p><p>"Oh? Come in!" a weakened voice in a tone that boomed far too loudly for the wooden door in its path to muzzle it informed Mana that it was safe to enter. Abandoning both care and rush alike behind her, the magician turned the door handle and pushed it ever so slightly just to ease her into the boiling pot she was stepping into.</p><p>Lucky! None of the band of misfits were visiting Sekita at the moment. When Regimental Commander Harcel told Mana that Stein was detained, she figured that it would be prime time to check up on the misguided young lady.</p><p>"Mana!" Sekita yelled out, her voice was too full of emotion to tell exactly what the meaning behind her exclamation was. She was a little bit of everything: exasperated, befuddled, elated… Mana approached Sekita's bed and crossed her arms, even now, when her skin pores seemed like they'd set on fire from the embarrassment she felt and the hatred of being here that she experienced, she did her best to fend it all away.</p><p>She promised…</p><p>"I… I came to see how you were," Mana shrugged her shoulders, still lacking the strength to look right at the pummeled to a pulp young woman that laid on a futon on the floor because she'd break any bed that the Allied Ninja had access to.</p><p>"Oh… Ummm…" Sekita wasn't sure what she wanted to tell Mana. Once the magician managed to look at the jumbo-sized kunoichi, she saw the need to explode in Mana's face for not being there to watch her fight, also to lament her own weakness and beg Mana to acknowledge Sekita's strength as the icon of strength as described by Harcel. There was a wish to cheer for the fact that Mana came to visit her in the hospital when most people only elated that she no longer roamed the easily accessible building hallways, making everyone uneasy with her unsightly visage.</p><p>"It's not because I don't believe in you that I didn't come to see your sparring match. It's because I disapprove of your motivations for it. It's because I've been burnt very badly for being misrepresented before and I don't want to go through that again. I believe that you can be a great Allied Ninja and that you shouldn't give up." Mana just did the talking for the young woman who looked glad that her visitor took the initiative.</p><p>"I'm sorry Stein tried to mush you with a boulder…" Sekita butt her index fingers together in embarrassment. "I didn't tell him to do that, I swear! He just… He gets very protective over me, we're very close friends!"</p><p>"Come on, you don't need to be well-read on the subject to know love when you see it," Mana shook her head, finally finding a genuine reason to smile. "Stein truly loves you, only a man in love would be willing to get into the type of trouble that he found himself in."</p><p>"H-Huh!? What happened!?" Sekita leaned back and hid her face halfway under the cover. Crap! Did she not know yet? How come her friends didn't tell her?</p><p>"Uh… Well… You see, this injury of yours hit Stein quite hard. He decided to beat-up the recruits that did this to you and… Well, he must have stepped over the line somewhat. They're holding him detained for now but he'll have to face a disciplinary hearing and I'll be speaking in it." Mana explained the best she could.</p><p>"Please! Please! You must say whatever can get him off!" Sekita clapped her hands and began bowing her head. "I know he tried smushing you with a boulder but he's a really good guy! You might not get him because he can't talk but… Even when he's completely silent, we kind of understand him… Somehow… And… He's our friend, Mana!"</p><p>"I'll…" Mana pulled her bowtie open so that she could free up the collar of her shirt and scratch it lightly. "I'm not sure what I can say that would result in him keeping his status, honestly, but… I'll… I'll do what I can. I know he's not a bad person, neither are you."</p><p>"I am though!" Sekita drove her open palms down with such a hefty thud that Mana shook believing that a lightning bolt lashed the sky with a roar of thunder. "I'm useless! I'm weak!" she shook her head, splattering tears wherever laws of physics demanded them to soil the ward.</p><p>"So, what if you are weaker than those recruits that bullied you? That's the nature of bullying, nobody bullies someone stronger than them. You were always set-out to lose that fight and you were wrong to play the game the way your bullies demanded it to be played," Mana tried comforting the young woman though it didn't look like she needed or responded to the softer approach that Mana had to offer. It would have taken the strict scolding of an authoritative man like Harcel to crack through the shell of self-loathing put before her.</p><p>"I… I guess…" Sekita sniffled. It didn't look like she was over whatever boiled within her but she at least could push that aside, for now, wipe those tears and look at Mana down beneath her despite the fact that the magician was standing whereas Sekita was sitting up. "Say, say… Shogito told me that you have a real problem with hardcore pornography. Do you think you could read some of your smut to me while you're here?"</p><p>"Honestly…" Mana smacked her forehead and shook her head. This group was simply heinous. Every time that she thought she had misjudged them, they'd pull something like this. "Shogito might have overplayed it, I've read a few romance novels. There's only that much time you can spend training before your mind starts asking for something more and, so far, I've not made too many friends…"</p><p>"Romance… That's weaksauce," Sekita lamented with disappointment. "Anyway, I think I understand your problem, sister. Harcel told us that friends are only good to back you up in trouble but that we shouldn't count on them for anything other than an additional number to your own strength. I'm trying to distance myself from anything else but power alone but… It hurts. Even before you came here, it felt so lonely… I don't think I have yet reached the part of being alone where it makes you powerful."</p><p>"Sekita… I am beginning to think that Regimental Commander Harcel doesn't have your best interests in his mind…" Mana tried bringing the topic up Sekita's violent, thrashing reaction shocked the magician and made her take a few steps back for her own safety.</p><p>"Shut up! Regimental Commander Harcel gave all of us a chance. He helps us when we're behind, he is a strong man who sacrifices that strength and stoops to our level to help us get stronger. I'm not sure what disgusts me more, people that speak ill about Regimental Commander Harcel or the fact that I'm too weak to justify his mercy. Mercy, love, family… All those things are a source of weakness yet Regimental Commander Harcel subjects himself to them for us all the time, just so he can root those weeds out and make us stronger as a result. Harcel is noble and more than anything else – he is strong!" Sekita bellowed before looking at Mana with eyes that were just as hateful as Stein's were when he tried to smash her to bits for not being present during their sparring match.</p><p>"That's not how you overcome hatred. Strength alone won't do, Regimental Commander Harcel is trying to isolate you from the things that truly conquer hatred, things that help you take a hold of yourself and keep moving when things get tough – your friends, the love and support of people around you, your family…" Mana knew she was making a mistake by standing her ground when faced with such violent backlash. She shouldn't have pressed on that issue, she might have salvaged a friendship that way.</p><p>"Get out," Sekita hissed with a whisper that sprayed vitriol so corrosive that Mana's façade crumbled down and she couldn't help but hunch and shrivel up. She left Sekita in her ward with fists shaking in passionate rage, carried away in sadness over her failure to reach this young woman.</p><p>She wanted to be a hero as a child. Someone who just said the right things to the right people and made friends out of all of them. The legendary hero of justice who performed magic tricks to break through the toughest walls before inflicting the finishing blow in getting people to her side via the magic of friendship. Someone who vanquished evil that was beyond repair, the evil that had no face nor did it have a name. The evil that was easy to identify and one that always made the skies shine when it keeled over and dispersed like a bad storm cloud.</p><p>After all of this path she walked, she was no hero. What was the right thing to say here? How was she supposed to reach Sekita when she wouldn't even entertain the chance of seeing Mana's side of the argument, choosing instead of shelter herself in loneliness and seethe in the toxic illusion of meaningless power that would come as a result?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0696"><h2>696. Discipline</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana tapped her sandal against the other one, just hard enough to hear a light rub but not enough to disturb the proceedings of the disciplinary hearing. A rugged man with a pale kimono, shoulders decorated with intricate and hefty pads spoke before the gathering of the four Regimental Commanders and the Supreme Leader herself.</p><p>Stein sat on his own chair with a stone face, his eyes just barely flared with spite when Mana walked into the room before the hearing started. The magician wasn't sure if she should have been proud of the importance that hating her had in Stein's life or if she should have rolled her eyes of how obsessed this group was with messing with her one way or another. She could have gone either way.</p><p>"Shinzo-san, what are your impressions of this young man?" one of the Regimental Commanders, a man in a clunky piece of the armor of a bloated body that could have fit a small group of people inside of it inquired with his voice passing through numerous obstacles in its path before wheezing out through one of the openings in the rubbery fabric covering the bulky pieces.</p><p>This entire affair hardly smelled of being an official tribunal session or something like what Mana had experience with since her own hearing back home. There were no introductions to the people involved and none of them gave any official testimony. Those of the important figures of the Allied Ninja just invited whoever they wanted out of the circle of invited individuals, asked the questions they had before letting them go.</p><p>Mana had hoped to see some of the tutors that she'd be working with, maybe getting to know them and their subjects better a little bit at the same time as she fulfilled her promise made to Sekita and Regimental Commander Harcel but this wasn't the case. She got to see some of the mentors she'd be looking up to in a few months' time for certain but just seeing them and hearing them speak of matters she was hardly familiar with was not the type of knowledge that Mana hoped to get out of this.</p><p>"I'm afraid I cannot say for certain. I do not know this young man," Shinzo stated with a stoic face of closed eyes and tightly pressed lips. The man's face beaconed traditionalist ways and bushido-type honor but his words appeared to cause confusion between the committee.</p><p>"What the fuck, dude? You're teaching the military course. Are you saying this guy hasn't shown up in a single one of your lectures?" the Supreme Leader growled as she removed her leathery hat and ran her white gloves through her hair before putting the hat back in place after the top of the woman's hair was ironed straight.</p><p>"That is not what I meant," Shinzo shook his head. "I meant that this young man has performed what I asked of him adequately, he did not excel nor did he drag behind the group, but beyond doing what is expected of him he did not open up at all. He does not speak, does not ask questions, or voice his thoughts."</p><p>"Is this because of some condition that the recruit suffers from?" another Regimental Commander, a woman of unimpressive size and build and facial scars ravaging her face and complementing her strict look wondered as he bent her head to the right ever so slightly, making her dark, short hair bend alongside it, just barely reaching her shoulders where a pair of scrolls hung awkwardly in the woman's seated position.</p><p>"I do not know. I respect a man's decision to stay silent. I do concur that the young man has the potential to make a decent Allied Ninja for he has never struggled with a task I put before him though he is no prodigy or talent we cannot afford to lose." Shinzo answered the question armoring himself up with patience. "It is up to you to decide if his breach of the rules is something you wish to send him back to Iwagakure for. As someone burdened by the knowledge of my subject, I can assure you that he would not thrive in the current situation of his home country. I simply do not think that the Kumogakure occupants would see much value in a voluntary mute unwilling to lick their boots and denounce his old allegiances."</p><p>"True, there is this matter to have in mind as well…" a woman of physical build mightier than most male tutors nodded in agreement. She was the fourth Regimental Commander, or so it seemed. She was clad in rings of belts over a simple leather top but her outfit made her more suited to work in warmer climates. "Then again, it is none of our business to correct this youth's life choices when he has no consideration over his own life himself."</p><p>"We should hear out the newbie. The bitch has had a few encounters with this asshole and his crew, maybe she can help us make a more informed decision. Or so Harcel said…" Supreme Leader turned to Mana making the magician's heart sink to her heels after being caught in the woman's gaze. She had no malevolence or spite in her eyes when she addressed Mana or spoke about her but the unorthodox manner of speaking of the Supreme Leader never failed to catch Mana unaware.</p><p>Shinzo stood up from the central chair and sat to the side, alongside the rest of the gathered tutors and recruits. With a very confused look on her face, second-guessing her every movement and step and wondering if coming here to testify was truly the right idea every step of the way, Mana settled in the chair that Shinzo had vacated.</p><p>"Mana-san is a kunoichi from Konohagakure of some renown, sadly, her infamy might have surpassed the reputation she built up during her career…" Regimental Commander Harcel pointed out to the rest of the committee. "Whether it was because of a connection with the group of troublemakers that Stein has associated himself with or sheer coincidence, she's shared more than a few experiences with that particular group, Stein included."</p><p>"Infamy? This is the young lady that left Guru Ayushi hospitalized, isn't it? I've heard that Konoha sent her to us. It only emphasizes that we need to work on our reputation amongst the villages, we're not some dumping ground for rejects, though that's hardly the topic to be discussed now…" the bulky woman spoke up with an authoritative and quite masculine tone. The tips of her lips tilted upward, revealing her to be a tad apologetic over her interruption.</p><p>"It's more than relevant, I'm afraid." Regimental Commander Harcel sighed. "If the villages weren't sending us those bad eggs they wished to get rid of, there wouldn't be a troublesome group like Stein and his pals amongst our midst."</p><p>"Madique was right. We can talk about telling the Kage to cut the shit with these recruits some other time. Now let's just hear it from the newbie about what she can tell us about the assemblage of shitstains…" Supreme Leader yawned and looked at Mana with a hopeful look as if she had not called her "a bitch" a few paces back. Playing along, Mana shrugged.</p><p>"One of Stein's friends, Shogito, is a fan of my career as a stage magician. He approached me immediately after I reached the headquarters. Through our association, I've come to share a few unpleasant encounters with the group. I've helped one of them, a girl named Sekita, with her bullying problem once though I quickly realized that I didn't want to associate with her or her group. I might not have made that clear abundantly enough since Stein and Sekita expected my backing in dealing with said bullies and when I didn't show, Stein tried to smash me with a boulder." Mana recounted her experienced with the group while trying to keep it brief.</p><p>Mana had expected Stein to pretty much start talking again out of the need to rip her head off and kick it through the window like a football but he didn't look at all hindered by the magician's recollections. In fact, at times, his face looked a tad somber as if he was regretting some of his actions and he had come to see them in a new light when someone new and unfamiliar was talking about how they perceived him and his actions.</p><p>"Wait, what? Are you telling us that this bastard tried pulling this shit again!?" the Supreme Leader tilted the beak of her hat, switching from cute and encouraging to outright livid. "You motherfucker!"</p><p>"If I might add, I believe that my encounter with Stein-san was purely out a passionate, on the spur of the moment decision. More so, he is not beyond listening to reason even when he's seeing red. A young lady from his group managed to talk him over with just a few remarks, in fact. I think that the group knows each other incredibly well and I don't think there's anything I can say that they can't elaborate on far better…" Mana turned for the location where the entire troupe save for Sekita had been seated.</p><p>"Are you this "young lady" from the group who talked this dumbass down when he tried to assault another recruit?" the Supreme Leader looked at the ash-haired goth woman with streaks of neon-blue hair. It seemed that if the young woman had been any more embarrassed, her blush of being addressed directly would have been transparent through the abundance of make-up she wore.</p><p>"Y-Yeah…" the goth woman nodded.</p><p>"Just because the Supreme Leader has a quirky way of expressing herself doesn't mean you're not in front of the sum of your superiors in this building," the giant collection of rubber and lead that was Regimental Commander Hallam remarked in observation.</p><p>"Yes, ma'am!" the young woman jumped up from a seated position to bow the upper half of her body while her lips trembled in waves as if she was getting queasy.</p><p>"Alright, let's have a crack at this, even though I think the answer's gonna be fucking obvious, what do you think we should do with your shithead friend?" the Supreme Leader crossed her arms. Mana simply couldn't get over how crude the woman's language was as compared to her completely harmless body language as there was not a hint of malice or spite coming from her eyes when glancing at the young man being disciplined here.</p><p>"Understand him and forgive him, ma-am!" the goth woman bowed a few more times to the point where it was becoming cartoonish. "The problem with Stein is that he's usually a cool a level-headed guy, it's just that he's hopelessly… With our friend Sekita… Well… You know… Like… Like…"</p><p>"Like in lo…" the Supreme Leader was about to ask for clarification when the goth woman clapped her hands with an unseen abundance of energy and bowed again, winking one eye in a request that the Supreme Leader didn't finish that sentence.</p><p>"I'd not say it out loud if I was you, ma'am! You see, because of that… Condition…" Stein's friend couldn't even mention it without clearing her throat beforehand, "He can't quite help himself when certain matters involve our friend Sekita. He's very protective of her and her interests, let's just leave it at that."</p><p>"This Sekita, she's the b…" the Supreme Leader spoke up again but Stein's gothic friend flipped out, leaning back in absolute terror of the havoc that was about to take place but the Regimental Commanders began coughing and clearing their throats to silence their mutual superior and muzzle her way of expressing herself out.</p><p>"Sekita is the young lady that got injured during the recent sparring match, is that correct?" Regimental Commander Madique spoke in Supreme Leader's face.</p><p>"Yeah. She's a nice young lady though she's more beautiful on the… Well… I guess she can be a piece of work on the inside too but it takes work to get to really know her. She can be such a softie, just this morning I read the Tale of Lillief to her in the infirmary and she sobbed like a big baby…" something about what the gothic friend of Sekita's and Stein's was saying didn't add up to Mana.</p><p>"This morning? You mean she's still supposed to be in the infirmary?" Mana asked her directly, sensing the general vibe of this hearing being more free-form than the Ninja Tribunal proceedings she knew.</p><p>"That's right, what's it to you?" the flamboyant young woman crossed her arms and gave Mana a squinted stare of distaste that almost sprayed off of her poking, ocean-blue tongue.</p><p>"I am a sensor and I cannot sense Sekita's chakra anywhere near the infirmary. In fact, she's currently outside the building in general," Mana pointed out.</p><p>Stein jumped to his feet, prompting a worried reaction from all the ninja present in the room as the ex-Iwagakure ninja was the one whom this hearing concerned the most. Though he seemed eager to just brush the formalities aside and run off to check up on Sekita.</p><p>"That shouldn't be," Regimental Commander Harcel shook his head sighing. "Though it's just like this troublesome group to run off infirmary like that. If the staff would accompany Mana-san in bringing Sekita back to her ward, that would be great. I suggest that this might be a suitable spot for a break in the session."</p><p>"Yeah, you folks chill the fuck out 'till the b…" the Supreme Leader was about to say something mean though something she didn't mean about the escaped patient before one of Shogito's group, the tall and broad-shouldered giant who was one of the few from the group who hadn't made himself known to Mana just yet and therefore avoided ticking her off up until now sneezed so loud it might have tilted the roof up a meter or two. "Fuck you…" the Supreme Leader nodded her head, as her unique way of blessing the sneezing recruit.</p><p>"It might be for the better if some of Sekita's friends come with…" Mana suggested, turning to the committee.</p><p>"Not Stein, we hope…?" Regimental Commander Madique raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"No, I believe that would be sabotaging to the task, the female friend…" Mana shook her head before realizing that she didn't know how to address the goth chick of the group.</p><p>"Ophite…" the gothic young woman crossed her arms and pouted her lips.</p><p>"Ophite should stay here too. She's got all the useful information about the concerned member and his relationship with Sekita and she's proven to be both respectful and eloquent enough to speak about it before the committee," Mana eliminated Ophite as well, turning for the broad-shouldered powerhouse with a square jaw and a shower of hair on his head.</p><p>The burly giant stood up and stretched his limbs and neck out, turning for the committee for permission but given how nobody voiced any doubts or outright denied him his leave, he followed the small group of tutors and Mana just in case they needed a familiar face to help Sekita return to her bed.</p><p>"What is recruit Sekita doing?" a man with thick furs and an ushanka guarding the top of his head where gray, greasy, and long hair ran down from turned to Mana. "She's a rather large young lady with the capacity for unmatched brutality, restrained only by her character."</p><p>"I'm not sure…" Mana shook her head while rushing down the stairs. "She isn't trying to escape nor is she targeting this hearing which is what I would have guessed her to try and do."</p><p>"That's ridiculous? Why would she attack the hearing?" the head-cook of the Allied Ninja headquarters, a thick of waist man of a bald head and a rich and braided beard expressed his low-pitched ridicule at the idea.</p><p>"The feelings that Stein has for Sekita, she very much shares. She was quite distraught when she found out about the hearing and, frankly, she's just miserable enough to try something this stupid…" Mana's voice trembled as she was beginning to lose her cool with this group. Even the square-jawed gent she asked to accompany her growled behind her, voicing his contempt with Mana talking bad about his friend.</p><p>"You're leading us to the chemical containers…" a thinly dressed woman with a stone headdress and exquisite bodypaint observed when the group left the headquarters building and began rushing toward a fenced-off area outside the building grounds and off higher on the coastline.</p><p>"The chemical containers? I've never been there, what is that area?" Mana glanced back at the tutor who shrugged her shoulders.</p><p>"It's where we store most supplies of venom used by the Allied Ninja during their missions. Large tubes of the more commonly known poisons as well as the limited supply of the most deluxe substances…" the woman replied.</p><p>"The Tale of Lillief…" Mana muttered under her own nose.</p><p>"You don't think!" a bare-chested mentor with side chops and long and wild brown hair gruffed out. It appeared that Mana wasn't the only one familiar with the particular story.</p><p>"She's gonna try committing suicide!" Mana grit her teeth, letting her muscles tense up as she dashed off at her full-speed toward the location, knowing that the rest of the staff and Sekita's friend from the crew would follow right after. "Sekita!" she yelled out immediately after stopping just in case the misguided giant had held the vat of venom over her head, willing to gulp it down by the tonnage.</p><p>Things were way worse – the giant laid sprawled out with her back pressing against an emptied vat thrice her size with purple juice soiling her lips and a bloated and heavy position that had her back bending the empty vat inward from the sheer collective weight of the envenomated young woman and the substance she chugged down together.</p><p>Just to mock the goddess of misfortune, Sekita let out a mean burp that came from deep down and flapped her lips while the soggy-fleshed giantess rose to her feet with a slow and imposing manner that kept all of the gathered staff on their back-foot.</p><p>"Mana… I'm gonna kill myself just like Lillief did, it's only fitting that I die of poisoning myself too. At least I can do that much right…" Sekita stumbled on her feet but Mana couldn't sense any reduction in her chakra. In fact, it didn't seem to be fading away and threatening immediate, painful death that should have followed such a gruesome abuse of getting the poisonous drink on.</p><p>Sekita's chakra was soaring through the roof instead! It was as if that very escalation of physical and spiritual might influenced the rising aggression that she was exhibiting toward the party stepping up to her with an attempt to save her life.</p>
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<a name="section0697"><h2>697. Flashbacks To A Nightmare</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sekita cried out at the darkening evening sky, her entire body stiffened in tension. That and her roar made it difficult to tell if she was still struggling with the agony of having drunken an entire vat of venom that the Allied Ninja stored in this place to be used by their ninja on missions, or if it was a declaration of violence meant to the gathered staff of Allied Ninja tutors and recruits alike.</p><p>The woman's size had grown tenfold and she was already a behemoth, to begin with. Her eyes whited out and twitched lifelessly but there were no signs in her chakra that she was dying or going through any sort of weakening process at all. It was quite the opposite – the Akimichi youth was soaring in power as her flaring chakra signature colored the mixture of bronze and red. It was the color of a particular taste for violence. She did not thirst for blood but merely for breaking things, lashing out at the world for the pain she was feeling at the moment as well as the pain that it made her go through her entire life.</p><p>The threatening giantess tumbled over herself, taking a few stumbling steps forward as her upper body leaned over, Sekita clutched over her abdomen as the skin flaps that hung all over her body stretched out and filled up with something else. Veins bulged out, flushing with unclear, cloggy fluid from within the young woman, a sort of phlegm that had an unhealthy shade of blood-red mixed with something corrupted and violet, resulting in nothing short of bloody sludge coursing through Sekita's veins.</p><p>Bile poured out from Sekita's mouth as if a hose was let loose and freed to spray and flood all around it without control or restraint. The emerald sludge with webs of black snot covering it as an outside layer threatened to flush away the entire storage yard. The wall of the rushing flood reached to the very top of the vats, forcing Mana to jump up and clap her palms and feet together before waving them underneath her and activate her Mystical Wings Jutsu to form a wind current to ride upward.</p><p>There was no time to save everyone, Mana grabbed the nearest staffers to her – the old man with winter clothing and the woman that might have dressed for the exact opposite conditions, wearing an elegant headdress and looking like a priestess of some civilization founded in the eastern Land of Wind deserts. Mana wasn't used to carry passengers around so her flight was slower than she was used to but she persevered and flung the two ninja to the tops of nearby venom vats. They turned around and thanked Mana with their own grateful gestures.</p><p>Mana bit her lip, seeing the flood claim one of the tutors – a well-built middle-aged man with dark skin and bone-shade hair. She begged whatever forces might have been listening that the bile wasn't lethally venomous or acidic though, judging from how the man emerged and activated the Art of Water Walking jutsu to get over the venomous tide with his elegant, blue coat corroded to rags with the venom working on his shirt and tie next, the magician just winced.</p><p>It didn't look that these people know what they were dealing with, whereas Mana might have had an idea. Sekita was a mutant. In extremely rare cases, there occurred mutations to the ordinary features and abilities of a ninja clan member. The Chinoike clan were all mutant Hozuki clan members and the magician had the honor of meeting them during the Yordalar mission way back. The hanging skin flaps, the unsightly appearance, this unique reaction to ingesting outright poison… This could have only been a mutation on the usual Akimichi features.</p><p>The Akimichi clan did not have a bloodline ability per se. They utilized hidden techniques taught within their clan which made them slightly more open towards marrying and procreating with people outside of their own clan as the chance of a clansman mutating like this was only recorded, to Mana's knowledge, on extremely rare cases of members breeding within their clan. It wasn't quite like inbreeding, the clan wasn't necessarily related through family bonds but curiously enough, when it came to mutations, they tended to occur within the offspring of two clansmen.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress, we would appreciate some help here!" the old man turned at her, his ushanka flapped open from the rough battle he was going through as a buzzard was slamming its stiffened wings against Sekita's face in an attempt to rake or peck out her eyes while the old man worked on conjuring a genjutsu.</p><p>"Forget it!" Mana cursed. "Pull out, get the Regimental Commanders and the Supreme Leader out of the building. Move Stein as far away from here as possible!"</p><p>Just as the fur-clad veteran was about to curse at Mana, his pet squawked from being crushed within Sekita's massive palms that were now swelling up with flesh whereas previously they were about as much hanging skin as they were fat. There was a faint glimmer of chakra within the avian as it fell down in a ball of blood, sticking out bone and feathers and poofed away back to its domain from which its summoner had called it from. Sekita rammed the vat where the old man was with her shoulder, crashing it down and sending it rolling toward the building.</p><p>Sekita's friend from the band of rejects she hung out on jumped in from behind the escalating ramming danger and halted it with inhuman strength. Mana barely sensed any augmentations in him, most of it was all his natural might acquired through lifting weights and working out, no doubt. The young man looked up his transformed friend with a scowl and cracked his knuckles. He also didn't appear to speak too much but not much needed to be said for the youth's intentions to be understood.</p><p>As the old tutor landed safely on the drying out puddle of venom, his illusion distracted and squandered by the mighty bash of the enemy, two friends collided with one another in the center in a struggle of strength.</p><p>"Give up!" the burly-haired strongman grunted in an animalistic snarl. "I was always the stronger one in the group!"</p><p>"No more!" Sekita bellowed as she pushed on with unimaginable strength, smashing her friend to the ground in one push before picking up his dazed body off the ground and smashing it behind her and kicking it away with one, good punt. "I am now strong! I have the strength to change things, to do what I want!"</p><p>"Stop fighting her, leave her to me, move the committee, and Stein!" Mana repeated her request, yelling at the tutors. She was frustrated that they wouldn't listen, though she understood that she was just a recruit and they weren't obligated to do so. Still, she knew what she was doing – she had faced similar powerhouses before in Little Honda.</p><p>"Are you mad? You cannot face this enemy alone, recruit, only together can we take young Sekita down!" the woman with a stone headdress and bodypaint scolded Mana as her legs moved to draw a circle in the venomous puddle with her heels. She put up her palms and concentrated a great deal of chakra in them after clapping them together to mold it for just a blink. "Nature Release: Mystical Bullet!"</p><p>A lone boulder the size of a watermelon rose from the ground, splashing the venom in its path away and levitating in front of the female tutor as the molding chakra manifested around her body in a bright aura that surrounded the floating boulder with a burn of natural green, releasing it at Sekita like a rushing comet in what seemed like an Advanced Bloodline of the Fire Release and Earth Release variety.</p><p>Sekita's head snapped to the side, facing her attacker head-on as she opened her mouth and unleashed another bile from her mouth, this time, in a more concentrated flow rather than a crashing wave. This stream of venom blasted the woman's own jutsu away before crashing into her and washing the tutor away, covering her in the venom that seeped through her skin in mere moments.</p><p>"You're just a recruit, either assist us or flee as you have no obligation to have any part in this just yet, but do not presume to be in any position to move us like pawns in your battlefield!" the previously poisoned tutor of dark skin and spiky white hair turned to Mana with a look filled to the brim with pain and ire as sweat broke down his body. The man pulled out a thick disc made of some metallic alloy and channeled Lightning Release chakra through it, forming a sort of deadly, three-blade shuriken out of it which he lobbed at the lumbering behemoth in front of them.</p><p>Sekita stumbled back as it hit her head-on but instead of slicing through her flesh, it merely released a wild flock of sparks and only made her flesh flab as the giantess herself struggled to regain her balance. This outcome appeared to perplex the tutor himself, it was no wonder as, judging by the large presence of chakra within his projectile, it should have easily been able to cleave through most ninja in two clean.</p><p>"Out of my way! I'm strong now! Strong enough to save Stein!" Sekita bellowed out as she jumped and stomped the ground, causing rampant quakes to resonate through them. Despite her massively increased tonnage, this didn't seem natural to Mana, there was ample chakra resonating through the ground too, suggesting this to be some sort of makeshift technique, a far-cry of an actual jutsu that the youth knows.</p><p>"Save him for what?" Mana yelled out, trying to reason with the rampant juggernaut but there was a fat chance of that ever happening – Mana couldn't get the abused youth to listen to her when she was in her normal state. Now, with all this power rushing through her body, corrupting her in every way power like this can corrupt, knowing Sekita's warped worldview, there was no way in hell that she'd listen and Mana knew this. "If you break him out by force, if you attack the committee, you'll never be Allied Ninja! To have him be exonerated and for you to stand down is your only chance of things going back to normal!"</p><p>"Shut up!" Sekita yelled out, kicking and thrashing but she could only hit scattering flower petals as each and every image of Mana before her scattered away. This would have been Mana's method of wearing Sekita down. She was a behemoth, a monster of power to be sure but that power was far from healthy to her. She was slow, more so, she was bleeding said strength at a rapid rate.</p><p>An animalistic roar filled the sky with Sekita's friend splitting the gloom of the night in a cannonball flight toward his friend's upper section. Instead of the bone-crunching outcome that he had intended, the Akimichi mutant caught him like a baseball and slammed him to the ground, stomping him a couple of times for good measure too.</p><p>Mana grabbed her head and dragged her fingers through her hair. The fabric of her gloves brushed against her skin roughly, due to the force she put into the expression of frustration as those she came here with proceeded to ignore her pleads and almost get themselves killed. At least Sekita's friend pushed her foot off of him and growled again, winding his supersized arms back in preparation for a good beating. Blood streaked down his face but the scent of his own blood seemed to only drive this one wilder.</p><p>A couple of bolts hit Sekita from the side, stumbling the young woman on her feet. One of them blew up with a coating of frost covering the spot, one of them spread inflammatory liquid that lit up from the spark of impact while another one aimed to shock the behemoth out of her boots, and another handful just tried skewering the Akimichi woman.</p><p>"You should just join us, Mana," the woman in an orange and brown jumpsuit with metallic plates on her chest, her shoulders and thighs, and an abundance of belts approached the magician and offered her a hand to help her get up. She was short but of spiky, brown hair. She had facepaint and ample make-up that most Inuzuka women wore and she was the only one in a while to address Mana by name. Likely so because the woman had Konoha background before becoming an Allied Ninja. "If your allies won't listen to you, may as well not be a sitting duck and join in on the team assault."</p><p>Sekita bellowed out something unintelligible and curled up into a ball, flinging off into the air before crashing back down where the crossbow-using Inuzuka woman and Mana were. After crashing like a wrecking ball, the Akimichi proceeded to roll wildly in place to mash what she had just smashed into porridge but Mana had petalled away, replacing herself with an illusionary avatar of herself while, from what she could sense, the Inuzuka tutor had used the Body Flicker technique to escape in a split-second as well.</p><p>The chakra signature of the Inuzuka lady was dipping as more and more seconds tolled, she must have taken a mean dip in the bile that Sekita spread before. A bare-chested man of ginger hair and a vibrant mustache, who appeared to battle bare-chested jumped into the fray as well, pulling out a pair of meat cleavers from his back to try and get a good chop into the supersized enemy who was lumbering and slow. His blades appeared to chop utter, flabby rubber as Sekita smashed him into the ground with a resonant double-ax handle slam.</p><p>Sekita let out a painful cry when a handful of Lightning Release streams hit her in various locations as a metallic gargoyle appeared to flap its wings and try to put the weighty young lady on the ropes. Mana couldn't recall seeing this mechanical marvel before but a quick headcount suggested to her that one of the teachers must have slipped into this puppet, wearing it as a suit of armor. His aerial offensive appeared to be moderately effective even if the puppet and the alloy it was made of showed signs of wear and corrosion from dipping into Sekita's bile previously.</p><p>"To battle!" a roar filled the air, forcing Mana to turn back and witness a man riding a ninja horse into battle and wielding a naginata in his right hand, thrusting it with a coil of Wind Release surrounding the tip. It was a valiant attack from this tutor, as he used his summon to build up acceleration and used a weapon favoring thrusting attacks while coating it in a gale of Wind Release – the elemental nature well-suited for cutting and thrusting. If it couldn't have made it through – nothing would have.</p><p>The rampaging juggernaut fell on one knee as blood splashed from her knee section. It was a very tactful place to target as it was a sort of a weak spot to anyone so hefty in size and weight but Sekita rose to her feet just moments later, yelling out into the sky in pain and frustration. The monstrous Akimichi then sent another washing wave of bile to flood the battlefield that was now significantly clearer and more devastated. A flurry of Body Flickers and substitutions with various rubble in the environment littered the field. Mana took off with her Mystical Wings again, surveying the possible victims of Sekita's attack.</p><p>The old man swam out, having lost his hat and furs in the rampant flow of venom that formed a dangerous flow and rushed toward the Allied Ninja HQ building in the quantities that it was present on the battlefield at that moment. The burly friend of Sekita's also swam out covered in venomous sludge, too pissed to care about the deadly venom seeping into his body through his pores and drying him out from his deadly little dip before one's eyes. He just wanted to punch Sekita until she was seeing reason again, that might have just been Mana's interpretation though, the only thing that his face could translate was the need to punch the lumbering juggernaut and not much else could have been made out from it so Mana had to fill in the reason he fought for herself.</p><p>Mana went through hand seals and breathed in deep. "Fire Style: Immolation!" she chanted out, breathing out a stream of Fire Release chakra that concentrated on its target and expanded into a twister of flames upon reaching Sekita's position. She didn't see any signs of weary, no end to Sekita's toughness and stamina but Mana kept the flames alive due to only her hope that the giantess would soon fold. The injured, old tutor stood on shaky knees as he prepared an illusion to subdue and knock Sekita out if need be. He appeared to be a potent enough genjutsu specialist to render people comatose with his illusions, while that was not an outcome Mana liked, it may have been the one that was necessary.</p><p>Sekita burst forth from the whirlwind of flames, ablaze and wild, she flopped on her belly, smashing the old man underneath her and leaving his lifeless, sprawled out body in the wreckage once she stood up and thrashed about, still engulfed in flames. Mana screamed out and swooped down to pick the old man up and take him away from harm's way. She couldn't even see what was going on in the background, she could hear the priestess-looking woman in a stone headdress scream, a bunch of loud grunts and by the time Mana took the old man away from the battlefield and rested him against a rock where the patrols should have found him and returned – only a field of broken bodies remained.</p><p>"Damn!" the magician heard a curse down below. Someone still looked to be in fighting shape, she landed beside the talkative soldier and it was not at all surprising to see that it was Sekita's meat-headed friend still writhing and crawling toward the HQ with fire in his eyes.</p><p>"Where is she?" Mana asked, her heart wavered with the knowledge of the answer that she didn't really need. Regardless of that need, the injured brawler lifted his hand and pointed at the HQ. Of course, she'd continue her fruitless quest and smashing the place to bits and running off with Stein in her arms.</p><p>"That idiot… Must'a did a real number on me to somehow outpace me, can't crawl fast enough to reach her anymore…" ever the fighter, Sekita's friend flipped over on his back and began hyperventilating. There must have been an influx of venom in him and the direr his chakra became, the less of it his body could utilize in augmentations to postpone the venom's deadly effects. They all needed medical attention, Mana collapsed on her bottom and dragged her hand through her hair. She could sense nearby patrols rushing in to the scene, they've likely already found the old man and were now coming in to stop Sekita too.</p><p>Who knew what took them this long? Has it been that long? It seemed like it had been an entire eternity but it might have been just a couple of minutes… Either way, Sekita needed to be stopped, or else more people would get hurt. If only she'd listen… If only they'd have listened and left Mana alone to face Sekita, then she'd have been the only one to suffer the consequences, she'd have held her back for a while, wore her out as much as Mana could.</p><p>Sekita's previously sky-high chakra was now significantly leaked and squandered, with every second she kept this mad fighting style going, she needed to take in more and more of whatever fueled her. Maybe it was the venom, maybe it was something in it, some herb or some chemical that triggered this reaction in her mutation, either way, research, and understanding would have to come later, once a maddened behemoth didn't threaten to bulldoze the entire Allied Ninja HQ down and kill all of the committee before running off with her boyfriend.</p><p>What Mana saw before her right now was a one of a kind chance to tackle Sekita by herself, no other people, no other lives on the line. Maybe now that Sekita was weaker, Mana might stand a better shot, most likely she'd throw her life out in the garbage bin but at the very least she'd slow the giant down some. That came first, it had to.</p>
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<a name="section0698"><h2>698. Don't Lose Your Head</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Finding Sekita wasn't a particular problem that Mana had to worry about. The recruit had a chakra that soared leagues above most around her that was slowly fading out with every step and movement that the giant made. Even if she wasn't a walking beacon, it wasn't like Sekita was trying to hide and the entire ground shook from each love tap of her foot. The floor was still soaked with puddles of poison, making contact with skin dangerous, Mana floated using her Mystical Wings jutsu just in case.</p><p>"Sekita!" she yelled out. Seeing how the brute was unmoved by Mana's vocal plead to stop, the magician curved out and stepped up in front of her. She expected her appearance to at the very least slow Sekita down but the jumbo-sized juggernaut kept on walking, only taking a mean glare with her whited-out eyes to acknowledge Mana's presence.</p><p>Mana tsked and slipped a white card out from her sleeve, allowing Lightning Release chakra to pass through her body, the magician extended the card and channeled the molded chakra through it, using it as a sort of a lightning rod that helped her shape the chakra into a beam like a laser.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" she chanted out. Sekita grabbed the beam of lightning with her hand, like a whip, and tore it to sparking shreds, continuing to walk forward in a threatening trajectory that would have led the giantess to walk right over Mana.</p><p>"Rebellious Twist Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, going through hand seals in a blink as only she could. Her sleight of hand movements had almost returned to her heyday before imprisonment. A wind current formed beneath Mana, spinning the magician and throwing her diagonally up on a collision course with Sekita's looming foot that Mana grabbed and moved together with the current of the whirlwind, flipping the brute over and down on her back.</p><p>Rebellious Twist was meant to deflect stray ninja tools and other projectiles, though this unorthodox idea that popped right into Mana's head for an alternative way of using the whirlwind in a different angle for a very different purpose did its deed. Sekita popped up on her bottom and rose from her fallen position. She looked to have finally been humbled enough to notice Mana now that the magician proved to be capable of stopping her strut to the HQ.</p><p>"I always knew it," Sekita mumbled, throwing a lightning-fast jab of her supersized arm. It was anything but a proper way to throw a punch but given Sekita's unnatural size and mutated source of power, she didn't need balance or proper arm movement to pop Mana's head clean off her shoulders with even such a puny blow. Fortunately for Mana, she'd not have been caught unaware by an even faster and more skilled physical combatant as evasion was second nature to her.</p><p>"I knew it that you were strong," Sekita continued her train of thought after gripping her hands together and throwing them in a spinning double-ax-handle slam aimed to send Mana flying up. Mana used a little bit of turbulent aid of the elements to boost her crescent-shaped vault over her opponent's attack, landing on the other side and slipping a full hand of cards from her sleeve that she flung at Sekita while she was open.</p><p>Whether the cards exploded or sent a jolt of electricity, unsealed a windstorm filled with more steel-tipped cards dancing inside it, or performed some other elaborate trick sealed inside one card, Sekita not only didn't appreciate Mana's resourcefulness but she didn't appear to at all be touched by it either. None of Mana's attempts to find a natural weakness to Sekita's ability other than the unnatural burn through her newly gained resources, nothing appeared to have any effect on the mutated Akimichi woman.</p><p>"You lied to me. You're just like Regimental Commander Harcel said!" Sekita yelled out, unleashing immense air pressure and airborne droplets of poison that brewed within her gut after she had ingested all of it that was on location. "You pushed everyone else away because you alone were strong! They'd have dragged you back!"</p><p>Mana bounced back gracefully to gain some distance and avoid the spray of venom that came from Sekita merely speaking with a raised volume in her direction. What was that she was spouting? Did she really think that Mana let the other tutors get incapacitated just so she could fight Sekita alone? What gave away that impression? There was no way Mana would have done anything like that.</p><p>"That's not true," Mana replied, flinging a handful of pouches from her side to roll behind Sekita while the magician clapped her hands together and extended them with her index fingers and thumbs touching each other while Lightning Release chakra passed through her wrists and hands. "Royal Flush Combination!"</p><p>Using her Magic Bullet Barrage, an improved version of the Magic Spark Barrage Mana used as a child, the kunoichi sprayed devastating Lightning Release spheres in a destructive barrage that should have either injured her opponent or, at the very least, stunned her and staggered her back into the twin pouches that contained a pair of Mana's decks with various sealed effects stored inside them. The myriad of seals, blasts, and elements raging all at the same time howled in a ruinous chain reaction that enveloped the stunned giantess whole.</p><p>Despite the fact that given the battle that Sekita waged with the rest of the Allied Ninja staff before, after taking such a hit anybody would have died for certain, Mana could feel Sekita's chakra blazing potently inside, still a fair bit mightier than the young woman's potency on her greatest day. And yet, not even she expected Sekita to bounce back this swiftly. A massive hand emerged from within the settling rubble, grabbing Mana by her collar and dragging her in.</p><p>Before Mana could grunt or think about resisting, Sekita slammed her to the ground and pressed her with her palm like a fragile, little bird. The pressure then faded but only for a second. Mana sensed Sekita's chakra signature up above – she was intending to slam her whole body onto her downed opponent. Mana clapped her hands and formed the Magic Bubble jutsu, augmenting it to the best of her ability and hoping for the best. She had better odds of blocking a meteor than mutated and enraged Sekita in her current state. And yet, the barrier held, if only long enough for Mana to roll away. Still, she cried out in pain when the resonating shockwave flung her aside like a whimpering leaf.</p><p>Still, she survived that slam even though it was as close as it got.</p><p>"You're wrong, I never pushed anyone away! You're wrong about strength!" Mana called Sekita out while getting some air back into her troubled lungs and preparing for another round.</p><p>"You didn't fight with them. I saw you, you weren't fighting together, you were avoiding me, avoiding the fight. You waited until all the weaklings die out, as a true warrior would. I don't know why you keep on denying it…" Sekita grumbled, returning back to her own feet and towering over her opponent. The brute finally got to see that to get to the headquarters and Stein she'd have to step over or onto Mana.</p><p>"No. It was hopeless to engage you back then, I tried making a plan, letting everyone in on it to fight smart." Mana denied Sekita's implication though she could hear how quivering her own defensive tone was. Damn it! This was the least convenient time to let Sekita get to her.</p><p>"They were too weak so you let them fall. But you haven't thought this through, because you are strong but you aren't stronger than me!" Sekita pressed her arms in to her sides while she rolled into a ball. Mana's jaw dropped and she went pale, realizing what her opponent intended to do. It was a manifesting nightmare – a literal human tank that wouldn't stop no matter what once it got rolling.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" Mana bit her thumb, going through hand seals while calling out to as many summons at once as she could. She was desperate, inserting far too much chakra into her call but maybe seeing the strength she sacrificed to call out to her partners, the rabbits would realize how dire the situation was?</p><p>"Human Bullet Tank!" Sekita yelled out as the human boulder got rolling. Usubane, Usuzoku, and a handful of others appeared all at once and engaged the incoming human juggernaut roll without asking any questions. Mana didn't even know a few of the rabbits that showed their face but they were willing to answer the call of the young woman that led them away from the snakes into their new home, to safety.</p><p>Everything went black, Mana could hear her own pain-ridden scream and a cascade of popping around her. The rabbits failed – she failed. Though she couldn't feel the ground rumbling anymore, there was no more earthquake nor were the people screaming or the foundations of the Allied Ninja HQ being toppled down like a stack of pins could be heard. There was nothing before Mana's eyes opened for a blurry and weakened sight of the satisfied scowl of her enemy, holding her head in her hand and dangling Mana's helpless body in her grip.</p><p>Mana's body felt distant, almost like it didn't belong to her anymore. As if it was some other weightless sack of broken bones being dangled like a fancy trophy in front of a proud opponent that tried to figure out if the enemy was worth the time spent finishing her off. The pain, the feeling of blood rushing up and down, and pressure in Mana's temple, it all went away for a second. Then dirt and rock seared bloody scratches and bruises all over Mana's body as her body left a dragging ridge where Sekita flung her.</p><p>"No, you're strong, you deserve death. Then, I'll show you to Regimental Commander Harcel and he'll understand that I am strong too. Stronger than even you. Stronger than you at your strongest, with all meaningless bonds thrown out and severed, with your true self exposed and full power on, I still beat you!" Sekita leaned over Mana, trying to hammer the point of her defeat into the magician's head.</p><p>There was still chakra in Mana's system, her body was banged up more than it ever has been since her fateful clash with Guru Ayushi but the magician felt like she could still go. These last few seconds that Sekita wasted bragging… If only she'd waste a few more and let Mana's eyesight align, breath return back to her burning lungs and the searing in her muscles to let up some.</p><p>Mana's scream ended in an awkward gargling sound, she didn't even see Sekita's foot move but the overwhelming pain coupled with tremendous numbness below her neck made the magician realize that Sekita had stomped her into the ground. Unlike everything below her neck, the feeling of Sekita's massive fingers creeping over Mana's scalp like anxious centipedes looking to inject their venom into just the right spot was not lost on her.</p><p>"I only need your head anyway…" Sekita smiled with a sign of unnatural twist to her expression, while Mana had her doubts before, now she realized that the Akimichi girl might not have even been fully in control here. Whether it was merely the psychological rush of this power getting to her or something more concrete, something else was dictating her actions.</p><p>No… This couldn't end here, not this way. Mana promised mother she'd give this Allied Ninja thing a chance and so far all she's done was push people away. She couldn't let her head get ripped off from her body before Mana could at least begin living up to that promise.</p><p>Intense heat flushed through Mana's face, forcing the magician to augment her toughness just so that the flesh on her face didn't turn to mulch immediately. Sekita wasn't very moved by the surprise attack from behind her but she turned back with a bemused scowl. One that soon changed to shock when she saw the people that declared they would fight her to whatever their clash led to.</p><p>"Shogito, Joshipa, and… Baiso, you're still kicking?" Sekita turned around, realizing that her squad of reject friends, save for the one that Sekita wanted to see the most – Stein, were all standing up to oppose her.</p><p>"We won't let you break in there and throw your career away!" Shogito yelled out, swiping his hand aside in defiance as a metallic backpack with a pair of metallic appendages reaching out over the young man in his protection. "We'll fight you until you can't move if we have to!"</p><p>"You won't hurt Konoha's Sorceress either, I'll tell you what I've told Stein – she's not worth it!" Joshipa, the gothic young lady pleaded with her friend as well.</p><p>"We're not done fighting yet, how dare you find yourself another opponent… I'll pound you into the ground for that!" Baiso, the burly-haired strongman cracked his knuckles despite appearing to be in a terrible condition to fight.</p><p>"You…" Sekita's eyes sunk in shadow as she let her messy hair cover them up. She shook, distraught by what she took as a betrayal from her friends. Mana felt relief followed by immense burning on her chest as the massive foot moved away from stomping her into the dirt. "You came here but you didn't bring Stein with you."</p><p>"Stein has his own bucket of troubles to sort out but he's facing them," Joshipa replied softly, still hoping in salvaging what was left of her friend from within the raging beast she had become. This intervention might have been just what they needed – Sekita's chakra had dipped even more since Mana stood to oppose her and struggled alone against her. Together, those three may just have stopped her the way she was now. If things proceed at the same rate – she'll be back to normal in a handful of minutes.</p><p>"He's… Facing them alone…" Mana coughed blood up but she struggled back on her knees, feeling like this was something too important to try and drown her lungs with the rest of the scarlet bile in her chest. "Because you're not by his side. The person he loves… The person he wants to be by him the most."</p><p>"But that's exactly why…!" Sekita cried out as she turned around, leaving Mana to eat her dust as she charged off to dash right through Shogito and leave him trampled. Shogito's mechanical puppet limbs moved to Sekita's feet and slammed them in place, forcing the rushing brute to stumble and plant into the ground, stopping just before him.</p><p>"You're not going to be of any help to him if you get there like this. You need to get yourself together, get this garbage out of your system and go to the session to support him, not to take him away! This session is the responsibility he has to face as a man!" Shogito spoke to his fallen friend as she struggled to return back to her feet.</p><p>"That is what it means to be strong… To see the full weight of the responsibility before you but to tackle it regardless. I've tried to do it alone… Don't force Stein to go through the same." Mana stood up on wobbly feet, making Shogito exclaim a warning that she shouldn't push herself that way.</p><p>"The weak band together, like herring, so that they can avoid being singled out by the shark as the weakling it is!" Sekita bellowed into the sky, brimming with strength and raw power, and yet her cry has never sounded more powerless than it did at that moment.</p><p>Mana pushed her disappointment back down as she inspected the gathered Allied Ninja recruits, doing her best to relay her resolve for what needed to be done. They needed to either hold Sekita here until she pushes through this toxic condition or to beat her until the augmentations she would need to use accelerate her sobering process.</p><p>Baiso didn't need to be asked twice, he rushed right at Sekita with a shoulder charge but the giantess swopped him and slammed him on her other side like a ragdoll. Shogito aimed his mechanical limbs, letting them crackle with jolts of electricity as he concentrated Lightning Release into their tips.</p><p>"Magical Shock Jutsu!" he yelled out, focusing the Lightning Release into concentrated, laser-like beams. Mana's dazed eyes powered through her weakness to express the appropriate shock of seeing her own technique being employed. The magician had used it plenty of times on stage, it was one of the first handful of jutsu that she had invented and continued to build up on ever since she was in the Academy, though the fact that Shogito learned it merely from still images was still something.</p><p>"I wonder where'd you learn that trick!?" Sekita mocked her friend as she grabbed both beams to rip them apart as she did with Mana's own attacks earlier. With both of her hands employed in the repeat of the feat she performed earlier, there was little that the walking tank could do to protect from the spinning umbrella top that came at her from Joshipa's side.</p><p>Sekita stumbled forward, leaning her sliced open back and writhing in pain while remaining on both feet while the umbrella buzzed back to its mistress who promptly attached it onto the iron rod it came off of and placed it on her shoulder. The edges of the tool dripped with blood, making a false impression that the gothic kunoichi was shielding herself from a crimson rain this way.</p><p>"Y-You!" Sekita grumbled, opening her arms for another bloodthirsty charge, this time aiming herself toward her female friend instead who appeared to be less capable of protecting herself from up close. Intercepting the realization of that idea, Joshipa flicked her umbrella again, flinging the spinning top aiming for Sekita's face. With a vain grin on her face, the walking juggernaut caught the buzzing umbrella top with two fingers.</p><p>"Gotcha," Joshipa proclaimed with an emotionless tone as she weaved a hand seal with one hand. "Curse Technique: Flogging of the Pure!" Joshipa proclaimed, erupting into a curious-looking dance motion while incorporating the topless umbrella pole into it.</p><p>"Curse Technique?" Mana muttered as it was not a part of the standard ninja arts that most people knew.</p><p>Sekita let out a blood-curdling scream as her knees twisted and snapped, dropping the giantess to the ground and shrinking her down to normal size as she wept in the accumulating bloody puddle left of her knee caps.</p><p>Despite not being fully sure what happened, Mana just accepted the reality that they've somehow managed to stop Sekita's mutated transformation for now.</p>
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<a name="section0699"><h2>699. The Severed Connections</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana must have been mad. This was the end of times, this was it. After all this time that she's spent secluding herself from everyone, especially Shogito's squad of misfits, she was now the one looking for them. Beaten and a little bit broken, especially around the rib area, slowly, one stumble at a time she was looking for the gang that, honestly, Mana wasn't sure wouldn't resume the job that Sekita started once they set their paths crossed again.</p><p>Tracking them down was a child's play, that was fortunate enough. Had Mana not the ability to sense chakra, this task would have been outright impossible as she'd have long since collapsed from the constant reminder that an Akimichi with an inflated weight of a planetoid had stomped her and tossed her around more than a few times just mere hours ago.</p><p>"You shouldn't be here, walking around," a youthful yet strict-sounding voice made chills crawl up Mana's spine. This didn't sound like any of the staff watching the halls, the voice could only have belonged to one of the recruits though it was not a recruit that Mana had met before.</p><p>"Are you going to give me in?" Mana wondered, turning around. Just the notion of shifting her axis was enough to call pulsing pain through her cracked bones that made the young woman's forehead erupt in sweat, her vision blur, and the familiar taste of nausea move up and down her throat.</p><p>"Maybe. I guess it depends on why you're sneaking around at your state and where is it that you're going…" the young man had a head of spiky, black hair and hazel eyes, dressed in a mahogany-colored kimono and black hakama. There were bags over the young man's eyes and while, judging from his looks alone, he appeared young, though the patches of scarring littering the boy's face added maturity to his look.</p><p>"There is something I need to know," Mana replied. She took a few precious extra seconds before replying as her first instinct was to throw something standoffish at the young man as she was beginning to grow accustomed to but in light of recent experiences and promises she tried to remain truthful though without going into too many details. "Someone I need to talk to."</p><p>"Your sneaking skills are lousy. You'll get caught. That's to say even if I let you go off my hook," the young man shook his head. "I'm afraid I'll need some more details to know if I will."</p><p>He approached Mana and grabbed hold of her arm, the magician would have tried to resist but she figured that whatever this youth had in mind would have hurt far less than trying to fight back in her current state. The traditionally-clad youth gently guided Mana toward the nearby bathroom where no staff members would find them unless they made too much noise. He was not aware that Mana's abilities allowed her to stay aware of those men and women at all times.</p><p>"Now, I'd like to ask you this again and I'd like a more detailed answer – why did you disobey the rules and sneak out in your state?" the young man asked after moving close enough to Mana to be able to whisper and not alert any potential watchdogs walking by outside the bathrooms.</p><p>"There is a group of other recruits that I've become involved with, against my better wishes but still… There are still questions I need to ask them, I guess I just need that closure," Mana explained. Ever since the clash with Sekita concluded, Mana hadn't seen Sekita or Stein around so she wanted to know how did the disciplinary session conclude. She also wanted to speak to Joshipa about her "Curse Technique".</p><p>A sense of natural curiosity about a type of ninjutsu she hadn't heard of much, nothing at all if one excluded vague affiliations of the type of techniques to a murderous and dark cult that rose to prominence in the Tea Country. Whenever Mana encountered a type of legend or technique, she couldn't wrap her head around, it tended to keep her awake at night. Perhaps it was just a remnant of her childhood condition peeking its ugly head out but all alien concepts needed to be explained accounted for and understood.</p><p>"Fine, I'll lead you there. See to it that you don't get caught," the young man nodded with a sense of sternness to his face that made it evident that he had made up his mind about this.</p><p>"Wait… Who are you exactly? No offense but… This is a little out of the blue, you've got nothing to do with this," Mana scratched her head. "This is between me and the group in question. I don't think that my plagues are the same things that keep you awake too,"</p><p>"I'm a ninja, for one. A real one. I can make sure that you sneak past wherever we're going. Distract the obstacles if need be. I… Let's just say I also need this. Need this for me." The young man explained, dropping his façade of sternness when the matter involved his own person and whatever emotional conflicts he was going through. The more Mana snooped around this place, the more certain she became that very few recruits came here from a genuine desire to work here and fulfill their duty to the entire world instead of one country.</p><p>"Okay, as long as we stop wasting time and get moving," Mana relented. The last thing she needed to do now was to shoulder all the responsibility and challenge onto her own two shoulders. Especially so after she's been burnt by that very same thing not too long ago.</p><p>The young man didn't lie about his skill in the art of stealth. It was as if he could have approached a trained ninja from behind and walked next to their own two shoes and not have been noticed by them. Watching him from a safe distance, just flexing at the task of moving unnoticed in front of the multiple involuntary guards of the hallways was a thing of beauty. It seemed as if his scent, his figure, and his entire presence disappeared altogether. Mana felt like she might have just been tired and hurt but she could swear that it was difficult to tell the young man's chakra apart as well as he had kept it so ordinary in terms of its specificity that it both must have been a fruit of deliberate training and allowed his chakra to camouflage and almost disappear when he wanted it to.</p><p>It was not at all surprising that Shogito's squad had a room of their own. They jumped up and their chakra signatures flared up once Mana's companion entered the room first. Once the magician followed suit, their reactions turned even more predictable. Shogito exclaimed in joy whereas Joshipa and Baiso looked much less interested. Joshipa rolled her eyes whereas Baiso just settled down in his bed, losing all investment into what he saw as someone barging in his room for a fight. He'd have loved that, Mana could tell.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress!" Shogito yelled out as he ran up to Mana. His iron backpack containing his puppet-limbs rested on the bed now. The mechanical limbs were inside making the iron backpack a very curious sight from afar.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress?" the young man with a scarred face turned to Mana. "You mean… You're the thug that beat up Guru Ayushi?" his voice turned harsher and more distant. It was only natural.</p><p>"Yes though… I sort of thought that maybe you already knew that…" Mana admitted, scratching her neck.</p><p>"I failed to recognize you without your flamboyant get-up and effort to keep up your appearance," her sneaky companion hissed. He may not have been as full of it as Mana wanted to think. She had been neglecting keeping up her appearances ever since being stomped on by Sekita.</p><p>Before Mana could speak up, however, Stein stood up from the other end of the room and walked up to the magician. The silent shinobi then pressed his hand to his own chest and nodded his head with a soft look on his face. Mana blinked a few times in rapid succession in confusion at both the fact that the troublemaker was still present and set free and that he was being so tolerant of her presence in his room.</p><p>"This is his way of apologizing for what he's done," Joshipa muttered with a passive-aggressive tone. She wanted Mana to take it at that and just walk out of the room if her tone was of any indication.</p><p>"Yes, I can strangely tell…" Mana admitted. Despite the man not speaking a word for however long Mana had been aware of him, she had to relent to the simple fact that he had ways of speaking without opening his mouth and raising his voice. Ways that weren't all that complicated to translate and understand.</p><p>"Whatever this meeting is all about, I regret being a part of it now," the newly met young man stated, giving Mana a scornful look. "I'm not sure what you guys are all about but I'll have my eyes on you and if any of you step out of line again, I'll destroy you immediately."</p><p>After his bold declaration, the classically-clad youth walked out of the room, closing the door quietly and fading out into the hallway. Mana had no doubts that given his profound talent for deception, diversion, and stealth that he'd have no problem returning to his room.</p><p>"Destroy us immediately?" Shogito scratched his head.</p><p>"Aku-Soku-Zan?" Mana muttered to herself. It was a samurai principle. That and the boy's attire made the magician wonder if perhaps this youth had ties with the Iron Country though she hadn't seen a blade by his waist at any point which was an oddity if he truly was a samurai or a trainee.</p><p>"He's the new guy, isn't he? Arrived here last night…" Baiso spoke up with a raspy, growling voice while looking up to the ceiling. "I noticed him, he's got a good look on his face!"</p><p>For some reason, Mana wasn't sure if she should have chuckled or be taken aback by the rich smile on the burly man's face as he proclaimed that sentence. She was aware of what he meant. The youth's killing sense was not quite in the territory where he'd be able to form his Killing Intent just yet, but he was seriously close. He had a certain no-bullshit flare that took someone who had met someone like Red Dog Tanshu in their life and learned to handle themselves around men like that to stomach be around such people.</p><p>"Whatever, I dunno what bee stung him…" Shogito leaned back on his arms, making a nonchalant look out of wanting to look as if he didn't care about the young man at all. "Whatever his business is, he'd better stay out of our way."</p><p>"Our way?" Mana wondered, somehow she felt like Shogito had clumped her in alongside his crew of misfits.</p><p>"Oh, I'm sorry… I thought you came here to move into our room, now that Sekita is out of the Allied Ninja…" Shogito muttered, widening his eyes and working on his best innocent, begging cat face.</p><p>"No, sorry, I came here to clear a few things out, that is all." Mana shook her head. "I want to know what happened after Sekita's mutation went wild."</p><p>Stein approached the window and stared out through, looking at some unclear, blank point on the horizon. Most likely his eyes just bounced off of a rocky wall of the mountains covering the entirety of the landscape up. Mana didn't exactly need to wonder what got into him now that she knew that Sekita was out of the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Oh, Stein got off the hook. The committee made peace with the fact that he did what he did for Sekita, that this wasn't his usual behavior. They probably would have let Sekita off the hook just this once too, maybe had her and Stein work on the poison she gobbled down and help the Allied Ninja get their supplies back in order but…" Shogito scratched his neck.</p><p>"They said that Sekita was a bad influence on Stein. That it was just courting trouble to keep them both around so one of them had to go. Those pricks, it's 'cause Sekita is a mutant, they should have gone out and said it!" Joshipa got more worked up than Mana had seen her be. Despite her apathetic façade, the goth lady truly seemed to have a bond with her misfit friends. A bond that Mana couldn't help but respect.</p><p>"It was cruel, what they did. Villages don't like mutants, they won't let Sekita come back to their midst if they ever find out. Her clan won't accept her back, they probably already didn't like her to begin with due to the way she looked and now this…" Shogito ran his hand through his head, pulling his goggles down to shroud his eyes as he rammed his back to the wall of his room and just slid down on his butt in a state of helpless collapse.</p><p>Stein turned back, clenching a fist. His eyes weren't hateful at all which Mana found welcoming for a change. They were hopeful and determined. Despite finding something new to respect the mute shinobi over, she could only wonder what might have inspired this sense of hope in the young man.</p><p>"Yeah, I get ya, she's tough. Tougher now than ever. Plus, she made that call herself. They didn't kick her out so I don't think it was 'cause she was a freakazoid at all…" Baiso husked out still staring at the ceiling. It seemed as if though the burly brawler could tell exactly what his friend was thinking without even needing to look at his cues.</p><p>"Still, what choice was that, exactly?" Joshipa looked down to the floor with a sense of longing and pity in her eyes that made light gather and dance in its reflection off of the traces of tears that began forming in the girl's eyes. "To have to choose to leave or to let someone you love leave instead…"</p><p>"Sekita chose to leave herself?" Mana muttered. She didn't truly need an answer to that question which was great because she didn't get one either. Instead, the rest just looked at her, wondering what might have gotten into the magician.</p><p>Knowing that after this experience the chubby young woman decided to leave herself instead of hurting the dream of the young man that loved her and whom she loved equally, it made Mana hopeful that maybe in the end Sekita saw the error of letting Regimental Commander Harcel's words define her attitude toward life and learned to trust people and the strength in bonds a lot more than she did before. At least Mana hoped that Sekita changed her strength-chasing, reckless ways and looked to redefine herself from the toes moving up. After all, going through her experiences alongside Sekita made Mana remember some important things and learn something new too.</p><p>"That jutsu you've used to subdue Sekita," Mana muttered and turned to Joshipa. "That Curse Technique, what was that? An advanced bloodline?"</p><p>"Nothing like that…" Joshipa dismissed the thought. This had disappointed Mana some as the magician had been working on learning to combine two of her three Elemental Affinities and create something new and sublime ever since she made it out of Jigoku prison and some time before then. "Those techniques are a gift from Lord Jashin."</p><p>"Jashin? So, you really are a Jashinist…" Mana muttered. Now it made a bit more sense why this young lady would be considered a reject by her village and the Allied Ninja too. Jashinists had a mean reputation of utter destruction and bloodbaths being left in their wake, no ninja village would like fostering a youth subscribing herself to those beliefs in their roster nor would the Allied Ninja though the latter might not have had much of a choice if they were short on potential recruits.</p><p>"Yeah, got a problem with that?" Joshipa looked up, pointing at the leather collar on her bedside table with a circle and an upside triangle inside of it decorating the front of it.</p><p>"I don't approve of your religion, your God, or what they represent but… I don't think that you're a bad person. I'm just curious to know how exactly you manage to stay on the right side of the law while maintaining the ability to utilize your Curse Techniques," Mana spoke truthfully. There was nothing in a religion that forced its followers to enact total destruction in all matters they engaged in and did not allow them to pick fights without slaughtering everyone involved or go through a long and grueling ritual of repentance for their sins that sparked anything but disdain in Mana.</p><p>"What's wrong? Don't like the world much once you've left your ivory tower?" Joshipa hissed at Mana. The goth chick curled up in her bed, collapsing into a sorry state of regret all at once. "Lord Jashin understands me, he doesn't force me to destroy and kill everything, just everything that I engage in. All I need to do is stay distant from all I don't want to destroy, that is all…"</p><p>A painful moment of silence took over the room. Mana contemplated for a second the fact that Joshipa got involved with Sekita though she didn't kill her friend, despite what her religious commandments demanded of her.</p><p>"You've lost your connection to Jashin, haven't you?" Mana wondered. Joshipa took to her knees and rolled up her shirt, turning her back to Mana and revealing entire nets and systems of lashes and cuts, then she unbuttoned her sleeves and rolled them back as well, revealing ridges many times more numerous than her age and as deep as her devotion to her religion.</p><p>"Hardly would be the first time. If I repent, Lord Jashin will understand…" Joshipa muttered in a tone filled with self-loathing. This was one of those times where Mana felt the call to do something stupid. Something that she's stopped doing because of the pain of alienation but something she needed to find again if she was to resume the path she walked before her imprisonment.</p><p>"I won't presume to know what has led you to adopt this path of your life but… You know, you could take this emptiness as a sign of something new. You could make something new for yourself, in fact, we could do it together. I've been working on a new fighting style as well after all my peers have left me behind during the last six months, maybe we can work on building something new for both of us together?" Mana suggested.</p><p>"You know, you can always just maul and slash yourself whenever you feel like it…" Shogito stood up and slipped off his goggles to look at his hurting friend with his own two eyes. "You should just give it a shot. If it doesn't work, sure – whip and carve yourself away."</p><p>"Fine," Joshipa mumbled out and fell on her side, turning to Baiso's side of the room to look away from Mana. "I'll find you when I want to train."</p><p>Stein placed his hand on Mana's shoulder and pointed at the sorry-looking bed that Sekita had left behind in their room. Mana turned to the door and felt the handful of yawning staffers parading the hallways behind that door.</p><p>"Yeah, I suppose that my odds of going back to my room successfully in this state are pretty slim…" Mana sighed in admittance. "I'll stay over but just tonight."</p>
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<a name="section0700"><h2>700. Petal Last Resort</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A violet guitar with a layer of tempering to prevent it from breaking too easily, decorated with thick spikes just narrowly whizzed over Mana's nose as the magician leaned her back to move her upper body down in just the right angle to both avoid the unorthodox weapon and to mock its owner with how close she got to hitting her.</p><p>It might have been the mockery but Joshipa did not let up and continue to wail her hardened guitar around, bashing it against dirt and leaving mean ridges where the spikes of the guitar shred the ground as it would've minced through the flesh of her opponent. It was an interesting weapon and for someone who's only been at it for a couple of months, Joshipa had gotten quite the hang of swinging it around.</p><p>The magician vaulted over her opponent, holding Joshipa's shoulder with her right hand while her left weaved a hand seal. Activating her Rebellious Twist Jutsu, Mana spun her body around while upside down, disorienting and sending her sparring partner for quite the spinning trip. It might have been because Joshipa used to practice the Jashinist rituals and use their Curse Techniques but the young lady had a pain tolerance that was second only to the Guru himself counting down the ninja that Mana had encountered.</p><p>"You never did tell me how exactly your Curse Jutsu worked…" Mana said bluntly at the frustrated face of her opponent who was peeling her face off the dirt, still clutching her guitar in hand and ready to try and tag the elusive magician with it at least once.</p><p>"Wouldn't you like to know!?" Joshipa yelled out, running at Mana while swinging her spiked and reinforced guitar like she'd wield a battle ax. Her barrage of strikes was too relentless for Mana to just dance around, in addition, Joshipa had spent the last couple of months seeing Mana move and there were just that many ways one could have dodged a spinning ax slash.</p><p>The young woman screamed out in pain and fell flat on her back. Mana extended her hand to pick her hat and put it back on as she sat up and rubbed the aching back of her head, feeling it for lumps. She didn't like augmenting her body at all but if she hadn't – she'd have had thumb-sized puncture wounds all over her mid-section from the spikes on Joshipa's guitar.</p><p>"What was that? Still didn't work?" Joshipa wondered, pressing the top of her guitar to the ground for support of her whole body while the ex-Jashinist wiped the sweat off her forehead.</p><p>"There's a reason why I haven't used the jutsu, it's because I don't feel like I can pull it off under the duress of battle yet and this is the proof…" Mana sighed. Even with her experience, she got too stiff. She tried dodging at first but saw that Joshipa had her usual evasions covered up, she figured that she'd slip out with Flower Petal Sanctuary but that would have been pointless as she'd have evaded the hit but also not have actually done any training that day if she kept pulling that card.</p><p>Thus, Mana tried executing the foundation for her fighting style with most of her reaction time already wasted. Whether it was because of that fact or not, she flunked it hard.</p><p>"If you're trying to nail something, you can just practice that, you know…" Joshipa pouted. It was the expression of a kunoichi who thought that she was holding her sparring partner back. She's been known to adopt that look every once in a while, these last couple of months whenever she felt bad about her progress.</p><p>"I have no need to practice that fighting style anymore. I've been working on it for a year now and I can pull it off, just not in the middle of a battle yet. That's why I can't use it, it's unreliable…" Mana sighed as she realized that her partner wouldn't offer her a hand to get back up.</p><p>"Yeah, well… Not sure why you need it at all. You don't seem to be breaking any sweat knocking me flat when you're actually trying," Joshipa let go of her guitar, letting it hit the dirt with a husky thud as the young woman herself crossed her legs and sat down, staring at the ground with the long and pale fingers of self-loathing creeping up her neck. "Who knows if Lord Jashin would even forgive me after all this time…"</p><p>"No!" Mana refused to let the young woman entertain that thought. "You don't need that strength, those techniques. It doesn't matter how easily I can beat you during training, this isn't about a one-on-one fight, this is about honing our skills. We're not fighting so I'm not actually beating you – you're honing your skills with that weapon while I'm trying to even out some chinks in all the concepts for new jutsu I'm working on."</p><p>"But you keep asking me about them…" Joshipa looked up.</p><p>"Yes, I do, because if I understand how they work I can understand what you're good at, which can help me advise you on a fighting style," Mana explained. "I'd never practice vile jutsu like that myself."</p><p>Despite what she said, there was lingering thought in Mana's head. This freaky deity that these cultists worshiped demanded total destruction and slaughter in all battles though his Curse Techniques didn't appear lethal at first. In fact, Mana saw plenty of potential for non-lethal takedowns using something like the asphyxiating Curse Technique that Joshipa used to take down Sekita during her rampage. Mana would like to torture herself after every fight to keep in Jashin's good faith, supposedly, but she'd still have an unorthodox method of tackling unruly opponents, even if it was an incredibly wicked source of power.</p><p>"Well… They're sort of like… Rituals, you know." Joshipa stood up, revealing some of the mystery that she's been so secretive about all this time. "You fulfill a certain condition and something happens."</p><p>"Rituals?" Mana wondered. She could vaguely grasp the basic concept but her understanding of ninjutsu theory just didn't click with this explanation. Then again, neither did it click with something like Tanshu's Demonic Pentalimbo that was essentially a sealing technique which was a ninjutsu technique that was transferred like a genjutsu.</p><p>"Yeah, take the jutsu I used against Sekita – Curse Technique: Flogging of the Pure, its condition is that the target has in their possession an item of mine. Once they do, I initiate and end the jutsu through a ritual dance. Once one rotation of the dance moves is complete, my opponent goes through an excruciating collection of fracturing bones. An arm might break, sometimes a leg, sometimes a few of their ribs…" Joshipa shrugged. It did seem like she was going through a sense of longing just speaking about those techniques, just speaking about them made her feel powerful and she missed that power.</p><p>"It seems like a combination of genjutsu and ninjutsu. It's a highly demanding concept, your chakra control and skill in execution must be exceptional!" Mana noted. It was both an attempt at building up her partner's spirit as well as a genuine suggestion of where she should focus her fighting style. "I'm not suggesting you drop your guitar completely but the crux of your new style should focus around ninjutsu or genjutsu. You'd likely also excel at sealing techniques too."</p><p>"Your fighting style, how does it work?" Joshipa wondered, brushing right past the compliment. Mana felt like it would have been for the best to tell her what she wanted to hear, maybe her own work might have inspired some ideas in her sparring partner too.</p><p>"It's supposed to be a sort of genjutsu that's triggered by another genjutsu," Mana explained, she couldn't even feel when her hands slipped inside the pockets of her blazer as she was talking about some highfalutin concepts that were meant to describe what she tried to achieve before being smashed in the face and knocked flat on her back.</p><p>"Huh?" Joshipa scratched the back of her head.</p><p>"Well, you see, genjutsu are usually initiated by something. You see some sign, the user's eyes, hear a sign or perhaps see an accessory they accentuate and you fall under it. I am trying to make the trigger of this illusion to be another illusion. People look down on illusions because they don't have tangible effects and since the medium of my intended illusion is in itself illusionary, it's tougher to make it work than you'd think. Easier when you're meditating or concentrating while standing still but hitting it in the middle of a battle is a different matter entirely…" Mana explained, still rubbing the aches from her most recent failure.</p><p>"You need to hustle a bit more…" Joshipa suggested.</p><p>"Hustle?" Mana muttered.</p><p>"Yeah, I mean, you have ample of tricks you can use to stall for time for you to get it right. You're moving all around the place all the time, I'd never hit you if we were just flat out fighting and you weren't trying to use that genjutsu-squared thing on me," Joshipa pointed out. "You need to fight like you're stalling for time."</p><p>Joshipa might have had a good idea there, though she didn't give Mana the right advice. Perhaps until Mana could, at last, get the execution of her jutsu just right she was better off employing other techniques to help her stall for the precious milliseconds of concentration that she still needed? Then again, perhaps she was trying to "square" the wrong illusions?</p><p>"Let's give it another go," Mana invited her opponent to come at her with her index finger. Saluting her opponent, Joshipa pulled her guitar off of the ground where it was stuck due to its weight and pointy accessories and prepared to come at her.</p><p>Joshipa yelled out, forcing effort through her airways as she raised the guitar over her head for an overhead smashing strike that would have left a spike etched into Mana's brain if it connected the right way and the reinforced surfaces would have smashed the magician's head outright. Mana's body dissolved into flower petals, Joshipa had been used to this method for escape but she wasn't used to what came next. Before her eyes, the petals became explosive tags that covered her entire body and filled her ears with a disgusting sizzle.</p><p>The goth chick fell on her knees, panting in shock. She looked down at her trembling arm that clutched her chest and wouldn't move. Through rigorous effort, Joshipa managed to just fumble on her side and crawl back from the reassembling image of her sparring partner before her.</p><p>"W-What was that?" Joshipa muttered.</p><p>"That was it," Mana nodded. "My mistake was that I tried to use the wrong illusion as a medium. The very point of my Flower Petal Sanctuary is to trick my opponent into attacking an illusionary self while the real me escapes harm – it's a perfect jutsu to stall for time and use as a medium."</p><p>"When those petals turned to explosive notes… I was terrified… As if… As if deep down I knew I was going to die. This shit's messed up, I've been around plenty of explosive tags, heck, I've used a shitload myself!" Joshipa hissed, she was confused and spiteful toward herself for reacting that way to something she deemed so elementary.</p><p>"People usually think that illusions are pointless. They think that fire or snakes or scary images wouldn't scare them but a skilled illusionist can manipulate your mind into being afraid of anything. It's just how high-ranking the illusion is. If I kept the illusion going you might have passed out or gone into what illusionists call genjutsu coma. It's a rather self-explanatory term." Mana explained.</p><p>"Wait, so you tell us how to feel, what to think of your illusions?" Joshipa scratched her head. "Maybe I should try genjutsu then…"</p><p>"Don't bother, if that's how much you took about the subject – you'd flunk at it," a rather mocking, feminine voice came from farther away. Mana had sensed the signature for a few minutes now but it was not as if it was unnatural to sense a ninja hanging around the training grounds. This woman was just one of the dozens of signatures moving closer and farther in the area so until she made it a part of Mana's training session, the magician had no reason to care about her signature.</p><p>Joshipa growled something unintelligible while mirroring Mana's turn to where the voice came from. Out came a woman dressed in a traditional Kumogakure uniform but instead of the baggy, black undergarments she donned a more revealing black bodysuit underneath. She topped her dazzling appearance with a large and thick, red fur coat that got stuck in the branches she attempted to elegantly move past resulting in a rather comically failed entrance to the scene as the dark-skinned woman was forced to liberate her fur coat before resuming her entrance.</p><p>"Genjutsu doesn't tell you what to fear, but it can manipulate your body to be more likely to fear something. You might not be afraid of a snake but you'll be wetting the bed if you have sufficient enough fever to make the snake grow a few heads and have you trip so hard that you could swear the snake has nanna's eyes on its front." The woman of long and curly, light purple hair stepped onto the scene, revealing to know more about illusions than she did about making a shocking entrance. "That's trademarked, now that I've said it though unless you take me up on my offer, you can't use that idea for your jutsu, by the way."</p><p>"I'm grateful that you've helped my partner understand the subject a bit better, I sometimes forget to speak in terms that someone uninitiated in the subject might understand, but this training ground is taken," Mana stated, staring the approaching woman right in her salad-green eyes.</p><p>"It's a good thing I couldn't care less about this useless patch of land. I'm here for you, Konoha's Sorceress!" the curly-haired woman stated before approaching Mana to where the two could look each other square in the eyes. Despite being of similar height, Mana found this Kumogakure kunoichi to be far thicker in build, almost looking like a slimmer man in that department.</p><p>"Hey, can't you see that we're training here? Mana's taken!" Joshipa hissed, jumping up and stepping in between the two in an attempt to hog some of the spotlight meant for her training partner.</p><p>"Oh, but I wouldn't mind recruiting you as well, Joshipa. Even if you were more careful to hide your Jashinist insignia, I am aware of your background as well…" the curly-haired woman turned to Joshipa as well.</p><p>"Have you been living under a rock? I've already got a crew of my own and I might be scummy at times when it comes to not eating the mayo in my friend's fridge or hogging their spotlight but I'm loyal when it comes to standing by my crew." Joshipa replied with a stern and adamant look on her face. "Plus, I've lost connection to Lord Jashin and I don't intend on chasing after it."</p><p>"Ah, I see, that's too bad. I've got no use for you in my crew then. You can hang around your pals in that case," the woman waved her hand, running the other one through her hair just to play around with it. Mana noted the heavy use of flashy make-up and a care for appearances that surpassed Mana's back when she was still worried about that sort of thing and performing on the stage. She had lemon-colored circles of glittery facepaint over her eyes. "Also, I've only arrived at the headquarters last night so yes, I am not aware of everybody's affiliations right from the get-go though that is a work in progress."</p><p>"Wait, you're assembling a group?" Mana wondered. "What for, exactly?"</p><p>"Oh, you know… I like to keep it in teams, that's where my skillset shines the brightest. Also, groups are just useful in general, we can be a study group, a friend group, a fighting team, a great array of different kinds of groups at the same time. I've got it on good authority that staff tends to notice that sort of stuff which might result in us ending up working together more often than not." The woman explained herself. While there was nothing unnatural in what she was saying, something in her defensive body language and the way she said it made Mana feel a bit chilly about buying what she was selling.</p><p>"Huh… So, what you're saying is that if I really don't want to have to work with some jerk bag, I might want to hang around a certain group of people and the authorities might notice how well we sync together?" Joshipa tapped her nose while concentrating on her thoughts hard.</p><p>"I've already told you, you're useless to me and my crew if you are no longer connected to Lord Jashin, now, ladies, if you will excuse me, this has taken me more time than I predicted which means I'll have to deal with another pest…" the woman yawned before turning around in a flashy manner that left her baggy fur coat gliding through the air as she threw a back strike and deflected something coming at her from behind. The weapon blitzed around in a wide, arcing trajectory before sticking into the ground, revealing itself to be a unique, double-bladed sword.</p><p>"Araki Endo, the ex-pupil of Gozen – one of the Four Godly Swords, you've answered my invitation to join the crew, I see…" the woman proclaimed, giving the emerging, all too familiar to Mana face of a spiky-haired young man with traditional clothing and baggy eyes that, despite their weary outline, beamed deadly intent at the flamboyant, wanna-be ringleader woman.</p><p>"No, I've come to slay the evil that is you immediately!" Endo declared while walking up to his double-bladed sword and pulling it from the ground. "Identify yourself, wench, so I can leave a name on your tombstone!"</p><p>"What did you tell him?" Mana looked at the curly-haired woman who was emanating emerald light from her palm to heal the wound on the back of her arm where she deflected the young man's blade. "He hated my guts before but you must have only made it worse…"</p><p>"I lied to him, of course, that we were plotting something nefarious. He did run away from Gozen's training voluntarily, before recruiting him I must make sure that he isn't some welp with a famous master and that he deserves to be called his pupil," the bombastic and glamorous Kumogakure kunoichi explained to Mana.</p><p>"Why am I not surprised to see the Witch of Konoha involved in your schemes? Perhaps it is for the better, I fully intended on putting my blade through her throat the moment she gives me an excuse to do so," Endo flexed around, spinning and tossing his impressive weapon around as if it was second nature to him. From what the young man let up to Mana with this display of warm-up exercises, he was an impressive acrobat on top of being an adept swordsman to wield a weapon like that while retaining all of his own limbs.</p><p>"That guy's so intense!" Joshipa pointed at Endo with a blush on her cheeks. "You shouldn't have antagonized him though. It doesn't look like he ever lets up his fervor."</p><p>"That is why I desire him in my crew," the curly-haired woman stated, running her hand through her hair before taking a balanced and stout taijutsu stance. "Though before that, we will need to calm him down some. I could appreciate your backing, Nakotsumi Mana, after all, I'm not sure in what mood the others will come."</p><p>"The others?" Mana rolled her eyes.</p>
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<a name="section0701"><h2>701. Meeting The Crew</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was this gnawing nibble in the back of Mana's head – a chakra signature in the vicinity which the magician could only vaguely identify. She had sensed it before though she hadn't committed it into memory just yet, likely because the circumstances were direr than doing so being on her list of priorities. Could it have been one of the "others" that this curly-haired ex-Kumogakure kunoichi was talking about?</p><p>No. It was rather large and there was not even a passing attempt at hiding itself as there would have been if it was confused about their reason being here or if its owner fostered any ill will or any intentions to ever join the fray.</p><p>"That chakra back there," Mana mumbled.</p><p>"Oh, you've sensed it? That's Nakotsumi Mana for you, yeah, I've gotten the permission for us to spar from the HQ staff just in case things go awry during the recruitment process." The curly-haired woman beamed a smirk at Mana as Endo buzzed his double-blade sword around, switching between his two hands while showing similar if not matching mastery of controlling the weapon with each hand.</p><p>Endo dashed in a deceiving manner. He didn't rush at the pair of kunoichi immediately but moved in controlled, quick, and deceptive sideways dashes. The pupil of one of the Four Godly Swords switched the distances of each successive dash, making it hard to impossible to trace or read him as he engaged both young women at once.</p><p>With arms emanating with blue flares of bursting chakra, the curly-haired ringleader engaged her would-be recruit before he could slice both of them into two, serving as the vanguard of their group. Despite demonstrating an ability to deal with the mastery of the two-bladed weapon with just her fists before, streaks of red following a fleshy, rending sound that filled the air demonstrated that this might not have been the case here.</p><p>Endo passed through the vanguard with a diving slash at her abdomen, completely eluding the kunoichi's attempts at blocking his assault while he proceeded to rush toward Mana. That was where he found his challenge for despite his astounding aggression and skill with his unique weapon – he was all that – aggression. It was exactly the type of approach that Mana knew how to deal with at close range as it was the one thing she expected to be countered by her entire career. In short bursts, as long as the enemy didn't have much time to scope her movements out and wear her reads and evasive moves out, she had such an engagement in the bag.</p><p>The curly-haired kunoichi charged in from behind, attempting to apply a hold and choke the aggressive swordsman out while he was losing his patience attempting to as much as scratch Mana and her elusive and disorienting approach to this engagement. It was as if Endo saw that exact attack coming as he threw a backward push kick straight to the young woman's chest and sent her flying back while he insisted on skewering Mana with at least one side of his blade.</p><p>Grabbing the middle section of the two-bladed weapon, where the hilt of it was, Mana weaved a hand seal, allowing a surge of Lightning Release chakra to pass down her body and shock her opponent away before his aggressive and acrobatic offensive could press her to a corner and reduce the odds of successful evasion. Endo skid back, slamming the blade of his weapon into the ground and imbuing it with chakra to avoid wearing and dulling the blade as he skid back from the rather violent pulse of the shock that stunned him. Smoke lingered from Endo's shoulders and back as he struggled to rise off of his knees.</p><p>"Comet Suplex!" the Kumogakure recruit yelled out as she wrapped her arms around Endo's mid-section from behind and tilted his body off the ground in an attempt to arc it and slam it behind her while she fell on her back as well. An alarming amount of chakra surged through her body, making Mana believe that the young woman placed a great deal of faith into the young swordsman to be capable of surviving such a slam.</p><p>There was little to nothing that Endo could have done in his situation but tuck his chin and brace himself for the worst to come. The ground swallowed his body up to his waist with only his braced legs dangling in the air, letting out a grisly twitch once in a while as the woman kicked up and returned to her feet before approaching Mana with an extended hand.</p><p>"Name's Shige-H, that was an awesome jutsu, we seem to be working together just fine and you're just a treat to team up with. Let's work together from now on!" she beamed a smile in Mana's direction. The magician extended her hand in return before it froze mid-motion.</p><p>Just what was she getting into here? What was it that she was signing away by accepting this handshake? Did this Shige-H truly know about Mana's past, would she be nearly as accepting if she found out what it was that Mana took the blame for? Was she just in it for Nakotsumi Mana or if she wanted the notoriety of the Konoha's Sorceress on her squad? No… She was one of the few around these parts to refer to Mana by her real name, not her stage name. Also… Mana promised and she was forced to learn that lesson over and over again – she needed to learn to trust people once more. Form new bonds and let go of the past.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana," the magician smirked with a subtle tilt of the corners of her lips as she answered the tight handshake with one of her own.</p><p>"What are you two prancing and hugging around for?" Joshipa tilted her eyebrow. "Kick that bastard to the curb while he's down!"</p><p>"You abhorrent cultist ratchet!" Endo bellowed out as he burst forth back to life and thrust his foot into the air, about to catch Joshipa unprepared and send her flying with just one good kick before Shige's hand locked around his heel and flung him aside.</p><p>"I'd rather you didn't involve Joshipa into this," Shige-H clapped her palms as if dusting them off before taking a shooting fighting stance and putting her dukes up. The flow of chakra that lacked any nature lit up in flares around her fists again, enhancing her power through the standard Chakra Enhanced Strength technique that the medical ninja used.</p><p>"She is a wicked wretch that needs to be slain!" Endo insisted, swiping his sword-holding arm behind him as he lowered the upper section of his body to be closer to the ground in preparation for his pouncing slash.</p><p>"I won't judge that as I barely know her but the matter of fact is that she isn't involved in our spar officially – therefore any attack on her person violates the rules that I've agreed with the staff upon," Shige-H replied with a stricter tone than she employed usually, more befitting of a leader who was keeping her goons in line.</p><p>"And why should I care about that? You're a walking corpse I intend to put down, same with the Konoha witch as well. Your wishes do not worry me," Endo yelled out. He appeared to be a hairline away from charging and cutting both of them down, Mana's look slipped onto the wound that still occasionally spouted out blood on Shige's side. Some augmentation was involved in keeping the bleeding in check but Shige was better off healing it as soon as she got the chance.</p><p>"And what good would being kicked out of the Allied Ninja be for you? Is that why you ran off from your master? To be kicked out and homeless again, wandering the world without a place to call your own?" Shige clenched her right fist, putting out the flare on her left hand and focusing all of that strength into just one of her hands.</p><p>Endo appeared to have taken that into the heart as he no longer looked to be too excited to jump into action and cut Joshipa down. Mana turned to the gothic youth and nodded her head, asking her sparring partner to end their training session early today so that she could settle this without putting Joshipa in danger.</p><p>"B-But… What if you get in trouble? You might need help, do you know what a drag it is finding a good sparring partner!?" Joshipa flipped out.</p><p>"You won't be able to help me either way," Mana shook her head. She could sense more chakra signatures propping up nearby, likely belonging to the other members of Shige's gang that she wanted to recruit, "You'll just be putting yourself in trouble with the staff if you interfere. You guys are already in trouble with the Allied Ninja so you'd just get yourself kicked out for something like this. Let me handle it."</p><p>"You guys?" Joshipa deflated as she turned around with a hunched back. "I thought that it'd be "we are" with you at this point."</p><p>"Shall you cease your incessant whining and remove yourself at once? Consider yourself lucky to have avoided your slaying here and now, ratchet!" Endo pointed his blade at Joshipa's back as the young woman proceeded to walk away toward the hive-shaped headquarters of the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Are you sure you still want to go like this?" Mana wondered, observing Endo's half-torn off gi and countless bruises. The bags over his eyes were now overshadowed by a few shiners decorating his face. The boy's forehead was cracked open and bled in a couple of crimson streaks all over his face.</p><p>"Silence your deceptive wiles at once!" Endo raised his blade behind his back by bending his arm backward and over his leaning body, in preparation for another attack. "Lest they be silenced by blood."</p><p>"Am I intruding something here? I feel like I'm intruding something… Did you guys already start without me?" a cloaked tower of a man wondered in a rather unusual-sounding, mechanical voice. It might have been a voicebox that this shinobi was using though because of his decent attempts at concealing any details other from the outrageous mask over his face, it was tough to tell anything about him except what Mana could read from his chakra signature.</p><p>"Walk away, jester, or that pretty mask shall roll on the ground separate from your shoulders!" Endo pointed the tip of his blade at the intruder. The confused man wore a plastic cylinder over his head that had a painting of a face on it – that of a famous and handsome man. Because of the proportions being somewhat stretched due to the face being covered by a cylinder-shaped mask and not a natural shape of the human face, the overall features of the mask left a rather creepy impression because of the smile and the gorgeous eyes smiling on the cover of the cylinder being so pointless and artificial.</p><p>"Look, man, I'm not trying to intrude on anything here but I was told to be here, apparently someone wanted me on their group and, I don't know if you've noticed, but a guy like me doesn't get invited into many groups so whatever's going down – I'm in." a limb appeared from underneath the cloak, an artificial one to be sure. Bone and vessels made of solid steel frames and wire while the muscle and sinew were strung together from some gelatinous substance coated in plastic of similar texture to the mask that the man wore. The limb only made a thumb pointing toward the chest of the enigmatic ninja as if to gesture and seal the deal of the man's acceptance of the deal.</p><p>"Excellent!" Shige-H beamed a smile of excitement. "Normally I wouldn't ask you to fight for me so soon before you even got accustomed to us as I know all too well about you but… Perhaps you would lend us a hand in settling down Araki Endo here?"</p><p>The tall, masked man appeared to skid across the grassland as he joined in on the group of three. It was tough to say what he was thinking or about to do with his successful efforts of concealing as much of his body as possible though every sign of his body language relayed the fact that he was willing to fight alongside the pair of kunoichi.</p><p>"As I've said, I'm just happy to be included!" the man's mechanical voice boomed.</p><p>"Hmph… I'll take it that this stooge is fair game to disembowel?" Endo looked up at Shige-H with a scolding glare.</p><p>"Yep, he's going to be part of our crew." Shige-H nodded while splitting the chakra enhancements evenly throughout her two hands again and taking a boxing-style stance.</p><p>"How apt that I would end up in a crew of corpses…" Endo muttered before launching himself at the entire group, seething with untold hatred as one of his hands weaved hand seals. The talent of performing hand seals with one hand was a rare one though it made sense that Endo would have developed it given the nature of the weapon he uses. "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"</p><p>Endo's skill with ninjutsu was significant for someone who excelled at fighting with a blade. Even Mana was caught relatively unprepared by the rushing gale that sent all three of Endo's opponents flying and struggling to retain their fighting stances so that they could respond to potential follow up. Just as Mana's Mystical Wings activated to settle her in the mid-air levitating position, a scarlet blur passed her, and Mana's black hair fluttered in the wind as her head rolled off her shoulders.</p><p>The two-bladed assassin would have rushed away from the headless, still jerking body but something halted him in place. Endo looked down only to see a shuriken embedded into his heel, spraying blood from his Achilles tendon. It was only then that the pain of it set in and the swordfighter noticed the swarm of rose petals blowing through the air, transforming into shuriken and whizzing right at him from seemingly thin air.</p><p>"Madness! Foul sorcery!" Endo bellowed feeling the shuriken cushioning his body and leaving it just a numbed pulp rushing with blood. The man looked down, witnessing the grisly transformation of his body into some twisted version of a hedgehog that had star-shaped steel projectiles covering his entire body instead of mere quills.</p><p>"Oh, but isn't Mana just a treat?" Shige exclaimed in joy as her entire body lit up with a surge of blue aura around it.</p><p>"Allow me, captain!" the masked ninja stepped out in front of Shige as blue jets of chakra shot from underneath his cloak, flinging his entire body drilling at the twitching and confused opponent who appeared perfectly normal to them, though hesitant to react or move out of the way of incoming attacks. The artificial arms erupted from within the cloak of the masked ninja in a rapid barrage of blows before one, good uppercut sent Endo off the ground.</p><p>The sound of reeling steel wire filled the air as the artificial arm hiding underneath the cloak of the masked ninja extended into the sky, pushing Endo with it before it snapped back into place in an instant. Blue jets lit up underneath the cloak of the masked ninja as he soared up into the sky with an uppercut aiming at his airborne opponent. The velocity of the strike, fueled by the enigmatic ninja's excitement to be taking part in this brawl, resulted in his cloak slipping off his body and falling onto the ground daintily.</p><p>Mana's feet touched the ground from the cover of the surrounding woods where she had slipped away after encasing Araki Endo in her illusion. She looked up at the landing member of her newfound group who appeared to be donning prosthetic arms and legs, the latter of which howled in amortization as they softened the man's landing. The only part made of flesh and blood of the man was his body. It was all covered in scar tissue as if the man had been at some point burnt to a lump of coal only to be brought back to life by some manner of ground-breaking medical ninjutsu but the scarring he bore must have been impossible to fully heal, similarly to his loss of limbs for without his prosthetics, this man might have very well been just a human-caterpillar of sorts.</p><p>"Well… I guess now you've all seen it, no way back now…" he muttered from underneath the cylinder that still hid his face. Likely just as affected by whatever had happened to this ninja as the rest of his body was. It somewhat explained the handsome man image stuck on the cylinder disguising him though it also made his image a lot sadder than if he came the way he was, without it. There was a man who still hasn't deal with the bad hand that he drew in life and Mana found that heart-wrenching.</p><p>Endo yelled out in pain after falling, clutching at his busted ribs, the young man had lost his gi, revealing only layers upon layers of bandages to be covering his body underneath, some of which had been in tatters as well, leaving them dangling in the wind and the moving air. With the aid of his twin-bladed sword, Endo rose on his feet and his eyes looked as determined as ever to go through the clash he had started.</p><p>"Well, if anything, this fellow doesn't seem to lack willpower…" Shige-H sneered, though she appeared to have expected to be already finished with this.</p><p>"It's not even that, it's that he appears to be growing in power…" Mana observed as her chakra sensory caught a whiff of something more sinister in the air – as if the young man had concluded in crafting his Killing Intent in the middle of this battle and had been looming over them all with his seething hatred for them and the desire to murder them all.</p><p>"What's wrong?" the masked member of their group wondered as he stretched his prosthetic arms to the sides. "No quip about what you see?"</p><p>"It is unfortunate what you have gone through and I have nothing but respect to a warrior who rises above and beyond and powers through such hardship. But as an aide to foul wretches such as these two, you are nothing but a demon that you appear as in my eyes and you shall be slain as such!" Endo exclaimed as he seemed to have lost none of his ability to wield his twin-bladed weapon despite taking a nasty pummeling. Quite the contrary, his lethality might have very much grown out of proportion because of this heat of battle as if though something the young man wanted to be forgotten and burrowed had begun resurfacing the more and more that the newly found group pummeled at the façade keeping that tormented darkness hidden.</p><p>Vision became inverted, the black outlines that defined the visual world became white while all other colors became pitch black as air stopped circulating inside Mana's lungs, and not even a single neuron in her body could twitch to send the appropriate impulses. Only her eyes fostered the strength to glance down, at tendrils of shadows consuming the entire trio, branching out from one massive shadow on the ground belonging to a figure as of yet hidden.</p><p>"I'm not sure what's going on here but when I see three people ganging up on one guy, I tend to take the side of the outnumbered," a weak and apathetic voice filled the air coming from the Nara clan ninja lurking and striking from the side at the rest of the group.</p>
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<a name="section0702"><h2>702. Four Out Of Six</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Yeah, I'd kinda like it if someone here explained what the heck's going on here…" a slim male with a blue top and brown, baggy cargo pants appeared from the cover of the woods as he wiggled his finger inside his ear. A static ponytail remained standing when the position of the young man's head shifted from left to right.</p><p>"I do not need your help…" Endo grumbled rising from his fall and stumbling forward, doing his best to regain and maintain the grip of his weapon well enough to execute his subdued enemies all at once. "Though rest assured, if your soul is wicked, I will slay you next as well."</p><p>Just as Endo kicked off the ground, aiming to charge through the subdued crew and behead all of them with one mighty dive, something stopped his in mid-air and quickly grounded him once more. Unable to manage the amortization, the youth's joints caved and made him kneel before the stationary Nara clansman. It had been a shadowy tendril that wrapped around Endo's heel, preventing him from acting upon whatever twisted idea of justice he might have had.</p><p>"Can you take it down a notch, dude. What's this about slaying people? I just got some random note inviting me here and, sure, technically, I'm a bit late to the party but I think if someone can give me a brief rundown of what's going on here, that'd be just great…" the Nara clansman ran his hand over the back of his head as he shifted between looking a bit guilty about being late and forgiving himself and accusing the rest of the crew of cutting it loose without him.</p><p>A lightning storm erupted outward, bursting forth from the shadowy blob that held Mana in the air, decimating the dark prison that the Nara held her up in, making the very casual and nonchalant expression of the Nara ninja change as his eyes widened upon Mana's disappearance. The young man grunted in pain as a kick to the back of his knee sent him kneeling and a jolt of lightning from Mana's Magician's Touch jutsu passed down his body, disabling him for Mana to press him down to the ground from behind.</p><p>"That woman there, Shige-H, is recruiting you into her crew. She seems to have intentionally antagonized some of those she recruited to test their abilities which is why Araki Endo there is acting so aggressively," Mana explained to him as she held the arm of the Nara ninja in a lock. Being someone who had resolved to never take any lives, the magician had ample ways of holding people down and forcing them to change their minds.</p><p>"Ah, I see…" the Nara ninja smirked with the right tip of his lips as his shape became floaty and incorporeal. The youth's back opened up in a black abyss as that lashed about with shadowy tendrils that aimed to both skewer and subdue anyone caught in the vicinity. Mana dashed back, disengaging her own armlock as it was no longer fruitful and riding an air current back to safety.</p><p>And here she thought that she'd be impressive showing off nature affinity type of shadow clones. A mesh of jutsu that ranked up as an A-Rank technique at the very least but this Nara ninja seemed to have been capable of sealing his clan hijutsu into shadow clones too. Moreover, he seemed to trick Mana, as if knowing that she was a sensor – transferring most of his chakra into the clone and leaving little reason for Mana to doubt the reality of what she had subdued. Now that she observed the reach of the shadows of the woods leaking into the cover of the forest, she realized that the Nara ninja had methods of returning at least some of the chakra they invested into this diversion back.</p><p>"I see… So you guys are just sparring then? That's lame, I'm out," the Nara declared while walking out from the forest and falling by the nearest tree, pressing his back to it as if he was preparing to take a nap there.</p><p>"It seems that we will need to work some more on convincing Skaven. As much fun as it's been tangling with Endo, he's becoming a nuisance…" Shige-H looked back at the enraged pupil of one of the four legendary samurai of the entire world.</p><p>"Leave it to me," Mana muttered as she stepped back to back to Shige-H.</p><p>"Are you sure, Mana-san? This man seems dangerous…" the masked ninja warned Mana with good-willed advice.</p><p>"He looks like a hardened manslayer seething in hatred. Just my type of opponent," Mana declared. "You're still to prove your chops as the leader of this gang, you can do so by convincing Skaven-san to join."</p><p>"Those are some hardcore eyes you've got. I'll remind you that you'll have to work alongside Endo when the time comes," Shige-H smirked, agreeing to Mana's proposition.</p><p>"I'll cross that bridge when I have to," Mana admitted.</p><p>As the massive cover of Skaven's shadows retreated, removing the danger of it getting in Endo's way again, Endo flung his blade right at the three people he saw as people to destroy rather than crewmates at the moment. Mana leaned to the side, feeling a sharp slit in her forearm as the buzzing blade covered a massive distance due to the size of the sword-staff. The all too familiar reeling noise of steel wire made Mana's hair stand up as she took more drastic evasive measures to avoid the returning swing of the double-blade sword attached to steel wire.</p><p>"I wonder how well you'll be able to engage in your witchcraft with that injury on your wrist," Endo hissed in a hateful tone. Without answering with anything, Mana looked her opponent in the eyes with a strict pair of eyes.</p><p>Endo was too proud of his skill with the blade, his strategic approach to disabling Mana's nuclear battlefield potential with one very well-placed attack, and he clearly enjoyed this too much not to allow Mana to beam her spite back at him with her eyes. That would prove to be his downfall in this sparring session. Endo flung his weapon buzzing vertically again. Missed Mana by a mile.</p><p>A rough yank on the steel wire manipulated his tool for murder into etching into the ground, something that allowed Endo to pull himself toward Mana with a push kick. Something that Mana blocked flawlessly with a cross-armed block and skid backward. Pulling his blade out, Endo let out a battle cry to power himself through his injuries and the daunting task ahead to slay the young woman he saw merely as a wicked witch that beat down a revered legend of the ninja world just for the kicks.</p><p>Despite his best attempts, his most honest swings, and attempts to pressure Mana into making mistakes, that was not what he saw. Endo roared again and again in frustration as his opponent seemed to deceitfully control the speed and rhythm of her evasion to almost a supernatural degree as not even a single hit of his landed. Every kick aimed at throwing her off balance for a thrust to the heart, any of drawing slashes aimed at her calves to stop her in her tracks, nothing at all connected.</p><p>Worst of all, the wicked witch countered with painful and well-placed jabs. She saw him right through better than he had ever been seen. Read him better than his master ever did. That was impossible. She was never this good, this perceptive and prodigious in the realm of swordsmanship and close-range combat to be this good. She had evasive moves before but that was just about it. He had dealt with evasive types and they fell every time. One good trip, enough pressure to make their hearts beat in overdrive and their bodies cave in to the unrelenting rush of sheer, edgy hatred coming their way was all it took to bathe the edge of either of his blades in the juices of their hearts.</p><p>Not this one.</p><p>She punched, kicked, and threw weapons at him at just the right moment. She attacked as if she was inside of his mind, reading through the weaknesses that he himself thought of when he attacked. Every time a fighter threw a cross, they prepared for an eventuality that the opponent might have countered and strung together a sequence of events to follow their attack up. It was as if Mana saw all of that if Endo thought that his swipe left his mid-section too open – that's where her next kick would come, digging her heel right into his liver. If he thought that a spinning motion was too cumbersome for someone so swift and evasive – Mana's kunai thrust into his kidney.</p><p>Dripping with sweat Endo collapsed to the ground, unable to hold his sword-staff any longer but still burning without a glimpse of temperance to his enmity toward evil. Eyes of hellfire and brimstone tried to stare Mana to death. With a bird-frightening bellowing, Endo rose from the dirt and continued to hack and slash at his opponent.</p><p>"Ummm… What's he doing?" the masked ninja wondered pointing with his thumb at Endo slashing at thin air. Not only that but he seemed to be grunting, roaring, and cursing at absolutely no one as Mana had joined their side in talking to Nara Skaven, clutching at the dripping with blood wrist of hers.</p><p>"It's an illusion of mine, one of the older ones I've not yet had the chance to use. He'll be fighting what he perceives as a perfect opponent, a nightmarish version of his enemy that taps into his own thoughts and fights him until he cannot fight any longer. Either that or he dispels the illusion already," Mana replied as Shige-H took her hand to quickly patch up the cut. It was a pity she couldn't have done anything about the scarlet stains on her white gloves, it wasn't like those were easy to come by in the middle of a rocky wasteland.</p><p>"Huh… Didn't he cut your hand? How did you do your hand seals?" Skaven pointed at Shige-H who at last finished gleaming her shine of emerald light at Mana's wrist, washing resonating pain away with a cold, flushing sensation as if it had cold water poured over it and it felt sweet and fresh through her very pores.</p><p>"I didn't need to. He looked me in the eyes and once I'm done molding the chakra for my Worthy Foe Jutsu – all the conditions for it are met," Mana replied. Seeing someone ask just the right questions and look as excited about her breakthroughs in the field as she was after stumbling onto them made it so it couldn't have been helped without her cracking a grin.</p><p>"You've got a pretty impressive bunch ganged up here," Skaven sighed and leaned his head back in the resting place made out of his own two interweaved hands. "It's just that I'm more of a loner-type of person."</p><p>"Look around you, do you think that many people wanted to hang around Araki Endo? He spent the last eight years of his life continuously fighting for his life in an active volcano," Shige-H pointed back at Endo who might have spent entire days sparring with his most dreaded version of Mana that his own worst fears continuously added on to.</p><p>"Shige-san is right, I've got to constantly worry if anybody ever saw a glimpse of my real body, wrap myself in sheets and curtains and make sure to hide my face at all times. I'm just so glad to have ever gotten the chance to be a part of something including anyone else but me," the mysterious ninja clad in prosthetic limbs pointed out.</p><p>"It's Shige-H, we're not yet close enough for you to call me Shige, and if you abbreviate it to just H – I'll rip that mask off your face and sock you right in your nose," Shige-H squinted at her much taller crewmate who instantly became flustered and began pacifying the situation and excusing himself, waving his prosthetic limbs around.</p><p>"What about you though?" Skaven pointed to Shige-H with his chin. "It's easy to point at people and tell everyone how dysfunctional they all are by their lonesome. What's your condition?"</p><p>"There is a chakra signature incoming from Skaven's direction," Mana stated before Shige-H could answer. She's been wondering it for herself as to what exactly prompted this outright obsession of Shige's to put a gang of these specific ninja together though she doubted that her esteemed leader would just answer it flat out. Still, what was even sadder was that Mana wouldn't much care either way – she just needed to work on stopping pushing people away and begin to see them more than just potential sources of danger and hatred. This gang was her shot at that.</p><p>"Nobody takes me too seriously. The Raikage, the other ninja I work with. They all look down and make fun of me, think I'm trouble just because I tend to be a bit obsessive and jumpy at times," Shige-H gleamed with a sheepish grin. "They don't think that I can amount to much, despite what I'm really good at, and they're right – alone I can't. If you want your footprint to be noticed, you can either be a big guy with a really massive footprint or you can have a bunch of people make footprints all around you."</p><p>"You're still hiding something, I'm out…" Skaven stood up and let out a lazy yawn before his voice became drowned out a sound of thrashing and the root of the tree he was just leaning to pushing him forward and making him stumble closer to the crew that Shige-H has been putting together. It appeared that not even that could make Skaven even remotely mad as he just looked at the massive mammal that rooted the tree out and flung it aside like a mere chew toy as if an excited young girl of spiky green hair seated atop of a massive, purple elephant with kanji markings painted all over it in red paint was something you'd see every Tuesday.</p><p>"Yo!" the energetic girl pumped her fist into the sky. As she opened her torso and chest up for examining with such an open gesture, Mana noted the belt of wooden boomerangs hanging over her body. Each boomerang had a stone with a sealing glyph and a smear of dried out blood on it, pre-packaged for something that came sealed within to come out without the ordinary delay and hassle of unsealing. "Where's the meanie that wants to carve himself out a manatee helmet?"</p><p>"Manatee helmet?" Mana looked to Shige-H.</p><p>"From what intelligence I could gather on young Tomi – she seems enthusiastic about animals, even more so than fitting girls her age. This goes far beyond your usual pony phase. Manatee seemed like the first animal to come to mind," Shige-H shrugged.</p><p>"I think Mana-san is more interested in the fact you lied to her about why you invited her here," the masked ninja pointed out.</p><p>"Who in their right mind thinks about manatees as the first animal to come to mind?" Skaven squinted while looking to Shige-H who just chuckled to herself while her blunders were being recounted before her.</p><p>"Okay… So… The thing is… You're incredibly late to the sparring session I had prepared for us," Shige-H butted her index fingers together while working to explain it to the hyperactive young lady sitting atop of a ninja elephant about why the curly-haired kunoichi had lied to her in the letter.</p><p>"It's not my fault that Zokaka here loves peaches so much that he needs brisk walks so that he doesn't get cramps while fighting," Tomi placed her hands over her hips as she directed a scolding glare toward her massively superior in size partner that towered over the entire battlefield. "I'm here now though, I hope that the poor manatees weren't already murdered or else I couldn't bear it!"</p><p>There was no need to test this girl's skills. As jealous as it made Mana to admit, if someone her age was capable of not only acquiring an animal contract with a ninja animal species but also impress someone the size of this specimen to fight alongside her – she had skill in spades. The strongest creature from the ninja rabbits that would agree to fight alongside Mana was a psychotic nitwit terrorist of the species who would have been a blow to her reputation to unveil now rather than something to behold.</p><p>"Don't get yourself worked up," Skaven looked up at the teen girl. "This woman here lied to most of us to get us to come here so that she could recruit us to her gang. At least in your case, your elephant got to eat up whereas it's all losses in my book…"</p><p>"Huh? Gang?" Tomi leaned her head lower to where her braid fell down over her head. The childish soul then fell back and began cackling as she pounded the back of her partner in a fit of hilarity. "Sorry, I'm more of an animal person. I hate most humans I meet."</p><p>"In that case, it might be for the better if you do join," Mana looked up to young Tomi with a genuine smile. "I used to love hanging around people, listening and talking to them, entertaining them, I've lost all of that at some point and I want that back. Working alongside one another might be a healing experience for both of us."</p><p>"You? Entertain people?" Tomi blinked a couple of times. "No offense, ma'am, but you look kinda boring to me… Like a… Waitress or something."</p><p>"B-Boring?" Mana's eye twitched though her sentiment appeared to be mirrored by the masked ninja to her left.</p><p>The magician flicked her hand, tossing her top hat to the ground as the hat rose back up atop of the head of a Wind Release clone that now hosted it on her head and saluted the little girl atop of the elephant only for the little bugger to erupt in childish giggling as she clapped her hands like a monkey toy. For someone in her early teens, there was a sense of childish glee and wonder. An apt lack of maturity for someone who didn't interact with people much.</p><p>"That's fun, I'll hang around with you guys if you show me more tricks!" Tomi yelled out without breaking the rhythm of her incessant clapping.</p><p>"Well, that's four out of six, well done, you…" Skaven congratulated Shige-H with a hint of sarcasm in his voice and a very uncertain thumb up as he walked away from the scene. If one drew the line at a colossal purple elephant of having seen enough for the day – who could have blamed them.</p><p>"Four?" Shige-H looked back at Endo who still tried chewing his opponent's limbs off after being utterly unable to lift or move his arms and legs anymore and bleeding all over the place from his wounds. "Well, I guess Araki Endo is still a work in progress…"</p>
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<a name="section0703"><h2>703. Gang Rivalry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Now, I'd like to talk a little bit about the Kumogakure international relationships. It's by far the most radiant point on today's geopolitical map so if you remember one thing after this course is done with and the exams are handed in – let it be that," a man with lively, dark hair and a full beard, donning a white gi and black hakama gestured toward the map of the world behind him.</p><p>Before the course started, he took some sweet time to place some pictures depicting various international relationship talking points as he now had both the means and the excuse to prod his bokken-like pointing tool at the location of Kumogakure and the picture depicting the Raikage's office in the middle of the day pinned nearby.</p><p>The general vibes in the room were pretty tense. There were plenty of Kumogakure ninja recruited to become Allied Ninja and the entire organization had their headquarters based in the Land of Lightning – a country best known for containing the entirety of the Cloud village within it. Mana had expected that perhaps these geopolitical courses would have a scent of Kumogakure bias because of it though she was pleasantly surprised by how fast things went right to the point of the problem.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess it's a bit unfortunate that I have to hammer this into your heads, after all, I used to be a Konoha ninja before joining the Allied Ninja so you might think I've got a personal agenda in dumping hot takes on Kumogakure external politics. That's a fair point for you to have, Konoha does have plenty to gain in criticizing Kumogakure who is its main rival in military power who isn't afraid of using said vast military power in gaining an advantage in other areas where Konoha has it beat. That being said, I am no longer a Konohagakure ninja so I just like I respect your right to take my opinion on the matter with a grain of salt, I'd like you to also humor me and at the very least hear it out," the tutor reading the course said.</p><p>From what little Mana had experienced of the prep courses so far – they had a rotation of Allied Ninja reading them to the recruits. Contrary to what she initially believed, the Allied Ninja did not employ people to just work as teachers and staff for the headquarters, instead, all Allied Ninja were staff when the need was present. Whoever wasn't out on a mission at the time might have been called up to watch the recruit hallways at night from trespassers, do yard work or teach classes to the recruits. Mana had chills running down her spine imagining teaching classes to recruits in the future, she could only hope that her experience working with an audience could supplement the lack of knowledge that she now felt like she had.</p><p>"Hmm… I expected Endo to be a bit more hot-headed about this topic but he seems perfectly calm," Mana whispered to Shige-H and Damisan, the tall ninja of the crew who preferred to wear masks and prosthetics and cloak his severely burnt and covered in scar tissue body from the Land of Wind whom she had a chance to meet since the crew first assembled.</p><p>"Heh, nice, Mana, glad to see you're keeping your eyes on the prize," Shige-H snickered, it did not seem like the failure to assemble the entirety of the squad she had in mind deterred the Kumogakure ninja in any way. Quite the contrary, she appeared to be even more determined and excited to get them into her crew now that they had a whiff of her intentions to recruit them.</p><p>"I'm… Not…" Mana's cheeks started feeling warm as she fumbled her way through the whispered words. "It's just an observation, he is from Kumogakure, Land of Lightning, around those parts, right? Kumogakure ninja are very stout, defensive, and patriotic about their race and their legacy and it doesn't seem like Endo is like that at all. That is all I meant."</p><p>"Sure…" Shige-H snickered with a full-teeth smile.</p><p>"Are the Kumogakure ninja any more nationalist than say Konoha's Will of Fire though…" Damisan wondered, his mechanical voice was not at all suited for muzzled conversation which immediately caught unwanted attention. Shige-H and Mana gave the absent-minded crewmate of theirs warning looks.</p><p>"It seems that this course is inspiring discussions already, that's good to hear," Sarutobi Takuro, the tutor of that day's geopolitics course couldn't have missed the booming of Damisan's mechanical voice from his elevated position on the stage before the entirety of the class of recruits. "Recruit Mana, why do you think that the other ninja villages, perhaps even other countries and their Feudal Lords are so hesitant to condemn Kumogakure's decision to annex Iwagakure outright instead of claiming their spoils of the coltan mines after the coltan conflict?"</p><p>"W-Well…" Mana jumped up. She wasn't at all keeping attention to what was being discussed by the tutor these last couple of topics so she felt glad for the fact that tutor Takuro voiced his question, improvising it from the current topic rather than having Mana answer a question they've already been discussing. "I believe that it is because of the coltan supply that Kumogakure is now controlling in its hands. The remaining world doesn't have the luxury to criticize and spoil the relationship with the leading export of coltan and military technology, also, the only manufacturer of radar technology in the world. It appears that on the political stage, the economy and trade is more important than basic decency and human rights."</p><p>"And don't you think that Kumogakure's vast military power plays any role in that? Perhaps the countries are merely afraid of Kumogakure to point their decimating Chakra Cannon towards them next and are bullied into silence or agreement?" Takuro wondered.</p><p>"Not at all, the coltan conflict has caused a strain on the Kumogakure economy that already was not its strong suit. Also, it has forced Kumogakure to pay a toll in military losses which has elevated Konoha as the new top military power in the world, as both of its strongest rivals – Iwagakure and its superior in Kumogakure have sacrificed that advantage for becoming the head of the coltan trade. I don't think that military plays any role whatsoever as most countries have means of fending off military campaigns from the weakened Kumogakure at the moment," Mana replied.</p><p>"Well… I see that some of you already see these courses as a mere formality. Whether you've been fighting knees-deep in these international conflicts, or you've just been hitting the books pretty hard – keep doing it, it's having the desired effect, recruit Mana." Sarutobi Takuro commended Mana on her reply and permitted her to sit back down before continuing his lecture.</p><hr/><p>"Hey, Skaven, have you heard Mana in that geopolitics course? She took that drill like a titan, don't you want to be a part of our crew? You'll be getting first-seat access to Mana's notes if you do!" Shige-H kept on hassling Skaven who appeared to be wanting less and less to do with Shige's the crew the more the woman tried enlisting him.</p><p>"No thanks, I'm good on that front myself," Skaven replied. He was. Nara clansmen were notorious around the world for their skill in strategy, research, and keen intellect that was never absent, just sometimes not developed and worked on in the case on the brawlier members of their clan. Mana had not a single doubt that Skaven would have graduated the prep courses without any of her help if not rivaled her own knowledge on most subjects.</p><p>"Finally, we're gonna see some real action next! Hey, whatcha readin'!?" little Tomi pointed her finger at Skaven as if he was a part of her crew and a good friend of hers. Something that Skaven was all too eager to deny with the glare that he gave the young teen. "You silly, didn't you know that you can't get better at warfare from reading a book!?" she chuckled.</p><p>"Shows how much you know…" Skaven hissed at the little kid. "You're lucky that Takuro-sensei didn't report you to the Supreme Leader and booted you out of the prep course for just standing up, growling at people, declaring that the class is boring and walking out."</p><p>"Yeah, what the heck was that all about? We can't afford anyone of our crew being booted out, we've got to stick together, Tomi," Shige-H postured at the young teen like a motherly figure which looked almost ironic given Shige's very risqué choice of style and attire as the striped fur coat didn't add her any style points in the classy category. "I know that the courses might be boring to you but at least try to sit through them."</p><p>"What's the bother? Didn't you hear? Mana-senpai has got this course thing on lock. All we have to do is use her notes for our homework and study them for our exams and we're through!" Tomi chuckled, leaning her head at her hands crossed behind her back.</p><p>"You know, you will be working on the field one day. This information might end up saving or ending your life…" Mana tried a different, more reasonable, and worrisome approach with the youth but she got laughed out of the circle for that even if little Tomi was the only one laughing. Her hyperactivity was sufficient for there to be no need for anyone else to laugh.</p><p>"Fine, I'll stop telling those teachers how boring their courses and topics are and will just nap the whole way through if that makes you guys stop making my back itch…" Tomi dismissed the concerns of the rest of the crew.</p><p>"Foul mutt witch, I wish to converse with you at once!" Mana's head twitched as a vociferous proclamation rung throughout the entire waiting room in between the large field where the war games and the military courses took place. With a slight hitch, Mana turned her head around to see Araki Endo scowling behind her. There were quills being sprayed from the youth's glares though they rushed in all directions, he appeared to be hateful toward himself just as much as he despised those he was laying his eyes on at that moment.</p><p>"What was it that you called me?" Mana asked as she approached the spiky-haired pupil to one of four greatest swordsmen in all of the world and looked him in the eyes.</p><p>"You are indeed wicked for the sins that you've committed. Had you not served a sentence for your misdeeds, labeled as a suitable one by the Ninja Tribunal, I'd have a moral duty to slay you where you stand at all times. You are a mutt for you have no legacy to call your own. Your only clan is that of swindlers and thieves and if there was any distinct heritage to the group you hail from, they've spoiled it by refusing to keep their bloodlines pure. Lastly, you do practice foul acts of trickery and deceive your opponents rather than overcome them, that makes the title of a witch and a trickster, a deceiver even all apt to describe you. Which part still confuses you?" Endo pouted his lips as he did not flinch for a second when looking Mana right in the eyes – something that proved perilous to him the last time he engaged in it.</p><p>Mana didn't feel her fists clenching, she first became aware of it only when her hands drew blood from her nails digging into the flesh of her hands with shallow cuts. It felt like the tips of her teeth would begin flying off in chips that would burst forth through her stiffened lips as something wet and chunky got stuck in her throat. It was a nice cost to pay for the tears that began forming in Mana's eyes not to surface. The magician turned and walked away. Nobody going out of their way to be this eager to thrust at her heart as many times as possible deserved anything more than that. She didn't even care particularly as to how Araki Endo came to know about the clan of wandering ninja that Mana's mother was from at that time.</p><hr/><p>"Welcome back to the field, recruits. It is the time to see if the skills that you've accrued from reading the memoirs of a Haoru of the Four Godly Swords and his experiences in the Second Great Ninja War will be of any use to you. Since we've got two whole hours to spend, it is time to put those warfare skills into practice. I understand that you may have been tricked into thinking that reading strategy books and studying combat tactics is all that we'll be doing here but you were wrong – this will be one of the few practical assignments, recruits," a familiar face that was there to try and subdue Sekita, riding in on a horse and using a spear in an attempt to defeat the expanded and empowered kunoichi, spoke to the group of recruits.</p><p>He was the second of the tutors teaching this course. The first one was the old man with an ushanka-style hat, familiar to Mana from that same clash as well. The magician was glad to see both him and this staunch and strong-sounding man survive the ordeal and recover fast enough to be able to teach courses again. Whereas the old man teaching the course before was much more into battlefield tactics and strategy, this one appeared to be keener on practical assignments.</p><p>"It is important for Allied Ninja to always have a step ahead of the village ninja in terms of strategy. In their missions they are often found to be unwelcome, always outnumbered by the local ninja and the sad reality is that it is all too difficult to have a village ninja face justice for a violent undoing of an Allied Ninja. That is why you must draw from the advantage of being able to study from the experiences of ninja from all over the globe and learn the lessons their strengths and defeats alike can teach you. It is a sole advantage you will have to leverage over the village ninja so it is important to make it a considerable one. Just to show you the difference that this course makes, I want to have a little bit of a survival exercise here today, more like a type of war game." The tutor spoke to the lined-up recruits.</p><p>The lined-up recruits were already bustling over the declaration of this war game. Some of them bustled in unease, Mana caught a glimpse of Skaven who seemed especially bothered by the fact that he might end up having to fight a bunch to pass this course and that he could no longer be rewarded through his keen intellect and skills in research as well as learning.</p><p>"I believe that this war game will demonstrate the difference between a group of ninja who have learned the adequate lessons of warfare and those that rely solely on their own power and the knowledge that they could have only gathered in their own background. I cannot take all the credit for this idea, for it was a group of graduating recruits who proposed this idea to me. They wanted to test the mettle of new recruits though they've requested a specific handful of them," the braided tutor with a spear, wrapped in leather, hanging on his back explained.</p><p>As if sensing that it was their cue to enter, a group of four ninja appeared in the doorway leading back from the field and into the waiting rooms. It was a quartet that was so familiar to Mana that the magician couldn't help but not to exclaim her disgruntlement and shake her head. She had a sense that she knew already where this was going the moment she saw Shogito, Joshipa, Baiso, and Stein take the field.</p><p>"Hello, new recruits, we are your senpai: my name's Shogito, this is Joshipa, Baiso, and Stein. Thank you to Mauma-sensei for giving us this word and this time," Shogito nodded his head with a slight bow. Judging from the look on tutor Bauma's face and how he raised his index finger up to argue, he might not have entirely agreed with the young man's sentiment to take the reigns over from him but he then relented, realizing that young Shogito may just explain this better than he would anyway.</p><p>"We've suggested that Mauma-sensei pits us against a group of promising new recruits just to demonstrate the type of difference that this course makes, just so you lot can get on board with the program and don't pout too much about all the reading you have to do for a course called "warfare", am I right?" Shogito smirked at the confused group of new recruits as he tried to get some of them to identify with him on this. "In any case, what we are proposing is a little war game – you'll be doing plenty of those here for your tests and the final exam too. It is a survival game of four against four. This field shall have four objectives put into place and the group that manages to pull off all four of them takes the cake. War games are a four-on-four affair which is why the four of us have come here to compete in good faith against four of you."</p><p>"I can see you guppies pissing your pants already!" Baiso pointed an accusatory finger at the very confused bunch of recruits who might have been taken aback by this but only because of how out of nowhere this war game was. "But we've selected the four of you to take on for this war game already so the rest of you can sit back and enjoy the show!"</p><p>"That's right. The four of you that we've asked Mauma-sensei to face in your first war game is the team of Nakotsumi Mana, Shige-H, Araki Endo, also, we're not sure what that guy's name is but… That guy too…" Joshipa pointed right at Damisan who let his steel and plastic prosthetics show from underneath his cloak as they planted over the mask covering his face while he gasped with a mechanical expression of surprise.</p><p>"What an unexpected development! Crew, our senpai appear to want to face the four of us. How fortunate that they've lumped us all together!" he turned to the rest of the crew, looking excited to be included in the first war game alongside his crew.</p><p>"Hmmm… You seem to have prior affiliations with that crew, Mana. Are you sure that you can face them in the war game on our side? I'll understand if you cannot," Shige-H glanced at Mana.</p><p>"Oh, I'm just eager to be done with this," Mana nodded her head, looking plagued by the constant presence of those four in her life here with the Allied Ninja. Just when she came to view them as her friends, they immediately formed attachment issues and decided to act upon whatever sick sense of ownership they believed to have over Mana with this stunt.</p><p>"Well then, now that your senpai have explained everything, let us make preparations for your first war game, recruits," Mauma pumped his fist out into the sky.</p>
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<a name="section0704"><h2>704. Let The War Game Begin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tutor Mauma pressed his hand against the field while the recruits that weren't supposed to participate in the war game lined around it in a square formation. Lines of symbols and sealing glyphs extended from where Mauma had placed his hand all across the field, forming complex, web-like patterns around larger, central sealing glyphs that gleamed with intense light.</p><p>"H-Hey… I'm standing on prosthetic legs, you know!" Damisan muttered reflecting on the trembling ground that gave rise to a varied battlefield that split the field into multiple diverse areas that intermingled by their meeting spots. It was tough to see the entire thing due to the trees and different formations, manmade and otherwise clogging up the view but it was a suitable environment to host something like a war game.</p><p>"Why is he lumped in with us?" Mana pointed her thumb at Araki Endo. "If memory serves, he's opposed to being in the same room as us, as he's making it painfully obvious every time he is around us."</p><p>"Yeah, about that…" Shige-H chuckled with nervous laughter, dragging her hand over her fur coat collar and scratching the back of her neck. "You won't believe it when I tell you…"</p><p>"Recruits!" tutor Mauma yelled out with a stern voice that put a swift end to the small talk and minute negotiations that were taking place. "This battlefield is split into four parts. Your objective is to utilize the four objectives inside to win the war game. Only the successful completion of all four objectives will stop the war game. These aren't normal war game rules because there are four members on each team instead of five so you would be smart to take note of it."</p><p>"I won't believe what?" Mana leaned in closer to Shige-H, breaking her stiff and straightened out stance in the process.</p><p>"Now's really not the time, I'll tell you later…" Shige-H waved her hand in dismissal, looking relieved to have an excuse to play it off.</p><p>"First – there is an informant dummy inside of the makeshift prison building located inside of this complex. Inside of the dummy there is a B-Rank seal placed guarding a scroll with information inside it. It will tell you the password that needs to be used to open up a mailbox in the village street part of the complex. Inside that mailbox there will be a tool that, used in conjunction with a tool hidden inside a construction site part of the complex, will help you in retrieving the final object from the underground laboratory tunnels that extend beneath this complex. I hope you've got that memorized because I will not repeat it, ready or not, the war game begins now!"</p><p>Araki Endo twirled his double-blade sword, slipping the sheathes over each side off onto the ground as he passed it between his hands. Shige-H flickered away in a puff of smoke with the apt use of the Body Flicker technique while Damisan corrected the cylinder covering up his face, turning to Mana.</p><p>"We should really flee and make a plan, I think…" he muttered as if all hope to win this war game was already lost.</p><p>"We do, I had hoped to find out what the heck Shige-H was so secretive about…" Mana sighed. As the wind ruffled the collar of her shit and her blazer, tipped her hat to the side, it dispersed an illusionary body double comprised of flower petals, making Damisan jump up and make a hasty retreat.</p><p>"M-Mana! You should have warned me you've replaced yourself!" Damisan yelled out, fleeing into the woods surrounding the starting area with impressive leaps that only someone with artificial and well-crafted prosthetics could muster up. Not only that but the Land of Wind native zipped and rode steel wire that he managed to apply gently enough not to cut through the tree branches he used for support.</p><p>"They fled, cowards!" Baiso punched his open palm with a beastly growl.</p><p>"Of course, they fled, they're putting a plan together in who will tackle which objective," Shogito nodded while stroking his chin deep in thought.</p><p>"Then why aren't we doing the same? They're getting ahead of us…" Joshipa turned at her jumpsuit donning, goggle-wearing friend.</p><p>"Have at you!" Endo yelled out as he dived into the fray of all four Allied Ninja, swinging his double-bladed sword around like he was looking to send multiple limbs flying with a single rotating slash. Shogito's backpack ruffled before bursting into leathery shreds as a quartet of mechanical appendages with scythe-blades attached to the very end wrangled out and positioned to protect him from the incoming attack.</p><p>"What the… What's this guy's deal!?" Shogito grumbled as the sheer force of impact and the deafening clang overwhelmed him, sending him rolling aside on the grass. "You're supposed to go for the objectives, dude!"</p><p>Baiso smirked with a sadistic smile as he grabbed hold not of the twirling blade that was incoming but instead the hand holding it, therefore subduing Endo's swing as he flung the trainee samurai over his head and slammed him on the ground on the other side.</p><p>"Is he some sort of an idiot?" Joshipa wondered, approaching the face-planted samurai trainee and stomping his head a couple of times. This only seemed to drive Endo madder for the young man thrust his arms down on the ground and spun his legs around, kicking at everyone around him while his arms looked for his lost weapon while he created some space for himself.</p><p>Stein fell on one knee, dirt shifted beneath his feet as the young man submerged underground while surfing the soil underneath. Without sparing the time for words, the stalwart Allied Ninja recruit disappeared underground and scurried off toward one of the objectives. Shogito observed the disappearing jet of shifting ground with an approving nod as his own mechanical appendages bent to his will, enforced by steel wire, and their scythe-like ends rotated like a chopping helicopter blades in a unique way to ascend to the air and hurry toward another one of the objectives.</p><p>"I'm off too, try to pummel him to the nearest objective ground, okay?" Joshipa gave Baiso a look, entrusting the painful demise of this young man who knew no retreat or strategy, only wrath and the blinding trance of battle. Baiso nodded his head in acknowledgment and cracked his knuckles.</p><p>"Cowards!" Endo exclaimed a cry that spent out all of the oxygen he still had in his chest. The young man picked up the weapon that he had dropped previously having moved closer to it and prepared to dispose of the only one of the four enemies that remained.</p><hr/><p>A howling gust carried a swarm of rose petals together into a larger clump that soon took shape of Mana as the magician cancelled out her illusion to appear before Shige-H. The two were close to a clearing in the woods which only had a small, clay dome with wooden door on it. If one had to guess, it must have been the entryway to the tunnels, the final one of the five objectives.</p><p>"What are you doing here? It's best if we tackle each objective one at a time!" Shige-H addressed Mana out loud though her voice couldn't shake off the defensive tone that she had before.</p><p>"What did you mean to tell me about Endo?" Mana asked again.</p><p>"Look… This… Really isn't the time!" Shige-H emphasized, directing Mana to move to the north-west of her current position – where the field arena emulated a busy village street with the mailbox that was needed for the fulfillment of one of the objectives. Without saying a word, just an irritated click of her tongue, the magician took off with a wind current fueling her flight. She'd be an easy target ascending over the woods like that but at least she'd be fast.</p><hr/><p>"Ugh… I didn't quite see where the others have gone…" Damisan sighed to himself and shook his head. "Stupid, stupid, stupid… Stupid and ugly… Now they'll kick you off the crew for sure! Got to focus!"</p><p>The cloaked recruit looked up and pushed through the thick coverage of leaves to see an opening surrounded by a brick wall. It was a square-shaped barrier that surrounded one of the notable battlefields unsealed for them by tutor Mauma. Damisan's prosthetic arm slipped out from the coverage of his cloak, the hand from the wrist up shot off, attached to a thick steel rope comprised of many intertwined steel wire strings and pulled the self-puppeteering shinobi up and over the wall, temporarily exposing his scarred and prosthetic-limbed body as he vaulted over the wall and his cloak rattled behind him.</p><p>"The construction site. Tutor Mauma said that there's supposed to be a tool hidden here somewhere…" Damisan recalled as he looked around the ruined ground filled with wooden logs and steel beams all over, multiple incomplete buildings in various stages of completion decorated the sixty-four square meter subtle makeshift conflict ground. Finding whatever tool he was meant to find here would be difficult and clash with the enemy ninja looking to claim it was inevitable.</p><p>The ground shook underneath Damisan's feet as he extended his prosthetic arm toward the nearest incomplete building and zipped up to one of its exposed floors. Whenever Earth Release ninjutsu was at play – it was a wise decision to stay off the ground whenever such an option was possible. A tall and broad-shouldered man with strawberry-blond hair filled with chips of dirt and gravel appeared from underground and fixed his look at Damisan almost instantly.</p><p>"Damn, he must have noticed my vibrations while he was underground. Would've been nice to have the element of surprise," Damisan sighed in disappointment in his own performance as he jumped down onto the ground, using the sturdiness and built-in amortization of his prosthetic legs to take the tension of the fall like nobody's business as the ground beneath him moaned in dull cracks. "Hey, there…" the Land of Wind native ninja muttered.</p><p>He was not yet aware that Stein was not known for his eloquence.</p><hr/><p>Endo grunted in pain when his back hit against a light pole and bent it like a twig. Baiso rushed in, throwing stiff power blows all around, just toying with his unarmed opponent and throwing him all over the place. The trainee samurai extended his hand to the side, reeling in the steel wire that he had attached to his weapon to return it back to his hands. He spared a moment to look around and realize that Baiso had busted him through the brick wall and into the yard of the makeshift prison facility which was exactly where one of the objectives was.</p><p>Endo's wrist gripped tightly around the handle of his weapon as he stood back up, his gi dirtied and lightly torn up and his face swollen in a few faces and decorated with shiners as it tended to happen when somebody who flicked hundreds of tons like it was mere feather decked you in the face repeatedly. Still, despite his injuries, despite the pain, the wear and tear, Endo's face was full of determination to fight on. Against this burly man and then his entire goon squad, one by one.</p><p>"You're like a bruiser's wet dream…" Baiso cracked his knuckles with a rich smirk on his face. "No matter how many times I keep dishing it out on you, you just stand up and scowl at me begging for more!"</p><p>This time it seemed that Endo had taken enough. His eyes were different than before, sense and thought had disappeared entirely with only terror and madness flickering in a dimly lit lab where a cocktail for rage was being made and those two were the fundamental ingredients. Endo bent his knee, thrusting one side of his blade into the ground while he placed the other up and in the way of his opponent's hammer strike which sent splashes of blood raining all over Endo's hair and down his face when Baiso ended up hammering at the tip of his opponent's blade and skewering his own hand in the process.</p><p>"You are lucky that I do not mean to end your life, for you are not scum, merely a bastard," Endo yelled out with a face running down with his opponent's blood as he used his own sword's handle for a pole and vaulted with a pair of kicks aimed at Baiso's chest. Despite a neat effort, Endo's kicks bounced off of his opponent's body like peashooter's shots bounced off of a tank.</p><p>"You annoying little shit, I'll lay you out!" Baiso roared, charging with the shoulder of his now disabled hand's side and bashing Endo aside. Despite a rocking hit, the samurai trainee did not as much as grunt in pain. Vexed by the complete lack of input from his opponent's side in the mutual painful harmony they were making, Baiso turned to the sword that was once more left etched into the pavement and pulled it out.</p><p>With sadistic eyes the burly brawler watched Endo's hand twitch in response to the sword to which a steel wire attached the limb to moved. Baiso pulled the weapon in, whipping the fallen young man closer to him as he charged onward with a running clothesline that seemed to behead the samurai that had a penchant for punishment and spat out a tremendous amount of blood as he laid in a little pool of it on the floor just underneath Baiso's raised foot looking to squish him like a bug.</p><p>Just as Baiso's foot shot down, Endo, revitalized seemingly just by his own willpower to keep fighting, rolled on and wrapped his legs around the heel of his opponent as he positioned the brute face-first onto the cement floor in a leghold. The young samurai reeled in his own weapon back as he moved his body over that of his fallen enemy and stuffed his sword in between Baiso's teeth as he bent the brute's body backward in an intent to break the back of the monstrous taijutsu user.</p><p>Endo's eyes widened in shock when Baiso growled and snarled and bit through the center of his blade-like it was a biscuit. The samurai trainee dashed off of the fallen body of his opponent, holding what remained of his unorthodox weapon now merely two separate short swords for each of his hands. Baiso rose, wiping blood off of his mouth as his teeth had moved inward into his gums a few inches from the sheer physical effort it took to bite through a weapon of such fine craftsmanship and chakra coating.</p><p>While it appeared that Endo had met his match in terms of someone who was willing to push all boundaries of how far he dished out and took violence, judging from the stance of God Sword's pupil, he knew how to handle duel wielding short blades almost as well as his preferred double-bladed weapon.</p><hr/><p>"Are you seriously just goofing off?" Mana asked Joshipa who sat on a nearby table and stared at a couple of mannequins with fake food and empty teacups by their sides, looking bored.</p><p>"What am I supposed to do? My team doesn't have the password yet, meaning that there's no use in trying to nail the second objective, right?" Joshipa sighed, changing the order of legs that she had one over the other put on the table. The heels of her long, leather boots clanged like two knives brushed one against the other. "Plus, I can't even eat any of the food or drink anything because it's all fake. At least the people are all fake too so it's not a total bummer."</p><p>"You could make it easier for your team by finding the right mailbox in the first place," Mana suggested.</p><p>"Or, I could take you out and do my whole crew a favor!" Joshipa jumped off of the plastic chair, pushing it aside with her buttocks. "I should pull out your heart from your ribcage and stab through it while it's still beating, maybe then Lord Jashin will take me back to his ranks?"</p><p>"I think you're overreacting a little," Mana stretched out her arms, letting the steel-tipped cards in her sleeves all slip out from their holding spot and flex in a current of air formed in between each of her hand as a chakra molding exercise.</p><p>"You took a bite out of our crew and stitched yourself into it, then tore yourself right out, if anything, I should pull your body apart and make you see how it feels!" Joshipa took her taped up weapon off her back and peeled the tape off of it, revealing the spiky-edged guitar in all of its glory. Had Meiko been here, she'd have without a doubt geeked out how much that thing looked like an ax when taped up and hanging off of Joshipa's back.</p><p>"I wasn't aware you felt this close to me," Mana replied. "That's the problem with your crew, you're possessive whether the person you're obsessed with wants it or not."</p><p>This wouldn't be just like all those times sparring this past couple of months. Joshipa had gotten much better at using that thing without any of her Curse Jutsu while Mana picked up a trick or few of her own, completing plenty of what she was working on before her imprisonment.</p><hr/><p>Shige's screams filled the underground halls of the tunnel. She hadn't noticed that Shogito had hung himself over the ceiling and so he managed to get a drop on her. Now his scythe-blades got lodged into her shoulders, her back, and her sides. Something much punier but also much warmer wrapped around the injured body of the Kumogakure ninja as she tried struggling out of this deadly hold. Shogito had wrapped his own arms and feet around her while his mechanical puppet limbs removed and inserted themselves into Shige's wounds over and over again, stabbing at her repeatedly.</p><p>The floor was cold beneath the knees of Shige-H, made warmer by her own blood trickling down and accumulating beneath her as the possessive pest had his arms and legs fixed in a stranglehold while his puppetry tools continued to work on Shige-H, looking to wear her chakra augmentations thin so that the blades go all the way in and not just leave shallow gashes, maybe puncture something she needs and can't heal easily. Shige jumped up, slamming her back and Shogito clinging onto it back into the ceiling with her Chakra Enhanced Strength fueling her motion.</p><p>Shige-H wasn't a violent person, having trained most of her life to save other people rather than kill them or see them suffer but when this fellow that stabbed her sixty times with varied success croaked in pain – a wave of pleasure washed over Shige's nervous system. At least she got the bugger off of her at last.</p><p>Though maybe that was just the blood loss introducing itself to the young woman and warning her of her impending fainting if she didn't mend the situation she was in due to her oversight.</p>
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<a name="section0705"><h2>705. Of The Hardcore Principles of Friendship</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Earth Release: Earthquake Slam!" Baiso grunted, slamming his open palm into the ground and rumbling the ground beneath his feet as the pent-up tension forced the ground to erupt with a jet of pressurized force that continued to split the ground as it raced toward Endo, causing violent earthquakes that made avoiding the rushing force that much more problematic.</p><p>Endo focused his chakra into the soles of his feet, propelling him into a great height up and over the rushing jutsu and the ravaging quakes as he tossed his two fractured blades up to free his arms for hand seals. Endo was not the type of ninja to employ ninjutsu often, preferring to punish his opponent with his blade rather than fight like a ninja, though given how his bruiser of an opponent just employed a powerful ninjutsu technique, it was up to him to follow that up accordingly.</p><p>"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" Endo yelled out, blowing out a powerful wave of air from his lungs that was meant to crash into Baiso and grind him with the stone that was underneath his feet though the enemy was surprisingly tough. The misfit brute just raised his hand up and pushed through the oncoming gust, remaining on his feet and stone-walling Endo's attack.</p><p>With a falling kick to Baiso's rocker, Endo shook the giant and left him on wobbly feet as the Allied Ninja recruit then reached out with his hands only for his separated blades to land into them at the right time for him to begin his sadistic dance around the enemy, slashing and dashing past him with his blades in hand, utilizing both the strength of his entire body when he swung but also the building up force of acceleration as he moved around the battlefield to prevent Baiso from pinning him down. The brawler growled and grunted as his measly black bodysuit parted and split, sinking in squirts of blood where Endo managed to get past his wobbly defenses.</p><p>The pain must have only aggravated it all. Baiso charged with his shoulder put up and blasted Endo onto the ground. A burning sensation filled the young man's lungs and escalated throughout his body as a visual inspection revealed a bloody trail where his body skid across the hardened cement as a signifier that his chakra augmentations were beginning to fail and he would take more damage to his body from subsequent attacks than he'd want to take ideally.</p><p>"Whole 'nother class, runt!" Baiso snarled as he punched his own open palm. Even with all the shiners he took from Endo, with all of the apprentice samurai's attempts at putting him down and working with his broken weapon, it only seemed to drive Baiso more insane in the end. This one wasn't much for technical prowess but he was an abominable physical juggernaut.</p><p>"Wind Release: Storm's Grip!" Endo grunted, weaved a single hand seal, and extending his hands out while he blew air from his lungs. As the current of air passed the triangle formed with his index and middle fingers as well as his thumb, it became a powerful force of gale that picked even the burly Baiso off his feet and lifted him up into the air, surrounding him entirely in a perpetual cyclone that seemed to leave the fearsome brute clawing at the air and his own throat as the gale prison began feeding on the oxygen within Baiso's lungs to sustain itself longer.</p><p>Baiso smashed both of his fists against his chest, popping the Storm's Grip like a bubble as he plummeted to the ground wheezing for air. In his bloodshot eyes, it was easy to make out that the brawler wanted nothing less than to tear the apprentice samurai apart with his bare hands but with all of his air being sucked out of his lungs he could no longer breathe.</p><p>With a crazed grunt, Endo flung his two blades spinning at his opponent while he rushed toward him to engage him with his bare hands. Baiso jumped back, covering the entirety of their battlefield arena in the process due to unnatural bulk and power, focused in his lower body before the burly brute launched himself across the entirety of the open prison ground with a spinning kick again, shooting right at Endo's chest and sending him flying into the far-off makeshift prison facility with enough pent-up energy to blast a pillar of a pressurized shockwave through the building's roof upon Endo's entry.</p><p>"Punk thinks he's hardcore…" Baiso grunted to himself, cracking his knuckles and neck, continuously wondering why this mad youth would continuously throw himself at insurmountable odds and opponents vastly larger and stronger than him. "Ain't nobody more hardcore than me…" the burly brute muttered, spitting blood and teeth aside, still feeling aching in his lungs and chest as well as his mouth which he used to bite through a chakra coated weapon.</p><p>"Now, where the heck is that guppy informant?" the brawler mumbled to himself as he walked through the hole of his own making and looked around the dimly-lit prison. As he stepped passed the rubble of his own making, looking for the informant dummy he was meant to find in one of the cells, he couldn't quite make out the crackles of lightning surging up around him nor could he make out the scent of boiling blood reeking throughout the entire building due to his concentration on the search.</p><hr/><p>"I have a feeling that you have some unprocessed anxiety toward me…" Shige-H wheezed in pain as she moved her hands armed with an emerald glow over her body ravaged by stabbing wounds that enclosed to the size of small cuts as he waved her arms over them. "Cause that was a bit vicious."</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress was our friend, you have no right to take her away from our crew!" Shogito clanged his four steel appendages by their scythe blade parts in front of himself as a warning of the pain that would come if Shige-H would continue this struggle. "Just when we were beginning to form a bond, you took her away from us!"</p><p>"Bond? That's funny, you don't even seem to know her real name," Shige-H pulled the wrist of her sleeveless, pink glove to tighten the glove's grip over her hand as she prepared to engage the leader of what would have been a group of her upperclassmen.</p><p>"Shut up! I've been following Konoha's Sorceress ever since she's first appeared on the Avalon magazine!" Shogito exclaimed, pulling his hands in as the chakra coating around the steel wire used to puppeteer his mechanical limbs became intense enough to be visible for just one moment. Two of his mechanical appendages dropped their scythe blade ends and left them hanging at the end of a string of wire as they were left with an empty opening that soon lit up with a flashing, golden light.</p><p>"Self-Puppetry Secret Art: Taser Flash!" he grunted as a jolt of electricity left each one of his appendages and, in the limited space of an underground tunnel leaving little place for Shige-H to move around in.</p><p>"Lightning Release: Static Field!" Shige-H spread her arms out, emitting a vociferous buzz that filled the endless halls of the secret underground tunnels with noise comparable to a thousand swarms of giant hornets all flapping theirs as fast as they could at once while a barely visible field of static electricity blew Shige-H's hair out even more than the mess that they already were.</p><p>The taser blast from Shogito's direction seemed to disappear as the static field absorbed them in their entirety while Shige-H moved in on her opponent, delivering a combination of empowered blows that forced Shogito to offer his two tasing limbs as a sacrifice so that they prevented the rushing powerhouse from pummeling him up close. Shige's blows tore through his hardened and constantly upgraded puppetry appendages as an industrial buzzsaw tore through a sheet of paper while the medical ninja leaped over the bottom two appendages to move in on her opponent with a risky maneuver.</p><p>The entire tunnel structure rumbled as both combatants collapsed onto a lower floor of the tunnels located beneath them. A floor they'd have ended up finding had they navigated the confusing tunnels long enough to discover one of several staircases though they now ended up having taken the quicker path. Shogito cowered underneath Shige's feet, desperately crawling back with a broken nose and busted goggles as the ex-Kumogakure kunoichi loomed over him, preparing to strike the finishing blow.</p><p>"What you don't understand is that you've never had a bond with Mana. You know nothing about her, none of her likes, you don't care about her weaknesses or why she's here to join the Allied Ninja. You don't offer her anything nor do you particularly need anything from her besides the great and flashy Konoha's Sorceress being your friend. She's just a showy figurine in your collection," Shige-H scolded Shogito with disgust seeping through her voice.</p><p>"And you're any different?" Shogito finally found the footing to get back on his feet and a crouching position at least while his mechanical limbs recovered from the stress of having taken a mean blow fueled by Chakra Enhanced Strength and blasted through the entire floor of rubble. "What the heck do you know about Konoha's Sorceress that makes you so much better friend to her than us, how come you're so high and mighty and don't presume to just be using her?"</p><p>"Because I've taken the time to assemble my crew. I don't lie to my crew about us not being friends. Though, maybe, in time, we will become more fond of each other. We're all ninja gathered together to make something more out of ourselves than we'd be apart. Mana offers plenty to my crew so yes, I do believe she is incredibly useful and handy in most situations but I also realize that's exactly what she needs right now," Shige-H reached out to rip the remaining two mechanical limbs apart, they lashed out at the medical ninja, stabbing through her calves but after wincing in pain, the medical kunoichi pulled them out and ripped them apart like mere strings and tossed them aside while she leaned down to tend to her wounds.</p><p>"What the heck are you on about!?" Shogito jumped up to his feet, removing his backpack and pulling on a special string attached to a ring sticking out to it which made a steel bar burst from the shredded-up backpack and transform into a staff with a circle of rotator blades at the end. "You've just admitted that you're gonna use Mana too but you're justifying it as if she wants that? Then you have the gall to act like you're so much better than us!"</p><p>"Our crew is not better or worse than yours. The fact of the matter is that I know where Mana comes from. I know that her entire world got pulled out from under her feet recently and that she's an individual who wants to do right and be a hero in this often cruel world. Helping and being useful to my crew will make her feel safe again, it will make her believe in herself again. Also, there are a few other things that she wants and I can teach her," the eyes of the curly-haired medical ninja lit up with bright flashes though, unlike the usual Lightning Release chakra that burst out from one's body, this outburst of chakra emitted not jolts and sparks of electricity but square pixels that dissolved into bright, smaller cubes after momentary exposure to air.</p><p>"And what's that?" Shogito exclaimed with a mocking tone.</p><p>"Plasma Release: Power Sight!" Shige-H chanted out, pressing her middle and index fingers to her eyelids and pulling them down slightly. Concentrated beams of what seemed like a very unstable radiance of lightning that behaved more like a stream of flames burst out from the eyes of the young woman, Shogito lowered his improvised helicopter staff and activated the rotation of its blades to block the plasma eyebeams, cowering in the pulsing heat of the white blaze.</p><p>Once the beam stopped, Shogito could no longer hold his own weapon in his hands for more than half of it had melted away while the lower, remaining half had become so hot that it made the thick, insulated gloves that Shogito wore burn out into fragile, black coal and scatter on the ground in powder shape.</p><p>"An advanced bloodline…" Shogito muttered finding himself short of weapons.</p><p>"That's right, a combination of both Lightning and Fire Releases, I've heard from Junichi-san that Mana has the ability to mold three Nature Affinities. That way she possesses more talent than she herself ever admits," Shige-H replied as her eyes settled down, red veins had shot out in the whites of her eye while her face still had bright light gleaming in the vessels leading up to her eyes that took additional few moments to subside and settle down, suggesting that this advanced bloodline was far less stable and polished than Shige-H would have admitted openly.</p><p>"That research… You've dug through the backgrounds of all of your crew members like that?" Shogito wondered, horrified as he was slowly walking back at a pace matching that which Shige-H was advancing toward him with.</p><p>"Not just all of my crewmates. I've done extensive background checks and research of over a hundred and fifty ninja, all of the current recruits being prepped for the field included and narrowed my ideal crew to the five that I've chosen. I find them to be ideal, not just because of their abilities but who they are as people, the troubles that hold them down. You see, I'm more than a medical ninja, I like healing people in more ways than one," Shige-H cocked up her fist, declaring that she'll do anything but that to the leader of the challenging upperclassmen if he continues to stand in her way.</p><p>Shogito turned around, ripping his bodysuit open and exposing six, small metal tubes scattered over his body as he looked up and behind him. Preceded by a chunky thud, a resonance of explosions shook the weathered tunnels as a barrage of explosive kunai fired from the surprising body modifications that the Allied Ninja recruit had done on him which gave him both a diversion and created an opportunity for him to flee.</p><p>The leader of her own crew approached the hole that her opponent had blasted in the ceiling. She could hear loud taps from her opponent's rubber boots slamming against the stone tiles as he desperately fled the scene, aiming to retreat from this battlefield and bolster his crewmates' efforts elsewhere instead though, with him needing to resort to such drastic measures to slip away, he must have reached into the bottom of his barrel and that made Shige-H wonder just how much more use he could have provided to his friends.</p><hr/><p>Stein clamped his hands together and spat out a handful of stone shards capable of fitting inside his mouth toward his opponent who rested on a wooden construction structure. Despite the fact that this was an Earth Release ninjutsu technique, he did not seem to need to speak any words which was both a testament of how much this young man had worked on cementing his fighting style to where he didn't need the additional support of speaking the name of his jutsu to use it but also worked as a handicap for him as it completely sheltered off any possibility of him using any jutsu of A-Rank or higher as doing that without being able to speak the name of the technique would have ranged on being impossible.</p><p>Damisan prepared to deflect the stone bullet but something struck him as odd about its angle. It was only when he noticed that the bullet was aimed beneath even his feet that he realized that the enemy was aiming at the platform he stood on and shattered the wooden beam, hardened by supplementary steel plates, that the impaired ninja stood on. Having lost his footing, Damisan plunged down, Stein fired an additional handful of bullets his way while Damisan was in mid-air, hitting him straight in the chest and leaving hand-sized holes in Damisan's cloak.</p><p>The cardboard platform on which Damisan had landed one floor lower shook under his feet and was about to tear open before the self-puppeteering ninja raised his prosthetic arm and shot out his hand attached to steel wire to hook him up to another wood and steel beam and yoink him up higher again. Once he raised himself up to the top floor of the construction project again, he looked down at his opponent.</p><p>"You know, I figured that as handicapped ninja we would kind of understand each other and that you wouldn't try to wreck my mask or cloak too badly… I don't like anyone else seeing what's hiding underneath, you see," Damisan complained, sticking the plastic finger of his prosthetic hand through one of few holes made by Stein's stone bullets.</p><p>He knew very well what his opponent was trying to do. By staying on the construction project and above ground, Damisan left his Earth Style ninjutsu favoring opponent at a disadvantage. While Stein looked like was capable in taijutsu as well from the side, Damisan had confidence that he'd still hold the edge in that department due to his prosthetic enhancements. As long as he stayed with a cool head and didn't play the game by the rules dictated by his opponent – he was golden.</p><p>Stein went through a myriad of hand seals before driving his hands down onto the ground. A pillar of dirt built up in front of him as if something was accumulating to burst from underground and it was causing undue pressure onto the soil from down below. The primal instinct proved itself to be the right call for the risen mound of dirt burst open, launching multiple stone pillars that came right toward the key bits and pieces of the incomplete building.</p><p>There were too many pillars and they were too widespread to counter them. The construction project shook and fumbled, leaving few to none platforms for Damisan to hook himself on to. The prosthetic-wielding ninja extended his hand and shot it out to the side, grabbing hold of a stone wall that had walled off this entire area and pulled himself up to that area instead, so that he does not end up under all of the rubble. It had been made of bricks and stone, leaving it malleable to a skilled Earth Release user but it sure beat landing on the ground where Stein had a whole myriad of ways to disable him.</p><p>That was close – had Damisan ended up under all of the rubble, he'd have been in real trouble as not only he'd have been underground but he'd have also had an entire building to worry about. Just as Damisan finished patting himself on the shoulder for surviving this attack and maintaining as good of a position as he could he noticed his opponent having walked up to the rubble and examining it.</p><p>"That bastard!" Damisan grunted as he realized that by bringing the whole building down, Stein had made it impossible for him to fulfill his objective without landing his feet firmly on the floor and examining the wreckage for the gadget he was meant to find inside that wrecked building. Not until his enemy was taken care of and not capable of threatening him or his crew in this war game.</p>
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<a name="section0706"><h2>706. Mending The Broken Bridges</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taking Joshipa on was troublesome. Even if the young woman wielded a weapon large enough to force her to use her entire body for its swings, making every blow telegraphed to a skilled evasive specialist as if she yelled it out from the top of a mountain with a megaphone, Joshipa had fought Mana plenty of times during their training sessions and knew some of her moves.</p><p>That was why Mana needed to pull out some new ones. The ninja magician raised her hands up and crossed them, flicking her fingers and slipping out a pair of steel-tipped cards from her sleeve. The two cards touched their edges down in the middle, traveling in a crossed trajectory and sparked a blast that was more smoke, flash, and noise rather than concussive force but it gave Mana the time she needed.</p><p>The literal white glove came off her hand as the magician flipped it over her head with a violent jerk and bite her finger, shuffling through hand seals at the fraction of a second and planting her hand onto the ground beneath her. Joshipa felt aggressive that day, just as Mana completed her motion and opened herself up, the guitar-swinging Jashinist charged through the smoke and flickering, flashy sparkles ready to crush Mana's skull but her swing was blocked halfway.</p><p>A claymore sword blocking the guitar at its neck from the right while an iron leg crossed in from the left, forming an adamant cross-shaped block out of two rabbits that Mana had called upon.</p><p>"Ya've got some nerve callin' on us now, Hatchling…" Usuzoku grumbled, looking as if it didn't take him much effort to intercept the assailant looking to do his summoner harm.</p><p>"Sorry, I hope you guys recovered okay from the last time, I needed moves that Joshipa hadn't seen before and you were the first thing that came to mind," Mana nodded her head with a blank expression.</p><p>"Mana-san! Where were you!? We were so nervous! You didn't call us for months and then just summoned us out of blue to… I'm not even sure, honestly… It hit us so hard and we've poofed away before even getting to say hello!" Usubane reacted with a more favorable reception of seeing her idolized summoner after a long break.</p><p>"Summons?" Joshipa exclaimed in shock and withdrew with her weapon in hand, choosing not to challenge these two rabbits in a struggle of power, especially since she had no idea what their skillsets were all about.</p><p>"I'll take it that you absolutely must settle this now? You won't just stand down and wait until one of our comrades returns with an objective?" Mana wondered with the advantage of six eyes being focused on Joshipa's reply instead of just her own natural pair.</p><p>"You've lied to me…" Joshipa quivered with a proclamation leaking with profound sadness. "Drove a wedge between me and Lord Jashin. Now the only way for me to ask him for forgiveness is to bring carnage on the battlefield. Maybe if I kill all of your crew in the most imaginative, vicious way I can think of, maybe then he'll forgive me?"</p><p>Mana closed her eyes as she didn't want the disappointment that she felt for this young woman to gleam right through from her look. Usuzoku gave Mana a wary, creeped out stare but the magician didn't even humor it, choosing instead to open her eyes and greet Joshipa's weeping and maniacal face with sternness.</p><p>"Stop looking at me with those eyes!" Joshipa roared out, flipping the table of her emotional stability and moving from crushed to absolutely livid in a flick. She shouldn't have opened herself up by raising her bludgeoning, spiky tool for murder over her head. Usuzoku moved in a brown blur, stepping past her in a gentle air tunnel that followed his swiftness that only rustled a few clouds of dust and gravel around the pair and shook the rings of flowers planted as decorations of the simulated village street.</p><p>"Double-Draw!" Usuzoku let a calm breath out while sheathing his claymore on his back and another, slightly smaller and more traditional blade to his side.</p><p>While the hateful scowl of Joshipa suggested that the scorned woman would have very much wanted to continue her charge and caved Mana's head in, the force of drawing slash with all two of Usuzoku's blades at once and the draft created by the speed of the ninja rabbit's movement caused her to flip over her back and land on the empty street as she wheezed in pain over the cross-gash on her chest.</p><p>"Go on…" Joshipa coughed up blood while she sat up on her side and began picking herself off the ground. "Laugh at me, mock me, tell me how disappointed you are. Do something but don't just stand there staring at like you're so high and mighty…"</p><p>"Mocking those that are hurting isn't my style and I want you to know that I understand. You feel hurt and betrayed and so you're clutching back to that buzz, right down the same rabbit hole you've worked so hard to crawl out of," Mana replied softening her expression. "Don't worry, I'm not going to let you spiral back down, I promised you, didn't I?"</p><p>"You!?" Joshipa spat blood aside before rushing to Usuzoku, correctly assuming that unless she picks off all of the ninja rabbits she'd stand no chance at ever as much as touching Mana. "You're the reason why I'm hurt in the first place!"</p><p>"Dynamic Entry!" Usubane chanted out as she kicked Joshipa in her exposed backside and sent her flying toward the fake and empty little restaurant built to the edge of this complex of the war game battlefield. Light sparkled as it danced on the surface of countless glass shards where Joshipa burst through while Usubane pulled her pink, shoulderless top-down to straighten it out and raised her fist up, pointing toward the hole in the window. "Don't you dare attack Mana-san or Usuzoku-san on my watch!"</p><p>"So that's your plan?" Joshipa rose up and emerged from the busted-up window, throwing broken rubble aside. Minor cuts and lacerations decorated her face and the torn-up parts of her top as she left the decorative building. "Just let your rabbits lay the self-righteous smackdown? Run away and hide behind their backs as you've hidden behind your crew?"</p><p>"I'm hardly hiding. Do you think I've chosen this place by accident? I can sense chakra, you know," Mana cut the ridiculous accusation down. "I know you're hurting. I can't really understand it, but I know you are feeling that way and I'm here to make sure you don't do something stupid. I'll do that by defeating you and preventing you from calling out to Jashin, keep your head straight."</p><p>Joshipa's arms were shaking. Mana wasn't sure if she was about to lash out again or explode into a wrathful, reckless charge again though her mood looked like both were just as likely. The movements on her hands were a bit stiff and her lips turned pale whenever Joshipa attacked. Mana feared for what she'd soon find out but she turned to Usuzoku.</p><p>"Zoku-chan, Bane-chan, I need you two to hold back for a second while I affirm something," she requested. Usubane hopped back with an obedient nod while Usuzoku cursed something down under his nose and crossed his arms over his chest. In a manner very much unlike her, Mana charged at her opponent after clapping her hands together and riding a wind current.</p><p>The magician stopped in mid-charge to let Joshipa's guitar smash into the ground. Joshipa might have been anticipating Mana's attack and swung up front to intercept it but her entire aching body was like an open book when she was using a weapon this hefty. Mana raised her hands up and flicked another pair of steel-tipped cards that brushed past Joshipa's shoulders, cutting her jacket open and exposing her bruised shoulders.</p><p>The goth-style Jashinist growled in wrath as she looked to raise her weapon off the ground and began swinging it at the magician but she found herself unable to move it one inch. Joshipa tilted her head in bafflement only to see Mana's image dissolve into flower petals while the real Mana hiding behind the illusion phased into Joshipa's perceived reality standing on top of the weighty neck of her weaponized, spiky guitar. The magician kicked off of her position, throwing both of her feet at Joshipa's chest while she focused an air current normally used for flying to emit a shockwave and bolster her dropkick. While still airborne, Mana weaved a signature clone jutsu hand seal.</p><p>A Fire Release and Lightning Release clone moved in from Joshipa's sides and slammed the airborne goth into the ground, pinning her down and ripping at her sleeves, exposing the ridges of scar tissue hiding underneath while the real Mana moved in between the two clones and reached down while the two clones flipped Joshipa on her belly and ripped her torn jacket clean off, taking a peek under her cut-up shirt underneath. It had been littered with various etchings most of which looked recently made and Joshipa's carved body barely resembled the gruesome scars that Mana recalled seeing on the young woman earlier.</p><p>"Heh, no wonder da Hatchling's 'andin' dis ere punk 'er arse. She's all cut-up…" Usuzoku cringed in disgust. "I'd ask ye to let me put 'er outta 'er misery but I know ye better dan dat…"</p><p>"You've tried reaching Jashin before this, haven't you?" Mana sighed. "He won't respond no matter how badly you're hurting yourself. He demands that you deliver a higher form of carnage, doesn't he?"</p><p>"Shut up!" Joshipa yelled out, struggling against the two clones, powering through the painful armlocks and through the gruesome flesh-churning sound that came as punishment for her defiance. She rubbed her face across the pavement, her front and her wounds punishing herself more and more as she went on with her fruitless struggle. "You don't know me!"</p><p>"I don't, what I do know is that I'm still your friend. That didn't change just because I've aligned with another group of friends. Heck, I haven't worked with my best friend for almost a year now and my team captain probably wants me dead at this point. You think that you're hurting and so you're hurting yourself further to stop it from hurting but what you don't consider is that this is hurting your friends, me, and those you recognize as your friends both," Mana replied with a shaking tone of voice.</p><p>"Don't you dare… Don't you dare talk down to me like you know it all. Like you know better! That's what I hate most of all about you, you're just like all those people telling me how to look, what to say and how to act, always looking down and talking down!" Joshipa bellowed out and smacked her forehead a couple of times into the pavement so hard that she cracked both the pavement and her head open. The pain did seem to inspire her some as the young woman used her dislocated arms to slip out from the simplistic lock of the clones and dispatch of them both with a high spinning kick and a high stomp.</p><p>Joshipa cried out in pain when the clones dissolved into a lightning storm and a blast respectively, throwing her in a violent fling across the street and leaving her powerless in the wreckage of the outside café where Mana found her. The magician couldn't believe her eyes which was why her right one was twitching in shock and her limp hand still hung in the air as if she could reach out and grab her friend away from harm.</p><p>"Ferget it, dis 'ere's maniac is outta kill 'erself. Let us take care 'a 'er, if she kills 'erself by yer hand, ye'll never fergive 'erself," Usuzoku whistled as if he was somewhat enjoying this sadomasochistic fighting style of the enemy.</p><p>"Zoku-san is right, please, Mana-san, step away, I know how heavy it would hang on you if this young lady happened to kill herself by accident this way!" Usubane turned to Mana with a plead.</p><p>Ignoring the pleads, Mana approached the battered and beaten body of Joshipa and sat down by her. Observing the chakra signature of the young woman that still rustled though to a very limited amount, Mana realized that Joshipa would be in no condition to lash out at her now or to hurt herself any further.</p><p>"Fuck you," Joshipa spat at Mana but missed her face as the bloody stain landed somewhere below the intended mark. "I'd kill myself just to give your self-righteous ass the middle finger and make you hurt half as bad as you deserve if I could still move my arms… I'd then be the first one to royally fuck you over."</p><p>"You are wrong," Mana stated. "I'm not talking down to you. I'm asking you as a friend, please stop hurting yourself and those that treasure you like this. Let's keep training together, just because I don't belong on your crew, it doesn't mean that we can't be friends. I realized it from the first time I met you guys that you were inseparable, you weren't just a group working together – you were like a family. I just don't belong anywhere near that but I still want to help you work through this and move past your Jashinist style. Let's fight again when you're all healed up and cleared for it. This won't count, if I pinned you down with my lousy taijutsu skills – it means that you should have stayed in bed and recovered today."</p><p>"Whatever… It wouldn't have worked anyway…" Joshipa calmed down some and just stared at the sky with a blank pair of eyes. "No matter how many people I'd have disemboweled, Lord Jashin would have never looked back at me again. Not after all those training fights, we had that didn't end in absolute carnage. You've tricked me with that and I knew it deep down the whole time."</p><p>"Wait a sec, da hell's a Jashin?" Usuzoku scratched behind his ear as his right one flapped and twitched in a pleasant tick fueled by the relief of his twitch.</p><p>"It's some mystical deity that permits the use of Jashinist Curse Jutsu," Mana replied.</p><p>"What da hell!? Ya mean da only god we got turns out ta be a massive prick!?" Usuzoku dragged both his ears down pissed off while Usubane slowly crept up to Mana and began rubbing her face in the magician's back.</p><p>"Guess so…" Mana sighed. "Somehow I'm not surprised one bit. Still, just because the only deity that we know of and can prove is some sadistic, evil bastard doesn't mean that we can't be better than that."</p><p>Joshipa began to chuckle lightly so as to not aggravate her numerous wounds before transitioning into a full-out riot just seconds later despite the pain and strain that it caused. Both the rabbits and the magician looked down at her.</p><p>"It's really crazy how easily you just take that in. Back when I realized that something out there is talking to me, it completely flipped my table," Joshipa proclaimed. "I mean… A god is out there, talking to us and working through us and he demands that we maim, torture, and slay all that moves in our way. What does that say about our universe?"</p><p>"I've been to other universes, I bet they've got a Jashin of their own too. I've spoken to the Author and fended off a crazed fan of our whole story. A wicked deity is just kind of par for the course at this point," Mana shrugged. "There is more than one way to be happy. Hundreds of thousands of people experience them every day, you don't have to appeal to some jerk god for that if you don't like it."</p><p>"Where were you this whole time, Mana-san?" Usubane finally found a moment of silence to slip the most pressing question in. "You've no idea how worried sick we all were that you just disappeared like that."</p><p>"Ye, some 'a us thought ye've gone on an' gotten yerself killed out dere an' dat we're left all by ourselves…" Usuzoku stated bluntly, devoid of any terror that had been gripping Usubane and only now slowly beginning to release her.</p><p>"I've been to prison, my chakra was sealed off so I couldn't have accessed any of you," Mana replied.</p><p>"I guess dat's why we couldn't 'ave summoned ya home to Forest 'a Death…" Usuzoku breathed out a long and hefty breath. "You 'ave a lotta bridges to repair, lil' missy…"</p><p>"It seems like that's all I've been doing ever since…" Mana sighed. "I'd like to visit and train sometime. I kind of feel embarrassed that I forgot you guys could reverse-summon me. Could have used some peace and quiet and friendly faces a long time ago…"</p><p>"So where is this? What's happening? Who are these people you're fighting?" Usubane wondered, looking down at Joshipa and freaking out when the gothic punk stuck out a bloody tongue at her.</p><p>"It's the Allied Ninja HQ, I'm working on becoming an Allied Ninja," Mana replied. "That way I can travel all over the world and perform at my World Magic Tour."</p><p>"So de rumors are all true, yer still doin' dose jerkoff shits and giggles…" Usuzoku sighed.</p><p>"Yep, nothing's changed on that front," Mana kindly smiled at the first ninja rabbit she ever got to fight alongside. "Then again, after everything, I could use a little bit of stability and things staying just the same."</p><p>"Yeah, well… Keep callin' someone else ta do yer tricks. Da great rabbit hero won't be embarrasin' himself like dat ever again…" Usuzoku grumbled before popping away. Usubane cried out, hating to be left alone as she wrapped her arms around Mana and pressed herself against the magician like a little sister before hopping further away and popping back home after one last bow.</p><p>"Yo, you were still holding back on me now, weren't you? Back when we were training, you were keeping secrets from me, you're keeping secrets even now, aren't you?" Joshipa asked, mustering just enough strength to lift her bloodied hand off the ground and point her fist at the sky over her head.</p><p>"Give yourself more credit than this. I've spent almost half my chakra dealing with you now, summoning multiple ninja rabbits at once, utilizing multiple elemental clones at the same time… It's hard stuff, you know, and all that just for a cut-up and unprepared version of you. Give it time, you'll be kicking my ass eventually," Mana offered her fallen, mad friend a warm smile.</p><p>"You're a dumbass, you know that? You mean you've used half of your chakra just prancing around and teaching me lessons? Fighting like that will get you killed out there…" Joshipa chuckled to herself.</p><p>"Yeah, people keep saying that…" Mana replied.</p>
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<a name="section0707"><h2>707. Comfortable Revelations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baiso scratched his head, letting his hefty hand sink in the rough embrace of his thick, spiky hair as he pondered on where he should have looked next for the supposed informant dummy. The burly recruit sealed every few steps with a strong stamp of his foot at the metal door keeping something important away from him, or so it seemed, but every time he kicked down the door nothing of significance was there.</p><p>An ornery roar filled the air. Baiso tried to track the source of this dreadful noise instead of focusing on picking through the rubble and junk filling the prison quarters but only received a stiff, metal sole of a boot planting on his face which pushed him rolling aside with ground-shaking power as the crazed humanoid berserker landed on his two feet, just barely keeping the upper half of his body standing, judging from his stance.</p><p>"Hey, hey…" Baiso grinned with a smug look as he stood up and wiped his busted nose and cracked forehead, staining his boulder-sized fist with red. "You just don't know when to quit, do you?"</p><p>Araki Endo growled like an animal, his fists were shaking from the unnatural tonus present in them. The blood running down the young man's body passed right over the iron rod that he held in his hand and dripped off each of its long ends. The heaviness of the blood dripping off of the young man's body weighed his spiky hair down and his eyes were whited out. It appeared as if though the body of the apprentice samurai could fight long past the time when his mind checked out.</p><p>"Just what sort of training did you do at that God Sword's place, huh?" Baiso chuckled, cracking his knuckle. "Seems like a joint I'd like to hit one day…"</p><p>It didn't look like Baiso was going to take Endo's chances at brawling with him at this point seriously. He was, after all, a figure who reveled throughout his life at being the toughest and strongest bastard around and he loved nothing more than when his opponent's tried to contest that. Whenever some fancy trickster came knocking with some unnatural set of techniques and deceit, Baiso tended to struggle but he was fine with that because he knew his role. He knew all that he would amount for in this life which made things a whole lot easier.</p><p>No iron rod swinging pipsqueak was going to out-hardcore him and he had nothing to learn in the art of unadulterated violence but everything to teach the world that sheltered itself away from such things.</p><p>Baiso and Endo took off at the same time, Endo growled and snarled as he twirled, lighting his iron rod up with the faint blue glow of base chakra as it coated the weapon as it spun around the apprentice samurai's body and smacked into the soft and mushy right side of Baiso's jaw, halting the man-beast's advance and throwing him off his senses. The monster of a man struggled and shook his head, trying to get himself together as the sock had clocked all semblance of sense and reason out of him. It used to be just the way he liked it but…</p><p>This wasn't just mindless animal instinct working Endo through this. No… The youth's movements, the impeccable footwork, the complete control over the tide of battle. He was more aware, more skillful now than he ever was when he was mindful and awake. The boy had a heart of a swordsman pumping the blood of honor and discipline but an attitude of a self-righteous brat punk that got in the way of that. By putting that punk to sleep, Baiso liberated the pure will, the honor, and skill laying dormant within.</p><p>It was dark, too dark to tell where the storm of hits was coming from but it was coming. The scent of blood filled the air, painful twinges made it impossible for Baiso to see a thing even in the few flashes of light he could get to illuminate his blood-coated opponent. Such a mindless state of pure willpower and skill was only possible to warriors who were commonly rubbing their backs at the shaving limits of life itself. Araki Endo was a man who had been brought to the brink of dying daily and came back from it, something Baiso did not know because of the pride he had in being unbeatable and impossible to match blow to blow.</p><p>Now the only possible move was one of desperation, Baiso rushed onward, arms spread out and scooped his opponent, no matter what position he caught him in. The swelling in his eyes made that impossible to tell but the burly brute made sure to put as good of a squeeze on his opponent as he could. Now that he knew the nature of his opponent's berserk power-up, he didn't need to worry about animalistic tendencies such as biting and clawing because no honorable swordsman would resort to such dishonorable methods.</p><p>"Gonna squeeze all juice out 'a you…" Baiso whispered to the ear of his opponent as the two got closer than they've ever been before. The burly brute locked his arms around the thin yet athletic bloody pulp as he put the squeeze on. Eluding his grasp in such tight quarters was next to impossible.</p><p>With a hop and a skillful toss, Baiso repositioned his opponent into a half-rack position hanging over his shoulder as the brawler continued to hop repeatedly, yanking and rattling young Endo's bones into what must have been mere dust at this point. Loss of balance… Baiso stumbled forward, walking into a stone wall augmented by steel beams and bust through the stone, leaving splatters of crimson over the rubble. The slippery worm smacked him across his ears, making him lose balance and control while he slithered out of his grasp and kicked him into the darned wall.</p><p>And then he was gone…</p><p>Pain… Silence. Pain… Silence. He was using his environment. Endo was no longer just an honorable swordsman colliding with an unstoppable force having accepted his own mortality and gambling on the chance that he would not die instead of fearing his demise. A blow to the outer knee sent Baiso down on the ground, just inches shy away from a pile of stone but a stomp to the back of his head made sure to finish the job. Again and again… After more than twelve stomps and there being no more stone rather than ground chalk on the floor the pain was no longer something notable.</p><p>The burly brute dragged his arm across his face and flung a wet arc of blood behind him. Jackpot. Most of it splattered behind him, hitting stone but something splat far closer to home. Baiso's weighty hand extended and grabbed a handful of spiky hair and enveloped around a coconut cranium of sorts, pulling him in for a ground-shaking punch to the gut.</p><p>After the impulse shockwave ringing through the entire prison calmed down, the brawler had to collapse on his back into a throne of rummage and straighten his arms and legs out while he wiped the blood off his face and worked on getting in control over his battered body again. Had his opponent not engaged everyone at once in the beginning, had he played his cards just a little bit better, he'd have actually done him in. Him… Baiso the Burly Brawler, the Monstrous Brute.</p><p>Not once has he met his match growing up amongst either the bullies of the Taro Island or in the prison of Jiro Island. Not even the self-proclaimed taijutsu experts amongst the ninja he faced as a mercenary could seal the deal. With each opponent and each beatdown taken only adding to the toughness of Baiso's knocking ringer and every mug he bashed in making him more and more frustrated and assured of his own unmatched penchant for violence.</p><p>Almost… Almost but not yet… What a crazy guy…</p><hr/><p>"Shit, it's gonna really suck but… I don't wanna get booted out of a gang after just finding one," Damisan shook his head, talking to himself as he fixed the cylinder covering his head and face as all the talking to oneself had made it shake and threaten to slip off. The walking assortment of prosthetic's pulled his artificial arm out from under the cloak and aimed it right at the scavenging upperclassman of his.</p><p>Smoke breathed out in jets around the end of his arm while rings of blue chakra bursts pulsed from the section of his prosthetic at the elbow. He could have simply fired off his hand as a form of rocketing punch, retractable via the steel wire but that would not have sufficed. The distance was too great for this manner of attack to be efficient, the enemy too tough to get done-in like that. He had to get rid of his own arm like that…</p><p>"Megaton Rocket Punch!" Damisan growled out as his right arm prosthetic separated from his body with a hefty pushback, sending him stumbling back ever so slightly as it blasted off picking up speed toward his scavenging opponent.</p><p>Stein noticed the flashy light show and performed a few hand seals, placing his hands on the ground and raised a wall of dirt and stone to block Damisan's attack. As cool as his mute act was, the upperclassman had underestimated Damisan. After all, the impaired recruit would not have gotten rid of his artificial arm unless the trade-off was of an extraordinary wallop.</p><p>The arm bashed against the wall and proceeded to send shocks that reverberated through the entire structure before lighting up with a bright, sky shade and going up in flames and a mushroom-shaped cloud while crackles of lightning chained up across particles of superheated, electrified air in the surrounding area.</p><p>Stein was tough, Damisan had not seen detonating one of his prosthetic limbs kill a ninja yet but he was used to it deciding a battle. He avoided using it in the beginning stages of the battle, perhaps that had something to do with it. There were better things to do in the early stages than to get rid of one of one's own arms. And yet, Stein laid flat on his back with only extensive damage to his clothing and patches of burns as well as a sense of broken bones and shattered ribs. His awkward pose on the ground suggested that much, at least.</p><p>Seeing his chance, Damisan reached out for the pile of rubble that his opponent was picking through, extending the hand of his left arm and shooting it out to pull himself up to it while his opponent was down. Did Stein just stomp with his feet? A stray stone crushing his arm answered that question. The enigmatic recruit grunted as if he could feel pain in his artificial limb. Despite none of his limbs being natural, he felt disgruntlement when they were smashed to pieces, not to mention the aggravation of realizing that he was no pinned down to the ground and within his opponent's reach.</p><p>Stein scooped his legs in a round whirl and picked himself off the ground, ripping his tattered top aside as he began weaving hand seals. A burst of chakra emanated from Damisan's foot as his other foot shifted, popping out three bird-like claws at the end which he used to both stamp at his Earth Style favoring opponent and rip at his exposed chest like a bird of prey.</p><p>A painful-looking gash spouted trickles of blood as Stein rolled back as if hit point-blank by another explosion. Damisan turned his attention to his smashed and trapped hand, zipping himself to the location to attempt and free his hand to give him some more movement, at the very least, given how he was now in his opponent's field. The noises of rumbling and whistling directed the enigmatic recruit to turn around and catch a boulder with his prosthetic arm like a ball of rags and smash it in between his artificial fingers as he deflected another but the rushing barrage of stones was too great and another boulder hit him straight in the chest – right where the soft spot was and where it would have hurt had Damisan's nerves not been singed off and deadened.</p><p>The boulder took Damisan flying with him. Throwing the rags that he wore for concealment of his body-wide extensive scars and revealing him to the cruel world that mocked and made fun of him when they wanted to do so and gave him pitiful looks when they didn't. Their greatest act of mercy was feeling pity for Damisan which only made him feel like the monster that they made him out to be whenever the world wasn't feeling merciful and lobbed insults at him.</p><p>The sharp noise of steel wire reeling in to no end informed the fallen recruit that the hand smashed under the first boulder had been now left where it was trapped while his remaining prosthetic snapped, leaving it behind. He could still rid of this arm too but the resulting explosion would be muzzled due to the absence of a part of the explosive.</p><p>Stein's breakthrough gifted him a few precious seconds that the Iwagakure recruit utilized in scouring the pile of rubble for the gadget that he needed but Damisan wasn't about to give him that much leeway. Base chakra colored flares pulsed from his feet as the desert-born dashed onward as if riding the buzzard's wings. Damisan tackled Stein down on the ground, bashing his broken prosthetic against his face before ripping a cord out of it and making it light up just like the last one did.</p><p>"Sun Lotus Arm!" Damisan bellowed, detonating his second, damaged prosthetic while pinning Stein down to the ground and riding the blast of his own creation now as armless as the scar of the desert Fennec had left him after bringing his own brand of justice to Damisan's village.</p><p>The armless recruit morphed his feet to resemble those of birds, giving himself hooked claws to pick through the rubbish so that he could locate the unfortunate gadget that had left both him and his opponent losing pounds of their flesh just to find it. Stein tackled Damisan from the side, out of sheer instinct the Land of Wind recruit almost tried raising his arms to intercept the goring charge but he seemed to have let it slip his mind that he just blew both of his arms up.</p><p>The Sun Lotus Arm had torn a few muscles out, leaving grievous flesh wounds over Stein's body. Before Damisan could identify the best place to hit his opponent at and begin stomping and kicking in that direction, a trio of boulders began levitating and spinning around Stein as if he had become some kind of human, vertical buzzsaw. Damisan felt a breeze washing away at his face. His cylinder cracked and shattered, forcing the recruit to scream out in shock and try to wrap his arms over his face, cradling his hideousness and crawl away into hiding but…</p><p>The light, the truth being out there burnt like he was a creature of the shadows. Like he was the last trace of the shadows being burnt to cinders by the emergence of the morning light. Stein stared right at him without uttering a word, whether because he couldn't or because he persevered the unsightly visage before him didn't matter. Now his crew would see Damisan if he showed himself to them! That couldn't happen! That must have never happened!</p><p>Screaming into the sky, the armless recruit dashed behind a nearby pillar and fell to the ground, beginning to quake erratically and drool as he fell on the ground. The shadow and cover provided him the secrecy that he needed but the truth was already out there and Stein had seen it. It didn't matter… It wasn't like he could tell anyone… Though… Who knew what the upperclassmen crew of misfits spoke of when they were alone.</p><p>With the corner of his true face, Damisan peeked from the cool shade that he hid in and saw nothing but a bowl of a cement mixer upside down. The fact that his enemy was gone meant that Stein used that distraction and moment of desperation to locate the gadget inside that cement mixer and bolt. Even when he was all alone, walking out into the clear with his face exposed felt like his flesh was burning all over again. Fire and light, they were all the same…</p><p>A desperate plight filled the air, an unintelligible grunt as Damisan kicked the cement mixer with his clawed prosthetics and tipped it over, spilling all of its filthy contents out and leaving it with a ripped hole on the side that Damisan could stick his head into and wear the bowl as his new mask. It weighed heavy, pulling Damisan to the ground with a mean hunch but the light was no longer stabbing heated needles into his pores. He was safe again…</p><p>Still, Stein had fled with the item. That meant that the enemy team was ahead of them in terms of objectives and that Damisan had royally messed up. His face might have been safe from being seen by his newly met compatriots but they won't like the fact that he came in short for their gang this time. They'll kick him out for sure, no matter if they knew his true face or not.</p><p>A blue pulse emanating from his feet sent Damisan dashing across the forest surrounding the construction site toward the location of the next objective. He had no idea which location Stein would have rushed off to but both of them landed their stiffest shots at one another meaning that there was still a chance that Stein was hurting enough to take him down and take the gadget away from him. Ultimately, the gang with all five objectives would be the one to win, not the one to find the final prize.</p>
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<a name="section0708"><h2>708. Violent Upbringings Warrant Violent Fall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A thick tree whirled from the outside area into the small, simulated street corner, smashing into and right through the fake café and raising a thunderous ruckus. Baiso walked in scratching his head, he was sure that he aimed for the dandy-looking magician but she was nowhere to be seen. He didn't even see her dodge.</p><p>"Took you long enough, dipstick," Joshipa let out a rough grumble still lying on the floor and lacking strength to move. "You better scram, Mana's not your type of opponent."</p><p>"I ain't runnin' from nobody who dresses like an attendant of some kind…" Baiso growled, throwing his gaze around in a desperate attempt to pick up on something even remotely Mana-looking.</p><p>A little, fuzzy, white rabbit hopped out from the wreckage of the café. Baiso leaned down to look at its pretty, red eyes as he sniffed his nose that drooled with blood and picked rubble out of his wild hair. The little mammal looked up with a lovely stare, almost hypnotizing the half-sitting powerhouse enough to distract him from handfuls upon handfuls of white bunnies hopping out from all over the area, flooding the place.</p><p>"What the…?" Baiso looked around. His confusion turned to wonder when white furballs began washing like a tsunami wave from over the café he just wrecked. The brute covered up and braced for impact as the wave of bunnies washed at him, rubbing their fluffy and soft bodies against him in ridiculous masses as the entire war game square became filled with rabbits.</p><p>"What are you doing?" Joshipa muttered with a weak voice that somehow still retained her usual sting.</p><p>"You fought that chick, didn't you? What do those rabbits do?" Baiso growled as he began shoving and kicking the rabbits aside but his brute force appeared to have little effect on the hairy predicament he found himself in.</p><p>"What rabbits?" Joshipa wondered before cringing. It didn't take long for the beaten Allied Ninja upperclassman to realize what was going on.</p><p>"If you're here, that means you beat someone and got the objective, right?" Mana's voice finally reached Baiso as the magician sat atop of a stray, horizontal steel bar sticking out from the totaled café.</p><p>"Stop hassling me!" Baiso roared out, smacking his fists together and sending a resonating shockwave throughout the field, decimating the bunnies like an ethereal vision as well as the faux image of Mana seated before him. The brute turned around to the direction of the magician's grunts to refocus his rising wrath to.</p><p>"Yeah, it took me a while to kick that angry brat's ass, he has an allergy for going down, it seems… Let's see if you share that team spirit…" Baiso cracked his knuckles as he began slowly approaching Mana while she picked herself off of the ground. She had Baiso in her illusion before but she needed some intel out of him, she should've detonated it immediately…</p><p>"C'mere!" Baiso snarled as he tried scooping Mana off her feet and into his grip but Mana hopped straight to his blindside with a backfoot stomp at the side of his knees. The brute growled in pain and fell to one knee. With stiff kicks aimed right at Baiso's busted face, Mana began reducing the bruiser down to something she could interrogate.</p><p>It took more kicks to the face of the kneeling brawler than she'd have liked to admit but after more of them than Mana could count to, the tough guy looked wobbly and his mean-looking nose looked even worse than it did when he walked in. The bloody drool reached all the way to the ground and it didn't look like Baiso tried to hard to close his eyes to restrict the blood from his cracked forehead from disrupting his vision.</p><p>He didn't need to talk, Mana grabbed hold of the bruiser's temples and began probing him mentally. It didn't take too long to see flashes of a pathetic looking mannequin inside of a rundown prison cell. Baiso must have viewed the brawl between him and Endo highly as various violent images and recollection of pain which the giant seemed to glorify were still fresh in his mind and the bruiser didn't shy away from them nor did he try to shelter these memories from Mana.</p><p>What did take some more probing, however, was the exact information that he saw on the prisoner. Baiso might have looked like a thick brute but his focus on the information that mattered was commendable. He didn't actively think of that intel. This was what made it more difficult – evidently enough the burly youth had ample training against mental interrogation as he did the more difficult thing and weaved the intelligence in between his memories.</p><p>It might not have even been a deliberate tactic. It was just as likely that it was just mnemonics, a way for someone in a rush and a shaken head to memorize a great deal of information. Walls of a facility of some kind, damp, dreary, and metallic in the colors that dominated the place. A party of kids ran down its halls, leaving a room in that hallway that had been sealed off with a door comparable to a safe. One kid, in particular, a small and sickly-looking brat had a familiar set of wild, spiky, brown hair though the features of his face were much gentler as if his face was still unflattened and, as of yet, unbroken even one.</p><p>Mana let the kids flee while her attention lingered on the door that they burst through. One thing of note in this entire gloomy place was the numbers 208 dyed on the door. The range of memories was not that long, usually one could only materialize a very narrow recreation of one's own state at the time as well as the general details they noted, that was especially prevalent if one recalled of a time that was well in their past. Had there been any other notable details, those would have been what Mana would have noticed instead of those numbers.</p><p>The fleeing wave of oblivion – a white void of that which Baiso either did not know or could not remember engulfed the magician, taking her to the next location. Somehow even gloomier and darker still – it looked like a warehouse except even tinier in size as it only hosted a handful of jackets. While the initial memories of this place gave Mana impressions of an orphanage – the price and quality of some of those jackets suggested that this was more like a school. A Ninja Academy, maybe?</p><p>"Hey, are you Baiso?" Mana heard a rather angry, childish request that seemed whiny enough to sound like its owner was about to voice a spoken complaint. True to the initial impression, a taller and much healthier looking brat compared to little Baiso before walked in through the one entryway and exit that this rundown storage unit had, walling young Baiso off from leaving and engulfing the cloakroom in shade.</p><p>"Yeah. You wanna fight?" Baiso, now with a much more familiar, crude tune snarled at the entrant who looked a few years older than him.</p><p>"You're some dumbass, aren't you? I'm three years older than you. You beat up my classmate today so you're damn right we're gonna have some trouble!" the entrant, accompanied by two others of indistinguishable features walked in closer to young Baiso. Mana could hardly contain a chuckle as she had no doubts that the reason why Baiso couldn't recall any features from these two was that he only cared about the squabble with this upperclassman.</p><p>"He made fun of the way I talk!" Baiso snarled again. The animalistic way he talked seem much worse at this part of his life and once Mana took a better look at the young man she realized why – his face looked like a bowl of mashed potatoes that had just had a brick flung into it. There couldn't have been a doubt that this troublemaker fought everything that moved.</p><p>The following altercation was mere splatters of black ink over a paper of scarlet. The little brawler must have felt so engrossed into the fight that he lost track of any sense even back then, making it of little mystery how come he could vaguely recall any specific details. By the time some semblance of clarity returned to the memory, Baiso was flat on his back in the corner, breathing through bubbly puddles of blood running from his airways though with a smile richer than a billion ryo.</p><p>"You deserve the shit you get, asshole. You picked a fight with an upperclassman five years older than you so you deserved what came to you. The upperclassmen say you just don't stop coming. That must have been why Yasu smashed your face into a wall for it. Dunno bout that rep though. You seem like a wimp that goes down just like anyone else to me…" the upperclassman turned to his featureless cohorts with a giggle. Now Mana understood why little Baiso had so much trouble breathing right – it was something that followed him all the way into adulthood. The injury sustained in a fight back when he was still just a human and not some senseless ogre of pure violence that he'd become eventually.</p><p>"I don't care if your runt of a classmate made fun of me, I'd have stomped his head into the pavement in any case. That's how I'm gonna make it into the Ninja Academy – I'll just kick the shit out of everyone that is about to make it until they either take me in or there's no one else left to take in!" Baiso spread his arms out and charged at the bully like an animal, tackling him to the ground and beginning to hammer at his face. Mana turned around, even if this memory contained some crucial detail, she didn't fancy watching a kid somewhere halfway across the world having his head bashed by arms that looked duller than a blacksmith's smasher.</p><p>"Wh…Wh…Wh…" something dull and awfully bubbly came from behind Mana. The magician turned back, trying not to focus on the state of the poor older boy trying to say something rather than focusing on Baiso's ecstatic grin. Covered with splatters of blood, the young boy stood up from his beaten challenger and began slowly approaching the two friends of his until they turned tail and bolted like an ogre from hell itself was chasing after them, looking to sit them both atop of a bamboo pole.</p><p>Mana didn't make any attempts to follow the chase, she stayed behind and let the memories wash her away and take her to wherever else they flowed. Something hard and dry was under her bottom. Recently washed sheets that still reeked of decay. It was a sight that Mana thought she'd know well – a prison cell, though hers was much more… Elaborate and ever-changing than this one. It was safe to say that Baiso had never been anywhere near Jigoku. Judging from the bloody shitshow and conditioning of children like they were soldiers in cold and desolate, damp facilities, that she saw in the earlier memories – this could have only been somewhere around the eastern part of the world. Kirigakure or the Archipelago, perhaps?</p><p>Voices reached Mana from the side, behind an open, thick, metal door that looked just the same as the safe doors from Baiso's educational facility where he got his brawling chops from. What felt odd was that Mana could hear the voices, she could turn in their direction but she couldn't move. A mere glimpse at Baiso, now significantly bulkier and more monstrous-looking, laid out on the busted bunk bed over a dead body who was smashed by the top bunk falling on top of him and crushing him dead when Baiso laid for some shuteye suggested a reason why this might have been the case.</p><p>Baiso could hear those voices too but at that moment he wanted nothing more than for them to walk into his cell and find him there just like he was lying there. Carefree, a malicious grin on his face, his dead bunkmate right underneath him, not a drop of blood drawn out of him yet his pale and rotting corpse sprawled out from messy wreckage of wood and steel framing yet completely of no concern to Baiso who continued to stare right at the ceiling of his own cell with a carefree, malicious smile.</p><p>"This is the new guy's cell, right?"</p><p>"Right, what a freakazoid, I heard he just swam up to Jiro Island and started beating the shit out of the guards until they took him in and imprisoned him."</p><p>"No shit?"</p><p>"Yeah, heard so too…"</p><p>"He's a hitman, right? Who's he after? Halberd or Toroi?"</p><p>"Who knows…?"</p><p>"More like who cares, nobody owns up to this guppy and he's freaking everyone out, time for him to go, permanently, if you hear my sneeze…"</p><p>"Sure, as long as my dragon tattoo is the last thing he sees and he knows not to mess with Toroi and his crew…"</p><p>The inmates all swarmed the open room at once. It was the middle of the night though Mana had seen more correctional facilities than to expect that any warden would keep any semblance of control around these parts. To be fair, control was to let these gangs run the place, that was the only way that this place would see anything remotely resembling order. No matter if this was the Jiro Island Containment Facility, Jigoku, or Rengoku, the way things worked was just the same.</p><p>"Holy…!" a few inmates stopped, pissing in their boots over the grisly sight of Baiso smirking at the ceiling while laying on top of his broken and positively reeking cellmate but the smell of blood about to be drawn prevailed. They rushed the cubical cell and one of them flipped a dirty sock over Baiso's forehead in an attempt to keep his head restrained while the others restrained his limbs and those who remained punched or stabbed at the new guy with their results from homemade recipes.</p><p>Some of the hitmen had more moxie than the others. Though the ultimate result was all the same, despite it – they all backed down with their hands too heavy to keep a solid grip over the shivs and decent-looking blades or smashed bottles. Most of them had cuts over their own hands due to improper handling and ruthless sadism when holding their tools of the deadly trade. Baiso's crimson chest lifted up and down a few times as the burly inmate sat up, his malicious smirk only grew sharper. His eyes were sunken in red though the bleeding was only internal as none of the inmates penetrated his ocular orbs despite numerous attempts.</p><p>Mana sighed, given how Baiso had now regained his passion for movement, this was just the right time for her to leave the cell and leave the burly brute to enjoy his treasured memories of yet another senseless rampage. The magician had no doubt that this version of the monstrous brute would lack what little semblance of restraint his childhood self had.</p><p>"Well, whaddya know!? I guess the dragon tat is the last thing I'll see of you guys!" Baiso snarled at the bloody mess he left of the place while staring at a torn off patch of decorated skin that was the only thing resembling sense in the brute's hands.</p><hr/><p>"208. WH. Dragon logo…" Mana muttered the password under her own nose after stepping away from Baiso and letting him hang powerless though still on his knees.</p><p>"What the fuck? How did you…?" Baiso growled as he pushed his burly hand down and forced his body to stand back up, even though he was on wobbly legs. "I smashed the damn puppet good so that you couldn't read what it said, I did…"</p><p>"And yet you didn't smash your own brain… Next time show less restraint," Mana aimed a strict look toward the particularly brutal young man that she now got to know a tad better as a result of taking a gander at the memories he associated with each separate detail of the password that the prisoner puppet relayed to him.</p><p>"Some goddamn witchcraft… Looking into my mind and shit…" Baiso shook his head and smacked himself across the temples to try and shake off whatever haze the momentary slip into his mind still lingered and held control over him.</p><p>Mana flicked the tip of her top hat, letting it roll off of her head and into her hand while she stuffed her hand down into it and set off the storage seal inside it. She had to rely on the Multi-Summoning Jutsu to call for two rabbits but there was no need for her to resort to washed-down jutsu invented by someone else for just one rabbit.</p><p>"Ji!" Usujitsa barked out overjoyed to be by Mana's side as he hugged the magician's lap and began rubbing his face by it.</p><p>"There are two more signatures coming in from the south and west. We'll have too much company to handle soon enough, get ready to cut loose. No murder. Anything softer is fine," Mana relayed her orders to Usujitsa with a strict tone. The absolute hell that she's experienced in Jigoku must have translated well through her serious gaze as the psychopathic rabbit just gulped with a fearful gaze and rolled away from Mana in fright. Then again, he was always easy to influence due to his limited intelligence.</p><p>"Another illusion, twerp!?" Baiso cracked his knuckle, charging at Mana while putting his shoulder out. He was fast, faster than even Mana could weave any hand seals. The magician rolled aside but she could sense an impulse of chakra leaking out from the charging juggernaut the whole time – it was some sort of enhanced taijutsu technique, something closely resembling Budojutsu from the Sun Disc Arena. The gust swooped Mana right back in Baiso's reach while the charging brute swatted her aside.</p><p>"Told ya you shouldn't have fooled around against me – you'd not have to reserve chakra right now on a lug-head like Baiso," Joshipa muttered with a weak tone.</p><p>Mana grunted in frustration while picking herself off the ground. It's been a while since she's been tossed around like this, not since Sekita. Baiso scooped Mana off the ground by her hair, showing off his flattened a thousand times over mug and his smile of dulled out and busted teeth, that same look he offered those prisoners he pulled apart with his bare hands.</p><p>"What's the matter? Your little funny-bunny ran away…" Baiso snarled right up in her face.</p><p>Mana only needed to clap her hands and send surges of Magician's Touch through her body to stun the dimwit in his heavy-duty boots and leave him dazed and stumbling again. Baiso threw his arms around, trying to swat Mana but he only dispersed a shower of flower petals that all froze in mid-air and began swirling around him, covering him entirely while one by one they all transformed into sticky notes and etched the markings of an explosive note onto them.</p><p>"The rabbit is for your crew. This is all it will take for you…" Mana muttered while her shape manifested behind Baiso and flicked her fingers, detonating all of the explosive tags littering Baiso and having the lug fall flat on his face with whited out eyes and drool from his mouth. Endo did a number on him physically, Mana tested his mental might as well, his consciousness only needed one good punt to shatter.</p><p>The problem was that Mana was standing around in the café where the second objective was at and everyone was homing in on the second one. The source of this problem was that an alarming number of Shogito's crewmates made it out with their objectives. Baiso landed a few good shots on her, tossing her around like that and Mana might not have had the stamina to keep up with two whole crewmates of Baiso's weight class but of a different skillset all by herself…</p><p>One could have only hoped that Usujitsa retained his ability to surprise and dazzle.</p>
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<a name="section0709"><h2>709. War And Peace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While Usujitsa scurried away with its squadron of fumbling clones to intercept the rushing duo of chakra belonging to the members of Shogito's crew, Mana began scouting her surroundings for a mailbox. Despite the wear and tear of the place, the magician spotted the metallic dome resting atop of an aged wooden pole without much trouble. It was a tad bent and out of place but it appeared to be mostly intact.</p><p>Mana tried to hurry up and open the mailbox up with the password extracted from the safekeeping of Baiso's mind at once but just as she rushed on toward it she felt an aching in her ribs and a hot boiling sensation in her thighs and where she took nastier bumps than she expected. Even with Baiso barely laying a hand on her, Mana still didn't feel too good and might have needed some medical ninja attention after this. It was a dreadful thought just trying to imagine how this bout would have gone for her had Baiso actually gotten his hands on her.</p><p>The mailbox had a scrolling mechanism, not unlike the childish, playful bento boxes from magazines. Despite some safes having the same protection mechanism, for whatever reason, the toy bento boxes were the first thing to come to Mana's mind. Maybe because she didn't deal with safes all too often whereas those common additions to kid magazine issues used to be a common occurrence in her day to day life during her Academy days?</p><p>Just as Mana finished scrolling the password into place, the mailbox let out a sharp pinging noise and its nose fell open like a released tin hinge. Frankly, seeing how thin and shoddy the material that the mailbox was made out of made Mana wonder just how tough would it have been to break into this mailbox but it didn't matter. Unlike extracting information from someone who had it, Mana doubted that breaking the box would have counted. Inside the mailbox laid a black cassette tape, smaller than the magician's palm. With a whirl of ethereal purple, Mana sealed it inside of her top hat and placed it back on her head.</p><p>"Konoha's Sorceress!" Shogito's voice pierced the deceitful silence that had taken over for a little while after Baiso went down drooling. The leader of the squad of upperclassmen revealed himself just before Mana prepared to leave this place for a quieter spot where the objectives might still have been intact.</p><p>"You fool! You should have attacked her while her guard was down, not yell your lungs out!" Joshipa objected from a humbling position of lying down on the simulated village street.</p><p>"I know better than that, Konoha's Sorceress never lets her guard down! Plus, if you try to run, I've got better chances at stopping you from long-range," Shogito proclaimed. Mana noted a handful of twitching metallic stumps that looked like parts of mechanical limbs similar to the prosthetics that Damisan used though likely more outlandish in appearance as Shogito was far less sensitive about restoring the human appearance and, in fact, wanted to build himself up as anything but.</p><p>Mana tsked her tongue, realizing that another problem stood in her way, one that managed to bypass Usujitsa. Shogito looked like he had been through a rough battle, his jumpsuit had been torn and dirty in places and even his head had signs of a mean-spirited beating so it might not have been too much problem taking the upperclassman down but Mana didn't feel even remotely in a fighting condition either. Her chakra has been more than half spent and she took some mean brushes with defeat against Baiso. If she made a mistake, Mana couldn't have been sure that such a mistake wouldn't have cost her group this war game.</p><p>Still, if Shogito beat whomever he's beaten, he had nothing to worry about and had ample time to just sulk there and spout whatever he wanted at Mana while Usujitsa took on his other surviving team member. Mana was at a massive disadvantage and it was one that would only be aggravated by standing around. Mana weaved her hand seals and directed her eyes toward Shogito.</p><p>"Polymorphy Jutsu!" she chanted out as Shogito clutched at his stomach and collapsed on his side, shaking his hands and legs out in front of him before he appeared to have completed his illusionary transition and extended his legs out, walking on all fours with his body almost brushing to the ground like some sort of insect.</p><p>Having found her chance to slip away, Mana rushed on and past the crawling Shogito who would have likely taken a few more minutes to grow accustomed to his new, beetle body to even try to dispel this illusion. It was not a high-ranking one though so as long as he had the feeling and control of his body, he'd have likely succeeded without much effort. Those few minutes and shaking off the upperclassman's attention was all that Mana needed anyway.</p><p>Explosions resonated far off to the west, it was not a single occurrence but appeared to be an inciting incident of an entire chain. Mana sensed Usujitsa's signature disappear, suggesting that the oaf rabbit with terroristic tendencies had been dispatched and that her diversion had served its purpose. Further off to the west where Usujitsa had been taken care of, there was still a strong chakra signature to Damisan, another one was incoming from the south – it was Shige-H.</p><p>So, her squad hadn't been entirely outclassed and beaten, their opponents had merely outplayed them by capturing the objectives first. The plight of her hazy body sent Mana fleeting southward to join with Shige-H. A stream of pelting stones came rushing from the west, smashing through the trees and making an uproar as it dictated its tremendous advantage in toughness against the terrain. The magician took a dive down, she got sloppy, her sides hurt too much and she didn't have much time to react. Nothing to hold on to, she just plummeted down on her side.</p><p>Mana felt her own hand pressing against her mouth and muzzling her scream in pain. Something must have stuck an explosive note in her shoulder and blown it up, or so it felt. There was nothing to grab on to so the fleeting kunoichi just slumped off of the treetop onto her shoulder. Maybe she did have a gnawing sensation at the back of her head that told her about the fact that she didn't have too much chakra to augment her toughness over and over again, that's to say if she trusted her augmentations too much to begin with.</p><p>Stein landed with his feet stuck to the de-branched tree as most of its limbs had been shattered and trimmed by the stream of sharp-edged stones. The shinobi stuck to the tree bark, standing horizontally, and then looked right at Mana with a serious glint of his eyes – he knew where she was immediately. Crying and whining, Mana wriggled further like a worm, adding every meter of distance between her and Stein warranted that her opponent might come short of range and need to close in on her. At this point, Mana would have preferred him coming close rather than smashing her from afar with another rock.</p><p>He didn't have much chakra left either, maybe enough for a pair of decent, average rank jutsu but that would have been more than enough. With tearful eyes, Mana weaved a one-handed hand seal in an attempt to put an elementary illusion together and buy herself some more time but blinding pain in her useful arm made everything go white.</p><p>The pain came washing like a tide, tendrils creeping in and wrapping themselves around Mana's elbow and then slithering over the rest of her body. He broke her working hand to prevent any more hand seals. Her left shoulder – dislocated, her right hand – broken. Stein moved without skipping a beat, rushing in by Mana's side and slipping his hand inside of Mana's blazer, checking her sleeves. Neither one of Mana's hands listened to her.</p><p>"You can't win, I took Baiso out and he smashed the puppet, I'm the only one who knows the password from the first objective," Mana muttered.</p><p>Stein shook his head. Something dull bashed against the side of Mana's neck.</p><p>Shige-H noticed shades of black and white standing out like a sore thumb in this thick, artificial forest so she landed beside it. Mana laid in an awkward sprawl, her expression was blank but an elementary inspection of her vitals suggested that she was still breathing. Her breath was slow but it was rhythmical and monotonous. Her life wasn't in any sort of danger but she was out and not in a state that Shige-H could treat in battlefield conditions.</p><p>Realizing from experience and common sense that treating all of Mana's wounds to make her viable to continue her offense on the field would take more time than it would take for the upperclassmen to complete all objectives, Shige-H took off. She should have been faster, maybe she could have helped Mana out. Still, Shige couldn't rest wondering who might have taken the magician out. She was the second most useful and versatile and certainly the most dangerous member of this gang.</p><p>Then again, the enemy group seemed to have some sort of baggage with the magician so it was likely that they all ganged up on her. The sum of her injuries might have been an expression of the wrath they fostered toward her translating into excessive fits of violence but it could have also been them knowing exactly how dangerous Mana was and making sure that she didn't single-handedly sabotage their plans for success.</p><p>Stein sat with his feet crossed in the ruined village street simulated in a forest opening with a stone pillar having been raised from the ground and providing shelter to a fallen kunoichi. Upon seeing Shige-H enter the fray, Stein calmly opened his eyes and stood up on both feet, preparing to face the medical kunoichi. That was when a rushing stream of air ripped a tunnel-shaped opening for Damisan to enter through.</p><p>"So, I've caught up with you!" Damisan wriggled on his prosthetic feet seeing how he no longer had any arms to shake at his foe.</p><p>"He beat you to the objective?" Shige-H wondered.</p><p>"Yeah… He…" Damisan tried jingling the cement mixer that he now wore for a mask like a giant bell making Shige-H become flustered and turn back at their common foe.</p><p>"I see… It doesn't matter. Let's dispose of this guy together how they ganged up on Mana. I've left that Shogito guy helpless so he won't be doing us much harm," Shige-H replied.</p><p>Stein didn't look like he was capable of taking both opponents down but he took a fighting stance regardless, clapping his hands together as well as hopping up and clapping his feet. When his feet touched the ground again, large chunks of stone separated from the ground and stuck together over Stein's body, forming a sort of outer layer of armor and making him into a living, armored golem of stone.</p><p>"No way!" Damisan yelled out, raising his right foot up and having blue flames of basic chakra release pulse from his thighs as his right prosthetic foot separated like a missile, careening off toward the massive golem that rose before them and detonating with an unmatched ferocity that resonated through the entire city street, toppling the lovely little cafes and other closed facilities as well as felling the large stone pillar on top of which Joshipa rested. The punk's eyes were whited out and her body didn't even twitch, suggesting that she was in no condition for either combat or spunky comments.</p><p>The newly made golem of stone collapsed one battered stone piece at a time, leaving a beaten and wheezing Stein on his knees with his arms weighed down from exhaustion. He didn't as much as grunt though his lungs were working overtime to compensate for the breaths he had offered in exchange for a few more minutes of active combat. Damisan's final prosthetic limb flared up, elevating his limbless body from the ground like a human-rocket. The impaired shinobi manipulated his body in mid-air to blast right toward his opponent as he spun his lower body and his final prosthetic limb for an explosive kick at Stein while the enemy was still weakened.</p><p>"Explosive Missile Kick!" Damisan yelled out, kicking Stein right in the chest and slamming his opponent to the ground with a violent stomp as his final limb detonated like a missile, throwing Damisan with a violent jerk backward, completely limbless, with just a cement mixer covering up his face. Shige-H grunted from the physical effort of catching her ally. The woods around them began to tremble at once, symbols and sealing glyphs began gleaming on the ground in a complex, web-like formation.</p><p>"I'm pretty sure this isn't from your technique, right?" Shige-H wondered, placing her helpless friend on the ground as she looked around to absorb the sights of the forest becoming just an array of beacons of light that disappeared as they were reabsorbed into the ground and sealed away. The playground for the warfare course took its initial shape.</p><p>"Hmph…" tutor Mauma looked right at the pair of less experienced competitors as he raised his hand, pointing at Shogito on the farthest reaches of the training ground.</p><p>"Are you serious!? He got all five!?" Shige-H dropped her jaw.</p><p>"That's right, while you felt perfectly content taking the bait of the enemy team and accepting their offering of two members in a misguided attempt of taking out everyone, your superiors rushed to complete their collection of objectives," tutor Mauma pointed out before showing Shige-H an open palm of five fingers. "Baiso obtained the first objective, which was then taken over by Mana but, technically, Baiso still had it as well. To make matters worse for you, Joshipa also overheard and seen Mana input the password making your upperclassmen having completed the first objective twice. While Mana obtained the cassette tape, it was taken from her by Stein who was the first one to obtain the cassette player from the construction site. Then it was just the matter of Stein surrendering everything to his teammate and leaving the rest to him."</p><p>"That's on us…" Shige-H nodded and looked away, looking like she placed most of the blame on herself as the leader. "Though I'm still curious as to how could Stein have relayed such a complex scenario without talking."</p><p>"That's just it," Shogito proclaimed, pointing at himself with his thumb as he approached his fallen team that was being taken away by the Allied Ninja HQ staff to the medical facilities for some medical attention. A fate that also was waiting for the loser team as well. "We've become pretty tight over all that time that we've spent here being dead-last. I guess I've never come to realize just what a powerful team we've become all of us together."</p><p>"You're right, you will make amazing Allied Ninja," Shige-H nodded, extending her hand to congratulate the winning team of upperclassmen.</p><p>"Teehee, the best part is that nobody will see us coming…" Shogito chuckled looking about as proud of his own performance as it was suitable for someone who essentially just scored the winning goal and carried the hopes and dreams of his team to victory. Shogito accepted Shige's handshake, looking like he was about to rocket himself over the clouds over it.</p><p>"About Mana…" Shige-H mumbled. "We're already short of a few members. We didn't have a chance to showcase our little natural wonder – Tomi. Plus, Skaven is still a work-in-progress to recruit into our group. If you took Mana…"</p><p>"No, that's fine." Shogito shook his head. "You've sort of opened my eyes about something. I guess I did just geek out over Kono… I mean Mana, and I didn't view her as an actual person with her own feelings. That's one me. I wanted her on our band of misfits because I was a huge fan of her magic shows and not because we've formed a genuine bond. I think we'll always be friends but she belongs with you guys. Especially if you can do as you say and help her out with her issues."</p><p>"That is my goal," Shige-H nodded her head. "Healing all of us on the inside as well as watching over us physically."</p><p>"See, recruits, this is the difference in battlefield strategizing of someone who's graduated the preparatory courses and a complete newbie like all of you. That is why you need this class, you may be as strong as any of these here fine recruits and capable of pummeling any enemy in your way, but at the end of the day it simply will not matter." Tutor Mauma spoke to the bystander recruits.</p><hr/><p>"Hey, how are you doing?" Shige-H beamed a smile Mana's way the moment she appeared in between the door of the leftover unused room where the nurses stored the injured recruits and Allied Ninja that required medical attention. The actual nurse's office was for diagnostic purposes and immediate medical treatments only and Mana had a few broken bones, making the nurse suggest that Mana heals up in a more natural way rather than the radiant glow of the Mystical Palm treating her completely.</p><p>"My injuries will be gone after a pair of days, or so the nurse told me when she sold me the idea of letting my body heal this naturally," Mana looked down at her bandaged body with the stain of crushed pride leaking off of her face. It was a mean-looking sight, all of Mana's countless scars accumulated throughout her career where the bandages allowed for some skin to show and bandages wrapped in the special, medicinal ointment of the Kamizuru clan. Soon enough she'll be as complex-ridden to expose her body as Damisan was…</p><p>"That's great!" Shige-H nodded her head. "It's good for a body to heal some minor injuries naturally from time to time. Doing all the work for it with ninjutsu tends to numb the natural ninja metabolism which can wreak havoc on your body's natural toughness. It might lead to you taking as long as civilians to recover from ordinary injuries like broken bones and you wouldn't want to be out for months for something as trivial as that…"</p><p>"I guess not. Anyway, you've come alone?" Mana sighed before looking up and expressing her bafflement at the fact.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess I owe you an explanation for why Araki Endo got lumped in with us, huh?" Shige-H smirked.</p><p>"You had him join the gang, didn't you?" Mana's chest deflated as the magician collapsed back into her bed. It didn't take a mighty sage to figure this much out.</p><p>"He said that he could use your notes from countless courses as he's struggling with some of the more boring courses like history and geography. He agreed to work with us as long as he has access to your notes, this idea sprung to him when he heard us extending that deal to Skaven," Shige-H replied.</p><p>"He called me a witch and a mutt and tried to kill me a few times, you know…" Mana let out a whimper, knowing full well that it wouldn't impact the resolve of Shige-H to assemble her gang the way she always intended it to look.</p><p>"Yeah, he's a real dick at the moment but he's already softened up, can't you see it? He's no longer trying to kill us both so that's an improvement. Damisan isn't too hot on being called a tin-scarecrow, abomination, or a fugly-feature, whatever that is. Still, once he moves past the baggage of his upbringing, he'll be much more manageable, I promise you that as the gang leader. He'll apologize to you before you leave the bed, you'll see…" Shige-H gave Mana and energetic thumb up though the magician just switched sides with a painful whine as if to show her friend that she wanted to rest now and that the topic still lingered with a profoundly bitter taste on her tongue.</p><p>"If you say so…" Mana let a weak response out though it sounded more sad than honoring a trust between a gang member and her leader.</p>
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<a name="section0710"><h2>710. Minor Intrusions And Grievances</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It is a common misconception that one does not need to know geography, after all, why bother? Can't children name every Great Ninja Country? I'm sure that if you asked a civilian brat kicking a ball of rags they would only hesitate for a second before shooting it like a bag of peas at you," tutor Karlee, a familiar face to Mana from her unfortunate clash with Sekita, began elaborating in front of a map large enough to fit all sixty-four of the settlements in the edge between the woods of the Fire Country and the deserts of the Wind Country alone.</p><p>Tutor Karlee was a unique teacher since she managed to maintain a grasp over an audience and not necessarily because of the fact that she managed to pour the subject she was teaching in an attractive manner nor was it because of the remarkable devotion to learning it from the side of the recruits. To be truthful, Mana couldn't really pinpoint a single reason. She suspected that the youthful and exotic appearance of the tanned-skinned woman, her rich make-up, and lacking in substance clothing had something to do with attracting a part of the audience.</p><p>Even if titillation played no part in the natural draw of the woman toward what she spoke of, she just looked weird enough with her giant stone headdress and almost antique accessories and decorations to attract attention even if she was talking about geography and tried hammering down the fundamentals of rivers, lakes, and settlements present around the world in the three months that the recruits had to learn it all before her subject intertwined with that of tutor Takuro in a more detailed geopolitics course.</p><p>"M-Mana…" a muzzled whisper came from Damisan's side. Mana turned to her side, curious as to what it might have been to prompt Damisan to call out to her during a tense moment of the lecture. "C-Could you maybe… Take notes for me?"</p><p>Mana blinked a couple of times before the full-picture took hold of her mind and she realized that Damisan had no arms and only stood on one prosthetic leg at the moment after detonating three of his vital prosthetics in the clash against Shogito's gang during the war games. She wasn't sure how long it would take for him to put a set of new ones together.</p><p>"Ummm… Sure, sorry, I just sort of assumed that you'd have a new set of prosthetics by the time I got out of the ward," Mana blushed in embarrassment as she reached out over Endo's hawkish stare and slipped Damisan's notes closer to her so that she could record it in his notebook and then copy it at her leisure afterward. She did, after all, possess the luxury of both arms.</p><p>"No biggie. I guess it's hard to tell if I've got my prosthetics fixed or not when I'm always cloaked all over, huh? Thanks a bunch!" Damisan nodded with what Mana felt like was a rich smile underneath the holed tin bucket that he wore for a masking accessory to hide his face. For someone who lacked the limbs to do much of anything and was severely disfigured, Damisan sounded like someone who was just lent some pocket change to buy some dango from the vendor down the street as a treat.</p><hr/><p>"Yo, Skaven! How about joining our gang?" Shige-H extended yet another invitation after the class was over, scouting out the loner from a massive group of recruits.</p><p>"Oh, wow… You know what, I think my answer hasn't changed since yesterday and the last fifteen thousand times you asked," Skaven raised his fist up in dismissal without interacting much with the troublesome gang or even looking at any one of its members once. Mana had to hand it to Shige-H, the woman could track that young man from a crowd with incredible precision and perception.</p><p>"Hey, Mana," Endo moved up to Mana to where they could almost touch their shoulders which only failed to make the magician nauseous because she needed some time for the belching instinct to build up though the stimulus had been more than fueled with this gesture. "The freak asked you to write for him for almost two hours straight and you did it. Why?"</p><p>"Is that why you were so constipated the whole time through? It's because I care and want to help," Mana replied coldly. Endo might have been the first non-Kirigakure native whom Mana set out hating from the get-go as opposed to the person in question needing to put in a drastic amount of work to earn the magician's ire.</p><p>"I see. That feels counterproductive and seems like something that would get you killed, also it isn't something I expected to see from you in particular," Endo pondered out loud to himself. He had a habit of offending everyone around him with a casual tone as if he was just telling them a shortcut to the library. "Is that why you supply me with notes as well? Even though we're fated enemies…"</p><p>"Fated enemies?" Mana mumbled out. "I don't like you at all, which is a new experience for me, but we're not enemies. We're in the same gang, apparently…"</p><p>"Ah, I see, yes, it was short-sighted of me to miss the band aspect. It makes more sense now why you'd engage in this charity work. It is your way of being useful, I suppose," Endo stroked his chin deep in thought.</p><p>"Also, just so we're straight, I'm not giving you my notes. I'm giving them to Shige-H. It's just so that she happens to hand them to you before giving them back to me," Mana beamed a flare at the asshole, hoping he'd pick up on it though it seemed like his skin was so thick that he only comprehended hatred when it came at a degree similar to something akin to a blood feud.</p><p>"Shige-H-san, your show at the war games last week was amazing!" a bunch of faces Mana didn't know surrounded Shige-H, babbling praise without end with a sprinkle of requests to join the gang or questions when she'd be looking for new faces for her team.</p><p>"Has this been a thing?" Mana wondered, pointing at Shige-H and the wave of recruits washing the gang leader away and storming her with questions the influx of which was visibly beginning to make her head dizzy.</p><p>"Yep!" Tomi nodded her head, pouting her lips. "She won't even show up to my tea parties. Mana, will you bring your rabbits along? I don't have many rabbit friends so your rabbits are most of those that I have!"</p><p>"I will, though, maybe in the evening. Now I've got some reading up to do or else we'll start falling behind of our stellar reputation," Mana answered the lovely teen with a warm smile. Tomi pouted her lips and blew out her cheeks, sticking out her tongue and turning away from the magician. By now Mana had spent enough time around the kid to know that it was just a mood swing and that she'll be doing Mana's hair by the evening and singing songs in the dorm room.</p><p>"Cheer up, brat, unlike being a mascot or a one-man freak show of the gang which comes naturally to you guys, Mana needs to work hard to serve her role. None of us want her outliving her usefulness, do we?" Endo crossed his arms, turning to little Tomi as if he was mentoring her. Frankly, Tomi didn't even seem to pick up on the fact that she was being insulted to her face as she just blew out her lips as if Endo just blew her mind and taught her something new here.</p><p>"Hey, if you need help working with those prosthetic limbs, maybe I can help?" Mana wondered, stepping in closer to Damisan to try and distract him from having been called a freak to his face twice when he was already plenty sensitive about his appearance and impairment.</p><p>"Oh? Do you have a background in engineering or puppetry?" Damisan wondered. It didn't sound like he was dismissing Mana's suggestion or being rude, his tone made the bucket-head sound genuinely curious.</p><p>"Well, no… But my father had plenty and I used to help him tinker with tools when his arms got injured. I'm good with following instructions since the smallest mistake made him frustrated and the pain of his trauma already left him with plenty of that to start out with. I can't say I've picked up a thing or two from him but my hands are as precise as they get for that sort of work so I can offer them whenever you need them," Mana smiled.</p><p>"Hot damn, thanks! I will really need someone's help with that. Rebuilding your prosthetics from scratch is not something you think about when you turn them into missiles and try blowing people up, I'll tell you that for free!" Damisan became pumped, he'd have put up his fists to assist him with his enthusiastic nod but given how he lacked the limbs needed for it, he just bowed his upper body without his hands. Laughter spread from behind.</p><p>"That looked so freaky, like a lunging snake or a worm or something…" Endo snickered after regaining control over his fit.</p><p>"Can you just shut up for one second and maybe stop harassing Damisan?" Mana growled, she didn't recognize the pent up aggression but she stepped out of line to get all up in the face of the taller young man and beam spite at him from below.</p><p>"What do you care? It's not like you can see his tears from under the bucket anyway…" Endo hissed out. The worst part of all was that he didn't intend to go anywhere which left Mana no options but to turn and walk away. She didn't want to just abandon her crew after she already spent the last four days away from them in which, apparently, they've built up quite the reputation of their own, having pummeled a bunch of upperclassmen before the entire assemblage of recruits, even though ultimately they didn't win, but Endo's behavior made her want to either do something she didn't want to do or retreat as far away from the temptation of forsaking her life's creed as possible.</p><p>"Sorry, sorry guys, we're not recruiting. Well… To be more exact, our ranks are reserved for the original roster of the crew, and not all of us are yet completely on board with this project of mine. M-Mana, where are you going?!" Shige-H yelled out to Mana's back as the magician rushed up the stairs so that everything that made her want to howl in wrath disappeared from her view.</p><p>More and more she wondered if she needed this at all. Yeah, she promised. She promised that she'd give people a chance again, do her best and become more like her old self, someone who hadn't seen giant, possible sentient germs floating around in the gut of a living prison and membranes that swallowed people up only to send them plummeting for what felt to them like an eternity. Someone hadn't seen people being treated like mere dogs, sniffers for trouble, or glorified cart-haulers.</p><p>Are things truly all that different on the outside? Damisan was a man dealt one of the poorer hands that life had to offer, from what little snippets Mana caught of the Wind Country native talking, he was born with all of his natural limbs and completely scar-free. And yet he was treated like a dog or something less than that even with Jigoku seemingly a whole dimension away from them. Reading. Maybe that would get her thoughts away from it all and focus them on something more productive than lamenting over things she had no control over nor things she could change.</p><hr/><p>Mana peeked into the room. It was odd that it was so dim, all except for a single, intense beacon illuminating Damisan's workbench. How could everyone still be out at this late time? Mana had indulged her reading habits a bit too long for the collective good, steering off toward things she had little to no need of reading about at that moment as they were entirely unrelated to her studies. The off-topic book that Mana had borrowed was, in fact, mostly filled with things she knew of yet that repetition of knowledge on genjutsu that she had ample of made Mana feel safer and more confident in herself when just calming everything around her and letting the same-old enthrall her. Lull her.</p><p>"Damisan?" Mana muttered, she didn't expect to see a pair of heads turning at her and not just Damisan himself. A young lady of silver hair and dark-grey eyes turned to Mana alongside Damisan. Hers was a face that Mana had seen around the mass of recruits flooding the halls during lectures though the young lady didn't do anything to stand out enough for Mana to remember her or find out her name.</p><p>The friend of Damisan's was tall yet fail in body build. Certainly, more attractive visually than Mana and outside the league of even a dreamy young man. Damisan looked to Mana for a second but then turned to his friend again with an impatient look. As Mana's eyes ran down the body of this new acquaintance, she noticed a few steel pieces in the gentle hands of this young woman, frozen as she answered Mana's bewildered look with something firmer. Something more challenging flickered in her eyes. Inevitable.</p><p>"Ion, if you could please connect those two and shield the sensitive seal and the inner parts from corrosion, that would be neat…" Damisan urged his newly met friend who just turned back and flicked his bucket with a love-flick before connecting the two pieces she held with the total outer shell of the arm prosthetic on Damisan's worktable.</p><p>"Well, it seems like Ion-san has you covered here," Mana observed.</p><p>"Oh, yeah, she has no idea what she's doing by her own admittance, but she's been a great help!" Damisan turned back to Mana, revealing to the magician that a new painting decorated the front of his bucket, one of an attractive female face that seemed remarkably similar to Ion's own though with a different color scheme to its features.</p><p>"Did you see Tomi? I promised her that I'd call up Usubingu and Usuvilme again for her tea party…" Mana scratched her neck, not feeling sleepy whatsoever and, frankly, feeling like a fifth wheel in whatever was going on in the dorm room.</p><p>"Oh? Tomi left with the others to the gym. There's music there and everybody's hanging out. Damisan wants to come too and he will dance with the best of them when we complete him the other foot to jig with," Ion nudged the focused shinobi with her elbow as he pondered on what bit of his arm to complete next.</p><p>"I am honestly baffled by Ion's assistance in helping me participate in that dance. If anything, dancing with me is a health hazard as if I step on your foot – it'll shatter most of your bones there," Damisan moved his eyes away from work to look at Ion again.</p><p>Mana couldn't help but smirk, realizing that Damisan had company that was beginning to approach the intimate territory. Quietly she slipped out of the room after tossing her book-holding bag onto her bed so that the two could finish their work in peace. Mana would have liked to assist Damisan and keep her promise though it was her overindulgence and dislike of being around people that kept her from doing it in time and so someone else had to step up.</p><p>Still, Mana was nothing if not happy for Damisan. The second merriest person around right after the bucket-head himself.</p><p>"Hey, you're Mana, right?" a voice from behind her made Mana jump up. She hadn't been focusing on her sensory as she would have been had she been outdoors or traveling somewhere as there was nothing unnatural in sensing chakra around the dorms of the hive-shaped HQ building in the evening. It was just a handful of guys coming back from the social event in the gym, it looked like.</p><p>"Yeah, Konoha's Sorceress to some, witch to others…" Mana sighed, wondering just how would these guys end up biting her. The brawl with Shogito's crew ended up putting her on the spotlight more than anything before and when one shed the spotlight on the magician, it was just one "Hey, wait a second…" away from her entire reputation of a ruthless bully of old, beloved monks being out in the light alongside it.</p><p>"You're a really amazing genjutsu specialist!" the young man noted. "So quick and effortless, wanna train with our group sometime? We're not like an official, big deal thing like your gang but…"</p><p>"Oh, you're a genjutsu specialist too?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Yeah! I've only perfected one technique of my own though, wanna see?" the genjutsu user with long, black hair, splitting out into two separate ponytails smacked the sides of his fists together like they were two mallets smashing something in-between.</p><p>Mana blanked out, for a moment it seemed like she was standing around the gym, the lighting was dim though bright, neon lights flashed everywhere and loud music banged to fuel rhythmic movement alongside the present recruits. Her gang was there, Tomi jumped around in circles, holding hands with a ninja otter while a ninja koala hung frightened on Tomi's back as a living backpack, Endo was standing grumpy in the corner, tapping his foot though looking entirely unaware of the fact that his body betrayed his enjoyment of the music.</p><p>Shige-H was robbing the stage somewhere further in the center of the flashing lights. As usual, she demanded everyone's attention though as much because of the gang she was in charge of as the actual skill of her moves. Damisan danced too, though his movements were subtler, he still did his best not to slip anything artificial out from under his cloak or to juggle his bucket too much to reveal his face.</p><p>Ion was rubbing her back against Damisan, like an alluring shaman inviting storm clouds and rain into a drought-ridden land. Mana blinked a few times in rapid succession and realized that she was still standing in the same hallway that she was in previously, in the company of the handful of guys that left the social gathering at the gym already.</p><p>"See? It makes you jump to a point in your future. I call it Genjutsu: Leaper! Something about the name just fits the concept of skipping people through time," the twin-ponytail young man snickered.</p><p>"That was temporal manipulation," Mana uttered. "I could never fully grasp the concept. We should definitely train together sometime. The jutsu was basic but I'd like to trade our knowledge for mutual benefit."</p><p>"Basic?" the genjutsu user looked utterly crushed.</p><p>"Don't get me wrong, you've still excelled in an area I struggle in. Though you're calling up images from the target's mind to "solidify" the illusion of the temporal leap, right?" Mana didn't really need to ask that, she knew that was the case as it was with her own Polymorph Jutsu which took the thought of the animal closest to the target's mind and made them think of themselves as that creature.</p><p>"Y-Yeah…" the young man scratched the back of his neck, looking a bit baffled by how easily Mana had dissected his signature illusion, one of his own making no less.</p><p>"Wait, won't your gang get mad, or something?" a young man with slick, wheat-colored hair and a red and black sleeveless bodysuit wondered. "We don't want no beef with you guys or anything…"</p><p>"I have a feeling that I might "outlive my usefulness" with those guys soon, so to speak…" Mana's mood turned somber as she had to turn away to the window and look at the flashing pink lights from the gym. Suddenly she didn't want to go dancing or socializing anymore though it wasn't like she could go back to her room either. "Say, maybe you guys are up for some sparring right now? I'm sure we could find a staffer by the gym to authorize it and watch over us…"</p><p>"Whoa, you're a real go-getter, huh?" a dark-skinned recruit from Kumogakure whistled. "Now I'm pumped up to see you kick Garikan down a few steps, we've gotta do it!"</p><p>Pummel or get pummeled, at least Mana could get her mind away from feeling unwelcome around members of her own gang for once. If one could do that while learning a new thing or two, that was a late-night well-spent.</p>
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<a name="section0711"><h2>711. The Elusive Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's mind just wasn't into it. Even when Garikan stood perfectly still and let Mana mold and channel her chakra her attempts to toy with his time perception just didn't stick. The magician might have rolled back on most of the progress she made training with Yushijin. And here Mana thought that she might have been close enough to something that she'd have possibly relied on it working in a pinch to give it a shot. This sparring session served as a cruel revelation that she still needed to keep it in the "to be polished later" bag and away from public view.</p><p>"Don't beat yourself over it, I… I think I felt the time extending somewhat…" Garikan scratched the side of his neck.</p><p>"Thanks…" Mana belched out. It only made her feel worse knowing that she made her sparring partner so bored with her attempts to stop time for him that she actually made him feel like time had extended to an eternity without any aid from genjutsu.</p><p>"Hey, are you seriously okay with this? Like… We don't want any part of your crew. Heck, we'd probably join it, either one of us," one of Garikan's friends approached the pair when they seemed like they had finished their training.</p><p>"Yeah, don't worry about it. Even if they had the right to tell me what to do and when they'd have to remember that I exist for that to happen," Mana let out a weary growl as she rubbed her tired eyes. She probably didn't mean to sound this mean though maybe she did, it was just that the better, more rational part of her obstructed the path for those words to come out.</p><p>"Did you get in a squabble with your crew or something?" another one of Garikan's friends got curious. "It would explain why Ion is rubbing backs with the star crew of the prep course."</p><p>"Yeah, sorry to break it to you, but if you're looking for the opening of my spot on the crew, you might be short out of luck. No problem, there's still an opening for Skaven. Maybe you can fit in there for the time being," Mana waved her hand in dismissal as she bowed in gratitude for the training session when she thought she needed it and began walking away from the gym.</p><p>Even the old man with a shaggy winter hat from the staff quarters began yawning watching Mana fail at time perception manipulation. That was always a good sign that it was time to wrap things up and brush up on something that might not have been working before trying whatever this was again.</p><hr/><p>"I didn't expect to see you walking around by your lonesome," oddly enough it was Skaven who approached Mana this time after history class, where usually it was the other way around with Shige's crew having to make moves on him.</p><p>"Yeah, I've just been feeling like I want to be with myself this past couple of days, you know?" Mana shrugged. Despite getting solid six hours of sleep, she still felt like Garikan's illusion hadn't let go of her and she's been just snoozing her way past through her life, leaping through time at random intervals.</p><p>"Trust me, I might be the only guy in this entire building who knows what's that like," Skaven replied.</p><p>Now Mana was sure she was seeing things – Skaven couldn't have actually been smiling right now. It was a creepy and rather weird-looking extension of violet-colored lips that showed off just how unnatural this state was to the young man's face but Mana felt sure like he was actually smiling at her. Though maybe it was just her mind playing tricks, maybe why it looked so weird that Mana's head just couldn't wrap itself around how Skaven would even look smiling?</p><p>"So, you just walked up to me to ask how come I was all alone?" Mana wondered. Skaven's breathing rate picked up, his eyes began shifting around. Was he getting angry, feeling confused, or embarrassed? Honestly, Mana couldn't tell. Being able to probe people's heads and read into the complex symbolism of their mental tales sort of robbed one of their natural perception of reading people. It began feeling as if though the only time Mana could understand what people were saying or doing was when they attacked her.</p><p>Ironic for one who sought to become a great hero, a Sannin even, someone to beacon the ideals of peace to only understand people when they were violent.</p><p>"Yeah… Whatever, just figured this was some sort of new, elaborate plan to recruit me into your band of jerks…" Skaven shrugged, stuffing his hands into his pockets and creeping away, looking in both directions as if he expected to be stalked back to the dorm floor.</p><p>"Way to show initiative, Mana!" Shige-H patted the magician on the shoulder having approached her from behind. The woman was standing back and observing with supreme anticipation as to how Mana would settle this opportunity and she must have seen some solid dents in the wall that Skaven's erected around himself or else she wouldn't be this cheerful.</p><p>"I still don't understand why we need that jerkoff," Endo grumbled. "They've already been calling us The Stars, in the back row. It's not like our gang needs more members. The more losers we let in, the fewer people will think of us and more bones we'll have to break to get our rep back."</p><p>"Why are you even here?" Mana squinted at Endo with a death-inducing glare. "Do you need my history notes?"</p><p>"Not at all," Endo crossed his arms, pouting his lips. "Ion promised me to give hers, that way I won't need to reduce myself to trash by having to ask you for help."</p><p>"Good for you," Mana turned and walked away. Seeing the smirk on Shige-H's face when she looked around and interacted with all of the stupefied prep course recruits made something boil deep down. Maybe it was the realization at how clueless her fearless leader was, so much so that she couldn't see her gang, her Stars falling apart right in front of her?</p><p>Though it just as likely might have been that Mana felt jealous of Shige-H. After all, the charismatic woman interacted with people she barely knew and had only seen once or twice with the corner of her eye in class that were bedazzled by her intelligence and splendor just the way Mana used to be able to do as a child. It was either that Shige-H was incompetent and a lousy leader to trust or that Mana was a broken wreck that needed immediate mending that was the problem and it was so much easier to believe in the first option.</p><hr/><p>The first training grounds on the very edge of the mountainous wasteland that lied further ahead was empty. There were some noises coming from behind a few rocky pillars covered with moss and needle-thin trees that cemented the impression that Tomi was here playing with one of her summoned friends. Mana nodded her head, letting her hat roll off her arm into the grip of her hand while her left slipped inside and pulled out a pair of rabbits by their ears.</p><p>"Yo! Been a long time, leader!" Usuvilme saluted Mana with a hand full of knives. The knife-wielding rabbit had gained some considerable weight in the time that the two hadn't seen each other as evidenced by a round belly hanging down from his front, making it difficult to believe that Usuvilme could dance around the battlefield with the same amount of grace as he used to.</p><p>"Is dis about da child play again, hero?" Usukari ran her paw over her ears to straighten them out after Mana's unscrupulous manner of pulling the pair out. "Because I am a rather humble rabbit but I won't to ye an' say dat it don't sting my pride bein' reduced ta a regular Teddy…"</p><p>"Sorry, guys, I promised Tomi…" Mana clapped her hands together and winked with a desperate plight. She did, after all, save the rabbits' entire society and she took care of their Usujitsa problem for them, that had to count for something on the negotiation table even if Mana didn't like to fling either of those cards around.</p><p>"You kidding me, that kid again!?" Usuvilme put up his dukes that clenched four knives in each hand, preparing to resist any and all attempts to take him in alive with deadly prejudice.</p><p>"It's only because you're da only hero dat us rabbits got, lassie," Usukari shook her head, planting her paw over her face.</p><p>"I guess that brat ain't half too bad. She seems to have gotten along with each and every species of ninja animals in existence and yet she didn't befriend the ninja mongooses… I've no shame in drinking with anyone like that even if it is tea that I'm drinking," Usuvilme nodded to himself, putting his hands behind his back and stuffing his knives inside of his fluffy tail where they proceeded to hang attached to the funky furball as if magnetically attached to the fuzz.</p><p>And yet when Mana turned the corner, she saw that Tomi was indeed sitting by a makeshift log meant for mid-training snacks with tea and oat cookies but she wasn't eating it alone. Beside a circle of a red ninja elephant, a two-headed ninja snake, a pair of ninja elk, a ninja lion and a pair of ninja camels, a ninja zebra and a pair of ninja apes sat Ion alongside a man-sized bird of majestic, glistening, black feathers and a white head. Ion's partner had the sharp hunter's look to its eyes that befitted a ninja hawk. The moment that Mana stepped out into the clear, it seemed particularly interested in the pair of rabbits accompanying Mana.</p><p>Usuvilme, being the knife-happy rabbit that he was, pulled his knives out and put up his dukes, ready to punch the oversized hawk bloody or pin its wings to the picnic table from the distance for daring to look at him, not unlike one stared at a muffin.</p><p>"Oh, sorry," Mana shook her hands out in front of her with a slight flush of warmth rushing to her cheeks. "I figured that you were alone and thought I'd make good on my promise I made yesterday…"</p><p>"Kari!" Tomi jumped up. "How's my favorite bunny doing!?" the little brat leaped out of the circle of well-behaved regular ninja animal zoo and dashed across the distance between the two, rushing at Usukari with a shoulder-led tackle package containing hugs and cuddles. Usukari looked up to Mana with a displeased expression at being cuddled and mushed like this but closed her eyes and submitted to it eventually.</p><p>"It's okay," Tomi turned to Mana. "Shige-nee explained that you're busy. I didn't quite get it at first, I mean, Ion is also pretty smart like you, she's doing great in class and she always hangs out with me but if Shige-nee says so, she must be right. You don't have to be here, you can go train or read or whatever. I won't be mad."</p><p>Usuvilme stuck a knife under Mana's skirt, putting the point of it by the back of her thigh as he turned to her with a crazed expression that he tried passing off as a lovely, child-friendly smile though he couldn't have come off as anything other than an absolute maniac.</p><p>"Don't… You dare… Leave… Me…" he muttered half-whispering, half hissing in a manner that seemed to pique the interest of the two-headed ninja snake.</p><p>"My, my, it's so great that you've come, Mana-san. I don't think we ever got to hang out yet so you must stay… I don't think there's place for everyone though…" Ion pressed her violet nail to her scarlet lips as she made a distressed expression on her face. The magician didn't need to be as good at reading people as Kiyomi was – she could tell that this young woman was the real snake by the table, or else she'd not have needed to act out and fake her emotions quite this clearly.</p><p>"That's okay, it does seem like you only have one free spot at the table so I'll leave Kari-chan here," Mana lowered the beak of her hat down to obstruct her eyes and covered up her face with the hand holding her hat as she turned away.</p><p>"Mana, I beg ye ta reconsider," Usukari muttered to the magician but by then Mana had backtracked her way far enough for her to claim plausible deniability of having heard the rabbit's plight for mercy.</p><p>"It's okay, Kari, this time I made special, homemade cookies that won't kill you if you eat them!" Tomi shrieked out in childish glee as she wrapped her stubby jungle-girl arms around the frozen in mortal peril rabbit. "I don't know many ninja rabbits so how about we become best friends?"</p><p>"We may as well, after all, da hero has become da betrayer…" Usukari cried out, submitting herself to her fate.</p><hr/><p>Every breakthrough that Mana has made throughout her ninja career in the field of illusions should have made her mastering time perception manipulation a simple matter. She had learned the primal method of achieving illusions through an assault toward the brain centers of the opponent early in her career and it elevated her genjutsu game, multiple leagues ahead of her age category. By now she was meant to be a master of the craft, at least her village deemed it to be so. And yet…</p><p>This one category of techniques had eluded her attention. It was true that the technique that Mana was pursuing – a combination of time perception manipulation to an extreme degree in combination with an auditory tick to activate it, making this jutsu not require any hand seals to be made, merely the right words to be uttered and for an opponent to hear those words, would have classified the jutsu as an S-Rank illusion in difficulty but she's been stumped by this one technique for years now.</p><p>Jigoku truly did shuffle her cards and Mana didn't like the new hand that she drew.</p><p>The chakra emanating from her body had elevated her above the moist rocky formation that she sat on and didn't let her bottom to form any bruises from hours upon hours spent on meditation and reflection upon the training session she had last night with Garikan and his crew. Maybe Skaven had a point after all? Feeling replaced and lonely had its perks, now all that she had to blame and all that she had to work on was herself. Maybe the Stars were better off without her, maybe Tomi was right, maybe Mana had just been making excuses, lying to herself and the Stars?</p><p>After all, Ion was smart, she could follow orders well enough to help Damisan craft a functional pair of prosthetic limbs, she seemed pretty tight with Shige-H and more than just a fangirl compared to the bulk that approached the ex-Kumogakure ninja every noon after class. Even Endo, of all people, felt comfortable around that woman. He had never offended her or tried to kill her even once which Mana thought to be so impossible that she couldn't utterly dismiss the idea that the two of them were in cahoots just to get rid of Mana.</p><p>It didn't make sense, Endo joined the Stars solely because of how useful he saw Mana being. He would have had no reason for getting rid of her now. Even if Ion was in his mind, a replacement to the use Mana served, he'd have rather left the Stars and all of the baggage contained therein.</p><hr/><p>Atop of a limestone plateau, a woman in black, leather military boots reaching her knees, a black, pleated skirt, and a military-themed uniform made out of a white, sleeveless shirt and a red tie sat down on one knee. The woman moved her hand back in a forceful motion to push her long, black coat from obstructing her aim. She tilted the beak of her white naval-style hat and moved a scroll off of her back.</p><p>Ion knew that Mana was a sensor. The magician would have been capable of tracking Ion's chakra seeing how she had felt it once before in Damisan's room. It was a careless mistake on Ion's part to forget to use her chakra signature suppression jutsu back then, a mistake that the assassin made sure not to repeat today when the magician crept up on Tomi.</p><p>Still, suppressing one's chakra signature meant that she couldn't use any jutsu or augment one's abilities without canceling it and being recognized. The only time when Ion would feel safe using her jutsu was when she reached the approximate range of twelve kilometers from the magician's current whereabouts. Now that Ion had locked her sights on the magician, she'd be able to measure just the right angle to hit her from, be it twelve or twelve thousand kilometers away.</p><p>The Nine Tales gang was right to hire her, the Snipe Hawker. Whatever the bounty on this young woman's head was, those guys must have felt it was well worth paying an international assassin capable of infiltrating the Allied Ninja and working her target until she was prime and conditioned for the little push needed to make her dead. The Nine Tales insisted on the whole body being brought to them, that meant minimal injuries, she needed to be identifiable from just her corpse, and moving a body bag through the border would be troublesome. Even carrying a stiffer inside of a scroll was dangerous these days, Kumogakure was especially paranoid about weapons of mass destruction being smuggled inside whether it be of Konoha's making or any of the other countries looking to challenge their position as the No. 1 military force in the world.</p><p>Ion moved slowly but methodically, she couldn't use any traces of chakra or else she'd be recognized. This Nine Tales gang seemed to blab something about their own members taking shots at this particular girly and failing already. To be fair, now that Ion put the prep work needed in taking her out, scoped out her abilities in this very handy war game and her intelligence during the classes, it wasn't hard to see why. The crew, her trusty Stars, needed to go too. Too many wildcards amongst them. Still, making Mana feel lonely amongst a circle of unsuspecting friends wasn't too hard when the chick was already a mess of her own category.</p><p>"This will be mercy killing, sheesh…" the Snipe Hawker muttered to herself. Despite being well over the ten-kilometer mark that she estimated Mana's sensory to stumble at, the assassin still whispered as she feared that something might have gone wrong. Such was her current mark – lulling her opponents into a false sense of security was her game the whole time.</p><p>It seemed as if only when Ion takes the shot and punches a hole through the Konoha Sorceress' chest the size of a homing ninja hawk missile and hands the body back to the Nine Tales gang, only when she feels the pleasant clang of ryo in a briefcase that she can truly stop expecting flower petals or rabbits shuffling behind her and the magician stuffing an explosive card down her throat from behind.</p><p>"No shaking," Ion shivered, extending the scroll on the flat plateau and raising a cloud of smoke that would have been instantly picked up on had it not been for a late time of evening and the immense distance between her and her mark. Ion wasn't like her father, she didn't like to make it close and personal or into a competition, she didn't like confirming her kills or seeing life leaving their bodies. It was best when her marks died without her knowledge, the less she had to look at them, the fewer things to go wrong, the better.</p><p>This was her first big-time mark like this. The payday wasn't nearly as big as the combined bounty on this lady's head was on the black market – rumors say – the combination of her Bingo Book bounty as a special jounin of Konohagakure and an Allied Ninja as well as a whole ton of whipped cream thanks to the ire of the Diamond Hand syndicate. A two-pronged jackpot, so to speak. Still, the reputation of this kill would make her stand out more than her father's little girl on the black market and that was all that Ion had ever wanted.</p><p>Once the smoke cleared, a supersized mountain of metal with a chest-cavity-wide tube sticking out in front appeared from the scroll while Ion crawled up her supersized ninja tool and placed her arm into the other end of the cannon, the loading compartment. The needle inside pricked her thumb automatically, forcing Ion to merely mutter the words "Summoning Jutsu!" and sit through a show of smoke and loud popping noises for her Snipe Howitzer to be locked and loaded.</p><p>The angle needed to be just right, else she'd be shooting one of her ninja hawks to hit a flat wall or some background decoration, down a tree or, the worst-case scenario – blast a hole into the Allied Ninja HQ itself. Screw that, Ion was no amateur. She was the only assassin capable of handling angles like they were crackers and even an inopportune miss could provide her with plausible deniability if she plays her retreat cards just right.</p><p>What Ion wanted the least of all was to blow an arm or a shoulder off and leave Mana bleeding out and grunting but alive. The Snipe Hawker licked the tip of her tongue and raised her arm over her head outside of her mechanical hawk-shooting contraption to get a feel of the wind again just in case.</p><p>The magician girl should have trusted her friends more and cared about the people she ended up pissing off. Ion soothed and cleared her mind, realizing that none of this was her fault. This would be a perfect, clean kill, all of this chaff in her head was just meaningless trivialities. Her father never showed any hesitation or worry before, during or after a hit. It must have been his experience talking.</p><p>This was enough of playing with fire. The cooking needed to start at some point. Nakotsumi Mana had to die.</p>
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<a name="section0712"><h2>712. The Final Throes</h2></a>
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    <p>A weighty thud pushed out a hawk with his wings pressed to its sides. A living tip of an arrow, coated with the radiance of basic chakra and spiraling through the air toward its destination. The distance of twelve kilometers covered in a third of a second as the bird's beak met its fleshy goal. Mana let out a husky grunt as the hawk left a jarring hole in her chest and straightened out its trajectory in an arc that tested the bird's integrity. The bird of prey lingered in the air, observing the young woman fall on her front with an obliviated expression reflecting only a void of any signs of life.</p><p>Ion's sandals clicked against the stone plateaus a couple of times as the second-generation assassin rushed in to confirm her kill. She wasn't a sensor so knowing if Nakotsumi Mana was dead or not was a troubling matter. One made even more troubling having in mind that the young woman was a potent ninja. Ninja had metabolisms and vitality that defied reason, a person without breath in their lungs could have been alive and sustained through only drawing vague breaths every twenty minutes.</p><p>"Is she dead?" the hawk wondered, the weight of the impressive flight and synchrony with the heavyweight artillery that the Snipe Hawker employed taxed the bird and one could have been able to tell from his voice alone.</p><p>"Maybe, maybe not. She's got a hand-sized hole in her chest, even if she's not dead yet, she'll soon be," Ion replied. She was in a rush. It was possible that nobody would have noticed that booming sound far off in the rocky wasteland and nobody from inside that building would miss the magician, of that the assassin had made sure already. Still, if the magician was just playing a mind game with her, it was dangerous to approach this corpse without being fully sure.</p><p>"Mana!" a blood-curdling scream pierced the training grounds. Ion's heart shuddered as her eyes scanned the surrounding, she was looking for a spy. Someone hiding their face behind the brushes of the stone pillars but that was not what she got in return. Shige-H rushed through, ignoring all reason and danger of rushing out to a stiffening corpse of one's ally out in the open with the killer standing right before them.</p><p>"I'll make you wish you hadn't done that," a whisper crept up from behind Ion, making the assassin jump up. It wasn't stealth but the speed that did her in as Araki Endo had blitzed right behind her and decided to skip the mourning process and simply tear the assassin limb from limb in an act of self-justified vengeance. It was a simple emotion, primeval almost, she should have seen it coming.</p><p>Ion leaned to the side. Her father had polished her martial arts skills plenty. She's been knife-fighting and performing feats of gymnastics and life or death evasive action since she knew how to walk. Someone who struck from afar like the Snipe Hawker would have exhumed a simple weakness of being easy to shred apart at close range and father made good on his proclamation of trapping a simple-minded opponent in their basic line of thinking. Ion vaulted backward and pushed her body off of the plateau, landing in between the rushing Stars members.</p><p>What is the meaning of this? She had infiltrated the Stars, hasn't she? She made sure to learn about the type of person Mana was and manipulated her into shutting herself off of all of the friends she had made here. She was supposed to be alone, that was an integral piece of Ion's plan. An emerald gleam beaming out from her backside made Ion's sandals shift uneasy, grinding the gravel under her feet.</p><p>"Can you help her?" Damisan turned to Shige-H who was leaning over the hopeless case of a magician without a chest cavity with freaked out, moist eyes.</p><p>"I… Who knows… I can't heal THAT, that much is for sure…" Shige-H cried out in desperation. Good. This was the first time that Ion had heard the leader of the Stars this freaked out. She usually maintained her composure and whenever it was not so – the outburst of feelings that Shige-H displayed was clearly played. Ion was too much a faker herself to be played Shige-H's act though her gang was played. Gullible fools, maybe their natures could still have been appealed to?</p><p>"Guys, wait…" Ion extended her hand. "It wasn't me, I rushed here just like you all did. I'm your friend, remember? I… Mana and I didn't get off right and I just wanted to see what she was doing and maybe if I could… You know…?"</p><p>This was a stupid game. Snipe Hawker needed a body to present to the Nine Tales gang and Mana stiffening up in the Allied Ninja HQ won't do. Though maybe they'd lower their guard long enough for her to give the Stars a slip. Shige-H was too distraught by the graphic nature of the magician's wound and the next to impossible chances of her survival and with Mana being one leg already inside of a cold grave the leader of Stars was the most dangerous member to watch out for.</p><p>"What's that hawk doing then?" Endo pointed at the bird floating over the battlefield giving the Stars mean stares and wondering when his mistress would command it to claw some eyes out at last.</p><p>"I called for Takanoku to scan the area. I'm no medical ninja so I couldn't have helped Mana but I thought that maybe the assassin was still in the area. I told him to keep looking out. I figured that the hit didn't happen too long ago given that there wasn't too much blood back then…" Ion put on her best tormented girl out of her depth mask and acted her heart out. Takanoku was sharp enough to catch on and tucked in its claws, turning them away from the agitated gang.</p><p>"If you can't heal Mana-san, we need to bring her to the infirmary at the HQ. She… If she can make it through this, she'll need everyone with any medical ninjutsu knowledge," Damisan swiped his impressive, prosthetic arm in a plead to attract Shige's attention as the leader of Stars was losing it all before them. Nobody had ever seen Shige-H this perturbed and pale. She looked like a banshee with all of that blood over her cheeks, fur coat, and hands.</p><p>"Is Mana-san going to be okay?" Tomi's face twisted in the all too familiar childish cocktail of anxiety and terror. She was dealing with the very likely chance of death better than anybody might have counted a young teen her age to do, suggesting that this might not have been the first time she had encountered death head-on, but the girl's youth still dominated her reaction.</p><p>"She's gonna need more than just green light show, she'll need a fucking chest cavity if she's gonna make it," Endo cleared his throat, doing his best to not help in any way whatsoever in regarding the fact that the magician's survival this far with a chest wound that should have left her clean in two was a feat of its own.</p><p>"We can't carry her anywhere, if I stop sustaining her life for one more second, she might die on the spot. Moving her is an absolute death sentence. Who knows how she's clung on for this long… Fuck… She's got no heart, where is this goddamn blood coming from!?" Shige-H screamed out as she was beginning to feel like Mana's life was fleeting even her life-sustaining hands. It was the absolute worst experience one could go through as a medical ninja and yet it was one that most medical ninja went through quite often – friends and allies, casual acquaintances and people one never met yet yearned to save nevertheless dying while one struggled against fate itself to keep them alive.</p><p>They could not have carried Mana away, nabbing her stiff from these buffoons was one thing, taking her away from the safekeeping of hundreds of skilled and experienced Allied Ninja who drew experience for their skillsets from the entire world was to straight out cross out her most promising job off her resume. Nobody would take her seriously after a failure like that, father would off her on the spot if she came back empty-handed. A failure like that reflected negatively on his flawless reputation as well, whether he liked it or not, they were related and that fact was public knowledge on the black market.</p><p>A beam of light filled the battlefield. A flashbang that Ion crushed in her hand to give her a few seconds. The uniformed, double-faced assassin rushed on alongside Takanoku to scoop Mana's body up. It was a way to shoot down two whole sweet and juicy birds. Shige-H confirmed that moving the magician would spell out death for her while Ion also needed to take her to Fire Country and hand her body to the Nine Tales gang. Finishing off the victim and securing her body, it was the optimal move.</p><p>"Decided to reveal your true face?" a tight, metallic grip locked over Ion's hand so hard that it should have crushed it. Almost at the same time, Takanoku squawked in a painful plead for its life and dispersed into a cloud of smoke as Damisan's elbow dug into its beak and knocked it down and out. The Wind Country refugee flicked at his cylinder, reminding Ion that his reliance over vision was limited due to him constantly working on concealing his face from the judging eyes of the people around him. "How could you do this? Why?"</p><p>"You freak, who do you think put your plastic stumps together?" Ion hissed at the impaired shinobi, turning and twisting her arm to stress just the right joints and gears in the construction of Damisan's prosthetic limbs to have them fall apart as if they weren't stuck together in any way whatsoever.</p><p>A flurry of Ion's limbs sent Damisan packing, the prosthetics-user tried shielding himself from a beating by putting up his prosthetic limbs but they met the same shameful fate as the previous sabotaged limb. With a single push kick to Damisan's chest, Ion sent the self-puppeteering ninja skidding across the gravel as she rushed in to resume her rush for Mana.</p><p>Time seemed to free in the precious, golden moment of triumph. Ion's saber was rushing right in between Shige-H's eyes as even with her gazers closed the ebony medical ninja worked on sustaining the life of her dying gang member. The fool treasured the life of this magician more than her own it seemed as she didn't skip a heartbeat to put up any defenses against Ion's blade. Maybe she'd just end up rushing to the undertaker faster than her friend?</p><p>A stout and disciplined swing of a blade deflected Ion's saber and threw it to stab into the ground. Araki Endo, the youth that used to be an apprentice of one of the four God Swords took his place in defense of the two young women with his eyes still irritated and watering. He moved through impeccable muscle memory and instinct of a swordsman alone. His sword-fighting easily matched that of Ion's if not surpassed it though the assassin didn't intend on fighting him long enough to find out. Avoiding the ruthless twirling of his death-chopper was troublesome enough.</p><p>Blood poured from Ion's face when the middle-handle of Endo's two-bladed sword hit the assassin right in the nose and a brutal kick sent her flat on her back. Her plan was crumbling to pieces, the magician was on death's door but even without her heart intact, something was still beating and keeping her alive and Endo was already airborne to skewer the fallen assassin with a side of his blade. He didn't intend on taking any prisoners. Ion rolled back and avoided a thrust through her heart that would have ended her.</p><p>"Shit… Why did you do this, Ion? What did Mana do to you?" Damisan pleaded with the young woman he considered his friend. With his limbs broken before him, it seemed like his pride and any semblance of fighting spirit had shattered alongside them. Though Ion knew how to work people well enough to know it wasn't the mere reduction to his powerless and disgusting self that broke the man, it was the fact that he felt something deeper with Ion. The assassin knew that acceptance and tolerance were the most important, key values to this one and she made sure to emphasize it and double down on those sentiments.</p><p>She crafted an intricate illusion of her own, one that not even a genius illusionist like Nakotsumi Mana could have accomplished. In just one night she made this slobbering imbecile believe that she liked him.</p><p>"Endo…" Shige-H muttered with a husky tone, having recovered enough of her senses to realize that the swordsman had jumped in to her and Mana's protection.</p><p>"We're a gang. We help out each other," Endo stated without wasting the time to even look back at his troubled allies. "I think I sort of understand what Mana was doing by befriending a monster like Damisan and giving a dumbass like me her notes even though she doesn't like the fact that I'd have liked to slay her with my own hands."</p><p>"Ion…" Snipe Hawker stood on her both feet, straightening her back and driving her hand through her scattering hair as her military-style hat had been lost somewhere during her clash of blades with Endo. "Who's that?" she mocked Damisan by revealing just how little he truly knew about her.</p><p>"Whatever your real name is, you hurt Mana-nee and I'm gonna make you hurt for this!" Tomi cried out as she drove the entire upper row of her teeth into her fingers and drove her bleeding palm into the ground. The girl cried out after her hand slammed not into the ground but a layer of makibishi spikes and the pain and puncture wounds made her lose the concentration for her "Multi-Summoning Jutsu".</p><p>This was going just fine, as long as Tomi, Damisan, and Shige-H weren't causing a ruckus, the staff won't know that this is even taking place. All the noise that her cannon made spread far away from the actual training grounds and nobody watched over this place the entire day. Snipe Hawker still had time to disassemble and murder this foul lot. With one of her hands skewered, little Tomi was just one hand away from being helpless as well, Damisan was down and out. Endo was trouble, though he'd have to be dealt with the last.</p><p>And just like with everybody else, Snipe Hawker had just the ace to deal with him.</p><p>"Whom are you trying to fool?" she asked with a mocking tone, breaking her impeccable sword-fighting stance to show Endo that she meant to talk to him. The uncontrollable berserker was having none of it, he twirled right in, disarming the assassin with a strong slash of his two-sided sword before turning with his entire body to gain enough momentum and split the loathsome assassin woman in two right through her chakra augmentations.</p><p>"You don't care about Stars nor do you care about the Allied Ninja…" she was weaving her complex web that should have been enough to have Endo. With a leaning turn Snipe Hawker evaded the lethal slash but she screamed out in shock and stiffened. Not a single word could leave her body anymore and with a quivering facial expression of terror, the assassin looked down to witness the other side of Endo's sword having gone through her gut as the vicious sword-fighter had thrust it backward right after the first key slash failed.</p><p>His sword was too unnatural to predict something like this…! A thousand of regretful thoughts, scoldings that came in her own voice as well as her father's ran through the Snipe Hawker's mind at that agonizing moment when Endo took a stout step forward and pulled the blade out.</p><p>"I told you I'd make you wish you hadn't done that…" Endo reminded the stumbling young woman who clutched her bleeding gut and struggled to contain the blood rushing out through her mouth too much to keep up her fighting spirit. "Whatever you wanted to tell me, keep it and take it to your grave."</p><p>Snipe Hawker fell on her front, stopping her fall with her knee while Endo swung his two-bladed sword to behead the humbled assassin but his blade hit something that let out a hefty clang and made it bounce off. Smoke filled the immediate range between Endo and his injured opponent as when the crazed ronin cut through the smoke he came face-to-face with a massive cannon aimed right at his face.</p><p>Who knew if it could have been salvaged anymore? She hadn't lost too much blood yet, chakra augmentations could carry her on for a few more moments and coming face-to-face with supermassive artillery would make anyone shit their boots enough to hear out a few words. Hawker didn't even need to shoot the thing and alert the whole HQ to her presence.</p><p>"All you want out of life is some meaning. You want to belong somewhere, to be needed. You didn't get that from Gozen so you bolted from that infernal cage of his and came here. Fuck this place and fuck those dorks. Come with me and train with my father, become an assassin, and put those skills of yours to good use. My father's no Gozen, he's far, far worse but to him a valuable vessel to imprint his skills onto means everything in the world. That's just what you want, isn't it?" Snipe Hawker finished spinning her yarn at gunpoint. Struggling and forcing her speech through intense pain, the young woman came to realize what her father meant when he mocked her for taking a perfectionist approach to planning things out and hoping that everything would go like clockwork.</p><p>He was a rotten bastard but he knew that plans went tits up and he hardened his daughter up to tough it through when it inevitably did. One couldn't blame a man for that, at least. That only left almost every other possible parenting problem one could think of to blame him for.</p><p>"Wind Style: Violent Whirlwind!" Endo chanted out after weaving a hand seal with his one, free hand. The technique produced a horizontal stream of wind from his mouth that blasted into the opening of the cannon and traveled in through the barrel, producing violent rips in it on various sides and rendering the weapon ultimately inoperable. The assassin seated in a compartment behind it screamed out as a dull concussive blast threw her out of the collapsing structure as the metallic mess fell apart cut and bashed to separate, busted parts.</p><p>"You're a rotten bitch, laying traps for each and every one of us just to screw with us. All just to kill Mana. You've clearly planned this out ahead of time, observed us, and made plans to overcome every one of us. You've countered Tomi, busted up Damisan's limbs, and made sure that Shige-H can't snap you like the twig that you are in an instant but you cannot prepare for me. I am righteous wrath, I am violence. That is the purpose that I have chosen and I don't need anything else. Apprentice assassin? Don't make me laugh!" Endo proclaimed, pointing the tip of his blade at the crawling and injured assassin. "You've schemed and plotted, you took care of everyone but me, now it's time you fight because the only way you walk out of this is by beating me until I can't try over and over again to snuff you out as you deserve."</p><p>As much as Snipe Hawker dreaded the thought, the terror in her eyes revealed that she knew this to be true.</p>
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<a name="section0713"><h2>713. Penance</h2></a>
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    <p>"I still have one good hand…" Tomi whined out through torment. The kid cradled her skewered, bleeding hand like a mother protecting her child while her eyes examined her functional hand.</p><p>"Forget it," Endo dismissed it, spinning his double-bladed sword, positioning it behind his back in preparation to finish off the fallen assassin if she ever gathered the courage and fortitude to challenge him again.</p><p>While she had taken a mean one from their earlier clash, Endo who had pushed through injuries a hundred times worse would have been the last person to underestimate the toughness of an injured ninja and their will to go on. Still, he couldn't shake off the feeling like he had the enemy on the ropes, no matter how hard he tried to quash it.</p><p>The spirit in the Hawker's eyes flared up moments before she powered through her injury. The young woman lobbed her saber at Endo. Despite the orderly, buzzing spin of the weapon, the apprentice samurai could not shake off the feeling that he was being set-up. That feeling was justified when he saw Snipe Hawker weaving hand seals and moving in to connect her hands. Using his free hand, Endo completed a single hand seal and blew a mouthful of air at his opponent.</p><p>"Wind Style: Wind Prison Jutsu!" he exclaimed with spite polluting his tone as the gale that burst forth from his lungs enveloped his opponent and tilted her off the ground, immersing the Snipe Hawker in a feeling of weightlessness as she floated surrounded by a hefty bubble of air. When she tried to speak, not a whisper left her lungs as the air was being slowly drained from her lungs, and every attempt to speak only fastened the process.</p><p>"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!" Endo yelled out, weaving another handful of hand seals while his previous ninjutsu technique dissipated, leaving the Snipe Hawker momentarily suspended in mid-air before gravity set in once again. A ripping stream of electricity slammed right into the assassin's chest, sending her rolling back while jolts of electricity shook her for a minute after the jutsu ended.</p><p>"String Reeling Technique!" Snipe Hawker grunted while rising off the ground. The ear-piercing noise of reeling steel wire caught everyone's ears as she had attempted to reel her saber back to her hand from the distance that she flung it to. Endo noted how close Snipe Hawker was to the exposed back of Shige-H and Mana. Too close for it not to be the woman's prime target.</p><p>With a resonating stomp, Endo pressed and mixed up the steel wire strings, disrupting the faint chakra flow present in them and leaving the saber skidding on the gravel floor. The apprentice samurai took a bountiful leap toward his grounded opponent, thrusting the end of one side of his blade down to pin the woman to the ground for what would have been her approaching end but Snipe Hawker rolled forward, ripping the steel wire off of the steel compartment on her wrist.</p><p>Time seemed to freeze over in mid-air as Snipe Hawker took a rolling dive toward Shige-H, looking to tackle the medical ninja to the ground so that the accursed magician from Konoha could finally kick the bucket for good. A resonant thud made it all go white for the airborne assassin as her body flipped over in mid-air from the collision of opposing forces when a wooden, curved projectile hit it right in the face. Snipe Hawker fell on her back, making the wound in her gut spout blood as the pressing instinct to cough it out from her mouth to prevent her from drowning in it awakened the fallen assassin.</p><p>"A… Boomerang?" the woman grunted as her floaty and blurry vision focused for just one snap of a moment to identify what Tomi had hit her with from aside.</p><p>"You're goddamn right!" Tomi pumped her fist with a determined look on her face. "Don't you dare think that summoning is all that I can do. My friends wouldn't have trusted me if I wasn't able to protect them myself when it counted!"</p><p>"Not bad, shrimp…" Endo smirked. Still, his seething anger resumed its consuming boil when he turned back to the assassin who had now twice tried to attack Shige-H and finish Mana off. Her attention was elsewhere, she must have accepted the fact that she'd be unable to beat Endo by herself so she at the very least tried to complete her mission now. It was a matter of pride for her. Unfortunately for the desperate young woman, the pride of an assassin meant nothing at all to Araki Endo.</p><p>"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Endo weaved a clone jutsu seal with his one hand while forming a single Shadow Clone and splitting his chakra in half. The doppelganger vaulted over the enemy as if walking on air if the altitude of his feat of acrobatics was to be taken into consideration and landed on the other side. The doppelganger weaved a hand seal of his own.</p><p>"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" he chanted out, exhaling a wind nature shockwave that flung his fallen opponent toward the original version that put up its double-bladed sword to attempt and run it through her once again. Despite flailing wildly in her state of weightless helplessness, Snipe Hawker drove her foot down, directing the tip of the blade down and using it as a platform to vault over to Endo's backside. The apprentice samurai put up the other end of his blade to try and impale the assassin on her landing but it appeared as if though his opponent had read that.</p><p>A tight grip of feminine thighs wrapped around Endo's throat as Snipe Hawker rolled forward, using that momentum and riding force to fling her opponent over her, resulting in an involuntary backflip that shook Endo's sense of balance. By the time that Endo had recovered, Snipe Hawker gripped her saber back in her hand and rushed at him. Due to the nature of her weapon, she only needed one hand anyway, being able to afford the second one to prevent as much blood loss from her grave wound as possible.</p><p>"G-Guys… Mana's not doing too well, I think I'm losing her…" Shige-H declared with a desperate plight in her voice that was meant for whoever listened to it. Damisan lowered his chin. Tucking his face down, he let his cylinder roll off of the impaired shinobi's head and roll aside. This brave notion ended up revealing his face to both the infiltrator assassin who was too busy to collide with Endo to notice and his shocked gang mates.</p><p>Tomi's eyes shook as a minute layer of moisture overcome them. She covered up her mouth so that she didn't say something mean or cry out though she continued to look at her determined comrade just so she didn't push him away and crush his resolve in doing so by looking away. Shige-H blanked out too, the emerald light gleaming from her hands shook up and stopped for a second, making space for a massive pulse of blood from down below to blow up and remind her that she was in the middle of keeping her treasured gang member alive.</p><p>With a mouth of uneven, yellow teeth, Damisan grabbed a shattered part of his limb – a golden capsule and tilted it up into the air by manipulating his true face as he began grinding his teeth over it in an attempt to destabilize it. As the saliva of the self-puppeteering ninja made it inside the unstable capsule, it popped, firing off a violent warning shot out of it. The desperate ninja bent his body up and down like a scared caterpillar, flinging the capsule up in the air. After a moment of silence – it blew up. This was the explosive part of his prosthetics that was responsible for detonating them when the puppeteer demanded it.</p><p>The bright flash and loud, popping noise halted Snipe Hawker in her resolute collision with Araki Endo as her horrified eyes glared at the colorful dust sprinkling from the air. This was it. There was no way that the HQ didn't hear this and knowing how jumpy they were about students fighting each other without permission and moderation of a staff member – they'd hurry right up here. Knowing that they were looking to part an ongoing clash between two recruits, it was inevitable that there would be an Allied Ninja amongst them.</p><p>Snipe Hawker collapsed on her knees, covered in cuts that resulted from the aggressive sword fighting style of her opponent overwhelming her up close. She knew when she was beaten. Her saber rolled off of her trembling hands. She'd hate nothing more than for her father to have to tear this place down with his bare hands and pull her out of trouble but that must have been what it would all amount to. She hit a brick wall, everything had gone wrong.</p><p>How did the blasted witch even survive the shot!?</p><p>"You think you're readying for your penance…" Endo closed his eyes, accepting his opponent's surrender before fighting spirit ignited in his spiteful eyes once more. "But not yet," he declared. "When the ogres are flaying your skin as you hang helpless on their hooks, you'll have an entire eternity to repent!"</p><p>While none of the Stars seemed to approve of Endo's violent slash that left Snipe Hawker slumping lifeless on the ground, her chakra too taxed on keeping her going with the stab wound in her gut to augment her body enough to prevent sudden death this time, they understood it. It wasn't too long ago that they all felt confused and betrayed and wanted nothing short of violent death for the assassin and Endo was the most noxious and trigger-happy out of their lot. When he got mad, his wrath only grew hotter and more intense.</p><p>"Recruit Ion!" a ginger-haired woman in elegant, sky-colored chainmail gasped upon setting her sights on the corpse of a recruit and the entirety of the Stars surrounding her. Endo approached the rolling, masterless cylinder that Damisan wore and slipped it onto his gang mate's face to cover it up.</p><p>"Th-Thank you…" Damisan muttered.</p><p>"Don't get me wrong, you abortion, I'm merely covering your freak face up from being seen by the staff. You're right to be embarrassed by it, it's grotesque," Endo whispered back to him.</p><p>"What is going on here? One of you better answer at once!" a short and plump woman in a black suit of armor and two pigtails for hair, a pale face, and intense, runny, black make-up growled at the weary recruits that scurried on to Mana. Seeing the desperate state at which Mana was in, the ginger-haired woman dashed beside the magician and examined her.</p><p>"The other one is obviously dead, how is this one?" a dark-skinned man with white face paint and apparel befitting the colder regions of the Snow Country turned to the medical ninja from the Allied Ninja staff examining Mana's condition. Understanding the profound importance of Shige-H's non-stop healing session, the woman did not interrupt it but examined the fallen magician around it.</p><p>"She looks stable. The immediate critical threat to her life is over but I'm not sure we can move her," the woman reported back.</p><p>"I believe you lot were asked a question," Regimental Commander Hallam himself pointed his finger to the gathering of Stars forming a circle around Mana. "From where we're standing, you've been caught brawling it out without authorization or supervision!"</p><p>"That's okay, you must be tired, I'll take over now," the woman with the cerulean chainplate gently butt her shoulder to Shige-H's, nudging the young medical kunoichi out of the way as she took over sustaining Mana's life until a better way to keep her alive and work toward her recovery could have been figured out.</p><p>"What the heck!?" Tomi pointed her finger at the Regimental Commander. "If we didn't come here to check up on our friend, that killer lady would've killed Mana!"</p><p>"Can someone above the age of fourteen explain it, maybe?" the dwarfish woman clad in obsidian armor let out an irritated growl. "Regimental Commander just put it how it looks, no need to show your teeth over it, brat."</p><p>"R-Right…" Shige-H nodded, looking at her trembling hands, the woman must have been feeling quite dizzy, or at least her pale skin suggested such a predicament as she stumbled onward, covered in bloodstains that soaked her fur coat and stained her face. Shige's curly hair felt greasy as they stuck to her spoiled face, forcing active effort to peel them off and out of the way of her vision.</p><p>"Mana wasn't in the best of team spirit moods lately. I've noticed it as a leader and I know why – she and Endo, our newest member, didn't get along. She must have been having second thoughts about joining the gang and as the team leader, I felt responsible for keeping her around. Having noticed her missing out on yet another gang evening, I decided to tackle the issue. Figured showing up with the whole gang, looking functional and chipper, and inviting her to join us on some fun leisure time would suffice but… We've asked around and people told us they've seen Mana in the training grounds, she's been doing nothing but training these last couple of days and either by her lonesome or with some other recruits outside of the gang. Naturally, that felt like a red flag to me so we've all hurried up and… When we next saw her, she was laying on the ground with a hole in her chest, not even a heart left to pump the blood for her…"</p><p>"She might be a mutt, criminal witch but she's tougher than most," Endo smirked when looking at Mana's peaceful, blood-stained face. "I gotta say, I've never had a hole blown out in my chest and I'm not sure if I'd even survive such a thing. I'm beginning to like having her around the gang…"</p><p>"It is highly unusual that such a wound wouldn't kill a ninja outright. Her guard must have been down, no chakra augmentations opposing the wound – she got hit hard and fast. It's a hit for sure," the medical ninja staffer working on keeping Mana alive remarked.</p><p>"Yeah… Recruit Ion… That isn't even her real name… She's an assassin who infiltrated this place just to kill Mana," Damisan turned his head to the Snipe Hawker's lifeless body, looking at her with a sorry expression. He hated the whole affair of this, trusting this pit viper for one but also the way it all turned out. This was by far the hollowest victory he's ever experienced.</p><p>"That's ridiculous!" the clad in black armor woman spat to the side. "For an assassin to pull a stunt like that… She must have been really skilled and highly paid. Someone with the skill to do this can't be your usual grunt who'd off someone for a pack of crisps. I've barely even heard about this chick, she can't possibly be worth that much money…"</p><p>"This is odd, I have heard of Nakotsumi Mana being a notable entertainer back in her home village, one would assume that she would be useful to hold over her village for a ransom but even then… Since the news broke all over the world about her implication with Guru Ayushi, nobody would pay a sizable ransom for her anymore," Regimental Commander Hallam stroked his massive, rubbery armor in a pose of intense thinking. "Still, this is alarming news. If an assassin can just slip into our ranks to kill this young woman, that means that our HQ is no longer safe for her. I'll bring this up to the Supreme Commander's attention first thing next morning, let's just hope that Mana's condition stabilizes…"</p><p>"We're in a bit of a pinch here, I can't move her. If I leave her unattended for a few seconds – she'll slip into a coma she'll never awaken from, followed by death soon thereafter. If we move her – she dies for sure," the medical ninja validated Shige-H's earlier judgment on the situation.</p><p>"You're making it sound like her survival was miraculous in the first place, how come she even survived that attack in the first place?" the dark-skinned and thickly-dressed man grumbled, observing the sprawled out and dying recruit with a mixed feeling of awe and confusion.</p><p>"She must have been meditating…" Shige-H muttered. "I've noticed her being pretty impressive at meditation. She's able to simulate training sessions and meditate so intensely that she starts floating off the ground and flowing with a sapphire aura when she gets serious."</p><p>"What's that got to do with anything?" the black-armored staff member wondered.</p><p>"I see… Indeed, if recruit Mana was meditating, it might have helped her avoid shock. No shock – no violent reaction of missing her entire chest cavity. Her mind must be stuck inside, she's got to be manipulating her bodily functions mentally. She's doing as much work at keeping herself alive as both of us," the medical kunoichi from the staff smiled, looking impressed. "It's quite a feat, controlling your body like that, bypassing the parts of blood circulation that would cause a ruckus and force her to bleed out, making do without the vessels and organs that are failing."</p><p>"Still, I take it that recruit Mana cannot sustain her own life alone?" Regimental Commander Hallam inquired.</p><p>"No, as impressive as her mental sustenance is, her life must be sustained from both sides, I'm afraid," the medical kunoichi shook her head.</p><p>Tomi bit the thumb of her healthy hand and weaved a few hand seals, placing it to the ground. "Summoning Jutsu!" she chanted out, now that life had been absent from Snipe Hawker's bland expression and it felt safe to place her hand without having to fear makibishi spikes and other traps again. The ground underneath the medical ninja and Mana's body quaked as it began to rise up.</p><p>"T-Tomi!" Shige-H scolded the little friend to all living beings as she stretched her healthy hand and cradled her injured one again. A large tortoise carrying the patch of land on its shell where Mana was lying with the shocked medical ninja looming over her rose from underneath the ground and shook off the dirt from its face and the lower half with a few good yanks.</p><p>"Kamera, get Mana-nee and the nurse back to HQ, please…" Tomi looked at her summon with the eyes that brimmed with emotion so deep that her ninja animal partner wouldn't dare of contemplating the option of failure when confronted by such tremendous need.</p><p>"Right!" Kamera let out a low-pitched proclamation that sounded dry, almost as if dirt and gravel were still stuck in the tortoise's throat somewhere as they ran out from its mouth in streams when the tortoise spoke up.</p>
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<a name="section0714"><h2>714. The Witch In A Red Dress</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana expected to see space. She wasn't sure what had happened outside, to her physical body. Somewhere amidst her serene tranquility of meditation, there was a bleed of crimson inside of her mental expanse and it was something outside of Mana's experience. She had been poisoned before and fought it off with meditation, fended of minor sicknesses but nothing quite like this. Cracks and fissures that seemed to shatter her very inner universe began cradling the entire psychic orbit, forcing Mana to choose to stay inside and cradle psyche off, see how she could help herself from inside rather than rush to what might have been her certain death.</p><p>At the very core of her immaterial scope, there was no space, no nebulae. Only an orb of lapis lazuli and salad-green. An Earth drowning in serene waters that hosted only one continent and if Mana was certain what it was that continent reminded her of – it was a curious sight to explore. The magician girl tilted her hand and pulled on the mental fabric like she'd have pulled a shroud to unveil what's underneath, pulling herself through the spiritual province. Her feet touched solid, sandy ground.</p><p>"Well, this is a surprise…" a voice familiar to Mana's own demanded the magician's attention, prompting her to tilt her arms and not turn by herself but roll the world around her as if she was turning a barrel. Thusly she positioned the inner world of her mind to where the mysterious mental construct now stood before her in full-view.</p><p>"What's wrong, has it been that long out there that you can't recognize me anymore?" a woman who was undoubtedly Mana though no mirror image of her as she had seemingly lived an entirely different life to the magician crossed her arms, resting both her elbows in a gentle grip of her hands while her lips made a mocking tilt. Her eyebrows joined in on the proud facial expression, challenging the magician to prove that her mind was made of sharper stuff than to fail to comprehend the inner workings of her own brain.</p><p>This Mana was an adult, her hair laid flat and long, reaching the lower sections of her thighs as scarlet strings tied around iron rings comprised her red dress. She donned extravagant make-up of eye-carving colors, shaped in patterns, more like ritualistic face-paint rather than genuine touch-ups meant to improve her appearance and hide the natural imperfections. Her exposed arms displayed an intricate network of abstract tattoos, lines running like threads, weaving, and hiding underneath various symbols and other simplistic artwork.</p><p>This construct's existence challenged what Taiga-sensei taught her about the human mind. The only way that a version of oneself could exist inside one's own mental realm would have been if one hosted multiple personalities. When Mana probed the minds of other people – she saw their mental avatars but only because she was a third person roaming their mental forts. If she was to roam her own – she'd have had to only perceive it from the first person.</p><p>"Space Baby…?" Mana muttered. Her first instinct was to recall the last time she found herself in a similar predicament – trapped inside of her own mind as her physical body floated slowly onward across the hellish river and toward the doom of a roaring whirlpool of finality.</p><p>"Oh, come on!" this new, adult and quite human version of space baby tsked as she wagged her finger in front of Mana's face like a cute warning. "I could forgive you calling me that back then, namely, because I wasn't quite sure what I was, and I certainly looked the part, but if you call me this again, I'll crush you and take over."</p><p>"Crush me and… Take over…?" Mana scratched her head, never having imagined that this was an option that was pointed at her and put on the table.</p><p>"Oh, don't linger on that!" this alternate construct of Mana waved her hand at it and raised her hands, proudly displaying the version of Konoha that she had created for Mana's mental fort that shined like a brilliant gemstone in all of its glory around them. "Like what I've done with the place while you were busy?"</p><p>"You've created a world inside of my mind and gave yourself a more defined mental shape…" Mana stated the obvious, admiring the mental constructs of Konoha citizens treading about, going through their day, glaring at the two Mana with wary stares. They were smitten by the two women though, it occurred to Mana, that they might have been terrified of them all the same. Still, they looked identical to the villagers Mana had seen and met throughout her life, she could identify some of them.</p><p>"Well, technically… You won't hear me admitting it often but… We created it. I used your eyes and ears to catch a glimpse of them. The scent in the air is based on your memories from childhood since… Well… You know…" the Mana in the red dress shrugged.</p><p>"Everything about this is curious to me," magician Mana admitted. "Your choice for the mental fort, the incredible precision you've gone through to assemble it as if not a single detail was allowed to be off-model. Your own choice for expression, your appearance… You're something that exists within my mind, it makes sense you'd model yourself after me but…"</p><p>"I wasn't aware that we've had a detective Mana snooping around, maybe the magician Mana is still off, floating inside the pocket universe in her own mind?" crimson Mana jested.</p><p>No, all of this is stunning, don't get me wrong, but… When an artist draws a masterpiece comprised of a specific image, depicting something concrete, the core question remains – why this thing specifically?" Mana shrugged, moving her hands and yoinking the fabric of space inside of her mental fort, twisting and turning it around, reducing it in size and growing it back to its original state with motions of her hands and hardened willpower to weave the network of her mind as she saw fit.</p><p>"You know, you could just turn…" the Mana in the red-dress slumped, sinking her hands and shoulders down as she hunched in an expression of slight disappointment in the way that her other, dominant self was acting. "You don't have to… Do… All this."</p><p>"Sorry, I'm making sure not to hurt or change anything. Your masterpiece is simply brilliant, I seem to be stuck inside for a time so I'd love to spend some time here and relax a bit, if you don't mind," Mana suggested her other-self. "We've been apart for quite some time, when we first met, you didn't quite know what you was and I, certainly, had no clue. I'm curious if after all this time you'd have gone on to understand yourself better?"</p><p>"You're the one who did all the mind-probing training, tell me, Magician…" the woman in the red dress teased Mana but she was quick to abandon the act, knowing full-well what Mana did and did not know, being a construct of her own mind, after all. "I'd like for you to stay here, in fact, I made this place specifically for that purpose."</p><p>"So there was a purpose…" Mana smiled, admiring the flowers growing out of the wayside decorations, silken to touch and fragrant in smell – a pleasure that Mana had long since forgotten about.</p><p>"Fine…" the woman in red groaned, running her hand over her straight hair, the nervous tick left her perfect hairdo a tad untidy, not at all unlike Mana's when she relented the inevitable defeat against her own wild hair. "There was, and… Look, I know… We've basically got infinity to mess around here, eat ice cream, dazzle people on the stage and receive as much praise as we want but… I'm not going to beat around the bush here if you don't mind."</p><p>"We both know that a dazzler won't get done in by a little glamour and soft-talk," Mana admitted.</p><p>"Exactly," the other Mana nodded. "You're right, I've come to understand just what I am and, you won't believe it, but… What you are too."</p><p>"Really?" Mana wondered, visibly acting intrigued. "Do tell."</p><p>"You see, you think that you're… Well… You, Nakotsumi Mana, Konoha's Sorceress, Konoha's Special Jounin, and Allied Ninja in the making, right? Truth be told, we're one and the same. You're not Mana, not really, neither am I. Both of us are Mana. You've been changing, redefining yourself just like I have, the difference is that you've been in charge, steering the whole ship whereas I've had as much time as I wanted to shape myself inside this mental realm." Mana in the red dress said.</p><p>Mana's sights set on the villagers, smiling, bowing, and nodding, albeit nervously. Bit by bit she could pick up speech patterns and they didn't make much sense. They were faking conversation and nodding to each other, petrified that their act would be discovered and it was exactly because of that reason that Mana acted like it wasn't. This version of her in the red dress, she might have been dangerous, or at least her own mental fragments suggested this much. It took a mean piece of an architect to make the building they designed scared shitless of them.</p><p>"So what you're saying is that I am merely a mental construct, just like you, though formed earlier?" Mana wondered if she got the pitch just right.</p><p>"Exactly! I know you won't like this thought but… I'm not sure that either of us is the original. Who's to say how many other Manas there were, the one that formed inside your mother's womb, sparked by our combined origin, that one must be long-gone already. Who's to say if there even is a fragment of the original us inside any of us anymore. Just think about how much you've molded and shaped yourself, Magician. You've gone from cheerful and naïve to experienced and just to bitter and gloomy, your experiences dented you and you've filled those dents with whatever you could find. Still, given my experience in the mental and spiritual matters, I'm more than certain that you're still the Magician construct."</p><p>"The Magician construct? So you're something like me, right? Another mental construct, someone who can steer the physical Mana if need-be, right? What does that make you? Scarlet Mana?" the Magician pondered, humoring her vivid imagination for a second.</p><p>"Call me whatever you will, it's not like there's a mother-mind to name us… Either way, you can stay here, in this version of Konoha. With how developed and trained our mind is – we can freely shape the entire mental dimension as we see fit, the entire universe at our command, whereas out there all you'll have is misery. Don't think I haven't seen you. More and more of you is getting chipped away with each passing day and if that continues – there'll be no more Magician to guide Mana." Scarlet rushed out in front of Mana, pleading her case with alarming passion.</p><p>What she stated suggested that her intentions were pure. Though based on everything that Mana had seen up to that point, she was beginning to wonder. Then there was this whole affair with her not being who she thought she was and merely The Magician construct. This idea felt like trouble. Mana had no idea how to approach or argue against it. She didn't feel like just a mental construct, she felt like… Well… Her… The real her but… Wouldn't that be exactly what a mental construct who was just a personality, a mask temporarily assigned to wheel duty say?</p><p>"Okay, so what's your pitch, Scarlet?" Mana mumbled, pocketing her hands inside of her blazer and swinging on her wobbly feet, doing her best to disguise the shapeless feeling that she had in her gut as if even her own mind was trying to trick her and lie to her. It felt like that was exactly what Scarlet was out for – to depose Mana and destroy her or tuck her away.</p><p>"Stay here, with me!" Scarlet stretched her arms out, suggesting that the splendor and artificial happiness around them was a substitute for reality. "You were closer to nabbing time perception, you know. I can feel it, inside your own mind, you can spend however much time you need in just one blink of real-time. We can enjoy this mental fort together and you don't have to ever surface again."</p><p>"That's… Hopeful. Even if we spend an eternity in here, eventually the Allied Ninja will get rid of Mana… Of me… The physical body. They'll rule us out as dead or hopeless. Hiding is no excuse, someone will have to surface and take control eventually." The Magician sighed.</p><p>"Only if the physical body is healed. You've seen it though, right? It doesn't look too good… Who knows if a cataclysm like that can even be repaired. Come on, think about it, I know that outside hurts, you've suffered for so long, for almost twenty years you've been chipped away and battered, weathering Mana's storms and troubles. If need be… If need be… I can surface and take over," Scarlet pleaded. The Magician couldn't see any glimmers in Scarlet's eyes when she said that, it was either that she received no gratification from such thoughts or that she simply was too good of a liar to tell anymore what she wanted or liked.</p><p>"Well… It's not like I've got any options, right?" The Magician shrugged, digging her cheeks and into her blazer as if it could shield her away from the decision she'd have to make eventually. She couldn't get a read on Scarlet at all anymore, who knows, maybe Scarlet is just as viable to be Mana as the Magician was. What a confusing mess, before this day, even with all of Mana's mastery of the mind, she'd have never thought anything that Scarlet told her to be possible or that the gates of probability were open and welcoming for something like Scarlet to even exist.</p><p>Being trapped inside Paradise that was designed by another you wasn't the worst fate, however long it lasts…</p><hr/><p>The ginger-haired staff member walked into the Stars' room, wiping sweat off of her face. Her expression looked hopeful, nothing in her face indicated that Mana might have died on the table or that the odds were dire but she wasn't outright gleeful either. That was why getting the initial read on the woman seemed impossible.</p><p>"Your friend survived. Her condition had stabilized already by the time we've brought her to the medical room and, thankfully, moving her the way we did didn't seem to aggravate it. Though the condition in which she's stabilized to… Well…" the medical ninja tried mustering up the necessary and stern stuff to say it but couldn't.</p><p>"She's as good as dead, ain't she?" Endo spat it out, never being shy of displaying his stuff that, most of the time, was the sternest stuff around.</p><p>"She's stable. Stably comatose that is. If we let her sleep and don't interrupt her – she'll likely sleep for as long as her body can last. Who knows, if we supply her with food and water, she might last for a full lifetime. Those are the best odds of a completely heartless person with a massive hole for a chest ever, I must say. Your friend is remarkably tough to kill, which shouldn't make sense because physically her body is an absolute wreck – she's been through some rough times already, does anyone know how old she is?" the medical ninja wasn't sure if she felt crushed by this report or admired her helpless patient more.</p><p>Everyone turned to Shige-H who, it was no mystery, had done extensive spying and research on every hand-picked member of her Stars.</p><p>"Around seventeen, the exact count didn't seem like integral information," Shige-H shrugged with a sad sniff of her nose.</p><p>"Well, she's the most punished and battered seventeen-year-old I've ever seen, in that case…" the medical kunoichi scratched the back of her neck, still feeling uncomfortable by the scans she's performed on the poor youth.</p><p>"Please do not get discouraged, Shige-H, I don't believe that Mana-san's condition is quite as hopeless as you are making it out to be!" Damisan spoke up, he didn't look quite as potent to change Mana's fate of helplessness, looking more like a wriggling, limbless caterpillar, carefully placed on his bed with his concealed head rested over a pillow. "I don't think that the Allied Ninja have a superior engineer than me in terms of producing functional organ replacements. Shige-H-san is an amazing medical ninja, if she gives me a blueprint of all the organs and blood vessels that Mana is missing, I can make mechanical replacements. Rubber tubes for vessels and a mechanical heart can't be outside the realm of possibility!"</p><p>"We're using pig vessels for replacements at the moment. Mana's body is incredible, once we've connected the separate, splattering vessels together with the biological replacements, she seemed to adapt and redirect the blood circulation, reworking how her body functions completely and inventing new blood circulation patterns just to survive. Without her help, she'd have long been dead. You guys seem like true stand-up guys too, though I'd hurry if I were you. I'm not sure for how long will the Supreme Leader let us keep Mana on the table all patched up like this. After all, she's quite helpless to the Allied Ninja in her current state, all she's doing is taking constant time, attention, and sustenance away from others that need the help of the medical ninja…" the medical kunoichi nodded, wishing the Stars the best of luck before she left their room.</p><p>"I'm sure that the Supreme Leader will come around after we visit her…" Endo looked grim and frightening yet hopeful of his success. "If the ultimate goal is for all of us to pass all the lessons the witch was pulling us through, I'll use all of my determination to make the Supreme Leader an offer she can't refuse!"</p><p>"I should probably get to work on my own prosthetics first, I can't tinker on anything for Mana without arms or legs of my own…" Damisan's cylinder weighed down in a depressing slump when he examined his current, limbless state.</p><p>"You better not mess up Mana's heart and vessels like you've messed up your own shoddy parts last time…" Endo warned the sad fellow Stars member.</p><p>"It wasn't me, it was Ion, or whatever her real name was. Shit, I can't believe I couldn't recognize that she was playing me and installing workarounds in my own limbs to disassemble me faster…" Damisan appeared to be getting even more worked up as self-loathing and desperation took control.</p><p>"Don't get yourself down, freak, if I looked like you and someone winked her eye at me, I'd be just as blinded to their treachery just out of the sheer shock that someone could even act like loving me," Endo seemed to mean it as an encouraging declaration of support though it seemed to utterly decimate his ally who flopped on his face, flinging his entire frame with one bountiful flick of his entire torso and, from the looks of it, turned himself off.</p><p>Endo yelled out in pain as a smack over his head resonated through the room. Little Tomi stood on his cupboard, looking vexed at her ally with her little hands, both the subtle and tanned left one and the bandaged and comically oversized right one to her hips.</p><p>"That's mean!" she scolded Endo, pointing an accusatory finger at him.</p><p>Little by little, the Stars planned on salvaging what they still had left after Snipe Hawker's attack.</p>
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<a name="section0715"><h2>715. A Heart That Doesn't Bleed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Supreme Leader appeared utterly stunned by the fact that a small group of recruits made their way up to her office. Regimental Commander Harcel was also present as the two must have been discussing a matter or two before the Stars decided to grace the highest authority in the entire Allied Ninja organization with their presence.</p><p>"What the fuck is this shit!?" Supreme Commander pointed her arms to the door to her office like two metal rods she meant to impale all of the entering recruits on while her crazed eyes turned to Harcel. "I don't even see people that work for us unless it's to get debriefings or hand out sensitive jobs to them. Why are those fuckers here!? Why are you fuckers here!?"</p><p>"Ma'am, we've come to talk about Nakotsumi Mana," Shige-H stepped out in front of what de facto was her squad and nodded her head. "We've heard that you might be considering turning her off life-support and letting her die. You've got to give us a chance to plead our case since Mana can't plead hers."</p><p>"What!?" the Supreme Commander tilted the front beak of her cap and scratched the back of her head, turning to Regimental Commander Harcel. "Okay, I'm fucking lost here… I don't know what the fuck is going on here…" she blew a stream of air out from her lungs.</p><p>"Well, to be fair, we were discussing the matter right now," Regimental Commander Harcel turned to the Stars with a smug grin on his face. "Although, you may be surprised to know that it was I who advocated letting Mana-san pass away and the Supreme Commander was the one who held on to her position that we simply cannot do so."</p><p>"Huh?" Shige-H switched her surprised pair of eyes between the two authority figures in front of her. "But I thought…"</p><p>"Yeah, when all of you came rushing back with that chest-less bitch in your hands, bleeding all over my headquarters, yeah, I got more than a bit pissy, I'll admit, tensions were high, cords almost got cut…" the Supreme Leader removed her hat and crossed her arms over her chest with it, "Though when cooler heads prevailed, it's clear that we can't do anything but hope we can get Mana back on her two feet and working for us again."</p><p>"That's good, she outranks you so we're good, right?" Tomi pulled on Endo's hakama, looking up to the apprentice samurai like she'd have looked up to an older sibling, with hopeful eyes.</p><p>"Not necessarily, I am still hoping to convince all of you to see reason – Nakotsumi Mana is but one ninja, a special jounin so she's no average ninja but she's not worth the constant upkeep in resources we've got to spend to keep her alive in her current state. The way she is now, she's useless to us, as sad as it is to admit it, and we cannot afford to throw our resources and manpower down useless prospects," Regimental Commander Harcel turned back to the Supreme Commander, as if talking to the Stars simply wasn't worth his time.</p><p>"W-Wait, that's not true! We're… We're working on a way to get Mana back on her feet. We just need a little time," Damisan stepped out atop of his rather crude, skeletal-shaped, metal prosthetics that were made merely to provide him with some elementary limbs rather than to be efficient in combat. "Working together, Shige-H and I can make some artificial organs to replace those that Mana had lost. She can be an asset to the Allied Ninja again. She can be alive and living again."</p><p>Damisan was sure to emphasize the fact that those two terms meant very different things. Especially so to him – someone who was left alive after a particular nightmarish event and spent so much of his time merely being alive and only recently started truly living.</p><p>"So what you are suggesting might bring her back the way she was before the injury?" Regimental Commander Harcel raised an eyebrow, giving the young ninja an almost mocking look.</p><p>"We've got no reason to think it won't!" Damisan pumped his artificial fist with an uncomfortable, screechy bend to his elbow joints.</p><p>"Well, that's not quite true…" Shige-H looked down with a grim expression, "Without Mana's real, organic heart, her circulation will be a mess. A whole bunch of her very important tenketsu points have been straight out obliterated and… I can't say for sure that she will come out of it weaker but… She'll have tremendous difficulty recovering and she may just need to learn to mold chakra all over again,"</p><p>"There you go, do we really have the luxury to spare invaluable and limited resources on rubbish like that? If we can afford to host ninja that need to learn the basics all over again, why don't we just start taking in children from now on?" Regimental Commander Harcel snickered as he entertained these possibilities, wondering why the rest of the office wasn't laughing alongside him as his look raced across the room to find others to join in on his chuckling.</p><p>"I think you've got your solution there, you rotten asshole," the Supreme Commander flipped her military cap back on and lowered its beak while she gleamed a malicious grin. "I'm keeping Mana plugged in and alive because I've got no other choice – she might be a criminal back in Konoha but she's also a starlet. She attracts attention to this fucking joint just by being here, existing, and living her day to day life. The next course of recruits has filled up before this one even started. Plus, there are some very influential people in Konoha that won't let me cut the cord but that's none 'a your fucking business…"</p><p>"Are we at such a foul state that we will allow ourselves to be influenced by mere numbers of meaningless chaff now? So what if Konoha's Sorceress attracts fodder here? Are any of them even one-tenth her worth in battle? Plus, why are we being bullied by some shadows over in Fire Country? We reside inside the Lightning Country and have the backing of Kumogakure – the strongest military power in this world. We are meant to heed no influence from any external sources, we are beyond such mere political frivolities," Harcel acted out spitting over his left shoulder in disgust.</p><p>"Lightning Country used to have the strongest military, old man, maybe back in your day, but after flexing that military for far too long, they've lost their position. It just so happens that Konoha is the second most powerful force on this planet so it might be wise to listen to what they have to say from now on," Endo replied with a strict and disdainful look directed to the Regimental Commander in charge of the recruit matters and their education.</p><p>"Hmph… That may be so, but there is no way that Konoha would risk their position "flexing" their military, as you put it, so far out in Lightning Country territory. The entirety of the Snow Country is protecting us, their forces would wither before they made through the mountain range, everybody knows that, you'd know that if you paid attention in class," Harcel hissed back at the bratty youth. "Basic knowledge in Logistics implies that there aren't enough caravans to transport a large military force over the mountains, meaning they'd have to march through and that would shave the difference in manpower down to nothing, if not tip the scales in Kumogakure's favor."</p><p>"The matter of military superiority is meaningless here. Konoha has always had a drastic advantage in population, sheer manpower and that is what is important. They have the most medical staff, the most booming small businesses, and the most ninja as well. That is why their voice matters, if we represent the world's matters – we represent Konoha's matters proportionately more so than the rest of the world's. Those are just basic statistics," Shige-H shrugged, looking to the Supreme Commander for support.</p><p>The woman sighed and nodded. "I guess you brats have been picking up a thing or two in class after all. I'm not the one you should be fucking bending over here. This fucker's also like so whatever… You're just posturing for its own sake, you tryhards. I've already told the lot of you, Mana's fucking staying, and she's gonna keep breathing. If she recovers and manages to pitch in in some other way than merely being a fancy flagpole to attract people with – that's all the better for us."</p><p>"Very well, I've understood your position, Supreme Commander and I will accept your decision, however, accept this also – if Konoha's Sorceress recovers and fails to keep up in class because of her condition, I won't spare her just because she's your little attraction. She'll flunk as many times it'll take to make a proper Allied Ninja out of her "new" and "weak" self," the Regimental Commander was sure to emphasize the two terms with great disdain for both of those words in his tone.</p><p>"Fine, I'm not asking you for anything else, dickwad," Supreme Commander smacked her forehead and sighed, looking increasingly more tired by this conversation the longer it went on. "It might even be for the better to keep her sorry-ass around, becoming an inspiration to the ninja she attracts to our cause so if she fucks up a couple of times and sticks around to build the other noobs up – all the fucking better."</p><p>"Always a very unique kind of pleasure to talk to you, Supreme Commander…" Regimental Commander Harcel bowed the upper half of his body with a smirk and left the office, walking around the Stars with a scornful look on his face.</p><p>"I'm impressed that you stuck up for Mana's life," Damisan noted, placing his stiff, metal prosthetic hand over Endo's shoulder. "It appears that being with the Stars is having a positive influence on you after all,"</p><p>"Yes, I too am glad that my education is of our prime concern here," Endo agreed with a lively nod. "I can't stand to deal with pissy tutors when they fail to teach me right and they end up failing me either. Mana is the only guarantee that will not happen, we cannot afford to lose her."</p><p>"Well… Your heart might not be in the right place just yet but… It's a work in progress," Shige-H smirked with half of a smile.</p><p>"You sorry fuckers, what the fuck are you still doing in my goddamn office!?" the Supreme Leader barked at the Stars, shaking her fist over her head. The quartet took it on their toes, right where their freezing hearts sunk down to when the Supreme Leader scolded them. The four dashed out of the office, not minding any sort of etiquette but, judging from the look on the Supreme Leader's face – the only fact that the woman cared about was that they got out and left her to work in peace.</p><hr/><p>"This is the end of this class, cease this abomination at once!" tutor Mauma crossed his arms, looking at Endo dragging Damisan by his heel across the ground as the battlefield has returned to the seals that gave birth to it at the beginning of the class and the recruits started packing into their own groups of friends and moving toward the dorms again since the class was finished for the day.</p><p>"Just give me five…" Damisan bellowed, rubbing the back of his head and wincing from the constant stimulation of the bruising that Endo's careless handling of him left him in. Shige-H leaned down to heal him, looking beaten.</p><p>"I was looking at our performance, we're lagging behind. Our current level doesn't befit our esteemed name, I expect you lot to do better next time," Endo wheezed out as he sat his bottom down on a nearby rock and wiped the sweat off his face.</p><p>"You were the worst of all of us!" Tomi yelled out, running at Endo with a large stick to whack him in the head with it. Being an expert swordsman, Endo managed to elude Tomi's swings without much effort and having the quality of common sense, until blind rage robbed him of all traces of it, the samurai apprentice knew better than to get hit even once by the furious young'un.</p><p>"That is ridiculous…" Endo caught the stick and redirected it, making Tomi stumble and very nearly plant on her face to the side.</p><p>"What was that carrying method you used," Shige-H turned to Endo. "Didn't you read the Battlefield Care Compendium? You put your ally on your back and then position their legs under your arms and hold their lower core while your back supports their body weight, you don't just drag them by their heel on the ground like a sack of trash."</p><p>"You know perfectly well that I did no such thing as reading anything. Even the Bushido code I have memorized from my master's retelling by heart. I had no use in reading when I was…" Endo got his song started again.</p><p>"Fighting for your life in a survival exercise against your master inside of a steel cage in an active volcano… Bla, bla, bla… We know it already!" Tomi shook her fist now that she realized how useless attacking Endo with a bludgeoning piece of wood was.</p><p>"You forgot the part where my master was the God-Sword user, one of four legendary swordsmen entrusted with a God Sword technique who chose me as the successor of that technique so next time you try and take a swing at me with some stick, remember who you're swinging at and who it is you are blaming," Endo gave little Tomi a scornful look, feeling like he had picked a great opponent to jab at each other's wits with in a girl half his size.</p><p>"Guys… Let's just go home, we're nearly done with our secret project anyway…" Damisan whined out after rising back up on his wobbly, prosthetic feet once Shige-H retreated off of him and stopped healing him with a weary breath coming from her lungs.</p><p>"I was hoping that we would finish it tonight, though given how Endo has mistreated you and how healing you has made me beaten off my feet… Who even knows anymore…" Shige-H rubbed her eyes while her arms fell limp by her sides.</p><p>"Just for the record, I knew how to carry an injured ally on the battlefield, it's just that touching this freak is too disgusting for me so I chose to drag him across the ground like the trash he was," Endo pointed out, looking like he felt it of profound importance to point this out before they were done with today's class. "Though I do agree, we must finish on getting Mana back on her feet as soon as possible. It is getting increasingly difficult to drag ourselves along those ruthless courses without her."</p><p>"I can't believe I'm agreeing with Endo here…" Tomi rubbed her tired eyes with her tiny knuckles and yawned. "I'm sorry, guys, I don't think I'll be able to help you much. I can summon Saruedo again to help you with your tinkering."</p><p>"Thank you, Tomi-chan, I could use some help from Katsuname and Katsukuji as well. At times it feels like they're more knowledgeable in medical ninjutsu than me," Shige-H nodded with bags under her eyes while the Stars proceeded toward their room and the chaos found therein. It took a special sort of dedication to devote one's free time to a project such as building a functional replacement for Mana's missing body.</p><p>Most of it could have been replaced with standard, Senju-clan filler of connective tissue but Damisan took no leisure time in designing a functional, mechanical heart prosthetic while, with the aid of Shige-H and Tomi's ninja slugs who seemed incredibly experienced in medical ninjutsu themselves, they've recreated the blood vessels and planned on connecting them with what remained of Mana's chest cavity before the medical ninja gave it their fairest go at reviving the magician once more.</p><hr/><p>"I… I can't believe it…" Damisan stumbled back from his secret project, positioned on the worktable and seemingly gleaming with ethereal light of the sum of all of the hard work that most of the Stars had put into making this come to be. "It's done…"</p><p>"I didn't expect it to be done so fast," Shige-H wiped the moistness from her eyes with the sleeve of her fur coat. The rough hair rubbed against her sensitive and tired eyes, irritating them and making them swell a tad. "Thank you, Katsuname, I didn't know that the cultivation of the artificial blood vessels could have been accelerated like that."</p><p>"Let's just hope it works…" a salad-green slug released a sticky sound out into the wild as its front end stuck to its body. The ninja animal had attempted to duplicate the human nodding motion but its front ended up sticking to the middle section.</p><p>"We're all holding out for Mana-chan," Katsukuji wriggled in excitement, the dark grey, and white slug poofed away into smoke only to be shortly followed by his companion after Tomi rubbed the slug's head in gratitude, shaking her sticky hand to get the goop off of her and attempting to wipe it at her raggedy, torn top once both of them were gone from view.</p><p>"Well, I'll be damned, I guess those bastards really did end up being useful. Now I feel sort of bad for trying to kill them with salt that one time," Endo approached the table, marveling at the artificial heart. He took it off the table and shook it in his hand, handing it back to Damisan when he let out a bunch of unintelligible growls, worried that the apprentice samurai would break it.</p><p>"It's busted, it doesn't pump anything…" Endo declared his judgment of the quality of the work.</p><p>"That's because it's not connected to anything!" Damisan scolded the samurai apprentice for almost busting the invaluable gadget. "Once hooked up to Mana, it will feed off of her chakra reserves to sustain itself and start managing normal blood circulation."</p><p>"Let's just hope that her body can grow accustomed to normal blood circulation after weeks of whatever she's been putting herself through. The last thing we need is for her body to use her brain as a circulation point…" Shige-H sighed easier as well while the two cradled their little baby and put it into a handheld chest where Damisan used to store sensitive parts to his prosthetics when he was rebuilding them again.</p><p>The handle of the door turned, without Mana to sense and warn the Stars that someone was coming, the entirety of the drained group turned to the door with exhausted stares only to exclaim in shock when Skaven was the one to walk to their room. They've been trying to reach out to this young man for entire weeks once Mana was still okay, though they've somewhat abandoned their recruitment efforts once the revival of the stage magician began demanding the most of their attention.</p><p>"Yo, you guys, I've heard you're working on some prosthetic for Mana. I'm here to ask you to can it and throw it out," Skaven scratched the back of his greasy-haired head, with a nonchalant expression as he asked the Stars to toss out their recent passion project to get Mana back to full consciousness and on her feet.</p>
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<a name="section0716"><h2>716. In Search For The Best Ham</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Whoa, whoa… Did you, Nara Skaven, the guy we've been trying to recruit to our crew, just busted into our room and declared that we should throw out the artificial chest model that we've been building for our friend and fellow Star?" Damisan pointed his metal finger at the Nara clad in an eggplant-colored jacket with his hands in his pockets like he had just asked them to take out their own trash or something.</p><p>"Yeah, though it doesn't help it when you break it down like that. I'm gonna explain myself in a moment so I'll just have to ask you to trust me and not install that robo-heart into your friend," Skaven pointed his finger at the precious prosthetic that Damisan held in his artificial hand.</p><p>"Why should we trust you?" Tomi beamed her suspicion through her childish and spiteful stare. "No matter how many times Shige-H asked you to join the Stars, you've declined every single time. You're a stranger and I barely trust even people I've met, let alone shady guys like you!"</p><p>"Tomi…" Shige-H raised her hand up to pacify the situation by requesting that the young lady keeps quiet and doesn't aggravate whatever this budding relationship of the Stars and Skaven ends up being.</p><p>"No, the urchin raises a fine point," Endo frowned with his eyes closed, rejecting even humoring his guest with a look let alone trusting his proposition. "If you make sure to further yourself as far as possible from a group, you don't get to make important calls such as these for that group. As far as the Stars are concerned, this man is nothing."</p><p>"Look, it's true that I haven't been the most approachable guy with that membership business and I don't do well with gangs so I'd still rather not have anything to do with your operation but… I do care about Mana and I want her to be fine again. I think what you're doing is a grave mistake that will ruin her life, which nobody who has become a target of criminals and assassins deserves. Mana deserves nothing less than a full recovery," Skaven explained himself, and the group's scorns laying with this man had softened once the truthfulness of his words and intentions became crystal clear from his body language and tone.</p><p>"You care about Mana?" Shige-H wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, lately, she's been sort of staying away from you guys and I found that odd, so I've been observing her whenever our paths crossed," Skaven shrugged. The young man looked not at all proud of what he had admitted. As was becoming a trend with him, there was a total package yet to unveil with the truth behind what he had just said and it began vexing Skaven more and more that this stacked up with something that was to be his first bilateral impression with the Stars.</p><p>"Whoa, did you follow Mana-nee, you creep!?" Tomi jumped up on her bed, her thumb slipped to her mouth while she reared her pearly whites ready to dig into her own thumb and call for some help to pummel this Nara weirdo on the spot.</p><p>"I didn't follow her per se. I just… If our paths crossed, if we walked by each other in the hallway or if we ended up reading in the library at the same time or trained in the Training Grounds with a matching schedule, I… I paid attention to her, as opposed to my usual disinterest with people in general," Skaven shrugged and looked away. While he looked a tad embarrassed to have to explain this, there was a glimpse of irritation in his eyes that brought up the impression that the young man was getting sick of this stand of his and was considering giving up on this complete stranger he intended to help in his mind.</p><p>"You saw Mana's loneliness. She piqued your interest because she looked to you like someone you could help." Shige-H put it down in plain and simple terms. It didn't hurt that she had thoroughly researched the personalities and histories of each Stars member she planned to recruit beforehand, so she knew just the kind of person Skaven was for real. Out of all the people in the room, except for the Nara himself, Shige-H needed his justifications the least.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess there was some of that…" Skaven mumbled in response.</p><p>"You're a lot like me, you know," Shige-H stood up. "You want to reach out to people and help them. Unlike me, however, you do it because that's just your nature. Unlike the people you've grown up around, you're a pleasant person and want to help everyone in-need. That's why you've chosen Endo's side during our sparring match without asking too many questions. He just looked like the person in-need of your help so you didn't hesitate to jump in and do what you felt was the right thing."</p><p>"I guess…" Skaven rolled his eyes. This whole psycho-analysis act and the true nature of the whole thing as yet another attempt to drag him over to the Stars' side didn't elude Skaven, however. His body language said as much. He was still lingering on the thought of walking away and never speaking to this gang again.</p><p>"Okay, what is your proposition then, Mr. Nice Guy?" Endo stated boldly, thrusting his verbal blade at Skaven's hesitant and lagging defenses without a care in the world about if his thrust penetrates his mark and how grievous the wounds would be. His tone was the dripping poison on the blade.</p><p>"Look… It's going to sound absolutely ludicrous so before I make this plight, I must explain where I come from." Skaven replied.</p><p>"Humph… You can spare us your life story. Just tell us what you advise us to do and leave us. If we like your advice–we'll take it, if not–we'll act as if you were never here." Endo pushed Skaven away without twitching a muscle. His voice and rude social skills had that effect on people.</p><p>"What's the matter? Is your background a touchy subject to you or something? Trust me, I can understand that thing if you find it difficult to talk about…" Damisan tried connecting with the enigmatic Nara loner but Skaven cut the cord before they could bond with a distant facial expression and a turn of his side.</p><p>"That's not it, it's just that in order for Mana to come back to us the way she was we must talk to the Supreme Leader too and I must recount that same story again and again. That's just such a bother, so I'd rather talk about it just once. Take my offer of seeing the Supreme Leader tomorrow after class or just stuff that rusty thing into your friend and watch her wilt in despair and hopelessness as her life's purpose floats away from her forever." Skaven replied with a cold drag of a razor's blade against sensitive, exposed nerves before leaving.</p><p>"I don't like that character. I can't believe you want him to join the Stars, he's just utterly unlikable..." Endo made a stone-cold expression of dismissal of the young man before Tomi flung a wooden boomerang at his head playfully only for it to bounce off and fall to the carpet in between their beds.</p><p>"You're the one to talk!" the girl hissed.</p><hr/><p>"Skaven," Shige-H nodded in acknowledgment of the fact that, true to his word, Skaven agreed to show up to the Supreme Commander's office door and plead his case before the frightening Supreme Leader herself.</p><p>"I take it you haven't stuffed the heart in just yet? 'Cause if you did, this entire job's sort of pointless so we may as well split," Skaven showed a skill in asking of something with no passion or curiosity behind the question peeking through the stone corner in his voice.</p><p>"Yes. We've gone a full day without Mana's help in our studies so this job of yours better be worth it!" Endo raised his fist and bumped it into his own chest as a taunt for the backlash that the Nara would face if his proposition doesn't pan out as something useful.</p><p>"Has it occurred to you that Mana might not be very helpful to your studies once she wakes up?" Skaven wondered. "She's skipped entire weeks of the prep courses. You may just have a better grasp of the subjects compared to her now and you may need to help her catch up. Are you willing to do that for her?"</p><p>"This is preposterous…" Endo crossed his arms. He stonewalled Skaven's question, so it wasn't entirely clear if at any deep-down layer of his heart he realized that Skaven might have had a point there.</p><p>"Of course!" Shige-H proclaimed. "We Stars stick together and help each other. Mana would do so much for any of us so it's only fair we stick up for her too. That's why we're here. We'd not have bothered if we felt any different way."</p><p>"Yeah, Mana helped me out when I blew up my prosthetics and she even offered to help me rebuild them too. Had it not been for the nasty affair with Ion… Well… I'm willing to provide whatever help Mana needs to make sure she doesn't feel alone and hopeless again." Damisan joined in.</p><p>"I don't trust or like that many people. People are mean, they hurt animals and destroy their homes. People downright suck! Mana-nee is different, she treats her ninja rabbits like her own family and she doesn't consider herself above ninja animals just because she's human. I'm gonna fight for Mana-nee because of that!" Tomi clenched her little fists and pumped them.</p><p>"Well… I suppose that's what Mana would do for us. If I didn't return the favor, I'd be worse than a lowly criminal and that I cannot allow. In what Mana does, I must do better!" Endo declared with passionate eyes devoid of hatred of any sort which was a rare sight to behold in this youth.</p><p>"Good, because you might just need nothing less than what you've promised to do right now. You might need to risk your lives and, possibly, even die for your friend. I just wanted to know that you were ready for that because few usually are." Skaven explained before opening the door and walking into the Supreme Leader's office.</p><p>"What the holy fuck is this shit!?" the Supreme Leader spat out her coffee in a chocolate-colored spray and pointed her arms at the entering party behind her door. "I thought I made it real fucking clear to you twerps that I don't wanna see ya unless you're starting out your preps, finishing them and you're expecting a fucking medal for it, or you're debriefing about a job and that job better be pristine as fuck because I'm gonna bite your fucking ears off and spit them out into your face if it ain't!"</p><p>Despite the Stars and Skaven alike being acquaintanced with the peculiarities about their Supreme Commander, the woman's untruthful rude behavior never failed to throw them off the loop. Despite the lousy first attempt at the siege of the woman's office, Skaven weathered the storm the best and approached her desk.</p><p>"There's a matter related to a job I want to discuss with you, Supreme Commander. It is not something to I can bring up before the Regimental Commanders as we haven't finished out prep courses so we don't have a regiment we can call our own yet." Skaven explained himself.</p><p>"Seeing how it's you fuckers, I bet it's about that stage magician bitch ain't it?" the Supreme Commander turned to a somber mood once she examined her soaked with coffee documents and spread them on the windowsill before resuming her slimy, chocolatey afternoon treat.</p><p>"It absolutely is. It concerns both Mana and the rest of the Stars." Skaven confirmed it.</p><p>"Really? So, you've signed yourself up with those goons too, huh?" the Supreme Commander wondered.</p><p>"I… I guess so. For now, at least…" Skaven admitted it with hesitation and his fair share of head scratching. "In any case, the Stars planned on putting their prosthetics into Mana and using Senju cells to fill up the missing chunks of connective tissue. Effectively, it would cover up her gaping wound while providing her with a working heart and core circulation system. Mana would be back on her feet albeit, most likely, her chakra circulation would be all messed up. Odds are–she'd remain incapable of molding chakra ever again, the best she can hope for is some impractical method of chakra control that dooms her for being a below average ninja for the rest of her life."</p><p>"Those are the risks we've discussed, yes. Frankly, while I'd rather see Mana as a useful and powerful asset to the Allied Ninja, I'm fine using her as a herald for the organization without actual combat ability too." The Supreme Leader replied with an annoyed growl as this was not what she had intended to be discussing at this point of the day nor were the Stars whom she intended to discuss it with.</p><p>"We've got the artificial heart built already, Supreme Leader," Damisan butt in with his metal index finger raised as if he spouted some fun trivia.</p><p>"Look, Mana has nothing to do with what happened to her. She barely even had the chance to defend herself. Some cowardly assassins started targeting her for a bounty she's accumulated by doing what she thought was right throughout her life and I think that's wrong. She deserves better than that. She deserves to have a shot at bouncing back from this, however slim and… However little she would like it if she was awake and had the choice in the matter." Skaven explained while running his arm over his messy, dark hair.</p><p>"So, you've got a better idea then, wise guy?" the Supreme Leader leaned back in her office chair and placed her high-heels with kunai for heels onto the table she was so itching to keep clean just a few moments earlier.</p><p>Skaven bit his lip, he didn't like how he was being addressed far more than the obscenities that the Supreme Leader spouted normally took him aback. The rest of the Stars noticed Skaven's hesitation. While they would have been glad to pitch in for their impromptu comrade, they didn't quite know Skaven's plan themselves either so they had to hear it first from him.</p><p>"Yes. I'm not sure how much of my upbringing you are aware of, I believe that only Shige-H amongst the Stars knows a thing or two about it but… I grew up and learned the ropes in the Hellhounds. A ruthless criminal gang operating in the far-off sections of the Fire Country, sometimes stepping out into the Land of Grass or some other smaller territory to shave off major heat but…"</p><p>"I knew it, you're just a no-good criminal yourself!" Endo yelled out, shoving Shige-H and Damisan away to each side as he forced Skaven to turn around and face him with a rude shove and yank.</p><p>"I'm not like the Hellhounds!" Skaven yelled out with vitriol matching Endo's own. "That's why I defected the first chance I got! I never knew my actual parents or where I was truly from, I took the first chance I had to jump ship and asked Kusagakure for sanctuary when I could."</p><p>"So that makes what? Only most of your entire life until a handful of years ago that you've spent thieving and offing people just like that assassin bitch blew Mana away?" Endo pressed his forehead up to Skaven's while the two beamed spite at each other, looking ready to throw down at any second now.</p><p>"I can't say that this ain't just fucking fantastic. Two dickwads about to throw down in my fucking office…" the Supreme Leader groaned, taking her hat off and running her hand through her hair before putting it back on and slamming her arms on the table as she split the two apart solely by standing up and leaning over her desk. "If you wanna go at each other and get yourselves kicked the fuck out of my organization, you're free to do it anywhere else where you're not being a fucking nuisance!"</p><p>"I apologize, it's just that… Skaven didn't tell us anything about his background yesterday nor did I, mostly because I felt worried that this job of Skaven's wouldn't come together if my group knew this. More than a few of them are still very touchy about criminals." Shige-H stepped in between the two.</p><p>"Me, for example," Damisan leaned in to the left, raising his artificial hand until his large, cloaked and covered up frame could be better seen from around the others. "Fennec and his gang quartered me and roasted me up like a regular barbecue in front of my entire village and left me to die."</p><p>Despite the severity of his declaration, Damisan sounded almost gleeful to be talking about it, as if the joy of being included into the Stars and this brewing affair with reviving Mana just the way she was before her big sleep overpowered the dread he felt lingering since the fateful day when a self-proclaimed revolutionary disfigured and brutally mauled the young man.</p><p>"That's all good and just fucking peachy, but I'd rather like to see the part where I'm supposed to get involved in this…" the Supreme Leader sat back down and leaned back in her chair while weaving her fingers over her belly.</p><p>"Well, the thing is that Endo was a bit off about his presumptions as to how recently I was still working with the Hellhounds. In fact, it hasn't been a full month since I've defected to Kusagakure before I asked to be assigned here." Skaven pointed out. "That means that some knowledge of the Hellhounds' inner workings and their bigger jobs remain with me."</p><p>"Humph… Of course, you did," Endo remarked. "With how much baggage you had with Kusagakure as a lowly criminal, murderer and a thief, just how could you have ever worked for that village? You turned tail and ran away as fast as you could, because that's what you lot always do. Abandoned your scumbag pals, then bit the hand that fed you and saved you and ran again. Say what you will, this still sounds like a proper hellhound to me."</p><p>"Recruit Endo, fucking seriously, shut the fuck up!" the Supreme Commander made a zipping gesture before turning back to Skaven. "You, shaved-sides-ponytail, keep going. I have a feeling I might like to hear something that you have to say."</p><p>"Well, it just so happens that we have involved the Hellhounds in a scheme that most gangs and anyone that's anybody around the Fire Country has dabbled in. Konoha has this shrewd fellow called Hanada Katsuo. They take him as a legitimate business person but he's got his claws deep into private healthcare facilities, he's been investing so much dough into the public Konoha hospital that he pretty much owns the damned thing by now. Not officially, not on paper, but he owns every gadget, every scalpel and every lab coat in that building because he supplied it to the facility himself. Donation after generous donation." Skaven started.</p><p>"And you guys look surprised when I say I don't trust people…" Tomi pouted her lips. The young lady looked like she wasn't much of a fan of this Hanada Katsuo fellow at all.</p><p>"Well, after his injuries, Guru Ayushi was hospitalized, and he's been laying in a coma he has no hope of waking up from ever since. Since Mana beat him to a pulp near her own home village, nobody batted an eye when they hospitalized him in Konoha and kept him there." Skaven explained.</p><p>"I think I already see where you're going, I've heard a peep or two about this…" the Supreme Leader leaned forward, looking very into this yarn of guts that Skaven was spilling.</p><p>"That's right, Hanada Katsuo is making a fortune off of using Guru Ayushi's cells, his very flesh for black market implants pretty much since week two of his hospitalization. Despite Guru being down and out, likely for good, his flesh still has some of his magic left in it. It's more regenerative than your usual lump of Senju cells for sure!" Skaven concluded his pitch. "If we get a pound of that black-market flesh–Mana would be up and walking as if nothing had happened a few hours later–I've seen shit like that with my own two eyes."</p><p>"You rotten bastards. Since Guru Ayushi regenerates himself, nobody would even notice a nip here or a tuck there," Endo's face turned sour despite the absolute criminal genius necessary to stand atop of a scheme such as the one underneath Hanada Katsuo's heels.</p><p>"He's not what he used to be, just a pale husk of the instantaneous, near-immortal regeneration but it's powerful and it's goddamn consistent," Skaven crossed his arms, looking at what the Supreme Leader has to say.</p><p>"You want me to send my Allied Ninja to get that pound of flesh for you, don't you, you wicked fuck?" the Supreme Leader leaned back in her chair, resting her head in her hands while her eyes blew out in the surprising amount of gall it took to put a plan such as this one together. "To send my people into the Konoha territory, to operate in the shadows and interact against the interests of this Hanada Katsuo dickwad that's got enough money to have his face carved right up that fancy-ass mountain of theirs or finance actual dicks being put into the mouths of the rest of those dead, old-ass pricks?"</p><p>"It would be quite a risk for you, Supreme Leader. That's why you need to send us–the Stars. If we get caught, you'll have plausible deniability. I'm a known associate of the Hellhounds and those haven't even graduated yet. This is the only way that this job would work for us," Skaven put his seal on the scroll with the pitch.</p><p>"You've thought this through, you sly fucking fox…" the Supreme Leader smirked. While the woman still appeared to have reservations, the confidence on Skaven's face suggested that he intended to talk the Supreme Leader through them one by one. There was too much spark in the militaristic woman's eyes for her to dismiss this as some nut job's wet dream to pull a heist of the century. "It sounds fucking stupid, honestly. None of you dweebs have even graduated yet and you'll end up skipping even more of your prep courses…"</p><p>"We'll catch up. If we succeed, however, we'll have Nakotsumi Mana back on her feet at full-power, if not better, while you have that ace hidden up your sleeve that you can whip out in your next meeting with the Hokage. You can look at him and show him how you can handle the shit brewing in his own village way better than he can. You have nothing but a handful of men and women to lose."</p><p>"Human resources are important, you guys are some of the most perspective recruits I've got now…" the Supreme Leader still resisted approving their job request on the spot but she's been halfway convinced already, the smell of it lingered in the air and the predators looking for a bite of it caught the whiff.</p><p>"Didn't you say many people have been flowing since Mana signed up, Supreme Leader?" Shige-H wondered. "You've got the labour force to spare, while none of them will be quite Stars material, you can bounce back from this several times over."</p><p>"Shitaka comes with you lot. No way am I letting a bunch of recruits prancing off like a couple of babies that know fuck all about the world outside the HQ without supervision of someone who knows what the fuck they're doing," the Supreme Leader relented while still altering the deal a little.</p><p>Though it was an alteration that the Stars could work with.</p>
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<a name="section0717"><h2>717. Nothing Personal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Stars' journey through the Land of Lightning wastelands had been uneventful all the way until they crossed into the southern parts where the ground turned rock-solid and ice-cold and powdery snow began pelting at their bodies. The flakes reached to the very essence of their resolve and washed at it like a relentless autumn rain threatens to dislodge a stone of an ancient, ruined wall and send it plummeting down to the roaring ocean below.</p><p>"Okay, what now?" Endo turned to the rest of the Stars as the team had reached the point where hills began taking over the landscape and all of them knew that it would be merely a matter of time before those hills transitioned into sky-reaching mountains. It would continue that way for at least six thousand kilometers that way before reaching twelve thousand kilometers of the tundra of blinding white. The Land of Snow was not as large as the sum of the Land of Lightning, but it was an annoying natural wonder to work one's way through.</p><p>"Now the least rocking part of all…" Shitaka sighed, deflating before the very eyes of the spunky recruits as the man withdrew himself inside of his leather coat. "We wait until a cabbie drops by some passengers looking to make their way through and pay him to take us back alongside him."</p><p>"No way! It's that difficult to cross to the other side of the mountain range!?" Damisan grabbed the cylindrical headgear that he hid his face down under in shock.</p><p>"Why did you think Kumogakure was isolated for so long?" Shige-H turned to Damisan with a squint of her eyes. "They hadn't even seen people that looked different from them until a couple of hundreds of years back."</p><p>"Yeah, you'd think one of those small villages based on caravans would have found their way on to the other side of the mountains, but they don't seem to see anything of use to find here. Any people living here are wanderers and loons that live in the mountains," Shitaka pulled on the straps of his bag. "But don't worry, little dudes, the other side of the mountain range lives and breathes the caravan business so multiple trips are in rotation at any moment. It will take us at worst a few hours until we see our ride to the other side."</p><p>"I guess it makes sense why no settlers would want to bunk down here. It's basically all frozen rock in the soil, not a single living soul in the vicinity for kilometers, no animals to hunt nor predators to hunt them… I'd wager that not enough people would want to go from Land of Lightning on to the other side to support a cabbie lifestyle either," Damisan turned to the side signifying the distance that they've already walked from the Allied Ninja HQ.</p><p>"Of course, nobody wants to travel back. What is it there on the other side to see? The Iron Country and Kumogakure has the finest swordsmen in the world. Nothing but savage outsiders out there…" Endo crossed his arms with a grumpy look on his face. "If you make it through the mountains on to Land of Lightning, you've made it."</p><p>"Yep…" Shitaka looked around with hazy eyes. "Nothing but miles upon miles of wasteland, desert, mesas and canyons… Why would one ever wanna leave this place?"</p><p>"What's that?" Endo growled at the Allied Ninja that the Supreme Leader insisted would lead their expedition for a Guru Ayushi's flesh sample. One that would bring Mana back to her feet. "You've got something to say about the greatest country in the world, say it to our face then!"</p><p>"Our?" Shige-H sighed. "Don't drag me into this petty, old stuff…"</p><p>Damisan's stomach growled. It was not because the man hadn't had a bite to eat since leaving from the shoreline where the Allied Ninja HQ was located, but because a tasty smell reached his nose. A smell of roasting, hard vegetables and watery fruit slices positioned onto a plastic platter and a smoldering, subtle flame that Tomi held her hands over.</p><p>"Now there's a little dudette that's got the right idea…" Shitaka rolled his eyes. "You should probably all get a bite of something or make some preparations you hadn't had a chance of making before. Who knows when shit's gonna hit the fan once we make it to the other side. I must agree with the fussy dude on the fact that the other side can and will probably get pretty savage."</p><p>"I packed nothing that takes into consideration the fact that we'll be eating on this side of the mountains. I'd best reserve my rations…" Damisan breathed out a depressed sigh while feeling out his stomach underneath the cloak that hid the scarred and scorched skin that covered it.</p><p>"Nonsense, we are a team. I will share some of my food to keep us happy!" Shige-H suggested.</p><p>"Humph, I shall not take charity from you," Endo hissed and walked off closer to little Tomi to see what she was roasting. "What is this? Looks like a bunch of roots you've pulled out of the ground. The ground's frozen, don't you know those are rock-hard? As if I'm eating any of that…"</p><p>"Those aren't for you," Tomi hissed, turning to the apprentice samurai. While the little one was not overly fond of people mostly being just a cheerful, rainbow-riding bundle of joy all by her lonesome or surrounded by her ninja animal friends, she looked especially protective of the measly food she's been working with.</p><p>"I couldn't have noticed the fact that you're only preparing roots and fruit. That's especially cruel, Tomi-chan, you know, the desert folk back in Wind Country eat mostly that stuff because the hard stuff like meat and fat bogs down the body and makes it waste water…" Damisan whined out while observing the stumps that Tomi was roasting and slicing up.</p><p>"They're not for you either," Tomi lashed back as vicious as a pit viper. The young lady bit her finger and worked through the hand seals to summon a whole myriad of ninja animals. Ninja sparrows, ninja frogs, ninja beetles… While sometimes the question still lingered in the air, like these it truly seemed like Tomi had most of the species of ninja animals under her contract.</p><p>The living zoo ready to fight at their little mistress' behest at any moment dug into the improvised lunch that the friend to all animals had prepared. Tomi turned her back on the Stars and Shitaka and joined the circle of animals, though she wasn't eating but sharpening a stone which she was fashioning after the shape of a kunai. Until that point Tomi had used the weapon as blunter, bashing tool to open up mushy fruit and vegetables and expose their innards or to pick out their seeds from bashed remains.</p><p>"That's so cruel…" Damisan sniffed, clearly overacting as he had a decent amount of food rations of his own and could have stopped to resupply at one of the little settlements on the other side at any point. That's, of course, if he brought any money with him.</p><p>"Tomi's not to receptive with people. She doesn't even let me in too close. I think Mana's the only one she's warmed up to and even then it's because Mana knows the ninja rabbits that are the only animal species I've never seen her use in training or after-hours…" Shige-H tried standing up for her fellow Stars member at the same time as comforting the other one, as a true leader should have in her eyes.</p><p>"Don't make me laugh…" Endo smirked. "All that hot air about being a friend to all animals and loving animals because humans are so mean and suck and all… Hogwash to fool someone that never saw her eating meat chunks larger than herself in size."</p><p>"Don't get your spirit down, appropriately dressed dude. I've got some drugs with me if you want any and the cabbie will have some rice wine for you under the seat," Shitaka opened up one side of his leather jacket, revealing an assortment of colorful flasks littering the countless pockets.</p><p>"I think I'll pass," Damisan sighed before picking himself back up as only someone that's had one of the poorest hands around dealt to him and yet kept going regardless could. "Alcohol and drugs will not solve the root of the problem and it will do little to help the fact I'm peckish though…"</p><p>"It'll help to forget, that's for sure. Sometimes, after I take a load of pain meds during a long trip, I forget which flask's got what… It's a good thing that I enjoy rolling with what I splash at my enemy most of the time and ain't a stickler for the rules…" Shitaka cringed while scratching the back of his head.</p><p>"What a stupid fighting style," Endo observed. "Don't those flasks ever shatter and cut you up when you take blows in battle? You don't look like that stern of a guy, so it's not like you can take a beating that well anyway…"</p><p>"Heh, you've got that right, I've slashed my nips plenty of times with broken glass and spilled a lot of noxious and even corrosive chemicals on me by accident," Shitaka chuckled. "I've kind of picked up on a neat trick eventually though, I ain't as hardcore as I used to be in my young days so nowadays I mostly coat the flasks with chakra since they're contacting my skin for the most time. I take out the coating when I fling 'em, that takes care of that…"</p><p>"That's very innovative!" Shige-H commended her superior. "I'm not sure what you mean with "your young days" though. You still look rather young, Shitaka-san."</p><p>"Yeah, well… Made a lot of poor decisions all throughout my life, they took their own toll and pulled the red line back a few years each," Shitaka shrugged while looking up and at an undisclosed point far off over a rocky hill.</p><p>Perhaps it served as a testament to Shitaka's experience to see the caravan arrive a good pair of hours later and scoop the recruits and their squad leader looking to go on to the other side up.</p><hr/><p>"So, who exactly is this person we're meeting?" Shige-H wondered, turning to Skaven.</p><p>"He's an old contact of the Hellhounds," the knight of the iron face replied while looking on ahead the chaotic mess of the Land of Fire forests. "He can arrange us a deal with Hanada Katsuo's crew and get us some Guru Ayushi tissue samples."</p><p>"Isn't Guru Ayushi hospitalized in Konoha? Why would we risk arranging a black-market deal when we've clearly don't have the resources to pay up? That means we'll be fighting off every party involved and trying to get them off our backs," Endo wondered.</p><p>"What's the matter, intense dude? Can't handle a bit of action?" Shitaka smiled with a warm face of challenging, friendly rivalry.</p><p>"Why you…!" Endo grit his teeth.</p><p>"It's not about what you can or can't handle, we've discussed this matter with Shitaka-san and this is the best way to go about it. If we walk into Konoha–we'll be announcing our presence to the Hokage who knows nothing about any Allied Ninja activity in his village which will instantly raise red flags. We'll have black ops all over our tails and no way in hell will we manage to just walk into the hospital and tuck the comatose stiffer," Skaven shook his head. "Trying to sneak into Konoha is too risky and difficult, the odds of success are too slim and the stakes are too great. We either do this thing this way or not at all."</p><p>"I'm sorry, Skaven," Shige-H muttered.</p><p>"Why?" Skaven turned to her, a little baffled by her saddened tone. His face had taken a paler shade ever since they've entered the Land of Fire and it's become especially apparent in the light of the setting sun giving everything a red shade while Skaven's cheeks contrasted that, shining pale like hustling moonlight.</p><p>"From how you put it back in Supreme Leader's office, it didn't sound like you left the Hellhounds on the best of terms. I'm sorry that you have to rip open old wounds like that for us," Shige-H elaborated.</p><p>"Trust me, this won't be for you guys. Didn't you hear me when I told you the first couple of times? I hate to see injustice done to people who don't deserve it. That's why I felt like the life of crime was choking me. The Hellhounds must have had a whiff. They mostly used me for revenge hits or big gang fights where the suffering party probably had what came to them coming. Anyway, you can't just keep afloat and sleep peacefully every night that way. Mana deserved nothing that happened to her," Skaven shook his head. He looked like was talking to himself just as much as he was affirming this to Shige-H.</p><p>A resonating chain of blasts littered the area, joining in on the blood-staining party of the setting sun with an infernal blaze of its own. Endo slammed against a thick, oaken branch with his back in a grotesque fall that looked like it would snap his back but with a growling grunt, the apprentice samurai wriggled and writhed himself down to a normal fall down on his arms and knees while he pulled out the pieces of his double-blade weapon together and connected them into a single tool for slicing and shredding.</p><p>Being trained in evasive action, Shige-H had evaded the resonating cascade of explosive marbles littered across the patch of the forest their group has been travelling on. Upon the first gleam of the erupting blast, the medical kunoichi of Kumogakure took immediate dashes and leaps and outraced bodily harm though the tips and ends of her long fur coat singed a tad.</p><p>Damisan attempted to stone-wall the explosion, putting up his prosthetic arms and seeing them spread out like webs to form an interconnected shield of steel ribs and an ethereal membrane of chakra coating stretching out in between. Whatever effort went into the construction of Damisan's new prosthetics served its purpose and showed some spunk–his arms walled the blast with minor dents to the structure. The right arm sparked a few times when it had to return to its normal formation since more than a few ribs deformed to where Damisan had to force them to bend the right way so that the formation change could complete itself but he successfully shielded himself and Tomi who was right behind him.</p><p>"Thanks…" the little one nodded her head with gigantic eyes, looking up at the rattled, self-rebuilt man.</p><p>"No problem, just glad to be included!" Damisan nodded. While his face remained hidden underneath the cylinder, his tone left nothing to doubt that the disfigured ninja was very proud of his work and usefulness for the Stars.</p><p>"Yep…" Shitaka groaned with a husky hiss. "Gonna need some pick-me up to stop feeling that…" the ninja winced as he rose to his feet, having taken a blast to the face and crashed back down through multiple layers of branches and leafage though, him having ended up more fortunate than Endo, there were no branches thick enough to snap him like a twig.</p><p>Skaven coughed up blood, having flown right back and hitting the very shaft of centuries-old oak tree with no hope of downing such a marvelous and almost mystical natural structure. It was the human body that folded first rather than the Senju-grown tree.</p><p>"Mercs…" he muttered. "We'll just have to fight them off!"</p><p>"I know that voice!" a shrieky-sounding tune filled the grave silence that reigned in after the ordinary hustle and bustle became snuffed out by the bombardment of mercenaries that befell the Allied Ninja. "Skaven, isn't it?"</p><p>"Haga…?" Skaven panted down on his knee as his eyes scanned the tree lines across various levels of altitude for a familiar face. "It's me, what the fuck!?"</p><p>"Sorry, Skaven-boy, heard you went separate ways from the Hellhounds. It's nothing personal, but you're just a bunch of ninja guppies snooping around places you're not supposed to be in. I'm afraid we must take you guys out and hand your stiffs for Ijiki to figure out." The same voice that sounded as if someone had dragged their nails across one's own nerve endings like playing some grotesque instrument filled the forest area.</p><p>"We're…?" Skaven wondered to himself.</p><p>"Earth Style: Mud Grinder!" a masculine chant came from down below, weightlessness took over before Skaven could realize what had been going on, prompting the young man to throw a kunai attached to a steel wire and stress his right shoulder with a yoink that brought him to the bark surface of another tree. The perturbed Nara observed the ancient tree becoming enveloped in mud and drowning inside it, while only shreds of it came out in a frightening shower.</p><p>Yet this jutsu came from a man down and behind the tree where Shitaka stood. One of broad shoulders and intense physical build who looked like he'd have been able to cave in faces and smash skulls with bare hands enough as it is, even without the bolstering of Earth Release ninjutsu.</p><p>"You too, Natsu?" Skaven yelled out.</p><p>"Hey, the money on your head is still good on the black market. It ain't anything to go out of my way to cash but with you presentin' to our hands yourself an' all… Sorry, man, it's how it's gonna be…" the mercenary craven referred to as Natsu replied with a lower pitch, buffoonish tone accompanied by a decent amount of spit being thrown from the man's face that had plenty of his teeth bashed out and many repairs of the man's broken belfry before.</p><p>"Well met, Skaven, dear boy!" a yell that seemed to want the Nara to acknowledge it came from even higher up as a near bare chested man in a Konoha flak jacket saluted Skaven while standing up on a spear that he himself had lodged into the tree to keep him so high up as no branches up there were thick enough to support the body weight of his athletic body. "Sorry we'll have to cash you in. Nothing personal, as Haga said, but try to make it interesting, ey?"</p><p>"Any more friends of yours that we have to worry about?" Shige-H turned to Skaven.</p><p>"Unlikely. I'd wager that Ijiki holed himself up in his hideout all by himself. He doesn't dirty his hands, Raitoncide and Geppo are off securing the prize as they're Ijiki's most trusted men. That's unless they've added fresh faces to their crew," Skaven shook his head.</p><p>"What arrogance, challenging us six to three… Don't make me laugh!" Endo growled in pain while still reeling in pain from the nasty bump and the fall he took.</p><p>"If cocky people make you laugh, you must have long since gotten numb to it just having to deal with yourself," Tomi showed her tongue to Endo from high up.</p><p>Regardless of if the Allied Ninja party was ready for it or if the odds worked for them or against them, working on hostile, foreign territory odds were never clear and the nature of this aspect of their jobs dawned on the Stars as they stared at a trio of local mercenaries looking for a cheap buck on the black market.</p>
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<a name="section0718"><h2>718. Mon Bébé</h2></a>
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    <p>"There's no use in engaging these mercenaries." Skaven turned to the few Stars members he could find. Whereas Shige-H appeared to agree with him, Endo showed his grit teeth as a coating of Lightning Release surrounded both blades comprising his weapon.</p><p>"Defending your pals, are we?" Endo mocked the Nara recruit before leaping into action. A shine of two red eyes lurking in the forest's depth did not escape Endo's notice, and so the two warriors primed for an inevitable clash.</p><p>A pale human face of sharp features peeked from the leafage, one donning a breathing apparatus of some sort and clad in a wrap of cloth. A bald head with a thick ponytail pointed the way for this enigmatic mercenary as he extended his cloth wings and swooped down in a controlled glide, revealing steel hooks for fingers and boots to be hiding underneath his wrapping attire.</p><p>The swoop happened in a blink, as if the gliding mercenary had accumulated speed and all of it just exploded in a one mean dash. Endo grunted in pain as the force from the resulting clash flipped him over and sent him falling down while the mercenary dug his hooks into the bark and looked down at the falling Allied Ninja recruit.</p><p>"Here's a little something to remember me by," the mercenary chuckled as he pulled out a round ball and flung it in an arc to follow Endo on his path down.</p><p>"Haga is an explosive user!" Skaven warned his team. True to his word, the red, handheld sphere sent a deafening bang somewhere in between the gliding mercenary and the ninja he had chosen as his target.</p><p>"Skaven, dear boy!" the flak jacket wearing man who stood atop of his own spear called out to his target before hopping up and kicking off of the tree he stalked on, grabbing his spear on his way down to the Nara. "Don't tell me you'd do us dirty like that and skedaddle?"</p><p>An animalistic growl came from down below, where the spear-using mercenary found the point of his spear to be as the sight of a berserk young girl holding a simplistic spear of her own, composed of a stone tied to a stick and coated with chakra, revealed why the mercenary had missed his mark. Little Tomi worked that spear like a living wonder, using her bare feet to move it around in ways in which spears weren't meant to be used, switching and angles and altitudes several times before the stone tip ended up plunging right into the chest of the bald mercenary.</p><p>"Bummer that!" the long facial hair wriggled, accompanying the defining words of the spear-wielding mercenary that followed him as the man plummeted down with a grievous wound on the center of his chest.</p><p>"Bye, Rukan," Skaven sighed before nodding in gratitude at little Tomi. The little wildling just growled, her eyes still not quite back to their serene state and racing across the battlefield in search of more enemies to dispose of.</p><p>"Well, with Endo getting injured, there's no more use in running," Shige-H shrugged her shoulders. "May as well conclude this business now. There's no way these mercenaries would let us sit still during an escape to heal Endo."</p><p>Before Skaven could reply, the handful of trees that the trio found themselves on began swirling and shaking as the shifting ground began swallowing the woods up and throwing it out in chippers. Skaven was about to yell something out to Shitaka before a black swoop removed him from the point in mid-air where he was just a moment earlier.</p><p>The mercenary known as Haga had found his chance to scoop Skaven up and bring him over the tree line, tossing him away and then flinging a couple of bombs for good measure. Despite appearing to agree with the sentiment that this attack was not personal, Haga took a few moments to observe the smoke-engulfed fireball swallowing Skaven up.</p><p>The mercenary ended up paying for that as a cloth-tearing sound filled the air and overpowered the metallic buzz of a hurling double-bladed weapon passing him by. The screech of reeling steel wire overcame even that more notable noise, however, as Endo returned his lightning-clad sword-staff back to his hands from a perch point of one of the Land of Fire's mighty oaks.</p><p>"You've chosen me as your enemy, you won't get rid of me that easily, mercenary!" Endo taunted the plummeting crook as Haga found his cloth wings torn up and useless now, which in term made bombarding the battlefield from above and disrupting the enemy with aerial raids next to impossible.</p><p>Trail of goopy crimson sprayed in the air, accompanying the howling fall of the terrified mercenary who dug his hooks into the tree bark, nearly skinning and separating the tree into several pieces just to halt his fall. The merc's own crooked tools for clawing back into Haga's hands as the mercenary did not intend to use them this way, in such situations.</p><p>Shitaka continued to aggravate the grounded, muscle-headed mercenary, leaping from one tree to another as the mercenary attempted to draw the Allied Ninja back on to the ground level by reducing trees thick as houses to an upward shower of sawdust and shreds in mere seconds. The Allied Ninja flung a bottle filled with odorous, swampy goop before flinging another one, filled with a transparent liquid that smelled of alcohol.</p><p>Despite a very clear glass shattering noise and a visual sign that both the highly flammable goop and the chemical that ignited upon coming into contact with oxygen connected with the intended target, it only appeared to have pissed off the mercenary whom Skaven called Natsu earlier. The reason how it was possible did not cause prolonged contemplation as the sunlight-bright flames exposed a coarse layer of brown to be burning instead of human flesh.</p><p>"Ninjutsu from a mercenary? I've not heard of that before…" Shitaka pondered to himself out loud, letting either Skaven or one of the other Stars pitch some ideas how this might have been possible.</p><p>"Yeah!" Shige-H grunted before dashing out from behind Natsu and delivering a running right hook that took the beefy mercenary off his feet and give Shitaka some leeway. "They're way tougher than someone who doesn't use chakra should be!"</p><p>The fists and most of her exposed body lit up with traces of bland, blue aura that signaled the activation of the Chakra Enhanced Strength ability that most medical ninja could put to use. With when her fists connected with Natsu's back, a folding flash of white alerted the leader of the Stars, revealing a couple of sealing tags the mercenary attached to select areas of Natsu's armor. Tags that seemed to deal well, even with being doused in flammable liquid and set alight.</p><p>"Attacking from the back, tsk, tsk, tsk, young lady…" the sassy Rukan emerged from a nearby bush, attacking Shige-H with a rush of chops and kicks all of which the medical kunoichi successfully evaded before realizing that she was engaging a pair out of the three mercenaries that felt quite confident with engaging six Allied Ninja all by themselves.</p><p>"Livelier too…" Shige-H panted, observing the wound in Rukan's chest that bled and looked as bad as a sharp stone shoved through someone's chest cavity should have looked yet the bald-headed mercenary of flawless facial hair seemed to be unaffected by it.</p><p>"Well, in order to take out super-powered ninja such as yourself, we need to find different methods of keeping up with you. Methods that need getting adjusted to, to be fair…" Rukan grunted, scratching his wound before his entire body began convulsing and his forearms and his hands began swelling atrociously with flesh ripping forth from its skin imprisonment and continuing to swell to a violet state as bony protrusions burst forth from areas where, as a medical kunoichi Shige-H could confirm, there was not supposed to be any bone.</p><p>Besides that, Rukan's entire posture shifted, his waist lengthened while his legs took a more goat-shaped form while remaining to display overgrown muscle tissue on top. The mercenary's spine began emerging from where his tailbone was and enveloping in rapidly growing muscle tissue while a bony, ax-shaped blade formed at the very end of the protrusion.</p><p>From a leafy and wooden grave, Haga took flight once more, riding atop of muscle tissue wings covered with bony spikes as the mercenary still clung to the bomb-carrying belts that he had underneath the cloth he used to use for gliding before. Using his unnaturally grown wings, Haga engaged Endo in battle once more by swooping back up to the top level of the treetops and trying to slash at the samurai apprentice with either his hands, his feet or his spiky wings. Had Endo not wielded such a wide weapon nor carried sufficient skill to wield it well, there was no doubt in mind that Haga would have done him in like that.</p><p>Natsu smashed his fists together, ridding himself of the layer of dirt that shielded him from the flammable chemicals at once as his arms began enveloping completely in cartilage, one layer over another until two massive spears substituted what Natsu used for bulky arms. The bony weapons must have been four times thicker and six times longer than the muscle-head's usually already quite bulky arms.</p><p>With his newly developed weapons, Natsu was about to lunge at Shige-H before he realized that he a shadowy connection froze him in place. A long and curling trail of a shadowy line extending over the ground led all the way to Skaven kneeling on one knee, bruised and his clothes torn up, though very much alive and in fighting shape.</p><p>"I was going to suggest soaking Natsu's antlion holes with water as it softens the ground he uses for grinding and makes his jutsu inert, then removing the sealing tags from his armor by hand, but those transformations are new to me," Skaven admitted observing the new states of the people he once relied on and made shady dealings with. "My guess is that Ijiki had something to do with this, probably spared some supply he's been making a killing from on the black market on his own men."</p><p>"W-What did you do?" little Tomi shook while standing atop of a thick, lower tree branch and quivering in observation of the transformed mercenaries.</p><p>"Tomi?" Shige-H turned to her friend, confused what might have unhinged the young one so much in this sight. It was an unnatural sight to be sure, but ninja had to deal with far worse and while Tomi was quite young, she was an experienced enough kunoichi to have found her way to the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"Some kind of sick scorpion-cheetah thing… A mantis shrimp and a bat of some sort…" Tomi grit her teeth as her pupils changed shape again, taking a more slanted, feline look as wrath filled the young kunoichi to the brink and threatened to flip the lid off. "How dare you imitate animals!?"</p><p>The young one reached for her waist, removing a handful of boomerangs that lit up with a Lightning Release crackle as she flung them at the two grounded mercenaries together at once. The Lightning Release coating surrounding the boomerangs reached out and intertwined, forming a net between the two that rapidly changed angles and position because of the irregular movement of the boomerangs.</p><p>"Ha!" Rukan exclaimed as he thrust his bladed arms into the ground and flipped over his head and swatted the boomerangs aside while grounding the electrical charge and using his experimental, animalistic physiology to withstand the charge passing through his body. "I think you will find that we have far transcended mere animals, mon bébé!"</p><p>This sent Tomi into a state of frenzy. She flung the spear ahead of herself, imbuing it with Lightning Release chakra to create a massive space-splitting arrow, but Rukan swung his tail around the spear. With an unnatural flow of movements for a man, the transformed mercenary swung around the spear as it imbedded into the ground like a pole before pulling it out from the ground and breaking it in between his bony blades.</p><p>"How dare you!?" Tomi growled out, pulling out a pair of sharpened stones just like the ones she used for the tip of her spear from behind her as she lunged right at the transformed mercenary looking like she wanted to take entire bites out of him before gouging his eyes out. "Animals are pure, cute and innocent, humans are cruel and deceitful, they've no right to imitate that purity, they don't deserve it!"</p><p>Rukan extended his ax-tipped tail to try to impale the charging youth on its spiky tip but Tomi spun like a little buzz-saw, slashing over and under the tail and slicing it to blood-spouting ribbons as she closed the distance between the two in a blink. Unlike ever before, Tomi felt inclined to fight this battle herself and not call upon any of her contracted allies as this mercenary seemed to challenge her personally, try to pull the soft rugs of her entire life's beliefs from down under her and spit in her face as little Tomi fell flat on her butt because of it.</p><p>"There go our chances for a retreat before this is over…" Shige-H sighed, erupting in an emerald gleam that substituted the blue glow of Chakra Enhanced Strength before it turned to a cyan shroud emanating as an ethereal aura from the select group of the woman's pores. "Might as well hurry it up and get this over with."</p><p>Natsu bellowed, overpowering Skaven's hold and charging at Shige-H like a rhinoceros looking to gore someone that intruded into its personal space but with a mere smack with the back of her hand, Shige-H deflected the tip of the spear-arm and sent it crashing into the ground. The layers upon layers of bony tissue that comprised the frightening jousting weapon began evaporating into floating, pearly dust and unraveling from Natsu's limbs, leaving the mercenary profoundly dismayed.</p><p>"M-My arms… They're… They're supposed to grow back!" he bewailed, lamenting the loss of his main bread-earning limbs.</p><p>"An interesting thing, those Advanced Bloodlines…" Shige-H cracked her neck and warmed up her shimmering body in preparation to attack the indisposed opponent once more. "It appears that one can combine not only a pair of different Nature Affinities but also different aspects of one's abilities. Such is the case here, a combination of destructive, superhuman strength with the healing abilities of a medical ninja. The result is a touch that reversely heals you–unmakes you, if you will."</p><p>"D-Don't come any closer!" Natsu cried out, taking rapid steps back as he observed his arms unraveling before him. The skin floating off in weightless chunks while his connective tissue snapping and undoing itself while bones withered away once exposed to the open elements and blood dried out splattered in a translucent, baser liquid state.</p><p>Skaven took it to one knee, wrapping a shadowy arm around his comrade's body that attempted to reach for his throat, but the numb-skull struggled out of its hold, turning tail and taking off. That was before a boomerang didn't imbed itself into Natsu's back, sending the frightened and armless giant down on his front with whited out eyes, paralyzed for life if he survived the hit. Tomi sneered and blew air from her nose in pure wrath, wanting to do away with this entire trio, having flung the decisive projectile at the fleeing enemy.</p><p>"You fool…" Skaven lamented the likely death for his past acquaintance. "I tried saving your life by choking you out."</p><p>"You're holding back. That's nice and all but these men want to kill you, one of the Stars, while simultaneously offending Tomi-chan. I'd let go and finish them off if I were you," Shige-H turned back intending to aid Tomi in her struggle against Rukan.</p><p>A fusillade of bombs fell atop of the clenched together formation of the Stars, but Damisan's umbrella-prosthesis shielded them from most of the devastation once more as the avian mercenary flapped his unnatural wings. It was no longer mere bombs that he flung at his intended prey. Haga had ripped open his own guts with his steel claws and began ripping pustules, glowing with a golden liquid inside that seemed to be even more destructive and noxious than the bombs he used earlier.</p><p>"I can give you a hand with this," Damisan suggested, using his prosthetic arm to zip himself closer to Endo and targeting the airborne saboteur alongside his fellow Stars member.</p><p>"Humph, that's hardly imaginable since you don't have a hand of your own to give," Endo mocked his ally with a scowl of a bruised and bleeding face as he was on the losing side of this engagement, having taken more than a fair share of point-blank bomb blasts and slashes from some many limbs of mercenary Haga.</p><p>"Come on, man…" Damisan shook his head before raising his hand up and letting a ring of flames erupt from the line where his wrist connected his forearm section to his artificial hand. "Ninja Style: Rocket Punch!"</p><p>Damisan's hand took off in a racketeering flight toward his enemy, lightly guided by a braid of steel wire layers attached to the other end. The punch changed directions a few times in mid-air, losing some of its momentum, but it still socked Haga in the ribs and made him whine out in pain while the soaring mercenary began taking a plunge.</p><p>With his double-bladed sword in one hand and a kunai tied to a steel wire in another, Endo spun around the falling enemy wildly, slashing and thrusting his favored weapon and removing both of Haga's wings one by one before throwing his blade and piercing it through Haga's transformed, muscular chest and pinning the mercenary to the ground who could only emit a feeble squawk of agony before Endo landed with a knee pressing to Haga's neck and snapped it, finishing the mercenary off.</p><p>"Jeez, that was brutal… I just decked him good but you like… Cut off his wings and stuff, stabbed him through the heart and snapped his neck? Jeez, man, that's hardcore, you need to stop being so intense and mean all the time…" Damisan advised his fellow Stars member shortly after landing by his side.</p><p>"What's the matter? Seeing his flappers getting cut off summoned some dark memories?" Endo cheeked his ally while he pulled out his sword and twirled it until it ended up split into two and crossed over on Endo's back.</p>
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<a name="section0719"><h2>719. The Field Of Muffled Screams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Swiping with his primal, bony hammers that had formed over his forearms and his hands, Rukan lashed at little Tomi. The young lady seethed with silent rage as she rolled aside, dragging her hand across one of the two kunai-shaped, sharpened stone knives, and left a smear on the grass and dirt below her. The Allied Ninja recruit flung the stone knife at the object of her hatred, who only deflected it with a swipe of his ax-tail.</p><p>Hitting him with the knife was not what Tomi was looking to accomplish here. It was to buy herself a few moments to weave her hand seals and place her cut open hand onto the ground again to call forth her contract. An armored ground-crawler with a good pair of dozens of sharp limbs emerged from the smoke with a tail matching that which Rukan donned.</p><p>The scorpion's tail rammed the ground where Rukan was standing, knocking the prowling mercenary on his back as the metallic tail extended, spreading a dreadful clanging noise as the separate chunks of its tough as steel armor rubbed against each other as well against the dirt it worked to borrow through. With his enemy having fallen down, the many-legged, giant scorpion crawler began scurrying with a creepy tatter of its many limbs to position itself over the enemy of his summoner.</p><p>"Don't get too excited, Sasoseki, the ninja scorpions aren't the only ones that this man is mocking," little Tomi pressed her hand against the top of the giant scorpion's frontal armor piece making the upward-pointed eyes blink a few times. As the creature blinked, armored layers moved over its eyes and back like a biological shield that it could raise and lower when needed. Every time the armored eyelid close, it clicked with a metallic rattle.</p><p>Rubbing her bleeding hand across the scorpion's upper shell, Tomi summoned again. Revealing a bipedal, feline warrior with streaming, spiky hair of glistening mahogany shade that looked almost like a showy headpiece of feathers to be inside the cloud of smoke. The warrior let out an irritated growl and clanged two scimitars that it clenched in its hands as it began looking for its opponent.</p><p>The cheetah-warrior leaped and thrust its blades at the prone mercenary, swinging its swords that, while on the shorter side, looked like they could chop a man up to a salad sum of its limbs. Crawling like a frightened insect, the transformed mercenary fled underneath the armored scorpion himself. Because of how close its belly was to the ground, Rukan must have thought that the ninja cheetah would not have followed him down under.</p><p>He was right, in a manner of speaking. He did not find ninja cheetahs underneath that ninja scorpion though, if his blood-curdling scream was of any sign, he found a death more horrible than the one he sought to escape from. Tomi jumped off of the scorpion partner of hers and pat its front while rubbing the chin of the ninja cheetah with the other hand. Both of her partners seemed to enjoy it with the ninja cheetah, even leaning down for a more efficient scratch.</p><p>"Thank you, Sasoseki, Hyota. Let's play after this mission is over, okay?" Tomi's voice softened and the ire that she once blazed with disappeared from her soft and childish gaze that only became more serious and bitterer than anyone her age had a reason to be when she turned back at her peers.</p><p>"Tomi-chan can be seriously scary sometimes. I'm glad I didn't insist on her giving me food now…" Damisan seemed to shake underneath the rugged cloak of his and rub his scarred skin from frightful itches that plagued him after imagining just what it was that Rukan found underneath that scorpion's belly.</p><p>"And you know all of their names?" Endo leaned his head to the side, raising an eyebrow as he inquired this of little Tomi.</p><p>"Of course, they're not my tools, they're my friends. Don't you know the names of everyone dear to you?" Tomi replied, missing any of the childlike wonder that she had when talking to her partners.</p><p>"I have no need. Names mask that which people truly are. I call them how I see them–a scoundrel, a witch, a freak and…" Endo listed, pointing to Shige with the first descriptor, implying Mana with the second before pointing to Damisan and stopping at Tomi. It seemed like the samurai apprentice struggled to find a suitable way to describe the girl before he settled on one in a state of enlightenment. "A brat."</p><p>"You might need to figure our new descriptors soon enough," Shige-H nodded her head, acknowledging the hard work that her team put in to defeat the group of mercenaries attacking them before turning her head to Skaven who just ran his hand through his hair. The Stars had caught him in a moment of longing as he stared on ahead into the thick shade of the forest, as if seeing his acquaintances off into the afterlife and lamenting their passing.</p><p>"It sounded to me like you knew where their ringleader was, Skaven," Shitaka landed behind the small circle that the Stars had formed.</p><p>"Yes. His hideout was our original destination, before these guys attacked us," Skaven nodded. "He has something to do with the Guru Ayushi tissue black market dealings. I've no doubt about it that something as dire as the transformations that those mercenaries had undergone could only be possible with the help of experimentation of Ayushi cells."</p><p>"Let me patch you up some, Endo," Shige-H approached the tattered and gleaming with red, streaking shiners sword fighter, who turned his nose up and to the right. He did not outright decline the woman's help, however, and thus with a brief shine of the Mystical Palm jutsu she closed most of his grievous wounds.</p><p>"I only gave you an immediate battlefield treatment. I'll look at your wounds when we're at a safer location and have more time and the tissues we've come here to get," Shige-H said.</p><p>"That's just fine. I need a little soreness in my bones to get me going and keep me straight," Endo smirked. This time there was not a trace of lying in the young man's eyes. This was neither a lie to himself nor one for the medical kunoichi.</p><p>"Should Shige-H preserve her chakra? How much trouble can we expect from this Ijiki fellow?" Shitaka wondered.</p><p>"Your guess is as good as mine. Ijiki isn't much of a brawler himself, he can catch and dissect you while you're unaware and he is undoubtedly a dangerous man, but he thinks himself above petty brawling. With most of his mercenaries unavailable–he'll at the very least be willing to talk it out before trying to kill us," Skaven shrugged.</p><p>"You said that there should have been two more mercenaries…" Shige-H recalled.</p><p>"Yeah, this group usually fights as five. The fact they're not here gives me the feeling that they're involved in a deal for more Ayushi cells." Skaven replied.</p><p>"With how much this Ijiki relies on these cells, we should press him to the wall and squeeze something soft. He'll likely drop us a decent chunk of those cells himself," Endo beamed a malicious smirk. It was an apparent attempt at volunteering to be the one doing the squeezing.</p><p>"Hm… So, someone experiments on these men to become animal like?" Tomi leaned down to examine the pudgy, pulsing flesh chunks scattered on the ground that were slowly undergoing unclear chemical processes as if they were attempting to grow the body they were missing back from their measly current form. "Can't we just bring Mana-nee one of those chunks, then?"</p><p>"Unlikely. Ijiki is the type to look down on genius of anyone else rather than his own. He wouldn't just use the Guru Ayushi cells in an elementary method, he'd likely genetically engineer them front and backward to where they no longer resemble what they once were. We need a clear sample, not whatever Ijiki did with it." Skaven shook his head and took a leap onto the branch up above, pointing for the rest toward the direction they needed to head toward. The Stars followed without objections.</p><p>It wasn't a prolonged trip until the Stars bumped into a forest clearing surrounding an old, abandoned building. One surrounded by a field of fleshy scarecrows. Masses of living, twitching muscle with random organs, eyes, mouths and teeth scattered across them, tied together and made sense of by mere wooden boards to serve as frame. A fundamental skeleton to hold these sorry fleshings in place.</p><p>"Now I'm definitely glad I didn't help myself to Tomi-chan's food…" Damisan shoved his metal prosthetics underneath his cylinder to cover up his mouth.</p><p>"I thought you said this Ijiki guy was a genius? His medicinal and puppetry skills appear to be no more advanced than those of a self-taught farmer…" Shige-H turned to Skaven with a distraught look. Even the leader of Stars, who acted as the spine of the team, support to draw courage and inspiration from looked disturbed by this field of wood and flesh.</p><p>"That's because that's exactly what Ijiki is. Everyone had a life before discovering who they truly want to be in life. Also, I never said that Ijiki was a genius, only that he thinks he is," Skaven sighed. While the shock frozen on his face suggested that this was the first time he saw this field or learned of its existence, Skaven didn't seem like denouncing it outright or questioning it all that hard. Deep down, he knew one should expect to see something like this when Ijiki is in the equation.</p><p>A sound of crackling lightning made the already jumpy Stars turn to the right, startled. Endo took a leap from his position, attacking one of the fleshy scarecrows and slicing it up with a twirl of his lightning-cloaked two-bladed weapon.</p><p>"Endo…" Shige-H stopped, stuck in between yelling and whispering with the tone of her speech.</p><p>"No, this is just fine." Skaven shook his head. "Ijiki would not have given these scarecrows frames if he didn't intend for them to move."</p><p>"Rocking, now you're talking my language dude!" Shitaka crossed a pair of devil horns gestures he made with his hands and stuck out his tongue before pulling out a few glass flasks from inside of his coat and flinging them at the field. One of them shattered releasing some pudgy, pink slime that appeared to grow larger from contact with oxygen while the other appeared to be empty, until it shattered and spread a field of a roaring lightning storm as it contacted with the rubbery slime and their interaction burnt the pudgy catalyst up to a crisp.</p><p>Skaven's gut feeling revealed itself to have been right when the fleshy scarecrows came to life. Elementary, momentary twitches at first, struggling to move their limbs restrained inside wooden frames and working on pulling their wooden stands out from the ground.</p><p>"And, of course, we have to fight them all…" little Tomi sighed, taken aback by this grisly sight of life finding a way where it absolutely should have given up.</p><p>"Just stand back, Tomi," Shige-H turned back to her fellow Stars member with a polite smirk as she leaned down and held the little girl's hand. "You've done plenty already, you need to conserve your strength."</p><p>"I… I'm not afraid!" Tomi yelled out with almost tearing up eyes. She wasn't the best of liars.</p><p>"I'm not saying that you are. I'm saying that we will need you in far worse fights than this. Keep your animal friends safe and let them rest through this one, okay?" Shige-H stood up and took a backwards plunge down before spinning with a rolling lariat as she took a pair of the framed fleshings down.</p><p>Almost immediately, Shige-H realized that problem of engaging something like that. It didn't have any clear weaknesses. No brain to shake or bash, no heart to thrust through, its eyes were too many and too random or it had none. Even with the first few hammering strikes, a random mouth opened up and dug into her bicep where there absolutely should not have been a mouth and where the other fleshings hadn't developed a mouth. When Shige-H grunted in pain and lifted the fleshling over her head to rip it up with her bare hands, it was no mouth that bit her. Just an opening with rows of uneven teeth that she slammed her arm into.</p><p>Fighting them normally would have been a disaster. It would have demanded too much skill to accomplish flawlessly, too much focus to keep up and too much stupid luck not to fall into a ridiculous blunder like getting whacked by a wooden limb from behind or failing to take into consideration just how tough these living masses of mutated flesh were. Frankly, some of them didn't feel all that tough, it felt like they were rather random in when they decided they had enough whereas some of them withered away and stopped moving from a few good hits and slashes, some of them just refused to end their miserable existence no matter what.</p><p>It was only when Shitaka realized that lobbing acid at them and corroding the fleshings faster than they could patch themselves together and grow new tissue with additional mutations sprinkled on top that the field of horrors finally began shrinking down.</p><p>"That's a very alarming amount of acid for one man to carry…" Damisan noted when the grassy plane of the forest clearing eroded into gravel from the showering layer of thick, acidic cocktail of molten flesh and acid that had dissolved it. Not being ones to waste needless chakra on augmentation, the Stars alongside Shitaka leaped onto the barks of the trees to avoid needing to augment themselves actively to avoid meeting a similar fate to their dissolving nightmares.</p><p>"Hey, I've got pockets with no bottom to 'em, dude." Shitaka opened up his leather coat, revealing sealing tags inside, sticking up on top of pockets of flasks he wanted to have on his body at all times.</p><p>"What are the odds that Ijiki hadn't turned himself into some horrible mutant abomination?" Endo cursed, spitting down at the melting mass below. His spit sizzled up a meek trail of vapor.</p><p>"Let's go and ask him if he did," Skaven ran his hand across his hair to keep them from obstructing his view as the Stars took a daring leap over the swamp of molten flesh and closer to the entrance to the abandoned building. One like many others scattered across the Fire Country where there were many legitimate and less so institutions and only experience or knowledge could help a wary traveler tell between a welcoming inn and an underground laboratory of a black-market dealer.</p><p>"This place is a dump," Endo observed with a mocking sneer. There was more to this statement than Endo's usual hatred of everything. It was subtext that was not lost on anyone within the Stars or Shitaka leading them out in front. Endo was right–for a secret, underground laboratory where Ijiki would have brought all of his expensive spoils and performed his experiments. There was no security other than that abominable field outside and the mercenary gang entertaining themselves in the area.</p><p>"If you believe that you have me cornered, ninja, I assure you you have bamboozled yourselves in thinking so. Cultivating a field of scrap to protect me like the one you've encountered takes no time at all," a short and plump man in a lab coat and thick glasses that completely obstructed his eyes turned from the other side of the eerie mixture between a butchery and a laboratory.</p><p>"We're not here for you, Ijiki!" Skaven yelled out. "We're under no orders to hurt you or to destroy your operation."</p><p>"That has never stopped me before…" Endo closed his eyes, looking proud of this statement.</p><p>"Ah, if this isn't Skaven. I've heard that you've ditched the Hellhounds. Hm. I had thought that you would have run off to work for another crew but it seems you've legitimized yourself…" Ijiki seemed to speak with a great deal of enthusiasm and underlying respect at first, but it all spoiled by the end of that sentence. The Stars froze in front of a large lab table with a handful of glass lab tubes containing cultivars with plants and flesh samples.</p><p>"Criminal life just wasn't for me. I can't stand watching innocent people getting caught in our dealings and hurt," Skaven replied.</p><p>"We could discuss the ethics of both of our sides here for years, boy. You have come here with force and numbers sufficient to make it here and speak to me. Perhaps if you were alone I'd be interested in the meager price, I'd score selling your unremarkable organs, but there's no use in me trying to take on all of you. What is your business here, Allied Ninja?" Ijiki fixed his glasses, looking more like a displeased landlord who found unwanted guests in his apartment rather than a rat of the criminal underbelly with a tail caught underneath someone's boot that was larger than the rat itself.</p><p>"Do you have a pure sample of Guru Ayushi's tissue?" Skaven asked straight.</p><p>"I do not. It is a material of great expense, demanding all of my side hustles to struggle at their utmost efficiency so I can make do with its outlandish price though it does not stay pure for long when I get my hands on it," Ijiki seemed outraged that Skaven would even imply that he would have such a thing on his hands.</p><p>"It's a utopic panacea…" Shige-H muttered. "It's a nibble of flesh that can heal all wounds and cure all sicknesses. I'll leave alone the absolute horror that you shady underbelly types use it for black market dealings and not medicine to help people, but why spoil it with your tampering?"</p><p>"Spoil it!?" the mad dealer raised an eyebrow. "I'll have you know that I only improve upon everything I buy. Healing all wounds, all sicknesses, is useless. No gang looks more serious, and no mercenary is more effective being able to heal any injury at the cost of a sample that costs more than an entire settlement. I can work something as useless as that and make it grant people power, I can sell a gang the numbers that they so desperately crave. Why heal a limb when you can have it mutate into something way better?"</p><p>"Something unoriginal…" Tomi bit her lower lip, almost walking out in front of the Stars to hurt the man, but Skaven raised his arm and held the wild girl back.</p><p>"Maybe you're right, we could discuss ethics and differences here for hours, but we need a pure sample. I know that Raitoncide and Geppo are buying it for you right now. We'll be snagging this one, but you can keep the money you'd have paid for it. That's the best deal I can offer you," Skaven said.</p><p>"Oh, Skaven… Little boy, grown up amongst dogs and you think you know how the dragons split their dinner. It's almost adorable how out of the loop you are. Very well, the deal is transpiring in the east wing alleyway of the Tanzaku Castle," Ijiki chuckled to himself.</p><p>"Are we meant to believe that you would give us the location just like that, that it's not some wild goose chase!?" Endo growled, rushing to the overweight shorty in an intention of bullying him before a dozen of thin, steel links unraveled from inside of Ijiki's cloak with a tiny blade of a scalpel attached to the end of each one. The net of intertwining medical tools was too troublesome even for a madman like Endo to rush through, so he stopped before it, seething with the need to hurt this loathsome man.</p><p>"Frankly, I don't care what you believe. If it gives you any peace of mind, you may want to know that the more of Katsuo's men you take out, the closer I can move in to controlling the supply of Ayushi cells. Surely, even a handful of do-gooders like you can understand the weight of one's own benefit in such a matter, right?" Ijiki fixed his thick glasses with his own stubby hands.</p><p>"Let's go," Skaven looked down. He was still wrestling with the sum of the intel that Ijiki gave them and the manner in which he delivered it to them as his head hung down heavy on his shoulders and his expression looked grim but with the initiator of this entire operation losing interest in this underground dealer, so did the interest of the Stars in him fade.</p>
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<a name="section0720"><h2>720. Cool And Experience</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Do you really have to do that?" a broad-shouldered mercenary with a fluffy, crescent-shaped, upward-pointing hairdo and a brushy mustache turned to his partner who floated off the ground. He sustained his flight through several jolts of Lightning Release chakra, being more than just a mercenary but a rogue ninja capable of more complex feats of ninjutsu.</p><p>"I've got to keep training. I'm going to bump into that little bitch, eventually. Somehow, she's out of the slammer, I've heard," a bald individual in a dark jumpsuit with a skin riddled with scars exclaimed as he intensified the electromagnetic push keeping him afloat.</p><p>"Oh, you mean the Konoha's Sorceress kid?" Geppo scratched his head. "It's crazy. She only got a few months or something for beating an old man senseless. Meanwhile, an honest to God man just making end's meat has to spend whole years behind bars… I'm telling you, the whole system is stacked against you."</p><p>"It makes me cringe when I say this, but I got off easy. The Middle Ring himself won't see the light of day just for looking out for his hometown. Not sure what the poor guy's up to these days. If I'd be seen around him or the part of his crew, that's still running wild, I'd be shut in a tight cell right beside him." Raitoncide said.</p><p>"Eh, you've got a decent gig, all things considered, that's right." Geppo shifted his lower jaw in contemplation. "It pays well and all we've got to do is trade some ryo for some merchandise. Nobody's gonna raise a ruckus, nobody's interested in trouble. Everyone just wants to live happy and fulfilling lives and get fat."</p><p>"Sure. But take my advice, no matter how well life treats ya, keep everything at a full arm's distance. It's only because I wriggled out of being associated with the Middle Ring that I don't rot in prison somewhere and can even do some honest work. Though, to be fair, I kind of miss some action. I wouldn't mind frying someone from time to time. If it weren't for Ijiki's side-hustles, I'd probably grow bored out of my mind…" Raitoncide said.</p><p>"Forest here, forest there, forest fucking everywhere. Good thing that Hanada's crew at least had the decency to set up shop by a shrine. Good luck finding the X spot otherwise…" Geppo shook his head.</p><p>"That's 'cause you're a loser, Geppo. You try too hard and you're, no offense, still kind of shit at this. You hustle and wriggle like a maggot and you get lost or get late. If it weren't for me, someone would've gotten sick of your shit and killed your sorry ass already," Raitoncide smirked, cheeking his partner. Geppo didn't look thrilled to be reduced to dirt this way. The man looked like he was a few degrees short of blowing the lid off its hinges.</p><p>"See? Even now you wanna murder me. So you murder me, what then? You think Hanada's men will deal with you when you come all covered in blood and shit? You think you're gonna even find them or manage to kill me and still get to the deal location in time? Nah, you're gonna fuck it up again. You're not fucking it up now though, you know why?" Raitoncide kept spreading his wisdom.</p><p>"Why?" Geppo asked.</p><p>"'Cause you're learning from me. You're keeping your cool about you. Those are the two things that matter the most in our line of honest work–cool and experience. You gain one through the tough grind, if you can survive it, you apply the other to execute and emphasize the first–that's a good guy everyone wants to work with. You're gonna get that working with me, 'cause I'm experienced and I'm cool…" Raitoncide shrugged, as if it was not a fault of his own that he ended up boasting before his old time acquaintance.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess those two things are pretty handy to have…" a husky, cybernetic voice came from the opposite side beyond the shrine in the deeper parts of the forest. Raitoncide and Geppo froze with blank stares as they couldn't pin down the source of this voice, or rather, why the source was sitting on top of a body pile and throwing kunai only to catch and whizz it over his finger.</p><p>Seeing how Geppo was a simpleton, it wasn't too difficult to tell exactly what he was thinking. Identifying the exact moment when the shock of seeing something entirely different from what he had expected to see before him change into a call for violence. Following that train of thought further to where the bruising mercenary with heavy, mechanical frames stretching from the sides of his forehead all the way down to his shoulder and forearms and colliding into his gauntlets tested the sophisticated manner of the mystery man's armor.</p><p>"Just who the fuck are you?" Raitoncide raised his hand, flicking his fingers into a spark before weaving them together in prime position for forming hand seals.</p><p>"I guess that's as far as your cool goes…" the armored head-to-toe man stood up and off of the body pile and flung the knife whizzing past Raitoncide's ear. The crackling electricity of the rogue ninja's aura cradled the knife and electrified it, leaving it to shoot right into a tree bark and disappear inside it, just a few inches short of leaving on the other end.</p><p>"You've killed a bunch of Katsuo's men. What the heck, man!? They keep telling new, hopeful mercs not to fuck with the money and you fucked with all the money!" Geppo dragged his well-geared arms over his thick hair with enough roughness to pull a good handful of 'em right out with his crude movements. It was just a stroke of good luck he didn't.</p><p>"It's a good thing that I'm neither young and hopeful nor a mercenary then," the man walked out into the shrine's light, revealing the red, black and pink motifs covering his extensive samurai armor and the round, vaguely skull-shaped faceplate with glowing, googly eyes and a bandana hanging at the lower end, disguising the lower section of the man's mouth. Even his neck had a layer of armor, rising in a round collar walling off most of his face from unimpeded view when looking at it from a static angle.</p><p>"See, it's situations like these that separate the cool from the rest. Where a little, pathetic shit-stain would pack their shit and run for their pathetic lives, the cool would fry this crayfish inside that fancy armor and sell his charred ass to Hanada Katsuo!" Raitoncide clapped his arms together, drawing his fingers apart with interconnected jolts of lightning through what seemed to be great physical effort.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Pillar!" Raitoncide howled out, the mystery man reached for his belt, pulling out a paper tag and slamming it into the rising pillar of electricity. The tag lit up with blue light upon contact and seemed to soak the Lightning Release ninjutsu technique up like a sponge. The man moved with no fear or hesitation, normally present to someone in the heat of battle.</p><p>The killer's speed wasn't blinding, not even to a couple of thugs, but the total assurance in every move only inspired more fear than the man would have, had he truly moved like a lightning bolt himself. Not even when Raitoncide took to one knee and chanted out the name of a follow-up attack, flinging stray jolts of electricity from his intertwined hands at the charging threat did the enemy as much as flinch.</p><p>With but mere subtle twitches and leans the enemy either avoided the jolts or let them slam against his large, flat shoulder pieces and bounce off of them while the faceless, almost inhuman in his total lack of emotion assassin closed the distance and wailed his fists with thunderous cracks on Raitoncide's face before pushing the overwhelmed and bleeding man aside with a standing kick.</p><p>"You shouldn't have let Raitoncide leave the range!" Geppo threatened the killer as he extended his hands out to try to blast him with concentrated sound waves rushing from the modulator gauntlets he wore but the mystery man slammed the paper tag he used to seal away Raitoncide's technique onto his shoulder plate and leaned for a shoulder charge. Instead, the lightning pillar he sealed away boomed from atop of the surface he stuck the sealing tag on to, overwhelming and drowning Geppo in Lightning Release chakra and leaving him flat on the ground, coughing smoke as his entire body felt too heavy to move.</p><p>"Nice tech. Connected to your vocal cords, isn't it? It's a nice source for sound waves but means you have to talk to attack…" the assassin boomed out with a cybernetic, utterly emotionless handful of sentences as he pulled a detached handle of a sword from the back of his pouch. He moved the handle up to the throat of the fallen and dazed mercenary as if threatening to slit his throat with the missing blade of the broken sword.</p><p>"What kind of jerkass sword is that!? You'll pay for making fun of us now, you fucking edgelord!" Raitoncide howled out from the bottom of his chest as he channeled surging Lightning Release chakra all over his body until the golden gleam of his Lightning Armor became impossible to tell from the man's actual skin.</p><p>Just as the coated with Lightning Release chakra rogue unleashed all of his pent-up chakra in the shape of a concentrated beam, the volume of which drowned out even the name of his technique, the heavily armored killer merely turned his upper body and raised the hilt of the broken sword, breathing life into it as if igniting it. His featureless helmet and mask became clearer in the shade, illuminated by the booming plasma sword in his hand that seemed to possess such extraordinary build up of Lightning Release chakra charge that it cancelled out Raitoncide's technique by absorbing it into it.</p><p>"No fucking way… I made that jutsu to kill that cheeky bitch! Not even her Lightning Release should have absorbed a ninjutsu of this high rank…" Raitoncide shook as the will to keep fighting appeared to fade away just at the mere sight of the Sword of the Thunder God in the killer's hands.</p><p>"That cheeky bitch? Lightning Release… Wait a sec, you're that grunt who worked for the Diamond Hand, right? I'm assuming you're talking about Nakotsumi Mana, Konoha's Sorceress?" the killer extinguished his majestic sword and pocketed its hilt while he stood up and moved away from Geppo, allowing the pummeled grunt to rise on his bottom at the very least.</p><p>"Yeah, no way am I gonna kick the bucket before frying that bitch for ruining my life!" Raitoncide's fists clenched again, the faded will oozed back into his eyes as he glared at the fallen Geppo with a cold stare of a hardened killer. "Sorry, Geppo, I'm not gonna hold back just 'cause you're in range!"</p><p>"H-Hey… Dude… I… I didn't attack because he was right next to you… Come on, now!" Geppo pleaded with his partner but the heavily armored killer raised his fist up, demanding his time to speak and interrupting something very merciless.</p><p>"It's useless, what you are doing right now won't work on me. I've spent almost fifty years killed ninja, mercenaries and civilians alike and a punk like you doesn't have what it takes to surprise me. You'd just be throwing your comrade away," the knight of the iron face waved his gauntlet while the bandana covering the lower section of his face singed away, ignited by a spark of Raitoncide's previous ace jutsu that it had caught.</p><p>"I'll take my chances!" Raitoncide declared, weaving a couple of hand seals before a husky tone interrupted him again.</p><p>"Nakotsumi Mana!" was all that the armored butcher had to say to snuff out the wild electricity surging all across Raitoncide's body. "I know that name. It is the last contract of my daughter. The one she didn't fulfill."</p><p>"Yeah, tough break, pops. You're still gonna fry, too bad for you and your chick, but at the very least you can go knowing that you'll be meeting that bitch soon enough and can flay her all you want down in Hell!" Raitoncide yelled out before Geppo jumped up on his boots and staggered back.</p><p>"Dude, for the love of… Just listen to what he has to say. Look around you, if this guy wanted us dead–we'd be dead right now!" Geppo called out to his hypocritically hot-headed partner.</p><p>"He screwed us out of a hustle of our lifetimes. From where I'm standing, he ain't too far above Konoha's Sorceress on my shit list!" Raitoncide oozed wrath toward the iron-faced human-tank.</p><p>"I know your feelings, young man. Before the loss of my daughter I too only cared about the money, the experience, the reputation of being the best… I've kept all of those things and yet I've got nothing to show for it now. I'm left with nothing to call my own except for my particular set of skills," the killer spoke, though it was impossible to tell his grief, if there was any, through the voice-box making his voice sound as artificial as possible.</p><p>"That's a nice sob story, old man. Yet all I can hear is your problems and nothing to keep me from frying you where you stand!" Raitoncide lashed out.</p><p>"I realize that until you feel that grievous sense of loss, you don't much care for this particular kind of pain. Though I might have cost you your money from this black market deal I've interrupted, I can still make up for it by giving you something that you might treasure more in the long run–I can help you ruin the life of the young woman that ruined both of ours." The killer suggested.</p><p>"You're talking sweeter, keep going…" the scarred grunt crossed his arms and wiped the blood dripping from his nose and mouth. The electric aura booming from him dissipated into nothingness once more.</p><p>"When I heard that my own daughter lost her contract, her life and her head, most importantly, I was ready to throw it all away. I tracked down the bastards that did it and either butcher them or die trying. That body pile back there was just around, they'd have gotten in my way and so they had to die. You'd have joined them too…" the killer said.</p><p>"We haven't yet established that, I've spared your life, old man, remember that!" Raitoncide oozed in high sodium content.</p><p>"Shit, you were planning to take someone else on too?" Geppo shook his head before a hefty sigh. "You mean Konoha got a wind of this? The deal's over?"</p><p>"Not Konoha, the Allied Ninja. The party of Allied Ninja is coming here to claim whatever merchandise you were meant to purchase here. I had little intel on their abilities and, at that time, I didn't much care. All I wanted was a blaze of bloody glory. Given that your own grievance with this Nakotsumi Mana is much more… Personal. I will leave her friends to you, however." The killer turned and pointed to Raitoncide while raising his other gauntlet to point at Geppo simultaneously.</p><p>"That so? Why the fuck should I give a shit about anybody other than Mana herself?" Raitoncide raised the ridge that he once had eyebrows on.</p><p>"Because killing is something I offer to contracts. It's quick, it's never personal, and your issues are nothing if not. As someone who has been through that type of pain before, trust me, hurt enough people she cares about, get really creative about it, and she'll cry tears of blood and tear her own hair out and strangle herself with it," the cybernetically voiced killed said.</p><p>"This smells like a set-up…" Raitoncide growled.</p><p>"If I let you go at them like this, it would be. If they've managed to kill my daughter, you'd last against them exactly as long as they'd let you breathe for. I've gotten a glimpse of your abilities, I can offer a few insights to amp you up just enough to stand a chance though…" the armored mystery man left the offer hang in the air.</p><p>"Even stronger? I've trained for entire years to step up my Lightning Release game to this level, and you're telling me that you can just give me something to amp me up to your level before those jerkoffs find us here?" Raitoncide looked hesitant to buy into what the armored killer was selling despite the man letting them live this long where he spared no such expense with the others.</p><p>"No, not my level. To get to where I am, mere strength isn't enough. You need to be cool and experienced to stand next to me," the armored enigma replied. He pulled out a sealing tag and attached it to a kunai before flinging it in a round arc for Raitoncide to catch. The hungry for vengeance rogue caught it right off the air and looked at the sealing tag. Even a simpleton such as him had the brainpower to comprehend the hieroglyphs he was staring at.</p><p>"This is…" he muttered.</p><p>"Stick this sealing tag to a tenketsu point. Unseal it, it will make your lightning change color," the man ordered.</p><p>"Okay, what about me?" Geppo waved his arms around. "I don't much care about Konoha's Sorceress or her crew, but you've messed my gear up too. After robbing us of my gig, you owe me something too, old man!"</p><p>"I suppose so…" the killer reached down behind his collar and pulled out a mechanical, cube-shaped object and flung it over to Geppo. "Use this. It's a voice-box meant to augment and change your voice. If your sound waves depend on your voice, may as well amp it up."</p><p>"Won't this make you feel sour, old man? I will kill that self-righteous bitch myself, you know. Can you live with yourself knowing that?" Raitoncide smirked in the face of the emotionless manslayer before him.</p><p>"I don't share your need to be the one to cause that girl misery. I suppose, in a way, my grievance with her still isn't personal. Still, justice must be done, her friends and her must die. That's just the cosmic sense of justice governing us, no matter how we feel about it. Whether I am the one to kill her or someone else is, I'm fine with it either way." The killer shrugged and turned to walk away.</p><p>"Hey, old man, where did you get a fancy sword like that?" Raitoncide yelled out to the killer as he walked away. The armored enigma stopped only to turn back halfway to the unstable grunt.</p><p>"A Thunder God…" the killer muttered before turning away and disappearing into the shade of the endless Land of Fire woods.</p>
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<a name="section0721"><h2>721. Cutting Lightning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Stars lined up around the opening near the shrine where the meeting between Hanada's men and Ijiki's mercenaries took place. Endo turned his head to Damisan, ready to mock the prosthetics user for his heavy and loud landing that, as he had expected, would either leave a hefty thump or break the branch that the self-puppeteering ninja landed on. However, the samurai apprentice just grimaced and turned his attention back to the forest shrine. Damisan had moved as quietly as any other ninja with his prosthetic limbs, landing with a muzzled, rubbery hum that was almost pleasant to the ears of the few who heard it.</p><p>"Something's wrong…" Skaven whispered.</p><p>"You think?" Endo sneered at the Nara. "Your pals betrayed Hanada's guys and left them in a body pile. How close exactly were you back in the day?"</p><p>"Come on, Endo, Ijiki's mercenaries tried to kill Skaven on sight. There's no need to lump him in with the rest of them…" Shige-H tried to reason with her fellow Stars member.</p><p>"All isn't as simple as a deal gone wrong, little dudes…" Shitaka sighed. "Those mercs rocked those Hanada's men good, but they didn't take the tissue sample, nor did they move from the scene of their betrayal. Why would they do that?"</p><p>"Something's definitely fishy here…" Skaven grit his teeth as his face grew dire. "Raitoncide isn't the type of guy to scheme something like this. One can penetrate his plans by one's first look, most of the time…"</p><p>"Maybe he's ranked up in the world since you've left the criminal ranks?" Endo tilted an eyebrow. "Either way, it only makes things easier that he didn't leave–makes it really easy to go down there and kill them both then get the sample and leave this mess for Konoha's Black Ops to sort out."</p><p>"It seems that way," Shige-H bit her lip. "Can we really ignore such an obvious opportunity to claim what we've come here for? I'm afraid this is a risk we might need to take…"</p><p>"Even if this is a trap," little Tomi growled out. "We've got the numbers and superior strength on our side."</p><p>The bald and cut-up mercenary jumped off of the pile of bodies he was sitting and pondering on as if shocked by his own crackling aura of Lightning Release chakra. He sustained a flight via separate lightning jolts emanating from his hands and propelling him off of a golden field of static electricity on the ground. A resonating pulse of electricity passed through the ground when Raitoncide landed on both his feet and raised a vial over his head.</p><p>"Alright, you stupid Allied Ninja shits, I know you're out there, somewhere, watching and shaking your little legs, weak in the knees, like always! I'm gonna make this shit real simple for you! You come out and I don't smash this vial and fry whatever's inside!" Raitoncide let a jolt pass his body upward from down below, passing and crackling off of the vial he held in his hands, making it difficult to say just how much more of this unstable and destructive voltage the sample could take.</p><p>"W-What!?" Skaven lost his cool. "Why would he be willing to destroy this sample!? What're you two really after?"</p><p>A weighty whistling noise filled the air, followed by a wooden bump. The vial fell out of Raitoncide's hands and rolled to the side while the mercenary with an electric personality let out a painful grunt but then transitioned into a chuckle. He looked up to where little Tomi flung her boomerang at him and raised his arm up while his other arm weaved a couple of one-handed hand seal variants.</p><p>The boomerang smacked Raitoncide's hand on its way back as the little beast-girl burst from the cover of the leaves and grabbed the returning boomerang out of the air and landed on the ground in plain sight. Endo joined the friend to all animals and connected two of the crossed blades behind his back to a single, double-bladed sword before coating it in Lightning Release chakra.</p><p>"How did he know we were here?" Skaven still struggled to understand this new version of a rather unimpressive pair of criminals that he once knew.</p><p>"Hm…" Damisan raised and bent his prosthetic hand, opening up a compartment inside it from which he pulled out a square, handheld gadget with a twisted, spring-like antenna on the top. "I'm picking up a powerful radio signal. He must communicate with someone. It's quite impressive that he can sustain all that lightning without it interfering with his communication device…"</p><p>"I see… You should try to complete the main objective, little dudes, I'll check out if I can rock 'n roll with whoever is playing the strings here," Shitaka stuck out his tongue while crossing two hand-formed devil horns and flickered away into thin air. In a combined feat of hi-speed movement, the rest of the Stars joined the impatient duo that had engaged the enemy first.</p><p>"Leader…" Endo noted the complete formation of this new roster of Stars with a slight hint of mockery behind the chosen term.</p><p>"We take care of these two goons as fast and possible, then we move on to assist Shitaka-senpai with whatever he's dug up," Shige-H updated their mission objective.</p><p>"Heh, so you're the friends of Konoha's Sorceress…" Raitoncide mocked the gathered squad with an ecstatic smirk. His entire body seemed to light up with a field of electricity that would have made it difficult to approach the man up close without a stronger Lightning Release technique to control it.</p><p>"He knows about Mana, about our mission?" Skaven shook his head in surprise. The more cards Raitoncide revealed, the less the Nara recruit liked this engagement.</p><p>"Skaven, ain't it a surprise, seeing you here?" Geppo noted the presence of a longtime acquaintance of his as he joined his partner side by side, the electrical field engulfed him and lightning sparks passed up and down the mercenary's body however it didn't seem to harm him. It might have been that despite the flash and the flair, the resulting built up expulsion of chakra emanating from Raitoncide's body wasn't as deadly as the jutsu he produced from the chakra he molded up.</p><p>"Geppo, Raitoncide, who are you working for now?" Skaven asked.</p><p>"Now why would you care, you rat? I'm gonna make you choke on the smoke that's coming from your mouth as you fry!" Raitoncide put his hands together, forming a hand seal to prepare for an impending attack.</p><p>"You can question him all you want once I remove his limbs. Will be much easier that way," Endo butt in before charging at the pair with a twirl of his double-bladed sword behind his back. Raitoncide extended his hands out.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Mouth of the Storm!" he yelled out, unleashing a sparky field of electricity that was too shapeless to dodge precisely. Endo spun his double-bladed sword like a ventilator to absorb as much of the shock into his coated weapon as he could, but there was too much energy coming at him all at once. It was too shapeless and unfocused.</p><p>As more and more electric coils caught on to the samurai apprentice and began lifting him off the ground as the Lightning Release chakra pumped through his body, Raitoncide continued to amp up his technique with more and more insertion of chakra into it as he raised the surprised opponent up in the air and aimed to amp up the technique into a single pulse that was as powerful as he could make it, given the technique he was using.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Rocket Punch!" Damisan yelled out, extending his prosthetic arm forward and lighting up a flare of blue glow around his wrist. The prosthetic fist of his arm took off by itself, blasting at the focused opponent like a rocket. The metallic fist let out a gruesome thud as it hit Raitoncide square in the face, sending the rogue flying back in multiple flips and cancelling out his electrical field at once.</p><p>Shige-H dashed up to Endo and placed her hands over her teammate, releasing a quick emerald glow while she moved her arms all over his body, quickly patching up the burns and fractures from both this battle and the ones from before where she saved up some chakra where it wasn't necessary to spend it.</p><p>"There, almost as good as new…" Shige-H gave her friend a gift of a warm smile as he rose to his feet.</p><p>"You shouldn't have bothered, I only grow fiercer the closer I am to death," Endo growled, but there was a deeper tone of emotion in his voice that he tried to keep buried underneath layers and layers of his false courage and vanity. Something resembling gratitude, though it was more than enough for the leader of Stars.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" Tomi chanted out after drawing blood from her finger and throwing her open palm to the ground. Seeing a target before him, Geppo raised his hands and unleashed a pair of invisible shock waves of rippling air at the summoning kunoichi. Tomi's shocked expression looked up, realizing that she had invested too much motion to cancel out her technique now, and that there was little she could have done to avoid it now.</p><p>Darkness enveloped little Tomi like a bubble. It wasn't the darkness of her own eyes being shut or her consciousness fading as the young kunoichi could still feel her own head looking around in a sense of wonder. It was as if a shadowy blob had enveloped her and it seemed to ripple like the surface of water as Geppo's Decapitating Airwaves merely bounced off of its protective surface.</p><p>"Shadow Prison Jutsu complete!" Skaven sighed easier as he canceled out his technique by rising from his kneeling position. The bubble of ethereal darkness bloated and threatened to burst from inside before it faded out, as little Tomi had completed her Summoning Jutsu successfully because of Skaven's timely intervention.</p><p>A pair of enraged elephants, looking like they were ready to wage war, rushed out from the smoke and ruckus. One of them was a towering, purple animal of majestic proportions and tribal, red war paint decorating its entire body in kanji symbols. The other one was a bipedal elephant of a sage-green color in skin and whited out eyes. Both war beasts looked like they had served and tasted their own share of battle as their rough experiences had left one of their tusks chipped off. Even the second full one seemed cracked and about to break at any moment.</p><p>Geppo pointed his arms down below and used his resonating sound waves to propel himself over the trunk swipe of the massive, purple elephant. By the time that the airborne ninja noticed the fact that a torn-out tree was coming at him like a speeding bullet train, it was too late. While he still aimed his arms down at it, the sound waves didn't come out by the time that the tree projectile smashed into him and took him away with it.</p><p>"Nice one, Zokaka, Zomiti…" Tomi pumped her fist in encouragement of her two emerging powerhouse partners. Both of the gigantic beasts blared their trunks as a proud war cry. The smaller, bipedal elephant flexed his biceps as it was him who ripped out and flung the tree at the airborne opponent and it didn't seem like he wanted everyone to forget it.</p><p>Damisan caught his returning prosthetic fist and attached it back to his arm before releasing a pulse of his chakra jets from his replacement legs and launched his body at Raitoncide while the Lightning Release user was down. The first two attacks seemed to rock the faltered and dazed rogue ninja, but he recovered and began beaming intense electrical aura from his body before long. The prosthetics user extended his arms to swim through the intense electrical currents as his hand-crafted limbs appeared to offer him some protection and dampening against Lightning Release but the spreading shock waves seemed to push Damisan away further than he could gain that distance back by powering through.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Pillar!" Raitoncide weaved a pair of hand seals before crossing his arms over his chest and his shoulders as a collection of intense jolts burst forth from underground where the Allied Ninja had resonating nerve impulses to attract them, almost like a living magnet.</p><p>While the Allied Ninja shuffled and dashed around, avoiding the booming upward lightning by switching their positions at the very last moment, when the pent-up electrical current couldn't correct its target, the pillars continued to surface again and again. One by one, all the Allied Ninja recruits tasted the burning and shocking lash of the lightning pillars and temporarily reeled on the ground.</p><p>"Yeah! That edgelord asshole was talking out of his ass!" Raitoncide flexed his hands out, admiring the handful of ninja he laid out all by himself. "I don't need any of that good shit of his. I can just save it up for when I finally bump into that magician bitch again!"</p><p>"M-Mana? How do you know her?" Skaven wondered, rising back on his feet after the painful shock. It didn't seem all too powerful because of how spread out and continuous it was, though if these jolts built up to higher numbers, they might just amount to being enough to take down sterner ninja than them.</p><p>"You dumbass, haven't I ever told you? She's the one that put me behind bars back when I was making a blast with my other gig in Shukuba Town!" Raitoncide yelled out as if he was seeing Mana before him and was trying to vent his frustrations.</p><p>"I see…" Skaven finally put down an answer on one of several dotted lines. "So that is why you're so determined to keep this sample out of our hands. You want to let Mana die?"</p><p>"What the fuck are you on about?" Raitoncide put his hands together, preparing for another collection of hand seals and a follow-up technique to send all the rising Allied Ninja recruits back down.</p><p>"Mana is injured really bad." Shige-H explained. "We need that sample to bring her back from a brink of death. Her condition is stable, but she might never wake up again without this sample."</p><p>A booming noise reached the battlefield from the distance as the tree that had slammed against Geppo tore to tiny shreds from an intense sound wave while the armored mercenary left the rubble, wiping sawdust out of his gear.</p><p>"You shouldn't have told Raitoncide that, right?" Geppo turned to his partner who stared at the vial just laying further by his left side where it ended up rolling off to after he dropped it.</p><p>"You know, I thought I wanted nothing more than to make the head of Konoha's Sorceress burst off her body or leave her just a smoking pile of coal after she ruined my life. Even now, I wouldn't mind frying her even as a vegetable… But… Leaving her all helpless and pathetic, unable to piss by herself or clean her own snot, that sounds like a sense of poetic justice to me too!" Raitoncide smirked with glee after he weaved a few hand seals and extended his hands toward the vial.</p><p>Skaven cursed his body with every fragment of his expression, he could see every twitch of his muscles, every tiny strand of the shadows extending through the floor and racing toward Raitoncide as he knew even before he launched his hidden Nara clan technique that he'd be too late.</p><p>"Wind Style: Friendly Gust Jutsu!" Endo's voice filled the air as a light wind wall made of Wind Release chakra threw the vial rolling off into the woods while snapping the coiling lightning net into powerless sparks that dissipated within mere moments after being hit. "Your entire arsenal is just Lightning Release ninjutsu, right? It would be such a pity if you bumped into someone with an affinity for Wind Release techniques–your natural weakness, wouldn't it?"</p><p>"That was Mana's jutsu…" Shige-H pointed out with a surprised expression. "You picked it up from our brief training sessions?"</p><p>"Please, she created it as a child just out of the Academy. Her techniques are a matter of literal child's play." Endo smirked, enjoying what he took as a compliment for snagging a simpler one of his fellow Stars member's techniques.</p><p>"You wouldn't happen to have also taken Mana's peerless skills in genjutsu, have you?" Skaven sighed, knowing full-well what the answer to his question would be.</p><p>"Shut up…" Endo turned his eyes away. "If you want to be useful–go find the vial. I don't want to be distracted by the enemy using it as leverage against us again."</p><p>"And what are you going to do? Run at the enemy and get your shit kicked in again?" Damisan interfered. "Let's work together this time, just like we took down that flying mutant guy back then."</p><p>"Fine, I suppose if you cannot fight by yourself, I will help you by joining you and seeing to it that you don't embarrass yourself," Endo nodded, changing the wording and the narrative of what it was that Damisan suggested.</p><p>"You have the absolute most infuriating way of agreeing with someone, you know that?" Damisan said in frustration.</p><p>"Just come and try it, it worked really fucking peachy last time, didn't it?" Raitoncide mocked his opponents before Geppo stepped out in front of him. "Hey, what the fuck?" the rogue ninja flipped out at his partner.</p><p>"Just stay behind me. I'm gonna try to see just how good the stuff that assassin gave us is," Geppo turned back to give his partner a look of pure thrill in his eyes. It was exhilaration that even a toxic personality like.</p>
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<a name="section0722"><h2>722. The Shadow Connection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The mercenary Geppo widened the spread of his legs, lowering his point of balance in the process as his arms adopted a position of a wide guard. Air howled as it flowed inside the multiple open tubes and stressed the rubbery artificial veins of storing and circulating it inside of the complex gear the mercenary wore. Because of the ever-amassing influx of air, wherever the suit found its pathway to bloat and expand–it took it.</p><p>Zokaka, the towering, quadruped elephant raised its trunk up and honked. Because of its size and thickness, the ninja animal was far less affected by the previous shock that had reduced the rest of the Stars to their knees. In such a way, the ninja elephant sent a straight aerial ripple to Geppo. The cocky mercenary thought so much of his newly obtained abilities that he made a mistake of just running out in front of a group of enemies and beginning to channel his technique.</p><p>The transparent sonic howl shot out from Zokaka's trunk slammed right into Geppo's chest, making the shocked mercenary wheeze. As the quick yet robust sound wave continued to drill against the mercenary's body, it shoved all the pent-up sonic waves from the ventilation openings in his gear like pressing a tube of toothpaste. Geppo had turned around vertically a handful of times, clockwise, on his path down and on his back. Little Tomi clapped with Zokaka's trunk after standing up and pulled out a pair of boomerangs from a pouch of cloth on her waist.</p><p>"Nice work, Zokaka," she commended the colossal ninja animal.</p><p>"I don't understand…" Geppo wheezed, still rubbing his chest and feeling up his busted up ribs.</p><p>"You dumbass, just 'cause the assassin gave us his good shit, that doesn't make you a peerless warrior. You still need to know how and when to use it," Raitoncide shook his head in disappointment with his partner. "Stop messing around, the elephant just sent you a little nudge to interrupt your attack, it couldn't have been anything strong. Pick yourself up and let's finish those kids off."</p><p>"I see…" Skaven muttered.</p><p>"What's that? You know something about this "assassin" that they spoke of?" Shige-H wondered.</p><p>"No. I was wondering why Geppo would gain this much confidence. Usually, he was the type to bully ordinary civilians around, but when he met his match, he started to get salty and demand help, even in fights he could perfectly win by himself. These two were given something by a third party–likely they are the ringleader but what could they have offered these two to make Geppo betray Ijiki?" Skaven scratched his chin, still trying to figure out the bigger picture before allowing himself to become absorbed in this battle.</p><p>"Who cares!?" Endo growled. "These two are just criminal scum, they need little incentive to betray and stab their own brothers in the back!"</p><p>The fearsome samurai apprentice twirled his sword behind him, charging head-first into battle. Raitoncide clapped his hands together, preparing a repeat of Endo's first failed attempt to attack the rogue ninja up close. But this time things went different. The apprentice samurai disappeared, taking a steep plunge upward and to the leafage. Upon his disappearance, the image of Damisan standing behind his fellow Stars member became clear. The prosthetics-user had his artificial arms crossed up as a faint glow of blue illuminated steel wire he used to manipulate the body of his ally.</p><p>Raitoncide's technique lashed and hissed before running out of range and becoming harmless while the opening persisted. Damisan spread out his prosthetic hands and then swung them in a single direction, like a gift of a constipated pigeon Endo swooped down with a ruthless slash of his sword, trusting the timing of his unattractive teammate. Raitoncide coughed blood out as he staggered back with unbelieving eyes. The part of his black jumpsuit underneath the wide laceration peeled off under the demand of gravity, prompting the rogue ninja to tear the other half off as well, though that was hardly his most pressing concern.</p><p>Because of the nature of his weapon and the aggravated toxicity of his character, Endo never attacked just once or twice. Now that his ally had provided him with an opening, the apprentice samurai served a flurry of death from multiple sides and angles, infusing his feet and head into the fold as the rough nature of the life that the young man had led toughened his noggin up for just this sort of test of its integrity.</p><p>A low-pitched crack filled the air, sending shrieking reverberations when an intense aura of Lightning Release extended from Raitoncide's hands, expanding as living blades adding to the length of his arm and proving to be intense enough to block the rush of Araki Endo's chakra-coated double-bladed weapon. With each blocked strike, Raitoncide's Lightning Release technique burst into sparks, but reignited before the rogue ninja welcomed the next strike.</p><p>"Did you think I would be hopeless fighting in close distance?" Raitoncide scoffed at his adversary. Endo performed a kata with his sword to return to a defensive stance as he found himself at a disadvantageous position. "Defend yourself!"</p><p>The rogue ninja moved his hands to his pouches, pulling out a pair of custom-made kunai knives made of chakra-conductive materials. The rogue ninja took no time coating them with Lightning Release chakra before attempting to carve something out of Endo. Despite matching ferocity in battle, Endo walled the relentless stabbing parade, proving it to be entirely fruitless. Having driven his opponent to a point of losing his composure, Endo danced aside upon reading a particularly nasty blow and tripped Raitoncide up before attempting to press a side of his coated blade to Raitoncide's neck and clipping it. The rogue had read Endo's desperate need to kill him and the greed in his movement, putting up his coated knives just in time to block the clipping motion.</p><p>The rogue ninja rolled aside as sharp, metallic cling filled the air. The upper halves of his custom knives twirled in mid-air, snapped off of the base of the blade. Endo pursued his opponent but felt a strong yank on his back and submitted to it. A tunneling sound wave passed where the apprentice samurai would have been if he pursued Raitoncide as Geppo found some space to join in on the battle.</p><p>"Zomiti, Zokaka, keep that human occupied!" little Tomi asked of her partners. Zomiti nodded and began rushing through the trees, cutting them in half with sick lariats as it approached a tall and chiseled boulder. The mint-colored elephant wrapped its hunky arms around the boulder, taxing its biceps some but ended up pulling it out and placing it under its armpit like a bludgeoning tool as it gave the mercenary Geppo a dead-eye stare.</p><p>Not being one of complex tool usage of intricate battle tactics, Zokaka charged on ahead, looking to stampede all over the opposing force. Geppo dashed and leaped aside in avoidance of certain flattening under the colossal elephant's foot but found Zomiti on his back, swiping with his large boulder as if it was a weapon and preventing Geppo from gaining distance. It was just a matter of a few failed stomps until the shadow of Zokaka's gargantuan foot lingered above Geppo and drowned out his immediate surroundings in shade.</p><p>A sharp-pitched howl filled the air as a bubble of living noise resisted Zokaka's attempt to stomp the mercenary. Geppo leaned down on one knee to get a more balanced foothold as he intensified the sound wave and used both of his arms to push Zokaka's stampede off of his schedule of troubles.</p><p>"Decapitating Airwave!" Geppo yelled out, sending a pump of pent-up air out from the rubbery tubes inside of his suit that enveloped Zokaka's foot and left lacerations around it as the airwave climbed higher and higher toward the elephant's head.</p><p>Just as a sly smirk colored Geppo's face, a ruthless smack from a boulder art piece sent him flying weightless and smashing through a centuries-old tree and struggling to maintain his consciousness. Zomiti signaled from his trunk, being an eager troubadour of his own success. Zokaka stumbled back in pain and let out a pitiful grumble that resonated throughout the area. Yet the elephant veteran had suffered far worse injuries back in its heyday.</p><p>"Raitoncide has picked up a few tricks. He was the one I was the least familiar with back in the day and unlike the rest, he always worked to improve his skills and learn new techniques," Skaven noted as the Stars exploited the opening that Tomi's elephants provided them with, moving in to all attack Raitoncide before he shows another landscape-affecting technique.</p><p>Little Tomi took it up, leaping easily twice her own size in altitude as she twirled around and lobbed a pair of boomerangs right at Raitoncide, adamant to snap his neck or to behead him outright with two sharpened pieces of hefty wood. Even as the ruthless rogue ninja leaned and ducked out of the way, a dancing trail of shadows moved across the ground, coming alive in the shape of shadowy arms that grabbed hold of Tomi's boomerangs and flung them right back at Raitoncide. This combination between Tomi and Skaven scored a nasty-sounding thud at the center of Raitoncide's spine.</p><p>Having found a moment when her opponent looked stunned and out of his own body, Shige-H let out a vicious battle cry as her arms lit up with vibrant, blue glow. The medical kunoichi rushed in for a beat down, but Raitoncide was made of sterner stuff as he ducked and weaved out of each successive strike, observing Shige's loud wind-ups with crazed eyes. The sharp noise of reeling wire filled the air as Damisan's fingers had shot out from their sockets, splitting and segmenting, revealing them to contain miles upon miles of steel wire as the segmented fingers wrapped the wire around Raitoncide's limbs and tied him down.</p><p>The prosthetics-using self-puppeteering ninja swung his subdued opponent around and over his head, disabling his hands from connecting so he could no longer mold chakra or use his Lightning Release ninjutsu as Damisan slammed Raitoncide right behind him, as if using him like a hammer that should have shattered the Earth's crust while Endo was already skyborne and aiming for a finishing thrust with his double-bladed sword.</p><p>The rogue ninja swung his legs around like the blades of a helicopter, kicking himself up to life and deflecting the thrust of Endo's sword in the process while imbedding the sword in the ground. It took Raitoncide a good few moments in wiggling some freedom in his fingers and some of his limbs. His right arm came free first. The rogue ninja weaved a single hand seal and enveloped himself in his own Lightning Pillar, singing off the steel wire and emerging shocked and lightly scorched up by his own technique but still hungry for more violence. As long as the young Allied Ninja recruits were the ones on the receiving end.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Stream!" Raitoncide yelled out, channeling a mass of Lightning Release chakra into the tip of his palm before lowering it and pulsing it outside throughout his entire body. Because of the slower build-up of the technique and the fact that the rogue ninja had to generate the focal first part of the technique inside of his hand, the Stars retreated wide enough to leave his range.</p><p>With the use of both of his hands returned to him and all of his foes outside of the range where they could have intercepted the use of his hands, Raitoncide immersed himself in weaving more than a few hand seals all at once before raising his right palm and enveloping it in a blinding crackle of Lightning Release chakra. The rogue ninja then connected both of his hands, dipping the left one inside of that mass of electricity before duplicating the awesome voltage with his left and forming a super-sized clump of Lightning Release chakra and extending both his arms, aiming for Shige-H.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Javelin!" Raitoncide howled out with a megalomaniacal shriek as the pent-up voltage all blasted outward toward Shige-H in a super-heated stream that resembled plasma a lot more than a jolt of lightning.</p><p>Shige's body reacted on its own. Moving through sheer instinct at just the right time, mere blink before the javelin left a hole in her gut and left her a bleeding out and whimpering would-be corpse on the forest floor. A light tremble emanated through the entire body of Shige-H as she stood back up on both feet and realized how close she was to an injury that would have soured the Stars' day and possibly doomed their chances of obtaining the Ayushi tissue sample for their injured friend.</p><p>"Nice instincts…" Raitoncide commended. "Though, of course, I'd have appreciated it more if you stopped struggling and just died. You going around healing away all the hard work I'm putting into this is a real hassle, you know."</p><p>"You might think you're being smart, targeting a medical ninja, but evasion is one aspect of our physical skill we've ironed out to perfection. I assure you that you will find me the toughest target to nail down and kill." Shige-H responded with a light shake to her voice. It was not that lingering sense of impending doom that made Raitoncide smirk, however, it was the sight of Shige's fur coat that failed to race fast enough after its mistress and burnt away from her shoulder blades and below.</p><p>The Lightning Javelin had pierced it in the center, leaving a hole with smoldering edges so hot that the surrounding fur instantly caught fire and singed until the coat's integrity forced it to collapse and cut off the blazing part, separating it from the remains of the coat.</p><p>"Geppo! How hard can it be to fuck up two elephants?" Raitoncide yelled out, addressing his partner but refusing to move his eyes away from the ninja queued up in front of him.</p><p>"Zokaka!" Tomi shrieked out, driving her hands through her hair and undoing her pigtails at once. Geppo had positioned himself firmly atop of Zokaka's head and had a firm grip over the elephant's trunk as he pounded Zokaka into a kneeling position. Zomiti laid on his back further to the right, his chunky belly lifted in a slumbering rhythm suggested that the enemy knocked him out not too long ago. "That's enough, please!" she pleaded.</p><p>"Don't lose your cool, brat. Ninja animals poof away when they take too much damage to prevent them from dying. If your knuckleheads are still taking a beating–they're willing to go on," Endo tried to prevent Tomi from making a mistake that he always ends up making. It was tough to say if that was because of a genuine care for the well-being of his teammate or if he merely considered holding some sort of copyright over such reckless behavior and didn't want Tomi copying him.</p><p>"Shut up!" Tomi yelled out. "Zokaka and Zomiti are my friends, they would never give up on a job I ask them to do! Don't you understand, they'll never back out, not until they can't anymore…"</p><p>"Leave this to me," Skaven muttered without a second's delay, taking it to one knee and expanding a cluster of shadowy tendrils from underneath his feet. Raitoncide tittered in mockery over Skaven, making the same mistake that Geppo had made just a minute earlier as he raced through hand seals.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Mouth of the Storm!" he muttered, releasing a contained lightning storm in Skaven's general direction. Damisan moved first, stepping out in front of the kneeling Nara and opening up his prosthetic limbs, spreading them out like umbrellas, interconnected via metallic rims and coated with membrane of base chakra coating.</p><p>"Shadow Possession Jutsu–Complete!" Skaven reported as both enemy ninja exclaimed in shock, reacting to how fast Skaven paralyzed them both with such a simplistic technique.</p><p>"H-How… I was… Looking out for your tendril…" Raitoncide cursed and grumbled to himself unintelligible swear words as the possessive paralysis of the Shadow Possession Jutsu kept him and his partner in place.</p><p>With Geppo no longer keeping hold of Zokaka's trunk and pummeling his skull with vicious strikes, the elephant slumped on the ground, spreading his fours to the side as he smashed against the forest floor lifeless. Geppo twitched twice while attempting to move away, but failed as Skaven had his shadowy tendril locked with Geppo's shadow.</p><p>"I had noticed that it becomes significantly easier to stretch out my shadow when you're using your Lightning Release jutsu. It's only natural as they're their own source of light. I guess it's the same effect as if when you use a flashbang–everything becomes enveloped in the light's shadow for a few moments. As for Geppo, it felt dangerous to connect with him earlier as his sound waves had double the range of my shadows. That's why it's quite convenient that I found the shadows of those elephants and could use their shadows as mediums," Skaven explained before turning to his fellow Stars. "I must admit, there are more than a few ways our abilities can work together."</p><p>While Geppo's eyes remained paralyzed, the mercenary looked by moving his eyes alone to see Skaven's shadowy tendril entering the pool of Zokaka's shadow before darting off of it and connecting to Geppo. It helped that the enemy perched on to the ninja animal at the point when the shadows connected.</p><p>"Skaven, you fucking rat!" Geppo cursed. "This has nothing to do with you, never had. You chose to fuck with us, remember that!"</p><p>"That's right, I did…" Skaven stood up and scratched his neck, looking more hassled rather than worried or afraid about the coming consequences. "That's the whole point though, I couldn't stand staying idle in relation to things that don't concern me. I care about Mana and I want to see her get better, no matter how little her injury concerns me, I want to get involved and make her return to form happen. I guess you could say that sort of stuff's my Ninja Way now."</p><p>Raitoncide looked like he was foaming his wrath from his mouth as both his and Geppo's bodies moved to repeat the motions that Skaven did with his body. Tomi dashed off to undo the summoning technique forcefully and send her injured friends back for some treatment while Damisan blitzed away to look for the sample they've all came here to get.</p><p>"I might not get so lucky as to catch them both again. May as well knock them out now," Skaven suggested.</p><p>"Knocking 'em out is too risky, I intend on settling this in a more permanent way," Endo declared, spinning his sword over his head and pointing it out in front of him in preparation to do away with the paralyzed enemies.</p>
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<a name="section0723"><h2>723. The Six-Paths Of Lightning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Endo, wait, they might have some more intel on this situation. They must know who masterminded this affair and prompted them to betray Hanada's men," Skaven yelled out, but his words smashed into a brick wall and scattered all over the floor in disarray.</p><p>His coated with lightning blade etched into Geppo's armor with a dull and low-pitched thud. A spray of blood covered the chest of Geppo's equipment but the mercenary still brimmed with life as evidenced by the painful and filled with scorn expression that he offered. A painful grunt filled the air when both sides of Endo's blade browsed for openings in the armors to sever the mercenary's limbs but ended up cutting into something too hard to slice with unfocused and widespread slashes.</p><p>Despite his pitiful attempts to crawl back in retreat and salvage his life and what remained of his future combat potential, Skaven's shadow held Geppo stationary, ignoring his most genuine attempts to fall down. Endo, however, allowed himself the luxury to forget the fact that Geppo wasn't standing because he still intended to oppose the Allied Ninja recruits but did so because Skaven's technique compelled him to.</p><p>Growing increasingly frustrated at what he saw as Geppo's toughness resisting his blows, Endo wound up for a focused power slash that he meant to split the cut-up and bleeding mercenary clean into two with, right through his heavy gear if his blade ended up meeting some of it in its path. A resonating slice of Lightning Release chakra split the ground where Endo hit it, missing his mark by what seemed like a mile. Skaven breathed one out, feeling pressure rolling off his chest.</p><p>It was once Endo continued to wail, swing and slash at what he saw as Geppo's weak points and ended up swiping around and cutting thin air, spreading that dreadful, electric hum wherever his chakra coated weapon went, that the Nara realized what was truly going on. His ally wasn't at all showing mercy to his opponent, it was just that, one reason or another, he was incapable of hitting Geppo anymore.</p><p>"What's going on?" Shige-H turned to the confused Nara.</p><p>"I'm… Not sure…" Skaven shook his head.</p><p>"That noise," Damisan noted, throwing his masked head around in search for its source. "Like whistling air or something… No. It's not just that, it's being filtered, or something like that."</p><p>"Sound?" Skaven turned his head around in search of what Damisan was talking about. As far as he was concerned–everything was dead silent until Endo didn't fill the air with his wrathful grunts and that noise of a double-bladed sword swinging through the air and hitting nothing but dirt. Geppo's wincing and whines also stood out, but Skaven couldn't pick up anything like that which Damisan described.</p><p>"This must be what that bastard gave us, huh? That voice box?" Raitoncide turned to his bleeding out and severely injured comrade with an energetic smirk. "Atta boy, you don't need your hands or the use of your body to spread your sound waves, do you? How about you raise some ruckus and break those shadow lines connecting to us, huh?"</p><p>"I… I can't, he cut up my gear… This is all that I can make out right now!" Geppo yelled out a whiny complaint.</p><p>"So, it is his doing…" Skaven bit the right side of his lip in frustration. "He's spreading sound waves indistinguishable to most of us, that disorient us and make us see things. Even with his limbs chopped up and useless, all he needs is to use his voice."</p><p>"His voice? I can cut that too!" Endo growled in frustration, slashing again at where he saw an opening to Geppo's throat, but his blade once again only cut thin air and the samurai apprentice stumbled, failing to maintain his own body's weight. "What the…?" he cursed upon realizing he needed to stab one side of his sword into the ground just to keep himself upright.</p><p>"Don't lose your cool. He's just disorienting you. Back up, Endo." Skaven once again appealed to his comrade.</p><p>"It's no ordinary illusion," Shige-H said. "We can't just dispel it. It's not just a sound-based illusion like Mana's Sweet Lullaby Jutsu. It doesn't require you to perceive it or hear it distinctly. It surpasses the audible spectrum and simply disorients the targets."</p><p>"Even so," Skaven switched the position of his hand seal, sending a shadowy ripple across the line connecting him to the pair of his opponents. "We're still in possession of the enemy. I can choke them out and disable them for questioning later."</p><p>"I wonder about that, brat…" Raitoncide chuckled. "Sure, that could have been the case. But what makes you so certain about the position of your body?"</p><p>"What!?" Skaven muttered, looking down and seeing just rippling mirages. Vision of his body doubled, tripled and continued to multiply in blurry hallucinations that displayed hundreds of unique positions to each one of his limb. The Nara could no longer trust his own body or tell if he was sitting or standing, or kneeling. What's the most important–he didn't know if he still held the hand seal to keep his enemies paralyzed anymore.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Javelin!" Raitoncide yelled out, extending one of his hand as it formed a crackling construct of Lightning Release knife over his palm and extended in distance to an intense beam that emitted a ghastly hiss as it penetrated in between Endo's chest and his abdomen and sent the young swordsman down and on his back with a visible hole in his body.</p><p>"Endo!" Shige-H screamed out, rushing after her fallen fellow Stars member. Upon reaching her fallen ally, the young woman immediately enlightened her hands with emerald light meant to treat the horrific injury that the wrathful swordsman had sustained.</p><p>"Careful, we're not sure if the illusion is over yet!" Skaven warned the leader of Stars but Damisan moved in to his side, preparing to fight alongside the Nara if the necessity came.</p><p>"It has to be–since it's no genjutsu technique, it must have affected everyone within the sound's range. If Raitoncide hit his intended target–that meant that he had perfect control over his body. We're free, for now, at least," Damisan said.</p><p>"We need to disable Geppo. It's unclear how much control he has over this technique of his and we can't press on our advantage against Raitoncide with the possibility of that technique lingering in the air," Skaven turned the corners of his eyes to the masked self-puppeteering ninja.</p><p>"Got it," Damisan nodded and took a stalwart fighting pose, winding back his right hand as pulsating chakra jets lit up on the other ends of his prosthetic legs, propelling him to soar onward.</p><p>Geppo staggered back, falling flat on his face as he flapped his cut-up arms around and smacking himself in the face in his attempt to cover up and protect his head. Damisan swung and rotated out of balance, hitting a nearby oak head-first and splitting it horizontally in two. Geppo's technique had set in again, telegraphing that he, at the very least, had partial control of it.</p><p>"Shadow Strangulation Jutsu!" Skaven dashed back a few paces before taking it to one knee again and sending a shadowy line across the ground. Instead of merely touching with his opponent's shadow and bonding the two of them in a possessive connection, however, a living, shadowy hand emerged from the other end of the shadowy line, looking to wrap around Geppo's body from afar, where the noise would have had a weakened effect.</p><p>"Just where are you aiming?" Raitoncide smirked at Skaven's attempt to halt his comrade's technique. Geppo seemed to halt it himself just in time for Raitoncide to finish his hand seals and position his palms to the ground, sending a collection of Lightning Pillars bursting from the ground. Shige-H dashed aside from the patient she was treating, beaming a petrified glare at the bursting electricity engulfing Endo and just barely missing her.</p><p>Further to the south of her position, the beaming pillar engulfed and burnt up the fallen tree where Damisan slammed into, swallowing up and shocking the disoriented Stars member as well. Grunting in pain and covered with trailing smoke, the self-puppeteering ninja struggled to rise back on his feet.</p><p>"That's some good shit, Geppo. Keep at it and we're gonna fry all of them!" Raitoncide pumped his fists and turned to his chopped-up ally, who only barely mustered up a nod with a pale face.</p><p>"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!" Endo's howl filled the air as a jolt of electricity came this time from the location of the Stars, aiming at Raitoncide himself. The rogue ninja crossed his hands and formed a pair of knife-shaped constructs of Lightning Release chakra around his hands, absorbing and nullifying the weaker in rank technique. "I've noticed you like Lightning Release techniques. Two can play that game."</p><p>"Endo, what are you doing? He's going to kill you!" Shige-H screamed out, panic-stricken over her comrade's complete ignorance of his own bodily condition and just how close he was to dying already. She had closed up his wound from Lightning Javelin halfway before Raitoncide's pillars shocked him back into consciousness.</p><p>"If my master failed to finish me off, there's nothing this guy can do to me to keep me down…" Endo wheezed as he stood to his feet. His own weapon appeared to drag the young man down and draw him to flop onto his face. It was only because of most of the young swordsman's efforts that he could stay on both feet.</p><p>"I guess I'll have to plunge my entire hand into your chest and make sure your heart stops beating manually!" Raitoncide howled as he jumped up and released a pair of lightning jolts from his shoulder blades, elevating himself with a Lightning Release channeling exercise just as he used to do when just walking around with his partner in-between assignments.</p><p>The rogue ninja sped up to the risen swordsman as if he was riding an actual thunderbolt, extending his hand that still pulsed with vibrant electricity as if to signify that he meant every tiniest bit of his words and that he'd truly shorten Endo's heart out with his bare hand. Before he could do so, however, a black and white, furry paw smacked him in the jaw and sent him careening off to the right.</p><p>"You were involved in a survival exercise with your master in a steel cage inside of a volcano every day, jeez, Endo, we get it already!" little Tomi smirked standing atop of a tree branch with a test tube in hand while a heavyweight panda with eyes of blood-red roared out, throwing its furry fists around as a warning that it would smack aside anyone to come in its way just as it did to Raitoncide just now.</p><p>"Tomi…" Skaven looked up at the youngest and shortest member of Stars, making her return to the battlefield.</p><p>"I found the sample, and I recalled Zokaka and Zomiti," little Tomi exclaimed with a lively pumping of her fist while she leaped up and flipped in mid-air to land beside the awestruck Nara. "Thanks for helping me protect them, Skaven."</p><p>"Right…" Skaven nodded. "We could use your help with Geppo–his sound-based disorientation technique is throwing us all for a loop."</p><p>"On it!" Tomi nodded, drawing blood from her thumb and pressing her hand to the ground. A blood-curdling squeaking noise sent Geppo writhing and crawling back in terror long before a bat twice his size lunged out from the smoke and grabbed hold of him, taking him with him to the depths of the forest and the peaks of the tallest trees where he couldn't trouble his summoner anymore. "Komonoi and other ninja bats have special protections to their inner ear that lets them block and filter sounds. I could have called on some ninja snakes, but they'd have eaten Geppo up…"</p><p>"That's great, now we've got just one headache to worry about," Skaven turned his attention to Raitoncide, who looked a bit loopy after the bone-shattering hit he took right to the face. It was just unfortunate that he was a rogue ninja capable of chakra augmentation and not some mercenary with technology worth more than their services.</p><p>Shige-H held her hands over the panting Endo, finishing the job of closing up the Lightning Javelin wound in his abdomen and patch up some beatings, cuts and bruises that he'd accumulated over this entire trip that left his body and frightening mess even for a relatively conditioned medical ninja such as Shige-H.</p><p>"You need to take care of yourself better. Let someone else take the lead until you fully recover and stop giving me such a scare," Shige-H tried reasoning with her teammate using her best attempt at a soft, motherly voice, but Endo seemed to just scoff and turn away. He sat still and let her heal him, however. That was already more than he'd have done a few weeks back.</p><p>"I'm at my strongest when I'm beaten past the point of reason and pass out, anyway. I've got warrior's spirit in me that's burning up the strongest when I'm past my limit," Endo bragged.</p><p>"That may be so, but that doesn't mean you've got to flirt with death in every brawl you have. Keep that bottled up for a darker day is all I'm saying." Shige-H replied.</p><p>"Heh…" Raitoncide felt up his aching jaw and stared at his shaky hands. "It's a good thing that I held myself back from using the good shit that armored guy gave us. My juice is getting a bit low, Geppo's fucked up like always. Now's the best time to take some of that good shit for myself. If it made someone scary out of a goon like Geppo, just imagine what it'll do to me!"</p><p>"The good stuff?" Damisan muttered to himself while wrestling himself out of the wreckage he had brought onto himself. "What are you talking about?"</p><p>"The armored guy? Who gave you that stuff? Who taught Geppo to fight like that?" Skaven pressed on this same line of questioning.</p><p>"It won't matter, not to you guys." Raitoncide revealed a sealing tag with a glyph painted on it and pressed it, clutching it in his hand while his left hand weaved a one-handed unsealing hand seal. "I've no idea where that guy got his hand on something crazy like this, but it's just what I need to kill all of you. Maybe I'll use this new, good jolt and defibrillate that bitch back to life only to show her your crispy bodies and make her beg finish her off again!"</p><p>The bright, white lightning around Raitoncide got an azure hue, as it drew energy from the reverberating might inside of the sealing tag he clenched in his right hand. It seemed to coat his entire skin with a glistening, almost metallic texture of cerulean, as if a living and crackling armor that covered the rogue ninja up, changing the very color of his Lightning Release technique.</p><p>"Yeah… This is the good shit alright…" Raitoncide muttered with a voice that broke and scattered in the intense electric aura that surrounded his body, reverberating off of the layer of lightning coating he covered himself with. "Finally, I've ranked up in life!"</p><p>"We need a few seconds so that leader can finish patching Endo up. As much of a pain as that guy is, he's the only one persistent enough to run at Raitoncide and hand him some pressure. We might just need someone as crazy as him to bust through whatever he just did." Skaven said. "Buy her some time!"</p><p>Intending to lead through example, the Nara took to one knee and reached out with a shadowy tendril. The light show that changed the color of Raitoncide's lightning had provided him with ample light to amplify his shadows with. A tall, washing wave of darkness rose from behind the rogue ninja, looking to envelop him whole in a bubble of complete shade.</p><p>"Are you fucking kidding me!?" Raitoncide sneered at Skaven, taking off the ground as if some magnetic force repulsed him off of it and erupting with bright and sparking spikes protruding off of his entire body as part of his intensifying Lightning Release aura and skewering Skaven's ace technique. The riddled shadows dissolved and burnt up on sight, flapping on the side like a burst balloon. "I'm juicing myself up with some actual Six-Paths chakra and you're trying that pathetic Nara shit on me?"</p><p>Raitoncide clenched his fist and extended it in Skaven's direction. Out of sheer instinct, the Allied Ninja recruit rolled aside and within mere blink felt grateful that he did. Another spike of pure lightning so intense and channeled that it was actually solid burst from underground, much like his Lightning Pillar technique from earlier. After failing to impale the Nara immediately, the lightning spike trickled down into amped up electrical field and dissolved.</p><p>"What kind of a hand seal was that?" Tomi freaked out, flinging a pair of sharpened stone knives at her opponent. Raitoncide straightened his clenched fist into a palm, releasing a network of intertwined electrical threads that seemed to halt the stone knives in mid-air via some sort of electromagnetism.</p><p>"Hand seals? Get the fuck out of here with that shit! I'm beyond that fundamental shit! I'm like a fucking Thunder God now! Raitoncide was a kick-ass name of a chump I was earlier but now I'm so much more… Raiden… Raijin… Who the fuck cares, I can brainstorm my new alias for me whole day after I fry all of you!" Raitoncide cackled to himself like a child while he elevated himself off the ground and marveled at his own booming power.</p><p>"Wind Style: Spiral Burst!" Damisan took it to his knees while his leg prosthetics disassembled to give him a wide frame of support while his arm prosthetics molded into a cannon-shaped rim for his technique. The intense amount of chakra that the Allied Ninja recruit channeled into the tip of his fleshy stumps that were once his arms positioned onto the cannon-shaped frame and took a bluish tint, elevating one rank beyond just being translucent wind currents.</p><p>"Are you fucking dense, you skinny, chopped-up freak?" Raitoncide turned his attention to the channeling shinobi, who raised the fused frame of his prosthetic arms higher for a better shot. It didn't look like the self-proclaimed Thunder God even cared to intercept a technique he considered so beneath him. He did so at his own peril, however, as once the charged-up sphere of Wind Release chakra boomed out to a beam, filling up the steel frame and beaming off toward its intended target, it seemed to sock him like a sledgehammer and send Raitoncide flipping and swinging back down on the ground.</p><p>"What the heck? Go, Damisan!" Tomi cheered on her comrade, looking baffled by how effective the self-built ninja's attack was against their seemingly invincible opponent.</p><p>"Wind Release… Of course, Wind Release is naturally strong against Lightning Release. If he's no longer just channeling Lightning Release techniques and using natural, Six-Paths lightning, he'd also be especially susceptible to its weaknesses. Wind Release ninjutsu might be our key to victory!" Skaven stumbled onto something profound after just observing what felt like a fruitless struggle for time yield them with significant results.</p>
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<a name="section0724"><h2>724. Only Human</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Stray bolts of lightning lashed in random directions as Raitoncide rose from the dirt. As was clear from his state, Damisan's technique had peeled off the layer of electric armor off of his skin, though the rampant electric fields weaved it back together from minute strands of flashing Lightning Release chakra weaves. The self-proclaimed Thunder God had his arms hanging beside him, too heavy to move at that moment, and he struggled to rise back to his feet and even a few moments after returning to his feet it took a brief pause for him to engage in his electromagnetic levitation again.</p><p>"Shitaka-senpai is taking an awful amount of time to check back with us," Shige-H grit her teeth, using this temporary pause that gave them all a chance to catch their breaths to worry about their superior who was supposed to check up on the true mastermind behind this plot of betrayal. Even if Shitaka couldn't find anything or anyone else, he'd have long since returned, as this brawl was getting far too wild to ignore.</p><p>"Is he really our problem?" Endo panted, building the strength back up to lift his sword off the ground. Finding his own movements too sloppy, the young swordsman split his weapon in half at the center and sheathed one half of the blade by his side.</p><p>"He is. I need you to check up on him," Shige-H looked to Endo with strength and authority behind her look. A look that she meant to show Endo that she wasn't ready to fool around and won't take Endo's usual antics from him with.</p><p>"Wait, me!?" Endo flipped out. "Why me? I don't give a shit about that guy…"</p><p>"You're also by far the closest to death out of all of us. I've healed you up, I know your exact state. If you get hit again–there's no guarantee that your chakra augmentations will hold. I'm not asking you to engage the enemy if you find it. I know also that you won't just sit still even for a second so I'm asking you to be useful differently instead of just rushing at the enemy and getting yourself killed," Shige-H replied.</p><p>"You know that I can use Wind Release ninjutsu, right?" Endo beamed a seething glare at his team leader.</p><p>"That's right, but I'm tuck to hide this ace away so I don't lose it forever." Shige-H said, standing her ground.</p><p>"Fine. But I can't promise you I won't kill the enemy that's keeping Shitaka occupied," Endo pointed his thumb at him, making a tough guy grimace before taking off.</p><p>"That is exactly what I told him not to do…" Shige-H sighed while the rest of the Stars prepared to take on their rising enemy once again, hoping to stop him this time.</p><p>"Do we have an actual plan?" Damisan wondered. "I'm not sure how many more shots of Spiral Burst I've got in me, it's possible that it's fewer than it might take to take this guy out."</p><p>"Honestly, I've got nothing. I'm willing to jump in and give my best shot, I will not ask you for anything more than that either. It feels like a simple either we all die or we take him down kind of situation," Shige-H looked on to Raitoncide as he hovered over the Stars and his missing patch of Lightning Armor reassembled, coating his entire body once more in an azure hue.</p><p>An authoritative thunderbolt slammed against the ground in between the Stars, scattering the young adults and tossing them about by its sheer, dominant power alone. Raitoncide had slammed against the ground in between the group as if he had become lightning itself, quickly regaining his humanoid form once he landed and spread his arms out.</p><p>"Lightning Style: Lightning Current!" Raitoncide yelled out as the entire area submerged in an expanding electrical field. Rampant and intense.</p><p>Shige-H screamed out. There was no resisting or escaping this expanding field of electricity. It was as if the entire area had been filled to the brim with an interconnected network of lightning jolts, evading even a single strand seemed impossible and every strand of the rampant electricity carried the entire voltage flowing from the newly garnered divine power of the rogue ninja.</p><p>A shocking, popping noise made Shige-H struggle through the overwhelming pain and see that the electricity had lifted all of them above ground, as if the unstable electromagnetic fields had completely robbed the entire area of the forest of gravity. The noise came from Damisan's side, the masked ninja tried to shield himself from the cruel attack by expanding his arms in a net and coating them with chakra but his arm prosthetics seemed to pop and shatter in shambles from the force that Raitoncide hit them with.</p><p>Little Tomi's cries uttered from within a furry body shield surrounding her as the ninja panda, rich with fighting spirit had enveloped the young kunoichi with its body to keep her from grievous bodily harm, however, it didn't feel like he had achieved much as its own body served as an ample conductor and much if not most of the voltage ended up transferred onto little Tomi merely through contact with her partner.</p><p>"And thus, it reveals your true nature. Once a scum, always a scum…" Raitoncide muttered while landing in between the fallen Stars members and staring at Skaven who raised himself lightly above ground and wrapped himself in a bubble of shadows, a result of his Shadow Prison Jutsu that he used both offensively and defensively. This time with much better results than earlier, when he tried subduing Raitoncide with it.</p><p>"You're delirious, Raitoncide. You've always been a little unhinged, but all this power snapped it completely," Skaven hissed once he hopped out of the collapsing bubble of shadows that protected him.</p><p>"Your ninjutsu can't hurt me, do you think your pathetic attempts at insults can?" Raitoncide smirked, feeling oh-so proud of himself and the crippling power he had achieved as he looked over the fallen Stars members, smoking and writhing in pain, stuck in between consciousness and oblivion. "Look at those kids, Skaven, you could have shielded them too, just like you've covered yourself up. And yet… I was too fast, wasn't I? It's okay to admit it, you didn't act out of reaction, you relied on instinct and the first instinct of a man such as yourself is to always look out for yourself."</p><p>"I wouldn't talk so much if I were you. You'll run yourself out of breath," Skaven smirked, even if he couldn't feel it, his feet dragged back on the dirt trying to bring him further away from imminent death that lied behind Raitoncide and this new power he had gained.</p><p>"That is impossible. I am no longer a man, I am lightning, I am energy, I am a force of nature. What's wrong? I thought you Nara were supposed to be a bunch of smartasses, don't you remember about the Six Paths from the Academy? It is a power that surpasses ninjutsu itself, even a rogue cutthroat such as the man I used to be knew that," Raitoncide took some sweet moments to admire his own splendor.</p><p>"Maybe if you did truly attain the power of Six Paths, that'd be the case, but you didn't. For the sake of old times, I'd power down and walk away. I'm still offering you that option right now. You drew that power out of a paper tag, do you really think you're in any sort of control over it? It'll suck you dry and burn you up, you fool!" Skaven grunted out.</p><p>"Ridiculous… The words of a mere dog, groveling before a god." Raitoncide posed in front of Skaven as he took it to the air again, channeling his Six Paths, blue lightning throughout his entire body to do away with his enemies.</p><p>"Think about where you've got it from. Do you really believe that the man that gave you this sealing tag gives enough of a shit about you to offer you this sort of power and intend to preserve your life? He knows that you'll burn out, he knows it'll kill you, he's hoping that both you and our group will kill each other," Skaven scolded the self-proclaimed god while he flexed before him.</p><p>"Perhaps it is so, though I think I've got enough jolt left to kill you lot and have a bit of a reserve to power down with. I fully intend on saving some of it for Konoha's Sorceress after all… Without the cannon-arms of that burnt up guy, you Allied Ninja have nothing to threaten me with," Raitoncide pointed at the useless scraps that littered around Damisan who laid down face-down and armless.</p><p>Without even needing to turn his head, a stray jolt of electricity parted off of the intense aura coating Raitoncide and engulfed a stone spear flying in his direction. While Tomi panted on her knees, the amped up voltage reduced her weapon to woodchips and pebble dust and scattered it before the crushed teen.</p><p>"You hurt my panda!" Tomi roared out the first instance of air that she drew into her lungs.</p><p>"Do you really think I wouldn't kill a child?" Raitoncide turned to his side and raised his hand, firing off a testament of his wrath that he meant to fry little Tomi with, but the child was no longer where she yelled at him from once the lightning hit the ground.</p><p>"Thanks, Skaven, that's a neat plan you've come up with," Shige-H smirked while she put Tomi down on the ground and stretched her stiff neck and knuckles out.</p><p>"Plan?" Raitoncide wondered.</p><p>"Yeah, it was right there in your little banter. For someone who claims to be a god, you should really be a bit more perceptive…" Shige-H smirked.</p><p>"You're the medical ninja of this squad, aren't you? Well, you're in for the most horrific time of your life then," Raitoncide muttered, raising his hand and turning to Skaven. "Lightning Style: Lightning Javelin!"</p><p>A concentrated beam of solidified lightning current going well into hundreds of thousands of megavolts pierced the distance between the self-proclaimed god and Skaven. A blitzing beam of light that saw a body of another ninja in its way, not at all an obstacle worth noting as it merely shined its way through Skaven with a grisly hiss. Skaven's body disappeared in a poof as a broken metallic leg took its place and fell apart into red-hot pieces.</p><p>"A Substitution Jutsu?" Raitoncide muttered. "So human that it's disgusting. Clinging to your illusion of importance. A scum who's always looking out for yourself shouldn't be selling your soul and struggling so hard to survive. You should accept your rotten nature and just die."</p><p>"Thanks for letting me use your leg to save my life," Skaven turned to Damisan, who writhed and panted down on his back, completely armless and now missing a leg too.</p><p>"Any time, pal…" Damisan tilted his cylinder that masked his face and gave the mohawk-donning Nara a mechanical thumb up. "Just glad to help."</p><p>"You talk high and mighty, but you've failed to eliminate me. As far as I'm concerned, you're a really lousy god. At this pace, you'll run out of your god-juice before punishing a single man. It'd be just like you to waste your godhood. No wonder Mana kicked your ass all by herself…" Skaven looked to Raitoncide with scornful eyes which Shige-H had never seen the shady Nara adopt.</p><p>Raitoncide just floated there, riding currents of lightning jolts waving and arcing from the ground and sustaining the crazy electrical fields running rampant in the area. He wanted to say something wicked and profane. It was at the tip of his tongue. As he simmered in his wrath, it became apparent that he had to say those things or else he'd burn up in them. And yet… Raitoncide failed to put the exact hatred he felt at that moment into words, and thus his lightning gradually changed color again.</p><p>Azure turned to silver that continued to blaze on into orange, ranging on accursed reddish as the would-be Thunder God extended a finger toward Skaven, as if sentencing him to death. The reason for this peculiar method of attack became apparent when the majestic cloak of living lightning that coated Raitoncide transitioned into his finger, focusing into a single point and beaming out toward Skaven while the Nara clapped his hands together in a race to shield himself in a shadowy bubble again.</p><p>A moist grunt shook Shige-H from her chest to her knees. The leader of the Stars charged on ahead to Skaven as the shadowy blob enveloping him deflated and ran off like black sludge and exposed her squad member with a black wound on the right side of his chest and blood trickling down from his mouth. The focused beam of Raitoncide's ultimate punishment as an ascended ninja of the Six Paths penetrated the Shadow Prison Jutsu and ended up tagging Skaven.</p><p>"Sorry… Leader… My mind started shooting blanks. He… Still had strength left and… One of us would have gotten tagged…" Skaven muttered with a bloody mouth and a weak tone while Shige-H cradled him in her hands and worked on healing his wound.</p><p>"You're going to be fine. He got you, but it's not a deadly wound. Stop making it worse for yourself with your apologies," Shige-H smiled, rubbing her wrist across her eyes to wipe some premature grieving tears that had proven themselves to be misplaced after a quick scan of Skaven's condition.</p><p>"You hurt my panda, you bastard!" little Tomi yelled out, whacking the fallen and very surprised Raitoncide that had run out of whatever chakra he had drawn from the sealing tags and ended up burnt out and powerless with her boomerang and knocking him out.</p><p>"Jeez, you almost caved his head in with that…" Damisan muttered after using his one remaining prosthetic leg to flip over on his belly and start his attempts to pick himself back up. Despite losing most of his prosthetics, Damisan seemed adept at moving around with just one remaining leg.</p><p>"Leader… This is… Important… I shielded myself with… My jutsu… Because…" Skaven tried talking through excessive coughs of scarlet before Shige-H beamed a mortifying look down at him.</p><p>"Stop talking!" Shige-H made Skaven's face go pale, though not for his blood loss but because of her terrifying expression. "It's the strongest when shielding in close range. It was the only way to use that technique and protect someone. You wouldn't have made it if you tried shielding one of us and even if you did–the jutsu wouldn't have held it either way."</p><p>"I guess… You really studied us…" Skaven muttered and closed his eyes to rest a bit.</p><p>"That bossy bitch!" Endo cursed to himself as he took a leap across the tree line and looked around. "Just like Tomoe-dono… I bet that worthless dumbass is just smoking on his own supply, or drinking…"</p><p>There was a noticeable reek of tobacco lingering in the air. While Endo followed just random chance for the first few dashes, he stumbled into an ever-strengthening scent of tobacco that became taking a much grimmer reek familiar to the apprentice samurai only from memories that he could access in his worst nightmares.</p><p>"Thank God you came!" an elderly man of balding top of the head but lively, long, grey hair and a dirty kimono raised his hand up and waved at Endo when the apprentice samurai followed the grisly scents to a scene he did not expect. "This man appears to have been murdered…"</p><p>Shitaka was not just murdered. His murderer had beheaded him clean. There were no signs of a battle. Had the Allied Ninja met his end in a battle, such a battle would have still been in progress. Neither did the killer merely beat Shitaka. Shitaka's murderer had fooled him, assassinated him in the proper meaning of that word. The old man sat by a mossy rock nearby the grotesque scene of a headless Allied Ninja and smoked from his pipe. His straw hat laid down beside him. Had it not been for the subtle frame of this man and his crooked posture, Endo would have cut him down at the spot.</p><p>"And you decided this was a good time for a smoke?" Endo wondered, landing beside the scene, allowing the headless body of his superior to lie in between him and this curious old man. "Give me a fucking break. Your shit may have fooled a dumbass like Shitaka, but I'm seeing right through it!"</p><p>"But Sir Ninja, I am but an old man heading to harvest my potatoes!" the old man shook his hands out in front of him, grabbing his straw hat and placing it out in front of him, as if it could shield him from Endo's sword. He acted so stupid that Endo almost bought into his act for a second and hesitated to attack immediately.</p><p>Endo leaped at the old man, flipping over Shitaka's headless body and slamming with the right side of his double-bladed sword. A thunderous hum filled the air when Endo's sword hit something solid in mid-air. Something that burnt through the alloy of its blade within seconds and clanged the falling sword into two, prompting Endo to dash back and draw the second half of his sword. Just so he didn't lose this half as well, the samurai apprentice coated it in Lightning Release chakra.</p><p>"What is that sword?" Endo hissed out.</p><p>"The Sword of the Thunder God…" the old man replied. As he lowered the ancient-looking hilt from which his sword appeared from thin air, the sword let out an electrical hum. The face of the old man had shifted in the flash of their collision. This was no longer the face of a frightened old man but that of a hardened warrior that matched if not surpassed Endo in experience. He left the young swordsman in the dust in terms of his equipment.</p><p>"You should not have wandered off from the battlefield, young one," Shitaka's murderer proclaimed while he extended his hand still holding his Sword of the Thunder God as a declaration for his intent to kill the young swordsman now that he has discovered the assassin. "It would be unfortunate if the rest of your allies came here to join you as well. I'd much rather kill you all on different terms."</p>
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<a name="section0725"><h2>725. Answers That Come With A Question Mark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Endo let out a battle cry from the depths of his lungs before rushing at his opponent. He hadn't seen much of his skill but the fact that he wielded such an impressive weapon and blocked his previous attack while still attempting to fool him suggested that he wasn't an opponent to fool around with. Not to mention the fact that he managed to kill an Allied Ninja without raising much noise at all.</p><p>Endo's sword crashed into the old man's sword of pure lightning that ignited just in time to block the rushing strikes of the samurai apprentice. Shitaka's murderer took it on the defensive as even with a single blade Endo's swordsmanship was aggressive and tended to dictate the pace in most engagements that the young man found himself in. Still, there was something suspicious in how this killer just backed up, keeping up with Endo's steps forward with matching pacing backwards. His sword moved with a controlled pace, it was just where it needed to be to defend himself, and even though he didn't rush it – neither did he tag Endo. Not even once.</p><p>"What's the matter, murderer?" Endo growled as his sword sunk to the ground alongside his entire upper body while he panted, struggling to raise it back up. "Here I thought you looked so eager to kill…"</p><p>"I must admit, your swordsmanship is impressive. Who was your master?" the old man wondered, retracting his lightning sword back to its ancient-looking hilt again and moving his hand inside of his kimono to remove a scroll and open it right in front of Endo. As Shitaka's murderer unveiled the scroll, it popped, releasing a cloud of smoke and revealing a crossed, scissor-like construction.</p><p>If only Endo had a bit more energy left, he could have rushed at this bastard right as he was switching his active weapon. Damn it. Why did he even need to do that in the first place? Endo didn't notice any faults in the weapon, it didn't look like igniting it and wielding it tired out this man at all. If anything, it was Endo who was tiring himself out, swinging at impeccable and well-timed blocks.</p><p>"Gozen of the Four God Swords," Endo replied. He hated the idea of humoring this man but he hated the thought of getting impaled or his head chopped off because he's short of breath and can't offer anything but his very best when their swords once again collide.</p><p>"I see, how is the old grouch these days?" the old man wondered.</p><p>"You mean you've met him!? Who the hell are you!?" Endo's eyes went blank, realizing that his greatest advantage might have been less and less notable if this man had ever trained with his old master.</p><p>"Boy, I've met everyone that's anyone in this world at one point or another. Fought most of them too. For Gozen's own sake, or maybe my own, he was not my contract when we crossed swords…" the old samurai pointed and opened up his inter-connected scissor sword in preparation to attack Endo. The apprentice samurai lowered his sword, pointing its tip at the ground as he reached over his sword-wielding wrist with the other hand to achieve the perfect balance for his swordsmanship technique.</p><p>"Oh… That pose. Don't tell me you've mastered Gozen's training? That would make you the first and only one. To be perfectly frank, his God Sword: Kagutsuchi would fold even me…" for the first time there was emotion in the voice of Shitaka's murderer. Whether it was fear or some strange spinoff of respect, it was impossible to say at the time.</p><p>"Why don't you come and find out?" Endo taunted his opponent. He might have revealed his hand. It was as if this old man saw right through him and just speaking up about this topic revealed the truth to him – Endo had flunked all attempts at learning Kagutsuchi. This time it was Endo feeling worried.</p><p>The moss-colored kimono that the old man donned flapped in the wind as he took off. His exotic scissor sword seemed deadly even if a master swordsman wasn't holding it. When opened, the range of the sword's clipping reach seemed ungodly. Endo's heart remained still as he closed his eyes. Seeing the oncoming death reaching out to him with her cold, sharp claws only distracted him and he needed a calm mind for his technique. Once Endo's eyes shot open once more, the core of the open scissors was already coming in on his throat.</p><p>"The Way of the Naked Blade: Punishment Cut!" Endo swiped his hand upward, his sword still in hand. A silver-like blur blinded both swordsmen as a crispy clean clang filled their ears. Endo's opponent stood before him wide open – the Punishment Cut had separated his scissor blade into two vastly inferior swords that felt now more like lumps of sharpened steel with rings to hold them with by the hilt instead of a testament of masterful craftsmanship.</p><p>"The Way of the Naked Blade: Judgment Cut!" Endo slammed his raised hand back down, his opponent, looking mortified, crossed his parted blades and blocked his strike, letting go of his swords and stumbling back as if, somehow, he had known that his blades didn't have what it took to withstand blocking this resolute cutting technique.</p><p>"I see…" Shitaka's murderer muttered as he stumbled back and felt his aching sides. "You may not have mastered Kagutsuchi, but you have improvised something of your own to resemble it. This Judgment Cut of yours seems just like Kagutsuchi, just without the burning soul of forceful will to dominate and absolutely destroy your opponent that is needed to execute the God Sword technique. You're like a little wyvern, blowing hot air because you've grown up in a dragon's nest and seen fire being blown a thousand times."</p><p>"Fucking asshole, talk some shit more, I'll kill you with this hot air!" Endo sneered at his opponent, pointing the tip of his blade right at him.</p><p>"I mean no disrespect, young man, you are, absolutely, an exceptional swordsman. You even managed to break my Kuchiwari, a sword that did in your superior." The old man was quick to excuse himself for what seemed like trash talk before.</p><p>"So, you did kill Shitaka then? With that sword, no less…" Endo grit his teeth, preparing to attack the disarmed opponent of his with all of his remaining will to slay him on the spot.</p><p>"It's a bad habit to lower one's guard. I took a shape that I felt would feel like it posed no threat to your superior, just like I took one with you. Though, it seems, the presence of his body in the proximity prevented you from looking down on me. Rest assured, you'd have followed his fate otherwise," the old swordsman said.</p><p>"So that's your game then, huh!?" Endo yelled out, from the bottom of his lungs, charging at his opponent. A gruesome string reeling sound filled the air as the assassin yoinked the two fallen parts of his Kuchiwari sword back into his hands and swung them in defense against Endo's relentless offensive. "You gave those two goons some fancy toys, hoping they'd do your dirty work but they fucked up and now you've got to stretch those old muscles of yours?"</p><p>Endo's swings were ruthless, his eyes blanked out and it seemed like for a moment he tapped into the berserk madness that enveloped him whenever he lost consciousness but was still very much alive in battle. It was this ferocity, this unmatched killing potential and warrior's heart that drew Gozen to adopt the boy as his student though it was, ultimately, his lack of ability to surpass that primal rage and convert it into talent that led to the frustrated boy abandoning his master after flunking his training once more.</p><p>When sight and sound mind returned to him, Endo stood before his fallen opponent with his split Kuchiwari blades now cracked and ruined beyond use. The sword of the young man pointed right at the face of the fallen veteran though his expression seemed impossible to make out due to the straw hat that he wore and how it obstructed his weathered face.</p><p>"The Way of the Naked Blade: Punishment Cut!" Endo yelled out, raising his sword up and splitting the hat off of the old man's head, preparing for his Judgment Cut to split the old man's head as it landed from up above and crashed into it.</p><p>A loud pop distracted him from enacting his rightful act of vengeance as smoke filled the area and where laid a seemingly helpless, old samurai, an armored fiend rolled out and took it to his feet. A fearsome presence that wore stalwart plating head to toe and masked himself with featureless, skull-shaped mast the lower section of which had a torn bandana tied up to it that rustled in the wind as the cold mask lacking any humanity to it stared right at Endo. Through this armored façade, it was impossible to tell if this man was angry, vengeful, excited, or glad. Almost as if emotions weren't something that this fiend was capable of. As if it was not a man that donned this suit of armor but a spirit that merely made the armor come alive and act upon the physical plane.</p><p>"So, is this your real look then?" Endo coughed up from the lifting cloud of smoke as he gazed upon his true enemy revealed to him.</p><p>"I wish I had the imagination to come up with something this elaborate on the fly. Yes, I did use the Transformation Jutsu to fool both your superior and you, young man. I didn't want to show this to you but it seems like I will not be deviating from my initial plan after all – you get to live until the day that I come for you all." The killer, now in his true form, said.</p><p>"Endo!" voices came from the distance. Subtle taps of sandals meeting wood or dirt followed them as the rest of the Stars gathered in the forest opening in support of one of their own in his hour of need as his armored opponent kept his featureless mask pointed in his direction without acknowledging the arrival of reinforcements.</p><p>"Shitaka-senpai!" Shige-H screamed out, rushing to her decapitated superior and the captain of their mission group. Her instinctual charge to help her fallen comrade stopped halfway when she realized that this man was beyond help already, having died immediately after decapitation and being already gone.</p><p>"Did this guy kill Shitaka-senpai?" Damisan wanted to point at the killer but lacked the limbs to do so. He used chakra jets inside his one remaining leg to dash here like a human missile. It was tough saying exactly just how useful he would be right now because of his impaired state.</p><p>"Yeah, he tricked Shitaka to lower his guard and then clipped his head off from behind like a coward!" Endo pointed the tip of his sword at the armored manslayer.</p><p>"N-No way…" Shige-H covered her mouth as her voice whimpered looking at the body of their captain that didn't as much as twitch any longer.</p><p>"It is odd hearing such accusations as if they're a bad thing, especially coming from a squad of ninja…" the assassin spoke in a shallow and husky tone. His voice did indeed match the voice that Endo heard from the old samurai earlier though it was as if the killer had dropped the impersonating tone and spoke seriously now. "Though, yes, I did kill your superior. I didn't intend on killing you lot just yet, it would have been much better killing all of you alongside Nakotsumi Mana once she recovers but… Your appearance here once again shuffles the cards for me."</p><p>"What's your involvement in this plot? Do you work for Hanada Katsuo? Ijiki? You've made trouble for both of them so it doesn't make much sense…" Skaven grunted, grabbing hold of his right eye as he struggled with a headache trying to piece this whole picture together.</p><p>"Neither. As I've said, I've got no problem letting you take the sample of Ayushi cells and getting it to Konoha's Sorceress. In fact, I'd very much like it if you did just that. I only killed Hanada Katsuo's men because they got in the way. I'd have killed Ijiki's men too but… They posed an interesting idea for me. A way to scope your potential and gain intelligence on your exact fighting styles and abilities. All invaluable information for an assassin looking to snuff you out once the time is right." The man answered. It felt as if though he only spoke to the Allied Ninja recruits because he himself was trying to decide what was to be done with them at this point. Whether he should jump the gun and kill them now or just flee and leave his plan as is.</p><p>"Then… Who are you working for? You're an assassin, right? Who hired you?" Shige-H hissed at Shitaka's murderer.</p><p>"Even if someone had hired me, I wouldn't tell you. That being said because the situation is so unique… I guess you could say I've hired myself to kill you lot," there was a hint of a chuckle in the assassin's speech, some semblance of hilarity and irony present in his voice.</p><p>"So, you've got nothing to do with either Hanada Katsuo or Ijiki then?" Skaven asked.</p><p>"No. My only goal this time was to obtain intelligence on your abilities. That information will be useful once I eventually move in for the kill," the killer nodded. He cracked the knuckles of his armored gauntlets. "Though, I suppose, it can't be helped now – I'll have to finish you guys off right now. In any case, I've got all the intelligence I need though I'd have liked some more time to prepare."</p><p>The Stars braced for upcoming combat before a sharp howl drowned out all the noise around them and a bright, blazing flash parted the tree line around them. Grey blitzed and blurs filled the battlefield while one of them lit up with flames again.</p><p>"Fire Style: Halo Dance!" a voice came from one of the unidentified interlopers as their blade parted a collection of blazing crescent-shaped projectiles that slammed right at the killer and sent him to an awkward stagger. Without saying a word, the assassin raised his hand up and cracked something in his hand. Within mere moments the battlefield became swallowed in purple mist. Something fast and rough grabbed hold of each Stars member and pulled them out of the flooding poison dew.</p><p>Once the interlopers stopped moving it became possible to once again tell their features. They were a handful of men and women donning black, baggy bodysuits and grey armor as well as blank masks with animal features dyed with various colorful patterns though their eyes remained inhuman and blank – sunken in black.</p><p>"The ANBU!" Skaven grit his teeth, fully expecting trouble.</p><p>"The Konoha's Black Ops?" Shige-H turned to the Nara surprised.</p><p>"I believe you have what you came here for…" one of the ANBU members pointed to the tube containing the tissue sample in little Tomi's hands. "You can return and save the Sorceress's life now."</p><p>"Wh-What? You're not going to arrest us or take the sample back to the village?" Skaven shook his head, looking absolutely baffled.</p><p>"Let's just say that Nakotsumi Mana has friends in some very deep layers of the village's shadows. They're very interested in seeing her recover to full strength and suffer no further similar incidents." The ANBU member nodded as the squad of Black Ops scattered, leaving the Allied Ninja to fend for themselves. Or, at least it so seemed from the first sight. Who knew where they were exactly and what they were doing. Given how much they already knew about the mission of the Allied Ninja – it made it difficult to not think that they were not under constant surveillance somewhere deep within the shadows of the forest already.</p><p>"Those weren't ANBU… They were something else, something with the gall to impersonate ANBU but also someone with the knowledge of classified information matching if not surpassing ANBU," Skaven muttered, still terrified more of this encounter with the Black Ops rather than meeting the killer that masterminded most of their troubles in the Fire Country so far. One whose true motives and business with the Stars remained unknown still.</p><p>"My head hurts…" Tomi whined out. "I'm tired… Can we do what the scary birdman said and go home already?"</p><p>"I suppose we've got no other choice. We're not authorized to handle bodies. We'll need a Shinigami and possibly a Sin Eater to take care of Shitaka-senpai so we'll need to send Konoha a letter from the nearest aviary station. Other than that, it's for the best if we return to the HQ with this sample and save Mana," Shige-H looked at the sample that the exhausted young kunoichi still clutched to herself.</p><p>"Humph… A bunch of chickens the lot of you. Can't even be bothered to take care of our own, huh?" Endo looked away. There was no fooling anyone – he was rattled by this loss even if he wasn't all that close to the deceased and he had spent most of the time together bad-mouthing him.</p><p>"Given what we've heard from that man, he clearly has an interest in killing us all, Mana included. Or, rather, Mana might be the primary target. If that is indeed the case, it might be that he had sealed a trap into Shitaka-senpai's body. It's for the best if specialists handle that business, I agree with Shige-H there," Skaven nodded.</p><p>"Hmm… Do you think that maybe the same people that hired Ion ended up also hiring this guy?" Damisan wondered.</p><p>"It is possible though those guys had no business with us where this guy clearly has a beef with us too," Endo said. "I have a feeling that things are exactly as he said them to be – he's in to get us because of his own reasons."</p><p>Needless to say, the trip back to the Allied Ninja HQ was filled with solemn silence and a feeling of unspoken dread in the atmosphere as this journey had managed to raise more questions about a whole lot of things rather than concluding the chapter of the people interested in seeing Mana die and people secretly working to preserve her life and the clandestine wars those two interest groups waged behind the curtains.</p>
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<a name="section0726"><h2>726. I Am Mana</h2></a>
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    <p>"You do realize that there's nothing in this library that you don't know, right? I mean... You can't create something that you don't know," Scarlet muttered, rolling her eyes onto something more exciting than just seeing Mana sitting around and meditating or flat out reading.</p><p>"Maybe, but I can't entertain these people as a stage magician and there's nothing for me to protect them from inside here. You've taken care of that…" Mana sighed and slammed the comprehensive book she's been skimming through closed.</p><p>"Wait, are you saying you want there to be crime and war in our pocket universe? I thought you hated that stuff…" Scarlet stood up and pouted. "Either way, I will not let you stay in this world unless I know you're content. We're doing this for the betterment of Mana, we want what's best for Mana, and that means all of us."</p><p>"No. This is great. It's just…" Mana looked down.</p><p>It felt selfish to notice minor flaws and inconsistencies in the universe that Scarlet made to contain the Sorceress part of her personality as a fair trade for taking over when or if she wakes up. For all intents and purposes, this may just have been a perfect little world. Scarlet had conjured everything to be well, or so it seemed and left there no purpose for conflict to sprout. Still, something felt creepy about this place.</p><p>"It's just what? Also, what's this about you being unable to entertain these people? They'll love and applaud everything you do," Scarlet blew at an unruly strand of her hair falling over her face and sticking to some excessive violet make-up on her eyelids.</p><p>"They will but… That's not why I love entertaining people. Frankly, it's scary that you would think that the applause and adoration is the point," Mana stood up and moved past the table to confront her other self. The magician dragged her hand across the empty space in front of them to move them to the Konoha square. An intersection of multiple paths that led to most key areas in the village if one selected a path and walked it all the way through.</p><p>"Hey, don't point fingers at me. You're the Sorceress here, you do the magic tricks…" Scarlet shrugged. "Just tell me what's wrong and I'll help you help yourself. All I want is for you to exist here, feeling fulfilled for as long as you want. Time only matters here as much as you make it matter. There's still time to make it work, all the time in the world."</p><p>"These people…" Mana muttered, turning to a passerby who froze in place as if a spear had impaled him and tilted him overhead on the spear that stabbed him for his last agony to be admired. "They don't feel like they're happy. It feels more like they've been told to be happy. They're afraid. They seem to be afraid of me, which makes me think they're afraid of you because we have the same face and I've only come here… However long ago…"</p><p>Scarlet sighed. A golden flame enveloped her and spread around, burning it all away at the first sight. It was only when Mana cried out and reached for the pocket universe inside of her mind that peeled itself away and disappeared into flames that she realized that the universe stayed underneath them as the column of golden flames erupting from Scarlet tilted them up into the cosmos of Mana's higher mental functions.</p><p>"It's dangerous to expose our personas to this plane. Our body might still die, both of us might get lost forever!" Mana warned Scarlet, but it seemed like Mana's doppelganger in a showy red dress preferred her light show.</p><p>"I can show something to you. Something that took me a little while to learn," Scarlet spoke with a bland tone as she extended her hand and streamlined the firestorm of golden flames on ahead to whirl in a yellow twister that left a luxurious, classical-style mansion floating on a rocky platform out in the higher planes of Mana's mind.</p><p>With the fire-show suspending itself until Scarlet would need it again, the pair floated inside of the mansion only to find a little girl with messy black hair and darker skin complexion, accompanied by two happy parents. Mana's father wore decorations proper to an ANBU member though he lacked a mask, Scarlet made it this way for the analogy to be utterly unmistakable. Mother wore a bloated and opulent pink dress, looking almost like a queen that way.</p><p>"Do they look happy to you?" Scarlet asked. It was tough to say who she was addressing with her eyes still gleaming with golden flames, though she angled her face to address somewhere in Mana's direction.</p><p>"I mean… They're smiling but… Little girl, are you happy with your life?" Mana leaned down to ask the child with the most acted smile of someone who just saw their creator mold them of golden flames and space dust and told them to smile.</p><p>"Am I?" little version of Mana looked around, taking equal time asking both the Sorceress and the Scarlet versions of Mana. "I have an instinct to do this, am I doing it right?" she pointed her index fingers to her upward shaped lips and pearly teeth. Her eyes and forehead looked more nervous than happy.</p><p>"See? If you just create something for the sole purpose of being happy, they won't be able to do it. Being happy isn't something as simple as smiling a lot or thinking positive thoughts. It's a sense of self-fulfillment, accomplishment, and love for one's own way of life. I guess it's also about stability and well-being of one's loved ones too, to an extent." Scarlet pointed at the nervous family of three, who by all means should have been happy. Like a capricious goddess, the Mana in red snapped her fingers, erupting in a nova of golden flames that swallowed up the mansion and the stone platform, reducing all but the family residing inside to ashes.</p><p>"This is all that is of your so-called world. Just a rock and a house on top. It's gone now. You're left with nothing," Scarlet declared as she pointed at the smoldering chaos sparking violently into oblivion behind the petrified family.</p><p>"I… I don't want to smile anymore…" little Mana cried out. It was not the sadness of seeing what she knew as her entire world unraveling before her and her own creator belittling it in its entirety that wrought terror in the face of this child, it was the fact that she had to stare at it with a smile and be happy about it.</p><p>"Sure, you are!" the ANBU ninja kneeled by his child and turned her head toward his face. It was an attempt to focus the attention of the daughter that he never truly conceived on to him so she could act happy and continue to please their creator by fulfilling their purpose.</p><p>"This is great!" the queenly woman exclaimed, raising her arms over her head and letting them wave down with a slow, all-encompassing motion. A lone blue tear ran down her cheek as the woman smiled.</p><p>"Do you want to do this or should I?" Scarlet looked to Mana with a tilted eyebrow before snapping her fingers and lighting the kneeling father aflame. The man burnt up to blazing paper shreds and tore apart before his daughter's very eyes. Little Mana's face remained fixed on the demise of her father because the man had turned her head at his smiling face as the last expression of his fleeting will.</p><p>"This is… Just… Wonderful, isn't it?" the red, voluptuous lips of the queenly woman pouted and quivered but when she found it impossible to smile through the tears, she clapped her hands to fake joy in other ways. "Oh, but… Now we'll be able to share the nothing we have left amongst just the two of us. We'll… Get to spend more and more time without… Without Tsukumo…"</p><p>Mana stared at the scenario and the twisted engineering of her other self with a gaping jaw. Even if something positive was to come out from this lesson, nothing good would have ever shown this to her in this way. Whatever lesson Scarlet meant to show Mana, she could have just told her outright. All of this nightmare fuel was unnecessary.</p><p>Scarlet extended her hand, directing her golden flames to surround her in a booming pillar. A gauntlet-wearing hand burst forth from the most intense center of the booming, golden hellfire as Tsukumo peeled the flames away and burrowed through them to emerge anew and reborn. The man panted, floating in mid-air as sweat ran down his face and he looked around with a pale expression, turning toward Scarlet with a petrified expression. This was no longer the face of his creator but his destroyer.</p><p>"Did you keep his memories intact?" Mana yelled out.</p><p>"What's the point of recreating him otherwise? He needs to know pain, death, terror to appreciate what he has. Can't you see? Unless you teach people what misery is, they can't ever be happy because they won't treasure what they have. Of course, in the material world the violence, the death, wars, and all the little imperfections fulfill that purpose nicely, but in here there are no such things unless I or you make them. I figured I had to find other ways to make these people happy." Scarlet explained as she turned away from her creations as they wrapped around the reborn family patriarch while Tsukumo put himself in between his cruel maker in order to protect his family from her whims.</p><p>Ultimately, he failed as when Scarlet switched her attention to Mana, the family scattered as swarms of soap bubbles and popped one by one in a colorful demise. A wondrous sight that did not befit the point of the thing it masked underneath.</p><p>"What did you do to those people? Which version of your wonderland is that universe?" Mana asked. Her head hung down, eyes wide and stuttering as they stared into the cold blackness of her own mind. Unlike before, it no longer glistened with nebulae and warm, welcoming balls of fiery gas. It was pitch black and silent to where a phantom shriek filled one's ears after a few moments of welcoming the deathly serenity into one's own self.</p><p>"It's the first, don't worry. I didn't destroy an entire universe just to start a new one. These people had to be put through terror, though. I had to show them what evil was like and let that evil scare them, hurt them, and kill them before I did away with it. So… Yeah, they might seem like they're scared but… Unless you want to start over and do it all over again–there's no other way of making them happy," Scarlet shrugged. "I feel you're demanding the impossible of me here, really."</p><p>"I can't let you out." Mana shook her head. As her head moved, the magician felt the cold brushing against her moist cheeks, realizing that tears made her eyelids swell up. "You're unhinged. You'll kill, you'll force people to do things, to adopt your ideas."</p><p>"My ideas? Wake up, sweetheart, they're OUR ideas. We're both Mana, I'm just as much Mana as you are. It's just that you've been in charge where I haven't still had my shot." Scarlet's tone changed. She was talking down to Mana now. It was as if a facade had shattered a veil of icy glass. "And what an amazing pile of Mount Fecal you've left for me to scoop up…"</p><p>"Is there nothing holding you back? Do you even know how far is too far?" Mana tried reasoning with Scarlet still.</p><p>"Everything was holding you back. You're a kid born in a cage that's inside a shut house that's inside a city that's part of a country which is an element of a globe. You've long since grown too large for your cage and you want to see the sun in the sky, but you're too afraid to struggle against the bars to break free. I was grateful for your input, Sorceress, I really have been, but someone had to say it and we're the only personae here–you're holding Mana back." Scarlet crossed her hands and pouted her lips. "Frankly, you don't deserve the perfect world I made for you. You've done more damage to Mana than you realize. Can't you realize how amazing Mana is? You could rise through the ranks like nothing but you keep holding yourself back–won't kill, won't use jutsu someone else has made unless it's to save a life, can't be bothered to break a few eggs, and stop being nice to the woman stabbing you this very moment."</p><p>"You're wrong!" Mana shouted out. Her body was shaking. Whereas it looked forward to exploding with anger and lash out at this Scarlet persona, she took as her ally this entire time, her eyes continued to weep. "We're not Mana. You're not even me!"</p><p>"That's right, keep denying reality, princess. I don't care what you believe, I won't let you control that body and keep dragging us into an early grave any longer. I think we've had enough of Sorceress Mana, Empress Mana is so much better for us," Empress lashed right back at Mana with matching passion.</p><p>"You're nothing but a figment of my inner fears. Ever since I started working as a ninja, I was afraid that I'd take a life, that I'd do something wrong or take a shortcut. Worse, I was afraid that I'd become stale, that the lines would become so blurred that I wouldn't see where they were anymore. Heck, I feared forgetting that the lines were even there. You're not another me, you're just the sum of those fears. I am Mana, and you're just what I am afraid to become!" Mana stepped in against her other self. The two stopped against each other so close that one extra step would have made them run into one another.</p><p>"If that is the case, how about you prove it, big girl? How about you show me how real and complete you are and kick me out? What's wrong? Afraid you won't be able to handle it? If your fears are better than you–maybe they deserve to be in charge, maybe if they're more than what you are–they're more you than you are?" Empress beamed a spiteful glare. There it was, the source of all that "Other Me" talk. The misguided way in which the Empress saw the world and the reason that birthed the delusion that she deserved to take over.</p><p>"Wind Style: Finger of Fate Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, thrusting two of her fingers out. It was one of her earliest techniques that she perfected before the finals of the Chuunin Exams. A jutsu she called her own to an extent that she could perform it without uttering its name or even casting any hand seals. She lashed out, but the idea of dispelling and overcoming her fears of going too far and recognizing no moral or legal limitations was too alluring to resist.</p><p>"Fool!" Empress mocked Mana. She spun around in a circle, forming a weak vortex of wind around her which deflected the stream of cutting wind propelled from Mana's fingers. She used another jutsu from her childhood that Mana had perfected by the time of the Chuunin Exams–the only method of being quick enough to fend off from one of Mana's perfected techniques.</p><p>"I am not restricted by meaningless nonsense that holds you back. Your fears make you predictable and weak!" Empress scoffed as she weaved a clone technique hand seal. "Fire Style: Shadow Clones!"</p><p>As Mana bit her cheek on the inside and prepared for an influx of attackers, she came to realize that what she saw as delusions of grandeur may have had more point to it than she cared to admit. Here she had a version of her that didn't fear Fire Release–her own elemental affinity solely because of how destructive it was and what it signified and dabbled in it to a higher extent.</p><p>The clones all came pummeling. There was not a hint of self-protection in their fighting styles. Just high kicks and acrobatics. They wanted Mana to fend them off and undo them, as that was when they were the most dangerous. There was solace for Mana because she knew what this theoretical concept for a technique was capable of and that doing away with these clones would have made them erupt in a firestorm strong enough to engulf her whole and put the strength and control of her chakra augmentations to the test. Every single clone had the potency to kill her if she beat them if she fought back.</p><p>Any hint of damage, any ninjutsu technique except for a Water Release one would have resulted in the same outcome. Here, resistance truly was futile. A kick to the back of her head made everything go hazy.</p><p>"A pathetic attempt, but the outcome would have been the same, no matter how long you resisted. Maybe it's for the better that you accept it and just let me take over. You should have just stuck to the lovely little world I made for you, but you've squandered even that…" Mana had never hated the sound of her own voice ringing in her head. One of Empress' doppelgangers kept stomping at her head to keep her dazed and confused.</p><hr/><p>A beam of bright light enveloped Mana alongside a feeling of liberating weightlessness. A rotating kaleidoscope of enlightening views with a dominating beacon at the end of the tunnel.</p><p>"Whoa!" Damisan froze still when Mana jumped up and wrapped his arms around him. The fact that he lacked notable arms and his usual metallic shoulders only made him that much more huggable at the moment. "Love the enthusiasm, Mana, but… I hope you won't mind if I can't hug you back right now."</p><p>"You fucking freakazoid, what did you do!?" Endo burst into the room, kicking the door open. He stopped with an ajar expression. He must have been waiting around for Mana to recover for quite a while since he's been waiting outside and he looked taken aback by the magician just coming alive and hugging the first person she saw. "Excellent work… I guess…" he cleared his throat.</p><p>"Mana!" Shige-H yelled out as the rest of the Stars burst into the room. "It took a couple of hours, but the sample worked out just fine!"</p><p>Mana was so ecstatic to have blown through her time inside her own mind and returned to her own body that she left the natural question of what the heck Shige-H was talking about for the future. Right now she was just glad to be back.</p>
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<a name="section0727"><h2>727. Counseling</h2></a>
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      <p>"Fire Style: Fireball Barrage!" Mana yelled out, breathing out a flock of fiery sparks that ignited and blew out into fist-sized fireballs scattering across the area. Not even Shige-H's medical training in advanced acrobatics and evasive techniques allowed her to maneuver around all the spread shot barrage of fireballs. The medical kunoichi grunted as one particularly nasty hit sent her falling down on her face after shaking up her ribs.</p>
      <p>"Ugh… I don't think… I don't think you're supposed to dodge that," Shige-H grumbled while returning on her feet. The medical kunoichi turned to Mana with raised eyebrows and rushed up to the seated magician as fast as she could with a pouted lip. "What's the matter? Why did you stop moving? Is it your heart? Do you want me to check up on it again?"</p>
      <p>"No. I feel fine, better than fine, really. It feels like I'm brand new, somehow. I can't even feel any of my old scars giving me flack in that area, it feels odd…" Mana muttered, looking down at where there was just a gapping, swooping hawk-sized hole in her chest. The young woman pressed her hand to feel is if her healed body wasn't just a phantom she imagined. It was hard being sure if the Empress didn't put her under some sort of dream inside of her own mind, lulled her into thinking she's awake while the monstrous fear-born persona of Mana wreaked havoc upon the actual world.</p>
      <p>"You're confusing me," Shige-H ran her hand across her curly hair, throwing them about like still developing pancakes on a pan. "This doesn't look like I'm glad to be alive face on most people, you know. Most people don't quit training prematurely, they actually do the exact opposite and stretch way past their limits. That's why I insisted on helping you train. I wanted to make sure as the team leader and a medical ninja that you didn't push it too far."</p>
      <p>"Yeah… I think I'm done for today though," Mana sighed and sat down on a large stone that might have been a part of some mountainous structure once but had fallen astray onto the training ground once something blew the mountain up long ago. Now it was merely something hard and cold to sit on and rest. A poor fate to most considering what it once was, though nobody could even find the rest of the mountain so this fate was a cost of its survival.</p>
      <p>"Okay, I will not bully you into pushing yourself. You push as hard as you want…" Shige-H shrugged and sat down on the grass around the stray stone. "It's just odd, that's all. You've always pushed yourself really hard. Whenever we had free time, I could have been sure that most of the time you were either training or reading and having seen some books you're into–that's just alternative ways of training yourself. You probably know just as much about a chakra network as I do at this point."</p>
      <p>"Yeah, I think I've nailed this jutsu already. I'm fine calling it quits for today," Mana shrugged. Just like her eyes tried evading Shige's glare, so did Mana's consciousness, tried eluding the realization that that was what she was doing from catching up to it.</p>
      <p>"Okay, yeah… You've learned a pretty decent ninjutsu technique. Having taken a shot from it, I'd say it packs a wallop. Nice. I have a feeling like you didn't read all those books on genjutsu and chakra network before the accident to learn Fire Style: Fireball Barrage, though." Shige-H winked with one eye, just trying to get her teammate to talk to her and give her a clue that Shige-H was onto the fact that Mana was running away from something.</p>
      <p>What Shige-H didn't expect to see was seeing her teammate just break down and for her face to disappear inside the clutch of her arms while her body wept quietly. Mana bent her legs up to have somewhere to rest her leaking face on while she covered her collapse up with her arms.</p>
      <p>"It's okay…" Mana felt a light pressure of Shige-H's arm wrapping around her as far as the young woman could reach it. The sound of Shige's fur coat rubbing against Mana's blazer came out as an irritating, rubbing grunge but it almost felt as if being wrapped in a blanket, like the medical kunoichi had warded them both off from the world and let Mana know that she was there for her. "Someone has tried to kill you and came dangerously close to succeeding. That's… We fight for our lives for the entirety of our service, and most of us still don't know what that feels like. I'm sorry, it's perfectly fine for you to take it a little slow for now."</p>
      <p>"No… No, it's not. The reason I push so hard is that I have to. Because I'm not like most ninja, because I have to take care of things killing no one. Most of the time that means I have to be faster, stronger, smarter than everyone to do that. I have to know the right thing to do at all times…" Mana whimpered out. Right now she felt the least like the person she strived to be, and it only drove her further into despair.</p>
      <p>"Okay… Look, I want to be honest with you, I'm a bit of a psychological type of medical ninja just as much as I am physical one, if you catch my cold, and… I'm not sure I entirely follow you here. Like… I've heard about this need to be superior, to be in control, but that usually leads people to push it too hard, not become alarmingly mature to take it slow," Shige-H sat close to Mana and started consoling her friend. Mana didn't want to emerge from the shell of her self-wallowing at the moment and have to face the pity. When that was all that waited on the other side, it was really hard to stop feeding into one's sadder habits and move on.</p>
      <p>"When… When Ion hit me with her shot… I was training. Meditating. Trying to work around the fact that a jutsu I was working on for years now just didn't work out with me," Mana finally opened up after a few seconds of sniffling and drawing the breath and courage to emerge.</p>
      <p>"You shouldn't punish yourself for it. Powerful and complicated jutsu take years and sometimes entire lifetimes to develop. We know a lot of famous ninja for a single technique they've perfected and some die without seeing their most amazing jutsu completed, leaving it behind for future generations to finish. You're no ordinary ninja, however, most of your arsenal is jutsu you yourself invented. They're weaker than what most aim for, but you find how to make them work for you. Who knows, maybe that's why you're so successful? Because you're not shooting for the stars but starting from something shiny and simple?" Shige-H seemed to think that this failure to grab success on a single technique was what dragged her teammate under. That was why she devoted so much of her specialty and speech into trying to console Mana about it.</p>
      <p>"When I… I don't know, was stuck between life and death, I've sheltered off inside of my own mind. It's not the first time it happens to me. Once when I fought another Konoha ninja, she was outranking me, so I put it all on the line to stop her but ended up on death's door. It happened then, too. I've become stuck inside an area of my mind and met this… At that time, it was like a space baby or something," Mana's tears cleared out, mostly because what she was describing sounded like something that the rest of the Stars would have laughed out of the room if they were present. It was something that Mana penned down under the tab of things she was all alone to deal with.</p>
      <p>"That happens to people with near-death experiences. I'm not sure if any of them experienced space babies per se, but I've read and heard it being described as dream-like. No offense, you're a quirky person, so I'm sure your imagination went to a weird place…" Shige-H shrugged.</p>
      <p>"I don't think that was just a near-death delirium, though. This time, I came back to that. Except the space baby had become a version of me, like an alternate persona. She's just like me, except… Stronger, probably. I think that she's what I think I would be like if I had nothing standing in my way–if I killed people, if I didn't care about doing the right thing and just did whatever's the best for me." Mana looked up. The tears on her face felt as if they melted into her cheeks and burnt the skin like acid, but the cool brush of the wind numbed that sensation.</p>
      <p>"Oh, like an alternate persona, huh? Yeah, when you tell someone else about it, you'd be better off telling them that instead of starting with the space baby stuff. That's a bit too metaphysical and weird and people won't have a clue what that's like decades since you told them about it," Shige-H nodded to herself, tightening the grip over Mana's shoulder playfully a couple of times as she pulled the cowering magician in closer to her.</p>
      <p>"She kicked my ass… It wasn't even a bout. You'd think that me and an alternate persona of me, another me, would be equal to me in skill but…" Mana breathed in and stopped talking. As sad and prolonged as her exhale carrying all of her sorrow was, the despair she felt was a self-sustaining and constantly refilling cup.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, I know that feeling. Being whooped so badly that your arms go down, you look back and feel like if everything you've ever done only brought you this far and it's still so far away from where you're looking at, maybe you're not supposed to be walking down that path at all," Shige-H stretched her mouth out in an upward-pointed crescent of pearly teeth as her eyes stared longingly up into the skies toward Kumogakure.</p>
      <p>"You do?" Mana muttered, sniffing once to give her nose some liberty for a little while.</p>
      <p>"Sure! Back when I wasn't yet Shige-H but just a Shige Jr., I was just like all the other kids that start out in the ninja gig. I wanted to be the strongest, the fastest, use the most explosive, amazing techniques. It's safe to say that it didn't work out that way. Again and again, despite my best efforts, I met a guy after a guy that just whooped me. This guy's a splintered Uchiha who fled to Kumo, so it made sense for him to be amazing. That other guy's lost his parents, lost his home, he's got nothing other than his training, he lives that stuff so of course he'd own me. Too many people beat me up because they were just in the game longer, many more still were just more talented. One headcount of who had my number later–I just felt useless." Shige-H said.</p>
      <p>"You're not really selling any hopelessness to me with that cheerful manner of speaking," Mana pointed out with a squint. She's felt useless before, and she would have never looked back on those times with this amount of nostalgia.</p>
      <p>"That's because it all worked out, because I found my way to be useful. I became a medical ninja, and it didn't matter how hard my punches hit, it didn't matter how explosive the fireballs I breathe are. My village, my friends, everyone I know need me and appreciate me. Sure, they probably would appreciate me because I exist, because that's what friends are, but I'm the one who needs this sort of validation after all. Some people say that helping other people is selfish because you only do it because it makes you feel better, even if you do it in good faith, and I say it doesn't matter. Because, in the end, if you feel better and the person you're helping feels better–who the heck cares, I'll take being selfish over everyone feeling miserable." Shige-H shook Mana's right shoulder, trying to breathe some life into her teammate.</p>
      <p>"So…" Mana mumbled to herself, trying to connect Shige's story with her case.</p>
      <p>"So, that's not what's ailing you, sister. A dream version of you whooped your behind in a dream–who the heck cares. You wouldn't meet a single actor that's all there emotionally who feels shitty about another actor beating them up in a movie. You've already said that you gave birth to that other persona with your fears–that means you're the one giving it power. In reality, you're stronger than it, you're stronger than you because what you are is a package deal. Your consciousness, your fears, all of that comes and has to work together." Shige-H jumped off of the busted stone with hands on her hips.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, but… I want to give mastering the time perception genjutsu another shot. Make it more usable. I just… I can't give it my all. I want to but every time I try, it's like… It's like opening a door and you don't know if what's behind it is going to be scary or not but, if it is scary, you know you'll be filling your pants with dread and the devil sitting on your shoulder is going to be laughing at you because it probably wouldn't have reacted that way." Mana dragged her hands combing through her hair and clawed at her forehead, nearly leaving visible scratches on it in embarrassment.</p>
      <p>"Hmm… So, you're afraid of trying your best and failing, because you wonder if that other, fearful persona would have failed all the same. You're afraid to be proven wrong, after that your fears would have done a better job at it than you, huh?" Shige-H scratched her chin.</p>
      <p>"I guess so," Mana shrugged, sinking into her cradle built out of her shaking hands.</p>
      <p>"Well, I can't tell you anything here. Dealing with this might take time. That's my best advice–try to ease into doing your best again, one step at a time. Just scope it out, touch around that limit bit by bit, and see when you can make the full leap. Don't rush it, no need to break yourself down again." Shige-H nodded with arms nervously clutching at her own hips.</p>
      <p>"I can't do that. I can't just take it easy. Shitaka-san died working to help wake me up. I owe it to him to make his sacrifice mean something. So many people have died for me and I feel like I'm failing all of them by not doing my best," Mana sighed.</p>
      <p>"That's not fair on you, you shouldn't think that way," Shige-H objected. "The people you've lost didn't die because they were investing in you and are waiting in the Afterlife to see their investment flourish and pay them their dividends in brownie points. They died because you were tight, because for whatever reason doing the right thing made them feel like they had to keep fighting, like they had to defy the odds," Shige-H sat down by Mana's side again.</p>
      <p>"If that's the case, maybe I was right to move away from everyone. If that's the type of connection I share with people, one that leads them to death," Mana sighed.</p>
      <p>"Everything we do leads us to death." Shige-H cringed and nudged Mana's on the shoulder. "Doesn't mean being born ain't worth it."</p>
      <p>"Shitaka-san died helping me recover from a hit that a gang of people looking to cash in on a bounty that's been placed by a crime lord I kicked out of his den because that was my mission objective in the job I chose hired. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, but it feels the same way it always feels when I lose someone–empty." Mana mumbled while chewing on bitter-tasting air in her mouth.</p>
      <p>"I'd really like to talk to you about how you perceive death and how you're dealing with it. I don't think you've got a healthy mindset about that stuff at all. It's dragging you down, it's hurting you, and the cost of that mindset is breaking your body and mind. Learning to deal with it would change your life fundamentally, Mana," Shige-H suggested, standing up and reaching out with her right hand.</p>
      <p>"Change my life? Make me swallow death down in a bitter gulp, shrug my shoulders and go on with my day like it means nothing? Like a man that's had a lousy hand throughout his life and lost all his friends and family and sunk into the depths of addiction that he turned to a source of strength and regained a chipper attitude towards life hadn't gotten himself killed after tangling in the shit-filled barn of my life? I'd rather burn out and stay broken, thanks," Mana stood up without accepting Shige-H's hand.</p>
      <p>The medical kunoichi ran her hand across her hair, scratching her temple and sighing in frustration before her expression froze on Mana standing still with her back turned to her and the magician turning back with an inviting glance. Shige cracked a grin and hurried on, along with Mana back to the dorm. She realized that while Mana might have known something didn't spark right in the gear work inside her head; she preferred it just the way it was, but that didn't mean that the magician didn't appreciate Shige's help and company.</p>
      <p>"So, I've noticed that Skaven is hanging around our room and someone covered the empty bed with unpacked stuff…" Mana spoke up after a moment of grave silence.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, he came around. It's odd how he's still hesitant to complete his move into our room. You know, it was him who put the entire mission of finding a way of healing you together! I guess you two connected at some point," Shige-H beamed a smile her way.</p>
      <p>"Odd, we've never really tried to. Come to think of it, how did you heal that wound I had? Everyone I've spoken to said it was like nothing they've ever seen before…" Mana asked.</p>
      <p>"Oh, I'll tell you later, we figured it might be a sensitive subject, so we didn't want to talk about that with you while you're still recovering. You know, so you didn't get any painful memories from the time you nearly died and all…" Shige-H turned her eyes away.</p>
      <p>"That sort of stuff just makes me more nervous…" Mana squinted looking at her, but despite some nervous laughter from Shige-H's direction–she said nothing.</p>
    </div>
  </div>
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<a name="section0728"><h2>728. The Reversed Magician</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cruel mark of "9/20" carved itself into Mana's chest with heated glass. Before seeing the results of the international law test Mana thought that seeing the result, whatever it was, would have been preferable to the gut-wrenching unknown but now that she had her test in hand–she wasn't too sure. The magician's glance faltered onto the paper of Damisan, who sat beside her. The tutor had decorated his sheet with a "1/20".</p><p>"It was awfully kind of him to give me a point for scribbling my name. I had to use a stamp I operated with my foot to do that…" Damisan pointed out with an energetic voice.</p><p>"It's a good thing that I did my own test," Endo leaned down from the higher row catching the moment when the entire room was abuzz to exploit the moment before the tutor finished handing back the tests that would impact the final score of the subject at the end of the prep courses. "I'd have sunk if I copied Mana again." He declared wearing his result that was just a few points short of a perfect score, like a ribbon on his chest.</p><p>"Wow, that's impressive, Endo," Mana admitted while turning away and doing her best to look supportive. She hadn't known it that morning, but with this current experience taken into consideration, she'd have preferred getting a lousy score rather than one just one point away from passing.</p><p>"Yeah, man, we're proud of you," Shige-H patted Endo on the back from right beside him. "This test was so rough, I got a 4/20 too…"</p><p>"You're lucky that your past few exams had high scores. This blunder won't do much damage to your overall score, though it'll be a visible blemish still," Skaven waved his finger like a maternal figure, embarrassing the leader of Stars for a second there.</p><p>"There were other exams?" Mana's jaw dropped.</p><p>"Yeah, four more while you were being a sleepy-head!" Tomi chuckled. The wild girl appeared to have just barely made it over the passing mark, though that was usually her modus operandi. Not a care in the world as long as she was just a pinky toe past the passing line.</p><p>"I guess my score's a 0 in all four of them." Mana sighed. "I'll make sure to write to you guys when you're out on missions."</p><p>"Mana!" Shige-H raised the volume of her voice to somewhere where the surrounding students gave her awkward and scolding stares. "Don't even joke like that! We're Stars, we're sticking together, remember? We'll all pitch in and help you pass if we need to. It's the least we can do for helping us with studies for the last couple of months."</p><p>"Though I would still recommend letting me help you out. I wouldn't trust those worthless dweebs if I were you. Tomi's an underachiever, Skaven's smart but he can't explain stuff for shit, Shige-H shows insufficient results to be a viable tutor and Damisan is an utter failure in everything he tries to do, both in studies and in general." Endo shrugged, looking mighty proud of his suggestion as if he had just donated a billion ryo to an animal shelter.</p><p>"Well, even if he could have been nicer about it, I will not be much help to you, I'm afraid. Though I should do much better in tests now that I've replaced my arm prosthetics!" Damisan pumped his steel arms from underneath his eggplant-colored cape that he hid his scarred body and replacement limbs underneath.</p><p>"You wrote the test without your arms?" Mana's eyes soured. Even with her miserable failure, Damisan's situation somehow felt way worse. He had a talent for making one's problems feel insignificant, though Mana felt horrible about even thinking it, let alone speaking it.</p><p>"Yeah, I lost my arms helping secure that medicine we used to wake you up. It's fine though, life's not gonna feel sorry for me if I'm armless either," Damisan nodded to himself, bobbing the oversized cylinder hanging over his head.</p><p>Mana wondered to herself if there was anything unfortunate going on in this world that she couldn't in one way or another track back to her and feel personally responsible for. It was because Ion nearly killed her and Mana needed that unclear medicine that nobody went into any details about that Damisan had his prosthetics busted again and couldn't perform in class.</p><p>Will she truly become so desperate that she'll ask Endo for help? Mana had never considered herself a person who put great importance on pride though just thinking about asking a cocky asshole like him for help made her wonder if she wouldn't rather just fail the prep courses and stay chained down inside of a classroom for six more months.</p><p>Considering the fact that the nerves about the test kept her biting her fingernails the whole hour and she couldn't write a thing that the tutor discussed in the lecture didn't do Mana's self-worth any favors. Just ironically Mana wondered if the Stars wouldn't have been better off just pulling the plug on her if this is the bucket of shit she'll have to plow through to return to just a speck of serenity in her day-to-day life.</p><p>"Now, I'd like for Nakotsumi Mana, Damisan, Pairte Daisyn, and Uppity-J to stay for a brief word. The rest of you can take that sweet post-exam racket somewhere else," the rugged tutor clad in natural linen and covered up with fur thick enough to serve the same function as the standard flak jacket rested in the spinning chair while he followed the rest of the students out.</p><p>"Stay strong, you guys," Shige-H clenched her fist in front of her as she passed Mana and Damisan as if this gesture could have somehow inspired strength inside of them as well. "We're rooting for you!"</p><p>"Foster this anger and disappointment and know that you won't have to feel this way again if you agree to accept my mercy," Endo smirked as he passed the two by alongside Tomi who just skipped along without a care in the world.</p><p>"I don't think that Endo meant that stuff he said for me but, thanks, guys!" Damisan nodded almost hard enough for his cylinder to tip over.</p><p>"Don't pay this too much attention, most of this mess is because you've been absent for so long. I'm sure you'll catch up eventually," Skaven waved his index and middle fingers farewell from his temple in a salute-like goodbye gesture.</p><p>The tutor looked like he hated this small meeting about as much as the four that he had to stay after class dreaded it. It wasn't hard to see why as he was an Allied Ninja and not one that Mana saw around too often. She could recall contemplating about this man's Senju legacy and how tough it was leaving Konoha with that esteemed bloodline working for him what felt like an eternity ago. Tutors changed often though, only their regular notes stayed after them for those that replaced them.</p><p>"Look, guys, I have little time for this sort of stuff, but I'm guessing you have a fine idea about why you're here." Joshi Senju, one of a few tutors for the international law course, spoke up, stroking his well-maintained brown beard.</p><p>"I'm guessing we all failed the test?" a girl of skin grey and gloomy as stone spoke up. Judging from her name and what her philology courses told her, the girl's name suggested that she was from somewhere in the Land of Water. It would have explained her dreary skin tone too. Pairte also had a notable amount of colorful make-up to help with the somber greyness of her skin that wasn't at all livened up by the dark brown locks flowing up to her waist behind her back.</p><p>"The cards say that the true reason lies deeper than that…" a dark-skinned young man who had a name quirky enough to pin him right down to hailing from Kumogakure and having made it up, as was the custom with the younger, more energetic generation of the north-western part of the world declared after pulling out an actual deck of cards and looking at a hand of a bunch of them he drew.</p><p>"The cards told you that?" Damisan's metallic finger peeked through his cape, pointing at the oddball ninja who appeared to be deep in thought and wore his pink hair like a bowl-shaped helmet over his head. There was not a hint of mockery in the voice of the self-puppeteering ninja, just curiosity.</p><p>"I'm not sure why you'd need to divine from cards to tell that when the truth lies in front of your face but you're right–it goes a bit beyond just you guys flunking the test. In fact, there have been a bunch of recruits that did a lot worse than you four. My problem with you four is that I can tell that all four of you will fail my course and therefore the prep courses." The tutor crossed his legs while shaking his head. The man didn't look at all impressed by Uppity's card reading tricks.</p><p>"Indeed, the cards spell out "Death" for me," Uppity's lips dragged down as his face lengthened a good chin's worth. What caught Mana's attention was the fact that Uppity pushed the "Death" card back into the deck and drew again several times, but still drew "Death" all over again. The size of his deck suggested that he only used one deck of tarot cards for his divination shenanigans. Even as she stood before the tutor wearing a stage magician's uniform and holstering a bunch of her own outlandish tools all over her body, Mana couldn't help but label this guy a weirdo. Even by her lax standards.</p><p>"Well, who knows, maybe those cards of yours don't mean squat. I let you use them in the test, didn't I?" Joshi Senju smirked, loving every moment of poking fun at his wackier students. "In any case, I don't want to have an earful from the Supreme Leader about flunking too many people or whatever. I've got better things to do. That's why I'm gonna give two of you four a chance by giving you an extra test right now. The grade you get here is 20/20 or 0/20."</p><p>"The cards say that…" Uppity was about to say something before the tutor interrupted him by standing back up and nuzzling his deck back to his chest.</p><p>"You don't need to draw your cards, kid, it's pass or fail. As if in pass my course if you pass the upcoming test and the final exam or seal your failure of the course in stone." Joshi groaned, pushing his greasy, long hair back and nearly freeing the bun of hair that he had hanging on the back of his scalp. "I'm not asking, for the record. You're doing this right now."</p><p>"That's fine by me, it's not like we can fail the course we've already failed even more." Pairte shook her head, regretting the choices that led her down the path of having to rely on her success in a single test that would decide if she stayed in prep courses for six more months.</p><p>"Technically, you still can. I like where your head's at though, kid." Joshi nodded with a smirk. "I don't really have the time or the patience to check more tests, so I'm just going to have you four duking it out outside."</p><p>"The card I drew is Judgment–I believe that our skills are about to be put to the test and it will decide our fates from this point on," Uppity-J proclaimed after showing the card depicting a horned woman in wide, oriental dress descending from the skies with a trumpet in hand.</p><p>"I disagree with those terms," Pairte objected. "It's no secret that Mana and Damisan are part of the same student group. Obviously, they know how to work together meanwhile I'm stuck with that imbecile. Plus, how the heck is a pair spar going to help us learn international law?"</p><p>"There are multiple legal systems around the world that accept trial by combat as a viable legal argument. The Sun Disc arena of Agbarah comes to mind," Mana was quick to jump at an opportunity to save her an unnecessary extra six months of roasting inside of a classroom. As much as she thought she could have used some more time sharpening her skills in the local training facilities, it was just a fact that she could have done some good out there as well. Plus, it's not like she won't have the chance to train in the headquarters in between assignments.</p><p>"There you go," Joshi shrugged, "Consider the theme of this test–trial by combat."</p><p>"I've drawn a High Priestess, I'm not sure what that means, but she looks pretty nice so it has to mean great things!" Uppity-J nodded to himself after shuffling his deck and pumping his hands. "The cards suggest that fortune is on our side, partner."</p><p>"Please tell me you steel-tip your cards like Mana does, at the very least," Pairte groaned, dragged her hand across her face and smearing her exotic make-up.</p><p>"That would be impractical, I rely on cards in every aspect of my life. I'd cut myself far too often drawing my fortunes that way," Uppity-J extended his hand, casting some judgment of his own with such a bold gesture.</p><hr/><p>"We're going to be fighting here!?" Damisan turned around with his entire body. Mana looked at him, wondering if he could see in such dim lighting at all underneath that cylinder. The self-puppeteering ninja was quite adamant about not letting people see his face to where he slept with that thing and usually only touched it to correct its position or to switch out the poster he nailed to its front.</p><p>"Correct. I've thought a little about what Pairte said I thought I'd make it a bit more interesting by having you schmucks fight it out in an archive room. There are archived legal documents all around you, if you damage the cases containing all those important scrolls–you'll screw yourselves over because nobody in your course will prepare for the upcoming tests adequately." Joshi pointed out with a smirk, feeling incredibly clever about himself.</p><p>"How is that supposed to make things any fairer?" Pairte objected. "We're supposed to hold back too!"</p><p>"Oh, come on!" Damisan chuckled to himself, "If you can't beat an impaired shinobi who can't even use half his deadly tools inside of his prosthetics–you deserve to train harder before taking on a proper assignment."</p><p>Mana looked at her friend with a soft pair of eyes. She wished that she had half of that positive energy to speak so openly about her shortcomings. It was as if Damisan had absolutely no complexes about his appearance and impairment, although he constantly kept most of his body tucked away and hidden, suggesting otherwise. Mana had never thought of her fellow Stars ally as a liar, though, so this contrast struck her as a bit odd.</p><p>"That's just fine," Mana flexed her hands, making steel-tipped cards appear and disappear from her sleeves at will. "I can restrain myself a bit if I have to."</p><p>"Really? But you're always fighting so flashy, Mana! Then again, that's so you–being able to improvise and adapt on the fly," Damisan nodded, turning somewhere to the other side to where Mana was standing. This might not have inspired much courage, but Mana still had the mental crutch of Uppity being a shinobi of questionable combat potential as well.</p><p>"Are you guys good to go then? I've sort of got places to be…" Joshi scanned the students from a neutral position a few steps away from them.</p><p>Uppity moved his arms aside, revealing his hands inside of his sleeves as a deck of cards floated before him. It was doubtful that Mana would have needed her chakra sensory to tell that he was using Wind Release chakra to maintain his deck of cards afloat before him, shuffled and drew from that deck with minimal physical intervention too. Still, to cast ninjutsu without speaking a word or weaving hand seals–this was a jutsu that came as easy to Uppity as flicking his fingers.</p><p>"The card I drew is "World"! It describes the world of potential that our impromptu team-up has," Uppity-J proclaimed, turning to Pairte.</p><p>"That's not even what that card means in fortunetelling, you dumbass!" Pairte growled. "Hey, Joshi-sensei said that he needs two winners. It doesn't have to be me and turd-mancer over here. We can still team up and leave them in the dust, you know."</p><p>"Sorry, having a member stuck in a classroom would muck things up for us Stars," Mana shook her head. She decided not to voice her disgust of choosing to betray her friend and working alongside a ninja from the Land of Water, the bunch that crippled her father, just to guarantee her own success in the test.</p><p>"Phew, you had me worried there for a sec, Mana," Damisan laughed out to himself, placing his mechanical arm prosthetics over his hips. "Just to let you in on a little secret, my eyesight isn't really optimal in this gloomy archive room, so I thought you'd go for the simple choice to work against me and Uppity there."</p><p>"Don't call me Uppity without my chosen name, we're not that close!" Uppity-J objected. "For this transgression, cards spell out "The Magician" for you."</p><p>"You've no idea what that means, do you?" Pairte shook her head and sighed, realizing that she'll have to make do with this joker working alongside her.</p><p>"Of course, I do–it's reversed, so it means that Mana made a poor decision sticking with this fool," Uppity-J extended his arms, looming over his deck of cards as they shuffled before him. For a snap, Mana's focus sharpened on the chakra signature emanating from every card in the deck. Uppity-J might not have been the oaf he made himself out to be in the beginning, after all. There was still a trick to his fighting style that needed to be ascertained before Mana could build up a plan of action.</p><p>"From your point of view, the magician card is reversed, but it's not from our side. The magician means exciting new opportunities when it's the right side up and I'm willing to bet on that read," Mana smirked, turning to Damisan even if deep down she knew that her goofy partner couldn't quite make her out in the shade.</p><p>It was an attempt to psyche Uppity-J out by speaking rubbish about his craft and it appeared to have worked as Uppity-J waved his hands in front of him, running through his cards like a rushing wave before him. He was about to attack, of that there could have been no doubts.</p>
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<a name="section0729"><h2>729. A Lesson In Positivity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The archive room where Joshi Senju took them for their extra test was a problematic environment to fight in. It only hit Mana it was so when she decided to start things out with a Fire Release technique and displace her opponents, throw them out of their comfort zone, and split them further apart from one another. She couldn't risk it. Everywhere around her were scrolls and posters with valuable information. Information that she'd need and so would the other recruits.</p><p>Who cared if she and Damisan passed this test if they'd fail the final exam anyway and, alongside with the rest of the recruits, got held back for six more months?</p><p>It was because of this hesitation to act that Uppity-J got the first move. He appeared to be completely unimpeded by any doubts. Not even Pairte looked excited to see this much initiative and an almost maddening devotion to bash the enemy with a ceaseless combination of attacks. The cards, floating in mid-air, danced in a hectic aerial shuffle before Uppity weaved his fingers in a hand seal.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Destiny Row!" Uppity-J chanted out like speaking a prayer as five, seemingly random cards lined out in front of him. They were all lighted up with chakra signatures, so there was not a single lingering doubt that those weren't ordinary cards. Uppity-J pressed his hand to the back of one card and it opened up.</p><p>As the card revealed itself, it displayed the Magician arcana before lighting up with a flash as intense as a beacon.</p><p>"It's a sealing glyph!" Mana warned Damisan as the card fell to the ground and disappeared in ripples as if the entire floor turned wet as a surface of a bottomless lake. As impressive as this technique appeared, being the master of illusions herself, Mana didn't waste time considering this to be an illusion.</p><p>"Magician Arcana Seal: Release!" Uppity-J proclaimed with an authoritative tone. As impressive as his technique looked, it was beyond flashy and rather clunky to execute. That might have been why Damisan found the time to raise his hand and attempt to interrupt the technique.</p><p>"Puppet Technique: Reeling Hook!" Damisan yelled out as he shot his mechanical forearm off of his right arm prosthetic, though it was not merely a rocket punch technique. The ear-raking string reeling sound filled the air as the forearm hurried toward the ninja fortune teller attached to strings of steel wire.</p><p>It was a pity that Damisan missed his target entirely. While a rather embarrassing display of combat potential, this stunned Pairte in place as she blinked twice while following Damisan's rocketing hook blitz in between the two ninja and hook onto a bookshelf.</p><p>"Don't pull it!" Mana warned her partner, wasting her own chance to think up of a counterattack before Uppity-J's attack hit them. It was just fortunate that the two of them had experience working alongside each other as Stars members. It might have been because of that experience that Damisan heard Mana out and released the clenching grip of his mechanical forearm hook, retracting his arm back and securing it in place.</p><p>The rippling floor turned black like oil. The oily surface bubbled and splashed, spouting out rainbow-gleaming, fist-sized bubbles that appeared to be soapy in consistency. With Uppity-J weaving another hand seal and releasing his technique, this network of floating bubbles took off in a pelting barrage, smashing into everything in their way. Her own puny whimper reached Mana's ears as the bubbles packed a bigger wallop than if Uppity-J would have punched them himself.</p><p>"The Water Balloon Jutsu. That is a technique of Kirigakure ninja, it's not a jutsu taught outside the village!" Pairte exclaimed, pointing her finger at Uppity-J. "How the hell do you have it in your collection!?"</p><p>"You are looking at this entirely wrong, partner," Uppity-J swiped his hand, shuffling his deck in mid-air once more before resting his deck of cards in his open palm, now–one card fewer in the deck. "I am not a collector of techniques but merely a fortune teller."</p><p>"Are you okay, Mana?" Damisan turned to the magician, releasing the chakra shield that he had formed out of his springing prosthetic arms that spread out like an umbrella to shield him but also as much of the archive room behind him as possible. "I had figured that you'd use this opportunity to slip away from harm with your illusions."</p><p>"Sorry, I…" Mana wanted to admit that she might have some issues she is yet to resolve after her meeting with the Empress persona inside her mind, but Damisan clapped his hands in a resounding metallic clang.</p><p>"I see! You've used your body to shield the invaluable scrolls behind us… You're way ahead of me, Mana! That's impressive. But next time leave it to me, you've just recently recovered from your injury, after all." Damisan nodded his head, wobbling the large cylinder obstructing his view and making seeing inside this dim room difficult for the self-puppeteering desert ninja.</p><p>Instead of arguing with her partner, Mana just signed and tried relaxing her body from the battered stiffness she felt all over the pelting barrage of the hardened oil bubbles that overwhelmed them both just now. Usually, techniques with such wide of a range packed a measly punch to precise points it hit, sacrificing power for range. She lucked out in regard, at least.</p><p>"Illusions," Mana thought to herself. "They won't wreck the room too much. They must be our key to victory here."</p><p>"That was dirty!" Damisan shook his fist over his head, addressing Uppity-J next. "You knew that we wouldn't risk substituting with any of these books and scrolls, who knows which ones might be really important?"</p><p>"That is a limited frame of mind of a confused soul," Uppity-J objected. "Your fates have already been decided at birth. No card that I could have pulled can change our fates. If it is written in the cards for this room to be destroyed in the scuffle, then there is nothing we can do to change it."</p><p>"Uppity-J is a dangerous opponent," Mana said. "This mindset of his is incredibly troublesome for us. Leave him to me. You try to engage Pairte, both of you share a concern for this archive room so it will be a simpler engagement."</p><p>"Leave it to me!" Damisan nodded, barking it out with enthusiasm as he aimed and shot off his hand, attached to the steel wire, and grabbed hold of the top of the bookshelf behind his opponents. The desert ninja pulled himself up to the top of the bookshelf and balanced atop of it as the entire structure shook up after his graceful landing. It was too hasty of an assault for Uppity-J to respond, so the fortune-telling ninja didn't even react to it, leaving the puppetry-user to his partner and answering Mana's challenge.</p><p>"I am intrigued by why you took the challenge of fate. You've struck me as a sensitive and an insecure girl, fate's dark twists are not for the weak minds, I'm warning you!" Uppity-J proclaimed, extending his open palm out while his free right hand struck a hand seal and began shuffling his deck again.</p><p>"You're a sham!" Mana stated, raising her finger. She now knew exactly how much time she had to interfere with Uppity-J's techniques, which allowed her to cast her illusion. The magician sunk inside a sharp flash of champagne-colored light, one that appeared to disrupt Uppity-J's card drawing process. Doppelgangers appeared around the fortune-reading ninja in an attempt to psyche him out and throw him off-guard, but Uppity-J's heart didn't waver for a second.</p><p>Even when Mana slipped into the fold of her own illusionary clones and more and more of them emerged from the bright light which was necessary as a medium of her genjutsu, even as she struck Uppity-J, swatted and locked his arm from drawing his cards and continued to both punch him with palm strikes and kick him with her stiffest shots before slipping back into the fold of her illusionary doubles, Uppity-J didn't waver.</p><p>"These cards you use and claim to read our destinies with are just improvised sealing tags for ninjutsu that somebody let you seal inside them. They don't tell anybody's destiny, you're just drawing your seals at random and proclaim that's our destiny!" Mana taunted her opponent from inside her flock of clones while switching in between concealment and attacking.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Destiny Row!" Uppity-J chanted out, forming another row of five face-down cards before him, with no need for him to draw the cards. "The World Arcana Seal: Release!" Uppity-J reached his open palm over a face-down card as it opened up for Mana and lit up with bright light, telegraphing the release of the jutsu sealed inside of it.</p><p>A barrage of Wind Release projectiles shaped like blue, slashing blades emerged from the card. It took Mana all of her evasive talent to evade them, but by far the greatest asset was her Many-Faced Jutsu illusion. It was because of that jutsu that Uppity-J tried his best, slashing as many doppelgangers of Mana as he could, missing out on the real one as a result.</p><p>A mistake very nearly followed as Mana took it down on the ground at the first wave of scorching heat pulsing from inside of the still lively World Arcana card. A booming stream of flames followed the barrage of slashing Wind Release projectiles and swallowed them up, exploding into a firestorm that exploding in an expanding ring of flames just a few meters over the bookshelves. Mana's heart froze solid at the sight of the flames very nearly touching the scrolls but she sighed with ease after the heat blast subsided without inflicting too much damage on the scrolls, just rustling a few corners of the tips of a few scrolls on the highest shelves.</p><p>"You are wrong, but you are also a hypocrite, Mana," Uppity-J stated, pointing an accusatory finger to the ninja magician. "You also claim to be a magician, yet you do not cast any real spells nor do you perform actual magic. Those tricks of yours are merely ninjutsu and genjutsu. And yet they have greater significance, don't they? You invent all of your jutsu yourself, which is why they dazzle your opponents similarly, like what they perceive as magic or don't understand dazzles a civilian."</p><p>"Are you saying your deck of seals serves a similar purpose?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"That's right," Uppity-J nodded. "I will show it to you and make you understand fate, and it's crushing power through our confrontation. I will teach you to leave concerns like the test we're fighting for behind, for if fate truly intends for you to pass that test–you shall. Concern is meaningless, fear, and resistance to fate's will shall undo your effort."</p><p>"Lightning Style: Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Pairte weaved her hand seals, emerging from a cloud of smoke a handful of her own alternate versions that rushed right at Damisan but the self-puppeteering ninja took it to one knee and raised his arm, pointing all of his right-arm fingers at the rushing line of clones as he grabbed over his wrist with his left hand.</p><p>"Puppetry Technique: Finger Scattershot!" Damisan yelled out as the upper parts of his prosthetic fingers took off with jet flames, shooting them out in a scattershot formation at the oncoming rush of clones. A pair of the clones gargled blood as the fingers drilled into their ribcages and dissolved them, the real Pairte grunted in pain as she rolled back as well, hardening her ribcage with chakra augmentation so she didn't find a drilling finger bullet shattering her chest and ending up stuck in her heart. Even in gloomy lighting, when the fingers scattered in a wider area, Damisan didn't need precision aiming for such a move.</p><p>As another pair of clones grabbed hold of Damisan's arms, the impaired shinobi slammed them one into another as hydraulic press expelled smoke from an area where his arms connected to his fleshy body and his arms hummed with an overflowing force that could have overcome even a much more physically demanding task than throwing a bunch of clones about.</p><p>"Got you!" Pairte smirked as the clones dissolved not in a loud pop and a cloud of smoke like ordinary Shadow Clones but instead into a small lightning storm that engulfed Damisan's prosthetic arms but didn't seem to transfer the electric charge much further. Much to the shock of his opponent, the prosthetics-user just moved his neck around and boxed with his prosthetic arms like nothing had happened.</p><p>"Amazing, isn't it? After my last mission, I realized that Lightning Release can be a problem, especially in really insane voltages so I insulated my next prosthetics model as much as possible!" Damisan put up a peace sign with two raised fingers as the finger tops he just shot off popped out from within his prosthetic arms, effectively reloading his hands for another use of his technique.</p><p>"I guess I'll just have to switch to another nature release for my clones, huh?" Pairte stood up and cracked her own neck and knuckles before taking a grappling-type fighting stance.</p><p>"Another nature release?" Damisan whistled out in awe.</p><p>"That's right, I might be a one-trick pony, but devoting your life to just one fighting style lets you really crack it beyond anyone's expectations," Pairte nodded while forming a clone-technique signature hand seal. "Water Release: Shadow Clones!" she chanted out, multiplying once more.</p><p>"Damisan…" Mana glanced over Uppity-J's shoulder, seeing her fellow Stars member geeking out over his own progress of improving his body. Her stumped glare softened for a moment. He was right to be this enthusiastic, he truly was amazing. Very few people would have kept going and gotten up on their figurative feet in life with the hand that fate dealt them, none would have gotten as far as Damisan had gone.</p><p>"Hmm… Your oddity of a partner shows my case better than any fancy words of wisdom I might offer you." Uppity-J glanced back as well. The fortune-telling ninja raised his hand up, aiming face down as his deck shuffled in mid-air once again in a hectic dance. "People claim that they are free to act as they please, that they guide their own fate through something they claim to be free will but free will is but an illusion. How can we be free to act however we please, how can we truly be free and how can you deny fate when the circumstances of our lives, our upbringing are so different? If I was born with a different color of skin in my country, I'd have been an outcast, I'd have gotten vastly different chances in life than I did. That is natural, for I would have been different and therefore my fate would have been different as well."</p><p>"So what? You just stop caring? Stop trying to change anything?" Mana wondered with a troubled tone of her voice. "Can't you see how irresponsible and lazy your nihilism is?"</p><p>It was a rare occasion that someone or something got Mana riled up, but once in a blue moon someone dismissing the value of human life or demeaning it openly appeared and did the remarkable. As much as the magician hated admitting it to herself, Uppity-J and his bleak and grey attitude toward all aspects of life ticked her off just the same way.</p><p>"Lazy? Perhaps. But if all of your hard work is pointless, if nobody is listening to you complain about your fate, isn't there more point in accepting fate? In my help of telling people what fate might have in store for them, I help prepare them for it. I ease their suffering for when the inevitable hard-hitting blows of fate come while people like you, hard workers, and strugglers only offer them illusions of choice. You tell them if they work hard enough that they can do anything when deep down you know that no matter what you do–fate is ultimate and immovable. Struggle only makes it more capricious and its bite more venomous. The strugglers are the immature ones." Uppity-J spit back to Mana, raising his hand over his deck once more "Ninja Style: Destiny Row!"</p><p>"Damisan and I… We both started out with bad hands. I struggled with comprehending the world around me as a child, I had no talents and nothing special about me in a world that praises the worth of a person for their bloodline and genius. There are people who were born sick, people raised in corrupting and hateful environments. I refuse to believe that they are doomed for the destiny that they've been born into. They have the power to rise above that." Mana claimed, standing still as Uppity-J prepared to showcase her fate for her for the third time.</p><p>"Hierophant Arcana Seal: Release!" Uppity-J proclaimed, opening up a card with a sealed ninjutsu technique that showered the archive room with cherry blossom petals, utterly sinking it in them to where they filled the space thick as a blinding, lingering fog. A jolt of lightning split the pink veil, delivering judgment to where he thought Mana to be struggling against the fate that Uppity-J had read to her.</p><p>It was, however, that the jolt hit nothing. The cherry blossom petals settled down on the floor and burnt up in azure flames as Uppity-J observed a flock of rose petals of different colors filling the room in a much wider formation and hurling around him like a vortex. One by one the flower petals landed on top of him, without the fortune-reading shinobi being able to shake or tear them off of him. The silky-smooth petals coated his entire body before a sizzling sound reached Uppity's ears, and he realized that the flower petals that covered him were explosive tags ready to blow.</p><p>"You don't accept fate either. You don't take your own nihilism pill. Your cards don't ready fate, they're just tools for you to struggle and fight on just like the rest of us do. Your worth in this world isn't measured by some lousy fate that dooms you to be sickly and weak, but in your desire to accomplish something and the skills of reaching that goal. Giving up on a goal because of fate is just lazy because only by struggling and acting can you achieve anything. Desire and resolve are anything but meaningless, they're what truly makes outcomes happen, not fate." Mana stated, manifesting from a spinning vortex of flower petals before her opponent as she undid the illusion before its climax would send him to a comatose state.</p><p>Uppity-J fell to his knees, sweating profusely to where his sweat dripped onto the ground and made the burning up cherry blossom petals from his Hierophant Arcana Seal technique sizzle when they came into contact.</p><p>"Both of us have a gift for making people's lives better. I can dazzle them, make them forget their troubles, if only for a little while. You can give people hope that their wishes aren't pointless and give them the power to defy their fate and achieve something great or fail, but grow as better people along the way. Telling people that something is against their fate is just bound to give birth to more misery and despair, and there's enough of that going around as it is." Mana leaned down, offering Uppity-J a hand. Judging by how the fortune-telling ninja couldn't even keep his deck of cards from littering the ground with a few of the cards catching aflame, he wasn't in much of a state to keep resisting.</p><p>"Nakotsumi… Mana…" Uppity-J muttered, accepting Mana's help in getting up. As they touched their hands, Mana noted how Uppity-J's body shook in the shock that he just went through under her illusion. Resisting something like that was beyond just being tough or cool. No matter how stone-hard Uppity-J's convictions were, fear of death on a level as primal as the one Mana invoked, it was universal among people. He completely folded under the pressure and it might have taken an incredible medical ninja to wake him from the genjutsu coma that Mana's illusion would have caused had she continued it.</p><p>"Say, you've burnt up your Magician Arcana to a crisp, didn't you? Those seals seemed like a one-time deal… Can I offer you one of my techniques for the new Magician Arcana?" Mana smiled, helping her opponent walk up to the table where tutor Joshi was penning something down.</p><p>"That would be great, thank you…" Uppity-J nodded while looking on ahead with dulled out eyes. Ironically enough, he looked by far duller and more apathetic once he finally accepted the worth of struggling, skill, and desire.</p><p>"Whoa, you've finished up before me?" Damisan stumbled back to the table with shoddy and banged up prosthetics. His left leg one had something stuck in the knee and didn't appear to bend by the center. Pairte was back in the western section of the archive, surrounded by fallen but still functional scrolls and paper sheets, laid out.</p><p>"Okay then, nice work, you two. I'll give you a 20/20 for this special test, that still means you have to pass the final exam next month, got it?" Joshi sighed and closed up a scroll he was working on beside a glowing, handheld pumpkin candle. "Good, now you guys can go ahead and fix this mess you've made." The tutor scratched the back of his neck after the trio nodded.</p><hr/><p>"Man, winning a fight has never felt this much like a loss," Damisan laughed out to himself as he picked up a scroll that Mana rolled up and tossed to him to put back in its place at the upper sections of the shelf. "I mean, I guess Pairte and Uppity-J didn't look like they were up for the clean-up job but still… Winners shouldn't be doing clean-up."</p><p>"Damisan," Mana called out for the masked ninja to look down at her, bending his head so that Mana couldn't peek underneath his cylinder and see even a section of his face. "I really love your positivity. It's inspiring, really. Hearing you being so proud of your own talent and your own skill, I know that you're still not completely secure with your own body and how it looks, but seeing you work with it… It helps me do my best too. Thank you."</p><p>"Sure thing!" Damisan chuckled, saluting Mana with his bent out of shape prosthetic fingers that he'd still have to work for hours on back in their room to fix. "Just glad to help."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0730"><h2>730. High And Low</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three scrolls somewhere inside the abandoned facility erected on the training grounds. Approaching the premises required little care, Mana took care of the early steps with haste though once a couple of identical-looking tutor clones turned to notice her, waving with their hands to scare the magician away, Mana acted as if she shrugged and walked away.</p><p>One of the miffed clones approached the closed and fenced off gate to peek through. Tutor Onoyon would have likely failed her on the spot if the guard still laid eyes on her lingering about for the second time. There was no need for that. Mana had spent a few precious moments leaned down and pressing by the gate wall, running through what she saw during her first peek inside. There was no viable way of getting in through the front.</p><p>With a rushing strut, Mana ran off to hide behind another corner on the south-eastern side of the training grounds. Pressing her back to the wall, Mana peeked from the corner. The tutor clone seemed content to stop at just checking if the recruit wasn't stalling by the front gate after bumping into a fenced off and heavily protected entrance. The staircase leading to a rooftop of a nearby, useless building was just there, right in front of her.</p><p>After a hefty sigh, Mana rushed to it and pointed her finger at the lock. The Finger of Fate Wind Release ninjutsu pierced the lock and as the penetrating beam of wind dissipated, it tore the remnants of the steel lock apart enough for it to lose its integrity and fall apart. It was one of those rare occasions that Mana's starting fifteen jutsu that she perfected before the finals of the Chuunin Exams still came into use.</p><p>Heels tapped a bit louder at the metal gratings and rails than Mana would have liked, but nobody saw anything. The nearest guard must have been almost a third of a kilometer away, and despite her flashy appearances, she would have had to try to stand out actively. A peek through the pipeline extending over on the rooftop of the useless service building. Tutor Onoyon had prepared this training ground the way it was for the test for a reason. While the service building looked empty on the inside, it offered a platform for easier entry within the facility from the outside.</p><p>Taking a plunge down inside the facility's territory was possible. Containers stacked one on top of one another comprised for a lovely, pier-like vibe that was perfect for slipping in between two nearby containers or pressing oneself on top of one or just controlling the doppelgangers' field of vision while one moved around the yard and infiltrated the facility itself. Given the larger number of patrolling clones, sensing how much chakra each one had, one might have counted just how many guards were inside the facility.</p><p>It was fortunate for Mana that she was a sensor and could have accomplished such calculations without the use of reasoning that was just educated guesswork at best. There were about eight clones indoors. They'd be troublesome to deal with, as Mana was not supposed to fight them. Being caught red-handed and implicated was the deal-breaker for the test, being sighted scoping the area was a yellow card, but it wouldn't even cost her points. No taking out the clones, though. That was fine, Mana preferred as little engagement as possible anyway.</p><p>Plunging down into the territory while remaining concealed would have taken a much stealthier body than Mana. One could have defused the fall via a pulse of chakra, leaving their feet to counteract the forces working against one's body besides some chakra augmentation tempering one's lower body to withstand the forces at work without injury. Still, Mana didn't feel confident that she could pull all of that off without raising noise. Knowing her, she'd force her chakra pulse out in the shape of a gust of wind or even worse–a ring of flames. Fire was her nature affinity after all…</p><p>With just the right moment, when all the clones were looking away, Mana flung herself off of the service building rooftop, diving and aiming herself for two whole seconds in mid-air before entering the right trajectory for one container. The ninja magician spread her hands out, activating the Mystical Wings technique and swooping up just a bit to correct her dive and make it so her feet clicked against the top of the container stack with just a gentle tap.</p><p>"What's that?" a clone of the tutor responsible for the Black Ops test scratched his bald head. Unlike the original tutor Onoyon, these clones didn't have the metallic lower jaw brace but had enveloped their gorilla-like bodies and gruesome lower-jaw injury with black turtlenecks and Konoha-style flak jackets. Onoyon's signature tone of voice and lisping speech mannerisms caused by the injury translated through with his clones too, though the turtlenecks proved to be a viable replacement for his brace since they didn't make the man's speech unintelligible.</p><p>"Could be nothing…" another clone scratched his bald head. The man might have been nearing four meters in size. He was a ridiculous specimen that could have just vaulted up and grabbed the top of one container. From there he'd have been a couple of repeated leaps and pulls away from setting his sights on Mana.</p><p>"Come on, it's obviously something!" a clone of Onoyon, roleplaying as the guard, said.</p><p>"Okay, genius, how 'bout you climb all the way up there and check then?" the other clone chuckled in teasing of his implied colleague. Tutor Onoyon gave most of the students some chances, acted like he didn't see them a few times, ignored clues obvious to trained shinobi and didn't use the full extent of his extensive abilities as they would not have been available to a lowly hired hand.</p><p>"Screw that. I ain't getting paid 'nuff to snap my neck climbing. If it's someone with a pointy nose snooping around, we'll get 'em, anyway. They'll have to try to sneak into the facility, right?" the first clone shook his shoulders, and the two returned to their patrolling routines. Overhearing this talk gave Mana an idea, though it might have been too late in her plan to incorporate it.</p><p>Tutor Onoyon had his clones drop their patrolling routines if they engaged in conversation, which they were all too eager to do. They stopped and spoke to one another at every opportunity they had, including when they patrolled out of rhythm and bumped into one another. Mana watched one clone pass by the container she laid on before rolling off of it and slipping down a few rows of them.</p><p>The clone heard Mana's landing as she did nothing to mask it but, by the time he turned around to look behind him, she had slipped in between two rows of containers and was out of view. The clone didn't go out of its way to go back and check since he figured he'd do that on his next return to the location while patrolling. Heck, if Mana stayed tucked in that long–she'd deserve to get spotted inside the facility territory and being flunked.</p><p>With the clone disappearing behind the corner of a few containers to circle around its intended territory, Mana tip-toed to the corner and peeked. There was a trio of clones in between her and the facility door, but they all were leaving and the door was a straight dash from the corner. If she stayed here and hesitated some longer–she'd end up spotted by the first clone guard turning corner again. Dealing with the lock couldn't have been that bad–it might have even met the same fate as the lock warding off visitors from the service building staircase.</p><p>The dash seemed flawless at first. Just as Mana approached the door, she felt a clone intending to walk through it, breaking its patrolling pattern. A more agile and crafty ninja might have leaped over the door and stuck to the wall to observe the straggler as he passed by, Mana didn't trust her abilities to pull something like that off. She pushed inside the building, tackling the clone down while pressing her right to his mouth and placing her left over his forehead.</p><p>The clone's eyes rolled back, but his grunts became muffled by Mana's hand. The magician kept her hold despite the foam that came out from the clone's mouth, freaking her out. Her Magician's Touch resonated a few times, running in a circulating chain throughout Mana's body while the magician looked to disable the guard. Taking the clones out would have costed her some grade points as long as she wasn't spotted, but she didn't intend to take it out.</p><p>The lights in the warehouse went on moments before the clone in Mana's grasp burst into smoke. All the roleplaying doppelgangers walked into the facility, looking at Mana funny. The magician shrugged. Her face felt stiff as she didn't know how to voice her complaint about the fact that the man had stopped the test prematurely for no reason at all.</p><p>"I guess you flunked," tutor Onoyon shrugged. "It's a pass or fail kind of test. Pass gives you 20 points toward your six-month average while a fail gives you 0, just in case you don't know the drill."</p><p>"That's not fair," Mana objected, finally gathering the courage to do so. The veteran Allied Ninja was a fearsome presence that inspired dreadful respect within even students that looked at him favorably. A cast to which Mana had attributed herself until now. "You stopped the test."</p><p>"You attacked a clone," tutor Onoyon spoke without movement. His words were like a brick wall that would have taken a wrecking ball of adamant conviction to topple down. "Didn't I tell you guys that if you kill a clone–it's an automatic failure? The point of the Black Ops class is to simulate the experience of an Allied Ninja working inside the village walls–if someone pulls a stunt or a village ninja ends up dead while you're visiting–you're the prime suspect."</p><p>Frankly, it wouldn't have taken a body for a man looking like tutor Onoyon to be treated as a suspect. He had the sort of scarred and beaten mug that people would have instantly started pointing fingers at. It wasn't a question of right or wrong, just thoughts racing through Mana's head. All those lessons and tests she missed out on while struggling for her life on the hospital bed. She couldn't afford to fail another test right after the situation with the international law course. She'd have taken the L under normal circumstances. It wasn't like she was that high on self-confidence, even after the boost that being around Damisan daily inspired.</p><p>It was just that she felt like she was in the right–the tutor didn't have the right to end the test so early. The training ground lit up as the seals swallowed the service buildings, the facility and the surrounding storage warehouses and piers up. The recruits waiting around for the test to conclude and for their turn or those that have already passed or failed their tests and either cheered for their friends to do the same or sulked in their despair watched on as the situation developed.</p><p>"I didn't intend to kill the clone, nor would I have done so. You allowed the clone to dispel after taking damage where a normal human would have taken damage but not even knocked out. Then, you used the knowledge of that clone to let the other clones know that I infiltrated the facility and ended the test. That's not fair…" Mana pouted and turned away. Lately, it felt like she had to bite and claw through to every minor victory she scored. If she didn't wail and kick–she'd drown down under. Even if a man like tutor Onoyon stood in front of her and stared at her utterly unimpressed, she deserved a fair shot.</p><p>"Are you saying that the A-Rank Lightning Release ninjutsu wouldn't have murdered a normal man? Stop fooling around. If you keep trying to bullshit your way out of this, I'll inform the Regimental Commander on duty about it. I've no time or patience to deal with lazy, impubescent punks." Tutor Onoyon growled, becoming visibly peeved as opposed to just bored.</p><p>"My Magician's Touch jutsu doesn't kill anyone, no jutsu in my arsenal does!" Mana stood her ground. Her own raised voice terrified her deep down as her feet began going numb and the deadly frost crawled ever higher with each second. It wasn't clear if this was because she stepped up and strained her heels by trying to speak to a giant like the Black Ops course tutor or if it was psychological. "The whole point of that jutsu is that it shocks the target. It's precision and efficiency are its key perks that give it its high ranking. If applied to the brain for long enough–it not only stuns the target but makes them forget things. I've spent years making sure that effect works just right, I can bet all of my course points that I can make that clone forget he ever saw me if you didn't dispel it."</p><p>"Hmm… I've never heard of such a jutsu…" Onoyon grumbled to himself.</p><p>"That's because I created it myself," Mana thrust after a successful parry.</p><p>"In that case, I suppose that most villages would have no idea you'd pulled it out. Heck, I'd say that the poor guard wouldn't even complain about forgetting a few key seconds of their patrol." Onoyon sighed, wondering how he'd best go around rectifying this situation. "Fine, I'll make a clone and turn around. You work your magic while I make sure not to dispel it after it takes any amount of damage. Unless the strain on my chakra becomes too hard, of course. Show him a gesture, anything, maybe several fingers. If you can make him forget what he saw and if his memories have a lapse when I dispel it and I can't recall the gesture–you'll get a pass."</p><hr/><p>"Huh, Mana?" Shige-H exclaimed out loud, widening her eyes as the magician walked out of the cover and into the training grounds after the class. Most of the Stars had been training. Skaven did little team training, he just sulked in the shade beside a tree. Endo was missing and, usually, so was Mana. Even when Mana wanted to train, she usually did so inside the pocket universe, inside the magician's mind. "Sorry, if we knew you'd come to train with us, we'd not have started early…"</p><p>The leader of Stars clapped her hands, squinting hard in apology. Mana looked around, noticing that Damisan had been lacking a limb while Tomi's tiny foot had been dug into the side of Damisan's cylinder. Just the threat of her kicking it off halted Damisan's attempt to pound the immature brat on the head for whatever transgression she pulled on him before Mana showed up.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm still a bit… I don't want to train just meditating. I feel guilty when I'm not training at all, so I'd like to train with you guys if it's okay…" Mana pocketed her hands and turned her eyes away, feeling a bit of heat building up under her eyes.</p><p>"Really!?" Tomi shrieked out, pumping her hands. "You don't wanna train with Endo even after all the times he asked you to?"</p><p>"Definitely not," Mana shook her hands out in front of her while she blew cool air out from her lungs that had built up during her request.</p><p>"Good, maybe you can fry Tomi's brains with that jutsu you passed the test with and make her forget the name of the damned hyena that took my arm away!" Damisan seethed in sibling-like acrimony toward Tomi who only stuck out her tongue and crossed her arms, acting innocent.</p><p>"Sorry, no can do. When Hailu likes something–it's better to let him have it. I'm not taking his toy away from him, it'll break his heart!" Tomi said. Judging from the look on Damisan's face, it was an argument that he had heard before and responded to already. Not that it had any effect.</p><p>"IT'S! MY! ARM!" Damisan stressed and lingered on every word, delivering them with as much authority and volume as he could.</p><p>"So! Build! A! New! One!" Tomi mocked Damisan, repeating his speech.</p><p>"Look, I get it-you grew up with all those furry guys and that they've been the only family that you had but… That's exactly why I'm saying this–you can't let Hailu, or whatever its name was, play with that. It's not just a stick, it's a weapon. If he pinches on the wrong steel bar–he can spread it open or self-destruct it," this time Damisan struck gold.</p><p>"I won't use my Magician's Touch on Tomi-chan, but I could read her mind about where Hailu and the arm are," Mana suggested. She didn't enjoy taking sides, but the only way to lose Tomi's friendship for good was to hurt her ninja animal partners. If the Stars were Tomi's third family, her summons were an easy second.</p><p>"No need…" Tomi deflated and whistled, stuffing two of her fingers into her mouth and calling the overjoyed, rhino-sized hyena to burst out from far away into the forested area, past more than a few brushes and a creek passing by the training grounds. "Hailu. I know you like your new chew toy, but it's gonna be just like the time you ate a morning star. It'll make you owie when you do poo-poo…"</p><p>"I can't believe it. Does she even know how long it takes for me to replace a limb?" Damisan sighed, nearly collapsing on the spot at the sight of the careless handling that his prosthetic arm had been subjected to inside the cackling mouth of the massive ninja animal.</p><p>"Don't tell Hailu anything about anything blowing up–it'll only make him more excited. It's not just him, ninja-hyena are way wild…" Tomi whispered, stepping up to speak to Mana quietly to her ear. Mana encouraged Tomi's childish giggle with a warm smile of her own while the teen wrestled the scratched and drowned in slobber prosthetic arm and gave it to Damisan.</p><p>"Alright, I guess, with this we can regroup and start a new training phase? One that includes Mana, maybe?" Shige-H suggested, stepping into the middle of the circle.</p><hr/><p>"Mana." The casual mention of her name made the worn-out magician turn around. It was because it was Skaven calling her out in his usual nonchalant manner that Mana didn't jump up or feel startled by being called out to like that.</p><p>"Skaven, you know, you really should have joined our training. It's tiring and physical training isn't quite my cup of tea, but Damisan and Tomi really make it fun." Mana waited for Skaven to catch up to her while walking at his own casual pace.</p><p>"Never mind that. That jutsu of yours that you used to pass the test today–Magician's Touch. You can make people forget things with it, right?" Skaven got straight to the point. Mana had a mean feeling that he'd not have spoken to her at all had it not been for that.</p><p>"Well… Yes, in a manner of speech. Though I'm not sure why…" Mana tried to weave a reply.</p><p>"I want you to make me forget some stuff," Skaven cut her reply to pieces with a ruthless, verbal chop.</p>
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<a name="section0731"><h2>731. Lies Meant To Protect</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Forget? Wait, you mean you want me to use my Magician's Touch on you on purpose?" Mana's right lower eyelid twitched. It was such an unorthodox request that she wasn't sure if she should just continue to feel confused about it or to submit to the repulsion that crawled its way out through inside of her throat.</p><p>"Yeah, that's right. That's how it works, isn't it? You hold your hands over someone's head, zap 'em, and then they forget things. There are things in my past I'd like to forget forever for some peace of mind." Skaven nodded, turning his eyes to the right. He knew how weird this sounded. Some part of him was ashamed to ask this of Mana though, given his unusual request, there may not have been another person who could have helped him.</p><p>"That's not at all how it works." Mana shook her head. The tone of her voice rose, though she couldn't help it. What Skaven asked her to do was reckless. "It's true that I made this technique with a stray, naïve thought that it could have someday been used for bringing people that have strayed a long path from decency back into the humane society. A better method to treat them rather than to do away with them. I've dispelled that idea entirely when I saw how painful and crude the technique truly is."</p><p>"If it's pain, that's no problem at all. Pain I can handle." Skaven insisted. "Even excruciating agony beats those voices and faces haunting me day after day. Think about it, haven't you ever failed anyone?"</p><p>"All I do is fail people. One way or the other. I've gotten so good at it that it won't break my heart one bit to say no." Mana shook her head and dismissed her fellow Stars member, turning to walk away and pleading to the surrounding universe that Skaven would leave this alone. She knew better, she wouldn't have left it alone had she been in the Nara's shoes.</p><p>"Then you know what it feels like. I'm not a kind person. I've hurt and killed people all throughout my life, but I wanted no one innocent to get hurt. And yet… At some point, I could no longer find misguided excuses why people that died and suffered all around me were guilty of anything. Not even one, flimsiest thing. Do you have that one thing that you hate most of all?" Skaven looked up with lost eyes.</p><p>"Yeah," Mana didn't hesitate.</p><p>"Has it ever dominated your life? Become a second-nature companion of your every step to where it feels like you've been cursed with it because you hate it so much? Have you ever felt that perhaps you deserve its load on your back because of how rotten of a person you are? But even then… Why did the innocent people have to pay for my penance? It makes little sense…" Skaven's wide-open eyes stared at his shaking hands while his knees wobbled and his skin turned pale white from a sicklier shade Mana knew him for.</p><p>Why was he saying all of those things? Why did he speak in a way that made this abhorrent thing feel so right, and how did he have such an open wide and straight path to Mana's soul as if he had been inside its chambers before? What a cottony tongue this ex-criminal had. Making nothing less than shocking a young man's brain repeatedly, torturing him for the sake of permanent mental crippling sound so liberating and dignified.</p><p>"Yeah. I have a way of imagining what that feels like." Mana put it softly. People she knew and loved, people she vowed to save and help, ended up dead far more often than Mana helped them out. A lifetime of heroics wouldn't excuse her for dragging Shimo out halfway across the world just to die. And for what? To realize Meiko's lifelong dream? To return the control over Mana's severed chakra network back? How could any of those things even compare to the worth of a human life? Just a drop in what was becoming quite a fussy torrent.</p><p>"In that case, how can you be so cruel? You owe me, have you forgotten? Maybe the rest haven't told you? They would have put a rubbery ball with tubes and gear work inside of your chest, resuscitating you back to life as an asthmatic cripple. You'd have lived as a husk, just a fancy poster to bring more cannon fodder at the doorsteps of the Allied Ninja. That's all they see you as. It isn't any business of mine to ask if it's any better than Konoha, but I'm asking you to repay the debt of going out of my way to not make you yet another screaming voice in my head. Just another howler saying it's all my fault. If I'm to change my way, I can't have those nightmares coming with. I know it would only be right, but I also know that I can't handle it." Skaven truly pleaded with both his tone and his sorry facial expression. Just one nasty thought away from spraying tears and breaking into a weep.</p><p>"It… It won't work like you think it will." Mana sighed, exhaling all sense of reason before submerging into this river of madness that Skaven pointed to. "Shocking the brain, aiming for the memories is dangerous. I've learned to be precise over the years. I've learned to target specific centers, centers that handle certain emotions, and it makes one forget many experiences. In theory, shocking the right centers that handle the emission of pleasure when one behaves in a sadistic manner would make them forget those highs and, more often than not, those experiences."</p><p>"If a hardened killer won't remember why he kills, how it feels to kill, whom he has killed, and for what reasons, they might not kill at all…" Skaven mumbled to himself. It restarted Mana's breathing when she realized that he was putting thought into it and giving it a decent second chance of consideration. "I'd imagine targeting blind memories, unaffiliated with pure, base feelings would be harder, but mine are. Fear, hatred, anger… I've felt all of those things so you could take your pick."</p><p>"You're right, it's way harder, though not impossible. Though what you perceive as a factor that'll make it easier in fact makes it more difficult. You affiliate your undesirable memories with an entire array of emotions so I would have to hit them all–you'd lose all of those memories and feelings. It's safe to say that you'd have nothing left. As grand and admirable love and joy are, they don't make a whole person. Rip even one feeling out and what's left is a damaged person, rip several and what you have is a husk." Mana pointed out.</p><p>"So, is there truly no other way? Please…" Skaven insisted.</p><p>"Well…" Mana sighed. "I could perform a more complex operation. I could enter your mind via the standard interrogation technique and scope the place out. Mark what to hit, what to sever, and what to keep. It'd make the removal far more humane and surgical."</p><p>"But you'd see the memories I wish to rid myself of." Skaven dragged his hand through his greasy, one-sided hair.</p><p>Mana didn't respond. She didn't have to. Seeing Skaven's reaction told the complete story–this looked almost like a complete deal breaker to him. It was a very human thing to not wish to reveal one's darkest moments to another, fearing that they won't like what they see and won't exalt of the man possessing those secrets and those memories. Yet that wasn't all that inhabited Skaven's mind, and Mana could tell. Call it experience in the craft of intelligence gathering and interrogation, or just experience in life, talking to people. She saw a whole different shade making Skaven's expression bitterer, and it made her curious since the magician couldn't put her finger on it for the life of her.</p><p>"Maybe you could do something else? Do you think it would be possible to experience everything but the memories I want you to burn? I would submit my mind to the interrogation, manifest my Ego inside of my mental plane and guide you around. We could walk around the walls of my undesired memories and you'd draw a mental map of sorts. Then you'll know what and where to cut without having been inside those corners?" Skaven had a lively pulse of energy in his face as he explained this.</p><p>What was going on? The Nara wasn't speaking in broad terms at all–he was familiar with how ninjutsu interrogation worked. He spoke in exact terms and tread the field of the subject that Mana was intermediate at, and there was no discernible reason for him to know all those things and why what he asked for was plausible. It was as if a civilian off the street with only the basic Academy education told a medical ninja that the neurodegeneration killing their patient wasn't because of a neurological condition but instead came to be because of a tape worm growing inside them and ended up being right.</p><p>"I suppose scouting the memories you wish to keep is plausible. With your Ego being there to guide me along, it would even take just a few hours to scout the mental plane and complete the trip." Mana stroked her chin, still unable to shake suspicion off of her face.</p><p>"I see, that's great!" Skaven nodded with excitement that looked alien stuck on his face.</p><p>Of course, with his Ego unchained and present inside of his mind, he would also be capable of switching Mana's course or engaging her with far greater force, with his entire conscious and subconscious mind allied with him while she was scouting. It wasn't like Mana expected Skaven to wish her mental self trapped inside of Skaven's mind. If he had such goals, he'd have never helped her return from her almost final slumber. Still, with his unexpected background in interrogation taking a peek just now, there was something more to Skaven's request for his Ego to accompany Mana rather than merely something to make sure that their scouting trip is faster and more streamlined.</p><p>"I suppose if we start now, we'd be done by bedtime." Mana shrugged. Somehow, despite being the one helping Skaven and supposedly in control, she felt like she was just a sheep guided around a narrow corridor toward something at the end. Just who was Skaven and what sort of experiences had he been through? Would he even let Mana see, or was this part of what he wished to get rid of and would therefore remain shut off from her?</p><p>"You're hesitating and your voice pitched higher. It's almost as if you're the one who's going to let someone inside of your mind and then ask them to shock their brain a bunch." Skaven cracked a grin. Whatever cards he held in his hand, he didn't let up on them and he enjoyed that bleak shroud of secrecy of his very much.</p><p>Once they've made their way back to their room, Endo had still not returned from whatever he did all by himself. Shige-H, Tomi and Damisan had still been training or goofing around afterward to bond a little more as friends and future allies. That was just fine. What they were about to do would have required a lot of explaining, and Mana's wasn't sure that it would go all that smoothly with everyone. No matter how many times Mana tried to spin it in her mind, it didn't feel like Shige-H would have let Mana shock the brain of a fellow Stars member.</p><p>Skaven sat on his bed with a calm expression, crossing his arms and adopting a perfectly relaxed meditative position. He was almost lousy at hiding the fact that he hadn't had experience with this. Where would one even get such an experience? Mere criminals would have resorted to torture to extract information that'd be all with it. Something like this, something incorporating proper body posture, terminology… These were details that only formal training taught and only official students aligned to a ninja village would have bothered to learn and apply.</p><p>Intelligence Division? Black Ops? Which village?</p><p>Mana pressed her hand to Skaven's forehead, breathing a deep huff of unease right out and cleansing her mind of worry and all thoughts that she could purge at that moment. Of course, achieving the perfect state of no-mind was impossible to worry-wart like her, Mana accepted it already. Still, the calmer she was, the easier the way in would have been and the smoother the process. The less time she had to spend preparing herself for the procedure, the creamier the whole thing would go.</p><p>A pulse. A black void surrounded by rings of teal. Skaven's mind almost forced Mana to float through them. He had reduced his entire mental fort to mere black space and skipped her along with the whole thing. A true no-mind was necessary for a thing like that. Even Mana, with all of her training and experience, could have perhaps bent the space and time of her mental plane but not nullified it entirely.</p><p>"There it is," Skaven's gleaming with an outline of starry-white image spread its arms, showcasing a reflective junction of an endless, metal highway that glistened in rainbow colors. The surrounding void was like a violet nebula clad in stars, while tornadoes and cosmic storms of diamond-flake winds ravaged the landscape far-off in the horizon.</p><p>"Orderly," Mana noted.</p><p>"I've… Had some practice arranging my man-cave a bit." Skaven scratched the bald side of his head. He must have known the jig was up by the time he showed Mana his mental fort. "Anyway, each path of the junction is a separate highway that will take you to a separate section of my mind. I know this looks massive and those… Things in the horizon might seem like frightening, but they're harmless. The moment we take a direction–I'll streamline our blitz through the highway like before."</p><p>"The diamond tornadoes are unavoidable, unless someone's together with your Ego." Mana placed her hands on her hips, giving Skaven a cheeky look. And to think that he even tried acting uninitiated. "Okay, I've seen enough."</p><p>"Mana?" Skaven turned back, his eyes met one of Mana's sassier looks as she stared at him, floating in mid-air with her arms crossed over her chest. An invitation to explain himself. One he failed to honor as the Nara just began fumbling through words and supposed meanings for Mana's stoppage.</p><p>"You know, I'm quite close to just snapping this whole deal of ours. You're taking me for a fool of some sort and that's especially unacceptable given how you've pretty much guilt-tripped me into doing this. If we are to proceed like this, you'll ruin my impression of you without the need for me to see a single skeleton in your closet." Mana said.</p><p>"I… I don't understand." Skaven muttered.</p><p>"With this level of training, an Ego strong enough to roam one's mental fort freely, intimate knowledge of the aspects of mental interrogation and the rules of the mental plane. If you wish to make me believe that a ninja this skilled couldn't have sheltered off memories he didn't want to see inside his own mind–we've got nothing else to talk about, I'm done with this charade." Mana pressed on.</p><p>"Okay, you're right, I guess I went overboard sectioning off my mind like that and forming blocks before the undesirable locations and mental circuits before the ones we visit, huh?" Skaven dragged his hand across his dark hair with an expression that appeared to only be sorry about the fact that Mana caught him and not the fact that he lied to her so many times while guilt tripping her into coming here.</p><p>"Why did you really drag me here?" Mana asked.</p><p>"Well, to be honest, for once, I had hoped to show you around the rough, but not too rough, edges, then point you toward the part I can easily section off by myself and ask you to delete that. The crux of our deal was actually genuine. I really want you to delete a part of my memory, but we don't need to snoop around at all. In fact, I can point you to the exact location of that wing of my mental fort right now," Skaven shrugged, raising his arm to point at a seemingly unimpressive section leading to one of a few north-eastern sections of the rainbow mind junction.</p><p>"What sort of memories are those? Given how your award-worthy act about innocent people crying into your ear was all hogwash, what's really in there?" Mana looked in that specific direction. It seemed thoroughly unimpressive, save for a few vortexes of turbulent diamond dust winds blasting from the north strong enough to yank one off of the pathway entirely if one wasn't wary, skilled and of dominant will.</p><p>"That's the point of wanting to get rid of those memories, isn't it?" Skaven placed his hand on Mana's shoulder softly, though the magician pulled herself away from it. The young man may have saved her career and her dream of becoming a peace-inspiring Sannin, but he was still lying to her and doing so for unclear reason and Mana felt sick of enigmatic figures looking out for her while fostering unclear goals of their own.</p><p>"Either we see what's there, or I'm out." Mana put an ultimatum on the table, she closed her eyes trying to will an hourglass of shifting sands behind her but Skaven had such a firm and willful grip of his own mental plane that the magician had no hope of conceiving anything inside without his permission. Part of this was because of the presence of his Ego. The shell of his nut was just that incredibly tough to crack. By Mana's call, not even a hardened master interrogator would yield much in this venture, perhaps not even Seiga-sensei who taught Mana her craft.</p><p>"Wait, I'll explain everything if only you give me the chance," Skaven tried pacifying the situation, though it was hard taking him up on his word when he held such a tight clutch over Mana's mental presence inside of his mental fort. In her current situation, she was just a canary inside of an impenetrable glass cage–prime for a sightseeing tour but incapable of leaving wherever her wings might take her. Even if she'd chirp, who'd listen to her or hear her from inside of a glass box?</p><p>His explanation better would have been a damn fine one.</p>
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<a name="section0732"><h2>732. Chatter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Explain away, it's not like I have much choice," Mana crossed her arms. That wasn't entirely truthful, she may have tried leaving Skaven's mind though, given his superior knowledge and mental training, he'd have been just as capable keeping her here too if he employed his shoulder into it.</p><p>Skaven stuck out his tongue, revealing a sealing glyph. While Mana hadn't seen this particular sealing glyph, she was familiar with the general idea behind placing a powerful sealing technique on one's tongue and why it would make one hesitant to talk honestly. Although Mana thought herself to have much better judgment, the way she looked at Skaven softened and her arms weighed down beside her while she took two careful steps to observe the seal from closer up.</p><p>The sealing glyph disappeared behind Skaven's chompers alongside the tongue that it was decorating. The air around the two mental projections became heavy and turned heavier still with each passing moment. Skaven's impeccable control over his mental realm might have stumbled once or twice. At least now Mana had a clearer clue why Skaven kept some things a secret. Still, whether or not his life was on the line, nobody enjoyed dealing with people keeping secrets significant enough to protect in such a drastic way.</p><p>"Shige-H mentioned that you were a part of a band of outlaws. In my experience, bandits protect their secrets using far more brutish methods." While Mana couldn't hope to understand the secret that the sealing master placing this seal meant to protect, she could at least learn of the surrounding circumstances.</p><p>"That's because the Hellhounds weren't the ones that gave me this glyph." Skaven replied, spreading his arms out. While Mana's skills in reading people suggested his body language to imply truthfulness, such was the eternal problem with this enigmatic young man. He had an aura of shadows about him. He could have easily known how to pretend and adopt a body language of honesty, just as he manipulated his own mind like a master interrogator.</p><p>"A village then? The Allied Ninja wouldn't have taken a bandit in so you defected and offered a village your services, hoping to legitimize." Mana rubbed her chin with her thumb and index finger. With Skaven's mouth being sealed, literally sometimes, she had to do a decent amount of figuring out by herself with Skaven only serving as a waypoint toward the truth.</p><p>"That was a very perceptive leap." Skaven noted.</p><p>"I'm familiar with the general idea of resocialization, believe it or not…" Mana sighed as her memories flowed back to Eiju, a Quack who chose sickness and eventual death as a legitimate medical ninja under Konoha's employ rather than continuing to live long and prosperous as a Quack.</p><p>"I suppose someone who's so adamant about keeping her enemies alive would try to learn all about something like that and constantly have it on her mind. In any case, it was a village that gave me this seal." Skaven nodded.</p><p>"I suppose there's no point in asking why. A criminal approaching a village to work for it wouldn't be trusted as long as they drew breath, no matter how many times they've been useful." Mana scratched her head.</p><p>"He who turns around has already showed he has the capacity and the drive to do that. It's a wise decision, but it's not why the seal was put into place." Skaven massaged his throat, feeling a light pressure around it as the speech began creeping up to the subject of the secrets that the seal protected. "Regardless of the reason, I'd ask you to abandon this for a more opportune time. Now that we're here, I'd like you to tell my reasons of why I asked you in here. If you understand where I'm coming from, maybe you'll still choose to help me? If not because of the sense of debt for saving your life, then because you're just that kind of person."</p><p>Mana tsked her tongue. The tendency on random people she meets to have done their homework and possess vast masses of intelligence on her personality and accomplishments outside that which people might have known within reason, namely her career as a stage magician, was becoming irritating. Shige-H wanted Mana for her gang. She was looking for a specific kind of people, so it made a modicum of sense for her to research the new recruits. Skaven too, though?</p><p>"As we've already established, I possess a certain corner of my memories that reflects certain information that I cannot reveal to anyone under any circumstances. When I saw and heard you pass that Black Ops course test, I reflected on the circumstances we find ourselves in. Us all as Stars. At any point I can become incapacitated and with you–a casual mind roamer around, those memories, those secrets aren't safe anymore. That is the conclusion that I have come up with." Skaven said.</p><p>"I see. You wanted me to be aware of that corner so that if the need ever came to visit your mind, with or without your permission, I wouldn't expose those secrets and doom you to an asphyxiating death?" Mana concluded.</p><p>"Not quite. While, if you refuse to talk to me again, that is a favorable outcome in my situation still, I actually need you to make me forget those secrets because that is the only way of truly keeping them safe. I've come to realize that you're an interesting person to be around, and events fall into place around you that not even the most intelligent man on Earth would have precautions for. Who's to say that another assassin won't try to claim your head and that my memories will never become endangered with exposure in one way or another?" Skaven said.</p><p>"There is such a possibility, I suppose. Your mental training is profound, second to none, matching if not surpassing the head of Konoha's Intelligence Division. Still, all that training will be null if you're unconscious when your mind is being probed or if an interrogator of matching skill challenges you. Or if this theoretical assassin numbs your mind through extensive physical torture…" Mana admitted.</p><p>"You see? It is too dangerous for me to keep those memories." Skaven nodded.</p><p>"But those memories are there for a reason. Granted, I've no idea what that reason is, but they can teach you valuable lessons or warn you about something. Are you sure that you won't miss them? Can you even imagine your life without them and think their absence won't change anything?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Trust me, with the Stars back in action in full-roster, whatever lessons those memories teach me and whatever uses they serve are of to me are completely irrelevant." Skaven had a cocky smirk on his face that wasn't a usual denizen of the album comprising his worn facial expressions.</p><p>"One thing's still a bit baffling to me–how come you don't just cut those memories off yourself. Someone with your mental training should be able to just seal off those prospects and cut those memories off through meditation." Mana asked.</p><p>"True, but that always leaves those memories there and therefore the potential for them to resurface. That's too dangerous for me. I'd rather cut them out in a more violent, permanent way." Skaven nodded.</p><p>Before Mana could agree, a sharp shriek cut through the entire mental plane. A high-pitched, psycho noise of shredding blood thirst. It didn't come from the prospect of his memories that Skaven wanted to forget either. It was on the opposite side, on one path that Mana could have sworn led out of his mental fort entirely.</p><p>"What was that?" Mana couldn't let go of her own head for a few seconds, asking while sharpness returned to her dull stare and color returned to her eyes. The suddenness and terror of that noise was beyond compare. It was human but also just a little alien, just enough to freak Mana out in a way that only monster Honda did with his similarly human features and voice.</p><p>"It seems I'm not as much as a master of my own mind as we've thought." Skaven sighed, turning toward the southern rainbow-reflecting pathway with a troubled look. "It's impossible to keep everything under lock at all times, especially when there's another mental projection inside of your mind."</p><p>"You'd rather keep that with you? Just what sort of mysteries are the ones you want to forget?" Mana asked, knowing full-well that one could only interpret her question as rhetorical.</p><p>"Oh, yes. That's something I never want to forget. It's one of those… Educational memories, you see. Now, how about you sever that direction off for good, huh? I'd wager that you'd be able to do something like that while inside my own mind?" Skaven turned to Mana with an inquisitive glare.</p><p>"I might, but that wasn't our original deal. It's dangerous for my mind to be anywhere else but where it belongs and fully focused on the jutsu." Mana's voice trembled.</p><p>"Nonsense, from here you'll be able to see exactly where to cut and what to fry. You'll have a front view to the light show. Plus, if anything goes wrong–you'll suffer the consequences alongside me too, right?" Skaven teased Mana with a smirk, but Mana's glare sharpened in display that she wasn't about to take this as some sort of joke.</p><p>"I can try to multi-task. I've never done so before, but then again I've never been this precise with what I send to oblivion either." Mana sighed, dragging her hand across and back her messy hair. She wasn't sure just how much of that insurance policy gag Skaven meant for real, but she will honor whatever portion that was. "It might be for the better if you stay here. It'll hurt and with your Ego here it'll hurt a lot less. Barely at all, if you're good at distancing yourself."</p><p>"Speaking from experience as someone who's experienced torture?" Skaven raised his right eyebrow. In his light-blue eyes, Mana saw the search of a common soul from someone who's been through more than their own fair share of torture sessions. Just what was this guy's life?</p><p>"Something like that," Mana nodded. She didn't have to go into the details, just the look in her eyes and submissive body language that portrayed the fearful respect she had to those sections of her own memories was enough to sustain Skaven's appetite for companionship and connection with a kindred soul.</p><p>While Skaven would not admit it openly, he must have known a bit about sheltering himself off from physical pain while hiding inside of his mental fort. Inside one's mind, time was a very fickle thing. One could skip right through hours upon hours in mere seconds, or seconds could have lasted for an eternity. Time was at its most relative inside the mental plane. Problem was that mind was at its least stable during worrisome physical duress, which made controlling the flow of time in one's mind difficult. Skaven might not have wanted to be alone for what he felt like an eternity of shocking torture, but lacked the bravery to admit it to a girl.</p><p>Mana closed her eyes. Her mental projection flickered in and out of existence. Skaven realized that he had to let go of any attempts at controlling her coming and going and removed his influence from Mana's dealings. That was bold of him. She could have very easily taken a peep inside of his undesirable room and looked at a flash of his skeletons before he recognized she did that with his limited amount of control and perception of her mental projection.</p><p>"Um… You're see-through." Skaven extended his hand, poking it right through Mana, who looked as if she was just an afterimage of her previous reflection. He spoke in a louder tone than usual, checking if Mana was still here and that she could still hear him.</p><p>"I'm trying to stabilize in between my body and the Magician's Touch jutsu and in your mind…" Mana's translucent image reported. It was then that a resonant crack smashed at the bridge separating the section of his unwanted memories and the central part of the junction where all of those regions came into connection. Skaven's fearful expression, shocked by the suddenness of the lightning strike, glowed paler still in the lightning's flash. As the young man turned around, he saw a chasm that grew larger and larger as more and more of his bridge collapsed into nothingness.</p><p>"I felt that a bit…" Skaven's mental projection rubbed its head, even if it was a mere phantom. "Shit, I'd back off the second you zap me with that if that's how bad the shock is."</p><p>"That was the idea, originally…" Mana grunted through severe effort as a branching out wall of lightning bolts smashed into the region, like a foot kicking a door down, but Skaven's memories didn't budge. "I need to cut more connections. I'll need you to tell me some details about those memories. Something they're associated with, something that won't choke you up too bad."</p><p>Skaven thought long and hard on how to help Mana with it. He shrugged and shook his head, "Maybe I can show you?" was all that he could suggest.</p><p>"Charades? I won't know until you try?" Mana panted through the pressure that was making her head split and even her mental image wobbly in the knees.</p><p>A tree began taking root from where the chasm between the central junction and the forbidden section was. It was just a predecessor of a grander image to come as the tree began twisting and bending like the world's most stubborn and massive vine as more and more trees burst forth from the abyss down below and the sprouting forest began turning one around the other. The choice of a single oak tree felt odd and rather obscure and too abstract to mean something specific to Mana but the fact that the tree appeared to have no origin anywhere down under in the black void below and seemed to just spring into life before them from the tip of their roots and go up from there gave Mana a little clue.</p><p>Cracking and snappy fields of golden static began reacting around a few of speedways, also some marble-texture staircases that went down before connecting to another pathway, all of them ultimately led to the same direction. Mana focused as she'd rather not stop the procession halfway. The lightning storm laid a deafening siege, attracted to the fields of snappy static and reduced those paths, bridges and tunnels to rubble until the entire walled off section of Skaven's mind separated off the imperceivable force holding it suspended and collapsed into construction material as it joined the furious vortex of the storms guarding Skaven's mind.</p><p>"How are you feeling?" Mana's mental projection returned to its fully visible form as she let go of the part of her mind needed to maintain focus on the jutsu. She had to admit that snapping and cutting this way, with part of her mind present inside the mental fort, felt way more precise though she'd not have risked it had Skaven nod requested it specifically.</p><p>"I'm… I'm not sure…" Skaven coughed up in pain, he couldn't even stand up straight without Mana's help. "Did I flip the junction over by accident?"</p><p>"No, I think you're just feeling dizzy right now." Mana looked around to make sure she wasn't just talking out of her hiney on this. "Everything's just right. I'm impressed, actually."</p><p>"Well, it's just a few years of my life I can't vouch for, nothing major…" Skaven grit his teeth as he winced in pain. It was his best shot at accessing his memories that Mana had cut off.</p><p>"You remember what we've been doing here?" Mana's eyebrows sunk down as her mouth went ajar.</p><p>"Sure, I've got those memories of our conversation intact. All that I can't remember is what I asked you to cut out. Nice work, mind surgeon…" Skaven tried to smirk, but he looked too weak to muster it up.</p><p>Mana breathed out easier, feeling content that she didn't screw this one up in a major way though she would have been perfectly fine never doing something like this again. Her job here was done so after making sure that Skaven could straighten his back and stand on his own two feet, she tried relaxing and returning to her body.</p><p>"Skaven, you're still holding me here. I can't return." Mana sighed.</p><p>"Oh, sorry… I'll try loosening it up a bit. I was under a lot of pain. I strangely can only remember very little about it. Shit must have been intense enough to make me white out naturally." Skaven looked concerned about it at first, but then shrugged and dismissed his worries. It was only that his grip on their mental projections hadn't loosened one bit. It was as if something inside Skaven's mind held them in their tight grip and just didn't let go.</p><p>"Skaven… You're scaring me right now." Mana teased the young man who she thought was her friend though now, with all those questions and secrets, she just didn't feel all that sure about it.</p><p>"Um… I tried to disperse my Ego, thought maybe it would give you more rights to change and shift things around in my mind but… Nothing. That's odd." Skaven looked up into the sky and began looking around.</p><p>"Well, you're under a lot of stress right now. Your Ego might not seem like it, but your body, your subconscious must be howling. It's not at all surprising you've lost complete control. It doesn't take much to expel us out of here, I'm sure it'll return to you sooner rather than later," Mana sighed.</p><p>Being stuck inside Skaven's mind wasn't how she planned to spend the rest of that day. Especially with the host being too exhausted to stay in control and his base, more primal instincts slowly filling in the gaps of control where skill and training retreated temporarily. The bestial, high-pitched howl filled the air again, followed by the noise of bony chatter. Although a noise as subtle as chatter shouldn't have reached their ears, this was the mental plane and weirder things than inconsistencies with the volume of sound had happened.</p><p>"Shit! I really hope I don't end up driving both of us mad or leaving us comatose and stuck here forever." Skaven began scanning the surrounding environment frantically. Mana had to admit that even she was feeling the shaky railing underneath and hearing the steel wrangle as some sick, supernatural force tried tearing or breaking the entire junction apart.</p><p>"Your mental fort is collapsing in of itself. If you don't calm down and take control–it will fall apart and then it's just your wild, untethered mind. We'll have to kiss our mental selves goodbye if we get stuck in between your imagination and subconscious. Get a hold of yourself!" Mana tried slapping some sense into her fellow Stars member, but he looked drained to a state of a pathetic husk.</p><p>This won't be a mere inconvenience. It'll be a desperate race for the grand prize of getting to keep their sanities intact!</p>
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<a name="section0733"><h2>733. Thoughts Of Bones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I… I can't keep it for long…" Skaven complained, grabbing hold of his head and exclaiming in pain as his back stretched and bent back as an instinctual jerk in reaction to the pain and the stress of fighting against himself.</p><p>He was too tired. It would have been for the best if he had slept this off and recovered his weary mind from the strain that it experienced during the banishing of his memories. Now he was a mess inside of his own mind and just as screwed by this situation as Mana was. The magician girl dashed up to Skaven, grabbed hold of him by weaving her arms under his armpits. She kicked off and took flight by converting her desire for her and Skaven to survive this ordeal into pure willpower–the currency for power inside of anybody's mind.</p><p>"You're flying…" Skaven muttered the obvious.</p><p>"Yeah, your weakened mind can't fend off my willpower anymore, so be a treat, and don't put up those blocks anymore," Mana said.</p><p>"Sorry… If that's going to happen, I won't be in much of control over anything." Skaven admitted.</p><p>"Yeah, I know. I was joking in the face of disaster. It's the only semblance of control I had exhibit sometimes." Mana sighed with a worried expression as she bolted through the many teal circuits looming over the various mental bridges on the collapsing junction.</p><p>"You're taking us inside my memories," Skaven spoke out after he realized Mana's plan.</p><p>"It's somewhere else than here, and that's the only criteria I'm looking for," Mana confirmed it while she turned around to avoid smashing into the top of a circuit as her swooping motion picked up speed drastically. With each circuit passed, the surrounding shrouds became blurry and one-note, and the pathway of glistening steel became even flashier and even more rainbow-like.</p><p>Without Skaven's impeccable control over his own mind, not only was the military-tier order toppling in on itself, but Mana found it possible to pass inside his memories without Skaven's permission as well. His Ego was becoming weaker by the second, though that had to be only temporary. The dreadful roar and bony chatter filled the air, this time closer. It felt as if whatever the source to this abhorrent cacophony of noise was would just now grab hold of the two young adults and crush them into a bloody stain in its gigantic grip but, in a flash of white, the junction and the mental nebula all disappeared at once.</p><p>"That thing…" Mana finally gathered enough strength to speak up after a session of panting, while gentle blades of grass caressed her thighs and subtle pokes of sunlight breached through the leafage and tickled her face. "It's a nightmare of yours, isn't it?"</p><p>"Something like that…" Skaven nodded, looking up at the sky with the shriveled up expression of someone who had just emerged after having spent more than enough time underwater to drown any lesser man. Once he recovered from the immediate haze and dizziness, the Nara sat up and ran his hand through his hair with a clearer look in his eyes. His willpower was slowly coming back to him. Just how long would it take for them to bust out, though?</p><p>"Why didn't you ask me to cut it out too?" Mana shook her head, exploring the space of this memory as it had plenty of space that did not involve the event that etched itself inside of this recollection. Usually, this happened with notable events where plenty of experiences relating to the surrounding environment played just as much of a part as the event itself.</p><p>"I told you already–I want him haunting me. It reminds me what I'm doing all of this for. Don't you sometimes waver? Wonder why get out of bed at all that day?" Skaven wheezed out, clarifying that whatever he just went through in this rough transition inside his own memories had a compressing effect on his chest cavity.</p><p>Mana looked away, noticing a young child in a loose, blue jacket and fishnet shirt. Even though Mana knew that this rascal could have only been Skaven because of similarities in the facial structure and the fact that she was roaming his memories so it wouldn't have made sense for them to notice anyone but the Nara himself, present Skaven looked so much different from his child self.</p><p>In the past, Skaven didn't look all that much different from most Nara. Healthy body complexion, a rather slim body build, and luscious black hair that he held in a spiky ponytail behind him. This must have been before the sum of Skaven's experiences converted him into the half-shaved, decrepit punk he looked like right now. Bags under his eyes and unhealthy, turning to a shade of banana grey skin included.</p><p>"This is… Konoha." Mana took no time at all in recognizing the familiar woods just outside the village she grew up in. "I didn't know that you belonged to the main, Konoha branch of the Nara clan."</p><p>"How could you? I made it my mission to reject as many people as I could with my attitude and my appearance." Skaven stood up and ran his hand through his half-shaved hair, staring at his own younger reflection playing with shogi figures on top of a flat stone. Whatever he was doing, playing actual shogi wasn't a part of this process. Young Skaven used a piece to prance around the stone like a horse while another one supposedly breathed fire on it, as evidenced by the kid flicking the "horse" away with his fingers.</p><p>"Son, what are you doing?" an older Nara sporting a full-beard ran up to his descendant and pulled on his hand, noticing the scattered shogi pieces of an incomplete set. "I was just about to show you around the Nara Clan Forest."</p><p>"You've noticed me slipping away, didn't you?" the little rebel pouted his lips while blowing out his cute cheeks.</p><p>"It's not like you were being subtle. You've scared away the deer with your dinosaur-feet clapping against the dirt. Are those shogi pieces? What are they doing here? Don't tell me you've slipped some into your pocket to practice some moves?" Skaven's father picked up the scattered pieces, examining them. "While admirable for an aspiring strategist, this is not the time for that, Skaven."</p><p>"Those stupid herbs are boring!" Skaven yelled out, lowering his tiny fists and pressing them clenched to his sides as his resonating voice signified his stance against his shocked father. "That's all that we're doing, looking at some stupid grass. Who cares what's doing what? I don't care about that junk, anyway. And deer? Deer are stupid, what kind of clan symbol is a deer?"</p><p>A clap followed by a husky cough coming from the side of the hurt boy falling on his knees with a dull look in his eyes and a trace of blood that Mana could taste herself on her own lip as well, lingering on the boy's face. Skaven's father approached his blanked-out son, looming in front of him like a brick wall as he gave the boy a stern look.</p><p>"You will silence yourself instead of talking rubbish like that, boy," he hissed out in a silent tone, and yet, despite the limited volume, it reached all over the woods and seeped into Skaven's ears like venom dripping from a serpent's fangs. "You are a descendant of a major branch of the Nara clan. I expected my son to have outgrown this childish foolishness."</p><p>"Shut up!" Skaven screamed out right at his father's face as he jumped on his feet. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I'm sick of your stupid boring shogi, I don't give a crap about some stupid weeds or wussy deer! Those dumb-ass pieces of that dry board game are too boring to even have any edges to slit my wrists with so I don't have to act like I give a shit about its stupid rules!"</p><p>"It goes like this for a while…" Skaven tried to pull the visage of these memories away like a blanket covering a wall, but Mana's willpower hammered it down as she kept watching. Without as much as a twitch to his face, Skaven's father began digging his fists and feet into his rebellious son. There was no anger in his movements and every single blow was pre-determined, considered, and weighed. They were meant to hurt, but not to maim or leave any marks.</p><p>"While what your father expected of you wasn't at all like that which people would want out of early teens, neither is the vitriol you showed to your father." Mana sighed heavily.</p><p>"It felt so good. Being angry, being able to yell what I thought right into the face of that stuck-up asshole." Skaven smirked, running his hand through his greasy hair with ecstasy on his face. Seeing those memories from up close inside of them was just like reliving it all over again, as opposed to merely recalling them as distant flashes.</p><p>"I've noted it before–the cruel expectations of children brought up in esteemed ninja clans to justify the clan's reputation. As a child, I wanted to have been born as a part of a clan too, instead of being just a nobody born to a clanless chuunin and a café owner, but I'm not so sure anymore." Mana sighed, helping Skaven tear a hole inside of the fabric of his memories to push forth further. The more unstable the mental fort, the easier time they'll have busting out at the end of the day.</p><p>"Yeah, having a childhood is pretty cool. With my old man hassling me with what to say, what to think and feel, and when, it felt like his choking me out every passing day of the week. No wonder I kicked that life in the nuts and joined a gang, huh?" Skaven shrugged as he stepped over the tear inside his own memories onto the other side.</p><p>"I didn't have much of a childhood either way," Mana admitted with her crystalline gleam forming in her eyes. "I was way too weird for some, far too unimportant for others."</p><p>The Skaven kneeling in front of a masculine ringleader wearing a bodysuit of leather adorned with what seemed like actual skeletal remains as accessories looked a lot more similar to the current Skaven. He had a much different hairdo with his black hair falling over his shoulders and the Nara earrings missing from his ears. Instead of the rather expensive jacket that he wore before, he hid his fishnet shirt under a bunch of rags that looked like he made them out of straw potato bags.</p><p>Behind the kneeling, troubled youth stood a handful of men in black, full-body bodysuits of glistening leather that only allowed the ovals of their faces to beam to the outside. Even then, they had all traces of facial hair meticulously removed to appear about as monotone as possible and one of the three held a snappy, four-men-long whip rolled around his hand while the big one cradled a massive mace with a steel fist on top of it where the bashing tip was meant to be. Each finger of the steel fist had a metal ring on it with a spike instead of a jewel.</p><p>"That's a pleasant look, punk!" the leader of Hellhounds chuckled to himself, opening himself up for a fit of pleased laughter. "But just because you're submissive and can follow orders, it don't make you a Hellhound, you know."</p><p>"It doesn't? I'll do whatever it takes. I just want to be free to do whatever I want whenever I want. So sick of following rules, but I'm willing to learn and obey to become one of you!" Skaven straightened his back. Cold sweat ran down his face and there was no making out of his pupils inside of his wide eyes. "I'm willing to work for and earn my freedom!"</p><p>"Earn? That's good. I like that word." The leader of Hellhounds who swung his pair of silver ponytails over a head of long, spiky black hair about like a deer swiping its horns struck an ecstatic pose as he wagged his hand at the looming figure of the largest out of his bodysuit-donning goons. Just as Skaven had been stretching out his back and begging for acceptance, the giant had been preparing to reach with his mace over Skaven's throat and strangle him with a gleeful, adoring simper, but he drew back at the command of the leader.</p><p>"Tell me, brat, what do you feel right now?" the whip-holding bodysuit goon cracked his whip before throwing it at Skaven and tying its end around the young man's arm before he manipulated the frightened youth to the floor and dragged him around like useless, wet rag to clean the sticky floor with.</p><p>"Hurting, afraid, lonely, sir!" Skaven cried out. Blood poured down his face from his busted nose and the place where being dragged across the floor knocked a tooth out, but his expression was also one full of determination to survive and flourish. Any amount of punishment, as long as it came alongside the freedom to live his way free as a rogue, was worth it compared to the mockery and disappointment of his clan.</p><p>"These feelings. They permeating the atmosphere." Mana noted.</p><p>"Yeah, you can imagine how much I wanted this. As crazy as it's looking from here." Skaven nodded.</p><p>"No. That's not it. These feelings feel fresh. You're feeling them right now, filling these memories with them. There is something missing in this, something that you've felt at the time, something at the corner of your mind that's missing from this picture." Mana shook her head. She had thought it to be another one of Skaven's enigmas, but the Nara looked to agree with her and began pondering on it. There was nothing in what Mana saw him do that would have suggested he was half-assing it and that he didn't care to find out what was lurking beneath this void inside of his memories.</p><p>"Sorry, no good." Skaven shrugged. "Anyway, there's no use staying around here and watching this drivel. Let's keep romping."</p><p>As the Nara tore a new one inside the center of his memory, Mana took a moment to stare at the brutal initiation ritual that had been transpiring without them to keep watch over the constantly looping memory. Skaven had been gritting and writhing in pain on the ground as the whipping bodysuit goon had dragged the new initiate closer to the leader who stomped over Skaven's head.</p><p>"You haven't earned the feeling of being afraid. You haven't earned the right to feel pain or to be lonely. Shit like that gets punished in our midst!" the leader stuck out his tongue while dropping a short blade by Skaven's side and leaning down to yank the fallen Nara by his hair. Feeling like she's seen enough, Mana stepped into the breach and kept breaching through until she reached Skaven, who by now had regained enough strength to burrow through his mind by himself.</p><p>"That blade. What did that punishment entail?" Mana asked when she caught up to her fellow Stars member.</p><p>"My father cut my ponytail when I pissed him off enough. It's basically the worst kind of humiliation a Nara can endure. It's rare that a Nara who lost their ponytail gets to return to the clan's good graces. I'm not sure what Fukaji wanted me to do with it, but I trimmed my hair the way you see it today, and seeing me look dead inside was enough torment for him." Skaven explained. "I like this memory. I'd like it if we stuck around a little more."</p><p>Mana found this declaration peculiar given how the memory had been in the same rundown and dusty room as before, however, unlike before, the place had not even a sprinkle of nocturnal serenity about it but was instead drowning in cinders. The walls had splashes of blood decorating them as if someone had turned a sprinkler on and directed it to the halls on purpose.</p><p>"We've gotta scram, you idiot. The Konoha ninja, they're butchering us all!" Fukaji hissed out in a whisper so that his voice wasn't overhead by anyone committing unseen atrocities, outside of which there were only agonizing howls and momentary wet splatters. An occasional, miraculous, vocal shimmer of steel cutting through the air pitched in as well.</p><p>"I don't know, leader…" Skaven slowly stood up off of his perched position and approached his leader within an arm's distance. Fukaji's eyes widened in painful shock and he looked down. Skaven didn't wait around for the leader of Hellhounds to notice the blade in his gut and he thrust it upwards, opening his leader up in a shower that covered Skaven in red. "I just don't know if I've earned the right to be afraid yet." Skaven finished his thought.</p><p>"Y-You're… With…" Fukaji tried speaking, but he was slowly drowning in his own blood lying on his back.</p><p>"I'm not with them, I was the one who tipped the ANBU off." Skaven wiped his chokuto before swiping it to remove the drips of blood that persisted in their choice to remain stuck on his blade. "You, the Hellhounds, even that freak, man-eater Mukihone. I've told them all about it. At least you can now live up to your names."</p><p>The sound of tearing cloth distracted both Mana and Skaven, who at the time was still adoring the memory like someone jammed to their favorite tune after not having heard it for a decade. It was an open mouth filled with rows of worn-out and chewed-off teeth. Blades of bone cut through the fabric of the memory space while muscular, goldenrod-skinned arms reached inside to grab hold of the two waiting about. The infernal chatter of bones clanging one against another and against rock, steel, and wood one at a time drowned the atmosphere out, though this time it came alongside the smell of rotten corpses that emanated from the mouth.</p><p>Just as Mana's body stiffened up in terror of the closing teeth chomping her in half vertically, the diamond dust whirlwind ripped her and Skaven away from the reach of the featureless, fleshy cream-colored monster and carried them off. Being cut away by diamond dust howling inside of a tornado was hardly a superior fate to being gobbled up, but Mana felt it being a more dignified way of going. Everything went black for a second just as the tearing force began pulling on every inch of Mana's skin and ripped off her clothes, shredding them to bits in a second.</p><p>"It's okay," Skaven's hand rested on Mana's shoulder. The magician jumped up and sat up, looking around the room. "I ripped us out. Mukihone gave us quite a scare, but we'll survive. Sorry you had to go through this and thanks for the memories you've dealt with. I won't forget this."</p><p>Skaven didn't talk to Mana for the rest of that day.</p>
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<a name="section0734"><h2>734. May The Real Best, Please Stand Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Honestly, what's that guy's problem?" Endo simmered, giving Skaven fiery glares from the other side of the row where the Stars sat alongside one another. With the entire roster of the gang being filled up and the recruitment closed for good, the lot of them occupied an entire line all by themselves. "See that? Won't even reply to me that prick…"</p><p>"I've only seen him talk casually to Mana so you're barking up the wrong tree here, buddy." Damisan pointed out with way more vigor than he should have displayed when addressing someone who had never once spoken to him without attaching a demeaning title somewhere in a focal part of the sentence.</p><p>"Not to mention that we're in the middle of a lecture." Mana rolled her eyes with a muzzled whisper. Little Tomi chuckled from Mana's right. "You shouldn't be barking up trees at all."</p><p>"The reason he won't talk to me is because he knows I'd show him he's not all that the instance we throw down." Endo finally settled down. He seldom used the comfort of a deceitful web to help him ease up from his anger fits. Whether Endo knew it somewhere in that hot-headed noggin of his that his serenity came from a lie bothered Mana very little.</p><p>"Calm down, Endo. This is the Teamwork course, the one place we're supposed to shine 'cause we're allowed to do tests and perform as a crew here," Shige-H took up her role as a leader seriously. She even gone far enough to stand out and talk over Endo, which was the one prerequisite necessary for the feisty numbskull to hear someone.</p><p>"Shige-H. I see that the Stars are volunteering to perform in today's lesson." Tutor Kushon pressed her teal-colored fingernail to her lip. It was something of note, given the excessive headdresses that the woman usually wore so whenever she touched her own face without flicking the hard materials comprising them or tangle her hand in feathers or colorful strings it was always impressive. "That's just amazing, but given your level of renown amongst the recruits, I'll be expecting some splendid results as well."</p><p>"Great, now we're all in trouble…" Endo rolled his eyes. "Thanks, jerk," the apprentice leaned forward to direct a stare at Skaven, who possessed an aura of calmness and utter dismissal to the extra attention they've earned as a group that matched his complete apathy toward Endo and his attitude.</p><p>With the theoretical part of the lecture finally being over, the entire hall of recruits rushed outside into the training grounds for the practical part of the activity. The Stars took their place on the training grounds while the rest scattered all across the observational stands to oversee the practice exercise and judge the performing group with about the same level of strictness and about half as much knowledge of what they were even looking for as compared to tutor Kushon herself.</p><p>"Do any of you even remember the subject I was lecturing about today?" the extravagant tutor positioned her hands on her hips as she instructed the group with her finger before feeling inclined to push her slipping stone headdress back into a more suitable position.</p><p>"Roles." Mana replied. She's been out of action for so long and has been showing some struggling with her test results enough for her to have more than one thing to prove. She simply couldn't ignore the fact that being a source for competent homework and on-the-spot knowledge for the Stars was a role she struggled to live up to, even if she never asked for it to begin with. Regardless, failing to live up to it lately didn't help her general mood and future prospects with the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"That's rather broad, but given that I didn't state the subject, I'll allow you to summarize it like that. That's right. Whether or not you like it, each team member fulfills a role in a team. Even two complete strangers eventually settle in roles, with or without their direct attempt to do so. It's only natural. What defines an experienced ninja and separates them from a newbie is the ability to switch those roles and improvise with them on the fly." Kushon elaborated.</p><p>As the educational figure stopped talking, light burst forth from the seals all over the training grounds forcing the recruits to cover up their eyes because of natural irritation while Kushon lowered her stone headdress to hide her eyes under black lenses that only revealed themselves to serve such a purpose once the woman changed the position of her headgear. Normally the lenses hung at about her forehead level. Naturally, because of such a drastic dip, the accessory flaunted its colorful feathers as they fell over on the front side.</p><p>After the light settled, the Stars realized that they were inside a rundown warehouse that spanned the entire training grounds. Since their memory served just fine, in such cases the happenings of inside enclosed training ground fields appeared on screens at the top of the construction, wherever that might have been.</p><p>"This place looks like the backstage area of most halls." Mana said in passing observation.</p><p>"Only because my assistant for today asked it to be like that," tutor Kushon smirked, revealing the colorful and odd field to not even be the last surprise the Stars would have to work with for that day. An ear-shaking pop preceded a straight-up rising eruption of smoke and dust, though it wasn't an ordinary method of Body Flicker Jutsu. The user had customized the technique somewhat showing some decent knowledge and comfort using it as streamers and confetti flew out alongside the smoke.</p><p>"Is this a joke?" Skaven pointed at the man that appeared beside tutor Kushon. He came to work that day wearing a flashy, striped suit donned over a shirt that didn't at all match the suit's colors and a bowtie that might have spanned half of his head if positioned properly. The man, despite having the features of a dark-skinned Kumogakure native, had purposefully dyed his face pitch black with ghastly features provided by white make-up, and he donned a jester's hat with the jingling bells and all.</p><p>"A joke, is it a reference to how I look? That's rich, it is!" the man cracked up, grabbing his gut and turning around in a genuine attempt not to collapse on the ground and start rolling in cackling. "Nope, I'm a ninja magician, I am!"</p><p>"So it is a joke. And I'm the clown…" Mana muttered in somber self-reflection, realizing how more close-minded people might have seen her just like this. Even there seemed to be a league of difference between the attitude and how she and this man carried themselves around–trying to point at them would have been a moot point when talking to a member of an older generation of ninja with much stricter ideas of what ninja could have and what they should have been like.</p><p>"This is Purini-D. A ninja magician, not unlike Nakotsumi Mana. In fact, I believe that Mana inspired this gimmick that Purini-D has adopted in his later career, hasn't she?" tutor Kushon turned to the guest she invited for the lecture.</p><p>"That's right. I used to be a boring, old Kumogakure jounin back in the day, but then I saw young Mana perform on stage. After finding out that she's a kunoichi too, I decided to have a little bit of fun at work too," the jester bowed. While he looked absolutely ridiculous in that getup and his tone of voice was loud and screechy, his chakra signature was matching the size of a jounin and the amount of close combat training Mana had tipped her off to how economical and confident the man's movements were.</p><p>"I guess now you guys understand why I was so excited to pick you for today's practice! Sure, it would have been fun seeing just about anyone perform against Purini-D, but this match-up has a sprinkle of poetry to it, don't you guys think?" tutor Kushon nodded her head twice, as if affirming it to herself that this was an excellent idea would have left the audience and the performing recruits just as convinced.</p><p>"So we have to take this clown on?" Endo growled, already reaching for the scroll containing his restored and sharpened double-blade sword. "Beat him all together and we're in the clear - top scores and bonus for the test this month, right?"</p><p>"Not quite, I'm afraid. I'll leave you guys with Purini-D to explain the rules of the exercise. I'll be looking forward to seeing you guys in action!" the female tutor winked before performing the Body Flicker Jutsu to remove herself from the enclosed premises of this massive backstage area that basically served no purpose.</p><p>"Well then, there are essentially two ways of beating this exercise–defeat me or claim the prize hidden in the training grounds. You can complete this assignment without scoring the prize that your tutor went through some trouble to procure. I'm sure it would break her heart if you did that." Purini-D explained while posing around and grabbing a stuffy wand that he spun about and toyed with as he spoke. Being an expert at sleight of hand, Mana couldn't skip past how quick and trained Purini-D's hands were. These weren't nerves guiding the toy wand–it was instinct.</p><p>"You've noticed it, didn't you?" Endo smirked, glancing at Mana.</p><p>"Yeah, let's not underestimate him, however weird he looks." Mana nodded.</p><p>"Those moves, that swiftness, he's a knife-fighter." Endo elaborated to the Stars that noted the pair's mumbling in a similarly reserved tone. "I don't think I've seen hands this good at handling knife-sized objects before. And master's concubine was known to fillet a vagrant or two that didn't please master's eyes."</p><p>"What's this prize you're talking about?" Damisan wondered, raising a mechanical finger that hummed pleasantly as the steel rubbed against the rubbery filling in between the pieces.</p><p>"The Ruby Supernova. A ruby stone etched into a golden star-shaped accessory, it is." Purini-D waved his hands around slowly, speeding them up for a single wave before a star-shaped toy appeared in between his right thumb and index. "This one's just a replica, so don't get any bright ideas, don't get any." The ninja magician cackled as he made it disappear just as easily with a wave of his hand as he made it appear.</p><p>"Huh? Looks neat and shiny but it doesn't look much besides something to please birds with glitter…" Tomi rested her head on her crossed behind her head arms. It was rare to see a little girl that didn't immediately erupt in sparkling joy at the sight of a gemstone as well-refined and incrusted as this. "Does it do anything special?"</p><p>"Not at all, not at all!" Purini-D proclaimed, posing with open hands as he positioned himself on one leg, stretching the right one out to the side.</p><p>"So what's the point? Does it net extra points then? Like maybe the Stars automatically will pass the Teamwork course by flashing it?" Shige-H scratched her chin, trying to figure out the point behind this illustrious prize.</p><p>"Try again, try again!" Purini-D spun around on his one leg, acting as if he was making fools of the imaginative recruits.</p><p>"I'll tell you what it does!" Endo clenched his fist out in front of his chest with a determined look on his face. "It yells loud and clear that whoever holds it is better than those without it!"</p><p>"Huh, how does that even work, how does it?" Purini-D leaned by, placing his open hand by his ear in a cartoonish manner as he squinted his eyes. "Do tell, do tell…"</p><p>"I don't care what you think it does, clown!" Endo became all fired up. "Those that gun for the gemstone, those who claim it, they're ninja of remarkable guts and skill. They're ninja that do not settle for mediocrity and are ready to strike for the jugular whenever the enemy taunts them! They're the best of the best and having that gemstone relays the message that unlike this jester, the one holding it is the king!"</p><p>"It's a meaningless distraction from the goal is what it is." Mana groaned, realizing that with this foolish, masculine obsession with having to prove he's the best at all times, Endo might sabotage the entire exercise.</p><p>"It might be a goal in of itself though…" Damisan pointed out. "I wouldn't mind being the best at something either…"</p><p>"Not you too…" Tomi shook her head in disappointment in a young man almost a decade older than her. "I'm with Mana-nee on this one. Let's just kick the clown's ass!"</p><p>"Perhaps we should put it to a vote?" Shige-H wondered to herself.</p><p>"Seriously? What kind of leader are you?" Skaven raised his right eyebrow, giving Shige-H a questioning look.</p><p>"Oh, are you finally going to contribute something to the plan!?" Endo flipped out, shaking his fist out in Skaven's direction who just sighed and straightened his back, leaning back on his arms as he looked away to examine the countless impractical props laying all over the place.</p><p>"Wow, it's like they've completely forgotten I even exist, it's like that…" Purini-D scratched below his eye before sighing and clapping his hands. As a potent gust of wind picked up, the curtain under a bunch of useless scrap slipped out and covered the ninja magician up, providing him with a way to slip away from the Stars' attention and hide until they try looking for him or to locate the Ruby Supernova.</p><p>"What's wrong, Mana?" Shige-H noted the severity decorating Mana's look as the magician stared at a banjo peeking its star-shaped plastic corner from under a pile of trash.</p><p>"It's something that tutor Kushon said, about roles in a team. I have a feeling that there was a point to all that and that we might not win much by trying to confront this situation the way we normally do." Mana expressed her worries.</p><p>"If that's your way of taking over the Stars, I have something to say about that." Endo smirked. "As I have been plotting to take over for a while now."</p><p>"You have?" Shige-H scratched her head, looking a bit taken aback by this proclamation.</p><p>"Of course, I suppose, you're a decent placeholder just for now." Endo shrugged. "I've come to think that you're the second most suited person to lead this team. Plus, it's not like I can claim my leadership without the signifier of being the best clutching in my hand."</p><p>"Please tell me you're not still talking about that stupid gemstone!" Mana grabbed her head, nearly losing her hat in the process as the sudden motion forced it to move back and take a dangerously dangling angle to stay on top of the magician's head.</p><p>"Heh, for now let's just carry on as we are." Shige-H nodded twice, overcome by nerves of realizing that one of her less stable gang members had been plotting to remove her as a leader of the group she assembled. "We'll see if we need to change our roles once we encounter difficulty."</p><p>"Can you though?" Skaven spoke up again. Given how rare such an instance was from the half-shaved rebel who just carried on by himself mostly even when accompanying the most noticeable gang in the entirety of Allied Ninja, when he spoke up–people took note and stopped talking. "Can you make a call like that as a leader?"</p><p>"What's gotten into you guys?" Shige-H pulled the collar of her fur coat, becoming a tad disgruntled by this joke of a topic becoming more and more serious as Stars mentioned it repeatedly. "I've put this gang together, I've researched your personalities and your skills for just this purpose."</p><p>"Yeah, but I know what everybody's like: Damisan's always energetic and keeps losing his body parts, Mana-nee is smart but quiet but she dresses classy and stands out to overcompensate with her need for attention, Endo's a doofus and Skaven doesn't matter and he doesn't want to matter. You keep talking about being the leader, but you're always just along for the ride." Tomi pouted while she listed her impressions of everyone.</p><p>"Apart from the part where the brat insulted me, I agree." Endo nodded. "You did little to get us out of trouble. Worse yet–we didn't even get in trouble because of you."</p><p>"We got in trouble because of you!" Mana clenched her fists and swung them down with a growl.</p><p>"Is that how everyone feels?" Shige-H sighed.</p><p>"Guys… Skaven's gone." Damisan pointed at the dimly lit, endless labyrinth of corridors cluttered with useless stage props such as balloons, all sorts of cycles, from mono to quadra, and musical instruments and the sort.</p><p>"That bastard! As if I'm letting him claim my prize!" Endo yelled out before taking off in a much hastier and louder way, pretty much challenging Purini-D to take a swing at him from the shadows.</p><p>"Wait, guys, I haven't still figured out what we feel like about me being the leader!" Shige-H yelled out, though her voice could only clasp at shadows and darkened objects hidden inside. The leader of Stars sighed.</p><p>"Don't be down, since you haven't been demoted yet–that means you're still the leader!" Damisan gave Shige-H a thumb-up. Given Mana's moderate taste for gambling, as long as she could stack the odds accordingly in her favor, she'd have bet that he was smiling under that cylinder too.</p><p>"Make the call," Mana nodded in agreement. "Do we cut those two off and look for Purini-D, do we look for the Ruby Supernova or do you have a different idea?"</p><p>"Well, I'd like to hear some…" Shige-H shrugged before little Tomi interrupted her by jumping up and bursting in petite wrath.</p><p>"I swear, if you say something along the lines of "how do all of us" feel, I'll kick you!" she growled with an animalistic, primal tone seeped with roughness like only she could.</p>
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<a name="section0735"><h2>735. Dolls Feel No Pain</h2></a>
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      <p>"Can you sense Purini-D anywhere, Mana?" Shige-H turned to the magician who kept on turning her irises in each direction. It was both because she expected the far goofier ripoff of her own gig to jump out from any corner with an attack and because she found this specific chosen battlefield to be quite interesting. Every time her eyes settled on a rundown prop, she became entranced by thoughts of how one could have used that prop for some fine stage magic.</p>
      <p>It's been far too long since she's been on the stage, and Mana longed for it to where it was distracting her.</p>
      <p>"Yeah. He's using clones. Purini-D's signature's all over the place." Mana replied.</p>
      <p>A flash of light so candy-red that even without its shocking luminosity it would have etched into one's eye merely because of the shade of its color alone stopped the group in their path. Mana had heard the noise that followed before. She knew that noise to define steel-tipped cards whizzing in the air though, judging by their noise, they weren't coming anywhere near the dazed Stars.</p>
      <p>"Ninja Style: Suppression Arrows!" a sharp voice pierced the grave silence that reigned in once the blinding flash took hold of the ninja and they realized that with their eyes shut they'd need to guide themselves through other senses which was why they didn't obstruct each other by talking. The cards lit up with sealing glyphs in a tactic that was not alien to Mana's own fighting style.</p>
      <p>Instead of a low-ranking jutsu or some other effect, however, the cards all collectively unsealed a blitzing arrow that buzzed down to pin the nearest target. Mana's body stiffened as she stared down at a hole inside of her abdomen where the arrow penetrated and etched itself into the floor. This revealed itself to be an illusion as the body stiffened in agony soon dispersed into flower petals that scattered all throughout the room.</p>
      <p>A powerful bubble of emerald chakra burst forth from Shige-H. The green energy that could have only been some sort of modification on the Mystical Palm technique that medical ninja used reduced the arrows into rusty tips that clanged onto the floor useless as their wooden shafts turned to dust. Resonant metallic scrapes and thuds came from Damisan's direction as the puppeteer used his prosthetic limbs to shield himself from harm using their stalwart blocks. Despite his wide-reaching guard, his limbs received some mean-looking scrapes as a monument of blocking Purini's attack.</p>
      <p>Tomi whizzed a pair of long bolas before her. The rope Tomi tied them out from and their velocity proved sufficient to shield the young lady from the downpour of arrows homing in on her. Purini-D became exposed by using a sealing technique right in front of them. His primary candy-red flash only kept him safe for so long and with Mana's illusionary rose petals flooding the backstage battlefield he was open for assault.</p>
      <p>"Petal Shuriken Jutsu!" Mana clapped her hands together after half of her shape manifested from a whirl of moving airborne rose petals. The scattered remnants of gorgeous flowers transformed themselves into shuriken as they all spun in pursuit of Purini-D who remained stuck upright to the ceiling. The man screamed out and covered himself up as the illusionary shuriken skewered his body. While neither the shuriken nor the flower petals they came from were real–Purini-D's body very much believed them to be.</p>
      <p>"Eek!" the riddled with shuriken man exclaimed before collapsing to the floor and gasping in pain. He would take far less time to identify an illusion given how this might have been a clone of his, and it hadn't suffered enough damage to dispel. "As expected from Konoha's Sorceress, as I expected," the copycat whined out.</p>
      <p>"Don't undersell yourself, you've still got us in for a loop, don't you–this is just a clone, after all," Mana shrugged as the remaining flower petals whirled into a vortex that revealed her true shape once she undid the illusion.</p>
      <p>"Correct, though you're not the only one up to my mind games, you are not. I am also aware that once I dispel this clone, the stress and mental damage from your illusions shall return to the host body as do all the experiences of shadow clones, they will do that," Purini-D smirked with a smile that twisted out the skull-motif of his make-up leaving it as something unrecognizable.</p>
      <p>"You're wasting our time!" little Tomi yelled out, leaping with a ferocious charge with her boomerang in hand and driving the tool right into the man's forehead hard enough to crack his skull and etch half of her weapon inside of it. This ruthless blow left Purini-D with no option of keeping his clone intact and forced it to dispel. "Serves you right, that verbal tick of yours was seriously pissing me off!" the wild girl stuck out her tongue to where the subdued clone once laid.</p>
      <p>The candy-red light aura enveloped Tomi, freezing her in a stiff pose of her arms and legs spread out as her entire body began convulsing wildly. The candy aura shocked in flashing jolts, emitting stray bolts outward as little Tomi began shrinking down. That was not the sum of her changes, however. Tomi's very skin texture began shifting to something resembling wood more rather than human skin while her dull and greyed out eyes lost their irises completely and became replaced by nacre buttons. Tomi's lifeless doll body clacked once when it hit the ground.</p>
      <p>"Tomi!" Shige-H yelled out, rushing up to her ally and picking her off the ground to inspire some signs of life back into her doll friend. "What happened, is this an illusion?"</p>
      <p>"Unlikely." Mana shook her head. She was second to very few in identifying and weaving illusions and a technique that made everyone around a person believe that their friend had turned into a doll was not entirely impossible though it didn't felt practical enough for the hassle that such a technique would require to pull off. "This reminds me more of the Yamanaka clan sealing techniques. Members of the Yamanaka clan can trigger their mind-swapping jutsu using seals, often resulting in switching their opponents' minds with common objects, such as dolls."</p>
      <p>"You think that Purini-D might be a member of the Yamanaka clan? Feels unlikely…" Damisan shook his head, taking the doll away from Shige-H's trembling hands and placing the doll inside a compartment of his prosthetic limbs on his right forearm, where Tomi's doll body would be safe from harm for a while. "I'm sure that he'd have a lot more going on with his life than putting on a flashy, striped suit and playing a stage magician in that case, no offense, Mana."</p>
      <p>"I am familiar with this method of techniques. I've been experimenting with a similar jutsu myself lately." Mana crossed her arms, turning her eyes away and wondering just how comfortable she was with admitting that this copycat had applied to practical use something she was just toying around with. "He might have used a seal that works similarly to genjutsu–invades the user's chakra network, but instead of causing the usual genjutsu effects, it forces the chakra system to react in a certain way–like perform a forced transformation."</p>
      <p>"Forced transformation?" Damisan wondered, fixing the cylinder hanging over his head as it had dangled on the side a little in the heat of the battle.</p>
      <p>"Yeah. A technique called Polymorphy Jutsu was one of the first jutsu I have ever learned. It was a genjutsu technique that took an animal that the target thought of and made them believe they've transformed into that animal. It was a very impractical technique for what it was so I've been working on improving it in just such a way–forcing my opponent to transform into an actual animal that way using their own Transformation Jutsu on my command." Mana explained. "I might force Purini-D to undo the technique if we get our hands on him."</p>
      <p>"So Purini-D has sealed just such a technique inside of his clones. This is dangerous! We need to warn Skaven and Endo!" Shige-H turned to the depths of the cluttered backstage corridors, only to hear a husky response coming back her way.</p>
      <p>"A bit too late for that, I'm afraid," Skaven emerged with his hands pocketed. Hanging by his belt, attached to it, was Endo's likeness, which Purini-D had turned into a doll as well.</p>
      <p>"Endo too?" Damisan grabbed hold of his cylinder as he would have freaked out if he'd have exposed his face and if he actually had a pair of arms.</p>
      <p>"Is it that hard to believe that Endo, of all people, would have lunged himself straight at one of those clones and gotten himself turned into a doll?" Skaven sighed. He didn't need a reply to that question, and everybody accepted that eventuality. Mana slowly approached the Nara and leaned up to his face to where even the usually apathetic punk became a tad flustered by the closeness of their faces.</p>
      <p>"He's not Purini-D's transformation. We're clear." Mana noted having sensed up Skaven's signature and found it to be no different from Skaven's actual chakra signature.</p>
      <p>"I thought you didn't need to be this close. You told me once that you can sense precise details about a chakra signature from a kilometer away." Shige-H threw shade at Mana while the magician just shrugged.</p>
      <p>"I know, I just enjoyed seeing him blush for once," she answered.</p>
      <p>The following moments of treading further and further into the backstage corridors that almost seemed to loop around had it not been for the differing junk and props littering the place were full of impending dread and constant worry. The recruits felt like the enemy could have been anywhere and was everywhere at once, and just one careless response to his attacks could have resulted in their transformation into a helpless doll.</p>
      <p>"You know, he looks all goofy and over the top but… I like you way better as a stage magician, Mana. Something about turning people into dolls and then popping their heads off in battle just feels really creepy." Damisan noted, shivering by himself.</p>
      <p>"Thanks, I appreciate it." Mana nodded.</p>
      <p>"I'm very glad you returned to the group, Skaven." Shige-H turned to the Nara who kept on shuffling in between the front and back of the Stars without a care in the world. "I will do my best to make sure that you don't regret it and trust us more in the future as well."</p>
      <p>"Whatever. It's not like running off by himself did Endo any good," Skaven rolled his eyes. He must have thought that Shige-H was making way too big of a deal out of this.</p>
      <p>Before the conversation could proceed any further, a chill ran down the back of Mana's spine. It was an uneasy noise of junk switching and falling off of one another. It was an uneasy category of background noise that usually was all over the place and used to tick the Stars' radars off at first but then they just learned to deal with it and ignore it because it was just too common and pointless of an occurrence to pay any mind. This time was different–loads of chakra was lurking behind it.</p>
      <p>A skull-decorated comb fell from atop of the junk pile, grabbing hold of some useless rag and engulfing it with enough static electricity to stay clung on to the comb and ruffle in mid-air as the comb floated suspended by the tremendous chakra it irradiated in all directions. With the rustling cloth flipping up and to the side, a smirking visage of Purini-D with hands full of knives emerged from behind the curtain where before was mere emptiness. With two energetic swipes, the dreadful stage magician flung his tools of the trade toward the recruits before disappearing behind the curtain again.</p>
      <p>Mana ran out in front of the group, extending her hands to the side and expanding her Magic Bubble Jutsu. The round gust of Wind Release chakra was more than enough to deflect mere handheld projectiles. What Mana did not expect was the gust blowing the curtain off aside and Purini-D emerging from behind it once more, as if he could somehow freely transport himself from one location to the other using this curtain, and aiming his hand at Mana with a sealing glyph beaming with a red light on the center of his palm.</p>
      <p>"Sealing Technique: A Call To Darkness!" Purini-D chanted out, emitting a jolt of ethereal, candy-red energy from his palm that struck Mana square in the chest and engulfed her. Whatever weight she felt like she had, whatever forces beckoned her to stay on the ground lost their power. The radiant, crimson energy lifted her off the ground. Mana's body convulsed, but it didn't hurt at all. It twitched as if being shocked, but no electric charges passed through her body. The vision became blurry, then–all black. In the beginning few moments, no air could enter her lungs, it was as if her mouth, her chest, and everything she held inside became solid and filled up.</p>
      <p>Then it struck Mana–she didn't really need to breathe anymore. The magician's doll body hit the floor with a light tap of a wooden doll being carelessly flopped on its back. Urged by this emergency development, Damisan shot out his hand attached to a steel wire to scoop his friend's doll body off the ground and pull it into his control, where he could put Mana carefully inside his left prosthetic compartment for safety.</p>
      <p>"Shit, he can pull off the switcheroo trick on command too?" Skaven grit his teeth. It was rare to see the Nara care too much about that many things though seeing Mana turned into a doll appeared to throw him into a mosh pit of anger and despair just like the one he experienced when describing innocents being murdered when discussing the memories of his criminal past.</p>
      <p>"It cost us Mana to figure that out." Shige-H shook her head.</p>
      <p>"Mana said that she was working on executing such a jutsu on command, maybe it was naïve of us to assume that Purini-D only had one way of executing his switch trick too?" Damisan shook his head inside of his oversized cylinder, causing it to flop and shake around. "But she did everything right, she protected us just like she always does."</p>
      <p>"Maybe… Maybe that's the problem?" Shige-H snapped her fingers, returning to what Mana had said in the beginning of the exercise. "Purini-D isn't actually fighting us–he's disrupting our strategies instead. He's testing if we're capable of switching our roles in a team. It's because Tomi rushed at him like the ferocious animal she likes to act as on the battlefield and because Mana tried protecting us from harm like she always does that they turned into dolls."</p>
      <p>"And Purini-D ended up punking Endo too because he acted just like Endo usually does." Skaven looked down at the doll of a scowling samurai apprentice dangling on his belt. "It makes some sense."</p>
      <p>"We need to switch our roles next time we confront Purini-D. I can't be the one calling the shots, you two can't be fighting him the same way you always are." Shige-H instructed the two.</p>
      <p>"But you're kind of bossing us around right now…" Damisan noted, crossing his prosthetic arms up and out from under his cloak. "Old habits are tough to break, huh?" he chuckled with his usual good vibes energy.</p>
      <p>The remaining trio of Stars rushed on ahead toward wherever the backstage corridor room of horrors led them to. Manic laughter soaked with Purini-D's voice filled the endless corridors, stunning the remaining active Stars temporarily as they looked and felt around to determine where their enemy could strike from again. With his hit-and-run mentality, there was little to no way of pinning the jounin down and landing a solid hit on him.</p>
      <p>More and more cackles came from closer and closer to them. Skaven looked around, gritting his teeth while Shige-H lit up her fists with chakra flares, signaling that whoever receives the next punch from her would feel a world of hurt. It would have all been in vain and deep down the leader of Stars might have known it as striking the clones that flooded the corridor would have been equal to signing herself away to becoming a doll.</p>
      <p>With the first silver-colored flash slicing through the gloomy atmosphere of nightmares, the relentless pelting of knives from the ceiling began with clones pestering the Stars with no countermeasure from the Stars' side being possible. Taking a plunge from up above and landing right in front of the Stars and their attempts to take evasive action without devoting all of their momentum into one protective motion to prevent them from getting caught in Purini-D's doll technique.</p>
      <p>"Genjutsu: Field of Swords!" Purini-D chanted out, weaving a couple of hand seals and positioning his hands onto the cluttered floor, forcing hundreds of swords to sprout as they rushed toward the evasive Stars, leaving them no room in the stuffy corridor to maneuver themselves out of harm's way.</p>
      <p>Damisan leaned his body to the wall, using his elbows to swat aside the needless props. While a handful of down-pouring knives cut through the cloth that he covered up his scarred body and prosthetic replacements with, he avoided the rising row of swords that were bursting from the ground and whatever stressful effects that illusion would have caused. Purini-D chuckled, his cackling filled the nightmarish corridor space.</p>
      <p>"Sealing Technique: Dark Toy Box!" Purini-D chanted out, clapping his hands. A tremor shook the floor of the battlefield, shifting the cluttering props and junk around and revealing Damisan to be pressing his back to an open coffin. Chains burst forth and tied themselves around the prosthetic limbs and worst yet–the cylinder of Damisan and began reeling him into the coffin before its door slammed shut.</p>
      <p>"You fool! Drop the prosthetics already!" Skaven yelled out with a shaken stare, knowing full-well that it was too late for his ally to free himself now. "He was holding Mana's doll."</p>
      <p>As the quaking coffin streamed with candy-red light and opened back up, three dolls fell out from its inner section. That of Damisan, Mana, and Tomi. Yet another method for Purini-D to achieve the sought after result of transforming his trapped enemy into a doll.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, Tomi's too. If you knew Damisan and I do, you'd have known that he can't ever drop that cylinder covering up his face. Maybe he'd have sacrificed that principle for the sake of his friends if given enough time, but… This was too sudden. Give it up. It's just the two of us now." Shige-H pressed her hand to Skaven's shoulder as the cackling clones retreated into the darkness. Their whites somehow peered through the dimly lit shadows of the ceiling and dark corners, filling their targets' hearts with the dread of their everlasting presence and knowledge that they were being watched at all times.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, it's just the two of us. Let's go." Skaven nodded, straightening himself out and looking on ahead to wherever this corridor led. Whether it be the ruby prize that Endo sought after or another chance at confronting their tricky opponent, the eventuality was another chance at solving this assignment and getting themselves out of trouble.</p>
      <p>What lay ahead was the return to normal for the Stars whom the enemy had turned into dolls.</p>
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<a name="section0736"><h2>736. Stepping Over</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"That thing Mana said, I think we need to change how we confront the enemy," Skaven declared as the two remaining Stars rushed ahead of the hectic backstage corridor that has become a setting of a genuine nightmare for the squad.</p><p>"Damisan fell for the trap too, and that was after we warned each other to be more careful," Shige-H replied in a quiet, reflective tone.</p><p>"Damisan acted as a protector for the dolls. He hadn't changed his approach to how he acts on the battlefield or adapted his approach at all. We need to be better," Skaven said.</p><p>"But we're the only two left," Shige-H responded after a moment of awkward silence between the two. It was apparent that both young ninja knew what this meant, though Shige-H spoke up just to set it in stone and extract Skaven's promise.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess I must take charge then," Skaven nodded with a hefty sigh.</p><p>"Okay, I'll stay behind you. Watch out and don't hit the enemy by accident. I can treat the knife wounds, you know." Shige-H stalled a bit to fall behind the Nara as the two rushed faster and faster toward what they could have sworn was a looping bunch of corridors as they took random turns every time. Regardless of this dire approach to pathfinding, they took their turns together without questioning each other or bickering about it.</p><p>"No, you stay behind in battle already. You need to step out and cause havoc. Break free, whoop-ass for once. Fight like it's your last day to do so and like you're willing to enjoy every last bit of it," Skaven denied Shige-H's request.</p><p>"Well, I guess you're the leader for now, so…" Shige-H was the one sighing now.</p><p>A wall of grinning, red-eyed shadow clones of Purini-D with knives and curtains in hands blocked off their paths. Cackling emanated from the walls themselves as the two prepared for what might have become the Stars' last stand to decide their ultimate score of this exercise. Chakra flares lit up around Shige-H's fists and blew up in size, changing color to an emerald hue of her Unmaker Fist that reverses the effects of a healing ninjutsu technique.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Bearer of Darkness!" a version of Purini-D yelled out in a visceral tone after weaving a single Tiger hand seal. Shige-H's fighting spirit faltered as she backed up a few steps. The woman looked around as the dimly lit room around her became darker and darker still until she couldn't see anything other than blackness.</p><p>"Don't lose your head. This illusion only covers up one sense, you can still sense the other clones in different ways," Skaven barked out directions as a genuine leader would.</p><p>"I don't need to!" Shige-H yelled out from the bottom of her chest as she slammed her burning arms together, causing an eruption of an emerald shock wave around her that passed through Skaven like thin smoke, expanding all over the place to cover up as much of the room as possible.</p><p>"That's reckless, you might hit a clone with the seal trap!" Skaven reacted, but Shige-H shook her head.</p><p>"That's fine. The range of this attack is insane, so if I hit the right one–it won't matter. Remember what Mana said, the user of this technique needs to be conscious and focused for it to work," Shige-H replied as the frightened clones all vaulted over the expanding destructive ring. Despite passing through an entire mass of inanimate objects, the shock wave barely showcased any of its effects just yet, though the clones and Purini-D himself knew better than to lower their guard just because of that.</p><p>Medical ninjutsu wasn't meant for inanimate objects. Neither could reverse medical ninjutsu show off the true fearsomeness of its effects against them.</p><p>A version of Purini-D, true or false became impossible to tell without Mana's chakra sensory on their side, vaulted over the Stars, flinging a handful of tomato-sized and shaped sizzling objects at them before shooting up its arms with knives from behind its back and sticking them into the ceiling to stay above the opposition. The tomato-bombs splattered, as squishy vegetables were known to do, but it wasn't healthy and pudgy innards of one that spilled on the floor, rather a wine-colored gas cloud filled the entire space.</p><p>"Dammit, the place is too cramped!" Skaven began coughing in pain as the gas that hit them wasn't toxic, or else they'd have long since collapsed, instead, they seemed to be something akin to powerful pepper gas. It wasn't any of the cheap stuff either as the Nara collapsed on his knees with sweat he couldn't even feel dripping off of his face in what seemed like torrents. The spiciness of the gas rocketed the Stars' body temperatures by several degrees while they rendered all feeling inside their airways numb from the burning sensation that had long since transcended pain.</p><p>Skaven knew what the opponent was doing, but he couldn't talk anymore. Dryness filled his throat, and he needed humidity to wash away the burn, but all liquids seemed to pour out his eyes. Eyes that couldn't see anything anyway, though, with this now stacked on top, even if he went through the hassle of dispelling an A-Rank illusion affecting the two of them, they'd still have to work through this ridiculous pepper gas choking them up.</p><p>Something loud, low-pitched, and filled with wooden rattling filled the air. A muzzled and irritated grunt came from Shige-H's side, and the shaken clones replied with a petrified shriek as they scattered. The kunoichi had slammed the ground beneath her feet, throwing Skaven down and leaving him working up the strength and willpower to pick himself back up as she desperately tried swinging wide enough to free-up the path for Skaven–the new field leader of the Stars.</p><p>More than a few of the clones shrieked out in terror and poofed away. Skaven began expecting his comrade to fall down as her transformation into a doll of wood and straw began, but nothing of the sort ever took place. She continued swinging and hammering away, sending violent shocks toward the enemy with no adverse effect reaching her. Whether this was because she wasn't contacting the enemy nor were any of her weapons, or because Purini-D had realized that the Stars had adapted to their new roles and changed up their approach and withheld the technique on purpose as a reward remained unclear.</p><p>One jutsu. All that Skaven needed was to connect, and yet, it just so happened that the enemy fought dirty and made it as difficult as possible to do just that. Purini-D let out a huff, and a warning sound of something heavy cutting through the air froze Skaven's heart up. The sound was far enough away to where he didn't freeze up as he wasn't the intended target, but he needed Shige-H if he was to land his jutsu and execute his plan successfully.</p><p>A low-pitched gurgle came from Shige-H's side. She got hit by something and something massive. This was ridiculous. If one jutsu was all that Skaven needed, he'd need to stop pissing his pants and start taking his chances. Still, if he could better his odds as much as possible, that would have been preferable to shooting from the hip in the pitch black.</p><p>"Dispel!" he yelled out, sending a visible, white pulse of light out from him but, much to his chagrin, his attempts at ceasing the blinding illusion prematurely weren't successful. Despite a visible ripple and the surface of blackness devouring his eyesight shaking up, his eyes remained in the dark. Only a visible lightness in terms of chakra wasted this way, and shattered pride remained.</p><p>With a light tapping noise of dripping blood, Shige-H roared somewhere diagonally to Skaven's location. The walls of the corridor shook violently, spilling its useless props all over the floor as the piles of trash moved in response to the resonant quaking. A familiar, flesh rending sound and Purini-D's scream of pain joined in. The illusion wavered, something that Shige-H did must have given the Stars their opening, lifting the illusion for a mere moment, but that was all that Skaven thought he needed.</p><p>As he opened his watering eyes, letting the tears that irked him from the tomato bombs flow freely, the sight of a large battle-ax stuck in Shige-H's shoulder halfway to her armpit greeted Skaven's eyes. Despite the horrendous physical torment, Shige-H drove her body alongside the version of Purini-D that delivered the ax and etched it into her into the wall, splitting the clone into two parts with the other side of his own ax. The clone poofed away while Shige-H collapsed on the ground and reached to treat her wound and work on healing her severed major vessels as much as possible before she removed the weapon.</p><p>She hit the ground in the form of a wooden doll of subtle features resembling the Stars' leader before she could finish. It was only then that Skaven realized that it wasn't something they did that canceled the Bearer of Darkness technique–it was the fact that Purini-D couldn't split his focus between maintaining the illusion and turning someone into a doll. Still, this was as nice of an opening as he'd get. The odds couldn't get any more favorable than this!</p><p>Skaven took the knee, placed his hands in the Nara clan hijutsu position, but his heart stopped. For the life of him, he couldn't mutter the words of the jutsu with his dried out and burning up mouth. He wasn't familiar enough even with the most basic Nara clan technique–the Shadow Possession Jutsu to cast it without speaking its name. His father would have chortled until the morning at the irony. Pissed beyond belief, Skaven stood up and flipped the nearest clone of Purini-D's off, sticking out his dry as a year-old sponge tongue out for good measure.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Multi-Kunai Jutsu!" Purini-D flicked his hands, emerging handfuls of knives from under his sleeve, inside of his suit pockets, wherever he could find them. Using this basic genin-level technique, he threw so many knives all at once that they approached a number early into the four digits. The Nara took more than a few, he fostered no illusions of grandeur but the sharp twingling cracking up his body as he froze up writhing on the ground so he didn't plunge one of the knives sticking out any further was nothing compared to knowing that he had achieved the intended effect.</p><p>A couple of shocked clones on the other side gargled in pain, spitting up blood as the immense number of knives skewered them thoroughly and pinned them either to coffins or drawers filling the perpetual backstage corridor area. Purini-D gasped in terror as the pinned down clones lit up with candy-red light and beamed up toward him.</p><p>"Yeah, figured that your jutsu works both ways…" Skaven grunted, finally feeling the savory wetness of blood gifting him speech back from the depths of his throat.</p><p>"Your victory is but an illusion, young boy, it's just an illusion!" Purini-D seethed from the shocking aura of candy-red light enveloping and radiating off of him to transform him into a doll. "I've devised measures against this very outcome, I did!"</p><p>"I'm sure you did," Skaven smirked as his opponent weaved a hand seal and dispelled the crackling candy-red light from claiming his body as well. Shadows shifted in the dimly lit corridor around the original Purini-D as determined to where all the candy-red lights concentrated toward. "Though I wonder if those countermeasures don't also work both ways."</p><p>Purini-D posed proudly, showing off his feat of avoiding being turned to a doll before his right eye twitched twice at the same time as the realization of what Skaven's words might have meant. The frightened stage magician turned around, hearing the noise of a lone water drop hitting and rippling a shallow surface inside of a void of complete darkness. Chains burst from underneath the shallow waters, hooking up to Purini-D's wrists, his heels, his thighs, calves, forearms, and biceps.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Black Magical Box!" Mana's voice spread through the air, enhanced by superhuman qualities as the illusionary void was entirely hers to control. Four walls of old tree dyed plague-black slammed the terrified stage magician shut inside of a decorated coffin with a convenient hole in the upper front for Purini-D's face. A lone gust carrying rose petals whirled in front of the shut and chained up coffin, revealing Mana's shape standing in front of the subdued ninja.</p><p>"Bravo, Konoha's Sorceress! The showmanship, the flair!" Purini-D exclaimed in ecstasy as his eyes rolled up.</p><p>"That's the purpose for the face-hole. So you don't miss what happens next…" Mana closed her eyes with a smirk as a knife ripped through her avatar, disrupting and dissolving it into petals again as it slammed into the coffin. The chopper had a chain attached to its backside, but it hit the coffin as if encouraged further by a sledgehammer. It penetrated the entire way through, leaving Purini-D no other course of action than to exclaim in shock as his neurons hurried to share this illusionary dread as very real and very dangerous.</p><p>All the blackness, the coffin, the torment disappeared at once, torn up like a sheet of paper rolled out and stuck to a wall like a background decoration. The arms of a bipedal ape lifted Purini-D off the ground and slammed him against the warehouse wall with a dominating roar as it lifted its arms over its head, preparing to smash the stage magician's head like a watermelon now that he had canceled out his own technique and Mana shook up his inner world enough to send his biological systems into overdrive with panic.</p><p>"You got me, you do!" Purini-D stuck out his tongue, giving the infuriated ninja ape his thumb up. It didn't seem to have much of an effect until Tomi pressed her hand to the ape's back and nuzzled it, causing the ape to lose all interest and turn to burrow around the heaps of junk all around them.</p><p>"That's it? You've called me just to roughhouse around a bit, pipsqueak?" the ape looked grumpy, though something in its body language showed that it knew better than to put up any meaningful objections. Unlike Mana and the ninja rabbits, Tomi seemed to have unwavering love and support of all the species of ninja animals she commanded almost to the point of brainwashing.</p><p>And here Mana thought if she was ready to train at the Sage Arts with the ninja rabbits. Despite the breakthroughs between the Chuunin Exams and now, there was still a long and perilous journey between them, especially after Mana just upped and disappeared during her stay in prison.</p><p>"Sorry, Sarutan!" Tomi winked and clapped her palms together, bowing in apology. "I wasn't sure this punk would skip his beating like that. He looked spry and really fired up for it, to a disturbing degree, honestly."</p><hr/><p>"I'm not sure I'd qualify that performance as mind-blowing as I had expected from a group as familiar between yourselves as the Stars, but… It definitely was flashy and you succeeded at your task. I'd say it's a job well done!" tutor Kushon nodded with a smile though her eyes remained closed almost as if she had to force it. "I could have used an exercise or two without taking anyone to the infirmary though, Purini-D."</p><p>"If I held back an ounce, it would have been me hitting the infirmary, it truly would have been!" Purini-D cackled into his open hand, somewhat unlike the skull-faced appearance that he carried himself around with. "I am so very blown away though! I've always wanted to experience the style difference between me and Konoha's Sorceress. I tend to dress more exuberantly while my act is all cold, steel business whereas she's the exact opposite. It was heaps of fun encountering, I'll say!"</p><p>"The Ruby Supernova…" Endo clenched his fist as he simmered in disappointment and anger. "The crown to label me as the best. It somehow feels like we've cheated our way through."</p><p>"By beating a jounin? If anything, we took the harder path," little Tomi turned her nose up and blew out her lips.</p><p>"Skaven, you should really go to the infirmary, you've got knives sticking out…" Shige-H turned back as she stumbled alongside a few volunteering recruits to take her for a quick Mystical Palm patch-up.</p><p>"The lecture isn't over yet," Skaven replied, crossing his arms as he sat down on the grass and looked up as the tutor for further guidance while the shaken woman covered up her face, looking like she was pushing through sea-sickness.</p><p>"Look at that cocky bastard, acting like he's too cool for bleeding out!" Endo ground his teeth, rolling back his sleeves. When Mana's chilly hand touched his exposed forearm gently to settle him down, he looked away and groaned but reconsidered, pounding the Nara a few times.</p><p>The same volunteers rushed back to lift Skaven up and drag him to Shige-H, who grabbed the doorway for support, glaring at her rebellious comrade with a smirk of someone who was embarrassed to know this person. While Skaven objected to leaving before the lecture officially ended before, he didn't resist the volunteering recruits lifting him up and dragging him out, however.</p><p>"Look at that guy, must think he's too cool to start shit with other recruits, even if he doesn't want to leave," Endo crossed his arms and turned away with a disapproving scowl.</p><p>"You know, Skaven stepped over himself back there," Mana turned to her feisty and obnoxious person she felt obliged to share a room with. "He doesn't enjoy hanging around other people, but he returned to work with us and did exactly that. If anyone here deserved that ruby, it would have been him. He did exactly what tutor Kushon asked of us."</p><p>"Wait for us back at the room, guys. We'll be resuming training from where we left off yesterday after we're back on our feet!" Shige-H displayed a vigorous fist to the other recruits with a look of confidence.</p><p>"Did she just bark out an order?" Tomi leaned back on her crossed arms, winking her right eye as if to see better.</p><p>"I think she did. Just like leaders would…" Mana cracked in a subtle chuckle.</p><p>"What? No vote of voting on how we feel about a vote for or against training first!?" Endo taunted the leader being led away to the infirmary.</p>
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<a name="section0737"><h2>737. Loneliness Amongst Friends</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A lizard-like amphibian of a threateningly proportioned head and black scales pulsing with venomous pustules at their edges hissed out. With its mouth splitting open, it unleashed a trio of whipping tongues, all of which ended in a more substantial mass where a purple liquid swelled up. Upon being whipped about, the growths at the tip of the tongues became so overburdened by the swelling liquid that it splashed it about.</p><p>Endo, Mana, and Tomi dashed aside, observing the showering venom closely so that they could pull out of its way and not experience the adverse effects of famed ninja salamander venom. What neither of the three had expected was that the venom burst into hissing fumes the moment that it spent a good pair of seconds exposed to the air of the unsealed battlefield resembling a mountain cave slapped together from two intertwining rocky ridges rising from opposite directions and forming a cradling triangle of pocket air in between them.</p><p>The trio erupted in a fit of coughing as the burning air filled their lungs. The composition of the venom was tough to pin down, but it felt like breathing something hot enough to rend and unravel one's skin while something viler, more chemical corrupted the sensitive flesh, causing a very nervous irritation in one's entire airway system. Mana couldn't even hear the salamander hissing over her own wheezing and whining.</p><p>She wanted to cry out to Tomi, who rolled forward and jumped with her hands and feet open, latching onto the salamander's shield-shaped forehead in a manner similar to a hug as the brat rubbed her face at the enemy's. While the exact effectiveness of this method was yet to be determined, Tomi confounded the lizard greatly at the very least.</p><p>"I know you doing this whole thing right now, but I also know that you'd much more rather be burrowing around that soft, wet soil down under, huh?" Tomi muttered as she let go of the giant salamander's forehead with one hand and used it to rub it gently over its forehead. The amphibian croaked out with rippling bubbles of air, making Mana almost forget the fact that she had breathed in some highly irritating substances and try to keep her eardrums from rupturing for a few moments.</p><p>The large lizard smashed its head against the ground, grinding the rougher patches underneath to mushy dust as its relatively small for its colossal proportions, arms began burrowing and the amphibian disappeared from sight within seconds. Having dropped on her butt, Tomi just chuckled, marveling at the sight from down below as the floor cleared up for them to claim their prize and complete the training exercise.</p><p>"Humph… That's right, tuck your tail and run," Endo grumbled as he was regaining his breath and breathed in enough oxygen to get back on his feet.</p><p>"I've seen nothing like that," Mana's jaw dropped, half because of the surprise of seeing a lizard being defused by mere pets and cuddles and a very mesmerizing suggestion, another half because she was that short of breathable air in her chest to where it felt like being choked. The sooner they'd leave this corrupted, noxious field the better.</p><p>"Salamanders are just big goofs. All they want to do is burrow around and eat venomous maggots to fill up their reserves. The poor thing must have been so frightened to spit venom at us even though it didn't intend to eat us," Tomi made a worried face staring down at the hole.</p><p>"It would have absolutely eaten us!" Endo sheathed his double-blade weapon before exclaiming as the battlefield lit up in bright light and became just a fluid mirage that sealed back into the glyphs drawn in patterns over the ground. Despite the rather bland and unimpressive appearance of the default training grounds, it was preferable to choking in venomous fumes that were spreading and thinning out until the recruits leaving the lecture and sharing their impressions couldn't even notice it anymore.</p><p>"Nonsense, you're a mean-spirited human. Too nasty for most animal species to eat, though, perhaps, salamanders are a bit too silly to care for the good of their own digestion…" Tomi began pondering to herself as the trio waited for Stars to reassemble so that they could go back to their room together like they did on most days.</p><p>"How am I mean-spirited? That bastard would've gobbled us up for sure, am I wrong?" Endo bit his lip as he turned away with a bitter scowl.</p><p>Mana didn't reply to him, even though this was one of the rare few occasions when she would have taken Endo's view on the situation over Tomi's. She didn't want to offend the littlest and cutest member of Stars, who already thought little of the people around her unless they proved entertaining to her or her ninja animal friends. It took a few months until she started sharing food with the other Stars members that weren't Mana or her ninja rabbits that immediately struck Tomi's fancy.</p><p>"Well done," tutor Rissen a tall woman of strict facial features, posh, pale make-up who carried herself around with the most formal strut that still was only one foot over the edge into parody territory clapped after taking out her smoking pipe and putting it back in between her lush, red lips. "Learning to care for ninja animals and establish bonds between yourself and another living being is exactly what I'm looking for from recruits excelling in this subject. Just because Konoha's Sorceress and Araki Endo immediately tried taking Sanshohoru down as their first reaction, I will award the three of you a score of 18/20."</p><p>"Thanks, Tomi, after recovering, failing exercises and flunking tests is no longer an option for me." Mana nodded in gratitude.</p><p>"Are you kidding me? Mana-nee helped me out in all sorts of boring stuff! Don't mention it!" Tomi pumped her tiny, cute fist into the sky with a tooth bracelet ticking and clicking around her wrist as she did so.</p><p>"It's not like you're bottom of the barrel, Mana, what's with the sudden worry about your score?" Endo wondered with a grumpy look as he crossed his arms and gave the ninja magician a suspicious look.</p><p>"Yeah, even if you'd fail the prep exam, you'll be able to retake it after repeating the course and you'll already have most of the score gathered and lectures penned down so you won't even have to attend any of your repeated lectures with the next generation of recruits. It'd be a breeze, you could spend the whole time training…" Shige-H looked up almost dreaming about failing the exam and having loads of free time that's now being spent on taking lectures and earning crucial score points that will comprise half of the exam score.</p><p>"No. I've settled on a decision already. If I fail the prep course, I am not waiting for the next generation and preparing for six more months." Mana shook her head, looking resolute.</p><p>While discussing the matter, the Stars gathered around a clustered together table made of cupboards that they've pushed alongside to comprise a larger table when they needed to share some snacks or drinks while discussing matters, over small talk or bonding as a group. Everyone pulled out the food they had stashed with Mana, handing Endo his meatloaf and potato lunch she stored in a sealing dimension just because their room did not come with a fridge, and sealing dimensions tended to be known for perfect conservation conditions. How the samurai apprentice could eat something that had floated in a void alongside everything else Mana had sealed there was beyond the girl, but that was the hill that Endo would have died on.</p><p>"If I fail the prep course, I'm leaving the Allied Ninja." Mana sealed her decision by speaking it out loud.</p><p>"Huh? You're going to return to your village then?" Endo wondered. "Doesn't everyone there want you dead already?"</p><p>"Not everyone," Skaven replied, looking uncharacteristically intrigued by Mana's proclamation as his usual shroud of apathy had disappeared and he looked at the magician with a clue of life and interest that was very unlike him. "Though she'd be back in the same melting pot she ran away from, yes. Are you really okay with this, Shige-H?"</p><p>"Here, have some of my tea herbs, I insist!" Shige-H bowed her head, offering her unraveled sash of dried out leaves and roots to very confused Tomi who just slowly nabbed it and sprinkled a few into her cup.</p><p>"You're acting weird, boss lady, it's okay if you don't want Mana-nee to leave, none of us want that," Tomi observed as she shuffled the roots and herbs around with her finger and took a gulp of the tea. The brat stuck out her tongue and couldn't open her left eye from disgust. "Jeez, Shige, you drink that, it's so bitter!"</p><p>"Anyway," Shige-H punched her own chest a few times and turned to Mana. "I'd rather Stars wouldn't lose people as I've gathered you guys for a reason. I felt like this group could have helped each of us individually and done some good while working as Allied Ninja all over the world. But it's your decision and I'll respect that, as long as you have a plan and you won't just wander back through the Fire Country that's filled with criminal scumbags itching to cash in on the bounty on your head and get yourself killed."</p><p>"No. I don't want to go back to Konoha just yet. I'd probably just tour the world as a traveling artist, just like my ancestors, the Wandering Ninja, used to do," Mana shrugged. She hadn't paid that alternative too much thought, but she missed stage magic most of all right now, so she figured that was the best thing to focus on if this whole Allied Ninja thing failed.</p><p>"The Wandering Ninja? Didn't they all get snuffed out by Konoha authorities?" Endo raised his eyebrow. "You'd better find a more suitable role model. I won't even comment on you growing up serving a country that had your ancestors' group assassinated."</p><p>"Lay off Mana-nee, it's not like she had much choice after being born in Konoha and wanting to be a ninja!" Tomi wagged her finger in front of Endo's nose, prompting the grumpy ninja to turn his eyes away from the table small-talk.</p><p>Holding a scroll with the lecture notes she had copied off of Mana's notes in hand, Tomi drew blood from her thumb and weaved hand seals, driving her open palm to the ground in front. It had become a signature part of the routine for the little rascal to not looking at the resulting pop and the thick cloud of smoke that shrouded the summoned ninja animal of choice until her friend appeared in their full glory. Just so she could look cooler that way by not looking. Though now the fact that no pop or thick cloud of smoke even occurred called for Tomi's attention much sooner than usual.</p><p>Nothing. Tomi bit harder into her tongue, filling her mouth with her own blood, and weaved the hand seals so intensely that the blood she had drawn splattered in a circle of a few meters around her. The wild girl slammed her open palm at the ground before her, but nothing came out. Tomi smacked her palms together and jumped up, focusing her chakra into a singular pulse to leave her feet at the moment that her feet leave the ground to propel her upward but she touched the ground far too soon and after making far too puny of a jump compared to what she intended.</p><p>The stark contrast forced Tomi to stumble and fall on her butt. What was going on? Why couldn't she do anything that required chakra anymore? How? How was she supposed to make it now? No ninja owls to memorize her homework, no ninja elephants for piggyback rides, or ninja apes to box playfully with. No ninja mantises to practice boomerang throwing skills or ninja swallows to race! Nobody. She was all alone now.</p><p>Tomi looked around with a terrified expression. The recruits practicing their skills around her all wavered and flapped around in the gloomy evening lighting. Their shapes grew out of proportions as their gaunt arms and fingers became one with the shady trees and loomed over little Tomi. Just a few more inches and they'd grab hold of her. If she's lucky, they'll never let go, but if they're as evil as Tomi's experience dictated, they rip, scratch and claw, and slap…</p><p>"Whoa, whoa, what's wrong, do you need help?" a weak, masculine voice reached Tomi's ears as the little one snapped her eyes back open, realizing that she's been lying cradled on the grass. The other practicing ninja had gathered in a circle around her. Shige-H and Damisan parted them and helped Tomi get back up on her feet.</p><p>"What happened, Tomi, we heard you screaming bloody murder from all the way on Training Ground No 46," Damisan pointed over his shoulder.</p><p>"My friends… I can't… I can't reach them… I'm all… All alone!" Tomi cried out.</p><p>"Hold on, you're not making any sense here, what's going on?" Shige-H kneeled by the little rascal, trying to ease her into explaining what was going on properly.</p><p>"I… I tried summoning Fukugane to memorize the notes I copied from Mana so that I could then train, but…" little Tomi struggled through her words as sniffling and irregular breathing made it difficult for her to talk. "But I couldn't… I couldn't reach any of them. I'm all alone! I've got no more friends!"</p><p>"Whoa, calm down there, little missy. What's the point of being in a super cool, special, exclusive membership-required group if you don't have any friends? We're all your friends, Tomi, and we're here for you." Damisan leaned down and patted little Tomi's head with his prosthetic hand.</p><p>"B-But… I had thirty-two friends already and… Now I only have five. I will never have a hundred friends like this." Tomi sniffled again, somewhat settling down as she pulled down her furry wristband to wipe her runny nose into.</p><p>"Okay… I'm officially lost about what she's talking about but… Maybe we should take her to the infirmary, see if any medical brainiacs over there can figure out what's wrong with you? Maybe you took a nasty bump or something? Don't worry, you've got all your arms and legs, as far as I can tell, you're gonna be just fine!" Damisan gave his thumb up to the frightened girl.</p><p>"I don't think that's necessary," Shige-H shook her head. When Damisan turned his shaky cylinder stuck to his head at the Stars leader with, what Shige-H assumed to be bafflement, she explained herself, "Look at her, the last thing she needs is some scary looking half-militarized lab-coats doing tests on her whole night. I'm sure that she'll be just fine and that this is nothing. In the meantime, why don't you just try socializing a little."</p><p>"Soc… Socializing?" Tomi muttered with her face going pale and her lips turning blue as they became so stiff that they quivered in terror. "B-But… I don't know anyone…"</p><p>"That's the point of socializing, isn't it?" Shige-H smirked and winked at her fallen little friend, helping her get back up and dusting her fur and rags dress off. "If you feel anything bad, just come to me and I'll check you up with my Diagnosis Jutsu. For now, just try to talk to people. Make some connections."</p><p>"Can't I train with you two?" Tomi poked her fingers together, looking away in embarrassment. "I don't know anyone else here."</p><p>"Sure," Shige-H sighed and wiped the sweat off of her face. All the droplets that she squirted out trying to point out that this was exactly the way making friends worked. "We can make it work, I think."</p><p>"Heck yeah, you can train with us!" Damisan bent his right arm and flexed his bicep made of steel skeleton, plastic accessories, and inflatable, gelatinous material simulating human muscle. "You might not be able to summon your ninja beasties anymore, but you've still got one wicked aim and a bunch of your weapons, right? You're still one mighty kunoichi, even if you can't summon anymore!"</p><p>Little Tomi screamed out, grabbing ahold of her head as her untrimmed fingernails threatened to rake right through her soft and fleshy childish skin that no longer received any emergency chakra augmentations. The teen jumped up and bolted toward the shade of the forest in the direction where the Allied Ninja headquarters building stood.</p><p>"You really didn't need to say that so many times," Shige-H shook her head, letting out a hefty sigh off her chest.</p><p>"Huh? Did I say something wrong?" Damisan pointed to himself, acting confused about the entire situation and what might have set his friend off and translating his feeling perfectly despite his face being blocked by the hefty accessory he wore over it.</p><p>Bit by bit, inch by inch, Tomi peeked from the cover of trees. Who knew how much time had passed since she fled for cover? Minutes, hours, how many? The novelty of her breakdown had grown thin with people returning to their usual practice routines. There was a group on the center-western part of the training ground, one to the north-eastern…</p><p>"H-Hey…" an insecure mumble distracted a pair of recruits exchanging kicks and slashes while armed with kunai. The pair stopped practicing and turned for the shy and unnerved young teen behind them. "Do you guys need help?" Tomi wondered with a wide and moist pair of eyes that wanted to add more numbers to her list of friends, but somewhere deep down begged the universe for those two to dismiss her.</p><p>"Sorry, girl, this is a sort of one-on-one practice drill…" one recruit scratched the back of his head, wondering how to send the little brat packing without being too rude or mean on her.</p><p>"Say, aren't you from the Stars? I'm sure that your crew's gonna take you in, why don't you go talk to them. Some of them are still practicing on Training Ground No. 46. I think I've seen one or two of them practicing by their lonesome too but I'm not sure who or where…" the second pressed his finger to his chin before scratching his head with it deep in thought.</p><p>"Mana-nee is in the library," Tomi turned around, looking at the glowing windows at the upper floors of the headquarters building. "That's where I left her. Maybe she'll… Wait, maybe she'll summon the ninja rabbits for me?"</p><p>Tomi's face brightened up. There was still a way for her to meet some of her friends again before the turbulence of the next day's lectures sets in. Maybe Shige-H and Damisan were right and things weren't as dire as they initially seemed? With a quick shuffle of her feet, dashing on all-fours, at times, leaping and vaulting over the many thick branches of the forest area and hurrying toward the shoreline clearing where the headquarters building was, little Tomi made a desperate dash toward the library.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0738"><h2>738. Help Without Enthusiastic Consent</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tomi dashed up the spiraling staircase on all fours. All traces of decency and etiquette, of dignity, had fled into their little clay huts and slammed the shutters, hiding their immediate families because the shroud of solitude was creeping in from outside the covers of the forest surrounding the village of Tomi's psyche. In submitting to the terror that the dark need for validating presence to come forth, Tomi granted loneliness an almost corporeal form. A dark and bubbly, noxious cocktail of fear and solitude.</p><p>The teen hadn't visited the library except to pick Mana up or ask the young woman who had become her de facto older sister to call out her rabbits and entertain her as if it was Mana's calling to do so. In that moment of need, Tomi promised herself that she would never take Mana or the ninja rabbits for granted. The sweaty and terrified teen browsed the library halls, throwing her head around like a hyperventilating mare that could pick up the scent of blood on a wolf's fangs behind the brush.</p><p>There she was. The magician had been brushing up on her taijutsu skills, ironically enough, with a tome that required a strongman to move around. Judging from Mana's eyes, she wasn't all that into the read so the tips of Tomi's lips tilted and twitched in an upward direction. Telling herself that she was doing her older sister a grand favor by giving her a chance to entertain her instead of reading that dry fluff was just what the wreck of Tomi's self-confidence needed to shuffle up to Mana's table and place her dirty with grains of black soil hands on the square piece of wooden furniture.</p><p>"Tomi?" Mana looked up with a stumped look on her face. "Is everything okay? You look pale and sweaty."</p><p>The magician stood up and pressed her palm to Tomi's forehead, feeling up her temperature. She must not have found a reason to continue this line of questioning any further as Mana sat back down and waited for Tomi to speak what was on her mind.</p><p>"I'm… Mana-nee, I'm lonely!" Tomi yelled out, rubbing her knuckles one into the other as her legs wobbled in a heroic struggle to keep the young teen from collapsing as she was breaking down into tears. Her mental state while running away from the core issue seemed as stable as the well-being of an emotional fugitive could have been while saying it out loud was like an equivalent of turning to face the creeping demon shroud.</p><p>Mana's eyes darted to the other readers and the Allied Ninja in charge of maintaining order in the library as she took the tome on martial arts theory and slipped it into a massive gap on the bookshelf. The magician grabbed Tomi by her hand and dragged her out of the library. It was once that the library door shut behind her that Mana slowed down her pace and stopped completely, pressing her back against the wall while turning to Tomi.</p><p>"Lonely? What do you mean?" Mana wondered.</p><p>"Well…" Tomi sniffled. "I… Something happened and I can't… I can't…"</p><p>Mana tried to be patient but there were visual cracks in her facial language like the elongation of the line her lips hung in and a light roll to her eye movement that made the image of her older sister whoosh a mile away as the black shroud of solitude began crawling over the bloody skies and seeping through the cracks of the wooden door.</p><p>"You… You were studying… For the test. You can't fail it…" Tomi muttered, still failing to explain what was on her mind. "I'm sorry, Mana-nee…"</p><p>"No, it's just… I don't understand what's going on. I'm here for you, that's what Stars mean to all of us, isn't it?" Mana pressed her hand on Tomi's shoulder and leaned down. She was treating Tomi like a child. Still, Tomi couldn't blow her cheeks out despite it. "What's going on with you? Do you want me to summon someone to play with you?"</p><p>"I… I can't… I can't summon anyone, I can't feel them," Tomi looked down at her awkward sandal that she was dragging across the floor as if trying to scribble her feelings down for Mana. That's right, Mana was a summoner too. She could understand what having a blood contract was like–the constant feeling of togetherness and bond. Kinship but also duty as well.</p><p>"Your chakra control must be going awry. Maybe it's an after-effect of the gas we've breathed in during the test? You were quite hands-on with that venomous salamander, after all," Mana smiled with accusatory, almost motherly eyes that were meant for a child who ate too many sweets despite her best attempts to warn them and was suffering from intense belly aches now.</p><p>"No, no, no! The salamander wouldn't do that to me. Animals don't do that kind of thing to people, they don't… They're not cruel… Not like people are, they wouldn't do this to me…" Tomi paced up and down the nearest staircase with hands intertwined in her spiky, green hair.</p><p>"Whatever the case is, don't worry. You can't sever a summoning contract. That's why they're not that easy to sign. You've signed it with your blood and that's for life," Mana replied with a kind expression. This made Tomi's racing heart stop for a breather and her breathing to gain a steadier rhythm. Tomi stepped up without thinking and grabbed hold of Mana's throat like a branch she intended to pull onto as both her arms wrapped around the magician's neck.</p><p>The young woman wavered on her feet but stayed on her feet by ramming against the wall behind her. Tomi felt a light pressure against her back too, but she felt too embarrassed to open her eyes and show her tears. The rascal shoved off of Mana as fast as she was to cling hold to her neck as she ran up the staircase railing and grabbed hold of the upper level of the railing. Her pull might have seemed less gracious than usual because of her mental state and teary eyes, but it was the fastest way for Tomi to run away.</p><p>Shige-H told Tomi to try talking to someone. Her tone would have almost suggested that this health crisis was a chance for Tomi to do something out of the ordinary. As bottomless and pitch-black as the hole Tomi felt swooping down was, when both Shige-H and Mana assured her with so much warmth and care that everything will be alright, Tomi couldn't help but feel like the shroud was melting away like a paper splashed with handfuls of water over it.</p><hr/><p>Shige-H wasn't in the room, but Damisan sat hunched over something barebones on his worktable with sparks flying every way and metallic frames scattered all over his bed. Sometimes Tomi had no idea how the fellow Stars member could sleep in his bed with all that junk he just haphazardly flings on it. Sometimes it smelled of oil and something burning from the other side of the room and Damisan wrapped his head in his pillow and covered himself, most importantly his face, up when sleeping. Tomi had to pinch her nose and belch just thinking about sleeping that way through the night.</p><p>"Oh, hey, Tomi," Damisan turned around. He might have smiled, or he might not have. The poster boy stapled onto the cylinder he had over his head was smiling all the time. "Did you find something to do with all your free time?"</p><p>"Um…" Tomi rubbed her elbow. She turned away, even though Damisan couldn't have seen that much of her embarrassment from under that cumbersome thing. "Can I do something for you? Maybe help you out with something?"</p><p>"Huh? Nah, I think I've got this whole thing covered! This isn't anything special, just repairs and some improvements to my arms. You really shouldn't be asking someone that's missing a limb, that sort of stuff, one might take it as being offensive, you know…" Damisan replied with a cheerful tone and turned back to his tinkering. The fingers of his prosthetic twitched as he tinkered installing a new compartment in there. After a stint of silence, Damisan turned around with a vigorous kick. "It was a joke, Tomi, I was just kidding."</p><p>"Oh…" Tomi faked a chuckle, even though it was the last thing on her mind. Why would Damisan decline to give her something to do? Didn't he want to be friends with her? Maybe he was just being shy. It wasn't like Tomi was always the nicest to him. She used to decline sharing food with him. Granted, she declined to share food with everyone except a select few, it was just that Damisan asked her for snacks more than most. "What you're doing?" she asked as the teen stepped up on her toes to look over Damisan's shoulder.</p><p>"Oh, this? Just slipping some new compartments every time I repair my limbs. I guess you could say it's how a guy like me does training," Damisan laughed out after that last observation before turning his attention back to his arm. His forearm had an entire roll of steel wire unraveled on the table, and working with it seemed like neural surgery to someone glancing at it from over the shoulder.</p><p>"I'm not bothering you, am I?" Tomi muttered. Damisan dropped his tweezers, distracted by the sudden question slashing through the curtain of silence, but he picked them right back up and got back to it. "It's just that… I had thirty-two friends this morning, and now I'm back to square one. I'll never make a hundred friends like that and, to be honest, a hundred friends was just one of many landmarks. I figured I'd have expanded that landmark to a thousand or even a million by the time I get married."</p><p>"U-huh…" Damisan squeezed out while operating some very thin wire and switching it between different vein-thin compartments they were meant to connect to. Every time he installed a new compartment he had to attribute a new thread to connect to it so that Damisan could activate them with a command just like the rest, just like every movement of his hand was. "You know, if you're looking for numbers, I can make you an entire army of friends. When I first woke up, in pain, smelling of charred flesh, not able to feel my arms and legs, the first thing I thought of is that my puppets would be my only friends, the only people that could look at me and accept me. The problem was–I couldn't quite control them because… You know, the whole no arms and no legs situation…"</p><p>"Puppets for friends?" Tomi squinted, deep in thought.</p><p>"Yeah, by the time I got back on my feet, not literally, of course, when I had a new set of arms to command my puppets with, I sort of didn't care about puppets anymore. I've found a couple of people who truly cared about me and could look at me the way I was. Not even a hundred puppets could replace a connection with one such person. Let me tell you something. And when Shige-H accepted me into an actual human group with stuff like pre-lecture banter and sitting together during breakfast–forget about it!" Damisan pumped his prosthetic arm that wasn't yet being dissected on the table. "It's almost like I'm not a revolting lump of flesh without arms or legs or something… Of course, you know, I am, and trying to stand up without attaching my legs will absolutely result in hitting my head at the floor hard."</p><p>"But I'm already a part of the Stars, and I'm still feeling lonely…" Tomi admitted with a sorrowful tone while her eyes couldn't move off her feet.</p><p>"Oof… Can't say I know how to help you out with that one. My life's been on an upward shoot ever since the Stars have included me in something!" Damisan turned his covered-up head back before returning to his hunching over the evening work. "You said you wanted to help me, right?"</p><p>"Yeah, that's how I befriended all of my animal friends! They all told me what I had to do, I did those things, and we became friends!" Tomi nodded, clenching her hands together to her chest in ecstasy that she was about to make a friend. The first step of a hundred.</p><p>"Not sure that's how it works though… Hearing that sort of makes me hesitant to ask you about anything. We're friends already. We've watched over each other's backs. If you don't like me, think I'm a horrible monster, or think the fact I don't have any arms or legs is funny and that I'm just nature's comedy act–that's fine too. Friendship isn't really about mere errands you run for people," Damisan turned around after this grand speech to look at Tomi but he bent his head to the side after seeing the little brat looking quite grumpy at beaming a flaming glare back at him. Without saying a word, Tomi bolted out of the room, leaving Damisan to wonder if he said something wrong yet again.</p><hr/><p>Endo was still in the training grounds, manipulating atop of his double-bladed sword planted firmly into the ground while the samurai apprentice maintained his balance atop of it by standing over his head with one arm pressed against the blade's tip. It was a feat of chakra control, concentration, and raw power of one's chakra network, mental toughness just as much.</p><p>"Endo, Damisan's being a prick and he thinks he's too good to be my friend, will you be my friend?" Tomi yelled out after approaching this vertical line of danger, determination, and fortitude.</p><p>"Get lost, kid. I'm practicing to prove that I'm the best," Endo squeezed out a reply through physical strain building up in his chest and translating through sweat drops as the young swordsman began pressing his arm repeatedly as an increase to the difficulty of his exercise.</p><p>"Come on, there has to be something that I can do to make us friends! There's something you need, right?" Tomi hopped like an outraged little bunny.</p><p>Endo breathed out and pushed his body off of his predicament, flipping in mid-air and drilling through the altitude he created to land beside the teen. He glared down at her from his superior height, looking down at her with a hateful stare that softened up to something blander. Endo always looked bored and lost all of his intensity when he was being merciful.</p><p>"Fine, if you're offering freebies here, I could use a sparring partner to sharpen my skills a bit," Endo scratched the back of his head. "Consider yourself forewarned though, training to prove that you're the best means pulling no punches!"</p><p>"Sure!" Tomi nodded twice with little stars in her eyes.</p><p>It was late. Maybe the Allied Ninja on duty at the library would have let Mana stay and take over, as long as she locked the place down after herself and agreed to keep watch over the order in the place while she studied. In any case, Mana just didn't feel comfortable asking for those kinds of favors from people she barely even knew. Heavy steps reached her and the metal railings shook, sending reverberations on-touch.</p><p>Curious as to who might have been wandering the hallways this late, Mana stopped and waited to take a peek. The chakra approaching her felt oddly familiar in terms of substance, but its size was different, so the magician didn't feel entirely sure about making such a bold prediction. It was only when the figure of little Tomi emerged from the corner with a swollen right eye, cracked lip, and cuts all over her, her rags barely hanging on a string extending over her shoulder, that Mana realized she was wrong to doubt her first instinct.</p><p>"Mana-nee…" Tomi muttered with a weak tone. When the teen tried smiling, the magician noted that the teen was missing a tooth. What was even more surprising than her battered appearance was a large gecko stretching over Tomi's back like a backpack. It didn't appear as if though it was helping at all. For all intents and purposes, he was just another passenger for little Tomi to piggy-back to the upper floors.</p><p>"I see you've got your connection to the chakra network back," Mana noted. It took much faster than it took Mana's own connection to return, then again, Mana might have severed it in a more meaningful way compared to little Tomi and she couldn't quite vouch for the quality of shock that caused Tomi to regain her connection.</p><p>"Oh, yeah… I guess Mana-nee and Shige-H were right all along–I did just need to wait a bit and sit tight. I wish I trusted you two more before signing up to get pummeled by Endo. He doesn't hold back at all in training…" Tomi looked to be over the clouds to stop walking the steps and to just relax and talk to someone.</p><p>"Yeah, funny thing, sometimes things people say to you are worth listening to. Are you headed up? I can conjure a little twister to carry you there faster," Mana pressed her hands over her hips.</p><p>"No, it's fine, I'm really enjoying this. I really am! I don't think you need to summon anything either. After spending an entire day alone, I'll never have enough of my friends being here with me," Tomi shook her head.</p><p>"Alright, you're the boss of you," Mana shrugged. "Just remember that your animals weren't the only ones trying to help you. If you can't reach them, for whatever reason, or if their help just isn't enough, you can always rely on us too."</p><p>"I guess…" Tomi nodded.</p><p>The next morning Mana found Shige-H inside the infirmary, wiping sweat off of her forehead and resting after a volunteering session of Mystical Palm treatment. The other medical ninja were leaving the resting room to get something hot to drink and maybe a bite to eat but given how Mana couldn't have stumbled into the infirmary by accident, Shige-H stopped herself from leaving and just crumbled onto a nearby chair with half of her medical equipment still hanging loosely on her.</p><p>"What's up?" the curly-haired kunoichi wondered.</p><p>"You did it, you gave Tomi the herbs with that tea you shared with her. You made her chakra control wobbly," Mana thrust for the jugular immediately. Frankly, she didn't have any proof, Shige-H could have just as easily dismissed the whole thing by claiming that this was because of the salamander venom that Tomi breathed in and Mana wouldn't have been able to object.</p><p>"Yeah, I did it." Shige-H nodded. She didn't look too proud of it, but the ease at which Mana pressed the Stars leader to be honest about it shocked Mana a little. "Don't worry, I knew exactly what I was doing. The dosages were perfect, and I made sure to disturb her network temporarily. I didn't expect anyone to figure it out, but it makes sense that it was you. Skaven's the only other guy's bright enough, but he doesn't care remotely enough to try putting that intelligence to work on something like this."</p><p>"Did you even see Tomi yesterday? She was absolutely crushed," Mana grit her teeth though she tried keeping her lips sealed as much as possible. She figured that she'd get the most honest answers by not giving Shige-H an excuse to ramble on and on about "being calm" and "not giving in to her feelings".</p><p>"I bet she was. The girl's perception about friendship is all twisted and jumbled up," Shige-H sighed and turned to stare through the window as if the two were discussing whether and not the fact that Shige-H gave her own squadmate, her friend some herb that robbed her of chakra control for a few hours. "I've spoken to Endo about it, it doesn't seem like she walked the path I directed her toward."</p><p>"Is that what it was all about? Some delusion of mental help?" Mana crossed her arms while keeping her gaze sharp as a spear, driving a mammoth to the edge of a cliff and keeping it there.</p><p>"I've told you all that all of you have problems. All of you have weaknesses as ninja and genuine problems as people, and I intend to help all of you. Endo struggles to validate his own existence because his master has hammered it home that only the strong may survive. Damisan still feels insecure about the way he looks and his impairment, despite our support. You can't get over your hero complex yet, at the same time, you're still hurting about the distrust and pain you faced coming from the very people you entertain and serve. Skaven still might not have realized that his chase for freedom is the only thing keeping him from realizing he's been free all along. Tomi views friends as mere numbers on a chart and friendship as a system of errands you do for your so-called friends."</p><p>"And you? What are your problems?" Mana tapped her foot subtly, shifting her weight onto her right side. "Who's going to help you?"</p><p>"If you want to come clean and tell the others everything–feel free. Though I'd like you to consider the fact that it very well might tear the group apart. It won't just set everyone back on their misguided paths as ninja and as people, it will only deepen their wounds and, likely, make them impossible to help in the future because any attempts to help them will associate with me and my well-intended deception," Shige-H sighed while looking back at Mana with begging eyes. That damned snake! She knew how to make Mana dance to her tune too well.</p><p>To think that she even told the magician exactly what trait she will exploit before turning on her puppy-eyes and asking Mana not to fail this bunch of people she thought she was growing close to and has come to accept as her new squad already.</p><p>"You try pulling any of this on me and I won't just come out with this. I'll put you to sleep and, being the self-proclaimed expert on me, you know I won't care all too much when you wake up. You will though, you'll wake up and you'll smell the shambles you've left on things." Mana set her terms with shady bluntness. "If I find out you're out to harm anyone else, I'll spill the beans on the spot and let the others decide what they want to do with the truth."</p><p>"I… I understand. I do see that I made a mistake and got overly excited with my attempts to help Tomi. I should guide them as a leader and set my own example instead of as an architect employing deception. I'll… I'll tell Tomi myself. I can only hope that she understands," Shige-H nodded.</p>
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<a name="section0739"><h2>739. I Just Like To Be Involved</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A sleazy young man vaulted over his front. Feet in the air while performing a split that made his leather pants squeak and hand-standing the whole trip through, the leathery thug buzzed rushing toward his opponent and drove right into him, tormenting the thick and bulky, hairy older man with a spinning, helicopter-like rampage of kicks. The brother of the leathery clad individual hopped over his younger sibling, pushing off of his crotch as he dived over with a jumping kick and beat the meaty and wild, haired ninja with his metal bat.</p><p>"And you're outta here, hick!" the older brother taunted his opponent, carefully winding his bat up and slamming it right into the face of the kneeling fleshy behemoth. The clanging impact sent the giant rolling back in a drag that stopped in a less than elegant, bottoms up pose for the opponent of the two weasel brothers.</p><p>While the two brothers were busy taunting their fallen opponent whom they've ganged up on, they became too entranced by their own "gun-show" to where they didn't notice the training grounds lighting up and the ancient ruins that they hosted disappearing inside of seals littering the training grounds floor. It was only when the younger brother temporarily opened his eyes to bask at the misery of his beaten opponent that he saw the dispersal of their battlefield and shook his older sibling back into it.</p><p>"Bro, something's off here," the younger brother pointed to the training ground that had returned to normal and the other Allied Ninja recruits filling it slowly as the lecture had closed in on its last stages with tutor Mauma ready to wrap it up.</p><p>"What? We must have beaten that hayseed so badly that the teach called the whole War Game off, yeah, that must have been it…" the know-it-all older brother nodded, taking note to fix the position of his massive shades as the accessory threatened to slip off of his nose from his incessant nodding.</p><p>"Actually, you have lost this round, ruffians," a middle-aged man, subtle of frame, approached the scene of what appeared to be an absolute mugging. "In your senseless obsession at tickling our powerhouse, you've ignored to maintain the security of the objective and you've left it under-manned. That is a mistake that I as the commander of my squad would not forgive my opponents and exploited, winning us the war."</p><p>The two leather jacket donning studs eyed the short and slim man approaching them in straight, black military trousers, a fishnet shirt and a black top over it, and a red flak jacket decorated with gold buttons, topped off by a dome-shaped mask with a single monocle eye gleaming in the center and a stiff, rectangular and wrinkly chin sticking out underneath it. The man had some missing teeth. A fact that became apparent when he spoke in his emotionless and strict tone.</p><p>"What's that, punk? You telling us you sneaked behind our backs like a little wussy and snatched the win?" the bat-wielding punk brother shoved his brother out of his way and began measuring his steel bat to take a hefty swing to see if the helmet that this man donned couldn't have been split with enough cracking force. "How 'bouts I remeasure your punk-ass face a little as I did with your corn-fed piggy over there?"</p><p>"It appears that your intel has deluded you, civvy, an unforgivable blunder provided that you and your sibling wasted the entire War Game here, beating on the distraction that we have left behind for you to fool you. It is despicable that your stupidity has drawn a mark of shame upon me as well, for I have only counted for Hoshido to take only a few minutes of your time, vastly underestimating your ineptitude at your tasks," the slim, red flak jacket-clad man reported with a stiffened chin and a strict, slashing tone of voice. "You appear to be deceived that your feeble pestering has done anything but vex our heavy artillery, it is a shame that the battle is already decided and I cannot sick Hoshido on you. He is a roughneck whose services I shall employ in my future ventures, that is for damn sure!"</p><p>Knowing that his strict response will trigger something in his opponents, the self-proclaimed commander snapped his fingers and saw a line of steel wire rise in front of him. The greaser with the steel bat staggered back, having nearly found himself entangled in this suddenly erected trap while his shades hung very loose on the very tip of his nose, exposing his frightened, cerulean eyes.</p><p>"Hey, boss, glad to be of use!" Damisan emerged from the cover of the brushes, saluting with his prosthetic arm while his left hung down missing the tips of his fingers as they've shot off of his prosthetic arm as counterweights and hooked onto the obstacle he used to erect the steel wire trap.</p><p>"I must admit, I've found your suppressing explosive kunai barrage arm maneuver to be just damn cool. At ease now, veteran, allow me to teach these pups a lesson," the short yet militant man croaked in response to Damisan while he approached the steel wire wall and placed two of his fingers into his mouth, letting out a sharp whistle that cut into the ears of even the more remote lines of recruits still hanging farther away and hearing the tutor's lecture out.</p><p>The fallen Hoshido rolled on his fat bottom and strung right back onto his stump-like feet, cracking his neck to the sides and then cracking his knuckles as the ginger yokel smirked with a sadistic smirk and wiped the trail of blood running down his nose. Before the behemoth could rip into his sibling bullies, however, the sharp and authoritative tone of the squad leader once again defused the situation.</p><p>"While you wasted time on meaningless acts of sadism that merely entertained my cornfed comrade, we have outplayed you on every rank and every aspect. You are embarrassments to your squad and to your service. I wouldn't design footman puppets after you even if the Supreme Leader demanded it and I'll let you know I am a man that respects his orders!" the helm-donning man replied with both arms positioned behind him as if he saw no impending danger from the two increasingly frustrated goons in front of him.</p><p>"Oh yeah? Well, what if I carve you up and scoop you out like an oyster?" the younger brother hopped forward, revealing a kunai knife from his sleeve that shimmered in bright sunlight. With a single slash, he cut through the steel wire and advanced toward the grumpy field commander of the impromptu squad that tutor Mauma put together for this lecture's War Game.</p><p>Before the young man could close up closer than one dash away from the field commander, his knife bounced off of something round and rubbery while the blades of a katana, a scythe, a spear, a round and flat shield with sharpened edges positioned around his neck and an elongated chain with sharpened links that sliced into its targets like linked razor blades wrapped around him leaving the sleazy brother's leather jacket in stringy tatters.</p><p>"Cease this at once!" tutor Mauma roared, rushing to the scene with a massive naginata in hand that appeared from a cloud of smoke and a loud pop, sealed inside of one of his gauntlets, as he tripped over the older goon brother and pressed him to the floor before swinging his glaive around and tossing the armed puppets surrounding the younger brother like rag dolls before subduing the younger sibling himself. "What has gotten into you? I would have thought recruits less than a month away from becoming Allied Ninja to be more mindful of the organization's rules!"</p><p>"I apologize, tutor," the puppet-commanding field leader bowed the upper half of his body in bodily language that translated genuine regret but a tone of voice that was as strict and unmoved as ever. "I must request that you understand our situation. This War Game became heated, tensions were high, and we're all very passionate about securing victory to the Allied Ninja!"</p><p>"I understand, recruit Tongo, that I why I won't be reporting you bunch to the Regimental Commanders and pushing for a disciplinary hearing. Don't make me think myself a fool because of it!" tutor Mauma pushed the subdued brother toward his older sibling. The two got back on their feet full and proper and checked up on themselves. They secured their shades as close to their eyes as possible so that the scare that this experience has put into them was not immediately apparent.</p><p>"Whoa, those are amazing!" Damisan yelled out, smacking his cylinder by accident as he had intended to smack his cheeks to shake himself out of what he thought surely to be a dream. The self-puppeteering ninja dashed up to the lined-up army of Hyakuton Tongo's puppets and began devouring them with his eyes. "I used to be a puppeteer myself back in the day when I had arms and legs so I can tell amazing craftsmanship. They've been through so much - their bodies have signs of scrapes and bends, but they're so meticulously maintained!"</p><p>"Thanks, son, this particular model you're gawking at is S13G3 Unit No. 4500," Tongo approached one of his puppets with both arms behind his back while his creation stood in a military position of tensed up salutation and greeted its commander and its temporary ally on the battlefield.</p><p>"Wow, you guys do stuff a little differently than us back in Sunagakure. We used to give our puppets sort of human names like Kara-chan or Luby-Hearts." Damisan said with a lighter tone now that the intense scuffle that Tongo guided his impromptu squad through had concluded just as decisively as the puppet commander promised to his comrades if they listened to him.</p><p>"These are weapons, tools of war, son. You do not name any of those excellent explosive projectiles you fire in sweet automated fire from your arm cannons, do you? I see my S13G3 Units and the lower ranking F00T models much the same way. Don't get me wrong, I'd sacrifice a hundred F00Ts over one S13G3, but that is about it! War is a matter of economics, just like hand-to-hand combat is about managing your stamina. Having more energy helps clinch victory, but it won't hand it to you all by itself!" Tongo reported while removing a scroll from an inner pocket of his flak jacket and unraveling it before him for his S13G3 Units to seal themselves into it as their commander and maker approached the bemused powerhouse behind him.</p><p>"You're a source of some fine mayhem, son!" Tongo commended his asset that settled for taking a beating for almost nine minutes that Tongo needed to scope out and achieve victory for his field squad. "Few men would have had the guts to sign up for what you did. Your bunk is grateful for your service!"</p><p>"Anytime, old-timer, I'm always up for a good slobber knocker. Say, you seen my hat anywhere? It fell off when one of dem bastards was swinging at my face with a brick and must 'a rolled off somewhere… It does that sometimes…" the colossus of flesh scratched his messy, long, and spiky ginger hair running down his chunky and hunched back.</p><p>"If memory serves, a high-crowned, wide-brimmed head accessory… That would be a negative, I'd be willing to lend you the aid of my F00Ts if you promised to allow me the luxury to conscript your services for tasks tall and grisly in the future," Tongo tightened the hanging of his helmet by pulling it lower down still to where it obstructed even more of the man's nose.</p><p>"Yeah, sure, whatever you say… I liked my hat…"</p><hr/><p>"Huh, where is everybody?" Damisan bent his head to the side, feeling the cylinder flop about on his head as it tried compensating for the sudden shift of position. The Stars' room had been empty. All Stars but Skaven appeared to be absent, which was a prime time for Damisan to work on the repairs of his prosthetics, but being the seeker of social acceptance that he was Damisan still felt curious.</p><p>"Mana is out studying, Tomi and Shige-H had a fight about something and don't seem to want to be in the same room as one another. Well, at least Tomi doesn't…" Skaven replied while lying on his back with his eyes closed, even though it was far too early for bedtime yet.</p><p>"Oh, do you think they'll be okay?" Damisan wondered. "We should do something fun together. Maybe I'll make a boomerang propeller in my arms for Tomi's summons to play fetch. She's always happy when her summons are entertained. I think that's how Mana won her over so quick."</p><p>"Guess so," Skaven mumbled in response. From the utter apathy in his tone it seemed like he didn't much care or want to talk to Damisan yet did so just so that his fellow Star didn't feel bad about it. Even though it felt a little rude, Damisan couldn't help but not smirk underneath his cylinder, as even this speck of decency would have been very much unlike the Skaven that he used to think he knew before. Just the very fact that Skaven cared at all what Damisan thought of him or how he felt uplifted the handicapped ninja.</p><p>"I want to work on some repairs for a little while. You're not actually sleeping, are you? It might be flashy and noisy for a bit," Damisan dragged his foot over the floor.</p><p>"Sure, knock yourself out," Skaven flipped over on his right shoulder, turning Damisan his back. Damisan settled by his worktable, still hesitating and postponing the first bumps and flares of his work as he just felt like something about his little talk with Skaven left things dangling in an uncomfortable zone that he didn't want to tread over. Talking to Skaven sometimes felt like talking to a woman. He said so little, that more was left to take from subtext rather than what Skaven said.</p><p>"Must be a real drag, having to repair your actual limbs after every little tussle," Skaven's voice rung from behind Damisan. He was talking to him! Skaven was engaging in small-talk with Damisan! It might have been because of the dreamy and optimistic nature of Damisan, but he couldn't help but slip into vivid imaginative flashes of him and his new best friend Skaven tinkering together and meditating one alongside the other. One caring so much about the other that they signed up for what the other liked, even though the first didn't quite care for it. It truly was like dating someone…</p><p>"Yeah. It isn't too easy getting materials either. I've got the tools, by now I've gotten back on my legs, figurative, of course, but getting materials isn't easy. The workshops here will sell or borrow you low to mid-tier weaponry, but getting raw materials still requires the blacksmiths or engineers owing you favors. Depending on how often tutors send me out to fight, they might run me into bankruptcy if I want to keep my arms and legs intact and operational," Damisan spoke with a sense of cheery optimism that should have been very alien for someone speaking what he spoke of. Regardless, by now Damisan's nature was public knowledge to the Stars, so most of the time they brushed that sort of bright tone away and took it for granted.</p><p>"Didn't you request tutor Mauma to put you on Tongo's squad today? Sure, they were a member short, didn't mean you had to volunteer…" Skaven switched back to lying on his back and sat up so that he could look at Damisan's back while the ninja worked on the maintenance of his prosthetics.</p><p>"Yeah, well… I like to be a part of things!" Damisan turned to Skaven one-armed and used his only arm to give his friend a thumb-up before returning to straighten out the bent frames and replacing the empty cartridges of weaponry he had used.</p><p>"Yeah, I've noticed that. It's one of your strangest qualities," Skaven said.</p><p>"Strangest, how?" Damisan left it dangling with howling curiosity.</p><p>"You wear that dumb thing on your face and staple pictures of pretty people onto it as if you're fooling anyone. You use those ridiculous, curtain-sized garbs to hide away your scarred skin and prosthetics underneath. Yet you wish to be in public and around people as much as possible. That just feels odd, you know? I'd have taken you for a more reserved person, more like me, maybe?" Skaven shrugged while looking at the ceiling.</p><p>"Heh, I guess I sort of understand where you're coming from but… When you see how short life is, how abruptly it might end and how deep the abyss of the nightmares it can plunge you in is, you want to experience the most of it you can, you want to spend your life with nothing but positive memories, boundless friends and no regrets, you know?" Damisan shook his cylinder in a plastic dangle while he flared the shade of the room up with the welding tool he worked on his prosthetic with.</p><p>"That thing that left you this way, what happened back then?" Skaven shot straight. It was one of the qualities that Damisan could recognize as no one else had just asked him like this without trying to dance around the subject and hope that the impaired ninja shared the story with them or as if they were trying to avoid the subject. Honestly, Damisan wasn't sure what felt more corrosive–remembering the pain and utter collapse of that day or seeing people decide for him what he thought of as a sensitive subject and making the call to protect him from his own memories, the nature of which they did not know.</p><p>Before Damisan could figure out what to answer to his friend, a knock on the room door disrupted them. Without Mana in the room, it was impossible to have prior knowledge about potential visitors, so the option of surprise was always present. It was Tongo, and he had Hoshido with him. Skaven sat up, but Tongo raised his hand.</p><p>"At ease, I'd like to speak to your heavy-duty friend over here in private. I'd like you to remove yourself for a moment while I do that," Tongo stared at Skaven and the more that Skaven hesitated, the more displeased Hoshido was behind his new master as the hick cracked his knuckles bit by bit.</p><p>"Are you going to ask your toothless dog over there to remove from my own room if I don't?" Skaven wondered, sounding more curious than threatened.</p><p>Tongo raised his arm up to block off Hoshido's path. "It has only been a few hours since we almost got into trouble with the tutor for breaking discipline. I take matters of discipline seriously, son, you will not dishonor me with your behavior," Tongo instructed his newly made friend.</p><p>"Oh, I see Hoshido found his hat," Damisan stood up, speaking with a cheerful tone as his facial expression was impossible to tell from underneath his cylinder. "That's great. It seemed to mean a great deal to him. Let's talk outside, Tongo. No need to inconvenience Skaven, who has nothing to do with this."</p><p>"Indeed," Tongo nodded while still fixing his one-glass visor onto Skaven "The role of a lone wolf is as immature as it is desperate. Camaraderie and military order, working in a unit and being part of grander order, defines a genuine man with actual power. I'd take that into consideration, young man,"</p><p>Feeling the potential of a conflict brewing in the air and wanting to avoid it at all costs, Damisan almost shoved his guests out of the room into the hallway outside that, fortunately enough, was empty.</p><p>"I need you to work for me, son," Tongo stated as soon as the door to the room of the Stars closed shut. The suddenness of the matter almost made Damisan trip over himself by stepping over his cloak.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0740"><h2>740. Less Than Useless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Huh? Work for you?" Damisan leaned back, rattling the large cylinder over his head. Despite a grand emotional shock to his system, the attractive face on the poster stapled to Damisan's headgear continued to gleam a starry smile. "You mean like a join a gang or something like that?"</p><p>"Boy…" Tongo's lips became tight and one struggled to push the other away so hard that it seemed like they'd erupt into smoke at any point in time. "I won't hold it against you, 'cause you don't know any better, but I run a tight and orderly regiment, and comparing it to something as deviant as a mere gang shames you by even suggesting it."</p><p>"Oh…" Damisan muttered. It might not have been visible to the outside because of his nature of covering himself up as much as possible when he didn't have immediate use of his prosthetics, though he scratched his elbows with still imprecise finger twitches underneath the cloak. "Well, I'm sort of already engaged with the Stars…"</p><p>"I've seen this answer coming, and yet, frankly, I can't help it but feel disappointed, son. You'd have a bright future under my leadership and, frankly, the unit needs you just as much as you need us for some discipline to straighten your back out as opposed to buffoonery you've been up to with these miscreants," Tongo locked his arms up behind his back while ranting to Damisan. The lumbering Hoshido scratched his ear, feeling enough irritation by his act of primal cleanliness to close one eye while doing it.</p><p>"You need me?" Damisan muttered, slipping a peek of his forearm out from under his cloak as he reached up for his lip out of instinct.</p><p>"Your rocket hands are hecking cool, man," Hoshido barked out with a grungy tone, pointing at Damisan's peeking forearms that had its most impressive features hidden away.</p><p>"You spoke out turn, maggot!" Tongo scolded his larger companion by turning around and looking up, spraying from his mouth as he berated the crude and tough bruiser. "In any case, Hoshido's observation was correct. Your rocket arms are an asset I desire in my ranks. The ability to spit barrages of highly explosive projectile weaponry on the battlefield is an essential to any functional association, military, social or otherwise."</p><p>"Well, I guess I'm not engaged with the Stars full-time…" Damisan revealed the entirety of his artificial right arm to reach behind his wobbly cylinder and correct it into place. "And I never thought that somebody would want me as an asset, say I'm essential, even…"</p><p>"Want? Son, I'll outright have you, one way or the other!" Tongo pointed his index finger, hardened, wrinkled, and filled with scars from cuts of steel wire. A sign of hardship and a very specific, passionate way of puppeteering one's manipulated tools of murder. "If one invents a way to shoot missiles from their forearm at a semi-automatic rate of firing, they owe that ability to be used for the betterment of the world, whether or not they like it. You've joined the Allied Ninja so you're halfway there already. Don't stray from the right path."</p><p>"Geez, I won't lie, you're kind of intense, mister. I've already made commitments with the Stars, but I want to help you out too. I'll work with you as long as it won't clash with my other commitments," Damisan nodded with a vigorous fist raised to seal his determined proclamation.</p><p>"Well, prior commitments are a sacred deal, I can't fault you for this decision. Sticking to your word is just what a man must sometimes do. I am glad that you saw reason and committed yourself to the sacrifice of blasting away all obstacles in our way as a part of my regiment, however. I'll be relying on you and the honesty of your service, son," Tongo nodded and turned to walk away. Hoshido turned and walked behind his commander, looking more confused if he could talk again or not rather than content.</p><p>"Jeez, I guess I'm gonna be a part of another gang… Sorry… Regiment?" Damisan shook his head, walking back into the room.</p><p>"You don't look too excited. If it's such a hassle, why did you agree to it, to begin with?" Skaven raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"It's not a hassle! Tongo-san said he needed me and that I am essential to his plans!" Damisan clenched his hands as if fully intending to punch at the wall of disbelief standing in his way until it shattered into puny debris.</p><p>"So?" Skaven wondered.</p><p>"So… My entire life after I lost my limbs and got burnt, people either looked down on me, hated me for forcing them to acknowledge that I was alive and part of their reality, or were polite enough to ignore me. After being ignored for so long, I cannot stand idly by when I am needed!" Damisan turned down to look at his shaking and twitching prosthetic frames, stumbling to his worktable bit by bit.</p><p>"Whatever you say, man." Skaven shrugged and turned toward the window and away from Damisan for a quick snooze until the band came back from wherever they were.</p><hr/><p>"You agreed to WHAT?" Shige-H grabbed and pulled her hair down by the handful, coming as close to tearing them out as it was imaginable.</p><p>"Tongo-san is making a cell of recruits, sort of like us but, according to him, not nearly as disorderly. He's probably in it for the same reasons…" Damisan explained later that evening when the gang came back and readied themselves to go to bed.</p><p>"Are you sure you trust him?" Mana wondered. "I don't know him, but he seemed like a nut job observing him perform in the exercise. I've seen men like him all my life. The enjoyment he had for crushing his opponents was something eerily similar to the atmosphere in Jigoku. Frankly, I have little trust for a man who feels the need to hide their eyes while acting this way."</p><p>"Wow, Mana, class-act!" Damisan gave his friend a thumb-up accompanied by a bit of bitterness in his voice. "I would have expected a low blow like that from Endo, but not you…"</p><p>"Even when I'm not saying anything at all, I do something wrong…" the Endo grumbled to himself while ironically shaking his head. He sat in a meditative position with his legs crossed up and appeared to be reflecting on something with focused eyes, almost like running something specific through his head. It was only the direct mention of his name that brought him back to Earth.</p><p>"That's not what I meant, Damisan," Mana's voice softened up. "I meant that, usually, people that talk about discipline, law, and order but hide their souls behind masks use those words as armor coating their sadism. It's up to you who you work with, it's just that I'm worried about you working for a man like that."</p><p>"With!" Damisan stuck his index finger up. "I'm working with Tongo-san!"</p><p>"Get real!" Shige-H slammed her palm down onto the cupboard, shaking it up and nearly disassembling it into busted planks with a mere passionate love tap. "There's no working with when men like that are involved. You'll just be following his orders! He doesn't care about you or want to help you at all! He'd tell you to take your cylinder off and parade around if he could stick explosives up that thing and throw it at someone."</p><p>"Maybe you're just jealous that another guy's putting a band together? Worried of a little competition, 'cause the guy showed himself capable on the battlefield?" Endo smirked while poking at the sides of his leader. Shige-H scowled at him with something guttural seething within her.</p><p>"I wonder where Tomi is, I'm sure that the way she handles animals and doesn't care about or trust people too much would have impressed Tongo-san…" Damisan looked around while testing the precision of his prosthetics at the same time.</p><p>"I don't know, Mana said she could sense her chakra signature somewhere in the western section of the facility. She must be sleeping outside, in the training grounds. I'm a bit worried about that, but she won't let me anywhere near her," Shige-H groaned in frustration, recalling yet another sign that her group was having the rug yanked from left and right under its feet.</p><p>"Well, you tried to emotionally manipulate her into doing something she hates, filled with a self-righteous belief that it's good for her without giving much thought into what she wants…" Mana shrugged. "All things considered, sending ninja rhinos on a stampede directed at your general direction every time you're within sniffing range is a very adequate response from a teenage girl."</p><p>"I… I know…" Shige-H looked away, rubbing her elbow nervously before picking up her brush and giving a few long drags of it across her hair. "Look, Damisan, I'm glad about the fact you've found more friends. It's just that I'm worried that they might not be seeing you quite like you're dreaming about them seeing you. I just want to ask you to cut it loose, if you find that relationship to be detrimental to you."</p><p>Skaven smirked while sitting on the windowsill and gendering at the night sky on the other side of the window and insects of various sizes tapping against the glass, on a desperate destination toward the light.</p><p>"Sleeping outside, huh? You trying to help the kid really messed her up and sent her spiraling back down the decency scale. Now here you are lecturing Damisan too, causing tension on the joint without being aware of just how close to snapping it is. You really should take more cues from me as a leader and just kick back already," Skaven explained the source to his hilarity.</p><p>"Since when are you speaking to any of us without being spoken to?" Shige-H sighed and shook her head. It was so apparent that she took his words to heart and kept reflecting on just how right they might have been at the moment that it didn't matter if she wanted to conceal that fact or not.</p><p>"If a rooster is sticking his beak into the boiling pot, give it a good kick in the ass, is all I'm saying…" Skaven shrugged, distancing himself from the social scene by eliminating all traces of feeling or care from his face and just continuing on observing the spring outside.</p><hr/><p>"Um… Yes, recruit Tongo?" tutor Vikara of international ninjutsu pressed her bottom against the edge of the table while crossing her arms. When the slender and short woman hunched or posed inward, her hands disappeared inside the long and thick sleeves of her red sweater. With her arms crossed, she had to blow lightly and nudge her head to move her slick, blond locks from falling over her eyes. For a Kumogakure native, Mana would have thought her to be more aware of the local weather and not lug around these massive sweaters all the time.</p><p>"Pardon the intrusion upon your educational provision of vital intelligence, ma'am, but I was under the impression that you were about to announce the end of lecture survival exercise and I wanted to make sure to line myself and my platoon up before any other volunteers might pop up," Tongo declared.</p><p>"Oh, that's very considerate of you, though this rush to grab the bull by the horns is quite usual for this part of the course. Where were you four months earlier when everyone still hesitated to volunteer?" the tanned woman chuckled to herself and moved toward the board to explain the rules of the upcoming exercise. The woman flipped the board over to reveal a rather impressive chalk-on-board rendition of a demonic face gazing upon the lecture hall and the recruits therein.</p><p>Mana had seen the Rashomon gate before during the search for the Box of Ultimate Bliss in the Wind Country. A seemingly impenetrable barrier that, at the time, they scaled rather than try to get through. It would not have taken a genius to realize that the purpose of this exercise would be to penetrate this barrier.</p><p>"The Rashomon Gate serves as one of the finest defensive techniques and the most powerful barriers to break through in the known ninja world. It would be rather cruel to request that you would try to bust it using the object of today's lecture–the treasured Kumogakure sealing techniques alone so you can use any assortment of techniques learned in this course to dispatch of this barrier, however, dispatch of it you should if you wish to earn those invaluable, clutch, final month points," tutor Vikara slammed her hand against the board and the daunting fangs of the Rashomon, leading the recruits outside and into the training grounds.</p><hr/><p>"So, what's the plan, Tongo-san?" Damisan turned to the puppeteer field commander, pumping himself up with palm-punching underneath the cloak. He already loved the initiative that Tongo showed, and he'd rack Damisan up with enough points to where he'd only need a minimum passing grade on both the written test and the survival exercise at this rate.</p><p>"Don't speak out of line, maggot!" Tongo reprimanded his comrade with a stiff upper lip glare. "It is the responsibility of the commander to devise a strategy and relay as much intelligence as he deems necessary. My plans may be none of your business, maggot, so you will act as you are told and surrender to my command! Am I understood?"</p><p>"Oh… Um… Yeah…" Damisan rubbed his prosthetic palm, feeling phantom tingles run down his prosthetic limbs as if they were his actual arms and legs from the embarrassment.</p><p>"You!" Tongo pointed to Hoshido behind him, just giving grumpy looks at the towering, demonic wall in front of him. "Go and give that wall a good beating and don't stop swinging until it's down!"</p><p>"B-But… Commander. The Rashomon will repel him…" Damisan was about to argue before a smack hit and nearly sent his cylinder rolling across the ground. The jolted ninja clutched to his accessory and stumbled on his knees, hyperventilating after the only thing between his face and the rest of the world nearly slipped off.</p><p>"Excuse me, maggot, but has hell frozen over yet!? Then why do I hear you speaking, let alone questioning my order!?" Tongo leaned over his kneeling subordinate and began knocking on Damisan's cylinder as if it was a door that Tongo requested entry from. "Sometimes I wonder if you can even hear how much I love you over this massive rubber johnny you're wearing!"</p><p>While Tongo scolded Damisan and the fallen ninja did his best to get back to a stable mode of breathing, Hoshido howled through the air and slammed his hammering fists onto the front of Rashomon with a resonating battle roar. An electric jolt lashed through the air as a transparent, ethereal force repelled Hoshido down on the ground, and the wall remained as unmoved as ever.</p><p>"Good! Continue!" Tongo demanded. "As for you, princess, if it's alright with your sensitive ass, I'd like you to stand up and hit that damn gate with the only thing you're good for! In words you can understand, stop whining and play me an artillery polka already!"</p><p>"But… Hoshido is right there in the blast zone…" Damisan wheezed, short of breath that the panic he was in robbed him of.</p><p>"Useless!" Tongo flat out roared into his face. "Why don't you go over there and cry a river on that goddamn wall and see if your tears at least corrode it somewhat then, you third wheel of the whole goddamn human race!"</p><p>Again and again, Hoshido ran into, tackled, and hammered at the Rashomon, but physical attacks appeared to be utterly null against it. Whatever mystical chakra-based protections coated it, it didn't look like even Hoshido's siege could put a dent in the gate. Eventually, even the boundless stamina and toughness of Hoshido had to run out.</p><p>"Taijutsu's no use, huh…" Tongo muttered to himself. With an authoritative yank, he pulled on a handful of steel wire strings that lit up with an azure light of base chakra flowing through them. A gaunt puppet of a weathered mannequin strapped with dead human skin, donning a black, tattered cloak danced in crescent swoops above the puppeteer commander before landing before him. It opened its black cloak, revealing eight empty holes inside. Tongo pressed his hand to the puppet's back.</p><p>"Fire Style: Head-Mincing Pain!" Tongo yelled out as the six holes lit up with infernal fireballs and howled as they drew air inward and bolstered the might of the projectiles that it spat out. The wild barrage of devastating fireballs detonated in chain explosions and sent Hoshido rolling on his back with his front singed and yet the same disgruntled look on his face frozen as if stamped on the center of his face.</p><p>"Impressive, the Fire Country's Head-Mincing Pain…" tutor Vikara chuckled to herself, acknowledging one of the techniques that she's showcased during these past six months of international ninjutsu class that meant to give recruits access or, at the very least, knowledge of various hidden techniques they might encounter working all around the world.</p><p>Yet, when the blast cleared out, there was not a single scratch on the Rashomon, regardless. A hate-ridden scowl formed on Tongo's face as he walked up to Damisan and sat down beside him, placing his hand on Damisan's back as he pointed at the gate.</p><p>"I order you to detonate your arms. Missiles enough won't cut it. Physical force won't work against it, detonate your arms now. Hoshido is out of the danger zone now, you're good to go," Tongo ordered with a solemn tone. He wasn't yelling at Damisan anymore, but this total apathy and distance from what he ordered the young man to do might have just been scarier.</p><p>"B-But my arms… I'll… I'll have to build them from scratch and… The prep course exam is in just a few weeks!" Damisan stood up.</p><p>"Gutless, to think I have ever needed you in the first place!" Tongo growled, swinging both of his hands up and down. A metallic rip reached Damisan's ears while the entirety of the recruits gasped in terror. A feminine, spider-like puppet had slashed with its scythe-shaped legs to remove Damisan's prosthetic arms clean. Tongo kicked his own comrade down with a push kick to prevent opposition, but Damisan just laid there as if the puppet had carved his heart out.</p><p>"Let's see…" Tongo cracked the compartments open by force and pressed his palm onto a sealing glyph, lighting the hand up with a blue flame-like jet at the other end. "Maggot, make sure this connects to our target!" he ordered while handing the hot-tailed arm-shaped missile to Hoshido, who just grumbled and ran off toward the Rashomon with both of Damisan's prosthetic arms in hand.</p><p>Grave silence reigned supreme before a sphere of white enveloped the battlefield. Once the heat subsided, only shatters of Rashomon's black face riddled the floor. Smoke rose from Hoshido's unbelievably tough exterior as the human-tank coughed smoke up, having just run across the entire battlefield with two extremely devastating explosives in hand and slam-dunking them into the gate's mouth manually.</p><p>"You had so much potential, son," Tongo looked down on the utterly broken, armless Damisan. "So much destructive force held back and restrained by that soft core of yours. I call people maggots to mock them, but given your revolting true form, you truly are just a maggot. Well-armed maggot, but a maggot nonetheless. Squirm back to your gal-pals and cry to them about how mean I was to you and how wet your panties are."</p><p>Hoshido stared down at Damisan with bruises, burns, and still smoking as if he had just stepped out of a literal field of immolation. From his grumpy look, it was impossible to tell what he thought of his expelled comrade, but the two remaining members of Tongo's cell approached the tutor who came in to evaluate them.</p><p>"Well, I'm not sure I recognized that method of dispatching of the Rashomon…" tutor Vikara scratched her head.</p><p>"That waste of space over there is a puppetry user. Those invaluable arms of his were akin to puppets. Self-destruction is a signature Wind Country puppeteer trick, I assure you of it as I've studied the Wind Country's puppeteers with admiration and read the memento of all those magnificent bastards as an aspiring puppeteer myself from a country with undisciplined and shabby puppetry traditions," Tongo explained himself. Judging from tutor Vikara's expression, that explanation was enough for her.</p><p>Tongo and Hoshido would have walked away had they not bumped into a disgruntled wall of Mana and Endo staring up right at Hoshido's unscathed scowl and Shige-H burning with deep-seated hatred toward Tongo like nothing Mana had ever seen before.</p><p>"You can scoop up your little shit over there, sorry, even turds have the properties of floating that this sissy does not," Tongo replied, staring right back at Shige-H, both group leaders knew all too well that neither side would harm the other without a good excuse to do so as they'd be courting instant expulsion from the organization otherwise.</p><p>"Come back up, big guy, you're getting dust all over yourself!" Mana dismissed her scornful glare at the behemoth of Tongo's cell and approached her fallen friend, helping him up by scooping him from the ground and raising him up so that Damisan could sit up. This experience devastated the poor guy–he didn't say a single word.</p><p>"Can you imagine, the arms like that on every single S13G3 Unit? Sublime! That sack of shit, most powerful military force in the world all gone down to the bottom alongside the useless brick that it is," Tongo sighed, shaking his head. The voice of the puppet commander faded out into obscurity once the duo left Mana's field of view and the livid magician postponed her wrathful roar until a later time when Damisan wasn't in such desperate need of picking up.</p>
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<a name="section0741"><h2>741. Ways To Defuse The Abuse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Damisan laid in bed, unmoving. The elementary, metallic frame of his arms laid beside him on the bedside cabinet, crossed and untouched since their completion. Slowly, Shige-H approached her crushed squadmate and leaned down, placing her hand on him to show that she wanted to talk to him.</p><p>"You haven't been to lectures in a few days," Shige-H said just to open a conversation up.</p><p>"Didn't feel like it, Tongo made us more than a few points with those endless exercises anyway," Damisan replied with a sorry tone of voice.</p><p>"You don't owe him anything. The guys are itching for an opportunity to pick a fight with him and that hick gorilla of his tailing him around, but I don't see that solving anything. You need to show up to lectures, you need to show him you're not afraid," Shige-H advised while nuzzling Damisan's back in solace.</p><p>"Show him what? That I'm strong?" Damisan muttered, his voice became raspy and his tone turned defensive.</p><p>"You are strong. You've got nothing to prove to anyone. Still, it hurts all of us to see you beat like this. As your friends, we want you to move past this," Shige-H said. Damisan peeked his head, wrapped up in an excessive number of layers of bandages as his cylinder laid beside his bed and the poster he had stapled to it laid torn in the bin by his bedside cabinet.</p><p>"Oh, it's just us…" Damisan noted, looking around. "Aren't you missing lectures by wasting your time with me?"</p><p>"It's well past the last lecture, Damisan. You've spent the entire day in bed, the fourth day. What you've experienced was shocking and crude and terrible and nobody deserves this sort of abuse and it might take you more than just a couple of days to move past it but you owe it to people who hold you dear to at least try," Shige-H sat down, dragging Damisan's cylinder closer and taking her seat while she picked up his skeletal, metallic frame off the cupboard and examined them. "You and Mana make a nice team, building something like this. Still, it's incomplete."</p><p>"Yeah, it's just something to stick on my sides and pretend like I have arms," Damisan sighed. "Apparently, Mana used to listen to someone else's guidance and tinker on something for her father. She's a natural at this, but I don't want her to miss out on her training and studying. It's important that she passes, more so than for any one of us."</p><p>"If you care so much, you're not doing any favors by sulking around. It freaks her out even more seeing you like this. You know Mana, she has to help everyone, and it doesn't seem like she knows how to pick you back up," Shige-H replied.</p><p>"I guess that's why she keeps on asking if I want to work on those arms further every evening…" Damisan recalled. "Everyone's off somewhere, I'm sorry I made you guys so worried. The last thing I want is for the Stars to fall apart. This group gave me a chance to work with someone and do something meaningful. I was a jerk to overlook that."</p><p>"Don't flatter yourself," Shige-H smirked with sad eyes. "I've had about as much to do in shaking the Stars up as anyone. It's because of me that Tomi hasn't been back in her room for almost a week, and I do not know what Endo is doing either."</p><p>"Maybe I'll check up on him tomorrow after the lectures?" Damisan sat up.</p><p>Shige's face brightened up. As many excuses as she could make about Mana being the one that needed to save Damisan from this gloomy cloud hanging over his head, she needed it just as much. Knowing that Damisan would be back to the lectures and back to working his way up toward completing the prep course and finally set the Stars off to becoming a genuine Allied Ninja squad made Shige-H feel just that much more competent as a leader deep down.</p><p>Even if she had an aura of someone who was more perceptive than everybody else and someone who knew what the others didn't, she wasn't immune to gloom and beating herself over things, feeling inadequate and second-guessing herself after all.</p><hr/><p>"Endo?" Damisan looked up at his friend, walking off the lectures and asking people around where they might have seen his fellow Stars member. With Damisan having already gotten a rep for being a nosy individual and with Stars often being seen hanging out together, as tight of a ring as a donut, nobody blinked twice when Damisan was asking around.</p><p>Still, they had that pitying look in their eyes. Everyone saw Tongo abusing Damisan, kicking him around, and using him as one of his puppets. They saw him doing that to both Damisan and Hoshido but those pitying stares somehow washed off of Hoshido, probably because the bruiser just had a habit that was as impressive as it was nasty to brush off beatings and injuries and smile his abuser in the face with deep-rooted sadism that would have made even a stiff oppressor like Tongo freak out a little.</p><p>"Hey, it's you. Finally gathered the courage to leave your room, I see. Impressive, with a face like yours, I don't think I'd ever get that kind of guts," Endo looked down from his position of sitting atop of a ring surrounding one of the training grounds and providing bystanders a platform to sit on and observe a sparring session or someone's training from. At the moment the place had been empty, though Endo still found it fitting to brood and stare at the center of the circle of trampled grassland.</p><p>"Heh, I don't know what you're on about, I'm gorgeous, can't you see?" Damisan directed both of his index fingers toward the picture of an attractive, mature woman in her swimwear stapled freshly onto his cylinder.</p><p>Even Endo couldn't resist tipping the corner of his lips. Acknowledging the fact that his goofy friend had entertained him somewhat and therefore deserved for Endo to hear him out, at least, the apprentice samurai pushed himself off of the platform and landed in front of Damisan, straightening his eyes out and glaring at his slightly hunched comrade.</p><p>"What's your deal? I'd have figured you'd have gotten the clue from the way I treat you as my doormat that I'm not into hanging out with you. Or anyone else, for that matter. If the Stars have someone they need out of their way–I'll gladly crush them. If you want a shoulder to cry on, go bother Mana, if you don't care if the shoulder listens or not, you can even try Skaven," Endo stated bluntly.</p><p>"Yeah…" Damisan scratched the back of his cylinder, wobbling it around a bit. "It's just that Shige-H has been worried about you. I have to admit, I agree with her that you're not your usual, angry at everything and crude self. You've barely insulted me once this whole time. You're often hot-headed but rarely distant, furious–sure, never self-pitying."</p><p>"Has your experience with Tongo given you a new perspective on feeling down? Is that why you're sticking your nose into everybody's business for no reason now?" Endo gritted his teeth, reacting bitterly, but he didn't lash out or try to attack Damisan with petty insults like he'd have done before. Something truly was different with him.</p><p>"You know me–I just like to be included in things. That comes double if those things are related to helping a friend in need," Damisan extended his metallic arm frame out from under his raggedy cloak for a bump.</p><p>"Just the man I wanted to see!" a sharp, authoritative voice pierced through the serenity of the training grounds during the afternoon when most recruits ran off to get some lunch before their evening training. While the first instinct that Damisan's body fumbled into was to shower him with a layer of cold sweat and try to come as close to goosebumps as his scarred skin tissue could muster, Damisan turned around with an empty heart and an, even more, void mind to face his abuser.</p><p>"I guess there are exceptions even to that rule, huh?" Endo said, taking a few steps to stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside his fellow Stars member as Hoshido and Tongo approached them. On a normal day, Endo would have been the loose cannon to just lash out at them and earn disciplinary sessions for each of them, whether or not they liked it. Now Endo was content just seething in whatever misery he was drowning in.</p><p>"Again with your comrades… Makes me wonder why I ever thought it would work out between us with your previous engagements," Tongo sighed, acknowledging the fact that Endo was present to watch Damisan's back this time and that hell would have had better luck freezing over than Endo would have had to turn his back away from the prospect of a good fight.</p><p>"Rocket hands…" Hoshido pointed to Damisan and turned to Tongo.</p><p>"True, the heavy artillery you were packing must have clouded my judgment at the time. No matter. I'll say it boldly, for I am a blunt man–give me the blueprint for your arms so I can outfit my platoon of S13G3 Units with your superior firepower and you won't be of any use to me. That's as good of a deal as a beetle can get from the links of a tank." Tongo placed his arms behind him as he stared Damisan down from underneath his headgear. The man's lips were as tight as ever, and the wrinkles on his chin betrayed the loathing that the puppet commander felt when talking to Damisan.</p><p>"I'm done being involved with you. My friends were right about you, you don't see me or Hoshido as people and your allies or friends. All you see us as is just the same as you see your puppets. We're just tools to you," Damisan declined that offer with both his spoken and his body language at once.</p><p>"My puppets? You're delusional if you think you're as useful as a fine S13G3 Unit. Heck, I'd not waste a T001 for a maggot like you either. I see I wasn't blunt enough with you during our drill–you're a shapeless dreg maggot and working for me was the only way a bumblebee turd like you had to accomplish something useful. You're soft, you've got no guts and you'll blow whichever way the wind carries you. Don't think that the feeble customs of warfare of this facility will protect you from me if you try to conceal your design from me–I'll rain hellfire upon your ass until you present it to me wrapped in a white flag," Tongo read it out like citing a national anthem. No man should have had this much dedication toward belittling a fellow man.</p><p>"Hey, Tongo, right?" Endo stepped out with his eyes closed and hands inside his pockets, taking subtle breaths. Expected by no one, the apprentice samurai shot his eyes open and drew his arms from inside his pockets, flipping Tongo off from two sides at once. "How's this for arms?"</p><p>"There's someone that got moxie. It's only too bad that I've already found someone with a bigger stick. I prefer dogs that don't bark but rip throats over dogs that are all bark," Tongo approached Endo, standing face-to-face with the Stars' swordsman and staring upward, right Endo in the eyes.</p><p>"What was that!?" Endo erupted, as oppressed as the swordsman was by the problems he was working through at the moment, his good old self that Stars loved to hate blew the lid off. Damisan had gotten good at reading his less than stable comrade as he had ripped the hand off of his skeletal arm frame and flipped the looping steel wire over Endo to subdue him from breaking the Allied Ninja rules about infighting without permission.</p><p>Damisan was fortunate that Endo hadn't put his twin-bladed sword together or coated it in chakra yet, as he'd have cut through Damisan's measly attempts at subduing Endo in a blink. Or perhaps Endo wanted someone to stop him. He wanted it because somewhere deeper down he might have known that what he was doing was wrong.</p><p>"Stand down," Tongo barked out to Hoshido, who stepped out and reached to push his ringleader behind him and take the hot-headed swordsman on himself, but Tongo's authoritative call appeared to have defused both trigger-happy brawlers at once. "This is not the battlefield we've chosen nor is this pathetic stump the prize we're after. If we can win only one battle, how about we win the battle that wins us the war?"</p><p>"War…" Hoshido mumbled, dragging his thumb across his throat while glaring down to Endo, whose eyes were casting thunderbolts at the hick, ignoring the ridiculous weight and height difference between them.</p><p>"War? We're working for the same organization. We're supposed to be allies, not trying to sabotage one another. Why don't we both just do our best, graduate, and work on fulfilling the mission of the Allied Ninja–ensure world peace and stability without the political webs and intrigue getting in the way?" Damisan pleaded one ultimate time as Tongo and Hoshido walked off. One would have thought Tongo disgruntled after finding a fight on his hands rather than submission and the total victory he expected. That was not the case. Tongo marched on with a sense of inevitability and bold acceptance of what he saw as a war between the two factions.</p><p>"Delusions of a gutless idiot," Tongo barked out, stopping and turning around. Rooting his feet into the ground like an ancient oak as he struggled against some deeper emotion, wriggling to burst free. "That's right. This is war. Make no mistake about it. War is always waging, war is never-ending, and it is warriors that win wars, not spineless cowards hiding behind hats, too afraid for their own potential to arm themselves properly. When we next meet, I expect you to be wearing something more appropriate. I have a take-no-prisoners policy so I might not be too good with the appropriate protocol for overseeing you making me the arms I'm seeking for."</p><hr/><p>"You're okay though, right?" Mana touched Damisan's cylinder as if she could feel the fever through it somehow, scanning her friend for any visual sign of injury. Endo's glare behind the magician sharpened as if it had attempted to stab into her back.</p><p>"What is it exactly that you are looking for, Mana?" Endo wondered, sitting with his legs crossed on his bed and observing the developing situation of the Stars discussing what they should do about Tongo and Hoshido from afar.</p><p>"I want to know if Tongo or Hoshido hurt Damisan again!" Mana turned back to Endo with a confrontational stare as if he was the true enemy here and not the nut job pretending to be a commander of a military platoon that, in reality, was just a bunch of puppets armed to the teeth. After a few seconds of a heated look, Mana realized she was wrong in snapping back like that and her expression softened.</p><p>"Why?" Endo asked again. "Didn't you just say that tutor Joshi let you retake that international law test tomorrow? Are you throwing your membership in the Stars away like this?"</p><p>Something round and hard-edged got stuck in Mana's throat. It moved neither up nor down, no matter how much Mana tried. Since when had life gotten so lousy that Endo was acting as the voice of reason here? She might have hung around Damisan, tried to scare Hoshido and Tongo off in ways only she knew how to, but she'd be sacrificing the bigger part of her odds at successfully completing the prep course that way. If only she hadn't missed out on so much while struggling for her life in the infirmary…</p><p>"That's okay, Mana, Tongo, and Hoshido can't hurt me. They can't. Even Tongo takes the Allied Ninja non-engagement rules seriously. Unless I agree to another exercise, they've got nothing to threaten me with so ace the shit out of that test!" Damisan pumped his feeble, metal arm frame in encouragement of his friend.</p><p>"That's incredibly short-sighted, Damisan," Shige-H shook her head with her arms crossed. "There are all manners of ways in Tongo stepping over that edge. What if he convinces a tutor to pit you against him in a War Game? That's exactly why you need to repair your arms as soon as possible and fight back. We know for certain that tutors won't make the odds uneven, so fighting alongside us is your best bet."</p><p>"I don't know about that," Mana shook her head. She's been around wicked people for too long not to know what she'd do in Tongo's shoes. "Tongo might care a great deal about the disciplinary regulations, but he's also willing to throw his squad under the bus like they mean nothing. He'll just have Hoshido hurt Damisan and take the fall for him."</p><p>"No." Damisan shook his head. "I know Tongo, he cares about discipline differently. Discipline isn't just an annoying barrier to him–it's everything. He won't break those rules nor will he command anyone else to break them."</p><p>"It still wouldn't hurt you to upgrade your arms already…" Endo noted. "For just how long do you plan on walking around with those ridiculous matchsticks sticking out?"</p><p>"Leave him alone, Endo." Mana shut him down.</p><p>"And you… How do we know you're not looking for injuries on Damisan to have an excuse to break the rules yourself? You've made it all too clear for us you don't much care about being an Allied Ninja, you're willing to crush it and throw it away at the sign of the first failure. You're not struggling against the stormy ocean, you're just coasting along and I'm disgusted that Shige-H would even keep someone like that around in her squad," Endo stood up and looked to Mana with a glare, unlike anything the magician had seen from him. It wasn't the guttural hatred he radiated at all times, it was… Disappointment, almost. It stung deep though, deep enough to make Mana get flustered and look away.</p><p>Maybe he was right. What exactly were her priorities here with the Stars? Where did the group fit in with the grander plans she had, and where did each individual member fit into all that too? Was she truly going to work as an Allied Ninja until she retires? When she put most of her plans here together, Stars hadn't even been something to consider.</p><p>"Hey, why's everyone so solemn?" Skaven wondered, having just entered the room and fallen down on his bed, staring at the ceiling like he always did before the first signs of snoozing hit him, when he would then engage in his ordinary evening routine before going to bed.</p><p>"Tongo and Hoshido messed with Damisan again," Shige-H explained it to him.</p><p>"As they will until you crush them and grind them into the dirt before you. That's how school bullying works," Skaven shrugged and closed his eyes, trying to see if he felt sleepy yet after the evening training.</p><p>"You and I have unique ways of dealing with bullying," Mana sighed and walked back to her own bed, falling on her side. She had ample things to figure out herself. It wasn't like she had much time on her hands either. The prep course graduation exam was just around the corner.</p><p>"I can see how Skaven's method might be effective, though I think I like Mana's a bit more," Damisan laughed out and popped off his legs and his arms, placing them beside his bed. It was his way to announce to the rest of the Stars that he wouldn't do what Tongo demanded of him and fight him how the puppet commander intended it. He wouldn't be building another weaponized set of arms and look for a fight.</p><hr/><p>A maddened shriek played Skaven's nerves like a violin. The Nara wrestled himself out of the sheets. He might have been thankful for the fact that he still had blurry morning eyes and that his hair fell over his face as the sight of a mangled face had greeted him, the specifics of which eluded him because of his limited morning vision. By the time Skaven's body pumped sufficient adrenaline to wake him up for good, Damisan had stuck his head into the sheets and wrapped them around his exposed face.</p><p>"My cylinder! My mask! They took it!" he yelled out. "I… I can't leave without it!"</p><p>Skaven sighed. His head sunk down with his chin pressing to his chest. In the background cacophony of terrified shrieks and wailing, he slowly turned his head to the right and saw all the Stars having already left the room early in the morning. Some of them hurried off to the early morning lectures, some of them might have hoped to spend that time preparing for the tougher educational trials ahead of them that day.</p><p>"Fine," Skaven caved in. "Find yourself a sock or something, let's go get your erotic cylinder back," he grumbled, cracking his knuckles.</p><p>"B-But… The rules…" Damisan cried out into the pile of his sheets in an inhuman voice, as if his voice had been changed by exposing his face, though, in fact, it had only been the way he acted without it that had changed.</p><p>"They made the mistake of pissing someone who doesn't care about them off," Skaven yawned, longing for a few more minutes of snoozing that the universe still owed him. "Staying in the Allied Ninja won't be what's it's cracked up to be with you wailing all over the room all the time, will it?"</p><p>"Th-Thank you!" Damisan nodded a few times, wrapping his head up in a whole heap of bandages. Despite doing well to cover his disfigurement up, the poor guy still trembled and twitched, paranoid about walking around without his cylinder.</p><p>"Hey, what are people you've bullied into joining your band for?" Skaven rolled his eyes.</p>
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<a name="section0742"><h2>742. The Unjust Tower Defense</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You seeing alright in that?" Skaven asked. Once in a while his eyes couldn't help but turn to his shaky friend, who began growing more and more accustomed to his situation and thirsty for punishment to the thieves that took his precious cylinder with each step.</p><p>"I don't need to see, I need justice," Damisan groaned, yanking on two pieces of bandage that had slipped off of the lousy configuration covering up his face. "This is wrong. You don't do something like this!"</p><p>"Bet you'd have liked to have repaired those hands of yours by now…" Skaven blew his lips out, realizing that if a fight truly was to break out, against everyone's best interests, he'd be stuck with a comrade with a useless set of arms in combat.</p><p>"Maybe, if I was looking for a fight. We won't be fighting. We can't do that. I will not fail everyone. Shige-H needs us to help her keep this team together, I can't even begin to imagine how lousy I'd feel if I got you kicked out because of me," Damisan shook his head, picking up a slipping ring of cloth and wrapping it over his head and tying a knot of some loose ends hanging down from his head.</p><p>"You know, I can't quite remember why it is that I came here to the Allied Ninja, right? It might have been that memory wipe thing we did with Mana, I guess my reason was related to something that she deleted. Either way, it won't really drag me down that much to break a few rules and pay the price," Skaven shrugged and turned an apathetic pair of eyes toward Damisan just to show him he meant every word he said. "So… Do you know where we're going?"</p><p>"I know where Tongo's room is. He might be at the lectures putting Hoshido into more danger for points," Damisan tried clenching his fists but his shoddy, metallic frame arms didn't clench the whole way. Only the very tips of his flimsy fingers touched each other as they hooked over to form a metallic ring on each hand.</p><p>"Right… There are lectures going on at the moment," Skaven looked up with an unapologetic look before letting curiosity weigh his face down and to the left to look at Damisan. Skaven didn't have even the smallest doubt that asking Damisan to waltz into a hall filled with recruits was the worst thing he could think of right now. The poor guy couldn't handle it, no matter how hardcore he tried acting.</p><p>"Who knows, maybe they've got your cylinder in their room?" Skaven shrugged.</p><p>"Y-Yeah… Worth a shot," Damisan nodded. They both knew that this wasn't true. There was no way that a despicable schemer like Tongo would have stolen Damisan's cylinder only to leave it unattended in his room. The two hastened their step. All things considered, Damisan was lucky that most of the recruits inhabiting these floors were occupied at the moment and they weren't bustling as they'd usually be.</p><p>One thing that neither of the duo had expected was to not only see Tongo and Hoshido sitting in their room, but a Regimental Commander accompanying them there. Hoshido sat holstering the cylinder underneath his armpit while his ugly and always disgruntled scowl just stared blankly at the door. His grumpy look didn't change for a second even when the two ninja walked through it and realized that they might have just entered the lion's den.</p><p>"Regimental Commander Harcel?" Damisan's stance became stiff and jittery in the joints. The seasoned ninja turned toward the two entrants with a light squint and strict, stiff lips. His right eyebrow arched over his eye, well above how his left one hung.</p><p>"Right on time," Tongo's lips twisted upward on the left side, making his teeth peek through the crack slightly.</p><p>"Hmm… His arms indeed look useless. Oh well, we'll find out soon enough," Regimental Commander Harcel turned his nose up, looking at Damisan with suspicious gawk.</p><p>"Those two stole my cylinder! I can't go anywhere without it, I need it!" Damisan raised his shoddy arm and pointed it, still clutching the tips of its fingers and looking more fitting to scoop trash out of a pond than combat.</p><p>"Wake up, man. Harcel won't move a finger to help you. He's here to make things worse for us, in case you haven't noticed," Skaven said in a carefree voice while sneering at the Regimental Commander. "So how about the bear trap snaps shut already and we go along with whatever Tongo's plan here actually is. What? Did he blame Damisan for something?"</p><p>"Indeed," Regimental Commander Harcel sang out with a melodious hum. "Recruit Tongo informed me of the worst crime that an Allied Ninja can pull off under our noses–weakness. Apparently, recruit Damisan refuses to rebuild his arms and threatens the solidity of our military potential. No village has feared Allied Ninja yet and with a display such as this, that is headed nowhere even remotely toward change in the future. Well, not if I can do something about it."</p><p>"Commander Harcel, can't you see that Tongo just wants my arms for his puppets? He wants to arm his puppets with my prosthetics," Damisan pointed to Hoshido and Tongo, who stonewalled this accusation. Where Tongo was too ruthless to take it to heart, Hoshido was too blunt.</p><p>"And he will have it if you are too weak to protect your limbs. If you're too weak to protect yourself, I've no objections to recruit Tongo forcing you to enhance his puppets, as long as it leads to the superior military power of our organization," Harcel crossed his arms, making his fancy robe go all wrinkly which was an unnatural look for it.</p><p>"No way this is really happening!" Damisan's head sunk down as he began quivering. A putrid stink of sweat and something guttural and quite rancid reached Skaven's way, making the Nara give his fellow Stars member a caring look, a drastic change from his usual attitude.</p><p>"Okay," Skaven smirked and pocketed his hands. "But how do you know Tongo is stronger than Damisan? How can you know for certain without having them settle it?"</p><p>Hoshido stood up and walked out in front of Tongo and Harcel, walling off the two men with his massive frame and displeased look that continued to stare on at a blank point in the room while his plump lips blew out alongside his eyebrows taking a sharp plunge down. The big guy wanted to be a part of the brawl if one was to break out, that much was for sure.</p><p>"Skaven," Damisan turned to his friend with a shaky tone.</p><p>"Don't worry, I can speak pretentious old geezer with his pants squeezing way too tight better than anyone else," Skaven smirked before returning his challenging glare back to Harcel. While the Regimental Commander hated Skaven's blatant disrespect to rank, being someone who valued strength over everything else, he saw the weight of the Nara's words.</p><p>"Well then, I suppose it is settled. If the Stars agree to it, you will take part in a very special survival exercise to settle this matter. Just like it should always work. It just so happens that the odds are fair, two on two," Harcel observed, stroking his shriveled, long, and sharp-shaped chin.</p><p>"This was your plan all along," Damisan pointed his finger to Tongo, who walked out from Hoshido's side. "You took my cylinder, trying to provoke me into challenging you to a fight so that you could legally bully me into upgrading your puppet army!"</p><p>"Men do not try, maggot, men do!" Tongo straightened his back, still measuring up only halfway to Harcel's chest, let alone the towering marvel that was his living tool. "State your conditions, Regimental Commander, we'll beat the Stars at any drill."</p><p>"Well… I suppose we could try a siege scenario. I shall unseal the prop construction site and place a container filled with scrolls in what would have been the main hall had the building been completed. The Stars can try to protect the scrolls while Tongo and Hoshido can serve as a siege team, your aim will be to topple the building down after claiming the scroll container from within," Harcel nodded to himself, deciding on the drill that the two teams would clash in to settle their differences.</p><hr/><p>"I'm sorry," Damisan grit his teeth. Skaven could hear snappy cracks from all the way on the other discarded armchair placed in this prop tower that they would have to defend. "I dragged you into this nonsense and now I'll be ruining everything just because I resisted everyone's advice and didn't rebuild my arms."</p><p>"Don't let that asshole get into your head," Skaven sat up and leaned forward, intertwining his fingers as the Stars waited for the Siege Team to start their assault on their tower. The rules of the drill forbade them from doing anything until the Siege Team made the first move and, in theory, this should have been balanced out because the Siege Team couldn't have just toppled the building–they needed their prize too. "This was never our game to win."</p><p>"What do you mean?" Damisan turned to Skaven. The Nara rebel tried not to notice the little crystals gleaming in his friend's eyes.</p><p>"Tongo's little puppet elite unit is called the S13G3 Unit, isn't it? This whole thing's a sham. Harcel hates our guts 'cause we're not what he sees as Allied Ninja material and that's all there is to it," Skaven explained his way of seeing things with a bitter grimace. "He knows that you're not at your full strength, he didn't make Hoshido give you back your cylinder, he didn't give you time to rebuild your arms. Up we went, and we went right to the training ground, the sooner he disciplines us the better."</p><p>"Even worse…" Damisan sniffed.</p><p>"No, it's not. Fighting from this position is where I've got home-field advantage. What's wrong with you? I thought you would too. Note that feeling, that bitterness that this injustice brings out, and draw it together with your breath. Take it in and breathe it out, let it fuel you and burn you up. You'll be surprised how strong it will make you," Skaven walked up to the missing window and glared outside. He couldn't see a living soul out there. He'd have figured that Tongo would have flooded the building with his F00T Units just as a distraction. Maybe surrounded it with his precious elites.</p><p>"I don't think I get it how that works…" Damisan admitted, letting out a nerve-wracking metallic shriek when he rubbed his throwaway arm with his other prosthetic limb.</p><p>"What do you mean? Don't you want to wreck every single S13G3 dolly he sends against you and make his time as miserable as possible repairing them all?" Skaven smirked as he turned back to his friend. Both of the Stars' ninja spread their feet out, skidding them against the floor while their eyes whited out in shock. The entire tower they were watching over threatened to collapse merely from the wild earthquake that rumbled its basis.</p><p>"What is that?" Damisan rushed to the window, staring out with renewed vigor in his moves. The shock he had when the earthquake caught the self-puppeteering ninja off-guard returned when he saw a black cart-shaped unit the size of the entire Allied Ninja Headquarters rolling up on them in a direct collision course.</p><p>"What the shit? I've never seen a puppet like that. It's like if a shopping cart had a baby with a suit of armor and that baby ended up over a hundred meters tall!" Skaven grit his teeth, staring at siege machinery of destruction rolling up on them. At this rate, they'll get flattened for sure.</p><p>Damisan yelled out in pain and fell on his front, nearly tripping Skaven up at the same time. Armored puppets with insectoid masks began flooding the room and showing off their tricks. Some of them fired off wild jolts of electricity from tesla coils enhanced by Lightning Release chakra sealed into their armor, some of them fashioned some good old flamethrowers or water spouts hard enough to drill through a diamond.</p><p>"F00Ts!" Damisan whined out on the ground, rolling on his back.</p><p>"Wreck them! They're trying to drive us out of the tower!" Skaven rolled his kunai in his hand before grabbing hold of its handle and stopping it in battle-ready position before taking off with a wild kick that blew the black helmet with compound eyes vizor clean off and exposed the wooden, featureless headpieces underneath while Skaven cut up the nearest F00T apart by opening up his armor like a tin can before flinging his kunai at the back of the flamethrower-using one prompting it to resonate with a firestorm spanning the entire room.</p><p>Thinking this would have been enough was just dreaming. Even with the smoke and heat still in full force, lightning arrows were buzzing all over the place. Damisan raised his feet and kicked at the legs of a nearby F00T Unit. While the kick had been successful and tripped the miserable puppet up, snapping its knees by the center, the footman puppetry unit appeared to operate as quadrupeds too by relocating his arms and legs to work like those of a spider as he crawled over Damisan and its buggy arms and feet began hammering at the fallen ninja from all directions.</p><p>"Shadow Prison Jutsu!" Skaven roared out, enclosing a good handful of F00T Units inside of a bubble of liquid blackness that rose from the shadows of the gloomy room. Slamming the sphere of shadows at the wall by swinging it like a morning star, Skaven flung the F00T Units out and under the impending wheels of Tongo's destruction machine.</p><p>Damisan was about to stand back up after Skaven's outburst freed him, but then he pressed his ear down to the rumbling, wooden floor of the abandoned tower. He didn't need to say a word–the fact that he heard more and more F00T Units flooding the premises was self-evident from his reaction and the fact that he cared to listen for so long.</p><p>"They're trying to drive us out. Hoshido is likely already inside too. This is a two-front scare tactic. We're supposed to leave this room and the scrolls while Hoshido scoops them up," Skaven grunted, looking out through the busted wall he was very much responsible for and stared ahead at the rolling cart of colossal destruction.</p><p>"I'm done being afraid," Damisan stood up, tearing a handful of his cloak off to get more freedom for his skeletal metal arms and his feet that were his most powerful weapon now when his arms had been downgraded a thousand versions back. "Whichever way they got in, I know exactly how we'll send them out."</p><p>"As scrap metal," Skaven sighed and turned toward the staircase that rumbled and clanged with wooden and metallic noises of thumpers and blades alike.</p><p>Damisan detached one of his feet and raised them up to aim them at the entryway. With a flick of a trigger, he fired a jet of chakra that would have normally helped him levitate or to move around the battlefield hastily but now it only served as a forceful blast to leave the shoddy construction meant to serve only as distracting or annoying footmen scatter and fall back down the staircase they climbed up in pieces.</p><p>As arms and cannons began bursting through the cheap, plaster walls, proving that the F00T units weren't willing to always use the door, Damisan curved his hell-spitting leg to curve his blast and welcome the attempted entrants with worse manners than their counterparts.</p><p>"Careful, you're going to slice the whole tower into two at this rate," Skaven worked up a smirk while leaking his shadows outside of the holes that Damisan's hell he gave the invaders made to stab at anything or anyone willing to try entering the same way someone else had already failed to enter through. Like a ring, Skaven's shadowy tendril wrapped around Damisan's bursting beam of base chakra before spiking out in each direction and expelling drop-shaped projectiles in the other room that led all the way into the main hallway they had to watch.</p><p>"I've never seen any Nara techniques like those!" Damisan blanked out as the fuel in his prosthetic leg began running short and he needed to replenish the shake stored in the seals to use a destructive blast like that again.</p><p>"Yeah, well… If I did what those stuck-up pricks in the clan told me to, you'd never have seen them at all," Skaven sighed easier while kicking up a board into his hands and rushing the door to slam a pair of F00T Units creeping into the main hall.</p><p>"Hey, it ain't looking that bad out here," Skaven's voice reached Damisan who punched his feeble metal arm through the wooden floor and pulled on it, leaving the prosthetic arm stuck into the floor while it fragmented into metallic pieces separated by steel wire. As Skaven rushed back in, followed by the remaining F00T Units, the improvised fragments of Damisan's metallic arm detonated, spreading steel wire and slashing the rushing puppet platoon up into lifeless chunks littering the main hall.</p><p>"I don't know why everyone called these arms useless, to be honest," Damisan gave Skaven a lively thumb up with his one remaining hand.</p><p>This friendly chatter was not meant to continue for much longer as a pair of arms burst forth from underground and grabbed hold of Skaven's heels, pulling him down and through the wooden floor. Another sheet and another one as the assailant seemed to keep breaking themselves down alongside Skaven with energetic thrashing and a general influx of grand bodily weight.</p><p>"Yeah… Was wondering when I'd bump into you…" Skaven grunted. His voice had a sprinkle of whining as he stood back up, feeling a nasty bump in his shoulder as in an instant the two ninja had ended on the bottom floor. Hoshido stood back up without saying a word. The silent bruiser just shoved a hefty grindstone off of his body before picking it up and smashing it over his head as a demonstration of his toughness. Or perhaps the grindstone merely got in his way.</p><p>Either way, the one time Skaven got involved in something for anyone else than himself, he had his hands full with this freak. While a tad ironic, knowing his fortune, Skaven had seen this feat of bad luck coming from a mile away.</p>
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<a name="section0743"><h2>743. Redecoration, Facial And Otherwise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hoshido took a step. Face stone-cold. With the first twitch of his foot, Skaven's shadowy tendril wrapped around his body with the Nara ninja taking the knee and weaving a signature Nara Clan hijutsu hand seal while the Shadow Strangulation Jutsu wrapped all around Hoshido's hulking body but stopped a few inches away from Hoshido's throat where the hold was supposed to lock-in.</p><p>With another step, Hoshido tore through the shadowy stranglehold, freeing himself out from the shadowy grasp by simply walking it off. Everything went black around Skaven's face as the massive hand of his brutal opponent wrapped around his face and the hick thrust Skaven into the ceiling, smashing him through while he dragged Skaven's body across the crumbling ceiling and smashed him back into the ground face-first. Skaven's feet locked around Hoshido's wrist, stomping it a few times.</p><p>The pressure against the giant's nerves caused a nervous twitch that awarded Skaven with a couple of precious seconds to slither out of his opponent's control. Skaven's right hand shot down to support his plummeting weight while his left went for his tool pouch. He spun with overhead kicks while freeing a kunai from his holster. A pair of silvery blurs colored the intense atmosphere against the two colliding ninja leaving grievous but shallow scratches on Hoshido's waist and his face while Skaven propelled himself off the floor and spun around with his kunai in hand.</p><p>Hoshido let out a prolonged grunt while the image of his disgruntled expression solidified in Skaven's weary senses. Skaven didn't have the time to exclaim something ironic as the hick just roared out and charged at him with his arms spread out wide and just ran Skaven over, taking him along for the ride as the wild bruiser slammed through walls of wood and plaster like it was a sheet of wallpaper.</p><p>Once Hoshido settled down with his outrage, the brute looked down at a wooden frame that fell down off of his chest. A piece of the structural integrity of the building that Skaven had substituted himself with in order to avoid being taken for a ride. "Shadow Sewing Jutsu!" Skaven's voice resonated from a darker corner of a shadowy attic that had half fallen apart during Hoshido's rampage. A washing tidal wave of sharp shadowy tendrils erupted from the dark corner, skewering at the burly bumpkin.</p><p>"What are you made of?" Skaven muttered to himself as he felt his shadowy tendrils merely cutting into Hoshido's flesh or inflicting very shallow puncture wounds. Hoshido bellowed, his hefty hands grabbed hold of the shadowy tendrils and ripped them apart, snapping them and dissolving them at once as the brute freed himself and dripped with thin lines of dripping blood, coloring him from his wounds.</p><p>The hick jumped up and grabbed hold of the attic, with a powerful yank, Hoshido slammed the whole floor down by ripping it down atop of himself but all that he could care about was that the annoying rat hiding inside of the shadows and bombarding him from his perch-point was now out in the light. As Skaven dug through and did his best to crawl away from the slowly advancing threat of violent obliteration, Hoshido merely walked toward him menacingly.</p><p>Skaven rolled back, trying to get back on his feet, but a stray wooden frame hit him straight in the head. Everything went black for a second. Once Skaven's vision returned, he was staring at droplets of blood gathering in a threatening puddle as his head hung down and his hair obstructed the limited lighting in the room. Everything blacked out again when Hoshido push-kicked Skaven through a couple more rooms and walked menacingly toward his opponent.</p><p>As Skaven coughed up blood and clutched at his busted ribs, his vision settled on the advancing threat of glorified violence, who ripped out a broken wooden frame of the building and stared at its chipped off upper part for a few seconds. When Skaven's vision returned to him in its full efficiency, the Nara might have wanted it to have taken some sweet time as he witnessed Hoshido slamming his head into the sharp, wooden shreds, looking back up and smirking at Skaven with a face full of splinter shrapnel. One of the wooden spikes was sticking out from Hoshido's eye, and when the giant pulled it out, his eye burst into a bloody spit.</p><p>"Shadow Wave Jutsu!" Skaven grunted, taking one knee and weaving the Nara hijutsu's hand seal as a shadowy arm filled the room and smacked his opponent to the back wall. Once the hand dissolved, Hoshido dislodged himself from the wall three rooms back and stumbled, a tad hazed from the violent impact. "Shadow Assault Jutsu!" Skaven yelled out with brutality oozing from his voice as a tendril of shadows extended underneath his feet.</p><p>Once the black line reached Hoshido's relative location, it expanded into a pool of black from which smaller, shadow hands burst forth, delivering an unrelenting beat down from all sides and holding nothing back. Shadowy fists sticking themselves into Hoshido's meaty frame from the front, back, hitting him high and low, fists for his joints, fists for his ugly, broken mug and fists for his knee caps, fists hammering Hoshido's feet and hands grabbing hold and yanking his fingers.</p><p>"Shadow Strangulation Jutsu!" Skaven yelled out, feeling the wear settling on his chakra pool as the miniature fists all unified into larger hands crawling across Hoshido's body and surrounding his entire body, creeping up around Hoshido's hulking frame and circling his throat like a ring of shadowy petals. This time–they did their job.</p><p>A smirk colored Hoshido's face that was turning blue. The limbering hick struggled and struggled on, but he couldn't quite shake the dark restraints. The floor underneath him, however, got the hint. With a wooden snap and deafening rumbling, Hoshido disappeared underground as his floor gave way. Skaven yelled in severe physical pain as his entire body stiffened and the feeling of his muscles tearing bit by bit took control.</p><p>"N-No way… You… Hung… Yourself, you… Madman?" Skaven wheezed and croaked out as, bit by bit, the pull of the hole began dragging him to it. His opponent had fallen through, ending up hanging by shadowy arms, essentially, but the switch in position had caused incredible tension on Skaven, forcing the Nara to let go and catch a breath before his entire body rips to shreds on the inside.</p><p>Skaven rolled back, having learned his lesson about the way this human juggernaut operated, this instinctual feat of evasion allowed him to avoid Hoshido diving from underground with a shoulder charge, collapsing the entire floor they were on and causing a downfall of debris that shook the foundations of the entire building. As Skaven's sense of balance still felt woozy, his opponent reached out for a grab with his light-obstructing right hand. Before he grabbed and flung Skaven through some walls, however, a shadowy tendril wrapped around Hoshido's wrist, pulling his grabbing hand down and opening him up for a beat down from all sides from Skaven's part.</p><p>With the steel kunai ceasing its buzzing inside Skaven's hand and his fingers finally locking around the handle, the Nara trust it somewhere in the general vicinity of his opponent's face. The physical resistance reverberated through Skaven's arm, forcing the rebellious Nara to stumble back in pain. Before Hoshido could return on both feet, however, crazed by the bloody manner of this brawl, Skaven grabbed hold of a wooden board and slammed it a few times, hammering the kunai deeper in to crack through the adamantine noggin of his unstoppable assailant.</p><p>Before the fourteenth slam could register in place, Skaven's board hit something farther from its goal–Hoshido's open hand. The colossal bumpkin didn't even need to crush or break the board, it folded into wooden strings and chips merely from his fingers wrapping around it, and Skaven once again found himself unarmed against a half-blinded and crazed opponent of unnatural strength.</p><p>Skaven didn't even realize it when the sense of weightlessness hit him as he was already over Hoshido's head. A brutal driver delivered from an overhead, body-slamming position drilled through the cement floor with Skaven's own head coloring the pale cement in blood-red. Just this one slam wouldn't do, however, as Skaven still counted stars and tried to walk toward the voices that were the only change of pace in the void of all-white that he found himself in, Hoshido's hands locked around Skaven's heels, flipping him over like a rag doll and slamming him about the warehouse. Whatever appliances, gadgets, and tools the Allied Ninja stored there, they were gone, broken and dusted by the shock wave and thunderous force of the brute.</p><p>Seeing Skaven writhing on the floor seemingly senseless, Hoshido lifted his foot to stomp his opponent's consciousness away, but before his foot landed on the squishy mush of his opponent's caving-face, it met a solid resistance of a shadowy bubble. Skaven had encased himself in his signature Shadow Prison Jutsu and shielded himself from the stomp. Now that he had gained one quarter, Skaven would not give up. The black tendrils wrapped around Hoshido's foot, locking him in place as the prison transferred from Skaven onto his opponent.</p><p>"Shit… Give me a second, at least for my head to stop ringing…" Skaven stumbled on his feet as a shadowy bubble wobbled and thick lumps from within it resonated throughout but failed to break the malleable containment of natural expression of darkness that Hoshido found himself in. "Any normal day, any other occasion, I'd have long since nope'd out of this one. Wouldn't even have come to blows with a lump of meat like you. That's just asking for trouble. But one thing I've come to realize today is that some fights are just worth fighting, some matters are worth involving yourself in. Sometimes it's good to be included in other people's business. That's tough luck for you, yokel, 'cause when we Nara put our brain and brawn into it and get motivated–we're kinda strong."</p><p>Skaven weaved a Nara hijutsu hand seal, "Shadow Sewing Jutsu!" Skaven wheezed out through the burning ribs to skewer the shadowy prison from inside out with black spikes sticking out from within and another batch of sewing tendrils poking like through from the outside. The complete assault on the bubble's integrity forced the Shadow Prison to burst from a minute, black singularity, flinging Hoshido right out, somehow, in one piece.</p><p>Hoshido grunted, standing up with his right eye blood-red, his entire rough frame littered with tears and scrapes, both of the constant bashing and rushing through construction material and shadows stitching him up constantly. While Skaven's will to fight and ability to stand lingered like never before, it was now only the sight of the giant wobbly on his feet and dripping blood in large, droopy pillars that still kept Skaven going.</p><p>The hick's lips twisted in an upward crescent. His grumpy eyes gleamed with an almost ecstatic state of utter psychopathy as he refused to utter a single word. Hoshido licked the blood off of his lips, but the blood soon soaked them again. Why the brute wanted a taste of his blood when his entire mouth drowned in bleeding gums and tearing from his internal injuries was beyond Skaven.</p><p>Without a particular rush to his movement, the bumpkin pulled out a knife that utterly drowned inside of his hand. Only a measly tip of his kunai could have been visible from the massive hand that enveloped it, but Hoshido approached his opponent with it, regardless. Skaven wobbled, wondering what his best option was. As absolute death approached him with a menacing, psychopathic grin on his face, the Nara went through his options.</p><p>He had gone through more than half of his chakra and it failed to down one man. This bout had weakened both of them, but this mostly harmed Skaven, as this meant he might not resist his opponent meaningfully now. In around a couple of minutes, he'd regain enough stamina to substitute again, but that would have required time sitting still. Even if he applied the Shadow Possession on Hoshido, it would be a struggle and hardly comparable to moments of actual rest. No, there'd be no rest as long as this relentless ogre was on his tail.</p><p>Skaven leaned back, avoiding a slash. This was feint, but Skaven read it. He dived underneath Hoshido's grab with the free arm without even having to see the arm behind him. If he'd have gotten grabbed–Hoshido would have gutted and flayed him alive. With those eyes, that look on his face, the troll hadn't seen a challenge like this in a long time and he thrived in this violence now. His entire life had frozen still and only this meeting, only this brawl now mattered. Skaven thrust his foot into the side of Hoshido's knee. A churning snap followed it as Hoshido collapsed and gave Skaven a way to roll over the hick's back and put some distance between them.</p><p>As much as Skaven wanted to attack–he just couldn't. All he could do was stumble helplessly. His face and everything underneath simply burned, and that pain was preferable to when it all gone down numb and Skaven just couldn't feel anything under his neck, relying on muscle memory and instinct alone to manipulate his body through chakra application as it felt like the next best thing to being paralyzed.</p><p>Hoshido growled in a satisfied snarl and turned around and flung the knife right at Skaven. It was half-assed fling as he wasn't even aiming, but it wasn't the knife that Hoshido meant to hit Skaven with. No, it was the chilling, sizzling sound that filled the air that mattered. The ogre had used his massive hand to fold and hide the explosive tag attached to the other end of the kunai. A silent and deadly hissing noise chilled Skaven to the bone–a gas leak!?</p><p>The entire building lit up, balls of flames drove out from each available window, and what wasn't available faced obliteration in the face of the shock wave and rushing infernal destruction. The tower rumbled and shook by its very foundation. It had been on wobbly legs before, but now it had no foundation to crutch to and thus down it went. Dust and shrapnel washed away like torrential waves of brown, choking corruption. Regimental Commander Harcel waved his hand before him and coughed.</p><p>A black blur alerted the eyes of an old veteran as he looked to Skaven, landing right beside him on both feet after a supersonic dash, though the Nara had not found the Regimental Commander of his own volition. The explosion of the tower had ripped off the top of the Nara's clothes and left his body with significant wear and tear - patches of burnt flesh as he raced to outrun an explosion from point-blank range while within the verge of collapse already. The fact that this young man even reeled on his knees beside the Regimental Commander given the circumstances made Harcel draw air from both his nostrils and his mouth with gleeful excitement.</p><p>"Well, well… Recruit Skaven, I took you for a punk, yet here you are, blowing me old away with the resolve and strength you have within you. At least one solid warrior will graduate from this rotten generation of useless weaklings. Perhaps this Stars group warrants another look, after all, with the strength of Konoha's Sorceress and now you, maybe I was too quick to judge the group?" Harcel crossed his arms while his black and red coat rustled behind him, thrown about by the violent gales of the wildfire raging in the training grounds.</p><p>Skaven winced in pain and looked up at the walking tank puppet that was just inches away from the tower. While the tower was down, which was a part of the Siege Team's aim, they did not secure the scrolls prior to toppling it down. Technically, that made both of them fail. Though this test wasn't what was important here. It was just a pretext for the two groups to settle their differences.</p><p>"Damisan…" Skaven tried standing up, but he fell right back down, tearing a wound that had already clotted by that time and colored the ground underneath him in a wet, red stain as the Nara realized he lacked the strength to even walk up to that moving tower, attacking it was a different matter entirely.</p><p>A loud pop followed by the sound of thrashing wood and rumbling, bricks falling apart and breaking made Skaven turn to his right. With a roaring punch that sounded more like an explosion all of its own category, Hoshido punched his way out from underneath the rubble, walking out from an entire tower falling on top of him.</p><p>"Well, well… Will nothing put this recruit down for good? I may have underestimated both parties here. When my eyes first met recruit Hoshido, I took him for an ordinary countryside settler. Working the farm his entire life in the Snow Country, incapable of using ninjutsu or genjutsu of any kind, lacking formal ninjutsu education of a Ninja Academy… And yet… I am yet to see what it takes to put this man down." Regimental Commander Harcel clapped to himself. Step by step, Hoshido walked toward the fallen Skaven like a man-possessed, determined to rip his enemy limb from limb because with how close the Nara has come to doing the impossible–he made it all personal.</p><p>Now Hoshido was beyond the point of reason, beyond all sense of control, and beyond orders. Now he was just a living vessel for the violence that beat in his heart and flowed through his veins. Skaven grit his teeth and crawled a few feet toward the advancing monster, doing his best to peel his bleeding, burnt and battered body off the ground for a last couple of rounds, but he found himself utterly helpless from the waist down.</p><p>Hoshido's thunderous fist shook the ground underneath where he pounded the dirt and left a house-wide crater in it. Skaven had rolled aside, but the collapsing ground drew him back to his pursuer who would not stop, who needed no rest or quarter. With a slick, metallic wisp, a kunai from Skaven's pouch found its way underneath Hoshido's kneecap and the Nara wrangled and mess the blade up after stabbing it. As bubbly crimson sprayed from the injured knee and Hoshido fell to one knee, the two engaged in some last resort wrestling in the ditch of Hoshido's making. Skaven weaved out of the way of Hoshido's hammering pounds and jabbed to whichever weak link he found in the giant's body–his bleeding eyes, his throat, his stuck up joints. A war of overwhelming power against deceitful and precise serpentine blows.</p><p>A powerhouse packing force to conclude the battle with one punch against an experienced ex-criminal fully capable of sustaining this war of attrition. Harcel's eyes marveled at this lowly, dirty struggle between the two young men like two amethysts. All the while, another battle raged atop of the walking structure of a building-sized tank-puppet where Damisan faced his abuser in a battlefield of the bully's choosing.</p>
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<a name="section0744"><h2>744. The Pointlessness Of Violence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A fusillade of thunderous, ground-shaking blasts forced a struggle out of Damisan to stay on his feet. The wall right in front of him separating him from his abuser as of late blew apart, reducing to mere sheds and debris. Feeling the rough rubbing of bandages against his disfigured face and the imminent exposure of his true self to the elements, if the bandages take any more needless damage, Damisan stood up and approached the hole that Tongo had left in the tower.</p><p>"Run and hide maggot!" Tongo's voice echoed from atop of his walking fortress of automated destruction. It had only been a few moments before that Hoshido dragged Skaven down and the entire building had been shaking ever since. As much as Damisan wanted to check up on his friend, he'd be leaving the scrolls for the taking and just opening the tower up for Tongo to come in and do as he pleases.</p><p>No. Damisan had to leave this matter up to Skaven. He could no longer stand here and hide. The longer he stood still and watched, the more comfortable this bully will feel walking all over him and taking what belongs to him. Tongo took Damisan's cylinder. Now he's going to rip the bandages off too and parade, showing his crushed target off to everyone whether or not they liked it.</p><p>A stiff, metallic arm buzzed through the air and grabbed hold of the first ridge it could cling up to. With a string reeling sound, Damisan swung himself up and over the walking mechanical fortress and landed firmly atop of the wooden platform on top surrounded by a barred railing. Damisan straightened his back and stared right at his baffled abuser with a determined look.</p><p>"My cylinder. Give it back!" Damisan demanded.</p><p>"Well, well. Finally grew a pair, did you?" Tongo replied, moving his arms behind him. This was a deceitful motion, Damisan knew. He was a puppeteer himself. When the walking fortress stopped in place, there could have been no other reason for it other than Tongo needing those extra fingers to operate something else.</p><p>The first F00Ts came with a blur and riding the sounds of rustling cloth. With Tongo controlling them directly, with his own hand, instead of relying on control panels inside his walking fortress, the F00T moved like specters. Silent and instant, like death itself. Two whole ranks above the danger level that those previous ones were, although limited in numbers because Tongo only had ten fingers. A hammering thud sent Damisan stumbling back. Tension on the bandages paralyzed him in terror.</p><p>The F00T that socked him had grabbed hold of a bandage end and threatened to rip it off. With Tongo controlling these guys in a more personal manner, they had all the cruelty and ruthlessness of their master instead of acting in a generalized, distracting manner like before. Damisan dashed forward, activating the jets in his prosthetic legs to send him flying forward so that the pull on his bandages didn't unravel the full view of his face. He received a cross to the center of his ribcage for the trouble. Two more F00Ts kicked Damisan about as they dashed in all directions before the fourth one rolled over the first one and kicked Damisan in his ribs, sending him sliding across the platform and slamming into the railing.</p><p>Damisan cried out as he almost tipped over the rail, but with a thrust of his prosthetic feet into the rails, he sent himself flying back into Tongo's legion. They moved in blurs, like riding the perpetual high of Body Flicker, and shuffled between each other in a confusing manner. Despite his best attempts, Damisan just couldn't land a blow. Two F00Ts blitzed in from each side, smashing Damisan's head in between two steel arms, throwing a wicked power blow to his jaw.</p><p>"Let's see if we can muck up that mess of a face up some more, shall we? You can't possibly care, being this ugly to look at already," Tongo mocked his opponent who just stumbled forward with whited-out eyes before popping and disappearing into a cloud of smoke. A broken F00T unit fell on the ground, severed from its strings. "What?" Tongo bent his head to the side, observing one of the F00T units he sent to rush the tower earlier being used against him as a substitution target.</p><p>"Tongo!" Damisan yelled out, rushing at the bemused puppeteer and bypassing his legion. Before Damisan's steel frame for an arm could sock his enemy, however, a Nelson hold from behind locked around him from underneath. With the handicapped ninja subdued, the other three rushed in to throw wild fists. Once they were done inflicting their ruthless beat down, the first F00T snapped its back to deliver a suplex and leave Damisan downed and battered.</p><p>"You've come unprepared, maggot. That is why you face humiliation and defeat now!" Tongo proclaimed while his F00Ts surrounded him from each side. Featureless and faceless ballistic dummies wearing greyed out, ghastly rags as they leaned over their master's shoulders in a declaration of everlasting protection until their dying day. "You're useless on the battlefield. You've got no stomach for it. Not that you're useless in general. Your skills are still worthwhile in enhancing my platoon. With your invaluable rocket arms, your self-destruction seals, with your engineering on my S13G3 Units, our faction would be invincible! That is your use, son."</p><p>"I… Already told you… Give me back… My cylinder!" Damisan yelled out as he rose on his feet and put up his puny frame-arms.</p><p>"I will do no such thing. It makes you weak, it helps you lie to yourself. You're ugly, you need to accept that and deal with the hand you've got. Maggots that dream to fly only live to feed the birds, maggots that do as they're supposed to and wallow in their dirt are useful for a myriad of things," Tongo shook his head. "If a little of shock therapy is what I need to break your spirit, I'll take that as my mission objective!"</p><p>The F00T units buzzed over Damisan's head, rotating like vultures and wailing on him from all directions. A pair of F00Ts just flew around, thrusting their punches like automated pistons wherever they aimed while the other one used the chance of Damisan's wobbly defenses to grab hold of the bandages over his head and rip them off, the other one used the chance to wrap a string of them around Damisan's throat and slam him over his head and hold the handicapped ninja in a chokehold.</p><p>"You are paying the price of disobedience. Beaten and humiliated by mere F00T Units, as if I'd let a lowly maggot even scratch my precious S13G3s. I've found that punishing an unruly dog with increasing severity eventually makes them obedient. We'll test that theory right now, then again, a dog has more brain than a maggot," Tongo grumbled as the F00T Unit raised Damisan up and over the rails, showing him off to Regimental Commander Harcel down below as nobody else was there to witness this authorized training drill. "First time you disobeyed, I punished you with a scolding, the second one–a beating, third one–I'll unravel the entire childish dream world blanket you've wrapped yourself in and expose you to the true world around you."</p><p>Damisan reached out with his stiff and malfunctioning steel frame arm. Tongo stopped talking to appreciate the slowly dying out light of his opponent. Obviously, the puppet commander didn't intend on killing Damisan, though if he had passed out, he'd have made for a fine showcase to the other recruits once they leave the lecture and come rushing outside in search for some fine, summer entertainment. Damisan's hand formed a straight hand, like a living blade, before turning and twisting outside the joint and bending backward with a rapid, steel-hard chop that etched into the head of the F00T holding him.</p><p>With a mad battle cry, Damisan grabbed hold of the railing and pulled himself up, grabbing the wobbly F00T while the puppet commander had lost control over it and ripped it into two with his own prosthetic hands. The ones that Tongo had ruled out as useless, the ones that he had thought Damisan would achieve nothing with, and the ones he had categorized as Damisan mocking him.</p><p>"So, you've torn through some junk…" Tongo spat aside in distaste when Damisan charged onward, riding the burst of chakra jets from his prosthetic feet as he delivered a ruthless charging kick that tore right through all three of his F00Ts. Something that Damisan felt was that Tongo's grasp over them had loosened as time went on. It was a common occurrence for puppeteers to lose a bit of focus with time. Besides that, arms usually went numb when employed for a longer time, even more–chakra that the Puppetry Jutsu demanded swelled up with time. Demanding more and more as time passed. It made sense that he'd call it quits with mere F00Ts already.</p><p>Damisan's shaky hand reached over the few strands of bandages still protecting his face from full exposure. Everyone could have seen his true face, it was just figurative protection from exposure, and yet… Damisan pulled the hanging, helpless string to his chest and pressed it close to his heart before returning to a taijutsu fighting stance.</p><p>"That's just fine, these are pawns serving their commander's master goal!" Tongo extended his hands out again, calling an entire platoon of F00Ts, all under his control. Damisan didn't dally until they could overwhelm him with their uncanny speed and mechanical precision. He slid across the ground with his elbow raised over his head, igniting his feet again as he delivered a crunchy strike to the gut of one F00T and bent it awkwardly over its broken torso.</p><p>Riding the jet of chakra flames, Damisan turned around in a circle before rolling and launching himself like a human cannonball over the back of the broken F00T and into the entire legion behind him. The footmen of Tongo's command all shattered and flew apart like bowling pins hit with the heaviest ball the joint could provide, launched at the top speed. Tongo's fingers moved and bent, twisted and turned, sending more and more F00T as the commander felt an ever-increasing resistance from his opponent.</p><p>Dispatching of a handful more F00Ts, Damisan's freed, greyed-out eyes set their gaze upon his precious cylinder. He took a gamble by diving after it, but he only hit a massive, steel shield erected before him like an impassable barrier. A blitz of rapid spear strikes from behind the shield tore Damisan up and a hefty thud of the shield sent the whited out Damisan sliding back and falling on his back with stab and slash wounds where the spear's tip did its worst.</p><p>The first S13G3 Unit has joined the battle, mingling in from out of nowhere with the small-fry. With stuttering motions, the phalanx-themed puppet took one step after another, willing to either push Damisan off of the walking fort with its massive shield or impale him on his spear if the handicapped ninja continued to resist.</p><p>"So, you wish to walk down this path, maggot?" Tongo taunted Damisan from behind the advancing guard. "What could a mere savage has-been puppeteer from a nation fostering a sick tradition of carving puppets out of dead people have to say that's of any value here? A challenge to the rock-hard military might of the Kumogakure puppetry tradition will show you just how backward and behind the times your puppetry style really is. But then again, you can't wield actual puppets anymore, you're the only dolly you can play with the way you are now, boy."</p><p>"Tongo!" Damisan roared out from the bottom of his chest. Something was bubbling inside him, and it was something he just couldn't hold in anymore. He raised his foot up, positioned his arms in an X-shaped blocking motion while a ring of flames burst forth from the connecting point of his prosthetic leg and the rest of his body. "I'll make you pay!"</p><p>"Empty words," Tongo muttered. "That's fine, I'll teach you the discipline of a first-rate military platoon."</p><p>"Sun Lotus Foot!" Damisan bellowed as his prosthetic foot detached from the rest of his body, rocketing on a trajectory toward the phalanx puppet. Despite the puppet's determination to keep advancing with its shield up, Tongo's broken posture of cool that he maintained betrayed all that he was thinking.</p><p>The entire platform lit up with a raging ball of flames and ripping shock waves. A dreadful sense of weightlessness snapped Damisan out of his troubling fall soon enough for him to shoot out a hook hand and grab hold of something sticking out in this massive fortress puppet. Bits and pieces of the S13G3 Unit Model: Phalanx still crumbled from the roof of the fortress puppet. A closer look made Damisan realized he had halted himself before a wall filled to the brim with cannons. Not wanting to be ripped apart, the handicapped ninja swung slowly, landed himself back down on the ground, wincing at his hurting body before a violent rupture robbed him of his senses again.</p><p>This time it was because of the whole tower behind him going up into flames. The raging firestorm and surging destruction that was looking for any excuse it could find, any breach or gap to slip out and into freedom commanded the entirety of Damisan's attention while the handicapped ninja wondered if his friend got out from this blast in time.</p><p>"You've gone and done it, spat me in the face, and became my enemy No. 1, haven't you?" Tongo walked out from the clearing. He was luring him in, Damisan knew it.</p><p>"Took you a while to figure out. I don't want to work for you, Tongo, all I want to do is get my cylinder back and break enough of your things for you to finally get off my back. For the first time in years, I want nothing to do with something," Damisan replied, hopping on one remaining prosthetic leg he had.</p><p>"Heh, I was wrong to categorize you as a maggot. Maggot is a term I use to refer to anybody beneath my rank. You're not like everybody else, you're just an armless, legless, pathetic excuse for a ninja. You're no maggot, you're a human-worm," Tongo mocked Damisan openly, calling the one-legged ninja out for another confrontation.</p><p>Damisan had no more space in his mind for a reason. He hopped onto his arms and scurried, swinging his remaining leg around like a scorpion's tail, hoping to stomp it right into Tongo's face and shatter his skull, send some teeth smile and doom him for a fate similar to that of Damisan's own. Make him just like that, which he mocks with a spirit of meanness behind the notion.</p><p>Collision! Damisan looked up and identified a featureless puppet, signature style of Tongo's, wearing a feminine wig and swinging a massive pair of scythes around like a mantis while walking on top of two chokuto blades. Damisan clanged his prosthetic foot in a collision with the cross-shaped swipe of the two giant scythes as he rolled forward to pass around the feminine puppet and launch himself at his true enemy.</p><p>More and more S13G3 Units blitzed in from the woods, infuriated by the destruction of an S13G3 Unit, Tongo was now out for blood. That was just fine–so was Damisan. An elastic tail filled with razor teeth buzzed right past him but Damisan rolled over it, jumping back on his foot to block a pair of incoming sword strikes from a speedy, colorful puppet with a vibrant color scheme of neon blue and a cocktail-pink jacket and the owner of the sawing tail who rushed onward with a sword now that the razor tail attached to its head missed its mark.</p><p>A marble with an explosive tag fell from up above while a burly puppet with mace-hands slammed at it, sending like a baseball careening toward the advancing Damisan and sending him skidding back. His scarred and sewn together flesh, his disfigured face all exposed to the public. So severe were the wounds of his past that fire didn't seem to catch on anymore to his flesh as if the gods themselves decided this poor man has had his fair share of punishment in his past and didn't let him burn any more.</p><p>A winged puppet that had dropped the explosive marble swooped down with razor talons, aiming to scoop out Damisan's eyes but only grabbing hold of his skeletal, steel arm. The feminine scythe puppet rushed in alongside the speedy blitzer of eye-challenging color palette, looking to behead Damisan now that his arm was stuck in their winged compatriot's hold. A rending sound filled the atmosphere, but it wasn't one of Damisan's beheading. It was Damisan ripping the steel arm off while he weaved a hand seal with his remaining hand and detonated rods of black coal sticking out from his metallic arm.</p><p>The detonation was nowhere near as intense as the earlier one, but it had served its uses. The appearance of these puppets was frighteningly human but not enough so, just enough for it to look creepy when one gazed at their featureless faces, their corpuses grazed and bent out of shape and joints dislocated. Tongo yelled out in frustration as his treasured army had been unraveling before his eyes.</p><p>"Sun Lotus Foot!" Damisan yelled out, taking aim directly at Tongo now that his precious S13G3s struggled to return to their feet. He'd take a pound of Tongo's flesh for his transgressions if it was to be the last thing Damisan would do. As his foot detached from his body and flew off like a missile toward the stunned puppeteer, a wooden and metallic collection of rattling sounds made themselves apparent behind Damisan as a feminine puppet in a white kimono with red lotus motifs disassembled and reassembled itself in front of Tongo to take the blast for him.</p><p>Once the blast cleared out, only patches of cloth and handfuls of black brush hair fell as remains of the sacrificial S13G3 Unit. The puppet appeared to be mostly useless and reserved in combat, yet incredibly hasty to sacrifice herself and efficient in doing so, suggesting to Damisan that this was its primary purpose. With the S13G3 Unit Model: Courtesan left as rags of cloth, it seemed like Tongo was about to become even more unhinged and Damisan had only one arm left to burrow himself out of the hole he had made.</p><p>Before Tongo's horde could ravage him like a fatty maggot assaulted by a murder of birds of prey, a black, sharp, triangular shape took it to the air, filled with six malicious eyes on each side from behind Damisan. The S13G3 Units all fell lifeless for a second while Tongo looked up at the frightening display that demanded all of his attention.</p><p>Regimental Commander Harcel stared right at the pair of recruits with unconscious Hoshido hanging and wrestling against the mouth of a shapeless, black aura with red eyes leaking out from Harcel and forming a rising, six-eyed raven's head behind him.</p><p>"Will you stand down by your own accord, or will you need additional encouragement like your comrade here?" Regimental Commander Harcel raised an eyebrow. To be frank, Damisan was also curious about that, but the lifeless S13G3 Units that flopped around him never fully returned to life, instead choosing to crawl off into the bushes with their twitchy limbs where they disappeared into clouds of smoke. Even the walking fortress dispersed into the tallest pillar of dust that Damisan had ever seen. "Good." Harcel nodded.</p><p>"Well, the tower's destroyed, but you don't have the scrolls, the collapse of the tower ruined them. That means you both lost. That being said, I did like what I saw of your strength. I believe that with guidance your groups can both serve the Allied Ninja well in the future. Do not skip your lectures for petty squabbles again," Regimental Commander Harcel nodded as he turned to walk back to the headquarters. "Oh, and if I find out that you are brawling it out again and harming that limitless future potential you offer to the organization, I'll dispose of you myself."</p><p>"Well, with that sort of positive reinforcement, who are we to disagree?" Skaven grumbled with a weak tone of voice as he barely kept on his feet. Harcel walked off carrying Hoshido, knowing full-well that if he let go of the massive brute, he'd not stop swinging fists until either he or Skaven was dead with how much their battle had stimulated his simpleton's brain. Finding himself alone before both of his opponents, Tongo chose to just walk away.</p><p>"Nothing but trouble and losses with you, you're like a curse of bad luck. A rotten soldier just like your looks would suggest," Tongo shook his head, resigning himself of this bullying Damisan business as it had cost him two of his precious S13G3 Units and his pride as an undefeated puppet commander.</p><p>"So, back to the dorm?" Skaven wondered, looking at his one-armed friend.</p><p>"Actually, if you could just… My cylinder must have fallen off somewhere in those brushes. Please?" Damisan wanted to clap with his hands in a request, but his friend just sighed and resigned himself to some more annoyance before he could call this a day.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess we can't parade you around looking like that… You've had rough day enough as it is," Skaven mumbled to himself, stepping over the nearby bushes where the walking fortress had disappeared from sight and left the cylinder to fall down from the top of its roof.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0745"><h2>745. Grounds For Fine Education</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A moment of awareness blinked first. A puny line of grey pencil, stroking across a white sheet and drawing a line of memory on which this awareness was merely a dot. Yet when looking down on the said line, one could see the dot and mark it as something profound. Focus on that awareness brought Mana back. It made that awareness permanent, but it was difficult. Had it not been years upon years of practicing meditation, she'd have not been nearly as aware of something odd transpiring with her own body.</p><p>Pulses of red fissures looking frighteningly vein-like, containing something crimson that pumped through them in an unhealthy manner, shocked in pain. A whirl of flames became a full-on firenado, from which, once the fiery natural structure burst, Mana returned to consciousness. Or at least it seemed like she was being conscious. The magician looked down, seeing aged yet resolute locks around her wrists and her heels.</p><p>A tall and thick, femininely shaped figure in a loose, dark tunic and a black headpiece with a white headband lacking a signature of any village or the Allied Ninja on the forehead protector leaned over Mana. She stared down from within an iron helmet upon which the headpiece hung. The vizor of the helmet was down and the woman's eyes didn't possess any lustering qualities in the gloomy room, yet Mana knew she was looking right at her somehow. It was an almost supernatural, horrific kind of internal knowledge.</p><p>This was a mental world of some sort. This was exactly how Mana knew all this. With the gaunt nun leaning over Mana to do something to her with her thin, branch-like fingers sticking out from within ghastly, black sleeves, another whirl of flames surrounded Mana, this time it enveloped the nun and the mental construct died in a petrifying scream of an entire village being burnt down. It sent chills down Mana's spine, but it also felt somehow… Suiting and familiar to her.</p><p>Something was wrong. Mana had roamed plenty of mental realms, laid siege on many mental forts, but this was nothing like anything she's tried before. There were no memories of what she was trying to do before this. Very few details of her life, however loose, existed in her mind. Whatever was outside this dark room might not have existed at all.</p><p>As Mana let her bare feet touch the gentle and expensively soft carpet underneath her feet, she couldn't help but look down and admire something she had noticed earlier but hadn't had the time to delve into. What was it she was wearing? A red dress with golden, fiendish motifs stretching out the front of it all over her chest. With a stumble, Mana approached a glistering heap of silver that had some reflective properties to it and snapped her fingers. A burning cat's eye opened up an inch over her fingers and revealed an image of her in the mirror that made Mana gasp.</p><p>Though… She couldn't quite understand why. This red make-up, these hair accessories keeping her dark, curly hair in check and falling straight down her back. The golden rings around which her hair was tied and the large ring-shaped earrings hanging off her ears. The face-paint, the illustrious accessories, and the weird red dress… All of it felt strangely right and continuously hammered down on the nail sparking in her mind that something had been wrong.</p><p>Mana… That was a weird name, but it was the name that felt right. She didn't look like mere Mana though; she felt stronger, better, braver. Unbound, figuratively and literally. Mana felt underwhelming, she was the Empress. Even though the Empress couldn't quite understand the source of that conclusion, the title felt as right as the name she awoke to.</p><p>Her body still felt a tad stiff, as she threw a punch chakra surged through the Empress' body and formed the burning bones of an arm over her shoulder that had sharp, bony protrusions sticking out from over its forearm that imbedded into the hard wooden door and incinerated it within mere moments, reducing it to mere burning woodchips. That's right, power, technique, speed, vitality, none of that mattered in this mental realm, only willpower. And the Empress felt like the queen of willpower at the moment. She couldn't help savoring how sweet the rush of willpower felt by dragging her sharp, decorated fingernails down her forehead and caressing her cheeks before they met her magenta-dyed lips.</p><p>"Stop! Return to your premises at once, recruit!" a towering shape of moving plastic. A lumbering doll dressed in a tuxedo and donning orderly silver hair and a rich and thick line of burly mustache pointed its finger to the Empress and began walking toward her, putting up its dukes as swinging them about in an almost comical stance while it shuffled with its feet in the approach of the unruly escapee.</p><p>"You are in contempt of the final exams, ma'am! Please return to your chambers, this is not the time nor the place for young ladies to be walking about!" the second toy-butler remarked, raising its hand as it began approaching the Empress looking to guide her back to the chamber.</p><p>"Exam?" the Empress muttered. As the second, guiding toy-butler reached her, bending its upper body by its knees to guide her back to the room she just burst out of, the Empress' body dissolved into flames that covered the doll-like giant making him stumble back and pat its own burning shoulders. The Empress molded back into existence behind both burly guardians of this sophisticated hallway. "That's right, something rings a bell here. I wonder if…"</p><p>The Empress raised her hand, sending more of her fiery armor fists to smash the guardians of the mental fort. This was her way to get to the bottom of all this–tear down this mental fort, destroy all of its guardians and make a struggle against its master's will. Once everything they've built is torn down–the Empress shall rule this meager place as she rules Konoha and the… Why did her mind skip a beat there?</p><p>The Empress' fiery armor fist collided with the boxing doll golem, who blocked the blow by crossing his dukes up. The impact made the protector skid back and shake its arms to flail the flames off of his burning tux. Both dolls realized the Empress was hostile by now and they weren't some weaklings. Whoever built this mental fort was an incredibly skilled ninja with mental fortitude training.</p><p>"Ma'am! You will return to your premises or you will be returned!" both doll butlers waved their plastic hands out in front of them as they shred out of their burning up tux sleeves. A spinning pillar of shuffling cards formed something stick-shaped and when both of them pointed these sticks toward the Empress, they hurled fireballs right at her but with waves of her hand and a dance of Fire Release mass of flames of her own making, she deflected those blasts to devastate the nearby rooms.</p><p>"The proctor is aware of the fact you are showing hostility, young lady," the more willing to reason butler pointed its plastic finger at the Empress. Seeing a sight of something most curious indoors, the Empress waved her hands inward, forming skeletal arms made of solid Fire Release chakra to smash both oversized dolls from both sides, one against the other.</p><p>Seeing them collapse into a heap of plastic junk that melted away into pink goop and then simply became stacks of cards that burnt away into nothingness sent a liberating rush through the Empress' head. She stumbled back with a painful grunt. Only when both of the doll butlers were gone, did she sneak up to the doors she let those guardians blow down to look inside at something curious she had noticed.</p><p>Inside those doors, stretched on a wooden rack, not unlike the hard imprisonment the Empress found herself in upon her awakening, laid someone remarkably similar to Shige-H. Had the woman's hair not been straightened out, had she not worn tamer and much more themed over an evening gala make-up and had she not worn a bloated, pink, evening gown, a set completed by silky gloves stretching up to Shige-H's elbows, she'd have been the young woman the Empress could vaguely recall about.</p><p>"So, the other recruits are all positioned inside these chambers as well. They don't seem like their usual selves, even though I feel just fine the way I am. Those servants mentioned something about some exam… Ugh, I need to smash more of them, tear everything down," the Empress flicked her hand, forming the burning cat's eye that hopped off of the tip of her fingers and latched onto the wandering nun with a knight's helmet underneath, burning her up at once. The hag died in a scream of a thousand different voices, but the more of those residents the Empress did away with–the more control she felt over herself. The more memories came back.</p><p>"Wake up, you pompous thing, I need someone to help crash this castle party, cause some general mayhem," the Empress smirked as nudged her slumbering friend and ripped the iron restraints around Shige-H's limbs. Once the Empress touched them, sealing glyphs lit up that burnt the Empress' hand, but with a little of perseverance they came off all the same.</p><p>"Oh… Oh my…" Shige-H waved her gloved hands over her lips. "Have I fallen asleep by accident, have I missed the party? I'm so terribly sorry!"</p><p>"This is frustrating, you don't sound right, but I sound just fine to me," the Empress ran her hands through her hair, combing it with her delicately maintained fingernails before pinching her lip in thought. "In any case, get up. We need to tear this place down. Smash the pottery, kick any house cats and certainly strangle all the butlers and maids."</p><p>"That does not sound like a very ladylike pastime…" Shige-H gasped.</p><p>"Fine, do whatever, just stay with me and don't get yourself recaptured. I need to free as many people as I can to cause as much damage to this mental fort as possible," the Empress pointed her sharp finger to Shige-H, stopping it just a few inches off Shige-H's eye.</p><p>"B-But why?" Shige-H wondered. "We're already late, the bash must be downstairs and if we engage in any more buffoonery we can be certain to get into trouble."</p><p>"Yes, that's what I'm counting on," the Empress nodded while walking out the door of the room and extending her hands to form a couple of rotating lightning vortexes and moved in each side of the corridor, sending shocks and bolts in all directions that ripped and tore through the walls.</p><p>Barks came from all directions. While the Empress had hoped that her thunderous vortexes will envelop and destroy these wind-up dog toys dressed with maid-like ornaments, headdresses, and frilly wristbands while they hopped and ran on the walls as if gravitational forces of this mental realm bent to their will. It was frustrating that they eluded the Empress' whirlwinds this way, but they'd promptly be punished for their survival.</p><p>"Oh my! Unruly, wild beasts in the halls! Mayhem, mayhem, I tell you! Where is papa?" Shige-H gasped and screamed out after peeking out through the doorway while the Empress got to work. She did not expect her fiery, ethereal armor hands to shatter upon impact with the nimble wind-up dogs and thus they pounced over her, pinning the Empress to the ground. Oil dropped off from their mouths as they reached down with a threatening snarl, telling the unruly recruit to sit still while a butler comes down to subdue her and restrain her properly again.</p><p>"Oh no, don't maul her, she's but a lady! Just like me, oh papa, oh, why did you leave me, papa?" Shige-H covered her forehead and neatly folded like a quivering leaf. With her embracing the expensive castle hall carpet, the wind-up dog perched atop of the Empress began reassembling itself into something resembling restraints that shut over the Empress' wrists and her heels again. Another dog and yet another joined into this constructor puzzle until they became a colorful rack with the head of a wind-up rottweiler atop of it, just above the Empress' head, drooling oil.</p><p>Freedom returned to the Empress without asking her for permission to do so. Feeling weightless, she raised her hand up in front of herself to stop her fall short and enveloped herself in a turbulent gale of a heatwave that kept the Empress levitating. Once she set her feet down and looked behind her at the rack that was to be, only a sharply dressed young man of a pale face and a ponytail of dark hair stood behind her, surrounded by shattered wind-up parts of the canine patrols.</p><p>"You're staging a breakout, aren't you? That seems improper, although I, for whatever reason, can't help myself but feel exhilarated by that thought. Ever since I've opened my own eyes, I felt a certain call to action, and perhaps you two ladies in need was exactly it," Skaven with orderly Nara clan hairdo stated while picking the fallen Shige-H off the ground and flipping her over his shoulders.</p><p>That's right, someone in Skaven's past trained him well in mental fortitude and probing as well. Better even than the Empress herself. And yet, the Empress couldn't help but feel like Skaven took his sweet time breaking out and wouldn't have broken out at all had it not been for her sending ripples of discord across the entire structure like she did.</p><p>"Do you know what's going on? You smashed those dogs so you must have gained leeway to struggle against this mental hold we're under. What have you found out?" the Empress inquired in a demanding and authoritative tone as if he owed her that knowledge and didn't merely ask for it.</p><p>"Well, I assume not that much more than you already know. We're currently in the prep course graduation exam, and this is merely how it proceeds. They put the recruits into a mental lockdown to prevent cheating, their personalities altered by the mental fort. I'd wager that the suppressing effect was weaker on us because we were so well-trained in mental intelligence gathering. Still, you don't quite look like yourself, are you feeling okay?" Skaven scratched his head. He must not have felt too well as he had been used to be scratching his shaved side on that side where now ample black hair stuck out and brushed against his hands.</p><p>"Never felt better!" the Empress smirked, taking a gander at her hands and her decorated fingernails before clenching her hands into fists. "Excellent, so this is the final prep course exam. And this is the mental fort of none other than the proctor, or so that doll guard claimed. This means that we can reverse this mental hold and seep his feeble mind of every ounce of information it holds. We can make sure the Stars get perfect grades."</p><p>"We could do that, that's for sure," Skaven cracked his neck to the sides and rolled his wrists. The idea clearly exhilarated him, but he couldn't quite understand why.</p><p>"Then our goal is simple–find and free the rest of the Stars, free them and then tear this place down brick by brick. Leave that proctor a debilitated vegetable at our mercy, useless and to be discarded for we will have all the information that's of any worth already," the Empress pumped her fists to the sides before turning to the side where the wind-up dogs came from. She couldn't quite sense inside this realm. What was present here weren't chakra signatures but just mental avatars of their owners, just a lesser element of what comprised chakra.</p><p>"Maybe we don't need to go that far. Just making sure we get top grades will be fine. If they find out we've tampered with the exam, we might get into trouble, after all," Skaven tried gently nudging his maddened comrade back onto the right track.</p><p>"Maybe so, once the Sorceress sees how effective my way is, she'll finally shut up and move out of my way, let me handle the reigns from now on!" the Empress nodded to herself and strutted with confidence toward the next corner while examining the golden tiles on each of the doors inside of a fancy hotel-like hallway.</p><p>"The Sorceress?" Skaven asked his comrade. Him not feeling entirely right in this body, with this appearance and fostering this faux personality, made him perturbed why Mana would feel this liberated and confident in her red dress, drastic make-up, and overcompensating personality of murderous malice.</p><p>"Good, he's here too," the Empress muttered without acknowledging Skaven's question before she turned the handle and walked into the room. The helmed nun hissed and launched herself at the Empress, having become feral and even more terrifying with the damage that the unruly recruits had been causing inside this mental fort but Skaven's shadowy hand smacked her aside and slammed her against the wall, crushing her with his arm like a bothersome pest that she was. Once again, the Empress ripped the handles off of what looked to be a literal scarecrow built out of spare engineering parts.</p><p>"I am activated…" Damisan declared. "Booting up. Motion sensors and mobility systems booted, perception interface–online. Vital operations are a go. Activation procedure–all clear."</p><p>"I guess Damisan is a robot of some sort in this world," Skaven observed the obvious as the scrap scarecrow took off of the restraint platform and stumbled a few steps forward.</p><p>"Good, he can serve us better without all the additional baggage of being a pitiful cripple then," the Empress sighed and smacked Damisan's back covered in a sheet of scrap metal. The shock forced the scrap tinman to fumble forward faster, to do its best to maintain some sense of balance. "You heard that? You better do as we say or we'll scrap you. I always thought that six people were too much for any group–five just has a better ring to it, don't you think?"</p><p>"He's one of the Stars, Mana, we're not leaving him behind. The whole point is getting the Stars to ace the test and score maximum points, Damisan is a Star too," Skaven said with unconscious Shige-H still on his shoulders. "These guys aren't as well trained as us at this sort of thing–whatever the proctor did to them is fully effective against them. It's not their fault they're acting like this."</p><p>"Excuses…" the Empress looked away with a scowl, biting her lower lip and getting some magenta dye on her teeth in the process. "Fine. Someone else's mental fort is a dangerous place to be wandering about in. I would have been done in again if it weren't for you. Maybe we need all sets of hands we can get. Let's try to find the rest then."</p><p>With just two people left to uncover, the greatly altered Stars set out on their mission to cheat their way into a perfect score on the final prep course graduation exam!</p>
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<a name="section0746"><h2>746. The Safari Of A Lifetime</h2></a>
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    <p>"So, what's up with those fiery arms you're throwing around?" Skaven's voice distracted the Empress while the two were rushing downstairs in search of the other Stars. "It's not something I've ever seen Mana use. Is it a mental invention? Some ninja invent flashy techniques when fighting inside the mental realm to impress their opponents, but I've found it to be the most comfortable to translate your will with what you know best. I'd have thought you to be of the same school of thought."</p><p>"You ignoramus, I am Mana," the Empress beamed an angry glare back at Skaven, freezing him on his toes there while the Nara wondered if his comrade would flip out and attack him next. With how odd this young woman in an all too familiar face and a red dress that looked rather alien on her acted, nothing would have been out of the ordinary at this point. "What you meant with that ridiculous observation is that the Sorceress hasn't used armor ninjutsu. Somehow I don't doubt that."</p><p>"Sorceress? So, you're an alternate personality… That explains it." Skaven snapped his fingers, shaking Shige-H up a tad, who still bumped on his shoulders while the two rushed down the stairs.</p><p>"Explains it? Explains what exactly?" the Empress stopped and turned back, placing her hands over her hips. Her mean glare advised Skaven to choose his next words carefully.</p><p>"How effective you are at dismantling and resisting this mental control. There are still a few questions, yes, but it is unlikely that tutor Ridworth knew about your altering personalities. It would explain why he'd not be able to contain you once you manifested," Skaven explained in a defensive posture. At that moment he clarified that he'd have rather not held a deadweight klutz in an extravagant dress over on his shoulders.</p><p>The Empress vanished in an azure blaze, this sign of aggression baffled Skaven as he didn't think he'd have set his comrade off with that answer, but the azure whirl blasted well over his head. The Empress whirled her authoritative foot over her head while floating upside down and stamped it onto the ceiling, splatting a sword-legged arachnid with a bowler hat concealing its wind-up body. With puny clangs and jingles, the separate pieces clattered all over the floor while the Empress descended and pressed the lines of her dress down as they were late to catch on with the kunoichi's position.</p><p>A pair of blazing armored hands emerged from a firestorm of ethereal energy centering at the Empress' upper body while separate fractions of armored limbs, interconnected at the center through a non-existent pin thrust its blade-tipped edges like a flurry of fists, decimating an entire swarm of these spying critters that might have sought to latch onto both ninja and put them to sleep or to ruin their mental avatars by slashing their faces off with those knifed legs of theirs.</p><p>"Armor ninjutsu is a pinnacle of shape manipulation. The Uchiha revere their signature armor ninjutsu technique as something that comes from Gods themselves. Of course, Sorceress would be too afraid of her potential and shy away from using such amazing techniques. I, however, am not the Sorceress. I shall bring happiness back to my life by living up to the potential lying within this body." The Empress proclaimed while striking a flashy pose that was very much unlike the Mana that Skaven knew, then again, it was very much unlike Shige-H to act like a pampered little princess too.</p><p>"Psychic signals detected. Tomi detected. Shall I lead you to her location?" Damisan exclaimed in a mechanical and apathetic tone.</p><p>"Lead the way, buddy," Skaven sighed, knowing full-well that this janky mechanical version of his friend wouldn't move anywhere near fast enough to lead the way to anywhere, resulting in them having to lag behind it.</p><p>Truly, dragging behind this helpless and lagging tinman built out of rejected scrap felt like torture all of its own. There were only two ways through this staircase: down or up, and yet this tin scarecrow knew the exact floor they needed to stop on, which would have made the arduous task of checking every door much simpler.</p><p>"What is this place? If I realize that you've betrayed us, I'll smash you to bits, understood?" the Empress gave Damisan a warning glare to which the emotionless robot remained completely oblivious.</p><p>"Tomi, Tomi is four hundred and thirty-seven steps in that direction," Damisan raised his hand, lacking the articulation in his hand to point a finger as the janky things sparked and let out tired noises when the tinman raised his hand.</p><p>"Madness, what kind of place is this?" Skaven looked around as he took the first steps through the hallway and into a flat, reflective obsidian platform that extended seemingly infinitely in each direction. Around them to each point in space except right underneath their feet laid a vast, lemon-colored space with massive playing cards floating all over the place with colossal and translucent silhouettes of planetoid-size versions of the entire playing card deck looming all over the expansive, lemon horizon.</p><p>"A place where Tomi is. A place from which the sooner we extract her, the sooner we can leave!" the Empress proclaimed, pushing Skaven and Shige-H aside as she walked past Skaven. Her less than gentle shove forced Skaven to fumble and fall flat on his face with Shige-H landing daintily on Skaven's face.</p><p>The shock of it proved sufficient to awaken the sleeping princess as she shook her hazy eyes and stood back up, completely oblivious of the Nara gentleman underneath her to gaze at the marvelous mental dimension they've found themselves in. Feeling like being a human stepping stone was not something he was too fond of, Skaven wriggled out from underneath Shige-H's heel and buttocks and stood on his own two feet, dusting himself off.</p><p>"We've been noticed! We've been noticed! Enemy signals inbound!" Damisan pointed to the skies above hosting mechanical hawks with silver, sword-shaped quills around their wings and lined up around their heads as they reached out with their vicious, hook-shaped claws to dive and scoop up these unwanted visitors.</p><p>"Eek, protect me!" Shige-H shrieked and hid behind Damisan. The useless heap of iron bent his head to the side as two red beacons flashed in the opening line on his box-shaped head.</p><p>"Understood, engaging defensive protocols!" Damisan shrieked out in a mechanical tone, surprising both the Empress and Skaven who were unaware of anything of the sort being present within this useless heap of junk that previously only slowed them down in their quest to recover the Stars and smash this entire mental realm to pieces while claiming perfect test scores. "Barrage Rocket Punches!"</p><p>As the scrap scarecrow raised its hands up, the sheet of tin unraveled, letting loose multiple belts attached with Damisan's prosthetic forearms to them. As willpower to protect the klutzy and cowardly young lady hiding behind him surged through the tinman, the jets on the other end of the forearms ignited, unleashing an entire wall of rocket punches that tore through the rushing murder of mechanical crows and reduced them to a sum of their falling scrap and littering knife-shaped quills they used as a ranged weapon.</p><p>"You know, you could have really assisted us with those hat-spiders earlier, both with warning us about them and with destroying them…" Skaven squinted at the robotic version of his friend who, now that he had fulfilled his orders, stood there utterly motionless and stared at a single point in space–the supposed location of Tomi.</p><p>"You just need to be nicer to Mr. Robot. I've found that muffins taste better when I don't fling my brush at the maids, I figured the same rule applied here. Peasants are simple, so the rules that apply to them must also be the same," Shige-H pointed out with childish glee in her expression.</p><p>"Well, you're not wrong…" the Empress turned away from her temporary ally to focus on Tomi's location while the entire party began moving toward that direction. Damisan even stuck his pathetic, wobbly robo-legs back into his core and replaced them with rollers to keep up with the rest of the Stars.</p><p>"Oh, are you of the layer of aristocracy as well?" Shige-H turned to the Empress, looking rather excited to have found herself a friend who might have shared her life story.</p><p>"Sure, something like that. I've subjugated everyone else underneath my crushing heel, does that count?" the Empress shined a sassy smirk, the first sign of excitement instead of irritation and desperation on the young woman's face.</p><p>"Well, papa has to deal with plenty of tyrants and dictators, so I suppose we could be friends as well. You'll have to buy me something nice, as those people always do for papa to make sure they receive his monetary and cultural support," Shige-H pondered on it for a second before snapping her woven in silken gloves fingers with a beaming smile.</p><p>"Will not killing you count as something nice?" the Empress rolled her eyes, feeling like her newly re-met friend was already too much of a handful to deal with even though the pair had barely interacted so far.</p><p>"Hey, Damisan, you're the last one of us to wake up, do you have any hint of what's going on here? Why is everyone so strange inside this mental fort?" Skaven wondered, turning to the short roller beside him who waved his puny robo-arms to swim through the air and help his rolling bottom to move faster so to better keep up with the rest of the squad.</p><p>"Why would he know? He's absolutely useless…" the Empress grumbled.</p><p>"I figured since he hid some surprises from us already, needing to be asked to fight back, maybe he's hiding some more knowledge from us too?" Skaven shrugged, but judging by Damisan's silence, he had not the vaguest hint.</p><p>"But then perhaps we can ask someone from wherever we're going about that?" Shige-H pressed her hand to her face as if she had just received some sort of divine clarity for her own eureka moment. Skaven offered a single creeped-out look, whereas the Empress completely ignored that brain fart.</p><p>"Hmm… That lump of junk said that Tomi should be around here, but there isn't anything here at all…" the Empress pressed her hands to her hips while looking around. Just when she thought that she had achieved proper concentration to think this whole thing through, growls and barks made themselves known in the horizon as more wind-up dogs dashed across the reflective, dark floor toward them.</p><p>"Robo-servant, fight them off now!" Shige-H waved her hands about in a moment of panic while the Empress snapped her fingers in front of Damisan's face and kicked him rolling back and out of her way.</p><p>"Abandon that, you said that Tomi is here somewhere. Pull her out. I'll deal with those mutts. We have some unsolved business after the last time I met them, anyway." The self-made sovereign in the red dress demanded while she took a fighting stance to engage the rushing bunch of mechanical hounds.</p><p>This proved to be a much more arduous task that initially seemed as because of the speed and shifty nature of these wind-up dogs, they could disassemble and reassemble in a blink while having virtually limitless space to maneuver with their unnatural speed in. No matter how many ethereal limbs the Empress sent their way or how many she tried enclosing and surrounding in a fiery vortex, none of them gave in to the demise that the Empress had promised.</p><p>Skaven didn't fair all that much better either, after realizing that this unnatural personality taking over Mana's mental self wouldn't check the cash she wrote with her bossy and unpleasant mouth. The dogs could have run circles around his shadows and even when Skaven wrapped his shadowy tendril around one of them, it just exploded into constructor pieces only to reassemble once the Nara had lost his focus to take him on again.</p><p>The dogs were toying with them, rushing past, tackling them, and grazing them with their teeth. Every time someone injured their mental selves, they'd flash in various colors best representing their natural chakra colors. The empress flashed in bright gold, as Skaven did in a brighter shade of yellow too. Shige was the one flashing in night blue, while the dogs didn't seem like they'd bust through Damisan as they merely bashed at him and dislodged a piece or two before running off.</p><p>"What's taking you so long, you useless…" the Empress was about to scold the battered and bent up tin can beside her before a sharp protrusion of a gear forehead ripped through her abdomen and left her impaled on it while the dog shook its head like a mad bull and sent the Empress hurling through the air and down on the ground. Her image flickered. She was as strong here as her willpower was, and as long as she had the guts to refuse death–she'd not surrender to this mental dimension or its dangers.</p><p>Still, thinking that one would never surrender was one thing, but the mental stress experienced within someone else's mental fort had its own ways to twist, bend and break one's will. The Empress flickered in a shade of Dijon, lacking the strength to return on her feet. The wind-up dog snarled with a mechanical grunt of grinding gears, looking to maul his prey until she either dissolved away from the confines of this mind or until she surrendered and returned to her cell.</p><p>"Shige…!" Skaven grunted, wrestling against another dog while the pink princess just collapsed on her knees, covered up her eyes, and hoped for all the beasties to go away and leave her alone. The leader of Stars hid behind a childish belief that if she couldn't see the monster in her room–it couldn't see her either.</p><p>Just as the mechanical hound froze in mid-air, its grinding gears just about ready to catch hold of and rip the Empress' whole face off and grind them within two clashing grindstones, the entire beast splattered into separate pieces. A shower of mechanical parts and oil washed at the Empress, corrupting her dress with black stains and her perfect, dyed skin with grease and bruises from the barrage of pelting parts hitting her from a near-point-blank explosion.</p><p>"I'll say, a jolly good kill, isn't it?" a girly voice distracted the Empress from the humiliation as she turned to Tomi with a shaking head only to see Tomi dressed in a jockey's uniform and a pointy, steel helmet while fashioning a prolonged tube attached with a kunai belt. These knives were quite massive and had sealing glyphs on them too, some of them resembling the standard explosive seals found on explosive tags.</p><p>"Objective to secure the target complete!" Damisan announced, picking up its detached arm with its remaining hook and trying to stick it back where it was meant to be.</p><p>"Tomi…?" Skaven wheezed out, still struggling against the grinding gears that closed up closer and closer with each inch.</p><p>"Ah, excuse me, Skaven you old chap, I got too absorbed in the moment there…" Tomi guffawed to herself before taking aim with her kunai-flinging rod and pulling on a ring on a steel wire which launched a hi-speed kunai bolt straight at the exposed bottom of the beast with sufficient velocity to penetrate through its brain and splatter oil all over Skaven while the gears in its jaws stopped turning and left the lifeless beast prime to be flung aside which Skaven promptly did.</p><p>With a bold and wide step, Tomi approached the cowardly princess and extended her hand to help her up. Shige-H sniffled while looking up, curious why these horrible, mechanical, grungy sounds had all but faded away. Once she saw the dapper-looking friend of hers, Shige-H jumped up almost directly into little Tomi's hands.</p><p>"Come now, madam, you'll miss an adventure of a lifetime by sitting on your own laps like this. Open your eyes, gander around you, take aim at the life's chest and fire. Drink from the fountains of spoils that spill out!" Tomi fumbled around with a much larger young woman in her arms, especially with the oversized dress that Shige-H donned getting in Tomi's way. Ever the gentleman, Tomi put Shige-H down and turned to Damisan. "I must thank you, tinman, seeing all those beasts for me to slay in a safari of a lifetime, I just couldn't contain my sorrow at being imprisoned within these foul chambers inside these playing cards. I've always said that a robot is a man's best friend, I have never been this glad to hit a jackpot as I am now!"</p><p>Before Tomi could conclude her praises and expressions of gratitude, a screaming banshee as a black nun with a shroud over her helmet vizor burst forth, ripping through the card from which Damisan had fished Tomi out just now. With playful vigor, Tomi rolled her spear of thunderous precision around in her arms before taking aim again.</p><p>"Not quite a beast, nor will this head dazzle any esteemed colleagues to visit me in my mansion, but alas, die anyway, loudmouth wench!" Tomi cursed before plugging one into the screaming banshee and reducing her to lifeless shreds of black cloth that burnt up in the lighting now that the creature was murdered.</p><p>A loud thud made the Stars turn toward Damisan before they could even wonder what was to be next as the Empress stomped the disarmed little scarecrow down on the ground and pressed it well with her heel, choosing to vent her frustration at being embarrassed with oil and scrap being flung at her face on the emotionless, glorified mailbox they were stuck with.</p><p>"Endo, where?" she growled, shaking from either a chill running down her moist back from all the grease that soaked her or frustration.</p>
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<a name="section0747"><h2>747. A Failure To Auto-Pilot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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      <p>"You, tin-can, how exactly did you rip Tomi out of there?" the Empress pointed an authoritative finger to Damisan, who just continued standing turned to a blank point in a seemingly infinite space. After this didn't work, she turned her pointing finger to the pretty princess in a flowery dress, "Extract that information from him with your affectionate chaff."</p>
      <p>Shige-H scratched her cheek and stepped out in front of Damisan, caressing his cheek, which didn't seem to have any sort of reaction. "Damisan, could you tell us how you rescued Tomi from thin air, pretty please?" she clapped her hands together and winced, hoping for the best.</p>
      <p>Without explaining himself too much, Damisan cut a sharp turn and raised his hand up. His forearm detached from the rest of his mechanical arm and shot out straight into one of the many floating playing cards. Once it punched into it, there was no shock, nor was there any notable reaction or resistance. The arm simply entered the card through a soft, rippling surface. After entering the pocket mental dimension found inside that card, Damisan reeled his forearm back with a shrieking, metallic, reeling sound. The forearm connected with a loud thud rather than a pleasant click, which was more common to Damisan on the material plane.</p>
      <p>"I see, so each card leads to a different pocket dimension inside of tutor Ridworth's mind. Can you sense where Endo is, pretty please?" Skaven tried mimicking the facial gestures and tone of Shige-H, but Damisan remained ignorant of the Nara's existence. It took Shige-H noting the social cue and once again using her gentle and aloof nature for Damisan to roll around and then come to a halt.</p>
      <p>"I guess he can't. Who can blame him? Endo might be inside of a dimension located inside of a pocket dimension. I don't know if there's a radar imaginable that could have such potent tracking," Skaven scratched his head with an irritated expression.</p>
      <p>"Ah, but this is a wonderful thing, an adventure throughout plentiful dimensions, hunting down hundreds of beasties! I relish this opportunity!" Tomi pressed her heels together and saluted the sky that remained littered with giant cards that served as portals to different locations within tutor Ridworth's massive mental fort.</p>
      <p>"Then we will continue ripping dimensions apart one by one, seeing if we can find the test answers or Endo first." The Empress declared. "You," she pointed to Shige-H, "Inform our puppet on wheels that it is to let us know if it gets a whiff of where Endo might be."</p>
      <p>"You really don't need to be that way, Damisan can hear you just fine…" Shige-H squinted at the Empress who already began walking onward in search of the perfect first dimension to hop into. Once there, the plan was simple–destroy as much of it as possible and cause as much general mayhem as possible until tutor Ridworth's mind unravels. Then, after they gain complete control over the mental fort, they can simply manifest the test answers before them and get the perfect score.</p>
      <p>"What a spectacular place to blast in all directions!" Tomi pumped her fists before her, marveling at the view once the Stars' feet touched one of many floating stone blocks. The blocks flew in various altitudes, flowing in rivers of vibrant colors inside of a dimension of the void the size of which was difficult to determine because its colors scratched the eye to look at for too long.</p>
      <p>Lines or crimson and shamrock, outlined with thick black, extending on a white basis so overflowing with colored decorations it was difficult to single out in the entire pattern. The rather plain stone blocks that they floated on were a welcome reprieve from the sensory overload of just looking around.</p>
      <p>"Well?" Skaven turned to Damisan. The scrap man shot out its hand and pulled itself to another passing-by block.</p>
      <p>"Where do you think you're going!?" the Empress hissed and Tomi raised her thunder-stick to blast her comrade into pieces.</p>
      <p>"Just give me the word, m'lady!" Tomi smirked, unable to contain her excitement even if she was to blast at her own friend.</p>
      <p>"No, wait, I think Damisan is just getting a better vantage point to scan the place!" Shige-H stepped out in front of Tomi, defusing the jockey's excitement, and thus she lowered her strange weapon. Damisan spent an entire rotation of the block's journey atop of it before shooting his forearm back down and hooking himself back to the other Stars.</p>
      <p>"Endo is not here," Damisan reported in an apathetic, mechanical voice.</p>
      <p>"He can't be this hard to find, I mean there may be a vast number of pocket dimensions and chambers inside them, but there aren't enough recruits to occupy all of them. In terms of dimensions with life signs in them, there should only be a handful of them, unless tutor Ridworth really stretched out ranks thin…" Skaven theorized. "Our odds of running into Endo aren't all that small."</p>
      <p>"Hey, can you guys hear that? Sounds like… Whistling or… Howling?" Shige-H pressed her hand to her ear, leaning to her left as if she couldn't see a grey vortex of turbulent wind coming at them. The whirlwind did a decent job standing out from its colorful surroundings in its path toward the platform where the Stars had found their sanctuary.</p>
      <p>"Wind? I can't shoot at the wind!" Tomi stomped her foot in impatience.</p>
      <p>"It doesn't appear that these whirlwinds are the only ones…" the Empress turned around, locating at least six more tornadoes, just like the one that initially caught the Stars' attention coming right at them. Just as the Empress began going through hand seals, a rough impact sent her flying off the stone block. With seething hatred the Empress looked up upon her fall, knowing well enough that it led to surrendering her mind to the owner of the fort.</p>
      <p>It had been Damisan that rammed her and pushed her off though just as the Empress was about to curse the tinman for its betrayal, a steel head slammed from up above, taking a hefty chomp out of Damisan and leaving only a dismembered arm spitting out plastic foam slowly fall nearby while the steel head lifted off and floated away. A shadowy tendril wrapped around the Empress' arm, pulling her back onto the platform while Tomi cackled with maniacal laughter as she began taking aim and unleashing hell at the dozens of floating steel heads over them.</p>
      <p>By that time there was no way of resisting the whirlwinds and they began tearing the stone platform to mere grains of gravel. Despite how little of a desire to provide these stone heads with the pleasure of hearing her grunt of scream the Empress had, she couldn't help it since it felt like her very mental essence was being torn apart chunk by chunk in all directions, just like the stone platform that became mere dust.</p>
      <p>A wind current flushed from down below, catching and swooping up a young woman in a stage magician's uniform as she hung in mid-air, surrounded by steel heads. Mana had little idea of what was going on but she knew that these heads had done something terrible and that she'd have fallen down into that colorful void had she not woken up in the middle of the fall and hadn't activated her Mystical Wings Jutsu.</p>
      <p>One of the steel heads opened up with a metallic snap. A plump man in a tuxedo and top hat, dark of skin with a honey-colored mustache and a stringy line of hair falling off the back and each side of his head while the top remained utterly bald. The man had worn a monocle and held a walking cane and pressed the tip to the tongue of the statue head which he stood inside of.</p>
      <p>"So you are the cause of this ruckus. Recruit Mana, was it? I'm afraid I'll have to disqualify you from the exam for cheating. It's disappointing, I must say. The Allied Ninja have a strict no-forgiveness policy so you've shut the doors for you ever joining the Allied Ninja again with this stunt, young lady," the Kumogakure native of dark complexion said.</p>
      <p>"Cheating? What are you talking about? The last thing I remember was the beginning of the final exam and putting on one of those bowl hats with the sealing glyph on," Mana objected.</p>
      <p>"What's this? Hmm… What an odd case, certainly your appearance inside my mental fort doesn't quite make sense, I believe that you've fallen to your doom alongside your friends from the Stars group. Then again, there would have been no way for you to wake up all by yourself as well… You've completely changed appearances too. Tell me, young lady, are you suffering from multiple personality disorder by any chance?" tutor Ridworth inquired.</p>
      <p>"What? No… Not that I know of," Mana shook her head. "I mean, an inner universe inside of my meditational world has an alternate personality called the Empress inside it. It took me a lot of time to understand her, but she's an imagined version of what I might have become if I didn't live by my Ninja Way. I don't think it qualifies as a multiple personality disorder…"</p>
      <p>"Hmm, perhaps not, but… What a curious case. You really should have approached me with that before. I wouldn't have let you take the exam in that case." Tutor Ridworth pulled on and rolled his mustache in between his fingers.</p>
      <p>"What? That's not fair! Why should I be singled out and not allowed to take the exam after I've worked so hard to pass it?" Mana objected.</p>
      <p>"You misunderstand, dear girl, you see, this mental fort is a prison to the minds of the recruits. It extracts all malicious impulses, their worst fears, and keeps them imprisoned and locked down. In that way, we don't have to watch out for the recruits cheating because they partake in the test almost on autopilot, with only their best qualities and intentions in heart. Had I known about your unique case, we'd have arranged a different way for you to take the exam," tutor Ridworth pointed out, raising up the other end of his stick and pointed at each of his steel heads.</p>
      <p>Upon being pointed at, each steel head snapped their jaws open, revealing a member of Stars in their unique, mental avatar only seen within the confines of such a peculiar mental fort as tutor Ridworth's.</p>
      <p>"So you're saying that the Empress took control over me and I became just like them?" Mana pointed to Shige-H and Damisan and Tomi one by one, finding it difficult to recognize her only friends as of late in their unique appearances.</p>
      <p>"That is quite correct. Because this Empress is more than your mere fears, because you've given her a more tangible body and a piece of her mind in the past, she's displayed a far greater level of awareness and power, one that even my well-crafted fort couldn't contain because it wasn't designed to deal with something like that. She set out to unravel the very fortification of my mind, it seems. This Empress has even freed some other recruits. She'd have been subdued once she fell down into this infinite void but it appears that has only shifted her back into the original mental avatar–you," tutor Ridworth finished summing up the mystery that he had just put together himself.</p>
      <p>"But why would the Empress do something like that? I think the last time I noticed her, she just wanted to take over my body and become dominant. Why would she set out to cheat on the graduation exam?" Mana pondered out loud.</p>
      <p>"That, my dear, is not a question you should ask me. Now, I'd like for you to just close your eyes, relax and return to your body. I'll watch over you taking the exam on the material plane for the rest of the test, I think," tutor Ridworth explained.</p>
      <p>"Yeah, I guess that's for the best," Mana looked down. She wasn't sure how her body managed to deal with the test on autopilot, but she at the very least had the comfort in knowing that it had been doing something while the Empress was busy on her wild goose chase inside someone else's mind.</p>
      <p>A cerulean stream washed over Mana as stars began rushing in her direction, escalating in speed until they became just blurry lines of lights buzzing past her. The magician opened her eyes and gazed upon an empty sheet of paper before her, gasping and covering her mouth in shock. Alarmed by this reaction, tutor Ridworth approached Mana and looked down at her test.</p>
      <p>"Well, it appears that your unique situation has posed yet another hurdle on you. Your body had been completely dysfunctional the entire time. It appears you'll have to start the exam from scratch. You'd better hurry too, you've got fifteen minutes left," tutor Ridworth pointed out while directing both their attention to the gigantic clock in the middle of the room.</p>
      <hr/>
      <p>On the last day of the prep course, tutor Ridworth handed out everybody their test results by giving out the graded sheets of paper. They all looked equally terrible as the exceptional and perfect scores alike had linings, corrections, and comments in red just like the failed ones. Mana wasn't sure why her gut had been trying to eat itself, she already knew that she failed it. She had completed just four assignments out of the six given in the remaining time, and she was only sure about having done one of them right.</p>
      <p>"Hmm… I feel like I could have done better," Tomi scratched her cheek and rubbed her sleepy eyes, showing off her result of 13/20. No matter how hard she might have scolded herself, it didn't matter–she had passed as getting a score higher than 10/20 was all that it took. Anything beyond that was just the cream on the top, as it wouldn't have translated into any perks during one's service as an Allied Ninja.</p>
      <p>"16/20, I think it's a serious statement. Then again, unlike most of you, I worked hard," Endo dangled his graded exam sheet before both Tomi to his left and Damisan to his right. It was only when he had turned to Damisan to gloat over him he saw Damisan's result being 17/20.</p>
      <p>"Well, I guess I did alright as well, celebrations are in order, huh, Endo?" Damisan bowed his head respectfully before Endo grabbed hold of his cylinder and began rubbing his knuckles and knocking into it, shocking the whole thing like a rung bell while Endo expressed his frustration at being outdone by someone who was just "a freak" in his eyes. For an ass-hat like Endo, the apprentice samurai was being quite soft on Damisan though with his nudging and teasing.</p>
      <p>"Whatever, tests are a relic of the past systems anyway," Skaven sighed and pushed away his sheet with a shine of 13/20 etched on the lower right side with red. "It's no efficient way to grade a student's progress whatsoever."</p>
      <p>"I don't know, I think it's quite alright," Shige-H playfully cackled before proudly displaying her 20/20 result to the rest of the Stars. "None of you now have any right to complain about me being the leader anymore! I believe I have proven to be the most capable commander of our pooled forces."</p>
      <p>Everyone continued to discuss their results with cheerful banter. It was a sentiment shared across the entire classroom and, frankly, the tutor himself didn't really feel like impeding that as any lessons he might have had to teach them would have been completely useless as they wouldn't really come to use in any exam except that of life itself.</p>
      <p>Mana folded her exam sheet in half and slipped it into her pocket. She should have been one with the rest of the bubbly bunch, chattering and cackling. Engaging in playful banter about how she didn't recall taking any test at all and it just felt like she took a long sleep except, in her case, that wasn't it at all. She had to grind and work on top of the past couple of months of hard work to catch up to the rest who were working hard and studying while she laid comatose because an assassin had shot a hawk through her chest from a high caliber cannon from far, far away.</p>
      <p>That was just her life. Nothing seemed to work out, she couldn't even fall asleep and let her body take care of the exam, having to worry and sweat for some of the most grueling fifteen minutes of her life just so she could hide away her 6/20 result and hope that nobody would notice the fact she existed and asked her about her result. In that case, at least she was lucky that most people still didn't like her guts because of what she served a full prison sentence in a place actually called "Hell" for.</p>
      <p>"Mana, you're being awfully quiet…" Shige-H turned to her, abandoning the playful teasing and banter amongst the Stars that all just drowned out as if Mana had been listening to it from eight meters underwater.</p>
      <p>"Sorry, I'm glad you guys aced the test so well. I'm really proud!" Mana turned to Shige-H, directing the course of her thoughts toward her genuine happiness for the few friends she had made in this place. It might have been because of all the excitement of the occasion but Shige-H didn't take this response as the least bit suspicious, she just nodded with a warm smile and wrapped her arms around Tomi and Mana, pulling them in closer for a group hug.</p>
      <p>Mana glanced to Tomi, who seemed to loathe just being in the same room as Shige-H just a few weeks earlier and it didn't look like the young lady had been all that excited about touching the woman that lied to her and temporarily caused the worst mental trauma in Tomi's life just to teach her some lesson but she at the very least accepted it as a good thing. Mana decided to do the same, allowing Shige-H to manhandle her for a few seconds before all the excitement died down some.</p>
      <p>That was how being social seemed to work. It felt like she had no right to be sad or to even mention the fact that she failed the exam in a downright humiliating fashion and spoil everyone's fun and a good time. Everyone was happy and thus Mana had to be too. It was a rough time, an equivalent of the feeling of one's innards being pulled out and ground against a pavement that was heated in the summer sun, and maybe because of this repulsive grittiness, Mana failed to remember why she enjoyed entertaining people, to begin with.</p>
      <p>Then again, when she was on stage she didn't feel like puking all blood out of her. She was just as happy as the people in the audience, and she just wanted to make people who felt like she did right now feel a little better. That was the difference.</p>
      <p>Either way, the Allied Ninja, the Stars, it all just turned out to be yet another place she didn't belong to. Was there even such a place anymore to begin with?</p>
    </div>
  </div>
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<a name="section0748"><h2>748. Five Fingers Straight Up The Bumhole</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The square outside the window was slowly becoming crowded with people. Swarming was slow for now, but it was bound to pick up soon enough. The first ones to come came as stragglers, the lone wanderers who either wanted to make it early for the graduation or who just had nothing better to do with their time but stand around and see the action building up one brick at a time before the ceremony finally kicked off.</p><p>"Mana-nee isn't going?" Tomi leaned over Mana's bed where she just laid slumped like a sack of straightened bricks. The wild girl slipped an Allied Ninja uniform on and even straightened her hair out into two proper pigtails hanging to the sides instead of the wild, spiky haystack she hauled around on her head.</p><p>"There's no use in going," Mana mumbled in return and switched her shoulder to turn to the other side. She still had told no one that she had failed the graduation test. It just sort of never came up throughout the entire four days separating the test and now. It might have been entirely on Mana, but no occasion just felt right enough to drop that bomb on everyone after denying them of it from the get-go.</p><p>"Finally, someone who understands how pointless the whole thing is…" Skaven smirked. "I've been telling everyone the whole time. There's no way they won't graduate us just 'cause we skip some stupid lump of speeches, right?"</p><p>He still had the uniform on, though. Because she switched sides, she ended up looking right at Shige-H and Endo, both of whom seemed to see right through Mana. Shige-H had an uncomfortable look of clarity in her eyes whilst Endo just looked mad as always. Mana wanted that maybe just this one he could relate to her and would just stop looking at her like she was responsible for the fact that his mentor tried to kill him in a cage hanging in an active volcano every day since his childhood. That is to say, the same way Endo looked at everyone.</p><p>"Alright, guys, go get us some neat places. This will be your first mission as Stars, graduated Allied Ninja and no longer mere recruits," Shige-H looked around the room with an encouraging fist pumping. While Tomi's glee had settled somewhat after looking right at the Stars leader, she still jumped off her bed and ran off first to follow the command. It wasn't as much that she was following what Shige-H told her to do, it was more that Shige's command had officially unchained the little wildling who was picking and pulling her stuffy collar the whole morning. "You too, Damisan, don't think you're not included in this first assignment."</p><p>Damisan's cylinder had a picture of a bright young man with a graduation uniform giving the photographer a peace sign with a smile that accurately expressed the infinite potential that the young man had for his future from this grand point on. In the few days he had, Damisan had rebuilt his arms and legs the way they used to be, armed and ready to fight alongside his Stars comrades.</p><p>"Are you sure you're going to make it to the opening ceremony, Mana? You haven't even taken your clothes out from the bag yet and I don't mean to sound ironic or douchey but you look a bit like a mess and I only say this because you usually really care about your appearance…" when Damisan's artificial limbs rubbed against one another they let a grungy, metallic clang out. The worry that Damisan expressed now seemed to threaten to pop his fingers out as they cracked with a gruesome crashing noise once in a while.</p><p>"That's not her uniform in there, you dolt," Endo growled. "That's her stuff."</p><p>"Nice going, looking that far up ahead that you've packed your things for the first mission…" Skaven smirked with an indifferent shrug as he dragged his feet to the door without a care in the world.</p><p>"Okay, I'll go help Tomi get us the places to hear the speech out then. With my looks, it'll be easy… That was a joke…" Damisan mumbled, adding the last part when it failed to brighten up the mood as the atmosphere in the room was getting heavy which was why Shige-H asked everyone out. With hefty stomps, the self-puppeteering ninja left the room and hurried to the square.</p><p>"Endo…" Shige-H turned to the samurai apprentice who sat on his bed, dressed and ready for the graduation ceremony but choosing to stare at Mana with his legs crossed. Now that Skaven and Tomi had left, Mana switched her shoulders again, turning to the wall and the window opening up the view to the slowly crowding square.</p><p>"Humph, fine. I only have things to discuss with the strongest graduates. Clearly, that only concerns you, Shige-H. I'll be expecting a word with you after the ceremony," Endo stood up and walked to the door, not even turning back to acknowledge the fact Mana existed once before he left and shut the door with considerable choler.</p><p>"So… You've failed the graduation test." Shige-H closed her eyes with a sigh. She didn't need to say anything, her self-loathing over the continuous festive mood amongst the Stars these last few days that made it so tear-jerking to hang around them soaked through her.</p><p>"Turns out my body's terrible at working when my mind's asleep. I never considered myself anything special, but I thought myself better than someone worth 0 points…" Mana snorted, still staring at the sunny skies outside.</p><p>"So, what do you plan to do from this point on?" Shige-H wondered, pressing her knees to the bed to bring her closer to Mana.</p><p>"Exactly what I promised to do. That's what the bag is for. I didn't waste any time these last four days. I knew exactly what I was going to do, so I sent a letter back home." Mana sat up and turned to one of her best and only friends these last six months.</p><p>"You're going back to Konoha? Isn't that really dangerous? The Land of Fire is bustling with criminals still looking to cash in on your head, and I don't think the Supreme Leader will spend workforce escorting someone who's definitely not going to be an asset to her." Shige-H stroke the back of her head while she thought things through.</p><p>"The Supreme Leader won't let me go. She says she wants me to stay here and give the prep courses another shot," Mana shook her head. "That's why I have to leave the place when it's busy. Someone will see or sense me leaving, but it won't matter. I don't yet owe this organization anything, I'm not worth that debt, it seems."</p><p>"Don't beat yourself over it. It's just a test. No one in the Stars will care too much if we have to work without you for a year more or so until the next round of prep courses starts and wraps up," Shige-H replied with a soft tone.</p><p>"That's fine, I don't think I'm going home. Konoha doesn't seem to have changed too much in the last half-year, they still would rather forget I ever existed." Mana smiled while shoving the rushing tears down her throat and into her warming-up gut. Somehow speaking it aloud made it easier. It didn't cut out the sadness, but it helped accept it as one's own. The easier it was for the horde of blue to take the castle, the fewer castellans would pay the price.</p><p>"Mana…" Shige-H slid off her bed and wrapped her arms around Mana's hunched back and her bare knees, pressing the magician closer to her. "Don't you dare think that you're expendable, you're not unneeded, we need you, I need you."</p><p>"No. I've spent six months rotting in prison already, six months wondering if this is the place I belong and failing spectacularly. I will not waste any more of my or anyone else's time," Mana shook her head, her black leather jacket squeezed uncomfortably as the magician dragged her nose across the coarse and stitched together patches of animal skin.</p><p>"Well, I can't let you just walk out there into the world and wander aimlessly," Shige-H said.</p><p>"That's fine. I missed stage magic a lot. I think I'll just do that for as long as it keeps me fed. My ancestors used to do this sort of stuff for a living, anyway. As long as I don't cross any villages, I should be fine," Mana stood up and grabbed hold of her backpack, flipping it over her right shoulder and turning to look behind her. She looked messy, like someone who wallowed in self-loathing and emptiness for four days straight, desperate to stay afloat and not fill her lungs with the sorrow she was drowning in.</p><p>"So, this is it? You're leaving?" Shige-H looked up with wobbly lips.</p><p>"Sorry, I ruined your graduation mood. For what it's worth, I almost remembered how life was back in the day. You guys made me feel like I wasn't a loathsome human being who should have died in prison. That's just fine, five is a way better number for a group anyway," Mana could only muster a soft smile before dragging the door open and walking through the doorway. She ignored Skaven, who seemed to hang with his back pressed to the wall.</p><p>"So, you're just going to ignore me and walk away like that?" Skaven turned to the leaving magician when she turned her back on him and turned for the nearest staircase.</p><p>"You know I'm a sensor, right? I could sense you listening in the entire time," Mana stopped but didn't turn back. "Lay off my case, it's not like you to care about things. People come, people go, right?"</p><p>"Shut up, damn it!" Skaven yelled out, frightening both the graduates making their way to the square and just a handful of Allied Ninja wandering the headquarters halls for shortcuts to various offices found throughout the hive-shaped building. The Nara clan punk pushed his back off the wall and stumbled closer to Mana, stepping in front of her and turning his eyes up to grill her. "I know I shouldn't care but… I can't let you leave. This joint, I don't know why, but I don't give a crap about it. If you're leaving, I'm leaving with."</p><p>"What the…? That's kind of out of nowhere?" Mana scratched her bed hair. Her backpack was feeling heavy on her single shoulder, so she kept bumping it up with her hips to ease the numbness instead of augmenting her body to make it feel like nothing.</p><p>"I know, I don't quite understand it myself either. I just… I can't allow you leave, I must watch over you." Skaven looked Mana straight in the eyes. "I don't feel any attachment to this place. Legitimate business, I don't care, a place to belong–I'd rather flush it down the toilet. I just have to make sure you stay here."</p><p>"I will not fight you, Skaven. I don't recommend it to you either. As long as you're still a recruit, you can't just fight another recruit, which I still am, you'll get yourself expelled." Mana groaned with her impatience radiating off of her as she bumped her backpack up with a push of her hips time and time again. What's gotten into him?</p><p>"That's what's the dumbest thing of all–I can't understand it, I can't justify it. The reasons I thought for being here, for being an Allied Ninja, just sound as vague excuses now. The only thing that makes me feel like anything at all is keeping you here and making sure you're safe," Skaven spoke up. His face begun turning pale, a few shades paler than was normal to him. The Nara wheezed twice for air, making Mana touch his shoulder and check on if he was alright.</p><p>"That's what you didn't want me to see. It's something related to the seal of silence you have. It's the memories we've tampered with," Mana muttered under her own nose, though she was close enough for Skaven to hear.</p><p>"So what? Do I just ignore the only thing that feels like it makes any sense now?" Skaven coughed out.</p><p>"I'd stop talking about it for once. Who knows what this obsession of yours is, with those memories gone, you've got a genuine chance to start a new life here. I'd take that," Mana straightened her back out and turned to walk away from her friend while he was still short of breath and while she still had the chance to do so.</p><p>"Then… Why don't you?" Skaven let a sly remark slip before Mana turned the corner and rushed down the staircase while curious eyes still followed her the entire way.</p><hr/><p>"That damned brat. Holed up in that fort of hers, buzzing with busy-bees. Taking all of them would be a tall order." An aged man in a showy suit of armor stood tall with his arms crossed over his chest as he stood atop the forehead of a crimson-furred, mint-skinned gigantic monkey with the body build appropriate to a gorilla.</p><p>The beast's eyes that would have normally shined with yellow irises and white pupils were now shiny with a completely opposite color scheme with a corrupting, jade-colored glow beaming from its eyes as a lotus-colored outline decorated its blank and emotionless stare as the beast strolled onward where the veteran assassin willed it. Atop of the forehead of the four-tailed monkey, in between the assassin's legs, stuck a paper tag with five clutching jade fingers holding it in place from each side. From the looks of it, the fingers came out from an arm that stuck out from the beast's own forehead to secure the paper tag bearing the writing of an ancient mantra: "Om Mani Padme Hum"</p><p>This was what the veteran assassin felt inclined to do, given the circumstances. With Nakotsumi Mana, the unfulfilled contract of his late daughter and her killers holed up in that accursed building, surrounded by troublesome ninja, he had to get creative. Him getting creative was a frightening thing. Then again, his entire life this was just being professional. Now it was entirely personal. As the Four-Tails advanced closer toward the Allied Ninja Headquarters building, the assassin riding it who had discovered the ancient method of enslaving the beast didn't regret the fact that he enslaved a living weapon of mass destruction merely to throw the Allied Ninja into chaos and give him a chance to act.</p><p>Excess didn't matter. The value of a Tailed Beast in the black market, the knowledge and tools to control it, none of it mattered. As long as he puts that cursed woman on his sword and presents her head to those thugs in Fire Country to absolve the dishonor on her late name as an assassin. It wasn't his own name that the elderly assassin felt worried about; he had killed just about anyone in any layer of society, done enough for multiple lifetimes, and survived far too many times to retire and become a gambler, for he had spent all his luck on his job.</p><p>Positioning the Four-Tails atop of the cliffside and commanding it to open its mouth, the assassin pointed toward the hive-shaped building on the horizon. One finger holding the paper tag had been open the whole time, the ring finger stretched back to accompany the pinky, leaving only three fingers holding the paper tag with the ancient mantra in place on the Tailed Beast's forehead. An unearthly howl filled the air as wind, enriched with chakra, rushed into the open mouth of the Four-Tails.</p><p>"Don't destroy the entire building. I need to make sure that Nakotsumi Mana, my daughter's killer, and his group are alive," the veteran assassin barked out an order to the beast. The slowly accumulating Tailed Beast Ball compressed into a bite-sized orb, which the monkey promptly swallowed and gulped down. Once it opened its mouth again, it came out as a jet of green flames that sunk the entire valley like a flood.</p><p>The Allied Ninja Headquarters became a nest of hornets that just realized that someone had spilled soaped water all over it and that they were drowning. The flames stuck to the unfortunate ninja, young and old, just as soap stuck to the wings and bodies of hornets, burning them up in an instant without offering them a chance to wash the flames away.</p><p>"Go play around a little, don't disturb me or my targets. I don't much care if you wipe them out or if they kill you," the assassin made another order. This time, the middle finger of the jade arm holding the paper tag in place opened up, loosening the hold over the beast. The killer took a valiant leap, blinking away with a Body Flicker while the howling monkey took a plunge down and began swinging its fists in a wild rampage.</p><p>A distinctive hum filled the air when the assassin swung the Sword of the Thunder God to cut down an Allied Ninja, who noticed him methodically and menacingly making his way toward the headquarters. Whether he identified the killer as the commander of the mad Tailed Beast laying waste to the Allied Ninja remained a mystery that the Allied Ninja carried off to his shallow grave. A black trail of charring crawled up the split sword that the ninja tried deflecting the assassin's flashy strike with and ended up cut in half just like its owner.</p><p>"Where are you? Nakotsumi Mana, also, Araki Endo…" the assassin grumbled to himself as he kicked down the shoddy wall and entered the building covered in bright, emerald flames that were slowly reducing it to rubble. The killer didn't much care if he ended up destroying the Allied Ninja and earning infamy across the entire world, becoming public enemy No. 1, all that mattered that the head of that magician girl laid on the Nine Tales Gang's table and his daughter, the Snipe Hawker, would have her vengeance and could rest easy.</p>
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<a name="section0749"><h2>749. Mana To The Rescue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A bright light enveloped the staircase room, forcing Mana to cover her face up instinctually. Noise boomed for a blink before dying out in a void of childish laughter. The light became a veil of white that surrounded everything, a veil the part of which Mana became one with without expressing her choice to do so. By the time she rationalized what had happened, she laid on her back outside, brushing her scraped back against stone while shards of glass and shredded wood rained from the sky.</p><p>Mana looked down, inspecting her body. There was a massive gap in her chakra. Her body had augmented her to withstand an expanding bubble of booming obliteration without her conscious demand. Normally Mana still hesitated to employ chakra augmentation, but survival came first to what her consciousness thought about a method of survival to her body. Hearing the ringing and feeling a warm drip down her ears, Mana stood up and faced the wall of flames before her and a massive wine-red shape with gleaming eyes on the horizon.</p><p>"The Four-Tails?" Mana muttered to herself, seeing the four tails of the colossal monkey titan flapping about as it smashed, kicked, and breathed emerald flames. Lives blinked out by hundreds as within an instant fireballs and lightning bolts lit up the sky and smashed into the beast, but they were like gnats attacking a raging bull. They may have been too tiny to pin down and squash, but they also couldn't hope to accomplish anything more than irritate their target.</p><p>Hearing screams and wailing fill the air, Mana turned her head up, seeing tremendous chunks of the hive-shaped building falling from the heavens. With the completion of a few hand seals, the magician took to the skies and swooped up to the falling building chunk, pinpointing the location of every frightened recruit and injured person within in need of rescue before the plummeting chunk hit the ground. With Mana having improved her Mystical Wings Jutsu and reinvented it time and time again, it may as well have been a different jutsu from where it had started out. Mana would require all that expertise to pull this off.</p><p>"Fire Style: Dragon Claw!" Mana yelled out while riding the current of wind that sent her torpedoing toward the falling building. After completing the Tiger hand seal, Mana blew out a mass of hot air from her lungs that ignited upon contact with the air around her and slapped with an open palm, creating a triplet of Fire Release chakra spikes that slashed through and melted the building wall making for an easier punt through.</p><p>The shrieking in her head took over as Mana winced and cried out in pain, slamming the building with her head and shoulders first was never a fun experience and she couldn't wallow in discomfort for too long lest she became a sharer of the fate that the victims she was trying to save all shared. As fast as she could, Mana activated her Mystical Wings again and maneuvered around the collapsing building chunk, grabbing and dragging whoever she could on her way out. Once the hot brush of late spring caressed her cheek, Mana vaulted in mid-air to secure her hold on the few survivors she held and slowly descended, wincing when the building wing hit the ground with a thunderous roar.</p><p>"Fuck… Oh, shit, Oakley was still there…" someone hanging on Mana's neck and slowly driving her down like an overweight balloon lamented.</p><p>"What? This isn't everyone?" Mana turned to them, feeling her pumped cheeks cool as their color paled out. How could this have been? How could she have missed someone?</p><p>"Yeah, there was this young man, he got pinned by a collapsing ceiling, I think he was still alive…" the young woman whom Mana held by her hands while the entire group landed on the ground and collapsed, breathing easier now that the immediate threat to their lives was over.</p><p>"My chakra sensory I… I thought I sensed everyone…" Mana dragged her cool hands over her face, rubbing her eyes almost to the point of bleeding before clenching them in fists.</p><p>"His chakra must have been pretty weak, with all this shit in the background…" one of the rescued recruits pointed at the massive bestial titan throwing parts of the building he had just reduced to ruin and squishing those choosing to hold it off while people got back on their feet and worked to help each other out. "Is that the Four-Tails!? I thought it was last seen in the Earth Country…"</p><p>"It's Iwagakure, it has to be, they've sent this beast to destroy Kumogakure in revenge and it's too stupid to see what's it doing!" one of the female recruits Mana helped wrapped her head in her hands, shaking in disbelief that they were fighting off a Tailed Beast.</p><p>"Move to the outskirts like in the survival drills. You know them better than me, I failed the graduation exam," Mana muttered with a hollow tone before turning to the Four-Tails and scanning the hot spots of its destruction. As streams of its emerald flames engulfed people and buildings, it seemed to dissolve them on a cellular level, almost as if it was toxic to their very cells and acidic to the tissue at the same time as being infernally hot.</p><p>"You're not coming with?" the rescued recruit asked with a raised tone to overpower the shattering boulders and roars of earthquakes in the distance.</p><p>"Too many people can't get out. Your protocols don't apply to me anymore, I'm out of the Allied Ninja. I'm doing what I think is right from this point on," Mana replied without turning back and flew off toward the source of all the heat. The Allied Ninja were getting slaughtered. For every platoon to take the beast on, hundreds of ninja evaporated to ash in the hellish baths of the monkey's flame or met their doom underneath a rampant storm of rubble.</p><p>A spike of chakra to her right, Mana barrel-rolled, avoiding something that simply radiated with chakra. Just when she thought she was safe, the projectile she had avoided lit up and made Mana scream out in pain when its rowdy blast and rough shock waves sent her arrowing back down. Just a few blinks longer and Mana would've splatted down and broken something, since she avoided the pinpoint explosive projectile, she kept enough consciousness to swoop up and correct her course at the final few seconds but she settled on not lingering in the skies anymore.</p><p>There was something else here. Someone else.</p><p>It wasn't the Four-Tails shooting explosives at her. This was a combo of ninjutsu and weaponry for sure, but primordial titans of chakra didn't know such subtlety and the evidence was all around the Allied Ninja and cinders falling from the cloudy skies that had turned dark from smoke before the noon clocked in. There was a third party, a method to this madness but, as always, screams and pleads for merciful salvation or a merciful death distracted Mana.</p><p>A handful of banged-up recruits hung atop of a dislodged and flipped-over piece of debris. It had rested in a position that suggested to Mana that the grand beast ahead had lobbed the whole thing here with those poor people hanging on the edge and shellshocked. With a kick to her flight, Mana leaped off of the sonic boom underneath her feet and slowed down before grabbing hold of the hanging recruits before U-turning and placing them down on the ground. Just after they had settled and realized that they were down on the good old ground a stream of emerald flames washed over the fallen building wing, reducing bricks and steel railings alike to ash and decaying it instead of melting it.</p><p>"That burning… It's massively cytotoxic, oh god…" the recruit with a fractured leg that looked strangely clean moped prompting Mana to put two on top of two.</p><p>"You're a medical ninja? Can you reach the outskirts? That's where everyone's regrouping. There might be survivors that need your help," she asked.</p><p>"Sure…" the medical ninja nodded. "Just give me two to thank the forces beyond I'm not flat or corroded to a pile of dead, powdery cells right now."</p><p>"Can you take him there?" Mana turned to the other recruit she just rescued.</p><p>"Yeah, I can walk," the recruit nodded.</p><p>"Tell me you're not going toward that thing…" the medical ninja looked up to Mana with a pain-ridden expression, holding his fractured leg.</p><p>"Eventually, maybe, for now, I've got to make sure that I help everyone I can," Mana ran her hand over her unruly hair, freaking out after realizing that everything around her potential tasks were failing. Ninja trying to coordinate an assault on the Four-Tails died by the handful, approaching the outcome of being wiped out. People in need of rescue crying out all around her, people she wasn't helping right now. "Survive, please, help someone else if you can," Mana muttered and took off again, rushing toward the grand monster on the horizon on her own.</p><p>Jets of the jade flame passed around with a rumbling shake. A recruit screamed, curling into a fetal ball where the flames ate her up and reduced her to nothing with a corrosive embrace before Mana's eyes. Her own shaking hand before her aligned to Mana's eyes while the magician gulped down her sorrow and turned her attention to a nearby recruit pinned down by rubble. Taming her desire to save everyone, Mana dashed to the poor recruit and grabbed hold of the debris, trying to push it off the ground herself.</p><p>"Just… Shit… Just smash through, you won't lift it off!" the recruit yelled out. The fallen wall had smashed both of the recruit's legs down under and, normally, lifting the thing pinning him down would have doomed the young man to certain death, but his ninja physiology and chakra circulation would sustain his life long enough, as long as he receives help.</p><p>"I can't, if I smash it from above, it won't be subtle, I'm going to injure you more…" Mana grunted and cried out while struggling to lift off the building wall collapsed to the lower half of the recruit. This went against her principles but losing control of her chakra again and severing her network sure beat seeing this poor man die before her eyes just like that last recruit. As the ninja magician tapped into her chakra augmentation, immense strength rushed through her and the wall became easier to lift and fling away.</p><p>Mana picked the injured recruit up and dashed behind and around the scattered debris, pillars of jade flame burst from underground, swallowing both the location where the recruit had been pinned down under and all around Mana but, with a swoop of her Mystical Wings, Mana squeezed through a few closing pillars and flew on a lower ground level toward the outskirts and further away from the action.</p><p>"Ugh… I can't feel my legs but… Thanks, you saved my life," the recruit muttered, wrapping his hands around Mana's neck while the kunoichi slowly tried shoving him away and handing the young man to the medical ninja working on healing those survivors that still weren't beyond help.</p><p>"Mana!" a familiar voice reached the magician, making Mana groan with a subconscious expression of her frustration. "We were so worried!" Shige-H, Damisan, Tomi, and Skaven surrounded her and hugged her each in a row while Shige-H examined the magician for wounds.</p><p>"Good, you guys are here too…" Mana scratched her head, realizing she came off bitchy by reacting this way to her friends being worried about her, but they seriously slowed her down. So many people out there still weren't beyond saving, so many would die because Mana won't be there.</p><p>"Calm down," Skaven stated with a sharp look right Mana in the eyes. There was something unspoken, something odd going on with him. As if he knew exactly how Mana felt on a level much deeper than someone who had only known her for a few months on a mostly professional level may have known her feelings.</p><p>"How can I!? There's a goddamn Tailed Beast out there! Everyone's doing their best to make time to rescue everyone we can. I can't just stand around here and talk!" Mana dragged her shaking hands across her face, her sifting fingers threatened to pull the unruly curls that weaved into untidy loops around her fingers but it only pinched her scalp in the end as the loops always caved under pressure. "I can't even fly around fast enough, there's some maniac shooting me out of the sky every time I rise!"</p><p>"Wait, what?" Shige-H gasped.</p><p>"Yeah, there's some unidentified, large chakra signature, A-Rank. At the very least, he tried sniping me out from the sky with a long-range explosive," Mana said.</p><p>"That's what I've suspected," Shige-H scratched her chin. "I have a vague clue what we're up against. This Tailed Beast, it's a diversion. Shit! I think I know why we haven't found Endo too. Damn… Let's just hope that man hadn't killed Endo and that he's just being his usual crazy-ass self," Shige-H flipped out, pacing across the more tranquil patch of the outskirts while rubbing her forehead nervously.</p><p>"What are you talking about?" Tomi's face soured.</p><p>"Think about it, who can pull something like this and who has the absolute nothing-to-lose mentality and sheer guts to do this? Who have we scorned to the point of them declaring a blood feud against us, but whom we haven't heard from since?" Shige-H sat down on a nearby rock as she stared at the ground.</p><p>"You're losing me. I'm off to see whom I can save! Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Mana split her chakra into five separate pieces just because she'd be able to help more people this way. She also reduced her combat potential by raking through her chakra resources this way too, but it wasn't like she fostered any hopes of doing anything against a Tailed Beast but becoming a powdery pile of ash.</p><p>"No, wait! You're absolutely the worst person to be out there right now–you haven't met that man, Mana, but he's the father of the assassin that tried to kill you. We've met him while securing the tissue sample that saved your life," Shige-H jumped up and stood in front of the way of the central Mana.</p><p>"I don't care about that man or whatever pointless vendetta he's on. If he stands in the way of me helping everyone I can, I'll deal with him," Mana looked up to Shige-H and the two clashed resolute stares. It seemed as if though neither was ready to back down from the other with Mana flirting with the thought of employing genjutsu while Shige-H tried defusing her friend through reason and employing her caring look.</p><p>"Deal with me? That's interesting," a cybernetic-sounding voice reached the Stars as all of them turned to where the voice came from. A tall and well-armored in a full-karuta set man carrying multiple armed sheathes and donning a round face-covering mask with three round, yellow vizors that complemented the night-black karuta with red decorations and edges to it.</p><p>"So, it is you…" Skaven sighed. "Oh well, maybe it's for the better, I still owe you for dealing with some of my old associates. Not all of them were salt of the earth, you know. Some of them were just people trying to make a living the only way they knew how and they didn't deserve to be your chess pieces."</p><p>"Shut up, ANBU scum, I've got no issue with you so I suggest you run back home to your master's lap and rub your back against it before I break it instead," the assassin raised the ancient hilt he used in the earlier clash against the Stars in the Fire Country.</p><p>"ANBU?" Skaven seemed stricken by this referral.</p><p>"I've got no time for this. You've brought a Tailed Beast here, and you sent it to rampage here, causing who knows how many casualties! I've got no time to settle meaningless squabbles with you. People are dying out there!" Mana took a few careless steps forward, swiping her hand to the side, but neither her approach nor her body language caused much concern for the veteran assassin.</p><p>"You want to keep it simple, huh? Fine, how's this for simple, Konoha's Sorceress? You roll back your collar and fall to your knees, I'll make it quick and recall the Four-Tails. How's that? The ball's in your court now, you're the one responsible for every death that the Four-Tails causes from this point on because you can stop all this by giving me the satisfaction for my daughter's death and the stain on her reputation," the killer spoke with a cold tone that didn't seem to require the aid of the voice box that he used at all. He was hollow even without it.</p><p>"What kind of sick and twisted…!? How can you blame Mana for surviving an attempt at her life?" Damisan ran up to Mana's side as his cloak stayed behind him and touched the ground gently. Behind them, recruits cowered and hid in search of safety as they were incapable of helping Mana and the rest of the Stars out too much against this threat in their current states.</p><p>"How do I know you've got any sort of control over this beast?" Mana tried finding the man's eyes somewhere behind that round, steel helmet covering his entire face up but there was nothing but glowing lamps behind them it seemed. The killer may as well have been a machine just like the facade he tried to form implied.</p><p>"The thing on Four-Tails' forehead. It is a part of an ancient artifact known as the Five Pillars Seal. It imprisons the victim underneath an impenetrable seal of five pillars and until it grants me five requests, each freeing it from one pillar, it remains under my total control. If I command it to, say, pick its nose and dance around, it would be free of my control." The killer explained, pointing at the raging beast bashing in the distance. "Right now, it is under the orders to distract the Allied Ninja until I take my vengeance. Once you are dead, that request is fulfilled, leaving it with only two more requests left ungranted."</p><p>"But if it is free, then it's no better than a wild animal. Tailed Beasts are dangerous weapons of mindless, mass destruction already. If you set it free, it'll just finish the job!" Skaven lashed back at the mastermind of what might have been the collapse of the Allied Ninja.</p><p>"No. This is not the first time that the Four-Tails has been captured this way. I have found that the beast is terrified of that artifact and will flee from it the first chance it gets. With it being captured by it again, its panic will be even more apparent. It will flee to a whole other country from where the Five Pillars Seal is, of that, you can't doubt." The veteran assassin replied.</p><p>"You're just a treacherous snake! You're delusional if you think we'll trust the father of the lying pit viper that infiltrated us and tried turning Mana-nee against us before nearly killing her!" Tomi threw a wild fit. "Don't listen to this guy, Mana-nee, he's lying!"</p><p>"He isn't," Mana shook her head. "I'm well versed in history and lore of the world, it used to be a hobby of mine, and I've heard of this story about the Four-Tails."</p><p>"A Fable of The Western Ninja by Aporius Noregin, wasn't it?" the killer asked with his inquisitive tone barely sifting through his wall of apathy.</p><p>"You read the scrolls in the Konoha Archive?" Mana muttered, somehow failing to find this impossible, rather feeling a bit of admiration for how devoted this man was to ending her life and coming to know the best ways of doing just that. "The same books I've read?"</p><p>"Look at who's suddenly all-talk…" the killer pointed his ancient-looking hilt at Mana in an accusatory gesture. "That's right, I've learned what makes you tick just like my daughter did before shooting you down. She did everything right, she doesn't deserve the stain of dishonor your survival gave her. Enough stalling, you're the one costing lives now, Konoha's Sorceress, accept death or fight back as a hypocrite. Your choice, just know that I'll kill you, your friends, and every wounded recruit here, leave no survivors unless you wipe the stain on my daughter's memory willingly."</p><p>"I'm sorry about the loss of your daughter, but you shouldn't have involved so many innocent people in this. You're too dangerous and too reckless so I won't hold anything back," Mana leaned down and pulled out a broken chunk of someone's steel staff, pointing it at the man after her own life like she used to wield the Audra alloy wand early in her career.</p>
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<a name="section0750"><h2>750. The Face Of Retribution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You can't just give in to this guy, Mana," Damisan turned to his friend as she hesitated to attack or straighten her back and leave her fighting stance.</p><p>"We won't let her either way. Once a Star, always a Star!" Shige-H clenched her fists.</p><p>"I don't plan on getting killed," Mana shook her head. "The Five Pillars Seal is an artifact from archaic times. It means that it follows the most archaic laws as well. If we beat this man and take it from him by force–he won't command the Seal anymore."</p><p>"Somewhere deep down I was hoping you'd say that," the armored killer admitted with a slight nod of his head. His Sword of the Thunder God hummed and crackled with stray sparks while the two parties prepared to clash surrounded by wounded Allied Ninja with a massive titan obliterating the rest of the Allied Ninja forces in the background.</p><p>"Let's go, the sooner we beat this man senseless, the more lives we can still save," Mana looked up straight through the lower two glass orbs which the armored killer viewed the world through. While she was addressing the Stars, requesting their aid to save as many lives as possible, she was also addressing this man in a way too–letting him know she was going to take this as seriously as she's ever taken a matter because of what this man put at stake.</p><p>Mana's hands moved in closer to one another aiming to form a clone technique hand seal. The man was like a bolt of lightning himself, diving in a straightforward charge, ignoring all threats around him, and rushing directly toward Mana. Something flashed inside of his helmet. It was a bright light that shined through the spaces in between sheets of armor, but rather a more ethereal glow. It was chakra being set-off and only Mana, as a sensor, could feel it.</p><p>It wasn't the sword that the man attacked Mana with. In that way, it was not an attack that she had anticipated. Mana moved her crossed arms to block the sword's swing, but it was just a feint. The killer's true attack came as sharp and swift double-finger pinches that stung like heated nails pushed through the skin. The man didn't intend on letting go either; he flung his crackling lightning sword into the air while using his freed hand to grab hold of Mana's collar and pull her in while his thrusting hand continued to pinch and strike at her.</p><p>Lightning bolts of silver and emerald shades blitzed in from the left and from the right as Shige-H and Damisan both dashed in to attack the man from both sides. The grizzled assassin grabbed hold of his falling Sword of the Thunder God while letting go of Mana's collar and striking her in the chest with an open palm, only to swing his sword around him and form a donut-shaped ring of light that sent Damisan and Shige-H staggering back in fear of being cut down.</p><p>Vision doubled. A sharp pain resonated through her nerves, rising from the heart, and something vexed her chest and forced Mana to cough up. Two drools of crimson extended down her lips and touched the grass underneath her feet as the magician slipped her jacket off and tossed it aside to look at her arms and her upper chest. Her eyes fixed on a myriad of nasty, red dots that suggested subtle internal bleeding localized in very specific areas.</p><p>"Tenketsu?" Mana muttered to herself. Almost at the same time as she's put her finger on the manner of the man's taijutsu style, she felt a grave weakness in her joints. Shige and Damisan weaved around wild swings of the Sword of the Thunder God but all of those were feints too, having trained in martial arts in the Sun Disc arena, Mana recalled what skilled feints looked like and this man was placing the two right where he wanted them, positioning them for a finishing blow he had already planned for ahead of time.</p><p>"Shadow Prison Jutsu!" Skaven's voice rung from behind the man, but he flipped his sword over his head and allowed it to imbed into the ground and expel a wild discharge of electricity that dispelled Skaven's shadow technique at once. Blades fashioned after bear's claws burst out from the killer's gauntlets as he thrust them toward Damisan's neck.</p><p>It hadn't been the kill-shot that Ion's father had hoped for as Damisan moved aside some, but he punched through Damisan's cylinder and slashed somewhere deep enough to send a splatter of blood squeezing through the hole and the claw plugging it. The killer's foot socked Shige-H right in the throat, sending the medical kunoichi wheezing in shock and skipping past the pale phase immediately to going blue. An elbow strike cracked through Damisan's cylinder, exposing a patch of his mangled face before the man whirled in mid-air and slashed at Shige-H, sending the leader of the Stars rolling back with a gash on her chest.</p><p>"Watch out for his taijutsu. This man is using the Byakugan, he's targeting your tenketsu!" Mana warned the Stars while rising back up for a round two. It was tough to believe that this man could be swift enough to interrupt all of her attempts to trick him or outplay him while handling all the Stars at once. It was as if he had taken his time studying them and planned this entire engagement thousands of times over, incorporating every eventuality into his mental simulation before executing it right now.</p><p>"Presumptuous," the armored killer grabbed his weathered hilt and undid the emergence of the Sword of the Thunder God before reigniting the sword once more in his hand once it was no longer stuck through the ground. "Yet feeling so sure of yourself, the folly of youth."</p><p>Having no more sleeves to slip cards from or her magician's uniform and all of its hidden pockets and mechanisms bit Mana in the ass right now. Her sleight of hand allowed her to slip cards out of the pair of pouches behind her waist while in mid-rush to meet her opponent who wouldn't let her use any ninjutsu unpunished but it was a far cry from how effective she could have made it while properly dressed for the occasion.</p><p>A card slammed right into the center of the assassin's helmet, releasing a loud clang and bouncing off of it, but it wasn't just a steel-tipped projectile. Once the sealing glyphs masquerading as a mosaic on the card's back lit up, a puff of choking smoke burst forth from the card as it burnt up on the spot as fuel for the noxious smokescreen. The killer leaned thrust his left arm still armed with gauntlet claws through the smoke, impaling Mana in mid-air but he kept his right arm on the ready as if aware that this was nothing more than an illusion.</p><p>To prove the man's primary instinct correct, the clone dissolved into flower petals, but the man's gleaming vizor shut down with iron lids covering it up. He turned around with his upper body still sunken inside of Mana's flashy smokescreen to cut behind him with the Sword of the Thunder God, which froze a version of Mana rushing in from the back and split her in half.</p><p>"Useless, my helmet comes equipped with noise and vision insulation. My vizor picks up on chakra signatures and warns me ahead of time. Your illusions are useless against me. You're just wasting more human lives you lie about caring so much," the assassin responded before the clone he had just slashed down twitched, and burst into a turbulent gale. "Wind Style Shadow Clone?" the killer grunted in surprise as his sword choked out of electricity when contacting the Wind Release reaction to slaying the clone.</p><p>The knockback also sent the ruthless avenger sliding back on the ground wide open as the erupting hurricane spread his arms to the side, deflecting them thusly. Now Mana found her time to rush through hand seals. It was a precious time, one she might need to work through blood and sweat to earn in the future.</p><p>"Mass Summoning Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, digging her teeth into her thumb while pressing her bleeding finger and her entire palm onto a rocky protrusion on the ridge and sinking in a cloud of picked-up dust. Once the dust had cleared out, a quartet of rabbits stood lined up in front of their summoner, willing to put their lives on the line as both parties have done on multiple occasions before.</p><p>Usuvilme bid his chompers on a large dagger he clenched in between his teeth while brandishing two entire handfuls of throwing knives in each hand. The chubby bunny looked like he could fully inflict some damage even without them. A female rabbit of pure white fur with a rippling blade encrusted with a line of gold on its blunt side and deep-blue gemstones resting on her puny shoulders turned to Mana.</p><p>"Dis has 'ta be dire for ye to call on me, Mana," Usukari observed as she had been one of Mana's rarer summons.</p><p>"Yeah, I know we've struck a deal and all, but I just kind of felt embarrassed to call you guys, anyway. I was just really used to fighting alongside Zoku and Bane-chan," Mana nodded. "The opponent is fully aware of my skills this time, however, I need to innovate a bit."</p><p>"Is dat da goddamned Four-Tails!?" Usuzoku freaked out, pointing his claymore in the distance at a thrashing, red ape breathing jets of all-decimating jade flames from its nostrils and its mouth while its rampant fists made the ground shake all throughout the continent.</p><p>"We'll deal with him later. This man might have an answer for that, so unless you want to fight Four-Tails on even terms, I suggest you take this fight seriously," Mana quickly put Usuzoku back in his place.</p><p>"If we do a good job here, Mana-san is going to call on us more often! We must prove ourselves!" Usubane clenched her tiny fists and waved her hard-tipped ears she used as an alternate pair of fists or flexible hammers of living tissue about.</p><p>"You could have used just about any technique under your belt and you called forth these soon-to-be fur coats?" the killer regained his composure and dragged his gauntlet to feel and correct his helmet and force the lids obstructing his vizors open with his hand as they malfunctioned after taking a hit from Mana's Wind Style Shadow Clone blowback.</p><p>"Wind Release shorts his blade out," Mana turned to her fellow Stars. "It's an incredibly dangerous sword that can cut through anything but it is still just really intense Lightning Release so a Wind Release jutsu of enough kick to it will shorten it out for a brief time."</p><p>"I guess we're lucky Mana's so well-read-up on things…" Damisan raised his right arm, taking aim at his opponent now that he was in mid-distance from each of his comrades and Damisan was free to attack him however he liked.</p><p>"Ninja Style: Lotus Arm Bloom!" Damisan chanted out while his arm segmented into separate rings and propped up rings of miniature missiles from in-between the separate segments. The missiles all took off in a series of barrage attacks, putting the assassin on the defensive though, despite his rather cumbersome-looking armor, the man had been skilled enough to dance around the missiles and put himself far enough away to dodge the blast of the resulting explosions as well, all except one missile, that flanked him and hit him on his right arm, forcing him to drop the ancient-looking hilt of the Sword of the Thunder God.</p><p>Before the cornered assassin could come up with a ruthless putdown while a minor scrape on his armor smoked from his shoulder, Shige-H blitzed in with a gleaming, wind-back fist and eyes looking for bloody murder. The killer thrust his crossed-up hands to intercept the attack at the central joint and redirect Shige-H's fist to the ground. A pillar of destructive energy boomed out from underground, sending both combatants sliding back with both their ears ringing.</p><p>It had only been once all the smoke had cleared out that the assassin looked around him and noticed that all the powerless hostages he could have used against Mana in the area were gone and that the Stars were now utterly alone against the enemy waging war against the entire Allied Ninja corps just to get to a pair of ninja he hated more than anything.</p><p>"This sucks…" little Tomi dangled her feet in mid-air, sitting atop of a tree. "Why do I always have to be on hostage clean-up duty?"</p><p>"Because you have potentially the highest number of available hands, feet, hooves, wings, backs, and trunks to pitch in?" Skaven scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"I see, perhaps not even I am beyond making miscalculations…" the killer admitted after a brief crack in his cool facade as a momentary chuckle.</p><p>"All you've been doing so far is miscalculate," Mana replied. "All because of your hatred. It makes you short-sighted, it makes you take foolish risks. The reason no one had ever beaten or captured you before, the reason you're so feared and respected in your circles that you used to not hate or get attached to anyone. Nothing you ever did was about the way you felt. It's only now that you hopped atop of a Tailed Beast and challenge the entire Allied Ninja head-on just so you could pick a fight you're not favorable to win in the first place."</p><p>"Maybe you are right, but it's all the same to me. After all the lives I've taken all the hits I've completed and all the money I've earned, all the skills I've picked up along the way, my daughter was the only thing to stay behind after me and make sure that what I did mattered at all. She was to inherit all of my skills, all of my reputation, and pass it down to her own descendants down the line. You've rendered my life worthless, you've pressed me to a corner and, frankly, I don't much care who lives and who dies, win or lose, the only thing that matters is that I have my retribution," the detached a tube from his chest and pulled off its lid to slip out a scroll. After unraveling it and placing his hand over it, he had unsealed a large, two-handed sword with two diamond-shaped blades to each side of the main one.</p><p>It made sense that he'd switch away from his Sword of the Thunder God now that Mana had shown she knew how to deal with it and let everybody in on that secret.</p><p>A bipedal elephant of sage-green skin bust through the woods and the rocks, grabbing hold of the first chunky boulder on its way toward the solitary target and swinging it to smack him aside. With basic chakra coating rushing up his blade, the armored veteran slashed through the stone, chopping a chunk off of the improvised weapon and kicking it aside while aggressively pressing on his advantage and fading out from view as he blitzed and flickered around the bemused, white-eyed elephant until the killer appeared behind the animal and lowered his large sword, allowing the dozens of cuts littering the ninja animal to open up all at once.</p><p>Another, violet elephant decorated with war paint burst roared and rumbled in the distance as it charged onward, the armored killer prepared to confront it just as he had fended off the other elephant but a roundhouse kick to his back sent the man fumbling onward and threw him off-guard. Mana's ninja rabbits and Tomi's own bunch had played together long enough to learn how to work together, and they did their best to watch out for one another. Because of Usubane's quick displacement attack, Zokaka's stout trunk swatted the killer aside and threw him in the center of a circle where the Stars and their summons surrounded him from all sides, resolute to beat the living daylights out of him until he lost control of the Five Pillars Seal.</p><p>"Fire Style: Fireball Barrage!" Mana chanted out, extending her hands out in front while she sent a flurry of head-sized fireballs rushing toward the assassin just to wear him out further, the man waved his triple-blade, diamond-shaped sword about, deflecting the attacks before leaving himself one-handed as he blocked another one of Usubane's flying kicks and promptly turned to block a combined push from Usuzoku and Usukari.</p><p>Leaving just one hand to compete with both ninja rabbits, the killer waved his gauntlet blades over his head to deflect Usuvilme's downpour of throwing knives before succumbing to Usuzoku's and Usukari's forceful push and stumbling back. A massive volume of earth hit the stumbling killer head-on as he grunted and dug his feet into the ground to struggle against the rushing force of mother nature punishing him. Against all odds, the veteran assassin lifted the building-sized earth dumpling over his head before Shige-H's triumphant roar resonated above it.</p><p>"Unmaker Fist!" Shige-H yelled out, as she threw her Advanced Bloodline enhanced punch straight into the core of her own dumpling and split it in half like a crashing bolt of heavenly lightning while her punishing fist dug into the man's fancy helmet and shattered it into steel shreds that melted away while the man himself rolled back with greasy hair of black and grey alike flashing before the Allied Ninja recruits.</p><p>"Your eyes…" Damisan noted, resisting to point his finger at the grisly sight only because he himself had been the target of such finger-pointing his entire life.</p><p>"That's right, taken from me by my own clan," the weathered assassin mustered up the strength to return on both feet as his face now laid exposed to the elements and his enemies. A face of a wrinkle-ridden man in the later stages of his life, strict and angular of facial features with shoulder-length, greasy, black, and grey hair split evenly over the middle. His eyes were white with silver irises and non-existent pupils, covered in a membrane while the surrounding area was covered in a line of scar tissue as if the man's eyes had been burnt out by pressing something scorching against his eye line.</p><p>"That spike of chakra you saw earlier, girl, it was not my Byakugan making its miraculous return. It was my helmet relaying information to me about your location. Your tenketsu, your vital points, I have them all here," the man pressed his fingers against his temple. "Unlike those stubborn fools of the Hyuuga clan, I don't need my eyes to show me my opponent's weaknesses anymore. Fortunate, because they don't show me much of anything at all."</p>
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<a name="section0751"><h2>751. Stripped Bare</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, we've been pushed around by a senior blind guy," Skaven scratched the back of his head, looking visibly distraught. "Makes me feel lousy…"</p><p>"Not me, I've got no arms or legs…" Damisan pointed out. "If anything, this fight just proves the value of never giving up, even with a bad hand."</p><p>The killer with a face to his impressive gear turned his head, listening in not only on the small-talk that had been occurring in between the beats of the battle but also the subtle signs that betrayed everyone's location. His entire body appeared to be working toward that goal. He was damn good at it too, if the precursor to this moment was a sign of anything.</p><p>It was indeed the veteran's own hand that moved first, grabbing hold of one of many scrolls that comprised an impressive belt crossing over his front and back, over the shoulder, and down his chest toward the opposite hip on both sides. As Stars and their summoned allies attacked to interrupt the man, he flicked his hand while holding an end to a scroll, scattering paper sheets that whirled out from the seal drawn onto the scroll he had just revealed.</p><p>The paper tags burst with miniature flashes of light, together creating a harmonious blinding wall to which only he himself was immune to. While the Stars and their allies reeled in mid-assault, caught unprepared by this curious technique, the killer drew and brandished his triangular diamond formation shaped sword. A loud and hefty rustling noise met the Stars that cared to listen in. The assassin had removed yet another scroll, though this time he raised his sword over his head while unsealing yet another wave of these paper sheets.</p><p>"Hurts, doesn't it? Blindness. Which is worse, the pain and irritation or the fear that follows? Don't worry, this first flash was just to disorient you lot. This one is for real, though. If only the main family had figured out such a humane way of blinding someone when executing judgment upon me," the assassin grunted while weaving a hand seal and forming a turbulent vortex of Wind Release chakra around him, just to guide his seals into an orderly whirlwind formation.</p><p>"Stop!" Mana's voice pierced the grueling silence while the Stars worked to overcome their temporary blindness before their enemy could hurt their eyes for real with this curious seal he used.</p><p>"Nice try, kid. You've wasted your chance to surrender quietly though, now you and your friends will pay the price," the assassin raised his triple diamond shaped sword over his head to catch the rays of intense flashing and direct them in a way that sealed the temporary blindness in those that caught glimpse of his technique.</p><p>A wooden thud snapped the man out of the haze as he tried moving his head out of instinct just to look around and understand what had happened to him. He couldn't see anything, but a subtle noise of dripping water accompanied him from nearby. The screaming and grunting, the cursing of one's cruel fate to end up against a Tailed Beast and the crashing violence, the deadly chaos that the Four-Tails wrought had been absent from the symphony of noises around him. Just eerie silence, the dangling of chains and that accursed, dripping water.</p><p>The water rippled in unease, something sharp clacked against its surface. Had the trapped assassin the ability to turn his head to listen in–he'd have done so. No matter. Mana helped him out by speaking before he could reveal that he had put two on top of two already.</p><p>"We both know I can't let you do that," Mana stated after stopping in front of an old, black coffin made of solid steel, incrusted in fine silver and covered in a glistening, razor-sharp cross in the middle with the helpless face of her opponent stuck in her illusion looking through the cross' center.</p><p>"Auditory tick… You weren't pleading for your lives, you were casting the medium of your genjutsu through noise," the assassin smirked. Even when trapped inside of a steel cage and stuck under layers on top of layers of Mana's highest-ranking illusions, he still looked with that smug expression that challenged Mana to do her worst. A face with the smugness that proclaimed he'd be back no matter how hard he's hit for his vengeance.</p><p>"When you spend enough time in hell, it teaches you the futility of begging for your life. That's fine, I'll make every killer like you respect that again in time," Mana calmly replied while chains shot out from underwater and hooked onto the steel coffin, raising it into the air before the magician inside of her illusionary dimension of pitch black and nothing but shallow water stretching out into the dark horizon. It wasn't like her opponent could appreciate the artistry of her illusion. A pity.</p><p>"You think you've experienced hell?" the killer smirked. He growled and rumbled, tensing up his body and expelling a burst of chakra from his pores. A sharp shatter of the illusionary dimension collapsing followed. Fresh air hit the assassin's nostrils again as he used the standard dispelling jutsu to escape certain punishment at the hands of one of Konoha's best genjutsu specialists.</p><p>He was just in time as Usubane's kick dug into the man's cheek, sending him sliding back while Usuzoku and Usukari blitzed and crisscrossed with one another to slash at the man trying to kill their summoner with the best of his ability from opposite sides. A revolting nails-to-the-blackboard shriek filled the sanctuary of the wounded as both Usukari and Usuzoku slashed with a cross-slash, passing by one another with their enemy caught in between. Their swords dragged across the adamant armor that the assassin donned, damaging the belts where he stored his weaponry and artifacts and leaving the armor scraped and ridged.</p><p>Coughing up from the immense pressure of the crossing swords hitting his chest and spine and nearly severing him into two, the assassin still found the strength to roll onward and take a handstand while spinning his still armored legs to deflect a rain of knives from Usuvilme. He had taken Mana up on her challenge, overpowering an A-Rank genjutsu with an ordinary dispelling method, cost an arm and a leg in terms of chakra. It was reckless, but the man had nothing left to be worried or caring for.</p><p>Shige-H scrambled up to the grizzled assassin with her Unmaker Fist wound back and ready to unmake either the man or his fancy suit of armor. Wanting exactly nothing to do with this hellish young woman, the blind man took a dive, as if smelling her there, and sent her fumbling in mid-air with a leg sweep. Instead of simply palm-striking or kicking her away, the assassin yanked another scroll from his back, unsealing a street light like a rod from inside him as he pointed it to Shige-H and sent her flying with a singular, pink pulse of chakra emitted from its front end.</p><p>Just like that, the killer sealed his gravitational pulse-inducing street light back where he holstered it in to unleash a mad flurry of ninja tools. Focused and on-point, even a masterful combatant wouldn't have been able to aim this well, let alone a blind ninja, then again, a mere masterful combatant would have only had an ounce of concentrated hatred stew that brewed within Ion's father. Shige-H hit the floor a good dozen of kilos heavier from the knives and shuriken sticking out of her while the rest of the washing wave of steel missed her and arced off toward the steep drop to the field of fire and destruction below.</p><p>Damisan launched himself with his prosthetic feet, erupting with unsealed chakra jets that carried him across the distance between him and his opponent. The self-puppeteering ninja drove his right hand down with a hammer strike to catch his blind opponent unaware, but the armored assassin spun around his foe, moving in from behind. The assassin vaulted into the air, rolling at the peak of his jump as he pushed both his feet back to stomp at the back of Damisan's head, while the handicapped ninja turned to face his swift opponent, which only made him receive the double stomp to his face.</p><p>Swinging his heavy armored arms like hammers in a manner, not unlike that of Damisan's own taijutsu style, the armored killer smacked the top of Damisan's head, cracking his cylinder in a few places before thrusting his foot in a roundhouse kick and repeating the same move twice to send Damisan flying at a nearby rock with enough force to bounce the handicapped ninja off of it while the killer slashed upward with his diamond sword and splattered blood in an arc across the grimy and washed out patches of grass around the place.</p><p>Ion's father yanked his arm back, alerting the rest of the rushing Stars to a specific steel wire reeling sound as he hooked Damisan back toward him and jumped up to intercept the wounded ninja again while he vaulted over his front with his sword performing a vertical frontal slash and driving Damisan into the floor. The killer's blade work was second to none, all Stars or animals alike that approached him received dozens of slashes in the blink of an eye, Tomi's elephants staggered back tooting their trunks in pain while the rest grunted and flew back like rag dolls, clutching over their wounds.</p><p>The blind killer focused his ire on Damisan, who was left alone to receive it all. The veteran's diamond blade danced and blitzed around, sending shallow splatters of blood around as Damisan's body did its best to augment itself and not permit any deeper wounds. This skill of swordsmanship was unparalleled. Despite being blind, he seemed to easily maneuver a blade even of his own impressive size around Damisan's prosthetic limbs and slash at the man behind them with only moderate effort visible on his face.</p><p>"Shadow Tendril!" Skaven yelled out as a black tentacle wrapped around the man's throat and pulled him back, slamming him about before flinging him away from Damisan.</p><p>"I can only assume what your assignment here is, ANBU…" the assassin grumbled as he worked toward rising back on his feet. Due to him having already taken a rather mean beat down and still being bogged down by that large suit of armor he needed to survive this grueling clash of fates, he took extra time and panting to do so. "Are you bodyguarding this girl or are you watching over her so that she spills none of Konoha's secrets to the Allied Ninja? If it's the latter, you'd have accomplished your goal by just slitting her throat in the night. Would have saved both of us a heap of work."</p><p>"ANBU…?" Skaven grumbled, grabbing hold of his head as something about that insinuation didn't quite sit well with his head, causing quite the pounding inside. "What are you talking about?"</p><p>"Humph… Did they mind wipe you or something so that you don't let something slip? You must be quite the reject to be handed such a revolting assignment, and to think that they wiped your mind because your village didn't trust you over something so trivial too." The assassin raised his blade and entered a sword-fighting stance. It took a man of a certain madness to raise his sword so casually while being so certain that he is facing a disguised member of Konoha Black Ops.</p><p>"I changed my mind," Skaven smacked his palms together, shuffling out the Nara hijutsu hand seal from a mangled mess of fingers as his shadow extended from underneath him into two separate lines that connected to two separate boulders on each side and enveloped them whole. "I'd rather you stopped talking, Shadow Prison Jutsu!"</p><p>Skaven's shadowy lines lifted the two boulders up after drowning them out in shadowy mass and slammed them toward one another, aiming to smash the blind assassin in between the two boulders. Slashes of silver and diamond brightened up the blackened stone as the assassin jumped up and spun his blade around to slice both boulders into a blizzard of mere pebbles before his feet landed on the ground once more. Skaven leaned to the side to avoid a kunai blitzing past his cheek, it flew at a peculiar trajectory, however, dangling down as weight and wrapping a string of steel wire on the other end around the Nara as the assassin pulled him in for a jumping roundhouse kick.</p><p>With the disgruntled Nara taking off, the killer's hands became blurry as he unleashed another hail of kunai and shuriken at his floating target. While the ruthless assassin couldn't see the shadow over him from a charging elephant, he could certainly hear the tooting monstrosity approaching which shortened the number of projectiles he meant to stick into his airborne opponent and forced him to grab ahold of his massive sword and swing right at the charging threat. A titanic elephant against a blind and weary man wasn't much of a competition.</p><p>Ion's father croaked in pain as he took off the ground, swatted aside by a trunk his own size while Tomi let out a wild chant from atop of her elephant friend and hurled a pair of boomerangs that socked the airborne enemy on their cross front and back before returning to the girl's hands. From up above, Zomiti dived with a boulder in its gigantic hands, smashing from up above to slam the floating assassin with a hammering strike and drill him into the dirt. While it didn't seem like the assassin could avoid getting hit, he manipulated himself in mid-air to direct his feet toward the boulder and let out a blast of base chakra jet from storage seals on his feet that softened the hit somewhat.</p><p>Once the dust cleared out and the last remains of the giant boulder slamming down in Zomiti's hands rolled aside, the assassin finally flopped in a more comfortable position compared to the awkward upside-down dangle he landed in. The man caressed the back of his neck while getting back on his feet. His knees shook, and he had to wheeze and pant and grit his teeth to rise back up, but he did so without complaining. He even put his sword back up and challenged the Stars for another round.</p><p>The man's armor was a wreck. Detached pieces laid scattered all over the place. What remained had been torn, dented, and totaled. And yet Ion's father pushed through. Ever as determined to see this confrontation through until the end. He'd hurt someone before dying a martyr's death this way. His valiant challenge to the entire Allied Ninja and near-victory would be hailed amongst the black-market clientele. Maybe he even craved it to an extent. For his legacy to be that of what he had created here and not the blunder of his daughter.</p><p>"Your daughter was a much more skilled killer than you," Mana's words pierced the grueling silence.</p><p>"Don't you dare talk about her," The man warned her.</p><p>"You were right earlier–she did everything right. Separated me from everyone, made me feel alone again. She researched the range of my sensory by getting close to those I trained with and took her shot from not one but ten whole paces away from the edge–just to be sure. Ion hit me in a way that'd only take one shot…" Mana kept pushing her luck. She needed to force the man into a very specific challenge. He showed before how reckless he was willing to be when he measured his own chakra pool against Mana's. Maybe he'd be willing to take that gamble again and waste his chakra away in a hopeless dispelling struggle?</p><p>"I said, don't talk about her! Not you! Not ever!" the man roared out, dashing right at Mana with his sword swinging wildly in front of him as he meant to decapitate the magician while gliding behind her. Mana's head took off her shoulders before the man's feet touched the ground, but it dissolved into white fluffs. An unintelligible sound came from within the furballs. A sound that made the ninja rabbits gasp and take a step back as it was familiar to them.</p><p>"Ji-Ji!" the sound became clearer once the furballs burst open, revealing handfuls upon handfuls of Usujitsa clones in a peculiar illusion. The killer may have been aware of Mana's Flower Petal Sanctuary, but this was something else entirely–a combination of both an illusion, the space-time aspect of substitution, and the summoning technique alike.</p><p>"Genjutsu: Rabbit Escape!" Mana's voice rung somewhere away in the distance, gaining a deceitful, multiplying effect while it emanated within the realm of illusion and Usujitsa sent its clones for a suicidal bombardment task. The man weaved a hand seal, exploding in a booming aura of chakra as he attempted to dispel the technique, but this was more than a mere illusion as illusion was but a mere aspect of it. Had the killer's eyes worked, they'd have picked up on Mana's form rippling into his field of vision, but for now, the circumstances left him only with the painful shock of living rabbit bombardment.</p><p>When the smoke cleared, there was no longer a single plate connected to another plate. Just a tattered black and red bodysuit loosely hanging from a collapsed masculine shape that was now littered with burns, not unlike the grievous patch of scar tissue across the man's eyes. Using genjutsu against a blind man was a tough challenge, but one Mana enjoyed to an extent. It reminded her of the stage and audience members that proved to be more difficult to impress with each passing show, as she had to get creative to claim their acknowledgment.</p><p>All gear was stripped, all plans wrecked. Now it was just a bare-chested man and his skill against the rest of the Stars' willpower. Ion's father proved himself a tough nut to crack, but even if the outer shell cost the Stars a pound of their shell to bust through–they've done so and the battle reached its ultimate stages. With the lives of the entire Allied Ninja corps on the line, failure was simply never an option they entertained.</p>
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<a name="section0752"><h2>752. Switched Allegiances</h2></a>
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    <p>"Is this where you ask me to hand you the seal and leave nicely just because you've pushed me into a corner?" Ion's father wondered with quills of mockery sticking out in his tone.</p><p>"I can't let you do that either. We both know that your life beyond this pointless revenge quest revolves around killing people. I'm not letting that continue either," Mana shook her head as a handful of Usujitsa clones hopped up closer to her. A pair of them looked to their summoner with goofy and thoughtless expressions, but once the strictness in Mana's face washed over them, they turned away and looked down in submission.</p><p>"Interesting… That's not the answer I was expecting. Especially not from someone who's resulted in more casualties until now than the total of successful, high-profile hits I've completed. That's right, Konoha's Sorceress, I've researched your past failures. I know the name of every single person you've ever let down, anyone that's ever trusted you to save them whom you failed. Do their faces still linger with you or have you failed so many of them by now that they're just a meaningless, grey mass that means nothing to you anymore?"</p><p>This unnerved Mana. As uncomfortable as she was admitting it, it made something boil deep down. There couldn't have been any more hiding behind her illusions. Mana didn't want to zap or burn this man. She wanted to pant and wheeze that frustration out and translate it into punishment. She knew it was a trap, that her opponent was vastly more skilled at taijutsu or armed combat, that he was a master of emotionally manipulating his marks, and that by his own admission he'd studied Mana for this exact purpose. None of it mattered.</p><p>Riding the gale of her Mystical Wings Jutsu, Mana shot herself toward the beaten man in front of her as he got off the ground and lifted his sword to fight back. To duck the first diving kick, the killer had to fall down and thrust his sword into the ground for support so that he didn't fumble. His hand locked around Mana's wrist as she slashed with a steel-tipped card in her hand. Seeing him move from so close was like real magic, in the sense that Mana had absolutely no idea what was going on. He was too close for his motions to make any semblance of sense.</p><p>The assassin threw his diamond-shaped sword behind him, absorbing Usubane's dropkick. Still manipulating Mana's limb and flinging her around as he secured his armlock, the man swatted Usuzoku and Usukari aside while Usujitsa clones dived to bomb him once again. Mana activated her Mystical Wings to flip over her opponent and thrust her boots in his back. A loud snap rung in her ears, but she still had a few twitches of time before the pain of her snapping wrist set in. The assassin put up his arm, lighting his forearm up with a sealing glyph that unleashed a torrent of ninja tool projectiles, skewering Usujitsa clones and detonating them mid-flight before he returned to focus back on Mana.</p><p>With one of the magician's wrists broken, the man backflipped, sending his sharp, armored boots into the crux of Mana's chin. Everything blacked out for a blink. The rush of air all around her confused Mana for a second. She knew that every microsecond that the man's sword was out of her sight was a matter of life or death. Still, with her wrist burning up to her elbow and it being impossible to tell which side was up and which was down, the creeping terror in her chest made Mana wonder if this might have been how she'd die.</p><p>White. A crescent-shaped flash of red slashed through the haze and bled just like the blood streaming down the shallow slash on Mana's chest. "This is it, just you and me, just how it should have been, I'm glad you agree…" Ion's father swung his sword around him, covering Zokaka's entire body with crosses and slashes of crimson and sending the bellowing elephant down. Tomi screamed out in panic, jumping off the branch she perched on to after her fallen friend. Mana knew that scream, that tone of utter decimation. She didn't blame Tomi for losing her will to fight any longer.</p><p>"You should have never gotten your friends involved, but it couldn't have been helped, I suppose. They involved themselves without asking permission, and now it's too late. They're too deep in, my daughter's blood is on their hands too," the assassin flicked a marble over his head that exploded spreading a corrosive liquid around him that sizzled and spread noxious vapors upon contacting the ground but it appeared to provide a ring-shaped barrier around him that blocked off the connection of Skaven's shadow to his by surrounding the man's shadow with a ring of fuming liquid that the shadow appeared to be incapable of passing.</p><p>The man knew her too well; he knew all of them too well, even with Mana trying to slip in a one-armed illusion hand seal a painful twinge made her eyes widen when a knife stuck through her free wrist, sinking Mana's arm back down as it twitched uncontrollably, pulsing with puny chugs of blood from the wound. Flipping over the ring of shadowy protection, the man bolted up to Skaven, outrunning the shadow racing behind him and vaulted over Skaven after reaching him, making the racing shadow return to its owner while the man mashed Skaven's face in with his bare hands, pushing and kicking in some blades still sticking out from the young Nara punk before cutting him down with his sword and performing a roundhouse kick to send Shige-H flying back and slamming into a nearby boulder too.</p><p>By then the Stars leader had pulled out some ninja tools that the assassin stuck in her and healed some of her own wounds, but all of their chakra was running low on both sides. Even the blinding flashes of the Four-Tails plowing through the Allied Ninja forces in the horizon became rarer, the screams were slowly dying out and becoming rarer with the periods of silence in between drawing longer.</p><p>"You had an option to stop all of that. If only you acted as honorable as you pretend to be, you could have saved so many lives. Not those of your friends, maybe, but definitely those of the Allied Ninja. Then again, you're not one of them, are you? What do you care?" the assassin swiped his massive sword to the side, splattering the trickles of blood stuck to the edge of its blade as he approached Mana. A starlit flash of light with a shrieking howl stopped the man in his tracks. He may not have cared too much for the flash, but he cared more than enough for the noise to pull one's ears off.</p><p>Mana's clutch sealing card tool acting like a mixture of a standard ninja flash bomb with extra on top came in for the save. It wasn't much, but it gave Mana a way to fight back. It bought her friends time to recover. Just because her wrists were ravaged and she could barely move her arms, it didn't mean that she was helpless. Mana assaulted the lethal avenger with a flurry of kicks, so many that it seemed like the magician had grown seven extra limbs and kicked with all of them at once. The skill of her opponent had been unparalleled, for he raised his forearm and absorbed every kick Mana threw his way. Before slashing upward with his sword and opening a gash at Mana's thigh as both of them vaulted into the air.</p><p>The head-splitting sear in her thigh almost helped Mana deal with the stopping power of two knives etching into her gut from a mid-air position. How deadly accurate the enemy was while being blind felt almost completely unfair, and yet it was all of them who were fighting a blinded opponent. A warm and sticky feeling touched her hair from underneath Mana. It was a feeling that she had been used to but hasn't felt in a while. Out of sheer instinct, Mana tried to crawl back to avoid the finishing stroke, but her helpless wrists just spouted more blood and refused to listen.</p><p>"Come on," the killer swung his sword in an aerial eight in preparation to finish his prone and helpless opponent off. "Give that useless line about how killing you won't bring my daughter back."</p><p>"I'm not the one who killed all the people that died today. Whether or not I surrendered to your execution, their lives would have been on you either way." Mana fell flat, accepting the fact that she couldn't do much of anything. With a lowly grunt, her would-be executioner flipped his sword over his head and deflected Usubane's attacks before kicking her aside as Mana's rabbits attacked the killer at a time he would have been the most vulnerable–just before the coup de grâce. Had the man not read them like an open book, they'd have succeeded too…</p><p>"Hatchling!" Usuzoku's grunt still reached Mana as the beaten rabbit quivered on the ground while the enemy had robbed him of his claymore and flung him aside at hand-to-hand combat. The man didn't rush to eliminate Mana even then, turning his back on the magician to deflect an oncoming boomerang with a deafening clang of chakra-imbued hardwood clashing with steel and nearly busting through.</p><p>"I won't let you kill Mana-nee!" Tomi grumbled, overcoming her panic of losing Zokaka and Zomiti as the two injured elephants disappeared in a puff of smoke, finally accepting the fact that their presence and further injury would have only hurt their mistress rather than serve her. The killer's fingers wrapped around Tomi's throat, stopping her in mid-pounce as he prepared to impale the girl.</p><p>Mana's whipping leg slammed into the back of the man's knees, throwing him off balance and prompting little Tomi to kick her feet into both sides of his elbow joint while she crawled his muscular limb like a wildcat and bashed him in the head with another boomerang she clutched tightly in her arms. With blood spraying from a gash in his battered eye, the killer staggered back with little Tomi landing before him and growling at him as she slipped her arms back and attached clawed gauntlets, much more primal and subtle in design to the chunkier ones that the assassin had used earlier but ones that looked like they could do the job.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu!" Tomi yelled out, as the man flung his hand forward, sending a spray of makibishi spikes to coat the floor. The savage girl stopped her palm plant halfway, fully predicting the same method of counterattack that had stopped her last time as she launched her full body into a charging, head-first tackle but the assassin's rising knee knocked Tomi flying like a rag doll. Grabbing the wild kunoichi by her hair, the assassin pummeled her gut a few times before punching her into the face and sending the battered kunoichi down like a wet rag before pulling his sword out of the ground again and returning to his immediate mission objective of snuffing out the ninja stage magician.</p><p>Without reviewing Mana's last words that came earlier, the man swung his sword, aiming to split her head open, without considering that he still needed to provide said head for the bounty that his daughter was seeking before her death. An electrical lash and a downfall of gold-colored sparks flew off in all directions as a chakra-coated double-blade sword intervened and deflected the assassin's blade while the sword fighter holding it twirled it onward with an offensive flurry.</p><p>Mana's savior clashed with her would-be executioner, exchanging blows though despite the assassin's vast injuries and the aggressive sword-fighting style of the double-blade wielder, neither man gained any progress as the disciplined and stalwart defense allowed Ion's father to deflect or evade every single strike through clever space management and only choosing to block or deflect the strikes he couldn't otherwise deal with, which allowed him to better manage Endo's aggressive sword-fighting style in a way very few swordsmen would have been able to.</p><p>"Endo…" Mana muttered as she wrestled herself back on her bottom just so this douchebag savior of hers doesn't see her in the compromised and weak position she was in before he came to her aid.</p><p>"You guys really are hopeless," Endo claimed with no hint of betrayal of the emotions that were running through his mind, seeing his entire team dismantled like that. "I had figured that you'd handle this guy when taking him on all together so I worked on saving the Allied Ninja where I could, but I guess this needs the attention of the No. 1 personally."</p><p>"You… Were rescuing Allied Ninja?" Mana dropped her jaw, forgetting the wince-inducing pain in her wrists and broken ribs and the pulsing nervous burn from her gut where two kunai were still sticking out from.</p><p>"Naturally. After all, I still intend on defeating them myself to cement my position as No. 1 and claim tutor Kushon's Ruby Supernova as a testament to me becoming No. 1. Do you have any idea how many recruits I've worked so hard to settle things with you've killed today with this stupid, drama queen stunt of yours, you asshole?" Endo beamed a wrathful gaze at the killer. Mana noted how only Endo's left arm was grasping his double-bladed sword and he seemed to only fight with that one hand while his right hung down, as if it had been paralyzed or wounded somehow. Endo might have been a temporary distraction. The Stars needed to get back on their feet and press on with their advantage again.</p><p>"No. 1?" the assassin swung his blade over his head and lowered it to a neutral position. This must have been a part of the total equation he had not yet been familiar with. So far, their enemy had been making strides, but only because he was so good at predicting exactly what the Stars would do and when.</p><p>Something soft and fuzzy but strong enough to lift her off the ground pulled Mana up. It was Usuvilme and Usukari as they dashed aside to bring Mana to Shige-H so that the Stars' leader could tend to Mana's wounds. The sound of rabbit's feet rustling through the sandy stone of the wasteland floor must have burnt through the assassin's mind like boiling water as he launched himself toward them in a wild charge, but Endo once again was there to intercept the man. This time Ion's father lit up his own sword with a chakra coating that he reserved before to preserve chakra, which he'd have already wasted plenty on dispelling Mana's high-ranking illusions. This allowed the assassin to crack Endo's sword and split it into two while slashing at Endo's chest for a deadly strike.</p><p>A bright flash made Mana wince as she had paid close attention to that engagement, worried that she might have lost another friend that day but something humming and electric blocked the assassin's deadly strike aimed toward Endo's heart again, despite his double-bladed sword collapsing and breaking in half. A weathered, stony sword hilt rested in Endo's hand while it lit up with a blade of pure Lightning Release chakra and ignited the sword fast enough to block what would have been a deadly strike.</p><p>"You've attached a steel wire to the handle, waiting for a moment to reel the Sword of the Thunder God in for a finishing blow?" the assassin commended Endo's killer instinct while backing off as he hadn't been expecting anything that came from the direction of the aggressive samurai apprentice.</p><p>"Yeah, it would have worked too if my useless sword didn't shatter again…" Endo grit his teeth as he examined the humming, electric stream flowing in blade-like shape off of the ancient hilt of an artifact he had just secured off the ground before entering the battle. "I may just have to switch my weapon to this old heap of junk."</p><p>"Do you have any idea the amount of trouble I had to go through to secure this sword? It's irritating how it accepts just about anyone now. That's not how it used to be, you see, before it used to accept only the man I took it away from. The rules became complicated when the man I was supposed to bring it to betrayed me since he didn't plan on paying me for the hit either way," Ion's father groaned, dragging his blood-soaked hand down his forehead and leaving a greasy, burgundy stain on his face.</p><p>"I see. So the sword's loyalty became stuck between the man that had murdered its previous owner and the man it belonged to the entire time? Tsk, I'm fighting using damaged goods, is what you're saying, essentially?" Endo examined the perfectly channeled stream of Lightning Release chakra and the handiwork of the ancient, glyph-incrusted hilt that channeled it.</p><p>"It is still a legendary, one-of-a-kind weapon, so I will take it off your body. Maybe since the sword accepts you, I'll gain full ownership again once I loot it off of your cold, dead fingers?" the assassin turned his back on Endo, preparing to dash off to intercept Mana being brought to Shige-H. Seeing his opponent turn his back pissed Endo off, the young man launched himself at the enemy again but received a handful of kunai for his trouble.</p><p>Endo collapsed on his knee, the Sword of the Thunder God died out in a moment of its owner's weakness as blood streamed down the cuts and scrapes that the samurai apprentice had accumulated as even with his back turned it felt like this enemy had his full attention on either enemy. With the rabbits too invested in moving their summoner, Shige-H being too rocked up and Mana being almost useless for the moment, Endo had to stop the killer himself before he kills both the leader and the heaviest hitter of the Stars at once.</p><p>"Hey, bastard, where are you going!? I'm the one who killed your bitch daughter, remember!?" Endo grunted out, picking himself back off the ground and igniting the Sword of the Thunder God as he rose back up. "All this talk about revenge and you're just gonna turn your back on me? I'm glad that tart got to kick the dust before seeing her toothless old man being such a little sissy!"</p><p>This time it was Ion's father who froze in place, his chin digging in between the bottom of his neck and the beginning of his chest as he slowly turned around and struggled to remain a cool rhythm of breathing. Mana winced in pain once the rabbits set her down and helped Shige-H get over her head trauma to treat Mana's injuries while Endo did what he did best and piss people off. Shige-H truly must have been a genius leader for realizing that Stars would need a person like that amongst them, a genius beyond her time and age.</p>
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<a name="section0753"><h2>753. Emerald Skies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ion's father and Endo made their moves at the same time. Ducking under a wide swing aimed at his head, the killer kicked at the back of Endo's feet, tripping the young swordsman up while he switched legs and threw him off-balance. Despite the grand assault and battery that he had suffered through that day, the grizzled veteran could still pull off a backflip as mean as anybody else while drawing his diamond-shaped blade to catch falling Endo in a slice while the samurai apprentice was still airborne.</p><p>A splatter of red dyed the grey ground in a crescent shape as the killer's sword slashed through Endo's robe and the outermost layers of his skin. Despite his most genuine attempts to cut the young man into two, Endo's chakra had still been fresh enough to augment the swordsman's body and keep him whole with only shallow cuts when a sword carved into his flesh.</p><p>The scorned father went wild, swinging his sword in overhead slashes and rising upper swings that took both combatants up in the air. Ion's father grumbled while throwing both his feet out in a dropkick that sent Endo shooting off while the man flung a pair of throwing knives to stick them into his daughter's killer as he had stuck up the other Stars with grievous injuries. Endo thrust a thin wooden plate attached to the palm part of his gauntlet to deflect the knives while he prepared to engage his opponent in mid-air while they were racing to land back down.</p><p>"You're still holding the Sword of the Thunder God like your old, twin-bladed sword. You won't land a cut on me this way," the veteran assassin taunted his younger and much feistier opponent with a growl. The two clashed in mid-air, each pushing their own sword upon the other but Endo was a dirtier sword fighter, shooting his foot out right into his opponent's face which knocked Ion's father out of the correct falling posture and opened him up for punishment.</p><p>A line of shiny platinum extended in between Endo as his opponent as a string of steel wire connected to his opponent's scabbard pulled the assassin toward Endo while the young swordsman dashed onward with the speed that made his body blur and formed afterimages behind him.</p><p>"Twilight Swallow!" Endo chanted out the name for his swordsmanship technique while turning around to answer a potential counterattack but his opponent, still struggling against the forces of gravity and inertia that have been claiming him, spun in mid-air, spitting out blood while a V-shaped gash of plume-like color, surrounded with a scar lining of revolting burns demonstrated the nasty aftereffects of Endo's attack.</p><p>While Endo's feet touched the ground with a resounding thud, the killer flopped on his back, grunting in pain as he slammed his back against the stone and gravel down under. An enigmatic sound resembling a passionate drag of metal hook over shamisen strings widened Endo's glare and kept him on his toes as the killer's image vanished from the ground and Endo raced to turn behind him as that was where an assassin would slash him from if given the chance.</p><p>Endo may have turned in time but his opponent didn't slash him, a roundhouse kick dug into Endo's gut, bending the young man out of shape and forcing air out of his lungs as he flew back from the blunt force socking him in the mid-section. The elderly assassin jumped in the air, hooking Endo's neck with his foot while he threw a jumping side kick to Endo's cheek, front and back. After landing on the ground, the man spun his entire body and swept Endo's feet, kicking him up from down under him and stomping at Endo's back, which brought the fight right back into the air.</p><p>Another capricious drag of rusty needles over shamisen. Ion's father vanished again, blinking in over Endo with movement so rapid that he only left mirages of his image, like separate frames of existence all depicted at the same time in rather unremarkable quality. The assassin drove both his feet in a diving dropkick that sent Endo crashing down while the killer positioned his sword over his target and fell down like a swooping bird of prey homing in on its lunch.</p><p>Endo's eyes whited out and he spat up an alarming splash of blood when Ion's father's blade dug in between Endo's heart and his gut, deep enough to pierce right through and etch into the gravel. The man lifted Endo's unmoving body off the ground and gazed on his seemingly lifeless opponent perforated by his sword while the assassin tried to come up with a way of the youth's execution that would have ended him in a manner that would soothe his grief for the time.</p><p>A gentle whistle filled the air. The man's eyes widened and his resolute, judgment-executing arm trembled. Powerful impulses of pleasure smashed into the veteran's middle section and made his guts cuddle against one another in ticklish ecstasy while the man grabbed hold of his abdomen and folded like a sheet of paper looking to make an envelope.</p><p>"The target…" he hissed to himself as he weaved his hand seal and exploded in a pulse of base chakra, forcefully expelling Mana's Sweet Lullaby genjutsu out of his system at the cost of the equivalent to an arm and a leg in chakra.</p><p>"Come on, Stars, all together again!" Shige-H pulled back her glove, lighting her hand up in an emerald shine similar to that of the Mystical Palm jutsu but of a darker hue, while the radiating energy leaked out from her eyes and reflected off of the mirrors to her soul as well.</p><p>"You can die together too," stumbling and heavy with his stance, the killer turned around to face Damisan as he swung off of a nearby branch and landed alongside his fellow Stars, knives still sticking out from his body though they only seemed to ruin the puppeteer's mood.</p><p>"You've started trying to kill Mana, one of us, that wasn't ever going to fly but then you went on and pissed every one of us personally too," Damisan dragged his prosthetic limb across his face to wipe the blood, sweat, and dirt off of his face. "Your daughter acted like my friend, made me feel wanted, liked, and included, worst of all, she turned me against my loyal friends, making me think I didn't need them. If she'd have asked for it–I'd have betrayed every single one of the Stars, even though they were the only ones to truly accept me into their fold!"</p><p>Ion's father ducked down to avoid a pair of boomerangs crossing up and buzzing over his head before they returned to little Tomi's hands and the wild kunoichi took a pouncing leap off of the stray treetops to land in front of the lined-up trio. She growled with an open mouth while placing her returned boomerangs behind her and pointing a straight stick she had just pulled out of a tree to her opponent while tying a kunai onto it with steel wire and coating this impromptu construction with chakra.</p><p>"And that's twice now you've hurt my elephant friends!" she snarled, oozing with hatred toward the man who managed to remain unnamed. Despite being the lone face of most of the Stars' misery and troubles until that time, and the decimator of the entire order of Allied Ninja.</p><p>"We've already shuffled a bloody polka with this guy and got our asses handed to us," Skaven's grumbling voice joined in on the pre-brawl banter. "We'll need more of a plan than just doing our own thing from this point on. This guy knows too much about how we fight, he can counter and put us down while blind."</p><p>"Mana left him short on chakra, one can't dispel this many illusions without huffing and puffing," Shige-H suggested. "If we press on hard enough–he'll fold and run out of breath. Endo marked him with an injury that restricts his moves. We're set for victory, Stars."</p><p>"A game of attrition will take too long. People are dying and I'm done wasting my time validating some old geezer's revenge fantasy. Hold him down for him, I'll rip his connection to the Five Pillars Seal from the back of his brain even if I have to leave him as a vegetable in the process," Mana unraveled a couple of loops of steel wire and coated them in Lightning Release chakra. A configuration such as this might have left their enemy with a mean choice of either rupturing his body by resisting bondage enforced by chakra coating or remaining still for once.</p><p>"Pulling something like that out of his mind, that's too bold for me to even consider trying," Skaven smirked with the corner of his lips. "He can hold your mind hostage just as easily. This guy's anything but weak-willed."</p><p>"There may no longer be any Allied Ninja after this attack, and I'll just have to live with the fact that it's all because of me and whatever issues this man has with me. I owe nothing less than everything I have to lose if I can save just one more life amongst those still resisting the Four-Tails," Mana grit his teeth, finding herself boiling in an emotion she didn't submit too often to, at least not so publicly.</p><p>"We've got your back, Mana," Usuvilme and Usukari stepped in from both of Mana's sides, each tightening the grip over their respective weapons.</p><p>"Give me a chance to invade his mind, I'll deal with Four-Tails once I free it, you can beat this guy and submit it to Supreme Leader for some battlefield tribunal judgment for all I care, as long as he lives with the grief that's led him this far and the regret of what he's done today and his dignity that he's sacrificed plotting something heinous and destructive like this," Mana made her plight with the Stars.</p><p>The killer attacked first, vaulting backward to grab hold of Endo's head, looking to swipe with his diamond sword to behead his daughter's killer quickly, the one who had the gall to insult her legacy while facing him, the man's arms swiped with the blade all the way but Endo's head did not part, in fact, the assassin checked on his sword feeling that it seemed a good bunch lighter than it had always been.</p><p>"Eat this!" Usuvilme cursed from up over the assassin's head, flinging knives at him while Usukari had cut and sealed half of the man's clutch weapon away with her own fabled All-Mirage sword. As much as the shrouded in haze eyes of the killer wanted the weapon that Usukari clenched in her subtle rabbit paws, the rain of steel forced him to roll aside even though a husky grunt revealed more than a few knives to have found their way through the backside of the man's ribcage.</p><p>Shige-H drilled through over the assassin's head, crashing down with both her feet digging into the killer's back while she stomped him into a crumbling crater that grew ever so larger as the medical kunoichi forced herself deeper and deeper down and grind the man who looked to undo both the Stars and the Allied Ninja further and further into the dirt. Ion's father crawled, cursed, and hissed as his ribcage had been smashed to bits and his lungs skewered by both ninja tools and his own fractured ribs but the righteous cause of vengeance fueled his motion, even if that motion comprised groveling and trying to crawl his way out of the crater he'd been buried into.</p><p>"Secret Spring Move: Arm Flower Bloom!" Damisan yelled out, pointing his prosthetic arm downward while flying directly over the crater of Shige-H's making. As the leader of the Stars dived out from the hole, the flying self-puppeteering ninja allowed his prosthetic limb to collapse into a system of steel rings as circles of missile heads stuck out as the petals of these "rings" in multiple rows. All of them parted and took off at once, detonating in a chain reaction that all added up to an impressive yet hectic explosion.</p><p>"Shadow Prison!" Skaven took a knee, engulfing the crater in a black dome as it closed down like a looming, colossal hand and sifted through the heated gravel and pulled out the decimated and battered killer from down under, floating and helpless inside of the shadowy bubble prison.</p><p>"Summoning Jutsu: Rush Hour Destroyer!" Tomi yelled out, sinking her fangs into her thumb while she planted her palm onto the ground. Instead of right down under her, where she placed her palm onto, the cloud puffed around Skaven's Shadow Prison as two rushing ninja rhinos slammed one against the other from opposite sides and promptly collapsed under the crushing aftershock of their collision while the static and helpless assassin floated in between them just before the collision.</p><p>"It won't get any more helpless than this," Shige-H placed her hand on Mana's shoulder, encouraging the healed stage magician to make haste. Mana nodded in acknowledgment and gratitude as she dashed onward, riding her Mystical Wings just to hasten her step. Shige-H might have healed the double stab wound in her gut and the extensive damage to her wrists but the initial impact of the Four-Tails attack and a bunch more scrapes persisted to plague her with either complete numbness or flaring pains upon calling to specific muscle groups.</p><p>The man looked absolutely decimated and broken. His whole impressive armor suit, all the scrolls containing the countless artifacts he had looted to prepare for this battle and the revenge for his daughter, all of it was gone and the man had been reduced to just his broken albeit still muscular body and his broken sword laying by his side. The man's eyes had been whited out, his skin and his hair no longer recognizable even with their initial distinctive features of contrasting opposites raking at the eye as they now sank him in a layer of grim blood and dirt.</p><p>The eyes whited out and rolled back. His flesh almost peeled off of the man's torso while his left arm and right leg seemed to have been pulled off entirely. Despite the somber state of his body, Mana could sense a distinct flame of chakra still rustling in his central tenketsu point. Less of it than it would have taken for a powerful jutsu, which was why she was so hasty to move in and reach over his forehead with her hand.</p><p>"We'll die together, you'll burn in hell alongside me like the witches of old, except your flesh will singe forever down where we're going!" the man howled out with madness in his eyes as the assassin's lone arm that was still intact shot out and grabbed hold of Mana's corset, pulling her in and wrapping around her as sealing glyphs engulfed the man's entire body.</p><p>"Fire Art?" Mana noticed an ancient symbol that she could recognize amongst more than a few more. The man hadn't been gambling his chakra, he was about to burn up using his very life force, which was a desperation move Mana didn't expect. Why should she have expected it? Then again, this was a man who had nothing to lose, so burning up alongside the object of his loathing was a perfect end of him, almost as if he had planned it this way the entire time.</p><p>"She's been to Hell and back already, punk," Endo's snarl made Mana tilt her head just before flames set in and engulfed the both of them. A golden flash cut perfectly in between the man's bicep and his shoulder, separating Mana from Ion's father by separating the man's arm that he used to hug Mana and press her closer to him from his body. Endo stomped the man's face ruthlessly, rending a chunk of his cheek off of the jaw and forcing the man's neck to emit a barbarous cracking sound as his head limped to the side with an open jaw. "Probe away," Endo stumbled, clutching at his gut as he gestured his chin in the man's direction. "Left him alive for you," Endo smirked through his pain.</p><p>Shige-H rushed in to take care of her berserk teammate while Mana saddled over the limp and paralyzed body of Ion's father and placed her palm over his forehead. His mind would be at its weakest right now, unfocused and smashed to bits after this grueling engagement, and his last attempt at dragging himself and Mana down to popping cinders and eternal brimstone didn't quite pan out.</p><p>Despite not wanting anything to do with this man or his empty quest for vengeance, Mana had to dig through his mind and extract or sever the connection with the Five Pillar Seal in order to send the Four-Tails packing or to stop him from rampaging, at the very least. As little as she wanted to honor this man by spending lone time with him and his memories, as little as she wanted to hear out the mind of a man who felt scorned solely because Mana survived an attempt at her life and wanted retribution, she'd face all that misguided hatred if that meant saving even one more person than she'd save otherwise.</p><p>"Can't we just kill this asshole? Just like I killed his daughter?" Endo grumbled in pain, filtering gravel through his fingers while Shige-H scanned and treated his guttural impalement injury with Mystical Palm.</p><p>"We don't know if flat out murder releases the Four-Tails from his debt to Ion's father. Mana knows about the Five Pillar Seal more than any of us, if she says that she's got to sever the link from within his mind–that's how it's gotta be," Skaven collapsed on his behind and breathed out easier now that the enemy had been utterly broken. Seeing the assassin almost go up in flames alongside Mana almost made his heart collapse in of itself, as if his own life would have been in danger at the same time or something.</p><p>"Humph… I bet Mana's just trying to save that knave's life, that's why she's taking the dive. There's no way cutting this shitstain's head off won't let Four-Tails loose," Endo grumbled.</p><p>"It might, but are you sure you want Four-Tails loose? I think Mana's counting on seizing control and sending the Four-Tails away using the Five Pillars Seal on him again," Shige-H said while hard at work treating Endo's cuts and stabs.</p><p>"Using something like that against another living being, something to restrain their will like that," Tomi gritted her teeth and looked over the edge at the gruesome sight of the rampaging, four-tailed massive ape and the reduced resistance from the surviving Allied Ninja who were closing in on a complete wipeout.</p><p>"This ain't one of your animal friends, this is a goddamn Tailed Beast…" Endo tried scolding his little comrade, but it didn't look like it worked when she beamed an angry glare back at him and flipped him off. "We'd have long destroyed every single one of them if they could even die to begin with…"</p><p>The Stars turned their head at the blood-red sky that occasionally lit up with a jade gleam when the chaotic beast breathed out its noxious flames to decimate yet another platoon of Allied Ninja. All of this because of one man maddened by grief and employing his vast experience and skills… Natural forces of mass destruction working at his command, all because of just one man.</p>
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<a name="section0754"><h2>754. The Wheel of Vengeance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The humidity felt like a moist cloth smacking in the face and lingering for an uncomfortable period, just long enough for its chilly mop water to run down one's face and drip under one's collar and leave one shivering before one's own body warmed the droplets up to bodily temperature. Once one wiped the wet rag away, another one that was cursed to take its place splat right back into one's face.</p><p>Dark and chilly, the mental fort of Ion's father appeared to be modeled after a dark and abandoned city. It looked nothing like Konoha's village streets. There wasn't a bud of a plant in miles. Just towering steel mills, power plants, and factories and just lifeless spikes and towers of steel that had absolutely nothing inside. Mana approached one and glared through its window. Oddly enough, there didn't appear to be anything inside, just complete darkness, and none of the buildings had any doors to them.</p><p>"Imagination wasn't your strong suit, huh?" Mana sighed, turning to the confusing layout of empty streets ahead of her. Mental forts might have ranged in on being various degrees of massive. It depended entirely on how much experience and memories one's mind held or how many treasured corners of one's mind it protected, and how many fake rooms one generated to keep probing eyes and minds away from. Mental training had a grand role to play as well.</p><p>Then there was the fact that the assassin that had caused so much trouble to the Stars and nearly wiped out all the Allied Ninja all by himself had been drifting in and out of consciousness, which meant that his subconscious was taking over more and more of the fort. This was both good and bad. Subconscious had a mean habit of being all over the place and hectic, though it was less focused and much softer than the piercing arrow of focused willpower. Willpower was everything on the mental plane. While subconscious had plenty of ways to surprise and catch one unaware, it sort of lacked the focus to make that chaos work in one's favor.</p><p>A heavy rumbling noise joined in on the howling winds brushing against polished, damp steel beams and jittery glass panels. Mana turned toward it. Was it a meaningful attempt to protect the mental fort against her or just a manifestation of the chaotic subconscious? It depended on what shape the interloper would have taken: if it was an avatar of similar appearance to its master, it'd have been the first, if it was an ice cream man with a mop for a face and teddy-bear hands, handing out crossword magazines–it'd have been the second.</p><p>Mana's lips stretched down, forming a downward aiming crescent while her eyes jarred when the ground shook and a rumbling lump of heavy machinery showcased its mechanical glory from around the corner, scraping a handful of buildings as it rolled in on crawler belts easily thirty times Mana's size in total length and the growling machine busted a nearby building as it turned the corner and aimed its main gun barrel down, straight toward Mana.</p><p>The house-sized tank had been a willful creation. It modeled itself after the vizor-down version of the heavy metal helmet that Ion's father donned, complete with a set of three glowing goggle lenses positioned in a triangular shape around the mantlet. Mana snapped her fingers, testing the mettle of her willpower against that of the enemy's. Cuddly bunnies began sprouting from the end of the barrel as the tank began grumbling and shaking about while hopping mammals overtook it from within its hollowed shell. The ground rumbled again as the lash of a thunderbolt would have been a mere whisper compared to the resonant blast that decimated the spot where Mana stood before the tank.</p><p>The bunnies that hopped out from the tank all cuddled together, forming a humanoid shape that solidified back into Mana as the previous avatar of her probing willpower had been utterly torn asunder. The magician's eyes raced across the complicated clutter of busy city streets as steel birds began circling around the main square up in the sky. As their gut opened, they dropped some hefty steel boxes, and it had been one of them that caused the rupturing detonation that had rocked Mana before.</p><p>The magician stumbled from a punch at her back. She looked down only to see a gaping hole in her gut. Faceless, rubber-donning grunts speaking unintelligible hogwash with a cybernetically altered and low-pitched tone that sounded most at all like utter static flooded the streets. The bunch took aim at Mana and unleashed hell, while the main tank opened up more than a handful of hatches and stuck out more barrels ready to open fire at Mana. All the faceless, rubbery soldiers carried two-handed kunai dispensers. They carried quite the punch too.</p><p>Mana clapped her hands. The soldiers fired blinding barrages of metallic static at her, kunai knives launched at a blinding speed that not even a highly trained ninja could match, kicked toward her at an automated rate. Reality folded like a mirror, bending and rippling until it settled down into a two-dimensional field of playing cards set face down and extending up, down, and to both sides ad infinitum. Once the cards revealed themselves by flipping over, the entire military resistance of the will of Ion's father had been gone, and Mana was the only one standing in the center of the square.</p><p>The entire mental fort had changed as well, morphing into a sunny field on grassy plains and an amusement park standing tall before Mana made of hundreds of vendors and a Ferris Wheel modeled after a cherry blossom with a pink-colored rim and darker, boxes spinning as the Ferris Wheel did its thing. A husky blowing noise filled the air as within the vendors and attractions, all over the Ferris Wheel and the attraction park itself balloon-men of thousands of different colors blew up from flabby, lifeless hump of plastic into a humanoid shape filled with imaginary air.</p><p>It was as grand of a distraction as any to alter one's mental fort like this. Mana wondered just how much resistance the man could put in when his entire mental realm had been altered like this. It was as antonymous and drastic of a change as it got, and there was no way that the man of the hour wasn't doing his best attempt at screaming in pain inside of the confines of his own mind. Mana hadn't quite experienced mental violation of such a scale, though what little atrocities her teachers in the Intelligence Division committed didn't feel too dignified. Having someone probing and molding one's mind as they saw fit felt like being groped and inspected by a crude hand, except you were powerless to resist and speak against it. It had only been imaginary too, mental, for all intents and purposes, but all too real to the only two people that were involved.</p><p>Still, this would provide Mana with just enough control over the plane to find what she needed to find. Scanning the hole in her gut and healing it by making it evaporate like a mirage with a mere suggestive thought that she wasn't truly hurt, Mana stepped into a Ferris Wheel to look around the totality of the killer's mental fort. She needed to locate the source of the connection of Ion's father to the Five Pillars Seal, and she had a hunch that the man kept it bonded to some more important memories and corners of his mental field.</p><p>The Ferris Wheel let out an epic shriek as the mettle of its metal had been tested, Mana glanced down to note that howitzer cannons had surrounded it and aimed up at her. What a detestable manner to protect oneself against her–to use that which nearly had murdered Mana before, Ion's hawk-launching cannon in vast numbers to psyche Mana out. Before the howitzers even launched one squawking bird of prey, homing in on a whirling air tunnel that would rip Mana apart with massive air pressure and shoot her down, the howitzers turned into googly-eyed snakes that bounced around like coiled-springs and scattered all across the amusement park.</p><p>Ion's father had tremendous will to fight back, even in his current state. Mana would have had absolutely no chance of probing his mind if he was completely conscious and not just somewhat lucid in his efforts at expelling her out of his mind. Far away in the distance, there was a familiar sight–a district that stuck out in the grassland like a sore thumb. A myriad of wooden buildings of the oriental, classical style all too familiar to Mana and inspiring flashbacks to home. She had seen those buildings and those streets more than a few times, though only in pictures.</p><p>The Hyuuga weren't too fond of clanless grey matter, roaming their esteemed district of high tradition and noteworthy historical significance to the village. The remaining cabins of the Ferris Wheel became filled with the faceless rubbery soldiers, taking aim at Mana's cabin but once their fired, they only riddled one of their own with their barrage of kunai knives, the poor perforated dummy fell over the rail and splat down onto the pavement, barely distracting the lifeless glee of the colorful balloon men, women and children below.</p><p>Confused, the soldiers began looking around as one by one they lit up with electrical crackles until only one remained. Once warm and soft feminine hands touched the shoulder of the last soldier, the mystery of how the rest were dispatched of clarified although it had been far too late for that as the reformed faceless soldier fell and turned to a cough-inducing cloud of dust. Mana peeked over to the side, looking up at the buzzing noises as the remnants of Ion's father's willpower did its best to reform the bird-like drones dropping explosive packages from its compartmentalized insides.</p><p>The drones began their dreadful task at decimating the disgrace that Mana had left of Ion's father's mental fort. Their sheer numbers made it seem like they'd be trouble though Ion's father appeared to have been more focused on undoing what Mana had done with his mental fort by stretching his drone squadron out and just flat out decimating as much of the amusement park and the sorry, flapping balloon people as possible.</p><p>The support of the Ferris Wheel became unruly as Mana grabbed hold over the side, the wheel rumbled and shook left and right, uncertain in which direction it should have fallen over, though for a second its support kept a hold of the entire shifting structure. A crude, explosive force vaulted Mana right out of the Ferris Wheel and sent her flying while the Ferris Wheel came to life and freed itself from its containment.</p><p>The magician rolled over the ash and dust-ridden floor to get back on her feet as more and more bombs threw her about like a helpless rag doll in a raging storm. Once Mana finally got back on her feet, the Ferris Wheel had turned black and dropped its carriers, adopting jet engines instead and spitting blasts of flame while its steel frame restructured itself to turn spikier. Ion's father took his sweet time to focus his strength and push back but as Mana looked around at the decimated amusement park becoming a post-apocalyptic landscape and the bird-like drones parading the skies and the titanic wheel of flames, spikes, and destruction before her, she had to hand it to the old man–he was giving Mana more resistance than she counted on.</p><p>At that moment, Mana dreamed of being a Yamanaka and needing none of this hassle to extract information or subjugate people's minds.</p><p>Mana's own scream filled her ears as a crude yank from behind her from a detonating bomb flung her onward while the growling, motorized Ferris Wheel rolled right over the avatar of Mana's stumbled willpower in a fiery trail of destruction, erecting branched towers of black steel spikes around it while it formed a junction to roll around in. As the magician opened her eyes and glimpsed at her mental image, it had been flickering, so Mana closed her eyes and worked on her focus.</p><p>Cold air brushed against her cheeks as a curious tickle in her gut caught ahold of the magician. Mana opened her eyes, seeing one drone having swept down and shut its open gut around her while it lifted off high into the air. The drone rocked its captive around, trying its best to wear her fortitude out like a weary rider of an unruly, wild horse before floating over the spiky towers bursting from the ground around the pathway of the demonic Ferris Wheel and dropping Mana down.</p><p>The pointy tips of the spikes looked so close and as gravity took hold they only got closer. Mana did her best to focus her fleeting and tolled willpower into flight but her body slumped onto the spikes with a mean crunch, flopping and driving the spiky peaks of the tower even deeper through as the shock of impact reverberated through the young woman's body. The avian drones lowered to examine Mana's mental representation to see if their job protecting the mental fort was done and if the magician had been removed from the mental plane, but there didn't seem to be any body impaled on the tower peak anymore.</p><p>With papery rustling, cardboard walls shut around the entire squadron of drones as colorful ribbons weaved over and under the boxes, wrapping them up as presents and scattering them all across the battlefield as Mana descended from up above with a black umbrella with woolen embroidery decorating it with rings. Once the magician's feet touched the ground, she glared up at the rumbling, demonic Ferris Wheel as it flipped its jets up and aimed them at Mana, lighting up the murky skies with fireballs flung her way.</p><p>Mana tilted her umbrella up and spun it about, deflecting the fireballs to scatter about but the Ferris Wheel kicked itself into high gear and dashed with nitrous wrath toward the magician, flattening her alongside her umbrella in a fiery path while the deflected fireballs scattered across the mental fort, igniting it. The ground rumbled underneath Mana, as another spiky, black, steel tower burst forth from underneath, entangling her in its hedge-like protrusions and leaving her subdued in a vertical sprawl by the tower's walls as spiky tendrils wrapped around Mana and etched into her skins like black barbed wire.</p><p>The Ferris Wheel roared its engines again, spitting flames in all directions as it prepared to flatten the magician. The wheel dashed and slammed into the tower, tipping it over, but it just couldn't perceive that satisfying crunch of a human body being crushed and rolled over and squeezed outward against its will. The dimensional fabric rippled as if a surface of a disturbed lake as Mana took the fallen tower into her hands like a baseball bat.</p><p>The entire perspective of the mental plane had shifted with the Ferris Wheel appearing to be the size of a ball of rags as Mana kicked it up with her feet and swatted it aside with her stick that had just served as her towering prison. Mana extended her hands, with more and more arms emerging from the pockets of her corset and sprouting from her clothes, expelling playing cards that buzzed in all directions and sliced through the spiky towers that had littered the vast landscape of the mental realm of Ion's father.</p><p>With the towers now standing about as tall as blades of unruly grass, they fell down and evaporated into oblivion just the same as they rose. Mana stretched her neck and sighed. She waved her hand, returning to the luscious grasslands, and then looked up to see the murky clouds parting ways as sunlight broke through and took a competent hold over the land. She extended her hand and pulled on it, like attempting to remove a shroud from a cloaked presence as looped herself closer to the Hyuuga district within the assassin's mind that she identified earlier.</p><p>It was a key location in the killer's mind, likely containing some powerful memories that he didn't want to be forgotten, which meant that Mana had a very strong chance of finding similarly important to the man whose mental resistances she just beat.</p><hr/><p>"Whoa! What's going on?" Damisan rushed up to Mana, who had flopped face-first onto the ground and begun writhing. The mental clash had twisted her face in pain and blood poured down her nose and from her eyes in the shape of tears.</p><p>"I warned her that the old runt would be harder to crack. He's hitting her with everything he's got left. Mana isn't really a skilled mental interrogator, she's talented and her imagination is impressive, her focus makes her a good student but she lacks experience and a bit of cruelty that's needed to subjugate someone," Skaven pointed out, running his hand through his greasy hair as his attention switched between his tormented friend and the pointless struggle against a colossal force of nature in the distance.</p><p>The killer's body stretched its abdomen out, raising it above ground as it groaned with a husky moan. The man's eyes opened wide and rolled back to his skull so suddenly and with such violent force that some eye muscle must've torn and burst open with a torrent of blood as the man's tongue stuck out and drool began seeping out his mouth as the shaking man foamed for a few seconds before slumping lifeless.</p><p>"Did she…?" Shige-H gasped.</p><p>"You can't kill someone inside of their mind. She got as close as you can get though–she broke him. You don't recover from that, this guy's gonna stay this way until the end of his days." Skaven sighed. "Well, well… I didn't think our Mana had the guts to shatter a man's mind like this…"</p><p>"Humph… I won't even grant this ass the mercy of death." Endo turned away from the fallen assassin as Shige-H pulled off of him and smiled with a tease, having just finished treating his injuries.</p><p>"Why? Mana's Ninja Way finally won you over, or are you growing fonder of her to where you don't want to see her upset?" she said.</p><p>"Don't be ridiculous, I just figured that this will be a fitting punishment to this guy. To keep him apart from his bitch daughter for as long as possible. It suits what he deserves," Endo grumbled with a twitch of his upper cheek muscles.</p><p>"Well, it's safe to say that she won't be running into any more resistance in there. The guy's body and mind are an open book. Let's just hope that Mana will find what she's looking for and that she'll make it quick," Skaven groaned, running his hand over his forehead and combing his hair with his fingers again.</p>
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<a name="section0755"><h2>755. A Name To One's Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the last collision with Ion's father had ended, it seemed as if anything Mana did inside of his mind came with a far easier time. Every motion, every intent fulfilled to its fullest with perfect precision. Almost as if there was no opposition. Mana hadn't felt such ease to control one's mind this way ever before. Even when one allowed her to enter a mind and do whatever she pleased, even during mental training, there was still always a level of subconscious resistance, like how an eye closed out of instinct when a needle came closer to its surface.</p><p>The surrounding buildings were ancient, though well-maintained. A classical style district with long houses that had the upper sections of their walls lined with veils of silk, as if they would have had nothing to hide from the eye of an outsider. Of course, the fact that the Hyuuga didn't let outsiders anywhere near these parts of their district had a vital part to play in this openness. Mana phased through the wall, entering the building with the clearest image, knowing full-well what she'd find inside.</p><p>A young man of shoulder-long black hair was kneeling alongside his father in front of a line of other Hyuuga clansmen. The line must have been the main house of the clan while the kneeling bunch belonged to the branch that served and protected it. The entire life's purpose of these branch house members was centered on servitude to the main branch. They even branded the branch house members with Curse Seals that could inflict excruciating pain or outright kill them on the spot if the main house members preferred it.</p><p>It was a primal, brutish tradition but Hyuuga were proud of how conservative they were and Konoha was a village similarly chained by its conservatism and pride in its old and wooden ways which was why it didn't do a good job in advocating change amongst the Hyuuga. It didn't take too long for Mana to identify Ion's father. At this point in time, he was a young man, judging by his age he could have been a few years into his ninja service and out of the Academy, couldn't have been more than a few years added or taken from his mid-teens.</p><p>"Lady Hissho will turn three-years-old next week. It's been a most unorthodox time for young Rakugi, being a member of a branch house without a Curse Seal and the main branch heiress to serve. Thankfully, this ataxia is coming at an end," the eldest amongst of the lined-up bunch spoke with a voice choked by the age of its speaker. In the middle of the sentence, a pair of the main branch ninja moved aside to reveal a frightened young girl of curly, dark hair hiding behind the laps of the main branch members.</p><p>Ion's future father, now identified as Rakugi, turned his eyes up, casting a grumpy look at the little girl he'd be sworn to serve soon enough. An elder of the branch house grabbed hold of the boy's rising head and bent it down. It was of little use or subtlety as there couldn't have been any doubt that the main branch bunch had noticed it and grumbled a little, clearing their throats as an objection.</p><p>"We rarely brand members this old, it's an entirely unorthodox affair, this whole thing. Usually, the branch house members are all branded by the time they graduate from the Academy, though circumstances and tradition have both stuck out their legs to trip us up, I am afraid. Not that lady Hissho's birth was not a miracle in of itself, though… I expect that there will be no issues with this, Kanmeki?" the main house elder glared down with a judging stare at the kneeling branch house members.</p><p>"None at all, I assure you that my son will not bring you shame, elder!" the addressed branch house member pressed his forehead to the mat even harder, trying his darndest to sound as his most convincing self.</p><p>"Good. With a bit of solidarity and luck, we'll move past this disarray and breach of sacred tradition and a semblance of order shall accompany the Hyuuga again. This is the only matter that we intended to settle today, Kanmeki, you and your son may go," the elder released the two.</p><p>Mana stepped back, phasing through the wall as it rippled like its reflection on a still lake would have if one chose to belly flop onto it. She followed young Rakugi and his father, seeing how the memory dampened and grew staticky back at the main house building. No matter how hard Mana tried, she couldn't hear what had happened inside there once Rakugi and his father had left. A bratty lash made Mana twitch and jump up as she turned back to young Rakugi talking back to his father.</p><p>"Tradition? The tradition of branding toddlers, he means? Honestly. And did you see that precious heiress they're lauding as a miracle?" Rakugi turned to his father before receiving a firm smack across his cheek that sent him stumbling and then plummeting off the wooden platform and onto the sandy road in between buildings.</p><p>"What if someone hears you bad-mouth the heiress, foolish boy? You better begin practicing discretion for that young lady you badmouth can undo your entire self-described splendor with a hand seal. No one will remember how strong you declared yourself to be, how great your grades were, or how proud your sensei is of you," the angered father hissed.</p><p>"May as well curse my fortune now, while I still can…" Rakugi stroked his cheek that had a mean, blue bruising forming on it. "My fortune will be held hostage by a three-year-old starting next week. A three-year-old that can't even see right as we can."</p><p>"Do you think yourself the first little rebel against our creed, boy? These very streets would be littered with gravestones of cocky little rebels and punks, traitors of their clan traditions if we cared to bury them. They're buried in the graveyard amongst civilians, dismissed and forgotten like the rest of them." Kanmeki raised his arm up and pointed toward an undetermined location. Had Mana a clearer sign of where she was in her village. Maybe she'd known better which location the man had pointed toward, but anything outside the immediate range of the most important memories was too vague. Like a white sheet of paper with pointless, black scribbles on it, just static.</p><p>"Forgotten if you do, forgotten if you don't…" Rakugi sighed. "Maybe it's for the better that nobody remembers us. I want neither their pity nor the shame of someone else knowing the destiny we're bound to lead."</p><p>"Oh, poor boy… Member of the second most influential ninja clan in the world… Truly, your suffering must be legendary." Kanmeki put his nose up, waving his hand at his son as he began walking the streets back home.</p><p>Mana's eyes focused on something unusual, something that could not have happened at this time in Rakugi's memories. The boy had been cradling something in his hands, something that he had either fallen on top of or stumbled into by uncovering it from a layer of dirt he planted onto. Mana approached the boy as he cradled an emerald with a part of an incantation spelling out "Om". The gemstone had been polished into a long, finger-like shape and looked too pristine to have been discarded, and it gleamed with intense clarity and energy like only an object further down the timeline of memories and closer to the immediate present could have exhumed.</p><p>The magician's hand brushed away the star-eyed Hyuuga youth like a mirage of hazy mist as she took over the finger irradiating jade light from it and looked where she could have stored it. Mana snapped her fingers, realizing she was in the mental realm and in complete control of it. With a spin of her hand, as if stirring a kettle with a stew, she formed a hat and stuffed the jade finger with "Om" inside it, snapping it away with her fingers. As long as she remembered where she left it, the "Om" finger was hers.</p><p>Now the issue of finding the other bits and pieces with the rest of the incantation remained. It wasn't as simple of a matter as just following the timeline of the memories, looking where they'd all lead. These memories were from decades ago in the boy's life, and he had some of the most vivid older memories Mana had ever seen. The odds were that he had loads of memories stored up and all of them would have been just as vibrant as they were pointless to her.</p><p>"Hey," Mana muttered, snapping her fingers. "Where are the other bits of the artifact?"</p><p>A whirl of ethereal energy spun before her as silky strands shot out from the corner of every nearby house and formed a singular cocoon that burst, revealing another Rakugi inside it. The young man felt himself up and turned his eyes up to Mana. The boy's eyes were blank, rather, his look was blank. Gazing into the white of a Byakugan was one thing, but seeing it gaze entirely through you as if you didn't exist was a frightening and pity-seeding thing.</p><p>"This is useless…" Mana shook her head, waving her hand and dispelling the forced manifestation of Rakugi's mind. She must have done a real number on him during their last clash. Still, the man was alive as if he wasn't–she wouldn't remain inside of his mind.</p><p>She needed something drastic to locate another key aspect of Rakugi's memories with the other part of the artifact and the incantation symbol on it. The world as seen through Rakugi's memories began spinning uncontrollably as the jade light identical to the one from the broken piece of the artifact that Mana had uncovered drowned the night and the oriental Hyuuga district until the jade-colored world remained only as a green iris of a kitten that smacked a rubber ball around in between its paws, unraveling the timeline of memories while Mana patiently stared at the kitten playing from above. Having left the plane of memories, the magician floated in mid-air atop of a large, rotating cylinder that forced a streaming whirlwind out through its opening to keep itself afloat.</p><p>The rubber ball bumped, urging Mana to take off of her rotating, suspended platform and grab the rubber ball away from the kitten that only meowed pathetically a few times before the young woman that had manifested it waved her hand and undid it into a handful of ginger hairs. Mana forced her index finger inside the rubber ball and grabbed hold of the bump, pulling it like a pin of a hand grenade while allowing the entire void around her to submerge into the memory she yanked out that stuck to the dimensional space like the world's most impressive wallpaper.</p><p>"Sensei!" a feminine voice shrieked out while the pink-clad kunoichi with short, blond hair reached out toward a stone mausoleum that looked like a box slapped together from stone pillars shutting inward. A fleshy slurp gave the young lady something else to worry about as the hand she had extended toward her trapped mentor parted ways from the arm it had been stuck to since the kunoichi's birth.</p><p>With a frightened stare, the quivering young woman stared at the stump of her hand before turning to the masked ninja that had unarmed her. She looked so miserable that it was almost as if the girl accepted her fate and didn't even bother defending herself or substituting away. The second swipe of the ninja's blade beheaded her with one go. Further to the west of the slumping corpse laid a teenage boy about this girl's age. His eyes were open yet lifeless and way too much liquid drooled out of his nose and mouth to deny the conclusion that he had drowned in the middle of a continent, surrounded by miles upon miles of forest. Such was a potential job hazard for a ninja.</p><p>Mana browsed the grisly scene for the man of the hour. She wondered for a second if Rakugi might have been the sensei that had been shut into the stone mausoleum, but then he'd not have seen this gruesome scene so vividly. No. This had been etched into his memories. Everything but the exact nature of the murder of these two ninja had been greyed out, despite this memory being a world of pinpoint detail. It was a sort of aftereffect of the scene carving itself so vividly into young Rakugi's mind that despite remembering a whole other bunch of details, the intense focus on the scene of murder made the surrounding circumstances greyed out.</p><p>"Bayushi, Soshi…" what was undoubtedly Rakugi's voice cried out. The young man pelted a ninja he was fighting with thrusts aimed for, what Mana believed was his tenketsu, though the stalwart ninja opposing Rakugi did a fine job blocking the strikes, offering other limbs and vital points for the ones that Rakugi wanted to hit before answering the young Hyuuga back with violent chops and a roundhouse kicks that rocked the young man's world and sent him flying back.</p><p>Mana's eyes lustered as she stared at the intricate system of grey flesh lit up with a burning, azure liquid flowing through a network of vessels interconnected with burning dots. These torches of chakra light must have been the tenketsu, as Rakugi saw them. Because Mana was seeing his memories and because the assassin himself was so unwilling to put up any semblance of resistance–she was seeing the world in how he saw it right now. Through the eyes of the Byakugan.</p><p>"Brat, a human body has 361 tenketsu. There are six of us. That makes it that you need to hit us 2166 times to beat us all. Just accept it and take it like a man. Your friend there did. You can meet your friends in the afterlife, kick back and leave it to us rather than trying to connect 2166 punches when you failed to hit me once this whole time," the bald man with a taijutsu specialist's build and a white dogi underneath a flak jacket pointed his index finger before giving Rakugi a thumb down.</p><p>"You know what…?" Rakugi grunted as he peeled his busted face off the ground. "You're right. This fighting style is rubbish, the Byakugan, the Gentle Fist… All of it useless!"</p><p>The masked shinobi who had beheaded Rakugi's teammate earlier moved in for the kill, sensing their opportunity. Mana wondered if she had more experience than these thugs, as she'd have done anything but. Maybe it was just because she had just spent her entire evening fighting against this man, she just met today, but she saw through that Rakugi lit up with a second wind that roared like a whirlwind inside of him.</p><p>As the blade performed a silver dance in the air, searching for the blood that it was drawn to, it only saw air and then solid ground. Rakugi's thrust jabbed into the man's shoulder and then arced across his entire arm downward. Once the man's arm had had enough, Rakugi moved on to jab at his outer knee and his thighs, forcing the masked ninja to collapse on the ground with a grunt. The future assassin took the man's own katana from him and swiped it without looking at the head he was splitting off of the body, answering his dead teammate's call for being avenged, though not looking pleased about it himself.</p><p>With a face stained in blood, Rakugi turned to the rest of the stunned ninja, placing the sword over his shoulders. Another assassin charged him, the young man blocked the overhead strike, he answered each swing of the sword with a countermeasure but he lacked experience, skipping a dirty kick to the chest that left the desperate boy breathless, panting on the dirt.</p><p>"Did you see how cool those fucking eyes looked? We've just got to carve them out, it's like they glow or something when he gets pissed. So, fucking cool!" a voice of a ninja positioned on top of the stone mausoleum that had the team's mentor imprisoned inside it grumbled through the battlefield.</p><p>The other swordsman moved in for the kill, but Rakugi blocked his upper slash and skid under the sword for a strike. Despite holding a katana in his right hand, the boy struck his opponent instead, going rampant on the man's wide-open body with pinched fingers. The pummeled man screamed bloody murder and collapsed, puking up blood and pouring it out of every orifice while Rakugi claimed the second blade and crossed the katana out in front of him.</p><p>"What the fuck was that? That was no pansy-dancing, Gentle Fist shit…" the bald ninja who had just beat Rakugi down earlier pulled his lower lip down in surprise of the boy's breakthrough that resulted in him killing a second member of a far more experienced ragtag group of missing ninja.</p><p>"The tenketsu isn't the only thing that the Byakugan can see. The elders, my father… None of them told me this, none of them taught this to me, but… I've just now realized that I can see everything. Your blood flow, your heart, your suffering lungs, and drunkards' liver. I can shut each one of them down with just a pinch too." Rakugi proclaimed, aiming his crossed swords like open scissors in the direction of the ninja that had just struck him down earlier.</p><p>The man rolled back the sleeve of his white dogi and charged toward the psychotic Hyuuga kid who took it to the air, vaulting over his head as he left one of his katana embedded into the man's skull. Rakugi turned back to check up on his opponent, who pulled the sword out, splitting his head into two like an unraveled banana peel immediately after the sword had been removed.</p><p>"I can see where your skull had been split before and all I need is a little tap to remind you how that felt…" Rakugi muttered before turning to the rest of the ninja and placing the blood-soaked sword over his shoulders as he raised his hand up. "Why has our clan never produced first-rate assassins is beyond me. I prefer staining my hands a thousand times over than living to serve some obnoxious, self-important brat that's been told nothing, but that's she's a little miracle the entire three-years of her life."</p><p>"Dude, this little psycho's got issues, no way we'll finish him off before his nanny breaks out, we've gotta scram!" one ninja yelled out and disappeared without waiting for a vote of his comrades. One by one, all the enemy ninja employed their Body Flicker Jutsu to flee the battlefield. The instant that the hand of the Earth Release user left the sealed stone mausoleum, the stone pillars comprising it collapsed, freeing a man with a standard Konohagakure Jounin uniform and spiky, night-blue hair. Rakugi collapsed on his knees, forcing the sword in his hand into the ground to help him stay on his knees instead of completely collapsing.</p><p>"I can't believe that your bluff worked, Rakugi. We're incredibly lucky that it did. If it hadn't…" the Jounin mentor looked around the bloody battlefield, stopping his gaze at the fallen young Konohagakure ninja. Mana couldn't pull her eyes away either. No ninja deserved this sort of fate, no person deserved such a cruel end period or an end of any degree of cruelty at such an age.</p><p>It wasn't as if she hadn't faced situations just as dire throughout her life as a ninja. Too many times she was a thought or a failed motion away from meeting the same fate. Heck, if memory served, she may have been one of the very few versions of Mana all throughout the infinite fabric of different versions that survived this long. This memory was soon to die out on Mana as the magician blinked a few times, realizing that she was standing in the middle of a featureless, dark city street as rain poured down her face and not a single trace of the memory she was just looking at remained.</p><p>She's become too entranced by the death and loss, Mana extended her hand and pulled it back, as if pulling on a rope, returning herself back to the previous memory as she kept scrolling it with her hand, shoving the memorial space-time fabric like a laundry rope. There it was, the familiar jade flash from within the mausoleum which Rakugi's mentor broke free of. The horrifying sight of haunting, adolescent death had prevented Mana from noticing it the first time around.</p><p>The jade finger with the golden symbol of "Mani"–the second part of the incantation. Snapping her imaginary top hat back into being, Mana stored this finger inside it as well before undoing the memorial hat again. Both the knowledge of the basic anatomy of the human hand and the knowledge of the name of the Five Pillar Seal suggested Mana was two out of five fingers done with taking control over Rakugi's connection with the mythical sealing artifact. Thankfully, in here, she had all the time in the world.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0756"><h2>756. Impressionable Youth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana waved her hand, leaving a withered, grey slather in the fabric of the mental plane before reaching inside her sleeve and pulling out a brush. A few strokes completing hieroglyphs on the grey fracture as if it was an unraveled scroll did the trick. The schism began expanding and swallowing up the grisly battlefield scene until the corpses of Rakugi's teammates turned to exactly what they were–a terrible memory.</p><p>Fulfilling her request for the scene containing the next finger of the Five Pillar Seal, the scene shifted drastically to a somber scene of a group of people dressed in black gathered in a familiar location to Mana–the Konohagakure Cemetary. For a pair of unfortunate youths, the crowd gathered to see them off to the Pure Land was notable. It was possible that their deaths sparked some sort of outrage, maybe it was a beginning of a political grievance of a sort. Matters such as those made these deaths feel more important while simultaneously objectifying them at the same time.</p><p>Rakugi's mentor stood out in front of the crowd. Behind him laid subtle monuments on top of two cemented gravesites. They awarded monuments of rotating flames of black obsidian to distinguished ninja, mostly. Either those two young ninja garnered an impressive array of accomplishments for their age or they truly were just being made an example out of. People wanted to feel like these two deaths mattered and the administration was all too happy to hand them out a "hero's" burial.</p><p>"My students, Bayushi and Soshi, were all promise. They were remarkable ninja that would have only grown stronger and better given time. It's unfortunate to see them plucked like this. I take full responsibility for their deaths as their team leader. If it weren't for Rakugi's heroism in the face of death, at a time when nihilism and despair felt at their strongest and not even I expected to make it out of that encounter alive, I would not have been able to give this speech here today. The marble factory would have been taken and nukenin would have had an entire facility worth of explosive projectiles on their hands." Rakugi's teacher, whom Mana had only seen a brief glimpse of after Rakugi helped free him, said.</p><p>Rakugi himself stood there and stared at his own two sandals, it seemed. Mana wasn't sure about the timeline, but it didn't seem like he already had the Curse Seal placed on him so these events that she had witnessed occurred in the same week. The fateful day must have been coming close, though.</p><p>"When the village puts three genin at the care of a jounin ninja, the village places a certain expectation, responsibility on us to guide these bright children through this rough life and make sure they learn the ropes before flying off on their own. I could not fulfill that promise to the Lady Third and Konoha itself. It would be honorable of me to end my own life and wipe this dishonor clean but I have settled on taking responsibility into my own hands differently–from this point on, I resign as the leader of Team Aspen and the rank of Konoha jounin. I intend to work from the bottom-up, making up for this misfortune with hard work and productivity instead of more death. Lady Third and I agree over this," the spiky night-blue-haired man said. To the north-east of the cluster of people, a short and elderly woman of silver hair fluffed up in the back and longer around the nape of her neck with large, twisting bangs falling over her face nodded with a soft and melancholic look on her face.</p><p>There didn't appear to be a sparkle of the familiar emerald shine anywhere. Mana straightened her back, pulling out in front of a network of computer monitors placed one beside another in a long line of tables as she breathed the damp air of an enclosed, dimly lit office building and scanned the various monitors. Each monitor depicted a different scene of the funeral, with the last one showing Rakugi walking away alone with his head sunken down low. Just to be sure, Mana extended her hand toward the second to last monitor.</p><p>The monitor screen rippled, expanding like a gooey mass looking to envelop and digest all as the damp and dark monitoring office was no more, and Mana stood in an empty cemetery. Rakugi and his sensei stood in front of one another, though neither one had the strength to look the other into their eyes. Rakugi's mentor stared off into the distance while Rakugi himself couldn't tilt his eyes back up, just gazing down with a stare of someone who wanted they'd have died and been laying in one of those gravesites instead.</p><p>"I hope you understand and will come to respect my decision, Rakugi," the jounin said in a reserved tone.</p><p>"You know, this team, the missions we went on, the friendships, rivalries, and enemies we made along the way. It felt like a whole different life. I always felt like I was just a bird trapped in a cage when I was home or living my life as a Hyuuga. Here, with you guys, it was different. It was like the main house, the branch house, the heiress, the Curse Seal, the lifelong servitude, like none of that ever existed. Like it was just an awful nightmare…" Rakugi muttered with a hollow voice. The voice of someone who just didn't have the strength to keep on going.</p><p>"Maybe that's why you were so good at it. To most ninja, work is just a means to get through the times and make a living. To some, it's just a triviality to gain the strength and notoriety for the life they truly desire. You saw this life as the authentic life you always wanted and viewed your life back in your clan district as the big distraction instead." Rakugi's mentor sighed, pocketing his hands, weakened but standing firmly by his decision to walk away.</p><p>"And now I'm all alone and the life I've always wanted to live crumbled before me. Now the nightmare is all I've got left…" Rakugi said.</p><p>"I'm sorry," the jounin slowly shook his head and began walking away from the scene. Despite gaining distance from the young man, Rakugi's memories of him persisted up even when he walked out into the void of static.</p><p>"It's a tough thing, losing your team," a voice muttered right to Mana's ear, making the magician jump up and turn to her left side. Could someone have found her out? Who? Another infiltrator? That should have been impossible.</p><p>The one that spoke was a man in a black coat who would have looked shady on a normal day but looked perfectly normal during a funeral. He shuffled with a weathered step, face carved with scars and a hedged, even and orderly haircut, with strands of grey stretching out on the sides. While Mana's heart continued to skip beats for a few more paces, the further the man walked toward Rakugi, the clearer it became that he didn't see Mana and that he was just another participant of this memory and not an outside factor for the ninja magician to take into consideration.</p><p>He was so stealthy that Mana couldn't even notice him, despite being an outside spectator to this dream-like memory with full access and control over Rakugi's mind. She could only guess if Rakugi himself had noticed the man until the old veteran wanted to be noticed. The man in a black coat stood beside Rakugi and stared at the obsidian flame monument standing behind the tombstones of Rakugi's teammates.</p><p>"I've lost my team too. My sensei as well. For the longest time, I felt like I was forgotten. The village didn't assign me to another team or anything. It was like I just… Existed. Like a ghost almost, wandering and haunting the village, people covering up and whispering wherever I went. Pointed their fingers at me. "Look at the sad boy. The poor boy", they said…" the man spoke in a strict tone that seemed all too truthful. Mana had felt like she'd taken enough shit from village loyalists and yes-men of the Hokage throughout her life to sniff bullshit out, and this wasn't it.</p><p>"This is the last couple of days of freedom I will have, old man. I'd rather not spend them listening to your useless tales." Rakugi let out a grumble.</p><p>"Yes, I know about your supposed future, boy. It's why I approach you right now, during the funeral of your teammates and the hardest time. It's because the luxury of tomorrow might not be there for you. That was one heck of a stunt you pulled out there. Killed a few missing ninja that outranked you. I'm interested in just how you accomplished that," the man said, his stare still fixed on the obsidian flames as if they were challenging him, a sharp and glistening offense to the life that the old-timer has led until that point.</p><p>"My clan lied to me. Should I even be surprised? Scum that would indenture a child into servitude of a spoiled toddler, handing that brat the keys to the very life of somebody. Why should they value the truth? They never told me you could see so much with the Byakugan. All the weaknesses, all those targets to exploit. If the part of the job as a ninja is to kill, why hide such an ability and never use it? The Gentle Fist of the main house is a joke compared to this," Rakugi looked up at the obsidian flame monument as if trying to see the same thing that the man in a black coat saw.</p><p>"Interesting. You said you don't care to know my story, but I think you do, you just don't know it yet. What helped me become the man I am today from a little, sad ghost boy, was a group of similarly suffering talented individuals. Ones that found use in my ghost-like abilities and turned me into a real specter as opposed to just a spiteful brat nobody wanted to have business with and everyone pitied." The veteran ninja said.</p><p>"A group? What sort of group functioning inside Konoha has use for cold-blooded, efficient killers and ghost-men? The Black Ops?" Rakugi turned to the man who closed his eyes and pulled out a smoke, flicking a flare from a silver lighter and taking the moment to absorb some sweet poison into his lungs before pocketing his hands and gazing at the monument with a fresh pair of eyes.</p><p>"The ANBU? No. Konoha is like an enormous tree, you know. A strong and stout oak tree, more like it. The Hokage feels like a monkey sitting at whichever branch it goddamn pleases, flinging fruits and stones at others that would approach that tree. ANBU is like the shadow of that tree. The frightening darkness that purveys just how massive and powerful that tree is and obstructs those that would threaten the tree from the hope of sunlight ever reaching them again. We are neither the leaves nor the fruit of that tree nor are we the shadow. My organization is like the roots of that tree, sunken underground. Providing our fine oak with the sustenance it needs to survive and making sure that monkey can spend the rest of its days on that tree it calls home. We also wrap and sever the roots of other trees that would take minerals and water from our soil when we need to, get what I'm saying here?" the man turned to Rakugi, who just gulped down and turned his eyes away. The young ninja couldn't handle the mass of the man's stare.</p><p>"I'm… Not sure I do. But if you want to use me for your goals, it sure as heck beats listening to what some brat has to say. I'm currently short of a life so I could use the sight of something over my head to know which way is up and where I should swim for a breath when the sludge I'm in gets over my head," Rakugi scratched the back of his head.</p><p>"That's good. That's very good, young man. But I'm afraid we're not the type of organization to shelter hopeless children, even talented ones. As you've said, you've still got a life, you're still just a leaf on the tree, a tad dried out and about to fall but a leaf can't quite be a root. Only that which lies on the bottom of the ground can burrow deep down under." the man closed his eyes and pulled his hands out of his pocket to raise his collar so that it protected his old and scarred cheeks from the harsh autumnal elements.</p><p>As the memory faded, Mana realized that she still hadn't found which part of it had been tied to the Five Pillars Seal. There wasn't a single shimmer of that jade glow in sight, and she had a hunch that the connection had revealed itself. She just had become too invested in the conversation at hand to notice it. This man that reached out to Rakugi seemed all too similar to Overcoat and other agents of the organization that struck the fateful Faustian bargain with Mana. Did they consider her their agent too? Was she already working for them without knowing it, or did she fail the test that's been put in front of Rakugi? If so, how could she fail it when she cast away her entire life for them, not that Mana wanted to be a part of an organization that seemed to take pride in eliminating unwanted people and working from the shadows but the entire concept of their selection process felt odd.</p><p>In the eyes of this enigmatic man whom Mana tried to pierce through with her scoping gaze, she found the jade gleam that she was looking for. The ninja magician looked to the obsidian flame monument and approached it, looking deeper into its black coil and noticing a polished jade finger with a part of a mantra spelling out "Padme" on it. Mana picked it up and stuffed it down the top hat that she produced out of thin air with the wave of her hand, where the rest of the fingers laid.</p><p>A world-ending explosion lit and spread across, one that tore the entire memory asunder, and as Mana stepped out from the harmless to her blaze, she walked out at the all too familiar streets of the Hyuuga District. She didn't expect to see these streets so much that she threw her gaze around, trying to determine if she regressed back to the original memory that produced the first finger. It was only when a hefty thud dropped a Hyuuga guard in a ceremonial kimono and pinned them to the floor that Mana clapped her eyelids a few times more in shock and turned to the rooftop from which the deadly arrow came from.</p><p>The first instinct of the remaining Hyuuga guard who accompanied his friend was the one that proved to be his undoing as the man leaned down to examine the corpse of his friend instead of instantly calling out or fleeing for cover. A steel arrow pierced all the way through the man's throat, leaving just a gaping hole that spouted blood as the second watchdog fell on the front and bled out in an accumulating pool, jerking uncontrollably.</p><p>Mana's eyes couldn't quite reach Rakugi from all the way back where he was picking these Hyuuga clansmen off from but some supernatural knowledge of his presence accompanied her. His skill at long-range assassinations hadn't yet developed to what he had taught his daughter in the future but it was already something of note as he picked off two distinguished Hyuuga ninja without breaking a sweat, using nothing but a custom-built bow that could fling projectiles across the entire district and chakra-coated, solid steel arrows.</p><p>Rakugi wasn't just an effective killer, but also ruthless to the point of brutishness. Even if he wanted to claim that this was just a way for him to cast out the old world and submerge into complete aporia before embracing his new life, the size of these arrows and how hard he sent them thundering at his enemies proved Rakugi had a deep-seated hatred for every person he would kill. Mana had a nasty feeling that she'd witness the death of a girl that would only turn three in a couple of days, though she was several decades too late to save her.</p><p>Seeing Rakugi clad in his first set of armor protecting his chest and his shoulders and moving through the rooftops with pulsing and hateful purpose in his mind made Mana certain that this man won't fail. Not just that, he couldn't have failed. Knowing that he aligned himself with an organization that even the Black Ops of Konoha considered a fringe, Black Ops splinter group amongst themselves and some considered being nothing more than a myth would explain the grand efficiency in bloodshed and mayhem that Rakugi has gained over the years.</p><p>The young man kicked the bodies of one of the fallen men and took his robe, slipping it over his armor as he let his own hair flow freely behind his back. He needed a few seconds of deception. When he'd open this door and walk through them, he'd only fool those that would cast their looks at him for a brief second, but it'd be enough. Nobody expected an assassination of the Hyuuga heiress within the beating heart of Konoha. It was such a horrific thing that nobody would have even wanted it to happen to such an extent that very few would believe it to be occurring even when signs introduced themselves to them kindly.</p><p>Splatters of blood colored the wooden and silken doors as Rakugi made his way through the principal building. He wasn't ready to take on the entire clan, but he wouldn't need to. Just a handful of good guards that thought nothing bad would happen, who considered to just be here to marvel at a miraculous heiress that came when she wasn't expected. Mana found it ironic how hard Rakugi struggled to escape servitude straight into the welcoming embrace of a different servitude. She stepped over the fallen corpses with a lamenting gaze.</p><p>A contained massacre some thirty years ago that she could do nothing about but keep watching. Not just experience–she had to pay close attention or else she'd miss the one artifact she came here to locate and she'd have to live through this dread all over again. One thing she didn't expect was to bump straight into Rakugi, who stood stationary as if deciding to freeze his bloody quest in the middle of it as he stood in the main hall room of the building.</p><p>"Father… Step aside," Rakugi said with an apathetic voice. It was a tone that would not offer another warning and only offered the first one as a common courtesy because of the blood relation that he shared with the servant.</p><p>"You call me your father again, scum, see what happens," the man Mana saw in Rakugi's memories before and knew to be his father declared, gently shoving a frightened and crying three-year-old girl behind his lap.</p><p>Rakugi raised his sword-wielding hand and took a sword-fighting stance. He'd carve his way to that child even if he needed to take the life of the man involved in granting him his, it seemed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0757"><h2>757. Of Old Men And Child-Murder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The two men crashed into one another like speeding tidal waves. It didn’t take sublime skill in martial arts to tell that this clash wouldn’t have lasted long. After all, if the fight gone on and raised too much of a ruckus, Mana would have never had the chance to meet the assassin in question, or his daughter. No. This would have been a short and violent affair.</p><p> </p><p>The skill of Rakugi’s father in the signature Hyuuga taijutsu style surpassed what Mana saw Rakugi use, though the young man never used an ounce of the style he learned during his upbringing. Despite Rakugi’s Byakugan gleaming bright and silver and veins raking his face when looking from aside, the young assassin fought with a brutal, clenched-fist fighting style, though his method wasn’t rage. No. Rakugi was patient and precise, as a skilled swordsman and accurate, like an archer.</p><p> </p><p>The palm strikes of Rakugi’s father slid down and under or around the elusive young man. At times Rakugi leaned back, shorting his father out of just mere inches in range, as if taunting him. The killer wasn’t foolish or naïve either. Very few times did he strike to wound or disable and saw his strikes deflected, because every deflection or entrapment provided his opponent with an invaluable chance to win. The little Hyuuga heiress tried sneaking off before Rakugi swept his foot and punted the kid back into the corner like a ball of useless, dirty rags.</p><p> </p><p>The assassin’s father wanted to speak up, but he only spat out blood from his mouth that stained the white undershirt underneath his black haori. Rakugi had landed a few strikes, using the fact that Mana saw through his eyes when looking at this bout. She saw chakra nodes outright explode with guttural violence within the body of Rakugi’s father. It had been as if the man had swallowed an explosive tag. He was dead after just one strike but didn’t know it until he broke down vomiting pools of bile and blood.</p><p> </p><p>The crying toddler stumbled her way through the corridor, tears obstructing the view. Mana wanted to believe that this scene would have moved her, that she didn’t have the strength to keep on watching, but she would have been lying if she admitted that aloud. Truth be told, while she feared that this gruesome yet inevitable sight might have distracted her from the very reason she took part in this memory in the first place, her experiences had long since rendered her numb to mental breakdowns in the face of these disasters.</p><p> </p><p>Thus when Rakugi kicked the still dying and bleeding profusely body of his father to slip off his scarf and fling it at the fleeing child to loop its end around little lady Hissho’s neck, Mana scanned the room without flinching. Eager to find that which she came here for so that she didn’t have to experience it again. While it remained stuck up in the air if Rakugi killed the heiress with a single yank that snapped her tender neck because of some remnant of professionalism and twisted kindness or merely because he was in a hurry, Mana didn’t find her prize in that room.</p><p> </p><p>Rakugi advanced onward, over the corpse of his father and the Hyuuga heiress lying limp and lifeless on the ground, frozen like a piece of artwork. The young man moved slowly, his movements were jittery as if grains of sand and gravel plagued his joints, drowning and obstructing their movements. Rakugi raked his own face, pulling the front of his hair as he advanced through the mansion, hopping up and pulling himself over the boards on the ceiling and rolling aside when the light came up and men came rushing through to avoid immediate detection.</p><p> </p><p>The guards were sloppy. So frightened they were for the life of their miraculous three-year-old that even with the white eye capable of seeing everything around them, they took a few seconds too late to spot the intruder hiding over the ceiling. Their prime goal was to gaze onward and see if the heiress was okay and if the assassin had been in the vicinity. By the time they realized that the assassin had been above them, Rakugi had extra time to break their immediate striking arms with one punch and further develop his one-punch, one-kill fighting style by dispatching of the small group of guards.</p><p> </p><p>It felt impossible to believe that the young man didn’t root the connection to the Five Pillar Seal to either killing the young girl he associated the torment of his existence and life as a Hyuuga to or his own father. Both seemed like monumental memories to say the least and certainly would have ranked vastly above all the memories that preceded it and yet… Despite how stumped she felt, Mana sighed and moved outside, seeing black blurs around her as the hive began going abuzz though the honey thief was well on his way out by then.</p><p> </p><p>Being a branch house member born to better serve the main house appeared to have provided Rakugi with superior knowledge over the district’s streets. Had she not been nauseated by this sick individual flashing back through murdering a child before her eyes, as if in a sick feat of defiance, mocking and abusing Mana even well past the point he could pose a threat to her anymore, the young man hid and dispatched of people with the grace and skill of someone who had nothing to lose and everything to win, fighting for their share of spoiled, dream life dangling in front of them.</p><p> </p><p>This was just grey and bloody filler. There was not a chance in hell that either of these poor Hyuuga clansmen would have served as the connection when not even the man’s own father nor his self-appointed nemesis that. Despite the man in the overcoat never telling Rakugi that, the two men met in the cemetery as if planned to do so. Even Rakugi looked lightly surprised by how well he was read by the members of this organization, while the man just turned back with a grizzled look. Neither impressed nor disappointed in the youth’s work, just acknowledging of his existence.</p><p> </p><p>“So, you’ve killed your old life, I take it,” the man in the overcoat said. He didn’t ask about it, he just flat out stated it.</p><p> </p><p>“What makes you so sure? Maybe I was just training?” Rakugi clapped his hands to wipe the dirt off of them. He had ditched his gear and weaponry at that point in hiding places known better to him.</p><p> </p><p>“When a man kills their own prior life, a part of them dies with that life,” the man in the overcoat tilted their top hat and pulled on the damp locks of their greyed-out hair, as if gesturing for Rakugi to check.</p><p> </p><p>Feeling curious, the young assassin pulled on his hair to examine it, he saw nothing on the first handful but the second one that grabbed more to the right revealed a handful of hair much paler than even the silver hair of the grizzled, village-serving veteran. Rakugi sifted through his hair, observing that half of his head of hair had gone pale with light inflammation seeping through his scowl, though the young man dragged his dirty and bloody hand combing through his hair.</p><p> </p><p>“This is nothing. I feel nothing. If you think you’ve put me through a test of some sort, you’re wrong. These deaths were just a formality. They were dead long before I drew the bow or threw a punch,” Rakugi objected to the man’s insinuation.</p><p> </p><p>“You know, I’m not here to help you lose a tail or to help you finish up burning down the bridges. We don’t adopt murderers into our fold, if you know what I mean. If you killed anyone, you’ll have to face justice for that on your own terms.” The man in the overcoat turned to Rakugi. The young man seemed baffled up to a point in time before a veil of understanding shrouded his expression in maturity.</p><p> </p><p>“Killed anyone? The fuck are you on about? We’re just having a talk over here. Figured an old guy like you would understand what I’m feeling better, as you’ve said earlier–we both lost people on the line of duty.” Rakugi stuck an index finger up in his ear and waggled it, adopting a bratty persona completely out of the blue.</p><p> </p><p>“Right. Tell you what, me and the other old farts are meeting up all over the village places. Nowhere special in particular. Places that used to mean something to someone long ago but places that have moved on or died out, I guess. Maybe they’ve got some stories to tell you you can find useful? We’ve all lost a thing or two, but we all want to see this village grow much older than all of us are. Shed many times as many layers and find thousands of nowhere in particular places just like those…” the man in the overcoat turned the tip of his hat up as he gazed at the stars over his head.</p><p> </p><p>“If the Hyuuga heiress was to die, how would the village be better off?” Rakugi turned to his companion.</p><p> </p><p>“That’s random. I’m too old for could-a-beens and should-a-beens, you know. You’ll only make people raise eyebrows if you talk about that rubbish in public too. My friends and associates feel too burdened by the weight on their old bones to figure how much more weight and on which shoulder they could have added over the years,” the veteran dressed for an autumnal drizzle cleared his throat, no-selling the question like it had been something normal.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re right. I guess it is random and meant nothing… That’s what I said before, didn’t I?” Rakugi scratched the back of his contrasting hairdo, still getting used to his new weird look. “Forget I asked.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sometimes it’s not about the immediate beauty of things in front of you, kid. Take it from an old fart like me. Sometimes stepping on a little bud is okay if you know you’ll be tending to the garden tomorrow and seed a hundred trees with a birdhouse on every branch. Even if the bud was about to bloom all cute and aromatic and didn’t really hurt anyone.” The man sighed before taking something out of his pocket and handing it to Rakugi.</p><p> </p><p>Mana had no idea what that object was, seeing how it had been replaced by the Five Pillar Seal part that she’s been looking for. Just when Mana was feeling the buzzing bees down in her belly that burnt up with noxious fumes of fright that she’d have to sit through that careful yet brutal massacre. In Jigoku, Mana had met dumbasses who would have admired Rakugi’s work and how few people he slew and how he had done it. Too many of them wouldn’t have shut up even when Mana would have asked them why anyone had to die at all…</p><p> </p><p>“Om Mani Padme Hum…” Mana muttered, looking at the fingers of her own hand as four of them became replaced by the polished stones of jade artifact containing the sealing power necessary to boss around even a Tailed Beast. The magician had studied enough ancient dialects to know that the mantra that the seal portrayed had been already completed, and yet there was still one bit of it missing. A Five Pillar Seal with a mantra of only four parts…</p><p> </p><p>The entire world inside of Rakugi’s memories became small as blurry images of two little girls with pigtails that seemed staticky as if their creator had scribbled them with a dark blue sharpie embraced each other from the sides. One of them had hair of pure white while the other one had a hair color completely matching the color of its unimpressive creation. Upon contact, the scribbled lines flowed out of order and swirled one around the other like thread forming a perfect twine.</p><p> </p><p>Inside that woolen world, as it slowly took a more cohesive appearance, Mana locked onto the next key memory. Two people, a father and a daughter, stood inside of a cavern of shiny, cerulean stalactites illuminating the home of choice of this curious family of two. The family situated themselves one in front of the other. Rakugi must have aged around forty years. The jump was so sudden and contrasted how close the rest of the memories were to one another so badly that Mana had to shake her head and consider the situation in front of her twice.</p><p> </p><p>Ion looked different at this point in time compared to how she presented herself to the Stars. She donned a subtler version of her father’s armor. She chose a platinum hue with sapphire lines stretched across it and she may have been a handful of years younger than the deceitful backstabber who shot a pressurized airwave riding hawk through Mana’s chest from a high-caliber dispenser cannon.</p><p> </p><p>“You may begin at your leisure.” Rakugi donning a much stricter and grumpier expression though, Mana was shocked to witness that he still didn’t have the blinding wound decorating his face.</p><p> </p><p>“Stop grumbling, dad, you’ve been grumbling this whole time!” Ion took a low fighting stance by extending her legs wide and bringing her upper body lower to maximize her balance. She must have been a nimble fighter, emphasizing mobility in combat to require balance this much. The masters in the Sun Disc arena would have qualified such thirst for something in combat as toxic as Ion’s entire stance seemed built around drinking in as much balance as she could manage at all times. “I’ll stop punching you in the face when you admit you’re a biased old grouch and won’t let me take my own job because you can’t fathom your little girl has grown up.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m grouchy because my daughter challenged me to a battle to prove her worth as an assassin instead of stabbing me in the back proper. I’ve never been more disappointed in my entire life. If I find the opening–I’ll kill you.” Rakugi declared, rolling a pair of thin throwing knives in his hand before freezing in a knife-fighting stance.</p><p> </p><p>Ion didn’t hesitate to begin. She slid her fingers across her nails, slashing into the soft meat and drawing blood in an instant as she splattered the blood out in front of her, summoning a handful of hawks that swooped onward like living missiles. Rakugi had already been gliding above them by the chance they appeared, socking his own daughter in the jaw and letting go of his knives as he smashed every single piece of her armor to bits with focused punches that honed in on the armor’s weak spots before kicking his falling knives back into his hands with full-intent on working on his daughter’s wide-open and exposed body. Rakugi wasn’t lying–he was fighting to kill.</p><p> </p><p>The man was the first person Mana could remember whose sleight of hand might have surpassed hers. He could have stabbed and outright eviscerated Ion in a blink then and there, but the man seemed to freeze in place.</p><p> </p><p>“Aw, dad, you do care…” Ion posed with her hands over her hips as she had the fear of death frozen in her eyes for a blink before she realized her father halted his hand. Her speech was slow–this sudden show of mercy seemed like a shock to Ion herself. Grazes and scars littering the young woman’s body suggested that restraint wasn’t something her father practiced as a rule.</p><p> </p><p>With a scornful expression, Rakugi shot to the sky as a missile and thrust open palms downward, expelling crushing gusts of air pressure that slammed Ion to the ground and stomped her into the cave further, threatening to crumble the entire cave. The man dragged himself down with a steel wire attached to a throwing knife as gravity was too slow for the veteran assassin.</p><p> </p><p>“Fine, you can take your own job.” Rakugi muttered with a bit of his signature grouchy grumble. “Inexperienced marks only. You don’t work on anyone older than you unless you have my permission to do so. You’ll have to earn every elevation in rank over your own through hard work and sweat and blood.”</p><p> </p><p>“Y-Yes Sir!” Ion mock-saluted her father as she barely scrounged to get back on her feet.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s the matter, killer? I thought you were excited about a job of your own? Why are you still here?” Rakugi growled through grit teeth, forcing air through with a noticeable bit of haste in his tone. He was trying to get rid of his daughter… Mana turned her head behind the man, wondering what he saw. There were no chakra signatures, nothing a Byakugan might have picked up, but Mana shared a more intimate knowledge of someone’s presence with Rakugi.</p><p> </p><p>“N-Now? B-But I… It hurts to breathe and I think you broke my fucking leg…” the teen assassin wanna-be whined, limping a few steps closer to her father before being greeted with scornful disapproval. A face of such disdain that she almost gasped audibly. “F-Fine…” Ion muttered, limping with a grunt of pain with each step to it.</p><p> </p><p>A moment of uncomfortable silence reigned in. As young Ion walked off deeper into the cave since her father blocked off the main exit with his disappointed look and polished body build, Mana wondered just how long would the assassins wait until they make their presence known to Rakugi.</p><p> </p><p>“My daughter has nothing to do with this. She’s not affiliated with the Hyuuga, she doesn’t have the Byakugan even if I am her father. She’s all-mother in that way.” Rakugi spoke with an elevated tone, letting his voice echo through the shade. Men and women dressed in standard Konoha uniforms and a platoon of Hyuuga ninja with black dogi and a white haori standing out from the crowd surrounded the lone assassin.</p><p> </p><p>“She might not taint the Byakugan, but you do. Tainting our bloodline is not why we’re here. She is an illegitimate Hyuuga and we cannot permit her to live through this. Even if your crimes against the Hyuuga would permit your survival, your eyes and your daughter are sins against our clan that must be eradicated.” A man from the Hyuuga dressed in ceremonial robes spoke up.</p><p> </p><p>“The famed Imbrium. An esteemed strike force loyal to the Hyuuga, almost dogmatic and maniacal in their devotion to cleaning out injustices and spites toward the clan. Does Konoha know of your presence here, I wonder.” Rakugi adopted a similar manner of speaking while voicing questions as statements, as the old overcoat-donning geezer that took him in to the enigmatic underground organization spoke. “You know, it’s because of this elitist, do-whatever-you-want mentality that Konoha had me kill the heiress all those years ago, I bet.”</p><p> </p><p>“So, you will deny your own role in orchestrating Lady Hissho’s murder until your final disgraceful moments, dog?” an outraged kunoichi from the ranks of the Imbrium exclaimed. “Your conspiracy theories of a mysterious organization that employs you won’t protect you or your daughter but owning up to your taint and penance will leave you and your bastard daughter forgotten amongst the Hyuuga instead of the figures of revulsion which you are now.”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s a good thing that your approval isn’t what I’m looking for,” Rakugi smirked as he advanced to the cavern wall and drew an oversized sword out of a bundled sheath of black cloth. “The only approval I care about is the fear of the tallymen that will pay the bounty for your heads. It’s a funny thing–the fear of a tallyman. They never ask but you can always see them wonder–if the head looks so miserable, just what did I do to the body.”</p><p> </p><p>“Enough filth, dog. You will pay your penance whether or not you like it!” the Imbrium commander interrupted Rakugi’s monologue as the Hyuuga chuunin around him all yelled out in approval of their commander’s sentiment. Mana felt a rustle of fear in their voices. The reason some of these ninja wandering into the lion’s den alongside the Imbrium wanted Rakugi silenced was because they feared about the truthfulness to his words.</p><p> </p><p>“Not that it matters in the end but… It shows how faulty your intel is, Imbrium, I am no longer employed by the Root. I’ve severed all ties with that lot a long time ago and went my own way. It just didn’t work out between us, I don’t like Curse Seals all too much, I’m sure the tethered dogs amongst you understand.” Rakugi entered a fighting stance after swinging his sword over his head in an impressive feat of strength and reaching for the ground to slip his helmet from a pouch down on the ground on. It helped to drive fear into the victim’s eyes when one viewed their killer as more like a demon and less like a man.</p><p> </p><p>It was part of the reason the battle nearly ended once Rakugi’s armor unraveled when he faced the Stars.</p>
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<a name="section0758"><h2>758. A Dream World For A Nemesis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The assailants all flung themselves at Rakugi at once. From the initial spark that marked the ignition of this conflict, Mana noted something peculiar that undoubtedly Rakugi had also picked up on, though by the time he did, it was too late. How these Hyuuga clansmen moved seemed far too synchronized. From the looks of it, this group comprising the Imbrium–a group of elite ninja, a personal Black Ops to the Hyuuga clan, and common chuunin and yet they moved almost the same.</p><p>Same speed. Matching stances and manners in which these enemies delivered their strikes. This appeared to have caught Rakugi off-guard. It was one of a couple of things to be fair. These ninja rushed in on the assassin all the way up to his face despite the enormous weapon he wielded with grand grace and experience. It was as if they had thrown caution away entirely. Not even the most brainwashed clan yes-men were capable of such profound devotion.</p><p>To make matters even more complicated, there was another feeling. One that Mana felt was validated when Rakugi's blade became stuck in the core of a Hyuuga ninja's abdomen, prompting the about to become deceased ninja to lock the blade in the core of their guts while they vomited blood, leaving the sword stuck as the rest of the ninja rained down a whole blizzard of palm strikes. Rakugi grunted and covered up. These strikes truly tested the mettle of his armor and shed more than a few plates he used to protect his tenketsu from being shut down.</p><p>What the grizzled veteran in the art of assassination took as a mere run-of-the-mill assault on his life and reputation became a genuine assassination attempt on his own head with its own twisted yarn of mystery to it. Just which part of this killer would have centered on the most to associate the final Five Pillars Seal part to it? Mana would have believed that the man would have bonded the last part with the last time he had seen his daughter or something sentimental like that. So far, this memory hardly seemed to suffice with the sentimental value needed for such an important bond.</p><p>"Interesting..." Rakugi cackled out a wet wheeze from the depths of his throat as he engaged the suicidal, hive-minded group of Hyuuga in hand-to-hand combat but the unorthodox fighting style of these men and women had the assassin cornered.</p><p>A handful of Imbrium assassins vaulted to the back of the cave, thrusting their open palm forward and sending tunneling shock waves of gale-force toward the cornered and oppressed killer they were after. Rakugi grunted and grumbled as more and more of his armor unraveled. It seemed odd how effective these ninja were at subduing an opponent that nearly demanded the Stars their lives to defeat all together. Then again, the Rakugi they faced differed from this man. Blinded, therefore weaker for one, focused and well-researched on their abilities, therefore stronger a great deal as well. It just showed how much importance battle conditions had as opposed to mere strength and speed.</p><p>The flak jacket Hyuuga all swarmed around Rakugi, throwing flurries of palm strikes and hammering everywhere, at each tenketsu that they could make out, each little bee in this twisted hive throwing thousands of palm strikes each second as their combined clangs and thuds became hardly bearable to listen to in this dark and moist cave. An explosion sent the accumulating body pile away as Rakugi rose from a messy cluster of the shed and torn steel, emerging bare and battered but alive as he picked up some of the stray armor parts and used them to hammer at his enemies while plowing through their stunned ranks with his bare hands.</p><p>With the initial shock of the mysterious and suicidal fighting style and one-track-mind attitude of this team having worn off, Rakugi's fists laid a valiant siege to their ranks, tearing and blasting through them with each strike leaving gaping holes in the enemy bodies. The ruthless assassin punched right through each target, striking precisely at their tenketsu and their vital organs, decimating the body to where, even if the target survived the attack, they'd die not too long after.</p><p>Rakugi jumped up, touching his feet to the short ceiling of the caves and shuffling into the jagged ranks of the stalactites above. The assassin plunged down below with a dive kick, stomping a poor Hyuuga into the rocky floor and submerging their crunched and caved-in face under the shallow surface of a cave puddle. Based on the noise that the victim's jaw made upon impact, perhaps it had been for the better. A power-cross ripped through the chest of a nearby ninja as Rakugi threw a sole butt to another, sending them flying and impaling them on a stalagmite further down the cave.</p><p>There wasn't much space to navigate in, though this only served the one who was outnumbered and taken aback by the odd fighting style of his enemies. Hurling and rolling through the air like a cannonball, Rakugi moved dead-silent before whipping his leg to snap a Hyuuga's neck and then unleash a targeted, annihilating combination of precise, shooting punches that rattled a lined-up group of ninja and sent them collapsing down. With a hooked kick, Rakugi sent a ninja sneaking up behind him in the way of an oncoming Hyuuga Empty Palm airwave. It didn't look like one of the flak jacket folk could entirely take what their superiors at Imbrium had been dishing out as the battered one collapsed in an awkward sprawl with fractures all over their body.</p><p>Like a whirlwind, Rakugi rolled into the midst of Imbrium ninja and unleashed a hail of blows and kicks in all directions. The true aim of his charge became apparent once the assassin disarmed an Imbrium assassin and slashed upward, opening up one of the higher-ranking ninja from the gut up and leaving them peeled open in two, flopping lifeless to the ground. Spinning in place with his newly gained sword and that which the diced Hyuuga carried on their back, Rakugi created a circle of death around him, prompting his assailants to back off or face obliteration of what little remained of the attacking squad.</p><p>"I've sliced thousands of people. I'm missing the warm shower of blood when I cut someone open. You guys won't let me in on your little secret, will you?" Rakugi grumbled out as his Byakugan rapidly scanned his enemies. Neither the scanning assassin nor Mana who saw through his eyes witnessed anything irregular or out of the ordinary which was outlandish, given all the red flags that this bunch waved so far.</p><p>The Imbrium and the lower-ranking Hyuuga all attacked at once. That once again baffled both Mana and Rakugi as the Imbrium drew their swords, creating a network of steel whizzing about which was dangerous for close-range specialists of lesser experience to navigate through and yet the flak jacket folk all rushed in without care for their lives. The outcome was as predictable as it should have been. Invisible grates of flashing, metallic hues, and fleshy slumps all around of people being cut down before they even reached their intended target.</p><p>And yet. Mana noticed a few awkward ticks in Rakugi's movements. Around his joints. Something was wrong, the man himself tried to pay them no mind for any attention he directed there wouldn't have been paid to the battle at hand though the first few splatters of blood coming from absolutely nowhere around his joins in his elbows and his knees warranted a shocked look which only earned him a more thorough beat down. While Rakugi's experience carried him through the minefield of whizzing blades all around him, the assassin's movements became stiff. Mana had seen similar limb motions to those of the surviving Hyuuga. She'd seen it used by spiders weaving around their prey.</p><p>"Steel wire? Since when do the Hyuuga play with steel wire?" Rakugi spat a tooth in a mouthful of blood aside as he struggled against the bonds, concealed in darkness, that wrapped tightly around his body in multiple compressed and adamant loops.</p><p>"For your sins against the Hyuuga, for the murder of our heiress Lady Hissho thirty-five years ago. For defying the established clan order and escaping from your duty as a branch house member to protect and serve the main house. You shall drown in obscurity. Your fate and the fact that you existed will remain known only to the Imbrium, and those that issued us the task for your elimination. But first…" an Imbrium member with a bloody face proclaimed before removing a scroll from the back of his belt and unraveling it before his subdued target.</p><p>A pair of surviving Imbrium, a male Hyuuga with strands of magenta hair running down his long hair, and a short-haired, petite woman pulled their hands back. While an elementary look suggested that their hands were empty, it had only been the cover of darkness that disguised the steel wire they've held on to. With a bloody gargle and pain-ridden grunt, Rakugi collapsed to his knees, completely entangled. The central Imbrium member nicked his thumb and drew blood across the scroll, sinking the cave in a cloud of irritating dust.</p><p>There it was. The jade gleam at the end of a long, steel rod. As the Imbrium approached Rakugi and pressed the glowing, jade end to the assassin's eyes, prompting an ungodly scream from his victim, Mana realized Rakugi had associated the Five Pillars Seal with this item because it had been the last item that he could see before the Imbrium robbed him of his Byakugan forever. They didn't claim it as the Uchiha did with their deceased ninja; the Hyuuga chose to outright destroy their most valuable asset. A Byakugan died alongside its owner. That was their stance on this matter, it seemed.</p><p>Mana grabbed hold of her right eye, feeling a hot sting at it. As she opened the eye up, she realized that her field of vision had shrunken down and her depth perception became almost non-existent. If there was a time to grab that Five Pillars Seal part–it was now, before the Imbrium robbed Rakugi of the rest of his sight and Mana would have to navigate the memories of a blind man how they experienced them without their skill and experience in doing so. She's been lucky that Rakugi had tied these parts to memories of his life back when he could still see.</p><p>A jolt of lightning burst forth from a stalactite over Mana's head, slamming into the haunting scene of the Imbrium's punishment and stopping the flow of time within the memory as Mana approached the Imbrium leader and grabbed the tip of the prod he used to burn Rakugi's ocular area with and create the horrid injuries that the assassin carried on throughout his life. Once Mana removed the fifth pillar and looked down at it, the golden syllables of "Mitra svaha" shining etched onto the jade finger, the ritual staff used by the Imbrium revealed itself to be a naginata with the bladed tip so hot that it didn't resemble a steel blade at all, instead shining with a bright blaze like it was fire and heat itself.</p><p>Calling forth the rest of the fingers from her mind's hat, Mana formed the complete Five Pillars Seal and saw all the jade fingers merge into a singular shape. Holding the upward-pointing hand that seemed frozen in a pose as if sifting through evening sands and filtering its infinite grains, Mana sealed the completed bond with the seal away in her mind's hat again while she looked up at Rakugi, frozen in his final, most memorable moment in life.</p><p>It felt pitiful that all this man delved on was the pain of his fated imprisonment at the hands of the main house, the death of his teammates and their funeral, his killing of his own father and the young Hyuuga heiress and his own blinding. The thought had occurred to Mana to shroud the man's mind in this memory, to relive his blinding repeatedly as his crushed will would never awaken, truly forming a fate worse than death for him.</p><p>After all, Rakugi had been a reprehensible, pathetic excuse of a man who killed his own father and a three-year-old child with little remorse shown and didn't treasure the memory of his daughter enough to entrust these memories a part of the seal but delved further into his hatred by connecting it to the moment of his torment and crippling. The man had been nothing but cold to his daughter even if he showed care if she lived or died, though he conditioned her to become just as spiteful and pitiful of a woman as he was as a man. Someone whose kill count would one day surpass that of her old man's. This was a killer who had studied Mana for months, followed her footsteps, and learned what made her tick and how to best kill her and her friends amongst the Stars. A vengeful fool who had bound a Tailed Beast to his will and nearly wiped out the Allied Ninja, all in the name of retribution he thought rightful, even though it was anything but.</p><p>And yet still… Mana felt pity for the man. She released the hold she had over the memory, deciding to see how the man had survived this perilous pinch before settling down on what to leave Rakugi with as his eventual fate. After all, even if he was to be executed not too long after Mana left his mind, to him, inside his mental plane it would still feel like an eternity had passed since Mana reshaped his mind into an apt prison for his crushed consciousness and his head was split from his shoulders.</p><p>As expected, the Imbrium had pressed the blade to the second eye as well before making sure and dragging the heated blade across the assassin's face in a straight line. Though just as the Imbrium leader tilted his ritualistic weapon over his head to finish the man off, Rakugi seemed to spring back to life, thrusting his fist into the gut of his would-be executioner. Even though the killer lacked the strength to punch clean through like he used to, his fist still drilled right in and sent the Hyuuga gargling and vomiting blood until he collapsed and died of a blown-up liver on the spot.</p><p>"How? The sheer pain of our sacred ritual would kill any man all by itself, let alone the fact that blindness hasn't hampered your precision!?" the female Imbrium yelled out in shock but a handful of throwing knives stuck into her chest in a blink, leaving her crumbling and folding to the ground as her bodily functions slowly turned off leaving her incapable of continuing the fight any longer.</p><p>The last survivor of the Imbrium rushed onward with his sword over his head. Rakugi lifted his arm up, augmenting the part of the forearm that collided with the blade, and even as his flesh split open and threw a splash of blood, his forearm had stopped the blade with only a fracture of his arm instead of a complete loss of it. The torrent of blood splashed into the eyes of the Imbrium, who seemed to rely far more on his Byakugan for fighting than the assassin did. Rakugi jumped at the blinded assassin, wrapping his arms around his head and snapping the man's neck so thoroughly that it turned entirely to the other side.</p><p>"Pain? Don't make me laugh…" Rakugi wheezed out in a tormented hiss. "Eyes? I'd have raked them out myself and handed them to you if you promised not to come after my daughter. Though I see now that it is impossible. After all, she is a daughter of the Hyuuga even if she's unable to use her Byakugan. You guys are real sticklers about executing all those lost children, aren't you?"</p><p>The fallen woman slowly drowned in her own blood while Rakugi leaned down to her and grabbed her by the hair, smacking her feeble attempts at hand-to-hand combat aside as he augmented the grip of his right hand to shatter the woman's forearms so that she couldn't fight him off any longer.</p><p>"I don't need my eyes to kill you. I've killed enough people to where murder is mere muscle memory to me. All I need is just to let go of my control and there I go, killing again. That's fine with me though, I get paid for it handsomely after all." Rakugi grumbled as he pulled out one knife he stuck in his last surviving victim and slashed her throat with it before pushing his knee into the blade to behead the woman as he stumbled to a stone with the scrolls, led merely by the memory of where his scrolls were.</p><p>The killer unsealed a containment jar and stuck the woman's head inside, sealing it down and feeling a chill in his cheek that Mana could feel from all the way where she stood in her own cheeks as well. In a world of darkness, it was subtle hints like these that helped one see the path forward. The containment jar had a layer of frost cover it from inside, preserving the head for when the assassin would present it to the black market dealer. Still, he had killed plenty of the Imbrium that day, so even while blinded, he still had work to do for his grand payday. The flak jacket chaff weren't worth anything to someone of his caliber. What would the dealers even think of him after finding out he killed a bunch of nobodies just for fun? Kills beneath his paygrade did him no service after all.</p><p>A boom of skipping heart left Mana stumbling back as she threw her head around in terror. Something was wrong. It must have been something that Rakugi felt as well. The bodies. The Imbrium weren't where he left them anymore. Mana couldn't hear any heartbeats. That meant that neither could Rakugi and he could trace them even while he could see clearly. It was as if someone had robbed the assassin of his prey.</p><p>"Sorry, man, I just can't let you take my puppets. I've worked too hard on them, even if they are worthless trash. You've done a delicate job and you've suffered enough, so I'll let you keep that one's head. I feel obliged to warn you though, your black market dealer might not like the fact that I've stuffed her brain and all that. Still, the flesh and the skull are all how they're supposed to be so don't let him rip you off, haggle for the right price, will you? Well… Whom am I kidding, you're a professional anyway…" a voice rung in Mana's ears as she was sure it did in Rakugi's.</p><p>"I knew something was fishy with the way these punks fought." Rakugi forced air out of his lungs to speak up. He sounded way too weary and tormented to face a puppeteer on a scale to architect something like this, but given the fact it was Rakugi, he'd have given the bastard a fair fight on his way out.</p><p>"My bad. My bad entirely. Human puppets are kind of my thing." The mysterious puppeteer stated in a cheery tone. "I can see why the leader would want to recruit you, you've got that badass headhunter vibe going around you and you're the only one to get away from the Root alive."</p><p>"What is this about? Are you a bounty hunter?" Rakugi wobbled on his feet. Even if he wouldn't have admitted it, the pain and exhaustion and the sum of his injuries were stacking up, and even talking to this man felt troublesome.</p><p>"Bounty hunter? Wrong. I come from a group called Parabrahma. We're looking out for clan rejects and people with no place to go in the world. We've intercepted these jokers on route to assassinate you and your kid so we figured we'd do you a solid." The man spoke. His voice came from a different direction. Either he used more puppets to speak through, or he just switched locations so that Rakugi didn't track him down and engage him.</p><p>"Gee, thanks…" Rakugi muttered, sarcastic venom dripping from his tone.</p><p>"Heh, though I guess those punks wouldn't have done anywhere near this number on you, huh? Thing is, I don't particularly want you amongst us. People like you, elitist pricks with talent just piss me off. So sorry for blinding you, but, honestly, it's for your own good. The way you are now, I could actually stomach having you around our ranks. Having to work hard and struggle for once and not see through some stupid, fancy eyes. Think about it…"</p><p>"I think I'll pass…" Rakugi cut it short.</p><p>"Right, I guess you still have your kid. It's hard to see you as someone who has nowhere better to go and nothing better to do, huh?" the man cackled to himself.</p><p>"If you come for my daughter, I'll…" Rakugi took a brief pause to take in enough air to finish his threat, but his companion cut it short.</p><p>"Oh, don't worry, as I've said, if we were to have you, I had to make sure I make a few corrections so that I don't have to kill you myself later on because you piss me off so much. If you don't wanna buddy-up and would much rather do your own thing–feel free. I was just getting some insurance, you see? Figured that dispatching those Hyuuga grunts for you would kind of make-up for blinding you in the end, if you joined us."</p><p>"Not really. I'd rather you'd get gone before I kill you too." Rakugi hissed at the man but no reply came back. It was as if he wasn't there anymore. Who knew? Maybe he was never there, to begin with, and it had just been Rakugi being delirious from the escalating fever and the pain in his seared-out eyes and the molten flesh that was covering the brutal scorches up to the best of its capacity.</p><p>Mana sighed. With a snap of her fingers, four walls of a wooden box snapped shut around her. When she next snapped her fingers, the walls opened up outward, revealing a training ground with beaten stumps and training dummies. One similar to hundreds of training grounds around Konohagakure outskirts. Rakugi in full armor stood in front of a training dummy, throwing a couple of weak jabs at it and moving back, letting adolescent Ion step up from behind his lap and repeat the combination of blows that her father had just shown.</p><p>Rakugi took a few steps back, looked down at his daughter's eyes, and nodded. Mana turned around, gazing at mountain ranges surrounding the training ground without a single person in sight in this imaginary world of memories that didn't exist that she's created for the man who tried unraveling her life on as personal of a level as possible. Now that Rakugi had the option of living out the rest of his days trapped inside his own mind with the idealistic memories of his daughter, Mana still had an international ninja organization to salvage and a Tailed Beast of mass destruction to subdue.</p>
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<a name="section0759"><h2>759. Monkey See, Monkey Smash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana's eyes burst open, covered in a bloody web of vessels ravaging them from their edges all the way to the iris. The blood made for a grisly contrast with the pure white but the Stars didn't get to marvel at their awakened friend for too long before Mana sat up and rubbed her aching forehead before struggling against gravity and rampant earthquakes from far away in the distance to get back on her feet.</p><p>"What happened in there?" Shige-H asked, approaching Mana and helping her maintain a steady balance on her feet.</p><p>"No time. Have to seal away the Four-Tails," Mana grunted. Her hands pushed Shige-H with moderate restraint, both because the magician felt weakened after her grueling quest inside of Rakugi's mind and her distaste for the idea of pushing her friend away for real.</p><p>"I guess she found it. Way to go, Mana!" Damisan pumped his sparking arm in the air. His artificial limb jammed a few times mid-pump, leaving the self-built man no other choice but to force his pump half the way through and guide the gesture with his free hand.</p><p>"Good, you're finally out of there…" Endo picked up a broken-off part of his blade off the ground and approached the sprawled-out assassin doomed to live out the rest of his days as a vegetable, reliving an artificial memory of training lovingly with his daughter–something that had never even happened exactly for the lack of trying on his part.</p><p>Maybe now that there won't be a world for Rakugi to protect Ion from, he'll be a gentler father even if it won't amount to much in the end. Either way, it just felt right giving him that chance. When Endo raised his arm up to drive the broken piece of the blade through Rakugi's eye, his wrist stopped in mid-air. A trickle of blood ran down the swordsman's wrist and he looked up at it with a curious gap to his stare.</p><p>Mana's wrist twitched, holding a loop of steel wire in the hand. She pulled on it gently so that she didn't cut too deep into her ally's hand or disarm him in a more literal sense. Endo took a few seconds to realize that there could have only been one person to stop him from killing this ruthless killer.</p><p>"You, of all people?" Endo wheezed out in disbelief. "He wanted to eviscerate you more than most of us and I actually killed his daughter!"</p><p>"Stand down," Mana said it plain and simple. "If you want to be useful, help me seal the Four-Tails."</p><p>"Aren't you a bit on a timer here? While we're bickering here, people are dying out there. Good people, Allied Ninja!" Endo pointed his arm toward the emerald flashes in the horizon and the titanic beast trampling and bashing people into bloodstains and ravaging the landscape.</p><p>"That's exactly why I won't discuss this with you. If you insist, I'll take you down too." Mana replied with a strict glare. Blood ran down her forehead and down from her nostrils now that she got back up on her feet and glared right at the fellow Star.</p><p>"You know I'd love nothing more than to show you your place…" Endo relaxed his hand and let go of the chipped-off blade. As his muscles loosened, so did the adamant grip of the steel wire as the loop limped down and slipped off of the young man's arm. Though instead of pressing on his claim to Rakugi's life, Endo approached Mana so that the two could stare at each other eye-to-eye.</p><p>It was only when the samurai apprentice approached the ninja magician that the size difference between them became even more apparent. Endo wasn't really a bulky fellow, athletic and fit for sure, above average in height though he was larger than Mana by his entire head and yet Mana didn't flinch or twitch. The young woman just raised her head to follow the line of eyes closing in on her.</p><p>"You didn't beat him. His life isn't yours to take or decide over," the two were so close to one another that Mana could mutter and Endo would have heard her perfectly.</p><p>"Neither did you. We all beat him." Endo leaned in, but Mana's head didn't budge. His forehead was just a hair away from slamming into Mana's.</p><p>"Great, we can vote on it. Right now, I'm not in a mood to cast my vote so we'll have to vote later, after the place is secure." Mana shrugged and walked away, looking around the place for something that she just couldn't find.</p><p>"I thought you don't force your beliefs onto other people." Endo crossed his arms with a squint. "That you let other people decide if they want to kill their enemies or not after hearing you out?"</p><p>"Heroes that let criminals decide if they want to hurt people or not aren't all that heroic, in my experience, it never worked out too well," Mana shook her head and kicked off the ground, picking up a wall of dust, severed blades of grass and gravel as she weaved a few hand seals in mid-air and took off with a sonic blast, hurling toward the Four-Tails as she rode the air currents of the Mystical Wings jutsu.</p><p>"Ugh… She can fly…" Shige-H groaned, rubbing her tired eyes.</p><p>"That's okay, I can fly a little too, I'll check up on her," Damisan nodded, performing a light hop as he ignited unruly jets of steel blue from his artificial feet and took off after Mana.</p><p>"Well, I guess I can leap up to the location eventually," Shige-H sighed and leaned in for the first leap. "You guys coming?"</p><p>"I'll let Mana handle it," Skaven sighed and sat by a tree, running a hand up his greasy and blood-covered hair.</p><p>"I'll see how my friends are holding up, then I'll swing by," Tomi nodded.</p><p>"Taking on the Four-Tails? Wouldn't want to miss that!" Endo grinned with a psychotic mouth of full teeth. Blood from his cracked lips and gums soaked them, giving him a mean, bruiser-like look.</p><p>"Really? How do you plan on getting there?" Skaven wiped the rich handful of hair off of his face as he taunted his more aggressive teammate.</p><p>"How else? I'm going to run at him!" Endo clenched his fists and turned toward the Four-Tails wreaking havoc on the horizon as he prepared to dash off the large hill and toward the decimated, pooling with blood and bodies battlefield, hoping to find something sharp to pick up and swing at the chakra monster by the time he gets to it.</p><p>"Yeah, sounds about right…" Skaven nodded and kept his chin dug into his chest as he began to nod off.</p><hr/><p>Being a sensor presented a whole extra bag of problems. The worst of them all was that Mana could sense every little flame flickering away as more and more people died. With each swipe, each smash of the massive ape's fists, more and more bright wisps fizzled out and wouldn't ignite again. With each flame, it was as if the monster had swiped with a careless hand, swatting cups and plates off of a prepared table and leaving nothing but shatters in its childish, rampant wake.</p><p>Mountain-sized boulders covered up the emerald light from the flames that the Four-Tails breathed out from its mouth and jet from its man-sized nostrils. Mana shifted her body around, taking a plunge down and under the massive pile of rock that would have knocked her out of the sky and flattened her. It wasn't even a willful fling yet, just a stray pile erupting and shooting from underground from the incredible force that the beast ravaged the landscape with.</p><p>Once Mana felt like she had avoided the stone, she shifted her weight again and propelled herself in a spin onward, swooping back up. Now the beast had noticed her. There weren't many who were trying to keep up with it at the level of its own eyes. Those that did were the first ones to get incinerated or flattened or smashed. The monstrous titan turned its head halfway to Mana and let out a roar from its mouth. Wrath seeped out from its jade-colored eyes that flared up with the same manner of flames that the beast had leaked out.</p><p>Mana braced for impact, knowing just how overwhelming the roar of a Tailed Beast was after having once met the Nine-Tails. She crossed her arms up and raised her knees, adopting a fetal position and giving in to the forceful push. Mana blasted away like a cannonball but quickly regained her composure and her balance, unraveling and pointing her feet behind her to arrow straight toward the beast again. The monster had thought that it had gotten rid of Mana as it had of everyone else it faced, more so, with the few moments of the beast's distraction, a barrage of fireballs, thunderbolts, and crashing waves came from down below and fissures split underground to open the rocky wasteland whole and gobble the fearsome giant up.</p><p>"So, what's the plan?" Damisan's voice came from the right as the busted-up, self-puppeteering young man closed in on the magician. The poster that he kept nailed to his cylinder had ripped off from the wind pressure, which was preferable, as it had been bloodied and singed up a decent bit, anyway.</p><p>"I crash into it, seal it, save everyone," Mana replied.</p><p>"Doesn't sound like much of a plan, more like a general guideline around which you form a plan." Damisan waved his sparking and disobeying prosthetic arms about, trying to get them working and fully under his control before he ends up having to clash with a Tailed Beast.</p><p>"It works for me. You don't have to follow it if you don't like it." Mana kept it simple.</p><p>"You know me, I…"</p><p>"Like to be included, I know…" Mana smirked. "Do me a solid and help me pull as many people out of the battlefield. I'll want some privacy if this is to work."</p><p>"Sounds crazy to want privacy with that thing but you're the one operating an ancient sealing artifact of incredible power after bonding with it inside of a mind of a psychotic killer. I've taken a beating but I'll do my best." Damisan nodded, almost losing his dome off of his head while the two began closing in on the beast.</p><p>The massive ape had noticed the two irksome gnats homing in on its zone of rampage. Mana and Damisan had to make sure that they had adequate time and space to land before the monster and that it didn't intercept them. Since both of them thought of the same thing at once, they didn't need to get each other on the same page and worked in sync.</p><p>Mana's arms waved frantically, flinging handfuls of cards with sealing glyphs on them before weaving a few hand seals and directing them toward the titanic enemy with a Friendly Gust jutsu while Damisan directed his feet toward the enemy and halted himself in a controlled hover while raising his sparking arms up and shooting them off of his body with jets of flames separating the prosthetics from Damisan's shoulders as the two arms homed in on the rabid chakra beast like twin missiles, detonating at once.</p><p>"I've seen you throw faster, I've seen you throw more," Damisan grunted while the two observed the massive cloud of smoke covering the Four-Tails carefully, waiting for their cue to dodge the incoming counterattack that was all but inevitable.</p><p>"It's on days like this I miss my old uniform, it did a lot of flinging and card slipping for me," Mana bit her lip while the cloud of dust lit up with a jade light. This was way too fast! By the time that the pair realized that the cloud had lit up–the flames were already more than halfway engulfing them and the immediate space around them in a vast expanse. It left dodging them not much of an option. Damisan skid out in front of Mana, covering the magician up with his shoulder ready to serve as a human shield while another shadow flashed in before the two young ninja, preventing Damisan's sacrifice that wouldn't have amounted to much in the end, anyway.</p><p>"Are you assholes fucking nuts!?" the Supreme Leader grumbled as hexagonal rings whizzed in from her right shoulder side and formed a shielding formation, igniting an olive-colored force field between them that directed the stream of flames around the three cowering ninja in a tunnel as more and more rings buzzed in and connected to the network, guiding the obliterating blaze around the trio of ninja.</p><p>The woman had seen better days. Her military uniform was in tatters, and her hat had been gone. Her face looked pummeled, and she was covered with burns all over. Even if she seemed somewhat able to guide and control these blazes, not even a ninja of her caliber could have been able to keep herself safe forever against a monstrous entity such as the Four-Tails.</p><p>"We've figured out why the Four-Tails is here. Mana can send it off just like the man responsible sent it after us," Damisan pointed out.</p><p>The trio scattered, Mana blasted off on her Mystical Wings, Damisan jetted off on his chakra jet-boots while the Supreme Leader skid off on a tunnel of the rushing hexagonal rings connecting to each other with a chakra force field in avoidance of the ape's smashing fist. The beast was just throwing hands in all directions, completely out of control.</p><p>"Is that true!?" the Supreme Leader yelled out.</p><p>"Yeah, evacuate everyone. I'd also like a hat too. I can't find mine anywhere. It has to be in blazes at this point!" Mana shouted back.</p><p>"A fucking hat, are you fucking kidding me, can't you just order it to go fuck itself!?" the Supreme Leader, clearly at her wit's end, even if she wasn't all too stable of a woman, to begin with, roared through the entire battlefield as a stream of emerald flames colored it with putrid death.</p><p>"I could, but then it would just hurt someone else somewhere else. I'm going to deal with it for good." Mana declared.</p><p>"Fuck! I don't have the fucking time to… Anyone! Does anyone have a fucking hat!?" the Supreme Leader's voice rung far and wide, reaching most of the combatants.</p><p>"A hat is this a joke!?"</p><p>"Fine, clear out your people, Supreme Leader. I'll deal with this monster alone." Mana shook her head. This was an enormous problem. She wasn't all that good with sealing techniques, as it was always more her father's and Meiko's specialty. By now she had learned only one sealing technique that well–the one that her father used to store items and weaponry inside of her hat. She wasn't fully sure if it had to be a hat specifically, but she'd just have to wing it. Either way, nobody else could die from this point on.</p><p>"It's your funeral, brat, we're just getting fucking wiped out here anyway… Fuckwads, clear the place out, we're scattering!" the Supreme Leader ordered the surviving Allied Ninja as all the injured and recruits that could have been helped had been cleared out of the disaster zone. The Tailed Beast couldn't have been driven away, no matter how much the international ninja organization threw at it. They had to be the ones to retreat. Unless, of course, Mana wasn't completely full of herself.</p><p>Damisan buzzed about like a fly. He lacked the arms necessary to launch an actual attack at the enemy, but it wasn't like any of his attacks would have registered to begin with. Distracting the rampaging chakra monster was the best that he could have hoped for. His constant pestering and bright buzzing provided the Allied Ninja with some brief blink to tap out and scatter with Body Flickers while only the two ninja remained to bully the immovable titan into submission or die trying.</p><p>"Okay, now what? I'm feeling way more heat up my bum than I like and I don't enjoy feeling any heat down there at all!" Damisan shrieked out in panic as he hurled himself far off into the mid-air evading a constant, showering stream of all-disintegrating, noxious flames.</p><p>"I need to erect the Five Pillars. I'll need a bit of time," Mana pressed her hand to her chest, trying to find the connection to the mythical Five Pillars Seal within her as she leaped across the field to a south-eastern position and placed her arms on the ground. Like clockwork, a booming pillar that rose all the way to the clouds burst forth from underground, the color of jade and seemingly chiseled out of the precious mineral in its entirety with one-fifth of the mantra etched onto it in golden symbols.</p><p>The sight of the jade pillar appeared to have made the Four-Tails go berserk. He stopped paying any mind toward Damisan even as the arms-less ninja began dive kicking and trying to shove explosive kunai down its nostrils. The monstrous titan just roared and bellowed and threw mad fists toward the risen pillar, push-kicked it, and sent emerald flames pouring down its mouth in a rush toward it, but nothing at all seemed to affect the pillar. Mana, who pressed her back against the pillar from behind it couldn't even feel any semblance of heat coming off from the pillar.</p><p>It made sense that the beast that got itself trapped twice in recorded history already within this seal wouldn't be able to harm it. Though it could have still beaten Mana into a pulp or burnt her up before she erected the full thing. Mana weaved a clone jutsu hand seal, sending off a handful of clones rushing in all directions, riding the wind currents, and meeting a grisly fate. The original swooped down and raced across the ground, rushing to the easternmost position and placing her hands on the ground again to force another jade pillar out, identical to the first in all but the mantra etched into it.</p><p>The titan of chakra widened its abyssal jaw as a stable stream of black particles began washing inward and morphing into a single obsidian sphere of chakra. Black yet still luminous, albeit in its blackness rather than light. It had been the first time that Mana had witnessed something black to be capable of luminosity but the chakra accumulating within that tiny sphere felt like it could stop Mana's heart at that very moment and it would only grow larger and larger at an impossible rate.</p><p>With shaking hands, Mana collapsed on her knees. "What's wrong? What are you waiting for? Erect the other pillars!" Damisan's voice rung in Mana's ears but she couldn't move. All that she could do was tremble and feel overwhelmed and absolutely helpless. Tremble in her knees, tremble her wrists as her pale hand clutched her chest and couldn't let go. Skin felt like it was boiling to where the fearful huffs from Mana's mouth actually felt chilly and cooling to her panic fever. She had never felt such monumental chakra in her entire life. It had been ages since chakra could send her into a panic, but then again–she was facing the biggest source of chakra in existence.</p><p>"I… I can't do it…" Mana muttered as she writhed and crawled to a pillar, pressing her back behind it as the Four-Tails continued to blow her mind with further accumulation of chakra within its impending Tailed Beast Bomb. "Not me… I… I can't…" she kept whimpering as a mantra. Her sensory abilities. It was all because of them. It wasn't her fault, she just… She couldn't do it.</p><p>"Mana!" a blood-curdling grunt reached the magician as she peeked through the jade pillar. The beast had smacked Damisan out of the air with a backhand slam and turned its attention toward the fallen ninja as the obsidian chakra ball continued to build up inside its mouth.</p><p>Mana needed to move. She needed to move now, or her friend was dead.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0760"><h2>760. Death Of A Star</h2></a>
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    <p>With the Tailed Beast Bomb still accumulating might and further escalating Mana's already hectic heartbeat toward a point where it would burst out from her chest, the titanic rampaging ape scooped up Damisan with its hand and swung him around, cradling the beaten young man inside his hand before slamming him into the ground again. Sparks and steel shards flew out in all directions from Damisan's smashed to bits equipment. The airborne steel turned crimson from the splatters of blood in the air.</p><p>"Move!" Mana commanded herself. As ordered, her legs sprung into motion, albeit still shaky enough to drop her at any point. Even if she had full control over her frightened, whimpering limbs, what use would they serve?</p><p>Neither one of the potential outcomes before her was acceptable. If she didn't intervene and take the Four-Tails' attention off Damisan–he'd die for sure. He was half-dead already and all of his prosthetic limbs had been impressively devastated and scattered throughout the gruesome and bloody battlefield. Then again, intervening on Damisan's behalf wasn't enough–if the Tailed Beast charges up its apocalyptic technique that is driving Mana insane merely by being charged up, they'll all be dead, no matter if she saves Damisan or not.</p><p>"Royal Flush Clone Jutsu!" Mana chanted, weaving a hand seal and waving goodbye to almost half of her chakra. She hadn't been driven to the point of chakra exhaustion for a while, that feeling of pressure around her eyes and blurry vision had become almost alien to her since the magician trained her chakra capacity to become inferior to very few ninja in the world through her unique, meditative methods of self-control.</p><p>As the Tailed Beast hurled its fist to hammer it down and leave nothing but a bloody stain of the impaired shinobi laying unconscious, bruised and bloody before it, a pair of Mana's doppelgangers flew in from the side, crackling with Magician's Touch Jutsu while delivering their strongest hooks to both of the Four-Tails' jaws. As the high-ranking Lightning Release chakra resonated through the chakra monster's body, one could almost believe it to have caused some sort of impact. It did not. The infuriated monkey slammed both of its hands together, clapping the clones to their demise.</p><p>A ground-shaking explosion parted the monster's arms open as a bright flash swallowed the Four-Tails. The Wind Release and Fire Release Shadow Clones reacted to one another as they dispelled into their respective violent elemental reactions, one enhancing the other and creating something devastating together. A spherical marble of a fiery inferno that howled and boomed in its destructive path, engulfing the monster of living chakra whole.</p><p>"C'mere, you…" Mana's clone mumbled while scooping Damisan off the ground. He was wet and felt incredibly soft in her hands. His clothes and skin had been drowning in blood and had the impaired ninja any semblance of consciousness left, the fractured bones might have given him a puncturing warning after Mana moved him away from the sudden death zone so rudely and swiftly.</p><p>Mana had been right to place absolutely no hopes in her impressive combo of different nature affinity Shadow Clones and their highly destructive chain reactions amounting to much in the end. More and more pixel-like obsidian chakra dots began flowing into the sphere that had been expanding in between the upper and lower jaws of the hectic monkey chakra beast. As the smoke clear, the beast browsed its immediate surroundings for victims to smash but could find none.</p><p>The beast's nostrils twitched. It turned around and dragged its mountainous fingers over the battlefield floor, dislodging a colossal boulder from the floor, and lobbing it toward an area diagonally behind it. Mana's image froze still, petrified as the unexpected flying mountain plateau swallowed all semblances of light before landing right on top of her where she had attempted to draw out the third pillar. The dislodged rocky projectile landed with a resounding, authoritative thud. A splitting fissure of Wind Release blades ravaged the mountainous surface, an aftereffect of an elemental release Shadow Clone being dispelled.</p><p>The bestial monster pounded its chest, raising the tremendous Tailed Beast Bomb over its head as it could no longer fit in between both of the titan's considerable jaws. Mana let go of the blood-soaked collar of Damisan's clothes. The shattered pieces of her friend's precious cylinder laid all over the place yet the magician couldn't gaze at Damisan's exposed face both out of respect to someone who had always respected her feeling and because whatever disfigurement he was so embarrassed about, a rampaging Four-Tails charging up a motherlode of all Tailed Beast bombs was just much more attention-grabbing at that moment.</p><p>Even before being launched, the ace jutsu of the Tailed Beasts was already dismantling any potential game plan against it. The ground had been shaking and rupturing all around Mana, hurling in concentrated, tunneled jets of howling air pressure and disappearing with a puny sizzle inside the vast, obsidian energy ball that generated all this overwhelming gravitational field around it. The evening skies had turned entirely black with choking clouds of noxious gas, the violent lashes of azure lightning were the only illumination that the apocalyptic sight provided apart from the strangely luminescent with black Tailed Beast Bomb that may have ended it all for how immense it had become.</p><p>A familiar chakra signature just a few hundred meters away. Mana almost missed it over this calamitous disarray. She had been doing her best to shut down her chakra sensory, as right now it had been doing more harm than good. After this was all over, if there was still a world to admire her image in, Mana would be shocked if her hair hadn't turned grey over this perilous feeling of the absolute, immovable nova of chakra before her while she lived in a world of mere candles.</p><p>"Unmaker Fist!" Shige-H roared out, throwing a flying punch from miles away from where the monster had been charging up the world's end. A stream of cyan shroud left as a straight gale emanating from her fist and socking right at the upper jaw of the monster, attempting to either unmake the Four-Tails' brain itself or to just slam its upper jaw shut, prompting a premature detonation of the Tailed Beast Bomb inside the Four-Tails' mouth.</p><p>Shige-H flickered away, dodging out of an unexpected tail swipe as the monster that she had attempted to undo wiped its four tails like feather dusters wiping away dust, stone, and human bones alike and leaving the stained puddle of blood accumulated on the battlefield ground as a filthy smear shaped like a crescent. Shige-H appeared once more at the top of the first of the Five Pillars that Mana had erected before flickering away again and appearing beside Mana.</p><p>"I can't believe it… The Unmaker Fist that destabilizes anything on an atomic scale and sends the particles scattering to dust is absolutely useless!" Shige-H ground her teeth, pressing her hand to her chest just to feel her pounding heart. "This is a hopeless struggle. What's taking you so long?"</p><p>"I can't as much as peek out," Mana admitted. "I've somehow raised two pillars out of five but… I think some part of it knows what I'm trying to do here."</p><p>"Why is that monster immune to my Advanced Bloodline, I don't understand…" Shige-H dragged her hand across her hair, Mana noted a quiver to the Stars' leader's hand as it moved. "It's powerful and all but… How could the very laws of physics not work on it?"</p><p>"It's not that you're not unmaking it, it's that it's too good at remaking itself. The regenerative abilities of a Tailed Beast are second to none. Also, the Tailed Beasts are composed of chakra itself. They're essentially chakra titans. Chakra is a form of energy and you cannot delete energy–just transform it." Mana stood up, ready to act before the Four-Tails detonates the Tailed Beast Bomb and makes Iwagakure's disaster look like the popping of a soap bubble in comparison.</p><p>"Do you have any idea how to stall it?" Shige-H wondered.</p><p>"I've got… A theory." Mana sighed. She grabbed hold of her trembling right arm and did her best to ease her unsteady breathing. She'd need as much focus as she can get once she reveals herself and there is no place for failure and no second chances here. It's do or get obliterated.</p><p>"Mana… You can't… You're the only one with a connection to the seal," Shige-H tried raising an objection.</p><p>"If my theory is correct, I am also the only one that can stall this monster and prevent it from taking a chunk out of this planet with this bomb. If… If it doesn't work, Skaven can claim the bond from my body, if there's a body left…" curious questions flooded Mana's head about how recovering the Five Pillars Seal from an obliterated body would work but there was no time entertaining her thoughts and curiosities.</p><p>Mana ran out into the open. A colossal shadow loomed over the scurrying magician before a hammering thud splattered her whole, but what came out from the splatter wasn't blood and guts. It was a soft pack of bunnies. A single clump that continued to grow and escalate, throwing the Four-Tails for a loop while Mana hurried off. Shige-H glanced from behind the pillar with a baffled stare. She could see everything just fine but all signs pointed to the Four-Tails falling victim to genjutsu as it had been fighting and trying to scrape off that which simply didn't exist.</p><p>"Come on!" Mana rolled forward and planted her palms to the ground, shooting off the third pillar skyward and forming three out of five sealing pillars around the Four-Tails. The Tailed Beast Bomb began shrinking down, Shige-H initially cheered, thinking it to be an effect of the genjutsu that Mana cast on the Tailed Beast to win herself a pocket of time to raise the next pillar but when the leader of the Stars saw Mana's pale and petrified expression, she realized that this compression was anything but a good thing.</p><p>"Summoning: Food Cart Destroyer!" Tomi's voice slashed through the gravitational howls and rocky grunge of the collapsing earth and the lashing lightning. A tortoise of mythic proportions dropped on top of the Four-Tails, shaking up the monster that was just twice the tortoise's size but once seven more Ninja Elephants dropped on the back of the massive tortoise, the Four-Tails collapsed on the ground at last under the combined weight.</p><p>A beam of black rose as a heaven-splitting pillar, engulfing the summoned animals and reducing them to dust instantly. As Tomi landed before the collapsed Four-Tails, ready to issue orders to her friends and direct the course of this battle until Mana sealed the beast away, the eyes of the wildling teen sunk in tears and blanked out. Eight of her friends blinked out in an instant. She never needed to worry about any of their well-being. It was usually the other way around and now… Now they were gone…</p><p>"Get out of there!" Mana yelled out, waving her hand, but Tomi had turned off and stopped registering anything. She was just a bag bloated with grief and laying helpless and useless before the enemy as if begging to be put down like the monster had mercilessly plowed through her friends. There was no way for Mana to cast another illusion with the Four-Tails, not even looking at her or hearing anything that the magician was saying. It was as if the mad monster was in a realm of its own. A realm of chaos, violence, and rabidness.</p><p>"Unmaker Fist Flurry!" Shige-H yelled out, rolling out of cover and throwing fists gleaming with cyan flames, overflowing with the energy of unmaking from her body to where the gleam spilled out from her eyes and her mouth, switching the very color of Shige-H's eyes thusly. The cyan beams slammed into the Four-Tails' jaw and ravaged its entire body, but didn't appear to move it at all.</p><p>Now that its Tailed Beast Bomb was gone, the Four-Tails could breathe its merciless, all-devouring emerald flames once more. Recalling of that gift that had claimed the lives of tens of thousands that very same day, the massive monkey drew breath in and bloated out its chest, as if preparing to unleash a hail of flames that would incinerate both Shige-H and Tomi.</p><p>"Mana, the pillars…" Shige-H whimpered out before the four-tailed titan blew out a stream of emerald flames in an all-encompassing tongue. Mana stared in absolute abhorrence as the emerald field of flames surrounded the jade sealing pillars like a tidal wave. A final grunt transitioned into a blood-curdling scream when Shige-H flew out from the infernal depths in a tunnel of air and slammed into the top of the sealing pillar, hitting it just right to stay awkwardly dangling over the edge.</p><p>Shige's skin had been scorched as there seemed to be just a few patches of healthy flesh as opposed to the burns. The grand field of fire had immolated half her hair and clothes in a blink before whatever force had flung her out from the inferno saved her life. Tomi hadn't been so fortunate. Once the emerald flames cleared out, a short skeleton crumbled. It was still rustling with specks of flames while absolutely lifeless. The shock of hitting the floor crumbled it into dust.</p><p>Tomi was gone.</p><p>"Stop…" Mana muttered once the silence reigned in. The Four-Tails turned its attention to Mana, looming as an approaching existential threat as it approached the risen pillar on which Mana stood before the approaching titan. Its mindless eyes had been mocking her. Even a thoughtless beast that knew only rampage and the orders that the original user of the seal had given it knew that there was nothing to stop doing at this point–Tomi was gone, along with a chunk of her summoned partners.</p><p>Extinguished in a blink. That was what would happen to all of them if Mana didn't act now. She still has two more pillars to raise. Just how many more sacrifices will this laborious task call for? What was even the point of subduing the beast if it would kill her friends, anyway?</p><p>"Mercy. You don't deserve it," Mana cried out as her trembling hands clenched into furious fists. Somehow it didn't much matter that she lacked the strength to even make the titanic calamity feel a thousand of her punches delivered at once. All she wanted was a pound of flesh.</p><p>The Four-Tails breathed in again. It knew that it stood no chance of damaging the primeval sealing pillars, but it could have easily burnt the young woman standing on it and challenging it. A thunderous tackle sent the Four-Tails sliding to the side. As the fallen monkey tried getting up, a tiger-colored, furry fist slammed its face down to the floor, hammering again and again as wild canine eyes testified Mana's wrath for the ninja magician. The Nine-Tails continued to pound, slam and stomp, bash and blast the fallen Four-Tails into the dirt without offering the Tailed Beast any hint of resistance.</p><p>It wasn't real. The Nine-Tails wouldn't have offered a single hair on its body to burn for Mana, despite the magician having once set it free. These beasts were just that–monsters. There wasn't a hint of soul or humanity inside them and if Mana could kill them–she would have. Her ninja way only prohibited her from killing humans, after all. There was nothing human about these living calamities. It might have taken a few minutes for the Four-Tails to realize that it was under a mere B-Rank illusion that made it believe to be involved in a worthy fight against what it thought to be a valiant challenger, but minutes were an eternity to a ninja.</p><p>Mana took off from her pillar after enjoying the Four-Tails wrestling air and getting the crap kicked out of it in its imagination. She could only have dreamed to know just what sort of violence this monster that only knew devastation and brutality imagined upon itself. Mana pressed her hands to the ground and raised the fourth pillar. The Four-Tails breathed fire all over the place. Its competition with a worthy foe of its own imagination had been considerable. A wind dissolved Mana into flower petals as she hurried across to the fallen and injured comrade of hers. Mana moved Shige-H away and placed her beside Damisan, behind the pillar where it was the least likely for the world-shaking battle to reach them.</p><p>"What are you doing?" a familiar condescending voice reached Mana, so she peeked from behind the first pillar. The magician's displeased glare settled on Endo having finally run up to the battlefield and found himself before the calamitous clash between the Four-Tails and its imaginary opponent. With a single, bellowing roar, the titanic ape monster had broken Mana's illusion, sending the magician flying back with violent force emanating from deep within her own chest.</p><p>The unfair competition of the Tailed Beast's booming chakra and Mana's genjutsu was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb being used to smash through candy glass. There could have been no doubt that such irregularity would have broken it out of the Worthy Foe Jutsu.</p><p>"I've run this far…" Endo growled, swiping the tip and blade of the sword he had looted off of the fallen assassin aside and preparing to charge right toward the beast. "It'd suck not to run the entire way!" he seemed to pump himself up for this mad charge.</p><p>What an absolutely insane individual!</p><p>"Endo! Substitution!" Mana yelled out. As if they were kindred souls, they moved in sync. Each one using the substitution technique to replace themselves with the other, effectively switching each other's positions and leaving Endo safeguarding the injured Stars survivors while Mana glared up at the scowl of the Four-Tails.</p><p>The beast roared before throwing a cross and smashing Mana to bits. As it tilted its fist off the ground, an awkwardly sprawled out, the bloody pulp of a body remained buried underneath the rocks while the Four-Tails continued to shove its fists, grinding the corpse further and further into the dirt and leaving a more and more miserable bloody stain out of it.</p><p>"Stop hitting dirt, you fucking jackass!" Endo taunted the monster though by the time it took the appropriate time to breathe out and realize it was under another illusion and had been expressing its grievances at absolutely nothing but an illusionary corpse, Mana stood atop of a raised fifth pillar.</p><p>Rushing to correct its mistake, the Four-Tails swiftly breathed out a nova of emerald flames at Mana, but the flames merely rotated in a dome shape and dissipated off of the magician harmlessly. With all five pillars being raised, a jutsu that protected Mana was more ancient and fearsome than even the might of a Tailed Beast could break.</p><p>The Five Pillars Seal was complete! And as golden, ethereal arrows shot out from the peaks of each pillar, penetrating the Four-Tails and locking it down in place signified–this last breath of devastating, toxic flames sealed the beast's fate and trapped it inside the seal once more.</p>
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<a name="section0761"><h2>761. Monkey In A Hat</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Four-Tails tried expelling emerald flames from its mouth again, but its mobility appeared to have been crippled to merely flexing and twitching. Ethereal tendrils of golden energy extended from the peaks of each pillar while Mana clapped her hands together "Om Mani Padme Hum" she chanted out as the ethereal tendrils surrounded and sealed the prison around the Five-Tails. The Five Pillars peaks began raking the ground they stood from, carving the ground as they moved in closer.</p><p>Once the Five Pillars finally surrounded the Five-Tails, their upper halves bent up, creating an appearance of a hand that had captured the Five-Tails within its grasp while the pulses of golden energy still burst in all directions. Power of a technique so ancient and so powerful that not even a Tailed-Beast could defy it. With the seal locked in place, the Five-Tails could once again thrash about, but there wasn't much use to it as nothing it could have tried doing would have left the containment field around the Five Pillars Seal.</p><p>"Now you're free from Rakugi's control over you. You don't have an excuse to hide behind anymore but we both know you'd have done every single thing you did, isn't that right?" Mana looked down at the Tailed-Beast, still hovering in the air where the pillar she stood on once was. The magician swooped down, feeling a heat wave pass her when the raging Five-Tails shot out a tongue of emerald flames her way, flames that hit an invisible energy barrier and dissipated, washing all over itself as punishment instead and calming the beast down.</p><p>"That's right, I've read about you. You see, I've met one of you before. The Nine-Tails…" Mana mentioned as she approached the hand-like cage that the Five-Tails ended up in.</p><p>An ear-splitting roar echoed for kilometers on end, spreading far and wide through the empty Lightning Country wasteland in all directions until the bustling mountain ranges of Kumogakure stopped it in the north or the snowy mounds of the Snow Country in the south did. While the beast knew full-well, it wasn't able to hurt Mana from within the cage, it still had boundless fury to express toward the ninja magician, and releasing these vociferous growls and yells was the only way it knew how to do that.</p><p>"Not a fan of Nine-Tails, are you?" Mana closed her eyes and nodded a few times before turning her attention back up at the beast that begged the universe for a chance to slip its hand out of the jade cage and crush this annoying brat standing right in front of it with its bare hands. "When I was younger and less experienced, I ended up releasing it from its imprisonment. It was at a tough spot, being endlessly drained and tortured, abused for nefarious goals by greedy people. When you look at it from that perspective, I can see why the Tailed Beasts aren't so fond of us."</p><p>The colossal monkey grabbed the jade fingers and released a maddened howl as it tried splitting them apart with its bare hands. Everything about this situation tipped it off: the fact that the seal it feared the most of all things once again came into play, obstructing its freedom and will, that it was snared and at the mercy of a mere human it hated so much and the fact that this human was just posturing and lecturing him despite being younger than some parasites making the Five-Tails' back itch this very moment were.</p><p>"I ended up releasing it. Everyone kept telling me what a massive mistake I did and how I would regret it. The Nine-Tails is by far the strongest and the most fearsome of you, isn't it? Even with that in mind, for the longest time, I was perfectly fine with my decision. Maybe I was even feeling cocky about it. The more days passed with no news of a settlement or a village leveled to the ground by that beast. But… The more experienced I've grown, the more I started second-guessing that call. I kept reading up more and more and more about you, finding out as much about each one of you as humanity knew. I guess it's because I just really, really wanted to be sure I did the right thing there." Mana scratched the back of her head, rustling her sticky with blood dark hair.</p><p>Another pair of sandals touched down. Mana could sense that familiar chakra signature incoming for a little while now, which was why she didn't hurry to decide over what to do with the Four-Tails. She turned to Skaven's direction and caught a whizzing head decoration. It was her hat. It had taken more than a few painful licks from the flames, the black cloth wrapping around it had torn off in a few places, and the whole cylinder looked more miserable than it was classy as the accessory looked when Mana wore it.</p><p>"Sorry, most of your stuff's scattered all over the place or burnt up. I guess you're not going anywhere for a little while, huh?" Skaven dragged his hand over his hanging on one side, greasy hair as he looked up to Mana with a dull pair of eyes.</p><p>Mana turned back to the Four-Tails without answering Skaven. If he found more than just her hat amongst the stuff she had packed that had been lost and scattered during the initial blast, why would he specifically look for her hat, almost as if he knew this hat held specific significance to Mana? The young woman shook her head lightly and turned back to the snarling chakra titan before her. She could wonder about Skaven's secrets when she didn't have a Tailed Beast waiting to be judged for all its transgressions.</p><p>"That kid, the part of which I still hold inside of me, would say that I should just open up the seal and let you go. That you're not to blame for what you did while under Rakugi's orders," Mana returned to talking to the Five-Tails who became suspiciously quiet once the magician brought up this possibility. "I say, I know what sort of Tailed Beast you are. Even amongst the Tailed Beasts, you are renowned for your dislike for humans. The few Jinchuuriki throughout history you've had have recorded that you believe yourself to be superior, stronger, and more intelligent than us. Even if it is because of this injustice that creatures weaker whom you also consider less intelligent than you are bossing you around and not giving you your peace of mind, I cannot in my clear consciousness allow such a human-hating monster to roam free."</p><p>With this Mana sparked the previous outrage from the Tailed Beast as it tried every possible option of breaking out and killing Mana while remaining within its cage imaginable: from pulling or splitting the five pillars obstructing it to breathing fire on, reaching or smashing the defiant ninja magician standing so miniscule before him and daring to talk down to it like that.</p><p>"I see, so you're sealing it inside of you, gonna become its Jinchuuriki and make sure that destructive power isn't wasted?" Endo approached Mana from behind, alongside Skaven, who stared at Endo with suspicion and followed his actions with wary.</p><p>"No." Mana shut that option down. "I'd rather die than host a human-hating beast like this inside me. I don't think I could stop anyone trying to cleave me into two when a part of me would belong to a monster who killed Tomi."</p><p>"So… Tomi's dead…" Skaven muttered to himself, pocketing his hands and looking at the sad and dusty windstorms picking up with hollow howls behind him.</p><p>"I believe that the right thing to do in this case would be to command you to jump as high up as you can, into the deepest corners of space and leave you there. Gasping for breaths, stuck in a perpetual cycle of dying and rebirth repeatedly. But… I just don't have that much hatred in me for you to do something like this. That's where we're different. Still, I'm not showing you mercy either…" Mana raised her hand, showing the Tailed Beast the depths inside of her hat.</p><p>"My punishment to you is to remain sealed inside of my hat. Stuck, waiting for the remaining four orders until all the remaining pillars are down and the seal frees you again. Once you have served humanity four remaining times, you'll have earned your freedom and you can have your way with me, the person who imprisoned you for however long this will take. That is my first order, Mitra Svaha." Mana completed the five-part mantra etched onto the Five Pillars of the seal, making the Five Pillars caging the Tailed Beast collapse with thunderous rumbling.</p><p>A paper tag held by a jade hand appeared on the center of the Four-Tails' forehead, one that replaced the previous decoration with far fewer available fingers and had all five fingers clutching the paper tag containing the mantra of "Om Mani Padme Hum". Almost immediately after the Five Pillars Seal finished forming over the Four-Tailed Beast, the thumb of the jade hand holding the paper tag opened up, engulfing the Tailed Beast in a golden, ethereal glow and washing toward Mana's hat. A wild whirlpool of energy began swirling around the head accessory as the hat appeared to struggle to contain the Tailed Beast initially but once the chakra titan converted fully into pure energy, soon the entire energy mass disappeared inside the hat and Mana rolled it up her hand, up her shoulder, and onto her head.</p><p>The Four-Tails had been sealed away and imprisoned inside of Mana's hat with four remaining orders to issue to it until the beast earned its freedom. Even if Mana didn't feel entirely contempt with the Four-Tails ever being allowed to walk free for what it did here, it wasn't like she'd allow the Tailed Beast to redeem itself with manual labor, anyway. Plus, maybe she'd feel more forgiving once the grief settles down somewhat and they pick up the pieces of what's left of the rest of their lives again.</p><p>"I've got to say, few people would have resisted taking the power of the Four-Tails to themselves. A fool would have used up those orders and bent back all five fingers eventually, a true warrior would have sealed the Four-Tails inside of themselves and become its Jinchuuriki," Endo looked to Mana from behind her while the magician stood still for a while, even after the affair had entirely resolved.</p><p>"Maybe I'm just done being a warrior," Mana muttered. "Too many people died today, and I just wanted it all to stop."</p><p>"Well, not being a true warrior is better than being a fool." Endo closed his eyes and sighed. "At least you're keeping the Four-Tails contained, even if this imprisonment is still susceptible to your questionable womanly judgment."</p><p>"Do you really want to be your lousy self around a woman that has a Tailed Beast sealed inside of her hat?" Skaven opened his right eye to scold Endo for giving Mana flack.</p><p>"I'm not just planning on using the Four-Tails for any excuse. If I can help it, I'll ask nothing of it once as long as I live," Mana turned around and wrapped her own hands around her arms, rubbing them to warm herself up as she looked around the grisly scene of total devastation around them. Finally, this nightmare was over, though, arguably, a far worse part of it remained–to pick up the pieces.</p><p>"I can't fucking believe it!" the Supreme Leader's jaw dropped when Mana, Skaven, and Endo appeared from the wall of dust and sand. Endo dragged Damisan's unconscious body with some rag wrapped over his face as a respect for the ninja's need to keep his face concealed at all times, Mana had Shige-H hanging over her back while she floated lightly above ground to make carrying the Stars leader a simpler task.</p><p>"Where is the Tailed Beast?"</p><p>"Did they stop it?"</p><p>"What on Earth happened out there?"</p><p>"Supreme Leader…" Mana muttered after landing before the woman and placing her comrade down on the ground. Endo just rudely let go of Damisan's lower body, sticking out his tongue and wiping his hands at his chest as if it disgusted him to touch the impaired ninja's limbless body. Skaven kept it behind Mana, having avoided any manual labor, and just wandered the battlefield with his hands inside his pockets.</p><p>"Well, I'll be fucking damned, I guess you found your stupid hat, you mean-ass bitch!" Supreme Leader still looked absolutely baffled because not only did the Stars survive but they also seemed to have dealt with the Tailed Beast menace.</p><p>"We've been wondering if you would find us having withdrawn so far away into the Land of Lightning wastelands, then we remembered that you're a chakra sensor, Mana," regimental commander Harcel chuckled to himself, looking mighty proud of something, most likely of the fact that he was the one to remember that fact and bring it up.</p><p>"I've sealed the Four-Tails away. It won't be troubling you any longer." Mana pointed at her hat before bowing and turning to walk away.</p><p>"Wait… Where the fuck do you think you're going?" Supreme Leader scratched her messy eggplant-colored hair.</p><p>"As I recall, I failed the prep course. I'm not an Allied Ninja even if there still were Allied Ninja. Thanks for the illusion of belonging that I had when I was here and the chance to do something bigger with my life but the graduation exam proved I don't actually belong with the Allied Ninja and I am not about to spend six more months of my life for another shot. I gave this Allied Ninja thing a fair shot, and it just didn't work out. I was planning to walk away from it all during the graduation ceremony, in fact, before this whole incident happened…" Mana looked around the site, seeing bright flames and smoke in the horizon illuminating the night's sky and making it look bright as early evening even this far away.</p><p>"You backstabbing cock-guzzler!" Supreme Leader growled, turning her head down and letting her spiky hair cover her seething face. "After all you've done for us, for the Allied Ninja, you think we're just gonna let you walk the fuck away from all this? From all the people you've helped save?"</p><p>Mana raised the front of her eyebrows, having heard something she didn't expect to hear.</p><p>"Mana, I've always known you to be incredibly strong. I never truly approved of you even going through this hassle of the prep courses. It's an awful waste of wonderful power. Strong ninja need to be on the field, moving mountains and defying impossible odds, and impressing mere mortals around them. You're one of the strong, Mana, therefore I never really cared about that chaff about grades and exams. Strength is the only truth, the absolute truth, and no amount of points or written tests can seal true strength in stone. Strength simply is, or it is not," regimental commander Harcel shrugged. "Quite frankly, most of the teachers who might have objected to this executive decision are dead right now, anyway."</p><p>"You're important to the Allied Ninja, Mana. Pass or fail, your name means something around the world. It attracts people whether or not you like it. Even if most of the people attracted by your name hate you, even if your name is polarizing, it still means a great deal. Now you've gone on and done something balls-licking crazy and sealed yourself a Tailed Beast. As if we can allow to let you walk away now, bitch!" Supreme Leader pumped her fist with a smirk on her face, encouraging Mana to turn around and stay.</p><p>"So deliciously strong. She could still unleash that monster upon us and break free if she wanted to. That's just the type of ninja we need around the Allied Ninja." Harcel licked his lips.</p><p>"Need…?" Mana muttered to herself. She couldn't sense so many familiar chakra signatures anymore. Most of the Allied Ninja that have been present for the graduation ceremony had been gone. She couldn't locate most of the familiar chakra signatures, no matter how hard she tried to.</p><p>"That's right, cunt, we fucking need your whiny ass!" the Supreme Leader took a step forward, extending her hand. "Look the fuck around you. We're the slimmest we've ever been and we've got more work on our hands and more enemies than ever. You're strong and your head's in the right fucking place. More fucking importantly–you've got a mother-fucking Tailed Beast in that ridiculous fucking hat of yours. That's a cock-sucking deterrent if I've ever seen one. Just you being around us and helping us out from time to time will save cum-squirts that're left of the Allied Ninja."</p><p>"Understood." Mana turned around and nodded, extending her hand and shaking it with the Supreme Leader. "I'll help you get the Allied Ninja back on their feet, Supreme Leader. Though I have little time to waste. I've got a World Magic Tour planned so you better give us a schedule that no other ninja team has worked before."</p><p>"Oh, you better fucking believe it, sister, it ain't happening any other way!" the Supreme Leader winked to the ninja magician while Mana sighed and returned to the Stars.</p><p>"What the hell just happened?" Skaven rubbed the back of his head.</p><p>"The Stars just became one of the top Allied Ninja units in the organization. We'll have to work our butts off because we're never going to see the end of assignments coming our way," Mana replied.</p><p>"What a hassle…" Skaven groaned.</p><p>"Well, we can kick back for today, at least until our leader wakes up," Mana sighed and turned to the still unconscious members of their cell. Slowly the selected location became an encampment for the Allied Ninja as surviving medical ninja raced all over the place for the roughest night they've had in a while. Something told Mana that Shige-H should have been thankful to have gotten knocked out…</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0762"><h2>762. A Bittersweet Return To The Stage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mana could hear her own shivering. No matter how hard she rubbed her sides, from the shoulder to her hands and her hands together, she couldn't feel anything. A temptation to send a spark of Fire Release ninjutsu somewhere harmless popped up, but it was just a sign of desperation. The more that Mana's unkempt, wet hair clung to her own freezing body, the worse it got, despite common sense suggesting that something covering her from the cold to a limited extent should help.</p><p>The door to a nearby incinerated room with a half caved in ceiling surrendered to one good shoulder push. It helped that Mana could barely feel that shoulder or any semblance of pain that should have resonated through it after she lobbed her entire body at the door like that. It was necessary, though. The door wouldn't work after the Four-Tails attack and this little room that Mana prepared for the magic show and after it was nowhere near being prioritized for repairs.</p><p>Finally, the pleasant feel of needles prodding her every pore and spreading warmth from within as she rubbed her body in a white blanket made Mana feel better. While still whimpering and shivering and barely controlling the finer aspects of mobility, the, as of now, yet again, stage magician found solace in the limited coverage of a rough, recently washed blanket. She should have used something more weathered and sweat-smelling, yet softer… Still, one would have been rude to complain about that which may have literally saved their life.</p><p>Shige's voice breached Mana's solitude from behind a few seconds before the medical ninja shoved the door and forced the unraveled tin shred against the floor making the equivalent of a calf being slain with a dull knife while its mouth was still being sewn shut of door opening noises. Mana wanted to hurry and get herself dressed so that she didn't have to stand before her cell leader in her underwear, but… In her defense, she was frozen today.</p><p>"I'll be ready for training soon enough, just give me five…" Mana managed to stutter out while rubbing the coarse blanket hard enough to warrant comparison to sandpaper.</p><p>"Don't rush, I just came to see how you were doing…" Shige-H put up her hands defensively, trying to shake off the accusations of being a strict squad leader. "I wouldn't be surprised if you skipped training today…"</p><p>"If I heard that every time I got frozen… That'd be the first time I've heard it…" Mana tried thinking up of something clever to say but she was freezing out of her mind so rubbing her temples that felt like something had been stabbing rapidly from within and trying to get out was the best she could muster at the moment.</p><p>"Seriously? You haven't been frozen before? Not even during practice?" Shige-H looked like she was about to say something entirely different before becoming oddly curious about this bombshell of a fact.</p><p>"Nope. Didn't even rehearse this trick," Mana shook her head, feeling glad that she could put her body through that much exercise. This gave her a headache-inducing idea. The stage magician slipped out from her lone savior blanky and jumped onto her arms, forcing blood to pump all over her stressed arms and flood up and down her circulation circle by doing a few overhead push-ups.</p><p>"Are you serious? You could have gotten yourself killed? Mana, you can't even call that which you did today "tricks". It's not stage magic, it's a bunch of stunts," Shige-H went for the jugular while observing the magician's scar-spangled back and arms that looked like they wore scars for tattoos. More than a handful of punctures that were yet to cover with scar tissue decorated Mana's body while she resumed her trembling shortly after standing back on her own two legs.</p><p>"That's rich. You know that to criticize a show you have to have seen it, at the very least, right?" Mana turned to her friend while slipping into her shirt.</p><p>"Mana… We have seen the show. I have a feeling that you know that." Shige-H softened her tone.</p><p>"You're right, I'm sorry. It was easy to pick out the only handful of faces I know from an empty hall…" Mana made a quirky grimace while shrugging with her right shoulder and buttoning up. This was a real low-blow for a return to the stage. She had hoped to lift some absolutely ruined spirits with some stage magic but while she somewhat exaggerated with her defensive sarcasm just now, the halls used to be fuller back in Konoha where people literally would have liked it better if she choked on her breakfast and didn't recover.</p><p>"Look, Mana… I've heard about your show. I've never seen you during your prime as a stage magician, but I've had it described to me with vivid detail. The flashy act, the positive attitude that makes you want to go on with your life and pump your fists when the skies are pouring their hardest. The unbelievable spectacle, the illusions that make you question if you're actually sitting on a chair or if you're up in the clouds somehow… I've been told that even the smoke you used had vivid colors." Shige-H kept avoiding Mana's inquisitive glare as she looked up at the ceiling and the massive hole where it had collapsed, which was the only source of light in the room as if visualizing the phenomenon of energetic entertainment that she described.</p><p>"Sounds like someone I know…" Mana weaved a ribbon like a dressmaker worked a needle before grabbing the sandpaper-blanky and rubbing her chilly hair with it until her hands were crackling with static electricity yet even that crackling sensation felt like a step up from not feeling her own toes when she stepped in glass. "I'm just… I'm exploring new avenues of the craft. Can't really expect me to be the same all the time. That's how an act goes stale."</p><p>"Look, you've hurt a man, and you went to prison for it. You've seen your dearest friends whom you've trusted your life with say they don't want to know your sassy ass from the Hokage. You've been through a lot of hardship and it's hard to find that spark, that belief in the fact that life's worth it. It's hard to believe what you're preaching, I get it, so you just snap your teeth shut and keep fighting what you see as the good fight, hoping that maybe, one day, things will be the same again. All I'm saying is… There's a massive difference between uncoordinated, deadly stunt work and flamboyant extravaganza so don't expect the same reaction to both either." Shige-H walked up to Mana and pressed her hand to the magician's shoulder, leaning down a bit to feel like their eyes were on the same level.</p><p>Something was wrong. A loud shriek that lasted just for a second and a flash of white washed over Mana. For a blink… Just for a blink. It felt like it had been Meiko holding her hand on Mana's shoulder and talking to her. When the struggling stage magician looked up again, Shige-H had been reaching out to her with a worried face.</p><p>"It's fine… I just…" Mana muttered.</p><p>"You got your ass frozen without practicing the trick first and knowing if you could take it, yeah… That's the point," Shige-H sassed Mana with her hands on her hips. "I told the rest of the cell to take a day off. They could use it after all that's happened. I figured that I'd need to scan you over once or twice after this shitshow."</p><p>"I don't like chakra augmentation so sometimes I don't augment myself enough. It's a whole thing, it isn't a disease or anything, it's just a mental condition. It has burned me before…" Mana excused herself while slipping into her leather jacket and sifting through her hair.</p><p>"Just because it's psychological doesn't mean you don't need help for it, Mana. You shut yourself into an iron-maiden and used its mirror screen to cast an illusion onto yourself while you were in a straightjacket. You're giving me a heart attack if you're telling me you might not have augmented yourself for that trick to not get skewered when that deathtrap shut closed." Shige-H struck a motherly pose.</p><p>"It was supposed to snap shut fourteen seconds later. That was fine, I left myself thirty-two seconds of leisure escape time because I haven't practiced that trick either…" Mana shrugged.</p><p>"You'd sound a lot cooler if you weren't leaking from all the puncture wounds where you've shut the iron maiden halfway onto yourself to make escaping harder…" Shige-H sat down on the table while Mana collected all of her equipment with her.</p><p>"Look, I get it. I just wanted to do something good for the Allied Ninja. I've been wanting to get back into my magic shows for a long time now so I figured that maybe it would help pick up morale after our entire base got ripped apart by a titanic monkey chakra demon. I didn't know that I've lost a few steps here or there and… I should have guessed. I guess I recalled all the good times and the highs and I just felt invincible and… I just wasn't." Mana sighed, pocketing her hands both because she was embarrassed and because she wanted to tuck them into something to feel warmer. "Anyway, don't forget that talk we had after your lies were exposed. This feels an awful lot like you sinking your fangs in me as you did to Tomi."</p><p>"Mana!" Shige-H lashed at the magician with her voice just because she lacked the restraint in her to pull back her punch enough not to splatter the weary and frostbitten friend of hers all over this rundown room if she threw a wallop.</p><p>"I don't need your sympathy or your check-up. You better touch up on yourself instead." Mana turned away and leaned over a table, acting like she was looking for something when in fact she just didn't want Shige-H to see how embarrassed she was for letting it slip out.</p><p>This suggestion wasn't entirely unwarranted, though. While Shige-H received substantial medical help to treat her burns, the medical ninja didn't waste invaluable energy to treat her scars much more thoroughly than just to ensure her best physical condition. As long as the scars didn't affect her performance as per their estimation–they let Shige-H work on herself if she felt like treating them. The Stars leader worked on them a decent bit. She styled up her hair too, which got partly singed off by the wall of fire that Tomi pulled her out of as her ultimate act of forgiveness and good faith.</p><p>"Look, Mana…" Shige-H sighed and crossed up her own hands underneath her fur coat. "It seemed more than a little to me after watching that routine of yours that maybe you wanted to get hurt like maybe you hoped to entertain those people by letting them see you flirt with death and suffer. Just tell me I'm wrong and that'll be it. We can hit the bricks, we can train together or you can just tell me to flip off, your call, just let me know this one thing."</p><p>"But… They all hate my guts. Shouldn't they love that sort of thing?" Mana turned to Shige-H with her eyes sunken and her lip whimpering from some sensitivity, choking her up from the inside rather than merely feeling cold.</p><p>"Mana…" tears leaked out and ran down Mana's cheeks when Shige wrapped her arms around Mana and pressed her, squeezing them out. "You saved all of our lives and you risked your own to do that. I think it's safe to say that your assessment is more than a bit outdated. If anything, they're just as worried about you as I am. So… Yeah… If my friend is trying to kill herself on stage and hurts herself just to validate other people's hatred that doesn't even exist in the first place, yeah, I will do everything I can to fix that. Even if that means going back on my promise to you."</p><p>"I'm sorry…" Mana muttered. "Tomi… She… She thought of me as an older sister and… I've played along with that illusion way more than I should have."</p><p>"That's okay," Shige-H rubbed Mana's back.</p><p>"I had the seal. I had the power to seal away the Four-Tails I just… I could have raised those pillars sooner if I just… That monstrous chakra, I've sensed nothing like that so I just…" Mana could barely understand what she was whining about herself but Shige-H just kept on rubbing. It felt… Warm. Warmer.</p><p>"Don't do that to yourself. You keep doing it, you're a chakra sensor, vast chakra signatures are dangerous and they feel overwhelming to you and you stood before some of the largest chakra sources in the world. If you could have raised those pillars sooner, you would have. I know that because I know you. I'm a snake who did her research before slithering up to all of you and uniting us, remember?" Shige-H pulled Mana off herself and gazed into her as if trying to gaze right through the magician.</p><p>"Yeah… I guess I do always do this to myself. I don't know, it just feels like… Maybe… If I grill myself hard enough, maybe I'll grill myself into shape and… Next time… Next time it won't happen anymore. I'll stop failing people and letting them die." Mana rubbed her swelling up eyes at her crude leather sleeves.</p><p>"Man… There really shouldn't ever be a next time for any of us. I think one time when you have to step up or see people close to you die is one time too many for a lifetime already and yet… Whenever you feel like grilling yourself over this, just try to think for a second about all the people you ended up helping. The people that are worried as hell about you when you ask a Yuki clansman to seal a high-ranking ninjutsu technique of theirs into your card so that you can freeze yourself alive and thaw yourself out in front of a crowd with no chakra augmentation." Shige-H let go of Mana after nudging her shoulder with a knuckle gently and approaching the revolting steel sheet door to peel it off and gesture an invitation for Mana to come with.</p><p>"You said you were up for some training?" Mana looked up, realizing that with the crystals of drying tears still frozen in the corners of her eyes, she looked like a begging puppy.</p><p>"Come on, sister, you can't be that itching for punishment! We've just had a talk about you not doing this to yourself." Shige-H flexed her arm while smirking with half of her lips to tease her friend.</p><p>"I was thinking about settling things with you once and for all. You know, I've just… I've been in my fair share of cells throughout my career, but I can't recall one that I've led myself. Got to start somewhere. Plus, I was technically the one to negotiate with the Supreme Leader our new commendable position as a trusty premier squad for the reforming Allied Ninja," Mana teased her friend right back.</p><p>"Alright, alright, you want to call up the guys, make it official?" Shige-H raised her eyebrows, playing along with Mana's tease. "I'm a humble and honorable leader, I listen to all of your whines and I accept all challengers for my position."</p><p>"I wouldn't want to hurt your pride. We both know that deep down you're softer than Endo…" Mana shrugged after her coup de grâce with her ears flooding with her friend's laughter while the two trekked across hole-ridden halls toward the nearest decimated wasteland that was once a luscious and impressive training ground.</p><p>"Mana…"</p><p>"Yeah…"</p><p>"You know you can call me just Shige, right?"</p><p>"Is that how that works? Do I need to get permission? I've just been dropping that part left and right, maybe that's why Kumogakure folks were so stuck up with me?"</p><p>"Smartass…"</p><hr/><p>"Okay… Now I'm genuinely glad that we didn't get the guys here to train. This feels kind of embarrassing!" Shige yelled out, rubbing her elbow as she rose back on her feet after yet another trip up. In the good twenty minutes that they've been sparring, Shige-H hadn't landed one blow on Mana despite her best attempts.</p><p>"Your fighting style is very interesting. It appears to be centered on thinking your forearms are maces with rocks attached to the end and trying to smash your opponent with them…" Mana teased her friend while extending her hand to help her up since Shige had fallen down so many times by now that she might have genuinely needed help as before she just kicked back up and went right back at it.</p><p>"They teach medical ninja evasion, sort of like yours, but I've seen no one fight as you do. It's like you don't show any aggression whatsoever, let your opponent trip up, and then explode all at once with a counterattack. The heavier I wind up, the harder I get hit back…" Shige observed.</p><p>"Don't feel bad about it–as you've said, your fighting style's supposed to be more defensive and evasive, just like mine, so you were fighting a losing battle by pressing on the offensive. That flashy fists thing, very loud, very impressive," Mana placed her hands on her hips, stretching out her lips like a lioness commending a cub for squirting out a measly roar.</p><p>"That's right, I let you win on purpose, just to help you feel better about yourself after freezing yourself. Anyway, there's a reason I showed it to you. I figured maybe it warranted a better showcase than this but I hit you with it you'd have dissolved on a microscopic level so… I think it's time that I help you learn an Advanced Bloodline, Mana, just like my Unmaker Fist." Shige flexed her arm again, igniting the Unmaker flare around it for a second.</p>
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<a name="section0763"><h2>763. The Next Stage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"An Advanced Bloodline? I've been trying to pull it off for a while now but I've not gone one step further than where I've started at. It might just be that I'm not talented enough for it," Mana replied to Shige's seemingly preposterous proposition. "I've even asked around of other ninja with Advanced Bloodlines and it hasn't really cleared up for me."</p><p>"Nonsense!" Shige-H flexed her arm with a cheerful expression. "How many Nature Releases have you picked up on by now?"</p><p>"Three…" Mana scratched the back of her elbow, looking away. While she knew that having control over three entire elements in ninjutsu was not a common trait amongst ninja, where many struggled to master one and the more experienced ninja settled on two, somehow this only made her feel worse about it. Almost as if nature dealt a much better hand to her than most and still failed to even begin touching up on her Advanced Bloodline ability.</p><p>"And, if memory serves, your Elemental Affinity is Fire Release, right? And yet it was the last Nature Release you've picked up on… That means that you've learned two whole Nature Releases other than the ones you had an affinity for before you've tapped into the right one." Shige-H pointed out. "That's basically unheard of amongst ninja."</p><p>"Yeah, I've had a lot of trouble picking up ninjutsu. I've been pretty average in the Academy and even after I've graduated it took me a long time for my ninjutsu to be anything but flash and smoke," Mana shrugged, still failing to find Shige's eyes. "Others seemed to pick up on a handful of ninjutsu techniques, even a few of their Elemental Affinity right out of the gate whereas I've been hanging my head against the wall up until the last days in the Academy."</p><p>"But you broke through that wall! Not only did you tear that wall down, but you also did it in style. You've picked up on two whole elements and you didn't let a ridiculous rule like your distaste for jutsu other people created get in the way!" Shige-H raised her hands over her head. This must have been the first time that she has worked so hard to convince someone to let her teach them something as incredible as an Advanced Bloodline.</p><p>"Sure, I've had over a dozen jutsu thought up after the Academy, but it took all the way until the finals of the Chuunin Exams for me to polish them. They were just a child's first, smoked pancake in the pan. I couldn't stop myself from nearly getting killed or even worse–getting someone else killed." Mana shrugged it off. She looked down and to the right, tracking an invisible dotted line up to the murky skies as she wondered why she was resisting this much against something she wanted so hard.</p><p>Maybe it was just that this is the closest she's ever gotten to professional help in the subject. If this fails–that would seal the deal. That would mean that Mana was officially useless in this department and that an Advanced Bloodline simply wasn't in the cards for her. It wasn't like her genetics were entirely a dead-end. She was, after all, a sensor ninja. Several Nature Releases available to ninja were also part of their genetics as well, at least half as much as talent and hard work was. And yet... An Advanced Bloodline was a gold nugget of a whole other category to those things.</p><p>"It doesn't matter, you were barely ten when you worked on those jutsu, of course, they'd be a bit lacking by your current standards! My points still stand, Mana, like it or not–you're crazy talented and you're a hard worker too! The sky's the limit in where you can get. Just because you're not a part of some amazing clan doesn't mean you can't be amazing in your own right. Everyone's born a little amazing in some way. Being born plain is about as unlikely as being born a once-in-a-generation genius. Don't lose faith in yourself and your abilities." Shige reached out to Mana.</p><p>"When I've spoken to Mollay-san, he taught me a thing or two on where to start with Advanced Bloodlines. He told me that in order to even begin training an Advanced Bloodline, one must master the composing elements to where using them is like waving your hand. I've been honing my elemental ninjutsu during training but… It just doesn't feel like I'm much further than I've been six months ago." Mana pouted, shutting in on herself.</p><p>"That's because you've been doing this all wrong, sister!" Shige-H winked. "Mollay misjudged your abilities. Your fundamentals are already solid and he told you to polish that which is already a work of art. I see that you've been polishing your statue hard enough to chip off its nose, you've lost your confidence, and that's why you can't proceed. You're already way past that stage, Mana. You need to start on the next one."</p><p>"The next one?" Mana widened her eyes, failing to close her lips as they continued to hang half-parted, even when her mouth had already closed.</p><p>"Yeah, you can train your Nature Releases all you want and it won't amount to anything. You need to visualize what you're trying to accomplish with your Advanced Bloodline, create a concept that molds together two properties of the comprising elements, and then bring it to life. It's a lot easier when you're basing your element on something like Lava–it has the consistency of Earth Release and the blaze of Fire Release, it's easy to visualize so it is the child's play of Advanced Bloodlines to make happen to some shape or form." Shige-H explained.</p><p>"I see… Two properties…" Mana muttered, staring down at her hands as she tried to wrap her head around this new hurdle in her way.</p><p>"It doesn't have to be just two properties. It's going to be tougher to combine multiple properties though. Just try to look at it this way–you know how to employ fire already. You know how to employ wind too. So, you can just try to imagine what it is like to create heat while you use the widespread range and consistency of the wind to create a scorching airwave and call it Heatwave Release, or something…" Shige-H suggested with an example.</p><p>"Hmm… It's going to be tough coming up with a combination that works. Obviously, I will not go for the easy opportunities or steal your idea…" Mana scratched her chin.</p><p>"Why is that even a worry you have…?" Shige's eye twitched.</p><p>"I'd like to try something out but even if I would pull something off, it would be meaningless unless I can use it in battle. Would you please spar with me again as I try to discover my Advanced Bloodline ability?" Mana clapped her hands together and bowed.</p><p>"Sure, I'm not holding back though for those mean bumps you gave me earlier!" Shige-H beamed out an ecstatic smile. "With you working through the creative process in the heat of our sparring, I can finally wail on you and put some of my own licks in!"</p><hr/><p>Skaven stood atop of a freshly repaired wooden bridge hanging over a dug-out ridge for a little creek to run under it. The entire field around him looked rather barren and also… Quite orderly and militaristic. What with all the trees neatly planted in a perfect square, lined up both vertically and horizontally, but nothing came of them yet. Just sprouts. In a few years, this place might prove a serene retreat, just like it once was.</p><p>"I figured I'd find you here," a voice lingered in the air before a light tap of leather boots snuffed it out and a figure in a white coat that encompassed its entire body landed at the southern edge of the bridge. As the man straightened himself out, he fixed his coat a bit. The man's gloved hands brushed through his ivory-colored vest and a black shirt, moving the coat back as preparation for vexatious physical activity that might prove it to be too hot for him otherwise.</p><p>"Really? Right where you asked me to come in your love letter or whatever…? What a surprise…" Skaven rolled his eyes as he pulled out an envelope and shook it in front of him before flinging it aside, flapping it onto the surface of the creek, and letting the water carry the envelope away and dissolve it at the same time.</p><p>"It's a challenge!" the masked man objected, passionately raising his fist and removing a cowboy-style hat to let his shoulder-long red hair fall over his shoulders. Since the man's beak-shaped mask only covered the top half of his face, his light stubble was available to anyone that cared to admire it. "I challenged you to a one-on-one fight. An honorable duel until one of us can't or doesn't want to go on!"</p><p>"You know, I kind of thought it would be one of the Allied Ninja to send this challenge. After all, who else would have the ability to roam freely around the compound while it is at its hottest? I came here to tell them to go fuck themselves in person. Me not recognizing a single feature in you is pretty interesting though, I won't lie…" Skaven rustled his wild, greasy hair while his eyes drew a gulp of vigor that they rarely see. "Fine. If I beat you, you'll tell me who you are and if you have anything to do with the memories that I asked Mana to delete. Something about what that assassin said to me keeps me up at night. I don't remember being a part of the Black Ops and yet… He was really persistent."</p><p>"Deal." The masked man nodded and adopted a wide fighting stance, hopping and switching between two legs as to which served as the dominant one while the man held his hands raised to his chest and stretched out just wide enough for this openness to serve as a challenge to lunge toward the open center.</p><p>"Humph…" Skaven mumbled before leaning down. "Shadow Clutch Jutsu!" he chanted out as his shadow extended outward, expanding into a goopy mass that then became a large, vertical hand reaching out to grab the mysterious challenger whole.</p><p>Even as Skaven saw his shadowy hand grab hold of the man and clutch him like a frightened critter inside. Instead of a pleasant, bony crunch, he heard a loud pop and sifting smoke. The Nara clansman didn't linger on his failed attack, choosing to undo his jutsu to regain full mobility instead. As the hand collapsed like a melting chocolate construct, a lone hat twirled out from its grasp, the object with which the enigmatic challenger substituted himself with.</p><p>This challenger showed off a desire not to showcase any of his abilities, which intrigued Skaven, and the Nara punk was not an easy man to intrigue or even interest, for that matter. Most ninja reserved the Substitution Jutsu as their clutch card. Their hidden ace. Substitution was a low-ranking, extremely useful jutsu that any ninja right out of the Academy knew. It was tremendously handy, but it also was only usable once in a while because of the requirement of a specific object to replace oneself with and the strain on one's muscles when skipping and hopping through space to replace oneself with said object.</p><p>For this masked dandy to use the Substitution Jutsu right out of the gate, it was an odd fighting style, to say the least.</p><p>The sound of fluttering came first. It was an alarm that gave Skaven ample time to backflip and roll aside and avoid the diving kick and the following up flurry of strikes from the attacker. Despite how hefty and awkward this long coat looked and how clunky it must have been to fight with it, the masked man still wore it and the reason soon became apparent to Skaven when the edge of the coat flashed just a tad over his head, splitting a few of his hairs which prompted the Nara to put an even greater width of space between the two dueling ninja.</p><p>"If you're going to hold back, why challenge me in the first place?" Skaven groaned while stretching his neck out. "There's no way you became this skilled at taijutsu and this fast by just swatting at people with a blade-tipped coat."</p><p>"Well, you've already crumbled my hat." The challenger admitted, adopting a different fighting stance now, placing his right leg forward while he bent his hands by the elbow and held his forearms up, the right one out in the front and ahead of the left one.</p><p>"You're no Black Ops, that much is for certain, yet you're going through way too much trouble to hide everything about your true skills and identity. The mystery and suspense are the only things still keeping me here with the disrespect you've shown to me until now," Skaven complained while kneeling on his left leg and preparing to engage his enemy when they would collide again.</p><p>"Oh? What gave me away?" the challenger tipped the left side of his lips.</p><p>"A Black Ops member would never agree to tell anything about themselves. Black Ops restrain their members with Curse Seals of silence so a Black Ops would have immediately let me know that. Sure, you could make the case that one could have just lied, but if Ion's father was true and I was a Black Ops and you were another agent confronting me about that business, you'd have had no reason not to be honest with me." Skaven pointed out.</p><p>"That's a fair point, I'll have to remember this in the future…" the challenger grinned.</p><p>"The future?" Skaven wondered, but it was too late. By that point the masked challenger had lunged right at him, chopping and kicking at him, but Skaven's own forearms and calves met his challenger every time with equal force. "Shadow Clone Possession Jutsu!" Skaven chanted out as the version of him that was engaging his challenger bubbled and rustled as if filled with hot air from within.</p><p>Alarmed, the masked challenger took it on his back foot but he was too late as the shadow clone sealed with Nara hijutsu burst and created a shadowy blob on the ground that stretched out in a line that cut right past the challenger's shadow until it connected with Skaven's own shadow, right behind the challenger who stood in between Skaven's true self and his shadowy shadow clone. With that chain of shadows intertwining, the masked attacker was completely under Skaven's control.</p><p>"You're not going to win if you don't fight seriously, with your actual fighting style. If you want to lose and tell me what I want to know so much, may as well just give up and tell me." Skaven rubbed his neck while rolling his eyes.</p><p>"I said… We will fight until… One of us either can't… Or doesn't want to…" the masked challenger growled through the effort required of him to move.</p><p>"Suit yourself, man…" Skaven groaned as he dived right up to the masked man and swatted upward with his palm. The Nara's hand was stiff enough to send his opponent off the ground a few meters while Skaven jumped off and spun around, adding a bit more momentum to the flying kick straight to the middle of the enigmatic dandy's spine.</p><p>While this aerial attack interrupted the shadow possession, the damage and the rampant nervous impulses in his opponent's spine made the man's movements rather sluggish and imprecise. It was because of that that Skaven rushed in right in front of his fallen opponent and punt him right to the lower chin, which raised the masked man off the ground slightly and prepared him to go all across the peaceful retreat. Skaven added on to this process, however, with a turning butt of his sole to the core of the man's face, which smashed his mask and sent him flying back and crashing through a handful of feeble, young trees.</p><p>The Nara dived on his left knee, extending a line of shadowy hands that pushed his fallen opponent off the ground just hard enough to stand him back up while still as wobbly as ever. Using this opportunity, Skaven dashed in for a few more precise chops to the neck and abdomen of his opponent, before he turned around, smacking his opponent in the throat as if his hands and forearms were blades. Cartwheeling back, Skaven flung his stunned opponent off the ground before kneeling on his left and weaving his fingers together.</p><p>"Shadow Prison Jutsu!" he yelled out as his signature shadowy bubble surrounded his dazed opponent in mid-air, leaving him suspended and unable to move without expending a grand deal of stamina and wearying his focus to the edge. A focused stream of light penetrated through the shadow as a potent beam but died out soon thereafter. The challenger flopped down on the ground with a busted nose and looked back up at his opponent.</p><p>"Not bad. But not quite the best either, was it?" the challenger muttered. A large, scorched hole beamed in the side pocket of his coat, suggesting that it was from within that pocket that this powerful beam of light burst through.</p><p>"You've shown it. For a second there. Your true colors." Skaven took a fighting stance again, one mirroring the one that his opponent took the last time. The stance of a taijutsu style taught amongst the Allied Ninja though one native to Kirigakure–the Sharp Palm. A more elegant and deceitful counterpart to Konoha's own Strong Fist style of taijutsu.</p><p>This man could have only been an Allied Ninja or an agent of Kirigakure, and he was not an Allied Ninja that Skaven had seen before. As unlikely as it might have seemed for a Kirigakure ninja to have snuck into the Allied Ninja compound at this time, it was a more likely choice compared to there being an Allied Ninja whom Skaven was entirely unfamiliar with, not even with their face. Everything about this masked challenger was an enigma, and it was that detective mystery that kept Skaven engaged through and through.</p><p>"The Sharp Palm is an assassination taijutsu style. Yet you use a modified form of it, you're not going for the kill here even though you do not know who I am and I might be dangerous to you and your organization. That is why you lack the properties of what defines the best." The masked challenger claimed.</p><p>"From what few moves you showed me, you use the same modified form. That is why we were evenly matched when we first clashed. As long as I have my true fighting style to rely on while you try to conceal yours, I'll always beat you to the punch, though. I have no reason to try to kill you because you pose no threat to either me or the Allied Ninja," Skaven replied as the two prepared to settle their matter.</p>
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<a name="section0764"><h2>764. Handicaps</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Skaven and his challenger took off at each other at the same time, almost as if they were men of the same blood. Brothers in arms, of a sort. Both started out with the same move as well, taking it up and throwing a backward sole stamp while turning. The Sharp Palm was a subtle style, a scalpel amongst stones, swords, and hammers. This particular move was the lone hammer in the fold–an opener of even the stoutest defenses so that the fearsome assassination style could reign free.</p><p>Much to his surprise, it was Skaven who flew back and fell flat on his back, doing his best to repurpose the momentum into a back roll. Such was truly the case that the skill of both him and his challenger was on par. The deciding factor of this collision wasn't a difference in skill. It was brute strength. This dandy ginger just threw a meaner foot stamp, that was all. That was why Skaven flew back and his opponent fumbled back on his feet and salvaged his descent, rushing in to exploit his opening.</p><p>A loud pop demanded Skaven's attention as he hustled to get into a proper stance to defend himself. It came from something that hid behind a cloud of dust at the moment but when a stiff, hardwood object swung with the aerial shriek of a mallet in-motion and socked Skaven right in the back of his head, jerking his belfry downward, the challenger literally hammered the point of his fighting style of choice inside of Skaven's head.</p><p>"A cane?" Skaven thought to himself. "The man fights with a walking cane?"</p><p>Seeing how such a crude yet simple tool, not meant for the task at hand, was not sufficient for bringing Skaven down entirely. The dapper challenger kicked with his left leg, aiming low. A stiff shot at the back of the middle section of his right leg tripped Skaven up and further squandered his balance. That was when the air began brushing against Skaven's hair and ears and his head began wringing. Only the pain in the Nara's chin reminded the punk of the flawless backflip kick that his opponent performed before striking a pose with his cane. Just an inch away from landing, the classy man swung again in an uppercut, as if aiming to cut Skaven through in half with his walking stick.</p><p>Skaven coughed up blood as if felt like his eyes and his teeth would check out and walk away right out of his sockets and mouth. The Nara grunted down on his knees as he clutched his busted gut while his challenger swung his cane around and deposited it under his armpit, punching and kicking from the shoulder with a stout sense of balance to his footing. Skaven hadn't met a hand-to-hand combatant with such perfect footwork. While important, footwork was more essential to swordsmen rather than brawlers who could grapple from a low position or perform acrobatics from high and didn't rely nearly as much on balance for perfect execution of their techniques.</p><p>Tossing his cane up into the air with a showy manner, the dapper gent grabbed hold of the other end of it and strut onward, swinging it around bravely, intending to knock Skaven out with his walking tool. It became difficult to follow the flurry of strikes as Skaven stumbled back, seeing stars from the various points of impact. With each strike, the cane let out a gruesome thud that appeared to test its own integrity at all times. Had it not been for chakra coating, such brutish impact would have shattered the cane into shreds needle-thin.</p><p>The man wasn't entirely without a flaw in his form. However, Skaven caught a moment when he delivered an upper strike, rising from the floor to the bottom of Skaven's chin. While the Nara punk took the impact and fell the despicable, iron taste of blood in his mouth from it while the crunch of it shook up the teeth in his gums from their roots, the trajectory was flawed for it allowed Skaven to reestablish his own sense of balance and stand back up on the ground in term of the footwork of his own. Immediately after this strike the Nara shifted his feet around and brought himself back into the bash.</p><p>With a rushing upper palm strike, Skaven disoriented his opponent, smacked his head back, and distracted his eyes just for a moment. Skaven knew it wouldn't last, for he had just recovered from just such an assault. That was why the Nara used his hard-earner time of his opponent's daze better by jumping up and sole-butting with a spinning sole stamp, shattering his opponent's stance at once while Skaven jabbed with his palms as if they were the tips of knives that he was relentlessly thrusting at the throat of the spry sir.</p><p>Evening his upper body with a perfectly static thrust kick, Skaven socked in the center of his opponent's chest and threw him back. Not content with just this much punishment, the Nara punk rolled right back into the mix with palms raised up. The dainty challenger tried to respond to Skaven's aggression with thrusts of his cane, but Skaven rolled around the object, weaving like a true close-range bruiser until he moved in too close for comfort when fighting with a cane.</p><p>An upper smack threw his opponent's attention off. Skaven repeated it twice to strengthen the effect because he needed time to execute his follow-up. What he started as yet another upper slap, the Nara transitioned into a rotational chop with palms of both his arms before transitioning further into a windmill kick and taking a kneeling stance.</p><p>"Shadow Slam Jutsu!" Skaven chanted out, sending a wave of shadows rushing toward his opponent but the man was no longer there when the wave washed in his previous location, having moved out of the range and avoided being entangled into the wave and crushed to the dirt alongside it before it dispersed. "So, you've finally shown me something? You're a genuine mystery, you know that? Wearing a storage seal around your wrist, under the sleeve of your shirt yet storing nothing but a walking cane that isn't custom made for fighting inside it. I'm not sure if you're mocking me or testing me for something."</p><p>"You're right to a point. I may have underestimated you. I've never been a fan of you so I may have let my personal feelings think that beating you down to a pulp won't be that much of a challenge. This will teach me I need to prepare better in the future." The clean challenger cracked his neck and knuckles while holding his cane under his armpit and slipping it into his hand as he poked it out like a rapier after he was done whipping himself back into fighting shape.</p><p>"In the future…?" Skaven muttered to himself.</p><p>Just as his opponent prepared to lunge at him with his cane in hand, Skaven weaved his hands together while taking a knee and sent a line of his shadow extending toward his opponent. While the man's eyes clearly followed the line of shadow, the object of his close observation warded off to the side, prompting the elegant cane-fighter to falter in his resolve to keep on advancing. By the time that the ginger turned to his right to follow the line of shadows, it was too late for him.</p><p>"There is more than one thing that has a shadow to connect with. Shadow Prison Jutsu!" Skaven yelled out, expanding the shadowy mass into a bubble, carrying boulders and debris right out of the ground. The young trees cast a feeble shadow over the ground they covered in hair-thin shade, though the Nara hijutsu were more than capable of expanding that shadowy area, as long as there was a shadow to connect with.</p><p>The challenger braced for impact, taking a mean brush of a ripped chunk of the dirt that carried him away and left the dapper gent covered in dirty scrapes. The man picked himself off the ground, wiping dust and dirt off his face, picking his cane back up, and taking a fighting stance. For how dashing the man had tried to make himself out to be, Skaven would have believed him to be of a frailer fighting spirit.</p><p>"Your breathing is picking up. What's the matter? Used a decent bit of your chakra already, haven't you?" the challenger noticed. Skaven raised his eyebrow. While the man formed his address as a question, it certainly didn't sound like much of an inquiry, rather it was somewhat of a mockery that didn't require confirmation.</p><p>"Does he know my approximate chakra capacity? How? I can't be giving out that many signs of chakra exhaustion yet…" Skaven wondered to himself before the man took off again. With a crude grunt, the Nara took a knee again and weaved his hands together, sending out a line of shadows toward his opponent. Once again, the man's eyes darted off toward the floor. It was as if he knew what he had to look out for and when Skaven's jutsu would have connected with him.</p><p>Somehow, the Nara had to use all the tricks in his book to succeed. The shadowy line splintered into a spark-like shower of thinner threads, and all of them disappeared in minor crevices in the dried dirt underneath. Thinking he had evaded the shadowy embrace or rather having figured out that he needed to rush through this, Skaven's challenger lunged further, dashing past the shadowy line as he threw himself toward Skaven while he was still using his Nara hijutsu.</p><p>"Shadow Prison Jutsu…" Skaven chanted, as the emerging shadowy treads molded back into a singular mass, emerging from crevices where bulbs of trees not yet planted will go soon enough. A massive, dark bubble lifted off the ground with Skaven's challenger still inside it. "Release!" Skaven yelled out, dispelling the shadowy mass in a hefty blast. It was as if it was a water balloon flung against a wall as it imploded within itself with immense pressure, squeezing anything or anyone trapped within out from the rising, tremendous crushing force.</p><p>"You're using Transformation Jutsu, aren't you?" Skaven fixed the collar of his jacket as he stood back up and observed his fallen opponent. "Your clothes, your appearance, no matter how much damage you take in this bout, it all seems the same. Almost as if you're not actually wearing them and you've transformed into them. It's not a dazzling idea to sustain a Transformation Jutsu during a fight, it sort of ties your hands behind your back in terms of other jutsu you can use."</p><p>That was when the pleasant popping sound followed by a lively cloud of dust swallowed Skaven's challenger. As the man had suffered huge damage from Skaven's improvised dissolution of his usually more supplementary and supportive Shadow Prison Jutsu, he had fallen into a state where he could either no longer sustain the transformation or he merely realized what Skaven had been telling him this whole time–that he couldn't win against his opponent while under hefty handicaps such as having to hide his true fighting style and disguise his appearance.</p><p>"N-No way… You? What the hell are you doing here, you dumbass?" Skaven beamed a serious glare at his opponent, having shaken off the apathetic squint that he carried himself around with. A twitching, ghastly figure rose from the ground, bleeding profusely but expelling powerful chakra that molded with the man's dark nature and sustained his miraculous return to fighting form. The true face of Skaven's battered challenger twisted in wrath like that of a growling dog and it became apparent that the Nara ended up facing a violent and rabid animal and not a man.</p><hr/><p>Shige extended her hand to Mana. It was difficult to see it at first, as the magician's vision had become blurry from the roughhousing that she suffered at her sparring partner's hand. While deep down Mana knew Shige wanted her to stumble into the concept for her Advanced Bloodline and successfully use it in battle, some part of Mana wondered if this wasn't also a genuine attempt of Shige to get back at her fellow Stars member for having humbled the leader of Stars earlier.</p><p>"You know, it'd be a lot easier to think and work my magic if you weren't beating on my face the entire time." Mana accepted Shige's hand, and the leader hoisted her ally and friend back up on her feet.</p><p>"Doesn't feel so great when you're the one being handicapped, huh?" Shige smiled at Mana, looking as rich as someone whose face someone had etched onto a coin.</p><p>"Just saying…" Mana winked a few times of her own will, decisively, trying to shake off the feeling of multiplying vision and wobbly legs. "I'm not sure I even know what I want to accomplish with my Advanced Bloodline yet."</p><p>"I didn't want to tell you this but there was absolutely no chance that you'd make something work right now," Shige-H sighed with hands over her hips. "Talented as you are, if you just started using an Advanced Bloodline release out of nowhere just because you knew what you wanted to do with it, it would have squandered all the luck and goodwill you had reserved for the rest of your life. It took me an entire year until I could make the Unmaker Fist work even after I knew exactly what properties of what elements it would borrow and what it was meant to be."</p><p>"I just… I don't know where I should even start with the concept for my Advanced Bloodline ability. Using the devastating and shocking power of Lightning Release with the free and flexible nature of Wind Release might be an interesting combination…"</p><p>"That'd be a pain. Wind Release is supposed to be strong against Lightning Release, so you'd have to strike the right balance of the two where your Wind Release doesn't dispel the Lightning Release. You have no idea how difficult it is to make Wind Release and Fire Release work together without blowing everything up in your face." Shige-H said while stretching out with awkward, weary moves and nodding back toward the compound of the Allied Ninja.</p><p>The place had currently become just a fenced-off camp filled with tents of varied sizes as the Four-Tails had blown away more than half of their previous hive-shaped facility and it would have been simpler to rebuild than to repair the old one and still make it safe for educational and administrational usage. For now, the Allied Ninja were just a military compound under the wasteland sky. The organization had been at their weakest they've ever been and around half of the surviving members had to scout the various directions of the wasteland for potential raiders of one of the ninja villages had decided to wipe an organization that defied their authority out for good.</p><p>It was especially a headache-inducing worry knowing how gung ho Kumogakure had been lately. Having recently completely conquered and submitted Iwagakure to their will, they may have been looking for their next challenge to flex their impressive military might. Especially given how the remains of the Allied Ninja were situated right by their doorstep, in the Land of Lightning wasteland, the same one where Kumogakure was in as well.</p><p>"Well, at least I have some more clarity and direction in my training now. Even elementary spoken instructions from someone who knows what they're talking about can easily peel off years of fruitless training so… Thanks." Mana nodded in gratitude.</p><p>"Don't mention it. Things are going to get pretty wild soon enough when the Supreme Leader gets the handle of administrative matters and the paperwork and starts sending us out on missions and all. I'm just looking out for all the Stars, actually." Shige-H shrugged, looking mighty proud of herself even though Mana hadn't really shown any progress in displaying an Advanced Bloodline ability from where she started.</p><p>In terms of intelligence and proper mindset, however, Mana had been leagues ahead from the initial point. Mana must have looked quite sullen on their way back into the compound as Shige-H kept turning her head at her friend and building up strength for the big shot.</p><p>"Say, are you sure you don't have an idea about your Advanced Bloodline concept? Because you look troubled and since it's only been a while since our training, I figure it has to be related." Shige wondered.</p><p>"Well, now that you…" Mana shrugged her shoulders before seeing some action in the medical tents and sensing some familiar chakra there. Since it had been at a diminished level, worry instantly sparked in the ninja magician's chest and she punted the question off into the distance, taking off and dashing toward the medical tents.</p><p>"H-Hey!" Shige-H yelled out, surprised by Mana's sudden dash. "Whoa!" the leader of stars gasped when she saw Skaven covered in bruises and wrapped in bandages. "He definitely wasn't this way when we left him…"</p><p>"Yes. Skaven was one with common sense not to come and pick a fight with the Four-Tails. What happened to him?" Mana inquired of the handful of medical ninja tending to his wounds. "Is he going to be okay?"</p><p>"Please, just let us work and don't get in our way…" a grumpy medical ninja in a stuffy bodysuit and a full medical equipment including a hat and a facemask gently moved Mana out of her way before another medical ninja scolded her and removed his mask and hat.</p><p>"Hey, do you have any idea whom you're speaking with? You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for Mana-san. This is one of your friends, right, Mana-san?" the medical ninja with ash-colored spiky hair pointed to Skaven while Shige-H unraveled her sleeves and jumped in to assist with the treatment.</p><p>"Y-Yeah, what happened to him?" Mana nodded, covering her mouth at the sight of rather grisly injuries. The poor guy had ribs and other fractures, bones sticking out and his face looked swollen, sick as if bashed a thousand times with a hammer before being flung face-first through a mountain.</p><p>"We're not sure yet. His life is not in danger. In fact, his injuries appear to be restrained, almost as if whoever did this to him avoided fatal injuries on purpose. He is in rough condition, though. I don't think he'll be telling us what happened to him exactly soon. The group restoring the woods around the training grounds area found him beaten to a pulp like this. We know little more than this." The medical ninja explained.</p><p>"Go back to the tent, Mana," Shige's tone became stricter as it became apparent that she had ample work to do and their sparring had left a taxing mark on the medical kunoichi already. At this point, it was a sense of personal responsibility for her own ally and a member of her squad that kept Shige going and her Mystical Palm Jutsu beaming. "I'll tell you everything we can put together when we do everything we can here."</p><p>It hurt. Seeing a friend of hers battered and broken like this, pummeled to a pulp and being unable to help at all. The only consoling thought was that Mana hadn't lost him, other than that–it was all envy of Shige and her ability to be helpful in times like these.</p><p>"Do you guys need anything? Water, tools?" Mana turned to the medical ninja, who shook his head and put his gear back on.</p><p>"Listen to your squad leader, Mana-san. Go back and try not to worry yourself sick. Your friend will make a full recovery, in time…" he replied.</p>
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